Over a long and varied career spanning three decades, John McLaughlin has become one of the premier jazz guitarists of modern times. Initially moving from Yorkshire to London he became a stalwart of the mid-sixties British blues boom. His career really took off when, nurtured by Miles Davis, he appeared on classic albums like In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson.

In the early seventies McLaughlin formed the Mahavishnu Orchestra, a group that fashioned a new link between rock and jazz, producing music full of raging beauty. In subsequent years, McLaughlin went on to forge a fusion with Indian music through the group Shakti, and collaborated with such varied musicians as Carlos Santana, Paco De Lucia, Larry Coryell, Al DiMeloa and Trilok Gurtu. Currently he continues to fill concert halls the world over and remains a guitarist of dazzling invention.

Go Ahead John takes the reader on a journey through a myriad of musical climates; from the drug-fuelled sixties, through the heady days of jazz-rock and ethnic fusion in the seventies, to McLaughlin's re-establishment in the nineties as a grand master of the jazz guitar. A writer with an intuitive and often highly original take on his subjects, as well as an extensive knowledge of both jazz and rock, Paul Stump eloquently draws together the various strands that have made McLaughlin a diverse and fascinating modern jazz virtuoso.

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