OK OK OK,
Be careful what you wish for!
I asked all of you to please post in the comments section anybody I may have missed in my “Top 10 Guitarists That Sing video and boy did I get an earful!!!
So I have created this video to honor those that were missed.
I also thought it would be fun to recognize some backstories to these amazingly talented players!
Here we go!!!!
Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy – Where The PROOF Is In The Singing!
Rick Emmett
In my notebooks, I’ll have little chunks of lyrics, little music ideas. I use an old-fashioned little hand-held cassette recorder. I’ll just grab little ideas. Some start with a two or a four-bar kind of little chord progression phrase and a little melody, or sometimes it starts with a line or two of lyric. I’ll start marrying the two things together fairly early in the process – music and lyrics – and start developing it that way.
Although he’s known as the vocalist and guitar player for Triumph, Rik Emmett is actually very familiar with other guitar styles such as classical, flamenco, bluegrass, jazz, and world music. In 2005, he won the Canadian Smooth Jazz Award for Guitarist of the Year.
On July 14, 2011, Triumph had a street named after them. The band’s hometown of Mississauga, Ontario named Triumph Lane in honor of the band for their hard work and success through the late ’70s and ’80s. At the dedication ceremony, the members of the band thanked their fans for their support, especially those in Texas who helped break them into in the US market.
Brian Setzer
In 1980, thinking they might have more success in England than in America, they sold their instruments to pay for airplane tickets and flew to London.
After performing in London for a few months, they met Dave Edmunds, a guitarist and record producer who shared their love of rockabilly and 1950s’ rock and roll. Edmunds produced their debut album, Stray Cats.
In the 1980s, he resurrected rockabilly, and in the 1990s, swing. He assembled the Brian Setzer Orchestra, a seventeen piece big band that got the public’s attention with a cover version of Prima’s “Jump, Jive an’ Wail” from the album The Dirty Boogie (Interscope, 1998).[1] The song won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, while “Sleep Walk” from the same album won the Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.
Ted Nugent
Henry Rollins, vocalist for Black Flag, reports that he and friend Ian MacKaye were inspired by Nugent during their high school years in the 1970s when he was the only major rock star to publicly eschew drug use: “[We] would read about the Nuge and the thing that really rubbed off on us was the fact that he didn’t drink or smoke or do drugs … [Nugent’s performance] was the craziest thing we’d ever seen onstage and here’s this guy saying, ‘I don’t get high.’ We thought that was so impressive.”
He is a board member of the National Rifle Association and a strong supporter of the Republican Party, and has made a number of controversial and threatening statements against advocates of gun control, in one case having the Secret Service investigated him based on comments about President Barack Obama where he said “There are rabid coyotes running around, you don’t wait till you see one to go get your gun, keep your gun handy. And every time you see one, shoot one.”… and “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” (quotes like these go on and on).
Zakk Wilde
He has stated that he would practice playing the guitar as much as 12 hours per day and would often play the guitar almost non-stop between coming home from school and leaving for school the next morning, then sleeping through the school day.
Wylde gravitated toward a particular Les Paul guitar, which has become known as “The Grail”; his famous bullseye-painted Gibson Les Paul custom. Wylde lost the guitar in 2000 after it fell from the back of a truck transporting equipment as he was travelling between gigs in Texas. Rewards were offered to anyone that had information about the guitar. Wylde and The Grail were reunited three years later when a fan bought it at a Dallas pawn shop and saw the initials “Z.W.” carved into the humbucker pickups backs. He contacted Wylde’s former webmaster Randy Canis to arrange its return to Wylde. Grateful, Wylde gave the fan his signature model in exchange.
Over the years, Zakk Wylde has referred to himself as Christ’s soldier since he is Irish Catholic and wants to promote the message of God.
George Harrison
George Harrison first became acquainted with other members of the Beatles when he encountered Paul McCartney while both youths were on their way to school at the Liverpool Institute. The pair instantly hit it off over their love for music.
