Profound Inspiration?

[Hairfarmer]

This may have been asked in this forum a million times before, but I'll throw it out there again.

 

What single person, or event, changed the perminant direction of your playing style; how old were you when it happened; where were you when it happened; and, why do you believe it had such a profound impact on you?

 

I'm not asking who inspired you to play. I want to know if your direction changed at any point after you had been playing a while, and why.

 

I anticipate some great reading in response. I hope I'm right. Maybe it'll spark some memories for some of you too.

 

Indulge me, please.

[Gruupi]

Well, there are really several for me. I'll name a couple of the msot significant.

 

The first time I saw Eric Johnson was in 1984. It was in medium size club. Even before the lights came up my jaw dropped. He played a couple of licks just to test his amps and I was completly floored. It was like a dream, I had been playing guitar for 10 years but had just realized thats what a guitar should sound like. The tones coming out of his amps made me almost leave my body. I really can't put into words how profound that moment was. Ever since that night I have worked on getting my guitar to sound that good. I can't play as well and don't exactly want to sound the same as Eric, but that is still my quest to have tones that good.

 

Another very important event was the night I discovered Bach. It was around the the same year in the early 80's. I had read about Bach and heard him for years. My music theory class in college focused on his choral style. But I just didn't like his music at all. It sounded like endless boring scales played at very even tempos to me. I just didn't get the point.

 

I had a few records that different people had recommended and forced myself to listen to them from time to time. I would put one on if I was going to take a nap, since it was boring to me it was good music to fall asleep to. Well I woke up in the middle of Segovia playing the prelude for cello #1 towards the end where the cresendo walks up and it hit me. It hit me hard. I suddenly got all the melodies and dissonances that were resolved so brilliantly. Ever since that night I have been in love with so much of Bachs music. I can't say I like every single piece or performance, but there is a huge amount of his work that just makes me stop and lose myself in the music.

[Hairfarmer]

Excellent post, Gruupi. I suspect there are many that frequent this forum with an equally eclectic experience to share.

 

I think you can learn alot about each other as musicians from sharing this kind of information about ourselves.

 

Thanks.

[Dr. Ellwood]

I remember exactly! and this is how it went. One early morning driving down the Southfield express way after a gig at just about (locals: Southfield between Ford rd. and Michigan Ave.) with my buddy Bill the other guitar player in the band. Listening to the radio, tired and wrung out we for the first time heard Jimmie Hendrix! I remember Bill saying WTF is THAT!! his exact words! then there was conversation between us to like holy shit! thinking we are ALL in trouble NOW! or amps didn't sound like that, our guitars didnt sound like that our singing didnt sound like that and if we now have to try to do THAT we are totally Fuc@ed!!! we decided that somehow we had to try to sound like that! and so the journey started for all of us...and it has never stopped since, love ya Jimmie but man you made us work! Hay and by the way thanks for making me remember that and even more for remembering my friend Bill who is gone now.

[Hardtail]

Van Halen I. My post is the first of many who'll say this album influenced them, I'm sure.

[King Kamehameha]

I wasn't very serious about music for the first 2 years. I didn't practice at all for the first 1 and a half. Last summer, somebody turned me on to Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, SRV, and all this stuff I hadn't heard before. Then I discovered Gary Hoey on my own. I went to his clinic and concert in late May. It inspired me so deeply to get much more involved with my music. I went from playing 1 hour a day to maybe 6. I've been counting the days since I got motivated on a whiteboard. It's day 83. Every time I finish a day, I put a little heart on. I put goals for the day and goals for the week and I keep a notebook now for ideas.

 

I have discovered true beauty and tranquility in music in the past year. I've been touched by songs, soothed, energized, helped in all sorts of ways.

 

I just can't imagine my life any other way. What would I do with the extra hours anyway? I don't know, because I'm always thinking about music. That's a lot of extra hours.

 

I'm going to see him again on August 22nd. I'm so excited! I don't think he knows just how much he's done for me, and he's even led me to discover Dick Dale, The Ventures, to REdiscover the Beach Boys, Tony Franklin, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and a whole lot more, I'm sure.

[Gabriel E.]

1988 I was 17 and had played bass for a few years and had been playing guitar for around a year.

 

GP issue came out with Vernon Reid on the cover and a soundpage (remember those?) of "Cult of Personality" inside. I had never heard of Reid before. Put on the record and my world changed. Listened to it again and again. Everything was there - power, dynamics, melody, rhythm.

