Veteran members of Melbourne’s heavy music scene came together in 2017 to form Tropical Fuck Storm. From left to right: guitarist/vocalist Erica Dunn, guitarist/vocalist Gareth "Gaz" Liddiard, bassist/vocalist Fiona Kitschin, and drummer Lauren Hammel.
In June 2021, while the pandemic was raging worldwide, Gareth “Gaz” Liddiard, who was isolating during one of Melbourne’s many lockdowns, decided he wanted to cover a Jimi Hendrix song. But the vocalist and guitarist for Australia’s Tropical Fuck Storm didn’t want to cover one of the legend’s hits. “I thought, ‘Let’s do a Hendrix song, but what’s the most ridiculous and ambitious one?’” he recalls. He ultimately decided that Hendrix’s “1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)” fit the bill.
The cover is now the centerpiece of Submersive Behavior, the band’s latest release. The Hendrix version of “1983” clocks in at about 13 minutes and features the kind of guitar histrionics one would expect from the legendary guitarist. Tropical Fuck Storm’s version of “1983” is an epic 18-minute swatch of sonic surrealism that honors the original, but also leans heavily on their own energetic style. From Liddiard’s opening guitar salvo, through the acid-trip, synth-psych middle section, the spirit of Hendrix is heartwarmingly embraced, and raucously and inventively reimagined.
1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)
Submersive Behavior is the latest entry in a growing catalog marked by fearless choices. The band’s 2018 debut album, A Laughing Death in Meatspace, was a singular-sounding mashup of post-punk and psychedelia driven mightily by the crafty guitar work of Liddiard and the band’s other guitarist, Erica Dunn. 2019’s Braindrops further solidified their reputation as one of Australia’s most innovative and boundary-busting exports. It featured an eclectic mix of genres and unconventional song structures, laced with the duo’s now-signature effects-saturated, experimentally recorded guitar sounds. With Submersive Behavior, Tropical Fuck Storm is pushing the envelope yet again, this time by gutting and reconstructing the once tried-and-true covers-record concept.
Gareth "Gaz" Liddiard's Gear
Gareth “Gaz” Liddiard says the vast Western Australian desert is one of his biggest influences. Growing up, he didn’t know if he’d ever get out of it.
Photo by Mike White
Guitars
- Fender Jaguars with humbuckers
- 1967 Guild Starfire
- Gibson ES-335 with Bigsby
Amps
- Fender Twin Reverb
- Fender Hot Rod DeVilles
- ’60s and ’70s Goldentone amplifiers
- ’70s and ’80s boom boxes in studio
Effects
- 4MS Mr. Ugly
- Bananana Effects AURORA
- Boss LS-2 Line Selector
- DOD Overdrive Preamp 250
- Jackson Audio 1484 Twin Twelve
- Line 6 HX Stomp XL
- Meris Ottobit
- Mid-Fi Electronics Magick “i”
- Montreal Assembly Count to 5
- ProCo Fat Rat
Strings and Picks
- Dunlop Tortex Standard Picks, .88mm
- Ernie Ball 2627 Beefy Slinky .011–.054
Aside from their own self-described “deranged spins” on “1983” and the Stooges’ “Ann,” the other three songs on the 36-minute EP are originals, credited, tongue-in-cheek, to fictitious bands like Men Men Menstruation and Compliments to the Chef. “Those are some of the band names that we used for our first four gigs,” explains Liddiard. “Since we just had that Hendrix song [for Submersive Behavior], and it’s 18 minutes long, it needed a B side, so that’s why you see some pretend band names on the album cover.” Even the title, Submersive Behavior, accurately sums up just how effective Tropical Fuck Storm is at bucking the status quo.
To color outside of the lines has been the band’s inheritance from the beginning. They formed in Melbourne, Australia in 2017, shortly after Liddiard’s previous band, the Drones, went on hiatus. Veteran musicians from Melbourne’s heavy music scene fill out the band, with fellow Drones alum Fiona Kitschin on bass and vocals, Mod Con’s Dunn on guitar and vocals, and drummer Lauren Hammel from High Tension. By combining elements of their previous endeavors, including rock, punk, and experimental music, and spearheaded by lightning-rod lyrics addressing climate change, political corruption, and societal unrest, Tropical Fuck Storm quickly developed a reputation for their musically chaotic live performances and unapologetic worldview.
