I am sad today. It is the 20th anniversary of the death of a hero of mine – Jaco Pastorius (although he officially died on 21st, the 11th was his last day of consciousness), so I naturally browsed the web today and got a shock and a surprise — Jaco’s musical partner in Weather Report died today – the great Viennese Keyboard player and composer Josef Zawinul

Joe lost his battle with a type of skin cancer variously called ‘Trabecular cancer’, ‘Apudoma of the skin’, and ‘Merkel cell carcinoma’. He died aged 75, in his native Vienna where he ran a Jazz bar called ‘Birdland’.

Jaco-and-Joe’s music has been a constant through my life — from secondary school through to adulthood. — and oh, such wonderful music — especially live concerts. Inspirational to a musician, these guys were so good that it was OK to admit it! They were beyond jealousy and pettiness.

Weather Report gigs with Zawinul and Pastorius were legendary, and I had the privilege and pleasure of seeing them many times in Edinburgh, London and Glasgow… some of the best gigs I have experienced.

Weather Report were amazing, and from the fun ‘Birdland’ through the slow, jazzy ‘A remark You Made’ to the danceable ‘Pearl on a Half Shell’, they led the way with Joe as the godfather of fusion! Joe’s amazing composition, amazing technical knowledge of synths and studio gadgets, combined with musical and technical ability to create a unique and new musical genre at the time of punk rock and disco.

But it is the strange date coincidence I cannot shake off.

It is just strange that it was exactly 20 years ago, back in 1987, when we heard the shocking news that Jaco Pastorius had been beaten senseless and was in a coma and on life support.

Jaco was a genius and another serious and major hero of mine. When Jaco and Joe got together, the whole world took notice – these guys rocked musicians (and still do).

Life has ups and downs, and Jaco was on a down at that time — he was divorced, depressed and dependent on drink and possibly drugs. He was unstable but managed to get some bass playing gigs to stay alive. I personally understand where he was. Been there and done that. He was only 35, so there was plenty of time to straighten things out and make it work properly again.

On 11th September back in 1987, he had fallen off the stage and was thrown out on the street. It was late, and he was lonely and bored as well as drunk, so he pushed on, and made his drunken way to The Midnight Bottle Club.

Unfortunately for Jaco, the bouncer on the door that night was martial arts expert, Luc Haven. These guys had bad blood, so a quarrel broke out.

You have to understand that in 1987, I had spent some years learning Karate in Glasgow’s world-famous Kobe Osaka dojo. As a new black belt I was getting offered part time work as a bouncer — I took security work at the new Virgin Megastore on Renfield Street on Saturdays just to get cheap albums. I also took occasional jobs as bouncer at nightclubs. This as well as being a bassist and guitarist means that I can relate completely with the tragic and dramatic events of that night…

Listen to one who knows, it doesn’t take much to beat up a man who is so drunk he could not stand unaided. Luc beat-up the bass legend so comprehensively that poor Jaco lost one arm and one eye and suffered a total disfigurement of his face — ears, nose and bone

With irreversible brain damage, and thankfully in a deep coma, he was rushed to ‘Broward General Medical Center’ and put on life support until declared brain dead after a brain haemorrhage a couple of days later. ‘Just as well’ I thought – his life was over — if he recovered consciousness he would have been brain dead, if he was mentally OK, he couldn’t perform as a result of disfigurement, but then again he couldn’t exactly play sessions with only one arm. This was a thousand deaths indeed. I heard all about it on the BBC radio and was deeply affected by the whole thing. It just amazed me.

His death was the beginning of the on-going family feuds and squabbles as his last wife refused to give consent to pulling the plug — she was outnumbered by the rest of his family. This took over a week, and finally the great Jaco Pastorius was removed from the life support system — and continued to live for three hours before dying on 21st September aged just 35. I heard the news from Johnny Walker on the BBC Radio the following weekend.

• The vicious, cowardly bouncer, Luc Haven, was tried in a court of law and found guilty of the murder of Jaco Pastorius in the Second Degree, and he went to prison for FOUR MONTHS!

In the martial arts we were always taught to use the minimum force – to hurt rather than maim, to maim rather than kill — I was so disgusted that I quit martial arts forever! I quit my jobs, the Kobe Osaka,the karate-do renmei, all competitions and classes, and I formally returned my black belt to my sensei, Tommy Morris. I’m not sure that he fully understood as he gave me a puzzled look, but then he gave me an embroidered black belt which I still have to this day. Mind you he never did return any money!

Thing is that I totally turned my back on martial arts on 21st September 1987 and although technically Jaco is down as 21st September, I cannot help thinking he departed on 11th September — same as Joe.

Jaco and Joe have been so influential on my life in so many ways – my wife feels the same, and in fact we almost called our baby son “Jaco”!

Joe was instantly recognisable, being bald with a thick moustache, his type of cancer is rare, but most common in bald men. I guess there will always be “what ifs”, but it all goes to show how lives touch other lives in surprising ways. It’s all here — even the family feuds and the nerds and geeks who are obsessed with Joe’s and Jaco’s minutae.

If you have not heard of Joe Zawinul or Jaco Pastorius, do a search on the web, listen to Joni Mitchell, Weather Report, Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley and Maynard Ferguson.

Their genius was that both Joe and Jaco took what was around and made new connections, manipulating things and combining to make something new, and they did this together.

Much may even seem obvious and logical now — looking back with hindsight — but at the time they were stunningly creative moves.

Joe was responsible for bringing electronic keyboards into Jazz, for updating the genre, for putting soul into synthesiser music.

The upright bass is like a large violin or cello — a rounded neck to be played with a bow and with no frets. However, when Leo Fender invented the electric bass guitar, he made made an instrument that was a guitar (flat neck and fingerboard and frets), but used to play bass parts.

What Jaco did was to pull the frets out of the neck and fill the gaps with wood filler.

So if Leo Fender invented an entirely new instrument (the electric bass guitar), Pastorius did too — a fretless electric bass guitar.

He then played this fretless utilising the techniques of the classical, flamenco and gypsy guitar genres — chords, thumbed harmonics, hammer on harmonics, and a lot more — he even slid chords and invented his own techniques, in particular, as evident in Weather Report’s ‘Birdland’, the bass guitar plays the high melody part (harmonics) while the saxophone and keyboards play the bass line! Revelation and revolution ensued!

911, eh. What a bleak date indeed.