APRIL 1996 • VOLUME 13 • NO. 6 FEATURES 24 The Best Guitarists You've Never Heard Of We could name them here, but you've never heard of them. So read on 28 Kiss The rock circus rolls back into town 28 Riffology Classic riffs and solos, plus a Kiss history 42 Alive Again Little Deuce Scoop: Exclusive interviews with Ace, Gene and Bruce on the family reunion and future plans 48 Rhythm Displacement by Jon Finn Professor Finn gets funky 56 Studio Guitarists byWolfMarsha/1 Session great Steve Lukather takes us on a walk behind the glass PROFILE 21 Bert Jansch byHPNewquist COLUMNS 70 Mike Stern OVER THE TOP Bop 'n' Roll, Part 2 72 Alex Skolnick THE METAL EDGE 74 Reeves Gabrels BEYOND GUITAR 76 Tony Franklin BASS NOTES 78 Steve Morse OPEN EARS 152 HookinQ Up Your Pedals SOUND F/X 158 The Recording Guitarist Oat's What I ua About DAT DEPARTMENTS 6 Opening Act 8 Input 10 Groundwire 68 Contest WinaB.C. Rich guitar 69 Toy Box Knowyourtubetypes 156 Guitar Picks 164 Tracks 172 Advertiser Index ENCORE 176 Musical Definitions by Charles H. Chapman and Jon Chappell GUITAR & BASS SHEET MUSIC 81 Performance Notes by Jon Chappell 82 Explaining Tab 83 MY JEKYLL DOESN'T HIDE Ozzy Osbourne 95 BETH Kiss 105 AFTERSHOCK Van Halen 129 SATELLITE Dave Matthews Band 140 INTO THE GREAT WIDE OPEN Tom Petty ssues ofyo rou decide t :again. easure to se Malmsteen th this yea as speechles e to feel tha IG nally realize vrite for thos n [Riffolog ative bits an It's about tim ndwagon. feature on hi r looking u Malmsteen i se articles o ,usands of o .ne. Thank yo 1e faith to pri md of cours ntinued on page 1 the sit and 8; judge! and sc and re big pri NewJ given took a Comp bandit with h tory a Ourc EMO, h moun- in in Nepal's Inner Dolpo region. He s not only the first to scale the ountain, but saved a friend's life dur• the climb.At lower altitudes you n find the new anthology set, which lly compiled himself, unlike last year's uier retrospective, which didn't actly get Billy's stamp of approval. ach will be released in conjunction th a CD-ROM featuring interview tage, vids, rare photos, and song ps. -RM for a live r. precursors to Eddie Van Halen's popular two-handed taps). Stanley was a stock rhythm guitar player-no better or worse than thousands of others-and Simmons was about as generic a hard-rock bassist as you could get. But all that was beside the point: Kiss put on the best rock shows in the world. To make their concerts even more spectacular, they would line up dozens of empty speaker cabinets onstage to make it seem like Kiss had the biggest guitar amplifica• tion system on planet Earth. To Kiss' credit, the audience bought it. But if you consider that the '70s were the "big• ger is better" decade (remember, Smokey & The Bandit was considered a real gem of a movie in its day), this shouldn't be sur• prising. Although it was a fun decade for entertain• ment, no one has ever characterized the 1970s as the decade of good taste. The first three Kiss studio albums were relatively non• descript affairs, but the aptly titled Alive! double disc served Kiss began as a four-piece in New York City, circa 1972. Bass player and for• mer grade-school teacher Gene Simmons (born Chaim Whitz, later Gene Klein) and guitarist Paul Stanley (a.k.a. Stanley Eisen) had covered Beatles tunes in Wicked Lester, but wanted to form a glam-rock band, using clown and kabuki make-up as their original contribution to the genre. After answering an advertise• ment in a New York paper, Paul Frehley joined the band as lead guitarist. From the outset, the band was never taken seriously. Their riffs were admittedly stolen from the best sources ("Firehouse" from Zeppelin's "Misty Mountain Hop," up all the fury, frenzy, and fire (literally) of a for instance), their songs never ventured Kiss concert. One of the great ironies here is that few people had heard of Kiss before the far from a four-chord format, and what they lacked in technical ability they live set came out. So just who were all those people that filled the coliseum shown on the made up in volume and stage presence. Despite the protests of his modern-day back cover? Like Peter Frampton, whose fans, Frehley was hardly a lead-guitar Frampton Comes Alive! would create the innovator; the majority of his solos relied same mystery the following year, Kiss already had a deeply loyal fan base that on bending single notes over and over (although his pick-tapping solos were could fill the rafters whenever the band hit town. It was just that the wider