 

The same year I saw SRV in concert at the Halifax Metro Center. He was incredible. Up to that point I had never seen a live performance by someone with so much talent. I had heard his records and read about him but teh concert made me realized the disconnect between recordings of music and music performed live.

[Tedster]

For me, it was something far simpler. The part of the Allman Brothers record where they had been playing "Don't Want You No More"...and it ends, and the intro to "Ain't My Cross to Bear" pops in.

 

Up until that moment I'd been craving speed. I wanted to play fast. The first six notes of "Ain't My Cross To Bear" were a slap in the face and a wake up call. It was like a wise old man sitting me down and saying "It ain't about SPEED, son, it's about making the guitar CRY. If you can't play slow with feeling, making your guitar cry, then all the speed in the world ain't gonna help you one little bit. When you can put the weight of the world into one note, and make it sing, then you can start to worry about speed".

[Darcy H]

As a youth, I spent so much time trying to play Rush tunes, and got quite frustrated and eventually life got busy and the guitar was put away.

 

The I heard some Jack Johnson a few year back, nice laid-back acoustic guitar, and figured I could do that so I bought myelf an acoustic and went to work. That was one.

 

Then I saw Morgan Davis, local Blues guy (well, originally from Detroit via Toronto but..) doing gorgeous solo electric covers of early Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, John Hurt, etc. plus his own material. He really moved me. There wasn't a phenomonal amount of speed going on, but the notes that he did play, the phrasing...I figured I could tackle that, and I've been striving for what he does ever since.

 

With Rush, I could never really see myself pulling it off, blues feels much more within reach.

[Mudcat]

Now there are other guitarists whose influence is more pronounced on my playing, but I got all of that influence by osmosis. However there was definitely a "turning point moment" with a guitarist who directly influenced me that I can remember while I was in college.

 

In 1983 at the Nashville Music Extravaganza, I saw an up and coming band called Jason and the Nashville Scorchers with a red hot guitarist named Warner Hodges. Warner was as big a fan of George Jones as he was of Motley Crue and it was reflected in his guitar playing style. He was the first player whose style I made a very deliberate effort to incorporate into my playing. The main things I pinched from him are incorporating pedal steel style bends and country flavored pentatonic runs in my otherwise minor flavored, distortion laden "rock-n-roll" guitar solos.

 

Later he jammed with my band at one of our gigs. It was pretty cool.

[miroslav]

While I never really tried to emulate Clapton...

...I would say that I first took notice of the whole "playing lead" thing when listening to Cream...and then followed by the Layla sessions.

 

And just about that same time (mid-late 60s) I was quite drawn to Neil Young's lead playing, as it had nothing to do with perfection/precision...but it had a certain attitude...and very interesting tone quality.

After that I started to pay more attention to people like...Page, Winter, Beck...and of course, all of the original blues greats...

 

But from that first day....up to now...I've never really sat down and tried to play like any of those folks...I just listened to them over the years...my playing is whatever comes out.

Heck...I honestly can't remember every sitting there and just trying to cop their licks note for note.

For me it was more about trying to just get a sense of their expression and their tone...rather than worrying about note for note mimicking...

[Dr. Ellwood]

Mimicking is for lazy uninspired clod guitar-pists!!LOL !!!

[miroslav]

Aren't tabs used for that purpose...?

[Dr. Ellwood]

Originally posted by miroslav:

Aren't tabs used for that purpose...?

Exactly! a source of constant inspiration!!

[Guitarzan]

Kiss made me want to rock.

but Mr. VanHalen was responsible for me getting into guitar heavily.

VanHalen and Judas Priest were the architechs.

AC/DC later gave me the adrenaline.

[picker]

There have been several, actually. I loved music from a very early age; I recall listening to Jerry Lee Lewis 78s, Great Balls of Fire in particular, along with my little yellow kiddie records, before I went to kindergarten. But when I was about 12 or 13, I saw the Animals play "House of the Rising Sun" in some British invasion Rock & Roll Extravaganza movie, and I was absolutely seized by the need to learn how to make that sound. Eventually, I found a guy who showed me the chords, and I worked for 3 months to get to where I could play them without stopping to move my fingers to the next chord. I can't stand to hear the song anymore, I played it to pieces. But that was the beginning of my interest in guitar.

