The Billy Cobham – George Duke Band "LIVE" On Tour In Europe

I love working with Billy! We started talking about putting a band together while he was playing with The Mahavishnu Orchestra, and I was with Zappa. In fact we did a tour together - boy what a moment in time that was!

I was in the process of leaving the Mothers of Invention, not because I was unhappy, but I just needed to challenge myself in other ways. I wanted to dive headfirst into fusion. Also, my contract with MPS records was ending. Little did I know, that this LP would become such a classic. More musicians have told me that this record changed their lives. Fortunately, I kept the entire original recordings, and more unreleased material exists from the original sessions. Billy and I plan to release that material in the near future.

Besides Billy and myself, the band was rounded off with John Scofield on guitar. He was perfect for the band. Al Johnson was not the first bass player with the band; it was Doug Rauche, who had played with Santana. He was a wild - straight out of the sixties bass player. He really looked the part, and could really play as well! However, he had a rather large substance abuse problem, so we were eventually called Al Johnson to do the gig.

Adding Al to the band was in some ways strange, because in those days all the major fusion bands toured together. We toured with Weather Report, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Herbie Hancock etc. all the time.

I remember the first night that we played with Weather Report, and a young bass player named Jaco Pastorius, had just joined the group. The audience was chanting Al Johnsons name while the band started its first tune. However, it didn't take long for the audience to warm up to Jaco.

Anyway, The Cobham/Duke Band lasted a year before other pressures pulled the band apart. The LP was recorded in 1976, at the Montreux Jazz Festival, and The Hammersmith Odeon in London over three nights. Our idea was to incorporate other ideas into Fusion Music - comedy, vocals, and funk.

My manager Herb Cohen, then Zappa's manager, enlisted the services of Cal Schenkel to do the artwork for the record. He used to do all of Zappa's covers, so we thought something kinda off the wall would be nice. I never thought it would be this off the wall, however.

Joining forces with Billy was one of the highlights of my career!

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