Since leaving the Maniacs, Merchant has dabbled in various genres Triple-platinum Tigerlily was full of bouncy funk. The face just as striking – Minnie Mouse fleshed out by Gauguin.Bundled up in a woolly cardie, hair in academic bun, she’s every inch the American prim queen as she stomps on stage. I’ve been in a rock band since I was 12, so my hearing’s shot.” At 34, however, the former 10,000 Maniacs’ singer is hardly an addled rock chick The voice is as bell-clear as ever. Their manifestations certainly would not have been attributed to “artistic temperament” or “rock’n'roll lifestyle” or genius-type waywardness.Artists, even great ones, are human beings first and foremost.

Sometimes gifted artists simply take the piss, misbehaving “because they can” At other times they may be genuinely in trouble. If there is a lesson to be learned from Jaco Pastorius’s tragic fall and demise, it is this: if we look after the humans, the art will look after itself.`Punk-Jazz – a Portrait of Jaco Pastorius’ will be broadcast on Radio 3 on 14 November at 6pm. NATALIE MERCHANT SHEPHERD’S BUSH EMPIRE

LONDON
NATALIE MERCHANT has been in the business for the longest time. As she told an increasingly exasperated Glaswegian heckler on Wednesday night, “Chestnut? Sorry. Things got out of hand, and he got into a fight with the bouncer. Or maybe “fight” isn’t quite the right word: he was pulverised. His skull was caved in; nine days later, he died in hospital without regaining consciousness.How could this have happened? How could Jaco Pastorius, one of the greatest musicians of his generation – fall so far and die so pitifully?Well, if he hadn’t been an artist and therefore “permitted” to act weird, his manic-depressive tendencies would probably have been diagnosed and treated sooner.

He had recently completed the second of his two sojourns in New York City’s Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, and returned to his home state to get himself together.One night he was trying to gain admittance to a club from which he had been barred. He could be seen, not on the stages of the world’s concert halls, clubs and stadiums, but sleeping rough in the park in Washington Square. Clubs where he had once been a premier attraction would bar him for stealing waitresses’ tips.Jaco Pastorius died in Florida in 1987, just a few weeks before what would have been his 36th birthday. His marriage collapsed, he frequently butted heads with Weather Report’s authoritarian leader, Joe Zawinul, and he began to disrupt live performances by turning his amplifiers on full and playing Jimi Hendrix’s “Third Stone from the Sun”.After leaving Weather Report to resume his solo career, things got worse. Pastorius had always been egotistical, albeit puckishly – he once answered a question about where the future of music was headed by informing his interviewer that he would be flying back to Florida the following day – but his mood swings were becoming uncontrollable.