In the early days of the Beatles’ career, and despite the fact that Harrison was a minor at the time, they performed in sleazy bars as a house band. Future Beatles fans would never have been able to recognize these youths, however, as they were clad in leather, smoked and swore onstage, ate chicken while they performed, and even nailed condoms to the wall before lighting them on fire!
At one point in the 1970s, George Harrison was at a party when he was approached by none other than John Bonham, the drummer for Led Zeppelin. Bonham was an admirer of Harrison’s, and wanted to get his picture taken with him. Harrison agreed but suspected that Bonham wanted to play a joke on him, so he came up with a plan.
Harrison struck first by smashing a piece of cake on Bonham’s head. To Bonham’s credit, he took it in stride, laughing it off as he threw Harrison into the pool.
Keith Urban
According to sources, he likes writing songs in the shower, and when he needs an energy boost during writing, he likes to order fried pimento cheese sandwiches.
After arriving in the United States, Keith wasn’t legally allowed to take a non-music job. He found work as a road guitarist for different musical acts. Fans can spot a very young Urban featured in the music video for Alan Jackson’s 1993 hit “Mercury Blues.” (He’s the one with crazy long hair…).
The country star sang backing vocals on INXS’s live album Live Baby Live, which was released in 1992.
He’s known as being an Australian country music singer, but Keith Urban was actually born in Whangarei, New Zealand. (pronounced “Wong-A-Ray”) and he dropped out of high school at just 15-years-old to become a musician.
Vince Gill
Mark Knopfler once invited him to join Dire Straits, but he declined the offer (although he sang backup on the Dire Straits’ album On Every Street).
He Has The Most GRAMMY Awards Of Any Male Country Singer. Gill has been nominated for 40 GRAMMY Awards and has won a whopping 21 times.
He played lead guitar on the song “A Runaway Train” from Alice Cooper’s 2011 album Welcome 2 My Nightmare.
Pete Townsend
He had plans to become a graphic artist before his music career took off.
Although known for his musical compositions and musicianship, Townshend has been extensively involved in the literary world for more than three decades, writing newspaper and magazine articles, book reviews, essays, books, and scripts.
Townshend suffers from partial deafness and tinnitus, believed to be the result of noise-induced hearing loss from his extensive exposure to loud music.
Pete’s dad wrote “Unchained Melody,” which was not a hit but was covered multiple times by other successful bands.
Hank Williams Jr
Being the son of a legend, Hank said, “Other kids could play cowboys and Indians and imagine that they’d grow up to be cowboys,” he wrote in his Living Proof autobiography. “I couldn’t do that. I knew that I would never grow up to be a cowboy or a fireman or the president of the United States. I knew I’d grow up to be a singer. That’s all there ever was, the only option, from the beginning.”
The fans that came to see him on the road wanted, and expected, him to do his father’s songs, his father’s way. This coupled by an increasing dependence on pills and booze, he tried to commit suicide in 1974. He said “I was all tore up about the direction I was heading. Every time I’d play one of Daddy’s records, I’d just start to cry.”
But during this time, he said, “I thought if I’d climb up old Ajax Mountain, maybe that would help me get it all off my mind. And It was a nice climb, right up until the part where I fell down the mountain.”
He emerged disfigured, wounded and, somehow, inspired. After multiple surgeries and a torturous recovery period, he was determined that he would spend no more time as a Hank Williams retread.
He has been selling out massive venues for a longer period of time than his father spent on earth.
David Gilmour
Gilmour knew Pink Floyd members Roger Waters and Syd Barrett from their high school years. Waters and Barrett attended Cambridgeshire High School for Boys while Gilmour attended the Perse School. Both schools are located on Hills Road in Cambridge, England.
In a Q&A with fans, Gilmour said he still gets stage fright when he performs, especially at more intimate shows.
