He holds the guitar in his hands as if it were his sixth sense. He doesn’t let her go.
The conversation with Al Di Meola is curious. Different from any other. Sometimes the interviewees quote from books, while he names the words rumba, flamenco or jazz and illustrates them by making chords with the six strings.
“Paco de Lucía is not only the most famous, but he embodied the whole tradition and took it to another level like no other flamenco guitarist during the seventies”, remarks Meola, who formed a duo with the Gadí and more late, at the beginning of the eighties, he replaced Larry Coryell and went on to integrate with Paco de Lucía and John McLaughlin in the most recognized guitar fusion trio of its time on the international scene.
From his native New Jersey, where he lives, he crossed the Hudson last week to participate in the Carnegie Hall macro-festival in memory of the resident of Algeciras, who died ten years ago. This time he was accompanied by Antonio Sánchez and Antonio Rey.
After the previous rehearsal, Meola, 69, who had also been a child prodigy, remembers that he discovered Paco de Lucía in 1974. He was in Spain accompanying Chick Corea. “There was a lot of talk about that young guitarist”, he points out. “I was curious to meet him, because everyone was talking about him, but he was not known in the United States”, he continues.
He went to El Corte Inglés and bought some of his records. De Lucía had published in 1973 Fuente y caudal which contains his legendary Entre dos aguas
“I discovered something very advanced and unique, a great feeling and a great technique”, he explains recalling that audition. Meola already had experience in Latin sounds, but that flamenco struck him.
He decided he wanted to do something with it. The opportunity came in 1976. He asked his record company to get in touch with the Spaniard’s. They recorded their song Mediterranean Sundance (included on the album Elegant Gypsy, 1977).
“We met for the first time face to face in New York, at Jimmy Hendrix’s Electric Lady studio in the Village,” he recalls. He even remembers that his guest was a little nervous. I didn’t speak a bit of English at the time. “He wasn’t in his comfort zone, but there was a part of Paco that wanted to expand, he wanted to get out of that zone and he had the courage to do what no one had done in flamenco”, he remarks.
“There is something magical about that recording,” he says. Then Meola was the youngest in the trio of guitars. “A healthy competition was established. We wanted to impress each other. Each wanted to do something that pleased the other two. We didn’t play for the audience, we played for the others in the trio. Paco played and you said, Oh my God!, and John tried to be spectacular and then I faced the challenge”, he reveals.
“We managed to be better because of this, because of the incredible adrenaline of inspiration”, he says.
According to Meola, “Paco is like Miles Davis in jazz”, the king of the flamenco guitar, and he still is, no one can compare to him”. He knew he was the best and that’s not why he lost his humility.” A decade later, he admits there’s no way he can play like his colleague. Yes, it imitates him in one thing. The guitars are bought at the same establishment in Madrid (Conde Hermanos). “To play with nylon strings you have to graduate from kindergarten to high school, because it requires much more effort.”
The fact that the Spaniard did not read music (“he always said that Maestro Segovia criticized them because they were not schooled”) made the work more tedious, but nothing more. He explains that if the trio broke up it was because of McLaughlin’s ego.
