Friends of Dan transcript

Part 1

Welcome to the Friends of Dan Music Podcast. I'm Dan Miles.

My guest today, Allan Holdsworth, is one of the most influential guitarists in the history of the instrument. His name appears on a very short list of truly visionary players—like Django Reinhardt, Jimi Hendrix, and Eddie Van Halen—whose musical imaginations and unprecedented technical ability have led countless guitarists to completely rethink their approach to the instrument and forever expand its vocabulary and possibilities.

On April 7th, 2017, he'll be releasing a 12-CD box set featuring remastered versions of all 11 of his groundbreaking solo albums, from 1982's I.O.U. through 2001's Flat Tire, plus his 2003 live album, Then.

This epic career retrospective is called The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever: The Allan Holdsworth Album Collection. While that title is entirely appropriate, I can guarantee you that it was not Allan's idea to call it that, as he's always been quite modest about his achievements as a soloist and composer.

The set will also include a comprehensive 40-page booklet. Even though it's well worth the investment, understandably a 12-disc set is bound to be on the pricey side. So on the same day, he'll also be releasing a 2-CD set featuring 28 tracks he has hand-picked as examples of his finest moments.

Though we're recording this interview in March and neither product has been officially released, I'm happy to say I am in possession of an advance copy of the 2-CD set, which is called Eidolon: The Allan Holdsworth Collection.

So we're going to be able to listen to samples from the new remastered collection. I'm going to start things off with one of my personal favorite Holdsworth compositions, featuring one of my all-time favorite Holdsworth solos. For long-time fans of Allan's, this will serve as a nice reminder of his epic skill, and for the uninitiated who will be experiencing his artistry for the first time... well, prepare to have your mind blown.

As originally featured on his 1985 Metal Fatigue album, featuring Jimmy Johnson on bass and Chad Wackerman on drums, here is the newly remastered version of Allan's composition: "Devil Take the Hindmost."

[Music plays: "Devil Take the Hindmost"]

DM: Joining me on the phone from San Diego, California, is Allan Holdsworth. Welcome!

AH: Thank you.

DM: Well, through the courtesy of your co-producer, Dan Perloff, I have an advance copy of the two-disc set you'll be releasing next month. I recently drove from LA to Phoenix, and I took the opportunity to listen to all 28 tracks uninterrupted.

AH: Oh, great!

DM: It was exciting! So the first thing I want to do is compliment you on the sequencing of the album. I appreciate how the tracks flow together. It isn't purely chronological in either direction, but musically it's very logical. I was wondering about that at first, but as I listened to the tracks, it all made complete sense.

DM: The second thing I want to compliment you on is how good it sounds. I did side-by-side comparisons with the earlier versions, and there's a noticeable improvement. What were your specific goals for remastering this material?

AH: Well, I relied on Dan Perloff for that because he had a mastering company and a mastering engineer that he really liked to work with. So they sent samples of all the tracks, and I thought he did a wonderful job, actually—considering that the source material, the further back you go, wasn't as good as the newer ones, obviously. But I think he did a wonderful job on it.

DM: Yeah, all the instruments sound very present, but to me, it's the drums that really stand out. They have a depth and a rumble to them that wasn't there before. I was putting the actual CDs into my Bose system in the car and going, "Oh my, this sounds really great!"

DM: An exclusive feature of the set is a previously unreleased version of the song "Road Games" with Jack Bruce on lead vocals instead of Paul Williams. What was the story behind that?

AH: Well, the story behind that actually goes back to a big battle I had with Ted Templeman, who was a fantastic producer, as you know. One of the problems was when I signed with Warner Brothers, they didn't really tell me upfront what they wanted me to do. I thought I would do what I had done before—which was to do exactly what I wanted.

