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Gilby considers himself "pretty good at picking out guitar parts", but he picked them all wrong at least once -- by his own admission


ludurigan

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This is a bit from a Gilby Clarke interview on Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon

He talks about playing with Wayne Kramer on a tribute to the MC5...

 

"When I first sat down with him to learn the songs, you know, I'm pretty good at picking out guitar parts on records, and when I sat down with him - man did I have them wrong. When he showed me what the parts really were, I'm not kidding, it blew my mind."

 

source: https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/ex-gnr_guitarist_gilby_clarke_i_was_beyond_stunned_to_see_axl__slash_reunite.html

 

 

SO Gilby considers himself "pretty good at picking out guitar parts on records"

BUT he picked the guitar parts of an album all wrong at least once -- by his own admission

 

YEAH I would go even further and say that it happened at least twice

YES i am talking about the izzy's parts that gilby "picked" on GNR songs

 

i think if gilby sat down with izzy and izzy were to show him what the parts really are, then gilby's mind would blow even harder

Edited by ludurigan
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27 minutes ago, ludurigan said:

This is a bit from a Gilby Clarke interview on Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon

He talks about playing with Wayne Kramer on a tribute to the MC5...

 

"When I first sat down with him to learn the songs, you know, I'm pretty good at picking out guitar parts on records, and when I sat down with him - man did I have them wrong. When he showed me what the parts really were, I'm not kidding, it blew my mind."

 

source: https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/ex-gnr_guitarist_gilby_clarke_i_was_beyond_stunned_to_see_axl__slash_reunite.html

 

 

SO Gilby considers himself "pretty good at picking out guitar parts on records"

BUT he picked the guitar parts of an album all wrong at least once -- by his own admission

 

YEAH I would go even further and say that it happened at least twice

YES i am talking about the izzy's parts that gilby "picked" on GNR songs

 

i think if gilby sat down with izzy and izzy were to show him what the parts really are, then gilby's mind would blow even harder

  Sometimes, as a player, your mind can deceive you. You think you're playing something perfectly as it was written but you're really not.  There are different reasons for this.  One being that you never were playing it properly or you have deviated from playing it correctly over time.  This even happens to the musicians who wrote it.  Ace Frehley had to pretty much relearn his solos for the Kiss reunion because he had been playing them wrong for years, as compared to the recorded versions.  He wasn't even aware that he was playing incorrectly. 

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now now... Gilby is a good guitar player with a good tone and a... he's not Izzy, but he contributed to the machine and it had it's value. I like his classic bluesy hard rock vibe. He kept it movin' along

Edited by Rovim
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9 hours ago, TeeJay410 said:

Why in the world did you highlight this part and not his comments on the reunion?

maybe because i have been listening to that band 92-93 live recordings for 25 years now and I always thought that "this doesn't sound right"?

and now I may have found (additional) information that may explain why said band never sounded right to my ears?

something I have always suspected -- Gilby wasn't playing the songs properly?

this "Gilby picks guitar parts wrong" information adds to a much more famous Gilby tale (also via his own mouth) that when he was learning the songs Slash told him something like "Hey, you are playing my parts"... (additional evidence that Gilby can't pick parts that good)... and then Slash told him something like "no one really knew what Izzy played"

You put A plus B and it gets pretty obvious why it never sounded right

 

 

 

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9 hours ago, Rovim said:

now now... Gilby is a good guitar player with a good tone and a... he's not Izzy, but he contributed to the machine and it had it's value. I like his classic bluesy hard rock vibe. He kept it movin' along

I agree that Gilby is a good guitar player with a good tone that contributed to the machine, had its value and kept it moving along

that doesn't change the fact that he didn't sound right on a lot of songs, and his little tale about picking wrong guitar parts may explain why Gilby didn't sound right on a lot of songs

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36 minutes ago, ludurigan said:

I agree that Gilby is a good guitar player with a good tone that contributed to the machine, had its value and kept it moving along

that doesn't change the fact that he didn't sound right on a lot of songs, and his little tale about picking wrong guitar parts may explain why Gilby didn't sound right on a lot of songs

Gilby has spoken about how he accidentally learnt Slashs rhythm parts because those were the ones audible on UYI songs. And Slash corrected him. From there Slash asked Gilby to change some parts to be different from Izzys - more streamlined. And Gilby also worked with Duff to try and put together what Izzy was doing in the inaudible parts.

