Miles Beyond: The Electric Explorations of Miles Davis, 1967-1991

by Paul Tingen

Presents an in-depth exploration of the musician's controversial electric period and the impact it had on the jazz community, as drawn from firsthand recollections about his artistic and personal life. Reprint.

Genres: Music, Jazz, Nonfiction, Biography, Music Biography

352 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2001

Reviews

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had some great insights into Miles' electric work from the late 60s onward, as well as some fantastic interviews with the may men who played with Miles during this period. The author spells out lots of cool stuff about the influences Miles took and why he developed in the direction he did throughout the electric portion of his career.

Despite the great content, Tingen was a bit of a know-it-all throughout the book, seemingly dropping references to every bit of intellectual matter he possibly could so that you couldn't ignore how much he knows about...well, everything! He also shoehorned in a lot about zen and a bunch of philosophical theories that I did not think added to the picture of Miles' artistry at all.

Further, Tingen felt overly harsh on a lot of Miles' work that is pretty fantastic. For example, he says On the Corner, universally regarded as a unique and influential masterpiece, was just a fine experiment that planted the seed for other, better works later. In addition, the dude seems a bit arrogant. In the beginning of the book, he says that he is writing the book because jazz critics are not able to accurately assess the worth of Miles' electric music, but he can write about it because of his background in rock music. However, when he later writes about free jazz, he writes off the whole thing as a childish, failed experiment. Why does he have the expertise to make this assessment? Overall, I did not love the author's voice/personality.

So, a good book if you're really into electric Miles, but, be warned, you may be annoyed by the author.

[Karl · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Paul Tingen book "Miles Beyond: Miles Davis, 1967-1991" he gives the reader an in-depth look into Miles Davis's "electric" period from 1967 to 1991. What brought it about and how it impacted his fans.

The book also contains an extensive musician list, discography, bibliography and session information.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best approached as a kind of reference book chronicling the least understood period of Miles Davis' career, one that's very close to my musical heart and soul. Obviously not to discount the towering achievements of the first (Coltrane, Bill Evans) and second (Shorter, Hancock) great quintets, but for me what Miles did in the period leading up to and following Bitches Brew represents something absolutely unique: an extended experiment in tracking the experience of "change" as the basis of sonic and psychic (and in potential anyway, social) reality. The personel changed frequently, the balance of rhythms and textures never settled: in essence, it's a sometimes beautiful, sometimes disorienting sense of what the Sixties could have become.

So Tingen's work was more than cut out for him as he set out to trace what all of that was about. On one level, it's daunting simply to figure out who was playing with Miles when and what they were playing--Miles stopped introducing "songs" in concert so unless you recognize motifs and riffs you can feel like you're adrift in an endless sonic ocean. Tingen provides a useful if inevitably (given Columbia records extremely erratic history of documenting and releasing Miles' music) discography.

Tingen also tracked down and interviewed an impressive number of the musicians Miles played with and the book is most certainly the best compendium of statements on how Miles worked, his zen qualities juxtaposed with a peresonality that could veer into violence of various sorts, and his pedagogical brilliance.

The parts of the book that worked least well for me are those where Tingen offers aesthetic judgements in a voice that hasn't earned its authority. I simply don't trust his ears or his comments on Teo Macero's edits. Doesn't matter much since my listening has been enriched by the journey.

Like Miles' career, the section dealing with his return from the "dark period" in the 1980s serves as a footnote.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you play music, don't play the idea that's there, play the next idea. Wait. Wait another beat, or maybe two, and maybe you'll have something that's more fresh. Don't just play from the top of your head, but listen and try to play a little deeper.

This is more of an attitude and a way of thinking about music than a style or a genre. It's a challenge to reevaluate one's basic conceptions -- what music is and how it's to be created. The idea is to be so open that the players are required to be completely present every second.

