John McLaughlin
Devotion

The spirit and the flesh were strong. These were times when giants were born, it was the golden age: the musical Zep Tepi. In those times, the sky was starry as never before and as it would never be again. Among the Kings, the Giants, the Magicians, there were the grooms, the artisans, the blacksmiths, and the alchemists, whose work was often the most important, it was the foundation of every emerging art.

At the court of Messer Graham Bond, along with noble companions such as Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, a tender sapling made his way, he used his fingers on the guitar strings like no one before. In that period, fruitful and interesting as few others, he came to know and claimed as his own the jazz and electric blues with a British imprint. It was certain, logical, that he would soon become a huge interpreter of the music of the time and the times to come. His name, John McLaughlin, still resonates today as a splendid and among the few shining examples of a musician who has continued his path over these decades with consistency and fine musical sensitivity.

When in 1969 he published his first work, that masterpiece called "Extrapolation", with strong references to the avant-garde jazz of Miles Davis, it made a real impact, and Tony Williams wanted him in America for his Lifetime. The American experience was crucial for McLaughlin's musical growth and the innovative bombardments of the time, well mixed with previous knowledge, set the premises for this "Devotion" of 1970. Starting with the band, no longer John Surman's saxophone, but Larry Young's Hammond B-3, a drummer not strictly jazz like Buddy Miles, already with Jimi Hendrix, and a less known bassist but with clear abilities like Billy Rich, signaled changes underway.

And indeed, Devotion proved to be a work endowed with a very personal approach and dynamics where the guitar, no longer clean and direct, became the distorted, acid, and psychedelic instrument as invented by the aforementioned Hendrix, to whom, more or less evidently, the work was dedicated. The Hammond, taking on the role of sidekick entirely, could not limit itself to producing sound carpets, and began to weave intertwinings with the guitars in a play of alternations and concatenations, which would be taken up in hundreds of subsequent works, not only from jazz-rock sources but also in progressive and experimental settings.

A special nod to the rhythms, marked by the atypical contribution of the Miles/Rich duo and the introduction of particular grooves, rich in jazz/blues patterns, but also of rock and dry post-beat psychedelia. The lengthy "Devotion" allows one to understand what multitudes of sounds must have been swirling in McLaughlin's creative mind, which far from the role of a despot, left enormous spaces for the band that often let itself go to tracing wandering paths under a tense guitar that frequently breathed melody, rather than experimental improvisation.

Though shorter, settling around five minutes, the other tracks contain the embryos of what will be the Mahavishnu Orchestra "Purpose Of When", of what will be the mystical and oriental experiences derived from meeting Carlos Santana "Siren", but above all the input for what will be worldwide jazz-rock in the years to come "Marbles" and "Don't Let the Dragon Eat Your Mother". Besides this (as if it were little), every groove exudes devotion and tribute to Hendrix's style and to the pyrotechnical guitar inventions in a whirlwind of schematized and improvised parts, at times bringing the result akin to a series of jams with great outcomes.

In some ways and for certain of its values, the album would deserve 5 stars, but I remain one step below for the greater qualities of the aforementioned "Extrapolation", McLaughlin's true masterpiece.