I've only ever copped one guitar solo from a record. I prefer to improvise, and this goes back to when I first started playing. I doubt I'd ever even heard of improvising at the time. I'd already tried my hand at various instruments, to varying degrees of success. I started on piano. Too much sitting still. I tried violin but for some reason, after a few weeks I was pushed to the cello. This was fine by me...until I broke a cello. So I next opted for something a bit more durable. TRUMPET! (coronet, to be precise) I enjoyed this but again, my thoughts on the subject were never really involved in the equation. Our school's marching band had quite a reputation, and my brother played tuba, so it was assumed I too would excel on tuba. Wrong. 2 or 3 weeks in and I skipped my happy ass out of the school band.
Next up was drums. Having spent most of my childhood listening to classical music, I was starting to pay attention to songs on the radio, or stuff I heard blaring from my brothers' room. (my sister's taste in music was horrifying...Bobby Sherman & Shawn Cassidy! No thanks!) Of the rock and roll and R&B stuff I heard; I was drawn to the drums originally. So, I talked mum into buying me a kit. A friend of my sister was selling a kit for $100, and I took possession of a very standard 4-piece trap set. I took the money that I had saved up and bought a couple of cymbals and began to terrorize the household. The drums eventually got moved from the basement to the garage. Maybe this was designed to quell my passion for rhythm, but it didn't. What did was my own realization that I was not a good drummer nor was I likely to ever be one. By the age of 12 or 13, I discovered guitar. My life direction changed drastically in one 24-hour period.
Long story short, I was hooked. I was teaching myself and having the time of my life! Some of the chords, I was pretty sure, were designed by the Marquis de Sade himself but I persevered. I played first thing in the morning, after school, and well into the wee hours. Dad was less than thrilled. Mum was infinitely more supportive (she too being a musician) It became all too clear to my parents that I wasn't going to stop, so I was forced into lessons.
If you ever want to kill a child's passion for music, send them for lessons after they've already started teaching themselves. I had been playing full chords and lots of old folk songs and standards, and my first lessons were basic bitch bullshit. Nothing against my teacher, Kevin, who I'm still close friends with. Learning to read the notes to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" wasn't going to cut it. It was already easier to just pick out the notes. I could read music already, from having played other instruments. It was just a matter of figuring out where they were on the guitar. (FYI, the coma I was in, in my late 30s, wiped out most of my ability to read music...it hasn't stopped me. It was a skill I, sadly, rarely used.) Kevin did, however, teach me some very valuable lessons. He taught me how to tune a guitar, how to string one, he made me use a pick (which my hands still try to fight off) and taught me the rudiments of finger picking. He taught me about power chords and using harmonics (which I still probably over-use). Had he stuck to pushing the kiddy songs and single string sight reading exercises, I probably would've walked a mile from the guitar. Thankfully, he didn't. He knew I was well on my to being a lifelong guitar junkie, so he got me headed in the right direction. (THANKS AGAIN KEVIN!)
This was the late 70s/early 80s and most of the popular music you heard on the radio had guitar. The problem was the sound. It was electric, which was fine...but there were all of these weird sound effects! I knew nothing about that stuff! I was a big fan of Queen at the time, and had sussed out that Brian May was using, at least, a fuzz box. But where did one get such a thing? For my 13th birthday, my parents got me a decent BRAND-NEW electric guitar. A Fender Musicmaster. I'd play it through an old Gibson amp that we had at the house (from a short-lived attempt by one of my brothers to master the guitar years earlier). I found that if I turned all the knobs all the wayto the right, I'd get a natural distortion. OVERDRIVE!!!! I loved it. My family did not. Our dogs did not. The neighbors, their pets, and I'm guessing the local constabulary, also did not approve of this level of volume. So, deals were made. I could play loud, after school until dinner time. After that, NO LOUD STUFF. As you can guess, I ignored this deal any chance I could, especially as the amps I used got bigger and louder. I also had purchased a fuzzbox! An ElectroHarmonix Mini Muff Fuzz! Greatest $20 I've ever spent! By this point, my music of choice was The Ramones and Sex Pistols. This shiny little box got me close to that, even at infuriatingly low volumes.
I was never big on trying to learn other people's music. I would figure out the basics of what they were doing and take it my own direction. Some friends of my oldest brother taught me some rudimentary blues stuff and told me about this thing called improvising. I could, if I chose to, make stuff up as I went along! Yet another life-changing event, courtesy of the guitar! If I wanted to play a certain song, I'd ask someone to show me how to play it. I was a quick learner. Show me once, I usually had it. Then I'd record myself playing it, play it back, and improvise over top of it. Thank God for that old GE cassette deck!
I was also listening to The Beatles a lot. I was almost obsessive about their records. They didn't sound like most of the other stuff I heard. What were those chords? How could someone sing like that? All of the songs were catchy! There were all sorts of guitars too! Plain, clean electric guitars, acoustic guitars, nylon string guitars, 12 strings (damned right I had to get me one of THOSE! Thanks AGAIN to Kevin for selling me an Epi 12 for a dirt-cheap price!). Sometimes there were effects, sometimes there weren't. I was intrigued to say the least.
