ESP Guitars’ CEO Matt Masciandaro recently appeared on the Musicoff YouTube channel and reflected on touring with Motörhead and Aerosmith. Matt said he learned that he shouldn’t fail in his responsibilities while working with Aerosmith.
Being one of the most renowned guitar brands in the musical instruments market, ESP Guitars started as a company that provided replacement parts for guitars. Later on, they expanded their field and started building guitars for high-profile artists during the mid-1980s. It raised its popularity over the years and is now among the most popular suppliers of guitars for heavy metal.
Matt Masciandaro had already been in the music scene before being hired as the CEO. He was both a tour manager and a guitar tech, working with Motörhead and Aerosmith. Thus, he’s had a chance to build relationships with many prominent artists. During a recent interview, he was asked how it was to work with all these artists and what he learned from these different experiences.
Masciandaro revealed that he learned a lot, especially during the live shows on tours and recording sessions. He had an excellent chance to observe guitars. Matt was just at the beginning of his career when he started to work with Aerosmith, but he still recalls the lesson he learned during this period. The person working with the band before Masciandaro told him once that there was no room for failure while the band was on stage. Matt thought that the guy was exaggerating the situation, but he realized that he was right later on. He very well learned that he shouldn’t fail in his responsibilities.
Matt Masciandaro speaking on the lesson he learned from Aerosmith:
“I remember them favorably; it was a pretty wild ride because it was still the ’80s, but I made a lot of good friends and contacts that I still maintain today. Some in my working relationship with ESP, some are like family still. I learned a lot of things that apply to what we do at ESP, also as seeing guitars in a live and recording situation and seeing what’s required of them by the artists playing them.
When I started working for Aerosmith, I was just getting started out, and one of the crew that was with them from their very early days and he was actually the guy I was hired to replace, and I had to hire him back because he knew where all the bodies were buried. That’s once again, I don’t know how that phrase will translate, but one time he said to me that when the band is on stage, this was with Aerosmith.
He said, ‘Failure is not an option.’ I thought he was being overly dramatic. This isn’t Apollo 13 or anything; what’s going on here but then I realized that when the guitars which you’re working for or in ESP’s case, building guitars for, when he’s on stage, whether it is in front of 50 or 50,000 people, you’re the only thing between him and them.
You can’t fail in your responsibilities. That’s what he was trying to tell me, and I completely understand and agree with him now. I try to think about that when we build a guitar for an artist to take on tour and for a consumer to play. That was an important lesson that I learned.”
You can watch the rest of the conversation below.
