In my travels running this site, I see a lot of videos of people playing Black Sabbath songs. Some are good. Some are crap. Every once in awhile one pops up that is to me head and shoulders above the rest. Ran into the latter tonight. This guy posted one of his videos on the Facebook page for this site, and I listened to it, enjoyed it. Sent it on to Geezer, Bill, & Tony for them to listen to as well. Then I started looking around. The guy has several other videos where he copies Black Sabbath tracks.
But, it’s not a straight up electric guitar riff he’s copying. He’s doing them all acoustic. To me, the words “acoustic” & “Black Sabbath” don’t match at all, but this guy makes it work. His name is Phil Schenker-Macrakken. Let me give you an example. I’m linking here to his video for Spiral Architect. The intro to that song has some great guitar work from Iommi, and is one of my favorite Sabbath tracks. So I know it well. Then I listened to Phil’s work, and hot damn – if he didn’t absolutely NAIL the intro. Check it out:
Phil’s got a bunch of videos with Sabbath tracks in a “Black Sabbath” playlist over on Youtube. Tracks on his list are:
- Fluff
- Children of The Grave / Embryo
- She’s Gone
- Snowblind
- Heaven & Hell (the track the he posted on Facebook)
- Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
- Spiral Architect
- Cornucopia
- Planet Caravan
- Supertzar (it appears he’s trying to harness his inner Gwar in this video)
- Laguna Sunrise
He also tackles a few Ozzy solo tracks in the playlist, too:
- Goodbye to Romance
- S.A.T.O.
You will definitely want to check out the dude’s videos. Here’s a link to his Black Sabbath Playlist. He also has playlists for Rush, Thin Lizzy, Marillion, Kansas, The Scorpions, Pink Floyd, and UFO.
Hey Phil, get your UFO videos in front of Eddie Trunk’s eyes, that’ll get you some more views. If there’s two things that Trunk is known for, it’s hating the R&R HOF, and loving UFO. :)
P.S. He is aware he looks like Zakk Wylde in some of the videos. I mentioned that to him; he’s apparently heard it before. hahaha. :)
I have seen this a while back and swore I linked to this guy in a post here. Maybe I didn’t. Yeah he does some great stuff. I’m a big acoustic player and love this.
THIS IS THE BEST THING I’VE EVER HEARD
EVER
Nice acoustic guitar work.
And to think Tony played this with two ‘numb’ fingers, awesome!
Fantastic. I know the intro but never seen someone play it through and so I will definitely learn from this. Beautifully realized and played. Its one of my favorites as well. When I hear a track like this, a truly stellar track that is part of an amazing, life changing album, it reaffirms my belief that Sabbath’s genius lies in so much more than just the amazing mammoth riffing. The entire arrangement, strings etc..Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is the first album produced by Sabbath themselves and opens up a world of new possibilities. Butler’s intelligent and evocative lyrics, and the they way that band sounded together with Ozzy’s voice. Peerless I think. Great job on that guitar interpretation! I’ll be watching more.
I belong to those who play, record, mix and upload crap cover versions, including a cover of PARANOID and one of WAR PIGS, onto their youtube channel (GFabio2011)… :-)
Having said that in all honesty, I believe this guy is a great guitar player.