Bruce Bouillet

Bouillet onstage with Racer X in 1987

**Bruce Allan Bouillet** (pronounced *boo-yay*) is an American guitarist, producer, and audio engineer from Vincennes, Indiana. Bouillet rose to fame as the second guitarist in Racer X and appears only on *Second Heat*, *Extreme Volume Live*, *and* *Extreme Volume II Live*. Initially a student of Paul Gilbert at Hollywood's Guitar Institute of Technology, Bouillet was later hired to play in Racer X and added harmonized leads and dueling solos to the band's sound.

Although Bouillet only appears on one studio album and two live albums, he is considered one of the band's core members and maintains a friendship with his Racer X bandmates to this day.

## Pre-Racer X

Bruce Bouillet was born February 3, 1965 on a naval base in Memphis, Tennessee but later moved to Vincennes, Indiana. As a teenager, he became interested in rock and metal music and soon got his first live exposure to the genre at a Judas Priest/KISS concert. Bouillet remarks that within the first song of Judas Priest's set, he knew that he wanted to play guitar for the rest of his life.

He quickly got his first guitar (a Les Paul copy) and amp (a Peavey Backstage 30) and began playing in local bands, deriving his stylistic influence from bands such as Van Halen and Rush. He soon upgraded to a Marshall stack and gained local fame from playing large shows in his area. Near the date of his high school graduation, he saw an advertisement in a guitar magazine for the Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles, California. Initially thinking his parents would disapprove of his cross-country move, they gave their blessing on the grounds that he would be attending a school. After unsuccessfully trying to persuade his bandmates to move west with him, Bouillet embarked across the country by himself to attend GIT.

On his first day in Los Angeles, Bouillet attended the graduation performance of Paul Gilbert, who was accompanied by the other members of Racer X. Bouillet, blown away by Gilbert's guitar skill, requested Paul as his private teacher in order to learn the techniques that he'd seen. Bruce was a diligent student and would spend long periods of time practicing the sequences that Gilbert had shown him.

In a 1988 Ibanez clinic, Bruce reveals that he was often able to pick up difficult sequences in relatively short amounts of time. "My technique was under Paul's when I met him, by far. Way by far," he remarked, "I think when I came back he was kind of freaking out because we'd do it in harmony and he was like, 'wow! That took me like, six months to do that. How did you get it in like, a week?'" He continues, "Especially with arpeggios. They came real easy for me. Within a month, I had all the shapes I have now, and they were about as clean."

A while later, Bouillet was walking down the hall and passed one of Gilbert's open counseling sessions. Paul invited him in, and began demonstrating a fast string-skipping sequence that was relatively unknown at the time. Bruce, on the spot, played the sequence in harmony with Gilbert, later referring to this event as "the luckiest manuever I ever pulled". Having thoroughly proven his skills without even realizing it, Bruce was given a copy of *Street Lethal,* the first Racer X album, by Gilbert and invited to a jam with the band. Bruce learned the album with some assistance from Paul and was subsequently invited to be the lighting operator at a Racer X show. Afterwards, Paul invited Bruce to become the second guitar player in Racer X.

## Racer X

Throughout 1986, Bruce was touring with Racer X and adding harmonized sections to established songs such as "Loud and Clear". Additionally, he and Gilbert began incorporating guitar stunts into their performances. During the solo to "Getaway", Bouillet would use his left hand to fret the notes on Paul's guitar while Paul picked the notes with his right hand.

During his tenure with Racer X, Bouillet shared a house with Juan Alderete.

Writing for the second Racer X album was underway at this point. The new set of songs began to incorporate elaborate guitar harmonies and dueling guitar sections. The album was recorded at Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati, CA in the winter of 1986 and was released under the title *Second Heat* in February of 1987. The album, which included famous instrumental "Scarified", showcased Bruce's powerhouse guitar abilities and gained him a high degree of fame locally, as well as feature spots in nationally circulated advertisements for Ibanez and D'Angelico strings. Bruce also wrote the intro to "Motor Man", which he and Paul refer to as the most difficult Racer X piece to play.

Bruce tended to use similar equipment to Paul, including a custom Ibanez with an Epiphone Wilshire body (the Iba-Phone) and a Lee Jackson Metaltronix amplifier. Paul usually used the hot pink Ibanez, while Bruce was usually seen playing the orange and green ones. Bouillet was officially endorsed by Ibanez and appeared in several print ads.

