Mr. Gone Is Not Forgotten

Downbeat's Most Infamous Review

During the heyday of jazz fusion (roughly speaking, the mid-to-late 1970s to the early-to-mid 1980s), no band soared higher than Weather Report. Founded by Austrian keyboardist and composer Josef Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter, both veterans of Miles Davis bands, Weather Report is best known for the 1978 - 1982 quartet consisting of Zawinul (also its primary composer), Shorter, bassist Jaco Pastorious and drummer Peter Erskine. Other fusion groups such as Return to Forever, Headhunters and the Mahavishnu Orchestra were also popular (and also benefited from Davis’s performing hiatus from 1975-1980), but fans and critics alike branded Weather Report as first among equals.¹

And no critical outlet was more supportive than Downbeat, long considered first among equals of jazz publications. Thanks to ecstatic reviews by its stable of music critics, Weather Report enjoyed unparalleled acclaim and equally fervent fans among its readers. Three albums in a row (Heavy Weather, Black Market and Tale Spinnin’) received Downbeat’s highest ranking and the annual readers’ poll placed the group and its members at the top of their respective categories for several years in a row.² Extensive international tours were routine.

And then came Mr. Gone.

The band’s eighth studio album was reviewed in the Downbeat issue of January 11, 1979 by critic David Less. Less assigned the album a single star rating (“Poor”), igniting a controversy that consumed the magazine for several weeks. With his blade well sharpened, Less carved into Mr. Gone.

It seems the general Weather Report idea now is to fill each composition with a mechanical bass…dense synthesized chording, and funky, cluttered drumming…Zawinul’s use of his electronic keyboards is too rigid and confining…Despite scattered moments and the too brief contributions of Shorter and [guest drummer Tony] Williams, Mr. Gone never gets off the ground.

Less went on. “Where earlier Weather Report records possessed a sense of adventure, Mr. Gone is coated with the sterility of a too completely pre-conceived project. While Weather Report was innovative and pivotal in its first experiments, the members now seem out of touch with their basic responsibility as musicians: to communicate.³

Had the matter remained there, this episode would have been likely been filed away by many Weather Report observers as an overly zealous and logically strained review (what, precisely, is a “too completely pre-conceived project” and why is it bad?) intended to deliver a comeuppance to a very successful band. But such was not to be the case.

While on tour, Weather Report stopped in Chicago for a series of three concerts. Downbeat sent reporter Larry Birnbaum to interview the band for a planned cover story. Birnbaum gathered the band at a nearby restaurant to conduct interviews. Zawinul lost no time asking about the upcoming review of Mr. Gone. Birnbaum delivered the news.

Zawinul wasn’t having it. The passion that ensued formed the basis of the February 8, 1979 cover story (containing the headline “Weather Report Storms Over Mr. Gone”).⁴ Following some historical exposition for the benefit of the uninitiated, Birnbaum wrote, “Blunt and outspoken as usual, Zawinul did most of the talking, evincing not a little testiness as he fumed…at the thought of the offending review.”

“There’s gotta be a professionalism…You don’t just give Horowitz one star or two. You just don’t do it, because it’s beyond. Certain things are beyond and what this band is doing is beyond anybody. If we tried to make a one star album, we couldn’t do it, because it’s just not in us. We are goddamned sincere with what we are doing.”

The remainder of the interview, covering topics like the genesis of jazz fusion, Zawinul’s influences, and the band’s instrumentation was civil enough, but the cloud of the review had clearly rankled Zawinul and, to a lesser extent, Pastorious. Shorter and Erskine kept out of it.

Reader response to the review and the band’s objections fell into competing camps. One reader complained in a letter to the editor about Less’s inconsistency, writing, “The criticism of Mr. Gone is that it won’t shake up the fusion world — a change for [Weather Report]. They have shown themselves to be mortal. So, too, Mr. Less has shown his mortality by letting his hopes for Mr. Gone overshadow much of his objectivity.”⁵ Another reader conceded that Mr. Gone was the band’s worst record (and most commercial) but the one-star review was deemed unfair.

Following the release of the cover story response, even CBS Records got into the act. Peter Keepnews, the manager of Jazz/Progressive Publicity — a business card I would love to have seen — wrote a lengthy letter to the editor, appearing in the March 22, 1979 issue. He concluded with, “It’s very easy to write a negative review of anything; it’s a lot harder to really listen… Mr. Less has apparently decided that the very fact that Mr. Gone’s music is thickly textured is reason enough to dismiss it without giving it the kind of attention which it —or any album— is entitled.”⁶

In his book, Bianchi notes that even as late as 2001, Zawinul was still burning over the Mr. Gone review. “I was angry about it and not because somebody gave it one star…That is totally a reviewer’s right…What I didn’t like is that it was such a good production. A lot of effort went into that, and we’re no dumb motherfuckers, you know…maybe it didn’t come off yet as well as it did later…But to give somebody one star is just outrageous… I was mad at the time and I am getting mad now.”⁷

Zawinul’s unapologetic ego aside, he had a point. Mr. Gone isn’t as commercial and formulaic as alleged in the review back in 1979.⁸ However, it also wasn’t as accomplished or groundbreaking as its predecessors. From a 2023 vantage point, it’s easy to see this album as the beginning of the slow decline of the band leading to its eventual disintegration in 1986.⁹ Shorter’s role in the band continued to diminish both as a composer and instrumentalist. He became more interested in new solo projects which continue to this day, many of which are astonishing. Pastorious and Erskine departed in 1982; Pastorious would be dead five years later. Zawinul spent the remainder of his life in Europe forming new bands, frequently revisiting his Weather Report compositions. Four previously unreleased live albums have launched since 2002 and many of the bands most memorable tunes continue to be covered by new artists.

Below, enjoy “The Pursuit of the Woman With the Feathered hat” from Mr. Gone, with apologies for the dreadful concert cinematography.

1. For a fascinating history of the band, see Curt Bianchi, Elegant People: A History of the Band Weather Report, Backbeat Books, 2021.

2. Bianchi, pp. 279-280.

3. Downbeat, January 11, 1979, p. 22.

4. Downbeat, February 8, 1979, pp. 14-16, 44-45.

5. Downbeat, February 22, 1979, p. 12.

6. Downbeat, March 22, 1979, p. 8.

7. Bianchi, Ibid.

8. In the annual poll, Downbeat readers ranked Mr. Gone #6 for albums released in 1979.

9. Although, in a great piece of musical irony, Weather Report’s subsequent album, Night Passage, received a 4 star review in the February 1981 issue of Downbeat.