Once upon a time, the mere act of strapping on an electric guitar and cranking up an amplifier marked one as an outsider, a rebellious badass who refused to live by the laws of a "decent" society.
But today's cookie-cutter rockers and forgettable pop janglers make studying for the priesthood seem like an edgier pursuit than playing guitar in a band.
Guitar World thought it might be instructive to salute some genuine rock weirdos — 25 individuals whose unique personalities and/or playing styles have been dictated not by popular trends, market research firms or knit-capped A&R guys, but by an all-consuming need to express themselves to the fullest.
Some have crashed and burned, especially when LSD was involved, and you probably wouldn't want to invite most them to dinner. But they're all colorful characters whose flying freak flags have contributed much to rock's rich tapestry.
Syd Barrett
Numerous books have been written about the late Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's original leader and rock's first serious acid casualty. His madcap antics range from the amusing (fixing Pat Boone with a murderous stare during an interview on Boone's TV show; styling his hair with Brylcreem and crushed Mandrax tablets) to the psychotic (locking a girlfriend in a bedroom for days with nothing to eat but crackers).
An incredibly inventive guitarist who combined an unorthodox slide technique with various echo units to create a truly "interstellar" sound, Syd unfortunately became synonymous with "losing one's shit entirely."
Hasil Adkins
The wildest one-man band in the history of recorded music, the late Hasil Adkins cranked out warped rockabilly paeans to sex, dancing and decapitation for many decades.
A manic-depressive lover man whose diet consisted entirely of meat, nicotine and endless cups of coffee, the Haze liked to scare visitors to his rural Appalachian abode with his collection of mannequin heads, and had been known to send unsolicited copies of his new records to the White House.
True connoisseurs of weirdness (including the Cramps, who covered Hasil's "She Said") worshiped his every primal clang and growl.
Buckethead
This reclusive, robotic guitarist (whose personal brand of shred encompasses the most out-there elements of art rock, heavy metal, hip-hop and free jazz) is never seen in public without a white mask on his face or a fried-chicken bucket on his head.
According to legend, the latter helps him harness the spirits of all slain and martyred chickens, without which he is powerless.
Buckethead has visited Disneyland hundreds of times (He even claims to have jammed with Haunted Mansion house band) and dreams of building his own surreal theme park, Bucketheadland. For more on that, head here.
Roky Erickson
Guitarist and founding member of the world's first psychedelic band, the 13th Floor Elevators, Erickson has claimed at times to be from Mars, and his songs are filled with convincing references to aliens, demons and reincarnation.
Busted for pot in 1969, he tried to beat the rap by pleading insanity. Although his habit of tripping four to five times a day might have already qualified Erickson for the nuthouse, the ensuing three-year incarceration (complete with Thorazine and shock treatments) in Texas' Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane certainly didn't help.
Roky recorded prolifically in the Seventies and Eighties, but he currently spends most of his time at home.
Roy Wood
The very definition of "weird beard," Wood has always cut a uniquely hirsute figure in the world of English rock. A worrying number of his songs for Sixties psych-pop legends the Move dealt with paranoia, insanity and mental anguish and allegedly resulted from the band's manager instructing Wood to "write about what you know."
An inventive guitarist capable of everything from shuddering power chords to delicate classical filigrees, Wood spent much of the Seventies cranking out Phil Spector-meets-Sha-Na-Na Fifties pastiches with Wizzard, doubtless scarring countless impressionable youngsters for life with his hideous glam-clown makeup.
Ace Frehley
Like the man himself, former Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley's playing remains maddeningly unpredictable — to this day, he can sound like a teenager who's just picked up his first electric — but he always injected Kiss with a jolt of electricity.
Ace's coked-out 1978 self-titled solo LP perfectly encapsulates his "life is one big joke" philosophy, but it's also one of the great bonehead rock albums of all time, right up there with the first Ramones record and Foghat Live.
Glenn Ross Campbell
The visionary behind Sixties garage-psych ravers the Misunderstood, Campbell could barely play a chord on a six-string guitar. But armed with a pedal steel and a fuzz box, he produced a mind-blowing squall that sounded like the missing link between Jeff Beck's work with the Yardbirds and Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced.
Inspired by his spiritually oriented mother, Campbell and his band toyed with the vibrational effects of feedback and light, sending unsuspecting audiences in to a communal trance with the sensory overload of their powerful performances. Sadly the Vietnam War draft destroyed the band after it had waxed only a handful of tracks.
Zal Cleminson
A visual cross between the Joker of Batman fame and Ronald McDonald, Cleminson was the musical lynchpin of Scottish glam terrorists the Sensation Alex Harvey Band.
Cleminson's contorted, grease-painted mug, green Lurex body stocking and synchronized dance moves invariably provoked an avalanche of catcalls and projectiles from audiences who didn't appreciate the SAHB's theatrical bent — ditto the band's "talent show" routine, wherein Cleminson recited Shakespeare while tap-dancing.
But his deft fretwork and monstrously fat sound endeared him to mid-Seventies rock fans with a taste for something beyond the usual arena fodder.
Dave Davies
Slashing his speakers to create that distorted "You Really Got Me" sound, Davies has clearly been thinking outside the box from the early Kinks days onward.
In the late Seventies, Davies became deeply interested in telepathy and mental visualization, and claims to have used these concepts to energize or heal concert audiences many times since then. In 1982, he was telepathically contacted by "five distinct intelligences" from another dimension, who significantly enhanced his consciousness and taught him the principles of "etheric magnetism."
Davies loves to scan the skies for UFOs, and extraterrestrial elements abound on Purusha and the Spiritual Planet, the techno/dance/New Age record he recorded in 1998 with is son Russell.
Euronymous
The mustachioed fret-mangler for Mayhem, Norway's original black metal band, Euronymous spent most of his downtime concocting explosive potions in his home laboratory, or presiding over pagan rituals and orgies in the basement of Hell, his Oslo record store.
When Mayhem's lead singer blew his own brains out with a shotgun, the guitarist harvested the scattered grey matter from the suicide scene, then gleefully ate it in a stew of ham, vegetables and paprika. The accumulated bad karma finally caught up with Euronymous in 1993, when he was stabbed to death by Count Grishnackh of rival black metal purveyors Burzum.
Link Wray
An intimidating enigma in dark shades, greasy pompadour and a black leather jacket, Link waxed guitar instrumentals so pungently crude, one of 'em (the 1958 hit "Rumble") was even banned on numerous radio station for being "too suggestive."
After losing a lung in his twenties to tuberculosis, Link let his cheap-ass guitars do most of the talking — or swearing, as the case may be. In the Fifties, he freaked out more than a few studio engineers with his primitive fuzz tone, achieved by punching holes in the speaker of his Premier amplifier.
Peter Green
The tastiest guitarist to emerge from the British blues boom of the Sixties, Peter Green was also the most troubled.
Originally a brash and arrogant player, the Fleetwood Mac founder decimated his ego with numerous LSD binges and became deeply uncomfortable with is modicum of fame and fortune. He gave most of his money and belonging away to charity — and unsuccessfully tried to convince his bandmates to do the same — and took to wearing flowing robes and crucifixes.
Green left the band in 1970 and was later institutionalized, where his schizophrenia was only worsened by repeated shock treatments. Although he still records and performs, the psychic scars from his ordeal remain.
Paul Leary
Ever the straight man to Gibby Haynes' psychotic jester, Leary gave up his stockbroker ambitions to wreak sonic vengeance on the world as the Butthole Surfers' lead guitarist.
With his permanently dilated pupils and Rockettes-style leg kicks — and, for a brief period, a hot-pink "sideways Mohawk"— Leary would have been the resident freak in any other band, but he was typically overshadowed by Haynes' lysergic meltdowns and the Buttholes' collection of surgical-training films.
Still, there was no denying the potency of Leary's bad-trip guitar grind, or his propensity for smashing and setting fire to his instruments at the beginning of a show. As he explained to Guitar World in 1991, "Why wait for the end, you know?"
Bryan Gregory
No one who saw Bryan Gregory onstage with the Cramps will forget the arresting spectacle of the stick-thin guitarist coaxing scorching feedback from a polka-dot Flying V (several years before Randy Rhoads wielded one!) while wiggling his ass and flicking lit cigarettes into the crowd.
With his pockmarked skin, viciously pointy fingernails and impossibly long bleached fringe, Gregory looked like a Times Square hooker returned from the dead, thus accomplishing the impressive feat of making bandmates Lux Interior and Poison Ivy seem positively normal.
Gregory allegedly left the band to join a snake-handling cult, though the Cramps have always maintained that his exit was drug related.
Wes Borland
It's one thing to put on a mask or makeup when everybody else in your band is doing it; it's another thing entirely to dress up as a randy satyr or acid-crazed monkey when the rest of your bandmates are all backward-baseball cap-wearin' slobs.
In Limp Bizkit, Borland's individualism extended not just to bizarre getups and mind-bending guitar noise but also to his very public discomfort with the band's dumbed-down shtick. Wes also has channeled his ADD-fueled energy into considerably more twisted projects like Goatslayer, Big Dumb Face and Eat the Day.
Jeff "Skunk" Baxter
Worried about American coming under missile attack from evildoers in faraway lands? No doubt you'll sleep easier knowing Jeff "Skunk" Baxter is counseling our elected officials on missile defense. That's right - he beret-wearing former Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan guitarist currently works for the U.S. Department of Defense as an adviser to the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.
Baxter apparently immersed himself in defense manuals and technical weapons texts while his bandmates were out partying, and now peppers his interviews with anecdotes that begin, "When I was in Afghanistan — well, I can't tell you why I was in Afghanistan, but when I was in Afghanistan..."
Robert Quine
The unlikeliest guitar hero to emerge from the New York City punk scene, the bald, bearded and bespectacled Quine looked more like a lawyer than a lead guitarist — before joining Richard Hell & the Voidoids, he'd actually spent three years writing tax law for Prentice Hall Publishing.
But Quine's musical presence was commanding as hell, and his ability to whip off the most mind-bendingly surreal solos without breaking a sweat won him work with such notorious hard-to-please figures as John Zorn, Tom Waits and Lou Reed.
And on Reed's The Blue Mask, Quine did something no guitarist has accomplished before or since: get a killer tone out of Peavey Bandit amplifier.
Tawl Ross
A sorely underrated player in the annals of P-Funkdom, rhythm guitarist Lucius "Tawl" Ross turned on George Clinton to the high-energy sounds of fellow Detroiters and the Stooges and the MC5, and his distorted, protopunk riffs perfectly complimented Eddie Hazel's freaky leads on the first three Funkadelic albums.
Tawl's voyage on the Mothership came to an abrupt ending 1971, following a tête-à-tête he'd had with his long-dead mother while tripping on a winning combination of raw speed and at least six hits of pure LSD. Though he briefly resurfaced int he Nineties, Tawl Ross essentially remains the Syd Barrett of funk.
Skip Spence
The West Coast psychedelic scene's answer to Syd Barrett, Alexander "Skip" Spence was a free spirit who took a serious wrong turn in 1968 during the recording of Moby Grape's second album: believing a bandmate to be possessed by Satan, Skip tried to "save" him with a fire ax.
After a stint in New York City's Bellevue Hospital, he wrote and played everything on Oar, a thoroughly deranged amalgam of folk, blues and psychedelia that's since become a cult classic. Unfortunately, Oar marked his last period of prolonged semi-lucidity; doomed to battle schizophrenia and substance abuse issues, Skip was in and out of various institutions until his death from cancer in 1999.
Ricky Wilson
Everyone associates B-52's with Fred Schneider's campy bark and the bewigged antics of Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson, but these perennial new wave faces wouldn't have gone far without the twangy licks of Cindy's guitarist brother, Ricky.
Heavily influenced by the disparate likes of Captain Beefheart and Joni Mitchell, Ricky (who allegedly learned guitar by playing along to TV commercials) used a variety of weird-ass tunings on his old Mosrite, dispensing with the D and G strings entirely.
At a time when Dire Straits and Van Halen ruled the rock roost, Ricky's thrift shop, surf-meets-spaghetti western sound was a total revelation.
Hound Dog Taylor
Born with six fingers on each hand, Theodore Roosevelt "Hound Dog" Taylor once drunkenly tried to remove his extra digits with a razor blade. Thankfully, he was only partially successful, leaving his left hand intact to execute his wild Elmore James-in-crystal meth slide runs.
Despite his clownish stage persona, Hound Dog loved to fight with his bandmates, and even wounded HouseRockers guitarist Brewer Phillips with a handgun when one dissing session got out of hand. A devotee of $50 pawnshop guitars and busted amps, Hound Dog rarely practiced, and he never performed sober. "When I die," he sagely predicted, "they'll say, 'He couldn't play shit, but he sure made it sound good!'"
Marc Bolan
He claimed to know only five chords, but nobody ever whipped a Les Paul with as much effete elan as the TRex main man. The bisexual elf's Freudian fixation on guitar flagellation began during his stint with mod provocateurs John's Children (wherein he routinely beat his ax with chains during live shows) and continued long after he'd morphed from acoustic folkie to high-heeled glam warrior.
Bolan's weirdo credentials were more confirmed by his impressive string of gibberish-laden hits — songs like "Metal Guru,""Hot Love" and "Telegram Sam" so brilliantly walked the line between genius and idiocy, no one is sure to this day which is which.
Jim Martin
"I'm from outer space and I'm here to kill you all," was a favorite between-song threat of the erstwhile Faith No More guitarist, and frankly it wasn't hard to believe him.
With his Furry Freak Brother beard and man — the latter gradually turning into an unsightly "reverse Mohawk," thanks to pattern baldness — his penchant for wearing several pairs of sunglasses at once and his unapologetic love for classic rock, "Big Sick Ugly Jim" always seemed the odd man out in the groundbreaking funk-metal band.
Since parting ways with FNM in 1994, the reclusive Martin as lent his searing tones to a handful of projects but his main interest seems to be growing giant pumpkins that tip the scales at well over 800 pounds.
Bobby Beausoleil
The pretty boy of the Manson Family (Charles, not Marilyn), Beausoleil was a talented musician who played rhythm guitar in Arthur Lee's Love, back when they were still known as the Grass Roots. In 1967, Beausoleil landed a gig playing guitar and sitar for the Magick Powerhouse of Oz, and 11-piece rock band formed by filmmaker Kenneth Anger to provide soundtrack to his occult film Lucifer Rising.
After a headed argument, Beausoleil stole Anger's car, camera equipment and 1,600 feet of his film — the latter of which he gave to Manson, who buried it in the desert and demanded $10,000 in ransom. While in prison, Beausoleil has built a wide array of electronic instruments, including the Syntar, a stringless, digital, touch-controlled guitar.
Angus Young
Angus is such an established member of the rock pantheon, most of us don't even flinch when AC/DC's diminutive lead axman duck-walks across the stage in full schoolboy drag, despite the fact the dude is several decades past his 16th birthday.
But how's this for a job description: not only do you sport a velvet jacket-shorts-and-cap look on a nightly basis but you do it while playing impossibly loud blues licks, punctuating each performance with a striptease and a full moon of the audience. If that isn't a weird way to make your living for nearly 30 years, we don't know what is.
It's mid-July, a special time of the year when we laugh about all the new year's resolutions we didn't come close to keeping, maybe curse the heat — and always reflect on all the new music that has come out since the first Tuesday of the year.
The first half of 2013 was peppered with high-profile releases, including Black Sabbath's 13, which turned the venerable metal legends into chart toppers across the globe and prompted Ozzy Osbourne to exclaim, "I didn't know there were 50 countries, and I'm No. 1 in all of them!"
And while you will find 13 in the photo gallery below, you'll also find several GW staff favorites, including addictive albums by the Melvins, Children of Bodom, Portal, Sleeping with Sirens, Deafheaven, Clutch, Kurt Vile, Son Volt, bluesman Ronnie Earl, Johnny Marr, David Bowie, Alice In Chains, Joe Satriani and a whole lot more.
Be sure to check out the 40-album photo gallery below. And if there's a first-half-of-2013 studio album you don't see here but would like to recommend, please let us know in the comments below!
NOTE: These albums are not presented in any particular order. Once again, these albums are not presented in any particular order ... .
Guitar players are the coolest creatures on this planet.
Don’t believe us? Consider Buddy Holly. Take away his guitar and he might as well be Melvin Poindexter, full-time accountant and part-time carnival geek. Give him a Stratocaster and suddenly he’s dumping Peggy Sue Gerron and shacking up with Maria Elena Santiago, una caliente Latina!
In fact, guitarists are on a whole different planet when it comes to defining cool. When you play guitar, you can get away with all kinds of acts normal people could never attempt. Face it: An ordinary dude could not walk down the street wearing a leopard-skin jacket, high-heel cowboy boots, flowing silk scarves and dozens of silver bangles without getting beaten up within minutes.
But put a guitar case in that dude’s hands and suddenly grown men want to buy him a drink, and ladies slip him their phone numbers. Or try doing Chuck Berry’s famous duck walk without a guitar; people will think you’re mental. But do it with a guitar and they’ll pelt you with a sea of money and panties.
Since guitar players are automatically cool, that means cool guitar players are the coolest of the cool. In this issue, we exalt this elite class of cold — the players who even we would sell our wives and first born just to have some of their mojo rub off on us. Some of them are pioneers who paved a bold, daring path to define new styles of cool, while others are simply the kind of guitarists we want to be when we never grow up (which is part of being cool).
These people are the real reason why the guitar remains the world’s most popular instrument, so let’s all raise our headstocks and give them a 21-power-chord salute.
JAMES HETFIELD Born August 3, 1963 Band Metallica Iconic Guitar 1984 Gibson Explorer Coolest Riff“Leper Messiah” — Master of Puppets
Most metal guitarists would kill to have half of the power and precision of James Hetfield’s right hand, not to mention his ability to write the most devastating riffs known to mankind, from “Seek and Destroy” and “Creeping Death” to “Enter Sandman.” Of course, most musicians with skills comparable to Hetfield’s have such big egos that they become the targets of our murderous intentions. That’s not the case with Hetfield.
Years of hard-earned success and fame have not changed his down-to-earth attitude. Even though he has become one of the world’s richest rock stars, he hasn’t married a supermodel or become a pompous art collector. Instead, he’s remained true to his working-class roots, spending his spare time building incredibly cool kustom cars and cruising the streets with his car club buddies, the Beatniks of Koolsville.
His kustom masterpieces like “Slow Burn” (a 1936 Auburn boat-tail speedster), “Skyscraper” (a 1953 Buick Skylark) and his daily driver known as “The Grinch” (a 1952 Oldsmobile) are drivable works of art that defy the bland Toyota Priuses, Lexuses and Land Rover SUVs of his Northern California environs like a stiff middle-finger salute wearing a skull ring.
JOE STRUMMER Born August 21, 1952 (died December 22, 2002) Band The Clash, Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros Iconic Guitar 1968 Fender Telecaster Coolest Riff"Train in Vain"— London Calling
Joe Strummer was far from the most proficient rhythm guitarist in punk rock, and his tone was often downright wimpy.
Yet you’d never find a punk rocker who didn’t want to be just like him. Whereas most punk guitarists found inspiration from the same hard rock and proto-metal players that they pretended to despise, Strummer was influenced by reggae, rockabilly, soul, ska and even early New York rap music when most of the world still hadn’t heard of the Sugarhill Gang.
Those influences helped him develop a truly unique rhythm guitar style that no one has been able to duplicate since. Perhaps the coolest thing about Joe Strummer is no one could ever predict what he would do next. In 1981, the Clash played 17 consecutive nights at the 3,500-capacity Bond’s International Casino nightclub in Manhattan, but when they returned to New York the next year they played two sold-out shows at Shea Stadium as an opening act for the Who.
Julien Temple’s documentary, Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, reveals what many would perceive as Strummer’s flaws: from his hippie squatter roots to the way he dissed former bandmates during the Clash’s last gasps. But ultimately, Strummer was a man who simply did wanted he wanted to do without giving a shit what anybody else thought.
SLASH & IZZY STRADLIN Born July 23, 1965 (Slash); April 8, 1962 (Izzy) Band Guns N' Roses Iconic Guitar 1985 Gibson Les Paul Standard (Slash); Gibson ES-175 (Izzy) Coolest Riff "Welcome to the Jungle"— Appetite for Destruction
Rock music has produced some memorable tandem guitar teams: Keef and Ronnie, Angus and Malcolm, Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing to name a few.
But Slash and Izzy Stradlin, with the original lineup of Guns N’ Roses, have to go down as one of the coolest duos ever. Gutter rats Slash and Izzy had just enough yin and yang going on to provide the color and contrast that made them more than the ordinary lead and rhythm guitar team.
Both loved similar bands, like Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, but Izzy’s tastes leaned more toward groove-oriented bands like the Rolling Stones and the Doors, with a healthy dose of punk rock thrown in, while Slash loved guitar heroes like Michael Schenker and Jeff Beck.
The combination of Slash’s rough-edged pyrotechnic solos and Izzy’s raw power chords and off-kilter rhythms resulted in an unusual mish-mash with massive crossover appeal that metalheads, punks, glam poseurs, pop fans and classic rockers loved alike. Slash and Izzy also made vintage guitars cool again, strapping on Gibson Les Pauls, Telecasters and ES-175 hollowbodies when most guitarists were playing DayGlo superstrats, pointy metal weapons or minimalist headstock-less Stein-bortions.
Balding guitar players also have Slash and Izzy to thank for making hats fashionable rocker attire during a time when big hair was all the rage.
JIMI HENDRIX Born November 27, 1942 (died September 18, 1970) Band The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Band of Gypsys Iconic Guitar Fender Stratocaster Coolest Riff "Machine Gun"— Band of Gypsys
Most guitarists view the guitar in terms of scales to master and tones to tame, but Jimi Hendrix viewed the instrument as an open canvas for his imagination, pulling sounds out of his Stratocaster and Marshall stacks that no one previously knew the guitar was capable of making.
The first guitarist to chain effect pedals together, Hendrix combined their tones and textures with whammy bar squeals and growls and unorthodox playing techniques to make the guitar sound like a symphony, animals, armies or the far reaches of outer space. While most Sixties psychedelic music was banal bubblegum pop with fuzz-tone guitar hooks, Hendrix made music that actually sounded like a trip after ingesting a cocktail of LSD, mushrooms and THC.
What makes Hendrix stand out is how he could play chilling, beautiful music without the sonic bombast as well. Naked, unadorned songs like “Little Wing” and “Red House” still burn with intensity even without sound effects and studio trickery, showing Jimi’s uncanny ability to speak through his instrument.
His playing shocked, awed and frightened even Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, who still view Hendrix as some sort of supernatural, mythical being. Of course, they may have also been scared of how Jimi could make even a puffy shirt and a marching band jacket look fashionable.
EDDIE VAN HALEN Born January 26, 1955 Band Van Halen Iconic Guitar Homemade "Frankenstein" Strat Coolest Riff "Panama"—1984
Eddie Van Halen forever changed the way that the guitar is made and played, but that’s not why he’s cool. Sure, he’s single-handedly responsible for the whole hot-rodded guitar and amp phenomenon that brought companies like Jackson and Charvel fortune, techs like Jose Arredondo and Lee Jackson fame and inventors like Floyd Rose immortality.