Around this time, Bouillet was hired as an instructor at GIT. He was noted for his blues influences and sweeping sequences in contrast to Gilbert who utilized a more traditional sound as well as more reliance on string skipping. Bruce recorded an instructional tape, entitled "Improvisation for Progressive Hard Rock Guitar", which was more straight-ahead and focused chiefly on theory in contrast to Gilbert's "Intense Rock" tape. He also toured the local clinic circuit for Ibanez and Fender.

Racer X continued to tour in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, and Phoenix, gaining a larger mass of followers. Two of these live performances were recorded as *Extreme Volume Live* and *Extreme Volume II Live*. The first album featured a solo spot from Bruce which was highly acclaimed and demonstrated his high degree of technical skill.

   However, Racer X soon found itself stagnating. After failing to grab the attention of major labels, the band's success began to wane as its crowd sizes either stagnated or diminished slightly. Paul Gilbert left to form Mr. Big with Billy Sheehan, and Bruce was temporarily the only guitarist in the band until they hired Chris Arvan for a brief time. However, the remaining members quickly agreed that Racer X was a dead-end pursuit and, after one final show at the Omni in Oakland, disbanded amicably.

Around this time, Bruce had developed carpal tunnel syndrome and in fact missed some of the final Racer X shows to seek treatment.

## After Racer X

Following Racer X's breakup, Bouillet moved on to L.A.-based rock band The Scream in 1989. This transition was not particularly jarring, as 3 out of the 4 initial members were from Racer X; Juan Alderete on bass, and Scott Travis on drums. Travis left shortly after to join Judas Priest for their *Painkiller* album in 1990, and lead singer John Corabi left The Scream after recording their 1991 album *Let It Scream*.

Though The Scream survived for a short time afterward, Bouillet's carpal tunnel had worsened to the point where he had to quit playing guitar. At this point, he moved into production and sound engineering.

Though he'd quit playing guitar in 1993, Bouillet was again asked to join a band called Epidemic in 2001. He was able to play guitar by tuning to Open Drop A, which necessitated the use of a light-gauge bass G string in the low E position, and only utilizing one finger to play. Despite this simplistic approach in contrast to his technically demanding work in Racer X, it was with this method that Bouillet finally secured a major label deal with Elektra Records. The band had a song appear in Madden NFL 03, then broke up.

Bruce again returned to producing, winning a Grammy Award in 2005 for producing Motorhead's cover of the Metallica song "Whiplash". Eventually, he discovered a practice known as myrotherapy that could be used to fix the injury in his left hand. Indeed, it was successful, and Bouillet began playing guitar once again.

In 2007, he reunited with Paul Gilbert to play in the 2007 G3 concert. This series of shows saw the two guitarists playing Racer X pieces such as "Scit Scat Wah" and "Scarified" for the first time since the late 80's. Though Bruce was successful in playing these pieces, he and Gilbert did have to re-arrange certain parts in order to prevent Bruce from re-occurring his injury. To accomplish this, they changed some of the licks and, sometimes, Bruce would only harmonize certain notes in a sequence.

In 2011, Bouillet replaced Guthrie Govan as the guitarist in Asia ft. John Payne.

In 2013, Bouillet released a solo album on Mascot Records entitled *The Order of Control.* An instrumental concept album, *The Order of Control* saw Bouillet returning to his rock/metal roots and incorporating technically demanding, albeit melodic, ideas.

In 2016, Bouillet recorded a medley of several Racer X songs and solos, mostly from the *Second Heat* album. He also collaborated with John Guilford of Guilford Guitars to produce the Guilford RX-88. Named after Racer X, it is modeled after the Iba-Phones used by Paul and Bruce during the *Second Heat* era. He has also been making appearances on guitar podcasts, as well as a Google Hangout with Paul Gilbert for ArtistWorks.

2017 saw Bouillet collborating with Kruse Amplification on the Ultrasonic amplifier, for which he recorded the official demonstration video.

## Style

Bruce is heavily influenced by Paul Gilbert himself, as well as Eddie Van Halen, Glenn Tipton, Ace Frehley, and Shawn Lane. Though he does not exhibit much country influence in his style, he talks about growing up around bluegrass music and has recently incorporated hybrid picking techniques into his playing.

