The Allan Holdsworth Stories

This is a slightly edited transcript of "The Allan Holdsworth Stories" on Samo Salomon's channel. The timestamps are not correct though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi2MCLre_pI

Steve Hunt

[00:04] We had fun on that and everything. But the way I met Alan was through that, because he called me up once in the '80s and he said—it was in the wintertime—and he goes, "Hey, listen, I have this huge tour going to Europe." This is 1987. And he goes, "I got this big tour going through Europe, it's going to..." He goes, "But it's two-and-a-half months long. 10 weeks long." Jesus, that's long. Which was exciting and stuff, and all through Europe and all that.

[00:37] But I was just married for seven years, and I had three kids—one was only a year old at that time. And I told Stanley, I'm like, "Man, that sounds great. I'd love to do this. This is exciting, but I need to talk to my wife because we have to make some kind of plans for the kids, and you know, I'm going to be gone."

[01:01] Back then there was no FaceTime, and you couldn't even call from hotels in Europe because it was expensive and you couldn't get a good connection, you know? So two-and-a-half months away from the family was a lot. But I said, "Let me talk to my wife and see if I can figure..." He goes, "Okay, that's cool. That's cool, you know. See what you can do." And everything.

[01:20] And oh, by the way, Alan Holdsworth is opening up first on the whole tour. I said, "Wait, wait a minute. What? What did you say?" He goes, "Also, Alan's going to be our opening act for the whole two-and-a-half months." And you know, I mean, I'm a huge Holdsworth fan and never talked to him or anything about it—just a giant fan.

[01:45] And then so I just said, "Oh, is that the case? Hey, I can do the tour, man. I can do the tour. I'll do it. I'll definitely..." And he goes, "Do you need to talk to your wife?" I'm like, "She's going to be cool. Don't worry, it's going to be all right," because I'm like, I'm not going to pass this up, you know, just to be hanging with Alan for two-and-a-half months and whatever. I had no dream that he would ask me to play, but it's just like, I get this...

[02:13] So we started this tour and they played first—all my stuff would be set up for Stanley's gig, but they would play. And after about a week, I would show up at every one of his shows just before we played and listen. Chad Wackerman's brother was playing bass. It was just a trio, okay? And I guess Jimmy Johnson couldn't do it, so Chad's brother, who plays really great, played bass. And Alan and Alan had just had the SynthAxes, and I think he had just done Sand, and he finished Sand I think.

[02:46] And it was a trial; the SynthAxe was new, so he had it out with him. But if you're doing a trio with guitar, I mean, you probably—if you're playing and you get to the solo section and you play a solo, you can stop and play a chord, or play a couple of notes. But he had a problem with the SynthAxe because it was just single notes playing. And then all of a sudden, like on "Looking Glass" and "Pud Watusi" and all these tunes, there was no chords, because it was just a trio. So they played with a cassette! Seriously.

[03:22] So what Chad did is they made a cassette with a click track. It was just a tambourine on the left channel of a cassette. And then they mapped that out so that when the solos started, Alan had recorded the chords to the solo. So when they played "Looking Glass" and things, they would play the song, but Chad had to listen to this click track, and when they got to the solo, Alan's chords would come in on the cassette and it would feed back into his amps, and then he would change to a solo patch and he would solo on the SynthAxe.

[03:57] But they had to do it exactly the same way every night. And if for whatever reason they got off by a beat or a measure—which they did—it would be completely off, you know? So they—and Chad hated it because he had this tambourine banging him in the head. Alan hated it because if he wanted to do another chorus, he couldn't.

[04:21] So we were on the bus, this is about after a week. He goes, "Hey, do you want to—do you want to sit in with us and so we can get rid of this effing cassette, man? We hate this effing cassette, man." And so I said, "Yeah, yeah. I'm here. I can play. I can play chords, you know."

[04:39] So he wrote out a few little things. I figured out—he showed me some stuff on maybe four or five songs, like "Looking Glass," "Pud Watusi," a few others. And I forget the tunes I played, but it was a good chunk of the set. And so I just started playing with him, you know.

[05:04] So my luck—my luck was I got to replace a cassette that was... you know, I'm slightly better than a cassette. So I got the gig, you know. And the other thing I had—I had Oberheims and DX7s, and I used big... because I was really into Zawinul, so I had all these kind of synth-horn sounds and patches and all that stuff. And he loved that kind of stuff, too—Alan, very orchestral, organic kind of sounds.

[05:37] But anyway, so towards the end of the tour, he goes, "Hey, listen. I have a tour with my band coming up in September. Would you care to join us, you know, if you would—if you would like?" And he was very humble, though: "Please, please, I love this."

[05:51] So yeah, so anyway, that's how I joined the band. And then he said, you know, he's very humble and he's like, "Hey, do you... I don't know if you want to do this or not, you know, but you can let me know. And I have this tour coming up and yeah, you probably don't want to do it, but you know, would you care to—would you care to join us on the tour?" And I was like—I was like, "Oh my God," you know. I was trying to keep my composure, like, "Oh, I think I can do it. Yeah, I'd love to."

[06:19] And I had to learn all the other tunes. And I have a good friend here in Boston, guitar player Bruce Bartlett, that we used to get together and learn Alan's tunes together. And we had a band together. In fact, my band opened up for Alan years before! Oh really?

[06:36] A friend of mine produced an Alan concert here in Salem, Massachusetts, and my friend said, "Hey, do you want to open up for Alan?" And I'm like, "Yeah, that'd be great." So this guitar player Bruce Bartlett, Jimmy Earl was in the band, and then we had a local drummer, Uribe. And then we opened up for Alan. But Alan didn't get to hear us play because they were driving from New Jersey and there was a big storm, and they were really late.

[07:03] So his roadie Gordy—who I know now—he came up, he goes, "You guys got to play more tunes because they're stuck coming up from New York." I'm like, "All right." So we played extra tunes, and we were like, nervous opening up for Alan. We were like kids, you know. And I got to see his show, I was like... it was like so happy.

