As the Aristocrats return after a five-year break, Guthrie Govan explains why humor and guitar virtuosity remain essential to his craft.
BY JOE BOSSO
FOURTEEN YEARS AGO, a group of super-serious musicians — guitarist Guthrie Govan, bassist Bryan Beller and drummer Marco Minnemann — formed a band after an impromptu NAMM show jam. Ever since then, they’ve been doing everything they can not to take themselves so seriously.
“Boring fusion is pretty much the antithesis of what we’re going for,” Govan attests. “We’ve always wanted to create something a little more fun and subversive. Our foremost priority was never to showcase ourselves doing things on our instruments that the audience might not be able to do on theirs. We feel like a genuine sense of joy emerges whenever we play together, so that’s really the foremost thing that we want to share with the listeners.”
Govan is right about one thing: The Aristocrats are a good time. The band has released four albums of rowdy, wildly unpredictable and irreverent instrumentals — everything from crushing metal, psycho funk, spacey jazz and mad dashes of swing — with song titles like “Sweaty Knockers,” “Blues Fuckers” and “The Kentucky Meat Shower.” But the idea that mere mortals could replicate the dizzying chops of this highly pedigreed trio is somewhat fanciful. After all, Beller has recorded and toured with Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, Minnemann’s résumé boasts names like Tony Levin and Steve Hackett, and Govan has worked with Hans Zimmer and Steven Wilson, among others.
“Of course, it would be disingenuous of me to play down the importance of us being able to operate our instruments at a relatively high level,” Govan admits. “That stuff is essentially the foundation for everything else. If we couldn’t play well enough to perform our music with the required degree of technical proficiency while maintaining enough headroom to accommodate our more chaotic and improvisational side, then the whole thing would fall apart. That’s why I said that showcasing the musicianship element was never our foremost priority.”
Following a five-year hiatus, the trio has reconvened for its latest album, Duck (Boing Music). From the ferocious metal-swing gem “Hey — Where’s My Drink?” to the feisty riff-banger “Sgt. Rockhopper” and the grandiose musical theater conceit of “This Is Not Scrotum” (get past the title and you’ll be imagining Cabaret mixed with Fiddler on the Roof), it’s an orgy for fans of virtuosic rock, fu
