To hear Phil Collen tell it, he joined Def Leppard almost by accident. He had loaned the band one of his amps, and when they asked him to play some leads on their upcoming record Pyromania, Collen thought he was just doing his friends a solid. The rest is history.
He and Shifty talk through Collen’s formative years on guitar, where he soaked up the scorching playing of classic guitar heroes: Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore, Mick Ronson, Michael Schenker, and Gary Moore all played a hand in Collen’s high-flying fretwork.
Collen’s solo on “Photograph” is a perfect example of the sort of “ear candy” that producer Mutt Lange encouraged the band to chase in the studio—and yes, he did record individual notes to build a single guitar chord on Pyromania. But there weren’t many tricks to Collen’s sound on the solo. His Ibanez Destroyer and a 50-watt Marshall were all he needed to get the job done for the slick, Blackmore-inspired solo. Tune in to see how he worked that two-piece setup to record one of the most influential guitar solos of the ’80s.
Credits
Producer: Jason Shadrick
Executive Producers: Brady Sadler and Jake Brennan for Double Elvis
Engineering Support by Matt Tahaney and Matt Beaudion
Video Editors: Dan Destefano and Addison Sauvan
Special thanks to Chris Peterson, Greg Nacron, and the entire Volume.com crew.
On this episode, the country guitarist walks Shifty through her blazing solo on "Hits Me," after sharing all about what makes her guitar-mind tick.
But before the two get into the solo breakdown, they cover some ground delving into topics like Lindsay's early bluegrass studies (and how her teacher Randy Bachman later introduced her to jazz and blues), her experience playing with producer Dann Huff, and why there aren't more female lead guitarists. (For that last one, she's not sure she has the answer, but is proud to be on the vanguard!)
"Hits Me" is in Bb, which could be a challenging key to play in, and even Chris admits he gets lost on the fretboard if his songs aren't in the far more common keys of E, A, or G. But, she didn't want to be pigeonholed as the "girl who uses a capo," throwing it out at a very young age, and plays the solo high up on the neck, mostly on the top strings, around the 16th fret. It's also full of "guitarmony"—which she loves doing on just one guitar, although the solo was tracked on two for the recording to throw a bone to the mixing engineer.
In the final minutes of the ep, Lindsay reveals one of her favorite warm up exercises, which she calls "chromatic spiders," which Shifty finds pretty wild (and they sound just as creepy as their name). Watch the full episode to get the whole story on Lindsay and the nuts and bolts of her guitar wizardry.
Credits
Producer: Jason Shadrick
Executive Producers: Brady Sadler and Jake Brennan for Double Elvis
Engineering Support by Matt Tahaney and Matt Beaudion
Video Editors: Dan Destefano and Addison Sauvan
Special thanks to Chris Peterson, Greg Nacron, and the entire Volume.com crew.
On the debut episode of Shred With Shifty, host Chris Shiflett sits down with Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson to learn the dramatic, vibrato bar-driven guitar solo off the 1981 hit “Limelight.”
On the first episode of the new podcast series Shred With Shifty, which features host and Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett getting a front-row lesson from our favorite guitar heroes, Shiflett learns the solo from Rush’s “Limelight” with a little help from the man who wrote it, Alex Lifeson. According to Shiflett, Lifeson’s lead on the song “does exactly what a great solo should do. It’s a scene change, it’s kind of emotional, it builds, and yes, it shreds.”
Shiflett recalls that in context, both “Limelight” and Moving Pictures, the 1981 Rush record that featured the track, were stylistic and structural departures from the rock ‘n’ roll fare of the day. Compared to Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, and KISS, the Canadian prog-rock trio was practically avant-garde.
Lifeson joins Shiflett from a meticulously maintained studio den he built in his apartment (“I’m a Virgo,” Lifeson admits), and talks about early influences like Allan Holdsworth, Jeff Beck, and Andy Summers. The first solo he learned was from Cream’s “Spoonful,” but even after Rush’s international success, he says he never felt confident in his ability. “I’ve always been a little bit insecure about my playing,” he says. “I always felt like I could be better than I was.” And despite Rush’s infamously complex arrangements and each member’s dazzling technicality, Lifeson remembers that there were occasionally some “trainwrecks” onstage. “With our music, if you got lost, boy, it was hard to get back,” he grins.
While memories of the “Limelight” sessions are imperfect (“That was 43 years ago. I can’t remember things from 40 minutes ago,” Lifeson quips), the guitarist recalls using a modded Stratocaster with a vibrato arm to record the song’s solo in five or six takes, which bassist and vocalist Geddy Lee and producer Terry Brown then comped into the final version. The idea was to create a solo that reflected the isolation and fragility of “living in the limelight.” “I really wanted to echo that feeling and that sense of loneliness,” he says.
Credits
Producer: Jason Shadrick
Executive Producers: Brady Sadler and Jake Brennan for Double Elvis
Engineering Support by Matt Tahaney and Matt Beaudion
Video Editors: Dan Destefano and Trevor Bowman
Special thanks to Chris Peterson, Gregory Nacron, and the entire Volume.com crew.