21. “The Noonward Race,” Mahavishnu Orchestra, from The Inner Mounting Flame (1971)

In the mid-1960s, John McLaughlin was a rock and R&B guitarist, playing in groups like The Graham Bond Organisation—alongside Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce, who would go on to form Cream with Eric Clapton—and as a session musician, appearing on recordings with Dionne Warwick, Burt Bacharach, and Petula Clark, a British pop star best known for her 1964 hit, “Downtown.”
 
But McLaughlin's heart belonged to John Coltrane and Miles Davis. “I’m listening to Coltrane and the Beatles come out with their first record and I said, ‘What is this shit?’” he recalls. “I mean, I wanted to hear ‘Giant Steps,’ not ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’…don't forget, I must've been 15 when I heard all that music—Miles, Trane, Cannonball, Red Garland, Jimmy Cobb, Philly Joe Jones…a whole new school of jazz came out…so the idea of going ‘yeah, yeah, yeah,’ I mean...no way. It was impossible.”
 
When Tony Williams heard a demo recording of McLaughlin jamming with Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette, the second great quintet's drummer knew he’d found a guitarist for his own new project, Lifetime, and quickly arranged to bring the Brit to New York.
 
McLaughlin was ecstatic—he would finally get to play with his jazz heroes—but at the end of the '60s the newest school of jazz embraced souped-up psychedelic rock and R&B sounds.
 
As it turned out, it was a cultural moment that perfectly matched McLaughlin’s skill set and training. After a year spent transforming jazz into a space suitable for wah-wah-infused double-necked guitar pyrotechnics, both in Lifetime with Williams, and, simultaneously, on In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew with Davis, McLaughlin finally formed his own band.
 
In July of 1971, Mahavishnu Orchestra emerged as a crossover-hit-generating monster. Featuring Czech keyboard player Jan Hammer, Panamanian-born drummer Billy Cobham, Irish bassist Rick Laird, and American violinist Jerry Goodman, the international group incorporated elements of British folk and Indian classical traditions into a pummeling, speed-oriented sound built around sinuous, elaborate melodic lines.
 
Billy Cobham describes the band’s level of intensity: “When we started…I used to put all my energies into it and I’d come away huffing and puffing and really, it would frighten me. I’d come off the stage and my heart would be beating so fast because of the energy. Then, all of a sudden, I began to learn how to pace myself. It was either that or die.”
 
“It was the loudest thing I had ever heard,” remembers guitarist Pat Metheny, describing a show the band played in Florida in 1972. “I think the term ‘face melting’ would fit here.”
 
The band quickly moved from nightclubs to festivals, and from jazz magazines to Rolling Stone and FM radio, yet the original lineup splintered after only two albums. Members blamed a jam-packed touring schedule—more than 300 gigs in just two years—and a lack of shared creative input in the studio. Certainly McLaughlin's locked-in style of leadership played a role—and his no-drugs, all-yoga-and-meditation lifestyle, defined by his relationship to guru Sri Chinmoy, who dubbed the guitarist “Mahavishnu.”
 
“The whole relationship with Sri Chinmoy was a cause of acrimony,” McLaughlin explains in an interview with guitarist Robert Fripp. “For me, I can still say music is God, music is the face of God…but that’s not the way everybody sees it. [During interviews] people would ask me questions and I would talk about development and ideals…and [the other musicians] would say, ‘We don't want to feel that way at all; we're not into that.’”