Musical Influences
My interest in music began as a child, as I learned to sing from phonograph records. We also had a piano, and my grandparents had an electric organ. Most of the music that influenced my style came later:
The 70's
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The early '70's was the peak of the revolution going on in music. My very first purchased album was Blind Faith (1969) with Eric Clapton. Later, I discovered Layla by Derek and the Dominos (1970) when it was still considered underground music that was only aired after midnight on KQRS radio. |
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Another member of the Dominos, Bobby Whitlock, released Bobby Whitlock (1970), featuring beautiful acoustic and electric guitar, along with soothing to raspy vocals. I found Peter Frampton in Humble Pie's Rock On. Later, I absolutely loved Lines on My Face from Frampton's Camel, so much so, I drove to a music store near midnight to get the album. Some of the best music is born from painful experiences. |
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In addition to the Beatles, my sister introduced me to the music of Spider John Koerner and Willie Murphy on Running Jumping Standing Still (1969), which is a timeless, folksy classic. She also introduced me to Jimi Hendrix with Are You Experienced, but I was not quite into him until a Band of Gypsies (1970) came out. I think a lot of people who never paid attention to Hendrix started with that album. Just as I was getting into him, he died in 1970. I visited his Electric Lady Studios in 1971. |
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The Alllman Brothers Live at Filmore East (1970) is still a great album. Guitarist Duane Allman also died soon after I was getting into his guitar playing. Unfortunately, it seemed to be the era of dying rock stars. |
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One native Minneapolis band I really liked was called Gypsy and they had several national albums. I loved Hocus Focus by Focus! I liked Jethro Tull and some of Martin Barr's lead guitar. I used to jam to the guitar solo by Joe Walsh in the song Stop by the James Gang. I later loved the intense phase shifted guitar in their song Alexis, the kind of emotional solo that sends a shiver down your spin! |
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Andy Powell, the guitarist in Wishbone Ash was a major influence. I used to jam to their dual guitar leads in Persephone, among other songs. And Deep Purple was of course in the forefront back then, as was Fleetwood Mac with Bare Trees. In fact, it seemed like every week I was buying a new album.The Doobie Brothers with The Captain and Me is an indelible memory. |
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Genesis got me going with their album Selling England by the Pound (1973), especially the The Cinema Show track with Tony Banks' synthesizer. The band created a new genre: "storyteller rock". In 1974, I learned to play Steve Hackett's beautiful and fluid guitar solo in Here Comes The Supernatural Anaesthetist. Except for learning all of Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin, I rarely spent the effort learning other people's music – I wanted to create my own music. Thus, I was never a candidate to be in a band because, back then, you had to play "covers". However, I would frequently jam and entertain at parties. |
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Good music was frequently bursting at the seams back then. In comparison, it's hard to describe the music scene today, other than there's a lot more of it. In fact, my music would not be on iTunes if it weren't for the alternative, garage band, and independent music revolution. We're seeing similar changes in video media now on the web. The lines between television and the internet are blurring, and it's only going to get better! Look how iTunes changed the way we manage and listen to our music collections? The same thing is about to happen to video and DVD, as we move those assets onto a storage and management devices, controlled by computers. It's all starting to culminate into a giant multimedia melting pot.
The 80's
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Perhaps my greatest influence is Bill Nelson from the United Kingdom. Bill was the lead guitarist and founder of Be Bop Deluxe. In the '80's, he pursued an interesting solo career that utilized synthesizers. In my opinion, his greatest work was The Love That Whirls: Diary of a Thinking Heart (1982). Bill is a fantastic guitar player, and a master at playing guitar with an Ebow. |
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That same year, the movie Blade Runner came out, and I loved the soundtrack by Vangelis. At the time, Vangelis would not release the music, so it became the first videotape I ever bought. As a mixing and mastering exercise, I recreated the soundtrack song Memories of Green by importing the MIDI file into Reason and assigning strings, horns, and even the flying police car sirens. Check out my remix of Memories of Green as produced in Reason 4.0. I still think the Blade Runner soundtrack is a masterpiece. |
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The 90's
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The mid 80's and early 90's seemed to mark the end of rock music as we use to know it, replaced by new wave, alternative, progressive rock, punk, (forget disco – I hated it), etc. During this period, I saw a lot of bands at First Avenue such as U2, The Furs, and New Order. I hated the Furs at first – too radical – but liked them later. I really liked New Order's Power, Corruption, and Lies album, with my all-time favorite song being Your Silent Face! But gone were the staples of Rock (or so it would seem) who kicked off the music revolution in the 70's. Rock and Roll was not forever... apparently. |
When CDs debuted in the 90's, I correctly predicted that they would replace albums within 3 years, not the 5 or 10 years experts predicted. I traded in my large vinyl record collection believing that all those clicks and pops would be remastered as clean CD's. I was right, but many of the classics took up to a decade to be re-released. After I traded in my entire album collection for a dollar per album, tops, I saw on TV that some of them had ended up at the Rare Records store. Duh! If I'd known the internet would eventually take off or that eBay would one day emerge as the eternal garage sale, I would have hung on to them! C'est la vie.
To be continued...
