On The Record: Alex Skolnick on Ozzy Osbourne, AI & solos

Alex Skolnick manages his various projects by staying organized and taking notes. He started a podcast called Moods and Modes, where he jams and discusses music with other musicians. The podcast started during the pandemic and evolved into more of a short story format. Alex believes that AI cannot replicate the improvisational nature of live musicians like himself. He also talks about his collaboration with Stu Hamm on the album "Fast," which was a long time in the making. They recorded the album at Sweetwater, and Alex mentions some standout moments and challenges during the recording process. He also discusses his approach to solos, mentioning that some are improvised while others are composed. Hi everyone, this is David from Ultimate Guitar and we are here with Alex Skolnick of Testament and of course many other projects. Alex, it's a great honor seeing you here. Thanks David, it's great to be here. I enjoy Ultimate Guitar, I enjoy the debates and the community and of course the articles. Do you sometimes go in there and visit the comment section once in a while? I do. I get Google alerts, so, confession, when my name is mentioned I go and see. Usually it's an article, sometimes it's a comment, mostly positive comments, but I understand it's par for the course. For the most part it's pretty nice. I check out other articles, articles on friends of mine. Stu Ham's got a new project. I guess I get mentioned in a lot of his articles now because I'm on his new record. It's fun to enjoy the reactions. Absolutely. At the moment you're juggling a lot of things apart from Testament. There's also Stu Ham and his stuff and you also have the text and you have your podcast. How do you actually manage to do all these things? There's a lot of juggling involved, for sure, but definitely a lot of note-taking to keep things organized. Yeah, absolutely. You also started your podcast called Moods and Modes with Alex Skolnick. I love how the name of the podcast kind of implies and reflects the fact that you can use modes and different scales to build different moods. Is this also something that you discuss on that podcast? Can you walk us a little through that? Well, the original idea for the podcast was to have one-on-one jam sessions. These would be with friends of mine, musician friends, in which there was a lot of improvisation. In some cases, well-known musicians. In other cases, musicians that I thought more people should know about. I've been thinking about this for years, honestly, since the 2000s. I was a big fan of radio short stories, like on NPR, and also this program called Piano Jazz, which was NPR's longest-running program. Marian McLartland one-on-one with another musician, usually a piano player. I had an idea of doing something like that for guitar. It took me forever to get it together between composing my own albums and touring, Testament, Resurrecting in the 2000s, and then becoming very busy with that. I finally started to get together just in time for the pandemic. That's when people couldn't be in the same room together. By that point, I already recorded several episodes with friends before there was this pandemic. In which case, we'd meet at a studio, or more often than not, they'd come visit me in my living room, and I'd just mic us both up with an amp. We'd talk guitars, and it worked fine. Once we couldn't be in the same room together during the pandemic, I had to improvise, and not just improvise on guitar. Fortunately, by then, we had platforms like this one, like what we're on now, Riverside, or Zoom, the very popular one. I just figured out a way to do the podcast where we didn't have to be in the same place. We could just talk, and whatever music came up, I could play samples of it. It went in many directions. It's become a little bit more of a short story podcast. Unfortunately, several very important musicians have passed away in the time since I started the podcast, including Peter Green, Eddie Van Halen, Chick Corea, Jeff Beck. When somebody like that passes, it only makes sense to do a tribute episode. On the bright side, I was able to do these very well-received tribute episodes. Also, there's different modes of being in music, especially today. Now we have this technology. A lot of us make music at home. We have recording technology, so we're in producer mode. We have social media platforms, so that puts us in PR mode. If we have our instrument with us, and we're playing on the internet, then we're in musician mode. We also have AI. Maybe that will also impact the way we create music and consume music, I guess. Yes, and that's a very recent technology. It remains to be seen how that impacts music and the music industry as a whole. It's a little bit scary in a way, but as somebody that does a lot of improvisational music, even though I'm best known for my work playing heavy metal, I know the improvisational music is very hard to replicate. I cannot picture AI doing what we do as live musicians, playing off of each other and giving the human touch to music. I can understand it with other music. I'm not sure it would work for heavy metal. I'm sure AI could come up with a riff. Come up with something that sounds like Judas Priest or whatever. But I don't