Secrets (album)

"Secrets" is a 1989 album by Allan Holdsworth. It is regarded by many as a high point in Allan’s career. It balances guitar and SynthAxe. It also balances Allan's own tunes with contributions from the musicians. "City Nights", written by Gary Husband, is among Allan's finest statements on guitar, not to mention Vinnie Colaiuta's jaw-dropping drums. The title track features the voice of Rowanne Mark, while "54 Duncan Terrace" is a tribute to Allan's friend, English pianist Pat Smythe. "Joshua", written by new keyboardist Steve Hunt, is another major guitar statement. "Spokes" is among Allan's wildest excursions on the SynthAxe, and also features phenomenal bass playing by Jimmy Johnson. "Maid Marion" and "Peril Premonition" were contributed by Steve Hunt and Chad Wackerman respectively. The album's most moving tune is perhaps the closer "Endomorph", a beautiful tribute to Allan's parents, with lyrics by Rowanne and a killer vocal performance by Craig Copeland.

Track listing

Allan Holdsworth: Secrets (D - S) (YT)

	Track title	Composer	Length	Comments
1.	City Nights	Husband	2:33
2.	Secrets	Holdsworth/Mark	4:22
3.	54 Duncan Terrace	Holdsworth	4:34
4.	Joshua	Hunt	5:59
5.	Spokes	Holdsworth	3:32
6.	Maid Marion	Hunt	7:16
7.	Peril Premonition	Wackerman	4:45
8.	Endomorph	Holdsworth/Mark	4:19

Allan Holdsworth: Guitar, SynthAxe
Vinnie Colaiuta: Drums
Chad Wackerman: Drums and keyboards on "Peril Premonition"
Jimmy Johnson: Bass
Bob Wackerman: Bass on "Peril Premonition"
Steve Hunt: Keyboards
Alan Pasqua: Keyboards on "54 Duncan Terrace"
Gary Husband: Keyboards on "City Nights"
Jeffrey Ocheltree: Hammer on "Peril Premonition"
Claire Holdsworth: Voice on "Peril Premonition"
Craig Copeland: Vocals on "Endomorph"

Gear

[Note: This info is based on the quotes reproduced below.]One notable guitar he used on the "Secrets" album was the Steinberger GM2T, which he mentioned having a great deal of control over and loving for its unique qualities. Additionally, he mentioned using a Boogie .50 Caliber amp with EL84 output tubes. The combination of the Steinberger GM2T and the Boogie .50 Caliber amp contributed to the distinctive tones on the album. Holdsworth also mentioned using a Boogie Quad Preamp in conjunction with the .50 Caliber's power amp, showcasing his innovative recording approach. For the SynthAxe material, he mentions using the Oberheim Matrix 12 and X5B synth modules, some Yamaha DX 7’s, and an Akai S-900 sampler.

Summary of quotes on "Secrets"

"Secrets" is an album by Allan Holdsworth. The album was recorded in 1989 and was released on the Enigma Records label. It features a contemporary style of improvisational music that Holdsworth is comfortable describing as jazz. The album includes notable contributions from musicians like Vinnie Colaiuta, Jimmy Johnson, Steve Hunt, and Chad Wackerman.

Holdsworth expressed his satisfaction with "Secrets," considering it one of his favorite albums at the time. He mentioned the inclusion of vocals on some tracks and his desire to incorporate them in his music. The album is known for its blend of Holdsworth's unique guitar playing style and his pursuit of musical progress. The artist's goal in creating "Secrets" was not based on a specific concept for the entire album but rather a collection of individual compositions that came together to form a cohesive whole.

The album was recorded in Holdsworth's home studio called "The Brewery," and it reflects his constant experimentation with recording techniques and guitar sound. The album features a blend of compositions submitted by band members and those written by Holdsworth himself, utilizing various instruments, including the SynthAxe.

Holdsworth mentions his preference for the Steinberger GM2T guitar and Boogie amplifiers, which allowed him to achieve a controlled yet expressive tone. He also discusses his use of the breath controller for dynamics and how it influences the guitar sound.

The article delves into specific tracks on the album, such as "City Nights," "Secrets," "Joshua," and "Peril Premonition," offering insights into the recording process and equipment used. The article also notes Holdsworth's return to vocal performance on some tracks, with humorous elements inspired by hotel experiences in Paris.

