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John McLaughlin interview on how he started
...Then there was the scene at The 100 Club with Alexis Korner and John Mayall – between The Flamingo and The 100 Club there was a lot of moving around. Everybody played with Alexis, he got everybody together. He was like fusion personified. Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, Jack Bruce and Cyril Davies, they all either sang or played in Alexis’ band. And everyone got on well. Nobody thought about ‘do you belong in this band?’ – the whole musical scene was fantastic. Alexis loved 50s blues, but he always had jazzmen in his band. I jammed with Alexis I don’t know how many times… I’ll never forget, at that time I was playing a really great early 60s Telecaster… it was a beauty, a real beauty. Alexis was crazy about that guitar, so I sold it to him and that’s when I got my Gibson L-4.”
McLaughlin eventually left the Blue Flames to go with Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and Graham Bond: “It was musically much more challenging with Graham. It was still very strong R&B, but if you take the R&B out of jazz, you don’t have very much jazz left, do you really? We were starving – making next to nothing. But The Graham Bond Organisation was a great little band.
Eventually, the GBO broke up, and then because I could read music, I started doing a lot of studio work alongside guys like Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones. Remember 1966-67 and all of those hits – Donovan, Sandie Shaw, Petula Clark, Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck – it was the first time I had some money in my pocket! You know, Jimmy and I go back a long time. I was 18 when I met him and he must have been about 15. I was living in Surrey and we happened to be neighbours. I gave him guitar lessons!”
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