Who Are Your Influences?

[ezbass]

Not a "Who Is Your Favourite Guitarist" thread, we already have one of those. No, this should be a sharing of players who have had an influence on your playing. Of course if your influences and favourites coincide, then that's fine.

As a teenager, when I started to play, I was a huge Clapton fan (funnily enough not these days) and his influence could be heard in my playing (flat bends for instance, not necessarily a good good thing). However, I've never been a shredder so back then I was attracted to players who I could emulate, step up Paul Kossoff (a Clapton devotee according to sources) and Carlos Santana.

Fast forward 20 or so years and I started to take my playing a bit more seriously and took an MI course. I then discovered Carl Verheyen and this introduced a more intervalic approach to my playing (if you're not acquainted with CV, check out his Garage Sale and Slang Justice albums). I also really got into Robben Ford and his jazzy take on the blues started to creep into my playing. However, the biggest influence and change to playing came from being ask to join a band for a one off gig (it turned out to be quite a few more than that), the band was ostensibly a rockabilly band, not something I'd played before. All of a sudden I was endlessly listening to Brian Setzer (his Dirty Boogie album is rock and roll plus big band loveliness) and his major scale with jazz tones playing came home to roost in my fingers, I even ended up with a Gretsch and Fender Bassman treated with slap back echo (long since traded for a MM SUB Stingray and other bits and bobs).

So there are mine, what are yours?

[ribbetingfrog]

I’m certainly no genius on the guitar, I like to play simple and loud, so the stuff I play is really influenced by the likes of Kurt Cobain, Noodles from the Offspring or the Foo Fighters.

Really though, most of my guitar education has come from YouTube and the likes of Marty Schwartz or Justin Guitar have probably influenced me just as much, if not more.

[darkandrew]

As above, I'm no guitar virtuoso so my main influences were those people that I could play along with and learn from. I've always loved the way Gary Numan mixed synths with guitars and I'd say I probably spent more time playing along with his stuff than anybody else when I was first trying to figure out how to play guitar. Once I became a little more competent, I also remember playing along with Andy Taylor's guitar and learning from him - again it's the way that Duran Duran mix punk / hard rock guitar with synths, and of course the way that Andy Taylor also mixes that with funky rhythm playing, which brings me onto my other major influence - Nile Rodgers. Once I'd got the basics of rhythm playing, the only place to go to begin to learn the intricacies of it was Nile Rodgers. So there you go, my 3 main inlfluences as a guitar player - Gary Numan, Andy Taylor and Nile Rodgers.

Edited April 7, 2019 by darkandrew

[tauzero]

My main influence is Marc Bolan, in his earlier Tyrannosaurus days. I principally play acoustic (or Variax on an acoustic patch) as I now recognise that I'm a crap lead guitarist.