In 2005, he was named Commander in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his accomplishments in the arts for selling his home in West London and donating the proceeds—more than $5.5 million—to Crisis, a nonprofit organization that works to provide services to the homeless. He has also donated countless millions to other charities.
David Jon Gilmour Worked as a model before joining Pink Floyd. He borrowed his first guitar from a neighbor when he was 14 and never returned it. In an interview from 2008 he said that he still has that guitar.
John Fogerty
Who will stop the rain?: The song is often interpreted as a protest of the Vietnam War (like “Fortunate Son”) but Fogerty told the crowd that he had been at Woodstock, watching the rain come down. He watched the festival goers dance in the rain, muddy, naked, cold, huddling together, and it just kept raining. So when he got back home after that weekend, he sat down and wrote “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” making it not a Vietnam protest at all, but a recounting of his Woodstock experience.
Saul Zaentz, owner of Fantasy Records claimed that “The Old Man Down the Road” shared the same chorus as “Run Through the Jungle”, a song from Fogerty’s days with Creedence Clearwater Revival years before. (Fogerty had relinquished copyrights and publishing rights of his Creedence songs to Zaentz and Fantasy, in exchange for release from his contractual obligations to them.) Zaentz sued (Fantasy, Inc. v. Fogerty) but the defendant Fogerty ultimately prevailed when he showed that the two songs were whole, separate and distinct compositions. Bringing his guitar to the witness stand, he played excerpts from both songs, demonstrating that many songwriters (himself included) have distinctive styles that can make different compositions sound similar to less discerning ears.[10] After prevailing as defendant, Fogerty sued Zaentz for the cost of defending himself against the copyright infringement. In such (copyright) cases, prevailing defendants seeking recompense were bound to show that original suit was frivolous or made in bad faith. This case, Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc., became precedent when the U.S. Supreme Court (1993) overturned lower court rulings and awarded attorneys’ fees to Fogerty, without Fogerty having to show that Zaentz’s original suit was frivolous.
Billy Gibbons
Singer-guitarist Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top can remember exactly when his life in music truly began: Christmas Day 1962. He was 13 and “the first guitar landed in my lap,” Gibbons says, a fond smile breaking through his trademark beard. “It was a Gibson Melody Maker, single pickup. I took off to the bedroom and figured out the intro to ‘What’d I Say,’ by Ray Charles. Then I stumbled into a Jimmy Reed thing.” He hums one of the legendary bluesman’s signature licks. “He was the good-luck charm. I’d play Jimmy Reed going to sleep at night — and in the morning.”
In writing sharp dressed man he said, “I went to see a film. The credits were rolling, and one of the players was described as “Sharp Eyed Man.” That started it. The track had this heavyweight bass line from a synthesizer. You know who was poppin’ at this time? Depeche Mode. I went to see them one night, and it was a mind-bender. No guitars, no drums. It was all coming from the machines. But they had blues threads going through their stuff. I went backstage; I had to meet these guys. They were surprised — “What brings you here?” I said, “Man, the heaviness.” We became friends. Martin Gore was a guitar player trapped behind the synthesizers. He was like, “Man, let’s talk guitar.”
Bruce Springsteen
“Born in the USA” is one of the most misinterpreted songs ever. Most people thought it was a patriotic song about American pride, when it actually cast a shameful eye on how America treated its Vietnam veterans. Springsteen considers it one of his best songs, but it bothers him that it is so widely misinterpreted.
Springsteen bought his first guitar for only $18, but don’t forget—this was the early 1960s, so that would have been a lot of money at the time. And it was—just three years later, his mom bought him a $60 Kent guitar, although she had to take out a loan to do so.
If you want to be part of Springsteen’s band, you have to follow some rules, which include no drug use, be on time and sober for all rehearsals and performances, and be on the bus when it leaves each city. You also wouldn’t catch him breaking his own rules, saying, “I demand twice to three times as much from myself as I do from anybody who works with me.”
