From: * (Jeffrey Swing)


AMERICAN LIFE  from "Sailing the Seas of Cheese" revised 5/15/95

After seeing Les play this song on a video that somebody copied for me
(thanks again for the video, Dave) I noticed that Les strums and does hammer
ons for this riff.  I have rewritten it below.  The important thing to
rememeber when playing this is to keep your strumming constant and hammer on
all of the notes with your left hand.  The slap on the lowest note is done
on the downstroke strum, and isn't hard to work in to your strumming
technique.  Make sure that you let the G-string drone on while you hammer on
the D-string notes.

V = downstroke strum
^ = upstroke strum
h = hammer
S = slap

     (V)  ^         V         ^          V     ^     V     ^
G-|-------0-(0)(0)--0-(0)(0)--0-(0)(0)---0-----0-----0-----0--|--|
D-|*------0--3h-5h--0--3h-5h--0--3h-5h------5h-5-----5-----5-*---|
A-|*---------------------------------------------------------*---|
E-|---3S---------------------------------------------------------|

The fills are done with the same strumming (downstroke on the downbeat,
upstroke on the upbeat), except that the left hand remains still, fretting a
power chord first on Eb, then later on F.

G-|--8--|-        G-|--10------|
D-|--8--|-        D-|--10------|
A-|--6--|-        A-|--8-------|
E-|-----|-          E-|--------|
    Eb5			     F5