know how convincing that would be. I know it has worked with some of the more recent pop music, such as Drake and The Weeknd, but that music is pretty mechanical to begin with. To me, that already sounds like a machine came up with it. I think music like that is much more in danger than guitar music, at least for now. Yeah, maybe someday, but for now we're safe, I guess. Of course, you also mentioned Stu Hamm. I recently also got the chance to talk to him and talk about his new album, which also features you on the guitar, called Fast. Can you take us through this record and what are some of the highlight moments from the recording session? Let me first say that to record with Stu is a great honor and a long time in the making. We first recorded in the 90s. Sorry, let me rephrase that. We first toured together, worked together in the 90s. He was trying out guitar players. He, at that time, was very known for his associations with Steve Vai and Joe Satriani. But being the bassist and just starting out, he didn't have their platforms. Obviously, guys like that were very busy, so he was looking for guitar players. It was just a real turning point for me to get that gig. I know there were some full-time instrumental players that were trying out, some name players. For me, it was this big break. It really opened a lot of doors. At that point, I think I was maybe 21 years old. That was just a few years out of high school. I'd spent the last couple of years in this intense environment of the band in its earlier years. Going into the studio, jumping on a tour, supporting a group like Anthrax or Overkill, being pressured to come up with parts, throwing together music, getting thrown back in the studio, doing it all over. During that time, I developed an interest in instrumental music and improvisation of all types. Jazz guitar, world music, rock improvisation, you name it. I was still very young, so I was expanding as a musician. To play with Stu, the guy from Satch and Vi. I'd seen him with Satch on the Surfing with the Aliens tour and just was knocked out. That was just an incredible moment. That was just amazing. I really had to step it up because the guitar players on his early work included names like Eric Johnson, Alan Holdsworth, as well as Satch and Vi. As hard as I've practiced to be this metal guitarist, to be the guitarist in Testament, I got to step it way, way up. It was really like starting over. We had talked about recording, but it just didn't happen for a number of reasons. He went through record label changes. He didn't end up recording after that tour we did together for a long, long time. I think by that point, I had moved to the East Coast. I was in my jazz hiatus mode. I was going back to school. I was determined to get a university degree in music, which I did at the New School. I was on the East Coast. Ironically, he had relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area for a time. I'm sure had I still been there, we would have recorded. All of which is a long way of saying this recording was long, long overdue. We started touring together over the last 10 years, I think starting in 2013 or so. I regularly do his shows at the Baked Potato. Stu's Baked Potato shows are legendary. You get great musicians showing up. You never know who's going to be there. The last one, Vi himself, showed up. No pressure playing with him sitting there. He was great, by the way. Super supportive. My friend Ardashir Farah from Strunzen Farah has come twice. He's just a major influence along with Jorge Strunz. Rhonda Smith came one time. There's Jeff Beck's bass player. Just so many great musicians. It's been this great hang. The tours we've done have been great. We've been talking about recording this whole time. This has been going on since the mid-2010s. Finally, we get in the studio. Of course, the pandemic delayed it as well. By 2021, it was finally safe to go in. We did it at Sweetwater. Our friends at Sweetwater set up a recording master class. Audio students could watch us record. They were let in on the process, guided by the engineer. We each did an instrumental master class. It was a lot of fun. It was intense. The music is challenging. Even though Stu gets identified with the Satch and Vibe stuff, not that that isn't challenging, but his own music has its own unique challenges. It's much more diverse. It goes in a lot of directions. He's very specific about what he wants. I guess you mentioned Hold Fast. That's the title. That's one of the tunes. I think the tune Flotsam and Jetsam is a big moment. It's an extended piece. It's one of those pieces where the guitar just has to play. It's got to rip. It doesn't stop. It just keeps going. You have to keep it interesting, which isn't easy. Not repeating yourself, which is really tough. One thing that I remembered while talking to Stu, he mentioned how he ended up hiring you. You were a young guitar player. He ended up hiring you because you were the only guy who showed up and played an improvised solo. You've built your career on being able to improvise. I have a couple of questions about that. The first one is there are solos that you perform live, like the Testament, that sound the same as on the recording. When you start writing a solo, do all of your solos start off as