Interview with Shawn Lane Guthrie Govan John Petrucci Steve Vai and Alex Hutchings

[Music] here we are on the beach it's because it's cold yeah it feels like it's 9 degrees right 60s welcome back to the channel some of these musicians they are prodigy they don't feel like they are but they are you'll say oh they just practiced let's see how they think about their instruments how does john lennon think about songwriting how does bruce lee think about martial arts let's see interviews with some of the greatest guitar players alive and if we can get a hint it's strange for me to do clinics because i'm completely self-taught but i have wow but i've taught a lot of other people how to play guitar so i guess what i try to do is teach people how to be self-taught okay that's bizarre that's good my father showed me about five chords when i was very young when i was three and then he said that's it that's all i know but there's my record collection so i used to slow down lots of hendrix and clapton and beetles and i mean later on i started reading books i would go to the library and find books about music theory but it all started with the sound yeah and then i would find the words to describe the sounds i don't know if i said i want to play guitar or if my dad said i think it would be funny to take a photo of our small child trying to play guitar it could have happened anyway everyone in my family grew up appreciating that music is a serious thing and that you should listen to it it's not just wallpaper as you go on quietly in the background whilst you lead your life you can sit there and appreciate music as a work of art so we all grew up thinking that and i guess any kid in that situation would put two and two together and say okay music is a serious thing and i feel good when i listen to music there's a tool over there that you can use to make music i want to make music so that i mean as every child that was your dream to make a living out of music or it simply happened no it was more like why does anyone choose to learn a language but in your case perhaps why did you decide to learn italian you didn't yeah all you know is now you speak italian and it's really helpful and it's part of the way you think and music for me was like that it's just i grew up surrounded by music and i learned the language of music the same way i learned the language of english it was never a conscious decision really very natural thing and in terms of trying to make a living out of it i don't know i'm still trying to work out how to make a living out of it um how long do you practice every day i don't really you don't that's amazing i mean you're very good well i try i've played a lot over the years but i think there's maybe a difference between playing and practicing and to me practice is an ugly word all right practice means locking yourself in a room and doing an exercise over and over again yes and i never had the attention span for that all i ever wanted to do was play the sounds that i heard in my head or copy the sounds i heard on a record and try and make everything sound good so for me it's always been fun there's never i've never needed that discipline element because i've always just wanted to play and that's because you're self-taught maybe because of that i mean it's something that uh it's just a feeling you let it go and you play uh possibly i mean i think a lot of the the stuff that needs improvement in what i do is stuff i can improve without touching a guitar my fingers pretty much know where to go to make the sounds that i would need to make yeah and it's all about the music up here if i'm trying to copy the sounds i hear in my head and the way to get better is to make the music in my head more interesting so a lot of that happens just by thinking about music which i can do when i'm sitting on a train or trying to feed myself new music i'm always looking for new things to listen to you know new things to inspire me and that's that's as close to practice as i get it's all up there well i try to be a musician rather than a guitarist i don't care about guitar just for the sake of guitar guitar is a typewriter it's not the book that you're writing it's just the typewriter um but i guess everything i've ever heard has been an influence even the stuff i don't like has influenced me by showing me exactly what i don't want to sound like um but then i guess a few really important things would be all the 50s rock and roll stuff when i was very young it was pre-army elvis i thought was great jerry lee lewis little richard all that good stuff the b tools really got me into interesting chord progressions and harmonies at an early age i guess eric clapton when he was in cream that era that's how i learned that a guitar could be like the singer in a band and the guitar could play the melody and it could be the voice hendrix obviously reinvented the whole instrument in every way imaginable but the thing i learned about him well the thing i learned the most from hendrix was probably the way he he didn't have rhythm guitar playing and then lead guitar playing as two separate entities he was just playing guitar and he would play melodic lines in his rhythm playing and he would play rhythmic stuff in his solo playing and i remember just listening to that stuff and thinking this guy is just playing whatever he wants to play he's completely free that's cool and in terms of the technical stuff i guess ingva malmsteen massive influence not just because of the speed of it but when ingway plays loads