Gizz Butt
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Gizz Butt (born Graham Butt, in Manchester, England in 1966) is a British musician, best known for playing the guitar during live performances by band The Prodigy in the late 1990s.
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[edit] Early Years
Coming from a musical background, Graham began playing the guitar at the age of eleven and would jam with his eldest brother to the sounds of Jimi Hendrix and Chuck Berry. He later took a series of guitar lessons with a unknown Manchester based guitarist and quickly began to learn how to play the guitar. By early 1978 his family had relocated to Peterborough and Graham formed his first band, The System. He was quickly recruited by another band, The Destructors who had admired his guitar playing very much.
By the early 1980s Randy Rhodes and Eddie Van Halen were becoming an influence on Graham’s guitar work and by 1984 he had parted ways with The Destructors and gone onto join The English Dogs. While in The English Dogs he toured the USA and It was at this time that Graham’s fusion of Punk and Metal based guitar playing was started to get him noticed by the likes of Metallica and helping influence the Thrash Metal genre. By 1987 Graham had moved on again, formed another band, Wardance.
As the bands' vocalist and lead guitarist Graham was now perfecting his sound and it was the bands active exposure to Europe that brought the influence of Yngwie Malmsteen to bear on his work. Graham at this time had now learned his own way of guitar playing and had influenced the growth of guitar based music. His next influence on guitar was the neo-classical genre which very successfully added to his already big influence of guitar playing.
[edit] The Prodigy Years
After being ‘blown away’ by The Prodigy’s Music For The Jilted Generation album (He became enthusiastic about the Prodigy after hearing Jilted on the English Dogs' tour bus) He later found out from good friend and Kerrang! Magazine's contributor Mörat that front man Liam Howlett was holding auditions for a new guitarist since Jim Davies had left. Graham was given the role of new live guitarist. He toured with The Prodigy for 3 years and gave the band a certain ‘Punk Image’ with his vicious guitar playing on ‘Their Law’ and wearing his studded Punk Jackets which he had worn in the earlier days.
[edit] After The Prodigy
After playing with The Prodigy throughout the 1996–’97 period, Graham formed Janus Stark (named after a 1970s comic book character) in 1998 who had US chart success with ‘Every Little Thing Counts’ (Radio station 102.1 for Milwaukee also held a ‘Stark Marathon’ which included every song from their album Great Adventure Cigar and a few Prodigy tunes.) Graham still continues to play with the English Dogs, and has formed another band in 2003 called The More I See. The More I See are a thrash metal 5 piece, showcasing fast, tight guitar work layered on a tight rhythym section. They are currently demoing for their second album, to follow up "The Wolves are Hungry"
[edit] Trivia
- Graham got the name 'Gizz Butt' from a character named 'Gizzard Puke' from The Kenny Everett Show.
- Graham is former guitar teacher who worked at Stamford School.
- Gizz is an endorsee of Ibanez guitars
- Graham has 2 cats. One is called Pwabble and the other one's called Joe, after the Leaves song "Hey Joe" (which was made famous by Jimi Hendrix later on) . Pwabble got his name from the James Bond film Live And Let Die, at the voodoo scene where the Jane Seymour's character Solitaire is about to have a snake put to her neck - and when Bond shoots the snake wielder, someone shouts 'Pwabble' for no apparent reason.
He also does backing vocals on the Trivium track Gunshot To The Head Of Trepadation
