The unreachable star

Guitar World, May 1989Matt Resnicof

Cover story: The continuing saga of Allan Holdsworth.
His utter mastery of the guitar and the ungainly SynthAxe
is matched only by his compulsive self-scrutiny;
fascination with progress and undying need to surprise
himself. For Allan Holdsworth, these alone are the
measures of success and the motivation that's fueled his
legendary career. A powerful interview with a bona fide
genius.
It's nigh on bedtime at the Brewery Allan Holdsworth's
home studio, but young Emily "Pud Wud" Holdsworth
wants no part of sleep. Her father, tweaking one of his
instruments from the control chair, is doing his best to
maintain peace, but his sweet child is intent on the far
more pressing matter of her sense of time, tradition and
thirst.
"I'll be in soon to make your tea, Pud," he says softly.
"Take Wolfie and watch TV and I'll come right in." He
stares at a stringy pile on the carpet before him. "That's
where Wolfie had a nap. He's not here at the moment
because I don't want to have to vacuum up all these dog
hairs. I've got to get this place clean, because I've got to
start working again. Can't work in here anymore."
The child persists, this time proferring a gangly toy
replica of the monster from the movie Alien for her
father's consideration. The maestro obligingly hops both
tiny figures onto his lap and tries to reestablish his train
of musical thought, but his attention is caught by a

peculiar attribute of the hideous creature held by his

child.
"Six fingers, Emily" he coos, shifting his gaze from her
cherubic face to the plastic figure. "One, two, three, four,
five ... six." He pauses to inspect the now outstretched
fingers attached to his own gargantuan left hand. "A sixth
finger. That'd be quite useful, now wouldn't it?"
THE EERIE PART of it is that if he really believed an extra
digit would suit his purpose, he'd probably grow one. It
falls under the first subtext in the maestro's unspoken but
resolute belief system: The things we see are there
simply to serve how we envision them. Compromise
yields dissatisfaction. Oh, yes, and the finer the ale, the
better the gig.
What Allan Holdsworth has done for the guitar - and to
circumscribed notions of what music can or should be says more about the artistic capacity to achieve under
duress than any other contemporary yardstick. It's borne
out by one glance around the Brewery, the garage-cumtastefully carpentered twelve-track recording facility he
calls a "cheesy wooden box I patched together in two
weeks." It's borne out in the way he cross-bends a spacey
inversion of an impossible chord with the vibrato bar and
contextualizes it perfectly or streams together lines upon
lines of tone, shape and color - all on an instrument
better suited for clumsy strumming at the county pot-luck
supper. And it's most emphatically there in anything he
played on albums from Tempest, to Tony Williams'
legendary Believe It, to his astonishing solo catalogue,
most of which he to this day flatly dislikes discussing or heaven forbid - listening to. What it all means is this:
Don't believe Allan Holdsworth when he tells y u that a

pile of dog hair is keeping him from finishing a solo for his
new record. Here at the Brewery things walk a hard
enough line for acceptability. Those that initially satisfy
his taste for harmonic intrigue will progressively - within
moments - become flawed, obsolete. It's the willing
indulgence of that bleary, ongoing conflict that makes
him one of the world's most important and innovative
musicians.
BY THE TIME the first Santa Ana winds have swept
through that same drowsy Orange County morning, the
maestro is already a pale-blue blur within the intimate
Front Page recording complex, waffling about with
everything from the house amplifiers to the tea maker to
the spaghetti-wire underbelly of the mixing console. To
the frazzled genius working on a breakfast of two Kit Kats
and some square intentions, all seems fairly well and
good; the bad transformers are replaced, the tea is finally
hot, and all the technical foulups in the world are
magically solved by any one of a number of homemade
little boxes he's brought out for the occasion. As he offers
each musician his lavish greeting, counterpoint is
provided by a tape of the previous day's work. No one
digs their solos; everyone digs Allan's shoes.
"I don't know how the maestro puts up with me,"
whispers keyboardist Steve Hunt, on loan from Stanley
Clarke's band and in a feverish composing and
improvising dutymode for this project. "I just kind of
schmutz around a bit, and then he comes in and does a
real solo." Bass wizard Jimmy Johnson shakes his hung
head as he listens to a second-take of his own section:
lyrical, confident - and hopelessly unsatisfactory. He vows
to "stay after school" to fix the mess.

Allan is laughing in disbelief at how good Vinnie Colaiuta's

drum performance is. ''This one sounds like a throwback
to the Bruford days.''
Johnson, remembering the despair in Allan's face when he
told the guitarist that he'd listened to a tape of Believe It
on the drive down from L.A., obliges: "We'll change that!"
The drummer's voice crackles wearily through the
intercom. ''I'm really having trouble capturing the
essence here."
"Well, you're not getting any help from the big boy in
here," Allan responds encouragingly. "Maybe we should
just bail on it as a lame tune."
The intercom sounds pained. "Come on! Let's just get it
one more time!''
''Okay;'' laughs Holdsworth. ''Let's get it, steeds!''
They get it good. The performance is surefooted,
professional, awesome. And all the preliminaries and their
precious results point up the attributes most
characteristic of Allan Holdsworth and the musical life he
leads - the disenchantment, the oppressive humility, the
tinkering. the raging genius. Most striking is the profound
awe he inspires in fellow musicians - and not, as critics
would have it, solely guitarists - without any concomitant
self-congratulation or compositional fascism. His records
afford these musicians the opportunity to play, and if
they're overly concerned with flow, contrast or the
presence of even one questionable dynamic, it's only
because they care so much about the music. He and his
bandmates bear the bane of the musically well-to-do; in
Allan's most singular case it renders his extraordinary gift

as much a burden as a civic crown of the musical

community. (Subtext #2 in the maestro's unspoken credo:
the farther you can see, the more distant becomes the
next horizon - the distance to your next horizon is always
inversely proportional to the measure of the one you've
covered.)
Allan Holdsworth's quest thrives on perceived progress.
And, like the finest of ales, his concept is first preserved
then slowly perfected, through a judicious split-view
sensibility: A substantive process on one side seeks to
generate the most responsive elements of harmonic
color, taste and texture; a tactile side looks out for the
most transparent means, vessels or contexts through
which the intangibles can flow unchanged. It wasn't
entirely by accident, then, that certain songs and themes
cropped up in different places on early works like The
Things You See, a series of improvisations with pianist
Gordon Beck, and the ill-fated maiden solo project Velvet
Darkness, whose title piece was re-cut entirely during
Allan's short tenure with the French fusion aggregate
Gong, and whose glimmering acoustic work restructured
into full-blown band settings with the New Tony Williams'
Lifetime. Holdsworth set things straight at home,
perhaps, even as he set the music world on its ear;
between those spells of idea-shaping during the early-tomidseventies, Allan wrung such thunder from his
instrument that the jazz and rock albums he played on-by
Williams, UK, Soft Machine, Bruford and Jean-Luc Pontywere smoked into legend by his magical presence alone.
As it happened, the appropriate context for many of those
compositional variations took their final shape in "The
Things You See (When You Haven't Your Gun)," the
opening cut to Allan's landmark, genuine solodebut,

released independently as Allan Holdsworth, I.O.U. That

album (and the tune, its characteristic Melvillian angst
intact from its initial vocal reading on the duets album
with Beck) was a harbinger of Holdsworth's decisive
redefinition of the guitar's function and parameters.
Inverted, intricate chordal figures weave in, around and
beneath expressive, saxophonic honking. soaring melodic
extensions and, to borrow a term from Allan (who'd
sooner lop off his tongue than use it to praise his own
performance), general reaming all around. He continued
to refine his revolutionary soloing and chordal approaches
on the mini-lp Road Games and its masterful follow-up,
Metal Fatigue,. which balanced crafty vocal tunes and
such deep instrumentals as "Home," which featured a
lovely acousti c solo, and "The Un-Merry-Go-Round," a
touching fifteen-minute centerpiece dedicated to the
memory of his father.
Allan probably reckons he discovered that sixth finger the
day he picked up his SynthAxe controller and began
writing the music for Atavachron, perhaps the first
contemporary recording ever to showcase the organic
potential of MIDI. When Allan solidified his direction and
his dedication to the instrument with 1987's Sand,
however, he met with what was the first troubled public
response to match his grim experience in trying to get his
early progressive bands heard in England almost fifteen
years before. Guitar legend Allan Holdsworth, playing
through robotic synth patches on an album with as
lackluster a title as Sand, of all things? (The fact is, Allan
plays brilliant guitar-his publicly acknowledged "home
turf' '-and highly expressive SynthAxe throughout the
record. On a likewise reservedly titled album, Sahara,
piano legend McCoy Tyner places marvelous strokes
along the keyboard and a Japanese stringed instrument

