John McLaughlin interview: from Miles to the Montreux Years

What next for John McLaughlin? Like most people, he’s looking to return to some kind of normality after the global coronavirus pandemic upended the lives of so many; so ideas and plans for the future are racing ahead of him.

“This Covid put a block on everything didn’t it? I’m down to two bands these days, I am either playing with the 4th Dimension or playing with Shakti – and here in 2022 I can tell you we are in the middle of a Shakti recording!” he says.

See also: Miles Davis and John Coltrane – Yin and Yang

Running two bands on two different continents is a challenge at the best of times, but for someone who was used to juggling several different projects in any given year since the 1970s, these are quiet times for the man of whom Huffpost once said, “Plays the guitar with a fluency of expression rarely seen. Others, like Coltrane and Miles, have possessed this fluency, and like McLaughlin, used it as a way to tap into a spirituality, which today eludes most musicians. But what links these musical geniuses is an intensity of self-enquiry borne of a golden era of music.”

That 'golden era' which McLaughlin was a part of saw him written into jazz history, his career a fascinating counterpoint to events he participated in and events he was witness to – the history of jazz in Britain from 1959 to 1968, and American jazz since the late Sixties.

His American adventure began after playing a private jam session one afternoon during the second week of July 1968 at Ronnie Scott’s club in London with Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette. For some reason, DeJohnette taped the jam and played it to fellow drummer Tony Williams when he returned to the States.

Williams, who was forming a new band, liked what he heard, his impression endorsed by Dave Holland who by now had joined Miles Davis, so he plucked the guitarist out of obscurity in February 1969 for his new group, which he called Lifetime.

Miles Davis popped in to check out this new kid on the block, and McLaughlin became the trumpeter’s guitarist of choice, appearing on seven of Davis’ first ‘jazz-rock’ albums – from In a Silent Way (just 48 hours after arriving in New York) to Get Up With It.

When, in 1971, McLaughlin formed his now legendary Mahavishnu Orchestra (with Davis’ blessing), he blazed a trail through the night sky for almost four years, becoming guitar legend in the process.

Since then, he’s played or recorded with so many of the top names in contemporary jazz, his contacts book must be the size of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace!

For example, on his latest CD and vinyl release, just out, John McLaughlin: The Montreux Years (Montreux Jazz/BMG) there are 19 musicians in six different bands he led between 1978 and 2016.

An absorbing slice of jazz history, it was mastered by Tony Cousins at London’s Metropolis Studios from the original festival tapes [which were first released as a limited edition 17-CD box set in 2003] and the recorded sound is excellent, McLaughlin saying, “I think the sound is very good – when we finalised the tracks I sat down and listened to the whole album, two LPs, and I was blown away by the musicians!”

The Montreux Years comprises eight aural snapshots of McLaughlin’s festival performances, each one unlocking memories and reflections on the changing face of his music and events that influenced him.

“Montreux is a big part of my life’s musical and personal history,” he says, “My association with Montreux actually goes back 52 years, to 1971, that’s a long time! These live performances are not in chronological order, but move backwards and forwards in time, and on them I’m playing electric and acoustic guitar on different tracks, and the Synclavier Guitar, the first synth guitar that could handle uptempo playing."

Watch John McLaughlin play El Hombre Que Sabia:

The oldest track on the album dates from 1978, following a tumultuous period in McLaughlin’s personal life – the break-up of his marriage, a parting of the ways with his guru Sri Chinmoy, and the break-up of Mahavishnu II.

“It affected me personally, emotionally, intellectually, so it’s inevitable this is going to affect the music – music and the person are basically inseparable, aren’t they?” reflects McLaughlin.