of notes it sounds like he means them he plays with passion he plays with sincerity and a lot of the clones that came out missed that part they just copied the technique and missed the spirit behind it but inva whatever other people might say about invade he's a real guitar player you know in 1993 you've been voted elected guitarist of the year what that meant to you and that changed in a sense your career you had a different exposition or for that or honestly not really i should add i don't really think of music as a competition right people would come up to me after that and say oh so you're the best guitarist in the uk i don't think so you know alan holdsworth didn't enter the competition gary moore didn't enter the competition just of the bored kids who could be bothered to enter the competition i was the one who got lucky doesn't mean anything um really i won just because i thought i might make some connections with the uk guitar magazines who might be able to get me some work or something like that i thought it might be nice to win an amp because i was a very poor child and it worked i got a very nice amp out of winning that competition but then nothing happened and i went back to working at mcdonald's and oh is that it so about a year later i wrote to the magazines who had sponsored the competition and said uh remember when you you said i was good at playing guitar well if you've got any work for someone who's good at playing guitar and i started a career of transcribing yeah guitar solos and things for the magazines how would you define yourself i mean more jazz fusion blues or rock guitarist or a bit of all of us yeah it's just music music i hate pigeonholing things the only good reason to have to put music into a category is because it can help you to sell it and it help helps people to to waste less of their time when they're looking for music that they think they might like so i like the word fusion because all that means is take all the different stuff you like put it in a big bowl and cook it all together let's take jazz nuts and play them with a rock instrument and then add loads of indian influence and what we're going to call it let's call it fusion so the spirit of fusion is a good concept i i guess i guess it's probably cleverer than normal rock but it's louder than normal jazz so somewhere in there in between so maybe it's the worst of both worlds i don't know but i think the important thing for me is whatever you're going to play play it like you mean it yeah but when we were talking about inva and just because someone is very technically capable doesn't mean it should be enough just for them to play things that are difficult to play it's like i don't care how long you practice that for does it sound good does it move me does it sound like you mean that okay it's it's a mix of everything but i've finally reached a point where i can fly halfway across the world and when i get to my destination nine time zones away someone at the airport will recognize me which has never been the case before now is that because i started playing when i was three and i was on i did my first gig when i was five and i was on national tv in the uk when i was nine or because i won that competition in 93 or because i joined asia no it's none of that i've tried all these things for decades of my life that's not why people recognize me it's because of a few random clips of me jamming along the backing tracks on youtube i didn't even put them up there i didn't tell anyone to watch them and maybe they're good clips maybe they're not but there's an element of luck there yeah because there are lots of great clips of people playing guitar really well on youtube uh some people get lucky some people don't don't ask me how it works but in terms of anyone who wants to follow the dream or whatever say remember the following music doesn't owe you anything as soon as you start expecting music to give you a pension or a handout every week it's like no music's just music and it makes you happy that's enough it doesn't owe you a living yeah play music because you have to and you can't help it and you can't imagine a life or you didn't play music then that way you can never be disappointed the one other thing i'll share with you this is not my quote i think it was steve swallow who played bass with pat matheny he said if you want to be a musician as a career don't do it if you have to be a musician is the best job in the world yeah i think it's nice to remain a child as much as possible and say if something distracts me one day oh that's interesting i want to do that i'll do it yeah so long as it's something that excites me so i think i'll play better in situations that i find challenging and interesting and it's a nice goal to try and be part of something that doesn't already exist okay which is what like three people who are really important in the development of the guitar yes les paul i hope everyone's familiar with just how incredible les paul was yes he just invented all of the that we use now and somehow managed to be a chart-topping pop musician at the same time he was the da vinci of guitar i think um hendrix i don't need to explain why hendrix was important i need one more it's tempting to say someone like chet atkins and all the rock guys would maybe question that but hugely important and the tree overrated it doesn't matter it doesn't matter okay all the others it doesn't matter if you can't say something nice about someone don't say anything at all all right good i don't