Unlike his former employer, Miles Davis, John McLaughlin talks to the audience and smiles a lot. He displays a good sense of camaraderie with the band – there is a lot of hugging, smiling and namasteying. He shows respect for the audience by starting on the dot of the announced time of 20.00 and finishing on the dot of 21.30, with no support band and no interval. I like that. He does one encore in response to a standing ovation from a full house. That is a mercy to those of us subject to the whims of the Circle Line and Southern Rail. He told the audience it was such a relief to be back on the road again after two and a half years of enforced unemployment and cancellations because of Covid. He was in fine fettle for 80-plus, slim in drainpipe trousers dancing about the stage. He has an impressive helmet of white hair, a fine barnet to equal even mine.
I was relieved to find my seat with no difficulty – I had anxious memories if wandering around the Barbican Centre in years gone by like a lost soul. When I sat down, there were many empty seats around me but they were filled as people drifted in with drinks in their hands. People even drifted in after the music had started. One can sympathise with people who have transport problems but these gobshites had time to get a drink. The fact that drinks were allowed meant that there were further disturbances because people had to go to the toilet. The man sitting next to me had a drink but he was in his seat in good time. He took a few pictures with his phone and left at 20.20. Odd!
John McLaughlin
Like Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame, McLaughlin was an in-demand session musician in the London studios of the early 60s. He gave guitar lessons to Jimmy Page. He played on sessions for Bowie and the Stones and was on Black Is Black by Los Bravos. He did not enjoy session work but it improved his sight-reading and improvisation skills as well as his income. He also played with the influential Alexis Korner band Blues Incorporated in the early 60s before moving on to Georgie Fame’s Blue Flames and Brian Auger. In 1963, at the age of 21, he joined the Graham Bond Quartet with future Cream members Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. I saw the Graham Bond Organisation in 1966 but I don’t think McLaughlin was with them then, Baker having fired him for being “a miserable moaner”.
In January 1969, McLaughlin recorded his debut album Extrapolation in London. It features John Surman on saxophone and Tony Oxley on drums. I still have that album and am still amazed by it. He moved to the US in 1969 and joined Tony Williams’s Lifetime. Jack Bruce joined that group to provide bass and vocals on its second album, Turn It Over, released in 1970. A recording from the Record Plant, NYC, dated 25 March 1969, exists of McLaughlin jamming with Jimi Hendrix. Williams had been Miles Davis’s drummer and McLaughlin teamed up with Davis for In a Silent Way in 1969. (Joe Zawinul wrote the title track). Another album I snapped up as soon as it came out. McLaughlin worked with Davis again on Bitches Brew (which has a track named after him), Live-Evil, On the Corner, Big Fun and A Tribute to Jack Johnson. McLaughlin returned to the Davis band for one night of a week-long club date, recorded and released as part of the album Live-Evil and of the Cellar Door boxed set.
Indian music was a big influence. I have a wonderful album of McLaughlin’s acoustic playing from 1971, My Goal’s Beyond. This was inspired by McLaughlin’s decision to follow the Indian spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy, to whom he had been introduced in 1970 by Larry Coryell’s manager. It was on this album that McLaughlin took the name “Mahavishnu”. In 1973, McLaughlin collaborated with Carlos Santana, also a disciple of Sri Chinmoy at the time, on an album of devotional songs, Love Devotion Surrender, which featured interpretations of Coltrane compositions. McLaughlin also worked with the jazz composers Carla Bley and Gil Evans.
I saw the Mahavishnu Orchestra live in 1973. At the Barbican concert, someone behind me was complaining that McLaughlin was not loud enough. The Mahavishnu Orchestra was seriously loud! This line-up was violinist Jerry Goodman, (from the rock band The Flock) keyboardist Jan Hammer (from Czechoslovakia, introduced by Miroslav Vitous), bassist Rick Laird, (from Dublin via New Zealand, Brian Auger and Ronnie Scott) and drummer Billy Cobham (from Panama via Horace Silver and Miles Davis). They performed a technically difficult and complex (and loud) style of music that fused electric jazz and rock with Eastern and Indian influences. This band helped establish fusion as a new and growing style. McLaughlin’s playing at this time was distinguished by fast solos and non-western musical scales. I was saddened to read in Mojo recently that this incarnation of the band ended with none of the members speaking to each other.
