25. AUGUST 2004-MAY 2006: FINALIZING CHINESE DEMOCRACY; LAWSUITS; RETURN TO NYC

ya never know when one of those moments are gonna happen, when life is gonna take a big turn, right?

I could make a lot of jokes about [joining Guns N' Roses] and say, well, they needed somebody with a name that sounded like Buckethead, and Bumblefoot, you know? Two syllables starting with a B, and then a body part. But no – from what I’m told, Axl wanted me.

It was through a recommendation - we started chatting in 2004, and it all came together by 2006. It's been a good year…

It was about four years ago that we started talking. Joe Satriani recommended me and then I got a funny email from Chris Pitman, the keyboard player, and we all just started talking. It took a minute for us to get it together but we started touring in 2006.

I got to know Joe [Satriani] after reading some interview he gave to a French magazine where he mentioned that he was a fan of my playing. I tracked him down and reached out to him, and we struck up a friendship. Then, in 2004, he invited me to jam with him at one of his gigs in New Jersey. It was him, Deep Purple and Thin Lizzy. I think we played [Freddie King’s] “Going Down” together. Anyway, a little later on he mentioned to me that he had dropped my name to someone in the Guns N’ Roses camp because they were looking for a new guy to replace Buckethead. He wanted me to know that if anyone from Guns got in touch it wasn’t a joke. And soon after that I heard from [Guns N’ Roses keyboardist] Chris Pitman. He sent me a funny email, real obnoxious. I wrote back, and we started talking. Then I began talking with management and then with some of the engineers working on Chinese Democracy. So we’re going back and forth, everything’s sounding good, and then there’s this long stretch of nothing. Until one day it was, “Hey, we’re rehearsing in New York. Wanna come down and jam?” So I went down and me the band, met Axl, and we hit it off. I came down again the next night, then the next week, and the week after that, and then before I know it [in May 2006] I’m onstage with the band at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York.

It was about 5 years ago. I got an email from Joe Satriani to tell me he recommended me for the gig (Guns N’ Roses) so if someone did reach out that I knew it wasn’t a joke or something. Very soon after, one of the guys from the band emailed me and we started talking. I started talking to guys working on the album about recording and then spoke to management. Eventually we hit the road and started touring and in between legs of the tour started recording tracks for the album, putting my 2 cents into it. That was it, and here we are.

It ended up causing a little battle between me and management, and that's why we didn't speak for a good year and a half (laughs). They then contacted me, and said "Do you want to work this out?". I was still all pissed off, because management really took it to extreme measures - that I won't even get into - trying to get me to say that I lied to get publicity, and I refused. I should also mention that that management is long gone - they're not around anymore (laughs). I was pretty pissed at them, but we managed to just talk it out, and come to an understanding.

The tour was coming together. We were talking for about two months, then things sort of fell off. Then a year and a half later they got back in touch and said, “Do you want to give this a shot? Give it another shot?” [...] the whole time I was actually telling them, “No.” Like in the beginning I told them no, and it became this fight between me and their manager at the time. When they got back in touch, because of that fight, I was still like, “I don’t want to deal with you guys.” Then we started smoothing it out and I said, “Okay, let me come and jam,” and they were cool guys. They were a great band. I like it a lot.

It ended up turning into a whole big thing with them and we didn't talk for a year-and-a-half. Then they reached out and said, "Can we work this out?"

It’s just a case of that’s the way they operate.

Once I was in the group, then we were getting along fine. It was just before then, they were misunderstanding what I did, and they were assuming the worst. I tried to stop rumours from spreading, but I just made it worse. I just really didn't know just how guarded you needed to be with things when it comes to a band like Guns N' Roses, or any band with big name recognition. Once we chatted about it a year and a half later, everything was fine. I get along with everyone - you have to be a real dick for me to not like you (laughs). I'm pretty easygoing.

I think Axl liked that I was a fighter. I think so. Because even before I joined the band, I was kind of in a fight with management back in 2004, and I was swinging. And he told me that he liked that. I think the exact words he said were that “my balls go clang” - that they're brass! (laughs)

They reached out again and I still didn’t want to do it. I just didn’t think I was right for it for a lot of reasons. Then my lawyer friend spoke to them on my behalf and said, ‘Look, just leave him alone. He doesn’t want to do it.’ Instead he got back to me and said, ‘You may want to talk to them.’ And I was saying, ‘No! No! No!’ He said, ‘Just talk to them. Hear what they have to say.’ And I’m being a brat saying, ‘No! No! No!’ He said, ‘For me, just talk to them.’ And I was like, ‘Alright.’ So I went down. They were rehearsing in New York and I just brought my guitar, I figured we’d jam a couple of songs that night. So we did, and then the next night another three songs. And we jammed seven times and then hit the road for three months.

I was relaxed, not worried about anything. Things would happen as they were meant to, however it turned out.

We started jamming late April, early May 2006. Each day we'd play a few more songs, after two weeks we started doing shows.

(Laughs) My memories of the original audition... I try not to remember. I try to block it out of my mind (laughs). What can I remember from it? Umm... I would just come down, park my car in the lot down the road, and just walk in. Everybody would be there. I think the band was pretty exhausted from the audition process they had gone through before I showed up; I think they had spent months checking out different guitarists, and were ready to get onstage. It was different. I had never played in someone else's band before, and I always did my own thing. Sure, I've jammed with tons and tons of people. I've played with all different people, but to be a member of someone else's band officially, I never really did that. I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know if I would be welcomed and treated like family, or if I was gonna be treated like just some co-worker in the next cubicle. I didn't think about it. I didn't try to analyze what was going on, or how I was being treated or not treated. I just thought "Alright, look. I'm here to make music, and that's what I'm gonna do, and that's it", and that's all I focused on - to do the best I could.

[...] when the tour was confirmed we started jamming. I came in and played 3 songs, came back the next day with another 3, and after 2 weeks we hit the road.

And then they had a tour going in early 2006 and we picked it up. And I they were in New York City jamming and I just came down and we just jammed to three old songs. Cool, let's do it again tomorrow night and did another three songs and did that for two weeks or so.

Chris gave me a very warm welcome. He gave me a big hug and was like, ‘Bumbles! How you doing!’ The other guys seemed to be a bit more all business. That’s alright – we did our thing. But also, I didn’t know their backgrounds. Even at that moment, they had spent months rehearsing. So, I’m sure they weren’t that excited to audition another person, with the tour only weeks away. It’s like, ‘Come on, you know?’ But we pulled it off! We did. We made it happen. They were ready to go – it was just getting me up to speed. We did it.

The thing I remember is that he walked in carrying a huge tray of hamburgers. At that point I hadn’t eaten red meat in a long time, and I thought, What a perfect way to break that streak and have some beef. So I had a burger with him, and my God – that was the best freakin’ burger I had ever tasted! Maybe it was because I hadn’t had red meat in a while, but it was fucking good. But what I didn’t know at the time, and I’ve since come to learn, is this: Wherever we are in the world, Axl knows where to find the best burgers. We’ll be in Japan and he’ll find these little Kobe steak burgers that are just… wow. So I trust him when it comes to ground beef. Oh – and I also remember we were jamming to one of the new songs and he yelled in my ear that it reminded him of “Hey Bulldog.” So I thought, All right, he’s a Beatles guy. Cool.

