Regarded
as one of the fastest guitar players in the world Chris Impellitteri
talks to us about his new 'Wicked Maiden' and dispels some of the myths
about the man, his music and his love of great melodies and songs.
MM - Firstly thanks for doing this interview so early in your day and
congratulations on another superb album!
Chris -
Thanks,
I appreciate that.
MM - The new album sees Rob Rock return to the fold, how did that come
about?
Chris - In all
honesty the fans really wanted it.
I've worked with other singers and they didn’t expect what I was
trying to do. Rob was really the voice of the band and I wanted to
return to our original roots. Rob was on the very first
Impellitteri record that we did, which was the Impellitteri 'Black' EP.
I just think the chemistry is better than the chemistry I've had with
other people. There's so much noise in the music industry at the
moment, there’s a million bands and it’s really difficult to be
unique and have your own identity, and for me I had to be totally honest
with myself about what line-up of Impellitteri was the best, and for me
the honest answer was Rob Rock. I just think I write music better
when he’s in the band.
MM - Yes if you have a certain writing style then it's true certain
vocalists can perhaps suit that style better than others.
Chris - Yes
that’s what I’m trying to say, as a child I watched Van Halen with
David Lee Roth and Eddie there was a chemistry.
I’ve heard it for years you know Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, Mick
Jagger and Keith Richards, there is a true chemistry between guitarist
and singers and I honestly think Rob and I have that.
MM -
So was it Rob's vocals that you specifically thought of when you started
writing the album?
Chris - Yes, I thought immediately about him.
MM
- The album
took some three years to complete. Why so long? Was it due
to other commitments or getting everyone together?
Chris -
It had a little to do with everything, mainly when I started 'Wicked
Maiden' I set a goal for the band, the goal was ...
of course when I’m saying this I’m not saying that we achieved this
or were better than these records, but none
the less we set a bar or a standard for what we were trying
to achieve. So I said ... hey when we
make 'Wicked Maiden' I want rise to the levels
of those records that I grew up and listened to.
I want to make a record in my mind is that's as good and
that rivals the bands I chose, bands
like Van Halen '1', Ozzy Osborne’s 'Blizzard
of Oz', Metallica’s 'Master Of Puppets',
Pantera’s 'Cowboys From Hell'.
Just
all these really great metal and hard rock records that were the
pinnacle of their generation. So that was the goal
and to do that it took me like a year and a half of just writing.
Inevitably on 'Wicked Maiden', and
again this is just my own opinion, I think we
had maybe four to five really good songs, where I think we really
did it, we rivaled my favourite artists that I
grew up with as a kid. Then
of course on the record we have four or five of what I call
record fillers that are fun to play live
.
MM - I
wouldn’t say that the album had fillers. I certainly
wouldn’t go as far as saying they're fillers.
I’ve listened to the album and to say there is fillers sort of puts
the album down.
Chris - Well thanks, I’m not trying to put the
album down I’m just trying to be honest. I hate it
when I hear bands who say ... “hey we're
really the greatest and this is better that ever” ...
When I say there are four or five songs that are great I really mean
they are great.
MM - You
mean the standout tracks. If someone asked you what
tracks you liked off the album, your standout
tracks, what would they be then?
Chris - For me personally, again this is such bias because
I’m a guitar player, so I like certain things to sound a
certain way. My favourite one would be the
opening track 'Wicked Maiden'. Something
happened that I can't explain, something
magical just happened in the studio and it hit
some sort of nerve. When we listened back to
it we thought ... "WOW! how did that happen?"
... my perspective may change later but right now I
really love 'Wicked Maiden'.
MM - I
also love ‘High School Revolution’, that’s a great
track.
Chris - Thank you so much for saying that because you know it's
so funny, that is also one of my favourite songs as a
guitar player. You know it reminds me
that traditional anthem sound that I listened to when I was
a kid. You know Van Halen had 'Hot For
Teacher', Alice Cooper had 'Schools Out',
all these classic songs, that’s what that song was
supposed to be. A lot of critics have said ... why
are you guys in your thirties singing about High School?
