Woodshedding With The Heavenly Timbres
JOHN McLAUGHLIN:
Mahavishnu's hot new band allows the master to rock out on his Synclavier
By Bill Milkowski
(Reprinted from Guitar World magazine: March 1985)
John McLaughlin is a searching soul, an ever-evolving artist. He's blazed
many trails in his twenty-plus years as a professional musician, beginning
in the sixties with such jazz-influenced British bands as Georgie Fame's
Blue Flames, The Graham Bond Organization (with Jack Bruce and Ginger
Baker) and Brian Auger's Trinity. And each new path he took, John
McLaughlin brought a new ax. The first guitar McLaughlin became closely
associated with was his trusty Les Paul Custom, used on the landmark
sessions for Miles Davis - In A Silent Way in '69, Bitches Brew in '70,
Live-Evil and Jack Johnson in '71 (all on Columbia).
This Gibson or variations of it (he alternated between Customs and
Specials) served him well on several sessions during this period, including
his work with Tony Williams' Lifetime (Emergency and Turn It Over for
Polydor, both in '70) and on the ponderous Carla Bley opera, Escalator Over
the Hill, an ambitious three-record set released in '71 on JCOA Records
(available through New Music Distribution Service, 500 Broadway, New York,
NY 10012).
McLaughlin continued to use that signature ax through the early days of
the Mahavishnu Orchestra, relying on it exclusively for the group's
groundbreaking debut in '72, The Inner Mounting Flame (Columbia). Later
that year, while on tour, he unveiled his Gibson double-neck, sending a
chill up the spines of guitar enthusiasts everywhere.
That revolutionary ax, with one twelve-string neck for arpeggiating
chords and one six-string neck for playing solos, instantly became
McLaughlin's new signature piece; so much so that years later violinist
Jean-Luc Ponty refused to allow his guitarist Daryl Stuermer to perform
with a custom-made double-neck of his own for fear of invoking memories of
(and comparisons to) McLaughlin's Orchestra.
In 1974 the familiar Gibson double-neck was replaced with a custom-made
double-neck created by a California luthier named Rex Bogue. This ornate
ax, christened The Double Rainbow, featured magnificent inlay work and
breathtaking craftsmanship. Easily the most striking effect of this
fantastic ax was its abalone flowers and mother-of-pearl vines flowing up
and down the fingerboards of both necks, serving as decorative position
markers on the fretboard. At the time Bogue said his elaborate design work
was inspired by the Art Nouveau paintings of French artist Alphonse Mucha.
This gorgeous instrument, weighing in at thirty pounds with the
inscription "Guru Alo" ("He who leads from darkness into lightness"),
suffered an unfortunate fate in '74 when it fell off a bench and split up
the middle. McLaughlin then replaced it with a second Gibson double, which
he used on the Apocalypse album and tour.
In 1975, McLaughlin went back to the old Gibson Les Paul Special for a
time. Then on the Orchestra's 1976 farewell album, Inner Worlds, he
unveiled the guitar synthesizer he had been dabbling with for some time. He
recalls that this prototype model was a bit unwieldy.
"Unwieldy is an understatement. It was like an elephant. I had a
Mini-Moog module for each string, just to give you an idea of how difficult
it was to tune the thing. I toured with that set-up for about three months
but it was so big and so very difficult to carry and patch that I finally
decided it was just not feasible for performance."
That cumbersome outfit (designed by Bob Easton of Santa Monica,
California) was put to the test on "Miles Out" and on the title cut from
Inner Worlds, yielding some eerie effects and dramatic results. But
McLaughlin found the conversion from pitch to voltage and then into
synthesis to be too slow and problematic. Proclaiming that technology
wasn't yet ready to meet his needs, he bailed out of the whole electronic
realm and immersed himself in acoustic guitar with Shakti.
That stunning band, hailed by critics as a triumphant meeting of Eastern
and Western musical traditions, released its debut album in '76 to
universal acclaim. Such respected guitarists as Pat Metheny and Steve Morse
still speak in awe of Shakti, pointing to the scintillating interplay
between McLaughlin, tabla player Zakir Hassain and violinist L. Shankar, as
an inspired peak in McLaughlin's career. Yet the band never made money and
disbanded after releasing three albums between '76 and '77.