Yes, he perfected the two-handed tapping technique that made the guitar sound like a fucking synthesizer. And, okay, he crafted a legendary sound that guitarists are still trying to duplicate today. But what makes Eddie cool is his attitude—especially how he makes work seem like it takes no effort at all.
While he could put out an album of his farts or slap his name on any shitty guitar and still make millions, he is a painstaking perfectionist who spent years agonizing over every minute detail of his EVH Wolfgang guitar and EVH 5150 III amp before offering it to the public and who has refused to release a new Van Halen album until he feels it’s ready.
Even after splitting with Valerie Bertinelli after 26 years of marriage, surviving battles with alcohol and cancer and enduring the presence of David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar for most of the last 38 years, nothing has wiped the big, warm, friendly smile off of his face.
LINK WRAY Born May 2, 1929 (died November 5, 2005) Band Link Wray and the Ray Men, Robert Gordon Iconic Guitar Supro Dual Tone Coolest Riff "Run Chicken Run"— Rumble: The Best of Link Wray
Back in 1958, most guitarists and guitar amp designers tried to avoid distortion. Not Link Wray. When he recorded his instrumental “Rumble,” Wray poked holes in the tweeters of his Premier Model 71 amp to make it sound even more nasty and distorted than it could on its own.
A direct line can be drawn from “Rumble” to “My Generation,” “Anarchy in the U.K.” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” The song is often credited as the origin of the power chord, but it also heralded the transformation of rock from the music of youth to the soundtrack of juvenile delinquency. Several radio stations banned “Rumble” because they thought it was too sexy, raunchy and violent. Wray even dressed like a juvenile delinquent, embellishing his greasy black pompadour with a leather jacket, jeans and shades at a time when most white rock and rollers still took fashion cues from Perry Como and Bing Crosby.
Wray kept the hits coming through the Sixties, issuing singles like “Jack the Ripper,” “Ace of Spades,” the manic “Run Chicken Run,” the appropriately titled “The Fuzz” and the coolest version of the Batman theme ever. Wray rocked hard until the end, playing his last gig only four months before he passed away at the age of 76.
JOHNNY RAMONE Born October 8, 1948 (died September 15, 2004) Band The Ramones Iconic Guitar Mosrite Ventures II Coolest Riff "Blitzkrieg Bop"— Ramones
If ever there were a forensic investigation to identify the true biological father of punk rock guitar, all DNA evidence would point clearly to Johnny Ramone. The guitar style that people most associate with punk—briskly downpicked barre chords executed with blinding precision at breakneck tempos and marshaled in service of concise catchy song structures—is the invention, progeny and proud legacy of the man born John Cummings on Long Island, New York.
Johnny was a strange case, a rock and roll outsider who was obsessed with uniformity. And that obsession helped forge the Ramones aesthetic: the identikit leather jackets and ripped jeans worn by each band member, the single surname shared by all four (in the absence of any actual familial kinship) and the terse pacing of the music itself, with not a single excessive note or lyrical utterance.
It all added up to a cartoonish minimalism that struck a vital cultural nerve when the Ramones burst out of Manhattan’s Lower East Side CBGB scene in the mid Seventies. They were the perfect antidote to the bloated self-indulgence of Seventies arena rock and the tendency—a hangover from the hippie era—for rock and rock musicians to take themselves way too seriously. The Ramones were passionate about rock, without ever being pompous.
Their songs cut right to the melodic and rhythmic core of great rock and roll. Johnny contributed song ideas and slashing guitar arrangements, but he also kept the whole thing on the rails. A straight guy in a world of addicts, perverts, weirdoes and psychos, Johnny’s politics were dubious. But, like Mussolini, he made the Ramones’ rock and roll train run on time for more than two decades. John Cummings passed from this life in 2004 after a five-year fight with prostate cancer.
But in the clashing clangor of Green Day, Rancid, Blink-182 and the next bunch of punk rock misfits rehearsing in some basement or garage, Johnny Ramone lives on.
JAMES WILLIAMSON Born October 29, 1949 Band Iggy and the Stooges, Iggy Pop Iconic Guitar Gibson Les Paul Custom Coolest Riff "Search and Destroy"—Raw Power (Iggy and the Stooges)
James Williamson was the man who facilitated Iggy Pop’s transition from self-lacerating Stooges frontman to solo artist, icon and all-around elder statesman of punk. In a way, Williamson was the only man for the job. He shared Iggy and the Stooges’ Detroit garage rock roots and was a friend of Stooges founding guitarist Ron Asheton during the mid Sixties.
But he also had his act way more together than any of the Stooges during their cataclysmic heyday. By the early Seventies, the Stooges were two albums into their career and starting to come apart at the seams due to myriad drug problems and an overall lack of widespread commercial acceptance of their music.
Williamson injected new life into the group, bringing an ideal balance of discipline and frenzy, best heard on the group’s 1973 disc Raw Power, the album that launched thousands of punk and post punk bands. “I’m his biggest fan,” the legendary Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr once said of Williamson. “He has the technical ability of Jimmy Page without being as studious and the swagger of Keith Richards without being sloppy. He’s both demonic and intellectual, almost how you would imagine Darth Vader to sound if he was in a band.”
Williamson went on to produce and play on Iggy’s classic solo 1979 album New Values, which features gems like “I’m Bored” and “Five Foot One.” The guitarist also played a key role on the follow-up disc, Soldier, anchoring a punk rock all-star lineup that included ex-Pistol Glen Matlock, Ivan Kral from the Patti Smith Band and Barry Adamson from Magazine. Shortly after Soldier, Williamson took a hiatus from rock to study electronic engineering, becoming Vice President of Technology and Standards for Sony.
When Ron Asheton died, Williamson took an early retirement from Sony and returned to his rightful place as the Stooges’ guitarist. Their new album, Ready to Die, came out this year.
BUDDY GUY Born July 30, 1936 Band Solo, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy & Junior Wells Iconic Guitar 1957 sunburst Fender Stratocaster, polka-dot Buddy Guy signature Fender Strats Coolest Riff"The First Time I Met the Blues"— Can't Quit the Blues
Buddy Guy is our greatest living link to blues tradition—a man who sat and played with immortals like Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Willie Dixon and Otis Spann, and who still climbs up onstage at events like the Crossroads Festival to jam with greats such as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Carlos Santana, not to mention newcomers like John Mayer.
Clapton himself has repeatedly called Guy “the greatest living guitarist.” Hendrix literally knelt at Buddy’s feet in the late Sixties, the better to study his riffs. Guy’s secret? He combines an old-time blues feel with the technical facility of a modern guitar player. He was a youngster at the legendary Chess Records in early Sixties Chicago. Fresh up from Lettsworth, Louisiana, Guy was some 20 years junior to giants like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, yet old enough and gifted enough to share the studio with them.
And when Cream, Hendrix and Led Zeppelin brought amped-up guitar hysteria to the fore, Buddy was still in his prime, ready, able and eager to join the fray. He’s still going strong today, an inspiration—and intimidation—to all who would strap on an electric guitar and dive deep into the mighty river that is the blues.
JOHNNY THUNDERS Born July 15, 1952 (died April 23, 1991) Band New York Dolls, the Heartbreakers, Gang War Iconic Guitar Gibson Les Paul Jr. Coolest Riff "Chinese Rocks"— Blank Generation: The New York Scene (1975-78) (The Heartbreakers)
Johnny Thunders’ snot-nosed New York take on Keith Richards’ cool is one of the pillars on which punk rock was built. An Italian-American guy (birth name John Anthony Genzale Jr.) from Queens, he was born a little too late to be part of the Sixties rock explosion. But the bands of that era were his influences, and he put his own spin on them in the early Seventies as the New York Dolls came together with Thunders on lead guitar.
Thunders had the riffs to match the glam-trash group’s mascara. He took rock guitar and cooked it down to its essence, playing open chords and switchblade riffs that laid bare the amphetamine urgency behind the Dolls’ concise, catchy tunes. The Dolls had split up by the time punk rock got underway in New York and London, but their influence was profoundly felt on both shores.
Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols has repeatedly cited Thunders as a major influence, Dee Dee Ramone was a friend, colleague and drug brother, and Richard Hell played alongside him in the Heartbreakers. While Thunders shared Keith Richards’ appetite for excess, he sadly was not blessed with Keef’s monumental endurance.
Thunders died in New Orleans in 1991 under mysterious, although most likely drug-related, circumstances.
KEITH RICHARDS Born December 18, 1943 Band The Rolling Stones, the X-Pensive Winos Iconic Guitar 1953 Fender Telecaster Coolest Riff “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” — Out of Our Heads
Keith Richards has made living on the edge his life’s mission. Grinning blissfully—and blatantly stoned—from mid-Sixties picture sleeves, lean and lanky, swathed in flowing scarves and stylish shades, he defined the look, the attitude and the swagger essential to the vocation of rock guitarist.
From day one, his playing asserted the primacy of riffs and rhythm as the structural backbone of rock music. Following his lead, an entire generation discovered the ancient mysteries of the blues and learned to cultivate a little sympathy for the devil. Effortlessness is the key to Keef’s cool.
He’s sauntered down through the decades unfazed by stints in jail and hospital, heroin addiction, assorted femmes fatales, copious boozing, rampaging Hells Angels and assaults from fellow icons like Chuck Berry and Peter Tosh. Unconstrained by the grinding gradations of clock, calendar, public morality or legal prohibition, he has defined life on his own terms.
The same lawless sense of effortlessness defines his playing. Guitar slung low, cigarette dangling from his lip, he’s never hyper, never tries too hard and always swings free of such limited concepts as lead versus rhythm. This is what enables him to get down to the raw truth of the groove.
ROY ORBISON Born April 23, 1936 (died December 6, 1988) Band Solo, the Traveling Wilburys Iconic Guitar Gibson ES-335 Classic Riff “Oh, Pretty Woman”—The Essential Roy Orbison
Most people think of Roy Orbison as the super-smooth crooner who sang songs like “Crying,” “In Dreams” and “Only the Lonely.” But Orbison was also a wicked guitar player, who ripped out several impressive solos on early Sun Records singles like “Ooby Dooby.” In fact, Sun owner Sam Phillips was more impressed with Orbison’s guitar playing than his singing during the early days of the rocker’s career.
Although Orbison’s good friend and Sun Records labelmate Johnny Cash may be known as “the Man in Black,” Orbison habitually dressed from head to toe in black in the early Sixties, a decade before Cash adopted his dark uniform. Even Orbison’s raven hair and impenetrable jet Ray-Bans were blacker than the cover to Spinal Tap’s Smell the Glove, adding to his alluring persona as a mysterious, brooding artiste.
By 1964, most of Orbison’s early rock and roll contemporaries were either dead, strung-out on drugs, in jail or making crappy movies, but Orbison’s musical career still hadn’t reached its peak. In between the ballads, he recorded singles like “Mean Woman Blues” (check his wild guitar solo) and “Oh, Pretty Woman” that showed upstarts like the Beatles, the Animals and the Rolling Stones that Americans still could rock harder than any Brit.
MIKE NESS Born April 3, 1962 Bands Social Distortion, Easter, solo Iconic Guitar 1971 Gibson Les Paul gold top with Seymour Duncan P-90s Coolest Riff “Ball and Chain”—Social Distortion
Bull necked and heavily tattooed, Mike Ness is not the kind of guy you’d want to mess with. The Southern California guitarist, singer and songwriter has known good times and bad, punching his way out of a serious drug addiction in the mid Eighties. He has funneled these experiences into some of the most hard-hitting, plain-dealing rock songs to come out of the SoCal punk milieu. Ness launched Social Distortion in 1978.
Initially a hardcore act—in fact one of the most vital bands on the Orange County beach town/skater hardcore scene—Social Distortion morphed over the years into a vehicle for Ness’ ever-evolving narrative songwriting gift, dedicated to a few simple-but-slamming guitar chords and lyrics that recount life’s hard lessons.
An avid skateboarder and hot-rod enthusiast, Ness epitomizes working-class Southern Californian culture. Springsteen comparisons are always dangerous, but the Boss did appear on Ness’ 1999 solo disc Cheating at Solitaire. Springsteen also named Social Distortion’s Heaven and Hell as his favorite record of 1992. Brian Setzer is another kindred spirit and musical collaborator. Ness is one skate punk kid who has stood the test of time.
JAMES HONEYMAN-SCOTT Born November 4, 1956 (died June 16, 1982) Band The Pretenders Iconic Guitar 1980 custom metal-front Zemaitis Coolest Riff “Tattooed Love Boys”—The Pretenders
James Honeyman-Scott’s moment in the spotlight was far too brief. He recorded only two albums with the Pretenders before he died of heart failure, but those tracks revealed incredible talent and versatility that quickly made him the most revered guitarist to emerge during the early days of post-punk new wave.
Honeyman-Scott’s solos were concise and economical, getting the point across in only a few measures. His solo on “Kid” is a pop song unto itself that evokes the Beatles’ finest melodic moments, while his three- and four-second bursts on “Tattooed Love Boys” unleash more emotion, fire and style than most guitarists can convey in an extended 15-minute solo.
Unlike most new wave guitarists at the dawn of the Eighties, Honeyman-Scott had impeccable fashion sense. He always maintained a timeless detached rocker look, and his aviator shades, medium-length shag haircut, suit jacket and jeans attire never really went out of style, unlike the geometric haircuts and DayGlo suits that many of his contemporaries wore. He always played the coolest guitars onstage as well, from classic Gibson Les Pauls and Firebirds to custom-made Hamers and Zemaitis metal-front guitars.
He even married a model with coolest imaginable name for a guitarist’s girlfriend—Peggy Sue Fender.
BRIAN SETZER Born April 10, 1959 Bands Stray Cats, Brian Setzer Orchestra Iconic Guitar 1959 Gretsch 6120 Coolest Riff“Runaway Boys”—Stray Cats
Most musicians who revive a musical style from the past are like classic-car restorers, refusing to modify it in any way and insisting on keeping it exactly as it was back in the day. Brian Setzer is more like a hot rodder, keeping certain essential elements as a foundation but updating them with a lot more power, speed and style.
With the Stray Cats he made rockabilly sound as dangerous as punk, and his fleet-fingered solos impressed even the most technically minded metalheads. He pulled off a similar feat in the Nineties with the Brian Setzer Orchestra, making big-band jazz appealing to rockers.
Although Gretsch went out of business and ceased making guitars about the same time that the Stray Cats emerged, Setzer helped bring the company back to life by showing players just how cool Gretsch guitars could sound. As a result, Setzer was the first artist since Chet Atkins to be honored with his own signature-model Gretsch guitar.
For those of us who dread Christmas music, Setzer’s holiday collections with the Brian Setzer Orchestra provide relief, giving guitar fans plenty of shredding solos to enjoy in between schmaltzy verses about figgy pudding and some fat, creepy man in red velvet pajamas.
DJANGO REINHARDT Born January 23, 1910 (died May 16, 1953) Band Quintette du Hot Club de France Iconic Guitar Selmer Modèle Jazz Coolest Riff“Mystery Pacific”—The Very Best of Django Reinhardt
Electric guitarists like Charlie Christian and T-Bone Walker rightfully get a lot of credit for introducing the concept of the single-string electric guitar solo, but many historians forget that Belgian Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt was shredding the strings a few years before those gents—and he didn’t need electricity.
The acoustic solos Reinhardt recorded with the Quintet of the Hot Club of France between 1936 and 1940 are simply astounding displays of virtuosity, melodic taste and speed that left indelible impressions on players throughout several generations, including Les Paul, Jimmy Page and Michael Angelo Batio. Django didn’t even need all four fretting fingers either, using only two left hand fingers to play complicated chords and hyperspeed solos (his third and fourth fingers were badly burned in a fire).
Django’s “handicap” later inspired Tony Iommi and Jerry Garcia to keep playing guitar after they permanently injured their fretting hands. Django lived life as hard and fast as he played guitar. A notorious gambler, drinker, gourmand and womanizer, he died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 43, but his solos continue to awe players today.
T-BONE WALKER Born May 28, 1910 (died March 16, 1975) Bands Solo, Sebastian’s Cotton Club Orchestra, Freddie Slack’s Orchestra Iconic Guitar Gibson ES-250 Coolest Riff“Strollin’ with Bone”—The Complete Imperial Recordings, 1950–1954
As the first blues guitarist to pick up an electric guitar and play single-string solos in the late Thirties, T-Bone Walker didn’t just lay down the foundation for electric blues and rock and roll—he also built the first three or four floors. John Lee Hooker credits T-Bone Walker with making the electric guitar popular, claiming that everybody tried to copy T-Bone’s sound.
That’s not an overstatement, as traces of T-Bone’s influence can be heard in the early recordings of Albert, B.B. and Freddie King, Muddy Waters, and especially Chuck Berry, who adopted many of Walker’s signature licks as his own. A sharp-dressed, flamboyant performer who played the guitar behind his head and did the splits without missing a note, Walker helped reposition the guitar player from the sidelines to center stage, inspiring Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan to copy his impossible-to-ignore moves.
Walker’s licks were so fresh and ahead of their time that his solos on the 1942 single “Mean Old World” and his 1947 breakthrough “Call It Stormy Monday” still inspire guitarists today.
JIMMY PAGE Born January 9, 1944 Bands The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, the Firm, Coverdale/Page Iconic Guitar 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard Coolest Riff“Black Dog”—Led Zeppelin IV
Normal people define cool as laid-back, excellent or highly skilled, but most guitarists define cool as Jimmy Page circa 1975 in a black velvet bellbottom suit decorated with embroidered dragons, playing a Les Paul slung down to his knees. As the musical mastermind behind Led Zeppelin, one of the greatest rock bands of all time, Page elevated the guitar riff to an art form, crafting orchestrated overdubbed parts that bludgeoned listeners like the hammer of the gods.
Page’s musical contributions with Led Zeppelin are well known to readers of this magazine, but here are some cool facts about him you may not know. As a session musician in the Sixties, Page played guitar on the singles “Gloria” by Them, “You Really Got Me” by the Kinks, “I Can’t Explain” by the Who and “It’s Not Unusual” by Tom Jones.
He’s owned homes previously lived in by Richard Harris, Michael Caine and Aleister Crowley, and his guitar collection consists of more than 2,000 instruments. The devil sold his soul to Jimmy to learn how to play the blues. As for that guy in the Dos Equis ads, forget him—Jimmy Page has already won the title of Most Interesting Man in the World.
BILLY GIBBONS Born December 16, 1949 Band ZZ Top Iconic Guitar 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, a.k.a. “Pearly Gates” Coolest Riff“Heard It on the X”—Fandango!
Bumper-sticker philosophy says that he who dies with the most toys wins. If that’s true, Billy Gibbons would be the hands-down champion.
The sharp-dressed ladies man known to his friends as “the Reverend Willie G” owns more hot rods, Harleys, vintage and custom guitars, amps, stomp boxes, museum-quality African art pieces, cowboy jackets, tortoise-shell combs and cheap sunglasses than two dozen sultans of Dubai could ever hope to acquire.
Every ZZ Top tour is a treat for guitar geeks, as Gibbons uses the occasions to unveil a six-string surprise. (Last year it was an elusive Gibson Moderne.) But what really makes Gibbons cool is a certain undefinable quality called “vibe.” Anyone who has ever met Billy and gotten to know him—however briefly—has an outrageous story to tell about the encounter.
Gibbons has also twisted more than a few towering tall tales in his time, but his life is so surreal that it’s hard to tell where the truth ends and the trip takes over. His colorful manner of speech, known as “Gibbonics,” has made him one of Guitar World’s favorite interview subjects, especially since his poetic ponderings are loaded with insight, wisdom and a unique sense of humor.
ZACKY VENGEANCE & SYNYSTER GATES Born December 11, 1981 (Vengeance); July 7, 1981 (Gates) Bands Avenged Sevenfold (both), Pinkly Smooth (Gates) Iconic Guitars Schecter Vengeance Custom (Vengeance); Schecter Synyster Custom (Gates) Coolest Riff“Unholy Confessions”—Waking the Fallen
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more distinctive guitar tandem in modern metal than Zacky Vengeance (Zachary Baker) and Synyster Gates (Brian Haner, Jr.). From their sound, to their look, even to their names, the duo routinely go down guitar paths other metal axmen don’t dare travel, spicing up Avenged Sevenfold’s otherwise dark and aggressive attack with, among other things, hooky, major-key melodies, laid-back acoustic picking, buoyant, carnival-esque rhythms and a whole lot of style.
They can also shred like nobody’s business: Though Vengeance largely fills the role of rhythm player while Gates handles the majority of the solos, almost every A7X song finds the two locking up for at least one or two rampaging runs of dual-guitar harmony leads.
Vengeance and Gates’ ascent to the top of the metal guitar heap did not always seem inevitable. Avenged Sevenfold began life as a somewhat traditional Orange County–style metalcore act, as evidenced on their 2001 debut, Sounding the Seventh Trumpet, for which Vengeance served as the primary guitarist. But the band has been reinventing and refining its sound ever since. By A7X’s third effort, 2005’s City of Evil, they had morphed into a swaggering, thrashy unit with an adventurous edge that showed itself in everything from the grand, instrumentally dense songs to the band’s theatrical image.
On 2007’s self-titled effort and the new Nightmare, Avenged Sevenfold have continued to expand their sonic template, leaving Vengeance and Gates plenty of space to explore a range of different styles. At the end of the day, however, metal is metal, and at its essence that means killer riffs and shredding solos, which the duo unleash in abundance. A7X staples like “Bat Country,” “Almost Easy” and the latest single, “Nightmare,” are chock full of blistering rhythms and finger-twisting, speed-of-light leads, while they tread that sweet spot between catchy melodicism and all-out aggression.
As metal guitar continues to evolve in even faster and wilder ways, expect Vengeance and Gates to be two of the players leading the pack for a long time to come.
MUDDY WATERS Born April 4, 1915 (died April 30, 1983) Band Solo Iconic Guitar 1958 Fender Telecaster Coolest Riff“Rollin’ and Tumblin’ ”—The Real Folk Blues
The father of electric blues, McKinley Morganfield was born in rural Mississippi, where he absorbed the folk blues stylings of Son House, Big Bill Broonzy and Robert Johnson. But in the Forties, he made the pilgrimage to Chicago, picked up an electric guitar and forged a bold new style all his own.
He assumed the stage name Muddy Waters and released a series of historic recordings on the legendary Chess Records label. These discs established the quintessential Muddy Waters persona—the jive-talkin’, sharp-dressed, tough-as-nails, mojo-workin’ Hoochie Coochie Man. Waters’ confident, cocky vocal delivery was augmented by the knife-edge drama of his bottleneck guitar leads. This steely, highly electrified sound galvanized a new rising generation of British rock musicians when Muddy first visited those shores in 1958.
A group of blues-crazy Brits even took their name from one of his songs: the Rolling Stones. The blues in general, and the recordings of Muddy Waters in particular, became the “roots music” for the youth counterculture that sprang up in the Sixties. Countless bands, from the Stones on down, have assayed Waters classics like “Rollin’ and Tumblin’,” “Got My Mojo Workin’,” “You Shook Me,” “I Just Wanna Make Love to You” and “Mannish Boy.”
Leading rock publications Rolling Stone and Mojo also paid proud titular homage to Muddy Waters, who passed away in 1983. It’s no overstatement to say that there would be no rock and roll had Muddy Waters not come along.
