Tony Williams: Difference between revisions
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Tony Williams was an American drummer. He recorded the "Wildlife" session in Sweden with Allan, Jack Bruce, Webster Lewis and Laura Logan, and the "Believe It" and "Million Dollar Legs" albums with [[The New Tony Williams Lifetime]]. Tony also appeared as a guest on the "Atavachron" album. The song "The Drums Were Yellow" is dedicated to him, as is "Blues For Tony" on the album of the same name by Holdsworth, Pasqua, Haslip and Wackerman. | Tony Williams was an American drummer. He recorded the "Wildlife" session in Sweden with Allan, Jack Bruce, Webster Lewis and Laura Logan, and the "Believe It" and "Million Dollar Legs" albums with [[The New Tony Williams Lifetime]]. Tony also appeared as a guest on the "Atavachron" album. The song "The Drums Were Yellow" is dedicated to him, as is "Blues For Tony" on the album of the same name by Holdsworth, Pasqua, Haslip and Wackerman. | ||
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Along with Williams, bassist Tony Newton and keyboardist Alan Pasqua, he recorded two albums - Believe It and Million Dollar Legs - and toured in 1975 and ‘76. After bad management drove him away from that ensemble (at one point during a tour he ended up stranded in San Francisco with neither money nor a place to stay and had to pawn his guitar to get back to England), Allan recorded his first solo album, Velvet Darkness. | Along with Williams, bassist Tony Newton and keyboardist Alan Pasqua, he recorded two albums - Believe It and Million Dollar Legs - and toured in 1975 and ‘76. After bad management drove him away from that ensemble (at one point during a tour he ended up stranded in San Francisco with neither money nor a place to stay and had to pawn his guitar to get back to England), Allan recorded his first solo album, Velvet Darkness. | ||
After you left Soft Machine in 1975, what did you do? | |||
While I was still with them, I had met [bassist] Alphonso Johnson. He was working with [flugelhorn player] Chuck Mangione at Ronnie's club in London. Chuck was sick one night, and a piano-playing friend of mine sat in; he suggested that they let me join them. So I went down and played a set. That's when I met Alphonso. He told [drummer] Tony Williams about me, a while later I got a phone call from Tony, who was in the States. I really lucked out. | |||
Did you leave for the U.S. right away to join him? | |||
No. I recorded with Tony, [bassist] Jack Bruce, and [keyboardist] Webster Lewis in Sweden, but the material was never released. I returned to England, and later got a call from Tony, who said that he'd gotten a deal with CBS Records and that I should come over quick. | |||
Did Tony Williams already have a band together? | |||
No. We found a bass player, Tony Newton, and a keyboard player, Alan Pasqua. We did two albums— Believe It and Million Dollar Legs—and toured in 1975 and 76. But because I was always zipping back and forth to straighten out problems at home, and because the management turned out badly, everything fell apart. We ended up stranded in San Francisco; Tony flew back east to work things out with the manager, and we were stuck without money or a place to stay. So I pawned my guitar and went back to England. I really enjoyed the band, though | |||
==[[Allan Holdsworth (International Musician 1981)]]== | ==[[Allan Holdsworth (International Musician 1981)]]== | ||
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GW: When Jimmy Johnson remarked that he was listening to Believe It on the way down to yesterday’s session, you winced. That album is really something of a landmark, and your playing is a great part of what distinguishes it. | GW: When Jimmy Johnson remarked that he was listening to Believe It on the way down to yesterday’s session, you winced. That album is really something of a landmark, and your playing is a great part of what distinguishes it. | ||
HOLDSWORTH:: Well, it was a great period for me in terms of being introduced to some really unbelievable musicians; that’s when I met '''Tony Williams''' | HOLDSWORTH:: Well, it was a great period for me in terms of being introduced to some really unbelievable musicians; that’s when I met '''Tony Williams''' and Alan Pasqua and Tony Newton, and hanging out and just being given a chance to play with them was really amazing. Alan is a truly astounding musician and I’ve always loved the way he plays. It’s also only in the last five years that I realized what kind of a genius the guy is. Same with Gary Husband. But getting back to that particular period, I hated what I did on that record. I can’t listen to it, but I thought everybody else sounded great. But I did the best I could at the time, so, that’s all you can do, unfortunately I wish I could go back and do ‘em all again [laughs]. | ||
