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BY JUDE 6 0 L D
IF YOU ARE A FAN OF INSTRUMENTAL ROCK.
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you'll likely be hard-pressed to find any moment
in the recorded history of the electric guitar
more bittersweet than Jason Becker's beautiful
intro on "River of Longing." That's because
while the piece is one of three new tracks on
Becker's recent Shrapnel release, Collection, its
tender E major prologue was tracked by Becker
way back in 1990. And if you're at all familiar
with Becker's story, you know that means it
was one of the guitar virtuoso's swansong performances. At that point in time, Becker was
lucky to still be able to even hold a guitar, let
alone play one.
"I was definitely slowing down by then,"
says Becker, who, five years prior to that session, was a 16-year-old wunderkind lighting
up the shred scene alongside Marty Friedman
in Cacophony. And just one year before that
recording, Becker's stunning Clapton-meetsPaganini lead guitar chops had landed him bona
fide rock stardom as lead guitarist for David
Lee Roth. 'Xs I was recording that intro, my
hands were shaking," continues Becker. "They
kept falling off the guitar."
Becker's physical challenges all started
one night when he was kept awake by a leg
cramp that wouldn't fade away. "I spent
months jogging and stretching, but that leg
wouldn't stop feeling lazy," says Becker. "I
was limping." Poised to become one of the
most dazzling and influential shredders since
Steve Vai and Randy Rhoads (YouTube some
old Becker clips for instant proof of his virtuosity), Becker soon began to suffer muscle
atrophy in places, and it wasn't long before
he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis (ALS), the oft-fatal neurodegenerative disorder more commonly known as Lou
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Gehrig's disease. The guitarist was told his
career was over, and given three to five years
to live.
That was 20 years ago.
"To survive this disease that long, you
have to have a real life mission," says Gary
Becker, Jason's father. "You have to still feel
like you have soniething left to do, which
Jason always has."
Though Becker can now move only his
eyes, he is, in many ways, as active a musician
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as ever. He doesn't play guitar, though. He
plays other guitar players. Just as he speaks
sentences through those people closest to
him (using an ingenious system of word
spellingvia simple eye movements he developed with his father), he expresses his music
through producers such as Dan Alvarez and
Mike Bemesderfer, and through guitarists
such as Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Greg Howe,
Dave Lopez, Steve Hunter, Marty Friedman,
and Michael Lee Firkins, all of whom grace
Becker's new album.
"I'm on two songs on the record, and they
were recorded 15 years apart," says Firkins.
The first of Firkins' features is the 11-minute
epic "End of the Beginning," a challenging
electric guitar concerto that Firkins, acting
as Becker's hands (just as he did in the
studio when tracking it), subsequently
performed with orchestras in Northern
California.
"There's a lot of emotion in that track,
because when we recorded it, Jason could
still talk, but he could no longer play, and
none of us knew how long he'd be around,"
says Firkins. "But Jason has more will to live
than most people. Now, 15 years later, he's
out-surviving everybody, and even though
it takes him longer to get his ideas across,
he still knows exactly what he wants from
a guitar performance, and he gets it.
"Fifteen years ago, we got deep into tone,
stacked harmonies, and a lot of the classical
approaches Jason wanted to hear employed
on the piece's guitar parts, which took us 12
days to record! For the new song, 'Electric
Prayer for Peace,' things were looser and less
detail-oriented, because Jason was speaking
through his father using his eye language
through the studio's double glass window,
but it didn't matter. The music is still 100
percent Jason's. The best part,about working with Jason is that he does not slack. If
there's something he doesn't like, he tells
you. He's always willing to go the extra mile
to make things happen, which is a quality I
always admire in a musician."
While Becker wasn't able to attend all
the sessions with Collection's guest guitarists,
his pieces arrived in their studios fully realized, which helped shape their performances.
"Hearing Jason's music pour through the
speakers for the first time was an awesome
moment," says Satriani, who also plays on
"Electric Prayer for Peace." "Jason had sent
me Pro Tools files, but didn't give me a hint
as to what kind of music they held. What he
had composed was so beautiful and full of
emotion. He gave me no specific direction
other than to be myself and take it where I
thought it should go. It was a joy to be part
of the music's ebb and flow. I just plugged
in and let the music take me for a ride."
Indeed, while it certainly "takes a village"
to record a modern Jason Becker album, the
painstaking efforts are always worthwhile.
"It starts with ine working with my father,
Gary, to compose, which takes some time,"
says Becker. "I give him a few notes at a time,
and then we go into a matrix where we can
Jason Becker
the songs are from Cacophony, my solo
albums, or David Lee Roth, the songs I chose
are the ones that have proven to be the most
moving to people-the ones that have gotten the best feedback from fans over the
years."
Bemesderfer points out that one of the
many amazing things about the new album
is that, compositionally speaking it's Becker's
newest pieces that are the most sophisticated. "When you go from the stuff recorded
when Jason was at his complete technical
best as a guitarist t o the stuff recorded
recently, it's just incredible that there is no
discontinuity. What you have is a record that
spans an entire music career with no deviation in quality. That's cool, because it means
the music Jason is producing today is as good
or better than any he's ever done, and that
sends a really powerful message-a message
about the amazing things people can do if
they really want to." 9
time' to play
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edit each part of each note-from attack to
duration-and move them around. Next, we
layer tracks until I have the tune written.
Then, Dan A l m a or Mike Bemesderfkr comes
in to do edits and adjustments and make it all
pro and perfect. And they each record the live
musicians with me. Making music this way is
a lot of work, but it really is a fine substitute
for guitar playing. It creates the same feeling
inside me as playing did."
"Jason is the producer/composer," adds
Bemesderfer. "Dan and I are just the hands.
I find it really easy to do editing with Jason,
because he understands exactly how platforms like Pro Tools and Logic work, and
knows how to use them to massage parts,
real or sequenced, until they're perfect."
Despite having hardly played any guitar in
the past two decades, Becker remains active
on ,the gear front, and has developed a signature solidbody with Paradise Guitars based on
his famous custom Peavey-his distinctive
'80s ax with the colorful fretboard numeral*
as well as a dual-mode ProTone Jason Becker
Distortion pedal. Of course, of all his current
market offerings, it is Colktion Becker is most
proud of.
"This record is for new and old fans alike,"
says Becker, who says that if he had been
playing guitar the past 20 years, there'd probably be a lot more Prince, George Clinton,
and Indian music in his playing. "Whether
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