Four-hour, 72-track anthology of the Laurel Canyon music community that became a dominant worldwide force in the late 60s/early 70s. Tracing the scene's development from The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Love and The Doors through to early country-rock and the singer/songwriter boom that defined the early 70s. By the end of the 60s, the international music world's nexus had shifted from such previous hotspots as Liverpool, London and San Francisco to Laurel Canyon, a rural oasis in the midst of the bustle of Los Angeles. Just minutes from Hollywood, the Sunset Strip and the LA record companies/studios, Laurel Canyon became home to a folk, country, rock and pop hybrid that encompassed everyone from early players The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield to The Doors, Frank Zappa, Glen Campbell and manufactured pop kingpins The Monkees.
The Mahavishnu Orchestra, in its original incarnation, lasted just four years, but in that brief time, the pioneering quintet set both the template and the high-water mark for fusion music. No band ever rocked as hard in a jazzy place as guitarist John McLaughlin’s charging ensemble. McLaughlin had already built a firm reputation in his native England as a keen improviser with blues and rock leanings when he was invited by drummer Tony Williams in early 1969 to join him in New York. Almost immediately, McLaughlin was swept up into the very epicenter of the burgeoning fusion movement, appearing on – in 1969 alone – three of the genre’s most significant recordings: Emergency! (by the newly-formed Tony Williams Lifetime) and In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew, the epochal Miles Davis albums that kick started fusion.