==[[Mike Pachelli Show (video transcript 1991)]]== | ==[[Mike Pachelli Show (video transcript 1991)]]== | ||
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"So I did. I played with them and was intrigued with the line-up... I thought it was a fascinating group. So we did that first album. And then I got another call from '''Tony Williams''' to go back again, and it was a really tough one, and this time I decided not to go. And then I guess I went from Gong to UK, because I met Bill during that period." | "So I did. I played with them and was intrigued with the line-up... I thought it was a fascinating group. So we did that first album. And then I got another call from '''Tony Williams''' to go back again, and it was a really tough one, and this time I decided not to go. And then I guess I went from Gong to UK, because I met Bill during that period." | ||
==[[A Different View (Modern Drummer 1996)]]== | |||
RF: You became very well known during the time period when you played with Tony Williams' Lifetime and then with Bill Bruford-first in U.K. and then in Bill's own band. They are such different drummers. What are your thoughts on that? | |||
AH: In the live situation I did with Tony, it was really great. It was about exactly what was going on, like it is with most of the people I've played with since. They've all had that thing where things change, things are moving, it's organic, it's alive. With U.K., on the other hand, I could have stood on my head or set the building on fire and it wouldn't have changed anything that anybody played. It used to drive me crazy. I enjoyed playing with Bill's band afterwards-especially on his second album, One Of A Kind. It was done more as a band than the first one, Feels Good To Me, which was more overdubbed. Bill played with a very compositional approach to the music, which is understandable since he wrote the music. I don't know how he did what he did sometimes going in there and playing on his own with nothing else going on. It's pretty amazing. Obviously, you have to have a vision. He knew exactly what he wanted to hear, and that was the really cool part about it. But I began to feel that I needed to do my own thing. | |||
==[[Allan Holdsworth (NPS Radio transcript)]]== | |||
PH: And obviously from one great drummer to another, '''Tony''' '''Williiams''' – such an inspirational drummer through the years. How did you meet up with '''Tony'''? | |||
AH: I met '''Tony''' by a bizarre accident. I used to play in London when I first moved there. I met a piano player called Pat Smythe who was a very, beautiful guy and a great piano player, and he used to take me on gigs with him. Sometimes he was playing at Ronnie Scott’s - he’d get me to sit in and do that, and one time he was opening up for Chuck Mangione at Ronnie Scott’s, and Alphonso Johnson was in the band, and one day Chuck Mangione was sick, and Pat Smythe sat in with that band, which is Joan La Barbara and Pat La Barbara on drums and Alphonso Johnson on bass. So I played one night, just one set with those guys, and apparently some months later '''Tony''' '''Williiams''' ran into Alphonso Johnson and told him he was thinking of putting a band together and he was looking for a guitar player. So - very nice of him - Alphonso Johnson said to him I heard this guy in England and you might want to check this guy out, so that’s basically how I met '''Tony'''. '''Tony''' called me to do a project that never was released. It was a project that we, he did with Tequila, the singer, and Jack Bruce on bass, myself on guitar and… I’m gonna kill myself, but I can’t remember the organist’s name – it wasn’t Larry Young, oh man, I gotta remember…I can’t remember his name, forgive me, forgive me. But anyways, we made the album, but it never came out – I don’t know why, but – maybe it’s a good thing, ha ha - but he went back to the States, and some months later I was still playing with the Soft Machine, and he called me up and said ‘I’m gonna put this band together, would you like to be in the band’, and so I said ‘yeah, sure! No kidding!’. | |||
PH: That was the Lifetime band. | |||
AH: Yeah, the New Lifetime, so then he sent me a ticket and I went to New York… | |||
(Lifetime excerpt) | |||
PH: Well you had '''Tony''' '''Williiams'''’ Lifetime with Larry Young and Jack Bruce... | |||
AH: And John McLaughlin… | |||
PH: Emergency, right? | |||
AH: Yeah… | |||
PH: We’re talkin’ like the early 70s... | |||
AH: Yeah, maybe ‘73, ‘74, might’ve been later… | |||
PH: What were some of the inspiration for you for '''Tony''' '''Williiams''' - what was his main attributes for you, which you found so appealing? | |||
