"That's the style and you can't criticize it. "In Spain people don't even think something like 'he's just trying to show off,'" Di Meola commented to Herb Nolan in 1978. As he pointed out, virtuosity and precision provide the basis of Spanish flamenco music, a long and rich tradition that the guitarist frequently mined in his own improvisations. Though the album, Saturday Night in San Francisco, was hugely successful and won several awards, Stereo Review critic Joel Vance commented that the trio was so intent on displaying their virtuosity that "not one moment of real emotion is allowed with all the dazzling zip, the result is sterility."ĭuring his first decade in the music business, Di Meola was quick to defend his dazzling guitar technique. The controversy reached a head when Di Meola first teamed with acoustic virtuosos John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia for a world tour and a live album, recorded in 1981. Though most writers agreed that Di Meola was a phenomenal technician on his instrument, a few felt that his pyrotechnics masked a lack of emotional content. With Di Meola's developing popularity as a soloist came a certain amount of negative press. Elegant Gypsy followed in 1977, and the album became Di Meola's first major commercial success, ultimately selling nearly a million copies. When the group suddenly dissolved in 1976, Di Meola, who had just released his first solo album, Land of the Midnight Sun, was momentarily disoriented by the group's disbandment but decided to use the opportunity to pursue a solo career. Over the next two years, Return to Forever continued to tour successfully and released three albums. After only a few days of rehearsal, Di Meola made his Carnegie Hall debut with Corea's group, and the following night Return to Forever played for a crowd of 40,000 in Atlanta. Corea, who a year earlier had founded a second version of his influential fusion group Return to Forever, heard tapes of Di Meola performing with Miles's group and found him a worthy replacement for Bill Connors, who had recently left the band. It was a call from keyboardist Chick Corea in 1974, though, that truly set his career in motion. In the early 1970s Di Meola studied instrumental performance at Boston's Berklee School of Music and performed with keyboardist Barry Miles. And Bob would teach me that stuff, but he also made sure that I learned jazz and bossa nova and even a little classical as well." Di Meola's exposure to many different musical repertories would continue to inform his development as a guitar soloist. As Di Meola related to Bill Milkowski of Down Beat, "The Ventures and Elvis were big at the time, and the Beatles were just coming in, so naturally I wanted to be a rock & roll guitar player. However, when he was eight he began taking lessons from a local guitarist named Robert Aslanian who introduced him to a wide variety of music. It separates the men from the boys." Talented performers on the two instruments have emerged from time to time, but few other artists have shown such a mastery of both or have been able to use them in such a wide variety of musical contexts.Īs a youngster in the New Jersey town of Bergenfield, some 20 minutes away from New York City, Di Meola's first musical experience was on drums. You can bend strings differently on electric than on acoustic so your ideas will flow differently." Yet, though he enjoys the versatility of the electric guitar, Di Meola admitted to Down Beat's Josef Woodard that "the acoustic guitar is more demanding. Outwardly the electric guitar might seem similar to its acoustic counterpart, but as Di Meola explained to Herb Nolan of Down Beat, "There are certain things you can do on electric guitar you can't do on acoustic. Passionate, opinionated, and immensely gifted, he has covered more musical terrain in his 20-year career than many artists have in a lifetime.ĭi Meola's accomplishments are made all the more remarkable by the fact that he has achieved them on both electric and acoustic instruments. "If you don't advance creatively," Al Di Meola once told Guitar Player's Jim Ferguson, "then all you have left is playing Vegas." From his stunning arrival on the scene as the fiery virtuoso in Chick Corea's jazz fusion group Return to Forever to his international acclaim as the member of an acoustic guitar trio, to his championing of the musical legacy of tango master Astor Piazzolla, guitarist Di Meola has held firm to this credo. Record company-Mesa Records, 209 East Alameda Ave., #101, Burbank, CA 91502. Addresses: Management-Don't Worry, Inc., 111 West 57th St., New York, NY 10019. Education: Studied privately with guitarist Robert Aslanian attended Berklee School of Music, Boston, 19. Born July 22, 1954, in Jersey City, NJ son of immigrants from Naples, Italy.