“There’s lots of bands with guitars and it’s good. But other things, you just go, ‘What the fuck?’ Something’s really happening and it’s that almost careening-out-of-control thing.”
Dunn says restrictions imposed by the lockdown, like having to isolate from one another, set creative parameters that played a big part in the cultivation and evolution of the original material on Submersive Behavior. Liddiard had a hard drive full of jams that the band had shelved as “fuck-ups,” and when he had nothing else to do, he combed back through them, grabbing program and session files that the band had forgotten about. “He was mulling over things and seeing ideas in a new light, and he kind of fell in love with a few things,” says Dunn. “So he set the beds [backing tracks], which were mostly from mistakes. We all were grateful that he went mad. I mean, we were all going mad, but he really put his energy into that. So it was cool. The lockdown was to blame for that. Or maybe we should be grateful.”
After isolating and excavating material from hard drives, Tropical Fuck Storm convened and recorded Submersive Behavior in a house that they rent outside of Melbourne. Liddiard, who does much of the band’s engineering, relied mostly on Pro Tools as his DAW of choice. “We tried Ableton, but it was just too clean,” he says. “If you turn a drum machine on and you turn a metronome on at the same time, they’ll just stay in sync forever. But when we do it in Pro Tools, if you hear a drum machine start one of our songs, if you were to set a fucking metronome in motion, it wouldn’t keep up with the song because it’s all out of whack. It’s cool. We’re the loosest electronic band in history.”
“I thought, ‘Let’s do a Hendrix song, but what’s the most ridiculous and ambitious one?’”
The ways that Liddiard and Dunn interact with each other and arrange their guitar parts is an important pillar of the Tropical Fuck Storm sound. “There was always some conscious effort to get out of each other’s way, and to know where to double down,” says Dunn. “Gaz is just this unbelievable shredder, and my work is to be the bedrock, keeping something repetitive and rhythmic. I think we’ve really got it going now, having played a lot live, and having more intuition about, ‘Well, if you are going to chuck a wheelie, I’m going to hold it down.’ We understand that balance.” Dunn says that process includes making a conscious effort to carve out different sonic territory. For Braindrops, she put all her guitars through a “crappy boom box” to further separate the quality of the guitars.
To build the Hendrix centerpiece of Submersive Behavior, the band tracked the beginning and end of “1983” first, and then recorded the tripped-out middle section separately, making use of synthesizers and “weird shit” laying around. “We didn’t want to go down the route of the Stratocaster noodling in the middle,” says Liddiard. “A friend of ours had a 7′-long spring that bolts to a wall that’s got a pickup on it. And he uses a violin bow—that’s the drone underneath. So we did that. When we cut and pasted it into the song, and it worked, I was like, ‘Wow.’”
Erica Dunn's Gear
The punny new EP, Submersive Behavior, features three new songs credited to fake bands pulled from Tropical Fuck Storm lore.
Photo by Mike White
Guitars
- Shub Jazzmaster with P-90s
- Fender Mustang
Amps
- Fender Twin Reverb
- Roland JC-120
Effects
- Electro-Harmonix Soul Food
- Gojira Fx “Mr Sparkle” Tubescreamer 808
- JHS ProCo Rat “Pack Rat”
- Pickletech Mega Berkatron
- Veternik Audio Fall Reverb
Strings and Picks
- Dunlop Tortex Standard Picks, .88mm
- Ernie Ball 2220 Power Slinky .011–.048
The idea of constructing a separate song section from odd elements, then dropping it into a quintessential classic rock song, sits well within Tropical Fuck Storm’s songwriting ethos. “We’ll try anything,” says Liddiard. “It’s always an act of desperation because when you start a record, there’s nothing. Sometimes we’ll get a drum machine or some kind of weird sampler to start us off in a way that isn’t your stock guitar or drum thing because when you sit down with a guitar and a real drum kit, you fall into habits. So if you can get a crazy little drum machine and plug it into an Eventide delay pitch shifter thing, it’ll come up with some chopped-up strange beat you would never have thought of. And maybe there’s a synth line in there that we’ll try and learn on guitar, and then we start jamming things out. Once we’ve started from that strange spot, we’ll move on.”