Its all hilarious and Spinal Tap. Why wouldnt they be able to make available isolated Izzy tracks? Why did Slash wanna bury Izzys parts with his own on the album but apparently want the reverse live? And I imagine that the parts Slash wanted to change would be from AFD and Lies tunes where Izzys parts matter more. Those parts he wanted Slash-ified. And the UYI stuff he wanted Izzy-fied. Its bonkers!

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12 hours ago, lame ass security said:

  Sometimes, as a player, your mind can deceive you. You think you're playing something perfectly as it was written but you're really not.  There are different reasons for this.  One being that you never were playing it properly or you have deviated from playing it correctly over time.  This even happens to the musicians who wrote it.  Ace Frehley had to pretty much relearn his solos for the Kiss reunion because he had been playing them wrong for years, as compared to the recorded versions.  He wasn't even aware that he was playing incorrectly. 

True. Depending on the song, hardly anyone plays something correct note for note. Sometimes I want to learn a song 100% correct like they played it on the record, so I slow it down to really nail it and to get every single note right. Then when I check youtube, I notice that every professional guitar instructor on there has a different version and plays it slightly different. Most guitarists don't even play a riff or a solo exactly the way they played it on the record most of the time either, even when they're not trying to improvise.

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1 hour ago, ludurigan said:

I agree that Gilby is a good guitar player with a good tone that contributed to the machine, had its value and kept it moving along

that doesn't change the fact that he didn't sound right on a lot of songs, and his little tale about picking wrong guitar parts may explain why Gilby didn't sound right on a lot of songs

yea cause he's not Izzy. I don't think anyone would sound "right" except the guitar playin' of the man who was a part of the original recipe. It sounded different, but for me, in the style of Gn'R. It wasn't too different that it stuck out like a butthurt penis

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I used to be harsh on Gilby for not contributing on the original material but Axl didn't want to it seems and Gilby had ideas, he had Pawnshop Guitars which could have been used for parts on the next Guns record. (can't believe I just said that)

Izzy will always be the greatest but Gilby did exactly what he should and could have done and he did it with grace.

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1 hour ago, Rovim said:

yea cause he's not Izzy. I don't think anyone would sound "right" except the guitar playin' of the man who was a part of the original recipe. It sounded different, but for me, in the style of Gn'R. It wasn't too different that it stuck out like a butthurt penis

i respect your opinion

yeah "butthurt penis" seems to be a more accurate description for the past and current axl aliens

yeah probably no one would sound right other than izzy

same goes for axl and slash

irreplaceable

and even steven in a sense

but GNR sounded good with matt on drums in 1991

duff seems to me to be the only replaceable member of guns n roses

 

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1 minute ago, EvanG said:

Gilby definitely could have added something to the creative process. Pawnshop Guitars is a decent record and Monkey Chow is one of the best songs on the Snakepit record.

agree

Cure or Kill me is fantastic

that riff alone has more heart & spirit than the entire axl rose solo discography

Black is pretty good too

the Col Parker album has some truly good songs

the list goes on

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2 hours ago, soon said:

Its all hilarious and Spinal Tap. Why wouldnt they be able to make available isolated Izzy tracks? Why did Slash wanna bury Izzys parts with his own on the album but apparently want the reverse live? And I imagine that the parts Slash wanted to change would be from AFD and Lies tunes where Izzys parts matter more. Those parts he wanted Slash-ified. And the UYI stuff he wanted Izzy-fied. Its bonkers!

exactly

pretty pathetic hysterical spinal tap stuff

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4 minutes ago, ludurigan said:

duff seems to me to be the only replaceable member of guns n roses

I think Duff is more important than people give him credit for, and even though he does have a distinctive sound for a bassplayer, of course he's no Slash or Axl whose guitar and voice really create the GnR sound.

But I think in other aspects Duff was rather important. For example, it was Duff who wrote the intro to You Could Be Mine.