know i think we need a balanced musical diet and sometimes we get kind of engrossed in a certain genre and maybe od on that and there's some kind of vitamin imbalance in our capacity to enjoy music and we just know that we're craving something else that our normal listening fodder isn't providing us so i think maybe you just become more receptive to a certain thing that particular genres of music might have to offer then you can find yourself looking for that also traveling i think traveling is really good for kind of opening your ear and exposing you to different things and going to turkey for instance helped me to discover a lot of details about turkish music which i would have spent the rest of my life not knowing had i not gone there so sometimes it's good to experience music in its intended context persevere you have to be prepared to try out different things and work hard and all that but also you have to let that initial idea tell you where it wants to go and a lot of my experience in the world of music doesn't really have words to go with it [Music] you just kind of accumulate experience and in some cases i think i'd cheapen an experience by trying to express it and how can i best serve the song and things like that you can't describe the instincts that you develop just by working more and more with different people and figuring out how to read what it is that they're trying to coax out of you but hopefully it's just something that comes more naturally as you do more and more of it i don't know why but i've always had the uh the ability to place like weird you know very difficult things i'm not a shredder but um when it came to frank's stuff he would like sit at the piano and write this stuff which is very un-guitaristic but i would just sit and work on it until i was blue in the face you know and i'd get it down and and and it worked so i had a place in the band but he would constantly i mean my audition one i had a play in this one thing over the phone once and um oh my god when i went down actually a play and during the rehearsal i thought this is crazy 20 years old auditioning for frank zappa this is ridiculous but i went down he told me to learn all these songs and of course he pulled all these songs that that i didn't know and he was so you should ask vinny because vinnie was there how brutal he was on me i couldn't believe it he was so he made it so difficult this one thing and i know this isn't necessarily a frank interview but i'll tell you the story it's great um this is during my audition he says he you know and frank would like play these things on the guitar and and he had a certain technique but he wasn't like a shredder or anything like that you know and he'd play something because i play that and i go okay and i play and he goes okay now play it in seven eight i say okay and i play it in seven he goes okay now play it reggae seven eight okay and i and i do and he goes okay now add this note okay and i do it playing reggae seven eight and i'm adding these notes he says okay add this note and it was impossible it just was physically impossible not just for me but for anybody and i said oh i can't do that and he goes he goes i hear linda ronstad is looking for a guitar player yeah that was a tough tour for me man not because uh not because of the music but because i was young i was out on tours all the stuff you know all this staying up all night and you know just it's this kid you know i grew up in my bedroom was playing the guitar and all of a sudden you're out there and there's there's you know groupies and all that stuff and up all night by the time i got to texas i turned yellow it did it's completely dehydrated it was just awful hi mitch gallagher from sweetwater welcome to gear fest 2019 we're here with steve ai great to have you here nice to be here pleasure to see you again [Music] right because still there's all in the back of your mind there's these well what if this isn't accepted you know what are people going to think about this what if you fail what if you can't afford it or whatever it is you know but i don't think that those kinds of thoughts are very uncommon in people but a creative urge can completely trump all that you know and that's what would happen i would just go well i have to do this right now right right an artist and you're recording something and you come across an idea that really gives you that aha moment it's like oh and and it's just like maybe it's just like a little riff or it's a change or it's the way the melody hits the the chords you know and that's what i look for i have to feel that in my in my music in order to feel as though i've got something that's gonna continue to stimulate me for you know whatever every time i listen to it because if uh if that's not there it's just it's like wallpaper or something you know right but now other people recognizing these little uh innocent treasures you know i never had any expectations for that i just thought they'd be my secret right you know and that was fine right and and these are like nuances that you don't you don't expect to talk about when you're talking about a project you know but these are the things that light me up you know this is really the re when i think about it sometimes you don't even know why or what you're doing but it's been 40 years now and i look back at it all and um and i'd think well well that's why for those little moments of ah right that's good that's good you know i've always had a kind of an affinity for the abstract you know so