A Short Bio:
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The
extent of Allan Holdsworth's contribution to the
Canterbury scene during the 70's tends to be
overshadowed by his subsequent success as a solo artist.
As a matter of fact, after moving to the USA in the
early 80's, Holdsworth found a new audience
that, apart maybe from his appearances on albums by UK
or Jean-Luc Ponty, was unaware of his work with such
bands as Nucleus, Soft Machine or Gong.
Allan
Holdsworth was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, in 1946.
Surprising as it may seem when hearing how accomplished
a player Holdsworth already was on his first
recordings, becoming a musician was not an early dream
for him. He considered himself a music lover first and
foremost, and if he ever thought of playing an
instrument, it would have been the saxophone. But saxes
were too expensive. One day his father brought a guitar
from his uncle, and Holdsworth, then aged 15,
started playing it, showing a growing interest for it.
His father, himself a very good pianist, helped him at
the beginning, but very soon Holdsworth
developed an instinctive understanding of the instrument
which made the technical learning process a lot quicker.
By
the late 60's, Holdsworth started playing with
local club bands, playing Top 40 material, in his native
Bradford (Yorkshire) area. In 1968, he formed
Igginbottom, with Dave Freeman, Mick Skelly and Steve
Robinson. The quartet put out an album, Igginbottom's
Wrench (1969), on the Deram label. Holdsworth
is a little embarrassed with these early recordings :
"All we were doing with that band was rehearsing", he
said later in an interview with Facelift. "The album was
recorded in about five minutes, a pretty horrendous
experience. I'm actually sorry that it became a record.
Everybody in the band hated it. There are some other
tapes around that I have from rehearsals which would be
much better memories of it than the record, but that's
life...".
Following
the inevitable breakup of Igginbottom, Holdsworth
went back to doing his day job, gigging around with
local club bands. Then an interesting opportunity
presented himself : one Glen South offered him a
well-paid job in his club band which had a residency at
a Mecca palais in Sunderland. The following couple of
years were spent doing that job, until Holdsworth
moved to Manchester for yet another residency, at the
Ritz Ballroom. In the meantime, Holdsworth had
began to teach himself the violin. While in Manchester,
he attended a jazz workshop by Graham Collier, where he
made friends with saxophone player Ray Warleigh.
Following the latter's invitation, Holdsworth
moved to London a few months later, staying at
Warleigh's place for a while, and becoming acquainted
with the London jazz scene, sitting in with a variety of
musicians, including Ian Carr, Jon Hiseman and John
Marshall.
In
the early days of his stay in London, Holdsworth
was involved in a shortlived line-up, which has a bit of
a 'legendary' flavour in the minds of Canterbury fans,
because it also involved Alan Gowen (keyboards), later
of Gilgamesh and National Health, and Jamie Muir (drums
and percussion), formerly of the Music Improvisation
Company and later of King Crimson's innovative Larks'
Tongues... line-up. Unfortunately, Sunship broke
up at the rehearsal stage, and Holdsworth
doesn't remember playing more than a few gigs with them.
In June 1972, he joined Ian Carr's pioneering jazz-rock
outfit Nucleus (alongside Gordon Beck, Dave MacRae and
Roy Babbington), appearing on the Belladonna
album, produced by former Colosseum drummer Jon Hiseman.
Hiseman was so impressed by his guitar playing that he
immediately asked him to join his new band Tempest.
A
heavy rock band, Tempest also included bassist Mark
Clarke, and soon the trio was joined by vocalist and
occasional keyboard player Paul Williams. Holdsworth
remained with Tempest for a little more than a year,
playing on the band's eponymous debut album. He left
following the replacement of Williams with
guitarist/vocalist/keyboardist Ollie Halsall, probably
not wanting to share lead guitar duties with somebody
else. During the following few months, he returned to
the London jazz scene, gigging locally with Nucleus,
drummer Alan Jackson's band Kincade and an ongoing
quintet with Ray Warleigh, featuring pianist Pat Smythe.
In
November 1973, Holdsworth jammed with Soft
Machine at a Musicians' Union rock clinic, which led to
guest appearances at a couple of Softs concerts. His
official debut with the band was for a Christmas party
at London's Roundhouse on December 23rd, 1973. Holdsworth
brought in an entirely new dimension to the thus then
guitar-less line-up. The Bundles album, recorded
at CBS studios in July 1974, was instrumental in his
rise to fame as a superior guitarist. It was also his
first recording in a purely jazz-rock/fusion vein.
Alas
for his colleagues of Soft Machine, Allan Holdsworth
was offered to become the guitarist in a new version of
Tony Williams' Lifetime, so in the Spring of 1975,
shortly after the release of Bundles, he left
the band. After recorded an aborted album with Williams
and Jack Bruce in Sweden, he followed the drummer to
America, where Alan Pasqua (keyboards) and Tony Newton
(bass) joined them. He ended up playing on two Lifetime
albums, Believe It (1975) and Million Dollar
Legs (1976), which also did much in forgeing his
reputation. But Holdsworth eventually left
before the recording of a third album due, among other
things, to the uncertain financial situation of the
band. At that point, a solo album, Velvet Darkness,
was released by CTI Records. Holdsworth now
describes it as "a real terrible disaster", which is
understandable given the fact that the label used
rehearsal tapes to compile it, deeming it unnecessary to
finance 'real' sessions. Too bad, really, given the
talent of the backing musicians involved - Alan Pasqua,
Alfonso Johnson and Michael Walden. Over the years, Holdsworth
has tried, and eventually succeeded in, preventing the
album's re-release.
