Let's start with your earliest memories about music.
When did you picked up the guitar first?
They tell me I was three years old - to be honest, all I
really remember about my earliest playing experiences is that my first guitar
seemed enormous, so I suppose I must have been pretty young!
Who were your guitar idols when you were young?
Initially, I was heavily into '50s rock 'n' roll - early
Elvis, Chuck Berry etc - and I guess I was probably fascinated by the
"high energy" aspect of that music. After that, I discovered stuff
like The Beatles, Cream and Hendrix through my parents' record collections...
and as far back as I can remember I was always a big fan of Zal Cleminson, from
the Sensational Alex Harvey Band.
You got your own tone and style, though the impact of
Allan Holdsworth, Jeff Beck and Steve Vai can be discovered in it for me. What
do you think?
I'm not aware of
a big Holdsworth influence in my playing, actually: he's incredible but I never
really tried to emulate what he does. His technique is otherworldly, of course,
but even more amazing is the fact that he's invented an entire musical language
all of his own: his harmonic concepts and chord vocabulary are totally unique,
so to my ears a lot of Allan's style only truly makes sense within the context
of his own musical universe... and perhaps that's why I never felt a desire to
"steal" any of it ;-)
Hearing Steve Vai certainly was a pivotal moment
in my musical development - Steve has expanded the vocabulary of rock guitar in
countless ways, and I was particularly inspired by the way he played on the DLR
album Eat 'Em And Smile: I thought it was very cool that he managed to
convey so much of his quirky musical personality within the constraints of a
"normal" rock record!
For some reason I was never really exposed to Jeff
Beck's playing when I was younger - I was a lot more aware of Hendrix/Clapton
etc - but of course I "got it" immediately when I did finally hear
him. (Of all the guitar players from that generation, he seems to me like the
only one who is still pushing the boundaries of the instrument even to this
day, and still getting better with each release...)
Is it true that you refused Mike Varney, when he offered
a record deal for you in the early '90s? What was the reason behind your
decision behind that? Most players would have died for a Shrapnel deal back
then... ;-)
Yes, it's true - though of course I did consider his
offer, and was very flattered by it. Mainly, I think I was just becoming a
little disillusioned with the whole "gratuitously virtuosic guitar"
scene at that time in my life, and wanted to focus more on the compositional
aspects of my music.
In 1993 you won Guitarist Magazine's "Guitarist Of
The Year" award. In spite of that you didn't end up in the spotlight,
you'd rather countinued teaching guitar at various places. What do you think
why? Was it because grunge swept skilled players from the mainstream and there
weren't
opportunities at all?
Interesting.... actually, I never had a problem with the
emergence of grunge - after all the spandex excesses of the '80s, I think rock
actually needed someone like Kurt Cobain to shake things up a little!
Well, teaching can certainly be fun and rewarding but,
to be honest, I've always been much more interested in writing, gigging and
recording etc, so essentially I ended up working in all of those guitar schools
because I wanted to make a living using my ability to play music, and I
couldn't see any other way of doing so at that time.
(I've never had a great instinct for business or
self-promotion: as you'll remember from one of the earlier questions, I learned
music in the same kind of way that I learned to speak English - and probably
for similar reasons - so maybe there were some interesting opportunities
after I won that contest, but I never noticed them. Who knows?)
Did you enjoy your time as a columnist at Guitar
Techniques? (I tell you the truth, those lessons were very useful for me as
well!)
Yes - I've always transcribed music anyhow, for personal
reasons, so it was nice to find a way of making a living out of something which
came naturally to me. The team of Guitar Techniques contributors
included quite a few great UK
Which was more challenging, working as a contributing
editor at this mag or teaching students at such famous places like GI, Brighton
Institute Of Modern Music, Academy Of Contemporary Music, and Thames Valley
University?
Well, the teaching stuff occurs in "real
time", so you have to be prepared for unusual questions and problems, and
to be able to respond to them on the spot. The magazine work required some
knowledge of recording and engineering techniques, so I had to adapt to that in
order to provide the required audio content for the cover CD... totally
different challenges, I guess: I couldn't really say which was more demanding!
I first met with your name on ASIA's Aura record in
2001. How did you get in touch with John Payne and Geoff Downes?
Through teaching at the ACM school in Guildford , where the head of the
drum department was Mike Sturgess. Mike had recorded most of the drum tracks
for the Aura album, and when John
and Geoff asked him to recommend a session guitar player to help them finish
the tracks, he mentioned my name and the guys got in touch.
Am I right Payne was the driving force in the band
rather than Downes at that time? What do you think about Aura and Silent
Nation?
