Allan's influences

This article gathers quotes on Allan's influences in the broadest sense: From his early listening, to anything he currently listened to and appreciated. The influences begin with some general quotes, and are then sorted alphabetically, but they are not terribly strict as to wether they list both names or last name only, this will have to be done later. As a result the article is very long, and many paragraphs are repeated. NB! This list is not conclusive! There are for certain names that have been left out due to oversights and coding errors. Still, as an overall overview, it certainly gives a decent clue to Allan's musical world. Allan would rarely ever badmouth another musician publicly, and in some cases probably was trying to politely answer direct questions.

The number of references is to some extent of course dependent upon the questions Allan was asked in the interviews. Nevertheless, the most frequently cited influence in the source material is John Coltrane, with 23 article references. Coltrane's importance as an influence can simply not be overstated, both in quantitative terms, but also substantially. Charlie Christian is a close second with 22 references, reflecting his especially his early importance. Next we have Michael Brecker, John McLaughlin and Django Reinhardt (13). McLaughlin is referenced due to many direct questions in guitar magazines, whereas Django is primarily an early influence. Michael Brecker is often mentioned as a current favorite. Other frequently mentioned jazz musicians are Cannonball Adderley (11) and Keith Jarrett (9). The most frequently mentioned classical composers are Debussy (9), Ravel (6) and Bartok (5). (See here for a version with article references in the contents.)

A few specific albums have been mentioned. The perhaps two most notable are "Coltrane's Sound" and "Cityscapes". "Coltrane's Sound" is an interesting choice of Allan's. Allan was dissatisfied with many of his recordings, to the point of excluding them from his own discography. He also disliked releasing outtakes, as he mentioned that for him, outtakes were something that was not deemed worthy of release in the first place. In that light, it is somewhat ironic that his favorite album was in fact made up of recordings done by Atlantic in 1960, and not released until 1964, without Coltrane's approval, when Coltrane has transferred to Impulse.

INFLUENCES (GENERAL)

25 Who Shook The World (Compiled quotes, Guitar Player 1992)

While Holdsworth keeps pressing forward, he feels there are compelling reasons to investigate the work of previous players: "There are some really deep, really incredible things you can get from the past. A saxophonist coming up now might not have heard anything earlier than Michael Brecker, who's absolutely incredible. But when you go back and hear some of the older guys, you realize that the newer players who tried to sound like them never did sound like them at all. There's something missing. When I go back and listen to Charlie Parker, he sounds unbelievable; it's so fresh. Cannonball Adderley and Coltrane, man, those guys were happening! Go back and have a listen to some of the early Miles Davis albums they played on, otherwise you're going to miss something."

Allan Holdsworth (Beat Instrumental 1979)

"I really would have loved to have played the saxophone when I began. I actually didn't start guitar till I was about 17 which I suppose is pretty late really. Before that I'd always wanted to play but never really wanted to enough to make a nuisance about getting myself an instrument."

"I liked quite a lot of classical music but was really more interested in people who could improvise. That was something that fascinated me. Luckily my father was a Jazz pianist and had quite a lot of records which gave me something to go on. When my Uncle gave me a Spanish guitar I dug those records out and listened to them."

Allan Holdsworth (English Tour Program 1989)

Influences..?" Very few of the people who've influenced me have been guitar players. One thing they have all been though is great musicians. I think you should be influenced by the people or the things that make you feel the most, and try to find a way of expressing yourself without particularly wanting to sound like someone else. Listen to it, absorb it but don't over-analyse things."

Allan Holdsworth (Guitar magazine 1974)

Do you remember, in those early days, listening to any particular guitarists and being influenced by them?

I listened to anyone who was better than me . . . and that meant I listened to just about all the pop guitar players. The first spark of jazz guitar I heard was Charlie Christian, because he happened to be on some of the records my dad had. It was then that I realised that this guy was playing guitar - when I heard it before as a kid I didn't realise what was going on. And then I started buying jazz guitar records. The strange thing is - well, I don't know if it's strange or not - I found that when I listened to these records with jazz guitarists on them, I used to finish up liking the solos that the other people played more, like the horn players. Just the way the horn sound flowed, as opposed to the guitarist's approach. I'm glad I did that, I listened and tried to learn something from every instrument. I think too many guitarists just listen to guitar playing and seem to ignore the rest of music. I listen to anything that's good: it's the notes you're listening to, not what they're played on.

Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)

What guitar players did you listen to when you were first learning how to play?

From that time period, it was mostly the records that my dad had. So originally it was Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian. And then it was Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, and Jimmy Raney. All those really great guys. However, I wasn't really focused on listening to the guitar. I listened to a lot of music. My dad had a lot of classical music, which was very inspiring to me. There was Debussy, Ravel, Béla Bartók, Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland. I was influenced by a lot of other things besides jazz.

You've mentioned your jazz and classical influences. What about your rock influences? When did you get the idea to incorporate rock influences into your music?

That came just by the fact that I couldn't play anything else. When you first start out, you don't just wake up one day playing like Joe Pass. I started out with what I could actually play. I started with pop music, and then I started playing in local blues bands because it was easier. And then I got interested in more different kinds of music as I progressed.

Since I didn't really like the guitar because of its “percussive” sound, I got very excited when people like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton started using heavier distortion. I saw that I could get more sustain out of the guitar now.

Allan Holdsworth: An interview (Atavachron 1994)

CH: Allan: How big of an influence, if any, was John Coltrane on your musical style?

AH: Well, he was a huge influence on my life. I mean, as far as "on my style," I don't really know, because I couldn't even say that, you know, I couldn't even begin to think about anything remotely like that. He was just a... he was a huge influence on me.

Allan Holdsworth Jam (Jazziz 1994)

Holdsworth sees his music as deriving from a combination of jazz, rock, and classical influences. He cites the harmonic influence of Debussy, Ravel, and Copland, as well as John Coltrane, Charlie Christian, and other role models. But, while his place in the fusion guitar pantheon is secure, he cringes at being associated with the f-word. There is something patently different about Holdsworth's bittersweet music, as compared to the typically upbeat, chops shop fusion.

Allan Holdsworth interview (Abstract Logix 2004)

Fan: You have pioneered a voice in music and influenced your peers and your fans. Who are some of your favorite guitar pioneers?

AH: Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Jimmy Raney, Wes Montgomery in fact most of the great guitar players; I loved them all. The newer guys: John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale... They?re all amazing with very different musical personalities. Of course there's Michael Brecker and Keith Jarrett, but they don't play the guitar (thank God!). I think I've been influenced by all instruments. I was influenced a lot by horn players, from Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane on to Michael Brecker. There's many, many more that you could fill this whole page with people that have brought great gifts to the world of music.

Any Key In The U.K. (Unknown publication 1978)

Can you pinpoint any one particular influence that helped you evolve your style?

Well,' I think I was influenced in that I think I wanted to play a different instrument to the guitar! It started very early when I was listening to jazz records. The guitarist would be playing well but I was often more impressed musically with the sax solo. That's what inspired me really. I wanted to get a more horn-like thing out of the guitar. It's very natural. I didn't consciously go out to do that. I knew I loved that but I didn't know that I was approaching it differently until a few years later. I just like that sort of liquid thing as opposed to guitars with a machine-gun feel. I really like it to be like . . . water. It's more like patterns as well. I know people mock guitarists who play fast things but I don't think of it in terms of a stream of notes. It's like a pattern, you create a pattern or a colour that you see as one. It's like a colour that appears before your face.

Guitarist's Guitarist (Jazz Times 1989)

The other significant influence on Holdsworth's playing has been - predictably, perhaps - saxophonist John Coltrane. "When I first started," he explained, "I tried to play pop music - or what was popular at the time, just because it was the only thing that I could manage to play. But I always used to listen to other kinds of music. Then a few years later I started listening to John Coltrane and it was wonderful (in fact, I introduced my father to his music, because he'd never heard it). Shortly after that, Coltrane died. And it was just after I'd fallen in love with his music. I was devastated; I remember locking myself in the toilet for a long time to think about it because I was so moved by what he did."

Mike Pachelli Show (video transcript 1991)

MP: What was your early musical influences?

AH: Well, all of the people really that my Dad use to listen to which is jazz from the period, which would go back as far as Django, Charlie Christian with Benny Goodman, and right way up through Miles…

MP: I understand at a real early age you had a major affinity with a record player, like at 2 or 3 you were just uh…

AH: Well I was absolutely enthralled with music, music was everything, I mean I had no desire whatsoever to play an instrument – I wasn't really interested in an instrument, I was just interested in music.

Player Of The Month (Beat Instrumental 1978)

The musical soil which was eventually to allow Allan's musical talent to sprout was therefore ripe and ready to be drawn on when the time came. "I listened to all the records my dad had, and he had a lot of classical records, he had those old Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw records, and that's when I first heard guitar - it was Charlie Christian on those records. But it wasn't till after I'd been playing the guitar a little bit that I realized what I'd been hearing all those years was this amazing player. It had gone right by me."

The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever (Guitar Player 2008)

At what point did you decide to dedicate your life to music, and have things turned out at all like you'd imagined they might?

No, things have turned out nothing like I'd imagined. And I often think about that whenever we go to music schools, because I'm sure almost everyone who goes to a music school is there because they've already decided that that's what they want to do. But for me it was the absolute opposite. My father was a wonderful piano player who had a great record collection, including all the classic jazz records, and I just loved listening to music. I had no interest in learning an instrument until I was about 15, when I started thinking that maybe I'd like to get a clarinet or a saxophone. But in those days they were pretty expensive, so instead my dad gave me a guitar he had bought from my uncle. Then he bought me a couple of chord books and as soon as he saw that I was making a little progress, he started trying to help me, and that's when I developed an interest. And he had records by all these great guitar players lying around, like Jimmy Rainey, Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, and Charlie Christian, who became my first major influence.

The Open End (Boston Sound Report 1988)

BSR: Who are some of your early and current influences?

AH: Some of my early influences were Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, I suppose, Jimmy Rainey and Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, and all those guys. They were the records that my father had. He was a jazz piano player, and he always had these records lying around. This was before I started playing. So I heard them all when I was growing up.

Whisky Galore (Guitarist 2000)

Allan, the average listener would be very bemused by your music. Not too many singalong choruses there...

"Not really, no. I don't know where it comes from really; it's like a little portal to the other side. I suppose it was initially classical music, which was what my father played around the house; he had loads of records so there's obviously a lot of classical in there. But he was also a jazz musician and had a lot of jazz in his collection too, so that was another obvious source of information."

ACKER BILCK

Whisky Galore (Guitarist 2000)

You don't fit in with traditional jazzers and yet the music is so harmonically complex that only sophisticated listeners will get it...

"When people mention the word ‘jazz' I think of it as music that's harmonic, melodic, rhythmic and a vehicle for improvisation. And that's it: it's not a particular form of music. When you mention jazz to some people they'll think of Acker Bilk and others will say Charlie Parker. Jazz is a very good word, but people have shrunk it by using it in the wrong way. It's like fusion. What I have come to know of fusion is a music that I detest, but there's nothing wrong with the word; it's a perfectly good word."

ARTIE SHAW

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Cymbiosis: I understand if your family could have afforded it you would have had a saxophone instead of a guitar when you were younger?

Holdsworth: Yeah, that's what I really wanted—to play saxophone.

Cymbiosis: Why was that?

Holdsworth: Well, I just loved the saxophone. It was the sound. I think people are first attracted to music and then to specific sounds within it. I also liked violin later. But at the time I liked saxophone more, because it was on most of the records that my dad had. He was a jazz player and had a lot of jazz records.

Cymbiosis: So you had things like John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw?

Holdsworth: Yeah, Dad played in the Air Force band during the war, and they played a lot of swing.

Player Of The Month (Beat Instrumental 1978)

The musical soil which was eventually to allow Allan's musical talent to sprout was therefore ripe and ready to be drawn on when the time came. "I listened to all the records my dad had, and he had a lot of classical records, he had those old Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw records, and that's when I first heard guitar - it was Charlie Christian on those records. But it wasn't till after I'd been playing the guitar a little bit that I realized what I'd been hearing all those years was this amazing player. It had gone right by me."

BARNEY KESSEL

Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)

What guitar players did you listen to when you were first learning how to play?

From that time period, it was mostly the records that my dad had. So originally it was Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian. And then it was Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, and Jimmy Raney. All those really great guys. However, I wasn't really focused on listening to the guitar. I listened to a lot of music. My dad had a lot of classical music, which was very inspiring to me. There was Debussy, Ravel, Béla Bartók, Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland. I was influenced by a lot of other things besides jazz.

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: Were there any guitarists later on that you listened to?

AH: I was extremely fond of Jimmy Raney. Of course there was Joe Pass, Tal Farlow and Barney Kessel. My dad bought lots of records to expose me to all this great music. Joe Pass' album Catch Me was mind boggling. But there was something about Jimmy Raney's sound that I loved. My favorite was a recording called Jimmy Raney In Three Attitudes which I lost during my move from England. I'm still trying to find the recording. He played a tune called "So In Love" and his solo is absolutely amazing.

The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever (Guitar Player 2008)

At what point did you decide to dedicate your life to music, and have things turned out at all like you'd imagined they might?

No, things have turned out nothing like I'd imagined. And I often think about that whenever we go to music schools, because I'm sure almost everyone who goes to a music school is there because they've already decided that that's what they want to do. But for me it was the absolute opposite. My father was a wonderful piano player who had a great record collection, including all the classic jazz records, and I just loved listening to music. I had no interest in learning an instrument until I was about 15, when I started thinking that maybe I'd like to get a clarinet or a saxophone. But in those days they were pretty expensive, so instead my dad gave me a guitar he had bought from my uncle. Then he bought me a couple of chord books and as soon as he saw that I was making a little progress, he started trying to help me, and that's when I developed an interest. And he had records by all these great guitar players lying around, like Jimmy Rainey, Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, and Charlie Christian, who became my first major influence.

The Open End (Boston Sound Report 1988)

BSR: Who are some of your early and current influences?

AH: Some of my early influences were Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, I suppose, Jimmy Rainey and Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, and all those guys. They were the records that my father had. He was a jazz piano player, and he always had these records lying around. This was before I started playing. So I heard them all when I was growing up.

BARTOK

Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)

What guitar players did you listen to when you were first learning how to play?

From that time period, it was mostly the records that my dad had. So originally it was Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian. And then it was Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, and Jimmy Raney. All those really great guys. However, I wasn't really focused on listening to the guitar. I listened to a lot of music. My dad had a lot of classical music, which was very inspiring to me. There was Debussy, Ravel, Béla Bartók, Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland. I was influenced by a lot of other things besides jazz.

In Memoriam: DownBeat’s Final Interview with Allan Holdsworth (Downbeat 2017)

You wanted to take up a horn rather than guitar when you were younger. You really didn't think of yourself as a guitar player. Do you still feel that way and why?

Pretty much. I just think of myself as a musician. I always think of an instrument as exactly that, it's just a tool for you to try and express yourself. My dad was a fine pianist and he had a lot of great records and beautiful music.

I grew up listening to Ravel, Debussy, Bartók and jazz like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhart. It was incredibly inspiring! And I was given a guitar and I said “What the hell is this?!”

Like I said, my dad was a piano player, and I tried that, but I just didn't have the feel for it. I wanted to play a horn or violin because you could change the loudness or softness of a sound. With a percussive instrument like piano or guitar I didn't think I could get the feel I wanted on it. But I tried the guitar and found myself trying to make it not sound like a guitar [laughs].

But eventually I fell in love with the guitar for other reasons. I played the violin for a couple years too but I missed playing chords. So I went back to the guitar and used distortion to sustain notes and make it do things it wouldn't normally do. So, here I am playing the guitar… or trying to!

Patron Saint (Guitar Player 2004)

I've never heard you cite any compositional influences.

Most of them are classical composers such as Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Copland, and Bartok-particularly his string quartets. I still can't listen to Debussy's "Clair de Lune" because, if I do, I'll cry [laughs]. I can't get past the first two bars. It's really weird, man. It tears me up. What I took from those guys was how their tunes make me feel in my heart. It's about the emotion, rather than what the piece actually is. I think that's because I want to be influenced, which is a whole lot different than trying to work out precisely what someone is doing.

The Allan Holdsworth Interview! (Jazz Houston 2006)

MM: Who's music are you listening to these days?

AH: Gee, all different kinds: I like Bartok to Don Henley. I love a lot of different music and the guys around me are constantly giving me stuff to listen to.

The Reluctant Guitarist (Jazz Journal 1992)

‘The thing that always moved me most was hearing a really great chord, or just the way it was voiced. That's what I live for, that chord. It came mostly from classical music in the beginning.I got interested in certain composers - Bartok, the string quartets, and then The Concerto for Orchestra, and I also liked some of that opera, like The Miraculous Mandarin. Oh, and Debussy and Ravel. I love Ravel's string quartets. There's something about that period. Music was just starting to look like scenery; you could see things in the music.

BEATLES

Allan Holdsworth - Jazz/Fusion Guitarist (Musicguy247 2017)

R.V.B. - Did you check out any of the big bands at the time like The Beatles, for example?

A.H. - To be honest, I didn't like The Beatles at the time. Now I absolutely love them. I think they were fabulous songwriters. I was interested in a different kind of music. I went to see all of the jazz guys play. I wanted to go where I could learn something.

Legato Land (Guitar Techniques 1996)

There are other surprises on the album, such as the jazzed up instrumental version of the Beatles' Norwegian Wood, and a strangely lilting cover of Django Reinhardt's jazz classic Nuages.

"What I wanted to do was my own rendition of something Django had done, rather than try to do something in a way that he might have done it, which I couldn't do anyway. For the introduction I just took and reharmonised the middle section. Then we just played over the sequence and the melody actually comes at the end. Django was always one of my main inspirations when I was younger. My dad used to have lots of Django records and I thought he was absolutely amazing.

"There's something special about those older players. I notice this when I listen to Charlie Parker records. Other bebop players have refined it all since then, but it's been cleaned up and it just doesn't have the vibe that it used to have. It used to have a mystery about it before they figured out how to do it. It's that mystery kind of thing in music that really excites me.

BEBOP

The Allan Holdsworth Interview! (Jazz Houston 2006)

MM: Ok, a question from me. I enjoyed hearing you play standards and really dug hearing you play over altered blues changes like the tune Isotope. You have such a great sense of phrasing and definitely from a bebop tradition. Do you like playing over those types of changes?

AH: Well it's like Pat Smythe used to say to me “the only thing worse than playing over one chord is playing over two” (laughter) so it's kind of like that. How many times do you want to play the blues? I mean there are some great blues tunes, but it's just, I don't know…I just don't feel the need to do that, but I understand how people in the audience can have fun seeing that and listening to that.

BENNY GOODMAN

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Cymbiosis: I understand if your family could have afforded it you would have had a saxophone instead of a guitar when you were younger?

Holdsworth: Yeah, that's what I really wanted—to play saxophone.

Cymbiosis: Why was that?

Holdsworth: Well, I just loved the saxophone. It was the sound. I think people are first attracted to music and then to specific sounds within it. I also liked violin later. But at the time I liked saxophone more, because it was on most of the records that my dad had. He was a jazz player and had a lot of jazz records.

Cymbiosis: So you had things like John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw?

Holdsworth: Yeah, Dad played in the Air Force band during the war, and they played a lot of swing.

No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)

Q: What were your first recollections of music , and how did you first become interested in music?

Allan: It was all the records that my dad had. Being a jazz piano player, he had a lot of records lying around, and that's how I first heard Charlie Christian, on some of the old Benny Goodman albums. So I kind of grew up listening to that. He also had Joe Pass, Jimmy Raney, Tal Farlow - those guys. I always loved music, I loved listening to it, but I absolutely had no intention of becoming a musician, or anything. I just thought music was something to enjoy and listen to, and that's all I did.

Player Of The Month (Beat Instrumental 1978)

The musical soil which was eventually to allow Allan's musical talent to sprout was therefore ripe and ready to be drawn on when the time came. "I listened to all the records my dad had, and he had a lot of classical records, he had those old Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw records, and that's when I first heard guitar - it was Charlie Christian on those records. But it wasn't till after I'd been playing the guitar a little bit that I realized what I'd been hearing all those years was this amazing player. It had gone right by me."

BILL EVANS

Allan Holdsworth’s Untold Secrets + Worthy Quotes (Guitar Player 1990)

Allan focused his attention on the SynthAxe for With A Heart In My Song, his second album of duos with Gordon Beck since meeting the pianist in London in the mid ‘70s. The Things You See, released in 1980, contained intimate, compelling duets between acoustic and electric guitar and piano - sort of a space-age take on a Jim Hall/Bill Evans dialog. Beck is one of the few bebop-based musicians Allan has worked with closely, and the guitarist has had to adjust his approach to suit the slightly unfamiliar territory. "I once worked in a band Gordon had for a while in France, which was kind of hard for me because I was like a fish out of water," he recalls. "But the more I played with him, the more I enjoyed it, because it was a way to check my own progress. At one time I probably wouldn't have been able to play on it at all, but because of things I've learned, I actually felt a lot more comfortable playing and soloing over his changes."

Legato Land (Guitar Techniques 1996)

‘None Too Soon' is an unusual Holdsworth album in that none of the tunes were penned by the man himself. It features compositions by jazzers such as John Coltrane, Joe Henderson and Bill Evans instead.

"It's not a trad album. It's a bebop album, but with a wrench or two in there. I've got Gordon Beck on piano, and there's Gary Willis on bass and Kirk Covington on drums. I think it turned out pretty good and we'll probably end up doing another, but we'll use real piano next time, as poor old Gordon had to deal with a digital one -something he's not used to at all!"

BILLY COBHAM

No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)

Q: How were you affected by John McLaughlin's music?

Allan: I've always liked John McLaughlin's playing, because he always sounded like an individual, a strong individual. That's one of the things I appreciate the most. Pat Metheny, I feel the same way about him. Absolutely incredible, and I kind of thrive on the difference. The thing that makes them different is the exciting thing. I was always a big fan of John McLaughlin, I like everything he does, because there's nobody that sounds like John McLaughlin. I see him as one of those guys whose head sticks out way above everyone. I like all the Mahavishnu albums-I loved Billy Cobham, he was absolutely unbelievable. I dug Billy Cobham before that band, when he had the band Dreams, with Michael Brecker. So when John came out with his first album, with Billy Cobham on it, it was great just to hear Billy Cobham again. An absolute monster. Actually, I have to say that my favorite stuff john McLaughlin has done is on acoustic guitar. To me, with all those musicians, it really wouldn't matter what they played. It wo uldn't matter to me if John McLaughlin played saxophone, he'd still be who he is, and I feel that way about all those guys. Keith Jarrett, it doesn't matter that he plays the piano, the piano is totally unimportant. I'm not a big piano fan, and it's not an instrument I go out and seek. I don't just like John McLaughlin, the guitarist, I dig him as a musician because of the music that he's written, and the things he's played. And I do like it more when he plays acoustic guitar. He just seems unbelievably strong on that.

CANNONBALL ADDERLEY

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Cymbiosis: I understand if your family could have afforded it you would have had a saxophone instead of a guitar when you were younger?

Holdsworth: Yeah, that's what I really wanted—to play saxophone.

Cymbiosis: Why was that?

Holdsworth: Well, I just loved the saxophone. It was the sound. I think people are first attracted to music and then to specific sounds within it. I also liked violin later. But at the time I liked saxophone more, because it was on most of the records that my dad had. He was a jazz player and had a lot of jazz records.

Cymbiosis: So you had things like John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw?

Holdsworth: Yeah, Dad played in the Air Force band during the war, and they played a lot of swing.

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: This was early Coltrane?

AH: I just bought everything I could find that he was on. There was some with Miles, and most of it was from the "Atlantic" period. "Coltrane's Sound" is probably still my favorite recording of all time. When I heard people like Cannonball Adderly, I loved it but I could hear where it was coming from. I heard the history and evolution. But Coltrane sounded like he short-circuited or bypassed something and he got to the heart and truth of the music. He was playing over the same things but he wasn't doing it the same way. He didn't sound like anyone else. I thought this would be great, to play over chord changes, from something other than a bebop perspective. Basically this is what I've been trying to do from the beginning. Unfortunately, I never saw Coltrane perform. When he died, I cried for hours. I felt like I knew him.

