The earliest film of the Mahavishnu Orchestra: amateur video filmed on Syracuse University campus, April 29 1972 - performing 'You Know, You Know' from their debut LP 'The Inner Mounting Flame'.

The Mahavishnu Orchestra: A Short Biography
Part One: Carnegie Hall in Six Months

Having been instructed by Miles Davis that it was time to form his own band, after two years of being a loyal sideman to the maestro - while also recording two solo albums, a joint album with John Surman and touring/recording with the Tony Williams Lifetime – John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra debuted at New York’s Gaslight club in July 1971. Supporting John Lee Hooker, in the first of many seemingly incongruous bills, they were an immediate sensation. Impossibly loud, impossibly virtuosic and playing a kind of music that no one had heard before, each member was a master of their instrument and yet together the ensemble was greater than the sum of its parts.

John had previously recorded with both Billy Cobham (drums) and Jerry Goodman (violin), on his acoustic album My Goal’s Beyond (1970), and knew Rick Laird (bass) from shared time on the London jazz scene in the mid ‘60s. Jan Hammer (keyboards) knew John from New York’s jazz scene, and from rehearsing together with Miles Davis.

Nat Weiss, who represented the Beatles on behalf of Brian Epstein in America, became their visionary manager. Through his own involvement and McLaughlin’s infectious belief in the project, CBS supremo Clive Davis took a leap of faith and signed the new band to Columbia Records.

Using material and ideas that John had accumulated during the Lifetime era – some even performed and recorded, in early versions, with that group – the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s first album The Inner Mounting Flame was recorded over two days during the period of their Gaslight residency in New York in July. It would be released in November 1971. Building their reputation by word of mouth, mostly with college dates on America’s East Coast, during the intervening period, the album was a revelation to most listeners. Fusing progressive jazz with the sound world of Jimi Hendrix, an aura of eastern mysticism, a fondness for rather sinister arpeggios (courtesy, according to John, of Thelonius Monk and late period Beatles) and complex time signatures more common in music from eastern Europe and India, the album was the benchmark by which all subsequent ‘fusion’ would be measured and a seemingly universal inspiration to a whole generation of jazz and fusion musicians.

In contrast to the group’s second album, Birds Of Fire (recorded in a more leisurely fashion over the latter half of 1972, and featuring a number of studio-only pieces), all of the tracks from The Inner Mounting Flame would be featured extensively in live performance.

In December 1971, six months after forming, the Mahavishnu Orchestra played Carnegie Hall. Nominally in support to mellow folk-rock act It’s A Beautiful Day, this was the turning point for the group, on their way to becoming a major headlining act and a perpetual thorn in the side of any bigger act they would open for. In a nutshell, no one could follow the Mahavishnu Orchestra and win. Also in December, John acquired his first double-necked guitar – the Gibson SG seen in the three European filmed performances from August 1972 (BBC, French TV, German TV). He would later acquire a custom-made Rex Bogue model (visible in the two 1973 US filmed performances), but with the white clothing and the twin-necked instrument, the otherworldly image of the group was becoming defined. In May 1972, Billy Cobham purchased the transparent drum kit, with double bass drums, also seen in the August ’72 clips. Jan Hammer had also by then added mini Moog to his armoury of instruments. He is regarded today as the man who very largely created the ‘vocabulary’ of the instrument, and it allowed him to solo and interact with guitar and violin on an equal footing, in a way that was impossible with pre-existing keyboards. The group’s unique sound was complete, and from the start of 1972 to the end of their intense life in December 1973 the Mahavishnu Orchestra ‘Mark 1’ was almost constantly on the road.

The MO filmed by Columbia records, seemingly a promo film, at Hunter College, New York, on May 15 1972 - synced up to audio of 'The Dance Of Maya' from a local radio broadcast of the show.

The Mahavishnu Orchestra: A Short Biography
Part Two: The Conquest of Europe

Remarkably, an open air gig at Syracuse University, New York, on April 22 1972 was video filmed with multiple cameras by students. A 55 minute edit of the performance was made around the time and rediscovered in the University library years later – the first known film of the group. The previous day the group had performed in Cleveland, Ohio, with Columbia taping the set – currently available in stunning sound as the Wild Strings bootleg CD. Earlier that month the group had appeared at the Mar-Y-Sol festival in Puerto Rico, with a blistering 13 minute version of ‘The Noonward Race’ gracing the Atlantic Records Mar-Y-Sol double LP of the event later that year – only very recently available on CD officially as an added track on a re-release of a 1970s vinyl Best Of The Mahavishnu Orchestra.

In between the Syracuse University amateur film and the major European TV broadcasts in August, Columbia Records apparently took the initiative to film a date at New York’s Hunter College on 15 May, seemingly with a view to creating a short promo film for TV use. The gig was also broadcast on a local FM radio station and when a three minute edit of the film turned up recently it was synced to a part of ‘Dance Of Maya’ from the show and circulates unofficially – the earliest fully professional film of the group.

By the time the Mahavishnu Orchestra toured Europe in August 1972 they had clearly created enough of a sensation for the broadcasters of three nations – France, Germany and England – to capture their magic on film. Most of the Munich set was seemingly broadcast on radio (the apparent source of a five-song set available online - comprising ‘Meeting Of The Spirits / You Know, You Know / Dance Of Maya / One Word / The Noonward Race’), while at least four songs were broadcast on TV. Two currently circulate in perfect quality, two in very poor condition. Hopefully a full master quality recording of the Munich film will turn up in due course.

In between Munich on 17 August 1972 and an outdoor show at Chateauvallon’s jazz festival on 23 August – filmed in full by French TV and recently unearthed in pristine quality by a man in Ukraine - the Orchestra performed at the annual Montreux Jazz Festival. Organiser Claude Nobs has expressed regret that this set, on August 20, was not recorded. A bootleg purporting to be the concert is bogus – including several pieces that would be unknown in their repertoire until October-December 1973. (Thankfully, the Orchestra’s ‘Mark 2’ incarnation would be filmed at Montreux in 1974, performing the whole of the Apocalypse album in extended form. Fifty minutes of that set is available with splendid sound mastering supervised by John McLaughlin on an official DVD, while the fabulous full set - with the exception of ‘Dawn’, audio recorded but not filmed - circulates unofficially.)

A BBC TV concert on August 25 was staged especially for the medium, with a set tailored to the 30 minute slot, and has been rebroadcast on BBC4 in recent years. The Chateauvallon set, however, offers a unique opportunity to see the Mahavishu Orchestra unencumbered by such considerations, performing stretched-out versions of favourites from the first album and three pieces destined for the second.

They would begin recording that second album, Birds Of Fire, at London’s Trident Studios, with Beatles engineer Ken Scott producing, within days of the BBC recording. After an abortive interlude at studios in Florida, it would be finished off at Electric Lady Studios in New York under Scott’s supervision later in the year.

Recorded on 15 March 1973, Bananafish Garden, New York and broadcast on ABC's 'In Concert' this was the MO’s first known US TV exposure. A period video recording has recently been synced by MO fans to stereo sound from an FM simulcast of the show. Featuring three tracks from the then-recently released second LP 'Birds Of Fire' (Hope / One Word / Resolution) it remains the definitive MO Mark 1 slab of concert film - capturing their sheer power and volume. Play it loud, ye mighty, and despair!

The Mahavishnu Orchestra: A Short Biography
Part Three: Birds Of Fire

Released in January 1973, Birds Of Fire reached No.15 in the US charts. On 18 February 1973 they appeared on the very first edition of the nationally syndicated radio show The King Biscuit Flower Hour (along with one Bruce Springsteen). Their first US live TV appearance followed, In Concert on 15 March, with stunning versions of ‘Hope / One Word / Resolution’ broadcast from a concert in New York’s implausibly named Bananafish Gardens.

Both Jan Hammer and Rick Laird view this period between Birds Of Fire and the abortive attempt to record a third studio LP in London in June 1973 as the band at its performing peak – egos in balance, everyone now adept enough with the material to play at their best without having to focus constantly on ‘counting’ the bizarre time signatures everything seemed to be in, and not yet reaching the levels of self-indulgence which several members believe infiltrated their performances during the latter part of 1973. The wealth of superbly mastered and annotated live performances currently available from www.wolfgangsvault.com (40 largely complete concerts at the time of writing) from a period spanning late ’72 to almost their final show together in late December ’73 allows an independent assessment of this opinion. Certainly, this writer would agree that early ’73 saw the Mahavishnu Orchestra operating at an incredible, joyous, mind-blowing level. Great performances would still follow, right to the end, along with new compositions, but the planets were aligned in those early months of 1973.

In late June, at the end of a second European tour, the band reconvened at London’s Trident Studios with Ken Scott. What would emerge many years later as the posthumous gem The Lost Trident Sessions (1999) was deemed inadequate at the time. There had been tensions over John claiming full composition credits on the band’s music to date, and this time Rick, Jan and Jerry all insisted on compositions of theirs being recorded (Billy felt too uncomfortable pitching his own material, so prudently held his ideas back for his first solo album Spectrum). In this writer’s view, the three non-John pieces – ‘Sister Andrea’ (Jan), ‘I Wonder’ (Jerry) and ‘Steppings Tones’ (Rick) – all sound like valid, Mahavishnu-esque pieces. Indeed, all were performed live by the band even after the Trident sessions were scrapped. But scrapped they were.

The band were simply so busy on the road – McLaughlin and Cobham even spending two weeks ‘holiday’ earlier in the year by touring with Carlos Santana in promotion of a joint McLaughlin/Santana LP Love, Devotion, Surrender which they’d somehow found time to record – that there wasn’t enough time to take stock, reflect on things or strategise. Cobham believes that after the initial couple of months before the band’s Gaslight debut in summer ‘71 they never had time to rehearse: new pieces would be the result of getting together an hour early at soundchecks and giving it a go that evening. After a couple of years of this, even the minds and stamina of the most gifted musicians will get fried…

Jan Hammer's composition 'Sister Andrea', from the MO's third and final LP 'Between Nothingness & Eternity', as performed at the Palace Theatre, New York, on November 7 1973: the Mahavishnu Orchestra's last filmed performance.

The Mahavishnu Orchestra: A Short Biography
Part Four: Between Nothingness And Eternity

With Columbia putting pressure on for a follow-up to Birds Of Fire, two concerts on 17-18 August 1973 at New York’s Central Park were taped and three of the key Trident sessions pieces – Jan’s ‘Sister Andrea’ and John’s epics ‘Dream’ and ‘Trilogy’ – comprised their third and final release, on the live album Between Nothingness & Eternity.

On 7 November 1973 the group featured again on US TV, on Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert, live from New York’s Palace Theatre. This time viewers caught blistering performances of ‘Sister Andrea’ and the second LP tunes ‘Hope’ and ‘Celestial Terrestrial Commuters’ (‘Dream’ opened the set but seemingly wasn’t filmed). Weeks later, regrettably, the Mahavishnu Orchestra were no more. Bad feeling in the ranks had come to light in a magazine piece for which all the members had been interviewed – McLaughlin discovering his cohorts’ views incredulously while on a plane to a gigs in Japan. There would be no recovery. A constant touring schedule led to two incendiary nights at New York’s Avery Fisher Hall on December 27 and 28 (both available from www.wolfgangsvault.com ), Toledo, Ohio, the following night and finally Detroit on December 30. And there endeth the greatest band that ever was.

McLaughlin forged a much expanded new line-up – the ‘Mark 2’ Mahavishnu Orchestra – with string quartet and brass section, in 1974, recording the dense Apocalypse with George Martin and a symphony orchestra and giving great filmed performances at Montreux and France’s Festival D’Antibes that year. In 1975 the surprisingly commercial sounding Visions Of The Emerald Beyond was released, blending funk, rock, choral vocals and a dash of avant-garde classical music into a mix that was now a kind of high-end progressive rock rather than strictly the outer edges of jazz. There was even a 2-minute UK single released, ‘Can’t Stand Your Funk’ – almost inconceivable with the ‘Mark 1’ MO (although a single of Birds Of Fire gem ‘Open Country Joy’ had actually been released in Spain). Nevertheless, the live popularity of the Mark 2 band – which performed at European rock festivals and toured US stadiums supporting Jeff Beck – didn’t lead to significant sales success and by 1976 the once mighty Mahavishnu Orchestra had diminished into a rather indulgent 4-piece, recording the incoherent LP Inner Worlds and giving live performances which, from the limited evidence available, seem like a pale shadow of what had gone before. By the end of year everyone involved had moved on and the name was retired.

One can but hope that a fully sanctioned DVD, with access to master sources and sound mastering overseen by McLaughlin, may one day appear. Detachment between some former members purportedly still remains, although all were happy to collaborate with Walter Kolosky’s splendid Mahavishnu biography Power, Passion & Beauty (Abstract Logic, 2006). In recent years both Billy and Jerry have taken part in Mahavishnu tribute albums, while Jan has performed live with Gregg Bendian’s sensational ‘tribute band’ The Mahavishnu Project and has also performed Mahavishnu material live with Jeff Beck. Additionally, John and Billy jammed – including Mahavishnu material – at an impromptu performance at the 2009 Montreux Jazz Festival. So, never say never. The 1973 US TV appearances – though brief - probably represent the most powerful audio-visual artefacts of the original Mahavishnu Orchestra, giving a real sense of their onstage volume, whereas the European concerts – while more politely filtered through TV sound mixing - allow an unparalleled opportunity to see at close hand, over extended coverage, the incredible interplay between five musicians still enthralled with each other’s possibilities and the shared adventure. We shall not see their like again.

The MO live at Chateauvallon in France on August 23 1972 - seemingly the only full MO Mark 1 gig to have been filmed. This is 'Awakening' from their first LP. The Cobham/McLaughlin duo sparring from c.9:45 is a delight. 'Peace and blessings to everyone, thank you...'

Mahavishnu Orchestra ‘Mark 1’: Discography & Filmography

Recordings:

The Inner Mounting Flame
Recorded: July 1971
Released: November 1971
Meeting Of The Spirits / Dawn / Noonward Race / A Lotus On Irish Streams / Vital Transformation / The Dance Of Maya / You Know, You Know / Awakening

Birds Of Fire
Recorded: August-September 1972
Released: January 1973
Birds Of Fire / Miles Beyond / Celestial Terrestrial Commuters / Sapphire Bullets Of Pure Love / Thousand Island Park / Hope / One Word / Sanctuary / Open Country Joy / Resolution
Note: Open Country Joy / Celestial Commuters [sic] was released as a single in Spain

Between Nothingness & Eternity
Recorded: 17-18 August 1973, Central Park, New York
Released: November 1973
Trilogy / Sister Andrea / Dream
Note: Sister Andrea [edit] / Sister Andrea [full] was released as a US promo single in January 1974 along with a quadrophonic version of the album. The previous gig to these two Central Park shows was at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville (available for download at wolfgangsvault.com). The set list at that show includes – alongside Dream and Sister Andrea – Birds Of Fire, Hope/Awakening, Open Country Joy and Celestial Terrestrial Commuters, which suggests what else might have been recorded by Columbia at the Central Park shows. One can but hope for an expanded CD edition in due course.

Various Artists
Mar-Y-Sol
Recorded: 1-3 April 1972, Puerto Rico, Mar-Y-Sol Rock Festival
Released: late 1972
Mahavishnu Orchestra track: Noonward Race

The Lost Trident Sessions
Recorded: July 1973
Released: 1999
Dream / Trilogy / Sister Andrea / I Wonder / Steppings Tones / John’s Song

Films

Note: None of the known films of the Mahavishnu Orchestra ‘Mark 1’ are as yet officially released, although clips from Syracuse are featured in an official John McLaughlin Shakti DVD. Whilst a comprehensive fully authorised DVD incorporating all the extant film, mastered from primary sources, must remain the aspiration of all Mahavishnu Orchestra fans, we must be grateful that so much, in relative terms does indeed survive.

Syracuse University, New York
Recorded: 29 April 1972
Duration: 55 minutes
Meeting Of The Spirits / You Know, You Know / Dance Of Maya / Dawn [edit] + 2 brief interview spots with McLaughlin
Notes: A 3 camera B&W film shot on video by students at an open air gig on a sunny day, where the MO was supported by Ravi Shankar. Seemingly, to judge by the retrospectively tinged narration, the film was edited a year or two later. An audio bootleg of the gig, The Inner Flaming Axe, includes the full version of Dawn and adds Awakening, Noonward Race and A Lotus On Irish Streams.

Columbia Promo Film
Recorded: 15 May 1972, Hunter College, New York
Duration: 3 minutes
Dance Of Maya [edit]
Note: A multi-camera professional film, this was possibly prepared for TV use but may never have been used. The film has recently been synchronised, by an MO fan, with a section of Dance Of Maya from a local radio broadcast of the gig. The full set was: Meeting Of The Spirits / You Know, You Know / Dance Of Maya / Sanctuary / Noonward Race / One Word.

German TV
Recorded: 17 August 1972, Kongress Saal, Munich
Duration: 28 minutes
Meeting Of The Spirits[edit] / You Know, You Know / Dance Of Maya / A Lotus On Irish Streams
Note: Rebroadcast in recent years by a satellite channel, the latter two pieces only currently circulate in poor quality. Further pieces from the set, broadcast on German radio, were One Word and The Noonward Race.

French TV
Recorded: 23 August 1972, Amphitheatre, Chateauvallon
Duration: 74 minutes
Meeting Of The Spirits / You Know, You Know / Dance Of Maya / One Word / Resolution / Awakening
Note: This appears to have been the only full MO ‘Mark 1’ concert to have been tele-recorded. The lesser ‘Mark 2’ MO would have two concerts fully or almost fully recorded in 1974, by French TV at the Festival D’Antibes and Swiss TV at the Montreux Jazz Festival.

BBC TV (UK)
Recorded: 25 August 1972, BBC Studios, London
Duration: 30 minutes
Meeting Of The Spirits / You Know, You Know / A Lotus On Irish Streams / The Noonward Race
Note: This was a specially tailored set for TV. It was rebroadcast several times in 2009 by BBC4.

In Concert
Recorded: 15 March 1973, Bananafish Garden, New York
Duration: 17 minutes
Hope / One Word / Resolution
Note: The MO’s first known US TV exposure, a period video recording has recently been synced by MO fans to stereo sound from an FM simulcast of the show.

Yugoslavian TV
Recorded: June 1973?
Note: There is a suggestion that the MO were tele-recorded in Yugoslavia during their June 1973 European tour, which also took in France, Germany, Switzerland and England. If so, it has yet to circulate.

Don Kirshner Rock Concert
Recorded: 7 November 1973, Palace Theatre, New York
Duration: 13 minutes
Sister Andrea / Hope / Celestial Terrestrial Commuters
Note: Again, MO fans have synced up high quality audio with period video recordings of the broadcast. The audio comes from MO sound engineer Dinky Dawson’s fine recording of the full gig – available for download at wolfgangsvault.com – which was in this case a 30 minute set which opened with an unbroadcast performance of ‘Dream’.

you've been threatening to do this.

Truly great band indeed.

And not a tumbleweed in sight!

...days yet Declan!

But if I'm Gary Cooper strolling desperately toward his doom through a deserted town on his own in High Noon, I'm comforted to know that at least one of the town's residents is watching me from a window (even if thinking, 'Bloody hell, I'm not getting involved in THAT!') :-D

For a man to go to such lengths to eulogize a band in this way must mean that I have missed something with regards the Mahavishnus.

Birds of Fire on vinyl? Hmmm...

...if you have BOF handy, get some headphones out, pour a single malt with ice and immerse yourself in it this evening. It's magical stuff, but given the rarefied nature of their soundworld you *do* have to search for the keys to castle to an extent...

As the non-less tongue in cheek suggester of a Mahavishnu thread, this exceeds my wildest expectations. Hoy, Ellen/Hepworth - publish this!

Brilliant.

...but my work is, of course, unpublishable. Which is why it's here, on the Word blog, the home of unpublishable proggy paradoxes!

