In 1979, de Lucía, John McLaughlin, and Larry Coryell formed The Guitar Trio and together made a tour of Europe and released a video recorded at London's Royal Albert Hall entitled "Meeting of the Spirits". Pohren said that de Lucía's decision to work with musicians like McLaughlin, Di Meola, Coryell, and Chick Corea must have been an "exciting and stimulating" experience for him, given their technical musical knowledge and ability to improvise and said that they carried him "so far afield that at times he must have been profoundly confused, a man running the risk of losing his musical identity." This concerned de Lucía, who said in a late 1990s interview, "I have never lost the roots in my music, because I would lose myself. What I have tried to do is have a hand holding onto tradition and the other scratching, digging in other places, trying to find new things I can bring into flamenco."