Allan Holdsworth interview (Abstract Logix 2004)

Fan: You have pioneered a voice in music and influenced your peers and your fans. Who are some of your favorite guitar pioneers?

AH: Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Jimmy Raney, Wes Montgomery in fact most of the great guitar players; I loved them all. The newer guys: John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale... They?re all amazing with very different musical personalities. Of course there's Michael Brecker and Keith Jarrett, but they don't play the guitar (thank God!). I think I've been influenced by all instruments. I was influenced a lot by horn players, from Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane on to Michael Brecker. There's many, many more that you could fill this whole page with people that have brought great gifts to the world of music.

Allan Holdsworth interview (Music Maker 2003)

When you were studying the guitar, was there an eye-opener for you or anything that you encountered that made you realize you were on the right track?

Well, just hearing people that were really great. It didn't matter what instrument it was. I was never fixated with the guitar as an instrument as such. Maybe because I never really wanted to play the guitar. I know a of guitar players, everything they're listening to, they focussed entirally on one thing, like the guitar. But maybe because I didn't wanna play the guitar, I never got to that state. So I used to just listen to music in general. I had a lot of guitarplayer friends that only listened to guitar. I played em all this shit and they'd go:'oh it doesn't have a guitar on there, I don't wanna listen to that'. It's like c'mon man, just listen to the music, you know, forget what it's played on, you know. I always think of an instrument as just being a tool. It's like, it doesn't matter if John McLaughlin played the trumpet, it'd still be great. And if John Coltrane played the piano it would be sounding great. I don't really think it mattered. It didn't matter if I heard something that was like really amazing and it didn't matter what it was played on, I would still get a lot of inspiration from it. Although I did really like horns, you know. I love particularly John Coltrane. That was a big changing point in my life, when I heard him. Versus what I was listening to before that. It made me realize that there was other ways to play over chord changes that didn't sound like...you couldn't... when I used to listen to those old records and there was Cannonbal Adderly and a lot of like other great bebop players. I could here the history in the playing. I could hear where it came from. And when I heard John Coltrane, I couldn't hear where it came from. It was like, where the hell did he come up.. how did he come up with that? Everything was working you know. That was like a real revelation. I was going, ok, so there's gotta be another way to play over chord sequences and stuff that doesn't sound like it came from somewhere else, you know. I tried to do that, I'll never be able to do anything like that, but...just the inspiration, it's awesome.

Allan Holdsworth’s Untold Secrets + Worthy Quotes (Guitar Player 1990)

The Precious Past

As time goes on, things move forward in some directions, but backward in others. It's like the quality of an automobile; they can make a car go faster, but it's not made like it used to be. People say that .all the time. There are some really deep, really incredible high-quality things you can get [from] the past. For example, a saxophone player [who's starting up right now] might not have heard anything {further] back than Michael Brecker, who's absolutely incredible. But when you go back and hear some of the older guys, then you realize - well, I did - that all these guys who came up afterwards and tried to sound like them never really did sound like them at all. There was something missing. When I go back and listen to a Charlie Parker recording, he sounds unbelievable; it's so fresh. You have to wade through the poor sound quality of the recordings, but boy, it was happening! Cannonball Adderley and Coltrane, man, those guys were unbelievable. Some of those Miles Davis albums both of them were on - wow, that was something. As things move forward, something else moves back. It's inevitable, because that's the nature of things. It's really great for people to go back and have a look, because otherwise they're really going to miss something. Things get lost that should never have gotten lost.

In Memoriam: DownBeat’s Final Interview with Allan Holdsworth (Downbeat 2017)

You wanted to take up a horn rather than guitar when you were younger. You really didn't think of yourself as a guitar player. Do you still feel that way and why?

Pretty much. I just think of myself as a musician. I always think of an instrument as exactly that, it's just a tool for you to try and express yourself. My dad was a fine pianist and he had a lot of great records and beautiful music.

I grew up listening to Ravel, Debussy, Bartók and jazz like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhart. It was incredibly inspiring! And I was given a guitar and I said “What the hell is this?!”

Like I said, my dad was a piano player, and I tried that, but I just didn't have the feel for it. I wanted to play a horn or violin because you could change the loudness or softness of a sound. With a percussive instrument like piano or guitar I didn't think I could get the feel I wanted on it. But I tried the guitar and found myself trying to make it not sound like a guitar [laughs].

But eventually I fell in love with the guitar for other reasons. I played the violin for a couple years too but I missed playing chords. So I went back to the guitar and used distortion to sustain notes and make it do things it wouldn't normally do. So, here I am playing the guitar… or trying to!

No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)

Q: Did your parents push you to take piano lessons?

Allan: My father tried to get me interested in the piano, but it was really obvious that I had no interest in it. It wasn't that I didn't like the sound of it, it was just that I don't have any interest in that kind of instrument. Then I really started to like the saxophone, Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane, who I heard on the Miles Davis albums. When I heard John Coltrane, I was really moved by it. Then I started going down to the record shop every Saturday-I'd go down in to town and buy an album, and I started buying all these John Coltrane albums. It was only four or five months after I discovered John Coltrane that I read in the paper that he died. It was a real shock because I guess when you're young and you've just discovered somebody, I felt like I really knew him. I just felt like he had a whole lot more left.

One Man Of 'Trane (Jazz Times 2000)

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.

"He just kind of completely turned my life upside down," Holdsworth says of Coltrane's influence on him at the age of 18. "I remember when I first heard those Miles Davis records that had Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane on them. It was fascinating to me. Coltrane's playing in particular was a major revelation. I loved Cannonball also, but when I listened to him I could hear where it came from, I could hear the path that he had taken. But when I heard Coltrane, I couldn't hear connections with anything else. It was almost like he had found a way to get to the truth somehow, to bypass all of the things that as an improviser you have to deal with. He seemed to be actually improvising and playing over the same material but in a very different way. That was the thing that really changed my life, just realizing that that was possible. I realized then that what I needed to do was to try and find a way to improvise over chord sequences without playing any bebop or without having it sound like it came from so mewhere else. And it's been an ongoing, everlasting quest.

The Allan Holdsworth Interview! (Jazz Houston 2006)

MM: Who are the sax players that influenced you?

AH: Charlie Parker because of records my father had…also Cannonball Adderly, but really Coltrane was the main one. He was spiritually connected to some pipeline where he could bypass all the stuff you had to go thru a thousand times to get to what you really wanted to say. I think that was the biggest thing that I learned from that---that “oh my God!” it's possible to play over this thing without doing things that you've heard before. It was very inspiring for me and I went out and bought everything he played on. I remember when he passed away I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for hours. It was weird because I felt like I knew him.

MM: Do you think that was the demarcation line in your life musically?

AH: Well it gave me a lot of ideas, it gave me a lot of…there were other ways of doing and playing things. It gave me freedom to do things that you hadn't really heard before…you know it didn't have to be diatonically correct or whatever if it's working. So it was that freedom to not have to make it sound like something you've heard already. Different lines, different chords, some specific formula to get away from…

The Outter Limits: Allan Holdsworth's Out of Bounds Existence (guitar.com 1999)

Guitar.com: Your legato sax-type attack has always come through in your playing going back to Soft Machine. If you listen closely, it's very much a Coltrane thing.

Holdsworth: He just completely turned my life upside down. I remember when I first heard those Miles Davis records that had Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane on them. It was fascinating to me, a major revelation. I loved Cannonball Adderley also but when I listened to Cannonball I could hear where it came from. I could hear the path that he had taken. But when I heard John Coltrane, I couldn't. I couldn't hear connections with anything else. It was almost like he had found a way to get to the truth somehow, to bypass all of the things that, as an improviser, you have to face. He found a way to be actually improvising and playing over the same material but in a very different way. That was the thing that really changed my life because I realized it was possible. His playing was just like a complete, total revelation to me. And I realized then that what I needed to do was to try and find a way to improvise over chord sequences without playing any bebop or without having it sound like it came from somewhere else. And it's been an ongoing, everlasting quest.

Guitar.com: When did you have this epiphany?

Holdsworth: When I was probably about 18, 19.

Guitar.com: You were already playing guitar at that time?

Holdsworth: Yeah, I was just dabbling with it. I was still really interested in the horn. I had wanted a saxophone, I didn't really want the guitar. But saxophones were pretty expensive in those days anyway, relative to a cheap acoustic guitar. There weren't so many guitars around then, not compared to nowadays. But my uncle played guitar and when he had bought himself a new guitar, he sold his old one to my father, who then gave it to me. And that's basically how it started.

Whisky Galore (Guitarist 2000)

Have you ever tried writing anything more overtly commercial?

"No. The biggest lesson I learnt was when I first heard John Coltrane. In the first records with Miles Davis there was Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley and it was the single most revolutionary thing to me. With Cannonball Adderley I could trace the path where it came from, but with Coltrane it was like he'd unplugged the pathway and tapped himself into a direct source. It was just as elevated, but he was coming from somewhere else. It was then I realised you have to elevate your playing, but you don't have to do everything that everybody else did before - again - before you can change something."

CHARLIE CHRISTIAN

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Cymbiosis: And then you started listening to people like Charlie Christian.

Holdsworth: He was on the records that my father had, so I went back and listened to those with new ears because I realized that this guy was playing guitar. Charlie Christian was the first real big major guitar influence. . . and Django [Reinhardt]. But mostly Charlie Christian, because I just love the sound that he got, and I still love it today. There's a lot of jazz guitar sounds. Guys like Jimmy Ramey, Joe Pass, Tal Farlow, Jim Hall...I love the way they play. But there's something about the sound that I really don't like. It's kind of like a rubber bandy sound, a dead, short kind of guitar sound, [laughs] It's just not for me.

Allan Holdsworth (International Musician 1981)

Dick Knight is making me a spurce (sic) solid at the moment, I wonder what the experts make of that. My reason for trying it is because the timber is very light and I tend to get a better sound when I start with a light body. One day I'd like to get a guitar made like a Gibson L7, something that's smaller than a Gibson Super 400, lighter with a larger scale. I like the clearer sound from a cello (‘f' hole) guitar - Charlie Christian was my hero. Round hole guitars sound a little on the boomy side to my ears. I've used an Ibanez L5 type cello guitar for recording that wasn't bad.

Allan Holdsworth (Music UK 1983)

Although Allan doesn't see himself as a jazz guitarist, in his youth he listened to a lot of jazz records belonging to his father, which featured Charlie Christian and Joe Pass. ‘I'd heard a lot of jazz guitar before I'd even seen a guitar. I listened to Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix too, but what I always tried to catch from people, was the essence of what they were saying, rather than the way they were doing it. The last thing I wanted was to sit down and calculate what they did, just so I could do it like them. What I wanted to do was find a way to get something that was as good as that musically, and that's my aim. To continuously try and play better, without deliberately playing like someone else.' Allan Holdsworth's morals were firmly planted when I quizzed him about the offer of a job with Miles Davis, should the offer ever arise?

‘I don't know, it depends on what I'd be asked to do (laughs).'

Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)

What guitar players did you listen to when you were first learning how to play?

From that time period, it was mostly the records that my dad had. So originally it was Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian. And then it was Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, and Jimmy Raney. All those really great guys. However, I wasn't really focused on listening to the guitar. I listened to a lot of music. My dad had a lot of classical music, which was very inspiring to me. There was Debussy, Ravel, Béla Bartók, Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland. I was influenced by a lot of other things besides jazz.

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: Were you listening to any guitarists at that time?

AH: Of course when I listened to Benny Goodman, I was exposed to his guitarist, Charlie Christian. I also loved Django Reinhardt, but there was something about the electric guitar that I was drawn to. So I tried to learn Charlie Christian solos. I absorbed them quite quickly. Then I would play two of his solos and then play one of my own. I couldn't really create, and realized this was not a good process for me. I needed a different direction. I soon purchased some records by John Coltrane and this changed my whole life.

Allan Holdsworth: An interview (Atavachron 1994)

MP: Which of your father's records did you used to listen to? I heard you say that. What are the ones that really "did it" for you?

AH: All of them. I used to listen to all of them. Most of them... we had Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Charlie Christian... Django Reinhardt. Now there, you know-Django Reinhardt-and Charlie Christian were probably the biggest influences once I started to play guitar, but before that, I didn't really pay any more attention to it because I heard the music in the notes. [to his kids, who are wanting to order pizza] Mom can do that! Jeez, I'm the one who's doing the interview! You don't want to order the pizza?!? Starve to death, then!

Allan Holdsworth Jam (Jazziz 1994)

Holdsworth sees his music as deriving from a combination of jazz, rock, and classical influences. He cites the harmonic influence of Debussy, Ravel, and Copland, as well as John Coltrane, Charlie Christian, and other role models. But, while his place in the fusion guitar pantheon is secure, he cringes at being associated with the f-word. There is something patently different about Holdsworth's bittersweet music, as compared to the typically upbeat, chops shop fusion.

Allan Holdsworth in exclusive LMS interview (tlms.co.uk 2000)

Merlin Rhys Jones started by asking Allan about the influence of John Coltrane on his playing...

Allan Holdsworth: ... that's when I started going out and buying tons of Coltrane records, everything I could find. My Dad had a lot of records and I started out copying Charlie Christian solos. By the time I discovered Coltrane I had learned to just absorb the (musical) experience. I never analysed or transcribed anything (Coltrane) did because it was very spirited, with a lot of heart but it was also heady. Coltarne Sounds was my favourite record.

I also listened to a lot of Chopin and Debussy. (My Dad) knew I wouldn't get anywhere with the piano so he gave me a guitar, but the guitar wasn't that much better! He used to sneak me into clubs to see electric players.

MRJ: How old were you then?

AH: 17

Allan Holdsworth interview (Abstract Logix 2004)

Fan: You have pioneered a voice in music and influenced your peers and your fans. Who are some of your favorite guitar pioneers?

AH: Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Jimmy Raney, Wes Montgomery in fact most of the great guitar players; I loved them all. The newer guys: John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale... They?re all amazing with very different musical personalities. Of course there's Michael Brecker and Keith Jarrett, but they don't play the guitar (thank God!). I think I've been influenced by all instruments. I was influenced a lot by horn players, from Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane on to Michael Brecker. There's many, many more that you could fill this whole page with people that have brought great gifts to the world of music.

In Memoriam: DownBeat’s Final Interview with Allan Holdsworth (Downbeat 2017)

You wanted to take up a horn rather than guitar when you were younger. You really didn't think of yourself as a guitar player. Do you still feel that way and why?

Pretty much. I just think of myself as a musician. I always think of an instrument as exactly that, it's just a tool for you to try and express yourself. My dad was a fine pianist and he had a lot of great records and beautiful music.

I grew up listening to Ravel, Debussy, Bartók and jazz like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhart. It was incredibly inspiring! And I was given a guitar and I said “What the hell is this?!”

Like I said, my dad was a piano player, and I tried that, but I just didn't have the feel for it. I wanted to play a horn or violin because you could change the loudness or softness of a sound. With a percussive instrument like piano or guitar I didn't think I could get the feel I wanted on it. But I tried the guitar and found myself trying to make it not sound like a guitar [laughs].

But eventually I fell in love with the guitar for other reasons. I played the violin for a couple years too but I missed playing chords. So I went back to the guitar and used distortion to sustain notes and make it do things it wouldn't normally do. So, here I am playing the guitar… or trying to!

Guitarist's Guitarist (Jazz Times 1989)

"The important thing that my dad did was to open me up to all kinds of creative ideas. I was exposed to music from the very beginning, As far back as I can remember I used to play his old albums,- even 78 rpm records, and I heard Charlie Parker and Charlie Christian very early on. And, of course I'd get to hear my dad play on his gigs. When I was about five or six he made me a record player out of one of those mechanical, wind-up turntables. He was into hi-fi, with mono amplifiers, and building stuff."

Joe Satriani Meets Allan Holdsworth (Musician special edition 1993)

ALLAN HOLDSWORTH: "Well, because my dad was a jazz musician he had records of most instrumentalists including guitarists, so after Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt, I grew up listening to Joe Pass and Jimmy Raney; I loved Jimmy Raney. And all those guys were absolutely wonderful, but there was something about the guitar that I didn't like even then. Guitar chords only consist of four DIFFERENT notes, generally---you can play more, but they're usually duplicates or an octave---so it becomes more limited. When I'd hear chord things, I'd recognize the sound of the chords straight away; you almost knew what was coming. You'd appreciate the fact that it was MARVELOUS---it never took anything away from that---but I thought it would be nice to do something, where the chords sounded different. And unfortunately, unless you have two guitar players and they don't duplicate notes, the chords will naturally sound a bit more ambiguous in some ways, although they're not, you know? So I started to think of chords as being related to families. I don't hear one voicing move to another; it's like, that chord belongs to a family, a scale, and the next one belongs to a different family, and I try to hear the FAMILIES change as the sequence goes. You can play anything that sounds nice, as long as the notes are contained in those scales as they move from one to another. I hear that in piano players I like. They don't sound trapped with this chord-symbol thing. Whenever I hear Keith Jarrett, it's just these harmonic/melodic ideas, and they all sound RIGHT, but at the same time have this kind of FREEDOM in the way they move."

Legato Land (Guitar Techniques 1996)

There are other surprises on the album, such as the jazzed up instrumental version of the Beatles' Norwegian Wood, and a strangely lilting cover of Django Reinhardt's jazz classic Nuages.

"What I wanted to do was my own rendition of something Django had done, rather than try to do something in a way that he might have done it, which I couldn't do anyway. For the introduction I just took and reharmonised the middle section. Then we just played over the sequence and the melody actually comes at the end. Django was always one of my main inspirations when I was younger. My dad used to have lots of Django records and I thought he was absolutely amazing.

"There's something special about those older players. I notice this when I listen to Charlie Parker records. Other bebop players have refined it all since then, but it's been cleaned up and it just doesn't have the vibe that it used to have. It used to have a mystery about it before they figured out how to do it. It's that mystery kind of thing in music that really excites me.

Mike Pachelli Show (video transcript 1991)

MP: You mentioned Charlie Christian, did you memorize Charlie Christian's solos?

AH: I learned a few Charlie Christian solos from albums that he was on, but that was one of the things that I realized was that I wasn't really learning anything from copying anything and I realized I needed to figure out what were a person, what they were thinking or how they were going about it, it was more important than actually what they played from the copying point of view. If I copied something and I was to do two solos from the same piece of music I realized that when I played the one I'd copied that was fine but when it came up to my own it was nowhere, so I realized early in the beginning I needed to find out a way to use whatever I had to play the kind of music that I wanted to play, and I been struggling with it ever since.

No Rearview Mirrors (20th Century Guitar 2007)

TCG: It's easy for me to forget when I'm around you, the effect that you've had on musicians everywhere, and in guitar, there are just a slew of other guitar players that you've influenced or outright have tried to copy your style and it must be daunting for you, you know...I mean a certain amount of imitation is flattery but you know, the Allan impersonators still exist!

AH: (laughter) The thing that was interesting to me that when I first started listening to...first started playing and I was listening to my dad's records and I heard Charlie Christian, and I really...I tried to copy Charlie Christian, and actually, I got pretty good at it, you know, but then I realized, "Well Jesus, man, you're only getting good at sounding like somebody else, you know...And then I caught it real early, and just said "Ah, I know what I need to focus on. I need to focus on the quality of what I'm playing as opposed to the actual, physical, you know, thing of what I'm doing, so I stopped doing it like right then, like within the first couple of years, and I just concentrated on trying to figure out a way to do what I thought was, just to try to elevate my playing without it being...I was always influenced by other people, but I would stay away from...I never analyzed anything to the point where you know, I was actually doing the same thing. I would try to sort of come up with another way of doing something that sounded like it or similar to it, without it actually being a direct, you know...knockoff, because it's pointless. One of the things that's really nice about music is that you progress, and you know, you never get anywhere in the end just...you know, it's an everlasting quest, you know, it's not like you're ever going to get anywhere, you know, you just try to get better, but I just think that, I can't understand how anybody would get any satisfaction...the feeling sometimes when most of the time I don't like what I do but once in a while, something will happen and I say, "Yeah okay...That was all right!" And at that point, I can't imagine anybody having...that's a nice feeling, that little bit of satisfaction once in a while, and I can't imagine anybody who spent their whole life, cloning somebody, how they could get any satisfaction at all. It would drive me absolutely insane!

TCG: There was show called The Stepford Wives.

AH: Oh, I saw that (laughter)

No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)

Q: What were your first recollections of music , and how did you first become interested in music?

Allan: It was all the records that my dad had. Being a jazz piano player, he had a lot of records lying around, and that's how I first heard Charlie Christian, on some of the old Benny Goodman albums. So I kind of grew up listening to that. He also had Joe Pass, Jimmy Raney, Tal Farlow - those guys. I always loved music, I loved listening to it, but I absolutely had no intention of becoming a musician, or anything. I just thought music was something to enjoy and listen to, and that's all I did.

Q: After you first became aware of Coltrane and Miles Davis, what were some of the other records that you were listening to and really pouring over?

Allan: I went back to listening as soon as I learned a little bit more about guitar. I started listening all over again to all those Jim Hall, Joe Pass, Jimmy Raney albums. I was really a big fan of Jimmy Raney, because, although all of those guys are absolutely wonderful, there was just something about the sound of the guitar I didn't like. I didn't like that rubber band, dead-tape-wound-string sound, and Jimmy Raney always seemed to have a little bit more of a sparkle in his sound. It sounded a little bit more lively, like Charlie Christian's sound-more vocal, not so dumpy sounding. I realized that I wasn't happy with the sound of the guitar. I wanted to make it something else, but it happened so gradually, I didn't even realize I was playing the guitar. It was a hobby, like someone who rides a bike. I had no intention of trying to make a living from it.

Player Of The Month (Beat Instrumental 1978)

The musical soil which was eventually to allow Allan's musical talent to sprout was therefore ripe and ready to be drawn on when the time came. "I listened to all the records my dad had, and he had a lot of classical records, he had those old Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw records, and that's when I first heard guitar - it was Charlie Christian on those records. But it wasn't till after I'd been playing the guitar a little bit that I realized what I'd been hearing all those years was this amazing player. It had gone right by me."

The Allan Holdsworth Interview! (Jazz Houston 2006)

MM: Who were your influences musically?

AH: The first guy was Charlie Christian that really did it for me and Django because he was one of the only European guys out there. Of course Jim Hall and Joe pass, but I was really more interested in saxophone than guitar.

The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever (Guitar Player 2008)

At what point did you decide to dedicate your life to music, and have things turned out at all like you'd imagined they might?

No, things have turned out nothing like I'd imagined. And I often think about that whenever we go to music schools, because I'm sure almost everyone who goes to a music school is there because they've already decided that that's what they want to do. But for me it was the absolute opposite. My father was a wonderful piano player who had a great record collection, including all the classic jazz records, and I just loved listening to music. I had no interest in learning an instrument until I was about 15, when I started thinking that maybe I'd like to get a clarinet or a saxophone. But in those days they were pretty expensive, so instead my dad gave me a guitar he had bought from my uncle. Then he bought me a couple of chord books and as soon as he saw that I was making a little progress, he started trying to help me, and that's when I developed an interest. And he had records by all these great guitar players lying around, like Jimmy Rainey, Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, and Charlie Christian, who became my first major influence.

The Open End (Boston Sound Report 1988)

BSR: Who are some of your early and current influences?

AH: Some of my early influences were Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, I suppose, Jimmy Rainey and Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, and all those guys. They were the records that my father had. He was a jazz piano player, and he always had these records lying around. This was before I started playing. So I heard them all when I was growing up.

The Reluctant Guitarist (Jazz Journal 1992)

In pursuit of solo lines, Holdsworth did his share of lifting and dropping the tone arm, but be found the results generally disappointing.

