So I play a little guitar. I’m not talented, but I play a bit with some friends. When I was learning to get my fingers around a few chords, some time in the mid-90s, it was considered essential for any aspiring guitar player to get fully immersed in a particular operatic, bombastic and incredibly technical off-shoot of mainstream hair-metal-rock. Like ELP meets GnR.
It was gothic and massive and mathematical and you simply had to get into it if you were any kind of musician.
The main exponents of this kind of music are Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Yngwie Malmsteen. There are loads more, but when I was 16, those 3 were all anyone ever talked about. In the years before the internet, I used to spend what little money I had on guitar magazines, which in those days used to publish the tab for your favourite songs and as long as I can ever remember, they had these 3 guys on constant rotation. It used to baffle me. The teenage me was into all kinds of music, but I just couldn’t get the appeal of Jongwie Satrivaisteen.
Even at that age, I fully understood that this music was technically, if not ‘perfect’, then very very very very accomplished. My brain was bamboozled by the mathematically precise scales and Mixolydian modes. Complex arpeggiated sweep-picking and fretboard tapping. Stuff most guitarists would never learn to do in their lifetime. Pushing the instrument to the limit of it’s physical properties. It was mind-blowing. I don’t know if it’s possible to take the guitar any kind of higher level. They reached the end of the guitar.
And yet I thought it was boring.
Even now, I’ll probably get lambasted for saying that. Like I’m crap at the guitar and I’m just jealous.
That’s probably true. It was still boring.
I mean, it left me totally cold. It had no soul. It was like listening to a computer. There was no room for human error. Nothing was left to chance. It wasn’t alive.
Also, they all seemed to play the same guitar.
But do you know what? 25 years have passed. They all have Grammys and millions of dollars and legions of loyal fans. I’ve re-evaluated a lot of music as I’ve grown older and many things which passed me by the first time around are now my favourite records. I decided I was just being sanctimonious and I went back and listened to a whole bunch of songs by our 3 Gentlemen of Rock, plus a host of others and to my surprise..
I still hate it.