Allan's influences: Difference between revisions

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This article gathers quotes on Allan's influences in the broadest sense: From his early listening, to anything he currently listened to and appreciated. The influences begin with some general quotes, and are then sorted alphabetically, but they are not terribly strict as to wether they list both names or last name only, this will have to be done later. As a result the article is very long, and many paragraphs are repeated. ([[Allan's influences (extra)|See here for a version with article references in the contents]].)
This article gathers quotes on Allan's influences in the broadest sense: From his early listening, to anything he currently listened to and appreciated. The influences begin with some general quotes, and are then sorted alphabetically, but they are not terribly strict as to wether they list both names or last name only, this will have to be done later. As a result the article is very long, and many paragraphs are repeated. NB! This list is not conclusive! There are for certain names that have been left out due to oversights and coding errors. Still, as an overall overview, it certainly gives a decent clue to Allan's musical world. Allan would rarely ever badmouth another musician publicly, and in some cases probably was trying to politely answer direct questions.
   
 
=ACKER BILCK=
The number of references is to some extent of course dependent upon the questions Allan was asked in the interviews. Nevertheless, the most frequently cited influence in the source material is John Coltrane, with 23 article references. Coltrane's importance as an influence can simply not be overstated, both in quantitative terms, but also substantially. Charlie Christian is a close second with 22 references, reflecting his especially his early importance. Next we have Michael Brecker, John McLaughlin and Django Reinhardt (13). McLaughlin is referenced due to many direct questions in guitar magazines, whereas Django is primarily an early influence. Michael Brecker is often mentioned as a current favorite. Other frequently mentioned jazz musicians are Cannonball Adderley (11) and Keith Jarrett (9). The most frequently mentioned classical composers are Debussy (9), Ravel (6) and Bartok (5). ([[Allan's influences (extra)|See here for a version with article references in the contents]].)
 
 
'''[[Whisky Galore (Guitarist 2000)]]'''
A few specific albums have been mentioned. The perhaps two most notable are "Coltrane's Sound" and "Cityscapes". "Coltrane's Sound" is an interesting choice of Allan's. Allan was dissatisfied with many of his recordings, to the point of excluding them from his own discography. He also disliked releasing outtakes, as he mentioned that for him, outtakes were something that was not deemed worthy of release in the first place. In that light, it is somewhat ironic that his favorite album was in fact made up of recordings done by Atlantic in 1960, and not released until 1964, without Coltrane's approval, when Coltrane has transferred to Impulse.
 
   
You don't fit in with traditional jazzers and yet the music is so harmonically complex that only sophisticated listeners will get it...
=INFLUENCES (GENERAL)=
 
 
"When people mention the word ‘jazz' I think of it as music that's harmonic, melodic, rhythmic and a vehicle for improvisation. And that's it: it's not a particular form of music. When you mention jazz to some people they'll think of Acker Bilk and others will say Charlie Parker. Jazz is a very good word, but people have shrunk it by using it in the wrong way. It's like fusion. What I have come to know of fusion is a music that I detest, but there's nothing wrong with the word; it's a perfectly good word."  
'''[[25 Who Shook The World (Compiled quotes, Guitar Player 1992)]]'''
=ARTIE SHAW=
 
 
While Holdsworth keeps pressing forward, he feels there are compelling reasons to investigate the work of previous players: "There are some really deep, really incredible things you can get from the past. A saxophonist coming up now might not have heard anything earlier than Michael Brecker, who's absolutely incredible. But when you go back and hear some of the older guys, you realize that the newer players who tried to sound like them never did sound like them at all. There's something missing. When I go back and listen to Charlie Parker, he sounds unbelievable; it's so fresh. Cannonball Adderley and Coltrane, man, those guys were happening! Go back and have a listen to some of the early Miles Davis albums they played on, otherwise you're going to miss something."
'''[["...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)]]'''
 
 
'''[[Allan Holdsworth (Beat Instrumental 1979)]]'''
Cymbiosis: I understand if your family could have afforded it you would have had a saxophone instead of a guitar when you were younger?
 
 
"I really would have loved to have played the saxophone when I began. I actually didn't start guitar till I was about 17 which I suppose is pretty late really. Before that I'd always wanted to play but never really wanted to enough to make a nuisance about getting myself an instrument."
Holdsworth: Yeah, that's what I really wanted—to play saxophone.
 
