R.I.P.
Bass Player featured him in a cover story March 2016. The guy was incredibly talented. A drummer at 10 and then started playing bass at 15 and was in Weather Report by age 20! My favorite question/answer from that interview:
Q: When the blowing commenced, what was it like to follow Wayne and Joe?
A: It was a challenge from the start, because I was practicing bebop at the time, and Joe would say, "Don't play any bebop on my bandstand--Wayne and I already did that." But the glaring difference was I had only been playing for six years, so I sounded like I was trying; they never sounded like they were trying. Wayne was so brilliant. I'll never forget, there's a song on Domino Theory called "Blue Sound--Note 3," a slow ballad in F minor. Although it didn't make it onto the album that way, in rehearsals I would solo on it before Wayne; I'd play a million notes, everything under the sun. One day after my solo he turned around and looked me right in the eyes and played three chromatic notes, A flat, A, and B flat. Then he proceeded to play those three notes in so many different ways, with like a bar and a half between each phrase. It was so profound, it completely wiped out what I had played! He was basically telling me, you just played a whole bunchy of stuff, now check this out. Those guys were at the level where they spoke through their instruments, while I was playing stuff I had worked out and practiced.
