“Music is inherently a collaborative process, and quite often, our heroes work better together.”
In 1986, my friend Jon Small produced the video for Run-DMC and Aerosmith’s version of “Walk this Way.” Small starts the video with Aerosmith loudly jamming in a rehearsal space with an annoyed Run-DMC shouting from the adjacent room, “Turn that noise down, man.” When DMC realizes they can’t get around it, they have to get into it.
They rap the first verse, and then Steven Tyler breaks down the wall between the rooms and joins Run-DMC on the chorus. The metaphor is pretty brilliant, tearing down the wall between hip-hop and rock, tearing down cultural walls and unifying two audiences that seem totally different but are way more similar than anyone suspected.
Tyler, being a drummer at heart, wrote the lyrics with this perfect percussive flow that was essentially rap before rap was rap. Tyler also peppered the lyrics with double entendre, which became a huge part of hip-hop.
“Walk This Way” was 10 years old at the time, and Aerosmith had been through it all. The band's drug use had taken its toll. Joe Perry and Brad Whitford had both quit and rejoined, labels were skeptical, and radio was ignoring them. But this crossover collaboration reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, and its frequently aired video resurrected Aerosmith’s career by introducing the band’s music to a new generation. It also paved the way for a melding of rock and hip-hop in the hands of acts like Rage Against the Machine, Kid Rock, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and all the others who jumped into these blurred lines created by this collaboration.
Music is inherently a collaboration. In every band, orchestra, duo, etc., players join together to achieve a common goal. Even if you’re a soloist, your arms, legs, and fingers are doing wildly different, complicated tasks separately while working together, hopefully in harmony. The best collaborations happen when the energy/talent/spirit/personality jell in such a way that it brings the best out of everyone, creating work that neither party could have done alone. Beatles, Stones, Aerosmith … none of the members’ solo work is as good as the band collaborations that made their careers.
Collaborations go the other way as well, like those big, epic closing jams at a concert, where 5 to 15 guitarists get on stage and each player tries to kick the ass of the person soloing before them. They usually turn into an unwatchable dweedlely-dweedle wank fest. A three-diva sing off is equally torturous: no melody, all riffs. That’s ego getting in the way of being part of something bigger than you. That’s why most supergroups are usually less than super. But great artists thrive with collaboration.
“Iggy Pop seems like a feral animal compared to elegant Bowie, and yet the two wrote and produced a ton of legendary music together throughout the ’70s and ’80s.”
One of the attributes that made David Bowie such a next-level talent was his love of collaboration, particularly with artists who were so different from himself. Bowie’s hit “Fame” was a collaboration with John Lennon. One of my favorite Christmas songs is Bing Crosby and Bowie’s “The Little Drummer Boy.” In 1981, Bowie and Queen were both recording their own projects at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland. This led to Queen inviting Bowie to sing on a track, which led to an impromptu writing/recording session, which led to the creation of “Under Pressure.”
Bowie brought in a young and unknown Stevie Ray Vaughan to be the rude, angry counter to Nile Rodgers’ slick and funky rhythm on “Let’s Dance.” Iggy Pop seems like a feral animal compared to elegant Bowie, and yet the two wrote and produced a ton of legendary music together throughout the ’70s and ’80s. Together, they served each other as perfect foils.
Clapton’s guitar weeping over George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” Eddie Van Halen’s rearranging Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” then laying down his iconic solo over the new section, or more recently, Bonamassa’s guitar driving under Glenn Hughes’ soaring vocals and Jason Bonham’s thunder with Black Country Communion’s new single, “Stay Free,” collaboration can take it to places where no one has gone before.
When I moved to Nashville 32 years ago, a writer told me this town was built on collaboration; it’s all co-writing, jamming, working together on life’s never-ending art project. Not only do you get a fresh direction in your work, but your chances of success double when two people are working on promotion rather than doing it all alone. The best part is the relationships you form. As your peer group comes to power, you all help each other along the way.
There are two collaborations I would love to see happen:
Ultimate collab #1:
Jack White and Jack Black. They are already friends. Both have an over-the-top, theatrical delivery. The project name options are numerous and brilliant. Call this unholy union “Jack White and Black” or “Jack Jack White Black.”