called a koto, with soprano saxist Sonny Fortune sailing

over the top, all to blistering results.)
"It's obviously a struggle to play a new instrument like the
SynthAxe initially," Allan concedes, "but on an expressive
level, it's really a dream come true. And it really puzzles
me that people who listen to my music think the
SynthAxe is less natural or acceptable than the guitar,
because whatever I play, I'm still the same musician,
offering the same quality of performance. It tells me that
people aren't hearing with their ears; they're hearing with
their eyes."
Jimmy Johnson is pleasantly surprised by what he's
hearing over the playback monitors. The piece is
"Joshua," a working track for the forthcoming Secrets, the
portion a reference SynthAxe solo that begins very
smoothly, very diatonically, with simple, ascending majorkey phrases. Holdsworth is sitting at the board, tapping
his foot nervously and shaking his head. Suddenly; the
reedy lines begin twisting and winding their way outward,
pushing and pulling at the confines of the progression. In
a moment, order is restored and the solo continues along,
undisturbed.
"That's the only bit, right there, man. The rest of it's
horseshit."Johnson is seeing the bigger picture; it's been a
long four days. "You know, this is jazz, man, it's jazz."
"Yeah," smiles Holdsworth as he picks himself up and
heads for the loo, "but they'll still never play it anyway"
FIFTY YEARS FROM today, when those gargantuan hands paucity of fingers notwithstanding - are wrapped around
the aluminum guidebar of a walker instead of the neck of
some futuristic, wonderfully bizarre derivation of the
SynthAxe, perhaps, the benefit of historical perspective

will bear out for the abysmally shortsighted multitudes

just how far ahead of his time the maestro was. And even
that kind of timeframe isn't sufficient for a guy like Allan
Holdsworth, someone who, after all, is just looking to find
something meaningful in sounds. Or, more difficult still,
just meaning to find something that sounds good.It's
raining relentlessly on the last of this four-day session.
There's a long, heavy highway ahead bogged with wet
traffic, a load of equipment to move back into the house,
tea to make for the children and much to discuss.Let's get
it, steeds!
GUITAR WORLD: You said earlier that you were really
happy with the way this record turned out.
ALLAN HOLDSWORTH: Yeah - with everybody else. I'm
never really happy with what I do, but you have to finish,
let go of it and then it's gone. Once I let go of it I don't
worry about it, but while I'm working on it I think, "Oh
Jesus, couldn't I do a little bit better than that?" but I
guess not [laughs].
GW: You didn't get picked up by Relativity for a second
album. Why?
HOLDSWORTH: They wanted three more albums, and I
just didn't know at that point if I wanted to do that. The
main point was that the original deal called for one album
with an option, which meant two albums. The album was
delivered late and distributed late, and they didn't want
to start the negotiations for another album until the first
had been out for maybe six months or more. Considering
that it was three months getting out, that's almost a year;
I might have had to wait that long to find out if they'd
even want me to do another record. So I said, "I don't
want to wait; I want to know now if you - want to do

another one, so I can at least start it." They said, "Only if

we have these extra clauses," so I passed on it. I
considered the fact that Enigma actually had all of the
catalog-that was really an important factor.
GW: What about the majors?
HOLDSWORTH: Well, during the periods between my
records for Enigma and Relativity I was approached at
different times by major labels to do an album deal, but
they didn't want to pay any money at all. They didn't
want to pay enough money for me to make a record.
GW: Now this is not like one of those rock-star advances...
HOLDSWORTH:: They wanted to pay between ten and
fifteen thousand dollars for an album. I've been involved
in making albums for five thousand dollars so I know that
it's possible, but the thing is that now I don't want to
make a fifteen-thousand dollar record. I.O.U. was a fivethousand-dollar record; we recorded it pretty rapidly and
mixed in two evenings. It was recorded over a span of
time because we couldn't get the studio time all at once.
But since then I've tried to be more careful in the
recording, pushed myself a little bit harder, and just tried
to spend more time mixing. And that all costs money. I
got into a state where I was spending more money on the
albums than I was actually making. So to go to a major
label and be offered fifteen thousand dollars was pretty...
well, it was pointless, really. I could have lived with that if
I thought that they would let me do what I want to do,
because they have the promotional capability a smaller
record comp any doesn't have.
But the worst point was that they hated everything that
I'd done; you know they thought it all kind of wacky and

that every record I'd made was a big pile. Yet they only
made specific references to maybe two or three tracks,
from a period of five or six years. Well, I just wanted to
get out of there as quickly as possible without insulting
anybody; I was like, "Oh, God, let me out! I want to get
out of this building." I don't want to hear a guy intending
to sign me to a label just to listen to him tell me he hated
everything I ever did. I mean, I appreciate the fact that
they might not like it - that's not the point. It's that they
think that I am completely lost, that I don't have any
direction, which is in my opinion completely wrong. I do
have a direction, at least in my mind, whether or not it's
perceived by other people.
One label did sort of like "Tokyo Dream" [Road Games ],
but they just rabbited on about who they could get me to
use in the band, you know: "It'd be really great if you
could use this guy on drums and that guy on bass, and do
it in this guy's studio with this guy engineering and play
these kind of tunes and those kind of solos." God, man,
that was back to square one.
GW: How could they dictate what kind of solos to play?
HOLDSWORTH: Well, they wanted someone else to
produce; since they questioned my direction, they wanted
someone else to stand there and tell me what I think is a
good solo. I don't think that's possible; I think if I was
working on someone else's project, then sure, I'll have a
guy telling me what to do; but with my own music.. you
know; I'm a big believer in the guy who produces his own
music, because I think he's the only person who knows.
GW: Right, and the only person who hears it in his own
mind.

HOLDSWORTH: Yeah. I mean, someone else can perceive

good or bad, obviously; or they might think that I could
have done better, but generally speaking, I push my-self
a lot harder than any producer would. I'm the worst, you
know; the worst.
GW: What do you think it was about the last two records
that forced the record companies into a corner?
HOLDSWORTH: Well, some of it is overconcern with what
they consider to be my audience. They think that the
majority of people who come to see the band are
probably musicians. They're probably right, but to me
that's really a drag, because then they'll turn around and
say "Well, guitar players aren't going to come and see
you play the SynthAxe, because they can't relate to it
anymore." which is a terrible thing to say, because it
implies that guitar players are not musicians, in a sense,
because they listen with their eyes rather than their ears.
I find that people who didn't like my music when I was
playing guitar - non-musicians - really like what we're
doing now with the SynthAxe. So it's taken on this new
life, but they don't seem to be prepared to try and reach
a different audience with the music.
GW: So they've driven you into reclusion your own home.
HOLDSWORTH: [Laughs] No, I always do the guitar at
home now; I can get a better sound here than I can in the
studio, because I don't have to worry about wasting time
for the other guys by trying to mike up the guitar. I've
used that room [Front Page], but I really like a certain kind
of room for recording guitar. I don't record in certain
rooms because I usually can't get a sound I'd be really
happy with. It might be okay - I mean, maybe nobody
else would notice the difference, but I notice the

difference.
GW: But you've often said that, when recording with
bands like with Bruford and UK, listening to the band
through cans in a separate room or on tape - a separate
musical situation - can really debilitate your spontaneity.
HOLDSWORTH: It's still like that, but I've kind of gotten
used to doing it that way over the last few albums, just
for practicality. It made more sense for me to worry about
the performance of the other musicians than to say "I'm
gonna use that track some other guy in the band doesn't
like just because I played a great solo on it." I don't work
like that because I want everybody to be happy with what
they played. I worry about myself later. But I don't wear
cans to do overdubs; I just go into the control room and
play and listen. I try to be as inside as I can get in an
overdub situation. It's difficult, because it's easy to
overdub something that sounds like a good solo, but hard
to make it sound like it was part of what was happening. I
like to live with the tapes and listen to them until I get to
play solos over them, to get an idea of what the men
were doing there. I try and play off of what they were
doing, so there is still the relationship. I like to strike the
combination between fitting in and maintaining a few
ideas I feel are reasonable.
Another thing I've done is to play solos live, but not spend
any time on them; you know, just get a really cheesy
tone, stick a Rockman into the board or something, play
the solo for a vibe thing, and then replace it with a proper
tone. Some of that is dictated by the music as well,
because of some of the pieces. For example, when I
started using the SynthAxe, I started playing all the
accompanying parts myself.

