Guthrie Govan: wild west guitar interview

WWG:
How would you describe the journey you have made thus far, the growth in your career,
coming from the UK and lighting it up in the US as a highly respected musician and clinician?

GG:
I'm not really sure! I've spent almost 20 years trying to pay the rent by doing something vaguely musical, and during that time I've tried all manner of approaches - transcribing, teaching, gigging and recording with bands ranging from the 80s-tinged melodic rock of Asia to the mad electronica of the Young Punx, etc etc. I suppose I've learned different things from each experience, and I'm sure it all counts in some way.

It's hard to say how much any one of those activities might actually have contributed to any kind of "bigger picture" in terms of my career, though.
Nowadays, I often get recognised by complete strangers in airports, many time zones away from home, and yet a surprising amount of these folks have no idea about any of the stuff I just mentioned... Invariably, they've stumbled upon my playing in the form of some random YouTube clip or another, which would certainly have been posted by someone else (I've never posted a YouTube clip of my own playing, just for the record...) and most likely without my knowledge or consent.

As a result of all this seemingly random online activity, it feels like my career - if you can call it that - has somehow taken on a life of its own, and it pretty much does whatever it wants to do, without any specific input from yours truly. The internet can be a strange and unpredictable thing, but in terms of the power it has to "spread the word" there's really nothing else quite like it. I'm slowly learning to acknowledge and embrace this
aspect of the internet, whilst resisting any futile urge to try to control it ;-) more