AH: He had that same thing of like, this like - you don’t know where it’s coming from, and he would do all these things on the drums that I’d never heard before… He was amazing, man! And the other thing is, that is funny is, well, is that I got to know him quite well, because when I first moved to New York I was like kind of nervous, obviously, coming from, well, really from Bradford, quickly to London, to New York - they’ve got bars at the windows, they’re shooting at each other, it’s like haha, it was a little strange. And also the fact that '''Tony''' wasn’t really in any hurry to get anything going. I was like, ‘jeez, let’s do something’, but time would roll by and we would just play with one bass player, and then a few weeks later we’d play with another, and eventually '''Tony''' Newton sent him a tape and he really liked the guy. And then '''Tony''' went off to do a gig one night with a group, I don’t know whose group it was, but Alan Pasqua was in the band, and afterwards I said, ‘hey '''Tony''', did you hear that piano player?’, and he said, ‘oh no, I couldn’t hear him from where I was’, and I said, ‘Man, the guy was amazing’, so he said ‘OK’. So he called up Studio Instrument Rentals which was a rental place in New York and rented some rehearsal time, and '''Tony''' Newton flew in, and Pasqua came, and we just played - and that was the birth of that band! But the thing about '''Tony''' was – for your original question – he was doing the same thing with the drums – like, most people had heard him playing in the jazz style, but when he went more over into the rock thing he was playing it in a way that had never been done before, and it’s never been done since. I mean, a lot of people have tried but... so it had that same thing - it was like coming from ‘where the hell was this coming from?’. You know, it’s unbelievable! To hear him playing every night, and sit and stand on the same stage with those guys, man, jeez… | |||
(Lifetime excerpt) | |||
PH: It was quite funny, because there are a lot of jazz drummers who can’t play rock, and rock drummers who can’t play jazz, so it’s kind of a gift if you can play both... | |||
AH: Yeah, he was a magician, haha! | |||
PH: We’re talking about geniuses, there are so many, even bass players – Jaco Pastorius, was he around at that time when you were in New York? | |||
AH: Actually, believe it or not, he was, because he was one of the bass players that we played with, haha, and he showed up one day and it was absolutely unbelievable! I was playing with this guy and said, ‘Jesus! Who the hell is this, man, this is pretty good!’, and him and '''Tony''', man… but the thing was, it was unbelievable and '''Tony''' liked him, but I think he was looking for a different kind of a player. I think he wanted someone who was going to be like – Gordon Beck always used to say - like the railroad tracks, so that you got the tracks, then the train and then the ticket collectors or whatever, but you got to have the tracks. It’s kind of like having Jimmy Johnson, who is one my favorite bass players in my… you know, I’ve worked with some great bass players, but Jimmy’s like that, he lays the tracks down and like, Gary’s the train. If you have a drummer that plays differently than that, you can have a bass player that plays differently. One of them has to be the tracks though… and in this case it wasn’t going to be '''Tony'''! He wanted something else, a different thing, so we didn’t actually end up with Jaco, and then Jaco, I guess, finally was deservedly discovered by somebody else... I guess the first time I heard about him after that was with Weather Report. | |||
==[[Allan Holdsworth: The final interview (Team Rock 2017)]]== | |||
Throughout the 1970s, you played with an impressive list of artists, each of whom was quite unique. Did you feel empowered to express your own musical ideas within the context of others’ work? | |||
When I played with Tony Williams, he would never direct as to which way he wanted the music to go; he would kind of leave it up to me. Tony’d just say, “Okay, there’s the music; do your thing.” So it was relatively easy for me to find a way to inject my own personality into some of the music, even though it was composed by someone else. And I found that almost everybody treated me the same way. | |||
==[[Once Upon a Lifetime (Jazz Times 2010)]]== | |||
Published 01/01/2010 | |||
By Bill Milkowski | |||
Guitarist extraordinaire Allan Holdsworth remembers getting the call from Tony Williams: It was 1975 and Holdsworth, a Londoner at the time, had already established a fervent underground following in the U.K. for his outstanding fretboard work with such progressive rock groups as Tempest and Soft Machine, though his activities abroad barely raised a blip stateside. All that would change after he joined the ranks of Tony Williams New Lifetime and appeared on the group’s 1975 release, Believe It. | |||
