Tag: features

It has been 40 years since the passing of Jimi Hendrix. In his honor, this month we will look at two unexplored aspects of his life and work, including the largely untapped oeuvre of Jimi’s later studio work – the period after 1968’s Electric Ladyland, when he was touring heavily but still recording countless hours of material. We’ll illuminate how this music dramatically differed from his more famous earlier work and, more importantly, how it could have paved way for his career in the ’70s.

But first, we will leap into the unknown and make a serious attempt to glean the musical styles and ideas Hendrix might have tried. Would his career have flourished? Would he have turned to jazz, as some speculate? And who would he have played with? In reality, Hendrix left lots of clues where his music was heading, and in this piece we’ll begin piecing them together to give a fuller picture of his staggering potential.

It’s a common enough question; “Had he lived, what kind of music would Jimi Hendrix have played?” Certainly, the studio album Hendrix would have released in late 1970/early ’71 – the assortment of tracks that fans variously call First Rays of the New Rising Sun or The Cry of Love – would have been a rock-solid recording and likely re-lit his career as a top recording artist. The other oft-mentioned project was a collaboration with jazzmen Miles Davis and Gil Evans. Add the coming tsunami of hard rock, reggae, and funk, we can speculate about various musical directions Hendrix might have explored in the ’70s and beyond.

One scenario is that Jimi would have continued in his bread-and-butter profession, releasing funky hard-rock LPs in the rising world of “arena rock,” but also investigating other veins of music in a variety of smaller, collaborative projects. Surely, he would have continued playing 10,000-seat hockey and basketball arenas for the growing masses of white, suburban teenagers, refining a touring business he pioneered with manager Mike Jefferies. This would have put him alongside Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Yes, Pink Floyd, and the Who, all of whom benefited from the proliferation of FM radio, hit albums, and the kind of relentless touring that would make them icons of the “classic rock” era. Suddenly, rock and roll had turned into big business and, with his and Jefferies’ business acumen, Hendrix would have been a part of it.

Back to Jimi, Davis, and Evans. On that matter, speculators often fail to address the fact Hendrix was not a jazz-trained guitarist – he could not sight-read music nor indulge in the kind of complex modal improvs that John McLaughlin, Bill Connors, and Larry Coryell would perfect in the coming years. Instead, any fusion collaboration between Hendrix, Davis, and Evans would have been crafted to fit the guitarist’s ability, just as George Martin would later bend jazz arrangements around the rock style of Jeff Beck on Blow By Blow and Wired. As Davis’ ’70s work bore out, the influence of Carlos Santana and his band was pervasive in early fusion – the Santana model of a grooving, rhythm-based band with instrumental solos on top would provide one standard for jazz-fusion jamming. In that light, a potential Hendrix/Davis/Evans album might be framed against LPs we know, such as the McLaughlin/Santana set Love, Devotion, Surrender, or the 1974 Santana/Alice Coltrane set, Illuminations. Like Jimi, Carlos wasn’t a jazz player, but that never stopped him from jamming with serious jazzers like Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. This is a reasonable bet for how a rocker like Hendrix might have explored the jazz universe.

One also has to think about reggae. As a musician based as much in London as in New York, Jimi would have been right at ground zero for the U.K. reggae boom of the ’70s, when white British musicians picked up on the hip, groove-based sounds of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. It would be hard not to see Jimi trying out a few reggae moves, as many rock musicians experimented with the fresh island sounds, from Eric Clapton (“I Shot the Sheriff”) to Jeff Beck (“She’s a Woman”) to Led Zeppelin (“D’yer Maker”).

It’s harder to gauge the impact Jimi Hendrix would have had on the funk universe. Considering that he, along with James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone, helped invent the genre, it’s difficult to see whether the guitarist would have continued to be a guiding force or merely relegated to being one of its forefathers. Judging by “Ezy Rider” and “Freedom,” Jimi’s own material was certainly headed in a funkier direction (see “Bringing the Funk”), so he might have been a big star of that genre. Or perhaps he would have collaborated with Parliament/Funkadelic, the Ohio Players, or Tower of Power on some bootylicious recordings. One could even speculate on a partnership with War, the California-based funk band fronted by ex-Animals singer Eric Burdon; you may recall it was Animals’ bassist Chas Chandler who “discovered” Jimi in ’66. It’s an interesting exercise that brings the Jimi/Chas connection full circle. Lending further credence to this idea is the fact Hendrix did sit in with War on September 16, 1970, two days before his death. It would be his last performance ever.

