Tell you what, today's guest Al Di Meola, speaking of athletics, it is an athletic

feat what this cat has been able to pull off on the guitar over the last several
decades. I've been a fan of Di Meola since I was a kid. My dad got me hip to this
record.
He had this record collection. It was insane. And there was a Di Meola record.
The first time I saw it, I was like, oh, that's the guy from that one live concert
record that my dad has. Where is it? The three guys up there playing.
Absolutely legendary album with John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucía. Incredible
record. You gotta check it out if you're not familiar.
Also Return to Forever, Al Di Meola solo records. This cat is a ledge in the jazz
and jazz fusion world. Actually, he has this book that was like a kind of jazz
study book that might be out of print that I remember I found a weird copy of when
I was in college.
Studied a bunch of that. So I did a bunch of these cats books and learned a ton.
Al's a great player, fun to talk to him.
Cats all over the place, man. He's in Miami, he's in Jersey, he's in Italy. Must
have been good living around the time when you could sell actual records.
Not gonna have that Italian villoff streaming. Tell you what, man, are we about to
go into another rant? Are we about to go into a streaming rant?
Not the right place, not the right time. Plus you probably listened to this on
Spotify or something. You're like, whoa, what am I doing here?
I've got cognitive dissonance about the whole thing now. It's fine, doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter.
It's the world we live in. I'm stoked to be here. Look, my voice is making it to
your ears.
Hopefully my guitar player is making it to your ears. That's what we're doing here.
You know, we're having some fun.
We're having some fun. Tell you what though, it's a guitar podcast. If you want to
get better at the guitar, I have just the course for you.
The Cory Wong guitar course. Now some people are like, oh, is this just a rhythm
guitar or funk guitar course? No, this is to make you an all-around, well-rounded
player, make you a better session musician, make you a better band member, make you
better at playing at jam sessions, get your chops in order.
You got to have chops. Nowadays, it's a given. You got to come with your A game
every time.
There's just a demand for excellence. If you're not excellent at what you do,
you're not even in the conversation. That's just step one.
This course is going to get you excellent at what you do, but I'm also going to
explore the thing that is the X Factor, which is creativity, artistry, and moving
beyond just excellence at the thing you do, the craft of playing the guitar, and
moving into finding creative ways to use these things and use your voice on the
instrument. Anyways, I've had a couple of cups of coffee. It's past 6 p.m.
My bracket is popping right now. I'm not going to tell you who I have winning,
because I don't know if I'm proud of it yet. I don't know, but I got it.
There's some games on the tube tonight. I'm working on mixing a record on my
computer, got the TV up, gonna be watching some Stanley Cup. It's just a good
night.
It's a good night. I hope you're having a great day. I hope you enjoy this
interview with Al Di Meola.
And guess what? We have a couple more episodes in this season. Gonna blow you away.
So stoked. Thanks for hanging with us. Here we go.
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All right, let's hit this episode. Well, Al, so good to see you, man. Thanks for
hanging with us today.
Thank you, man. Yeah, it's a real pleasure.
Yeah, where are you at right now? Are you at home? Are you on the road?
Where are you at?
I'm at my home in Miami Beach, like right on the beach.
I'll tell you what, the best smelling hotel I've ever been to in my life is Faena
or however you say it.
Faena is amazing.
In Miami? That place smells incredible when you walk in.
Oh yeah. It's amazing. They have a really cool lounge.
It's like a living room. It's not like a nightclub at all. It's like a really cozy
lounge and they usually have a band playing and there is a bar and everything, but
there's beautiful couches all over the place.
It's just, the place is amazing.
When you go out to see a band at a place like that, are you able to enjoy it or are
you constantly scrutinizing? Where are you at? I go in cycles with this.
I don't go out that much to see bands, although I'm not adverse to it, but it's
just, I'm usually here working on some music.
Well, I'll tell you what, man, this new track, Fandango, fantastic.
Thank you, man.
