In 2014, Joe Bonamassa recorded a guitar lesson for Guitarist that went viral. Reflecting on that clip 11 years on, he's now revealed he was totally unprepared for it.
Bonamassa is the latest guest on the No Cover Charge podcast, which is hosted by YouTuber Music is Win (AKA Tyler Larson) and Jared James Nichols. Across a conversation that spanned his insane live rig and the rise of amp modellers, he was also asked about that viral lesson – his ultimate guide to getting more tone out of Gibson Les Pauls. As of today, it’s racked up 2.5 million views.
“It was one of those European press tours that you do, and we had a long day,” Bonamassa recalls. “I was there with my tour manager, Clay, and we're at John Henry's [gear hire warehouse] in London, and they're [Guitarist] like, ‘Okay, now that we're done with all this, we were promised a half-hour guitar lesson on camera.’ And I'm like, ‘Nobody told me that.’”
He then says he replied, “I could teach you everything I know in like 15 minutes, I just can't teach you how to apply it. That's a personal thing.”
Still unsure of what he was going to say when the red light was on, he was handed a Les Paul and a Lazy J amplifier, and improvised.
“What stood between me and a martini was this 30-minute lesson,” he then says with a grin. “I’d checked out. I completely blagged the whole fucking thing.”
That Bonamassa was able to 'check out' yet share some guitar-playing wisdom that has been received by millions of players over the span of just over a decade is probably a testament to his tutoring skills.
It may have been last minute, but Bonamassa's lesson – which, among other things, detailed how to optimize use of a Les Paul's volume and tone controls – clearly struck a chord.
It wasn't by design, though. The angle of his lesson came from the setup Bonamassa found himself thrown into. The amp was set “way back”, so he focused on how to extract a multitude of sounds from a Les Paul using only its on-board controls.
“It was one of the first videos of mine that went viral... I was just using the volume,” he explains. “I said, ‘You realize that all of the sounds in your head can come out of this little thing right here.’
“Forget these [strings/humbuckers], it's how you tweak [the knobs] and [knowing] how what you hear in here is being channelled through the guitar.”
In related news, Joanne Shaw Taylor recently looked back on the time JoBo helped haggle a deal for her dream guitar. Bonamassa also looked back on his surprise at being asked to join Ozzy Osbourne's band for one song only.