‘My dad had a lot of Charlie Christian records, and I used to learn a lot of his stuff, but it wasn't long before I realised that when I came to play my own solo, it sounded as bad as it did before I tried to learn what the other guy was doing. I realised I had to go back and find out how I could play over the things. I started taking chord sequences and working out what I could do that would sound good, and not worry about what someone else was doing over it. And I still feel like that. I'm fascinated when I hear what other people do, but that's as far as it goes, I don't sit down and try and figure out what it was. I'll try and do something else of my own and be as elevated as that.'

The Unreachable Star (Guitar World 1989)

GW: What players do you feel epitomize the proper way the instrument should be played?

HOLDSWORTH: Well, in a funny way all the people I like are all the people who are doing something different with it. From the beginning, I've enjoyed players like Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass, and more recently, Pat Metheny who did a whole thing on his own. Scott Henderson is doing something unique, and now; Frank Gambale comes along and does something great. It just shows you that you shouldn't be so resolute about things like music. People waste time spending hours trying to clone something when they could be spending hours practicing something really different.

CHARLIE PARKER

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Cymbiosis: I understand if your family could have afforded it you would have had a saxophone instead of a guitar when you were younger?

Holdsworth: Yeah, that's what I really wanted—to play saxophone.

Cymbiosis: Why was that?

Holdsworth: Well, I just loved the saxophone. It was the sound. I think people are first attracted to music and then to specific sounds within it. I also liked violin later. But at the time I liked saxophone more, because it was on most of the records that my dad had. He was a jazz player and had a lot of jazz records.

Cymbiosis: So you had things like John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw?

Holdsworth: Yeah, Dad played in the Air Force band during the war, and they played a lot of swing.

Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)

The thing I liked about jazz was that I had a fascination with improvising. I didn't want to stick to any one style of jazz. I just liked being presented with a set of chord changes, and then trying to think of putting something interesting on top of it. I didn't really focus a lot on the guitar. I listened to a lot of horn players, like Charlie Parker of course, and when I discovered John Coltrane, that was it. That guy changed my whole life. I couldn't hear any lineage in his playing. Somehow, he seemed to be connected to the instrument in a way that I had never heard before. So I became really fascinated with John Coltrane, and I bought just about every record I could get my hands on.

Allan Holdsworth interview (Abstract Logix 2004)

Fan: You have pioneered a voice in music and influenced your peers and your fans. Who are some of your favorite guitar pioneers?

AH: Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Jimmy Raney, Wes Montgomery in fact most of the great guitar players; I loved them all. The newer guys: John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale... They?re all amazing with very different musical personalities. Of course there's Michael Brecker and Keith Jarrett, but they don't play the guitar (thank God!). I think I've been influenced by all instruments. I was influenced a lot by horn players, from Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane on to Michael Brecker. There's many, many more that you could fill this whole page with people that have brought great gifts to the world of music.

Allan Holdsworth’s Untold Secrets + Worthy Quotes (Guitar Player 1990)

The Precious Past

As time goes on, things move forward in some directions, but backward in others. It's like the quality of an automobile; they can make a car go faster, but it's not made like it used to be. People say that .all the time. There are some really deep, really incredible high-quality things you can get [from] the past. For example, a saxophone player [who's starting up right now] might not have heard anything {further] back than Michael Brecker, who's absolutely incredible. But when you go back and hear some of the older guys, then you realize - well, I did - that all these guys who came up afterwards and tried to sound like them never really did sound like them at all. There was something missing. When I go back and listen to a Charlie Parker recording, he sounds unbelievable; it's so fresh. You have to wade through the poor sound quality of the recordings, but boy, it was happening! Cannonball Adderley and Coltrane, man, those guys were unbelievable. Some of those Miles Davis albums both of them were on - wow, that was something. As things move forward, something else moves back. It's inevitable, because that's the nature of things. It's really great for people to go back and have a look, because otherwise they're really going to miss something. Things get lost that should never have gotten lost.

Guitarist's Guitarist (Jazz Times 1989)

"To be honest," he said in a conversation in mid-April. "I call it jazz because the essence of the music is improvisation, and that makes it jazz to me. My dad used to tell me that to him jazz meant improvisation, and it was supposed to be current with what was happening at any particular point in time. Unfortunately some people insist upon tieing jazz to a specific time period. And that's not completely right, I don't think. I always feel that what Charlie Parker did when he came on the scene, or what any other new player does, should be different from what went before. That's what's jazz to me. That's the essence of it,"-

"The important thing that my dad did was to open me up to all kinds of creative ideas. I was exposed to music from the very beginning, As far back as I can remember I used to play his old albums,- even 78 rpm records, and I heard Charlie Parker and Charlie Christian very early on. And, of course I'd get to hear my dad play on his gigs. When I was about five or six he made me a record player out of one of those mechanical, wind-up turntables. He was into hi-fi, with mono amplifiers, and building stuff."

The Allan Holdsworth Interview! (Jazz Houston 2006)

MM: Who are the sax players that influenced you?

AH: Charlie Parker because of records my father had…also Cannonball Adderly, but really Coltrane was the main one. He was spiritually connected to some pipeline where he could bypass all the stuff you had to go thru a thousand times to get to what you really wanted to say. I think that was the biggest thing that I learned from that---that “oh my God!” it's possible to play over this thing without doing things that you've heard before. It was very inspiring for me and I went out and bought everything he played on. I remember when he passed away I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for hours. It was weird because I felt like I knew him.

MM: Do you think that was the demarcation line in your life musically?

AH: Well it gave me a lot of ideas, it gave me a lot of…there were other ways of doing and playing things. It gave me freedom to do things that you hadn't really heard before…you know it didn't have to be diatonically correct or whatever if it's working. So it was that freedom to not have to make it sound like something you've heard already. Different lines, different chords, some specific formula to get away from…

The Open End (Boston Sound Report 1988)

BSR: Were there any saxophone players who influenced you?

AH: Oh yeah; I liked Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Michael Brecker... Michael Brecker is unbelievable. I listen to all different kinds of instruments. I do like horn players because I wanted to play the horn. I didn't really want to play the guitar.

BSR: It doesn't show. (laughs)

AH: It does to me.

Whisky Galore (Guitarist 2000)

You don't fit in with traditional jazzers and yet the music is so harmonically complex that only sophisticated listeners will get it...

"When people mention the word ‘jazz' I think of it as music that's harmonic, melodic, rhythmic and a vehicle for improvisation. And that's it: it's not a particular form of music. When you mention jazz to some people they'll think of Acker Bilk and others will say Charlie Parker. Jazz is a very good word, but people have shrunk it by using it in the wrong way. It's like fusion. What I have come to know of fusion is a music that I detest, but there's nothing wrong with the word; it's a perfectly good word."

CHICK COREA

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Holdsworth: In a way, yeah, because it's so new. I want to be able to make as Individual a sound on that as what people think I do on the guitar. It has to be possible. I guess if I could do that, it would prove something. [Laughs]

Cymbiosis: And leave your mark on the world?

Holdsworth: Not like that. Just for my own satisfaction. I would like to be able to create—like Jan Hammer or Joe Zawinul. There's not many synthesists you can say that about. They're recognizable through the music. When I hear Chick Corea play synthesizer, I can recognize the musician—I can hear the notes through the sound. It's still the music that's the most important thing. That's all I want to achieve. I can now make a lot more sounds, so it's more inspirational to me in the writing sense. Sometimes I find a sound and I'll go off on a whole other thing than I would have done If I'd just been trying to write a piece on guitar.

Guitar Like A Saxophone (Guitar World 1987)

Scott Henderson explains:

"I teach at the Guitar Institute Of Technology in Los Angeles and I get all these students coming in who try to copy the Holdsworth thing. But most guys who cop Holdsworth tend to just take it off the surface. They don't get to the heart of the musician. They cop all the fast shit but they leave out the incredible musicality of what makes Holdsworth so great. Sure, it's a thrill for a younger guitarist to cop a line from Holdsworth that's really, really fast. But it's often a trap. That's the worst thing that can happen to you ... to be accused of sounding like somebody else, only not as good. And that's something that Allan Holdsworth will never be accused of. He doesn't sound like anybody else in the world." Miles Davis, Joe Zawinul and Chick Corea would heartily agree. All three jazz giants were reportedly considering Holdsworth for a featured spot in their bands.

CHOPIN

Allan Holdsworth in exclusive LMS interview (tlms.co.uk 2000)

Merlin Rhys Jones started by asking Allan about the influence of John Coltrane on his playing...

Allan Holdsworth: ... that's when I started going out and buying tons of Coltrane records, everything I could find. My Dad had a lot of records and I started out copying Charlie Christian solos. By the time I discovered Coltrane I had learned to just absorb the (musical) experience. I never analysed or transcribed anything (Coltrane) did because it was very spirited, with a lot of heart but it was also heady. Coltarne Sounds was my favourite record.

I also listened to a lot of Chopin and Debussy. (My Dad) knew I wouldn't get anywhere with the piano so he gave me a guitar, but the guitar wasn't that much better! He used to sneak me into clubs to see electric players.

MRJ: How old were you then?

AH: 17

CITYSCAPES

The Unreachable Star (Guitar World 1989)

That girl I mentioned who really liked "Distance Versus Desire - I was really kind of knocked out by that, and it opened my eyes to the fact that though it was played on an instrument that has caused me to be rejected by one half of the population, I was able to reach somebody else with it who knew very little about what I was doing normally So there was a classic example of a person who was exposed to something and liked it. If we could only get more creative people involved in radio stations or record companies, or people who actually knew what they were talking about! The whole thing's like a Monty Python sketch; it's so ridiculous that it's laughable. I couldn't go into a hospital and pretend to carve somebody up. Oh, pass me the scalpel, sir. But you've got people doing that in other jobs! I was fortunate enough one time to be talking to Michael Brecker about what's probably my favorite album of all time, Cityscapes, by Claus Ogerman and Brecker. God, what an awesome re cord that is, man; everybody should own it. It's a really subtle, deep record with wonderful orchestration and fantastic playing by Brecker, and the record company wanted to market it as "The Joy Of Sax." And you can't even find that record; I mean, God, who's in charge of this? It's so wrong, man. I used to always want to fight it, and I'll continue to fight, but I can't continue to fight and survive. Of course, I'll have to, and I'll continue by just doing what I want to do - that's the only way I know how to fight against it. Do what I want to do, refuse to conform, and get another job [laughs].

CLARE DU LUNE

Patron Saint (Guitar Player 2004)

I've never heard you cite any compositional influences.

Most of them are classical composers such as Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Copland, and Bartok-particularly his string quartets. I still can't listen to Debussy's "Clair de Lune" because, if I do, I'll cry [laughs]. I can't get past the first two bars. It's really weird, man. It tears me up. What I took from those guys was how their tunes make me feel in my heart. It's about the emotion, rather than what the piece actually is. I think that's because I want to be influenced, which is a whole lot different than trying to work out precisely what someone is doing.

Whisky Galore (Guitarist 2000)

Do simple chords and music just sound ugly to you, or shallow?

"No, no, not at all. In fact I love some pop music and hate some jazz music - especially the kind of jazz that's everything you've ever heard... again! For example, Bonnie Raitt's I Can't Make You Love Me is beautiful. And the most glorious composition of all time is Debussy's Clare de Lune. I almost can't listen to it without it doing something to me. But it's so simple, but it's like the magic deception."

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Allan Holdsworth (Beat Instrumental 1979)

"I liked quite a lot of classical music but was really more interested in people who could improvise. That was something that fascinated me. Luckily my father was a Jazz pianist and had quite a lot of records which gave me something to go on. When my Uncle gave me a Spanish guitar I dug those records out and listened to them."

Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)

What guitar players did you listen to when you were first learning how to play?

From that time period, it was mostly the records that my dad had. So originally it was Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian. And then it was Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, and Jimmy Raney. All those really great guys. However, I wasn't really focused on listening to the guitar. I listened to a lot of music. My dad had a lot of classical music, which was very inspiring to me. There was Debussy, Ravel, Béla Bartók, Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland. I was influenced by a lot of other things besides jazz.

Allan Holdsworth Jam (Jazziz 1994)

Holdsworth sees his music as deriving from a combination of jazz, rock, and classical influences. He cites the harmonic influence of Debussy, Ravel, and Copland, as well as John Coltrane, Charlie Christian, and other role models. But, while his place in the fusion guitar pantheon is secure, he cringes at being associated with the f-word. There is something patently different about Holdsworth's bittersweet music, as compared to the typically upbeat, chops shop fusion.

Any Key In The U.K. (Unknown publication 1978)

What kind of music were you listening to when you came down to London?

We'll, all sorts really. From extremes to extremes. I listened to a lot of classical music, not classical guitar music so much, but a lot of violin music. I like jazz as well. I don't like the word ‘jazz' but I like anything to do with improvisation. Like, classical music is virtually just one guy's improvisation but it's not spontaneous.

Guitar Phenom Allan Holdsworth Says He’s Not That Impressed By Flash (The Georgia Straight 1983)

What music do you most enjoy listening to in your spare time?

I listen to Keith Jarrett, and I listen to a lot of classical music. And I'm always made aware of new players 'cause being surrounded by musicians, they're always saying, “Hey, check this out, check that out.”

No Record Contract, No Big Hoopla, But The Fans Have Kept The Faith For Allan Holdsworth (Guitar World 1982)

"There were a couple of guys I met, classical guitar players, who asked me if I'd been taught, because my left hand was very legitimate, as a classical player's. I didn't do it like that- nobody told me about it. I just looked at the problem and said, ‘Well, logically it would be better for your hand to be in this position."

Patron Saint (Guitar Player 2004)

I've never heard you cite any compositional influences.

Most of them are classical composers such as Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Copland, and Bartok-particularly his string quartets. I still can't listen to Debussy's "Clair de Lune" because, if I do, I'll cry [laughs]. I can't get past the first two bars. It's really weird, man. It tears me up. What I took from those guys was how their tunes make me feel in my heart. It's about the emotion, rather than what the piece actually is. I think that's because I want to be influenced, which is a whole lot different than trying to work out precisely what someone is doing.

Player Of The Month (Beat Instrumental 1978)

The musical soil which was eventually to allow Allan's musical talent to sprout was therefore ripe and ready to be drawn on when the time came. "I listened to all the records my dad had, and he had a lot of classical records, he had those old Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw records, and that's when I first heard guitar - it was Charlie Christian on those records. But it wasn't till after I'd been playing the guitar a little bit that I realized what I'd been hearing all those years was this amazing player. It had gone right by me."

The Open End (Boston Sound Report 1988)

BSR: Do you see yourself doing that with an orchestra or just with the SynthAxe?

AH: I would do it just with the SynthAxe. I'd have total control over it. Then I don't have to sit there with some guy who plays the violin and doesn't want to play this shit. (Laughs). Some of those guys can be a big pain, especially with different kinds of music. I always like that thing that Keith Jarrett says about classical musicians: "They are worse than the audience." I guess a lot of those guys only want to do certain things. It's like a job. They are kind of like worker bees. Their creativity must be on a different plane from a lot of jazz musicians. A lot of these guys seem to be stuck up about it, but the fact is that their creativity level isn't very high at all. It is with some people-obviously there are some wonderful musicians. Generally speaking, the guys in the band, the orchestra people, a lot of them are unhappy. That's how it seems to me. It's like they just sit there and read newspapers and play their part. To me that's not music. You have to find people who are really involved with and into it. You have to have someone there kicking their ass constantly, trying to get them to do it the way you want it, or you just do it yourself, with synthesizers, with much more control. Obviously you don't have the same sound palette that you would with a real orchestra, but eventually you might.

Whisky Galore (Guitarist 2000) 2 references coded 1

Allan, the average listener would be very bemused by your music. Not too many singalong choruses there...

"Not really, no. I don't know where it comes from really; it's like a little portal to the other side. I suppose it was initially classical music, which was what my father played around the house; he had loads of records so there's obviously a lot of classical in there. But he was also a jazz musician and had a lot of jazz in his collection too, so that was another obvious source of information."

Your guitar tone is huge and thick, almost like a baritone sax...

"Well that's the kind of sound I've been striving to achieve. I'll never get exactly what I want, but it's just like music itself. When I first started listening as a kid, I'd hear some piece of classical music and it would make me want to cry. And I didn't understand it, so instinctively I knew I wanted to be a listener and an absorber of music. It's like when you first fall in love and it's an agony and an ecstasy at the same time; that's because there's something that you don't understand and that's what I love about music. It's like being in love with something you know you're never going to get. And it's the same with the sound: to me the sound is part of the music; I've always strived to achieve a certain sound and that's a neverending quest for me."

CLAUS OGERMAN

The Unreachable Star (Guitar World 1989)

That girl I mentioned who really liked "Distance Versus Desire - I was really kind of knocked out by that, and it opened my eyes to the fact that though it was played on an instrument that has caused me to be rejected by one half of the population, I was able to reach somebody else with it who knew very little about what I was doing normally So there was a classic example of a person who was exposed to something and liked it. If we could only get more creative people involved in radio stations or record companies, or people who actually knew what they were talking about! The whole thing's like a Monty Python sketch; it's so ridiculous that it's laughable. I couldn't go into a hospital and pretend to carve somebody up. Oh, pass me the scalpel, sir. But you've got people doing that in other jobs! I was fortunate enough one time to be talking to Michael Brecker about what's probably my favorite album of all time, Cityscapes, by Claus Ogerman and Brecker. God, what an awesome re cord that is, man; everybody should own it. It's a really subtle, deep record with wonderful orchestration and fantastic playing by Brecker, and the record company wanted to market it as "The Joy Of Sax." And you can't even find that record; I mean, God, who's in charge of this? It's so wrong, man. I used to always want to fight it, and I'll continue to fight, but I can't continue to fight and survive. Of course, I'll have to, and I'll continue by just doing what I want to do - that's the only way I know how to fight against it. Do what I want to do, refuse to conform, and get another job [laughs].

COLTRANES SOUND

Allan Holdsworth in exclusive LMS interview (tlms.co.uk 2000)

Merlin Rhys Jones started by asking Allan about the influence of John Coltrane on his playing...

Allan Holdsworth: ... that's when I started going out and buying tons of Coltrane records, everything I could find. My Dad had a lot of records and I started out copying Charlie Christian solos. By the time I discovered Coltrane I had learned to just absorb the (musical) experience. I never analysed or transcribed anything (Coltrane) did because it was very spirited, with a lot of heart but it was also heady. Coltarne Sounds was my favourite record.

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: This was early Coltrane?

AH: I just bought everything I could find that he was on. There was some with Miles, and most of it was from the "Atlantic" period. "Coltrane's Sound" is probably still my favorite recording of all time. When I heard people like Cannonball Adderly, I loved it but I could hear where it was coming from. I heard the history and evolution. But Coltrane sounded like he short-circuited or bypassed something and he got to the heart and truth of the music. He was playing over the same things but he wasn't doing it the same way. He didn't sound like anyone else. I thought this would be great, to play over chord changes, from something other than a bebop perspective. Basically this is what I've been trying to do from the beginning. Unfortunately, I never saw Coltrane perform. When he died, I cried for hours. I felt like I knew him.

Allan Holdsworth interview (Abstract Logix 2004)

Fan: : If you were shipwrecked on a desert island, what ten albums would you bring with you?

AH: I wouldn?t take any. (Laughs) I'd just hang out on the beach and drink Bohemia. I'd take more the ten albums in my head... But I might just sneak along a copy of Coltrane's Sound.

Allan Holdsworth interview (Music Maker 2003)

Any period or album of John Coltrane you particularly like? I like mostly all of it. But I particularly liked the album, my favorite, I actually was telling Ernest one of my favorites was an album called Coltrane's Sound. That was one of my favorite Coltrane albums. ‘The Night Has A Thousand Eyes' and then he playes my favorite tune on that record was the last one, it was ‘Satellite'.They played it as a trio.McCoy Tyner played on the whole record except that one track. And it's not because I don't love McCoy Tyner, I do, I think he's insane. But is was just that one piece of music, it was like.. jezus that's pretty awesome. Yeah, I still love that one.

COPLAND

Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)

What guitar players did you listen to when you were first learning how to play?

From that time period, it was mostly the records that my dad had. So originally it was Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian. And then it was Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, and Jimmy Raney. All those really great guys. However, I wasn't really focused on listening to the guitar. I listened to a lot of music. My dad had a lot of classical music, which was very inspiring to me. There was Debussy, Ravel, Béla Bartók, Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland. I was influenced by a lot of other things besides jazz.

Allan Holdsworth Jam (Jazziz 1994)

Holdsworth sees his music as deriving from a combination of jazz, rock, and classical influences. He cites the harmonic influence of Debussy, Ravel, and Copland, as well as John Coltrane, Charlie Christian, and other role models. But, while his place in the fusion guitar pantheon is secure, he cringes at being associated with the f-word. There is something patently different about Holdsworth's bittersweet music, as compared to the typically upbeat, chops shop fusion.

Patron Saint (Guitar Player 2004)

I've never heard you cite any compositional influences.

Most of them are classical composers such as Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Copland, and Bartok-particularly his string quartets. I still can't listen to Debussy's "Clair de Lune" because, if I do, I'll cry [laughs]. I can't get past the first two bars. It's really weird, man. It tears me up. What I took from those guys was how their tunes make me feel in my heart. It's about the emotion, rather than what the piece actually is. I think that's because I want to be influenced, which is a whole lot different than trying to work out precisely what someone is doing.

CREAM

The Reluctant Virtuoso (Guitar World 1981)

Putting this rather dispiriting state of events aside for the moment, we make a desultory stab at the past. Was his first professional band, Tempest (Warner Brothers, now deleted from catalog), an attempt by British drummer Jon Hiseman to recreate his own version of Cream?

"It was really, that's why I left. He even wanted it to be more of a Cream than it was on the record. I couldn't stand it so I just left. My playing is so bad on that anyway, it's so old. That was a long time ago."

The Silent Man In Tempest (disc 1973)

Hiseman's new line-up have already cut a debut album and on January 12 begin a series of European dates. By March they plan to hit the English university circuit. Tempest will probably be compared to early Cream, since the line-up and emphasis are often similar, yet Hiseman, as always, is reluctant to categorise his work.

"We're a new band that plays the music of today and not yesterday," he says, "But if people want to compare us with Cream that suits me down to the ground."

DEBUSSY

Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)

What guitar players did you listen to when you were first learning how to play?

From that time period, it was mostly the records that my dad had. So originally it was Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian. And then it was Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, and Jimmy Raney. All those really great guys. However, I wasn't really focused on listening to the guitar. I listened to a lot of music. My dad had a lot of classical music, which was very inspiring to me. There was Debussy, Ravel, Béla Bartók, Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland. I was influenced by a lot of other things besides jazz.

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: When you play chordally, obviously we're not talking standard II-V-I progressions. Are you following your ear or possibly that Ravel and DeBussy influence?

AH: It's just what I hear. If I write a piece of music, I try to get it harmonically settled. I don't really think about where it's going. I let it go where the music sounds like it wants to go.

Allan Holdsworth Jam (Jazziz 1994)

Holdsworth sees his music as deriving from a combination of jazz, rock, and classical influences. He cites the harmonic influence of Debussy, Ravel, and Copland, as well as John Coltrane, Charlie Christian, and other role models. But, while his place in the fusion guitar pantheon is secure, he cringes at being associated with the f-word. There is something patently different about Holdsworth's bittersweet music, as compared to the typically upbeat, chops shop fusion.

Allan Holdsworth in exclusive LMS interview (tlms.co.uk 2000)

Merlin Rhys Jones started by asking Allan about the influence of John Coltrane on his playing...

Allan Holdsworth: ... that's when I started going out and buying tons of Coltrane records, everything I could find. My Dad had a lot of records and I started out copying Charlie Christian solos. By the time I discovered Coltrane I had learned to just absorb the (musical) experience. I never analysed or transcribed anything (Coltrane) did because it was very spirited, with a lot of heart but it was also heady. Coltarne Sounds was my favourite record.

I also listened to a lot of Chopin and Debussy. (My Dad) knew I wouldn't get anywhere with the piano so he gave me a guitar, but the guitar wasn't that much better! He used to sneak me into clubs to see electric players.

MRJ: How old were you then?