Man, I love this tune. It is just a beautiful melody and the guitars come in
nicely. And then I was so pleasantly surprised when the orchestration and
everything came in, the arrangement and the choice of instrumentation was just
incredible.
I love this tune.
Thank you, man. Yeah, it's one of the few times I've orchestrated for brass, and it
just called for it. It was kind of a majestic piece and the way it reminded me of
gliding over the Alps.
And it just, I had a whole lot of time in the COVID year and the year, the next
year as well to be off and to get my mind off of the news. It was like therapy to
go down into the studio back in New Jersey, that is. And it just, write, keep
writing.
Because writing or reading music takes my mind off of whatever the dilemma is in
the world or personal. So yeah, I had so much extra time that this record that was
deemed to be a solo acoustic project, just everything solo, no overdrive at all,
just grew and grew until it became a big production record. And it's also expanded
into being a double record.
So it's two records.
I love that.
16, 16 brand new compositions and they're all very involved. I hope I don't have to
do this again.
Well, your tone is also incredible on this. Cause I have questions when it comes to
acoustic guitar. Now I know you're about to go on tour, to tour this record and you
got a lot of great dates.
I was looking at your tour dates. I'm wondering when you play acoustic guitar live,
cause you've been doing this a lot of years, you've probably run the gambit on
miking DI acoustic guitar. We got it tough out there as guitar players with
acoustic guitar.
How do you get a good tone when you're playing live? Where are you at with that?
Well, in the studio it's a little different, of course, but I use in the studio,
two Sheck mics. And then I also mic with a Neumann, I forgot the number, but it's a
little black pencil mic. AER acoustic amp, the smaller version.
Yeah.
So I'm up close mic'd with two Shepp's cross mic'd and fairly close. And I've been
using Shepp for the last 30 years plus since 83, I think. So even longer than 35
years.
Cause I was always asking my engineer what ECM, the label ECM uses to get that
crystal clear sound. And the engineer is very familiar with ECM and their recording
techniques. So he recommended I buy a pair of Shepp's.
So they've been my standard mics. Also very good for grand piano, not for a
distorted amplifier electric, but very good for acoustic instruments, you know.
Is that what you're using live too?
No, for live I don't use the Shepp's because it'll pick up everything around you
and that you don't want that. So I use a Neumann that little black pencil mic. It's
kind of the same shape.
It looks like kind of a cigar almost. And I go direct through my RMC box because I
have an RMC pickup on my acoustic. So I'm able to get some volume other than just
the microphone in front of me.
And we run it out of the AER, that tiny little AER ramp, which is barely just
cracked on slightly.
Nice. Well, you have a very percussive picking style and a lot of it very demanding
as far as how you play. Where did you learn that from?
And was there a point where you got away from more legato playing?
Well, legato playing is there when needed. But I was always, I think I was from the
get go, a frustrated or destined drummer or percussionist because I hung out in
Latin clubs and I spent my last couple of years in high school completely not
paying attention and just kind of tapping out rhythms on the top of the desk and
figuring that I could somehow transfer my sense of rhythm combinations to my guitar
playing. So there is a lot of syncopation mixed with counterpoint on a point on a
lot of my compositions.
And over the years, compositions have become the central focal point more than what
a lot of young kids are doing when you pop on your phone every day. You see this
next new young kid has just popped out. He's probably two years old and he's
playing fast.
It's like that's not my goal these days is to... I don't get impressed with that
kind of thing. That was cool back in the mid-70s and it carried me through.
But really, I come from a band when I started out. The band was the most
compositional band of the three leading fusion bands. I was inspired by composition
and also the excitement of the velocity of what fusion was all about because it was
new and exciting.
So what does impress you about young and up-and-coming guitar players?
Well, I tell you, look, there's a lot of young guys that have got very impressive
technique and impressive lines, but it's against nothing. There's no composition.
So the question I would ask is, well, what are you going to do with it?
How are you going to apply it? What's it used in? Is there anything to use it in?
