Do you have the Peavey onstage with you tonight? I read that you tried out several tester models on G3 and this is the one that you decided on.
Oh absolutely. We kept changing up until the beginning of the second G3 leg in Europe. We were in Amsterdam when we had the final tweaking done and it went through quite a metamorphosis, especially in the area of the mid-range. I think what you hear on the G3 album with Steve and Yngwie is when the amp was sort of at its angriest, with a lot of mid-range. We slowly tweaked it so it was a more open sound - fuller in the low end and more pleasant and brilliant on top. Not so angry in the mid-range at all. We added some more things to it and eventually got it all worked out and it's been a pleasure. I've basically been touring with them for almost a year now and the ones that we settled on, the ones that have been for sale since June, are the ones that I've played. On this tour we're actually doing the R & D for the speakers. So when you see me tonight I'll be playing two different speaker cabinets because we need just a couple of more days to see what happens over the course of a show in different size venues before we settle on the JSX speaker models.
Cool! Speaking of Amsterdam and the whole European leg of the tour, what was the most unique show you did over there?
Well, I tell you, the most enjoyable show was the Albert Hall in London. It was just a magical night. The place was sold out. The Albert Hall is like a giant La Scalla, you know, the Italian theater in Milan. It's got about 4500 people in it and when it's sold out it's like you've in this huge tube, you know, it goes straight up. But the people are very close to you. It's like you can just reach out and touch the guy who's sitting in the first box off to your right or to your left. It's just a special atmosphere in there. We had an absolutely fantastic show. I like London and the British people are just nice. But the most unusual gig would have to be the last night playing at Corsica. We played this open air venue that had been constructed by the Corsicans as a tribute to their veterans of World War II. It was a very beautiful and very artistic monument that they had turned into a stage. The veterans that were alive felt very passionately that things should be celebrated on this monument. It wasn't supposed to be something you just look at. They wanted performances done there and so you perform on this stage, but behind you are these unusual statues that make you think of the sacrifices that generations have done for us for freedom. It was very touching and I thought it was very moving. Of course, Corsica is an absolutely beautiful island and the weather in the summer was gorgeous. It was just a great place to finish the tour.
Do you really have a preference between large and small venues?
I think that large venues can be very exciting for a performance point of view, but they can be the worst sounding. In the tour that we did with Deep Purple this summer we did nothing but outdoor amphitheater's the entire tour. It's great when you're playing in front of 10,000 people and you're outdoors. It's very exciting. You run around and go crazy, but the sound is usually ... well, usually you're on a concrete stage and you don't really hear any ambiance because the music just go out into the summer evening and never comes back. But when you're playing a small theater, that just has the right feeling, like the Fillmore in San Francisco, which is probably the same size as the Roxy, I think artistically, you feel more inspired. The feeling is better. It's more of a natural surrounding and you feel closer to everybody in the audience so there's more of a "togetherness" vibe there. I think that, I mean it's pretty obvious, all of the great live albums usually come from small venues. The big ones are always chaotic. It's so big and you just can't dig too deep when you're playing in front of twenty or thirty thousand people. I've had experience playing in front of 100,000 people when I was playing with Mick Jagger and you can't call that a personal, artistic experience. It's more like a circus act than a musical performance. People are so far away that the things you have to do to connect with them are a bit unusual. You always notice that when you see films of Mick with the Stones and he's trying ... it's almost as if he's over acting on purpose to reach that person way way back in the stadium. But when you see him on the jumbotron on the front, you think "oh my God!
