Al was hired to play in Return To Forever out of the Berklee College of Music. They made him stick around and practice after sessions and concerts were over in order to get him up to the “standards of the band” and fired him, along with Lenny White, after they recorded Romantic Warrior. Stanley Clarke wanted to keep the band together but Chick was the boss.
Al went on to win just about every and any award you could imagine for his guitar work. His album Elegant Gypsy is one of my all-time favorites and critics call Friday Night in San Francisco one of the best acoustic albums ever recorded.
If you haven’t heard his solo work, along with the solo albums by Stanley Clarke and Lenny White, you are missing out on some masterpieces.
THANKS for that !