Don't play what's there. Play what's not there. Listen to what you can leave out. Less ornamentation can sometimes get you closer to the soul and the spirit. Play as if you don't know how to play. Don't follow what the others are doing. Don't finish the phrases that you start.

Collective improvisation in this style is dependent on freshness and unpredictability, intuitive inspiration in the moment, never slipping back into habit. The melody can be in the bass, or a drum sound, or just a sound. And every rhythm can be played three or four different ways.

So don't play too much too soon. Don't jump in too quickly. Take your time, find your pace, develop a solo logically and musically. Listen. Listen before breathing. When you come into any situation, it's the best thing to to: to listen. That is how you learn. Then make music. Play the way you breathe.

By the 70s, the drums and electric bass were the foundation, the rock, of the Miles Davis band. The keyboards and guitars gave a palette of colors, a wall of sound. Then the trumpet galvanizes everything, brings it all together into focus in the beginning, the end, and transitioning from piece to piece. Pure sound, a fantastic, magical sense of space. Establish a mood and it can go on for hours.

Receptivity and awareness are considered feminine traits, as opposed to the masculine domain of domineering and penetrating. For all of the volume and violence of his life and band during these years, his was always a vulnerable, soulful sound. His trumpet more like a human voice, singing rather than playing. Rough and raspy, sad and pained.

Honesty, nobility, darkness. Confidence, control, passion. Like a bomb of energy, riding the waves of the jazz revolutions he pioneered, each decade putting together new bands of fresh talent and taking them in original directions, breathing individuality and innovative expression at every point.

adapted from the text

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Paul Tingen's MILES BEYOND: The Electric Explorations of Miles Davis 1967-1991 is one of the few explorations exclusively of Miles' electric era. The albums from IN A SILENT WAY until Miles' first retirement in 1975 are my favourite of all his output, so I looked forward to reading Tingen's book. The book is indeed informative, covering all the recording sessions, the ever-changing lineup, and Miles' disputes with the label. Perhaps the most interesting portion was Tingen's distinction between Miles' studio lineup and his live band in the era from 1968-1971, revealing that he was actually pursuing different artistic directions at the same time.

But the book desperately needed tighter editing. So much of the book consists only of quotations from Miles' musicians about how great he was. His attempt at connecting Miles' working methods to Zen Buddhism is dilettante, and at one point there's a completely out of place exposition of Ken Wilber's "holon" theory that goes on for page after page. Now that Columbia has released an enormous amount of previously unheard material, such as the "Complete On the Corner Sessions" box, there's an opportunity for a second edition of the book, but I could only hope it would be better edited.

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exactly the in-depth overview of Miles' electric period that I needed. He even includes a Sessionography breaking down all the fusion recordings by the dates they were recorded, including who was playing on them and where the recordings can be found. I made a whole playlist based on this information (which is a little outdated now, but still incredibly helpful).

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

We immediately learn that author Paul Tingen is deeply aggrieved and is writing this book (in 2001) to fight back against the jazz-heads who have always maligned Miles’ electric period. He tells us that contemporary jazz critics were anti-rock snobs and/or didn’t understand rock. And therefore were prejudiced against electric Miles.

Today in 2026, I have the impression that Miles’ electric output is widely respected by music enthusiasts of many tastes. Perhaps critics and fans came around to it. Perhaps Tingen had a hand in bringing them around.

But Tingen’s bone-to-pick, chip-on the shoulder tone reads juvenile and whiny. Luckily, we can often overlook his tone because the content is stellar. That is until he gets to free jazz…

Irritatingly, albeit a bit amusingly, he dismisses free jazz outright. In the most ironic way possible, Tingen commits the same error as the music critics he so strongly criticizes and against whom he writes this book. Namely, he dismisses free jazz because he doesn’t understand it. Calling it “nihilism,” and saying “anything goes,” betrays this ignorance. This wouldn’t be such a big deal except that he is forceful in his treatment of critics who dismissed Miles’ electric period, for an alleged lack of understanding of the genre.

