The Instrumentals of Rock Podcast episode #5 Neil Zaza

Throwback Thursday!  I met Neil Zaza back in 1996 during the IOR radio days.  We met in 1996 on the floor of the Anaheim Convention Center for the annual NAMM show. Episode #5 is audio only from that interview. #neilzaza#iorock#instrumentals#instrumentalrock#iorpodcast#shredguitar#onedarknight#NAMM   

Transcript

Mitch Barnett (00:15)
Welcome to the Instrumentals of Rock podcast. I'm Mitch, and this episode is part of the Throwback series, where I bring back interviews from the syndicated radio show I did in the mid-90s called The Instrumentals of Rock, where the music speaks for itself. This episode was recorded in 1996 with guitarist Neil Zaza. Back then, I would scour the guitar magazines for articles about guitar players who released instrumental records, and also for ads of new releases.

Of course, I was interested in all the big-name guys like Satriani, Vi, Eric Johnson, but I was also on the lookout for up-and-coming players too. I remember seeing ads for Neil's first two instrumental records, Two Hands, One Heart in 92 and Thrills and Chills in 93. Then in 1996, Neil released his album titled Sing and I interviewed him at the 1996 NAMM show while he was promoting the record.

Now for those of you who don't know about NAMM, it's the National Association of Music Merchandisers Trade Show. There you'll find all the latest and everything for sale in the music retail world. Just about any musical instrument or accessory you can think of will be there. It's also an exciting place to be with musicians playing live all throughout the convention center and in the clubs at night.

I usually did my interviews over the phone, so this was one of the rare ones I did in person. You can tell I've got Neil mic'd up, but not me, so my voice doesn't come through as well as Neil's, but I think it's good enough to hear my questions. I do remember that Neil was fighting through a bit of a cold at the time, but he got through it fine. For those of you who have followed Neil over the years, I think you'll find this an interesting snapshot of where his career was at the time.

It had been three years since his last release, and with SING, the songs were not just about showing off his guitar playing skills, but more about highlighting his maturity as a songwriter. Still plenty of insane guitar playing on it, something that would continue throughout the years with over nine solo instrumental records, his latest being Vermeer in 2022. So let's get back to my interview with Neil Zaza during the NAMM show at the Anaheim Convention Center, January.

1996. And what was it that made you pick it up in the first place? I played guitar. I played out of Melbae Book One. I took some lessons at the YMCA. And I enjoyed playing music. I love music. And I knew that something I had a great interest in. But after hearing Van Halen play, I really

it kind of opened up the whole picture because I wasn't exposed to like Hendrix or anything like that. So that's when I said, yep, this is what I'm gonna do. So did you start taking lessons right away? I was taking lessons at the Y and learning, you know, Mary had a little lamb and all that and then I just started playing by ear and took some lessons with some guys that showed me how to play, you know, songs like Boston tunes or Cars tunes or whatever and so I played

for a few years and did a few different things, took lessons like that. Then I said, well, if I'm gonna get serious about it, I should probably learn some actual music things. And so I went to college for three years for classical guitar at the University of Akron. And I learned all my scales and modes and theory and stuff. I couldn't play maybe a classical riff to say my life, but it really helped my education process. Now before then, were you kind of going through the standard

Yeah, I played in a lot of cover bands and I grew up in an era of like, you know, like when Van Halen had Dave Lee Roth and Foreigner and Journey and all that stuff. So that's really the stuff I grew up on so I played a lot of Journey tunes, a lot of

A lot of stuff like that, I guess that was top 40 in those days. So to this day, I think that's why Neil Sean is an inspiration or inspires me because that's the stuff I really grew up listening to. When this whole neoclassical thing came out, everyone wanted to be influenced by Bach and Paganini and that. But I have to admit, my influences in that time period when I was playing in those bands were Neil Sean and stuff like that.

And once you got out of college, how did your career in the rock guitar industry get started? I was just, as I said, in a lot of different cover bands and this and that.

