Alex Skolnick

of just being in the post van Halen Revolution. You know, it was all about Eddie van Halen and virtueoso guitar players Rany Rhodes from the Ozzy Osbourne's band, the late great guitarists like Joe Satriani who was actually a teacher of mine, and I know, you know you've had him on And by the time I was doing my first record, I was still developing, you know. So at eighteen years old, you know, I'm still discovering things musically, and I guess you know, the way I found my way to it

was music that is arguably jazz. So an example would be the music that Miles Davis recorded in the eighties, where he had like screaming guitarists like Mike Stern and John Schofield. And also, you know what's considered jazz rock. So al Damiola is a name a lot of rock guitar players would know. He inspired a lot of rock guitar players. You could talk to Zach Wilde about Aldamiola

and he would not stop talking. John Patucci from Dream Theater was very inspired by al Damiola, and Aldemia sort of occupies this space that's in between jazz and rock and world music. But he also had these incredible other musicians that he collaborated with over the years, like Chick Corea, for example, or Jocko Pastorias and if you follow the sort of family tree of musicians on records by Al Damiola and another one, Alan Holdsworth, who was a big

influence on Eddie van Haleen. He had worked with Tony Williams, who had also worked with Miles Davis. So jazz rock is really what got me right around the time I was doing my first professional heavy metal recordings, and it was wanting to understand jazz rock Aldemiola, Tony Williams with Alan Holdsworth, et cetera. That made me want to study actual jazz, jazz that even jazz pure jazz fans or traditional jazz bands could agree is jazz.

who had some great guitar players. Yeah, and in my case, you know, I was able to learn solos by the likes of some of the people I mentioned, Randy Rhodes, our friend Joe Satriani. You know, not that I could play quite like them, but I could, so I could understand it, and I could get it, get a handle on it. When it came to jazz rock, I could not understand what the heck was going on. Some of the al Daimiola stuff made sense because he he st

of has his own vocabulary, which isn't really jazz. But you know the music I mentioned before, Miles Davis in the late eighties, mid to late eighties, with guitar players John Schofield, Mike Stern, Robin Ford, I could not figure out what the heck was going on. It's a completely different language. And I went to a few different music

teachers in the Bay Area. By this time, Satrianni was already off and running with his career, so I found some music teachers in the Bay Area that were more focused on jazz and jazz fusion, and they explained to me, like, Yeah, all these people you're listening to, they know how to play jazz even though you're hearing them in this jazz rock setting. They can play tunes. They've listened to artists

like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, saxophonists. They've listened to piano players like Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner and all. You know, there's too many essential jazz musicians to name, but basically, you have to get a handle on the vocabulary of the music. You have to appreciate the history of it, you have to learn about all these historical musicians, and you have to obviously, you have to like the music.

So by the time I started studying it just to help with my jazz rock interest, I developed a taste for it, and then I got it. I really liked it. But I was never one of these kids that sort of grew up wanting to be a jazz player. It hit me later, which is very unusual.

and very into screaming guitar. So to me, the reason I didn't gravitate towards that type of jazz was it sounded old. Yeah, I saw music from the you know, the forties and fifties and early six It just it felt old. And when I heard Miles Davis for the first time doing late eighties music in the late eighties, it sounded like the future. This is you know, this is this is what's happening now, this is what's going to happen. So it gave me a very different feeling.

And also I if I remember right. The first time I discovered it was on a public television station, so they were airing a concert. It was one of these arts programs on PBS or the some East. I think I was on the East Coast at the time, and they were showing this whole concert and I was just knocked out. I didn't know what it was. I remember I wrote down the names of all the musicians afterwards.

But I think it really took hearing it, even though I wasn't live in the room with them, but he you know, hearing the music being played live, watching it and just having it be current and not feeling like old music.

in common with punk rock. You know, you have artists very few, but there are actually artists that cover all this ground. John Zorn is an example of somebody like that. You could hear moments of most types of jazz. So I would say, you know, liking getting somebody to like jazz, you know, it really depends on their taste. It depends on the type of jazz. You'd have to point them

in the right direction. Somebody who likes funk and R and B music, for example, well they might gravitate more towards the music of early Herbie Hancock certainly seventies Herby Hancock. They probably already know about that. You know, Horace Silver, you know who is a big influence on Steely Dan. Believe it or yeah, listen to Steely Dan. You know, Josie Comes Home. It's almost sampled from a song called

Song for My Father by Horace Silver. So you know, sometimes making these connections helps somebody who is familiar with some element of rock and roll might relate to something in jazz if you point them in the right direction. And I would just also add that blues is something that definitely, you know, you find all over rock and roll and you find all over jazz and in very different ways.

of those. My parents are academics. They had done the same thing. They had moved from New York to California. I knew many people who would did that. And you have to move back to New York from California was considered a little crazy. So I needed a good excuse. And my excuse was to get a music degree and study at the New School in New York, and which kind of made my parents happy because they hated the fact that I never went to college. And also I was getting to know people in the jazz world at

that time. So while at school, I threw this band together just for fun and it started. We started getting gigs and put out a record that was actually it shocked me. It was actually well reviewed by Downbead and jazz Is and some other jazz magazines. A jazz radio promoter, Michael Morrick took a liking to it and got us played on a bunch of jazz radio stations. So I had really initially thought of our first album as like a demo. I'll put this out into the world, we'll

see how it goes. But it did well enough to launch a band that's still going a couple decades later.

and the offers have gotten better. We've played some very prestigious venues. We just did a tour in March, we played a place in Vienna called Porgy and Best, which is yeah, John Schofield was playing there the same week. I can't play all the venues he plays, but yeah, at least there's some common venues. And these are the types of venues that twenty years ago absolutely not. You know, they either assumed again it was a novelty or they figured I'm some I'm going to be doing some shred act.