 

Then, a year or so later, I was listening to the Vanilla Fudge's album "Near the Beginning", the side with the long live jam. After the opening bit, they settled into a slow three chord blues jam with a guitar solo. I don't know why it happened exactly, but all of a sudden I recognized what they were doing as "the blues". It was a major epiphany for me, like the shape of my brain changed or something. I got so excited that I ran screaming into the kitchen and dragged my mom back into the living room where the record was playing, yelling "Mom, Mom! It's the blues! It's the blues!" She looked at me like I was nuts, and of course, I was. I have been ever since, too.

 

Some years later, I was listening to the Who's "Live at Leeds", the long jam they did of "My Generation" on side 2. It wasn't the first time I had heard the album but it was the first ime I had really paid attnetion to the second side. As I was listening, I realized what was going on; Townshend had built this incredible, huge sound, as if it were a steam shovel or bulldozer, or some humongous, lumbering machine, and he was making it dance like a ballerina. The whole point of The Who, I realized, was this amazing control and direction of sheer, raw, power, and anyone who ever saw the Who live knows Townshend controlled and directed the rest of them when they went off into a jam like that. It was another epiphany for me, and I still get chills when I hear that version of "My Generation".

 

The last one I would mention was one time when I was listening to Stevie Ray Vaughn playing "Couldn't Stand the Weather". Somehow, I got caught up in it from the first chords, and by the time he got to the lead break, played that "chukka-chukka-chukka" and then hit that first amazingly timed note, I was so sucked into it that I might as well as been hypnotized. I was rocked, plain and simple. I hadn't bothered to learn any lead break note for note for a long time before that, and I haven't since, but that one I just had to learn. Stevie Ray's tone and licks were great, but his phrasing was a revelation to me. He played his leads in shorter, pithier phrases than the long, unbroken lines of the shredders I had been hearing everywhere else I listened. It was like knocking back a cold brew after having to drink warm water for a while. I have been in love with that kind of phrasing ever since.

 

There were other times over the years, and I hope I always have them because they never fail to inspire me to play more and better. Music, and guitar in particular, has been the passion of my life for as long as I can recall being passionate about anything. I hope it will always affect me the way it does.

[Bluesape]

Blind Faith live in Phoenix, AZ, 1969. Clapton took my breath away - I still haven't gotten it back!

[Dr. Ellwood]

Originally posted by Bluesape:

Blind Faith live in Phoenix, AZ, 1969. Clapton took my breath away - I still haven't gotten it back!

Yeah Clapton took mine too, then SRV grabbed me by the neck and knocked me out!!

[Xplorer]

Metallica insipred me to play, but Dimebag Darrell turn the spark into a fire.

[Justus A. Picker]

I'd have to say it was a buddy of mine who ditched the pick and worked out a set of fingerstyle instrumentals that just blew me away. Multiple-lines, counterpoint, the whole tiny orchestra bit. I was a typical cocky 25 year old rock guitarist and could see he was just leaving me in the dust....

[Hairfarmer]

What an incredible bunch of posts thus far. It totally intrigues me to read about stuff like this. Because while it not only reflects an influence on our playing direction at that moment, I would also like to believe it also has influenced the directions of many of our lives, to one degree or another. Some of you, maybe not.

 

Pretty heavy stuff, I know. But, I am a firm believer in fate. And that being said, I also believe that fate takes you where you are menat to be, and no matter what happens, it's always for reasons that are only meant to make us better human beings.

 

This is how we learn about each other. I hope to read more.

 

Thank you, to those who have shared thus far.

[Wolfgangsta]

Last year I discovered Robert Randolph and the Family Band while watching Austin City Limits. The next day I went out and bought the CD. I haven't been able to directly incorporate what he does into my playing, but his genuine passion for playing and entertaining just jumped out of the TV at me. For anyone not familiar with Robert Randolph, he is like the Jimi Hendrix of pedal steel (for lack of a better way to explain what he does)!! I HIGHLY recommend checking him out.

[Warthog]

Townes Van Zandt in 1993. Not techincally challenging and his voice is an acquired taste, but that time in my life and the profound messages of the lyrics did it to me. For those who don't know of him, he wrote "Pancho and Lefty", which was made famous by others including Willie Nelson. Other songs that hit me back then were "Two Girls" and "White Freightliner".

 

Another guy who was an early influence was Kelly Joe Phelps. His slide guitar is awesome and his songs are very soulful.

