Allan Holdsworth — Guitar’s Poet
They say he’s on a par with Mozart, but how many know him?
The pantheon of guitar greats is long established: Hendrix, Clapton, Page, Beck, Van Halen, Blackmore; lesser known but equally revered sidemen like Steve Lukather and Larry Carlton. Some single out Brian May’s work with Queen, others one strand of Prince’s genius; the list is endless, stretching back to Chuck Berry and beyond.
But there’s one man you rarely see on any list of top ten axe heroes. Like his fellow countryman Bill Nelson, he was too unassuming, had little interest in carving up his integrity to make it on the big stage. Compromise did not appear to be part of his lexicon.
Eddie Van Halen, a huge fan of Holdsworth, got him a record deal with Warner but the strictures and the failures to communicate how his work would be handled, didn’t suit. (How do you tie down the ultimate improvisor?)
When most men are asked to sacrifice their vision for money or fame, they capitulate. Rare is the human being, artist or otherwise, who stays true to themselves despite the consequences. (One of life’s many injustices was selling off guitars just to survive; others having to rattle posthumous tins and push his collections to help his daughters.)
Allan Holdsworth was one of those men, reminding me of a Samurai lord or an exponent of Zen or Advaita Vedanta in the spiritual world.
Put an artist of genius together with nobility of spirit and what you have is a poet, someone who is neither motivated nor guided by the shallow interests of ordinary men, rather responds to a calling, an inner light.
Such people are few and far between in this very material world where selfishness and personal ambition is rife; the world often does not recognise the genius within its midst, although may wake up to what has been lost many years later.
The case for Holdsworth, who died in April 2017, is gaining ground, largely through the music community, especially fellow guitarists, who saw him as light years ahead of his time, often speaking in glowing deferential terms, not just of his playing but the immensity of his theoretical understanding, despite not being able to read music. His understanding of chords and scales is unsurpassed, I understand.
In listening to some of the posthumous documentaries on YouTube (thank you Rick Beato and Eric Miller) several stories repeat: Holdsworth wanted to be a saxophonist but his family couldn’t afford the instrument; he would often come off stage down on his performance while others couldn’t believe he could not see how accomplished he was; he was humble and generous to a fault, giving away guitars and was always good for a round (he was a fan of English ale).
One interesting footnote is that he hailed from Bradford, England, a stone’s throw from fellow jazz fusion genius John McLaughlin who reputedly said if he knew what Holdsworth was doing with his guitar, he would steal his ideas. Bill Nelson is also a Yorkshireman. (Perhaps one day the county will be equated with sublime guitar rather than tea, cricket and a certain brusqueness.)
But all of this you can read on the web and it is not my intention to rattle off facts, simply to play a small part in bringing his sublime offerings to greater awareness, while relaying my personal journey to his music.
As a psychotherapist, I would be fascinated to know more of his early life, rather than the brief news that his maternal grandparents raised him. I am curious to what happened in his early life as I suspect he could be much better understood if those stories were revealed. Equally, I won’t be prying any time soon into family business.
I want to put up some of Holdsworth’s more accessible work for newcomers by way of introduction, starting with the solo from UK’s track In The Dead Of Night, because it was perhaps the first piece I heard as a teenager in my back bedroom. The solo starts from 2.57 minutes.
Perhaps my affinity with Allan stemmed from my own early losses, never seeing my father again after the first few years post divorce — although my initial interaction with his work was brief.
My love of guitar had started very early, under ten years old, in the West Midlands not far from the stomping ground of Robert Plant and John Bonham, although it was a young Marc Bolan and his catchy riffs that hooked me.
Then, around 12, the dual leads of Thin Lizzy’s Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham and Brian May’s bravura turn on Killer Queen on BBC’s Top Of The Pops struck home. I was so excited when Bill Nelson’s Be Bop Deluxe was the Friday night gig at the Malvern Winter Gardens where I lived, I braved it to the concert alone just after my 14th birthday as a shy kid with a sophisticated ear.
I am tempted to place Be Bop’s live version of Adventures In A Yorkshire Landscape here or Sound Track from their Futurama album, both worth a listen, but perhaps Bill, who is still making remarkable music in Yorkshire, deserves his own tribute.
The Winter Gardens was one of several funnels that guided my musical palate. There were two more. Buzz Music in Hereford, where we would slink off in our school uniforms to don the headphones and listen loud as you like to Kiss, Budgie and Deep Purple before getting the train home.
That’s where I first listened to National Health, my ear ever more complex.
I would eventually buy a gleaming black Les Paul copy from the lead guitarist of The Pretenders who happened to be working in the shop and which I would never learn to play.
But I graduated to more complex music by jumping off the train after Saturday morning school, rushing home to listen to Alan Freeman’s Radio One show and then returning to Buzz for a further listen. By 15, I was into Camel, Santana, then Brand X, The Mahavishnu Orchestra and Weather Report.
I was moving closer to Holdsworth. Dave Stewart was playing keyboards for National Health and would later team up with Allan on Bill Bruford’s solo project. A year after the Be Bop Deluxe gig, I went on a trip to Knebworth Festival organised by sixth formers, to see Genesis.
What surprised and delighted was seeing Phil Collins drumming with Brand X not long after nine in the morning, then later at night with his mainstay. Back home, another highlight was listening to the dual drumming of Bruford and Collins on Cinema Show, the centrepiece of the Genesis live double album Seconds Out.
(I had no idea then I would go on to work as a therapist through eight years at The Priory Roehampton with some of the biggest rock stars in the world.)
It was around that time, late 70s-early 80s, I really noticed Allan in both UK and on Bruford’s Feels Good To Me and then One Of A Kind, my favourite of the three works. This is perhaps my favourite track from that album, one of the rare solos with which the maestro was said to be pleased.
I had also bought one of French violinist Jean Luc Ponty’s records, although not one Allan was playing on, a discovery only made in the last year.
Other than music, which was my refuge, it was not a particularly happy time in my life and perhaps I was still not awake enough to stay close to Allan’s music, as my life carried me in many different directions, finally and sadly bringing Allan’s work back into my life only after he had died.
There is much more of his solo work to discover but here are some of my favourite collaborative pieces, starting with Ponty, then Soft Machine, with Ken Akagi, Gong, returning to UK and a rare and wonderful acoustic intro.
I hope those who don’t know Allan Holdsworth have enjoyed this brief introduction to some of his work. There is far more to discover in his solo projects. His legacy is unique and wondrous and within it you hear the fine interplay of space and form that is the hallmark of the great lyrical poets.
Many talk of spontaneously bursting into tears on hearing him play. This is the sign of the ineffable, the divine genius in the world that most will not understand until their own frequency is raised to such heights.
We need this enlightenment more than ever with the world in utter disarray. Perhaps Allan was called home where he belongs to miss the mayhem, yet he leaves the beauty of his genius to remind us of what is fine in life, and a connection to the divine now imperative.
Copyright Simon Heathcote