Tingen: “Yet the size and influence of the movement has decreased as time went on, and most jazz critics appear to agree that especially its radical edge has failed to produce a substantial body of significant and enduring music. The free-jazz movement also led to an audience exodus, caused by the same factor that affected the radical side of the classical avant-garde: a lack of depth and meaning, which resulted from attempts to exclude influences of the past” (98)

In the preceding passage, he points to “most jazz critics,” in order to back up his judgement against free jazz. But it is the consensus of “most jazz critics” that he is attacking for judgement of Miles’ electric period. Tingen does not indicate any awareness of this glaring hypocrisy.

Tingen appealing to most jazz critics is simply insufficient support for his argument against the merits of free jazz. The other part of the passage compares the alleged failures of free jazz by comparing the genre to avant-garde classical music and its alleged failures. But while Tingen generally is good about discussing specific works of art to back up his arguments, as he does with John Cage and classical music, he doesn’t offer such discussion with free-jazz. He doesn’t consider early pioneers like Ayler and Dolphy, and how they clearly did not “attempt to exclude influences of the past.” Nor does Tiingen consider the AACM for clearly incorporating other non-Western musics (exemplifying Tingen’s beloved “include and transcend” approach to music). Nor does he comment on late-era Coltrane, which–say what you will if you don’t care for it–I would dare anyone to claim it lacks “depth and meaning.”

But where Tingen really goes off the rails is when he abruptly introduces sweeping ideas of world history and tries to relate it to a criticism of free jazz. Among several bizarre sections of the book this is surely the strangest. Tingen divides world historic thought into crass and totalizing binaries, assigning free-jazz to the “rational Western paradigm, which highly values static, fossilized art that can be studied and dissected under the microscope. It was this attitude that enabled colonialists to wrench local art from its colonies, depriving it of its context and meaning and reducing it to a trophy with pure surface value. Wilber describes how one of the rational paradigm’s achievements was to separate art, science, morals, and religion….These had been fused in the prerational, preindustrial paradigm, when declaring, for instance, that the earth revolved around the sun was a religious transgression, with often rather horrible consequences. While offering the freedom for a revolution in scientific thinking, this separation was hampered by the fact that scientists, and artists, practiced their vocations from ivory towers, without regard to morals or the needs of society. In art, this was expressed in the idea of ‘art for art’s sake’ and in the phenomenon of the tortured artist who only expresses what’s relevant to him or her. The audience-alienating extremes of free-jazz and postwar classical avant-garde were both manifestations of this idea” (98-99).

What?! This is free jazz? This is Pharoah Sanders? Sonny Sharrock? Is Ornette Coleman a neocolonialist?! (LOL). Where do we even begin to unpack this? I don’t think we try to. Instead, I think we can agree that this is utter nonsense. Undoubtedly, free jazz is an extreme form of jazz and alienated, and continues to alienate, fans of straight-ahead jazz. But as Tingen extensively documents, so did Miles’ electric work alienate segments of the straight jazz world (and still does), something that Miles and Tingen celebrate as artistic integrity. Tingen could have simply stated this latter point, and saved himself some embarrassment by omitting reductionist historicizing about world cultures. Tingen’s pop-philosophizing is out of control and its relationship to Miles’ music is entirely unconvincing.

Setting aside these bizarre detours, so much of the book is enjoyable and enlightening! That’s why I rate this book a confused and conflicted three stars. The high points are that we gain insights into the evolving methods Miles employed with his constantly changing bands. Tingen gives us a range of perspectives on Miles’ work as an artist and bandleader through the many colorful quotes from his family, friends, and former bandmates. Below are some of my favorites:

“‘He was not one for God,’ Jo Gelbard commented, ‘but he was convinced that all the concerts and all the sounds he’d ever made were there, floating around somewhere. That, for instance, his concert on November 12, 1956, was intact somewhere in space, and that they would one day invent a machine to play it again’” (20).