I think John and Geoff saw their musical partnership as a
kind of melodic rock version of Steely Dan, where the two main guys would work
together to act as the "driving force" behind the band. As for those
albums... I was a session guitarist on Aura and more of a permanent band
member by the time of Silent Nation, so there was a different vibe
during the recording of each. I must say I do prefer the production on Aura,
and I remember being very excited to be featured on tracks alongside guys like
Vinnie Colaiuta, Simon Phillips, Elliot Randall etc on that album - but I
probably had a little more input on Silent Nation. Very different
experiences...
In 2006 Downes left the band, but you guys continued as
GPS, later as ASIA FTJP. Was it a difficult time for you guys?
Well, we were actually in the studio, recording Jay's
final drum parts for a new Asia album, when Geoff announced his plans to tour
with the original members of the band, so… the timing wasn't exactly ideal! On
the other hand, the GPS album came out of that experience, and it was certainly
a lot of fun to meet and work with Ryo Okumoto - he's a very musical guy, with
great sounds and a unique personality - so it wasn't all bad!
Around that time you released your first instrumental
stuff called Erotic Cakes, and signed with Jam Track Central. Since then your
popularity grows quite fast. How do you see exactly what was the breakthrough
moment? Maybe your instructional stuff at JTC?
Actually, I initially released Erotic Cakes through
Cornford Records, who played a big part in making the recording happen in terms
of funding, etc. The Cornford label started to struggle a few years ago, and
for a while my album was "in limbo", until we worked out a way of
re-releasing it via the JTC company. It's nice to know that my album is alive
again, anyhow ;-)
In terms of a "breakthrough moment", I don't
really know. About 6-7 years ago,I remember a lot of people were circulating
DVDs of some gigs I played in Tone Merchants (a boutique music store in Anaheim , CA
Back to GPS, I've heard that a live DVD is due to be
released later this year. Is this band still alive anyway?
I've heard those rumours, too, but I wouldn't take them too
seriously! I don't expect GPS to record or tour any time in the near future -
it was an interesting band, but keeping it going would require a lot of effort
and commitment from four band members who are all busy doing other things...
and scattered across the globe. These days, it seems to me that John's main
priority is the "Asia featuring John Payne" band, anyhow: JP wrote a lot
of material in his Asia days, and I think he wants to preserve that musical legacy…
I strongly think that the Aristocrats' eponymous debut
album is the best fusion record in the last couple of years. How do you
describe ther style of this unique band?
It's easier to describe what the style isn't,
rather than what it is! We didn't want to make the stereotypical "fusion
supergroup" album: most of those recordings tend to sound very musically
accomplished but somehow sterile, so we wanted to capture more of a raw,
"rock" energy. Everyone in the band writes music - for that début
album, each of us contributed three songs - so I guess the style of the band is
just a big mix of everyone's different influences. Our musical tastes certainly
overlap, but they're not exactly the same: Marco and Bryan have a great passion
for metal - the heavier the better! - but then again Marco and I are huge Björk
fans. I suppose the one thing we all have in common is our fondness for
the music of Frank Zappa, which for us represents the perfect balance between
playing challenging music and retaining a sense of humor and fun.
How did you get in touch with Bryan and Marco?
It was one of those fortunate accidents, I guess! In
January of last year, Bryan was scheduled to perform a 30 minute set at an event called the
Bass Bash, in Anaheim CA Bryan
How did you work out the guitar parts? The record sounds
so spontaneous, I only can hear one guitar track at a time in the songs. Am I'm
right?
There's one short section in Boing… where you can
hear two guitar parts, but apart from that the intention was to capture the
sound of a live band in a room, so we kept the instrumentation as sparse as
possible. All the guitar solos are totally improvised - though, of course,
there are some composed melodic sections in each tune, too. Basically, If you
hear a part more than once, it was written: if not, it was improvised!) One of
the main thing we're trying to capture with this band is the interplay between
the three members, and all that stuff all happens spontaneously.
Believe or not I can hear a little Andy Timmons influence
in Sweaty Knockers. Can it be possible?
Not really. I dig Andy's playing a lot - he has that
authoritative "touch" whereby every note he plays sounds very musical
- but if you hear any similarities between his playing and mine, it's more
because we probably have shared influences, and I get the sense that we have
the same basic priorities when we play.
Sweaty Knockers is one of Bryan
Bad Asteroid is one of your earliest tunes. Why did you
decide to re-arrange it?
Well, I had played a simplified version of the tune with
Asia , but
I realised that I had never recorded a studio version of the whole structure of
the song, the way it was when I wrote it 20 or so years ago. I quite like the
tune, and I was curious to hear what flavours the wonderful BB/MM rhythm
section might add to it!
