The Guitar Hero Series: Peter Hodgson

Written by Ava

The Guitar Hero series on Jemsite features interviews with guitarists and musicians who may not have star status YET, but their current situations have shaped them to be who they are--determined, fond of their craft, and heroes in their own right. Perhaps you'll see in these upcoming entries the next Jimi Hendrix, Melissa Etheridge, or Duane Allman. Or perhaps they'll become household names by doing what they do best--ripping a mean riff!

Australia, too, can rock out with the best of them, and it holds some of the best guitarists on the planet! Chris Cheney...Tommy Emmanuel...Paul Dempsey...and then there's Peter Hodgson, who picked up guitar at age 7, counts David Bowie and Steve Vai as major guitar influences, writes consistently for his guitar blog I Heart Guitar, chats with John McLaughlin about fusion, and owns his dream guitar, which happens to be a JEM!

And so much more!

And that's why he's our next Guitar Hero!

How did you get started playing guitar?

Our next door neighbours gave us a couple of old guitars they had lying around the house. I can’t remember exactly when they gave us the guitars, but when I was about 7, I started to pay particular attention to these glorious combinations of wire and wood. After a few months of mindless strumming, my dad (who doesn’t actually play guitar) showed me that I could change the pitch of the note by pressing the string down on the frets. From there I tried picking out little melodies and writing extremely embarrassing and heartfelt songs about world hunger. My first guitar heroes were Mark Knopfler and Gumby.

Then in 1988 I happened to see the video for David Lee Roth’s ‘Just Like Paradise’ with Mr Steve Vai on guitar. I now had a clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life. In 1989 my parents finally relented and let me take guitar lessons with a local dude named Peter Cominos, and from then on, guitar and me have been pretty much inseparable.

At 7 years old, you made your first ever guitar? Tell me about that experience!

Well the guitar itself already existed – it was a parlour-sized acoustic, made in about the 50s or 60s in Japan. It’s one of the two guitars the neighbours gave us. The only identifying mark is the legend ‘STEEL REINFORCED NECK’ I still have it but the neck’s beyond warped because guess what: while the neck may be reinforced with steel, it ain’t adjustable, so any bowing and bending that happens is unfixable. Oh well. Anyway, I really wanted an electric guitar but didn’t think it’d ever happen (though I did put in a request to get one for my 21st birthday, thinking it’d probably take until I was 21 to learn to be responsible enough around electricity to handle something as magical as an electric guitar). So instead I took a cheap little microphone, plugged it into my boom box (it was the 80s after all) and jammed the microphone into the soundhole of my acoustic. To enhance the faux-electric-guitar look, I took a few backgammon pieces and stuck them to the front of the guitar with blu tac.

Is guitar more of a hobby to you or a career?

A career. A sizable chunk of my income is from guitar-related journalism and there have been periods where I’ve taught 50 students a week while also doing repair tech work. I’m a journalist in my full-time day job too, but the guitar writing is my real love. I write gear reviews for Australian Guitar, artist interviews for Australian Musician Magazine, and a lot of different stuff for Mixdown Magazine: interviews, gear reviews, feature articles, and a pair of regular columns, ‘What’s That Sound?’ where I look at ways of replicating the tones of famous guitarists, and ‘Unleash Your Inner Rock God,’ an instructional column that explores everything from simple power chords to song construction to insane shred extravaganzas.

Who are some of your guitar and music influences?

Aside from the obvious ones like Steve Vai, John Petrucci, Dave Mustaine, Nuno Bettencourt, Joe Satriani, Paul Gilbert and Eddie Van Halen, my biggest influences are Frank Zappa, Mike Keneally and David Bowie. While the other guys influence my guitar playing to various degrees, Zappa, Keneally and Bowie influence me by giving me inspiration for my entire approach to music.

You’re already a journalist. Why the urge to start a guitar blog?

It started because I realized I had a couple of years worth of reviews and interviews from Mixdown Magazine which weren’t likely to be read by anyone after each issue’s month-long run ended. Mrs I Heart Guitar, an avid blog reader, suggested I put them online. The blog allows me to expand upon articles that were originally written for the magazine, as well as writing fresh new content. Sometimes it works the other way around too, and material from the blog will make its way into Mixdown.

Does actually playing guitar give you an edge in your music journalism?

I guess it gives me a level of insight into my interview subjects that non-playing writers don’t have, and I find that a good way to loosen up an interview is to throw in a particularly geeky guitar question relatively early on. Sometimes you only get 15 or 20 minutes for a phone interview and you’ve really gotta think on your feet to get a connection with the artist in that time. When I interviewed John McLaughlin, it was only a 15 minute chat but I got a lot out of him by being upfront with him that I was just beginning to get into fusion, both as a listener and as a player. He was only too happy to talk about fusion and improvisation from that perspective and I feel it made for a pretty interesting interview.

What’s your take on Ibanez/JEM models?

I love ‘em! I have a Jem7VWH and a UV777BK. The Jem7V was always my dream guitar, ever since seeing Steve Vai with one in Guitar World around the time of the Sex & Religion album. To be honest it’s not even my main guitar but just having it and playing it from time to time is pretty special to me. The UV777BK is my main axe. It just feels right. Sometimes I leave it in its case or on the stand for a few months while I let my other guitars have some love and attention, but when I go back to the Universe I’m reminded just how awesome it is. Her and me, we got somethin’ special goin’ on. It sounds cheesy but sometimes I feel like the Jem and Universe were designed for me rather than Steve Vai.

Is it cool to be a Guitar Geek? What is a Guitar Geek?

Well it sure wasn’t cool when I was growing up. I used to get teased in high school for playing shredding guitar solos and collecting guitar magazines. Now my playing has been heard by thousands of people and I get to party with rock stars, so ha ha to all those kids who laughed at me.

Seriously though, I think it’s important to have a little something that you can get lost in for a few hours, and the guitar is the coolest instrument in the world so why wouldn’t you want to geek out over it?

Ok, so you almost got into a fight with Slayer guitarist Kerry King?

To this day I’m not sure why the hell I said it, but I was at a record company party being held for Machine Head, who were touring with Slayer at the time. Kerry King showed up and I was pretty nervous – I was a huge Slayer fan in my mid teens. So I marched over to him to say hi. I told him I used to play “Dead Skin Mask” in my band in high school. He said something like “Yeah but I bet you didn’t play it right.” I said something like, “I could show you how to play it, mate.” As the words left my mouth I could feel a chill down my spine – what I really meant was “Oh Great Sir King, I’ve listened to your playing so closely that I feel I have a deeply ingrained knowledge of the majesty of your phrasing and the minutiae of your note choice, and given the chance I would demonstrate to you via a performance on the electrical guitar just how faithfully I strive to reproduce in my own little way your brilliant recorded works.” But instead I said “I could show you how to play it, mate” and he called me a cretin. Oops.

What is a Guitar Hero to you?

When I think about my personal guitar heroes I think of the way they portray a vibe or a worldview. It’s not just about what they’re doing on the guitar, it’s what it represents. A guy like Mick Ronson in David Bowie’s band wasn’t the most technically proficient player of his day but he believed in what he did, and had a clear vision in doing so. I always try to keep that in mind whether I’m recording guitar stuff, playing a gig, writing an article, or whatever.