Interview
Steel Notes Magazine
January 2017
Interview
The King Of Shred Rusty Cooley
By Andrew Catania
Can a childhood birthday present set the entire course of future for someone ? This might be quite a random and subjective thought to ponder , but that ’ s what happened to Rusty Cooley ’ s life , to say the least !
Who knows what the person had in mind when he presented Rusty with a guitar on his 15 th birthday . The guitar turned out to be that lucky charm that one needs just once in their life , to meet their fate and make everything fall into place . The moment his fingers first encountered the chords , it was the defining moment of his life , and he has never looked back since .
His interest in music landed him into the supervision of a couple of instructors in the initial years of his learning phase . However , disgruntled with the way guitar lessons were taught back then , Rusty opted to test his own mettle and decided in favor of a self-learning approach .
This proved to be just the right learning medium as it not only improved his basic knowledge about the physics of guitars , but also helped him familiarize with the tact and intricacies of the chords . This probably is the reason why he ’ s titled as the ‘ Fastest Guitarist in the US ’ as well as a master shredder .
Rusty ’ s career debut as a guitarist was different from his contemporaries , unlike a typical debut norm of a studio album or record label release . Rusty , through his self-taught approach , had become so competent at playing guitars that he started giving guitar lessons at a local music store . In 1989 , at the age of 19 , he kick-started his professional playing career with the famous rock band Revolution .
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