Guitar guru helps get Madonna into the groove
Talent, determination, genius. All important qualities if you’re shooting for rock stardom.
And then there’s good, old-fashioned luck.
A few months after rolling into Los Angeles in 1999 in search of rock ‘n’ roll glory, Texan Monte Pittman got a call from someone looking for guitar lessons. The guy’s girlfriend had given him a guitar to mess around with while he was laid up after surgery. Teaching someone their first G chord wasn’t Pittman’s end goal, but he didn’t have the bank balance to refuse the extra cash.
In a glorious case of right time, right place, the guy turned out to be Guy Ritchie – the gal, Madonna.
“First she got him a guitar, then he returned the favor, so I ended up teaching them both,” Pittman said. “A few months later Madonna asked me to go on Dave Letterman with her and then she invited me into her band.”
Now Pittman splits his time between guitar duties in legendary underground metal outfit Prong and axe-slinging behind the Material Girl. Pittman’s skills will be on display at Madonna’s sold-out TD Banknorth Garden shows tonight and tomorrow.
So how does Madge’s blond ambition apply to the guitar?
“She’s a very dedicated student,” Pittman said. “She takes it very seriously. Her assistant told me she’s caught Madonna a couple times up at 2 a.m. working on stuff I showed her. If I show her something, she works very hard to get it right and is a fast learner.”
At 50, you might wonder if Madonna is taking up guitar so she can take a break from all the singing, dancing and berserk yoga poses she pulls off on stage. Pittman doesn’t believe that’s the case.
“She doesn’t think, ‘Oh, I can take a break here and play some guitar’,” he said. “She doesn’t need a break. There’s plenty of songs she doesn’t play guitar on where she could, but she likes to keep things balanced.
“That’s why this show’s got a pimp section, old-school section, acoustic section and futuristic section where the lasers come out,” he said. “I don’t really know how she could top this show. Maybe if she ran on a treadmill while doing flips.”
From an artcile by Jed Gottlieb, Boston Herald.