Like many rock giants of the late ’60s/early ’70s explosion, however, Jimi may well have hit the wall by the end of the decade. With the rise of punk, disco, and the arena crunch of Aerosmith, Kiss, and Van Halen, Hendrix may have retreated from the spotlight, as his brand of blues-fueled guitar may have sounded anachronistic by the early ’80s. But there was hope…

In the ’80s, Hendrix’s career may very well have re-blossomed, thanks to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robin Trower, and Frank Marino (much the way Clapton and the late Mike Bloomfield helped revive the careers of B.B. King, Muddy Waters, and other electric blues icons 15 years earlier). Even if Jimi’s career didn’t hit high gear in the ’80s, one could see him on the ubiquitous Alligator Records label, cranking out fresh electric blues alongside Roy Buchanan, Johnny Winter, and Albert Collins. Think about it.

Into the ’90s (and assuming he was still musically active), Hendrix would have been perfectly positioned to ride the wave that saw the Fender Stratocaster and Gibson Les Paul return to their rightful places as definitive rock instruments. Furthermore, with Stevie Ray Vaughan’s passing in 1990, he would have been the world’s preeminent living Strat player, especially as retro rock continued to rise in popularity. Around the millennium, anything would have been possible – a Hendrix/Clapton CD of their favorite Chicago blues tunes, or a Hendrix/Beck jam of electro-fusion, pushing the Strat deeper into outer space. The sky’s the limit…

Today he would a be 68 years old – a rock-and-roll elder statesmen, either winding down a long, fascinating career or, like Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan, touring as much for personal pleasure as anything else. And while all of the thoughts and ideas here are pure speculation, Hendrix left a number of musical clues as to where he was headed toward the end of 1970. Whatever would have happened, good or bad, his later career would undoubtedly have been colorful and exciting. Then again, the man left us four years of brilliant, earth-changing rock and roll. In that light, perhaps it’s greedy to wish for more.

Bringing The Funk
Hendix’s Late Studio Recordings

In a span of only four years, Jimi Hendrix carved out a career that still reverberates and entrances music fans and historians alike. However, his legacy is rife with questions and conundrums – from those trying to decipher veiled meanings in his music to others wondering why he died so carelessly.

One simple-but-perplexing question asks why Hendrix didn’t release more studio albums. This is all the more bewildering when you consider he had more than ample time to do so – in fact, there were two full years between the fall ’68 release of Electric Ladyland and his accidental death in September, 1970. This was an era when rock bands routinely put out one album per year and sometimes more – Led Zeppelin released its first two albums in 1969 and Black Sabbath put out its first two classics the next year. So, was Hendrix on permanent vacation during this span? Hardly. In addition to building his own studio (New York City’s Electric Lady) and touring incessantly to help pay the construction bills, Hendrix was laying down tracks – lots of them. The good news is that, despite the absence of a final studio album, enough material had been released to make a serious study of the guitarist’s late recordings. With that in mind, let’s take a look at what is essentially the second half of Jimi Hendrix’s recording career.

The recently released Valleys of Neptune is good jumping-off point for a primer on the guitarist’s late style, as it captures a number of studio recordings from 1969 and ’70. Despite the high audio quality and production values on Neptune, it’s still a posthumous Jimi album and, as such, only a glimpse of how he might have tweaked these tracks for release. As one hears regularly in material cut during the last two years of his life, its focus is on a stripped-down trio format and a brutish blend of hard rock, blues, soul and, most of all, funk. For example, you’ll hear “Valleys of Neptune,” a mid-tempo, soulful rocker, and the explosive “Bleeding Heart,” both of which sit comfortably next to later tracks like “Freedom” and “Roomful of Mirrors” as evidence of the increasingly urban late-Hendrix style. The Experience’s concert favorite, a cover of Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” is equally powerful. What you won’t find from the early Hendrix days are any nods to pop hit-making – you won’t hear the sweet psychedelic trippiness of “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” in later recordings. This is lean, mean Jimi.