Steve Winwood
was a key member of The Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, Blind Faith and Go. He also had a successful solo career with hits including “While You See a Chance”, “Valerie”, “Back in the High Life Again” and two US Billboard Hot 100 number ones, “Higher Love” and “Roll with It” charting 20 years after the start of his recording career.
At the age of eight, Steve began playing regularly with his father and brother in licensed pubs and clubs, the piano had to be turned with its back to the audience to try and hide him, because he was so obviously underage.
While still in high school, Winwood was a part of the Birmingham rhythm and blues scene, playing the Hammond C-3 organ and guitar, backing blues singers such as Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, T-Bone Walker, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Eddie Boyd, Otis Spann, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley on their United Kingdom tours.
B B King
After serving in World War II, Riley B. King, better known as B.B. King, became a disc jockey in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was dubbed “the Beale Street Blues Boy.” That nickname was shortened to “B.B.” and the guitarist cut his first record in 1949. He spent the next several decades recording and touring, playing more than 300 shows a year.
Coincidentally, the year that King made his first recording was also the same year that he named his beloved guitar. King attended a dance in Twist, Arkansas, that had a barrel lit with kerosene in the middle of the dance floor, used to keep the crowd warm late at night. While there, a fight broke out and the barrel was knocked over, causing a fire to spread throughout the venue. Everyone evacuated, including King, but he rushed back inside to retrieve his prized guitar.
Luckily, he managed to escape with his guitar as the building collapsed around him. King later learned that the fight erupted because of a woman who worked at the venue named Lucille. From then on, King named his guitar “Lucille” to remind himself never to do anything so foolish again.
Chuck Berry
He got a cosmetology degree and worked as a beautician.
Berry long cultivated a reputation as a cheapskate, in large part because he used local “pick-up” bands while on tour instead of hiring regular performers, often resulting in sloppy performances with the musicians he met just moments before hitting the stage. (You could just say he often used local bands as his back up band).
A year after his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — he even admitted that he became a rock ‘n’ roller for the money, and that “the Big Band era is my era.”
“Rock ‘n’ roll accepted me and paid me, even though I loved the big bands,” he told the Los Angeles Times.
Bonnie Raitt
The Story of… “I Can’t Make You Love Me” by Bonnie Raitt The idea for the song came to Reid, after reading an article about a man arrested for getting drunk and shooting at his girlfriend’s car.
The judge asked him if he had learned anything, to which he replied, “I learned, Your Honour, that you can’t make a woman love you if she don’t.”
Raitt recorded the vocal in just one take in the studio, later saying that it was so sad a song that she could not recapture the emotion: “We’d try to do it again and I just said, ‘You know, this ain’t going to happen.'”.
It wasn’t a massive hit. The song reached number 18 in the US, and wasn’t even released in the UK at the time. However, it has since been considered a classic. It ranked #339 on the Rolling Stone magazine’s list of ‘The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time’.
Bryan Adams
The Adams family lived in Portugal, Austria, Israel, and Japan during Bryan’s childhood. When his parents divorced when he was 12, Adams didn’t see his father for a decade—that is, until the mid-’90s when a concert tour took him to Japan and the two reconciled over dinner.
HIS FIRST LABEL CONTRACT IN 1978 WAS FOR $1. “Contracts have to have a denomination passed back and forth to make them legal. And because they didn’t want to give me any money, one dollar was the minimum amount to make the contract legally binding,” Adams told Rolling Stone last year. “I still have the check somewhere … It proves the absurdity of the whole thing.”
Adams’s monster hit, “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You,” was specifically written for the 1991 movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, but he had to compete with the likes of Annie Lennox, Kate Bush, and Peter Cetera for the job. Michael Kamen, the composer for the film, thought Adams had enough roughness and edge to make the ballad compelling and romantic without becoming saccharine.