[This summary was written by ChatGPT based on the quotes below.]

Quotes on Secrets

The Unreachable Star (Guitar World 1989)

BY THE TIME the first Santa Ana winds have swept through that same drowsy Orange County morning, the maestro is already a pale-blue blur within the intimate Front Page recording complex, waffling about with everything from the house amplifiers to the tea maker to the spaghetti-wire underbelly of the mixing console. To the frazzled genius working on a breakfast of two Kit Kats and some square intentions, all seems fairly well and good; the bad transformers are replaced, the tea is finally hot, and all the technical foulups in the world are magically solved by any one of a number of homemade little boxes he’s brought out for the occasion. As he offers each musician his lavish greeting, counterpoint is provided by a tape of the previous day’s work. No one digs their solos; everyone digs Allan’s shoes.

The drummer’s voice crackles wearily through the intercom. I’m really having trouble capturing the essence here."

"Well, you’re not getting any help from the big boy in here," Allan responds encouragingly. "Maybe we should just bail on it as a lame tune."

The intercom sounds pained. "Come on! Let’s just get it one more time!

Okay; laughs Holdsworth. Let’s get it, steeds!

GUITAR WORLD: You said earlier that you were really happy with the way this record turned out.

ALLAN HOLDSWORTH: Yeah - with everybody else. I’m never really happy with what I do, but you have to finish, let go of it and then it’s gone. Once I let go of it I don’t worry about it, but while I’m working on it I think, "Oh Jesus, couldn’t I do a little bit better than that?" but… I guess not [laughs].

GW: It’s been said by certain musicians that synthesis, by its very nature, blocks a certain essential path of their creativity, their ability to express. It creates an undeniable separation between the actual dynamic and its transmission.

HOLDSWORTH: That’s not true. That’s an opinion and I value it, but I think what’s most likely is that I haven’t learned to control it - I haven’t had as long a time to learn how to control it as I had with the guitar. I think that during the Sand period, I really made a lot of progress with regard to that specific area of the communication of music. I suppose the outside perception and the inside perception are so different that I can see why someone might say that. But I’m closer now; especially with Secrets - not necessarily playing-wise, but with a focus on the musicality that I’d like to convey - than I was before.

GW: What sort of innovative waffling did you do in preparation for Secrets?

HOLDSWORTH: Well, I’m always… this is the big trouble with me, that I never know if what I’m doing is right, because I always finish up spending more time dabbling with pieces of equipment than I do playing. Sometimes, if I get a good sound I think, "Oh, maybe it was [?], maybe I did learn something," and after all, the sound is part of the music. For example, I have a hard time listening to certain guitar players because I can’t. get past their sound. For instance, I really don’t like that kind of "bebop through a fuzz box" approach. But we were talking about gadgets, weren’t we?

GW: Not necessarily, although in the van you did say you really had to pull some stuff out from beyond to solo over the stuff the chaps recorded the other day. I assumed you were speaking metaphorically.

HOLDSWORTH: Well, I tried to, because the rest of the guys just played so great. I mean, they always do, but this time particularly I think the tracks that we ‘got are just great - Vinnie and Jimmy were just reaming on it, and I couldn’t just putsy around on top of them.

Axes Of God (Guitar World 1989)

One of the least constant factors in the equation has been Allan’s preference in the characteristics of the guitar itself. Since the early seventies, when he acquired his first Fender Stratocaster, he persistently sought to break the instrument down to an elemental form - moving on to the thinner Gibson SG, another chiselled Strat, several hollowed-out Charvel and Ibanez solidbodies and, most recently, to the deceptively resonant, stripped down plastic Steinbergers - ultimately using MIDI as the basis for its restructure. With two SynthAxes and their corresponding analog Oberheim Matrix 12 and X5B synth modules and disk player, some Yamaha DX 7’s and an Akai S-900 sampler, Allan feels that the dream has been finally realized. "For years, I’ve been trying to get the guitar to do things it simply didn’t want to do," he explains. "I never have to fight the SynthAxe to make it respond, and, in a surprising sense, it’s really the most expressive instrument I’ve ever played through"

After years of struggle with the tonal inconsistencies of wooden instruments, Allan today waxes ecstatic in praise of Ned Steinberger’s synthetic creations. "I was so floored by the thing that I couldn’t believe it," he recalls. "I haven’t felt that way about a guitar since I started playing, it’s really the most significant development in the last fifty years. Everything else has just been kind of a little tweak on something older guys like Leo Fender or Les Paul did."