Another glimpse of later Hendrix in the studio is The Baggy’s Rehearsal Sessions, a Dagger Records CD of live-in-the-studio recordings from December, 1969, featuring bassist Billy Cox and drummer/vocalist Buddy Miles. These jams were recorded shortly before the fabled Band of Gypsys concert at New York’s Fillmore East, ostensibly to tighten up the set for the upcoming show. Just cue up this version of “Ezy Rider,” which packs a veritable right-cross to the jaw, while “Burning Desire” and the studio version of “Power of Love” get that deep-funk/Band of Gypsys treatment. There are no frills and no Sgt. Pepper-inspired fashion puffery – just a tight trio at the peak of its game. And while you can argue that Baggy’s was never intended as an official studio album, the recordings do capture Hendrix’s musical mindset at the end of ’69. In that light, it’s a useful – and quite enjoyable – studio document.

Released in ’97, First Rays of the New Rising Sun is the definitive posthumous Hendrix album. Made up of remastered and retooled tracks from such ’70s LPs as The Cry of Love, Rainbow Bridge, and War Heroes, it’s the closest thing we have to Jimi’s last studio album. Compared to Are You Experienced? and Axis: Bold as Love, these recordings crisply reveal his leaner approach to arranging and instrumentation. Again, gone are the psychedelic pastiches of the early Chas-Chandler-produced albums; they’re now replaced by an earthier vibe – just guitars, bass, and drums, without many of the backwards-tracked guitars and wild echo and flanging sounds (though “Drifting” does showcase some of those effects). Of course, we don’t know how Jimi might have adjusted the tracks during final mixdown, but quite a few of them are extremely close to being final mixes, according to John McDermott’s typically illuminating track annotations.

“Roomful of Mirrors” is a great example of Hendrix’s growing hard funk/rock hybrid, featuring fiesty Latin percussion and Billy Cox’s propulsive bassline, along with stereo-panned slide guitar. “Dolly Dagger” remains a stunning fusion of rock and soul, embellished with rhythm guitar licks that harkened Jimi’s days on the R&B circuit – in retrospect, there’s no way contemporaries like Clapton, Beck, or Page could have pulled off masterful chord work like that. Perhaps the coup de grâce is “Ezy Rider,” a remarkable blending of what we might now call “FM hard rock” over a funky groove with more Latin influences. Like Santana, Traffic, and Chicago, Hendrix was now emphasizing the rhythm section in much of his later work. It was a brand-new decade and Jimi was clearly getting his groove on.

The broader lesson one gets from listening to Jimi’s post-1968 recordings is that there are two distinct eras of Hendrix’s studio legacy. One is the earlier pop-fueled, psychedelic work guided by Chas Chandler and the other is the later, self-produced work that came from a thousand studio jams and sessions for his never-completed last album. And in the middle is Electric Ladyland, arguably the transition between Jimi’s distinct eras of polychromatic acid rock and the dangerous, politically-charged funk of his final months. Neither is superior to the other, but 40 years on, we can now see them as separate entities of unsurpassed beauty and power.

This article originally appeared in VG December 2010 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

“And the Oscar goes to…”

If they gave out Academy Awards for the best guitar instructional film, Tom Feldmann’s latest on Robert Johnson would be a shoe-in.

We rarely review instructional videos, but this one is something special. And it’s more than just a how-to guide: it’s an in-depth, note-for-note documentary look at the playing style of one of the most influential bluesmen of all time. And for that reason alone – whether you’re willing to sell your soul to the devil to learn to play like Mr. Johnson or not – you owe it to yourself to check out Mr. Feldmann’s study.

Johnson of course needs no introduction, but Feldmann may to those not up on the blues. Based from a small town in Minnesota, he has immersed himself in traditional country blues stylings, releasing several CDs of his own recordings, plus a series of stellar how-to DVDs on Charlie Patton, Son House, Bukka White, and more. Few pickers today play these old-time blues so naturally and intuitively.

Feldmann’s long-antipicated Johnson set has been well worth the wait. First, the technical details. The package includes three DVDs with a total running time of 352 minutes – that’s almost six hours. And the songs are available in both tab and musical notation in pdf form on the DVDs as well.

Feldmann covers most all of the 29 songs that Johnson cut in 1936-’37. He organizes his lessons by guitar tunings – standard, drop D, cross-note, Spanish, and Vestapol.

