Early Days: Difference between revisions
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Born in Bradford in 1946, Allan didn’t start playing the guitar until relatively late - he never wanted to play it anyway, he’d rather have learnt sax - but it was a guitar he was given and so it was the guitar he learnt to play. Guided by his father, apparently a gifted jazz pianist, Allan was a good pupil, always questioning and probing. He quickly realised that the way keyboard chords were arranged differed greatly from the musically limiting system which ‘shape’ guitarists seemed all too willing to adhere to. But, as Allan preferred the more musical sound of his father’s piano chords, he set about the arduous task of transferring them to the guitar: "I started experimenting... taking a triad and going through all the inversions I could get on the lower three strings. Then I’d do the same on the next three, then take a four note chord and do the same... and so on. Then I’d write them all out, find the ones I liked and discard the ones I didn’t." It was this approach that gave Allan his amazing chord vocabulary and led to those tendon-defying stretches - seven or eight frets sometimes - that still put his imitators to shame. | Born in Bradford in 1946, Allan didn’t start playing the guitar until relatively late - he never wanted to play it anyway, he’d rather have learnt sax - but it was a guitar he was given and so it was the guitar he learnt to play. Guided by his father, apparently a gifted jazz pianist, Allan was a good pupil, always questioning and probing. He quickly realised that the way keyboard chords were arranged differed greatly from the musically limiting system which ‘shape’ guitarists seemed all too willing to adhere to. But, as Allan preferred the more musical sound of his father’s piano chords, he set about the arduous task of transferring them to the guitar: "I started experimenting... taking a triad and going through all the inversions I could get on the lower three strings. Then I’d do the same on the next three, then take a four note chord and do the same... and so on. Then I’d write them all out, find the ones I liked and discard the ones I didn’t." It was this approach that gave Allan his amazing chord vocabulary and led to those tendon-defying stretches - seven or eight frets sometimes - that still put his imitators to shame. | ||
From school, Allan drifted into work at various local mills. His respite from the tedium of the mill was playing in ‘Top 40’ bands in the evenings. He then joined the Glen South band, who worked in the Mecca-owned ballrooms of Sunderland and, later on, Manchester. Although already thinking in his own musical way, Allan reckons his three years with Glen South were a good grounding. He recalls the times - a couple of decades but musical light years away - with fondness: "He gave me quite a lot of freedom in that band. There were generally two solos in every song - we had to eke them out back then - and I always played the first solo as it was on the record, but for the second solo Glen used to let me do my own thing. It was good also, because I had all that time during the day to practice... | From school, Allan drifted into work at various local mills. His respite from the tedium of the mill was playing in ‘Top 40’ bands in the evenings. He then joined the [[Glen South]] band, who worked in the Mecca-owned ballrooms of Sunderland and, later on, Manchester. Although already thinking in his own musical way, Allan reckons his three years with Glen South were a good grounding. He recalls the times - a couple of decades but musical light years away - with fondness: "He gave me quite a lot of freedom in that band. There were generally two solos in every song - we had to eke them out back then - and I always played the first solo as it was on the record, but for the second solo Glen used to let me do my own thing. It was good also, because I had all that time during the day to practice... | ||
==[[Guitarist's Guitarist (Jazz Times 1989)]]== | ==[[Guitarist's Guitarist (Jazz Times 1989)]]== | ||