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1 hour ago, Rovim said:

I used to be harsh on Gilby for not contributing on the original material but Axl didn't want to it seems and Gilby had ideas, he had Pawnshop Guitars which could have been used for parts on the next Guns record. (can't believe I just said that)

Izzy will always be the greatest but Gilby did exactly what he should and could have done and he did it with grace.

no matter where you go, whenever you start to try and understand why things didn't work (or,why did they go so wrong) the name that always pops up -- and usually closes the conversation -- is axl rose

2 minutes ago, EvanG said:

But I think in other aspects Duff was rather important. For example, it was Duff who wrote the intro to You Could Be Mine.

that is important

do you have source for this info?

also that doesn't make him irreplaceable

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2 minutes ago, ludurigan said:

do you have source for this info?

also that doesn't make him irreplaceable

It's on youtube somewhere. Interview with Matt. They asked him if he came up with the drum part at the beginning, but he said it was Duff.

I think that was Duff's role in that band. He talked about this in his book as well. He was basically the conductor in that band because he had the most musical experience out of all guys.

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3 minutes ago, EvanG said:

It's on youtube somewhere. Interview with Matt. They asked him if he came up with the drum part at the beginning, but he said it was Duff.

I think that was Duff's role in that band. He talked about this in his book as well. He was basically the conductor in that band because he had the most musical experience out of all guys.

oh you mean the drum intro

yeah thats a great drum intro

i dont think duff wrote the "full" proper intro -- the crescendo stuff, the dramatic and so flowy arrangements

and if you ask me i would say that duff probably didnt have much to do with building that drama (and flow) in the songs, and even being a sort of "conductor" as you point

i respect your opinion, i am speculating here, but all that i have read about GNR and all that i can listen on everyone (axl, izzy, slash and duffs) solo albums leads me to believe that izzy had way more to do with that kind of stuff than duff

or it was a band effort

maybe clink helped?

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1 minute ago, ludurigan said:

oh you mean the drum intro

yeah thats a great drum intro

i dont think duff wrote the "full" proper intro -- the crescendo stuff, the dramatic and so flowy arrangements

and if you ask me i would say that duff probably didnt have much to do with building that drama (and flow) in the songs, and even being a sort of "conductor" as you point

i respect your opinion, i am speculating here, but all that i have read about GNR and all that i can listen on everyone (axl, izzy, slash and duffs) solo albums leads me to believe that izzy had way more to do with that kind of stuff than duff

or it was a band effort

maybe clink helped?

I'm sure Izzy wrote more than Duff, I agree with that. I can imagine Duff writing the drum and bass part until those licks come in (bending of the strings). From then on it's probably Izzy's and Axl's song. But I wasn't there, so it's all speculation.

Because Duff was the guy with most band experience, I can picture him having been the one who put a lot of ideas together and what not. There's always someone like that in a band, even if they're not the main songwriter. That's why I think Duff was probably more important than he got credit for.

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5 minutes ago, EvanG said:

I'm sure Izzy wrote more than Duff, I agree with that. I can imagine Duff writing the drum and bass part until those licks come in (bending of the strings). From then on it's probably Izzy's and Axl's song. But I wasn't there, so it's all speculation.

Because Duff was the guy with most band experience, I can picture him having been the one who put a lot of ideas together and what not. There's always someone like that in a band, even if they're not the main songwriter. That's why I think Duff was probably more important than he got credit for.

yeah i see, its possible

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the real magic was Duff and Steven together, that rhythm section is perfect but even just Duff's tone and bass lines, his feel for arranging tunes and knowing how to do it in the path of least resistance to where the tune needs to go... you lose something when you replace a player like that. He was instrumental to the sound and Steven as well. In a band like old Guns, you change one ingredient and it becomes something else. we've seen it with Sorum which I think brought something interesting to the table but it wasn't the same thing anymore.

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11 minutes ago, ludurigan said:

yeah i see, its possible

I meant the first twenty seconds. I know it doesn't seem too important, and that's why he didn't get a songwriting credit for it. 

But it's the same with Sweet Child... it's mainly Izzy, Slash and Axl's song, but Duff wrote that bass melody in the intro, which isn't insignificant either. I think in many songs Duff was probably the glue who put a lot of things together and added small things that might have not been enough to give him a songwriting credit if you want to go all technical, but he did add something to the song. I read an interview with Duff where he said that he wrote a lot more for the UYI's than he got credit for. Like the bass melody in the intro of Pretty Tied Up... I can imagine Duff coming up with that and not getting a songwriting credit for it because it's played over Izzy's composition.

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