Review: 'Possibilities' by Herbie Hancock

You don't have to be a jazz aficionado to be acquainted with Herbie Hancock, a protean musician who has ventured far afield from his jazz and classical roots to become something of an icon of American culture.

Ranging freely from jazz to funk, acoustic to electronic, highbrow to middlebrow, Hancock has been on the radar of anyone even remotely interested in music since 1962, when his aptly named debut album "Takin' Off" launched him into the world's consciousness.

Since then, Hancock has made a personal manifesto of venturing beyond listener expectations, to the delight of millions and the dismay of those who treasured his groundbreaking work as jazz pianist and bandleader. His journey has taken him from a pivotal role in Miles Davis' second great quintet in the 1960s to his Afro-centric Mwandishi band of the early 1970s, from the funk explorations of his Headhunters outfit and the Davis-inspired music of the V.S.O.P. ensemble of the '70s to subsequent experiments in 1980s techno (with "Future Shock" and its hit single "Rockit"), 21st century pop ("River: The Joni Letters") and extensive film scoring (most notably "'Round Midnight," the 1986 Bertrand Tavernier masterpiece that won Hancock an Oscar for best original score and featured the pianist in an acting performance as well).

In effect, Hancock has lived several lives in music and culture, and now, at 74, he has chosen to look back on it all in "Possibilities," a hauntingly candid, lyrically written autobiography that will be welcomed by his fans and perhaps will win over a few skeptics, too. Though the book, penned with Lisa Dickey, has its flaws, the warmth and joy that pervade Hancock's music also radiate from these unflinchingly honest pages.

In recalling his early years growing up on the South Side of Chicago, for instance, Hancock discusses both the loving support of his family and the bipolar rages of his mother; the ebullience of music in the neighborhood; and the terrors of the racism of the day, the latter crystallized by the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till.

"Jet magazine published a full-page close-up photo of Emmett Till's swollen, destroyed face, and although my parents tried to shield us from seeing it, curiosity got the better of me," writes Hancock. "When I picked up the magazine and flipped to the photo, fear and horror shot right through me. No matter how much control I thought I had over my emotions, nothing could have prepared me for seeing the cruelly disfigured face of a boy my age, from my own neighborhood, who'd been brutally murdered for nothing at all. I had nightmares for weeks afterward."

Yet Hancock took his innate optimism forward into the world, in his early 20s landing in the band of trumpet master Davis, whose hunger for perpetual change profoundly influenced Hancock's attitudes on art and life thereafter. Davis' spirit pervades the pages of this book, as Hancock constantly refers to one thing or another that the trumpeter had done to point the way for the younger musician. "Miles represented everything I wanted to be in jazz," writes Hancock, "though at age twenty-two I couldn't imagine achieving it."

Few indeed have matched Davis' track record for altering the course of jazz several times over, but Hancock surely emerged as a force in his own right. As he traces his artistic breakthroughs, he painstakingly takes us through the thought processes that led him to so many far-flung musical destinations.

At the same time, however, Hancock often sounds defensive about his relentless pursuit of large and young audiences, arguing with critics he would be better off ignoring.

He earns the reader's trust, however, with passages of disarming self-criticism and the revelation — first unveiled here — of a crack cocaine habit he fought and ultimately vanquished. Still, Hancock's editors would have done him a favor by trimming back copious discourses on Buddhism, technology and the joy of the Grammy Awards. And the pianist's harsh words about a young Wynton Marsalis clash with the congenial tone of the rest of the book, even as Hancock tries to backpedal by saying, unpersuasively, "we all have our weaknesses."

In the end, though, Hancock has given us a mostly revealing look at his life and artistic methods, in so doing significantly enriching the jazz literature.

Howard Reich is the Tribune's jazz critic, author of five books and writer-producer of the PBS documentary film "Prisoner of Her Past."

"Possibilities"

By Herbie Hancock with Lisa Dickey, Viking, 344 pages, $29.95

Copyright © 2014, Chicago Tribune