Regarded as one of the most technically challenging rock guitarists out there - as he proved with Racer X and with his various solo albums, not to mention, the greatest Mr. Big - the gifted Paul Gilbert has recently released his first all-instrumental album 'Get Out Of My Yard' where he has excelled himself. During his first European solo tour I had the privilege of meeting a talkative, relaxed and - surprisingly for a man of this talent - an ego free Gilbert a few hours before his performance (and what a performance!) at the London Mean Fiddler.

Welcome to your first ever solo European tour.

Nice to be here. Thank you.

How come it took you so long?

I think I was scared because playing in Japan was so easy and comfortable, and before I became a solo artist of course I was with Mr Big, who had huge success in Japan. So when I left the band I started doing tours there and they were just easy. I always thought if I toured the rest of the world, maybe nobody would show up. Finally I started experimenting and did a little tour of South America and some shows in the States and it went great. So I thought 'It's worth doing an experiment to see if people would come to the show' and so far they have. It's been really good.

And you're only doing three shows in the UK.

Whenever I get letters from fans saying 'When are you coming to play here?' ... well, there's not a lot I can personally do about it. I just call my manager and say 'Book the tour for as many shows as possible in there if you can'. Then I start practising guitar so I do a good show. But as far as when and where we go, I leave that up to the promoters.

You're playing songs from Mr Big, Racer X and your own solo albums. We couldn't be happier!

Oh, good! Me too. I love all of those bands I've been in and it's easy because I think my favourites are the same as the favourites of the people who are coming to the shows. Also YouTube has been really helpful for me because originally MTV was the way people would see you on TV and you had to fight, kick and scream to get anything on MTV and lots of times you just couldn't. But YouTube is sort of the people's choice. People watch whatever they want to watch. There's no programming and a lot of people seem to be looking at my old instructional videos, old concert footage and the new stuff as well. A lot of the computer savvy kids are finding out about what I do through You Tube. So, thank you You Tube and thank you kids.

On this tour you have Jeff Bowders on drums and Mike Szuter on bass, but you don't have Bruce Bouillet.

I don't have Bruce Bouillet because there wasn't room for him on the budget and also there wasn't room for him on most of the venues. The stage of a lot of venues that we play is so small that we can barely fit the four people we have in the band. It was really cool playing with Bruce. We hadn't played together since the early Racer X days but musically I'm just as happy playing with the band I have now. It sounds great and it has a focused sound. Electric guitar is a noisy instrument. It's very easy to make a lot of noise with an electric guitar - you have all these knobs, you can turn everything up and you can be horribly noisy. So when you have two electric guitar players you have twice the potential for noise, so to me with only me causing the noise trouble it's arguably an easier sound to listen to for a long period of time.

You just finished the G3 tour in the US and Canada with Joe Satriani and John Petrucci. Had you met Satriani before?

Oh, sure. Not for a long time, but I did a benefit concert that he was putting on for a friend of his a few months before the G3 and I came to jam on a couple of songs. I gave him a copy of my instrumental record which I thought he'd be interested in because most of Satriani is instrumental. We had a great jam session that night. I think that was really the spark of what got me into the G3 tour. I think he liked my instrumental record and also I think he enjoyed our jam session on stage.

In the last interview with Fireworks in 2005 my colleague Thiago asked about the possibility of doing G3 and you said it'd be fun, but you'd rather play by yourself so you could get to play longer. It's great to see that now you're doing both!

I enjoyed G3 a lot, more than I expected. The jam session at the end, when we all play together, was so much more fun than I ever expected. Joe chose the songs but he took our suggestions as well. And the songs are simple songs, like Jimmy Hendrix stuff or 'Goin' Down' by Jeff Beck. I love those songs but they're not like the most progressive stuff that all of us do on our sets, so in a way it's a little simpler when we get together. As an audience member that would always bum me out, like 'Come on, with three of these amazing people together, whoever it is, I wanna see them work something harder than that', whereas the jams were spontaneous. But the reason I loved it is when you are spontaneous it can go anywhere. It can be terrible or it can be great and it so just happened that the three of us had a real good chemistry and every night it was fantastic. We all pushed each other to go to the highest levels and it was very inspiring to do those jam sessions.

