No Stairway! Unless You’re These Guys – Rodrigo y Gabriela

Read Time 1 Minutes

Rodrigo y Gabriela

If you’re not one of the eight million people who have seen Rodrigo y Gabriela’s rendition of Zeppelin’s classic “Stairway To Heaven” then you’re about to join those ranks.

The team of nylon string shredders met in Mexico City, where they both played in a thrash band. They soon became frustrated with with the limitations of the musical scene there, so they ditched their electric guitars, found some acoustics and hit the trail to Europe.

They played on the streets of Ireland for a long time before things began to change for them.

Once they were in the right place, with the right instruments their synergy began to show in some pretty amazing ways.

Gabriela Quintero pretty much handles the rhythm work – and I mean literally. She has developed a technique for hitting the guitar in specific areas – be it on the strings (fretted) or various places on the body in a furious dance with standard left hand rhythm work to create something that’s difficult to find anywhere else.

Rodrigo Sanchez handles the lead work in a more standard rock and roll vein.

Together, the result is pretty amazing.

As far as classification of their music, they’re careful to state that it isn’t flamenco. As Gabriela told Premier Guitar:

Most of the music we draw from is just music we love to hear. Lately, we’ve been listening to a lot of reggae, classical, and jazz, with a lot of rock from the ’60s. We’ve also been listening to a lot of metal, which we genuinely love. So when we listen to those forms of music, we like to adapt those rhythms to make our own music more diverse. I think, in the end, what we really play is rock music—because we aren’t jazz or classical musicians, but we try to take those influences and add them to our own music.

Let’s check out one of the most popular of their adaptations – “Stairway To Heaven”