Joe Bonamassa on tone – and how to sound like Clapton, Page and Beck

there's probably not bad place to start as I'd seen you since he went to the tweet right Rick what was the motivation for doing that the the motivation to go to the tweed amps Bob I should preface this video this is the world's most photographed green jumper I wear now almost everything it's just like security blanket on the road the motivation was when we did the Red Rocks gig two years ago doing the hollow wolf Muddy Waters catalog and I decided about a month or two before you know I've always collected tweed amps and used them enjoy and I said you know I gotta do this this gig right I can't just Ram the silver Jubilees up there and you know the dumbbells and I had this whole big cacophony and thing at the time in four amps and I just you know wasn't so so pleased with my sound at the moment at that time and I just decided that um to do the blues thing right I was going to have to go real stripped down like a Fender and bring so I put together a couple high-power twins which are the ones that are up there in the video and I bought one twin from Steven Segal the actor okay and I bought bought one twin and then the other twin it that's in better condition used to belong to Tony Dunning guitar player for Brian Poole and The Tremeloes and it was the very first tweed fender high powered twin to be imported into the UK so when I got it it had a writ had a radio spares transformer mounted in the bottom of it but they had sent it over to ROS Morris and they mounted this thing to the bottom where a 110 amp came in to the to the step step down and into the wall and I had it converted back to Fullerton spec and I've used it ever since and then the two baseman's kind of cut the sound a little bit they're a little more compressed and they're a little more distorted because if you just use the two twins it gets pretty honest up there there's a symbiotic relationship with the rig from from the outside in that it was just this magic day I thought were going to be there all day trying to like not electrocute ourselves the first the first attempt plated we plugged it in and it just was in phase it was perfect and it didn't buzz so bad and I picked up a Les Paul and just and it just was like that scene out of The Back to the Future his thing just exploded I said now we got something and then it was just about getting the right speaker combination generally I'm finding that selections and the tweed fenders of the best combination both for reliability and sonically they give you a mid-range that the Jensens are anything more like eat like the eminent speakers or any of the more american ish speakers tend to get a little bit too high five or the selection 80 watts and the twins has do this very nice creamy thing and I kind of make that idea from Keith Richards you know and and that's what I think he uses in his amps so um it was just like it I've used it ever since they just sold the dumbbells so all and and it's closer to the sound that I want in my head right now and there's no pedals there's a boost called an overrated special and there's a there's a wah-wah pedal and there's no pedal board there's no pedal power there's no nothing's to batteries and it's so liberating to be able to figure out that a lot of the sound you know comes from your hands so I went from Vienna addicted to the DD 3 to cold turkey there is no more effects - except the ones I can I can I can I can create with the guitar I think I'd say the amps hang up when going down yeah needed to be yeah they clean up great they roar when they have to and I figured it out when we did the muddy wolf show at Red Rocks the last set of tunes was off of my solo record so we were doing John Henry Burton loved a loss on you know the usual suspects Logan and the sound was so heavy with the tweet I said I could I could use this thing for a heavy metal kick I could I could join Slayer with the Sam you know and it was like it was really um it was really eye-opening that's really eye-opening so it's a pretty conception changer because a lot of guys just won't be able to get a head around the fact you go from 400 warheads to full combos what 40 to 80 more combos in there well you know it sounds just as big to my ears you know um well you know the thing is - it's like you just as a player you have to challenge yourself to do something different you can't just plug in it can't just be set and forget we just plug in the same backline time and time again it sounds the same and I think my playing is improved um for economizing and paring it down to what I've been using lately and you know the odd chance where you do a club gig you know I get mr. Kipps I just used one twin and it was great if I can get rid of 120 I would but it's the stages are are a little bit big for that you know you still need to get a proportional amount of headroom per space like in this little dressing room I'm using a fender champ and the champ feeling paint it's sold out you know but it's a small space now if we had a 80 watt twin in here be deafening but out of the big stage - 80 watt twins and - baseman's even with the wedge it sometimes gets overwhelmed just by its just how much air you