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About a decade or more before releasing his album The Way Up in 2005, Pat Metheny had already come up with a tune by the name of The Way Up. I’m trying to search for this on Amazon but cannot seem to find it anywhere. It used to be on YouTube but got removed.

Does anyone know where I can find this piece?

There are other such pieces that used to be on YouTube but were removed, such as Metheny’s There will never be another you which was an absolute masterpiece of improvisation.

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  • It was recorded in 1978. I saw it on YouTube, but now I can't find it. I do have the audio. Not sure how to post it here.
    – user1155
    Sep 28, 2015 at 3:48

3 Answers 3

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Are you sure about this? Because this piece, according to Mays, was written not too long before being released.

http://www.motu.com/newsitems/atnewsitem.2005-04-07.7801716143

If you look in the right margin, about 2/3 of the way down the page, you see a mini-interview with Mays where he states they wrote it just before recording it.

An excerpt:

Lyle describes the overall creative process for The Way Up

MOTU: How did the idea of doing an entire continuous album come about? Was that something that had been kicking around for a while amongst you guys?

Lyle: Not really. But it emerged during the first few days of meeting with Pat. I flew out from LA to New York to start a writing process for this record. Our discussions before the record were pretty minimal. And Pat and I got together with the idea that we would compose a record. And we didn't know that it would be a single piece of music at that point.

Also, in this Metheny interview he never says anything about playing this piece prior to releasing it:

http://www.jambase.com/Articles/5933/REFLECTIONS-FROM-METHENY/2

That's not to say that they didn't perform a variation on it; plenty of bands perform versions of song prior to release and it evolves a bit before it's finally recorded (a la Pink Floyd performing Dogs and Sheep on the Wish You Were Here tour under the titles "You've Got To Be Crazy" and "Raving And Drooling" respectively).

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  • I am 100% sure that a piece called The Way Up had been played by Metheny & Mays in their early days. The base melody is the same as that of the album The Way Up, but it's only one track and lasts only several minutes. The album we have today was a variation on this track that has been expanded into a full blown concert. As for There Will Never Be Another You I had this on my iPod until it got wiped out recently. The track was just short of 13 minutes and was an absolutely superb demonstration of Metheny's improv skills.
    – DaniG2k
    Jun 8, 2015 at 21:56
  • Metheny has a song he did with John Scofield called "Quiet Rising". It was on Scofield's "I Can See Your House From Here", released in 1994. It's got a similar riff, but that's about it. I've got a few Metheny bootlegs from various years and it's not on any of them. I also saw him a couple times and don't remember him playing anything called "The Way Up". "There Will never be Another You" was done back in '76 By Pat Metheny Quartet, though I don't know if it was ever released officially. There was an FM broadcast from Boston that has it, I might have that somewhere. Jun 8, 2015 at 22:49
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After 5 months of searching, I have finally found both songs again!!!

It's a collection of 3 disks called The PMG Companion Vol 1 (1976 - 1980).

Disk 1, track 4:

  • There Will Never Be Another You (Warren/Gordon) 12:55

Disk 2, track 7:

  • Unidentified #4 8:58

This last one ended up containing the base theme for Metheny's album The Way Up.

I'm so happy :)

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I had exactly same question and knew the main theme for The way up was recorded many years ago and thanks to this thread I actually found the video covering this :)

Many thanks for all the input guys and gals (if any;))

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