Love Quote by John McLaughlin

“At the risk of sounding hopelessly romantic” is McLaughlin doing two things at once: preemptively deflating the eye-roll and staking out a contrarian sincerity. In a music world that loves virtuosity-as-armor, he admits the engine isn’t speed, theory, or even taste. It’s love. Not love as Hallmark mush, but love as a working method: the willingness to listen hard, to be changed by someone else’s phrasing, timing, and tradition.

The second sentence makes the romance concrete. “Different musicians” and “different cultural backgrounds” isn’t a diversity slogan; it’s a description of how his career actually moves. McLaughlin’s legacy - from jazz-rock fusion to collaborations that braided Indian classical music with Western improvisation - depends on crossing borders without turning them into souvenirs. The subtext is ethical as much as aesthetic: real collaboration requires more than borrowing exotic scales. It requires affection and respect strong enough to survive confusion, ego, and the inevitable moments when your default musical language fails.

There’s also a quiet rebuke here to the myth of the lone genius. Love, in McLaughlin’s framing, is anti-solipsism. It’s the thing that keeps technical mastery from becoming sterile, the thing that lets “fusion” mean conversation rather than conquest. Calling it “hopelessly romantic” is a wink, but also a dare: if you think love is embarrassing, you may be playing the notes while missing the point.