Ultimate collab #2:
Marcus King and Kingfish. Both brilliant guitarists deep in the blues/rock world, but with sophisticated jazz leanings. Both sons of the South. Proposed name: Marcus King Fish.
Marcus, Chris, Jack, and Jack, if you are reading this, know that your audience awaits with eager anticipation.
Portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven by Joseph Karl Stieler
Sad music, ironically, seems to make us happier when we listen to it. The explanation for that could be either scientific or philosophical.
Sad songs make me happy like drinking makes me thirsty. It’s a strange paradox most of us share; nobody enjoys being sad in real life, but boy do we love to listen to a song that makes us miserable. It’s magic, or maybe a better word is “alchemy”: If you take a few inert ingredients (one C major scale, one D#, a 3/8 time signature), then arrange the ingredients in the right order, like Beethoven had in mind, and play dynamically with a flowing tempo that breathes a bit, the final product can tear your heart out.
Für Elise starts with this motif in A minor, full of longing and melancholy, then lifts with the contrast of the C major—creating a sense of whimsy, unpredictability, and playfulness. Then it goes back to the legato A minor, which now sounds even sadder by comparison to the happy, whimsical relative major.
“Although writing music was his livelihood, he wrote this as therapy, or a private declaration of love and loss.”
I recently worked up a guitar arrangement of Für Elise and played a version while filming a PG video of the Godin Multiac Mundial. It’s an embarrassingly rough, semi-improvised performance, but what I wanted was to take this epically sad melody and play with it, adding some fun jazzy/bluesy American improvisation to put a wry, crooked smile on the tragedy. That’s part of the magic of this piece; it’s a simple melody that can be musically reinterpreted as blues, ragtime, anything. Even Nas used a sample of it in his song “I Can.”
After filming the Godin video, I said to my colleague Chris Kies: “I don’t know who Elise was, but boy did she do a number on Beethoven.” The always well-informed Kies told me that Für Elise was discovered 40 years after Beethoven’s death. Beethoven had never published it, and the only clue to the song’s inspiration were the words “Für Elise” messily scribbled on the top of the forgotten page. There were apparently three Elises in Beethoven’s life, so no one alive knows for sure, but what it comes down to is Beethoven fell in love, it did not go his way, and he dealt with it by writing this music. Although writing music was his livelihood, he wrote this as therapy, or a private declaration of love and loss. Perhaps it was so soul-crushing that he did not go public with the music. We turn to music when words fail, right?
Hearing the rest of the story made the whole thing even sadder to me, which led to my spontaneously breaking into tears, thereby turning a normal product video into an awkward workday for me and the very tolerant Chris Kies.
Weird, right? I never want to cry, particularly in front of people. It’s horribly embarrassing to be that vulnerable in public. I’d rather be seen going to the bathroom in public than crying, and yet I’m drawn to sad songs like a moth to a flame. I’ve broken into tears while performing and turned my back on the audience or buried my head in my pedal steel until I could take some deep breaths and pull it together. So why do we voluntarily submit ourselves to this kind of torture?
There may be some science that helps us understand it. One study suggests that music, particularly sad music, stimulates the release of comforting hormones like prolactin. There was a study where scientists played sad music for people and then measured their prolactin levels and, as you guessed, listeners who felt some positive effects from the sad music had just released a heavy hit of prolactin. Other listeners who report feeling sad without the accompanying positive effect, as it turns out, already had a higher level of prolactin to begin with, “suggestive of a homeostatic function.” It seems our bodies are using music to self-regulate our chemical balance. If you need a boost of prolactin, music will give it to you. If you don’t need it, it saves it for later. Another study suggests that sad music can also stimulate that feel-good bringer of pleasure and rewards, dopamine. In short, listening to sad music can flood your body with happy chemicals.
Maybe another reason we willingly subject ourselves to the beautiful sadness of melancholy music is to engage in a fictional sadness to help deal with that vague malaise that we all carry around but never unpack. A lifetime of quiet heartbreak that we don’t even understand and try not to think about. Music releases the steam valve before the boiler blows.
