RIP Allan Holdsworth, Guitar Colossus

"I think Allan Holdsworth is the John Coltrane of guitar. I don't think anyone can do as much with the guitar as Allan Holdsworth can." ~ Robben Ford

Though I've never played an instrument, music has been a vital part of my life for as long as I can remember. And for decades, Allan Holdsworth has thrilled and inspired me like no one else with his astonishingly fluid and impossibly complex virtuosity and steadfastly uncompromising musical sensibility.

Frank Zappa called him one of the "most interesting" guitarists on the planet. Eddie Van Halen said he was simply "the best." John McLaughlin quipped that he'd steal Holdsworth's licks if he could understand them. The praise went on and on from guitar luminaries the world over.

But Allan Holdsworth died yesterday at the age of 70. So, there will be no more soul-searing guitar lines and otherworldly chordal phrasings from those magic fingers. A giant who perhaps stood taller than any other in the prodigiously demanding genre of guitar-centered "fusion" has passed on.

While it was well-known that he was in poor health, Allan's death still comes as something of a shock. A friend of mine saw him perform just a little over a week ago. And, despite his not having practiced much for a long time, he was still in virtuosic form.

Sadly, Allan never prospered from his music. In fact, he was apparently in pretty dire financial straits at the end. For while serious guitarists and hardcore guitar fans idolized him, most of the public never even heard of him. And if they happened to chance upon any of his music, they probably cringed from the strangeness of it.

I confess that, huge Holdsworth fan that I was, I found some of his music pretty "out there" too, and some of it left me cold. But then there was this solo, my favorite guitar solo ever, and this rare, hauntingly pensive and beautiful acoustic guitar piece on an album he despised and tried to suppress.

I was blessed to see Allan perform in person a couple of times. One such time was in the early to mid-80's at a local nightclub in Palo Alto, CA. This song, in particular, enraptured me and is probably my favorite song that he himself composed. I wish I'd been able to see more of him.

Fortunately, his recorded music lives on, and YouTube abounds with his live performances and this lovely tribute. RIP, Allan.

Musical Trio of Doom

Two of these genius musicians, Jaco Pastorius and Tony Williams, are no longer with us. But their music lives on. And John McLaughlin still lives to make more brilliant music.

Opportunity Lost

I don't know what prompted me to check up on him yesterday. I just had the feeling that I should. I did that periodically with him. Just to see how his career was going. He and I were never close friends. In fact, I never had any close friends growing up. I was a loner. But he lived down the street and around the corner from me through elementary, junior high, and high school, and we spent a fair amount of time together playing playground football and basketball and walking home from school discussing music, politics, religion, school, classmates, the Vietnam War, "recreational" drugs, and whatever else caught our attention through the wild and crazy times of the mid to late 60's and early 70's.

Once, in our early teens, we were throwing rocks at each other, the way rambunctious boys like to do or, at least, we did, and I hit him with a big rock in the head just above or below the eye. He ran into his house crying. He and I were lucky I didn't blind him or worse. But he didn't hold it against me. I could have been the one hit instead of him.

One day, as we were boarding the school bus, he was the one who told me that Jimi Hendrix had died. I wasn't as familiar with Hendrix back then as he was, but I still remember feeling sad that such a famous musician had died so young and so pointlessly.

For a few years back then, I fancied myself a reasonably smart guy. Then, in high school, I found out who the really smart people were, and I wasn't one of them. But my friend was. I first became aware of this when we took a physiology class together in our junior year. He excelled; I struggled to memorize the locations of the organs we had to identify on the human cadavers on which we were tested. He and I both wrote term papers on sleep. But his was much better than mine. As I recall, he even secured an interview with William Dement at nearby Stanford University. I simply paraphrased books and magazines from the school library.

After high school, I saw my friend only one time. It was a year or two after graduation. It was a summer afternoon. I was visiting my old elementary school to shoot some baskets, check out the old neighborhood, and see if anyone I knew came by. I was hoping most of all to see my old friend. And I was happy when he did come by and we talked for awhile.

My memory is fuzzy about details. It always has been. But I think he sat and played a guitar. I do recall us talking a little about John McLaughlin. I had recently discovered him and was eager to sing his praises. I think my friend had heard of him but wasn't familiar with his music. I felt sad when we parted company, like I was losing one of my only connections, tenuous as it was, with the past.

I didn't attend our 30th high school class reunion, but my friend did. Had I gone, he was the one I'd have most wanted to sit down and talk with. For I had Googled him off and on over the years, and I would have loved to hear firsthand about his work. Until yesterday, I had this fantasy that I would finally become enough of a success in life to attend my fortieth or perhaps I'd have to wait until my fiftieth class reunion, and my friend would be there, and we could have that talk I'd been wanting to have with him for decades.

But I found out yesterday that I'll never get that chance. My friend died last year. I don't know how he died. I just know that if I ever do attend one of my future class reunions, he won't be there. That means I probably won't attend.

