Allan Holdsworth "Road Games" 1983***

They say that an artist's death is bad news for everyone except his record label, as it always gives his record sales a considerable boost. Now I'm not so sure this also applies to Allan Holdsworth, but in my case it did. In the music encyclopedia of my mind, under that name were just 3 words "70's session guitarist", so it was only after he died and I read his obituary in the latest issue of Mojo (he died on April 15th, 2017) that I understood how much I had underestimated him. He was a guitarists' guitarist, a veritable idol to such big names as Eddie Van Halen, Yngwie Malmsteen and Joe Satriani. He was also quite famous in the musos' world of jazz rock fusion, having revolutionised the electric guitar with his legato playing, producing torrents of notes that flow into each other without pause, a technique he had copied from jazz saxophonists he admired like John Coltrane. In the 70's he did play with prog bands like Soft Machine, Nucleus, U.K. and Tempest and do session work for prog rock musicians, which is how his name came to be vaguely familiar to me. This mini-album (only 24 minutes long) was the fruit of Van Halen's insistence that his label Warner Bros produce an album with Holdsworth, and was rather successful, even nominated for the 1984 Best Rock Instrumental Grammy Award. He himself wasn't fond of it because of artistic differences with the producer - supposedly he also never received any royalties for it. None of these facts was known to me, I just saw this CD at the 1 euro stall of a flea market and thought "Oh that's the guy I read about in Mojo magazine". It may also be the right place for me to start as it combines instrumentals with songs, and all-instrumental albums tend to lose my attention after some time. Listening to opener "Three Sheets to the Wind" one immediately understands why Metal guitarists are fascinated with this guy: he's very technical and fast, but his playing is also very imaginative and he doesn't always do what you expect him to. The other two instrumentals "Water on the Brain Pt. II" and "Tokyo Dream" are rather slower and sound to me similar to other jazz rock bands (e.g. Weather Report) with guitar instead of horns. His sidemen (Jeff Berlin on bass and Chad Wackerman on drums) are also very good and strictly jazz-oriented players. Rock fans will be more interested in the vocal tracks, of which "Road Games" (sung by long-time collaborator Paul Williams) is the more rock-oriented, although the guitar never limits itself to rock scales. The last two "Was There?" and "Material Real" feature the late great Jack Bruce on vocals and sound very much like 70's Colosseum and, inevitably, the softer moments of Cream (a good thing). I can't say I was blown away by this album (his playing is much too technical for my taste) but anyone interested in electric guitar should check this guy out. I hear there's also a good "best of" album out there.

**** for Three Sheets to the Wind, Road Games, Material Real

*** for Water on the Brain Pt. II, Tokyo Dream, Was There?