Edged In Blue

After his last exhaustive world tour with Def Leppard, Vivian Campbell needed a break from music. But not a long one.

"After a couple of weeks I started to get anxious about not playing in front of people," remembers the Belfast-born, LA-based guitarist. "So I started to play at open-mic blues jams." The jams were the genesis of Campbell's first solo album, Two Sides of It, a raw, willfully ragged blues disc. Recorded live in the studio with no overdubs whatsoever, it's a far cry from the studio sheen of Def Leppard and Campbell's previous bands, Whitesnake and Dio.

"I was a little sheepish about telling people I wanted to do a blues record," admits Campbell. "A rock player trying to play blues can be really pathetic because they often approach it from a point of view of technique. But it's not about the technique. It's about interpretation: how you put your own spin on it."

Campbell prepared for the record by immersing himself in classic blues—from the earliest acoustic recordings to Muddy Waters' electric masterworks. It was an eye-opening process, says Vivian: "I had a layman's knowledge of the blues, but I'd been more influenced by blues-based rock players like Rory Gallagher, who was my first guitar hero. But now I realized how much Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers, who played guitar in his band, influenced the rock players I grew up with. I could hear note-for-note the licks that Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page played."

Campbell's main blues ax is a Yamaha AES1500. "I used it more than any other guitar on my record," he says. "It's just an amazing- sounding guitar. It was the one I took to these blues jams, where you don't bring an amp—you just plug into whatever's there. But no matter what I plugged the AES1500 into, it always sounded great. It's a beautiful instrument."

The Yamaha hollowbody was a change of pace for Campbell, who'd previously favored solidbodies. "The AES1500 has so much tone," he notes. "It's there whether or not it's plugged in. Since it's semi-acoustic, you hear the tone of the instrument, whereas with solidbodies, 98% of the tone comes from the pickups. It has definitely changed the way I play."

Vivian sets the guitar up with relatively high action and heavy strings gauged .013 through .052. "I'm very physical with guitars," he says, "as were my guitar heroes, like Rory Gallagher and Gary Moore. Part of what I liked about those guys was that they played every note like they meant it. I grit my teeth and shred my fingers when I play. Whereas a lot of guitarists from the '80s with monster technique played so fast that they barely touch the instrument—they just fluttered over it."

While the '80s was the era that brought Campbell fame, he has little nostalgia for the era's guitar styles. "It became this Olympic sport of bigger, better, faster, more," he recalls. "That burned me out for two reasons: One, because I couldn't do it! I tried to play with more technique, practicing and practicing, but not getting any better from a technical point of view. And two, on top of that, the style left me cold. You'd have these guitarists with amazing technique, but they all sounded exactly the same. At the time, I was frustrated because I couldn't play that way, but in hindsight I'm glad. I recently listened to the records I made with Dio for the first time in many years, and I finally heard the worth of what I was doing back then. I didn't have the technique, but I had the passion. I was clumsy, but I was full of fire—and ultimately, that's more important."

Campbell's recent recording experiences have renewed his commitment to that reckless fire. "I believe in the spontaneity of blues and rock ‘n' roll," he states. "The human imperfection has to come across, because that's ultimately what people connect with. It's so easy to make records with today's technology. But every record on the radio sounds the same, with the same overcompressed, perfectly time-aligned quality. In blues and earlier rock, you hear the human element. I'm slowly trying to get Def Leppard to think that way, too!"

How's that working out? "It's a bit of an uphill battle," chuckles Campbell. "In my 13 years with Def Leppard, I've grown immensely as a songwriter and singer. And we obviously spend a lot of time in the studio, so I've learned a lot about making records. But perhaps the most important thing I've learned about making records is that I like to make them in one take, unlike Def Leppard!"