If I've written something, it's a very specific thing, and I

want it to be a certain way. Even though someone else
could play it, they might not play it exactly as you heard
it, whereas if you're playing it yourself - not that it's any
better - it's going to be specific. And that's really
important. Even though Steve's new tune "Joshua"
sounds really open, it's actually very specific in terms of
the voicings and what he wanted to hear in the
accompaniment. And in that instance, you let the guy do
his thing. To serve that, we did that take live.GW That
piece is uncharacteristically straightforward.
HOLDSWORTH: I actually had a little bit of trouble with
that one. That was the only tune that I wasn't sure about;
I liked it, but I wasn't certain that it would work for me,
because it reminded me a little bit of Bruford. As soon as I
started soloing on it, everything I played reminded me of
ten or fifteen years ago, so I started getting really
depressed really fast. Not because there was anything
wrong with it, but because it was putting me in a space
that I didn't want to be back in, just because that was
then and not now. But I went in and said, "Okay I'll do it,"
did the solo, and, listening to it afterwards, I realize that it
came out different, even though the composition still
reminds me a bit of something Bill might've written. That
was my main worry - that it would come out sounding like
an old Bruford record.
GW: "Strangher," (sic) a boogie you recorded with
Tempest, represented perhaps one of the first times such
outside notes were played tastefully in a rock context.
How did that develop?
HOLDSWORTH: I improvise with the same bunch of notes
as everybody else, but just try to kind of rearrange the

order of them, that's all. I don't do it very well, but I try to

analyze the structure of the piece of music, and be
creative harmonically It doesn't often happen, but I try.
My ultimate goal is to be able to really improvise over
anything; I'd love to be able to improvise over all the old
bebop tunes, but I don't want them to sound like they
were coming from there, because somehow there's
something about improvisation that dictates to me that
no one should take something that everybody else has
done, like a certain formula, and reapply it. I'd rather try
and formulate my own theory on how I hear it, as
opposed to how someone else heard it. I think that's why
I do get a little misunderstood. Harmonically
misunderstood. That's all I ever cared about: just being
able to play a solo, you know, all I ever want to do is play
a good solo [laughs].
GW: I can anticipate your response, but in retrospect,
which among your recorded solos have you been most
happy with?
HOLDSWORTH: I'm not really happy with any of them. I
mean, I just think that they were okay at the time,
because that's all you can ever hope for, unfortunately.
Because I started playing late, it's only in the last five
years or so that I've started to feel I've made any
progress as a musician, out-side of just waffling around
on guitar. I feel like, I don't know that I haven't done
anything yet. There are certain things I almost like. Like
that solo on "Distance Versus Desire" [Sand]. In a way
that was the closest I ever got to attaining the kind of
sound I hear. People say, "You know I like the guitar sound
you get, it's really expressive," or whatever all these
things are that one tries to attain, but to me, it isn't
anywhere near as expressive as what I think I'm going to

be able to get out of the SynthAxe. I didn't think the

sound was so great on that particular track, but I would
never have believed that you could get that degree of
control over a synthesize r. But people perceive things
really differently. And it's almost like I've been living all
this time just to get that instrument and I never even
should have gotten a guitar. But then again, if I hadn't
gotten started on the guitar, I wouldn't really be able to
deal with the SynthAxe. You know I wish now more than
ever that I'd been a horn player, because there's all these
new little wind instruments coming out for synthesizer
control; God, it makes me want to try again with one of
those.
GW: A genuine sense of yearning, similar to that of
"Distance Versus Desire," is apparent in some of the
newer tunes, "Endomorph" in particular.
HOLDSWORTH: That's a solo piece about my father, but it
could have been written about anyone. The song was
written because I'm one of those people who never
seems to say how much I care about people, especially
the people I'm really close to. It's kind of an English thing;
certain things go unsaid, and you don't have to always
keep hugging people. I wish I had, because when my
father did pass away, I felt that I hadn't actually told him
how much I cared about him. The title means "something
that's encapsulated in something else," like when you
crack open a rock and there's some kind of a stone inside.
I just felt like letting him know, and the song's about
anybody else who might be feeling the same way, about
just generally not being able to say what you're feeling.
Another new tune, "54 Duncan Terrace," is named for an
address of a friend of mine who died a few years ago, Pat

Smythe. He was a great piano player, and he had this old

Bluthner piano in his house. That piano just sounded so
nice, man. It had a beautiful sound, and those particular
chords in that type of sequence reminded me of him. It's
a very quiet piece, and I think I might even do another
solo on that one, maybe an acoustic guitar solo. Alan
Pasqua plays an acoustic piano solo on it that turned out
great.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].GW:
Velvet Darkness included?
HOLDSWORTH:: [Groans] That whole thing was just a ripoff and an embarrassment; I don't even like talking about
it.
GW: If nothing else, the acoustic work on the record was
very memorable. You've said that the performances they
recorded were live rehearsals, and you were denied the

opportunity for overdubs. How did you accompany

yourself "Kinder" and "Floppy Hat?"
HOLDSWORTH:: They were done a different day, and I
wasn't happy with them. It was one of those things where
you think that they're going to let you listen to what you
did, let you choose and maybe even do some of it again.
But it wasn't the case. We rehearsed, and they recorded
it. Everybody was trying to figure out what was going to
happen during the tunes, and then we were to try and
record them, but it just didn't happen like that. The guy
put us in the red zone while we were just running through
things, and consequently it came out sounding like shit.
Sometimes, really cool things can happen like that, but
generally, that would be far more likely if the guys knew
everything and were then thrown into the studio playing
pieces they were familiar with, rather than going in and
struggling. It was a struggle, it sounds like a struggle and
I really felt bad for all the other guys involved because
nobody really got a chance on it.
GW: The guitar line from "Wish" is identical to the melody
Paul Williams sings on"The Things You See (When You
Haven't Got your Gun)" [IOU].
HOLDSWORTH: That's because I counted nothing we did
on that album. Usually, if I record something and feel that
was the right place for it, I'll leave it to rest and never do
another version of it again. I think that can only be said of
that album; I can't remember anything else. The only
time I ever did that was when it was unfinished - for
example, on that Gordon Beck thing, we did a tune that
turned out to be "The Things You See," or part of it, but
that was before it was really finished. When we did the
I.O.U. thing, I put it to rest.GW: Did that record do

anything for you?

HOLDSWORTH:: Well, it's the same prob1em. I have great
difficulty listening to it now because I sound so bad on it.
But it was obviously representative of what we were
doing, and that's the way I played then, because I didn't
know any better. But it's a good record in terms of having
captured something; it captured the essence of what we
were doing. And Gary I thought, played just great on it.
Paul Williams sang great, too.
GW: Do you think the vocal concept prevented you from
getting over with the jazz constituency?
HOLDSWORTH:: It was just something that I grew out of,
or that I thought I should change. The original vocal
concept stemmed from the trio concept; I wanted to be
able to play things as a trio with a melody and chords, set
up in a situation where I could perform them with just a
guitar. So I used the voice like an instrument, and Paul
was the perfect person for that. But I just wanted to do
something different. I mean, I never know what I'm going
to feel like or what I'm going to want to do, because it
changes, and I can't help it. When I got the SynthAxe, a
whole other thing suddenly opened up to me and I didn't
see what I was doing as a musician, or the band itself, in
the same way anymore. And I also saw the vocal thing
sitting me on the fence really hard, and that people who
like instrumental or "jazz" music were kind of perturbed
by the vocal aspect of my music. I never was, but I
thought that they were, and I also felt that there were
people who liked the vocal aspect of the songs but didn't
like the rest of it. It was like stretching both sides, and,
like I said, when I got the SynthAxe I decided that that
was what I wanted to do, so I just continued to sit on the

fence in a different way.

