A Lifetime ago
Here, out of the blue, is something of historical importance: a piece of film showing Tony Williams’ Lifetime — with Larry Young, John McLaughlin and Jack Bruce — in Bremen, recording for the popular Beat Club TV show during their European tour in late 1970 but never broadcast. This nine-minute extract from that 30-minute performance, which appeared on the programme’s YouTube channel this week, is the only filmed record of the existence of one of the key bands of its decade.
It’s particularly important to me since I saw them twice that year, and it provides evidence, up to a point, of what I’ve been saying ever since. They were extraordinary both times, but the second appearance — at the Marquee on Tuesday 6 October — still lives in the memory as the most electrifying gig I’ve ever attended.
The first time was at Ungano’s, a club on West 70th Street in NYC, where they spent most of August, having done a week at Slugs’ Saloon in the East Village in April and then played concerts in Pennsylvania, Detroit, Cincinnati and elsewhere. They were still a three-piece, just drums, organ and guitar, as they had been on Emergency!, their remarkable debut album, and already they were staggeringly different from anything else around. (One thing I remember about that night is Miles Davis leaning against the bar, wearing a tan patchwork suede suit, listening hard. Outside his silver Lamborghini Miura was parked at the kerb.)
The next day I went to interview Tony at the office of Polydor, his record company. The conversation was not productive. He was reading the New York Times while I asked my questions, and he carried on reading while he gave his answers in surly monosyllables. I don’t think I even wrote it up. His manager later conveyed his apologies. As it happened, I didn’t mind. A lot of the younger musicians who’d worked with Miles in the ’60s had picked his refusal to be ingratiating, either with audiences or journalists. Being cool was the priority. That was kind of all right with me.
And anyway I’d more or less worshipped Tony Williams since he’d joined Miles in 1963, aged 17. He was 15 months older than me, and I was trying to be a drummer at the time. To have someone of just about my age joining Miles was mindblowing. The dimension of his genius — and genius is what it was — somehow softened the blow when I decided that I wasn’t going to make a career of it. I was happy just to listen to him, whatever he did and whoever he did it with. And however he chose to conduct his public relations, which was really not important.
Bruce had joined to make it a quartet by the time they arrived in Europe for two months later for a 40-date tour. The Marquee was the third of those dates; they’d already played at Lancaster University and the Roadhouse in Dagenham. I stood there with Robert Fripp among the audience of about 200 as they played and he was as blown away as I was by the cascades and tidal waves of sound they produced. That’s what the Beat Club clip, magnificent though it is, doesn’t capture: it gets the complexity of the music but not the intensity, which had less to do with volume — although they were very loud — than with intention. The overriding sensation was that they were on a collective journey of discovery, there and then.
Larry Young was the least known of the four to a British rock audience, but in a way his playing defined the music that night. His Blue Note albums — Into Somethin’ and Unity — had shown that he had a very different approach to the Hammond organ from Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff or John Patton. He brought the instrument into the sphere of the New Thing. But with Lifetime he took it somewhere completely different, into a realm of almost pure texture (although that’s not an adequate word).
I’m indebted to the drummer Vinnie Sperrazza for teasing out, in his excellent Chronicles blog, the identity of the snatches of four themes heard in the clip: three McLaughlin pieces, “Devotion” and two that he would later record with the Mahavishnu Orchestra,”Trilogy” and “The Dance of Maya”; and the Jack Bruce/Pete Brown “Smiles and Grins”, which would appear on Jack’s solo album Harmony Row a year later. There’s a lot of 7/4 in there.
For me, this was the band of the era. To a far greater extent than Weather Report, Return to Forever, Headhunters or Mahavishnu, they realised the promise of In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. Only Hendrix, at his very best, could match them. And they were together not even a year. It’s painful to think of what they might have gone on to achieve. But sometimes, even now, you can hear a band clearly marked by their influence, and it still sounds like the future.
thebluemoment.com 
Richard thank you. That’s a wonderful piece. So many great stories in there. So much joy in your memories- even when you were being blanked! Miles at the bar. Love all those details
I’m a bit ahead of you, Richard, and visited NYC from New Zealand at 25 in October 1966. I heard the Miles Davis Quintet at the Village Vanguard; Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams of course, and tenor was George Coleman that night. Our rather capricious record releasing here meant that “Kind Of Blue” was familiar, but not the angry stuff by 1966, so I didn’t really enjoy the experience. I was with a spectacularly constructed young lady from here whom I vaguely knew, and I felt that Miles was playing up her skirt; a bit disconcerting for a naive jazz fan.
