Mahavishnu Orchestra

Mahavishnu

John McLaughlin, an English guitarist born in Doncaster in 1942, made his debut album Extrapolation in London in 1969 and then moved to the United States to join Tony Williams' Lifetime. He played on Miles Davis's In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson and Live-Evil. After a club date in Boston in 1970, Davis told him it was time to lead his own band. By then McLaughlin was a follower of the guru Sri Chinmoy, who gave him the name Mahavishnu, joining the Sanskrit maha, great, to the god Vishnu. He later disavowed Chinmoy's teachings.

He formed the band in New York in 1971. The drummer Billy Cobham, born in Panama, had played with Horace Silver and Dreams, and the Chicago violinist Jerry Goodman came from the Flock. Both had played on McLaughlin's My Goal's Beyond. Jan Hammer, a Prague-born keyboard player, came through Miroslav Vitous. McLaughlin had wanted Jean-Luc Ponty on violin, but immigration problems stood in the way, and the Dublin-born bassist Rick Laird, once the house bassist at Ronnie Scott's, said yes before Tony Levin could. The quintet's first show was on 21 July 1971 at the Gaslight at the Au Go Go in New York, opening for John Lee Hooker. The run was held over into August, and Columbia signed McLaughlin after it.

The Inner Mounting Flame

The Inner Mounting Flame was made at CBS Studios in New York in August 1971. Phil Freeman of Burning Ambulance wrote that the band cut all eight tracks in a single day, 14 August. McLaughlin wrote every piece and produced the record, which drew on rock, R&B and funk and on the rhythmic ideas of Indian classical music. Released on 3 November 1971, it reached 89 on the Billboard 200 and 11 on the jazz chart. Walter Kolosky later called its sound "loud, raw, and dangerous". Robert Christgau gave it an A and singled out The Dance of Maya, which turns into a blues midway.

The band toured hard through 1972, opening for Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Yes. At the Newport Jazz Festival they followed Count Basie, and Kolosky says hundreds of fans walked out during the opening set.

Birds of Fire and the break

Birds of Fire, recorded in August 1972 and released in January 1973, was their commercial peak: 15 in the US, 20 in the UK and a gold record. A third studio album, begun in tense sessions at Trident Studios in London in June 1973, was abandoned, and the tapes stayed unreleased until The Lost Trident Sessions in 1999. In its place came the live Between Nothingness & Eternity, taped that August at the Schaefer Music Festival in Central Park.

Late in 1973 Hammer and Goodman criticized McLaughlin's leadership in an interview with Crawdaddy. The original band played its last show at the Masonic Temple in Detroit on 30 December 1973, and McLaughlin dissolved it in January 1974. He has said the group was "maybe too successful" and that by 1973 the atmosphere had become untenable.

Later bands

McLaughlin kept the name for a new line-up with Ponty, Gayle Moran, Ralphe Armstrong and Narada Michael Walden, which he reportedly called the real Mahavishnu Orchestra. Apocalypse (1974) set it beside the London Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas, with George Martin producing. After Visions of the Emerald Beyond in 1975, Ponty left in a dispute over the writing credit for Pegasus. A four-piece made Inner Worlds in 1976, and the band then broke up as McLaughlin moved on to Shakti. In 1984 he revived the name with Bill Evans, Jonas Hellborg, Mitchel Forman and Cobham for Mahavishnu on Warner Bros., followed by Adventures in Radioland on Relativity.

Legacy

Greg Ginn of Black Flag, the Mars Volta, Opeth, Black Midi, the Dillinger Escape Plan and Phish's Jon Fishman have all named the band as an influence. Jeff Beck heard them on his car radio late in 1973, and said Cobham's record Spectrum changed his whole musical outlook, which led to Blow by Blow. Massive Attack sampled Planetary Citizen on Unfinished Sympathy and You Know, You Know on One Love.

Kolosky's book Power, Passion and Beauty (2006) is built on interviews with every member. The five-disc Complete Columbia Albums Collection of 2011 added a disc of unreleased Central Park material. In 2017 McLaughlin played the old book on his farewell US tour with the 4th Dimension and Jimmy Herring, and said the resulting live album brought the band's 1971 beginning full circle.