Multi-talented musician Andy Holt speaks about his eclectic musical career.
Andy Holt has been a musician all his life, playing in various bands and performing solo acts both in his hometown of Blackpool and countrywide. Despite testing a few mainstream careers over the years, music has always been his primary calling.
Today, Holt plays in a band called The Heat and performs several solo acts, as well as appearing in a tribute band called the AC/DC Experience and performing in his one man Pink Floyd show.
What inspired you to play Pink Floyd tribute acts?
When I was fourteen, I worked at the theme park here in Blackpool. I used to help a lady out with her stall during afternoons and holidays. She had a guitar and used to let me play. She also had a cassette tape and I remember listening to Pink Floyd. I fell in love with it. They became my favourite band and I went to see them at Earl's Court when I was twenty-one. When I was forty, I began toying with the idea of getting a guitar synthesiser and kept thinking about this idea of a one man show. Slowly, the idea escalated. I booked a gig in Bolton; it went down really well.
You use CGI and lasers in your shows. How did this begin?
I went to see Roger Waters in around 2010 and he used a lot of CGI imagery on his wall. I made a few enquiries and started adding a bit of projection to my show, initially just lighting. I’ve been a musician since I was sixteen; I’m fifty now and I was forty then. It was something new and it really excited me. I’ve always been into art; I studied it at school but didn’t go on to do anything else with it because I became a musician. When I hit my forties, it rekindled in me a little bit. I started doing some painting for my Floyd show and this led onto the CGI work.
You say you have been a musician since you were sixteen. What is your musical background?
My dad always loved playing The Beatles and Jimmy Hendrix around the house. When I was fourteen I started playing guitar eight hours a day. My schoolwork went off the wall, though I did all right in the end. When I left school, I wanted to go and study art and music at college but my father said I had to get a trade. I ended up working at Blackpool Pleasure Beach as an apprentice engineer. I did that until I was nineteen. The moment I qualified I gave it up.
I was then in numerous bands throughout the 90s, including Power Tribe until it started to get a bit heavy for me. I left and moved to London for five years where I was in a band called Here On In. I then came back here, had a baby and got a proper job again. After a while, I couldn’t do it anymore so I became a full time musician. If you have a passion, you’re not happy if you’re not doing it.
Do you think creatives are taken seriously?
Being a musician is a funny game because you get left on the shelf after thirty. You’re too old to get a record deal or build it up; you have responsibility by that point and a lot of people fall by the wayside. Many people try to be musicians, authors or painters that are part time hobbyists, which is fine, but there are others who just don’t get the break and there’s no support system for them. That’s why I do so many things really. It's trying to make money but keep the passion going.
What is your favourite part about performing?
It’s so varied. You can’t get much different that AC/DC and Pink Floyd. With AC/DC, I run around in shorts and play the guitar with a banana. I feel like a different person, like an actor really. I like the silence of the Pink Floyd act. When you play like Angus Young in AC/DC, it’s very fast and hectic. If you play mistakes, it goes past so quickly that you don’t notice. With David Gilmour in Pink Floyd, the music is quite slow so there’s a wider error margin. I like the challenge of that.
Ultimately, I'm happiest when I’m at home doing the graphics side of it. I’ve done some great gigs over the years: played at the Rugby World Cup, sessioned for Bonnie Tyler in Blackpool etc. The small gigs are the best really. You feel like you’re part of the audience. When you’re older, you learn to be in the moment. People can pick up if you’re not in it.
What has been your greatest challenge to date?
I’ve been playing guitar for thirty-six years. I found an outlet going back to art however, creating a world around it. Most creatives are daydreamers and in their own world a lot of the time. Really, I’m creating another world for myself.
Where has been your favourite place to perform?
I’d love to do all the Planetariums in the country. As a musician, they don’t always take me seriously, however. Many of them charge too much but I’m not a charity, I’m a business. People often expect creatives to do things for free. Next year, I’m going to take responsibility away from the venues and put it back onto my own hands.
What does music mean to you?
Every time I’ve had to get a normal job, as in a 9-5, I didn’t feel myself. I’ve always been able to apply myself within that realm but I wasn’t being authentic. I’m a musician through and through. I still love new music now, still search for it. I’ve never become jaded or bored with it. I’ve never not tried to become a better musician. Music means everything to me. Music and art. Reading as well. Those three things are, apart from my family, the main stays of my whole life.
With many thanks to Andy Holt for this interview.
(Conducted and written by Francesca Tyer).
Upcoming performance dates:
Holt will be performing in Winchester on 2nd and 3rd May 2025.
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