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The Return of Return to Forever


By NATE CHINEN
Published: August 3, 2008

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Correction Appended

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Lynn Goldsmith

Return to Forever, above, together


again: from left, Al Di Meola, Stanley
Clarke, Chick Corea and Lenny White
in Los Angeles this year.

Multimedia

A FEW days before kicking off their


PRINT
big reunion here, the members of the
SINGLE PAGE
jazz-rock band Return to Forever
REPRINTS
shared a moment of collective
SHARE
astonishment. The keyboardist Chick
Corea, the bassist Stanley Clarke, the
guitarist Al Di Meola and the drummer
Lenny White were gearing up to
perform together for the first time in
25 years, headlining large concert halls in the jazz
equivalent of a blockbuster tour. What blew their minds,
during a rehearsal, was the sound of their former selves.
We were trying to work out Vulcan Worlds, Mr. Corea,
67, said the following afternoon, referring to a
turbocharged tune by Mr. Clarke. So Lenny said: Hey, Ive
got this live recording we did in 1975. Lets listen to it, see
what we did with it.
He chuckled. Kind of reoriented me a little bit. Because it
was the peak of the band back then, 75, when it was really
free, and we were playing these incredible improvisations. I
thought, You know, in a sense its like were starting out
again.
Mr. Clarke, 57, sitting next to Mr. Corea in the lobby of the
Four Seasons Hotel, agreed: Someone asked me a little
while ago, did I regret that we waited so long? I have two
answers to that. One is, yeah, it would have been nice. But
the other answer is that we all play better now.

The tour, which began in late May and wraps up on


Thursday and Friday at the United Palace in Washington
Heights, marks a moment of reassessment for jazz-rock,
Return to Forever Archives; Heino
the combustible hybrid also known more broadly as fusion.
Kalis/Reuters
Mr. Corea
Long understood as a popular but polemical style, it has
often been accused of commercial motivations and
hyperactive excess. In most conservative histories of jazz, notably the Ken Burns
documentary on PBS, fusion is even cast as a scourge, responsible for the wholesale

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/arts/music/03chin.html?_r=0

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Music - Return to Forever Returns, Marking a Moment of Reassessment for Fusion - NYTimes.com

4/25/15, 4:49 PM

coarsening of the art.


The charge of commercialism has some merit here. All four members of Return to Forever
have enjoyed successful solo careers, and their reunion would not have happened without
some irresistible offers from promoters. With over 50 concerts throughout North America
and Europe, I would say it is one of the largest tours we have ever produced, Ted Kurland,
who organized the tour, said in an e-mail message. (His agency also represents the
guitarist Pat Metheny, one of fusions current exemplars, and the trumpeter Wynton
Marsalis, one of its most vocal critics.)
When Return to Forever first plugged in 35 years ago, fusion was still a growth industry,
riding the momentum of the landmark Miles Davis album Bitches Brew. Most of the
important early jazz-rock groups involved alumni of that recording, including Mr. Corea
and Mr. White; the keyboardist Joe Zawinul and the saxophonist Wayne Shorter, who
founded Weather Report; and the guitarist John McLaughlin, who created the
Mahavishnu Orchestra.
In the case of this band the haze of Bitches Brew gave way to a sound at once athletic and
cosmic, with a lot of busy counterpoint and jagged syncopation. The thing that stood out
about Return to Forever was Chicks composing, said Gregg Bendian, a drummer who
leads the Mahavishnu Project, a jazz-rock repertory band. I think the intricacy, the
rhythmic aplomb, the contrapuntal nature of what he did was so incredible and elevated.
Fans who saw Return to Forever tend to hail its complexity as well as its energy. Some, like
Rich Rivkin, kept the legend alive by trading concert tapes. (It was on his Web site,
jazzfusion.tv, that Mr. White found the 1975 recording of Vulcan Worlds, from a radio
broadcast in Elgin, Ill.) The fans have never stopped asking about the possibility of a
reunion.
Return to Forever originated in the early 1970s as Mr. Coreas take on Brazilian jazz, with
Mr. Clarke, the multireedist Joe Farrell and the husband-and-wife team of Airto Moreira
(on percussion) and Flora Purim (on vocals). Its jazz-rock makeover came in 1973, with
the release of a boldly adrenalized album called Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy. Mr. Clarke
had switched from acoustic to electric bass, and the roster now featured Mr. White and the
guitarist Bill Connors. The following year Mr. Connors decamped for a solo career, and
Mr. Di Meola, then 19, dropped out of the Berklee School of Music to join the band.
These guys were already legends, and I was just a kid, said Mr. Di Meola, now 54. So I
had to swim in deep water right away, which was great. But the bulk of my growth as an
artist happened from that time on. He said he was hoping to bring new authority to the
music.
For me, playing with these guys, its like I never stopped, Mr. White, 58, said. I went
and did other things, but it was always in the back of my head.
The now-classic iteration of Return to Forever disbanded after Romantic Warrior, its
fourth and best-selling album, in 1976. Mr. Corea briefly tried out a lineup that included
his wife, Gayle Moran, on vocals. Even more briefly he regrouped the core members in
1983. (Reviewing the reunited band in The New York Times, Jon Pareles disparaged it as
a quartet of idle virtuosos.)
Various explanations for the bands breakup have circulated over the years, including a
persistent rumor that internal conflict over Scientology was to blame. (Mr. Corea has long
been a prominent Scientologist; Mr. Clarke was during most of his tenure in the band.)
When the subject of the breakup arose, Mr. White and Mr. Di Meola both exhaled. Heres
the real deal from my perspective, Mr. White said. Life is life. People make changes. At
that point Chick decided he wanted to do something else.
Mr. Di Meola was diplomatic: Actually there was no big fallout at all. There was no big
thing that happened. That was what kept the hope alive.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/arts/music/03chin.html?_r=0

Page 2 of 3

Music - Return to Forever Returns, Marking a Moment of Reassessment for Fusion - NYTimes.com

4/25/15, 4:49 PM

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This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:


Correction: August 10, 2008
A picture caption last Sunday with an article about the reunion of Return to Forever
reversed the identities of two members of the group. Chick Corea was third from left, and
Lenny White was fourth from left.
More Articles in Arts

A version of this article appeared in print on August 3, 2008, on page


AR17 of the New York edition.

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