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Music’s Leading Guitar Man
By Lisa Cowley
Andy Aledort has been an important figure
in the guitar music industry for over 20 years. His editorial roles at
Guitar World and other magazines brought quality transcriptions of
famous rock n’ roll musicians — Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton — to an
untapped market. His performances, both on his numerous instructional
CDs and on the stage, have warranted invitations from Dickey Betts and
Stevie Ray Vaughan bandmates Tommy Shannon and Chris Layton, a.k.a.
Double Trouble. Aledort was even sought after by Aerosmith’s Joe Perry
for an emergency blues lesson. This leading guitar man comes to the
Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett on February 11.
Aledort’s love for guitar began while viewing the Beatles’ performance
on “The Ed Sullivan Show” from his home in Little Neck, Queens. “When I
was growing up, everybody had a guitar. A cheap acoustic guitar you can
bring to the beach or you can play it by yourself or play it with other
people. So much of the music I listened to the guitar was such an
important part of early rock music and the blues.
Setting The Standard
“There’s a connection to the human voice, I think, in the sound of a
guitar solo or someone playing single notes on a guitar,” mused Aledort.
“When you start to play, you realize there’s a lot of different ways to
approach expressing yourself musically with the guitar. I like so many
different styles, everything from country western and bluegrass to rock
and blues to classical music and fusion. The guitar is part of all those
different styles of music. So when you sit down and play, you can really
go in a lot of different directions.”
Aledort, in the late 1970s, performed in various Southern rock bands,
popular at the time, and dabbled in punk and fusion. However, a hand
injury, known as “trigger finger,” a cyst that forms on the tendon of
the finger, nearly ended Aledort’s performing career. While he said the
surgery isn’t that complicated, the therapy that followed created
additional problems. “The silver lining was that it forced me to look at
other ways of making a living related to music. And that’s what ended up
getting me into music publishing.”
Even up to the early 1980s, when Aledort first came upon the guitar
magazine scene, there was very little guitar instruction available, and
what was only applied to traditional and classical music. There was
nowhere to go if you wanted to learn Hendrix’s “Purple Haze,” for
example, so Aledort spent “countless hours” learning the riffs on his
own, by listening to records and watching numerous hours of video.
Hendrix Note For Note
His first magazine job was as music editor for Guitar for the Practicing
Musician. He had heard the magazine needed transcribers. So he sent a
transcription of Hendrix’s “Red House.”
“The editor said ‘This is the best transcription I’ve ever seen, please
take my job. You’d probably do this better than I would.’” Aledort noted
that at the time, the quality and accuracy of instructional materials
varied, as did the symbols used for different effects, etc. Aledort
created a higher standard for how to present guitar transcriptions,
which ended up becoming the standard. “I thought that if you give people
the most accurate stuff possible, they’ll know the difference. And that
was proven to be true, because GFTPM went from ranked third, to within a
few years, ranked number one.”
“When I got into music publishing, it was something new to present rock
music and Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix songs, and then do a complete
analysis in terms of music theory and scales and offer that as
instruction to people. We created a market that had once been untapped.”
Aledort is now an editor for Guitar World.
Another career move that opened doors for Aledort was his numerous DVDs
and books with CDs, teaching everything from B.B. King to Joe Satriani.
His book/CD Jimi Hendrix Signature Licks caught the attention of Tommy
Shannon. “He thought it was Hendrix when he heard it.” Aledort was then
invited by Shannon and Chris Layton to be a part of their instructional
videos, which led to a gig at a Hendrix tribute event at the Rock n’
Roll Hall of Fame. There he met the Experience’s Mitch Mitchell and
Billy Cox.
“In the dressing room, Billy and I played together through the same amp
for an hour and a half. We must have played 20 Hendrix songs. I went out
on the stage and played with Double Trouble and the next thing you know
Mitch gets behind the drums and Billy walks over to me and says ‘Let’s
play ‘Voodoo Child.’” Aledort was then invited to a tribute in San Diego
in front of 30,000 people, and again in Japan, with 50,000.
“It’s so unreal and exciting that I don’t get nervous at all. When it’s
happening, I still can’t believe it. I’ll be standing up there and I’ll
think, ‘There’s Mitch Mitchell standing five feet away from me. How’s
this possible?’ Because part of you isn’t any different than when you
were a kid. You’d play along to the records and it was unimaginable.”
Joe Perry was a big fan of Aledort’s DVD Learn To Play Songs From Jimi
Hendrix Experience: Are you Experienced?, which Aledort had given him
while ghost writing for Guitar World, along with two CDs. Eight months
later, Perry gave Aledort a call. “It was a total shock . . . They were
just starting to work on their blues record Honkin’ On Bobo. He wanted
to work on really specific phrases and solos that he had a hard time
with — Jeff Beck, Clapton, Robert Johnson, Johnny Winter. So I went up
to his house and we played for 10 hours. We broke for dinner, but other
than that, we spent the whole time playing. It’s the kind of thing you
wish you could go do every day.”
Invite By Dickey Betts
Another Aledort fan is Warren Haynes. He loved his album Put a Sock In
It, and invited him to play with the Allman Brothers. Recently, Aledort
has been sitting in with another childhood idol, Dickey Betts. “Even
after many years in the business, I’d never thought that I’d meet Dickey
Betts and then when I did meet him, he was such a great guy. I just said
to him ‘I’d love to sit in with you sometime if you don’t mind.’ He said
‘sure,’ and it was good and he did something that no other musician on
that kind of level every offered me; he gave me an open invitation. He
said ‘Any gig you can make it down to, you’re more than welcome to
play.’” They’ve played together at least 20 times.
At the Talkhouse, Aledort will perform with his band The Groove Kings.
Drummer Vito Luizzi was Johnny Winter’s drummer for five years and also
played in Blood, Sweat, and Tears in the 1970s. Bass player Dennis
Metzler is from the local rock/reggae band Shockshine. Mike Demeo, once
a heavy metal singer, as the Groove Kings’ keyboard player, loves jazz
and R&B. “The songs are written intentionally so that there’s a lot of
room for all the players to express their musicality and individuality
in different ways. It’s really great having musicians like this, who are
always looking to bring the music up to another level and put their own
twist on it too.”
Aledort added, “It’s great to go out and play with Double Trouble, and
Billy and Mitch. Fans of that music love it and I’m happy to play it.
It’s not the same as when it’s your own music; it means more to you.
When people come see us locally, that’s where they’ll hear us playing
our original music, and I hope they like it.”
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Talkhouse and Coming Attractions in the area!
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