HPR All Things Considered Host Dave Lawrence welcomes back a guitar legend in our latest Road Stories interview: John McLaughlin!
Returning for his sixth chat with Dave, one of the guitar’s most celebrated players, who graced some of Miles Davis' most important albums of all time, offers a new chapter in one of his groundbreaking projects, Shakti. That's the acoustic Indian group that originated after Mahavishnu Orchestra in the 1970s, and is a pioneer in bringing Indian music to the west.
We hear about their first studio album in 45 years, This Moment, due out next week, continuing their fusion of Indian music, jazz and blistering improvisations. We sample some of the record, too, plus hear some classic live Shakti.
John also shares the remarkable story of how Shakti first came together by chance through a highly influential get-together in 1972, and talks about Shakti's most bizarre concerts, a run of dates in 1977 opening for Black Sabbath!
Tomorrow we learn about John's connections to the late Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and even Johnny Depp, plus hear more of the new album and more classic Shakti.
MORE:
See an incredible live video from the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival capturing the first era of Shakti:
Here they are back in Montreux in 1999:
And an entire concert was filmed earlier in 2023 when they played India!
Dave has been privileged to speak with John five times prior to this, which you can listen to online: 2015, 2018, 2020, 2021, and 2022. Tomorrow we'll post the complete new interview!
