Myles Kennedy Explains Why He Finds Metallica’s James Hetfield ‘Inspiring’, Names One Thing ‘a Lot of Your Favorite Players’ Do

Myles Kennedy dishes out some solid musical advice!

Myles Kennedy noted how the best guitar players he’s had the chance to work with never really stopped learning, talked about the key aspects of successfully singing and playing at the same time, and explained why he finds Metallica’s James Hetfield impressive in that regard.

Aside from being an impressive guitarist himself, Myles Kennedy has had the opportunity to work with some really impressive guitar players such as Mark Tremonti, Slash – and even Jimmy Page.

On the outside, these people may look like their playing skills couldn’t possibly improve further – especially since a lot of guitarists tend to look at them as the “end goal” when starting out. However, Kennedy tells Music Radar in a new interview how the drive to keep learning is one thing most of these guitar heroes have in common. He said:

“A lot of your favourite players, that’s what they would do. I feel like good players generally want to do that; for example, Mark [Tremonti] has always been super open to learn the things. He’s always got some guy that he’s learning from on YouTube, or he’s discovered new players he’s super excited about.”

Having recorded four studio albums and played 10 years together as Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, the Alter Bridge frontman also has a pretty good grasp of Slash’s guitar philosophy – and it’s pretty much the same thing:

“Slash is the same way. Even if I was playing some little lick, Slash would come up and go, ‘Hey, man, what’s, what’s that? That’s cool’. But the funny thing about Slash is, he would pick up a lick that I’ve been working on for years and I’d hear him play it later that night in the set, perfectly. He just picks it up very quickly.”

And while he started out as primarily a guitarist, Myles nowadays often finds himself in a position where he’s got to sing lead and play guitar at the same time. Needless to say, this is often very challenging to pull of correctly – especially with Alter Bridge, given how intricate the Kennedy’s and Tremonti’s guitar and vocal arrangements tend to be. In that case, Myles Kennedy stresses how getting the chorus right is one of the most important things:

“The chorus is very important. And generally the nice thing is with choruses is a lot of times it’s just a sequence of chords. And so that’s all you have to worry about.

“Occasionally you have a song where your chorus will be sung over a riff. And when that is happening, I might try it a few times to see if I can sing and play at the same time and once in a while surprise myself. But often what I’ll do then is I will try it in the rehearsal context and come up with a part that will complement what’s going to happen within the realm of the other guys that are holding down the fort with the riff. I’ll add some kind of fairy dust part to make to ensure that I can still sing it and play at the same time.”

Although they (generally) don’t feature highly complex guitar parts, Myles notes that playing and singing during choruses can also be extremely tricky if the vocals have a radically different rhythm to the guitar parts:

“So it really it really depends on the track and it depends on the rhythm. A big part of it is rhythm; if the rhythms are close enough, and the melody is accenting rhythmically, it will usually be fine. But if they’re in a totally different place, then it’s like rubbing your belly and patting your head.”

As the Alter Bridge frontman goes on to explain, this is why he finds James Hetfield so inspiring:

“That’s the thing that amazes me; I watch a guy like James Hetfield and it’s amazing how he can come up with those very rhythmic riffs and then sing over the top the way he does. I find that very inspiring.

“I find that occasionally, there will be something that will stump me, but with enough time, if I just put in the time and keep practising and doing it over and over and over, I’ll generally be able to land on my feet.”

Alter Bridge’s latest studio album “Pawns & Kings” is out now via Napalm Records.