Guthrie Govan
So Far
In a world where everything is amazing and
nobody’s happy, I was very happy when I was
told I’d be interviewing my guitar teacher.
I’d never met Guthrie Govan, but for the
past ten years I’ve been studying his lessons in Guitar Techniques magazine. Guitar
Techniques calls him “the world’s most outrageous guitarist,” and anybody who has
studied his columns will swear to this fact.
Govan’s playing is amazing, but he has the
rare gift of being a super-effective teacher.
Some of the greatest guitar players on the
planet are rotten teachers, so what he gives
to the guitar community is not lost on me.
In TERvIEw By osCAR JoRdAn
Not only does he take complicated music-theory concepts and make them understandable to slow kids like me, but he also transcribes and interprets the work of the masters
so we lesser players can get it. He can go
from Albert King to Allan Holdsworth in a
heartbeat—and then show up to his own gigs
and be his unadulterated self.
If you’re wondering how Govan got where
he is today, here’s the scoop: He replaced
Steve Howe in the prog-rock band Asia from
2001 to 2006, he teaches guitar clinics all
over the place, he is the author of two books,
Creative Guitar 1: Cutting Edge Techniques
and Creative Guitar 2: Advanced Techniques,
and he is currently prepping for a follow-up
to his first solo record Erotic Cakes. You could
call Govan “a guitar player’s guitar player,”
but there’s a lot more going on with him than
that. My time spent with him revealed an
artist searching for something deeper than
creating a guitar chops record. For certain, he
was blessed with having achieved technical
virtuosity at an early age (his first gig was at
age five), but today he’s on a spiritual path
to use his talents to not only speak to guitar
players, but to lovers of fine music as well.