i kind of just noodle and i just let my ear take it wherever it's going to go and yeah there's certain tendencies i have you know everybody does yeah it's i don't really i don't usually ju i i base everything oddly enough i base everything off of the blues scale but you'd never know it because it's doesn't sound like the box right no it's it's all over the place you know but uh yeah i just don't i try not to think so much right and uh i'm not so much an uh an experimental jazz type player you know like if you have a major chord that you hear obviously there's a lot of notes that you can play with that aren't um you know as long as you stick with the notes the one the three and the five for the most part uh and you can do that with all sorts of all sorts of chord structures i don't do that on the fly as a player usually i'm just you know i don't the guitar is not mapped out in my mind that way you know i'll and i i've resisted for many years and still to practice or to even go that deep into scales uh i mean in the early days sure i practice scales but the the the the theory you know in a sense where okay i know what chord that is so i know that i can play this scale you know i i don't do that because you lose you lose your connection with the melody that's that's organically coming out of you so what i try to do more in which i encourage and yes it's great to know the theory and all right because then it becomes it can become second nature but really um listening you know your ears are your greatest um your best friends when you're playing and that's kind of a double-edged sword in a sense that um what do you mean by that uh what do i mean by your ears or your best friends well there's two ways to listen you know uh and and i when i'm performing i keep that i try to find that balance one way is you're listening you're just very present in in the moment of the performance with you know you're listening to the stage you're listening to the other musicians you're keyed into what they're doing you know you're listening to the harmonic atmosphere you're listening to the whole atmosphere that you the atmospheric real estate of the entire your entire awareness so to speak so you're just listening intensely you know sure and if when you do that uh there's no room for um thoughts that will derail you from your uh being connected because when you're listening you're connected you know not listening sounds like this in the head oh my gosh i wonder what they're playing and when he's better than me i can't do that oh but i can do this and okay what key is that oh my god i don't know what key that is what maybe this note i don't know uh okay geez it's loud up here why is he louder than me you know the drummer's off you know this is all mental noise you know and uh only you know if it's happening most of the time people don't know what's happening they're unconscious of the fact that they're not present if you were conscious of being present then you wouldn't have any uh of those thoughts sure because when if you're listening intensely there's no room for that and that's when you really can respond the other listening is more of like a listening inside of your own it's very hard to explain it's kind of like you're just listening for a melody for the melody to tell you what to play you know and it's fun because you're just you're present with it and it the notes just kind of fall into themselves so to speak you're just being in the moment with what you're doing and you don't have to do anything it kind of does it on its own it's kind of a difficult thing to talk about but and that's what i work on i'm no master no somebody tell you well that's i would they don't know my secret so it's always a practice though no matter where you're at sure but it's a good one it's life in music it's the life of music it's where you belong you belong in the presence in your own presence in a musical environment listening and and connected and flowing that's that's when it's a good experience sublimate that how do you push that down so that you can get into that space well it's a it's a recognition of your own ego you know and because it's a very it can be a very difficult thing to do not recognizing it can be considered and this is just terminology being unconscious so the mental noise that torments you is going on uh it's conditioned it's just conditioned thinking from they're not even your thoughts they're you've inherited them from humanity they're the collective thinking patterns of humanity that you've inherited because that's just the way it is you know it's just the way we were brought up and brainwashed and conditioned so you start creating beliefs in your own mind about things about the way you play and about your um presence in a with other people and this you believe that the these thoughts are real like what you think about the other guy or girl whatever are real you know uh but um so in order to help create some clarity and to to get more in touch with your note and when i say your note what i'm referring to is your unique creative voice because everybody has one everybody you know like i i've said before i've never heard anybody hit one note that ever sounded actually like jimi hendrix sure but but i i would probably never hear anybody hit one note that sounded like the guy that was trying to play like jimi hendrix everybody's actually on a very deep deeper level you're completely unique so that's a great advantage you know and when you recognize that uniqueness then it can start