Allan's influences (extra): Difference between revisions
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This article gathers quotes on Allan's influences in the broadest sense: From his early listening, to anything he currently listened to and appreciated. The influences are sorted alphabetically, but they are not terribly strict as to wether they list both names or last name only, this will have to be done later. As a result the article is very long, and many paragraphs are repeated. ([[Allan's influences | This article gathers quotes on Allan's influences in the broadest sense: From his early listening, to anything he currently listened to and appreciated. The influences begin with some general quotes, and are then sorted alphabetically, but they are not terribly strict as to wether they list both names or last name only, this will have to be done later. As a result the article is very long, and many paragraphs are repeated. ([[Allan's influences|See here for a version without article references in the contents]].) | ||
NB! This list is not conclusive! There are for certain names that have been left out due to oversights and coding errors. Still, as an overall overview, it certainly gives a decent clue to Allan's musical world. Allan would rarely ever badmouth another musician publicly, and in some cases probably was trying to politely answer direct questions. | |||
The number of references is to some extent of course dependent upon the questions Allan was asked in the interviews. Nevertheless, the most frequently cited influence in the source material is John Coltrane, with 23 article references. Coltrane's importance as an influence can simply not be overstated, both in quantitative terms, but also substantially. Charlie Christian is a close second with 22 references, reflecting his especially his early importance. Next we have Michael Brecker, John McLaughlin and Django Reinhardt (13). McLaughlin is referenced due to many direct questions in guitar magazines, whereas Django is primarily an early influence. Michael Brecker is often mentioned as a current favorite. Other frequently mentioned jazz musicians are Cannonball Adderley (11) and Keith Jarrett (9). The most frequently mentioned classical composers are Debussy (9), Ravel (6) and Bartok (5). ([[Allan's influences|See here for a version without article references in the contents]].) | |||
A few specific albums have been mentioned. The perhaps two most notable are "Coltrane's Sound" and "Cityscapes". "Coltrane's Sound" is an interesting choice of Allan's. Allan was dissatisfied with many of his recordings, to the point of excluding them from his own discography. He also disliked releasing outtakes, as he mentioned that for him, outtakes were something that was not deemed worthy of release in the first place. In that light, it is somewhat ironic that his favorite album was in fact made up of recordings done by Atlantic in 1960, and not released until 1964, without Coltrane's approval, when Coltrane has transferred to Impulse. | |||
=INFLUENCES (GENERAL)= | |||
==[[25 Who Shook The World (Compiled quotes, Guitar Player 1992)]]== | |||
While Holdsworth keeps pressing forward, he feels there are compelling reasons to investigate the work of previous players: "There are some really deep, really incredible things you can get from the past. A saxophonist coming up now might not have heard anything earlier than Michael Brecker, who's absolutely incredible. But when you go back and hear some of the older guys, you realize that the newer players who tried to sound like them never did sound like them at all. There's something missing. When I go back and listen to Charlie Parker, he sounds unbelievable; it's so fresh. Cannonball Adderley and Coltrane, man, those guys were happening! Go back and have a listen to some of the early Miles Davis albums they played on, otherwise you're going to miss something." | |||
==[[Allan Holdsworth (Beat Instrumental 1979)]]== | |||
"I really would have loved to have played the saxophone when I began. I actually didn't start guitar till I was about 17 which I suppose is pretty late really. Before that I'd always wanted to play but never really wanted to enough to make a nuisance about getting myself an instrument." | |||
"I liked quite a lot of classical music but was really more interested in people who could improvise. That was something that fascinated me. Luckily my father was a Jazz pianist and had quite a lot of records which gave me something to go on. When my Uncle gave me a Spanish guitar I dug those records out and listened to them." | |||
==[[Allan Holdsworth (English Tour Program 1989)]]== | |||
Influences..?" Very few of the people who've influenced me have been guitar players. One thing they have all been though is great musicians. I think you should be influenced by the people or the things that make you feel the most, and try to find a way of expressing yourself without particularly wanting to sound like someone else. Listen to it, absorb it but don't over-analyse things." | |||
==[[Allan Holdsworth (Guitar magazine 1974)]]== | |||
Do you remember, in those early days, listening to any particular guitarists and being influenced by them? | |||
I listened to anyone who was better than me . . . and that meant I listened to just about all the pop guitar players. The first spark of jazz guitar I heard was Charlie Christian, because he happened to be on some of the records my dad had. It was then that I realised that this guy was playing guitar - when I heard it before as a kid I didn't realise what was going on. And then I started buying jazz guitar records. The strange thing is - well, I don't know if it's strange or not - I found that when I listened to these records with jazz guitarists on them, I used to finish up liking the solos that the other people played more, like the horn players. Just the way the horn sound flowed, as opposed to the guitarist's approach. I'm glad I did that, I listened and tried to learn something from every instrument. I think too many guitarists just listen to guitar playing and seem to ignore the rest of music. I listen to anything that's good: it's the notes you're listening to, not what they're played on. | |||