Chick Corea: “‘It was always interesting to see what he did with someone’s composition. Miles would take the basic piece and often only play certain notes from it, and leave the rhythm section to play other notes. He didn’t write that much as a composer, but he was an incredible, brilliant arranger. Miles suggested how to play the melodies, when to play them, how long to play them for. He’d open them up and then close them down and leave notes out. An example was the afternoon rehearsals we did at the Blue Coronet Club in Brooklyn [in April of 1969]. He asked me to bring some tunes, and I played a theme called “This” for him, which had a quick rising line full of fast notes, then a couple of slower notes at the end. After I played it a couple of times, he just picked out the couple of notes at the end to play on the trumpet, and let the rhythm section play the fast beginning. This immediately gave the piece a sound and identity’” (58).

“As an ambient piece, or “tone poem,” In a Silent Way moves in a unique musical universe, where unconventional aesthetic and time laws apply. Not everybody appreciated or understood this approach. Stanley Crouch was probably not alone in viewing it as ‘droning wallpaper music,’ therewith touching on both ambient’s ambition (ie: to be a kind of wallpaper) and to its potential weakness (ie: the danger of a slide into Muzak). The distinction between ambient and Muzack is ultimately a matter of taste, but a ground rule may be that Muzak tends to be sentimental and aesthetically derivative, a form of aural kitsch. Author Robert M. Pirsig memorably describes sentimentality as ‘a narrowing of experience to the emotionally familiar.’ The music on In a Silent Way is original, unfamiliar, and decidedly nonsentimental, and therefore anything but Muzack. Its triumph lies in the fact that it not only lays open two new musical universes–jazz-rock and ambient–it also manages to poise itself perfectly on the meeting place between the two, working well as either. Apart from the clarity of the ideas and the masterful playing of the musicians, there are other secrets to its success. One is its innovative form: it was a new approach at the time to release an album with two continuous sides of music, with the two tracks on Side 2 fused together. It reflected the continuous ‘musical suite’ form in which Miles had started to play his live performances from early 1967 onwards, and on record the structure is an essential aspect of why the hypnotic mood is sustained over the whole of the album” (59-60).

Billy Cobham: “‘He always played the ultimate musical phrase, even if it wasn’t technically correct. It was unbelievable! When you listen to Freddie Hubbard you hear trumpet proficiency par excellence, and then you hear Miles and he had a way of taking what Freddie did and compacting it in five notes. THose five notes said it all. The air around them became musical, and the silence became more profound and important. You just don’t learn that. Miles somehow could just do that…It was based on Miles’ innate ability to use space. Not playing became more important than playing. But it had to be the right spaces at the right time! It was uncanny how he’d play one note, and that note would carry through five or eight bars of changes. That note would be the note’” (70-71).

“‘He plays rhythm,’ saxophonist Dave Liebman remarked. ‘He plays off the beat. He plays on the upbeats. He’ll play a rhythmic phrase in order to get the attention going. He’s not just thinking harmonically and melodically. He’s thinking rhythm. It’s like a drummer. He would constantly talk about rhythm…Coltrane was straight ahead, it wasn’t about rhythm, it was about lines and motion. With Miles this thing was about up and down, get in between the beats, in between–like boxing…When you think about Miles’s playing…It’s a ballet. It’s advanced. It’s a ball bouncing. It’s not like some stream of air or stream of water” (87).

[Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone unfortunate enough to get me onto the subject of music, what I despise about it, and what I like to get my talons into, will no doubt have suffered one of my lengthy polemics about Miles, his electric period, and how only now is his influence on many aspects of contemporary dance music being felt. This is heavy going unless you enjoy music that grips you and becomes a personal adhesive. Like a brazilian waxing, it hurts to pull it off. Miles will remain forever attached to my musical "poonanny" . Booyakasha.

