Famous Riffs – Cult of Personality by Living Colour

By Carl Brown | March 26, 2014 |


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..

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Cult of Personality - Famous Riffs

Posted in Song Lessons

5 Comments

  1. Jason Barker on March 26, 2014 at 9:05 pm

    I love it! Great song.. How about the solo? One of my favorite solo’s and I know it’s quit complicated, but would love for you to do a lesson covering it..

    • Carl Brown on March 27, 2014 at 1:15 pm

      Yeah maybe I should start a famous solos section to!! Hmmm.. 🙂

  2. Jason Barker on March 30, 2014 at 1:59 am

    That is a good idea.. I think it would be quit popular.. 🙂

  3. Gary Hodgins on April 3, 2014 at 9:50 pm

    I totally agree, great idea!!

  4. Carl Brown on April 4, 2014 at 12:37 pm

    OK I am starting the new famous solos lesson series to go along with the famous riffs lessons.

    Look for the first famous solo this weekend and at least one new one every week after that. 🙂

    Carl..

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