GW: And now?
HOLDSWORTH: Now I'm sitting on the fence between
what the record companies see as my audience and what
I'd like to see as the audience. I don't know if there are
piano players who wouldn't buy a Chick Corea album
because he was playing synthesizers and not piano,
because he's the same musician, with the same kind of
quality of performance. But there's this little thing in the
back of people's minds that relates keyboards with
synthesizers, and it's actually horseshit, because there's
nothing - other than the fact that it was once easier to
control a synthesizer with a keyboard - to relate a
keyboard to a synthesizer, any more than there is to
relate a Jew's harp to a synthesizer. So it really tells me
something. It tells me that guitar players don't listen with
their ears. They don't relate to the music or to the notes;
they're only relating to something physical.
GW: Hmm...
HOLDSWORTH:: It must be the fact that people are
conditioned to combine in their minds things like
keyboards and synthesizers. They say, "Oh, it sounds like
a keyboard," and they've already spoken an untruth. It
doesn't sound like a keyboard; it sounds like a
synthesizer. That's the truth.
GW: You once said that a volume pedal and a delay were
very primitive tools in obtaining the swelling effect you
introduced on the second Tony Williams album [Million
Dollar Legs]. Does the SynthAxe represent the proper
means?

HOLDSWORTH: Well, I've always tried to get the guitar to

do something it didn't want to do. I started out using
distortion to get sustain so I could work on the legato
approach and not have notes sputtering out - they could
flow out, as though I were playing a horn. To me, one of
the most tedious things I could ever imagine would be
listening to a sax player tongue everything he played! I
never really liked how the guitar sounded, so I guess I just
basically got stranded with the wrong instrument. The
way I view instruments is just as the word suggests: an
instrument which a musician uses to translate what's in
his head to someone else's ears. So, in a lot of respects,
I'm not a guitar player; I don't think guitar, and I don't
even think I play guitar very well, because I'm not really a
guitar player...
GW: ... in the traditional sense, of course...
HOLDSWORTH: Yeah, not at all. I'm just a musician who
got stuck with that instrument.
GW: We were discussing your disenchantment with the
expectations placed on you by guitarists or guitar fans
who blindly reject non-guitar expression from one who's
made a name for himself on the instrument.
HOLDSWORTH: I get that impression now from comments
directed towards me. It sometimes seems that real good
players don't seem to concern themselves with that as
much.
GW: You can't deny, though, that there is a certain
amount of dehumanization involved in using synths of
any kind.
HOLDSWORTH: I'm not of that opinion at all, because any

instrument is a product of technology. Absolutely any

instrument.
GW: Even a string stretched across a hole?
HOLDSWORTH: Even a string stretched across a hole. And
even the most primitive flute, made out of bamboo cane,
with holes in it, is a product of technology, because
someone had to know where to put the holes. It's that
way all the way down through time. Even a grand piano,
with its steel strings, is a product of technology - they
didn't know how to do that at one time. I see a
synthesizer as being another instrument. The barriers
between what people consider real and unreal will
eventually be just broken down completely I remember
when people used to think that electric guitar was some
kind of horrible monster that didn't have anything to do
with music, and that people wouldn't give it any credit
whatsoever as even being a musical instrument. Now the
electric guitar is almost regarded as an acoustic
instrument. All the people who thought the electric guitar
was a monster because it used primitive magnetic coils to
pick up string vibration and pumped it through a fifty-watt
Marsh all to create this' kind of bizarre tone utilizing
distortion - it's amazing how many people still don't
understand the principle behind that. You just can't tell
some guys, electronics guys in particular, how you want
something to distort, because distortion is something
people have been fighting for years. It comes down again
to the music. I mean, you can give an idiot a synthesizer
and it's going to come out sounding pretty bad, but if you
give a musician a synthesizer it'll be okay. I'm not saying
I'm either of those [laughs].
GW: It's been said by certain musicians that synthesis, by

its very nature, blocks a certain essential path of their

creativity, their ability to express. It creates an
undeniable separation between the actual dynamic and
its transmission.
HOLDSWORTH: That's not true. That's an opinion and I
value it, but I think what's most likely is that I haven't
learned to control it - I haven't had as long a time to learn
how to control it as I had with the guitar. I think that
during the Sand period, I really made a lot of progress
with regard to that specific area of the communication of
music. I suppose the outside perception and the inside
perception are so different that I can see why someone
might say that. But I'm closer now; especially with
Secrets - not necessarily playing-wise, but with a focus on
the musicality that I'd like to convey - than I was before.
GW: What specific barriers have you overcome between
the music and the instrument?
HOLDSWORTH Well, just the problem posed by learning
how to do something in a short space of time, that's all.
Because, with all due respect to keyboard players,
they've had about fifteen years to learn how to deal with
synthesizers. In a lot of ways, it's taken people fifteen
years to accept that instrument. And I find that people particularly guitar players - will often put that barrier up
themselves. I think I've made a lot of progress with the
SynthAxe on this record. The longer I play the thing, the
more comfortable it becomes and the more it becomes a
part of my playing. Now; I enjoy playing it even more than
guitar, because guitar poses a different set of problems
that I've been battling with one way or another for years.
On the one hand, I had to use distortion - quite unnatural
to a percussive instrument like a guitar - to get the kind

of sustain and vocal quality I wanted from my instrument.

At the same time, I'm left with the schzzhhhh of it all. I
find that I leave a lot more holes and pauses in my
playing with the SynthAxe, whereas with the guitar's
sustain, there's always some kind of note hanging on.
GW: Are you finding that playing the SynthAxe has
affected the manner in which you approach playing
standard guitar?
HOLDSWORTH: Well, maybe it is, because I'm learning.
When you learn something,it can't help but be passed on.
I think I'm becoming more and more dissatisfied with the
guitar's sound, just because I'm trying to turn something
incredibly ugly into something I want to be really
beautiful-sounding. I want to get the range of the guitar's
fidelity in terms of bandwidth, without losing all the high
end and making it sound too mellow. And of course,
because I can accomplish more things with the SynthAxe
on an expressive level - using the breath controller, for
instance - it's made me even more dissatisfied with the
guitar. But again, that's me. I still love to hear other
people play the guitar, but find myself liking it less and
less because I can get less and less from it.
GW: It's interesting that you note a growing use of space
in your SynthAxe playing, because most of your singlenote work with the instrument, specifically on tracks like
"Spokes" and "Secrets," are far more complex than the
concise guitar head on a tune like "City Nights."
HOLDSWORTH: I wasn't thinking of melodies as much as
solos. It's relatively natural for me to leave holes when I
play the SynthAxe, and because of the amount of sustain
I'd normally use on guitar, it's less natural there for me to
leave those holes That I don't like, because I realize I'm

actually being pushed into something that I don't want to

do, by the instrument. So in a bizarre way though the
SynthAxe is a much more technological "space tweak"
than the guitar, a lower-tech thing that seems to have the
potential to allow one to express more through it, the
SynthAxe is actually closer to reality. It doesn't push me
into playing things I don't want to play. I feel that the
guitar still uses me, and I didn't realize the extent to
which it did until I started playing the SynthAxe.
GW: You mentioned that you don't consider yourself a
very good guitarist within the traditional confines....
HOLDSWORTH: I don't really consider myself a guitar
player at all.
GW: What players do you feel epitomize the proper way
the instrument should be played?HOLDSWORTH: Well, in
a funny way all the people I like are all the people who
are doing something different with it. From the beginning,
I've enjoyed players like Charlie Christian, Wes
Montgomery and Joe Pass, and more recently, Pat
Metheny who did a whole thing on his own. Scott
Henderson is doing something unique, and now; Frank
Gambale comes along and does something great. It just
shows you that you shouldn't be so resolute about things
like music. People waste time spending hours trying to
clone something when they could be spending hours
practicing something really different.
There is one English guy I admire who never gets any
mention - Steve Topping. There's a guy who's amazing.
And it's typical of England that he can't get out or get a
deal or anything, because, like Gary Husband, he suffers
too much opposition to what he's doing. Steve plays
really; really interesting harmonic lines - and definitely