AH: 17

In Memoriam: DownBeat’s Final Interview with Allan Holdsworth (Downbeat 2017)

You wanted to take up a horn rather than guitar when you were younger. You really didn't think of yourself as a guitar player. Do you still feel that way and why?

Pretty much. I just think of myself as a musician. I always think of an instrument as exactly that, it's just a tool for you to try and express yourself. My dad was a fine pianist and he had a lot of great records and beautiful music.

I grew up listening to Ravel, Debussy, Bartók and jazz like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhart. It was incredibly inspiring! And I was given a guitar and I said “What the hell is this?!”

Like I said, my dad was a piano player, and I tried that, but I just didn't have the feel for it. I wanted to play a horn or violin because you could change the loudness or softness of a sound. With a percussive instrument like piano or guitar I didn't think I could get the feel I wanted on it. But I tried the guitar and found myself trying to make it not sound like a guitar [laughs].

But eventually I fell in love with the guitar for other reasons. I played the violin for a couple years too but I missed playing chords. So I went back to the guitar and used distortion to sustain notes and make it do things it wouldn't normally do. So, here I am playing the guitar… or trying to!

Patron Saint (Guitar Player 2004)

I've never heard you cite any compositional influences.

Most of them are classical composers such as Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Copland, and Bartok-particularly his string quartets. I still can't listen to Debussy's "Clair de Lune" because, if I do, I'll cry [laughs]. I can't get past the first two bars. It's really weird, man. It tears me up. What I took from those guys was how their tunes make me feel in my heart. It's about the emotion, rather than what the piece actually is. I think that's because I want to be influenced, which is a whole lot different than trying to work out precisely what someone is doing.

The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever (Guitar Player 2008)

Since wealth and fame aren't your prime motivating factors, what is it that inspires you to get out of bed every day and keep making music?

It would have to be the music itself. There's something in the music that's been there as long as I can remember. I can recall listening to the records my dad gave me when I was really young, and when I would play some Debussy I'd start crying, and I'd ask myself, “What's going on?” And then I'd play something else and it would make me feel really happy. So right from the start, there was just something about music. I probably feel about music like some people do about religion. That's the thing for me.

The Reluctant Guitarist (Jazz Journal 1992)

‘The thing that always moved me most was hearing a really great chord, or just the way it was voiced. That's what I live for, that chord. It came mostly from classical music in the beginning.I got interested in certain composers - Bartok, the string quartets, and then The Concerto for Orchestra, and I also liked some of that opera, like The Miraculous Mandarin. Oh, and Debussy and Ravel. I love Ravel's string quartets. There's something about that period. Music was just starting to look like scenery; you could see things in the music.

Whisky Galore (Guitarist 2000)

Do simple chords and music just sound ugly to you, or shallow?

"No, no, not at all. In fact I love some pop music and hate some jazz music - especially the kind of jazz that's everything you've ever heard... again! For example, Bonnie Raitt's I Can't Make You Love Me is beautiful. And the most glorious composition of all time is Debussy's Clare de Lune. I almost can't listen to it without it doing something to me. But it's so simple, but it's like the magic deception."

DIZZY GILLESPIE

In Memoriam: DownBeat’s Final Interview with Allan Holdsworth (Downbeat 2017)

You wanted to take up a horn rather than guitar when you were younger. You really didn't think of yourself as a guitar player. Do you still feel that way and why?

Pretty much. I just think of myself as a musician. I always think of an instrument as exactly that, it's just a tool for you to try and express yourself. My dad was a fine pianist and he had a lot of great records and beautiful music.

I grew up listening to Ravel, Debussy, Bartók and jazz like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhart. It was incredibly inspiring! And I was given a guitar and I said “What the hell is this?!”

Like I said, my dad was a piano player, and I tried that, but I just didn't have the feel for it. I wanted to play a horn or violin because you could change the loudness or softness of a sound. With a percussive instrument like piano or guitar I didn't think I could get the feel I wanted on it. But I tried the guitar and found myself trying to make it not sound like a guitar [laughs].

But eventually I fell in love with the guitar for other reasons. I played the violin for a couple years too but I missed playing chords. So I went back to the guitar and used distortion to sustain notes and make it do things it wouldn't normally do. So, here I am playing the guitar… or trying to!

DJANGO REINHARDT

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Cymbiosis: And then you started listening to people like Charlie Christian.

Holdsworth: He was on the records that my father had, so I went back and listened to those with new ears because I realized that this guy was playing guitar. Charlie Christian was the first real big major guitar influence. . . and Django [Reinhardt]. But mostly Charlie Christian, because I just love the sound that he got, and I still love it today. There's a lot of jazz guitar sounds. Guys like Jimmy Ramey, Joe Pass, Tal Farlow, Jim Hall...I love the way they play. But there's something about the sound that I really don't like. It's kind of like a rubber bandy sound, a dead, short kind of guitar sound, [laughs] It's just not for me.

Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)

What guitar players did you listen to when you were first learning how to play?

From that time period, it was mostly the records that my dad had. So originally it was Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian. And then it was Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, and Jimmy Raney. All those really great guys. However, I wasn't really focused on listening to the guitar. I listened to a lot of music. My dad had a lot of classical music, which was very inspiring to me. There was Debussy, Ravel, Béla Bartók, Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland. I was influenced by a lot of other things besides jazz.

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: Were you listening to any guitarists at that time?

AH: Of course when I listened to Benny Goodman, I was exposed to his guitarist, Charlie Christian. I also loved Django Reinhardt, but there was something about the electric guitar that I was drawn to. So I tried to learn Charlie Christian solos. I absorbed them quite quickly. Then I would play two of his solos and then play one of my own. I couldn't really create, and realized this was not a good process for me. I needed a different direction. I soon purchased some records by John Coltrane and this changed my whole life.

Allan Holdsworth: An interview (Atavachron 1994)

MP: Which of your father's records did you used to listen to? I heard you say that. What are the ones that really "did it" for you?

AH: All of them. I used to listen to all of them. Most of them... we had Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Charlie Christian... Django Reinhardt. Now there, you know-Django Reinhardt-and Charlie Christian were probably the biggest influences once I started to play guitar, but before that, I didn't really pay any more attention to it because I heard the music in the notes. [to his kids, who are wanting to order pizza] Mom can do that! Jeez, I'm the one who's doing the interview! You don't want to order the pizza?!? Starve to death, then!

Allan Holdsworth Interview (richardhallebeek.com 1996)

-Can you tell us something about the tunes on the album and why you have chosen to record these?

‘We absolutely didn't want to play all the well known standards everybody is playing already, like ‘Stella By Starlight'. Gordon Beck wrote two tunes. We also play ‘countdown' by Coltrane and a few tunes from Joe Henderson, ‘Isotope' and ‘Inner Urge'. Then we do ‘How Deep Is The Ocean', which has always been a personal favorite, and ‘Nuages' from Django Reinhart. I definitely didn't want to do any of my own tunes this time. That way nobody could say " He wrote that just to make it easy to play over for him'. It's really the opposite. I find almost all the stuff I compose really hard to play over. I have written songs that were so hard to improvise over, I could cry. When I write a song, I think about the harmonies and which direction I want to take the song. I'll start improvising over it afterwards.A lot of people think that when you write your own tunes you make it deliberately easy on yourself. Believe me or not, with my music, this is normally no t the case.'

Allan Holdsworth interview (Abstract Logix 2004)

Fan: You have pioneered a voice in music and influenced your peers and your fans. Who are some of your favorite guitar pioneers?

AH: Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Jimmy Raney, Wes Montgomery in fact most of the great guitar players; I loved them all. The newer guys: John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale... They?re all amazing with very different musical personalities. Of course there's Michael Brecker and Keith Jarrett, but they don't play the guitar (thank God!). I think I've been influenced by all instruments. I was influenced a lot by horn players, from Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane on to Michael Brecker. There's many, many more that you could fill this whole page with people that have brought great gifts to the world of music.

In Memoriam: DownBeat’s Final Interview with Allan Holdsworth (Downbeat 2017)

You wanted to take up a horn rather than guitar when you were younger. You really didn't think of yourself as a guitar player. Do you still feel that way and why?

Pretty much. I just think of myself as a musician. I always think of an instrument as exactly that, it's just a tool for you to try and express yourself. My dad was a fine pianist and he had a lot of great records and beautiful music.

I grew up listening to Ravel, Debussy, Bartók and jazz like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhart. It was incredibly inspiring! And I was given a guitar and I said “What the hell is this?!”

Like I said, my dad was a piano player, and I tried that, but I just didn't have the feel for it. I wanted to play a horn or violin because you could change the loudness or softness of a sound. With a percussive instrument like piano or guitar I didn't think I could get the feel I wanted on it. But I tried the guitar and found myself trying to make it not sound like a guitar [laughs].

But eventually I fell in love with the guitar for other reasons. I played the violin for a couple years too but I missed playing chords. So I went back to the guitar and used distortion to sustain notes and make it do things it wouldn't normally do. So, here I am playing the guitar… or trying to!

Joe Satriani Meets Allan Holdsworth (Musician special edition 1993)

ALLAN HOLDSWORTH: "Well, because my dad was a jazz musician he had records of most instrumentalists including guitarists, so after Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt, I grew up listening to Joe Pass and Jimmy Raney; I loved Jimmy Raney. And all those guys were absolutely wonderful, but there was something about the guitar that I didn't like even then. Guitar chords only consist of four DIFFERENT notes, generally---you can play more, but they're usually duplicates or an octave---so it becomes more limited. When I'd hear chord things, I'd recognize the sound of the chords straight away; you almost knew what was coming. You'd appreciate the fact that it was MARVELOUS---it never took anything away from that---but I thought it would be nice to do something, where the chords sounded different. And unfortunately, unless you have two guitar players and they don't duplicate notes, the chords will naturally sound a bit more ambiguous in some ways, although they're not, you know? So I started to think of chords as being related to families. I don't hear one voicing move to another; it's like, that chord belongs to a family, a scale, and the next one belongs to a different family, and I try to hear the FAMILIES change as the sequence goes. You can play anything that sounds nice, as long as the notes are contained in those scales as they move from one to another. I hear that in piano players I like. They don't sound trapped with this chord-symbol thing. Whenever I hear Keith Jarrett, it's just these harmonic/melodic ideas, and they all sound RIGHT, but at the same time have this kind of FREEDOM in the way they move."

Legato Land (Guitar Techniques 1996)

There are other surprises on the album, such as the jazzed up instrumental version of the Beatles' Norwegian Wood, and a strangely lilting cover of Django Reinhardt's jazz classic Nuages.

"What I wanted to do was my own rendition of something Django had done, rather than try to do something in a way that he might have done it, which I couldn't do anyway. For the introduction I just took and reharmonised the middle section. Then we just played over the sequence and the melody actually comes at the end. Django was always one of my main inspirations when I was younger. My dad used to have lots of Django records and I thought he was absolutely amazing.

"There's something special about those older players. I notice this when I listen to Charlie Parker records. Other bebop players have refined it all since then, but it's been cleaned up and it just doesn't have the vibe that it used to have. It used to have a mystery about it before they figured out how to do it. It's that mystery kind of thing in music that really excites me.

The Allan Holdsworth Interview! (Jazz Houston 2006)

MM: Who were your influences musically?

AH: The first guy was Charlie Christian that really did it for me and Django because he was one of the only European guys out there. Of course Jim Hall and Joe pass, but I was really more interested in saxophone than guitar.

The Allan Holdsworth Interview (Musoscribe 2017)

Your early influences were the ambitious end of classical music: Stravinsky, Bartok, and the like. When you were young, did pop music filter its way into your musical sensibility?

My dad was a piano player, a really good pianist. He had lots of records around; they were mostly jazz records. But you don't wake up one day and sound like Django Reinhardt, so I decided to learn to play some of the pop music that I could play. And once I could, my interest in that music faded away. So pop music was just a starting point, although I still listen to all kinds of music.

The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever (Guitar Player 2008)

Describe the ways in which you use finger vibrato. The vibrato that I use mostly came from playing the violin, and is akin to the vibrato that classical players use, stretching and shortening the string by moving your finger backwards and forward, as opposed to across the fret. It's a totally different sound, because if you roll the finger back on a violin the note is going to go flat, and if you roll it forward it goes sharp, which doesn't happen when you are just bending the string from side to side. I've found that I can get some incredible variances in pitch using just that stretching/shortening technique alone.

That was a big part of Django's sound, too.

Right, and he had a huge influence on me.

The Open End (Boston Sound Report 1988)

BSR: Who are some of your early and current influences?

AH: Some of my early influences were Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, I suppose, Jimmy Rainey and Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, and all those guys. They were the records that my father had. He was a jazz piano player, and he always had these records lying around. This was before I started playing. So I heard them all when I was growing up.

DON HENLEY

The Allan Holdsworth Interview! (Jazz Houston 2006)

MM: Who's music are you listening to these days?

AH: Gee, all different kinds: I like Bartok to Don Henley. I love a lot of different music and the guys around me are constantly giving me stuff to listen to.

ERIC CLAPTON

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Cymbiosis: So Clapton's was more of a sound that you wanted?

Holdsworth: When I first heard Eric Clapton it was great. It was the first time I'd heard that kind of sound and the first time I'd heard the amplifier being used in that manner. Guys had done it before by accident, but this kind of thing was more deliberate. That sparked me off because it was kind of a horn, violin sound... just off in the right direction.

Allan Holdsworth (Music UK 1983)

Although Allan doesn't see himself as a jazz guitarist, in his youth he listened to a lot of jazz records belonging to his father, which featured Charlie Christian and Joe Pass. ‘I'd heard a lot of jazz guitar before I'd even seen a guitar. I listened to Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix too, but what I always tried to catch from people, was the essence of what they were saying, rather than the way they were doing it. The last thing I wanted was to sit down and calculate what they did, just so I could do it like them. What I wanted to do was find a way to get something that was as good as that musically, and that's my aim. To continuously try and play better, without deliberately playing like someone else.' Allan Holdsworth's morals were firmly planted when I quizzed him about the offer of a job with Miles Davis, should the offer ever arise?

‘I don't know, it depends on what I'd be asked to do (laughs).'

Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)

You've mentioned your jazz and classical influences. What about your rock influences? When did you get the idea to incorporate rock influences into your music?

That came just by the fact that I couldn't play anything else. When you first start out, you don't just wake up one day playing like Joe Pass. I started out with what I could actually play. I started with pop music, and then I started playing in local blues bands because it was easier. And then I got interested in more different kinds of music as I progressed.

Since I didn't really like the guitar because of its “percussive” sound, I got very excited when people like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton started using heavier distortion. I saw that I could get more sustain out of the guitar now.

No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)

Q: Did the English blues guitar players lie Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck have an influence on you?

Allan: Yeah. I was a big fan of Eric Clapton, especially in the beginning. I really liked the sound, because again, it was the sound. I thought, it doesn't sound like a normal guitar, its a little different. Since then it's been kind of a hell trying to squeeze a sound out of a guitar. Even now, I still don't like the guitar as an instrument to play. I like listening to other people play it, but it's not....everything I try to do with a guitar, the guitar doesn't want to do by nature, like I don't want to use distortion, but I have to use distortion to get the kind of sound I want, so then I have to figure out a way to make the distortion not so gnarly. I'm not really into that gnarly kind of sound anymore. It's like wanting your cake and eating it as well.

Q: Let's go back a little bit. After hearing Clapton and being a fan, did you then pursue getting equipment like that, and buy a Les Paul?

Allan: I never liked Les Pauls. After I had the semi-hollow guitar, my dad bought me a Strat, and I played that for about 6 months. Then I made the mistake of going into this music store in Leeds, and I saw a SG custom in the window, a white one with 3 pick-ups. I played that thing, and that was it. So a friend of mine took over the payments on the Strat, and I started a new payment plan on the SG. And I basically used that SG pretty much right the way through until Tony Williams. I love those guitars. That one was lost mysteriously. The tour manager of Tony's band was owed some money and he had my guitar, and what he did is, he took my guitar down to the pawn shop and sold it. So when I came back to carry on working with Tony, my guitar was in the window of Sam Ash's or something. And I couldn't get it back, because I couldn't prove that it was mine. It was there for sale, but they wanted so much money for it that I had to go buy another SG somewhere else. This was right around that time of the first albu m, Believe It. And then I got this other SG Custom, a really nice one, but it was black, and that was a beautiful guitar. Then the band got stranded in San Francisco and I had to sell that one to get home.

The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever (Guitar Player 2008)

On Tempest, you alternate between very original-sounding phrasing and note choices and Clapton-like playing. Were you going through an EC phase, or merely accommodating the bandleader?

I always liked Eric Clapton, especially in the early days. But in Tempest, Jon Hiseman, who is a wonderful musician and a really great guy, wanted that band to be a power-trio kind of thing, so I felt obliged to do what I was told to some extent. But I'd disobey orders and do what I wanted once in a while. He also used to point his finger at me and say, “Too many notes,” but all you'd have to do is wind forward 20 years to see about too many notes!

FATS WALLER

Allan Holdsworth: An interview (Atavachron 1994)

MP: Which of your father's records did you used to listen to? I heard you say that. What are the ones that really "did it" for you?

AH: All of them. I used to listen to all of them. Most of them... we had Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Charlie Christian... Django Reinhardt. Now there, you know-Django Reinhardt-and Charlie Christian were probably the biggest influences once I started to play guitar, but before that, I didn't really pay any more attention to it because I heard the music in the notes. [to his kids, who are wanting to order pizza] Mom can do that! Jeez, I'm the one who's doing the interview! You don't want to order the pizza?!? Starve to death, then!

FREDDIE HUBBARD

HUMBLE GUITAR MASTER ALLAN HOLDSWORTH ALWAYS STRUGGLES TO PAY THE RENT

For his three Town Pump dates, Holdsworth will be focusing on material from his new album Atavachron. Named after a word he heard in a Star Trek episode, the new LP features a newly developed instrument called the Synth Axe. “It's like the next generation of machines that guitarists can play to control synthesizers,” says Holdsworth. As well as his trusty Synth Axe, Holdsworth will be joined on stage by drummer Chad Wackerman, bassist Jimmy Johnson, and keyboardist Billy Childs (formerly with saxman Freddie Hubbard).

GARY MOORE

Allan Holdsworth (Guitarist 1985)

Are there any guitarists you especially like?

Oh yeah, thousands - ranging from Jimmy Rainey to John McLaughlin or, Pat Metheny to Gary Moore. If it's good, it doesn't matter what kind of music it is!

Guitar Like A Saxophone (Guitar World 1987)

Mr. Holdsworth has this dilemma. On the one hand, he's revered by nearly every aspiring six stringer m the free world, and a guru to guitar heroes like Ed Van Halen, Frank Zappa, Gary Moore and Neal Schon. And yet, this guitar hero's hero can't seem to get over with the record-buying public.

Guitar Phenom Allan Holdsworth Says He’s Not That Impressed By Flash (The Georgia Straight 1983)

Eddie Van Halen calls him “fantastic”. Gary Moore says “he's frightening. He's definitely dangerous and getting better all the time.” Carlos Santana gives him “more credit than anyone for just pure expression in soloing.” Journey's Neil Schon says: “If you play guitar and ever think you're too good, just listen to that guy.” And Pat Thrall calls him “The most innovative guitarist to come to rock.”

GEORGE BENSON

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: Must guitarists play out of visual shapes. Do you see the guitar as this type of instrument or is it just a tool for your vision?

AH: I think I see all instruments as just tools. I didn't see this in the beginning, but I do now. For example, if John Coltrane had played another instrument he still would have been John Coltrane. If John McGlaughlin had played trumpet he'd still be amazing. it comes from somewhere else. Most people are lucky and find the right instrument for them right away. But for me guitar was definitely not love at first sight. I grew to love it. If I had played horn, I would have really missed playing chords. There are still things I don't like about guitar. For example, I really don't like to use distortion to get sustain. I don't love it but it's a necessary evil. I'm always trying to find another way to get sustain without sounding distorted. Also that big jazz guitar sound never appealed to me. I like what other people do with it though. I think George Benson is amazing.

Blinded By Science (Guitar Player 1993)

"I see why people get accused of selling out. I read an article with George Benson and some guy was giving him a hard time, assuming that he had sold out. He said to the guy, ‘What makes you think what I do is so important that I have to sacrifice my family for it?' I can see the argument from both sides. But I've never been a showman - I even have a hard time talking to the audience. I would rather get a job doing something else than try to make money playing another form of music."

The Innocent Abroad (Musician 1984)

A better clue to Holdsworth's ultimate intentions came when George Benson and Joe Farrell became goggle-eyed by him at a Manhattan club and dragged CTI president Creed Taylor down to hear. The resulting 1975 LP Velvet Darkness, felicitously matched Allan with the tasteful but ennervated Alphonso Johnson and Narada Michael Walden; though all too short, it is one of Holdsworth's best early dates, ablaze with Hendrixian fission, virtuoso precision and genuine emotion.

HANK MARVIN

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: Tell us about your guitar evolution.

AH: I started out with a regular steel string flat top at a young age. Then I got a Hofner. I think it was called a "President." Later I put a pickup on it. My father's friend built me my first amplifier. I used to love going to his place and watch him solder and such. This got me started in my interest in electronics. When someone lent me a Stratocaster, that was it. I couldn't believe it. It sounded like the Shadows, or Hank Marvin who was a huge hero to me. I bought a Strat and used it enthusiastically for about six months till I tried a Gibson SG. It changed me again. I sold my Strat and played SGs for about a decade. Later, I did experiment with Strats again but with humbucker replacement pickups. I liked that sound. In 1972, I recorded with a trio called Tempest using an ES-335. I later used the SG with Tony Williams' Lifetime Band.

I CANT MAKE YOU LOVE ME

Whisky Galore (Guitarist 2000)

Do simple chords and music just sound ugly to you, or shallow?

"No, no, not at all. In fact I love some pop music and hate some jazz music - especially the kind of jazz that's everything you've ever heard... again! For example, Bonnie Raitt's I Can't Make You Love Me is beautiful. And the most glorious composition of all time is Debussy's Clare de Lune. I almost can't listen to it without it doing something to me. But it's so simple, but it's like the magic deception."

IN THREE ATTITUDES

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: Were there any guitarists later on that you listened to?

AH: I was extremely fond of Jimmy Raney. Of course there was Joe Pass, Tal Farlow and Barney Kessel. My dad bought lots of records to expose me to all this great music. Joe Pass' album Catch Me was mind boggling. But there was something about Jimmy Raney's sound that I loved. My favorite was a recording called Jimmy Raney In Three Attitudes which I lost during my move from England. I'm still trying to find the recording. He played a tune called "So In Love" and his solo is absolutely amazing.

INDIAN MUSIC

Allan Holdsworth interview (Abstract Logix 2004)

Fan: Some of your fans are wondering what you would sound like doing the Eastern thing that McLaughlin and Lane have been doing. Do you have any thoughts of traveling to other musical horizons?

AH: Yes I do, very much so. As to exactly what it's going to be I'm not quite sure, because there's a lot of logistics involved. I always wanted to record with a pedal steel guitar player; I think pedal steel guitar and guitar in place of a keyboard is a very interesting sound to me. I always wanted to do something with a string quartet, French horns, with an acoustic rhythm section. I absolutely would love to work with some of these unbelievable Indian musicians, but I'm not sure I'd be able to hang with them on a raga. (Laughs).

JIM HALL

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Cymbiosis: And then you started listening to people like Charlie Christian.

Holdsworth: He was on the records that my father had, so I went back and listened to those with new ears because I realized that this guy was playing guitar. Charlie Christian was the first real big major guitar influence. . . and Django [Reinhardt]. But mostly Charlie Christian, because I just love the sound that he got, and I still love it today. There's a lot of jazz guitar sounds. Guys like Jimmy Ramey, Joe Pass, Tal Farlow, Jim Hall...I love the way they play. But there's something about the sound that I really don't like. It's kind of like a rubber bandy sound, a dead, short kind of guitar sound, [laughs] It's just not for me.

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: And some current guitarists?

AH: I love Jim Hall's ideas and Wes Montgomery, especially his playing on a memorable tune called "Missile Blues." Of course, I personally know many guitarists, so I hear their music regularly. I always loved players who had their own identity, like John McGlaughlin, John Scofield, Scott Henderson and Pat Metheny.