AH: But they decided that they wanted to change it. Ted didn't like Paul Williams for some reason—and I loved Paul, actually; I thought he was fabulous. But Ted wanted me to use different people and kind of forced the issue. In the end, I just kind of gave up on it, which is why the original EP just says "Produced by Circumstance." We were supposed to have at least eight to ten tracks on there, and we only ended up doing six. Then I was unceremoniously dropped by the label.

AH: Which was fine, because in the contract it said that they had to pay for me to do another demo. So I went back to the studio of my choice and recorded Metal Fatigue. It was just bureaucracy, you know—I had to send the tape to Ted Templeman, which they just declined (I don't think he even listened to it). But the fact is that they ended up paying for the majority of Metal Fatigue, and I gave that to my friend Bill Hein, who was the boss at Enigma Records.

AH: But coming back to your question: Jack was on the original recording. Actually, it was Paul on everything originally, but then we replaced him with Jack because it was part of the deal, and I couldn't get out of that.

AH: Eventually, what happened was we recorded it with Jack, but Ted Templeman never came to the studio once—he listened to all of the mixes over the phone in the end. I figured he knew that we weren't going to agree, so he said, "Okay, well, you just go finish it yourself."

AH: So I took the tape back—I snuck the tape out of Warner Brothers and took it back to the Music Grinder studio—and did a mix with Paul on it, which is why Paul was the only one on the original release. But we already had the Jack Bruce version, and I love Jack, obviously. So I thought it would be interesting for people to hear Jack sing that song, and I decided to use that version as opposed to the original.

DM: I know from your perspective Road Games was very problematic, but it's always going to be a sentimental favorite for me simply because it was my personal entry point to your solo work. Of course, Jack Bruce and Paul both sang vocals on the album, so it was interesting to see that resurface now. I like both performances, but the one that's been in my head all these years is Paul's.

DM: I don't have the 12-disc set yet, but I reviewed the track listing. For more exclusive content, people can look for three bonus tracks on Disc 7: "Tokyo Dream" and "The Un-Merry-Go-Round (Parts 4 & 5)," which I believe have been released before, but only in Japan. On Disc 12, there's a bonus version of "Funnels," and on Disc 10, there's a track called "Material Unreal," which is a title I don't recognize. What's the story behind that track?

AH: Basically, it was just an instrumental version of a track—there were no vocals on it from what I remember. I originally added that as a bonus track on The Sixteen Men of Tain, on a limited edition release that Eddie Jobson put out when he was distributing that record for a short time. I just used that version for this collection.

DM: Well, as I said, I haven't heard the 12-disc set yet, so I was only able to read the track listing. But the real point of it is just to hear the remastered collection, and I'm looking forward to that.

DM: What I want to know more generally: as you were developing your signature style—which is often characterized as being fluid or legato—was it a case of hearing a sound in your head and trying to develop a technique to capture what you heard, or was it more of an instinctive process of doing what felt natural?

AH: It was both. Originally, I wanted to play a horn—I really wanted to play saxophone, or any wind instrument, really. I did play clarinet for a while, and messed around with the saxophone many years later.

AH: But basically, it was instinctual for me to try to get the guitar to sound a little bit more liquid. As you know, the guitar is a percussive instrument, and I tried to get it to sound like a non-percussive instrument. I was always striving to find a way to make it more fluid. I guess it was just an unconscious desire to play the saxophone!

DM: Another thing that's frequently commented on—beyond the actual notes you play—is your tone. With very few exceptions, jazz guitarists tend to favor clean tones, avoiding any hint of distortion at all costs. But you've taken the best aspects of distortion—controlled feedback and warm sustain—to create a very rich and pleasant sound. Did you ever experiment with clean tones in your early days, or have you always been drawn to a more rock-oriented guitar sound?

AH: It's actually a blend, really. I needed to use some sort of distortion to assist with the sustain, because I knew that in order to make it sound more horn-like, I needed the notes to hold longer than they would with a clean tone.

AH: However, for the chordal stuff, I always used a very clean sound—at least, I thought it was clean! So it was a mixture. It wasn't easy in a way, because I wanted to make it sound fluid without sounding like heavy distortion—not quite as aggressive as a regular rock sound.