have to move depending on this face so you mentioned about applying Dean has the change in sounds how to knock on effect - you're playing here or are you just in the same space anywhere I tend to play more passionately I think without the help um I tend to be a little more straightforward I tend to call upon my inner Paul Kossoff more with this rig than I did before and the liberating thing is I don't have to make them are I don't have to come all the way over to the side you know from one side of the stage to the next to make sure during this break you know I shut the delay off because you want a clean break it's like I don't have to worry about the slow speed Leslie being left on I don't have to worry about you know am I going to use the this overdrive that overdrive or what you know what channel and you know what he's the doubles for this and I need to be back to get back to the van wheeled ins were the two marshals I'd say it's just like before you know it you become a become a slave to your own creation you know or it becomes this real challenge to just make the marks every night and then it becomes like a base cake and here I can improv I can sometimes and songs that I use the boost I use the boost in some songs that that I normally used to be sometimes adjust but just just forget to turn it on and it's fine because it drives you to a different place sonically and and and just playing wise well this is a pranky but it's all if you'd be cranky too if you were 57 and on the road for five weeks so you mentioned kosslyn let's talk about the upcoming tribute to the pretty girls explosion right in the in the stuff that we've been sent anyway it takes about cuts and pages bag so yes star I mean that's the start of it I mean we'll have to dig a little bit deeper I don't have a song list as a recording date we haven't got my head around what songs I want to throw into the hat there is a list there's initial list I I can tell you stairway the heavens not on the list again well I think we've been so successful with the muddy wolf DVD and before you know the three kings will be out but staying away from the well-worn paths staying away from those just historic songs yes be covered the thrill is gone yes we covered hideaway yes we did born under a bad sign but that was the Encore the bulk of the set was deeper be be Freddie and Albert racks the bulk of the whole set was deeper um you know hollow wolf sets deeper money you know tunes and that's the success because ultimately you don't become a tribute band but you still pay tribute and I can only do this stuff in the way I can do it and you know due to my limitations and I think some of that actually adds to to the cool factor of it in the sense that I'm not trying to pretend like I'm somebody else and so likewise with the summer to her that I'm not going to try to pretend that I'm in any of those guys League I just lucky enough to have an audience that they don't follow me you know these little experimentation things and I'm lucky enough to where I can be a kid again and just celebrate the music that made me want to play guitar and still makes me want to play guitar so um it's good to be challenging it's not good this will be the hardest one this would be probably the last one so say they say the hardest and hopefully best for last yeah so that I'm thinking about the very first thing then versus oh there you are in states with access to all the great American blues guys who many of which was stay tuned and you work it British blues thing was kind of done and gone so what was your access to how did you how did you come across well my mind's my my father um had a great record collection but he was also a big fan of like John Mayall and he was a big fan of you know Jeff Beck Group and Clapton and of course Led Zeppelin and oddly enough one of my favorite John Mayall records blues from Laurel Canyon is was made and recorded but literally a few blocks from where I live right now and it's it's a interesting kind of full circle that the British blues really grabbed me before the American stuff and then ultimately the American stuff really um kind of took shape and and I really enjoyed you know going back and discovering Robert Johnson but through the Gateway of Eric Clapton you know and going back and discovering you know Willie Dixon through the gateway of Jimmy Page and so on and so forth you know um you know I love those versions link 8 superstitious the Jeff Beck Group did it was like so she had such swagger you know and and if they were making early hard rock records but they're all they were all blues in intrinsically all blue songs well that was those the beginnings of arena rock cream was playing arenas where Albert King was playing clubs and you know oddly enough cream was doing Albert King so they were doing born under a bad sign but you can go see how we're playing in a club in Dallas where to go see creamy head play for Cynthia right um and isn't it always the case though I mean like societies tend to eat their own and then celebrate the ones that come from afar even though it's you know like like I'm perfect example of that I come from America playing British blues and one of the first places that ever