SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM MUSICIAN Is there a theme guiding the album? he was doing. But the Beatles were doing TOOLS OF THE TRADE Not at all. The music just came. But each it, and the Beach Boys, too—we were all piece has an anecdote behind it. The looking for answers to these profound opening piece, “Trancefusion,” is from my existential questions: Who am I? What does John McLaughlin played some of his favorite old hippie days, my trance days. Even it all mean? What is this thing called God? guitars on Now Here This including one he today, when I meditate, I go into another The big questions of life. That was tied with received as a gift from PRS owner Paul state of consciousness that some would my musical search. It took me a long time. Reed Smith. “It’s a standard model with call a trance. Trance is not a bad word, and Some people get it younger and quicker, McCarty pickups and a whammy bar, and is fusion is a label that’s been put on me for but not me. The whole of the ’60s was really a wonderful instrument,” he says. the last 40 years. But I like the real word research and work. “There are two pieces on the new transfusion, too. It’s a healthy word. When album where I play MIDI through a Godin you put fresh blood into someone, you make Miles Davis named a song after you. Freeway, which has the new wireless MIDI them feel better. In the studio, he never had any titles. When adaptor made by Andras Szalay that will be we went into Bitches Brew, I had a few marketed by Fishman,” he adds. “The one What was your recording process? ideas in my arsenal. I can only assume that I have is a prototype, but it works great. Live in the studio. What can replace that it was his way of saying thank you. And Finally, a MIDI guitar that can be played! The thing that happens when you play together? there was another one, “Go Ahead John,” on Godin Freeway is a fine electric guitar that When we go onstage we’re talking about the Big Fun album. I’ve played a lot the past couple of years. the relationships we enjoy with each other, And purely for affection, I have a white Strat and the music and our instruments and even What was Miles like to work with? similar to the one I gave Jeff Beck in the the world at large. All of that comes through He was such a genial person—he helped 1970s, and a reissue 1958 black Les Paul when you start to play with people. me survive those early days when we were Custom with Bigsby.” making peanuts. He’d stuff money in my McLaughlin has long focused on pocket. He had this gift for bringing out of electric guitars, but hasn’t abandoned his ‘What can replace musicians things they didn’t know they could acoustics. “I have a custom nylon-string made do. But at the same time he was waiting for by Abraham Wechter, and it’s a dream,” he that thing that the musicians to spontaneously give him says. “I recorded the Thieves & Poets record something. In November of 1970, we were with it. The tone is extraordinary, and it’s very happens when you in a club outside Boston, just the two of us, lovely. The guitar is pictured on the album and he turned to me and said, “It’s time you cover. Another acoustic I’m very attached to play together?’ form your own band.” is a 1980s Gibson J-200 with steel strings and a stunning tone.” Why do you prefer to self-produce? Describe Mahavishnu’s early days. When it comes to amplification, “I use na McLaughlin I I know what I want. It’s not difficult to What amazed me was the degree of three tube pre-amps,” McLaughlin continues. produce an album. If you don’t have a clear popularity we had very quickly. I knew “In my rig is the Zendrive—which I recorded idea of what you want, it’s good to bounce the band was killing. It was beautiful—the JOHN MCLAUGHLIN ideas off of somebody. But as soon as we experience we were all having was amazing. started playing the new music I was clear And fortunately we happened to be there At 70, the guitar virtuoso still revels in his dynamic musical journey on how it should be. at a time when people were receptive to it. But the popularity was a blessing and By Jeff Tamarkin Do you write everything before heading a curse, one of the elements that led to to the studio? the dissolution of the group—too much JOHN MCLAUGHLIN REMEMBERS SOME ODD ADVICE HE as The Inner Mounting Flame, Mahavishnu combined the complexity It was basically set up, except for the solos. popularity, too quickly. once received from Miles Davis—cryptic words at the time, but later of jazz and the muscle of rock. McLaughlin had already made waves I try to provoke them, because I need made perfect sense. It was 1969, and the young guitar master was by then, playing with jazz drummer Tony Williams, and working further provocation, too. That’s why you have to When did you get into Indian music? working in the studio with the jazz titan when “Miles made this Zen with Davis on the landmark Bitches Brew, which included a track play together. We don’t want to play what It was already there in the ’60s. First I was statement,” recalls McLaughlin. “He told me, ‘Play like you don’t know that not only featured the guitarist but bore his name. McLaughlin we’ve already played. The whole point of into the philosophy, then I discovered the how to play guitar.’” Davis wanted McLaughlin to free his mind and has remained an active musical seeker since, and has collaborated improvisation is to get to this new kind of music. It tied in with what Coltrane did, approach the music without preconceptions. with a wide range of musicians ranging from Carlos Santana to collective creation. And the great thing about because Indian music is so inclusive—it More than four decades later, McLaughlin, 70, still takes tablas maestro Zakir Hussain, with whom he co-led the acoustic, a studio recording is you can do another integrates every dimension of the human that counsel to heart, and it’s evident on his newest release, Indian-influenced group Shakti in the ’70s and ’90s. performance, or five, to find the best one. psyche from the most capricious to the most Now Here This, which offers some of the most intense music of Now Here This finds John McLaughlin in a decidedly electric- sublime. In jazz, we use harmony, so we Ina McLaughlin his career. It’s the second with McLaughlin’s 4th Dimension band— music frame of mind, though he never knows where he’ll head How did your musical ideas develop? can take the drone and extend its harmonic keyboardist Gary Husband, bassist Etienne M’Bappé and drummer next—only that he has no intention of slowing down. Says McLaughlin, It’s a lifetime search. I realized a long time possibilities, which they cannot do in India. Ranjit Barot—recalling the electricity of his groundbreaking ’70s jazz who lives in the south of France, “When the music stops coming, ago I know very little about almost nothing. But they are master improvisers, and the fusion group, the Mahavishnu Orchestra. On pioneering albums such I’ll stop, but at the moment I’m very happy.” But that’s beside the point. The search for drummers are second to none. some kind of musical and spiritual identity began in the ’60s. It came out of the whole How did Shakti form? with recently—and also the Seymour Duncan ‘The search for musical and spiritual identity came psychedelic scene. And don’t forget, John In 1969 I met Zakir Hussain, and we Twin Tube. Plus there’s one of my oldest Coltrane had just come out with A Love played in front of [Indian sarod master] favorites, the Mesa-Boogie V-Twin. I like out of the psychedelic scene in the ’60s.’ Supreme. That was a wonderful stimulus— Ali Akbar Khan in 1971. Something magical them all, and the one I choose just depends even though it took me a year to hear what happened between Zakir and me. By this on the mood I’m in.” 62 63 M mag 22_cs6.indd 62 10/18/12 11:15 PM M mag 22_cs6.indd 63 10/18/12 11:14 PM SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM MUSICIAN Inset: Ina McLaughlin Javier Etxezarreta/Landov Onstage in Spain, 2011 Gary Husband, Ranjit Barot, John McLaughlin, Etienne M’Bappé ‘Indian music integrates every dimension of the human psyche ORCHESTRA TO REMEMBER from the capricious to the sublime.’ “Mahavishnu Orchestra is part of my personal history,” says McLaughlin. “But I’m not there time, I had the second version of Mahavishnu a dream I had. I called Clive Davis, who anymore. I have no desire to go onstage with with Jean-Luc Ponty in the band, and I was was then the head of Columbia Records, other old-age pensioners, playing music we also jamming with this young teacher from and said, “I had this nice dream about did 40 years ago.