The Circle of Love

In Guitar World’s 30 on 30, 30 great guitarists pick their favourite axemen.

All the cats you’d expect to see are there:  Green, Clapton, Blackmore, Beck, Hendrix, May, van Halen, B.B., Rhoads, Malmsteen …

As are, thankfully, a few guys you worry might be all but forgotten, like Leslie West, Alvin Lee and Mick Taylor.  And there are a few names you might not expect to be the idols of guitar wizards, for example Neil Young or Pete Townshend or George Harrison.  Not that they weren’t/aren’t amazing guitarists, but you don’t realize the hotshots feel the same way as you do.  So that’s cool.

But what’s really interesting is to see who the guys on the list like.  So:

• Tom Morello likes Steve Vai, and Steve Vai likes Brian May.
• Joe Perry likes Angus Young, but Angus likes Chuck Berry.
• Ron Thal likes Zakk Wylde, whereas Zakk Wylde likes the Judas Priest duo of Tipton and Downing.
• Richie Kotzen digs Eddie van Halen, who in turn thought Clapton was the man.

Sometimes you can clearly hear a guitarist’s influences in his work; other times, not so much.  So it’s instructive to see what they actually think.  And sometimes surprising.

Solo Stars

Guitar World’s 40 Most Influential Solos In Rock is quite possibly the list that’s come closest to what I would have expected.

All the early rockers are there: Scotty Moore, James Burton, Eddie Cochrane –and Chuck Berry, who’s Johnny B. Goode GW correctly notes is “the most important rock guitar part ever recorded.”

All the Classic Rockers are there: Clapton, Beck, Hendrix, Blackmore, Allman, Fripp, Page, Gilmour, Knopfler, Young and West.

The blues influencers are there: Elmore James, and the 3 Kings.

The list is chronological, so until it got to the 80’s my reaction was consistently, “yep, influenced me alright.”

The latter-day guitar heroes are there too: SRV, Zakk Wylde, Randy Rhoads, Malmsteen, Satriani and, the cat with the coolest handle: Dimebag Darrell.

One or two guitarists I wouldn’t have included myself, but fully expected to see.  And given GW limited itself to one solo per guitarist, I think they did a pretty good job of coming up with the most representative tune.  No easy feat with most of these guys.

Not sure how Heartbreaker gets to be Jimmy Page’s most important solo, but that’s just me.  I certainly remember being floored when I first heard it, but later on I kinda felt it wrecked the song, because it interrupted such a powerful groove.

Nice to see Europa chosen for Santana so they could make room for Peter Green and the original Black Magic Woman.  Peter Green is usually under-rated and overlooked.  Speaking of overlooked: no Highway 61 Revisited by Johnny Winter?

Undercover Agent For The Blues …

… and Rock!  Take a look at the influence John Mayall has had.  The connections.  The influences. The great music that came out of his influence.

It’s almost unbelievable.  The diagram just depicts the most obvious connections.  The ones that could fit on a page.  It’s missing the Yardbirds-Page-Zeppelin link.  It obscenely abridges Clapton’s reach.  It skips the whole Dylan universe outside the Willburys.  It doesn’t even try to show who Phil Collins has touched, which is, like, everybody.

Was John Mayall as influential as Lennon, Dylan, Jagger, Hendrix or Page?  Maybe not, but when you think about who he’s played with – and who they played with, he’s touched just about everything.  Mayall is one important cat.

The Thrill of It All

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Gibson has an overdue list of 10 Guitar Greats Who've Been Unduly Neglected, the list being:

Terry Kath

Ollie Halsall

Luther Grovenor

June Millington

Phil Manzanera

Lenny Breau

Jimmy Nolen

Randy California

Robert Quine

Bob Stinson

Amen, especially for Kath, California and Manzanera.  I might also add Peter Green, Kim Simmonds and Rory Gallagher.

The article hints that maybe you need a larger-than-life personality to get all the attention.  Maybe.  Maybe it was the tunes, the bands, the PR, the hair …

It certainly wasn’t the licks

Disappearing Acts

Sometimes ideas for lists must seem good until you try to populate them.  Take Rolling Stone’s 13 Rock Stars Who Disappeared list, for example.

Not all rock stars burn out.  Some fade away.  Some gracefully withdraw.  And when they command our attention for so long, we do want to know what happened.  So cool idea.

Then Rolling Stone tries to add an additional twist by measuring people against the (Syd) “Barret Scale”, using him as the benchmark for rock star dropout reclusive weirdness.

Cool idea, but it weakens the argument for including many names on the list.  The article admits that Fats Domino is “more retired than reclusive.”  After making a big deal of what sounds like the mysterious departure of David Bowie, it then admits “it's hard to be a true recluse while you're posing for red carpet photos with your supermodel spouse.”  OK then.

