John McLaughlin (born 4 January 1942), also previously known as Mahavishnu, is an English guitarist, bandleader, and composer. A pioneer of jazz fusion, his music combines elements of jazz with rock, world music, Western classical music, flamenco, and blues.
After contributing to several key British groups of the early 1960s, McLaughlin made Extrapolation, his first album as a bandleader, in 1969. He then moved to the U.S., where he played with drummer Tony Williams' group Lifetime and then with Miles Davis on his 1969–72 electric jazz fusion albums In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, Live-Evil, and On the Corner. His 1970s electric band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, performed a technically virtuosic and complex style of music that fused electric jazz and rock with Classical, Indian and other influences. In 1974, he helped found Shakti, a seminal Indian-Jazz rock fusion band with Indian violinist L. Shankar and percussionists Zakir Hussain and Vikku Vinayakram.
McLaughlin's solo on "Miles Beyond" from his album Live at Ronnie Scott's won the 2018 Grammy Award for the Best Improvised Jazz Solo. He has been awarded multiple "Guitarist of the Year" and "Best Jazz Guitarist" awards from magazines such as DownBeat and Guitar Player based on reader polls. In 2003, he was ranked 49th in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". In 2009, DownBeat included McLaughlin in its unranked list of "75 Great Guitarists", in the "Modern Jazz Maestros" category. In 2012, Guitar World magazine ranked him 63rd on its top 100 list. In 2010, Jeff Beck called McLaughlin "the best guitarist alive", and Pat Metheny has also described him as the world's greatest guitarist. In 2017, McLaughlin was awarded an honorary doctorate of music from Berklee College of Music.
John McLaughlin was born on 4 January 1942 to a family of musicians in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England. His mother Mary was a concert violinist; his father John, of Irish descent, was an engineer. The younger John McLaughlin was predominantly raised by his mother and grandmother; his father, the elder John, had separated from Mary when he was 7 years old. The younger John did not have a relationship with his father for most of his life, until in the late 1970s when he contacted his father and took him out to a pub. The younger John said of the experience, "Without my dad, I wouldn't be here. At least I had closure, and for that I thank my lucky stars"; His father later died from a heart attack. Also, at the age of 7, the younger John McLaughlin heard classical music on the phonograph, and considered it a "message to my heart and soul more than anything"; this motivated him to become a musician.
McLaughlin studied violin and piano as a child; At the age of 11, his brother gave John a guitar and John immediately took up the instrument, exploring styles from flamenco to the jazz of Tal Farlow, Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli. Other influences included Muddy Waters, Sabicas, Jim Hall, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Thelonius Monk, S. Balachander, and Jimi Hendrix. He moved to London from Yorkshire in the early 1960s, playing with Alexis Korner and the Marzipan Twisters before moving on to Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, the Graham Bond Quartet (in 1963) and Brian Auger. During the 1960s, he often supported himself with session work, which he frequently found unsatisfying but which enhanced his playing and sight-reading. Also, he gave guitar lessons to Jimmy Page. In 1963, Jack Bruce formed the Graham Bond Quartet with Bond, Ginger Baker and John McLaughlin. They played an eclectic range of music genres, including bebop, blues and rhythm.
Graham Bond was McLaughlin's first spiritual influence. Bond would introduce McLaughlin to Indian culture, philosophy, and religious esoteric practices, which McLaughlin stated "triggered a desire to know", while under the influence of drugs. The Graham Bond Quartet was not well received financially and critically; McLaughlin quit the group.
By 1966, while working in pop and jazz sessions, McLaughlin observed the personal tragedies of those of his musical peers who succumbed to drug addictions and death. As a response, McLaughlin would gradually stop using drugs and pursue a spiritual lifestyle, which would be a recurring motif of his music career. At the same time, McLaughlin experienced a profound musical revelation when psychedelic music was in vogue: he inferred that this music raised existential questions and insisted that he was "on the same boat" as those who sought answers to such questions, which further motivated his interests in Indian culture and its classical music. For a time, in 1968, McLaughlin would be involved in the free jazz scene with musician Gunter Hampel; McLaughlin described this experience as "devastating" and "anarchistic", but appreciated the free-form aspect of the genre. McLaughlin would later state in a July 2024 interview for JazzTimes that his experience with Hampel was "self-indulgent" and that he needed "structure ... the more restraints I put on myself, the happier I felt."
In January 1969, McLaughlin recorded his debut album Extrapolation in London. It prominently features John Surman on saxophone and Tony Oxley on drums. McLaughlin composed the number "Binky's Beam" as a tribute to his friend, the innovative bass player Binky McKenzie. The album's post-bop style is quite different from McLaughlin's later fusion works, though it gradually developed a strong reputation among critics by the mid-1970s.
McLaughlin moved to the U.S. in 1969 to join Tony Williams' group Lifetime. A recording from the Record Plant, NYC, dated 25 March 1969, exists of McLaughlin jamming with Jimi Hendrix. McLaughlin recollects "we played one night, just a jam session. And we played from 2 until 8, in the morning. I thought it was a wonderful experience! I was playing an acoustic guitar with a pick-up. Um, flat-top guitar, and Jimi was playing an electric. Yeah, what a lovely time! Had he lived today, you'd find that he would be employing everything he could get his hands on, and I mean acoustic guitar, synthesizers, orchestras, voices, anything he could get his hands on he'd use!"
He played on Miles Davis' albums In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew (which has a track titled after him), Live-Evil, On the Corner, Big Fun (where he is featured soloist on "Go Ahead John") and A Tribute to Jack Johnson. In the liner notes to Jack Johnson, Davis called McLaughlin's playing "far in". McLaughlin returned to the Davis band for one night of a week-long club date, recorded and released as part of the album Live-Evil and of the Cellar Door boxed set. His reputation as a "first-call" session player grew, resulting in recordings as a sideman with Miroslav Vitous, Larry Coryell, Joe Farrell, Wayne Shorter, Carla Bley, the Rolling Stones, and others.
McLaughlin recorded Devotion in early 1970 for Douglas Records (run by Alan Douglas), a high-energy, psychedelic fusion album that featured Larry Young on organ (who had been part of Lifetime), Billy Rich on bass and the R&B drummer Buddy Miles. Devotion was the first of two albums he released on Douglas. In 1971 he released My Goal's Beyond in the US, a collection of unamplified acoustic works. Side A ("Peace One" and "Peace Two") offers a fusion blend of jazz and Indian classical forms, while side B features melodic acoustic playing on such standards as "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat", by Charles Mingus whom McLaughlin considered an important influence. My Goal's Beyond was inspired by McLaughlin's decision to follow the Indian spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy, to whom he had been introduced in 1970 by Larry Coryell's manager. The album was dedicated to Chinmoy, with one of the Guru's poems printed on the liner notes. It was on this album that McLaughlin took the name "Mahavishnu".
In 1973, McLaughlin collaborated with Carlos Santana, also a disciple of Sri Chinmoy at the time, on an album of devotional songs, Love Devotion Surrender, which featured recordings of Coltrane compositions including a movement of A Love Supreme. McLaughlin has also worked with the jazz composers Carla Bley and Gil Evans.