Matteo Mancuso is more or less half-way through writing the follow-up to his bravura debut album, The Journey, with four songs written, another four, maybe five to go, and while he says he is enjoying some downtime before hitting the road next month, you get the impression he is itching to get it done.
Sure, all of us in his audience are still grappling with the compositional audacity of it all, jazz, rock, fusion, all emulsified in those big atmospheres. The Journey felt like a landmark release for instrumental fusion, Mancuso announcing his presence with a virtuosic fingerstyle approach that electrified electric guitar and yet was adapted from classical guitar. The “virtuoso of virtuosos” was how Tosin Abasi described him. He was not alone. The Journey made good on the hype
But Mancuso says he has outgrown the material. He’s got something else to say. “The tunes are more mature from a compositional perspective,” he says. “And plus, I’m more happy with the sound I am achieving with this album. I’m happier with the recording process. I will never do up the same album as before. They need to be very different from one another.”
And that’s a theme in the conversation we’re here to have: what were the 10 albums that changed Mancuso’s life? The artists Mancuso chose never stood still. All in their own way did some radical with their sound, with the guitar.
The following list is guitar-based but Mancuso says Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds would be his 11th pick, not ostensibly a guitar album but one that reminds him of driving from Palermo to Catania to visit family, and it endures because it is a “masterpiece of composition”.
That’s what Mancuso wants people to hear in his next album. “I would like to have more attention not to the the way I play but rather what I play,” he says. Maybe some clues as to how it’ll sound will be in the following…
Led Zeppelin – S/T (1969)
“I started with rock influences, so the first album that comes to my mind was the first Led Zeppelin album. That was the album where I first started to learn songs – on the first position on the guitar, my first blues, Good Times Bad Times, my first power chords.
“Led Zeppelin was and still is a big influence on me, and that album in particular was one of my favourites because my brother also is a big fan of Led Zeppelin. My brother is 12 years older than me. Always in the car we had some rock ’n’ roll, like AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen. A lot of the rock stuff I came to know because of my brother. He was playing this album every day.
“Of all the Led Zeppelin albums, it’s still one of my favourites for sure. The Led Zeppelin discography is so interesting because you could tell they wanted to do something different every time, like the folk elements are more present on the later albums, the previous albums more blues-based, and there are always acoustic elements in it – Jimmy Page playing acoustic was a huge inspiration for me.”
Van Halen – S/T (1978)
“Hendrix was the first virtuoso player that I heard and he was also a big influence but I remember vividly, [aged] 12 or 13, when I first discovered Van Halen. The first video I saw was Eruption, playing live. I don’t when it was, maybe the ‘80s. Van Halen was already incredibly famous then. But the first album I listened to was the first Van Halen album from ’78.
“It’s still my favourite album because they’re not like pop songs. There’s a tune called I’m The One – it’s still one of my favourite rock tunes, and Eddie is playing a lot of these solos and it’s incredible because you can hear everything is in one take. The band is playing in the studio, no overdubbing. It was magical to me.
“I think it was the energy. All of the members were really young. Van Halen was discovering his style, and so he was really excited about it, ‘Oh, check this out!’ Nobody was playing like that. That’s why it was so revolutionary. [The energy] is something that you lose if you record too many takes. That’s what I like about going into the studio with all the songs ready; there’s more energy to it.”
“If you are recording in your home studio you know you have all the time you want so you lose that energy, that nervousness and stress that makes you play in an angrier way – and that’s what’s missing in today’s guitar players. Today, guitar players can do as many takes as they want. By the time you make it perfect, and upload it on Instagram, it doesn’t have the same energy.”
Wes Montgomery – Boss Guitar (1963)
“My father is a really big fan of jazz guitar, so he introduced me to all the jazz greats, people like Barney Kessel, Django Reinhardt and Wes Montgomery.
“My favorite was for sure Wes Montgomery. I really fell in love with his music. The first album I listened to was Boss Guitar. The note choices and the solos, even if they are improvised, they sound like he wrote them. It sounds like it is a preconceived solo and that’s how good it is.
“When you listen to Wes Montgomery live it is the same thing. There is a live album where Wes does five, six minutes solos and he never repeats himself. It’s something magical, so Wes is for sure one of the best jazz guitar players we've had.”
Weather Report – Heavy Weather (1977)
“This is still my favourite Weather Report album because it introduced me to the jazz-fusion world where you can play with distortion but you can play jazz.
“At the time it was called electric jazz because of that. Double-bass was substituted by electric bass guitar. Semi-hollow guitars were replaced by solid-bodies, and distortion came also to the jazz world.
