Friends of Dan transcript: Difference between revisions
From Allan Holdsworth Information Center
No edit summary |
|||
| (3 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown) | |||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
This is an edited version of the "Friends of Dan" raw transcript. Almost all the editing has been done by AI, and I have not checked every single quote, but done a quick readthrough that seems to be acceptable. It is still a work in progress. | |||
=Part 1= | =Part 1= | ||
| Line 206: | Line 208: | ||
[Music plays: "Metal Fatigue"] | [Music plays: "Metal Fatigue"] | ||
=Part 4= | =Part 4= | ||
[00:00] Well, I have one last audio clip to play, and unlike the other contributors we've heard from so far, this is someone who's actually played on some of your recordings. When I mentioned this to him, we were both out of town. I was in California, though I live in Arizona. I don't even know where he was, but, you know, we were away from our usual gear, but he really wanted to contribute, so I suggested he just call my cell phone and leave a voicemail, and he promptly did that. | |||
[00:23] Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, you know, the sound quality is gonna be less pristine, than the other clips we've heard, but I'm sure we can all just adjust our ears and focus on the content. So let's hear what our friend Jeff Berlin has to say. Hi, Dan, here I am, and I'll go and offer some thoughts. | |||
[00:42] My thoughts are these. Alan is imbued with an inner voice, a voice that some have organically. That some are born to, to have. Uh, Alan's vision of guitar goes beyond the instrument. It's actually more of a vision of music itself. And this is the sign of true genius to me, that the guitar is a tool. | |||
[01:10] I mean, he could have done it on a, on a, on a saxophone or a piano had he decided to play those instruments. Um, I always felt a kinship with Alan. Alan and I as people always were in love with each other as friends. We got along famously. Uh, our humor was the same. Our, our vision of, of life was the same. | |||
[01:36] And quite frankly, playing with him was always, uh, a remarkable experience because I had the daily opportunity to watch an individual voice in music play and be a part of that experience. | |||
[01:51] Alan is unique, and uniqueness is not something that comes to everybody. He's as unique as Coltrane was, actually as Eddie Van Halen is as well, in that unique view of guitar playing in the rock sense. Alan is in his stylistic view of music. He's unique. He is imbued with something special that simply was a part, is a part of his, his very life force, uh, that which makes him so special that everybody who first heard him were instantly impacted by his uniqueness, that unique thing that made him utterly different, uh, an original voice in music. | |||
[02:34] Well, thanks for that, Jeff. Uh, another very funny guy, we should add. Jeff's also been on the show a couple times. Jeff's amazing. He's absolutely amazing. What a tremendous musician, man. And again, you know, sentiment plays a role, but, you know, you've worked with a lot of great, great bass players, and maybe it's because Road Games was my introduction, but I, I always kind of have a special fondness for his bass work, the two of you together. | |||
[02:57] Um, you know, many people probably don't realize it, but apart from sharing a sense of humor, another thing you and Jeff have in common is you're both violinists. Um, how did your experience on that instrument inform your guitar style? Uh, well, I didn't start playing the violin for many, many years after I'd played guitar. | |||
[03:16] Some people thought I started with the violin, but I did not. Um, I started with guitar, and then maybe 10 or 15 years later, I stumbled into a— fell out of the pub and stumbled into a pawn shop, and I saw this old violin. And I just thought, oh, and it had no strings and it looked pretty beat up. | |||
[03:37] And, uh, I bought it. It was really cheap. It was like $10 or something. It turned out that it was a very, very good violin. Later on, a couple of years later, I tried to buy another one which was very— an expensive violin. And I was playing it in the violin shop and then I said, oh, wait a minute. | |||
[03:57] And I pulled out my violin and it completely torched this very expensive violin. I mean, not Stradivarius, you know, but, um, even the guy in the store was going, oh my God, what the hell is that? It turned out it was just a factory-built, an old factory-built German violin. It was very old. Of course, all the violins say Stradivarius inside, but they're not, you know. | |||
[04:22] Yeah, but, uh, And I only had a brief relationship with that thing. I think I only played the violin for maybe a couple of years and then I quit playing it, you know, I just stopped. I wanted to focus on the guitar because of the chordal aspect, because I was really into like chords. Otherwise, at a different time, I might have stuck with the violin, or if I'd have started with the violin, that might have been even better. | |||
[04:45] But I just got so into, uh, being able to play harmony, you know, multiple notes, which is— you can't really do on a violin. In the same manner as you can on an instrument where you can play chords. I asked the wrong question. Instead of saying, how did your, you know, experience on the violin inform the guitar, really, how did your guitar playing inform your, your playing on the violin would have been the right question. | |||
[05:08] You know, I only brought it up because you, you were credited on an early solo album. You played some violin on it. And of course, Jeff was a violin virtuoso before he became a bass virtuoso, so that's the only reason I brought it up. All right. Yeah, I mean, he never, he never really went into that very much, you know. | |||
[05:23] Um, We never played violin together. We never, you know, I never saw him with a violin actually. But, uh, yeah, so it wasn't— we didn't often talk about that, right? And most people wouldn't associate you or Jeff with violins, but, you know, it sounded like you flirted with it. But I think it was his original instrument, and that's why I asked him the question, because, you know, classical violinists will play, you know, fast, complex runs when they play classical music. | |||
[05:48] And then, you know, he translated that to the bass, and that was why I asked. But, uh, you know, to Jeff's point about your uniqueness, he hit that word several times unique. Whenever I listen to music just in general, I, I always like coming across things I've never heard before on any instrument. So one thing I've always enjoyed about your recordings over the years is there's just an abundance of those totally unique moments, you know, mostly on guitar but the other instruments as well, you know. | |||
