No Record Contract, No Big Hoopla, But The Fans Have Kept The Faith For Allan Holdsworth (Guitar World 1982): Difference between revisions

No Record Contract, No Big Hoopla, But The Fans Have Kept The Faith for Allan Holdsworth

Allan Holdsworth wasn't Stateside for long. But he had a new band this tour, his own. The vocalist, Paul Williams, first appeared with Allan ten years ago in a heavy metal band, Tempest, on the same bill as the old Fleetwood Mac at the Fillmore East. Tempest didn't make it big, and the next time Holdsworth appeared in the U.S. he was filling the chair formerly occupied by another British guitarist, John McLaughlin, in drummer Tony Williams' Lifetime. Holdsworth was already a guitar legend, having recorded in Europe with Soft Machine, the prototypical jazz-rock fusion outfit. Guitar fans strained to hear Allan's outrageous lines, which were buried in a muddy stage mix. After all, it was the drummer's gig!

Gone almost as soon as he'd arrived, Allan returned to England to become a touring and recording member (for one lp) of UK, the supergroup formed by Roxy Music's Eddie Jobson, Yes' Bill Bruford and King Crimson's John Wetton. Everywhere they played, more and more listeners looked up in amazement at what they heard. When Bruford left UK to go on his own, Allan went with him, and cut the first Bruford lp. Along the way, Allan recorded with the progressive Continental ensemble Gong - and his solos stand out, unique. Then he was featured with Jean-Luc Ponty, and guitar lovers waited through all the other music, just to hear Allan play.

Silence, that is, until last spring, when he returned to the States with his band I.O.U. He repaid the fans who'd kept the faith and waited, fans who'd kept his name from disappearing entirely. Allan's achievements had become obvious - so obvious that guitar king Eddie Van Halen asked to jam with Allan during his gigs at New York's Roxy. What? Eddie asking for a guest spot? Yes, and it was like a student asking to sit in with his teacher. News of the apocryphal encounter spread far and wide.

Guitar history was made in Los Angeles. where Van Halen jammed with Holdsworth at one of his shows, and acknowledged the Englishman as a champion of the guitar. Allan didn't brag about it; rather, he concentrated on his appreciation of such a gracious gesture. He explained to me how it came about: "Jeff Berlin and his band were playing with us that night, and we just thought it would be nice if Eddie would play with us. I met Ed originally about three or four years ago while I was working with UK. Just briefly. you know, I didn't get to know him that well then. At my first Roxy gig we talked, and Ed - he's really a great guy. I said, 'Come on down in the afternoon when we're playing,' and he and Jeff came down and we had a bit of a fertile afternoon session. Then we came up with the idea that we should all get up and play a bit at the end of the show. Eddie worked out this tune, and we did it that night in L.A."

For example, what I did with UK was a total disaster as far as I was concerned - I should have never done it in the first place except for the fact that maybe a few more people got to hear me. But I hated it! Because I really had no space in it, I had no being in the band. They wanted me to play the same solo, and there was no way that whatever I did would affect what went on. I couldn't play something and then add another chorus or it would go off and do something else - I couldn't do anything like that. I had to do it just as I was playing on a record. It made me sick. But that was the way the music was written, in bits and pieces, not real compositions, composed like violin variations, but bits and pieces thrown together. It made the music kind of non-organic and sterile to me, and I was miserable most of the time. I used to just get drunk. Half the time I couldn't remember which tune we were playing! Basically, I enjoyed making the album with Bill, and I hated UK! I just wanted to escape the 'Tricky Di ck,' to try and find a musical thing, where I had more of substance to do rather than parts, because anybody can learn parts.

Though for Allan it's "all in the hands", his hardware setup facilitates his playing style. His single-humbucker, Strat-like guitars are set to play easily, to offer almost no resistance with extra-super-light gauge strings and a very low action. He speaks of equipment with precise glee, and since he maintains his own guitars, he knows what he likes: "At the moment I'm using two Charvel Strats that Grover Jackson, of Charvel, did especially for me - they're made out of slightly different wood and the neck dimensions vary slightly. They're wider at the top of the neck, I think it's two and a quarter inches, than at the body end, which is nice 'cause normally Fenders are very narrow there, and the strings pop off the end. So there's an eighth of an inch on either side of each E string all the way up the neck. I hate it when you go off the fingerboard, which is easy to do when you use thin strings."