Think I've mentioned him on here before but it bears repeating... this chap was a truly remarkable player.
Fantastic rhythm playing, really intricate part that always keeps moving... and a face-melting solo at 1:40. He's the earliest guy I can find who played really, really fast in the context of a rock band. Almost a proto-shredder, if you will... but that's unfair really, because his playing was more reliant on very fast four-finger legato (not tapping) and there's a fair bit of angular jazz-fusion influence to be heard. He was a very significant influence on Allan Holdsworth, which makes total sense. He also apparently influenced Bill Nelson of Be Bop Deluxe, another one of my favourite players - so I think directly and indirectly, Halsall's been a fairly major influence on my own playing since I found him.
He recorded a few albums with Patto, but their stuff is somewhat spoiled for me by the singer, whose voice I don't really like and whose lyrics are gibberish. Here he is with (IMO) a much better band, still shredding like an absolute demon.
Then at 3:20, we find this, you can really see where Holdsworth got it from:
Absolutely stunning. He was very, very ahead of his time as a player, I think... which may be why he never got much attention. He's no longer with us - drugs got to him in the early 90s. Some other things about him...
1) He was left-handed, but numerous reports confirm that he was equally good right-handed. And with the strings either way round.
2) I have it on good authority that he would sometimes tie knots in his strings when they broke. (!)
3) At the time the first track I posted came out, he'd been playing guitar for only four years. He'd switched from the vibraphone, apparently also having been a virtuoso at that.
I don't know, but I suspect he might have actually been Superman.
- "I'm going to write a very stiff letter. A VERY stiff letter. On cardboard."
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In his later years he was based more out of Madrid where he was working with a great Spanish band called Radio Futura. Unfortunately he developed a hard drug habit at the same time.
He's all over their last album Veneno en la Piel. His playing on that is a real lesson in how to play sympathetically within the context of a song but really drive a band at the same time.
Oh for the days when I used to walk into Terrapin Trucking and Simon would say "you have to hear this" and I'd walk out having dropped a ton on the credit card.
electric proddy probe machine
My trading feedback thread
and ... just don't make it sound like Sergio Mendes ...
I didn't know that.
I wonder if that is why Nelson had a very brief flirtation with a white Gibson Sg Custom. When I say brief, I clocked it at less than 15 minutes. At an early Be Bop Deluxe gig he turned up with said guitar and told the audience in the pub that this was his "dream guitar". 10 minutes into the gig he looked down at the Sg and started wondering out loud if he "could take it back". He then switched to the Es-345.
That sticks in my mind so clearly because I also wanted a 60's white custom.....and I was also underwhelmed when I finally got my hands on one.
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!