Rick Laird

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Rick Laird was an Irish bassist, born on 5 February 1941 in Dublin and died on 4 July 2021. He came from a musical family: his mother played the piano, his father the ukulele. He played those instruments from the age of three. Through his mother he got to know jazz. At sixteen he went to New Zealand with his father and worked on a sheep farm. There he began to take music seriously, at first on guitar.

Music and breakthrough

A record by Oscar Peterson with the bassist Ray Brown made a deep impression on him. He bought a double bass, played along with Brown's records and at eighteen became a professional bassist in Auckland. He played with the pianist Mike Nock and toured New Zealand. At nineteen he went to Sydney for two years, where he played with Don Burrows, among others. In 1962 he moved to England. There he toured with the vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, played with Zoot Sims and Al Cohn and did session work. From 1963 to 1964 he studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and played with The Brian Auger Trinity.

Influence

He is best known as the bassist and co-founder of the jazz-rock band Mahavishnu Orchestra, with which he performed from 1971 to 1973. That group, led by the guitarist John McLaughlin, brought together jazz, rock and virtuosity. Laird showed that a jazz bassist could also hold his own in the electric music of the 1970s.

Listening

In School of Rock

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