What can you say about today's guest on the No Cover Charge Podcast?

I don't fucking know mate, that was horrible.

Is he going to get mad if we use accents?

You know what?

I love Richie.

He loves me.

He'll let one or two slide.

We're good.

I'm not going to test it, I'll just keep it in the can.

Oh my gosh.

So Judas Priest is his claim to notoriety.

I would say.

We have so much to discuss with Richie.

He actually hasn't yet arrived.

So we're taping this segment of the podcast before he even shows up.

We're.

Scared and we don't know what's going to go down.

Not only is Richie like the, the, you know, the firepower for Judas Priest, he's the Falcon dude.

He goes by the Falcon.

At any moment he could just come down from the sky and just absolutely break into these windows.

If you have a nickname, does that make you 12% better guitar?

13% I'm thinking like Slash.

I'm thinking bucket head.

Yeah, he's a living legend, and we're all in for a treat.

The.

The.

That thing sounds great.

I've changed I've had this for 2014 about this change.

Change once.

Yeah, change.

Once.

Music Zoo.

Oh shit, you've changed strings a total of.

Only changed the strings once.

And it was only maybe three years ago.

Up until then I didn't change them and it sounded amazing.

May I, May I just seemed like.

Hey.

All of a sudden, Tyler touches it pink.

One breaks, I mean.

It's resonant.

Yeah, it's pretty bright.

It's always been like that, you know?

I noticed when you picked up the guitar and you were tuned it you you seem to prefer it just without an amp actually.

Are you one of those?

Electric guitars, I think you would prefer it if I played.

It without you know what I notice a lot though?

When I'm not, when I don't play plugged in, like on my own, I have a better time like learning the guitar, like whatever guitar I'm playing, it's like I can hear the consistencies, you know what I mean?

And then when I plug it in, it's like, OK, cool, I already know the guitar sounds like this, so now it's like amping that it's.

Weird as well.

You play guitar acoustically and it sounds a certain way when you plug it in.

You can never get it to sound like it does acoustically.

You always have to make kind of compensation.

You compensate here and there.

You know what I mean?

It never sounds like this when you plug it in.

Yeah, because it's super ringy.

It almost, it's like the best something with Les Paul's I feel like too.

And a lot of Gibsons is, it feels really just, like resonant, yeah.

You know, when you're sitting there playing it.

And then a lot of times you'll turn it up and you'll go.

Oh, that's it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It just doesn't sound like that.

Yeah.

Is your first impression of the guitar always unplugged when you pick it up to potentially buy a guitar?

Yeah, if you pick something off the shelf, either it's the neck that suits your hand or there's something about the combination of everything on it and the resonance.

And sometimes, sometimes though, you can get a, a dead sounding guitar, you plug it in and there's something else about it that really jumps out of you.

So it's never one thing determines everything, you know, it's just a combination of different things on the guitar.

I thought it's like we had the conversation about cars.

You find stuff as you old cars, you know, you get an old car and little things, little quirks become apparent as you build the relationship with the guitar becomes part of the guitar, you know, becomes part of the the the personality of it.

You either work around it or find different things to do.

Some guitars you'll pick up and you'll go do this is going to sound fantastic on this.

I already have it in my mind.

And then you play it and you go, OK, and then you try it on something else and you go, oh, I didn't even think this was going to sound badass on you know what I mean?

Like there's certain guitars, I have this Firebird and it's like the thinnest sounding guitar when you hear it.

But if you if you put it in the mix with a band, it just pops out.

You know what I mean?

Things like that.

We have on the road with Priest.

I have at the moment, I usually have 6 out with us just to you know, I have 3 and then a spare of each one.

At the moment I have 3 or 4.

They're all different guitars, they're all set up the same and they all sound different.

Same pickups, so.

What are you running on the road?

What?

What guitars?

There's there's I've got a couple of VS and Explorer and let's pull, Yeah.

And they all sound.

They all sound different.

They've all got the tech is meticulous.

I mean, to the point of being, what would you call it?

OCD.

Oh yeah, but he's not.

You know what I mean?

Isn't that an important quality to have in a sound technician it is.

Or guitar tag it is.

And they're all set up exactly the same.

Everything's symmetrical.

Everything has to be.

If something isn't the right colour, it it bugs him and he has to kind of, you know, if it's not the right gold on the pickup ring.

Yeah, he's going to change it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and as I said, they're all set up exactly the same.

