"I couldn't help but think how, God!, just no-one, truly no-one can take his place. He had this way when he played live about him. He pulled out all these weird bends to the end of notes, vibrato, and some strange haunting melody lines.
It's not like he would change it drastically, and then, mixed with the regular stuff he was playing. Just his playing! Really really
haunting, in a romantic, melodic kind of way. The way Chopin must have left people in his day, but of the rock genre!"
- Alex, 24th October 2005
HAPPY BIRTHDAY STEVE!
This year King Steve would've been 51 if he were still with us. He remains forever young and super special. If you know music and have studied Steve Clark's playing style and song writing talents closely, you will have learned that Clark was a genius at his art. He knew and understood the rules of music; he knew theory, scales, inversions, finger style etc. He could read music. How many musicians out there today can actually read music? If you can't read music then how can you call yourself a musician?
The legendary drummer Ginger Baker once stated in an interview in a rock magazine that the late Phil Seamen told him that "these pop musicians wouldn't know a hatchet from a crotchet." And I would guess that this is still very much the case today. I can't tell you how much pride I take in knowing that my guitar hero was a real true musician.
Another quote I'd like to share here is one I came across recently from one of the world's top guitar musicians - Steve Vai: "... there are a lot of guitar players who can play fast, who can stretch their fingers, know all the chords and [have] memorised the notes on the scales, so there’s no shortage of players who are very good at mechanically playing the guitar... but finding the one guitar player who has an original sound and who can write & play a song, that makes you cry or makes you excited ... or makes you, y’know, look inside your soul... and just makes you feel happy, that's a gift. That’s a special gift."
Steve Clark was born with this gift and used it extremely cleverly. We remember him fondly as always and treasure the music he gave to us.
Forever young, forever loved...
Always.
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"The man's whole approach to solos were classical; he used extensive scale knowledge to come up with those licks, and he was plain awesome.
Especially note Steve's little solo break between the first chorus of Heartbreak and the second verse, that run he does is the A Aeolian scale and it's amazing. Nothing blues about it."
"... it's scale knowledge and music theory that made him unique. Steve was not this "feel - bluesy player", he was a classical technician that knew the fretboard. Beautiful guitar work!"
