Kei Akagi

"...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before..." (Cymbiosis 1986)

Cymbiosis: You've gone away from keyboards in the past, especially after your U.K. and Bruford days.

Holdsworth: They were basically keyboard dominated situations, and I wanted to reverse the roles and use the guitar. For example, with Bill [Bruford], he'd always use the synthesizer above the guitar for a chordal section, just because he thought the synthesizer sounded better than the guitar. I needed to get that out of my system and escape from all the synth things. So we did the I.O.U., Road Games, and Metal Fatigue—three trio albums. So I've had four or five years of trio and I really felt that I wanted to do something else.

Cymbiosis: And so you recruited Billy Childs.

Holdsworth: Yeah. Originally, Alan Pasqua was the guy I first thought of in the band, because I just love the guy. I can't say enough good things about him. He's an incredible musician.

Cymbiosis: You've worked with him quite a bit in the past?

Holdsworth: No, I worked with him with Tony Williams, which is the only time. (I was definitely suffering from novice behavior in those days). And it was nice to get back together to play with him again. So I asked him to play on Metal Fatigue. He played a solo on " The Un-Merry- Go-Round". On "Atavachron", because I'd written and recorded most of the music on synthesizer, I wanted to get somebody else to come and play solos. So Gary Willis, the bass player on "The Un-Merry-Go- Round”, introduced me to the piano player, Billy Childs, and he sounded great. And through working Bunny Brunei, I met Kei Akagi, who's fantastic. He's the guy who's in the band now.

Cymbiosis: He's the one we saw you with at the Roxy [L.A., 14 March 1986].

Holdsworth: That's right, and Kei was actually going to play on some of the album, but he wasn't available at the time. We couldn't coordinate it, and so I asked Alan and he played on two tracks, "Atavachron" and "Mr. Berwell". Billy Childs played on "Funnels."