Talking With Guitar Legends - Guitar International

Talking With Guitar Legends

Buddy Guy: Photo Credit Bill Bronson

Quotes from some of the greatest guitar players of all time.

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Thank you for completing the GI survey! Guitar International magazine was launched in September 2009 to offer guitarists and music enthusiasts with news and information about acoustic and electric guitars. Published by the Guitar International Group, LLC, the magazine has presented readers with exclusive interviews that include such guitar icons and Les Paul, Buddy Guy, Eric Johnson, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and many others. The magazine has broadened its field of interviews to include conversations with music industry leaders and other musicians including: Joe Lamond (President & CEO, NAMM), Christian F. Martin IV (Martin Guitar Company); Paul Reed Smith (PRS Guitars); McCoy Tyner (Pianist; John Coltrane) and Anthony Gourdine (Little Anthony and The Imperials). With a monthly readership of 200,000 guitar and music enthusiasts Guitar International continues to seek interesting and informative content. Soon, the Guitar International Group will offer eBooks and other valuable products and services to those in the music industry. We’ve roamed through our archives of Guitar International interviews to pull out some of the more informative or most interesting discussions of the musicians who grace our magazine’s pages. Some of the quotes that caught our attention are those of world famous guitarists – legends. We’ve also found some interesting gems spoken by more niche artists, now well known to many, – but, musicians who may be more niche artists and not well known, but offering up some keen insights and cool things that we found interesting. We selected excerpts from interviews by our writers Brady Lavin, Rob Cavuoto, Brian Holland. Dr. Matt Warnock and Rick Landers. Enjoy!


George Thorogood Brady Lavin: You said in an interview “Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley are religion.” In this hypothetical religion, who is God, who is Jesus, and who are the saints? George Thorogood: Let’s put it this way. I don’t think it’s a religion. I think it’s an addiction. One’s like morphine the other’s like heroin. [Laughs] Read the complete interview

Tyler Connelly Rob Cavuoto: Who are some of your biggest guitar influences? Tyler Connelly: I would probably say Jimmy Page, Joe Satriani, and Steve Vai. I was into the shredding stuff when I was kid. Jimmy Page was my all-time favorite and I think he turned me on to the riffs. He’s probably has the greatest riffs in history and wasn’t necessarily the greatest lead guitar player. I would rather be Page than Malmsteen any day. It’s fun to shred, but I would rather write an awesome riff. I think that the greatest thing about songs and songwriting. Just like Keith Richards, I bet he doesn’t know scales and read music or know what a B7 chord is, but the music he has written some of the most amazing guitar riffs in the world. Read the complete interview

Ted Nugent Rob Cavuoto: Would you say you’re a schooled player as far as theory goes? Ted Nugent: No, I’d say I’m an anti-schooled player. My whole pulse of music is like my entire pulse of life: defiance. I don’t believe in authority. I don’t believe in rules, status quo, perception-wise. I believe in Chuck Berry. And I believe it’s a great starting point, but the notes that I find exciting are the really ugly notes, scary notes, especially with the feedback. For example, one of the greatest notes in the world is such an ugly note in, “Baby, Please Don’t Go,” when I first started playing [starts playing “Baby, Please Don’t Go”].


You get those nasty, bluesy notes that you can’t get on any other instrument. You can’t do that on a horn or a keyboard and that turns me on to no end. Yeah, I can play boogiewoogie and honky-tonk, thanks to Joe Podorsek at the Capitol School of Music on Grand River Avenue in Detroit in 1958. But I like to take paradigms and throw grenades at them. I call in an air strike. There is no envelope. I obliterated that in 1963. So there are some things that are schooled that I will play with, because it can sound wonderful, a simple three chord progression. But I always like to challenge myself to break the status quo and break the paradigm. Read the complete interview

Marc Sandroff Matt Warnock: You were motivated to turn to classical because you had heard it, and it was intellectual and stimulating. With the rock ‘n’ roll, was it just adolescent rebellion like most kids? What was the draw to that kind of music? Marc Sandroff: I think it was just the music of the day. It was just the music that everyone related to. It was the music I was listening to. I would turn up the stereo loud like every young aspiring guitarist and play fills or whatever, but classical appealed to me totally differently because of the polyphonic nature of the instrument. Not only was I drawn to the music, I was drawn to the how many things were going on. It was like a small orchestra. Read the full interview