Those are the questions. So that's not always so easy. I can come up with 20
phenomenally weird sounding, fast lines, but where are you going to use it?
It's how you tastefully place it within the solo context of hopefully a good
composition, because after a while, the players that have lived on technique alone
and really lacked on the side of composition, because it's a whole other profession
almost, let's say, you get tired of it. There's not a girl in the audience that
cares for that stuff. They get moved by the emotion of the story within the context
of the composition rather.
And that's where I put my importance. I'd rather be known as a composer, guitarist,
than the other way around.
Well, the other thing about guitar players is that so many of them, they're working
on their technique, doing their thing. Not everybody really focuses on finding
their voice on an instrument. I'm curious as somebody who's been around and done
this thing with also so many other great guitar players, what is it that's required
to find a unique voice on the instrument?
And to you, what is it that makes certain players stand out amongst others?
Oh, well, the second part's easier to answer. The players that stand out for me,
you know, it doesn't have to be guitar specific, are the ones that have immaculate
articulation. And of course, great technique, but the articulation of how they
deliver the phrasing and how within the context of the paragraph of that little
story they're telling in the solo, how it's articulated on certain notes, it could
be upbeats, it could be whatever.
It's not all linear, you know, and you know, when it has to be strong, the
articulation of the player like a Chick Corea or Gonzalo Robocaba or as a drummer,
Steve Gad, I mean, those are the kinds of guys. And then when I used Anthony
Jackson, cause he played with a pick, you know, there's some great things to be
said about, you know, guitars or bass players that play with a pick because you do
have the ability to actually articulate a little bit more than hands.
Yeah.
But not everybody that plays with a pick has strong articulation, you know, it's,
and when you set out to try to find a voice or your own style, I think, I don't
know if you do that. I think you kind of listen to the guys that you, that are your
heroes at the time. So for young kids, if it was Joe Satriani or if it was
whatever, who was Steve Vai or somebody that's, you know, the newer generation,
let's say, from where I came from, they'll try to do what they're doing, but
eventually they'll probably, you know, realize that what's emerging is their own
slant or their own voice, because everybody sounds kind of different, you know, but
to set up, to find that is really just a discovery thing that happens along the
way.
Well, it's interesting what you say about articulation. With your type of picking
style, do you have to have your guitars set up in a certain way to get your thing?
No, not really, no. It's set up pretty normal. I mean, at the moment, my nylon
guitar, and I got to tell you, to play a nylon with the same velocity as an
electric guitar or even an ovation steel string is, it's three times harder.
It's just way harder because of the response time of a nylon is not the same as the
response of a steel string. And usually on a nylon, especially the mine, I think
the height is too high. The string height from the neck to the string is way up
there.
It has to come down. But if you could train your hand to execute, it takes a lot of
practice and it's frustrating. And it takes a lot of muscle movement in the hand
to...
More energy must be exerted, in other words, to do what you could do on those other
instruments and do it the same on the violin.
Yeah. When you recorded the first guitar trio album, Friday Night in San Francisco,
three acoustic guitar players, did you feel that was an exceptional night just on
its own in the middle of a tour, or was that just like, was that one shot to record
a live album? What was the process?
The live album was the last of two shows after two months of touring nearly every
night. But two months of touring in that era, where there was not anything close to
a cell phone that had not emerged yet. No computers have emerged.
So the amount of time that we spent every day in our hotel rooms or wherever we may
have been to prepare for that night show was totally devoted to our chops. So that
gave, like, if I look at the average of time I spend on my phone, it's probably not
much different than a lot of other people. But you know, five hours more is a lot
of time to have extra, you know.
Nowadays, it's like if you're backstage, you're looking at your phone. When you're
finished with the show, you're looking at your phone. When you're in the hotel
room, you're mostly dealing with the phone.
You have to really try to discipline yourself to put the phone down, but it's.
Hard. I think in that era, I knew that I was up against two guys that are
relentless in their delivery of phenomenal ideas. When they finished the solo, I
was like, oh my God, now what am I going to come up with?
