Lamb of God’s Mark Morton once Googled the riff of Redneck during a live show because he forgot how to play it
“I started having a mini panic attack in my head – I couldn ’t figure it out.”
Image: Daniel Knighton / Getty
Lamb Of God guitarist Mark Morton has recalled how he once forgot the order of the riff to their track Redneck at a live show in front of 20,000 people.
As Morton explains, sometimes when you get so used to playing a riff it almost becomes automatic, but having a blank moment happens to the best of us. Luckily, the guitarist was able to get out there and play the riff correctly with a quick Google search.
The band were opening for Judas Priest at a show in Belgium, and Redneck – from their 2006 album, Sacrament – was due to be played as the closing track. At the time, vocalist Randy Blythe was saying their thank yous and wrapping things up. Meanwhile, Morton was in panic mode having gone blank.
“When you play these songs night after night so much, sometimes they get so ingrained in you that you sort of do it… It’s not that you’re not paying attention,” Morton says in a Riff Lords video with Gibson (via Ultimate Guitar).“It’s just that it’s such a part of you that you’re not really thinking about playing it.”
He later adds, “All of a sudden, I realised – I have no idea. I know how the riff goes, but I can’t remember if it repeats the first half twice or if I play the riff all the way through for the intro of the song. And I’m sitting there and I started having a mini panic attack in my head. And I couldn’t figure it out.”
“So I asked my tech, Alan Sosa, I said, ‘Hey, does Redneck do the first half twice, or does it go all the way through?’ And he looked at me, and his eyes got real big. He’s like, ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember.’ Because he was on the spot.”
“I walked up to our drum riser and to our drummer, I said ‘Hey, does Redneck go halfway through, or does it go all the way?’ And his eyes got really big.”
“So I went back to our little guitar workstation, and I had my tech Google it on his phone. And we listened to it in my ear 20 seconds before I walked out in front of that 20,000 people and played the riff,” he says. “So there’s a fun story about Redneck and how I learned it seconds before I played it at a big festival.”
Watch the full interview below:
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