“Pretty much everybody in the genre was a Fender guy… I said, ‘I’ve gotta pivot and do something different’”: Joe Bonamassa reveals what prompted him to switch from Strats to Les Pauls – and the one technique he cannot nail

Joe Bonamassa may be one of the greatest electric guitar players in the game, but it turns out he is human after all. 

Speaking recently to Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett, the typically besuited bluesman identified the one guitar playing technique he simply can't wrap his head around: legato.

“I have absolutely no legato whatsoever,” Bonamassa said on Shiflett’s Shred with Shifty podcast. “Zero. Not a stitch. I can’t pull anything off. I'm like the Al Di Meola school. I love Al's playing, so all my stuff is picked.”

It's not the first time he's outed his biggest weakness. Speaking to Guitar World back in 2020, Bonamassa admitted to having “absolutely no capacity to play anything using the legato technique”.

Instead, JoBo relies on an approach that sees him pick every note, adding additional dynamics with how hard he hits the strings. 

“Eric Johnson blends legato and picking perfectly in my opinion,” he told Guitar World. “I am an Al Di Meola school player, especially when it comes to faster playing. I pick literally every note. 

"I’ve tried to incorporate legato a little, but as my tech – who is extremely good at it and a huge Allan Holdsworth fan – glares over with the look of, ‘You are embarrassing yourself, Bonamassa,’ I decided it was not in my best interest to pursue that avenue.”

Elsewhere in his chat with Shiflett, Bonamassa broke down his soloing approach on Blues Deluxe (which he reveals was a one-take) and blew the Foo Fighter's mind by showcasing how he simultaneously picks and swells the volume control on his Les Paul – a technique he can nail, that he borrowed from Fender players such as Roy Buchanan and Danny Gatton.

While on the topic of Fenders, the guitarist then went on to explain how an audience member had initially prompted him to pivot away from the Stratocaster and towards the Gibson Les Paul, after he compared his playing to Stevie Ray Vaughan.

He recalled: “I was at the merchandise table. Some guy comes up to me and he's like, 'Man, you know when you played that piece that sounded just like a violin? When you did that, I closed my eyes and it sounded exactly like Stevie Ray.

“He was hearing with his eyes. There was no Stevie Ray in that. He was seeing the Strat,” he recalled. “At that point in the early 2000s, pretty much everybody in the genre was a Fender guy. And there was a lot of Stevie referencing in the music. I said, ‘I’ve gotta pivot and do something different.’

“It just so happened that on that same tour, Gibson gave me an early Les Paul Classic reissue. That night I did Blues Deluxe with the Les Paul and the volume swells, and it killed. I said, 'That's what I'm going to do from now on.”   

In other Bonamassa news, the blues titan recently partnered with Reverb to pit a vintage Jimi Hendrix live rig against a budget alternative, which yielded some rather interesting results.