 
"I liked quite a lot of classical music but was really more interested in people who could improvise. That was something that fascinated me. Luckily my father was a Jazz pianist and had quite a lot of records which gave me something to go on. When my Uncle gave me a Spanish guitar I dug those records out and listened to them."
Cymbiosis: Why was that?
 
 
'''[[Allan Holdsworth (English Tour Program 1989)]]'''
Holdsworth: Well, I just loved the saxophone. It was the sound. I think people are first attracted to music and then to specific sounds within it. I also liked violin later. But at the time I liked saxophone more, because it was on most of the records that my dad had. He was a jazz player and had a lot of jazz records.
 
 
Influences..?" Very few of the people who've influenced me have been guitar players. One thing they have all been though is great musicians. I think you should be influenced by the people or the things that make you feel the most, and try to find a way of expressing yourself without particularly wanting to sound like someone else. Listen to it, absorb it but don't over-analyse things."
Cymbiosis: So you had things like John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw?
 
 
'''[[Allan Holdsworth (Guitar magazine 1974)]]'''
Holdsworth: Yeah, Dad played in the Air Force band during the war, and they played a lot of swing.
 
 
Do you remember, in those early days, listening to any particular guitarists and being influenced by them?
'''[[Player Of The Month (Beat Instrumental 1978)]]'''
 
 
I listened to anyone who was better than me . . . and that meant I listened to just about all the pop guitar players. The first spark of jazz guitar I heard was Charlie Christian, because he happened to be on some of the records my dad had. It was then that I realised that this guy was playing guitar - when I heard it before as a kid I didn't realise what was going on. And then I started buying jazz guitar records. The strange thing is - well, I don't know if it's strange or not - I found that when I listened to these records with jazz guitarists on them, I used to finish up liking the solos that the other people played more, like the horn players. Just the way the horn sound flowed, as opposed to the guitarist's approach. I'm glad I did that, I listened and tried to learn something from every instrument. I think too many guitarists just listen to guitar playing and seem to ignore the rest of music. I listen to anything that's good: it's the notes you're listening to, not what they're played on.
The musical soil which was eventually to allow Allan's musical talent to sprout was therefore ripe and ready to be drawn on when the time came. "I listened to all the records my dad had, and he had a lot of classical records, he had those old Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw records, and that's when I first heard guitar - it was Charlie Christian on those records. But it wasn't till after I'd been playing the guitar a little bit that I realized what I'd been hearing all those years was this amazing player. It had gone right by me."
 
 
'''[[Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)]]'''
=BARNEY KESSEL=
 
 
What guitar players did you listen to when you were first learning how to play?
'''[[Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)]]'''
 
 
From that time period, it was mostly the records that my dad had. So originally it was Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian. And then it was Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, and Jimmy Raney. All those really great guys. However, I wasn't really focused on listening to the guitar. I listened to a lot of music. My dad had a lot of classical music, which was very inspiring to me. There was Debussy, Ravel, Béla Bartók, Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland. I was influenced by a lot of other things besides jazz.
What guitar players did you listen to when you were first learning how to play?
 
 
You've mentioned your jazz and classical influences. What about your rock influences? When did you get the idea to incorporate rock influences into your music?
From that time period, it was mostly the records that my dad had. So originally it was Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian. And then it was Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, and Jimmy Raney. All those really great guys. However, I wasn't really focused on listening to the guitar. I listened to a lot of music. My dad had a lot of classical music, which was very inspiring to me. There was Debussy, Ravel, Béla Bartók, Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland. I was influenced by a lot of other things besides jazz.
 
 
That came just by the fact that I couldn't play anything else. When you first start out, you don't just wake up one day playing like Joe Pass. I started out with what I could actually play. I started with pop music, and then I started playing in local blues bands because it was easier. And then I got interested in more different kinds of music as I progressed.
'''[[Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)]]'''
 
 
Since I didn't really like the guitar because of its “percussive” sound, I got very excited when people like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton started using heavier distortion. I saw that I could get more sustain out of the guitar now.
TCG: Were there any guitarists later on that you listened to?
 
 
'''[[Allan Holdsworth: An interview (Atavachron 1994)]]'''
 
CH: Allan: How big of an influence, if any, was John Coltrane on your musical style?
 
AH: Well, he was a huge influence on my life. I mean, as far as "on my style," I don't really know, because I couldn't even say that, you know, I couldn't even begin to think about anything remotely like that. He was just a... he was a huge influence on me.
 
