FULL CIRCLE
The first issue of Guitarist I bought was around 20 years ago. I was 16 at the time and I remember it having a pink Paisley Telecaster on the cover. Reading with avid interest, I wanted to be like the featured guitar heroes and immerse myself in all the gear reviewed. Those were very exciting times.
Inspired, my first electric guitar was a cheap Marlin Sidewinder from my local guitar shop, which cost £30. I thought it was the best thing ever. As I progressed, I then bought various Japanese, UK and American-made guitars, all of them wonderful in their own way – and many of which I regret selling. Life continued and I matured. As much as I love all styles of music, my passion to play heavy styles progressively – and very quickly – ebbed. Blues would soon become my go-to style of playing every time I picked up my favoured instrument.
Then, in 2013, I got the urge to learn classical guitar. So I did. For seven years. All my electric equipment went and in a strange and unexpected turnaround, I was left with an old Spanish six-string that I used to work my way through my grades. I thought,‘That’s it, I’m a classical guitarist.’ I honestly believed that my journey in electric guitar had genuinely come to an end.
However, they say things often go full circle. Several weeks ago the desire to play electric – and blues – bit me again. So I found a Hamer USA Studio online and bought a high-end valve amp as its sparring partner soon after – if I was going to do this, I wanted to do it properly. After setting up, I played some old ideas, churned out some 12-bar progressions and improvised some blues licks. This initial session showed that while I was rusty, I hadn’t lost it altogether. What I had lost was all concept of time – and I was grinning ear to ear. The feeling I had was great – electric, as it were!
But this story isn’t over just yet. If rekindling my love for electric guitar and blues wasn’t enough to make me feel like a 16 year old starting out again, then rushing out to buy issue 456 of Guitarist certainly did just that.
Ben Edwards, via email
Hi Ben, thanks for your inspiring story. It’s a reminder not to pigeonhole yourself or rule out areas of guitar you’ve never tried. The guitar is one of the most flexible and expressive instruments ever devised and, even more usefully, what is learned in one discipline can often be transferred to another. Yngwie Malmsteen and Ritchie Blackmore both borrowed from classical music in their influential hard-rock playing – no reason why phrasing, taste and tone lessons from classical guitar shouldn’t bring something to blues as well. Have you tried acoustic fingerstyle blues yet? Might well suit someone with a well-developed right-hand technique.