Paul Gilbert recently sat down to take part in a session of Guitar Player’s No Guitar Is Safe podcast.
In addition to playing riffs, jamming and talking about his career and technique, Paul offered up a fast, impromptu cover of the Doobie Brothers’ 1979 hit “What a Fool Believes.” In doing so, he delivered a spot-on imitation of Doobie Brothers vocalist Michael McDonald.
Paul was illustrating a point using the song’s catchy riff when he spontaneously began copying the heavily bearded singer’s distinctive falsetto.
Asked by host Jude Gold how he managed to channel McDonald so accurately, Paul replied, “With Michael McDonald you just have to try. And I’ve got a little bit of a beard going. It’s the F filter, where every consonant becomes the letter F.”
Check out the clip below. And be sure to click any of the links below to hear the entire free episode, which is presented by Audio-Technica and their new E-Series in-ear monitoring headphones. You can also enter to win a pair of Audio-Technica’s flagship E-Series ATH-E70 monitoring headphones just by entering your name and email in the drawing here.
Christopher Scapelliti is editor-in-chief of Guitar Player magazine, the world’s longest-running guitar magazine, founded in 1967. In his extensive career, he has authored in-depth interviews with such guitarists as Pete Townshend, Slash, Billy Corgan, Jack White, Elvis Costello and Todd Rundgren, and audio professionals including Beatles engineers Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott. He is the co-author of Guitar Aficionado: The Collections: The Most Famous, Rare, and Valuable Guitars in the World, a founding editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine, and a former editor with Guitar World, Guitar for the Practicing Musician and Maximum Guitar. Apart from guitars, he maintains a collection of more than 30 vintage analog synthesizers.