...were Dave 'Weathers' Crombie on guitar, Chaz 'Cat' Combes - bass, Fred 'Thunder' Westone on drums, Eric 'Stimpy' Archangel on moog, mellotron and vibes, and Tim 'Free' Reed - congas. Released one Todd Rundgren produced album on Casablanca in 1974, split in the middle of an ill-fated US tour where they were unwisely booked to support Leif Garret. There's nothing on Youtube, I've looked.

after listening to a hip hop artist called Aceyalone who sampled Meeting Of The Spirits on his track The Hurt in the late 90s.
I have listened to the album (The Inner Mounting Flame) about once a year since and I like it but I have never wanted to delve deeper.
Why did they strike such a chord with you above all others? This always interests me, why bands become a person's favourite. I don't believe it's just the music, it has to fit with your circumstances at a particular moment in your life. That's my theory anyway, I look forward to hearing yours.
And I love blogs like this, by the way. I don't care if it's a band I cannot stand or have no interest in, I love reading about a person's passion for a certain band or musician full stop.

when I pressed play on that first video, but to my surprise it was really good...seriously funky drummer!
Hm...might have to investigate further now...oh dear.
Unless they make CD's and vinyl the new currency when all the banks in the world finally crash and burn, I'll never be rich.
(The silver lining is that as long as I listen to great music, I really don't care!)

dithering about buying this for some time now, but after the above I've taken the plunge (it's only just over £2 an album after all):

http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=280;0;-1;-1;-1&sku=73...

as always, Colin.

As you know, I'm a huge fan of the MO. I never got to see the first line-up live, but did catch the MO incarnation with Jean Luc Ponty at the Albert Hall in January 1975.

I've only just realised that McLaughlin was the only common member in that line-up which featured Narada Michael Walden (now back working with Jeff Beck) and another ex-Zappa member Ralphe Armstrong on bass.

I saw them at the first Knebworth festival. Not sure of the line-up, as I didn't get close to the stage until the Allmans came on.

Although it's not a MO album, "My Goal's Beyond" is a very nice precursor to that blistering run of albums, one side featuring Billy Cobham and Jerry Goodman.

His earlier "Devotion" album - a MONSTER slab of jazzrock heaviosity - also showed the direction he was taking.

And the last Billy Cobham album "Palindrome" is definitely a return to the values of Crosswinds (all-time classic - oops - iconic - album). It doesn't seem to have picked up much of a following, but I can guarantee if you liked Cobham's first solo albums you will like this. Big band, great arrangements.

...I agree that 'My Goal's Beyond' [always had my doubts about the placement of that possessive apostrophe, mind!] is a wonderful precursor to the MO era. It has some of the elements, while 'Devotion' has others, and the Tony Williams' Lifetime recordings/live repertoire others still. The 1971 Lifetime single 'One Word' (not on youtube, though there is a version from a Tony Williams tribute concert sung by the group's original vocalist Jack Bruce which gives an idea) was in a fact a combination of ideas which later became parts of both 'One Word' and 'Resolution' on the second MO LP.

I have Billy Cobham's 'Spectrum' but to be honest I've never been very keen on any other fusion artists (not Weather Report, not Return To Forever, not Santana...) though I do like a couple of early Stanley Clarke albums and a bit of Isotope.

The first post-MO Jan Hammer Lp 'The First Seven Days' is lovely, and the Jerry Goodman & Jan Hammer LP 'Like Children' has some lovely MO-esque moments, albeit feeling akin to the first McCartney LP in terms of its lets-play-every-instrument-ourselves approach and basic level production. And, after his acoustic interlude with Shakti, John's 1978 LP 'Electric Guitarist' featured a kind of let's-make-up-and-be-friendly farewell to the MO era and sound, with guest appearances from Jerry and Billy (and Jack Bruce from the Lifetime days, and Stu Goldberg from the final 1976 MO line-up).

One of the reasons the MO Mark 1 split was the frustration Jerry, Jan and Rick had with getting compositional credits and their own material on disc. One piece from each of them was in fact recorded for the aborted 3rd studio LP in mid '73 (released in 1999, when a single reel of rough mixdown was discovered in Columbia's vaults) with Ken Scott producing. Here's Jerry's fabulous 'I Wonder' - which he and Jan would re-record a year or two later on 'Like Children'. It makes you wish John had been a bit more 'enlightened' about sharing the vinyl space/credits - all three could write pieces, like this, perfectly within the MO soundworld.

- but I love this:

"'Resolution' was 4 chords, but it was 4 chords Status Quo were never going to find"

You're absolutely spot on with all this. You'd have to go back to the Ellington big bands to find such concentrated virtuosity. Certainly no rock band came close, before or after. The Wolfgang's Vault series are all downloadable as mp3 albums from the usual sources. They make me wonder why "From Nothingness To Eternity" hasn't had the remastered/expanded/deluxe treatment it clearly could have.

(... and another plug for "Palindrome" - it's lovely!)

Thought you were a folkie!

Seriously, thanks for the summary. I never did get the Mahavishnu Orchestra and from a dabble into the clips above I probably still won't, but thanks for your efforts. I'll keep going.

....was on a school trip in 1971. My mate brought a transistor radio which by hanging out of the window you could occasionally pick up Radio Luxembourg and other exotic stations. Anyway one evening the sound of Vital Transformation came through the crackle with that grounbreaking drum intro. Eyes popping out of our heads - what the hell indeed who the hell is that ?! The sheer virtuosity and energy of that first album has never failed to impress - I loved the fact that the sound was so dirty and non jazz like . There are great guitarists and then there is John McLaughlin.

Monstrous thread Colin !!!

an article in the word AND a very lengthy trqack in the sampler is warranted

I've always treasured the 1972 live double LP of the Mar Y Sol Festival in Puerto Rico. Not only does it contain what I think is the definitive live performance of the MO doing Noonward Race, but it also has other great tracks by the Allman Brothers etc.

Rubbish visuals, but a great performance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar_y_Sol_Festival#Album_track_listing

...and Atlantic MUST have the rest of the MO's performance in the vault: certainly, I understand that full sets by some of the other acts have been released - Billy Joel's, for example, was apparently his breakthrough show.

The problem is getting the 5 MO members to all agree to releasing any new archival stuff - it seems a miracle they all agreed to 'The Lost Trident Sessions' in 1999 (or maybe Sony/Columbia contractually didn't need to seek permissions on that one?). Certainly, it's the case that the April 1972 Cleveland show that currently circulates as 'Wild Strings' - with monstrous, crisp, powerful sound quality - was originally recorded by Columbia and derives from a relatively recent mix that was intended for official release. Word is that Jerry Goodman thought his playing substandard (!?!) on it and said no. Incredible. The tracks in the show were: Meeting Of The Spirits / You Know, You Know / Dance Of Maya / Noonward Race

I interviewed John in 1996 (written up in versions with different slants for two magazines and commissioned for a third but unpublished) and he eulogised about that Cleveland recording even then - albeit getting the date wrong.

At risk of boring everyone with this increasingly mammoth Mahavishnuthon, here's the intro from that unpublished version of the interview (the whole thing's 5000 words and in the 'Journalism Archive' section of my website if anyone's interested):

JOHN McLAUGHLIN: GOD OF FUSION

Commissioned by Hot Press, early 1996 but unpublished

Colin Harper

“We were ripped off!” he’d roared, “Ripped off!” – memorably lapsing into some vestige of a Yorkshire accent and instantaneously cumbusting any notion of Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, beacon of otherworldly bliss and serenity, scattering to the cognoscenti the secrets of Truth encrypted in billion mile an hour flurries of modal scales and complex rhythmic techniques, delivered in onstage situations involving garments of white cheesecloth, double-necked guitars and blistering volume. Times have clearly changed.

The wrath of the Mahavishnu (strictly speaking, he dropped the moniker after splitting with guru Sri Chinmoy in the ‘70s – but it still ‘feels’ appropriate) was, on this our first encounter, loosely directed at Van Morrison or his flunkies, though he was notably more careful than his band members at not singling out The Man. Criticising other musicians, it transpires, isn’t something a jazz man does. It was McLaughlin’s first appearance in Ireland for 30 years, at the Cork Jazz Festival last November, and he was sharing a venue – a venue, not a bill – with Van Morrison. There was no sign of any cheesecloth, the guitar had a single, sensible neck, the scales were somewhat more in keeping with mainstream jazz but the volume was still there and McLaughlin in full flight was every bit the archetypal guitar hero, striding around the stage, firing off solos with abandon and throwing shapes like shoe-gazing never happened. It was only an hour and a bit in when it became apparent that somebody was trying to interrupt his locked-in state of bliss from the side of the stage. The stage manager, one presumes, was more concerned with clearing one audience, wheeling another in and shifting the pot plants around for the midnight arrival of Van. The earthly presence of the God of Fusion was plainly of no interest to the man, and – possibly for the first time ever – the stage manager of an international jazz festival pulled the plug on John McLaughlin. And he wasn’t happy.

This word was McLaughlin doesn’t give interviews at the best of times, and this wasn’t one of those. “No chance” said the festival PR; “He’s only done one in the last three years” said the record company, “and that was on the phone.” Here was the man who had turned down The Irish Times a day or two before. “So, John, sorry to hear about the Van stuff, too bad… Great show… Can we do an interview some time?” Remarkably, he said yes, calming down with almost as much speed as his solos. “You set it up.” Two months later we’re exchanging pleasantries in the elevator of London’s Langham Hilton. The great man has flown in from his home on the sunny shores of Monaco, I’ve flown in via a foggy diversion to Birmingham the previous evening and the record company have booked a most salubrious suite for the occasion. Casually attired in turtle-neck and sweater, he talks with a curious French lilt, betraying the Yorkshire voice of rage and the mid-Atlantic drawl of early ‘70s live tapes. He seems personable and courteous, but the cliff-edge of wrath is e’er but a short step away. We enter the suite and he is aghast. Someone has turned the air conditioning on (“In the middle of winter?!”). And that’s not all. On the coffee table is a bowl of fruit and a mysterious note ‘To John Jones’. “Who is this John Jones?” mumbles the Mahavishnu, reading Jones’ mail. A little while later, somebody arrives at the door with a bunch of flowers for Mr Jones. The Mahavishnu, with increasing desperation, tries to explain that, really, they’re very nice but he didn’t order flowers, he’s trying to do an interview and, no, he has absolutely no idea who John Jones is. The man from the record company suggests we might care for some tea or coffee. “What kind of tea?” asks John. “Virtuosi-tea…” one mutters. “What?” says John. Once again, he is not amused.

Bandying word-play with a man who has dedicated the past 25 years of his life to communing with God through music – maintaining during such time a dizzying speed and an almost total avoidance of lyrics – isn’t a good idea. His mastery of his instrument is frightening, and he has proved time and again capable of flitting between straight jazz, orchestral composition, pummeling post-Hendrix rock and Indian classical music with an ease and exhilaration which must mesmerise his contemporaries, furrow the brows of his record companies and, certainly in the past, baffle his audience. “So what’s he like then?” asked Martin Hayes – traditional fiddle wizard and closet devotee of fusion – a few weeks later. “Well, he’s, er, strange…” I replied. He’d said as much himself. “I like being strange, Colin. It’s a good feeling…”

.

Colin was a bit disparaging about Santana's efforts but together, on this album, I think he and mclaughlin melded wonderfully

This is brilliant - I can see my Sunday plans utterly sabotaged by this loving collation of one of the greatest bands ever.

well done, folks.

yet again, you spoil us.

This is truly magical stuff.

We are not worthy.

As I've mentioned a couple of times the awesomeness of the 'Wild Strings' bootleg - derived from a never issued official multi-track recording by Columbia, made in a college gymnasium in Cleveland, Ohio on April 21 1972 - I think it's about time we heard it!

Some kind soul has posted the whole 62 mins on youtube, so here it is - hopefully it won't weight the whole thread into submission. The MO were, if you can believe it, the opening act on a three act bill with Procul Harum and West, Bruce & Laing. WB&L were taping a live album and the MO were allowed to record as an add-on. Can you IMAGINE Procul Harum or even Leslie West having to follow this sonic assault?

Tracks are:

1. Meeting Of The Spirits
2. You Know, You Know (starts at 12:50)
3. Dance Of Maya (starts at 25:00)
4. The Noonward Race (starts at 39:40)

If you only care to sample a minute or two, go straight to the first couple of mins of 'You Know, You Know' - incredible, and exquisitely recorded... It beggars belief that violinist Jerry Goodman thinks his playing below par on this.

And so to some CH blog-only track by track sleevenotery for the above tracks:

Meeting Of The Spirits

A definitive statement from The Inner Mounting Flame, in 6/4 time with the kind of unresolving, hypnotic and vaguely disorientating arpeggios which defined John McLaughlin’s playing at this time, this was the MO’s standard set-opener throughout 1972 and no doubt also during its early gigs the previous year. Towards the end of 1972 it began alternating in this role with ‘Birds Of Fire’, a coin-toss that would continue throughout 1973. The one constant was that if one was in the set, the other would not be. No matter which one opened the set, the second piece was always ‘Miles Beyond’ or ‘Open Country Joy’, pieces also from the Birds Of Fire LP, only giving way in this role to the third-album pieces ‘Sister Andrea’ and ‘Trilogy’ towards the end of the group’s life. ‘Meeting Of The Spirits’ was almost always 12-14 minutes long in concert, save for the specially shortened version in the BBC TV concert of August 1972 and a one-off 21 minute version recorded at Yale University in October 1973 (available via wolfgangsvault.com). The Munich TV performance of August 1972 was probably the usual 12-14 minutes, similar to the Chateauvallon filmed performance, of which only the 5 minute edit currently available on youtube was broadcast on TV.

You Know, You Know

Published in 4/4, but requiring the players to ‘count’ in increments of 12 – explained eloquently by McLaughlin himself in a tuition DVD This Is The Way I Do It – this was the MO’s regular second song in live sets throughout 1972 and into January 1973, with ‘Meeting Of The Spirits’ opening the show. When ‘Birds Of Fire’ began to alternate with ‘Meeting…’ as the opener, ‘You Know, You Know’ was dropped from the set. It reappeared in a few shows during May 1973 and made an unexpected swansong - as the opening number for seemingly the first and last time - at one of the group’s last ever shows, at New York’s Avery Hall on 28 December 1973. A beautifully restrained, hypnotic 5-minute piece on record, it became a dynamic vehicle for Billy Cobham and Jan Hammer, especially, during live performances, where it would usually double in length. Both Jan and Billy are on great form in the BBC performance, while Jerry and Billy shine particularly during the Munich performance. It would be revived as an unsatisfying jam vehicle for the MO’s little-known final incarnation as a 4-piece in 1976.

Dance Of Maya

Another piece from the first album, this was almost always in the live set from the band’s earliest gigs until May 1973, when pressure from material destined for the unreleased third LP (posthumously released in 1999 as The Lost Trident Sessions) squeezed it out. It sneaked back in for old times’ sake in a couple of shows during the band’s last days in November-December 1973. Predominantly a feature for violinist Jerry Goodman, its length in concert varied wildly from 10-22 minutes, although 15-16 minutes – as seen in the Chateauvallon performance – was the norm. Published in 10/8, other authorities have cited the time signature as 20/8 and 10/4 while bassist Rick Laird – who spent a hefty portion of his life trying to ‘count’ the thing onstage – believes the particularly tricky 13/8 to be closer to the truth. Whatever it is, the fact that the MO could play something so awkward and still make it swing, and appear effortless, is a testament to their quality as individual and ensemble players. The main melody of the piece had been featured in the 1970 live repertoire of McLaughlin’s previous band, Lifetime – featuring McLaughlin (guitar), Larry Young (organ), Tony Williams (drums) and Jack Bruce (bass/vocals) - with Jack Bruce providing improvised lyrics. Official live recordings were apparently made of Lifetime’s 1970 UK tour but remain thus far unreleased.

The Noonward Race

Another first album feature, ‘The Noonward Race’ was a regular set-closer in early ’72 gigs. Blistering versions can be heard on the rare official various-artist release from the Mar-Y-Sol festival in Puerto Rico (included above in this thread in an audio youtube clip) and of course on this incendiary recording from Cleveland, taken from unreleased Columbia Records tapes – both recorded in April 1972. The BBC TV version packs a decent punch, despite the group obviously having to play within restrained volume, and all three feature the thuggish non-album opening sequence which truly assaults the ears. MO biographer Walter Kolosky hears a similarity between motifs in ‘The Noonward Race’ and in ‘Right Off’, a McLaughlin-heavy piece from Miles Davis’ jazz-rock classic A Tribute To Jack Johnson (1969). Published in standard 4/4, ‘The Noonward Race’ could reach epic proportion in concert – up to 25 minutes, albeit containing by then parts of what would become the similarly epic ‘Dream’, eventually featured as a side-long piece on the 1973 live album Between Nothingness & Eternity. With such new epics entering the set during 1973, ‘The Noonward Race’ was apparently last heard in concert in May of that year.

...I thought this would be too long to put up here in full but.... aw, what the hell. If anyone's come this far, a few thousand words more will be a walk in the park ('Thousand Island Park', obviously):

(Part Two of an unpublished 1996 feature on John McLaughlin):

The record company had more than common courtesy in mind in facilitating an interview. Released this month, The Promise is John McLaughlin’s 30th album in 27 years. It’s his quirkiest and most adventurous record for years, moving from fusion to bebop to pseudo-classical and beyond with brief bursts of ‘jungle’, spoken word and manic guitar jams in between. It displays, in one handy package, a fairly full gamut of the man’s myriad styles – with guest appearances from Jeff Beck, Paco De Lucia, Al Di Meola, Sting, sundry Indians and more besides. And by now, of course, his current label Verve have become attuned to the wayward ways of their most auspicious act: “Well, thank God,” he says, “they’re very happy with what I’m doing. So, touch wood, I’ve just re-signed for another five years.” For someone brought up on the metaphysical auras of his reissued 1970’s album sleeves (even the titles, for goodness sake) it comes as something of a surprise that a figure of McLaughlin’s perceived serenity, inscrutability and seemingly boundless musical questing should leave room in his concerns for worldly wherewithalls like sales figures and record contracts, but there they are. Even the Mahavishnu has a mortgage to pay – though woe betide the building society that stands in the way of his goals beyond:

“Any painter” he says, “you look at his paintings from 25 years ago and you look at what he’s doing today: is he doing the same thing? I would say there’s a 99.9% chance that he’s not, ‘cos he’s changed, and I’ve changed. But why not go with the changes? So I do. Just because something works commercially is no guarantee that it works musically – and it has to work musically – but there are certain risks you take. Like Shakti – I took risks with Shakti and I lost record sales with Shakti, but what am I going to do? Am I going to sell my soul? No, I have to stay happy with myself. There are different kinds of success and musical success is the most important. You want to have commercial success too, but not at the price of being unhappy.”

McLaughlin’s quest for bliss begins in Yorkshire, circa 1950: “My mother was an amateur violinist” he says, “and I asked her at eight ‘Can I take some piano lessons?’ and she said ‘Yes, of course. I had this dragon of a piano teacher, but at the same time I used to listen to a lot of music and practice, and every time you practice without reading music you’re developing your ear, developing an appreciation for music. It can only help.” He’s often been criticised for ‘too many notes, too little music’, and it’s clear from his interviews over the years that in spite of the same gritty, formative influences as every other English musician of his generation – Big Bill Broonzy, Leadbelly, and other ethereal heroes of American long wave broadcasting – McLaughlin takes a more disciplined, austere approach, regarding the advancement of one’s technique and theory as a route – the route – to the advancement of one’s music. I suggest to him that this in contrast with the intuitive approach of, for instance, a player of similar age (McLaughlin is 54) and background like Bert Jansch:

“No, don’t make any errors” he says, “Bert Jansch has his own technique; Muddy Waters in 1952 playing very simple Mississippi Delta blues – very sophisticated technique in his own way. But I think it would be fairer to compare a jazz instrumentalist with a classical instrumentalist, because Bert plays finger-picking folk music and sings. I’m a guitar player. You have a discipline – a classical discipline and a jazz discipline. Now why do you have a discipline? Because if you don’t dominate your instrument, your instrument will dominate you and that’d really get in the way of the music.”