I'm going to do instrumental jazz, but I'm going to bring in Marshall stacks and drums that look like Peter Cris's kit from Kiss. You know. No, actually I have real jazz players. I have great guys, Matt Sebraski and Nathan Peck. The drum kit is small, the bass is an actual jazz bass, although he does some electric now as well, But for a long time it was always with upright base and we always had this acoustic dynamic.

So it's taken a while to have the credibility to play more established jazzy places, if you will, but we're doing a lot of those, and yeah, we keep the overhead low. We obviously don't. We don't have a light show when we tour Europe. For example, we have one crew person and he he's amazing. His name's Alex as well, and he drives the van, does the merchandise, helps set everything up. And this friend of ours, he also he

works for a lot of different musicians. Right after our tour in March, he went off to tour for Dominic Miller, who plays for guitar for Sting. And when Dominic Miller is not playing with thing, you know, he's he's not doing places like Stink, you know, he's to actually some of the same same places my trios do.

They'll show up in a megott Ass or a Slayer.

If it wasn't sold as jazz, you wouldn't necessarily hear it that way. It's not as out there. Whatever, just switching gears. Tell me about your experience at the New School.

like John McLoughlin, Aldon Yola. And now, interestingly, I get to the New School, this is uh late nineties around, you know, two thousand and Yeah, I'm an older student at that point, I'm like pushing thirty, but I'm ready at that At that point, I was hungry, hungry to study, and not just the jazz part of it too. I also took a couple of courses in philosophy and creative writing. A lot of my classmates were just out of high school. Now I wasn't. There were actually a few older students.

I was definitely one of the oldest ones. I wasn't the oldest one, but the vast majority had gone straight

from high school college. And yeah, they might have been stars and their jazz program, you know, whatever town they're from, so you had a lot of there was energy I picked up on, like I was surprised, a lot of unhappy energy because I think a lot of these kids, you know, they'd been the jazz or you know, the virtuoso champion and their little music scene in their town and then they get here, they get to the big city, this music program where you just you know, you have

like the best of the best, and you know, I think a lot of hearts were breaking. I just I picked up on it, and I was in this interesting place because I wasn't really affected by it. I was sort of disillusioned having been a professional on the rock side of things, and I was just ready to learn. I just I was so excited to study with all these great players. You had legendary teachers at this school, guys like you, Reggie Workman, who was a bassist who

played with John Coltrane, seeciul McBee. Yeah, yeah, there's like too many to name, but a lot of these are very well known names for jazz insiders. But you just you have access to these people and you could talk to them all the time, and you're put into ensembles with other players, and you're you suddenly have this very structured learning and I I never had that. I did have guitar lessons with Satriani for a couple of years, which was the most serious musician I'd ever studied with,

but that that was very guitar focused. And when I got to the New school, it was really about music.

Guitarists weren't even the majority of the musicians there. There were a lot of piano players and saxophonists, and I was so excited to just be around that and just be in this environment where it's not just about guitar based and vocals and you know, other instruments matter, and studying the history of the music, learning about what's called ear training, where you actually focus on listening and not just playing music, but being able to tell one note

from another, how far away is it, what type of chord is this, just by hearing it. All this great stuff. So I was really excited. I did see a lot of you know, unhappy young players. I tried not to get bummed out by that. I saw a lot of people drop out because there were many players there that just wanted to go there, network and drop out. I was determined to get my education. So for me, it

was like the perfect thing. I met the you know, these great musicians there I'm still friends with to this day, launched my band from there, got my education. But the yeah, the one thing that was odd about it, in addition to yeah, the unhappiness I could sense from some of the players that were kind of struggling. The younger players, the artists we're talking about John McLaughlin, h Jaco Pastorius,

Weather Report, they really weren't talked about very much. They were at that time there was such an emphasis on straight ahead jazz, and there was this sense that it's time to you know, to bring back, you know, the real jazz. There had been this movement called the the Young Lions. You know, Wynton Marsalis had been a part of that, and he tended to have a little bit more conservative jazz views. He wasn't a big fan of fusion.

He was championed by the jazz writer Stanley Crouch that was a great writer and had great taste in music, but absolutely hated electric music and jazz rock. So at the time, the School I think was very much under the effects of that. You know, it was almost like the alternative music movement and rock suddenly, you know, this big change. I've heard it's very different now. Now it's

a lot more open. You've had players come out of from that period like Robert Glasberg, and he was actually at the New School at the same time I was. He's kind of one of the leading lights in jazz music. These days, and he collaborates with hip hop artists. You know, he's he's very well known for playing with Kendrick Lamart and apparently so like somebody like Glassberg being a star student at the News Classic, that's had a big influence.

