The streaks of grey in his hair give John Mc Laughlin
a distinguished, professional look. The red bowtie
adds a touch of continental class. He wears it well:
it’s just hard for me to accept the fact that my
boyhood hero has turned 50.

Twenty-three years have passed since he travelled
to the United States to play with Tony Williams’
lifetime and Miles Davis. Those were trailblazing
days. People like Miles and Tony were leading the
way down a new path, exploring a marriage
between the language of jazz and the visceral power
of rock.....something that Jimi Hendrix had only
hinted at. And John Mc Laughlin was a key player
on that exciting new scene. Through his scintillating
work with Lifetime, Miles and his own Mahavishnu
Orchestra, he had become the living link between
Hendrix and Coltrane. He stood as a towering
influence on a generation of musicians.

Some people say the fusion movement fizzled by the
mid-70’s; the once-dynamic genre reduced to a
critical joke. But by then, John was into another bag
with Shakti, a revolutionary ensomble that fused the
structures and discipline of Indian classical music
with jazz-like improvisation. Like his main mentor
Miles, he kept moving forward. And there were
several landmarks along the way- his return to
electric music on 1978’s Johnny Mc Laughlin:
Electric Guitarist; the formation of his One Truth
Band in 1979 and his appearence at the “Havana
Jam” in Cuba that same year with an all-star band
called Trio of Doom, featuring bassist Jaco and
Tony Williams; the triumphant acoustic guitar trio
tour in 1980 with Paco de Lucia, yielding the
Grammy Award-winning Friday Night in San
Fransisco; his revival of the Mahavishnu band (in
name only) in 1984; his appearence with Herbie
Hancock and Dexter Gordon in the 1986 film
‘Round Midnight; the formation of his current trio in
1988 with Indian percussion master Trilok Gurtu
and a succession of incredible bassists (Jeff Berlin,
Kai Ekhardt and now the French phenom Dominique
Di Piazza).

As I enter his hotel suite in Manhattan, John
appears jovial and ready for his week long
engagement with the trio at the Blue Note. He is
sitting on a couch, tuning his beautiful hand-crafted
flame maple acoustic guitars, made for him by the
great luthier, Abraham Wechter, who also built his
customized Shakti guitars back in 1976. As he rips
off a few stunning licks it’s clear that he’s fully
recovered from the career-threatening, freak
accident that occured in 1990. Whie watching TV at
home in France, John got his lefthand forefinger
caught in the track of a swiveling television set. As
he recalled at the time, “It was so quick, so fast. I
heard it snap, I saw the end of my finger flopping
around....it was just a nightmare.”

Six stitches and a splint put that finger right, but the
injury forced John to cancel a statside tour with his
trio. Now the release of Que’ Alegria, his debut on
Verve, the trio is out touring with renewed vogor.
And John is once again playing beautiful music with,
as Coltrane put it in his notes to A Love Supreme:
“elation, elegance and exlatation”.

Q: I’m fascinated by the transitional period in
‘68-’69 when jazz and rock started coming
togather. And to me, the first so-called fusion album
that really grabbed rock fans was Jack Johnson.
Miles had flirted with rock forms on In A Silent Way
and Bitches Brew. But there was something about
the raw power of Jack Johnson....I mean you’re
playing power chords on that album like Pete
Townshend!

John: Well you know, that was Miles’ favorite
record. You know how the majority of Jack Johnson
came about? The bulk of the record came out of
some jamming we did in the studio. There was
Herbie playing the most horrible Farfisa organ and
Michael Henderson on bass, Billy Cobham on
drums. We were all in the studio, just waiting for
Miles. He was talking to Teo Macero in another
room and that went on for 10-15 minutes, and I got
bored. I started to play a boogie in E just to have
some fun, that’s all. I was playing these funny kind
of chords that later I used more to advantage in
“Dance of Maya” from 1971’s The Inner Mounting
Flame.... kind of angular chords but all really
realted to the blues. That’s what “Dance of Maya”
is, blues in E, really with some funny angular
chords. And I was really hitting the strings hard,
just going for it. Billy picked it up, Michael picked it
up and in a couple of minutes we were gone. So
finally the door opened and Miles ran in with is
trumpet. The recording light was on and he just
played for about 20 minutes, which I had never seen
him do before. It was a situation where he just
walked in and everything was happening already.
And he played so fine. It was so spontaneous, such
a great moment. That whole record was.