improvisations at home or wherever, and then just build up from there? Or do you start with a composition mindset? How does it start for you? I'll start with the audition that you mentioned, and coming in and not playing the same solos that Alan Holdsworth and Eric Johnson had played on Stu's record. For one thing, I had seen Alan Holdsworth at that point. I was a huge fan. He was influencing my solos with Testament. But I knew he didn't play the same solos. They were completely different. Even times where I thought, okay, maybe he should reference the original solo, like in Metal Fatigue, he's got this beautiful melody. But it's fine. He just goes for something new. I don't think there's any way anybody can play like him exactly. So it just made sense. I realize anybody that tries to play what Alan played on Stu's record, it's just not going to happen. So I didn't know that would be looked upon favorably. I'm glad it was, but it just seemed like the logical thing to do. So as far as solos that I do with Testament, yeah, it always starts with improvisation. The first thing I do is improvise. It's a little more of an involved process, because in that situation, you do have to live with those solos. I learned that on the very first Testament tour. I was getting questions. We were on our first record, and people were getting to know the solos. People would come up and say, on the record, you played this. And then the band talked to you. I realized, okay, for that genre, yeah. That's what you've got to do. That's one of the reasons I had to carve out some outlets for improvisation over the years, while respecting that when I'm in a situation where a solo is expected a certain way, I will play that. I may do little tweaks to keep it interesting for me. In fact, I always do. So it's never note for note, but it's close enough. It's recognizable. All the signature parts are there, and I've never gotten any complaints. But again, it starts with one big improvisation, and it usually takes a few passes until there's a few bars that I like. And then I put that aside, and I'll say, okay, I like three or four bars out of 12 or 24 bars or whatever it is. And I put that aside. I'll do some more passes. Okay, I like what I played in this section. So it's really like a blending of these small sections that I like. And then once you put them together, you might realize, oh, you know, what I did in the middle would make a great intro to the solo. That should start the solo. Or maybe it's the reverse. Maybe, you know, the way I started it is too much. I should build up to that because the solo has nowhere to go. I'm going to put that at the end. Or any type of variation. You know, it can happen a number of different ways. What would be your best advice for someone who wants to get improvisation, who isn't used to it? How should they start going about it and getting used to the whole thing? It takes time to develop. So I think one of the first things is to accept that it's going to take longer than you think it is. This is true of almost everything. The recording process. The records always take longer. They did back in the day, too. You always had to extend the amount of time. And that could not be more true for learning the guitar. So the first thing is allow yourself that time. Accept it. And be accepting. Be easy on yourself. Because it's not going to come to you right away. And also the more you stick with it, the more things start to happen. So you have to get through these periods where it feels like you're not making any progress at all. You just want to stop or do something. And there are times where you should take a break. Maybe you're burning yourself out. Specifically learning to improvise. It depends on the player's level. What are they able to play at at that time? So if somebody is already playing and they have a sound and they just need help improvising, I might advise something different than if they're still learning the instrument if they're in their more formative years. But I recently worked with a friend who's, I'm not going to name him, but a pretty well-known band that packs huge places and wins awards and all that. You definitely know this band. He had some questions about improvising. What I advised him was just to take some examples of licks that you already know and change them around. One example I'll use is from Randy Rhoades. It's a solo from Over the Mountain. It's a great solo. And that's obviously if somebody's pretty advanced. It starts out with a triad. And it goes, climbs up the triad. And it goes down the scale. And one thing you could do is reverse that. What if you go down the triad and up the scale? Right? So right there you have a variation, which is pretty simple. But there are so many little things you could do to improvise off of just that lick alone. That starts on the one in the groove. One, two, three, four. What if you start on a different beat? So instead I'll do it slower. So one, two, three, four, one. And then it feels different. You could move it to the next beat. Three, one, two. And then the accent starts to shift. So right there, just based on that one lick and just doing that, that triggers new ideas. Now, I want to go back in time a little bit. You started with Testament when you were just a