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by Tom Moon

Fusion has meant many things, but the initial hit, spelled out by Bitches Brew, was simple: jazz improvisations over a rock-like rhythm bed. Tailor-made for hotshot electric guitarists and synthesists, it went through many changes from its Seventies heyday. Now, even such pablumized instrumental pop music as Kenny G's gets labeled "fusion". The squishiness of the term makes it impossible to arrive at a definitive list of 10 fusion titles - does Frank Zappa, architect of so much impossibly technical jazz-rock count? Do British prog-rockers like Steve Hillage and Gong? What about the abstractions of Ornette Coleman circa "Dancing In Your Head"? Rather than cover the waterfront, we concentrate on guitar-oriented fusion albums from some of the genre's major figures.

al dimeola
Splendido Hotel (Columbia, 1979)
When Al DiMeola first appeared on the scene in 1974 as a member of Return to Forever, his fleet-fingered runs and dramatic careening phrases set the bar just a little bit higher for fusion guitarists. But it took a few years of record-making until he found a sound that was more than just nerdoid noodling. Though there are plenty of guitar pyrotechnics on Splendido Hotel, they're tucked into all the right places of the stop-start workouts "Dream Theme" and "Alien Chase," and, remarkably, they rarely detract from the overall mood.

Jimi Hendrix
Band of Gypsies (Capitol, 1970)
Fusion purists may quibble with this inclusion, but there's no denying that Hendrix' last trio, with Buddy Miles and bassist Billy Cox, was playing something that was not simply foursquare rock or booty-shaking funk. Whatever it was, it sure had lots of mind-bending guitar improvisation in it. Many fusion guitarists, including McLaughlin, have cited Hendrix as an inspiration, and "Machine Gun" and "Message of Love" offer plenty of reasons why. His lines twist and contort into exquisite shapes, and his harangues are alternately driven by road-warrior rage or an unusually contemplative lyricism- and these qualities, as much as the sheer dense force of this trio, had an influence on everyone exploring music in 1970.

Weather Report
Heavy Weather (Columbia, 1977)
There's no guitarist on this commercial breakthrough, but there might as well be. Playing fretless bass and pitch-bending like he's determined to stretch the neck, Jaco Pastorious brought a guitarlike sense of phrasing to this protean group and showed that it was possible to possess superhuman virtuosity, yet play with a deep appreciation of melody and a lyrical sixth sense.

Return to Forever
Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy (Polydor, 1973)
With Hymn, Chick Corea created a dauntingly detailed, intricate music full of spry melodies and subversive counterlines, in which the individual contributions of the soloists (mainly Corea and guitarist Bill Conners) were woven into roiling, syncopated rhythms. Though later RTF albums (particularly those with guitarist Al DiMeola) saw the group concentrate on motifs that tested the limits of technical mastery, this group was more notable for its sheer energy level, high-speed-shuttle grooves and furious, crackling interplay.

Jeff Beck
Blow By Blow (Epic, 1975)
Of all the rock guitarists who ventured into the fusion trench, Jeff Beck looms as one of the most articulate, a rare riff-master who can navigate unusual harmonic structures and tricky, sidewinding lines and still come up with music that speaks with the emotional knife-edge of rock. On the craft Blow By Blow - most notably, perhaps the ebullient stone-cold classic shuffle "Freeway Jam"-Beck employs expansive, fluid lines to soar above high-stepping funk and slippery rock.

Mahavishnu Orchestra
The Inner Mounting Flame (Columbia, 1971)
This first effort from the Mahavishnu Orchestra opens with a hefty, rafters-rattling chord, the kind of thing you would expect to hear at the end of an emotionally exhausting piece of orchestral music. From that gathering point, guitarist McLaughlin and his crew (vioinist Jerry Goodman, keyboardist Jan Hammer, bassist Rick Laird and drummer Billy Cobham) embark on a feverish uptempo excursion called "Meeting Of The Spirits," tossing hot-wired melodies back and forth as though their characters were being tested with every note. All of The Inner Mounting Flame burns at that intensity level; even a contemplative ballad like "Dawn" is spiced with a mid-section full of unexpected hairpin turns. And when John McLaughlin launches a more rock-oriented trip, like the percolating "Noonward Race," it's as though he's channeling all the great guitar playing he'd heard in recent years - Hendrix' fury, Santana's elegance - into a brilliantly agitated summation. Flame and its follow-up, Birds of Fire, are both excellent examples of technical mastery in the service of ambitious, relentlessly imaginative music.

John Mclaughlin, Al Dimeola, Paco Delucia
Friday Night in San Francisco (Columbia, 1981)
There was no shortage of fusion supergroups in the late Seventies and early Eighties; only a shortage of interesting ones. The acoustic guitar setting of Friday Night proved perfect for this trio, which reunited for a studio set in 1983, "Passion, Grace and Fire". Both offer pleasurable romps, though the trio's flamenco reworkings are significantly hotter on the performance disc, and there's more live-wire suspense in the exchanges.

Pat Metheny Group
Pat Metheny Group (ECM, 1978)
Most fusion stomps around with a heavy foot. Pat Metheny floats. This Midwestern guitar prodigy borrowed elements from many fusion pioneers-Corea's needlepoint melodies, McLaughlin's ecstatic peak-seeking, Wes Montgomery's rounded mellow tone- then whipped them into a light, pastel-hued approach to rhythm that was revolutionary for its subtlety.

Billy Cobham
Spectrum (Atlantic, 1973)
By the time he made his solo debut in '73, drummer Billy Cobham had done time with Miles Davis and the Mahavishnu Orchestra and was seeking a hybrid of jazz and rock with a more assertive rhythmic foundation- fusion that followed a tighter script. With this charged album, he got it. Though there are two stylized, heavily arranged tracks featuring guitarist John Tropea and a horn section with saxophonist Joe Farrell, the highlights come from the band with guitarist Tommy Bolin and keyboardist Jan Hammer, two technically accomplished musicians who understand the power of repetition and the way to make rock rhythms sizzle. This rhythm section tore through muscular melodies and disciplined solo bursts, and was particularly keen on developing episodes of scrappy, high-intensity crossfire like those on "Red Baron" and "Taurian Matador."

Sonny Sharrock
Guitar (Enemy, 1986)
The late Sonny Sharrock played with Miles Davis just after Bitches Brew, in the band with McLaughlin and Cobham that yielded the funk-tinged Jack Johnson. After that, he essentially disappeared until the Eighties, when he surfaced in Bill Laswell's genre-hopping Materialand Last Exit and began a solo career with this exhaustive, wide-ranging statement. Though he's not considered exclusively a "fusion" guitarist, his approach was marked by an inquisitiveness that aligns him with the genre's masters. On this album, for example, he experiments with slide guitar, offers a tone-poem reverie and a mournful, pondering blues, and veers from crisp, single-note lines to abrasive chordal gales that dance right along the edge of distortion and feedback, yet never lose their sense of musicality.

<<From Guitar World Magazine, Dec 1998 Issue>>