Paul Gilbert, I wrote my best guitar solo on a kazoo
As the incomparable Paul Gilbert has now released his 17th solo album, I Can Destroy, we’re exclusively premiering three episodes from his Scarified: The Terrifying Tales Of Paul Gilbert video series, where the guitar ace looks back at his career and drops a few revelations along the way.
Paul reveals that he considers the solo for the song Vibrato among the best he’s recorded… but he actually wrote it on a kazoo. “I think it’s one of my best solos,” Gilbert reveals. “I thought, ‘Man, I want the solo to come not from my fingers, not visually from patterns; I want to just sing it!’ And so I thought, ‘I’m gonna put the guitar down’, and I actually have an electric kazoo that I ordered on the internet.
I did it, and I was like, ‘Man, this is the best thing I’ve ever played!’
“I plugged it into a Marshall, and I started just humming and wrote this whole thing, and then I learned it on guitar – and I had to learn it because when you sing you might come up with stuff that you wouldn’t play. It was absolutely what I wanted.
“And I did it, and I was like, ‘Man, this is the best thing I’ve ever played!’ I look on the YouTube comments, and it’s like, ‘Well, it’s not really the best thing he’s ever played.’ I was like, ‘Damn, those shred fans are harsh judges!'”
Scarified episode 19: Groove And Rhythm
Below, you’ll find more exclusive clips from the virtuoso’s video series, in which he waxes lyrical on the albums Space Ship One and Get Out Of My Yard, while discussing his love of Rush, how his students influence his songwriting, and how playing G3 with Joe Satriani changed his views on what instrumental guitar playing could be.
The guitarist even manages to remember and play a song he wrote when he was 14 – proof that his mind is just as quick as his fingers.
Scarified episode 16: Space Ship Live
Scarified episode 17: Get Out Of My Yard
I Can Destroy is out on 27 May and was produced by Kevin Shirley – it includes the single Everybody Use Your Goddamn Turn Signal, and also heralds the return of Gilbert’s infamous Makita drill on One Woman Too Many.