Double-guitar genius proves metal mettle
He strummed, he rocked, and he conquered. Much to the delight of Delhi’s headbangers, Michael Angelo Batio, famously known as the fastest guitarist alive, blew listeners away with his jaw-dropping “double-guitar” performance.
The legend, who invented the quad guitar, was inspired by a saxophone player. “I was amused to see this little African boy playing two saxophones together on TV. Initially, it was difficult for me to play two guitars together, but I wanted to try something that nobody had done before,” says Batio, who was in the city for his first ever VH1 God’s of Guitar gig in India in association with Turborg.
The 54-year-old feels that India is finally opening up to the world of metal. “It took me long, but I always wanted to come to India. It’s good to see people here embracing love for rock,” he says adding that he loves Indian music and is fond of ragas.
Having learnt the piano as well as the guitar at a very young age, Batio is a trained jazz guitarist, and has spent his earlier days playing ballads as well. But popularity of heavy metal in US, made him switch to the genre and experiment with the speed. “I started playing guitar when I was 10 and learned jazz in school. But later, the craze for metal was at its peak in the US and so I embraced it. But I feel I didn’t really switch to metal, it was always inside me. I just happened to become famous in that musical genre and loved it. It gave me a huge female fan following too, as women hate the noise of jazz,” he says.
He flaunts planet Earth and Yin and Yang tattoos, and still practices around 14 hours a day. “Rock needs power, energy and passion on the stage, and I still feel I’m a learner. But I don’t practice when I have a show. I warm up and hold up the energy to set the stage on fire.”
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