In 88, there was a contest in Cleveland, hottest guitar player in Cleveland. And I say that with kind of irony in my voice because you can't judge hottest of anything. There's no one great player. So I entered the contest and I won and there was a lot of notoriety about that and a lot of publicity and I got to open for like Ted Nugent and a few other people which was neat. So that started the whole guitar player's guitar player thing going.

set out to pursue that, you know, I want to be, you know, a guitar player's guitar player. I don't even think I am now. That kind of pushed me in that direction. So what happened then is I was in a band called Zaza. We did a vocal original material and that was three or four years since I'm traveling with that. And I just didn't have any connection to the music anymore and I said...

here's what I want to do and that's what I'm doing now which is playing a lot of instrumental stuff or all instrumental stuff and that's what really gave me pleasure just playing my guitar you've done a lot of instructional videos or done some instructional videos some yeah and the clinics and things like that how did you get hooked into doing that is that something that you kind of pursued or did it just happen? I guess I've really been lucky to be in the right place at the right time I was playing a NAMM show

video magazine, they have some videos out. They saw me playing and struck up a friendship and I was featured in two of those tapes. So they said, well why don't we do an instructional thing and why don't we just tape you live and sell some of that to your fans. So that's where the video stuff happened with that is it just kind of perpetuated one thing after the other. So once again I didn't pursue it but I did really want to do it. I don't really perceive myself as a great teacher or a great...

you know.

educator I think because I do a lot of clinics people think I'm this educator or something like I'm just a player that you know if someone has a question about what I do hopefully I know enough of what I do I can explain it but the video thing I fell into for sure. Do you enjoy doing the clinics? Oh yeah. I love doing the clinics I love traveling I love playing guitar and it's always great because I get go out and get to play my music in front of guitar players which is that's

It's a real appreciative audience. A lot of times you play in a crowd that they don't know what you do. They don't really understand it, but this puts me in front of the guys that understand the kind of music I play. So I love doing it. I love clinics and all that stuff.

You've recently been on the internet, you've got your own web page, website on the internet. I have a page on the internet and I find that's a real good way to keep in touch with a lot of my fans. I have an email mailing list that I send out, you know, email.

updates on what I'm doing and stuff. I'm a real technology freak. You know, I like email, I love computers, Macintoshes, and I love all that. So I'm into hard disk recording. So anything that has to do with technology like that, I'm really into. Now you've got, this is your third record. What kind of direction is this record going in compared to the others? I think my last projects, my last records were about...

Obviously my first record, I think anyone's first instrumental guitar record is about showing, hey I can play, my fingers move. And that's cool, but I think a lot of times the songs are left to the wayside. I could say that kind of happened on the first record. Second was a little more focused, that was thrills and chills. And I said, you know, I enjoy this whole widdily diddily thing of playing fast, but...

we have to play some songs and we have to play some melody because that's really what I grew up listening to and was into. So thrills was the next step in the progression and then Sing Now, you know everyone feels their latest album is their best album, but this I feel is a culmination of everything now in one package. The songs were gone over with fine tooth comb, I didn't write anything for the guitar.

I would hum things. That's why actually one of the reasons we call it Sing is because most of the parts on the record were hummed or sing, you know, da, and I would just duplicate that on guitar. So I really tried to take the guitar out of the picture and make melody the forefront. And there is some willy-dilly things on there that I kind of went nuts on, but I think this album, Sing, is more about songwriting and playing what fits the song rather than, hey, look at me.

check out my playing, you know, check the whole package out. Well, I think the whole instrumental rock guitar sound and feel and all the guys that are doing that now, I think are all kind of getting past that too, you know, because there's a lot of guys that can play and everybody knows throwing the notes out is one thing, but you know, getting a good song, that's the bottom line. Yeah, I have to say that I really don't listen to any

instrumental music per se. There's a lot of different guys I listen to a tune or two, but when it... It has to be about music.

songs and that's why I like a lot of what Satriani does. I like a lot of what Eric Johnson, he's just what a great guitar player and he's just fantastic. That's why I like Neil Sean because you could hum every one of his solos. Whether you like the band or not or like him or not, you can't deny that you could probably pull an average person off the street and say hey, you know, this is a, you know, you can hum the tune or whatever. So yeah, you gotta change direction and you gotta be true to what you love and you know,

normal stuff you know. Right. And the record still slams too. Oh thank you. That rocks. Thank you. Yeah that's actually the producer Eric Fritch was like, hey man do those arpeggio things. I'm like man I did those on my last two records. I gotta do something different. It's go ahead. So really all the stuff that's fast in the record is because he just he goes do it. Just come on. And then.

I would do stuff and the whole engineer in him would start going, yeah! And he got me going so they knew how to wind it out of me. They had to yank it out of me a little bit. Were the songs on Sing Once that had kind of been around for a while or did you just kind of write them just before you went in? I had a bunch of tunes that I had written for the record. The band which was Eric, Mike Paptonis and I.

