Russ Parrish: Steel Panther Gibson interview

I think neon is the way of the past and of the future.

Yeah! You can’t go wrong with neon. That’s definitely metal. I’ve got a white Kramer Pacer, and that just goes with every outfit. That’ll go with my purple spandex, my zebra spandex, everything. And I’ve got a lot of spandex, so it’s good to have a versatile guitar that’ll go with your spandex. Y'know, I used to hang out and party a lot with Paul Gilbert, and when you mention the neon, I was roommates with him and he used to paint everything neon when he was in Racer X. His whole apartment was neon. Their whole stage was neon. They would go on with neon clothes. It was crazy. They would turn on a blacklight and their teeth would glow. They would put, y’know, neon paint on their teeth, too. Crazy.

Your unaccompanied solo moment on stage is always a highlight of your gigs. The unaccompanied solo is really a lost art. What’s the secret?

Many, many times, while I’m doing it, I’m thinking “I’m not doing this right.” There’s really no right or wrong way to do a solo, and trust me, I’ve seen C.C. DeVille do a 25-minute solo before, and then you realize, “Okay, anybody can do this.”

I remember seeing Poison in 1988 or ’89 or something, and C.C. took a 30-minute solo, and I thought, “They’re doing this on purpose. They’re trying to get people to go buy T-shirts right now.” If you’re going to do a solo, there are a few guidelines. It should never be too long, like C.C. Deville. So stay off the blow before you do it. It should definitely have melody, because a lot of rock guitar players tend to go for super-fast licks, because it’s more impressive sounding, especially if you’re by yourself. It should have that element but you’re carrying everything by yourself, so you have to have some melody in there. The vast majority of your audience don’t give a [expletive] how fast you can play, they just want to be entertained. I used to fly above the audience on a harness, and that’s always fun. Sometimes the harness gets caught in my guitar strap and I can’t play at all, but most people don’t care. Most guitar players are too worried about if they’re playing good, but after my worst solos I’ll have more compliments backstage than ever. They don’t care about your technique. They care about melody and they want to see something cool, so I get behind the drums and I play drums and guitar at the same time. People are always very impressed by that, and that will usually get you laid after the show, which is awesome.

And, of course, you want to have some flash, too. I throw in “Flight of the Bumblebee,” and I’m not the first ’80s guitar player to play that, but it’s something that everybody knows, and it must be hard to play because it’s fast, right? So everybody goes, “Oh wow, he’s talented!” And then I end up having sex with their girlfriends. Awesome. more

Comments