Do you think there would be a possibility of bringing G3 to Europe?

Anything is possible. Joe is the organiser of G3 so you'd have to ask him, but I'd be happy to do it. It would be great.

Now, let's talk about your newest release, 'Get Out Of My Yard'. In the past you weren't keen on recording an all-instrumental album. What made you change your mind?

The reason I didn't want to is I never listen to instrumental guitar music, I like rock bands but over the years, once in a while I would do an instrumental song ... like I'd do a Racer X album it would be all vocals except for one instrumental or my solo albums would be all vocals with maybe one instrumental. On the last tour I did, about two years ago, I started doing more and more instrumentals in the live show and they were fun to play and the audience response was great. So I thought, 'Maybe it's a little possible' and then I thought 'I've been playing guitar for such a long time and I've got so many things that my guitar can do that it'd be interesting to see if I can write instrumental songs that I'd like that a person who doesn't like that style of music would like'. It was like breaking my own taste barrier. So that's what I tried to do. At the end I did it, I really love listening to it, I liked making it and I'll probably do another one.

Everyone knows that you are a bit eccentric (in a good way) when it comes to your writing and playing. But how did you come up with the idea of having a human capo (where another guy literally uses his hand, forming a moveable capo) in the first 'impossible to play' minute of the album?

That was sort of competing with myself. I felt like when people would hear my first official guitar solo record they would compare it to the instrumental songs that I'd already done. Although I hadn't done that many before, the ones I've done would have very, very fast and intense guitar playing, so I thought I really have to do something beyond what I've ever done and I wanted to do it within the first minute. I want people to put it on and within one minute, they know 'Okay, this is really a serious record'. At first I just started by playing my normal kind of soloing style as fast as I could just to try to make the best version of me, but then I thought 'No, it's not good enough. I have to expand, I have to make something different, something that I've never done before.' I'd been doing some things with this three string guitar and I started working on that but it was limited because when you play very high up on the neck the frets are close together so you can stretch out with your fingers very easily but as you go lower the frets get wider apart and you can't do the stretches anymore. I thought if there was a capo I can use it to open the strings, but then I'm stuck in one key. So I thought 'What if the capo can move?' and I turned into a human capo and that's the impossible to play first minute of the album.

You have a bunch of instructional DVDs. It's not very usual for guitarists of your talent to share their knowledge.

Teaching is a whole different skill. You can be a great player and have no idea how to communicate it in small logically placed pieces for a student to digest. If you try to take all the knowledge that you learned as a musician over 30 years and teach it to someone, you have to think about what order it's in, where to start and how to make sure students understand it. Teaching is a whole art and an art that I really enjoy. The more I do that, the more I love it ... any level. It is sort of easier to teach people that are at your level because then you don't have to explain so much, you can just show them whatever it is you're working on now, but it's a challenge to teach a beginner and believe it or not that's what I enjoy more than anything. I taught beginners, people who didn't know how to tune or anything. I was trading Japanese lessons for guitar lessons in Los Angeles when I had some time off. It was really fun because it takes you back. I had to start there too and it makes me remember what it was like to be there and my whole journey through guitar so far. I love teaching, it's very inspiring.

The new instructional DVD for 'Get Out Of My Yard' is out now and I must say that, aside from being interesting for guitarists, it's also very entertaining to watch.

I had no idea. I'm glad you say it's entertaining to watch because I worked so hard editing that video. Not because it was difficult to edit but because my deadline was so short and I stayed awake three days in a row without any sleep, so by the time it was over I was 'I don't know if it's good, but I know it's finished.' So I'm glad I have an objective voice to say it. I really was happy with the way it came out. It was longer than I expected because with the DVD you can have a longer time, so it ended being over two hours of material.