[07:17] But I was too nervous—I saw after the show he was talking to a bunch of people, very nice, you know, but I was too nervous to actually go speak to him. So I never introduced myself or talked to him. I was like, "Oh my God, there's God!" I mean, Alan ain't God, but it's like... so I never met him then.

[07:39] So he was very humble. After he asked me to play, I got a postcard—I think we were in Germany or something. I got a postcard and I wrote it to my friend Bruce Bartlett. And the only thing I put on the thing, I just put: "I got the gig." And I sent it to Bruce, and he knew exactly what I was talking about. And I think he still has it up on his wall somewhere. GARY HUSBAND

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[00:04] And as some people would come in here to the Alan Holdsworth shows, you know, back in the day, and you know, I was accused of... would you call—when you try to destroy something purposely? I was accused of sort of being detrimental to that music by simply the spirit and often the volume. But what people were hearing was just an intense expression.

[00:36] But to me, it was like a... this is what I understood from when I listened to Coltrane and Elvin, and when I listened to Miles and Tony Williams, and John and Billy Cobham, exactly. So it was a big deal. I don't get it, but I mean, for those who sort of did get it, it was okay. But there was a lot of resistance to maybe playing with such a strong motive and being... it was too overbearing for people.

[01:13] But for me, it was totally for the music all the time. And Alan, all he wanted was propulsion and constant improvisational movement. He wanted activity—ever-changing activity all the time. And that's what he demanded. I mean, the moment anybody fell into a backbeat, it was a big no-no. You know, "Break it up! Break it up! Play with me, you know, take me on a ride." And he loved that.

[01:44] Did you guys—like, when he presented a new tune, how was the process there? Did you have carte blanche for drums, or... absolutely, yeah. And I did a video cast—one of my own video casts—especially on that. And okay, I'll send you a link, oh please, yeah, a thing for you to have it. But it's motivational, I hope, more than educational in a way, but it's also educational and insightful into a union of the particular way we worked, which was highly unconventional.

[02:22] I do realize that, but he would come, being the completely reluctant bandleader he was, and he'd say, "I've got this thing that kind of falls here and it does this, and then or it goes round and round here." And you know, so "There you go, okay, so I don't know what I'm going to do." So he'd give me a recording of it, and you know, I'd spend—because we had very little time to record those records that we did—I just disappear for the night and maybe spend, depending on how jet-lagged I was, spend a night just living with this composition and coming up with it, letting intuition suggest to me what I could do that might really set it up in interesting ways.

[03:22] So you know, and really take note of the whole form and how to present it. In fact, you know, he allowed me to take extreme liberties in that music, not only in the way that I'd approach it, but formically, too. You know, he let me introduce things in a way, play ahead of things, and also finish them. You quite liked that, when the drums were kind of furious and raging and finished the tune. And I know you really liked that, and so because I wanted to please him and stimulate him—keyword—I wanted him to remain stimulated and excited by what was going on. That was my motivation to really just get creative, because that's what he kind of asked me to do.

[04:10] Then he had no real fixed idea of what he wanted from drums, and paralleling that, he wanted the musician to really find their own expression in it. So for drums, that was a big opportunity, and I grabbed it. For better or worse? No, no, for the best, actually! It's like, come on, it's some of the best stuff out there, at least for me, you know. It's like, well, it was our little contribution, I guess, in a corner of jazz-rock somewhere where we're there, man.

[04:46] But I mean, it was like already the first rehearsal like that with you guys. Like, almost no talking, that he just... oh, yeah, really? Yeah, okay, yeah. It really was like that, yeah. We just got into a room, and he'd heard me play somewhere, and... I don't suppose you fancy playing with me? Okay, yeah. So I said, of course, you know, just name the place and the date, and I'll be there.

[05:27] And we did, but in setting up I found out there were a lot of other musicians at this studio, and we were all supposed to have this big giant jam, but it became clear to me and him that everybody else at some point had picked up their instruments and left and given up because I was just trying to get this connection with him and just working at it. And it was just going round and round, just totally free-form, just playing.

[05:51] And I remember it was like waking up out of some kind of mysterious, sublime dream at... not only the experience that presented itself like that, but it was also it showed me a way of going that I didn't even know existed within myself. So this was just hugely a monumental experience to me, and—say—eye-opening, spirit-opening as an understatement. So it really was like that, and it just sort of continued to be. I'm very lucky.

[06:36] And you were 18, right, when this happened? Or like... I was 18 when that's incredible. That's incredible. In actual fact, Hansford from the group Gong managed to find a cassette he had of a demo of The Things You See, and because it's just like a great stocking filler, in a way—I mean, the sound quality is pretty inferior and it was never mixed, but it was a demo, and it was at that point in time, because I recognize his gear, the sound of his gear, and I recognize which kit I had and which cymbals I had, and I know that that was really, really close to the beginning.

[07:23] And we're going to release that on a... I'm putting a couple of compilations together called Postcards From the Past, and that's going to be on there, you know. It's a nice stocking filler, that record, and an interesting document, because despite its inferiority sonically, it just represents how real it was right at the beginning.

STEVE SMITH

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[00:00] Hey guys, Samo here, thanks for checking out the channel and its contents. And you know, if you feel like it, please do subscribe, thanks so much, enjoy the video.

[00:13] And so, and then as far as Allan Holdsworth, of course, I saw him with Tony Williams—I think I saw him in that band three different times, oh wow, twice in Boston and once in Chicago—which was mind-blowing to, you know, be in the room with those musicians.

[00:32] And when I first joined Ponty's band, it was Alan Zavod on keyboards and Tom Fowler on bass, and Daryl Sturmer on guitar, and Jean-Luc. And there's actually a video of my second gig—oh wow, I have to check it out—it's... yeah, you could... it's on Soundstage. Soundstage was a PBS show, I think based in Chicago, and there's a video of us playing, I don't know, like 20 minutes of music, okay?

[01:13] And that was, yeah, the second gig. We did a club gig somewhere, and then that TV show, and I do a duet with Jean-Luc and Steve on that.