DM: Obviously your chord voicings are very clean—you really wouldn't be able to hear the details if those were distorted. I was really speaking of your lead guitar tone; I guess I should have been more specific.

AH: No, that's right! But that's basically what I did: I tried to control the distortion to a point where it didn't sound that distorted, at least later on. I kept pushing myself to find a way to get that sustain without having a nasty sound.

DM: You're right, it occupies a middle ground. To me, it sounds like a singing voice—it just sings, and it never sounds unpleasant. I appreciate that; thank you so much for the compliment!

Part 2

DM: Well, speaking of compliments, as listeners of the show can attest, I know quite a few elite guitar players who are big fans of yours. I reached out to some of them to solicit their input—some responded in writing, others in audio. Don't worry, I'm not going to force you to sit there uncomfortably while I heap a lot of random praise on you; that's not what this is about. What I want to do is take some of their observations and use them to springboard into some interesting discussion points.

DM: Let me start with Mark Bonilla, who, among other things, was the lead guitarist in the Keith Emerson Band for many years. I mentioned Road Games being my entry point into your solo work, but it wasn't my first exposure to your playing—I'd already heard some of the work you'd done with other artists. I mention that because it was also the case for Mark. Here's what Mark had to say:

DM: "When I first heard that final guitar phrase on Allan's second solo break in Jean-Luc Ponty's Enigmatic Ocean Part 2, I literally fell off my chair. It was like this nubile young temptress had entered through the beaded curtains and started massaging my neck, lulling me into this blissful altered state—only to have my neck snapped in one short stroke with a flick of five fingers. I was never the same after that. Allan's phrasing is so unorthodox: patient at times, feeding you a spoonful of sonic nourishment, letting you chew your food, taste it, and swallow it before handing you another... and then magically growing six more fingers in order to pave the fretboard in note choices and sensual tones heretofore undiscovered or expressed."

AH: That's what the right beer can do, apparently!

DM: No, that's pretty sweet! Those were very kind words indeed.

AH: So thank you Mark, for your typical blend of eloquent insight and down-to-earth humor.

DM: Enigmatic Ocean was also one of my first exposures to you, so I know exactly the passage he's referring to. His description of hearing you for the first time—I think we all had a pretty uniform reaction, which was, "Who is this guy?" It's like hearing Hendrix or Van Halen for the first time; it definitely commands your attention. Rather than getting your reaction to our reaction to your playing, I want to know: have you ever had a similar experience where you were blown away by an artist the first time you heard them?

AH: Yeah, I felt that way when I first heard John Coltrane, of course. I felt that way when I first heard Keith Jarrett, because of my upbringing—my dad was a fine pianist and he had lots and lots of records of the jazz guys from the eras before. I remember when I first heard Keith Jarrett, I played it to my dad and he was like, "Oh my god, that's insane," you know? So, yeah... and with guitar players too, obviously, like when I first heard John McLaughlin or any of the great guys. They all affect you in some way or another. I never had the desire to try to knock them off in any way, but I was certainly inspired by almost everybody that I've ever heard. There are so many great players out there now, it's insane.

DM: Yeah, I once bought a jazz guitar compilation and it was the first time I ever heard Wes Montgomery. His playing—particularly compared to all the others—was just so tasteful, so confident, and so elegant. He made it seem so effortless, like, "Well, of course you play jazz guitar like this, why wouldn't you?" That's the message I got from it, and I was going, "Oh my gosh," so I immediately got everything else he ever did.

AH: Yeah, yeah.

DM: I also appreciate what Mark said about your phrasing. While you do have the ability to play quite rapidly when you want to, if that's what you're feeling, you obviously mix it up. It's not just about velocity. That's why I'm so fond of your "Devil Take the Hindmost" solo: I enjoy the slow parts as much as the fast ones.

