“He had his own vocabulary. He had his own way of constructing chords. His own understanding of how they go on the neck”: Steve Vai on why Allan Holdsworth – the fusion virtuoso who wrote his own rules – was the GOAT

Steve Vai has spent much of this year tearing it up on tour with his old friend and former teacher Joe Satriani, with the super-gifted Pete Thorn playing rhythm for the Satch/Vai Band.

On the G3 and Generation Axe tours of yore, Vai has shared the stage with the likes of Eric Johnson, Tosin Abasi, Nuno Bettencourt, Zakk Wylde, the irrepressible Yngwie Malmsteen.

He made his bones as a teenager playing with Frank Zappa; Vai can hold his own in any company and he will elevate the jam.

But as the latest guest to appear on Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan’s superlative YouTube show/podcast, The Magnificent Others, Corgan put the question to Vai, that, if players were gunslingers, which would be the one whom he’d look at and think ‘nope, not today’?

Vai had no hesitation: that would be the late English jazz fusion trailblazer Allan Holdsworth.

For Vai, Holdsworth is the one, a player who was simply wired differently. Corgan is intrigued. Holdsworth was the one of the players who blew Eddie Van Halen’s mind, too. But why?

“Growing up in the generation that I did, I’m in the guitar magazines, I’m reading about you,” says Corgan. “And I’m hearing all these things and everyone would talk about Holdsworth like he was this kind of spinning deity. But as a kid, you go grab that record, put it on, and I think, for me Holdsworth still remains a bit of a cypher.

“I certainly understand the influence, and the technical mastery – and even the fluidity in his playing, if that’s a fair thing to say – but I never found that emotional connection to his work.”

Vai’s answer explains all, but it also reminds us of what Vai told us about the two competing impulses in his creative brain.

One is pulling towards rock, as practised by Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin et al, the other towards “high-information music” – and Holdsworth was the doyen of the latter.

“Yeah, it’s more of an intellectualised sophistication,” says Vai. “Sophisticated listening, and for me it tickles a particular part of my brain, because it encompasses all of these elements.

“The thing that I love most about someone like Allan Holdsworth – or Jeff Beck even – they’re craftsmen. Allan Holdsworth, the reason why I am so attracted him is because his musical mind is unique.”

Like Zappa, Vai got to know Holdsworth as a teenager, newly arrived in California and available for all kinds of electric guitar related services. Both wanted Vai for his transcription skills, which were considerable. Zappa ended up recruiting Vai. Holdsworth needed Vai’s help to finish his book.

“When I moved out to California in 1980, I was doing transcriptions to make a couple of bucks, and he called me,” says Vai. “He was writing a book on his wild chords, crazy things, but Allan didn’t really know traditional music.”

This goes a long way to understanding just how Holdsworth came to sound so different to anyone else, as though he arrived here via meteorite.

“He had his own vocabulary,” says Vai. “He had his own way of constructing chords. His own understanding of how they go on the neck.”

Joe Satriani & Steve Vai - I Wanna Play My Guitar (Official Video) - YouTube

Watch On

For Corgan, the Holdsworth story begins to make sense.

“That helps me understand him a little bit, because I could never understand why someone of your calibre would point at him,” says Corgan. “Even Eddie Van Halen would talk about Holdsworth.”

“This is just his musical mind,” continues Vai. “He didn’t even understand how to translate that into conventional notation, to write this book, so that was what I was helping him with.”

Maybe Holdsworth wasn’t of this world. Holdsworth made his own sense of music and sound to create something no one else could get close to. Putting Holdsworth's material down on staff notation gave Vai a deeper appreciation of his genius.

“In the process I got to recognise a person who is almost like, if you left people on a desert island and just gave them a couple of tools, the real brilliant one built things,” says Vai “That’s what Allan did. His way of approaching notes, to a lot of people, it sounds like crazy notes going around the place, but if you’re into connecting the musical dots of music theory and melody...”

...Then you’ve got a rabbit-hole to go down.

Steve Vai | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan - YouTube

Watch On

Corgan recalls his father – also a player – talking about seeing Wes Montgomery and realising deep down that he couldn’t touch that. No way he was ever playing like that. Vai can relate.

“That’s how I felt when I watched Joe Pass play, or Allan,” he admits.

There is another connection between Pass and Holdsworth. Pass, similarly, did not have what we might call knowledge of traditional music theory.

“That’s why it’s so inspired,” argues Vai. “Insipid jazz playing is people who know the chords, and then what you hear is ripping arpeggios – but there’s no soul in it. It’s more mental than coming from a soulful place, and that’s fine, that’s a process. Not someone like Allan – or a great jazz player, who doesn’t even know anything about it…”

And it becomes magic. When Vai told Music Radar the 10 guitarists who blew his mind in 2017, he demurred on the notion that anyone could be the best. But if pushed, he said, it would have been Holdsworth.

“I very rarely agree with the term best guitar player. It just seems so obscene to put something so subjective into a best category. But if I had to say there was one, I would pick Allan Holdsworth," said Vai. “The way he uses the whole tone scale is like his own baby shoes – it’s so easy for him. His thought process was phenomenal.

“I can hear any guitar player and I know what they’re doing – I might not be able to play it – but I can see it in my mind’s eye. But I do not know what the fuck Holdsworth was doing at all.”

Holdsworth died in 2017. Paying tribute at the time, Vai said Holdsworth’s contribution to guitar was “unquantifiable”. Holdsworth had a prolific solo career, one that got off to a false start in 1976 with Velvet Darkness, an album culled from rehearsal performances and released without the musicians’ consent.

Holdsworth disowned it. But there were some hints at what was to come. I.O.U. marked him as a jazz-fusion player to watch. Metal Fatigue (1985) positioned him as a revolutionary of the art.

“I remember him saying to me once that his goal was to create a catalog of music that was undiluted,” said Vai, in 2017. “Well, that he did…. Dear Allan, you were extraordinary and from all of us who you’ve touched so deeply with your brilliance, we are grateful.”

• "I have tremendous problems with some of my own tunes, unless they’re particularly simple": Remembering the musical mind, self-deprecation and wisdom of Allan Holdsworth