Ralph Santolla

North Carolina · born or raised1966–2018

American guitarist (1966–2018)

Born in Charlotte

guitarist, composer

Recorded without a firm citation

Kept here, labelled, rather than mixed in above.

I don't know ANY secrets about playing guitar, and there's no fairy dust that you can sprinkle on your guitar to make you good or great. To master an instrument requires suffering. It is also a process, not something that can ever be finished... If you REALLY want to play great, there's only one way — work. It's like trying to take down a mountain with a toothbrush — you can never finish, just scrape a little more every day.

I think alot of these stupid fucks who are so up in arms about bands like Deicide [...] It's stupid. If they want to like really worry about evil and shit like that they shouldn't be worrying about a metal band, they should be worrying about child molesters and fuckin' Darfur and things like that.

I'm not going to tell people that what they believe is wrong at all. I'll drink and I'll party more than ten fucking black metal bands put together. I'm definitely not a choir-boy. I have my own thoughts on religion, but at the end of the day, I just want to play my guitar and play metal and have a good time. The rest of that shit is none of anybody's business. What I'll never do though — I'll work at McDonald's before I pretend to be someone I'm not just so that people accept me. I guess that attitude is what's caused a lot of the problems in my life. But there are two kinds of people in this world. One kind — and Glen is one of them — aren't afraid to be themselves. There's another kind that, for some reason, that offends them, and that pisses me off. I will be myself, and I don't really give a fuck what anyone says. I know who my friends are, and that's all I need. The funny thing is that these metal kids are constantly ripping on me on Blabbermouth, and I'm really close friends with a lot of the bands whose T-shirts they're wearing. I'm not going to pretend to be some dark and angry and evil person so that people think I'm metal. I have all of that in me, but the most important thing is that I play my guitar, and you either like it or you don't. I really don't care one way or another.