WHITESNAKE guitarist Doug Aldrich is featured in a new interview with Jeffrey Ougler at The Sault Star. An excerpt from the article is available below:

Fear of flubbing a guitar lick didn't have Doug Aldrich shaking all over. It was more like meeting KISS for the first time sans makeup that was enough to give the fledgling guitarist wrinkles.

In 1982, the 18-year-old had just moved to L.A. and the famous band just happened to be holding auditions to replace original axeman Ace Frehley, whose relationship with fellow bandmembers had peeled and cracked noticeably for some time.

"Half of the intimidation thing for KISS was that nobody had seen their faces at that time," Aldrich said.

True enough.

In those days, it was a treat to catch a peek of a portion of Gene Simmons's mostly shielded unpainted face when photographers would snap the band's bassist arm-in-arm with one of his steadies at the time, such as Cher or Diana Ross.

"I didn't know what these guys looked like, and here I was going down to the recording studio to meet them," Aldrich said. "There was that whole thing going on in my head. 'Wow, this is just bizarre.' "

Aldrich, "more of a LED ZEPPELIN guy," came well prepared nonetheless, able to unleash a very healthy solo for 'Calling Dr. Love' and any number of other KISS standards.

"Gene is sitting there with no makeup on telling me, 'Try a solo on this song, or whatever.' "

Aldrich tried, but it was Vinnie Vincent who got the gig. There were no hard feeling, and Aldrich and Simmons remain buddies to this day.

"I was too young, too immature for a gig like that at the time," he added. "What it did was really wake me up to, 'OK, I have potential. Obviously I have something going on or those guys wouldn't have noticed.' It got me serious about being better as a musician. It has never been about, for me, getting girls or trying to be famous. It's about trying to be a good musician. I'm still trying."

Go to this location for the complete story.

Guitar World's recent Lick Of The Day is from Aldrich, who delivers a "GARY MOORE-style Super Chunk." Doug explains:

"Today's lick is inspired by the legendary Gary Moore. It begins with a steady, machine-gun barrage of alternate-picked, palm-muted 16th notes and ends with a wild two-step "over-bend" on the low E string, punctuated by a squealing pinch harmonic.

I play through this lick using strict alternate picking (down-up-down-up) to ensure my rhythms are dead-on accurate. The best way to practice this style of picking is simply to start out slow, paying close attention to your pick stroke's direction. You can use the picking prompts in the notation as a guide to make sure you're on the right track.

When performing the two-step bend on the low G note (low E string, third fret) in bar 4, I'm using both my index and middle fingers to pull the string in toward my palm. The extra finger muscle is all but required to perform this monster bend, as otherwise there's a good chance the string would slip out from under my middle finger.

The piercing squeal heard on the first G-note bend in bar 4 is the result of a pick-hand technique called a "pinch harmonic." Pinch harmonics are usually indicated in notation by the abbreviation "P.H.", and are produced by grazing the tip of your pick-hand's thumb against the string as you pick a downstroke. However, to produce a harmonic, the thumb must touch the string at a specific point along the string, known as a "node." Node locations are different for each fretted note, so you'll need to seek them out by picking up and down the string until you locate the desired harmonic note "squeal." An overdriven amp or distortion pedal will expose node points more readily, as will the use of the guitar's bridge pickup, making pinch harmonics a bit easier to perform.

The tempo is 120 beats per minute, 64 for slow practice."

Check out the Lick Of The Day below: