[[File:Wardenclyffe1.jpg|200px|right]]"Wardenclyffe Tower" is a 1993 solo album by Allan. The album mostly features long and dense instrumental pieces featuring Allan on guitar and SynthAxe, although Naomi Star contributes vocals to one track. The album features three drummers, while Jimmy Johnson and Steve Hunt lay down the bass and keyboard parts on the original release. The Japanese edition contains three bonus tracks, which feature Gordon Beck on keyboards. The bonus tracks are included on current rereleases of the album.
[[File:Withaheart.jpg|200px|right]]"With A Heart In My Song" is a 1988 album by [[Allan Holdsworth & Gordon Beck]]. Allan wrote two tunes for the album, and Gordon five. The album was produced entirely in Allan's home studio. The album features Allan almost exclusively on SynthAxe, he only plays guitar chords on “54 Duncan Terrace”. Gordon only plays electronic keyboards. They play five tunes together, and one solo piece each: "Sundays" for Allan and "999" for Gordon. The music sometimes has traditional jazz elements, as most of the tunes are Gordon’s, but as it’s all done with electronic instruments, there’s a modern feel to it. “Sundays” is Allan’s solo piece, which includes sound effects from a fishing trip, and has a very orchestral feel. It then goes into an organ/choral-like section where Allan ventures into spiritual territory.
|+Holdsworth/Beck: With A Heart In My Song ([[Allan Holdsworth Discography|D]]) ([https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nP2jaGQ47Fk8f9uW2jtF5VOejs_0JLH1A YT])
Allan Holdsworth discussed his album "Wardenclyffe Tower" in various interviews. He mentioned his affinity for certain equipment, particularly Mesa Boogie gear. Holdsworth shared his frustration with the mixing process, his approach to album titles, and how he composes music with an imaginary backdrop. While he acknowledged potential parallels between his career and Nikola Tesla's lack of recognition, he emphasized his focus on music rather than recognition. In comparing the sound of his albums, he felt "Wardenclyffe Tower" had a less uniform sound than his later work.
=Quotes on "Wardenclyffe Tower=
==[[Allan Holdsworth’s Untold Secrets + Worthy Quotes (Guitar Player 1990)]]==
==[[No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)]]==
Q: What’s going on with the new record?
Allan focused his attention on the SynthAxe for '''With A Heart In My Song''', his second album of duos with Gordon Beck since meeting the pianist in London in the mid ‘70s. The Things You See, released in 1980, contained intimate, compelling duets between acoustic and electric guitar and piano - sort of a space-age take on a Jim Hall/Bill Evans dialog. Beck is one of the few bebop-based musicians Allan has worked with closely, and the guitarist has had to adjust his approach to suit the slightly unfamiliar territory. "I once worked in a band Gordon had for a while in France, which was kind of hard for me because I was like a fish out of water," he recalls. "But the more I played with him, the more I enjoyed it, because it was a way to check my own progress. At one time I probably wouldn’t have been able to play on it at all, but because of things I’ve learned, I actually felt a lot more comfortable playing and soloing over his changes."
Allan: It’s finished, but it’s not mixed. I do want to record one more track, and drop one of the tracks that I have onto the next album, because I turned out having a lot of ballads. Also, I really enjoyed playing with Skully [sic] Sverrisson and Chad Wackerman on this tour, and I’d like to record a track with Skully on it. What I’m going to do is mix the tracks that I’ve got now, and then right before I hand it in, go in and record and mix another track.
I was really looking forward to a European tour that was supposed to follow the release of my latest album with [pianist] Gordon Beck, '''With A Heart In My Song'''. We were going to go out as a duo and play material from the album, and I was really excited because it was going to be the only tour I’d ever done where I’d only play SynthAxe - I wasn’t going to take a guitar. It was going to be acoustic piano and some synthesizer stuff, with some rhythmic things that were sequenced. The guy from the record company called and told us that when they learned of my involvement, everybody over there said, "Oh, no; that guy’s a rock player." It just put them off. I feel really frustrated by that, because I don’t really see the music I play as rock at all. I mean, I can see its roots, but I think they must just hear the tone; a somewhat distorted guitar sound, and automatically the music goes right by; all they can think is "Oh, this is rock." It’s a weird world.
