Pat Metheny: The ECM Years, 1975–1984 by Mervyn Cooke (review)

In a 1958 UNESCO address, the pianist and composer John Lewis noted: ‘The audience for jazz can be widened if we strengthen our work with structure. If there is more of a reason for what’s going on, there’ll be more overall sense, and, therefore, more interest for the listener.’ Over time, with steady personnel and frequent touring, Lewis and the Modern Jazz Quartet devised their own solutions to the structural form ‘problem’ in small-group jazz, using novel blends of composed ensemble sections and solo improvisations that often replaced the head–solos–head schema and the use of repeated chorus structures for improvisations.

How the guitarist Pat Metheny addressed that same problem in a later decade is one of the central themes of Mervyn Cooke’s excellent new book. Cooke highlights Metheny’s compositional structures (along with those of his collaborator, the pianist Lyle Mays) through a vocabulary of narrative and storytelling, ultimately folding in Metheny’s growing involvement with film music to underscore a burgeoning cinematic conception for his compositions. He accounts for sectional designs, composed interlude sections to launch improvisations, ways in which underlying harmonies for improvisations might emerge from details of those transitions, predetermined ascending half-step modulations during the solos to enhance excitement and tension, as well as numerous other factors. All contribute to a view of Metheny’s small-group work as ‘like a modern big band’, in the words of one of the players.

In one sense, Cooke’s overall view is evolutionary, suggesting that the eleven recordings made for ECM brought Metheny to a higher elevation achieved by the last, First Circle. This recording was regarded by Metheny as the best of the eleven, attaining a plateau continued with the following two done after the guitarist broke with ECM and began recording for Geffen.

At the same time, the book is comprehensive. Cooke tells a story that begins with Metheny’s apprenticeship and earliest recordings with Gary Burton and ends with those albums that followed his work with ECM. He uses transcriptions of improvisations—often with comparative analyses of solos from the same composition done both in the studio and live—for descriptive analysis. Relying on the Pat Metheny Song Book (Milwaukee, 2000) for score excerpts of many of the compositions, he details balances between slow and active harmonic progressions, and syntheses of diatonic languages with richer chordal vocabularies. He considers the growing role of electronic technology (digital delay, Synclavier, Roland GR-300 guitar synthesizer, monophonic then polyphonic keyboard synthesizers), and its impact on Metheny’s (and Mays’s) compositions and improvisations. Cooke highlights Metheny’s extreme and personal eclecticism: along with stylistic markers (rock, pop, country and western, electronics, bluegrass, free jazz, bebop, and minimalism), he addresses how Metheny’s Midwest origins allowed him to tap into notions of place, particularly a rural heartland aesthetic described by David Ake as ‘pastoral jazz’. Further, the book reaches into Metheny’s use of alternative tunings and custom-made guitars, and even considers the artwork of the ECM album covers themselves. Throughout, Cooke portrays Metheny as a meticulous band-leader paying constant attention to sonic detail, who quickly built a large fan base and substantial record sales through an ongoing and often gruelling touring schedule.

Cooke’s study is the latest instalment in Oxford University Press’s Studies in Recorded Jazz series, whose volumes focus on a recording or unified group of recordings by a jazz artist or group. It might be argued that the eleven albums covered here are more bifurcated than unified. Those eight recordings regarded by critics as fusion, a term Metheny disliked—including Metheny’s Watercolors, five by the Pat Metheny Group (Pat Metheny Group, American Garage, Offramp, Travels, and First Circle), as well as his solo album (New Chautauqua) and album with Lyle Mays and the percussionist Naná Vasconselos (As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls)—all differ markedly from...