BILLY ZOOM Born February 20, 1948 Bands X, Billy Zoom Band Iconic Guitar Gretsch Silver Jet Coolest Riff“Johnny Hit and Run Pauline”—Los Angeles (X)
As guitarist for the seminal punk band X, Billy Zoom played a key role in launching the L.A. punk scene in the late Seventies. His raw-nerved guitar work with X drew heavily on Fifties rockabilly, spelling out the connection between punk rock and the original rock and roll music.
But Zoom also served as the perfect foil for X’s principal songwriters, singer Exene Cervenka and bassist John Doe, who were arty, bohemian denizens of hip L.A. environs like Silverlake and Venice. Zoom was a politically conservative Christian greaser from the notoriously uncool southern L.A. suburbs of Orange County. In the now-classic L.A. punk documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, he is famously shown refusing to get a tattoo.
But opposites not only attract—sometimes they also make groundbreaking music together. This is certainly true of Zoom’s collaboration with Doe and Cervenka. Since that band broke up, Zoom has gone on to do session work with everyone from the late John Denver to the Raconteurs. He’s also become semi-legendary as a guitar amp hotrod guru, having tweaked circuitry for Jackson Browne, the Black Crowes, Los Lobos, L7 and Social Distortion, among many others.
WAYNE KRAMER & FRED "SONIC" SMITH Born April 14, 1948 (Kramer); September 13, 1949 (Smith; died November 4, 1994) Bands The MC5 (both), Gang War (Kramer), Sonic Rendezvous Band (Smith) Iconic Guitars Custom Strat with American Flag finish (Kramer); Mosrite Ventures (Smith) Coolest Riff “Ramblin’ Rose”—Kick Out the Jams (MC5)
The MC5 were the nexus where radical politics and proto-punk belligerence first came together. This dangerous mixture touched off an explosion that’s still rocking the world today. The group burst out of Detroit in the cataclysmic year of 1969, with its roots firmly planted in mid-Sixties garage rock, and mutated by injections of inner-city R&B and free-jazz mayhem.
The MC5 was founded by guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred “Sonic” Smith, friends since their teen years and veterans of the Detroit garage rock scene. They honed a two-guitar attack that owed much to the heavy rock sounds being popularized at the time by acts like Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Led Zeppelin. But Kramer and Smith laid down their riffs with more reckless abandon and a greater sense of desperate urgency than any of those groups.
Many Sixties rock acts made political statements, but the MC5 were among the first rockers to make a serious commitment to revolution, aligning themselves closely with the White Panther Party (a Black Panther offshoot organization) and effectively serving as the White Panthers’ agitprop machine. Their blue-collar Detroit roots lent a certain gritty gravitas to their stance. These weren’t effete rock stars dabbling in left wing chic but working-class guerrillas with ammo belts strapped across their bare chests and guitars brandished as rifles.
Kramer served a prison sentence on drug-related charges after the MC5 split up. When he got out, he teamed up with Johnny Thunders to form Gang War and later re-emerged as a solo artist on L.A. punk label Epitaph. Smith went on to lead the punishingly loud Sonic Rendezvous Band and married New York punk rock poet, artist, singer and originator Patti Smith. He passed away in 1994. But from the Clash to Fugazi, Crass and Green Day, the politicized wing of punk rock continues to fly the banner first raised by the Motor City 5.
CHUCK BERRY Born October 18, 1926 Band Solo Iconic Guitar Gibson ES-355 Coolest Riff“Johnny B. Goode”—Gold
Chuck Berry is probably the only man alive who could kick Keith Richards ass, and not only would Keef let him get away with it, he’d thank Chuck afterwards. That’s because Keef knows that without Chuck there would have been no Rolling Stones, let alone the Beatles or Beach Boys.
Chuck Berry is the true founding forefather of rock and roll. His guitar playing in the mid Fifties defined the true personality and vocabulary of rock and roll guitar so comprehensively and conclusively that it’s impossible to find any rock player who doesn’t still steal his licks, riffs and tricks today. In fact, Berry doesn’t even tour with his own band; instead, he hires local musicians to back him up, because almost everyone all over the world knows how to play his songs.
Berry is also an energetic performer who invented perhaps the ultimate rock and roll stage move: the duck walk. Surprisingly, Chuck still performs this signature move when he plays onstage, even though he’s now in his 80s.
LOU REED Born March 2, 1942 Bands The Velvet Underground, solo Iconic Guitars Gretsch Country Gentleman (Velvets), Schecter, Klein, Sadowsky and other customs Coolest Riff“Sweet Jane”—Loaded (The Velvet Underground)
The dark underbelly is Lou Reed’s comfort zone. Despair and degradation are his muses. Emerging in the mid Sixties at the helm of the Velvet Underground, he offered up a gritty black-and-white alternative to the rainbow-colored pyschedelia of the prevailing rock culture. He brought us along, albeit reluctantly, to meet junkies and hustlers, S&M bondage goddesses and suicidal transvestites. He was one of the first rock guitarists to embrace chaos truly and wholeheartedly.
But the avant-garde din of Velvet Underground rave-ups seemed a genteel curtain raiser compared with the full-bore cacophony of Lou’s 1975 solo opus Metal Machine Music. The noise-guitar side of Lou’s legacy set the stage for cutting-edge genres like industrial, art damage, dream pop, grunge and present-day noise exponents, like Wolf Eyes and Yellow Swans.
But Lou’s edgy lyrical stance and image spawned something even more fundamental to deviant aesthetics: punk rock. It is with considerable justice that he graced the first cover of Punk magazine in 1976 and was subsequently dubbed the Godfather of Punk. Lou embodied a new kind of rebel hero, an amalgam of two distinctly different but equally vilified social pariahs: the disaffected intellectual and the scumbag street hustler. In recent years, he’s added a third persona: the grumpy old man.
And let's not forget his recent album with Metallica ... Still, there can be no underestimating Lou’s immense contribution to rock or the fierceness of his commitment to obtaining guitar tones and lyrical images that cut like a knife and leave a permanent scar.
JOHNNY MARR Born October 31, 1963 Bands The Smiths, Electronic, the Pretenders, The The, Johnny Marr and the Healers, Modest Mouse, the Cribs, solo Iconic Guitar Rickenbacker 330 Coolest Riff “What Difference Does It Make?”—The Smiths
Johnny Marr is a chief architect of the post-modern rock-guitar aesthetic. As the guitarist for seminal Eighties poetic pop stars the Smiths, he created a tonal palette and crisp stylistic approach that still forms the roadmap for much modern rock guitar playing. It was Marr who created the orchestral guitar soundscapes that enhanced the moody drama of Smiths singer Morrissey’s introspective lyrics and ironically detached vocals.
From the low-string riff for “What Difference Does It Make?” to the deep tremolo textures and swooning string bends of “How Soon Is Now,” Marr always seemed to have the notes and the tone to suit the moment perfectly. Marr’s work has been profoundly influential to guitarists of the Nineties and beyond. Noel Gallagher of Oasis dubbed Marr “a fucking wizard,” and Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien has cited Marr as the reason he picked up a guitar. In essence, Marr is a classicist, drawing much of his approach from the guitar sounds of the Sixties British Invasion, yet deftly adapting those influences to rock and roll modernity.
He embodies the stylish sideman identity forged by guitar greats like George Harrison and Keith Richards: a neatly trimmed pudding-basin haircut, and a stage presence that never upstages the frontman. Yet, he is intriguing in his own right. Marr’s post-Smiths career has been stellar. He’s worked with everyone from New Order’s Bernard Sumner (in Electronic) to Oasis to John Frusciante, and has been quite active recently with both Modest Mouse and the Cribs. He has an uncanny knack for being around whenever cool music is happening.
RITCHIE BLACKMORE Born April 14, 1945 Bands Deep Purple, Rainbow, Blackmore’s Night Iconic Guitar Fender Stratocaster with scalloped neck Coolest Riff “Smoke on the Water”—Machine Head (Deep Purple)
The original dark knight of metal guitar, Ritchie Blackmore boasts a surname that evokes Medieval England and a pedigree that goes back to the beginning of classic rock. Early studies in classical guitar left him with an astounding legato technique that laid the groundwork for the neoclassical and shred movements several decades later.
In the early Sixties, Blackmore did sessions with legendary British producer Joe Meek and apprenticed with U.K. session ace (and Jimmy Page mentor) Big Jim Sullivan. Blackmore founded Deep Purple in the late Sixties and led the group through various incarnations. He also spearheaded metal icons Rainbow with the late Ronnie James Dio and has more recently played a role in Blackmore’s Night with his wife Candice Night.
The history of metal wends ever onward, but, much like Mephistopheles, Ritchie Blackmore has a way of always turning up.
JOE PERRY Born September 10, 1950 BANDS Aerosmith, Joe Perry Project ICONIC GUITAR Gibson Les Paul COOLEST RIFF “Walk This Way”—Toys in the Attic (Aerosmith)
Joe Perry is the American distillation of the good-old Keith Richards/Jimmy Page recipe for sideman/lead guitarist cool. He’s got the look and the licks, and he’s maintained both over the course of three or four decades—despite all odds. Jagger and Richards are the Glimmer Twins, but Perry and Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler went down in history as the Toxic Twins.
They took the Sixties formula of sex, drugs and rock and roll to new heights in the decadent Seventies. Yet they also cranked out a steady stream of hard rock gems throughout a career that has known more ups and downs than a roller coaster. What’s perhaps most amazing about Tyler and Perry’s partnership is that Perry is the sensible one.
He averages only about one meltdown to Tyler’s every three and keeps the Aerosmith juggernaut anchored with endless heavy guitar hooks. He’s even marketed his own brand of hot sauce. How cool is that?
Sometimes the best part of an old TV show is the music running over the opening credits.
Maybe we didn’t notice it at first; perhaps we were too busy stuffing our preteen pieholes with Twinkies or ogling the jugs on Ginger, Chrissy, Batgirl or Brenda as hey jiggled across our screens. But it was there.
With this in mind, and in hope of redeeming ourselves slightly for our cathode-ray binges, we set out to find TV themes that contain cool guitar work. (And yes, we're using the word “cool” loosely.) Now pass the remote… Baywatch is on in five!
10. "Simon & Simon"
Ah, the vaunted “private investigator” genre. Ripping yarns, funny gags, head-scratching cases, despicable bad guys! And for once, a cool theme song reflecting the yin (streetsmart Rick) and yang (booksmart A.J.) of those crazy Simon brothers.
09. "The A-Team"
If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire … the A-Team. And if not, at least you’ve got this cheesy hard-rock riffing that provides the perfect backdrop to Mr. T & Co.’s explosions and rapid-fire machine guns.
08.: "The Ren and Stimpy Show"
A psycho chihuahua, dopey cat and an early-rock/rockabilly theme? “Happy Happy, Joy Joy” indeed.
07. "Three’s Company"
One thing’s for certain: some dude was totally trippin’ when he cut this nasty wah wah freakout.
Then again, the show is essentially about one man, Jack Tripper and his masturbatory, ménage-a-trois fantasies. Even so, we’re not sure how this insane guitar part slipped by the show’s producer.
Unless, of course, it was recorded by his son, and he had no choice.
06. "The Munsters"
While a million surf and instro bands have taken this ol' tune to new heights (including our buddies, Los Straitjackets), we'll always reserve a place in our hearts for the original (well, Season 2) version. And who can pass up a chance to look at Pat Priest, who played "plain" Marilyn Munster?
05. "Chico and the Man"
Prior to offing himself at age 22, Freddie Prinze was, by all counts, “loooking goood!” And Jose Feliciano’s brisk Latin theme song, played on acoustic, was sounding good. Too bad the pairing only lasted three seasons. Now all we’ve got is Freddie Prinze Jr.
04. "Batman"
Holy hitmaker, Batman!
The weirdest thing about Neil Hefti’s popular theme is that it charted four different times, at the hands of four different artists, all in 1966!
Same Bat song, different Bat channel!
03. "Beverly Hills 90210"
The perfect hair-metal chord progression, laid over a lame keyboard lick and a heavily processed trumpet. Hmmm… “perfect hair,” “lame” and “heavily processed.” Sounds like the cast of the show.
02. "Law & Order"
Mike “Rockford Files” Post proved that TV tunes were songs, too, meaning they could even reach heights on the charts. Here super-stiff yet amazingly tasty blues plucks merge with a heavy, measured rhythm section to create feelings of simmering introspection and patience – both of which you’ll need, incidentally, to get through the show.
01. "Barney Miller"
Barney’s wacky 12th Precinct in New York City seems an unlikely setting to have inspired this Larry Carlton sound-alike to jam out over a funk-fusion rhythm track. But add the inscrutable presence of Wojo and Fish, and it all seems to make sense.
For all the audio wizardry made possible by effect pedals, nothing quite rivals the expression allowed by a great wah pedal.
Originally intended to mimic the sound of a muted trumpet, it didn't take long for guitarists like Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa to make that sweet, sweeping "wah-wah" sound an integral part of the rock and roll lexicon. Whether conjuring a voodoo child or a bad horsie, the human element of the active manipulation of the pedal and its voice-like qualities are what give the wah a special place on the pedalboards — in and in the hearts — of countless musicians.
This week, we look at five essential pedals tailored especially for players who really took the wah and made it an integral part of their signature sound.
As always, this list was compiled by a group of Guitar World staffers, including technical editor Paul Riario.
Outside of the realm of fretboard dramatics, few guitarists have used the wah quite so effectively as a tone control than Alice In Chains' Jerry Cantrell. The wah makes a subtle appearance on countless AIC classics, including "Them Bones" and "Down in a Hole," helping one of grunge's greatest players to home in on that tonal "sweet spot" for his ripping leads.
With a darker tonal spectrum than your stock Cry Baby, the JC95 gives you maximum control of your range by way of an adjustable Fine Tune knob. Thanks to Cantrell's predilection for cutting mids, you won't get bogged down with muddy bottom-end tones or shrill highs, instead getting a clear, throaty effect ideal for the careful tone-master and the stomp-happy guitarist.
What does it sound like?
Our own Paul Riario tries out the Jerry Cantrell Wah:
The Vox Joe Satriani Big Bad Wah dual-mode wah pedal is the result of a collaboration between Vox and Joe Satriani (one of three such collaborations).
In the context of wah pedals, the Vox BBW is unique because it truly is two wah pedals in one. Wah 1 is pretty much a classic VOX, complete with the expected vintage UK tones; Wah 2 captures Satriani's original drive and voice controls. The result is a wide range of new sounds — not exactly the kind of sounds you'd expect from your average wah pedal.
The pedal has a Drive knob that mimics the Wah 1 gain at its lowest setting; it also delivers a 10-dB boost at the maximum settings for growling overtones. Wah 2 mode incorporates the Voice switch, which lets you choose everything from trad wah voicings to dark, resonant tones reminiscent of a vintage talk-box.
What does it sound like?
Here's the official Big Bad Wah demo video, featuring Satriani in action, direct from Vox's website:
By now, you’ve probably guessed that this pedal was "designed according to the artist’s specifications," much like everything else on this list. And that is indeed the case for this pedal, Morley’s Steve Vai Bad Horsie Wah.
Vai has a close relationship with Morley Pedals, and the company makes three Vai signature models: the Bad Horsie, Bad Horsie 2 and the Little Alligator volume pedal.
As any Vai fan knows, this pedal is named after "Bad Horsie," the wah-heavy opening track from Vai’s 1995 album, Alien Love Secrets. (Check out a video of the song here.)
The pedal features Morley's electro-optical design, so there are no pots (which tend to get scratchy and wear out over time). Another cool feature is that you simply step on the pedal -- as in, touch it with your foot -- to engage it, and then just step off the pedal for true bypass.
You also can check out Morley’s official demo video for this pedal, featuring Tommy Bolan, below. (And feel free to watch this additional video by Gearmanndude, who reviews countless pedals from all makers, large and small.)
The Joe Walsh Signature Wah by Real McCoy Custom has been on Walsh’s pedal board (which you can see here) since late 2007, when the company, also known as RMC, began producing the pedal.
The pedal — which happens to be the company’s first signature model — was designed according to Walsh’s specs and aims to reproduce the wah sounds heard on Walsh’s early recordings.
The Walsh model features true bypass, an exclusive RMC ROC-POT potentiometer and easily adjustable rocker tension. As a visual bonus, the flame graphics on the chassis were created by artist Perry Hall according to — once again — Walsh’s specs.
What does it sound like?
This pedal doesn’t leave much of a footprint on YouTube (no foot/pedal pun intended). Hopefully, RMC will create and post an official demo video. Until then, you’ll find only one or two poor-quality videos on YouTube, plus this helpful video from ProGuitarShop.com.
You know any wah made for Zakk Wylde is going to be rough, tough and road-ready, and this metal-cased behemoth of a pedal is all of that and more.
Used by Wylde with both Ozzy and Black Label Society, the Z-45 from Dunlop is a wah pedal that, in the words Guitar World gear reviewer Eric Kirkland, will make "each note cry with a deep and evil-sounding moan that resolved into an emotional peak."
The secret to the Z-45's warm, cutting tones is the Fasel inductor, which was responsible for some of the most iconic wah sounds of the late '60s. A longtime user of the Jimi Hendrix Cry Baby, Wylde made sure his signature medal had both a "classic" feel as well as more than enough thickness cut through loads of gain.
What does it sound like?
Here's a video from Dunlop — featuring Wylde — that introduces and demos the Jim Dunlop Z-45 Zakk Wylde Signature Wah:
From “Dazed and Confused” to “You Shook Me” … from “Tangerine” to “The Lemon Song” … from “Trampled Under Foot” to “Stairway to Heaven” … Guitar World presents a critical analysis of the classic-rock group’s best tracks.
With the recent release of Celebration Day, the concert film immortalizing Led Zeppelin’s historic and most likely final reunion concert at London’s O2 Arena on December 10, 2007, guitarist-producer Jimmy Page reminded the world just how profoundly great and enduring his band’s music is.
In homage to what is arguably hard rock’s most innovative group (and certainly its most influential), what follows is a tour of 50 of the most celebrated Led Zeppelin songs, with a focus on the guitar playing, songwriting and arranging genius of the quartet’s visionary founder.
Compiling such a finite list presents tough choices for anyone, as the band’s recorded output of great music during its heyday was impressively prolific by any standard and includes well over 50 gems.
50. “D’yer Mak’er” (Houses of the Holy)
This lighthearted but heavy-sounding song, the title of which is intended to be pronounced “D’you Make Her,” was conceived as a playful melding of a Fifties doo-wop-style repeating chord progression and the quirky, syncopated rhythms of Jamaican reggae.
Page makes good use of sliding sixth intervals on the song’s verse riff, providing a thin-textured but catchy and harmonically effective accompaniment to Plant’s vocals. His guitar solo, like so many of his others, is noteworthy for its tasteful, lyrical phrasing and emotive use of bends and finger vibratos.
49. “Tangerine” (Led Zeppelin III)
Like “Thank You,” this folky ballad, written exclusively by Page, offers good bang for your musical buck, in terms of packing a lot of expression into a handful of melodically embellished open “cowboy” chords.
Jimmy achieved a rich texture by performing the song’s main guitar part on a 12-string acoustic and handsomely decorated the chorus with authentic country-style pedal-steel licks, for which he used lots of oblique bends and a wah pedal to accentuate their weeping sound.
The chorus, played in the happy-sounding key of G, provides a welcome contrast to the somber feel of the verse and solo sections, which are in A minor. Also noteworthy is Page’s short and sweet slide solo, played with a thick, overdriven tone that effectively sustains his vibrato-ed notes and enhances their singing quality.
He thoughtfully describes the underlying chord changes in his slide melody by closely following the chord tones as he works his way up to the highest note on the neck.
48. “Custard Pie” (Physical Graffiti)
This opening track from Physical Graffiti features a punchy, Les Paul–through-Marshall–driven “crunch riff” behind Plant’s sexually euphemistic lyrics, many of which were borrowed from songs by early American bluesmen of the Robert Johnson era, specifically “Drop Down Mama” by Sleepy John Estes, “Shake ’Em on Down” by Bukka White, and “I Want Some of Your Pie” by Blind Boy Fuller.
Like “Houses of the Holy,” “Custard Pie” is built around a repeating two-bar riff based on an open A chord.
As in other songs, Page makes great use of rests in the song’s main riff, which allows it to “breathe” nicely and draws attention to the vocals and drums. Jimmy’s penchant for jazz/R&B harmony is manifested in the G11 chord he plays—in place of the perfectly acceptable straight G chord—near the end of each of the song’s verses, which are loosely based on the 12-bar blues form.
The guitarist makes clever use of the wah pedal in his solo, which he begins with a repeating oblique-bend phrase that, with added wah-wah inflections, sounds like a toddler throwing a tantrum. The solo is also noteworthy for the way Page melodically acknowledges the chord changes by touching upon their chord tones as opposed to simply riffing away on the key’s major and minor pentatonic scales.
47. “That’s the Way” (Led Zeppelin III)
Like “Bron-Yr-Aur,” this mellow acoustic song was inspired by the serenity and pastoral beauty of the Welsh countryside during Page and Plant’s working vacation at the remote Bron-Yr-Aur cottage in 1970.
The band performed the song live in open G tuning, but the studio version sounds in G flat, which is most likely the result of the instruments being tuned down a half step (or a possible manipulation of the tape speed in the mastering process, similar to what Page did with “When the Levee Breaks”).
Jimmy strums the song with a pick and makes great use of ringing open strings within his chord voicings, even as he moves away from the open position. Particularly cool are the reverb-soaked pedal-steel licks that Page overdubbed, for which he alternates between major and minor pentatonic phrases—again, a fine example of “light and shade.”
Also noteworthy is the climbing outro progression, for which Jimmy again combines open strings with notes fretted in the middle region of the neck to create unusual, lush-sounding chord voicings.
46. “In the Light” (Physical Graffiti)
Jimmy broke out his violin bow once again and put it to great use in this song’s extended intro, providing a low, eerie, sitar-style drone as a backdrop to Jones’ mystical, echoing “bagpipe” melodies, creatively conjured on a synthesizer.
Also particularly cool is the ominous-sounding descending blues-scale-based guitar riff that comes crashing in at the end of the intro (at 2:45) and the menacing, angular verse figure that follows, against which Page overdubbed a twangy, ringing open G note, played in unison with the D string’s fifth-fret G and treated with a shimmering tremolo effect.
The song’s bright, triumphant-sounding final theme, introduced by Jones on a Clavinet at 4:09, stands in stark contrast to the hauntingly dark minor key-based sections that precede it—another example of “light and shade.”
Also worth noting is the ascending major scale-based lead melody Page plays over the theme’s repeating progression at 4:25 and the way it moves in contrary motion to the descending bass line, a compositional technique regarded as one of classical music’s slickest moves.
45. “For Your Life” (Presence)
Page broke out his 1962 Lake Placid Blue Fender Stratocaster for this darkly heavy song about the excesses of drug use in the L.A. music scene, tastefully employing its whammy bar to create well-placed, woozy sonic nosedives.
The song’s midtempo groove features sparse and restrained but fat-sounding guitar-and-bass riffs that include wide, dramatic “holes of silence” that are crossed only by the drums, vocals and a shaken tambourine.
The arrangement really starts to develop at 2:07, as Page introduces a more ambitious new riff in a new key that’s propelled by a short machine-gun burst of triplets that further enhances the tune’s earthy midtempo groove. Jimmy’s solo, beginning at 4:17 is noteworthy for its melodic inventiveness, quirky phrasing and wailing, drooping bends.
