Tony Newton

Tony Newton is an American bassist. He was a member of The New Tony Williams Lifetime, and appeared with Allan on two albums, "Believe It" and "Million Dollar Legs".

Allan on Tony

Allan Holdsworth (Guitar Player 1980)

Along with Williams, bassist Tony Newton and keyboardist Alan Pasqua, he recorded two albums - Believe It and Million Dollar Legs - and toured in 1975 and ‘76. After bad management drove him away from that ensemble (at one point during a tour he ended up stranded in San Francisco with neither money nor a place to stay and had to pawn his guitar to get back to England), Allan recorded his first solo album, Velvet Darkness.

No Secrets (Facelift 1994)

So, how did the Gong projects come about?

Well, it's funny because it kind of intertwined. I then went to do the thing with Tony Williams and stayed there in New York and then we had some real problems. Not with Tony or the band, because that was the other thing - I loved that band - enjoyed every minute of it - but it was really rough financially. I stayed at Tony's house which was fine. I didn't need any money and he took really good care of me. But when we were on tour, we had got back to New York and I'd scraped together enough money to get a plane ticket back to see my girlfriend. So I was there, hanging out, and then I phoned back to see what was happening, and then I found out that the tour manager didn't get paid and he was in charge of my guitar and he sold it!

"That was the first and only time that I ever got that attached to an instrument. I was mortified! I only had one - I carried it everywhere - I used to buy a ticket for it on the plane... I'd had a lot of SG's - but instruments are like that - you can make 50 of them but there'll only be one of them that's any good - some of them might be OK, but only one of them will be magic and so it was sold and I was completely bombed out. So then I went back to New York and had to buy a new guitar and there in the window was hanging my guitar! But I couldn't prove it was my guitar and it was more money than I could afford, so I had to buy something else! So I bought another one and then we did another tour and ended up on the West Coast, ended up in San Francisco. And then the band ran out of money. Tony went back to New York to find out why there was no more money and both me and Alan Pasqua had no hotel - we were absolutely out on the street with a suitcase and a guitar. So we went down to the club where we'd been playing and the waitresses there gave us free drinks. We found the guy who had put us up for the night and we get back to this guy's house in the evening and he said, ‘yeah, you can stay in this bed and you stay in that bed'. And we get back after the club had closed and there were two other guys in those beds! So this went on for three nights, and after the third night I said, ‘Man, I can't hack this anymore', so I took my guitar to the pawn shop and sold it. Alan Pasqua lent me the money (he lived in New Jersey at the time) to get from San Francisco to New Jersey and bought the ticket with my guitar from New York to London. I didn't have anything! Just a suitcase.

"Tony Newton was OK, because he lived in Los Angeles, so a ticket from San Francisco to Los Angeles wasn't really expensive. So that's when this thing came about with Gong. I got this call from Nicholas Powell, who actually managed me for a while. He split from Virgin Records and wanted to get involved in the video stuff. He really helped me out. In fact, it was Nicholas Powell who gave me the free studio time on the barge to record the IOU album.

The Unreachable Star (Guitar World 1989)

GW: When Jimmy Johnson remarked that he was listening to Believe It on the way down to yesterday's session, you winced. That album is really something of a landmark, and your playing is a great part of what distinguishes it.

HOLDSWORTH:: Well, it was a great period for me in terms of being introduced to some really unbelievable musicians; that's when I met Tony [Williams] and Alan Pasqua and Tony Newton, and hanging out and just being given a chance to play with them was really amazing. Alan is a truly astounding musician and I've always loved the way he plays. It's also only in the last five years that I realized what kind of a genius the guy is. Same with Gary Husband. But getting back to that particular period, I hated what I did on that record. I can't listen to it, but I thought everybody else sounded great. But I did the best I could at the time, so, that's all you can do, unfortunately I wish I could go back and do ‘em all again [laughs].

Tony on Allan

Which of your many stops means the most to you?

“My time with the Lifetime band means the most. That was the most innovative music that I’ve ever been a part of. Playing with Tony Williams, Allan Holdsworth, and Alan Pasqua was so different because the bar was set very high. We essentially created the genre of jazz-rock-fusion, and I’m still writing music like that today. I’m still waving that flag and refuse to let it drop.”

That begs the question, why didn’t Lifetime last longer?

“It was too bad; it really was. People think we just let it end, but we didn’t. It was the late 70s; we were out on tour and ran out of money. The record company [Columbia] didn’t want to fund it anymore, and that was it. I never understood it, and I never got to the bottom of it, but we were broke just the same.

“After our last gig in San Francisco, Allan Holdsworth had to pawn his guitar to get home. I lived in L.A., so I didn’t have to, but he didn’t. I had no idea what was happening until I read about it later; it was so sad.”

https://www.guitarworld.com/features/tony-newton

Gold Thunder

"After one of our short three-week tours, after about a year into the project, Tony stated that it was time to make a second album. He said that we would be doing it at Caribou Ranch studios in the mountains of Colorado. This studio was owned by the legendary bassist, Jim Guercio, of the super-group Chicago. It was located in the Denver mountains on a very large ranch-type layout…we were at Caribou about three weeks. The recording of the album 'Million Dollar Legs' was done differently than 'Believe It', the first recording. The recording went relatively smoothly, although it did have its challenges. Just as in the case of the first LP, we each brought in compositions to be considered for recording. This time as it just happened, I brought in more music than the other members. I had been writing the tunes over the vacation-break time that we had after the last tour.

"I also still had strong ties to the California Motown family and during this time, I was doing some songwriting and producing with Al Cleveland. Al and I had gotten together to write 'You Did it To Me Baby'. We knew it was commercial because it had a vocal part, for which I sang lead. Tony actually wanted us to cross over to a broader listening audience, so he was 100% for recording 'You Did It To Me Baby', as was the producer-engineer, Bruce Botnick. I also wanted to write something with extended movements and time, as well as orchestral - not classical, but orchestral, meaning using strings, woodwinds, brass and other sound colors and shades. This became 'Inspirations of Love', inspired by a new relationship which was doomed from the start because of bad chemistry...

"...We hired the great composer-arranger, Jack Nitzsche, to do the arrangements. Jack had done several famous recordings with the legendary Phil Spector and others... The day finally came to hear the finished mix and it was awesome. This was the day I could finally hear 'Inspirations of Love', which included an extended piece that I wrote for Tony to play a long solo. I also wanted to feature the bass clarinet in a section of the composition doubling with the electric bass. This was a carryover from my days playing bass clarinet and woodwinds in various orchestras when growing up. Jack and I had gotten together previously, and I had described the instrumentation and parts that I wanted to play by specific instruments. Jack conducted the orchestra and as soon as they struck up and started playing, the studio filled up with this glorious sound. The music critics in their reviews didn't seem to appreciate the orchestral sound. I guess they still yearned for the rawness of the 'Believe It' recording. Even though the orchestra wasn't with us on the road, we would still get cheers for our performances of this music. Alan Pasqua was very gifted at creating textures and colorful keyboard soundscapes.

"A lot of people expected the second album to be a repeat of the first, bearing the same kind of material. We wanted to continue evolving and exploring new territory. Perhaps if there were a third recording, we may have brought back some of those elements. In any event, the 'Million Dollar Legs' album wasn't as intense or as high energy as our first album together. Who knows, it may have been due to the relaxing ranch energy."

https://threadoflunacy.blogspot.com/2017/06/6-velvet-darkness-and-million-dollar.html