McLaughlin’s domination of his instrument doesn’t appear to have taken too long. Obsessive achievement probably runs in the family – both his brothers are PhDs (in Marine Biology and Petro-Chemicals). Suitably esoteric subjects: “Mmm, different, Colin. Certainly different.” He took it up at 11 and by 16 he was off to Manchester, axe in hand, and shortly thereafter to London. The jazz direction had already been firmed up at school where he had a band – or three: “A band at school? Yeah, I did – it was a kind of traditional jazz band, and I also had a George Shearing kind of band and, alas, I had a skiffle group! The greatest thing about my school – and it was a pretty dreadful school – was my music teacher. He was great. And of course he taught classical music, but the fact that he had some students that were interested just in music and wanted to play, for him was enough. He encouraged us. There was a music club where we could play jazz records – in those days it would be Jazz At The Philharmonic, Oscar Peterson… I was also very much aware of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and the whole bebop movement, but Miles [Davis] was a revelation, especially Milestones because it was really a milestone in jazz music and music in general…”

His early years London are something of a chronological blur. He started off in Georgie Fame’s band (enjoying the opportunity to say hi to his old mentor, now cheer-leading for Van, at the Cork gig), occasionally jamming with Alexis Korner before joining Korner mutineers Graham Bond, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker to form the Graham Bond Quartet before, as legend has it, Baker decided he didn’t like the guy and had him shucked out in favour of sax player Dick Heckstall-Smith. Bond shared with Miles Davis a dark, mysterious public persona. Were they similar? “Not at all. Bond was wild, he was a wild man but we were all a little wild in those days. But a very interesting man, and very curious. He peaked my curiosity in a number of directions.” Bond’s involvement with Theosophy, illicit substances and latterly all manner of occult activities is legendary. A baptism of fire, perchance? “I think the whole of the ‘60s was a baptism of fire generally. It was pretty amazing, you know, because I’d been growing up with Miles and Coltrane and then 1964 comes along, Sgt. Pepper, LSD… And by this time I was already questioning a lot of things about perception, about life and about the meaning of it all – about existence.”

McLaughlin spent the mid ‘60s in London, recording as a session musician for about 18 months on “stupid pop music, until I couldn’t stand it any more”. He got friendly with Beatles’ men George Martin and Geoff Emerick at the time, later calling them up, in 1974, to produce the dark and ambitious Apocalypse – one of the indulgent era’s more successful rock band/orchestra projects, if a tad heavy-going to the casual ear. “I’m one of The Beatles’ biggest fans” he says, surprisingly, “and George Martin I believe is the greatest producer of the latter 20th century. And a great musician.” He doesn’t recall – or care to recall – too many of those ‘60s sessions but among them were a couple with The Rolling Stones and a few more with Northern Soul faves Herbie Goins & The Night-Timers, and if legend is to be believed he was giving lessons at the time to fellow sessioneer Jimmy Page.

His most extraordinary work of the period, well indicative of his already unique playing, were a series of recordings, including several co-written songs, with a refugee from Larry Parnes’ stable of British rock’n’rollers with silly names, Duffy Power. Power was, nevertheless, an exceptional jazz/R&B vocalist and the recordings – currently compiled on CD as Little Boy Blue – remain a fascinating glimpse of McLaughlin circa ‘65 and way ahead of his time. John himself prefers to side-step anachronistic reverence: “I don’t know any musician who sees himself in that way; he’s much too concerned with his music. He’s not thinking ‘Am I ahead of my time, am I behind my time’…” And he hasn’t even heard the stuff either: “Yeah, apparently some kind of record has come out with me and Duffy – nobody told me, I didn’t even know there was a recording. I mean, it’s too bad. It shouldn’t be like that. I should be asked – I should be paid, for crying out loud*, and I was certainly never paid. But my association with Duffy was that we shared musical interests and that was really that. We didn’t really do any gigs – well, we did gigs with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, sometimes he’d sing with us. And in fact, that’s where Jack got all his harp playing and singing from, direct from Duffy.”

[* NB Duffy insists that John WAS paid for all their recordings together - most of them publishers demos, with only a few released on a French EP/UK single at the time. They're fabulous recordings, available across various Duffy CDs including 'Leapers & Sleepers' and 'Vampers & Champers']

Part 3 to follow if/when everyone catches their breath...

...I'm off to lie down in a darkened room for a while, but in the interim, amidst the gargantuan slabs of prose and sonic assault, here's some sublime and gentle acoustic interlude music. From the August 1972 BBC studio concert - 'A Lotus On Irish Streams':

A Lotus On Irish Streams

A stately, contemplative oasis amid the cauldron of frenzy on The Inner Mounting Flame, ‘Lotus…’ was the only acoustic piece the ‘Mark 1’ MO performed onstage. (Sadly, its counterpart on Birds Of Fire, ‘Thousand Island Park’, a feature for Rick Laird on double bass, appears never to have been played in concert, probably for logistical reasons.) ‘Lotus...’ usually lasted around 8 minutes in live versions, and the relatively normal 3/4 time signature (waltz time) perhaps echoes the similar 6/8 time associated with Irish traditional music. The BBC studio concert was a probably unique opportunity for the MO trio of John, Jan and Jerry to play genuinely acoustically – with a real piano provided and John able to mike his acoustic guitar externally rather than process the sound with its internal pick-up. ‘Lotus…’ was also performed and broadcast from the Munich TV concert that same month (a surviving low-quality clip can be seen on youtube.com). The presence of John’s acoustic guitar, visible on a stand onstage, at the Chateauvallon concert suggests it could easily have been performed that night. We must assume John wasn’t inspired to do so, as the TV recording of the show – unearthed by a sonic archaeologist in the far fringes of Eastern Europe - appears to be complete. ‘Lotus…’ dropped out of the live repertoire around February 1973.

Because I got an extra "large" paycheck this month I went on a shopping spree.
First I got myself a subscription to the rather splendid magazine hosting this cosy place.
Then I went to my friendly online record shop and stuffed an awful lot of albums in my virtual basket...who can resist a good sale ? And the Original Album Classics package was, as always, just too bloody irresistible.
You probably should have a percentage of that money, Colin!
One more convert to the temple of Mahavishnu...(well, I haven't heard all of it yet, so I may still end up hating most of it!)
Ahh, but this is why I love this place! Passionate preachers on a mission to get everybody else to see the light...
It can sometimes get expensive, but it's well worth it most of the times.

but they're no Tears For Fears are they?

Great stuff Colin we truly are blessed to belong to this here forum and be able to get this standard of stuff from writers of your stature. Whether I'll ever get The MO or not is another matter and probably irrelevant but bugger me you can write Colin and with such obvious enthusiasm and knowledge. Thank you.

Fantastic, Dave! LOL etc :-D

And thank you for such kind words - we can but try to share our enthusiastiams, can't we?

And while I'm here, I guess we may as well have Part 3 of the unpublished John M feature... in which we move from London's Swinging Sixties to New York at the end of the 70s...

JOHN McLAUGHLIN: GOD OF FUSION - Part 3, continued from Parts 1 and 2 above

Speaking of which, its curious that McLaughlin was never asked – as seemed perfunctory for embryonic guitar heroes of the period – to join John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, and more curious still that just when all the rest – Beck, Page, Clapton et al – are forming prototytpe heavy metal bands, McLaughlin is wearing black polo necks and playing straight jazz with the Gordon Beck Quartet and the Danny Thompson Trio: “Yeah, I know but I think John [Mayall] wanted more of the Mississippi style and by that time I was much too much under the influence of Miles and Coltrane. But I’ve always just followed my nature as long as I can remember. You go where you feel happy and for me it was natural to gravitate towards jazz – towards more eloquent ways of expressing myself, and that’s all I’ve spent my life doing. Of course, Jimi [Hendrix] was on the scene then and Jimi was really blowing everybody’s mind – he was killing everybody – and Eric [Clapton] was already gravitating towards this way and Jack was looking for another vehicle. He’d abandoned double bass since the work we’d done with Duffy and he’d started to sing too…”
And there wasn’t even a tiny part of him that saw the success of Cream and thought ‘that could have been me’? “No way – why should I give a shit? Great for them, fantastic – but I was very happy. By October/November ‘68 I was already in discussion with Tony [Williams] and very shortly after that I left for America and basically I never came back…” The period 1969-71 is literally strewn with ground-breaking, experimental McLaughlin recordings. The first solo album Extrapolation, recorded before leaving England, is still regarded by jazz critics as the guitarist’s finest hour (“What can I say? They’re out of their tiny minds…”), while the next three – the Hendrix-inspired Devotion, the meditational My Goals Beyond and the John Surman collaboration Where Fortune Smiles – explored ideas that would reach fruition with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. He denies, however, that it was in response to the sheer pressure of life in New York that he abandoned the excesses of the ‘60s jazz lifestyle (you think the rock’n’roll lifestyle’s bad…?) and sought for solace in spirituality:

“No, not because of the pressure – you couldn’t find a happier person than me in New York. For a European jazz musician to find himself playing with Miles Davis, Tony Williams, playing Harlem – it’s paradise, Colin. I was in Heaven. But of course there was a lot of crystallization going on musically – I couldn’t have arrived at a better time. To play with Tony – still today one of the greatest, revolutionary drummers – and the late Larry Young, who was my all-time favourite Hammond organ player, and then of course Miles… So a lot of musical things were crystallizing. Tony was encouraging me to write more and this coincided with my own personal quest for… whatever, during which time I began to practise meditation and became a disciple of Sri Chinmoy.”
With whom he parted company in the mid ‘70s: “Yeah, so it’s not my path, but so what? There are many paths, and I still meditate every day.” Would he have any affinity with that other volume-driven visionary of the period Pete Townsend? “Hmmm, yes. Wasn’t he a follower of Meher Baba? I’m very fond of Meher Baba, but that also was not my way. But The Who was a group that I always loved – I just loved their vibe – and Pete is one of the sweetest guys I ever met. The music’s very simplistic, so I didn’t really see much analogy in what Pete was trying to do in music and what I was trying to do but, nevertheless, I liked them then and I like them today.”

Far from simplistic were the two albums McLaughlin recorded during this same frenetic period with Tony Williams’ Lifetime and several Miles Davis albums including Bitches Brew (1970) – generally regarded as the birth of fusion – but the one that holds the fondest memories for McLaughlin is the relatively obscure Tribute To Jack Johnson (1971): “I was very happy when Miles eventually told me that Jack Johnson was his favourite record” he says. “I’m very much a big part of Jack Johnson – in fact I started off the main theme with these funny, weird chords and the sound… Miles would normally come in with a piece of paper or a paper bag on which he’d written some chords in a taxi on the way over, but I remember we were in the studio with Herbie [Hancock], Michael Henderson, Billy Cobham, Steve Grossman and Miles was in the control room talking to somebody and after a while I just started this R&B thing. We all got into it, Miles heard it, the light went on, he ran in and he played for 20 minutes straight and it was just great. He was just killing – and that was the only record where Miles didn’t do any direction, it was totally spontaneous. And that was Miles’ favourite record.”

During that same ‘69-’71 period in New York McLaughlin also found windows in his diary to turn up on recordings by Jack Bruce, Wayne Shorter, Larry Coryell, Miroslav Vitous, old uncle Tom Cobleigh and all. Oh, and wasn’t there a bit of a session with Jimi Hendrix? “It was a farce” says John, recoiling at the thought of a less than perfect meeting of the gods (which somebody happened to tape). “I mean, I loved Jimi, but we were at this big party in a studio, in New York, and I was playing this hollow-bodied Hummingbird which was feeding back all the time, it was so loud in there. But I didn’t care – I was with Dave Holland and Larry Young, and we all sat and played. It was hard to play guitar, but Jimi was killing. In fact, I remember taking Miles to see Jimi on the Monterey Pop film. Miles had never seen him before and he couldn’t believe it.”

John speaks very affectionately of Miles, and freely admits it was only on Miles’ insistance that he finally ventured onto the sunlit path with his own band – the truly peerless Mahavishnu Orchestra. The first incarnation lasted two years, cutting three explosive, genre-defining albums – The Inner Mounting Flame (1972), Birds Of Fire (1973), Between Nothingness & Eternity (1973). McLaughlin knew exactly who he wanted, bringing bassist Rick Laird over from England (previously a colleague in the Brian Auger Trinity), poaching pianist Jan Hammer from Sarah Vaughan, Billy Cobham from Miles’ band and searching out Jerry Goodman, ex violinist from The Flock, on a farm in Wisconsin. The violin was the key: “Maybe something to do with my mother” he says, wistfully, “she was a violin player, I always loved violin… I didn’t really have, like, a vision. I just had that instrument. You hear things in your mind and I heard a violin. I heard Jerry on The Flock record and I’d heard a few other violin players, and I didn’t want anybody else – I wanted Jerry. He was very much like a rebel, in there with his ripped jeans and his torn t-shirts long before it was fashionable, but I liked that – especially because it was a contrast to me, because I was into my meditation thing…”

Indeed – the cheescloth and serenity period: “No, I mean, I don’t have a serene kind of persona that I want to project – I’m just me, Colin. But I like contrast – in life and in music. Also, by this time I’d been getting louder and louder with Tony and Miles too – I mean, he wanted it loud. To the point where I played with Jimi on a round-holed guitar – impossible. If you play at a certain volume you’re going to have to have a solid-bodied guitar.” In this respect, McLaughlin went to town – first with Gibson then customised Rex Bogue double-necks. It was all down to the arpeggios, which characterised his compositional style almost throughout the ‘70s: “I like arpeggios on guitar and 12 strings perfect, and then I had the 6 string for the solos.” That said, there are several instances on record, particularly the live recording, where McLaughlin uses the 12 string for soloing – solos which, he believed, wouldn’t have worked on 6 string.

The unbelievably tight, call-and-response interplay between McLaughlin’s over-driven guitar, Goodman’s scratchy electric violin and Hammer’s distinctive mini-moog together with impossibly fast statements of themes involving not only the lead instruments but Cobham’s machine gun drumming were the unrepeatable, uncopiable hallmarks of that first, great line-up. And it still figures in the mind of a man not given much to ruminating on past glories: “I’ve got this live tape from Cleveland from the first band that is just unbelievable, from 1971. It’s unreal. It was a great band. But the second band was fantastic too. One of my all-time favourite records in this genre is Visions Of The Emerald Beyond (1975), with Ralphe [Armstrong, bass] and Narada [Michael Walden, drums/vocals]. Ralphe was a funky guy. In fact, we just played together, Ralphe, Narada and I, at the Jimi Hendrix 25th Anniversary thing in Seattle. But the violin was still the thing. Even after Jerry left, John Luc Ponty came in, then Stephen Kinder came in [in an unrecorded version of the Orchestra], and then Shakti. Shakti already existed anyway, from 1973, parallel to the Mahavishnu Orchestra and ‘75 was when I decided I wanted to concentrate more or less exclusively with Shakti. And of course there was already a violin player in that band called Shankar.”

It may just transpire, incidentally, that the next Martin Hayes album will greet the world as Visions Of The Emerald Isle – but then post-gig banter in Dublin is a rarefied beast, and would anybody except people who hang around guitar shops get the joke anyway? And even then… The final MO album, the little-known Inner Worlds (1976), featured a four-piece version of the band and a curious mix of fusion-by-numbers, Walden’s soul-mystic vocal outings and more adventurous eastern-tinged acoustic music that pointed in the Shakti direction. McLaughlin recorded three albums with his newly adopted band between 1975-77 -Shakti With John McLaughlin, A Handful Of Beauty and Natural Elements – inadvertently setting himself up as a latterday godfather of ‘world music’ to chroniclers of genres. As always, though, the collaboration was fuelled purely by musical exhilaration. McLaughlin – who had taken lessons from Ravi Shankar earlier in the decade – immersed himself in the rules of Indian music and commissioned a unique instrument in the form of an acoustic guitar with extra drone strings running across the sound hole diagonally and scalloped frets for infinite microtonal bends. The scales may have changed – and the speed, if anything, had increased – but the statement of theme with call and response soloing was still essentially the same. The experiment was, musically, a phenomenal success and the Shakti records are still as unequalled today as the best of the Mahavishnu recordings, but it came to an inevitable conclusion:

“I don’t pretend to play Indian classical music but I’ve studied it and I know the theory, I know the practical applications of it. I tried to get Shankar a bit more on my side with the study of jazz harmony, but he wasn’t really interested. He was more interested in going in a pop direction, away from any kind of complex harmonics. But I’m a western musician, Colin, and much as I love Shakti I still have a desire to play with western musicians – in jazz, R&B or whatever, but to play harmony, to play with musicians who improvise in a western way. I’d lost record sales with Shakti, so to make Electric Guitarist (1978) at the time was a great chance for me to, in a way, ‘come back’.”

Featuring an all-star cast of fusion alumni from the period, Electric Guitarist is one of McLaughlin’s most unassuming but enjoyable records, and with both Jerry Goodman and Billy Cobham on board was as close as he got to fulfilling a lingering but futile desire to regroup the first Mahavishnu Orchestra, which had ended in tears five years previous: “It was just stupidity – Jerry and Jan would act like two idiots – and when they stopped talking to me… I mean, who wants to play with people who don’t talk to you any more? They had six months notice – ‘If you’re not going to talk to me, this band is over’. And they didn’t. But I tried from ‘75, ‘76 – for a period of maybe 10 years – to regroup that band. Not for financial reasons but just because I felt it would be good to show everybody that the music was beyond petty bullshit. But it was not meant to be. I later saw Jerry and he said ‘Shit, that was the stupidest thing I could have done, to blow that’ – but at least we became pals again. Jan, for some reason, still holds a grudge against me. A great musician but what an idiot – I mean, for how long? It got to the point where Jerry would have been ready but Jan, in the meantime, is a multi-millionaire writing music for Miami Vice…”

Part 4 to follow (as an increasing body count of innocent pop-pickers and casual readers piles up on the fringes of the Word blog)...

Just read through the lot whilst listening to an old Shakti bootleg (1977-05-12 BBC Live in Concert, as introduced by the dulcet tones of Brian Matthews).

The blog needs much more of this kind of thing. Thank you.

...thank you, James!

As for the blog needing 'much more of this kind of thing', I can't imagine Heppo and Ellen ever thought, 'Yeah, we'll create a blog... so all our readers can post humungous slabs of text about the Mahavishnu Orchestra! THAT'S what the punters really want... oh, and maybe we'll throw in a podcast with Nick Lowe and Richard Thompo dropping by for a strumalong now and again... Doubt anyone'd be interested in that, but it'd be summat to do on a Friday afternoon...'

Anyway, here's the fourth and final part of the unpublished 1996 McLaughlin feature:

Immediately after the ‘come-back’ McLaughlin went acoustic again, touring and recording in successful collaboration with Paco De Lucia and Larry Coryell, later replaced by Al Di Meola. The threesome reappear for one number on The Promise, and it was clearly a highlight for McLaughlin: “One of the pluses in doing a record like The Promise is that it opens up all sorts of imaginary doors, potential doors, but one of the most immediate is that since it brought Paco and Al and I back together they’re saying ‘we have to make another record together’, so that’ll probably be the next record.”

There was a time, during the ‘80s, when McLaughlin’s ‘next record’ could have been three years away and only available on import. His two guitar synth based records of the period with a violin-less band entitled Mahavishnu, featuring Bill Evans (sax) and Jonas Hellborg (bass) – Mahavishnu (1984) and Adventures In Radioland (1987) – are not without their moments but have an uncharacteristically anonymous feel, at its worst like muzak from American sit-coms. The current era of prolific, readily-available-in-the-British Isles releases was ushered in with the excellent Live At The Royal Festival Hall and the widely acclaimed Mediterranean Concerto, both from 1990. Since then, the UK based Verve label has overseen a flurry of diverse but regular projects, which have neither added to nor diminished his core audience and reputation, including Tokyo Live, featuring The Free Spirits; Time Remembered, McLaughlin’s exquisitely scored and executed tribute to the music of late pianist Bill Evans (not to be confused with…); and last year’s homage to Coltrane and the bebop sound After The Rain. An appearance on the recent all-star Hendrix tribute album In From The Storm, where he plays ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ with Sting, turning in his wildest solo in years – totally spontaneous, as it transpires (“I don’t like this overdub stuff, let’s just play…”) – should have given warning that the God of Fusion was about to stage a resurrection. That said, the agitated physicality of his performance at Cork was a revelation:

“I only play” he says. “I don’t know what I’m doing when I’m playing. But I wasn’t doing anything abnormal at that gig – you just have to play, and maybe it would be my last concert, I don’t know. I don’t know when I’m going to be called back, but I certainly would like to play every concert like it was my last concert. I have no regrets. But, I mean, a band like The Free Spirits with Joey De Francesco and Dennis Chambers – I mean, those guys are killing, they’re killing. They’re on my case all the time, which is exactly what I want. There’s a lot of dialogue going on and there’s a lot of spontaneity and sometimes we’re on a tightrope. It’s great, I like that.”

