Happy 71st Birthday to Al Di Meola

The guitar great is back from a health scare in 2023 and out touring once again

As I write this, on July 22, guitar hero of my youth Al Di Meola turns 71. Currently in Abruzzi, Italy, he is finishing up a whirlwind tour of Europe that took him to Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Romania, where he suffered a heart attack in September 2023 during a performance in Bucharest at the Roman Arenas. Al has rebounded triumphantly from that horrible incident and is now back on tour once again, enjoying life with a newfound gusto as he travels the world with his wife Stephanie and 9-year-old daughter Ava. The man is truly blessed.

Over the years, I’ve marked time by Al since he is just two months older than me (I’m coming up on 71 on September 26). I first encountered the New Jersey native backstage at the Performing Arts Center in downtown Milwaukee on April 7, 1975, following a performance with the fusion supergroup Return To Forever during their No Mysterytour. We were both 21 then and I was wide open to this relatively new music called fusion, my interest having been sparked by seeing the Mahavishnu Orchestra in 1973 and from avid listening to records by Miles Davis, Weather Report and Tony Williams Lifetime. But Return To Forever spoke to me on a different level, possibly because I identified with the young guitarist, who seemed unassuming while flaunting unprecedented speed licks on his instrument.

I followed Di Meola throughout his tenure with Return To Forever and then picked up his solo debut, Land of the Midnight Sun, which featured a young relatively unknown Jaco Pastorius on the three-part “Suite — Golden Dawn.” That Di Meola album was released by Columbia Records on October 25, 1976. Jaco’s own self-titled debut on Epic had been released a couple of months earlier in August of 1976.

I continued eagerly consuming Di Meola’s albums —- Elegant Gypsy in 1977, Casino in 1978, the ambitious two-LP set Splendido Hotel in 1980 — then caught him in concert at Carnegie Hall with John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia on December 2, 1980, just three days before they would record their famous live album, Friday Night in San Francisco at The Warfield and six days before John Lennon was assassinated outside The Dakota on New York’s Upper West Side. My review of that concert appeared in the April 1981 issue of Downbeat and I subsequently got to interview Al for a Feb. 23, 1982 cover story in Good Times, the arts & entertainment publication on Long Island where I served as managing editor. For that story, entitled “Al Di Meola’s Sweet Revenge,” I drove out to Al’s home in Old Tappan, New Jersey. Take a look:

On November 17, 1981, I caught Al appearing as a surprise guest with Frank Zappa at The Ritz. Frank had written a challenging piece for Al called “Clowns on Velvet,” and he introduced him as “another great Italian” before turning him loose to unleash his trademark chops on the piece.

I later caught Al in concert with bassist Athony Jackson, keyboardist Jan Hammer, percussionist Mingo Lewis and drummer Steve Gadd on his Electric Rendevous tour, which came to The Savoy in New York on April 7, 1982. I would interview Al once again, this time for Downbeat, following the release of his 1983 album Scenario, which found him experimenting heavily with the Roland Guitar Synthesizer and Fairlight CMI (Computer Music Instrument) digital synthesizer, music sampler and audio workstation. The track “Sequencer” from that album got considerable play in dance clubs around New York back then.

I subsequently did liner notes for Al’s 1991 release, World Sinfonia, which included music by Astor Piazzolla along with a new rendition of Chick Corea’s “No Mystery,” and 1992’s Kiss My Axe, which featured a more reflective side of Di Meola, despite the harsher tone of the title (an inside barb aimed at radio programmers who refused to play his music on the air). I followed up with liner notes for Al’s 1998 album, The Infinite Desire, which featured John Patitucci, Rachel Z, Peter Erskine and included an updating of his anthemic “Race With Devil On Spanish Highway” from Elegant Gypsy (redubbed “Race With Devil on Turkish Highway) with fellow guitar monster (and another great Italian) Steve Vai.

There followed a slew of releases on Telarc — 1999’s cozy Christmas album, Winter Nights (1999), 2000’s The Grande Passion and 2002’s Flesh on Flesh, 2006’s Consequence of Chaos — before Di Meola would jump to the German in-akustik label and release such excellent outings as 2007’s Diabolic Inventions And Seduction For Solo Guitar Volume I (Music Of Astor Piazzolla), 2011’s Morocco Fantasia, 2013’s All Your Life - A Tribute To The Beatles Recorded At Abbey Road Studios, London, and 2015’s Elysium.

I interviewed Al once again for Downbeat following the relase of 2018’s Opus, his debut on the Hamburg-based earMUSIC label. That album, inspired by Di Meola’s roots-like quest to Cerreto Sannita, his grandfather’s village near Napoli, featured the family’s coat of arms on the cover. And he wrote on the back cover: “With Opus I wanted to further my compositional skills as I think that the evolution of this part of my persona has labelled me more composer/guitarist than guitarist/composer. At the same time this record also marks a new era in my life. For the first time in my life I have written music being happy. I’m in a wonderful relationship with my wife, I have a baby girl and a beautiful family that inspires me every day. I believe it shows in the music.”