Q: It sounds like you should have gotten a
co-composer credit for some of that album.

John: No, there was no tune. Why even bother to
discuss who wrote what? What happened with all
the musicians who played with Miles in the studio
was strictly Miles’ doing. Let’s make that perfectly
clear. Miles’ records were always quite carefully
directed by him, orchestrated in a way that was not
quite obvious. Because he had that thing, the ability
to make musicians play in a way that they would
not normally think of. He had a way of pulling things
out of them that they were unaware of. He certainly
did it to me. So it was absolutely Miles’ vision, the
way the concepts would go. I think we would have
to put the credit on Miles. We all had ideas.
Everybody would come up with things, a fiff or motif.
But they were all really in function of Miles and his
music. We were only concerned with what we could
do to continue what he was playing. And I think
everyone more or less had that same idea. So it’s
kind of a useless question: who wrote what?
Because the concept and the way the music was
grew and was recorded was truly, absolutely Miles.
And I think that was true even in the later days,
when he got more into funk and hip hop. I know a
lot of people who mocked Miles for that, but not to
me. To me, Miles could do no wrong.

Q: What was your impression of the Miles tribute
concert you attended in Paris last summer?

John: I was very moved, personally. To see Miles
with all those people representing all those years of
music, to see him walk on stage with Wayne Shorter
again, to see him playing with Jackie McLean again
was something else. And of course, the In a Silent
Way band was a highlight with Joe Zawinal and Chic
Corea. Actually, I didn’t play in that band. I played
on two pieces, “Jean Pierre” (from We Want Miles)
and Katia (from You’re Under Arrest). Darryl Jones
was on bass, Al Foster on drums, John Scofield was
also playing guitar. The way Miles set it up, each
tune, as was Miles’ want, had a kind of opposition
element happening. He would pair up players:
Scofield and myself, Wayne Shorter and Bill Evans,
Jackie MacLean and Steve Grossman, Herbie
Hancock and Chic Corea, so that there were always
two soloists on the same instrument, whic was nice
for us. I don’t get much chance to play with
Scofield, whom I love. He’s such a great player. So
every tune was from a different era, different feeling,
different sound, different attitude. Each piece had
its own life to it. And it’s just amazing to think that
it all came from one person. Overall, I think the
whole event had a powerful impact on Miles.
Everybody was so happy to be there. It was like his
birthday party. I really regret that a couple
musicians who should’ve been there couldn’t make
it. Keith Jarrett should’ve been there, Tony Williams
should’ve been there. Jack DeJohnette should’ve
been there. (Umm what about Sonny Rollins John?)
They were very much a part of his groups over the
years. For whatever reasons they weren’t there, but
a lot of musicians did show up. Just to see this
amazing canvas of music, played briefly in
condensed form, it was like repainting a picture. It
was an amazing event and a very moving
experience. In fact, at the end Miles didn’t want to
see anyone except for Katia, my girl, who he had
met about ten years ago. I introduced them to each
other. She was talking to him in his dressing
roomand he was so nostalgic about what had
happened. After the show he went to Italy. We
talked on the phone briefly and I told him how
happy I had been just to be there. And he said he
really enjoyed the whole concert.

Q: How did he seem to you at the time?

John: I could see thet he was not in top form,
health-wise. And I was a little worried about it. But
for many years I had been worrid about him. I
remember 16 years ago I was in his house with
Herbie and we both thought he was going to die
then. But he had always been very tough, very
resilient. You could never imagine that Miles would
die. Its like family. You could never think anyone in
your family will ever die. But I think he must have
had an idea at that Paris concert. Because when he
went in the hospital later he had double pneumonia
and bronchitis and had one heart attack. Around
that time I was speaking to Peter Shukat, who was
an old friend of mine, and had been handling Miles
for the last few years. And I would ask Peter, “Does
he want to live? Does he really want to?” And Peter
would say, “I don’t know.” This was most worrying
of all. Because you can get sick but you need the
will to get better. And nobody knew if he had it at
that point.

Q: That was also true of Jaco Pastorius in the end.
So many people who knew hin thought he was giong
to die years before it actually happened. Some
people thought he was indestructable becaused he
always bounced back from whatever he put himself
through. But at some point, he gave up.