Q: And this is for Restless Records, right?
==[[L’hommage de Jean-Marie Salhani à Allan Holdsworth (Guitaremag 2017)]]==
We did a second album together afterwards, in L.A. entitled '''“With A Heart In My Song”'''. It's all electric. Allan no longer played acoustic guitar, he played electric guitar and Synthaxe. It was made at his home in L.A., he had one of the first home studio in which I could worked. He was much ahead of his time and already made his own studio in his house, he called it "The Brewery".
Allan: Yeah.
It has to be said that Allan was a big big fan of beer he had a great knowledge of beers from all around the world, and I think he could have been a great brewer. He also invented a pump to draft the beer. He patented it for a fortune, and didn't market it, because he realized he would have been in another world, and the business world wasn't his one. He was a musician to the bone, very focused on what he was doing, it was all that mattered.
==[[Blinded By Science (Guitar Player 1993)]]==
Blinded By Science: Allan Holdsworth Explores New Guitar Frontiers
- A few memories about this second album in duo, and the recording in his home studio? The evolution regarding the first one? What can you tell us?
Guitar Player, February 1993
- For the first one, the acoustic one, there was a constant modesty, a chastity, if I may say. Actually, Allan was very introverted, very modest. He sung on that album, a song called “At The Edge”, he asked everybody to leave the studio, so we left him alone. He did the recording by himself, he performed by himself, he didn't want us to see him sing. He has a very distinctive voice, very moving. For the other album however, at his home, he was much more at ease, he was on his ground. The first time was more uncomfortable and he was facing Gordon who was kind of monumental, as a jazz figure, whereas the other album, '''“With A Heart In My Song”''', he was, like I said, on his own turf, so he was much more comfortable. Even though he is at his best, I think, when he was at risk, like in the first album “The Things You See”, he was never better than when he was in danger.
Chris Gill
- So we can end by evoking the musician and the guitar player he was, in retrospect, how would place him within the guitar world?
Society rarely recognizes genius. Perhaps that’s why Allan Holdsworth sympathizes with Nikola Tesla. Holdsworth named his latest Restless album The '''Wardenclyffe''' '''Tower''' in tribute to the man who developed alternating current, fluorescent lighting, and the radio without attaining the fame of an Edison or Bell. The '''Wardenclyffe''' '''Tower''' was Tesla’s most ambitious, and perhaps most controversial idea: a '''Tower''' that broadcasts radiowaves worldwide and transmits power through the earth’s surface, without transmission wires, providing free electricity to the masses. Of course, Tesla never saw his dream come true - he couldn’t raise the funds.
- Well, I would say that he is the guitar player of the guitar players, Allan Holdsworth gave something to all the guitar players, everybody owes him, whether it's for the sound, the fingerings, the fluidity, the improvisation, the personality.
In many ways, Holdsworth shares Tesla’s ambitious, idealistic, and inventive spirit. Holdsworth constantly pushes the guitar beyond the boundaries that confine so many players. He has developed his own voice on the instrument, explored guitar synthesis, and experimented with special baritone guitars to expand the instrument’s range and custom electronics to improve its sound. Most important, he pursues and maintains musical integrity without compromising his vision, conceding to his record label’s whims, or blindly pursuing the almighty dollar.
Holdsworth experiments tirelessly with equipment. His studio is littered with the latest amps and gadgets from several manufacturers, all awaiting Allan’s approval. He’s most satisfied with Mesa Boogie gear: "For a long time now I’ve mainly been using Boogie stuff. I just discovered the Dual Rectifier. It’s a cross between some of the things I liked about their old amplifiers, and it has a lot of what’s happened afterwards. It has a vocal quality that I really like. I also have a .50 Caliber which I’ve used for a long time. It’s slightly modified so it doesn’t have as much gain."
