Before You Begin...

You will need a good quality copy of The Hellecasters version of the tune. Additionally, unless you are either Steve Lukather or Jeff Beck, you probably need one of the two excellent transcriptions available.

The obvious first choice would be to get both here: Camp Hellecaster. I've made a few purchases there, spanning decades, and the service has always been... let's say extraordinary in ways beyond what one could expect to hope for from a random online seller. I live in Europe, got almost immediate confirmation, and had the stuff in my hands within a week. And this was after I found out that they had generously covered my underpayment of shipping charges, long before I had even discovered my mistake - nice note included. So... go there first.

Alternatively, from Amazon here: Return of the Hellecaster cd

In addition, you will need either the Return of the Hellecasters score, or the February, 1994 issue of Guitar Player magazine.

If you already subscribe to highbeam.com (I don't -- too expensive for my needs) then you can grab the original article called: The Hellecasters'  "Highlander Boogie": thar's gold in them thar fills.

Also, worthy of special note, are the audio lessons at TrueFire.com, which I only recently discovered.This three-part series includes tablature and audio lessons from each of The Hellecasters. I bought them, and find them very useful, and will listen to them many times. You get the Jesse Gress tablature (only tab, no dots!) thrown in as well. This might be the way to go unless your plans include learning some of their other tunes. If that's the case, then buy the book. If you're really serious about this band you probably already own it. Once again, with this package you only get the tablature, and not the traditional staff notation. Detail is lost, particularly in the all-important rhythmic indications. Your ear may be good enough so that this isn't an issue; mine is not. With this tune I need all the help I can get. I'm not sure why they did this, because after digging up the old Guitar Player article I see that this transcription includes the traditional notation. Maybe TrueFire's clientele doesn't gizzashit.

This is all copyrighted work, and there are no other sources of these materials that I know of. Please don't ask me for copies of these materials. If you're serious about learning this piece you're going to want your own copy anyway. Except for a few hundred nit-picking concerns I have with the layout, I would consider these to be extremely accurate transcriptions of a very challenging piece, and well worth the money. And when you consider the amount of time you're going to spend listening to the song, and reading the sheet music, it's going to be an expenditure that you will be measuring in pennies-per-day. Go ahead and spend the pennies.

You can buy the materials via the above links, (supposedly will I make a small commission), or get them somewhere else. Either way, you're going to want to have these materials in front of you before you try to follow along with this measure-by-measure discussion of the tune.

If you think that my commission is unfair or unearned, that's fine, and you're probably right. Send me an email and include your address, and I shall happily return the commission to you by post, in whatever currency I have available, which is unlikely to be that of your own country. Sorry.