Good Charlotte’s Benji Madden: “If you’re a guitar player, your skills go completely to waste if you’re not working with a f**king great songwriter”
When you’re a rockstar, it’s easy to let the ego take over. However, as tempting as it is to show off all your finest licks and tricks, Good Charlotte’s Benji Madden insists the key to being a great guitarist is knowing when to wind your neck in.
In a recent interview with Guitar.com, Madden explains why he’s never wanted to be seen as a “guitar god”. Instead, he knows that a solid riff is an integral cog in Good Charlotte’s sound; showing off can compromise the integrity of a track, so he tries to look at the bigger picture. While “everyone’s got an ego”, he insists that “if you are serving the song, that guitar part is going to be memorable.”
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With that in mind, he also argues that all good guitarists know to trust their bandmates and fellow songwriters. “If you are a guitar player, your skills go completely to waste if you’re not working with a fucking great songwriter,” he adds. “Your moment to shine will come in these moments of great songs.”
“Serve the execution of a song, and make it a fucking classic!” he concludes.
It’s a similar ethos held by plenty of legendary “guitar gods” – know your place, play your part and let the song do the talking. Eddie Van Halen notably hated being called a “shredder”, because he believed that shredding was often just a way to “show off”.
Speaking to Guitar Player journalist Jas Obrecht back in 1991, the Van Halen guitarist explained: “A lot of people just do all kinds of crazy shit [but] playing as fast as you can doesn’t really hold much water for me… To me, a solo is to highlight song. It’s not to show off.”
“I was like that back then [when I was younger],” he added. “But the whole band thing, the songs… that’s what’s important.”
Marty Friedman has also expressed his distaste for guitarists who only long to ‘show off’ onstage, notably “shredders”. He associates the term with players who only want to stroke their egos, indulging in speed for speed’s sake and often lacking musical depth and versatility.
“That’s what I always associated the word ‘shred’ with,” he explained during a February episode of Masters of Shred’s Pages In Time. “So when people say, ‘Marty Friedman, he’s a shredder,’ I’m like, ‘Please don’t, please don’t!’”
Elsewhere, Queen’s Brian May has also stated that guitarists need to consider the song as a whole, rather than inflate their own ego. During a 2024 Q&A at the The Red Special Guitar Podcast’s Red Special Meet Up, he explained how the song should always be a priority, not the guitar solos.
“I think the guitar, to me, is always secondary to the song,” he said [via Ultimate Guitar]. “It’s not an excuse to go in and show off. It’s a way of enhancing whatever material you’re using. So I’m always trying to coax different textures out of it – different sounds, different moves.”
Good Charlotte’s latest album, Motel Du Cap, is out now. The band have also just released a festive cover of Fairytale Of New York, right in time for Christmas…
The post Good Charlotte’s Benji Madden: “If you’re a guitar player, your skills go completely to waste if you’re not working with a f**king great songwriter” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
