Alexi Laiho comment (excerpt)

Even before he started cutting classes to shred in his bedroom, Laiho had begun taking guitar lessons at a local music school. For five years, he learned jazz and classical technique, as well as proper picking. “All the crap that no kid ever wants to learn!” he says with a laugh. “No one was there to teach me sweep arpeggios and stuff like that. So I’d buy instructional videos and learn from them. I taught myself a lot of the metal technique.”

As a result, he says, “sometimes I do things wrong; I’m just banging the shit out of the guitar. But who cares, as long as it sounds cool. The key is to find the balance between technique and attitude, and that’s something they don’t teach you in school. You can’t play like John Petrucci and be in an extreme metal band. It just doesn’t work.”

-----

None of this is meant to undercut Laiho’s dedication to the guitar; he typically spends his days off in the rehearsal studio, pushing his technique as far as it can go. But as much as his chops are a reflection of the heroes he grew up with, so is his hard-partying lifestyle. You can’t develop on a steady diet of Guns N’ Roses, Ozzy Osbourne and Motley Crüe and not indulge in the many distractions of road life. Simply put, true guitar heroes know that playing well isn’t enough.

“There are lots of guitar players out there who play super fast and super well, but they’re also super lame. Like Dream Theater,” he says, referring once again to his favorite whipping boys. “It’s not even music; it’s sports. And then there are the guys who concentrate on all the little details and never fuck up one note when they play live. You know what? That’s not cool! If you’re going crazy onstage and you miss a note or two, who gives a shit? It just shows you were really into it.”