absolutely, not bop. His lines are so unusual that the bop
guys would have a hard time figuring them out [laughs].
And he plays chords that I've never heard people play
before. He's got ridiculous chops - I've seen him
demonstrate both left- and right-hand facility; but he's
got just outrageous right-hand chops. He's got it all
covered. We had a band back in England called
Handlebars: just him, Gary myself, and anybody we could
get on bass. It was a really free thing where we'd just go,
and some very interesting things happened, mostly
because of him. He has this unbelievable control of
space.
It's really fresh to hear a guy come along and do
something so stylistically opposite to what I would have
thought of. I listen for that. I actually listen to a lot of
guitar players. What I'm saying is that I'm not really
overfond of the instrument as an "instrument," but I love
to hear somebody like John Scofield, Eric Johnson or any
of those studio guys who are actually wonderful guitar
players, who can play all these different styles and things
that I couldn't even touch.
GW: Numerous players have taken unmistakable
elements of your style - vibrato-arm techniques like
slurring into notes or flying them away by shaking them
sharp, volume swells and your general linear concept and assimilated them to where they've become staples in
both rock and jazz-rock. Bill Connors, who's a wonderful
player, leaps to mind. Does your influence frustrate or
disturb you in any way?
HOLDSWORTH: It doesn't frustrate me at all, but it would
frustrate me if I were them, because it's a waste of time. I
mean, Bill Connors was, to me, an example of someone

who had a very unique style. I think I first heard him on a

Stanley Clarke album I loved, and on that album Bill
sounded like Bill Connors. Now it's like ... I don't know. It
makes me realize how fickle and unimportant a thing
style is. It's interesting how something like that can push
that person who's been imitated into a direction they
might not otherwise have gone. For example, when
people start to pick up on my things, it makes me realize
how superficial those things are, and that makes me
move forward. You realize, "Oh, that must have been so
meaningless that it was just like a face panel from 1980,"
something that everybody had. Something else comes
out and you realize it's just not an important thing at all.
So when I hear people playing not just like me, but like,
say Bill Connors used to play it'spositive inasmuch as it
might move me towards something else. If someone else
can't take the time to find it. I'm sure gonna look.. hard.
GW: I guess we all go through our own private journey as
far as learning and developing, but in the saturated
musical environment we choke around in today it's close
to impossible to start from scratch. How does the study of
others - meaning attempting to capitalize on the distance
they've already covered - figure into a healthy growth as
a musician, and not just as a guitarist?
HOLDSWORTH: To me, studying - meaning studying
yourself and what you think you're bad at, or trying to
learn something more about harmony or chords or
whatever - is something that can be done to good results.
But studying a person is completely wrong - it shouldn't
ever be done. Listening to them and being influenced by
them, yeah. I'm influenced by everybody I hear. When I
listen to Scott Henderson's album, it really affects me. I'm
motivated by the chords he's playing. I try and retain the

attitude through which I realize that there is something

else, and there's got to be more and more that I can learn
to make my playing better. But I would never sit down
and try and figure out anything that they did. Like I said,
I'd like to become a really good improviser so that I can
play on anything, but in my own way without having
utilized things that I just picked up from other people.
Maybe I'll capitalize on the essence or the heart of it, but
not so much specifically what he hadin mind; that's
something that's unique to that person, like the way the
guy looks. To me, playing like somebody else is just as
ridiculous as dressing up in drag, you know? What for? I
was born a guy, I wasn't born a woman. This shape, this
color, it doesn't matter. You just have to find something
within yourself and develop that.
GW: You practice scales using four fingers on a string.
What sort of exercises might help those who wish to
reach into the uncharted realms of the instrument?
HOLDSWORTH: Well, the only exercise I really did was to
utilize all limbs when practicing any given scale or
harmonic concept that interested me. As chord changes
are going by I like to be able to just look with my eyes at
the notes on the fingerboard and imagine what I could
play. I'd be looking at the fretboard and listening to a set
of chord changes or imagining changes that I need to
practice over, and I won't think about what my limbs can
do and what they can't do. You're kind of improvising with
your head, on the neck, but your limbs are not involved in
the process. Then I thought, "Well, to be able to do some
of that in reality I have to do something that my hand
won't naturally want to do." So just in order to help
myself stretch, I started to practice playing scales with
four fingers. That way you can put yourself in different

areas of the neck without playing a pattern and then

jumping a position; they would all intertwine. That's all.
And all of the study [of] the theoretical side of it, is down
to whatever that particular person needs to learn or
wants to learn at that time. It's just an approach to the
guitar, that's all. And that approach is there, no matter
what the subject matter.When I think of chords or scales and I'm really bad at this, too - or if I think of a chord
symbol, it's a very specific voicing that I'm concerned
with. If you saw a chord symbol for a lot of the things I
write, it might be a very ordinary-looking chord, but the
voicing might be more specific because of where it came
from and where it's going, simply because of the sound
that I wanted to create with it. You're always playing a
specific voicing of a basic chord symbol. If I were to solo
over that, I'd look at all the notes, determine what I would
hear in the scale that would constitute the chord - related
to either specific key or a bass note - and then I would
just play notes in that scale, tied together. I might not
even play any notes that really constituted what someone
would think of as that chord symbol.
GW. Some of your most interesting solo.' have flown over
pedal tones. You play pretty discursive solo over Chad
Wackerman's new tune, "Peril Premonition, " while "Devil
Take The Hindmost" [Metal Fatigue] almost sounds as
though you've played every existing tone over a G minor
vamp and succeeded in making them all function for what
you were trying to say musically.
HOLDSWORTH: [Laughs] I don't know about that; but the
reason for tunes like those is just to allow us a different
kind of creative thought. Although I try to maintain a
consistent approach, the way I view what you could play
over one chord is pretty close to how I'd determine what I

could play over a lot of chords. But the application is

slightly different. What I wanted to do with "Devil Take
The Hindmost" was write a tune that didn't have a lot of
chords in it, because most of the tunes that I write have a
lot of changes. So to give us a little bit of brain rest,
during the night we'd play something like that, because it
was something that people can relate to, something with
which the players can sort of just have a good time, just a
kind of "boogie-out" tune.GW: Now, what of these great
stretches...?
HOLDSWORTH: Someone asked me once, "How far can
you stretch?" and I said "I don't know, because I don't
want to know". Because if I actually physically calculated
how far I can reach, then I might not try and do
something.
GW: Might not try?
HOLDSWORTH: Yeah, because I'll say, "Oh, I can't do that.
I can't reach that far." I don't want to know; because
sometimes you find that you can do something you never
thought you could do if you don't tell yourself you can't
do it. My hero, Clint Eastwood, always says, "A man has
to know his own limitations," but I'm not sure about that
one.
GW: But as you said, knowing your weaknesses can only
help you to develop your strength.
HOLDSWORTH' In the area that Clint was thinking, he's
probably absolutely correct, but for me... I don't want to
know that I can only reach from the B to an F. [Looks
curiously at his guitar] I mean, I'm just guessing. I don't
know, and I don't want to know I might think while I'm
improvising, "Oh, I want to play this G[?] up here," and

my hand might be oriented elsewhere. So I'll have to

quickly determine how many different ways you can
finger a particular set of notes. If I start figuring my
limitations into that, I might not try as hard. I just never
sat down and said, "Well, I can't do that." Although I know
there are certain things I can't do! [attempts a fifteenstep stretch]
People always say;. "Oh, you use wide interval leaps" and
stuff like that. Well, I do in some ways, but then again, I
don't use any more wide interval leaps than somebody
like Scott or Frank Gambale. The only reason I did it with
stretches was for a sonic purpose - it was the only way I
could get that note to sound that way Like, if I had to play
[plays an ascending figure beginning on. the B string's
fourteenth fret; repeating the C# on the first string on the
way up], then I'd have to repeat that note, and it wouldn't
sound the same, or the limitations of my hand wouldn't
allow me to do that, because I'm not a good guitar player.
GW: Something a lot of people who are awed by your
technique don't understand is that you frequently use
larger stretches to facilitate playing small intervals on
consecutive strings. Stretching, you can actually move
from a note on one string to a semitone above it on the
next.
HOLDSWORTH: That was something that I originally
started by working with two guitar players; we'd find all
these chords that worked nicely with each other, and with
two guitars, they'd sound really amazing. We would just
play chords together, with very close notes. Neither of us
would use any notes that were contained in the other
guy's chord, but each pairing would constitute a whole
chord. The way they sounded, very clustered, is very