The Promise, with its track by track diversity embracing all manner of musical genres with playful interludes, is “a kind of visual journey. Also I like the idea which was relative to the first record I made, Extrapolation, in which the pieces didn’t really stop. There was this transition between one piece and the next, and that was very interesting work for me because each piece is so different. It was interesting just to find unusual ways to present these pieces, to string them together.” It is, given the retro feel of McLaughlin’s recent releases, a surprisingly contemporary sounding record. McLaughlin’s electric guitar sound throughout, while never as brutal and direct as MO days, shifts its coloring from the dark, sonorous, Bill Frisell feel of late to something resembling the effects used on Electric Guitarist’s ‘Phenomenon:Compulsion’. McLaughlin’s style has changed too, featuring, again Frisell-like, a preponderance of quarter-tone bends via momentary jabs at a newly favoured tremolo arm. Jeff Beck, of course, whose debut recorded duet with McLaughlin on the opening track ‘Django’, is the king of the tremolo arm and has kept the same sound and style for years:

“Yeah, well that’s me and that’s him” says John, “but he’s still my favourite. We played so many times together in the ‘70s – we did I don’t know how many tours together in America, his band and my band, and at the end of every evening we had both bands on stage, every night. Jeff is just a great guitar player – a rock/blues player if you want to put a label on it, but for me he’s just a great guitar player. And when I talked to him about doing the recording together and sent him a cassette – and remember we hadn’t played together for 20 years – he called me back and said ‘when can we go into the studio, this tune is just a killer tune’. I knew it would be perfect for him and it is – he’s killing on it.”

So what, then, is his proudest achievement? “My proudest achievement? To be alive today; to have made this CD, The Promise… I don’t think about my past the way anybody else does – I don’t even think about my past for the most part. I’m too busy with today, my life today, my ideas today. Occasionally I’ll have a reflective period or I’ll discover something I wrote some years ago and say ‘well, I didn’t work it enough – there are some things I can find out about that.’ Otherwise, I forget what I’ve done. I just go from day to day – like you, like everybody else!” Even God, it seems, is an ordinary bloke.

...I must admit, I'm really enjoying this Mahavishnu-thon, and I'm delighted that there seem to be a few fellow Wordies enjoying it.

I've dug out some extracts (many unpublished) from a 1998 interview I did with British R&B legend Duffy Power, who made many recordings with and co-wrote with John McLaughlin during the mid '60s, having first worked with him during the curious era of British pop package tours in the early '60s, and then first recording with him when Graham Bond's Quartet (including John) cut some tracks with Duffy on EMI in 1964.

I've also extracted some recollections about John from an email exchange with Mahavishnu US soundman (1972-73, 1975) Dinky Dawson. Dinky is the foresighted genius we have to thank for all the stunning MO concert recordings available at wolfgangsvault.com - and there are still many more MO concert uploads to come.

Duffy refers in passing to John's first wife (Eve). I wonder what became of her? My friend Trevor Hodgett actually saw John & Eve McLaughlin (so billed) doing a meditation music concert in London circa 1970. John was already based in the USA then. Did he remain married to Eve during the MO era? Walter Kolosky's splendid biog on the MO is silent on the matter, as far as I recall...

DUFFY POWER ON JOHN McLAUGHLIN (from a 1998 interview):

It was the early ‘60s and Duffy’s Larry Parnes-managed pop career, with a string of 45s on Parlophone had pretty much fizzled out:

‘Just up to that time, what happened is that Shane Fenton’s [the future Alvin Stardust] agent was on the same floor as my manager, who was a publisher. A couple of agents had been there and it was all very useful because the guy could get me television, it was a guy called Joe Roncromi, an Italian, about 50, been in the publishing business for years. He managed me sand he managed a group called Nero & The Gladiators. This was my first big move away from Larry Parnes. One of the guys from Nero took me in to meet him and he liked my songs... Anyway, Shane Fenton decided to get married and they were all piqued and said, ‘Well, we’re left with the band’. They were all from up north, miners basically. And someone said, ‘How about giving Duffy The Fentones?’ I’d been singing with the Graham Bond outfit for about a year - this would be ‘63 [McLaughlin and Duffy left Bond early ‘64]. I was with McLaughlin on Gaumont tours when he was with Jet Harris & Tony Meehan. Jet went nuts with his drinking so Tony Meehan said, ‘Sod it, I’ll get Joe Moretti our guitarist to do the bass and we’ll get John McLaughlin in and give him the job’. So I did a few of those things - in fact, I did one with Graham Bond. We did a tour with Rolf Harris and Marty Wilde. Nobody ever mentions that.’

On one occasion (probably in 1966/67) Duffy took McLaughlin to ‘Les Cousins’, epicentre of the London folk underground:

‘He didn’t want to know about it. I took him down there, it was very quiet and the audience start going, ‘Here Duffy, that’s not folk you know...’ Then someone else came up and said, ‘Wow! You really livened the place up, the best it’s been for months’. Then another guy said I sounded like Junior Wells and Buddy Guy and so on. It was just me and McLaughlin.’

Did McLaughlin have a bit of an attitude even then, one wonders?

‘Well, he’s come from a formal music background. His mother was a music teacher, it’s his conditioning. What he got from me - ‘The way you do that, and the way you do that...’ he used to say. I used to pick up the guitar and I didn’t have very much technique at the time but, ‘The way your fingers are going...’ He used to go on like that, he did. Once, we were sitting on a tube, he said, ‘Duffy, about our relationship, I feel really humble’. Not really understanding it I said, ‘You shouldn’t feel humble, you should feel proud’. He was great to watch, he had this stance and wasn’t a pedestrian player, he was really in there. But when I first went round his place to do some things he took the guitar out, put it there and played some really, really beautiful, precise but doomy chords. They were dark and rather melancholic. He actually tuned down for me, a tone down on ‘Red, White & Blue’, and he never does that - he always wants to work in standard tuning.

‘We did one gig. I can’t remember where. I know it was for Joe Cocker’s manager Nigel Thomas who wanted to manage me. John can’t remember being paid but he was paid - the only number he wasn’t paid on was ‘God Bless The Child’ because we were mucking about and we said, ‘Let’s go down and make a demo - I knew the guy down there, at this studio I knew, would run the tape for us and McLaughlin didn’t live far from there, in Finchley Road. So we ambled down there and did ‘Red White & Blue’. I lost the tape of it in this station, I left some stuff in Left Luggage and when I came back this box of tapes had gone. But we did ‘Red White & Blue’, just him with the open tuned guitar and me with the harp, and we did ‘God Bless The Child’. ‘GBTC’ is the one that’s on the album [‘Innovations’, issued on LP in 1971]; the version of ‘RW&B’ on it is a later session.

‘I did another session with McLaughlin, with [bass player] Binky McKenzie - who killed his whole family, first case of CS gas in Britain, totally tragic. Binky McKenzie was probably going to be the best player ever, he was dynamite. McLaughlin turned up at his door after Extrapolation [John’s first solo LP, which features a track called ‘Binky’s Beam’] and Binky was very angry. The connotation is ‘spade, watermelon’ - characterizing black people. I think John meant it as a ‘ray of light’ but he didn’t say it clear enough.
[Note: Extrapolation features a Duffy/McLaughlin co-write ‘It’s Funny’ on which, alas, Duffy was miscredited as ‘Dussy Downer’] With all his busy-ness he never remembered that he did get paid, and he gets half the publishing. They make three figures once or twice a year.’

By late 1967 bassist Danny Thompson and McLaughlin (who had recorded a single, an EP and a BBC session together, with drummer Terry Cox, as Duffy’s Nucleus) were operating as a trio with saxist/flautist Tony Roberts:

‘Well I brought them together but they were running around picking up jazz gigs for themselves, it was as simple as that. I could have got in there and done a couple of songs on their gigs but that’s the way it goes - they probably thought I’d have wanted money. The thing is nobody really wanted that - they didn’t want an upright bass on the rock scene. I did one gig with McLaughlin, backing someone in town - Mick Eaves fixed it up - and it was packed, there was a band on. I just did it with him, he played guitar I played harmonica, we had a row, that was the last thing I ever did with him - mainly because I didn’t push it, I got iller and iller and more paranoid. We queued up, just me and him, in Cliff Barton’s bathroom to get our first ever fix of amphetamine and we were both injected. I think I’d done it myself before, but it wasn’t a game, we both wanted it. I did it once or twice but I did hear that John carried on at home - they lived with his mother in law - she [John’s first wife, Eve] was in bed, the kid was in bed and he’d take something and sit up all night playing the guitar - it was to get speed. He carried on without me, the bugger. But then I didn’t want to anyway because I started to get quite ill, paranoid and screwed up, and I wasn’t looking for the gigs. And when I turned round and had a chance to book some gigs and start something they were all gone.’

MAHAVISHNU SOUNDMAN DINKY DAWSON ON JOHN McLAUGHLIN (from a 2009 email exchange):

'Sounds like you found the lad from Doncaster interesting, John is one hell of a musician with so many demonic tones bursting out of him through his playing that he needs his spirituality in the real world. This torrent of notes stems from his time before M.O. in San Francisco and my feeling is no matter how interesting his journey is, he will always come back to the high he had before M.O. We call it drug abuse that happens to some people in the real world. In the music world it is called creating! John doesn't have to do drugs anymore as he found the high he wants during Mahavishnu Orchestra's first band.

'The MO concert at Lenox Music Inn 1972 is not posted yet*, but when it is this one will knock you out. You see what you are listening to are cassettes that have been mastered by the Grammy winning lads from the "Magic shop" in NYC. You also see a photo of the equipment I built for the sound reproduction on Wolfgang's Concert Vault. http://concerts.wolfgangsvault.com/ct/dawson-sound-catalog/5.html

'This was the first time I mixed M. O. and the first time I had used the music reproduction system. You can see the photo of this date on W.C.V. The recording is a reel to reel with DBX experimental noise reduction model 154 unit coded on the tape. The dynamics on this recording will blow you away and these guys let loose as it was the first time they could here themselves on stage.'

* It still isn’t! Hopefully soon, along with many other 1973 MO recordings and recordings from the Mark 2 MO’s 1975 tour with Jeff Beck.

Listened to it a few times. I say that. I tried to listen to it.

I will not deny the obvious virtuosity. I just found it ugly on the ear.

Each to their own, I suppose.

Been out for the day and returned to find thatColin is still going. Needed to bring this thread back to the front page. So this brief piece is a recollection of one of my favourite concert pieces which is McLaughlin with Larry Coryell and Paco de Lucia. I have this on video from about 20 years ago . As I recall they are doing a version of Meeting of the Spirits and JM is just unbelievable and plays one of the all time great acoustic solos - it just builds and builds and you see Coryell just looking on in absolute awe ( bear in mind that he is one of the all time great players). The sweat builds on his upper lip as he realises that he shortly has to follow this solo.

Colin I assume you are now lying down in a darkened room and buildng you stregth for another volume !i

...let us indeed see Coryell, McLaughlin & De Lucia circa 1980 proving that it is indeed possible (if only for three people in the world) to play the MO's 'Meeting Of The Spirits' on acoustic guitars. Here's the first 9 minutes. I think it's Paco everyone needs to be scared of following in this context. (On the Coryell front, I have a 1970 LP of his called 'Spaces', on which McLaughlin guests on second guitar: the title MUST have been a joke - there isn't a single space on the whole thing!)

should get some sort of award

...you turned up with your band (whoever it was - I don't know) to headline a show during the 2010 Montreux Jazz Festival. Festival supremo Claude Nobs tells you that, alas, the support act - shall we say Basil 'Baz' Bohlwinkle & His Hot Club de Bognor - is stuck in transit and can't make it - but not to worry, he thinks there's a couple of guys in the area who might be up for jamming an opening set. He'll give them a call...

And then imagine Claude says 'Phew, eeets alright, mon amis, ze guys are ap for eeet...'

'Well, that's great news Claude, great news, great news. So who are zeeez guyz, er, sorry, these guys?'

'Eeets Beeelly Cobham and Jean Ma-Glock-leeen...'

[The sound of blood draining from faces...]

It's akin, is it not, to Twangathon turning up at his Sunday night pub residency in Hitchin to find that the opening act, The Hitchin Folk Four, couldn't make it but the pub owner's an old mate of a guiy from Blackpool so the last-minute saving-the-day openers are Jethro Tull....

Or KatyG & Hannah's Punk Housewife ensemble turning up at the Spit & Sawdust in Newport Pagnell to find their warm-up act are The Slits...

Or Shane Pacey turning up with his blues trio at the Dingo & Dog Biscuit in Alice Springs to find that local hero 'Digger' McGraw has run out of strings for his banjo but, not to worry, there's a bloody good bloke called Buddy Guy who's staying the night on hols and with a bit of luck he'll get the crowd going for Shane'n'the boys...

You get my drift...

Here's a bit of cameraphone stuff of Billy & John, ending a version of the MO's 'You Know, You Know' and going into something they probably made up on the spot:

Colin, one of the tracks from "The Lost Trident Sessions" was included as a bonus track on a CD edition of "Inner Mounting Flame", years before the "Lost" album made its appearance. The sleevenotes of that album claim all the music as (of then) newly-discovered, but this can't be true?

Great intro from Bill Murray.

Looking like Ken Barlow's younger brother, here's McLaughlin from 2007 at Eric Clapton's Crossroads Festival proving he can still play better than almost anyone.

That's Vinnie Colaiuta on drums, too. He's worked with everyone of note from Zappa to Jeff Beck.

so I have cut and pasted this entire thread into a word file to break up the journey. Tidied up, it comes to 23 pages of 10pt Ariel. I have also downloaded those clips I don't already have on my iPod.

Keep it going, I'm looking forward to this one running forever!

...a tragic incident aboard a long haul flight. A Mr Nick Duvet forced open one of the doors of the plane and threw himself out. Eye witness reports say that he had become increasingly agitated during the flight, mumbling, 'It's too much, I can't take it anymore...' Mr Duvet appears to have been trying to get to the end of an impossibly long screed of detailed information on The Mahavishnu Orchestra, a semi-popular 1970s beat combo..."

Well, seeing as you've done such a superb job of summarising the Mahavishnu movement, I wanted to add a few of my own thoughts.

I discovered MO via their 'Between Nothingness and Eternity' album in around 1989 - as a fairly new drummer I'd heard of this mythical band from a drumming mag (Rhythm I think it was) and had to check it out. Being pre-internet, it was a bit of a tough call but finally I found an LP copy of BNaE in the Virgin records store in Edinburgh. I must have played that album to death (still have it - it's a bit scratchy and worn now, but like an old pal it's also looking at me and thinking I've aged too, so there you have it).

Of course, for me, as a drummer (going through what I hate to admit was a GRP-guided muso willy-waving phase (peppered with Weckls and the like) the thing that marked MO out from other bands was that whilst there was unarguably a strong muso seam running through the music, there was also a passion and an anger to it - this wasn't muso w@nkery, this was muso warfare... so as a 15 year old or whatever, I slowly and surely started to absorb the rhythmical inflections and nuances of these masters of their art. Looking back on it, 20+ years later, I can sit here and tap out pretty much the whole album (side a or b) on the desk, without losing the pulse or falling off the bucking beast that is its ever-changing time signature. It's not easy music and many people will never get past the sheer (as Frank Zappa put it beautifully) 'statistical density' of the performance and its intensity. However, that music stayed with me and has influenced me in a way that few other artists have (I'll cite The Beatles and Zappa as the only other artists to have had such a profound influence on me as a person and upon my musical odyssey).

Which is why I can't thank you enough for this fine homage to one of the great bands - and one whose final performances were but days after the day I was born (late December 1973) meaning that I feel a connection to the music, an 'inner mounting flame' if you will, which perhaps passed into the newborn me... or maybe I'm just hopeful...

john

...brilliant observation, Podster...

Here's hoping Sony Legacy will give BN&E the same 24 bit mastering (and expanding!) treatment they gave IMF and BOF in the late 90s.

Actually, the word after the Lost Trident Sessions was that it hadn't sold as well as Sony hoped and then Jerry apparently said no to an expanded IMF (adding the amazing Cleveland 1972 concert mentioned). So all has been quiet - bar the budget price 5CD set mentioned above, and another label (forget which) licensing the Mar-Y-Sol track from Atlantic and adding it to a reissue of the vinyl Columbia 'Best Of' tracklisting from the 70s (none of which would require new band member permissions, just label permissions) - on the MO/Sony reissues front in recent years.

But I think a lot has changed in MO appreciation in recent years, evidenced by all the tribute albums. I think writing a letter to Sony Legacy might be in order... An official, mastered from original sources definitive MO Mk1 DVD would be the Holy Grail.

...We've talked about the Mahavishnu Orchestra itself, and the lecture (!) has thus far been illustrated by MO audio/video clips.

But I've mentioned the extensive recent industry in MO tribute projects, so here's a clip representing one of the finest: The Radio String Quartet. There's two products from these people (from Austria I believe) - a CD and a DVD. The CD comes with an endorsement from John M.

Here they are performing 'Dawn', with added trombone virtuoso Nils Landgren (seemingly also a painter & decorator on the side), along with a 1972 clip of 'Dawn' by the MO itself.

how can Goodman veto expanded reissues if the band members left coz they couldn't get credits while in the band?

Considering he's from Doncaster, at what point did McLaughlin start to speak like a blissed-out Californian?

A combination of too long in America and too much religion, I guess?

...Sony obviously feel that, contractually or morally, they require the permissions of all five ex members in order to release anything previously unreleased (hence not covered by existing contracts).

Certainly, I've been involved in reissue projects with new archival material where the permissions of five original members of a long defunct band were required. As it transpired, several of the previously unissued items didn't make the final release precisely because one or more members weren't happy with it.

Don't ask me why this get-everyone's-permission isn't applied across the board with archival releases. Usually only one person's permission (taken as representing the whole band) is required if, for example, a third party label wishes to license BBC sessions and put them out as a 'Live at the BBC' album. Strictly speaking, it should probably be all members permitting, but in practice it often isn't.

I guess the MO/Sony relationship - whether out of courtesy or contract - is simply one where the permissions of all five are taken as being necessary.

However, I have no idea how wolfgangsvault.com manager to get past this. They are a legal operation but, except for a few instances where they've done direct deals with artists (like Peter Frampton), it seems that almost all their concert audio download offerings from the 60s-80s are without direct permissions. Anyopne any info on how they manage this legally?

I would like to submit the evidence for consideration of being the most exhaustive (who said exhausting - I'm still with it !) and comprehensive thread to date .

I would like to submit the evidence for consideration of being the most exhaustive (who said exhausting - I'm still with it !) and comprehensive thread to date .

Thanks so much for starting this thread, I haven't read it all yet but it's come at just the right time for me. This morning I walked into a Salvos store here in Sydney and picked up near mint vinyl copies of the three Mark 1 MO albums, plus 2 of the Mark 2 albums, John McLaughlin's My Goals Beyond, Devotion and Best of as well as loosely related albums from Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Bill Frisell and (L) Shankar - all for $2 each!

I'll admit I hadn't heard a note of any of them before hand, so why did I buy them? Well, I'm always looking for things outside my listening comfort zone that others are passionate about and rather than methodically working my way through an A-Z of artists on Spotify I like to put my trust in the randomness of the universe and see what it will throw in my direction via op shops. Your potted history of MO has whetted my appetite further and I'm looking forward to spending some quality time with these albums.

...that's a brave move, but an inspired one - and what a nice bit of karma to find all those goodies so cheaply! (Was the Miles LP 'Jack Johnson'? As John McL said, it's a fabulous record...)

Very humbled indeed that you'd find all my wittering on worth $26 AUS - and if you can survive years of floods and drought down there, you can survive a job lot of Grade A fusion!

I wonder what the reaction would have been if this had been the first album? Just as strong as that for "Inner Mounting Flame", is my guess. It's interesting to imagine the response to the line-up change - "no Jean-Luc Ponty?! You got in JERRY GOODMAN?! And who the fuck is Rick Laird? He's horrible!" I'm sure there'd have been discussion as to whether Cobham's jazzier chops were as "right" as Walden's thundering approach, too.

It's almost heretical to say it, but I enjoy that album quite as much as the first two, it's their equal in every way. That's an incredible achievement for McLaughlin to have pulled off, one that he's never really given credit for.

its like the reviews of Dylan songs where people say if anyone else wrote this they would be hailed as the new Bob Dylan but it is Bob Dylan so meh !

Visions stands proud in the pantheon.

