Imagine like a massive, world -dominating tech
giant. OK, I'm with you. and they've just released
this product that completely redefines their
industry. I mean, it is universally beloved,
it's printing unbelievable amounts of money,
and it's basically become a cultural religion.
Right. The absolute dream scenario for any company.
Exactly. But then their executive board's immediate
response to all this staggering success is to
just shut down the production lines. They alienate
their most loyal customer base and completely
ruthlessly cannibalize their own product. Which
runs counter to literally every instinct we have
about success. I mean, the natural human tendency,
especially in business or art, is to fiercely
protect a winning formula, not deliberately set
it on fire. Yeah, but they destroy what they
just built, deliberately, just to force themselves
to invent the next big thing. Right. But that
whole burn the ships mentality, that usually
belongs to Silicon Valley disruptors. The wildly
fascinating part here is that the greatest practitioner
of this philosophy wasn't a software engineer
at all. No, not at all. He was a jazz trumpeter.
So today, welcome to the deep dive. We are pulling
from a comprehensive biographical profile of
the legendary American artist, bandleader and
composer Miles Davis. It is such a dense, fascinating
document. It really is. And we're doing this
deep dive not just to like recount a timeline
of jazz history for you. We want to dissect the
psychology of a man who stayed at the absolute
vanguard of music for 50 years, precisely because
he had this ruthless willingness to assassinate
his own past. Yeah, it's a staggering psychological
profile. We're going to trace exactly how Davis
engineered nearly every major stylistic earthquake
in his field. I mean, bebop, cool jazz, hard
bop, modal jazz, fusion. He spearheaded all of
it. All of it. But to understand that level of
forward velocity, we also have to look at the
severe personal, physical, and moral toll that
this unyielding momentum took on him, and crucially,
on the people around him. Right. We have to look
at the whole picture. And I think the journey
has to start with the environment he actively
rejected, because he did not come from that stereotypical,
you know, struggling, starving artist background
that gets romanticized so often. Not even close.
No. He grew up in a really affluent family in
East St. Louis, Illinois. His father was a highly
successful dental surgeon. They lived on a 200
acre estate with a profitable pig farm. They
rode horses. It was this incredibly insulated,
comfortable middle -class existence. Highly comfortable.
And that resistance to expectation, it shows
up the very moment he starts playing the trumpet
in his early teens. Well his primary teacher,
a man named Elwood Buchanan, actively fought
the prevailing musical trends of the era. So
the fashionable style at the time demanded this
heavy romantic vibrato. Lots of shaking on the
notes. Right, that classic old school jazz sound.
Exactly. But Buchanan aggressively trained that
out of Davis. He forced him to play straight
dead center tones with zero fluctuation. If Davis
wavered even a little, Buchanan would literally
slap his knuckles. Oh wow, literal physical reinforcement.
Yeah. which fundamentally alters his sonic fingerprint
before he even leaves home. And Davis later said
he was looking for, I think the quote is, a round
sound with no attitude. He wanted the note right
in the middle, stripped of all that sentimental
decoration. And that specific sonic pursuit,
it explains what is otherwise a totally baffling
life choice. The Juilliard decision. Right. So
it's 1944. His family leverages their wealth
to send him to the Juilliard School of Music
in New York City. arguably the most prestigious
academic music institution on the planet. And
he just throws it away. Just walks away. He drops
out after just three semesters to live on a $40
a week allowance, just tracking down his idol,
the saxophonist Charlie Parter, and playing in
these smoky Harlem dive bars. On paper, it looks
like classic teenage self -sabotage. It definitely
looks that way until you analyze the actual musical
timeline. Because Juliet was teaching European
classical theory, which to Davis was essentially
a Museum of the Past. A museum, right, right.
But the actual leading edge of American music,
the laboratory where the future was being invented
in real time, was in those Harlem Jam sessions
at night. Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were engineering
bebop. And bebop was wild. It was frantic, incredibly
fast, just virtuosic music. Totally. So Davis
didn't drop out to rebel. You know, he dropped
out because traditional academia just couldn't
teach him the future. But even inside that rebellion,
he's playing this subversive game. He joins Parker's
quintet. but he doesn't try to outplay them at
their own frantic pace. I mean, he couldn't play
as high or as fast as Gillespie anyway. A few
people could. Right. So he uses his own cheat
codes. He takes that mid -range vibrato -less
tone he learned in Illinois and just plays the
middle. He anchors all that manic energy. Exactly.
He realized early on that you don't compete with
Charlie Parker on speed. You compete on space.
