I.O.U. Live (album)

Allan considered this a bootleg, and was able to pull it off the market. The recording is the soundtrack to Allan’s “Tokyo Dream” concert from 1984, featuring Allan, Chad, Jimmy and Paul Williams.

A Conversation With Allan Holdsworth (Abstract Logix 2005)

Bill: Speaking of bootlegs, I saw a CD the other day at a store here in town...it’s a live I.O.U. gig being marketed by (I.O.U. singer) Paul Williams.

Allan: Oh yeah, it’s a bootleg. Yeah, I have a little bit of a problem with that guy.

Bill: Yeah, I would think so. There’s a big picture of him on the inside and none of you. It’s like the Paul Williams show.

Allan: Yeah, except that he’s ripping everybody else off. It was from a tape of a gig we did in Japan in 1985. He took the audio portion of what was a video and made his own album cover. Pretty sad.

Bill: So he obviously didn’t get any permission from you to do this.

Allan: No. There’s this guy that he used to work with...a guy called Shawn Ahearn. If I see him, I’ll deck him. He runs a label called Pangaea Records. He put out this bootleg and he wouldn’t stop. Even after I said, ‘You can’t do that!’ he went right ahead and did it. There are certain people all over the world who make bootlegs, but I don’t know these people. You know, they’re people just trying to make some money and they know that a person in my position can’t do anything -- you can’t really stop them, you can’t sue them. It’s not like Madonna, where you can get all this stuff stopped. But when it turns out to be guys that you know, that are supposed to be your friends, it’s kind of brutal. I mean, that’s happened to me a lot in the last few years. I was dealing with a lot of small record companies and they’re all wonky. It’s not good. They start out as your friend and then they end up like the enemy.