Guys, as it going, we are here with the amazing Brian Beller, who I've been a huge fan of for a long time, Brian.

Great to you. We've hoodwinked him into coming to Manchester and hanging out with us here. We're here in the middle of the aristocrats European tour. Nice and early after a show day with another show coming up. So if there's bags under my eyes, everyone's just going to have to forgive me out there on Internet. But I'm happy to be here. I know we've been talking about this for a long time.

I can't believe I'm finally here.

It's like three years.

Yeah.

Four years or something like that.

Yeah.

We're pretty efficient.

We talked earlier.

We did. Yeah, we had one. But it was one of those remote Skype. It was like from Skype. It's always better to realize that actually, yes, you do exist in real life. Yeah, I do.

Just on the little rectangle.

So if you don't know who Brian is, obviously you might be living in a cave. He's played with Steve Weide, Joe Satriani, the aristocrats. Like, who else jumps to mind, Brian that... Well, I mean, also Mike Caneli, you know. Mike Caneli, John Petruci. Like, all of the guitar gods seem to really love you. Right.

You know, it's the strangest thing because I was really, when I was growing up, I mean, of course, I liked Led Zeppelin and I was really into Pink Floyd and yes, and some rush. So there was like playing there, but it was never like, I never was like looking at the bass like Stu Hamm or Victor Wooten being like,

how can I push this into the next dimension?

I was never looking at the bass like Stu Hamm or Victor Wooten being like, how can I push this into the next dimension?

I was never looking at extended technique.

I just kind of wanted to play.

Play bass in a good band.

And then somehow I ended up in this coterie of, you know, of like, technique pushing guitarists.

So maybe it works out that like I'm like the bass player that just wants to play bass, so they can do all this crazy stuff.

How did you even find the bass in the first place?

Well, I was a rotten kid. I was taking classical piano lessons and then my parents were like, well, you should be in the orchestra also.

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