News: graham bonnet interview

News:
28-04-2009:
Classic Rock revisited interview Graham Bonnet about the new Alcatrazz album and other guitar related things... what it must be like to have played with Yngwie Malmsteen, Richie Blackmore,Howie Simon, Steve Vai and Michael Schenker.

Graham Bonnet:
Well with Ritchie obviously I have to thank him very much for giving me the job. He is one of the originals and that’s who Yngwie was influenced by which I think is pretty obvious. I will always look upon the time that I was with Rainbow, even though it was a very short time- Ritchie was the guy who turned my musical tastes around because I was more into R&B and pop stuff or whatever. He will always be close to my heart because as I said he was an original and the best guitar player that I had ever heard in my life when I played with the band. It was just such an exciting thing to do and to be accepted by the other side of music which I didn’t think I would be because I had short hair and was into doo-wop and whatever else. I had nothing to do with metal [laughing].

When Yngwie came along what I wanted to do was sort of put a Rainbow band together so when he came along he was the perfect guy for the job. He was very young and very eager so it was just a magical thing. Yngwie went on to become something that he very much wanted to be and that was a star, it was inevitable and I could see it happening. He wasn’t very happy with the players in the band, he was ok with me but he just didn’t think the others were good enough to be one of the front men so to speak. So he left and became successful and the band went down the shitter [laughing]. Then Steve came along and we were rescued once again. We made what I think is a great album, we did some gigs and then David Lee Roth came along and stole him away. Steve was as I said a very easy person to work with and very humble about everything. There was “No it has to be done this way”, he always listened to other people.

Michael was – a lot of his songwriting kind of rambled, we had to edit things down a lot, but again he’s a different player altogether. I saw Michael play a couple of years ago and I did a track on his MSG anniversary album. He asked me to write a tune for that so I did and it was really great to do that again. Unfortunately Michael and I are very much alike, well we were. We used to drink a lot which was one thing that screwed up my time with him because I got totally drunk and made an idiot of myself. I was fired from the band because of it. We used to drink from morning until night. Michael and I would be drinking champagne in the morning, whenever we had the money for champagne that is, and beers throughout the rest of the day. Michael is a great talent and I’m probably going to ask him if he can maybe do a track for me possibly for Alcatrazz or for something else. He told me “I’ll do anything for you anytime Graham”. We’ve got lots of ideas so Michael might contribute to this new Alcatrazz album like a couple of other outside writers have, Russ Ballard being the one people know most.

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