Of all the rock or fusion guitarists out there, there's none who possesses the most pleasing tone, amazing technique, and exceptional phrasing all wrapped up into one than the Brit Allan Holdsworth. He's is a guitarist's guitarist, having influenced everyone from Eddie Van Halen to Greg Howe. Holdsworth has been a journeyman over the years, bouncing around notable prog or fusion bands like The Soft Machine, Lifetime, UK, Level 42, Gong, and Gongzilla (a spinoff of Gong).
He's also made a good living as a sessionist, and his appearances on Jean-Luc Ponty's Enigmatic Ocean and Individual Choice elevated both of those albums. Holdsworth also performs on Ponty's upcoming new release The Acatama Experience, which I'll discuss in a review of that CD in a few weeks.
But Holdsworth has also performed as a leader and produced about 15 or so solo records since the late seventies. They are of varying quality but several of them are quite good. His best of all came in 2000 when he stripped down the format to the basics for The Sixteen Men of Tain. Here, there's no overproduction or keyboards distracting from his message, which is a message of maximal musicianship, group interplay, and intriguing chord progressions. If I had to pick only one electric guitar virtuoso album to take to that mythical desert island, it's going to be The Sixteen Men of Tain. Really, it's not even a close call.
And while I could easily go on about the whole album enough for multi-part series, one song deserve special focus. That's because "The Drums Were Yellow" is Allan's tribute to his old boss in Lifetime, the legendary drummer Tony Williams, who sadly passed away unexpectedly ten years ago this past January. It's also a standout in an outstanding album because it's just Holdsworth and drummer Gary Novak tackling a really knotty composition. Thus, we get to hear what these guys are really made of.
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Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
i think maybe i need to check this out, because the only Holdsworth i have is that first UK record and one of his discs called Secrets, which i didn't like all that much.
for whatever reason, Holdsworth has never really resonated with me.
and woa, i didn't know about Gongzilla.
2 - Pico
Secrets is one of the few of Holdsy's that I don't have, so I can't vouch for it; but I did note that overall his records very in quality.
That aside, Tain probably has the most jazz sensibilities of any of his records, because his backing band is all acoustic, there's no vocal tracks, and the compositions are generally more challenging than normal.
For those reasons, you're likely to like this one much better, unless you're just not a fan of his guitar tone and style. It's very unique, and it strikes some people much differently than others.
3 - duane
An absolute monster. Whether you like him or not, Holdsworth is unparalleled as an electric guitar soloist. Truly frightening. He changes between modes at the blink of an eye, and knocks out 32 notes per measure sans tapping. And he knows all the chords. He can play four notes over a chord change and bring a tear to your eye.
I doubt that his influence is all that far reaching. He's just too damned good to influence anyone. Most any guitarist who's at that impressionable phase of his development will listen to Holdsworth and just say, "What the hell?" Guys like Clapton, SRV, and Page are far more influential because they are far more accessible. Holdsworth is an alien.
He's kind of unusual. He complains that he has never been satisfied with his playing. He worries that he will run out of originality just before a show, and get into a rut, thereby boring the audience. He soaks his left-hand fingers in warm water before a show, sitting alone. He wants his guitar playing to resemble a horn player. His biggest influences were not guitarists but trumpet and sax guys. Evidently, he's not drowning in money, and has to fight for US tour dates.
By the way, some more fine examples of his playing can be found on the Bill Bruford albums, teamed with my favorite bass player, Jeff Berlin.
4 - Pico
Great post, duane. You explained Holdsworth's amazing skills better than I ever could. Indeed, the pre-UK Bruford albums of the late seventies are fine examples of his work, too.
5 - JR
Duane: I doubt that his influence is all that far reaching. He's just too damned good to influence anyone.
Gotta disagree. His legato style, particularly the way he uses the vibrato bar to "scoop" into notes, has been very influencial - it's easily noticeable in Eddie Van Halen and Alex Lifeson ("Limelight"), and those two have in turn been widely influencial themselves. Few people can imitate Holdsworth's complexity and harmonic sophistication, but it's relatively easy to skim off the superficialities of his style, and I think that is what has happened. For example, you can hear it in Yngwie's playing, even though his music bears little resemblance to Holdsworth's.
Most any guitarist who's at that impressionable phase of his development will listen to Holdsworth and just say, "What the hell?"
Yep. Been there. I bought the I.O.U. album shortly after it came out and I went to see Holdsworth live around that time, based on his reputation among guitar players. At the time I was convinced he was just playing notes randomly and using arbitrarily wide fingerings just to show off. For the longest time I couldn't make sense of his playing. I tried learning solos off the album note by note and I simply couldn't remember more than a dozen notes at a time because they formed no musical pattern I could recognize.
Years later I picked up a CD called The Collection consisting of the two albums he recorded with Tony Williams Lifetime. That music I could hear, and following up with the Jean Luc Ponty stuff (along with several years of listening to jazz), I got an idea of where Holdsworth was coming from. When I went back and listened to I.O.U., close to twenty years after I first bought it, I found it some of the most beautiful guitar playing I've ever heard.
(I now recognize that vibrato bar technique as a direct imitation of the saxophone. I wondered why jazz guitarists tend not to bend notes even though the saxophonists clearly do it all the time. But it turns out to be next to impossible to bend to pitch on guitar with the facility that sax players do, and intonation is pretty critical in jazz; I think that's why jazz guitarists prefer to slide up to the target note. However, sliding up the frets isn't a perfectly smooth glissando. With the bar, Holdsworth found a way to approach notes from below that sounds closer to what saxophonists do.)
6 - duane
Thanks, JR. Good stuff there, and several good points, especially about skimming the surface of Holdsworth's playing.
Could you elaborate on:
But it turns out to be next to impossible to bend to pitch on guitar with the facility that sax players do....?
I know nothing about sax. I'm saxually inexperienced. I've abstained from sax. I'm asaxual. Why can't guitarists bend as effectively as sax players? Are you referring to pitch accuracy? Or is it the change in pitch "distance"?
7 - JR
Duane: Why can't guitarists bend as effectively as sax players?
I'm talking about pitch accuracy and the speed with which sax players can hit the note they're bending into.
I don't know anything about playing saxophone myself; I'm just speaking from the experience of trying to imitate sax solos on guitar. You can hear them gliss up to a note, and they nail the note. And they can do it quickly, so that you can hear them bend into one note amidst, say, a run of sixteenth notes and still clearly make out the note for what it is. Theoretically you should be able do this on guitar, but I've never gotten that fast and accurate with bends and I've never heard any other guitar player do it.
With Holdsworth's technique, you depress the vibrato bar as you fret the note you're bending to; when you release you automatically hit the pitch perfectly.
8 - Peter
Many things make this track stand out. First Allan's only accompanied by drums, which if quite rare. It's a wonderful interplay of Holdsworth and Novak. The first half of the piece is all chords, but chords in the case of Holdsworth is a phenomenon completely different from any other musician. The second part is this thrilling single string solo, with its unexpected twists. With Holdsworth you never know where a solo is going, but the direction he takes is always better than the direction you'd anticipate. This is a track that makes a guitarist very humble.