Cris Cohen: I would classify your playing on most of these songs (on the album "Velvet Kiss, Lick of the Lime") as… it’s almost like your guitar work is kind of another backing vocal. There’s a harmony to it, a lyrical essence to it. It’s not just a show-off shred kind of thing, but more…
Michael Lockwood of Lions & Ghosts: There’s no more shredding now. [Laughs]
Cris Cohen: …but more layers of, again, it’s like a harmony. I’m curious, how did you develop that style? Where did that come from with you?
Michael Lockwood: That’s a great question. And I, obviously, have a lot of guitar player friends and we always sort of talk about guitar players and what we like about them and who influenced us. And I’ve always been the guy that says, “Listen. There’s no vocals happening. There has to be an event. But I don’t think it needs to be a shredded event. I want it to be lyrical and melodic. I want it to be something that sets up something that’s about to happen or an answer to something that just went by.”
And it’s the way that I think if I’m playing bass or if I’m playing keyboard or anything. That’s my first thought, “What serves this song? What serves this singer? Do I mimic the melody of the chorus on my solo?”
I don’t know where I got that from. I grew up listening to the Beatles. That was sort of my first big musical influence. Clearly, those guys are great crafters of arrangement and ideas and little things that orchestrate their music. So, probably some of it’s that. And a lot of the guitar players I listen to and grew up listening to, like James Honeyman-Scott from The Pretenders… Even Jimmy Page is a parts player. I know that he’s a shredder too, but he’s really an orchestrator of parts. And I really enjoy that when I’m working on music.