embraced me as an artist was the UK and even though the homegrown talent here is tremendous you know and that was it's really it's the real it's the real great irony and that you just never know what's going to connect them what's not going to connect but it's also you know a testament to the ones that figure it out it's also a testament the ones that stick to their guns and say I'm here if I play clubs all the rest of my life this is this is my idealistic way of approaching things so if I say to you cut two men is does your brain go to a certain place does your just does a certain position of the fingerboard open itself up to you you well you know I mean but again yeah all those kind of pentatonix young you know and you know he says he was a classic example of a guy just plugged straight into a couple of stacks and was able to get away caveat emptor for everybody watching this this is a this is a silver face fender champ in the bathroom of a dress room so none of these sounds please don'tdon't slag me online none of these sounds are legally binding so anyway um you know but that was it you know Clapton was always that woman thing and he's always had he's always had a real creamy sound I mean like even through his journeyman era and then from the cradle and even now you know when he uses a strat in a tweed twin always had a very it was never other than for the very early 70s around Leila where he just plays through champs and strats um it was never striped there was always a this kind of depth to his tone and playing you know so that's that's kind of how we did it um if you want to talk about back um you know for me when I first heard Jeff back is about here hmm and he was so angry you could tell the guy was just so angry and he chose do those you know and it just had it you know and it was like this like like he took the Les Paul and he sounded like you want to ran the freakin headstock through the front end of the am feel like almost like Pete out of music he's always sounded angry and I've met him a couple of times he's very nice man it's very down-to-earth and humble but there's a conduit between the guitar and him and he is he is angry player and it's and it's so fun to listen to you know at all I mean I don't have the proper kit as they say to do the the tram stuff that he's known for but a lot a lot of the stuff that I used to listen to you know was was all that stuff off of Beca Jolla and and and and truth you know you know was it this you I can't get the sound it's all that kind of really angry you know very hoarse sounding guitar playing that went magically with a very hoarse sounding Rod Stewart and Nick Waller and Nicky Hopkins and and the great Ronnie Wood on bass and arguably in my mind is I'm more of a fan of his bass playing than his guitar playing and he's a great guitar player so um that that that was a perfect blues rock band you know at that time 68 and by the way Jeff Beck is the only person in the history of the Woodstock Festival to cancel it not once but twice he cancelled it in 69 and 99 thirty years apart there's your there's your fun fact of the day if you won't talk about Paige Paige always had that kind of I don't have my other my other one as a has a better in and out of phase Paige always had those kind of slurry thing you know chichi he did this version and this sound was always brighter than the other two um I think by design he you know coming out of a being a telly player in the yardbirds and in the in the early stages of the new Yardbirds wouldn't begin Led Zeppelin he was playing the Telecaster which was arguably much more strident guitar so I think when he got the Les Paul from Joe Walsh his ears were already I can only get kids speak from there and I would assume there was that's just how he hears it um and Paige are arguably is the toughest to kind of copy the sound of him I got a tribute guitar player but um he had these kind of wacky slurs and things that he would do and it's you know in some circles it is argue that he was not a very accurate player I I disagree he is he's intrinsically very consistent so that's not a question of accuracy that's just how I played and it's one of the hardest things to do is copy those idiosyncrasies in his playing so much so that I'm not going to bother you tempting online I'm sure we will you know and you know Peter speaking of fender amps you know most of the classic burst tone is discussed as a as a you know you know on 59 Les Paul to a Marshall stack and that's going to coat the classic burst um in a lot of cases that is um but um if you listen to and then other solar phase fender amps it's sad they sound like twins they sound like showman's and if you see the live footage I think the hard the hard road the John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers record that sounds like more effects it's squishy and compressed but all those Fleetwood Mac you know you know what do you dig in Marshalls Marshalls don't stay that that that tight we need when you dig into the g-string you geek it almost it sets it off if you ever messed with compressor and put it over at only 16 and 1 it just kind of it just squishes we're fender amps the class a/b thing you always stayed more you