Why I Suck... Series 3, Episode 5: Eric Johnson!

 So we've discussed the style of Satan's own guitarist, we've discussed the guy who taught him.. where next? How about the guy who came out to jam with them?

The softly spoken but instantly recognisable style of Eric Johnson shot to prominence with the 1990 with the Ah Via Musicom album containing Grammy-award winning hit “Cliffs Of Dover” but there is a lot of history preceding this.

Born Austin, Texas in 1954 to a musical family, the young Eric initially began studying the piano, but he made the switch to guitar around the age of 11, recounting hearing one of his three sisters playing some blues out on the front porch at a very young age - “I remember thinking, 'what sound is that?'” he remarked in an interview with Total Guitar in 1996. Early influences included (of course) Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, but also country players like Chet Atkins and jazzers like Wes Montgomery.

In 1969, aged 15, he joined his first professional band – a psychedelic rock outfit named Mariani, and the following year they recorded a demo (which has subsequently become something of a collector's item). The next few years were spent travelling in Africa with his family but in 1974 returned to Austin and joined a fusion band called The Electromagnets, before forming his own band – The Eric Johnson Group – in 1976, and spent the next two years recording his debut album “Seven Worlds”. Unfortunately, due to contractual wrangling, it would be an incredible twenty years until this was finally released in 1998.

The next few years saw Johnson working as a session musician with Cat Stevens, Carole King, Christopher Cross, Richard Marx and more, eventually being recommended by Cross to Warner Bros. Records and being signed as an artist in his own right in 1984. In that same year he would go on to appear on the popular “Austin City Limits” music TV show (think Jools Holland but in Texas) performing the career-defining anthem “Cliffs Of Dover”, and in March 1986 his first album “Tones” was released (featuring “Zap”, the track I managed to transcribe most of this month's examples from). May 1986's Guitar Player magazine ran a feature in him and the album, but it proved not to be a major scuccess commercially. It did, however, strengthen the cult following that had built up around Johnson's playing since the early days of his career. Due to the poor sales, Warner let his contract drop and in 1990 he switched to Capitol Records independent division, Cinema Records.

1990 brought the now famous “Ah Via Musicom” and with it the breakthrough hit “Cliffs Of Dover”, firmly establishing him as major force in the guitar world, and 1996 would bring the follow up “Venus Isle” as well as the first iteration of the G3 guitar tours woth Steve Vai and Joe Satriani.

That's where we'll leave the potted history for now, although it's worth mentioning that Johnson is still recording and touring, having recorded the albums “Yesterday Meets Today” and “The Book Of Making” and in 2023 will be touring both of them. Assuming that next year doesn't try and top COVID and war by slamming a comet into the earth.

Right, let's take a look at some licks -

This first is an “in the style of” to illustrate Johnson's unique use of the humble minor pentatonic. Crucial to his technique is the use of larger, often odd numbered note groupings – here, we're using position 1 of E minor pentatonic in descending run grouped in 5s. A side note to help get the rhythmic feel – it's tricky to count 5 to a pulse, so I use a five syllable word, “opportunity”. Practice saying that to a beat, timing the first syllable on the beat and you'll find it easier to get the rhythm. Then have the notes match the words you're saying.

In this second example we'll take a look at Eric's approach to chord voicings – specifically, a technique known as “open voicing” (worth checking out the Neil Zaza blog entry from last year for more examples of this). What's happening here is we're taking the usual chord inversion ideas – Root position (R 35), 1^st inversion (35 R) and 2^nd inversion (5 R 3) and breaking the sequence, and in doing so we raise one note of the chord into the next octave up. So an open voice chord will be played R 5 3, 1^st inversion 3 R 5 and 2^nd inversion played 5 3 R. For this example I've taken an A major chord (A C# E) to demonstrate how this applies on the fretboard. As a side note on technique, Johnson will often play these either fingerstyle or hybrid picked with a clean tone for a more “pianistic” sound.

Starting along the D string, we have Root position, 1^st inversion, 2^nd inversion and then the same idea extrapolated onto the A & E strings.

Moving on to an example from the classic “SRV” from 1996's “Venus Isle” (which features guest solo from Jimmie Vaughan), this is an absolutely devastating pentatonic blitz including some of Eric's signature harmonics. Take note of the large note groupings in the run down – this is a significant part of Johnson's sound. For the tapped harmonics, you're aiming 12 frets above the fretted note, and to begin with at least you'll need to eyeball it- so take note of reference points like pickups, polepieces etc.

Our final example comes from “Zap” on 1986's “Tones” in Ab, but our example uses the F minor pentatonic – this is nothing to clever though, most of you reading this will recognise the “3 frets back” or relative minor hack. Note some of the wide intervals and position shifts involved in this – and I would put money on Joe Bonamassa having spent some time working this one out...

It's been a fascinating month looking at this utterly unique player and rest assured he'll be going under the microscope again before long! Next up we're looking at Deep Purple's riffmeister Ritchie Blckmore, as a prelude to Unleashing The Fury with Yngwie! See you then , don't forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel to see these licks and ideas demonstrated.