Jamie Muir

Allan Holdsworth: An interview (Atavachron 1994)

CH: Alright. Here's an obscure one: rumor has it you worked with a guy named Jamie Muir, a musician I know of and respect.

AH: Yeah, a drummer.

CH: A drummer and percussionist. Is there a story there? How did that come about?

AH: Well, it came about with Jamie Muir and Alan Gowen and a couple other people were involved in just a band that was trying to get together, and I used to go ‘round to their house-Jamie's house I think it was, actually-to rehearse.

But we never did anything... we never recorded anything and we never went anywhere. It never...

CH: Do you remember anything about working with him, in particular?

AH: Well, I remember I enjoyed it... you know, I enjoyed working with him, and I really enjoyed working with Alan Gowen, and everything, but then, you know Alan Gowen died a few years later... of leukemia, I think. And I just went off in this other direction.

CH: It was just interesting because, like, he was another member of King Crimson you worked with-which you've worked with a lot of other members-or at least two of the major ones.

AH: Well, what happened was I worked with... we were just rehearsing with that band, and then I got the gig working with Jon Hiseman of Tempest. So, it took me away from that, you know. I don't know if we would have still carried on like that, but I enjoyed it. It was a pretty loose, open kind of band. You know, maybe too loose! But, from an organization point-of-view.

Creating Imaginary Backdrops (Innerviews 1993)

Here's one you probably didn't expect: Sunship.

What's that?

That's a band you were in with Jamie Muir, Alan Gowen and Laurie Baker—back in 1971.

Oh, is that what it was called?

You didn't know the name?

No! [laughs] Oh yeah! That was good fun too. It was really different than what I was wanting to do at the time. But as far as I remember, it was pretty open. It was very spontaneous music. It was a combination of those people improvising really. It wasn't like anything else.

Did you guys record anything?

Not that I know of. [laughs] Who knows, that might be the next album—the bootleg! [laughs] We might have done a couple of gigs. The most I remember about that band was just rehearsing. Even though I didn't stay in touch with him, I like Alan Gowen a lot. He died from leukemia quite awhile ago. That was really sad. That's thing I remember most unfortunately—that's he's not around anymore.

No Secrets (Facelift 1994)

Around about this time also was the fabled but short-lived band called Sunship, featuring Holdsworth alongside Alan Gowen ... “…that's right, and Jamie Muir" (Lyn Dobson and Laurie Baker were also band members). "Yeah, well, he (Alan Gowen) was great, a lovely guy. Yeah, that was one of the examples of where we did get together and rehearse without any real prospects. And it was good - I enjoyed it. I liked it a lot although I can't remember if we ever did a gig. But it was good." Allan also recalls similar projects recorded on reel to reel including a singer who later turned up on television some years later as a maker of mazes (!). It conjures up an image of a pool of players based in and around London who interacted in much the same way as the jazz scene traditionally works, with some crossover: "... most musicians were just slightly outside that - they weren't what I would consider to be the real jazz bore guys, but we did work together."