world hadn't ... heard of them ... yet, that is. band came up with a well-arranged, deftly With the release of Alive!, however, the orchestrated set. Utilizing harmony guitars band found its "overnight" success, and on "Detroit Rock City" and "Shout It Out whetted the public's appetite for a studio Loud," thundering power chords on "Do You album that would deliver the same high• Love Me," and eerie riffing on "God Of volume rock goods. Since most of the world Thunder," Ezrin got more mileage than had never listened to any of the band's stu• most people expected out of Paul Stanley dio records, Kiss had to come up with some• and Ace Frehley. The solos were well-chore• thing that would not be snickered at. ographed (especially "Detroit Rock City") Fortunately, the band succeeded. By all but never felt forced or stilted. The record's accounts, then and now, Destroyer was an success was due as much to the guitarists' exceptiona.[ rock album; not from the stand• ability to make pomp rock sound raw and point of technical guitar playing, but from reckless as for Ezrin's technical direction. the marriage of big guitar songs with studio To further build up the growing Kiss technology. Under the guidance of producer tsunami, the band appeared on national Tv; Bob Ezrin (Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd), the landing a prime spot on comedian Paul Text continues on page 35 Deuce Here's a chordal riff that mixes three• note triads with doublestops.You can play this riff entirely out of 5th position by using your ring finger for the 7th-fret doublestops. Words and Music by Gene Simmons. ©1974 Hori Productions America, Inc., Gladwyne Music Pub. Corp. & Cafe Americana STRUTTER from Alive! (0:56 - I :03) AS 85 AS 85 AS B5 AS F#5 Words and Music by Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. ©1974 Hori Productions America, Inc., Gladwyne Music Pub. Corp. & Cafe Americana NOTH IN' TO LOSE from Alive! (0:00 - 0:03) " . -n . .____.. =t1 p II II II -'-.__../ II sf. p Words and Music by Ace Frehley. ©I 974, I 977 Hori Productions America, Inc. & Cafe Americana 32 GUITAR APRIL 1996 PARASITE from Alive! (2:04 - 2: I I) Shuffle feel ( qr=qce) N.C.(Cim) I. 2. Army Think of this riff in_ two parts: the straight-ahead, high-low sound of bars 1-2 versus the bouncy, II syncop:ited figure m bars 3-4. Note that both parts end with a two-beat figure that's unlike the wants preceding I ½ bars. -------•H H you! Wordsand Music by Paul Stanley and Bob Ezrin. ©1976 by Hori Productions America, Inc., All By Myself Music & Cafe Americana Continued from page 32 SHE from Alive! (0: 13 - 0: 19) Lynde's 1976 Halloween special. Like The success of "Beth"-a piano single-Kiss ing airplay with "New York Groove." But the G5 8>5 G5 C5 112 N.C. Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, this was embarked on a long and arduous journey band members began to suffer from their J) the first chance many teenagers had to wit• that continues to this day. Rock And Roll own glam excesses-especially Frehley. ness the band's dazzling performance Over, Love Gun, Alive II and Double Sinking deeper into drugs and drink, he power. After burning all over "Detroit Rock Platinum followed, as did the release of became reckless (wrecking cars seemed to City," Peter Criss gently crooned his way simultaneous solo albums, which despite be an ongoing pastime) and alienated him• self from the other members of the band, 112 through the ballad "Beth" (all lip-synched, "shipping platinum" reportedly didn't sell of course) and, in a flash, Kiss had instantly too well. Considered a brilliant public rela• especially Simmons and Stanley, who were turned every 13-year-old in America into a tions ploy, little memorable music was cre• notorious control freaks. charter member of the Kiss Army, as their ated here, with the exception of Frehley, Frehley departed from the band bitterly fan base was called. Kissmania had begun. who had shown that he was capable of both in 1982 after a series of poorly conceived After Destroyer, and the breakthrough writing and playing his own material, gain- and received albums, notably The Elder and Text continues on page 40 112 /4) H "JI -~ "' ' --,J -: --,J .. --,J -: ~ ·-H ·-H sf. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 112 -------• ' _;f\ H -~ C C :::i:~ic~~~ Music by Gene Simmons and Steve Coronel. ©J 975, 1977 Hori Productions America, Inc .. G/adwyne Music Pub. Corp., Rock Steady Music & Cafe . :- " •0 / : " " " II" - - - - - - - - II - - .