Meeting of the Spirits
Dawn
The Noonward Race
A Lotus on Irish Streams
Vital Transformation
The Dance of Maya
You Know You Know
Awakening
It’s very difficult to explain now just how jaw‑dropping and head-spinning Mahavishnu Orchestra's The Inner Mounting Flame sounded when it landed in 1971, seemingly from a galaxy far, far away. At times loud, heavyweight and in-your-face with its controlled cacophony of virtuosic guitar, bass, drums, synthesiser and electric violin, occasionally achingly melodic and pacific, it was truly groundbreaking.
An easy first listen it certainly was not. But with Mahavishnu’s outrageous debut album, jazz-rock had truly arrived, the term ‘far out’ was redefined, and a new mountain peak had appeared on the musical landscape. The Inner Mounting Flame was the first jazz-rock album that rock fans in numbers found themselves being jolted and grabbed by – enough of them to make it an unlikely but important Top 20 hit.
“It was a very powerful time of upheaval,” guitarist John McLaughlin told Classic Rock. “The psychedelic revolution; the whole black and white thing in America; the assassinations; the Vietnam War on top of that. The music just reflected society as it was then. There was a great feeling that we could actually make the world a better place.”
Every week, Album of the Week Club listens to and discusses the album in question, votes on how good it is, and publishes our findings, with the aim of giving people reliable reviews and the wider rock community the chance to contribute.
Other albums released in November 1971
- Hooteroll? - Howard Wales and Jerry Garcia
- Barclay James Harvest and Other Short Stories - Barclay James Harvest
- Madman Across the Water - Elton John
- The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys - Traffic
- Nursery Cryme - Genesis
- Farther Along - The Byrds
- Gonna Take a Miracle - Laura Nyro
- A Nod Is As Good As a Wink... to a Blind Horse - Faces
- There's a Riot Goin' On - Sly & the Family Stone
- Muswell Hillbillies - The Kinks
- Fragile - Yes
- Funny How Sweet Co-Co Can Be - Sweet
- Killer - Alice Cooper
- Deuce - Rory Gallagher
- Anticipation - Carly Simon
- "Babbacombe" Lee - Fairport Convention
- Bless the Weather - John Martyn
- Bonnie Raitt - Bonnie Raitt
- Brain Capers - Mott the Hoople
- Choice Quality Stuff/Anytime - It's a Beautiful Day
- Do You Like It Here Now, Are You Settling In? - Man
- Dog Of Two Head - Status Quo
- E Pluribus Funk - Grand Funk Railroad
- Flowers of Evil - Mountain
- For Ladies Only - Steppenwolf
- Good and Dusty - The Youngbloods
- Lost in the Ozone - Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
- Nazareth - Nazareth
- Nilsson Schmilsson - Harry Nilsson
- Performance Rockin' the Fillmore - Humble Pie
- Pictures at an Exhibition - Emerson, Lake & Palmer
- Quicksilver - Quicksilver Messenger Service
- Sanctuary - Dion
- Sunfighter - Paul Kantner and Grace Slick
- There's Gotta Be a Change - Albert Collins
- Whatevershebringswesing - Kevin Ayers
- Year of Sunday - Seals and Crofts
What they said...
"A furious, high-energy, yet rigorously conceived meeting of virtuosos that, for all intents and purposes, defined the fusion of jazz and rock a year after Miles Davis' Bitches Brew breakthrough. It also inadvertently led to the derogatory connotation of the word fusion, for it paved the way for an army of imitators, many of whose excesses and commercial panderings devalued the entire movement." (AllMusic)
"The Inner Mounting Flame is a classic, and a defining album in Jazz Fusion. One of the interesting aspects of the album is that it features no wind instruments, a rather unusual quality for a Jazz album, but because of its more rock-oriented sound it has also proven to be influential in several other genres outside of Jazz music." (Sputnik Music)
"Listening to this 1971 release, one is struck by the grandiose reach of the quintet that dared to call itself an orchestra. Pieces like Meeting of the Spirits and the fragile, acoustic A Lotus on Irish Streams are like classically-inspired suites in miniature. But it was numbers like Noonward Race, Vital Information and especially Awakening, fuelled by Cobham’s smouldering intensity on the kit and McLaughlin’s raging, distortion-soaked guitar lines, that really grabbed rock crowds." (Jazz Times)
What you said...