44. “Friends” (Led Zeppelin III)
As mentioned earlier, Page employed the same open C6 tuning on this song that he used on “Bron-Yr-Aur” (low to high, C A C G C E), again employing the open strings as drones to create a mesmerizing, hypnotic effect.
In this case, Jimmy is strumming heartily with the pick, as opposed to fingerpicking, and plays double-stop figures against ringing open notes to create hauntingly beautiful melodies, making extensive use of the exotic-sounding sharp-four interval (Fs in this case), as well as the bluesy flat-three (Ef) and Arabic-flavored flat-nine (Df), conjuring an intriguing East-meets-West kind of vibe.
As he later did in “The Rain Song” and “Kashmir,” the guitarist moves a compact two-finger chord shape up and down the fretboard, played in conjunction with ringing open strings, in this case to craft an enigmatic-sounding octave-doubled countermelody to Plant’s vocals. As a finishing touch, a string ensemble, arranged by Jones, was brought into the studio to double and dramatically reinforce the countermelody.
43. “Trampled Under Foot” (Physical Graffiti)
Inspired by the cleverly euphemistic lyrics of Delta blues legend Robert Johnson’s 1936 composition “Terraplane Blues” and the funky grooves of James Brown and Stevie Wonder, this muscular song features Jones stretching out on a Hohner Clavinet keyboard and a hard-stomping, almost relentless one-chord vamp that’s broken up periodically by a brief string of accented chord changes, over which Page plays wah-inflected, Steve Cropper–style sixth intervals.
Jimmy uses his wah pedal very creatively throughout the song and creates exciting aural images by treating his guitar with ambient reverb, backward echo and stereo panning effects, especially toward the end.
42. “Houses of the Holy” (Physical Graffiti)
Built around a fat-sounding strut riff, this song is nothing but a good time. Particularly cool is the way Page and Bonham shake up the riff’s solid eighth-note groove throughout by playing off each other with quirky, syncopated 16th-note fills, such as those at 0:38 and 0:42.
Also noteworthy is Page’s resourceful use, during the verses, of progressively descending triad inversions on the top three strings (not unlike those used by Pete Townshend in the Who’s “Substitute”), which provide an effective contrast to both Jones’ angular bass line during this section and the meaty main guitar riff.
41. “The Rover” (Physical Graffiti)
This song’s sexy main riff, introduced at 0:23, embodies that trademark “Led Zeppelin swagger,” resulting from Page’s clever application of pull-down bends on the lower four strings, which he uses to “scoop up to” target pitches from a half step below and make his guitar sing, just as he had done earlier on the low E string in his main riff to “Dazed and Confused” and with whole-step bends in the previously mentioned “Over the Hills and Far Away” inter-verse riff.
The effect is accentuated in this case by the use of a phaser, which makes Jimmy’s guitar sound almost as if it’s played through a talk box.
Also noteworthy are Page’s elegantly crafted, flamenco-flavored solo and the decorative second guitar part heard during the song’s choruses, for which Jimmy arpeggiates the underlying chord progression, in the process adding an attractive countermelody to the theme without obscuring Plant’s vocals.
40. “Dancing Days” (Houses of the Holy)
Page takes a riff-building approach on this light-hearted yet powerful rocker similar to that used by Keith Richards on many Rolling Stones classics, such as “Brown Sugar,” “Honky Tonk Women” and “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.”
Making great use of open G tuning (low to high, D G D G B D) and the convenient one-finger major barre-chord shapes it affords, he uses his fret hand’s available middle finger, ring finger and pinkie to add harmonic “extensions” and embellishments to index-finger barre chords.
Page’s fascination with the Lydian mode, specifically its s4 interval, manifests itself in a musically compelling way in both the song’s sassy intro riff and its punchy verse and chorus riffs, all three of which convey a strong feeling of tension-and-release, as the harmonically turbulent s4 resolves downward in each case to the stable major third.
Particularly cool is the soaring slide melody, a neatly executed overdub first appearing at 0:56, which requires quick position shifts and carefully attention to intonation (pitch centering).
39. “Bron-Yr-Aur” (Physical Graffiti)
Conceived during Page and Plant’s legendary 1970 retreat to Bron-Yr-Aur cottage in rural Wales and recorded during the sessions for Led Zeppelin III, this ingenious fingerstyle-folk instrumental is performed in the same open C6 tuning as “Friends” (low to high, C A C G C E).
Page weaves the tune’s melodic themes into an impeccably uninterrupted stream of forward and backward 16th-note arpeggio rolls across the strings, with lots of droning open notes and unisons creating a rich natural chorusing effect and a lush, pastoral soundscape that puts the piece on par with the works of renowned late 19th-century impressionistic composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.
38. “No Quarter” (live version, The Song Remains the Same)
This fully realized, extended performance of John Paul Jones’ keyboard showcase piece packs the same kind of dynamic punch and slow-jam rhythmic drama as “Since I’ve Been Loving You” and demonstrates both Jones’ and Page’s penchant for modal jazz and their respective skills at building extended, story-like solos over a one-chord vamp. (Incidentally, it is performed in standard tuning, a half step higher than the studio version from Houses of the Holy, for which the instruments sound a half step below concert pitch.)
Also noteworthy are the two jarring, prog-rock-flavored chords in the song’s pre-chorus, Bfadds11 and Efadds11, first heard at 0:58 and 1:06, respectively.
37. “The Wanton Song” (Physical Graffiti)
Like “Immigrant Song,” this composition’s main riff demonstrates how alternating octaves combined with a strong, syncopated rhythm can create a compelling, heavy-sounding riff, and it’s safe to say that it probably inspired bands like Living Colour and Rage Against the Machine to pen their similarly styled riffs.
And like “Out on the Tiles” and “The Ocean,” the use of wide, recurring “holes of silence” in the guitar and bass parts while the drums and vocals continue, creates pronounced dynamic and textural contrasts, which add to the song’s appeal.
The instrumental interlude section that ensues after the second and fourth verses (at 0:59 and 2:03, respectively) provides a stark contrast to the raw power of the alternating-octaves riff and introduces a surprisingly jazzy chord progression within such a heavy rock song, with overdriven diminished seventh chords—something few other rock guitarists outside of Yes’ Steve Howe or Dean DeLeo from Stone Temple Pilots would have the vision and daring to use—employed as harmonic pivots to modulate to new keys.
Page’s Leslie-treated minor-seven chord riff that ensues brings to mind the Isley Brothers’ 1973 R&B hit “Who’s That Lady” and further demonstrates the breadth of Page’s stylistic influences.
36. “How Many More Times” (Led Zeppelin)
This lengthy final track from Led Zeppelin’s debut album and live set-closer in their early days was a favorite improvisational vehicle for the band, with open-ended jam sections that allowed Page to stretch out with scorching lead licks, reverb-drenched violin bow excursions and wah-wah-inflected chord strumming.
As Jimmy told Guitar World in 1993, the song “was made up of little pieces I developed when I was with the Yardbirds, as were other numbers, such as ‘Dazed and Confused.’ ” He adds, “It was recorded live in the studio with cues and nods.”
Embodying an eclectic blend of stylistic elements, the song features an interesting variety of rhythmic grooves, from a jazzy swing feel, to a straight-eighths funk beat, to a Latin bolero rhythm somewhat reminiscent of the previously recorded Jeff Beck instrumental “Beck’s Bolero,” on which both Page and Jones had played.
35. “Gallows Pole” (Led Zeppelin III)
Led Zeppelin’s creative arrangement of this sardonic, centuries-old, storytelling Celtic folk song titled “The Maid Freed from the Gallows” begins very modestly, with Plant’s pleading vocals accompanied solely by Page’s quiet acoustic strumming.
It builds in stages to a full-blown bluegrass-style “hoe-down,” with a mandolin and acoustic 12-string joining the fray midway through, followed by bass, drums and, finally, banjo (played by Page) and overdriven electric lead guitar, on which Page cleverly plays major pentatonic licks to conjure the sound of a country fiddle.
The arrangement’s ambitious development is not unlike that of “Stairway to Heaven” in its magnitude and creates a similarly dramatic effect.
34. “Out On the Tiles” (Led Zeppelin III)
This “forgotten classic” features another of Led Zeppelin’s signature octave-doubled, single-note “stomp riffs,” this one played at a faster tempo than most of their other similarly crafted songs, with Bonham grooving on one of his favorite funky drumbeats as Page and Jones lock-in on a tricky bass melody that drops an eighth note at the end of the first and third verses (at 0:24 and 1:40, respectively).
Particularly cool- and powerful-sounding are the accented pulled bends on the low E string between the A power chords in the intro riff. It’s also worth pointing out that this is one of the very few uptempo Led Zeppelin songs that does not include a guitar solo; it doesn’t need one.
33. “You Shook Me” (Led Zeppelin)
Led Zeppelin’s convincingly worthy cover of this Chicago-style slow blues song (written by Willie Dixon and J.B. Lenoir) showcases their thorough assimilation of and deep adulation for the style and ability to take it to the next level of intensity through each band member’s musical virtuosity and artistic depth of feeling.
Page’s slide work, performed in the challenging and potentially unforgiving mode of standard tuning, is impeccable here, as he shadows Plant’s vocal melody with spot-on intonation and coaxes sublime vibratos from many of his sustained notes.
Equally laudable is Jimmy’s wailing guitar solo, played without a slide, for which he employed tape echo and epic reverb effects to create breathtakingly soaring trails of cascading, screaming licks during the solo’s and song’s climax.
32. “Celebration Day” (Led Zeppelin III)
This playful, uptempo rocker was built around a slinky slide riff conceived by Jones, the genesis of which he described in his column in Guitar World July 1997: “I came up with the intro/verse riff to “Celebration Day” while playing and old Danelectro baritone guitar like a lap steel, using an unusual, low open A7 tuning (low to high: A A A E G Cs), a steel bar and a nut saddle to raise the strings.” When performing the song live, Page would adapt this riff to standard-tuned guitar.
On the recording, Page crafted a complementary and similarly slinky bend lick to play over the song’s main A-riff following each verse (initially at 0:24).
Similar to what he later did between the verses in “Over the Hills and Far Away,” the guitarist uses pulled bends on the bottom two strings to reach up to the last note of each phrase he plays, in this case adding a bold, shimmering vibrato to each bend.
31. “Four Sticks” (Led Zeppelin IV)
Named after Bonham’s literal use of four sticks on the track (two in each hand), this tribal dance–like song features exotic rhythms and harmonic modalities that conjure images of Near Eastern and North African wildernesses from an earlier century.
The arrangement is built around three guitar riffs, each incorporating an open-string bass pedal tone, or drone. As mentioned previously, Page used, for the song’s primary riff, the same “bending away from a unison” trick he employed in his “Whole Lotta Love” riff, with equally haunting results. In this case, he strums the open G string together with that note’s fretted equivalent on the D string’s fifth fret and pushes the fretted G slightly sharp by bending it upward (away from the palm).
30. “Thank You” (Led Zeppelin II)
Before “Stairway to Heaven” or “The Rain Song” were ever conceived, this well-written, timeless love song displayed, along with “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” a sensitive, emotional side of Led Zeppelin, one that didn’t have to do with sexual lust or scorn. (Gee, what was George Harrison complaining about in commenting to Led Zeppelin that their songbook was lacking ballads?)
Layering tracks of acoustic and clean 12-string electric guitars, Page weaved a tapestry of warm harmony behind Plant’s tender, low-key vocals and crafted an elegant single-note acoustic solo, one often celebrated and emulated for its melodic appeal by players such as Slash.
Also noteworthy in “Thank You” are Page’s melodic 12-string runs behind Plant’s vocals during the song’s final two verses, specifically at 2:31 and 3:14.
29. “Bring It On Home” (Led Zeppelin II)
Like their other blues covers, Led Zeppelin’s reading of this Willie Dixon blues song has their unique artistic, stylistic stamp all over it, from its funky bass-and-drums groove, octave-doubled single-note riffs and Page’s soulful use of string bends, which, incidentally, Jones aggressively mirrors an octave lower on bass during the song’s main riff.
Page added to the riff, at 1:54, a decorative high harmony line, as he would later do with riffs in “Black Dog,” “The Ocean” “Achilles Last Stand” and other songs, in each case further building the arrangement and enhancing its appeal. His harmony notes here form sweet-sounding sixth and third intervals based on the E Mixolydian mode.
The song’s middle verse sections sport a particularly bad-ass guitar riff, first appearing at 2:04 and built around sixth-interval double-stops, again based on the decidedly bluesy-sounding E Mixolydian mode. Notice how Page divides and orchestrates this riff into two separate guitar tracks, which he pans hard left and right in the stereo mix, accentuating the riff’s call-and-response quality.
28. “Living Loving Maid (She’s Just a Woman)” (Led Zeppelin II)
Following on the heels of “Heartbreaker,” this playful and more light-hearted rocker features some of Jimmy’s most tasteful “power-pop” guitar parts. He recorded the song’s primary rhythm tracks on his Fender electric 12-string (the same guitar he used in the studio on “Stairway to Heaven” and “The Song Remains the Same”).
As in “Heartbreaker,” “Good Times Bad Times,” “Communication Breakdown” and other songs, he liberally employs his go-to “Hendrix-style” thumbed chord “grips,” which, lacking the low fifth of a conventionally fretted major barre chord, add sonic clarity to his chord voicings.
Jimmy’s solo in this song is short and sweet, featuring emotive bends and vibratos and culminating in one of his trademark chromatic climbs up the B string.
27. “Going to California” (Led Zeppelin IV)
Page also used open strings and unison notes to great effect on this acoustic folk masterpiece. Tuning both his low and high E strings down to D (in what is known as double drop-D tuning), the guitarist plays dreamy hypnotic arpeggio figures that feature lots of ringing, repeated notes played on different strings.
With its blend of English and American folk-guitar styles (think Bert Jansch meets Merle Travis), “Going to California” is a finger stylist’s delight. Particularly compelling is the dramatic bridge section beginning at 1:41, played by Page in the parallel minor key, D minor. If you listen closely, you’ll hear two acoustic guitars fingerpicking different inversions of the same chords, thirds apart.
26. “What Is and What Should Never Be” (Led Zeppelin II)
Like “Ramble On,” this song is another masterwork study in dynamic and textural contrasts. Page begins each verse by strumming a breezy two-chord vamp using jazzy, George Benson–approved dominant ninth and 13th chords with a clean, mellow tone, as Jones plays one of his celebrated brilliantly lyrical, complementary bass lines.
Taking advantage of the wide range of gain and overdrive afforded his Les Paul/non-master–volume Marshall tube amp pairing, Page cranks up his guitar’s volume on the choruses, resulting in a beefy crunch tone that perfectly suits the powerful riff he crafted for that section.
The song also features one of Jimmy’s most tasteful slide solos, carefully executed in standard tuning and thus without the harmonic safety net that an open tuning affords.
25. “The Ocean” (Houses of the Holy)
On par with “Heartbreaker” and “Black Dog,” in terms of embodying that trademark Led Zeppelin octave-doubled single-note “stomp groove,” this song’s iconic intro/main riff demonstrates just how effectively heavy-sounding rests, or “holes of silence,” can be when sandwiched between notes in just the right places.
This riff, as well as the power-chord-driven and similarly punctuated verse figure, are made to sound even more dramatic by the ambient room sound surrounding John Bonham’s drums, to which Page, the producer, rightfully deserves credit for his visionary use of distant miking techniques.
24. “Rock and Roll” (Led Zeppelin IV)
The ultimate hot rod–driving song and tribute to Chuck Berry, this uptempo, straight-eighths blues-rock anthem features irresistibly boogie-woogie-like rhythms and a killer guitar solo that begins with Page playfully pulling off to open strings before ascending the neck with a daringly acrobatic chromatic climb somewhat reminiscent of his climactic lead in “Communication Breakdown.”
Particularly artistic is the way Page lays back rhythmically during the song’s verses with sustained power chords, providing an effective, welcome contrast to the relentless eighth notes of the bass and drums.
23. “The Lemon Song” (Led Zeppelin II)
Borrowing from Howlin’ Wolf’s 1964 blues hit and eventual standard, “Killing Floor,” Led Zeppelin created a derivative work that became a classic unto itself, showcasing their own renowned Memphis soul–style interactive blues-rock jamming, dynamic sensibilities and each individual musician’s fat tones.
Not content to just play the song’s climbing intro riff on his low E string, Page employs hybrid picking (pick-and-fingers technique) to pair each low melody note with the open B string, creating a pleasing midrange “honk.”
Also noteworthy in this arrangement is Page’s substitution, on the five chord in the song’s repeating 12-bar blues progression, of a minor seven chord, Bm7, for the customary dominant seven chord, which would be B7 in this case, creating a darker, more melancholy sound.
22. “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” (Led Zeppelin)
Another acoustic masterpiece, this song features a bittersweet circular chord progression presented as ringing, fingerpicked arpeggios. Particularly noteworthy is the way Page spins numerous subtle melodic variations on the theme throughout the song (check out the one at 3:40), sweetening the aural pot with dramatic dynamic contrasts.
This may be one of the most perfectly recorded and mixed acoustic guitar tracks ever. Notice how, in the song’s intro, the “dry” (up-front and un-effected) acoustic guitar is in the left channel while the right channel is mostly “wet,” saturated in cavernous reverb.
21. “When the Levee Breaks” (Led Zeppelin IV)
This track is revered for, among other things, its epic drum sound, resulting from the cavernous acoustics of Headley Grange and Page’s ingenious distant microphone placement, as well as his decision, as producer, to slow down the tape speed in the mastering process.
Led Zeppelin’s cover of this blues song, written and first recorded in 1929 by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie, also features great slide playing by Page in open G tuning (low to high, D G D G B D). Due to the slowing of the tape speed, however, the pitch of the recording was lowered by a whole step, so the song actually sounds in the key of F.
Page performed this song’s two guitar tracks on his Fender electric 12-string. Its additional strings, in conjunction with the open tuning, enhanced the unison and octave-doubling effect of many of the notes in the guitar parts, which already incorporate unison notes. The result is a huge wall of droning G and D notes with a natural chorusing effect that mesmerizes the listener in a way akin to the chorus chords in “Kashmir.”
20. “The Battle of Evermore” (Led Zeppelin IV)
For this mystical-sounding folk-rock gem, Page and Jones traded the instruments they play on “Going to California,” with Page taking up the mandolin and Jones strumming acoustic guitar. According to Page, “ ‘The Battle of Evermore’ was made up on the spot by Robert and myself. I just picked up John Paul Jones’ mandolin, never having played one before, and just wrote up the chords and the whole thing in one sitting.”
Page’s mandolin sound on this song is epic, which is partially the result of his taking advantage of the cavernous, majestic natural reverb of the location where he recorded his tracks, which was in the foyer of a large, old stone house in rural Wales called Headley Grange. (This location, by the way, is where several other tracks on Led Zeppelin IV and Physical Graffiti were recorded, most notably Bonham’s drums on “When the Levee Breaks.”)
Page additionally doubled/layered his mandolin tracks on this arrangement and employed a tape echo effect, with a single repeat, timed to echo in an eighth-note rhythm relative to the song’s tempo, resulting in a continuous stream of percolating eighth notes.
19. “Immigrant Song” (Led Zeppelin III)
With its fiercely galloping rhythms, jagged backbeat accents and ominous-sounding flat-five intervals, this ode to Viking pillage no doubt helped fuel the lustful creative fire behind hordes of heavy metal bands like Iron Maiden, Celtic Frost and Mastodon that came of age in the years following the song’s 1970 release.
Particularly sinister-sounding is the way Page plays, during the song’s outro, an atypical second-position G minor chord shape over Jones’ C-note accents, in the process creating a highly unusual voicing of C9(no3).
18. “Good Times Bad Times” (Led Zeppelin)
This punchy opening track from the band’s debut album set the stage for Zeppelin’s juggernaut conquest of the world of hard rock. Page octave-doubles Jones’ nimble, angular bass line on his slinky-strung Fender Telecaster, adding shimmering finger vibrato at just about every opportunity.
The guitarist’s scorching, Leslie-effected lead licks, with their gut-wrenching bends and tumbling triplets, convey a man on fire and poised to win the West.
17. “Nobody’s Fault but Mine” (Presence)
Led Zeppelin’s turbo-charged reinvention of this traditional American gospel blues, or Negro spiritual, song was inspired primarily by singer and acoustic slide guitarist Blind Willie Johnson’s 1927 recording of it. Zeppelin’s version is built around a mesmerizing, laser beam-like guitar melody, which Page played with distortion and a flanger effect and doubled, both in unison and an octave higher, with Robert Plant additionally scat singing the line, adding to its mesmerizing, bigger-than-life quality.
Page’s aggressive exploitation of string bending and vibrato techniques, in both the main riff and his solo, adds to the soulfulness of the band’s arrangement. Also noteworthy are Jones and Bonham’s lock-step bass-and-drum syncopations, which further add to the power and drama of the band’s arrangement.
16. “Black Dog” (Led Zeppelin IV)
“Black Dog” was built around a snakey blues riff, initially written on bass by John Paul Jones and doubled an octave higher on guitar by Page. The rhythmic orientation of the song’s main riff to the beat has been the subject of heated debate among working musicians over the years, the point of contention being specifically where “one” is.
When pressed for an explanation, Page was vague. But Jones, in his Lo and Behold column in Guitar World December 1996, states that this deceptive riff should be counted with the first A note — the root note of the song’s key and the fourth note of the riff—falling squarely on beat one. (Drummer John Bonham’s big cymbal crash on beat two is one of the things about this riff that throws a lot of people off.)
Page enhanced the riff later in the song, at 3:18, by overdubbing a parallel-thirds harmony line. In the 1993 GW interview, the guitarist noted, “Most people never catch that part. It’s just toward the end, to help build the song. You have to listen closely for the high guitar parts.”
Page and recording engineer Andy Johns tried a novel and ultimately successful experiment by triple-tracking the song’s rhythm guitar parts. As Page explained, “Andy used the mic preamp on the mixing board to get distortion. Then we put two 1176 Universal compressors in series on that sound and distorted the guitars as much as we could and then compressed them. Each riff was triple-tracked: one left, one right, and one right up the middle.”
15. “Ramble On” (Led Zeppelin II)
This song is all about contrasts, or as Page likes to say, “light and shade.” It begins with a mellow, folky acoustic strum riff pitted against a highly melodic Fender bass line for the verse sections, which lead up to a hard-hitting and highly inventive electric guitar–driven chorus riff.
Page broadened the definition of the term “power chord” here by using the seemingly odd two-note combination of root and flatted seventh (Fs and E, respectively, played right after Plant sings “Ramble on!”), a pairing made even more unlikely by the fact that he plays it over John Paul Jones’ E bass note. The theoretical discord notwithstanding, it sounds great.
14. “Black Mountain Side” (Led Zeppelin)
Page spices up this traditional Celtic folk melody with East Indian musical flavors, hiring a bona fide tabla drummer to accompany him on the track and injecting his own fiery Indian-style acoustic lead break into the arrangement.
Check out the January 2013 issue of Guitar World to learn the secrets to this iconic song.
