John McLaughlin: From Miles to Mahavishnu and Way Beyond
He’s never stopped developing, and we’re covering our favorite highlights of McLaughlin’s career: his acoustic (and later electric) take on Indian music with Shakti, his more traditional jazz projects, and much more.
Guitarist John McLaughlin’s career has been long and winding. From his early solo records and work with Miles Davis, he possessed a unique approach to the guitar that encompassed jazz and rock vocabulary, played with a biting tone and stellar, virtuosic technique. He’s never stopped developing, and we’re covering our favorite highlights of McLaughlin’s career: his acoustic (and later electric) take on Indian music with Shakti, his more traditional jazz projects, and much more.
There are lots of listening highlights in this episode and we’ve covered as much as we can: Mahavishnu Orchestra’s first two records are undisputable; Tony Williams Lifetime’s Emergency may be the birth of fusion guitar; McLaughlin’s mid-career studies in Indian music are inspiring; his take on Coltrane in an organ-jazz setting is monumental. But we could still cover a whole other episode’s worth.
A rare Honey Happening that survived the era of the Happening.
Our columnist’s musings on honey bring him back to a forgotten little guitar company in Japanese history that didn’t last very long, but produced some interesting models.
One of the guys I work with is such an interesting fella. Dylan has an opinion on literally every topic, and I take amusement by asking him all sorts of probing questions.
For instance, he only wears t-shirts made from a certain blend (I’ll wear anything), and he likes smoke-infused whiskey (I drink mine straight), and he can go into great detail about an array of things like infusers, griddles, recording software, artificial intelligence, and the list just goes on and on. It seems like I, on the other hand, only have a certain amount of brain bandwidth and I don’t really ponder things of the material world, unless it’s guitar-related.
Recently, he was telling me about the rise of hot honey! He’s always telling me about recipes and how he uses it, but I have to say, anything that’s hot always turns me off. I used to love heat and spice and I could really eat anything. Yours truly even won a chicken-wing-eating contest (101 wings, baby!) with scorching hot sauce. I can even remember working at a restaurant back in the day, and the cooks were always challenging me with hot-sauce concoctions. Even the Jamaican dudes there couldn’t believe how I could inhale heat without a tear. Alas, all the years of trashing my body eventually caught up with me, and now if I eat anything that’s spicy, my belly and bowels just give up the ghost.
So, all this talk with Dylan about hot sauces and hot honey got me thinking about the old guitar brand, Honey. Looking back, I can’t believe I’ve never written about the little company before, but it was just a blip in guitar history—albeit a cool blip.
The story goes that in 1965 the Japanese guitar company Kawai had purchased the Teisco company. Teisco had its headquarters in Tokyo and made mostly electronics there. The wood production was done at a plant called Teisco Gen Gakki, which was located near Matsumoto City. Within a year or so, Kawai brought all-wood production to its own plant and Teisco Gen Gakki went idle.
Some former Teisco employees, who had mostly lost their jobs in this production shift, decided to make a go of their own at the guitar business. From this time, we see the brands Firstman, Idol, and Honey. The Honey Company made all sorts of products, including amps and guitars, and the company only sold in the Japanese market. Honey had a few wild designs, but mostly the guitars were copies of Rickenbacker, Gibson, and Höfner. But then there were these crazy one-off models, like this Honey Happening guitar from 1968. I’ve never seen another one and the only photos I can find online are all of this same guitar! One of my good Japanese friends gifted this to me.
The Happening takes its name from common terminology of the time, like, “It’s what’s happening,” meaning “hip” or “cool,” but this one is one of the coolest, with that elongated upper bout contrasting a super-short lower one. It has a Bigsby copy resting on the beveled-out section at the butt, which is another detail that’s rarely seen. If you check out the pickguard, there’s a cute little bumblebee there with “happening” written across in an old typeface. The headstock design is also noteworthy, featuring an extra-large truss-rod cover with two little diamond-shaped accents.
