Joe Bonamassa on Eric Clapton and Eric Johnson’s Influence

geographical location is I think a really big um factor in one's musical Journey we grew up my my family grew up in a you know a very lower middle class neighborhood in Upstate New York outside of UDA and all it did was rain in the summer that's right and and then when it was not raining it was cold and when it was not cold it was sleet and then it was snow it wasn't exactly let's say a summer Sports uh Mech you know although we did have a few professional baseball players coming out of our area but um so you know when it's November you know 26th um and it's gray you get home from school what do you you're not going outside right you're not riding your bike so what are you going to do put on a record and you have a guitar and my dad was a guitar player he is a guitar player he owned a music store and and did other things we played in bands and my grandfather was a trumpet player very P trumpet player and played in the military bands and my great-grandfather Buddha bamasa was pretty much the one who started the family in in music you know my grandfather would be into you know Dizzy Gillespie and mayard Ferguson and and Arturo sandal you know and my dad wanted to go you know he wanted to play at Leslie West you know you or Black Sabbath or you know he loved heavier sludgy blues rock and um so I would my my grandparents live next door to our house which is pretty much an Italian thing it is the whole family with a couple of blocks so I would go and Hear jazz and my grandfather and actually my first instrument technically was trumpet okay and I could not I could not ever get a note out of it without doing the the the you know the the puffy cheeks and my grandfather would yell and I'm like okay well that's that's that's not for me and then my dad had an SG okay and I'm like perfect and a and an amp that would would growl you know to this day when when I was able to like like first get an E chord in tune and was able to do this I was like I'm I'm hooked you know and you turn up real loud and it pisses people off and it's like I'm like yeah I can I can get down with this did your dad teach you at first and what were the first things he would he would teach you well the very first electric blue song I learned I mean he would teach me like you know I had some formal lessons with a guy named Carmen Konica who is a really really great jazz player in in upstate he recently passed away so he would you know he would he would give me the the chords you know [Applause] yep I think was this a sixth yeah you know so like that was a big that was a big thing major sevens you know and um that was a really okay so that was the fundamentals and I was learning from the Mel Bay books book one I was like oh that's a cool what kind of guitar is that it's like oh that's a dangelico you know it's like and then I think there was an actual Les Paul and like and you know at the time my father would buy me all these guitar books because he had the store you know like so I'm reading Tom Wheeler's books so I'm into the gear as much as I'm into the music and then when my dad would teach me you know he would be like so what do you want to learn today so you know like it would be the very first electric song ever learned was was further on up the road you Clapton's version yeah not Bobby Bland's yeah and um so much so is when I when I he was nice enough to sit in with me Eric was nice enough to sit in me with me in 2009 he asked me what song I wanted to do and I said it's got to be further on up the road and he asked me he goes he goes do you do you want to do Bobby Bland's version or what version I'm like no your version you know let's do your version that's that's one I heard first I'd like to take a second to talk to you about this channel this is actually Rick Bato 2 I've had it since the beginning of my main Channel and many of you are not subscribed as a matter of fact 87% of the people that watch this channel regularly are not subscribed so I encourage you to hit the Subscribe button on this channel and on my main Channel this will help me get even more of my dream guests and help continue to grow both channels thank you and then I would just like kind of just zone out and pretend I was a member of whatever band or group I was listening to on my little cassette deck so I would just I play Rhythm so I learn how to comp some chords behind it and then I would solo you know over the top of other people's solos and I would try to learn a little bit of how the they approached it not so much learning the solo note for note and because I was like well I want to try to create my own thing and and then when I heard Eric Johnson I was like well I can't do that but I really like that so then I said well I can do a bastardized version of that which I done pretty well with um and I always apologize to ER the two Erics I'm like dude you have no idea how much I've ripped from you okay and and both both Erics are very gracious like Hey listen we all get it from somewhere um but especially Eric Johnson every time I see him like I apologize in advance for what you're about to hear but Joe even figuring out Eric Johnson Style lines back in the 80s before there were tab books that had it you had to have a great ear to do that and all the stuff that you learned when you were a little kid M you had to learn basically by ear yeah tab books didn't really start to the late 80s or so but people but you were learning all this stuff by ear off a cassette or or record and would you you basically what you do is have a cassette deck that you play a phrase and then you do a quick rewind so it would just jam it would horribly it's horrible for the cassette and would normally start eating the cassette after about six pressings but you would get it to where you could Loop it and then just kind of see and kind of see where where these phrases were and you would try different you know is it here like where where are they playing it all kind of sounds different you know right and um which actually develops your style it it really does cuz you know like when you listening to John M and the Blues Breakers you know the Hideway I was like I can't well that's kind of like what Freddy played it like that but and I was like oh up here I was like okay when you hit that that's when I go okay he's up a register but on Lower strings right so it's higher on the fingerboard but warmer in tone and then I discovered that these things had these things I was like oh these don't have to be all the way up all the time so if you want to you know if you want to you know [Music] [Music] so you can kind of get all those bino tones just by you know cuz you know I mean I didn't have I mean I I'm known as a collector now and I have access to just about everything but back I had an amp and a guitar I a silver tone 1481 single 10 or 12 maybe put out 8 watts but it was just low enough in volume to where I can crank the cassette deck and have enough headro to play right and I was like that's really cool you know and then um I I got a Reverb pedal with some DOD like not to knock him it was terrible uh but but in my in my mind when I'm when you're when you're 10 and you have your first Reverb pedal and you're kind of achieving these kind of sounds that you're hearing on record I'm like man sounds like the Albert Hall it really didn't it really really really didn't it didn't sound like the matter to you though didn't matter it didn't matter so that was it and then I got a Twin Reverb with the red knobs I was like man I can get High Gain clean and Reverb I was I was like I was on top of the world

Channel: Rick Beato 2

Views: 63,455

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Id: mrsriD3uIUQ

Length: 8min 15sec (495 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 20 2024