The Pat Metheny Group was an American jazz band founded in 1977 by guitarist and composer Pat Metheny, along with his core collaborating member, keyboardist and composer Lyle Mays. Other long-standing members included bassist and producer Steve Rodby, from 1981 to 2010, and drummer Antonio Sanchez, from 2002 to 2010. Vocalist Pedro Aznar and drummer Paul Wertico were also long-time members. In addition to a core quartet, the group was often joined by a variety of other instrumentalists expanding the size to six or eight musicians.
History
1970s
Founder Pat Metheny first emerged on the jazz scene in the mid-1970s with a pair of solo albums. First was Bright Size Life, released in 1976, a trio album with bass guitarist Jaco Pastorius and drummer Bob Moses. The next album, released in 1977, was Watercolors, featuring Eberhard Weber on bass, pianist Lyle Mays, and drummer Danny Gottlieb.
In 1977, bassist Mark Egan joined Metheny, Mays, and Gottlieb to form the Pat Metheny Group. ECM released the album Pat Metheny Group in 1978 with songs co-written by Metheny and Mays. Pat Metheny Group marked Mays' first use of the Oberheim synthesizer, which became an integral part of the Group's sound. In 1979, the group's second album, American Garage, reached No. 1 on the jazz chart in Billboard magazine.
1980s
The Pat Metheny Group released the album Offramp in 1982. Offramp marked the first recorded appearance of bassist Steve Rodby in the group (replacing Mark Egan), and also featured Brazilian "guest artist" Naná Vasconcelos. Vasconcelos had appeared on the Pat Metheny/Lyle Mays album As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls in 1981, and his performance on percussion and wordless vocals marked the first addition of Latin-South American music shadings to the Group's sound. Offramp was also the group's first recording to win a Grammy Award, the first win of many for the group.
In 1983, a live album titled Travels was released. It won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Fusion Performance in 1984, which also brought the release of First Circle, a popular album that featured compositions with mixed meters. With this album, the group featured a new drummer, Paul Wertico (replacing Danny Gottlieb). Wertico and Rodby had both played with the Simon & Bard Group. A soundtrack album The Falcon and the Snowman followed in 1985. It featured the song "This Is Not America", a writing and performing collaboration with David Bowie which reached #14 in the UK Top 40 and #32 on the US Billboard Hot 100 in early 1985.
The South American influence would continue and intensify on First Circle with the addition of Argentine multi-instrumentalist Pedro Aznar. This period saw the commercial popularity of the band increase, especially thanks to the live recording Travels. First Circle would also be Metheny's last project with the ECM label; Metheny had been a key artist for ECM but left over conceptual disagreements with label founder Manfred Eicher.
The next three Pat Metheny Group releases would be based around a further intensification of the Brazilian rhythms first heard in the early '80s. Additional South American musicians appear as guests, most notably Brazilian percussionist Armando Marçal. In 1987, Still Life (Talking) was the Group's first release on new label Geffen Records and featured several tracks which have long been popular with the group's followers, and which are still in their setlist. In particular, the album's first tune, "Minuano (Six Eight)", represents a good example of the Pat Metheny group compositional style from this period: the track starts with a haunting minor section from Mays, lifts off in a typical Methenian jubilant major melody, leading to a Maysian metric and harmonically modulated interlude, creating suspense which is finally resolved in the Methenian major theme. Another popular highlight was "Last Train Home", a rhythmically relentless piece evoking the American Midwest. The 1989 release Letter from Home continued this approach, with the South American influence becoming even more prevalent in its bossa nova and samba rhythms.
1990s
Metheny subsequently concentrated on solo and other small-group projects, and four years went by before the release of the next Pat Metheny Group album. This was a live set recorded in Europe in 1993 titled The Road to You and it featured tracks from the two Geffen studio albums alongside new tunes. By this stage, the group had integrated new instrumentation and technologies into its sound, including Mays' addition of midi-controlled synthesized sounds to acoustic piano solos, accomplished via a pedal control.