You would just have to go beyond what you normally might play. You have to play
outside more. You have to experiment more.
There were nights that were phenomenal. There were nights that could have been
better, but there were nights that were absolute magic, especially within the
interplay, because the three of us did have a considerable amount of technique
ability. We could deliver very quick ideas and have conversations in that sense.
But it was the solos that really mattered. Whereas in years after that, it was the
compositions that matters. I didn't want to make records full of 5,000 mile an hour
runs and stuff most of the time.
It worked for that trio. I mean, it worked to the degree of 7 million records. So
it was a huge record that people still talk about all over the world.
And then in the COVID year, I found, because I had all the tapes of the whole two-
month tour from 1980, I went in my back room where all of these tapes, about 100
boxes, two-inch reels. And I found that there was a Saturday night that we almost
forgot that we played a second night in San Francisco. And I found alternate pieces
that probably weren't our first choice pieces, but they were still good enough for
a record.
That's incredible. That's so dope. Well, you used the verbiage, going up against
these two guys.
Was that the energy? Was it like a real competition vibe or did you feel like you
were on the same team?
We were on the same team, but it was a real healthy competition because the guy
would do a solo, maybe 20 choruses of mind-blowing stuff and then it became either
the other guy's turn or your turn. It's like, oh my God, now I got to come up with
something. So you have to have the agility and the ability with the agility, to be
able to execute things that you hear in your head beyond and beyond.
And really kind of, you're doing it to impress the other guys. We were trying to
impress one another. The audience got the benefit of us having this little very
healthy competition.
I know I hate to use the word competition, but it really was in a sense because we
were all out to do our best. But it was cool and healthy, especially in the
beginning.
Yeah. Well, I can imagine also, I mean, three monster guitar players in a room.
Guitar players are notorious.
We are notorious for being somewhat territorial. A lot of times you're messing with
egos when it's other guitar players you're playing with. All of that.
Or what was your experience with that?
It was challenging. I think I was more closer with Paco because Paco had recorded
with me on Elegant Gypsy years before, three years before that, and that became a
hit single, believe it or not, the Mediterranean Sundance version of it. Then we
talked about touring and then we were approached somewhere in the beginning of 1980
or the end of 79 by an impresario out of London named Barry Marshall, who basically
books McCartney and Pink and Elton John.
He's the biggest. But he started in the business with us as a young guy. It was his
idea to put the tree together with McLaughlin.
I said, well, if you do that, this thing is going to explode. But it really was way
bigger than we all imagined, especially later on in terms of sales. And then, of
course, we did a couple of reunion tours soon thereafter.
One in 83 and I think one in 95, or 81 and 95, I forget. Yeah, and then later
became, there was some tension, let's put it that way. Look, I was the young guy.
I was 12 years younger than John and Paco was somewhere in between. And John and I
are, at least, we're friendly and we're talking to one another now, but there was a
lot of years we weren't, there was some animosity there. We cleared up a lot of
stuff.
And when I told him I found the tapes, he didn't want to talk to me. So I had to
basically convince him, I said, let me just send you a track. He would just say,
no, yes or no.
You know, there's nothing behind anyone's back. I just happened to have listened to
one track and I'm, I was blown away with the excitement of it. So he goes, okay,
send me something.
So I sent it and I didn't hear from him. I mean, he was pretty much sequestered in
France because of the COVID thing was hitting hard, you know, still first quarter
of 2020. So I also thought it was a good time to call him because, you know, we're
all concerned for one another, you know, what's happening with humanity in the
world.
You know, I saw the more of the compassionate side of John, and he eventually
really liked what he heard. He said, man, I love to hear the rest of it. So when he
heard the rest of it, it was like a go.
You know, he went to Paco's widow, and she was very amenable, and the whole thing
came together. And so the thing that may have irked John a little bit was that, you
know, or just disappointed him was he couldn't get involved with it. I had to do
all the editing and all of the mixing because there was no easy way to travel
during that period, you know.
