‘Human beings are in trouble these days,’ says Herbie Hancock, chatting to us between songs. ‘And do you know who can fix it?’ ‘Herbie!’ comes the instant reply, shouted from somewhere in the stalls.
Hancock might be a jazz legend, but he’s not quite the Saviour. Kicking off this year’s excellent contemporary music programme at the Edinburgh International Festival, he’s a hit from the moment he strolls into view. In his long black frockcoat, Hancock has come tonight as the High Priest of Cool. When he straps on a keytar, he’s a funky gunslinger. When one of his outstanding trio takes a particularly inventive solo, he cracks up with undisguised glee at the sheer showdown-slaying audacity of their playing.
Hancock’s band is sensational, comprising James Genus on electric bass, drummer Justin Tyson and electric guitarist Lionel Loueke, who takes centre stage. Hancock parks himself over to our left, hopping between synthesiser and grand piano, often switching several times during a song.
At 82, he is a living link in the chain of jazz greats. A member of Miles Davis’s legendary Second Great Quintet in the 1960s; creator of a series of brilliant Blue Note albums during the same period; jazz-rock fusioneer in the 1970s; pop star in the 1980s. Still a tireless innovator into his ninth decade, Hancock needs a box set for every era of his career. Two hours on stage can only offer so much.
As such, the opening ‘Overture’ turns out to be a kind of crash course in Herbie, a medley moving – only slightly awkwardly – from spacey atmospherics to acoustic piano improvisations to Loueke’s impressively scatted guitar and vocal version of Hancock’s jazz/funk/rap/pop crossover ‘Rockit’, which you will remember as the old Top of the Pops theme in the 1980s.
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