Steel Notes Magazine
Spring 2017
Italy
Luca Cerardi
Interview with
Chris Poland
This month I present another interview with one
of the guitarist who changed the way to play
heavy metal and one of the ones who let me
push to play rock in my life: Chris Poland. I had
also the pleasure to have him in my Not Over Yet
project and it was awesome to talk about himself,
is way to play, his love for music and the way he
could and can play between fusion and metal, his
days with Megadeth, his friendship with Nick
Menza and his long running project Ohm.
What I was thinking then was that by constantly
doing those exercises, I would have eventually
been able to play the instrument for real. Of
course, playing is one thing and writing a song is a
totally different thing. I didn’t actually write one
until I was a teenager.
What do you feel when you play the guitar?
I focus on what the songs are giving me in that
moment and I try to affect the crowd as a
consequence of that. As Satriani also said, it’s
about trying to convey feelings and the
interpretation of the song to all the people in
front of me.
When did you realize that you wanted to play
the guitar? And when did you realize that you
could actually be a professional guitarist?
I was young when I realized I wanted to be a
guitarist, before I was even in a band. I remember
getting my favorite records at the time (like Led
Zeppelin) and I was trying to hit those notes.
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The turning points were many in my career.
However, I think the most important one was
when I left Megadeth. Right after that I actually
started to play the guitar all the time. With
Megadeth, we were in our 20s, we did not have a
lot of songs to play, and even the records we
made did not sound professional, given the
equipment at the time. Who knows how
everything would have sounded, had the
equipment been different. So all along, with