AH: For me, everything's about trying to make melodies, you know—not just to demonstrate how rapidly you can do something. It wasn't like, "How fast can I run a mile?" It wasn't like that for me. I mean, if that happened, then it was fine, but I just like trying to make melodies because, for me, that's what improvising is all about. It's about trying to solo over the chord sequence and make melodies out of it, you know?

DM: Now let's hear from another talented guitar player. Here's what Jesse Salomon had to say:

DM: "Allan's music was incredibly important to me in my development as a player. His chords and swells were inspiring, even though I had no idea what he was doing. The tone he drew from his guitar and electronics was extraordinary. I never felt like trying to recreate his music as much as I liked to emulate the emotions that it made me feel. In that sense, his influence on me wasn't as apparent to somebody listening to me. I like a lot of his sensibilities with layers, solos, overall arrangements, and his interplay with the musicians he plays with. The picture of Allan and Eddie Van Halen in the brochure for Musicians Institute was all it took for me to want to go there. Seeing Allan play back in '85 when I was at GIT was amazing, and also having Chad Wackerman come to the school was inspiring—of course, Jeff Berlin was a teacher there, too. A memory I have of Allan was a time I was at the NAMM Show looking at some guitars and he came over, said hi to me, and said, 'You're from Fort Collins.' He saw that on my badge! I said yes, but I was thinking, 'This is Allan Holdsworth—how come he's saying hi and how does he know Fort Collins?' He went on to tell me he had friends from Boulder and that he'd enjoyed some Coors beer and touring the brewery in Golden! So that was a cool little exchange. I'm happy to have been able to watch him play over the years and have more conversations with him, most recently when my friend Chris Van Tassel at Rockett Pedals designed a pedal for him."

DM: I like what Jesse said—and you said something similar a little bit ago—about trying to recreate the emotions you made him feel in his playing, and when he plays he wants to recreate those emotions as opposed to just copying licks. That seems very wise and insightful to me. I can also relate to what he said about there being a sense of mystery with certain aspects of your playing—that "How is he doing that?" factor. What's the pedal Jesse's referring to?

AH: Before that, for many years—and I still do, actually—I had been using a TC Booster pedal, because it's not a distortion pedal at all. I always liked the sound of Alnico pickups, like the old original PAFs from the Gibsons back in the day, which were pretty low output compared to modern pickups. So I liked to use the booster as another way to push the front end of the amplifier a little harder without adding any extra distortion. You're actually still using the amplifier to make the sound without adding any extra grunge to it. So what we tried to do with that pedal that I worked on with Chris was a combination: he had a clean boost section, but he also had a section which could develop some kind of distortion, because they wanted to do that for the guys that were more used to that kind of sound. It was kind of a hybrid pedal.

DM: I see, interesting! Well, we have one more written comment before we break out the soundbites. This is from Mike Jacobs, who says:

DM: "Along with Jaco Pastorius and Jimi Hendrix, I can't think of another musician that has been a bigger game changer on an instrument than Allan Holdsworth. From his astounding facility and technique and innovative use of technology and equipment, to his forging of a harmonic and compositional identity like no other, Allan has created his own sonic universe that is virtually unrivaled in depth and scope. From rockers to jazzers, he's inspired and influenced multiple generations of guitarists in countless ways. There are probably a hundred different things you could do on guitar that might elicit the response: 'He or she has listened to Holdsworth.' He's a wonder and a true musical treasure."

AH: Again, very, very, very kind chap.

DM: Yes, he is! And he knows his music—Mike knows his music. I know what he means about the transparency of your influence, because I've heard recordings of myself improvising and soloing, and they definitely include moments that would expose me as a "guy who's listened to Holdsworth." I'll be listening and saying, "Oh, that series of notes..." It comes into a person's subconscious and it just comes out, you know? So when you hear other guitar players play something that's clearly derived from your style, do you feel flattered, or do you feel proprietary?

