2006, Omar Rodríguez-López was a towering, Jimi Hendrix-like figure within the world of modern progressive rock. Guitar World dubbed him one of “The New Guitar Gods,” and he joined a jaw-dropping murderers’ row — Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Eddie Van Halen, Kirk Hammett and John Mayer — for Rolling Stone’s “Guitar Heroes” cover story.
Despite these accolades, the Mars Volta bandleader wasn’t convinced of his own merit on the instrument: “I’ve never considered myself a guitarist, and I’ve never liked the guitar,” he told us. “I feel like an imposter in a really beautiful, magical place,” he admitted to Rolling Stone during a photo shoot for the aforementioned interview. “And I feel like any minute somebody’s gonna go, ‘That guy!’ and I’m gonna have to leave.”
He’s managed to stick around, of course — racking up piles of dazzling arpeggios and hurricane wah-wah solos as part of the Volta, the reformed post-hardcore act At the Drive-In and his numerous, genre-spanning side and solo projects. There’s an intriguing disconnect between his perception and the public’s: he’s an icon in front of an amp, like it or not. But while Rodríguez-López sells himself short as a technician, it’s fitting that he feels out of place next to virtuosos like Van Halen or traditionalists like King. He’s always been a composer who just happened to pick up an ax; he wields guitars like paintbrushes — practical tools for flinging color on a canvas. (It’s telling that his first signature guitar, the Ibanez ORM-1, was about as un-fussy as you can get: one pickup, one knob.)
On the Mars Volta’s early records, Rodríguez-López used effects (delays, phasers, choruses and virtually everything else) as rocket fuel to visit strange new worlds. “I mean, how old in 2012. “And there are only 12 notes you can play on it! When you think of it that way, it’s like, in terms of the guitar as a device, what else does technology offer? So you go into the gear, the pedals, the plug-ins and anything else that has been invented.”
