Miles Davis
“Perhaps it seems odd for someone known as a rock drummer to pick a jazz trumpeter. Well, Miles Davis fascinated me from the stuff he did with in the early 1950s with John Coltrane onwards.
“Davis was an absolute leader. Besides his playing having an unbelievable tone, what I liked most was that he made every note count. He didn’t always play a lot and he wasn’t necessarily the greatest technician around, but it didn’t matter. What he did was meaningful.
“He was one of the first to use a wah-wah pedal on a trumpet. He also wore a glittery jacket on stage, and a pair of big sunglasses, which drew me to him more than ever.
“Davis was one of the first jazz players to try to cross over into the world of electric jazz. With Bitches
Brew [1970] he set standards for all to follow. He was responsible for switching people on to jazz in the same way that Emerson, Lake & Palmer made classical music available to young people. He wanted a wider audience. Unlike so many jazz musicians, he never buried his head in the sand.
“People might listen now to what he did back then and find it too experimental, but at least he was willing to step out of the box.”