John McLaughlin’s short-lived power trio with Jaco Pastorius and Tony Williams had all the ingredients to achieve Cream-like notoriety. It brought together three musicians from the upper echelons of their genre for an all-star explosion of talent.
Except that their Trio of Doom, perhaps cursed by their name, didn’t stand the test of time. Anger and egos got the better of them.
All three musicians were esteemed virtuosos. McLaughlin was celebrated for fusion-guitar work with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Pastorius for his genre-bending bass skills with Weather Report, and Williams for his ground-breaking drumming with Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet.
But together, the three visionary musicians couldn't seem to ... the tumult that was the three of them together, however, proved to be something out of their reach.
Columbia Records assembled the group in 1979 for a spot at the Havana Jam festival. It would be their only live performance, having proved to be the most “embarrassing” gig of McLaughlin's career, and an attempt to reconvene in the studio ended in violence and chaos.
McLaughlin met Pastorius prior to the bass player's coming-of-age gig in Joe Zawinul's Weather Report, and was impressed his attitude and skills. But it would be a little longer white before they could get their teeth in a project together.
“The first person Jaco Pastorius came to see in New York was me, and we jammed together at SRI [Studio],” McLaughlin told Jazz Times in 2016. “He found me and asked me for 20 bucks to fix a flat — money I never got back!
“He walked in and said, ‘I'm Jaco Pastorius, the greatest bass player in the world.’ I said, ‘Oh, I like the way you talk. Let's play,’ and we played, and it was marvelous. I told him, ‘If I didn’t have a great bass player already I'd hire you.’
"But I called Tony Williams that night and said, ‘See if there's something you can do with this guy Jaco, because he's amazing.’ Within six months Joe Zawinul had snatched him up, fired Alphonso Johnson and the rest is history.”
Pastorius was taken under Zawinul's wing in 1976. But three years later, as the first rumblings of the doomed Trio of Doom began, the bassist had begun to show signs of his emerging bipolar disorder, which wouldn't be diagnosed until late 1982.
“In 1979 we were booked for the Havana Jam," McLaughlin recalled. "And Jaco had already started his descent — so sad. But we went to rehearsals, and the rehearsals were just amazing.
“I'm so sad those rehearsals weren't recorded, because they were outstanding.”
While those preparations suggested to all that something great was about to happen, exactly the opposite happened at their festival debut.
“The performance was not good at all," McLaughlin recalled. "Jaco went on a star trip, and musically it was a bit of a disaster.
"The three of us are onstage, and all of a sudden, Jaco, in the middle of a C minor blues, starts playing in A major, real loud, and going up front [and showboating]. [Tony and I] did what we could, as best as possible.”
Evetually, McLaughlin's irritation got the better of him.
“When we get offstage, Jaco says, 'You know, you're a bad motherfucker.' And I said, 'I have never felt so ashamed to be onstage. If I never see you again, it's too soon.' And all the rats and snakes came out. I was so angry because I felt he betrayed Tony and me. I just let it all out. I told him to fuck off.”
Williams internalized his rage, McLaughlin recalled. But it rose to the surface a few weeks later after they agreed to try again, this time in the studio.
“We went in, and Tony was very angry, still,” McLaughlin recalled. “He should have gotten it out, really, because it was boiling over. In the studio, he wouldn't talk to Jaco, he wouldn't even look at him until finally Jaco said something and that was the trigger. Tony flipped.
“Jaco thought he was gonna die that day in the control room of CBS! Tony was furious. He didn't touch him, but Tony, in anger, was a volcano in activity.
"I thought it was funny by this time because I'd let [all of my anger] out. But he let it all out, and Jaco was afraid. Tony went in and destroyed his drums in the studio." McLaughlin laughed. "And walked out.”
Pastorius was just 35 when he died, in 1987. Williams passed in 1997, and a decade later the trio's album would finally get released, with McLaughlin wanting to honor their memory and the band's meager flash-in-the-pan legacy.
McLaughlin nurtured those tapes from the studio and the ill-fated Havana set to ensure that the Trio of Doom got the very best, and very belated release possible.
“When Sony called me and said, 'We'd really like [to put this out],' I said, 'Give me all the tapes. Because I love them both, I miss them both, and only I know how this should be mixed,'” he says. “And so I did. But it was very tricky, because you've got two versions of things [live and in studio].
“I wanted to get the Havana part in as well, as part of the story, because it's interesting. Trio of Doom is a document; it's not just a record. These two giants, they're gone. And I told Sony they had to give the money to their widows. I've lost a lot of friends over the years. More than friends — people I loved.”
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