Joe Stump Interview

by Matt Mills.

Master guitar shredder Joe Stump can play at full throttle with the best of them, but the architecture of his demonic playing is always built within the fortress of melody.

True, he’s been ranked as one of the ten fastest shredders of all time by Guitar One and has been lauded for his fretboard speed, but Stump’s not playing to char his guitar, but to make music that’s interesting, entertaining and foremost, to make a musical connection.

Stump, a past Berklee College of Music student and instructor, digs deep when asked about his major music influences and offers, “Johann Sebastian Bach, Vivaldi, Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Paganini, etc… mostly stuff from the Baroque and Romantic periods”.

In 1994, Stump got a call from his alma mater to help build a new generation of shredders where he mentored students on the art of metal guitar.  Around the same time, Joe met with David Chastain of Leviathan Records and cut a deal that unleashed a series of shred-metal guitar albums including Guitar Dominance; Night of the Living Shred; Rapid Fire Rondo; Dark Gifts: Rare and Unreleased; 2001: A Shred Odyssey and Armed and Reddy.

As much as Joe enjoyed teaching one-on-one at Berklee, his passion to teach fellow guitarists who were otherwise out of reach led him to release a series of instructional DVDs, published by The Shred Academy.  The eight videos offer an array of guidance for both novice players and those advanced guitarists who want to pull the trigger a bit faster, yet are also looking for some inspiration from one of their guitar heroes.

His last few albums have been released on the European Lion Music label with his latest CD Virtuostic Vendetta offering fans more of Stump’s classically influenced pedal to the metal scorching guitar.

Guitar International teamed up another “rising force” in the shred zone, neo-classical master Matthew Mills to talk to Joe about the world of high speed guitar, the need for foundational melody, as well as Yngwie, Ritchie, Uli and others that helped pave the way for those of us who love pyrotechnic guitar, laced with savage, yet melodic grace.

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Matt Mills: Got the new custom shop guitar. I was showing it to Rick. [Rick Landers, Publisher, GI]

Joe Stump: Nice. That’s when I always get excited, when I get a custom shop guitar, the first few weeks and then the novelty kind of wears off.

Matt: Oh, don’t say that! I’m hoping it lasts for months and months.

Joe: Well, I guess I have too many guitars, you know what I mean? It goes in a pile with the rest of them. I  have two of the Japanese Black Ball models and they recently reissued…not reissued but, it’s a Mexican one, much nicer than the Japanese ones they put out in ‘97.

Matt: Oh, is it really? Cool.

Joe: The Japanese ones were made out of basswood and the Mexican ones are an alder body and it’s a much better made guitar. You can even feel it.

Matt: Sweet, sweet.

Joe: And the other thing about it is, like same thing with the Japanese ones in ‘97, I bought two of them. And they only made like 500 and immediately, it was originally only like an $800 guitar, then they started going up on eBay, people started selling them for $1500.

Matt: Oh, right. Right, yeah.

Joe: So I figured that the Black Ball model, they’re only gonna make for a short period of time.

Matt: Let’s cover some areas that you’ve probably already talked about in other interviews, but some of our readers may not be familiar with you.

Joe: I’m happy to answer everything. The other thing is that even though I’ve done a ton of interviews, a lot of times you never know someone’s reading an interview and they don’t know anything about you so they’re reading these things for like the first time. It might seem like a routine question to you when you’ve been asked quite a bit, but to somebody else, it doesn’t matter who you are because not everybody’s gonna know your work.

Matt: I’ve heard that your CD, Virtuosic Vendetta should appeal to your fans who love to hear accelerated guitar and strong melodies. Is the CD more of a reflection of your evolution as a player or did you somewhat have the intent to set it apart clearly from earlier albums?

Joe: Virtuosic Vendetta, I have to say, as a solo record is my crowning achievement in that I managed to meld styles. It’s not just fast-playing or slow-playing, or over-the-top playing and then melodic playing, it’s kind of effortlessly having all those elements included. Virtuosic Vendetta is a ton about over-the-top guitars because that’s such a big part of what I do.

But, a lot of my older school influences whether it’s the Black Ball thing or the Uli John Roth thing or Gary Moore or Frank Marino and Hendrix. Those are clearly present on the record, in addition to the classical influences and obvious Yngwie influence.

Matt: It’s real evident on “Blackmore’s Boogie”.

Joe: Throughout the record I’m tipping the hat to them and you’ve mentioned this before, but there are a bunch of quotes in there from my favorite players like little bits of classic things if you’re familiar with Blackmore’s work or Yngwie, someone will say “Oh, that’s so derivative!” But it’s supposed to be.