So it's less conservative than it was. But at the time I was there, there was this sense of it being just being very conservative, and even guitar was a little bit frowned upon. But I was at an age where I wasn't affected by the negativity.

for example. You know, and see at the Seattle scene, you had several huge bands, and the Bay Area music scene, you really had one huge band metality, and the rest of the bands were more like the bands that you know, insiders know about, but they weren't household names, so the band never made the kind of money where you just felt like you could retire. But at that point I had put enough away. I felt like, Okay, I certainly

have enough to move to go back to school. Now, full disclosure, I had academic parents that desperately wanted me to go to college, you know, insist did on helping out for one of my years. But for the first

part of going college, I've done it all myself. I'd actually taken care of all my basic credits at a community college in California, so actually I only had to go to the new school for like a half a term, just a couple of years, and yeah, financially I was okay, I had enough to you know, I knew I could take a few years and do whatever I want. But after a few years, you know, of course, then you have to start thinking, Okay, what am I going to

do here? And I was always able to teach, And there was a music school called the American Institute of guitar that was just had nothing to do with college journey, just an informal music school that that had a few guitar teachers and they were all professional musicians. And I got in there and that became a job. And then I got the strangest call in my life from someone named David Krebs. I'm sure.

I saw him a couple of years ago at an event where the Scorpions were being honored and yeah, one of the great music industry personalities.

and with a group, Sabotage, that Paul was producing. And it Sabotage is guitarist was a great, great guitarist, Chris Oliva, and sadly he had passed away and the band needed somebody quickly to do solos on the record. And initially I said no, And I'd been a fan of the band, and Testament had toured with the band, That's how we knew each other. But I said no because, you know, Testament had it had gotten very difficult towards the end, you know, classic VH one behind the music stuff, you know,

we weren't getting along, felt like a toxic environment. So I was also getting more and more into jazz guitar. The last thing I was going to do was join another band just because of those reasons. But the band gave me a call personally, and you know, John Oliva was Chris's brother, and he said, you know, I, Chris would I think I want you to play guitar on this album. I think you're the only one he would want to play on this record. So how do you

say no to that? So I recorded for Sabotage. I did a bunch of shows and that was how I got to know Paul O'Neal. Well, fast forward a few years, they've Sabotage had turned into this had become the nucleus for the Trans Hyberine Orchestra, this traveling show with some of this similar music but brought with Broadway singers and

dancers and a light show and everything. And yeah, I got this this call from David Krebs and they were auditioning people, but yeah, we just want you to do it if you want to, like, you don't even have have to audition. And it was funny because it wasn't

really what I saw doing. I kind of I was so focused on developing as an instrumentalist and not thinking about performing, and here was a show that's all about performing and literally had pyrotechnics, but you know what, I needed a job and I thought, Okay, you know what, the experience will probably be good. And the next thing you know, I this is while I'm still at the New School. By the way, I was able to take a month off and do homework assignments while I was

on this tour. And it was still theaters at the time. We've played the Beacon. We played the theaters in Cleveland and Pittsburgh for multiple nights, and.

and it's like this holiday tradition. And I was part of this tour for nine years. At the end of the year that that was what I did.

your city, that's your whole world. You know, they there's that famous New Yorker cartoon about how New Yorkers see the world, didn't they right? But you know, that applied to us growing up in Berkeley, and we saw the whole world through you know, it was te We have Telegraph Avenue and then San Pablo Avenue and yeah, and of course as you get older, you realize, oh, okay, there's more to the world than just this little corner

where we are. But growing up, you know, from the time time I was, when I was in single digits, I assumed, oh, the whole world must be like this, all these strange characters around and you know, and of course I found I found out that that is not the case.

spent hours with the guitar at all times. And he was always looking for gimmicks and ways to make it as easy as possible, you know, and he he had even you know, it's funny, and he thought it would be so simple to just sign a record deal and everything will just fall into place and you become this big rock star. And even you know, even being seven years younger, I realized, Okay, I think maybe he's take you know, taking too many hits off the bong. You know, he's uh.

a serious person. But of course all that did was make me be more serious about being a musician.

And it is a bit ironic that I chose a career where I'm on a stage in front of lots of people, because that, yeah, that would seem to go against it. But yeah, of course I later heard that many shy children or even shy adults end up being performers. And as far as sports, I just never got the neck. I never had the interest that I never saw what the big deal was, and I was never good at it.

call it panic. I'm exaggerating, of course, But uh, I've never understood people who can just instantly make friends at a party and be the so called life of the party. That's definitely not me. And it's funny. With sports, I just I always felt it was this thing everybody was into and I just couldn't get into it. I never had the talent to throw a baseball or football like everybody else did. But I'm almost having corrective experience in

recent years. I was just invited to play for the Cleveland Browns at a pregame event on NFL Opening Day.

to be done. And I happened to get the call and it was It was amazing, It went, it went great. I had a great time. I have a Cleveland Browns jersey with my name on it. I watched the game afterwards with these friends of mine who set it up and had just had a great time. And actually a couple of years before that, I played the anthem for the Chicago Wolves.

with different people. So this Chicago show, it was the drummer for masted On bron Daylor and Mark Mani the founder, and myself, Bobby Blitz from Overkill you know, it's always a mashup. We played in Chicago and it was right I think it was right around hall Leen too, if I remember. And somebody who works in the Bills office is got word of it and they were looking for somebody to do the anthem, and you know, they they've had singers, but I think they've been talking about bringing

in an instrumentalist. And somebody who is this guy that works for the team who's also a fan of music, reached out it saw that we were going to be in town and said, would you like to play the national anthem? I said sure. So I love doing stuff like that, and every time it's it's sort of it's this window into sports fandom, like I get it. I'm at the game, I'm feeling the passion from everybody. So

somehow growing up I never had it. But when I do these events where I play music at the game, so I have a great time.

