The following interview was conducted in Colchester, Essex on October 16th, 2007, during my first trip to the UK. I read that Michael was going to be performing a the Colchester Institute, roughly an hour and a half away from where I was staying in downtown London, so I quickly boarded a train to Essex and spent the entire ride jotting questions down on the back of a map. I arrived an hour early and Michael was kind enough to grant this interview on the spot, right before his spectacular performance...

An Interview with Michael Angelo Batio

[Enter to win an Autographed, 11 x 17 inch, full color “Assume the Shred Position” Double-Guitar poster of MAB!]

IC: What are your clinics typically like - are they question and answer and then performance?

MAB: It'll be a lot of performing. There are a lot of things I talk about, including my own personal career.

IC: And you do these shows for Dean?

MAB: Some of them; it's only half for Dean. So I do 100 "concerts" a year - 50 clinics and roughly 50 concerts. About 50/50. Tonight there will be question and answer with the audience, but I have to limit that too because we could spend all day asking, and I think people get more by watching me just shut up and play the guitar! [Laughs]

IC: So last year you released Hands Without Shadows. Do you have a follow-up in the works?

MAB: Yes, it's called "2 X Again".

You know, I'm a prolific person when it comes to music because I perform more than - well, I'm up there with the people who perform the most. So I play those 100 plus shows around the world a year, and in the last three or four years I've released five DVD's, two CD's, and then two major CD's, as well as played on a bunch of other people's albums too.

IC: Can you talk about any of the special guests you'll have on this album? Last time you had Bill Peck, Mark Tremonti...

MAB: Yeah, Tremonti, Rudy Sarzo from Ozzy... but on this new one, no, I didn't do anything like that. I just kept it to my stuff, and had a drummer come in and play real drums, so no drum machine or anything like that. So I really just had him and I recorded everything else, and it came out really nice.

IC: How much do you practice in preparation for recording?

MAB: For recording the albums I practice more than I do while I'm on tour, because I fly to the shows. It's not uncommon for me to fly nine hours to come to Europe, and then I have to get off the plane and play. So there's not much practice then. But for the CD's... 12-14 hours a day. That would be the most. The least would be like 2-3 hours.

IC: So you recently released Speed Kills 3. Do you have any plans for another Speed Kills or perhaps a Speed Lives follow-up where you'd break down another one of your songs?

MAB: Well, I write for Guitar World magazine in the US, and Guitar World was telling me recently that everyone is asking for transcriptions of my stuff. The Speed Lives series was to show the song "No Boundaries". But now people want to know the song "Rain Forest" that I play, so we might do that. I'm not sure yet, but I'll talk to Doug Marks from Metal Method, because I work with Metal Method on all the DVD's. We'll definitely do one next year.

   ("Rain Forest" from Speed Kills 2)

IC: Your new Hands Without Shadows Performance DVD was labeled "Volume 1", so is there going to be a sequel to that?

MAB: Yeah, that'll be next year too. I really should have called it "Studio Performance", because it's all my clinic tracks I play, but I think it turned out really well. I was really happy with the playing and everything.

IC: So is your new signature Dean guitar model out?

MAB: It'll be out really soon. Mick (he's the head person from Dean Guitars in the UK) has taken me every time I've come here to some magnificent historic place, so in the last 24 hours we were at the Knebworth House, a beautiful 500 year-old estate, and today we were at Colchester Castle. So that's where I got the idea for the Armorflame. A lot of people use alien motifs on their guitars, but I didn't want anything like that. I love history - especially European history - so I used armor, like Knights of the Round Table chain mail; it's BAD! [Laughs]

IC: So you have a new Quad as well... are you performing with that one?

MAB: Well this particular one by Dean was more of a photo-op instrument, rather than for playing it. My original one was really playable, but this Dean one was big and it was more for the looks. We're actually going to rebuild it. Just because... it's fun! You know? I mean, to me it's entertainment, and I could do it. So I'd like to do it.

IC: I saw you have a new signature pedal...

MAB: Yeah, a new overdrive pedal from a company called T-Rex. It's the "MAB Overdrive", and Guitar Player magazine said it's quite possibly the best overdrive they've ever heard. It's like a TS-9, but on the low-end it's a bit cleaner in my opinion. So if people like the Tube Screamer - the TS-9's - if they like that, they'll love this.

IC: So you have an old Starlicks instructional video. Was that your first instructional?

MAB: Yeah, and I'm going to go so far as to say that was the first shred instructional video ever. Before Paul Gilbert, before Tony MacAlpine, before anyone, I did the first. And so even something as simple as an A minor arpeggio that everyone knows now, that had never been shown before. That! I mean... Jazz 3 picks... you know, that's what I talked about. And it's great, because after all these years those things have stood the test of time.

IC: That's a real hard one to find. Are there any plans to re-release it through Metal Method?

MAB: No, the reason it's hard to find is because they owe me over $1,000,000! And it'd be too hard to sue - I don't like the negativity of a lawsuit - we've looked into it but I just stopped them from selling it because I wasn't getting royalties, so they're not allowed to release it. That's when I started working with Metal Method instead and did Speed Kills.

IC: So you recently traded solos with Mattias Eklundh on Tobias Hurwitz's new album, "Zen Shed Zone". What was that like? Do you record it at your own studio and send it away when you make guest appearances like that?

MAB: Yeah, because I'm so busy. They just send me the file and I record my solo and send it back. Yeah, in fact it almost sounds as if both of us were in the studio together, because Mattias has a real different style than me, and it worked out great. I'm really happy - it's one of the coolest trade-off's you can hear, and it's very fusion-ey and outside. It sounds like me but it's really more outside and non-linear. It's cool.

(MAB VS IA?)

IC: I recently bought an old album called U.S. Metal Volume 2, which you appear on as "Mike Batio"?

MAB: That's right!

IC: How long ago was that recorded, and when did you really start your solo recording career?

MAB: That was when I was in college, and Mike Varney - I'd sent him a tape - wanted me to be on Shrapnel Records, and so... I guess that was really the first album I ever did that was released nationally (it wasn't until 4 years later that I got in and band and we got signed again). But yeah, I was really proud of that! The track was called "The Haunted House". And then Mike Varney wanted me to do another album on Shrapnel but at that time I was signed to Atlantic Records with Nitro, but I never went back to Shrapnel.

IC: What led you to play instrumental music?

MAB: Well, I always liked instrumental music, and I think there's a vehicle out there for it. I think a true artist not only records, but you have to perform and you have to have some kind of consistent output. You can't just put out an album every ten years and never play - that's not an artist, that's something else. But I find there's always been a vehicle for what I've done, because I get out there and play all the time. I say 12 hundred shows on my website just in case, because we can't verify it, but it's more like 15 hundred!

IC: Wow.

MAB: Because it's 100 shows EVERY year. See... I like that! [Laughs]

IC: [Laughs] Well your fans really appreciate it. And thanks for doing the interview on such short notice!

MAB: Thank you. Oh, and also... ANGELO. DOT. COM. [Laughs]

Essential Michael Angelo Batio links:

www.angelo.com

The MAB Forum

www.metalmethod.com

... and don't forget to buy "2 X Again"!

 -- Dave B.