Ricardo -> RE: Saturday Night in San Francisco (Jan. 23 2021 21:29:17)
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But I know the original line up was Larry Coryell, John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia. There has historically been a lot of al Dimeola hating in favor of Larry C over the years regarding the Trio. I can admit personality wise and perhaps behind the scenes artistically he was probably a nice guy and fun to work with. Paco admits Larry taught him the “wheel” which I assume means the circle of 5th and how to improvise and change keys. But having said all that I have to say the fusion was FIRST Al dimeola’s idea to play with Paco. And he always just wanted to compose duets with Paco (Mediterranean Sundance, Fantasia suite for 2 guitars, Passion Grace and Fire, Splendido Sundance etc) where Al would arrange a duet specific for the two. Only 2 of those ever manifested as recorded duets. Mclaughlin most likely heard med sun on the radio (it’s the only song I can imagine Paco had on international Radio honestly, unless it was Entre Dos aguas which is basically the same song but not Internationally known at the time) and tracked down Paco to do a tour. His original idea was to feature classical, jazz and flamenco in an acoustic fusion setting, but sort of gave up looking for a classical player that would improvise of charts so he chose Larry to be the “jazz” guy. Larry and John had worked together on “Rene’s theme” for example on Larry’s spaces album. Of course Paco brought Al’s tune to the table, as this was a simple extension of Al’s original idea of doing a fusion. The trio format, of course is first revealed in that tour in 1978-79. To be frank, poor Larry struggles with most of the material IMO. The feel of THAT trio was Larry keeping the beat for John and Paco to really stretch out and battle on stage. At least that is how it seems to me. Keep in mind Al was a student of Larry and worked with him too, but Al was on a different musical level that matches closer to John and Paco abilities, regardless of your tastes (lots of people HATE Dimeola) this is a pretty obvious fact to me. What happened was, according to Paco, Al wanted to arrange an actual duet Tour with Paco, and it seems it was already in the works when John contacted Paco to do round 2 with the trio with Larry. So Paco said he was already booked to tour with Al so john could join THEM instead. The end of THAT tour resulted in the famous Sanfrancisco album. Larry was not totally out of the picture as right after Sanfrancisco tour ended December 6, Paco and John flew to japan to do a trio tour with Larry and recorded two pieces around christmas for Castro Marin. So literally days apart. The issue with Larry and drug rehab came soon after, but at the time none of these guys knew how HUGE the Sanfrancisco album would turn out. Multi platinum. I don’t think that would have happened with Larry, sorry to say. I feel fortunate to have met Larry and his son back stage of the RTF reunion tour. Super nice guy. The trio concert of Larry Al Dimeola and Bireli Lagrane is also an excellent production. A nice counter example of the format to the actual Duet concert tour Paco and John did around the same time.
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