know and you can't discount the the contributions of Jeremy Spencer as well you know where Peter was more of the kind of bandleader songwriter spend all eight of it all but but Jeremy did a lot of heavy lifting on all that and Peter gets a lot of credit rightfully so and you know I mean you have to talk about Alexis Korner you have to talk about you know you know was it Long John Baldry and and all those guys that kind of you know I don't know how in depth we're going to get into the catalog of like let's just corner and all that because most of the songs that they did work was mostly cover material they were doing Little Red Rooster and they were they were really you know getting into that so ultimately I'd like to pick from the best I think ultimately I just like to play the music that means the most to me and you know the other trick to get in the Bluesbreakers town fever if anybody's ever interested is it's allowed amp turn it all the way up or enough to where you get some overdrive and tone down about half or you know to taste it's like doing like a lot of salt an onion and back the volume off almost one because I'm a potentiometer a lot of your top-end comes in even on these old central labs like this which is a huge part of this guitar sound this these get a lot of credit but I think 50% of with the sound like what lies beneath these knobs so the trick is you to do is you just take it down and take it down one and it just it just takes that little 2k thing off that's actually wait a minute the other thing is use a heavier gauge pick or whatever you want and you don't have to strike the guitar that hard because what happens is the harder you strike the guitar the more it becomes choked and you're actually getting diminishing returns by hitting harder so if you just use a like a more of a lighter attack by that I found the heavier pick you get that kind of it'll bloom for you where if I know if you can hear it at home baby but this certainly gets less bright and it gets more like what you're what you heard on the record 1966 C this is all stuff you don't want to discuss while on a date with a girl because that means you're not going to get a second one ladies and gentlemen won't talk hey honey you want to talk about central abbs Sprague versus a strong huh want to talk about that stuff KT 66 or 88 what do you want check please that's amazing it's counterintuitive what you're saying about the UM which is even acoustically here are chokes notch you here at all and that's you let's join any instrument you can you can overplay it and my kryptonite is no Headroom and II am low volume and too much overdrive and too much compression that's my kryptonite because all the techniques and stuff that I kind of learn by listening to these records completely gets negated with with a low volume highly distorted and highly compressed amp because there's nowhere to go the guitar didn't clean up you know and that's why I don't use the in-ear monitors anymore because ultimately what I was having to do is turn them up so loud to get any kind of resistance from the guitar that it was actually blowing my ears out and an a up needs to be turned to get these classic sounds now if you're looking for modern sounds that's you don't come folk around here asking me the the more modern stuff is definitely I mean hell they're even MIDI to pro to a lot harder story the other day you friend of mine is playing with a very notable act that the programmed temper or the fractal then plug the MIDI cable into the fractal and all your changes your pedal changes your sound changes come through the Pro Tools rig that's running the entire show that's just that's a that's a land I don't want to ever see but that's that's reality for a lot of people for me it's it's about you know a more of an old-school approach which is you know letting learning the instrument knowing what it is we can do it doesn't need to be a three or four hundred thousand dollar Les Paul it you can do this with the Les Paul 500 ala Les Paul Studio or an Epiphone if the whole thing is still applies you just got to find what you got to find is a piece of gear that you that you have a symbiotic relationship with and just spend time learning the sounds that come out of these things you know and you beast you be absolutely shocked how many different things that this will do mmm you know play jazz obey this couple of couple of moves you're you know got the moment you know so and then you get like a strategy thing and it's all just a touch of a button yeah it's like it's like the ultimate universal remote Plus this way don't even worry about a battery these don't take batteries um what about costs general Nicolas awful is that I hope so um you know Kossoff I mean a lot of my vibrato comes from him you know he's a great young and I saw some pictures of recently Paul Kossoff in the studio Deana Marshall half stack needs fender super reverb which made a lot of sense to me because the sound that he would get was this very it was almost like Bloomfield if Bloomfield use Marshalls and it was like I was like I'm like I'm not gonna understand the picture here cuz I think he split and they must have mic both or just minute put a mic in the