Matt: Yeah. “Blackmore’s Boogies” was like one of the best…I don’t want to say tribute songs, but it definitely had an overall tip your hat to the man, so that was good. Ritchie I don’t think gets enough credit nowadays as far as how much he influenced so many players. Everyone makes such a big deal about the ’80s players but if it wasn’t for Ritchie, to me there wouldn’t be those ’80s players.

Joe: Blackmore really revolutionized…you could say Blackmore and Michael Schenker and most of the players from my era, not my era but for my age, you’d be hard-pressed to find a metal player that wasn’t influenced by at least one if not both of those guys.

Matt: Including Uli of course too.

Joe: Pre-Yngwie as far as European, classically influenced shredding, that’s the holy Trinity right there.

Matt: I massively agree. I tell that to my students as well.

Joe: When you’re talking to younger players and trying to turn them on to that kind of stuff, a lot of times, unless the music is speaking to them, it’s tougher for them to relate. They might hear an old Rainbow thing or an old Scorpions thing with Uli or old Michael Schenker Group thing and since it’s maybe the music of their parents’ era, it’s not really gonna speak to them the same.

Matt: Exactly, yeah.  Blackmore being one of your main influences, but he has moved to traditional music in some ways in his later albums. Of course now he’s moved more towards the whole Renaissance….

Joe: Yeah, the whole Blackmore’s Knight thing…

Matt: How do you feel about that?

Joe: In one aspect, of course, I would love for him to reform Rainbow and do a couple more records and a few more tours and have him strap it on and throw down like he did in the late ’70s, early ’80s.  But the other thing is, what you really have to respect is, he didn’t play very much with his fingers prior to the Blackmore’s Knight thing and he’s playing all these different acoustic instruments and at that stage in his career to almost take up another instrument and delve deeply into a style that you love but you never got deeply into requires a huge amount of discipline.

As a musician you could really appreciate that kind of a thing. All of a sudden after playing all these years, all those records, all those world tours, he decides to do that.

Matt: Do you find the work he does now inspiring?

Joe: I really enjoy some of the Blackmore’s Knight stuff and on the latest record, Secret Voyage, he’s starting to play more electric on it, and from people who have seen Blackmore’s Knight recently and spoken to me, they say he’s starting to play more electric and he’s starting to gravitate towards it, like he misses it to some extent. And there are some brilliant solo pieces that he plays, a nylon string solo thing or some of the sections in the Tombs and all these different ethnic elements and various period pieces.

A lot of it I do enjoy. Some of it gets a little…it starts to wear me down a little. I’ve seen Blackmore’s Knight a whole bunch of times but I don’t want to see two and a half hours of  anything I don’t absolutely love. It’s gonna wear anybody down.

Matt: True. I’d love to see him pick up just a Strat again and do the old Rainbow thing.

Joe: He was close to doing it when Cozy Powell was alive, but then when Cozy died that put the whole kaibash on the thing. The people at FPB, Blackwood Night record company, desperately wanted him to do it even just to do it like a small European tour and a DVD and a live album and his heart’s just not in it anymore. That, and there’s nothing for the misses to do and that’s a big portion of it too. His wife is also his musical partner.

Matt: Exactly. I did want to ask a question about Ritchie Blackmore tribute that you did, kind of a Rainbow tribute discs that you did, a compilation from the live shows. Could you tell me a little bit about that?

Joe: That’s just a thing, I didn’t officially release it. They recorded one of the shows from a European tour I did back in February/March of  2008. When I go to Europe, I’ll play a mixture of some Reign of Terror stuff, some of my solo stuff as well as some Deep Purple and Rainbow. One, because it’s like playing a big huge concert. You jump into “Kill the King” in Belgium or Germany or Holland and everybody goes shithouse [Matt laughing]. You could play that in the States and there might be a couple of Blackmore fans that recognize it, but that would be it. Where younger guys would be hearing it and going, “Oh, this is a cool kind of speed metal.” They invented speed metal.

Matt: But you add your own touch to those tunes. I know you don’t play them verbatim. But, when you play incredibly fast and fluid, you seem to be really relaxed. You don’t seem to be straining when you’re playing these incredibly complicated passages.

Watching you play and sharing the stage with you just a little bit, it’s amazing how fluid and relaxed you are. You’re not like one of those guys going “Oh my God! Can I actually pull off this next passage?”

Joe: One thing I’m a firm believer in…I’ve been lucky as a more underground artist in that I’ve done quite a bit of touring. With the power metal band Holy Hell and I’ve been lucky enough to tour at a very high level as well. But one of the tricky things about touring is the fact that you constantly have to perform and play basically when you feel like a piece of shit a lot of times. I

n a perfect world, come show day, we’d all be well-rested, the right amount of sleep and if all the planets would be aligned that would be great. You know what I mean?

Matt: Right.