John: I agree with you. I saw Jaco quite some time
before he died and I agree. think he had given it up
already, and that really, really hurt me. Because he
was a man with such talent. I mean, how can you
give up?

Q: Some of his closest friends were really angry at
him for that.

John: Yeah, I’m angry myself. I’m still angry about
it. Yeah, it was sad. I met Jaco in 1973, before he
joined Weather Report. He arrived in New York from
Miami and found out where I was rehearsing. I had
a great bass player at the time in Ralphe Armstrong
but Jaco came by and basically said “I wanna play.”
He was really such a live wire, so full of vitality. So
we jammed and he was amazing. He was looking
for a gig and was broke. I loaned him money to get
his car fixed and he payed me back 11 years later. I
called Tony and said “You should hear this bass
player This guy is amazing.” But Jaco went back
down to Florida and eventually hooked up with Joe
and Wayne, and that was the start of a beautiful
period. I actually got to know him better around
1976-1977 when Shakti did a lot of touring with
Weather Report in the US and Europe. Every night
we would be checking each other out and it was
really a wonderful combonation because the two
bands were so different. Jco was playing great then
and Weather Report was such a great band. They
really had a great impact on contemporary music.
And to see Jaco in his element was really wonderful.

Q: So what happened at the “Havana Jam” with the
trio of doom?

John: It was such a shame. Tony and Jaco and I
had rehearsed here in New York, and what a trio it
was! What a pleasure it was to play with them! Tony
and Jaco were just so much togather. After one
rehearsal, we actually went in to record with Joni
Mitchell (for her Mingus album). We recorded one
tune and then later they wiped Tony and me off the
tracks, which I thought was a shame. But rehearsals
were happening and we went down to Havana with
expectations. We each had a tune we brought into
the trio. We started off our set with my tune, “Dark
Prince,” which was an uptempo C minor blues with
altered changes. It was really a chance stretch, but
Jaco just threw the music down, walked back to his
amp, turned it up to 11 and started playing A major
really loud against it. I was looking at Tony like,
“What is going on here?” It was nothing like the
rehearsals. He did the same to Tony’s tune. Then
he went out and did his whole audience routine. It
was a fiasco, the bay of gigs. And I was so mad at
Jaco. He came off stage saying, “Yeah man, that
was the shit!” and all this. And I told him, “I have
never been more ashamed in my life to be on stage
with somebody. That was the worst shit I ever
heard in my life. I don’t want to see you for at least
a week.” I was really mad at him. Tony was mad at
the time but he wouldn’t say anything. But he got
mad later. We went into the studio later to try
something but there was a big fight between them,
not really a big fight. Tony just flipped out and
smashed his drums and walked out of the studio,
and that really tore Jaco to strips. So it was evident
to me during this period that something was giong
on with Jaco that didn’t really have too much to do
with music. There was something happening in his
mind. I don’t know what it was. It was some kind of
idea or image of himself of what he had to do or
what he was supposed to do. And it was really
crazy. It certainly had nothing to do with what we
were playing. It was strictly showtime. It was sad.
But you can never take away from what he has
done. He single-handedly revolutionized bass guitar.
His sound, his chords, his harmonics. I mean Jaco
just blew the shit open. It’s amazing what he did to
bass guitar.

Q: I’m sure Dominique Di Piazza would attest to
that. You can hear a lot of Jaco in his playing.

John: Of course, Dominique is a great player. But
even today, Jaco stays unique. In the bass guitar
firament, he’s unique. And nothing can take that
away, nothing. Whatever happened afterwards is
just tragic. He had his faults too but who doesn’t?
He was a lovely person. And everybody just wanted
him to be alive and just play. That’s what we’re
here for.

Q: And when I heard your new album (Que Allegria)
I thought...

John: Jaco is alive! It’s like Coltrane. You can listen
to almost any saxophone player today and you
think, “Trane is alive and well.” It’s amazing, it’s
beautiful to see. And for that, we can only thank
people like Jaco. And Dominique, yeah, he’s really
working on his instrument, trying to find his own
way, which is difficult even in the best of times. But I
think he’s doing a great job. He plays very well.

Q: It was generous of you to feature him on that one
track, “Marie.”