[Michael Roeder · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very clinical look at what is probably the most controversial and interesting periods of Davis's career. As someone who in recent years gained an appreciation for the 1967-1975 period of Electric Miles Davis I wanted to get some idea of what was going on around each of the albums. Tingen is considered the expert on this period and he delivers a very detailed account of things. It's a lot to digest and honestly in retrospect, I should have attempted to listen to the albums as I got to them in the book. Tingen covers all of the songs with a quick recap describing them. He doesn't pull any critical punches either. If the album or song discussed suffers from production or Davis's approach, he calls it out.

Ultimately, I come away with a renewed appreciation for the Columbia and Warner Brothers periods covered here-- however, it's with a sad understanding that with Davis's failing health and over-reliance of his rotating cast of band members the catalog starts to suffer. This is compounded by the fact that he never really recovered as a performer following his return to playing after his 1975-1980 sabbatical.

In recent years there has been a general new appreciation for this period of Miles Davis's career and this book is an excellent compendium and compliment to this. I think this book could use an update from Tingen in light of some newer archival releases. It's a shame that this is out-of-print.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

As anyone who knows me knows, I have no shortage of love for the music of Miles Davis (minus the post-comeback 80's era perhaps). In particular, I've returned to the electric era (roughly '68-'75) over and over again and I can hear something new almost every time. Tingen digs into this era with gusto and, yet, mixed results in Miles Beyond. On one hand, his research is exhaustive and I definitely learned a lot from reading this, especially through the perspectives of his (many!) band members during this time. However, Tingen interjects his personal opinion and makes strange narrative choices (asides, tangents, irrelevant connections) that occasionally left this reader frustrated. I'm not sure why he felt that he had to provide his own opinion on songs, recording details, and pass judgment. Sometimes I agreed with him, but many times I was annoyed that he was critiquing songs and albums that I felt completely differently about. Side note: the photos he included, especially the awful cover photo, were bewildering and of very low quality. The missing star is related to these issues. However, overall, Miles Beyond is well worth the time and incredibly detailed. Tingen does deserve a lot of credit for digging into an era that is complex and overwhelming on many levels.

[S Shah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although Tingen's opinions about what works and what doesnt, and what is of interest and what is not do not always find agreement with my own sensibilities, the content is both insightful and informative. As an amateur musician Enrico Merlin's research into session details and compositional structures proved to consistently be the most fascinating material. An even more technical exploration the rhythmic and harmonic nuances would have been welcome. As it is, despite listening to much of this music for years, the fresh unsdertanding of various nusances and details were enlightening. Tingen's psycho/philosophical analysis magnified the threads that wove the various and many interviews into a coherent picture. The musicians and other associates who worked with Miles also provided candid antecdotes that begin to develop into a blueprint for the way the man worked, if, perhaps the way he lived remains something of a mystery. Overall, a very informative work that left me hungry for more; a favor to Tingen's contemporary biographers, perhaps.

[Todd Meigs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic overview of Miles' later period music. What I really liked was Tingen's specific analysis of songs and albums. For example, he listed all of the different edits in "Pharoah's Dance" so that you could really get a sense of what was done in the studio to assemble the music. It provided me with a framework through which I could start to understand the reasons why I found this music so compelling. Bonus points for intelligently linking Miles' approach to Integral and Ken Wilber's idea of "transcend and include", and for not glossing over the effect of Miles' often chaotic personal life on his music. I'm sure i'll be going back to this book for years to come.

[Kiof · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really really comprehensive while not being that long of a book. The author seems to have interviewed nearly every important musician, and is perceptive about the inner workings of the music (though I would give On the Corner more credit than this book does). More insightful than Miles’ autobiography, too, of course.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great, if not perfect, rundown of the most interesting and least understood years of Miles’ career. I do like how he kept going all the way to the end instead of fizzling out after the hiatus.

[Eric Bur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing study of the Miles Davis electric years, which I had previously ignored, save for Bitches Brew. At one point the author was posting updates online.