Here’s an excerpt from that Di Meola interview that appeared in the April 2018 issue of Downbeat:

As he approaches his 64th birthday in July, guitarist Al Di Meola remains a road warrior. Last fall, he went out with his electric group as part of the Elegant Gypsy 40th anniversary tour to celebrate his explosive 1977 sophomore outing. In May, he begins the second leg of his Opus tour, hitting the road with guitarist Peo Alfonsi and accordionist Fausto Beccalossi in an all-acoustic setting to mark his latest rhapsodic recording on the Hamburg-based earMUSIC label; Elegant Gypsy & More Live is expected to be released in June. “It’s no relation to Opus,” said Di Meola over the phone from his winter home in Miami. “It’s all fireworks.”

After a performance of Di Meola’s acoustic trio in February at Infinity Hall in Hartford, Connecticut, where he played tunes from Opus—like his tango flavored “Milonga Noctiva” and the tender “Ava’s Dream Sequence Lullaby,” as well as Astor Piazzolla’s “Double Concerto” and “Cafe 1930”—he talked about the new album, new label, new marriage and new lease on life.

You’ve said that Opus is the first album that you’ve recorded when you were really happy.

Yeah, the record before, Elysium, came during a dark period, when I was going through a long and difficult divorce.

And you were also coming out of a contentious split with Return To Forever, following your 2008 reunion tour.

That was brutal as well. So actually, I was going through two divorces at once. And it was like being in a dark tunnel. But just sitting with my instrument and writing whatever came out of my head was a deterrent for the gloom I was in during that period. And Elysium came out of that. With this particular record, Opus, I had already been on the other side of that dark period when I began working on it. I had met someone new and now I’m in a really great marriage and have a baby daughter. And I was actually afraid I couldn’t write anything at all unless I was kind of like a little bit pissed off or upset over something. In the past, I did really well with all those records when I was in relationships that were less than perfect. So, you know, I disproved that whole theory with Opus.

The centerpiece of Opus is “Cerreto Sannita,” which is the name of the village your grandfather’s from, near Napoli, Italy. You actually visited there?

Yes, my wife, Stephanie, arranged with the town council of this little village a visit last June, the day after our show in Napoli. And I had zero expectations, only a curiosity to see where my grandfather grew up … a man that I had never gotten to know, because he died before I was born. I only knew of him through all these stories that my father told me hundreds of times. So we went up into the hills of Campania and when we pulled up to Cerrito Sannita we saw both sides of the street loaded with people, and there was a sign hanging down that read: “Welcome Home.” Police were holding the crowds back and I was like, “What? This is not for me, is it?” I get out of the car and people are going crazy and then one after another, people are coming up and hugging me. And almost everyone was a Di Meola! I found out that my grandfather had 16 brothers and sisters, but only two—him and his brother—went to the United States to start a family. The rest of them stayed behind and had kids, and those kids had kids. So, of this village of 3,000, at least half were somehow related to me.

I received an honorary citizenship, which was a ceremony in the town court that was not to be believed. Then they had a big dinner in my honor that night and an Al Di Meola tribute band played, and I got up and played a little bit with them. And to have my wife there and my baby girl running around, I felt like I was in a scene from TheGodfather.

The next day we had a tour of the village and they took me to where my grandfather actually lived. And on the door of this place was this amazing coat of arms, which had been in the Di Meola family for generations. Symbolically, this was the door that my grandfather had left to go catch the ship to Ellis Island and start a family in New Jersey. So, we took a picture of that door, which became the back cover of Opus. And that Di Meola coat of arms is on the front cover in gold against a black background. It’s stunning.

You seem to be thriving with earMUSIC.

It’s really the greatest artist-label relationship I’ve ever had. Usually, I’m at odds with the record company for one reason or another, but not this time. This record company is really on the case. I have a six-record deal and judging from how they’re treating Opus—the video shoots and photo shoots, and other promotion they’ve done for the album—they’re going to get behind each one. I haven’t seen this kind of concentration and commitment from a record company since the CBS days back in the ‘70s. It’s like an old school approach of taking care of an artist. You don’t see that anymore.

You’ve landed in a good place.

It’s better than I could have ever dreamed. The label is great, Stephanie and I have been together for five years now and every day it’s been pleasurable … no stress at all. And I’m loving being a dad again at my age. We do a lot of things together as a family, and they travel with me a lot. In fact, we just came back from Dubai. So, a lot of good things have happened since I’ve been married to Stephanie. She’s a great team player and she helps out a lot with my career. She does all the Facebook postings and organizes and schedules things for me on tour. It’s nothing like what I’ve experienced in past relationships. I always saw that kind of thing happening from afar with other musicians who had wives that got involved in their husband’s career, and I was always kind of envious of that. So, it’s just the way it should be now. It’s beautiful. DB

Al followed up with 2020’s superb Across the Universe, his take on the Beatles music that he grew up with in Bergenfield, New Jersey, and last year’s Twentyfour, his intimate COVID project that included one grand orchestral number (“Ava’s Dance in the Moonlight”) recorded in Italy with Orchestra Di Bellagio E Del Lago Di Como conducted by Fabrizio Festa.

Of course, Al had his onstage heart attack before Twentyfour was finally released in July of 2024. He would incorporate some of those by tunes on his triumphant “Electric Years” Spring tour, which I caught in Fairfield, CT at the Sacred Heart University Community Theatre on April 13, 2024. My Al Di Meola cover story in the September 2024 issue of Guitar Player was the second to last print issue before they ceased publishing.