[01:23] And when Jean-Luc wrote the music for Enigmatic Ocean, he had it in mind to have two guitars, and he wanted Allan Holdsworth to be the second guitar player. So that's... you know, we rehearsed—it's hard for me, I can't really remember exactly, but I think we rehearsed a lot, like maybe for a week, wow.

[01:48] And Ponty, you know, he didn't have demos or anything; he had charts, you know? And he had a, you know, a chart lead sheet for me. So when we rehearsed, there was nothing to go on except for our creativity. So he'd give us the chart, but then we came up with our parts, and then I, you know, came up with the drum parts for that album, just as one would in a big band, you know—they hand out the chart and you just come up with a part.

[02:19] And so we rehearsed, and then I think we spent four days in the studio, and everything that's played is live. There was some editing as far as I remember, especially those suites, you know, because we... there was like two suites, and we'd play like part one, then stop, and part two, part three.

[02:38] Actually, the other thing about that album: it's the only time I've ever done that—we recorded the album exactly in the sequence that it is on the album. Oh wow, okay, so he had the whole thing planned out and we just started at the beginning and recorded all of that music just as it's presented on the record.

[03:01] And so then, Allan was supposed to come on tour with us, and he played one gig with that band, and I don't know why, but I don't think he enjoyed playing that music with the band, and he just disappeared the next day—gone!

[03:20] And so Jean-Luc said, "Well, I need a second guitar player." And I recommended Jamie Glaser, okay, because the two of us had played together a lot at Berklee, and Jamie's one of the very few guitar players that can really read music—really read music, like, you know, like you could put a chart in front of him and he can play, he can sight-read it, yeah. And so he came in, and there was an audition with a few guitar players, but Jamie, you know, he really killed it. And so he became the second guitar player with Jean-Luc during, you know, during that time that I was in that group with him. And then he's continued to work with Jean-Luc for many, many years after that, oh interesting, okay.

[04:12] But I did get to work with Allan later, um, in... I pretty sure it was 1988, there was a band that was put together called Jazz Explosion. Oh yeah, with Randy and Stanley, right? That one, yes, yes. How was that like?

[04:28] It was, you know, Randy Brecker, Stanley Clarke, and Allan Holdsworth and myself. Sometimes Mitchel [Forman] would play with us, yeah. That was fantastic, you know, that was a great group. I think, you know, we played well together and put on some very good shows, very good concerts. And it was just a pleasure to play with, you know, that level of musicians. So that... and we did a lot of gigs in that year. We would... they were like, we'd go out for two or three days, like for the weekend, and then come home, oh, and then we'd meet at wherever, you know, the next set of gigs were. So it was a pretty great situation.

[05:25] And out of that, I ended up working quite a bit with Randy Brecker after that, because Randy—both Allan and Randy asked me to go on tour with them, but I was more inclined to play with Randy than Allan, and yeah, it's... I think it's like, I really enjoy playing straight-ahead, you know. I like playing fusion, it's kind of, yeah, yeah, you know, and I like that, but like it was in... like in Allan's group, it's very much like fusion, very kind of free, free fusion. Whereas with Randy, he had just done an album called In the Idiom with Al Foster on... you know, it was more straight-ahead, and it was, you know, in that way more what I was interested in. So, and then since, I've continued to play with Randy, you know, even into the last couple of years I've played with...

BILL BRUFORD

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[00:00] Hey guys, Samo here, thanks for checking out the channel and its contents. And you know, if you feel like it, please do subscribe, thanks so much, enjoy the video.

[00:07] He plays... they seem like, you know, so effortless. Like, how did the process in the studio with those songs go, and you guys playing that?

[00:20] Well, you know—you're going to ask me! That's difficult to remember, actually. So, Alan was never easy. You're always kind of hoping that Alan might get something down, because of course I'm paying the bill, or my record company's paying the money—which means that in the end, I'm paying the money—and you're kind of hoping Alan can work fast.

[00:37] The great skill of the worker-ant studio musician—who we should not denigrate in any sense at all, that phrase "worker-ant," we should be very careful with this—the great skill of a studio musician is he knows when he's done his best, you know? He knows when there is no more he can do on that song. And you must have been in the studio like I have been, twiddling your thumbs like this, you know, hoping that the singer will get it right this time, because you know this has taken two days to do this vocal track, that kind of thing.

[01:15] And in jazz, as you know, you can't do that. We can't afford to do that. Alan was terrific, and he did his absolute best. Occasionally there were times when he said, "I'm not going to play that. I can't play that," for example, some comping behind in a certain style. I wanted some comping, and I had to get another guitar player—John, John from Brand X, came in to do some things. But Alan sort of said, "It's really not my style, not my thing," it's outside his range. I said, "Okay, that's fine, we'll get another guitar player to do that."

[01:52] But I think he probably redid some guitar solos—not dropping in and dropping out, but he probably redid whole solos. And then I think in his later career, he made his own recording studio and would track himself endlessly, I think, to find that one thing that would make him happy. So I don't think he liked being in my band very much, because I think he found himself too boxed in. He more or less said that to me on several occasions. And I think... he may be right, you know. I wasn't sure how much to be open with him and how much to say, "Oh, just play anything you want here." And I was a beginner at collaboration, not knowing that I had one of the best guitarists in the world in the studio with me. You're careful what you say, especially if you're a drummer!

[02:46] Interesting, because when you listen to those records, it still sounds so cohesive and stylistically one, isn't it? Yeah, it's like everything is there because it has to be there, and also the solos and everything... it's like, wow.

[03:03] Yeah, I think that's true. You're looking... I'm sort of a big-picture guy, in a way; I'm something of a conceptualist. You know, when is a record right? When it's finished. When is it done? You know, we don't want to be Weather Report, so how can we—even though we've got Weather Report's producer with us, excuse me—but we do want that same cohesion, you know, of Heavy Weather, for example, or something like that, where everything again is there for a purpose and it says everything you need to know about the group.

[03:34] Because like that group, from your early groups, it's interesting that there are no... I think there's just one live recording that's out there from Oxford, and the rest is with John Clark, the guitarist, right? I think he subbed...

