John McLaughlin
John McLaughlin
attitude thinking order
I think I'm built like a painter. I have friends who are painters and they reflect a similar psychological attitude towards their work. They don't know what's coming next, they just wait for the message, for orders to come and then off they go on their next project.
playing-music moments enjoyed
The moment you start to talk about playing music, you destroy music. It cannot be talked about. It can only be played, enjoyed and listened to.
government dna levels
The biggest government waste: The death penalty. An individual death-penalty case could climb to $100 million, much of it spent at the litigation level. Also, DNA evidence has exonerated nearly 300 death-row inmates.
funny inspiring musician
When I hear a great musician, I can feel his life inside the music.
records way sound
In a way records are like paintings. Instead of using paints and brushes we use sounds and instruments.
children lying silly
If I can get out of the way, if I can be pure enough, if I can be selfless enough, and if I can be generous and loving and caring enough to abandon what I have in my own preconceived silly notions of what I think I am - and become truly who in fact I am, which is really just another child of God - then the music can really use me. And therein lies my fulfillment. That's when the music starts to happen.
player yawning way
You can have the greatest player in terms of mastering an instrument and you could be yawning your head off when you hear them. So, it's not what you do, but the way you're doing it and in the end that's all that we have
jobs giving goal
I don't have any particular goals in making a recording. In a way the recording is itself the goal. The music comes into my mind, and from there the main job is to give form to it.
locks band tunes
Everyone can lock into the rhythm on a tune. It's organic in nature. It connects the band as a whole and connects the band to the audience.
spiritual musician language
Music speaks from spirit to spirit and in that sense you could call it a true spiritual language.
two musical kind
There are two kinds of success. One is musical or artistic and the other is commercial.
struggle fighting rights
Question: Does it frost Jackson, Jesse Jackson, that someone like Obama, who fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a white on the inside -- that an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rights struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for?
order play challenges
In a certain sense, these were lessons I learned by playing with Indian musicians. The rhythmic forms that they use are very complex, and very challenging. In order to play in fifteen, or eleven, or seven or even five, you have to have mastered that time in order to be able to be free with the music.
musician spirituality music-is
Spirituality is worthless if it's not practical. Music is my work. I am a musician.