John Etheridge
@ the Pizza Express Jazz Club
20 August 2009

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John Etheridge biography

John Etheridge rightly enjoys a glowing reputation throughout the jazz world and beyond and has been described by Pat Metheny as, “One of the best guitarists in the world”. He is a prodigiously gifted and creative player whose approach to music can only be described as ‘eclectic’ as he refuses to accommodate or even acknowledge artificial musical boundaries. His range is well illustrated by his years of touring and recording with the iconic Stephane Grappelli while simultaneously doing likewise with the legendary jazz-fusion group, The Soft Machine. John is equally at home on acoustic and electric guitar and his willingness to engage with so many styles is matched by his ability to excel in any of them. He has played with John Williams, Yehudi Menuhin, Dizzie Gillespie, Herb Ellis, Mundell Lowe, Nigel Kennedy, Pat Metheny, Birelli Lagrene, Barney Kessel, Vic Juris and countless others.

Ehteridges’s ability as an outstanding composer is sometimes overlooked but he is often under pressure from audiences to feature more of his own material. His promise was evident even during his earliest days of playing and he received recognition and encouragement from both Jimi Hendrix, whose comment was “You’re great”, and Eric Clapton, who told him after a gig, “You're not a great blues player but you’re a great guitarist.”

After graduating in the History of Art in 1970 from Essex University and returning to London, Etheridge started to get seriously noticed when working in the various bands such as ex-Curved Air violinist Darryl Way’s Wolf, an early jazz/rock outfit with whom he recorded three albums. Others included Icarus, Abednigo (which had a woodwind player named John Altman, later to become a famous film director), the short-lived Warhorse and the wonderfully monikered Global Village Trucking Company. His 1975 leap into the front rank came when he was contacted by The Soft Machine after they had been given his number by the departing Allan Holdsworth.

“The album ‘Bundle’ was just out, and I started by promoting that. Then we did this great Summer tour with Mahavishnu Orchestra, Soft Machine, Caravan, Climax Blues Band, Wishbone Ash, all together, on this Hercules transport aeroplane, flying at 80 miles an hour - took about 4 hours to fly from Stuttgart to Marseille!... Unfortunately, the whole thing went bankrupt in the middle of it”.

It is a measure of both the breadth of Etheridge’s ability and the recognition and regard he commanded from fellow musicians that less than a year after joining The Soft Machine, the great Diz Disley suggested that he would be Disley’s ideal successor to play alongside the stellar jazz violinist and ex-sparring partner of Django Rheinhardt, Stephane Grappelli. When Etheridge met up with Stephane (on a borrowed Framus acoustic guitar), he did not consider himself remotely to be a ‘Django’ player but he knew the repertoire and was a great improviser. He clearly made his mark because he spent the next 6 years touring the world in collaboration with Grappelli in what he describes as one of his happiest times in music; he certainly refers to this period with great affection.

Through the eighties and nineties, Etheridge could be found honing his craft and extending his range even further with collaborations with the likes of Vic Juris and Dick Heckstall-Smith. In the late seventies and early eighties he played a series of solo concerts in Australia (where he was given an early Smallman acoustic guitar by its admiring maker) and went on to play duo dates in the USA with bass-player Brian Torff with whom he had worked in the Grappelli band. During 1985, Etheridge worked with fellow guitarist Gary Boyle in both duo and quartet set-ups. Between ‘89 and ‘93 he then toured with Whatever led by the ubiquitous ex-Pentangle bass-player Danny Thompson and joined luminaries such as Alan Skidmore, Stan Tracey and Henry Lowther on the 1990 album Elemental. Around this time John was also working frequently with Elton Dean as the Elton Dean/John Etheridge Quartet with a rhythm section comprising of Fred Baker and Mark Fletcher on bass and drums respectively. The great Manouche guitarist, Birelli Lagrene was another touring partner in what was a gypsy jazz feast for their audiences.

Etheridge’s theme of working with the cream of violinists was to continue when he played with Didier Lockwood, featuring on his first album, New World, as part of an all-star line-up including Gordon Beck (piano), Tony Williams (drums) and Niels-Henning Ørsted-Pedersen (bass). With Ric Sanders he then formed the band Second Vision and recorded the eponymous album.

From 1993, Etheridge toured extensively with Nigel Kennedy and was featured on the 1996 album “Kafka”. 1994 saw John joining his long-time friend and ex-Police guitarist Andy Summers for a world tour and they released the album “Invisible Threads” as a duo.

In July 2006, Etheridge began touring a great new programme in a duo set-up with John Williams, the most celebrated classical guitarist of this generation. The two Johns have worked together before, most notably on their interpretations of African music with Francis Bebey, Richard Harvey, Chris Laurence and Paul Clarvis and documented on the CD “The Magic Box”. John Williams had always retained a desire to explore further the enticing combination of classical and steel-string guitar and got back in contact with Etheridge to realise this ambition.

A measure of the universal respect for John Etheridge’s accomplishment and skill was his nomination as one of just three finalists for the highly prestigious award for the 2006 Jazz Musician of the Year, presented on May 10th at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards ceremony at the House of Commons.