'''[[Allan Holdsworth Jam (Jazziz 1994)]]'''
 
Holdsworth sees his music as deriving from a combination of jazz, rock, and classical influences. He cites the harmonic influence of Debussy, Ravel, and Copland, as well as John Coltrane, Charlie Christian, and other role models. But, while his place in the fusion guitar pantheon is secure, he cringes at being associated with the f-word. There is something patently different about Holdsworth's bittersweet music, as compared to the typically upbeat, chops shop fusion.
 
'''[[Allan Holdsworth interview (Abstract Logix 2004)]]'''
 
Fan: You have pioneered a voice in music and influenced your peers and your fans. Who are some of your favorite guitar pioneers?
 
AH: Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Jimmy Raney, Wes Montgomery in fact most of the great guitar players; I loved them all. The newer guys: John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale... They?re all amazing with very different musical personalities. Of course there's Michael Brecker and Keith Jarrett, but they don't play the guitar (thank God!). I think I've been influenced by all instruments. I was influenced a lot by horn players, from Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane on to Michael Brecker. There's many, many more that you could fill this whole page with people that have brought great gifts to the world of music.
 
'''[[Any Key In The U.K. (Unknown publication 1978)]]'''
 
Can you pinpoint any one particular influence that helped you evolve your style?
 
Well,' I think I was influenced in that I think I wanted to play a different instrument to the guitar! It started very early when I was listening to jazz records. The guitarist would be playing well but I was often more impressed musically with the sax solo. That's what inspired me really. I wanted to get a more horn-like thing out of the guitar. It's very natural. I didn't consciously go out to do that. I knew I loved that but I didn't know that I was approaching it differently until a few years later. I just like that sort of liquid thing as opposed to guitars with a machine-gun feel. I really like it to be like . . . water. It's more like patterns as well. I know people mock guitarists who play fast things but I don't think of it in terms of a stream of notes. It's like a pattern, you create a pattern or a colour that you see as one. It's like a colour that appears before your face.
 
'''[[Guitarist's Guitarist (Jazz Times 1989)]]'''
 
The other significant influence on Holdsworth's playing has been - predictably, perhaps - saxophonist John Coltrane. "When I first started," he explained, "I tried to play pop music - or what was popular at the time, just because it was the only thing that I could manage to play. But I always used to listen to other kinds of music. Then a few years later I started listening to John Coltrane and it was wonderful (in fact, I introduced my father to his music, because he'd never heard it). Shortly after that, Coltrane died. And it was just after I'd fallen in love with his music. I was devastated; I remember locking myself in the toilet for a long time to think about it because I was so moved by what he did."
 
'''[[Mike Pachelli Show (video transcript 1991)]]'''
 
MP: What was your early musical influences?
 
AH: Well, all of the people really that my Dad use to listen to which is jazz from the period, which would go back as far as Django, Charlie Christian with Benny Goodman, and right way up through Miles…
 
MP: I understand at a real early age you had a major affinity with a record player, like at 2 or 3 you were just uh…
 
AH: Well I was absolutely enthralled with music, music was everything, I mean I had no desire whatsoever to play an instrument – I wasn't really interested in an instrument, I was just interested in music.
 
'''[[Player Of The Month (Beat Instrumental 1978)]]'''
 
The musical soil which was eventually to allow Allan's musical talent to sprout was therefore ripe and ready to be drawn on when the time came. "I listened to all the records my dad had, and he had a lot of classical records, he had those old Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw records, and that's when I first heard guitar - it was Charlie Christian on those records. But it wasn't till after I'd been playing the guitar a little bit that I realized what I'd been hearing all those years was this amazing player. It had gone right by me."
 
'''[[The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever (Guitar Player 2008)]]'''
 
At what point did you decide to dedicate your life to music, and have things turned out at all like you'd imagined they might?
 
No, things have turned out nothing like I'd imagined. And I often think about that whenever we go to music schools, because I'm sure almost everyone who goes to a music school is there because they've already decided that that's what they want to do. But for me it was the absolute opposite. My father was a wonderful piano player who had a great record collection, including all the classic jazz records, and I just loved listening to music. I had no interest in learning an instrument until I was about 15, when I started thinking that maybe I'd like to get a clarinet or a saxophone. But in those days they were pretty expensive, so instead my dad gave me a guitar he had bought from my uncle. Then he bought me a couple of chord books and as soon as he saw that I was making a little progress, he started trying to help me, and that's when I developed an interest. And he had records by all these great guitar players lying around, like Jimmy Rainey, Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, and Charlie Christian, who became my first major influence.
 
'''[[The Open End (Boston Sound Report 1988)]]'''
 
BSR: Who are some of your early and current influences?
 