... and I laugh and say basically we're speaking for
a generation. We're not the ones in High School,
we're speaking for that, I think everyone can
remember the frustration of being at school and just wanting to get out.
MM - Where
do you see this album sitting amongst the rest of the bands albums?
Chris - I’ve been told by a lot of people lately that this
is the bands best record we’ve done, and of course I took some three
years to make it so I hope it’s a little better that some
of the others. But having said that, I
don’t know if this is the best record by any means. I
don’t know if this is a good or bad record because I've
been so close to it for three years now, it’s very
difficult for me to have a clear perspective. In
three years time I may look back and say ...
"hey that was the greatest thing ever"...
or I might say ... "oh god that’s horrible,
what were you thinking?" ... I don’t know
because I’m so attached to it right now.
MM
-You’ve stated that this is a band and that everyone has had
their part to play in it.
How important was for the album?
Chris - Absolutely, I mean when people
say the name Impellitteri, which basically nobody
can pronounce, they go Impellitteri, that’s Chris
Impellitteri and they immediately throw me in with the Yngwie,
Vai and Satriani. All these
guitar players and I’m like why are you doing that? Listen
to our records for gods sake! The music it's
heavy rock with singing. I get my thirty or
forty seconds to basically masturbate on my guitar,
to do all my shredding guitar solos which I love, but the
reality is that this is a band with four guys contributing
equally. |
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I
will say this however, I do write all the music so I take
the credit on that part, but the music can only be as good
as the performers, the drummers, the bass players ...
I mean James Pulli, this dude is a solid guy when he lays down the bass,
he just puts out this huge fat foundation and the same thing with Glen
Sobel. These
guys are just amazing musicians. When
people say ... "great
record" ...
don’t just look a me playing great because they did it too!
MM - Speaking
of Glen, the album has Brandon Wild listed as the drummer but on
the video I noticed Glen
Sobel plays?
Chris - There’s been a mixed up there, I was working with
some young drummers originally basically to see if I could
get my youthful fire back personally, so I was working with
Brandon Wild and some really young drummers to help me arrange some of
the tracks. But when it came down to the rehearsal
stage and the recording it's all Glen Sobel. Glen is not best
pleased either ...
MM - You’ve
been described as one of the fasted guitar players around.
How important to you is
melody over speed?
Chris -
Melody is more important than speed. I have
been described as the fasted guitar player in the world and
sometimes I do it great, but the reality is it's
about the melody. Can you imagine bragging and
saying I can talk faster that anyone else? It’s
silly isn’t it? Can I play fast? Yes
do I play fast, absolutely, but melody is
crucial.
Yes when I warm up I go through my
technical scales and I get to the point where I’m playing really fast
and accurately, but then I work on the riff, and the riff to me is when
you listen to 'Crazy Train', it's
all about the riff, even Van Halen. Take
the cover of 'You Really Got Me' by the Kinks,
it’s the riff it sticks in your head so to me that’s the most
important thing. Can you hum this? Does
it stick in your mind? Does it make you happy?
How does it affect your mind?
MM
-
How has the band changed since it
first started out?
Chris - Production! (laughs).
Our very first EP is one of my favourite records.
It's called the 'Black Impellitteri' EP.
We were poor. We had no money. It
sounds like a bootleg recording. It literally sounds
like we went into a live hall, put up two microphones in a
room, didn’t even dead-mike, that's where
you put the mike on the drum, so it sounds really watered and distant.
The production sucked, but as for the music,
for that period it was great. It was
almost borderline Speed Metal. Screaming,
terrifying fast guitar solo’s, all that fun
stuff, taking that forward we tried to evolve.
As the production got bigger and bigger and bigger, we really got into
the production phase, probably around the 'Victims
Of The Systems' EP we did for Japan. That’s
when we started working with a guy who had just finished working with
Bob Rock on the Metallica 'Black' album,
the other engineer. So we said ... "hey
we should start making our records sound bigger" ...
and so since then we’ve evolved more into the production
element. OK once we get the songs right we get it
live in the studio and it feels really good to everyone. Then
we colour it, it's what
I call the icing on the cake. We try to polish and
give it that power, so I think in that way we have evolved.