[Being asked if he was nervous:] Nooo, not nervous, had no perceptions other than our own dealings through management two years prior. I don't buy into rumors and hearsay, I meet people, have my own experience with them and go with my gut. We were jamming in NYC to some of the newer songs, it was totally normal, we ate some food, made some music, it was good vibes. I hadn't eaten red meat in a few years and his friends brought in a big tray of hamburgers, I figured it would be a memorable way to break that streak, and had one of the burgers. Lemme tell ya, after so long without it, that was the absolute best fucking thing I ever tasted. So that's my memory about it – jamming in New York and eating my first real burger in a long time. Good stuff...

Axl & I met face-to-face for the first time jamming to the song Riad in NY in April ’06, a few days before the tour began…

I had no preconceived ideas about the guy. You hear lots of things but I've learned the people with the strongest opinions are the ones that have the least experience and that's pretty much with anything. Even when traveling, people that had the harshest opinions about a place were the ones that have never been there as opposed to the ones that have and had a more realistic and not so scathing review. It's the same with people and I found that to be true with Axl as well. [...] The first time I met him, he came down to a rehearsal and we jammed to the song "Riad" and he was yelling in my ear, "This part of the song reminds me of 'Hey Bulldog' from the Beatles." I was like, "Yeah, you're right." Eating some burgers and it was just totally normal. That's the thing - anybody's normal and everyone's a human being making music.

He knew the stuff I had done on Shrapnel. He knew the song “I Can’t Play the Blues” [from Thal’s 1997 album, Hermit] and I think he said that was one of the things that made him want to check me out. But I don’t know if he really knew too much. I don’t think anyone did, other than real guitar freaks.

[laughs] I ask myself that all the time: 'Why me? Why me?!' [laughs] No, seriously…I don't know. I don't think he ever told me. Actually, of all things, I think it was because he'd heard a song of mine called I Can't Play The Blues, which was on an old album I did for Shrapnel Records. I guess he liked all the crazy stuff I did on that song. Axl gravitates towards players who don't play all the normal patterns and licks.

They needed someone that was going to replace Buckethead and I was going to be able to keep up with his incredible guitar playing. So, they needed someone that could handle that kind of stuff. I’m not by any means calling myself incredible. I’m calling him incredible and saying they needed someone that could [laughs] do that stuff. They needed someone that, could of course play melodies and someone that could play technically. Just by coincidence, I had a funny name. From what I was told, the song that made them interested was off my very first, or second album — a song called “I Can’t Play the Blues,” which made fun of shred guitar players. It was a light-hearted, poking fun at ourselves as guitar players. Just always having to be a little bit louder and play a little bit flashier and all the little tricks and things, just that was the song that I was told they heard and said, “Oh this guy would be right.”

It was Joe Satriani that recommended me. From what I understand it came from two places, one of the guys in the band was surfing the Internet and found me and was like, “Oh, him.” Then from a second source there was Satriani that reached out and said “Hey they’re looking for someone to replace Bucket and I recommended you so they might be getting in touch.” A few hours later they emailed and got in touch and funny thing, that email was from the band member that hadn’t talked to Satriani. It was just odd timing that it kind of happened that way. So I’m still putting all the pieces together on how I ended up in that band [laughs]. It’s a mystery to myself.

Oh, yeah. I believe that you have an obligation to not waste someone’s time. I made sure when I went in there I knew every guitar part, bass part and even vocal line. If I’m going to learn the song, I’m going to learn the whole song, not just my part. I want to be able to cover anybody’s ass.

In fact, when I joined the band, I only had a week to learn all the songs and then hit the road. And to learn the Chinese songs, they wouldn’t give me a copy because they were so worried about leaks. I had to learn all of that stuff on a pair of headphones in the rehearsal room on a laptop just listening and taking notes.

Honestly, I think it was they were worried about leaks. They did not want to have any music out there. Even when I had to learn the songs to start touring in the very beginning when I was first joining the band, they wouldn't give me the music to learn. So I had to learn all the stuff on "Chinese Democracy" we were gonna play live, I learned it with a pen and paper and headphones on the road manager's laptop in a half-hour just writing while the band was taking a break from rehearsal in the next room. [...] I was like, "Alright, let me just quickly in a half-hour take notes and make little cheat sheets and learn everything I need to learn." All that crazy stuff I had to get down in a half-hour with pen and paper and memory and that's it.

I was actually pretty iffy on the whole thing. A big reason for that was because at the time I first started talking with the Guns organization, the whole Dimebag [murder] situation was still very fresh. And I was wondering, Will people blame me for the original band not getting back together? On top of everything else, do I have to worry about that? Also, I kind of liked where my life was at that point: I had gotten myself back on track; I was doing my solo thing, working in my own studio recording other bands, giving guitar lessons, licensing some of my music for TV, touring a little bit. I wasn’t rich and famous, but everything was on my own terms, and I dug that. My life was mine – my fuckups were mine, my successes were mine, and there’s something to be said for that. So I wasn’t sure if I wanted to drop everything I had been working toward.

I had some concerns about things I'd inevitably have to give up – the teaching, producing; my own touring. I had my life on my terms, which was something that took a long time to make happen. But sometimes it's better to not over-think things; you can think yourself right out of meeting your own potential. It's better to just jump in, and life will figure itself out. I jumped in, and have no regrets.

I did have some hesitation at first, because I had just got my life where I was completely master of my own domain in every way. My life was totally mine, and I had it balanced perfectly between teaching music at the college, doing guest gigs, putting out my own albums and touring with that. Producing other people, doing things in the studio, I had a million things going on. I had it perfectly balanced, and I just knew that if I joined Guns that the majority of those things would have to stop because I wouldn't physically be there to do it, and it wasn't something I could do on the road.

It was a question of, do I want to give up all of these things? Even though playing with GNR is a much bigger thing, it's all about happiness, satisfaction and gratification. A lot of things that mean more than being on the map, fame or whatever else. Not that I ever did it for that. It was more like I met with them, we jammed and hit it off. Once that happened, I had a personal connection towards it, and we just kept it going.

Sometimes you just have to say, “What the fuck!” That’s the truth. It’s very easy to over think yourself out of anything. You can come up with a million reasons to not do something, when the reality is that you should just shut the fuck up and do it. You make it work. It’s like, these are your balls – juggle them. Of course, my balls are pretty lopsided right now. I have this little one over here that represents me, and then there’s this big one over there that’s Guns N’ Roses, which is, like, 10 times the size of a normal ball.

I would love to if they would take my crazy self back. I miss it. I miss the students ... and all the professors. It's just a great place to be. ... It's kind of a hiatus, but we're just not sure how long this hiatus is going to be. Every semester I'm like, 'Oh, Guns booked more shows.'