But the more I looked into the appeal of sad music, it seemed to ask more questions than answers. Like, why do we connect to the songs we connect with? Does it remind us of someone? Is it empathy? Is it self-pity? Do we connect with the artist? And perhaps the most puzzling bit of it all: Why does flattening a 3rd, 6th, and 7th in a scale make a melody universally sadder? That’s the magic, the mystery, the therapy.
As one of life’s simple pleasures, playing acoustic guitar—especially outside—can be the perfect mental-health solution.
“Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.”—John Stuart Mill
My heroes have always been musicians. After a lifetime of gigs and a decade of Rig Rundowns, I’ve been lucky enough to meet a lot of musicians that I have loved, emulated, followed, stalked. For the most part, they are nothing like the demigods I imagined. If you get an unguarded glimpse into who they are, often you will recognize a kinship, for we share this same fragile, nervous, socially awkward, somewhat insecure core. Distill it all down without smoke and mirrors, or smoke and beers, and you can see that like most of us, they were drawn to music from an early age because it gave them something they needed.
Maybe music is the words they can’t say, or the feelings they can’t express, or emotions they need to get out, or a chi-aligning meditation that centers them, or gives them the recognition they crave. Most teenagers like music, but for those who go on to become full-on musicians, it goes way beyond liking music, or even loving it—it’s a necessity. Perhaps, for some who don’t feel at home in the world, they retreat into music. I suspect that most of us spend all those hours alone with our instrument because it’s our therapy.
Research has found that musicians are three times more likely to experience anxiety or depression than the general public. And odds are, if you are reading this gear-nerd mag, you are probably a musician. So yes, I’m talking to you, gentle reader, because you (like me) are wired differently than the so-called “normals.”
Why am I bringing up this cheering fact? Because this is PG’s acoustic issue, May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and it just so happens that my personal mental-health panacea is playing acoustic guitar, preferably outside. Here’s why it works for me.
Most teenagers like music, but for those who go on to become full-on musicians, it goes way beyondliking music, or even loving it—it’s a necessity.
Often, I find myself lying in bed in the middle of the night, obsessively dwelling on problems that have no solution, my mind busily polishing every horrible detail. If I continue lying there, these negative thought loops will accompany me until the sun rises, and then through the following miserable day.
Playing electric guitar works, too, but not as well, because it’s too easy to get bogged down in gear with an electric. What I love about acoustic is the immediacy of it. It’s right there, the sound literally comes out of your fingers and the wood, and presses against your body to resonate. There are no cables to chase down, amps to fiddle with, pedals to think about; it’s just making music. Best of all, acoustics are highly portable, so you can take it outside. Provided the weather is not horrible, outside is where you want to be.
I suspect we are living in the least mental-health-friendly age ever, with the average American spending 7 hours per day staring at a screen that feeds us a constant diet of anger, desire, and fear. You are what you eat, and that dystopian diet has a cost. Combine that with the fact that for the roughly 2 million years that Homo genus has been walking the Earth, we’ve been grounded to earth the entire time until now, and that too has a cost. Research suggests that reconnection with the Earth’s natural electric charge stabilizes our physiology at the deepest levels; reduces inflammation, pain, and stress; improves blood flow, energy, and sleep; and generates greater well-being. If you happen to drive by my home at 4 a.m. and it’s not freezing outside, there’s a good chance you will see me sitting cross-legged on my lawn playing guitar alone in the dark.
My main acoustic is my Epiphone Lil Tex. The strings are so old on it, you may need a tetanus shot after playing it. Although Tex does not have a great tone, it feels like part of my body; we have seriously bonded from all the hours we’ve spent together outside, sitting with my toes in the grass and connecting to the universe. Twenty minutes outside playing that thing always makes me feel like what I imagine an advanced yogi must feel like after a deep meditation.
So, when this world is just too much, grab your acoustic and go outside and play with your toes in the grass or sand. Get lost in the music and I promise you will feel better. And if you or someone you know is struggling with mental health issues, there is help—samhsa.gov is a great resource.