Billy Joel, Grace Slick, The Everly Brothers  -  these people are retired.  John Deacon knew that Queen died with Freddie, so he is smart.  John Frusciante definitely registers on the “Barrett Scale,” but not many of the other names do.  If they really wanted to use this “Barrett Scale,” why didn’t they include Peter Green?  He’s been lurking in the shadows so long the scale could be named after him!

But Joni Mitchell?  She’s always done her own thing.   Sly Stone?  Maybe he sensed he had overstayed his welcome, or used up more than his fair share of public consciousness.

An interesting variation on the list might have been rock stars that walked away while on top:  Little Richard, Conway Twitty, Dave Clark, Linda Ronstadt.  Barrett, Green and Frusciante definitely belong on that list.

Postscript: since the list came out, Bowie actually released a new single and announced a new album.  Not terribly reclusive, then, is it?

A Change’ll Do You Good

A sad but inevitable (inescapable?  inexorable?) truth in music is that the line ups of our favourite bands keep changing.  Gibson’s 10 Bands That Changed Singers ... and Won deals with this reality, and reminds us that change is not always a bad thing.

Here’s the list:  Deep Purple, Van Halen, AC/DC, Faith No More, Judas Priest, Journey, Iron Maiden, Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, Pink Floyd.

Winning seems to mean, “enjoyed increased commercial success,” so that ducks the question of whether the band actually got better.  For a lot of these transitions, it’s debatable whether the band improved, especially in the eyes of their existing fans.

David Lee Roth for Sammy Hagar?  Not sure.  Bon Scott for Brian Johnson?  I think so, but many wouldn’t.  Syd Barrett for David Gilmour?  Well, for me, Floyd’s music was finally approachable with Waters and Gilmour at the helm, and maybe that illustrates the problem with “winning.”  Commercial success means, well, “more commercial” (ya I know we’re talking about Pink Floyd but everything is relative).

Take Genesis.  By the time Collins is through with them, a (some would say) pretentious prog rock band becomes a pop act.  Makes you wonder how much of the original fan base was still around to celebrate the victory.

Or take Fleetwood Mac.  Trying to reconcile the dichotomy between the Peter Green and the Buckingham/Nicks eras, the article suggests that FM is “arguably not a band, but a brand.”   Maybe, but don’t brands have a core sound/image/look/feel/quality/certain-something that is supposed to endure and is therefore protected?  I would suggest that Fleetwood Mac is not a brand, but simply a name that got re-used.

The most interesting case for me is that of Deep Purple.  No question that Ian Gillan was an improvement over Rod Evans, and their popularity certainly jumped with the change.  But there was something very cool about those early albums.  I felt at the time, and I guess I still feel now, that they made the switch to try and sound more like Led Zeppelin.  They succeeded, and it was great and all, but they also lost some Deep Purpleness in the process.  They might have become highway stars, but the bird had flown.

Excitable Boys

Gibson has this fun list called Mad Geniuses: 10 Brilliantly Eccentric Musicians.  People, so they say, “who seem wired differently from the rest of us.”

It’s a matter of degree, I suppose, but you could probably say that about most artists.

Here’s the list: Roky Erikson, Peter Green, Brian Wilson, Prince, Joe South, Phil Spector, Wayne Coyne, Scott Walker, Skip Spence, Syd Barrett.

Don’t pretend to know much about many on this list, but what I do know about the ones I do know about tells me that drugs might have a thing or two more to do with the madness than any innate wiring.

Whatever the cause, it’s too bad we lost Peter Green, one of the best guitarists of all time who just happened to also be a great singer and songwriter.  Who knows what he could have accomplished?

Can’t say I agree with Phil Spector’s inclusion on this list, and not just because I’ve never been a “wall of sound” fan.  Just suggesting there is bit of a difference between mad genius and sick creep, you know?

A Hard Road

I saw John Mayall in concert a while back. Always a joy to see a legend perform.

And what a legend. Your textbook itinerant bluesman: working hard, grinding it out, spreading the word. Giving it up, getting very little back.

Always a footnote on someone else's career ... Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Coco Montoya, Walter Trout, Buddy Wittington, and now Rocky Athas. An impressive list of sidemen, but I understate.

Anyway, it was a fun show. Great tunes, tight band, lots of energy. Not bad for a 78 year old man.

Good work, John. You've been down so many roads. Glad to see you've still got room to move.

Defining Moments

If you look at the Guitar Player 40 Most Influential Rock Guitar Solos, as a guitarist, you get the depressing feeling that it's all been done, so why bother?

I mean, take Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode, for example. It has the quintessential licks that fit in almost every rock song.

