Shred vs. Grunge

Wgg: What do you think about the general state of - let's just limit it to guitar playing? We had the 80's with the focus on technique and then came Grunge and technique was suddenly considered "bad"....

Scott: Well, I guess none of that really ever influenced my life at all. Only because I sort of saw that all as kind of just fads that come and go.

I never got into Shred that much. I just never really liked it because it sounded to me like a lot of notes but not a whole lot of feel and not a whole lot of phrasing. It just sorta sounded like chops to me.

When I first heard Van Halen I didn't feel that way. You know, I heard Van Halen and I heard him play with all this technique and this 2 hand thing that I thought was really cool, then just about everybody that followed Eddie... I didn't get it. I see that they are copying Eddie and I see that they are tapping on their guitars with their fingers but I didn't hear the soul and the phrasing that Eddie Van Halen had.

The only guys that have come around to me... like Yngwie (Malmsteen) is really good, he can actually play the guitar. When I heard everybody else it seemed like, "Ok, I don't hear a lot of good phrasing. I just hear a lot of notes."

It sort of bypassed me. I hear this really wide vibrato and a super amount of notes but it all started to sound the same to me.

Freak show at the circus

Wgg: So do you think that phrasing is the one thing that most players neglect?

Scott: Well, most heavy metal players - most modern rock guitar players. That seemed to be an element that got lost along the way.

I've seen it at school. I see guys that are into technique - blazingly fast guitar. And for my ears it's sorta like going to the circus. You go there and you see it and then you don't really go back until a couple years later.

Wgg: Like a freak show?

Scott: Yeah, like a freak show. It's something that I listen to and I go, "Wow, that was really fast," and I go, "That caught my attention for a minute."

Would I sit there and listen to it again?

No!

It didn't have a whole lot of meat to my ears but then I hear the same thing when I listen to Grunge. I listen to it and I go, "Yeah, that had a cool feel." But there still wasn't that much there to interest me, being a Jazz musician.

I guess what I'm trying to say is the popular movements among guitar players sort of just didn't have much effect on what I do.

What I do has never really been that popular - so I've just kept doing it. Wasn't popular when Shred was around, wasn't popular when Grunge was around, so it doesn't really make much difference to me.

Peer pressure

We've never been a popular band in the States anyway - and the States is where these trends happen mostly.

People in Europe are way more open minded. In the States music is not just music. It's a lifestyle. It's a peer group.

So if you have a group of people that listen to one kind of music they don't veer away from that very much. Otherwise they are considered a "geek" among their friends.

That whole concept to me is so ridiculous that it's just laughable - we just laugh at it. Like these movements, to me they are just funny because in Europe it's never been that way. You'll find a guy that went to a Mozart concert one night, went to see a Jazz show the next night, went to see a Metal show the next night and they just go to whatever is there. They don't have a peer group that's gonna think they are idiots for listening to whatever they wanna listen to like in the States.

The States even in other art forms and in TV... you can see how cliquey it is. It's very niche oriented and people that form these little niches very often don't veer out from them.

That's why you see what you see on TV. That's just America. America is kind of a culturally fucked up country, unfortunately.