Back in 1978, my sister bought a record of Carlos Santana containing the "Europa" song.When i heard this song for the first time, it gave me the "guitar virus".

In 1979, my parents got me to the conservatory of Marseille (Classical guitar conservatory) where i learned for 5 years the music theory as well as guitar playing of course.

In 1984 i stopped my studies at the conservatory, due to the famous VH "Eruption". I felt like i wanted to start to play electric guitar instead of classical. Then, i started to learn to play electric guitar, listening to records from Dire Straits, Scorpions etc ... alone in my room.

In 1985, i took jazz rock lessons with Philippe Robert (kinda famous in France at this moment) during one year.

In 1986, one of my best friends came to my place telling me "listen to this, it's pure madness !". This was the "Edge of Insanity" of Tony Macalpine. It was a revelation for me, it makes me understand that I was "made" to play this kind of things ! I started to buy a bunch of video lessons from Michael Angelo's weird stuff, to Macalpine, Paul Gilbert...and at last but not least, Yngwie Malmsteen. (I was still touring with Anastasia).

In 1989, i went to the IMFP (a famous jazz school around Marseille) for 2 years. During those years, I've studied guitar with a real good friend called Cyril Achard (we were the only guys playing neo-classical chops, among the jazzmen!).

In 1991, I started playing in a band called "Blizzard", we were playing live, recorded some materials etc ...(until 1993).

In 1995, I started playing with a french singer called David Hernandez. I recorded one album with him called "Imprevu". We've been playing live everywhere in France for two years.

From 1996 to 2000, I did worked in studio for several french bands and singers (mostly undiscovered talents), during this time I gave a lot of guitar lessons too. In 2001 I recorded a 3 tracks demo, made of covers of Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani and J.S Bach (Toccata).

Since I know Ritchie for a bunch of years (1994), our project, that we had in 1994, was to play together, but since we were really busy we never really had time to compose, arrange and record our songs.

This project comes to life in September 2001, and our first album "Structural Damage" came in November 2002. It was a great experience with Ritchie....Now i am working on my own project (coming soon) and start my solo career.

Thank you for reading :)

Cyril

www.cyrillepizzera.com