A positive attitude won’t fix your problems, but accepting things as they are is a good start.
I did not enjoy the transition from childhood to adulthood. Going from a loving, nurturing home to an indifferent and, at times, seemingly cruel real world was not a good fit for me. My freshman year in college, I was adrift, scared, and, occasionally, what I now recognize as clinically depressed. Out of desperation, I took a philosophy course to get some answers. There, I read Nietzsche’s book, The Gay Science (perhaps the greatest title ever), and learned the phrase amor fati, which is Latin for “love of one’s fate.”
Nietzsche wrote:
“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity…
“I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly, I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse.”
I’ve tried to embrace amor fati as my personal battle cry ever since. When applied, that philosophy has gotten me through a lifetime of catastrophes, beautiful moments, and the mundane. It’s also been a valuable tool to make me a better and happier musician. Here’s how:
Collaboration
When playing with a band, the goal is to serve the song, to make the music feel good. Sometimes my idea of where the song should go does not align with other players’ visions. If we stopped and talked it through, we could try a few ideas and see what works best. But in a live jam, that’s not an option. When ideas clash live, that can become a battle of wills. When I try to force it by playing louder and leaning harder into my idea of what it should be, it almost never works. Embracing what the other player is doing rather than forcing what I imagined is usually the quickest and most practical way to make the music feel right. It doesn’t matter how great your idea is if it rubs the wrong way against another player. Let go of your plan and try making what is happening work. The song will go where it was supposed to go.
Envy
There’s an old musician saying: “Whenever a friend succeeds … part of me dies inside.”
Success doesn’t only visit the most talented, or go to the most deserving, so it’s easy to compare yourself to others and feel like you are shortchanged. There’s always somebody else doing something bigger and better, and that’s when it’s hard to love where you are. Yesterday, I was playing the CMT Awards. The show’s big finale was a Skynyrd tribute with an all-star lineup (Slash, Billy Gibbons, Warren Haynes, Chuck Leavell, Paul Rodgers, etc.). During rehearsal, I watched my friends Rich Redmond and Ethan Pilzer playing drums and bass with these legends and caught myself feeling the bitter sting of envy, even though I’m a terrible drummer, a mediocre bassist, and I was literally booked on the same show. That’s like a greedy child in a room full of toys wanting somebody else’s. Count your blessings.
Career
Currently, I’m not touring. I get four to eight cool TV gigs a year and a few monthly sessions, but most of my present work is on Nashville’s very non-glamorous Lower Broadway. Two to six times a week, I haul my gear down and play four-hour slots. At times, it’s grueling, frustrating, embarrassing, too loud, and there’s a physical toll. You either get better or bitter. Your choice.
Singer checks into rehab and a gig is same-day canceled? Amor fati. Carpal tunnel is making the fingers flow like Elmer’s glue from a clogged tube? Amor fati. Your bandmate plays horribly? Amor fati. Amp dies, strings break, back aches? Amor fati. If you can laugh about it later, you can laugh about it now. It’s been a wildly entertaining chapter that’s made me a better musician and a better person. Not what I planned, but right where I’m supposed to be.
You either get better or bitter. Your choice.
Nietzsche gleaned amor fati from Epictetus, a Greek philosopher (c. A.D. 50), who was born into slavery, crippled by his master, and later exiled from his homeland after gaining his freedom. Epi knew a bit about things not going as planned.
Epictetus said:
“Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths.”
Loving your fate doesn’t mean you plaster on a smile and ignore the hard truth. A positive attitude does not fix issues. But getting depressed and dwelling on your problems won’t fix them either. Once you accept it is what it is, then you can focus on a solution rather than the problem. You stop wishing and start doing.
Life is one big improv jam. What’s happening to you is happening for you. Amor fati.Jared James Nichols performs with John Bohlinger at the “Rock to Remember” concert live at Nashville’s Gibson Garage in February 2023.
I was hired to lead the house band for a benefit to raise funds for veterans battling PTSD. Jared James Nichols, Kirk Fletcher, Dave Mustaine, and others joined the cause, and here’s how it went.