[06:13] And to his point about your overall musicality and his suggestion that you could have achieved innovative results on any instrument, when I think of guitar synthesizers, the 3 players who always come to mind first are Andy Summers, Pat Metheny, and yourself. Uh, some of your work on the Syntaxx could easily be misidentified as keyboards, even though it's, it's all guitar-generated. | |||
[06:34] You know, earlier we heard from Jennifer Batten. When Jeff Beck invited her to tour with him, you know, she quickly discovered that in addition to the role of second guitarist, he was also expecting her to cover a lot of parts that were originally done on keyboards. She had to find, you know, a way to trigger all those non-guitar-sounding parts. | |||
[06:51] And from my own experience with early guitar synthesizers, the biggest concern was the lag time between playing a note and hearing it back. So given how you play, did you initially have any delay issues with the Syntax, or was it, you know, always able to keep up with you right out of the gate? To me, it was, uh, light years ahead of any of the other guitar synth controllers that were around, like the Roland or the ones in the beginning, the They're much, much better now, but in the beginning they were pretty bad. | |||
[07:21] Um, but syntax was great, and, uh, especially if you use the keys, it was instantaneous. I mean, if you could play things using the key section of it, it was, you know, when you hit that key, the note came out right then. There was no lag at all. Yeah, there was some— there was a small lag from the trigger strings, but you kind of get used to it. | |||
[07:42] And what the instrument was giving back to me more than made up for the effort I had to put in to try to figure out how to manipulate it. I mean, I got better at it the longer I played it, obviously. But, uh, oh, one guy you forgot there was John McLaughlin. John McLaughlin is unbelievably amazing with guitar synthesizers. | |||
[08:04] I mean, I think you forgot him. Yeah, I officially apologize to him, but in fairness to me, I said the first 3 and not the only 3. I said the first 3 that occurred to me. All right, okay, I got you. Well, I want to play another track from your upcoming collection which spotlights the Synthax. | |||
[08:21] Now everyone will be able to see, you know, how this could be mistaken for keyboards, but they can also see how that instrument expanded your sound palette as a guitarist. The name of this track, which features only Alan and no one else, is Distance vs. Desire. | |||
[08:38] Well, I want to acknowledge one last listener, my friend Robbie Bickford. When I mentioned your name, he sent me a very succinct one-sentence response that I found, you know, quite apropos. What he said was, I can't hear as well as he can play. And, um, I understand what he means, you know. You know, as you're making all these split-second decisions during your improvisations, you know, that are, you know, par for the course for you, and some listeners might be feeling a bit left in the dust. | |||
[09:06] Now, even though he's a smart guy and a great player, I think he's just acknowledging, you know, he his inability to grasp the entirety of your playing and, you know, to appreciate every nuance and subtle intricacy simply because he can't keep up with you mentally. But, you know, Charlie Parker, even Keith Jarrett, some other people we've mentioned, it's not totally unique. | |||
[09:25] Um, but this does bring me to my last question for you, uh, in terms of your own self-assessment, you know, as you look back on the evolution of your playing throughout this comprehensive collection, in what areas do you feel that you've improved the most by your own internal standards? It's always kind of stayed the same, really, in as much as I always prefer the newer recordings to the older ones. | |||
[09:48] Yeah, because it's closer to where it actually is in my head at the moment, you know, as opposed to some of the older tracks where I go, oh, I shouldn't have done that. Oh, if only I'd have done this, you know. But you can't change it, you know. It's done. What's done is done, you know. It's like looking at an old photograph or something, you know. | |||
[10:07] Oh, I used to be young, you know. It's all like, well, But then at the same time, it works in reverse with the music to me. I like the newer stuff better, not the photographs, just the music. Well, yeah, well, Donald Fagan said he can't stand to listen to Do It Again or Ricky Don't Lose That Number, all the early songs that Steely Dan did for the same reason. | |||
[10:27] It's not complex enough. And, you know, but yeah, this is the thing, some of the people who've, who've commented have mentioned, you know, they— we all started with you early and everybody just sort of stayed with you. And so they kind of grow with you. And that's the case for a lot of artists. And that's why it's good that you do try different things. | |||
[10:44] Flat Tire is a good example of that. And None Too Soon is a good example of that. And, you know, we mentioned Pat Metheny. He does the same thing. If you just, you know, do Metal Fatigue Volume 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, you know, is there any growth there? But yeah, Robbie's funny because he— I didn't know this about him. | |||
[11:00] You know, he started out as a jazz musician. When I met him, were in high school and he was playing, you know, UFO and Blue Oyster Cult. Yeah, I had no idea he had any jazz history or chops, but that was probably my favorite response because it was just one sentence. I, I can't hear as well as he can play. | |||
[11:15] You can, you can take that 2 ways, but I'll, I'll take it in the pleasant way. I think that's the way we all mean it. | |||
=Part 5= | =Part 5= | ||
AH: I just want to thank everybody for being so kind to me, and all those great musicians who've said those nice things about me. It's very moving, and I appreciate it. I was very happy that Dan and Evan Cohen from Manifesto Records asked about doing a compilation, as an old guy and everything, and just kind of reissuing this stuff—because of the fact that they were mostly either discontinued, bootlegs, or remastered who knows where. | AH: I just want to thank everybody for being so kind to me, and all those great musicians who've said those nice things about me. It's very moving, and I appreciate it. I was very happy that Dan and Evan Cohen from Manifesto Records asked about doing a compilation, as an old guy and everything, and just kind of reissuing this stuff—because of the fact that they were mostly either discontinued, bootlegs, or remastered who knows where. | ||