Allan Holdsworth’s Untold Secrets + Worthy Quotes (Guitar Player 1990)

Allan focused his attention on the SynthAxe for With A Heart In My Song, his second album of duos with Gordon Beck since meeting the pianist in London in the mid ‘70s. The Things You See, released in 1980, contained intimate, compelling duets between acoustic and electric guitar and piano - sort of a space-age take on a Jim Hall/Bill Evans dialog. Beck is one of the few bebop-based musicians Allan has worked with closely, and the guitarist has had to adjust his approach to suit the slightly unfamiliar territory. "I once worked in a band Gordon had for a while in France, which was kind of hard for me because I was like a fish out of water," he recalls. "But the more I played with him, the more I enjoyed it, because it was a way to check my own progress. At one time I probably wouldn't have been able to play on it at all, but because of things I've learned, I actually felt a lot more comfortable playing and soloing over his changes."

No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)

Q: After you first became aware of Coltrane and Miles Davis, what were some of the other records that you were listening to and really pouring over?

Allan: I went back to listening as soon as I learned a little bit more about guitar. I started listening all over again to all those Jim Hall, Joe Pass, Jimmy Raney albums. I was really a big fan of Jimmy Raney, because, although all of those guys are absolutely wonderful, there was just something about the sound of the guitar I didn't like. I didn't like that rubber band, dead-tape-wound-string sound, and Jimmy Raney always seemed to have a little bit more of a sparkle in his sound. It sounded a little bit more lively, like Charlie Christian's sound-more vocal, not so dumpy sounding. I realized that I wasn't happy with the sound of the guitar. I wanted to make it something else, but it happened so gradually, I didn't even realize I was playing the guitar. It was a hobby, like someone who rides a bike. I had no intention of trying to make a living from it.

The Allan Holdsworth Interview! (Jazz Houston 2006)

MM: Who were your influences musically?

AH: The first guy was Charlie Christian that really did it for me and Django because he was one of the only European guys out there. Of course Jim Hall and Joe pass, but I was really more interested in saxophone than guitar.

JIMI HENDRIX

Allan Holdsworth (International Musician 1981)

Do you have any favourite players?

ALAN: There's a guy called Steve Topping I like very much. Mostly it's musicians who play other instruments that move me, horn players for example. I'm more interested in trying to figure out what they're playing than what some other guitarist is playing. Actually Hendrix didn't make any kind of impression on me until after he died.

Allan Holdsworth (Music UK 1983)

Although Allan doesn't see himself as a jazz guitarist, in his youth he listened to a lot of jazz records belonging to his father, which featured Charlie Christian and Joe Pass. ‘I'd heard a lot of jazz guitar before I'd even seen a guitar. I listened to Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix too, but what I always tried to catch from people, was the essence of what they were saying, rather than the way they were doing it. The last thing I wanted was to sit down and calculate what they did, just so I could do it like them. What I wanted to do was find a way to get something that was as good as that musically, and that's my aim. To continuously try and play better, without deliberately playing like someone else.' Allan Holdsworth's morals were firmly planted when I quizzed him about the offer of a job with Miles Davis, should the offer ever arise?

‘I don't know, it depends on what I'd be asked to do (laughs).'

Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)

You've mentioned your jazz and classical influences. What about your rock influences? When did you get the idea to incorporate rock influences into your music?

That came just by the fact that I couldn't play anything else. When you first start out, you don't just wake up one day playing like Joe Pass. I started out with what I could actually play. I started with pop music, and then I started playing in local blues bands because it was easier. And then I got interested in more different kinds of music as I progressed.

Since I didn't really like the guitar because of its “percussive” sound, I got very excited when people like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton started using heavier distortion. I saw that I could get more sustain out of the guitar now.

Player Of The Month (Beat Instrumental 1978)

But, as every Beat reader knows, pedals, strings and picks don't make you a good player; And in Allan's case they still don't explain that astonishing technique with the tremolo. How does he do it?

"Practice," came the frustrating reply. "I love the effects you can get with it. The first person I heard who used it in an interesting way was Jimi Hendrix. Well, it seemed interesting at the time, but afterwards you realized that it was similar to the way most people used it. Then, when I was with Tempest, I heard Ollie Halsall use it, but in a more controlled way than Jimi Hendrix. So I started experimenting myself, and after a while I realized that I was doing things that I hadn't heard anybody do. Using a tremolo arm makes it very expressive - it takes it somewhere else from having just frets, where all the notes are laid out for you like a keyboard.

JIMMY RAINEY

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Cymbiosis: And then you started listening to people like Charlie Christian.

Holdsworth: He was on the records that my father had, so I went back and listened to those with new ears because I realized that this guy was playing guitar. Charlie Christian was the first real big major guitar influence. . . and Django [Reinhardt]. But mostly Charlie Christian, because I just love the sound that he got, and I still love it today. There's a lot of jazz guitar sounds. Guys like Jimmy Ramey, Joe Pass, Tal Farlow, Jim Hall...I love the way they play. But there's something about the sound that I really don't like. It's kind of like a rubber bandy sound, a dead, short kind of guitar sound, [laughs] It's just not for me.

Allan Holdsworth (Guitarist 1985)

Are there any guitarists you especially like?

Oh yeah, thousands - ranging from Jimmy Rainey to John McLaughlin or, Pat Metheny to Gary Moore. If it's good, it doesn't matter what kind of music it is!

Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)

What guitar players did you listen to when you were first learning how to play?

From that time period, it was mostly the records that my dad had. So originally it was Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian. And then it was Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, and Jimmy Raney. All those really great guys. However, I wasn't really focused on listening to the guitar. I listened to a lot of music. My dad had a lot of classical music, which was very inspiring to me. There was Debussy, Ravel, Béla Bartók, Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland. I was influenced by a lot of other things besides jazz.

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: Were there any guitarists later on that you listened to?

AH: I was extremely fond of Jimmy Raney. Of course there was Joe Pass, Tal Farlow and Barney Kessel. My dad bought lots of records to expose me to all this great music. Joe Pass' album Catch Me was mind boggling. But there was something about Jimmy Raney's sound that I loved. My favorite was a recording called Jimmy Raney In Three Attitudes which I lost during my move from England. I'm still trying to find the recording. He played a tune called "So In Love" and his solo is absolutely amazing.

Allan Holdsworth interview (Abstract Logix 2004)

Fan: You have pioneered a voice in music and influenced your peers and your fans. Who are some of your favorite guitar pioneers?

AH: Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Jimmy Raney, Wes Montgomery in fact most of the great guitar players; I loved them all. The newer guys: John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale... They?re all amazing with very different musical personalities. Of course there's Michael Brecker and Keith Jarrett, but they don't play the guitar (thank God!). I think I've been influenced by all instruments. I was influenced a lot by horn players, from Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane on to Michael Brecker. There's many, many more that you could fill this whole page with people that have brought great gifts to the world of music.

Joe Satriani Meets Allan Holdsworth (Musician special edition 1993)

ALLAN HOLDSWORTH: "Well, because my dad was a jazz musician he had records of most instrumentalists including guitarists, so after Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt, I grew up listening to Joe Pass and Jimmy Raney; I loved Jimmy Raney. And all those guys were absolutely wonderful, but there was something about the guitar that I didn't like even then. Guitar chords only consist of four DIFFERENT notes, generally---you can play more, but they're usually duplicates or an octave---so it becomes more limited. When I'd hear chord things, I'd recognize the sound of the chords straight away; you almost knew what was coming. You'd appreciate the fact that it was MARVELOUS---it never took anything away from that---but I thought it would be nice to do something, where the chords sounded different. And unfortunately, unless you have two guitar players and they don't duplicate notes, the chords will naturally sound a bit more ambiguous in some ways, although they're not, you know? So I started to think of chords as being related to families. I don't hear one voicing move to another; it's like, that chord belongs to a family, a scale, and the next one belongs to a different family, and I try to hear the FAMILIES change as the sequence goes. You can play anything that sounds nice, as long as the notes are contained in those scales as they move from one to another. I hear that in piano players I like. They don't sound trapped with this chord-symbol thing. Whenever I hear Keith Jarrett, it's just these harmonic/melodic ideas, and they all sound RIGHT, but at the same time have this kind of FREEDOM in the way they move."

No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)

Q: What were your first recollections of music , and how did you first become interested in music?

Allan: It was all the records that my dad had. Being a jazz piano player, he had a lot of records lying around, and that's how I first heard Charlie Christian, on some of the old Benny Goodman albums. So I kind of grew up listening to that. He also had Joe Pass, Jimmy Raney, Tal Farlow - those guys. I always loved music, I loved listening to it, but I absolutely had no intention of becoming a musician, or anything. I just thought music was something to enjoy and listen to, and that's all I did.

Q: After you first became aware of Coltrane and Miles Davis, what were some of the other records that you were listening to and really pouring over?

Allan: I went back to listening as soon as I learned a little bit more about guitar. I started listening all over again to all those Jim Hall, Joe Pass, Jimmy Raney albums. I was really a big fan of Jimmy Raney, because, although all of those guys are absolutely wonderful, there was just something about the sound of the guitar I didn't like. I didn't like that rubber band, dead-tape-wound-string sound, and Jimmy Raney always seemed to have a little bit more of a sparkle in his sound. It sounded a little bit more lively, like Charlie Christian's sound-more vocal, not so dumpy sounding. I realized that I wasn't happy with the sound of the guitar. I wanted to make it something else, but it happened so gradually, I didn't even realize I was playing the guitar. It was a hobby, like someone who rides a bike. I had no intention of trying to make a living from it.

The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever (Guitar Player 2008)

At what point did you decide to dedicate your life to music, and have things turned out at all like you'd imagined they might?

No, things have turned out nothing like I'd imagined. And I often think about that whenever we go to music schools, because I'm sure almost everyone who goes to a music school is there because they've already decided that that's what they want to do. But for me it was the absolute opposite. My father was a wonderful piano player who had a great record collection, including all the classic jazz records, and I just loved listening to music. I had no interest in learning an instrument until I was about 15, when I started thinking that maybe I'd like to get a clarinet or a saxophone. But in those days they were pretty expensive, so instead my dad gave me a guitar he had bought from my uncle. Then he bought me a couple of chord books and as soon as he saw that I was making a little progress, he started trying to help me, and that's when I developed an interest. And he had records by all these great guitar players lying around, like Jimmy Rainey, Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, and Charlie Christian, who became my first major influence.

The Open End (Boston Sound Report 1988)

BSR: Who are some of your early and current influences?

AH: Some of my early influences were Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, I suppose, Jimmy Rainey and Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, and all those guys. They were the records that my father had. He was a jazz piano player, and he always had these records lying around. This was before I started playing. So I heard them all when I was growing up.

JOE PASS

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Cymbiosis: And then you started listening to people like Charlie Christian.

Holdsworth: He was on the records that my father had, so I went back and listened to those with new ears because I realized that this guy was playing guitar. Charlie Christian was the first real big major guitar influence. . . and Django [Reinhardt]. But mostly Charlie Christian, because I just love the sound that he got, and I still love it today. There's a lot of jazz guitar sounds. Guys like Jimmy Ramey, Joe Pass, Tal Farlow, Jim Hall...I love the way they play. But there's something about the sound that I really don't like. It's kind of like a rubber bandy sound, a dead, short kind of guitar sound, [laughs] It's just not for me.

Allan Holdsworth (Music UK 1983)

Although Allan doesn't see himself as a jazz guitarist, in his youth he listened to a lot of jazz records belonging to his father, which featured Charlie Christian and Joe Pass. ‘I'd heard a lot of jazz guitar before I'd even seen a guitar. I listened to Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix too, but what I always tried to catch from people, was the essence of what they were saying, rather than the way they were doing it. The last thing I wanted was to sit down and calculate what they did, just so I could do it like them. What I wanted to do was find a way to get something that was as good as that musically, and that's my aim. To continuously try and play better, without deliberately playing like someone else.' Allan Holdsworth's morals were firmly planted when I quizzed him about the offer of a job with Miles Davis, should the offer ever arise?

‘I don't know, it depends on what I'd be asked to do (laughs).'

Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)

What guitar players did you listen to when you were first learning how to play?

From that time period, it was mostly the records that my dad had. So originally it was Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian. And then it was Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, and Jimmy Raney. All those really great guys. However, I wasn't really focused on listening to the guitar. I listened to a lot of music. My dad had a lot of classical music, which was very inspiring to me. There was Debussy, Ravel, Béla Bartók, Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland. I was influenced by a lot of other things besides jazz.

You've mentioned your jazz and classical influences. What about your rock influences? When did you get the idea to incorporate rock influences into your music?

That came just by the fact that I couldn't play anything else. When you first start out, you don't just wake up one day playing like Joe Pass. I started out with what I could actually play. I started with pop music, and then I started playing in local blues bands because it was easier. And then I got interested in more different kinds of music as I progressed.

Since I didn't really like the guitar because of its “percussive” sound, I got very excited when people like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton started using heavier distortion. I saw that I could get more sustain out of the guitar now.

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: Were there any guitarists later on that you listened to?

AH: I was extremely fond of Jimmy Raney. Of course there was Joe Pass, Tal Farlow and Barney Kessel. My dad bought lots of records to expose me to all this great music. Joe Pass' album Catch Me was mind boggling. But there was something about Jimmy Raney's sound that I loved. My favorite was a recording called Jimmy Raney In Three Attitudes which I lost during my move from England. I'm still trying to find the recording. He played a tune called "So In Love" and his solo is absolutely amazing.

Guitarist's Guitarist (Jazz Times 1989)

Even the most cursory hearing of Holdsworth's playing will reveal just how moved he was by Coltrane - the long, fluid lines, the extended improvisations, the phrasing which feels and sounds more like a horn than a plucked string instrument. "It was unconscious in the beginning," Holdsworth said. "But I think I was always trying to make the guitar into a less percussive instrument. That's why I got interested in trying to use the amplifier to create sustained notes - so I could put the instrument into another realm of phrasing. Its not that I like distortion or anything like that for its own sake, its that I liked the way the amplifier could let [me] play long notes. Whereas, the normal jazz guitar - like say Joe Pass - is too percussive for me to be able to relate to it; I still love it and love to listen to it, but it wasn't something that I felt; that's why the SynthAxe was such a great discovery for me. It was like it was suddenly possible for long, flowing lines to be created by a guitar player; and now, with a breath controller, I can control the dynamics using breath like I would if I was playing a horn. So its kind of like a dream come true. Its like I've finally gotten around to playing the saxophone!"

Joe Satriani Meets Allan Holdsworth (Musician special edition 1993)

ALLAN HOLDSWORTH: "Well, because my dad was a jazz musician he had records of most instrumentalists including guitarists, so after Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt, I grew up listening to Joe Pass and Jimmy Raney; I loved Jimmy Raney. And all those guys were absolutely wonderful, but there was something about the guitar that I didn't like even then. Guitar chords only consist of four DIFFERENT notes, generally---you can play more, but they're usually duplicates or an octave---so it becomes more limited. When I'd hear chord things, I'd recognize the sound of the chords straight away; you almost knew what was coming. You'd appreciate the fact that it was MARVELOUS---it never took anything away from that---but I thought it would be nice to do something, where the chords sounded different. And unfortunately, unless you have two guitar players and they don't duplicate notes, the chords will naturally sound a bit more ambiguous in some ways, although they're not, you know? So I started to think of chords as being related to families. I don't hear one voicing move to another; it's like, that chord belongs to a family, a scale, and the next one belongs to a different family, and I try to hear the FAMILIES change as the sequence goes. You can play anything that sounds nice, as long as the notes are contained in those scales as they move from one to another. I hear that in piano players I like. They don't sound trapped with this chord-symbol thing. Whenever I hear Keith Jarrett, it's just these harmonic/melodic ideas, and they all sound RIGHT, but at the same time have this kind of FREEDOM in the way they move."

No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)

Q: What were your first recollections of music , and how did you first become interested in music?

Allan: It was all the records that my dad had. Being a jazz piano player, he had a lot of records lying around, and that's how I first heard Charlie Christian, on some of the old Benny Goodman albums. So I kind of grew up listening to that. He also had Joe Pass, Jimmy Raney, Tal Farlow - those guys. I always loved music, I loved listening to it, but I absolutely had no intention of becoming a musician, or anything. I just thought music was something to enjoy and listen to, and that's all I did.

Q: After you first became aware of Coltrane and Miles Davis, what were some of the other records that you were listening to and really pouring over?

Allan: I went back to listening as soon as I learned a little bit more about guitar. I started listening all over again to all those Jim Hall, Joe Pass, Jimmy Raney albums. I was really a big fan of Jimmy Raney, because, although all of those guys are absolutely wonderful, there was just something about the sound of the guitar I didn't like. I didn't like that rubber band, dead-tape-wound-string sound, and Jimmy Raney always seemed to have a little bit more of a sparkle in his sound. It sounded a little bit more lively, like Charlie Christian's sound-more vocal, not so dumpy sounding. I realized that I wasn't happy with the sound of the guitar. I wanted to make it something else, but it happened so gradually, I didn't even realize I was playing the guitar. It was a hobby, like someone who rides a bike. I had no intention of trying to make a living from it.

The Allan Holdsworth Interview! (Jazz Houston 2006)

MM: Who were your influences musically?

AH: The first guy was Charlie Christian that really did it for me and Django because he was one of the only European guys out there. Of course Jim Hall and Joe pass, but I was really more interested in saxophone than guitar.

The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever (Guitar Player 2008)

At what point did you decide to dedicate your life to music, and have things turned out at all like you'd imagined they might?

No, things have turned out nothing like I'd imagined. And I often think about that whenever we go to music schools, because I'm sure almost everyone who goes to a music school is there because they've already decided that that's what they want to do. But for me it was the absolute opposite. My father was a wonderful piano player who had a great record collection, including all the classic jazz records, and I just loved listening to music. I had no interest in learning an instrument until I was about 15, when I started thinking that maybe I'd like to get a clarinet or a saxophone. But in those days they were pretty expensive, so instead my dad gave me a guitar he had bought from my uncle. Then he bought me a couple of chord books and as soon as he saw that I was making a little progress, he started trying to help me, and that's when I developed an interest. And he had records by all these great guitar players lying around, like Jimmy Rainey, Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, and Charlie Christian, who became my first major influence.

The Open End (Boston Sound Report 1988)

BSR: Who are some of your early and current influences?

AH: Some of my early influences were Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, I suppose, Jimmy Rainey and Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, and all those guys. They were the records that my father had. He was a jazz piano player, and he always had these records lying around. This was before I started playing. So I heard them all when I was growing up.

The Unreachable Star (Guitar World 1989)

GW: What players do you feel epitomize the proper way the instrument should be played?

HOLDSWORTH: Well, in a funny way all the people I like are all the people who are doing something different with it. From the beginning, I've enjoyed players like Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass, and more recently, Pat Metheny who did a whole thing on his own. Scott Henderson is doing something unique, and now; Frank Gambale comes along and does something great. It just shows you that you shouldn't be so resolute about things like music. People waste time spending hours trying to clone something when they could be spending hours practicing something really different.

JOE ZAWINUL

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Holdsworth: In a way, yeah, because it's so new. I want to be able to make as Individual a sound on that as what people think I do on the guitar. It has to be possible. I guess if I could do that, it would prove something. [Laughs]

Cymbiosis: And leave your mark on the world?

Holdsworth: Not like that. Just for my own satisfaction. I would like to be able to create—like Jan Hammer or Joe Zawinul. There's not many synthesists you can say that about. They're recognizable through the music. When I hear Chick Corea play synthesizer, I can recognize the musician—I can hear the notes through the sound. It's still the music that's the most important thing. That's all I want to achieve. I can now make a lot more sounds, so it's more inspirational to me in the writing sense. Sometimes I find a sound and I'll go off on a whole other thing than I would have done If I'd just been trying to write a piece on guitar.

Guitar Like A Saxophone (Guitar World 1987)

Scott Henderson explains:

"I teach at the Guitar Institute Of Technology in Los Angeles and I get all these students coming in who try to copy the Holdsworth thing. But most guys who cop Holdsworth tend to just take it off the surface. They don't get to the heart of the musician. They cop all the fast shit but they leave out the incredible musicality of what makes Holdsworth so great. Sure, it's a thrill for a younger guitarist to cop a line from Holdsworth that's really, really fast. But it's often a trap. That's the worst thing that can happen to you ... to be accused of sounding like somebody else, only not as good. And that's something that Allan Holdsworth will never be accused of. He doesn't sound like anybody else in the world." Miles Davis, Joe Zawinul and Chick Corea would heartily agree. All three jazz giants were reportedly considering Holdsworth for a featured spot in their bands.

JOHN COLTRANE

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Cymbiosis: I understand if your family could have afforded it you would have had a saxophone instead of a guitar when you were younger?

Holdsworth: Yeah, that's what I really wanted—to play saxophone.

Cymbiosis: Why was that?

Holdsworth: Well, I just loved the saxophone. It was the sound. I think people are first attracted to music and then to specific sounds within it. I also liked violin later. But at the time I liked saxophone more, because it was on most of the records that my dad had. He was a jazz player and had a lot of jazz records.

Cymbiosis: So you had things like John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw?

Holdsworth: Yeah, Dad played in the Air Force band during the war, and they played a lot of swing.

A Conversation With Allan Holdsworth (Abstract Logix 2005)

In a recent interview, the up-and-coming jazz guitar star Rosenwinkel paid this tribute to the 59-year-old British guitar god. - ‘To me, one of the most important guitarists in jazz guitar is definitely Allan Holdsworth. His chordal vocabulary and his linear vocabulary are major parts of the jazz guitar lexicon, although he's often overlooked when speaking about jazz guitar because stylistically his music would be placed in another genre, maybe fusion or electric jazz. But in terms of innovation on the instrument in jazz, the language that he's dealing with on the guitar is the closest to the language that Coltrane was dealing with on the saxophone. As a deep fan of Coltrane's music and his playing, to see that there is a way to that sheets-of-sound kind of language, that Slonimsky kind of approach to linearity...I think that Holdsworth is a very, very significant guitarist.'

Allan Holdsworth (English Tour Program 1989)

On clones: "One of the saddest things for me is that you can go out and see clones of everybody. You can see John McLaughlin clones, John Coltrane clones, Michael Brecker clones... But the thing is that clones don't count, and what's more it's such a waste of energy. The only recommendation I can give is: admire somebody, like them for what they do but find another way of trying to achieve it." There can be no guitarist - no musician, in fact - who can so honestly claim to have done just that.

Allan Holdsworth (Music UK 1983)

‘I don't believe that people have to understand anything to enjoy it. Even guys I know who don't know anything about music, will hear maybe John Coltrane and go ‘God, what is that?' But at the same time they know something is happening, but they don't have to understand anything. All they have to do is be touched by it, and hopefully the better I get, the more I'll be able to communicate with people. I might not have been able to do that before, and there's a lot of different reasons. One of them is that I probably didn't wanna do that a few years ago anyway. I was probably happier trying to reach some goal to satisfy myself, whereas now I'd like to do both, which is even more of a challenge . . What I'm not prepared to do is to go out and do something just to make money in music, because if I do that then all my life will have been a waste of time. See that's what I was saying before, I'd rather go out and get a job doing something else . . driving a truck . . . and then come home and play the shit out of the guitar rather than go and play the guitar half-heartedly to a million people, and make a lot of money.

Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)

The thing I liked about jazz was that I had a fascination with improvising. I didn't want to stick to any one style of jazz. I just liked being presented with a set of chord changes, and then trying to think of putting something interesting on top of it. I didn't really focus a lot on the guitar. I listened to a lot of horn players, like Charlie Parker of course, and when I discovered John Coltrane, that was it. That guy changed my whole life. I couldn't hear any lineage in his playing. Somehow, he seemed to be connected to the instrument in a way that I had never heard before. So I became really fascinated with John Coltrane, and I bought just about every record I could get my hands on.

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: Were you listening to any guitarists at that time?