John: It’s beautiful what he’s doing there, solo bass,
it’s rare. I think the only other person who did that
was Jaco. And I encourage Dominique to keep going
as much as he can in his own direction, to grow and
evolve. He’s been with us a little over a year now.
And I think the group is the most complete version
of the trio. Whereas before, Trilok and I had a very
strong complicity, almost to the exclusion if the bass
player sometimes, not by chioce but just the way the
music goes. And since Dominique’s been with us,
I’m starting to have a complicity with him that
balances things more. We do a lot of unison playing
togather, which is something that goes back to
bebop, exemplified by Charlie Parker and Dizzie
Gillespie, I love that. It’s beena part of my music all
along, even with Shakti. curiously enough, unison
playing is a tradition you find in India too. And
Dominique is capable of doing it. This is one of the
aspects of complicity that’s growing between
Dominique and myself. We have this kind of
guitaristic relationship developing that’s very
interesting. And I still have great between the two of
them. And so the group itself becomes more whole
now than it’s ever been. The record is great, but
some things have started to happen in live situations
that are truly amazing. It’s like we planted a flower
that’s blossoming now.

Q: You have such a strong hookup with Trilok now.

John: Well, Trilok is an Indoan musician by training
and a jazz musician by affection, so we have a lot in
common. He can shift at a moment’s notice from an
indian groove to an Elvin Jones kind of groove. So
we’re able to move togather in a very easy way, very
instant communication. At any point, we can
dramatically change the musical derivative, and this
means we have a big field to play in. We’re not just
restricted to just one or two particular ways of
communicating. And he has a great sence of humor
too in the way he plays, I love humor. I take myself
very seriously but htere’s a point beyond which you
take yourself so seriously you get heavy, and I don’t
want that to happen to the music.

Q: Are you doing any other playing outside of the
trio?

John: Yes, I continue to play with a symphony
orchestra. I do several concerts a year. I have a
couple schedueled with a great American orchestra,
the New World Symphony in Miami, which is an
orchestra of musicians between the ages of 20 and
35. We have two concerts in November. It’s my
second concerto and we’ll probably record it
sometime next year. I also have a group with Katia
and Marielle Labeque (world renowned classical
duo) which exists in europe called 20th Century
Living. The music is all by 20th century composers,
classical and jazz: Stravinsky, Bartok, Bernstein,
arrangements of Monk tunes with everything written
out. In Europewe’re able to play with this group in
great concert halls and have really mixed
audiences, classical and jazz. It works very well. We
tried to get some gigs over here but nobody’s
interested. The difference is, in Europe you have art
subsidies, whereby governments contribute money
to make these programs happen. They see them as
cultural events that need to be promoted simply
because it’s a good cultural event, that’s all. You
don’t need another reason.

Q: That’s the failing of shortsighted American
politicians. They don’t see the connection between
cultural events and social problems.

John: Exactly, and when I see symophony
orchestras going bankrupt in America, this really
frightens me.

Q: The group that is supposed to be funding artistic
expression in the States, the National Endowment
for the Arts, and is being raped by the Bush
Administration and the whole fundamentalist right
wing.

John: Well, money is petrol in the motor, isn’t it? No
money, no orchestras.

Q: Other than that gig you played with Miles last
summer, you probably don’t have much use for
electric guitars these days?

John: Not at all. Not since I formed this trio back in
‘88. I’ve been concentrating on acoustic gut string
gutar, which is the guitar I discovered when I was
11. So maybe I’m reverting back to my childhood.
But there’s definitely something there for me. I love
the tone and it’s a very percussive instrument, much
more responsive in the upper register than a steel
string guitar. No comparison. But I would like to
play electric guitar again some day. As a matter of
fact, I would like to record with Elvin Jones and a
Hammond organ player, and for that I would have
to play electric guitar. Or with Tony Williams. I love
those guys, Tony is still the great revolutionary on
drums. And Elvin, who I never had the chance to
play with, is so much a part of my growing up,
listening to him and Trane. I really like this idea.

Q: Elvin did a record last year with Sonny Sharrock
(Ask the Ages) that was a very powerful blowing
album.