Joe: But, that’s not always the case. One of the things that’s always in your control is preparation. So I never want to play when mentally something slips or a section doesn’t just flow out of me the way I want it to or that type of thing.

But, I’m extremely well-prepared, well-practiced up and part of doing that whole thing is if you can’t execute the stuff…execution and memorization when you play anything should be second nature.

Granted some people play things that are more challenging than others. When I play, I’m rarely white-knuckling it with, “Ooooh. I hope this is gonna come out good.” Plus the other thing is after years of playing and playing this type of music live and after so many records and so many shows you start to build up some confidence. A lot of it is just being very confident in your ability where if you’re doubting yourself that’s gonna come across. I just chalk that up to the fact that I practice my ass off and continue to do so. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t play. The only time that occurs is if it’s a travel day or the occasional vacation.

Matt: I think I remember hearing that you took your guitar with you on some vacation.

Joe: I did. After I played the Virginia shows I was in New Orleans with the missus, and the travel day, and the day I checked into the hotel I sat there and played for a good hour before I went out. For me, when I’m on vacation, I might play an hour. Between an hour and two hours is like my vacation practice.

Matt: That’s cool. I find myself doing the same thing. I can’t leave my guitar at home. It’s impossible.

Joe: Going a day and a half or something like that because of travel, but it’s always with me. The other thing is when you’re playing live you’re so amped up and there’s so much adrenalin happening that the more experience you have, you start to become, and the more seasoned you are as a live player, you’re able to hang back, stay inside yourself and really just getting freed up and letting it flow is what it’s all about.

Matt: Is there any memorable stage experience that you have or a connection with the audience that sticks out in your mind over the years?

Joe: I’ve been lucky enough to play some huge shows and when I think about live shows, I think more in terms of my solo things. I’ve played a lot of memorable live experiences, like when Holy Hell was opening for Man O’ War and Rhapsody on a package in Europe and I played the Olympia Hall in Munich where they recorded Rainbow Live in Munich, where Deep Purple played. That was like a big deal. I’m standing on that left-hand side of the stage in Munich like Blackmore did. He had stage left.

Matt: That would be particularly epic.

Joe: That comes to mind. And one time many years ago back in ‘94 before my second record came out, I opened up for Yngwie. I was doing sound check and nobody was in the club except for him and, now his ex-wife but his wife at the time, and he was sitting at a table further out in the room and he was the only one in the roo.

So we’re sitting there doing the little sound check and the man himself was there. It was a huge honor to open up for him. He came over after the show and said a couple of nice things, so for me it was like a bonus because not only did I get to play, but then I got to watch him play.

That’s another great experience, but I ‘ve had a ton of great shows. One time I was playing at the Monterey Metal Festival in Mexico and I saw they  started playing this Eastern thing and everybody started clapping in time to what I was playing, without me provoking them by clapping my hands or anything. And then they started going, “Joe…Joe…Joe…Joe.” [Matt laughing]

So like a big huge rock festival moment, a bunch of cool shit, but I always tell everybody I love to play. It doesn’t matter if it’s a small venue, whether it’s 20 people or 20,000 people, I love it. And if it’s 20 people, those 20 people came to see me, so what are they supposed to get: a stinkier show?

Matt: Exactly. I totally agree. That’s how I feel when I perform too so I understand. One thing I have to ask: When you did open up for Yngwie, how did his fans accept you?

Joe: The response was very positive.

Matt: Awesome. Yeah, I’ve opened up for Yngwie too, and it was quite an honor. I was a little nervous though.

Joe: Strangely enough, I wasn’t nervous. I think I’d be more nervous now. I was playing a backup track in front of Uli and I was playing it to the line and I totally botched it, totally butchered this middle section. Not butchered it, but I butchered it in my eyes. I made a mistake and f**ked it up just because I was so nerved out because I was sitting there playing right in front of Uli.

But, then I didn’t feel so bad because Uli had mentioned that one of the first times he went to see Yngwie play, Yngwie himself was a bit nervous and didn’t play as well. Obviously they’re good pals and stuff, but it’s amazing that it doesn’t matter what level you play at. Those types of things could still creep in. I was younger then, so I was less affected apparently.

Matt: Guitar World ranked you as one of the top-10 fastest guitar players of a all time. How does that make you feel?

Joe: It was a cool thing because like anybody who aspires to the shred game, I always wanted to be in those guitar magazines that I read. The first time Guitar World, back when they used to star stuff for reviews back in the ’90s, like 5 was tops and “Night of the Living Shred” got 4 stars or whatever. Like everybody else, like every other aspiring shredder, I always wanted to be in those types of magazines and get that type of coverage.

