Eric Gales was born in Memphis in October 1974 and picked up the guitar at four, learning from his older brothers Eugene and Manuel, known as Little Jimmy King. Because the brother who taught him was left-handed, the right-handed Eric mirrored what he saw, flipping a standard guitar over without restringing it, so the heavy bass string sits nearest the floor. This episode explains how that upside-down approach forced his hands into alien shapes, made him pull strings downward to bend them, and gave him a tone no one else could physically copy. By 11 he was entering blues competitions with Eugene on bass, and by late 1990, at 16, the brothers had signed with Elektra Records as the industry searched for a new guitar savior after the death of Stevie Ray Vaughan.

The conversation follows the 1991 debut The Eric Gales Band, a Guitar World reader ...