Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick sat down with Ultimate Guitar ahead of the band’s European summer festival run to discuss his new book, Jazz-Rock Guitar Improvisation — published by Hal Leonard and co-authored with Dave Rubin — and why rock guitarists who fixate on speed and technique are limiting themselves as players, drawing on Miles Davis as the defining counterexample.
On the shape of the summer schedule, he said: “Yeah. The first show is a festival headlined by Iron Maiden, which is exciting, and we’re doing a number of these European festivals. That’s a great thing about doing metal guitar in the 2020s — there’s this festival circuit that didn’t exist when we first started. So we have festivals in July, then I come back for a couple of weeks, then I’m back in August. These are mostly metal festivals, but occasionally we get put on these pop festivals that have a token metal band. I think Rihanna is headlining one of them, which is really interesting. Riot Fest in Chicago is like that — they have pop and stuff you’d never think to place together.”
September is taking shape around jazz rather than metal, with one major exception still to be revealed: “Then September has been up in the air. There was another festival tour in the works, but another tour came up for early 2027 — it hasn’t been announced, so I can’t say who it is, but it’s a very big tour that we’re a support act on. So now September’s open, and I’m going to do more of the jazz-rock thing. I have some dates booked on the West Coast. And I’m actually part of a Jeff Beck tribute — which is fitting, because it’s his birthday today. It’s taking place in September in Northern California with a bunch of musicians, put on by a friend of mine, guitarist Eric Barnett, who’s been doing it for a couple of years now. It’s an all-star thing.”
“And I’m trying to work out a show with Stuart Hamm at the Baked Potato. We played there a couple of months ago — we actually had about three shows there this year, which is pretty good; it doesn’t always work out with my touring schedule. And I think I have another show there with a group I played with earlier this year — it’s still being put together. Somehow, I’m going to be playing the Baked Potato, which is always great. This other group is with Brian Charette, a great organ player. So it’s a nice mix of metal stuff and jazz stuff — these two worlds a lot of us think of as separate.”
Turning to the book, Skolnick described its intended audience: “Well, you’re my target audience, somebody who maybe wasn’t a natural with music theory instantly, but wants to explore it, and explore it in such a way that you’re not hit over the head, with hopefully relatable examples.”
He argued that jazz is more accessible than rock guitarists tend to assume, particularly when approached through jazz-rock as a gateway: “Well, quite a bit, actually. My gateway to exploring jazz was jazz-rock. It really just took having a taste for Miles Davis in the ’80s, and Return to Forever, and Jeff Beck’s instrumentals in the ’70s, and then having it explained to me.”
“Like, all these people Jeff Beck is playing with: ‘Okay, Narada Michael Walden, the drummer and one of the main composers on Jeff Beck’s Wired — he also played for this group called the Mahavishnu Orchestra, you should listen to them.’ And then Mahavishnu Orchestra — ‘oh, that’s led by John McLaughlin, who played for Miles Davis in the ’70s.’ And then you discover that jazz is foundational to a lot of that music. In the same way that blues is a source of much rock, and what led to hard rock, I think jazz is a source for more improvisational ideas — ideas a bit more complex than blues-based ones.”
Skolnick then addressed the book’s dedication to Miles Davis, framing it around the same tension between technique and artistry that the book itself explores: “It’s really interesting, because I discovered him at a time when I was very caught up in the Van Halen revolution — Eddie Van Halen. And then there seemed to be this hierarchy of guitar players that came in the wake of it: Randy Rhoads with Ozzy, Yngwie, all these amazing players. The music was great, and it’s still great, and I think that’s often overlooked, because so much attention gets paid to technique. Eddie Van Halen talked about this in interviews — he was very frustrated by it, because he saw music as a whole and saw technique as just one ingredient in his music.”
“But Miles did not have the most technique. If you put him up against other trumpet players of the day — Dizzy Gillespie, say, or Clifford Brown — he couldn’t outdo them, couldn’t outrun them in speed and dexterity. Instead, he created palettes and colors. He was just a real artist. It wasn’t about technique. It was about creating this sonic image. And he was able to do that decade after decade, each time reinventing himself, and also uplifting these amazing musicians who’d go on to be incredibly influential, including a lot of the ones I mention in the book.”
Jazz-Rock Guitar Improvisation, co-authored by Skolnick and Dave Rubin, is published by Hal Leonard and is available now.
