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Good interview with Al DiMeola.
DiMeola has been a leader in the area of fusion and progressive rock since the release of his first album. Ironically, one of his biggest influences was bluegrass great Doc Watson. The speed of his playing at times is amazing and very precise. I remember reading that Al was amazed at some of the rock & blues players because “they didn’t pick every note” i.e. they used hammer, pulls and slurs. You may laugh at that but when you listen to him and realize what it would require to pick every note, you will see why he is such an amazing player.
Notice the muting in the 2nd and 3rd song, Al’s guitar is panned to the right on the 2nd song. He is accomplishing that with his left hand instead of using the heel of right hand at the bridge. BTW, the 2nd song is a collaboration with Paco De Lucia, who was one of the great flamenco players of Spain
In his early days, his weapons of choice was a Les Paul loaded with DiMarzio’s into a Marshall. Also in his early days, on the back of his albums was written: If you would like to write to me, my address is” and it was an actual street address instead of a PO Box – bet that has has changed
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Great post! Thank you for sharing these videos. Such a diverse and virtuosic guitar player. Listening to ‘Flight over Rio’ I found myself thinking of a ‘jazzier’ Carlos Santana for some reason.
Cheers, DebraYeah, I can see that. There is a lot of Latin influence to his music. Blues, jazz, Latin, flamenco, and even Doc Watson all blended together. Al & Jeff Beck are two players that truly amaze me with their command of the instrument. I’ve listened to them a lot over the years and I still ‘discover’ new things in their recordings. Jeff Beck’s Blow By Blow is one such recording as is Al’s albums Casino and Elegant Gypsy
Al once stated that in High School, he’d join the local garage band and b/c he couldn’t play Cream and Deep Purple as recorded (he said his lead lines came out sounding more like Jazz), those bands would tell him that they were breaking up and then reform under a new name a few days later.
Wonder if any of this HS mates went on to the fame that Di Meola has LOL
Here are some of his albums that YT has available. I had Casino, Elegant Gypsy, Electric Rendezvous, Land of the Midnight Sun, Splendido Hotel – all worth the time to listen thru
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I think he is a great musician but I’ll always remember him with some degree of negativity. My wife and I saw him in Tampa and like everyone else we were anxiously waiting for him to come on stage. While we all waited the roadies were adjusting the stage equipment and in particular tuning his guitars. He had about 3 or 4 guitars as I recall and all of them were tuned by a roadie before he started his show. Well, when Al came on stage nearly one hour later there was no apology to the audience for him being late. In addition, he picked up one of the guitars and strummed a few chords and then had some bad ass words for his roadie. He appeared to be really arrogant and that didn’t sit well with most of the audience as they all started clapping for him to start the show.
Anyway, when he did begin the show he was outstanding. He didn’t have much rapport with the audience but I guess his guitar playing spoke for him.
That’s my two cents on Al Di Meola.
Tim -
He took his place as a leader even before his first album. His stuff with Return to Forever, with Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke, was at least as influential as his early solo work. That said, Elegant Gypsy was one of my favorite albums.
And yeah, from Doc Watson he gets incredibly fast runs that are strictly alternate picking.
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