The '''Wardenclyffe''' '''Tower''' features several cuts with Synthaxxe (sic) guitar synthesizer, but Allan says he’s retired that instrument from live performance, possibly even from recording. In its place, he’s dabbling with a new controller developed by Starr Switch. "The instrument has unbelievable potential," he beams. "It’s different than a guitar. It looks like a small keyboard. It’s laid out with 24 ‘strings,’ which are actually keys, and 23 frets or keys. It’s like a two-dimensional keyboard. You can play it vertically as well as horizontally, and play chords on a single ‘string,’ I had him design me one that’s like a guitar neck, where the different-colored keys are like the dot markers on a guitar."
You’re known for being highly critical of your own playing. What do you think of it on '''Wardenclyffe''' '''Tower'''?
The problem I have with '''Wardenclyffe''' '''Tower''' is that the album was recorded a long time before it was mixed. It was recorded over a year prior to releasing it and the reason is that we recorded it and the scheduling was such that I could never get to mix it. I started to mix it one time and I wasn’t happy with the mixes so I stopped and we went out on the road. I came back and tried it again. I usually go to Front Page [studios] in Costa Mesa and I mixed it there pretty quick. I thought it was going okay, and then when I listened to the mixes I wasn’t happy with them, so I didn’t release it. I was gonna do it again, but because of the amount of time that had gone by, I started to get really fed up. I was getting very tired of it. So I thought, having played the mixes to my friends and the guys, to release the mixes that I had done at Front Page, which is how the album is now. But I’m not completely happy with the way the mixes are now.
What do you think is wrong with them?
With Secrets, I mixed that album at home and I spent a lot of time on the mixing. It’s different when you do it at home—you don’t have to watch the clock. So, obviously I can take longer to make decisions.
Why didn’t you mix the new album at home?
I decided to go to the studio at that time with '''Wardenclyffe''' '''Tower''' because I didn’t have my home studio set-up working because we had just moved. So, otherwise I would have tried to do it at home again, but I didn’t have a set-up going at the house. We moved everything and I lost the set-up I had, so I had to start again. I think the album is what it is. I think it’s pretty good. The thing that lets it down for me is just that I would have liked to mix a couple of tracks again—not everything.
You don’t sound too enthused at all.
Well, I like some of the music on it. I thought all the guys played really great on it. As I said, the only thing that let it down for me is the mix.
What were you going for when you first conceptualized the album?
I never really have a concept for an album as a whole. Whenever I’m working on a piece of music, I’ll just be working on that. I’m never thinking about a concept for an album. I just think about writing tunes and trying to find a balance between the tunes to make up an album. Usually, when I come up with an album title—and this has been true with every album I’ve ever done—I don’t think of it is as a whole. Sonically, and making sure the balance between types of tracks, and the running order—that’s important. The titles of the albums have always been related to one piece or one song. I take one piece of music and say "That’s a good title, so I’ll use that." And then the album ends up being called that. Secrets was the same—just that one track, I liked the title, so I used that. So, it wasn’t a concept for the whole record. I balance the pieces of music in a record to make it a whole. I never have an album title based on a concept.
Musically-speaking, did you achieve what you envisioned?
Yeah, pretty much. I think each piece of music turned out the way I wanted them to, except with the way they were mixed, which is very important to me. They weren’t so bad that they weren’t recognizable. I carried a tape of mixes around that I had, even though I started out saying "Geez, I shouldn’t have done that, I should have done this." After I spent time listening to the tape, I got used to it and made the decision not to go back to do it again. I got so used to hearing it as it actually was that I didn’t know if it was gonna be worth doing it again. I like to work constantly on something until it’s the way I want it and release it and never worry about it again. I’m not very good at working to a deadline, in fact I’m horrible at it—that’s what’s going on right now, I’ve got this stuff I’m supposed to do by a certain date. To me, that whole concept doesn’t work. They’re gonna take as long as they’re gonna take. I can’t guarantee it. You might just get one thing that sounds really good right away and it’s done and you get to another track and you just can’t get what you want out it.
Composition-wise, '''Wardenclyffe''' '''Tower''' strikes me as an extension of Secrets.