13. “In My Time of Dying” (Physical Graffiti)
This 11-minute track was inspired chiefly by Blind Willie Johnson’s reading of the traditional blues-gospel song “Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed” as well as a similarly titled rendition from the same era by Delta bluesman Charlie Patton.
Zeppelin’s inspired interpretation of the song features some of Page’s best slide guitar work (performed in open A tuning: low to high, E A E A Cs E), as well as one of the fattest-sounding drum tracks in this or any other band’s catalog, the result of Bonham’s unique touch and feel and Page’s miking and mixing techniques.
12. “Kashmir” (Physical Graffiti)
Played in DADGAD tuning, which Page had previously used to great effect on both the Yardbirds’ “White Summer” and Led Zeppelin’s “Black Mountain Side,” “Kashmir” is built around four mesmerizing riffs, three of which involve the use of open-string unison- and octave-doubled notes, which create a natural chorusing effect and a huge wall of sound.
Particularly noteworthy is the way Jimmy overlaid, at 0:53, the song’s menacing, ascending riff—the James Bond–theme-flavored part—on top of the recurring descending sus4 chord sequence.
Page explained in the previously mentioned GW interview, “The descending chord sequence was the first thing I had—I got it from tapes of myself messing around at home. After I came up with the da-da-da, da-da-da part, I wondered whether the two parts could go on top of each other, and it worked! You do get some dissonance in there, but there’s nothing wrong with that. At the time, I was very proud of that, I must say.”
11. “Over the Hills and Far Away” (Houses of the Holy)
This song is another study in contrasts, specifically between English/Celtic-flavored acoustic folk and Les Paul–driven hard rock. It begins with a playful, folk-dance–like acoustic riff, which Page initially plays on a six-string and then doubles on a 12-string, that gives way, at 1:27, to crushing electric power chords and a clever single-note riff, for which Jimmy incorporates pulled bends on the bass strings (first heard at 1:37).
Particularly cool is the way the guitarist reconciles this electric riff with the strummed acoustic chords previously introduced at 1:17.
Also noteworthy is the grooving James Brown–style funk riff behind the guitar solo and the rhythmically peculiar, harmonized ascending single-note ensemble melody that follows at 3:00. To top it all off, Page, the producer, concludes the song with a “false ending.”
As the band fades out, at 4:10, a lone guitar emerges with a final variation of the folk riff from the intro, but all you hear is the 100 percent “wet” reverb “return” signal, which creates a mystical, otherworldly, “faraway” effect.
10. “Heartbreaker” (Led Zeppelin II)
With its menacing, octave-doubled blues-scale riffs and sexy string bends, this song epitomizes the “Led Zeppelin swagger.” Interestingly, the verse riff features Jones strumming root-fifth power chords on bass, treated with overdrive and tremolo, while Page alternately lays back on decidedly thinner-sounding thumb-fretted octaves — a signature technique heard in his and Jimi Hendrix’s rhythm guitar styles — and punches barre-chord accents together with the bass and drums.
Page recorded the song with his 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, which he had recently bought from Joe Walsh, playing the guitar through his newly acquired 100-watt Marshall amplifier. The song also showcases some of Jimmy’s most aggressive, inspired soloing, including a free-form, tantrum-like a capella breakdown section.
Page recorded the breakdown while the band was touring the U.S., using a studio different from the one where the rest of the song’s tracks were cut. He was unaware that his guitar on that particular section was tuned slightly sharp of the rest of the tracks, which are at concert pitch. The discrepancy goes unnoticed to most listeners and only becomes obvious if one goes to play along with the entire recording.
09. "The Rain Song" (Houses of the Holy)
Performed in an unusual tuning (low to high, D G C G C D) with lots of ringing open strings and unison-doubled notes, this beautiful song features a sophisticated chord progression that was initially inspired by Beatle George Harrison, who challenged Page to write a ballad.
After playfully evoking the verse section of Harrison’s “Something” on the first three chords of “The Rain Song,” Page veers off into an ultimately more ambitious and original progression. Particularly inventive and cool sounding is the Hawaiian-flavored dominant-ninth chord slide that precedes the first lyric line of each verse.
When asked to explain why the studio version of “The Rain Song” is in the key of G while the live version, as heard in the film The Song Remains the Same, is in A, Page replied, “It surprises me to hear you say that, because I thought they were both in A. Okay, the [live] tuning is [low to high] E A D A D E.
The only two strings that change are the G, which goes up to A, and the B, which goes up to D.” Page explained how he arrived at this unusual tuning. “I altered the strings around so that I’d have an octave on the A notes and an octave on the D notes, and still have the two Es,” he said. “Then I just went to see what finger positions would work.”
08. “Ten Years Gone” (Physical Graffiti)
Like “The Rain Song,” this heart-warming yet heavy ballad demonstrates Page’s intuitive harmonic depth and sophistication, as he employs jazzy, “expensive”-sounding maj7, maj13, min9, dim7 and maj6/9 chords as effortlessly as Burt Bacharach, minus the associated schmaltz.
The song’s instrumental interlude, which begins at 2:31, is particularly sweet and rich sounding. It features a laid-back, phaser-treated lead guitar melody with soulful double-stops over a bass, drums and clean, jangly rhythm guitar accompaniment. Also noteworthy is Page’s doubling of the chorus riff, first heard at 0:32, with an electric sitar.
07. “Communication Breakdown” (Led Zeppelin)
With its down-picked “pumping” eighth notes and syncopated power-chord stabs, this song’s urgent verse riff embodies the spirit of Chuck Berry–style rock and roll. Not surprisingly, it served as the quintessential prototype for both heavy metal and punk rhythm guitar.
Page’s piercing, well-crafted solo, with its climactic, chromatically ascending unison bends, is like Berry on steroids and demonstrates that Page, on his new band’s freshman outing, was already thinking “outside the box,” both figuratively and literally (the physical “box” being a pentatonic fretboard shape).
06. “Since I’ve Been Loving You” (Led Zeppelin III)
Jimmy’s impassioned guitar solo in this highly dramatic Chicago-style slow blues song is among his most inspired and emotive.
The song’s chord changes and structure are truly original, and in his rhythm guitar part Page plays an inventively slick turnaround phrase at the end of each chorus (initially from 1:06–1:12) that mimics a steel guitar, with a bent note woven into and placed on top of two successive chord voicings.
What makes this phrase so interesting and enigmatic is how, over the second chord, Dfmaj7 (played on organ by John Paul Jones) Page bends a C note up to D natural—the flat nine of Dfmaj7—and manages to make it sound “right.” It’s something few musicians apart from Miles Davis would have the guts to do.
05. “Whole Lotta Love” (Led Zeppelin II)
This song has one of the coolest intro and verse riffs ever written. Not content to play it “straight,” as his blues-rock contemporaries might have done, Page inserts a subtle, secret ingredient into this part, giving it that x factor and a spine-tingling quality.
Instead of playing the riff’s second and fourth note—D, on the A string’s fifth fret—by itself, he doubles it with the open D string (akin to the way one would go about tuning the guitar using the traditional “fifth-fret” method), then proceeds to bend the fretted D note approximately a quarter step sharp by pushing it sideways with his index finger.
The harmonic turbulence created by the two pitches drifting slightly out of tune with each other is abrasive to the sensibilities and musically haunting, but the tension is short-lived and soon relieved, as Page quickly moves on to a rock-solid E5 power chord. “I used to do that sort of thing all over the place,” said Page. “I did it during the main riff to ‘Four Sticks’ too.”
04. “The Song Remains the Same” (Houses of the Holy)
Like a getaway chase on a stolen horse, this ambitiously arranged song, with its galloping rhythms and fleet-footed solos, is guaranteed to give you an adrenaline rush. Particularly noteworthy is Page’s decision to overlay two electric 12-string guitars during the song’s opening chord punches, each playing different and seemingly irreconcilable triads, such as the pairing of C major and A major.
“I’m just moving the open D chord shape up into different positions,” Page told Guitar World in 1993. “There actually are two guitars on this section. Each is playing basically the same thing, except the second guitar is substituting different chords on some of the hits.”
He adds, “ ‘The Song Remains the Same’ was originally going to be an instrumental, like an overture to ‘The Rain Song,’ but Robert [Plant] had some other ideas about it! I do remember taking the guitar all the way through it, like an instrumental. It really didn’t take that long to put together — it was probably constructed in a day. And then of course I worked out a few overdubs.”
03. “Stairway to Heaven” (Led Zeppelin IV)
Jimmy Page trampled over two rules of pop music with this masterpiece: it’s more than eight minutes long, a previously prohibitive length for pop radio formats, and the tempo speeds up as the song unfolds.
“Stairway” is the epitome of Page’s brilliance as not only a guitarist, but also as a composer and arranger, as he layers six-string acoustic and 12-string electric guitars throughout the song in a gradual crescendo that culminates in what many consider to be the perfect rock guitar solo, performed on his trusty 1959 Fender “Dragon” Telecaster (his go-to guitar in the early days of Led Zeppelin).
02. “Dazed and Confused” (live version, The Song Remains the Same)
Clocking in at more than 28 minutes, this marathon performance marks the apex of this song’s evolution and showcases some of Led Zeppelin’s most intense jamming and collective improvisation in a variety of styles. Page is at the height of his powers here, in terms of both chops and creative vision, never at a loss for a worthwhile musical idea.
The otherworldly violin-bow interlude, beginning in earnest at 9:10 and spanning nearly seven minutes, is particularly inspired, and Page’s use of tape echo and wah effects in conjunction with the bow is absolutely brilliant.
01. “Achilles Last Stand” (Presence)
This epic, 10-minute song is Page’s crowning achievement in guitar orchestration.
The ensemble arrangement, bookended by a swirling, unresolved arpeggio loop, really begins to blossom at 1:57, and from this point on, Page spins numerous melodic variations over top of the jangly, plaintive Em-Cadd9s11 chord progression that underpins most of the composition.
Interestingly, Page previewed this chord vamp in the 1973 live version of “Dazed and Confused” that appears on The Soundtrack to The Song Remains the Same, beginning at 5:52.
Thoughtful consideration was put into the stereo image of each guitar track, which keeps the entire recording crisp despite the dense arrangement. The song also features one of Page’s most lyrical guitar solos (and one of his personal favorites).
On the face of it, that question is a no-brainer: It's Hendrix. Or Clapton. Or Page. Or Beck. Or ... is it?
In 2010, as Guitar World was celebrating its 30th anniversary, we picked 30 guitarists and asked them to name their guitar heroes — and the results will surprise you.
ANGUS YOUNG by Joe Perry
Apart from the usual suspects—Page, Clapton, Beck, Hendrix and Peter Green—one of my favorite guitarists is Angus Young. I first saw him when AC/DC opened up for Aerosmith in the Seventies. They played about 25 dates with us, and I was just overwhelmed by his energy and ability to do his acrobatics without missing a note. He definitely had an influence on me inasmuch as his solos always had a purpose. Instead of using all the traditional tricks, he found a way to get inside those licks and be inventive. My favorite AC/DC song is probably “Sin City.”
For me, the essence of a good guitarist is someone who plays what the song calls for. It’s about listening to the music as a whole and then doing what you need to do. Sometimes it’s not even what you play; it’s what you don’t play. Which brings us back to Angus Young.
CHUCK BERRY by Angus Young
When I was growing up, everyone used to rave about Clapton, saying he was a guitar genius and stuff like that. Well, even on a bad night, Chuck Berry is a lot better than Clapton will ever be.
Rock music has been around since the days when Chuck Berry put it all together. He combined the blues, country and rockabilly, and put his own poetry on top, and that became rock and roll. And it’s been hanging in there.
AC/DC’s whole career has been playing rock and roll, and I’m sure you still get a lot of people tuning in to bands like us and the Stones. Younger bands will be plugging into it and taking it into the next realm. There’s always going to be another generation that will take it and give it to a new, younger audience, so I think it will just keep going on.
STEVE VAI by Tom Morello
Some instrumental guitar players are lost in a muso fog. Steve Vai is not one of them. He’s an artist, and one of the greats.
I’ve certainly learned from him, especially from his work ethic. I started playing guitar very late, when I was 17 years old. I felt really behind, and when I read about Steve’s practice regimen it really encouraged me. It also nearly killed me! While doing my college studies I was also practicing eight hours a day to amass the kind of technique that I admired in players like him and Randy Rhoads.
Once, Steve was doing a presentation at GIT, and he asked me to do it with him. He told me he’d also invited Steve Lukather, Stanley Jordan, Joe Satriani. I said, “No, bro, it sounds like it’s gonna be a shred-off.” But he said, “We’re not even gonna play; we’re just gonna discuss our craft.” So I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”
A couple of days before the event, he says to me, “Just bring your amp and guitar along in case we have to demonstrate techniques.” So of course, I get there for soundcheck, and my worst nightmare has come true: it was six of us in a row with our guitars, and it was nonstop shredding the whole time.
TONY IOMMI by James Hetfield
As far as being a riff-and-rhythm guy, my favorite guitarist is Tony Iommi. He inspired me to want to play heavy. I admired other rhythm players, like AC/DC’s Malcolm Young, who’d just stay in the back and hold it down, and the Scorpions’ Rudy Schenker, who has a lot of percussiveness in his playing. I also liked Rush’s Alex Lifeson—people wouldn’t think of him as a rhythm player, but he comes up with some pretty amazing offbeat things.
But Iommi is the main man. To me, he seemed like one of those quiet geniuses. At one time he was the frontman of Black Sabbath, and Ozzy was off to one side; at that time, the riff was more important than the vocals. Tony can go from the heaviest minor-key doom riff to a happy mode, and it will still sound heavy. Metallica can’t do happy, but Tony can pull it off. My favorite Black Sabbath track is “Into the Void.”
ERIC CLAPTON by Eddie Van Halen
Clapton was it. I knew every note he played. Mammoth—me, Alex Van Halen and a bass player we knew—were the junior Cream.
Being limited gear-wise forced me to find my own voice on the guitar. That’s why Eric Clapton’s live jams with Cream were such an influence on me. Back in ’68, he was pretty much just using natural distortion on those live tracks on Wheels of Fire and Goodbye. I had no money and couldn’t afford a fuzz box or a wah-wah or a ring modulator, or whatever Hendrix had in his whole rig. I just plugged straight into an amp and turned it up to 11. So in order to get a different or unique sound, I had to learn to squeeze it out of the strings with just my fingers. I never had a guitar lesson in my life, except from listening to Eric Clapton records.
JIM McCARTY by Ted Nugent
I discovered the most powerful musical influence of my entire life when I played the Walled Lake Casino outside of Detroit. It was either 1959 or 1960. My band the Lourdes opened up for Martha & the Vandellas, Gene Pitney, and Billy Lee & the Rivieras, who went on to become Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels. Their guitarist was Jim McCarty, who played a Gibson Byrdland through a Fender Twin.
Standing there watching McCarty rip into his leads, I thought, Dear god in heaven, what is that? It was so outrageous, so noisy, yet so musical and so rhythmical. I realized that simply playing a song would never do again.
After I heard him play, I went on a gee-hah to get a Byrdland and a Fender Twin amp—because of the crispness, the thickness, the style of his playing. It was about using all the fingers, all the strings, all the time. That’s where the multirhythmic patterns on my song “Stranglehold” come from, with all the grace rhythms, all the counter-rhythms, all the pedal tones that never stop. I’m playing multiple parts on the guitar by using various incremental touches to each string. And that’s because of McCarty.
KEITH RICHARDS by Steven Van Zandt
The British invasion of 1964 to 1966 turned Americans on to our own rock and roll pioneers and blues players. I grew up on Keith Richards, and his lead on the Stones’ versions of Chuck Berry songs helped reinvent the guitar for Beck, Clapton and Jimmy Page. I always felt that you go through that muso phase and stay there or get out. I went out the other end. I didn’t want to be a virtuoso for a minute. So I came full circle to the fact that the guitar solo must serve the song—that’s more important.
JIMMY HERRING by Alex Skolnick
Some may not know Jimmy Herring’s name, but they will know the bands that he’s played with: the Allman Brothers, the Grateful Dead, Widespread Panic, and Jazz Is Dead. He’s a hero of the jam-band scene, which is kind of funny, as stylistically he’s very influenced by jazz.
Jimmy has his own band called Aquarium Rescue Unit, who operate on a level similar to [jazz-fusion group] Weather Report. Having said that, although people like the Dave Matthews Band and Bruce Hornsby took them out on tour and begged their own label to sign them, Aquarium Rescue Unit never got a decent record deal and eventually disbanded [in 1997]. They reunited in 2005 and have played somewhat sporadically since then.
Jimmy is an incredible player. He has the bluesiness of Warren Haynes or Johnny Winter and the vocabulary of John Scofield, with an element of Steve Morse thrown in. If that sounds appealing, then track down a copy of Aquarium Rescue Unit’s 1993 album, Mirrors of Embarrassment. Play it, and you’ll wonder why you’ve never heard of him until now.
RITCHIE BLACKMORE by Phil Collen
The first gig I ever went to was Deep Purple, during their Machine Head period. They played “Highway Star,” and it blew me away. And that’s when I decided to start playing guitar.
Ritchie Blackmore was a huge influence because he was flashy. I love really flashy lead guitar playing, and Blackmore’s technique is great. It’s aggressive. When he hit a chord, it was like being punched in the face. I don’t really care about finger picking, and acoustic doesn’t satisfy me. It’s electric, screaming loud rock that I love.
As far as what he’s doing now [playing Renaissance-style music with Blackmore’s Night], I honestly respect him. The fact that he’s still playing and is passionate about it is great, even if it is a bit wonky and weird. He can take liberties. He’s Ritchie Blackmore.
GLENN TIPTON & K.K. DOWNING by Zakk Wylde
When I think of underrated guitarists, I go for some of the guys in really big bands, the ones who get overshadowed by the achievements of their band act. For instance, when Journey is mentioned, you think of great songs and amazing vocals. But who ever praises Neal Schon? And that guy can play up a storm.
That’s why I pick Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing from Judas Priest. It’s two guitarists, yes, but you always think of them as one. They are the ultimate twin guitarists in metal—they go together. Just listen to the amazing riffs they’ve come up with over the years. And these guys can shred with the best.
Tipton and Downing have influenced generations of young guitarists, but a lot of the time these kids don’t even realize that what they’re playing all started with Judas Priest. Tipton and Downing have also given metal a subtlety that’s often overlooked. Both appreciate that sometimes you are most effective when you back off the pedal a little. You don’t need to be blazing all the time.
They’ve worked together for so long that each immediately understands what to do in a song. Sometimes Tipton is soloing and Downing is riffing, and then they’ll change over—it’s not like one does the lead work and the other does the rhythm. This is also what they introduced into metal: the idea of not only being a great lead player but also being prepared to let the other man have the spotlight when it matters to the music.
Without Tipton and Downing, metal would be very different. That’s why I have such a high regard for them. In my book, they rule.
LESLIE WEST by Martin Barre
Leslie West made a big impression on me when Mountain supported Jethro Tull on a long U.S. tour during the early Seventies. In those days, opening acts weren’t too friendly, and it all became a bit competitive, but Mountain were lovely guys, and we really hit it off. They were such a great band. I loved Leslie’s larger-than-life style, they had great songs, and they were so incredibly tight. In that last respect, they taught Jethro Tull a lot about being a band.
I know of at least three people that were affected by Leslie’s playing style—myself, John McLaughlin and Mick Ralphs [of Mott the Hoople and Bad Company]—but I’m sure there are plenty more. Leslie has such recognizable tone, and I love the melodic way he plays; every note counts. He never resorts to the pyrotechnic approach or feels the need to be overly clever. If you want a good starting off point for a beginner, go with Climbing! [1970] or Nantucket Sleighride [1971]. I still love what Mountain did with “Theme from an Imaginary Western.” My goodness, they brought that to life, especially onstage.
JEFF BECK by David Gilmour
I’m sort of horribly, pathetically fannish about Jeff. Ever since “Hi Ho Silver Lining” came out [in 1967] when I was 20-odd years old, I’ve revered him and his playing. In many ways he is just the best guitar player. And 40-something years since he came to prominence in the Yardbirds, he is still the only person pushing forward in that way. He’s never retreading old ground; he’s always looking for a new challenge.
Jeff’s scarily brilliant. He’s a tightrope walker. I’m not. I like to cover all my bases and make myself secure with a great band, with the music all rehearsed. I just walk out there, and if I didn’t even play anything it would still sound great. Jeff’s different. He’s out there mining that seam.
JIMI HENDRIX by Joe Satriani
The first thing that really flipped me out was hearing “The Wind Cries Mary” on the radio. Before that, I was a drummer, and I started from watching the Rolling Stones and the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. But as soon as I heard Hendrix, that was it.
What made him great was his choice of notes. When you hear “Machine Gun” from Live at the Fillmore, you have no idea what’s going to happen in the next few minutes. You’re totally unprepared. With “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return),” you can’t believe how perfect a performance it is, and it’s just a blues thing in E.
Unfortunately, the Seventies were a hellish period for many great players, if you look at Hendrix’s comrades, it was a rough road. But look at someone like Jeff Beck—he just gets better and better. I saw him a month ago in Oakland, and I was just in tears standing at the side of the stage listening to him playing “Where Were You.” Nowadays, as a guitarist you want to celebrate what you’ve been able to play, which goes back to quoting other great players, but you also feel a responsibility not to copy those people. In my mind, when I’m playing, my heroes are sitting on my shoulders.
BRIAN MAY by Steve Vai
I don’t think enough is really said about the brilliance of Brian May’s guitar playing, in the sense that it’s overshadowed by the greatness of the music itself. The Queen II album was one of those pivotal moments that just nailed me to the wall.
He’s probably one of the top identifiable guitar players, even more so than Beck, Page and Clapton. They’re all so identifiable, but Brian May had such a tone in his head and in his fingers. It speaks volumes. His contribution to orchestrated guitars is unprecedented. There was nothing like it before him. To me, it was like when Edward Van Halen came along and reshaped the sound of electric guitar. That’s what I heard in Brian May’s playing. It’s something that’s inherent in the brain of the guitar player.
I remember working with Frank Zappa for the first time. I had just moved out to Los Angeles, and nobody knew me. I was 21. I went to the Rainbow Bar & Grill, and Brian May was there. I couldn’t believe it. I mustered up every little bit of courage and went up to him and said, “Thank you so much for everything you’ve done. I play guitar. I’m here in town with Frank Zappa.” He said, “Oh, really? Why don’t you come down to our rehearsal?”
I went down, and he brought me up on the stage, and he let me play the guitar—the guitar that he built with his dad [the “Red Special”]. I couldn’t even believe that I was touching this instrument! He was so kind and so warm, and for who? This kid, you know? And I played his guitar, and it sounded like Steve Vai. Then when he played it, it sounded just like Brian May. It was very apparent to me that his tone is in his fingers and his head.
He’s a class act from head to toe, and it shows in his playing. I can listen to any player and pantomime their sound, but I can’t do Brian May. He’s just walking on higher ground.
MARTY FRIEDMAN by Jason Becker
When I was 16 years old, I sent a demo tape to Mike Varney of Shrapnel Records. He called me and said I should go and meet Marty.
I went to Marty’s tiny apartment in San Francisco. We started jamming, without amps. That moment changed my life. What he was doing was so new to me. The unique bends, vibrato, exotic scales, phrasing and timing were fascinating to me. And then it hit me: he was a lot better than I was. I started to sweat. I tried to play my best stuff, but my musical mind had already shifted. I knew I wanted to learn from this guy.
