![]() McLaughlin is an affable interviewee whose natural curiosity is evident and who enjoys swapping stories in an easygoing patrician manner and mid-Atlantic, mid-Mediterranean accent. Not surprisingly we ended up discussing all three. I subsequently followed McLaughlin’s career closely over the years, through his acoustic ventures with Indian musicians in Shakti, a hugely popular guitar trio with Paco de Lucia and Al Di Meola, and the numerous ensembles that he has led since then always featuring musicians of a caliber that McLaughlin was now able to attract – right up to his current group, John McLaughlin and the 4 th Dimension, an ensemble that has been together since 2007.Īfter I recently noticed McLaughlin wearing an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak in live footage from the 1990s along with various other interesting timepieces, I somewhat cheekily asked him for an interview to discuss his watches rather than his music or his guitars, to which he kindly agreed. McLaughlin created his own musical universe, with one concertgoer notoriously reporting leaving the concert hall feeling that he had been “rearranged on the molecular level.” Even before the first track ended, I had marched across to the counter, handed over my £5, and took the record home.īetween 19, John McLaughlin had been recording in New York with Tony Williams and Miles Davis, but The Inner Mounting Flame launched the Mahavishnu Orchestra on the world, achieving rapid commercial success in the United States and Europe and introducing a broad swathe of rock fans to music that the press liked to describe as “jazz/rock” or “fusion,” but which, with its exotic and complex chords and 7/8 and 12/4 time signatures, had little to do with either jazz or rock such as they existed at that time. This was music that I had always suspected – or hoped – must be out there somewhere but had not manifested itself to me until this point. To this day I can recall the boxy, compressed sound of those budget headphones, but they failed to diminish what was quite simply the most astonishing music I had ever heard, the sostenuto opening chords of “Meeting of the Spirits” clashing and resolving like waves upon the shore, but with an intensity verging on violence. This was in the days when a record store had a row of turntables behind the counter and a row of headphones hanging on the wall so that you could listen before buying. ![]() They were also collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the twentieth century's 100 most influential people.Mahavishnu Orchestra’s first album, ‘The Inner Mounting Flame’ (photo courtesy Colin Alexander Smith) The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, and all four main members were inducted individually from 1994 to 2015. They have received seven Grammy Awards, an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score and fifteen Ivor Novello Awards. ![]() In 2008, the group topped Billboard magazine's list of the all-time most successful artists as of 2017, they hold the record for most number-one hits on the Hot 100 chart with twenty. They are also the best-selling music artists in the United States, with 178 million certified units. They have had more number-one albums on the British charts and sold more singles in the UK than any other act. ![]() The Beatles are the best-selling band in history, with estimated sales of over 800 million physical and digital albums worldwide. In 1963, their enormous popularity first emerged as "Beatlemania" as the group's music grew in sophistication, led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney, the band were integral to pop music's evolution into an art form and to the development of the counterculture of the 1960s. Rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock and roll, the Beatles later experimented with several musical styles, ranging from pop ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock, often incorporating classical elements and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they became widely regarded as the foremost and most influential music band in history. The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960.
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