John McLaughlin (musician)

John McLaughlin (musician)

John McLaughlin (born 4 January 1942, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England), also known as Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, is an English guitarist, bandleader and composer. His music includes many genres of jazz, and rock, which he coupled with an interest in Indian classical music to become one of the pioneering figures in fusion.

In 2010 guitarist Jeff Beck called him "the best guitarist alive". The Indian tabla maestro Zakir Hussain has called him "one of the greatest and one of the important musicians of our times". In 2003 McLaughlin was ranked 49th in Rolling Stone magazine list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

After contributing to several key British groups of the early sixties and making his first solo record Extrapolation (with Tony Oxley and John Surman) he moved to the USA where he played with Tony Williams's group Lifetime and then with Miles Davis on his landmark electric jazz-fusion albums In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew, A Tribute to Jack Johnson and On The Corner. His 1970s electric band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, performed a technically virtuosic and complex style of music that fused electric jazz and rock with Indian influences.