Space! Wow, yeah! And that desire to create space
leads Davis to actively dismantle the very bebop
movement he just helped popularize. By the late
1940s, he deliberately slows the music down and
forms a nine -piece band, the Miles Davis Snonet,
to record what becomes known as Birth of the
Cool. And the orchestration on those sessions
is just wild. Like, bringing a tuba and a French
horn into a bebop Jason Ensemble, it's like casting
oddball character actors as the romantic leads
in a movie. It shouldn't work. Right, but it
changes everything. It's like putting a heavy
weighted blanket over a frantic nervous system.
Bebop was all sharp angles and adrenaline, but
that tuba anchored the bottom end. It provided
this thick... slow -moving foundation that practically
forced the rest of the instruments to just relax
and float over it. It engineered the entire concept
of cool. The intent was to imitate the human
voice with a thickly textured orchestral sound.
Right. It was a complete departure from the aggressive
individualism of bebop, shifting the focus to
arranged melodic ensemble playing. But right
as he successfully bends the entire trajectory
of American music, his psychological foundation
crumbles. In 1949, he travels to Paris for a
jazz festival. This is a massive turning point.
It is, because for the first time in his life,
he is treated not just as an entertainer, but
as an intellectual peer, a genius and a respected
black man. He's mingling with Picasso and Sartre.
He has a romance with the French singer Juliette
Greco. Sounds incredible. But then he has to
board a plane and return to the deeply segregated,
violently racist reality of Jim Crow America.
The psychological whiplash was devastating. Going
from being revered as an artist in Paris to being
treated as a second class citizen in New York,
it plunged him into a severe depression. Understandably
so. And like many jazz musicians of that specific
era who were seeking a coping mechanism, he developed
a crippling heroin addiction. By the early 1950s,
his life was unrecognizable. Right, the sources
get really dark here. He was skipping hotel rent,
his car was repossessed, he abandoned his partner
Irene and their three children, and he even resorted
to street hustling and pimping just to fund his
habit. It's a terrifying descent. But what's
fascinating is the mechanism he uses to pull
himself out of that abyss. He eventually kicks
the habit cold turkey, which is agonizing. And
he doesn't do it through therapy or a clinic.
He does it by channeling the psychology of a
prize fighter. Specifically the boxer Sugar Ray
Robinson, right? Yes. Davis revered him. He adopted
Robinson's arrogant, untouchable attitude and
his extreme punishing physical discipline to
beat the addiction. He retreated to his father's
house in St. Louis, locked himself in a room
and essentially fought the withdrawals like a
grueling 12 round boxing match. And when he finally
emerges, the music mirrors the man. He's physically
hardened from working out at a boxing gym and
his sound hardens up too. The cool era gives
way to hard bop. Which brings back a heavier
deeply rooted in the blues and gospel. And this
is the era where he really starts utilizing the
Harman Mutes, stripping away the excess. He brings
the trumpet right up to the microphone, creating
this iconic, piercing, intensely intimate whisper
of a sound. And the tragic irony there is that...
Right as he isolates that whispery tone on the
horn, his own physical voice undergoes a traumatic
mirroring of that exact sound. Oh man, this part
is so crazy. It really is. In 1955, Davis underwent
surgery to remove polyps from his larynx. The
absolute medical directive was that he could
not speak for weeks while he recovered. Total
vocal rest. Exactly. But a few days later, he
got into a massive heated argument. He forced
his voice, screamed, and permanently destroyed
his vocal cords. It's such a profound self -inflicted
wound, he literally screamed his voice away.
He did. From that day forward, he could only
speak in a raspy, croaking whisper. It earned
him the nickname, the Prince of Darkness. Right.
But rather than retreat from public life because
of this vocal handicap, he completely leaned
into it. He weaponized it. He turned that damaged
whisper into a central pillar of his intimidating,
untouchable mystique. That is the ultimate psychological
reframe. He rebuilt his body, he reclaims his
mind, and he forms this sextet featuring absolute
titans like John Coltrane on tenor sax and Cannonball
Adderley on alto. And this incredible momentum
culminates in 1959. Columbia Records. Kind of
Blue? Yes. It remains the zenith. Kind of Blue
is widely considered the greatest jazz album
ever recorded, eventually selling over five million
copies. The U .S. House of Representatives even
passed a resolution honoring it as a national
treasure. Which is mind -blowing. But structurally,
it was another radical departure. He abandoned
the complex, rapid -fire chord changes of hard
bop and fully embraced modal jazz. We should
probably explain the mechanics of that, because
the shift is monumental. Go for it. So, in bebop,
the chords might change every two beats. The
soloist is running this frantic obstacle course,
constantly calculating the next harmonic turn,
but modal jazz is like stepping out of a claustrophobic
city street onto an open desert highway. a great
way to put it. Instead of changing chords, the
musicians are given one static scale, a mode,
and told to improvise over it for 16 or 32 bars
at a time. Exactly. Because the harmony isn't
moving, the soloist is forced to rely entirely
on pure melodic invention in space. Leaning heavily
on the brilliant impressionistic piano playing
of Bill Evans, Davis created an atmosphere that
was incredibly spacious, moody, and deeply contemplative.