uncommon on guitar. It sounds completely different than

it would on most other instruments. That's why I started
doing it when I started working on my own. Plus, at the
time, I was a big fan of [saxophonist] Oliver Nelson, who
was always writing things with close voicings. Now, I don't
use them as much as I used to, because I'm thinking a
different way now.
GW: You don't do much jamming. Has being Allan
Holdsworth intimidated potential partners?HOLDSWORTH:
No, I just generally don't enjoy it. I think if I played
another instrument I might feel differently but with guitar,
it seems like everything always finishes up in a duel. And
it usually means either nobody knows what the hell's
going to go on, or someone or everybody has to know all
of the same tune, or it's like a free-for-all. I'm just not into
it; I don't gain anything from it and I don't think anybody
else does by listening to it. You know, I used to sit in a lot
more with other people, but that was at a time when
that's all I used to do, just trying to get a gig, so I'd just
go and try and find some guys I could play with. I'm kind
of content just to waffle on my own now.
GW: What sort of innovative waffling did you do in
preparation for Secrets?
HOLDSWORTH: Well, I'm always this is the big trouble
with me, that I never know if what I'm doing is right,
because I always finish up spending more time dabbling
with pieces of equipment than I do playing. Sometimes, if
I get a good sound I think, "Oh, maybe it was [?], maybe I
did learn something," and after all, the sound is part of
the music. For example, I have a hard time listening to
certain guitar players because I can't. get past their
sound. For instance, I really don't like that kind of "bebop

through a fuzz box" approach. But we were talking about

gadgets, weren't we?
GW: Not necessarily, although in the van you did say you
really had to pull some stuff out from beyond to solo over
the stuff the chaps recorded the other day. I assumed you
were speaking metaphorically.HOLDSWORTH: Well, I tried
to, because the rest of the guys just played so great. I
mean, they always do, but this time particularly I think
the tracks that we 'got are just great - Vinnie and Jimmy
were just reaming on it, and I couldn't just putsy around
on top of them.
GW: How do you prepare yourself for something like that?
Do you just lock yourself in here to search for tones and
inspiration and....
HOLDSWORTH: I really just kick myself in here, yeah. I've
found that I can't just say. "I've got this really great guitar
tone. Now I'm gonna make it work with this song." For
example, I was working on a guitar sound in here the
other day and I got what I thought was a really good
sound. Then I put it in the track and I realized I didn't like
it at all. So now what I try and do is, when I'm working on
a sound, I'll do it while monitoring the music, and when it
sounds like it belongs in that track, then I'll just try and
play it.
GW: But tonal consistency still seems to underlay your
philosophy of sound. What about the speaker boxes
you've constructed to maintain tone in various
circumstances?
HOLDSWORTH: My first concern was to retain the same
tone, no matter what. Even though there's a box
involved, it doesn't react like a speaker driver - you won't

hear it as much as you hear a speaker box. When you

listen to a cabinet, you're hearing the cabinet, even more
so than the speaker. I wanted to try and get more of a lab
- type situation where I was really only listening to the
speaker. It solves my problem of not having a place where
I can actually set up microphones and record, because
we've got the garage in this room, and I couldn't put
mikes in there [points to enclosed patio area] because
there'd be screaming kids all over the tape. The first one
that I built was intended to replicate the sound of the
speaker/microphone/monitor approach that you would
use in the studio, but I realized its other virtues were in
things like isolated recording in places where you don't
have a room to record! Those boxes are out there in the
patio near the washing machines, and no noise will get on
the tape. It's sufficiently isolated from the outside, and
the sound in the box is very quiet, because I use that
other device I built myself that allows me to get what I
feel is a good tone.GW: What exactly is "The Extractor"?

HOLDSWORTH: Well, a lot of guys use a load resistor on

an amplifier so they can come off the amp's line output
and use that to drive all their effects, because everybody
knows how useless a tube amplifier is in terms of utilizing
effects sends and returns. For example, once you push a
power amplifier into distortion, everything you return in
that insert will be distorted: the reverb, the delay
everything will just be a mess. And, in my opinion, if
you're using a tube amp, a big part of the tone - if not
eighty per cent of the beef, the actual quality of the
sound - comes from the output section. I realized that I
wanted to tap the output of the amplifier, but I didn't
want to use a load resistor. So the Juice Extractor uses a

different principle. For live use, the advantage is that you

can use any kind of a head - a Fender, a Boogie, a
Marshall or whatever - and just come off the output and
into the Extractor. It's got eight multi - pie outs, so you
can send and return for eqand gatin g and make the amp
totally invisible to your ears. The outs can be sent to as
many pieces of processing equipment as you can afford,
and that signal just returned to a stereo power amp via a
mixer of some description.
For recording, I take an amplifier whose sound I really like
and put it into the Extractor. Then I take the line out of
the Extractor - it has only a line out; there's no output and feed it into a solidstate power amp. That drives the
box that's going to be recorded at an absolutely minimal
level, so the speaker's not experiencing any pain, and the
cabinet's not experiencing any undue resonance from
overloaded air inside it. Plus, the microphones are happy
because they're not dealing with huge air excursion. And
it's unbelievably quiet. I can get a big, reaming guitar
tone on tape, with no noise whatsoever.
GW: Well, you certainly use what you say you use; there's
a bevy of Rocktron gear in here. One thing I don't see,
though, is a single Hartley-Thompson amplifier.
HOLDSWORTH: [warmly] Yeah, I've got them out in the
garage. I couldn't sell them because they mean too much
to me, in nostalgic terms. I stopped using the Hartley Thompsons when I started using Dan Pearce's amplifiers.
The Rocktron stuff is great, and they're really, really nice
people. It's tough as a musician with regard to those
things. As soon as somebody starts to take any kind of
notice of you, then people start trying to get you to try
things - and some of it's really great and some of it isn't.

It inevitably leads to adifficult situation, because if you go

out and purchase a piece of equipment and the
manufacturer finds out, they'll ask you if you liked it, and
usually if you bought it, you did. It's almost at the stage
where I don't want to say I like anything, because it's
really against the grain of someone who's creative - not
to say that I'm creative, but from my perception of any
kind of creativity - to assume that one piece of equipment
would be satisfactory from now until doomsday. It can't
be, because my nature is that I'm constantly looking for
something better. I don't like the sound I get now; I want
to get a better sound, so I'm always looking for the better
way to get it.
GW: Throughout the years, you've played SG's, Strats,
Charvels. What about acoustics? What did you use on
your really early work?
HOLDSWORTH: Actually; I didn't have an acoustic guitar; I
borrowed one from Tony Williams' girlfriend at the time,
Tequila, who sang on some of those older albums he did
right before Believe It. She had an old acoustic guitar and
I used that.
I never really owned an acoustic guitar. For a while, I had
an Ibanez copy of a Gibson L5 that I used on the UK
album. I love F-hole guitars; the only acoustic guitar I'd
ever really like to own would be a really really great
acoustic F-hole - you know, no pickups, just a really nice
one, but they're so expensive, and for someone who has
such limited use of that instrument, it doesn't warrant the
amount of money that I'd have to spend on it. For three
or four thousand dollars, I could buy another synthesizer
[laughs very loudly].GW: So you don't presently own an
acoustic?