Mike Canoe: An intriguing and immersive album that takes my brain to places it doesn't normally go. Guitarist John McLaughlin may be the name above the title - and his playing is phenomenal - but he also gives the rest of the band plenty of opportunity to flex their muscles.
I especially like how Jerry Goodwin's clean and elegant violin contrasts with McLaughlin's distorted guitar. Similarly, softer pieces like You Know You Know and A Lotus On Irish Streams balance out the headlong frenzy of the other pieces like Vital Transformation or The Noonward Race. A good album to just let the music wash over you.
Chris Elliott: There's an iconic Morecombe and Wise comedy sketch in the UK, the punchline being, "I can assure you I'm playing the right notes... just not necessarily in the right order."
This isn't jazz-rock. It's far worse. A collection of random notes with no discernible reason. Its not even freeform jazz. It's just a cacophony. Nothing mundane like a song, a tune, or – god forbid – a melody.
Then I remembered Massive Attack sampled it on Unfinished Symphony so I listened to that instead. Proof you can make a silk purse out of a pig's ear.
Mark Herrington:I can appreciate the musicianship and complexity clearly on display here. Ultimately, it doesn’t resonate with me and leaves me hankering for something a little catchier and simpler to listen to. One best admired from afar and left to those it does click with.
Dale Munday: Stellar performances all round, no question about that. Reminiscent of Zappa at times and also pre-empting Larks Tongues-period King Crimson. Ultimately I find it gets just a little tedious.
John Davidson: Even as a long-time prog fan I found this a difficult listen. Yes have their jazzier moments but there is at least a song with a tune in there somewhere Not so with the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
Doubtlessly very talented musicians but that's as far as it goes. Jazz-rock, less than the sum of the parts.
Philip Qvist: The Mahavishnu Orchestra are another one of those bands who I have heard of but whose music I rarely listened to - if at all. Jazz-Rock, or whatever you want to call it, has never really appealed to me, so this band has never featured on my radar - until now that is.
If I'm being truthful, The Inner Mountain Flame didn't exactly float my boat. For sure, band leader John McLaughlin's guitar playing is sublime, well backed up by a very tight band on top of their game; especially Jan Hammer on keyboards and drummer Billy Cobham, who was my Man of the Match here.
So there is nothing wrong with the musicianship and the songs are well crafted, but it isn't an album that I will be rushing out to listen to again, far less buy it.
Highlights for me were opening track Meeting Of The Spirits and A Lotus On Irish Streams.
So not my cup of tea, but I can't fault the quality of the musicians on show here. This is going to be a difficult one for me to score this week.
Gary Claydon: So many notes and chords! This is music with too many moving parts. I've long been an admirer of John McLaughlin's guitar work (and the rest of the band are none too shabby either) but there's the rub. On the ( very occasional) occasions that I give The Inner Mounting Flame a listen, I find myself admiring the musicianship, admiring the virtuosity, admiring the technique.
After 40-odd minutes of admiring, though, it feels oddly unfulfilling, like the takeaway meal that leaves you feeling stuffed but an hour later you're hungry again. You know you've just had a feast but can't help hankering for something else.
Keith Jenkin: Building on his involvement with Miles Davis on his best fusion albums (In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson) here John Mclaughlin put his own band together and delivers the sort of music I have always imagined Hendrix might have ended up delivering had he lived longer. All the musicians here are on fire and although this is slightly removed from the more typical classic rock settings most reading this will be used to, this album and its follow-up Birds Of Fire have to be among the best guitar-led all-instrumental albums to have ever graced our eardrums.
Greg Schwepe: Mahavishnu Orchestra’s The Inner Mounting Flame is yet another album (and band, for that matter) I had to check out after reading other articles where musicians (Zakk Wylde, Neal Schon, to name a few), just raved about this one. Jeff Beck was a fan of John McLaughlin and did a cover of You Know You Know on one of his live albums that I have.
I went all in; ordered a box set with this album and a few others, and slammed it into the CD player when I got it. Then realized; “Uh oh, not clicking right away, not so sure about this…”
And that began my little journey with this album. So revisiting again for this review gives me another shot at figuring all this Mahavishnu Orchestra stuff out. First thoughts were that the musicianship was off the charts. You can hear the talent oozing out of these tracks. But that doesn’t always translate to listenable music to me.