Hi Richard, we obviously were both very impressed with the Lifetime band. I think we have discussed this before. My recollection of the two shows I saw, Marquee and Hampstead Country Club are of a revolutionary musical collaboration that I took to my band Jody Grind with a vengeance. Of course we were not of the caliber of Williams, Young and McLaughlin although I had played with Johnny Mac with Duffy Power in the 1960”s. Jack and myself worked the Canteen shows with Esther Phillips and I always admired his bass playing, singing and writing but when his bass amp blew up a third of the way into the show at the Country Club the trio that was left took off like a moon rocket! Listening to the band today (Emergency and the Youtube clip) it has aged but although still fantastic. The essence of that trick that Tony Williams pulled off with his ride cymbal speeding up but the rest of the kit stying perfectly in time still gets me going! BTW I did two trio stints on B3 with Cindy Blackman on drums and Mel Collins on Saxophone in Zurich some years ago. Cindy can do that same trick! She is the only other drummer I know of who can complete that ‘trick’.
Really ? To me this is four very skilled musicians, showing off their virtuosity without eliciting a single emotional response. If it fails to stir an emotion what is the point ? Philip Nisbett PS Thank you for your wonderful posts which enliven every week.
Quite. I gave this a go, despite my habitual allergic reaction to “fusion” and “Miles Davis”, but it left me very cold indeed.
Will all the blue moments go into a book?
I was there!
Together with a collegue of mine we had travelled from Cologne to Bremen.
For some reason, when we arrived – as I recall – the recording was over,
and we met the band (except for TW) in a hotel room.
The were quite frustrated because they had an argument with Beat Clubs director Mike Leckebusch over the given equipment.
Beat Club used Orange, but TW insisted on Marshall.
(You can see one Marshall speaker behind Larry Young).
As I recall (very vaguely) they split from the recording crew in vital disagreement, demanding that the recording should not be used for release.
In fact, I think they sound horrible, and somehow not up to Beat Club standards.
—
At least a dozen years later, after a club gig with his quintet in Cologne I was happy to get an interview date with TW in a simple hotel, just across the street.
When I entered the room, he halfway sat on his bed watching a deer documentary on tv. In German.
During the interview he continued to do so, with his right eye, keeping track of me and my microphone with his left.
There are numerous stories like this, and Gary Husband has one of the best.
—
Anyhow, when I read again remarks on Lifetimes performance at the Marquee,
I can vividly hear what that was alike.
It seems Lifetime was one of those ‘you had to be there’ experiences, Richard. And many who were say it was unforgettable. (On the other hand, some published reviews from the time are damning.) As someone who wasn’t ‘there’, I can hear genius in the Mahavishnu Orchestra – for me, it’s where John’s influences and total originality come transcendently together after 12 years on the slow but increasingly ascending curve towards it. And the groundbreaking creative magic translated into a genuine commercial sensation too, if only for a couple of years. A rare event.
The artefacts left by Lifetime have only, by and large, historical curiosity for me – I don’t hear magic there. The compositions, to my ears, don’t live on beyond the recorded artefacts – and the recorded artefacts are pretty shoddy. The compositions of the Mahavishnu Orchestra have inspired (and easily withstand) myriad tribute albums, tribute ensembles and reinterpretations – big band, string quartet, flamenco, solo piano… As delightful as it is to have this visual evidence of Lifetime, nobody needs to rewrite history as a result of it.
I too saw the Lifetime at Slugs and I think also at Unganos, the later gig with Bruce. After hearing his sedate takes on In a Sllent Way I couldn’t believe McLaughlin (far, far, superior to Hendrix in my view). An insane group.
On a much more mundane level, adverts for the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester NY included concerts on 17 and 18 April 1970 headlined by “Tony Williams Lifetime featuring Jack Bruce with John McLaughlin and Larry Young”, The concerts were described as their “New York Concert Debut” ( THE BRIDGEPORT POST, 16 April 1970. They had been included in the Capitol Theatre advertisement in THE VILLAGE VOICE for 9 April1 1970 but not in the previous week’s advertisement that also covered the period in question)
Later that month, there was a brief Associated Press newswire saying that Jack Bruce had joined the group. That report was carried by different newspapers across the States on different dates over the following month, some of which mentioned the release of TURN IT OVER in June.
