Gary Husband: Difference between revisions
From Allan Holdsworth Information Center
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Gary Husband is a British drummer and keyboardist. He has appeared on several of Allan's albums: IOU, Metal Fatigue, Atavachron, Sand, Secrets, Wardenclyffe Tower, and Hard Hat Area, as well as the live album Then!. Allan appeared on Gary's "Dirty And Beautiful" albums. Additionally, Gary has recorded the solo album, "The Things I See - Interpretations of the Music of Allan Holdsworth", featuring himself on piano. | Gary Husband is a British drummer and keyboardist. He has appeared on several of Allan's albums: IOU, Metal Fatigue, Atavachron, Sand, Secrets, Wardenclyffe Tower, and Hard Hat Area, as well as the live album Then!. Allan appeared on Gary's "Dirty And Beautiful" albums. Additionally, Gary has recorded the solo album, "[[The Things I See - Interpretations of the Music of Allan Holdsworth]]", featuring himself on piano. | ||
"Sounding Off" Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6UoYEuPxqQ | |||
See also [[Gary Husband on Allan Holdsworth]] | |||
=Quotes by Allan on Gary= | |||
==[[Holdsworth & Co. A New Side Of Allan’s Music. (Guitar 1980)]]== | ==[[Holdsworth & Co. A New Side Of Allan’s Music. (Guitar 1980)]]== | ||
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- I could never work as a studio musician. Such side projects have come about because I know these guys, and sometimes I have played on records as a thank you for helping me out. This is how it was with Gorky Park, they lent me the equipment to mix None Too Soon. As for Level 42, I filled a temporary vacuum. (Drummer) '''Gary''' '''Husband''' played with them, and when their guitarist died, I participated in a tour and a recording. I was definitely not the right man in the right place, but I cannot say I regret anything. Generally, it would have been more fun if one could have influenced the music to a greater extent, but I do that with my own compositions. | - I could never work as a studio musician. Such side projects have come about because I know these guys, and sometimes I have played on records as a thank you for helping me out. This is how it was with Gorky Park, they lent me the equipment to mix None Too Soon. As for Level 42, I filled a temporary vacuum. (Drummer) '''Gary''' '''Husband''' played with them, and when their guitarist died, I participated in a tour and a recording. I was definitely not the right man in the right place, but I cannot say I regret anything. Generally, it would have been more fun if one could have influenced the music to a greater extent, but I do that with my own compositions. | ||
==[[A Different View (Modern Drummer 1996)]]== | |||
RF: Through your solo years you've used a variety of different drummers for their individual nuances. Can you expound on some of the choices you've made? | |||
AH: I've always felt that the drummer makes the band—and I like to play with people who I feel will enjoy working with me. Obviously I look for people who are gifted musicians. When I started my own band, I started working with Gary Husband. I'd heard about him when I first moved to London. People were saying, "There's this nineteen-year-old guy who is monstrous." Gary's a phenomenal drummer-and a great keyboard player, too. We really hit it off and I've always liked working with him. | |||
RF: What does he bring to your music? | |||
AH: He plays different from anybody else I've ever played with. Actually, most of the guys I've played with have something that makes them unique, which is what I like. I don't like to play with drummers who play like somebody else. A lot of guys make that mistake. They'll think, "He plays with Gary Husband, so when Gary is not around he'll look for someone like that." But I don't. I just look for some other drummer with a musical personality that is distinctly theirs. | |||
If I had stayed in England, I would most likely have ended up playing with Gary all the time. When you have a musical partner—someone who is able to hear what you hear and understand things with out having to speak about them—why look for someone else? Everything I tried to do on guitar, Gary instinctively understood. It was very organic to work with him. I only started working with other drummers in my own band after I made a decision to move to the States, which was around 1981. | |||
RF: Do tracks come to mind that might have been particularly influenced by a drummer? | |||
AH: Everything those guys do influences me. Seventy-five percent of what I play is a response to what someone else is playing. And because of the way the music is presented in the first place, it's not that different with each guy. Of course what comes out is somewhat different with each person, but the result is usually ninety-nine percent what I expected it to be. But sometimes the track turns out so good I go, "Whoa." Gary was particularly good at that. For certain songs he would come up with unique drum patterns that I didn't dictate to him—like when I wrote the tune "Non Brewed Condiment" for Atavachron. The beat Gary came up with on that one is really a great thing. He did the same thing with the title track of that album. He always used to say to me, "Man, I'm afraid of the day when you get me to play on something where I won't be able to think of a new thing." So far he hasn't had that problem. | |||
RF: What comes to mind when I say Gary Husband? | |||
AH: A lot of fun. The guy is like a natural-born comedian, and his playing is absolutely beautiful. As far as the closeness to the way things are heard in my head, he is the closest. Sometimes it's like we're one guy. When I play with him, I get lost in it. This is a difficult thing to talk about because I'm not really comparing anybody. You could never do that; all these guys are absolutely unbelievable. | |||
RF: Do you have a preference in sizes of drums? | |||
AH: I tend to like real small kits, but it's different for different drummers because of the way they play. You can't really give everybody the kit of your dreams. Gary Husband has been my longest-standing relationship with a musician, and he's always played the music the closest to the way I hear it in my head. Ironically, when I first met Gary, he had a really small kit. Then I said, "Hey, man, you'd sound really great if you got lots of drums." So he did—and then he found it hard to put them away. So it was my fault! However, we did a tour in England a little while ago where he played a real small kit, and I loved it. I thought he sounded absolutely spectacular on it because he's not the kind of guy who needs a lot of drums: He's a very creative musician, and small drums seem to articulate such creativity. You can hear everything; nothing gets in the way of anything else. Also, usually when there's a smaller kit involved, the cymbals tend to be reduced from bicycle wheels to a reasonable size. I tease Gary about that. We had a cab driver in England one time who got out to put the cymbals in the back, and even he said, "Geez, look at the size of those." | |||