[03:51] Oh, you're talking about Alan Holdsworth? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Live albums from Alan Holdsworth with me? With you? No, true, true, there's no live material, because you guys played live, or you didn't?

[04:01] With that, we did very little live. We had a wonderful French tour lined up, and Alan did the unforgivable thing that all musicians—they cannot do really—which is he gave me about three days' notice and said, "Well, I'm not coming on the tour."

[04:23] Oh, that's terrible! Which is really, you know, unforgivable. But he then did say that there is somebody else who could do it. And I said, "You mean there's another guy who can be Alan Holdsworth? And we just recorded One of a Kind, right, and we're ready to go on tour?" And he said, "Well, funny enough, he's a student of mine. I've been giving him some [lessons]." And this guy, John Clark, was available, and at about three days' notice he jumped in on the album [tour] and did the best he could, which was a valiant effort, a valiant effort, but it was not... it wasn't Alan. Yeah, of course, yeah.

FRANK GAMBALE

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[00:05] What a unique man! What a unique musician. An unsung hero—I mean, he was respected. I always told him, I even wrote to him many times, saying how much I thought he was a genius. And I don't give a shit what the world says or understands, they're... you know, take it from one of your peers: you're a flipping genius and you're just amazing. You've created a whole style that has been so copied.

[00:39] You were the trailblazer. It's always harder to lead than follow, and he was definitely a leader in his field. People like that are rare—rare on this earth. And every opportunity I got, I would tell him how much I appreciated what he had done for guitar and music.

[01:04] So, you know, we had a friendship. The first electric band tour I did was a quartet, and his band opened for us right through the US. So, yeah, I got to... he would come off the stage every night and say, "I'm sorry you had to hear that." You know, he was the most self-deprecating person I ever met. He was so down on himself; he thought because he couldn't read music that he was less than, you know? It's the stupidest thing ever.

[01:32] And you know, after a while, he... you know, we'd always... that was amazing. You'd be off the side of the stage going, "That's incredible!" and he'd go—you'd walk off the stage like this, head down. It was horrible, you know? And after a while, we started to agree with him! You know, we'd go, "Oh, man," we'd be holding our noses as he came off the stage! And then he started to laugh and loosen up, you know? He was very English; I'm Australian, so I could relate to the humor, you know.

[02:10] And, you know, we did that record, Truth in Shredding. Yeah! That's because Mark Varney was a huge fan of Allan and a huge fan of mine, and his big dream was to put us together, which was, you know... at first I went, "I can't be on the same record with him, that guy is like—whoa, forget it!"

[02:33] Anyway, he asked me to produce it, so I chose the songs. A lot of them were Brecker tunes and my favorite jazz tunes; there was one original composition. But the thing I wanted... when I first heard him, I heard him on Jean-Luc Ponty's album called Enigmatic Ocean—ocean, yeah—and that first track where Allan comes in with his tone and the notes, and it was just like the most refreshing guitar I ever heard in my life. I'd never heard anything like it, and I had no idea how he played. I couldn't figure it out at all, so I gave up trying. I never even tried to play like Allan. A lot of people kind of copied his style. I had no idea as a kid what the hell... I was '74, I think, in Enigmatic Ocean—or '76, something like that—I was 16.

[03:30] Yeah, so I always... you know, when I heard him play his own music, it was very esoteric, and, you know, a lot of chords—chord, chord, chord, chord, chord, chord, chord. It's like, it's exhausting! Yeah, brilliant, but exhausting, even for someone who can understand the depth of what he's doing. And the chords he plays were insane.

[03:51] And so, but I always wanted to hear him again like that Jean-Luc Ponty record: on chords that were simpler, with a bit more space, like a couple of bars of each chord. So I, you know, I chose those kinds of songs. And the funny thing in that contract for Truth in Shredding—Mark Varney was such a guitar freak that he said, "Each solo has to be two minutes long from each of you in each song." I mean, where do you find a contract like that these days? I love it! Each solo has to... I had to time the choruses so that there were enough choruses going around. And so there's a lot of guitar on those records.

[04:39] But you know, to hear Allan playing over what I call, you know, standard chord progressions was really kind of cool. Yeah. And so I did my best. Allan was not able to record with us; I recorded live with the band—ah, okay—and he added his parts later in his own studio, in his own time, because I knew that that would be the best approach for him. If he had to do it live, he wouldn't have been happy, and I just know his character. And so that's how it happened.

[05:14] And I remember we mixed the album together in the studio, and I mean, literally, he was one foot away from me, and I'd watch him play, and I still couldn't figure out what... even this close, I'm going, "What are you doing? I just don't." And he didn't know what I was doing either! So it kind of... he said, "What are you doing?" "Oh, what are you doing?" One hand, you know.

[05:37] He was brilliant, and, you know, I'm really glad I got to know him as a person and have that one album documented together. It was... oh man, an honor and a pleasure to have done that with him.

KEI

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[00:02] Well, first of all, I'm not sure how and why he contacted me. I'm not sure where he heard about me, okay? I do know—just if I recall correctly—he had been working with the amazing pianist Billy Childs at that time. Man, I didn't know that! Yeah, I think he did a recording... Billy played on one cut from Atavachron, I believe. And Billy couldn't go on the road with him, and for some reason my name came up. So I believe—I think that's what happened.

[00:51] And as far as Alan's music, I went to his house and he taught me—literally taught me—each tune, and I wrote them down. I couldn't use just ordinary jazz chords, because his music really wasn't based on that. So I had to literally write down each voicing that he used on the guitar, and then from that extract my own version of what the chord symbol might be. But his music... you really have to play off of his guitar voicings more than anything else. You can't just say, "Oh, that's an E minor 7," and then play some E minor 7 licks—that's not the way his music works, you know?

[01:34] So I really had to dig into his harmonic structures to begin to even understand how his music works. And the Frankfurt concert was actually the first gig we played, really! Oh man, so I had only rehearsed with them maybe three or four times at that point, yeah. And so, you know, I was struggling just trying to make sense of everything. Oh, it sounds amazing! I mean, especially, you know, Jimmy and Gary obviously helped; they were... yes.

