My brother recently sent me a picture of a tombstone in
Paris, which sadly includes someone I knew:
our old guitar teacher, Joel Brigante, who apparently died in 2001. He’s buried with his parents, who survived him,
in Pere-Lachaise Cemetery in northeast Paris, along with Jim Morrison and other
famous musicians. After eulogizing
President Bush I, I’ll take the time to do so with Joel.
Sometime in 1980 or so, I tried taking guitar lessons with
our school’s science teacher, Mr. McLeavey (sic). I seem to recall him being a Beatles fan but
don’t recall him being into anything heavier.
His first lesson was some strumming technique light years away from
AC/DC or Black Sabbath, the type of music I wanted to learn. Since it appeared that our teacher was not on
the same wavelength, I gave up the lessons almost immediately and forgot about
playing guitar. [Incidentally our French teacher at the same school, also named
Joel, was actually closer to us in musical tastes, having a fondness for heavy
metal.]
Fast-forward five years later, to August 1985, and my
brother came back from a lesson with a different teacher, and immediately
played me the opening riff to Whitesnake’s “Saints & Sinners”.
WHOA. Mind. Blown.
Not the whole song, much less the solo, but the riff to a song I
actually knew! I went the next week and
learned – to my recollection – “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC, then several Black
Sabbath songs.
This teacher, Joel, with an apartment on the lower east
side of Paris (Montgallet was the
metro stop), on the fifth floor of a building with no elevator, wouldn’t bore
us with music theory or mindless routines, or show the least contempt for the
contemporary metal we wanted to learn, even if it appeared miles away from his
own preferences, which seemed to be jazz.
He’d patiently listen to the cassette tape we brought, figure out the
riff in question by ear, and teach us how to play it. If we wanted to learn anything more esoteric
or theoretical he’d be happy to teach and encourage us, but he was mainly happy
to teach us anything. I’ve lost track of
how many songs he taught me, but in addition to AC/DC and Black Sabbath, he
also taught us some Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Rush – “2112”. Somewhere deep in our records might be the
blank tablature sheets with metal riffs handwritten, song title at the top in
his handwriting, for all those songs he taught us.
Once I brought him a book of Judas Priest sheet music, focusing
on the early stuff – “Dreamer Deceiver” was the song I wanted to learn. He took a look at it, listened to the music,
and told me the two were not the same.
“The band doesn’t bother to reduce their music to sheet music, someone
at the publishing company does, and no one bothers to check to see if it’s
actually correct.” Tablature, which is
actually designed for guitar, is much easier.
Joel expressed the opinion that for the most part, it’s a waste of time
for a guitarist to learn to read sheet music.
For Christmas in 1985 we received our first electric
guitar, an Ibanez Roadstar II in black, essentially one of their earlier Strat
copies (three single coil pickups and a tremelo) but still looking like an
Ibanez and not a Fender. I bought a
Strat copy – cherry sunburst and maple neck – with my earnings from working at
the US Embassy in Paris over the Christmas holiday, making tourist passports
and learning about Hawkwind from Bernard, the French guy who ran things. The following Christmas I got an actual
(Japanese made) Fender Stratocaster, black with rosewood fretboard, which
eventually led to a US-made Vintage Reissue model (’62) (black with rosewood
fretboard) which I traded in for my current Fat Strat (made in Mexico but with
a humbucker in the bridge position). I’m
glad to say that the passion which Joel sparked in 1985 has continued to the
present day.
Joel would also purchase guitar effects from the local
stores and sell them to us at cost, especially if it was something valuable
like MXR Distortion. He also sold my
Strat copy AND my Japanese Fender Stratocaster for me, without taking a
commission.
My brother had more interaction with him than I did,
actually playing out with him on occasion, for which my father helped as a
roadie, carrying equipment up and down those flights of stairs at his
apartment. (This must have been when I
was in college and Matt was still in high school).
I recall his own guitar was a Gibson ES Artist, which was an ES335 model with active
electronics. He actually gave me a ton
of contemporary Gibson sales materials, from which I learned about the RD and
other models. This put me on my way to
accumulating the four Gibsons I have, though none of them are ES or RD models.
To this day, I still play guitar. We moved away from Paris in 1990 and sadly
did not keep in touch with him. This was
before the Internet and email, so you’d have to write or call someone. If there was a way to speak to him in the
Great Beyond, I’d ask him about King Crimson, Frank Zappa, the Grateful Dead,
and all the more complex music I’ve gotten into beyond AC/DC and Black Sabbath
– though those two bands remain my favorites even to this day. Above all, to be able to jam with him would
be the ultimate. Who knows what the
afterlife has in store for us? We’ll
find out eventually.
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