AH: Some of my early influences were Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, I suppose, Jimmy Rainey and Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, and all those guys. They were the records that my father had. He was a jazz piano player, and he always had these records lying around. This was before I started playing. So I heard them all when I was growing up.
 
'''[[Whisky Galore (Guitarist 2000)]]'''
 
Allan, the average listener would be very bemused by your music. Not too many singalong choruses there...
 
"Not really, no. I don't know where it comes from really; it's like a little portal to the other side. I suppose it was initially classical music, which was what my father played around the house; he had loads of records so there's obviously a lot of classical in there. But he was also a jazz musician and had a lot of jazz in his collection too, so that was another obvious source of information."
 
=ACKER BILCK=
 
'''[[Whisky Galore (Guitarist 2000)]]'''
 
You don't fit in with traditional jazzers and yet the music is so harmonically complex that only sophisticated listeners will get it...
 
"When people mention the word ‘jazz' I think of it as music that's harmonic, melodic, rhythmic and a vehicle for improvisation. And that's it: it's not a particular form of music. When you mention jazz to some people they'll think of Acker Bilk and others will say Charlie Parker. Jazz is a very good word, but people have shrunk it by using it in the wrong way. It's like fusion. What I have come to know of fusion is a music that I detest, but there's nothing wrong with the word; it's a perfectly good word."
 
=ARTIE SHAW=
 
'''[["...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)]]'''
 
Cymbiosis: I understand if your family could have afforded it you would have had a saxophone instead of a guitar when you were younger?
 
Holdsworth: Yeah, that's what I really wanted—to play saxophone.
 
Cymbiosis: Why was that?
 
Holdsworth: Well, I just loved the saxophone. It was the sound. I think people are first attracted to music and then to specific sounds within it. I also liked violin later. But at the time I liked saxophone more, because it was on most of the records that my dad had. He was a jazz player and had a lot of jazz records.
 
Cymbiosis: So you had things like John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw?
 
Holdsworth: Yeah, Dad played in the Air Force band during the war, and they played a lot of swing.
 
'''[[Player Of The Month (Beat Instrumental 1978)]]'''
 
The musical soil which was eventually to allow Allan's musical talent to sprout was therefore ripe and ready to be drawn on when the time came. "I listened to all the records my dad had, and he had a lot of classical records, he had those old Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw records, and that's when I first heard guitar - it was Charlie Christian on those records. But it wasn't till after I'd been playing the guitar a little bit that I realized what I'd been hearing all those years was this amazing player. It had gone right by me."
 
=BARNEY KESSEL=
 
'''[[Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)]]'''
 
What guitar players did you listen to when you were first learning how to play?
 
From that time period, it was mostly the records that my dad had. So originally it was Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian. And then it was Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, and Jimmy Raney. All those really great guys. However, I wasn't really focused on listening to the guitar. I listened to a lot of music. My dad had a lot of classical music, which was very inspiring to me. There was Debussy, Ravel, Béla Bartók, Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland. I was influenced by a lot of other things besides jazz.
 
'''[[Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)]]'''
 
TCG: Were there any guitarists later on that you listened to?
 
AH: I was extremely fond of Jimmy Raney. Of course there was Joe Pass, Tal Farlow and Barney Kessel. My dad bought lots of records to expose me to all this great music. Joe Pass' album Catch Me was mind boggling. But there was something about Jimmy Raney's sound that I loved. My favorite was a recording called Jimmy Raney In Three Attitudes which I lost during my move from England. I'm still trying to find the recording. He played a tune called "So In Love" and his solo is absolutely amazing.
AH: I was extremely fond of Jimmy Raney. Of course there was Joe Pass, Tal Farlow and Barney Kessel. My dad bought lots of records to expose me to all this great music. Joe Pass' album Catch Me was mind boggling. But there was something about Jimmy Raney's sound that I loved. My favorite was a recording called Jimmy Raney In Three Attitudes which I lost during my move from England. I'm still trying to find the recording. He played a tune called "So In Love" and his solo is absolutely amazing.


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Merlin Rhys Jones started by asking Allan about the influence of John Coltrane on his playing...
Merlin Rhys Jones started by asking Allan about the influence of John Coltrane on his playing...


