Stay home, stay safe, work on those Mahavishnu tunes…

Just ‘out’ today, it seems: a ‘grey area’ live album featuring three US radio broadcasts 1971-72. I’m posting here rather than as a noticeboard item cos I don’t have an image to upload (a required part of posting a Noticeboard item). The 1971 recording, incidentally, is the earliest MO live recording around.

https://music.apple.com/se/album/clouds-of-unknowing-live/1494731602

Forty-seven years ago yesterday, 30 December 1973, the Mahavishnu Orchestra Mk1 (John McLaughlin, Jan Hammer, Jerry Goodman, Rick Laird Laird, Billy Cobham) imploded in the snow.

Here is an extract from ‘Bathed in Lightning’ covering that period, and a fabulous recording from their fourth-last-ever concert, New York’s Avery Fisher Hall on December 27th:

EXTRACT

Over two editions of Britain’s New Musical Express back in July 1973 Ian MacDonald had taken stock of John McLaughlin’s career thus far, from a time when he ‘had a reputation for being one of the remotest and most difficult people to work with in London’ to his current status as a ‘Hero’ who ‘bestrides the world of the electric guitar like a solitary colossus’. ‘Ridiculous speed is the transcendental essence of McLaughlin’s recent work with the Mahavishnu Orchestra,’ he wrote. ‘[T]he fastest passages in The Inner Mounting Flame and Birds Of Fire are now being played so swiftly that the ear has difficulty in separating bar from bar, let alone note from note… This, in purely musical terms, means that in about six months’ time the Orchestra will be no more than a shrill aural blur with the members fading visibly into hyper-space, like Captain » Continue Reading.

…somebody called John McLin – maybe the presenter thought there were no Laughs involved. The walk-on music is ghastly – but hearty congratulations to John for the award, for his solo on the Mahavishnu re-run ‘Miles Beyond’ on ‘Live At Ronnie Scott’s’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL3pGb8OEIU

I’ve hesitated to start a new thread on this, as I posted a tour heads-up thread and a ‘wow – he’s back to double-neck’ thread within the past couple of months, and I fear annoying people with too much Maha… But… dammit, John McLaughlin has just played his last ever tour in America, where he made his name (relocating to New York in 1969 after a remarkable 10-year British career under the radar, but popping up in all sorts of places, traversing all sorts of scenes – a Zelig of the Swinging 60s in London) and where the Mahavishnu Orchestra burned bright and then burned out, 1971-75.

It may well be that he has played his last ever show (as opposed to tour) in America – at UCLA Royce Hall, Los Angeles, a couple of days ago. The tour was remarkable for him playing a load of Mahavishnu tunes for the first time in decades, including a full separate two-band set of the stuff with tour co-headliners Jimmy Herring’s Invisible Whip.

Here then is a glimpse of the last homage in America to the Greatest Band That Ever Was, ‘Eternity’s Breath’:

The great man is touring the US for the last time in the month few weeks, playing Mahavishnu music in quantity for the first time in decades. Here’s his promo vid:

I’ve just noticed that someone has posted a high quality version of the great ‘Smile of the Beyond’, from MO II’s Montreux performance in 1974 (which, bafflingly, was among the 60-odd minutes omitted from the official DVD of the show) – and it has to be shared!

Rare in the MO canon in being primarily a vocal item, featuring the exquisite Gayle Moran, the studio recording of this was among the late George Martin’s favourite productions, done in one take.

But fear not, bolted on to the song is a 20-minute wig-out.