For his work with Shakti, McLaughlin required a new ax to truly capture
the essence of East Indian tonalities. Working closely with Abe Wechter, a
consultant for Gibson, he came up with a revolutionary thirteen-string
acoustic built from the flattop body of a Gibson J-200. This astonishing
guitar featured a set of seven drone strings positioned across the
soundhole which could be strummed or merely allowed to vibrate for
accompaniment. McLaughlin says he originally got the idea for this Shakti
guitar in '73 when he studied the vina, a marvelously expressive Indian
instrument with four playing strings and three accompanying strings.
"I got involved with the vina because it's so flexible," he says. "The
possibilities of expression on that instrument were so much more than
guitar. Basically, the key was the fingerboard. I began experimenting with
the idea of incorporating the vina's scalloped fingerboard on an ordinary
guitar to help satisfy an artistic desire for certain expressivity and
nuance on individual notes. This was a major step in terms of being able to
articulate."
With this scalloped fingerboard, which from a side view resembles a
series of waves with a fret on each crest, you get the shifts and
subtleties and nuances of notes not by pushing the strings down as a
guitarist would but by pulling them towards the floor as a sitarist would.
McLaughlin would later incorporate this scalloped fingerboard on the
Gibson ES-345 he used in '79 with his post-Orchestra electric ensemble, the
One Truth Band, featuring Shankar on electric violin.
McLaughlin's re-entry into the realm of electric music, following his
three-year involvement with Shakti, came in '78 with the release of Johnny
McLaughlin, Electric Guitarist (Columbia). Featuring a cast of old friends
and former bandmates (Jack Bruce, Tony Williams, Billy Cobham, Carlos
Santana, Jerry Goodman, Stanley Clarke, Jack DeJohnette), this album
highlighted the guitarist on a Gibson Byrdland. For one tune, the ballad
"My Foolish Heart," which he dedicated to an old hero, Tal Farlow, he
played a Les Paul DeLuxe through a Leslie speaker for a decidedly mellower
effect.
This long-awaited return to electric guitar ironically came around the
same time that McLaughlin first heard and met flamenco master Paco De
Lucia. Since the British guitarist had an avid interest in the passion of
flamenco music, dating back to the time he was a kid growing up in
Yorkshire, he naturally hit it off well with the Spanish virtuoso.
The two began playing together and along with Larry Coryell they toured
the States and Europe from '78 to '79. In the fall of '80, Al Di Meola
replaced Coryell in The Trio. This new line-up was captured live on the
acclaimed Friday Night In San Francisco (Columbia) and their tour was
heralded as a victory for the acoustic guitar. For that triumphant tour,
McLaughlin used a stock Ovation classic with nylon strings. For their 1983
studio album, Passion, Grace & Fire, he played a Yamaha classical flamenco
gut-strung guitar.
By this point, McLaughlin seemed so enamored with the acoustic guitar,
speaking in glowing terms about its purity and richness, that it appeared
his electric guitar might remain on the shelf forever. But his fascination
with the instrument didn't just happen overnight. One of his earliest
albums, My Goal's Beyond (originally released in '72 on the Douglas label
then rereleased in'82 on Elektra/Musician) was an all-acoustic affair,
acclaimed as one of the most beautiful albums of the early seventies. That
landmark project, which presaged by several years McLaughlin's return to
the acoustic guitar and Shakti, featured on one side an eight-piece
ensemble that included charter Mahavishnu members Cobham and Goodman. The
other side was strictly solo acoustic guitar with McLaughlin accompanying
himself by judiciously overdubbing on such jazz classics as Charles Mingus'
"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" and Miles Davis' "Blue In Green." For this early
acoustic outing he played a custom-made ax by Mark Evan Whitebook.