Same fret, same string height, everything about them, same pickups, everything.

We've got one volume and that's it.

And they all sound different, you know.

So they've all got little quirks and little things.

People say you put a set of pickups on it, an active pickup on a guitar, and it's going to sound the same.

It doesn't.

They, they really don't.

You know, it's a combination of different things.

And if I play anything, sometimes people bring out things in a row.

Cesar brought something down the Flying V Yeah, we had one in France.

You know, Matt, Matt's guitar show, we brought one out.

We have to push the front end a little bit.

Yeah, I always wonder, I should ask you that because, you know, like you've played those songs now so much.

A lot of times this is controversial, but like an EMG suits the job because it's going to cut so much better.

Wait, what would be the controversial part of that?

PAFS don't sound great on on on everything OK, you know, or like.

There will be people who say PAF or die.

Yeah, and and I, I get it.

Well my my active EM GS are based on PAFS.

Oh, that's so OK.

Now it's like, cool.

I'm on the fence.

I keep everyone of you there's PAF quality.

But she goes don't kill me.

I started with.

The.

These are EMGPAF well.

Obviously they're active, so you get everything that comes with an actually pick up, you get the the fidelity and everything like that.

But obviously it's trying to get the voicing of a PAF, which everyone loves.

And originally the music that we're playing was created on those.

The Pafs and Glenn and Ken, they both went to EMG after a while, but back in the day it was done on Pafs, sort of.

They've got the best of both worlds, really.

Did you always play EM GS like before priest and all that?

Were you into EM GS or was that like something that came later on?

No, I played it.

I used to play in bars and and pubs and stuff around in the UK and EMG were the most volatile, versatile.

We played Jeff Beck, we played Monkeys, we played Sabbath, we played Van Halen, we played, I don't know, you name it.

We played everything and EMG did everything.

I just wind down the volume pot and you can get 8 tons out of them.

Yeah, I think.

One of the earliest YouTube videos I remember seeing was You Shredding and it was an EMG promotional video.

Yeah, that that was the end of that session.

I do, yeah.

They they basically said, you know, we've got these couple of tracks just shred over them and that's what we.

Did It's like a guitar player's dream.

Yeah.

I mean it's difficult really.

You know you haven't got any time to that's.

Prep.

To prep or think of anything you just just got to go but when you I think when you can do that and you don't have to worry about how the gear isn't doing it for me or the pickups aren't working, you just got you know that the things working if you can just flow like that you.

Know it's funny, though, sometimes I feel like getting thrown in those waters where you're like, hey, man, can you just jam over this?

And we're going to film you right now.

And you're like, are you serious?

You just, you've got to like, rise up.

Yeah.

You're like, OK, cool.

Here I go, man.

And you're just like, yeah.

And sometimes you'll listen back after, after you get over the initial shock of like, why'd they do that to me?

You listen back, you go.

That was actually, you know, pretty good in the moment.

Well, some of them came out better than others.

There's a couple of them on there, came out well.

Some of them, I think they're perceived well, but I don't think they came out well.

You know what I mean?

It's one of those things, it was in a different mode or whatever that is.

It was in a different kind of scale, the backing track, and I wasn't really adjusted to it, you know what I mean?

And it's they put it out, but it was OK.

You know, what I love about you, Richie, is the fact that like you're not one of those players that like obsesses over theory.

And you know, it's like it's a feel thing.

But also, when you say, oh, it's not in the right mode, You have such good years that you know what's right and wrong when you're playing something.

I think that's what's important.

I think that's all you need really.

Yeah, let's see if we can test that.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

E Minor, where's your ear telling you to go?

Oh yeah.

I'm going to throw in something different here.

Yeah, it's your ear though chord would never work.

Like maybe it might work as a passing chord, but you've made it musical right there and that's what a great player with their ear can do is just instantly correct.

It's like this auto correct that guitar players have built in and it's the making it musical part when you're improvising like we're talking about where it's like, I don't know, oh, here it is.

And that sort of is a rush for me and I some people, you know, it can be uncomfortable.

Well, I would say, dude, that notes are the wrong notes.

Are yours free of charge, man, for me, because I will literally play some shit sometimes and I'm like Yikes.

But the one thing about going along with what you said here, give me, let me try once.

Uh oh.

I saw your ear working in real time.

Dude, that's the thing.