He then makes sense of the song similarities by organizing them into variations on themes. For instance, he goes through “Kind Hearted Woman” in patient detail, then explains how Johnson used that song form to create variations, seguing into explanations of “Phonograph Blues,” “32-20 Blues,” and several others. He also explains the efficacy of fingerings and the why behind the how. This logical approach makes understanding and playing the songs dramatically clearer.

As a teacher, Feldmann is ideal; as a blues historian, he’s downright heroic. His understanding and explanation of Johnson’s playing – as well as the other country blues greats – is masterful.

It’s also insightful, and this will be a reason that Feldmann’s films endure. No need to traipse to a crossroads at midnight and strike a bargain; just pop Feldmann’s DVDs into your player. Maybe this takes away some of that romance, but fear not – there’s still hours and hours of good old woodshedding left.

This article originally appeared in VG November 2014 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady have been playing music together for 53 years – 40 of them as Hot Tuna. What started as an acoustic splinter group from their gig with Jefferson Airplane morphed into both acoustic and electric variations and myriad combinations.Released on the heels of Tuna’s successful “blues tour” with Charlie Musselwhite, Jim Lauderdale, and G.E. Smith, Tuna’s first studio album in 20 years, Steady As She Goes (Red House), is an artistic triumph – its six originals alongside material associated with Kaukonen’s longtime muse, Rev. Gary Davis, proving Hot Tuna is stronger than ever.

Why is this Hot Tuna’s first studio album in 20 years?
It’s a valid question, and it presupposes that we try to order our lives in a predictable way. I guess we just weren’t ready yet. But I did two CDs with Red House and said, “What about a Hot Tuna project?” They jumped at it. I got to use Larry Campbell again as a producer and as a co-player and co-writer, and we got to do it at Levon Helm’s place. So in a way, it was a perfect storm of creativity.

There are a lot of talented people in this business, but to say Larry is a multi-instrumentalist doesn’t begin to tell you what this man brings to the table. Yes, he plays each instrument as if it were his only instrument, but as a producer, he puts himself into your band, and I don’t think it’s something he has to make himself do. In the studio, his musical sensibilities are so unbelievable, you just trust him.

What was your electric setup on the CD?
I have a Gibson LP-295 I used on the electric stuff where I was fingerpicking, I used a Gibson Chet Atkins SST I’ve had a long time. I have a ’67 Fender Deluxe – which is not vintage to me, because I bought it new; it’s just old. I also used a Louis Electric 2×12, which is what I use onstage. On “Angel Of Darkness” I used a ’50s Bogan PA amp that’s been made into a guitar amp, and on “Children Of Zion” I used my SST through a ’30s Oahu steel-guitar amp.
Recently, Gibson used an Airplane song, “Volunteers,” for its new Firebird X, so I thought, “I’ve got to have one of those.” Well, they’re real expensive, and I’m not interested in a modeling guitar. But Gibson gave me a new Les Paul Standard, and I love it so much I would have paid for it.

Which acoustics did you use on the CD?
I used the Jorma M-30 that Martin makes. But since this is Vintage Guitar, I have to add that I still have my ’59 Gibson J-50 I bought new for a hundred bucks at Pop’s Music Store in Dayton, Ohio – which sort of defined my guitar playing life for so many years. I don’t have any of the old electric guitars – they’re long gone – but I’ve got that J-50. It’s sort of fragile in its old age, but it’s still a great-sounding guitar.

What do you think constitutes a “psychedelic” guitar player?
When I came into playing with the Airplane, I’d played in a band with Jack in high school and stuff, but I thought of my guitar as an amplified guitar, not an electric guitar. We didn’t use any of the tricks we’ve all come to take for granted. So it was kind of like on-the-job learning. I’d really never played with a band and came in knowing almost nothing. Then we just sort of listened to what was going on and kind of followed the music. I can’t say that I “architected” anything, but I think if you’re given a great song to play with, and everybody else is playing the song, you’re totally free to go a lot of different places. For a guy like me, whose style is uncluttered by knowing Albert King or B.B. King licks or any of that stuff, I honestly just played what I felt and got lucky. If you listen to the solos on “Somebody To Love” and “White Rabbit,” I mean, I’d never played in F# before in my life! Surrealistic Pillow was recorded on four-track, no noise reduction. So you couldn’t keep doing overdubs because the tape sound would degrade.