According to Liddiard, Tropical Fuck Storm song ideas are forged entirely in the studio and aren’t required to germinate in a live setting before making it onto a record. “Obviously, it’s a patriotic duty in Australia to admire AC/DC,” he chuckles. “But we’re not like them. We make stuff up in the studio, so we don’t even know what it’s going to sound like live when we’re doing it, because we’ve never played it live. We’re just trying to invent something and then we learn it later. Again, it’s desperately trying to get some material together.”
One might imagine that capturing such off-the-cuff-sounding recordings is challenging, but Liddiard’s ability to craft incendiary, seemingly improvised performances in the relatively controlled studio environment is rooted within some of rock’s most influential and freewheeling acts. The ability to toe the line between flawless execution and teetering on the brink of collapse is an art unto itself, and it’s a quality of performance and songcraft that Tropical Fuck Storm wholeheartedly embraces. “The minute I heard Van Halen, it was like hearing Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin,” he says. “There’s lots of bands with guitars and it’s good. But other things, you just go, ‘What the fuck?’ Something’s really happening and it’s that almost careening-out-of-control thing. I love that. It’s a fun thing to do.”
“We’re just trying to push it out there and keep it fresh and interesting. It’s like Hendrix or Captain Beefheart, just looking for something that hasn’t been done.”
Despite the experimental, loose nature of their songwriting and recording process, Liddiard says a lot of his ideas should translate easily enough to and from an acoustic guitar. “Generally, everything we do is doable in the real world,” he says. “I’ll noodle on the acoustic guitar because you might have a riff, but you want to know what key it’s in, and then you want to know what keys you can move to as well.” But starting songs with guitars and ending with guitars is not something that particularly inspires him these days.
“I’ve been in bands for years, so with Tropical Fuck Storm, we’re just trying to push it out there and keep it fresh and interesting,” he says. “It’s like Hendrix or Captain Beefheart, just looking for something that hasn’t been done. Those are my favorite things. The adventurers like Van Halen or even people like Hubert Sumlin from Howlin’ Wolf…. He had a kooky style that no one had. He introduced the whole eccentric kookiness to that electric guitar thing.”
Tropical Fuck Storm like to experiment. To achieve greater separation of guitar tracks while recording, guitarist Erica Dunn ran her guitars through a busted old boom box.
Photo by Mike White
Dunn shares a lot of the same influences with Liddiard, including Hendrix, but ultimately describes herself as a very “tactile, hands-on sort of person,” and a bit more of a minimalist than Liddiard in terms of effects pedals. “I’m not like Gaz, who is a full-on, self-described nerd when it comes to pedals and knowing them and taking them apart and building them and making them work,” she explains. “I find a thing and I generally stick to it and then I push those parameters. Sometimes, if I’m given too much, I’m overwhelmed, and I shut down.” With that in mind, one of her preferred, go-to effects in any situation is a JHS-modded ProCo Rat. “It’s sort of your base-level sound effect. We had a show the other day and it looked like our bags weren’t put on the airplane and we were just laughing about what we might be able to borrow or beg or steal to make the show happen. And I thought, ‘If someone has a Rat around, I’ll be alright.’”
“I gravitated to the metallic clang of a guitar, the rusty, barbed wire sound like early AC/DC or Neil Young.”
When it comes to framing out their own territory in the modern musical landscape, one of the most significant influences that continues to profoundly affect the Tropical Fuck Storm sound is their geographical upbringing. Had Liddiard not grown up in Western Australia, they simply would not be the same band. “Western Australia is like Southern California or Arizona,” he says. “Really dry desert, but it’s also super vast. So I gravitated to the metallic clang of a guitar, the rusty, barbed wire sound like early AC/DC or Neil Young. It seemed to make more sense and it had a vastness in it because there’s literally nothing out there.”
Western Australia occupies a geographical space roughly the size of the lands between the Rocky Mountains and the West Coast of California. But in the U.S., there are densely populated cities and millions of people occupying that area. “In Western Australia, there’s just nothing,” Liddiard says. “There’s one city, and it really did have an effect.”