Allan finds that, despite its size, the Steinberger cleverly embodies the tonal consistency, uniformity of feel and sleek playability he’d sought in guitars for years. "It’s unbelievably even," he says. "It has a kind of resonance, though not the kind induced by the various pieces of wood you’ve ordinarily got connected together. When I started playing the Steinberger, I was taken by its really scientific approach. The materials used were all the same; you could consistently operate under a formula that works. You’re not worrying about how far up the tree this piece of wood came from, how it was cut, how it was dried or how long the tree had been dead. It seemed that every single thing on the guitar just contributed, so you were left with either a really great guitar or a little junk pile. And for some reason, the Steinberger has a great sound. Between that guitar and the SynthAxe, I can’t imagine wanting another guitar - except to own another Steinberger. I actually had one stolen from the studio [Fron t Page Recorders, Costa Mesa, CA]; If anybody finds a black Steinberger with serial no. 2660, and when you take the top plate off, it’s got my name written on it in gold pen - it’s mine."

To create the tones customized for the specific tracks on Secrets, Allan cross-matched ideas, ingenuity and his inventions until he struck on a tasteful variety. Using his Steinberger GM2T, loaded with two custom Seymour Duncan Allan Holdsworth humbuckers and refretted by luthier Bill DeLap with Dunlop 6000 wire, Allan created "City Nights" by running a Boogie Mark III head through the Extractor prototype, into an equalizer, and back into a Boogie Simulclass 295 power amp, using only one side of the unit to drive his speaker box. There, the signal from a Celestion KS speaker was brought to tape via a Neumann TLM 170 microphone. The inline processing for his lead tone included an ADA Stereo Tapped Delay, two ADA mono delay lines and a Lexicon PCM60. Formulas differ on each track; there are few constants. "I used that power amp and the speaker box on all the tracks, with different variables," Allan reports. "On ‘Peril Premonition,’ for instance, I substituted a Boogie Quad preamp, and used a combination of a Shure SM58 and an AKG 460 on the same Celestion I’m very flexible, because it’s all a big experiment to me. If I thought that I’d gotten a really good guitar tone and just left the mike and everything in the same position and used it, I know I’d die after-wards. I wanted to get back to using tube amps. Since I started using the Juice Extractor with the Boogies, I’ve fo und that I can get more flexible variations of tone than ever before. I find myself customizing the amp from the outside."

Guitarist's Guitarist (Jazz Times 1989)

A mystery man? Not exactly. His name is Allan Holdsworth, and his gentle , burry accent immediately reveals his near-Scottish roots in the Northern England textile town of Bradford, in Yorkshire. But the truth is that the intensely personal music that he explored in the seventies with such groups as Tempest, the New Tony Williams Life-time and Jean-Luc Ponty, and that earned his EP "Road Games" a Grammy nomination for "Best Rock Instrumental" has yet to break through to the larger audience. This month, his latest recording, Secrets, will be released on the Enigma Records label. Like his most recent two disks, it will feature Holdsworth playing guitar and Synth-Axe (a guitar-like MIDI controller) in a powerfully contemporary brand of improvisational music that Holdsworth, prior identifications to the contrary, is happy to describe as jazz.

With or without large label interest in his career, Holdsworth is moving forward enthusiastically. He is particularly excited about the new album. Secrets, which features L.A. All Star drummer Vinnie Colaiuto [sic] on drums, Jimmy Johnson, his regular bassist, Steve Hunt (a drummer playing keyboards on Maid Marion his own piece), with Chad Wackerman (his regular drummer) also playin on one of the tracks.

"What pleases me the most about Secrets," he continued, "is that I still was able to hear some kind of progress from the last one. If I don’t feel there’s any progress being made, I think I’d try doing some other kind of work. If I can hear something that I’ve learned recently, or if I’ve recently unlocked some kind of creative door then that makes me happy.

