MR. BIG Guitarist PAUL GILBERT - "My Guitar Playing Was Formed Listening To LED ZEPPELIN, AEROSMITH, JIMI HENDRIX"

21:41 Tuesday, 23 July 2024

Greg Prato, reporting for Ultimate-Guitar.com:

Paul Gilbert's name definitely sits among the most influential guitar shredders who came out of the 1980s. What is, however, somewhat unconventional about Paul's style of playing is that, for such a technically proficient guitar player, he tends to hold his instrument pretty low. How he manages to play all those fast and intricate parts so cleanly with the guitar fairly low is pretty impressive.

This is why we took the opportunity to ask Paul that question during our recent interview. Mr. Big is promoting their newly released album Ten, we discussed the matter with the guitar legend.

Ultimate-Guitar: How do you manage to keep the guitar strapped so low and still play well?

Paul Gilbert: "The wrist position for a lot of things is important for blues and blues-based rock. It's actually if the guitar gets up too high, it messes with your wrist position. And there's no one wrist position that's perfect for everything. If you're doing a lot of barre chords or a lot of really big stretches, that works really well having the guitar up high.

"But to me, my guitar playing was formed listening to Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith and Jimi Hendrix. So, to get that kind of vibrato and string bending, which is a big part of what I like about guitar, the wrist needs to be up more. And if your guitars up here, it's really hard to get the wrist up.

"And you'll see the thumb creeping over, not even because the thumb needs to be over, but just because the wrist needs to be there. So, the thumb is just sort of like an indication of where the wrist is.

"So, as the guitar comes down, it's a lot easier to get the wrist in the right place, to be able to bend the strings like Jimmy Page or Brian May or the 'legendary '70s string benders.'

"Now, as it gets lower, actually, that stuff's still relatively easy to do. It's just the barre chords get harder. Which is kind of amazing watching Johnny Ramone because he does play barre chords and still does it low. What he was doing probably would have been easier with it up a bit. But he didn't mind working.

"So, really, to me, it's about the wrist. And the players that play up really high don't tend to have 'Jimmy Page vibrato.' And you can have a career without that. But to me, for my own checklist of stuff I love, I gotta have that."