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Does Brad Gillis suck?


Does Brad Gillis suck?  

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Youtube Speak of the Devil

Ozzy was ahead of his time, truly. I mean, look at his blue yoga pants!  😉

Watching this makes me jealous. Being in Hawaii (on Oahu) for the show I saw on this tour you'd get a minimum of "gear" taken over. So we got guitars, drums, amps, mics and some small backdrop. NO light show, no fireworks, nothing fancy. The costs to ship all the stuff over for one show was too much.

When I saw Judas Priest on the Scream' tour they borrowed a Harley to Rob could "ride it out" onto the stage. That was the big extra. Only, no gas was allowed in the arena, no motors, so they "pushed" him from the back out onto the stage and had the Harley sound run through the PA. Rob cranking on the throttle and the sound is coming from the PA, curious...  😉  We actually knew the bike, connected to a friend in high schools family.

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3 hours ago, Drew816 said:

Being in Hawaii (on Oahu) for the show I saw on this tour you'd get a minimum of "gear" taken over.

I saw Brad Gillis with Night Ranger at Blaisdell Arena 11/23/88.  Great show but I'd agree the stage was relatively bare.

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On 6/28/2020 at 11:43 AM, Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame said:

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/

I used to rehearse and record at a recording/rehearsal studio in Hayward, CA called Spirit Wind Studios. Brad had a business partner, Jim Hawthorne, who owned the studio at that time and was involved in the production helping Brad with his background music for the ESPN commercials. I visited the studio one day and got to check out some of Brad’s guitar and his Soldano SLO 100 stack over there. :D  

                                                                                                                                                        Guitar George

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3 minutes ago, holLoWskull said:

Brad's an excellent player IMO.   Jeff (Watson) had the flashy 8-finger tapping stuff, but when it came to the solos I almost always preferred Brad's phrasing and tone in the Night Ranger stuff.  

Jeff had that 8-fingered stuff, but he also had some really impressive technique. The "Don't Tell Me You Love Me" solo had that complicated picking pattern at the beginning of his section, and then he did a speed run that started off with 8ths, then triplet 8ths, then 16 notes. He did that acceleration thing in a bunch of his solos, and could really burn with the fastest of the speed guys.  And then the string skipping in his flatpicking was also considered world class.

He just apparently had the same ego thing that Steve Perry and Dennis DeYoung did, where he'd use his health to hold the rest of the band hostage for touring "I can't believe they would tour without *me*!".  Which is said, because while he was an important member of the group, he was more periphery. The core was really Jack, Brad, and Kelly.  They were kind of a power trio with long-term guest musicians, now that I think about it a little.

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5 minutes ago, Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame said:

Jeff had that 8-fingered stuff, but he also had some really impressive technique. The "Don't Tell Me You Love Me" solo had that complicated picking pattern at the beginning of his section, and then he did a speed run that started off with 8ths, then triplet 8ths, then 16 notes. He did that acceleration thing in a bunch of his solos, and could really burn with the fastest of the speed guys.  And then the string skipping in his flatpicking was also considered world class.

What a monster solo that was. I've tried to learn Watson's part, and I don't quite have the dexterity to pull it off.  Brad's solo, however, I can play; and to my ears, it sounds even cooler that JW's. 

 

 

 

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And I think Brad's black and red super strat is the best looking guitar I've ever seen.  Made me a black pickguard/fretboard/hardware fan with any color body, but especially red.

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40 minutes ago, Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame said:

As much as I like Night Ranger, I didn't like Jeff Watson's tone very much.  A little too shrill.  But Brad's tone was smooth.

His tone from those '80s albums and on most live videos certainly sounded a bit tinny, especially for a guy wielding a Les Paul most of the time. Between Brad's tone  on those NR records and John Sykes' tone on Whitesnake, Mesa Boogie seemed to have a lock on high gain nirvana in that era.

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2 minutes ago, Biz Prof said:

His tone from those '80s albums and on most live videos certainly sounded a bit tinny, especially for a guy wielding a Les Paul most of the time. Between Brad's tone  on those NR records and John Sykes' tone on Whitesnake, Mesa Boogie seemed to have a lock on high gain nirvana in that era.