[02:00] It's beautiful to hear you play with him, because it's just like... the lines he played—they were out of this world, I mean. Oh yes, even nowadays, it's like so modern, and we were talking... oh yes, yes, incredible. Yes, there were similarities—okay, I'm just going to say it that way—similarities between some of the phrases he played and something that was coming out of the more modern phrasings, especially from sax players, you know, people like, say, Michael Brecker.

[02:40] So the idea of what we used to call "polychordal construction" was very much embedded in the way Allan heard music from the get-go. So that was a point of reference for me that I could find a way into his way of thinking.

[02:56] Yeah, I must have been... I transcribed many solos by him, and I'm like trying to figure out all the time, like, "Man, what are you playing?" You know, it's just like... but not just the notes—he had a tremendous sense of structure, you know? Each phrase almost like is a story. It's like a horn player. Yeah, exactly, yeah, so beautiful. And the legato technique, you know, like... oh yes, yes.

JIMMY HASLIP

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[00:04] You know, beside all these players, how did you end up with Alan Holdsworth, and what was your experience like with him? You know, me being a guitarist, I spoke the other day with Gary Husband—like this interview—and you know, what are your thoughts on Alan, and how did that meeting come about? How did that happen?

[00:24] That was incredible. And I was a big fan, obviously, of his music and his playing, yeah. And especially two rhythm sections—I'm sorry about that, there's two rhythm sections that I really, really loved. I mean, I loved all the recordings, but there are two rhythm sections that I absolutely loved, and that was Jimmy Johnson and Chad Wackerman. So I used to listen to all those records, and they did most of the recordings.

[01:00] But there was a nice record that I absolutely loved, and that had a bass player that I spent a little time with, and a drummer that I do a lot of work with, Gary Novak. Oh yeah! The bass player was Dave Carpenter—Sixteen Men of Tain, I love that record, yeah. What an incredible... "Zero Two Seven Four," that's... oh man, that's... hmmm. So I was listening to all that.

[01:37] And then all of a sudden, out of the... and you know, here's a really crazy thing. In the early '70s, I was living in San Francisco, and then every once in a while I'd come home and visit with my mom and dad and my friends. And then one time I came home, and a friend of mine said, "Hey, this guy Alan Holdsworth is playing..." No, he didn't say that. He said, "This guy Tony Williams is playing a club near your house." I said, "Oh, you mean... there was a place in Roslyn, New York, called My Father's Place." That was the name of the club, and they had international groups coming in all the time, and I saw a lot of bands there.

[02:27] So Tony Williams—I was a big fan of. We didn't know what it was, but he said "Tony Williams Lifetime." So we said, "Let's go check it out." So we got tickets, we went in, and it was this band with Alan Holdsworth, Alan Pasqua on keyboards, and a really great bass player named Tony Newton. And they were playing music from a record called Believe It, which wasn't even out yet—it hadn't even been released! And we were just checking these guys out, going, "This is incredible. It's like a rock band, but beyond that, you know." And I'd never heard a guitar player sound like Alan Holdsworth, so I was just blown away by him.

[03:26] And then later I got into all his music and stuff, and I actually met him a couple of times at these things called NAMM shows, yeah. So there's one in Anaheim here in California, so a couple of times when I was down there working, doing something for some manufacturer, I would run into Alan Holdsworth, and people would introduce us, and it was great.

[03:51] But you know, he was playing with Jimmy Johnson and Chad Wackerman; I was doing Yellowjackets and all this other stuff. So all of a sudden, I think it was around 2002, I got a phone call from Alan Pasqua—who I knew, I knew Alan and had done a bunch of things with him. I said, "Hey, what's going on?" He said, "Well, I'm supposed to go out on tour with Alan Holdsworth, a tribute to Tony Williams and the Tony Williams Lifetime, and the bass player doesn't feel good and he's canceling"—and that was Alfonso Johnson. And Alan Pasqua said, "Would you be willing to do this tour?" And I went, "Wow, okay. Well, what are the dates?"

[04:44] And he gave me the dates, and I looked, and I was able to move a few things around, and I did the tour, yeah. And on that tour, somewhere in the middle of that tour, we decided to do a DVD, which was up in Oakland, California, at Yoshi's. So that came out pretty good, although we were just... I was just like learning the music at that time, but at the same time, it was a pretty good performance, and the company that put the DVD out did a really good job with filming and the recording and all that. And so that was it—I ended up playing with that quartet for a couple of years.

[05:36] And then after that, you know, Alan liked playing with me and we liked each other as people, and he just said, "You want to do some trio gigs with me?" And I said, "I'd love to." So I ended up doing a few trio things with Chad—Chad Wackerman—but the bulk of the trio stuff that I did was with Virgil Donati. Oh really, okay? Oh man, that must have been heavy! I did, yeah, it was unbelievable. So I ended up working with Virgil on other things as well, and he's incredible—he's a monster, yeah.

[06:22] So I probably did, I don't know, 80 or 90 shows, maybe more, maybe 100 shows with Virgil. I probably did, you know, a month or so of gigs with Chad, and some other little special things that we did. I think Chad had something with a cymbal company at a NAMM show, and he asked me and Alan to do it with him, so we did.

[07:00] And then one of the last things I did was a really nice tour with Gary Husband. Yeah, I saw that on YouTube, it's incredible. Yeah, yeah, that was... we went to Korea, but we did all of East Coast and Chicago, some other gigs in the Midwest, and then we went to Japan, and we went to Korea—it was a place north of Seoul, I can't even pronounce the name, but it was an hour plus north of there in a really big open field, and it was a festival called Jarasum.

[07:44] And so that was one of the last... I did some more gigs with Alan and Virgil after that, somewhere in there I even did, like, one show I think with Gary Novak and Alan. Really? Because I think Chad—we were doing this one show here in LA, and Chad was unavailable, so we got Gary Novak to do it, so that was fun, yeah.

