Mahavishnu Orchestra - Birds of Fire (1972)

Emboldened by the popularity of Inner Mounting Flame among rock audiences, the first Mahavishnu Orchestra set out to further define and refine its blistering jazz-rock direction in its second -- and, no thanks to internal feuding, last -- studio album. Although it has much of the screaming rock energy and sometimes exaggerated competitive frenzy of its predecessor, Birds of Fire is audibly more varied in texture, even more tightly organized, and thankfully more musical in content. A remarkable example of precisely choreographed, high-speed solo trading -- with John McLaughlin, Jerry Goodman, and Jan Hammer all of one mind, supported by Billy Cobham's machine-gun drumming and Rick Laird's dancing bass -- can be heard on the aptly named "One Word," and the title track is a defining moment of the group's nearly atonal fury. The band also takes time out for a brief bit of spaced-out electronic burbling and static called "Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love." Yet the most enticing pieces of music on the record are the gorgeous, almost pastoral opening and closing sections to "Open Country Joy," a relaxed, jocular bit of communal jamming that they ought to have pursued further. This album actually became a major crossover hit, rising to number 15 on the pop album charts, and it remains the key item in the first Mahavishnu Orchestra's slim discography.

by Richard S. Ginell in All Music Guide

Styles:
Fusion
Jazz-Rock

Tracks:
01 - Birds of Fire (05:50)
02 - Miles Beyond (04:47)
03 - Celestial Terrestrial Commuters (02:54)
04 - Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love (00:24)
05 - Thousand Island Park (03:23)
06 - Hope (01:59)
07 - One Word (09:57)
08 - Sanctuary (05:05)
09 - Open Country Joy (03:56)
10 - Resolution (02:09)

Line-up:
John McLaughlin - Guitar
Rick Laird - Bass
Billy Cobham - Percussion
Jan Hammer - Keyboards, Moog synthesizer
Jerry Goodman - Violin

Carlos Santana/ Mahavishnu John McLaughlin - Love Devotion Surrender (1973)

A hopelessly misunderstood record in its time by Santana fans -- they were still reeling from the radical direction shift toward jazz on Caravanserai and praying it was an aberration -- it was greeted by Santana devotees with hostility, contrasted with kindness from major-league critics like Robert Palmer. To hear this recording in the context of not only Carlos Santana's development as a guitarist, but as the logical extension of the music of John Coltrane and Miles Davis influencing rock musicians -- McLaughlin, of course, was a former Davis sideman -- this extension makes perfect sense in the post-Sonic Youth, post-rock era. With the exception of Coltrane's "Naima" and McLaughlin's "Meditation," this album consists of merely three extended guitar jams played on the spiritual ecstasy tip -- both men were devotees of guru Shri Chinmoy at the time. The assembled band included members of Santana's band and the Mahavishnu Orchestra in Michael Shrieve, Billy Cobham, Doug Rauch, Armando Peraza, Jan Hammer (playing drums!), and Don Alias. But it is the presence of the revolutionary jazz organist Larry Young -- a colleague of McLaughlin's in Tony Williams' Lifetime band -- that makes the entire project gel. He stands as the great communicator harmonically between the two very different guitarists whose ideas contrasted enough to complement one another in the context of Young's aggressive approach to keep the entire proceeding in the air. In the acknowledgement section of Coltrane's "A Love Supreme," which opens the album, Young creates a channel between Santana's riotous, transcendent, melodic runs and McLaughlin's rapid-fire machine-gun riffing. Young' double-handed striated chord voicings offered enough for both men to chew on, leaving free-ranging territory for percussive effects to drive the tracks from underneath. Check "Let Us Go Into the House of the Lord," which was musically inspired by Bobby Womack's "Breezing" and dynamically foreshadowed by Pharoah Sanders' read of it, or the insanely knotty yet intervallically transcendent "The Life Divine," for the manner in which Young's organ actually speaks both languages simultaneously. Young is the person who makes the room for the deep spirituality inherent in these sessions to be grasped for what it is: the interplay of two men who were not merely paying tribute to Coltrane, but trying to take his ideas about going beyond the realm of Western music to communicate with the language of the heart as it united with the cosmos. After three decades, Love Devotion Surrender still sounds completely radical and stunningly, movingly beautiful.

by Thom Jurek in All Music Guide

Styles:
Jazz-Rock
Fusion
Blues
Post-Bop

Tracks:
01 - A Love Supreme (07:48)
02 - Naima (03:09)
03 - The Life Divine (09:30)
04 - Let us Go Into the House of the Lord (15:45)
05 - Meditation (02:45)

Line-up:
Mahavishnu John McLaughlin - guitar, piano
Carlos Santana - guitar
Doug Rauch - bass guitar
Mahalakshami Eve McLaughlin - piano
Khalid Yasin - piano, organ
Mingo Lewis - piano, keyboards
Billy Cobham - drums, percussion
Don Alias - drums, percussion
Jan Hammer - drums, percussion
Mike Shrieve - drums, percussion
Armando Peraza - congas, percussion, vocals

Mahavishnu Orchestra - The Inner Mounting Flame (1971)

This is the album that made John McLaughlin a semi-household name, a furious, high-energy, yet rigorously conceived meeting of virtuosos that, for all intents and purposes, defined the fusion of jazz and rock a year after Miles Davis' Bitches Brew breakthrough. It also inadvertently led to the derogatory connotation of the word fusion, for it paved the way for an army of imitators, many of whose excesses and commercial panderings devalued the entire movement. Though much was made of the influence of jazz-influenced improvisation in the Mahavishnu band, it is the rock element that predominates, stemming directly from the electronic innovations of Jimi Hendrix. The improvisations, particularly McLaughlin's post-Hendrix machine-gun assaults on double-necked electric guitar and Jerry Goodman's flights on electric violin, owe more to the freakouts that had been circulating in progressive rock circles than to jazz, based as they often are on ostinatos on one chord. These still sound genuinely thrilling today on CD, as McLaughlin and Goodman battle Jan Hammer's keyboards, Rick Laird's bass, and especially Billy Cobham's hard-charging drums, whose jazz-trained technique pushed the envelope for all rock drummers. What doesn't date so well are the composed medium- and high-velocity unison passages that are played in such tight lockstep that they can't breathe. There is also time out for quieter, reflective numbers that are drenched in studied spirituality ("A Lotus on Irish Streams") or irony ("You Know You Know"); McLaughlin was to do better in that department with less-driven colleagues elsewhere in his career. Aimed with absolute precision at young rock fans, this record was wildly popular in its day, and it may have been the cause of more blown-out home amplifiers than any other record this side of Deep Purple.

by Richard S. Ginell at All Music Guide.

Styles:
Jazz-Rock
Fusion

Tracks:
01 Meeting of the Spirits
02 Dawn
03 The Noonward Race
04 A Lotus on Irish Streams
05 Vital Transformation
06 The Dance of Maya
07 You Know You Know
08 Awakening

Line-up:
John McLaughlin - guitar
Rick Laird - bass
Billy Cobham - drums / percussion
Jan Hammer - keyboards / organ
Jerry Goodman - violin

Mahavishnu Orchestra at Syracuse University (1972)

Tracks:
01 Meeting of the Spirits
02 The Dance of Maya
03 Dawn

Line-up:
John McLaughlin - guitars
Billy Cobham - drums
Rick Laird - bass
Jan Hammer - electric piano / organ
Jerry Goodman - violin