Randy Holden

Dan McGuire said it, and I believe it: "Randy Holden always reaffirms my will to live; he is the ultimate example of getting fucked and coming back for more." Holden's a seeker in the same realm as Coltrane or Hendrix; his particular grail was the perfect tone. Commencing in Baltimore in the late '50s and moving to California in the early '60s, he played his way through every contemporary style of American rock guitar -- surf (the Fender IV), garage-psych (the Sons of Adam), hipi-psych (the Other Half), and heavy psych (Blue Cheer for half of one album) -- and every permutation of equipment (Jazzmaster/Dual Showman, Les Paul or SG/Marshall, finally settling on a Strat with _16_ Sunn amps chained together for his epic 1970 album Population II, a collaboration with drummer-keyboardist Chris Lockheed and no one else; no wonder Jon Teague likes this record). On Population II, Holden echoes Hendrix, Clapton (back when it wasn't shameful to cite him as an influence; one song follows the spirit, if not the letter, of Blind Faith's "Had To Cry Today" quite literally), and Beck (Holden's use of semitones and harmonics prefigures latter-day Beck-ola as much as his use of sustain and Near Eastern-sounding scales is redolent of the Brit guitarist's Yardbirds daze) while resolutely remaining His Own Guy. After cutting his magnum opus, Holden dropped out of music for 24 years; he didn't even know that Population II was released, and an unscrupulous equipment manager sold off all of his gear. The Japanese rediscovered him; Marble Sheep guitarist Ken Matsutani released Holden's comeback album, Guitar God, on his Captain Trip label in 1994, and since then, Holden's established himself as a little cottage industry, recording and releasing albums in limited editions and selling them through his website, playing a glass-necked (!) guitar his artist wife had built for him. Happy ending.