Sterner Stuff

Five years after a misstep on a New York City street left him with broken bones and nerve damage in his right hand, Mike Stern perseveres one gig at a time.

- By Bill Milkowski

I first witnessed Mike Stern on stage 31 years ago in his sideman role with Miles Davis at New York's Avery Fisher Hall back in 1981. This was Miles' eagerly awaited comeback” gig after a five-year absence from performing and recording (a period depicted in the 2015 Don Cheadle feature film, Miles Ahead). As Robert Palmer reported the next day in his July 6 New York Times review, “It began promisingly with the trumpeter playing a tartly quizzical muted solo, accompanied by terse, restrained playing from his band. Then, abruptly, Mr. Davis gave a signal and his guitarist, Mike Stern, hit a series of ringing chords. The contrast between Mr.Davis's refined playing and Mr. Stern's heavy metal bombast was jarring. But it was the only recurring element in the group's first piece, which was a series of solos over a loose, splashy funk rhythm, interrupted by the trumpeter's signals and the guitarist's power chording at apparently arbitrary intervals.

Little did Palmer know that Mr. Stern's heavy metal bombast” was a directive from the leader, who commanded the guitarist to turn it up or turn it off!” during their set. And while Stern was very capable of delivering the kind of post-Hendrixian six-string assaults that Miles was looking for in that comeback band (with bassist Marcus Miller, saxophonist Bill Evans, percussionist Mino Cinelu and drummer Al Foster), the guitarist was also someone who loved the warmth, harmonic sophistication and sheer swing of Jim Hall, one of his preeminent role models.