Let’s Go To San Francisco

Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin both remember the first time they came across the phenomenon that was flamenco and classical guitarist, Paco De Lucia. Di Meola was on tour in Spain with Return To Forever and kept hearing the name. “I bought a few of his records while I was over there. When I got back I was completely blown away at how he had elevated the idiom of flamenco by a technique I had never heard of before with a velocity that was second to none and a percussive technique that was a new approach.”

John McLaughlin was in the back of a taxi in Paris. “There was this music playing on the radio and I asked the driver who it was and he told me. ‘Paco, who?’ I’d never heard of him. I thought: this guy’s a monster. So I got back to the hotel and I found out that Paco was in Paris. I mean, if that’s not a sign I don’t know what is. We got together a couple