When Liddiard was a teenager in the ’90s, he felt like he couldn’t escape. He was too far from anywhere. But somehow, things worked out. “You feel so trapped and you feel like everything that’s happening in music is happening somewhere else, and you’ll never be a part of it,” he says. “There was never any pretension or effort to conform in any way musically. So we just did our own thing.”
On her new record with her trio, Molly Miller executes a live-feeling work of structural harmony that mirrors her busy life.
Miller has a lot on her plate. In addition to gigs leading the Molly Miller Trio, she also plays guitar in Jason Mraz’s band, and teaches at her alma mater, the University of Southern California (USC), where, after a nine-year stint, she earned her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate in music. In 2022, she became a professor of studio guitar at USC. Prior to that, she was the chair of the guitar department at the Los Angeles College of Music.
Molly Miller's Gear
Miller plays a fair bit of jazz, but considers herself simply a guitarist first: “Why do I love the guitar? Because I discovered Jimi Hendrix.”
Photo by Anna Azarov
Guitars
- 1978 Gibson ES-335
- Fender 1952 Telecaster reissue with a different neck and a bad relic job (purchased from Craigslist)
- Gibson Les Paul goldtop with P-90s
Amps
- Benson Nathan Junior
- Benson Monarch
- Fender Princeton Reverb Reissue (modified to “widen sound”)
Effects
- Chase Bliss Audio Dark World
- Chase Bliss Audio Warped Vinyl
- EarthQuaker Devices Dispatch Master
- EarthQuaker Devices Dunes
- EarthQuaker Devices Special Cranker
- JAM Pedals Wahcko
- JAM Pedals Ripply Fall
- Strymon Flint
- Fulltone Clyde Wah
- Line 6 Helix (for touring)
Strings & Picks
- Ernie Ball .011s for ES-335 and Les Paul
- Ernie Ball .0105s for Telecaster
- Fender Celluloid Confetti 351 Heavy Picks
To get things done, Miller has had to rely on a laser-focused approach to time management. “I’ve always kind of been juggling different aspects of my career. I was in grad school, getting a doctorate, TA-ing full time—so, teaching probably 20 hours a week, and then also doing probably four or five gigs a week, and getting a degree,” explains Miller. “I had to figure out how to create habits of, ‘I really want to play a lot of guitar, and gig a lot, but I also need to finish my degree and make extra money teaching, and I also want to practice.’ There’s a certain level of organization and thinking ahead that I always feel like I have to be doing.”
“The concept of the Molly Miller Trio—and also a part of my playing—is we are playing songs, we are bringing back the instrumental, we are thinking about the arrangement.”
The Molly Miller Trio’s latest release, The Battle of Hotspur, had its origins during the pandemic. Miller and bassist Jennifer Condos started writing the songs in March 2020, sending files back and forth to each other. They finally finished writing the album’s last song, “Head Out,” in December 2021, and four months later, recorded the album in just two days. The 12-song collection is subtle and cool, meandering like a warm, sparkling country river through a backwoods county. The arrangements feel spacious and distinctly Western—Miller’s guitar lines are clean and clear and dripped with just the right level of reverb, trem, and chorus, while Jay Bellerose’s brush-led percussion trots alongside like a trusty steed.
The Battle of Hotspur has a live feel, and that aspect was 100-percent deliberate. Miller says, “That’s the exact intention of our records—we want to create a record that we can play live. Jason Wormer, the recording and mixing engineer that did our record, came to a show of ours and was like, ‘This is incredible.’ He’s recorded so many records and was like, ‘This is the first time I’ve ever recorded a record that sounds the same live.’ And that was our exact intention. Because I feel like [the goal of] the trio itself was to be full. It’s not supposed to be like, ‘Oh, let’s put saxophone and let’s put keys and other guitars on it.’ The concept of the record is a full trio like the way Booker T. & the M.G.’s were. It’s not, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if you added another instrument?’ No, we’re an instrumental trio.”
Musicality is what separates Miller from the rest of the pack. She has prodigious chops but uses them appropriately, when it makes musical sense, and her ability to honor a song’s written melody and bring it to life is one of her strong suits. “That’s a huge part of what we do,” she says. “The concept of the Molly Miller Trio—and also a part of my playing—is we are playing songs, we are bringing back the instrumental, we are thinking about the arrangement. The solo is a vehicle to further the story, to further the song, not just for me to shred. So often, you play a song, and you could be playing the solo over any song. There’s not enough time spent talking about how to play a melody convincingly, and then play a solo that’s connected to the melody.... Whether it’s a pop song, an original, or a standard, how you’re playing it is everything, and not just how you’re shredding over it.”