Jimmy Johnson’s Bass Concept (Guitar World 1989)

Quite literally at the other end of the sonic spectrum is Holdsworth’s blissful analog mayhem, Although his soloing abilities are documented extensively throughout the catalogue - see Metal Fatigue’s remarkably lyrical "Panic Station," Sand’s frantic ‘4Pud Wud" or Secrets’ sensitive. "54 Duncan Terrace" for the tip of the iceberg - it’s with thick, five-string support that Johnson adds color, depth and melody to the foundation of Allan’s provocative compositions.

Steve Hunt (English Tour Program 1989)

The collaboration resulted in Steven playing on two tracks from ‘Secrets’ - Joshua, which he wrote and Maid Marion which he co-wrote with Allan. "I wrote the melody and Allan said it reminded him of old English folk music, and so hence the Robin Hood connection."

Allan Holdsworth’s Untold Secrets + Worthy Quotes (Guitar Player 1990)

On an average day, it may take a couple of slow, careful steps to wade safely through the foyer at the Holdsworth residence, which is generally crammed waist-high with pieces of ingoing or outgoing equipment. The day before an I.O.U. tour, allow an extra minute or two. But when Allan is immersed in a recording project, it’s best to either pack a lunch or just use the patio door around, because that’s the most direct route to the meister’s nerve center, The Brewery - home of bottles, boxes, inventions-in-the-rough, and site of much of the sonic outrage captured on Secrets, his latest release.

Allan chose to section the undertaking in a number of crucial but practical subdivisions. For of the eight compositions were submitted by members of the band, two of those feature Allan’s electric guitar work. Of the remaining four, written by Allan, two are SynthAxe-based, two feature extended improvisation and two are elegies. The eight pieces were partially tracked at a commercial recording studio; the improvised half of each was recorded here at The Brewery. Then Allan began mixing the album - at home - and spent half his time working on an album with pianist Gordon Beck, and half his time arduously fitting all the pieces together. He went almost a halfyear over schedule, and half his fans went crazy-eights.

Why?

"Because I’m a constant experimenter," explains Allan. "Over the last two albums, when I started using the SynthAxe, I began working with different ways of recording guitar, probably more than I should have. At points during Atavachron, I’d do things like run the amp into one speaker cabinet, mike it, feed that into another amp, and then mike up that cabinet. On The 4:15 Bradford Executive, from Sand, I used two of the little enclosed speaker cabinets I built and drove each with a different amplifier [Ed. note: These small, soundproof cabinets contain movable microphone riggings for placement in relation to the speakers]. Finding things like that can take forever. On this album, I just thought about all the things I learned from the past and tried to consolidate them. I’d say okay look, - this mike sounds good and I’m going to stop putzing with it." I did putz a lot with it in the beginning: I’d record a solo and then two days later erase it all. Jimmy Johnson would keep calling and say, "look, man, don’t be erasing." I’d listen to copies of what I erased and think "Oh ,that wasn’t so bad." When I start chasing the tone thing, sometimes I really go around in circles."

But Allan is far too judicious to squander time on one element in the picture he wanted to present with Secrets, which is why he chose to mix the tracks at home, away from the financial demands of a studio schedule and the distractions of travel and industry. But this kind of music lives for the bandstand, and he was called away from the console for short tours that waylaid the project even further. "We did a tour with Vinnie Colaiuta and Jimmy that was just wonderful," he reports, "and in the same tour played with [drummer] Chad and [bassist] Bob Wackerman, and that was wonderful. Then we did a trip to Japan with [drummer] Gary Husband and Jimmy, which was amazing. I’m so stoked to be playing with these guys. As far as I know, they’re probably all saying, ‘Give me the guitar.’ In fact, I tell them that every time: I say, ‘Man, the only thing wrong with this band is the guitar player. There’s probably a lot of people who would agree with that, and I’m with ‘em. They played so great on the alb um, and it makes me feel particularly good, knowing I gave them the kind of freedom I would enjoy."

He’s right on the first and last accounts. This band - drummers Colaiuta, Husband, or Wackerman, Johnson, and keyboardist Steve Hunt - is one of the most vital rotating units in electric jazz, and their breathtaking performances stand tall in Allan’s crystalline production. From the rich ambience of the drums and Johnson’s 5-st’ring Alembic all the way down to the Spaten Franziskaner ale Allan pours as a spirited coda to "City Nights," Secrets is a rich, deep collection of adventurous music that features some of the guitarist’s most dramatic electric work, and some of the most expressive guitar-synthesis to be encountered anywhere.

