Some Things You Want to Tweak and Make Your Own- How the Foos' Chris Shiflett reworked two rock classics on his recent solo EP

Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett is also a solo artist in his own right, and his latest EP Starry Nights & Campfire includes Lights covers of two great old rock tracks - Thin Lizzy's Cowboy Song and the ballad Don't You Ever Leave Me by Hanoi Rocks, the Finnish band that did so much to inspire Guns N' Roses.

- By Amit Sharma - Photos by Alec Strickland / joey Martinez

Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett is also a solo artist in his own right, and his latest EP Starry Nights & Campfire includes Lights covers of two great old rock tracks - Thin Lizzy's Cowboy Song and the ballad Don't You Ever Leave Me by Hanoi Rocks, the Finnish band that did so much to inspire Guns N' Roses.

For Chris, there's an art to reimagining famous songs, where you have to strike a fine balance between paying tribute to the original and putting your own personal spin on things...

You spoke about your love for Thin Lizzy in your last TG interview. What drew you to Cowboy Song in particular?

I've always wanted to do some sort of countrified version of it. It's funny when you listen to songs instead of playing them, you're not thinking about arrangements, you're just letting it hit you. But when you actually open up Cowboy Song and dissect it, it's a really strange arrangement. There are two long solos and a breakdown - it goes through a lot of stuff. So the first thing I was asking myself was how to chop it down into something a bit more manageable. How could I change the key, the tempo, the feel and the groove?

There are some things you want to tweak and make your own, and then there are other things that the song can't live without, like Scott Gorham's guitar solo. To us guitar players, that is as important a melody as the lead vocals. We slowed it down a lot, which really affected the vocal. It was a stumbling block, because I was asking myself how I needed to sing it in order to get things where I needed them to be.

It definitely sounds like you used a Telecaster as your main electric.