Bon Jovi’s Phil X Talks About Improving Guitar Skills and Avoiding Mistakes

Bon Jovi guitarist Phil X recently sat down for an interview with Guitar Summit and shared insights on how he improved his guitar playing. He didn’t hesitate to offer advice and discuss mistakes guitarists should avoid.

He said: “My ear training was learning Aerosmith and AC/DC and ‘Back In Black’ without help. I think that’s more important. There’s a kid I know and he’s been playing for six years but sounds like he’s been playing for two months, and he took lessons. So that teacher sucks and maybe he doesn’t practice, so he sucks. But the bottom line is you see other people that have been playing for 6 months and sound they’ve been playing for like 20 years, they’re amazing.”

Phil X highlighted what’s more important when learning guitar and warned against one thing that many guitarists do: “It’s not how long you’ve been playing, it’s how much you put into it in that length of time. And again the ear training thing is learning on your own and not watching a video because it’s funny. Somebody put up a video of playing the solo to Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ like Eddie’s solo incorrectly. Now there’s a whole slew of people playing it incorrectly because they learned it from that guy. F*ck that guy.”

He also stressed the importance of practice, but pointed out that many guitarists miss some key elements: “I had this thing called ‘conquer the lick’ where I would try to come up with really crazy, abnormal licks that my fingers weren’t accustomed to and I wouldn’t put down the guitar until I had nailed it,” he told Guitar Skills earlier, “and that not only helped me gather my vocabulary of personal favorites of my own licks but it also developed my technique.”

The guitarist went on to explain the importance of communication between the left and right hands, “It got my fingers doing stuff that they couldn’t do prior: left hand, right hand, talking to each other, and the communication between left and right hand is almost like an art that is lost to some players. Like, you can see them picking and you can see them fingering with the left hand but you can see that they are not joined. You can see that they are not talking to each other, and that’s where sloppiness comes from… I don’t think a lot of people put enough effort into that.”

In other news, Bon Jovi recently appeared on the Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales chart with their song ‘Now or Never,’ which debuted at number 13. The track, is led by Pitbull and it features the chorus from ‘It’s My Life.’