I think every album has been an extension of the previous one, or has grown out of the previous one. But I think it’s quite different. I think it’s a little less aggressive in a way. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not—it’s just the way it turned out you know. [laughs] I’m already working on stuff for the next album. Obviously, the problem with '''Wardenclyffe''' '''Tower''' is the amount of time between recording it and releasing it. I like to get it so they’re fairly quick. Usually, when we start recording it, I work on it until it’s mixed and it’s out, so there’s not a huge difference between when it’s recorded and when it comes out. Now that I think about it, that happened on Secrets as well. I got involved in a tour and other projects at the same time, and I wasn’t able to finish it when I wanted to. I don’t know, it’s hard for me to say, it’s hard to compare them. They sound different—the music is different. Hopefully, they have something that’s the same about them, the thread of evidence of one mind or something, but I don’t know.
It seems to have a more spontaneous and live feel than Secrets.
If people perceive that, then that’s always a good thing. Even when we end up overdubbing things, I try to make it sound live. Sometimes you can overdub something and it might be correct, but it just might not feel right since it didn’t happen at the same time. So, sometimes I’ll make it sound like it really belongs there even if it’s not exactly what I wanted.
Why did you choose to call the album '''Wardenclyffe''' '''Tower'''?
It’s about this particular '''Tower''' and Nikola Tesla. I always intrigued when I had the big book with his patents and everything. He seemed to be a guy who was doing things, being really creative and it seemed he wasn’t in the right time to be doing what he was doing! [laughs] Although what he did contributed to everyone and everyone benefitted, not many people actually know he was responsible for all the things that he did. When I started working on that track '''Wardenclyffe''' '''Tower''', I had this idea of this guy in his workshop. So, when I finished that piece, I thought well, that would be a good title for the whole record.
Are you often inspired to write music that way? Do you need that sort of catalyst?
I set out to write something. I quite often start out with an idea I have and work with that. With '''Wardenclyffe''' '''Tower''', that was definitely a concept I had—creating an imaginary backdrop for this guy.
Tell me how you go about representing a story in music without lyrics.
It’s only perceived obviously from my own eyes and ears really. I just have to hope that whatever I visualize is somehow transferred to someone else’s mind. That’s why I’ve always wanted to be involved in film music. When I see something, I often hear something at the same time. So it’s just a matter of putting it together. It’s almost as if I’m doing an imaginary film. I think all of my music is kind of like that. They’re almost like imaginary film things. Not so much the soloing aspect of it—that goes into another thing, trying to be creative in an improvising way—but the composition aspect comes from the pictures in my head. So, I was thinking about what I know about Nikola Tesla—which isn’t that much—and just visualizing something and then just putting the music to the pictures of what I see, and that’s what I do usually.
As you said, Tesla contributed to the world as a whole, sold the rights to his inventions for a meager sum and received little recognition. Do you see any parallels between that and your own career?
It’s possible, but I wasn’t thinking about it like that. I wasn’t using it as something where I could say "I’m doing something and no-one is taking any notice." It wasn’t like that at all. If it was, it was some sort of a coincidence. I wasn’t concerned with myself. I was just trying to write some music around what my imagination was doing with regards to Nikola Tesla.
==[[Allan Holdsworth: An interview (Atavachron 1994)]]==
CH: How would you compare it to '''Wardenclyffe'''..., for example, I mean in terms of the sound?
AH: Well I actually think it sounds better. I think it’s more linear, or more uniform than '''Wardenclyffe''' '''Tower'''. That had different groups, different combinations of guys doing different studios and it wasn’t quite... one uniform sound.
CH: There was a track with Vinnie Colaiuta, for instance, on '''Wardenclyffe'''..
AH: Yeah, yeah. Chad played on it...
CH: Was that left over from Secrets, or something?
AH: No, no-no-no. We went in and did that. So it was... Gary played on it, Gary Husband; Chad Wackerman played on it; and Vinnie played on it. So there was three different bands, and a couple of the tracks that Chad played on were done at different studios.
