Scotty Hall (left) and Phil Robertson
By Steve Newton
I’ve been lucky enough to have interviewed some amazing guitar players in the last 35 years, pickers like Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Satriani, and Scotty Hall.
Scotty Hall? Who the funk is he, you’re probably thinking. Well, unless you’re a music insider based in Vancouver, you’ve probably never heard of Scotty Hall. But I gotta tell ya: that dude could play!
I got turned onto Scotty’s talent in a big way in 2006 when he recorded an album titled Rez, which was also the name of the instrumental project he’d put together with Vancouver drum great Phil Robertson. I interviewed Hall and Robertson at a coffee shop across from Neptoon Records on Main Street, where Hall used to work, and the story ran in the Georgia Straight in March of 2006.
At the time Hall was fighting a very serious type of cancer, which took his life just two months later. Years after Hall passed away I gave the tape of the interview to his former boss and best buddy, Neptoon owner Rob Frith, and he went ahead and put it on YouTube.
Have a listen:
Here’s my original story from 2006.