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Gus tell me how did you start playing guitar ? Was it as a kid ?
Yes . I started playing when I was 9 because my dad had this record at home he kept playing , Frampton Comes Alive , by Peter Frampton . I just loved the way he did the Talkbox and I thought it was like a robot effect or something . I didn ’ t think it was a guitar at the time . Yes , that is how I was interested in picking up a guitar
Interesting . Do you remember your first guitar ?
The first guitar that my dad got me was a classical guitar . For the first four years , I was kind of stuck with that classical guitar and I was going to some local music school basically learning a few chords and stuff nothing really too exciting but when I was fourteen he saved up and got me my first electric guitar , which I still have . It is a Fender Stratocaster . It was one of those models and the first attempt that Fender made to try to be a bit more metal . It was like a Floyd with Rosewood and a humbucker
How did you get into your first band ?
I was playing covers when I was 16 around town just classic rock stuff . I played for a couple years before I went to America after high school . I went to Berklee College of Music for a while and dropped out of that and did some recordings with some classmates from Berklee and that was basically the beginning of Firewind as a project , as an idea .
And that was back in ’ 98 ? Yes , ’ 98 .
Ok , so you were trying to shop at labels to get your project Firewind acknowledged ?
Yes . Just trying to see if there was any interest out there at the time and there was no interest .
( laughter ) Ok . So Firewind got signed ?
Yes , I was still young and my ideas were not developed soI was doing all these 4-track recordings and I would send them to this label in Atlanta , Leviathan Records , and the owner was David Chastain . He would write me back letter ’ s or e-mails and said yes he would encourage me to keep working at it and eventually he offered me the first contract and that is how we signed with Leviathan .
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