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Does Brad Gillis suck?


Does Brad Gillis suck?  

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A friend of mine hates Brad Gillis. He says Brad Gillis sucks. What do you think?

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He's always been an excessive showboat on stage, but the guy has serious chops. Copped all of Rhoads riffs and licks with, what, two weeks preparation? He definitely does not suck. 

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I voted no: I was a huge Zakk fan when I was younger and then someone handed me Speak of the Devil. I though it was Zakk at first, then learned it was Gillis. First thing I thought was Zakk stole all of Brads playing. Gillis was killing all those pinch harmonics before Zakk came along. 

 

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Only when drinking thru a straw. Preference of showmanship/showboating aside, dude has mad skillz and is the polar opposite of suck. 

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I saw Nightranger at Walt Disney World at Grad Nite as it used to be known.  Weird Al opened for them.  It was 1984.  Kimo West was playing for Al.  Brad was out there side-stage with us having a blast.  The Weird Al stuff was really popular at the time and West just killed.  Nightranger came on and West was right there next to us watching Brad and Jeff.  Nightranger was so polished and so good, it was scary.  

 

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I've always thought the Brad was an amazing guitar player and was impressed he was able to fill in after Randy died.

I  always wanted to see NR in concert,but never got the change until I got to open for them in about 2007.

I played an outdoor festival in Laredo Texas which had a bunch of bands playing all style of music.

We took the 6:00 pm slot and NR went on after us.

After we finished out show, we went back stage while the roadies set up NR's equipment.

I got to meet BG and talk shop with him for about 15 minutes and got a pic with him.

The guy was actually pretty down to earth and really seemed interested in talking shop.

After the band got on , the band I went around to the front of the stage and there was a fence the blocked off the stage so no one could come about 20 feet in front of it.

So I sorta got my own private concert  in front of the stage with nobody in my way .

I stood in front of Joel Hoekstra who was the other guitar player in the band, for the 1st half of the concert, and I stood in front of BG the last 1/2

After the encore, Brad walked up to the front of the stage and handed me his guitar pick.

So I tell this whole story just to say that BG does not suck, and is actually a pretty decent guy.

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32 minutes ago, Ua D said:

If You choose to rock a scepter at any point in your career you decidedly don’t suck.  
image.jpeg

Maybe he saved the, “suck”, for his choice of graphic designer? The LP Custom cactus is a classy touch. 

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Speak of the Devil was the album that got me to Black Sabbath for real. I had listened to the early Sabbath albums at a friends house a lot. But had not really gotten in the their dark sound.  And their album covers were scary. Speak of the Devil is like the McDonalds version of these songs (easier to chew, but in a good way). Love that album. And it also led me to discover Blizzard of Oz and Diary of a Madman. I thought it was Randy on guitar on Speak of the Devil for years, (hey, I was only 11-13 years old at the time).

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I got Brad's autograph on a steel guitar pick after a show on the Seven Wishes tour.  I got his autograph on the Gilrock Ranch CD when he was doing a record store appearance.  Brad's playing on albums is good in my opinion.  Seeing him live he was doing way too much whammy bar trickery years ago.  The last time Night Ranger came through he was still making use of the bar, but not as much as I remembered from years ago. 

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2 hours ago, Steve Haynie said:

Seeing him live he was doing way too much whammy bar trickery years ago.  The last time Night Ranger came through he was still making use of the bar, but not as much as I remembered from years ago. 

Brad discovered that Phil Collen was doing more whammy wanking in a single Def Leppard show than he did on an entire NR tour in the '80s. To that end, Brad figured that fans were getting enough wiggle stick trickery in their diets and thus, he could dial it back a bit himself.

 

 

I jest....

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Saw him with Ozzy on 28 June 1982 on the Diary Tour. He'd been playing with Ozzy by then for what 2-ish months and he was amazing. I'd bought the tickets before Randy's death, we thought the tour/show was going to be cancelled but they kept on trucking.

