Guitarists Who Kept Trying To Learn After Becoming Stars

General Music Discussion
#1

I’m always amazed at how many guitarists achieve a very high level of proficiency in lead guitar playing fairly early i their lives, but then make little or no effort to continue to grow as lead guitarists.

I reall have to think to come up with exceptions to this, so here are a few guys who I think are or were, exceptions:
Glenn Tipton and K.K.Downing of Judas Priest - In the 1970’s they were very much blues based heavy metal guitarists with a good technique for the standards of the time although they weren’t considered to be on the level of greats of that era such as Ritchie Blackmore, Michael Schenker, or Uli Jon Roth. However, they gradually showed an increase in their technical abilities,with early 80s albums such as Screaming For Vengeance and Defenders Of the Faith. Then by the early 90s, with the Painkiller album they had made dramatic improvements in their technical abilities with faster, clean alternate picking and even sweep picked arpeggios! That kind of constant drive to improve is rare for some reason and I commend them for having it.

Criss Oliva of Savatage - Criss made significant changes in his lead playing from the Savage debut album “Sirens” to his last album he recorded with Savage - “Edge Of Thorns.” I always liked his playing very much. I thought his playing on “Sirens” was great - so aggressive and intense! As time went by you could here that he was moving away from being primarily a blues scale based player to a player who utilized diatonic scales more and more. While his picking continued to remain impressive, he greatly refined his legato technique, his phrasing and his use of tapping.

Randy Rhoads - I haven’t heard much of his playing with Quiet Riot and what I have heard was many years ago so I don’t clearly remember how it sounded but he clearly made some leaps and bounds in his playing from his time in Quiet Riot to his playing with Ozzy. As great as he had become by the time he had become Ozzy’s guitarist, he wasn’t content to just rest on hs laurels. Instead, when he was on tour, after checking into a hotel room, he would look in the yellow pages for classical guitar teachers and take a lesson from a classical guitar teacher in every town he could!

The list of guitarists who stopped trying to grow as players after a relatively early point in their lives is too long to do more than just scratch the surface but a few guys who are notorious for stopping improving their lead guitar abilities very early are:
Yngwie
Kirk Hammett
Dave Mustaine
Marty Friedman
Michael Angelo batio
Vinnie Moore
Warren DiMartini
George Lynch
Ritchie Blackmore
Iron maiden’s guitarists
Matthias Jabs of The Scorpions
Joe Satriani? (I haven’t followed his later albums closely enough to be sure)
Tony Iommi (after becoming accustomed to the plastic fingertips he constructed for himself as prosthetic devices).
Vivian Campbell

Obviously these are my opinions. If you have different opinions on a few of these guys, or many of them, just state your reasons for believing I’m wrong. All opinions are welcome!

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#2

I kinda disagree with Adrian Smith from Iron Maiden. Maybe post-2000, sure. But during the classic Bruce-era days he made in progress in leaps and bounds between the Piece of Mind and Seventh Son… records. I feel like Dave Murray remained in a similar place for much of his career. Not only did his chops improve but Smith also honed his songwriting skills and developed a pretty dramatic sense of melody for an 80’s metal axeman. He did some cool and rather different stuff on the Bruce Dickson solo albums too.

He isn’t really a shredder, but he certainly blossomed as an artist during the peak point in Iron Maiden’s career in a few different ways which I have a lot of respect for. Granted, nowadays Iron Maiden is basically a football team.

Another guy who I feel strove to improve and develop his playing was Gary Moore. Obviously we all love his early solo material and his rip-roaring leads in Thin Lizzy but we had a thread about him on the forum and someone posted a cool video of him ripping through some complicated crosspicking on jazz lines shortly before his death and he explained how he wasn’t able to do that sort of thing before. He stopped shredding hard rock but his chops kept going. So that’s cool.

I suspect that if Chris DeGarmo (Queensryche) was still playing out in a bigger band he might have continued his development as well. He, like Adrian Smith, had a real renaissance period as a player and an arranger. Michael Wilton was probably closer to being a shred player and made an effort to use expensive scales but I feel like his sense of melody and phrasing didn’t mature in the way DeGarmo did.

#3

Gonna question the first - Hammett continued to take lessons from Satriani for the first few Metallica albums, and famously used to bring in riffs to Satch so they could sit down together and work out approaches to solos - which modes would work, where he might need to modulate, etc. Also, while his slide playing is hardly remarkable, its something he was studying and practicing for a while before, what, Load, was it, when he first used it in a Metallica tune…?