I used to sing those songs. And by the time I was sort of nine or ten years old, I think I was just looking for something exciting to do. Even though I had tried piano lessons and the teacher I really wasn't very nurturing. I think I needed more attention as a student, and it just it didn't work out with piano. I thought I wasn't gonna be good at music, and then I started begging for guitar lessons

when I discovered Kiss. And the way I discovered Kiss was on the schoolyard there was I was very tired of hearing about baseball cards. All my friends, you know, would trade baseball cards. And one day I these friends were calling me over, I have to look at these baseball car and you know, and I resisted, No, I don't know, No, You're gonna love this look and it was Kiss cards. And that moment was like it was

life changing. And you know, these guys, they looked straight out of comic book and they have guitars and Ace, may he rest in peace. We just lost Ace. You know, he's got this guitar. Smoke is coming out of the guitar. So suddenly guitar got very interesting. And then the first record that I had wanted to buy on my own

was a Kiss record. And I didn't know about compilations or Greatest Hiss records at the time, but it was called Double Platinum and it was a compilation, but it had some great songs and I genuinely loved the music. And between Kisses music and imagery, I had to learn guitar, So I started studying with.

like the complete op of my brother. Because my brother had gone to my parents and I begged for a less Paul. He needed a less Paul guitar, which he eventually traded for a bass. I was not gonna be so lucky. They Yeah, they said, okay, yeah, we're gonna get you this classical guitar and if you stick with that,

maybe one day you'll get an electric guitar. So yeah, I had a really difficult to play acoustic guitar nylon strings, but I stuck with it, and I think it in retrospect I might have helped that I had to work for it, and I had to put in all this extra effort. And by the time I got a good guitar, I was probably fourteen years old, and I'd been bagging groceries at a local supermarket and saved up, and I

saved up enough to buy my own last bom. So I got this sense of working hard at it and also just really kind of earning my own keep and earning what I got. Okay, not having things handed.

I went to him, I was very determined. I didn't want to have the same experience that I had had with piano, where I just didn't practice enough and I lost interest. The teacher didn't want to teach me. So I worked really hard my first week or so, and he was very complimentary. I couldn't believe how fast I was picking it up and taking to the chords. And he was very good at making connections between different types of music. So, for example, there was a fifties resurgence

going on around this time. This is around nineteen eighty, so not only am I into kiss, but I really liked fifties rock. I was hearing fifties rock. Happy Days was the number one show. There was a film called American Hot Wax that had Jay Leno and fran Dresser, and it was not the best acted film. It was kind of not surprising that they both ended up on TV movies, But with all due respect, it was a fun film and the best part about it was it

starred all these fifties artists as themselves. It was the story about Alan Free, so it's kind of educational in a Way too, and Judge Jerry Lee Lewis is in the movie Screaming. Jay Hawkins is in this movie. And the one who stole the show for me was Chuck Barry. So when I went to Gary, my first guitar teacher, I talked about the music I loved, and part of it was Kiss, but also I really liked this music

from this film and especially Chuck Berry. And that was perfect because this guy, he didn't know Kiss songs, but he certainly knew about Chuck Berry, and he made connections between like what Chuck Berry was doing and how he influenced the Beatles and the Stones. The Beatles even covered Chuck Berry songs. I didn't even know that at the time, and it was very educational, and I learned those basic chuck Berry hits, you know, Johnny be Good, roll over Beethoven.

To this day, those intros that Chuck Berry played on those songs really get me excited. I still yeah, they haven't lost any of their magic. But Gary's best quality, I think, was just making that connection. And when I started talking to him about ac DC, same thing, He's like, well, yeah, here's how the blues riff influenced this AC DC tune.

Here's how I would influence this Kiss tune, and it just really gave me a good understanding about connections with fifties rock and the hard rock that I was then getting into, like Kiss and Athies.

on the Aussie record. And this is the time, too win not as many kids played guitar. Today, there are more kids than you can count that have that played guitar and play guitar well, and they most of them have Instagram pages. But at this time it wasn't as common to start guitar at a young age. Most kids I knew started in their early teens, and I had already been playing for a few years. So I was told, you know, listen to Ozzy Osbourne and this amazing guitarist