Through 1981 and 1982 McLaughlin continued to spotlight acoustic music
exclusively. When he wasn't touring with The Trio he was touring or
recording with his Belo Horizonte band, which included world renowned
classical pianist Katia Lebeque performing on the Synclavier II. The two
albums he recorded with this band, 1981's Belo Horizonte and the 1982
follow-up, Music Spoken Here (both on Warner Bros.) took a more orchestral
approach and had a more mellifluous feel than the driving bravado of The
Trio. It was an intriguing attempt at blending acoustic and electric
instruments, but in retrospect he says the experiment did not suceed all
that well in a performance situation. "It was beautiful music that I loved
very much," he says. "The range of tones and sounds and timbres that Katia
was able to achieve on the Synclavier was nothing short of astonishing. It
was her input, grounded in the classical tradition, that really inspired me
to write a wholly new kind of music, even while building on my past work.
But it was very difficult in a live setting trying to balance the acoustic
guitar and drums."
And now we come to 1984, the year of George Orwell's Big Brother and all
that. And it appears that technology has finally caught up to John
McLaughlin. With his newly-revived Mahavishnu Orchestra (which features
drummer Billy Cobham on the recently released Warner Bros. LP, Mahavishnu,
but has Danny Gottlieb filling in on tour) McLaughlin is playing the
Synclavier II digital guitar almost exclusively. He picks up an old '58 Les
Paul Special now and then during a given set with the new Mahavishnu
Orchestra, but mostly it's the otherworldly effects of the Synclavier II,
designed by New England Digital Corporation (Box 546, White River Junction,
VT 05001).
McLaughlin is quite taken by this instrument and talked at length about
the exciting new possibilities it now affords him: "I knew some time ago
that there would be a new instrument coming out. I'd been talking to and
working with New England Digital for the past three years, so I knew there
were developments coming with their guitar. I had been playing acoustic
guitar for so long, but of course, electric guitar is part of me. It's in
my blood. So I've been dreaming about this instrument for quite some time.
And now I'm excited about the possibilities of this new Synclavier. It's
really a whole new instrument, and it's possibilities are equal to that of
an acoustic guitar. I like the electric guitar, but to me it's got a narrow
emotional frequency band. It just doesn't have the breath that the acoustic
guitar has. Consequently, the expression on the acoustic is much greater
for me than on the electric. So I've been waiting for about ten years for
this new instrument to come along, and now I'm ready to experiment with
it."
After receiving his Synclavier guitar last January, McLaughlin went into
an intensive period of woodshedding. "I am personally interested in the
programmable aspects of the Synclavier and what's available to me through
the guitar in this incredible world of digital synthesis. So for the first
six months I was averaging about fifteen hours a day just working on the
programming, just creating the different sounds and timbres that I feel are
me. It's like learning to develop a whole new vocabulary. So now I have
this large palette of colors, if you will, with which I am able to paint.
The big question then becomes, what are you gonna do with it? You have this
incredible red colorËyou're not just going to put it on the canvas and say,
'Doesn't it look nice?' What are you going to do with this red color with
regard to the rest of your palette and with regard to the way you feel at
this moment in this context in this musical situation. Application becomes
the key to it all. It's very extensive, exhaustive work, but very
satisfying work."
The Synclavier II digital guitar option provides a link between the
Roland GR guitar and the Synclavier Digital Music System. With this option,
the guitar player can play any of the 512 preset timbres or 64 sequencers
with even more sensitivity than is offered to the keyboard player. Because
it is a polyphonic guitar synthesizer, the user can not only play chords
but can actually play different sounds on different strings.
McLaughlin is quick to point out that each timbre, whether called
up or created, requires a different attack on the strings. "The approach to
the instrument is different in the sense that when you're playing a
particular timbre, you have to play that timbre. You're not playing the
guitar anymore, so to just play guitar phrases with a vibraphone sound or a
brass sound doesn't really work. You have to play the timbre as though you
were playing that particular instrument or that particular sound. And that
sound may be slow, long, fast, short or anything in between. So you are
obliged to change and adjust to the sound. But because it is a guitar and
you do have the capability of bending strings or doing those things that
only a guitar can do, you can impose the particular characteristics of the
guitar on whatever sound you choose. So you really have the best of both
worlds."