To be mentioned alongside guys like Michael Angelo; Mike is one of the more modern of those who shred, this over-the-top thing. You can’t get much more over-the-top than Mike. To be mentioned with the kings of the genre, Paul Gillenberger, Yngwie or…Paul Gilbert, Mike and stuff. So that was just great. Any time you’re on a list like that with some of the guys, the masters of the genre, I was extremely grateful.

Matt: Did you feel though it kind of put you in sort of a shred cage’?

Joe: No, because people that are a bit more guitar savvy and musically educated, they can hear the obvious. I get pigeon-holed with the heavy Yngwie thing all the time which is completely cool in that he’s had such an impact on my playing and many of the things I play are derivative of the things he plays, not all of them but certainly a good share.

I share many of the same influences whether it’s Uli John Roth, or Paganini or Bach and I love Vivaldi, as well as Blackmore and stuff, Di Meola and all the guys that impacted him. Not as many people hear the Blackmore thing or the Gary Moore thing. They’ll just hear only the shred aspect.

I’m considerably older school than even the guys on that list, other than Yngwie who’s got a very heavy, even though he’s the shred master, a very heavy European base to his playing. You know what I mean? Carrying on the tradition of the European masters. I do get kind of pigeon-holed into that sometimes.

Matt: The true fans will see what you do anyway.

Joe: Yeah, people that are familiar with Blackmore’s playing certainly latch onto that immediately. They say, “What are you talking about?” As they call it, the power stance, the official Blackmore leg out thing, like a bunch of kids will be on YouTube and they’ll be dogging me and they’ll say, “Oh, look. He’s got that pose from Yngwie,” and it’s like, “No.” You know what I mean? Ritchie Blackmore’s the man when it comes to the power stance. [Matt laughing] That’s a Blackmore thing. The official leg out, the power stance. Blackmore’s the coolest as far as bulldozing stage antics and all that shit.

Matt: Exactly. I know exactly what you’re saying. A lot of times YouTube…I’m not sure if they’re the best fans sometimes. Sometimes they just like to post endless comments about nothingness.

Joe: The cool part about the Internet is this: so many things accessible. And the poor part is any moron has an opinion and people actually read it and will read into it. Who knows? Just like most of those people are either frustrated younger players or stupid younger players…

Matt: I go see videos just because I want to see what’s going on. I want to see a good video of a good guitar player.

Joe: Exactly. It’s a really great and healthy thing. You could watch all these players, even more obscure players and you can watch them which is great as opposed to the younger kids. A lot of them view it as a forum for bashing or say they like one guy better than the other guy. “Oh, I like this. Oh no, they all think he’s better.” You know, it’s like little high school shit. [Matt laughing] But, I would imagine a lot of those guys are high school students.

Matt: Yeah, I would imagine.

oe: So we’ll hear from the high school students now. [Matt laughing]

Matt: Well, when you’re at home, do you ever find yourself wanting to explore those types of music or do you find yourself exploring the jazz or just other…?

Joe: I don’t have any tendency towards that. When I was a Berklee student, it was a very jazz-oriented school, kind of strictly just jazz. I did quite a bit of that myself, but I was never like straight edge, but I played some jazz/rock things, some fusiony things and things of that nature. I love classical music, but most of the stuff that I record is a reflection of my tastes. I love all different eras of rock and hard rock whether it’s  Rainbow or Deep Purple or UFO.  I like heavy stuff too, like MegaDeth or Arch Enemy and other power metal things. My records are a reflection of what I love to do.

Matt: I can definitely see that.  Was it tough to get into Berklee as an undergraduate and how did you become an instructor at the college?

Joe: I got my gig at Berklee just because I had a reputation. This was back in the early ’90s, my first record in ‘93. Right around my first record is when I started working there so that was…what is that? Like 16 years ago. It’s been 16 years now. It really had nothing to do with the fact that I had gone there for a period of time, even though I never graduated. It had everything to do with that I had a reputation for being bad-ass as far as that kind of guitar playing goes.

Matt: I have to imagine, since there’s been kind of a return to the intense guitar in recent years, but I have to ask, what was it like in the early ’90s? Did you still get a lot of interest in what you had to offer?

Joe: Yeah, and that’s one of the ways I was lucky enough to get a decent amount of notoriety doing the shred thing, because everybody kind of abandoned it with the exception of the guys like Yngwie. He never wavered or whatever. The same with Michael Angelo or many of the guys who still continue to do it.

A lot of people weren’t making those types of records during that period of time, but there were still plenty of people who wanted to hear them. It was a bit more underground. That’s one cool thing about the guitar virtuoso thing. There’s always gonna be people who want to hear the shit played out of the guitar. You know what I mean? Sometimes it might be a little bit more in vogue, but the core audience that loves virtuosic playing in many styles is never gonna go away.