AH: No, no, I've always thought it's nice, it's cool. If it's too blatant, then I don't like it so much, because it's like, "You could have spent just as much time trying to figure out how *you* want to do something as you did trying to figure out what that was," you know? But it's still a nice thing. I think, "Oh, that guy or gal actually listened to something and it affected them in a way that they wanted to employ it themselves in some way." The only ones that get offensive are really when it gets too deep into it—then I really don't like that, because I think that individual could have spent more time trying to develop their own voice rather than trying to figure out how somebody else developed theirs. Trying to emulate somebody to a point is okay, but after a certain point it becomes a little obnoxious. I've done it myself, but mostly I let the music inspire me rather than the specifics of it, if you know what I mean.

DM: I do! Like if somebody sees you playing, they should go, "I like what he did there, I'll find a way to incorporate it into my style and put an original twist on it," instead of just copying it note-for-note, because that's been done already. I have to tell you, I asked Dick Dale the same question about surf guitarists. I can tell you he definitely landed in the proprietary camp! My feeling was, all these bands like The Ventures and The Surfaris were having big hits that were blatantly derived from a style that he created. So what I was wondering was if he felt a sense of community—like, "we're the surf guitarists." If you create a style the way he did, and then a year or two later "Wipe Out" and "Walk, Don't Run" come out, are you going to think, "Great, people have done stuff with my style," or are you going to think, "They're ripping me off"? He never really answered it, but the impression I got was he didn't like it—I think he wanted to be the only surf guitar player in the world!

AH: Well, I got over that pretty quickly, really, because as soon as—particularly with the internet and everything—nothing's sacred anymore, it's all up to everybody. And it's good, because if somebody could take something that I did and move it forward and make it better... because I'm an old man now, you know, I'm 70 years old, so I don't have the same kind of outlook on life as I did when I was 25. I might have been more offended when I was younger than I am now, but I just think it's all okay, you know? It's okay.

DM: Remember, 70 is the new 65, or something like that, however they say it!

AH: No, in my case, I feel every minute of it, believe me!

DM: Well, now it's time for our first audio clip. Let's check this out:

DM: [Audio Clip - Joel Martin]: "Hi, my name is Joel Martin. I'd like to thank Allan for constant and extreme inspiration for 30 years, which is almost the entire length I've been a musician. I started playing guitar a month before I turned 12, and two years later in 1986, I joined my first two bands. One featured a nine-year-old Brooks Wackerman, and I'd heard that Brooks's brother played with this Allan Holdsworth guy and Frank Zappa, but those were only two names I'd heard in Guitar Player magazine. The other band had a young female lead singer, and she gave me a cassette tape of her songs that she'd recorded on a TDK or something. I listened to her songs to learn them, and then they ended and this music she'd taped over started. It was the most glorious guitar sound I'd ever heard in my entire life—I just did not know how a guitar could sound that good! So I went back to her and said, 'What was this?' She said, 'I have no idea, it's just a tape someone gave me and I taped my stuff on it.' I thought that was the end of that story. The following year, I was going to school at the Grove School of Music, and I saw a friend with some headphones on. I went up to him and was like, 'Hey, what are you listening to?' He said, 'I'm listening to Allan Holdsworth.' I said, 'Oh, I've never really got to check him out before.' He goes, 'What? You're a guitarist and you don't know Allan Holdsworth?' It was just like a movie—it was an incredible moment! He put the headphones on my head, pressed play, and the beginning of Metal Fatigue started. Every part of my brain must have lit up! I was a young, impressionable guitarist, and that was just perfect music. So I was hooked—I was a complete, devout Allan Holdsworth fanatic, and I went to every show that my fake ID could get me into in Southern California. I even got to see a special show because of my Brooks Wackerman connection: Chuck Wackerman's middle school and high school band concert in Seal Beach featuring the Allan Holdsworth Band! Loved it. Around the same time, I was getting into progressive rock, learning about King Crimson, and getting into Bill Bruford and John Wetton. So I found out that there was this U.K. record with everybody on it, and I went and found it. I was listening to it, and at the end of side one there's 'Nevermore'—and there was that guitar melody that I'd heard years before! I finally got to track it down and know that it was Allan, which completely made sense. So I just want to thank you, Allan, because all of your records have really affected me, from Lifetime all the way to your current work, and I just want you to know that. Thank you, cheers!"

