subject: THE ORCHESTRA with a difference [print this page] THE ORCHESTRA with a difference THE ORCHESTRA with a difference
The Mahavishnu Orchestra is a product of John McLaughlin's creative inspiration. He formed the, band in search of a particular sound, a new sound of byzantine electronic complexity, to express the wisdom he had acquired in his life. He needed extraordinary musicians to play the surging, breakneck tempos, the intricate time signatures, and the whining, careening melodies that pulsed in his inner ear, and he found them and made them a band. And they have made music that is probably the most significantly innovative to reach a mass audience since the halcyon days of the Beatles. "It's music that people are made to shy away from," BillyCobham commented, "because it's too sincere and it represents life in its real form. The fact that everybody's living a lie on the street, drugged out, eating corn flakes and thinking they're vitamins, makes it hard to take in because the music is just the opposite of all that." Besides creating an incredibly fluent and versatile ensemble, McLaughlin showed astute commercial prescience in forming the Orchestra.
The band's original lineup featured "Mahavishnu" John McLaughlin on acoustic and electric guitars, with members Billy Cobham on drums,Rick Laird on bass guitar, Jan Hammer on electric and acoustic piano and synthesizer, and Jerry Goodman on violin. This first incarnation of the ensemble was a multinational group: McLaughlin is from Yorkshire, England; Cobham from Panama; Hammer from Prague, Czechoslovakia; Goodman from Chicago, Illinois; and Laird from Dublin, Ireland. Jean-Luc Ponty was actually McLaughlin's first choice for violinist, but the idea was stalled by "immigration problems". Ponty would later play with McLaughlin on both Apocalypse and Visions of the Emerald Beyond. The group is best known for their albums The Inner Mounting Flame (1971) and Birds of Fire (1973).
The intense, high-volume sound they produce could easily have been predicted to capture at least the interest of the huge rock audience that had been weaned for five years on banks of high-powered amplifiers. This audience, unlike previous generations, had not abandoned the popular music of its adolescence upon reaching adulthood and because of this, its tastes had grown in both sophistication and catholicity. Of course, as Rick Laird said, "Musicians had been ready to do this for a long time but the establishment wouldn't buy it. We've given a glimpse of the possibilities, like Ellington said, 'If it sounds good then it is good.' That principle applies to the endless possibilities of music. Influences have been spreading, like Indian music on Jan and John, and these new things have been creeping in, plus rock in the '60s and the changing of song forms, 32-bar and 24-bar blues. Forms have taken whole new shapes now." This "glimpse of the possibilities" that the Orchestra represents transcends the regular definitions of both jazz and rock. The music's passionate vitality and volume explode over the cerebral niceties of jazz and its complexities of form and improvisation easily surpass anything rock alone has yet produced. However, easily 90% of the Orchestra's audience comes directly from rock and roll, something which the members of the band seem to truly appreciate. "In jazz, you hardly ever play concerts," Jan said. "It's mostly clubs and there are very few people there. They don't really open up either and start yelling and expressing themselves. They don't let go and that's why the musicians don't let go either. That's why jazz dried up and came to a screechy stop," he laughed, "after many years of blossoming. The regenerative circle just stopped functioning. The feedback wasn't happening either way. Although the jazz audience isn't that big, a portion of every audience we play to is a jazz audience because they feel, and I feel it too, that we are carrying on where jazz used to be but isn't anymore." The first attraction of The Mahavishnu Orchestra to rock audiences was McLaughlin's guitar. He is probably the finest electric guitarist working today and his virtuosity is easily accessible to the millions of young people raised on guitar-oriented music. However, it is still difficult music to really appreciate compared to, say, The Band's, and the Orchestra seemed aware their concerts were educative experiences for most of their audience. Replying to a question about the changes in the audience over the last two years, Laird explained, "They have changed because they know the music better. They're more familiar with it because we've played the same material for a long time because...well, that's the reason.
We really wanted people to understand it and know what role each instrument was playing. It's amazing now. Kids shout out the numbers they want to hear and they know what to expect. It's really nice." This group was considered an important pioneer in the jazz fusion movement. McLaughlin and Cobham met while performing and recording with Miles Davis during the Bitches Brew sessions. McLaughlin was also influenced in his conception of the band by his studies with Indianguru Sri Chinmoy, who encouraged him to take the name "Mahavishnu" which means "Divine compassion, power and justice."
McLaughlin had particular ideas for the instrumentation of the group, in keeping with his highly original concept of genre-blending in composition. He particularly wanted a violinist as an integral contributor to its overall sound. As the group evolved, McLaughlin adopted what became his trademark: a double neck guitar (six-string and twelve-string) which allowed for a great degree of diversity in musical textures, and Hammer became one of the first to play a Mini Moog synthesizer in an ensemble, which enabled him to add more sounds and solo more freely, on the guitar and the violin.
Their musical style was an unprecedented blending of genres: they combined the high-volume electrified rock sound that had been pioneered by the Small Faces, the Who and later by Jimi Hendrix (who McLaughlin had jammed with on his initial arrival in New York as part of theTony Williams Lifetime), complex rhythms in unusual time signatures that reflected McLaughlin's interest in Indian classical music as well asfunk, and harmonic influence from European classical music. The group's early music was entirely instrumental; their later albums had songs which sometimes featured R&B or even gospel/hymn-styled vocals. In the aforementioned two albums, though, the group goes from an intense fusion of upbeat genres (a representative example of which is the song "Vital Transformation") to very serene, chamber music-like tunes, such as "A Lotus On Irish Streams," a composition for acoustic guitar, piano and violin, and "Thousand Island Park," which drops the violin and incorporates double bass; or from low-key to extremely busy in a single piece, such as "Open Country Joy."
Due to the pressures of sudden fame, exhaustion and a lack of communication, the original band began to fray at the edges as 1973 rolled on. The stress was further exacerbated by a disastrous recording session at London's Trident Studios that found some of the players not speaking to others. The project was never fully completed. The last straw came as John McLaughlin read an interview in Crawdaddy! magazine in which Jan Hammer and Jerry Goodman expressed their frustrations with John's leadership style. An effort to fix things back in New York fell short. Almost 30 years later, during the beginning of a renaissance of Mahavishnu's music, the incomplete album from the failed London recording was released as The Lost Trident Sessions.
