Friends of Dan transcript
Welcome to the Friends of Dan Music Podcast. I'm Dan Miles.
My guest today, Allan Holdsworth, is one of the most influential guitarists in the history of the instrument. His name appears on a very short list of truly visionary players—like Django Reinhardt, Jimi Hendrix, and Eddie Van Halen—whose musical imaginations and unprecedented technical ability have led countless guitarists to completely rethink their approach to the instrument and forever expand its vocabulary and possibilities.
On April 7th, 2017, he'll be releasing a 12-CD box set featuring remastered versions of all 11 of his groundbreaking solo albums, from 1982's I.O.U. through 2001's Flat Tire, plus his 2003 live album, Then.
This epic career retrospective is called The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever: The Allan Holdsworth Album Collection. While that title is entirely appropriate, I can guarantee you that it was not Allan's idea to call it that, as he's always been quite modest about his achievements as a soloist and composer.
The set will also include a comprehensive 40-page booklet. Even though it's well worth the investment, understandably a 12-disc set is bound to be on the pricey side. So on the same day, he'll also be releasing a 2-CD set featuring 28 tracks he has hand-picked as examples of his finest moments.
Though we're recording this interview in March and neither product has been officially released, I'm happy to say I am in possession of an advance copy of the 2-CD set, which is called Eidolon: The Allan Holdsworth Collection.
So we're going to be able to listen to samples from the new remastered collection. I'm going to start things off with one of my personal favorite Holdsworth compositions, featuring one of my all-time favorite Holdsworth solos. For long-time fans of Allan's, this will serve as a nice reminder of his epic skill, and for the uninitiated who will be experiencing his artistry for the first time... well, prepare to have your mind blown.
As originally featured on his 1985 Metal Fatigue album, featuring Jimmy Johnson on bass and Chad Wackerman on drums, here is the newly remastered version of Allan's composition: "Devil Take the Hindmost."
[Music plays: "Devil Take the Hindmost"]
DM: Joining me on the phone from San Diego, California, is Allan Holdsworth. Welcome!
AH: Thank you.
DM: Well, through the courtesy of your co-producer, Dan Perloff, I have an advance copy of the two-disc set you'll be releasing next month. I recently drove from LA to Phoenix, and I took the opportunity to listen to all 28 tracks uninterrupted.
AH: Oh, great!
DM: It was exciting! So the first thing I want to do is compliment you on the sequencing of the album. I appreciate how the tracks flow together. It isn't purely chronological in either direction, but musically it's very logical. I was wondering about that at first, but as I listened to the tracks, it all made complete sense.
DM: The second thing I want to compliment you on is how good it sounds. I did side-by-side comparisons with the earlier versions, and there's a noticeable improvement. What were your specific goals for remastering this material?
AH: Well, I relied on Dan Perloff for that because he had a mastering company and a mastering engineer that he really liked to work with. So they sent samples of all the tracks, and I thought he did a wonderful job, actually—considering that the source material, the further back you go, wasn't as good as the newer ones, obviously. But I think he did a wonderful job on it.
DM: Yeah, all the instruments sound very present, but to me, it's the drums that really stand out. They have a depth and a rumble to them that wasn't there before. I was putting the actual CDs into my Bose system in the car and going, "Oh my, this sounds really great!"
DM: An exclusive feature of the set is a previously unreleased version of the song "Road Games" with Jack Bruce on lead vocals instead of Paul Williams. What was the story behind that?
AH: Well, the story behind that actually goes back to a big battle I had with Ted Templeman, who was a fantastic producer, as you know. One of the problems was when I signed with Warner Brothers, they didn't really tell me upfront what they wanted me to do. I thought I would do what I had done before—which was to do exactly what I wanted.
AH: But they decided that they wanted to change it. Ted didn't like Paul Williams for some reason—and I loved Paul, actually; I thought he was fabulous. But Ted wanted me to use different people and kind of forced the issue. In the end, I just kind of gave up on it, which is why the original EP just says "Produced by Circumstance." We were supposed to have at least eight to ten tracks on there, and we only ended up doing six. Then I was unceremoniously dropped by the label.