Allan
Holdsworth's second major link with the Canterbury
scene took the shape of an unexpected stint with Gong.
The Shamal line-up had just broken up, and
Pierre Moerlen (drums) and Didier Malherbe (reeds) were
left to assemble a new line-up. With the recruitment of
Moerlen's brother Benoit, who doubled on vibraphones and
marimbas with the already involved Mireille Bauer, and
the addition of former Magma bass player Francis Moze,
the new combination was very rhythm-oriented, and Holdsworth
keeps fond memories of this unusual musical experience.
When the album Gazeuse! was recorded in the
Autumn of 1976, following an appearance at the Reading
festival in August and a European tour in the Autumn, Holdsworth
had become the main composer in the band alongside
Pierre Moerlen. Unfortunately, there was tension between
Moerlen and Moze, so Gong broke up shortly after the
sessions. But a solid musical friendship was forged
between Holdsworth and the band, which led to
later guest appearances, most notably on the Expresso
2 (1978) album.
1977
was a year of more informal associations, with Holdsworth
appearing on albums by Bill Bruford (Feels Good To Me),
Jean-Luc Ponty (Enigmatic Ocean) and Gordon Beck
(The Things You See), recording in an improvised
jazz setting with drummer John Stevens (Touching On)
and eventually joining Bruford in his new band venture,
UK, alongside John Wetton (vocals and bass) and Eddie
Jobson (keyboards and violin). The musical direction of
UK was progressive rock in the vein of Yes and King
Crimson with a modern, synth-based approach. Holdsworth
didn't really feel happy in this context, especially
when playing live, as opportunities for improvisation
and band interaction were limited by the constraints of
the extremely written compositions. By late 1978, both
he and Bruford had left, following which the cast of
Bruford's Feels Good To Me - with Dave Stewart
(keyboards) and Jeff Berlin (bass) - was reunited for One
Of A Kind (1979), which featured one composition
by Holdsworth, "The Abingdon Chasp".
Although
he did a British tour with Bruford in the Spring of
1979, Holdsworth was soon to leave, on the eve
of an extensive American tour. "I enjoyed working with
Bill, but the problem was that I had this thing in my
head about wanting to do my own thing...". He then
formed an 'all-star' trio with Jack Bruce and Jon
Hiseman, but this didn't go beyond the demo stage :
tapes were sent to various labels without mention of the
players' identities, and they all met with refusal -
although things would of course have been different with
the label's knowledge of the commercial appeal of the
line-up. It was around that time that Holdsworth
met drummer Gary Husband. It was the start of a
long-term musical collaboration. With the help of
bassists Henry Thomas, Neil Murray and Paul Carmichael,
Holdsworth and Husband played many gigs during
1980-81, sometimes supported by keyboard player Dave
MacRae, an old acquaintance from Holdsworth's time with
Nucleus. The line-up went under the names of Allan
Holdsworth & Friends, Handlebards and finally
False Alarm.
In
parallel to these 'rock' activites, Holdsworth
also kept busy on the jazz scene : Sunbird
(1980), another duet with Gordon Beck, led to a British
tour in 1980 with Jeff Clyne (bass) and Gary Husband
(drums). A little later, Holdsworth appeared
with the same rhythm section as part of Turning Point at
the Bracknell Festival, also touring Britain with them
later in the year. Turning Point was a band led by
ex-Isotope members Clyne and Brian Miller (keyboards),
but Holdsworth was offered his own trio showcase
during the gigs, with Clyne and Husband. Towards the
year's end, he also guested on Soft Machine's final
album, Land Of Cockayne (1981), alongside John
Marshall, Karl Jenkins and Jack Bruce among others.
In
1981, False Alarm became I.O.U. with the addition of
Paul Williams, Holdsworth's former Tempest
accomplice. At that point, he had discovered that he had
much more of a potential following in the USA, and
started spending more and more time there. Eventually,
he moved to California in 1982. Since then, Holdsworth
has enjoyed a successful career as a solo artist with
his own band - featuring drummers Gary Husband, Chad
Wackerman and Vinnie Colaiuta, bassists Paul Carmichael,
Jeff Berlin and Jimmy Johnson, and keyboard player Steve
Hunt. In the mid-80's, Holdsworth made extensive
use of the SynthAxe, which as it names indicates is a
guitar synthesizer. At last, it fullfilled his lifelong
fantasy of achieving perfect sustain with a guitar. But
he gradually moved back to the guitar in the 90's.
Holdsworth
has also kept busy as a guest player, adding his
considerable talents to solo releases by Chad Wackerman,
Stuart Hamm, Jack Bruce, Stanley Clarke, Jens Johansson
and many others. More surprising was a brief stint with
pop group Level 42, a connection provided by Gary
Husband, who'd become their drummer. Holdsworth
guested on the album Guaranteed and even joined
the band for a record-breaking series of shows at the
Hammersmith Odeon in December 1990. In 1994, he played
on Gongzilla's debut album, Suffer (1995),
renewing his collaboration with former Gong colleagues
Benoît Moerlen and Hansford Rowe.
Another
return to Holdsworth's roots occurred in 2002 -
he joined forces with three other former members of Soft
Machine in SoftWorks, which consisted of Elton Dean
(sax), Hugh Hopper (bass) and John Marshall (drums), now
with Holdsworth who replaced Keith Tippett, the
original fourth member for a one-off concert in Germany
in September 1999. SoftWorks released their debut album
Abracadabra on Universal Japan in early 2003,
and the band subsequently toured Japan and Italy. By
late 2004, however, Holdsworth had left to be replaced
(once again) by John Etheridge.
There
is a chronology of Allan Holdsworth's career
on this website.
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