The Influences

Joe has many, many players who he admires, but there are three significant influences that he sites as the top three. Here Joe explains his love of these players

Jimi Hendrix

"We'll start with Hendrix. For reasons unknown his music reached out and grabbed me. I don't think anyone can explain why they have a direct link with particular artists. But you know it when you hear it—the sound that they make just somehow touches you.

And as a guitar player and a professional musician I'm stunned at how revolutionary his playing was, how he took the rich history of music that he grew up with and used it in such an original way. If you listen to something like Electric Ladyland you hear so much of his growing up. You hear blues and jazz and early rock'n'roll and then the rock that was being created right there by his generation, the excitement with how to manipulate equipment, which was quite new at the time, and a dedication to a new way of thinking.

It's astounding. You could take out a pad and a piece of paper and say, "OK, why do all guitar players do this today?" And you'd write down, "Because of Jimi Hendrix." And then you'd think of another thing we all do—"Because of Jimi Hendrix." The list would be really long. We all just sort of absorbed him. He was part Chuck Berry and part Les Paul and part Buddy Guy. He had all those guys in him, but he had a way of turning it around that was quite unique. His love of Buddy Guy somehow turned into "Voodoo Chile." Most people wouldn't be able to connect the dots but Jimi could tell you that.

Recently I did a celebrity list for iTunes. One of the songs I put on there was the first Capitol release of the song "Machine Gun," on The Band of Gypsys live at the Fillmore. For a live performance and being improvised, Hendrix somehow creates and goes through so many techniques that all of us use today. Guitar players who didn't do that stuff would be considered illiterate. It's just insane what he did in that one song.

But it turned out that that particular version is not available for download. Capital has not released it yet. So iTunes wound up with like four other versions which I didn't like. So I had to switch to my other most important Hendrix song. And I picked "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" because that one is so enduring and it inspires so many players. And the sound of it, oh God, it's just incredible. If anyone's ever just stood in front of an audience in a power trio and tried to create that off an E chord... It's just an incredible tour-de-force. And it's arranged like Mozart sat down and worked it out. It's incredible the amount of talent that he had and how he used it."

Billy Gibbons

"There's one player that is still the epitome of what a lot of modern players do. Hendrix noted that Billy Gibbons was like the future of music. This was back in '69, I think, when they did some touring together. I remember hearing that when I was a kid and I thought, OK, I've got to check this guy out. I'm fascinated with Billy Gibbons and I think that he also is an innovator, but in a more subtle way because his scope is not as broad as what Hendrix was dealing with. Billy Gibbons and ZZ Top were coming from a real blues direction. They didn't really get into psychedelia or jazz or R&B. They kept a straight focus.

But on the other hand if you think about the things he did on the guitar—the restraint, the harmonics, how he arranged the guitar in songs, how he constructed riffs so that they would go through the song—and then you hear what he's done on the last four albums, it's like the guy is from the future, from another planet. And with each album he's sort of reinventing the Mississippi delta blues with a writing style that is completely all his own. But here's the funny part. My favorite song of theirs is "Loaded." It's one that Dusty Hill sings, but Gibbons gets this sound that's exactly like a guitar with a broken cable. It keeps cutting out. Any normal guitar player would say, "Oh my God, replace that cable." And somehow Billy uses that through the entire song. The thing is noisily cutting out and yet he gets it to swing."

Wes Mongomery

"Well this is a bit of a curve ball but I know that he kind of relates to a lot of things people play today. His name was Wes Montgomery...

He was a jazz guitar player. It's interesting how I got into him. I graduated high school a half year early. I think it was because they wanted to get rid of me. But my grades were good enough and they let me double up on my subjects. So come January of my senior year I was free. I thought before going to college I'd seek out some unusual players and teachers. And I wound up taking a few lessons from this blind piano player, his name was Lenny Tristano. He's a giant in the bebop world; he was quite famous. They mentioned him in Time magazine when he passed away in 1980.

As a matter of fact it's the mention of Lenny's name in Jailhouse Rock that drives Elvis Presley nuts at a cocktail party. A woman who is trying to manage Elvis brings him to a party to try to get him to meet some important people. It's a cocktail party and everyone's wearing suits. And some guy starts saying "Hey have you heard the latest Lenny Tristano record, it's out of this world." And for some reason Elvis loses his mind when he hears that. And he breaks something and walks out of the party or something [laughs].

But Lenny Tristano was a fantastic musical innovator. He really was the father of cool jazz. He had a very unique way of improvising. It was almost like a Zen attitude. You had to get rid of every cliche, every little turn and phrase, anything that was based on you listening to yourself and being judgmental or self-conscious. He taught everybody—drummers and singers and guitar players—how to be real musicians.

One part of the lessons I had with him (which were very difficult) was scat singing along with records. And he didn't care what records. I used to bring in Black Sabbath and Johnny Winter. And I used to bring in Charlie Parker and Wes Montgomery and stuff. And he didn't discriminate; he knew when guys were really playing.

But one of the things I had to do was scat singing. You had to learn the melody and then you had to memorize the solo and be able to sing it along with the record. It was kind of embarrassing but the idea was to get the music into your body and not to worry about your fingers. If your body and your mind and your soul can really inhabit some great performer's expression, that music will then come out of you in your own way. He felt it was a far better way to learn something than just looking at the printed page and simply memorizing it as dots and dashes. The guy was right. I truly believe in it.

And when I brought in the Wes Montgomery I started to see the beauty of what he played. Wes Montgomery was famous for using his thumb and playing harmonics impeccably. And the guy was never out of tune. Now, we all know guitars are always out of tune to some degree. But Wes was never out of tune because he had a way of playing where he took care of that.

The other thing about Wes Montgomery-and I know people today probably can't conceive of it-but this was a musician who made records that were based purely on live performance. There's was no punching in. What you heard him play is what he played live one afternoon. They probably cut these records in three hours. And Wes never made a mistake. I remember thinking to myself: How does a guy play every note and it's totally tasty, not one extra note in there?

Lenny used to tell me lots of stories about hanging out with all these jazz cats-Charlie Parker and just about everybody. And I'll never forget the day he said to me, "You know, Wes never played a wrong note. He never played an extra note, he never left one out." He said, "In all my years of jamming with him and playing gigs with him and watching him play, I never saw him once play out of tune or miss a note." That's what I had thought, but I just thought I was a little kid who didn't know any better.

But he was right when I went back and listened to the records... When you sing one of his solos you feel like you're in the presence of greatness. It's like reading a poem that's perfect and you just can't believe someone came up with that combination of words that you use every day but just in a different order. And that's kind of like what music is. We all have the same notes in our pocket, but the great ones pull out the right ones at the right time. Wes was one of those guys. He had the timing, the rhythm, the note selection, he had an incredible sense of melody and harmony, and he performed impeccably."