Though Bruce and Paul often played in perfect synchronicity, the two have very distinct styles. Fans of the band have often attributed Bruce to a more blues-based style and a heavier use of sweep picking. "Bruce's Solo" off of *Extreme Volume Live* demonstrates both of these ideas in full effect, and is often regarded as one of the greatest demonstrations of sweep arpeggios. In his solo passage, he also implements several dominant ideas.

In footage of a private lesson from 1991, Bruce expands on some of his stylistic choices. He remarks that he "was never really comfortable doing the three-note-per-string stuff" even though he "had to do quite a bit of it". He instead preferred to utilize two-note-per-string ideas such as the pentatonic scale and an inversion of a major 7th arpeggio. Additionally, he confirms his penchant for taking complicated ideas and making them fit rhythmically into the song (ex. the intro to the "On the Loose" solo from *Extreme Volume II Live*). When asked about tapping, he remarks that he "never really carried the tapping thing too far", although he sometimes had extended tapping passages in his unaccompanied live solos.

Bruce is well-versed in modal ideas, such as his Mixolydian concepts in "Give It To Me" and a Lydian sweep that appears in "Moonage Daydream". His Lydian sweep involves adding a flat 5th to a standard major-triad arpeggio. In his live solo as well as "Lady Killer", he adds diminished ideas into his sweeps by playing an arpeggio and moving the shape chromatically.

Bouillet also prefers a bluesier tone, often using his neck pickup in lead lines and solos. Paul, in contrast, uses more treble as well as his bridge pickup. On the Extreme Volume albums, Bruce is heard in the right stereo channel while Paul is heard in the left.

## Today

Bouillet is married and has one daughter. He currently lives in North Hollywood, Los Angeles and offers guitar lessons over the video messaging service Skype.

## Trivia

* Bruce recalls that, at Racer X shows, fans would often shout "Bruce". He would sometimes get confused and think that they were saying "Boo".
* In footage of a private lesson from the early 90's, Bruce says that he only attended GIT for 2 or 3 weeks before being picked up by Paul. He remarked, "I really dug the school, and I really would have liked to get into the jazz side of it [...] But what did I need anything for? 'Cause I was going for rock and then I was in a band with the best rock teacher there. So I was like, 'why bother?'"
* Bruce was an early fan of Shawn Lane and has a lot of admiration for him. He recalls getting to visit Shawn Lane's house once to see him play and being thoroughly impressed. He was especially awestruck by Lane's ability to do "crazy nonsense shit that'll give you tendonitis in fuckin' five minutes," specifically his diminished rakes.
* Unlike Paul, Bruce is a former smoker.
* While Bruce occasionally struggled to play Racer X solos, especially "Heart Of A Lion", he recalls that Paul could pull off the most difficult solos "smiling and drinking a Coke at the same time."
* During a Google Hangout with ArtistWorks and Paul Gilbert, Bruce recalled that the first thing Paul told him was, "Huh... you pick economy one direction, and alternate the other!" Bruce immediately changed his technique to strict alternate.

## Discography

### With Racer X

* *Second Heat* (1987)
* *Extreme Volume Live (1988)*
* *Extreme Volume II Live (1992)*

### With The Scream

* *Let It Scream* (1991)
* *Takin' It To The Next Level* (unreleased)

## References

1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 Amps & Axes #067 - Bruce Bouillet (2016) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzen5tA9hoE>
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Double Stop Podcast Ep. 32 - Bruce Bouillet (Racer X, The Scream, Solo) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZi1hziHT-0>
3. ↑ 1988 Bruce Bouillet Ibanez Clinic
4. ↑ Racer X - Getaway - Country Club Live 1986 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzJOO7Sd6oU>
5. ↑ http://www.shrapnelrecords.com/cd/second-heat-cd
6. ↑ Guilford Guitars - RX88 http://www.samurai-web-works.com/site/guilford-guitars/rx88.html#fifthPage
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Bruce Bouillet Private Lesson 1991
8. ↑ brucebouillet.com
9. ↑ Rock Guitar Google Hangout with Paul Gilbert. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcp8ED5W\_9w>