Artist: Buckethead
Title: Hold Me Forever (Pike 65)
Year: 2014

Composed in commemoration of his mother’s death, this is a classic Pike and a great introduction for newbies to Buckethead’s immense and (sometimes) impressive oeuvre.

A common but fair criticism of Buckethead is that he can at times be formulaic and repetitive. That’s not the case here even if it may seem so at first.

At the start of the Pike Buckethead seems to want to keep moving forward while mourning in his own quiet way, but his guitar has a few words to say. So he picks it up and for the first fifteen minutes gives it space to say its piece and shed a few tears while he keeps marching on. But then halfway through when the guitar is coming to the end of its oration Buckethead gets more into the playing and starts shredding his heart out as the incomprehensibility of death progressively dawns on him.

In the last few minutes the guitar is completely silent and we only hear Buckethead’s raw emotion. Not sorrow or anger. Just determination to keep playing, keep playing, keep playing; to hold the guitar forever and not let go while knowing he must.

After 27 minutes of buildup, all of which is essential to the whole, the Pike ends with a final cry, an optimistic galloping into a fade-out where it is still probably playing inaudibly; the only way a tribute like this can and should end.