Category John McLaughlin
Book Launch: John McLaughlin (From Miles and Mahavishnu to The 4th Dimension)
Matt’s new book ‘John McLaughlin: From Miles & Mahavishnu to The 4th Dimension’ is available now via the links below. Drawing on hundreds of sources and interviews with key collaborators, ‘From Miles and Mahavishnu to The 4th Dimension’ is the first major book about John McLaughlin since 2014 and the first ever to illuminate his […]
John McLaughlin/Shakti @ Hammersmith Odeon, 28 June 2023
Late July 1976: if you were a British jazz/rock fan, all roads led to the legendary Hammersmith Odeon in West London. The Billy Cobham/George Duke Band opened three nights of music, followed by John McLaughlin’s Shakti and then the headliners Weather Report. The encores often featured members of all three fusion supergroups. So how apt […]
New John McLaughlin book: your feedback
Soundsofsurprise.com wants YOU! My new book on master musician John McLaughlin will be published worldwide by Rowman & Littlefield in September. The design department have put together a few draft covers, and I’d like to know which one YOU most like the look of. It would be good to get your feedback, and you’ll get […]
Album Review: Is That So? by John McLaughlin/Shankar Mahadevan/Zakir Hussain
It’s taken this writer two months and countless listening sessions to put pen to paper on the subject of Is That So?. But, as the cliché goes, it’s a lot easier to write about something you hate than something you love. Six years in the making, this spellbinding album may just be the most cohesive musical […]
John McLaughlin & The 4th Dimension @ Barbican, 23 April 2019
If this was John’s final London gig, what a way to go out. Though the audience’s response was at times reverential and/or strangely undemonstrative, the outpouring of emotion at the conclusion was heartfelt and seemed to come as quite a shock to the performers too. It’s hard to think of another ‘jazz’ band which has […]
Album Review: John McLaughlin & Jimmy Herring Live In San Francisco
If this is indeed McLaughlin’s final album, as some recent interviews have intimated, it’s a pretty remarkable one to go out on. There are various reasons for this; it’s the first bona fide full-scale return to Mahavishnu Orchestra material since the final incarnation of that band waved goodbye in 1975; it was recorded live on […]
Rescued From The Vaults: Johnny McLaughlin Electric Guitarist
The 1970s were made for such an eclectic and open-eared musician as guitarist John McLaughlin. As blues, rock, free jazz, Eastern scales and psychedelia merged at the end of the previous decade, McLaughlin was perfectly placed to cash in with his distinctive brand of fusion and the world was ready to listen. Cutting his […]
John McLaughlin @ Barbican, 23 April 2010
What is the role of the electric guitar in jazz music? Since Charlie Christian‘s revolutionary bebop permutations in the ’30s and ’40s, the guitar has undeniably held a fascination for jazz fans specifically and music fans in general. And when volume levels were increasing and minds expanding in the mid-to-late 1960s, in some ways John McLaughlin […]
Sounds Of Surprise 