Eric played bass and keys and guitar on the record and produced it. We went to Missouri, is where we started out to do the record, and we sat in a room for a week, and we went through tunes and we threw some songs out. We threw a lot of tunes out because they didn't work in a band context, and we wrote a lot of tunes. So the tunes were very immediate on sing, so they were written and recorded real fast, which was good because it's really kind of a snapshot of what happened at that time. They're not tunes I had from five years ago or something like that.

Do you have a musician or songwriter that is always writing or do you kind of need the project to give you that, you know, and how you got to go? That's a great question. I come up with little riffs and this and that but I forget them a lot. You know, hey that's pretty cool, I remember it and I forget it two minutes later. I really write for the project. Kind of what happens is I, I feel like I kind of give everything I have to the record.

and then I don't have anything more to say, and then I go out and play it on tour and play it in clinics and stuff. And then some time has passed and then I feel like I've grown as a musician and then it's time to make another statement. So I'm not constantly writing, I kind of dump out all I have inside and then I need a refreshing time to go out and play and live life and experiment and learn and then I have another statement to make. So a lot of guys write 20 tunes in a week and I write 10 tunes every year.

I think if I just wrote a bunch of tunes...

all the time they would just be the same tune just rewritten in different ways. Well, you know, I think, you know, I mean some guys are always writing, always doing stuff. And I think, you know, as an artist I think you need to just find out what you're comfortable with doing. Right, right. You know, whether it's this way or whether it's writing every day or whatever. Right, right. That works for me. Yeah. Obviously the album is all instrumental. When it comes to song titles, is it kind of a necessary evil for the CD jacket?

Or is it an important aspect of the song itself? I think it's an important part of the song. I mean, it's more or less a private joke with me. Some of the song titles like, like Halen for instance, is a tip of the hat to Eddie Van Halen because I copped in the middle of the tune a bunch of riffs of his, you know, like as a tribute, you know. I'm Alright on the album was the first tune I wrote for the album, so that was kind of a justification that, hey, I'm okay.

do another project and I have some stuff to say so I'm alright. So it's usually private jokes or you know. But yeah it is kind of important that there's a few titles on the record that say actually something. Well not having it right in front of me but like Journey to Texas I mean that's a... Journey to Texas we had the riff and we were playing it.

It reminded me of a Journey tune because there's a little change in there that sounded like something maybe Neal Sean would have played, hopefully. And it reminded me of when I was doing my last record in San Antonio, Texas, so Journey to Texas. Everything I should have said off the record, right where we were rehearsing and writing, and I had one more song to do for the record. We needed that 10th song or 11th song or whatever it was. And I was banging my head for two days and me and the drummer went for a walk in a graveyard and we were looking at all the head.

and we're just thinking, these people died and...

they didn't tell their wife that they loved them before they left for work that day, or they didn't hug their kid or something before. Because they woke up and they thought they were going to be alive another three years, eighteen years. So it was everything they should have said to the people that they never did. So that's where that title came from. So that's some of that. In your newsletter, it kind of starts out when you're talking about the new record as I'm in love with a guitar again, and you kind of talk about maybe there's a little of a burnout period there for a while. What happened there?

Yeah, when I get off the road playing a lot and stuff, I'm really fried. And I'm not fried of traveling or anything, I'm just fried of hearing myself play. And I'm not fried of guitar in general, I'm fried of me playing guitar. I'm sick of hearing my hands on those strings every night. So a lot of times I'll go home and I'll just put the guitar down for a few weeks or whatever. And it really charged me up again to play.

the songs on the record because they were very melodic. It's things that I really got into music wise. And I really wasn't, this project really charged me up about the guitar and I'm excited to play because I'm saying something different than I was last time out. So I think if I had it redo the same record or redo the same riffs every record, I would quit. But it has charged me up a lot for it.

Well, you know, I'll be honest with doing this show, which now I'm in my second year. And all I had heard was Two Hands, One Heart, which was from an era. That was that 80s era. And so, hey, it's Neil Saucer, I got a new album. I'm going, oh. I mean, I was really, when I heard it, man, it was just, it was really, it was great to hear.