[...] I miss being in a room with a bunch of hungry minds where we share ideas and experiment and explore things ... reach new epiphanies, even if it's sitting in front of a computer screen and showing them a new technique for making a snare drum sound consistent and strong.

Right from seeing Welcome To The Jungle on MTV for the first time at three o’clock one morning, I knew they were special, that they would go on and do something magical. I felt the exact same way after seeing Vision Of Love by Mariah Carey, and Britney’s Hit Me Baby One More Time.

Honestly, I didn't follow them much;  In the 2000s I didn't know much about them, just the basics: that Axl was there, that the rest of the original members were gone, but I didn't know what state the group was in.  About Chinese Democracy, I only knew the name and that it was not ready after a long time of working on it.

I had no idea what was going on with their shows, I didn't know what to expect… then I was surprised at how big everything was when I walked in.

No. Before, I met Bucket once or twice. Never met Slash.

Well, it was actually awhile ago. It was in the summer of 2004; I got an email from Joe Satriani, and he said that he had recommended me for Guns N' Roses. They were looking for someone to replace Buckethead, and told me in case someone got in touch, so I knew it wasn't a joke or anything. At that point, I really didn't know that much about Guns N' Roses and what they were doing, where they were at album wise, touring wise, so I took it lightly. I said "Ok... If they call and get in touch, I guess we'll be playing some bars... whatever's going on (laughs)". They got in touch, and it was about a year and a half before we started working together, and it was at the very last minute. I didn't think it was gonna happen at that point, and honestly, I was very happy with what I was doing - I had my own albums that I was putting out, and I was touring with that. I was producing a lot of people, I was teaching at a college and really enjoying that... My life was completely in my... not control as it were, but I was doing everything I wanted to do, and I was really happy with it. I knew that if I joined Guns N' Roses, I would have to give up a lot of things, so I wasn't really that quick to jump into it.

About a year and a half later, they had a tour ready, and they got in touch, and we started talking again. They said "Hey, do you know some of the songs?". I said "Yeah. Tell me what to learn", and they named three songs. I just came down with my guitar, and just plugged it into whatever they had there - a Marshall or whatever it was - and jammed with them, and just had fun. That was it. They then said "Hey - you wanna come back tomorrow, and do another three songs?". I said "Sure", and we did that. Every night, I would come down knowing three more songs, all of the older material and everything. Then while I was there, I would try to learn some of the newer songs.

At the time though, I had a tour booked. This was in April of 2006, and I had my own tour booked in May and June. I was gonna be going from Iceland to Russia with my band, and touring to promote the 'Normal' CD. I was talking to management, saying "Well, I need to know - either this is gonna happen, or it's not. I'm not cancelling anything until this is definite". Finally, at the last minute they said "This is definite". I told them even before I came down - I said "If you want me to come down, it's because I'm pretty much in the band, because you're hiring me, because you want me, because I'm in, and because we're doing it. Otherwise, I'm gonna be doing what I'm doing".

It was over 8 years ago when GNR reached out. At the time, I was releasing my own albums, touring, producing great bands, guest guitarist with cool artists, licensing music to TV shows & videogames, teaching music production at a University, my life was complete and gratifying and the thought of putting all this aside to join another band... I told them no. A year-and-a-half later they reached out again and we worked it out. I had to cancel an upcoming Bumblefoot tour from Russia to Iceland, stop teaching, put producing on hold as well as my own albums, and took a chance that I'd be able to juggle everything. We jammed 7 times, I learned all the unreleased Chinese Democracy songs by listening on a laptop for a half-hour with pen & paper in hand, and hit the road.

It was cool. In Brooklyn, growing up there, everybody was just real and straight-forward and you know what you get. Not a lot of bullshit, even at a very young age. You could be five years old and you know who your friends are and everybody is just straight up. When I moved to Staten Island, the next borough over, all the neighborhood kids there were my age, and then there was the next generation, like two or three years older. We all had older brothers and sisters so through them we would get exposed to a lot of music, what they were listening to, what their interests were. So at a very young age, like five years old, we were all listening to KISS and things like that.

I’m from Brooklyn and she’s from Queens. We met twenty-two years ago and been together ever since. It was actually a blind date. People tried to set us up for six months and we wanted no part of it. Then, finally, it was, like, ‘Alright, yeah, we’ll get together’ and we were just bent on hating each other just to prove everybody wrong. Then, she tried to get rid of me by asking me questions about science and parallels between matter and anti-matter and the asymmetry of the universe. I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh! She has a brain!’ and we started talking and, yeah, there you go!  Twenty-two years later we’re having breakfast in North Carolina.

Well in the, you know, mid 70s I had heard Kiss Alive album and 75 and that is what made me... that was my first love, that was the first thing that really got me inspired and excited and- [...] It was the greatest... It was the album that launched, like you know, a thousand of the bands and yes, it was that. Also the Beatles, I was a big lover of the Beatles. As I grew up - trying to think of some of the first albums I got, was Boston's first album. [...] There was Parallel Lines from Blondie. Love that album. Billy Joel, The Stranger, that one that was one of my first albums. [...] We didn't have Internet, it wasn't so easy to explore and find music. Either you went to a record store, you know, you go with your parents while they go shopping and say, "Oh, could we go to the music store?" you know, you go there and they leave you alone in there while you just browse through album covers and if you see one that looks cool it's like, "Oh, what's this one, 'Killers', Iron Maiden? That looks cool, I'm gonna try this out," and you go and buy it based on that- [...] And you find a gem. But, there was that and then there would be, "Hey, my older sister just got Yes, Going For The One, let's listen to it!" And listen to it and, you know you, just hear something that freaks your little child mine out. And so yeah, that was actually that album, Yes, Going For The One was one of the first albums I got. So I had a sort of eclectic diverse rock collection going on as a kid and from there I got into, you know, a lot of Ramones and Sex Pistols, some Dead Kennedys we listened to. You know, and then of course all the classic rock stuff that at the time was just rock and I was, like, we were 10 years old and, you know- [...] I still remember everything, like, you know, I remember hearing on the radio while I was going to school that morning and getting ready that, you know, John Bonham was found dead and, you know, Led Zeppelin was a big part of growing up. And of course The Stones. Everyone had the Hot Rocks album out of course. There was AC/DC, the new album with the new singer, you know [playing Back in Black]. It was like, "Wow! He's good!" I remember like the fear and concern I had when I found out Paul Di'Anno was out of the band and they got this new guy. I didn't know what to expect and then, you know, hearing [playing Iron Maiden] and when he does that [singing Iron Maiden] and like, "Oh shit, he's got pipes! Yeah, you can do this!" And then the first thing comes out [plays the guitar] I was like, "Yeah!!" So yeah, yeah, I remember all that stuff so vividly. I'm just growing up with, you know, classic rock and then, you know, old school metal, which was just metal, and I would always go every Sunday to Rock And Roll Heaven, this little record shop in a flea market run by this nice married couple, John and Marcia, John Sesulu [?], and- [...] And he would always say, "Hey, check this one out, you might like this one," and, like, "It's called Angel Witch," and it was just turning out to be the craziest stuff [...] And then he's like, "Hey, check out this one!" [play the guitar and sings]. And, you know, you just get me all, like, he would point me in the right direction that guy. He's like, "Check out this band," "Check out this one," and I would go there and get all my weird Australian imports of AC/DC stuff and all the, you know, picture discs of Maiden and whatever else and I would just try and find every weird cover of the album 'Hero, Hero' from Judas Priest and stuff like that.