I dreamed about him last night. I seldom remember dreams very well, and last night's is no exception. But I do remember that Steve and I were on a bus together. It was evening. We were on our way home but got off early to eat at a restaurant. At least I thought he was going to join me at the restaurant so we could eat and talk and catch up on old and not-so-old times. But he declined to go in the restaurant with me. He just said "bye" and took off walking. I went in the restaurant, disappointed, but I couldn't eat. I came out and gazed up the street, hoping to see my friend. He was gone from sight.

I wonder how many people with whom I used to play sports during recess or after school or sit in class have walked up that road and disappeared forever, except, perhaps, from my dreams. And I wonder if anyone from my distant past thinks of me the way I did of my friend and hopes to meet me at the next class reunion and reminisce with me about old times, and if I should go on the off chance that someone does, before there are no more chances.

The Freakish Robert Smith

"If there was one guy I'd want to watch it's Robert Smith. It's like watching John Daly rip a drive — it's fascinating. Robert Smith is like Marshall Holman on steroids. I love watching him bowl...he does things other people can't do."
--Marshall Holman

"Problem is, the nature of the current game doesn't allow Smith to be Smith for long. After a few games, sometimes even from the start of competition, the lane's oil breaks down under the power of the new equipment churning it up. This forces Smith to move first to the extreme inside part of the lane searching for fresh oil, then ultimately he begins lofting the ball way down the lane to avoid the dry early part of the lane. It is spectacular, but these moves ruin Smith's chance for consistency and sink his ship."
--USA Today

Now that I'm working full time and studying as much as I can, I've had to put my bowling on indefinite hold except for a very occasional practice session with my wife or a friend. However, I still regularly watch bowling on TV, as I have for over forty years, and last week I was thrilled to see one of my favorite bowlers of all time win his first championship in more than two years. That bowler was Robert Smith, and I guess the main reason I like him so much is because he can do freakish things with a bowling ball.

I don't exactly know why, but I'm very drawn to people with astounding physical or mental ability, whether it be in sports, intellectual or artistic endeavors, or music. Take guitar players, for instance. I am fascinated by guitarists with amazing technical skill such that they can play mind-bogglingly complex musical passages with blinding speed. Hopefully, they can also appeal to the mind and heart with their playing, but tremendous technique alone will grab hold of my attention. My two favorite guitarists, in large part because of their freakish technical skills, are John McLaughlin and Allan Holdsworth.

I guess one could say that Robert Smith is the bowling equivalent of an Allan Holdsworth. He's a freak. What makes him freakish is the amount of speed and revolutions--i.e., power--he's able to put on a bowling ball and do it with enough accuracy and control on challenging lane conditions to win PBA national tournaments. While the average professional bowler averages about 300 rpms with the balls they throw, Smith averages over 600, and does it with tremendous speed. In fact, I remember reading that he throws the ball with so much more power than other bowlers, amateur and professional alike, that he's the bowling equivalent of a baseball pitcher throwing a fastball around 140 mph while the other fastest pitchers are in the high 90's. Not only that, but when he has to do it because his ball is hooking too much, he will loft the ball way down the lane and still generate tremendous power with decent accuracy and consistency. For those who don't bowl, this may not mean very much. But if you bowl or know anything about bowling, you can't help but be impressed by this.

Anyway, after spending most of last year recuperating from a debilitating injury to a hip flexor muscle, he won a tournament on TV last week and did in in a way that only he could. Below are parts one and two of his victory match.

Paco DeLucia--Flamenco Guitar Master

I recently posted about a dazzling concert I attended in San Francisco in 1980 featuring three incredible acoustic guitarists--John McLaughlin, Paco, DeLucia, and Al DiMeola. That post was chiefly about John McLaughlin. This one is about Paco DeLucia.

Paco is one of the greatest flamenco guitarists ever. He was born in Spain in 1947 and was a child prodigy who was playing on the radio at age 11, won a special prize at a national flamenco competition a year later, and was touring with renowned flamenco dancer Jose Greco's troupe at age 14. Since then, he has recorded numerous albums, toured the world many times, and become a leading exponent not only of traditional flamenco guitar but also of New Flamenco and world music. His version of the famous classical piece Concierto de Aranjuez is said to have prompted the composer, Joaquin Rodrigo, to exclaim that he had never heard his composition, normally performed by great classical guitarists, played so brilliantly. But I became aware of Paco through his collaborations with Larry Coryell and John McLaughlin and, later, with McLaughlin and Al DiMeola.

Paco is a spellbinding master of the flamenco guitar, as this solo from his Saturday night in San Francisco performance and this duet with John McLaughlin years later reveal.

Saturday Night in San Francisco

John McLaughlin has been my favorite musician for the past 35 years. He is one of the most accomplished and respected guitarists in the world. He is astoundingly proficient technically on both acoustic and electric guitar. He has a profound grasp of music and guitar theory. He can play world-class jazz, rock, blues, and world fusion music. His groups and compositions over the course of his career show remarkable creative diversity. To my mind, he's an indubitable genius who has given me and countless others innumerable hours of joy and inspiration.

