Italian guitarist Alex Masi is one of the most gifted guitarists of his generation. Highly respected in the music world he is an established solo artist with an extensive and varied back catalogue covering styles as diverse as hard rock, classical and more experimental fusion outings. Hot on the heels of his last fabulous solo album “Late Night At Desert’s Rim Rock” comes his latest release “1900-Hard Times” a storming live album by the band known as M.C.M which features Alex on guitar, John Macaluso on drums and finally Randy Coven on bass. When hard Rock House was invited to table some questions to Alex it was an opportunity not to be missed so read on to discover what Alex told us about his M.C.M project and about Alex Masi the guitarist.  

Alex Masi

Hi Alex. Firstly can I congratulate you on the release of “1900 Hard Times”, it’s full to the brim with great individual performances and sounds fantastic. You must be very pleased with how it turned out?

AM - Thank you! yes, it's my first (official) live album, I was a bit unsure when we first thought about releasing some live material because when I listen to my live recordings I always find things I would like to change but you simply can't because there is no track separation, all the instruments are recorded at the same time on two tracks and you're stuck with them whether you like them or not...but on these numbers we heard a certain type of continuity and some interesting ideas that justified the project. 

M.C.M features you on guitar with Jon Macaluso on drums and Randy Coven on bass. All three of you are now well-established artists in your own right. When did you first become aware of Randy and John and could you tell us a little about how M.C.M came to be. I’ve always wondered if it was mutual respect and friendship that brought you together or if it was someone at music label who thought you guys could make great music together?

AM - I’ve known John Macaluso for over 20 years.  We met in LA in the mid eighties at the house where he was living with a bunch of guys.  During a party I accidentally opened a door thinking it was a bathroom but instead it was this little room where John was practicing his drums 24 hours a day, it was all cramped and stuffy and John was bashing away like a maniac.  I forgot about the party and sat there listening to him and we became great friends, did some touring and an album and then he moved back to NYC.  We got back in touch when he was finishing his "Yngwie tour of duty".  He came to stay at my place here in LA for a couple of weeks, we recorded some tracks that ended up on my last solo album "Late Nights At Desert Rimrock" (Lion Music) and when he went back to NYC he called me to ask me if I would be into trying to jam with Randy Coven who had just left Yngwie's band as well.  This all coincided with a request for a tour I had received from some countries south of the border so I thought it would have been a cool idea to check out the potential of the trio on some stages around the world and so we did.  The shows went amazingly well and when we got back we decided to do our first album as M.C.M "Ritual Factory" (Lion Music).

The new album was recorded during your tour of the USA and Central America. How many shows did you perform and were all the shows recorded or just certain ones?

AM - Yes, we decided to record all the shows...digital tapes are cheap, LOL...we decided to go with the shorter tracks in order to preserve some focus in each piece without getting too diluted with long pieces...but those long pieces have their charm as well and we might consider releasing those as well sometime in the future. 

As you were performing with the band were there moments where you instinctively thought to yourself “this version will end up on the live album” or was it a case of sifting through all the recorded shows to find versions you were happy with?

AM - No, when I’m onstage I don't do much thinking at all...the rational part of the brain goes on standby for the duration of the gig and there's a whole other type of consciousness that comes into play.  When I was very young and I had just started playing live my rational brain was on all the time and I couldn't really let go and "take off" but after so many years it's just all about a semi-mystical experience, almost like an out of body experience, sometimes it works better than others. Playing with Randy and John is one of the most natural things I’ve ever felt in my life...the amount of ESP among us is surreal sometime...they're amazing. 

As a live album this release is amazing in that all three of you sound like one unit and not just three musicians doing there own thing. Everyone seems to be listening to each other especially Randy who puts in some superb phrases and melodic passages behind your playing giving you a platform to work from. Working with musicians of this calibre must be very inspirational for you?

AM - Randy and John are incredible musical vehicles, everything is possible with them and nothing is out of reach.  The other great thing about them is that they accepted to try some of my weirdest ideas and experimental approaches, that's not an easy thing to come by in seasoned musicians of that calibre. 

M.C.M’s live performances give each of you room to try different things and experiment. Your music is very much a case of going for the moment. I know that some of the intros, endings and certain melodies were worked out in advance to give the band a musical framework but there is something I would love to ask you. As a tour progresses and you get performances under your belt do you find yourselves playing the music in a more organized way. Does some of the spontaneity erode as you become familiar with the music?