If you use your ears, if you use your ears and you've got, you've got the ear.

I don't know what you call it when you know where everything is or most things are.

Like muscle memory?

Muscle memory, muscle memory.

A lot of a lot of times I've found with younger players when they're learning, they, they learn with their eyes and numbers on the tab or the notes, whatever it is.

And if the tab's wrong, they don't hear that it's wrong, but the tab says it's, that's what it is.

Yes, if it's wrong, but if you can hear it, I don't think you're you're not going to be that far out and you can always bend it.

And if you're listening and you know.

Right.

You know, kind of your relative where you are.

Without looking you can, if you give us a chord, see if this goes right.

You can always hit the right note OK.

But here's the best part about that.

You just went and it was like this beautiful.

Land on the right note and you're like, I know the whole path down it is.

Correct.

Yeah, but it doesn't have an overnight as we all know.

Well, that's a thing though that like you were saying, like a lot of young younger players are, are younger in where they are in the game of playing.

When you play something, you can play anything.

You can play this chord.

And if they don't have that knowledge of essentially, OK, cool.

I've I've seen this shape before.

I've jammed around this.

I've had this conversation a million times.

You know, that's kind of one of those things that's I hope not.

It doesn't get super lost, but it is sometimes lost where you'll jam with someone to go, oh, let's just play an E to an A, you know, and they go.

I didn't learn a solo around that, so I don't know.

There was, there was a time when I was young, I went to a Blues jam and I, and I was into that rock and metal at the time.

I went to a Blues jam and like Blues is just like easy, easy metal.

It's like.

What?

No, I'm just kidding.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

I hear you.

I went there and with my, you know, with my, I don't know, I had a Jackson type guitar, pointy headstock.

He had a dinky.

Kind of, kind of.

He had a pointy headstock.

And I went down there thinking, yeah, I know Iron Maiden and fucking all this stuff.

I went down and they started playing exactly what you were saying, and I didn't know what to play.

And I had all these people in front of me.

And you learn a lesson, You learn a big lesson.

It's like and I just ended up playing a.

Just like the chords.

Yeah.

Because it's like, OK, cool, let's learn a really cool riff.

And you learn anything, you go, you know, Sabbath.

Hey, imagine if Sabbath goes.

What?

But it's like, OK, why are they playing that?

OK, there's AG chord to an octave to a flat 5, you know, and all of a sudden you go when you start to learn around what it is.

I just think it's important man to like learn stuff and then like find out why it makes sense.

This conversation we're having is the answer to should you learn theory or is theory important?

I think every great guitar player has a great ear.

I don't think every great guitar player knows theory, but there are great like guitar players who know theory, thus they also have great ears.

In my experience, it's important to develop your ear first, crucially because then you can put assignments to the things you already inherently know.

Rather than the argument that I think people have debating whether you should learn theory or not.

It's like, should you only learn and start with theory, which is an irrelevant subject because you have to learn with your ear, and I think that's naturally how a lot of players learn.

Notice also we're playing, we're playing very like slowly.

We're not, we're not ripping it up here.

I think that that becomes a different thing if you're changing chords a lot quicker and the things a lot more shreddy becomes a lot harder to kind of interpret what you're playing.

We're playing slow melodies and slow chords.

It's easier to interpret what's coming next and figure it out.

Yeah, but when you're under the gun.

And it's fast and you know, if it was like a Mound Sting type thing and you're improvising over that and you're not, you don't know what chords are coming next and what voicings and what modes, I think that becomes a different thing altogether.

We're playing.

That becomes you better prepare before.

Yeah, that that, that you better have your shit together.

When you were like first getting in priest, how did you learn all those songs right away?

I knew some of them.

Oh, you knew some of.

Them.

Yeah, we played, we played four or five of them in the in the cover band.

OK, I knew enough to know the band.

I knew what the band meant and everything knew the guitar approach.

I used to be into Thin Lizzy when I was younger and you know, the maiden and some priest and.

Yeah, that whole, that whole vibe.

Yeah.

So I wasn't, I wasn't a super fan.

I didn't show up to the audition with 10 albums to sign, which is probably a good thing, you know?

Yeah, you probably won't get the gig that.

Way and maybe maybe different enough to bring something new.

It wasn't turning up for a priest cover band.

We love the priest riffs, you know what I mean?

Maybe it's.

Different.

You weren't.

You weren't a clone or something.

