Another man down. I remember seeing this live on some TV show back in the day and thinking he was amazing. Which he was!
Allan Holdsworth RIP
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
A plank-spanker par excellence. Here are a couple of my favourites from different stages of Allan’s career.
Firstly, a rhythmically nimble tune from Pierre Moerlen’s Gong, then a mind-scrambling short piece from the Holdsworth solo album Secrets, with Vinnie Colaiuta on drums
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xUQIyEaHG4
RIP AH
That Gong track is a monster!
yes, hadn’t listened to it for a while myself. That and the first Bill Bruford album (see below) were regulars back in the day
He was the ultimate jazz-rock noodler, a genre I don’t always have much love for: beautiful tone. He and John Ethridge set the pace for the others.
Very sad. Great man. Saw him with Soft Machine and Gong but not Bruford
I met him in a bar in Dana Point, California a few years ago. He was absolutely shit faced. Anyway, we chatted for a while then he disappeared for about 10 minutes. He’d been out to the car to get a copy of “The Sixteen Men of Tain” which he signed and gave to me. Lovely bloke, even when pissed as a fart!
Unfortunately there’s no video evidence, but I saw him at the Music Machine in Camden back in the late 70s, guesting on lead guitar with Johnny Moped, of all people. It seems that a few of the Johnny Moped band were big fans and had discovered him drinking in a nearby pub just before the gig and begged him to come and play with them, and he agreed! The sight of him playing his free-form jazz rock solos over Johnny Moped’s primitive punk is one I won’t ever forget.
His family are apparently having to resort to crowdfunding to pay for his funeral.
There’s a lot of truth in the old adage that a rock guitarist plays 3 chords to 3000 people and a jazz guitarist plays 3000 chords to 3 people.
A few words from Dweezil:
http://www.dweezilzappa.com/posts/1983366-allan-holdsworth