Marty was very complimentary of my technique and the melodies on my demo tape. He started coming over to record his songs on my four-track. He taught me the second harmonies and counterpoint lines. Once he saw that I was a sponge for learning, he started incorporating some of my ideas. I feel like every day that I jammed or wrote with Marty was like taking lessons for a year. He taught by example, and with his influence I learned how to be my own unique creative artist. Even to this day, when I am composing and I get stuck, I think to myself, What would Marty do?
EDDIE VAN HALEN by Richie Kotzen
This is kind of embarrassing, but the first time I heard Eddie Van Halen was on the solo for Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” I was like, “Man, that’s unbelievable. Who is this guitar player?” I asked around and found out it was Eddie Van Halen. Then I ended up getting some Van Halen records, and after that I just really wanted to play like him.
He didn’t sound like any other guitar player, but it was more about the way that he played the notes. Everyone talks about Van Halen’s sound, but it really has to do with his timing, his rhythm style and his phrasing. It’s more about that to me than the amp or whatever guitar he’s using.
The first time I saw Eddie play, I had the best possible seat. Because we had the same guitar tech, I was able to watch him from this little room under the stage, where he goes to change guitars or do whatever. It was pretty incredible.
YNGWIE MALMSTEEN by George Lynch
Every little microevolution of the guitar that came along in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties influenced me. The number of people I didn’t appreciate is probably a much smaller list.
Yngwie is one of those players that had a huge impact on me. His neoclassical style was just mind-blowing to me. I was raised as a blues player and learned my chops in the late Sixties, early Seventies, so it was all incredibly new to me. Just the ferocity of it was mesmerizing. The ease with which he does it was fascinating, too.
Ultimately, guitar-driven Eighties music had wound itself to the point of absurdity and inaccessibility. I mean, how many people can actually appreciate that kind of music? It’s just an elitist speed contest. But Yngwie created the trend. On a pure playing level, players that create music that touches people are always viable. And that’s why he’s still around and a lot of the other guys aren’t.
MICK TAYLOR by Slash
Mick Taylor had the biggest influence on me without me even knowing it. My favorite Stones records were Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers. Those three were major to me because I was exposed to those records as a kid when they first came out. Mick Taylor played on a couple of those records and went on to play with the Stones for a couple more. As I got older and started playing guitar, I always gravitated to his style.
People always mention Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Angus Young…all the obvious ones. But there are guys like Mick Taylor and Joe Walsh that were as important. Mick Taylor had a really cool, round-toned bluesy sort of thing that I thought was really effective.
One of the greatest Mick Taylor solos is on “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking?” from Sticky Fingers. It’s the kind of stuff that’s almost like old Eric Clapton—it’s very simple stuff, but it’s about how the notes are placed and how you approach them. The new guard of guitarists always forgets about doing simplistic and very effective guitar playing that speaks to you. It’s not all about two-handed tapping.
RANDY RHOADS by Frank Hannon
I was always a big fan of Randy. In 1980, when Ozzy’s Blizzard of Ozz came out, some friends of mine went to see him perform in Oakland and came back raving, saying, “Man, we saw this guitarist today, and he was better than Eddie Van Halen!”
This was a few years before we started Tesla. I was already playing guitar and was a big fan of Eddie Van Halen. So we went down to the local record store and got the album, and I was infatuated from day one. Randy was doing everything that Van Halen did, and more. It was the classical knowledge that he was incorporating into the guitar. The arrangements on “Crazy Train” and “Mr. Crowley” were unbelievable. I think a lot of the soloing on Van Halen tracks were improvised, which is cool. Randy took it a step further. His discipline probably came from his mother who taught him at her music school [Musonia School of Music in North Hollywood]. When I was a kid I would read the guitar magazines, and he would always mention that his mother was a big influence.
I went to visit the school, and I met Randy’s brother, Kelle, and his mother Delores, who is nicknamed “Dee.” “Dee” was also the title of an acoustic song on Blizzard of Ozz, which was a big influence on me. If you listen to my acoustic solo on “Love Song” it’s really inspired by that. I played that for Dee when I met her recently. She loves meeting fans, and she told me some stories about Randy. She said that his favorite song was [the Big Band swing tune] “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” how he found his first guitar in his father’s closet, and how when he was in London recording Diary of a Madman he would spend all his downtime studying classical music at a university. She just lit up when she talked about Randy. I have a video of that meeting on my web site.
ZAKK WYLDE by Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal
I first heard Zakk in 1986, when he was with a New Jersey band called Zyris. The next thing I knew, he was playing with Ozzy. Like Zakk, I had been a huge Randy Rhoads fan, so I was very happy that Ozzy picked Zakk to be his guitarist.
When you hear Zakk’s playing, you know right away that it’s him, with that distinctive use of harmonic vibrato on the lower string. Before he came along, every time you saw a blond-haired guitarist kicking a Les Paul’s ass you thought of John Sykes. Now you also think of Zakk. In addition, he’s very diverse stylistically, with the southern rock of Pride and Glory [Wylde’s early Nineties group], the singer-songwriter style of his Book of Shadows album [1996] and, of course, what he does with Black Label Society.
I met Zakk for the first time about a year and a half ago; he was a guest on my friend’s TV show. His visit to the studio was supposed to last for three hours, but he ended up staying for 14. Besides being a phenomenal musician, Zakk’s as good-hearted as I expected. I hope that some day we can do it again.
B.B. KING by Billy Gibbons
My favorite guitarist is B.B. King. His album Live at the Regal, recorded in 1964, remains a classic. The electricity, the crackling atmosphere… Plus, it’s a great sound, recorded with a full band, horns and piano, and a rabid audience thrown in.
B.B.’s distinctive one-note style, his sustain and attack, that kind of call-and-response thing between the vocals and the solos… He’s taken for granted now, which means he’s underrated. Obviously, he’s a maestro entertainer rather than a blues purist, though he can be that too. He’s a former cotton picker, but he remains so self-effacing, plus he has a great sense of humor, lyrically and in life. He’s got class.
MALCOLM YOUNG by Scott Ian
Malcolm Young has got to be the most unsung, underrated guitar hero of all time. He’s the backbone of AC/DC, the greatest rock band ever, and has written some of the most amazing riffs you’ll hear. This is the man responsible for more great rock moments than any other guitarist you can name. Is Malcolm Young the greatest rhythm guitarist in the world? No contest.
I recall being given one of his guitar picks recently after a gig on the band’s current tour, and it was half worn down. But you know what’s astonishing? Apparently that pick was used on just one song during the band’s set that night. Malcolm gets through a pick for every song because he hits the strings so hard. It’s amazing. The man is truly a one-off.
When I first started to listen to AC /DC, it was Angus who caught my attention. He was the lead guitarist and got all the glory. But in about 1979, when I began to get into guitar playing in a serious way, I gravitated toward Malcolm. I was listening to what he did, because he was the guy writing the music. I now appreciate just how incredible he is. He’s a songwriter, not a shredder, but without him what would AC /DC sound like?
If you’ve never heard him play—and can there be anyone on the planet who hasn’t heard Malcolm Young?—then go and listen to the opening chords of “Back in Black.” If that doesn’t move you, then you have no soul. The other songs I’d strongly recommend are “Riff Raff” and “Beating Around the Bush.” The way he takes straight blues riffs and siphons them though the AC/DC sensibility is a lesson to all guitarists.
GEORGE HARRISON by Elliot Easton
I was 10 years old when the Beatles played the Ed Sullivan Show [in February 1964], and I was already playing a little guitar. To see George Harrison there, standing off to the side, looking down at his guitar while he played his licks—to my impressionable mind it defined what a lead guitarist was.
I knew right then what I wanted to do with my life: I wanted to be like the guy in the middle—the guy looking down at his guitar and playing all the little fills and solos. Harrison taught me about short solos and hooks, and what a hook is. All those mid-Sixties Beatles tracks—whether it was “Day Tripper” or “Ticket to Ride” or whatever—they all start with a guitar lick that you wait to come around again in the chorus. That’s where I learned to do that.
ULI JON ROTH by Kirk Hammett
Around the time of Metallica’s Death Magnetic sessions, I began listening again to some of the rock music of my teens, and it inspired me all over again. I’d forgotten how much those guitarists meant to me.
Uli Jon Roth is one of those players. When I started listening to him again, I realized that I can still learn a lot from him. I love his choice of notes, the attitude behind his playing and the way his solos “up” the level of his songs. He took Scorpions to a totally different level. After his solos, you’re left there shaking your head. It’s like being sideswiped by a truck.
The track I love the most is the one I play every night, “The Sails of Charon,” from Taken by Force. The opening motif is just great. It’s spooky sounding, exotic. It’s very old-school heavy metal. People in the audience who know the song recognize that I’m flying the flag for that old-school metal, and they come to me and say, “Bro, ‘Sails of Charon’ rules!” There are a lot more Uli Roth fans out there than I expected.
NEIL YOUNG by Nancy Wilson
Neil is identifiable whether he’s playing acoustic or electric guitar. For acoustic he has a completely unique type of tuning, detuning, attack and release. He plays a song called “Bandit,” from the Greendale album, and there’s a live version of it that’s incredible. He chooses a specific guitar that can be detuned on the low string down to a C and picks the particular gauge of string that will rattle in the perfect way. It sounds so wrong that it’s right. I think nobody in the world would do that on purpose except for Neil Young.
He has a monstrous electric guitar sound, too, and on “Cinnamon Girl” he recorded what is probably the best one-note guitar solo ever. He puts more feeling into one note than anyone else. It shouldn’t work, but it does. Of course, it’s his tone that makes all the difference. Touch sensitivity accounts for about 90 percent of everything. Neil has such expressive playing that he can play a onenote solo and make it memorable for decades, for generations.
FRANK ZAPPA by Dweezil Zappa
I was never intimidated by my father’s technique. I think most guitar players are just excited to see somebody do something they didn’t think was possible. We’d sit and play together, but what Frank was doing was musical. I couldn’t grasp it at a young age—it was too sophisticated for me. He’d show me inversions of chords and composition devices—moving triads around the neck and stuff. It sounded neat, but I didn’t always understand what was happening musically.
I do the Zappa Plays Zappa tour because I want to get Frank’s music more into the public eye. I want him to be better understood. I think there are a lot of misconceptions about his music and him as a person. First of all, Frank was really a composer who used a rock band like an orchestra. He could hear stuff in his head and just write it down. I didn’t have a musical background; I was just a guy who learned things by ear—more a guitar player than a musician. The first thing I learned was the incredibly fast passage toward the end of “The Black Page.” It took me a good five or six months, and I had to totally change my picking technique in order to play this thing. I’d have to play it really slow for hours and hours and hours. I definitely think Frank would enjoy that we go to such great lengths to get it right with Zappa Plays Zappa.
PETE TOWNSHEND by Ace Frehley
I got all my rhythm work from listening to Pete Townshend and Keith Richards. I think Pete is a wizard when it comes to chords. He can play the same chord in, like, 20 different positions, doing inversions, suspensions… Just listen to Tommy. I’m a huge fan.
Pete has a great right hand as well as a great left hand. “Tattoo” is a great picking song, but of course he’s known best for his power strumming, like on “Pinball Wizard,” and his power chords, like on “My Generation” and the chord that opens “I Can See for Miles.” His rhythm work was just amazing.
The first time I saw the Who was the same day I saw Cream for the first time. They were both performing at a Murray the K show in Manhattan. [The revue-style show, presented by disc jockey Murray Kaufman, was called Music in the Fifth Dimension and presented at the RKO Theater from March 25 to April 2, 1967.] I was cutting school, and a friend and I snuck into the show and got down in front. It was the Who’s first New York show. I think the headliner was Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.
I saw the Who perform again, at the Fillmore East, in 1968, the day after Martin Luther King got shot. [The civil rights leader was assassinated on April 4, 1968.] The Who weren’t going to play because they were worried about riots, and I believe they ended up doing a short show. Ironically, Paul Stanley [Frehley’s former Kiss coguitarist] was there too, but we didn’t know each other at the time.
ALVIN LEE by Mick Mars
Sometimes I feel I should’ve been true to myself as a guitar player and stuck with the blues. All bullshit aside, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Alvin Lee, Jimi Hendrix…that stuff was the total shit for me. I was brought up on those players, and they all influenced me in one way or another.
When Bloomfield started getting too countrified for my liking, that’s when I discovered Alvin Lee and Ten Years After. Alvin brought a real explosive side to the blues. Some people said they couldn’t handle it, but I thought he was great.
PETER GREEN by Rich Robinson
Growing up in America, you couldn’t help but hear Fleetwood Mac’s [mid-Seventies breakthrough albums] Rumours and Fleetwood Mac on the radio all the time. And it was by getting into these records that I started to explore the Peter Green legacy. Obviously, he’d left Fleetwood Mac long before these were done, but I was influenced enough by them to want to know more about what the band had done before. And that’s when I discovered the amazing talent of the man.
His playing is just so moving. Listen to what he achieves on “Oh Well” and “Rattlesnake Shake,” and it is stunning. What he does is so interesting because he doesn’t overplay. Green understands that simplicity could hold the key to the blues.
It makes him so authentic. To my mind, Peter Green is the finest white man I’ve ever heard playing blues guitar. That’s a bold statement when you consider some of the other greats, but I genuinely believe this to be true. His playing has the soul and passion of the blues. And yet he never seems to get the recognition enjoyed by people like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page. Perhaps that’s because he’s so understated. If you check out something like “I Need Your Love So Bad,” what you hear is a guitarist prepared to submerge his own ego for the sake of the song. He gets the mood exactly right. He was never flamboyant like the others I just mentioned. As a result, he’s often overlooked in the list of guitar greats.
He also has such an incredible range. You can’t ever claim that one particular song defined him in the way that you can with Hendrix.
When the Black Crowes recorded and toured with Jimmy Page, he told us so many Peter Green stories. It was clear that Jimmy loves the man’s talent. And if he’s good enough for a giant like Jimmy to acclaim, then it reinforces my adoration.
RON ASHETON by Kim Thayil
It was the Seventies when I first heard the Stooges. By then, all the albums by the New York Dolls, the Stooges and the MC5 were out of print. You could only find them in used-record stores, and the nearest was six miles away. I’d check out their racks, and once in a while I got lucky.
The Stooges’ Funhouse album was one that I found. There’s some crazy stuff on side two—some really great, aggressive rock solos. Ron has a particular gritty, sleazy sound with the groove that he lays down. And the dueling improvisations with saxophone made for some cool jazz noise rock.
The Stooges didn’t do as much of that 12-bar blues stuff. They just hit a groove and then hypnotically beat you over the head with it. They just stayed with that riff for a long time. Of course, there is a lot of blues in what Ron did, but there’s something a lot looser, too, and it was freer and it utilized chaos. It was something that was definitely not present in FM rock or Top 40 at the time. “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” “TV Eye,” “Loose,” “Down on the Street”…
They’re all amazing. If rock should be about anything, it should be about freedom and rebellion, and not the stupid requirements that would be imposed upon you by the record company—like professionalism. I mean, it’s good for a person to know their damn instrument, or else you can’t come up with inventive ideas, but not to be bound by the patterns on the fretboard.
In the the February 2013 issue of Guitar World, we paid tribute to the high-flying genius of Pete Townshend by taking a look back at the Who's most creative — and most volatile — years.
It's difficult to understate the importance of Townshend as a composer and a guitarist, and no shortage of great bands have taken a cue or two from the Who's songwriting wizard over the years. Several have even tipped their hats to the band by putting their own spin on one of the many classic cuts in the Who's back catalog.
As a bonus, we've rounded up our 10 favorite Who covers of all time. What a bargain!
For more about the Who, including an analysis of their legendary output between 1969 and 1973, plus the tab for "Behind Blue Eyes" (with performance notes), check out the February 2013 issue of Guitar World. It's available at the Guitar World Online Store.
10. Iron Maiden — "My Generation”
If ever there was a bassist who could pay fitting tribute to the nimble four-string work of the late John Entwistle, it's Iron Maiden's Steve Harris. This deep cut from Maiden — who were just named 2012's best live act in our annual readers poll — features Blaze Bayley on vocals and was originally released as a B-side to their 1995 single, "Lord of the Flies." The song would re-appear in 2002 on the somewhat rare Best of the B-Sides compilation.
09. Elton John — "Pinball Wizard"
Yes, we just went from Iron Maiden to Elton John. But it just so happens that Elton's version of "Pinball Wizard" is one of the highlights of the 1975 Tommy film soundtrack, which also features performances by Ann-Margret and a berobed Eric Clapton. Besides its powerful vocals and spirited performance, Elton's version of the song, a hit in its own right, is noted for its undeniable "'70s-ness," from its instrumentation to its glam feel to those gigantic shoes in the clip below.
08. Green Day — "A Quick One While He's Away”
Green Day have always had a thing for this multi-part song, which can be considered Townshend's first — albeit mini — rock "opera." They like to perform bits of it at soundchecks, and the song has been a Green Day concert highlight on more than one occasion. The band finally got around to recording this spine-tingling studio version of the tune, which was released as a bonus track on their 2009 album, 21st Century Breakdown. They are "forgiven" for waiting so long!
07. The Jam — "So Sad About Us”
The Jam — Paul Weller, Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler — would often make half-hearted attempts at covering the songs that inspired them (case in point: their weak version of the Beatles'"And Your Bird Can Sing"), but they gave it their all when it came time to record this tune from A Quick One. This version, originally released as the B-side to "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" in 1978, sounds polished off and updated (at least by '78 standards) and stars Foxton's expert often-overlooked bass playing.
06. David Bowie — "I Can't Explain"
One of two Who covers on 1973's Pin Ups, this laid-back, almost parochial take on "I Can't Explain" brings an unmistakable cool to the band's first hit single. Bowie's vocals on this album have been infamously maligned by critics over the years, but factor in Ken Fordham's baritone sax and Mick Ronson's saturated guitar licks and you have a more-than-fitting tribute to Townshend and crew.
05. Rush — "The Seeker"
In 2004, Rush honored some of the bands that inspired them by releasing Feedback, an eight-song EP packed with covers of songs by the Yardbirds, Buffalo Springfield and Cream.
The EP also featured a cover of "The Seeker," which was originally released as a single by The Who in 1970.
Although the track doesn't give these three master prog-rockers a chance to "spread out," they put the emphasis on the song's strong, steady beat and high-flying vocals, which are handled rather nicely by Geddy Lee.
04. Sex Pistols — "Substitute"
While this song may seem like an oddball cover for a band that made a short career of toppling rock and roll dinosaurs, frontman Johnny Rotten has never had anything but positive things to say about the musical and personal influence of Pete Townshend. "Every now and then, when you feel down and despondent, a fellow like him can really put a good word in your ear, and it's unfortunate that that side of his character hasn't really come through in the media," he said in a 2012 Guitar World interview. "He's a very important person for us, and let's not for forget that. And he wrote some bloody excellent songs along the way!"
03. Oasis — "My Generation"
If any modern rocker has the die-young persona to pull off Roger Daltrey's lyrics in "My Generation," it would have to be Liam Gallagher. Oasis were as combustible a group of musicians as any in the last two decades, but when they pulled it together, they could put distorted guitars and debauched lyrics together as well as anyone, making them an ideal candidate to take on this Who classic. Four-string enthusiasts may find the bass solo a bit lacking, but one thing's undeniable: Liam means every word.
02. Van Halen — "Won't Get Fooled Again" (Live)
It takes a powerful band to truly do justice to what some consider The Who's greatest song — 1971's "Won't Get Fooled Again"— but the Sammy Hagar-fronted Van Halen take no prisoners. Their live version of the song, which is featured on 1993's Live: Right Here, Right Now, is noteworthy for its spot-on performances by all involved, especially Eddie Van Halen, who covers the iconic keyboard parts on his guitar. The video below shows them rehearsing the tune in a studio, but the energy is there.
01. Pearl Jam — "Love, Reign O'er Me"
Few bands carry on the spirit of the Who quite like Pearl Jam. In 2008, when VH1 assembled a cadre of modern-day rockers to pay tribute to the Who, there was no doubt that Pearl Jam — whose cover of "Baba O'Riley" has been a staple of their live shows since 1992 — would be providing the climax of the evening. As predicted, Eddie Vedder put everything he had into a medley of "Love, Reign O'er Me" and "The Real Me." The former was released in 2007 as part of the soundtrack to the film Reign Over Me, as well as on the band's 2006 fan club Christmas single. According to lore, Vedder would only agree to cover the song after getting Roger Daltrey's blessing.
For more about the Who, including an analysis of their legendary output between 1969 and 1973, plus tabs for "Behind Blue Eyes" (with detailed performance notes), check out the February 2013 issue of Guitar World. It's available now on newsstands and at the Guitar World Online Store.
Guitar World recently celebrated its first 30 years of publication with a look back at the most significant events to rock the guitar community since the magazine was founded in 1980.
Some of these events are landmark record releases, some are wild technological advances and others are tragic moments of loss. But they all reshaped, revitalized and renewed interest in our favorite instrument.
The photo gallery below highlights 30 watershed moments, but it also shows the ephemeral nature of music; how quickly things can change. One day something is state-of-the-art, and the next day it's bargain-bin junk.
One moment your guitar hero is dazzling you with skills beyond your comprehension, and in another moment all that remains is his legacy. One thing that never changes, though, is evolution. The only thing more interesting than what's happened in the last 31 years is what will happen in the next.
The events below are listed chronologically. Enjoy!
Besides reliable gear, sensible footwear and a guaranteed ride to gigs, members of good backing bands must have:
• Humility. After all, they're not the stars. The frontman (or woman) is.
• Natural talent and/or undeniable skill. A frontman doesn't need to wonder if his guitarist will actually nail the tricky guitar solo this time. That stuff needs to be automatic.
• Personality. No, they're not the stars, but backing-band members can't be bland sticks in the mud, either. They need to bring something unique to the table, each part of the band combining to create a superior "whole."
The best backing bands, of course, have all these qualities — plus lots of success. Some of them of have played on countless hits. Some have played a role in music history. Others just have so much talent that they automatically move to the next level.
This story is about 10 such backing bands.
Note that we kept our choices to backing bands with actual "names." These are groups we call "ampersand bands," since their name, in most of these cases, follows an ampersand or an "and" in the act's full name, such as John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers or Johnny and The Moondogs (neither of whom are included on this list).
So even though Bill Black and Scotty Moore kicked vintage ass as Elvis Presley's backing duo, the duo never had a name. And the talented gents who backed Roger Waters or Paul McCartney at last week's 12-12-12 Concert for Sandy Relief? No name. You get the idea.
We also tried to focus on bands that kept a core group of members intact over the years. For example, we'd consider Elvis Costello's Attractions (always the same three guys) over Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention (This Wikipedia page says it all).
On that note, here they are, Guitar World's 10 best backing bands of all time. Enjoy!
10. The Band
Although The Band are best known for their own dark, rustic late-'60s masterpieces Music from Big Pink and The Band, they hit the world stage in the mid-'60s as Bob Dylan's backing band.
Actually, their backing-band pedigree started in 1958, when they hooked up with rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins and called themselves The Hawks. After short-lived stints as Levon & the Hawks and the Canadian Squires, the gang was hired by Dylan in 1965, just as he was ditching his acoustic/folk persona in favor of Strats and heavier rock.
