Tony Newton

Tony Newton is an American bassist. He was a member of The New Tony Williams Lifetime, and appeared with Allan on two albums, "Believe It" and "Million Dollar Legs".

Allan Holdsworth (Guitar Player 1980)

Along with Williams, bassist Tony Newton and keyboardist Alan Pasqua, he recorded two albums - Believe It and Million Dollar Legs - and toured in 1975 and ‘76. After bad management drove him away from that ensemble (at one point during a tour he ended up stranded in San Francisco with neither money nor a place to stay and had to pawn his guitar to get back to England), Allan recorded his first solo album, Velvet Darkness.

No Secrets (Facelift 1994)

So, how did the Gong projects come about?

Well, it's funny because it kind of intertwined. I then went to do the thing with Tony Williams and stayed there in New York and then we had some real problems. Not with Tony or the band, because that was the other thing - I loved that band - enjoyed every minute of it - but it was really rough financially. I stayed at Tony's house which was fine. I didn't need any money and he took really good care of me. But when we were on tour, we had got back to New York and I'd scraped together enough money to get a plane ticket back to see my girlfriend. So I was there, hanging out, and then I phoned back to see what was happening, and then I found out that the tour manager didn't get paid and he was in charge of my guitar and he sold it!

"That was the first and only time that I ever got that attached to an instrument. I was mortified! I only had one - I carried it everywhere - I used to buy a ticket for it on the plane... I'd had a lot of SG's - but instruments are like that - you can make 50 of them but there'll only be one of them that's any good - some of them might be OK, but only one of them will be magic and so it was sold and I was completely bombed out. So then I went back to New York and had to buy a new guitar and there in the window was hanging my guitar! But I couldn't prove it was my guitar and it was more money than I could afford, so I had to buy something else! So I bought another one and then we did another tour and ended up on the West Coast, ended up in San Francisco. And then the band ran out of money. Tony went back to New York to find out why there was no more money and both me and Alan Pasqua had no hotel - we were absolutely out on the street with a suitcase and a guitar. So we went down to the club where we'd been playing and the waitresses there gave us free drinks. We found the guy who had put us up for the night and we get back to this guy's house in the evening and he said, ‘yeah, you can stay in this bed and you stay in that bed'. And we get back after the club had closed and there were two other guys in those beds! So this went on for three nights, and after the third night I said, ‘Man, I can't hack this anymore', so I took my guitar to the pawn shop and sold it. Alan Pasqua lent me the money (he lived in New Jersey at the time) to get from San Francisco to New Jersey and bought the ticket with my guitar from New York to London. I didn't have anything! Just a suitcase.

"Tony Newton was OK, because he lived in Los Angeles, so a ticket from San Francisco to Los Angeles wasn't really expensive. So that's when this thing came about with Gong. I got this call from Nicholas Powell, who actually managed me for a while. He split from Virgin Records and wanted to get involved in the video stuff. He really helped me out. In fact, it was Nicholas Powell who gave me the free studio time on the barge to record the IOU album.

The Unreachable Star (Guitar World 1989)

GW: When Jimmy Johnson remarked that he was listening to Believe It on the way down to yesterday's session, you winced. That album is really something of a landmark, and your playing is a great part of what distinguishes it.

HOLDSWORTH:: Well, it was a great period for me in terms of being introduced to some really unbelievable musicians; that's when I met Tony [Williams] and Alan Pasqua and Tony Newton, and hanging out and just being given a chance to play with them was really amazing. Alan is a truly astounding musician and I've always loved the way he plays. It's also only in the last five years that I realized what kind of a genius the guy is. Same with Gary Husband. But getting back to that particular period, I hated what I did on that record. I can't listen to it, but I thought everybody else sounded great. But I did the best I could at the time, so, that's all you can do, unfortunately I wish I could go back and do ‘em all again [laughs].