Matt: True. I just remember the early ’90s being that really dark time for the genre. No magazines were reporting on it and there was such a backlash against actually exploring your instrument and playing it well.

Joe: It was almost like you had to apologize. At Berklee, because in addition to guys that are more shred based players, I had players that any kind of metal you can imagine, whether it’s death metal or thrash type stuff or power metal, anything remotely heavy or technical, I’m one of the guys.

Matt: Right, exactly. You’ve migrated some of your classroom guitar instruction into DVD. How do you move from one scene into the other? What’s the established template or format that’s the same in both cases? What’s your approach to this; how do you really cram all that into the DVD format?

Joe: Obviously I’m in an area of my expertise.  I’m very comfortable doing clinics and seminars and I have master classes at Berklee and things where I might have 30 guitar players or 35 or 40 guitar players in a room and I’m demonstrating things and answering questions and talking about various things.

For me it’s just very natural, so I just try to think of a way I’m gonna put the whole thing together. So a lot of it is just very natural to me and those are things I’ve spoken about in detail before and then I just think about, “Okay. Well I’m gonna put it together like this.”

I also think about if I was somebody and I’m buying a DVD, what do I want to see? Do you want cool instructional content with plenty of that? Would you also want to see the guy throw down and play? So I approach it the same way I do my records. As a guitar fan, what would I want to see?

You see some of your favorite players and they’re talking about all the stuff they do and some of the things that they play, some of their favorite playing patterns or fingerings or signature passages or gear and then throwing down and playing a bunch of tracks with a backing track. You can really get a strong sense of how well somebody plays watching that. That’s why really only strong players can do those types of things, because it’s as close as you’re gonna get to sitting in a room across from the person.

Matt: I’m glad you mentioned that about the DVD, because a lot of the instructional DVDs sometimes hold back their playing. And they’re great teachers a lot of the times, but it’s nice to actually see the performance aspect in the DVD.

Joe: You should try to balance both things because somebody should be watching you and be insanely inspired in addition to getting the content. My DVDs do fairly decently and it’s not like they’re high tech whatsoever, but they’re plenty good enough quality that it’s a great instructional tool in a cool DVD for guitar players.

Matt: Looking back at the DVDs that you’ve done so far, is there any one that you’d like to do differently next time?

Joe: The only thing I would say, content-wise I’m fairly happy. Maybe they could have been a bit more concise script-wise, but the other thing that’s cool about my DVD is it’s like you were sitting in a room taking a lesson from me, so there’s that aspect of it. There’s that kind of personal aspect of it which is cool.

I played a little when I was a kid, like 10 and then all of a sudden I was like, “This sucks. I’m not interested in it. I’m not really gonna bother with this.” And then I kind of let it go. I was playing out of Mel Bay’s “Easy Way”, taking lessons from an old guy, “This is an E. This is a f**king F. This is G7,” and then play the little melodies, songs out of books. I lost interest quickly. I took it back up when I was 13 because all my friends were into music and I was into the hard rock of the day, Hendrix, Sabbath, Purple, early Jeff Beck, Zeppelin.

The ’70s were a great era for hard rock and I immediately became hooked. I was drinking my first beer. I grew up in New York so the drinking age was 18. I was in my first bar drinking at 15 years old and playing in my first bar at like 15, 16.

Matt: Wow.

Joe: And that’s what I used to do. I had a ‘74 Strat, a Marshall stack and my band would play functions. Then I got older, I started playing clubs. I was going to high school and going to bed at 3:00 in the morning and waking up and going to high school. I don’t know how I finished the last two years of high school. [Matt laughing]

Matt: Are there any pivotal moments as you were developing as a player that helped you shift gears a little bit?

Joe: The first time I remember my friend’s older brother played Al di Meola’s Elegant Gypsy for us back in the late ’70s and that kind of transformed me because Schenker’s playing with UFO and Blackmore and stuff and Made in Japan and all that. Then I heard Elegant Gypsy and I was like, “Holy shit.” You hear “Race with the Devil”.

Then I was going to Berklee as well so I became Al di Meola obsessed. That’s one of the things that really motivated me. At Berklee, at the time I went, it was a scene of very strong playing and I still feel that way. If  you weren’t eating and sleeping and breathing it, then you had no business being there.

Matt: Yeah, exactly. I can see that.

Joe: At the time that’s one of the things that was really quite memorable.

Matt: The first time you heard Yngwie, did that alter your playing too?

Joe: What happened as far as the Yngwie thing, this is how that whole thing transpired. I was reading Guitar Player magazine and I would read that “Spotlight” column that Mike Varney had and all of a sudden I saw that article on Yngwie, this small article on him, and I saw all of his influences like Uli John Roth, Al di Meola, Ritchie Blackmore, Bach and I was like, “Oh, wow! This guy with the hard-to-pronounce name loves all the same guys I like.”