One day, a friend gave me an old Jimi Hendrix record. MIND BLOWN! This was somewhere between blues (which I already knew and loved) and crazy, psychedelic rock. I saw footage of Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival, playing "Wild Thing". What were those chords? What was that sound? 13-year-old me figured he may never know! But it didn't stop me.
Somewhere around this point, I had sold the drums, used that money to buy a REAL electric (Fender Telecaster DELUXE...which I still have) and had traded the Musicmaster for a bass. I had heard it was easier to find gigs as a bass player, so I got to work on that as well. I had been asked now and then to sit in with bands and play Hendrix-y sort of stuff (once I learned the magic chord). I was forever trying to start a band. Now and then, I'd get a crappy little basement punk band together and maybe play a house party. Small town Ohio wasn't ready for those sounds. At least not from me. But I kept playing.
My improvisation skills got better and better. I figured out a few patterns that I could go to over most chord progressions. Using the stuff I learned on piano, violin, and cello, I kept up with my scales too. One day, a guy told a friend and I a great trick about guitar. If you hit the wrong note, bend it until it sounds right. I started bending strings every chance I got. It sounded better. I tried bending chords...didn't usually sound better. Lesson learned.
My friend Tim Fair gave me a hard truth one day. He worked at the local guitar shop, and I was there often, bugging him. He was in a working band and could really play! He had fancy gear and lots of effects pedals. I had recently scored a box of pedals and needed to know what they all did and how to use them. So damned many knobs and gadgets. It was becoming overwhelming. Tim put it to me bluntly: Effects (especially distortion) hide a multitude of sins. To demonstrate, he plugged a guitar into a fancy solid-state amp with built-in effects and played an eye-opening fast riff. Then he played it again without the effects. I could hear everything that wasn't perfect. He pointed out that effects hid all of that and the real skill was in becoming an accurate player. Learn to play how you want it to sound, even without effects. A big order to fill, but I wanted to be able to do that!
There was another guitar store in town, and one of the guys there was a jazz player. He played those big ol' hollowbody guitars (which were NOT cool at the time) and used strings as fat as phone cables. I figured if he could play that fast, fancy, CLEAN jazz stuff, he might have some tips on how to become an accurate player. I started bugging him on a regular basis. He could play stuff like Joe Negri, so I was definitely impressed. He'd show me some weird chord, and suggest things to play over it, and how I should probably learn and PRACTICE modes (fancy scales!) and to practice WITHOUT effects. He suggested only using effects if you really needed them. Since I was mostly playing punk, which was barely even music to him, maybe it would develop my ear and get me playing 'real' music. "Like some of those Beatle chords?" I thought to myself.
When I was maybe 15, I heard The Blasters for the first time. SWEET SHIRLEY BASSEY IN A COCKTAIL DRESS!!!!! Those guys were on fire! They were every bit as fast as any of the punk bands, had as much if not more energy, and their guitars...so natural sounding! No fuzz, no phasers, no wah wah pedals, just pure tone! It wasn't long before I threw all of my effects pedals back in the box and put them away. I wanted the energy The Blasters had. I soon 'borrowed' (stole actually) a record from my brother (BB KING LIVE AT THE COOK COUNTY JAIL) and started trying to find more blues records. My brother eventually got the record back from me. I think it went back and forth between us for a couple of years. I eventually found some John Lee Hooker records. At 16, I was asked to join a friend's new band. They were playing "rockabilly". Never heard of it. So, I asked him what it was. "Like Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins stuff" was his answer. To me, this meant stuff that The Beatles had covered, and stuff I'd hear on a Sunday night 'oldies' station. Sure, I could play that. He was all into a new band called The Strat Cats. I thought they were OK but didn't have the energy of The Blasters. Our record hunting led us to finding acts like Robert Gordon, SUN Records compilations, a lot of Elvis wannabes, and too many bands with 'Cat' in the name. Shortly after joining the band, the bass player quit. I owned a bass so guess who got to be the bass player. You guessed it. While not thrilled at the time, I eventually started to get a lot of work due to it, so it all worked out.
I played mostly bass, mostly in rockabilly bands for the next 8 years. I got the occasional gig doing recording sessions, played on a few jingles, etc. I really wanted to get back to playing guitar. Where I was living at that point, almost no one knew I played guitar! I put together a short-lived trio and opened a few eyes. I ended up moving back to Pittsburgh. When I joined The Rowdy Bovines, I was originally supposed to play bass. That was until James heard me play guitar at a party. I was playing some Cliff Gallup and Scotty Moore type stuff, mostly just goofing around. James decided then and there that he'd prefer to have me playing guitar. Again, fine by me.
I insisted on improvising my solos. I'd worked too hard for too long, really beefing up my skills. I wasn't going to spend hours trying to learn someone else's solos. James was ok with this, and the crowds were more than ok with it. James learned to use my improv skills to his advantage. Forgot the words? Have me take a long solo. Need a beer? Have me take an extended solo. Had a case of food poisoning with explosive diarrhea? Have me take yet another long, drawn-out solo. However, there was one song we played that no matter what, I couldn't sort out a good solo over it. I tried and tried. Nothing worked. So, I sat down with a tape of the song and learned that damned solo note for note. Just nothing else really fits. Hats off to Don Leady of The Tailgators. His playing is deceptive. It flows so smoothly with the songs that you don't realize just how damned good he is. Another goal to aspire to!
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