Randy Roads. And I think that was partly what got me interested in wanting to play guitar solos. But I also, around the same time, discovered van Halen. The van Halen had been out for a few years, but he hadn't really reached my radar. And then the same kids that were into Ozzie were into van Halen, and then they played the first van Halen record and that was it. I was off to the races. And I know many

guitar players today tell the same story. Yeah, they they heard eruption for the first time on a record or a cassette and it was just life change, Like, oh, I didn't know what guitar could do. That that's exciting. And up until then I thought about being a singer guitarist. I never cared that much about having an electric guitar. I knew I would get one eventually, but you know, playing that type of guitar was never a thought. And

then it all changed. The day I heard that first Van Haalen record, as it did for so many.

to get my brother to join his band. My brother was interested in that kind of music, but Danny was really getting good fast, you know, and he was the only guy that I knew in the Berkeley music scene in that sort of had a grip on Van Hamlinton's and I saw him play. We were I remember a couple of times at home just or at there were gatherings or at local parties when people would pass around a guitar, This guy, Danny Gill would would get the

guitar and he would do these licks. He learned from eruption, and so I could see how it was done and that was shocking, right, Wow, that's how you do that. And I ended up asking him for lessons, so I studied with him for a while. He later became a teacher at m I Musicians Institute down in Hollywood. He lives in Sweden today. He actually married a Swede, but he's a full time teacher. So but he ended up being my next teacher, and he was a very good teacher.

And around the time I studied with him, that was around the time I got my first electric guitar. This lest Paul. I think in the meantime I had played it. There was a cheap guitar that my brother acquired that I played a little bit. It was so cheap. I really needed a good guitar, so I I got the less Paul. I started startying with Danny. But within a year or so, it felt like I was able to learn some of the Van Halen stuff on my own.

And I remember there was one lesson and I say this, you know, with all respect to Danny, but I I was showing him how this song was. It was a song called Little Guitars off of nineteen eighty four, and yes, I figured out how to do the riff and he he looks at me, how do you do that? I'm like, wait, oh, you should be paying me by the hour. So I started realize, Okay, I wonder who taught Dan. Did you know did Danny take lessons? And I knew Danny had

studied with this music teacher. He taught all all the best players, all the top guitar players in the area. They talked about this guy, the very mysterious person. All I knew about him was that he was Italian and he's from New York and he's very serious. Like, if you go and study with this guy, you have to do your lessons and you have to practice hard otherwise he will he will fire you. Yeah, And of course that turned out to be Joe Satrianni.

same day as this political rally. And my mother, I think, you know, she's sort of been this repressed political activist, you know, to this day, she's like an MSNBC news junkie. And I think she'd always wanted to be involved with politics, but it never did. And so she's insisted I come to this rally, and I think she thought I would take to politics and political activism. And the rally was for a presidential candidate named Gary Hart, and all this

did it completely turned me off politics. First of all, the guy showed up like hours late, and suddenly I realized, I'm going to be late for this lesson. I've been want on the waiting west for this, this teacher that it's really important to me and my mother. You know. It was arguing with me, you know, no, this is important, and I remember running off going, you know, no, this is important. And I was a few minutes late. I

but Joe was very understanding. It never happened again, and it just caused me to be even more punctual and serious in my lessons with Joe. And of course, as we all know, Gary Hart ends up caught in a sex scandal and kicked out of public office. The whole situation was just very metaphoric.

I really understand unstood what serious music lessons were. And guitar really wasn't thought of as a serious instrument at that time. Like if you're a serious musician, okay, you there's there were serious teachers for violin, for piano, electric guitar, not so much at that time. But he was somebody

like that. It was like going to a classical violinist or pianist that had regimens, and you know, practice was incredibly important, discipline was really important, and he really didn't want he didn't want his time wasted, and he made that very clear. In fact, I was recently speaking to

a friend of mine, Mark Mark DeVito. He's a guy who did a lot of artwork for various bands, my band, He's did some work for Metallica, he did Motorhead's last album cover, went on to be a full time artist, but at one time he wanted to be a guitarist and we were talking recently and he never told me the story before, but he actually went to Joe for lessons and yo, Joe was very honest with him. Yeah, he said, do you have any other hobbies?

explained earlier, it was a different time. So yeah, I tried jamming with a couple guys in my school and it just didn't really go anywhere. And around this time I am going to concerts. There's a whole local scene happening, and I particularly enjoy with the music that is later known as Thrash Meult. It was funny because at the time I never thought about playing that music. I was really focused on Van Halen Randy rose Evy Meltinstein has come along by then, and he was my new hero.

But I loved going to concerts by these bands. And you know, Exodus was one slayer who did I saw their first time? Answered Metallica, I think was sort of off to the races at that point. They'd already released an album and I think we're working on their second record.

