In a video for Loudwire Slipknot guitarist Jim Root played his favorite riffs and talked about his journey with the instrument.
Speaking about her progression with the guitar since childhood, Root recounts, “I was listening to the Beatles and The Who and things like that and I was in love with the guitar, but I never had a guitar. My parents couldn’t afford me a guitar, so I had a metal guitar with maybe three nylon strings, which I would play or use other things to pretend were guitars.”
Regarding the first songs and riffs he learned, Root resembles many guitarists at the beginning of their careers, “When I started playing guitar, I started to move away from what my parents were listening to and was learning to play these Ratt and Mötley Crüe like 'Too Fast for Love' and things like that – [Led] Zeppelin, Black Sabbath , and then I started listening to Anthrax, Metallica and Megadeth and that's when I really started to increase my dexterity and learn that kind of music.”
The guitarist even mentions that one of the first riffs he learned was from Deep Purple 's "Smoke In The Water." Furthermore, Root had a natural affinity for the guitar, saying he had a good understanding of the instrument despite never having played it before; his theory is that perhaps, in a past life, he had been a guitarist.
Check out the video below of Jim Root from Slipknot playing his favorite riffs:
