Rick Laird (05/02/1941 – 04/07/2021)

No doubt Rick Laird will be chiefly remembered for his barrier-breaking work with the Mahavishnu Orchestra from 1971-73, but his career took several different turns. Born in Dublin, he emigrated aged 16 with his family to New Zealand, where he switched from guitar to bass. After playing there with Mike Nock and in Australia, he moved to London in 1962 to study classical bass at the Guildhall. His early association with the Brian Auger Group (which included a young John McLaughlin) ended because he was unwilling to play electric bass, and from 1964-66 he worked in the house rhythm-section at Ronnie Scott’s, replacing another emigré-to-be Malcolm Cecil. He’s heard on live recordings done by Les Tomkins (with Scott’s permission) featuring such as Roland Kirk, Wes Montgomery, Yusef Lateef, Ben Webster and Sonny Rollins. He also played on a 1965 Scott studio album and worked with him on Rollins’s soundtrack recordings for the movie Alfie.

He then obtained a scholarship to Berklee in 1966 and, finally taking an interest in fretted bass guitar, was particularly inspired after hearing Tony Williams’ Lifetime including, of course, McLaughlin. Meanwhile, he was the bassist in Buddy Rich’s big-band (1969-71) until McLaughlin invited him to join the eclectic personnel of the initial Mahavishnu Orchestra, with whom he appeared on their first three albums before that edition broke up. After that headline-grabbing stint, he played with Stan Getz, Chick Corea, Richie Cole and others, sometimes working on upright bass. The one album under his own name was released in Europe in 1979 (Soft Focus, featuring Joe Henderson) but, not long after, he told musician-writer Bill Kirchner that he was frustrated with low-paying jazz gigs. From 1982, like musicians Bill Perkins and Stan Levey before him, he focussed his energies on photography, and published his portraits of jazz greats online in 2009.

Although not featured as a soloist with Mahavishnu, his virtuosic playing updated the traditional anchor role of the bass. As his erstwhile colleague Billy Cobham wrote on Facebook, “He played what was necessary to keep the rest of us from going off our musical rails.”