I.O.U. (album): Difference between revisions

==[[Allan Holdsworth (International Musician 1981)]]==

What is the current state of play?

==[[Allan Holdsworth (Guitar Player 1982)]]==

Given the freedom to pursue his chordal, melodic, and soloing abilities with the new band, Holdsworth developed material he had written over the previous few years, and with '''I.O.U.''' began performing in England. According to Allan, though, the climate wasn’t quite right for the type of music the band was performing. Punk and new wave were the rage, making '''I.O.U.'''’s music less desirable to the general public. Holdsworth and company recorded in early 1981, and found their music met with less than enthusiastic response by record companies.

==[[Allan Holdsworth (Music UK 1983)]]==

When I saw Allan Holdsworth on a very grey day in Kingston Surrey in the middle of 1981 he was feeling well shall we say not at his best? He’d grown tired of the fight and intimated that it wouldn’t take an awful lot more before he threw in the towel. He’d become disillusioned with the business to the point of thinking about taking a job in a factory, leaving free his evenings to play what he liked. Allan refuses point blank to play music he doesn’t feel, hence his dilemma. The last straw was an album he recorded in England called IOU, which featured singer Paul Williams who is now the only person from that band that’s currently playing with Allan. Allan Holdsworth’s troubles were not yet over, and he ended up having to press the album himself, and sell it on the door at his own gigs and by mail order. So far he’s sold an astonishing 14,000! None of the major UK record companies were interested enough to pick up the album, although that situation is about to change.

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

What would you like the future to hold for Allan Holdsworth?

==[[The Innocent Abroad (Musician 1984)]]==

Thus did America beckon to one Allan Holdsworth, legendary electro-jazz guitar stylist who, by 1980, was unable to find gainful employment in his U.K. homeland, either as a guitarist or leader/composer of his own appropriately named trio, '''I.O.U.''' Holdsworth was even preparing to hang up his guitar strap forever: "I was broke, couldn’t make any living at all in music. I would’ve had to retire; in fact, I was just about to take a job in a music store. I had accumulated a lot of equipment over the years, and I basically paid the rent by selling a few things each month. Eventually, when we came to mix the '''I.O.U.''' album, I sold the last guitar I had. Then I came over to America on vacation and met someone who said she could get us gigs, so we all came over."

==[[Allan Holdsworth (English Tour Program 1989)]]==

The Holdsworth brand of music -uncompromising and enigmatic - has never really found favour with the record companies. He shrugs: "They say to my manager ‘Let us know when he does something that we can sell’. And, you know, that '''IOU''' album we made... we couldn’t even give it away; we actually tried to give it to record companies and they wouldn’t accept it!"

==[[The Unreachable Star (Guitar World 1989)]]==

'''I.O.U.''' was a five-thousand-dollar record; we recorded it pretty rapidly and mixed in two evenings. It was recorded over a span of time because we couldn’t get the studio time all at once. But since then I’ve tried to be more careful in the recording, pushed myself a little bit harder, and just tried to spend more time mixing. And that all costs money.

GW: Did that record do anything for you?

HOLDSWORTH:: Well, it’s the same prob1em. I have great difficulty listening to it now because I sound so bad on it. But it was obviously representative of what we were doing, and that’s the way I played then, because I didn’t know any better. But it’s a good record in terms of having captured something; it captured the essence of what we were doing. And Gary I thought, played just great on it. Paul Williams sang great, too.

GW: Do you think the vocal concept prevented you from getting over with the jazz constituency?

HOLDSWORTH:: It was just something that I grew out of, or that I thought I should change. The original vocal concept stemmed from the trio concept; I wanted to be able to play things as a trio with a melody and chords, set up in a situation where I could perform them with just a guitar. So I used the voice like an instrument, and Paul was the perfect person for that. But I just wanted to do something different. I mean, I never know what I’m going to feel like or what I’m going to want to do, because it changes, and I can’t help it. When I got the SynthAxe, a whole other thing suddenly opened up to me and I didn’t see what I was doing as a musician, or the band itself, in the same way anymore. And I also saw the vocal thing sitting me on the fence really hard, and that people who like instrumental or "jazz" music were kind of perturbed by the vocal aspect of my music. I never was, but I thought that they were, and I also felt that there were people who liked the vocal aspect of t he songs but didn’t like the rest of it. It was like stretching both sides, and, like I said, when I got the SynthAxe I decided that that was what I wanted to do, so I just continued to sit on the fence in a different way.

==[[Mike Pachelli Show (video transcript 1991)]]==

MP: In 1980 you started a trio called False Alarm, with Gary Husband and Paul Carmichael – was it time for you to become a leader?

==[[Creating Imaginary Backdrops (Innerviews 1993)]]==

You had Velvet Darkness pulled?

==[[Makin’ Trax (Guitar 1994)]]==

Musically, what did you try differently on Hard Hat Area than on previous albums?

==[[No Secrets (Facelift 1994)]]==

So, how did the Gong projects come about?

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

- A friend gave us free studio time at The Barge, [literally] a barge in London. To be able to mix the album over two evenings in Trident Studios, I had to sell the guitars used for the recording. Sometimes I miss England, but that side of the country I don’t miss. For a musician like myself, it’s extremely inhibitive to live there.

==[[Untitled (Guitar Magazine? 2001)]]==

Q: And you devote yourself on solo project after 80ís.

==[[Harnessing momentum (Innerviews 2008)]]==

Having said all of this, I would like to remix the '''I.O.U.''' album because the last time I played it off the original two-inch tapes, it sounded so much better than the album. The record was mixed in two evenings. I think everything, but especially the drum sound, can benefit from a remix. Also, the tapes were stolen during that session and two of the tracks were gone by the time we mixed the album. Later, the studio owner found the guy who stole the tape and got it back. So, there are two tracks that aren’t on the original '''I.O.U.''' album that I would include. I’ll have to bake the tapes in order to do it, but I think it would be worth it. The recorded sound was just so much better than the CD and I think I can do it a lot more justice.

==[[A Different kind of Guitar Hero (BAM 1983)]]==

BAM: Tell me about the recording of the I.O.U. album.

AH: An old Strat that I had for a long time. Unfortunately, I had to sell it to come to L.A.

=Links=

YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mNjYYfxHBBUTiW1OeiNVUWhZOE8DMsGvk