I think Paco combines everything and then becomes one... It's like soul, brain, heart, hands and directly to the guitar... His music is alive. Ole Paco Maestro!
At 1:10:56 Al as the accompanying guitarist always brought the best out of Paco…Paco plays that run all the time, but this was one of the most expressive versions.
El publico muy apasionado y respetuoso . En mi opinion hay una gran diferencia entre tocar una guitarra con una púa (que tiene un sonido metalico y mas limitaciones ) y tocar con los dedos con cuerdas no metalicas (un sonido mucho mas limpio y mas capacidad para arpegiar)
In fact, yes, in an interview Jhon stated that the tours that the three of them did ended due to differences he had with DiMeola, he acknowledged that the latter was difficult to deal with.
You guys can read the book by Russel de Maria about his time with Paco. It turns out the classic “friends don’t come in 3’s” was going on, which is a shame, but based on the age difference, Al being the baby. For me it is sad because the idea of collaboration with Paco was always Al’s idea, and he always realized a duet with paco, never a trio, and even the Fantasia Duet of Casino was accidentally ruined by the engineer and Al had to redo the thing with overdubbed guitar. John basically “stole” Paco away from Al, the way I see it. Al had scheduled the duet tour with Paco, paco told him John wanted the same so he asked Al to let John join, and that became the famous San FRancisco end of tour record. Make no mistake, Paco always played flamenco duets and “Mediterranean Sundance” was nothing more than Entre Dos Aguas which was always a hit in Europe (1973), so the idea is who gets to play with Paco is the “fight” going on. Russel makes it clear the two would tease and make fun of Al all the time and it hurt Al’s feelings, and Paco told Russel they were just joking and he needed to get over it, but it finally ended up being a fist fight in 1996 tour, with lawyers involved. In the end Al had the last word, performing impromptu with Paco in 2010 4 years before Paco passed. I am very glad John and Al reconciled their differences to produce the Saturday Night record last year. We need to give Al credit for that too, securing royalties for Paco’s widow etc. The Trio was an amazing project in the history of guitar music world wide.