==[[Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)]]== | |||
What guitar players did you listen to when you were first learning how to play? | |||
From that time period, it was mostly the records that my dad had. So originally it was Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian. And then it was Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, and Jimmy Raney. All those really great guys. However, I wasn't really focused on listening to the guitar. I listened to a lot of music. My dad had a lot of classical music, which was very inspiring to me. There was Debussy, Ravel, Béla Bartók, Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland. I was influenced by a lot of other things besides jazz. | |||
You've mentioned your jazz and classical influences. What about your rock influences? When did you get the idea to incorporate rock influences into your music? | |||
That came just by the fact that I couldn't play anything else. When you first start out, you don't just wake up one day playing like Joe Pass. I started out with what I could actually play. I started with pop music, and then I started playing in local blues bands because it was easier. And then I got interested in more different kinds of music as I progressed. | |||
Since I didn't really like the guitar because of its “percussive” sound, I got very excited when people like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton started using heavier distortion. I saw that I could get more sustain out of the guitar now. | |||
==[[Allan Holdsworth: An interview (Atavachron 1994)]]== | |||
CH: Allan: How big of an influence, if any, was John Coltrane on your musical style? | |||
AH: Well, he was a huge influence on my life. I mean, as far as "on my style," I don't really know, because I couldn't even say that, you know, I couldn't even begin to think about anything remotely like that. He was just a... he was a huge influence on me. | |||
==[[Allan Holdsworth Jam (Jazziz 1994)]]== | |||
Holdsworth sees his music as deriving from a combination of jazz, rock, and classical influences. He cites the harmonic influence of Debussy, Ravel, and Copland, as well as John Coltrane, Charlie Christian, and other role models. But, while his place in the fusion guitar pantheon is secure, he cringes at being associated with the f-word. There is something patently different about Holdsworth's bittersweet music, as compared to the typically upbeat, chops shop fusion. | |||
==[[Allan Holdsworth interview (Abstract Logix 2004)]]== | |||
Fan: You have pioneered a voice in music and influenced your peers and your fans. Who are some of your favorite guitar pioneers? | |||
AH: Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Jimmy Raney, Wes Montgomery in fact most of the great guitar players; I loved them all. The newer guys: John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale... They?re all amazing with very different musical personalities. Of course there's Michael Brecker and Keith Jarrett, but they don't play the guitar (thank God!). I think I've been influenced by all instruments. I was influenced a lot by horn players, from Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane on to Michael Brecker. There's many, many more that you could fill this whole page with people that have brought great gifts to the world of music. | |||
==[[Any Key In The U.K. (Unknown publication 1978)]]== | |||
Can you pinpoint any one particular influence that helped you evolve your style? | |||
Well,' I think I was influenced in that I think I wanted to play a different instrument to the guitar! It started very early when I was listening to jazz records. The guitarist would be playing well but I was often more impressed musically with the sax solo. That's what inspired me really. I wanted to get a more horn-like thing out of the guitar. It's very natural. I didn't consciously go out to do that. I knew I loved that but I didn't know that I was approaching it differently until a few years later. I just like that sort of liquid thing as opposed to guitars with a machine-gun feel. I really like it to be like . . . water. It's more like patterns as well. I know people mock guitarists who play fast things but I don't think of it in terms of a stream of notes. It's like a pattern, you create a pattern or a colour that you see as one. It's like a colour that appears before your face. | |||
==[[Guitarist's Guitarist (Jazz Times 1989)]]== | |||
The other significant influence on Holdsworth's playing has been - predictably, perhaps - saxophonist John Coltrane. "When I first started," he explained, "I tried to play pop music - or what was popular at the time, just because it was the only thing that I could manage to play. But I always used to listen to other kinds of music. Then a few years later I started listening to John Coltrane and it was wonderful (in fact, I introduced my father to his music, because he'd never heard it). Shortly after that, Coltrane died. And it was just after I'd fallen in love with his music. I was devastated; I remember locking myself in the toilet for a long time to think about it because I was so moved by what he did." | |||
==[[Mike Pachelli Show (video transcript 1991)]]== | |||
MP: What was your early musical influences? | |||
AH: Well, all of the people really that my Dad use to listen to which is jazz from the period, which would go back as far as Django, Charlie Christian with Benny Goodman, and right way up through Miles… | |||
