JAZZ ODYSSEY
“It was a disaster,” says John McLaughlin. “It was brutal.” He is referring to the year 2020, while talking about the background to the making of Liberation Time (right), his latest addition to a solo discography that first began back in 1969. While the pandemic’s lockdowns touched and affected everyone differently, this man has been gigging more or less non-stop since the late 1950s, and when he says he found the enforced confinement brutal you can hear the pain and anguish in his voice.
McLaughlin initially made the best of it. Living in a relatively rural environment in France meant he could go for walks, and he got plenty of exercise playing his beloved table tennis, not to mention keeping up with his guitar practice. However, the frustration of