AH: Of course when I listened to Benny Goodman, I was exposed to his guitarist, Charlie Christian. I also loved Django Reinhardt, but there was something about the electric guitar that I was drawn to. So I tried to learn Charlie Christian solos. I absorbed them quite quickly. Then I would play two of his solos and then play one of my own. I couldn't really create, and realized this was not a good process for me. I needed a different direction. I soon purchased some records by John Coltrane and this changed my whole life.

TCG: This was early Coltrane?

AH: I just bought everything I could find that he was on. There was some with Miles, and most of it was from the "Atlantic" period. "Coltrane's Sound" is probably still my favorite recording of all time. When I heard people like Cannonball Adderly, I loved it but I could hear where it was coming from. I heard the history and evolution. But Coltrane sounded like he short-circuited or bypassed something and he got to the heart and truth of the music. He was playing over the same things but he wasn't doing it the same way. He didn't sound like anyone else. I thought this would be great, to play over chord changes, from something other than a bebop perspective. Basically this is what I've been trying to do from the beginning. Unfortunately, I never saw Coltrane perform. When he died, I cried for hours. I felt like I knew him.

TCG: Must guitarists play out of visual shapes. Do you see the guitar as this type of instrument or is it just a tool for your vision?

AH: I think I see all instruments as just tools. I didn't see this in the beginning, but I do now. For example, if John Coltrane had played another instrument he still would have been John Coltrane. If John McGlaughlin had played trumpet he'd still be amazing. it comes from somewhere else. Most people are lucky and find the right instrument for them right away. But for me guitar was definitely not love at first sight. I grew to love it. If I had played horn, I would have really missed playing chords. There are still things I don't like about guitar. For example, I really don't like to use distortion to get sustain. I don't love it but it's a necessary evil. I'm always trying to find another way to get sustain without sounding distorted. Also that big jazz guitar sound never appealed to me. I like what other people do with it though. I think George Benson is amazing.

Allan Holdsworth: An interview (Atavachron 1994)

CH: Allan: How big of an influence, if any, was John Coltrane on your musical style?

AH: Well, he was a huge influence on my life. I mean, as far as "on my style," I don't really know, because I couldn't even say that, you know, I couldn't even begin to think about anything remotely like that. He was just a... he was a huge influence on me.

Allan Holdsworth Jam (Jazziz 1994)

Holdsworth sees his music as deriving from a combination of jazz, rock, and classical influences. He cites the harmonic influence of Debussy, Ravel, and Copland, as well as John Coltrane, Charlie Christian, and other role models. But, while his place in the fusion guitar pantheon is secure, he cringes at being associated with the f-word. There is something patently different about Holdsworth's bittersweet music, as compared to the typically upbeat, chops shop fusion.

Allan Holdsworth in exclusive LMS interview (tlms.co.uk 2000)

Merlin Rhys Jones started by asking Allan about the influence of John Coltrane on his playing...

Allan Holdsworth: ... that's when I started going out and buying tons of Coltrane records, everything I could find. My Dad had a lot of records and I started out copying Charlie Christian solos. By the time I discovered Coltrane I had learned to just absorb the (musical) experience. I never analysed or transcribed anything (Coltrane) did because it was very spirited, with a lot of heart but it was also heady. Coltarne Sounds was my favourite record.

I also listened to a lot of Chopin and Debussy. (My Dad) knew I wouldn't get anywhere with the piano so he gave me a guitar, but the guitar wasn't that much better! He used to sneak me into clubs to see electric players.

MRJ: How old were you then?

AH: 17

Allan Holdsworth interview (Abstract Logix 2004)

Fan: You have pioneered a voice in music and influenced your peers and your fans. Who are some of your favorite guitar pioneers?

AH: Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Jimmy Raney, Wes Montgomery in fact most of the great guitar players; I loved them all. The newer guys: John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale... They?re all amazing with very different musical personalities. Of course there's Michael Brecker and Keith Jarrett, but they don't play the guitar (thank God!). I think I've been influenced by all instruments. I was influenced a lot by horn players, from Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane on to Michael Brecker. There's many, many more that you could fill this whole page with people that have brought great gifts to the world of music.

Allan Holdsworth interview (Music Maker 2003)

When you were studying the guitar, was there an eye-opener for you or anything that you encountered that made you realize you were on the right track?

Well, just hearing people that were really great. It didn't matter what instrument it was. I was never fixated with the guitar as an instrument as such. Maybe because I never really wanted to play the guitar. I know a of guitar players, everything they're listening to, they focussed entirally on one thing, like the guitar. But maybe because I didn't wanna play the guitar, I never got to that state. So I used to just listen to music in general. I had a lot of guitarplayer friends that only listened to guitar. I played em all this shit and they'd go:'oh it doesn't have a guitar on there, I don't wanna listen to that'. It's like c'mon man, just listen to the music, you know, forget what it's played on, you know. I always think of an instrument as just being a tool. It's like, it doesn't matter if John McLaughlin played the trumpet, it'd still be great. And if John Coltrane played the piano it would be sounding great. I don't really think it mattered. It didn't matter if I heard something that was like really amazing and it didn't matter what it was played on, I would still get a lot of inspiration from it. Although I did really like horns, you know. I love particularly John Coltrane. That was a big changing point in my life, when I heard him. Versus what I was listening to before that. It made me realize that there was other ways to play over chord changes that didn't sound like...you couldn't... when I used to listen to those old records and there was Cannonbal Adderly and a lot of like other great bebop players. I could here the history in the playing. I could hear where it came from. And when I heard John Coltrane, I couldn't hear where it came from. It was like, where the hell did he come up.. how did he come up with that? Everything was working you know. That was like a real revelation. I was going, ok, so there's gotta be another way to play over chord sequences and stuff that doesn't sound like it came from somewhere else, you know. I tried to do that, I'll never be able to do anything like that, but...just the inspiration, it's awesome.

Any period or album of John Coltrane you particularly like? I like mostly all of it. But I particularly liked the album, my favorite, I actually was telling Ernest one of my favorites was an album called Coltrane's Sound. That was one of my favorite Coltrane albums. ‘The Night Has A Thousand Eyes' and then he playes my favorite tune on that record was the last one, it was ‘Satellite'.They played it as a trio.McCoy Tyner played on the whole record except that one track. And it's not because I don't love McCoy Tyner, I do, I think he's insane. But is was just that one piece of music, it was like.. jezus that's pretty awesome. Yeah, I still love that one.

Allan Holdsworth’s Untold Secrets + Worthy Quotes (Guitar Player 1990)

Worthy quotes

By MR

Although he makes use of guitars and amps for much of his music, Allan Holdsworth isn't even close to being a conventional guitarist - never wanted to be, in fact. Drawing his concepts from saxophonists such as Oliver Nelson and John Coltrane, he's forged a virtually unbounded linear approach and a remarkable chordal flair that have stretched ears and fingers for nearly 20 years of recording. His mastery of the cumbersome SynthAxe was critically validated by three consecutive sweeps in the Guitar Synthesist category of Guitar Player's Reader's Poll.

Regardless of whether he likes it, Holdsworth's ceaseless innovations and unswerving standards have secured his place on the evolutionary timelines of both jazz and rock guitar. His unique perspective on these achievements cast as much light on the man as does his music. Here, then, are some particularly pithy Allan Holdsworth solos.

The Precious Past

As time goes on, things move forward in some directions, but backward in others. It's like the quality of an automobile; they can make a car go faster, but it's not made like it used to be. People say that .all the time. There are some really deep, really incredible high-quality things you can get [from] the past. For example, a saxophone player [who's starting up right now] might not have heard anything {further] back than Michael Brecker, who's absolutely incredible. But when you go back and hear some of the older guys, then you realize - well, I did - that all these guys who came up afterwards and tried to sound like them never really did sound like them at all. There was something missing. When I go back and listen to a Charlie Parker recording, he sounds unbelievable; it's so fresh. You have to wade through the poor sound quality of the recordings, but boy, it was happening! Cannonball Adderley and Coltrane, man, those guys were unbelievable. Some of those Miles Davis albums both of them were on - wow, that was something. As things move forward, something else moves back. It's inevitable, because that's the nature of things. It's really great for people to go back and have a look, because otherwise they're really going to miss something. Things get lost that should never have gotten lost.

Guitar Like A Saxophone (Guitar World 1987)

During intense moments of his set, Holdsworth resembled a sax player, blowing through his plastic tubing, grimacing, getting very physical and emotional with the instrument. At times, it was hard to imagine him as a guitar player at all. The sheets of sound pouring forth, the peaks of intensity, the total abandon and unswerving conviction… he reminded me of John Coltrane, blowing scales upon scales of pent-up passion.

It's hard to guess where Holdsworth might go with this stuff. Truly, he has evolved to higher ground. The Allan Holdsworth of Sand is "blowing" some different sounds. At this point in his career, he is to Chuck Berry on guitar what John Coltrane (circa Ascension) is to Clarence "Big Man" Clemons on tenor sax. Ever-probing, ever-changing, he's taking the six-string to new heights. Now, if only he can take some listeners and record-buyers with him.

Guitarist's Guitarist (Jazz Times 1989)

He's the guitarist most young guitarists place near the top of their list of favorite performers. He's a player whose own, favorite musician is John Coltrane, yet who was recommended for a major label record contract by rock star Eddie van Halen. He's a performer whose still-small, but intensely dedicated fans will go to almost any lengths to hear him play.

The other significant influence on Holdsworth's playing has been - predictably, perhaps - saxophonist John Coltrane. "When I first started," he explained, "I tried to play pop music - or what was popular at the time, just because it was the only thing that I could manage to play. But I always used to listen to other kinds of music. Then a few years later I started listening to John Coltrane and it was wonderful (in fact, I introduced my father to his music, because he'd never heard it). Shortly after that, Coltrane died. And it was just after I'd fallen in love with his music. I was devastated; I remember locking myself in the toilet for a long time to think about it because I was so moved by what he did."

Even the most cursory hearing of Holdsworth's playing will reveal just how moved he was by Coltrane - the long, fluid lines, the extended improvisations, the phrasing which feels and sounds more like a horn than a plucked string instrument. "It was unconscious in the beginning," Holdsworth said. "But I think I was always trying to make the guitar into a less percussive instrument. That's why I got interested in trying to use the amplifier to create sustained notes - so I could put the instrument into another realm of phrasing. Its not that I like distortion or anything like that for its own sake, its that I liked the way the amplifier could let [me] play long notes. Whereas, the normal jazz guitar - like say Joe Pass - is too percussive for me to be able to relate to it; I still love it and love to listen to it, but it wasn't something that I felt; that's why the SynthAxe was such a great discovery for me. It was like it was suddenly possible for long, flowing lines to be created by a guitar player; and now, with a breath controller, I can control the dynamics using breath like I would if I was playing a horn. So its kind of like a dream come true. Its like I've finally gotten around to playing the saxophone!"

Legato Land (Guitar Techniques 1996)

‘None Too Soon' is an unusual Holdsworth album in that none of the tunes were penned by the man himself. It features compositions by jazzers such as John Coltrane, Joe Henderson and Bill Evans instead.

"It's not a trad album. It's a bebop album, but with a wrench or two in there. I've got Gordon Beck on piano, and there's Gary Willis on bass and Kirk Covington on drums. I think it turned out pretty good and we'll probably end up doing another, but we'll use real piano next time, as poor old Gordon had to deal with a digital one -something he's not used to at all!"

No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)

Q: Did your parents push you to take piano lessons?

Allan: My father tried to get me interested in the piano, but it was really obvious that I had no interest in it. It wasn't that I didn't like the sound of it, it was just that I don't have any interest in that kind of instrument. Then I really started to like the saxophone, Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane, who I heard on the Miles Davis albums. When I heard John Coltrane, I was really moved by it. Then I started going down to the record shop every Saturday-I'd go down in to town and buy an album, and I started buying all these John Coltrane albums. It was only four or five months after I discovered John Coltrane that I read in the paper that he died. It was a real shock because I guess when you're young and you've just discovered somebody, I felt like I really knew him. I just felt like he had a whole lot more left.

Q: After you first became aware of Coltrane and Miles Davis, what were some of the other records that you were listening to and really pouring over?

Allan: I went back to listening as soon as I learned a little bit more about guitar. I started listening all over again to all those Jim Hall, Joe Pass, Jimmy Raney albums. I was really a big fan of Jimmy Raney, because, although all of those guys are absolutely wonderful, there was just something about the sound of the guitar I didn't like. I didn't like that rubber band, dead-tape-wound-string sound, and Jimmy Raney always seemed to have a little bit more of a sparkle in his sound. It sounded a little bit more lively, like Charlie Christian's sound-more vocal, not so dumpy sounding. I realized that I wasn't happy with the sound of the guitar. I wanted to make it something else, but it happened so gradually, I didn't even realize I was playing the guitar. It was a hobby, like someone who rides a bike. I had no intention of trying to make a living from it.

Q: Did you ever spend time working out any of Coltrane's lines on guitar?

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.

One Man Of 'Trane (Jazz Times 2000)

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.

"He just kind of completely turned my life upside down," Holdsworth says of Coltrane's influence on him at the age of 18. "I remember when I first heard those Miles Davis records that had Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane on them. It was fascinating to me. Coltrane's playing in particular was a major revelation. I loved Cannonball also, but when I listened to him I could hear where it came from, I could hear the path that he had taken. But when I heard Coltrane, I couldn't hear connections with anything else. It was almost like he had found a way to get to the truth somehow, to bypass all of the things that as an improviser you have to deal with. He seemed to be actually improvising and playing over the same material but in a very different way. That was the thing that really changed my life, just realizing that that was possible. I realized then that what I needed to do was to try and find a way to improvise over chord sequences without playing any bebop or without having it sound like it came from so mewhere else. And it's been an ongoing, everlasting quest.

[Allan Holdsworth (NPS Radio transcript)]]

PH: But somewhere along the line it set the seal of which you wanted to sort of pursue experimentation with like using rock rhythms and jazz basically, didn’t ya?

AH: Yeah, well because of my father, who was a jazz musician, and I grew up in a house full of classical music and jazz records… I obviously had a great love for it, you know, I started out with a classical music… I remember even before I could read I remember listening to like Debussy or something or a couple of my father’s favorite composers and actually crying, and I couldn’t figure it out – ‘this is really strange – what is this strange thing that’s happening to me’, and I didn’t understand it, and then a few years afterwards I realized how powerful music is… And then the next big major thing was John Coltrane because my father had those records that had Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane in the same band. The thing about that was, I loved Cannonball Adderley, but I could hear where it came from, you know, I could hear the connection between him and what was before - but when I heard John Coltrane, I couldn’t – he was like, somehow he’d been able to take this elec – this cable of life or cable of music and plug it directly into the source, and it wasn’t going through any pathway that had already been recreated - it like was a new circuit, like a new thing and it just… I was just really moved by it and I used to go out every Saturday morning and buy all the John Coltrane records I could find. And I’d already learned earlier that it was a very bad idea to try and copy someone, because all you did was get good at sounding like someone else, and also make you feel like you were kind of leeching off of somebody, so I didn’t want to do that. What I wanted to do was listen to the spirit of it, and the heart and the soul of the music – and the head, you know, because he was a brilliant musician – if you listen to some of those things like, I think, my favorite album, Coltrane’s Sound, and there’s a tune on there called Satellite, and I listened to that just a couple of days ago and it’s unbelievable, man it’s absolutely astounding – it’s amazing! And it never happened before – isn’t that great?

(Coltrane excerpt)

PH: The approach and the feeling – you wanted to pursue that sound, right? By hearing something which is so vital and fresh, that you wanted to kind of pursue that kind of approach?

AH: Well, what I learned from him was that it’s a really bad idea to try and do something that somebody else is already doing. What I wanted to do was, I wanted to find out what the essence of it was. In other words, if a certain kind of music has been elevated to a certain level because of the quality of it, then he made me realize that you can get to that level and beyond it without necessarily travelling the path that somebody else made to get to that level, and he made me realize that quality level, that line, can be pushed up and pushed up and pushed up and pushed up …without going through pathways that had already been gone through, and it was like a revelation and I tried constantly – well I’ve been trying ever since, just to uh… Also knowing that you can never know anything about music is a beautiful thing - like when you fall in love, and you’ve got that thing that you don’t understand before you find out who the person is – music’s like that to me, you can’t ever find out what it is, but you just want to know more and more and more – and you try to get more and more and you try and also put out more and more because you’re trying to get to it – it’s a really great thing, man, it’s like life, it’s like everything gets better except looking in the mirror, haha!

The Allan Holdsworth Interview! (Jazz Houston 2006)

MM: Who are the sax players that influenced you?

AH: Charlie Parker because of records my father had…also Cannonball Adderly, but really Coltrane was the main one. He was spiritually connected to some pipeline where he could bypass all the stuff you had to go thru a thousand times to get to what you really wanted to say. I think that was the biggest thing that I learned from that---that “oh my God!” it's possible to play over this thing without doing things that you've heard before. It was very inspiring for me and I went out and bought everything he played on. I remember when he passed away I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for hours. It was weird because I felt like I knew him.

MM: Do you think that was the demarcation line in your life musically?

AH: Well it gave me a lot of ideas, it gave me a lot of…there were other ways of doing and playing things. It gave me freedom to do things that you hadn't really heard before…you know it didn't have to be diatonically correct or whatever if it's working. So it was that freedom to not have to make it sound like something you've heard already. Different lines, different chords, some specific formula to get away from…

The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever (Guitar Player 2008)

“Allan wanted to sound like John Coltrane. Problem was he's playing guitar, not saxophone, so he had to figure out a way to get a similar ‘sheets of sound' equivalent on guitar. The scales and intervals he chose were also all unusual, and he didn't become just one of the great scalar improvisers overnight. He worked like a dog on Nicolas Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns. Then, when he'd run out of notes he'd reach for the whammy bar and send shivers down your spine.” —Bill Bruford

The Open End (Boston Sound Report 1988)

BSR: Were there any saxophone players who influenced you?

AH: Oh yeah; I liked Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Michael Brecker... Michael Brecker is unbelievable. I listen to all different kinds of instruments. I do like horn players because I wanted to play the horn. I didn't really want to play the guitar.

BSR: It doesn't show. (laughs)

AH: It does to me.

The Outter Limits: Allan Holdsworth's Out of Bounds Existence (guitar.com 1999)

Guitar.com: Your legato sax-type attack has always come through in your playing going back to Soft Machine. If you listen closely, it's very much a Coltrane thing.

Holdsworth: He just completely turned my life upside down. I remember when I first heard those Miles Davis records that had Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane on them. It was fascinating to me, a major revelation. I loved Cannonball Adderley also but when I listened to Cannonball I could hear where it came from. I could hear the path that he had taken. But when I heard John Coltrane, I couldn't. I couldn't hear connections with anything else. It was almost like he had found a way to get to the truth somehow, to bypass all of the things that, as an improviser, you have to face. He found a way to be actually improvising and playing over the same material but in a very different way. That was the thing that really changed my life because I realized it was possible. His playing was just like a complete, total revelation to me. And I realized then that what I needed to do was to try and find a way to improvise over chord sequences without playing any bebop or without having it sound like it came from somewhere else. And it's been an ongoing, everlasting quest.

Guitar.com: When did you have this epiphany?

Holdsworth: When I was probably about 18, 19.

Guitar.com: You were already playing guitar at that time?

Holdsworth: Yeah, I was just dabbling with it. I was still really interested in the horn. I had wanted a saxophone, I didn't really want the guitar. But saxophones were pretty expensive in those days anyway, relative to a cheap acoustic guitar. There weren't so many guitars around then, not compared to nowadays. But my uncle played guitar and when he had bought himself a new guitar, he sold his old one to my father, who then gave it to me. And that's basically how it started.

The Reluctant Guitarist (Jazz Journal 1992)

Holdsworth's favoured role for the guitar - as a source of melody and harmony rather than percussive rhythm - is also reflected in the vocabulary he draws on in his improvisations. Allied to his love of rich harmony is a passion for the polytonal style espoused by such hornmen as John Coltrane, and, more latterly, Michael Brecker. He's careful to point out that his approach to building guitar lines is polytonal rather than simply chromatic.

People have said to me "Scott Henderson sometimes sounds like you", but he doesn't, not at all, to me. It might be there as a coincidence, but I don't hear it. And he's got so much of himself in it that he's beyond that anyway. It's like Michael Brecker and John Coltrane. You know, you

can hear similarities but Brecker's elevated himself, his playing is so incredible that it's his. It's great. Actually, he was gonna play on one of the albums, but we just couldn't schedule it. But I'd love to get him to play on something.

Whisky Galore (Guitarist 2000)

Have you ever tried writing anything more overtly commercial?

"No. The biggest lesson I learnt was when I first heard John Coltrane. In the first records with Miles Davis there was Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley and it was the single most revolutionary thing to me. With Cannonball Adderley I could trace the path where it came from, but with Coltrane it was like he'd unplugged the pathway and tapped himself into a direct source. It was just as elevated, but he was coming from somewhere else. It was then I realised you have to elevate your playing, but you don't have to do everything that everybody else did before - again - before you can change something."

JOHN SCOFIELD

A Conversation With Allan Holdsworth (Abstract Logix 2005)

Bill: Does hearing other musicians have an impact on your own writing?

Allan: Definitely, yeah. For example, I went to see John Scofield when he was playing at Musicians Institute in California about five or six years ago. Gary Willis was playing bass with him and it was beautiful and incredible. Then I went home and wrote this piece of music called ‘Above and Below,' which took me a few days to complete. And that was a direct result of hearing him play, although it sounds nothing like how he plays.

Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)

How much did you practice when you were first learning how to play guitar?

I practiced every day, pretty much all the time. I didn't have a particular regime. I didn't have anyone rapping my knuckles and saying that I had to start at six o'clock and play for four hours. I just picked it up when I wanted, and I put it down when I wanted. Sometimes it would be a half an hour, and sometimes it would be a whole day. And it's still like that today.

However, sometimes I get to the point where I don't want to even touch the guitar, and I'll go for months without playing. And actually I find that really helpful for my playing. It allows me to make connections in my head, rather than on the guitar. It's like John Scofield once said about that Yellow Pages ad that went: “Let your fingers do the walking.” He used to always say: “Never ever let your fingers do the walking!” Sometimes when you practice a lot, you start doing things that you've already done before. It's inescapable in one way, but on the other hand, sometimes when I take some time off, some of those connections get broken. Then when I get back to the guitar again, except for the first two or three hours when I feel a little stiff, I start making new connections. So I think that it's okay to take a break once in a while.

I'm a huge John Scofield fan also. He's like the other end of the spectrum with his music. It's all about the harmony, which is almost more important. The chops are one thing, but playing really cool notes is another game entirely.

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: And some current guitarists?

AH: I love Jim Hall's ideas and Wes Montgomery, especially his playing on a memorable tune called "Missile Blues." Of course, I personally know many guitarists, so I hear their music regularly. I always loved players who had their own identity, like John McGlaughlin, John Scofield, Scott Henderson and Pat Metheny.

Allan Holdsworth interview (Abstract Logix 2004)

Fan: You have pioneered a voice in music and influenced your peers and your fans. Who are some of your favorite guitar pioneers?

AH: Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Jimmy Raney, Wes Montgomery in fact most of the great guitar players; I loved them all. The newer guys: John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale... They?re all amazing with very different musical personalities. Of course there's Michael Brecker and Keith Jarrett, but they don't play the guitar (thank God!). I think I've been influenced by all instruments. I was influenced a lot by horn players, from Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane on to Michael Brecker. There's many, many more that you could fill this whole page with people that have brought great gifts to the world of music.

Allan Holdsworth’s Untold Secrets + Worthy Quotes (Guitar Player 1990)

One problem with legato technique is that it tends to make you play all the notes running in one direction, and that's something I tried to stop doing two or three years ago. I try not to play more than three or four notes going in one direction. You realize that it's too easy, that your fingers are doing the walking, as John Scofield says. When I read that, it made me start rethinking it.

Legato Land (Guitar Techniques 1996)

There are many fantastic guitar players out there at the moment. Are there any that Allan particularly enjoys listening to or playing with?

