On Acknowledging His Amazing Talents
Scott Tailford: So the list we put you on has a lot of amazing guitarists like Guthrie Govan and Joe Satriani, how does it feel to be included alongside the greats of the genre?
Jon Gomm: It feels kind of weird to be on a list like that, but it means that people who have heard of those guys pay attention to me who have never before, and also for the people who have been following me, like my friends and stuff, they see you on a list like that and theyre really proud of you, so its cool! (laughs) To me theres no difference between acoustic guitar playing, electric guitar playing or , so it shouldnt really matter that theres different genres. Most players are really influenced by Joe Satriani, I mean Im influenced by Joe Satriani! There are bits of his guitar playing that Ive stolen, like loads of his compositional techniques that he uses, I use them in my own songs. I write modal tunes, and Ill write pitch axis, and theyre both from Joe Satriani. Even the two-handed tapping, some of his solo pieces like Midnight or Day at the Beach where its just a solo, instrumental guitar piece on an electric guitar but with a clean tone, those are really influential to my approach to playing on an acoustic guitar.
S.T: I think something like Midnight, when you first see it, its so mind-blowing, I think that was the reaction a lot of people had to your Passionflower video!
J.G: Man I used to love playing that when I was kid, especially when youre an electric guitar player and you wanna kind of show off to somebody like Look at me, look what I can actually play when you dont have a band. Its like you could just shred a load of solos, but just sounds weird cause theres like no band, but like you could play it, and it didnt matter that there was no band, it just sounded cool.