With the Synclavier II, a player has a terrific amount of control over
dynamics, attack, decay and the threshold of sensitivity, which McLaughlin
finds endlessly exciting. "I've put in so much work in discovering my own
timbres, my own voice on this new instrument. Many of my experiments with
the Synclavier II are documented on the new album, but I've made so many
discoveries since then that I would have Iiked to have on the record. If
onlyËyou know? But there's always another record to make, always new ideas.
Change and evolution; to me that's what life is all about. It's the only
thing I know. To learn, for me, is one of the greatest of all things in the
world. It's something I never get tired of, something I never regret. And
having this new Synclavier guitar has given me that opportunity to learn
again."
With its 32-voice polyphonic sampling capabilities, its built-in 32-track
digital memory, its timbre/sequence recall, its array of real-time effects
and its access to a powerful 16-bit mini-computer, the Synclavier digital
guitar does present endless possibilities, especially in the hands of
someone like John McLaughlin.
Says John, "I've got my work cut out for me for quite a few years."
*******************************
JONAS HELLBORG: BASS GYMNASTICS
Old Mahavishnu Orchestra fans turned out en masse recently at the Beacon
Theatre in New York City to welcome back an old friend, guitar hero John
McLaughlin. But when bassist Jonas Hellborg was given the spotlight, they
all but forgot whose show it was.
The twenty-six-year-old Swede unleashed a torrent of manic energy and
uncanny chops in his extended solo improvisation, beginning with a
quotation from Jimi Hendrix' "Little Wing" and finishing up with a frantic
ax-tossing salute to the crowd. They loved it. They dug his shaved-head
punk appeal. They dug his shades. They really dug his technique and above
all his sheer reckless abandon. A star was born - Sid Vicious Meets Jaco. Dig
it!
Of course, most of Europe has known about this Swedish phenom for some
time now. He began unveiling his virtuoso chops around Sweden from the time
he was eighteen and finally in 1981 his considerable talents attracted the
attention of Montreux Jazz Festival promoters. He was given an opening act
spot on the bill of the '81 summer festival and wowed the discerning crowd
with his thumb-thumping prowess and vast chordal knowledge. But more
importantly, he was seen by all the biggies - cats like Michael Brecker,
Chick Corea and John McLaughlin.
Yet in spite of all the acclaim, he couldn't land a contract. So the
determined lad formed his own label and put out his first solo bass album,
The Bassic Thing (Day Eight Music), on his own. It's a tour de force of
bass playing, stretching the instrument to realms where no man (including
Jaco himself) has gone before. That auspicious debut, ironically, features
a McLaughlin composition, "You Know You Know" from The Inner Mounting Flame
album.
McLaughlin heard the album in 1981 while on tour with The Trio. Hellborg
saw them in Stockholm and slipped a tape to John. His response was, ""We
will get together some time." But as Hellborg recalls, "I didn't think it
would ever be. So many people say that. I never expected him to call, and
when he finally did, around June of '83, I was trembling. I mean, John has
been like a god to me since I was fourteen. And when we finally got
together for rehearsals in Paris with John and Billy [Cobham] it was like
an all-time dream come true. The first time we played together it was like
trying to catch a 747 taking off."
Hellborg did some recording and a brief tour with Billy's band before
beginning the Mahavishnu tour of Europe. His future plans include touring
with Mahavishnu through the summer of '85, taking time off to collaborate
with drummer Michael Shrieve and bassist-producer Bill Laswell, then
reuniting with McLaughlin and company in December of '85 for the follow-up
album by his new edition of the Orchestra.
Hellborg plays custom-made fretless and fretted basses and also has a
double-neck (fretless and fretted) made for him by Wal, the English guitar
manufacturer. His amps are custom-designed by him and manufactured by two
companies In Italy.
Besides McLaughlin, his other heroes include John Coltrane, J.S. Bach
("the very God of music") and Jimi Hendrix ("He has never left me").
For a kid who started out in Cream clone bands, then gravitated to a
Black Sabbath clone band, an Albert Ayler-esque free form band, a
commercial disco band and on to performing solo guitar recitals, Jonas
Hellborg has ended up in a nice placeËturning the music world on its ear
with the new Mahavishnu Orchestra. -B. M.
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