"With A Heart In My Song" is a 1988 album by Allan Holdsworth & Gordon Beck. Allan wrote two tunes for the album, and Gordon five. The album was produced entirely in Allan's home studio. The album features Allan almost exclusively on SynthAxe, he only plays guitar chords on “54 Duncan Terrace”. Gordon only plays electronic keyboards. They play five tunes together, and one solo piece each: "Sundays" for Allan and "999" for Gordon. The music sometimes has traditional jazz elements, as most of the tunes are Gordon’s, but as it’s all done with electronic instruments, there’s a modern feel to it. “Sundays” is Allan’s solo piece, which includes sound effects from a fishing trip, and has a very orchestral feel. It then goes into an organ/choral-like section where Allan ventures into spiritual territory.
Allan focused his attention on the SynthAxe for With A Heart In My Song, his second album of duos with Gordon Beck since meeting the pianist in London in the mid ‘70s. The Things You See, released in 1980, contained intimate, compelling duets between acoustic and electric guitar and piano - sort of a space-age take on a Jim Hall/Bill Evans dialog. Beck is one of the few bebop-based musicians Allan has worked with closely, and the guitarist has had to adjust his approach to suit the slightly unfamiliar territory. "I once worked in a band Gordon had for a while in France, which was kind of hard for me because I was like a fish out of water," he recalls. "But the more I played with him, the more I enjoyed it, because it was a way to check my own progress. At one time I probably wouldn’t have been able to play on it at all, but because of things I’ve learned, I actually felt a lot more comfortable playing and soloing over his changes."
I was really looking forward to a European tour that was supposed to follow the release of my latest album with [pianist] Gordon Beck, With A Heart In My Song. We were going to go out as a duo and play material from the album, and I was really excited because it was going to be the only tour I’d ever done where I’d only play SynthAxe - I wasn’t going to take a guitar. It was going to be acoustic piano and some synthesizer stuff, with some rhythmic things that were sequenced. The guy from the record company called and told us that when they learned of my involvement, everybody over there said, "Oh, no; that guy’s a rock player." It just put them off. I feel really frustrated by that, because I don’t really see the music I play as rock at all. I mean, I can see its roots, but I think they must just hear the tone; a somewhat distorted guitar sound, and automatically the music goes right by; all they can think is "Oh, this is rock." It’s a weird world.
We did a second album together afterwards, in L.A. entitled “With A Heart In My Song”. It's all electric. Allan no longer played acoustic guitar, he played electric guitar and Synthaxe. It was made at his home in L.A., he had one of the first home studio in which I could worked. He was much ahead of his time and already made his own studio in his house, he called it "The Brewery".
It has to be said that Allan was a big big fan of beer he had a great knowledge of beers from all around the world, and I think he could have been a great brewer. He also invented a pump to draft the beer. He patented it for a fortune, and didn't market it, because he realized he would have been in another world, and the business world wasn't his one. He was a musician to the bone, very focused on what he was doing, it was all that mattered.
- A few memories about this second album in duo, and the recording in his home studio? The evolution regarding the first one? What can you tell us?
- For the first one, the acoustic one, there was a constant modesty, a chastity, if I may say. Actually, Allan was very introverted, very modest. He sung on that album, a song called “At The Edge”, he asked everybody to leave the studio, so we left him alone. He did the recording by himself, he performed by himself, he didn't want us to see him sing. He has a very distinctive voice, very moving. For the other album however, at his home, he was much more at ease, he was on his ground. The first time was more uncomfortable and he was facing Gordon who was kind of monumental, as a jazz figure, whereas the other album, “With A Heart In My Song”, he was, like I said, on his own turf, so he was much more comfortable. Even though he is at his best, I think, when he was at risk, like in the first album “The Things You See”, he was never better than when he was in danger.
- So we can end by evoking the musician and the guitar player he was, in retrospect, how would place him within the guitar world?
- Well, I would say that he is the guitar player of the guitar players, Allan Holdsworth gave something to all the guitar players, everybody owes him, whether it's for the sound, the fingerings, the fluidity, the improvisation, the personality.