On 26 April 1970, TONY WILLIAMS’ “LIFETIME” WITH JACK BRUCE (as the advert read) headlined a concert at the Labor Temple in Minneapolis. The advert urged, “Don’t miss the fantastic sounds from this 4-piece group! ” (THE MINNEAPOLIS TRIBUNE, 26 April 1970).
I’m not sure whether any the above is of interest to anyone but I thought I’d mention it in case it is.
Not present in Bremen but I did see the band in 1970 at St George’s Hall in Liverpool, a very rare non classical concert in the room most often used for organ recitials. At that point jack Bruce was the main draw to callow rock fans like me. The highlight of the show was Tony Williams’ drumming which was mesmorising, and very loud.
I also attended the concert in Liverpool which featured a somewhat incongruous double bill of Lifetime and Curved Air. You are right that many people were there to see Jack Bruce and were disappointed by the complexity of the music. Several of them walked out long before the concert finished. However, I was 17 years old and was mesmerised. I stayed to the very end even though I knew it meant I would miss the last train home.
I don‘t remember Curved Air being on the bill. Were they support?
Yes they were the support so strictly speaking it wasn’t a double bill.
Finally !!! This is a MAJOR FIND, one of the true Holy Grail of the last 80 years of music. NOW we need to march over Bremen to get the rest of the 30 minutes recorded that day. WE DESERVE THIS, come on !!!
Richard, there’s one thing that puzzles me. You say that Robert Fripp was attending the TWL Marquee gig and I have no reasons to believe that your statement is not true. At the same time, more or less one year later, I was attending the Porchester Hall devotional gig that paired on stage John and Eve McLaughlin. August 26th, 1971. Admission was 20 pence. Attendance maybe 20 souls. All (!!!) the benefits went to Sri Chinmoy. You were there too, obviously, even if I did not know, then. And you covered that performance for Melody Maker. Robert Fripp was sitting on the very chair located on the right of my chair. First Row. At the end of the performance John was available for a chat at the side of the stage. And I’m pretty sure that Robert Fripp introduced himself to John as if this was the first time that they met. Am I wrong?
Myles Palmer takes brother to a gig : On Sunday I met Neil at Baker Street tube and we got a cab to Haverstock Hill, which cost 7/6, and went to the Country Club, a prefabricated one-storey building which was like a scout hut. We arrived at 8.30 pm and found an oblong room which was about ninety feet long and thirty feet wide, incredibly hot, with a thick smell of pot, sweat and perfume. Many people were sitting on the floor and far too many people had been crammed into this small venue.
I had some doubts about taking my younger brother to see a group as avant-garde as the Tony Williams Lifetime, a jazz-rock supergroup with two Brits and two Americans. Electric bass player Jack Bruce, a compact figure with a very unusual face, wore a black cowboy shirt with blue shoulders and blue cuffs, while tiny drummer Tony Williams had a moustache, a shirt with billowing sleeves, and velvet trousers. John McLaughlin was on guitar and the tall Larry Young was on organ.
Williams had a big Wem speaker directly behind his drum stool and that was a clue: this music was going to be loud. The gig kicked off and very quickly Jack was playing WWII on bass, Tony was playing WWIII on drums, John’s flashing runs flew off into a neighbouring galaxy, and Larry played the most exciting Hammond organ I have ever heard in my life, producing spacey slabs of sound which were electrifying.
This sonic bombardment was the most challenging music I had ever heard. There was so much going on that it made my head bulge and halfway through the set I already wanted to see Lifetime again. But not here. Please, not here. Cramming so many people in to a tiny venue was so uncomfortable that I told Neil we would not be coming back to the Country Club, even if Jesus Christ re-played the Crucifixion with the Original Cast.