But under them, there was this whole scene going on, and I remember thinking, you know, if I could join one of these local bands that's already playing, then I wouldn't have to go through this trying to search for guys my age to play with because it's not working out. And lo and behold, I hear about a band that needs a guitar player. And it's this band that at the time is called Legacy. It's the band that would go on to be called Testament. And it all happened,

you know, in a snap. At this point. I think when I first met them, I was fifteen. By the time I did my first gig with them, I was sixteen, and by the time I was eighteen, I was on the East Coast recording my first album with the band.

far East Bay, like Dublin, Pleasanton. I was in Berkeley where a lot of the clubs were, so in a way, I was lucky because it was very easy for me to and my friends. We could just take the bus downtown and we would go to the Keystone Berkeley, which was the big venue at the time, or you know, go across the Bay. We had the Stone in San Francisco, and Testament, which was then called Legacy, was already playing

these clubs. They supported Slayer. I think they supported Megadeth on one of their first shows when Megadeth was a brand new band, and Mustaine had just been kicked out of Metallica and uh the Yeah. By the time I got asked to join the band, they were already gigging. They already had these shows. There was a new venue called Ruthie's In, which became sort of an epicenter for this type of music. Pretty Much all the thrash metal bands you've heard of played there, except Metallica, who was

already on their way. They actually did play there once, but it was like an unannounced fun gig. And my very first show was that Ruthie's In and it was just a whirlwind. Suddenly, you know, one minute, I am kind of a frustrated high school student, yeah, wishing I was in a band. The next thing, you know, I have shows. I mean this, I'm rehearsing a couple times a week, and you know, my parents were not happy about it, but I think at that point they knew

there's there's no stopping me. And that was Yeah, that was how it all started.

ended up it ended up working out. We put a lot of my parts with parts that Eric had, and well, you know, within a year we had you know, the first almost half a dozen songs that the band had, which were you know, much much simpler. They were mostly like fast songs in one key, not a lot of harmony, not a lot of melody. But I was bringing in different elements. So I sort of taught Eric how to harmonize,

how to play scales together. Let's get out of you know, the low key on guitar as all guitars know as e but there, Yeah, we don't have to be stuck there, we can we could take apart and move it somewhere else. So I and by that point i'd been with I had enough of my Satriani lessons that you know, I was getting pretty good at harmony and melody, and uh yeah, I'd say within a year and a half or so,

we had enough material to do the first record. Now, of course, there was some major drama that happened with the lineup, which I can explain later. We'll explain now, Okay, So the lineup at that time included a singer. His name's Steve Stuza, and he was like the drill sergeant

of the band. It was almost I didn't even know Eric had started the band because I thought this it must be his band, because this guy ran it like he ran the show, and it was all Later I thought it was kind of a source of contention with them,

but very type a personality. And during this time, the biggest band around is Exodus, and every it's expected that Exodus is going to follow in the footsteps of Metallica, largely because Exodus was arted by Kirk Hamick before he was coached by Metallic, so we all look up to Exodus. You know, the outside of Metallica, the biggest concerts, the biggest thrash metal shows are by Exodus, and lo and behold, Exodus decides to fire their singer Paul bailoff. May he

rest in peace and take our singer. Yeah. So I'm only in this band for a year. I'm still in high school, and suddenly I'm embroiled in this like major band drama. So Steve joins Exodus and we need a singer right quickly. And another funny thing that had happened was, Yeah, my my exasperated father. You know, he he gave up on me going to law school and whatever the hell he wanted me to do. But he said, the one thing I'm going to insist on, which and he was

right about this, is that you hire a lawyer. So he had had a former teaching assistant that ended up working in entertainment law. And the teaching assistants name was Elliot Kahan. Elliott Kahn had a very interesting history because he had been a member of Shauna not while at Columbia and had actually done Woodstock as a member of Shauna. Not met Hendrix, you know, so he had this incredible backstory.

And around this time, you know, he's basically doing doing law and but you know, helping out musicians in the San Francisco Bay area. So I got to know Elliott because my dad, Elliott became the band's manager. Elliott had some connection with John and Marcia's Uzula, I forget what it was, and knew that they had been involved with Metallica on their first record. Knew that they were they were signing metal bands, they were looking for metal bands.

So Elliott Cohn, my friend of my father, which is so ironic, ends up sending our demo tape to the Uzulas and this Zula's liked what they heard, and we were already in negotiations to at least do a showcase for John and Marsha's Zula. And then shortly before that happens, we find out Exodus has fired their singer. They're talking

to Capitol Records. They take our singer, and we need a singer, so I the singer we got is his name is Chuck Billy, and he's this six foot four Native American towering presence, and he had been in a band that was more of a glam band, but it was with that great guitarist who I used to take lessons from Danny Gill, and that was how we knew about him, and we weren't sure he would be able to sing heavy music, you know, this fat but he you know, he learned, he was willing to learn, and

he became the singer. And this all happened really fast. We did a new demo with Chuck. The Zazulas liked it and they came out and we showcased for them. The day that we showcased for the Zazulas, Cliff Burton from Metallica passed away in a bus accident. So it ended up being this very somber, sad day, But it was the day we showcased for the Suzulas and signed our first record.

But it's on this very sad day that the world lost the great Cliff Burton. So it was definitely a period of growing up fast and recognizing yes, you know, there's going to be these very positive moments, but there's going to be some difficult sad moments too, and sometimes all within a very short period of time.

fans of Slayer were notorious. You know, they were like Mets fans, you know, just if they don't like you, they they're not shy about it. But everybody told us, if you can survive opening for Slayer at Lamores in Brooklyn, you're on your way. And we got flown to New York. We did the show with Slayer. We were booed, we were subjected to Slayer chants, but it started dying down midway through, and by the end, I think we'd won over enough people, so it really felt like, Okay, things

are happening now. And right around the same time, we went to upstate New York. There was a producer up there named Alex Pirialis, and he had recorded Anthrax and a bunch of other albums for Mega Force, and they had a relationship already, so he wanted to take us under his wing. And at the same time, a lot of my friends were going off to college. I was on a plane heading to Ithaca, New York, and uh, you know, being in a pro recording studio for the

first time. We've done a couple of demos at this point, but yeah, this this was the next level and the whole going through the whole process of you know, the calendar dates. Here's when you're going to do your drum tracks, Here's when you're going to do your guitar tracks. Here's the budget here. We want to come in under budget.

