Cult Of Personality - Famous Guitar Riffs - Living Colour

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Guitarist Vernon Reid of Living Colour created an instant classic riff with his monster opening riff in the song Cult Of Personality off of their debit album Vivid.

Cult of Personality went on to win a Grammy for best rock performance, but we don't care about any of that. It rocks and that is all that matters.

For the most part the riff is pretty straightforward. However, you will want to pay attention to the picking because that will make playing the opening riff much easier.

After that I decided to also include some of the quick little scale runs that he throws into the riff before moving to the pre-chorus.

You may want to use some slight palm muting to get those fast note sequences to come out clearly. A nice thick distortion tone doesn't hurt either. ;)

Ok that's about it for now. enjoy! Carl..

[ua]

Deep Purple defined Living Colours as “The most talented yet underrated band ever”

[Unclecoconuts]

Being a beginner, all i was hoping, while searching the guitar lesson for this song on YouTube, is that i should find a lesson on this channel. i feel like commenting this on every video, thankyou for teaching guitar man❤️

[veerayyahorapeti]

Listened in GTA San Andreas listened in WWE cm punk's theme and now I found it

[kevinmattie]

That two downstrokes an an up is just the fine little details that you put in all your videos not to mention the finger positions. So good at what you do…so thankful ..Carl you are the best at what you do. 🎸

[foorankoo]

I can usually count on Carl to show riffs I'm thinking of. Chris has great vids. We really appreciate it

[whitechocolate]

My own personal opinion for people to try. In the intro - when Carl suggest up picking the 3rd note on the D string, also try doing a pull off instead.
Ive found - that at least for me - it is easier to continue & keep the rhythm, and it also doesn’t sacrifice any tonal consistencies. Playing that way helped me a lot when I was first learning the song. Experiment! Good luck!

[Jdawg-gq]

“ Im the best on that microphone in the ring even in commentary” Best in the world

[TheBushwooky]

Well I promised myself I was going to get off YouTube and do work after checking my sub box one more time...then I saw this. Dammit. 

[imray]

Holy shit. Someone created that music with a guitar. Incredible..

[alexisvezina]

Anyone watching this in 2023 after cm punk returned to WWE at survivor series and wanting to learn the riff because you’re a wrestling fan but also a guitarist, like me?🤣🤣🤣

[chatchaat]

Vernon Reid plays the first four beats of this riff with his index finger only

[devinomateus]

Hey Carl, any plans of recording a full lesson of this one?
Those crazy solos should be fun to play. 🤣

[nickrunyon]

Pleas do the rest includeingthe solos
They look realy hard

[MLsuperbros]

You really got me amazed! I hunt for a song I want to learn and guess who pop's up first. Awesome take over Carl!

[anthonygarcia]

I didn't even know there was a tutorial on this. Can you finish this please??

[Gamfam]

Punk, Chicago, United Center, August 20, 2021

[andrewjordan]

LOOOK IN MY EYYEEES, WHAT DO YOU SEEEE?

[pjss.]

This is definitely not an easy song to learn and get right! Thanks for the great breakdown!!🎉

[JFKweb]

Awesome, just what I was looking for. Any chance you could do a quick video on the solo? Not note for note or anything, but just some of the techniques to make it sound like that. It's almost like organized chaos.

[TMoody]

Why is the first 3 notes of this tune so damn tricky for me.