Arguably the tastiest of the 80s LA glam metal
guitar heroes, Warren was part of the first wave
of Van Halen inspired LA guitarists. He is known
for using Charvel strats with Japanese and snakeskin
graphics, slapback echo abuse, and for appearing
in videos with Milton Berle (and looking more
like a chick than Uncle Milty did in-drag). But
despite his considerable talent as a guitarist,
Warren has never really overcome the limitations
of his environment in Ratt.
Influences
Obvious: The biggest influence on Warren's
style is clearly Eddie Van Halen. His choice of
guitars, his tone, and his approach to the instrument
are all very much in the Van Halen mold. George
Lynch (picking technique) and Michael Schenker
(vibrato) are also prominent in Warren's playing.
Not so obvious: Warren claims Robin Trower,
Leslie West, and Pete Townshend as big influences,
but I'll be damned if I can hear any of these
guys in Warren's recorded output.
Strengths
Attitude and Feel. From his early days with Ratt,
Warren has played with an aggressive, ballsy tone
and an in-your-face attitude. He always sounds
confident, never tentative, and plays every note
like he means it. His feel is very similar to
Van Halen's style — a lot of swinging eighth
notes and bluesy swagger crossed with the occasional
flashy bit — but he's more for the song than
Eddie is.
Restraint. In the 80s, the big thing was speed,
especially after Van Halen and Malmsteen opened
Pandora's box and showed everyone that there was
life after Lynyrd Skynyrd. Warren was a little
different than a lot of his 80s contemporaries
in that he managed to avoid falling into the look-at-how-fast-I-can-play
trap. In the April 1987 edition of Guitar World,
Warren says: "It's so easy to do that, play
fast, play a lot, over everything — it's
too easy, and certainly not challenging."
What he is known for is being a very tasty player,
emphasizing quality over quantity. He is more
than capable of hopping on the 32nd note autobahn,
but he picks his spots. Again, from the same interview:
"I always felt like I didn't want to play
everything I know."
Tone. Again, straight out of the Van Halen school,
very similar to the infamous Brown Sound
of early Van Halen. The biggest difference seems
to be in the ambient micing. Where Van Halen relied
on a lot of room ambiance on the early stuff,
Warren's sound relies less on the room and more
on processing to add ambiance. We'll discuss this
in more detail in the Tone section below.
Vibrato. I love Warren's vibrato. Subconsciously,
I'm sure I stole a thing or two from him over
the years. This is where you start to hear the
Schenker influence in his playing.
Weaknesses
When you talk about Warren DeMartini, inevitably
you have to look at how his recorded output with
Ratt has stood the test of time. Frankly, it hasn't
held up well as a complete musical package. There
are many reasons for this, and to be fair, Warren
was incredibly limited by working with Ratt singer,
Stephen Pearcy. Pearcy's half-octave (on a good
day) range and consequently rhythmic vocal approach
had far more in common with today's rap metal
singers than the melodic vocalists who were his
contemporaries. Imagine Fred Durst in eyeliner
and spandex, going toe-to-toe with Ronnie Dio,
Bruce Dickinson, Klaus Meine, or even Don Dokken.
We could rag on Pearcy all day, but the bottom
line from a musical standpoint is this: Steven
Pearcy is completely incapable of adding any
melody or emotion to a song. And DeMartini's
music certainly paid the price for that.
Songwriting. Virtually all Ratt songs
songs have the same energy level and feel. There's
almost no compositional dynamics. There are no
quiet parts contrasted with power and glory. No
mood changes. No fast songs, no slow songs —
almost everything falls between 80-90 beats per
minute. Hope you like vanilla, 'cause they don't
do chocolate, or anything else for that matter.
And yes, a lot of this was tied to vocal limitations.
You just weren't gonna get power ballads or the
kinds of slow airy songs that typically let a
singer (or a guitarist) stretch out with Pearcy
at the mic. But Warren has to take some share
of the blame for the lack of songwriting diversity.
Here's why:
Ratt featured a great rhythm section in Bobby
Blotzer (drums) and Juan Crocier (bass). Both
were killer players who knew how to groove —
a real differentiator in 80s rock. Listen to the
groove on the verse of Back For More. That
cooks! Given that strength, the band would have
done well to let the rhythm section establish
some grooves and then add the guitar parts over
them (an approach you can hear in Aerosmith).
So despite Pearcy's weakness, the band didn't
lean enough on an obvious strength. Warren should
have been able to come up with more interesting
stuff working with that rhythm section. But most
Ratt songs sound like they originated from guitar
riffs — and that formula often dictates a
straighter rhythmic approach.
Immaturity early. Warren had not been playing
very long when he joined with Ratt, and although
he had great chops, he lacked depth. As a lead
player, on Out of the Cellar, Warren's
solos aren't very lyrical and don't really foreshadow
the melodic direction he ultimately went as a
lead player. His technique, ability, and energy
is all there, but he rushed through things a lot
and didn't seem to know how to please the ear.
But by the time of Invasion of Your Privacy,
Warren's lead work got much more melodic, sexier,
and purposeful.
Tone
Warren played Floyd-equipped super strats and
you can certainly hear that sound on his recordings.
