Behold one of the most innovative, technically gifted guitarists of the 20th century. I’ve been listening to him since I was a teenager. Last week he played at the Iridium in New York. I went there to worship, and I wasn’t surprised to run into some terrific musicians, including the guitarists Jonathan Kreisberg and David Gilmore and an Australian pianist named Sean Wayland, who writes intriguingly in a Holdsworthian vein.
Holdsworth, who will turn 60 this August, first came onto my radar via the starry-eyed endorsement of Eddie Van Halen. From the start I was floored not just by his prodigious technique on the instrument (plenty of guitarists have technique), but also by his unorthodox scale runs and his advanced harmonic sensibility, which is as bizarre as it is beautiful. Above all, Holdsworth makes music, not just guitar music, and certainly not just “jazz fusion.” When I first heard it around 1985 it seemed like the sound of the next millennium, and it still does.
In my philosophy elective during senior year of high school, we devoted a class or two to art and aesthetics. Each of us was asked to bring in one piece of music that to us represented true quality. I brought in Holdsworth’s “Where Is One” from the 1985 album I.O.U. I’m glad to say I could proudly make the same choice today.
The Iridium date was special in that Holdsworth was joined by two of his longstanding colleagues, electric bassist Jimmy Johnson and drummer Chad Wackerman. Both are consummate studio players. Johnson works steadily with James Taylor; his discography at All Music Guide goes on for three pages. Wackerman has worked with everyone from Frank Zappa to Barbra Streisand. Holdsworth’s immensely difficult music is in their bloodstreams, and their live chemistry is astounding (this recording gives you an idea). Johnson took killing solos on “Water on the Brain” and “Pud Wud.” Holdsworth was poetic on “Above and Below,” with its haunting ballad cadences. He was poised to shatter every wine glass in the house with his solo flights on “The Things You See,” “Fred” and “Proto-Cosmos.” One particular run verged on inhuman: With his index finger he fretted a series of anchoring notes while his other digits roamed the neck at least four frets higher, in convoluted patterns that gave forth the most inconceivable sounds.
Kurt Rosenwinkel, in this piece [pdf] for Jazz Times, spoke of his love for Holdsworth: “To me, he’s the only guitarist dealing with the kind of language Coltrane was dealing with — those long Slonimsky patterns [Nicolas Slonimsky, 1894-1995] that evolve differently through different registers in a very precise way, but pure like a prism. That’s a big part of what I hear, that clarity of harmonic unfolding and melodic intricacy.” Other guitarists hear it too, even if, like Kreisberg, they’re cultivating a more “traditional” jazz approach than Holdsworth ever did.
I talked with Holdsworth briefly after the set. He’s notoriously self-effacing and painfully shy, with a Yorkshire brogue and a slight build. Like his music, he’s aged remarkably well. May he continue on for many years.
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