{"id":26650,"date":"2024-01-04T05:30:02","date_gmt":"2024-01-04T10:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=26650"},"modified":"2024-01-02T12:52:13","modified_gmt":"2024-01-02T17:52:13","slug":"golden-rules-greg-golden-and-a-life-with-guitars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/04\/golden-rules-greg-golden-and-a-life-with-guitars\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden Rules: Greg Golden and a Life with Guitars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Greg Golden Band recently released their latest album, Storyteller, Vol. 1<\/i>. The band\u2019s specialty is melodic hard rock featuring guitarist Golden and singer\/multi-instrumentalist Joe Retta. The group has played with some of the biggest names in the business, including Sebastian Bach, .38 Special, Great White, Y&T and many others. After years on the road, Golden eventually settled down at home in Reno, where he and his band are based. Golden also owns and operates Bizarre Guitars, a guitar shop with a massive inventory. Those twin passions \u2013 his band and his business \u2013 both center around the guitar. Golden spoke with me about his life in music. \u2013 bk<\/span><\/p>\n

How did you get your start as a musician?<\/b><\/p>\n

We lived in Las Vegas. My mom was a country and western singer when I was a kid; she sang in the club. She actually sang here in Reno in a couple of big nightclubs for about 25 years. My dad played a little guitar, and my sister sang pretty good too.<\/p>\n

On December 22nd of 1958, I was six years old. My dad bought me a guitar and amplifier from a neighbor. I never took a lesson; I\u2019m completely self-taught. But I was gifted with super long fingers, which is an advantage when you\u2019re playing guitar. I caught onto it pretty quick, and I could pick up melodies pretty well on it, so I\u2019ve always been a lead guitar player, because I could hear a melody and play it.<\/p>\n

My father owned a casino, so we played in there with the other casino owners\u2019 kids; they\u2019re still my friends to this day. So I\u2019ve been playing for 65 years.<\/p>\n

When did your band start?<\/b><\/p>\n

I started playing in Las Vegas, but my first real rock band was Axe, here in Reno. We won a national Battle of the Bands in 1967 and got to record at Studio 10 in San Francisco. We won a cash prize, and got to record with Johnny Mack. That started us, and then we had an agent here in town, so we were booked constantly. It seemed like we played all the time.<\/p>\n

I was in Floyd Rose\u2019s band. Floyd got signed by a record company, and we played all kinds of gigs. The first Floyd Rose [guitar tremolo system] was made for me; I have it in my vault.<\/p>\n

I was on the road, on and off for three or four years. I went to different towns, and I bought guitars. But I wanted to stay local; I got my fill of sleeping in a different bed every night for three or four years. I opened my guitar shop, Bizarre Guitar, when I came back, and I also played with Chuck Ruff from the Edgar Winter Group.<\/p>\n

Now, we\u2019re centralized at my store, and we have a really amazing practice place there. Frank Hannon, the guitar player for Tesla, is my best friend. He and I have been friends since he was 16. He has mastered and produced all of my records. I have two CDs, two EPs, and a DVD. My music\u2019s getting played on Sammy Hagar\u2019s internet radio show, which reaches a ton of people.<\/p>\n

Over the years, what about your band has made you most proud? <\/b><\/p>\n

I feel that my singer Joe Retta is the best singer in rock and roll today. There\u2019s no one better. When Ronnie James Dio died, Joe took over in Dio Disciples. And when Ronnie Montrose died, that band kind of fell apart, and I got the bass player. We had four former Montrose guys in my band at one time!<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve had opportunities to play in Nashville and all over the place, but we decided we really didn\u2019t want to go on the road. We\u2019re all pretty close to my age, and traveling is kind of out. We\u2019ve all been there, done that. But we\u2019ve opened for some of the bigger bands. We opened up for Tesla in 2017. And Frank plays with us all the time.<\/p>\n

My sound man and partner in the store passed away last December; it was the most shocking thing that\u2019s ever happened to me in my life. He was more than a brother. We raised each others\u2019 kids, did everything together. He had a recording studio, and during the pandemic, he ran all the cords from his building to my 18,000 square foot building. We recorded for six months straight! Then we sent it to Frank Hannon to be mastered. And it sounds incredible.<\/p>\n

What do you think explains the appeal of the kind of melodic hard rock that you play?<\/b><\/p>\n

For starters, the lack of anybody [else] doing it like we do it. I have a very unique style of playing, and Joe\u2019s singing is amazing. We have thousands of covers that we can do, but we\u2019ve got 58 originals. I\u2019ve written [the music], and Joe has written the vocal parts on about a third of them. Frank wrote the vocals on about a third, and Randy Scoles wrote some vocals [on our 2015 album].<\/p>\n

But what makes us endure is the fact that we are extremely tight, we have really good harmonies, and we have our own unique sound. We\u2019re not copying Lynyrd Skynyrd or Blue \u00d6yster Cult or Journey just like everybody else\u2019s worthless band that plays all over the place. I don\u2019t mean to cut down the tribute bands, but it doesn\u2019t take a whole lot of creativity to copy. We\u2019re pretty much an original sound and original band.<\/p>\n

What do you most enjoy about running Bizarre Guitars?<\/b><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve met an amazing amount of people through the store. I\u2019ve dealt with Van Halen, Doobie Brothers, Garth Brooks, B.B. King, Carlos Santana\u2026 if you name a rock or country band, they\u2019ve been to my store one time or another.<\/p>\n

I love playing guitar. It\u2019s just my thing, and I know a lot about guitars. I can fix and refinish them. I was a repairman for the first five years in the store. I\u2019ve always had a great stock of old and new guitars. We stock just about every Gibson guitar they make.<\/p>\n

This is my 49th year owning that business. I\u2019m into old guitars; I have a museum in my store. It\u2019s called the vault; we bring people down and show them around.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve been in music nearly your entire life. Where do you see music going in the future?<\/b><\/p>\n

The future of music is originality. Cover bands? \u201cOh, let\u2019s see how much we can sound like Journey. Let\u2019s see how much we can sound like Lynyrd Skynyrd.\u201d I don\u2019t believe in that. I think that people are so used to not hearing good music that they go back to things that they did like. They\u2019ll listen to a tribute or remakes of that stuff versus new music, because most of the new music isn\u2019t written that well.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not tooting my own horn, but my<\/i> albums are incredible. Great guitar, great vocals, great harmonies, great hooks, a great theme. And so our future is to keep writing good music, and to keep playing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Greg Golden Band recently released their latest album, Storyteller, Vol. 1. The band\u2019s specialty is melodic hard rock featuring guitarist Golden and singer\/multi-instrumentalist Joe Retta. The group has played […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26651,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,62],"tags":[5310],"class_list":["post-26650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-rawk","tag-greg-golden","cat-41-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26652,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26650\/revisions\/26652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}