Guitar Concert Not Total Success
by Bill Rice, The Times Record, August 28, 1973
(editor’s note – Ed McMahon was originally scheduled to perform on this date, but canceled.)
Two of the foremost guitarists in rock, John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana, joined forces Sunday evening at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. A crowd of over 15,000 young people attended the concert.
This was the first of a 12-concert tour for the group, an amalgam of the Mahavishnu Orchestra of McLaughlin and Santana’s band. The tour will include six East Coast performances and six on the West Coast.
Besides the two acclaimed guitarists, the band consisted of drummer Billy Cobham and keyboard artist Larry Young of the McLaughlin group, and bassist Doug Rauch and conga drummer Armando Peraza of Santana’s regular band.
The group seemed to have things musically together for their initial concert, but it was not a complete success all the same. This was due more to the makeup of the audience than the music.
The McLaughlin-Santana combination would no doubt go over very well with a college-age audience. But Saratoga audiences generally are a mixture, with many high schoolers or younger.
The music was a little heavy for those who came to “boogie” in the aisles. Some of the disgruntled would-be dancers left in the middle of the show — which is alright. Others chose to toss things on stage—which isn’t.
Most of the audience seated in the amphitheater was quite attentive, and the wall-to-wall mass of people on the bowl of the lawn was better than usual. Beyond them there was the usual crowd of milling people who could apparently care less about the music.
While each guitarist was featured extensively, the emphasis seemed to be on group effort. The extended improvisational music was progressive, hard-driving and penetrating, but it could also become monotonous.
It created more intellectual excitement than visceral and that’s what can lose part of a young audience in a hurry at Saratoga.
McLaughlin and Santana proved what everyone knew already, that both are technically fine guitarists, but the rhythmic combination of Cobham and Peraza also deserves mention. They kept a relentless beat going through every song that could become hypnotic.
This was the second time I heard Cobham, and he continues to be, in our opinion, the best drummer on the rock scene.
It might even be said he was the star of the show.
The Post-Star, July 27, 1973
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