It was a masterpiece of restraint. Absolutely.
But the universe has a brutal sense of timing.
It's August 1959. Kind of Blue has just been
released. Davis is headlining at the legendary
Birdland Mike Club in New York City. Right at
the peak of his career. Exactly. He steps outside
during an intermission to smoke a cigarette and
escort a blonde woman to a taxi. A white police
officer approaches and tells him to move on.
Davis explains he's working there. He points
to his name on the marquee and he refuses to
move. And the situation escalates instantly.
Yeah, the police immediately brutalize him. They
strike him in the stomach with a nightstick.
Detectives swarm him and they beat him over the
head, leaving him bleeding on the sidewalk. He's
arrested, taken to the hospital for stitches,
and charged with assault. I mean, he was eventually
acquitted, of course, but the psychological damage
was permanent. Just weeks after delivering America
one of its crowning cultural achievements, he
was violently reminded that in the eyes of systemic
authority, his genius offered him absolutely
zero protection. How does an artist even begin
to process that level of betrayal? By his own
admission, it destroyed him emotionally. Davis
stated that the horrific incident completely
shattered the renewed optimism he had painstakingly
built after getting clean. It just broke him
all over again. It replaced that hope with a
profound hardened cynicism. Many cultural historians
view that specific beating at Birdland as the
emotional catalyst for the aggressive, radical,
and almost confrontational musical shifts he
would make in the decade that followed. Right,
the quiet contemplation of Kind of Blue was over.
He was entirely done being polite. Completely
done. So, by the late 1960s, the acoustic jazz
world treats him as royalty. He could have played
concert halls for the rest of his life. But Davis
is looking at the cultural tectonic plates shifting.
The civil rights movement is evolving into the
black power movement. And he's paying close attention
to the youth. Exactly. He notices that young
black audiences aren't listening to acoustic
jazz anymore. It feels like music for their parents
in suits. They are listening to the raw electric
energy of James Brown, Sly Stone, and Jimi Hendrix.
And this sparks his most controversial reinvention.
Heavily influenced by his new wife, the funk
singer, Betty Mabry, Davis immerses himself in
rock and funk. He brings electric pianos, electric
bass, and heavily distorted electric guitars
into the recording studio. He literally burns
the bridge to acoustic jazz entirely, and the
purists absolutely lose their minds. Oh, they
hated it. Later figures like Wynton Marsalis
and Stanley Crouch openly blasted this era. They
essentially accused him of selling out to chase
pop trends, claiming it wasn't even jazz anymore.
But if you look at the studio process for albums
like In A Silent Way and the massive double album
Bitches Brew, it was far more avant -garde than
simple pop music. Davis and his producer, Keo
Machero, revolutionized how records were made.
And this is where the mechanics are so critical.
Because Machero wasn't just hitting record and
editing for length, he was using the studio tape
itself as an instrument. Like a physical tool.
Right. They would record a wandering, chaotic,
20 -minute jam session. Then Machero would extract
the most hypnotic 10 -second bass groove, cut
the physical tape with a razor blade, and splice
it into a literal loop that repeated endlessly.
It's incredible. Davis wasn't just playing over
a live band anymore. He was soloing over an artificial
manufactured trance. It is the exact mechanical
precursor to modern hip -hop sampling. He was
undeniably pioneering jazz fusion and ambient
music simultaneously. And to the criticisms from
the purists, Davis's stance was clear. He believed
acoustic jazz had become a museum piece. Right
back to the Ulyard mindset. Exactly. He wasn't
abandoning his culture. He was fiercely chasing
its evolution. He proved that a true innovator
must possess the absolute willingness to alienate
their core fan base in order to find a new one.
Which he did. He started opening for rock acts
like Neil Young and the Steve Miller Band. He
was playing to massive crowds, including like
600 ,000 people at the Isle of Wight festival.
