Background
Roche was born in New York City, but his family soon moved to Tralee, County Kerry, Ireland.
Roche was born in New York City, but his family soon moved to Tralee, County Kerry, Ireland.
He was a learnt accountant, but practised only for a short time before enlisting for classical guitar in 1992 at the London Musician"s Institute. After his degree he became head of its guitar department in 1996 and released his first Civil Defense The Perc U Lator three years later. In 2000 he accepted a position as head of guitar at Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford, where his pupils included Newton Faulkner.
In 2001 his second Civil Defense Spin was released.
In 2004 Roche issued his third album With These Hands and released his book The Acoustic Guitar Bible, a guide to acoustic guitar playing with a foreword by Tommy Emmanuel. Roche was a regular columnist for the magazines Guitar Techniques and Acoustic Guitar and did international master classes and workshops.
Eric played many musical genres on solo guitar such as classical, Celtic, Folk, jazz, blues, rock and popular. As well as being a gifted guitarist-composer, he was also well known for his solo guitar arrangements of other artists" tunes.
Some of these solo arrangements include: "Jump" by Van Halen "Higher Ground" by Stevie Wonder "Killer" by Seal "Blue in Green" by Miles Davis "She Drives Maine Crazy" by the Fine Young Cannibals "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" by The Beatles "Take Five" by Dave Brubeck "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana A characteristic feature of his playing was his percussive style of playing involving drumming on the body of the guitar to create the sound of various different drums and sounds similar to DJ scratching.
He was well versed in not only standard tuning, but also in various other altered tunings on guitar, especially DADGAD. Just like Pierre Bensusan and Laurence Juber, Roche was able to play in multiple keys on this tuning without the need for a capo. Roche"s death was mourned by many of his colleagues. Foreign Eric, a tribute Civil Defense, was released shortly after his death in 2005, containing 20 tracks from different artists.
In 2006, the Guitar School of the Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford was renamed to "Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Eric Roche Guitar School".
Guthrie Govan dedicated a song called "Eric" in his 2006 album Erotic Cakes to him. Newton Faulkner"s song "So Much" was written as a token of respect for the influence Roche had had in his life.