So it became kind of my project. Not that I was totally into meeting John or having
John come over, whatever the case may be, but we all had to be very, very careful
of not getting COVID because we, at that time, in the first quarter of 2020, we
thought if we got COVID, we'd have a good chance of dying. So I kept busy and that
came out.
And then I worked on my new album that has Fandango on it. And that record exploded
because I worked on it for three to four years. And with that three to four years,
I produced two albums and I figured there's no way the record company is going to
want to release two records, a double album.
Double albums, even when we were in the glory period of the recording industry,
record companies hated it because it would mean the price would go up and cost more
to make and less people would buy it. But my company, when I mentioned it, they
said, oh, that's great. They were so excited.
I said, wow, okay. And the reason why I would want it out is because it was music
made in this period. I don't want to five years from now release the second half of
the record.
It should all come out now. It goes against the grain of what people do when they
listen to music, which is basically skip, you know, short attention span, shorter
than ever. This goes against the grain.
You notice the song was long. There's a lot of them that are long and the record
long. So yeah, it's once again, I'm going against the grain.
I have been on a quest the last four years to find the best tiramisu in the world.
You've got an album called Tiramisu. You do a Italian cooking night at your house
that I need to come hang at.
Tell me what's going on. Tell me what's going on with your Italian cooking night.
Tell me where I can find the best tiramisu in the world.
You know, we just had a phenomenal like the best we ever had in our lives in Europe
last week. I think it was maybe it was Zurich or something. I don't remember, but
it was after the show.
We had dinner and everybody said this is the best tiramisu ever. So but yeah, it's
really a northern Italian dessert. It has very little to do with my style of
cooking and my heritage.
You know, we don't make creamy desserts. Not that much. I mean, you know, okay,
cannolis are from Sicily.
So it's considered the southern Italian dessert. But the best dessert from Napoli,
which is really where my family or, you know, the whole family comes from, that
whole region, the most famous dessert, the one that will blow you away is called
sfugatella.
Alright, I got to get hip.
Yeah, sfugatella will blow you away, especially if it's got to be crisp and it
can't be soggy. So you can't leave it out and then the next day eat it because
it'll be soggy by then. So it has to be, it's very flaky and very crisp.
And it's really the most incredible dessert you will ever have.
I like that.
And they may be hard to find. You know what we do now is we get them directly from
Knopf's and we freeze them. And then we put them in the oven and they come out like
they were brand, just made, brand new.
But the whole cooking thing started in the summer of 2020 when people were outside,
walking in the streets, you know, everybody was out of work. You know, so a high
school friend came over with his wife and I mentioned to my wife that, you know, I
wouldn't mind, you know, making something for everybody because my wife is also a
great cook. So she said, all right, if you want to, I said, yeah, I got this, I got
this pasta dish that's going to blow them away.
They can never get this in any restaurant. So I went ahead. I was feeling really
good.
A few glasses of wine, you know, kind of enjoying being home, to be honest. And I
said to my wife, why don't you go live stream? She goes, really?
I said, yeah, go live stream. Let them watch me cook. So we were getting like tons
of like incoming from South America, Europe, Asia, the states, you name it.
And so in the middle of the live stream, I wasn't really reading stuff as it was
coming in. I was still busy. But in the middle of the live stream, I looked up at
the phone and, you know, I just made a mention.
I said, and if you guys want to come here, you know, we could maybe make, you know,
we could do this for you live in person. You know, and so I was kidding. I didn't
mean I wasn't thinking at all about actually doing it.
But then we read the manager's going, Let's go, baby.
No, no, no. The manager actually, when he found out that this was brilliant, I
said, yeah, it actually was brilliant. But, you know, we we read the comments and
it was like so many people asking, Are you serious?
I said, well, you know what? I said to my wife, maybe we can do this. This might be
a great idea.
What we do is after dinner, first, we serve all these hors d'oeuvres, all the
Italian appetizers under the sun. You know, all the wines, champagnes, we decorate
the place like walking into like the most amazing house ever. And then we have like
a three hour dinner with like three courses and all the best Italian desserts at
the end.