When I was 5 years old I got the Kiss 'Alive' record and that's what made me want to be musician. That's what made me want to do this.

Oh man, this goes way back to when I was about 5 years old. All the older kids in my neighborhood were into KISS. Then I heard the KISS Alive album for the first time and it just blew my mind! I wanted to be a drummer and so did my brother. So we got into this contest where whoever had the faster drum roll got to be the drummer. Me being 5 and him being 8, he was a little bit faster, so he ended up being the drums. So I was like, “OK, I want to be a bass player because Gene Simmons is badass with the fire, the blood and the high shoes!” Bad shoes! [laughs] So, I went to a place to start taking bass lessons and at this point I was about 6. The bass was taller than I was and the strings were thicker than my fingers, so that wasn’t going to happen. So they lied to me at the music store and told me that by law you have to play acoustic guitar for two years before you can switch to bass. So I was like, “OK, if that is what I need to do I will do my time, man! I am gonna take it like a man, like a 6 year old man, and do it!” So I got into it and just stuck with it and forgot that I was supposed to switch to bass. Twenty years and I forgot! But I do play bass now too, but I play it like shit because I never did get those bass lessons when I was 6. So it all kinda worked out and I have gotten to do everything, although I am the world’s shittest drummer. So it is a good thing that I didn’t take the drum lessons!

It was the whole KISS thing. A lot of people from my generation heard the KISS Alive album for the first time and it got them so psyched up that they felt like they needed to experience that themselves – then spent the next 20 or 30 years working towards it. It’s the same kind of story. I was 5 years old and all the older kids in the neighbourhood got KISS Alive. Where I grew up there seemed to be two ages of kids: all the kids that were my age, and all the kids that were two or three years older. And the younger ones seemed to get exposed to a lot of the culture of the ones who were a little bit older. So I was five, six, seven years old and going out buying Boston’s first album, Yes’s ‘Going For The One.’ Blondie’s ‘Parallel Lines.’ Ramones’ ‘Rocket To Russia.’ Really getting exposed at a much younger and maybe even more impressionable age. And KISS and the Beatles, those were my two favourites that made me really wanna make music. KISS made me wanna get up on a big loud stage and put on a crazy show, but the Beatles made me truly love music. That’s what made me want to lock myself up in a studio, splice up tape, turn it backwards. All that kind of stuff. That was the creative inspiration.

When I first began, I jumped right into band activities - I started writing songs, had a band logo, merch, started making demos, planning shows... only problem was I couldn't really play guitar yet, haha. But there's one philosophy I always believed in – you only need to be good enough to play your own songs... or whatever song you're playing. I wrote songs I could play, and did the most with my limited abilities. I started taking 1-on-1 guitar lessons, private lessons with different teachers and continued for 8 years. I started with reading, a lot of reading, then music theory, then classical and jazz, while always playing rock on my own and training my ears, learning songs just by listening. I would drop the needle on the record for a few seconds, remember the sound I just heard and would try to match it on the guitar. I would try to learn an album a day – the Scorpions, Judas Priest, Kiss, Ozzy, Iron Maiden... then tougher things like Yes, Van Halen, Jethro Tull, even Tchaikovsky.  It was great for the ears, and great when I wanted to jam with people, because I'd know a lot of songs. After I stopped taking lessons, I kept studying on my own, and would try to find patterns that linked other aspects of life to music, try to see how music, math and emotions all connected. I even programmed my old Commodore64 computer to write random music, haha. Crazy kid...

I had an overactive brain like wow. I would be outside in my yard, I'd be five years old, and have a stack of encyclopedias and I would be reading the encyclopedias just memorizing information about everything I could while everyone would be in the front, you know, just playing football and stuff and they'll like, "Come play with us!" "Yeah, one minute" and I'm... stuff like that. And I was a real just, I don't know, I just had this like incredible hunger for like everything there was to sponge up about everything. Oh yeah, I got dumber with age. Now I'm just a stupid rock star. Oh, but yeah, I was a smart kid. And I think part of the... what I loved about music besides just, you know, loving music, was just trying to understand the math behind it and I was as a kid I was definitely into all the theory and everything and trying to just find on my own, you know, just come across all the different links between things in life and the math that makes music work and yeah.

[...]  I was 5 years old and all of the neighborhood kids were like 4-6 and then there was the next generation of kids that were 7-9 and they all went out and got the KISS 'Alive' album that had just come out. So I heard it through them and as soon as I heard it, it was like a little spark came on and I was like, that is what I gotta do with my life! So, immediately, I need to get a band together, writing songs, doing promotion, making demos..and make it happen! [...] This was a 5 year old all motivated! Immediately I got together with some of the neighborhood kids and started writing songs and borrowed a guitar from one and I didn't even know how to play it. I would lay it on my lap and just strum it and hit it..and I had no idea whatron4 to do with it, but I started writing songs and the only thing I wrote about was what my little geek brain knew about like the solar system and the planets. My first song was a rip off of 'Fox On The Run' called 'Jupiter Is Nice.' But yeah, yeah...I really wanted to play bass because, out of everyone in KISS, it was Gene Simmons that wowed me the most. I wanted to spit blood, fly up to the rafters, breathe fire and play a bass! So I went to the store and the nearest place where they sold instruments and gave lessons and I was a tiny little kid and I was like "I wanna play bass!" My fingers were probably thinner than the bass strings at that point and they looked at me and somehow they conned me into playing guitar.....You need to play acoustic guitar for two years before you play bass...... and I'm thinking to myself, "that's a strange law", but if that is what it takes, fine! So I started taking guitar lessons and strictly academic stuff, reading and all eighth notes and sixteenth notes. Going through all of the reading books, Book 1 and 2 and 3 and my teacher would throw me a bone every once in awhile and teach me a song, the first song I learned was 'Rock And Roll Hoochie Koo.' And what was funny and coincidental is that one of the guys in Guns N'Roses, that was HIS first song too. Richard Fortus...

So that was how it all started ....writing songs, I started putting on concerts in my basement and the local school, we'd have cups of confetti to hand out for the end of the show and they'd all throw the confetti in the air and my poor Mom would have to clean it up.

I’d go over my friends’ houses and would check out thier older siblings’ albums that would be lying around. I think the first one I spotted was Paul McCartney ‘Ram’ at age 5. I immediately started checking out the Beatles. It was Kiss ‘Alive!’ that really got me riled up though, it made me want to do what they were doing. Spent the rest of my life taking that road.