When I got into electric guitar, Mike Bloomfield was a gatekeeper for me in the beginning. I’d never seen anybody play the guitar like that. He sort of showed me how to do stuff and demystified that overdriven sound. And there was an Ike & Tina Turner song called “If You Can Hully Gully (I Can Hully Gully Too),” with a guitar solo that’s insane. Then there was Eric Clapton – the John Mayall stuff and the Cream stuff. He opened so many doors, too. When I got to know him a little, I thought it was funny that the Cream stuff wasn’t his favorite music. I thought they were brilliant. I had never heard an electric band so righteously take these acoustic blues things and turn them into electric stuff without being stupid or silly – just taking them to that level. In my opinion, nobody else has done it as well. I’d heard all the originals of those songs, and they captured the essence of what they needed to capture and turned it into their thing.

What’s it like playing with Jack Casady?
Jack is my oldest buddy, obviously. We’ve been playing together since ’58. We’ve always respected each other as artists and as men, and we read each other really well. He just listens to what’s going on and knows what is needed. When I do solo stuff, I have a collection of building blocks, and I move around this way and that way. It’s kind of like a Rubik’s cube until you get what you want. But Jack’s solos every night are so different. It’s like, “Where is this stuff coming from?” It’s a really deep well.

Anybody playing in a band will appreciate this: Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen and Hot Tuna have never had a band meeting. I think that has a lot to do with why we’re still buddies. We just listen to each other.

This article originally appeared in VG August 2011 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

“A lot of critics perceived us as being pretentious,” says Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson of his band’s early years. “We were not representative of where they thought rock was heading.” • Responding after being asked about a comment he made in the award-winning 2010 documentary Beyond The Lighted Stage(“We always felt it was us against the establishment.”), Lifeson elaborates. “We only cared about playing and performing best we could. If people hated us for whatever reason, that was fine. Everybody’s got the right to like and dislike something, but it was painful, at times, to read stuff that was just plain nasty.”

In the summer of ’68, Lifeson joined friends Jeff Jones on bass and John Rutsey on drums to form a band they called The Projection. Jones left after one gig and was replaced by a schoolmate named Geddy Lee as the band evolved to become Rush. Six years later, as they prepared for their first American tour, management decided that Rutsey, whose diabetes was exacerbated by what they saw as excessive use of alcohol, couldn’t handle the stress of touring. So, Neil Peart took over on drums, and would subsequently become the band’s primary lyricist. In the decades that followed, Rush amassed more than 24 gold and 14 platinum albums, placing them in the company of the Beatles and Rolling Stones in terms of sales.

Their eponymous 1974 debut reflected the influences of Led Zeppelin, Cream, Deep Purple, and The Who. But by the next album, 1975’s Fly By Night, they began relying on their own musical instincts and Peart’s more-literary lyrics. With the 1976 release of 2112, the band was hitting its stride and released a string of impressive efforts leading up to 1981’s Moving Pictures, which includes its best-known song (“Tom Sawyer”) and remains its biggest seller.

Through the group’s many musical changes, Lifeson has provided unique guitar work on electric and acoustic guitar, as well as on mandolin, bouzouki, mandola, and keyboards. In concert, he incorporates a multitude of electronic effects, including bass pedal synthesizers.

Rush uses a MIDI controller in concert, which allows them to re-create the intricacies of their album sounds without having to add musicians or employ backing tracks.

On the band’s just-completed tour, Lifeson used several Gibson guitars, including his trademark ES-355, a ’58 reissue Les Paul sunburst, ’59 reissue Les Paul with tobacco-sunburst finish, and a Howard Roberts Fusion, along with two Martin acoustics (D-10 and D-12) and a Garrison OM-20 octave mandolin.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has just completed this year’s inductions, and Rush has once again been bypassed. What are you feelings on that?

It’s not a big concern. It’s a business that makes a lot of money and I have no problem with that, but it’s not a real representation of what rock music is about. There are certainly a lot bands in there that I admire, like Zeppelin and U2. But if we’re not wanted there, I really don’t care. Being inducted is not going to change my life at all.

