Allan's influences: Difference between revisions
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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]].) | 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]].) | ||
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. | |||
=INFLUENCES (GENERAL)= | =INFLUENCES (GENERAL)= | ||
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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. | 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]] | |||
