page_title: Weather Report
section_title: 1980-1982: A tighter arrangement
hierarchical_section_title: Weather Report / History / 1980-1982: A tighter arrangement
caption_attribution_description: English: Bobby Thomas Jr. and Wayne Shorter with Weather Report, Amsterdam, 1980
context_page_description: Weather Report was an American jazz fusion band of the 1970s and early 1980s. The band was initially co-led by the Austrian-born keyboard player Joe Zawinul, the American saxophonist Wayne Shorter and Czech bassist Miroslav Vitouš. Other prominent members at various points in the band's lifespan included bassists Alphonso Johnson, Jaco Pastorius and Victor Bailey; and drummers/percussionists Airto Moreira, Chester Thompson, Alex Acuña and Peter Erskine. Throughout most of its existence, the band was a quintet of keyboards, saxophone, bass, drums and percussion.
  The band began as an avant-garde jazz group; when Vitouš left Weather Report after a few years, Zawinul increasingly took control and steered the band towards a more funk and R&B-oriented jazz sound incorporating elements of world music and the latest developments in synthesizer technology. During the mid-1970s Weather Report remained one of the defining acts within the jazz form, winning the DownBeat best album award five times in a row.
  Alongside Miles Davis's electric bands, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, and the Headhunters, Weather Report is considered to be one of the pre-eminent early jazz fusion bands.
context_section_description: During 1979's touring, Shorter had begun to feel sidelined by the current Weather Report's aggressive drive and by the sometimes overly macho musical interplay between Pastorius and Zawinul, which on at least one occasion squeezed him out of band performance. At one point, he claimed to a journalist that he would be leaving the band within a few months. In the event, Shorter resolved his major differences with his bandmates - but the near-split appeared to inform Weather Report's next development, which was a step back towards a purer jazz approach.
  At the beginning of 1980, Pastorius recruited hand-drummer Robert Thomas Jr. (a fellow Floridan, with whom he had jammed previously) into the band. Thomas featured on the 1980 album Night Passage. A tighter and more traditional recording than previous releases, the record featured a more prominent role for Shorter, a strong element of bebop, and a nod to jazz's golden age via a high-speed cover of Duke Ellington's "Rockin' in Rhythm" (showing off Zawinul's pioneering and ever-increasing ability to create synthetic big-band sounds on his synthesizers).
  By now, Pastorius was displaying signs of the mental instability and substance abuse problems that ultimately wrecked his career; and the close relationship he'd previously shared with Zawinul was becoming strained as Zawinul grew tired of Pastorius' showmanship onstage (beginning to feel that it detracted from the music). Towards the end of the year, Pastorius began working on his long-delayed second solo album (Word of Mouth) (1981) in New York, while Zawinul worked on new Weather Report material in California.
  Weather Report's next album Weather Report (1982) - their second eponymous release following their 1971 debut - was recorded in 1981, although it was not released for another year. Zawinul's dominance as instrumentalist and composer (as well as group director) was even more pronounced on this album. Much of the band's music was increasingly written out rather than improvised. In the event, Pastorius spent more of his creative attention on the Word of Mouth project: his only writing for the Weather Report album being his contribution to a single, group-composed piece. Shorter (who only contributed one whole composition to the 1982 album beyond group-written work) was already taking a more philosophical approach. He later commented, "for a long time in Weather Report, I abstained. I elected not to do things."
  The delay in releasing the 1982 Weather Report album had the side effect of breaking up the current line-up of the band. By late 1981, Pastorius was putting together the Word of Mouth Big Band (which included Erskine) for concert dates in Japan, on the assumption that 1982 would be a Weather Report rest year. However, previously canceled tour dates had left the band open to potentially crippling lawsuits and an obligation to play replacement concerts. When scheduled, these clashed with the Word of Mouth concerts and led to Pastorius leaving Weather Report, albeit relatively amicably. As Zawinul put it, "We had no choice. We had to find another bass player... Basically, Jaco went his way and we had to go ours."
  Erskine's own commitment to Word of Mouth (and a subsequent summer commitment to Steps Ahead) meant that he, too, had to be replaced, while Robert Thomas Jr., was simply dismissed. Reduced to a duo, and with tour commitments looming, Zawinul and Shorter were obliged to quickly assemble a new band.
caption: Drummer Thomas, left, and Shorter, performing in Amsterdam, in 1980
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