As an aspiring guitarist, were you more impressed with Jimi Hendrix, or Eric Clapton with Cream?

Oh, from the very beginning, Hendrix blew my mind. He was just amazing. There was no thinking about ever reaching his level. Everything he did seemed so nuanced and out of this world, especially at that time. You could never replicate that tone, or how he played those things. I certainly didn’t have the dexterity to do it. As a kid, Clapton’s solos seemed a little easier and more approachable. I remember sitting at my record player and moving the needle back and forth to get the solo in “Spoonful.” But there was nothing I could do with Hendrix.

What about Jimmy Page as an influence?

Jimmy Page has always been my absolute guitar hero. From the first time I heard Zeppelin’s first album, I wanted to play just like him. I wanted to dress just like him. When I finally got to meet him in ’98, I was so nervous, like a little kid. My hand was shaking when I handed him a copy of my solo album, Victor, on which I had written something saying how much he meant to me.

Any other major influences outside of the usual suspects?

I loved Steve Hackett’s playing with Genesis in the early ’70s; the way he worked melodies into the context of the music. He would stay in the background for the rhythmic stuff, but when needed, add a line that echoed or complemented a keyboard. It was always tasteful and sounded great.

You saw The Who play live in ’67, when you were 14 years old. What do you remember most about the show?

They were opening for Herman’s Hermits, and were simply amazing. I remember watching Townshend, noticing his strumming, and how the voicing in his chords was unique and covered a lot of territory. It was incredible.

You started taking classical guitar lessons when you were 17…

Yes, and I was very serious. I enjoyed the discipline, but the following year, 1971, the drinking age in Ontario was lowered from 21 to 18, and we went from playing two or three gigs a month to playing six days a week in clubs, and sometimes Saturday afternoon. Everything became full-time, so I had to give up the lessons.

Was it a matter of ego that you decided Rush didn’t need a second guitar player?

Actually, I was very self-conscious about my playing in those days. And we did have a couple of other guitar players; Geddy’s brother-in-law played rhythm guitar and keyboards the first year. Then we had Mitch Bossie for awhile, but he was more about image than playing, so it didn’t work out.

There are still times when I’d like to have another guitar player in the band… most times (laughs)!

In Beyond The Lighted Stage, you say 2112 was a do-or-die album because the record company was considering dropping the band.

Well, there was definitely pressure to do something similar to our first album, which really reflected our roots and was very Zeppelinesque. Before we released 2112, we did Caress Of Steel, which was much more experimental than our early ones and an important part of our growth. But because it was a commercial failure, there was a lot of pressure to make something Mercury considered more palatable to a rock audience, not so esoteric.

That idea probably didn’t fly well with the band.

Definitely not. Even though all of us were very broke at the time, we weren’t going to buckle and remake our first album. We figured, “At the end of the day, Rush is about who we are and what we are. If we can’t do the album on our own terms, what’s the point? We may as well go back to working straight jobs instead of becoming a bar band for a few years then ending everything.”

So we went into the album with the passion of having to fight the establishment again. And the music resonated with fans and became very successful. It really bought us our independence and freedom from ever having anyone at a record company influence or control how we do our music. A lot of musicians from other bands look up to us for that, because that’s the ideal for any musician.

To what do you attribute the enduring popularity of “Tom Sawyer?”

There’s the spirit of the lyrics – that swagger. There’s that keyboard opening, that bass sound… that’s a real signature. Neil’s drumming is spectacular on it. Every time we play the song live, it’s a challenge for him to reproduce it. I guess, structurally, the song is very sound. It’s not particularly repetitive, and has some interesting dynamics. I could never have never imagined that 30 years later, it’s still very active in terms of requests that it gets for television and film usage, and, of course, radio airplay.

You reportedly only did five takes on it. Is that typical of the way you work?

Yes, most of my solos are like that. I prefer doing very few takes. Over the years, I’ve found that when I’m soloing, I get stale very quickly. I’m too self-aware of my playing. Everything works best for me when I’m impulsive.

Which three of or four Rush tracks do you think best display your virtuosity? 

Boy, that’s a tough question. “Limelight” definitely has one of my favorite solos. “Kid Gloves” is probably my second favorite; really off-the-cuff. Listening to it always makes me smile. “Natural Science” is always a challenge to execute in concert.

