From: Terri Bey and Ken Rodenas; April 2002
Columbus, OH was treated to an intimate clinic with guitar great, Bruce Kulick on Wednesday, April 3. The event, sponsored by ESP guitars and KRA Music Store in Columbus, featured a very candid Bruce talking guitars, career and music. It is not a "clinic" per se in the sense that he did not go into exquisite detail on guitar techniques or go into theories and chord progressions. Instead, he played lead to songs with backing tracks and spoke a bit about the inspiration for each of the songs. And this worked perfectly since the majority of the crowd appeared to be fans, not practicing musicians.
Early in his career, Bruce fell in love with the body style of the Gibson SG-1. But he also loved the quality and craftsmanship of ESP guitars. Not surprisingly, Bruce incorporated the best of both worlds into his ESP Signature Model guitar. Bruce's new favorite is the ESP Viper Ltd.. He likes the fact that "it is an affordable guitar that any beginner can go out and buy" and that "they are not $1500-$2000 guitars that only rock stars can afford and take 6 months to build". Bruce did make some minor modifications however, adding Duncan pick-ups and locking tuning pegs.
Bruce began the clinic playing along to studio backing tracks from Kiss's Revenge recording sessions (minus the vocals) and ripped the leads on "Unholy", " Heart of Chrome" and "Tough Love". Before playing "Tough Love", he explained that he came up with the riff but he had to transpose the song into a different key to better match Paul Stanley's vocal range and emphasized to the musicians in the audience how important it is to write songs in a key that compliments the singer's voice.
Next, Bruce moved into his solo material from his debut solo album, "Audio Dog". Citing Steve Vai and Joe Satriani as influences, Bruce explained that "Pair of Dice" was a tribute to David Lee Roth's "Just Like Paradise" featuring Steve Vai. Bruce would go on to perform "Liar", "Skydome" and "495". The inspiration for "Skydome" came during a visit to Toronto's Skydome. And "495", affectionately named after New York's Long Island Expressway was in part inspired by songs like Jeff Beck's "Freeway Jam" and appears on the limited edition pre-release version of Audio Dog.
Before fielding questions from the crowd, Bruce shared snippets of live recordings from his current band, Grand Funk Railroad. During the Q and A, he spoke about attending Randy Castillo's funeral reinforced the sadness of losing his dear friend, Eric Carr. He also was asked about whether he would wear the spaceman makeup if Ace left KISS and Bruce said that it would be a very difficult decision and would feel much more comfortable without makeup, a la the Revenge era KISS. He also talked a little bit about the photo shoot and recording of the "Carnival of Souls" album. Bruce also gave small updates on his upcoming book and a possible live Union DVD to come out later in the year.
To conclude the evening, Bruce thanked Columbus for all their years of support and conducted a meet and greet where he signed autographs & took photos with the members of the audience.
All in all, we thought that this was a wonderful event. Bruce's guitar work never sounded better. He seemed to be in very high spirits and looked to be in great shape. He kept the event very interactive, was very candid and cajoled with the crowd. More clinics are expected throughout the year. Do yourself a favor and catch one!
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