Furtive Jack has a huge Jeff Beck vibe guitar wise. Do
you agree?
I'm honestly not sure - if you hear any Beck in there,
it must have happened on a purely subconscious level! I actually wrote that
song as the "soundtrack" to the life of an imaginary character called
Jack, who likes to steal things and is always sneaking around, on the run, to
avoid getting caught. The main vibe of the guitar part was meant to be an
electric re-invention of certain folk/gypsy elements - I can imagine that the
main melody would work really well on a violin, for instance ;-)
Could you please introduce your studio gear what you
used during the recording process - piece by piece? Does your stage equipment
differ from it?
Okay... guitars first! I used my early '70s Gibson
ES-335 for Get It Like That: everything else on the album was recorded
using my Suhr Antique Modern signature guitar, which features a roasted maple
neck and a basswood body with a plain maple top. Usually I prefer mahogany
guitars, but for the exposed trio format of the Aristocrats, I thought I'd try
a guitar with a wider range of frequencies, just to fill up a little more sonic
space. (Now, I've grown to like that guitar so much that I use it for pretty
much everything!)
I split the guitar signal using an Axess buffer unit,
and played through two amps simultaneously: most of what you hear on the album
is a Suhr Badger 30 head with a 2x12 open-backed cabinet, but in certain places
we mixed in a hint of the other amp (a Custom Audio Electronics PT-100 with a
4x12) to get a slightly more aggressive, "modern" tone.
In terms of pedals, I mainly used a Suhr Koko Boost in
front of the Badger, to boost the mids slightly. (For the PT-100, I borrowed a
pedal from one of the guys who worked in the studio: I think it was called a Sex Drive
Which do you prefer and why:
Okay: I'll be brief here - I've probably talked way too
much already!
- Double locking
trem or vintage whammy bar?
Locking terms stay in tune better, but they're
complicated to maintain and they're usually too sensitive, so… vintage whammy
it is. If you stretch the strings properly and lubricate all the contact
points, a retro style term can stay in tune pretty well.
- Humbuckers or
single coils?
They're both great, but for different things. Do I have
to choose?
- Thick or thin
strings/picks?
I tend to use very thick Red Bear picks: I can have more
control that way. In the studio, I might use a thinner pick for a funky
strumming part or an acoustic track - the EQ sounds very different, and
sometimes that's what you want - but generally I can get through any gig or
session with my trusty Red Bear.
For strings, I normally use Rotosound .010-.046: I'd
break anything lighter that that, but if I go much heavier than .010s, I seem
to lose the dynamic balance between picked and legato notes. (I'll happily use
.014s on an arch top jazz guitar, though - it all depends on the situation.)
- High or low
string action?
High enough that the notes sustain properly, low enough
that playing doesn't feel too difficult.
- High or low
gain amps?
There are different kinds of high gain: a Dual Rectifier
and a Cornford MK50 both have huge amounts of gain, but they feel very
different. I prefer the kind of gain which helps notes to sustain and feed back
in a musical way, but still manages to preserve the detail in each note:
I like it when an amp responds differently to each of the various ways you
might hit the strings: you have to "fight" the amp a little more, but
it's worth it ;-)
- British or
American amp characteristic?
This probably sounds a bit weird, but I think the UK
- Rack effects
or stomp boxes?
I've always been a "pedal" kind of guy…
Last December some of your gear has been stolen in Italy
while you were touring there. What happened exactly?
Well, you covered all the main points right there! We
stopped off at the Colosseum on our way to the soundcheck for a gig in Rome
As far as touring, how is you schedule for this year?
Pretty busy - there are lots of Aristocrats gigs coming
up (we're working on another European tour for October-November time, for
instance) and a big run of solo clinics in the US
What are your recording plans for the near future? Any
chance for a new instrumental album?
I'd very much like to get a new solo album done this
year, and we're also working on the logistics of recording the next Aristocrats
album ASAP. (We may even release some kind of live DVD from one of our
Aristocrats gigs - let's see what happens!)
With so many years teaching under your belt, what advice
could you give to young players who want to achieve great tone and technique?
Practice playing things perfectly, rather than just
being obsessive about speed. Be aware that most of your tone comes from your
fingers, and that you can't always blame your gear if your tone sucks.
Work on developing your ear, by transcribing as much as possible and by trying
to sing the notes you play (even if you only do so internally: not everyone can
be George Benson, but the important thing is the mental process of trying to
feel responsible for each note…) Don't rely on other people's tablature for
everything you learn. Finally: try to have specific goals - if you know exactly
what it is that you're trying to achieve, you're far less likely to waste any
valuable time in your practice sessions!
Check out Guthrie at:
the-aristocrats-band.com
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