Ultimately, Allan’s decided knack for steering clear of his obstacles came to fulfill the beauty of Secrets, the next careful step in his ongoing search for sounds. The vehicle, he hopes, will eventually become irrelevant. "People who have followed and liked my music over the years have been pretty forgiving when I wanted to do something different," he admits. "It got a little tough when I started using the SynthAxe. I knew I wanted to get into it, but it was difficult for me to get my own personality to come through, and now I’ve got it to where it’s a lot better. I know the limitations of the instrument, I’ve come to understand synthesis a lot more, and I feel I’ve tried to get more of a voice, so that you can hear the musician through the instrument. I’m not saying it’s there yet, but it’s a lot closer now. It’s all a learning experience.

"City Nights"

This is a strong guitar statement, the first to actually open an album since Metal Fatigue.

When the guys played it in the studio, I thought, "Boy, this would be a nice one to use as an opener." It was really hard for me to decide the order of the tracks, because although there’s a lot of intensity on the tunes, there are a lot of ballads. It made it easier when I stopped thinking of them in terms of slow tunes versus fast tunes. I sequenced the album through the intensity of each track. Gary Husband, who wrote the tune, played keyboards. He played a ridiculous keyboard solo on his demo, and that inspired me: "Gee, I can’t fall asleep on this tune, because I just heard what he did on it."

Your tone has a little more bite than it did the last couple of records.

A lot of that is because I started using Boogie stuff. One of the other things I’d been perfecting over time was my little load box, the Juice Extractor. When I combine that with certain miking methods, it worked great. On this track, I ran a Mark III Boogie with the Juice Extractor into the Boogie 295 [power amp], and recorded if with a Neumann TLM17D microphone with a James Demeter mike preamp. I used that mike setup for all the guitar solos.

Did finding desirable sounds through the SynthAxe allow the guitar to resume a hard-edged role in your music?

Well, not really. Sometimes you can get lost in experiments. I think the last couple of years I was disappearing a bit with the guitar, not because I was happy with what I was doing; I was trying different things because I was dissatisfied with just plugging into the amp and cranking up. I wanted to work with the regular, distorted guitar sound so I could mold and control it, instead of having it play me. When I tried one of the newer Boogies about a year ago, it sort of made me flash back. Using all the little tweaks I learned, I found I could actually control the tone I liked.

It sounds like you’re sweep-picking the beginning of the solo.

No, I don’t do that. I can’t do that. It’s just that normally I don’t arpeggiate things in the way that’s become fashionable. I remember when I first started playing, my dad had all these books for me to practice on: Everybody was familiar with Paganini’s Caprices, and arpeggios were something you practiced but didn’t play. It’s always inspiring to hear somebody like Frank Gambale do it - I couldn’t play arpeggios the way he does, but I can play them the way I do. I’ve practiced playing scales where you put the accent anywhere, whether on a note you pick or one you don’t. You can say, "I’m going to play four notes and accent the second note, but I’m only picking the first note." So you make the first a really gentle touch, and then you have to whack the string with your finger on the second. For the third you can be a little slower when it hits the fret, and so on, so that eventually you can put the accent where you want it. Over the years I’ve learned that by using the legato technique, I can physically play anything that anyone else can play anyway, just by accenting unpicked notes and finding different fingerings. But it’s easy for me to do that, because that’s how I play.

One problem with legato technique is that it tends to make you play all the notes running in one direction, and that’s something I tried to stop doing two or three years ago. I try not to play more than three or four notes going in one direction. You realize that it’s too easy, that your fingers are doing the walking, as John Scofield says. When I read that, it made me start rethinking it.

The ale at the end of the tune was a Spaten Franziskaner poured into a weissbier glass. I had to waste a couple, actually, being a bit of a madman on the recording. I finished up not being able to drink them all, and I was getting out of control trying to record it. Luckily, I made it with the third bottle. Gary’s been known to have a bit of fun after the gig, and it was his title for the tune:

If we play in a big city, as soon as the gig’s over that’s about the first sound we’ll hear.

