Kirk Covington

Narada Michael Walden played drums on Velvet Darkness (album).

NARADA ON ALLAN

NARADA MICHAEL WALDEN ON WORKING WITH ALLAN

Recently, drummer Narada Michael Walden was a guest on Questlove’s podcast, “Questlove Supreme”. The podcast was published on April 10, 2024. As you may know, Narada played drums on Allan’s solo album “Velvet Darkness” that came out in 1976. In the podcast, Narada sheds a light on what happened during those sessions. In most ways, he actually confirms what Allan has said: The band met in the studio, and were rehearsing the songs while the engineer was recording, and that’s what we hear on the album.

Narada does not share Allan’s misgivings about the album, though: He got paid to do the session, and is proud to say he worked with Allan Holdsworth.

You can hear the whole podcast here: https://omny.fm/shows/questlove-supreme/narada-michael-walden-part-2

Special thanks to Dirk V. for bringing this to our attention!

This is an edit of the transcript provided with the podcast, shortened for clarity. Questlove starts talking about Allan at 1:10:18, even though the transcript times it to 1:03:42.

QUESTLOVE: I'm a big CTI Records fan, as people might know, Creed Taylor and you worked with Allan Holdsworth on an album called 'Velvet Darkness' in 1976. Do you have any memories of those sessions and Allan Holdsworth?

NARADA: Yes. Allan asked me to come and record them at CTI. He's one of the most brilliant guitar players in the world, and we all know he's very sensitive. On keyboards is a cat who was from Tony Williams' band; Alan Pasqua, and on bass from Weather Report; Alphonso Johnson. And I go there with my drum kit. It's a white Gretsch kit with the enameled double painted on the inside, which sounds they are like fibes [sic]; clear, but they're - mighty like that - wood.

And so then Allan starts showing us these songs and as he shows the song, then we play the song and then we would cut it. Then we maybe cut it a second time and that will be that. Then, you know, we kind of went through those songs like that. In his mind, he's thinking - he’s just kind of showing us the songs and we're...- you know - come back another time or whatever he'd think, I don’t know.

But Creed Taylor and Rudy van Gelder, the great engineer, they were loving it and that was what they wanted to get: that live, fresh, raw vibe and then they wanted to put it out...and Allan wanted to do more; do more takes and whatever he wanted to do, you know. So it’s some discrepancy between his concept and maybe what theirs was. But I was just doing what I was asked to do and being paid to do whatever it was. So that was the album. It came out and I'm proud of it. I'm proud to say I worked with Allan Holdsworth.

ALLAN ON NARADA

A Different View (Modern Drummer 1996)

RF: Narada Michael Walden.

AH: Whoa. That's a pretty interesting story. I heard Michael play on the Mahavishnu album after Billy Cobham. Everyone thought, "Billy Cobham was absolutely unbelievable, how's anybody going to follow that?" Then the new McLaughlin album came out and there was this insane drummer on it. Geez, where did he come from? The strangest thing was one time I was on a tube train in London, and this guy got on the train and sat exactly opposite me. I looked at him and he looked at me. I had never met Michael Walden and didn't know what he looked like, but I just knew that was him. A couple of days later I went to a concert that John McLaughlin was playing, and sure enough, it was Michael. He's a lovely guy, and a ferocious drummer as well.

RF: What did you work on with him?

AH: Unfortunately I worked with him on a really terrible, doomed album called Velvet Darkness. The problems were no fault of anybody in the band. I was working with Tony Williams at the time, and I got offered a deal to do a solo album for CTI. I think they were used to recording straight-ahead jazz guys who just went in, called out the tunes, and played them. We didn't do that. We were trying to play original material that we hadn't really rehearsed, so we were piecing it together in the studio. They were rolling the tape all the time while we were just running through things, so none of the stuff was really done to anybody's satisfaction. The sad part was that it was a dream band-Alan Pasqua on keyboards, Alphonso Johnson on bass, and Michael Walden on drums—and if we had actually done it the way it was supposed to be done, it would have been great. Unfortunately, it was a total disaster. There are tracks without endings because we had never figured any out. They just stop. It's a mess.

Mike Pachelli Show (video transcript 1991)

MP: You did some things with CTI you mentioned, the Velvet Darkness album…

AH: Yeah that was a big rip off, a big disaster in my whole – and it haunts me to this day – the guy basically said I could record with whoever I wanted to and I got Alan Pasqua, Alphonso Johnson, Michael Walden and I thought wow, this going to be great, but we were rehearsing in this studio and they just recorded the rehearsing, we never actually got to record the tracks – they just recorded the rehearsals and that was it. When we said like, Isn't it time we did those tracks? Again, you know? No that was it. So it was a real disaster album then and it's an even bigger disaster now because the new album Secrets, the last album, was on Enigma, which was bought by Capitol, and now that album is no longer available, but- ! Of course you can find the old CTI album on Sony CBS which is, makes me want to give it, just quit on the spot. How do you deal with that?

The Innocent Abroad (Musician 1984)

A better clue to Holdsworth's ultimate intentions came when George Benson and Joe Farrell became goggle-eyed by him at a Manhattan club and dragged CTI president Creed Taylor down to hear. The resulting 1975 LP Velvet Darkness, felicitously matched Allan with the tasteful but ennervated Alphonso Johnson and Narada Michael Walden; though all too short, it is one of Holdsworth's best early dates, ablaze with Hendrixian fission, virtuoso precision and genuine emotion.