Chris Holmes thinks great guitarists always bring something new to their performances.
“I used to get a lot of trouble. I used to go and do a solo completely different one in the song and I get screamed down for it all the time,” said the musician in a new interview with The Metal Voice. “Once I get money for it, ‘You’re not playing close to the song.’ So I started playing close to the song and once I did that, life was boring. It was like walking down the street. Boring. Same thing.”
The host interrupted to say, “That was where I gonna get at. You feel like a robot if you keep doing the same thing every night, right? Repeating the same thing.” Holmes replied, “Hendrix never played the same way once. The good guys never do.”
“When I was about 12 or 13, I saw the Jimi Hendrix movie, and that got me into playing the guitar,” Holmes told Guitar World last year talking about his guitar influences. “I thought, ‘What a job – I wanna do that!'”
The rocker continued, “My older brother took me to concerts. I saw Johnny Winter and was blown away. At the time, he played rock. He played good, good, hard rock. He’s mostly known for blues, but what turned me on was when he played rock. Brownsville Station – I saw them open for Johnny Winter, and they kicked a**. I saw things like that.”
“I couldn’t read music,” the guitarist also revealed. He added, “Actually, I’ll tell you, I have dyslexia. I’ve never read an entire book during my whole life. Reading music was impossible. Anything I’ve done was by ear. If you do it enough, you’ll get it.”
Holmes will have a Scandinavian tour, starting on August 23 in Trollhättan, Sweden. His last show is scheduled for August 31 in Notodden, Norway.
