Allan Holdsworth on working with Bill Bruford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lKt6DZOQik
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vMdOCuLkF4
Part 1: Allan Holdsworth on working with Bill Bruford
Allan Holdsworth: He wasn't really like a band leader as such. He just generally kind of organized the things and he wrote the music. I never thought of him as being like a band leader cuz everybody was all the guys were always treated with the same, you know, like his equal. It was... I never got that from him at all. We'd all decided that um we like the music because on the first album Feels Good to Me I I did that basically as just a session and I wasn't really like a band member as such. After that he formed his own band called Bruford. So all the guys in the band then who had played on the first album they were allowed more of a kind of a say as to what went what went on, you know, which was which was great and I enjoyed making that album a lot, you know. We we had problems making it as well because we used to disagree about how to do it cuz what first played with Bill and the UK thing was the first time I'd ever played in the studio with no one else there, you know. It's like everybody did things separately and I... it took me a while to get used to that kind of situation because I'd always been used to playing with people that played all at the same time. There's nothing wrong with it, you know. It's just different. It's just a different way.
Allan Holdsworth: Bill is a really great composer actually. I like... I think that's his strength. And um basically what what I was trying to do is to try and get them to do more things like live in the studio like the playing parts, but leaving like all the compositional parts that he wanted to be done like really tight and everything. Do those like like he normally would do them, but make sure all the parts where people were playing like organically should be done like that. So in fact most of that album was done that way, you know. Like there's quite a few of the solos and stuff on the album were done like live. They were all done all playing together and it was just like some of the the Tricky Dick things, you know, like the lines and stuff were done like after. Yeah, I noticed that when I left, obviously not due to me leaving, it was just the way that he seemed to be continuing in that direction of recording things like kind of live when he seemed to go over the top because it's... wasn't you couldn't really apply it totally to that kind of music and it sounded to me like his music composition wise got kind of more diluted, it wasn't as strong. I think out of all those albums, when it's absolutely got nothing to do with the fact that I played on any on any of them, was I still think One of a Kind was his best album.
Allan Holdsworth: He almost kind of... it felt like to me as an outsider then like kind of lost sight for some reason of exactly what his strength was and I think his strength was really apparent on One of a Kind. Yeah, he's a different kind of... he's a very different kind of musician to um a lot of the other people I played with like the guy I'm working with now like Gary and uh or Tony or somebody. Like he's not that kind of a drummer. He's... well he's... he's unique. That was one of the main reasons that I left the band was that like I really... I was homesick for another kind of music where more of that kind of interplay with the people could happen. For example, like with UK it was almost like playing with a tape because there was no way no matter what I played could I affect the rest of the situation, whereas I didn't like that. I don't like that feeling, you know. Having already gone through the UK thing which completely blitzed me mentally and physically, um it was... it still had too many things that were similar in it the way the music was put together. So that's... that's basically I just got homesick, but I enjoyed it a lot, you know, really really did enjoy at the time. It's a shame for me that I think I would have stayed with that band a long time if it hadn't have been for the fact of going having to suffer the UK thing because that kind of beat me up so much musically that it was harder to to follow on with Bill than it would have been if UK had never happened.
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Part 2: Allan Holdsworth on working with Bill Bruford
Allan Holdsworth: When I was playing with Tony it was just like... um although my playing improved a lot since then like everyone's does hopefully... it was... there was more I was allowed to sort of express myself more, that was all. And I... I really enjoyed the interplay and the way that like if someone played something it affected what went what went on. And I like playing things that are harmonically interesting as opposed to um like kind of tricky dick or sort of over-organized because sometimes that kind of thing is something that if you can apply yourself to it that is... which I can't always. If you can apply yourself to it almost anybody can do it because anybody can learn something, you know. Anybody can learn to play a really ridiculous line or something, but it doesn't mean that they'll be able to play a good solo or or whatever. So it was just... it was just uh Rights and Wrongs for me and I just... just reached a point in time where I needed to leave. And it was a shame um that the UK thing really messed it up for me with Bill because... um like I said before if I hadn't have gone through the UK experience I would have loved to have stayed with Bill quite a lot longer.
Allan Holdsworth: If you play in a band like... um UK... where everything is sort of... highly organized, but in in the worst possible way if you see what I mean. It's like it's not really organized harmonically or musically. It's kind of... or it's kind of stitched together and uh it's just a little bit too kind of computerized really. And what I mean by the tricky dick thing is just it's like for example learning a... like a really ridiculous line or something just for its sake... um doesn't really mean much to me so because it wouldn't be an important part of the music that I'd wish to play. That was all. I guess that's all I mean. I think Bill's a fantastic composer. I really like the things he does. But all I was saying was it was a difference between the way that I saw what I should be doing and what he should be doing. That's why I was saying about why I think One of a Kind is such a good album because it shows his strength as a... composer. And uh but at the same time it's not the ideal situation for me because my role was very limited in that band. I could only... like I wasn't allowed to play certain things cuz Bill thought they sounded better on the keyboard, which is fine which is... it's his band so you know. It was just that it just reached that point in time where I needed to do something else.
Allan Holdsworth: I think I first met Bill... uh in a public somewhere in London and uh I kept seeing him then in different places. Just kind of kept bumping into him and he mentioned the fact that he was trying to get something together. This was before the first album, before Feels Good to Me. And uh he had an idea of getting something together with Eddie Gomez... or Eddie Gomez and... and we went around and played together and uh it didn't seem to be working out very well so it didn't happen then. But... but he just kept coming back with the idea and I just... I guess just kind of kept in contact and then eventually he um started doing things with Dave... with Dave Stewart and they worked together quite closely writing wise anyway. And then... and then I guess he formed... well he put the band together to do the first solo album, but it was not really a band. Then it became a band later.
Allan Holdsworth: He... he just... he's just plays in a very sort of personal way and that's what makes him stand out, I guess. He plays in a real personal way. It's not... it's not nothing to do with... doesn't got anything to do with like technique or those kind of things, I don't think. It's just... um the way he plays it's so very sort of special to Bill. Yeah, I really... liked Bruford on on the first album. But... and they messed the guitar sound up, I guess, cuz I wasn't part of the band and they mixed it without, you know. Sounded a lot better before it was mixed, you know. They managed to be able to make it sound worse. I don't know how. That album sounds really... really tiny compared to One of a Kind. One of a Kind sounds a lot bigger. I guess that's because everybody said well I don't really sound that way so change it. Whereas if... if you play in the studio and someone's producing it and then you... play and then you leave, you don't know what they're going to do with it. I mean that's happened to me quite a lot whereas you go away, you... sort of kind of book to do the thing and you... you play it, then you leave and you don't know what they're going to do with it. Just take pot luck.