It's good that I think any good musician always has to keep on trying to change, keep on trying to do something different. Well thanks. I listen to this record now and I say, boy it's really great. It could be better. There could be more hooks, more melody to it. It's funny, I haven't listened to the record and said, I could whittle my fingers a little faster on the next one. I haven't said that. It's been, yeah we gotta write another...

prettier song than that or something more moving than that. So I play guitar but I don't really think guitar now. I really just kind of think of songs now and stuff like that. Hopefully, you know, maybe that's my progression. Some of the products that you endorse, maybe you could talk a little bit about them. I mean, Rocktron is one. What is it that for a non-guitar player, what does Rocktron do? Rocktron makes the best processors and preamps for guitar. The company's...

run by guitar players. They make exactly what a guitar player needs. No matter what setup I'm using on stage, you know, I change gear a lot. I always have a Rocktron piece and I always have really had Rocktron gear before I really got hooked up with them. So I was endorsing them way before they said, yeah Neil, it's okay, you could play our gear and we'll say, you know, they make great stuff. I endorse Hamer guitars. They're great, they're fantastic.

A bunch of other companies, some string company, LaBella Strings, great strings, visual sound pedals. I've been using a great volume pedal that has LEDs on it. It's real nice. Do some stuff with Morley pedals, which are real nice pedals too. I'm getting real selective as to who I endorse or whatever, because I really have to like the gear, or I won't do it. So I've been approached by a few different companies.

Yeah, free gear is cool, but it has to be the right free gear to be really cool. I just hooked up with Fostex, which is great. I did most of my album on a D80, a hard disk recorder, and that helped my creative process a great deal. They're a great company. They treated me great. I guess I'm just into being in the team of...

good companies and things like that. Well, the hard disk recorder, how does that make things easier for you? Hard disk recording is different than analog recording in that you can go instantly to a section of your music. So if you want to go right to the solo, you can go right to the solo. It saves time in that sense, but then again, you could just as if you would word process, you can cut and paste.

this solo here and there. It's a lot more creative because a lot of times you do a solo and you go, man, I wish I could have the end of that solo on this solo. And well, now you can. Or if I wanted to actually, for instance, we edited down three songs on my computer at home, everything I should have said, Jenny's song and song for home. And we did these long ride fade outs. And we said, man, that's a little bit too long. Eight minutes is a bit long for a tune on this record. So, you know, putting the computer, got the best parts that

fine and went. So it allows me a lot more creative freedom than just recording it and there it is. Is this hard disk recorder a stand alone kind of unit? Well the D80 is a stand alone unit.

850 meg drive or 1.7 gig drive and that's a standalone unit. I also did a lot of the records on ADAT and I also have a Mac with Pro Tools on it, Pro Tools project and did a lot of editing on that. So a lot of the digital stuff is, I'm really into, but a lot of stuff we recorded on the D80 and just bounced it around to different digital mediums and did what we had to do and mixed it in.

So are you going to be able to take your band out, hopefully do some gigs other than at clinics? Yeah. I know that's hard to do sometimes. It's very tough doing instrumental stuff. A lot of times the market, you know, they don't know what to do. I mean, what do you mean there's no singing? Who's going to come see this? But we have some good footholds in Colorado and Nebraska and different pockets of the country so it's been going great there. We did a few weeks out.

And then I came home and we'll do this six week tour. Come home and we'll go out again and try to break into some new markets. We're trying to hook up with some different booking agents and stuff like that. So I'm ready to play live. Between doing a clinic and live, I'll do it live because you get to really crank up the bands behind you. It's pumping, it's energetic and everything. So I- You know, to stop the flow with going, and now. And now, when I'm doing any questions, you know, live it's just, here's what we're doing and-

take it or leave it. So it's a lot more direct doing a live gig for sure. But it's great how it's really kind of taking you all over the world and offering you a living as well. It's great because I went to places, I went to Europe last year was in 12 countries and played and that's where some of my earlier records were distributed so it was neat to play countries where the record was out and there was guys coming up in Norway and they had the record and it was it'll be neat now that uh...

Singers out nationally that hopefully that'll start happening now, you know guys will be familiar with the tunes before I play the club or you know Whatever and that'll be nice

I'm gonna do it. Are you sure? Yeah, I think so. Okay, cool. If you can do it, Instrumentals of Rock ID. Hey, I'm ready, what do I say? This is Neil Zaza. The name of the show is The Instrumentals of Rock. You got a little script. Just right on the top, The Instrumentals of Rock, where the music speaks for itself. Just, hey, this is Neil Zaza, you're listening to. Okay. Instrumentals of Rock. Hey, this is Neil Zaza, you are listening to The Instrumentals of Rock, where the music speaks for itself. Right on. There you go. Okay.

Thanks for listening to the Instrumentals of Rock podcast. I hope you enjoyed this throwback episode from the interview I did with Neil Zaza from 1996. Check out the previous episode for my interview with Neil that I did at the end of 2023. Thanks for listening and subscribe to the show to be notified about upcoming episodes. Cheers!