John: Really! I haven’t heard Sonny Sharock in a
long time. I remember playing with Sonny on one of
Wayne Shorter’s records, Super Nova. I knew Sonny
from back in 1968 when we played the Berlin
Anti-Festival togather.

Q: Does your switch to acoustic guitar have anything
to do with hearing loss from playing so loud with
electric guitar?

John: No, although I do have a little dip around 4K,
but just a small one. So I’m in pretty good shape.
Actually, I have other problems with listening to loud
music. When it’s above a certain volume I really
miss the tenderness that’s part of the music, part of
human life, the sublety and feelings. And that all
goes by the board for me when everything’s cranked
up. I’m not interested in doing that. I don’t want to
blast people, I want to go into the music. I don’t
want to confront them with a wall of pressure. I am
convinced personally if the music is open, if it has
more space in it, then the listener’s mind will go
inside and start their imagination and will start to
play inside the music. And that, for me is really
what’s happening. At that point, the listener
becomes lost in an individual sence and is found in
a greater sence, just as we are when we play the
music. And if we are able to do it, then the listener
is giong to be able to do it. And the music will be
able to do it’s thing, which is, in fact, heal. That’s
the great power of music, it heals the human spirit.
So I am convinced now that people should’t be
bombarded by music. Maybe I did before, but 20
years ago was another era, the Vietnam war and the
whole thing, freedom now, the black intellectual
movement and how it was repressed, flower power,
LSD and all of that, where we were going, it was a
very different period. Certainly for me. So I consider
things differently, and for me, I see things actually
differently. And for me I would prefer to see more
space and more subltleties in music. Because the
act of listening to music is very intimate, as it is to
play. And if some kind of intimate action can take
place inside of the music, I think this is what is
really happening.

Q: So how do you feel now that you’re so immersed
in more intimate acoustic music about being
confronted by your own electric past? In the last
couple of years, Columbia has reissued Jack
Johnson and Electric Guitarist, for instance.

John: They’re great, I love them. They’re all a part
of me. And today there’s still an electric guitarist
inside me. I love that too, but it’s another way. And I
don’t rule out the possibility of playing the electric
again, especially if it’s with Tony or Elvin. But I
don’t know about that sound anymore. Waht you
hear on Que Alegria, that’s what my sound is all
about now. That’s my voice now. And I don’t know if
it’s feasible to play an acoustic guitar with
somebody bashing drums. That’s tough. The giutar
doesn’t like it. At a certain volume, she freaks out.
And the only way to get around that is to plug in the
electric guitar. And I don’t know what my voice is on
that instrument anymore. It would require going
back to the lab and finding out where my head is as
far as an electric sound is concerned. Maybe it will
come back quick, maybe it won’t. I don’t know.

Q: That’s a whole other woodshedding period.

John: You bet it is. And I may find the time, even if
it’s just a couple of days, to go into the studio and
and flounder around and find out what I don’t like.
Sometimes by the process of elimination you find
out where you need to go, so we’ll see what
happens.

Q: I recently saw a bootleg album of that jam you
and Hendrix did togather, it was selling for
something like $40.

John: What a ripoff! There was not too much to that.
It was just like a party in the studio. That was never
intended to be released.

Q: That’s been happening with Jaco, so much
inferior stuff has come out since he died, some of it
is just Walkman recordings in nightclubs.

John: That’s terrible, but what are you gonna do?
These people have no scruples. They have no honor.
They’re just looking to make a quick buck off a
dead man’s name. It’s really a shame. This disgusts
me. They’re just mercenaries with no morals, these
people. But they’re out there so what can we do?

Q: Keep playing.

John: That’s it. That’s all we can do.

Mc Laughlin’s gear: Abraham Wechter acoustic
guitar with D’Addario strings, equipped with a
Fishman Hexaphonic transducer capable of
providing a separate output for each of the guitar’s
six strings. Those signals are sent to his Photon
Guitar Synthesizer (made by Phitech). MIDI
connections are forwarded to two book-sized
Yamaha TX-7 synthesizers.

The signal from the Fishman Piezo transducer used
to pick up the guitar’s acoustic sound, is sent
through a TC digital 31 band eq and BSS DPR 901
dynamic eq. In addition, two Lexicon reverbs (PCM
70 and LXP 1) and a Newmann KM 85 microphone
with a Klark Teknik DN 360, 31 band eq.