“It’s about change, the music will change, there are certain fundamentals, of course, we all know the pain of sorrow, we all know the loss of loved ones, particularly as you grow older, but to be unceremoniously dumped by one’s wife, and she goes off and crashes your new car with her boyfriend – it’s a bit strong, isn’t it? I can laugh about it now, but it wasn’t funny when it happened! You mentioned my spiritual guru, because I’ve had a number of gurus in my life – the word basically means teacher – Sri Chinmoy was my meditation guru, and, up to that point, I had been with him for five years, and I had to be honest with myself, I wanted to assume responsibility for my own development, which I did and it has continued to this day. That said, I would hate anyone to feel that I had any kind of negative feeling towards my guru, to the contrary, just to put the record straight. Of course, experiences like that will affect a human being quite profoundly, and I’m no exception, so there would be perhaps periods where you question yourself, you question everything you are doing, but I think this is a very important aspect of any kind of creative life.”

It’s fair to say McLaughlin totally immersed himself in music in the months and years that followed.

Writing profusely, for a succession of bands each demanding a different approach, different complexities and a different repertoire, he often moved between ensembles with barely a pause for breath.

At the time, he was not conscious that what he was doing was distancing himself mentally from events that had caused him pain: “I never gave it a second thought, I had a strange childhood with a one parent family, my teen years were particularly difficult, no Dad, and my mother having to bring up five kids, there were lots of problems, but what really saved me was music and I always found my haven, as it were, in music. And to this day the world of music – the universe of music – is a marvellous universe for which I am entirely grateful to be a musician, which I believe is a great privilege, where I have found happiness, comfort, but the idea of me considering the events of my life in music, I never gave it a second thought.”

The Montreux Years contains a fascinating cross-section of McLaughlin’s work, illustrating the variety and scope of projects he put together between 1978 and 2016 – for example, the track 'Friendship', recorded live at the Casino Montreux in 1978, is with the first version of his One Truth Band which never got to make a record, giving this track, which takes up one side of an LP, particular significance.

“I am very happy this track is on the CD and album, because the drummer was Son Ship, a very special person, I got to know him when he was playing with McCoy [Tyner], and I was really taken with his playing, he passed a couple of years ago. He was a very spiritual person, you hear a kind of poem on that track and I used to recite it with him, a lovely poem, it was always a very poignant moment, it always came up in the middle of his drum solo, but not every night. Basically he was waiting for the spirit to move I’m glad we got that on tape. It’s not staged, if you will. But the thing about the One Truth Band was there was a kind of conflict going on between TM Stevens, the bass player, who I really loved too, and Son Ship. I know TM quite well, his health hasn’t been too good recently, but there was a musical conflict going on and in the end, before we even had a chance to record, I really had to do something. So Tony Smith on drums and Fernando Sanders on bass became version two of the One Truth Band, but I really missed that original One Truth Band with Son Ship and T.M. Stevens that’s on The Montreux Years, at least we have that track of the original band format.”

When the One Truth Band was wound up, things were moving fast in McLaughlin’s life: “I abandoned the Mahavishnu Orchestra completely as I wanted to continue with Shakti — they are amazing improvisors in India, both north and south, and improvisation is the heart and soul of jazz music, isn’t it? Actually, Shakti had begun as a very small second group around 1973, and 50 years later we’re still here! So, lots of changes — The One Truth Band, and then 1978-79 is when I ran into Paco [De Lucia] for the first time, then the first guitar trio with Paco, Larry [Coryell] and myself, which by 1981 had Al Di Meola in place of Larry, and this was a big event, both musically and commercially, much bigger than anyone imagined – we reunited in 1996 for a recording session and world tour. And in 1982 I had this commission to write a piece for guitar and orchestra, which was The Mediterranean Concerto – there was a great deal of acoustic work going on in that period, Shakti and the guitar trio, and then back to the electric guitar for the 1984 Mahavishnu.”

In 1984, McLaughlin formed his third, and final, version of Mahavishnu – omitting the word 'Orchestra' – this time with Bill Evans on saxes, Mitch Forman keyboards, Jonas Helborg on bass and Danny Gottlieb on drums, releasing the album Mahavishnu prior to their Casino Montreux performance that same year.

So did the name Mahavishnu raise unrealistic expectations of raising sunken treasure from the original 1971 band?

