Remembering:  Mahavishnu Orchestra, Birds of Fire (1973)

One of THE touchstones for the merging of jazz and rock sensibilities in the 1970’s.  Birds of Fire arguably brought the jazz impulses of the players closer to the hearts of rock fans than had their prior album (The Inner Mounting Flame), by capitalizing explicitly on a short song format for maximization of intensity and impact.  Yet within that more restrained format, John McLaughlin’s range, in both composition and performance, insistently burns with its trademark spiritual glow.

And “that album cover”!  (See my prior post on this topic.)  The flame is there, and its center burns white-hot, but its presence on that cover has an uncanny subtlety and softness.  It’s a flame to which we are invited; it beckons quietly into the not-so-quiet world of sound within.  I remember the impulse to hug the album to my chest, hoping to fly with those birds, while realizing once I heard the music that in doing so, I would have burned my hands.  When I listen now, I still feel the heat.

But the album also never loses sight of the implied silence that sound transgresses, or of the darkness without which the glow of the fire could not be made manifest.  Sri Chinmoy’s poem seeks to capture the passage:

No more my heart shall sob or grieve.
My days and nights dissolve in God’s own Light.
Above the toil of life my soul
Is a Bird of Fire winging the Infinite.

These birds have flown.  Listen, and they might fly again.  Isn’t it good?