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G3 was the title of a guitar wankfest arena tour that stopped in Montreal on June 16th, 1997, featuring the crème de la crème of ’80’s mile-a-minute big-hair modal shredders. I drove into town with my university performance teacher, guitar hero, and good friend Wayne Eagles and my new young friend, co-worker, and future guitar hero Dave Lauzon where the three of us joined about 3,000 other male guitar players in the packed theatre inside the Molson Centre.
We were three mini-generations of serious guitar players and for us this was more about research than anything else.
We got there early and were in our seats by 6pm. We killed the next hour talking shop and cracking jokes about all the guitar geeks in the crowd (takes one to know one) while a roadie busied himself setting up a large rack full of effects processors on the stage. Blah, blah, blah Les Paul, blah blah blah George Fullerton went us while the guy onstage sat in a chair next to the rack mount tuning up a guitar and twiddling a million knobs. We heard nothing aside from a subtle hum in the room that we attributed to the air-conditioning ducts, or maybe it was barely-audible ambient Muzak-like preshow music coming from the PA. Either way, we paid little attention to the roadie as he mostly stood in the wings with his arms folded and occasionally returned to the stage for more bouts of knob-twiddling.
So imagine our surprise when at 7pm (the start time indicated on our tickets) someone came out on stage, held up the arm of the roadie and said “Ladies* and gentlemen, Robert Fripp!”
Huh? Wha?
It turns out that the roadie was in fact guitar great Robert Fripp, and we had just experienced his ‘set’. Never mind that it started an hour before the show was scheduled to begin or that it consisted of nothing more than dialling in the most subtle of electronic timbres. To even call it a set feels like just another rock ’n roll lie, or at least a very, very big stretch.
But at least it answered a question we had been asking ourselves: Why did the ticket say G3 avec Fripp? Nothing other than these five letters on our tickets gave us any indication that Robert Fripp was going to be there.
We did, however, know that Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and Michel Cusson were going to show up, and show up they did.
Michel Cusson was up first. While the American stops on the G3 tour featured Eric Johnson alongside Vai and Satriani, this Canadian date instead included Montreal’s own Michel Cusson fresh from his stint with neo-jazz synth semi-stars UZEB, and he was truly excellent.
The guy really wails, and not just in a scalar up-and-down the neck kind of way. He’s a thoughtful shredder – if such a thing exists – and he absolutely killed it. I think Satriani was up next.
Widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley wooo.
The crowd was in hysterics.
Then Steve Vai came on for the closing set.
Widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-woo-woo-wooooooooo-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-woo-woooooooo-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-widdley-woooooooooooooooooooooo-ooo.
Nihilists were finding religion. Grown men were weeping. People around me were rolling on the floor and speaking in tongues. Near the end of the set Steve Vai ate his guitar whole and pulled it out of his butt without missing a note. The crowd went completely ape-fecal.
The show closed with all three axe-slingers on stage together playing one Hendrix song or another. Vai and Satriani had clearly spent Michel Cusson’s set hidden away in their dressing rooms talking shop and cracking jokes because when Cusson stepped up for his solo Vai and Satch both looked at him and back at each other in shock. I think they had no idea who this Michel Cusson guy was and they were finding out in a hurry. Frankly, they looked at him like we all looked when we looked at them.
The show ended with a nearly-endless cavalcade of dorian modes followed by a vacuum of stunned silence that eventually gave way to gushing, reverent applause. Then three thousand young local guitarists hurried home to light their instruments on fire in frustration whilst we three piled into my Volkswagen Jetta for the ride back to Ottawa.
All we could talk about on the way home was that Robert Fripp “set”. To this day I’m not sure what to think about it.
*Pfffft. You’d find more females at a topless monster truck pull that took place at a Dungeon & Dragons-themed Rush convention/power tool auction.
Todd Man Out 