RIP RONNIE MONTROSE - THE ORIGINAL MASTER BLASTER OF 70`S HEAVY ROCK GUITAR

 

Believe you me, I am not normally a fan of instrumental music of any kind, not just instrumental hard rock and heavy metal. 

As much as I respected him greatly for his incredible technical ability, it's only since Joe Satriani become a part of the band CHICKENFOOT and had Sammy Hagar putting some vocals to his awesome guitar playing that I have taken him seriously at all. 

I dont know about you, but I think instrumental guitar music most of the time can only be fully appreciated by other guitar players. 

This instrumental from Ronnie Montrose, the one time member of his namesake and pioneering 70`s hard rock band, is one exception to my own personal rule. 

BLOOD ALLEY is just a no-nonsense ballsy exhibition of Thin Lizzy and Van Halen inspired heavy rock guitar pyrotechnics, for someone who inspired the likes of Eddie Van Halen and Joe Perry to become the masters of 70`s metal like Montrose did, BLOOD ALLEY was an opportunity for him to let loose with a much heavier and virtuoso performance than he ever had while playing within the more workmanlike structure of MONTROSE or his experimental second metal band GAMMA. 

BLOOD ALLEY would have made the perfect soundtrack to the intro to WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS on Channel Nine, but i guess I am writing this twenty years too late to make that happen. 

Ronnie Montrose died on March 3rd, 2012, as the result of suicide, he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer around 2006 and on tour in 2009 Montrose indicated he had beaten it, but it apparently returned shortly after.

He was a monumental under-achiever, mostly of his own choosing, after the demise of MONTROSE he tried artistically to distance himself from the whole metal/hard rock genre by branching out and recording a number of instrumental fusion albums which even touched on jazz rock, it was only around the late 90`s when him and Sammy Hagar got back together for the first time since 1974 to perform a couple of MONTROSE reunion shows that he reminded his old metal audience that he still was a hard rocker at heart. 

In 2000 Montrose reformed GAMMA to record a fourth album to compliment the first three GAMMA records recorded between 1978 and 1980. 

Technically limited in comparison to the likes of Satriani and Vai, Montrose could still pack a great heavy metal groove.