Andy Johns Matt Warnock: Since you’ve worked in the studio since ’69, are you still working with some analog technology or are you all digital at this point? Andy Johns: I’ve been all digital now for quite some time. I haven’t recorded an album on multi-track tape since, oh I don’t know five or six years ago I guess. With Steve Miller, he brought in all this tape and we started that way, but about half-way through he said, “Fuck it Andy it takes too much time, let’s just do it in Pro Tools.” I said fine, because the drums were just banged over to Pro Tools and it ended up sounded great. I actually got an email from Roadrunner records saying that it was one of the best sounding albums they’ve heard in a while, which is unusual because they don’t http//:guitarinternational.com

usually bother. I’m happy enough with Pro Tools, and it sounds great, as long as you don’t use it as a crutch it’s great. Read the complete interview

Steve Vai Rob Cavuoto: What do you see as the benefits to releasing singles versus an entire CD? Steve Vai: It’s much easier to record one song instead of twelve! I like the idea of singles, but a full record takes you on an adventure and gives you emotional depth of field. You can have a richer experience as a listener and more creative experience as an artist when you have a full album to work with. They both have their advantages. Rob: Your record label Favored Nations has many great acts. How do you select the artists? Steve Vai: The kind of artists I look for at Favored Nations are people who are independent, passionate, have unstoppable drive and above all else, fearless confidence in their work. Nothing else works or sounds as good. Read the complete interview

Terri Clark Matt Warnock: Were you nervous when you went off on your own, walking away from a label backing you up financially? Was there a bit of pressure on you to do well? Terri Clark: Oh, absolutely. You gotta let go of that No. 1 radio success, because it takes a lot of big label power, politics and money to promote singles on the radio, because it’s hard to go up against that. You have to close one door and let another one open. I knew that I was going to be walking away from something. I was also tired of spinning my wheels and not being able to put an album out because it was being held up. I wanted to make music. That’s what I’m in business to do, to make music. If I’m sitting around twiddling my thumbs as the world goes by, I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing, so I had to leave in order to be more productive. Read the full interview


Andy Powell Matt Warnock: What are some of the biggest changes you’ve notice, good and bad, in the music industry over the past four decades? Andy Powell: The specialization of music, the categorization of everything. It seems that if you’re R&B you can’t be Folk or if your Prog then you can’t have the Blues, that kind of thing. What was great about the early ‘70s was that you could be whatever you wished. There’s also a short shelf life to everything now. Things don’t last. Back then we were writing the rules and producing lasting classics in a way. Read the complete interview

Top Topham Matt Warnock: I’ve heard rumors that you were approached by Jimmy Page to join Led Zeppelin as the second guitarist in the band. Can you address those and put a rest to that story either way? Top Topham: Well this is what happened in 1968 I was making Ascension Heights, my album with Blue Horizon records (CBS), with Mike Vernon as the producer. I received three telegrams, which I still have, from Peter Grant and Jimmy Page, expressing an urgency to get in touch with them, one of these said “great news for you.” I called them from our local telephone box in Kingston on Thames, Surrey, we didn’t have a phone in those days, and I spoke to Jimmy who I saw reasonably regularly. He said he wanted to reform under the name of the New Yardbirds and hit America, and asked if I would be interested. Read the complete interview

Robby Krieger Matt Warnock: I don’t want this question to come off offensive at all, but I don’t think it is. Jim Morrison – obviously a complicated character. You mentioned how touring with him was a challenge. Sort of a two parter: How tired do you get about hearing about Jim all the time as opposed to the music, and how annoying could he be? Robby Krieger: [Laughs] Jim was [annoying], you know. People talk about him all the time and sometimes they do overlook the music. But, they would never would have http//:guitarinternational.com

noticed the music if it weren’t for Jim, you know, and they never would have noticed Jim if it weren’t for the music. So, you have to live with both. What was the second part of the question? Read the complete interview

Phil Campbell and Lemmy Rob Cavuoto: What’s best part of being in Motörhead? Phil Campbell: Well, the worst part is going deaf. The best part is the good life. [Phil picks up his Blackberry and shows me a photo of a vintage car he recently purchased] Rob: What do you attribute to the longevity of Motörhead? Lemmy: Not dying, that’s the secret to longevity! If you believe in what you do, it’s easy to keep going. It’s not a problem. I’ll never consider giving up. For one thing, I’m not qualified to do anything else [Laughing]. Read the complete interview

