Four Voices Hunting Fire Together
Al Di Meola's electric guitar cuts through the fusion haze and gives Return to Forever its fiercest edge.
Al Di Meola joined Return to Forever for this album, and his presence changes the group's sound. He had recently come into the band's orbit and brought a guitar style that was fast, precise, and aggressive, drawing on rock as much as on jazz. On No Mystery (1975), he gets much of the spotlight, and his lines push the quartet toward a harder, more urgent kind of fusion than the earlier band recordings.
The record is the second to feature the quartet of Chick Corea, Di Meola, Stanley Clarke, and Lenny White. That familiarity shows. The four players lock together tightly, and the arrangements leave room for each of them to take big solos without losing the thread. Corea's keyboards carry the melodic weight, Clarke's bass drives the low end, and White's drumming keeps everything moving forward.
If you want to hear what Di Meola added to Return to Forever, this is a good place to start. It is not the group's most famous album, but it captures the band at a moment of energy and confidence, and it is a useful document of how the fusion scene was pushing jazz toward electric rock in the mid-1970s.
Who's playing
Al Di Meolaguitar
Lenny Whitepercussion
Where next?
More by Chick Corea
Crystal Silence 1973
Romantic Warrior 1976
The Chick Corea Acoustic Band 1989
The Chick Corea Elektric Band 1986
The musicians on this record
Their own records, close in time