[Jake Cole · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a student journalist, I was overwhelmed at the sheer level of research and access Paul Tingen put into this critical biography of Miles Davis' most overlooked years. His book contains the amount of first-hand accounts and objective analysis normally reserved for a biography of a great world leader, and it is a delight to see such loving attention paid to who I believe was the most important American musician of the 20th century, perhaps in this nation's young history.

By the same token, as a journalist I am also keenly aware that Tingen falls into the amateur's trap of being so proud of the notes he got that he couldn't leave anything out. The introduction and first two chapters of Miles Beyond are tedious, borderline unreadable. Tingen barely adds anything of his own, instead using repetitive quotes to show off how many of Miles' former bandmates, friends and managers spoke to him. Tingen also, despite assuring the reader that he will not use let his background with Zen Buddhism take over his interpretation of Miles' life and work, immediately defines Davis in terms of Zen Buddhism.

Thankfully, once Tingen moves into the actual electric music with Miles' full foray into electric music, In a Silent Way, the book picks up considerably. Tingen starts to balance the anecdotes with his own input, and his knowledge of musical structure and, more impressively, the exact details of Miles' sessions and what sections of each song cobbled together by Teo Macero come from which players. Miles' work with Macero rivals the Beatles' symbiotic relationship with George Martin, and for Tingen to be able to figure out they pieced together Miles' jazz-rock-Indian-funk mashup is nothing short of impressive. I especially appreciated the serious and positive evaluation given to Miles' '73-'75 band, which I feel is Davis' artistic peak.

Miles Beyond stumbles again near the end when Tingen half-heartedly defends Miles' '80s comeback despite the clear suggestions of his distaste for most of it. Still, he finds the diamonds in the rough of this spotty artistic coda and manages to paint the electronic experimentation brought on by Miles' degenerating physical health as a believable continuation of his musical exploration. Despite these hiccups and the occasional repeat quote (maybe Tingen himself lost track of all he'd used), Miles Beyond is a vital document of a fascinating and underreported stage of a great career. It's like getting a volume on Godard dedicated solely to his post-Weekend work, something that ignores the indisputably great but already canonized early years of a great artist to finally give overlooked decades their due. With some tightening and an updated edition taking subsequent vault releases into account, Miles Beyond could be an essential critical biography. Let's hope the Miles Davis Estate stops holding Tingen back on this front.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Miles Beyond is a great companion to understanding the often confusing electric music of Miles Davis. The copious research and interviews with Miles' former band members makes Tingen's book one of the most complete works on the electric era. While the author clearly favors the 70s jazz-rock era over the 80s fusion he still gives sufficient detail on all parts of Miles' career. The author seems greatly inspired by the music throughout and I would suggest this book to anyone unsure about the electric era of Miles Davis.

[Jamil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun Fact!: Thom Yorke on Bitches Brew: "It was at the core of what we were trying to do with OK Computer." I only read the chapters concerned with Bitches Brew & Jack Johnson. Seems like a good book though if you are interested in electric, "fusion" Miles. I'll probably come back to it once I actually listen to more of the music.

[Brandon Wu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tingen gives a great overview of Miles' fusion output during the latter part of his career, going into great detail about each recording while still managing to keep a momentum throughout that keeps the entire book fascinating. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in this phase of Miles' career.

[Koven Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best straightforward analysis of Miles' work, and without a doubt the ONLY book that deals with his electric period in a responsible way. Reading this actually changed the way I hear a lot of Miles' electric music, which is hard for me to admit. Wonderful!

[Onsetsu Evan Cordes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great details on both studio and live sessions.

Could do without a bit of the hypothesizing by the author, but it really isn't too bad.

Focuses way more on the 70's music than the 80's. For good reason.

Solid.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting. it's amusing to read between the lines decades later to see who holds a chip on their shoulder and who doesn't.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing and reverent look at Miles late electric period. Definitely opens a whole new look at this most understood music.

[Dean Wilcox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great detail on Miles' electric period. Good info from the musicians that helped make that sound come into being.