THE SHRED SUMMIT
“HOW DOES ANYBODY PLAY GUITAR LIKE THAT?” Dream Theater guitarist and main man John Petrucci says, recalling his reaction when he first heard the music of Steve Morse. “It was the wildest, most incredible stuff I had ever heard. There are moments that you can pinpoint and say they were truly life-changing, and for me, hearing Steve Morse play guitar was one of them.”
It was the mid ’80s and Petrucci was a metal-crazed high schooler and budding guitarist big on Metallica, Iron Maiden and Ozzy Osbourne. “I spent most of my free time practicing, and I thought I was getting pretty good,” he says. “I could play a lot of the stuff by my heroes pretty well.” One day, a friend’s older brother gave Petrucci a mixtape of tracks by the Dixie Dregs, a band the young guitar player had vaguely heard of, along with a sage piece of advice: “You have to listen to Steve Morse.”
Petrucci didn’t know what to expect when he loaded the tape in his deck. The first song that came up was “The Bash,” an exuberant, revved-up and rocking country jam on which Morse charges out of the gate like a bucking bronco, blitzing across the fretboard and spinning wild chicken-picking licks all over the neck while keeping pace with Allen Sloan’s hyper-giddy violin lines. “It totally blew my mind,” Petrucci says. “I couldn’t understand how anybody could play like that. I wasn’t very familiar with bluegrass, but Steve mixed it with rock in such an exciting way. His technique and phrasing hooked me immediately.”
“STEVE MIXED BLUEGRASS WITH ROCK IN SUCH AN EXCITING WAY. HIS TECHNIQUE AND PHRASING HOOKED ME IMMEDIATELY”
JOHN PETRUCCI
From that moment, Morse zoomed to the top of the list as Petrucci’s favorite guitar player. “I even transcribed the song, because I wanted to learn how to play like that,” he says. “I did the deep dive and immersed myself in all things Dregs and Steve Morse. Whatever he played, I had to hear it. He became ‘the guy.’”
By Petrucci’s estimation, Morse’s impact on his guitar playing has been incalculable. “He helped bend and shape my approach to the guitar in so many ways,” he says. “The first was compositionally. I loved how he could incorporate rock, bluegrass and classical, and that added flavors to my repertoire. Technically, Steve took me to a very high level. I read about his approach to practicing, and that prompted me to apply his work ethic to my own practice routine. I said, ‘I’m going to do what he did and follow in his footsteps.’”
Happily, Petrucci reports that the oft-repeated adage “don’t meet your heroes, they’ll only disappoint you” doesn’t apply to here. After first encountering his idol at a guitar clinic Morse was conducting, Petrucci, by then a guitar star in his own right, went on to establish