flowing and many people are doing it you know you're you're sort of um you're unique by like just knee jerk reaction you know you can't help it but to actually dig deep into the the the the beautiful creativity of your uniqueness you have to create an opening for that right you have to you have to be it almost sounds like you know you you need courage or something because sometimes your unique voice it doesn't it shouldn't fit in you know it should not be and it isn't what everybody else might be doing so it can take a lot of courage to create that opening and the the way to do it is to first first have the desire to do it right okay you have to want to find your own unique creative potential that's actually that has to be a burning desire right and that's all you have to do because the rest will just follow it has to you know now what you when it starts following what what you might recognize you start recognizing the obstacles to your uniquely creative talent you know because that's the only thing and those obstacles are not in the outside world like most people think they may say well i can't be uniquely creative if i don't have this gear or i don't have that amount of money or this person doesn't sign me to this or if i this is all nonsense it's an illusion it's that your ability to uh block your own unique potential is is it's you that's doing it you're the only one that can do that and the only thing that ever obscures that is the thoughts in your own head about it and they're usually thoughts that have to do with insecurity and that this and fear you know and this is fine it there's nothing you know what i mean you're natural it's not you can't if you consider yourself a bad person because you have all these weird thoughts about things uh that's only gonna make it worse you just have to recognize that um you know these thoughts are destructive to my creative health right but you have to be able to recognize that and ask yourself is what i'm thinking here actually productive does it make me feel good does it is it something that's valuable a valuable contribution a sharing experience or is it separative is it based in fear is it is it creating an an obstacle between me and the others you know so you have to be ready to recognize these things sure because uh you know i've been touring for like 40 years and a tour is like a piece of your life you know and and if there's one you know what i mean it can have the it can have the tendency to to kind of make that whole experience kind of like a bummer right you know and i just at this point in my life or for the past 10 years 15 years now i i i don't really need that you know i really don't you know and um it's much nicer to tour with guys that like to have a good time right so first and foremost i guess they got a good sense of humor uh fun easy and of course they have to be talented in a particular area they have to resonate with the music uh eager capable you know and um willing to grow uh i've been playing for a couple of years and i i distinctly remember saying to myself when is it gonna happen when am i gonna get good on the guitar when when's it going to happen and uh it never came and it still hasn't um you know because that's not the way it works you don't arrive at certain points as a musician and just go yeah god damn i'm where i want to be because you're always pushing to be better um but one thing that has happened while i've been practicing while i've been working my bollocks off to to be a better player time just goes just keeps going just keeps going and one thing that i realize is really important is that you've got to embrace time you've got to allow time to happen you know um learning the guitar or learning any instrument or devoting yourself to any kind of artistic craft is a lifelong commitment a lifelong commitment so why are you in a rush you don't need to be in a rush take your time you've got time you've got all the time in the world you don't need to be really good now and to be honest with you you'll never get there if you if you're in a rush to be better um i remember was a music school somebody said to me uh because constantly being given scores to learn and you know to be put in positions where you have to play certain gigs and you know really quickly and it's like i remember being given this score and i was just like how the am i going to learn this this just i've got like days to learn this and uh somebody i was on the the course with just said speed learning i was like what the are you talking about speed learn it you know what what that means is you either learn it properly or you you learn it badly there's no such thing as speed learning you know it was funny but i learned a lot out of that and what i'm saying is you know um to go back to embracing time um you know you're in no rush you know so sit back and enjoy the process enjoy the process you know being able to pick up a guitar and play certain things you know it's wonderful you know and maybe you can't play the things that you want to play right now but you will in the future and that is something to be really excited about and that's something to give you a reason to get up in the morning tomorrow morning you know you can wake up and go you know maybe i'll be able to do this you know and if you if you can't on that day don't worry you'll be able to do it soon so embrace time because time is well uh i guess i try not to think too much in styles uh i i of course um when you start to learn it's it's kind of important that you learn