Ace Frehley once complimented Joel Hoekstra’s guitar playing.
Hoekstra was on stage with George Lynch, Brad Gillis, and Frehley but the sound was so overwhelmed by Ace Frehley’s loud amp. “I thought, ‘Why is anybody bothering right now?’” the guitarist recalled during an appearance on the Jay Jay French Connection podcast. “So, I just turned my guitar off, because I thought, ‘All I’m doing is contributing to the noise.’”
Hoekstra realized Ace sounded great with his loud amp, so he decided to turn his own guitar off. The musician added, “And what was amazing about that, Ace came over to me after, and he complimented me on my playing. He came over and he said, ‘Oh yeah, you did a really good job up there.’ And I thought, ‘Man, my guitar was off, but, you know, thank you.’”
“But, yeah, I get it. That’s when I really understood Ace Frehley. He’s just a rock star. He’s larger than life, you know?” the Whitesnake guitarist also noted.
Hoekstra revealed that this jam session happened at a Rock N’ Roll Memorabilia Museum when he was with Night Ranger.
Frehley thinks he’s a ‘sloppy’ guitarist. He talked about his guitar playing earlier this year, explaining, “I am a sloppy guitar player. So is [Led Zeppelin’s] Jimmy Page. So is [The Rolling Stones’] Keith Richards. Jimmy Page is a sloppy guitar player. So am I.”
He further stated, “Keith Richards is sloppy. Sometimes, they’ll have an off night, and Keith is off in the ozone. I wasn’t always on, but most of the time, when I played with KISS, I was on. I’d save the partying for after the show.”
Although he has a unique guitar-playing style, Ace thinks he should have practiced more. So, he wouldn’t prefer other guitarists to take him as a role model as he stated in several interviews before.