AH: Which was fine, because in the contract it said that they had to pay for me to do another demo. So I went back to the studio of my choice and recorded Metal Fatigue. It was just bureaucracy, you know—I had to send the tape to Ted Templeman, which they just declined (I don't think he even listened to it). But the fact is that they ended up paying for the majority of Metal Fatigue, and I gave that to my friend Bill Hein, who was the boss at Enigma Records.
AH: But coming back to your question: Jack was on the original recording. Actually, it was Paul on everything originally, but then we replaced him with Jack because it was part of the deal, and I couldn't get out of that.
AH: Eventually, what happened was we recorded it with Jack, but Ted Templeman never came to the studio once—he listened to all of the mixes over the phone in the end. I figured he knew that we weren't going to agree, so he said, "Okay, well, you just go finish it yourself."
AH: So I took the tape back—I snuck the tape out of Warner Brothers and took it back to the Music Grinder studio—and did a mix with Paul on it, which is why Paul was the only one on the original release. But we already had the Jack Bruce version, and I love Jack, obviously. So I thought it would be interesting for people to hear Jack sing that song, and I decided to use that version as opposed to the original.
DM: I know from your perspective Road Games was very problematic, but it's always going to be a sentimental favorite for me simply because it was my personal entry point to your solo work. Of course, Jack Bruce and Paul both sang vocals on the album, so it was interesting to see that resurface now. I like both performances, but the one that's been in my head all these years is Paul's.
DM: I don't have the 12-disc set yet, but I reviewed the track listing. For more exclusive content, people can look for three bonus tracks on Disc 7: "Tokyo Dream" and "The Un-Merry-Go-Round (Parts 4 & 5)," which I believe have been released before, but only in Japan. On Disc 12, there's a bonus version of "Funnels," and on Disc 10, there's a track called "Material Unreal," which is a title I don't recognize. What's the story behind that track?
AH: Basically, it was just an instrumental version of a track—there were no vocals on it from what I remember. I originally added that as a bonus track on The Sixteen Men of Tain, on a limited edition release that Eddie Jobson put out when he was distributing that record for a short time. I just used that version for this collection.
DM: Well, as I said, I haven't heard the 12-disc set yet, so I was only able to read the track listing. But the real point of it is just to hear the remastered collection, and I'm looking forward to that.
DM: What I want to know more generally: as you were developing your signature style—which is often characterized as being fluid or legato—was it a case of hearing a sound in your head and trying to develop a technique to capture what you heard, or was it more of an instinctive process of doing what felt natural?
AH: It was both. Originally, I wanted to play a horn—I really wanted to play saxophone, or any wind instrument, really. I did play clarinet for a while, and messed around with the saxophone many years later.
AH: But basically, it was instinctual for me to try to get the guitar to sound a little bit more liquid. As you know, the guitar is a percussive instrument, and I tried to get it to sound like a non-percussive instrument. I was always striving to find a way to make it more fluid. I guess it was just an unconscious desire to play the saxophone!
DM: Another thing that's frequently commented on—beyond the actual notes you play—is your tone. With very few exceptions, jazz guitarists tend to favor clean tones, avoiding any hint of distortion at all costs. But you've taken the best aspects of distortion—controlled feedback and warm sustain—to create a very rich and pleasant sound. Did you ever experiment with clean tones in your early days, or have you always been drawn to a more rock-oriented guitar sound?
AH: It's actually a blend, really. I needed to use some sort of distortion to assist with the sustain, because I knew that in order to make it sound more horn-like, I needed the notes to hold longer than they would with a clean tone.
AH: However, for the chordal stuff, I always used a very clean sound—at least, I thought it was clean! So it was a mixture. It wasn't easy in a way, because I wanted to make it sound fluid without sounding like heavy distortion—not quite as aggressive as a regular rock sound.
DM: Obviously your chord voicings are very clean—you really wouldn't be able to hear the details if those were distorted. I was really speaking of your lead guitar tone; I guess I should have been more specific.
AH: No, that's right! But that's basically what I did: I tried to control the distortion to a point where it didn't sound that distorted, at least later on. I kept pushing myself to find a way to get that sustain without having a nasty sound.
DM: You're right, it occupies a middle ground. To me, it sounds like a singing voice—it just sings, and it never sounds unpleasant. I appreciate that; thank you so much for the compliment!
