aaamusic | On 10, Apr 2012

Chat with Gus G, Guitarist of Firewind and Ozzy Osbourne, about the guitars he loves and Firewind’s new album ‘Few against Many’, and how he juggles all his time to keep rocking 24/7.

AAAmusic: How hard is it to manage your time between Ozzy Osbourne and Firewind?

Gus G – Originally it was a bit weird because I didn’t know how things worked in the Ozzy camp. The way we do things in Firewind is that we know in advance where we are going, in the Ozzy camp things keep changing at the very last minute. In the beginning it was a bit weird for me to adjust to that but after a while I got used to it. Now I see how it is, you really have to be ready for everything, for a phone call at anytime of the day at any point. So you are just ready for it, and so now it’s not all that bad. It’s pretty good actually. I knew from the start that I would be very busy for the first eighteen months doing a world tour and everything on that was cool. After the tour wound down, I started working with Firewind. It’s good to keep busy and when I’m not playing with Ozzy, I’m playing with Firewind, so that’s how I do it. The guys are very supportive of me going away and they know it’s good for all of us. I wasn’t really planning to work on the Firewind album and I didn’t really have any timing planned or a specific time frame. I kept writing while I was on tour, in off days and backstage and when we were warming up. I had a bunch of ideas, a bunch of riffs, so on one of the tour breaks I just sat down and said well I should record some of these things cause I don’t want to forget the riffs. When I came to record it I came up with more, and I realized I had six or seven songs that were pretty good. I had a lot of stuff to work on and I said to the other guys, that we needed to put the finishing touches to it on my off days while I was on tour and when I  was at home. After the Ozzy tour had finished we had two or three months to work on it. The good thing about it was that we didn’t actually have a label, our deal with Century Media was up, so we were just really on our own and it was a pretty good feeling cause we didn’t feel any pressure with deadlines or people telling us we can’t do that and you have to be there at that time. So we just took our time to write it and record it. We did everything on our own like under the table, and then once we had almost done we started talking to labels about getting a new deal. We wanted to be happy with the final result and the music first and then we started looking to the business part. The album was recorded in Greece in my hometown Thessalonki in a studio, in a brand new studio actually that a good friend of mine owns and he is a really good engineer. So I decided to do it at home I didn’t want to relocate. I wanted to be at home and relaxed about it, we did the vocals in Sweden cause Apollo that’s where he lives and then we mixed it in Florida at Audio Hammer Studios.

AAAmusic: How long do you practice a day to get so technical and how hard was it to find your own sound?
Gus G: When I am on tour I practise everyday for at least a couple of hours, when I am at home I don’t really pick up the guitar and play. I play everyday but not for so many hours, but I do need to keep up with my chops and everything. I make sure I do a good warm up and as for finding my own sound it’s something which every musician develops through time. You need years really to get your own sound, style and own voice. It’s not the easiest thing actually, so you need to give it time and it really comes from experience and playing, writing, recording and all those things. I carry a guitar with me most of the time and always have one backstage, on the bus and at home. So everywhere I go even in the hotel room I always have a guitar with me.

AAAmusic: Tell me about your signature guitar Series?

Gus G: I actually have quite a few signature guitars from ESP. ESP guitars actually make my signature guitar. I think in 2004 or 2005 the first one came out and it’s the random star shape. You would see why it’s called that, it’s a pretty weird shape. Through the years I have had different variations of that guitar in different colours with different woods and different pick-ups. I always keep improving them. Two years ago we did another model which is more like a Les Paul shape guitar with a nice graphic and I play that a lot with Ozzy especially on the Sabbath songs. So I have a bunch of guitars I have designed. I use Seymour Duncan Pick-Ups and recently I have just designed my own pick-up, so I am using mainly that one. You can buy the ESP at custom shops but it is only available on special order from Japan and that costs a lot of money. You can also get the Ltd models which are a more affordable line and they are only a few hundred pounds. The Ltd 200’s are stocked by a normal dealer most of them will have them around I guess, so a kid could afford to have one of these and play it in their bedroom.

AAAmusic: Firewind have got a new album coming out. Is there any concept behind the album ‘Few against Many’ which took two years to record?

