Greg Prato of Songfacts recently conducted an interview with guitarists Sam Totman and Herman Li of British epic power metallers DRAGONFORCE. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.Songfacts: In DRAGONFORCE, what would you say is more important, songwriting or the soloing?Sam: Definitely the songwriting, for sure. But at the same time, everything counts. I always tell people I definitely spend a lot more time writing a song than writing guitar solos. Obviously, I still spend a lot of time on the guitar solos, but nothing close to the amount of time I spend actually getting the song right first getting the vocal lines good and getting the structure in place. Guitar solos always come last. Not to say that they don't count, because, of course, they do. But a great guitar solo is nothing unless it's in a good song. To me, anyway.Songfacts: Who would you say are your favorite guitarists as far as influences and also modern-day guitarists?Herman: My favorite guitar players are usually the solo artists, so Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, those kind of guys instrumental guys I really like. No one can argue with me that those guys are not inspirational or a big influence on the rock music and electric guitar of the last, I don't know how many years.Sam: I never got into those guys so much, even though I think they're amazing players. But I didn't find the songs that catchy. I was more into the bands, mainly. Say, IRON MAIDEN, for example, I thought the songs were really great. But I also thought the guitar playing was cool, too. So those guys were definitely a big influence in the beginning. But, there's so many guitar players out there that are really good. I was never a huge fan of EXTREME, but I thought Nuno Bettencourt was really amazing. We went and saw him the other day, actually. We hadn't seen him play for a while, and were just really blown away. So I'll get influences from guys like that, though I might not necessarily listen to their albums all day long. But you can still appreciate them. There's so many great people out there. I really like Chuck [Schuldiner] from DEATH and James Murphy on that "Spiritual Healing" album. I thought they played really well together. There's just too many to list off, really.Read the entire interview at Songfacts.
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