room for whatever but um yeah I mean you know all those I mean his his cords this first time I learned those court you and then the the best way to tune your guitar is at Paul Kossoff cart young you know and it's just a thing with the the five in the octave um the top Oh yeah and you just you just squeeze the notes out of the thing there's another cause of thing I liked watching him on the very there's a few good videos especially some TV stuff and he's got a couple of orange half stacks with one orange half stack two cabinet his ecord the way he would mute strange just in of early I think was intrinsically it is in his in his DNA let stead of playing an E chord he played a chord same thing but you limonade manner and then with what you do is with your ring finger you're commuting that g-string so it said nothing but roof fabric five in fat and the power of those cords you know it's like he really had this beautiful technique and his tuning was always in an era before Big Ben's nut sauce and and snarks and you know whether tuning with their ears and pianos between Andy Fraser and Paul Kossoff they were they were just brilliantly in tuned as far as a band you know and and the bass kind of added the route five on the lower side and between the both of them made this like this gigantic sound it's standard tune so I wonder if the um leaving out the major third thing was was an information issue probably is that concerned about you yeah you know and yeah it's like it's like people play bar chords yeah plays them like this anymore yeah you play bargain so you just mess around one core and all of a sudden there's so many different sounds it's out of the one thing and that's that's the fun about guitar is getting some control over your chords getting some control over your tuning because and I go through this all the time Michael Rhodes and I talked about it pretty much it like is there's no worse feeling on stage or in the studio when you know you're just slightly out of tune not completely out of tune but just slightly there's a confidence thing when you go to hit the chords that's just that just doesn't happen and that's something that's a part of players development is you know because I don't know if the guitars and tune projects came out of the rack but um playing in tune is one of the hardest things you'll ever have to learn but it's also one of those valuable things like what's that book well surely guitars in tune I can hand certain players perfectly tuned into native guitar and they'll intrinsically with the way they play will make it sound a little out or a little sharp little flat just depending how their technique consequently you can hand somebody a little slightly attitude guitar and they'll figure out a way just by eliminating certain things that they're hearing that the intonation will correct itself especially soloing lies you know and it's such an important skill to know especially when you're playing with other players especially when you play with keyboards because keyboards don't move if you're a power trio if it wobbles a little bits fine that's the charm but when you play with keys and horns oh man it's a bad feeling it's like Tooting forth it just it's like whoa anyway um obviously they'll be bursts on the on the run of three screws do you think you might be on telly I don't think I will I know I'm up I even got the telly already and you know me I'll always I'll have the right stuff I can't do it with the wrong stuff um III think ultimately that the material is going to dictate what we're doing and I think the actual just deal overall what I would how I really want to say you know how I wanted to come across you know you want to come across a thing but you also want to put your own stamp on you know um I will say this though my goal is to have at least one Marshall stack with an inverted top cabinet whether that top cam it's on you got to do it just for the back thing um you mentioned that you've already got the telly is that the real rosewood will tell you yeah I mean the one I was planning on using this is 63 you could use maple neck but to be more authentic to what they were doing back in those days of 63 would be more preferable because it was ash body with a with a non slab neck which is some I think with page had and and even you know you even early Yarbrough this year klappa when the tally and yeah that's that's that's Libya tell either be I don't know it just a be still be stuff I don't know if there'll be a Flying V I don't think we need to find me this one last year I did Albert King you need a flying beaver you have to do the Davis thing with the arm for the but you know that was the attendant vert that was the intended use of a flying man that's what they did that they it was supposed to be for country-western guys that you know the whole like this and they're you're flying me and I way it's the most uncool thing in the world to play fine be like that oh geez

Channel: Guitarist

Views: 2,781,696

Rating: 4.8284402 out of 5

Keywords: joe bonamassa, blues guitar, fender amp, Gibson les paul, eric clapton, jeff beck, jimmy page

Id: vqhoPqDR47c

Length: 34min 12sec (2052 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 03 2016