Satriani, I know definitely was still teaching after his career started to take off, but I thought he continued to take lessons here and there afterwards. It was definitely more in terms of harmony, though, than it was in terms of technique, which was already pretty well-formed by Not of This Earth, and probably peaked around Surfing or Blue Dream. From that point on, my sense was always that he felt like he had “proved” himself, and instead focused on being more lyrical or pushing interesting harmonic boundaries, rather than just trying to get faster. And then for a number of albums he basically just wanted to get his Jimmy Page on, but I think “What Happens Next” is kind of a return to form for him, where his writing is a lot more melodic and vocal than it’s been lately, and less riff-based.

As for other guys who continued to take lessons, a friend of mine who’s a HUGE Ty Tabor fan loves to tell the story about how when King’s X was touring with Satriani, Satch offered to give Ty a couple pointers and suggestions as the tour went on and he jumped at the chance - my buddy always tells it as a story about how humble he was, but honestly if Satch offers to show you some stuff, you accept. :rofl:

#4

This is why it’s great to hear different opinions. We all learn this way. See, I ad no ida that Kirk kept taking lessons that long. I think my reason for thinking Kirk stopped improving his soloing abilities fairly early is that he relied extremely heavily on the wah pedal. He just overused the hell out of that thing! It gave almost all his leads a very similar sound. It also didn’t help that after And Justice For All the band as a whole really simplified their music an awful lot. I thought …And Justice… was absolutely brilliant with its songs with 15 or 20 different riffs, it’s multiple changes in time signature, etc. They had some great, great riffs on that album such as the riffs to Blackened…talk about a complex and fast omg! Wow! I don’t think I could play Blackened today and although I haven’t tried in many years, when it was a new song I worked o to for many months and that rhythm where the accent was on the upstroke instead of the downstroke or should I say on the upbeat instead of the downbeat was already making things tough for me but you add in the element of the tempo and my God, it’s the hardest Metallica song to play that there ever was!

So to go from that to songs like “Sad But true” on the next album which any beginner could learn and it was just so disappointing. I think …And Justice For All… was the creative and technical peak not just of Metallica bit of their entire type of metal that they played. So many great songs like Shortest Straw, title track, Blackened, the blazing Damage Inc. and the poignant “One” and it was just a tremendous landmark in thrash metal history. It was a sign that we were living in the golden age of that art form. Since then while Metallica has certainly never equalled it, I am very interested in a band named Opeth Their ability to switch from brutal death metal to the loveliest, yet such sinister sounding ballads is something truly unique.

#5

I just listened to Queensryche’s debut EP a few days ago and I had to listen to it about four times in a row because it was just so damn good! It was absolutely brilliant and for a debut EP and for that time period, it was so advanced that I don’t think describing it as revolutionary would be exaggerating. I love the guitar solo on “Queen Of the Reich” and the way they trade off those 16th note licks back and forth with some cool phrasing and effects. Geoff Tate’s voice was just phenomenal. The combination of those guitars and drums with that voice made Queensryche one of my top 3 heavy metal bands ever along with Dio and Judas Priest (especially 1970’s Priest).

That said, I don’t know if I heard much improvement over the years as far as their technical guitar ability. That’s OK though because I certainly heard growth in their composing abilities. Operation Mindcrime, to me, was their peak as far as composing and performance. Simply stunning!

#6

I think Justice may have been the last album he worked with Satriani on. The black album, and the simpler, more groove-oriented direction they move there, though, was entirely a stylistic choice and not based on a degredation in their ability to play (though arguably that followed, especially for Lars who I gather was at his limit on their earlier thrash albums, and after a couple decades of touring their more hard rock material really struggles to pull some of it off…).

I will say, though, that while “Sad but True” is fairly easy, it’s also heavy as $#@!. So, I’m ok with that. :slight_smile:

#7

Oh, I didn’t mean to imply they started playing simpler music because their skills had degraded, but like you said, degrading skills may have followed the switch to a simpler style of music to play. A friend of mine and I had a joke where he’d pretend to be Kirk and I was the interviewer and I’d ask, “So, after releasing Load, you’re going on tour again. Does it suck having to practice to be able to play all those fast riffs in the old songs”?

#8

Oh, and Opeth RULES. They’re moving in a more conventional prog-rock direction these days - Mikael Akersfeldt has gotten sick of growling, I guess - but their earlier purely heavier stuff is brilliant for that exact reason. Akersfeldt can growl with the best of them, but then has the voice of an angel when he backs it off a bit.

I’d recommend “Blackwater Park” as a starting point, partly because it really is a brilliant album, partly because while I love their mellow stuff (“Damnation” is the best thing Pink Floyd didn’t release) I think it’s important to hear them at their heaviest first, and partly because I don’t know what the greatest guitar riff ever written is, the first main riff from the title track (1:49), or the second (5:13).

Seriously, the riffs in this thing… Unreal.

