The Tommy Emmanuel Interview | World’s Greatest Acoustic Guitarist

So I have Tommy Emmanuel here, who's one of my absolute favorite guitarists in the world.

I want to keep moving my chair forward so I can see everything that Tommy plays.

Yeah, no, actually, he wants to keep moving his chair forward because he wants to be bigger in the picture, he wants me to look small.

That's what he's really doing.

Tommy, how do you get so great on the guitar?

There's so many different things that you do well.

Oh, so many different types of guitar playing, you're a great electric guitar player, you're incredibly well well versed in so many different genres and your arrangements utilize so many different types of guitar things.

Whether it's like I've seen you do your, you know, the cascading harmonics and things like that.

Well, well, I, I mean, I got it directly from Chet Atkins.

Yes.

As all of us did, he was the first person to make that sound on a record.

Yeah.

And it was, you know, it was a long time ago.

It was in probably the late 40s or early 50s.

Um, Lenny Bro came along and took it to another level.

I just found ways of doing it myself that, um, I tried to come up with arrangements of songs that the public would know.

Yes.

Like Michelle, somewhere over the rainbow.

I also have an arrangement of, um, Secret Love.

Which incorporates some other harmonics too.

Ooh.

Right.

So it has a bit of, has a bit of everything.

You can't, this guitar's not super loud.

Um, and Mr. and Mrs. Gibson loaned me this today.

Um, and it's got very light strings on it.

I use heavier strings, just wanted you to know that.

But it.

There are so many different stylistic things.

There's a lot of really sophisticated jazz harmony that you do in there.

Well, they, they're the surprise moments.

Yeah.

You know.

That we talked about.

I saw your interview with Sting and and Dominic.

And, um, you know, uh, Sting is so right about that.

We need to be surprised.

Because actually, surprise equals entertainment.

You know.

And I learned that from Pat Metheny.

And so surprise me is a beautiful thing.

So, you know, I, I purposely, I went looking for stuff that that is purposely not predictable.

That's where it gets into those more sophisticated harmony.

You're really combining so many different styles of harmony in that right there.

Right there.

Well, you know, I, I have a lot of people to thank for that.

You know.

Chet, of course.

Yeah.

Jerry Reed.

Yeah.

Ray Charles.

Yeah.

Um.

George Benson.

Um, and, uh, Lenny Bro, of, of course.

And, and every jazz player that I've ever come across.

And piano player.

I remember one time I was walking through an airport.

I can't even remember where it was.

And I, I heard this piano playing.

And it was, it was.

And he was playing Moon River.

And he went, you know.

Moon River.

And he wasn't singing.

And then he went.

And I went, holy smoke.

What was that?

You know, because guitar players don't do that.

That's right.

This piano.

And I said, I gotta steal that straight away.

So I sat down and got my guitar and worked it out.

And then I thought, okay, how can I vary it?

Because I can't use it every time.

Right.

So, so.

The second time.

Yeah.

Then.

So forth.

And, and I'm.

I'm trying to do piano things on the guitar.

To be different because I don't want to be sounding like every other kind of chordal melody kind of guy.

You know.

When you're working on an arrangements.

Arrangement.

Is there some style of, of, uh, harmony that you like to use?

If you're playing a Beatles tune, for example.

Right, then I go for the vocal harmonies.

I was wondering about that.

Because I noticed that.

Yeah, a lot of vocal harmonies do this.

So some parts go up while the melody's going down and vice versa.

Right.

And sometimes you get a harmony.

Like, uh, like Chet did this beautiful thing in, in Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

But then.

Yes.

Yeah.

You know.

It's very pianistic too.

Yeah, it's very Hollywood as well.

And there were so many incredible arrangers came out of, you know, the 30s, 40s, 50s in, in Hollywood movies.

And the music is, is truly amazing.

So, you know, I stole that idea immediately.

One day I'll wish upon a star.

And wake up where the clouds are far.

So forth.

Um, and I'm always looking for something that sounds vocal.

That's, that's, that that is a kind of sound.

Like it's written in stone.

The important thing to me is interpreting the melody properly.

What I learned, uh, through my life, thus far.

Is that if you want to learn a song and come up with an arrangement, you've got to learn the melody.

As the, as Chet would say, as the composer intended.

Yes.

So learn the melody properly first.

Um, don't go learning all the other fancy fancy stuff that that so many creative people do.

Learn the melody properly first.

Learn the right chords.

Then if you want to change it and make it your own thing, you can do that.

But you've got to learn the melody properly first.

People often say to me, how did you come up with this arrangement of classical gas?

Right.

So I learned the original, uh, from my friend Mason, hello Mason.

As a solo piece, it just took too long to get going.

The public, when when you're playing in bars and stuff like I was all those years ago.

Yeah, people have the attention span of a three-year-old.

You're being generous, I think, too.

You've got to.

You've got to keep it rocking and and you got things have to keep moving and grooving and and all that stuff.

You know.

So what I did is out of necessity, I changed everything about it.

And I purposely didn't play the, the original version.

Because it just didn't work as a solo piece.

I just took the iconic parts, which is.

Right.

And then.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The other three iconic parts.

Yeah.

So, um, I just built the rest of it around it.

And I just threw it out there.