As soon as I got that inspiration at five years old from KISS. By the time I was six, I had a band with the older kids in the neighborhood. We were writing songs. I couldn’t play yet but it doesn’t matter cause from day one I realized I only have to be good enough to play your own songs. You try and get better and then your own songs get better. But when I started off, I had very limited resources. I was six years old so the first song I wrote about, or the first songs that I wrote, were all about the solar system, because as a little kid I was interested in the planets and space and stuff. So the first song I wrote was “Jupiter Is Nice” and it was an exact rip-off of the song “Fox On The Run.” Exact. Because that is what I heard on the radio. So all I had were those things that I heard. I wasn’t creating yet, I was just receiving stuff. I didn’t have enough things that I received that I had pieces to put together and start making my own things form.

I was thirteen years old when I started playing bars. I had a puberty mustache so everyone thought I was eighteen. And by that point, everything was very progressive. It sounded like a mixture of Loudness meets Iron Maiden meets Manowar meets Yes meets Rush. It was interesting stuff. I was playing with a lot of the older teenage kids, so yeah, it was pretty scary. I had no stage fright until one day I was ten years old and I was on stage, fifth grade playing in front of the school, and suddenly it hit me: What the hell am I doing?! I guess it was just part of growing up, that self-awareness began, and that lasted until my early twenties, I would say, until eventually you become more self-assured and not so self-absorbed. And you realize that people don’t define you.

I was just really, really focused. And I practiced a lot. And I was the kind of kid who was into things like music theory. I found it to be really fascinating. I was interested in the math behind it all. It was like food for the brain; it wasn’t just mindless stuff to me. But I needed to keep my brain occupied – otherwise I would do very bad things. And I did. I would vandalize the neighborhood in the most creative ways you could imagine.

I took lessons when I was a kid for a good eight steady years of just weekly lessons, very academic. From there I started teaching out of the basement. Then I started teaching at a music store, and then in my early 20s I set up the music department at a private school. I was teaching music for children there, I set up a jazz band, a choir, music history… a whole music program for this private school. Right before that I was teaching at a music institute that a chain of guitar stores in New York had. At some point I worked my way up to teaching music production and guitar at an actual legitimate college in New York State.

I had to – it was a challenge. And yeah, this was the early Eighties, and there was nobody like Eddie. Before that I was into Kiss, AC/DC, the Beatles. But the first time I heard Van Halen, it was like nothing else. I had “Eruption” on cassette, so I popped out the reels, flipped them over and popped them back in. I literally wanted to be able to play the song forward and backward. And at 12 years old, I could do it.

Maybe a regular guitar player and an amazing guy. (Laughs) I think I'm pretty regular. And as far as playing guitar, all that stuff is all a matter of opinion. If people like what I'm doing than great. If they don't? Then I guess I've got a little more practicing to do.

I suppose that’s when I went “legit.” This was in the late Eighties. I had been gigging in bars and clubs around the New York area, trying to get a deal for my band, AWOL, and also playing in cover bands, doing, like, every Rush song known to man. But in addition to all that I started making these weird, strange instrumental songs, mostly for my own amusement. And a friend said to me, “Hey, you should submit this stuff to one of those guitar mags that showcases unknown players.” So I did. And the guy who got in touch with me as Mike Varney. He put me in his “Spotlight” column [in Guitar Player magazine], gave me a nice write up, and we stayed in touch. I wound up appearing on a few of his compilation CDs and also a few of the Guitar on the Edge compilation records his brother [Mark Varney] put together. Mike was also talking to me about doing a full instrumental album, but I always said no, because I wanted to be part of a band. I grew up on Kiss, the Beatles, Van Halen – I wanted it to be four names up there. I didn’t want to be known as the solo guitar guy. [...]  I never considered myself just a shredder. I’m more like a songwriter that tastelessly plays way too many notes for the song. [laughs] But that said, it’s still the song first. And as a guitarist, the most amazing thing you can do is come up with one of those riffs that every player wants to learn: “Smoke on the Water,” “Paranoid,” “Stairway to Heaven” and, dare I even suggest, “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” If you can come up with something like that, you’re golden. All the other bullshit doesn’t matter.

Definitely Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen. There were plenty of others, from Charlie Christian (old bluesy jazz) to Andre Segovia (classical) to Alan Holdsworth (fusion) to Yngwie Malmsteen (neo-classical) but the ones that had the most impact were definitely Eddie and Jimi.

Guitar-wise, I was always into Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen really opened my mind up to a different way of looking at things. For the most part, I really played a lot like Angus [Young] when I was a kid and was totally into that vibe. When I heard Eddie Van Halen for the first time, I was like, “What? What the fuck is he doing?” and that kinda changed the road that I was on. [...] Well definitely Eddie. Hendrix is there, for that feel and he had such a fucking vibe to him. It is so hard to say. Even Yngwie [Malmsteen] because, to me, I think of the ones that had such an impact on music or guitar players, or both. People started shredding because of him. He’s to blame for that because he inspired a lot of people that went on to take what he did and add it to their schooled, jazz approach that they had to things and suddenly you have all the shrapnel artist for next 10 years. So he has to be given a lot of credit for being a major inspiration for a lot of people. I could even throw in some people that you wouldn’t expect like Elliot Easton from The Cars because he was so fucking tasty in what he played. If you want to go down that road, you could even say Ace [Frehley]. You can sing his guitar parts more than you can even sing the vocal to a KISS song. You could go on forever, people were great for so many different reasons either by what they contributed or by how something hits you individually.

I was 5 years old, and the older neighbors (they were around 8 or 9 years old) played me the KISS Alive! album, it had just come out. I was an instant KISS fan. Next memory, besides putting the KISS Army sticker on my bedroom door, or seeing an occasional commercial on TV for a concert or album and getting all riled up, was playing drums to Detroit Rock City for our 2nd grade talent show. (I wanted to be a drummer originally...) Then getting the KISS dolls, and seeing them live at Madison Square Garden in '79 - it was my first concert, and not much topped it. All this had an impact on my life, the direction it took, and why I'm doing what I'm doing today.

[Being asked why he started playing guitar]: Well because I was a really shitty drummer. Yeah. And I wanted to, you know, I heard KISS, I was five years old, I heard the KISS Alive album and I was like, "That's what I want to do that right there." "I want to put on makeup and dress funny." Uh so yeah, so I wanted to be a drummer and it didn't quite work out and I was like, "Well I want to be a bassist cuz Gene Simmons is the shit, he scares me I'm five," and you know, "I want to spit blood and fly and I want to breathe fire and fuck chicks and..." Actually no I didn't want to fuck chicks when I was five. So I remember I was six years old, I was having a birthday party and invited two girls from my class thinking that, like, if I invite them both that I'd be able to get with both of them at the same time. Yeah didn't work out. It did not work out in any way but that's another story. So yeah once wanted to be a bassist but you know I was too young, you know, bass strings like fucking cables, you know, for a five-year-old, you know, thickening my fingers so I started on guitar and I stuck with it.

Vigier Guitars has been making one [fretless guitar] for 20 years, but very few people had embraced it. From the first time I heard it I thought it was the coolest thing and started using it. Been playing Vigier guitars since '97, got a fretless in '99 - gets such a unique sound, real fun to play.