Miller still gets pigeonholed by expectations in the music industry, including the assumption that she’s a singer-songwriter: “I don’t sing. I’m a fucking guitar player.”
Photo by Anna Azarov
Miller’s strong sense of melody can be traced to her diverse palette of influences. Even though she’s a “jazzer” by definition, she’ll cover pop songs like the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do is Dream” and the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Miller says, “I spent nine years in jazz school. I practice ‘Giant Steps’ still for fun because I think it’s good for my guitar playing. But it was a release to be like, ‘I am not just a jazz guitar player at all!’ Why do I love the guitar? Because I discovered Jimi Hendrix, right? What made me feel things in high school? Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and No Doubt. It’s like, Grant Green’s not why I play the guitar.
“I play jazz guitar, but I’m a guitar player that loves jazz. What do I put on my playlist? It’s not like I just listen to Wes Montgomery. I go from Wes Montgomery to the Beach Boys to freakin’ Big Thief to Bob Dylan to Dave Brubeck. The musicians I love are people who tell stories and have something to say—Brian Wilson, Cat Stevens.... They’re amazing songwriters.”
“Whether it’s a pop song, an original, or a standard, how you’re playing it is everything, and not just how you’re shredding over it.”
Despite a successful career, Miller continually faces sexism in the industry. “I went to a guitar hang two days ago. It was a big company, and they invited me to come and check out guitars. And I’m playing—I clearly know how to play the instrument—and this photographer there is like, ‘Oh, so are you a singer?’ And I’m just like, ‘No, I don’t sing. Fuck you,’” recalls Miller. “It’s such an internal struggle because of the interactions I have with the world. This kind of gets this thing in me where I feel like I need to prove to people, like, I am a guitar player. And at this point, I know I’m established enough. I play the guitar, and I know how to play it. I’m good, whatever. There still is this ego portion that I’m constantly fighting, and it comes from random people walking up to me and asking about me playing acoustic guitar and my singer-songwriter career or whatever. And I’m like, ‘I don’t sing. I’m a fucking guitar player.’”
YouTube It
Molly Miller gets to both tour with and open up for Jason Mraz’s band. Here’s a taste of Miller leading into Mraz’s set with some adeptly and intuitively performed riffs from a show in July 2022.
George Benson’s Dreams Do Come True: When George Benson Meets Robert Farnonwas recorded in 1989. The collaboration came about after Quincy Jones told the guitarist that Farnon was “the greatest arranger in all the world.”
On that recommendation,Benson tapped Farnon for a 1989 recording project encompassing the jazz standards “My Romance” and “At Last” next to mid-century pop chestnut “My Prayer,” the Beatles’ “Yesterday,” and Leon Russell’s “A Song for You,” among others.
Across the album, Benson’s voice is the main attraction, enveloped by Farnon’s luxuriant big-band and string arrangements that give each track a warm, velveteen sheen. His guitar playing is, of course, in top form, and often sounds as timeless as the tunes they undertake: On “Autumn Leaves,” you could pluck the stem of the guitar solo and seat it neatly into an organ-combo reading of the tune, harkening back to the guitarist’s earlier days. But as great as any George Benson solo is bound to be, on Dreams Do Come True, each is relatively short and supportive. At this phase of his career, as on 1989’s Tenderlyand 1990’s Count Basie Orchestra-backed Big Boss Band, Benson was going through a jazz-singer period. If there’s something that sets the ballad-centric Dreams Do Come Trueapart, it’s that those other records take a slightly more varied approach to material and arranging.
When it was finished, the Benson/Farnon collaboration was shelved, and it stayed that way for 35 years. Now released, it provides a deeper revelation into this brief phase of Benson’s career. In 1993, he followed up Big Boss Man with an updated take on the smooth, slick pop that brought him blockbuster fame in the previous two decades and delivered Love Remembers.
