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Living Colour

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Cult of Personality - Guitar Tab

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Band Overview

History and Guitar Legacy

Living Colour emerged from the New York City underground scene in the mid-1980s, officially breaking through with their 1988 debut 'Vivid.' The band fused Hard Rock, funk, metal, jazz, and punk into something that transcended genre boundaries. Guitarist Vernon Reid proved that heavy guitar music could be intelligent, funky, and boundary-smashing simultaneously, drawing inspiration from Jimi Hendrix's psychedelic fury, James Blood Ulmer's harmolodic jazz explorations, and Thrash Metal aggression.

Playing Style and Techniques

Vernon Reid combines blistering alternate picking runs, angular jazz-influenced chord voicings, and noise-rock textures with deeply soulful blues bends. He masters diminished arpeggios at speed while locking into tight funk grooves with the rhythm section. Reid's wide, vocal vibrato and unpredictable phrasing are enhanced by whammy bar dive-bombs and controlled feedback. Rather than relying on pentatonic boxes, he plays across the entire neck using modes, chromaticism, and intervallic leaps for maximum expression.

Why Guitarists Study Living Colour

Vernon Reid is one of rock's most underrated guitarists and essential study material for players seeking to expand beyond standard rock vocabulary. His approach demonstrates how to blend multiple genres into a cohesive, adventurous style. Living Colour material teaches precise muting technique, rhythmic control, and improvisational thinking. Studying Reid's solos reveals how outside playing, wide intervals, and rapid position shifts create genuinely challenging and innovative lead work that inspires boundary-pushing musicianship.

Difficulty and Learning Path

Living Colour material sits in the intermediate-to-advanced range. Riffs blend syncopated funk rhythms with heavy distortion, requiring precise muting and rhythmic precision. Songs like 'Cult of Personality' are approachable at the riff level for intermediate players, but soloing demands serious chops and comfort with pentatonic extensions and chromatic passing tones. Reid's largely improvised solos incorporate outside playing and rapid position shifts, making them genuinely challenging for developing guitarists.

What Makes Living Colour Essential for Guitar Players

Vernon Reid's rhythm playing blends heavy palm-muted power chords with funk-inflected 16th-note strumming patterns. Learning his riffs will force you to develop precision muting with your picking hand while keeping a tight, syncopated feel, skills that transfer directly to any groove-based rock or metal context.
Reid's lead style is built on chromatic approach tones, diminished arpeggios, and wide intervallic leaps that break out of standard pentatonic boxes. Studying his solos teaches you to use tension and release in ways that most rock guitarists never explore, making your improvisation vocabulary significantly deeper.
Controlled feedback and whammy bar manipulation are key texture tools in Reid's playing. He uses the tremolo arm not just for dive-bombs but for subtle pitch wobbles and harmonic squeals that add an almost vocal expressiveness to sustained notes, particularly effective through a high-gain amp at stage volume.
Living Colour's songs frequently shift between clean funk passages and heavy distorted sections, requiring quick adjustments in picking dynamics and right-hand attack. Practicing these transitions builds the dynamic control that separates intermediate players from advanced ones.
Reid incorporates tapping, hybrid picking, and legato runs into his solos, often switching between techniques within a single phrase. His approach isn't about showcasing one skill, it's about having a full toolkit and deploying whatever fits the musical moment.

Did You Know?

Mick Jagger was so impressed by Vernon Reid that he produced Living Colour's first two demo tracks, which directly led to their deal with Epic Records. Jagger also invited them to open for the Rolling Stones on their 1989 Steel Wheels tour.

Vernon Reid co-founded the Black Rock Coalition in 1985 with journalist Greg Tate to combat the music industry's reluctance to support Black artists playing rock and metal, a move that changed the conversation around genre and race in guitar music.

The iconic opening riff of 'Cult of Personality' was tracked with Reid's guitar running through a heavily overdriven signal chain, but the riff itself is deceptively simple, a syncopated single-note line in the key of G that gets its power from rhythmic precision and tone rather than complexity.

Reid is known for modifying his guitars extensively, including installing unusual pickup combinations and rewiring controls. He's gone through phases of using custom instruments built specifically to handle the abuse of his aggressive tremolo bar work and extreme alternate tunings.

During the recording of 'Vivid,' producer Ed Stasium encouraged Reid to layer multiple guitar tracks with different amp settings and pickup selections to create the album's thick, multi-dimensional guitar sound, a studio technique worth studying for anyone interested in guitar production.

Vernon Reid studied at Berklee-adjacent programs and was deeply influenced by jazz guitarist Sonny Sharrock's aggressive free-jazz approach. This jazz foundation explains why Reid's note choices often sound 'outside' compared to typical rock guitarists, he's intentionally targeting tensions that resolve in unexpected ways.

Living Colour won the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance in both 1990 and 1991, beating out acts like Metallica and Faith No More, a testament to how seriously the guitar world took their musicianship.

Essential Albums for Guitarists

Vivid 1988

This is the essential starting point. 'Cult of Personality' teaches syncopated single-note riffing with heavy tone, 'Middle Man' develops your funk-rock rhythm chops, and 'Desperate People' pushes your alternate picking and palm-muting into thrash territory. The solos across the album range from blues-rock vocabulary to full-on chromatic shredding, making it a masterclass in versatile lead playing.