I'm a huge Randy fan so I mean no disrespect, but Brad just took it up a notch and made it look easy and I don't know, more "open?" I don't have the words. And a bigger tone live, I have heard he was using Randy's rig but I don't know if this is true, but the live tone was less nasally sounding, the Distortion + pedal battery ran out and they used the Marshall's tone instead.  😉 Anyone know about this, the details of the tour beyond what's on Wiki? Just curious...

I was never a big Night Ranger fan, but I totally respected the band and Brad. And the interviews and those that I'd known that had run into him said like the above, he's a pretty down to earth guy, grabs his Charvel'ize Fender and lets it rip!

I like Jake E too, Bark at the Moon is pretty amazing. And Zakk is okay too, just not my favorite. All of them can freakin play, that's for sure.

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On 6/26/2020 at 7:58 PM, Biz Prof said:

Copped all of Rhoads riffs and licks with, what, two weeks preparation? He definitely does not suck. 

Oh yeah, & you gotta remember this was pre youtube or even hot-licks-play-like-RR mail order lessons. There's a clip or two of Benire Torme (sp?) clamming it up w/ Ozzy right after RR died, not a dis on BT but he was NOT nailing the parts even kinda closely.

I saw Brad w/ a trio version of Night Ranger in a small Raleigh bar and he was excellent, great tone w/ his battered red strat and Hiwatt 1/2 stack, he sang great harmonies too. I still have the aluminium pick he handed me.

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22 hours ago, Drew816 said:

 I have heard he was using Randy's rig but I don't know if this is true, but the live tone was less nasally sounding, the Distortion + pedal battery ran out and they used the Marshall's tone instead.  😉 Anyone know about this, the details of the tour beyond what's on Wiki? Just curious...

I read long ago that on the Speak Of The Devil album & Ozzy tours Brad used his Mesa stacks (I wanna say Mach II+, but I'm not that familiar w/ Mesa nomenclature); he connected them w/ the stereo outs of one of those old grey Roland chorus pedals. During the rehearsals for SOTD, drummer Tommy Aldrigde came into the rehearsal while Brad was tweaking his rig and said something like "that's it! Don't touch a knob!".

EDIT - found this;

 

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18 hours ago, Ting Ho Dung said:

Not sure if Brad does but Night Ranger does / did.

 

I am not a fan of their pop flavored hard rock either, but technically they are great players who wrote great tunes.

Edit - this is very fun podcast w/ Brad - https://podbay.fm/podcast/1020669587/e/1438036844

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1 hour ago, Brooks said:

I read long ago that on the Speak Of The Devil album & Ozzy tours Brad used his Mesa stacks (I wanna say Mach II+, but I'm not that familiar w/ Mesa nomenclature); he connected them w/ the stereo outs of one of those old grey Roland chorus pedals. During the rehearsals for SOTD, drummer Tommy Aldrigde came into the rehearsal while Brad was tweaking his rig and said something like "that's it! Don't touch a knob!".

One of the most wonderfully wicked guitar tones of all time.

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I'm a big Night Ranger fan.

Really good songs, really good lyrics, and some amazing guitar work between Jeff Watson and Brad Gillis.  Brad isn't a technical player, but he fakes it well enough to keep up with Jeff on all those twin guitar leads.

Not sure how widely known it is, but Brad did quite a bit of the background music on ESPN.

https://archive.blabbermouth.net/news/night-ranger-guitarist-pens-music-for-espn-sports/

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On 6/27/2020 at 12:37 PM, Biz Prof said:

Brad discovered that Phil Collen was doing more whammy wanking in a single Def Leppard show than he did on an entire NR tour in the '80s. To that end, Brad figured that fans were getting enough wiggle stick trickery in their diets and thus, he could dial it back a bit himself.

 

 

I jest....

I almost had to pick my jaw up off the floor... until I saw your "I jest"

PC's whammy work, IMO, was/is rudimentary at best. At best. :P

 

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