Neal Schon Played We Captured Some Great Energy That When the Adventure Starts
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NOVEMBER 2012 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM NOVEMBER 2012 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM MUSICIAN How is this solo album unique? How important is melody? TOOLS OF THE TRADE Usually when I make an album I love it I’m always thinking about melody. Once I for a moment and then put it away. This have that melodic structure in my head, that’s has staying power the others didn’t have. when I start messing around with it. That’s For most of The Calling, Neal Schon played We captured some great energy that when the adventure starts. If you don’t have custom Paul Reed Smith guitars—all single- translated into different styles of music. a strong melody you don’t have anything. cutaways, some with 22-fret necks and It sounds more off-the-cuff. The structure When it comes to instrumental records, a couple with 24. “I had them set up with is there but there’s looseness within that there are lots of great guitarists who could Roland GK synth pickups and a Fernandes structure—it’s a controlled looseness. run rings around me. For me it’s more about Sustainer,” says Schon. He also used a Roland expression and having style. There’s a lot of Fantom single-space rack synthesizer module Describe the recording process. blues and R&B roots in my playing. When I designed for keyboards but reconfigured for Everything was dictated by guitar and first started I was listening to a lot of Aretha guitar. “I used a lot of synth on the album,” drums. All I had was a bunch of riffs on a Franklin, and I used to try to make the guitar he says, “mostly for a ghosting effect. If you looping machine. Smith would lay down a sing like her vocals. That applied to the type listen closely you’ll hear cellos, violins or a viola groove based on the riffs we chose, and I of vibrato, the choice of notes, all of it. Any following my guitar solos around.” Schon also would arrange with rhythm guitar around time I’ve worked with singers, I’ve always played a custom Fender Strat on two tracks. his drum loop. He’d listen back and write tried to make the guitar an extension of the For bass work he settled on a Music Man. down my arrangement, with crescendos and vocal. It’s actually more difficult than writing For amplification, Schon used Marshalls, everything. After that I would do four or five instrumental music. Fenders, a Blackstar and various types of solos, not knowing what I might come up Bogners, including a Bogner Shiva with a with. It was all done in sections. It was the How did you learn to play? 212 cabinet. “I used that for the straight guitar one time I actually enjoyed using Pro Tools I picked up the guitar after seeing my cousin work,” he says. “I locked into a sound and just as a writing tool. playing in a band. They were doing some left it alone instead of switching things up on Paul Revere and the Raiders stuff at a roller every song.” He also used a Fractal Axe-Fx, rink. I asked him to show me a song and he plugged direct to the board. “It’s an amazing played me “Louie Louie” and “Gloria.” And unit,” he says. ‘Some of the riffs that was it—I was hooked. I started practicing Schon describes his live setup as “pretty and listening to all different styles of music. much the same thing—nothing elaborate.” T ravis Shinn are from stuff I I took jazz guitar lessons from a teacher my For effects he uses the Fractal unit, directly father found for me. My parents gave me plugged. For amplification he uses a Blackstar one of those old record players where you with a single cabinet and two mics. “I also have did in the ’70s but lift up the arm. I would take one record and wear it out. I would go to sleep listening to never used.’ whatever I was studying at the time, learning to dissect things. I reached a point where Why did you play bass? I could tell the position—where the player’s NEAL SCHON I didn’t have a bass player available. After hands were on the neck—by listening to the I played the lead guitar parts I thought, “I differences in the sound. With his solo efforts, the Journey ace guitarist explores many musical roads don’t know who I can get—no one’s around.” I’m not the world’s greatest bass player, What did you learn from Santana? By Russell Hall but listening back to a couple of tracks, it Those guys were the example of great band sounded in keeping with the character of chemistry. That rhythm section—Michael NEAL SCHON IS NOT ONE TO REST ON HIS LAURELS. Igor Len and keyboard wiz Jan Hammer. “I think making the record the album. If I had gotten a better bassist I Carabello, José “Chepito” Areas and Michael Despite selling upwards of 80 million albums with classic-rock quickly helped us achieve things we would have missed otherwise.” don’t think the music would have sounded Shrieve—created magic. Chepito was the behemoth Journey, the guitar virtuoso continues to be driven by Schon has been following an eclectic path for four decades. as glued down. I like what Hendrix did in timekeeper. He could play any instrument– a restless creative spirit. “In Journey I sort of ride with the flow,” In 1971, as a teen prodigy, he joined Santana and spent a two-year the early days, with Noel Redding playing make music out of anything you put in his he explains. “It seems to work better if I do most of the more apprenticeship honing his six-string skills. Co-founding Journey in bass, or even when Jimi himself played bass hands. And Carabello wasn’t interested in experimental stuff on my own. It keeps me from getting frustrated, 1973, he saw the group’s progressive-rock beginnings give way Shinn Travis once in a while—the tuba-style bass, where playing a lot of hot conga licks—he just let the and it also keeps Journey doing what we’re good at.” to a commercial sound that yielded such monster hits as “Anyway it’s felt more on the bottom end. Doing that groove happen. And Shrieve was a brilliant That philosophy has never been more evident than on his latest, You Want It” and “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Meanwhile, he’s given fuller lets the drums—the kick—be the thing that’s young drummer. His youth worked for him, The Calling, Schon’s fifth solo album. The instrumental record shifts expression to his love of guitar by releasing solo albums. more in your face. as it did for me, in that we had no fear. Those nimbly between rock, jazz and blues, all carried on the wings of “Sometimes you get into the studio and there are just too many guys opened me up to styles I never knew Schon’s dazzling technical skills and soulful expression. Schon wrote cooks,” he says. “In a band that’s fine—it’s more of a democratic Do riffs come easily to you? existed. I’ll be forever grateful to them. and recorded the album in just four days, working at Fantasy Studios situation—but with a solo record there’s no need for that. You can I always have an overabundance. Some of in Berkeley, Calif. “We went in with nothing prepared,” explains just take the ball and run with it.” During a break from Journey’s latest the riffs on this album are from stuff I did back How are things with Journey? Schon, who handled the bass parts in addition to guitar. Joining tour, Schon discussed the new record, the importance of melody in the ’70s but never used. I have hundreds For the last record we did, Eclipse, I really him in the studio were former Journey drummer Steve Smith, pianist and how Aretha Franklin influenced his style. of riffs and other ideas stored on a Line 6 was stubborn about us not repeating Looper or a Roland that I’m using now. I ourselves by writing new versions of songs a couple of cabinets onstage so I can hear make up riffs constantly. That’s the form my we already have. It’s easy to go, “Well, we things, but they aren’t miked,” he adds. His ‘The structure is there but there’s looseness within practice takes. I just jam over the tops of have this old song. Let’s write something Paul Reed Smiths are strung with D’Addario those things, and play some melody. That’s new that’s like that.” My thinking was, “Let’s 9-42 Super Lights. “I still like the light strings,” that structure—it’s a controlled looseness.’ how all the ideas on The Calling got started. move in a new direction, write grooves we he says. “I don’t care what anyone else says.” 46 47 M mag 24_cs6.indd 46 1/14/13 12:04 AM M mag 24_cs6.indd 47 1/14/13 12:04 AM ISSUE #24 MMUSICMAG.COM ISSUE #24 MMUSICMAG.COM MUSICIAN Marty Moffatt, Neal Schon; Alex Solca, Journey Marty Moffatt, Neal Schon; Onstage in Birmingham, England, 2011 Jonathan Cain, Ross Valory, Neal Schon, Arnel Pineda, Deen Castronovo ‘I’m always thinking about melody.