Herbie Hancock: Jazz Legend on his extensive career and Australia and New Zealand tour

Pianist, composer, educator, Herbie Hancock is a legend. 

He’s credited with redefining the world of jazz and a primary architect of the post-top sound, as well as the leader of the electronic jazz-rock genre. 

At age 84, he still has a passion for performing, bringing his musical talents back to New Zealand for the first time since 2019. 

The tour will begin at Auckland’s Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, moving on to Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre before shifting off across the ditch. 

When asked why he’s still on the road despite being over eighty, Hancock told Andrew Dickens that it’s because he’s “crazy”. 

“It’s fun. It’s hard work, but it’s so rewarding,” he said. 

“I get a chance to meet people from New Zealand, you know, and people from all over the world, get a chance to perform for them, express myself musically, and include them in the performance.” 

 

Tour Dates: 

Auckland – October 8th, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre 

Wellington – October 9th, Michael Fowler Centre 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Herbie Hancock, pianist, composer, educator, icon credited with redefining the
world of jazz and electronic jazz rock like this. Miles Davis,
who employed him, said there's no better pianist who's come
after him. He was a member of miles most revered Quintet.
He's given us classic tunes like Cantaloup Island. He is

(00:20):
a living legend and he's coming back to New Zealand.
He came here in twenty nineteen, but he's now going
to be here again. October Auckland and Wellington and Herbie
Hancock joins me. Now, Hello, Herbie, Hey, how are you great?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Great to see you.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
I'm really good and really good to see you. You
look great. You are a living legend who looks very
much alive, and you look very sharp my ad, though
I probably should say you're looking cool.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
I'm glad to be lookable.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
And how old are you these days?

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Eighty four? Wow?

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Your birthday's April the twelfth, which is one day after mine.
You're an aries bring child of the universe and you're
still on the roads.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Why Because I'm crazy. That's why I like being on
the road. It's fun, it's hard work, but it's so rewarding.
I get a chance to meet people from New Zealand,
you know, and people from all over the world, get

(01:31):
a chance to perform for them, express myself musically and
include them in the performance. You know. It's so the
performance is different every night.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Are you still pushing the boundaries?

Speaker 2 (01:50):
I hope. So I try to challenge. If I'm not,
I just I try to challenge myself every night.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
You were a child prodigy back in the day. You
played Mozart with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the age
of eleven. But somehow the you're classically trained, somehow the
jazz got in. Now, how did the jazz get in?

Speaker 2 (02:12):
And it snuck in somewhere and it just kind of
captured me when I was in high school, even though
I was I started out actually in college as a

(02:32):
not as a music major, but electrical engineering. That was
That was the path I took, and which makes you know,
it's technological age that we're living in now, so exciting
for me.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
And that came out later in new music too.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
I got it the synthesizers so easily because I understood
the language of how they work.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, you played with Miles from sixty three to sixty eight.
It's I understand it's working with him is wonderful and
difficult all at the same time, very unique, and he
always challenged you, what was it like working with Miles
Davis and his best band?

Speaker 2 (03:14):
It could not have been better. Working with Miles actually
was beyond my wildest dreams I had, you know, thought
of and you know, maybe dreamed of playing with any
other musician, but Miles. I never even dreamed of playing

(03:36):
with Miles because I thought it was that was impossible,
so I've even considered it. So when I was actually
hired by Miles, it was I'd already surpassed my dreams
and I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
I understand it. For a kind of Blue, for instance,
all the guides turned up and they never seen the music,
never seen any of it, and then he talked about
stuff and then set them down, and then seeing go
for Gold? Was it like that? And your itserration too.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Uh. It was like as though somebody had bought a
basket of gold coins, you know, in front of me
were working with with Miles. But you know, I'll tell
you one thing that really was a huge inspiration to me,

(04:32):
What happened was I remember playing at the club in
New York called it the Village Vanguard, and I noticed
that Miles at one point in one of the songs,
he played something that I could tell that he heard

(04:54):
what I had done for him to play the notes
that he chose, And it dawned on me that Miles
was listening to me. If I hadn't comp to that realization,
I would have gotten I would have gotten fired. Yeah,

(05:16):
I found out Miles hired me because he wanted to
hear me.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Boy, tell me a little bit about Rocket, because there's
a lot of New Zealanders who saw that on our
TV shows. We saw the video on the TV shows
with the crazy old robots cutting half doing the crazy
old dance, and we all crazy old danced around to
it and there was like nothing we'd ever heard before.
So tell me about Rocket. Where did that come from?

Speaker 2 (05:42):
Well? Actually I had a guy working for me, sort
of an assistant, but he was a very bright guy,
verse and he loved all kinds of music, and he
was younger than me, and he always wanted to explore

(06:03):
what's happening with the underground scene. And he found these
two guys in New York that were part of that
the new underground scene that was happening, Bill Laswell and

(06:24):
Michael Beinhoan, and they had a group and they were
producing other people's music and producing their own, and he
thought they would be great to do one of my records,
one of my albums. And I had never heard of them.
I didn't know what they had done, and so what

(06:48):
I said was, okay, if they don't mind doing it
on spec in other words, whatever they present to me,
if I don't have to use it with that that
they said great. Anyway, they prepared some stuff, recorded some
stuff on tape, and flew from New York to La

(07:11):
you know where I had my studio, and they started
playing the tape of one of the things and I
I heard scratching on it. It wasn't the first time

(07:32):
I heard it. I actually only heard scratching for the
first time a few weeks before that, because some young
friend of mine turned me on to that that sound
to another record and by a guy named Malcolm McLaren's
a record called Buffalo Guess. That was the first record

(07:53):
I heard with scratching on it, right, And as soon
as I heard that sound, that sound actually reminded me
of some things we might have used with the One
DC Band, the Space Band, So I said, okay, let's
do this anyway. We continued. I wrote a melody for it.
We put the whole thing together, and when it was

(08:15):
released much took all of our surprise was it was
a gigantic hit.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Gigantic we never.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Ever expected anything like that. And then people were all
breakdancing and they all wanted to break dance to Rocket.
I was the thief I heard.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
You actually took the type downtown and you stuck it
at in a boom box and you played it and
some kids started going off to it, and you suddenly
thought yourself dis.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah it was I didn't know it was going to
be hit. I didn't know, but other people.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
Knew absolutely, the kids who wanted to dance it. Hey, Herbie,
it's fantastic that you're coming down, that you're bringing a
bit of history down to New Zealand so that we
can all witness it in your first hand. You look great,
you sound great, You've always had a good Thank you
so much for your time today.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
Thank you so much, too, great talking to you.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
Oh, thank you. The tour is going to start at
Aucland's coming to kind of with Theater October the eighth,
then Michael Fowler Centser in Wellington October the ninth. Then
it's off to Australia. This is your chance to see
a legend, probably the last time. For more from the
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