Michael Wilton

Michael Wilton

Michael Wilton (born February 23, 1962, San Francisco, California) is an American guitarist for the progressive metal band Queensrÿche. Wilton attended Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle where he met future Queensrÿche drummer Scott Rockenfield and began recording in 1981. As a progressive metal musician, he has quite a number of influences from metal bands, for instance, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, UFO and Van Halen.

Childhood

Wilton's musician life began when he was eight years old, when he inherited a bass guitar from his uncle, who died in a motorcycle accident. He started to learn bass by learning some songs by bands from his father's collections, such as The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Later, he also got a nylon string acoustic from his aunt and accidentally blew his father's speaker. He convinced his father to give him his uncle's equipment, a Fender Bassman and speaker cabinet. In junior high school, Wilton changed his mind and chose to play guitar rather than bass, when he bought his first guitar, a Les Paul copy and a fuzzbox. At school, he also joined some garage bands with his school-mates, including Chris DeGarmo, Queensrÿche's former guitarist. He began to explore the guitar world further in high school, where he started to listen to hard rock music such as Judas Priest, UFO, Iron Maiden, and Van Halen and began practicing seriously, for 2 hours per day.

Career

After high school, Wilton attended the Cornish Institute of Allied Arts in Seattle where he studied jazz and classical music. This was a big step in his life as he began to appreciate more ethnic and improvisational music, which later gave him influences as a progressive rock musician. At college, he also met Eddie Jackson and Scott Rockenfield, who are still active members of Queensrÿche. With three friends, he began to play at some parties and called themselves The Mob. In 1982, Wilton met Geoff Tate, Queensrÿche's singer, and started recording four songs in the late summer that year. In 1983, Queensrÿche released their self titled debut album. In 2002 he started a side band called Soulbender and has released 2 CDs and played various shows around the northwest. After Degarmo left Queensrÿche in 1998, Wilton gradually began performing most of the songs that previously featured DeGarmo doing the main solo live, including "Silent Lucidity", "The Mission", "En Force", "I Am I", "Take Hold of the Flame", "Best I Can", "The Killing Words", "Bridge", "The Lady Wore Black" and "Anybody Listening?", amongst others. Parker Lundgren joined the band in February 2009 as a touring guitarist but mainly as a rhythm guitarist only joining in for dual guitar solos in songs like "Neue Regel" and "London". After the band's tour for its 10th album American Soldier started on April 16 2009, Wilton took over all of the solos.

Equipment

Wilton has used many different guitars throughout his 24 year career, mostly Gibson guitars and Fender guitars. He then began endorsing ESP guitars in 1989. He also has had two signature series from ESP, which are the 2004 ESP Signature Eclipse (comes in three different colors) and the 2004 ESP Signature Skull.

As for the amplifiers, he has acquired Marshall, Fender, Roland, and Orange amplifiers. In 2006 he signed a deal with Hughes and Kettner endorsing the Switchblade and MKII amplifiers. As of 2009, he has switch from a Hughes and Kettner endorsement to a Krank Amplification endorsement. He uses the Rev+ and Nineteen80 heads with Rev+ Cabs, Nineteen80 Cabs, and Rev Jr cabs.

Wilton, mostly on stage, uses a VOX V847 Wah pedal. Wilton is endorsed by Planet Waves, as well as Digitech.

Discography

Queensrÿche

• Queensrÿche (1983)
• The Warning (1984)
• Rage for Order (1986)
• Operation: Mindcrime (1988)
• Empire (1990)
• Promised Land (1994)
• Hear in the Now Frontier (1997)
• Q2K (1999)
• Tribe (2003)
• Operation: Mindcrime II (2006)
• Take Cover (2007)
• American Soldier (2009)

Soulbender

• Soulbender (2004)

Pamela Moore

• Stories from a Blue Room (2006)

External links

• Official home page