it like jazz rock pop or something like that but these days when i play my own music i always try to play my own music and i guess it's a mix of everything i want to feel that the performer is really really trying to say something or playing life is a satisfying place you know and he's really trying to feel the music and so obviously to put that in a word is expression so when someone's really trying to express something meaningful um so i guess that's what i look for in music or what i try to do myself and sometimes it's hard but you know you have to try and keep focused and uh you know express something new every time you play you guys and then suddenly i heard frank and bali and my ears exploded and i was like wow this is a great combination of really good rock sound but more sophisticated harmony and then i set on my path to really learn how to play um in that kind of fashion you know i didn't want to copy although i spent a great deal of time uh learning uh frank's technique and or trying to learn it and uh it's a wonderful um technique that he's innovated and i guess i've been heavily heavily influenced by that um of course i try to put my own thing on it as well my own slant however i i really respect the classical discipline you know the technique uh part of how i sit and how i have the guitar is so that i'm in a prime position for technique you know for good techniques so i have a respect for classical but i um i think it's more that i just take from the technique because i thought that if if i could hear that chord [Music] i'd like to be able to do that if i want to [Music] so you know you can use a few approaches like the blues like i said [Music] approach you know like [Music] so again depending on the sort of sound you're after um you can just your approach changes with the inspiration you know yeah say the the the blues you sign you know like it's quite a vocal quality but then the sort of more jazzy is the more sweeter [Music] and then you can tense it up a bit more like i'm using this as a looper which is a great practice tool so i if i was practicing my a minor i would do something like [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] um [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so what i guess i'm saying is that i would always try and make my practice feel interesting uh like to spice it up uh so using a looper um or a metronome or both or a drum machine um inspires you to play longer and i guess you know i when i was practicing a lot more i mean dang i'm wrong i i i hope i had i wish i had more time to practice but um i would definitely say that if you if you can make yourself inspired to practice as long as possible then that's a really good thing you know make sure you trying to have good technique don't play too fast play at a speed that's comfortable and gradually build up bring the drum machine up or the metronome tempo up or your backing track you probably slow down or pitch up these days with programs think about how you want to sign you know how you want to what do you want to sound like when you're out playing on stage and you should be able to sound like that in your bedroom uh so that you're practicing the way you want to sound so i mean because i think some people just practice really fast licks you know and you know like for ages and then it's like try and play something different on a gig and then wonder why it doesn't really sort of come into their playing and that's because it's quite separate so i would say make sure you have time to play in your practice as well so that it's you start to practice how you want to sign you know when you you kind of learn your art when you're younger you know you you you obsess over it for hours and hours and it kind of takes over your life and it certainly did with me until i was maybe 26 or seven i was just caning it every single day for 10 12 hours you know when i could um and i think i've just tried to focus more on life you know enjoying life and and getting inspiration like more emotionally than physically on the instrument listening to music that really touches my soul if you like and um you know just being really honest about music so um yeah that's sort of where i'm at really at the moment plan your solo or your improvisation how to make it you know like have a peek yeah i never plan it um i actually that's something that i specifically um don't do because i like to um really leave it up to spontaneity so i i really don't you know um all the the blues jam track stuff or shall i say jam track central stuff that i've done um i just it you know improvise on the spot you know so even you know like feeling fine love were improvisations the whole thing even though there was some sort of melodic content um you know i knew on those two that i was going to start in that position i knew i was going to do that and then that was it the rest is improvised and the same with yeah i had that much yeah and then that was the starting point yeah and that that's become your trademark yeah well maybe at the moment yeah he's in there um generally i i'd look at i guess yeah i use my ear because sometimes you know theoretically there's a key center but um it doesn't necessarily always sound like that i think i let my ear tell me what is really going on um and obviously you can hear if there's really a strong key center say like c minor and it just sort of diverts for a while but then comes back whereas obviously some tunes will actually kind of shift key for a while and then it doesn't feel