Henry Thomas

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Cymbiosis: I understand that when you were auditioning bass players for one of your bands in England, if you saw a fretless bass being opened up, you said, "Fine, next."

Holdsworth: Yeah, we did. I know that sounds unfair; it was just that we'd been through so many guys trying to find a bass player, and it was pretty difficult. We found out that most of the guys who had fretless basses were just trying to play like Jaco. They made that tuba-like sound, but they couldn't play in tune. All we wanted was a guy with character; some personality of his own. The first bass player, Henry Thomas, was great. We had some personality problems, and it didn't work out for one reason or another, but he was great.