The title doesn't referred to me, of course, but the great guitarist Alex Skolnick, best known for playing lead in the thrash metal pioneer Testament. This is actually the title of his recently published memoir. In general I don't read much biography but I did read a few about musicians, including Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix (I still remember I had to kill time while waiting for female classmates at the library so I picked up Miles' biography) This is a little different because Skolnick is still alive and wrote the whole thing by himself. Testament is one of my all-time favourite band. I "discovered" them after listening to Metallica and Slayer and magazines raved about them being a thrash metal band of the same caliber. Their album at the time was "Souls of Black" and I was immediately hooked and bought their prior and subsequent releases. Alex Skolnick's unique style of guitar solo was one of the reasons I'm attracted to their music. And I subscribed to his Facebook page, on which he promoted his book. I wanted to read about the beginnings of his band and his guitar study and the book certainly didn't disappoint.
The book basically covered his childhood (not a very happy one because he didn't fit in with his family and school) to present, primarily focusing on his experiences from his first stint with Testament. I felt somewhat connected to his stories because he grew up in the SF bay area (Berkeley) He mentioned a lot of local places (e.g. Yoshi's!) and bands that I'm familiar with.
There are quite a few episodes that I found most interesting from this book:
When Alex asked for advices from his guitar teacher Joe Satriani whether he should join Legacy (renamed to Testament later because the name was taken already), Satch encouraged him to just play like himself. So he decided to bring the standards of the best hard rock guitarist that inspired his playing to thrash metal, which he initially didn't think his style would fit in. And he did it!
Even though I think "Souls of Black" is an ass-kicking album (may not be as good as "Practice What You Preached" but close), Alex didn't like it that much. He revealed that they did the album just to get enough money from the record company to support their touring. And he thought it's a step back from "Practice" that they should not have made. Rushing to do "Souls" might have cost them the opportunity to become as successful as the "Big 4" (of thrash metal: Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax) In fact, according to Alex, the band wasn't as successful as I imagined. They played in a lot of small clubs after their heydays of playing in big arenas, mostly opening for the biggest names in metal. Now I remember going to one of Testament's concert at a small SF venue called Trocadero Transfer in mid-90s. They certainly made less money than I thought. Alex mentioned few guys from the scene were able to afford buying houses in the bay area. You see sports car in rock music videos a lot but he was no where close to buying his dream Ferrari. After his Pontiac Firebird was stolen, he drove a Corolla instead and sang high praises for it! My experiences with cars is a parallel to his: going from a sports car to a compact car that is also based on Corolla :P
His book mentioned a few lesser-known but great jazz guitarist: like Lenny Breau and Tuck Andress (p.286) I first learned about Lenny Breau while driving in Toronto and listened to its local jazz radio station several years ago. His style was so fascinating that I had to look him up on internet once I got to my sis' place.
Alex wrote some of Testament's early songs using the less-common scale (actually, mode) Mixolydian b2 b6, taught by Satriani earlier. I learned this from Berklee and they call it Mixolydian b9 b13 (b9 is the same as b2 and b13=b6) and wrote a post about its fingering
here.
He mentioned there was a song for which he came up with a rhythm guitar part that both he and the other guitarist in the band (Eric) couldn't play well and the producer almost hired a session player for the recording!
A few more things we have in common: we both enjoy the writing of Haruki Murakami. Alex quoted Murakami in his book. We both disliked the disappearance of guitar solo from metal during the grunge era. It's one thing to have your own style that doesn't rely on guitar solo. It's another to imitate bands that don't have guitar solo because you can't pull it off anyway. We both moved to New York, even though in my case, it was just a year but there's no better place for a jazz guy than NYC.
His book actually didn't say much about what happened after he left Testament. I found out he recorded quite a bit of music, for example, with violinist Joe Deninzon on an album titled "The Adventures Of Stratospheerius", and formed the fusion band Attention Deficit that released 2 albums.
I wish he wrote a bit more about his days at Newschool studying jazz but he was living a low-profile life then and may not have much interesting stories for most readers. Nevertheless, it's a fun read. Highly recommended!
