Back in the late ‘80s, there was some scuttlebutt that Dave Mustaine had shortlisted Testament’s Alex Skolnick for the lead guitar position in Megadeth.
Mustaine had an ear for hot-shot players, and Skolnick, schooled by Joe Satriani, not long after making his bones on record as a Testament’s teenage guitar prodigy, was on his radar.
Ultimately, it didn’t come to anything. Marty Friedman got the gig. Skolnick remained in place, splitting the shred atom as Testament barrelled into their early career thrash classic Practice What You Preach.
But decades on, Skolnick nearly had a second bite of the cherry during Kiko Loureiro’s stint as Megadeth lead guitarist, circa 2016, when he was placed on standby in case some emergency paternity cover was needed for Loureiro.
The Brazilian guitarist’s wife was due to give birth and there was a possibility he might miss some shows. Skolnick learned the Megadeth set top to bottom and waited by the phone. The call never came but the experience stuck with him. He had always been close to the Megadeth camp, was a fan of the band, and yet learning the set was a real eye-opener.
“Oh yeah, I certainly got a new appreciation for the Megadeth stuff,” says Skolnick, joining MusicRadar over Zoom. “I’ve always appreciated Megadeth. I was a listener early on. I think, as I got older, I tried to avoid bands that were sort of in the same universe as Testament, just because you don’t want to absorb too much of another band, another player. And yeah, it was amazing to see how far guitar quality had come in our genre of music.”
Thrash metal has forever been an arms race, of brutality, of who could put on the most insane show, who could write the heaviest riff – and this being an ascendant subculture of metal guitar during the ‘80s, there was also an escalation of lead guitar technique.
It was a bit of a struggle to develop my work with Testament and have it be interesting to guitar fans, and myself as a guitar fan, but also fit the music and still be heavy
The challenge for players like Skolnick was how to write that virtuosity into songs written at breakneck tempo. It wasn’t always an easy fit.
“When I had started, I was considered the type of player that should probably move to southern California. Some of the Sunset Strip bands had great guitar – the guys in Ratt, George Lynch and Dokken, and many bands that didn’t make it to the point of doing records and touring but [had] just insane guitar players,” says Skolnick. “Up in the Bay Area, the music didn’t really lend itself to virtuoso playing, if you will. So it was a bit of a struggle to develop my work with Testament and have it be interesting to guitar fans, and myself as a guitar fan, but also fit the music and still be heavy.”
Skolnick’s musical appetites had always extended beyond thrash. After tracking The Ritual in ’92, he left Testament, joining Savatage for 1994’s Handful Of Rain, then moving to New York in 1998 to study a degree jazz guitar. It was in New York he formed the Alex Skolnick Trio.
He has played with the Trans-Siberia Orchestra, currently plays in progressive jazz-rock collective PAKT. His is a roving brief. In 2001, Skolnick returned to Testament for a one album deal, rerecording tracks from their first two albums on First Strike Still Deadly, before rejoining the band full-time for their triumphant second act in 2005.
Skolnick had changed. His musical vocabulary had expanded. He returned a better musician. He returned to a better band, too. Testament has only gathered momentum since returning with 2008’s The Formation Of Damnation, and the arrival of the twentysomething Chris Dovas on drums for this year’s Para Bellum has given them another shot in the arm – that kid can play anything.
We’d like to think Skolnick can, too. But he admits that learning the Megadeth setlist – and Loureiro’s material in particular – was a real eye-opener. Loureiro was doing in 2016 what Skolnick had wanted to do as a teenager in the late ‘80s, and he had to work out how he was going to play them.
“Fast forward a few years, yeah, you have somebody, like, Kiko, who’s a serious musician, and just playing so musically with Megadeth,” says Skolnick. “It was really cool to study what he did, and also, he’s the type of player who, some of his stuff, I’m not just not gonna be able to pull off. [Laughs]
“He’s got a few techniques that, like an Yngwie or even Van Halen – nobody can really play like those guys. I have my own fast parts, or I have my own arpeggios. I have things I can sneak in and make it work. But yeah, it was a challenge.
“I did a cover of a Judas Priest tune a while back. I don’t know – that should have come out. I don’t know why that hasn’t come out yet, but it was with an all star lineup. And I love those guys. They’re great players. But I also felt like, ‘Okay, I can sort of take what they did, and expand it and get even more technical.’ But Kiko Loureiro, it’s like, ‘Okay, I’m not gonna build, I’m not gonna expand on the technique here!’ I definitely had to find some of these replacement licks because I’m just not gonna do what he does.”
Also, a Megadeth setlist is not just Loureiro. You’ve also got Chris Poland, Chris Broderick, Glen Drover, and the great Marty Friedman – whose note choice and phrasing is as much of a challenge as his speed is.
“True. Marty has a very unique feel. And it’s not like his playing isn’t fast. It’s fast. But I kind of feel like, if we’re just talking about speed and technique, maybe we occupy a similar space,” says Skolnick. “He has a different note choice, and he has very unique inflections. It’s a challenging gig. As it turned out, Kiko was able to make the concert, so I didn’t end up performing with them, but just being on standby for that was amazing.”
Skolnick leaves us with some advice on what we can do if we ever feel ourselves outgunned or intimidated when playing with technically superior players. Skolnick has been there before. If you find yourself out of your element don’t panic. You can’t match every player note for note, climb into their style, and would you really want to if you could? Maybe if you’re a session pro and you need those gigs.
He’s doing this Guthrie-ism right here, it’s super impressive, what do I have? I’ll fill those bars with something impressive that I do, but I’m not gonna try to do his licks
But for the rest of us, if we’re playing with someone whose musical abilities outstrip our own, there’s no point in panicking. Like Skolnick says, you do you – play your own style. That’s what he does.
“The most recent time I’ve had this experience about two years ago, I played with the young bass virtuoso Mohini Dey at a music camp, and I had to learn one of her songs,” he says. “The guitarist was Guthrie Govan. Okay, well. [Laughs] Nobody’s gonna do what that guy does. I’m sorry. And that was another one. ‘Okay, but you know what? All right. He’s doing this Guthrie-ism right here, it’s super impressive, what do I have? I’ll fill those bars with something impressive that I do, but I’m not gonna try to do his licks.’
“And it worked out fine! I found my space in the song and it got a really good response. But yeah, that’s another example. He goes to places I’m just not even gonna try to go.”
You can read our full interview with Alex Skolnick, coming soon to MusicRadar. Testament’s new album, Para Bellum, is out now via Nuclear Blast.
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