McLaughlin is too long in the tooth for me to cover his entire career. As I have a box set of their albums, I will mention his acoustic playing with Shakti (energy). The group featured L Shankar (violin), Zakir Hussain (tabla), Thetakudi Harihara Vinayakram (ghatam) and Ramnad Raghavan (mridangam). McLaughlin played a custom-made steel-string J-200 acoustic Gibson guitar which featured two tiers of strings over the soundhole: a conventional six-string configuration and seven strings strung underneath at a 45-degree angle – these were independently tuneable “sympathetic strings” much like those on a sitar or veena. The instrument’s vina-like scalloped fretboard enabled McLaughlin to bend strings far beyond the reach of a conventional fretboard.
Ranjit Barot
New Dimension’s drummer is Ranjit Barot from Mumbai. He has been an integral part of some of AR Rahman’s work through the years and has contributed to the scores of many Bollywood movies as well as doing a bit of acting.
He has performed with Ravi Shankar’s ensemble, Jazzmine, featuring John Handy, George Adams and Mike Richmond of Mingus Dynasty, Swedish guitarist Jonas Hellborg, Wayne Krantz, British sax player Tim Garland and Armenian multi-instrumentalist Arto Tunçboyacıyan.
Gary Husband
McLaughlin introduced the keyboard player as a fellow Yorkshireman. McLaughlin is from Doncaster, Husband from Leeds. I wondered why there were two drum kits on the stage. The reason for this was that Husband does drum solos in addition to his keyboard work. He joined The Syd Lawrence Orchestra when he was 16 as their full-time drummer. He picked up session or touring work with artists or acts such as Lulu and The Bachelors among many others. Husband also frequently played in his home town with visiting jazz soloists from London in pubs and music venues.
He moved to London when he was 18 and played piano or drums with the Mike Carr Trio, Barbara Thompson’s Paraphernalia, Gary Boyle Trio, the Morrissey–Mullen band, (I have seen all of those live) Jeff Clyne’s Turning Point, occasionally recording with the BBC Big Band and frequently picking up freelance work performing at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club.
Gary Husband’s Force Majeure, his group from 2004 to 2005, featured Mahavishnu Orchestra electric violinist Jerry Goodman, trumpeter Randy Brecker. He has also worked with former Mahavishnu drummer Billy Cobham, Jeff Beck, Eumir Deodato, Gil Evans, Bob Berg, Gary Moore, Joe Lovano, Al Jarreau, Norma Winstone, Biréli Lagrène, Didier Lockwood, Larry Coryell, Mike Stern, Soft Machine, Robin Trower, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce. He has even recorded with Jimmy Nail!
Etienne Mbappe
He was born in Cameroon and went to France in 1978 when he was 14. At that time, he was playing guitar. He took up the bass in 1984 because there were a lot of guitar players in Paris but not many bassists. He got invited to do a lot of session work and played in many multicultural fusion bands. People were noticing him. “Even the French national orchestra began to take notice of me. The musical director said, ‘Hey, I want you in our orchestra!’” Quincy Jones was impressed by a song he wrote and they are still in touch. When he was playing with Salif Keita, he met Joe Zawinul and played in his band. When he was working with Dee Dee Bridgewater he met Ray Charles and played on his very last recording.
What about the gloves? “Initially it was just for a joke; when I was learning my scales I didn’t want to look at my hand, so I covered it with a towel… Then my wife said to me, “Why don’t you use gloves instead?” So she gave me her woolen gloves, but they broke in a second! So then she suggested silk gloves, because some people use them when they’re skiing. So I tried that and I just loved the sound. I did some experiments playing the bass with and without them and there was no question about it, the sound is much better with!”
“I’ve had musicians such as Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller asking for the secret is to my sound. They can’t believe it something so simple as the gloves.”
Meself 