Les Paul Rick Landers: We had a longer interview back in 2005, so this is more of a catch up for us, to see where you are now. But who’s your favorite guitar player of all time? Les Paul: Oh, I don’t have such a thing because they’re different in different ways. Used to be, when I started on the guitar, “Oh, you’re playing wrong; you can’t play that way. There’s only one way to play. That’s the correct way.” That’s a class where we were playing the guitar and it came down from that and so you play in different positions. I’d never play with a pick, you’d be crucified 40 years ago. For a guy to put a clamp on a guitar would be sacrilege [both laughing]. Read the complete interview


Ritchie Blackmore Matt Warnock: Besides playing guitar on the record, you also play the mandola and mandolin. Both are stringed instruments, but are tuned and strung different to the guitar. Is it tricky to change your mind set when going from one instrument to the other, because of the different tunings, and do you prefer to record each one separately when you get into the studio, recording all the Mandola parts consecutively before moving onto the guitar parts for example? Ritchie Blackmore: I have to readjust whenever I pick up the mandola and the mandolin as they are tuned in 5ths, and I have to feel my way around the instrument. When I’m playing a mandolin and the mandola, I don’t know sometimes what chord I’m playing or what key I’m in, but I find that refreshing because it’s a sense of adventure not knowing exactly what I’m playing. I tend to go to different places that are not familiar. Also, when I used to play the cello, play the same way, and that’s how I got the riff for “Gates of Babylon,” which I wouldn’t have gotten to by writing on the guitar. Read the complete interview

Bumblefoot Thal Rick Landers: Do you find yourself getting annoyed when people try to compare you with Slash? Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal: You know, it’s not that it’s annoying. There are different types of mentalities in the world. There’s the ‘and’ mentality and the ‘or’ mentality and that’s how I look at it. When people think so black and white, they’re missing out on a whole gray area that they could enjoy and that’s just like a general philosophy of life. I find that when people do that, it’s ‘You or Slash,’ it’s kind of a bummer, because I would rather people think ‘Me and Slash’. That’s the thing about music is you can have as much as you want and there’s enough room for everybody out there. Read the complete interview


Arlo Guthrie Rick Landers: You’re known as a master storyteller and I’ll add that you’ve got a great sense of timing. What’s it take to craft a good yarn and then get it to really capture people? Arlo Guthrie: For me it’s just trial and error! [Laughs] You say something and sometimes people look at you with a blank look thinking, “What’s he talking about?” And when that happens over a period of time and its consistent then you just don’t say that anymore! You have a history of knowing what will actually work and be funny and engaging. I just keep it in my head. And I don’t think about it until I get to that same part of the story or that song. And that’s the way a great singer or guitar player learns to play. Read the complete interview

Robben Ford Brian Holland: What do you look for in a guitar, when it comes to setup? Robben Ford: I like a high action. I use 6105 fretwire. They’re kind of tall and thin, not real thin but not wide. It’s a real balancing act for me because the higher the action the more difficult it is to play fast. But the lower the action the harder it is to bend strings and get tones out of the guitar. It’s kind of a fine line there for me. My guitar tech measures them, and he tries to set them up according to certain measurements. My 1960 Tele is my blues guitar. That’s one of the reasons I play two guitars, instead of just one all night. I’ve used that Tele a ton, ever since the mid-Nineties. Read the complete interview


Buddy Guy Rick Landers: You now have a Martin Buddy Guy Signature guitar; you played acoustic earlier in your career right? Buddy Guy: Until Leo [Fender] come out with the Strat, the solid bodies, they probably go back beyond me, but everybody was playing that acoustic. I asked B.B. King, we were there at the Grammys, year before last and I asked him, “What size amplifier were you using when you made ‘Three O’Clock in the Morning?’” It looked like one of those little radios that come out that you put in your pocket. It’s just a little bigger than that. We all were playing that acoustic guitar with a pickup stuck on to the guitar. So that’s when it all started. Then Les Paul and Leo Fender, Les Paul, I think, came up with the whole electronics and then Leo came out with the Fender and the guitar took off like hot soup there, man. B.B. King come out with “Three O’Clock in the Morning” and you didn’t have to look back for the guitars no more. Read the complete interview

Joe Bonamassa Brian Holland: Do you have any advice for young players today? Joe Bonamassa: Be yourself and try not to get overwhelmed by your influences. Obviously, everybody’s influenced by somebody, but I think what happens is that many get overwhelmed by their influences to the extent of becoming clones. It’s cool to hear a little Jeff Beck influence, or whomever, but it isn’t cool to become an exact clone. Read the complete interview
