This marks the first performance of Return To Forever with the fiery young guitarist Al DiMeola, who at the time of this Carnegie Hall concert was three weeks short of his 20th birthday.

As DiMeola recalled, "Sometime in the early summer of 1974, I was sitting in my Back Bay apartment in Boston behind Symphony Hall when I got a call from Chick. My first reaction was shock and disbelief that it was him. As a student at the Berklee College of Music, Return To Forever and Chick were favorites of mine and a lot of fellow students. He had called me to extend an offer to come to New York and join the band based on a recording that he had heard.

A friend of mine from New Jersey, Mike Buyukas, had taken it upon himself, without my knowledge, to locate Chick and try to get him to listen to some recordings he had made of me playing with the Barry Miles Quartet when I was 17 years old. This cassette tape that Mike passed on to Chick convinced Chick to hire me.

So I packed a bag, hitched a ride back home to New Jersey, and three days later was playing in Carnegie Hall."