Guthrie Govan on Allan Holsworth

[simon moon]

In a recent interview with Govan (10 guitarists the blew my mind), he had this to say about Holdsworth:


“I’m sure every reader is already somewhat familiar with the mighty Allan, but I still feel that his contribution to music in general has been criminally underrated: I consider his work to be every bit as revolutionary as that of jazz legends such as Charlie Parker and John Coltrane.

“Evidently not content with redefining what was technically possible on the guitar, he also managed to rewrite pretty much the whole of music theory, coming up with all manner of chord voicings which had never been heard before and then concocting brand-new scales to complement them.
“His tone has always fascinated me, too - perhaps its uniqueness stemmed from the fact that he seemed to regard the guitar not so much as his ideal or ‘chosen’ instrument, but rather as a problem which needed to be solved.

“To me, Allan’s playing is a rare example of a guitar player exhibiting no kind of ‘family tree’ whatsoever - when you listen to most players, you can hear at least some evidence of their early influences, and yet with Allan, the most logical explanation for what you’re hearing is that the this guy must have arrived very abruptly and unexpectedly - if not from another planet then, at the very least, from the future!”]


A good friend of mine (a top LA session keyboardist), had this to say about Holdsworth about 5 years ago:

"For me, Allan Holdsworth was the most innovative improviser of all time on ANY instrument. The great jazz soloists (McCoy, Brecker, Freddie Hubbard, Trane, etc.), all had predecessors on their respective instruments that they copped licks from and modified with their own voice. There clearly was no guitar lineage leading up to Allan's approach. This freak landed ship with a completely new vocabulary not based on anything that was already established. No blues, pentatonix, bop, post-bop...NOTHING".

Seems Govan and my friend are on the same page concerning about Holdsworth.

[nosebone]

No argument from me.

[Baribrotzer]

That's partly because Holdsy's influences weren't guitar players at all - they were sax players melodically, and perhaps piano players chordally. And his tone reflects that: He tried as much as he could to sound like an alto sax, I think, to the point where I always wanted to ask him what kind of mouthpiece and reed he used.

[Zeuhlmate]

As I recall it, he played violin, wanted to play the sax, but his father gave him a guitar because he couldn't afford a sax.

Sendt fra min BLA-L29 med Tapatalk

[nosebone]

Holdsy was the consummate perfectionist.

I saw him many times through the years and he always looked up tight and dissatisfied.

Except for a late show at The Bottom Line in NYC circa 1988.

He was so loose, relaxed and tearing it to pieces .

The most astonishing live guitar performance I ever witnessed.

[Paulrus]

That's partly because Holdsy's influences weren't guitar players at all - they were sax players melodically, and perhaps piano players chordally. And his tone reflects that: He tried as much as he could to sound like an alto sax, I think, to the point where I always wanted to ask him what kind of mouthpiece and reed he used.

Yeah, I always followed the "He sounds like no other guitar player" mantra when thinking about AH, but when someone interviewed him and he basically said he was trying to emulate Coltrane it suddenly all made sense.

[MJBrady]

After 40 years, I am still trying to learn my first Holdsworth lick, but I just go back to what I know.

[sphinx]

Jeff Berlin Shares the Nicholas Slonimsky Approach

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ365ol1f2Y

He mentions Allan practicing after this book specifically at 2:40 and 5:40..

- - - - -

„…Allan wanted to sound like John Coltrane. Problem was he’s playing guitar, not saxophone, so he had to figure out a way to get a similar ‚sheets of sound’ equivalent on guitar. The scales and intervals he chose were also all unusual, and he didn’t become just one of the great scalar improvisers overnight. He worked like a dog on Nicolas Slonimsky’s Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns. Then, when he’d run out of notes he’d reach for the whammy bar and send shivers down your spine.” - Bill Bruford

[proggy_jazzer]

GG is 100% correct: Holdsworth definitely came out of nowhere. The Coltrane influence is well-documented and seems obvious in hindsight, but there was no one doing anything remotely resembling what he was doing on guitar at that point in history.

FWIW, I have always felt the same way about Bill Frisell. Even though he himself speaks of being heavily influenced by Jim Hall, I don't think many people would listen to his early recordings and say "oh yeah...Jim Hall". Frisell was working from a palette all his own.

[tribalfusion]

People mention Coltrane a lot where Allan is concerned but it's a question of being inspired by Coltrane; Allan's actual lines and harmonies have nothing to do with him or any other horn player.

[Zeuhlmate]

People mention Coltrane a lot where Allan is concerned but it's a question of being inspired by Coltrane; Allan's actual lines and harmonies have nothing to do with him or any other horn player.

Same thing for Christian Vander from Magma. But nevertheless...

[Baribrotzer]

Same thing for Christian Vander from Magma. But nevertheless...

In a way, I can hear it in Vander: Both use repeating modal vamps at great length, although Coltrane would use one single vamp as a foundation for the whole of a towering solo, while Vander uses them as building blocks for large-scale compositional structures. But more than that, I think it's in the emotional tenor of their work, wherein Vander, as a drummer/composer, tried to create music that felt like Coltrane's (even if it sounded quite different) and made audiences feel the way JC's did.