But human physiology has limits. You cannot run
at that velocity, constantly tearing down and
rebuilding your artistic identity without the
engine eventually blowing out. Yeah, and by 1975,
endless touring and the relentless pressure of
being at the Vanguard completely break him. We
enter this five -year hiatus, and this is the
point in the source material where we are forced
to look unflinchingly at the deeply flawed man
behind the myth. The biographical record is really
stark regarding the periods from 1975 to 1980.
Davis retreated entirely into his New York brownstone.
And his body was failing him, right? Completely.
He suffered from ulcers, hernias, and eventually
required multiple hip replacements. He admitted
in his own autobiography that his days became
entirely consumed by a heavy reliance on cocaine,
alcohol, codeine, and morphine. He literally
wrote that sex and drugs took the place music
had occupied. Yes. And the darkness of that period
wasn't just internal self -destruction. The texts
detail severe documented physical abuse toward
the women in his life, including his wives and
partners like Francis Taylor and Joe Gelbard.
The accounts are harrowing. They really are.
Francis Taylor ultimately fled for her life after
he hallucinated and chased her through their
home with a kitchen knife. And later in his life,
the familial fractures were so deep that he excluded
two of his own sons from his will. We have to
confront this. You can't just brush past it as
the collateral damage of a, you know, a tortured
artist. He inflicted profound trauma on the people
closest to him. It demands that we hold two conflicting
truths simultaneously, which is often the most
difficult task when analyzing historical figures.
Miles Davis was an unparalleled musical visionary
who fundamentally altered the 20th century. And
concurrently, he was a deeply troubled, violent
partner who caused immense suffering. As observers
relying on the historical record, we cannot gloss
over the abuse in the name of his art. It is
a permanent part of his ledger. It is a stark
reminder that genius does not grant you a pass
on basic human decency, Rawl said. But eventually,
the hiatus ends. He emerges in the early 1980s.
He's in his late 50s. And let's be honest, the
playbook for an aging legend coming out of a
five -year retirement is pretty well established.
Oh, totally. You launch a massive stadium nostalgia
tour. You play the acoustic hits from the 50s.
You print money and soak in the applause. But
to do that would violate his fundamental artistic
ethos. Even with his physical deterioration and
his moral failings, his core philosophy, never,
ever look backward. remain totally intact until
his death in 1991. He absolutely refused to be
a legacy act. Absolutely refused. He teams up
with young musicians. He starts playing covers
of pop songs by Cyndi Lauper and Michael Jackson.
On his album Tutu, he's heavily utilizing program
synthesizers and drum machines. And there is
this incredibly revealing anecdote in the text
about this exact era. Oh, of the interview. Yeah.
Someone asks him to play those gorgeous classic
ballads from Kind of Blue, and he f - He flatly
refuses. He calls playing his old music, warmed
over turkey. Warmed over turkey? That is amazing.
He says, it hurts my lip. He literally tells
an interviewer, jazz is dead. There's no point
ape in the shit. He was completely relentlessly
unsentimental about his own legacy. To date us,
jazz was strictly the present tense. Capturing
a recording like Kind of Blue was about channeling
the energy of the right hour on the right day.
Once it was recorded, it was over. Right. Replaying
a 30 -year -old hit just to please an audience
was fundamentally opposed to the definition of
the art form he helped invent. The wild audacity
of that mindset. I mean, it really is like demanding
that a visionary tech CEO go back to manufacturing
rotary phones because the public felt really
nostalgic about them. He just wouldn't do it.
Playing So What in 1985 would have been an artistic
lie to him. Exactly. He believed you can't discover
the future if you're constantly looking over
your shoulder at what you've already done. And
that is exactly where this deep dive connects
back to you. Because while none of us should
ever seek to emulate Miles Davis's personal demons,
his destructive coping mechanisms, or his abhorrent
treatment of his partners, his professional creative
ethos is staggering. Staggering. He proves that
true world -altering innovation requires the
absolute courage to abandon your past successes.
You literally cannot build tomorrow if you are
using all your energy to protect what you built
yesterday. Which leaves you with one final provocative
thought to maul over long after this audio stops.
Think about Davis's concept of warmed over turkey.
Look closely at your own life, your career trajectory,
or your creative projects. What past success,
what comfortable proven routine are you desperately
clinging to right now that might actually be
the exact thing preventing you from discovering
your next major breakthrough? Are you brave enough
to kill your best product just to see what you
might invent next? That is the challenge. Thanks
for joining us on this deep dive.