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Warren Justin DeMartini (born April 10, 1963) is an American musician best known as the lead guitarist for glam metal band Ratt, which achieved international stardom in the 1980s.
DeMartini's mother bought him a guitar at his request when he was "around seven or eight years old". According to Warren, he struggled early on learning to play it due to the tuning pegs being cheap, causing the instrument to constantly fall out of tune. As a result, he became frustrated and smashed the instrument as he had seen Pete Townshend of the Who do onstage. As a result, that was the last guitar he would receive as a gift. At age 14, he had to get himself a job in order to raise the money to purchase a new electric guitar, a Cimar Les Paul copy. The first song DeMartini learned was "Sunshine of Your Love" by Cream, which he learned by ear.
Warren played his first concert with his band the Plague in front of a small crowd at San Diego's La Jolla High School at the age of 15. By this time he was emerging as one of the San Diego area's most talented and sought-after young guitar players. The first year he signed up, he won "Best New Guitar Player in San Diego" at Guitar Trader on Clairemont Mesa Blvd. He graduated from high school in 1981. DeMartini began taking classes at a local college, but in the first semester was invited up to Los Angeles to join Mickey Ratt, the band that would eventually become the highly successful 1980s metal band Ratt.
DeMartini's lead guitar became one of Ratt's most recognizable aspects, and he would co-write several of the band's best known songs, including "Round and Round", "Lay It Down", "Dance", and "Way Cool Jr.". Ratt would ultimately become one of the top-selling and most popular metal acts of the decade, issuing four consecutive platinum albums and one EP in the 1980s before disbanding in February 1992.
Warren will sometimes use finger vibrato, similar in style to George Lynch. Allan Holdsworth often used the same technique, which achieves the periodic raising and lowering of the note by moving the fretting finger longitudinally, back and forth along the string, to alter the pitch, as opposed to bending the string across the frets. Moderate downward finger pressure and relatively light strings are necessary for friction of the fingertip against the string to facilitate such pushing and pulling, respectively lowering and raising the pitch, as well as frets to stop the strings, making such vibrato possible. (Violin-style vibrato requires moving the fingertip along the string's length somewhat, more of a rolling approach, since the violin and family lack frets altogether.)
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