Tag Archives: Rick Laird

Rock has already established very few superstar violinists, mostly as the violin isn’t usually seen as a rock and roll device — David Combination of Ruler Crimson, Darryl Method of Curved Atmosphere, and John Weider of Eric Burdon & the Pets one thinks of, and that’s about any of it. …

Rick Laird was the noiseless person in the Mahavishnu Orchestra — even though John McLaughlin, Jan Hammer, Jerry Goodman, and Billy Cobham each regularly tried to outdo his bandmates in swiftness and quantity, Laird provided the anchor towards the group’s audio. Not really that he didn’t sometimes get the opportunity …

A wild improviser, bassist Jonas Hellborg leans more toward rock and roll than jazz. Sketching motivation from Jimi Hendrix, Arabic music, and Life time, Hellborg started playing professionally within the middle-’80s. After some program function (including Pil’s Record, Ginger Baker’s Middle Passing, and periods with John McLaughlin’s brand-new Mahavishnu Orchestra), …