kid. You left in the early 1990s to pursue new things and everything. But this was a very turbulent time, a strange time for rock music, especially with the rise of grunge and whatever. Especially for the bands who blew up in the 1980s. Did you ever feel like the rise of grunge and general changes in rock music ever affected your decision to leave the band? Or generally did you feel, for lack of better words, threatened by this new rise of the musical style? Or was it just something else for you? I was kind of fascinated by it, to be honest. I don't know if this is because I have parents who are extreme academics. PhD, extreme academia. To a level that I could never relate to. One of the reasons I got into music was it was just so different than the drudgery of academia. But I looked at the whole grunge movement, for lack of a better word, or other musical trends in the 90s, kind of from a sociological point of view. I liked some of the songs, to be honest. I thought some of the songwriting was fantastic. In fact, even recently I got invited to a concert, Smashing Pumpkins, who I'd never seen before, and Jane's Addiction. Great numbers. Both of them, just unbelievable. So I watched those bands. I totally get it. I dig the songs. But at the time, me as a musician, even though I could appreciate what they were doing, I thought the songwriting got really good. It was a lot better than some of the music it was rebelling against. There was just an onslaught of cookie-cutter music at the time. Now, I don't mean the originals. I think a lot of really good bands and good musicians, unfortunately, got caught up in that. To me, the original wave of glam metal in L.A. had some great players, like George Lynch and Warren DeMartini. It's fantastic. That's what holds up today. But it got to the point where labels were just signing any band with that hairdo, and the guitar solo was a part of it. Some really good music and honest music got caught up in that. So it affected the thrash metal bands, for sure. Even a band like Xtreme, they just released an album. Nuno is just unbelievable, as ever. But it's like he's a new guitar player. It's like people are just discovering him. Because after that period, they were seen as one of these bands. Long hair, guitar solos. Oh, radio suddenly isn't interested. The industry isn't interested. So I always thought it was kind of bizarre. Ten years before that, that music was bigger than life. The Scorpions were a stadium band. Meanwhile, the Scorpions had their biggest hit during that time. But it was all over the rest of the world. It's like the song Winds of Change. It barely existed in the United States. And it wasn't the musicians, either. It was some in the music media, some on the record label and PR side. I wasn't sure what was happening. I thought this was really bizarre. It's like this herd movement. And meanwhile, I still like guitar solos. Just because some label jerk or spin magazine or whoever suddenly decides guitar solos aren't cool. Who are you? And meanwhile, I was getting more and more into really advanced musical stuff. I mentioned Alan Holdsworth earlier. I studied him more and more. I was just getting more into guitars that would be categorized as jazz. Jim Hall, Wes Montgomery, John Schofield, Pat Metheny, Pat Martino, George Benson. The early George Benson pre-pop. Too much stuff with the name. And I started studying with advanced jazz players. And I eventually got my university degree and started playing jazz guitar. I always thought I wanted to balance it. I'd love to come back and do some type of heavy metal. And I always liked artists like John Zorn, who's an experimental artist. But has music that's pure jazz and has music that you could call extreme metal. I always admired him. And there's a lot of lesser known artists like that. So I figured I would find my way back into metal somehow. More likely in that way, like in an arts way. But as it turned out, by the mid-2000s, Testament had matured and started to get things. It was a lot like those VH1 behind the music specials. The band goes through a bunch of drama, doesn't get along. Then they start to appreciate each other. And that's kind of what happened. And it was good timing, too. Because by that time, I think the whole backlash against hard rock and metal had started dying down. There was new appreciation. Big festivals were starting in Europe. Wacken became a thing. So it died down. The 90s was a very strange period. Yeah, absolutely. But during that same time, you also got the chance to audition for Ozzy. And if I remember, you played a couple of shows or one show. I can't remember right now. I mean, you were still pretty young compared to other musicians involved in the band. And you got the chance to play with Deezer and Ozzy in the same band. I mean, how does it feel like for someone so young and just exploring jazz and everything else, you just get the chance to play with Ozzy and Deezer? That was completely surreal. At that point, I think I was already sort of on my path towards just taking a few years off just to study. And just to see where that took me. And I would have been happy just being a lesser-known guitar player playing breweries and coffee shops. But then, yeah, that Ozzy call came through. And that was one rare