Although people people will say otherwise and I understand why, but you know, long blonde hair and a flying V.

Do you feel like a clown or do you feel like yourself?

How do you really feel?

I've always tried to copy people, you know, but that's and so I can see why people said that blonde hair is your hair.

And I play the Flying VI was into Michael Schenker and obviously KK and Randy Rose and all that.

That's just part of MyHeritage.

But when I got into priest playing covers, you try and emulate the people that you look up to.

When you get into priests, you realize you can't do that anymore.

It's like now you've got your turn to speak your voice, and it can't be Zack Wilde and Dave Murray and Michael Schenker anymore.

It's got to be, you know, it's got to be Richie.

It's got to be.

Yeah.

So.

So I did feel, what am I going to?

I didn't feel like a clone, but I felt like I've got a kind of same, my own bit, come up with my own thing.

And I think every album we do, you try a little bit more to hone that voice you.

Know, dude, it sounds super daunting because it's like you're walking into like such a rabid fan base of people that like live and breathe that music and then all of a sudden you walk in and you're like, yeah, I love it.

And you have to now navigate the waters of Where do I fit into it?

All, I think you just got to do what you do.

You know, that's all you can do really.

You've got to be respectful of what went before.

You've got to be respectful of what the fan base is, but I think you've also got to kind of respect yourself as well and try and put your, however self obsessed that sound.

You've got to put your stamp on it as well.

Otherwise it's not genuine.

And I think that's what the fans want.

They want genuine.

They don't, they didn't want to clone, you know, So that's what you've got to kind of do.

You've got to do a bit of both.

There was a Wikipedia article about you, in case you didn't know that.

And in it there's an extensive documentation of your Judas Priest and all your accolades musically.

And I thought it was funny.

And I'd really like to know more about this five year period between 1995 and 2000 when you were a sausage salesman.

Yeah, maybe the best one.

And then you became the Judas Priest guitarist.

Well, that shows you didn't it.

Anyone can do it.

Anyone if I can do it?

Is that accurate though?

Like what does that?

Mean yeah, I used to sell sausages, I used to sell hot dogs.

Is this in Sweden?

I read it was in Sweden.

The streets of Stockholm, yeah, OK, Yeah.

And you do anything, you do anything to make money and do your music at the weekend.

And I was only, I was 16 to 20.

So we, we were too young to get in the bars.

So we couldn't play like gigs in the pubs.

So we'd play youth centres and stuff like that once in a blue moon and that's what you lived for.

So you'd work during the week, rehearse at the weekends and gig every now and again.

And that's what it was, you know, And it was cold in the winter, beautiful in the summer.

But you did whatever it took, you know.

And again, if if that's what it takes, anyone can do it, you know, that's why.

My odd job before I started anything musical was Spa Boy.

All right, so I.

Spa Boy.

Dude, I cleaned up nasty towels and it was I don't know what's the worst.

Was this like a kind of like an Asian relaxation massage?

No.

Way man, it was all above the line.

But.

I definitely did some things, saw some things that I wish I had.

Or you know.

What?

It all leads you to the place you're meant to arrive.

Yeah, I like to say, but that's also it makes you appreciate and work so hard that you will do anything to not go back to whatever that thing is for people.

I got a confession my first odd job before well, the first one was baling hay and milking cows, right?

But then I got typical, yeah, typical Wisconsin kid.

But then the, the funny one was I got a job when I was like 11 at the restaurant in my town.

And I thought when people left the money on the table for the tip that because I was cleaning the table I could just keep them nice.

Dude, you made a lot of.

Money, dude, I got fired in two, two days later.

They're like, are you taking money off the table?

I'm like, of course I am.

Yeah, they they left money for me to clean the table.

You.

Never know when you're going to do that again, you know?

Right.

The way music is and you grow up and it's never, it's never guaranteed that you're ever going to make a living out of music.

When you start to get in a situation like that, you think, well, it's not going to.

According to Priest on the farewell tour, it was a final tour.

So I was like, well, I better keep that on the back burner.

I still, I still make a good sausage.

You know, you never know we what's going to happen next year or we had COVID.

No one was doing anything, you know, so you never know what's, what's around the corner.

So there's always something, you know, Broadway's down the road.

You never know.

You might need that again, but you never know what's around the corner.

What were you doing guitar wise while you were working that job?

Like how did you build the skills or maintain the skills?