I was very lucky to see the Mark one line up at Birmingham Town Hall which I guess would have been 1971 or 1972. I think it was in between Inner mounting flame and Birds of Fire. I recall they had a couple of minutes of silent meditation before launching into a ferocious set that was intense beyond anything else I had witnessed in my tender 16 years.The interplay between violin and guitar was what struck me then.
Years later I loved the Jan Hammer album of incidental music for the Miami Vice series.And the Jan Hammer work with Jeff Beck - Blue Wind being a classic of Becks illustrious career imho.Also a big fan of Billy Cobhams solo albums of that era Spectrum and Crosswind.Then later still I was listening to an amazing piece of instrumental music played over the PA before a gig I was attending. I cannot recall which gig it was but this music really moved me and I had to go and ask the PA man what it was. I was told it was John McLaughlin from an album called The Promise - I bought the album and there is a wonderful duet between Beck and McLaughlin on the opening track Django. This lead me back to the stunning albums with Shakti (also available in a 5 box original album series). Later still and as a result of Colins enthusiastic championing of the band I re-invested in Inner Mounting Flame and Birds of Fire which had long ago disappeared with the rest of my vinyl collection. Lo and behold they sound even better than I remembered.
All this from a rather bewildering start in the early 70's - the music they played then was challenging to a 16 year old but I stuck with it and I am glad I did.

(as you perhaps did, Colin) from the first album, on issue. There has been only one album in my life as startling, as revelatory, and that's Trout Mask Replica. Each of these albums triggered a new dimension for me, an immediate top-of-head-unscrewing, that I've never experienced since. They seem very dissimilar albums, but each is the result of intense, isolated practice between virtuosic and idealistic musicians with a common vision. Each seems to appear from thin air, but has roots in previous albums. Each led quickly to slightly more refined albums on the same theme. They sound alike only in their intensity and uncompromising attack, and that can be either off-putting or immersive.

I never quite dared to listen to Trout Mask on acid (there's a voodoo mean-ness in those grooves) but I used to trip out to IMF; what it did to my inner landscape remains beyond words, and mostly beyond memory. The word ecstasy (not the drug!) comes closest. This was unexpected - the sheer overpowering passion of the music - which I agree sounds sometimes like inter-spatial warfare - is at its root sublime and harmonious. It's all in there - the frustration of being human, tied to the earth, the yearning for freedom, the struggle to escape the bounds of thought. Going beyond thinking is a big part of it; at its most visceral, McLaughlin allows no *time* for thinking, even for appreciation and enjoyment in the usual sense that we get from music. It's a wild rush, and you're either on for the ride or it's all a meaningless din. McLaughlin clearly wasn't aiming at pleasing a sedentary audience, he wanted to blow our fucking minds.

...that's a terrific tale Steve. :-) Annoyingly, I've also had a few JM items borrowed and not returned - 'The Promise' on CD, the first Shakti album on CD, Electric Guitarist on vinyl, the Free Spirits CD... Oh well.

Still, you'll all be amused to know, I'm sure, that I've inspired MYSELF with this thread to go and buy a replacement copy of 'Electric Guitarist' (currently on CD as a twofer with 'Electric Dreams', which I've never owned).

I'm not sure if that counts as hubris, absurdity or enlightenment! Which, now that I think about it, pretty much describes the whole Word blog... :-D

...well, okay, copied from his website and probably written 12 years ago, at the time of the Lost Trident Sessions release!

an unusual writing style (his sleevenote endorsements on the Radio String Quartet and HR Big Band MO tribute CDs are similarly clipped and brief), but a few nuggets of info and observation nonetheless.

I do find his statement that the Trident 3rd album material was recorded in 1972 to be odd, though. From the WV live recordings, none of the 3rd LP material enters the live set until mid 1973 [with the exception of one show dated as being in late 72, featuring a fully-formed 'Dream' - but I'm convinced this is a mislabeling on the tape: 'Dream' otherwise first appears a few months after that as an extension of 'The Noonward Race', not quite formed as a standalone piece].

Anyway, here's John's own bio on the Mahavishnu era:

MAHAVISHNU

After a Club date with Miles Davis in Boston in 1970, Miles tells me that it's time I formed my own band.

If he says it, it must be true...

In my mind, I begin the first conception of the 'Mahavishnu Orchestra'.

He also says 'If you wanna make some money, go see Nat Weiss'.

He gives me Nat's phone number and a week later I sign a management contract with his Company. Even though we don't work together any longer, Nat Weiss remains till today my all time favorite manager.

He also introduces me to Clive Davis who worked for CBS at the time, Clive Davis has got to be the greatest record man of the 20th Century.

For the 1st. Mahavishnu, I invite drummer Billy Cobham who played with me on Miles favorite recording, 'Jack Johnson', I wanted a Violinist probably thanks to my Mom, and I found Jerry Goodman from Chicago, Pianist Jan Hammer and my old friend from the U.K. Bassist Rick Laird.

February 1971. By the time we come together for the first time, I've got enough new music for two records.

First public appearance, 2 weeks opposite John Lee Hooker at the 'Whiskey A Go Go' on Bleeker Street New York. Unbelievable success! We have to be the loudest and fastest group on the Planet!

2 Days after the 'Whiskey' gig, we record 'Inner Mounting Flame'.

Amazing successes follow. We win most of the 'Downbeat' Prizes by the end of the year. Grammy Nominations follow, etc..

By the end of 1973 the band 'Mahavishnu Orchestra' disbands due to discontent on the part of Jan Hammer and Jerry Goodman.

2nd. 'Mahavishnu Orchestra' is formed. It includes drummer Narada Michael Walden and bassist Ralphe Armstrong. A String Quartet and Brass are also part of this group. It's big! 11 musicians...

First recording with this formation is 'Apocalypse' produced by George Martin. We record with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. What a team!!! A great experience.

The group continues to enjoy great success through the end of 1974.

I am still playing big concerts with a reduced version of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, but the writing is on the wall for me. Before breaking the Band, we record an Album, and I use my first Guitar Synth. It's a 360 Systems Interface that uses 6 MiniMoog Modules !!! It's a monumental Elephant, but I really love it. Unfortunately the technology is primitive. I'm going to have to wait...

Musically, I want to devote my time to playing with Shakti, and leave Mahavishnu behind. I speak to both Zakir and L. Shankar about the idea of a 'permanent' Shakti group, and they are as enthusiastic as I am.

1986: I form another electric band with Tenor Sax man Bill Evans, Keyboardist Mitch Forman, Bassist Jonas Hellborg and drummer Danny Gottlieb. We record two Albums 'Mahavishnu' and 'Adventures in Radioland'. 'Mahavishnu' is again with Warner, bad news, it was a really great band.

In addition I have discovered the Synclavier, and shortly after the interface for Guitar. It's heavy but I love it....I'll have to wait again.

1987: I am obliged to break the band due to extremely 'creative accounting' after a long tour, which left me swimming in very deep red ink....

THE LOST TRIDENT SESSIONS

These recordings of the first Mahavishnu Orchestra took place at the Trident Studios in London with the great Ken Scott in charge of recording. The recordings actually took place during the year 1972 and not 1973 as written on the CD cover.

I was personally very happy with these recordings, and was excited about the release of this record. However, all was not well during that year with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Billy Cobham, Larry Young and I had made a record and a tour with Carlos Santana, Doug Rauch and Armando Peraza. The record went 'Gold' pretty quickly, the Tour was a sellout, and all in all the project was a great success.

At the end of the Santana Tour in Hawaii, Billy and I caught a flight that the rest of Mahavishnu had taken from LA. We were on our way to Tokyo to begin our first Japanese Tour.

We boarded the flight and I knew right away something was wrong. Jan Hammer and Jerry Goodman wouldn't speak to me. Rick Laird was still cool and of course, Billy and me were tight, we had just finished a great tour. To make a long story short, Jan and Jerry refused to speak with me and after a week of this treatment I let them know that I couldn't play music with people who didn't want to speak with me. They didn't care and six months later that great band was history.

I still don't know today, 30 years later, why they went 'out' like that, but anyway, they then began making unhappy noises to our manager about the release of the Trident Recordings.

I wanted to be democratic about it and I put it to the vote. Billy and I wanted an immediate release.

For some reason Jan and Jerry convinced Bassist Rick Laird to vote with the both of them against not only an immediate release,but they didn't want to release the Album at all, so consequently the recordings stayed in CBS and eventually got lost. We recorded the Live Album 'Between Nothingness and Eternity' in a Central Park concert to replace the Trident recordings.

After all these years I really am happy to finally see these recordings released.

I'd like to add at this point that inspite of the wierdness of this story, I still have great affection for all of the guys in the first Mahavishnu. That was some band !

Thank you to everyone for taking part in this discussion/ lecture/ splurge of Mahavishnology!

Who would have thought 100+ posts? (And barely half of them from me! :-D )

The offer's still there for people to proudly state that they've seen the Mk 1 band in concert (1971-73) - all anecdotes welcome. By way of signing off - unless there's any latecomers with something to say or questions to ask - I'll post a few recollections of the mighty MO from other musicians of the period (from walter Kolosky's very readable biog) in the next day or two.

But in the meantime, here's the MO Mk1's only - to my knowledge - commercially release single from anywhere in the world: the exquisite and as accessible as they ever got 'Open Country Joy', issued with a picture sleeve in Spain in 1973. It soothes... and then it rocks...

........piss all over Mahavishnus

...to differ on that!

there was papa john creach ,there was don sugarcane harris but above all there was jerry goodman

November marks the 40th Anniversary of the founding of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. So glad to see the vigor with which the band is still discussed. I will have a piece out shortly, after I find a couple of appropriate Internet homes, in which all five members look back 4 decades. Thanks Colin for the informative post and the mention. Remember, it is not just about "The Word." It is about "One Word."

...in case anyone missed the references above, Walter is the author of 'Power, Passion & Beauty: The Story Of The Mahavishnu Orchestra - the greatest band that ever was'. It's a long title... but it does what it says on the tin: a rip-roaring read and really adds to one's appreciation of the music.

Rest assured we'll link to the piece when it appears!

And Walter... while you're there, any chance of republishing online your MO tour dates listing and pics? I went looking a while back but the site seems to have disappeared...

(A clip from the Munich 1972 film: 'Meeting Of The Spirits', or at least half of it)

These days, we see all music within categories - almost before we hear something we want to know what genre it is, who it sounds like. Back in the early 70s it seems music was music - the rock world was a broad and eclectic church, with what would today be seen as bizarre concert bills being the norm, especially on the US college circuit.

The Mahavishnu Orchestra were less a jazz-rock act that you could only see at jazz festivals; they were a rock act who played jazz, or something wholly novel but akin to it, and they could - by all accounts - blow any other off the stage. The TV clips only go some way to showing that all-consuming power, but the 17 minute ABC TV concert (a few miles above this post) comes close in its glimpse of both the sheer volume involved and the crowd response.

Here are some recollections of the MO impact from some fellow musicians who supported them, were supported by them (yikes!) or saw a show. All quotes are taken from Walter Kolosky's biography which cannot be recommendeed highly enough. Anyone still unconvinced about the whole MO experience will enjoy what Ian Hunter has to say:

Pat Metheny (of a concert in Miami, 1972): ‘The first thing was the minute of silence with John all in white and those guys looking kind of intense, before they even started…. The tension that they set up was tangible. Then they started and the first thing was the sound of it I had thought [opening act] Larry Coryell was loud, but this was easily 10 times louder. It was the loudest thing I had ever heard. It was louder than loud. I think the term ‘face melting’ would fit here. The tunes I had heard on ‘The Inner Mounting Flame, which sounded like a few guys in a room playing – not unlike a jazz group, but one dealing with some truly unique material – suddenly took on these monumental, epic proportions… For all the incredible dexterity on display – I mean, we were watching three people (John, Cobham and Jan) completely and forever reinventing the meaning of their instruments in jazz – it was the spiritual power of it that transformed all of us that night... People went crazy. I had never seen an audience react like that to music that was that advanced. I am certain that everyone who was there remembers that concert to this day.’

Steve Morse (also at that Miami concert): ‘The world really changed when they did a gig at our campus… There is a certain edge in the Mahavishnu material that is pure genius.’

Nat Weiss (MO manager): ‘I had them [play some gigs] with Mott The Hoople. Mott complained afterwards that they didn’t want to follow Mahavishnu on stage. You just couldn’t measure up to that music.’

Ian Hunter (Mott): ‘I thought they were boring.’

Joseph D’Anna (MO road crew): ‘The phrase Columbia used when they marketed the band was ‘the hardest act to follow’. This was the truth. Frank Zappa once refused to go on. When the band was first coming up they opened for a lot of people… It was like you were travelling the country with a heavyweight fighter that went into town after town knocking everybody out… What could you possibly hear after you heard them? You don’t have any capacity left to take anything in. It was overwhelming.’

Anthony Barone (MO road manager): ‘Invariably, if we were the opening act we would embarrass whoever followed us. It was some of the most powerful music on the planet It would blow anybody away – Emerson, Lake & Palmer, even Frank Zappa.’

Buddy Cage (New Riders of The Purple Sage): ‘We did one date [with MO] when we were pretty damn high on the prestige list – and very aware of it! I always checked out the opening acts out of respect… the rest of the guys were in the dressing room… [When Mahavishnu came on] I ran upstairs and told the guys to get the **** downstairs: something really big was happening. They just kinda looked at me with polite disinterest. Tough. I went back down to enjoy the experience witness Mahavishnu DESTROY our audience. OUR audience! We proceeded to play [our own show] to absolutely no avail. The audience was in a coma over McLaughlin & Co…’

Joey Kramer (Aerosmith): ‘On the first night [of a tour opening for MO] I was sitting behind the stage watching those guys play and I got depressed… Billy Cobham was so good that I could not really believe I was playing the same instrument as he was.’

Brad Whitford (Aerosmith): ‘It was a mystical experience.’

Steven Tyler (Aerosmith): ‘Sometimes we felt really rejected. Right after the first song we’d hear them chanting ‘MA –HA-VISSSSSSHHHHHHNOOOOOOOO’.’

Joe Perry (Aerosmith): [with sarcasm] ‘A brilliant move, us opening for Mahavishnu… [But] later we realised it was good for us because we had to play much better. We had to kick ass every night, and later we’d listen back to the tapes and it would sound almost professional to us. Meanwhile, these geniuses in Mahavishnu had been to ******* Mars and back, every night.’

Steve Lukather: ‘It scared the shit out of me. [But] it’s like drinking fine whisky. The first time it stings but THEN it gets good.’

Bill Bruford (Yes): ‘It was an upstate college gig in New York in about 1972 – the Kinks, Yes and Mahavishnu. As we walked in for the soundcheck I remember walking past a beautiful set of drums, tapping each one and confirming they sounded as good as they looked. I didn’t know who it was but I knew we had a serious player on the bill that night. When they started, I couldn’t believe it – never heard anything like it. I grabbed Rick Wakeman and pushed him out to the front of the house with me. It was stunning.’

Henry Kaiser: ‘It was in Boston. They were opening for Jerry Garcia and Howard Wales. I remember Jerry Garcia sitting on stage – a younger, thinner Jerry Garcia – under the piano watching the Mahavishnu Orchestra, totally amazed the whole time.’

Herbie Hancock: ‘It was really powerful. They were doing a lot of technical things that were astounding to the ear and to the listening experience, the body experience.. Your whole body experienced something because it was that dynamic.’

Dennis Chambers: ‘I saw them on the ‘Birds Of Fire’ tour. It was an experience I will never forget. The show was over and I was still sitting there. I must have sat there for an hour. I looked at the stage as if they were still there… It felt like I had stuck my finger into a light socket. I couldn’t sleep for 48 hours.’

Jeff Beck: ‘Watching them was an education. It was like having your pants ripped off and politely put back on again. There just wasn’t one fiery star in that band – they were all virtuosos. It was too much for people… I wish I’d been at the Central Park gig [where ‘Between Nothingness & Eternity’ was recorded]. The next best thing is the album which got me playing that stuff all day. ‘Sister Andrea’ was one special song. I’m still trying to figure out all the riffs on the other stuff.’

The problem for those of us who do most of our Reading on iTouch or iPhones is that it takes about 2 minutes to get to the bottom ! Loved last entry about other musicians reactions. The Bruford quote is similar to the one he tells about watching King Crimson for the first time ie he had no idea people could be that good (he later joined KC).

ATM keep this one going !!

The problem for those of us who do most of our Reading on iTouch or iPhones is that it takes about 2 minutes to get to the bottom ! Loved last entry about other musicians reactions. The Bruford quote is similar to the one he tells about watching King Crimson for the first time ie he had no idea people could be that good (he later joined KC).

ATM keep this one going !!

...here he is playing Mahavishnu's 'Eternity's Breath' (okay, I'll admit - an MO Mk 2 piece) seguing into Stratus from Billy Cobham's first post MO album 'Spectrum'.

Jeff's current band features MO Mk2 drummer Narada Michael Walden. There's an amusing quote in Walter's biog where Billy Cobham recalled sagely that, towards the end of 1973, he was beginning to wonder what Michael Walden was doing hanging around behind the drumkit at every show. Come 1974, he'd be on the stool...

Jeff has said in interviews around the release of his last album 'Emotion & Commotion' (a fairly reserved album for Jeff, save for the Jan Hammer tribute 'Hammerhead') that he anticipated the next album would be 'more like Mahavishnu'. Let's hope so! He's done plenty in his career with that influence - often featuring the one and only Jan Hammer on keyboards (including, on at least one occasion, opening a live show with a spontaneous cover of the MO's 'Resolution') - but a whole album of blistering, unapologetic MO-esque fusion would be a delight. Given the directions John's sound and music have gone since the MO era, it's almost up to Jeff now to keep the flame going. As this clip shows, there's no better man for the job.

If Jeff was playing somewhere with Michael Walden and Jan Hammer in his band, I'd be on the plane...

...After the acrimonious MO split at New Year 1973, Jan Hammer swiftly made a fabulous guitar-less solo LP 'The First Seven Days' (happily now available via Jan's cdbaby.com page, along with a terrific previously unreleased 1976 live set by his Jan Hammer Group).

And then... he got together with MO violinist Jerry Goodman for this underrated DIY gem of an LP 'Like Children' - this track, 'Country & Eastern Music', is like the MO playing southern rock with a portastudio on hand: Jerry on violins, guitar and vocals; Jan on piano and drums.

"If Macca can do it, we can do it..."

As the man says "Butt out, get back... dance to country & eastern music!"

...it's worth underlining how much residual MO influence there was on 'Like Children': Jan's 'full Moon Boogie' - which I think was later on his live LP with Jeff Beck - was built on a solo improv he did as a feature within very later-period MO concert versions of 'Awakening' (December 1973 performances) is one MO leftover, as it were; and the Jan/Jerry recording of Rick Laird's 'Steppings Tones' is another.

The fabulously named 'ST' had been recorded during the abandoned 'Lost Trident Sessions in 1973 and wouldn't see light of day in that format till 1999. Although the MO had performed it live a few times, Jan & Jerry's version was I believe its first available recording (alas, I'm not familiar with Rick Laird's own post MO recordings):

Thanks for the additional kind words Colin. As to the gig list, I believe it has dissolved into the Emerald Beyond as its web host has gone through several incarnations since. However, since Mahavishnu fans can get quite serious, I wouldn't be surprised if someone has pulled it down from the Net. I will make some inquiries....

...that bass meister Rick Laird played with. Oh no. Here he is with Wes Montgomery at the BBC in 1965. And not a cheesecloth smock in sight:

(And Junior - I thought the cover of Like Children was lovely!)

...for John McLaughlin was a seemingly unique solo concert in Munich on August 19 1972 - two days after the MO had played the city (as featured on one of the TV clips above). Both events were part of a jazz festival built around the Munich Olympics.

John performed a 38 minute solo set alongside sets by Albert Mangelsdorff, Gary Burton, Chick Corea and Jean-Luc Ponty.

John's set has circulated for years in various off-air versions, but I see that a spruced-up complete version is widely available for download. Must get a copy...

The pieces he played were:

Waltz for Bill Evans (C. Corea) 10:46
Blue in Green (M. Davis) 5:54
Something's Missing / Something Spiritual (D. Herman) 7:21
Good Bye Pork Pie Hat (C. Mingus) 9:18
Follow Your Heart (J. McLaughlin) 4:35

Here's the final piece:

Well, what do you know. The Mahavishnu Orchestra gig list is at http://label.abstractlogix.com/?page_id=79

I have received a couple of new events over the last couple of years sent to me by readers of the book, but have not applied them due to lack of time and the effort required after so much time has passed;-(

...I hope you find a second wind of enthusiasm at some point to update the list and repost the vintage pics etc! I'm sure a right time will present itself in due course...

Aside from the wolfgangsvault.com concert recordings of 40 of these dates (mostly Dinky Dawson's 1973 soundboard recordings), I see that a fair number of bootlegs (mostly audience recordings, some pretty good) of further dates - several 1972 shows plus 1975 shows and some European/Japanese 1973 shows which wouldn't have been recorded by Dinky Dawson - are available to stream or download for free at jazzfusion.tv

Walter - what's the current inside track or speculation on further MO remasterings from Sony Legacy? And indeed on the question of an official MO Mk1 DVD - SURELY the warring factions can see there's now enough material extant to pull together something that would cement and enhance their reputation?

