Five Minutes Alone - Chad Taylor

The Live guitarist talks six-string shocks, shops and an acoustic with its own security detail.

- Matt Parker

It’s the guitar man…

“I started playing trumpet in elementary school, but one day there was a performance for the school and there were a group of young girls, my peers, all fascinated with the guitar player. I knew at that point, ‘I want to be that guy…’. No one was talking about the trumpet player. Then the physical form of the guitar looked like a fascinating thing to me. The curves, the shape of it, the build, and all these years later, I think I’m still obsessed with that.”

Selling the drama…

“My primary motivation was just to write songs. On Live’s first album Mental Jewelry, I know there’s not a guitar solo on that record. Then we went on the road and playing the songs night after night, all of a sudden I noticed I was playing more deep, rich chords to fill out larger venues. So when you hear the next album Throwing Copper, you hear me starting to develop some solos, some bigger sounds, and by the time