Tony MacAlpine, Dave Reffett: Guitar World interview

Interview: Tony MacAlpine Discusses Gear and Tone and Answers Readers' Questions: For this week's column, I had a talk with guitar legend Tony MacAlpine about the heavy tone on his new self-titled album; and he answers some of your questions. Enjoy!

Who are some of your all-time favorite artists?

Johnny Winter has been at the top of my list forever. George Benson has been at the top of the list forever. Steve Vai. There is a wealth of players that opened up so much and they are all so varied.

I really like Vinnie Moore a whole lot; he is one of my favorite guitar players. You played keyboards on his record The Maze. What was that like working with Vinnie?

Well, Vinnie and I, it’s interesting. We just came back from New Zealand and we finally did a live show over there for the Gtaranaki Festival. In all the years we've recorded in our groups and did things like that along those lines, we had never actually played together. So that was the first time and we've been friends for almost longer than the time we've actually been recording. So it's a good thing; he's a good guy.

So I'm curious: You do so much; you know, you're a guitar player, you play keyboards, all kinds of stuff. Are there ever going to be vocals from you?

There was, yeah. I did a vocal record years ago. It was a period in time when I was coming in and out, doing different types of things, different styles of things, you know. Like I had worked with Ring Of Fire for a while and I wanted to get involved and kind of do some different aspects of things and I did this record called Master Of Paradise. more