PRESENCE - Volume 85

Inspiration For Guitarists

When Flash Isn't the Same as Talent

When I was 17 and still in high school, I had a part-time job that really helped form who I am today.

I spent a lot of time hanging out at the local music store in Charlotte, NC — Reliable Music. I got to know all the guys in the guitar department well. One of them, Jimmy Saviano, took me under his wing and asked me to roadie for his band, the Vandals. I still can't believe my mom said yes to it, since I was spending my weekends in clubs I really wasn't old enough to be in.

I learned so much from that job.

This was the era of Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads — songs with guitar solos where speed was king. Every guitarist around town was chasing the same thing: faster, flashier, more notes per second.

Jimmy wasn't like that. He was a musician first, guitarist second. He wasn't as flashy as some of the other guitar hotshots around, but I learned more from watching him play night after night, and from hearing the power of a band that played together as a unit, than from anyone trying to impress a room.

While most of the bands around town sounded like a bunch of individuals trying to show off, the Vandals played for the songs. Jimmy was a great songwriter who spent as much time — probably a lot more — crafting chord progressions, writing rhythm guitar parts, and shaping melodic guitar solos as he did working on flashy chops. And it showed when the band played. They had the melodies of Cheap Trick, the chord progressions of Queen, the vocal harmonies of the Beatles, and the power of AC/DC.

They made a big splash on Star Search, the popular TV show at the time, but never quite became a household name — even though they should have been. What they did do was inspire a lot of us in the NC music scene to get our act together and start actually learning about music, instead of just chasing technique and flash. I can't thank Jimmy and the rest of those guys enough for that.

Here's the thing I didn't fully understand until years later: the hotshot guitarists around town were all flash and no framework. They could shred, but most of them couldn't write a song, hold down a groove, or make a band sound like one instrument. Jimmy was the opposite. He'd built the framework — songwriting, chord progressions, melody, the discipline of playing for the song — and his technique existed to serve that, not to show off.

That's the same trap I see guitar players fall into today. They chase flash — fast licks, impressive-looking shapes on the fretboard — without ever learning the musical framework underneath it. Jimmy taught me, before I even had the words for it, that the framework matters more than the flash. It's the whole reason I teach the way I do.

- Dustin