We want to come in ahead of time. You know, I just learned this crash course learning how this is done, and it was an incredible on the job experience, on the job training.

makes a lot of decisions too. It's like a real great partnership. And I think with us, I think Testament we were so green. We were really just started looking for guidance, so I don't think we knew what would have We just ended up on a tour with Anthrax and across the United States. We ended up on another tour with Overkilled. These are both Mega Forest bands. We did our very first tour in Europe, and yeah, Mega Death at that time is starting to reach a higher level.

So yeah, we were sort of part of this echosystem of all of all these bands, but it was never clear how big we could get, and Metallica just always felt like they were in a category of their own, so I kind of never never thought we would quite catch up to them, but it did feel like they were making it more acceptable to do music that at the time was considered very uncommercial. This was not glam metal, this was not Sunset strip.

the second record. But yeah, emotionally it was I definitely went through some mixed emotions because I felt like, on the one hand, yeah, this is kind of what I've always wanted. I'm touring and I'm playing guitar, getting some nice attention for my guitar playing. At that time, technical playing wasn't really a thing in that style of music. It was more limited to glam metal and for the world of you know, sort of thrash or speed metal

as it was called. I was getting some nice attention, but I also felt like at the shows, you know, they didn't really know how to mix the music yet, and the equipment has come a long way. It's much better now. At that time, you're playing through amplifiers that you know, they're designed for music like fog Hat Foreigner, the whole crunchy heavy metal sound. It's still a very new thing. It's very hard to get that sound, and it often didn't sound good live. The PA systems could

not handle it. They weren't designed for that music, so it just sometimes it sounded like this just wall with noise. And yes, the crowds were excited and their crowdsurfing and washing, but I felt like, Okay, I really kind of wish there was more listening, and I wish there was more attention to the music itself. And maybe this contributed to me getting so into sort of yeah, virtuoso instrumental music the way I did. A short time later.

was very satisfying. But also we had our first arena support tours, so we had supported judas priests and from the time I was in you know, ninth grade, all the way through high school, just you know, they were heroes and they seemed like giants to me. But at this time they were having a hard time. Suddenly the arenas weren't selling as well as they should and it

was kind of right out of a spinal tap. And then on top of that, we're the first group on the arena tour, and so you've also got Megadeth, and it's on the one hand, it's terrific. Wow. I got to play the Oakland Colisseum, which is where I've seen some of my favorite concerts, and that show was great. But then we would do other shows where we're playing people are walking into the arena and it's it's not

how you imagine. You know, there are some groups that are lucky to just have a big break and suddenly they're they're they're playing in front of an arena crowd. But yeah, that wasn't the case. So there was some disillusion there. As I mentioned much earlier, the band really wasn't getting along. And also, yeah, I was having, you know, musical interests that were different. I realized I could stick around and sort of just be the thrash metal guy.

But I've been already been developing as a musician. You know. When we did our third record, we didn't go to the East Coast. We stayed at home and recorded at Fantasy Studios, which was home to Fantasy Records. And at that time, Fantasy Records was buying up all these defunct jazz labels like Riverside and Impulse, and I was listening to jazz albums being remastered. It was just an amazing experience. I heard a live John Coltrane record being remastered. I

thought he was in the room. It sounded that good. So that we really sort of contributed to my jazz interests, and Fantasy cooked me up with a whole box load of jazz albums that I got for nothing were dollar and and then so I was studying jazz. And then a couple of years later, by nineteen ninety two, the band took a break. We had been going non stop too, I should mention like it was practically an album a year,

followed by this touring cycle where everybody was exhausted. The one time we did some time, the one time we did take a break was in nineteen ninety one, and everybody just yeah, took vacations, didn't want to think about music. I auditioned for Stuart Ham, who was this great virtuoso bass player who played on Joe Satriani's records, had toured with Joe and Stu heard something in me and hired me to tour with him. So that was my first taste of the world of music outside of Heavy Melt.

And there I'm playing to people who have no idea who I am, but they're listening and it was just very diverse music. So get to get back to your question. Yeah, by the time I leave the band, yeah, everybody's exhausted, they're not getting along. I'm exploring, playing instrumental music, exploring jazz music, and it was time.

while and it started to interesting to me again. At this point too, you also had some changes in the music and the culture. The whole alternative period had died down. The anti guitar solo fever had died down. You know that that was another thing too. You know, the way music was going in the nineties, it just seemed like rock was going through this phase out with the solo out with virtuosity. Okay, what am I doing? This is what I do. So but by the two thousands, okay,

it's starting to come back. The guitar solo was coming back. The oz Fest was happening at that time. So now there's newer bands, and some of the bands had grown up listening to Testament, and I was coming into contact with some of these bands. One of those bands is band called Lamb of God, and I got to know the guys. They invited me to do a guest solo on their record, a record called Ashes of the Wig, and I thought, okay, that would be interesting. At that point,

I had not done heavy metal. I'm mostly, you know, playing these jazz box guitars, and okay, let me step back in there and see you. And it felt great.