And then all of a sudden I saw an article on him in Guitar Player again when he was at Alcatraz, so then I went out and bought the Alcatraz record, like the LP, and I started learning a bunch of the songs and I loved it and I loved the solos. I started learning a bunch of the solos. Because of the Bach stuff, I had played a lot of that prior to hearing him whether it’s his inventions, violin sonatas, partitias and various bits, many different things. When I was a performance major at Berklee, you had to play solo guitar, so I was playing quite a bit of classical stuff solo. But bastardized, picking fingers and Paganini stuff with the pick.

This was back 1981. I started learning many of the Alcatraz things and I had learned all those small arpeggio shapes from Blackmore, Schenker and Uli so a lot of the things he was playing, obviously his playing was groundbreaking, but a lot of it I was kind of familiar with to a certain extent. Then I got the Rising Force record. Back when he was still way under the radar, I went to some import specialty metal store and bought it as a Japanese import. I’ve been hooked ever since.

Joe Stump – Demon’s Eye

Matt: Me too, I would have to say. So you heard the Alcatraz stuff before you heard his albums with Steeler?

Joe: After Alcatraz I heard the Steeler record and I had the Steeler record, the Alcatraz, the Alcatraz Live record and No Parole for Rock and Roll as well.

Matt: Those are great records, very influential to my playing as well. I have to mention that.

Joe: Some of the solos on their records are still some of the best, within a track, solos he’s ever played. Not to say that he doesn’t throw down still, but there’s something about players when they’re younger, you know what I mean? There’s a certain killer instinct that you have that comes with being at that point in your career. Not that anything’s lacking. He’s still going in for the kill, the stuff on those records is just…

Matt: Groundbreaking. Awesome.

Joe: Yeah.

Matt: Was he the guy that really got you to use the scalloped neck?

Joe: That was more of a Blackmore thing although I saw that he did it too. But, I’ve always been a Blackmore disciple. I have part of my guitar collection on my website now and one of my very first scalloped neck guitars, it’s like a ‘79 neck on a Fender Japan body and I had that guitar since 1987 and then I started getting a bunch of different Strats.

Then I got the Yngwie model when it first came out, the very first year it came out and that’s the guitar that I used on my first three records. The candy apple red Yngwie model. It’s a great sounding and great playing guitar. I still play it around the house all the time.

Matt: Yeah, those are great models. The scalloping, do you like it deeper or do you like it more of a shallow scallop? I personally like the deep scallop on my guitars.

Joe: I like it fairly deep because I can use the big fret wire, the jumbo 6000, so that combination is great.

Matt: Definitely. Were your parents strong supporters of your music growing up?

Joe: Yeah. I’ve been very lucky in that both my mom and dad were very supportive. We used to have the band rehearsing in the basement. In fact, when I was a kid, whenever there was a band playing in the neighborhood, the cops would come to my house and my mother would be like, “No, he’s playing at the pub down the street tonight. That’s not him.” [Matt laughing] I was very lucky and very blessed. When I started to make records and started to do things and get notoriety…there was a guy who owns a really nice restaurant in Florida where my parents liked to eat.

The guy who owns the restaurant, his son is a huge fan of mine and my mom and dad came in and the guy comped their meals for them.  So my mom is now enjoying the perks of my success.

Matt: If you could put together a five-piece band with four other players from any era, any style, who would you choose to join you on tour?

Joe: I’d have Cozy Powell on drums and then I’d have Ronnie James Dio on vocals, of course. On keys I’d have to go with Jon Lord.. Bass I’d probably go with Glenn Hughes.

Matt: Wow. It sounds like a Rainbow/Dio…

Joe: The best of all…although Glenn Hughes is a better bassist than Phil, Phil Lynott still is one of my favorite musicians, so maybe Phil Lynott on the bass. Glenn’s a little bit stronger player but Phil was bad-ass and Phil could sing a few numbers too, which I love his voice. So that’s a toss-up, either Glenn Hughes or Phil Lynott on the bass guitar.

And I know Phil plays with a pick. I can’t remember if Glenn Hughes does or if he does both. I can’t remember. I get asked that question quite frequently and it never changes.

Matt: Just thinking about it, didn’t you do a performance with Graham Bonnett?

Joe: Yeah. At the Uli John Roth Sky Academy concert out in L.A. the first year they had the concerts, I played a couple of tunes with Graham Bonnett. For me that was huge. And then Uli was sitting in as well so that was a huge…I was sitting there with full-on rock royalty just trying to behave myself, not overplay and show the rock legends proper respect. Luckily I played fairly well and I’m sure it’s on YouTube.

