Sam Holdsworth: Difference between revisions

==[[Any Key In The U.K. (Unknown publication 1978)]]==

The sounds of Django Reinhardt, Jimmy Rainey, Charlie Christian, Joe Pass, Eric Clapton, and John Coltrane were among the primary inspirations identified by Holdsworth which steered him away from an early passion for bicycle racing and instead towards learning to play a musical instrument. Having never picked up a guitar until his late teens, he found his musical hobby paying off on England’s Mecca dance hall circuit. Born in Bradford, Yorkshire (U.K.), in 1946, Holdsworth had been tutored in many aspects of musical theory and jazz appreciation by his '''father''', Sam, an accomplished amateur musician. Allan later went on to analyze scales on his own, based on mathematical permutations of intervals-the results of which can still be heard in Allan’s playing today.

CH: Okay, what, if anything, do you see as a prerequisite for making your name as recognizable as other famous jazz artists’? Like Wynton Marsalis; do you see that there’s a... is that a concern to you?

- The books he wrote were actually better than anything I could have bought in the music store. He could not play the guitar himself, but he had all the necessary theory. In this manner, he did not limit me by saying the chords should be played this or that way for example. One can say that the foundation of my style was laid there - I started without a lot of notions of what one could or could not do. He also pointed out that I should not use open strings, which I greatly benefited from when transposing what I had learned to other keys. It also meant that from the very beginning, I was using four fingers of the left hand. Many only used three and for me that was a mystery - the guitar is difficult enough to master with all fingers available. I wish I had more, he says, laughing.

Guitar.com: Your legato sax-type attack has always come through in your playing going back to Soft Machine. If you listen closely, it’s very much a Coltrane thing.

Holdsworth: Yeah, I was just dabbling with it. I was still really interested in the horn. I had wanted a saxophone, I didn’t really want the guitar. But saxophones were pretty expensive in those days anyway, relative to a cheap acoustic guitar. There weren’t so many guitars around then, not compared to nowadays. But my uncle played guitar and when he had bought himself a new guitar, he sold his old one to my '''father''', who then gave it to me. And that’s basically how it started.

==[[Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)]]==

AH: When I was about 15 or 16, I thought it might be interesting to try the horn, because I found myself listening to a lot of saxophone players. I was really drawn to the idea that you could shape the notes after they were sounded, as opposed to the guitar which was basically a percussive instrument. Saxophones were pretty expensive and we couldn’t afford one, so I ended up with a guitar that I got from my uncle. I wasn’t really that interested in this instrument. I wasn’t particularly drawn to it. I soon took an interest in some local Skiffle music which sort of lit the torch. My '''father''' realized this and started helping me with my musical education. Interestingly, even though he was a pianist, he realized that playing scales and such with open strings on the guitar was counterproductive to playing in different keys. So I learned and still use lots of fingers to accomplish my musical ideas.

His '''father''', Sam, was a piano player who taught his son chords and scales. "But since he wasn’t a guitar player, he couldn’t tell me how it was supposed to be done on the guitar," says Allan. "And I guess that’s how I developed such an unorthodox technique. I learned things from the piano and figured out on my own how to transpose those ideas onto the guitar. And I just acquired this dexterity through constant repetition and practice. I didn’t know it wasn’t supposed to be done that way, it just seemed perfectly logical to me.

==[[Allan Holdsworth in exclusive LMS interview (tlms.co.uk 2000)]]==

Particularly these days, when people think of Kenny G. as jazz. Smooth jazz. Those guys need to grow a beard, man. There’s a five-o-clock shadow on that stuff.

R.V.B. - I glad you made out ok. Thank you for taking this time to speak with me. The guitar... you brought it to a new level. Was there any incident in your youth that made you want to become a guitar player?

A.H. - Apparently not. (Hahaha)

You wanted to take up a horn rather than guitar when you were younger. You really didn’t think of yourself as a guitar player. Do you still feel that way and why?

But eventually I fell in love with the guitar for other reasons. I played the violin for a couple years too but I missed playing chords. So I went back to the guitar and used distortion to sustain notes and make it do things it wouldn’t normally do. So, here I am playing the guitar… or trying to!

Your early influences were the ambitious end of classical music: Stravinsky, Bartok, and the like. When you were young, did pop music filter its way into your musical sensibility?

My '''dad''' was a piano player, a really good pianist. He had lots of records around; they were mostly jazz records. But you don’t wake up one day and sound like Django Reinhardt, so I decided to learn to play some of the pop music that I could play. And once I could, my interest in that music faded away. So pop music was just a starting point, although I still listen to all kinds of music.