By the way - I see we're now at 150 posts and, contrary to Godwin's Law, no one has yet mentioned the Third Reich! Let's celebrate with these 'Sapphire Bullets Of Pure Love':

...apparently it's all down to the konoko rhythm technique. Here's John - in the section from c.3:00 - 4:00 mins - explaining how to count 'You Know, You Know', which he reckons is 12/4.

The astonishing thing is that, listening to all the astounding MO recordings, especially live ones, one forgets that the people playing the music are not only creating fabulous melodies, harmonies and improvisation, playing around with the beat and often call/responding with another instrument, but are internally COUNTING the whole time.

As I think Walter's book makes clear, the members found the counting in certain thorny pieces got easier as time went on, through familiarity. But the likes of 13/8 or whatever will never be a walk in the park.

November sees the release (from Sony) of a 5 CD Mahavishnu box set featuring some never before released material, the band's first 3 albums and Lost Trident... of course this info will be in my upcoming article ;-)

...let's hope it enjoys the sales and coverage* it deserves!

Those guys should bury the hatchets and do something together again (a gig, a TV show, a photo session, one track in a studio... ANYTHING!) before it's too late. :-)

* Coverage: such as, say, an erudite, independently published British popular culture magazine run by free-thinking individuals with lightly-worn '70s rock backgrounds. Can anybody think of such a publication?

EDIT: I'm sure Walter knows the contents but it would be unreasonable to ask ahead of Sony letting the info out. So... here's what I could find online on the forthcoming box set, firstly from theseconddisc.com :

The Complete Columbia Albums Collection from Mahavishnu Orchestra includes four albums (on five CDs) by the legendary unit led by guitar guru John McLaughlin. These include the 1973 Lost Trident Sessions which didn’t see release until 1999. This box only contains the recordings from the first iteration of the band (1971-1973) with McLaughlin, Billy Cobham on drums, Jan Hammer on keyboards, Jerry Goodman on violin and Rick Laird on bass guitar. McLaughlin and Cobham met while working with Miles Davis on Davis’ Bitches Brew sessions, and the Mahavishnu Orchestra took fusion to new heights, combining a high-powered electric rock sound with funk, world, classical and jazz influences. After the original group split, McLaughlin reformed the Orchestra with new personnel for 1974’s Apocalypse. This box contains just The Inner Mounting Flame (1971), Birds of Fire (1973), The Lost Trident Sessions (1973), Between Nothingness And Eternity (1974), and the bonus disc Between Nothingness And Eternity (Disc 2).

Also, mention elsewhere online that Gregg Bendian of the Mahavishnu Project has been involved in the set in a production capacity. some years ago Gregg mixed the Cleveland 1972 set (see entries above...) for imminent release but nothing appeared (apparently as Jerry didn't rate his playing)...

I'd speculate, thus, that the 'Between Nothingness & Eternity - disc 2' is likely to be the fabulous Cleveland concert, currently circulating as 'wild Strings'. It could, of course, be more from the Central Park shows from whence the BN&E LP was derived. Again, as speculated in posts above, it's very likely that several other pieces - almost certainly opening with a circa 14 minute version of 'Birds Of Fire' along with 'Open Country Joy' and/or 'Miles Beyond' would have been played at those two concerts.

At the very least, my fingers are crossed that Sony will have finally given serious mastering to BN&E - to bring it in line with their already superb IMF and BOF remasters. Another possibility is that they'll have improved the 'Lost Trident Sessions' by using a better source tape rumoured to have been found after the original 1999 CD appeared - or, again at the very least, that they'll have revisited the mastering on the existing tape. Sound technology has moved on greatly since 1999.

Anyway, at $45 - against the £12.99 of the current 'original album classics' 5CD set of MO albums in vanilla/slimline packaging - one would hope that some additional care and polishing has gone on!

November 22 - splendid!

Speculating is always dangerous... The extra material will be tunes from the Central Park show previously not heard- well not heard by some ;-)

In addition a rollicking version of "Noonward Race" from the infamous Mar Y Sol Festival will be included.

...I really wasn't expecting you to spill the beans, Walter, but thank you for the info! I certainly haven't heard the additional Central Park material - looking forward to it immensely! :-D

Bringing the Mar Y Sol 'Noonward Race' into the fold, as it were, is a touch of class (I'd just have assumed Sony wouldn't want to bother licensing from Atlantic) - it's a killer version!

Edit: I see that an audience recording of the August 17 night (the first of the two the MO played) is available at 'Dr Fusion's website. To whet the appetite, here's the tracklist:

01 - Trilogy
02 - Sister Andrea
03 - Hope
04 - Awakening
05 - Dream
06 - You know, You know
07 - One Word
08 - The Dance of Maya

I've no idea if the BN&E recordings were taken from this night or the next, but it was a 90+ minute show. And the live 'One Word' was always a thing of wonder...

20 days to go... :-)

...in the absence of any new swathes of text to add, I thought I'd share this (which I just noticed on youtube): a 1987 film of John McLaughlin & bassist Jonas Hellborg performing the MO's 'Trilogy', or more specifically it's first part 'The Sunlit Path', at a club in Germany.

There's no film of the MO performing this one, their late-period masterpiece IMHO, so delight in watching how a delightfully simple riff (okay, it's in 7/8) can be adapted to sound like the most ridiculously complicated thing imagineable.

John plays more notes in his cadenza (which goes up to 2:30, when the piece proper starts) than most acts do in their whole set. But yes, I'd concede that this kind of over-egging is not exactly necessary...

By way of illustration, the original MO version - from 'Between Nothingness & Eternity' (1973) - is below. The 7:30 John/Jonas version equates to the first 3 mins of the MO version. Whatever anyone may tell you about the MO being indulgent they were incredibly disciplined and concise most of the time!

Watch out for a rare mistake from John at 5:06 - and marvel as he climbs out of the hole with a terrific passing atonal solo that leads back to the root. As Keith Richards says, 'If you make a mistake, make it three times and every thinks it was meant to be there'.

Amusing to see that by the '80s even John's bass guy felt he needed to go onstage with a double-neck...

The article I mentioned earlier in this thread,the piece on the Mahavishnu Orchestra, has now been published at http://www.guitar-channel.com/rich_murray/mahavishnu-orchestra-40th-anni...

I had the good fortune of seeing John McLaughlin and Chick Corea with the Five Peace band over the weekend at NYC's Blue Note. I am so glad to tell you that none of the fire has left John.

...happened."

Anyone wanting to find out which of the five MO maestros said that - rather poignant but also, perhaps, rather sad, like a glorious thing being allowed to fade from memory - will just have to check out Walter's splendid piece.

Funny how Billy Cobham, of all the five originals, can sound the most sentimental - when he comes across in Walter's biography as rather detached and, as Walter says in the new piece, business-like!

I'll not give any more spoilers to the piece - but hats off to Walter for keeping the flame alive! (And, as ever, thanks to The Word for hosting the discussion - we can sometimes take this forum for granted, but it's a terrific place to be: so thanks, Word, for tolerating all the fusion talk!)

... check out this link for full details and some nice visuals:

http://www.popmarket.com/details/26284519?current_country=TH

In a nutshell, the 'Between Nothingness & eternity' bonus disc includes 65 minutes of extra material from the Central Park shows (I'm guessimng it's either the August 18 date or a combination of tracks from the 17 & 18 shows: see the known tracklist for the August 17 show in a post above).

The new tracks are:

One Word
Awakening
Dance Of Maya
Hope
You Know, You Know
Steppings Tones
Vital Transformation

Plus the rare 13 minute 'Noonward Race' previously released on the Mar-Y-Sol festival vinyl double LP in 1972.

Given that John refers to having recently mixed the extended BN&E in Walter's feature (link in a post above), here's hoping the whole thing - new tracks and old - have been newly mixed/mastered.

Roll on November 22... :-D

EDIT: And as if that wasn't enough, Wolfgang's Vault has added a new MO show to its epic canon today. 100 minutes of blistering MO Mk1 recorded four weeks before imploding:

http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/mahavishnu-orchestra/concerts/constitution...

I will appear on The Fusion Show with host Randy Allar this Friday (11/11/11) on WCSB 89.3 FM in Cleveland OH. The show airs from 1pm - 3pm Eastern time,(East Coast USA) and can be heard online at http://www.wcsb.org/listen/. I will be discussing the 40th anniversary of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, my recent Guitar Channel article, my latest book and upcoming one, and more. Tune in!

Regards,

Walter Kolosky

I miss the days of the Guitar Hero..John McLaughlin was a massive influence on any player who wanted to keep going further out.Tommy Bolin was one of the best.

Exhausted just reading (most of) this thread. I've owned the first 2 MO albums on vinyl or CD since they were first released. They occupy a unique position in my collection in that they are easy to admire but hard to love. I have always found the musicianship to be technically brilliant but somewhat devoid of emotion.
My main reason in writing is to say how amazing music is that someone like Colin can love MO whilst also being a keen devotee of folk music, which is almost diametrically different in content and feel. I would also like to commend him on his Dazzling Stranger biography of Bert Jansch. That is, if it is the same Colin H...

...yep, same fellow, I'm afraid. Glad you liked the thread and book (new printing coming out soon apparently, with afterword by the splendid Pete Paphides).

Keep trying to love the MO - I don't want to be too pompous about it, or to insinuate in any way that prefering 'simpler' music is inferior (I love lots of very, very simple music and have huge admiration for composers/songwriters who can distill a few notes or chords into something that really connects with people and lasts the course), but diving deep into the MO's music is a bit like becoming a fine wine or whiskey connoisseur: it takes a while, and a bit of dedication, but one's palette [if that's the right spelling!] and experience are really enriched as a result.

To be clear, it's not just a celebration of virtuosity - I DETEST all those 90s noodlers from LA, for instance - it really is about the music itself, albeit that that music is a product of both virtuosity and compositional artistry/inspiration. This is borne out by the slew of recorded interpretations by other types of ensembles/instruments, mentioned in the OP.

It's a world of wonders!

I was thinking of compiling a list of known live recordings of the MO to add to this thread, though I wonder how much more the world/the Massive can take! Poor old Nick Duvet still has 'nocturnal fusion episodes', where he wakes up in a cold sweat believing he is being forced out of aeroplanes by men with strange accents and double-necked guitars...

I'm still hoping to compile a list of recorded/bootleg Mahavishnu concerts from the 535 played by the original band - and from a preliminary search it looks like around 15% have been audio recorded in some form or another, which is pretty remarkable. Anyway, when time allows (if only for my own interest!)...

But while perusing the net around the subject it became clear that a particularly remarkable double bill - in that era of remarkable double bills - occurred on May 15 1972, at the Hunter College, NY, show glimpsed in the film clip at the very top of this thread:

Judy Collins & the Mahavishnu Orchestra

Amazing. I love both acts, both at their peak at this time... what a great show to have been at!

Bootleg CDs of both artist's shows are circulating, from a local radio broadcast...

...in the mighty footsteps of Mark Lewison, I thought I'd have a go at assembling a fairly accurate list of extant Mahavishnu Orchestra concert recordings. There's been no one-stop-shop to date to find this info on the net, but I've merged info from a number of sources and this will certainly suffice for those of us (including me!) who wish to collect everything going and need a reference manual.

Contrary to what you might imagine, I barely have 50 of the 73 currently available sets. I know - it's shocking, isn't it?

THE MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA LIVE

Key:

* An asterisk denotes that although a recording is not yet circulating/available, there is a likelihood that it exists and will appear in due course with the source suggested (specifically relevant to either Dinky Dawson engineered shows or shows performed at Bill Graham venues)

DS – Dawson Sound – engineer Dinky Dawson recorded all the MO shows he was involved in, many of which are currently available legally via Wolfgangsvault.com with more to come

BG – Bill Graham – promoter who routinely recorded shows at his venues, archive owned and being made available by wolfgangsvault.com

NJF – Newport Jazz Festival – audio archive owned and being made available by wolfgangsvault.com

FM – a show that was broadcast on local FM radio

Film – a show that was filmed in full or in part

WV – a show that is available for paid download / free streaming at Wolfgangsvault.com

DrF – a show that is available for free download at DrFusion.blogspot.com

JFT – a show that is available for free download/streaming at JazzFusion.tv

CD – a show that circulates on bootleg CD, with titles given

Research:

The sites used to compile this list were firstly Walter Kolosky’s almost complete MO gig list (impeccably sourced, only missing a few dates by his own admission) at abstractlogix.com , plus the DrFusion.com, Wolfgangsvault.com and JazzFusion.tv download/streaming sites. There may well be further Mahavishnu live recordings peppered around the net, but one only has so much time!

The MO played 535 gigs between their first at the Gaslight/Café Au Go Go, New York, on July 21 1971 and their last at Masonic Temple Auditorium, Detroit on December 30 1973. One wishes there was more remaining from 1971 but really it’s extraordinary - and wonderful – that there IS so much from 1972-73.

By my reckoning, from the sources below, there are 73 concerts available in full or in part with 28 more recordings eminently likely to appear in due course (albeit with some overlap – where Dinky Dawson would have made an as yet unreleased soundboard recording and an audience recording is already circulating). That’s pretty close to a fifth of all the group’s concerts existing in some form 40 years later!

1971

Nov 4 Jabberwocky Club, Syracuse, NY (FM/JFT)

1972

Jan 26 Symphony Hall, Boston (FM/JFT/CD – ‘Symphony Of Spirits’)
Mar 24 Winterland, San Francisco (BG*)
Mar 25 Winterland, San Francisco (BG*)
Mar 27 Whiskey A Go Go, LA (CD – ‘At The Whiskey’; also ‘The Eternal Flame’)
Apr 4 Mar-Y-Sol Festival, Puerto Rico (Atlantic Records multi-track taping; one track released on ‘Mar-Y-Sol’ festival LP)
Apr 21 Cleveland, OH (Columbia Records multi-track taping/DrF/JFT/CD – ‘Wild Strings’; also ‘Cleveland And Beyond’)
Apr 29 Syracuse University, NY (Partial Film/Extended CD – ‘The Inner Flaming Axe’)
May 15 Hunter College, NY (Partial Film/Full FM/DrF/JFT/CD – ‘Hunter College Auditorium’)
June 18 Community Theater, Berkeley CA (BG*)
July 6 Carnegie Hall, NY (NJF*)
July 8 Lenox MA (DS*)

AUGUST 17 – SEPT 2 European/UK Tour

Aug 17 Munich, Germany (Partial Film/Full FM/JFT) – FM the apparent source of the vinyl bootleg LPs ‘Bundled Sunspray Demise’ and ‘King Of Guitars’
Aug 23 Chateauvallon Festival, France (Full Film/JFT – audio, diff source)
Aug 25 London, BBC TV ‘Sounds For Saturday (Full Film)

Sep 16 Windham College Fieldhouse, Putney, VT (DS/WV)
Oct 15 Miami University, FL (JFT)
Nov 4 Lawrence, Kansas (DrF/JFT/CD – ‘Live At Hoch Auditorium’)
Nov 9 Community Theater, Berkeley CA (BG/WV/CD – ‘Winging The Infinite’)
Dec 3 Williams College, Williamstown, MA (JFT)
Dec 8 Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY (JFT)
Dec 9 University of Pennsylvania, PA (JFT)

1973

Jan 19 Woolsey Hall, Yale University, New Haven, Conn (DS/WV)
Jan 21 Philharmonic Hall, NYC NY (DS*)
Jan 24 Le Grand Theatre de Quebec, Quebec City, Canada (DS/WV)
Jan 25 Place des Arts, Montreal, Canada (DS*)
Jan 26 University Of Toronto, Ontario, Canada (DS/WV)
Jan 27 Century Theatre, Buffalo N.Y (FM/DS/WV)
Feb 14 Ford Theatre, Detroit, Mich (DS*)
Feb 15 University of Toledo, OH (DS/WV)
Feb 16 Kenyon College, Gambier, OH (DS/WV)
Feb 17 Case Western University, Cleveland OH (DS/WV)
Feb 18 Kinetic Playground, Chicago ILL (DS/WV)
Feb 20 N.E. C. Convention, Cincinnati OH (DS*)
Feb 23 Cornell University, Ithaca NY (DS/WV)
Feb 24 Franklin Pierce College, Ringe NH (DS/WV)
Feb 25 Southeastern MA University, North Dartmouth, MA (DS/WV)
Feb 27 C.W. Post College, Brooksville NY (DS/WV)
Mar 9 Franklin Marshall College, Lancaster PA (DS*)
Mar 10 Constitution Hall, Washington DC (DS*)
Mar 11 Orpheum, Boston MA (early show) (DS/WV)
Mar 11 Orpheum, Boston MA (late show) (DS/WV)
Mar 15 Bananafish Gardens, NY ABC TV ‘In Concert’ (Partial Film/FM)
Mar 16 Felt Forum, NYC, NY (DS/WV)
Mar 17 SUNY, New Paltz, NY (DS/WV)
Mar 19 Stock Pavilion, Madison WI (DS*)
Mar 20 University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh WI (DS/WV)
Mar 21 University of Wisconsin, Beloit WI (DS/WV)
Mar 23 Winterland, San Francisco (BG*)
Mar 24 Winterland, San Francisco (BG*)
Apr 2 Ebbets Field, Denver (FM/DrF/CD – ‘Irish Streams’ [though credits April 1 as date])
Apr 3 Ebbets Field, Denver (FM/JFT)
May 4 Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, Canada (JFT)
May 6 Hunterdon Central High School, Flemington NJ (DS*)
May 9 Morris Mechanic Theater, Baltimore MD (DS/WV)
May 11 Milwaukee Arena, Milwaukee WI (DS/WV)
May 12 Cobo Arena, Detroit, IL (JFT)
May 14 Princeton University, NJ, WEM (DS*)
May 17 Palace Theatre, Albany NY (DS/WV)
May 18 Philadelphia, PA WEM (DS*)
May 19 Palace Theater, Waterbury CT (DS/WV)
May 21 Auditorium Theater, Chicago IL (JFT)

JUNE 2 – 30 – European/UK tour

June 7 Stuttgart-Boeblingen, Germany (JFT)
June 14 Paris, French TV studio (*not circulating/not extant?)

July 21 Lenox, MA (DS/WV)
Aug 1 Albuquerque, NM (JFT)
Aug 10 Civic Center, Saginaw, Mich (DS*/JFT)
Aug 11 Civic Auditorium, Grand Rapids, Mich (DS/WV)
Aug 12 Morris Civic Auditorium, South Bend, Indiana (DS*)
Aug 13 Memorial Auditorium, Kansas City, Missouri (DS/WV)
Aug 14 Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville (DS/WV)
Aug 15 State University, Columbus, OH (DS*)
Aug 17 Central Park, NY (Columbia Records multi-track recording) (DS*/DrF/JFT/CD – ‘Live At Wollman Ice Skating Rink’)
Aug 18 Central Park, NY (Columbia Records multi-track recording) (DS*/ LP ‘Between Nothingness & Eternity – expanded to full show+ on MO ‘Complete Columbia Albums’ 5CD set)

SEPT 19 – 28 – Japan Tour

Sept 19 Shibuya Hall, Tokyo (DrF/JFT/CD – ‘Between Failure & Frustration’)
Sept 26 Yubin Chokin Hall, Hiroshima (JFT)
Sept 28 Budokan, Tokyo (JFT)

Oct 11 San Diego, CA (JFT)
Oct 19 Boston (DS*/DrF/JFT)
Oct 25 Bowdoin College, Brunswick ME (DS/WV)
Oct 26 University of MA, Amherst (DS*)
Oct 28 Woolsey Hall, Yale, New Haven, Conn (DS/WV)
Nov 4 University of Colorado, Boulder (JFT)
Nov 7 Don Kirshner Rock Concert, 47 Street Theatre NYC, NY (DS/WV)
Nov 16 Community Theater, Berkeley CA (BG*)
Nov 17 Paramount Theater, Seattle WA (DrF/JFT)
Nov 24 Miami, FL (JFT)
Nov 28 Hofstra University (DS/WV)
Nov 29 Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (DS/WV)
Nov 30 Princeton University, NJ (DS/WV)
Dec 2 Constitution Hall, Washington DC (DS/WV)
Dec 8 Fairfield, Conn (DS*)
Dec 14 Providence (DS*)
Dec 27 Philharmonic Hall, NYC (DS/WV)
Dec 28 Philharmonic Hall, NYC (DC/WV)

Oddities:

‘University Jam’ CD – definitely a late 1973 audience recording, purportedly made at Amherst, MA (not a venue listed on Walter Kolosky’s concert chronology), available from Dr Fusion’s website

‘Mahavishnu Orchestra Live’ CD – definitely a mid-1972 recording, venue/date unknown, circulated during the 1990s, possibly taken from a ‘70s vinyl bootleg

‘The Missing Montreux Concert’ purports to be an audience recording of the 20/8/72 Montreux Festival show which wasn’t officially recorded; it’s clearly a recording of a late 1973 show, venue unknown

...I see that an upgraded/extended version of the Munich 1972 film is floating around online.*

Previously only available in a 28 minute version, two tunes in great quality, two in very poor quality, it seems someone has found another off-air video tape and synced up the FM radio sound to it, creating a (still incomplete) 5 song / 46 minute DVD/video download of the show.

