How I’m Wrestling With Miles Davis’s Complicated Legacy as Artist—and Abuser

In 1985, I couldn’t escape trumpeter Miles Davis. It seemed like he was everywhere. Raspy-voiced, hidden behind sunglasses, chewing gum, always intimidating.

I first saw him in a commercial for Honda scooters as part of a multiyear campaign that included Grace Jones, Lou Reed, and Devo. In his spot, Davis is leaning against a scooter wearing a full-length leather jacket and baggy pants and holding a trumpet. His one line speaks multitudes: “I’ll play first, and I’ll tell you about it later—maybe.”

That fall, I watched him in an episode of Miami Vice called “Junk Love,” in which he played an ill-fated pimp named Ivory Jones. A week later, there he was again playing at the start of a music video on MTV for the title track of the album Sun City by Artists United Against Apartheid.

One of my all-time favorite songs came out that year as well, “Perfect Way” by synth pop/funk group Scritti Politti. The following year, Davis released the album Tutu with a personally beloved cover of “Perfect Way.” In the ensuing years, I understood the Miles Davis I discovered as a teenager was but one of many iterations he birthed in a life of perpetual innovation, reinvention, and controversy.

Twenty-five years after his death, people around the world, from St. Louis to Paris, New York to Tokyo, are seizing the centennial of Miles Davis’s birth this month to decipher his enduring impact across genres of music, fashion, and politics. Record labels are rereleasing some of his most beloved recordings in expanded editions, including 1957’s Birth of the Cool and the legendary concert set Live at the Plugged Nickel from 1965. Additionally, a Mick Jagger–produced feature about his affair with French actress Juliette Gréco, Miles & Juliette, is forthcoming, and jazz hubs such as Birdland, the Montreux Festival, and Jazz at Lincoln Center are paying homage to key periods in his creative oeuvre.

Dubbed the “Prince of Darkness” for a brooding presence onstage and aloof demeanor off it, it must be acknowledged that he was also a “motherfucker,” a term he used often when talking about musicians he deeply admired. He was also infamous for disputes over recording credits throughout his career, and in later life was rebuked for physical abuse toward his wives, most famously by Pearl Cleage in her 1990 feminist landmark Mad at Miles: A Blackwoman’s Guide to Truth.