How did you decide to do this double tour?
I had this summer pretty much booked up [with Asia], and Yes were disappointed about not getting a chance to play this summer, so I put my thinking cap on. I feel strongly that Asia is going to be very good opening act for Yes and it is a very unusual situation that someone like me would be in both groups — I feel that in itself says quite a lot.

During the show, what can we really expect?
Well obviously we’re fortunate that a lot of our music from our albums is greatly enjoyed, like for Asia, “Sole Survivor” and “Wildest Dreams,” and of course “Only Time Will Tell” and “Heat Of the Moment.” And then with Yes we have our rich material from Close to the Edge, Fragile and those albums, and of course “Roundabout” is incredibly popular, and so is “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” and we put in a good selection from the early years.

Turns out, Orianthi is as disturbed by the whole thing as the rest of us:

“Seeing how happy he was, excited, singing and dancing, it’s shocking. But I’m so grateful for the time I had working with him.”

For Orianthi, the chance to play with one of the world’s greatest entertainers was a major coup. “I’m a big fan,” she said.

“He had this wonderful aura about him, a beautiful spirit.

“It’s been a surreal time working with him and what’s happened is devastating.”

Orianthi had been rehearsing with Jackson six days a week for the past three months.

She said: “We knew the songs so well.”

Her mother Sue said her daughter was very upset but was trying to keep herself focused for Tuesday.

“She’s very sad at the moment,” she said.

Hopefully, the “guitar babe” (ugh, did they really write that?! ) has a bright future ahead of her. She’s really good:

(via musicradar.com)

It takes me a good hour to loosen up my fingers and I always just leave the DAT tape rolling or something, or a cassette, anything, and after two and a half, three hours, you kind of get into a zone that I’m kind of relearning because I’m not drinking anymore. When I used to drink, it would get me there quicker. It’s kind of the zone where you’re not thinking, where you’re just open to anything and I just believe that when you play long enough you’re able to execute with your fingers, whatever God gives you, and God’s not gonna give you nothing if you don’t practice or play. So after a couple, three hours, God says, “OK, he’s ready. I’ll throw him a bone.” And God’s got a sense of humor, too — sometimes he gives me s—, ’cause not everything I do I like.

I can’t imagine how hard that must be/have been for him to deal with over the years: booze is killing me, but I have to drink to do what I do. I’m glad he’s for now broken that cycle. Keep it up, Ed.

I like it. Very tasty indeed. Best of luck to you Jack!

Well, I had just done a couple of instrumental records. Those actually did great for me. Especially in America and Europe. When I did my first instrumental record, Get Out of My Yard, Joe Satriani took notice and asked me to do the G3 tour with him, and my career kind of took off. I was kind of joking that when I quit singing, my career took off…. But I still love music with vocals, so when I started thinking about going back to that, I thought that I had reached a new level with guitar and that if I went back to how I always do it — which is to do everything, I would not be able to keep that quality up. I thought it was the perfect time to find a collaborator, and Freddie [Nelson] was the perfect collaborator, co-producer, picking out photos for the album cover — everything.

Although he entered into semi-retirement long ago, he still plays every Monday night at NYC’s Iridium Jazz Club.

Here’s Les jamming with Guitarbalooga favorite, Jeff Beck:

“Mississippi Queen” has one of rock and roll’s all-time great guitar riffs. Do you think writing great riffs is a dying art?

I don’t know. I can only talk about my own style. I play the guitar with only my first and fourth fingers, on my left hand. I never learned to use all my fingers, like you would playing a scale. What I try to do is play to my strengths. I can’t play fast, so I try to play slow and melodic. I remember someone telling me that “less is more.” In Alfred Hitchcock films the music is really intense, but then there will be this dead silence. You don’t know what’s going to happen, but that silence is deafening. I try to play around with dynamics in a similar way.

It’s one of those tunes you never get sick of and sounds as relevant and awesome now as it did when it was released 40 (!) years ago.

Jimmy’s approach is to learn a set of basic, easy-to-play major shapes in order to learn how to alter scale tones without getting bogged down in rote scale memorization. It makes for more interesting improvisation because you’re not locked into specific chord scales. It’s beautifully simple and an approach I’ve long endorsed in rock guitar.

And Jimmy Bruno is also a nice guy. I traded emails with him years ago when I wrote the Ultimate Guitar Chord Trainer, which uses a technique for drop-2/3 chords similar to what Jimmy teaches–once you learn 4 basic major chord shapes, 1 for each inversion, learning all the others is easy because you know which notes to raise or lower to turn a major 7 into anything else. (He doesn’t endorse my software. I’m just stating my opinion).

These days, Jimmy teaches online via the Jimmy Bruno Guitar Institute, a site rich with videos and students of all abilities communicating. One of these days I’ll join, as I’ve always wanted to improve my jazz chops, which are, sadly, terrible. Here’s a sample of the kind of teaching Jimmy does:

Jazz News posted a nice bio of Jimmy yesterday. Check it out.