Jazz great Herbie Hancock on playing with Miles Davis, AI, and why the piano makes him cry
Herbie Hancock is an all-time jazz great, so it is reassuring to hear that he suffers from the same modern day procrastination problems as the rest of us mere mortals.
“I fall into rabbit holes on YouTube. A lot of them. New music writing software, things about health, tech things.”
That is his explanation as to why he has not made an album for 15 years.
“I get victimised by it, so to speak, but that’s life,” he chuckles.
Speaking from his house in west Hollywood, the ridiculously sprightly 84-year-old pianist has never been afraid to embrace technology, but normally he is the one doing the mastering, not vice versa.
Hancock’s half century… and more
Discovered by trumpeter Donald Byrd at the start of the 60s, Hancock signed to Blue Note Records, and wrote jazz standards including Watermelon Man, Cantaloupe Island and Maiden Voyage.
In the 70s he was an early adopter of synthesisers, blending genres with the electro-funk classic Head Hunters.
In the 80s, he had a bona fide worldwide hit single with Rockit after embracing turntablism and scratching, winning five awards at the first ever MTV Awards for its classic dancing robots video.
Deee Lite’s Groove Is in the Heart? The riff that drives that song is a sample from Hancock’s Blow-Up soundtrack. Madonna, Janet Jackson and NWA are amonst the plethora of performers to have incorporated his music into their own.
While as recently as 2008, he beat Amy Winehouse and Kanye West to win his first album of the year award at the Grammys.
The reason we are talking is that Hancock has been announced as one of the recipients of this year’s Polar Music Prize, the closest music has to a Nobel prize.
Previous laureates have included Sir Paul McCartney, Dizzy Gillespie, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Quincy Jones.
“It’s a huge, fantastic list of people I’ve admired,” says Hancock before expressing particular delight that the saxophonist Wayne Shorter was chosen for the honour in 2017, six years before his death. Together they made up two fifths of Miles Davis’s Second Great Quintet.
Working with Miles Davis
Joy comes over Hancock’s face when reminiscing about the period between 1964 to 1968, when he toured the world with the man Rolling Stone magazine called “the most revered jazz trumpeter of all time”.
“I was always frightened playing with Miles,” he laughs.
“It was very intimidating. I always wanted to be at my best, because I admired him so much. He was such a big part in my own development as a musician.
“It was fear on one hand. On the other hand, it was exciting. And when things were at their best, it was really inspiring. When were all in sync, that made life worth living.”
On the pianist’s favourite distraction, YouTube, there is a clip that has been viewed almost five million times, showing a furious Davis, on stage in Milan in 1964, stopping his improvised solo to send dagger eyes at Hancock.
Online there is much debate as to what caused this trumpet temper tantrum. But for Hancock, this was a regular occurrence.
“A lot of times I would be surprised at what would upset Miles, what would make him a little angry. I didn’t always know. He was not always easy to figure out, so I got used to that slight discomfort,” he says grinning.
“That’s life. But I was always looking to learn from those discomforts.”
And when he embarks on his European tour this summer, which includes three UK dates at London’s Barbican, Hancock will be thinking about another lesson he learnt from Davis – this one about the make-up of his audience.
He adopts a low, deep whispering voice and does a full-on Miles Davis impression, recreating the conversation from the mid 1960s, when the trumpeter gave him a stern warning: “If all you see are dudes in the audience, that means your music is dead.”
Herbie Hancock is pretending to be Miles Davis to an audience of me. It is a glorious moment.
“He used more expletives than I just did,” Hancock chortles. “But you get the idea,” clearly enjoying his mimicry as much as I did.
Hancock has been playing the piano for almost 80 years, but the instrument still gives him so much joy, that on occasion, during a session on the keys, he finds himself sobbing.
“If I’ve solved some kind of problem that I’ve had with the tune and made some kind of discovery that surpassed my expectations, I’ve been known to cry, to have tears coming down my face.”
I ask what kind of problem leaves him reaching for Herbie hankies.
“It’s difficult to explain,” he responds, “But, trying to make something work out, where there’s no easy answer. Where, ‘this is not supposed to work’, but ‘how can I make it work?'”
It feels like we have been invited inside Hancock’s brain and are seeing the cogs turn. At speed.
He continues: “There may be something that I want to connect, but all the ways I know of connecting them are not the solution. And I have to find some other means.
“And sometimes that [means] can come from looking at it in a different way. And not necessarily through music.”
This answer goes a long way to explaining the difference between someone who is a musical genius and someone who is not.
Hancock went to college to study electrical engineering, so it is no surprise that he has taken a huge interest in the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
He believes our fears about the technology are overblown, and says he prefers to “embrace it”. Hancock acknowledges concerns that AI lacks an ethical framework but asks: “Who are the worst examples of understanding ethics and being able to live a life with ethics? We, human beings, we’re the worst, right?”
He is on a roll now.
“I have this feeling that AI is going to help us all understand and get closer to becoming more ethically responsible people that are helping each other, instead of hurting or killing each other. Helping the planet instead of killing the planet with environmental issues.”
And the man who once released an album called Future Shock, has some simple advice for us all.
“When I’m using ChatGPT or Siri on my iPhone, I always say thank you and they usually say, ‘You’re welcome.'”
“I try to treat AI like it’s human and it actually manifests itself in an extremely positive way and that makes me feel better.”
At the age of 84, Herbie Hancock is still determined to try and future-proof himself, by getting the robots on his side.
Finally, I ask him a question on behalf of parents all round the world. My 11-year-old Charlie loves playing the piano, but hates practising. What advice would he give anyone in that situation?
He nods.
“I understand your pain. I don’t like practising either.”
Hancock, pauses and thinks before adding: “But you know, I look at it as, ‘OK, this is something, even if I don’t want to do it, I need to do it.’ And once I get into it, then I feel like I’ve conquered an obstacle in my life.”
He pauses again, before concluding: “I don’t always win that battle, but I’ve gotten to this point. So I guess I didn’t lose a lot of battles.”
And has he practised today?
“No. I didn’t today. And I probably won’t.”
Once again he laughs, and with that he departs, ready for the rest of the day and to watch some more YouTube.
Herbie Hancock will be presented with the Polar Music Prize in Stockholm, Sweden on 27 May 2025.