And I hope we’ve also evolved as musicians and
songwriters too, obviously when we started this band I was
a teenager. I started my band when I was fifteen
years old, so for me it's twenty or so more
years later. So obviously I’ve evolved personally
as I’ve played guitar for many, many hours and
recorded more than I did back as a kid.
MM - Have
ever thought about going back and re-recording that EP?
Chris - That’s a good question. You know
I don’t do that because I think it's so hard to recapture
that live performance, that spirit, you know, we could
re-record it but would it have that same magic? Can
you imagine Van Halen trying to recapture Van Halen '1'?
... and I don’t know if that would have worked,
Eddie plays different now than he did then. For me
the past is the past, let that be part of our legacy.
You have to listen to that EP as if you're
listening to a live bootleg recording, don't expect it to
be this huge production.
MM - Yes
that’s what people thought about Metallica when they started and the
whole Bay area thing
.
Chris - Yes Metallica evolved. One of the biggest
problems I’ve encountered is that the major misperception
of my band, people always think of me, or at least the kids
or the people that have been around for a long time remember me
from when we did an album with Graham Bonnet called ‘Stand In
Line’. The funny thing is that record had nothing
to do with what my band has ever really been about. That
was a major turn off the course we were taking, most people like it but
I hate that record.
MM - That
was my next question, how does this new album stand up
against 'Stand In Line'?
Chris - The new record, blows it away, 'Stand in
Line' to me was, I was a teenager and Rob Rock had just
left the band to do something else. I was really
depressed and I was really into Graham Bonnet in Alcatraz and MSG and
all that, so basically I thought it would be fun to do maybe an Alcatraz,
or a watered down Rainbow, so we went in, again we had no
money just this tiny budget, and there were two or three
songs I thought were OK. I liked 'Stand
In Line', it’s a fun song, it's
not metal by any means and it doesn’t sound like
Impellitteri, but it's become the staple for
the older generation. However I always hated the fact
that the guy made is sound so reverby.
MM - Yes
if you mention the name Impellitteri to the older crowd they
always turn towards 'Stand In Line'. If
you listen to the new album it's a completely
different animal altogether.
Chris - Yes, but now take the new record and go
back to the 'Black' EP. With
the exception of the production (laughs) ...
oh I get it Robs screaming, what do you hear on the first
song on 'Wicked Maiden'? ... Rob screaming.
Chris is playing really fast guitar solo’s on the
EP ... Chris is playing REALLY fast on 'Wicked
Maiden' ... so you realise that we’ve always been a much
more heavy hardcore band.
With 'Stand In Line' what happened was the
buzz was so big from that 'Black' EP,
especially in Japan and America where it was really
popular, every guitar player had it, pretty much every major rock band
had it!, so 'Stand In Line' was
set up and of course the video for 'Stand In Line'
ended up on MTV and was really popular for quite a while here in
America, so what you had this hardcore metal band that was
getting all this attention for the wrong kind of music
!
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MM
- Moving
away from the album now, I read that you're
working with Elliott Rubinson of Dean Guitars to
create the Chris Impellitteri signature guitar model?
How is that going?
Chris - It’s going very nicely. The
owner of Dean Guitars Elliott contacted me and he
was really cool. He really liked me and he
said we must do a Chris Impellitteri signature model.
I had to think about that, I mean I’ve
played a Stratocaster for twenty years, what do I do,
just take off the decal and put Dean on it?
(laughs).
The funny thing is it’s pretty much not too far
from the truth. Basically my main
Stratocaster is the same year Jimi Hendrix used the 68-71,
pretty much unmodified just stock. The
reality is that Fender guitars today don’t make that same
guitar, I’ve got guitars from their custom shop and they never
play as good as that 71, so with Dean’s custom shop, we said
why not take the Strat body do some modifications? In
the studio I use a Humbucker, so basically the Van
Halen thing, we’ll drop the Humbucker
in the bridge single coil in the neck, the finger |
| board
is very much like a 74 Strat neck with a fingerboard flat.