You know.

Um, and and people loved it.

They responded straight away.

I always judge how something's going by audience response.

Because.

That's my job, I'm playing.

My job is to play for people.

I, I judge what my work is like and how I'm performing it, how, um, how it comes out.

By your response.

You know.

So you're, you're my, uh, you're my yard stick.

You're.

You're my quality control.

I'm talking to you out there.

You know.

If you take a song like Somewhere Over the Rainbow, that has such a sophisticated chord progression.

That versus if you're doing a, a Beatles song, for example, that may have a simpler chord progression.

You're always bringing different things in there, different techniques to, to make the, uh, the.

But the bottom line is, I'm still interpreting the melody correctly.

Hopefully.

Yes.

When I, when I play Lady Madonna.

Yeah.

My, my biggest decision is how do I want to make it feel?

Yeah.

You know, so I want the singing part to be like Paul McCartney.

Lady Madonna.

Right.

So.

How do you just play like that?

Without even, I mean, even warm up or anything.

I warmed up at 6:00 this morning.

Oh.

Um.

Now, I'm thinking like a singer.

When I, when I play, see, let's do a quick thing here.

Here's what happens.

When you're learning a new song that's complicated like Lady Madonna.

Yeah.

You don't play anything else.

Only that.

For at least until you can play it well.

You know.

Like how long would it take you to, to actually play, to, to do the bass and the melody together?

Well, I've been playing Lady Madonna, I'm trying to remember when I worked it out.

It was in the late 70s.

Yeah.

I've heard you, I've heard you play it for years.

I've played it many different ways and I play it differently now to what I did two years ago.

Mhm.

Uh, and I just played it a little differently then.

You know.

Um, so, which tells you that I, I'm free now.

I, I'm not, I'm not wrestling with the skill of playing this song.

Right.

What I'm doing is, um, I'm putting my, my mojo on the melody.

Yes.

Right, so all the rest of it is take, is all taken care of because I've played it enough.

But when you're working out something like this.

Yeah.

You're, it's not music yet.

It's skill.

Okay.

So you've got to work out carefully.

And people.

Don't want to do this.

But there is no other way.

No.

You've got to start out bar by bar, a little bit by little bit.

And and practice it and practice it and practice it.

Until it comes together and then something happens with our brain.

And what it is is.

Our attention suddenly goes to the melody and everything else starts to feel good.

But our attention goes to the melody.

Well, I shouldn't say we because.

I have to speak for myself because it may be different for you.

You know.

So our little gray cells.

How they work.

But so when I play Lady Madonna now, all I'm thinking about is how do I want to make it feel?

Right.

And and I enjoy it.

I love the song, it's so beautifully written.

As everything is with Paul McCartney.

You work out the skill of playing it and with enough playing.

And enough dedication, that skill turns to music.

And girls and boys, that's a great reason to get out of bed.

That is a great reason.

Okay, so I want to know though, what is hard for you to play?

Is there something that you're, oh man, that's hard.

A lot of the stuff that I write.

Yeah.

If I don't practice it.

I, I play it on stage and I come off going, what the hell was that?

You know.

Why aren't my hands doing what they're supposed to do?

I have nights where I come off stage mad at myself.

Because I haven't come up to where I need to be.

I'm, I'm trying to push myself.

You know.

And I realize, like if I listen to something I recorded 20 years ago.

I struggle with it today.

But back then, I was all over it.

I was just hosing the hell out of it.

And and it all came and and flowed and it sounded perfect.

The tuning was great.

The timing was good.

Okay, that's good.

And then, you know, today, if I don't play that song 10 times today.

I will struggle with it.

So that's the thing, it's like really keeping up on it.

Warming up, practicing and and playing.

Just playing the songs.

You know.

What was I playing this morning?

I was playing.

Um.

I was running over a song that I wrote with Chet Atkins, uh, a long time ago.

Because I wanted to put it into my show.

And tell the story.

Because it's an interesting story.

But, um.

I was running over it.

It's called Chet's Ramble.

I was just running it down.

Because, uh, there's a couple little parts in it that that needed some skill work.

And stuff like that.

Okay, when you say skill work, what does that mean?

That, that means like attention to detail?

Attention to detail.

Making sure that, that every move is, like there's a part in the song where there's a key change.

The song's in A.

There's a key change into C.

And it.

You know what I mean?

Just that move.

To get to that clean.

So that melody just does that.

Right.

And sounds like it has a life of its own.

So.

And like that.

And just milk that vibrato out.

And this thing just.

It just speaks, you know.

But you can't travel a lot with an instrument like that.

It's too fragile.

Yeah.

You know.

The Matons are awesome, they really are.

And, uh, when I was a kid in Australia.

What.

The people that we were idolized, you know, Chet Atkins.

Uh.

Glenn Campbell.

Yep.

Um.

Eric Clapton.

The Beatles.

Everybody had Gibsons, Martins and, uh, and Fenders.

You know.

Couple Rickenbackers in there.

And Gretsch.

Of course.

Chet, Chet was great.

And Rickenbackers too.

Yeah.

My first good guitar was an Australian made Maton.

Which is in their factory.

And, uh, where I'll probably, I'll be stuffed and mounted in the factory there.

You know.