Features the following tracks:

Brief Interview
Meeting of the Spirits
You Know You Know
Dance of Maya
One Word
A Lotus On Irish Streams

I haven't seen it yet but I understand the quality's terrific...

(*Sound of Nick Duvet scribbling an addition to his Christmas list)

...I see that an upgraded/extended version of the Munich 1972 film is floating around online.*

Previously only available in a 28 minute version, two tunes in great quality, two in very poor quality, it seems someone has found another off-air video tape and synced up the FM radio sound to it, creating a (still incomplete) 5 song / 46 minute DVD/video download of the show.

Features the following tracks:

Brief Interview
Meeting of the Spirits
You Know You Know
Dance of Maya
One Word
A Lotus On Irish Streams

I haven't seen it yet but I understand the quality's terrific...

(*Sound of Nick Duvet scribbling an addition to his Christmas list)

The Mahavishnu Orchestra: The Complete Columbia Albums: A review
(Sony/Legacy, November 2011; 5CD)

This splendid box set brings together for the first time, under one roof – that roof being an elegant, grey-marbled box – the three original MO albums from their two and half year 1971-73 tenure alongside the aborted 1973 studio set first released in 1999 as ‘The Lost Trident Sessions’ plus a previously rare 15 minute live track from a 1972 festival LP and a whole fifth disc of previously unreleased live tracks from the two August 1973 Central Park shows from which the group’s single LP swansong ‘Between Nothingness & Eternity’ was drawn. Each album is housed in a thick card mini-LP sleeve (with spine titling) with matching design trim and each disc is elegantly lettered in bold black font on bright red background. These are new pressings, not mere recycling of existing stock. A 16 page booklet of photos with brief but detailed recording information and an affectionate note from John McLaughlin.

Available exclusively (at present) from Sony’s own popmarket.com site for around $45, the question has to be – for non-diehards who may have most or all of the previously available CD editions of the four albums – ‘Do I need this?’ Is one disc of live tracks enough incentive to duplicate an existing MO collection? The answer is ‘Yes’ – but not only for the disc of additional August 1973 tracks (which would have made ‘Between Nothingness & Eternity’ a triple LP had they been included at the time), but for the stunning, long-needed remastering of the original ‘Between Nothingness & Eternity’ material. That, on its own, is worth the price of entry; the expanded concert material is icing on the cake. And it’s a hell of a cake!

Mark Wilder and Maria Triana at Battery Studios, NY, are credited with mastering on the whole set, with Gregg Bendian from uber tribute band The Mahavishnu Project credited as consultant on the ‘BN&E’ discs. (This presumably dates back to his work a few years ago on preparing the legendary and still-unissued Cleveland 1972 concert for release along with, as was rumoured at that time, an expanded ‘BN&E’. At least part of that project has now come to fruition.)

I’ve compared sections of all the albums back to back with existing, separately released versions and here’s the summary:

‘The Inner Mounting Flame’ (1971)

Incredibly, this was recorded in one day, on August 14 1971. Every one of its 8 pieces would remain in the rotating pool of songs in the set list of the 535 gigs the MO played right to the end, on December 30 1973. (It’s worth remarking that this tally of concerts in 2 ½ years is roughly 100 more that Paul McCartney has managed in the 40+ years since the Beatles called it a day. Better to burn out than fade away!) As with ‘Birds Of Fire’, the existing early-2000s 20-bit remaster of ‘TIMF’ was already stupendous. This edition appears not to have tampered with that, but it has – very sensibly – added the fabulous 15 minute live version of the originaly 6 ½ minute ‘TIMF’ track ‘The Noonward Race’ which was released on the Atlantic label’s 1972 2LP set ‘Mar-Y-Sol’ recorded at the Puerto Rico festival of that name in April 1972. MO biographer Walter Kolosky regards this version (only recently available on CD for the first time, as an extra on the relatively obscure Wounded Bird reissue of ‘70s vinyl comp ‘The Best Of The MO’) as the definitive one: and he’s right! It makes sense being added here rather than on the ‘BN&E’ disc 2, so kudos to Sony for that touch. The mastering of this track is terrific. One can only hope that the whole set from that festival becomes available at some point.

‘Birds Of Fire’ (1973)

Its predecessor was produced by John McLaughlin, in one day, and stands as an incredibly taut, disciplined distillation of the group’s live sound at that time. Each one of its tracks would be stretched, some to four times the original album version’s length, in concert. ‘Birds Of Fire’ had the luxury of being recorded over several days in London and New York during 1972 with Beatles engineer Ken Scott. It has a wonderfully exotic sound-world and takes the concept of ‘jazz band channelling Hendrix and Indian music’ vibe of the first album to a far more sophisticated, complex place, with no obvious precursor or peer whatsoever. Two of its pieces – the sublime chamber jazz delicacy ‘Thousand Island Park’ and the art-statement masterpiece ‘Sapphire Bullets Of Pure Love’ – would never be performed live; the others, of course, would be stretched to the heavens onstage, and yet these studio versions would be the group’s definitive fusion of pop, rock, jazz and world music: capturing the possibilities and momentary free-spirit of the age to chart at No.15 in the USA. It distilled the highest peaks of attainable virtuosity and the furthest shores of musical exploration into something that was both accessible to the kid on the street at that time, and endlessly fascinating to jazz and chamber ensembles of all colours 40 years later. As with ‘TIMF’, the mastering guys have apparently left the already superb existing master of ‘BOF’ alone.

‘The Lost Trident Sessions’ (1973; 1999)

Again produced (though not finished as such) by Ken Scott, over 5 days in June 1973, this was shelved at the time – with the group entering a period of disagreement. John said in interviews in 1974 that he hoped it would come out that year (by then, already posthumous to the existence of the original group) but this wasn’t to happen until 1999. Until then, it was believed the tapes had been lost. What was discovered – by Bob Belden, also overseer of this box set – was a rough mixdown of the studio tracks. Since then it’s believed that the multi-tracks have turned up, leading to speculation about a newly mixed version of the album. Well, sadly, this isn’t it. It appears to be the 1999 release – although to my ears it MIGHT have been warmed up a little with fresh mastering. Either way, an essential part of the MO story and the studio versions of the three epics which were subsequently recorded in concert for ‘Between Nothingness & Eternity’ (‘Trilogy’, ‘Sister Andrea’, ‘Dream’) plus two further compositions which were to feature in late period live shows, many available at wolfgangsvault.com (‘I Wonder’, ‘Steppings Tones’) plus one real rarity (‘John’s Song #2’) which was seemingly never performed live.

‘Between Nothingness & Eternity’ (1973)

Recorded live at two concerts in Central Park on August 17-18 1973, it can now be revealed – thanks to the fabulous audience recording of the first night, available as the bootleg ‘Live At Wollman Ice Rink’ and confirmed by the information in this box set booklet – that the three tracks on this release all derived from the second night. The planets were aligned, for the version of ‘Trilogy’ captured that night was never bettered – though any and all versions, with the exhilarating call/response dynamic of the opening segment, ‘The Sunlit Path’, are fascinating to hear - and both ‘Dream’ and ‘Sister Andrea’ were extraordinarily powerful performances, certainly as good as any circulating on soundboard tapes.

Unlike ‘TIMF’ or ‘BOF’, this album was never remastered subsequent to its original CD appearance in the early ‘90s. This is where the box set becomes an essential purchase: the original ‘BN&E’ retains its integrity as a stand-alone disc here (with the best of the unreleased tracks from those two nights on a separate disc) but benefits from a massive improvement in sound. This cannot be stated forcefully enough.

For too long the ‘runt of the litter’ in the original MO trio of albums – albeit residing alongside The Who’s ‘Live At Leeds’ as an exemplar of power and brevity as a one-disc, leave-them-wanting-more live album in an era of doubles and triples – this new mastering surely elevates the album to the level of its predecessors. From the portentous, tension-building opening gong crashes it’s immediately apparent that a veil has lifted, a gauze curtain removed. Practically every animated yell from audience members who can’t wait for the show to begin is now audible between Cobham’s crescendi – ‘Let it rock!’ yells one; ‘Go on John!’ shouts another; ‘Yeah!’ says a third. When the music begins it is with newfound clarity, richness and expanse. The drums are crisp and clear, the bass rich, warm and defined; the violin, guitar and high piano notes sparkle and fly.

This isn’t, perhaps sadly, a new mix (to these ears at least – the panning of Cobham’s drum rolls in various places through headphones being the key giveaway) – as there might be odd places where current technology could (with subtleness) enhance things, particularly perhaps with some of Jan Hammer’s work in the full-on sections where everyone assaults the senses at once – but the new master still allows elements of the music to be heard or appreciated for the first time. The unison bass and violin runs in ‘Trilogy’s’ second part, for instance, feel like a pleasing new detail (indeed, the contribution of Rick Laird’s bass overall will be more fully appreciated now) and one can practically hear – for the first time - every movement of John’s fingers on the fretboard of his amplified acoustic, every fading repeat of his echo pedal and the subtle, exquisite electric piano decoration behind him during the low-volume intro to ‘Dream’: sounds that were simply inaudible on previous editions. Similarly, the richness of the bass and low-end electric piano details during the ‘impossible guitar’ breakdown section in the middle of ‘Sister Andrea’ is a whole new experience.

Overall, there is an expansiveness, warmth and punch to the sound without compromise to the dynamic range. The astonishing precision, power, passion and ingenuity of the music was always there to be appreciated. But now the gauze curtain of an always slightly murky, dense sound has been removed – and the music shines as never before. It’s the difference between being half a mile from the stage and standing beside the soundman at a huge festival. ‘Let it rock!’ said the guy shouting at the start. Well, they did – and now we know it better than ever before.

‘Between Nothingness & Eternity: Disc 2’ (1973; 2011)

For many, this disc will be the decider in purchasing. Does it live up to expectations? Yes, of course it does! Had there been no wealth of 1973 MO concert material available – in very good sound – via wolfgangsvault.com, this disc would have been a revelation: gloriously expanded versions of familiar tunes that previously only existed in their disciplined, brief (and still always definitive) studio incarnations.

But if the familiarity of having heard many live versions of these compositions obviously dulls the ‘surprise’ aspect of how they lived and breathed in the live setting, and gives endless possibilities of comparing these performances to the others that exist, the sound quality here is most certainly a new experience. As good as Dinky Dawson’s live sound mixing was (his tapes being the source of most of the wolfgangsvault concerts) and as good as the wolfgang mastering guys are, these tracks are newly mixed from multi-tracks, with 21st century technology and cannot help but be the best sounding 1973 MO live recordings there are. For me, these are going to be performances I’m looking forward to living with and experiencing (with whiskey, with headphones, in a room at 11, in a car…) for a long time!

That said, I can certainly give an initial evaluation. Let’s start with some dry facts. The ‘Wollman Ice Rick’ bootleg, of the entire August 17 Central Park show, features the following performances:

Trilogy
Sister Andrea
Hope
Awakening
Dream
You Know, You Know
One Word
The Dance Of Maya

The contents of ‘BN&E Disc 2’ are:

Hope
Awakening
You Know, You Know
One Word
Stepping Tones [sic]
Vital Transformation
The Dance Of Maya

The problem is that the ‘BN&E: Disc 2’ recording credits list ‘Hope’, ‘One Word’ and ‘Stepping Tones’ as deriving from the August 17 show (as heard on the ‘Wollman Ice Rink’ bootleg, which comes with a detailed memoir/note from the taper so it seems unlikely his date is wrong). For a start, ‘Steppings Tones’ was NOT played that first night; and secondly the version of ‘Hope’ is definitely NOT the one on the ‘WIR’ bootleg. But ‘One Word’ IS the same as the ‘WIR’ version.

The ‘BN&E Disc 2’ info credits ’Awakening’, ‘You Know, You Know’ and ‘Vital Transformation’ as coming from the August 18 show. ‘You Know, You Know’ is, however, undoubtedly the ‘WIR’ first-night version. I’m satisfied that ‘Vital Transformation’ is indeed an August 18 performance (it wasn’t played on August 17). And I’m 95% satisfied that ‘Awakening’ is the version from August 18 (which would also make sense as ‘Hope’ and ‘Awakening’ often ran together as a segue, and we’ve already established that ‘Hope’ comes from August 18). As far as I can tell the ‘WIR’ bootleg performance of ‘Awakening’ is different – the drum break in the first minute of the track is 15 seconds longer, for instance – but it’s odd that both versions are circa 14 minutes in length: normally, from mid ’73 onwards, ‘Awakening’ would stretch to epic length. A 14 minute version would be unusual. For example, versions at two concerts played mere days before the Central Park gigs (on August 13 and 14, available at wolfgangsvault) were 20 mins and 26 mins respectively. All subsequent known versions would last between 17-26 mins.

Nevertheless, the MO knew they were being recorded for a live album at the two Central Park shows and this may well have focused their minds on keeping some tracks shorter than usual to give options vis a vis vinyl side length – ‘You Know, You Know’ for instance, at 7 mins, was notably tighter than its usual 9-12 mins concert length. On the other hand, with an improvisation/in-the-moment act like the MO these things can’t be overthought in retrospect: they played music, and went with it every night wherever it led. Sometimes ‘One Word’ would be 10 mins, sometimes 26 mins. The version here at 18 mins is par for the course.

Finally, in this ‘dry facts’ section, the ‘BN&E Disc 2’ credits strangely neglect to offer a recording date for ‘The Dance Of Maya’ – which John introduces as a group favourite that they haven’t played in a while. In fact, it IS the version from August 17 (though the ‘WIR’ bootleg version is incomplete, with spoken intro and end of the track clipped). And as to not having played it in a while, it does seem they’d neglected it since mid-May – which must have seemed like a lifetime for a road band as dedicated as the MO!

So in conclusion I can say pretty confidently that the origins of the ‘BN&E Disc 2’ tracks are as follows:

Hope (August 18)
Awakening (August 18)
You Know, You Know (August 17)
One Word (August 17)
Stepping Tones [sic] (August 18)
Vital Transformation (August 18)
The Dance Of Maya (August 17)

Adding up the timings of the now known August 18 tracks (including the original ‘BN&E’ tracks) we arrive at around 69 minutes. The August 17 performance, from the ‘Wollman Ice Rink’ bootleg and factoring in the missing half of ‘Dance Of Maya’, we know would have been around 100 minutes. We can only speculate what might have made up the other 30-odd minutes – very possibly it might have been duplicate versions of ‘One Word’ and ‘You Know, You Know’ which John M and the compilers of this set felt were inferior to the previous night’s versions. One hopes, though, that we haven’t been denied a live version of ‘Birds Of Fire’, which was a regular live track at this time…

So, after the anorak-ish analysis (thanks to Sony’s disappointing slip in correct crediting), what of the music?

‘Hope’ is and always was, in concert, a set-piece that varied little from its studio version. Here, it starts in an oddly subdued fashion, building reflectively up to its full might rather than crashing straight in. John (who supervised the mix) obviously thought this version superior to that of the previous night. I’m not so sure. But after the underwhelming start, it does ascend to the heights and, either way, it may have been a case of maintaining the segue into the next track…

‘Awakening’, which follows after ‘Hope’ without a second of a break DOES come crashing in and features solo sections for all the players bar Rick Laird (who only ever solo’d on ‘One Word’ in concert). Towards the end of the group’s life, in November-December 1973, ‘Awakening’ could devolve into VAST solo extemporisations by either Jan (using multi-layered keyboards/primitive sampling) or John. Jan’s extemporisations basically led to his solo album composition ‘Full Moon Boogie’, while John’s could have become a whole new MO piece in dark flamenco style had the group continued. On this occasion, the group get a terrific funk groove going, with violin the lead instrument, for the first three minutes, bookended by the knotty high-speed riff, before a burbling Jan Hammer multi-keyboard improvisation that meanders in and out of keys (in a manner that drove Mrs H to venture into the room with the words ‘What fresh hell is this?’) before Cobham and Laird come in and a driving keys/bass/drums sequence takes flight. At precisely seven minutes in the finger-busting motif comes back in… and then everything stops to make way for those Spanish-flavoured John McLaughlin extemporisations I mentioned earlier. The man’s command of dynamics – rich, low volume chords giving way to squealing bursts of machine gun soloing up the neck and back again – is revealed at its best here. After three minutes of solo John – which pass in no time at all – Cobham joins in for a blistering guitar/drums duel which winds down towards the motif after two minutes and then it’s a 90 second lesson in drum dynamics, with the recording quality revealing Cobham’s exquisitely tuned toms … and then that riff again, and it’s over. It might be 14 minutes, but this was the MO distilling the live ‘Awakening’ into practically half its normal length for this stage in the game, and no worse for it.

‘You Know, You Know’ is the biggest surprise here. Taken at breakneck speed compared with either its studio incarnation (a Zen-like wonder of repressed tension) or its surely definitive live reading on the April 1972 Cleveland concert recorded by Columbia and thus far only available on the ‘Wild Strings’ bootleg (see above), this is jazz-fusion as punk rock. Thuggish and wild, Jan Hammer’s keyboard work is extraordinary, wrestling wild howls and distorted tone-wheel tricks out of his mini-Moog, with Jerry Goodman’s violin dazzling in its cart-wheeling virtuosity as Cobham crashes around behind him. McLaughlin’s short stabs and squeals on guitar throughout punctuate the madness. Everyone is constrained by the metronomic nine-note riff, but simultaneously everyone is straining on the leash to counterpoint it or break from its cage. As said above, this sub-7 minute version is a real rarity, as most live performances were between 9-12 minutes (including the ‘Wild Strings’ version).

Ultimately, though, while this atypical version is a delight for aficionados or, presumably, anyone who knows only the beautiful, understated studio version, it makes one yearn for an official release for that incredible multi-track recorded Cleveland show: the performance of ‘You Know, You Know’ there was one of taut, coiled-spring power and majesty; this version is a wild jam by comparison – exhilarating for sure, but lacking the awesome power of its predecessor. If anything, it gives a perfect illustration of the different phases of the MO live. There were at least three phases: 1971-72; early 1973; late 1973. Towards late ’73 even the MO members will concede that their discipline and focus gave way to discontent and indulgence onstage. The early ’73 shows arguably catch the band at their performing peak. These Central Park shows are on the cusp of the peak period morphing into the era of over-indulgence before everything collapsed at the end of the year. Posterity would be wonderfully served if the Cleveland show were available officially as well as this expanded ‘BN&E’ – or, even better, if the King Biscuit Flower Hour recording from the ‘Birds Of Fire’ tour (early ’73) were released officially. That way, one perfectly recorded show from every era of the MO live history would be available to enhance their legacy – three sides to the triangle, all offering a different flavour of the magic.

‘One Word’ is arguably the definitive MO composition. As with its (albeit restrained) studio version, it was always a concert showcase for both Billy Cobham on drums and, uniquely, Rick Laird on bass. Never a ‘flash’ soloist, Rick’s ‘One Word’ spots were often very cerebral and measured, unlike your typical jazz bass solo. Indeed, his playing as an ensemble musician was the rock upon which the rest of the band members could jump off into space. This particular solo – prefacing a typically bravura virtuosic display from Cobham - is an unusually funky one, with wah-wah pedal in use, establishing a groove which Jan and John can offset with James Brown-esque stabs. The transition to the faster-speed section of the track is here handled better, more ‘naturally’, than it would be in many concert versions (where sometimes it felt a bit jarring).