"Secrets"

I think of "Secrets" as a song, but primarily as a vehicle to improvise over. The harmonic structure of the piece was inspired by a thought I had about how no one can ever really figure out what anybody else is thinking. And Rowanne Mark is really fantastic at taking an idea and creating lyrics. Apart from that, she sings fantastically. Quite often with me, titles come as I’m writing something, but this time there was only a feeling. I also usually write the melody after the chords, but on this piece I played the melody as the top line of the chord voicings.

On almost the whole album I used an Oberheim Matrix 12 and an Xpander, a Kurzweil Expander, and some Yamaha TX synth modules. Most of it turns out to be the Oberheims and the Kurzweil. The solo sound on "Secrets" is a mixture of the Xpander and a TX7 module; I have the Steinberg Synthworks program to work with that synth. FM synthesis doesn’t kill me, but having a couple of those units is useful. I was looking for something like a cello tone that I could get a bowed quality from. I wanted it to have more of a string feel than a blown feel. I’m not saying that’s what I achieved, but that’s what I was going for.

So you didn’t use the breath controller.

I did. That’s what I use to control the dynamics. I use the breath controller to do things I would have done with a bow, like pulling harder, laying off and being more gentle, and then doing staccato notes where you bounce the bow.

When you play loud, staccato notes, do you blow intermittently or just blow hard and use left-hand articulation to determine the notes’ shape?

Most of the time I use it with normal guitar technique, and I’ll be blowing constantly hard with the envelope open all the way. I use the air to control velocity alone. If I were playing a bunch of sixteenth-notes and wanted them really hard, I’d be blowing really hard, so all of the notes I was playing would come from what I was doing with my right and left hands, not the breath controller. I’m not using it to dictate the way the note is played; it’s only shaping it after it’s been played. It’s not part of the function of getting the note out, like it would be on a true wind instrument.

"Joshua"

How do you get the guitar to scream like that, but within control?

This might sound like bull, but I’ve got the most control I ever had over any guitar sound since I started using the plastic Steinberger, the GM2T. I just love that guitar, man. Boogie sent me this little .50 Caliber that uses EL84 output tubes, my favorite tubes. They have an aggressive yet soft, spongy tone, and it just went. That guitar and amp worked perfectly for that track. It wouldn’t have been so good on "City Nights," where the notes sputter out more, but on this the notes were longer-toned, so it was great. The way you strike the string with the pick and then move your finger, you can get it to change vowel sounds, like an oo to an ee, and I really love that. On a bad amplifier it always goes the other way, from an ee to an oo. That’s the way I test amps: If you can have a note go to ee and stay like that, then it’s great. I ran the .50 Caliber into the Extractor, into the [???], and recorded it with the TLM17O, straight to the tape machine.

This is a textbook example of how you de-emphasize the pick sound.

You have to make your finger hit the fret just a fraction of a second apart from when the pick strikes the string, and then it won’t have the front on the note. A lot of other times I’ll use the little finger itself to start the note, just to zap the string on the head right at that fret for the first note, and that’ll be it. I do that pretty often. Like I said, I’ve practiced a lot to emphasize different notes, because I hated it when I used to listen to what I’d done, and I’d say, "There’s the pick; here’s the hammer; there’s the pick." I thought, "Screw that; I want to make it so you can’t tell which one’s which."

The whammy bar must be effective in helping to do that, too.

Oh, it is, because once the string’s in motion and you use it really delicately, when you hit that next note with the string and then just tweeze on the bar a little bit, it emphasizes the effect. The bar’s good for keeping strings going.

Are you noticing a refinement in your general bar technique?

I don’t use the whammy bar as much as I used to, because it’s become just like a fashion. When I first started using it and heard other guys using it, it was something that you didn’t hear that often, so it was okay. But after a while I realized that once everybody starts doing it - and they inevitably will - it doesn’t have any meaning anymore; it’s become something normal, and therefore something to be avoided. For me.

"Peril Premonition"

This is a great piece by Chad Wackerman, so different from anything I would write. He recorded it on his sequencer at his mum’s house, using real drums. It had this really perilous vibe; it always sounded like something was going to happen, as opposed to nothing keeping happening, which is what normally happens when I try to play. The solo began immediately - from the first second, beginning to end, it’s completely improvised. Whichever one I used of the 20,000 takes I did, that’s how it was from the outset.