HOLDSWORTH: Yeah, I do. I own one custom - made

guitar built by Bill DeLap, which is beautiful. It's a fivestring guitar, tuned in fifths. I like that tuning [C,G,D,A,E,
low to high]; it's a really logical tuning to me. The guitar's
standard tuning is really illogical, and if I were starting
again if I hadn't had so much trouble trying to figure out
how to get round the B string, I'd probably have learned
to tune like Stanley Jordan, in fourths, to C and F [for the
two highest strings]. That's the most logical tuning.
GW: Did you start experimenting with tunings on the
acoustic guitar?
HOLDSWORTH: Well, I started working on it with the
SynthAxe, just because it has very great limitations on
acoustic instruments; you can only really effectively get
four strings tuned in fifths to sound good. You can get five
to sound borderline, but six - impossible. Well, nothing's
impossible, is it? But it's much more difficult with an
acoustic instrument, because you'd have to have an
instrument as small as a violin and as big as a bass. With
the SynthAxe, you don't have that problem, because
you're just reaming little synthesizers and oscillators.
GW: Did it take you long to finish the guitar work for this
record?
HOLDSWORTH: Well, if you look at it on an hourly basis,
it's probably not too long, but if you measure it as an
amount of time from when I take the tape out of the
studio and sit at home with it, it probably is. That's the
trouble I find with doing it at home, that there's too many
distractions. I should be working now. It's just that right
now there's three kids in here, and there's always
something that'll happen right when I'm in the middle of
something. I'll start something, then I'll get a tone that I

really like, and I'm scared of soloing, man, I don't like it,
because I know I'm not going to like what I do, so I put it
off. So I'll go in there and when I've got a tone that I like
for the tune, I'll consider the chore over, when it's really
not.
GW: Why do you think you're afraid?
HOLDSWORTH: I know that I won't like what I do. I'm
scared that I'm going to be stuck with something that's
not going to make it, so I'm afraid of it. I really want to do
it, but I'm scared of it at the same time. I just try and be
as creative as I can at any particular time, and sometimes
it doesn't feel like I am. Sometimes, I feel like I'm not
creating anything. I'm scared of the day that I'll go in
there and play a solo like one I've already done.
GW: I'm still curious as to why that bothers you so much.
Don't you think that a musician's style is defined by
consistency in his vernacular?
HOLDSWORTH: No, style is different. Style is just a way of
somebody doing something, but a style in itself doesn't
mean much, really. To have one is fine, but the thing is
that I have to keep hearing a progress in my playing,
harmonically I just want to keep hearing a musical growth
in my solos, and I'm scared that I won't. Luckily, when I
finish a project, I can usually hear some kind of progress. I
mean, harmonically speaking - the internal things, not the
external things. Not so much the way someone does
something, or a tone or anything like that, but actual
substance of it. I just want to continue to grow musically
and play more intriguing or interesting harmonic ideas
That's the part that I'm afraid of - that I'll get to a point
where I just can't soak anything else in. I don't mean that
what I've soaked in is anything substantial at all, I just

mean that I might get to a point where I have to say

"Well, you know, I can't hold any more water so I've got to
get off."
GW: Do you experience that anxiety while you're playing
or when you're hearing yourself play on a record?
HOLDSWORTH: Sometimes I experience it while I'm
playing because I'm conscious of my limitations, but
mostly, if I'm feeling relaxed and I've been playing for a
few hours, then it's easier for me to play ideas, because I
won't be so worried about my hands. For the first few
hours that I start soloing in the morning, sometimes I feel
that my limbs are in the way, that there's no connection
between what I want to play and what my hands are
doing. And then the more I play, the more connected it
becomes, and the easier it is to get your hands to do as
they're told.
As you learn something, it unlatches a door to another
room that's full of all the other stuff you didn't know
about before. You knew it existed, but you didn't know
how to tap into it, and it goes on and on and on. A better
analogy would be... When you get to the top of one hill,
you can see that every hill ahead is bigger than the one
you just climbed, so you really know that you can't get
anywhere.
GW: You may be painting a pretty bleak landscape here.
HOLDSWORTH: Well, each person can only absorb so
much in a lifetime, and some people can absorb more
than others, but that's why a lot that has to do with music
is passed on, just because no one guy comes along and
does everything all at once. I only speak with regard to
soloing, be cause that's the thing about music that I'm

most intrigued by. I've always wanted to be able to play

good solos. And I never can. I never can get what I want and probably nobody ever does - but at least I learn from
each album and year that goes by this stuff that I didn't
know before. And, as I said, this has nothing to do with
style - they don't even really connect. One thing is my
ability to play through sets of changes and try and come
up with something inventive. I didn't learn music in a
normal way inasmuch as my ultimate goal was, and is, to
he able to solo well over anything. I mean, that's always
been my dream. I want to he able to improvise over any
changes - bop changes or anything - but I want it to
sound like it came from somewhere else. I don't want to
he beaten by the changes, that's all. Playing over
changes is the big challenge, but I don't want it to sound
like it came from bop.GW: Can the two things work
exclusively?
HOLDSWORTH. Oh, of course! I mean - try telling an
Indian musician he can't improvise! [laughs] You don't
have to do one to be able to do the other, but it might be
more difficult. I've probably bitten off a whole lot more
than I can chew; but that's my goal: I don't want the
changes to eat me up.
GW: Although you've mentioned that it's a saxophonic
quality you've tried to bring to the guitar, the way your
phrasing combines with your guitar tone often attains an
almost bowed sound.
HOLDSWORTH: The violin's very similar in a lot of
respects, because again, you wouldn't want to hear a
violinist sputtering out every note bowed. In a way it's the
closest you can get to a wind instrument, because you
can blow soft and loud on it, just by virtue of the bow;

and you've got control over the volume, shape and

sustain of the note once the vibration of the string has
started. That's very difficult to accomplish on guitar
because the guitar's really a percussive instrument.GW: I
notice you don't even use a pick when you play the
SynthAxe.
HOLDSWORTH: Well, the reason for using a pick is a sonic
one, because it gives a certain sound, and I'm not so keen
on the sound of my fingers on the strings on guitar. But
with the SynthAxe, the connection between the finger
and the string makes no difference to the sound, because
the sound is controlled via other means. So I play with my
fingers because I feel I can actually play better with them.
I can play things from string to string with a little bit more
control than I can with a pick on that instrument. And
that's true of guitar, too. I can do things with fingers that
are difficult for me to do with a pick, but the pick sounds
a lot better - you know, the initiation of the string
vibration, the delicacy of it, can really be shaped with a
pick.
GW: Are you working or involved with SynthAxe in the
same capacity that you might have been working with
Washburn?
HOLDSWORTH: Well, the challenge of it was in trying to
find a company that would allow me to work for them in a
creative area, but not to be strapped down with saying I
used their instruments. Just because I'm Steinbergered
doesn't mean that I can't give some other company
creative input on how to make their instruments better.
And that's something I was really looking forward to. So,
all I can say to any young guys out there thinking about
doing endorsements is, think again. That's a warning. If

they're gonna rip off an old fart like me, who's been doing
it for twenty years, then they're sure as hell going to try
and ream some young guy who comes along. That's how I
feel. They caused me a lot of problems. I mean, that's
part of the reason I was pawning equipment again; I had
reached a point in my life where I needed to get into
something else in order to survive anyway because
playing this kind of music doesn't make money. Making
these kind of records doesn't make money. It's like a
survival thing; when I was younger it was cool, because
the survival - just getting by - was enough. But now as I
get older, with kids and everything, it's getting to be that
that isn't enough. You know I'd like to be able to think
that in five years' time, no one might want to hear
anything that I do, because guitar players might be
elevated to such a point that I can't even think of
anything worth shit. So, I might be out of a job, in which
case being creatively involved in another aspect of music
would be a good thing for me. Thinking about the kids,
making sure that they've got somewhere to live as
opposed to being out on the street or something. It
seems like we got to the point like, "Well, what the hell
are we going to do now?" Because three months' rent is a
lot of money. They just took it away And that's the truth,
as far as I know and nobody can do anything about it,
except to say that it's true.
GW: I can't believe some of the things you're telling me
today It's so out of sync with what this is supposed to all
be about.
HOLDSWORTH: The thing is that sometimes people see
your face in a magazine and they say [mimics smugness]
"Yeah, Allan Holdsworth, aaaah, he must be rich," or
whatever, and it's sick, man, because... it's just really...