You said you were in a cover band.

Was that like kind of your routine?

It was back to the UK when I was 20 and we played cover geeks Thursday to Sunday every week.

And we used to play little places, Irish pubs, and there was one in Camden Town.

I don't know if you've been to London, Camden's like, well, it used to be kind of like a, what would you call it, like a like a free spirited.

Kind of like.

A hippie area used to be a lot of drugs, a lot of music, a lot of.

A lot of cool clubs.

Yeah, You know, so we played there every Sunday That that was the big, the big gig for us.

It had a few names.

It was called the Fusilier and Firkin, and then it changed its name to the Carnarvon Castle.

Then it changed back again.

It's had a few different names.

We played there for years and years and years every Sunday.

And without knowing it, you're kind of honing.

That's how you Thursday to Sunday, you're playing, as I said, the Monkeys, you're playing Jeff Beck, you're playing Black Sabbath Deep Purple.

You know, without knowing it, you're kind of dialling in gear, realizing why gear doesn't work.

Why can't I be heard?

And it was every man for himself.

There's no PA.

It was just, you know, you turned up.

That's what it was.

If you couldn't be heard, you go off louder amp, you know, and cutting through and playing with the band and all that sort of stuff.

Learning songs.

You're you're learning your craft.

Sometimes you hate it, you know, sometimes you pull up.

I've said this before you, you pull up at 8:00, you got to load in.

You're not, you're not on till 12.

You play till three.

It's raining, freezing cold.

You got, you know, take the cabinets out and you fucking hate it, you know, but you're there the next day doing it again because you you love it somehow, you know, and you're learning a lot, You know, you're learning the songs, you're learning dexterity and getting there on time, gear, playing with the band, all that sort of stuff, you know, without actually practicing.

If you know what I.

Mean it's like real world field training.

There's unsung parts of the job that people do not realize whatsoever.

But if you don't do it, I mean, you're there to sell beer.

That's what you're there for.

You're not there to kind of fulfil any dreams of Rockstar ambition.

You're there to sell beer.

And if you're not there on time or you're too loud, you're out and you're not, you're not earning.

That's it.

You don't realize that at the time.

You think you're there dominating the world or whatever, but after a while you think, Oh yeah, that's that's.

Kind of what I'm doing.

Yeah, we're being employed here to sell beer or whatever.

We definitely did our 10,000 hours, you know, without knowing it.

And we didn't practice.

We we slept Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday we gigged and the small places we did on Thursday and Friday, Saturday got a bit bigger and Sunday was the main event in Camden.

That was every week that, you know, years.

I'd like to show you a couple videos on this screen here and get your reactions.

Oh no.

These are a couple different points in your career.

These leaves a different program.

Lionel Richie was there.

Where was this?

That was that, that was that was the the venue in Lai was talking to you about with the RF problems.

Oh, that is.

Nokia, yeah.

What's your signature, Bee?

Yeah.

What year was this?

22.

What does it feel like to be playing that kind of iconic riff in that exact moment?

I I just want to know if there's a feeling of different parts of the song that hit different or different moments in the set, or if it all is just one big ride.

How would you define?

Because everyone's like singing along to that moment.

Well, usually when when we do it, we do it after we do it quite near the front of the set now, OK and we'd do it, we'd do a song before it would go straight into it.

And it's a surprise for a lot of people and it lifts the roof.

You know, they're not expecting it till later on in the set.

So that's quite a cool thing they're not expecting.

But that one, that was the their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

So it was, it was 3 guitars.

It was KK Downing was being inducted and you know, obviously Glenn Tipton was there as well.

So it's three guitars, but it's TV and TV is, it's not your world.

It's a different animal.

Yeah, man, there's cameras and queues and it's a totally.

High pressure.

Yeah, rehearse it you a couple of days before you do a rehearsal, but it's never it never.

It's not the same as rehearsal.

Yeah, everyone starts moving about like more and things are in different places.

It's a weird thing.

So it's a bit nerve wracking, but when we play it normally and it's our crowd, you know, you'd think after 50 years they'd get bored playing it, but it's always when you hear that roar.

I couldn't imagine playing that in South America or something.

It's a half step.

Down.

Do you guys play?

Yeah, yeah.

How it goes.

Yeah, yeah, I'll put the octave in here.

Yeah, Which no one cares about but me.

No, no.

One care about that?

It actually thickens it up pretty good.

