Allan's influences: Difference between revisions

Allan: no, because at the time that I was listening to Coltrane, I realized trying to copy what people did from records never did me any good. I started copying stuff that Charlie Christian did, and it didn't do me any good at all. All I did was get good at copying Charlie Christian, and I never really got any good at that. I just realized that I had to be motivated by the quality and the level of it, rather than exactly what it was, so I never ever sat down and tried to figure out what he played. I just tried to remember in essence what I thought it was that he was saying. You can hear what people do, though my playing ability is a lot lower than what I can hear, and probably most people's are too. It's just that if I hear somebody playing something, I usually can hear what it is. I tried to hear what he was doing without sitting down and figuring any of it out. If I wanted to play over something else, I would have to come up with something a whole lot better than what I was doing, and he was pushing me t o try to learn how to play better. He pushed me into trying to find out what I felt I needed to know rather than what anybody else knew. The whole concept of this lick thing is kind of offensive to me, because I don't think that's what it's about. A lick to me emphasizes the fact that it's something that you've played it before, which is something that I really don't want to do, even though I do it, because when you run out of ideas, and you're lost and you're stuck, my brain will only do so much. Then I go, "Oh geez, I'm not playing that shit again am I?" But really, the whole idea of music is exactly the opposite of that. You have to practice things that will allow you to have control, I suppose eventually. The idea is to practice so you have enough control over the instrument to actually be able to play what you can hear, and then that way you really are truly connected to the instrument. To play licks means that you sat down and figured out a few licks and are trying to find a place to put them all.

Here was a guitarist who had attained the absolute pinnacle of what practically every plectorist I had ever interviewed was striving for-to liberate themselves from the percussive nature of the instrument and emulate the flowing legato lines of saxophone players. And Holdsworth had already accomplished this way back in the ‘70s. He's been refining that aesthetic ever since, coming closer than any other guitarist to capturing the spirit of John Coltrane on his instrument. Indeed, ‘Trane has been Holdsworth's guiding light from the very beginning.