“I was working with a piano player named Pat Smythe and quite often we’d open for groups at Ronnie Scott’s,” recalls Holdsworth. “Chuck Mangione was headlining there with Pat La Barbera on sax, Joe La Barbera on drums and Alphonso Johnson on bass. Chuck got really sick during this engagement, so there were a couple of nights that he wasn’t able to be there and they asked Pat Smythe if he would help out. Pat mentioned to the guys that he knew this guitar player and asked would they let him sit in on one set. So I did.” | |||
Upon returning to the states, Johnson heard that Tony Williams was putting a new band together and remembered the British guitarist he had played with one night at Ronnie Scott’s. He recommended Holdsworth to Williams, which led to the fateful phone call. “Tony asked me to come to Sweden to join him for a recording,” he recalls. “There was Jack Bruce on bass, Webster Lewis on organ and Tequila, who was Tony’s girlfriend at the time, was singing on it. We recorded a bunch of Tony’s tunes there, but I don’t think the album ever came out.” | |||
After that session, Holdsworth went back to London and four months later was summoned once again by Williams. “Tony called me to say he had just got this deal with CBS Records and asked if I wanted to come and join his band. My immediate reaction was, ‘Yes, please!'” | |||
The guitarist flew to New York and stayed in a hotel for a while before eventually settling into the drummer’s Upper Manhattan abode. “It was just me and Tony at first, playing together and developing material,” he recalls. “And then he would invite different bass players over to play. There was an upright bassist named Juno, and then we played with Jaco Pastorius, which was a great opportunity for me. And Jeff Berlin also came up.” | |||
By this time Williams had gotten a demo tape from bassist Tony Newton. “He loved it,” Holdsworth recalls, “and he was determined that this was the guy that we were going to use for the band.” | |||
Williams and Holdsworth went together to check out Newton on a big-band gig at Carnegie Hall. The pianist in the group happened to be Alan Pasqua, who made a favorable impression on both of them. Williams called a rehearsal at S.I.R. Studios in Manhattan, and a band was born. “We started rehearsing new tunes and then a few weeks later we were playing at the Bottom Line,” says Holdsworth. “Shortly after, we did Believe It, then did a couple of tours and followed up with Million Dollar Legs.” | |||
Though short-lived, the Tony Williams New Lifetime made a significant impact on the mid-’70s fusion scene. Now, three decades later, Holdsworth and Pasqua are paying tribute to the late drummer and their former bandleader in a special edition quartet featuring Yellowjackets bassist Jimmy Haslip and drummer Chad Wackerman. The all-star group first documented its explosive chemistry in a concert DVD filmed in 2006 at Yoshi’s in Oakland. A year later, while on tour in Europe, a performance was recorded by a Berlin radio station. That live recording has recently been released on the progressive rock/fusion label Moonjune as Blues for Tony. On this two-CD set, the guitarist unleashes in typically awe-inspiring fashion on Pasqua’s title track and “Protocosmos,” Newton’s “Red Alert,” Wackerman’s “The Fifth” and Holdsworth originals like “Pud Wud,” “Looking Glass” and the anthemic “Fred.” | |||
Currently on a stateside tour in support of Blues for Tony (including a weeklong engagement in January at New York’s Iridium), Holdsworth is quick to cite Tony Williams as not only one of the greatest drummers of all time but also a major influence on his own career. “The great thing Tony did for me was, he would never tell me to do something in a certain way or project an interpretation on anything I was supposed to do. He would say, ‘Just do it how you wanna do it.’ Before that, people would say, ‘Can you do it more like this or more like that?’ and I would generally give them what they wanted. But with Tony, he wouldn’t ever do that. He’d let me find my own way in a piece, even though sometimes he’d leave me out there to hang myself. But that was a huge lesson for me. And now I never tell any of the guys that I work with what to play. I just play them the tune and they kind of interpret it any way that they want.” | |||
At age 63, Holdsworth continues to play like no other guitarist on the planet, closely emulating the spirit of John Coltrane’s “sheets of sound” approach with his horn-like legato phrasing and uncanny ability to blow over the changes. He is currently working on his first studio recording since 2000’s The Sixteen Men of Tain. “It’s got considerably more energy than the last couple of records I did,” says the guitarist. “It’s actually pretty aggressive … for an old geezer.” | |||