Gus G: The musical concept of the album was to make a heavier record than we had done previously. To just try out different stuff, really try and not make the same record again, that’s what we were really trying to avoid. We wanted to come up with new stuff when it came to grooves or beats or riffs, so that was the main idea behind it. Lyrically even if you look at our past albums we usually talk about everyday life and situations, or the feelings we have and the stuff we go through. Every song talks about different stuff. We have a couple of songs that are love songs and other songs that are about certain feelings like ‘Losing my Mind’, it is a pretty obvious title which explains what it’s talking about and our first single ‘Wall of Sound’ that’s talking about us and the whole musical revolution and getting people under one sound, our sound. So there are different kinds of topics discussed. ‘Few against Mary’ the album title is hopefully something everyone can relate to, at a different level or a different situation depending on somebody’s life or whatever. It could mean anything for us, for example, the concept for that was talking about our band because sometimes you feel it’s just you against the world. Your working so hard for so many years, and it’s been just a f**king struggle for me for many years, and you end up getting s**t, so it could be about anything really. It could be about a nation, about the metal community, about whatever you want it to be. It really is about a certain battle that we have to fight. Sometimes at some points in our lives, whether that would be a personal thing or not. If you want to call it your band or you are trying to make it in the music world. When your just trying to overcome situations or problems or whatever and I’m sure everybody has these kind of issues in their lives, so that’s hopefully it is something people can relate to. ‘Few against Many’ is a heavy and high energy song and it has a very dramatic vibe to it especially in the chorus melodies, and the break down in the middle which has a kind of ballady part. It’s one of the most soulful songs I have done and I really like that one. So it is a song that I worked pretty hard on and I’m really glad the way it came out. It’s what creative music is all about. It just starts from one small idea and develops from that. I worked a lot with that on this record just trying to do different arrangements, tempo changes in the songs, mood changes, stuff that we really didn’t do before on the song ‘Losing my Mind’ for example, which is a six minute song which just keeps building and building and building up until the very end of it and has a lot of musical parts in there. That was really cool I thought because we weren’t doing that before. I actually produced the record, I work with the engineers and we got Jason Suecof in Florida to mix the record, but I over saw everything on the record and most of the production ideas and all the rest.

AAAmusic: Can you tell me why you got given the nickname G?

Gus G: It’s just like an even shorter name for Gus, a friend of mine used to call me that, it was just a stupid thing but it turned out to be a short and catchy thing, a good stage name. I thought we have Kenny G, so I will be Gus G. I’m the Kenny G of metal I guess.

AAAmusic: What made you choose to use Blackstar Amps?

Gus G: The thing with Blackstar was that it was a brand new company and actually the guys that started it used to work at Marshall. They left there and  formed Blackstar, a friend of mine at ESP said you should try these amps. It was about the time I was about to record the ‘Scream’ album and I said well maybe they can bring down an amp and we could try it in the studio, so they brought me the 200 amp they had and we ended up doing most of the record with it. It is something I really loved and now I take it on the road, it’s a very consistent and trustworthy amp. I’ve been with those guys for the last couple of years. I have never had any issues with Blackstar’s amps burning out. One of our sound guys was telling me these amps, cause they are all tube amps, have the same power from the first note to the last one. They have been really consistent and I have never had any trouble with them at all.

AAAmusic: Tell me about your experience at the Berklee in Boston?

Gus G: That was a short one actually, I only went there for a couple of weeks and then just like dropped out. It was a good way for me to get out of Greece and meet other musicians and get to know people that play in other bands. I had formal training before at a conservatory in my hometown I just thought going back into that and starting again at Berklee was pretty boring. I just wanted to be in a band and rock. It was like starting from scratch again when I already knew a lot of the stuff. I knew all the theory, basic harmony and I had ear training so I knew my stuff. So I thought I really didn’t need to spend twenty thousand dollars a year to study all that again. Berklee is a pretty expensive school. It’s one of the top ones for music, if not the top one, so I realized this is not the one for me.

AAAmusic: Can you tell me about the music scenario in Greece and what bands you like especially in the rock and metal genre?

Gus G: We have a lot of bands now in Greece, a lot of metal bands it’s an underground scene that is growing. I don’t really pay attention to much or follow many bands and there are tons of them. Actually sometimes we have some of those bands supporting us when we play a home town gig. There is a good metalcore band called Psycho Choke which I did a solo on their record, these guys are good and they have been around for a while. Then again we have a lot of those Black Metal bands and Extreme Metal bands from the 90’s, like Rotting Christ and Septic Flesh and bands like that. These bands have been around forever, just on the underground, keeping going. I like these bands and I think Rotting Christ have made a lot of good albums. I like a lot of their stuff and they are a very well respected band. They have been going on forever they are a legendary cult band.

AAAmusic: What would be your ideal guitar?

Gus G: The one that I am playing, I have those guys really making my dream guitar. ESP have been doing that for the last eight years, so that is the one I would pick. Even if I wake up tomorrow and have a new idea for a guitar I can just ask them and they will make it for me, which is fantastic. They make the guitars in Japan and I communicate with them and explain what I want and they will then just make it. I have been to the factories in Japan and have seen how they make them. It’s amazing how they produce such volume in such a small custom shop and they work so hard.

 

Author: Daniel Cairns

Photos: Luca Viola