Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick, equally renowned as a composer and improviser across metal and jazz, spoke about some of his earliest guitar influences in a new interview with Rad Jet.
Skolnick said (transcribed by Blabbermouth): “Going back, when I first started playing at 10 years old, I would say my first two or three years I was really focused on songs, and I didn’t know if I wanted to be a rhythm guitar player, singer, or a lead guitarist. I was more into John Lennon, Paul Stanley, Elvis [Presley]. I loved ’50s rock.
“Although Chuck Berry, he really inspired me to play guitar. He was in a movie called ‘American Hot Wax’. Yeah. And then I later made the connection: ‘Oh, he inspired The Beatles, he inspired AC/DC, he inspired Kiss.’ But he was really my idea of a lead guitarist until I heard Van Halen.
“And when I heard Van Halen, it was a few years after the debut. And this was already the early ’80s, so say, like, ’82 or so. I’m 13. They were already on, like, album four or five. But that was when I first heard that debut album, and then I had that same experience that many people talk about having in 1978 when the needle hit the vinyl and ‘Eruption’ [came on].
“I mean, ‘Runnin’ With The Devil’ was enough just ’cause of the tone, and the solo in that, it’s a composed solo, so it’s overshadowed by a lot of [Eddie Van Halen’s] other [stuff]… But that is amazing, too. I mean, nobody played like that. He already paved new ground just with ‘Runnin’ With The Devil’. And then, of course, ‘Eruption’ happened and then, okay. The world has changed.”
Skolnick added: “The Beatles [were] probably [my] biggest [early influence], or Kiss as well, and Chuck Berry, all of those. But then it quickly evolved into Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, Scorpions, AC/DC.
“I think [AC/DC lead guitarist] Angus Young actually deserves a lot more credit. He’s a guy that gets a lot of attention more as a performer. But he’s a really fantastic musician. And [late AC/DC guitarist] Malcolm [Young], too, may he rest in peace… And Eddie Van Halen cited [Malcolm] as one of his favorite musicians. And they were close friends too.”
One of the elite guitar shredders of the 1980s, Skolnick was famously a student of Joe Satriani alongside Steve Vai and Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, and was sought out by Ozzy Osbourne, playing a gig with the Black Sabbath legend in the U.K. in 1995. Skolnick joined Testament in 1985 at age 16, stayed for eight years before departing in 1993, and went on to study at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.
Skolnick’s long-running Brooklyn-based jazz-rock band Alex Skolnick Trio (AST) recently released its sixth album, Prove You’re Not A Robot, via Flatiron Recordings. Alongside Skolnick’s inventive guitar work, bassist Nathan Peck and drummer Matt Zebroski bring rhythmic complexity and emotional depth, with odd-time signatures and genre twists that have become AST hallmarks. Since forming in the early 2000s, AST has reimagined the jazz guitar trio by melding influences as far-reaching as Wes Montgomery, Black Sabbath, Prince, tango, calypso, and Western swing, earning praise from Billboard, Downbeat, Jazziz, The Village Voice, and NPR.
