Eddie Jobson
Eddie Jobson is an English keyboardist and violinist. He appears with Allan on the album U.K. by the band of the same name. He also appears (uncredited) on violin on one track of "One Of A Kind". He also released a special edition of "16 Men Of Tain".
Contents
EDDIE ON ALLAN
And the reason I ended up really being main writer for U.K. was that I was
the guy sort of in the center. John was definitely on the right wing, and Allan was
totally on the left wing. And John always wanted it to be more commercial, more
accessible, more rock and more arena like. Allan, on the other hand, wanted it to be
more jazz, more obscure. And Bill...he'd gone exactly opposite direction of most
people. He started off the biggest band in the world, and getting more and more
obscure, more into jazz, less commercial thing, you know. Yes to King Crimson to
U.K. to Bruford. He was the one who brought Allan into the band, and wanted to do
more jazz thing with Allan. I was sort of in the middle trying to keep all of these
elements together, but nobody was totally happy. I was probably happiest than
anybody in the band because I was sort of in the middle. I liked John did, which was
more accessible, and I also liked the improvisation that Allan was brining. Bill always
wanted to be progressive and move into other areas. I was quite happy with that, but
John was unhappy with that, Bill and Allan were unhappy. So I had to kind of make a
choice which side I was going to go with. We just decided... Bill and Allan go and do
fusion thing, John and I will take the band in a direction that is sort of lot more
mainstream because we were suffering little bit from the fact that we were being
conceived as a fusion group.
Art Rock: Here's an instrumental called "Forever Until Sunday"on this (showing him a
bootleg CD that I brought, which was called Road Test). Why was not this on any of
U.K. albums?
Jobson: "Forever Until Sunday"is on Bill Bruford's album (I realized I didn't reme mber
Bill'sOne Of A Kind album.)
Art Rock: But...didn't you write this?
Jobson: (Looking over the CD) Umm...It says here I did. I think there were two
versions of it. Well, well...that's a good question. Forever Until Sunday...I don't
remember if I wrote that or Bill wrote that or if we co-wrote that because I know
"Sahara Of Snow"was written by Bill and myself. Bill wrote one section, and I wrote
another section. That ended up on his record, too. So I don't remember if I wrote this.
There are two songs we worked on together. Once U.K. split up Bill asked me if I
could do songs on his album. So I said "yes,"and in fact I played on his record, but
I didn't get any credit because I asked not to put my credit.
Art Rock: Why?
Jobson: Because I didn't want to make confusing. When U.K. split up, Bruford (Bill's
own project) was Bill and Allan, and U.K. was John and me and Terry. And for me to
play on Bruford's album seemed little bit confusing. So I did play on it, but I got no
credit. (laughs) I think "Forever Until Sunday"is violin instrumental, right?
Art Rock: Yes.
Jobson: That's the track that I played on the album, and I think I might have played
on "Sahara Of Snow."
ALLAN ON EDDIE=
Allan Holdsworth (Guitar Player 1980)
How did U.K. form?
Bill said that he had an idea of working with [keyboardist] Eddie Johnson and [bassist] John Wetton. He asked me if I would like to go to a rehearsal and play. I agreed, and it looked promising. But the closer we came to recording, the more sterile the music sounded. Just before I left the band, I used to daydream an awful lot while we were playing all those bits onstage; you know, thinking about a nice pint of beer or something. I was easily distracted. And because I couldn't associate all those bits - they didn't form any kind of cohesive picture in my mind - I wouldn't know if it was tune three or tune six or what.
Allan Holdsworth interview (Abstract Logix 2004)
AL: Rumors are that previous collaborators Eddie Jobson and Bill Bruford are interested in a project. Would you consider going back to the future?
AH: Possibly, if the circumstances were right.
Any Key In The U.K. (Unknown publication 1978)
How did U.K. come about?
Well, it had been going for a while before I knew anything about it. John and Bill got together first and then found Eddie and, around that time, I met Bill who asked me to play on his solo album. I was introduced to the other guys and that's how it happened. Nobody actually knew it was going to work or whether we'd get on together ‘cos there are a lot of differences. That's probably one of the things that make it good.
Creating Imaginary Backdrops (Innerviews 1993)
I'd like to go back to U.K. for a moment. Why was the experience so miserable?
It had a lot of potential. The band was originally Eddie Jobson, Bill [Bruford], and John Wetton without myself. They were looking for a guitarist and I had just started playing with Bill to work on his album Feels Good To Me. And he said "There's this guitar player playing on my album, wanna check him out?" So, they had me over and thought this might work and said "Let's give it a go." And we formed the band and came up with the name. I got on really good with all of them, but what went wrong is that everyone wanted to do something else. I think there were two factions in the band: Bill and myself and Eddie and John. And they were kind of at war really. So, that's what made it miserable—they wanted me to play the same solos every night and it was a completely alien thing for me. I would have probably been able to adapt to that now, but what I wanted to do then was so opposite to that. Whereas now, I could have maybe said "Well I know what I want to do, but this is what this is." I enjoyed making the album, and that was great, but it got to be not too much fun on the road. It was purely a musical question. I don't know, maybe the other guys in the band hate me, but it wasn't that for me—it was just the musical thing. It was "Geez, what am I doing here?" It wasn't that I didn't like the people. I did—I really liked all of those guys, even though they probably don't realize that! [laughs] It was purely and simply a musical problem.
Player Of The Month (Beat Instrumental 1978)
Bill Bruford's solo album (out this month) is the latest of Holdsworth's projects; the featured musicians also include Dave Stewart on keyboards and an American called Jeff Berlin on bass, whom Allan spent several minutes enthusing over ("He's a killer. He's gonna scare a lot of people. Really lethal." ) At the time of writing secret rehearsals are going on with a new band believed to include Bruford, Holdsworth, Eddie Jobson and John Wetton. Whether this will result in a touring band, or in an album, or in both, is not known yet. Allan had been sworn to silence even regarding band personnel, and this information came from "another source". Let's just hope it's accurate.
The Innocent Abroad (Musician 1984)
Having worked with the likes of Tony Williams, Jon Hiseman (in Tempest) and Narada, it seemed only logical that Holdsworth would fall in with another great drummer; he joined Bill Bruford to make Bruford's solo classic, One Of A Kind. The two enjoyed working together so much, Bill brought him along to help found art-rock power players U.K., something which Bruford now has second thoughts about: "It's obvious that U.K. was split into the pop half-with John Wetton and Eddie Jobson the potential Asia-type superstars-and Allan and I on the other side. I had hoped Allan would reinforce my side of the discussions, counterbalance the rock aspects of the thing. But it was a painful counterbalancing, it wasn't understood, and I kind of put Allan on the spot."