We did it really differently. When Chad came down to the garage, we sequenced all the parts on the multi-track, and I soloed over that before they put on the bass and drums. That track has a really, really live feel, and it made me think about that for the future. Although I had done a couple of things with sequencers in the past, I had always waited to do the solo last. When I play with a backing track, I’m concentrating on what the other guys are playing, saying, "Oh I can’t play this, because he did that. This time I just did what I wanted. Then I called Chad and his brother Bob, and they went down to Front Page Studio and played the drums and bass live, and that was it. I would have never thought it would work, but it did.

I also took a really different recording approach: I ran the output of a Boogie Quad Preamp into the power amp of the .50 Caliber, and put that into the Extractor. Everybody knows now that 75% or more of the tone of a great tube amplifier comes from the power amp. If you plug a preamp straight into a recording console, it’s the worst sound ever. You have to use power tubes, and since the Quad is a preamp, I needed to feed it into a power amp before I could Extract it. I didn’t want to use a big power amp, because I would have had to make the Juice Extractor glow red.

This track also marks your first vocal performance [in] quite some time.

We kept thinking about all these times, particularly in Paris, where you leave a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door, and no matter how big that thing is, man, the maid’ll be there breaking your door down at sunrise. We had some really funny experiences with Gary Husband when we first took the band to Paris and somebody was pounding on the door. He got up out of bed, and the maid had actually come into the room, got hold of the sheets, pulled them back over but didn’t change them, didn’t change his towels, and then left. Not only that, but there’s usually someone down the street with a pneumatic drill that’s starting at 7:00 in the morning, and there’s some guy in the next room fixing the plumbing. Those sounds and voices at the beginning are just a bit of humor; Claire, my wife, is saying in French, "Open the door, I’ve got to clean up the room."

Mike Pachelli Show (video transcript 1991)

MP: You did some things with CTI you mentioned, the Velvet Darkness album…

AH: Yeah that was a big rip off, a big disaster in my whole – and it haunts me to this day – the guy basically said I could record with whoever I wanted to and I got Alan Pasqua, Alphonso Johnson, Michael Walden and I thought wow, this going to be great, but we were rehearsing in this studio and they just recorded the rehearsing, we never actually got to record the tracks – they just recorded the rehearsals and that was it. When we said like, Isn’t it time we did those tracks? Again, you know? No that was it. So it was a real disaster album then and it’s an even bigger disaster now because the new album Secrets, the last album, was on Enigma, which was bought by Capitol, and now that album is no longer available, but- ! Of course you can find the old CTI album on Sony CBS which is, makes me want to give it, just quit on the spot. How do you deal with that?

MP: And you did for Intima in 1989 the album, Secrets. What was the inspiration there?

AH: Well it’s just the same, I just keep trying to learn just learn more about music and continue to write tunes and play ’em. I enjoyed that album, that was my favorite album so far, just because it’s the last one.

Creating Imaginary Backdrops (Innerviews 1993)

What do you think is wrong with them?

With Secrets, I mixed that album at home and I spent a lot of time on the mixing. It’s different when you do it at home—you don’t have to watch the clock. So, obviously I can take longer to make decisions.

What were you going for when you first conceptualized the album?

I never really have a concept for an album as a whole. Whenever I’m working on a piece of music, I’ll just be working on that. I’m never thinking about a concept for an album. I just think about writing tunes and trying to find a balance between the tunes to make up an album. Usually, when I come up with an album title—and this has been true with every album I’ve ever done—I don’t think of it is as a whole. Sonically, and making sure the balance between types of tracks, and the running order—that’s important. The titles of the albums have always been related to one piece or one song. I take one piece of music and say "That’s a good title, so I’ll use that." And then the album ends up being called that. Secrets was the same—just that one track, I liked the title, so I used that. So, it wasn’t a concept for the whole record. I balance the pieces of music in a record to make it a whole. I never have an album title based on a concept.

Composition-wise, Wardenclyffe Tower strikes me as an extension of Secrets.

I think every album has been an extension of the previous one, or has grown out of the previous one. But I think it’s quite different. I think it’s a little less aggressive in a way. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not—it’s just the way it turned out you know. [laughs] I’m already working on stuff for the next album. Obviously, the problem with Wardenclyffe Tower is the amount of time between recording it and releasing it. I like to get it so they’re fairly quick. Usually, when we start recording it, I work on it until it’s mixed and it’s out, so there’s not a huge difference between when it’s recorded and when it comes out. Now that I think about it, that happened on Secrets as well. I got involved in a tour and other projects at the same time, and I wasn’t able to finish it when I wanted to. I don’t know, it’s hard for me to say, it’s hard to compare them. They sound different—the music is different. Hopefully, they have something that’s the same about them, the thread of evidence of one mind or something, but I don’t know.

