What inspires me to write and play music .
As you go on through life you encounter people, things and events .
that sometimes have a profound effect on you.
out of many such experiences, a few immediately spring to mind . .
My main influences as a guitar player go back a long way, all the way to the Beatles and KISS, in fact. They were the first bands that got me aware of the guitar as a way cool instrument to play. So my first real guitar hero was Ace Frehley of KISS, and I spent many a moon staying up trying to figure out all of his licks, especially from the Alive! album. .
(vinyl, remember).
I also got quite heavily into the twin lead guitar sound of Iron Maiden, who really taught me alot about what what melodic soloing and great feeling in guitar solos was all about. And who can forget the short but glorious stint of Vinnie Vincent in Kiss 83-84 ! He is truly one of the most underrated guitar players ever, and in my opinion he never topped his playing on .
Kiss' "Creatures of the night" and "Lick It Up", neither before or after.
After that I discovered Randy Rhoads and later Yngwie, who really opened the floodgates, so to speak, with a whole new vocabulary of playing, that also got me interested in classical music big-time. After that it was inevitable that I discovered the whole "Mike Varney" stable " of guitarists, Tony MacAlpine, Vinnie Moore, Paul Gilbert, Jason Becker,.
the list goes on and on .
This was during the late eighties "Guitar Boom" when a whole new standard of guitar playing was reached. It was during this period, up until the early 90's when I did most of my woodshedding on my guitar. Ah, the many hours of sweat and blood, with nothing but your guitar, 3 octave triplet sequences, some coffee, a metronome and a love for music ! My love for classical music also got me into playing classical guitar and learning the violin. This was a period where it was cool to be a great musician, and it seemed that most musicians you knew really tried to improve themselves.