And at no time did I feel more joy and inspiration from his music than I did at a concert at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco on a Saturday night in December of 1980, when he, Al DiMeola, and flamenco guitar legend Paco DeLucia put on an acoustic guitar concert for the ages. In fact, it, or, rather, the previous night's showing has been preserved for the ages in one of the most popular guitar albums of all time--Friday Night in San Francisco . But I saw them the next night, and, if anything, they were even better. Never have I attended a concert that swept me and the rest of the audience away with so much impassioned virtuosity. It was magical and one of the greatest experiences of my life.

I have just discovered video from that concert on YouTube, and I'm in heaven when I watch it and relive the bliss of that night. Here is a video of a McLaughlin solo from that night. I'm looking forward to seeing more of that concert on YouTube or somewhere else if and when it becomes available.

Power, Passion and Beauty

In March of 1972, I went to San Francisco's famed rock venue Winterland to see my favorite music group Emerson, Lake & Palmer play their enticing and popular brand of progressive rock. But opening for them was a group I had never heard of called the Mahavishnu Orchestra. I had no idea what to expect from this group and frankly didn't care, since I was there strictly for ELP. But when famous rock promoter Bill Graham came to the stage and introduced the MO as "the tightest assemblage of musicians in the world today," I was intrigued. I was even more so when five musicians took the stage who, with the exception of the long-haired and bearded violinist Jerry Goodman, didn't look anything like the rock musicians I was accustomed to seeing in that era. The boyish looking guitarist, John McLaughlin, had very short hair, was clean-shaven, and was dressed in white pants and a white, short-sleeved T-shirt that said "Mahavishnu Orchestra" on the front. He was also holding the first double-neck guitar I had ever seen. The keyboardest, Jan Hammer, and bassist, Rick Laird, were also clean-shaven, and the black drummer Billy Cobham looked like a bodybuilder.

I had a feeling that something extraordinary was coming our way, and when McLaughlin asked for a moment of silence, my level of anticipation grew. I don't remember what they played first, but it was loud and like nothing I had ever heard before. As they continued, I went from struck to dumbstruck with the music they were playing. It was breathtaking in its awesome complexity, virtuosity, and intensity, and there was something of an odd and otherworldy spiritual nature to it that reached deep into my soul like no music ever had before or has since. This magical music grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let go. From that night through today, the Mahavishnu Orchestra (in what turned out to be its first of four incarnations) became my favorite musical group of all time, and John McLaughlin became my favorite musician. In fact, they were my virtual musical obsession for the better part of three decades.

And I wasn't alone. The MO revolutionized both rock and jazz, and John McLaughlin became one of the most influential electric and acoustic guitarists in history. People were blown away by the MO, other groups were soon refusing to follow them (ELP never wanted to follow them again after that concert at Winterland), countless musicians, including Carlos Santana, were inspired by them, and countless more anonymous music lovers like myself were never the same after hearing them.

Here is how the great jazz guitarist Pat Metheny described his first experience of seeing a Mahavisnu Orchestra concert at the University of Miami in 1972:

Of course, as we all know, the first thing was the minute of silence with John all in white and all those guys looking kind of intense and stuff before they even started. I am thinking...something is about to happen...the tension that they set up was tangible. Then they started, and the first thing was the sound of it. I had thought Coryell was loud, but this was easily 10 times louder. It was the loudest thing I had ever heard. It was louder than loud. I think the term "face melting" would fit here. It was totally encompassing. The tunes that I heard on The Inner Mounting Flame, which kind of sounded like a few guys in a room playing--not unlike a jazz group, but one dealing with some truly unique material, suddenly took on these monumental, epic proportions. It seemed impossible to tell who was playing what. Dance of Maya, with the 12-string ostinato arpeggio, was suddenly the sonic equivalent of the ebb and flow of the biggest ocean. The unison violin-guitar stuff was like Ornette and Cherry but with this ridiculously precise undercurrent of rhythm. What time signature is that? Is that a guitar? A violin? Who cares! The tangibles of the music became the 50th thing on the list of priorities at that minute. Because for all of the incredible dexterity on display--I mean, we were watching three people (John, Cobham and Jan) completely and forever reinvent the meaning of their instruments in jazz--it was the spiritual power of it that transformed all of us that night. In the end, it was the real accomplishment of that band...It was interesting to see the reactions around me as the concert wound down. I had never seen an audience react like that to music that was that advanced. People went crazy. That included the vast majority of people who were there that had no idea about the details of the content--they just got the FEELING of it. I am certain that everyone there remembers that concert to this day.

Walter Kolosky, like me, was never the same after seeing the MO for the first time. But, unlike me, he wrote a wonderful book about the group that I am now reading. The book is titled Power, Passion and Beauty: The Story of the Legendary Mahavishnu Orchestra: The greatest band that ever was. It tells the whole story of the group by seamlessly weaving revealing interviews with all of the group members, supporting personnel, and other famous musicians into Kolosky's spare but enchanting history and commentary. If you have any interest in the Mahavishnu Orchestra or in the jazz fusion genre of music of which they, along with Weather Report and Return to Forever, were undoubtedly the greatest exponents, you owe it to yourself to read this outstanding book about the "greatest band that ever was." And check out the amazing, albeit ancient, videos of the group on You Tube, including the ones below.

One Word


The Noonward Race


You Know You Know