Then we'll go down to my studio and I'll give a private show and offer a lesson at
the end or jam at the end, which no one ever took that, but they just loved the
show. And yeah, so when we got the first one, that summer, it was one of the
hottest days, it had to be like over 100 degrees. The guy arrived, he was
completely drenched, came by himself from Detroit.
And I said, dude, you got to go upstairs in the guest room and take a shower.
Right, I'll be fine. No, no, don't take a shower.
It was so hot. You know, so the funny thing is at the end of the night, he goes,
okay, yeah. After the show, the private show, he goes, I'd like to jam with you.
I said, oh, oh, great. Okay. Okay.
Just pick any guitar. I had them all out.
Oh, no, no, no.
So what do you mean? I brought my cowbell. I said, I looked at my wife and I went,
I said, well, what the hell?
He paid for it. You know, so I started playing. He was hitting the cowbell
completely out of time.
You know, and I just sat there. You know what? This is still a great way to make
money.
And also I have a charity, which which we set up. Tenesis Charity. So it was like,
wow, this is really a cool.
It doesn't matter if he's playing in time. It doesn't matter if he wants to sing in
the exact same. What matters is that he could say to his friends, I jam with Al Di
Meola.
I'll tell you what, though, if I'm coming over, I'm a stickler about pizza because
nowadays I'm only getting pizza. I'm a Napoli style pizza guy. I go to places that
are VPN certified.
Got that?
I know the best places.
Vera Pizza, Napolitana, Verified, places. Those are the only places I go to. I only
get VPN pizza now.
Where are you located? I'm in Minneapolis.
In Minneapolis, okay.
But I'm, you know, I'm all over the place, so.
We'll be playing up there, you know.
Yeah, you're playing at the Dakota in a few weeks.
Yeah, two nights, yeah. Yeah, down here, I know the best places in New York with
guys, everybody in the place that works there from Napolitana. And we found their
offshoot places in, right near us in Fort Lauderdale, outside of Fort Lauderdale.
And we went there, I guess it was a month ago, and I have to say it was the best
pizza I've had in my life. Even better than the best places in Napolitana.
All right, let's say we're stuck. Let's pretend that you and I are on tour
together. We're stuck.
The only place in town to eat is Olive Garden. What's the least offensive item on
the menu that you're ordering?
Chicken. Chicken.
Just straight up, just a piece of chicken?
Well, whatever is on it, scrape it off. You know, you don't want to scrape that
shit off, because basically, you know, they don't know at all how to cook. Zero.
Okay. So if they're putting any kind of tomato sauce on there, it's certainly not
going to be San Marzano. So they don't even know what San Marzano is.
And that's a specific kind of tomato from Napoli. And all the best Napolitan pizza
places or even food places, they use San Marzano tomatoes. The tomatoes that look
like pears, they're kind of oblong.
Yeah, they display them. They got to have them on display so you know, dude.
Yeah, so I don't even have to ask, but I'm sure I would be going there to ask
anyway. But Olive Garden is not going to use any quality stuff like that. No way.
And I would not get the pasta because a typical American likes it soft, which is
like, you know, there should be a law against it.
Got to be cooking al dente, baby. You got to be al dente, dude.
And a lot of people don't like it that way. And that's just too bad. I mean, that's
the way it should be enjoyed.
And if they cook it soft...
I mean, are we going to completely ignore the Al Di Meola, al dente? Where are we
going with this? Is there something there?
Come on.
Yeah, yeah. You know, it's my heritage. Food is the most important thing, probably.
I like that. I mean, you got the album Tiramisu. You need al dente now, dude.
You know what Tiramisu means?
What does it mean?
Lift me up.
I like that. I like that. Cue the DMB, dude.
Every day. Lift me up every day, dude. Cue the DMB.
Let's get back to some music questions. I got a question because you're a
composition cat. You're all about composition now.
