Music Review: John McLaughlin/Jaco Pastorius/Tony Williams - Trio Of Doom - Page 2

The next selection was Jaco's, "Continuum" from his debut solo album of 1976. It's a pretty, flowing melody that showcases Pastorius' more tuneful side, and even though Williams and McLaughlin were royally pissed at him for the prior tune, McLaughlin manages to give him sympathetic support. Williams sounds like he's still reeling a bit from Jaco's earlier adventurism.

"Para Oriente" was Williams' contribution to the set, a mid-tempo funky number with a straight jazz middle that doesn't seem to go anywhere. The set wraps up with another McLaughlin tune, the rocking "Are You The One, Are You The One?", and the give and take between the two guitarists work much better than on "Dark Prince."

Columbia was eager to include this gig as part of a planned release documenting the Havana Jam as a whole, but McLaughlin immediately vetoed that, believing, along with Williams, that Jaco had gone off the mark during the performance too many times. Determined to get this threesome on the record, the record company coaxed them into the studio just days later to re-record the songs, and three of the tracks ended up appearing on Columbia's two double lp releases of the Bay of Gigs, called Havana Jam and Havana Jam 2, both released later in 1979. The studio version of "Dark Prince" released on Havana Jam was even enhanced with live crowd noise to make it appear it was recorded at the Cuban event!

The unaffected studio version of that song is clearly lacking the schizophrenia of the live version, but some of the immediacy is lost with it as well. "Continuum" in the studio benefits from Tony's tighter playing. After a couple of false starts, the third take of "Para Oriente" is still sounding just a little bit rough around the edges. There was clearly some more studio work left to do, but the sessions ended abruptly on a sour note. As McLaughlin related a few years ago:

"So we all went into the great CBS Studio on 52nd Street where we did all those great things with Miles — In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew and all of that. So we start re-recording the tunes and in the meantime, Tony's not looking at Jaco. I mean, forget about speaking, he's not even looking at him. And Jaco's already very nervous. So we start playing and we did my tune again. So we do one take and we go in the control room to listen back and Jaco says, "Well, I think we can do it better." And all of a sudden Tony jumps in front of Jaco and says, "Better' Better, motherf****r'!!" He pushed Jaco up against the wall. I had never seen Tony angry but that was like a little volcano action, man, I tell you. And Jaco's like..."Hey man, I'm sorry, man, I'm sorry." Tony didn't hit 'em or anything, but when Tony got mad you just get out of the way. He had Jaco up against the wall and Jaco was like apologizing profusely. He knew he f****d up bigtime. So after 10 minutes of Tony blasting him with both barrels, Tony went into the studio and destroyed his drumkit. (laughter). And I said, "You gotta record with this!" He destroyed his kit and walked out of the studio and that was it. What a shame. But hey, who's perfect in this world?" — Bill Milkowski interview of John McLaughlin, 2004

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