[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/wr_press_7908_1.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:The "classic" lineup of Weather Report from the late 1970's. Clockwise from the left: Josef "Joe" Zawinul, Wayne Shorter, John "Jaco" Pastorius, Peter Erskine]]

Weather Report was a jazz fusion band, formed by [[IAmTheBand the only two consistent members]], keyboardist Joe Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter, in 1970. The rest of the lineup was a RevolvingDoorBand, but several of the members are well-known on their own, most notably world-class bass virtuoso Jaco Pastorius.

In the beginning, they played Music/MilesDavis - inspired free jazz (Shorter and Zawinul had both played on Davis' albums ''Music/InASilentWay'' and ''Music/BitchesBrew''), and gained attention for Zawinul's innovative use of synthesizers (he was one of the first to use the instrument in jazz) and influences from everything from bebop to world music. They soon moved into a sound more oriented around funk, and shifted away from improvisations into a more melodic and thought-out compositional style, mostly dominated by Zawinul.
Their greatest success came with the arrival of Jaco Pastorius in 1976, and the album ''Heavy Weather'', which reached #1 on Billboard's jazz charts and provided their SignatureSong, "Birdland". This also signalled their shift into a more rock-oriented and commercial style, which made them one of the leading jazz bands in the world. Unfortunately, Zawinul was developing increasing ControlFreak tendencies, composing everything on his synthesizers and dictating their musical direction completely. Friction rose within the band, and Pastorius left in 1982. The band continued a while longer to diminishing returns, until the band members felt that they had more freedom in their own projects, and Shorter's increasing distance from the band led Zawinul to split them up in 1986. Pastorius died in 1987; Zawinul himself passed away in 2007. Another former bassist, Victor Bailey, died in 2016. Wayne Shorter died on March 2, 2023.

!!Discography
* ''[[SelfTitledAlbum Weather Report]]'' (1971)
* ''I Sing the Body Electric'' (1972)
* ''[[LiveAlbum Live in Tokyo]]'' (1972)
* ''Sweetnighter'' (1973)
* ''Mysterious Traveller'' (1974)
* ''Tale Spinnin''' (1975)
* ''Black Market'' (1976)
* ''Heavy Weather'' (1977)
* ''Mr. Gone'' (1978)
* ''[[LiveAlbum 8:30]]'' (1979)
* ''Night Passage'' (1980)
* ''[[SelfTitledAlbum Weather Report]]'' (1982)
* ''Procession'' (1983)
* ''Domino Theory'' (1984)
* ''Sportin' Life'' (1985)
* ''This Is This!'' (1986)
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!!!'''This band provides examples of:'''
* TheAlcoholic: Joe Zawinul was a notoriously heavy drinker.
** Jaco Pastorius became this after Zawinul innocently had a few drinks with him. Sadly this, coupled with drug abuse and bipolar disorder ended up costing him his life not 10 years later.
* AceCustom: Jaco Pastorius made his trademark "Bass of Doom" by prying the frets off with a butter knife and filling the holes in the fingerboard with an epoxy. Or so he sometimes liked to claim. On other occasions, he said that it was like that when he got it.
* BadassBoast: Jaco got his demo tape into Zawinul's hands by walking up to him and saying "I'm John Francis Pastorius III. I'm the greatest bass player in the world."
* TheBandMinusTheFace: Weather Update, which consisted of several earlier members (Zawinul, percussionist Robert Thomas, bassist Victor Bailey and drummer Omar Hakim) along with guitarist Steve Khan, and with Shorter not involved. It didn't last long.
* TheBigGuy: Jaco. As seen on the picture above, he towers over the rest of the band, although no official height was ever given. More telling is that his son, Felix has a reported height of 6ft7.
* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: Pastorius suffered from bipolar disorder, and his behaviour was often erratic and unpredictable.
* ControlFreak: Zawinul completely took over the band's composition in their later years; for an extreme example, on their second self-titled album, he would write out all of Jaco Pastorius' basslines and double them on his synthesizer. That's right, he was writing basslines for ''one of the greatest bassists of all time''. Jaco unsurprisingly quit the band after the album was recorded.
* DesignStudentsOrgasm: Weather Report albums almost always had ''amazing'' cover art.
* EverythingIsAnInstrument: Starting with the album ''Mysterious Traveller'', Zawinul would begin to splice sound effects such as cheering crowds into their music.
* GenreMashup: A mixture of bebop, rock, free jazz, funk, Latin jazz and world music.
* IAmTheBand: Zawinul and Shorter were the only permanent members, with Zawinul taking even more control, as mentioned under ControlFreak above.
* LeadBassist: Jaco Pastorius was one of the all-time greats to pick up the four-string, and it's not a coincidence that his time with the band yielded their most-loved recordings. Many bassists will testify to his influence but Music/{{Metallica}} bassist Robert Trujillo went so far as to co-produce an entire feature-length documentary about Jaco and his legacy.
* LiveAlbum: Released two during their lifetime, Live in Tokyo and 8:30.
* TheOner: Being a world class jazz band, a chunk of their songs were recorded in only one take.
** Jaco Pastorius' first song with the band was "Cannon Ball"; apparently, his highly ornamental playing during rehearsal infuriated Zawinul, and the single recorded take occurred just after Pastorius was yelled at.
** Drummer Peter Erskine's first take with the band was for "Pinocchio". Since the recording engineer had dubbed it a sound check, Erskine played all over the drum kit, partly to give the engineer "some variety" to work with[[note]]Drum kits are usually mic'd with no less than 8 microphones, to capture each drum and cymbal, as well as room ambiance[[/note]]. Erskine was horrified when the rest of the band decided that that was the recording that would make the album.
** "Birdland", their breakout number, which to this day is a staple of ensembles such as marching bands, was recorded in one take.
* RichesToRags: Jaco Pastorius was an infamous and tragic example. He went from one of the biggest names in jazz, signed to a major record label to a drunk mess sleeping in parks with only his bass to his name, [[FromBadToWorse and even that was stolen from him]]. Sadly, because he could never properly fix his mental issues, that was the way he died.
* RevolvingDoorBand: Everyone but Zawinul and Shorter rotated over the years, and those who did are some pretty respectable names in jazz: Jaco Pastorius, Miroslav Vitouš, Victor, Bailey, Alex Acuña, Omar Hakim, Mino Cinélu, Peter Erskine and Alphonso Johnson were all members at some point, with several other big names (like Steve Gadd and [[Music/EarthWindAndFire Maurice White]]) all contributing as session musicians in one-off appearances.
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Joe Zawinul has gone on record saying that he was the one who introduced Jaco Pastorius to alcohol, which ended up aggravating his bipolar disorder and ruining his life. He's expressed a lot of regret, and realized his mistake after the first or second drink.
* SelfTitledAlbum: Two of them, one in 1971 and the other in 1982.
* ShoutOut: "Birdland" is named after a legendary New York City jazz club, and is written partly in the style of the big band jazz that its composer Joe Zawinul heard there.
* SuicideByCop: What Jaco essentially did. Towards the end of his life, he started provoking bar fights, then let himself get beat up. He eventually had a run-in with a bouncer who beat him into a coma; he died 10 days later.
* {{Supergroup}}: The original line-up was essentially an early jazz fusion supergroup, with Zawinul and Shorter coming from Miles Davis' "second great quintet" and original bassist Miroslav Vitous from playing with Chick Corea.
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