His tone was pretty thin on Out of the Cellar,
but got fatter and a lot warmer on Invasion
of your Privacy. Compared to his contemporaries
who used super strats, Warren's tone was less
processed than George Lynch's and Ozzy-era Jake
E. Lee's tone. It was warmer than Viv Campbell's
tone, but not nearly as warm or middy as any of
the guys who were using Gibsons at the time. Warren's
tone is most similar to the Roth-era Van Halen
tone, but a little more ragged and looser sounding,
with more bottom. Compare the tone on Take
Your Whiskey Home or Unchained to Warren's
tone on Lay it Down, You're in Love,
or Way Cool Junior — you find it's
pretty close! The biggest difference is in the
application of ambient micing. Van Halen relied
on a lot of room sound to get his tone —
usually in the opposite speaker to the main guitar.
The basic tone is just a close mic SM57 on a Marshall
4x12. Warren does the same thing with his basic
tone, an SM57 on a Marshall 4x12, but instead
of using room ambiance, he used digital delay
and reverb to artificially create the acoustic
space. The result has more presence in the mix
than Van Halen, and it's a little fuller, but
still very much a Eddie inspired brown tone.
There's no secret to producing Warren's tone:
take a single pickup super strat with a humbucker,
and run it straight into an old 100W Marshall.
Cabs were Marshall 4x12s with 30W Celestions.
Warren used Seymour Duncan JB and custom Charvel
pickups in his Charvel super strats, and they
were all fitted with Floyd Rose tremolos. Although
he was a Laney endorsee in the 80s, he doesn't
seem to have actually used them much, if
at all. His amps were modified by amp techs Jose
Arredondo or Frank Levi to give them a little
more gain.
One of Warren's trademarks is the use of heavy
slapback echo on his guitar — not just on
leads, but on the rhythms as well. You can't truly
nail Ratt's guitar sound without it. This was
added at mixdown or at the soundboard, never at
the amp. Set your delay to eighth notes in tempo
with the song and one or two repeats; tune to
dropped D, and rip the opening to You're in
Love and voila — it's 1984 and you're
on stage at the Whiskey!
Guitar Style
DeMartini has always been a strong rhythm guitarist.
Warren and co-guitarist Robin Crosby were very
good at coming up with complementary rhythm guitar
parts. Sometimes they double each other (Wanted
Man, Back for More, You're in Love),
other times they play totally different parts
(Lay it Down, Round and Round),
and sometimes it's a combination of both. Slip
of the Lip is an interesting example where
both play the same rhythm, but play different
chords. I've always dug this approach, as it fills
out the sound and makes Ratt's simple songs a
lot more interesting.
Warren's rhythmic sense is more LA-influenced
than European-influenced. Instead of the straight,
perfect, lockstep eighth notes that typify the
European approach, Warren's leads swing more like
a jazz player's. For example, if he's playing
a pair of eighth notes, he might play them in
more of shuffle rhythm rather than in straight
time. He might hold the first note a little longer
than he should, and make the second a little shorter.
This influence in Warren comes directly from Eddie
Van Halen. Compare the feel of Way Cool Junior
to Van Halen's Take Your Whiskey Home,
Bottoms Up, or The Full Bug and
you'll see where it Warren's style comes from.
This approach adds to the groove and vibe and
spices up simple lines. When the rhythm section
locks up to this feel, things start to get interesting.
Lay It Down is a great example of what
these guys could do as a team
In an era that featured a guitarist-as-gunslinger
mentality, DeMartini separated himself with a
less-is-more approach to soloing. Rather than
consisting of a barrage of 16th and 32nd notes,
a typical DeMartini solo intersperses longer,
sustained notes with short, speedy passages, ala
George Lynch. But what makes him different is
that he's much more structured than Lynch, and
more traditional in his approach and note choices.
I'd call him a very safe player — he's not
going to take any chances that are going to kill
the song, but he's also not going to really push
the envelope in terms of technique, speed, or
harmonic content either. Take Lay It Down
for example: starting off slow, Warren gradually
builds the speed and intensity, ending up with
a couple of 32nd note runs at the very end before
hitting the chorus. The solo sounds composed,
but not particularly adventurous or innovative.
In context, it works pretty well. Most Ratt songs
follow a similar formula — You're in Love,
Round and Round, Slip of the Lip,
etc. These lead breaks sound composed or at least
somewhat thought out, but they're almost always
blues based pentatonic and more cool than melodic.
His outro solos tend to be more off-the-cuff and
sound improvised, but again, very safe. Nothing
wrong, but nothing new either.
George Lynch really influenced DeMartini's picking
style, from the way he fans his right hand fingers
out to the way he holds his pick. He alternates
between striking the string in the traditional
way with the tip of the pick, and pointing the
tip back toward the bridge and striking the string
with the side of the pick. He is typically a legato
player unless he's ripping through a short run,
in which case he primarily alternate picks.
Warren never delved too far into the tricks and
trappings of 80s metal. He doesn't use many harmonics
and squeals. He wasn't a big tapper or whammy
abuser.
Vibrato:
Warren has a really cool vibrato. Once he stopped
rushing through his solos, Warren found plenty
of time to work the sustained notes. A favorite
technique is to land on a note, hold it, and gradually
bring in the vibrato before moving on. His vibrato
tends to be wide, mostly medium speed, and tastefully
applied. Kirk Hammett, take note: this is how
you apply finger vibrato.