Allan Holdsworth: ... that's when I started going out and buying tons of Coltrane records, everything I could find. My Dad had a lot of records and I started out copying Charlie Christian solos. By the time I discovered Coltrane I had learned to just absorb the (musical) experience. I never analysed or transcribed anything (Coltrane) did because it was very spirited, with a lot of heart but it was also heady. Coltarne Sounds was my favourite record.
Allan Holdsworth: ... that's when I started going out and buying tons of Coltrane records, everything I could find. My Dad had a lot of records and I started out copying Charlie Christian solos. By the time I discovered Coltrane I had learned to just absorb the (musical) experience. I never analysed or transcribed anything (Coltrane) did because it was very spirited, with a lot of heart but it was also heady. Coltrane's Sounds was my favourite record.


'''[[Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)]]'''
'''[[Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)]]'''
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But, as every Beat reader knows, pedals, strings and picks don't make you a good player; And in Allan's case they still don't explain that astonishing technique with the tremolo. How does he do it?
But, as every Beat reader knows, pedals, strings and picks don't make you a good player; And in Allan's case they still don't explain that astonishing technique with the tremolo. How does he do it?


"Practice," came the frustrating reply. "I love the effects you can get with it. The first person I heard who used it in an interesting way was Jimi Hendrix. Well, it seemed interesting at the time, but afterwards you realized that it was similar to the way most people used it. Then, when I was with Tempest, I heard Ollie Halsall use it, but in a more controlled way than Jimi Hendrix. So I started experimenting myself, and after a while I realized that I was doing things that I hadn't heard anybody do. Using a tremolo arm makes it very expressive - it takes it somewhere else from having just frets, where all the notes are laid out for you like a keyboard.  
"Practice," came the frustrating reply. "I love the effects you can get with it. The first person I heard who used it in an interesting way was Jimi Hendrix. Well, it seemed interesting at the time, but afterwards you realized that it was similar to the way most people used it. Then, when I was with Tempest, I heard Ollie Halsall use it, but in a more controlled way than Jimi Hendrix. So I started experimenting myself, and after a while I realized that I was doing things that I hadn't heard anybody do. Using a tremolo arm makes it very expressive - it takes it somewhere else from having just frets, where all the notes are laid out for you like a keyboard.
 
'''[[James Marshall Hendrix: Undisputed Master of the Electric Guitar (Guitar World 1985)]]'''
 
I CAN'T REALLY remember what year it was when I first heard Jimi Hendrix play, but it was around the same time as I first heard Cream, so that would be around '67 or so. I guess. What I first heard was his single, 'Hey Joe', which I thought was great.
 
Actually, at the time I was more of an Eric Clapton fan, so I did go to see Cream a few times, but I never saw Hendrix live at all. I really liked Clapton's style a lot; it didn't really strike me until later on how important Hendrix was for the guitar. Obviously he was a real innovator, and he opened up all kinds of possibilities to guitarists — his use of the tremolo arm, for instance, and his control of feedback. But at the time, as I say, I wasn't really a Jimi Hendrix fan — I liked his stuff, but we weren't really on the same wavelength as far as musical direction. It's only looking back that I can see what he was doing. It's kind of like how I felt about the Beatles when they came out. I had the same reaction: I didn't really like them until after. Hendrix, just didn't move me that much at the time, and he didn't inspire me to do anything different from what I was already doing.
 
I've gone back and listened to the records since then, obviously. The ones I like best are the ones he did in the studio, like 'The Burning Of The Midnight Lamp', for example. I really like the opening riff for that one [hums it], and the bit with the harpsichord.
 
All I can say is. it's my own misfortune that I didn't understand or see more of what Hendrix was doing at the time he was actually doing it. Even though we just didn't connect stylistically, I think he was great, and he was definitely an important guitar player.
 
