A “gateway drug” is what I’m tempted to call this album.  It was that in my experience, anyway.  I bought it when it was released, during the period when my musical tastes, rooted in 70’s prog, began really to open out.  Here was my first encounter with a solo album from John McLaughlin, who had amazed me via televised appearances of the Mahavishnu Orchestra (was it on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert?  The Midnight Special?  Both?), and the appropriately legendary Birds of Fire (1973).  That limited exposure set my expectations, and pushed me to buy the album “blind,” as we used to say.

I listened.  So much for my expectations.  As I look back now at the remarkable list of musicians playing with McLaughlin on this album (you can see that list here on Wikipedia), it stands out as a landmark in my gradual awakening to the wonders of artists who refused to be confined by a genre.  Sure, the jazz elements are often prominent, but always — in every song — in the service of a work of art, and never simply subservient to defined protocols that I was associating with jazz at the time.  I did not really come to understand the term “fusion” until later; Coryell, for example, was for me a taste more slowly acquired.  Appreciation for the importance of Miles Davis in this historical trajectory also came later.

Such appreciation did indeed come, but it was in no small measure through a McLaughlin threshold.  His skills and stylistic range are breathtaking in general, and if you’ve not partaken deeply before, Electric Guitarist is a mighty fine place to begin.  The music curves in an irresistible arc, beginning with the amazing “New York On My Mind,” and culminating in an extraordinarily subtle and moving rendition of “My Foolish Heart.”  If you remember it, go listen again; if you haven’t heard it, I would urge you to add it to your queue.