“Heavy Weather is the representation of that change. It’s the first fusion album I came to know. That’s when I fell in love with Jaco [Pastorius]. The bass in most of the tunes, it’s right in front of you! It’s a bass that makes melodies. After that album, a lot of bass players took the frets off their bass to play fretless but nobody was playing like him! [Laughs] Jaco was the Jimi Hendrix of bass.”
Al Di Meola – Elegant Gypsy (1977)
“This came out in the same year as Heavy Weather. Imagine, in the late ‘70s there were so many good choices. Al Di Meola, Chick Corea, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin – everything in that period of time! It’s kind of mind-blowing.
Al’s playing, especially Mediterranean Sundance, in duo with Paco, is magical. It’s something incredible
“Elegant Gypsy is still one of my favourite fusion albums. Al’s playing, especially Mediterranean Sundance, in duo with Paco [de Lucia], is magical. It’s something incredible.
“The sense of melody that Al has is very Mediterranean, because Al likes to mix a lot of Latin and Italian elements to it – and South American elements in his playing. It is based on melody, so he is very good at making tunes that are complex but simple at the same time.
“You maybe have a complex arrangement but a very simple melody on top, and when you have this kind of mix you get the musicians and the people who are not musicians together. That’s why I like Al’s compositional skills. Every album is different. He is always searching for something new. That’s what I like about him.”
Chick Corea Elektric Band – S/T (1986)
“We have Scott Henderson on two albums on this list. The first is the Chick Corea Elektric Band album.
“I know that Scott is not on all the tunes from the album but one tune that stuck in my head for a long time is King Cockroach. It is one of the best fusion solos I have heard to this day.
“Scott, I think he has an incredible gift in terms of timing and feel, because every time I hear Scott play my body can’t stay still. I need to dance. I need to move a little bit. That’s why he is one of my favourite players, because everything he plays has rhythm. King Cockroach is one of the best examples.
“Also, there’s Got A Match? Scott doesn’t play on the original studio version but there’s a live version I found on YouTube and it’s incredible, the timing, the fusion between the rock elements…”
Pat Metheny Group – Letter From Home (1989)
“It is one of the albums that changed my perspective on composition because Pat Metheny is one of the best composers on planet earth.
A lot of people talk about Still Life (Talking), the previous album, it’s a little bit more famous, but Letter From Home has more Latin elements and I like that a lot. I really like a lot of South American elements that I also have in my playing.”
George Benson – Tenderly (1989)
“One of my favourite jazz guitar players. There is one cassette that I found in my father’s car one day, Tenderly. I think it’s from ’89.
“He has a lot of tunes where he sings and he scats also while soloing, and there is a version of Stella By Starlight on that album that’s my favourite.
“I think it’s the best example of how jazz guitar playing can be applied in songs, because there are a lot of songs. Genius. Genius playing. We’re at the last two, right!?”
Tribal Tech – Face First (1993)
“Tribal Tech was the second band who introduced me to jazz-fusion playing. It has so many good tunes. It is a very complex album.
Gary Willis on bass. Kirk Covington on drums. Scott Kinsey on keyboards. They are masters of their craft. It’s a supergroup
“It is not very melodic-sounding, but there is so much groove in it! It’s kind of like funk-fusion, and jazz combined, a lot of suggestive harmonic parts – and, of course, Scott [Henderson] is soloing on all the tunes, so you get a masterpiece basically. [Laughs]
“It’s like they got really intense with the compositional side of things. The title track is a masterpiece of composition and groove, very complex sounding but at the same time there is something magical in it, and this is one of the best Scott albums.
“Gary Willis on bass. Kirk Covington on drums. Scott Kinsey on keyboards. They are masters of their craft. It’s a supergroup. They don’t play live anymore but I think this album here is one of their best works.”
Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson, and Steve Vai – G3: Live In Concert (1997)
“It’s not something that I listened because I had the album. I saw all the videos on YouTube, and I realised, ‘Oh, all these videos are part of a live album!’ I didn’t know that.
“That album really changed the way I looked at the guitar because imagine not knowing Eric Johnson, Vai and Satriani and seeing this for the first time? It literally blows your mind.
“After this G3 album I started to search for all the albums by Satriani, Vai and Johnson. It introduced me to the guitar hero side of playing, so I need to add this album even if it is a live album because it really changed the way I play.
“I believe there is a version of Manhattan by Eric Johnson that is one of his best live versions ever. Also, the difference in the way they play is so incredible. When they jam together, you really don’t know what to expect. It’s still the best G3 album they made. It’s something magical.”
- Mancuso is on tour in March. He plays The Garage, London, on 3 March. See here for tickets. Visit Matteo Mancuso for full dates.
- The Journey is out now via Mascot/The Player's Club.
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