"Oh, there's so many good guitar players out there I get scared to go anywhere now. But really, I just like anybody who does anything that's different - anyone with a voice. I believe that an instrument is just a tool in order for a musician to make music. I never really listen for the guitar, I just like to listen to musicians, so it doesn't really matter which instrument they play. But occasionally I'll hear something with some great guitar playing by someone like, say, John Scofield. There are so many amazing guitar players that I'd feel embarrassed to mention only one... which I just have [laughs].

"I prefer not to play with many other guitarists, with the exception of a very few players like Steve Topping, for instance, who has this amazing restraint, even though he's got the ability to do all kinds of stuff. Most of the time when you get guys together who play the guitar, they'll just be going at it and it'll be like a swordfight on stage."

The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever (Guitar Player 2008)

“Allan really changed guitar playing. The legato techniques and ‘sheets-of-sound' approach influenced not only jazz guitarists, but also a whole generation of metal players. And aside from all the technical stuff, he's a master jazz guitarist. Check out his version of ‘How Deep Is the Ocean.'” —John Scofield

The Unreachable Star (Guitar World 1989)

It's really fresh to hear a guy come along and do something so stylistically opposite to what I would have thought of. I listen for that. I actually listen to a lot of guitar players. What I'm saying is that I'm not really overfond of the instrument as an "instrument," but I love to hear somebody like John Scofield, Eric Johnson or any of those studio guys who are actually wonderful guitar players, who can play all these different styles and things that I couldn't even touch.

KEITH JARRETT

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Cymbiosis: You've named Tony Williams as probably one of your biggest influences. How does he, as a drummer, influence you as a guitarist?

Holdsworth: Because of the way that he is, the way that he plays and the way that he does things. It's his person. People play like they are, I think. When I went to see him play with V.S.O.P., I felt I was going to burst into tears. It was Incredible. I can't describe it. He has such a grasp on whatever it is that's real. Like Michael Brecker. I feel the same thing when I hear him play now. And Keith Jarrett. It's just the whole of what Tony's doing, the way he's playing, experimenting, his timing, the whole thing. Whatever it is, he has It. And I'm totally inspired by all that. I just felt like I wanted to go and hug him after the gig because he's so great. It transcended just notes or anything. It's beyond. I don't know what it is, but it sure makes you feel good.

Allan Holdsworth (Guitarist 1985)

No, no, I listened to lots of different things, but I tried just to draw from the things which I found particularly moving, and which made me feel something. Sometimes I will be in awe of something I hear which is amazing in a technical sense but, usually, it's how emotively it connects with me; like listening to Michael Brecker or Keith Jarrett when you get that feeling up your back and your hair stands on end. That's the feeling that I try to extract.

Allan Holdsworth interview (Abstract Logix 2004)

Fan: You have pioneered a voice in music and influenced your peers and your fans. Who are some of your favorite guitar pioneers?

AH: Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Jimmy Raney, Wes Montgomery in fact most of the great guitar players; I loved them all. The newer guys: John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale... They?re all amazing with very different musical personalities. Of course there's Michael Brecker and Keith Jarrett, but they don't play the guitar (thank God!). I think I've been influenced by all instruments. I was influenced a lot by horn players, from Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane on to Michael Brecker. There's many, many more that you could fill this whole page with people that have brought great gifts to the world of music.

Guitar Phenom Allan Holdsworth Says He’s Not That Impressed By Flash (The Georgia Straight 1983)

What music do you most enjoy listening to in your spare time?

I listen to Keith Jarrett, and I listen to a lot of classical music. And I'm always made aware of new players 'cause being surrounded by musicians, they're always saying, “Hey, check this out, check that out.”

I want to reach people with my music – common people. (Sym Info 1987)

You're a shining example for a lot of famous guitarists. Bill Bruford told me a month or so ago that if he would play the guitar, he would have wanted to play like you, which is somehow the most beautiful compliment one can get. Aren't you afraid that you're investing 10.000's of dollars in an instrument which will in the end alienate you from your own audience?

“Yes, but I don't care for it. I'm not interested in guitar-players, I don't want to play for guitar-players, I don't like it to play for guitar-players. I want to make music, become a better musician. The instrument isn't important. I listen to music, to tones. When I hear Michael Brecker play the saxophone, I'm not only hearing the saxophone, but also the music, the ideas, ‘the mind in the man'. The same when I hear Keath Jarrett play the piano. I've never wanted to play piano, it's in some way a percussive instrument, and I don't like percussive instruments. I love wind-instruments, like an oboe, or English horn, which is about my favourite sound. I want to reach people with my music, common people. And when I don't play guitar anymore in the future, maybe I get a bigger audience, or not any at all, but that doesn't interest me.”

Med Siktet Innställt På Total Kontroll (MusikerMagasinet 1996, Swedish language)

Here I try to interject a small protest. I argue that each instrument has its own characteristics and that one can prefer one over the other.

- I do not agree. Musicality is not linked to an instrument. An instrument is just what the word says, a tool - like a pencil to write with, and the genius of a Keith Jarrett or Michael Brecker is not limited by it. I know that many missed the guitar playing in my music but my guess is that the music itself was not so important to them.

No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)

Q: How were you affected by John McLaughlin's music?

Allan: I've always liked John McLaughlin's playing, because he always sounded like an individual, a strong individual. That's one of the things I appreciate the most. Pat Metheny, I feel the same way about him. Absolutely incredible, and I kind of thrive on the difference. The thing that makes them different is the exciting thing. I was always a big fan of John McLaughlin, I like everything he does, because there's nobody that sounds like John McLaughlin. I see him as one of those guys whose head sticks out way above everyone. I like all the Mahavishnu albums-I loved Billy Cobham, he was absolutely unbelievable. I dug Billy Cobham before that band, when he had the band Dreams, with Michael Brecker. So when John came out with his first album, with Billy Cobham on it, it was great just to hear Billy Cobham again. An absolute monster. Actually, I have to say that my favorite stuff john McLaughlin has done is on acoustic guitar. To me, with all those musicians, it really wouldn't matter what they played. It wo uldn't matter to me if John McLaughlin played saxophone, he'd still be who he is, and I feel that way about all those guys. Keith Jarrett, it doesn't matter that he plays the piano, the piano is totally unimportant. I'm not a big piano fan, and it's not an instrument I go out and seek. I don't just like John McLaughlin, the guitarist, I dig him as a musician because of the music that he's written, and the things he's played. And I do like it more when he plays acoustic guitar. He just seems unbelievably strong on that.

The Open End (Boston Sound Report 1988)

BSR: Do you see yourself doing that with an orchestra or just with the SynthAxe?

AH: I would do it just with the SynthAxe. I'd have total control over it. Then I don't have to sit there with some guy who plays the violin and doesn't want to play this shit. (Laughs). Some of those guys can be a big pain, especially with different kinds of music. I always like that thing that Keith Jarrett says about classical musicians: "They are worse than the audience." I guess a lot of those guys only want to do certain things. It's like a job. They are kind of like worker bees. Their creativity must be on a different plane from a lot of jazz musicians. A lot of these guys seem to be stuck up about it, but the fact is that their creativity level isn't very high at all. It is with some people-obviously there are some wonderful musicians. Generally speaking, the guys in the band, the orchestra people, a lot of them are unhappy. That's how it seems to me. It's like they just sit there and read newspapers and play their part. To me that's not music. You have to find people who are really involved with and into it. You have to have someone there kicking their ass constantly, trying to get them to do it the way you want it, or you just do it yourself, with synthesizers, with much more control. Obviously you don't have the same sound palette that you would with a real orchestra, but eventually you might.

The Reluctant Guitarist (Jazz Journal 1992)

‘Henderson's coming much more from a bebop sort of standpoint than me, and he sounds like he's really improvising. You never know what he's going to do. Scott seems to make it come out in a fresh way. It's almost like when I hear Keith Jarrett. When I hear Keith Jarrett play a standard, I never hear any standard things. It's obvious that he's completely familiar with all of that stuff, but he actually sounds like he's improvising. That's absolutely wonderful to me.

MCCOY TYNER

Allan Holdsworth interview (Music Maker 2003)

Any period or album of John Coltrane you particularly like? I like mostly all of it. But I particularly liked the album, my favorite, I actually was telling Ernest one of my favorites was an album called Coltrane's Sound. That was one of my favorite Coltrane albums. ‘The Night Has A Thousand Eyes' and then he playes my favorite tune on that record was the last one, it was ‘Satellite'.They played it as a trio.McCoy Tyner played on the whole record except that one track. And it's not because I don't love McCoy Tyner, I do, I think he's insane. But is was just that one piece of music, it was like.. jezus that's pretty awesome. Yeah, I still love that one.

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN

Allan Holdsworth (Beat Instrumental 1979)

What characterises his playing, above all other attributes, is its sheer fluidity and feel. Despite playing mainly in Jazz orientated ways, Allan has chosen not to follow the stacatto (sic) machine-gun like approach of the equally creditable fellow Yorkshireman John McLaughlin.

Allan Holdsworth (English Tour Program 1989)

On clones: "One of the saddest things for me is that you can go out and see clones of everybody. You can see John McLaughlin clones, John Coltrane clones, Michael Brecker clones... But the thing is that clones don't count, and what's more it's such a waste of energy. The only recommendation I can give is: admire somebody, like them for what they do but find another way of trying to achieve it." There can be no guitarist - no musician, in fact - who can so honestly claim to have done just that.

Allan Holdsworth (Guitar Player 1982)

Are you more enchanted with the music environment in America?

Absolutely. It's a much more happening place. The struggle is everywhere -- no matter where in the world you live. You end up banging your head against the wall. It's been easier in the States for me than England. No one -- absolutely no one--was interested in anything that I did. We couldn't get any gigs, which is why we called the band I.O.U.: The few gigs that we did do there always ended up costing us more money than we'd get. We almost finished up phoning people by saying, "How much do you want for us to play." It's definitely better for me in America, although it may be different for somebody else. It seems that English musicians don't get any respect in their own country until they've been somewhere else. People used to tell me about John McLaughlin -- how he wasn't accepted at all in England. Then after he played in the States and returned, they were all like down on their hands and knees. England's such a fickle place, and the music's so much monopolized by the BBC, which plays such crap all d ay long. And the record companies are only interested in fashion. And if it's fashionable, then that's it. They'll spend a little money on three bands and hope that they'll make it by being fashionable, rather than spending maybe the same amount or less on one band that may turn out to be long-term. It's really nuts.

Allan Holdsworth (Guitarist 1985)

Are there any guitarists you especially like?

Oh yeah, thousands - ranging from Jimmy Rainey to John McLaughlin or, Pat Metheny to Gary Moore. If it's good, it doesn't matter what kind of music it is!

Allan Holdsworth (Music UK 1983)

Do you, I ventured, see yourself as a latter day Mahavishnu, whose music is not as accessible as some of today's three chord wonders?

‘I don't believe that people have to understand anything to enjoy it. Even guys I know who don't know anything about music, will hear maybe John Coltrane and go ‘God, what is that?' But at the same time they know something is happening, but they don't have to understand anything. All they have to do is be touched by it, and hopefully the better I get, the more I'll be able to communicate with people. I might not have been able to do that before, and there's a lot of different reasons. One of them is that I probably didn't wanna do that a few years ago anyway. I was probably happier trying to reach some goal to satisfy myself, whereas now I'd like to do both, which is even more of a challenge . . What I'm not prepared to do is to go out and do something just to make money in music, because if I do that then all my life will have been a waste of time. See that's what I was saying before, I'd rather go out and get a job doing something else . . driving a truck . . . and then come home and play the shit out of the guitar rather than go and play the guitar half-heartedly to a million people, and make a lot of money.

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: And some current guitarists?

AH: I love Jim Hall's ideas and Wes Montgomery, especially his playing on a memorable tune called "Missile Blues." Of course, I personally know many guitarists, so I hear their music regularly. I always loved players who had their own identity, like John McGlaughlin, John Scofield, Scott Henderson and Pat Metheny.

TCG: Must guitarists play out of visual shapes. Do you see the guitar as this type of instrument or is it just a tool for your vision?

AH: I think I see all instruments as just tools. I didn't see this in the beginning, but I do now. For example, if John Coltrane had played another instrument he still would have been John Coltrane. If John McGlaughlin had played trumpet he'd still be amazing. it comes from somewhere else. Most people are lucky and find the right instrument for them right away. But for me guitar was definitely not love at first sight. I grew to love it. If I had played horn, I would have really missed playing chords. There are still things I don't like about guitar. For example, I really don't like to use distortion to get sustain. I don't love it but it's a necessary evil. I'm always trying to find another way to get sustain without sounding distorted. Also that big jazz guitar sound never appealed to me. I like what other people do with it though. I think George Benson is amazing.

Allan Holdsworth interview (Abstract Logix 2004)

Fan: You have pioneered a voice in music and influenced your peers and your fans. Who are some of your favorite guitar pioneers?

AH: Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Jimmy Raney, Wes Montgomery in fact most of the great guitar players; I loved them all. The newer guys: John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale... They?re all amazing with very different musical personalities. Of course there's Michael Brecker and Keith Jarrett, but they don't play the guitar (thank God!). I think I've been influenced by all instruments. I was influenced a lot by horn players, from Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane on to Michael Brecker. There's many, many more that you could fill this whole page with people that have brought great gifts to the world of music.

Allan Holdsworth interview (Music Maker 2003)

When you were studying the guitar, was there an eye-opener for you or anything that you encountered that made you realize you were on the right track?

Well, just hearing people that were really great. It didn't matter what instrument it was. I was never fixated with the guitar as an instrument as such. Maybe because I never really wanted to play the guitar. I know a of guitar players, everything they're listening to, they focussed entirally on one thing, like the guitar. But maybe because I didn't wanna play the guitar, I never got to that state. So I used to just listen to music in general. I had a lot of guitarplayer friends that only listened to guitar. I played em all this shit and they'd go:'oh it doesn't have a guitar on there, I don't wanna listen to that'. It's like c'mon man, just listen to the music, you know, forget what it's played on, you know. I always think of an instrument as just being a tool. It's like, it doesn't matter if John McLaughlin played the trumpet, it'd still be great. And if John Coltrane played the piano it would be sounding great. I don't really think it mattered. It didn't matter if I heard something that was like really amazing and it didn't matter what it was played on, I would still get a lot of inspiration from it. Although I did really like horns, you know. I love particularly John Coltrane. That was a big changing point in my life, when I heard him. Versus what I was listening to before that. It made me realize that there was other ways to play over chord changes that didn't sound like...you couldn't... when I used to listen to those old records and there was Cannonbal Adderly and a lot of like other great bebop players. I could here the history in the playing. I could hear where it came from. And when I heard John Coltrane, I couldn't hear where it came from. It was like, where the hell did he come up.. how did he come up with that? Everything was working you know. That was like a real revelation. I was going, ok, so there's gotta be another way to play over chord sequences and stuff that doesn't sound like it came from somewhere else, you know. I tried to do that, I'll never be able to do anything like that, but...just the inspiration, it's awesome.

Holdsworth & Co. A New Side Of Allan’s Music. (Guitar 1980)

Is the way your guitar is set-up very important to play the way you do?

Not really, because I've always tried to do what I do with acoustic guitars. It depends on how you set them up, but it's the same for any instrument. If you play saxophone you use the kind of reeds you like. But those things are never as important as what comes out in the end. I use thin strings, and I've experimented with all weights of strings. Sometimes thin strings are worse to play than thicker strings. There's an optimum balance for playing and a similar balance for sound, and I've always gone for the one that sounded right, even if it might not have felt quite right. Sometimes the string set-up feels a bit funny, a bit weightless in the middle, and when other people play it they go out of tune. It's a matter of getting used to them, and I like them because like the sound to really sing, like John McLaughlin on acoustic guitars - a beautiful singing sound from thin strings. Other guys do it with different gauge strings, but it's all relative to how you play the guitar, the natural balance between your right and left hands, the sound you hear in your head and the one you produce. I've had problems with acoustic guitars because I've never really owned a good one. The only time I play them is on records, and it's never been a priority to own one. I have a nice Ibanez acoustic cello guitar, and I liked the sound of it, but it has no volume. The top is so thick round the outside I suppose. Dick was explaining to me that it doesn't matter how thick it is in the belly of the guitar as long as it gets thinner towards the edge, so the top vibrates like a speaker. The Ibanez doesn't moνe, and when I put thin strings on it, it just doesn't operate. Other guitars, classical guitars for instance, put out an incredible volume. I'd like to find out the steel-string weights that are relative to the top of the guitar. I've searched for a long time with electric guitars to get the sound as near as possible to the sound in my head and it's hard. I've come close to it with acoustics on records when the engineer has been hip to all the problems, but I'd really like someone to make me a cello guitar with a very thin top, something that would probably collapse if you put telegraph poles on it. A guitar that would respond to the strings I like.

No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)

Q: How were you affected by John McLaughlin's music?

Allan: I've always liked John McLaughlin's playing, because he always sounded like an individual, a strong individual. That's one of the things I appreciate the most. Pat Metheny, I feel the same way about him. Absolutely incredible, and I kind of thrive on the difference. The thing that makes them different is the exciting thing. I was always a big fan of John McLaughlin, I like everything he does, because there's nobody that sounds like John McLaughlin. I see him as one of those guys whose head sticks out way above everyone. I like all the Mahavishnu albums-I loved Billy Cobham, he was absolutely unbelievable. I dug Billy Cobham before that band, when he had the band Dreams, with Michael Brecker. So when John came out with his first album, with Billy Cobham on it, it was great just to hear Billy Cobham again. An absolute monster. Actually, I have to say that my favorite stuff john McLaughlin has done is on acoustic guitar. To me, with all those musicians, it really wouldn't matter what they played. It wo uldn't matter to me if John McLaughlin played saxophone, he'd still be who he is, and I feel that way about all those guys. Keith Jarrett, it doesn't matter that he plays the piano, the piano is totally unimportant. I'm not a big piano fan, and it's not an instrument I go out and seek. I don't just like John McLaughlin, the guitarist, I dig him as a musician because of the music that he's written, and the things he's played. And I do like it more when he plays acoustic guitar. He just seems unbelievably strong on that.

Player Of The Month (Beat Instrumental 1978)

His playing style, nevertheless, is hard to pin down in words. It veers from almost heavy metal in the chords to light and ethereal in the solos, interspersed with runs so lightning fast he makes John McLaughlin look like a sleepwalker. But he can do that, and, knowing he can do it, doesn't feel constrained to demonstrate the ability at every opportunity, whether it's appropriate or not. So what is it that makes him different from the legions of other jazz-rock guitarists? Again, hard to say. But a lot of it has to do with his use of the tremolo arm on his customized Fender Strat.

The Allan Holdsworth Interview! (Jazz Houston 2006)

MM: Do you like any of the modeling things out there that could substitute for the SynthAxe?

AH: Well, I like the VG-8 but it wasn't really a controller…it was still using the pickup thing. I actually have a thing made by Roland built into a couple of my guitars currently. John McLaughlin was telling me about a new Roland thing that works off that same pickup thing and I have a lot of respect for him not only as a musician but as someone who really is into the technology thing. He recommended this Roland thing and that you can track right into the computer with it. It sounds pretty cool to me. John actually heard some things I did with the SynthAxe and he tried it but it didn't really work for him. In some ways I just kind of fell into the SynthAxe, it was kind of luck and it just worked for me. I think I will investigate that Roland thing because ultimately the SA is going to croak at some point.

The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever (Guitar Player 2008)

"I've known Allan and his music for 30 years now, and after all this time he still amazes me. His concept is still advancing with his playing, and his technical prowess, which is phenomenal, is in complete harmony with his musical direction—and this is a very advanced direction. I recall a show I saw him at in London about 14 years ago. After the concert I said to him, ‘If I knew what you were doing, I'd steal everything, but I don't know what you are doing!' Allan laughed." —John McLaughlin

MICHAEL BRECKER

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Cymbiosis: You've named Tony Williams as probably one of your biggest influences. How does he, as a drummer, influence you as a guitarist?

Holdsworth: Because of the way that he is, the way that he plays and the way that he does things. It's his person. People play like they are, I think. When I went to see him play with V.S.O.P., I felt I was going to burst into tears. It was Incredible. I can't describe it. He has such a grasp on whatever it is that's real. Like Michael Brecker. I feel the same thing when I hear him play now. And Keith Jarrett. It's just the whole of what Tony's doing, the way he's playing, experimenting, his timing, the whole thing. Whatever it is, he has It. And I'm totally inspired by all that. I just felt like I wanted to go and hug him after the gig because he's so great. It transcended just notes or anything. It's beyond. I don't know what it is, but it sure makes you feel good.

25 Who Shook The World (Compiled quotes, Guitar Player 1992)

While Holdsworth keeps pressing forward, he feels there are compelling reasons to investigate the work of previous players: "There are some really deep, really incredible things you can get from the past. A saxophonist coming up now might not have heard anything earlier than Michael Brecker, who's absolutely incredible. But when you go back and hear some of the older guys, you realize that the newer players who tried to sound like them never did sound like them at all. There's something missing. When I go back and listen to Charlie Parker, he sounds unbelievable; it's so fresh. Cannonball Adderley and Coltrane, man, those guys were happening! Go back and have a listen to some of the early Miles Davis albums they played on, otherwise you're going to miss something."

Allan Holdsworth (English Tour Program 1989)

On clones: "One of the saddest things for me is that you can go out and see clones of everybody. You can see John McLaughlin clones, John Coltrane clones, Michael Brecker clones... But the thing is that clones don't count, and what's more it's such a waste of energy. The only recommendation I can give is: admire somebody, like them for what they do but find another way of trying to achieve it." There can be no guitarist - no musician, in fact - who can so honestly claim to have done just that.

Allan Holdsworth (Guitarist 1985)

No, no, I listened to lots of different things, but I tried just to draw from the things which I found particularly moving, and which made me feel something. Sometimes I will be in awe of something I hear which is amazing in a technical sense but, usually, it's how emotively it connects with me; like listening to Michael Brecker or Keith Jarrett when you get that feeling up your back and your hair stands on end. That's the feeling that I try to extract.

Allan Holdsworth: An interview (Atavachron 1994)

CH: A female out there, that's interested in the Holdsworthian realm, yes, very "megor" [if so, and if not, no offense intended!] Is there a possibility that, if you had an opportunity to involve Michael Brecker in the next project in some way, would you?

AH: Yeah, I'd like to do that! But then so would everybody else!

CH: Yeah! [laughs] Is it something I should pursue, at some point? Is it possible for the next project?

AH: Well, it would be possible, yeah, ‘cause what we'd have to do is ask him if he could do it, and if he wants to he would, and if he doesn't, he won't.

CH: Yeah. So in other words, "We'll ask him."

AH: Yeah.

Allan Holdsworth interview (Abstract Logix 2004)

Fan: You have pioneered a voice in music and influenced your peers and your fans. Who are some of your favorite guitar pioneers?

AH: Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Jimmy Raney, Wes Montgomery in fact most of the great guitar players; I loved them all. The newer guys: John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale... They?re all amazing with very different musical personalities. Of course there's Michael Brecker and Keith Jarrett, but they don't play the guitar (thank God!). I think I've been influenced by all instruments. I was influenced a lot by horn players, from Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane on to Michael Brecker. There's many, many more that you could fill this whole page with people that have brought great gifts to the world of music.

Allan Holdsworth’s Untold Secrets + Worthy Quotes (Guitar Player 1990) The Precious Past

As time goes on, things move forward in some directions, but backward in others. It's like the quality of an automobile; they can make a car go faster, but it's not made like it used to be. People say that .all the time. There are some really deep, really incredible high-quality things you can get [from] the past. For example, a saxophone player [who's starting up right now] might not have heard anything {further] back than Michael Brecker, who's absolutely incredible. But when you go back and hear some of the older guys, then you realize - well, I did - that all these guys who came up afterwards and tried to sound like them never really did sound like them at all. There was something missing. When I go back and listen to a Charlie Parker recording, he sounds unbelievable; it's so fresh. You have to wade through the poor sound quality of the recordings, but boy, it was happening! Cannonball Adderley and Coltrane, man, those guys were unbelievable. Some of those Miles Davis albums both of them were on - wow, that was something. As things move forward, something else moves back. It's inevitable, because that's the nature of things. It's really great for people to go back and have a look, because otherwise they're really going to miss something. Things get lost that should never have gotten lost.