Love is Blue (feat. The Robert Farnon Orchestra)
This kind of stylistic jumping around, of musical discovery, is a thread through Benson’s legendary career. From his days as a young child busking in Pittsburgh, where his favorite song to play was “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” he evolved through backing Brother Jack McDuff and leading his own organ combo, into his soulful and funky CTI Records phase, where he proved himself one of the most agile and adroit players in the jazz-guitar game. He eventually did the most improbable—and in anyone else’s hands thus far, impossible—feat and launched into pop superstardom with 1976’s Breezin’ and stayed there for years to come, racking up No. 1 hits and a host of Grammy awards.
At this moment, deep into his career at 81 years old, Benson continues to dive into new settings. While anyone observing from the sidelines might conclude that Benson has already excelled in more varied musical situations than any other instrumentalist, he somehow continues to discover new sides to his musicality. In 2018, he joined the Gorillaz on their technicolor indie-pop single “Humility,” and in 2020 he tracked his guitar onBootsy Collins’ “The Power of the One.” Benson assures me that not only are there more recordings in the archive that he’s waiting to reveal, but there are more wide-ranging collaborations to come.
On Dreams Do Come True, Benson covers classic jazz repertoire, plus he revisits the Beatles—whose work he covered on 1970’s The Other Side of Abbey Road—and Leon Russell, whose “This Masquerade” brought Benson a 1976 Grammy award for Record of the Year.
PG: The range of songs that you’ve played throughout your career, from your jazz records to 1970’s The Other Side ofAbbey Road or 1972’s White Rabbit album to 2019’s Chuck Berry and Fats Domino tribute, Walking to New Orleans, is so broad. Of course, now I’m thinking about the songs on Dreams Do Come True. How do you know when a song is a good fit?
George Benson: Well, you can’t get rid of it. It stays with you all the time. They keep popping up in your memory.
All the stuff that Sinatra did, and Nat King Cole did, and Dean Martin, that’s the stuff I grew up on. I grew up in a multinational neighborhood. There were only 30 African Americans in my school, and they had 1,400 students, but it was a vocational school.
I remember all that stuff like yesterday because it’s essential to who I am today. I learned a lot from that. You would think that would be a super negative thing. Some things about it were negative—you know, the very fact that there were 1,400 students and only 30 African Americans. But what I learned in school was how to deal with people from all different parts of the world.
After my father made my first electric guitar. I made my second one….
You made your second guitar?
Benson: Yeah, I designed it. My school built it for me. I gave them the designs, sent it down to the shop, they cut it out, I sent it to the electric department, and then I had to put on the strings myself. I brought my amplifier to school and plugged it in. Nobody believed it would work, first of all. When I plugged it in, my whole class, they couldn’t believe that it actually worked. So, that became my thing, man. “Little Georgie Benson—you should hear that guitar he made.”“I can let my mind go free and play how I feel.”
George Benson's Gear
The Benson-designed Ibanez GB10 was first introduced in 1977.
Photo by Matt Furman
Strings & Picks
- Ibanez George Benson Signature pick
- Thomastik-Infeld George Benson Jazz Strings
Accessories
- Radial JDI Passive Direct Box
So, your environment informed the type of music you were listening to and playing from a young age.
Benson: No doubt about it, man. Because remember, rock ’n’ roll was not big. When the guitar started playing with the rock bands, if you didn’t have a guitar in your band, you weren’t really a rock band. But that was later, though. It started with those young groups and all that hip doo-wop music.
I was known in Pittsburgh as Little Georgie Benson, singer. Occasionally, I would have the ukulele or guitar when the guitar started to get popular.
What’s your playing routine like these days? Do you play the guitar every day, and what do you play?
Benson: Not like I used to. Out of seven days, I probably play it four or five days.
I used to play virtually every day. It was just a natural thing for me to pick up. I had guitars strategically placed all over my house. As soon as I see one, my brain said, “Pick that up.” So, I would pick it up and start playing with new ideas. I don’t like going over the same thing over and over again because it makes you boring. I would always try to find something fresh to play. That’s not easy to do, but it is possible.
I’m looking for harmony. I’m trying to connect things together. How do I take this sound or this set of chord changes and play it differently? I don’t want to play it so everybody knows where I’m going before I even get there, you know?