[08:18] Did you guys ever talk about music, like how to play those tunes, or how did you learn the music? Because I know I've spoken with Steve Hunt, you know, the piano player who played with Alan, and he said, like, "There were no lead sheets, there's not charts." How did that work?

[08:38] Well, you know, I used to learn a lot of music just by ear, you know, just memorizing stuff, so that wasn't a far-fetched way of learning the music. But it's very complex, and there's a lot going on, so it took me some time to really feel fully comfortable with the music. But I also got some cheat sheets from Jimmy Johnson—he had some cheat sheets that helped me with at least some of the harmony, yeah.

[09:24] You know, because even like the bar lines and the meter and stuff, none of that was written out, so you have to kind of figure out if it was like a bar of seven and then two bars of five, and then back to four-four, and then a bar of nine, you know, it's like all over the place. But yeah, you know, even with the Yellowjackets, I had a lot of experience with odd-meter music, so I was fairly comfortable with understanding what the music was. It was just a matter of getting comfortable with actually playing the parts and learning how to improvise over some of this stuff, you know, to make it, yeah, make it organic. ALAN PASQUA

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[00:00] Oh man, you... yeah. Alan would call me up and say, "Oh man, I'm doing a record, and you know..." and it sounds like shit, you know? He would say crazy shit like that! "And oh, you know, I know you wouldn't want to play on it," and I go, "Of course I'll play on it, Alan, you know, geez."

[00:17] You know, oh man, I'm sorry—yeah, he'd start apologizing before we even got off the phone. Um, nothing was... I'd get to the studio, and there's no music. And we'd spend the majority of my time transcribing the harmony, you know, into what I could, you know... This is another footnote I'll tell you about Michael Brecker, which is really interesting, too.

[00:46] And then I'd solo, you know... then I'd spend, you know, a third of the time playing on it, you know. But once there... there's no system to it. There's no trick—it's just, you know, there's no formula to his stuff, yeah. It's just really in the outer extremities of the harmonic universe, the way he builds chords. And hard to... really hard to transcribe, yeah, hard to transcribe.

[01:23] And beautiful—I mean, so much of his music, the melody comes from the harmony almost, yeah, like Giant Steps almost, you know? The melody in Giant Steps comes from the harmony. But you know, I think a lot of Alan's music is, you know, the melody is just in the chords. And of course, there's some that don't... weren't constructed that way, but I think that's what makes his... for me, that's what made it hard to do with the transcription, because, you know, it was all built in. You know, you had to get it all. It wasn't like, "Oh, here's the melody line, I'll get the chords."

[02:14] And because, you know, those things were never played on piano before, exactly, yeah. It's like, "What is this?" you know? I'd have to make up names, you know, these names for everything, yeah, yeah.

[02:35] Bizarre footnote to Michael Brecker: When I made a record called Dedications—yeah, yeah, I love that one, yeah, it's beautiful. Thank you! Randy and Michael and Gary Bartz are on it, Dave Holland and Paul Motian, and there was a tune called "The Emergence." And actually, I remember having a big fight with the producer, Ralph Simon, over... he said, "I don't think this tune should go on the record." And I insisted that it did. He goes, "Yeah, I think it's one of the weaker tunes on the record." And I thought he was crazy. And of course, now years later when I listen to it, I think he was right!

[03:19] But Michael called me up and he said, "Man, you know..." I sent him the music, and he said, "I'm looking at your changes," and he said, "What do you... what do you mean by this?" You know? He would isolate a chord, he goes, "How... what are you going to play over that chord, you know?" And I was like, "Oh, well, I would play this." And he's like, "Oh, okay." And then he'd write down what worked in his system. So all of a sudden, I realized, man, it's... you know, because piano players tend to be piano-centric, and I've always been quoted by saying, "One piano is one too many."

GARY WILLIS

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[00:25] The first time I met him was because Gary Henderson knew him, and he was looking for... basically, I was a sub for Jimmy Johnson on a tour. And since they were going to tour, he decided, "Okay, let's go in the studio as well." So I played on one tune, which was like half a record or something like that.

[00:57] So basically, yeah, I was a sub. We toured around the US, and it was kind of weird because at that point, the band—he still had the singer, Paul Williams—so there was some friction between those two that made the long days driving kind of uncomfortable, you know? So it was kind of a weird situation to be put into.

[01:25] And that it was kind of frustrating because, you know, he's a complicated person when it comes to his playing. You can't give him a compliment, you know? He will drag you through the mud like you're an idiot if you think he played well, you know? Seriously! He's like, "Oh, that sucked, I was horrible." You know, there's no acknowledging that you thought it was better or worse than any other thing, you know? So that part was kind of frustrating. But like, the super nicest guy you've ever met, you know—like a super nice human being.

[02:07] And it was another kind of weird situation was playing... making the None Too Soon jazz record with him, yeah. We got down there, and Gordon [Beck], the keyboard player, was an acoustic pianist, you know, and a great one, but he was having to deal with a controller which he hadn't done before, so that he was a little out of his element there.

[02:33] The other thing was that Holdsworth—like I suppose most of his projects—he knew he was going to probably record everything again. So on this record he didn't even bother tracking one note! So we would rehearse the songs to say, "Okay, guitar solo here," and Gordon and I would play and hope, you know... kind of like there was a solo section, you know. So, oh interesting, that's how it happened—and he added everything later.

[03:11] Oh really? Yeah, man! But when you play the bass solo, you also played it only with Gordon, like very early, with the Bill Evans trio-like that, yeah, with Gordon, wow.

[03:20] Yeah, man, I didn't know that, because you know, I love None Too Soon. I mean, like, he's playing on that record—you don't hear him playing standards many times, but you know, Come Rain or Come Shine, he plays it, and it's like, man, the lines he plays, it's just like phenomenal.

[03:36] So I mean, in having the opportunity to do it over the years, there's an art to recording a solo to the events in a rhythm section. You know, you can make it like so ungodly amazing—how did that happen, you know?—and you can blow people's minds when it didn't happen. Or you can make it as if it happened in real time, where you play a rhythm and the rhythm section reacts to it. Exactly! That's what Alan did, you know—he would at certain times, he would suggest a rhythm, and then you would hear it in the rhythm section. So that's how we would react, yeah.

