Allan Holdsworth

“In a way, I think the whole business is pretty corrupt. It's like anything else where people make a lot of money - it's really hard for the little guy.”

“Music moves forward so quickly; music is an accumulation of knowledge, and musicians keep getting better and better.”

“I'm a very tough critic of my guitar-playing. Sometimes I don't even want to do it anymore.”

“I like lyrics a lot.”

“I wanted to be a music fan who just listens to music. I never wanted to be musician. I didn't gravitate toward playing.”

“The more you learn, the more you learn you don't know.”

“My music is written with one goal in mind: to improvise. It's like explaining a great story in words, but without words, much faster than you could with words. It's like a direct line of instantaneous communication where you don't have to wait for the end.”

“The problem we have is that, some people call it 'too rock' to play on a jazz station, and it's 'too jazz' to play on a rock station. So it's difficult. It's difficult to make it playing this kind of music.”

“There are good people in radio and the record companies, but there are others who are completely in the wrong job and holding music up in the process.”

“That's why I like the Steinberger guitars. They're easy to travel with... and they don't get messed up by the airlines.”

“To most people, jazz-fusion means this dreadful synthetic jazz-rock thing, this jazz-Muzak, which I detest. They also think of jazz as a specific form of music, while to me it's just the opposite.”

“I'd get another job before I would play music I don't enjoy. But then, I'm really not qualified to do anything else.”

“I started out in rock, but I didn't want to stay there, and haven't.”

“Standing and playing next to Tony Williams was pretty amazing. One of the things I learned about being a band leader from Tony was that he would never, ever tell me what to play or do.”

“I didn't decide to play guitar, but that was the instrument which I was offered. I've always been interested in horn-type instruments, such as a saxophone; but those instruments are very expensive, so my dad bought me a guitar instead. I didn't like the guitar at first, but after noodling on it for several months, I developed a feel for it.”

“It's not my personality to brag in any way or be pretentious. It's just not my nature.”

“I don't mind categories, but it's so hard to find one that fits.”

“As soon as I figured out I didn't know anything about music, I was OK. It's when I thought I could learn something that I was in trouble.”

“I was working with another major label after Warner Bros, and they were telling me who to hire as musicians, what kind of music to play, what producer to use. I mean, what's the point of putting me on the record?”

“Perhaps since I have been using the Synthaxe, it might have made it easier for people to listen to me, in a funny kind of way it takes for things to happen.”