Slash is well and truly in his blues guitar era. Having already dropped his Orgy of the Damned blues cover album, the Les Paul loyalist is now well underway with his star-studded S.E.R.P.E.N.T “blues festival”.
Eric Gales is just one of many guitar greats who have been tapped for the tour, and now footage of the pair paying tribute to Jimi Hendrix at their recent show at Marymoor Park, Redmond, on Tuesday (8 July) has been posted online.
Having been chosen to open the show, Gales brought out Slash for his final song with the quip, “You all might know this tune, I think” – before commencing a near-seven-minute jam of Purple Haze.
Though Slash and his Gibson Firebird play their part, it’s Gales and the deliciously dialed-in tone of his Magneto signature guitar that steals the show. When he’s on it (and, naturally, he always is), Gales is near-unstoppable – an awesome force of sheer blues power.
His solo at the 4:30 mark – which delivers some of the most expressive blues soloing the S.E.R.P.E.N.T tour will undoubtedly play host to – is proof of that.
The two guitar heroes are of course very familiar with Purple Haze, and in a recent conservation with Guitar World Gales called it one of the five riffs that influenced him most as a player.
Slash, meanwhile, no doubt revelled in the opportunity to share the stage with Gales – a guitarist who left quite an impression on the GNR rocker when he first saw him play some time ago.
“He’s amazing,” Slash said of Gales during a chat with Blues Rock Review. “I saw him play a long time ago, I was doing this Jimi Hendrix festival, and I was playing with Billy Cox and Mitch Mitchell.
“Eric Gales’ band played earlier that evening, I’d never heard of him before, and I was just like, ‘Wow, this guy is on fire.’ I’ve been aware of him ever since then.”
Slash, like most people who have witnessed Gales play the guitar, was particularly taken by his “unique” approach and style: “He has this natural, fluid way of playing that’s really got a lot of feel, but he’s also got an amazing technical prowess. But he doesn’t make it sound like he's trying.
“A lot of these guys that are real technical in their ability sound like that, and it doesn’t really do anything for me. Eric manages to mix it into his natural feel for the guitar. It’s sort of unique in blues, that kind of approach.”
Visit the S.E.R.P.E.N.T Festival website for upcoming show dates.