I want to reach people with my music – common people. (Sym Info 1987)

You're a shining example for a lot of famous guitarists. Bill Bruford told me a month or so ago that if he would play the guitar, he would have wanted to play like you, which is somehow the most beautiful compliment one can get. Aren't you afraid that you're investing 10.000's of dollars in an instrument which will in the end alienate you from your own audience?

“Yes, but I don't care for it. I'm not interested in guitar-players, I don't want to play for guitar-players, I don't like it to play for guitar-players. I want to make music, become a better musician. The instrument isn't important. I listen to music, to tones. When I hear Michael Brecker play the saxophone, I'm not only hearing the saxophone, but also the music, the ideas, ‘the mind in the man'. The same when I hear Keath Jarrett play the piano. I've never wanted to play piano, it's in some way a percussive instrument, and I don't like percussive instruments. I love wind-instruments, like an oboe, or English horn, which is about my favourite sound. I want to reach people with my music, common people. And when I don't play guitar anymore in the future, maybe I get a bigger audience, or not any at all, but that doesn't interest me.”

Joe Satriani Meets Allan Holdsworth (Musician special edition 1993)

ALLAN HOLDSWORTH: "I mean, it's great to LIKE people and be influenced, but there's a difference between being influenced and trying to play like somebody else. I've actually started to hear Scott Henderson clones! Nothing gets left alone. There was a time when you heard Michael Brecker and it could only have been Brecker---and it still could only be, anyway, because there's always something WRONG with the rest of it---but it's that strange thing of so many people trying to sound like him. It's sad...it was like that with Jaco. The most important thing about Jaco was what he was PLAYING. But nobody picked up on that; the first thing they go for was the SOUND."

Med Siktet Innställt På Total Kontroll (MusikerMagasinet 1996, Swedish language)

Here I try to interject a small protest. I argue that each instrument has its own characteristics and that one can prefer one over the other.

- I do not agree. Musicality is not linked to an instrument. An instrument is just what the word says, a tool - like a pencil to write with, and the genius of a Keith Jarrett or Michael Brecker is not limited by it. I know that many missed the guitar playing in my music but my guess is that the music itself was not so important to them.

No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)

Q: How were you affected by John McLaughlin's music?

Allan: I've always liked John McLaughlin's playing, because he always sounded like an individual, a strong individual. That's one of the things I appreciate the most. Pat Metheny, I feel the same way about him. Absolutely incredible, and I kind of thrive on the difference. The thing that makes them different is the exciting thing. I was always a big fan of John McLaughlin, I like everything he does, because there's nobody that sounds like John McLaughlin. I see him as one of those guys whose head sticks out way above everyone. I like all the Mahavishnu albums-I loved Billy Cobham, he was absolutely unbelievable. I dug Billy Cobham before that band, when he had the band Dreams, with Michael Brecker. So when John came out with his first album, with Billy Cobham on it, it was great just to hear Billy Cobham again. An absolute monster. Actually, I have to say that my favorite stuff john McLaughlin has done is on acoustic guitar. To me, with all those musicians, it really wouldn't matter what they played. It wo uldn't matter to me if John McLaughlin played saxophone, he'd still be who he is, and I feel that way about all those guys. Keith Jarrett, it doesn't matter that he plays the piano, the piano is totally unimportant. I'm not a big piano fan, and it's not an instrument I go out and seek. I don't just like John McLaughlin, the guitarist, I dig him as a musician because of the music that he's written, and the things he's played. And I do like it more when he plays acoustic guitar. He just seems unbelievably strong on that.

The Open End (Boston Sound Report 1988)

BSR: Were there any saxophone players who influenced you?

AH: Oh yeah; I liked Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Michael Brecker... Michael Brecker is unbelievable. I listen to all different kinds of instruments. I do like horn players because I wanted to play the horn. I didn't really want to play the guitar.

BSR: It doesn't show. (laughs)

AH: It does to me.

The Reluctant Guitarist (Jazz Journal 1992)

Holdsworth's favoured role for the guitar - as a source of melody and harmony rather than percussive rhythm - is also reflected in the vocabulary he draws on in his improvisations. Allied to his love of rich harmony is a passion for the polytonal style espoused by such hornmen as John Coltrane, and, more latterly, Michael Brecker. He's careful to point out that his approach to building guitar lines is polytonal rather than simply chromatic.

People have said to me "Scott Henderson sometimes sounds like you", but he doesn't, not at all, to me. It might be there as a coincidence, but I don't hear it. And he's got so much of himself in it that he's beyond that anyway. It's like Michael Brecker and John Coltrane. You know, you

can hear similarities but Brecker's elevated himself, his playing is so incredible that it's his. It's great. Actually, he was gonna play on one of the albums, but we just couldn't schedule it. But I'd love to get him to play on something.

The Unreachable Star (Guitar World 1989)

That girl I mentioned who really liked "Distance Versus Desire - I was really kind of knocked out by that, and it opened my eyes to the fact that though it was played on an instrument that has caused me to be rejected by one half of the population, I was able to reach somebody else with it who knew very little about what I was doing normally So there was a classic example of a person who was exposed to something and liked it. If we could only get more creative people involved in radio stations or record companies, or people who actually knew what they were talking about! The whole thing's like a Monty Python sketch; it's so ridiculous that it's laughable. I couldn't go into a hospital and pretend to carve somebody up. Oh, pass me the scalpel, sir. But you've got people doing that in other jobs! I was fortunate enough one time to be talking to Michael Brecker about what's probably my favorite album of all time, Cityscapes, by Claus Ogerman and Brecker. God, what an awesome re cord that is, man; everybody should own it. It's a really subtle, deep record with wonderful orchestration and fantastic playing by Brecker, and the record company wanted to market it as "The Joy Of Sax." And you can't even find that record; I mean, God, who's in charge of this? It's so wrong, man. I used to always want to fight it, and I'll continue to fight, but I can't continue to fight and survive. Of course, I'll have to, and I'll continue by just doing what I want to do - that's the only way I know how to fight against it. Do what I want to do, refuse to conform, and get another job [laughs].

MILES DAVIS

Allan Holdsworth’s Untold Secrets + Worthy Quotes (Guitar Player 1990)

The Precious Past

As time goes on, things move forward in some directions, but backward in others. It's like the quality of an automobile; they can make a car go faster, but it's not made like it used to be. People say that .all the time. There are some really deep, really incredible high-quality things you can get [from] the past. For example, a saxophone player [who's starting up right now] might not have heard anything {further] back than Michael Brecker, who's absolutely incredible. But when you go back and hear some of the older guys, then you realize - well, I did - that all these guys who came up afterwards and tried to sound like them never really did sound like them at all. There was something missing. When I go back and listen to a Charlie Parker recording, he sounds unbelievable; it's so fresh. You have to wade through the poor sound quality of the recordings, but boy, it was happening! Cannonball Adderley and Coltrane, man, those guys were unbelievable. Some of those Miles Davis albums both of them were on - wow, that was something. As things move forward, something else moves back. It's inevitable, because that's the nature of things. It's really great for people to go back and have a look, because otherwise they're really going to miss something. Things get lost that should never have gotten lost.

Guitar Like A Saxophone (Guitar World 1987)

Scott Henderson explains:

"I teach at the Guitar Institute Of Technology in Los Angeles and I get all these students coming in who try to copy the Holdsworth thing. But most guys who cop Holdsworth tend to just take it off the surface. They don't get to the heart of the musician. They cop all the fast shit but they leave out the incredible musicality of what makes Holdsworth so great. Sure, it's a thrill for a younger guitarist to cop a line from Holdsworth that's really, really fast. But it's often a trap. That's the worst thing that can happen to you ... to be accused of sounding like somebody else, only not as good. And that's something that Allan Holdsworth will never be accused of. He doesn't sound like anybody else in the world." Miles Davis, Joe Zawinul and Chick Corea would heartily agree. All three jazz giants were reportedly considering Holdsworth for a featured spot in their bands.

No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)

Q: Did your parents push you to take piano lessons?

Allan: My father tried to get me interested in the piano, but it was really obvious that I had no interest in it. It wasn't that I didn't like the sound of it, it was just that I don't have any interest in that kind of instrument. Then I really started to like the saxophone, Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane, who I heard on the Miles Davis albums. When I heard John Coltrane, I was really moved by it. Then I started going down to the record shop every Saturday-I'd go down in to town and buy an album, and I started buying all these John Coltrane albums. It was only four or five months after I discovered John Coltrane that I read in the paper that he died. It was a real shock because I guess when you're young and you've just discovered somebody, I felt like I really knew him. I just felt like he had a whole lot more left.

Q: After you first became aware of Coltrane and Miles Davis, what were some of the other records that you were listening to and really pouring over?

Allan: I went back to listening as soon as I learned a little bit more about guitar. I started listening all over again to all those Jim Hall, Joe Pass, Jimmy Raney albums. I was really a big fan of Jimmy Raney, because, although all of those guys are absolutely wonderful, there was just something about the sound of the guitar I didn't like. I didn't like that rubber band, dead-tape-wound-string sound, and Jimmy Raney always seemed to have a little bit more of a sparkle in his sound. It sounded a little bit more lively, like Charlie Christian's sound-more vocal, not so dumpy sounding. I realized that I wasn't happy with the sound of the guitar. I wanted to make it something else, but it happened so gradually, I didn't even realize I was playing the guitar. It was a hobby, like someone who rides a bike. I had no intention of trying to make a living from it.

One Man Of 'Trane (Jazz Times 2000)

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.

"He just kind of completely turned my life upside down," Holdsworth says of Coltrane's influence on him at the age of 18. "I remember when I first heard those Miles Davis records that had Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane on them. It was fascinating to me. Coltrane's playing in particular was a major revelation. I loved Cannonball also, but when I listened to him I could hear where it came from, I could hear the path that he had taken. But when I heard Coltrane, I couldn't hear connections with anything else. It was almost like he had found a way to get to the truth somehow, to bypass all of the things that as an improviser you have to deal with. He seemed to be actually improvising and playing over the same material but in a very different way. That was the thing that really changed my life, just realizing that that was possible. I realized then that what I needed to do was to try and find a way to improvise over chord sequences without playing any bebop or without having it sound like it came from so mewhere else. And it's been an ongoing, everlasting quest.

The Outter Limits: Allan Holdsworth's Out of Bounds Existence (guitar.com 1999)

Guitar.com: Your legato sax-type attack has always come through in your playing going back to Soft Machine. If you listen closely, it's very much a Coltrane thing.

Holdsworth: He just completely turned my life upside down. I remember when I first heard those Miles Davis records that had Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane on them. It was fascinating to me, a major revelation. I loved Cannonball Adderley also but when I listened to Cannonball I could hear where it came from. I could hear the path that he had taken. But when I heard John Coltrane, I couldn't. I couldn't hear connections with anything else. It was almost like he had found a way to get to the truth somehow, to bypass all of the things that, as an improviser, you have to face. He found a way to be actually improvising and playing over the same material but in a very different way. That was the thing that really changed my life because I realized it was possible. His playing was just like a complete, total revelation to me. And I realized then that what I needed to do was to try and find a way to improvise over chord sequences without playing any bebop or without having it sound like it came from somewhere else. And it's been an ongoing, everlasting quest.

Guitar.com: When did you have this epiphany?

Holdsworth: When I was probably about 18, 19.

Guitar.com: You were already playing guitar at that time?

Holdsworth: Yeah, I was just dabbling with it. I was still really interested in the horn. I had wanted a saxophone, I didn't really want the guitar. But saxophones were pretty expensive in those days anyway, relative to a cheap acoustic guitar. There weren't so many guitars around then, not compared to nowadays. But my uncle played guitar and when he had bought himself a new guitar, he sold his old one to my father, who then gave it to me. And that's basically how it started.

Whisky Galore (Guitarist 2000)

Have you ever tried writing anything more overtly commercial?

"No. The biggest lesson I learnt was when I first heard John Coltrane. In the first records with Miles Davis there was Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley and it was the single most revolutionary thing to me. With Cannonball Adderley I could trace the path where it came from, but with Coltrane it was like he'd unplugged the pathway and tapped himself into a direct source. It was just as elevated, but he was coming from somewhere else. It was then I realised you have to elevate your playing, but you don't have to do everything that everybody else did before - again - before you can change something."

OLIVER NELSON

The Unreachable Star (Guitar World 1989)

GW: Something a lot of people who are awed by your technique don't understand is that you frequently use larger stretches to facilitate playing small intervals on consecutive strings. Stretching, you can actually move from a note on one string to a semitone above it on the next.

HOLDSWORTH: That was something that I originally started by working with two guitar players; we'd find all these chords that worked nicely with each other, and with two guitars, they'd sound really amazing. We would just play chords together, with very close notes. Neither of us would use any notes that were contained in the other guy's chord, but each pairing would constitute a whole chord. The way they sounded, very clustered, is very uncommon on guitar. It sounds completely different than it would on most other instruments. That's why I started doing it when I started working on my own. Plus, at the time, I was a big fan of [saxophonist] Oliver Nelson, who was always writing things with close voicings. Now, I don't use them as much as I used to, because I'm thinking a different way now.

RAVEL

Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012)

What guitar players did you listen to when you were first learning how to play?

From that time period, it was mostly the records that my dad had. So originally it was Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian. And then it was Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, and Jimmy Raney. All those really great guys. However, I wasn't really focused on listening to the guitar. I listened to a lot of music. My dad had a lot of classical music, which was very inspiring to me. There was Debussy, Ravel, Béla Bartók, Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland. I was influenced by a lot of other things besides jazz.

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: When you play chordally, obviously we're not talking standard II-V-I progressions. Are you following your ear or possibly that Ravel and DeBussy influence?

AH: It's just what I hear. If I write a piece of music, I try to get it harmonically settled. I don't really think about where it's going. I let it go where the music sounds like it wants to go.

Allan Holdsworth Jam (Jazziz 1994)

Holdsworth sees his music as deriving from a combination of jazz, rock, and classical influences. He cites the harmonic influence of Debussy, Ravel, and Copland, as well as John Coltrane, Charlie Christian, and other role models. But, while his place in the fusion guitar pantheon is secure, he cringes at being associated with the f-word. There is something patently different about Holdsworth's bittersweet music, as compared to the typically upbeat, chops shop fusion.

In Memoriam: DownBeat’s Final Interview with Allan Holdsworth (Downbeat 2017)

You wanted to take up a horn rather than guitar when you were younger. You really didn't think of yourself as a guitar player. Do you still feel that way and why?

Pretty much. I just think of myself as a musician. I always think of an instrument as exactly that, it's just a tool for you to try and express yourself. My dad was a fine pianist and he had a lot of great records and beautiful music.

I grew up listening to Ravel, Debussy, Bartók and jazz like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhart. It was incredibly inspiring! And I was given a guitar and I said “What the hell is this?!”

Like I said, my dad was a piano player, and I tried that, but I just didn't have the feel for it. I wanted to play a horn or violin because you could change the loudness or softness of a sound. With a percussive instrument like piano or guitar I didn't think I could get the feel I wanted on it. But I tried the guitar and found myself trying to make it not sound like a guitar [laughs].

But eventually I fell in love with the guitar for other reasons. I played the violin for a couple years too but I missed playing chords. So I went back to the guitar and used distortion to sustain notes and make it do things it wouldn't normally do. So, here I am playing the guitar… or trying to!

Patron Saint (Guitar Player 2004)

I've never heard you cite any compositional influences.

Most of them are classical composers such as Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Copland, and Bartok-particularly his string quartets. I still can't listen to Debussy's "Clair de Lune" because, if I do, I'll cry [laughs]. I can't get past the first two bars. It's really weird, man. It tears me up. What I took from those guys was how their tunes make me feel in my heart. It's about the emotion, rather than what the piece actually is. I think that's because I want to be influenced, which is a whole lot different than trying to work out precisely what someone is doing.

The Reluctant Guitarist (Jazz Journal 1992)

‘The thing that always moved me most was hearing a really great chord, or just the way it was voiced. That's what I live for, that chord. It came mostly from classical music in the beginning.I got interested in certain composers - Bartok, the string quartets, and then The Concerto for Orchestra, and I also liked some of that opera, like The Miraculous Mandarin. Oh, and Debussy and Ravel. I love Ravel's string quartets. There's something about that period. Music was just starting to look like scenery; you could see things in the music.

SATELITE

Allan Holdsworth interview (Music Maker 2003)

Any period or album of John Coltrane you particularly like? I like mostly all of it. But I particularly liked the album, my favorite, I actually was telling Ernest one of my favorites was an album called Coltrane's Sound. That was one of my favorite Coltrane albums. ‘The Night Has A Thousand Eyes' and then he playes my favorite tune on that record was the last one, it was ‘Satellite'.They played it as a trio.McCoy Tyner played on the whole record except that one track. And it's not because I don't love McCoy Tyner, I do, I think he's insane. But is was just that one piece of music, it was like.. jezus that's pretty awesome. Yeah, I still love that one.

SHADOWS

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: Tell us about your guitar evolution.

AH: I started out with a regular steel string flat top at a young age. Then I got a Hofner. I think it was called a "President." Later I put a pickup on it. My father's friend built me my first amplifier. I used to love going to his place and watch him solder and such. This got me started in my interest in electronics. When someone lent me a Stratocaster, that was it. I couldn't believe it. It sounded like the Shadows, or Hank Marvin who was a huge hero to me. I bought a Strat and used it enthusiastically for about six months till I tried a Gibson SG. It changed me again. I sold my Strat and played SGs for about a decade. Later, I did experiment with Strats again but with humbucker replacement pickups. I liked that sound. In 1972, I recorded with a trio called Tempest using an ES-335. I later used the SG with Tony Williams' Lifetime Band.

SHOSTAKOVICH

Med Siktet Innställt På Total Kontroll (MusikerMagasinet 1996, Swedish language)

It's late at night and Allan Holdsworth is on his way home to San Diego. The car radio is on, and suddenly a Shostakovich piece flows through the speakers. He parks the car and sits speechless, listening intensely, and deeply moved. The music stops and he thinks of himself and his musicianship: "Why do I do anything at all, when someone else has already done that?!"

SO IN LOVE

Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)

TCG: Were there any guitarists later on that you listened to?

AH: I was extremely fond of Jimmy Raney. Of course there was Joe Pass, Tal Farlow and Barney Kessel. My dad bought lots of records to expose me to all this great music. Joe Pass' album Catch Me was mind boggling. But there was something about Jimmy Raney's sound that I loved. My favorite was a recording called Jimmy Raney In Three Attitudes which I lost during my move from England. I'm still trying to find the recording. He played a tune called "So In Love" and his solo is absolutely amazing.

STING

Allan Holdsworth: An interview (Atavachron 1994) 3 references coded

CH: Here's our star-struck question... Would it be a mistake for you to appear on a high-profile artist's recording, as a soloist? Like Peter Gabriel, Sting, or Steely Dan?

AH: Ah, I'd love it.

MP: Why would it be a mistake?

AH: It would be absolutely megor.

CH: Now, if I named those three, which one would you most like to do?

AH: Sting, probably.

MP: Why?

AH: Because I like... I know he seems to be a bit of a poseur, but I like his...

MP: Poseur?

AH: There's something about his music that's like, kind of organic that I like; it seems really... scratch the poseur thing!

[laughter]

AH: There's something about...

CH: He's quite a musician, isn't he?

AH: Well, I don't know, but what I like about it is when I hear his music sometimes, it's like... they're songs that I've heard in my head before. Everything sounds like I've heard it before. But I recognize it... I recognize it; it seems to be one level further back than like, pop music, which is just like on the front-and you just [hear] it and you go, "Oh, Jeez...."

CH: Could that possibly be because you're from the same geographic area, in a way? I mean, he's from Newcastle; you're from Bradford.

AH: Well, I mean... I think music is very geographical. You know, you can tell a lot of times where people come from, by that.

CH: I really enjoyed his band, especially David Sancious and Vinnie Colaiuta, who are incredible musicians.

AH: Ah, yeah.

MP: When he was done playing the keyboards, he got up there and took up a guitar, man, and he still-he'd part your hair at a hundred meters. The guy was phenomenal!

AH: Well, I think David Sancious is great, you know, I mean because that's what I always liked about him. I could never figure out where, why. I could realize the guy that they've got [guitarist Dominic Miller], you know, does the job, or whatever, and maybe looks good, or whatever-I dunno. But there's a funny thing; is that David Sancious plays really good guitar.

MP: He does.

AH: And the thing that I saw, he just completely torched the guitar player.

KK: This is true...

AH: It was like... it was like, "Why wasn't he playing guitar?"

KK: Just remember, it's like you say: Sting is fundamentally a songwriter, and I don't think he wants the chops to get in the way of the song, and that's what you're always thinkin' about. I mean, you've heard it all before, and if everybody was busy wankin' off and playing solos...

AH: Well, they wouldn't be, would they?

KK: No-he wouldn't let them.

MP: Wanking. Wanking seems to be a recurring theme. I was commenting on the wanking... [no more ales for him!]

AH: Well, I don't think they should be, anyway. It's not the kind of music it is.

MP: I listen to like Sting, and I wish he would wait a little while. Frankly, the last couple, I thought, haven't been as developed or entertaining, and when he was doing "The Dream of the Blue Turtles", he probably had a long time to gather material, while the Police was goin' on. And that was such a fine album, and it's like I'm waiting for him to do that one again. Well, not again...

AH: Well, that's probably what... that's possibly what happened, you see, because... I mean, I don't know-who knows? But I know that was the way it was when we did the first I.O.U. album. We had a lot more material before we started that one, more available than any other one. Until we came to the last one-that's why I think "Hard Hat Area" for me was a nicer album. You know, ‘cause you had the same kind of thing as the first one: We played the music live before we went into the studio, and that was real important to me...

Never again a serial-production-group (Sym Info 1986)

That music has, just like yours, quite some common ground with jazz.

“That's true, although that doesn't mean automatically that it's good. A whole lot of people just love one kind of music – take for instance those people who only love jazz. I think that's ridiculous, because a lot of jazz is awful, terrible and simply bad. The same way a whole lot of pop-music makes me mad, it's disgusting! On the other hand, some pop-music is good, Sting for instance.”

TAL FARLOW

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Cymbiosis: And then you started listening to people like Charlie Christian.

Holdsworth: He was on the records that my father had, so I went back and listened to those with new ears because I realized that this guy was playing guitar. Charlie Christian was the first real big major guitar influence. . . and Django [Reinhardt]. But mostly Charlie Christian, because I just love the sound that he got, and I still love it today. There's a lot of jazz guitar sounds. Guys like Jimmy Ramey, Joe Pass, Tal Farlow, Jim Hall...I love the way they play. But there's something about the sound that I really don't like. It's kind of like a rubber bandy sound, a dead, short kind of guitar sound, [laughs] It's just not for me.

No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)

Q: What were your first recollections of music , and how did you first become interested in music?

Allan: It was all the records that my dad had. Being a jazz piano player, he had a lot of records lying around, and that's how I first heard Charlie Christian, on some of the old Benny Goodman albums. So I kind of grew up listening to that. He also had Joe Pass, Jimmy Raney, Tal Farlow - those guys. I always loved music, I loved listening to it, but I absolutely had no intention of becoming a musician, or anything. I just thought music was something to enjoy and listen to, and that's all I did.

WES MONTGOMERY

The Unreachable Star (Guitar World 1989)

GW: What players do you feel epitomize the proper way the instrument should be played?

HOLDSWORTH: Well, in a funny way all the people I like are all the people who are doing something different with it. From the beginning, I've enjoyed players like Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass, and more recently, Pat Metheny who did a whole thing on his own. Scott Henderson is doing something unique, and now; Frank Gambale comes along and does something great. It just shows you that you shouldn't be so resolute about things like music. People waste time spending hours trying to clone something when they could be spending hours practicing something really different.