 

1 hour ago, Hamer95USA said:

I used to rehearse and record at a recording/rehearsal studio in Hayward, CA called Spirit Wind Studios. Brad had a business partner, Jim Hawthorne, who owned the studio at that time and was involved in the production helping Brad with his background music for the ESPN commercials. I visited the studio one day and got to check out some of Brad’s guitar and his Soldano SLO 100 stack over there. :D  

                                                                                                                                                        Guitar George

I thought Brad used Soldano, too, but the video earlier has him playing Mesa Boogies. Which is it?  Did he switch at some point?

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13 minutes ago, Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame said:

 

I thought Brad used Soldano, too, but the video earlier has him playing Mesa Boogies. Which is it?  Did he switch at some point?

He and nearly everyone else playing hair metal and guitar rock bought an SLO 100 at some point in the late '80s, but they weren't even on the market until either late 1986 when Michael Soldano first set up shop or, more likely, at some point in 1987.  I vividly recall Clapton and Knopfler being two of Mike's first customers in 1987.  Regardless, Brad was most definitely a Boogie guy during NR's heyday, as was John Sykes, who had a couple of those ridiculous 180-200w Coliseum heads. 

 

 

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14 minutes ago, Biz Prof said:

He and nearly everyone else playing hair metal and guitar rock bought an SLO 100 at some point in the late '80s, but they weren't even on the market until either late 1986 when Michael Soldano first set up shop or, more likely, at some point in 1987.  I vividly recall Clapton and Knopfler being two of Mike's first customers in 1987.  Regardless, Brad was most definitely a Boogie guy during NR's heyday, as was John Sykes, who had a couple of those ridiculous 180-200w Coliseum heads. 

 

 

that makes sense.

thanks

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7 hours ago, Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame said:

 

I thought Brad used Soldano, too, but the video earlier has him playing Mesa Boogies. Which is it?  Did he switch at some point?

I also know that Brad uses a Mesa Boogie Tri-Axis preamp and a Soldano Decatone 3 channel 100 watt amp head as well. I didn’t see any Mesa Boogie gear the night that I visited that studio. 

                                                                                                                                                                                      Guitar George

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On 6/27/2020 at 12:40 PM, Drew816 said:

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.

Boogie all the way on Speak

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  • 2 weeks later...

I liked the "Speak of the devil" album a lot, never followed Night Ranger. There are several players who have the sound I like to get with my stuff, Steve Lukather, Neal Schon and Brad Gillis. They have in common that they used Mesa amps and used the Floyd a lot. Also Vernon Reid, he plays weird stuff, but he also has that sound.

 

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The first time I heard someone do the "Floyd warble" was when BG did it at the at the end of his "Don't Tell Me You Love Me" solo. I went, "Whoa! What was THAT?!" I got my first Floyd-equipped guitar in 1983 and had to figure out how to do it immediately.

He's also a very energetic interviewee:

https://podbay.fm/podcast/1020669587/e/1438036844

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9 hours ago, Dana_V said:

The first time I heard someone do the "Floyd warble" was when BG did it at the at the end of his "Don't Tell Me You Love Me" solo. I went, "Whoa! What was THAT?!" I got my first Floyd-equipped guitar in 1983 and had to figure out how to do it immediately.
 

Yup.

That Floyd flutter was something I didn't intentionally achieve until '88 :P. Was in a music store trying out some Floyd equipped axe and one of employees was encouraging me to go nuts on the bar. I flogged the bar rather vigorously and it slipped out of my hand and fluttered!  That trem was set up REAL well! 

To be fair, I would likely have created it prior to but the Floyds on my Kramer Focus and later, my modded '76 Strat weren't really setup to flutter.

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 7/15/2020 at 10:39 PM, Dana_V said:

The first time I heard someone do the "Floyd warble" was when BG did it at the at the end of his "Don't Tell Me You Love Me" solo. I went, "Whoa! What was THAT?!" I got my first Floyd-equipped guitar in 1983 and had to figure out how to do it immediately.

He's also a very energetic interviewee:

https://podbay.fm/podcast/1020669587/e/1438036844

I had the same experience.  I hadn’t heard anything like that up to that point.  Great song.  

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