And then I went to see Lamb of God play at one of the OZ fests, and I met other new bands, bands like Slipknot and Hate Breed, all these newer bands, and they they recognized me, and they they were very complimentary, and so suddenly I was feeling this appreciation from this newer wave of heavy metal guys, and I just started to think it might be fun to do a metal project. You know, maybe I could get some of these guys and put together some new band.

And just around that time, I hear from the guys in Testament, the original guys that are still there. That's Chuck the singer and Eric Peterson, the guitarist. They'd been through a revolving door. By that time, they'd been through about more drummers than Spinal tap other guitar and they were tired of it. They were actually ready to retire

the band, and they we worked out. We had a few business disagreements that got worked out, like here, here's that thing you should have gotten paid for that you didn't get sorry about that. That was okay, and we're friends again. And they just, you know, they wanted to do some shows with the old lineup, and they actually had a couple offers come in because at this time European festivals are really popping. You know, you have Vakin

in Germany, Sweden Rock. It's this whole other world where every country is trying to outdo with each other with a big hard rock and heavy metal festival and some so these promoters were wanted us to play as the original lineup, and we took We agreed and did a few shows. We were like weekend Warriors for the mid two thousands, and we would go to Europe play a few shows here and there, and then the offers kept coming in and the people said, oh, this is great.

You know, why don't you guys do a full tour, why don't you do a record? And we were a bit resistant, and then one day the band gets an offer to tour with motor Head, Judas Priest and Heaven and Hell, which is Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dia, one of his last go around on the condition that there is a new album. You can't tour without an album, so we go into the studio. We recorded an album called The Formation of Damnation. We end up doing this

tour with Motorhead, Judas Priests, Heaven and Hell. It was called the Metal Masters Tour, and next thing you know, we're back. Offers kept coming in. Another tour that followed was with Slayer and Megadeth, and that was called the American Carnage Tour. In fact, the funny side note, Rachel Maddow talked about this tour when Trump did his whole American Carnage theme at the first inauguration, And if you watch this episode of Madows, she actually holds up a

t shirt from this tour. Up until now, American Carnage meant this tour with Slayer, Meganeth and Testament. Today it means something. It was hilarious, but anyway, yeah, since then, yeah, it's just it's kept up. The band had this resurgence and we seem to be doing better. We're Yeah, we've definitely learned from mistakes of the past. The new album came out Parabellum, it's charting, it's actually getting good reviews.

We just we're in the Guardian, so a lot of the types of outlets that would never have covered the band before paying attention and it all yeah, it all really started with that tour in two thousand and eight, the Metal Mask.

about having other projects. Other members of the band have other projects that used to be sacrileged to have a band outside of your main band, and now it's it's very understood. So well. This year, for example, we we did a summer tour that lasted about five weeks. We just did a European tour that lasted three weeks, but I also toured with my trio in March for the whole month. Later this month, I'm going to do a

two week East coast Midwest tour with my trio. And in January I'll be touring in Texas with the trio and also up and down the West coast. But then in the plant. Current plan is to do a testament tour in March and April for about five weeks. So normally the tours are about five weeks. There are about three or four of those tours a year, so it's actually a lot. It's a lot of time, and when you add up the other the instrumental music I do, it's it's a lot, but it's fun.

You know, transportation and logistics, and I'm able to delegate some things and you know, there are things that I don't do. Visual art is not something I do. I admire artists like you know, Joni Mitchell and Rob Zombie that do all their artwork. I don't. I don't do that, but yeah, it's it's it's been fun. I mean, I really like the un predictable things that come up. So an example of an unpredictable thing is I just did my first soundtrack and it's for a film called Traction

Park Massacre. The director works for Metallica. His name is Adam Duban, and he did a year and a half of the Life of Metallica, but he also did some iconic music videos Beat by the Beastie Boys, fight for Your Right to Party, and this is his first feature film, and he and I kind of get it off. We actually live in the same neighborhood, and he convinced me

to do this soundtrack. And the film just debuted at New York Comic Con and it's getting some raves and I'm hearing a lot about the music, so it's I think it's possible I may do more of that. I just got back from an event called the Guitar Summit in Europe and played on a stage with Weasel Zappa and Andy Timmins. And a bunch of other guys. And you know, there's these guitar events like that. Joe Satriani, our friend, has done some great guitar events. He does

this thing called the G four Experience. I've been a guest on two of those, and yeah, just you know, when you add it all up, it's it's a lot of fun. I don't really know what each year looks like, but I'm totally fine with it. This year I was able to to squeeze out an album with it with my trio. But you know, coming up, I also have

a tour with this great bass player, Percy Jones. He was in a band called brand X in the seventies and has He's associated with artists like Brian Eno and h Phil Collins who was part of brand X, And so Percy's a legend like any fretless bass player knows him. And we have a project together, and uh, you know, I just did a CD release party or album release party in New York a few weeks ago. Vernon Reed was a special guest.