{"id":13112,"date":"2017-08-16T05:30:14","date_gmt":"2017-08-16T09:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=13112"},"modified":"2017-08-17T08:18:23","modified_gmt":"2017-08-17T12:18:23","slug":"the-allan-holdsworth-interview-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2017\/08\/16\/the-allan-holdsworth-interview-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"The Allan Holdsworth Interview, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"In the years that you worked with Jean-Luc Ponty \u2013 because he was essentially the lead instrumentalist \u2013 did you have to ease back on some of what you were doing to leave space for him? <\/b><\/p>\n

Jean-Luc was great to work for; he left me alone pretty much as well. He didn’t give me any instructions. I liked the music, and I totally enjoyed playing with him.<\/p>\n

But that wasn’t the case when you played with U.K. \u2026 <\/b><\/p>\n

Not as much. There was less improvisation than I would have liked. It was more structured, not that there’s anything wrong with that. It was just that Bill [Bruford] and I were on one side of the fence, and Eddie [Jobson] and John [Wetton] were on the other. It wasn’t a personality thing, at least not for me; I liked all those guys. I just found U.K. a little bit too restrictive; I wasn’t making enough progress. It wasn’t assisting me to make progress in my own playing.<\/p>\n

You didn’t make your solo debut <\/b>I.O.U.<\/b><\/i> until you were in your mid thirties. What spurred you to finally do it?<\/b><\/p>\n

U.K. disbanded at that time, and I was still playing in Bill’s band. I’d just met drummer Gary Husband; we played together a little bit, and then I just kind of decided \u2013 the switch went on in my mind \u2013 \u201cYou know what? I’m just going to try this!\u201d I just wanted to make the jump to play my own music. I had a reasonable amount of music written.<\/p>\n

One of the unifying qualities of this new box set collection of 12 albums is the timeless nature of the music. For the most part, there’s nothing about, say <\/b>I.O.U<\/b><\/i>. that suggests that it was made nearly 20 years before <\/b>Flat Tire<\/b><\/i>. When you’re making an album, do you seek to to avoid sonic textures or production techniques that might make the record sound dated down the line?<\/b><\/p>\n

No, it’s not a conscious effort. Some of it comes from the musicians who I played with, and their translation \u2013 or their interpretation \u2013 of my music. Some of those guys just had that quality; they didn’t necessarily have a sound [associated with] a specific point in time.<\/p>\n

But at the same time, generally speaking, the newer the album the more I like it. For me, the box set is just a look back over time. There were bootlegs, and some albums had been discontinued for years, so we decided we wanted to put out my whole back catalog.<\/p>\n

In the past, you’ve made a list of a half dozen or so albums called \u201cStuff I recorded but wish I did not.\u201d Why did you characterize them that way?<\/b><\/p>\n

It would depend on the particular instance, but I remember a couple of them that involved other guitar players. It was just a mixing thing: the other guitars would be three times the volume of mine! Stuff like that.<\/p>\n

Early on in your solo career, you became very closely associated with the Synthaxe. What piqued your initial interest in that instrument? <\/b><\/p>\n

It went back really far into my childhood, actually. Because I always wanted to play a horn or a violin or something where you could shape a note, as opposed to the guitar which is basically a percussion instrument. And I always tried to get the guitar to sound like it wasn’t<\/i> a percussion instrument.<\/p>\n

When the Synthaxe came along, it opened the door to not only different textures and sounds that were unavailable on the guitar, but with the use of the breath control, I could do all the things that I wanted to do if I had been a horn player of some sort. I learned a lot from just playing that instrument. I still use it a lot in the studio; for the stuff I’m working on now, it has probably ended up on every track.<\/p>\n

You’ve explored other technological innovations, and you’re involved with some development yourself. Have you played any newer things, like the Moog guitar?<\/b><\/p>\n

Briefly, but it was a few years ago. But it was like a step backwards for me; if I have to go from the Synthaxe, the thing is going to have to be absolutely, incredibly remarkable for me to want to make a jump.<\/p>\n

Click to continue<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… In the years that you worked with Jean-Luc Ponty \u2013 because he was essentially the lead instrumentalist \u2013 did you have to ease back on some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13120,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,41,56],"tags":[3134],"class_list":["post-13112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fusion","category-interview","category-prog","tag-allan-holdsworth","cat-32-id","cat-41-id","cat-56-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13112"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13129,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13112\/revisions\/13129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}