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Time's Up 1990

Even more adventurous than the debut, 'Time's Up' is where Reid's jazz and experimental influences come to the forefront. 'Type' features one of his most aggressive and technically demanding solos, 'Love Rears Its Ugly Head' teaches tasteful clean-tone chord work and R&B phrasing, and 'Elvis Is Dead' blends thrash intensity with funk grooves. This album will stretch your rhythmic vocabulary and expose you to chord voicings beyond standard barre shapes.

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Stain 1993

The heaviest Living Colour record, 'Stain' strips away some of the funk and leans into drop-tuned aggression. 'Leave It Alone' and 'Auslander' feature crushing downpicked riffs in lower tunings that feel almost proto-nu-metal. Doug Wimbish's bass presence on this album also makes it great for studying guitar-bass interplay in a heavy context. If you want to work on your heavier rhythm technique, start here.

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Tone & Gear

Guitar

Vernon Reid is most associated with custom Hamer guitars, particularly the Hamer Chameleon and various custom superstrat-style builds with Floyd Rose or Steinberger tremolo systems. In the 'Vivid' era, he frequently used a Hamer Steve Stevens model and ESP custom builds. He later played Parker Fly guitars extensively for their lightweight carbon-fiber construction and piezo bridge capabilities, and has also been seen with PRS and custom Fender Stratocasters. His guitars typically feature HSH or HSS pickup configurations to allow quick switching between fat humbucker rhythm tones and glassy single-coil cleans.

Amp

Reid's amp history is diverse, but he's long been associated with Mesa/Boogie heads, particularly the Dual Rectifier and Mark series, for their high-gain saturation and tight low-end response. He's also used Marshall JCM800s and Soldano SLO-100s for a more classic British crunch. His live rig has often included multiple amp heads running simultaneously to blend different tonal characteristics: one amp providing tight gain, another adding midrange warmth. He tends to run amps at moderate-to-high gain with the mids pushed forward to cut through the band's dense low-end.

Pickups

Reid has used a variety of high-output humbuckers over the years, including EMG active pickups (81/85 combination) for their compressed, articulate high-gain response, and DiMarzio models like the Super Distortion and Evolution for a more dynamic, open feel. His preference for HSH configurations means he can access single-coil tones in the middle position for cleaner funk passages. The active EMGs in particular contribute to the razor-sharp attack and sustain heard on songs like 'Cult of Personality,' where every note in the riff needs to pop with clarity even under heavy distortion.

Effects & Chain

Vernon Reid is a serious effects enthusiast. His board has included a Digitech Whammy pedal (essential for his octave-up screams and pitch-shifting leads), Dunlop Cry Baby wah for funk and lead work, Boss DD-series digital delays, Electro-Harmonix Micro Synth for experimental textures, and various overdrive and distortion pedals including the Ibanez Tube Screamer for pushing his amp's front end. He's also used rack-mounted effects processors for more complex delay and modulation patches in live settings. Unlike minimalist rock players, Reid treats effects as creative instruments, he'll stack a wah into a Whammy into heavy delay to create almost unrecognizable guitar sounds that blur the line between guitar and synth.

Recommended Gear

Guitar

Fender Stratocaster

Vernon Reid's custom Fender Strats provide the classic contoured body and tremolo system he needs for Living Colour's fusion of funk and metal. The versatile pickup configurations let him switch between thick rhythm tones and articulate lead work within songs.

Amp

Marshall JCM800

Reid uses the JCM800's natural British crunch to add warmth and classic rock character to Living Colour's dense low-end, often blending it with other heads to layer different gain frequencies. This amp's tight, focused overdrive cuts through without sounding sterile.

Amp

Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier

The Dual Rectifier's high-gain saturation and responsive tight low-end are essential for the heavy, articulate riffs on tracks like 'Cult of Personality.' Reid runs this head alongside others to achieve his signature layered, multidimensional distortion tone.

Amp

Soldano SLO-100

Reid deploys the SLO-100's smooth, vocal-like high-gain character to add sustain and harmonic richness to lead passages and solo work. This amp's natural breakup responds beautifully to his stacked effects chains and whammy pitch-shifts.

Pickup

DiMarzio Super Distortion

The Super Distortion's dynamic, open-sounding output gives Reid's riffs clarity and note definition even under heavy distortion, crucial for Living Colour's technically complex rhythms. Its responsive character works perfectly with his HSH pickup configurations for quick tonal switching.

Pedal

Dunlop Cry Baby Wah

Reid uses the Cry Baby to add expressive funk articulation and vocal-like lead character to Living Colour's fusion sound, often combining it with the Whammy and delays. The wah's responsive sweep helps define the band's signature style blending metal heaviness with rhythmic funk grooves.

How to Practice Living Colour on GuitarZone

Every Living Colour song page on GuitarZone includes a built-in Practice Toolbar. No app to download, no account needed. Open any song, then use the toolbar to slow the video to 0.5× speed, set an A/B loop around the exact riff you're working on, and jump between song sections instantly.

The toolbar appears automatically on every guitar tab, lesson, and cover page. Pick a song below, hit play, and start practicing at your own pace.

Practice Cult of Personality - Guitar Tab