AAJ Review: John McLaughlin & Paco de Lucía, Paco and John: Live at Montreux 1987

[jkelman]

My review of the two-CD/one-DVD set, John McLaughlin & Paco de Lucía, Paco and John: Live at Montreux 1987, today at All About Jazz.

It's truly a shame that, all too often, artists with diverse careers become pigeon-holed, defined by the primary genre in which they first achieved notoriety. Take guitarist John McLaughlin, for instance. Ask most jazz fans about him and what will first come out of most of their mouths will include either the words "fusion," "jazz-rock" and/or Miles Davis, in any permutation/combination (not that there's anything wrong with that). Those a little further in the know might also be aware of his longstanding investigation into the nexus of eastern and western music with his Indo-collaboration, Shakti.

But while it may be true that McLaughlin first made a big name for himself through his raw, electrified work with Davis, Tony Williams = 11412 and, ultimately, his own group, the groundbreaking, high-velocity, even higher-decibel Mahavishnu Orchestra--and continues to explore all things electric with his 4th Dimension band (now his longest-lasting band ever)--McLaughlin's career has always been considerably more expansive.

McLaughlin's first album as a leader, 1969's Extrapolation (Polydor), was an impressive first shot across the bow of the jazz world--an interpretive, explorative and, yes, extrapolative album of free-leaning post-bop. His second record was, a gritty, rock-intense quartet record, Devotion (Douglas, 1970), that took his work with Williams to the next level. His third release, My Goal's Beyond (Douglas, 1971), was an all-acoustic affair, with one side featuring McLaughlin alone (or overdubbed) on steel-string acoustic, performing a combination of jazz standards and original material; and a second side that featured a still-acoustic group that, with the inclusion of drummer Billy Cobham and violinist Jerry Goodman, may not have possessed Mahavishnu Orchestra's electrified intensity, raw energy or sheer improvisational power, but was still the place where the seeds for Mahavishnu Orchestra--and McLaughlin's love affair with Indian music--first began to germinate.

And that's just McLaughlin's first three albums. In a career now in its sixth decade and with nearly fifty albums as a leader or co-leader, the guitarist has done plenty, from nylon-string-with-embedded-synth guitar trios and tributes to Bill Evans in collaboration with a classical guitar quartet to cast-of-dozens collaborations like 1995's The Promise (Verve), and duos with artists including keyboardist Chick Corea...and, perhaps, McLaughlin at his most intimate, with the great and, sadly, late flamenco virtuoso, Paco de Lucia. While McLaughlin's collaborative trio with De Lucía and guitarist Al Di Meola was documented on three commercially released albums, the only place where McLaughlin's duo with de Lucía could previously be found was in the now out-of-print (and outrageously expensive) 17-CD box set, The Montreux Concerts (Warner Music, 2003), where the pair's 1987 performance at the world-renowned Swiss music festival can be found in its complete, two-disc, 92-minute glory (along with, on the final disc, a second performance, by the duo, of Brazilian guitarist/pianist Egberto Gismonti's "Frevo").

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[Watanabe]

I was never able to get into any of the Di Meola, Coryell, Mclaughlin, De Lucia mash ups.

De Lucia is just such a monster and so incredibly musical in his acoustic phrasing that none of the other guys really match up or fit that well stylistically with him...well i suppose he's the odd one out tbf, being a more strictly traditional player.I enjoy much of Mclaughlin's acoustic playing in other contexts but Paco makes that characterstically stiff(not a bad thing on much of his other projects) machine gun phrasing sound ugly and rhythmically uninteresting.They don't fit well together as stylists imo.