I've accumulated more, and I've got a room where I can

work and I'm actually lucky to have a good record deal,
but it's just that it's really hard to survive doing it,
because we don't sell records. The records cost as much
or more to make as I get paid to do them, so it really is
kind of a struggle, and the last few years, I've wondered
about whether or not I should even worry about
continuing to do it. And it's things like this that make me
realize what a disgusting industry it is, man. I was having
a beer in Old World one day and Ed, our head road guy
showed me an endorsement thing I'd done in some
magazine. I started talking to this couple, and they were
saving, "Well, how come you've got your name in here
when I've never heard of you? Wh at are you?" It made
me realize how people in the industry will use you to a
certain extent. And at the same time, the record company
won't really devote as much promotion as that involved in
trying to sell an amplifier. So it's really a bizarre gig, man,
being a musician, and you should definitely never expect
anything. I really scrape by, literally. You know; we get by
and I am surviving, playing something that I enjoy but I
must have been so fucking lucky it's unbelievable. And if
you want to do what you want to do without that luck, it
can take a long time. Guys see your face around and
think you're rich - they forget it took twenty years, man,
to get what I've accumulated now. To be able to afford
something like a SynthAxe, I literally sold a house. We
sold the house that we used to have in England so I could
do that. That's how important it was for me to get that
instrument. It's not like I had twelve thousand dollars
hanging around where I could just go out and buy one,
'cause I don't- I don't make that kind of money. It's just
that it was such a meaningful thing for me to have. It was
like, "I had to have one.

GW: As much as I'd expect anyone to be, I'm in a state of

disbelief - without sounding fawning - that someone
regarded as one of the greatest guitarists alive couldn't
make certain small compromises to pursue his goal, like
playing on other people's albums and willingly do what's
commercially necessary to...
HOLDSWORTH: You can only play on someone else's
albums if they ask you. You can't invite yourself. Nobody
asks me to play on their albums, so I never do.
GW: But aren't there session possibilities outside the
"guest guitarist" camp?
HOLDSWORTH:: No. I'm a terrible session guy, number
one, because I can't read, and number two, because I'm
not a "who - do - you - do" kind of person; my equipment,
or rig, or whatever you want to call it, is not conducive to
instantly recreating someone else's thing. They would
have to want me to do my thing, and if they want me to
do my thing, they sure as hell don't call, so that's fine.
GW Couldn't you, with just a certain amount of discipline,
fashion a part of what you do into something that could
be salable in a studio situation? Is it something that you
find so prohibitively abhorrent, or is it something you
don't think you could do because you have a tendency to
undervalue your abilities?
HOLDSWORTH: Oh, no, I enjoy playing other people's
music. But the problem is, the less you do it, the less
adaptable you become to doing it. There was a point in
my past where I was doing a lot of different things with
different people, and I'm slow even under those
conditions, but I was much faster then than I am now
because if you don't do it, you lose the ability for other

people to communicate what they really want from you.

Because you get tuned in to the inside, you get tuned in
to what you're trying to do. And the closer you get to
that, the further away you get from being able to
replicate what someone else has in mind. So it's almost
like:.. I'm kind of imploding, in a way. And I feel totally
inadequate at doing it; I wouldn't feel that I could do
something that somebody else could do a lot better. You
know I'd be too worried about how bad I sound... I just
don't think I'd mentally be able to deal with it now.
GW: But that psychology can be too self-directed. In those
situations, even if you don't like what you played, they'll
still hand you the check. For your own music, yeah, that
attitude is fine, and expected, but in the studio...
HOLDSWORTH: But if I didn't like it, I wouldn't want to do
it even for the check.
GW: Well, okay But that's the thing...
HOLDSWORTH: Because then I might as well go and do
something else, you know? I'd be less happy doing that
than I would perverting my own music in a way to make
that more commercial, because at least I would be in
control of that. On the other hand, I love to play on other
people's projects, if the way I play is what they would
hear on their tune. But as far as doing a session and
some guy saying, "Well, no, you might not want to do that
one, don't do that kind of ..." Many years ago I was asked
to do a few sessions back in London, when I was just
waffling around with the whammy bar, and it would flip
people out. They'd go, "God, don't do that, man, it's
horrible!" It's very interesting that something that was
totally unacceptable then is so normal now. It's so normal
now the vibrato arm stuff, that it's unbelievable. It's like,

tennis shoes, you know? Everybody's got a pair. But as far

as compromising the music in order to make more money
- I couldn't do that , because th en everything that I've
ever believed in before, I'd just throw it out the window.
My father used to go to the pubs and play and I never
could understand why he'd always say "I'd rather go out
and get a job than play this music that I have to play.''
And that's exactly what he did. And I never understood - I
thought, ''God, surely it's better to play than not to play.''
But it isn't. I'd rather get a job at Guitar Center or
somethingI don't know. I'd rather get another job.
GW: What would you?
HOLDSWORTH: Well, I'd try and get a job working on
something I thought was creative. And it wouldn't have to
be even in music, but it would bc preferable if it was
because I don't know much about anything else. And I
don't know much about that either.
GW: How would you promote yourself? You've mentioned
that you hated them using that Van Halen quote on the
ads for your albums.
HOLDSWORTH: Yeah, they'd have all those quotes from
these poor guys who've been pummeled by the papers
into supposedly having said all this stuff about me, which
is, you know, really an embarrassment for me. I don't
ever want to use anybody else to sell something; that
aspect of it makes me really cringe. The other thing is,
[]you see an album out by some of the newer' guitar
players, and they'll just say; Hey man, check out this guy
- let the music speak for itself,'' and then you get an old
fart like me who's been around for twenty years, and my
music obviously - according to them - can't speak for
itself! It's [totally] depressing, man. So how do you

communicate all that stuff to them? You know, I'd have to

spend more time than I spend now crawling about, going
up to record companies pleading with them not to do this;
I'd have to oversee absolutely everything that they did,
and you can't, man! You can never oversee it all, man,
you just can't get it all done in one lifetime.
I'd really rather get a job working for a company in a
creative capacity, or get involved working for somebody
like SynthAxe than to play something that wasn't what I
wanted to play Because there's no point. It would negate
everything I ever thought was... I just can't do it. I don't
think I'd know how to do it anyway,'I wouldn't know if
what I was doing was commercial or not. It's that
brickwall thing - that there's the musicians. And then
there's the public, and in between them there's this huge
wall you can't get through, created by the record
companies. Most of them - not all of them; there's some
very creative people at record companies, obviously don't know anything about music. And then, you get the
radio stations, who seem to know even less. I can't
believe what I hear sometimes listening to a local radio
station, KKGO, who totally refused to play anything that I
do. That doesn't make me biased against them; I don't
mind if someone comes up and says, "Man, you suck big
time," or "We hate the music." That's fine, because
everybody's entitled to an opinion. But one thing I can't
stand is the stations ignoring the quality of musicians excluding myself - who have played on the last two or
three albums, and the kind of music we've played, which
is in essence, improvised music, which must be, in
essence, [a] form of jazz. They won't play it, because they
don't know what it is, and because it doesn't conform to
what they consider jazz to be. And the perception of what
jazz is is completely wrong! For example, I've heard the

guy on KKGO play things by guys - with all due respect guys who cap barely play man, I mean really barely play.
Awful. But because it was in a spang-a-lang spang-a-lang
form that they could understand, they play it. So, the
poor guy in the street who's desperately looking for
something else to listen to - not that that would be us and the poor musician who's trying to get his music
across, have this huge obstacle between them.
That girl I mentioned who really liked "Distance Versus
Desire - I was really kind of knocked out by that, and it
opened my eyes to the fact that though it was played on
an instrument that has caused me to be rejected by one
half of the population, I was able to reach somebody else
with it who knew very little about what I was doing
normally So there was a classic example of a person who
was exposed to something and liked it. If we could only
get more creative people involved in radio stations or
record companies, or people who actually knew what they
were talking about! The whole thing's like a Monty Python
sketch; it's so ridiculous that it's laughable. I couldn't go
into a hospital and pretend to carve somebody up. ''Oh,
pass me the scalpel, sir.'' But you've got people doing
that in other jobs! I was fortunate enough one time to be
talking to Michael Brecker about what's probably my
favorite album of all time, Cityscapes, by Claus Ogerman
and Brecker. God, what an awesome record that is, man;
everybody should own it. It's a really subtle, deep record
with wonderful orchestration and fantastic playing by
Brecker, and the record company wanted to market it as
"The Joy Of Sax." And you can't even find that record; I
mean, God, who's in charge of this? It's so wrong, man. I
used to always want to fight it, and I'll continue to fight,
but I can't continue to fight and survive. Of course, I'll
have to, and I'll continue by just doing what I want to do -

that's the only way I know how to fight against it. Do what
I want to do, refuse to conform, and get another job
[laughs].
Transcribed by Per Stornes