It seems to have a more spontaneous and live feel than Secrets.

If people perceive that, then that’s always a good thing. Even when we end up overdubbing things, I try to make it sound live. Sometimes you can overdub something and it might be correct, but it just might not feel right since it didn’t happen at the same time. So, sometimes I’ll make it sound like it really belongs there even if it’s not exactly what I wanted.

Legato Land (Guitar Techniques 1996)

Does he have a favourite album out of the ones he’s recorded?

"I usually end up liking the last one, but I think I’m most pleased with ‘Hard Hat Area’ and ‘Secrets’. The problem with me is, as soon as I go back and listen to something that I played it all sounds really old and I can hear all the things I was trying to do but couldn’t. And I think that’s a good sign, as it’s what keeps me going. If I listened to an album and thought it was good, then I’d realise that maybe it’s time to get another job. What worries me a little now is that I’ve started to feel something happening where I’ve developed a way of hearing things that are really, really difficult for me to play. It’s the most frustrating thing in the world to be playing a solo and this idea’s in my head, but it’s not in my hands. I’ll start doing things like that and then I’ll crash because I haven’t got the chops to do it! I don’t know - maybe I just need to go back to the drawing board and practise for a while."

Med Siktet Innställt På Total Kontroll (MusikerMagasinet 1996, Swedish language)

Is he satisfied with his previous records?

- Naturally, I think the best record is the most recent one, but I can also live with Hard Hat Area and Secrets.

Allan Holdsworth Interview (richardhallebeek.com 1996)

-Which album is it that you are really satisfied with?

I’m very happy about my last album, ‘Hard Hat Area’ and also ‘Secrets’, because these were real band albums. We have been on tour for six months before the recordings and the band sounded really tight. I think that spark was really audible on the CD, too. ‘The Wardenclyffe Tower’ was more of a produced studio album with different musician’s on different tracks. I usually don’t like that too much, but there was no other possibility this time. I find it really hard to listen to my older albums. Especially my guitar playing is hard for me to listen to.

Untitled (Guitar Magazine? 2001)

Q: What is your favorite album on your own, as a member and solo project?

A: First of all, the newest one. And others are solo albums; ìWardenclyffe towerîîI.O.U.îîAtavacronîîSandî and ìSecretsî.

Allan Holdsworth interview (Music Maker 2003)

In the past you recorded things with vocals, like on Secrets. And it...

...Rowanne, yeah Rowanne is great. She quit singing though. She got married and she doesn’t sing anymore.

Do you ever think about using vocals again?

Yeah.

How did that start out on Secrets, was that something you heard immediately?

Certain things, even though the vocals took up only very short sections of tunes, typically they weren’t very long, they didn’t involve a lot of the music. I mean some of them did. Like against the clock when Naomi sang it, that was kind of a longer piece. But usually with Rowanne, they were very short things, like maybe introductions or endings. It was very easy to communicate with her very easily. And she really is a great singer. Sometimes I feel like.. I think words are good. Not all the time, you don’t need them all the time, but sometimes I think they are.And when I first her do that thing on Atavachron, where she did ‘All Our Yesterdays’, and that was very important. To have the lyrics on there, ‘cause they were very..they meant a lot, you know?

Allan Holdsworth interview (Abstract Logix 2004)

Fan: What is your favorite album and/or song that you’ve recorded (both solo and group setting)?

AH: : I don’t actually have one. Some of the albums just turn out a little better than the others for no real reason, but they’re all so different to me--because a lot of people think my shit sounds all the same).. I couldn’t choose between say Hard Hat Area, Secrets, or The 16 Men

Links

YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lDKzKLwFlgyiSZytWO6awM9qcjt2cZERc

Ed's blog: https://threadoflunacy.blogspot.no/2017/08/20-secrets-1988-89.html

Discogs: https://www.discogs.com/master/199436-Allan-Holdsworth-Secrets

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrets_(Allan_Holdsworth_album)