As I write Ian Hammer and Jerry Goodman have left this group, Cobham has formed his own band and McLaughlin is rehearsing a new Mahavishnu Orchestra in Florida and won’t as yet disclose who’s in it. That means that this is the last album by this band, and one has doubts as to whether any new group can be as good.
Pinned by Cobham’s incisive drumming, flexed by Hammer’s imaginative piano work, McLaughlin’s guitar here seems in its element. This, and not the world of Miles Davis, is the place for McLaughlin’s kind of jazz. Make no mistake that this is jazz of a very high order indeed, and anyone who misses out on McLaughlin’s conceptions is losing much more than they think.
I haven’t written about the band since its first record, and now here it is with its last. A fitting farewell, because it’s quitting at the top. You couldn’t better this beautiful matching of rhythms – at one time Tomorrow’s Story bucketing along like a steam train with McLaughlin and Goodman in ferocious duet, and at another switching to sounds of gentleness and beauty as in the incredible Dream. Dream has a Blues In C Sharp Minor—like figure and demonstrates so effectively McLaughlin’s superb spacing of things. Laird sets the figure and McLaughlin plays intricate and virtuoso patterns over him, spilling out sounds from everything from Shankar to Christian and back again. Cobham lashes the drums and mayhem rides in an intense jumble of sounds and rhythms with an amazing number of voices seeming to come from a quite small combination of instruments.
Many readers may think that this is rock music, and it certainly comes in the area where jazz and rock come together. But it is perfectly valid as jazz music, and while I would caution the suspicious to hear it before buying it, I would urge you very much to hear it, because it’s an outstanding record—an outstanding jazz record.
Discography
Trilogy; The Sunlight Path; La Mère De La Mer; Tomorrow’s Story Not The Same; Sister Andrea (21 min) – Dream (21½ min)
The Mahavishnu Orchestra: John McLaughlin (gtr); Ian Hammer (elec-pno/Moog); Jerry Goodman (vln); Rick Laird (bs); Billy Cobham (dm). Central Park, NY, August 1973.
(CBS 69046 £2.45)
