promoter Bill Graham brought us to Fillmore to back up the Who.

[Indeed, despite a Teutonic accent, Zawinul contradicts stereotypes about his Austrian heritage that he should be playing Mozart and Beethoven.] There is another Austria, ... much less known, and that is the folk music of Austria. Even the way we speak is very musical, like a walking jazz bass. Classical music is so dusty that the dust has dust. And much of jazz is following in the same dusty path, recreating its glories rather than moving forward.

I am an improviser, ... I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it all, it is all improvised music. I may capture it and go back and write it down for others, but it was originally improvised.

Boxing is such a great sport and so much like making jazz music, ... There is the footwork, the jab, the constant setting up and reacting to your opponent.

[At a spry 72 with five decades of innovative performing now behind him, does Zawinul know where jazz itself is heading?] I have no idea, ... but as a good improviser, I know where it is not: the past.

[Weather Report, the massively popular and longest-continually-performing fusion band, is often cited as a major influence by artists around the world, but according to Zawinul, particularly in Africa.] Musicians from Africa know Weather Report music inside and out, ... but often didn't knew who was playing it because it would be distributed on pirated cassettes that had no labels. Many such players couldn't believe that some of us were white.