[04:21] So I've had, you know, situations where I've had to do that, or Henderson's had to do that to our rhythm section playing and things like that. So there's an art to having access to and understanding vocabulary enough to compose or record a solo, yeah, absolutely.

[04:46] But I mean, nowadays that's easy to do because of technology, but still, we're talking about '96, so it must have been harder to do for him also, I don't know. Yeah, the technology back then, I think he might have been still using tape! Oh, wow, yeah, I think he still might have been using tape, maybe digital tape. But yeah, it was harder.

[05:08] But you know, like from the beginning, my philosophy was: I from the beginning never knew if this was going to be my last recording opportunity. So, you know, and I had a sense that, okay, this is permanent, like this is going to be forever, you know? So I would take advantage of whatever technology was available to make it so that I could stand listening to it sometime in the future, you know? And so if that meant overdubbing, if that meant computer, whatever, you know...

[05:38] And it still has to have an imagination for what can happen musically, you know? It doesn't magically make you a great soloist, you know? It's definitely a concept for ideas and imagination, and how ideas are put together.

JEFF BERLIN

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[00:01] We never talked about it. I felt I understood how he did it. Alan was an ear guitarist for 99.9% of his career. I mean, he would look sort of... and do that, and that gave birth to a song, yeah.

[00:30] So his thing really was basically in his experimenting on shapes and sounds that even he wasn't sure what they were going to sound like. He would do them, recognize that there was something there, and then repeat it until he learned what it was. And a lot of his playing reflected that, his sort of... all that linear play, yeah. Actually, an undefinable thing—he didn't quite know what he was doing, but his ear guided him. It's like, your ear is often more powerful than somebody might think.

[01:09] And a lot of these guys were guided by ear, not by training—ear and a vision. That's really kind of what it is. Allan had a vision of guitar that was unique. And as he crept... see, I remember Allan before Allan sounded like Allan, if that makes sense. I knew Allan before... but I knew him before Tony Williams. I was in Tony's trio with Allan, but didn't stay for reasons I can explain one day, but it wasn't bad—I just didn't feel qualified. But Allan would... well, I didn't mean... it was...

[01:42] But Allan did things back in the early days that were pretty not-Allan-like, heard of, yeah—not very interesting. But there was something in the flavor. But you see, nobody heard Allan sound like Allan until the first months and years of work were out of the way. And then what we heard was the result. And that's how it is for everybody—everybody sort of tends to really sound bad when we're developing a philosophy of playing. The nature of the development requires sounding bad, because it isn't fully formed. It isn't, "Here it is, I can do this." I mean, I heard Allan doing stuff in the old... I remember one thing really wasn't that inventive, but the concept was. So what nobody ever heard was Allen not sounding great at being Allan, but when he went through this and then discovered and developed Allan Holdsworth, that's what we heard, and that's what blows everybody's mind. But nobody remembers the five years or six years or eight years before that. I happened to... I knew Alan for a long time.

[03:20] Well, when did you guys first play together? I mean, I know obviously Velvet Darkness with Bruford, which is, you know, one of the classics...

[03:32] Tony Williams was looking for bass players in 1975 or '6, and I went up to his and jammed with him, and he invited me to play with him. And Alan Holdsworth was in the room, and I had never met Allan. I just remember this guy that played legato guitar, and he was interesting-sounding. I didn't notice him sounding like he did later, but that's to be expected. So that's where I first met him, then we did Velvet Darkness, and then later we developed a friendship and we toured together, and I recorded his record, and he would have been on my Jack Bruce project—I had a couple of solos for him, but it's sad to say that he left us, and I couldn't have him play.

[04:20] Yeah, yeah, wow, amazing. Yeah, no. I mean, Road Games again, it's like one of those records like... which you and Chad like, and I mean, it's—it's a beautiful record. How you guys interacted, I think it's just nice to hear that 40 years ago, actually, yeah.

[04:36] Crazy! I practiced a lot for that record. I knew records, even back then, I had the good sense to understand that records last forever. I did never actually anticipate I'd be 70 years old talking with Samo in 2023 about it, but when I recorded it, what was it, in the '80s? I knew that Allan was a voice, and I knew that this record was going to be regarded, especially since Eddie Van Halen helped to arrange the session for Allan. I knew it was going to last. I knew everything I ever recorded was going to remain, and for that reason I didn't have genius in me when I played bass—I had a good musical sanity, and I had the determination to practice hard before a recording session, usually before a solo, so that when they recorded me, I already fairly well knew what I was going to play, because I imagined that years later people are going to remember it as well. ANTHONY CRAWFORD

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But like I said, I was already a fan of the music, man, even before I got the gig. I was already listening to this stuff as a kid. I already knew the music, you know? So when I started working with Alan, and Alan was like, "Oh, yeah, we're going to play this," and I'm like, "Dude, I already know this stuff, you know?"

And so, and I remember Alan—we were in rehearsal one time, and I guess Alan was so... and Virgil made this comment as well, you know? Sometimes—sometimes people, from my experience, it's like you pay attention to some of the small things that people say, you know what I'm saying? Like, especially because in this, you know, you're working with—you're in and out, you're working with all these people, you're working with all these musicians, you don't get to know everyone all the time. Like, sometimes you may just be passing by and you only work with them one time your whole entire life.

But I remember when I first started working with Virgil, and—and Holdsworth made a comment, he was like, "Oh, man," he was like, "Yeah, man, come to Hall's, man, you know, you know the music, we don't have to like stop and..." you know, he just kind of left it at that, right? So it was his way of saying like, "Hey, you know, you're prepared every single rehearsal, right?"

Yeah. Alan was not prepared on every single rehearsal, you know? And so, so Alan made a comment, he was like, "Yeah, man," he was like, "Whenever you want to solo, just start soloing. I don't care." And I—and then I made a... and I made a joke. I said, "Alan, what if you're soloing? You want me to just start soloing as you're soloing?" He was like, "Yeah, why not?"