gig I would just have dropped everything for. And just, it's Ozzy. And I didn't even know at the time Deezer was playing with him. I flew out to this audition. And there's Deezer. Half the band is Black Sabbath. And I'm like, okay, whatever happens, this is really, really cool. You're basically Tony Iommi at that room, I guess. Tony and Randy. Yeah, actually. Because we're playing mostly Ozzy songs, but a couple Sabbath songs. Paranoid and I forget what else. It was a really interesting experience. I was surprised at how dysfunctional it felt. Because it was just... Most of the band didn't seem to know what was going on. They knew we were auditioning people. We tried this guy, we tried that guy. Apparently, when I played, it went really well. And they stopped auditions. And wanted to do a live show. And then the live show was... I think Ozzy had a sore throat. So the whole thing was cancelled. It was planned, and then it was cancelled. And then it was planned again, and then it was... And I remember Deezer getting really annoyed. And he would actually be gone in about six months. So I think it was kind of a turbulent period in the Ozzy world. They didn't have... He wasn't doing the Osbournes yet. Which would just really reignite his career. But the new record at that time, I think I still have the demo of it. Or the unreleased cassette. It was Osmosis. Which was a great record. And there were all these stories. Like I'd heard, Zach Wild was hanging out with... Presobriety was hanging out with Axl. And Axl was putting him in a headlock. Saying, yeah, me and Slash aren't getting along. You're the guy, man. So he was going to supposedly join Guns N' Roses. But I don't know. I don't know how much truth there is. But it was just craziness. Craziness. So anyway, finally the show did get called. It was on. And there was... It was so last minute. There was some miscommunication about getting the equipment there. So I think only one of the techs. And the drummer at the time, Gene Castronova. And me. We had to load the equipment in the truck. And I just imagine. This is Ozzy Osbourne. This arena act. There's got to be like this machine where everything is taken. And it was like... I tell you, I'm like in high school, like huffing gear. We go to do the gig. They told me, you know, when Ozzy comes in, he likes to be alone before the show. Just let him. Oh, absolutely. I won't even talk to him. So I go find this room that nobody is in. And suddenly Ozzy comes into the room. Decides he's going to take over the room. And he wouldn't let me go. And he just starts shadowboxing. And talking in that voice. You know, Alex, when we get out there, just do your thing. I'm not one of these... They think I'm one of these fucking perfectionists. I mean, totally. You couldn't make it up. In fact, when the Osbourne show came on TV, I'm like, oh, yeah. I lived this for about a week. And the show went great. The show went really well. And I was told by the road crew and everybody else, like Ozzy has not... We haven't seen Ozzy this happy since before all the auditions and everything. It seemed like things were going to go really well. But I had also gotten these messages. Never directly. I didn't know who they were coming from. It was the person running the show who was married to Ozzy. But things like, you know, can you lower the guitar? Can you stand this way? And I realized, oh, she's... And knowing what I know about the entertainment business now, I get it. I mean, she's seeing something. She's not... She's focused on the image. She was so used to Zach Wild, this hulking lumberjack that does these wild poses and the guitar is down to his knees. And, you know, that's just not how I play. So I got all these congratulations after the show, but I never got one from her. And then I never heard anything. I had to follow up. I figured out that the guitarist that they went with, he was a very good player, Joe Holmes. Yeah. Was always sort of in the mix. And apparently he was at auditions in the past. Yeah. And I think was selected at one point. The whole thing was very confusing. But he was, like, almost there, and then they worked things out so that he was going to be the guitarist for the story. So, yeah, I was kind of... I was hoping it would work out, but I also just greatly appreciated the whole experience. And then when I saw... Much later, when I saw clips of the tour, you could barely see him. I think they reached a point where they decided, okay, we're not going to make the guitarist such a feature. Yeah. Right? So he was really, like, dimly lit and put in the back. I don't think he was even on a recording that I'm aware of. Right? Yeah. And a few years later, you know, Gustie was the guy, and he was a little more featured. And then, of course, Zack ended up back. He should have been there all along, probably. So it was a crazy, crazy experience. But, you know, definitely a unique one. And just to have gone through that and to have played with half of Sabbath. I mean, how many people can say they did that? Okay, Alex, I'm not going to take much of your time. This has been an absolute honor talking to you. Yeah, so I really hope, you know, that we'll see more of you in the future. Absolutely. It's my pleasure. I enjoy the site and appreciate you having me.