“I wasn’t trying to sound loud. I was trying to sound good.”
How did you develop your guitar tone, and what is important about a guitar tone?
Benson: Years ago, the guitar was an accompaniment or background instrument, usually accompanying somebody or even accompanying yourself. But it was not the lead instrument necessarily. If they gave you a solo, you got a chance to make some noise.
As it got serious later on, I started looking for a great sound. I thought it was in the size of the guitar. So, I went out and bought this tremendously expensive guitar, big instrument. And I found that, yeah, that had a big sound, but that was not it. I couldn’t make it do what I wanted it to do. I found that it comes from my phrasing, the way I phrase things and the way I set up my guitar, and how I work with the amplifier. I wasn’t trying to sound loud. I was trying to sound good.
George Benson at Carnegie Hall in New York City on September 23,1981. The previous year, he received Grammy awards for “Give Me the Night,” “Off Broadway,” and “Moody’s Mood.”
Photo by Ebet Roberts
When I think about your playing, I’m automatically thinking about your lead playing so much of the time. But I think that your rhythm playing is just as iconic. What do you think is the most important thing about rhythm guitar parts, comping, and grooving?
Benson: That word comp, I finally found out what it really represents. I worked with a man called Jack McDuff, who took me out of Pittsburgh when I was 19 years old. He used to get mad at me all the time. “Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? I can’t hear what you’re playing because you play so low”—because I used to be scared. I didn’t want people to hear what I was playing because then they would realize I didn’t know what I was doing, you know? I would play very mousy. He said, “Man, I don’t know if you play good or bad because I can’t hear you. Man, play out. People don’t know what you’re playing. They’ll accept whatever it is you do; they’ll think you meant to do it. Either it’s good or bad.”
So I started playing out and I found there’s a great truth in what he said. When you play out, you sound like you know what you’re doing. People say, “Oh wow, this cat is a monster.” It either feels good and sounds good or it doesn’t. So, I learned how to make those beeps and bops and things sound good and feel good.
The word comp comes from complementing. Whoever’s coming in to solo is out front. I gotta make them sound good. And that’s why people call me today. I had a record with a group called the Gorillaz. That’s the reason why they called me is because they realized that I knew what to do when I come to complement somebody. I did not have a lead role in that song. But I loved playing it once I found the space for me. I said, “Man, I don’t wanna just play it on an album. I wanna mean something.”
I did something with Bootsy Collins, who is a monster. I said, “Why is he calling me? I’m not a monster, man.” But he heard something in me he wanted on his record, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. I said, “No, I don’t think I can do it, man. I don’t think I can do you any good.” He said, “Try something, man. Try anything.” So I did. I didn’t think I could do that, but it came out good. Now I’m getting calls from George Clinton.
You worked on something with George Clinton?
Benson: Not yet, but that’s what I’m working on now, because he called me and said, “Man, do something with me.”
That’s not going to be easy. You know, I gotta find something that fits his personality, and where I can enhance it, not just throw something together, because that wouldn’t be right for the public. We want something musical, something that lasts for a long time.
“I can let my mind go free and play how I feel.”
In the liner notes for Dreams Do Come True, you say that there’s always more to be discovered. You just mentioned the Gorillaz, then Bootsy Collins and George Clinton. You have such a wide, open exploration of music. How has discovery and exploration guided your career?
Benson: Well, this is the thing that we didn’t have available a few years ago. Now, we can play anything. You couldn’t cross over from one music to another without causing some damage to your career, causing an uproar in the industry.
When Wes Montgomery did “Going Out of My Head” and Jimmy Smith did “Walk on the Wild Side,” it caused waves in the music industry, because radio was not set up for that. You were either country or jazz or pop or blues or whatever it was. You weren’t crossing over because there was no way to get that played. Now there is.
Because I’ve had something to do with most of those things I just mentioned, my mind goes back to when I was thinking, “What if I played it like this? No, people won’t like that. What if I played it like this? Now, they won’t like that either.” Now, I can let my mind go free and play how I feel, and they will find some way to get it played on the air.
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George Benson digs into the Dave Brubeck-penned standard “Take Five” at the height of the ’80s, showing his unique ability to turn any tune into a deeply grooving blaze-fest.