‘Steppings Tones’, like ‘Hope’, was a set-piece built around a curious ascending pattern, with a gradually overlaid melody and little prospect for deviating off on solos. As with ‘Hope’ it was often used as a bridge or introduction into a more improvisational piece – which is precisely what happens here…

‘Vital Transformation’, at 6 minutes, is very close to its studio arrangement and length – which is typical of its live outings (unlike several of its fellows from ‘The Inner Mounting Flame’). A stately, eastern-vibe melody bookending a Hendrixy sort of groove, which allows all the melody-instrument players to call/respond at speed over it, this is perhaps a solid rather than Grade-A MO composition and consequently this performance is ticking the boxes rather than lighting the fires.

‘The Dance Of Maya’, however, is a bedrock MO composition and not for the faint-hearted. Doomy arpeggios, an ever-ascending vibe to goodness-knows-where before a banshee-like wailing melody of sustained guitar/violin notes enters the fray… and then it unexpectedly breaks down into a funky, rock’n’roll sort of groove and a mischievous dual between Jerry Goodman (playing his violin like a guitar, with flurries of pizzicato notes and chords) and Jan Hammer on electric piano. This low-volume section – after the sonic assault of the rest of the MO show – was always a real excitement builder at MO shows. The MO were, for all their amps-at-11 reputation, masters at using dynamics. Each show would be like a rollercoaster of both emotion and volume, the one no doubt influencing the other. Jan and Jerry’s hillbilly hoedown soon drives upwards into a spiralling jam with bass and drums behind it, before John’s guitar comes through with a motif that somehow marks a transition into the ascending riff reappearing… but no, before the ascension takes hold, John and Billy are off on a blistering wig-out… and then everyone joins in and That Riff gradually reappears, with seeming three time signatures going on at once at one point. Without doubt, a blistering performance. It does, though, have a different energy to the more coruscating Cleveland ’72 performance (of very similar length) – but each is brilliant in different ways.

‘You have made this a really beautiful occasion and we’re really glad it’s on record,’ says John at one point. Well so am I. As a stand-alone disc it IS a little hard to get the head round, being familiar with so many MO concerts from wolfgangsvault – because no MO concert would have started with ‘Hope/Awakening’ or indeed featured these seven tracks in this order. It seems strange to be listening to something that feels like an MO concert but actually isn't - rather it is, of course, simply extra tracks from two concerts that were probably largely recorded in order to capture versions of the group’s three ‘biggest’ new numbers at that time: ‘Trilogy’, ‘Dream’ and ‘Sister Andrea’. Almost every MO concert between 1971-73 as far as is known began with either ‘Meeting Of The Spirits’, ‘Birds Of Fire’ or ‘Trilogy’. These two August ’73 shows clearly both began with ‘Trilogy’.

If I have a criticism (aside from Sony getting the date crediting inexplicably wrong), it’s that the unreleased tracks couldn’t have been integrated into the existing ‘BN&E’ tracks to create a 2CD experience closer to the running order of an actual MO concert. But having said that I understand why that hasn’t happened here – both historically (to maintain the integrity of the original ‘BN&E’ as an album experience) and technically (a full integration might have jarred without the original ‘BN&E’ tracks also being remixed rather than remastered).

So, in a nutshell, let us delight in the fact that Sony/Legacy have at last given fans pristine quality new live MO material – and let’s hope it sells well enough to encourage them to make efforts to release the Cleveland 1972 show and perhaps a new mix of the ‘Lost Trident Sessions’. Meanwhile, this set will give hours of pleasure!

wow...you deserve some sort of award for this Colin, though I know the music is its own reward.

I'm curious to know how the new mixes of BN&E sound, so the complete recordings does indeed go on the Christmas list. A punk version of YKYK? That I've got to hear.

...just to be clear (in among the dense verbiage above, it may not have been!): the original 'BN&E' is REMASTERED, while the 64 mins worth of previously unreleased material recorded at those two shows is (of necessity) a NEW MIX.

But as it transpires, while a whole new mix (a Steven Wilson-type job, remaining faithful to the original mix but utilising 21st century digital tools to finesse it and remove the odd glitch) would be glorious, the long-overdue mastering job itself has polished the original 'BN&E' tracks up incredibly.

I'm happy to pay Sony Legacy for the set even though it's essentially for two of five discs (if also a nice set in itself) - as I already have, naturally, stand-alone CDs using the same masters for the IMF, BOF and LTS albums - because (a) some money will trickle back to band members and (b) Sony will be encouraged, by sales, to make further releases happen.

Among the stories circulating as to why the Cleveland '72 didn't appear officially a few years ago is that Jerry Goodman wasn't wild about his playing (he's wrong!) and, perhaps more pertinently, the band members were each offered a derisory sum of money ($250) to sanction its release.

If this box set signals a new willingness at SonyLegacy to treat artists of monumental importance with a little more respect, then I'm delighted to buy the product and help enthuse others to do so! :-)

...says Gene Triplett, a couple of days agos at this News site;

http://newsok.com/article/3628190

If only he knew! :-D

...it's a wry enthusiast, Mr Brandon Tenold, presenting a lovingly crafted resume for the casual listener of the MO's first album 'The Inner Mounting Flame'.

In the (admittedly, unlikely) event that any casual browsers have made it this far down this, the mother-of-all-fusion-discussion-threads, without knowing what on earth's going on, Brandon sorts the whole thing out in 15 minutes with a delightful melange of moving image, stills, memorabilia and narration. The last 10 seconds is worth waiting for.

And anyway, being a wry, enthusiastic kind of guy, with any luck Brandon will notice the link here - to a whole community of wry, enthusiastic types - and come over to say 'hi'...

worth forty-five quid for the new box set when I'd be buying most of these for a third time? BTW when I bought BN&E on CD in the 90s it sounded like they'd used a rejected album mix for it (though it still sounded scraggy like the LP I was replacing; a quid in 1984-result!) Incidentally,it's been suggested here that the live album was the only time the three pieces were played at the same gig. Not so. Seattle 17/11/73 (day after live LP release - a reggaefied 'SA' and a superior,half-hour 'Dream'), Miami a week later-same order as BN&E) and Avery Fisher Hall 27/12/73 all have them. There's probably more.
BTW re Colin's bootleg/giglist - if you go to Sugarmegs Audio you'll find, amongst others, a great Roxy gig from Nov 73 - the one where even the celebs couldn't get in! Listen for the icecubes rattling in drinks from the volume when John talks to the audience :D
PS Anyone else heard the unreleased John/Eve McLaughlin LP from the early 70s? Fabulous or what? Are any recordings of their gigs about?

...you're absolutely right about that Sister/Dream/Trilogy howler. I made the comment from 'memory', without double checking set lists, and realised when next I was rifling through my MO live collection that there are indeed at least a few examples of all three being played on the same night. In my defence, it was still a bit of a rarity - didn't happen often! :-)

I've also been wrong in my suggestion that 'Dream' never appeared in the setlist until early '73, emerging out of an elaborately elongated version of 'The Noonward Race'. It's true, there IS an early '73 'Noonward...' which extends massively into much of what became the stand-alone epic 'Dream', but there really ARE a couple of earlier instances of Dream - or at least a shorter piece recogniseable as an emryonic version of it - including, no less, on the very earliest extant live recording of the band, the FM broadcast from the club show in Syracuse in November 1971. Incredibly, John really did have 2+ albums worth of material written and ready to go from day one of the band.

As for the new box set of the MO albums, if it WAS £45 my view might be different, but its only $45 (c.£22) - so YES, I DO think it's worth it for the new master of 'BN&E' plus the disc of newly mixed extras! It really is a shame they couldn't have gone the extra mile and remixed the 'Lost Trident Sessions' if they really do now have the multis available. But maybe if sales are good that'll be a separate project...

And thanks for the Sugarmegs heads-up - a new one on me!

Re: John & Eve - my pal Trevor Hodgett actually saw them performing live, WITH Sri Chinmoy himself at an unadvertised thing in London (Chinmoy was advertised, not JM - Trevor just had a hunch he'd be there, as the MO had played the night before nearby). They only released one track officially - a live recording on a CBS various-artists double LP called 'The Historic Town Hall Concert' in 1971. They recorded that whole LP in late '73 (when the MO Mk 1 was imploding)... which never appeared...

the Sugarmegs site is worth it- it also includes a half-hour of Shakti demos (another thread?) from 1974 (CBS - "It'll confuse people, John"). Your pal Trevor was one lucky guy - the download site where I got the unreleased LP said John had approved an official release, but no sign of it yet!

...I think I'll leave that one to you or someone else, Fishbender: I don't think the Word Massive have yet recovered from two monumental Mahavishnu threads!

...it's an unnamed Mahavishnu Orchestra tribute act, who are introduced 'in character' by a man dressed in John McLaughlin's tablecloth. They're performing at something called Spoof Fest (it doesn't sound promising, does it?).

And yet... their performance of 'Birds Of Fire is very impressive. It has a bit of grit to it plus all the right notes in the right order...

So far, this is as close as we get to a Mahavishnu 'Bootleg Beatles'. And 'Jan Hammer's moustache is very impressive too.

PS re: my comment above about someone other than me starting a Shakti thread... well, that didn't exactly pan out, did it! :-D

...this is a Gregory Dubrov & Jeff Burns composition with Jerry as the featured musician: two acoustics, one violin. I'm not wild about the upbeat sections (starting around 2:00 in, and alternating with the slow sections thereafter) but the contemplative sections and Jerry's lyrical playing therein is terrific. The first couple of minutes alone is surely among his finest recorded work since the MO:

...Wolfgangs Vault have just this week made available near complete recordings from the desk of the MO's two Central Park shows of August 17 & 18, also taped on multi track by Columbia for a live album.

To recap much longer posts above: three tracks appeared on 'Between Nothingness & Eternity' in 1973.... and then late last year a Sony box set made several more tracks (no duplicates) from the two nights available. As great as the sound is on those Sony mixes, as a listening experience the problem (for me at least) is that it's clearly a compilation of tracks rather than a concert as it happened. The Wolfgangs releases now make hearing everything in context possible - which adds to the sense of awe and atmosphere, I think. Especially John's relatively long spoken introduction on the second night.

Check it out here:

http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/mahavishnu-orchestra/concerts/central-park...

...it seems you don't have a contact option available. I, however, do: drop me a line offlist...

Meanwhile, Julie Oakes has done it again! Here's her fabulous cover of Sanctuary:

to finally hear the BN&E shows after 25 years of playing the LP and wishing there were more of it. There's still room for a live album of a complete show though - several from '73 spring to mind. Funny how John stopped introducing the band members as 'brother musicians' round this time...

On this Mug kick lately...looking for something nice when I go into work and have my coffee...

...can such devices really be purchased, or are you a tea-sing whiz with Photoshopery?

Obviously, its contents have to be Indian tea or virtousi tea.

Either way, a great start to any day!

Well Colin I have succumbed to all the Mahavishnu propaganda and have purchased the box set. I bought Birds of Fire on vinyl when it first came out and really enjoyed it. So I've decided to give the whole lot a proper listen and at that price who could resist? Not me.

...here's a new MO tribute, from Alex Iberer, just uploaded to youtube - 'Darkness Falls', a lovely reimagining of 'You Know, You Know' in a more major-feeling key:

To celebrate the appearance of the two Schaefer festival sets on Wolfgang's Vault, here's a reminder of how Crawdaddy saw it in their November 1973 issue.

Throughout the day, dark, storm-heavy clouds had brooded over Central
Park, but by evening only a few tattered remnants hung silhouetted against
the stars. Ten thousand people had gathered in this welcome August cool to
hear the soaring music of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Under the awning of the
Schaefer Music Festival stage, the five members of the Orchestra walked to
their places smiling under the pleasing weight of tremendous applause.
McLaughlin stepped to the microphone to thank the crowd in his thin, boyish
voice and then, unlike previous New York gigs, he made a special point of
introducing each of the other band members before they began their set.
"On drums, Billy Cobham. On piano and synthesizer, Jan Hammer. On violin,
Jerry Goodman. And on bass, Rick Laird."
After waiting for the ovations to fade, he asked for a moment of silence. The
response to this varies from night to night and this time the quiet held for a few moments, only to be broken by a series of whoops and jeers which in turn were
met by an equally noisy barrage of outraged "shhhh's." The Orchestra smiled
again.
Their concert that cool evening in Central Park went well. After opening with
their traditional "Meeting of the Spirits," which by now is so tight and effortless
it isn't played as much as conjured, The Orchestra ground into Hammer's as yet
untitled song. It has a sinewy, funky quality not found in McLaughlin's material
but still it melded perfectly into their set. All of the material, whomever the legal
author, is given by the band the same diamond-etched sharpness and precision. Moreover, their improvisation whatever its starting point follows the same cyclically
ascending patterns.
After "Hope Awakening," with its towering, dramatic crescendos of whining,
marrow-piercing catharsis, they played "Dream," a McLaughlin composition he
begins on acoustic guitar. As the song progresses and builds, he switches to his
inlayed double-necked electric. The music flows into a long round-robin improvisation and during Hammer's solo, McLaughlin and Cobham smiled ecstatically at one another
as they batted syncopated riffs back and forth like birdies in some trans-galactic badminton game.
The next number, which incorporates Goodman's song with "One Word" off "Birds
of Fire", builds to a blistering three-way exchange among the soloists. As they blend
and bend and burn white-hot together, Goodman stands far to the left, his bowing a jerky/smooth symphony of dips and sways. Hammer leans on his keyboard with his mouth open, head thrown back in almost epileptic intensity. And center stage, McLaughlin's eyes close as his brow furrows in concentration. His shorn head leans to one side as he plays until it virtually rests on his shoulder and as the number climaxes,
he arches his back, a time-leaping pilgrim possessed by the music, and looks up at the stars overhead.

...as we now know, 'Meeting Of The Spirits' was not played. On either night...

Reviewers, eh? Tsh...

In anticipation of an upcoming project, I have a new author's website which includes an updated Mahavishnu Orchestra gig list. www.walterkolosky.com

BETWEEN NOTHINGNESS AND ETERNITY by Ken Emerson

Mahavishnu John McLaughlin is unquestionably one of the greatest guitarists playing anything remotely resembling rock to emerge in the past five years. But after the brilliance of INNER MOUNTING FLAME and BIRDS OF FIRE, BETWEEN NOTHINGNESS AND ETERNITY-LIVE is a bit of a disappointment. First, the song titles are new, but the music isn’t. The sound is heavier, more abrasive, and as befits a live performance, more ragged and improvisational, yet it’s too familiar. Even the most incandescent licks [with which LIVE abounds] lose a great deal of their candlepower the third time around.
Secondly, LIVE exposes McLaughlin’s limitations as a writer. He is less a composer than a deviser of riffs. These are generally quite intricate, and the Orchestra elaborates them with masterful ingenuity, but still, McLaughlin’s music does not so much progress and develop as repeat itself. When the possibilities of a riff are exhausted, McLaughlin, often without the pretense of a transition, simply picks up another, and off they go again. The procedure recalls “Layla”, and indeed McLaughlin resembles Eric Clapton in that neither can write as extraordinarily as he can play, and both compose around riffs. (As if to acknowledge this kinship, at one point on LIVE McLaughlin coyly alludes to “Sunshine Of Your Love”.
In the past, this has not presented a serious difficulty, for the Orchestra has inclined toward relatively brief tracks. But the cuts on LIVE are very few and very drawn-out, with the result that, particularly during the 21:26 of “Dream”, the music tends to be redundant and disjunct. Although frequently dazzling, it doesn’t hold the listener over the long run.
But LIVE offers many short-term joys: the rousing funky parts of “Sister Andrea”, the reflective opening of “Dream”, the searing interplay between McLaughlin and Jan Hammer on Moog, the endlessly inventive and sizzling drumming of Billy Cobham. Violinist Jerry Goodman is oddly inconspicuous on LIVE but the drummer almost makes up for his diminished presence. Overshadowing them all, of course, is McLaughlin, now spewing forth cascades of notes, now sculpting stately lines, now elegantly musing, always playing with a genius almost unparalleled.

Not all MO reviews were gushingly effusive in their praise. Here's an example from The Great Speckled Bird underground newspaper. The full review seemed more impressed with support band Radar!

Symphony Hall, Atlanta GA – Sep 9th 1972

Last Saturday, Atlanta was treated to the second appearance of the summer of John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. The scene had changed. The modern setting of the Atlanta Memorial Arts Center’s Symphony Hall was in total contrast to the funky Sports Arena, the venue of the first concert.

The Mahavishnu Orchestra was greeted warmly by what was seemingly one of the most attentive audiences of which I have been a part. Throughout the entire performance, the crowd was quiet and seemed absorbed in the music.

A percentage of the audience, however, had other reasons for silence. They were nearly asleep! I was part of that percentage. I had expected much more variation in the program of the Mahavishnu Orchestra than was delivered. Upon second listening, the glaring similarity in the structure and dynamics of each selection on the concert bill was appalling. Why is it that a guitarist who has shown such versatility on his many recordings chooses to play with such a set pattern in concert performances? I certainly don’t know or understand.

The only members of the group who seemed interested in giving the audience anything more than a high-volume version of their latest album were Jerry Goodman, the violinist, and Billy Cobham, the drummer. The Mahavishnu Orchestra is composed of some of the finest musicians of their kind, but I was frankly bored with their material.
Joe Roman

Mahavishnu Slated For Spring Weekend
(Reprinted from The Eagle, April 13th 1973)

The Mahavishnu Orchestra, with John McLaughlin, will be featured in the Spring Weekend concert tomorrow afternoon at 4:30 in Woods-Brown Amphitheater. If it snows, Spring Weekend will be held in Leonard Gym. Commenting on the choice of the relatively unknown group, SUB chairperson Ken Schwartz said, “If the money hadn’t been spent the way it was last semester we would have had a bigger group, which was originally planned”. Tomorrow’s concert, including back-up band, equipment and security will cost under $13,000, according to SC comptroller Ed Varrone. The Mahavishnu Orchestra will get $7,000.

Audience Mars Spring Weekend
(Reprinted from The Eagle, April 1973)

Woods-Brown Amphitheater is probably not the best place to listen to John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. At least it wasn’t last Saturday. Perhaps more than any currently popular group, Mahavishnu plays deep, serious music that requires at least a little bit of attentiveness and concentration on the part of the audience. Unfortunately for both the band and its fans, most of the 15.000 or so people who showed up at AU’s annual spring concert weren’t prepared to give either.
The audience can perhaps be forgiven for wanting to let loose and have a little fun at the first outdoor concert of the season. No doubt they would have been happier boogeying along to the monochordic ravings of Black Oak Arkansas or Grand Funk Railroad than trying to get into the complex polyrhythms and jazz-oriented improvisations of Mahavishnu. And the Student Union board can be forgiven for jumping at the opportunity to get a quality group for the unheard-of low price of $7,000. Nonetheless, the spirits just did not come together, as McLaughlin would undoubtedly put it.
McLaughlin and co did their best to get their music across through the screen of frisbees, paper airplanes and untimely war-whoops, but even with the usual virtuoso performances by McLaughlin and drummer Billy Cobham, things just didn’t work out. McLaughlin may well be the best rock guitarist in the world, and Cobham one of the best drummers, but it didn’t seem to do much good.
Despite everything, a good time seemed to be had by all, except McLaughlin and the few who wanted to listen to his music. Better luck next year.
Alan Lewis

Puerile Antics
(Letter to The Eagle, April 1973)
My thoughts of being able to hear and see the man who might be the best guitarist alive, and certainly the most innovative, were quickly dashed by the puerile antics of the crowd. John McLaughlin began the show by asking for a moment of silence from the audience. (Alas, poor fella didn’t know much about the erudite AU music-lovers. He soon found out). After standing remorsefully for five minutes, listening to voices with that distinctive Long Island twang, shouting to long-lost friends and complaining about the inflated price of donuts (ah, those thrifty AU folks), McLaughlin seemed resigned to his fate and began the music. Anyhow, all was not lost. When I got home, I got to smash my own head against the wall for being so naive and wasting a beautiful afternoon on the “AU social scene”.

Organic Spirit
(Letter to The Eagle, April 1973)
Last week The Eagle described the Mahavishnu Orchestra as a “rock machine”... It is surely difficult to describe in words the force behind this orchestra. But a much closer term to use would be one that describes no machine. That term is “spirit”. For those who insist that the concert was too short, it was this spirit that made me feel – far more than any other recent concert I have seen – grateful to be alive.

Here's a question for you. What was the first song the MO ever played live?
Anyone?
No,it wasn't "Meeting of The Spirits", it was "Vital Transformation". Apparently, some guy in New York has a copy of the first Gaslight gig (21/7/71)which he is 'not at liberty to share'. Meh!
No doubt the recording ends with someone going, "Gee, what just happened?"...