Sunship: Difference between revisions

From Allan Holdsworth Information Center
Created page with "==Allan Holdsworth: An interview (Atavachron 1994)== CH: Alright. Here's an obscure one: rumor has it you worked with a guy named Jamie Muir, a musician I know of and res..."
 
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So to Soft Machine and Gong. Given Allan Holdsworth's links with Nucleus, with the musicians in Sunship, and later with Bruford, I long ago came to the conclusion that here was a musician very much aware of the dynasty of bands and musicians which can be traced right back to the mid-Sixties with the Wilde Flowers. Surely it wasn't a coincidence that Allan Holdsworth first played in the Soft Machine and then Gong. And yet: "In both cases I had no prior knowledge of the bands. In Gong I knew nothing about Daevid Allen or anything else that had gone before. I don't mean that in a bad way - I'd never heard it. Same with Soft Machine - I hadn't heard what had happened before, which may be a good thing, because then you're not trying to keep something alive. But there was a guy who was also a huge help to me starting out called Brian Blain, who works for the Musicians Union. He was absolutely wonderful - he helped me a lot. I think he really liked me and tried to put me in different situations. I remember we did some clinics - that's how I met John Marshall. I guess John told the rest of the band about me, and then Brian Blain hooked up a couple of clinics with the Soft Machine, but they added a guitar player because at that time they didn't have a guitar player.
So to Soft Machine and Gong. Given Allan Holdsworth's links with Nucleus, with the musicians in Sunship, and later with Bruford, I long ago came to the conclusion that here was a musician very much aware of the dynasty of bands and musicians which can be traced right back to the mid-Sixties with the Wilde Flowers. Surely it wasn't a coincidence that Allan Holdsworth first played in the Soft Machine and then Gong. And yet: "In both cases I had no prior knowledge of the bands. In Gong I knew nothing about Daevid Allen or anything else that had gone before. I don't mean that in a bad way - I'd never heard it. Same with Soft Machine - I hadn't heard what had happened before, which may be a good thing, because then you're not trying to keep something alive. But there was a guy who was also a huge help to me starting out called Brian Blain, who works for the Musicians Union. He was absolutely wonderful - he helped me a lot. I think he really liked me and tried to put me in different situations. I remember we did some clinics - that's how I met John Marshall. I guess John told the rest of the band about me, and then Brian Blain hooked up a couple of clinics with the Soft Machine, but they added a guitar player because at that time they didn't have a guitar player.
==Interview with Jamie Muir in Ptloemaic Terrascope==
PT: And then you went on to form the provisionally titled 'Sunship' which included Alan Gowen and Allan Holdsworth?
JM: Alan Gowen was the keyboard player in Assagai actually, that's how I met him. He was a really nice guy and a good keyboard player. There wasn't much work around at the time, I think I found a bit in Germany or something, but we played together and somehow the bassist Laurie Baker got involved as well - I can't remember exactly how Allan Holdsworth had just come down from the North where he'd been doing commercial work. We had a rehearsal group in my house. I remember, that was the year of the electricity strikes. Laurie's wife would be making great vegetarian concoctions in the kitchen downstairs by candlelight, while we'd be upstairs rehearsing. Allan had come down wanting to do some sort of crucial music and I'd been involved in so-called Art Music and wanted to explore other areas - we were approaching it in some quite tongue-in-cheek ways and we had a lot of fun - we spent more time laughing than playing music. Laurie Baker was very much into art music on the intellectual side but in the right mood he could play some monstrous bass.
Source: https://www.elephant-talk.com/wiki/Interview_with_Jamie_Muir_in_Ptloemaic_Terrascope


[[Category:Musicians]]
[[Category:Musicians]]