like there's a key center there's a few yeah um so i try to hear that again as a bigger picture but as i'm going kind of pinpoint each chord to try and pick up the inflections of it you know so it's mean you have to uh you have to you need to have a good ear to understand by your ear yeah i think so i think you know music really originally i guess was you know done by ear before music was actually notated and everything so i suppose the most natural way is to feel through through your ears so do you have it true that in hotels you don't sleep in the bed you sleep on the floor yeah back to that of course yes it is true and uh it's kind of a curious uh a curious uh preference but uh i find that there's some some uh i don't know there's just some uh reassurance and having that solidity and perhaps that's why uh mrs gibbons was gonna say your wife how does she feel about that well she wrote missing your kiss and i think it's because i have to i have to get up and snuggle up every once in a while just to well it's probably better for your back i would think right i don't mind it i don't mind it um were billy gibbons and zz top offered a lot of money to shave their beards to this day we don't know what's lurking in these chin whiskers of ours yeah and uh early on we we had taken a break off the road and disappeared we were we were staying in touch by telephone and when we got back together these uh these bristles that were starting to sprout had taken on a uh epic proportion and except for frank whose last name is beard who does not have a beard yeah go figure after 50 years you know like it's like okay frank beard the man with no beard but uh yeah we were offered uh we we had to deny it we couldn't we couldn't bring ourselves to doing it uh okay let's see is billy gibbons a vegan well i i don't know i was walking down uh soho and uh there was a rather interesting uh restaurant turns out to be a vegan restaurant but uh that that brought up a recent discovery here in manhattan there's a certain restaurant that is serving smoked watermelon wow and i think it started as a challenge uh but it certainly pleases the vegans out there they uh they don't have to consume meat but they don't have to feel like they've been left out of the barbecue line right um how many guitars does billy gibbons own to the at this moment oh lord have mercy uh well the ideal thing is one's too many and a hundred ain't enough gotcha uh what guitar does billy gibbons play the most one of the more recent ones that will be seen on this uh next outing with the big bad blues our fearless guitar builder in boise idaho wow what's the name give him a plug it's called a little thunder a little thunder yep um what kind of sunglasses does billy gibbons wear the ray-ban caballero caballero yes sir uh and how many cars does billy gibbons own oh lord i guess the question is running still running right well yeah there's a garage full we we uh are waiting for the day when we got a holiday and go see if they can crank it up have you done jay leno's show yet yeah you have we have okay um zz top the longest running major rock band still composed of its original members and i think bb king told you once a long time ago that just play what you want to hear and everything will be fine is that one of the reasons that the band has stayed together for so long well certainly we embraced that adage from bibi dearly i guess there's one extra uh caveat to that whole thing someone said gee whiz you've stayed together longer than most marriages that what's the secret separate buses right there you go yep uh his name is billy f gibbons everyone go out and get this new album well i've never drank a beer i've never touched a drug and i've never poisoned my senses and those little chumps are probably jealous of me because i shoot bigger deer than they do for starters but then i don't have to play games for anybody did you notice this i don't have to play any games i say it how it is if you don't like it that's tough i i'm not dumb enough to think that i have a right to an opinion because nobody does have a right to an opinion until they have shoulder the responsibility of doing homework based on the subject they would like an opinion on or whatever um i was never a huge uh record collector per se you know certain certain bands that i kind of drifted towards and got really into and then of course i got really into guitar playing so that sort of took over because we were like totally into it we'd practice for six hours a day we would you know we were just completely uh obsessed yeah you know some of the other guys there were a lot of guys that were really good um but i don't think they were as like hardcore obsessed about it as we were uh applied to berkeley college and we ended up getting in and going there straight out of high school and that's where we met mike so we were like 18 years old what did you want to do at that school what what what were your goals i wanted to be a professional musician i wanted to be a performer and you know i went there because i heard that steve i went there and uh you know certain guys that i looked up to and that's the career path i wanted to take you know i wanted to be a professional musician performer um i hear young guys that didn't know what they were doing yeah yeah you know we went into the studio we were really young it was our first album we had like no time to do it no experience i didn't even have like i didn't even the amp i used wasn't even mine the guitars i borrowed you know yeah um we