Tony Williams: Difference between revisions
From Allan Holdsworth Information Center
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"So I did. I played with them and was intrigued with the line-up... I thought it was a fascinating group. So we did that first album. And then I got another call from '''Tony Williams''' to go back again, and it was a really tough one, and this time I decided not to go. And then I guess I went from Gong to UK, because I met Bill during that period." | "So I did. I played with them and was intrigued with the line-up... I thought it was a fascinating group. So we did that first album. And then I got another call from '''Tony Williams''' to go back again, and it was a really tough one, and this time I decided not to go. And then I guess I went from Gong to UK, because I met Bill during that period." | ||
==[[Allan Holdsworth (NPS Radio transcript)]]== | |||
PH: And obviously from one great drummer to another, Tony Williams – such an inspirational drummer through the years. How did you meet up with Tony? | |||
AH: I met Tony by a bizarre accident. I used to play in London when I first moved there. I met a piano player called Pat Smythe who was a very, beautiful guy and a great piano player, and he used to take me on gigs with him. Sometimes he was playing at Ronnie Scott’s - he’d get me to sit in and do that, and one time he was opening up for Chuck Mangione at Ronnie Scott’s, and Alphonso Johnson was in the band, and one day Chuck Mangione was sick, and Pat Smythe sat in with that band, which is Joan La Barbara and Pat La Barbara on drums and Alphonso Johnson on bass. So I played one night, just one set with those guys, and apparently some months later Tony Williams ran into Alphonso Johnson and told him he was thinking of putting a band together and he was looking for a guitar player. So - very nice of him - Alphonso Johnson said to him I heard this guy in England and you might want to check this guy out, so that’s basically how I met Tony. Tony called me to do a project that never was released. It was a project that we, he did with Tequila, the singer, and Jack Bruce on bass, myself on guitar and… I’m gonna kill myself, but I can’t remember the organist’s name – it wasn’t Larry Young, oh man, I gotta remember…I can’t remember his name, forgive me, forgive me. But anyways, we made the album, but it never came out – I don’t know why, but – maybe it’s a good thing, ha ha - but he went back to the States, and some months later I was still playing with the Soft Machine, and he called me up and said ‘I’m gonna put this band together, would you like to be in the band’, and so I said ‘yeah, sure! No kidding!’. | |||
PH: That was the Lifetime band. | |||
AH: Yeah, the New Lifetime, so then he sent me a ticket and I went to New York… | |||
(Lifetime excerpt) | |||
PH: Well you had Tony Williams’ Lifetime with Larry Young and Jack Bruce... | |||
AH: And John McLaughlin… | |||
PH: Emergency, right? | |||
AH: Yeah… | |||
PH: We’re talkin’ like the early 70s... | |||
AH: Yeah, maybe ‘73, ‘74, might’ve been later… | |||
PH: What were some of the inspiration for you for Tony Williams - what was his main attributes for you, which you found so appealing? | |||
AH: He had that same thing of like, this like - you don’t know where it’s coming from, and he would do all these things on the drums that I’d never heard before… He was amazing, man! And the other thing is, that is funny is, well, is that I got to know him quite well, because when I first moved to New York I was like kind of nervous, obviously, coming from, well, really from Bradford, quickly to London, to New York - they’ve got bars at the windows, they’re shooting at each other, it’s like haha, it was a little strange. And also the fact that Tony wasn’t really in any hurry to get anything going. I was like, ‘jeez, let’s do something’, but time would roll by and we would just play with one bass player, and then a few weeks later we’d play with another, and eventually Tony Newton sent him a tape and he really liked the guy. And then Tony went off to do a gig one night with a group, I don’t know whose group it was, but Alan Pasqua was in the band, and afterwards I said, ‘hey Tony, did you hear that piano player?’, and he said, ‘oh no, I couldn’t hear him from where I was’, and I said, ‘Man, the guy was amazing’, so he said ‘OK’. So he called up Studio Instrument Rentals which was a rental place in New York and rented some rehearsal time, and Tony Newton flew in, and Pasqua came, and we just played - and that was the birth of that band! But the thing about Tony was – for your original question – he was doing the same thing with the drums – like, most people had heard him playing in the jazz style, but when he went more over into the rock thing he was playing it in a way that had never been done before, and it’s never been done since. I mean, a lot of people have tried but... so it had that same thing - it was like coming from ‘where the hell was this coming from?’. You know, it’s unbelievable! To hear him playing every night, and sit and stand on the same stage with those guys, man, jeez… | |||
(Lifetime excerpt) | |||
PH: It was quite funny, because there are a lot of jazz drummers who can’t play rock, and rock drummers who can’t play jazz, so it’s kind of a gift if you can play both... | |||
AH: Yeah, he was a magician, haha! | |||
PH: We’re talking about geniuses, there are so many, even bass players – Jaco Pastorius, was he around at that time when you were in New York? | |||
AH: Actually, believe it or not, he was, because he was one of the bass players that we played with, haha, and he showed up one day and it was absolutely unbelievable! I was playing with this guy and said, ‘Jesus! Who the hell is this, man, this is pretty good!’, and him and Tony, man… but the thing was, it was unbelievable and Tony liked him, but I think he was looking for a different kind of a player. I think he wanted someone who was going to be like – Gordon Beck always used to say - like the railroad tracks, so that you got the tracks, then the train and then the ticket collectors or whatever, but you got to have the tracks. It’s kind of like having Jimmy Johnson, who is one my favorite bass players in my… you know, I’ve worked with some great bass players, but Jimmy’s like that, he lays the tracks down and like, Gary’s the train. If you have a drummer that plays differently than that, you can have a bass player that plays differently. One of them has to be the tracks though… and in this case it wasn’t going to be Tony! He wanted something else, a different thing, so we didn’t actually end up with Jaco, and then Jaco, I guess, finally was deservedly discovered by somebody else... I guess the first time I heard about him after that was with Weather Report. | |||
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