You mentioned recently 'Get Out Of My Yard' is selling better than your previous work.

I think so.

It's amazing, though, as it can be classed as more targeted to guitarists, whereas the other albums could attract a wider audience.

I've always been surprised at the people who have really focused on the guitar niche, like Steve Vai or Joe Satriani. I've been surprised by their success because although I respect their abilities, I don't really listen to guitar instrumental albums, so I just assume that no one else does. So when I see them selling out all these big venues I'm like 'Really? Who's listening to this?' I'm a fan of classic rock, like Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith. I see Aerosmith sell out a stadium 'Of course! They have a great singer and cool tunes', because those are kind of my standards. And I look at Steve Vai and I go 'Great guitar playing, really interesting tunes but there's no singing.' Now that I've gotten into the art, I'm getting more interested and really beginning to appreciate the beauty of it. That's one of the things I enjoy so much about it. To me it's brand new. Certainly the icons of the art, people like Satriani and Vai, have been doing it since the mid 80s, but I really haven't paid attention so it's like this brand new undiscovered art, both with what has been done and also with what I'm trying to do, so to me it's very fresh and very interesting.

Did you miss singing on this album?

Not really because live I still get to sing a few tunes. On G3 I was sort of the main singer. Joe sung one song, but I sing most of the stuff and then my own set. It's a nice balance too, to give my voice a rest, so when I do sing I sing better, unlike fatigue from singing every single song.

Have you ever thought of bringing a singer into the band?

I have, but I'm much more picky now than what I've ever been with singers. When I was a teenager and looking for a singer all I wanted was someone with a great voice and hopefully who would look the same in our band, but now I realise that in order to really work with a singer, or maybe any musician, you have to not only agree on things musically but also philosophically. I think that's really important for the singer because they're singing words and they have to be singing about something. That something can be anything, it can be something that makes you cringe or something that makes you feel right on, or anywhere in between. So to me it's not only finding a voice, but also finding a mind, somebody who can philosophically compose the kind of message that you want to send to your audience. To find those two things in one human being is really hard.

So, in the meantime you will keep having fun playing guitar and singing too.

I'll keep an eye out but I had no great hope. It's such a rare gem.

What is your favourite track of the new album?

I think it's 'Hurry Up'. 'Hurry Up' is very influenced by the band Rush and Rush is probably my favourite rock instrumental band even though most of the songs do have vocals, but there's instrumental songs like 'YYZ' and 'La Villa Strangiato' and also the instrumental sections in their songs. To me it's the most listenable rock instrumental stuff and I tried to imagine if Rush was still in 1978 and was writing a new song what it would sound like and that's what I did with 'Hurry Up'. I certainly added other elements like Gary Moore and Van Halen, but I was really thinking Rush. And actually the title 'Hurry Up' means rush.

On the album you named a track 'Three E's for Edward' in honour to Eddie Van Halen, one of your guitar heroes. Have you met him in person and were you sad when the Van Halen reunion a few months ago was postponed/cancelled?

I did met him briefly and it was a great honour, really cool. We sat around and just listened to music. It was really fun. To me the disappointing Van Halen news was when David Lee Roth left the band and Sammy Hagar joined. In retrospect I really like some of the stuff that Sammy did with Van Halen, some fantastic, totally top level music, but the energy that they had with David Lee Roth was to me religious in its intensity, power and happiness. It was life changing as a kid to see those shows with Dave. With Sammy it was still great. Maybe musically better but energy wise nothing can top that original line-up. I don't know if them reuniting even with the original line-up would ever be the same. I think there's a certain amount of youthful energy that you have when you are 25 that's going to be tough to recreate when you're 50. I'd love to see it. I'd go to see him in a second. I'd go to see Eddie play with Air Supply if he was playing in that band. I just want to see him play! One of the reasons I came up with that song is that it's been 10 years or so since there's been any new Van Halen music, as far as a complete album, and I miss him. To me his music is like a friend, like a parent almost. I miss my dad! I just want to make sure he's doing okay and I want to hear something good from him.