Dylan and the Band (still known as the Hawks for a while) — Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel — toured the US in 1965 and the world in 1966, enduring the heckling and disapproval of folk-music purists every step of the way.
The Band were on stage with Dylan in Manchester, England, on May 17, 1966, when an audience member shouted "Judas!" Dylan replied, "I don't believe you. You're a liar!" He then turned to The Band and said, "Play it fucking loud!" before launching into "Like a Rolling Stone."
The Band followed Dylan to Woodstock, New York, where they recorded The Basement Tapes. It was a relationship that wound up lasting — albeit loosely — for several years, in the form of various touring and recording projects.
In terms of sheer talent, The Band were a dream team. Every member of the group was a multi-instrumentalist. They could provide soaring harmony vocals, oddball lead guitar, mesmerizing keyboards and everything from fiddle to trombone to sax to mandolin.
Maybe The Band were at the right place at the right time, but there's no denying they occupy a special place in rock history.
09. The Roots
Acclaimed by many to be hip-hop’s first “real band,” the Roots are one of the genre's longest-standing acts.
Formed by Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter and Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson in Philadelphia back in 1987, the Roots' 13 studio albums alone have been enough to propel them to household-name status, including a Grammy nod for their latest album, 2011's Undun.
But when they're not breaking down genre barriers, the Roots also have earned a reputation as one of the best backing acts going. In 2005, they appeared in Dave Chappelle's Block Party, a documentary film that saw them team up with everyone from Erykah Badu to Big Daddy Kane.
Since 2009, the band has served as the house band for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, curating the program's music (sometimes controversially) and backing multiple guests through the years. Tune in any given night and you'll likely catch one of guitarist "Captain" Kirk Douglas' fine selection of Gibsons, including a beautiful CS-356.
08. The Blue Caps
Of the major "named" backing bands of rock’s first generation — Buddy Holly’s Crickets, Bill Haley’s Comets, Johnny Burnette’s Rock n’ Roll Trio and Gene Vincent’s Blue Caps (We'll even include Johnny Cash's Tennessee Three) — the Blue Caps had a monopoly on super-serious chops. Among their lineup was — to quote Jeff Beck — the “demon-like” Cliff Gallup.
Gallup, whose playing and sound are perhaps best described as "ahead of their time," was a true pioneer who had a massive influence on the first wave of British Invasion players, particularly Beck, who incorporated Gallup’s lightning-fast triplet pull-offs into his own playing. Gallup's quick "slap-echo" delay, as heard on Bluejean Bop and Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps, is still considered the gold standard sound for rockabilly guitarists.
The Blue Caps also included Willie Williams on rhythm guitar, Jack Neal on upright bass and Dickie Harrell on drums, a crew that could drive fans into a frenzy with relentless rockabilly beats as heard in “Jump Back, Honey, Jump Back,” “B-I-Bickey-Bi, Bo-Bo-Go” and “Hold Me, Hug Me, Rock Me.”
Gallup, who left the band in 1956, was replaced by Russell Williford, followed by Johnny Meeks. He died in 1988.
07. The Funk Brothers
Unlike the rest of the bands on this list, the Funk Brothers weren't an "official" backing band; their nickname didn't follow an "and" or an ampersand in a band name, and they didn't make their living on the road backing a single artist.
The Funk Brothers were a crew of Detroit-based session musicians who played on most Motown recordings from 1959 to 1972.
As claimed in the opening titles to Paul Justman's 2002 documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown, the Funk Brothers have "played on more No. 1 hits than The Beatles, Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys — combined." And while you might want to head for your iPhone's calculator and dive into Google land to verify that, there's no denying they played on an impressive collection of Motown hits, including "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone,""I Heard It Through the Grapevine,""My Girl,""Ain't No Mountain High Enough,""Baby Love,""Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours,""The Tears of a Clown" and "(Love Is Like a) Heat Wave."
They can be heard on singles and/or albums by Marvin Gaye, The Miracles, The Temptations (Check out the video below), The Supremes, Martha & The Vandellas, The Marvelettes, The Contours, the Jackson 5, The Four Tops, The Spinners, The Originals and other acts.
Although the Funk Brothers weren't quite as fluid an ensemble as Wings or the Mothers of Invention, many musicians have been members of the brotherhood. Core members included guitarists Robert White, Eddie Willis and Joe Messina, Joe Hunter (bandleader), Earl Van Dyke (piano), James Jamerson (bass); Benny "Papa Zita" Benjamin (drums), Richard "Pistol" Allen (drums), Paul Riser (trombone), Jack Ashford (tambourine, percussion, vibraphone, marimba), Jack Brokensha (vibraphone, marimba) and Eddie "Bongo" Brown (percussion).
Other notable members include guitarist Dennis Coffey and bassist Bob Babbitt.
06. Double Trouble
In the early '80s, Texan Stevie Ray Vaughan breathed new life into a faded genre called the blues, created a distinctive modern Texas sound that is still mimicked today and introduced Jimi Hendrix, Albert King and Lightnin' Hopkins to a new generation of guitar players.
But he didn't do it alone.
Behind him every step of the way were Double Trouble — bassist Tommy Shannon, drummer Chris Layton and (as of 1985), keyboardist Reese Wynans. It can be argued (Note the COMMENTS section below, folks!) that Vaughan only really sounded like Vaughan when he was backed by Double Trouble. His sound changed when he made cameo appearances on other artists' albums and on the Vaughan Brothers' 1990 LP, Family Style.
Layton and Shannon — who, as Johnny Winter's former bassist, brought his own Texas blues pedigree into the mix — formed the perfect rhythm section for Vaughan, filling the gaps and adding dynamics during 15-minute versions of "Little Wing/Third Stone from the Sun" and sounding like a blues-shuffle instructional tape on "Empty Arms."
They understood their role in catchy guitar-based instrumentals like "Scuttle Buttin',""Rude Mood,""Boilermaker" and "Stang's Swang" and knew how to alter their playing styles to fit each mood and blues sub-genre.
Wynans' arrival in 1985 gave the band a bigger, beefier sound, as heard on Soul To Soul and In Step.
Since Vaughan's death in 1990, Double Trouble have backed a host of artists, including Jimmie Vaughan, Buddy Guy and, most recently, Albert Cummings.
05. The Wailers
Formed in the early ‘60s when Peter Tosh taught a young Robert Nesta Marley how to play guitar, the Wailers — in one incarnation or another — would back reggae’s most legendary figure throughout his entire career.
There are two distinct periods in the strata of Wailers history. The group’s original incarnation featured Tosh on guitar, with the Wailers existing as essentially a three-piece (with Bunny Livingston on percussion) between 1966 and 1974.
Citing unfair treatment within the group, Livingston and Tosh exited the band in ‘74, leaving Marley to regroup, establishing a new version of the Wailers that would serve as his backing band for the remainder of his career. The new Wailers lineup would hit the road in 1975 with Al Anderson handling guitar duties. Anderson would only stick around through '76, however, opting to join Peter Tosh's Word, Sound and Power and opening the door for Junior Marvin to enter the scene.
Marvin would breathe new life into the Wailers, as evidenced by the massive success of 1977's Exodus. But if you asked Marvin, he'd give all the credit to Roger Mayer, the man who Jimi Hendrix trusted to help craft his groundbreaking guitar sounds.
“You listen to the Wailers from 1977 onward and you listen to the Wailers pre-1977, and you will hear the difference,” Marvin says. “Part of that is down to Roger Mayer.”
But beyond a reinvigorated lineup and the technical know-how of Mayer, it was undoubtedly Marley’s strict work ethic that, regardless of lineup, made the Wailers one of the tightest backing bands in history.
“Bob was on top of everything, perfectly woven with everything,” Marvin said. “You felt like nothing would go wrong. Bob would rehearse us so much. At the end of rehearsal, you could play that thing in your sleep.”
These days, you can catch multiple versions of the Wailers on tour. The Wailers Band, led by “Family Man” Barrett, and the Original Wailers, featuring Al Anderson and Junior Marvin, are both doing their parts to keep the music and spirit of Bob Marley alive.
04. Booker T. & the M.G.'s
Among the first backing bands to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Booker T. and the M.G.s may very well be the most imitated house band in history, playing on hundreds of recordings for Stax Records, fortifying the sound of Southern soul in the process. During the 1960s, they would lend their talents to countless hits, including Sam & Dave's "Soul Man" and Otis Redding's "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," even backing Redding at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.
While primarily known as a backing band, Booker T. & the M.G.’s also received some acclaim on their own, particularly with the 1962 instrumental “Green Onions,” which was added to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry list of "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important" American sound recordings earlier this year.
In 1965, original bassist Lewie Steinberg would part ways with the band, paving the way for another Stax house band member, Donald “Duck” Dunn, to join the fray, solidifying a storied musical partnership.
“Steve and I are like an old married couple,” Dunn would later say of his relationship with Cropper. “I can look at him and know what he’s going to order for dinner.”
A further nod to their in-demand status, Dunn and Cropper would later join a pair of young Hollywood actors looking to cut an album of slick blues and R&B. They called themselves “the Blues Brothers.”
03. The Heartbreakers
Some names in popular culture are just inseparable: Starsky and Hutch; Laverne and Shirley; and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Formed from the remnants of the Southern rock band Mudcrutch, the pairing of Petty's wry lyrics and penchant for melodies gelled seamlessly with the rock steady rhythm section of drummer Stan Lynch and bassist Ron Blair.
And even when Petty — much to the dismay of many, including his bandmates — went solo in the late ‘80s, guitarist Mike Campbell was never far away, playing guitar on every track of the critically acclaimed Full Moon Fever.
Outside of the Heartbreakers, Mike Campbell is a much-sought-after studio musician, adding his tasteful licks to recordings from the likes of Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan, among others.
02. The E Street Band
Two high-profile Bruce Springsteen solo albums — Nebraska and We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions— might be fine pieces of work, but there's nothing quite like the sound of Springsteen when he's backed by the musicians who've had his back since 1972, the E Street Band.
The E Street Band is proof that a great band is more than the sum of its parts. Current band members, including Steven Van Zandt, Max Weinberg, Nils Lofgren and Garry Tallent, might have their own successful side projects (including a never-ending series of mob-related cable TV shows), but they all know who's "Boss." When they are called to action, they are truly a force to be reckoned with. In this way, they are perhaps the perfect backing band; they live to serve their leader, but they do it while adding touches of their individual personalities and strengths.
Springsteen's early albums are clearly defined by the sound of the E Street Band, especially the trademark sax playing of the late Clarence Clemons. They often transformed what could have been simple compositions into grand, sprawling, dramatic works, such as "Born to Run" (Check out the live video below), "Lost in the Flood" and "Backstreets."
And while the band might not be so concerned with forging new sounds in 2013, as a live unit, they kick ass when it comes to generating excitement and reproducing their classic sound.
01. Crazy Horse
From 1969’s Everybody Knows This is Nowhere all that way up through the excellent Psychedelic Pill from 2012, the partnership between Neil Young and Crazy Horse stands as one of the most prolific in rock lore.
While the band has gone through its share of incarnations through the years, the drum-tight rhythm section of Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina has been intact since the ‘60s, and guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro has been a steady fixture since 1975’s Zuma.
In the realm of backing bands, Crazy Horse are far from the tightest act around, drifting lazily but deliberately between tempos with the occasional burst of cacophonous noise thrown in for good measure. But Young has never tapped them for metronome-like precision; he always comes back to them because, in the purest musical sense, they complete each other.
“I don’t think of my guitar solos as guitar solos,” said Young in a classic Guitar World interview, “because when we play, we’re like a big band jamming and taking long rides together.”
And so Crazy Horse stand atop the heap of backing bands for an unparalleled ability to elevate their frontman to new heights, never hesitating to take a leap out of the pocket when the music calls for it. Assuming their signature stance, huddled tightly around Molina's drum set, you get the undeniable impression that they're in another world entirely, journeying through strange landscapes with no particular destination in mind.
Neil Young said it himself: “I can’t do this with anyone else.”
Yeah, they dressed funny and their lyrics often lacked the angst and agonized self-awareness that we’ve come to expect in this decade of the rock and roll sissy-band, but the pop metal acts of the Eighties produced some top-shelf albums during their short reign.
In chronological order, these are the 20 best records woven, steamed and blow-dried by the most esteemed members of rock and roll’s Hair Club for Men before they were abruptly given the hook.
Check out the photo gallery below — and be sure to join the conversation in the comments section below the story.
The origin of heavy metal is a very fuzzy thing, but most historians and fans can agree that Black Sabbath’s eponymous 1970 debut was the first true heavy metal album.
Its thunderous drums, sinister riffs and downright evil lyrics left little to be debated. But what we wanted to know was this: What was the heaviest song before Black Sabbath?
We ranked the the following songs based on a variety of factors: distortion/fuzz, playing speed, "darkness," volume, shock value and, most importantly, the song had to have been released before mid-February 1970, when Black Sabbath was unleashed unto the universe.
And sure, it would've been easy to list all the songs on the first two Led Zeppelin albums and call it a day, but we wanted to go deeper than that. We dug deep to find some hidden gems from the era of peace and love.
NOTE: We will be presenting these songs in installments. Check out the first list of 10 below; we'll post the next 10 songs later this week! Until then, enjoy!
50. The Troggs, "Wild Thing" (1966)
This bit of caveman rock, written by Chip Taylor (actor Jon Voight’s brother), is the only song on this list to feature an ocarina solo.
49. The Yardbirds, “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” (1966)
Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page teamed up on this elaborate, psychodramatic masterpiece to contribute slashing rhythm parts, zig-zagging lead lines and a witty imitation of a police car’s siren.
48. The Who, "My Generation" (1965)
Studio version not heavy enough for you? There’s always the explosive — literally — Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour version from 1967. Pete Townshend’s ears are still smarting from it.
47. Coven, "Pact With Lucifer" (1969)
Jinx Dawson was Doro before there was a Doro. Coven makes the list for their occult themes and evil-sounding song titles like “Pact With Lucifer,” “Choke, Thirst, Die” and “Dignitaries of Hell,” but ultimately the music just wasn’t that heavy.
46. The Guess Who, “American Woman” (1970)
After luring in listeners with a sweet acoustic blues intro, Burton Cummings, Randy Bachman & Co. hit the stompboxes and showed the world what Led Zeppelin would’ve sounded like if they were Canadian. This one came out in January 1970 — mere weeks before Black Sabbath would redefine heavy.
45. Pink Floyd, "Interstellar Overdrive" (1967)
The song that launched a thousand space-rock bands.
44. The Count Five, "Psychotic Reaction" (1966)
The Count Five’s only hit single was this blatantly Yardbirds-inspired gem from 1966. The band, who were all between the ages of 17 and 19, split up a year later to pursue college degrees. Remember, kids, there’s nothing heavier than an education!
43. The Wailers, “Out of Our Tree” (1966) A fun, fuzzed-out offering from the Tacoma-based Wailers, one of the first American garage rock bands.
42. Sam Gopal, "Season of the Witch" (1969)
Sam Gopal was the first percussionist to bring tabla drums back from India and incorporate them into rock music. However, his 1969 album, Escalator, was a landmark in rock music for another reason: It featured, on vocals and guitar, a young Ian Kilmister. You may know him better as “Lemmy.”
41. Cream, "Sunshine of Your Love" (1967)
This song was written by Cream bassist Jack Bruce in a burst of inspiration after watching a Jimi Hendrix concert. Hendrix would cover the song a year later, adding some burning guitar licks in place of the lyrics.
Before he wielded the hammer of the gods — and a Les Paul — as a member of mighty Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page was a Telecaster-wielding Yardbird.
Today we turn our attention to Page's best guitar work with his former band.
Fortunately, we don't have very far to look, since Page recorded only one album with the band — 1967's Little Games— plus a few non-album singles and B-sides, all of which have wound up on deluxe versions of Little Games over the decades.
While the band's Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck eras enjoyed decent chart success — from "For Your Love" to "Heart Full of Soul" to "Shapes of Things"— its Page-fronted version managed to fly under the radar until imploding in 1968. (Even "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago," which featured Beck and Page, only reached Number 30.)
Check out our five choices for Page's best guitar work as a Yardbird. This list was compiled with the input of Guitar World Editor-in-Chief Brad Tolinski, author of Light & Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page. If you're interested in Page's Yardbirds days — not to mention his Led Zeppelin days — you might want to check out the book, which is available now at the Guitar World Online Store.
P.S.: I'd like to award an "honorable mention" to a lesser-known Yardbirds track from 1968 called "Avron Knows," which features Page playing a Tele with a simply beautiful fuzz tone. The recording, which is incomplete (And I don't think Page and the boys will be gathering to finish it anytime soon), wasn't released until a few years ago on the Cumular Limit album.
On that note, enjoy!
"Think About It," B-side of "Goodnight Sweet Josephine"
If the guitar solo on "Think About It" sounds familiar, that's because Page borrowed and re-purposed it a year later when recording "Dazed and Confused" with Led Zeppelin. The guitar solo makes this the Yardbirds' most Zeppelin-like track, and it's easily the most shred-centric solo in the band's catalog. Be sure to check out Aerosmith's cover of this tune, which can be found on their Night in the Ruts album.
"Happenings Ten Years Time Ago," A-side of a 1966 single
"Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" was the first Yardbirds single to feature Page, who — this time around — shares the guitar spotlight with Beck. There are only three Beck/Page-era Yardbirds recordings — "Happenings,""Psycho Daisies" and "Stroll On.""Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" is a mini-masterpiece, what Tolinski calls "a tour de force of guitar invention and orchestration ... a moody slice of psychedelia with nightmarish overtones." That's John Paul Jones on bass, by the way. You can hear Beck's voice during the mid-song ranty interlude.
"White Summer," from Little Games
This acoustic instrumental track is the precursor to Led Zeppelin's "Black Mountain Side," and Page often performed the two songs as a medley during early Led Zeppelin tours. It's interesting to note that during the Yardbirds' final days as a touring band, Page performed this song with an electric guitar, as heard on Live Yardbirds: Featuring Jimmy Page. Said Page: "I used a special tuning for [the song]; the low string down to D, then A, D, G, A and D. It’s like a modal tuning, a sitar tuning, in fact."
"Smile On Me," from Little Games
"Smile On Me" is the closest the Page-era Yardbirds got to straight-ahead (and spaced-out) blues. P.S.: That's '60s fashion model Edie Sedgwick in the video below. We like her!
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"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor," from Little Games
BRAD TOLINSKI: Those ringing guitar parts and suspended chords on "Tinker, Tailor" are almost like a precursor to "The Song Remains the Same."
JIMMY PAGE: Well, it could be, except I've got two or three different demo versions, each with different guitar approaches. What is somewhat funny is I presented [producer] Mickie [Most] with the poppiest version. Here I am talking about shooting ourselves in the foot by doing pop stuff, but I really sort of enabled the situation by coming up with parts that were intentionally quite catchy. I guess I still had that instinct from doing sessions for all those years!"
Note that Page is playing guitar with a violin bow during the solo, a sound that would turn up on the first Led Zeppelin album.
Metallica are undeniably the most influential rock band of the past 30 years. That fact can be perceived simply by looking at the numbers.
They are on the exclusive list of music artists who have sold more than 100 million records, and each of their albums has enjoyed multi-Platinum status, an achievement that even AC/DC, the Rolling Stones and U2 haven’t matched.
And while they’ve never really had a bona fide pop hit, dozens of Metallica songs — including “Seek and Destroy,” “Master of Puppets” and “Enter Sandman” — have become vital landmarks on the vast landscape of music history, inspiring new generations of music fans and aspiring guitarists much the same way “Johnny B. Goode,” “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “Stairway to Heaven” inspired previous generations.
In that respect, Metallica’s influence can be observed simply by tuning into the very culture of modern music. To put it simply, Metallica redefined metal music. During the early Eighties, bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest were considered heavy metal. But after Metallica burst out of the underground and into mainstream awareness, the terms heavy and metal didn’t quite seem to fit those bands any more.
Metallica’s sonic signatures — extreme high-gain distortion, rapid-fire down-picked riffs and jackhammer double–bass drum rhythms — became the new vernacular for metal. Since Metallica’s arrival in 1983, thousands of bands—including industrial groups like Ministry, nu-metal newcomers like Korn and unabashed Metallica clones like Trivium—have adopted those characteristics as their own.
Having deep influences has certainly helped Metallica hone their craft. Drummer Lars Ulrich’s vast collection of Seventies Euro metal, punk rock and NWOBHM records provided a bottomless well of inspiration during Metallica’s early days, when the band consisted of Ulrich, guitarist/vocalist James Hetfield, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett (who replaced founding guitarist Dave Mustaine) and bassist Cliff Burton.
The band members never stopped searching for new inspirations, discovering unlikely muses like Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western scores, Tom Waits’ lowlife junkyard blues and Nick Cave’s gothic post-punk swamp rock. Along the way they lost members: Burton died in 1986 and was replaced by Jason Newsted, who left in 2001 and was later replaced by Robert Trujillo. But even as Metallica evolved from progressive thrash epics in the Eighties to shorter and more melodic songs in the Nineties, they never lost the essence of their personality — an indefinable intensity that makes Metallica songs as recognizable as any classic from the Beatles or Led Zeppelin catalogs.
Considering the band’s lasting and ever-growing influence, we felt an examination of its contributions was long overdue. The following 100 songs are significant mileposts that have shaped and defined much of the hard rock and metal music made today, and they’re also the source of some of the coolest riffs ever written for the guitar. No wonder Metallica remain a powerful force to be reckoned with.
It’s probably not a coincidence that effects such as wah pedals and fuzz boxes started appearing en masse about the same time that recreational drugs like marijuana and LSD became popular with rock musicians.
Indeed, it would take the mind of an incredibly stoned individual — someone deprived of exposure to the sun’s rays, fed a diet of lukewarm Mountain Dew and stale frozen pizza and kept awake for days by snorting lines of Instant Maxwell House — to even conceive of the idea for some of the music industry’s many audio oddities.
In salute to effect innovators like Electro-Harmonix’s Mike Matthews and Zachary Vex of Z.Vex (both of whom may be as straight and unpolluted as an Iowa highway, for all we know), we present to you our selections for the strangest and most wonderful guitar effects ever unleashed upon the unsuspecting public.
Plugging into one of the following effects is like discovering an ancient Mayan city of gold on the tip of your fingernail while your cat pontificates, in Lebanese, about Proust. Or whacking yourself in the head really hard with a sledgehammer.
Note that, since it's unusual to come across two or three of these effects, let alone all 10, we do not have consistent photos or videos of the effects presented below. Luckily, there's this thing called YouTube.com. We tried to find the most to-the-point and least-annoying video for each effect. (We admit we really love the video for Number 5, the Maestro Rover!)
Enjoy!
01. Ludwig Phase II synthesizer
What could possibly be weirder than a guitar synthesizer pedal made in the early Seventies by a drum company? Like many so-called guitar synthesizers from this era, the Ludwig Phase II is not a synth but actually several effects, including fuzz, voltage-controlled filters and gating, combined in a box that unfolds to reveal a rocker pedal, several oversized mushroom-shaped footswitches and a control panel placed at a height only Verne Troyer would find comfortable.