Well almost. To fill up your bag of tricks you can borrow from the songs listed by the Three Kings: Freddie, Albert and B.B.: Hideaway, Born Under A Bad Sign, and The Thrill Is Gone. You don't need much else. Don't believe me? Listen to Clapton's Crossroads. (Yes I know Crossroads preceded The Thrill Is Gone but I'm making a point.)

As a guitarist, I'm always searching for new ways to express myself, but those five solos give you a pretty large playing field.

This is a list of influential solos, not necessarily best or favourite solos. So for sure Duanne Allman's Statesboro Blues belongs there, and, sadly, Eddie Van Halen's Eruption belongs. But some seem arbitrary to me. Is Heartbreaker really Jimmy Page's most influential solo? Is Comfortably Numb David Gilmour's? Pride and Joy is Stevie Ray Vaughan's most definitive solo, and All Along The Watchtower is one of Hendrix's most amazing, but ...

At some point it feels like we've crossed the line where the best, most admired guitarists simply get an arbitrary pick. Fair enough. I wouldn't want to see a list that didn't include Mark Knopfler, Peter Green, Angus Young, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour or Ritchie Blackmore either.

My favourite thing about this list is that most of the solos are very musical. Happily, there isn't much mindless wankarama. Thank you, Guitar Player.

By the way, I get the influence of Elmore James for Dust My Broom, but it's Robert Johnson's, 100%.

Rolling Stone Top 100 Guitarists

Rolling Stone has this list of The 100 Greatest Guitarists.  Interesting, even if it's, like, way wrong.

OK, maybe not totally wrong.  Here's the Top 25:
 1. Hendrix.  Hard to argue, but his brilliance was inconsistent.
 2. Duanne Allman.  I've had this lifelong challenge to understand the big fuss.  Sorry.
 3. B.B. King.  Sure.
 4. Eric Clapton.  No problem.  Well, yes, actually.  Number 1.
 5. Robert Johnson.  Yes.
 6. Chuck Berry.  Definitely.
 7. Stevie Ray Vaughan.  OK.  Should be higher, but at least they put him in the top 10.
 8. Ry Cooder.  Pleasant surprise.
 9. Jimmy Page.  I guess so.  I mean, he's important and all that.
10. Keith Richards.  Amen.
11. Kirk Hammett.  Whatever.
12. Kurt Colbain.  Seriously?  Like, is skill not a criterion?
13. Jerry Garcia.  Another of life's great mysteries.
14. Jeff Beck.  To be expected, I guess.
15. Santana.  Could have been worse.  Could have been higher.
16. Johnny Ramone.  Come on!  If you're talking about influence, then where is T-Bone Walker?
17. Jack White.  OK.
18. John Frusciante.  Yes.
19. Richard Thompson.  Whatever.
20. James Burton.  Yes.
21. George Harrison.  I rank him much higher, but am relieved he made the top 25.
22. Mike Bloomfield.  For sure.
23. Warren Haynes.
24. The Edge.  Interesting.  One unique cat, that's for sure.
25. Freddy King.  Yes.  Hugely influential.  But him and T-Bone lower than Ramone?

Overall it could have been worse.  But ...
Mark Knopfler only at #27?  Stephen Stills on the list at all?  For electric?  The write up specifically mentioned electric.  I thought the list was meant to be taken seriously.

Steve Cropper, Bo Diddley, Peter Green and Scotty Moore are all too far down the list.  Ritchie Blackmore is obscenely far down the list.  Ditto Johnny Winter.  And David Gilmour at #82 and Angus Young at #96?  Forget it.  That's just wrong.

Where is Bonnie Raitt?  Where is Mike Campbell?  Where the hell is Albert King?

It could have been worse.  At least Tony Iommi and Van Halen are in the bottom half of the list.  I'll count my blessings.

Now, about Jimi versus Eric ...More  

Best Guitarists Ever - Part 2

Some honourable mentions, in no particular order:

Joe Bonamassa.  He has studied - and mastered - the masters.

Peter Green.  Clapton's successor with John Mayall and founder of Fleetwood Mac, Green was the master of the tasty lick.

Robben Ford.  Incredibly versatile, I don't understand why his isn't a household name.

Robert Johnson and T-Bone Walker.  Definitely the two most influential guitarists who ever lived.

John Frusciante.  The Chili's frontman has all the right chops!

Shifting gears to acoustic greats:  Keb' Mo', Bruce Cockburn, and James Taylor.  Well, you don't have to be a blues guy to play amazing guitar.

In leagues of their own:  Harry Manx, who manages to blend blues, folk and Indian music and make it sound obvious;  Ritchie Blackmore, whose lightning speed and unique vocabulary have never been matched.

Oh ya, and Paul McCartney.  Sure, we think of him as the bass player who can play piano, but his solo on Taxman alone earns him a spot on the list.

Again, each one of these giants can surprise and delight, but always to compliment the song.