Dig playin' both, each has somethin' about them. Fretted guitars you can really dig in and bend the strings till your fingers are chewed up, but fretless has a freedom you don't get from a fretted guitar. I kinda dig soloing with the fretless, Vigier makes the ones I use, with the metal neck. And they made the foot guitar. They gave me the fretless to check out, I think it was the NAMM show in 1999. The first 5 minutes were strange-but after an hour or so, it all started comin' together. CHEck 'em out at "www.vigierguitars.com",

Vigier Guitars has been making a fretless for 25 years, but none of their artists really jumped on it. I figured I'd give it a shot, and see what comes of it. Definitely a different approach - no bending strings, vibrato more like a cello - takes a minute to adjust, but after that it feels natural.

The company Vigier, they were making this [fretless] guitar I had discovered it in 1998-99 and I asked them if I could try one out and that's when I started using it.

Yes, Vigier just put it out in January 2006. Nothing crazy, not a flying foot or a chunk of cheese - a 'Normal' guitar, customized with the pickups and wiring I use (split coil and out-of-phase settings,) non-floating vibrato (stays in tune when you break a string,) and a hole to stick your thimble when you're not using it

Yeah, about the thimble (metal cap used in sewing that you put over your fingertip so you don't get jabbed with the needle...), I keep it on the little finger of my picking hand and tap with it - after the neck ends and the string keeps going, I use it to get the higher notes.

I don't think I'm doing anything physically different from other players, maybe just the choice of notes and phrasing. Maybe the only difference is the metal cap or thimble on one of the fingertips so I can tap above the fretboard and still get sustained notes off the string. You can hear that in the song "Guitars SUCK", the real high notes, that's all tapping with the thimble.

I did have a cover band back then. What cover songs were we doing at the time… We were doing covers of GN’R. [...]We’d do “Brownstone”, “My Michelle”, uh, what else… I think we did “Jungle”. A bunch of stuff off of Appetite. I had a band called Leonard Nimoy – you know, the guy on Star Trek? He played Spock – and we would do covers of AC/DC, Kiss and Aerosmith, Guns, and… It’s pretty funny, we would – no, I shouldn’t even get into that story, it’s too much! We just did some crazy shit.

[...] I had a cover band with some friends called Leonard Nimoy - we did a few songs off Appetite when it first came out, I think we did Brownstone, Jungle and Michelle... I remember the first time hearing Guns - it was 3am and I caught the Jungle video on MTV. I remember thinkin', "this is gonna be BIG..."

In the early 90s, my girlfriend was in veterinary school and I was helping her study - one of the animal diseases was named Bumblefoot. One of the treatments was to rub hemorrhoid cream on a bird's foot. It was all so bizarre that I wrote a song about some kinda fucked-up superhero named Bumblefoot. I used the idea for the artwork on that instrumental CD, then named my band Bumblefoot, eventually it became my nickname. It fit the band, kinda quirky experimental sometimes-Zappa-ish Mr.-Bungle-ish sounding...

Yeah. And I can say she's now been my wife for 10 years, so she must have done good on the test. It was one of those sleepless nights and she had a thousand pages to memorize and one of the diseases in her book was called Bumblefoot and I thought it sounded like such a silly sounding name that I ended up writing a song about a superhero called Bumblefoot. And then it ended up becoming the name of my band and then my own nickname. Now, I'm stuck with it. And now I'm stuck in this cool band with the name of a Saturday morning cartoon character.

The name Bumblefoot happened about 15 years ago, my girlfriend was studying to be a veterinarian, one of the diseases she was learning about was something that birds and rats get, called Ulcerative Pododermatitis, also known as "Bumblefoot" One of the treatments for the disease was to rub hemorrhoid ointment on the bird's foot. It all sounded so fucking ridiculous, I went and wrote a song about a superhero called Bumblefoot, a few years later, started up my band and called it Bumblefoot, and it sort of morphed into my nickname. What the fuck was I thinking..........?

Kids, don't do drugs.

My wife was in veterinary school many, many years ago and she is a veterinarian now, she passed! Thanks to my help, of course! I was helping her study and one of the diseases was called Bumblefoot and I was like, “What the fuck is that? That is so stupid!” So I am reading about it and it said that turkeys get this disease and that one way to treat it is to rub hemorrhoid cream on their foot. I was thinking, “This is so idiotic! I am naming my band Bumblefoot!” It sorta became my nickname, which worked out to not being the best thing in the world. Especially following someone named “Buckethead” in a band. You get all the jokes like “Buckethead and now Bumblefoot? What’s next, Bumperdick?” Everyone has something to say, but whatever! At the time I guess I was more in a Monty Python state of mind where I thought being named after a giant fucked up foot might be funny and good for the rest of my life. So I wake up one morning and I am taking myself a little more serious or I should say that other people are taking me more seriously and the name is, I wouldn’t say a detriment, but it makes you scratch your head.

It was the early 90s, my girlfriend was in veterinary school and I was helping her study. One of the diseases was Ulcerative Pododermatitis, also known as Bumblefoot. It was a disease that turkeys get, and one of the treatments was to rub hemorrhoid creme on its feet. It inspired me to write a song for my band at the time about a superhero called Bumblefoot, and when I had my first record deal in the mid-90's, I called the debut album "The Adventures Of Bumblefoot", with an album cover showing this apocalyptic scene of mayhem and destruction with this winged striped foot flying overhead. When the deal finished I started my own band, called it "Bumblefoot", that was around '97, '98. Over the next 10 years of putting out albums and touring, the name 'Bumblefoot' was connected to everything I was doing musically, and it went from band-name to nickname.

That name goes back to the early 1990’s when my wife was in veterinary school. She was studying to be a veterinarian and one time I was helping her study and that was one of the diseases. It’s called Bumblefoot or the technical term “ulcerative podermatitis.” It was such a silly name and I was thinking to myself that would be a cool idea for a song. So I wrote a little song called “Bumblefoot.” Then when I had my first record deal in the mid 1990’s, my first record was called ‘The Adventures of Bumblefoot.’  It was this big apocalyptic cover of death and destruction with this big winged foot flying overhead. After that I started a band called ‘Bumblefoot’ and that’s kind of what did it. Having the band since 1997 and putting out ‘Bumblefoot albums’ it just became a thing where when people met me and I introduced myself as Ron, they would go oh yeah, “Bumblefoot!”  It kind of became the nickname from doing the band because the band was pretty much a solo thing. I wrote everything and it was my guitar and singing.

Yes, it was my wife, when she was just my girlfriend and she was studying to be an animal doctor, veterinarian and I was helping her study and that was the name of one of the diseases. It was very strange disease, where a turkey or different birds can get it. It's infection on the bottom of their feet and one of the ways you treat it was to rub hemorrhoid cream on their feet, which I thought was so stupid and make me laugh. It's just so ridiculous, that inspired a song and I wrote a song called "Bumblefoot" and that song led to another song, which led to the album, which led to the band, which led to my nickname. From there it just inspired the other songs, where I would take different other animal diseases and write songs around them. That was sort of direction, the concept, I guess, just as I was making the album.

[Bumblefoot's] not me, it's a side of me. It's a Ziggy Stardust, not a David Bowie.