It's on the record, there's a 11 there, but again, I don't think hard to play though.

That a octave real quick though.

Yeah.

I'm not hitting them all, you know, I mean, I'm kind of cheating.

Playing like some like power riff like that coming out of the PA and it's blasting.

We can hear it now with the octave, but sometimes it's just like you're just going to get that the main, you know what I'm trying to say?

You're just hearing that projection and.

It is.

It is big, big and loud.

Is the solo in Breaking Law always different or is it just different in the performances that I found because I'd like to go it's always we have something here that.

It has to be different these days.

Yeah, this is the easy one.

Yeah, that's the easy one.

And even the halfway through it, it changes from being, it slows down.

I don't know what you'd call that, but.

It's not, it's not a ostinato, it's some some other classical music.

Turned it starts in the 16th notes.

Yeah, 1 Yeah, because it's easier.

Is that?

Is that called a retard?

It was just a slight retard.

Yeah, it's a slight retard.

Is there is there a song on in the setlist that you're every time it comes in you're like fuck yeah, I can't wait to play it.

At the moment, probably Touch of Evil.

Touch of Evil is a good one because of the atmosphere of it all.

It's kind of mid, mid paced and kind of eerie.

The the solo's amazing.

Just again, nothing technical, but kind of just the right notes.

Satisfying.

Yeah, man, yeah, probably that one at the moment.

If we get through painkiller, when painkiller comes, it's it's like if we can get through this, we're good.

Yeah, it's like, it's kind of like the final stretch.

Yeah, yeah, The song in your sets where you're just like, all right, here comes this one.

Or are they all kind of?

Well, sometimes.

I mean, every night's different, but in every venue you ever have it where some nights, and this is across the board, you're just playing, you pick up your guitar or whatever, and you're just like, fuck yeah, dude, I feel great.

Yeah, yeah.

The sound's great.

Everything's great.

Wow, this is easy.

And then other nights you're sitting there and you're going, you're nothing's coming out right?

And you're just like, this is horrible your.

Bends are just not quite there.

Yeah, and you just feel like the tone is thin and something's feeding back and you're just like, Get Me Out of here, you know?

From the first hit, stroke, whatever you want to call it, you're not.

It is true.

You kind of know when you're going to sound sweet that night.

It's kind of even like, do you guys ever feel this way when you when you plug in a guitar, right?

And you sit there and let's say you just go and you go like.

As you do.

Right, you go, OK, cool.

I like that tone and it inspires you to play better.

I think a tone can literally alter your mind into being like, I'm going to play great.

I definitely, definitely.

It's like, I think it's like sports.

If you start, if you play like a bum point in tennis, it affects your mind and then it's easier to play more bum.

100% dude.

If if it's a good one, it inspires you to play better one.

Yeah, if you come out of the gate and you're like, Yep, yeah, it just almost like it steam rolls it.

Yeah, yeah.

Somehow, Yeah, yeah, like we're talking about here on feel and the sound of it and how it feels.

And you're playing slightly different all the time depending on how it's inspiring you and stuff like that.

You know, you're not playing by numbers.

You, you're playing, you're playing around like a blueprint, but how it feels and sounds and.

Kind of like an always moving blueprint basically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

Speaking of always moving, this song is always playing it seems like.

Oh yeah, this is an example of.

Dude that looks so sick.

Look at Richie dude, he's my fucking rock star.

Dude that looks so cool.

It's a song that we used to play in the cover band.

I used to play a different version of it.

It used to be more Zach influenced.

And again, you're doing something like this, which is for something that huge.

Back to the beginning, right?

You can't play the same as Iomi, you can't play the same as Zach.

So you've got to do something that's different because.

You covered that song too, Jared.

Oh yeah, Richie and I have actually played that on stage together a few times.

Jared was telling me about one time when it was just like, you know, years ago.

The drummer didn't know how to play.

It did.

You ever have like these nightmare stage moment where you thought you knew?

Oh yeah, we'll crush this and then no.

No more pics on Painkiller.

Painkillers, this happened.

Yeah, with my other band, Elegant Weapons, we were playing in Paris and we had time left because we didn't have enough songs.

We were doing a headline set.

Do Pankilli.

That'd be easy.

They played great.

Oh, it was just a that was a train wreck.

Malfunction.

Just bad.

One of them things, it started going bad and then you start thinking about it and it brings you back in the moment and it you, you do another bad note and oh fuck.