“I write sweet melodies,” Kamen has said, “and sometimes they need someone to deliver them with enough authority to make sure that you don’t fall asleep.” It worked: Adams and super-producer Mutt Lange wrote the lyrics in roughly 45 minutes to fit with Kamen’s orchestration, and the song went on to be one of the best-selling singles of all time (as well as a wedding staple for the entirety of the ’90s).
Gary Clark Jr
“I was a fan of the Jackson 5 and hearing guitar over those soul records,” Clark explains. The expansive triple guitar attack of “I Want You Back” and the propulsive fuzz guitar of “ABC” put Gary over the top to pursue guitar seriously. “Guitar always stood out to me; it was the only instrument that could go from here to there. As soon as I picked it up, that was it for me.”
it was the local musicians—Derek O’Brien, Mike Keller, Tony Redman and others—who served as Clark’s professors in his journey to guitar scholarship. The impact of seeing these vets play the same songs differently one night after the next fed his musical hunger.
“I learned everything from them,” Clark admits. “I learned how to play guitar solos, rhythm guitar, because I could see it right there. I’d ask, ‘What is that? What chord is that? How do you bend that from here to there?’ ” The seeds of the squealing, hulking improvisations we hear on “Bright Lights,” “When My Train Rolls In” and “Numb” were all sown in Austin,
Lenny Kravitz
Kravitz was raised in a wealthy home environment. His father is a television producer, and his mother played Helen Willis on the popular television sitcom The Jeffersons.
His father, who was also a jazz promoter, was friends with Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby Short, Miles Davis and other jazz greats. Ellington even played “Happy Birthday” for him one year when he was about 5. But it was seeing The Jacksons perform at Madison Square Garden that he said he wanted to be them.
While Kravitz’s debut album, which exemplified his own eclectic blend of rock influences, was moderately successful, he didn’t achieve widespread fame until Madonna covered his song, “Justify My Love,” in 1990.
In recent years, he moved to a tiny island in the Bahamas—where he has found peace and inspiration in living simply.
During his early years, Kravitz did not grow up in a religious environment. After a spiritual experience when he was 13, he started attending church, becoming a non-denominational Christian.
Dave Grohl
Dave claims he was at a house party thrown by Paul McCartney, and McCartney was playing a song on the piano for the room. When the song stopped, the crowd turned to Grohl to perform one of his songs. However, he doesn’t play piano, and said he was too high to play McCartney’s lefty guitars. While he stood there, confused as to how to proceed, pop megastar Taylor Swift popped up out of nowhere to play a song: Foo Fighters’ “Best of You”.
Once in a road trip he stopped in the small desert town of Barstow, California to get gas. When he got to Phoenix, Arizona, that night he realized that he left his wallet on the gas tank when he tried to check into the hotel. Ten years later he was with his daughter buying something when the girl at the counter asked him, “Are you Dave Grohl?” Dave says, “Yes.” The girl then asks, “Did you lose your wallet in Bartsow in 1998?” Dave says, “Yeah!” The girl explains, “That was my parents’ gas station.” Dave replies, “You’re kidding me!” She says, “No. They still have your wallet.”
Grohl gave her his address and they sent him his wallet with “f*cking everything in it from 1998.” Best road trip story ever.
Matt Bellamy
In 1994, under the name Rocket Baby Dolls and with a goth/glam image, the group won a local battle of the bands contest, smashing their equipment in the process. “It was supposed to be a protest, a statement”, Bellamy said, “so, when we actually won, it was a real shock. A massive shock. After that, we started taking ourselves seriously”. Shortly after the contest, the three decided to forego university, quit their jobs, change the band name to Muse.
They chose the name ‘Muse’ because it was short and it looked good on a poster. The first they heard of the word was when someone in Teignmouth suggested that the reason for a lot of the populace becoming members of bands was due to a muse hovering over the town.
