Allan Holdsworth (Guitar Player 1982): Difference between revisions

Bouncing from one band to another, album by album, was once the rule rather than the exception for Allan Holdsworth. Moments of brilliance left in his wake on LPs by jazz and progressive rock artists including [[Tony Williams]] Lifetime, [[Gong]], [[U.K.]], [[Jean-Luc Ponty]], [[Soft Machine]], and [[Bruford]] created for Holdsworth a reputation almost exclusively as a soloist. His presence on some of the recordings was by and large similar to that of a saxophonist: sitting out and waiting until it was time to fill a certain number of bars with a flurry of creativity. Holdsworth's chordal abilities were rarely showcased, and because strict limits often governed his approach, he grew tired of his role as a mercenary soloist.

In 1980, Allan teamed with bassist [Paul Carmichael] and drummer/pianist [Gary Husband] to form a trio in London known as False alarm. Expanded later to include vocalist [Paul Williams] (formerly of [Juicy Lucy] and [Tempest], a band in which he and Holdsworth had worked together in 1973), the group became known as I.O.U. In a Guitar Player interview in the December 1980 issue, Holdsworth originally described the music as having "some elements of jazz and rock, but we try not to be overly tricky."

For several months Allan and I.O.U. played gigs mostly on the West Coast, and in August a dramatic upheaval in the band found Gary Husband and Paul Carmichael out, and bassist [Jeff Berlin] and drummer [Chad Wackerman] (who accompanied [Frank Zappa] on a few tours) in. After a few weeks of working together, the new lineup went out on the road, hitting major cities on the West Coast -- mostly in California. New material by Jeff Berlin and Holdsworth combined with new approaches to the older songs yields a hard-charging, spellbinding concert for guitarists as well bassists. Currently, I.O.U. plans to record a new album this month for Warner Bros.

I think we took about five days to record it, and it was mixed in two evenings. Rather quick. It was recorded on [The Barge], a studio in England, which is actually a real boat. It floats, but it doesn't move much because it's very heavy. And luckily, the water where it's docked is usually very still.

No. Because I used to use pretty thin strings, and I didn't like pickups like those, which had a lot of [magnetic] string pull, because they took away a lot of the vibration.

That was just the help of Trident [studio, were the album was mixed]. And we probably could have gotten it to sound a lot better if we had had more time to mix. But we didn't.

Well, actually I went DI [direct input into the mixing console] on one song, "Temporary Fault." I did that one DI just to see how it would come out, and I was quite pleased with the results. I could have probably gone DI on more. The Hartley Thompson works well for miking and DI. It does everything. The reason I didn't use DI more in the studio was that chords and the solos would have been coming down on the same track. At that time I didn't own enough Hartley Thompsons to set them up like one for the solo and one for the chords.

I kind of visualized a sound like that, but it changes, and it continues to change. And that's why I look so forward to doing this next album, because the ''I.O.U.'' album is almost two years old, and the last thing I did before that was the Bruford album [''One Of A Kind''], about two years before that again. A lot of time has gone by, and for that reason I wish that we could have been able to use a better studio so that I could have made more use of the room and get the sound I was really after. It was kind of a compromise; the drums got the benefit of the room. After all, they were set up right in the middle of the room. Hopefully, when we do this next album, we can do it properly. And because we've moved on quite a bit since the last one was recorded. It will be interesting to see what people think of the sound now.

I was really lucky, because just before I sold my Stratocaster, I met [Charvel Luthier/designer] Grover Jackson in London. We went out for a few beers and he was willing to listen to ideas I had about certain woods, whereas a lot of other people wouldn't. They'd say "you can't make a guitar from this wood or that wood." But Grover listened to everything, and made three Strat-style guitars from various woods. Also I had the necks made wider at the fingerboard end. I hate the Fender string spacing.

Fender's overall string spacing is wider than Gibson's, but at the same time Gibson's necks are wider than Fender's. It's absolute madness. I had Grover make the necks wide at the top [near the headstock] like Gibsons, and about 2 1/4" wide at the body end of the neck. So that means there's a good 1/8" on either side of the outer strings, which is really nice. The strings used to really fly off the edges of the Stratocasters. I'm really happy with the guitars Grover made. They're the best guitars I've ever owned.

All three are different. The red one has a maple neck with an ebony fingerboard and a basswood body. The white one has a maple neck, ebony fingerboard, and a body made of jelutong [a Malaysian and Indonesian softwood]. Then there's the one that I was most interested in: a maple neck and fingerboard -- one piece -- and a spruce body with a clear finish. They all sound different from each other, which is really great, because I've learned so much about what to do about two more guitars that Grover's going to make. He's going to use a combination of all the best ideas in these three.

I used to until Grover came along, because if I was going to take a chisel to it, He'd say, "On, no. Let me do it." And [luthier/repairman] [Dick Knight] was the same way in England. He and his son-in-law, Gordon, were always helpful. They did so much work for me there. As far as wiring goes, I always liked to do my own, though.

Yeah. That's a custom routing box made about five years ago by [Pete Cornish]. The box it was in kind of fell apart, so Hartley Thompson built a new case for it, and I stuck one of their stickers on it. I know what all the knobs are, so they aren't labeled. It's basically a routing box that allows me to patch anything that I want in any sequence. You see, I have two channels on each Hartley Thompson amp, and each has its own tone equalization. That box sends different signals at different times to whichever amplifier I want. Usually, I only use effects on the chord channels: a real short delay, or A/DA Stereo Tapped Delay. On the lead channel -- the red channel -- I usually go directly into it.

No. They probably don't know about it -- two years later [laughs]. England is definitely on its knees as far as music and almost everything else, it seems.

I just hold the pick and lightly tough the string with my middle [right-hand] finger, but I don't use them very often.

That was at the Roxy [in Los Angeles]. I met Edward a few years ago when I was working with U.K.; I didn't know him then, but we said hello to each other. He came down to our first gig at the Roxy, and I was trembling in my shoes at the thought of all the people being out there. At any rate, he came to the gig, and I was talking to him afterwards, and I said we're coming down in the afternoon to do another soundcheck. Why don't you bring your guitar? I talked to Jeff, too, and told him to come down. So we had a bit of a blow in the afternoon. We thought it would be a good idea to do a jam together at the end of the night. So we worked out one of Edward's tunes. We finished our set, came back on and played this tune together. It was great. It was fun -- kind of a nice contrast to the rest of the gig.