A song that changed my life

there have been certain songs that I feel like have change my life and one of these songs in particular is what this post is about. It opened up a new world to me a gave me an artist that I could really feel was "mine". Nobody have ever met knows more about him then I know and I must say I'm glad that I have him to myself in a way. The song that changed my life this time is:



Eric Johnson - Cliffs of Dover

It was my second year in gymnasium and we had all year had a sort of show and tell going on in my English class. We had this so that the more quiet students would get a chance off showing what level their English was on. I myself had no need for it cause my oral English is perfect but eventually it was my turn to talk about something. It could be whatever I wanted and first of I had set my sights on Steve Lukather but for some reason i can't explain I thought about doing it on Eric Johnson instead. I knew who Eric was but only from a G3 show with Vai and Satriani where he was kickasss and then from his album Venus Isle witch had a song I really liked called SRV (A tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan) but other then that I had never really explored his music. I did my presentation about his gear and a bit about his Grammy winning song Cliffs of Dover  but I just talked about it I didn't really hear it, but after I was done I sad down and found a live show from Austin, TX, from 1988 and the penny Dropped. I couldn't believe my own ears. The intro to the song was him playing chord variations on his clean sound and I thought I was flying around the white cliffs of Dover. I have never experienced anything like that. Had I been at home I would have started crying because I thought I was in heaven. And then the song. The FUCKING song! Eric Johnson is a master craftsman who sounds 100% unique and for some reason just speaks to me. I started checking out the whole concert and found one amazing song after the other and then he started singing. His soft and high voice fitted the gentle love songs with the blistering solos perfectly. Songs like Emerald Eyes and Trail of Tears, where so different from what I heard at the time and I ended up almost hearing nothing but Eric Johnson for 6 months. The only song I really heard outside of Eric was Take on me by A-ha <3 but it was all about Eric. Now I wanted to sound like Eric and try some of that amazing stuff he did and I found out that my band mates also thought it could be interesting so I learned some of my favorite guitar songs and it all culminated when I finally got the courage to take on Cliffs of Dover one Saturday and that moment where I nailed the main riff it felt like everything I had ever done didn't matter cause right now I was playing the best instrumental song ever and it sounded god damn good. I couldn't play his songs unless I had my gear set up right and when I got the Mad Professor: Golden Cello pedal  in Las Vegas my pedal board was complete. Now I had Eric in a box and now I could always get a fix of Cliffs and in my opinion the highest from of art that exists.

If you've never checked out Eric but like classic rock and guitar in particular then for god's sake do something about it. You don't know what you're missing ;)