MP: I understand at a real early age you had a major affinity with a record player, like at 2 or 3 you were just uh… | |||
AH: Well I was absolutely enthralled with music, music was everything, I mean I had no desire whatsoever to play an instrument – I wasn't really interested in an instrument, I was just interested in music. | |||
==[[Player Of The Month (Beat Instrumental 1978)]]== | |||
The musical soil which was eventually to allow Allan's musical talent to sprout was therefore ripe and ready to be drawn on when the time came. "I listened to all the records my dad had, and he had a lot of classical records, he had those old Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw records, and that's when I first heard guitar - it was Charlie Christian on those records. But it wasn't till after I'd been playing the guitar a little bit that I realized what I'd been hearing all those years was this amazing player. It had gone right by me." | |||
==[[The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever (Guitar Player 2008)]]== | |||
At what point did you decide to dedicate your life to music, and have things turned out at all like you'd imagined they might? | |||
No, things have turned out nothing like I'd imagined. And I often think about that whenever we go to music schools, because I'm sure almost everyone who goes to a music school is there because they've already decided that that's what they want to do. But for me it was the absolute opposite. My father was a wonderful piano player who had a great record collection, including all the classic jazz records, and I just loved listening to music. I had no interest in learning an instrument until I was about 15, when I started thinking that maybe I'd like to get a clarinet or a saxophone. But in those days they were pretty expensive, so instead my dad gave me a guitar he had bought from my uncle. Then he bought me a couple of chord books and as soon as he saw that I was making a little progress, he started trying to help me, and that's when I developed an interest. And he had records by all these great guitar players lying around, like Jimmy Rainey, Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, and Charlie Christian, who became my first major influence. | |||
==[[The Open End (Boston Sound Report 1988)]]== | |||
BSR: Who are some of your early and current influences? | |||
AH: Some of my early influences were Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, I suppose, Jimmy Rainey and Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, and all those guys. They were the records that my father had. He was a jazz piano player, and he always had these records lying around. This was before I started playing. So I heard them all when I was growing up. | |||
==[[Whisky Galore (Guitarist 2000)]]== | |||
Allan, the average listener would be very bemused by your music. Not too many singalong choruses there... | |||
"Not really, no. I don't know where it comes from really; it's like a little portal to the other side. I suppose it was initially classical music, which was what my father played around the house; he had loads of records so there's obviously a lot of classical in there. But he was also a jazz musician and had a lot of jazz in his collection too, so that was another obvious source of information." | |||
=ACKER BILCK= | =ACKER BILCK= | ||
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You don't fit in with traditional jazzers and yet the music is so harmonically complex that only sophisticated listeners will get it... | You don't fit in with traditional jazzers and yet the music is so harmonically complex that only sophisticated listeners will get it... | ||
"When people mention the word ‘jazz' I think of it as music that's harmonic, melodic, rhythmic and a vehicle for improvisation. And that's it: it's not a particular form of music. When you mention jazz to some people they'll think of Acker Bilk and others will say Charlie Parker. Jazz is a very good word, but people have shrunk it by using it in the wrong way. It's like fusion. What I have come to know of fusion is a music that I detest, but there's nothing wrong with the word; it's a perfectly good word." | "When people mention the word ‘jazz' I think of it as music that's harmonic, melodic, rhythmic and a vehicle for improvisation. And that's it: it's not a particular form of music. When you mention jazz to some people they'll think of Acker Bilk and others will say Charlie Parker. Jazz is a very good word, but people have shrunk it by using it in the wrong way. It's like fusion. What I have come to know of fusion is a music that I detest, but there's nothing wrong with the word; it's a perfectly good word." | ||
=ARTIE SHAW= | =ARTIE SHAW= | ||
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AH: Yes I do, very much so. As to exactly what it's going to be I'm not quite sure, because there's a lot of logistics involved. I always wanted to record with a pedal steel guitar player; I think pedal steel guitar and guitar in place of a keyboard is a very interesting sound to me. I always wanted to do something with a string quartet, French horns, with an acoustic rhythm section. I absolutely would love to work with some of these unbelievable Indian musicians, but I'm not sure I'd be able to hang with them on a raga. (Laughs). | AH: Yes I do, very much so. As to exactly what it's going to be I'm not quite sure, because there's a lot of logistics involved. I always wanted to record with a pedal steel guitar player; I think pedal steel guitar and guitar in place of a keyboard is a very interesting sound to me. I always wanted to do something with a string quartet, French horns, with an acoustic rhythm section. I absolutely would love to work with some of these unbelievable Indian musicians, but I'm not sure I'd be able to hang with them on a raga. (Laughs). | ||
=JIM HALL= | =JIM HALL= | ||