This solidbody is powered by two sizzling pickups that are Mosrite copies. It has a stinging sound—sorry—and sets up well with the adjustable bridge. Electronics round out with simple volume/tone knobs and a 3-way pickup selector switch. The only part I personally dislike on this guitar is the tuners, which can be finicky. But the guitar itself is surprisingly well-balanced and is a joy to play.
The Honey Company started business in early 1967 but was bankrupt in March of 1969. All Honey guitars and amps are extremely hard to find today, and if you have a good example, consider yourself one of the lucky ones. So instead of hot honey, let’s give a little props to a cool Honey.
1968 Honey Happening Guitar Demo
Frank’s friend Mike Dugan demos the Honey Happening 6-string.
This Teisco MJ-2, also known as an ET-200, comes with a tremolo, grinding surface-mounted pickups, and a deep V-shaped neck.
This guitar is the same model that belonged to Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks. Of course, the one that our columnist owns still has its whole body intact.
As the wind blows, so do my interests, and recently, I found myself taking a deep dive into the music of the Buzzcocks. That group was one of the early, legendary English punk bands. I was going through all the band’s recordings but I was really digging the group’s first EP from 1977, Spiral Scratch. That first record just has an incredibly raw guitar tone that has a familiar feel.
As I suspected, good ol’ Pete Shelley, their lead singer and guitarist, was playing a Teisco-made guitar in his early days! People, I feel like my ears are tuned to the Teisco frequency. Which is sort of interesting, because I have no real musical ability or ear to speak of!
After doing a bit of research, I found out that Pete’s guitar was a Teisco MJ-1, which was branded as “Starway” in his part of the world. His was a one-pickup model without the tremolo, but these guitars were sold in one- and two-pickup configurations and with or without tremolo. Here in the U.S., these same guitars wore all sorts of headstock brand names like Lafayette and St. George.
In 1963, the electric-guitar boom was starting to gain momentum, and these Teisco guitars were among the first mass-produced electrics to ship out of Japan, and therefore some of the first to satisfy the needs of the public. The MJ guitars were sold in large numbers and you can find them pretty easily on the used market. Brian Eno was also known to use the Teisco MJ-2 as a studio guitar!
The two-pickup model here was known as the MJ-2. (In the States, MJ-2s carried the ET-200 name.) Produced until around 1965, these guitars have that familiar Matsumoto City-area build technique with surface-mounted pickups and a half pickguard that hides all the electronics. It’s an efficient design that many manufacturers used for years in the early 1960s. Also, the MJ guitars went through a couple of variations, including changes to the pickups and headstock shape.
“Personally, I love the deep V shape, but it can be a bit much to the modern player.”
In the 1964 Teisco catalog, the MJ-2, or ET-200, retailed for $90. You could also buy an E-200, which was the same guitar, sans tremolo. Whatever configuration you choose, these early Teisco guitars’ incredible surface-mount pickups just grind! If you listen to the Spiral Scratch EP you can hear that edgy tone. The pickups featured here on my St. George and on Pete’s Starway are really the ones to own. The makers in Japan were still learning the craft in the early days, and there are many examples of happy accidents that led to guitars sounding like buzzsaws! These Teisco pickups are exhibit A.
The standard MJ-2 has two volume and tone knobs and two pickup-selector rocker switches. The guitar is rather light in the hands, but some are a little neck-heavy because of the large V-shape of early necks. Personally, I love the deep V shape, but it can be a bit much to the modern player. The headstock of this early version is also awesome, all gonzo and exaggerated.
Pete used his Starway from 1973 to 1977, and the guitar was even specified among the credits of Spiral Scratch! Interestingly, Pete had wired his pickup straight to the jack to avoid the knobs, but more famously, he accidentally broke his guitar in half so that the entire top half of the body was gone! But he kept on playing the guitar for many concerts afterwards because he enjoyed how much lighter it became. Talk about a legendary guitar!