As a guitarist you're amazing and everyone knows that, but musicians in general can be very hard on themselves. Do you feel you have any limitations?

Yeah, of course. I know my limitations very, very well because that's what I work on. There are parts that I'm always practicing and trying to improve and music is such an unending universe of places you can go that to me the only time that you can feel like you really know everything is if you're totally self-taught because then it's fairly easy not to be able to see that whole universe. But as soon as you go to school and learn music theory and learn about other styles of music, suddenly you can see it. The whole universe opens up and you go 'There's no way I'm ever going to go all these places', so I really have to chose my favourite ones, maybe take a vacation over here to the jazz planet for a week to get some things there but then I want to come back to rock, which is my home. If you have any amount of education you easily see that it's unending.

What about flamenco style? You play one song, 'Flamingo', which is beautiful.

Oh, thank you! That song had a much better response than I ever imagined and it's a funny song to me because the technique that I use to play it is so primitive compared to what a real flamenco guitarist could do. A real flamenco guitarist spends years developing all or most of the fingers on their right hand so that they can use it as a super pick and I've done none of that. All I got is like the claw of a crab, two dumb appendages that can barely move, but my left hand is good. So my left hand is sort of dragging my right hand through the song. But it was inspired by what I heard in my head, so any time that happens the music turns up good regardless of the technique.

You seem to embrace different cultures. You moved to Japan for a while and then you came back and wrote some Japanese sounding songs. What have you got to say in this respect?

Sometimes it's just having to escape your own culture! At the time when I decided to go to Japan I had been living in Las Vegas for 10 years and it was like living on the moon because I had a really nice house there with a recording studio in it but I really never went out because I had no interest in any of the Las Vegas culture. I didn't want to gamble or go to the casinos. There was really nothing for me there other than a place to work. I was flying the musicians from other parts of the country and we would play music in my house to record it. But the whole time I was there I never played a live show there - it might as well have been the moon. I had very little interaction with any of the culture that was around me. I'd been to Japan so many times working, to do shows, and I really liked it but I never had much time off, so I thought I had about a three month time period when I didn't have to do anything, I'd rent an apartment there and see if I could learn some Japanese and have a vacation in a really different place. It was absolutely great and I ended up going a lot more and now I'm married to a Japanese woman as well.

During the last interview for Fireworks, you explained that the song 'We All Dream Of Love', from your previous studio album, 'Space Ship One', was about 'the hope for finding a great love someday'. Well, you are now married to native Japanese, Emi, who is joining you on the tour playing keyboards. You must have met her soon after that interview and it must be great for you to have her on the tour.

I knew her before that but I was thinking about her when I wrote it. I've been on tours before where you leave your girlfriend or wife at home and that can be really hard. The thing I enjoy is that I've been on a lot of touring completely by myself doing the guitar clinics and there are so many unusual experiences that you have when you do a rock'n'roll tour. Everything from the great shows to the ugly back stages, to the great food or the horrible food, weird fans, great fans... there are so many extremes that you have in your daily experience of being on the road and when you just experience that by yourself you can't look at her in her eyes and share that look of understanding. It's really nice to experience it together with people and if you can experience that with someone that you're really close to, that's even better.

Over in Japan you also met Marty Friedman and you were on some of his TV shows. Do you think you could do an album together? Maybe a new version of Cacophony?

Oh, I don't know. Marty and I come from very similar influences. We both know very obscure heavy metal songs. I can play an album cut from a UFO record but Paul Chapman on guitar instead of Michael Schenker and Marty would know exactly what I'm doing. We both grew up in the same era and we have the same records. We had a great time playing on that show, but I think we are kind of territorial. I don't know a lot about him but I know he's doing his records and I do mine. We came from the same place but we went different directions.