Joe Walsh
Walsh joined the Eagles in 1975 as the band’s guitarist and keyboardist following the departure of their founding member Bernie Leadon, with Hotel California being his first album with the band.[4] In 1998 a reader’s poll conducted by Guitarist magazine selected the guitar solos on the track “Hotel California” by Walsh and Don Felder[5] as the best guitar solos of all time. Guitar World magazine listed it at eighth of the Top 100 Guitar Solos.
His creative contribution to music has received praise from many of the best rock guitarists, including Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, who said, “He has a tremendous feel for the instrument. I’ve loved his style since the early James Gang.”[8] Eric Clapton said that “He’s one of the best guitarists to surface in some time. I don’t listen to many records, but I listen to his.”[8] The Who’s guitarist, Pete Townshend, said “Joe Walsh is a fluid and intelligent player. There’re not many like that around.
For one of their first concerts, his group The James Gang played a concert in Detroit at the Grande Ballroom opening for Cream. At the last minute, Silverman informed the others that he would not join them at the show. The band, desperately in need of the money, took to the stage as a trio. They liked their sound as a threesome and decided to remain that way.
he became known for hot-wiring the pick-ups on his electric guitars to create his trademark “attack” sound. In fact Jimmy Page bought one.
In 1975, Walsh was invited to join The Eagles as founding member Bernie Leadon’s replacement. There was some initial concern as to Walsh’s ability to fit in with the band, as he was considered far too “wild” for The Eagles, especially by their drummer and co-lead vocalist, Don Henley.
Billy Squier
In the Studio interview that aired the week of July 27, 1992 that “the label didn’t even want ‘The Stroke’ on the album.
The cover art for Emotions in Motion was by Andy Warhol. The title track of the album, on which Squier shared vocals with Queen’s frontman Freddie Mercury and drummer Roger Taylor.
Squier brought Def Leppard to the United States with the Emotions tour, in conjunction with the release of their Pyromania.
As an active volunteer for the (New York) Central Park Conservancy for more than 17 years, he personally maintains 20 acres (81,000 m2) of the park.
Dave Matthews
Born in South Africa he moved to the United States after high schoo to avoid South Africa’s compulsory military service. Here he became a bartender at a jazz club in Charlottesville, Virginia. Matthews decided to put together a demo tape and approached his favorite jazz musicians to accompany him.
The Dave Matthews Band was soon playing at frat houses and beach clubs around the country. People began to make bootlegs of their shows and word of the band spread quickly among the college crowd. In 1994, the band released its major label debut, Under The Table And Dreaming, which went to No. 11 in the Billboard 200.
Paul Stanley
From more than 100 million albums over the past four and a half decades, Stanley lives high up the treeline in the Santa Monica Mountains, in a villa that he’s fond of calling “the house that bad reviews built”.
In fact, they were actively, albeit unofficially, barred from being inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, kept out until 15 years after their eligibility. Bestselling author and Creem magazine cofounder Dave Marsh, a member of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame nominating committee, huffed in 2011: “Kiss will never be a great band, and I have done my share to keep them off the ballot.”
He was missing an ear during Kiss’s heyday, until he was 30.
“I had nothing more than a stump on the right side of my head, and my ear canal was also closed, so I was deaf,” “That left me unable to tell the direction of sound, and more importantly, made it incredibly difficult for me to understand people when there was any kind of background noise or conversation. These problems would lead me to instinctively avoid social situations.”
In a series of five surgical procedures, a doctor removed pieces of cartilage from the rock star’s rib cage and carved them into the framework of an ear, which was then “implanted with a series of skin grafts.”
Chris Stapleton
How he wrote the song “Traveler”: “My wife bought me an old Jeep, and we drove through the desert, and I wrote that song just thinking about life and how we’re all just passing through it. I was driving down the road holding a phone, driving a ’79 Cherokee, singing that into my phone. The song ‘Traveller’ is about seeing life through the eyes of an NBA referee. You know, they see this kind of stuff all day long.”
It was on the same road trip that His wife helped him to sift through 15 years worth of songs to pick 9 songs to start recording the traveler album with.