“The man who organised the tour, he asked me very sincerely, ‘Could we please put Mahavishnu as the name of the band?’ I wanted to make him happy so we used the name. For me, I don’t feel I was betraying anything, and then in 1984 we did the Montreux date, and there are two tracks on The Montreux Years album. The thing is, Bill [Evans], is just an amazing player, and being introduced to him by Miles [Davis] he came highly recommended, and to this day he is a very dear friend, I am a great admirer of his. The band was what it was, it didn’t last long, there was a problem with the keyboard player, Jim Beard, he had lots of things on and there were times at the last moment I had to find another keyboard player, and there were difficulties with that.”

In the late 1980s, he successfully toured as a duo with Paco de Lucia, and The Montreux Years captures their impassioned acoustic playing at the Casino Montreux in 1987 on two tracks – one side of an LP.

By then McLaughlin was also working with a new trio: “That was a great trio, with Trilok Gurtu and the bass player Kai Eckhart. and subsequently with Dominique Di Piazza. That group is not on the album, but I hope we do get to it at some point because to this day, I am very fond of that trio.”

By the mid-1990s, McLaughlin had returned to his roots and formed the band Free Spirits, a trio with Joey DeFrancesco on Hammond Organ and Dennis Chambers on drums. They are captured at the Auditorium Stravinski in 1995.

“What a beautiful band! And Joey was another musician who was introduced to me by Miles, he was 17 years old, and I said, ‘What instrument do you play?’ he said, ‘The Hammond organ.’ And in 1961-62, I was playing with Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, and then playing with the Graham Bond Organisation, and then the Mike Carr Trio – three great Hammond Organ trios.

"And then, when I got the call from Tony [Williams] I didn’t even know what form the band was going to take, and when I arrived in New York, to my great joy there was the great Larry Young, aka Khalid Yasin, on Hammond Organ! The Hammond is part of my musical life: it’s like Mahavishnu, I love it. Shakti, I love it. I loved the guitar trio, I loved the duos with Paco, but that Hammond Organ sound goes back so many years. I would like to get that trio back together [with Joey DeFrancesco and Dennis Chambers on drums] – we played this tune [on The Montreux Years], ‘Sing Me Softly of the Blues’, that’s a great Carla Bley tune, she's a wonderful composer.”

Free Spirits was followed by The Heart of Things band, “It was a natural growth out of the Free Spirits, I wanted to play with Gary Thomas [tenor sax], I’m such a fan of his, and we had Jim Beard on keyboard at one point, then the wonderful Otmaro Ruiz, Victor Williams came in on percussion, Matthew Garrison on bass – and Dennis [Chambers] on drums, of course. What a great band, every band has got its own vibes, got its own atmosphere, got its own soul, but that was a special one.”

The band is caught on the Montreux album in 1998 at the Auditorium Stravinski playing ‘Acid Jazz.’ The album is rounded out by a performance by one of his current bands, The 4th Dimension, from 2016. “It’s like a kind of family, this 4th Dimension. We’ve had some personnel changes over the years, we very much put a lot into that band.”

Reflecting on the 38 years represented on The Monteux Years, McLaughlin says: “In a way I see myself almost as a painter sees his paintings as he looks down in time, they’re all crystallised moments in his creative life, and these albums, they’re like paintings to me, we can’t change them, they’re fixed forever; they are windows into the heart and soul of a musician and his colleagues and this album, I’m really, really happy about it, this Montreux album, they made a very interesting choice – I helped of course – and they are very much about getting this music out of the vaults of Montreux where they have amazing tapes they are beginning to get out for the public.

“So let’s hope they do another, second volume because there’s a lot of stuff they have missed out – Shakti, Mahavishnu, the original Mahavishnu when we played there in 1971, I hope they recorded that, then there’s Mahavishnu II, the 11-piece group that made the album Apocalypse with George Martin, those other bands too, the Guitar Trio, the trio with Trilok Gurtu, for example. Such a lot happened – impossible to put on one album. In music we say you go onstage and you are playing with your trousers hanging down by your ankles: you are standing there you can’t hide in music.

"Generally speaking, one minute into playing music, the music takes over and it’s just joy, basically, the aspects of music – love, joy, beauty, eloquence, elegance – all of them the great aspects of the human spirit. That’s why I love music so much.”

This article originally appeared in the June 2022 issue of Jazzwise magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today