Sorry, now I have to ask you about this. Same as you are successful in Japan, Mr Big were doing extremely well and I know you never talk much about Mr Big anymore...

Oh, I don't mind.

You simply state now that you respect the band and you enjoyed it, yet at the end of it for you, you weren't enjoying it and the band wasn't getting on well. Can you be a bit more specific?

We want more gossip! [laughs] Well, it's no fun being more specific because I'd rather remember the really cool parts rather than 'This guy did this and this guy did this and I'm still mad at them', because I'm not. I think if we got together it would just happen again, which is why any time the question of reforming comes up, it's 'No!' The same people, the same thing would happen. It was just some bad chemistry between human beings, which is unfortunate because they're great musicians. When we were together as much as we were driving each other crazy, we all really loved the band. By the second or third year it was already a nightmare, intolerable, but we all just looked at it like 'We don't care if it's intolerable, because this music is so cool and we're having such a good time playing it.' But finally it got to the point that we couldn't even make the music anymore because we couldn't even get together and make decisions. For me that was the end. In your band you have to be able to talk about the set list or where the second verse goes, the specific things of how to make the music. If you can't make these decisions then it just falls apart.

Mr Big is one of my favourite bands ever.

Oh, thank you.

And I spoke to Billy Sheehan a while ago and he said there was no way he'd ever share a stage again with Eric Martin.

Unless it's a boxing ring! [laughs]

Hahaha! But if for any strange reason, Billy, Pat and Eric decided to reunite Mr Big, would you be in for it?

No, I really rather not. Well, they did it with Richie Kotzen.

Yeah, but it was different. As much as I love his playing he changed Mr Big. Without you it's not the real Mr Big.

Thank you for the compliment, but the real Mr Big was there for eight years and those records live on.

Are you in touch with any of them?

Actually I did some shows with Billy. There's a whole DVD of it that is available through Mike Portnoy's website. The band was called The Amazing Journey and we did three shows in America all in tribute to the Who. So there's two hours of Who songs. It was great and Billy's bass style was perfect for making those Who songs rock. There was really great feel in that context. We had a great time.

My editor, Bruce Mee, together with English band Ten went to Tokyo a few years go for the Universal Who tribute show and he was pleasantly shocked to see you sitting behind the drums kicking ass at the Hard Rock Café on Zakk Wylde's set. He'd like to know whether you actually learned drums or it was just instinct.

It was also with Tom Keiffer from Cinderella and it was very short, like a private thing for the record company. I had some of the best drum teachers in the world because I've been in bands with great drummers. It happened from the beginning. I've been in rock bands since I was 11 years old so when the drummer would finish the song, I'd ask 'How do you do that bit?' So I've always gotten drum lessons from the people I've been in groups with.

As for Racer X, is there anything going to happen?

I hope so. I really like Racer X. It's a really fun heavy metal band and the guys are good friends of mine, so I hope we'll do something again.

We heard that John Alderette is suffering from a rare blood disorder.

He sent me some news about it right before I left for this tour and I gave him a call but he didn't answer the phone, so I haven't been able to talk to him yet. As soon as I get back I want to talk to him and find out what's going on.

Talking about health problems, you suffer from tinnitus, a hearing difficulty. Does it affect your playing?

My ears are terrible. All I can hear from this ear is bumbly things and bass guitar. It doesn't affect my playing because first off, music is loud, so I can always hear loud music. The only thing that is hard is if you talk very quietly I can't hear.

Thank you very much for your time and words. Is there anything you would like to add?

Of course a million thank yous to all the people who give me a job. I love my job, playing guitar. The other message is that I always want to promote my heroes that people don't know about. So if you're a guitar player out there, please buy these two albums: 'Go For What You Know' by Pat Travers and 'Bridge of Sighs' by Robin Trower. These are the great albums that most of the modern heavy metal kids don't know about. Those are two of my biggest guitar heroes. I got so much of my style from those two records, so please go back and check out these records.