'This Is My Rifle' is a kind of tribute to Al Di Meola.
There are a few things that I will hopefully be credited for as a pioneer. One is my four-mallet playing. Another one is the starting what was first called jazz rock in 1967 when I started my first band, later became jazz fusion by the 1970s.
One of my problems is I'm not really sure if I slot into rock or not. I've always tried to combine world music, folk, jazz, blues and rock, and have done since Traffic.
In a lot of ways, Metallica is like a fusion band. It's not necessarily jazz or any of that, but the music is grooving.
The beauty of jazz is that it can accommodate all styles. You can take jazz and put rock in it, and it's still jazz.
The Mahavishnu Orchestra - when it came out, it was an explosion, completely unexpected as far as I was concerned. I was just forming a band.
Being jazz-trained, things happen spontaneously. Even though it's funk rock, we still have the instincts of a jazz musician.
The job of the jazz people is to take it as far as it will go and that's what they're doing. But in the process of taking it out there, there has to be some times when they're not getting it right. It all depends on what you dig. I personally don't think the fusion of jazz with the heaviness of rock is working.