What were the first guitars you used after the band became popular?

I bought a Gibson ES-335 on our first tour, then got a Les Paul in ’76. Those were my main guitars until the late ’70s. I also had a Strat as a backup and for a different sound. I dropped a Bill Lawrence  humbucker in it, and a Floyd Rose vibrato. In ’76, I got another 335 – my white one – which became my main guitar. I love that guitar and still use it on tour and in the studio. It’s a perfect weight, and has real creamy tone.

What were your next ones? 

I started using a Howard Roberts Fusion as my main guitar for a few years, then a Signature, which was a Canadian-built copy guitar that was awful to play – very uncomfortable – but had a particular sound I liked. The last few years, I’ve used Gibsons almost exclusively. There’s nothing like having a low-slung Les Paul over my shoulder! The tonality and playing is so great, so traditional.

You’ve also used PRS guitars. Would you agree that Les Pauls typically have a heavier sound than a PRS?

Most of my experience has been with the PRS CE, which has a smaller body, which gives it a smaller presence and tighter midrange. The vibrato is fantastic; you don’t need a locking nut and I never had any tuning issues with them. The Les Paul seems more expressive to me. Their sustain is different, and the guitar resonates in a different way.

How is work on the new album coming along?

Well, our intent was to have it out this year, but after we started it, we thought, “Let’s go on a short tour, get in shape, then finish it.” Then the tour did so well that there was pressure on us to do another run, then we decided to do another leg. We’ll take a few months off after it’s finished, and complete songwriting. Geddy and I are working on several new songs to balance out the six we’ve already written.

As a band that has been recording for nearly 40 years, it must be a real challenge to come up with new ideas and avoid becoming a caricature of yourself.

That’s always our ultimate worry. We’re always concerned about repeating ourselves, always looking to go in different directions. But it’s difficult. You don’t want to go toofar outside what you’re known for just because you think you have to. Lately, I’ve been trying to challenge myself with different tunings, particularly in the context of songwriting, because the guitar becomes totally different, and having Geddy play off what I’m doing with the tunings sometimes takes us in new directions. I think we have a pretty good understanding of what our older fans want. I don’t think they want us to keep doing the same old thing.

Is there such a thing a typical Rush fan?

I don’t know. Since the documentary, we have a new level of popularity and a broader fan base. There are a lot more females at shows than in the past because there are things in the documentary that women relate to – the connections we have with our families, and the women we married when we were young and have been with ever since.

The typical Rush fan? Hard to say. Probably fairly intelligent; very interested in music and information. Knowledgeable.

Do you think rock music is healthy in 2011, or are its best days in the past?

Well, a lot of the music on classic-rock radio has great staying power. When that music was made, times were very different – the listening experience, the presentation. Now, communication is instantaneous and broad. Yeah, there’s a lot of lousy music around, but there are also a lot of different kinds. You have to look hard to find a niche you’re interested in.

I have to admit, music doesn’t connect with me the way it did when I was younger; when I really enjoyed the experience of spending the time exploring the talents of a particular artist. Also, having a nice big album cover to look at while I was listening to the music was a much richer experience than downloading and having an iPod with 1,000 songs.

It’s been a very long time since rock dominated the music charts.

Yeah! What happened? Is it because of the quality of music? This generation has grown up on different influences. Rap and hip-hop isn’t my cup of tea. I try to be open-minded about it, but honestly I don’t see any real quality there. I recently had to bring my TV into a place to get repaired, and while I was standing in the queue, I was watching a huge TV on the wall. The sound was turned off, and there was some concert footage of Ricky Martin with all this dancing. It looked so ridiculous. Music is all about dancing now. To me, it has lost the plot. Is all that dancing really more important to people than real music?

What’s the secret for keeping a band together as long as Rush?

Well, I think mainly it’s that we’ve always gotten along. We keep things light and fun, and have always been a great challenge and inspiration to each other. Geddy and I will get together to talk about what we’re going to do next, and we’ll sit around, drink coffee, laugh, and fart. He’s still my best friend in the world. We just happen to be in a band together. Me, Geddy, and Neil are like a brotherhood. We’re family, and we work hard at staying as one.

This article originally appeared in VG September 2011 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.