Guitar Tricks Insider February/March Digital Edition | Page 16

CLASSIC CORNER: BACKTRACK

The whole thing was supposed to be similar
to Mexican trumpets. I grew up learning my
phrasing and thinking melodically as a horn
player. I probably should have been a horn
player; and I’d still be banging around the streets
of New York here. I kind of grew up hearing
things that way and for that song, since it has
kind of a Mexican flavor, Spanish flavor, what do
you do? The horns are sort of like a Mexican horn
part or a Mariachi band would play something
similar to that. As a matter of fact, when we did
the acoustic version for MTV I almost had some
Mariachi horn players come in and play some of
those things. But I thought it was better to keep
it down to the band. I didn’t want to be label V@