Matt: Well, what did Uli think of your playing?

Joe: He’s a wonderfully sweet, cool guy. I was lucky enough to jam with him and play with him many times now and he’s a great musician, a great artist and a complete gentleman and just very warm. It’s always a treat to watch him play and play with him.

Matt: Awesome. Getting back to the whole shred thing, have you ever clocked your speed to see how fast you could play before things start breaking apart?

Joe: No, because a lot of times for me it’s got to be in the context of something musical, so if I’m locking a fast double-klick tune and it’s in the 120s and I’m playing 1/32nd notes, that’s like 1/16th note past 240. That’s obviously quite fast or faster than you need to hear. In the proper place it sounds killer. Another example of something that would be stupid fast that I play is imagine you had like a 1/2 time groove where the quarter note was, for you metronome nerds out there in the 80s and you were rocking like a 1/2 time groove and then I was playing fast 1/16th note triplet runs but they’re actually 12 notes on the beat which is the equivalent of playing 1/16th note triplets past 160, 170 which is also stupid fast.

Matt: That would be pretty fast.

Joe: That’s an example of things I’ll do where I’m playing stupid fast. It’s not like I don’t still play insanely over the top, but for me it’s so much more about the technical stuff being great. Now the things that I really used to have to focus on and work hard on to achieve technically tend to flow out of me more freely now and that’s when you know you’re really reaching that other level.

It’s not like, “Ooh, I’m not trying to play technically,” but it’s just part of what you do musically. It’s all just part of what you do and it flows out of you. To me it’s all about music because there’s tons of guys who can play fast and I can play as fast or faster than just about anybody and I don’t even play as fast as I can play on my records. It sounds great for an effect…

Matt: It’s just part of the repertoire, right?

Joe: Yeah, like everything else. It’s hard for me to go about it in a non-musical fashion.

Matt: It seems like players are still fascinated by the complete over-the-top type playing. I’ve noticed that younger players are more fascinated by the speed and the older players tend to want to hear more of the phrasing mixed in with the great over-the-top technical stuff. That’s what I’ve personally noticed.

Joe: The other thing is I just play and it’s not like, “Ooh, I wonder if I played fast enough on my new record.” You know what I mean.

Matt: [Laughing] Right.

Joe: Obviously I play plenty fast and there’s plenty of insanely hard shit on there. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’m sitting there cooking it up in the lab. It’s just coming out of me.

Matt: About the whole shred scene in the past few years, how do you think it’s evolved or matured?

Joe: Just like anything, one of the key things is there’s plenty of players that have the technique and can achieve those things technically like that very challenging instrumental, “Caprici Diablo” on Yngwie’s  record Perpetual Flame.

You can see anyone playing a clip of it, of him playing live. It’s kind of bootleggy quality. He’s killing it and everything but then you could put it on YouTube and see some 16-year old playing it flawlessly with a backing track just like he recorded it.

That’s great and it’s great to be able to achieve that, but the other thing is to be able to showcase great playing in a context that is very musical and write riffs and melodies and phrases and combine that with great technical commands. There are too many guys that make guitar exercisey records. And it’s fun after a track or two, but then like everything, it’s gotta have something. There’s more to music than technique. Technique is just a portion of it.

Matt: Exactly. So the writing is still the main course of everything.

Joe: It’s just how you showcase it in a musical context. Whether it’s a Alexi Laiho from Children of Bodom, who’s a new, more technical player for the younger generation or the Dragon Force guys or Jeff Loomis from Nevermore. There’s all kinds of great technical playing going on. I know the Dragon Force guys are always getting dogged, but I’ve seen them play a few things and it sounds quite good. But it’s not like I’m searching on the Internet for a bad video of them playing like many of the children are.

Matt: [Laughing] Since there’s been such a resurgence, I talked about this earlier, but do you think it’s almost better in a way now than it was back in the ’80s?

Joe: Any time you have bands selling records where there’s great guitar playing and great intelligent hard-rocking metal music and great playing being embraced, that’s a good thing for everybody all around. So I think it’s great that players are interested in dedicating themselves to their instrument. More guys are doing so than ever. I think it’s a great thing.

Matt: In your own playing, what do you feel are the most important things? What’s critical to you as far as aspects of your playing?

Joe: Like anybody else, I’m still always committed to working hard and trying to get better and better at what I do, constantly being freed up. Technique is far more about control and command than it is velocity so the longer I play and the more seasoned I play, putting all those elements together on a consistent basis when you’re in a club in front of 50 people or 150 people or at an outdoor festival in front of 10,000 or 20,000 people. Trying to perform at the top of your game all the time and be very consistent and be flawless and relaxed is something I think we’re all striving for.