Ulcerative pododermatitis is its full, fancy name. 15 years ago I was helping my wife study for veterinary school when we discovered it. It was the stupidest thing I ever heard, so I used it for a song title. Then an album called The Adventures Of Bumblefoot [1995]. It’s well-suited to my solo work, which is quirky and Mr Bungle-ish, but personally-speaking I might’ve outgrown it. I don’t feel like Bumblefoot when I’m onstage with Guns. In that environment I feel like Ron. Does that make sense? [...] Well, I have this multi-personality disorder [laughs]. I put on my funny foot-shaped guitar and I’m being Bumblefoot. But I’ve got a Flying V and I’m playing with Axl and my name is Ron. It’s hard to explain.

I had a band and got signed to a small indie label that released the two out-of-print albums. [...] So I signed the deal, part of the deal was the label wanted an all-instrumental guitar album from me - that was the first album, "Adventures..." [...] .

I remember it all like it was yesterday. I lived at home with my parents. I had all my equipment set up in the basement, where I would be sitting on the chair, the mixing board in front of me and a little foot switch under my foot. It was a summer time (laugh) I remember how the air-conditioning would go on and it had really loud motor. It cooled down the whole house, so I couldn't record every time it went on. And I would have to wait for it to shut off for 10 minutes and then lay tracks and then go back until it would stop and wait. Sometimes I would go upstairs and turn up the thermostat, so that the air-conditioning wouldn't go on (laugh) and my mother would realized some hours later that the whole house is so hot and start yelling at me. I remember it all completely, very vividly. Writing the songs for it, the excitement for doing my first solo album. Before that I was just doing single songs for different guitar compilation CDs. I started doing this in 1991, 1992, 1993. So this was 1994 and I was finally doing my first album.

[...]Shrapnel is re-releasing the album after 15 years, and we're adding a few extra tracks from a video game I did music for around the time the album was first released. I spent 6 months transcribing the album, as detailed as possible. Notation, TAB, fingers, picking, everything the hands do on every guitar track for every song (the 12 songs, not the bonus tracks) It's about 200 pages, all I have to do is add some text info, photos, tweak the layout and get 'em printed. Hope to have it available by mid-2010.

I wouldn't change anything. Not now. I think I go through a pattern with every album I do - I finish the album, I'm happy with it, a week later I start hearing the things I'd change, I'm haunted by more and more changes... it's actually *me* that's changing, I start to feel like I've outgrown the album, like it represents who I am less and less as time goes on. Then after a few years I accept it as part of a previous chapter of life, and I'm ok with it, and feel good about it. The only thing I ever would have changed was some of the vocal screaming in the song 'Q Fever' – my voice was blown out from recent gigs, and couldn't deliver the intensity of what I wanted to do. I had a deadline, I couldn't wait a few days for my throat to heal and retry it with the vocal tone I pictured. But I'm ok with it. It's imperfect, as albums should be – they should be *human*, imperfect like a real person. Shrapnel Records is the label that released the album originally, and are re-releasing it. I worked with them on it, I updated the artwork and added bonus tracks from a videogame soundtrack I did back then, around the same time the album first came out. I'll be selling autographed copies of the CD at www.baldfreak.com - it's the official webstore for all my CDs & merch. And I'll be donating $5 from every autographed album to Multiple Sclerosis research. I also made a transcription book of the album - it took 6 months to write out, it's 200 pages. It has every detail of what I played on the album – notes, fingers, picking, tablature... that'll be at the webstore too.

My first album 'The Adventures Of Bumblefoot' came out in 1995, on Shrapnel Records in the US, Roadrunner Records in Europe & Japan. It's an instrumental guitar album, and every song is named after an animal disease, a concept that began with the first song 'Bumblefoot' (aka Ulcerative Pododermatitis) That's where my nickname 'Bumblefoot' began. The album got a good response from critics and press, reader's polls, it was a nice beginning. Two years later, I finished the record deal and the label stopped manufacturing the album. It was out-of-print, and there was no way to get the album.

Sometimes I'd see them on eBay, selling for up to $150. I even saw one going for $600... last year Shrapnel contacted me and said they wanted to re-release the album. I was so glad – we worked together on it, I prepared the artwork for the digipak design (original was a jewel case) and added 5 bonus tracks from a video game soundtrack I had made for a Sega game also in 1995. The album will be available online at my webstore ( http://www.bumblefoot.com/store/ ) in August – the CDs will be autographed and $5 from every album will be donated to Multiple Sclerosis research.

I also made a transcription book for the 'Adventures' album. I listened to each recorded track and re-learned the parts, I wrote out every detail of everything I played on the album, did the typesetting for all the music notation, TAB, fingers, picking, everything. It took six months to write out, and is so accurate and detailed, definitely something 'guitar geeks' like me will enjoy, haha. That will also be available in August at the webstore.

I wasn't planning on my first album to be instrumental, it was what the label (Shrapnel Records) wanted – my vision was to have a band, that's what I always wanted.  But I wasn't going to stop moving forward just because it wasn't immediately happening the way I planned it. Life never happens the way you plan it, it's filled with compromises, and that isn't always a bad thing.  It turned to be a special album, something unique for its time (1995).  We re-released it in 2010 with additional tracks from a video-game soundtrack I had scored in '96.  I released a 200-page transcription book for the album as well, it was nearly a year of work making that book.  I transcribed it myself, completely accurate with fingers, picking, musical notation, tablature, for every track of every song.

"Hermit" was released in 1997, it was the second album released under the artist name "Ron Thal" - it's out-of-print along with the first album in 1995, "The Adventures Of Bumblefoot."

I had a band and got signed to a small indie label that released the two out-of-print albums. The band sounded like the stuff you hear on the "Hands" CD (debut Bumblefoot album released 1998). We were gigging in and around NYC, I was teaching music, playing in cover bands with friends and doing some photography on the side. [...] I guess that's the main difference - the first "Adventures..." album was all instrumental, the second "Hermit" album was more of what I do, singin' and band-oriented stuff. Never wanted to be a guitar hero, just wanted to make songs and be in a band.

Yes - you can find Bumblefoot CDs anywhere on the internet. You can't find Ron Thal CDs - I don't own the rights to the albums, the label won't re-release them, your only choices are to buy them for $100 on eBay when someone sells one, or "illegally" download them. Although it doesn't seem very illegal to download an album, if the record label makes it impossible for people to buy.

The album was half-instrumental and was gonna be called "Guitars Suck," but as I was finishing it up, the terrorist attacks in the US happened, and I felt I needed to do something helpful with the album, so I donated all the proceeds to the Red Cross. I changed the name so people would easily identify it as the benefit album.