You did a couple records where you interpreted the Beatles music. When you took the
time to do those records, what did you learn about composition?
Well, when I worked on the Beatles stuff, I looked for the pieces that had enough
of harmonic movement. Of course, the melodies are outstanding, but the harmonic
movement of those pieces, you could do a lot with that. They really had beautiful
harmonic movement in a lot of their, a lot of their music.
Even though the songs were on the extremely short side, more than three minutes was
a big deal in the beginning for them, up until probably Magical Mystery Tour. If
you were doing something prior to that, there wasn't a lot of meat. If you
eliminate the voice and the lyrics, you really can't copy what they did, because it
would be less than what they did.
So I had to do my thing with it, which is respect the aesthetic quality of those
pieces. I view them as very aesthetic cop pieces. I took pieces like Norwegian
Wood, for instance, that when you hear the original version, and as beautiful as it
is, no one ever complained about it, but it was a song that was under two minutes.
But you don't think about it. Now, if I were to do that instrumentally, and it was
under two minutes, it would really be like, that's it? You know, so I wrote a lot
of music as if, you know, to extend it, like where would they go with it if they
were going to develop this?
You know what I mean? And no matter how much I wrote, and sometimes I wrote a lot,
like in Strawberry Fields, Norwegian Wood in particular, you're not allowed to take
any credit, and neither did I care to get it. I just wanted to deliver my vision of
how I would hear it if it were instrumental.
And it was a project of passion, especially the first one. The first one was really
intended to be just solo acoustic and not invite people to come in and not start
adding keyboard layers or drummers or bass and just do a very unique kind of
project, which I wound up being really happy with the end result because it was not
me doing The Beatles like The Beatles do it. You already have 10,000 albums of
artists that are trying to do what The Beatles are doing for reasons that blow my
mind because The Beatles did it the best.
You can't even come close. But they do it like that. So if you're going to do it,
you got to hopefully have something unique to say but also retain the aesthetic
nature of it and not go too crazy like some jazz artists have completely ruined
their renditions of The Beatles by altering every chord so dissonantly that it
makes it...
It doesn't need... I know you're trying to hippify it, but if you hippify it too
much and all of a sudden it's not that pretty song anymore. And sometimes you can't
even recognize it because the melody is buried within a dissonant chord.
You know? Now you're getting cute with the pizza. Now you're putting all kinds of
whack.
Now you're putting fruity pebbles on the pizza when you didn't eat fruity pebbles
on the pizza.
It's like when they put the pineapple on the pizza, it's like, you know, there
should be a law, you know.
Are you like morally offended when pineapple is on the pizza?
I'm morally offended with pineapple. I'm morally offended when they call sauce
gravy. Never call tomato sauce gravy.
Gravy brown, mashed potatoes.
Oh, I'm gonna go with you there. I mean, the thing is, have you had pineapple on
pizza though? It can be, we don't have to call it pizza, but you put pineapple on
some dough, tomato sauce and cheese, it's not bad.
It's kind of good.
Yeah, the good part was the tomato and the cheese. So you got, you got, you got 75%
good. The pineapple just didn't belong there, you know.
So what overwhelms the taste is that, that sauce. Now the sauce is dark. Now we'll
get in on it.
This is like a food lesson.
That's fine.
If you see pizza like, you know, at a shitty place, like Pizza Hut or any of those
kind of Caesar's Pizza, those delivery places, what you're going to, what you're
probably going to notice is that the, the sauce is dark red.
Alright.
Run, run for the hills. Dark red sauce is a very low grade sauce, usually loaded
with acid. You ever get acid reflux, you know, I have not.
So, so much acid in that sauce, which has the totally wrong taste, but people don't
know better. I mean, a lot of these, especially Midwest, they don't know what a,
what Napoli pizza tastes like.
Dude, you're basically at a Grateful Dead show at that point. There's so much acid.
Yeah. They don't really know what, what, what great pizza is, you know? And maybe,
maybe if they had it, they still wouldn't get it.
