Extraordinary musicians and kindred spirits, John McLaughlin and Chick Corea go back a long way. Now the legendary guitarist and pianist join forces for the first time since they were members of Miles Davis’s unforgettable Bitches Brew-era band some forty years ago.

Individually they created the two greatest jazz-rock fusion bands – McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra and Corea’s Return to Forever both rating amongst the most popular instrumental groups of all time. Their musical collaborators over the years are a Who’s Who of jazz, rock, flamenco and more. McLaughlin’s concerts with fellow guitar greats Paco de Lucia, Larry Coryell and Al di Meola, and recordings of his own composition, Mediterranean Concerto, with Katia Labeque and the London Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas, have made him an outstanding pioneer of World Music. A 12-time Grammy Award-winning pianist and best-selling recording artist, Corea is one of the most prolific and versatile composers of modern times. From bebop to classical, from jazz fusion to straight ahead, Corea has touched an astonishing number of musical bases with his standard of excellence.

Together again after four decades and lining up with top ranking instrumentalists Kenny Garrett (sax), Brian Blade (drums) and Christian McBride (bass) in their brand new Five Peace Band, McLaughlin and Corea stand poised to write a dazzling new chapter in jazz-rock fusion.

Chick Corea and John McLaughlin
Five Peace Band

Chick Corea
John McLaughlin
Kenny Garrett, saxophone
Brian Blade, drums
Christian McBride, bass

Chick Corea and John McLaughlin
Grand Old Men of Jazz

by Clive Davis

Strictly speaking, it is a little premature to describe Chick Corea and John McLaughlin as “grand old men”. After all, the two musicians – born within less than a year of each other – are youthful sixty-somethings. But with the gradual passing of the old guard from the bebop era, it is the musicians who came of age in the 1960s who are increasingly seen as guardians of the flame.

It is hard to think of many other artists who have such a significant connection with the most fertile experiments of that turbulent age. Along with Herbie Hancock – a man who seems able to re-invent himself each season – Corea and McLaughlin were pivotal figures in Miles Davis’s ground-breaking fusion recordings.

This is one reason why their decision to join forces in the Five Peace Band has caused such a frisson among jazz enthusiasts. Having made their name with Miles, the two men went their separate ways in the decades that followed. The Five Peace project finally reunites them in a setting which provides the opportunity to look simultaneously back to their youth and peer into the future.

It is chastening to think that 40 years have passed since they helped change the course of jazz on Davis albums such as In a Silent Way. Given that we are still a few years short of celebrating the centenary of what is generally accepted as the first jazz recordings, the two men can congratulate themselves on having helped to shape nearly half of the music’s entire life-span. They have survived long enough to witness a period in which jazz has evolved into a protean form that overlaps with classical disciplines and the folk music of Asia, Africa and Europe.

If purists such as the combative Wynton Marsalis have won headlines by attempting – with varying degrees of success – to emulate the forms and traditions of yesteryear, Corea and McLaughlin have found themselves exploring the frontiers. (Although Corea, too, can be the classicist when the mood takes him. One of the last times I heard Corea in London he was performing a Mozart piano concerto.) McLaughlin, for his part, has devoted more and more of his energies to exploring the religious and philosophical underpinnings of Indian traditional music. In the mid-1970 he was deploying outrageous power chords and mystic showmanship in the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Later his work took a more intimate, acoustic turn in that ever-popular ensemble, Shakti, although he has continued to explore jazz-rock textures in his 4th Dimension group.

Working alongside such virtuosi as Zakir Hussain, the guitarist has done as much as anyone to expand the vocabulary of improvised music. As pop has grown ever more formulaic and juvenile, McLaughlin continues to seek a higher path. One of his avowed passions has been “konokol” -- a system of conveying rhythms through speech and hand-clapped patterns. He first acquired the fundamentals of the technique from the hands of the master, Ravi Shankar, some 30 years ago.

More recently, Corea has been revisiting his fusion past in a concert tour with his immensely popular group, Return to Forever. Just as rock music was once the domain of high-tech “progressive” outfits such as Yes and Genesis, so Return To Forever represented the most flamboyant – not to say bombastic – end of the jazz spectrum in the era of bell-bottoms, handle-bar moustaches and Afghan coats.

At its worst, fusion could be painfully self-indulgent and addicted to virtuosity for its own sake. Decibels often took the place of ideas. But in forming the Five Peace Band, Corea and McLaughlin are attempting to summon up the genuinely creative aspects of the Age of Aquarius.

Even if both men had never recorded another note after In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew, both would still be remembered as members of the most adventurous and controversial jazz groups of the 1960s. Corea had joined Davis’s group in 1968 as a replacement for Herbie Hancock. Having already gained crucial early experience with bandleaders such as Mongo Santamaria, Blue Mitchell and that morose yet magical saxophonist Stan Getz, he found that Davis wanted him to experiment with electric keyboards. As he explained in a recent interview:

“One night as I was walking on stage and heading toward the acoustic piano, Miles turned around, pointed at the Fender Rhodes and said 'play that.' So I did. Probably from that day forward, which was about six or eight months after I got in the band, I played pretty much exclusively electric keyboards… So I learned as I went along and it was an experiment.”

Some of Corea’s early studio work with Davis can be found on the intriguing album, Filles de Kilimanjaro. But it was a few months later, in early 1969, that the trial-and-error strategy bore full fruit on In a Silent Way. The session struck a superb balance between jazz creativity and the more visceral rhythms of rock. Bitches Brew, which followed soon afterwards, made a bigger commercial impact, and gave both Corea and McLaughlin freer rein to improvise, but it is the more controlled passions of In a Silent Way which have truly stood the test of time. If I had to recommend one album to convey the mood of a decade, it would be this.

Kenny Garrett joined Davis’s group in the 1980s, when the trumpeter fell increasingly under the spell of pop ephemera. If the great man’s performances were variable, at best, Garrett’s forceful soloing invariably offered some respite. In the years since, he has established himself as a player who can oscillate between fearsome neo-bop and more listener-friendly funk.

Vinnie Colaiuta, who cites Tony Williams as a prime influence, is one of the most accomplished drummers at the nexus of jazz and rock. A sideman with the likes of Frank Zappa, Sting and Joni Mitchell, he will be anchoring the rhythm section alongside Christian McBride, the most accomplished bass player of his generation, a man who is just as comfortable cooking funk licks as negotiating the most intricate bebop chord changes.

Poised between past and present, the Five Peace Band provides a snapshot of the condition of jazz at the dawn of the 21st century. The oft-derided notion of the “supergroup” is alive and well, and still making a noise.

Clive Davis writes on music and the arts for The Times and Sunday Times. His blog can be found at www.spectator.co.uk/clivedavis