At that point I knew things had to change. So I decided that it was about time I got my shit in order. I weaned myself off the meds, started exercising and finished my next album [2005’s Normal]

I went as long as could without making music, until it felt like I was denying myself something valuable to my soul,' he told me. 'For a year-and-a-half I was content, at peace – at its best it felt like a celebration with a slight buzz. I got past whatever I needed to, I was out of the hole, all healed up, ready to put the crutches down, so I did. I remember wondering if-and-when things would start to revert back to how they were before. It was weeks after stopping, I didn't feel any different yet, but people started to ask me 'what was wrong?' he recalled. 'They said I looked, I guess the best word would be 'conflicted'. My face was changing - people saw it, but I still felt fine. Not long after, it hit me, while waiting on line at the Post Office - I remember the feeling, it was like seeing the first dead leaf on the ground and knowing Summer's over. But ya know, I wouldn't change a thing. That’s what I meant before - it's about experiencing life and having something to share.

Normal brings you into the world of an insane musician who takes medication and experiences what it's like to be 'normal' for the first time - but the medicine silences his ability to make music. Eventually he must choose which life he wants. The songs on Normal follow his journey, leaving you to ponder, "What's 'normal,' anyway?"

"Normal" is a true story of a musician who was suffering from depression. He starts taking medicine, and for the first time in his life, he feels "normal". The only problem, he soon realizes, is that the medicine is blocking his ability to write music, his head was once filled with music, and it's now silent. Through the album he evaluates different parts of his life from a new perspective. Eventually, he feels he must choose what's more important to him - the happiness with silence, or music. In the end, he chooses music, but takes with him everything he just experienced, everything he realized about life, that there is no "normal", there just is what is, and what we make of what is.

The album is about *balance*, realizing that good and bad are only ideas, they only exist in our perception, and they are interlocking pieces that complete each other, creating the whole. They're one and the same, a piece of one in the other, and they only exist as what we choose to see them as. Getting to experience the same life from two opposite points of view make you realize, there is no pretty, no ugly, it's how we choose to process what we see - the object doesn't change, how we objectify it is what changes. And it is something we absolutely choose. We can't control what we will encounter in life, we can only control our reactions to it.

The Normal album touched on making the choice, whether to continue on meds and sacrifice creativity, or get off them so I can do what I love, making music, at the risk falling back into Hell. In the end you realize you're not powerless, it starts with your perception of things and how you choose to react to everything. It's where life was at self-discovery-wise, learning to give up control and not try to change what we can't, and to just roll with it all, to learn, and draw from your experiences. I think an emotional charge can push creative moments, I think it's a personal expression, a look inside a person, I think free thinking helps creativity flow, but I don't think artistry completely coincides with mental disorder. But I'm the wrong guy to ask, haha.

Yes, for the most part. Some of the silly songs that break up the story a bit aren't completely autobiographical, but the overall concept is.

[...] the fifth Bumblefoot album "Normal" was recently released, we did a European tour in October/November of 2005, made a video for one of the songs, got some radio airplay, some TV shows played the songs as background music - always funny when that happens, ya don't expect it, suddenly ya hear it and I'm saying "What the...?" as if I'm hearing things...

So there are seven albums released, the first two are "Ron Thal" albums and near impossible to find, the other five are
"Bumblefoot" albums.

I release them myself on the internet, but not in stores. They're at my site, Cdbaby , Amazon, iTunes - you can get them anywhere in the world , as long as ya can get on the internet...

I was having fun, but had to concentrate on song arrangements. I was still learning songs a few hours before going on stage, I had songs written out in my pocket, haha. But I had faith that everything would be ok, I accepted that everything would happen as it was meant to.

The hardest part of the gig was remembering the new songs - I didn't have copies of the new material, only heard them once through headphones on a laptop at rehearsal, and had to learn the songs just from that.  We started making plans in the Summer of 2004, but a tour didn't happen until almost two years later - we got together in NY and started jamming just a few weeks before the tour began, then hit the road, and started recording tracks for Chinese Democracy soon after that.

The main concern was the new songs. They were afraid of leaks, so I had to learn them within a very short period of time on a laptop in the rehearsal room (laughs). I had little notes that I’d put on one of the speakers just in case! But after the first show, which went without incident, I felt better. I remember the first show with 100,000 people in Madrid, Spain (on the 25th of May, 2006). It was the first time I was seeing that sort of endless sea of heads. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel differently from when I was playing in small clubs.

About a week to get ready, and to learn all the Chinese Democracy music. I had a half hour to just listen on a laptop with headphones, and just write notes, and I had those notes on the side of the stage when I started doing the shows, because they wouldn’t give me a copy of the music. And at that point they were so worried about leaks and all of that, and they didn’t really know me well, and so just to play it safe, that’s how it went. So it was definitely an extreme challenge, at least for the new stuff. The old stuff, everybody knows. Who doesn’t know the songs off Appetite and Illusions? So that wasn’t a problem. But we had about a week to get it all together.

We only had seven rehearsals and my biggest concern was knowing the music off the yet-to-be-released Chinese Democracy album. There was so much concern over music being leaked that they wouldn't give me a copy of the songs to learn them. So I had to learn half an album of complex arrangements by listening to the songs for a half-hour on the road manager's laptop at the rehearsal room. That was the challenge.

We jammed 7 times and hit the road. I learned the Chinese Democracy songs by listening to the demos at the rehearsal room one time with a pair of headphones, a pen & paper, a half-hour. That first show was weird, I had that piece of paper sitting on top of the ‘side fills’ (big PA speakers on the sides of the stage aimed at us) with little reminders of how the songs went - Hey Bulldog’ for the song Riad... they were so worried about demos getting leaked at the time and wouldn’t give me a copy of the demos, so all I had was that half-hour listen and those notes to go by.

I thought to myself, "Which harmony was I supposed to play in this song...? How many verses are in that song...? How many beats is the break in that other song...?" Stuff like that...

You know I spoke to them about that before joining the band. You know, "Does Bumblefoot match the coolness of Guns N' Roses?" If this was Primus or Mr. Bungle or a band like that it would work. But they were like, 'Naw man, that's you. Keep it.' ... It's not me, it's a side of me. It's a Ziggy Stardust, not a David Bowie.

You know, there's not much that I wouldn't wear. I remember one time around Passover, I did a gig where I dressed up in all my old Bar Mitzvah stuff, and in between songs was just preaching all this stuff about building pyramids and 3,000 years of retribution; kind of like a militant rabbi. Another time, I did a gig where I wore a big pair of sweats and stuffed 20 sweaters into it all, and looked like I was 400 pounds. There's pretty much nothing that I won't wear. But as you know, I wouldn't want to embarrass (Guns N' Roses) the way I would be willing to embarrass just myself. But yeah, I would wear a space suit. I'd be cool doing that.

I was brought into the band because of who I am, I was brought in to be me. I was never asked to change. Even when I played my fucking 'Foot' guitar (http://www.bumblefoot.com/gear/08-vigier-flying-foot-guitar.php) when I first joined, no one stopped me. They should have, but they didn't, haha...

haha, I was playing and hit the bar, and suddenly little strips of yellow and black wood hit my feet. That guitar had been through 8 years of tours, it was a matter of time before it gave out. It was time to put it to rest. The whole time I'd be soloing, a certain singer would be breaking my balls, saying stuff in my in-ear monitors like "Get a real guitar, that thing's a toy...", HAHA! Man, he fucked me up good sometimes, haha!