Audio Fidelity has re-issued the 1973 jazz-rock classic Birds of Fire by John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra on a limited edition 4.0 Quad SACD release. The sound quality is amazingly clear, and with ear plugs you feel like you’re caught in the studio standing in the midst of McLaughlin, Billy Cobham/dr, Jerry Goodman/vi, Jan Hammer/key and Rick Laird.
As for the music itself? Like its predecessor Inner Mounting Flame, Birds of Fire was a paradigm shifter in terms of jazz and rock. The searing strings from McLaughlin’s relentless machine gun of an axe along with Goodman’s careening violin on”One Word” and “Birds Of Fire” are egged on like a stampede scene from Red River by Billy Cobham’s relentless drumming. Songs like this were a gauntlet thrown down to the listening world, and only a few bands were up to the task of answering, most notably Return to Forever and Weather Report.
What is most intriguing after over a quarter century of distance from the release is how beautiful are the more acoustic and reflective pieces. McClaughin’s acoustic guitar teamed with Hammer’s piano on “One Word” is a pastoral gem, and there are some gorgeous autumnal colors on “Open Country Joy” that seemed to be overlooked due to the (no pun intended) hammering of the more macho pieces. Music that would soon be, as they say in the musical Oklahoma, “taken just as far as it can go.”