Often with multi-act shows, limited budget, space, and inputs on the mix necessitate that some acts share a house band. Because I’ve been slugging it out for 30-plus years in Nashville, I occasionally get hired to lead it. A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to get the call to lead for “Rock to Remember,” a concert/live auction collab between Guitars for Vets (an organization that provides guitars to veterans struggling with PTSD) and Gibson Gives.
We had a killer lineup, including Jared James Nichols, Dave Mustaine of Megadeth, Kirk Fletcher, and Tonic frontman Emerson Hart. In addition to supporting those acts, I was asked to do one of my songs. There was only room for a three-piece band, and I needed a rhythm section who were intuitive enough to nail a pressure gig with limited or no rehearsal, diverse enough to cover pop, blues, rock, and metal, and could sing harmony. I called drummer Duran Crone and bassist Logan Hatcher, with whom I’ve played enough jam-type gigs that I knew they could hit the curve. As an added bonus, Hatcher served six years in the Marines, which might inspire some vets to see one of their own making it in the music industry.
It’s a bit unnerving playing with talented celebrity musicians you don’t know. But when you’re performing in front of a live audience, it's filmed for broadcast, and it's a no-rehearsal-plug-and-pray, that takes it up a notch. I wasn’t worried about Jared James Nichols and Kirk Fletcher. I knew they would both do something blues-based. Put four good to great players who haven’t played together onstage and tell them to play blues: it’s going to be interesting.
"The idea of trying to cover Marty Friedman’s solo on “Symphony of Destruction” in front of a very intimidating Dave Mustaine was terrifying. Although the internet is full of children who can nail that solo, I cannot."
Nichols walked into the crowded greenroom at the Gibson Garage with just his ’52 Les Paul. I introduced him to Crone and Hatcher, who hadn’t heard Nichols’ song yet. We walked to the only quiet place we could find—a large, tiled bathroom. Nichols played “Baby Can You Feel It”on his phone while I wrote a chart and the guys tried to discern their parts. Then we went onstage, Nichols told us about the form, and we ran it once during soundcheck. Nichols gave us a little more direction, then we went back about an hour later and nailed it live. Nichols is such a driving force that you really can’t get lost playing with him.
Kirk Fletcher was even easier. It was a hectic day, so the details are fuzzy, but I don’t think Fletcher made it to soundcheck. He just texted me saying something like, “Let’s do a blues shuffle in A.” Fletcher met Crone and Hatcher as we walked onstage to perform. Fletcher plugged in, turned up, counted it off, and played his ass off. It couldn’t have been less stressful nor more fun.
Tonic’s Emerson Hart was like dessert. He was playing “If You Could Only See” and “You Wanted More,” two songs I genuinely loved back when there was music on MTV. In gigs like this, I rarely learn a solo note for note. Not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I’m not a particularly good mimic. Even if I get the notes right, it usually feels stiff and inauthentic. I usually start where the recording started but let it go where it goes. Some artists don’t like that, some do. Hart seemed cool with my improv and the performance went well. He has an iconic voice that has grown richer with time. He played and sang great, was fun, funny, and all about helping the cause.
The idea of trying to cover Marty Friedman’s solo on “Symphony of Destruction” in front of a very intimidating Dave Mustaine was terrifying. Although the internet is full of children who can nail that solo, I cannot. Maybe if I dedicated the next 10,000 hours of my life to it, I could get close, but it would still be like bad karaoke. So, I was hugely relieved when Gibson’s brand president Cesar Gueikian volunteered to cover it. He only had a weekend to prep but covered it with ease. Thanks Cesar.
The best part of this gig is that it raised funds for veterans battling PTSD. Studies prove what guitarists already know: playing music is a powerful therapy tool.
Two of my beloved nephews, Joe and John Bohlinger, were teenagers when they joined the Marines and went from hunting and fishing in Wyoming and Montana to heavy combat in Afghanistan. They voluntarily put themselves through years of a truly hellish, life-changing war because they wanted to keep us safe. That kind of trauma leaves an indelible mark. I’m grateful to be part of an organization that does something to try and help them.