AM - What happens with M.C.M is that before going on stage we get incredibly scared at the thought of not really knowing what we're going to play except for a few lines here and there.  That fear is exactly what fuels our ideas when we step on the bandstand and we grab our instruments.  Suddenly something hits us, it's impossible to give it a name, it's just like a surge of electricity that places us exactly where we need to be mentally and the only thing to do at that point is to try to get ourselves out of the way of the music, which means doing as little thinking as possible and just letting that energy move us. There never really is any type of fatigue following that method. 

The album, as mentioned earlier, sounds great and I see the project was engineered, mixed and mastered by you. All three members of M.C.M are very busy as musicians so as a result did Randy and John hand over the reins of this part of the project to you exclusively or did they get some input into the final mixes?

AM - Well, mixing and mastering this album was relatively easy giving the fact that it consisted of only two stereo tracks.  The editing took a little bit more time because we wanted to maintain a good level of continuity and flow.  Randy and John pretty much trusted my judgment and gave me their blessings at the end.  Of course a studio recording is a whole different beast and that's when you tend to see more chefs in the kitchen. 

One glance at your musical upbringing shows me that you look for inspiration from art, culture and all genres of music. You obviously have a deep love of classical music, rock and progressive and experimental music. All those genres have created some staggering guitar talent and in some of the tracks on the live album I can hear many of them.” Cliffs Of Dover” by Eric Johnson is a favourite track of mine and during “River Offering” and “Emergency Poncho” I feel your playing captures some of his personality. Also some of your whammy bar work reminds me of the way Allan Holdsworth gentle wobbles certain notes. Would I be right in thinking these two players are on your list of inspirational players?

AM - I love both Allan and Eric. I had the huge fortune to have Allan play on one of my earlier albums years ago.  He's been a huge influence on me since I was twelve years old. Eric has one of the most beautiful guitar voices ever on electric guitar, unique and expressive. I can only admire those guys, I can only hope to be able to reach even a fraction of their mastery sometime in the future. 

I don’t know if you have had a chance to read my review of your live album yet but I commented that Shawn Lane is one of my favourite guitar players and that I felt you had captured the spirit of this much missed player with this live performance. I hope you don’t mind me making this comparison as it is meant as a sincere compliment.

AM - Shawn was a dear friend. I’ve known him since 1988, he completely destroyed and rebuilt my concept of what playing electric guitar means. To be honest, in my humble opinion, he’s the last guitar player to say something extremely moving with the instrument, he went beyond playing guitar, he connected with a higher form of consciousness and the guitar became just an excuse to channel other dimensions. There are tons of good players out there; there is no one who can move me like Shawn. I thank you for what I consider a huge but undeserved compliment. 

“Powers Of Ten” by Shawn Lane has to be one of the finest guitar albums recorded not just because of his playing but also in the compositions. They are thrilling and harmonically beautiful. He approached harmony in a wonderful way. I gather as player you are always looking for inspiration and that you have found Indian and Arabic scales a source of creativity. How did this start and what does it influence, rhythm or melody?

AM - The Indian/Arab thing comes from a long time ago. I’ve always been hugely fascinated by those cultures, their philosophies, their artistic expressions etc.  I remember playing over and over "black mountain side" by jimmy page on the first Led Zeppelin album; it attracted me for some reason. Through the years I always listened to eastern music, in Europe if you tune your short wave radio on the far left of the dial you get all these amazing Northern African radio stations that play Moroccan, Tunisian, Algerian, Egyptian etc music that sounds just unbelievable. I used to go to bed at night and stay awake to listen to those mysterious sounding pieces of music completely spellbound in the darkness of my bedroom...later on, seven years ago to be exact, I had the immense pleasure of meeting, jamming and recording with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's party that includes Rahat Ali Khan...they do qawwali music...that opened my mind to a whole new level...since then I’ve been studying various forms of Indian music, northern and southern obviously some of that tends to contaminate my playing regardless what type of music I’m playing - Rhythmically and melodically and most importantly spiritually. 