AH: Well, thank you, Joel! Indeed.

DM: No, I can relate to what he said about hearing that U.K. track, filing it away in his head, and then somewhere down the line experiencing that moment of discovery like, "Oh, *that's* what that is!" I think we've all done that. One of the things about doing this show is I learn things about my friends—I mean, I didn't know he played with Chad Wackerman's brother and everything; it's pretty interesting to hear, too. But sometimes people hear something and they think they know what it is when they really don't. For example, there's a Rod Stewart video with Jeff Beck in it, so everyone assumes all the guitars on that track were played by Jeff when they weren't. Similarly, while the solo on Michael Jackson's "Beat It" is performed by Eddie Van Halen, all the rest of the guitar on that track—which is considerable—was done by Steve Lukather. Speaking of Jeff Beck and Michael Jackson, next we're going to hear a clip from a guitarist who has collaborated with both! So let's hear what Jennifer Batten has to say:

DM: [Audio Clip - Jennifer Batten]: "Allan is about 10 levels above a black belt on guitar, and it's a level that most guitar players don't even think of aspiring to because it's in a whole other dimension. I had a great conversation with Chad Wackerman once, and he told me Allan explained time like this: when you're having a conversation, it's not stiff and boxed in time; a spoken paragraph isn't necessarily going to fit into two or four bars rhythmically. So if you have a couple extra words beyond the bar line, that bar might become maybe 5/4 or 9/8. So he looks at music like a conversation, and that makes a lot of sense in theory—his approach would seem a lot more natural and human. In fact, all the blues guys that didn't play with a drummer did it that way: they made their bars fit their words! I spoke with another drummer that worked with Allan, and he agreed with me that we both had no idea where 'one' was for his entire shows until that guy actually learned the tunes, and then it made sense. Steve Lynch from the '80s band Autograph was a fellow student when I was at GIT, and I learned tapping from him—and he's the guy that turned me onto one of the Soft Machine records that Allan was on, and it was stunning how original and fluid his sound was, to the point where it actually sounded kind of like fretless. I think that's one of the inspirations for Steve to get into tapping, to make the guitar sound more fluid than picking each note. Years later, I had a student that spent a lot of time trying to cop Allan's style or his sound, and the guy's fingers were so strong he could pull the strings towards the nut to make them go flat! He told me Allan didn't use the tremolo bar as much as you would think because he used that technique. I tried briefly to give it a shot and realized I just didn't have the kind of strength to do that, so instead I used the snot out of the tremolo bar and the Whammy pedal set to a whole step down to get those bends. The last time I saw him was in Portland when he did kind of a free-for-all with Tony Levin and Terry Bozzio—only the cream of the crop would have the balls to attempt a show of total improv, having faith in their creativity at any given moment to make that work. I worked on one of my favorite songs of his, 'Tokyo Dream,' that was released in a songbook (and maybe one other in that book), and I think inside that book or in a Guitar Player article, it was explained that Allan would come up with scales that would work for the wacky chords he came up with, which just seems crazy for the rest of the world, including myself—using known scales is enough for a lifetime of work! He's definitely the cream of the crop, and I have the utmost respect for him."

DM: Well, thank you, Jennifer!

AH: Beautiful! Very kind again, because she's fantastic.

DM: Yeah, she is! She's amazing, she's been on the show twice. She mentions you being a black belt on the guitar, so do you want me to start calling you sensei for the rest of the interview?

AH: No, no, no, absolutely not! I'm a white belt, you know—I haven't even started!

DM: I don't know, do you need to pause and break a board or anything?