Paul Gilbert Interview: Master of Shred Tue, 13/01/2009
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Paul Gilbert Interview: Master of Shred Tue, 13/01/2009 - by Owen Edwards A Revealing and in-depth interview with the Master Of Shred The name Paul Gilbert conjures up images of death defying shred and an almost un matched technical ferocity, yet there's much more to this most genial of guitari sts than pure guitar wizardry. Whilst Paul is undoubtably one of the most fearso mely gifted guitarists ever to draw breath, he also combines an advanced composi tional ability with a great pop sensibilty - quite simply the man is a great son gwriter, something often ovelooked. One of the few guitarists of his genre to genuinely achieve mainstream success - particularly with the Mr Big worldwide smash hit 'To Be With You' - Paul has al so never stood still, as a cursory listen to his back catalogue will attest to. Versatile, humorous, melodic and thoughtful, these adjectives could apply equall y to his personality as well as his playing - Paul is a true Guitar Hero and we at Alloutguitar applaud him! My first encounter with Paul was back in the early days of shred when Guitar Wor ld ran a feature on a fresh faced teenager who'd lain waste to LA's hottest guit arists in the LA Guitar Wars competition. One to keep an eye on... and then, aft er months of seeing his purple Ibanez in adverts, by the time Racer X's debut 'S treet Lethal' was released. Anticipation - but also scepticsm! - was high: after all, Malmsteen had decimated all barriers of what was thought possible as a roc k guitarist - surely this guy couldn't be that special? From the opening salvo in 'Frenzy' (Paul's unaccompanied guitar solo that opened up the album) through to the sheer intensity and outright riffage of the title track - via innumerable notes in between! - there was no doubt that the bar had been raised... again! Far more 'Rawk' than Malmsteen's cod classical stylings, P aul simply destroyed all in his path with an arguably unmatched to this day disp lay of technical ferocity: ask (as I have done on many an occasion!) any world c lass rock/metal guitarist to name picking maestros (for example) and you can bet Gilbert will be on the list. But outside of his outrageous, inhuman picking abi lity there lies a great many technical innovations - not least his almost patent ed string skipped arpeggio technique (that for many players seems to have suppla nted Yngwies ubiquitous sweep arpeggios as ther chosen arpeggio weapon) - as wel l as a sheer humanity to his playing. There can be few rock/metal players who have not checked out Paul's ground break ing REH instruction videos - particularly those who grew up in the 80's: oustide of the still state of the art licks on display, what is very evident is that th is is a regular good fun guy: not a po faced 'virtuoso', but a guy who'd be as g ood fun to hang out with in a bar as he is to watch on stage. And, a word for an y fan of the new generation of shred heads like Matt Heafy, Herman Li or Syneste r Gates: Don't even think about it - Paul would have slayed those guys when he w as 17... as for now, forget about it! Alloutguitar spoke with Paul in November 2008 for this very revealing and in dep th interview. Early Days Paul, lets do the intro stuff and get it out of the way: when and where were you born? November 6th, 1966, in Carbondale, Illinois - but my family moved to Pennsylvani a when I was very young, so I really grew up in Greensburg, PA. What age did you start playing? I took some guitar lessons when I was six, but I didn't like the teaching method (Mel Bay), so I quit. I started playing again when I was nine, this time teachi ng myself by ear. I've been playing ever since then. I have wanted to play guita r for as long as I can remember. I always loved the Beatles records that my pare nts had. That was my first inspiration. Who were your initial influences? All the records my parents had: The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Wh o, Carole King, Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. My uncle was (and still is) a great guitarist, he was a great inspiration and he also encouraged me to listen to Ji mi Hendrix, the MC5, Iggy and The Stooges, David Bowie (with Mick Ronson), The R amones, and The Sex Pistols. I also loved the big rock bands and guitarists that were around when I was young, like Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Heart, Van Halen, R ush, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Gary Moore, UFO, Cheap Trick, KISS, Pat Travers , Robin Trower, Frank Marino, Ted Nugent, Triumph, and Def Leppard. What albums and songs during this period were particularly influential? Every Van Halen album with David Lee Roth was a guitar lesson to me. Robin Trowe r's 'Bridge of Sighs', Rush's 'Hemispheres', and Pat Travers' 'Go For What You K now' were all very important records to me. What age did you start to get serious? I have always been serious. But I started practicing consistently when I was nin e. I forced myself to play for one hour every day. One hour was a long time, bec ause I was a total beginner and didn't know how to play anything! Actually I tau ght myself some really simple guitar riffs like '25 to 6 to 4' by Chicago. I wou ld play it over and over and over for an hour. That is a long time to play just one riff. I was a very serious kid! You mentioned your first guitar lesson and not exactly enjoyong them! But - pre GIT - did you get any more? After struggling to teach myself for 2 years, I finally found a local guitar tea cher who wasn't using those horrible Mel Bay sight-reading books. My new teacher encouraged me to keep learning by ear, but he gave me lots of useful musical to ols like chords, scales, soloing techniques, and the idea of using neck diagram paper to help memorize scale shapes. I stayed with this teacher for about a year and a half, then briefly went to another teacher who had better technique. This newest teacher suddenly quit teaching, so I went back to teaching myself by lea rning songs from records. After I finished high school, I moved to Hollywood to attend GIT. It was a one-year course, and I learned so much about new techniques , ear training, music theory, and other musical styles. Any pivotal teachers? I had some great teachers at GIT. Keith Wyatt was probably my favorite. Recently I've taken some lessons from Barrett Tagliarino. I wanted to learn more about m usic theory, composition, and improvisation. He helped me a lot. I want to take more lessons from him when I get time. You mentioned those early Mel Bay books - and understandably finding them frustr ating (Note: for any new/young rock players reading this, keep an eye out for my own 'From Zero To Rock Hero... In Just 6 Weeks!' book coming out in 2009 throug h Harper Collins in the US and Apple Books in the UK: this adressess all those b oring 'beginner books' problems!) - but when you realised you were becoming a re al deal guitarist did you try again and learn how to read? After all, at any/all guitar schools being able to read is seen as the Holy Grail... I've always learned by ear: I disliked my early Mel Bay reading lessons so much that I quit guitar for three years! I did read a lot of chord diagrams in the ea rly days. I had a Beatles book, and I used the chord diagrams to help me learn a lot of those songs. And after going to GIT, I became pretty good at reading cho rd charts. But standard notation and even tablature is very difficult for me to sight read in 'real time'. When did you realise that you were gifted above your peers? There were always guitarists who were faster than me. If I had any advantage, it was my sense of rhythm and my musical ear. It took me a long time to train my f ingers, but I could always feel the rhythm and melody of a song very naturally. I specifically remember learning the Beatles song 'Hey Bulldog' when I was about 10. It has a lot of syncopations in the rhythm, but I could easily feel the gro ove. I had a friend who could never 'hear' it. That was the first time I remembe r being 'different'. But, mostly I just practised more than the other musicians I knew: I practised all the time! When did you start concentrating on technique? Can you remember any particular e xercises that helped? I didn't practice pure scales or arpeggios until I went to GIT. I had already pl ayed for eight years at that point and my style was mostly formed already. Pract ising pure technique certainly expanded my knowledge and gave me more musical to ols, but the heart of my sound came from learning songs and jamming with my teen age bands. Were you known as the local hot guitarist? My early cover bands were never successful because we didn't want to play popula r songs.