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#9

I have Blackwater Park! I think the first Opeth album I got was “My Arms, Your Hearse” which got me hooked on them and Blackwater was probably my second purchase.

I didn’t know that they have gone in the more prog-rock direction but that’s great as far as I’m concerned because the growling was my least favorite thing about them… I love the album that’s all mellow - I think “Damnation” is the one . It’s the album they perform live on the DVD entitled “Lamentations” and I just LOVE that DVD! Have you seen it? They play some of the old songs with the growling after they finish playing the Damnation album so you’d like that too. BTW, the guitar solo in “Windowpane” sounds a little bit like Carlos Santana to me. The song doesn’t sound like anyone I’ve ever heard.

#10

Great list but I would add Mark Tremonti.

@element0s One of the things I love about Somewhere in Time is how much it showcased Adrian’s solos and songwriting. Probably my favorite Maiden album.

#11

Vinnie Moore completely re-invented his lick bag after his first couple of neoclassical albums. Have you heard the difference between Time Odyssey and Meltdown?

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#12

Alex Skolnick from Testament to “Oh I fancy doing a world music/fusion album in the Al Di Meola vein”

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#13

Thank you, I was thinking the exact same, but I refrained from commenting to not give the impression of being a “Vinnie Moore fanboy” :rofl:

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#14

Oh yeah I totally forgot about him. Yeah he definitely deserves a mention. Kiko Loureiro does too I think, although he was a killer shred player even from his early Angra days

#15

Great addition - I always had a soft spot for the riffs in Creed - Scott Stapp became totally insufferable after “My Own Prison,” but even at their schlopiest, stuff like “Higher” had damned cool guitar parts. Then they break up, the band sans Stapp reforms as Alter Bridge with the (amazingly talented) Myles Kennedy out front (who incidently is also a pretty killer player)… and Tremonti holes up with Troy Stetina for a couple months and comes out of hiding with some fairly credible shred soloing under his belt.

In the mid-2000s, seeing Troy Stetina thanked in the liner notes to a hit rock album was pretty damned heart-warming. :slight_smile: I love the first two Alter Bridge albums, by the way - the third got absolutely smashed in mastering and is kind of painful to listen to, but the first two are great - awesome tones and mixes, killer vocals and riffs, and great songs.

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#16

I am genuinely perplexed that Jeff Beck hasn’t been mentioned yet. His development as a player and as a musician since he started out in the late '60s British Blues Rock scene is incredible.

In the Yardbirds and the first Jeff Beck Group (with Rod Stewart), Jeff was a fairly straightforward Blues-Rock player, though he did havea unique style and a distinctive sound even then. Despite achieving notable success, he did not make an impact in that genre that is really comparable to what his contemporaries like Hendrix and Clapton accomplished.

While I do think Jeff had greater facility with the guitar than Page or Green, I don’t think his best playing of that era compares to Clapton’s lead work in Cream (which is not nearly as simple as most shred fans believe it to be) or Hendix’s rhythm playing.

In the '70s, Jeff developed an interest in fusion and had a productive relationship with Jan Hammer. He sounds completely different in the second Jeff Beck Group than he did with the first. Wired really is the quintessential '70s Jeff Beck album, and his progression when compared to his younger self is undeniable.

If that weren’t enough, in the '80s he essentially developed a completely new and distinct approach to the guitar, beginning with the Guitar Shop album.

His bending control, both with his fingers and the vibrato bar, and his ability to shape notes is peerless. Despite the fact that he rarely plays anything at typical “shred” speeds, the difficulty in performing his pieces and arrangements is at least equivalent to the difficulty of the standard “shred” repertoire.

Beyond that, he’s continually developed his musicianship in diverse genres, including rockabilly, techno, world music and hip hop.

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#17

Oh good lord. Excellent name to bring up here. He was always good, but he’s in his own class and has an amazingly distinctive voice these days.

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#18

Can you point me to the best examples of this?

#19

Jeff Beck, great choice - way underrated, if that’s even possible.

In the shred world one of the more unusual is Chris Impellitteri. The first album and REH instructional were off, but then second album… there it is! I mean no disrespect, he’s a great player. What is a amazing is that thousands of players of the era faked their way through fast solos without really having the technique, or any hope of having it. This is in some sense the whole reason Cracking the Code exists. But Chris actually did get there, so props to him.

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#20

Like Impellitteri, another guy who I thought showed remarkable growth between records is John Petrucci. I don’t know if I’ve heard anyone talk about it, but the difference in his lead playing between ‘When Dream and Day Unite’ and ‘Images and Words’ is incredible. Based on the timeline for when those albums were recorded, I wonder if Intense Rock had something to do with it? In any case, it sounds like he spent a lot of time in the woodshed between ‘89-‘91.

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