And then you, you, you know.

Dude, remember when we played?

Actually, I now I remember, I was thinking back, we played War Pigs here and then we were in Switzerland together with the Winery Dogs and remember how quiet the venue was.

Richie had his amps.

Here's the thing, like when you're playing a show and I don't mean to go off on tangent, you need to be able to hear the guitars.

Didn't you have to turn your cabinets around?

Because in Switzerland they had this like decimal law.

But I remember we jammed War Pigs there and that was great.

But I just remember how weird it felt.

It was like an empty stage.

Like you'd play it, you'd be like, there was nothing.

It was like.

Well we have to be louder than the drums.

Fucking drummer.

His ride cymbal is 1,000,000 decibels anyway.

You got to get it one of those.

Little he knows who he is.

The drummers hate you know.

Those Yeah, the little pest.

Hey, we won't call him that now.

I'm just kidding.

Well, he knows who he is and he's one of the best drummers I know, you know, But he's fucking loud and volume wise you've got to match that, otherwise you can't hear what you're doing.

Sure, you know, and it always happens.

Actually, we started sound check with the cabs, turned around because we knew what was going to happen.

We started sound check and I saw the fucking sound guy walking up and he's a local sound guy.

He's walking up.

He doesn't walk up to the drummer because I'm the guitar player with the fucking Marshall.

Cabbage your ears he.

Thinks that you're the one that's being too.

Loud.

So I can see him walking up to me, you know, Swiss guy and he's got that look on his face.

I'm like.

That Swiss eating look.

But also, dude, I've walked into venues much smaller, you know, in the club clubs and you know, a lot of times too, it's just the whole feel of a stack feels different.

You know, when you're playing that compared to a combo amp.

And I'll be walking in carrying a cabinet and the sound guy will look at me and be like, oh, like they have this look of dread on their face, No.

That makes me so angry.

It's happened to me.

Not that I play live nearly as much as you guys, but that just instant no.

It's deflating.

Come on, it is deflating so.

You haven't even met me yet.

Like, maybe I'll be worth your time, you know?

Talk about starting off on the wrong foot of a day, man.

Is when you walk into a venue and you get entered in with that or like a sound check and they're like, yeah, you guys are going to have to cut that in half.

And you're like, how?

I can't hear, you know, I can't hear shit if I cut it in half.

Yeah, live show politics, and it's an.

Entire episode.

Oh, that sure is, dude.

As you know, you know, I don't know if you play with ear.

I don't.

I'm still, I'm still old school, man.

Good man.

Are you doing ears?

Oh yeah, OK.

Oh, not no in ear.

Wait, does does priest use ears at all?

Yes, OK, they all do apart from me.

Oh, so you're that?

Because this interacts with that and it interacts with the monitor.

And as we're talking, you're not playing by numbers.

You, you, you're moving around.

It's like a tornado, you know.

So you're controlling this thing and it could go any, any direction like we're talking about.

It could go bad, it could go good.

You can control it, but it it's all the feedback, you should get some feedback in it.

In that second, you you hit a note and it reacts with the speakers behind you and the volume that it's at, and it all goes away with the, you know, if it's too quiet or it's.

So it is, you know?

Yeah.

And I couldn't agree more.

The thing I love, I think more about anything than playing guitar, is the interaction.

That's why I don't really play a lot of acoustic guitar.

And no hate on it, but it's the interaction between an amp, a speaker and a pickup and a guitar and the vibration.

And once you start to lose that or you start to interfere with that.

And I think a lot of times people don't even think about this and they go, man, why?

Why is it when Richie hits that note, he's got all that sustain?

I must need a sustainer pedal.

It's like, no, sometimes it's like, get rid of that shit and just plug straight in or whatever, or put a drive, notice how your guitar reacts.

You know what I'm saying?

Old school mentality I guess.

Speaking of old school, one more clip for you.

Please tell me what you think about.

This.

Oh, man, yeah, I was going to bring that guitar today.

I'm playing for my life.

See, that's the Zach stuff, which you know, there's a hard bend, but see, it started feeding back at the end there.

Yeah, you start to get a whoo.

Yeah, it started to go out which?

You don't know until you do it, but you're interacting with.

It what year was that clip?

2012 I think.

Yeah, about 20 lbs ago.

Your thoughts on guitar from then to now?

What would you say has changed?

