A Quote by Paul Gilbert
I waited until the end of the 'Behold Electric Guitar' recording sessions to record 'A Herd of Turtles,' as I knew the unusual arrangement might raise some eyebrows.
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A Herd of Turtles' is the only song on 'Behold Electric Guitar' that is not strictly instrumental. But instead of singing, I am reciting a poem. My poem is about overcoming challenges.
I was interested in the electric guitar even before I knew the difference between electric and acoustic. The electric guitar seemed to be a totally fascinating plank of wood with knobs and switches on it. I just had to have one.
Now I'm at a point where I decided I'm going to be in the studio for a while, at least until I finish this record I'm working on now. I should have two, three, four of the sessions that I had that were similar to the sessions for Peace Trail before I have a complete record.
If I make a move, like raise my eyebrows, some critic says I'm doing Nicholson. What am I supposed to do, cut off my eyebrows?
I came into my own, you might say, in terms of putting out my first record quite late in life. And yet there's some authors and photographers and even probably recording artists that didn't really hit their stride until their mid-50s.
I do try to reduce my carbon footprint a little bit by travelling around London on my electric bike. A lot of people raise their eyebrows but I love riding it.
I loved the idea of recording. The idea of sound-on-sound-recording captured me as a young kid, and once I realized what it was I had an epiphany. Before I was even playing the guitar, I would create these lists of how I would record things and overdub them, like Led Zeppelin song, 'I could put this guitar on this track...' and so on.
I knew absolutely nothing about recording. I had this four-track recorder, and I'd plug my electric guitar right into it, which sounded real bad. I moved any fader that made a drastic change in sound. I thought that was cool - that it was communicating something. I didn't have the skills to do anything subtle. It was just like screaming.
Some sessions are stars and some sessions are stones, but in the end they are all rocks and we build upon them.
We expect to keep our writing sessions going until late spring, then to play some new material in a few secret club dates. The record will likely take a long time and may not surface until 1999!
Are people crazy? People waited all their lives. They waited to live, they waited to die. They waited in line to buy toilet paper. They waited in line for money. And if they didn't have any money they waited in longer lines. You waited to go to sleep and then you waited to awaken. You waited to get married and you waited to get divorced. You waited for it to rain, you waited for it to stop. You waited to eat and then you waited to eat again. You waited in a shrink's office with a bunch of psychos and you wondered if you were one.
The thing is that I have a really intense, almost compulsive need to record. But it doesn't end there, because what I record is somehow transformed into a creative thing. There is a continuity. Recording is the beginning of a conceptual production. I am somehow collapsing the two - recording and producing - into a single event.
I feel some allegiance to pushing electric-guitar music into a different realm, somewhere that isn't retrospective. There's a lot of guitar bands that are a tribute to the 1970s or the Nineties. I want to experiment with guitar music more.
There was a show in Germany called Beat Club, and they had a lot of bands playing live. And I had this master plan, at 11 years old, I wanted to play electric guitar, but I knew... We lived in a small apartment, there was no way that was going to happen. I told my parents I wanted a classical guitar and I wanted to start studying classical guitar. So then a few years later, I think around 16 or so, I started playing electric. But that was my, my plan as an 11 year old. I thought I was so crafty.
When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble. I don't only listen to the guitar player.
When do you suppose the electric guitar was invented? If you thought the 1950s, you'd be wrong. If you can muster a recollection of hearing electric guitar in Lionel Hampton's big band in the 1940s and date it to that decade, you'd still be off - by more than 30 years.
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