MINNEAPOLIS — Jazz guitar great Al Di Meola felt anxiety at First Avenue like he’d never quite experienced before in his 50-year career.

He was on a bill with activist rock stars Tom Morello, Ike Reilly, Rise Against and unadvertised special guest Bruce Springsteen at the Concert of Solidarity & Resistance to Defend Minnesota on Jan. 30 in Minneapolis.

“I had extreme anxiety before the show. Them knowing Tom perhaps far more and the kind of thing he does, on the angry side of things. And Bruce? What am I doing?” said Di Meola, who will return to Minneapolis for two nights this weekend at the Dakota with his electric band.

“I was never involved with something that was leaning toward a political message. I psyched myself into playing," he said.

“I did a solo spot for 20 minutes and [expletive] they went nuts. They probably never heard anything like that.”

Indeed, his mashup of classical, Latin and jazz instrumental on acoustic guitar, concluding with an interpretation of the Beatles’ “In My Life,” was the perfect palate cleanser in a program of agit-rock like “Prayer of the Refugee” and “Killing in the Name.”

To hear Di Meola tell it, he planted the idea of the First Ave concert with Morello, who organized it all.

They had met the summer before on the Italian island of Capri, where the Di Meola family has had a home for years.

After federal agents killed Minneapolis citizen Alex Pretti on Nicollet Avenue on Jan. 24, Di Meola reached out to Morello with “We gotta do something.”

“I thought he’d organize something down the road. I wasn’t thinking about a few days later in Minneapolis.”

Di Meola was so blown away by the response of 1,500 people at sold-out First Avenue on a chilly Friday afternoon that he called his agent to say, “We gotta play more shows for cheap tickets.

“It wasn’t just people were there to support the cause. They really dug it. I walked away from there feeling like it worked. I really wasn’t sure at first.

“It felt like we did something very positive,” Di Meola said Sunday from his home in New Jersey. “It’ll be in my memory in a good place. We did a good thing.”

Getting to Carnegie Hall

Di Meola will be back in the Twin Cities this week debuting his “newish” electric quartet, featuring keyboardist Anibal Cruz with whom he’s never gigged before. They rehearsed for two days in Miami and will convene for a couple of days at a Twin Cities area recording studio. Plus, his Dakota soundchecks, open to the public for $150, will be rehearsals.

Di Meola, 71, has no anxiety about these gigs, but there was one other performance in his storied career that caused high anxiety. His first big professional gig, at Carnegie Hall, no less.

There’s a backstory. The strait-laced teenager Di Meola came under the influence of his older sister’s friend, Michael Buyukas, who was a big music fan. They listened to music together, though Buyukas was a hippie who smoked pot.

Before a New Year’s Eve gig in 1971 with jazz pianist Barry Miles’ band, Buyukas gave the young guitarist a tab of LSD, saying, “Trust me.” Di Meola took it, and Buyukas recorded the gig during which the guitarist discovered new voices in his playing.

Because Di Meola had said his dream was to play with Chick Corea’s band Return to Forever, Buyukas somehow got the tape of that New Year’s Eve concert to Corea’s manager. And soon thereafter, the established jazz-fusion band had an opening for a guitarist.

The tape of that gig greatly impressed Corea. At age 19, Di Meola was invited to join Return to Forever without even having to audition.

The budding guitarist dropped out of the prestigious Berklee College of Music and showed up at his surprised parents’ house in New Jersey.

They didn’t believe Di Meola got this gig — and at Carnegie Hall.

Di Meola recalled: “My father was ‘Get the hell out of here. You’re not playing Carnegie Hall.’ This went on for like an hour.”

The guitarist recalls that his mother had a prescription for the equivalent of Xanax. “And I took a lot of it because I was just a baby compared to these guys.

“I had the ability to read [music] which was a big part of it because the charts were long and none of the guys they had before could read. I had enough chops. They liked me as well.”

After two or three days of Return to Forever rehearsals, a car was dispatched to drive the Di Meolas to midtown Manhattan.

“My father’s in the car and shaking his head thinking this is a hoax. ‘I always did tell you how to get to Carnegie Hall.’

“‘I know, Dad, you always did tell me. It’s practice, practice, practice.’ And I’m thinking to myself, it’s acid, acid, acid. That’s how I got to Carnegie Hall.”

The gig went well. Di Meola spent three years with Return to Forever and then launched his own career. Over the course of more than two-dozen studio albums, he’s collected a Grammy, a Latin Grammy, an honorary doctorate from Berklee and 14 awards from Guitar Player magazine, including jazz guitarist of the year. In fact, he’s won so many awards from Guitar Player that he was inducted into the magazine’s “Gallery of the Greats.”

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Al Di Meola

When: 6:30 & 9 p.m. May 1-2

Where: The Dakota, 1010 Nicollet Mall, Mpls.

Tickets: $52.25 and up, dakotacooks.com

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