Listening to John McLaughlin’s latest album, Now Here This, it’s hard to believe that the guitar maestro will celebrate his 71st birthday in January, such is the fizzing, unrelenting energy unleashed. And as Andy Robson discovers, this latest dispatch from the guitar guru is the product of his steely creativity and a lifetime quest for enlightenment

Johnny McLaughlin is not a man to keep waiting. The stereotype may be of love, peace and serenity, the smile beatific and the robes once white, but as his drummer Ranjit Barot has noted, this is a man straight out of Miles: he tells you straight when he doesn’t like something.

“I’d given up on you,” he notes. Due to circumstances beyond my control I’d telephoned the guitarist 15 minutes late: unfeasibly, but I kid you not, I’d been mis-patched to a Tarot card reading service. Graham Bond must have been fettling with the mystic Internet.

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