==[[The Outter Limits: Allan Holdsworth's Out of Bounds Existence (guitar.com 1999)]]== | ==[[The Outter Limits: Allan Holdsworth's Out of Bounds Existence (guitar.com 1999)]]== | ||
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Yes, I’ve played in many groups where people told me what to do and I decided I wanted to do this. Economically, it was a disastrous decision. When I formed my first group with '''Gary''' '''Husband''' I almost left the music [business] because I did not make enough money and then I met Matt Valy [Mike Varney? Ed.] , who had a column in Guitar Magazine, he found me and showed me all these magazines in which my name appeared and which I had no idea of. So I got a few gigs in California. It was amazing to play in front of ten people in a pub in England, to clubs in California with six or seven hundred people and always full. So I thought it was time to move. That’s why I went to the US, for work ... and it’s better to avoid rain. It’s not that I’m very fond of the beach or any of this, but I like to see the blue sky and the sun from time to time. | Yes, I’ve played in many groups where people told me what to do and I decided I wanted to do this. Economically, it was a disastrous decision. When I formed my first group with '''Gary''' '''Husband''' I almost left the music [business] because I did not make enough money and then I met Matt Valy [Mike Varney? Ed.] , who had a column in Guitar Magazine, he found me and showed me all these magazines in which my name appeared and which I had no idea of. So I got a few gigs in California. It was amazing to play in front of ten people in a pub in England, to clubs in California with six or seven hundred people and always full. So I thought it was time to move. That’s why I went to the US, for work ... and it’s better to avoid rain. It’s not that I’m very fond of the beach or any of this, but I like to see the blue sky and the sun from time to time. | ||
==[[ | ==[[Allan Holdsworth (Guitarist 100 Guitar Heroes 2000)]]== | ||
Allan has worked with loads of people during the past 25 years, but are there any musicians he’d particularly like to work with? | |||
"There’s lots of musicians who it would be nice to play with, but I’m quite happy just doing what I do. I just feel privileged to have worked with some of the musicians who I have worked with. '''Gary''' '''Husband''' (drummer), for example, is just unbelievable, although not too many people know who the hell he is." | |||
Allan | ==Allan Holdsworth (NPS Radio transcript)== | ||
PH: You have a desire to play, and you want to meet people and kind of interchange your ideas, that’s basically being a musician…you want to feel other people out and feel their ideas out, yeah? | |||
AH: Yeah, that’s why it’s been very important for me to work with – I’ve been very lucky cause I’ve worked with some of the greatest musicians, period, and also, since I stopped working more or less with other peoples’ bands and working in my own band, I still was lucky enough to find some of the greatest guys around. I mean when I met '''Gary''' '''Husband''' that was an unbelievable thing for me because he’s another guy from Leeds - it’s like right around the corner - and he’s – the guy is insane, an amazing musician. He’s really incredible and very instrumental to me, in bringing to light my kinds of musical ideas, because when I present pieces of music to them, he would play them in a way that would be almost as if I was playing the drums, if I could play them – at times it’s almost like one thing, which is very difficult to find, that kind of closeness in people. It seems to happen in a lot of the other groups I’ve heard, where there’s been some sort of major stuff going on, where there’s a distinct definite combination of people that are contributing to this thing. So finding the right people to play with is very important to me, and he, Gary is definitely one of those people. | |||
==[[Don’t you know? The Lost Words (Oneiric Moor 2003)]]== | ==[[Don’t you know? The Lost Words (Oneiric Moor 2003)]]== | ||
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AH: I absolutely loved it! I was so incredibly flattered. I was very moved by it. It meant al lot to me. The fact that it was interpretations of my music was something I really liked. There are people out there who make these clone records, and try to do everything verbatim just like it was, and what he did was much more deep. He came at it from a totally different perspective and I really liked that. He knew I would have wanted it that way and I like that he chose to do that. | AH: I absolutely loved it! I was so incredibly flattered. I was very moved by it. It meant al lot to me. The fact that it was interpretations of my music was something I really liked. There are people out there who make these clone records, and try to do everything verbatim just like it was, and what he did was much more deep. He came at it from a totally different perspective and I really liked that. He knew I would have wanted it that way and I like that he chose to do that. | ||
==[[A Conversation With Allan Holdsworth (Abstract Logix 2005)]]== | |||
Bill: These recent Bruford sound great. Have you heard that stuff? | |||
Allan: I have a good friend who’s also a big fan...because I don’t really have any of my own recordings,I usually end up giving them away and then I try to get them a little later on. But he played me some of One Of A Kind, which I hadn’t heard it in 25 years. It was pretty good, I thought...for the time and everything. | |||
Bill: That must’ve been an interesting band to tour in. | |||
Allan: Yeah, it was. I think if it hadn’t been for the U.K. experience I might’ve stayed with Bill a little bit longer because I really enjoyed playing with him. But with U.K. it was kind of uncomfortable because we had such different tastes in music. All of the guys were great guys, it wasn’t like a personal issue at all. We got along really well. It’s just that (bassist) John (Wetton) and (keyboardist) Eddy (Jobson) were of one mind musically and Bill and I were of another. And then when I started working with '''Gary''' '''Husband'''...I had just been introduced to him and played with a couple of times and I thought, ‘Oh man! I wanna play with THIS guy.’ So I decided to form my own band and that’s what cut short the Bill thing. | |||
==[[The Allan Holdsworth Interview! (Jazz Houston 2006)]]== | ==[[The Allan Holdsworth Interview! (Jazz Houston 2006)]]== | ||