Matt: Right, definitely. Technique is one of those things that you can get really caught up in and it’s a great tool but I notice even with my own work that I’m trying to make less of those exercise-y songs that you mentioned.

Joe: I think a lot of it’s got to come from within so melody and music and groove and all those things, those are all things that are a reflection of somebody as a person, as an artist or whatever. Those are things that, and this isn’t a reflection on your music, but you would know your stuff, like any time you write a really good melody it doesn’t come from your sitting down and saying, “Oh, this tune needs a melody,” you just hear it organically in your head and it starts popping out and coming to you.

Matt: It hopefully comes from your soul.

Joe: Yeah, it comes from within. That kind of transcends because that’s a very honest thing. If that comes across to people, that’s great.

Matt: What’s the best guitar or the most beautiful guitar you’ve ever played?

Joe: I’m trying to think. I’m very happy with the last custom shop model ESP built me that’s on the cover of “Virtuosic Vendetta”. It’s a pearl white with gold hardware, maple neck. That’s a gorgeous and classy-looking and great playing and great sounding guitar. I’ve had Strats and some I liked better than others and some I really loved but I can’t remember a guitar where I was just, somebody put it in my hands and I went, “How much is that? I must have it. I must own it. It will be mine.” I love guitars and I have over 40 of them and I love them and all that and I never get tired of buying them or getting them for free or any of that shit, but bottom line is, it’s a tool.

I want it to look cool and I want it to be functional and I want to be able to work on it. My two main live guitars, the arctic white ESP with the maple neck and the mint green pick guard and the black pickup covers and the pearl white one. It’s vintage white, olympic white with the pearl pick guard. I’ve been playing those guitars and beating the piss out of them now for years.

They go everywhere with me and it’s great. 90 times out of 100 they’re extremely well-behaved and they can take the abuse and they’ve been battle tested and it’s great to put my hand around the neck and it’s like all those shows, all those performances, all that is in that guitar.

Matt: Right.

Joe: So there’s something to be said for that.

Matt: I’ve seen you play with maple necks and rosewood necks and I know it’s tough to ask you this question but: maple or rosewood?

Joe: I prefer maple to tell you the truth. If I had to pick just one. I like rosewood as well. It’s got a different tone. All my guitars, even though they sound very similar, they all sound slightly different. The bulk of my new record was recorded, the two main workhorse guitars for that record that most of the solos were recorded on was the maple neck pearl white ESP that’s on the cover of Virtuosic Vendetta and the pearl white rosewood neck guitar with the black pickup and black pickup covers, the one that’s modeled after Blackmore’s circa 1981 “Down to Earth” era Strat.

Matt: I didn’t even know it was modeled after that. That’s great.

Joe: I’ve got my little colors, my continuous effort to try to be Ritchie Blackmore. I get my color schemes for my Strats from various eras of Blackmore’s guitars.

Matt: I’m want to ask you a couple of questions that kind of rolls into the one about the most beautiful guitar. I’m using the term beautiful in those. What’s the most beautiful song that you’ve ever heard?

Joe: There’s a lot of things that come to mind. One really beautiful, even though he didn’t write it, one of my favorites…when I think of beautiful or what I think right off the bat, I think of a great guitar ballad and one of my favorite guitar ballads is “The Loner” by Gary Moore even though Max Millson wrote it with him, who’s the guy who wrote a bunch of the stuff with Jeff Beck, “Blow by Blow”.

I could be wrong. It could be somebody else that I’m not giving up the credit to. But “The Loner” is a beautiful guitar ballad. I love that track and there’s various slow, melodic classical pieces that I love. I love that haunting, slow melodic part in Paganini’s 24th Caprice where it slows down and the violin is playing the octave. That’s haunting and beautiful.

Some slower Vivaldi things. There’s all kinds of stuff or another beautiful piece of music is “Moonlight Sonata” by Beethoven like in “His Dearly Beloved” where he’s got his head on the piano and he starts playing that piece, that haunting piece. So that kind of runs the gamut. I think of something with a melody that makes me completely weak.

Matt: [Laughing] Okay, this is another beautiful question.  What’s the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard?

Joe: The most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. That’s a good one. I’d have to say the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard, it might not be one sound, but there’s nothing like a Strat through a Marshall could be one of the most beautiful sounds for me.

I could say something like Itzahk Perlman playing the violin but from an aspect of the guitar, some beautiful sounds would be some of the tones like Hendrix got on Electric Ladyland, that Strat through the Marshall sound that Gary Moore got on Chord of the Power or Blackmore’s Strat in your face on Made in Japan.

Matt: That’s a great record right there.

Joe: To me, when I think of amazing tones, amazing sounds and things like that, those are things that come to mind.

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Joe Stump

Lion Music Label