John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra
Fusion began when Miles said the time was right. It ended when a wall of silence proved unsurpassable.
HELLO EARLY 1971
It was October 1970. I was playing with Miles [Davis] in this club called Lennie’s On The Turnpike, right near Boston. I’d had a really rotten night, I just played like a dog. And when I was busy apologising to Miles, out of the blue he says, “It’s time to form your own band.” And I took it very seriously because I trusted him implicitly.
I’d run into [drummer] Billy Cobham on the
Jack Johnson recording [1971 Miles LP], and we became very tight. He was the first person I called. A month later, I got a call from Miroslav Vitouš, he said, “I’m putting a band together with Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter and it’s going to be called Weather Report, and we’d like you in it.” I said, “Sounds fantastic, but Miles has given me the word…” He understood, and said, “I have a friend who’s from Prague, Jan Hammer, he’s a great piano player, he’s out in California right now with Sarah Vaughn.” “He’s playing with Sarah Vaughn?!” I talked to Jan, I said, “You know, we’re moving out of that classical format here. And he said, “I need to break out also.” Then Jerry Goodman came – I didn’t want a jazz violinist, I wanted a rhythm blues or blues player really – and Rick [Laird, bass].
Billy and I had started going through the tunes at SIR studios in Midtown, so by the time Rick, Jerry and Jan came in, they had this rock-solid kind of tightness between the drums and the guitar to lean on, you know? I think that really helped them feel a way into it. We were very strong together. It just felt very right, from the very beginning.
We had instant success, opening for John Lee Hooker at the Whiskey in Greenwich Village. People were gobsmacked. I don’t know what John Lee Hooker thought of us, maybe he thought we were just crazy. He wouldn’t have been the only one. We got flak from jazz musicians, saying, “This ain’t jazz!” But you know, what’s jazz? As Miles said, “It’s a white man’s word.” I kind of like that. And anyway, I didn’t care, because I really believed in the music.
We’d had this great success, with lots of money and girls and you know, drugs, if you’re interested. But I was very much involved in my spiritual discipline – for me, after a concert, I’d go back to my hotel, order a salad, meditate, go to sleep, you know. I didn’t hang out, get high and blah-blah-blah. In that sense, it could have been interpreted as anti-social behaviour, not intentionally.
There was the point where I was hanging out with Carlos Santana, and we had the kind of dialogue that I didn’t really enjoy with the other guys. We did [1973 LP] Love Devotion Surrender,a
real labour of love, and went on tour, with Billy. At the end of the tour we were going to rejoin Mahavishnu Orchestra to continue on to Japan. And something happened. When we got on the plane, Jerry and Jan wouldn’t even say hello to me. By the second night, I said in the bandroom, “If you think I’m the worst asshole in the world, fine, spit it out, I’ll fix it.” But until the end of the Japanese tour, not one word from them. The really weird thing is that they were playing their hearts out, giving 100 per cent musically, but off-stage, stony silence.
At the end of the tour, I said, “If you’re not going to speak to me, I’m not gonna play with you, because this is silly, this is in the silly zone.” They continued, so I said, “OK, we’ve got about five, six months of concerts, then that’s it.” And that’s exactly how it happened. Until the very end, not one word.
To arrive at such an acrimonious situation was baffling to me, and just really sad, because I really loved these guys. It ended with a whimper, not with a bang. We could have done a final tour and then said goodbye, with a good feeling. I tried that later, but I couldn’t get Jan to agree. That’s why I use this word ‘limbo’, because the story of this band is like a long fade-out. I gave it a tremendous amount of thought – why? And the only reason I can come up with is human nature, you know, and that I was into my trip – I mean, I’m still into it – which may have been misinterpreted. But, you know, such is life.
John McLaughlin: The Montreux Years is out now on BMG. He plays London Barbican (May 28), Manchester Bridgewater Hall (30) and Edinburgh Usher Hall (31).