Dweezil Calls In The Stars For New Album
Van Halen, AC/DC, Deep Purple, Malmsteen, Vai all feature on new record
Dweezil Zappa has enlisted the help of a ream of guitar legends for his forthcoming new album.
Eddie Van Halen, Brian May, Steve Vai, Steve Morse, Angus and Malcolm Young, Yngwie Malmsteen and Warren DeMartini all guest on Zappa’s forthcoming solo album ‘What The Hell Was I Thinking?’.
In a recent interview with The Huffington Post, Zappa stated about the forthcoming CD, "It's a record that I started a while ago, and I just haven't had a chance to really put it all together. I know I'm probably going to add some changes based on my own technical improvements to my playing. I guess the best way to describe the project is it's an audio movie. I recorded a bunch of different music that all segues together, so it's constantly morphing and turning. Each little segment has its own little audio environment, and then you have these cameo appearances by all these different guitar players who sort of start falling out of the speakers. So, it's got about thirty different people on there so far. . . And the thing is, all these different people, they all have a very recognizable sound, and in the world of guitar playing, that's a real challenge — to create your own sound to where when you hear just a couple of notes you actually know who it is.
"The fun of it is that you're actually hearing a lot of these people out of context, they're playing on things they wouldn't normally be playing over, and that was part of the fun of making this project happen. So, either people are playing on exactly what you would expect them to play over, or something you would never expect them to play over. The Van Halen thing is pretty funny because I put this section together where I asked Edward to play sort of a 'greatest-hits' from all his different guitar licks. We just took different licks from different solos from different records and made him play them all and string them together in one guitar solo. That was pretty fun because it was like having your own toy Eddie Van Halen — like, 'I'll make my Eddie Van Halen play this.'”
Dweezil Zappa plays at next week’s High Voltage festival.
The "son of Frank” plays on Saturday 24 July on the Prog Stage at Victoria Park. There are still a handful of tickets left for the UK’s inaugural classic rock bash.