had fun and the songwriting for you yeah it just seems like it's just that of youth you know not not as uh developed i think as it is now i mean i think there's some good moments in the songs and i think that we certainly established the style that would take us through you know the rest of our career you know that sort of progressive metal sound um was was absolutely established on the first record but you could definitely hear the immaturity you know as as musicians as players as writers and some of my influences were maybe frank mourinho then and that's when i got into hendrix and some other people but really what turned me around on guitar and music was were two different things i saw allen holdsworth play live in concert in 1978 and i was about 14. and i didn't know who he was i just showed up at the concert it was it was with a band uk i didn't even know who they were i just went to the concert because it was a some bargain concert i think and it just really changed my whole life about guitar and really made me see guitar in a whole other way and you know i thought i wanted to go in in a direction like that after i'd seen him and also the keyboard player that i ran into a couple years later that played in black of arkansas a band with me about 12 13 years ago he was a classical pianist and he had learned from the time he was a kid to play a lot of classical pieces a lot of lists and brahms and rock moaning off and up until then classical music i just didn't think much about it it always been when i was a kid it was just something that was pretty or something or something that was just kind of in a museum somewhere or something but when i saw this guy really play this stuff live it really had a big effect on me and so i really saw the vibrancy and the aliveness of it how it could still relate to anytime it's a timeless kind of music so that really had a big effect and so when i had ivanez build me this guitar i had to model the neck after that guitar because ivanez was actually the original manufacturer of the rolling guitars too it's not the rolling name but ivan has made it and i always like curly maple and because i played that guitar so much i'm really attracted to arch top guitars i really don't i'm not real comfortable with a flat top on a guitar so arch top is where it's at for me well guitar picks i use these jim dunlop jazz three picks i like kind of a small pick that i can fit in kind of the first joint of my finger and i like the point i can't use jazz two or jazz one i have to have like the point that's on the jazz three they made they changed the formula a little bit on these and i kind of like the older ones better but i use the new ones right now and also i use these homes amplifiers i've had for almost 20 years that was the first amplifier i ever bought and i'm still using it i bought it 20 years ago and and then i've got this tube powered overdrive the westberry that's been discontinued for a long time i get it probably eight or nine years ago and the homes aren't that great in and of themselves and the westberry isn't that great and of itself but the two together really make something that's a real smooth sound it's hard to find in a lot of the newer amps today i find a lot of them sound kind of cold what's my personal opinion what's the consensus of how these people think well i would say in a nutshell it's just a personal opinion that they harbor no sense of doubt they release all sense of burden struggling fear they choose to live in trust they trust themselves they go forward they practice and practice and practice and then they change their approach if it's not working they believe that tomorrow morning is your audition day you have to do it before tomorrow and they go at it like nobody's ever gone at it by the time they put their head on the pillow they ask themselves could anybody else have practiced more today this day than me if not they can sleep and rest they uh push they push p-u-s-h they persist until something happens they continue going forward they take an action they take the bull by the horns and they kick it in the ass they keep going change their approach give it cooking time harvard no sense of doubt take an action towards it and implement that's really a repetitive thing they believe in themselves belief haber no sense of doubt release all sense of burden struggling for you and saying i can't c-a-n-t you can't be saying that not if you want to be a level musician so get up do it take an action if you believe it's right go ahead and do it ask yourself is this right if it is do it everybody else will be better off for it because you'll be more in tuned and more equally yoked with the people that you need to know and be around if you're going to be a professional no matter what the game [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] my [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] well again thanks for visiting us here at the guitar temple don't forget to visit my sister's site which is steel horse rv if you're into travel and going throughout the united states and stuff like that in an rv tour bus that's for you all right thanks again for coming today

Channel: The Guitar Temple

Views: 62,068

Keywords: Interview, John Pertrucci Interview, Interview with Guthrie Govan, Alex Hutchings Interview, Shawn Lane, Grave of Shawn Lane, John Robida, Guitarist Trevor Reed, Rock stars, Steve Vai at sweetwater

Id: NjmCMbTCW_s

Length: 54min 43sec (3283 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 10 2021