Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Mike Curtis slaved over the “Highway Star” solo in his basement, then turned to his desk-top computer to chronicle his quest.
Guitar Odyssey: A Journal of Musical Growth, by Michael Rays, Smashwords, 2013. 59 pages, $4.99.
A few years ago, Mike Curtis set two goals for himself. He wanted to write a book and he wanted to master Ritchie Blackmore’s blazing guitar solo on Deep Purple’s “Highway Star.”
He hit on the idea of combining the two goals by setting out to learn the guitar solo while chronicling the experience in a diary. This past November, after two years of practice, he was finally satisfied with his rendition of the solo and pronounced an end to his quest.
And now he has come out with “Guitar Odyssey,” an e-book he self-published at Smashwords, under the pen name Michael Rays.
Curtis, who owns an advertising agency and has lived in Billings since 1998, pursued his “semi-obsession,” as he put it, by practicing in the basement of his Yellowstone Avenue house, then sliding over to his desktop computer to write about nearly every practice session.
The result is a surprisingly entertaining read. Curtis has an easy, straightforward style, and he writes with a guileless enthusiasm.
Here he is in the introduction, explaining his motives: “Just as mountain climbers go up Everest because it is there, so will I learn every note of Ritchie Blackmore’s masterpiece — because it is there, and because it is awesome.”
He strikes a similar note a few months into the project, when he tells how “Highway Star” suddenly came on during a spinning class at the Y. Dripping with sweat and pedaling in time with the music, he finds himself “lost in and at one with the universe of kicking ass.”
He said he wrote the book thinking of fellow guitarists as his primary audience. That’s a pretty big niche market in this country, so this book could do well. I play guitar myself but know next to nothing about music theory or notation. Fortunately, you don’t need to understand every nuance of passages like this to enjoy the writing:
“Another issue is starting to rear its head: the final note in the speed section (the last in a series of 640 straight 16th notes) is going to be trouble. To hit it, and then move cleanly into the final licks, will take some work. To skip it and hope no one notices is the easy way out. But we can’t have that!”
Other aspects of his quest probably will appeal more to fellow guitar players, such as his constant experimenting with picks of different thickness, his intimate relationship with the metronome, and his finicky obsession with calluses and fingernails.
“Another light night of practicing,” he writes on Oct. 30, 2012, “this time due to a sore fingernail on my left middle finger. I clipped my nails a couple days ago, and I clipped that one a bit too close, but not until today did it decide to become really sore. I feel like such a prima donna. ‘Tonight’s concert has been canceled because Mike has a sore fingernail.’”
You feel for him, and not just because of his sore fingers. Time and again he thinks he is so close to conquering the solo, only to have all his painfully acquired skills fall apart during one of the five distinct sections of the solo. In case you’re wondering, the solo is 1 minute and 20 seconds long and consists of 57 measures at 168 beats per minute.
He breaks up the chronicle of his quest with a couple of recurring interludes. One is a series of rock haikus, or “rockus,” that pay homage to some of his other favorite guitar solos. Here he is writing about Randy Rhoads’ solo on Ozzy Osbourne’s “Flying High Again”:
Effortless lightning
Controlled, almost robotic
Yet full of feeling
The other is a series of 10 “music memories,” starting with growing up in a musical family in Colorado, taking piano lessons and hating them and switching to the trumpet in the fourth grade. He played in the junior high jazz band — the Funky Turtles! — and then got heavily involved in music in high school. He also turned “pro,” making a few bucks “playing the Star-Spangled Banner at civic and restaurant openings.”
These keep the tone light and help you get to know Curtis, which in turn encourages the reader — or encouraged me, anyway — to care about his ability to nail that solo. There is no great climax. He just finally decides he’s playing it about as well as he could ever expect to, after two solid years of practice.
And having said that, he immediately begins thinking of what might lie ahead. Hmm, he thinks, Poison’s “Talk Dirty To Me” solo sure would be fun…
Details: I’m not a big fan of classic rock, but I did listen to Deep Purple pretty intensely during one stretch of high school. Even so, I couldn’t remember “Highway Star,” until I found it on YouTube and gave it a listen. Oh, I said to myself, that song. The solo in question runs from 3:45 to 5:05.
To find Curtis’ book, just go to Smashwords or Amazon and type in “Guitar Odyssey.”
