I remember hearing Jimi Hendrix for the first time. I was around 10, and it was before I started playing guitar, and he blew my hair back. I thought: What is this fire, and how can I lunge into it? His “Star-Spangled Banner” was both complicated and historically poignant. I can play it, but not like Jimi.
There’s nothing that sends me like a certain electric-guitar sound — whether you know the tone, the riff, the vibe, the player. There’s something disruptive about the volume, drawing so much power from being so loud. It’s a visceral experience.
Guitar solos came into rock & roll by way of blues and jazz. In the Sixties, all the English dudes revered the lineage of Black American music. Then Bob Dylan plugged in at Newport, the lore of which has become that it was a fork in the road between the past and modern playing.
In the Seventies, you had Steely Dan, whose guitar solos are so iconic that I don’t want to hear someone improvising over them — even the great guitar players that they’ve had onstage. I want to hear Larry Carlton’s solo note for note. That’s a testament to how iconic and crucial those solos are. They’re sacrosanct, compositionally.
In the Eighties and early Nineties, solos had a really big moment. It wasn’t a rock song unless there was a solo. I was listening to a lot of grunge music — the first solo I learned was “Alive,” by Pearl Jam — and Kurt Cobain. His solos were some of the greatest melodies ever written.
The concept of “three chords and the truth” speaks to me. It takes an incredible amount of effort to make something look effortless — to distill it down to something that will just absolutely obliterate the heart. When I’m really in the zone, it feels like freedom. I love to stretch out on guitar and just play — when you’re improvising and thinking, “I have no idea where this solo’s gonna go, but I know everybody on this stage is locked in and has got my back.”
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