Sweet Dreams And Flying Machines

They may not all rock in a kick-ass kinda way, but the songs listed in Guitar Player’s Top 10 Acoustic Riffs of All Time nicely remind us that you don’t need a wall of Marshalls and a dozen stomp boxes to deliver 6-string joy.

The list is ostensibly about riffs, and every song listed has a signature riff indelibly stamped into our collective consciousness.  But the article actually focuses more on the tunes themselves, so you might question whether More Than A Feeling, or Hotel California, or Stairway To Heaven are acoustic or electric tunes – especially as compared to Fire And Rain, Angie or Tears In Heaven.

Then again, what’s to question?  They’re all awesome songs masterfully delivered.

I Don’t Need No Marshall

I agree with Slash that “there’s no lying with an acoustic guitar,” but I’m not quite convinced that all the songs on Guitar World’s 25 Greatest Acoustic Songs in Hard Rock share an ‘elemental simplicity.”

Stairway To Heaven doesn’t strike me as simple.  Sparse, maybe – at the beginning – but not cowboy chord, sing-around-the-campfire simple.  Anyway, it doesn’t stay very acoustic for long.

The same could be said for More Than A Feeling, or Pinball Wizard, or Feel Like Making Love.  I mean, in the last case, do you even remember the acoustic guitar, or do you just think about the rhythmic, power chord hook in the chorus?

Dust In The Wind, Wanted Dead or Alive – ok, got it.  These are great songs built around an acoustic guitar.  But many of the songs listed – while being fantastic tunes – don’t really jump out at you as being acoustic guitar songs.  Rather, they are hard rock songs that happen to have acoustic guitar in them.

Speaking of hard rock, while Extreme might have been a hard rock band, More Than Words, as terrific as it is, sure isn’t a hard rock song.

By the way, are we sure Eddie Van Halen even owned and acoustic guitar?

As Clear As The Sun In The Summer Sky

I know it’s been played to death, but there’s a case to be made that Boston’s More Than A Feeling might be the best rock song ever written.

OK, maybe not, but – like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony– it could be held up as the best example of the genre, worthy of study.

Screaming guitars and fancy acoustic pickin’.  Nice.  An unforgettable hook.  Lyrics that grab your emotions without actually going too deep.  Smart.  Another great hook that acts as a bridge to the chorus, showing you that this ain’t no simple 3 chord rock song.  These people were MIT students; they have depth.

So make that two unforgettable hooks.  Wait!  Make it three, since the chorus somehow manages to steal a power chord riff that’s been done to death and make it sound new.

A soulful melody.  Sweet harmonies.  Another genius bridge on the way into the solo.  Oh ya, and you can sing the solo.  You do sing the solo.  No mindless shredding here; this is music.

All of the elements are simple, but the relative complexity of the structure, and the number of elements subtly add to your enjoyment of the song.  “Like this?  Great.  Here’s a little something more.”  It’s like chocolate sauce and sprinkles on your ice cream.

Listen: I like raw three-chord rock and blues, but a lot of masterpieces have the kind of added complexity and intelligence described above.

It’s too bad the lawyers got involved so early in their career.  I always felt Boston could have given us so much more.

Eruptions

So Rolling Stone has its own list of 100 Greatest Debut Albums, proving once again that there is less room for controversy in a shorter list.  Here’s their top 10:

Beastie Boys – Licensed to Kill

The Ramones

Jimi Hendrix – Are You Experienced?

GNR – Appetite for Destruction

The Velvet Underground – and Nico

N.W.A. – Straight Outta Compton

Sex Pistols – Never Mind the Bolllocks

The Strokes – Is This It

The Band – Music From Big Pink

Patti Smith - Horses

A 40% overlap, but the gap is actually bigger than that.  Led Zeppelin I, for example, comes in at #72 on the RS list, despite the fact that they turned the world upside down, and as RS itself admits “the template was here.”

Just a little confused by RS’s logic.  They claim it’s about debuts “that gave you the thrill of an act arriving fully-formed, ready to reinvent the world in its own image.”  But they also said they deducted points if an act went on to far greater achievements.  OK.  No argument that Zep had many great albums after, but Zep I is arguably their best.  The impact was immediate, the excitement off the scale.  They certainly were “fully-formed.”

Similar gap with The Doors, by the way.

Scanning the longer list, one thing that strikes me is the number of times you could say, “they could have stopped there.”  This is acknowledged in a quote from Elliot Easton saying The Cars’ first album could have been called The Cars Greatest Hits.  You could say the same for The Band, Boston, Oasis, or even Hendrix.  They all went on to make some great music, but did they ever really match that first effort?

The impetus for both Gibson’s and Rolling Stone’s lists was the 50^th anniversary of Please Please Me by The Beatles.  In this case, you gotta wonder if the album is on the list because subsequent masterpieces dictate the debut had to be included.  OK, forget I said that.  But it could be true for Pink Floyd. 

Dream On, Dudes

Gibson has this list of 10 Power Ballads That Don't Suck.

Well, ya know, these are some pretty good songs:

Dream On – Aerosmith

Day After Day – Badfinger

Ballad of Dwight Fry – Alice Cooper

Bringin’ on the Heartbreak – Def Leppard

Don’t Look Back in Anger – Oasis

Learn to Fly – Foo Fighters

We are the Champions – Queen

More Than a Feeling – Boston

All the Young Dudes – Mott the Hoople

Purple Rain – Mr. Squirckle

The premise of the article is that power ballads “have gotten and undeserved bad rap,” that the “gaudy, bombastic videos” of the 80’s caused this otherwise charming genre to fall from grace.

Nonsense.  The videos just added visuals to the gaudy, bombastic music.

If you’re a fan of rock music (a dying breed, I know), you may point to the rise of rap or the laziness of grunge as the moment when the decline of rock began.  But a good case can be made against the power ballad.  Sorry, dudes, but the bad rap is deserved.

Re: the list.  They aren’t bad tunes, but they aren’t all really power ballads.