Time at the bar

There’s a rasp of brass on the high street and through a window, a glint of a trumpet’s brightwork. It’s band practice in the pub before opening time. But this is Sunday morning: perhaps it’s a scratch group of local players warming up for church. As I get nearer, the music swells and there’s the irresistible undertow of a well-drilled rhythm section. It turns out to be a big band in full sail, 17 musicians pitching in, propelled from the drum stool by none other than Billy Cobham, 82.

To find one of the greatest living jazz drummers belting out a free gig at your local is like ordering a sweet treat in your regular coffee shop and Nigella herself sliding the brownie across to you. People would pay good money for this – and for the next few days they will be, as Cobham and his mates take to the bandstand at Ronnie Scott’s. I’ve stumbled upon rehearsals at the Crown and Anchor in Chiswick.

There’s no room at the public bar for spectators, though landlord Mark will let them sit upstairs and listen. I’m supposed to be doing the weekly shop, in any case. I have my list, my forever bags, my loyalty cards. But I sit at a table on the street and Mark fetches me a drink. Framed by the full-length window directly in front of me is Cobham himself, in rear profile.

Through the window I follow Cobham’s fills, rolls and rimshots and the blurry egg-beating of his solos, tight but punchy. On the carpet beside him is sheet music for Na Pasashok, (meaning “one for the road” in Russian), part of his repertoire. There’s a quiver of fresh sticks at his feet. 

Born in Colón, Panama, in 1944, Cobham played behind the sulphurous Miles Davis in his rock-fusion period. The trumpeter was by then in the habit of performing with his back to the audience, fixing his unforgiving glare on his drummer. Outside the pub, I’m sharing my table with a man in a beard and hoodie who’s smoking a roll-up. It’s the chef. Roasts are on the menu today, he says. “We’ve got the best pork in London.” He’ll be serving lunch to Cobham and the boys when they take a break. Jazzmen are meant to subsist on heroin and cigarettes, but perhaps the secret of playing into your ninth decade is putting roast beef and Yorkshire pudding under your belt from time to time.

The band is under the baton of Guy Barker, trumpeter, arranger, producer. He pops out to chat between numbers. It emerges that he lives round the corner from me. His hair is grey now but hangs in bangs to his shoulders. I wonder if the set will include The Peacocks, a standard written by Jimmy Rowles. “That tune got me the gig on The Talented Mr Ripley film with Matt Damon,” says Barker. “[Director] Anthony Minghella heard it and called me. He wanted to use it in the movie but it was written in the 1970s, later than the period of the film.” It’s not a definite for Ronnie’s, but the band is going through the charts for Cobham favourites including Cap Breton. Another listing reads simply “Drum Solo”: cue for the main man to cleave the air like a Chinook taking off. He can still tear up the joint like he did when he first burst onto the scene, but over time he’s absorbed Miles’s famous lesson: it’s all about the notes you don’t play.

Illustration by Oscar Ingham for The Observer