 

The latest artist to hit me like that has been Jack Johnson. Probably boring to many of you, but that simple, soulful, meaningful stuff with a neat groove is my thing.

 

Good topic...

[mdrs]

Picker....great evaluation of Pete T and The Who. I was lucky enough to see them a couple of times when Keith was still with us, and the experiences were almost beyond description. I keep hoping I'll find a DVD of The Who from that era that really captures their essence, but I haven't really found one yet. I always describe a Who concert as a marginally controlled nuclear explosion that lasted about 75 minutes! No encore, no BS, just raw power on the edge of oblivion.

 

Great Post!

[mdrs]

My musical epiphony has been a slow steady contunious one, lasting now for about 43 yrs.!

 

Early music that inspired me as a young kid were pop, early rock stuff I heard on the AM radio, like "Itsy Bitsy Teney Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bicini", or "The Twist" by Chubby Checkers, or "Puff The Magic Dragon" by Peter, Paul and Mary. And, of course Chuck Berry.....that double string riff was monumental. Somehow, I also remember Petula Clark's "Downtown" as being a song that moved me.

 

I'd say there were a couple of truely pivotal moments.

 

First, The Beatles. Simplicity, and perfection....harmony, melody to rival Mozart, content, a lively beat, and a positive message. They had it all. I don't think any music has ever revolutionized the world like The Beatles' music did. For those who weren't around then, it's hard to describe how pervasive their influence was on all aspects of life. And, they didn't just influence kids...they effected adults, politicians, every level of society. They literally changed everything...musically and culturally.

 

Then there was the earth shattering moment when Dylan went electric! Holy $hit!! It was brilliant, and totally unique. And it was so damn powerful. It was a new language....a musical version of speaking in tongues!! Once I under stood it, music was never the same. The power became palpable. And, it was good. Real good. Almost too good.

 

This is a bit off point here, but to anyone who has never done so, please try to go back and read the lyrics to Pete Townshends music...all of it, but particularly from Tommy onward. He is a poet of great magnitude.

 

My next musical inspiration came while this New Yorker was in Lousiville, Kentucky suffering (and I do MEAN suffering) through college, and med school. I was exposed to Bluegrass music, and musicians. They totally blew me away. Just when I KNEW that Jimi, Pete, Dwane and the like were with out a doubt what guitar was all about, I saw bar band country and bluegrass musicians that blew away 99% of the musicians I'd ever worshipped! I wish I'd have had time to learn more of their riffs.....I was so consumed with my studies that I observed, but didnt' play out at all.

 

In my next life, I'll make up for all that...

[Big Red 67]

Something just blew my mind when I heard Rush. That was THE moment. I loved Billly Joel when I heard him. Bust Rush was the shit for me.

[mdrs]

Yea, Captain Jack made a big impact. Joel was from Oyster Bay, Long Island, right next to the town I grew up in. We worshipped him. Also, The Police, and "Roxane" made a big impact on me.

[Gifthorse]

I have had tons of heros. My first hero was Rik Emmett of Triumph. He was a good songwriter, singer, and a great well rounded player which with my classical influence impressed me. I worshipped him completely. I even wrote him a letter telling him why he was better than Eddie Van Halen (I was 12 I think)

 

Eddie Van Halen--Then George Lynch and Warren Dmartini/a bunch of shredders Yngwie, Vinnie Moore, Paul Gilbert, Allan Holdsworth (even back then I knew I would never be this good). Al Dimeola, Greg Howe..

 

Then when I was 24 my best friend bought me tickets to see Leo Kottke at The Ark in Ann Arbor.

 

This really changed my whole direction on guitar. I was sick of playing fast. I wanted my technique to mean something bigger than a bunch of fast single note solos. I lost interest in fast leads on electric with a whammy bar. Every shredder started to sound like Satch, Steve Vai, or Yngwie-- never Holdsworth or VH because thats just too unique.

 

I became obsessed with Kottke and lost interest in being super flashy and fast.

 

I love Kottke still but I am admiring so many players now on Utube. I know I suck at what I want to do on guitar but thats why I still play. I have a vision of what I want but that can only be attributed to the heros I have had along the road.

[Big Red 67]

Originally posted by mdrs:

Yea, Captain Jack made a big impact. Joel was from Oyster Bay, Long Island, right next to the town I grew up in. We worshipped him. Also, The Police, and "Roxane" made a big impact on me.

Captain Jack was drawing for me too, Roxiane was something that those guy's had a hard time with.