And I’m claiming this graphic, it's
really cool. It's basically
white with a really cool thick black spiders web. I’ve
seen some guitars with a spiders web on before but
they never seemed right. When
you get about twenty feet away it just looks like a really thin
line. So that’s pretty much the guitar. |
MM
– Any tour plans or festival dates arranged
for this year?
Chris - Yes, we just found out we're doing the
Sweden Rocks Festival. We're playing the
headlining stage and there are only four bands on the stage.
It all starts at 1.30 in the afternoon and it goes
Impellitteri then Journey, then Dream Theater,
then Heaven N' Hell. We're
one of the bands doing the headline stage, it's just so
cool.
MM - Wow,
that’s a real coo for the band!
Chris - Yes, one thing though we better not suck!
(laughs). All of sudden it's our first
trip Europe period and heading off to Sweden and who are we
playing with? It's got five stages and who do they
put us with? The number ones.
Yes, put us on with the legends, thanks
guys!
MM -
Let's just hope they haven’t listened to the 'Stand
In Line' album and said ... "hey let's
put these guys on with Journey!" ...
Chris - Yes! (laughs). The
band tried to convince me to do 'Stand In Line'
and 'Since You’ve Been Gone' for the Journey
crowd, but I said hey Sabbath are playing, we
got to be playing 'Wicked Maiden' and all the
heavy stuff.
MM -
So
Chris, do you know a 'Wicked
Maiden'?
Chris - Do want to hear a really funny story about that?
MM -Yeh.
Chris - If you listen to the lyric that Rob Rock eventually took, I
wrote the opening line ... “you run from the wicked
maiden’ ... that's the words I wrote when
I was working on the music. Rob Rock turned it into a
warfare story. Let me tell you what the story is
really about, about three of four years ago Iron Maiden
played the Ozzfest, you know remember this?
MM - Yes.
Chris - So Ozzy, Sharon and Bruce Dickinson major
fight right, the fight was conveyed in the press, that Sharon and her
boys they cut the power on Maiden and Bruce Dickinson said ...
"Fuck You Sharon!" ... major fight.
Well what I saw in America was a major
change that I hadn’t seen before. I mean Ozzy and
Black Sabbath has always been Ozzy. Ozzy
rules, Sabbath rules, nobody ever had a bad
word to say about them. Well soon after this
happened it was ... "Fuck You Ozzy!,
Maiden rule!" and it was the first time we saw Sharon
and Ozzy with their tails between their legs, because the
Maiden fans were much stronger than the Ozzy fans,
and I was like ... oh my god that’s freaky, so
that’s where I got the line ... “You run
from the Wicked Maiden” ... like
Ozzy and Sharon running from the Iron Maiden fans, that’s really how
the song started out.
MM - What does the future hold for the band and will you be promoting
the band live?
Chris - Yes of course
we're doing dates here in the States, we're gonna do a tour of Japan as
well, we always do. We're gonna release the album in the States
then we're looking at a full blood European tour. We're
talking to promoters right now about doing that. The label tells
us there's a huge buzz around this record, whether that’s true or not
I’m not sure. I mean Impellitteri is a really big band in
certain parts of the world, although we don’t do the big rock star
ego’s, but we do get treat like that and when we play the bigger
venues, we do sell out shows. Big productions you know. So
when we're forced to play markets we're not used to ... well I mean our
drum riser is bigger that some of the stages!
MM - Yes
the European crowd love their metal, especially the likes of Germany.
Take festivals like Wacken, they have a guaranteed sell-out crowd.
Chris - Yes
we tried to get on that but couldn’t get hold of the promoter.
MM -
Yes
the European festivals are really taking off and new ones are
appearing every year.
MM - Well Chris, thanks for taking time out to chat with us today, we
really appreciate it.
Chris - Yes, it’s
been a pleasure.
MM -
After
the interview Chris and I talked some more about the
different festivals and venues and chattered generally about what
I thought of the new album, my likes and dislikes and what generally
floats my boat.
I'd
like to thank genuinely thank Chris for taking the time out of his busy
schedule to chat with us and share such honest opinions on the band and
their music. I hope one day to catch him and the band performing
live in the UK and whole-heartedly suggest you check out this man and
his music.
(*
Image of Chris with guitar appears courtesy and copyright of James Pulli). |