* En anglais uniquement
Bumblefoot -- the stage name of
Ron Blumenthal, which is sometimes expanded to
Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal -- is best known as the guitarist in the 21st century incarnation of
Guns N' Roses that
Axl Rose shepherded before reuniting with
Slash in 2015. Although he'd been a known name in shredder circles since the mid-'90s, he joined
GNR in 2006 and stayed with them through 2014, a span of time that included the release of the long-awaited
Chinese Democracy and several international tours. During these years, he also released several solo projects, all exhibiting his fleet-fingered virtuosity, and after departing
Guns N' Roses, he joined both
Art of Anarchy and
Sons of Apollo while maintaining his own career.
Ron Thal fell in love with music after hearing
Kiss'
Alive! as a child, picking up the guitar when he was five. From that point forward, the guitar was an obsession. He recorded homemade tapes and played live gigs, developing a dense, complicated style inspired by straight-ahead hard rock and eccentric solos. His penchant for the latter brought him to the attention of
Mike Varney, the head of Shrapnel Records, who wrote up
Thal's demo tape in a 1989 issue of Guitar Player.
Varney would later sign
Thal to his guitar-specialty label in 1995. That year saw the release of The Adventures of Bumblefoot, which was followed in 1997 by
Hermit, both credited to
Ron Thal. Once he left Shrapnel in 1998,
Thal formed a group called
Bumblefoot and released Hands on his own Hermit Inc. imprint.
Bumblefoot the band stayed active through 2001 but
Thal decided to go his own way in 2002, adopting the appellation as his solo name starting with the 2002 release of Uncool.
Thal continued to tour and record over the next few years, polishing outtakes for 2003's The Forgotten Anthology and releasing the full-length Normal in 2005; he was then recruited to join
Guns N' Roses in 2006. While he assisted in the completion of
Chinese Democracy, the long-promised
GNR album that finally arrived in 2008, he continued with a variety of projects, including recording, scoring TV and film, teaching, philanthropy, producing artists, and recording his own music. He'd continue to divide his time between these activities and
Guns N' Roses until 2014, when he left the group to focus on his own music.
By that point, he had formed a band called
Art of Anarchy with
Disturbed's
John Moyer and
John and
Vince Votta, recruiting
Scott Weiland of
Stone Temple Pilots to sing on an album that eventually saw release in 2015. A year after the first
Art of Anarchy record,
Creed's
Scott Stapp joined as a full-time vocalist and this lineup released
The Madness in March 2017. By August of that year,
Bumblefoot formed
Sons of Apollo -- a supergroup featuring bassist
Billy Sheehan, vocalist
Jeff Scott Soto, drummer
Mike Portnoy, and keyboardist
Derek Sherinian -- and recorded an album called
Psychotic Symphony that came out in October. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine