As a music critic, you spend a lot of time trying to find stuff to say about albums you wouldn’t choose to listen to, and little time writing about the music you really love. If you love jazz fusion, you’re pretty much guaranteed never to write about it at all, because it is the most unfashionable genre ever invented and invites a disproportionate amount of disdain. I used to feel sad about this, until I realised it meant that jazz fusion would never become my work, only ever my private pleasure. The vocabulary of onanism has long been thrown at a genre known for extended guitar solos and its almost entirely male cavalry. But I like to think of it as onanistic in a different way. Those of us who enjoy it have access to a deep, physical thrill whenever we want, and we’ll never talk about it to anyone else.
On 9 February, the pianist Chick Corea – one of the founding fathers of the genre, but important in many other ways besides – passed away just weeks after a cancer diagnosis. I don’t know how many times I saw Corea live in concert and I’ve lost track of where. I had little sense of who he was as a person; I have never read an interview with him. But I saw him every time he came to London, and sometimes in America too, because I enjoy getting goose bumps, and because every time I saw him, he was playing a completely different style of music.
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