As a guitarist you emerged during the mid eighties when you joined an existing band that was later named Masi. It was a time when guitar playing was very competitive and record labels were almost pitting guitar payers against each other and trying to find the fastest player on the block. It did unearth some very exciting players and certainly got people taking their guitars seriously and trying to improve their techniques and eventually became the era of “the Shredder”. Do you feel that emerging as a player during this time has maybe made people assume that you are a player from the Yngwie school of rock and have you striven to shake off this possible perception?

AM - That era was fun for a couple of years...we were kids and it was like playing sports, not much musical content but it had its place in time...now it's like a billion light years have passed...the term "shred" honestly makes me cringe because it implies an emphasis in quantity rather than quality which is counterproductive when it comes to artistic expression. I happen to play some quick sequences of notes every once in awhile but I’m always trying to do it hoping to achieve some sort of balance...speed and technique are tools, some people might use those tools and some people might not need them at all and make the most extraordinary music anyway...to focus on technique only is to perpetuate that saying that goes "the poet points at the moon but the fool stares at the poet's pointing finger".... 

You wore you classical heart on your sleeve when you recorded your series of “In the name of…” where you have recorded music by Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. I know you are busy promoting M.C.M at the moment but is it possible that you may record another album in this series in the future?

AM - I might actually, I’ve been thinking for awhile now about doing an album completely dedicated to Vivaldi who, like myself, was a Venetian.  Vivaldi's music is something every Venetian has a strict relationship with because it's often played around Venice and it permeates the walls and everything else.  When you're in Venice you just "hear" Vivaldi even if not a note is being played, it's in the ether, I love him very much. 

On your web site you say that you don’t get too attached to guitars but there is a great picture of yourself and Shawn Lane in which Shawn is holding a red Charvel guitar. You mention that you miss that guitar and that it came to a sad end. Could you fill us in on why this guitar was special and, if it doesn’t hurt too much, let us know what happened to it?

AM - That was a beautiful guitar, Shawn himself kept saying how much he liked it and that was way before his relationship with Charvel. That guitar was given to me by a rehearsal studio owner here in LA at the time Michael Jackson was rehearsing there for a tour and after a few weeks when he moved out of the studio the workers there had noticed that some pieces of equipment were still there. They called the management to ask them how they wanted these instruments to be delivered but the management said they didn't really need them so the studio owner gave that guitar to me. It was destroyed by a guitar tech of mine accidentally while loading the truck after a show; the neck got broken in a way that couldn't be fixed. 

I recently went to see Allan Holdsworth perform and he had Chad Wackerman on drums and Jimmy Johnson on bass. It was an incredible show and it was great to see them all having little smiles at each other as they individually pulled something out of the bag. Would you say M.C.M have that sort of chemistry and as a result can we hope to see further releases from the band in the future?

AM - There is a certain type of magic that can happen when you play in front of an audience...when that happens it's like being in flight without moving...it is a distinct high and you can find yourself smiling, laughing etc... of course there will be more collaborations with Randy and John, as a matter of fact John will be at my house in January and we'll surely record something, that's how our projects always start...no big plan...just the desire to create sounds and then after that we try to give them shape. 

I know your time is precious so to round things off I have a few more lighthearted questions. At the moment HRH is running a series where each writer has to nominate his, or her, three most influential albums, not their favourites but the albums which helped shape their tastes and musical direction. What would be your three most influential albums?

AM - Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland, Mahavishnu Orchestra - Birds Of Fire and Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue. 

If you were given the chance to form a one off band project whom would you choose to be in your band, these could be musicians living or dead?

AM - Oh boy....too many to choose from....Billy Cobham on drums, Jaco Pastorius on bass, Joe Zawinul on keys, a guitar section with Holdsworth, Mclaughlin, Metheny, Shawn Lane, Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Michael Brecker, Charlie Parker and Coltrane on saxes, Miles and Dizzy on trumpet, Nusrat, Jeff Buckley and Joni Mitchell on vocals, Frank Zappa composing the music and conducting...naturally I would be in the first row watching.

Finally on behalf of HRH can I thank you for taking the time to answer my questions and giving us an insight into the world of Alex Masi and M.C.M and wish you the very best for the future. In closing is there anything you would like to say to the readers and your fans?

AM - Thank you so much for the great questions and for listening! Listen to all music; keep your minds open...love 

Alex Masi

M.C.M's live album 1900: Hard Times is out now through Lion Music. You can check out the HRH review of the album via this link and to find out more about Alex you can visit his official website @ www.alexmasi.net