What stayed the same?

What What do you feel like has evolved about you since then?

Well, quite a lot.

It's got a lot slower out of necessity, really.

Yeah, yeah.

And as I said before, thinking about not relying so much on the Zach Wildisms and stuff like that, but kind of speaking more my own voice as the years go by.

So there's less of that for two reasons that I just mentioned.

But at the time, I didn't have much else to rely on.

I just had a box of tricks that came from the the cover band days, you know?

And that's what I was kind of doing, really.

I was fortunate enough to get a solo during one of the songs.

I just pulled them all out and that was the last show of the tour, so by then I'd kind of honed it.

I never practiced it.

It just what?

So that was an.

Opportunity like a showcase?

Yeah, you like that's a career moment I think is.

Well, fortunately it was the last one because it had been not rehearsed.

But every night I did it, certain parts stuck and certain parts went by the wayside.

So it got refined over a year and a half and that was the culmination of it kind of thing.

Would would it be fair to say it's your eruption?

It's like your solo moment and then you guys go into the music, something like that where it's a feature of.

There's a part in there that is a bit more melodic.

Yes, yes.

That people can identify with.

I wouldn't say it's Eruption, No, no, it's nowhere near as shocking as Eruption.

It's just, it's just a melody that people can latch onto.

You know, actually I was, we were out with Black Label for a part of it.

So I was, I was doing, I did a section of crazy train, I think it was because it was in F# and I'd do a section of rock bottom in F#, you know.

Oh yeah.

And Glenn actually came up to me.

He said, Rich, can I have a word with you?

And that's never good when someone says that can I have a word?

He said in his in his solo, he said, I noticed you're playing, you know, some some other people's stuff.

He said, I think you can come up with better than that.

So it was his way of saying like, interesting, you know what I mean?

No, that's actually really cool, though.

This is kind of like the moral of all of that is like, you know, it's like you respect what came before, but it's like also do your, do you?

Yeah.

Put your stamp on what's.

Future plans?

Do you have anything laid out?

Well, I'm on Broadway this weekend selling hot dogs.

Oh.

Yeah, I thought I saw you guys.

Got a sausage?

Sausage salesman?

That's great.

Well, we're back out with Priest next month.

We're doing AUS leg with Alice Cooper.

It's a Co headline and we're with corrosion and conformity as well.

Yeah, it's sick.

Who haven't been out for a while, don't think.

I think they've got a new.

Record New record coming out.

Yeah.

So that should be good.

And then after that, who knows?

There's another record in the works for Elegant Weapons as well that's kind of mixed.

Just looking for a chance to put that out, you know, around the pre schedule.

So probably sometime next year and then we'll see what happens beyond that.

But.

Yeah, awesome, man.

Do you have one piece of advice for all the guitar players who are listening and watching this show?

Well, I always say, I said it earlier on, if I can do it, I don't know.

I don't know what I'm doing.

I don't know theory, you know, there's there's no right or wrong way to do things.

It's just what sounds right.

And if it sounds wrong, you'll know or people will tell you.

Yeah.

You'll get the hand.

Yeah, and, and you'll work it out.

And again, it's, it's if I can do it, anyone can do it, really.

You know, we're all doing it.

You know what I mean?

We're doing it the best.

Yeah, we're doing it the best we can, learning stuff along the way as well.

Just do what sounds right to you.

And I'll definitely say what Glenn said to me as well, Glenn.

Glenn has been a bit of a mentor over the years.

He said when he was younger, he listened to Rory Gallagher and stuff like that, and he'd play copy Rory Gallagher, but it wouldn't sound like Rory Gallagher.

And he couldn't understand why it didn't sound like Rory Gallagher.

It was the same notes, but he realized that it sounded like Glenn Tipton.

And he said that's why I need to embellish and work upon.

And that's what happened, which is massive advice really.

So I'd pass that advice on to anyone.

Yeah, it's it's like I've heard people say that too.

It's like where you fail to sound like you're heroes or the, you know what you're copying.

That's you.

That's you.

And I've found that sometimes you can be a little scared or intimidated that your voice isn't good enough because it's sounds so familiar, like, well, that can't be good.

That's what I always hear.

I want to sound like this that I love and you kind of forget.

No, actually this is pretty good.

No, dude, that's the joint to me, Dude.

I thought I was going to be Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Now look at me.

Dude, what the hell happened?

The.