A lot of times it seems like they were being dissonant for dissonance's sake. Kept waiting for a melody I could hum, then realized that wasn’t coming anytime soon...or ever. As I went through the album I’d find bits and pieces I really liked, then sections that were just too frenetic. The violinist at times sounded like a combination of Robbie Steinhardt from Kansas and Charlie Daniels all jacked up on Red Bull. And yes, that’s a compliment. But again, I need to little melody to guide me along.
Overall, I really wanted to like this from start to finish, but I think my jazz fusion meter goes to Blow By Blow and won’t go any further than that. My favourite song is You Know You Know, and that’s probably because I had heard the Jeff Beck version long before this and had that committed to memory.
As a wannabe guitar player, I truly admire John McLaughlin’s chops, but sometimes he’s shredding just because he can. But boy can he shred. I can see why others admire his technique and style.
I will freely admit that my ears are probably not sophisticated enough for half of this album. But there are similar proggy freeform-type albums that I am a fan of, so there’s hope for me yet. 7 out of 10 on this one for me. And the Mahavishnu Orchestra box set eventually ended up at the used book/record store.
Marcelo Morem: I love this album. More than the otherworldly guitar playing there's a total drumming showcase by Billy Cobham.
Michael Fildes: Sadly the term 'jazz-rock' has probably put many people off giving this band a chance over the years, but there's all kinds going on here. Jazz, prog, alt-rock, funk. You can hear Crimson, Hendrix, Soundgarden, Jane's Addiction, Funkadelic, and yes, Miles Davis, and Pharaoh Saunders.
The players are incredible, the interplay is stunning, and the star of the show is John McClaughlin's trademark 'machine gun' guitar, although the rest of the band give him a run for his money, particularly the rhythm section of Billy Cobham and Rick Laird. (If this album floats your boat check out Billy Cobham's Spectrum album - with Tommy Bolin on guitar.)
It's never going to be to everyone's taste but I challenge anyone to find it boring. For me it's a masterpiece – a trippy, blissed-out bit of heaven. It shimmers, it shakes, it grooves, and most importantly, it rocks 10/10.
Kev Sullivan: Always loved this album. I had no idea who they were when, as a kid, I bought this in a second-hand shop in the late 70’s. A gamble that paid off.
Mike Galway: I had a second-hand copy which was a bit crackly so ordered a new one. It was at the time when Eddie Van Halen was changing the way guitarists played. My friend came around to my house and I said, "Forget EVH, listen to this!" I put the album on but instead of Meeting Of The Spirits some Scottish pipe and drum marching band music started up! Obviously it was a mislabelled copy, we still chuckle about it today.
Barry Johnson: Saw a broadcast of them playing back in the day and got this. A colossal band brimming with talent. I played this as recently as last week. I have almost all their recordings and Inner Mounting Flame sets the pace for those that followed.
Ben L. Connor: As good as this is, I think the follow-up Birds Of Fire is even better!
Steve Pereira: At the start of the Sixties jazz was both respected and popular, but as rock music developed and grew, so it replaced jazz as the most popular and successful "serious" music. By the end of the Sixties, jazz was all but dead. Leading jazz musician Miles Davies could see the way things were going, and embraced rock music, so creating "jazz fusion" or "jazz-rock". Many of his band members would go on in the early Seventies to form their own jazz fusion bands. John McLaughlin was one such. His guitar playing blends elements of both jazz and rock as well as touches of Indian music.
While jazz fusion was popular for a while in the early Seventies, with some bands such as Weather Report having hit singles, it didn't gain broad traction. There are bands who continued to explore it, but it was mainly an early Seventies movement. Part of the problem is that rock by the Seventies was already a broad church, and allowed plenty of freedom of musical expression, while jazz remained fairly limited.
Most jazz rock bands felt more jazz than rock, and seemed to miss out on the main essence of rock music, which is having a good time. It is difficult to dance to jazz. It is difficult to feel jazz as a social commentary. Jazz is more ornamentation than music. And this is the main problem with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and the debut album, Inner Mounting Flame.
It is ornamentation. It is showy music. We are somewhat impressed by McLaughlin's technically fast fingers and the sounds he makes. But while intellectually we can appreciate it, emotionally it doesn't strike us in the way that Johnny B Goode, The Kingsmen's Louie Louie, or Pretty Vacant hit us.
The Mahavishnu Orchestra is more about musical masturbation than about proper gritty music. It's not for me.
Final score: 7.16 (37 votes cast, total score 265)
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