=JIMMY RAINEY=
=JIMMY RAINEY=


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"He just kind of completely turned my life upside down," Holdsworth says of Coltrane's influence on him at the age of 18. "I remember when I first heard those Miles Davis records that had Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane on them. It was fascinating to me. Coltrane's playing in particular was a major revelation. I loved Cannonball also, but when I listened to him I could hear where it came from, I could hear the path that he had taken. But when I heard Coltrane, I couldn't hear connections with anything else. It was almost like he had found a way to get to the truth somehow, to bypass all of the things that as an improviser you have to deal with. He seemed to be actually improvising and playing over the same material but in a very different way. That was the thing that really changed my life, just realizing that that was possible. I realized then that what I needed to do was to try and find a way to improvise over chord sequences without playing any bebop or without having it sound like it came from so mewhere else. And it's been an ongoing, everlasting quest.
"He just kind of completely turned my life upside down," Holdsworth says of Coltrane's influence on him at the age of 18. "I remember when I first heard those Miles Davis records that had Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane on them. It was fascinating to me. Coltrane's playing in particular was a major revelation. I loved Cannonball also, but when I listened to him I could hear where it came from, I could hear the path that he had taken. But when I heard Coltrane, I couldn't hear connections with anything else. It was almost like he had found a way to get to the truth somehow, to bypass all of the things that as an improviser you have to deal with. He seemed to be actually improvising and playing over the same material but in a very different way. That was the thing that really changed my life, just realizing that that was possible. I realized then that what I needed to do was to try and find a way to improvise over chord sequences without playing any bebop or without having it sound like it came from so mewhere else. And it's been an ongoing, everlasting quest.
'''[[Allan Holdsworth (NPS Radio transcript)]]'''
PH: But somewhere along the line it set the seal of which you wanted to sort of pursue experimentation with like using rock rhythms and jazz basically, didn’t ya?
AH: Yeah, well because of my father, who was a jazz musician, and I grew up in a house full of classical music and jazz records… I obviously had a great love for it, you know, I started out with a classical music… I remember even before I could read I remember listening to like Debussy or something or a couple of my father’s favorite composers and actually crying, and I couldn’t figure it out – ‘this is really strange – what is this strange thing that’s happening to me’, and I didn’t understand it, and then a few years afterwards I realized how powerful music is… And then the next big major thing was John Coltrane because my father had those records that had Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane in the same band. The thing about that was, I loved Cannonball Adderley, but I could hear where it came from, you know, I could hear the connection between him and what was before - but when I heard John Coltrane, I couldn’t – he was like, somehow he’d been able to take this elec – this cable of life or cable of music and plug it directly into the source, and it wasn’t going through any pathway that had already been recreated - it like was a new circuit, like a new thing and it just… I was just really moved by it and I used to go out every Saturday morning and buy all the John Coltrane records I could find. And I’d already learned earlier that it was a very bad idea to try and copy someone, because all you did was get good at sounding like someone else, and also make you feel like you were kind of leeching off of somebody, so I didn’t want to do that. What I wanted to do was listen to the spirit of it, and the heart and the soul of the music – and the head, you know, because he was a brilliant musician – if you listen to some of those things like, I think, my favorite album, Coltrane’s Sound, and there’s a tune on there called Satellite, and I listened to that just a couple of days ago and it’s unbelievable, man it’s absolutely astounding – it’s amazing! And it never happened before – isn’t that great?
(Coltrane excerpt)
PH: The approach and the feeling – you wanted to pursue that sound, right? By hearing something which is so vital and fresh, that you wanted to kind of pursue that kind of approach?
AH: Well, what I learned from him was that it’s a really bad idea to try and do something that somebody else is already doing. What I wanted to do was, I wanted to find out what the essence of it was. In other words, if a certain kind of music has been elevated to a certain level because of the quality of it, then he made me realize that you can get to that level and beyond it without necessarily travelling the path that somebody else made to get to that level, and he made me realize that quality level, that line, can be pushed up and pushed up and pushed up and pushed up …without going through pathways that had already been gone through, and it was like a revelation and I tried constantly – well I’ve been trying ever since, just to uh… Also knowing that you can never know anything about music is a beautiful thing - like when you fall in love, and you’ve got that thing that you don’t understand before you find out who the person is – music’s like that to me, you can’t ever find out what it is, but you just want to know more and more and more – and you try to get more and more and you try and also put out more and more because you’re trying to get to it – it’s a really great thing, man, it’s like life, it’s like everything gets better except looking in the mirror, haha!


'''[[The Allan Holdsworth Interview! (Jazz Houston 2006)]]'''
'''[[The Allan Holdsworth Interview! (Jazz Houston 2006)]]'''
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HOLDSWORTH: Well, in a funny way all the people I like are all the people who are doing something different with it. From the beginning, I've enjoyed players like Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass, and more recently, Pat Metheny who did a whole thing on his own. Scott Henderson is doing something unique, and now; Frank Gambale comes along and does something great. It just shows you that you shouldn't be so resolute about things like music. People waste time spending hours trying to clone something when they could be spending hours practicing something really different.
HOLDSWORTH: Well, in a funny way all the people I like are all the people who are doing something different with it. From the beginning, I've enjoyed players like Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass, and more recently, Pat Metheny who did a whole thing on his own. Scott Henderson is doing something unique, and now; Frank Gambale comes along and does something great. It just shows you that you shouldn't be so resolute about things like music. People waste time spending hours trying to clone something when they could be spending hours practicing something really different.
[[Category:Influences]]
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