So, and I guess that was their way of saying that they were very... um, relieved and actually like happy that I was like really on top of the music the way that I was. But I always tell them, like, "Dude, I always knew this music." So when Alan—when we did like the tours and Alan would call out the songs, I just instantly go back to my childhood. I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I remember listening to this, you know, learning this shit, you know what I'm saying?" So it was easy for me because I was genuinely a fan of it, you know?

How was it like on the road with you guys, I mean, playing that music? Did you talk about—you and Virgil especially—Rhythm Section, what to do? Because I think you and Virgil were, you know, I think the most advanced—I'll put it carefully like that—Rhythm Section, if you know what I mean, you know, both guys really digging into odd meters and polyrhythms.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's the thing: every rhythm section that Holdsworth used, it made his music sound different, yeah. So, of course, his OG—okay, his all-time favorite rhythm section of Holdsworth was Jimmy Johnson and... Vinnie, Vinnie Colaiuta! Yeah, yeah, that's the secret album that personally was my favorite rhythm section, you know. Yes, Chad Wackerman—Chad Wackerman had been with him for forever, but I don't know, maybe there was something about Jimmy and, you know, Vinnie, yeah, yeah, yeah, just their chemistry.

But it's not saying that one is better than the other; it just sounded different, absolutely. But that right there was my personal preference. And of course, me and Virgil, because I'm coming from more of a rockier, like... okay, so I'm coming from more of a progressive rock-jazz type of interpretation of his music, right? Virgil is the same thing—he's progressive a little bit, but then he still has the jazz influence, but then he's kind of like rock, too, you know what I'm saying? So it's like we're playing the same music as the other, but it sounds different though, because it's our own interpretations of it.

So that being said, that's what Alan wanted. Alan did not want me to sound like Jimmy Johnson. He did not want me to sound like Jimmy Haslip. He did not want me to sound like Gary Willis. He wanted me to play his music the way that I heard it, you know? Same thing with Virgil—he didn't want Virgil to sound like Vinnie, he didn't want Virgil to sound like Chad Wackerman, you know what I'm saying? He wanted his music to be interpreted the way the musicians interpreted the music, you see what I'm saying?

And so he made that comment, he was like, this is... you know, he was like, I... you know, he was like, he appreciates that stuff. So I guess he found like an enjoyment of, "Oh, I didn't—I didn't know my song could sound like this. I like this," whatever, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And so that's what it was. So a lot of times on stage we would just be—just having fun on stage, like just doing all kinds of crazy stuff, stuff that we probably didn't even rehearse, you know? But Alan, he liked—he liked the challenges, he liked the different interpretations of his music, he liked that stuff, and that's what he wanted. And I feel like that's the reason why me and Virgil were there, because we interpreted his music our own way.

Yeah, because if he wants Vinnie, he could just get Vinnie. If he wants Chad Wackerman, he can just get Chad Wackerman. But he wanted Virgil, you see what I'm saying? So that's what it was, yeah.

Beautiful, yeah. Like I said, you know, I love you guys, but what you guys are doing underneath him, it's just like, man, what the... you know, what's happening there sometimes? And then he's playing these crazy lines over it, it's like, damn, man, that's crazy.

He liked that stuff, man, yeah, yeah. Like, and I remember us getting off stage sometimes, and—and I remember we were in—oh, my God, where were we? We were, I think, in Poland, I believe. We were in Poland, and I remember us getting off stage, and Alan was so, like, he was crying, right? Because he felt like he didn't do his best, like he was—he was apologizing to me, too. He was like, "Anthony, I'm so sorry, man." He was like, "Dude, that one—that one measure on that one particular song that I literally forgot about..." He was like, "Dude, I'm so sorry I didn't hit that with you," or like whatever, you know what I'm saying?

He, you know, although he was definitely, you know, he's a virtuosic guitarist, the thing I really appreciate about Alan was that when he played with a band, he wanted to be a part of the... like, it wasn't like, "Oh, I'm Alan Holdsworth and it's all about me." Like, no, he wanted everyone to be a part of the—the situation. So like, if he felt like that he wasn't keeping up, he would—he would tell me, he's like, "Dude, I just, you know, I'm sorry I wasn't on this," or like he would literally come apologize to me.

And then I remember telling him, I'm like, "Alan, you ain't got to apologize." I'm like, "Dude, like, we're just having fun." He was like, "Yo, man," he would take it a little bit more personal, because I guess it's, you know, it's him, it's his music, and here I am playing all this shit and he's not keeping up, or whatever the case—I don't know what was going on through his head, but I remember him getting off stage and literally like apologizing to me, you know?

And then I remember telling Alan, I'm like, "Look, man, like, we're just having fun, man. Like, I..." you know, "Look," I'm like, "Look, dude, like, it's not even like... like, dude, like, I'm just happy, you know, that you even consider, you know, working with me like this. But dude, like, you know, it's not that serious," you know what I'm saying? But to him, it is serious. It was serious, because it's like, you know, this is—I'm playing my music, this is what he gets enjoyment from, he takes it seriously, you know? And then it's like, if he felt like that he wasn't like 100%—he could have been literally at 90%—that little 10% would mess up his whole entire night, you know?

Yeah, I've heard those stories, yeah, yeah. He was very, very self-critical. I mean, like, everyone said that, yeah. Which is bizarre, you know, it's... yeah, yeah, he's very self-critical, man, very self-critical. Like, you know, if we started working on—we started working on a solo album—he said it's never going to get released. But I remember working on an album, a studio album, um, and I remember Virgil calling me a couple of times because Alan would record a solo, he would like it, and then the next day he wouldn't like it, you know what I'm saying? So he would just delete the whole entire solo!

Oh, shit, man, come on! And sometimes he would make a mistake and delete the whole entire song! So I remember Virgil calling me, "Hey Anthony, can you resend that bass track? Alan deleted the song again, man." But he was very passionate. Like, if he felt like that—if he felt like it wasn't 100%, he would literally delete everything. That's just how passionate he was, man, he would delete everything, yeah, man, that's crazy.