Guitar Tricks Insider June/July Edition | Page 18

CLASSIC CORNER: BACKTRACK JOHN PETRUCCI ON PURPLE RAIN by John Stix T he Guitar Battle recording was dreamed up at the 1996 NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) show in Anaheim. With the sight of so many world class guitar players, Nat Kusano from Shinko Music Japan and I came up with the idea of multiple guitarists performing on various songs. Each guitarist would be given the spotlight to play melodies, fills, and solos alongside their fellow bandmates. The players were Reb Beach, Brad Gillis, Michael Lee Firkins, George Lynch, Danny Miranda (bass), Steve Morse, John O’ Reilly (drums), John Petrucci, and Al Pitrelli. great, the chances are vastly improved that the speech will be eloquent. And Prince was a great writer. Dream Theater’s John Petrucci cemented “Purple Rain” into the lineup as it was one of his favorite songs he used to jam to. The inclusion of “Purple Rain” was an easy sell because I remembered my own similarly endless jams to Grand Funk’s version of The Animals’ “Inside Looking Out.” When Prince died I went back to this recording only to discover that John Petrucci had gone on to perform it again – most impressively at the Musicians Institute. It reminded me that when the writing is “Purple Rain” has a special place in your development as a player. 18 DIGITAL EDITION John Petrucci is currently on the road with Dream Theater showcasing their newest album, The Astonishing. When I told him it reminded me of a Broadway show, he lit up saying, “We wrote it as a show. It’s our version of a Broadway rock opera. It’s a live band scoring a movie type of things. It’s all those things in one so it’s creatively very satisfying to say the least.” But for GTI he had no problem looking back to one of his earliest satisfying moments. That was one of them. Going back to Kevin Moore (John’s childhood buddy and DT’s original keyboard player) when we were growing up – one of the things that we loved to do was constantly jam. I believe that helped me as a young player. It really helped me with my improvisation – helped me with my ear. We would have jam sessions at our houses or we would go JUNE/JULY