The Tony Williams Lifetime
Turn It Over

THE REVIEW

In 1969, right after leaving Miles Davis's lineup, where he joined at only 17, the great drummer Tony Williams founded a group destined to revolutionize the history of music, contributing to the birth of the genre today known as "Fusion", a fusion between Jazz and Rock.

Together with the English guitarist John McLaughlin, who had just arrived in the United States, and the revolutionary organist Larry Young, he released the debut album "Emergency!", a double album already notable for its audacity in performances and arrangements.

In 1970, John McLaughlin invited his friend Jack Bruce, the famous bassist of Cream, to join the band. Knowing the fame and artistic stature of the group's members, Bruce accepted the invitation immediately.

From this combination came this magnificent album I am reviewing, released in 1970: a hard, paranoid, structured, and deconstructed record where every sound aesthetic, both in performance and recording, seems to have been deliberately overlooked. It features "Vuelta Abajo" with its dissonant riff and pounding gait, the album opener "To Whom It May Concern", divided into two parts, and the standard "once i loved" distorted by the harrowing images evoked by guitar and organ, and Tony Williams' paranoid voice.

It goes without saying that a work of this type was snubbed by critics, who cried scandal over the brutality of the performances, and by the public, being a decidedly extreme and uncompromising musical proposal.

Yet, it is particularly interesting to note how the solo excesses that perhaps weighed down the debut album are set aside here in favor of an ensemble sound, and the sick atmosphere of many pieces is striking, especially the sung ones, as well as the heaviness of the performances, where the line between sound and noise is often and widely crossed.

The CD version also includes an unreleased song sung by Jack Bruce composed by John McLaughlin, "One Word", which would become one of the classics of the future Mahavishnu Orchestra.

In short, this record is a very transversal work, unjustly forgotten and underrated even today, but deserving more attention given the stature of its protagonists and the bold experiments contained within it.

To Rediscover.