You know, you have to be somewhat of a connoisseur of fine food.
You know, you got to go back to basics. The tomato, that's it. That's a pH joke on
the, on the acids.
I'm glad to hear you're so passionate about this though. I mean, that's the thing
is a lot of cats that are really good at an instrument, that passion and that
dedication carries over into something else. And for you, it's Italian food.
I like that. Well, you're paving the way for Mark Lettieri to someday become a good
Italian chef. Before we close up here, tell me a bit, you're about to go on tour.
What's the band configuration? Is it electric? Is it acoustic?
What can people expect from this upcoming tour?
Well, this time I'm, I'm pulling out all the stops. This is a, an electric tour,
kick ass electric tour, because normally whenever, you know, every five to ten
years I'll get the urge to, to resurrect the electric thing. The reason why I
stayed away from it and I made major changes back in the end of the seventies,
that's the eighties, was because of the volume had created a tinnitus, a ringing in
the ears that was so bad.
And it doesn't go away. It's just something you live with and it's, it's miserable,
horrible, but you just have to deal with it. But, you know, after watching a lot of
these kids, you know, it's all, it's all electric that they get excited about.
And I said to myself, you know, let me put on a few of my early records and see
what it is that my fans keep talking about. And, you know, yeah, it's, it's quite a
bit different when you listen to Aligan Gypsy, Casino, Land of the Midnight Sun and
the early RTF from where I've gone as a writer. So whenever I went out electric in
these last 30, 40 years, I would go out majorly featuring the music of that new
record that the fans were pretty much not familiar with.
And I'd go with that because I figured, well, they'll like whatever I do. Well, to
a large extent they did, but they're not wild about the new stuff because they
don't really know it. Now we went out in January with this concept of doing, let's
say, you know, for better or worse, the hits of what's considered the more familiar
songs of my early career that everyone knows if you're a fan.
So we, you know, we would do Race to the Devil, Egyptian Dons, that's Senor Mouse.
Like every tune is well known to that particular crowd. And the whole night is
that.
So it's really going back, it's an electric tour, going back to the beginning. And
even the early RTF pieces that some of them, I've always wanted to play live. And
Casino is from my third record, it's something I've never played live.
And Elegant Chipsie Suite, I've never played live. So when I pulled out the charts,
for one thing, I was like amazed at how perfect the charts were. You know, I was
still living with my parents, but they were just perfectly written and they haven't
faded at all.
So they were kind of easy to run down. But there was a lot of, it was more
aesthetic in the music than I had given it credit for. Because I had grown as a
writer and I just put those to pasture.
You know, I just forgot about them. I said, well, what I'm writing now is far more
advanced than any of that old stuff. In a sense it is, but there's still something
about the early music that I can now put my finger on it because I'm doing it and I
see the audience reaction.
It's phenomenal.
Love that.
So that's what we're doing. We're slipping in a new piece from the album, of
course. We have to do that one or two.
I love it.
Well, you're coming to the Dakota here in Minneapolis. I'll be sure to come check
you out, man.
Good.
All right.
Come on back and say hello.
I will. All right. Well, Al, thanks so much for joining us, man.
It's really a treat to speak with you and I wish you the best luck on this tour.
Excited to see you out there.
Thank you, man. A lot of fun.
Yeah.
Take care, guys.
There you have it. Al Di Meola. I mean, come on.
How are you going to do Di Meola, Al Di Meola, and not do Al Dente? I mean, that's
got to be a thing. You're going to do these Italian meals?
Somebody in his marketing department needs to get it together. I'll do a pitch deck
for them if they need. But there's some clever things that could happen in the Al
Di Meola marketing world for these dinners.
Although the people that I'd be marketing to, they might not get like the people
with that kind of disposable income, might not appreciate my style of marketing. So
I might not be the right cat. That's all right.
I guess I'll just keep playing guitar. Anyways, thanks for hanging with us. Great
to have you with.
And we'll see you next time.
Peace!