Trivia / John McLaughlin

• He Also Did: His list of credits as a sideman is colossal, but a particularly noteworthy one is his lead guitar performance on much of Carla Bley and Paul Haines' triple-LP "jazz opera" Escalator Over the Hill, which was released in 1971 after three years of recording - not due to any delays in the recording itself, mind you, but just due to the complexity of the material and the issues involved with scraping together the funds to produce it. Some 50 people appear on the recording either as musicians or vocalists (or both), among them Linda Ronstadt and Jack Bruce, not to mention the massive cast of people involved in producing it.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: The Mahavishnu Orchestra's third album languished in a vault for twenty-six years because the group couldn't agree on its value (McLaughlin himself always maintained it was the best thing they recorded). It was finally released in 1999 as The Lost Trident Sessions.

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