Paul Gilbert’s Zooming us from his home in Portland, Oregon. He’s armed with his purple Ibanez Fireman (a guitar, not a euphemism), and as we speak he noodles away whenever the occasion arises. “After dinner my job is to wash the dishes, and I hate it! But yesterday I put Iron Maiden’s Killers on my headphones – hearing Wrathchild with Paul Di Anno just killin’ [Gilbert plays the riff and emulates Di Anno’s screaming delivery], and then the song Killers, y’know, the gallop [he performs a section perfectly]. I never had that much fun washing the dishes in my life!”Gilbert’s 54 now, and on great form, his enthusiasm for his own album and the ten that changed his life is utterly infectious. For many he’ll forever be the Shrapnel-stable shredder behind uber-metallers Racer X, and the six-string powerhouse for supergroup Mr Big, but his latter-day albums show another side