Artist Spotlight - Rickey Medlocke [Lynyrd Skynyrd]

by Lisa Sharken

Groundwire: Something that surprises many people is learning that you were originally the drummer for Lynyrd Skynyrd back in the early '70s.
Yes, I joined the band in the early '70s as a drummer and played for just about three years. I've been back now since '96, playing guitar. I knew in my heart that I would probably never achieve greatness as a drummer and that my talents lied within guitar and singing. I left Skynyrd so that I could play guitar, and as fate would have it, it's all kind of worked out. The vicious cycle came around and here I am, back with them again!

GW: Which players influenced you as a guitarist?
I was raised in a musical environment. My grandad Shorty Medlocke had his own bands and toured with musicians from Nashville and the southeast area. He was even on a television show out of Jacksonville from 1953 through 1958 that I was on as a little boy. It was a cool schtick with a grandfather and grandson. At that time I was playing banjo, which was my very first instrument. I had a miniature 5-string banjo and I played and sang with him until I was about eight years old. I started playing guitar when I was about five years old and guitar has always been my real love.

As a kid, I listened to records galore and radio stations back in the '50s. I started listening to a lot of the early stuff like Elvis Presley when I was about five or six years old. Of course, Carl Perkins played on some of the old Elvis Presley sessions and I enjoyed him. He also played on a lot of sessions for Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and people from the Sun Records label. My grandfather listened to a lot of old old Mississippi Delta blues stuff, so I ended up listening to a lot of the old black players like Sun House, Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, and Leadbelly. It was like a Mississippi Delta blues/bluegrass/country environment. The blues was really my biggest influence getting into rock and roll, and I still love the blues.

By the mid '60s, I started listening to the Beatles. I loved the Beatles. Then I happened to hear a Jimi Hendrix record on a local radio station and I was just in awe of what was going on with the guitar and what he was playing. After that I followed Eric Clapton with Cream, then Jeff Beck with the Jeff Beck Group, and then Jimmy Page. In my teenage years, when I was learning how to play leads, my three favorite guitar players were definitely Hendrix, Clapton and Beck. I still listen to those guys today. I've got some incredible footage of Beck playing live in Japan. His style and technique are just unbelievable. His tone is just... ahhh. You wonder what planet he came from.

I've always said that you bake the cake with Hendrix, Clapton and Beck, but the icing is Billy Gibbons' hands stuck on top. He's always been a hero, as well as one of my dearest friends. I'm also a huge Eric Johnson fanatic. He is a virtuoso. Sometimes when he's playing guitar it's like someone playing a violin. He's just incredible. There are a lot of wonderful guitar players walking around - too numerous to mention. The world is full of talent, but to me, those five guys I mentioned are just the cream of the crop.

GW: Which players motivated your choices in gear?
Without a doubt, it was Clapton, Hendrix and Beck. The combination of Gibson® and Marshall® together has always been my favorite. I'm still using an old Explorer and old Les Pauls. I do use a Stratocaster once in a while for certain songs, like "Sweet Home Alabama." I like a Strat for the cleanliness and I use it for slide a lot of times.

GW: Describe your live rig.
I've got an arsenal of late '50s right up through late '60s. I love old guitars and I don't spare nothing being able to use them. I have taken some of my old guitars off the road, but Gibson has been wonderful enough to recreate a lot of my guitars in their Custom Shop. I guess I'm a purist when it comes to it because I just love playing those old ones. I've still got my old black beauty on the road with me and I just can't turn it loose. I still love old P.A.F. pickups and that's what I love about the Seymour Duncan stuff. Seymour Duncan is the real deal. I have some really ancient Seymour Duncan pickups loaded in a couple of my oldest guitars. I've never changed them out because they've never gone bad and as long as they're still working, I'm gonna keep them there. In fact, the pickups in my black Les Paul are vintage JB models. They're great. I basically use a lot of JBs, but I started using some other ones. I've got a couple of Pearly Gates in another Les Paul because for the density of the wood, they fit pretty well perfect. For strings, I'm using a standard set of .010s on most guitars. My picks are brass and they're custom made for me by a guy named Len Milheim in Michigan. That's how I get that "squank" out of my strings. This year I'm also using heavy-gauge plastic picks, too.

As for amps on the Vicious Cycle tour, I've got several old ones-hot-rodded '70 and '71 100-watt heads that I've been using for many years and an early JCM 800 head that Jim Marshall gave to me when I was in Blackfoot. Skynyrd is sponsored by Peavey and I am using a Peavey straight cabinet. For effects, I use a Boss chorus and a beefed up Crybaby which keeps the signal very steady so I don't lose any volume.

GW: How does your live setup differ from the gear you've used in the studio?
Well, actually it doesn't differ a whole lot. I mean, 90 percent of the time what I play live is what I played in the studio. I love being able to recreate what I do live. I use Marshall amps, Gibson® guitars, and once in a while a Stratocaster®. On Vicious Cycle, I used a Stratocaster quite a bit this time. For the beefiness of the rhythm and a lot of the leads, I'm still a Gibson guy.

GW: As a three-guitar band, how does Skynyrd separate things both sonically and technically?
Well, each one of us has our own style, our own sound, our own tone. I have a real low-endy beefy kind of tone, whereas Hughie has the single-coil Stratocaster sound, and Gary has a real nice smooth midrangey tone. You put it all together and it just blends great. That's the beauty of this band. We never fight over who's going to play what leads in what songs because we just go with whoever's style of lead playing fits whatever style of song it is. Actually, while we're writing the songs, we start figuring out parts and who's going to play where. Everything just comes together naturally.