Sunbird (album)

This a quartet album of Gordon’s tunes, featuring Allan on electric and acoustic guitar, and violin, Gordon on acoustic and electric piano, Jean-François Jenny-Clark on acoustic bass and Aldo Romano on drums. The music is mostly acoustic jazz, flavored by Gordon’s soulful style. Allan does a good job, but does not really sound at home all the time. Their later duo album “Things You See” has better chemistry.

http://threadoflunacy.blogspot.no/2017/07/14-gordon-beck-in-70s.html

Allan Holdsworth - An interview (Atavachron 1994)

CH: Yeah, let’s move on... I want to kind of move on and talk a little bit. Gordon’s going to be involved in the next album, and you were telling me that you really hadn’t had a chance to make a real album with Gordon. What do you mean by that?

AH: Well, everything that I’ve ever done with Gordon has been... has had some problems for me, one way or another. Either I didn’t know the music before it was done, like when we did "Sunbird"-we did the music before; it wasn’t music that I was familiar with, or a style of music that I [was comfortable with at the time]... By the end of the tour, at least I’d figured out how I could work my way through it [the changes]. But the album was recorded before the tour, which was disappointing for me. I felt that I liked it but that I sounded really bad on it. And that was my main reason. And everything that we’ve ever done together has been like that for me; I’ve never felt comfortable. So what I wanted to do is at least have the chance to be comfortable with the music before we recorded one. And I have such a respect for him, you know, he’s an unbelievable musician-that I just would look forward to having a chance to do that.

No Secrets (Facelift 1994)

AII of which paints a picture quite different to the one of obvious harmony between him and Gordon Beck. Despite their obvious affinity in Nucleus, their partnership was first really sealed on the 1977 album “Sunbird", an uplifting album, deliciously light in touch, but with all the technical mastery both players were renowned for. “The sad thing about that was that we did the album first. My reading’s really bad, and they recorded the album before we did the tour. By the time we’d got through the tour I’d figured everything out, but the album was done!” Sunbird" also features Allan (briefly) playing violin: "It was the last time I ever played it. I never really played violin - it was just like a hobby. I just went into a music store in Sunderland when I was playing with that Glenn South band and I don’t know why, I was just walking past a junk shop and went in and asked him if he had any old violins. I didn’t see anything - and he went in the back and he came out with this thing - no strings. And it was like 10 shillings or something - no, it was 5 quid. So I fixed it up and got a new bridge made for it and strung it up.