Interesting -and possibly revealing – to think that Bruce + Mclaughlin also recorded (but with Carla Bley on organ) around the same time, for spectacular tracks such as Businessmen and Rawalpindi Blues on ‘Escalator over the hill.’ Paul Motian remarkably hard-driving on drums. Recorded exactly round the time of those Lifetime London gigs, to go by this – https://ethaniverson.com/accomplishing-escalator-over-the-hill-by-carla-bley/
Saw them at the Maryland in Glasgow. I was overwhelmed. took me a day or two to process what I’d heard. ‘Tidal waves of sound.’ describes it perfectly. NEver felt the lyric content of Tony’s songs suited the music, though.
Thank you so so much, Richard. I have watched the clip over and over and sad that I didn’t see them live myself. did see Tony Willams with Miles at the Olympia in Paris, when he was 17, and needless to say, I could see he was a total game changer! I passed on your blog to many friends, notably jazz musicians in Paris who may not have been following you. By the way, talking of “Blue” I wonder if you ever saw my doc “Kind of Blue”, which was on C4 in 1993 or so, and explored the melanchioly mood. The opening sequence runs to Coltrane’s “Naima”, and of course “Blue in Green” is in there somewhere. The other film you might not know is my Le Paris Black (Arena) which has some specially shot music I think you’dd love (not least a lovely duo betwee Hélène Labarrière and Johnny Griffin), it is a hymn to Paris’s romance with Africa and the Afro-Atlantic world. Happy to share with you. By the way, talking of monosyllabic interviewees, I did an interview with John McLaughlin for my film on Ravi Shankar, and was he hard work!
Thanks for this Richard. As an 18 year old living in the north I was fortunate to be at the Marquee as my company had sent me to London for a training course that week.
I agree completely with you. Electrifying.
My attendance was because of the presence of John McLaughlin and Jack Bruce. Tony Williams was my introduction to a different world of music. Very thankful.
Heavy stuff. Fascinating to hear this early run-out for ‘The Dance Of Maya’. Richard, this era is covered in some detail in my new book ‘John McLaughlin: From Miles & Mahavishnu to The 4th Dimension’ (and you get a few mentions…). If you’d like a review copy, get in touch.
Thanks for this Richard (and Vince). Great to see and hear this properly. Larry Young!! I have about a minute of this somewhere in the lowest quality possible on an old VHS of questionable provenance. It suddenly appears and then disappears in the middle of a Stephen Stills Manassas concert!? I’ve always been very curious about what happened with Bill Laswell’s excellent ‘redux’ of Turn It Over from the late 90s. Great sound, unedited and extra tracks, liner notes by John Szwed, and cover by Russell Mills. It was available from Downtown Music Gallery (I imagine via Bill) when I worked in NYC but it’s never been officially released.
The actual date of the Bremen tv recording is given as October 24th, 1970
The vocals lessen the impact of JB’s impassioned/frenetic playing. What would gave been the reasoning behind having a song, whose lyrics, to my ears at least, add nothing? That said, the interplay on show is outstanding.
Mick Steels #
After the increasingly formulaic and stultifying approach of Cream it seems Bruce was liberated in the period 69 to 71. He popped up in all sorts of challenging situations from working with Mike Gibbs and Neil Ardley to the much lauded Lifetime. There was the group with Larry Coryell and Mike Mandel and the Chris Spedding/John Marshall trio who I remember seeing with Graham Bond as added guest.
It would seems the Marquee performance has now achieved legendary status up there with Massey Hall 53 and The Band Albert Hall 71, surely someone had a tape recorder at one of their gigs?
October 25, 2014
Well this is an unexpected pleasure, since this was posted the Live in New York recording has been released no Bruce but worth searching out
Must check out the Beatclub footage of Tony Williams Life, a rare find indeed. I feel for you re: the interview with Tony. I had a similar experience with Buddy Miles when talking to him about his latest album. I expressed interest in his using a familiar Dizzy Gillespie arrangement. ‘I never heard Dizzy Gillespie’ was the precursor to an abrupt end to our interview.
Thank you so much for posting this – I saw them at Sheffield City Hall and was likewise blown away. So good to have a reminder of that memorable occasion.
. . . and also, on the subject of difficult interviews, I saw Jack Bruce with Larry Cornell at Slug’s in the summer of 1969 and “interviewed” Jack for the Bristol University newspaper. He was hard work too, and I just about got enough to produce a piece about him. It certainly seemed to be a “thing” to be rude to interviewers in those days!
A great post Richard. Fascinating footage, and the eyewitness comments add a lot. Watching Young play was of special interest. Thanks all!