George Varga
POP MUSIC CRITIC

October 26, 2003

John McLaughlin has been hailed as one of the world's greatest guitarists since the early 1970s. A masterful instrumentalist, bandleader and composer, his ability to fuse jazz, blues, rock and Indian classical music is even more notable than his collaborations with Miles Davis, Carlos Santana and Jeff Beck.

But few of his fans know that McLaughlin, whose stunning new orchestral album, "Thieves & Poets," was released Oct. 14, started his career as a pop studio-session guitarist in England in the 1960s.

That was when he recorded, mostly as an uncredited sideman, with everyone from Herman's Hermits and a very young David Bowie to Marianne Faithfull and Los Bravos (on the group's lone hit, "Black Is Black"). He also contributed guitar parts to albums by such short-lived bands as the Frays, the Hairy Ones and Twice As Much, on whose 1966 debut future Led Zeppelin leader Jimmy Page played alongside McLaughlin.

It was a lucrative, yet intensely unsatisfying, profession for McLaughlin, whose official-record company biography mentions his jazz and blues work during this period with Graham Bond and Ginger Baker, but not one of McLaughlin's pop recordings.

It's not surprising, then, that he can't recall if he also did sessions at the time with the budding Rolling Stones, the Night-Timers and Sandy Brown & His Gentlemen (on an album called "Friends: Hair at Its Hairiest").

"Believe me, when you're a session man, sometimes you don't even know who the artist is unless they have the courage to come down and sing on the session," McLaughlin, 61, said recently from Manhattan.

"I remember doing things with Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick, and that was great. I also did things with Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck and Petula Clark, and I was ready to kill myself. I thought I was going to die, and I probably would have if I'd continued.

"It was a very hard life because you have to sublimate every part of yourself. You're a machine. You can make a lot of money, but that's it. And you'll be playing some dismal music, I mean, really dismal."

To demonstrate just how dismal, McLaughlin began to sing a gratingly childlike riff over the phone. Could it have been "Winchester Cathedral," the sung-through-a-megaphone novelty song from 1966 by the New Vaudeville Band?

"Yeah," he said. "I mean, come on! That song has about as much culture as a sneaker!"

But McLaughlin's frustrations as a studio musician ultimately yielded fruitful results.

He decided to follow his muse and create music that championed risk-taking and virtuosity. In 1969, he left London for New York, where he soon became a member of the groundbreaking jazz-rock fusion band Lifetime and began recording with Miles Davis on such landmark albums as "In a Silent Way," "Bitches Brew" and "Live-Evil."

By 1971, McLaughlin had formed the Mahavishnu Orchestra, a trailblazing fusion band that set a dizzying standard. He subsequently founded Shakti, a group that brought Indian classical music to a jazz audience and anticipated world music nearly two decades before its rise to prominence.

He has since recorded prolifically as a solo artist and led many different bands. He has also collaborated with artists as varied as James Taylor and flamenco guitar giant Paco de Lucia; Dexter Gordon and Luciano Pavarotti; symphony orchestras and all-star jazz groups.

In addition to his latest Verve Records album, "Thieves & Poets," McLaughlin is featured on two other new albums of note. "The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions" (Sony Legacy) is an expanded, five-CD version of the 1970 Miles Davis album "A Tribute to Jack Johnson." Miroslav Vitous' "Universal Syncopations" (ECM) teams bassist Vitous and McLaughlin with pianist Chick Corea, drummer Jack DeJohnette and saxophonist Jan Garbarek on a freewheeling album on which none of the musicians performed at the same time and which was recorded over several years in different cities.

But it is "Thieves & Poets," which is equal parts classical and jazz, Western and Eastern, that McLaughlin speaks of most proudly.

The album's three-part opening suite features him and such noted soloists as violinist Viktoria Mullova, cellist Matt Haimovitz, clarinetist Paul Meyer, guitarist Philippe Loli and timpanist Bruno Frumento. Steeped in the very musical traditions it boldly strives to expand, the suite offers an enticing summation of McLaughlin's multifaceted career.

"Every piece you write and every record you make is the story of your life, up to that moment," he affirmed.

"But there's so much work on this album where you can see pretty clearly my roots and the influences I've had, particularly in my younger, formative years. I hear things on it from the Mahavishnu Orchestra, flamenco, rhythms from Indian culture and the Western music I began my life with."

McLaughlin wrote the 26-minute suite so that the first movement would reflect his European roots, the second his transition to "the new world" (as he likes to refer to the United States in general and New York specifically), and the third to the unification of both worlds – and one or two beyond – in his music.

"Thieves & Poets" also includes McLaughlin's adaptations of the jazz standards "My Foolish Heart," "The Dolphin," "Stella by Starlight" and "My Romance." He performs them with the help of the guitar-playing Aighetto Quartet and contrabassist Helmut Schartlmueller.

The album defies easy categorization, which pleases McLaughlin.

"Tell me about it!" he said. "People in the music industry have problems with me. They don't know what box to put me in. But there are two kinds of success. And for me, at my age, it doesn't matter if it doesn't sell.

"What is important to me is that I have my own internal success. And if I'm happy with the recording, then it's successful."

George Varga: (619) 293-2253; [email protected]