With a little patient tweaking, the Phase II can produce the sound of anything from alien conversations to spaceship landings—the kind of weirdness that’s made it a favorite of Sonic Youth (Washing Machine), Primus’ Larry Lalonde (Pork Soda) and Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready (Binaural).
02. Ampeg Scrambler
Ampeg is best known for its big ’n’ beefy bass amps, but the company also attempted to exploit the pedal market in a few rare instances. Ampeg’s first effort, the Scrambler, bewildered even acid casualties upon its introduction in 1969, but today’s bizarro stomp box aficionados consider it the Holy Grail. Although these pedals are rarer than Paris Hilton’s brain cells, they were built to withstand nuclear war, so units that turn up are usually in fine working condition. Its two controls (texture and balance) generate a mutated rainbow of fuzz tones ranging from metallic ring modulation with buzzing octave-up overtones to the flatulence of a 400-pound chili cook-off judge.
03. DeArmond Tremolo Control
Tremolo effects aren’t particularly strange, but this early Fifties contraption, the first mass-produced external effect device for the electric guitar, earns distinction for its primitive design and clunky aesthetics. (And it was manufactured in Toledo, Ohio — isn’t that weird?) Instead of employing components like transistors, resistors and diodes to generate its on/off effect, the Tremolo Control used a motor to rock a glass tube filled with mercury (the original heavy metal) back and forth across an electrical contact to open and close the circuit. Unfortunately, mercury deteriorates over time, but Windex makes a safe alternative (and it provides “clean” tone). This effect is a favorite of Billy Gibbons, Ry Cooder and Duane Eddy.
04. EMS Synthi Hi-Fli
Another so-called guitar synthesizer from the Seventies, the EMS Synthi Hi-Fli was mounted on a waist-high stand and looked like a prop from Dr. Who (EMS actually made the synths used to create sound effects for the show). Originally (and appropriately) called the Sound Freak, the Hi-Fli was essentially an early multi-effect unit that combined fuzz, octave shift, ring modulation, phasing and resonant filters to generate synthlike tones. David Gilmour used a Synthi Hi-Fli on The Dark Side of the Moon, and other fans include Steve Hackett (when he was with Genesis) and the Chemical Brothers.
05. Maestro Rover
Someone must have spiked the water coolers at Maestro with Blue Sunshine — how else to explain sonic oddities like Maestro’s Bass Brassmaster, Filter Sample and Hold, Ring Modulator and the world’s first fuzz box? The Maestro Rover is a rotating speaker unit that not only looks like a UFO but sounds like one, too, as the speaker can rotate at exceptionally high speeds to create watery, warbling Doppler effects. A built-in crossover routes low frequencies to a guitar amp while it directs treble frequencies to the Rover’s rather low-powered internal amp, which isn’t loud enough to irk even a Ladies’ Auxiliary tea party. That’s why David Gilmour’s Rover is, uh, house trained.
06. Electro-Harmonix Frequency Analyzer/Maestro Ring Modulator
You know those bizarre, dissonant metallic boinks on ZZ Top’s “Cheap Sunglasses” and the closing theme of South Park? That’s the sound of a ring modulator. Electro-Harmonix and Maestro unleashed this atonal beast of an effect on unsuspecting musicians during the early Seventies, and guitarists have been struggling to tame them ever since. By moving the controls while you play (the EHX Hotfoot makes a handy “third hand”), you can imitate the sounds of extraterrestrial radio transmissions, drunken calypso steel drummers and screaming robot elephants. Who hasn’t wanted their guitar to sound like that?
07. ADA Flanger
One of the finest pedal flangers ever made, the ADA Flanger generates a wide variety of impressive effects, from jetlike whooshes to shimmering chorus. But spend a little extra time tweaking the controls and some truly bizarre sounds emerge, such as ring modulator–like percussive metal overtones and ghostly moans. Its best (i.e., weirdest) effect is a sort of “auto whammy” that is coaxed out of the pedal by turning the enhance control all the way up. Engage the effect and your guitar’s pitch will rise and fall dramatically and uncontrollably, even if you aren’t playing anything at all. How cool is that?
08. Roland Funny Cat
Perhaps the most appropriately named pedal of all time, the Roland Funny Cat sounds like a feline that has huffed a spray can of Rust-Oleum and downed a bottle of Jäger — and is being whipped. Kind of a fuzz/envelope-follower combination, the Funny Cat spews and mews unpredictably, with the effect often becoming more pronounced the softer, or the higher up the neck, you play. Considering how hard it was to get killer buds (an essential part of good pedal design) in Japan during the early Seventies, the Roland engineer who designed this probably smoked a lot of catnip instead.
09. Oberheim Voltage Controlled Filter/Maestro Filter Sample and Hold
These pedals are identical in every way except for their paint jobs. Controls consist of knobs for range (depth) and sample-and-hold speed, and a switch that engages either the sample-and-hold random-filter effect or an envelope follower, for autowah effects. Even with this limited feature set, the pedals can generate a surprisingly vast palette of strange but wonderful tones, ranging from juicy, drippy envelope-follower funk to guttural auto-arpeggiator stutters. Frank Zappa used one on “Ship Ahoy,” “Black Napkins” and several other songs, so if it’s weird enough for the man who wrote “Poofter’s Froth Wyoming Plans Ahead,” it’s certainly weird enough for you.
10. Electro-Harmonix Talking Pedal
While honorable mention must be made to the Heil Talk Box (which provides guitarists with a tube that they stick in their mouths to duplicate the sound of a stomach being pumped and other barfy delights), the Electro-Harmonix Talking Pedal enables your guitar to speak through purely electronic means. Actually, it only produces “A-E-I-O-U” vowel sounds, but it does give a guitar an uncanny vocallike tonality that is reminiscent of Yoda speaking Cantonese.
For someone who spent a mere seven years in the spotlight, Texan Stevie Ray Vaughan left behind an impressive amount of recorded material.
He released four studio albums, a double live album and a Vaughan Brothers album (with Jimmie Vaughan), not to mention enough leftover live and studio material to fill several posthumous albums and a box set.
He even found time to perform on albums by several other artists — from Teena Marie to Stevie Wonder to Lonnie Mack — very often with fiery results.
With that in mind, here are Vaughan's top five guest appearances as a guest or session guitarist during his "famous" years, 1983 to 1990. We'll discuss his pre-fame session work in another story.
And just so the Vaughanophiles are clear, this list does not take into account Vaughan's 1983 Canadian TV studio appearance with Albert King — or anything recorded in a TV studio, a radio studio or a studio apartment. It also doesn't include his 1987 recording of "Pipeline" with Dick Dale because that track is credited to the duo, so neither guitarist is the other's "guest."
05. A.C. Reed, "Miami Strut," from I'm In the Wrong Business! (1987)
A.C. Reed was a respected Chicago-based sideman who started his lengthy career in the '40s and worked with a host of big names, including Magic Sam, Son Seals, Albert Collins and Buddy Guy.
"Miami Strut" is a funky instrumental that features Vaughan playing a Strat through a Leslie cabinet, its revolving speaker providing an exceptionally "wet" sound. Note how he plays around Reed's catchy tenor sax riffs, making his guitar an integral part of the track. Vaughan's guitar solo starts around 1:22.
Because the album, which also features Bonnie Raitt, was released in 1987, it represents a lost period in Vaughan's discography, since Soul to Soul came out in 1985 and In Step came out in 1989.
WHILE YOU'RE AT IT: Check out "These Blues Is Killing Me" from the same album. Vaughan's guitar solo starts around 2:06. That's Reed on vocals.
04. Bennie Wallace, "All Night Dance," from Twilight Time (1985)
Here's Vaughan guesting with another sax player — this time Bennie Wallace (with Dr. John) — on another blues-based instrumental, a lengthy shuffle called "All Night Dance" from Wallace's now-out-of-print Twilight Time album from 1985. The song also was featured on the Bull Durham soundtrack album in 1988 — and even that's out of print (Good luck finding it for less than $60 on Amazon Marketplace or eBay!).
Stevie's guitar solo starts around 3:24, and he really pours it on, dialing up his Soul to Soul sound and including several signature SRV motifs and bends.
Like a great songwriter who sometimes relegates jaw-dropping tunes to the cutting-room floor or non-album B-sides, Vaughan recorded this brilliant guitar solo one random day in his career — and then just moved on to the next gig, never really looking back.
03. Johnny Copeland, "Don't Stop by the Creek, Son," from Texas Twister (1984)
Texas blues guitarist and singer Johnny Copeland (father of blues singer Shemekia Copeland) invited Vaughan to play on two tracks on his Texas Twister album. On "Don't Stop by the Creek, Son," Copeland, a fine player in his own right, stepped aside to let Vaughan handle all the lead work.
Although Vaughan's Strat was mixed a little too low in the original vinyl mix (It had to compete with Copeland's acoustic guitar), "Creek" is a fun, engaging, upbeat track with a catchy melody and some nifty guitar work from start to finish.
It's worth noting that the original 1984 Black and Blues version of Texas Twister featured two tracks with Vaughan on guitar — "Don't Stop by the Creek, Son" and "When the Rain Stops Fallin'." However, when the album was reissued by Rounder Records in 1986, "When the Rain Stops Fallin'" was gone — and it's still gone. iTunes sells only the 1986 version of the album
02. Lonnie Mack, "If You Have to Know," from Strike Like Lightning (1985)
Serious Vaughan fans got a nice bonus in 1985: Alligator Records released Lonnie Mack's masterful Strike Like Lightning album, which was co-produced by Vaughan and Mack, one of SRV's many guitar idols (Be sure to check out Mack's classic 1964 album, The Wham of That Memphis Man!).
Vaughan plays on several songs on the album, but he actually plays and sings on "If You Have to Know," making it the closest thing to a straight-ahead bonus SRV track. Check it out below.
WHILE YOU'RE AT IT: From the same album, be sure to get a taste of "Oreo Cookie Blues," which features Vaughan on acoustic guitar, predating "Life By the Drop" and his Unplugged appearance by five years ...
... and don't forget "Double Whammy" (a new recording of Mack's early '60s instrumental hit "Wham!" featuring Vaughan and Mack duking it out in the key of E), "Hound Dog Man" and "Satisfy Suzie," which you can hear below.
01. David Bowie, "Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)," from Let's Dance (1983)
Come on, you knew something from David Bowie's Let's Dance album had to be No. 1 on this list.
Let's Dance served as the world's introduction to Vaughan, who, with Bowie, invented something new by adding Texas-style blues guitar to contemporary, dance-based pop music — raising eyebrows, expectations and bank accounts for all involved.
Vaughan plays lead guitar on several tracks, including two of the album's many mega-hits ("Let's Dance" and "China Girl"), but guitar-wise, the song that truly kicks collective ass is the less-famous "Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)." It's also got the album's healthiest serving of SRV; he solos in the middle, adds Albert King-style bends throughout and then solos near the end of the song.
Note that Bowie recorded two studio versions of this song in the early '80s; be sure to seek out the Let's Dance version (not that there's anything wrong with the other one).
WHILE YOU'RE AT IT: It just feels wrong to leave out the album's title track — which millions of people can credit as the first time they heard Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Welcome to the bonus page! Here are three extra tunes that feature Vaughan as the guest guitarist, each interesting in its own way.
Stevie Wonder, "Come Let Me Make Your Love Come Down," from Characters (1987)
While the Vaughan-heavy video below is promising, it's also misleading.
Sadly, the finished studio recording of this 1987 Stevie Wonder track features much less of Vaughan's playing, although he can be heard closer to the end of the song, going head to head with B.B. King. So make the most of this video!
Don Johnson, "Love Roulette," from Heartbeat (1986)
What's interesting about this one? First of all, Miami Vice star Don Johnson released an album in 1986. Second of all, he got Vaughan to play on it. Third of all, the album reached No. 17 on Billboard's Hot 100.
The album, Heartbeat, was a star-studded affair that also featured Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers Band, Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, Dweezil Zappa and Willie Nelson. Johnson eventually recorded one more album, 1989's Let It Roll.
Vaughan's solo on "Love Roulette," which you can check out below, starts around 2:51.
Brian Slawson, "Bumble Bee Blues," from Distant Drums (1988)
And then there's little-known but interesting gem — "Bumble Bee Blues" by jazzer Brian Slawson from his Distant Drums album from 1988. Check it out!
Photo: From Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: Stevie Ray Vaughan album cover
Damian Fanelli is the online managing editor at Guitar World. Follow him on Twitter.
Be sure to pick up the new March 2013 issue of Guitar World magazine, which features SRV on the cover and celebrates the 30th anniversary of Texas Flood. The issue also profiles the amps and effects in Vaughan's arsenal, dissects 10 Vaughan albums and discusses Vaughan's "Number One" Fender Strat. The new issue is available now at the Guitar World Online Store.
"Don't call it a comeback / I've been here for years."
So said LL Cool J in the title track from 1990's Mama Said Knock You Out, which came out when many fans and critics thought his career was just barely limping along.
The album turned out to be a massive critical and commercial success. So, with our apologies to Mr. Cool J, we are calling it comeback. Because a comeback — as defined here at Guitar World— is any critically and/or commercially successful or significant album that follows a career-altering absence (breakup, retirement) or low point (death of band members, "dead" careers, being dropped by your label, critical uber-flops, telling a London audience that you're ashamed that George W. Bush is from Texas ...).
So, with that in mind, here's our list of the 10 best (and worst) comeback albums of all time.
10. U2 — All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000)
The Set-Up: Sitting-on-top-of-the-world stadium rockers U2 took some chances in the '90s, releasing three adventurous, occasionally bizarre albums. The last of the bunch, 1997's Pop, the techno-, dance- and electronica-influenced culmination of their self-inflicted reinvention, was harshly panned and widely misunderstood. It was as if fans and critics collectively said, "Enough already, guys."
The Comeback:All That You Can't Leave Behind was, in every respect, a homecoming. With producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno back at the helm, the band returned to its classic sound (although brilliantly updated) with an emphasis on grand melodies and a renewed reliance on guitar, bass and drums. Rolling Stone called it U2's third masterpiece, next to The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby.
09. Allman Brothers Band — Brothers and Sisters (1973)
The Set-Up: Allman Brothers Band co-founder and slide guitar master Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident in late 1971 while the band was recording Eat A Peach. As if that wasn't terrible enough, bassist Berry Oakley was killed the same way — in the same Georgia town — one year later. Although the band — fortified by talented replacements — forged ahead, it was as if a dark cloud had found them and decided to stick around for a spell.
The Comeback: The album that would follow the band's tragedies, Brothers And Sisters, was, by far, their greatest success, settling in for five longs weeks at No. 1 on the U.S. albums chart. It also was a high point for guitarist Dickey Betts, whose composition, "Ramblin' Man," would become the band's only hit single, reaching No. 2 on the charts. The album featured two more eternal FM radio staples, "Southbound" and "Jessica," both written by Betts. Simply put, it was the band's — and Betts'— commercial high point.
08. Foo Fighters — Foo Fighters (1995)
The Set-Up: There's no doubt that Nirvana changed everything, and that by 1994 they were one of, if not the biggest band in the world. For a few years, all of the United States felt like Seattle, and the sale of thrift-store sweaters was at an all-time high. That is, until the suicide of lead singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain in April of that year.
The Comeback: It would take one hell of an effort for anything Dave Grohl released from that point on to not be considered a mere footnote in the history of Nirvana. The fact that we now know Grohl as one of the biggest personalities in rock — who also has shared the stage with the likes of Jimmy Page and plays in a band with John Paul Jones — is a testament to his tenacity and talent for crafting memorable hooks.
It could be argued that the second Foo Fighters album (and their first as a real band), The Colour and the Shape, is better suited for this position because it spawned the first mega-hits for the band, but the first Foos album was Dave Grohl playing everything himself, a lone man trying to forge ahead and create something meaningful after the demise of the biggest band on the planet. If that's not the meaning of a comeback, we don't know what is.
07. Metallica — Death Magnetic (2008)
The Set-Up: Napster, Tom Cruise film soundtracks, St. Anger. Let's face it, the turn of this century was not kind to Metallica when it came to public opinion.
Their latest, guitar-solo-free album had left fans more confused than betrayed, and the follow-up film, Some Kind of Monster, showed the band in a new, vulnerable light that left fans of Ride the Lightning scratching their heads. It would take one hell of an album to get the image of the band in group therapy talking about feelings out of the heads of fans.
The Comeback: Enter Death Magnetic. While the album itself was met with some criticism -- mainly for its over-compressed sound — there's no doubt that it re-ignited interest in the band's thrashier roots and made people forget about "I Disappear," perhaps for good. One might even venture to say that, had the band made another St. Anger or Load, the Big Four shows might not have ever happened. Can anyone imagine Kerry King, Dave Mustaine, Charlie Benante and others joining James and crew onstage for a rendition of "Tuesday's Gone"? Didn't think so.
06. Johnny Cash — American Recordings (1994)
The Set-Up: Although Johnny Cash never really went away (much like LL Cool J), during the 1980s, record sales and support from his longtime label, Columbia, were at all-time lows. After putting out a string of fine yet occasionally overproduced albums (Check out his cheesy cover of CCR's "Have You Ever Seen The Rain" from 1985's Rainbow album), Cash found himself without a label in the early '90s.
The Comeback: Enter Rick Rubin. The producer, known for his work with A-list hip-hop artists and heavy metal bands, offered Cash a contract with his label, American Recordings, and got right to work, stripping the Man in Black's sound down to the basics: voice and acoustic guitar. The album, considered his finest release since the late '60s, transformed Cash from museum piece to the ultimate in cool.
05. Aerosmith — Pump (1989)
The Set-Up: The early '80s were not kind to Aerosmith. The had band lost both their guitarists by the time of the recording of Rock in a Hard Place (you know, the album with Jimmy Crespo and Rick Dufay) and were in serious danger of being a footnote of '70s American rock.
Aerosmith in the mid-'80s can be summed up as this: When the movie This Is Spinal Tap came out, Steven Tyler actually thought the movie was about Aerosmith. In a 1997 interview, Brad Whitford was quoted as saying, "The first time Steven saw it, he didn't see any humor in it."
The Comeback: Sure, Run DMC gave them another taste of the spotlight, and Permanent Vacation gave us "Dude Looks Like a Lady" and "Rag Doll," but if anything is going to be called a comeback album for Aerosmith, it would have to be 1989's Pump.
Commercially, Pump does have a slight edge over Permanent Vacation, with the latter going a measely five-times platinum as opposed to Pump's seven-times, good enough to make it the second-best-selling Aerosmith album of all time behind Toys in the Attic. But beyond numbers, Pump just felt like an Aerosmith album (yes, even the horn section). That's not to knock the strong numbers on Permanent Vacation, but Steven Tyler singing about needing to get away to St. Tropez when the whole world was still wondering "Where were you?" may have been a bit premature.
04. John Lennon and Yoko Ono — Double Fantasy (1980)
The Set-Up: The mid-'70s weren't the best of times for John Lennon. He had endured a separation from Yoko Ono and a complicated lawsuit filed by Morris Levy (regarding breach of contract and the messy Roots / Rock 'n' Roll scandal), not to mention the disappointing — by former-Beatle standards — sales of his 1975 greatest-hits album, Shaved Fish.
So, after taking part in a recording session for Ringo Starr's 1976 Ringo's Rotogravure album, Lennon made the shift from rock star to house husband, living a private, tame existence at the Dakota in New York City with Ono and their 1-year-old son, Sean.
The Comeback: In 1980, after taking several years off, Lennon felt it was time to get back to work. Inspired and/or awakened by new music by Madness, The Pretenders and the B-52s, he decided it was "time to get out the old axe and wake the wife up," as he told Rolling Stone. The album he and Ono made, Double Fantasy, was the perfect comeback, representing a fresh start for a well-rested couple who were ready to greet the world again. The irony is that when Lennon was killed on December 8, 1980, Double Fantasy went from comeback to sad farewell.
03. Deep Purple — Perfect Strangers (1984)
The Set-Up: After releasing a string of heavy, successful albums between 1969 and 1973, including Deep Purple In Rock, Made In Japan and Machine Head, the classic "Mk II" lineup of Deep Purple — Ian Gillan (vocals), Ritchie Blackmore (guitar), Roger Glover (bass), Jon Lord (keyboards) and Ian Paice (drums) — basically just fizzled out. By the mid-'70s, when only Lord and Paice remained (David Coverdale, Tommy Bolin and Glenn Hughes had come onboard), the band was just a shell of its former self. Their lackluster late-1975 album, Come Taste the Band, was sonic proof of that. Deep Purple disbanded in 1976.
The Comeback: In 1984, Deep Purple regrouped — with the Mk II lineup, thankfully — and released Perfect Strangers, a major worldwide hit that went platinum in the U.S. The band reached back and dusted off its classic sound, spotlighting Gillan's ageless vocals and Blackmore's lightning-fast snake-charmer scales. The album spawned several radio hits and a tour that just kept on going — because people just couldn't taste enough of the band.
02. Ozzy Osbourne — Blizzard of Ozz (1980)
The Set-Up: After two less-than-stellar releases from Black Sabbath — 1975's Technical Ecstasy and 1976's Sabotage— Ozzy Osbourne took a brief break from the band to work on a project he called "Blizzard of Ozz." At the request of the band, Ozzy dropped the project to return to the band for the recording of 1978's Never Say Die!, which brought tensions in the band to a new high.
A myriad of drug problems and mounting tensions between Osbourne and Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi led to the group unanimously deciding to fire Ozzy. Within two years, the band had recorded Heaven and Hell with new vocalist Ronnie James Dio, which proved that the band could remain relevant without Osbourne. The question then became, could Ozzy pull himself out of the gutter and remain relevant as well?
The Comeback: It turns out all Ozzy needed was new management. Of course, not just any manager would do. It took then-girlfriend Sharon Arden (daughter of Sabbath manager Don Arden) to pull Ozzy out of his haze and set him to work on his "Blizzard of Ozz" project. With the help of bassist/lyricist Bos Daisley and a young guitar prodigy named Randy Rhoads, Ozzy finally finished the album, Blizzard of Ozz, which would re-ignite his career and eventually lead to his being one of the biggest personalities in rock and metal.
01. AC/DC — Back in Black (1980)
The Set-Up: In late 1979, AC/DC unleashed Highway to Hell on the world. While not a departure in sound from their previous albums, the production efforts and arrangement contributions of producer Mutt Lange, alongside the wry lyricism of lead singer Bon Scott and always-fiery guitar efforts of Angus Young, made Highway to Hell the band's most commercial success to date. Less than six months later, Scott was found dead in the back of a car, having choked to death on his own vomit.
The Comeback: Whether or not to continue the band without their charismatic frontman wasn't an easy choice for the remaining members of AC/DC, but after much soul-searching, the band recruited former Geordie singer Brian Johnson to try and fill the void left by Scott's death.
Johnson had his own troubles after joining the band, struggling to pen lyrics he felt were up to the lofty standards set by his predecessor. As fate would have it, a storm rolling in one night over the Bahamas, where the band had retreated to in order to write, inspired the opening lyrics to "Hells Bells," the opening track from the ultimate comeback album — not to mention the second-highest-selling album of all time — Back In Black.
Next: Honorable Mentions
Honorable Mentions
Iron Maiden – Brave New World
Eric Clapton – 461 Ocean Boulevard
Avenged Sevenfold - Nightmare
Alice in Chains – Black Gives Way To Blue
Van Halen – 5150
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication
Celtic Frost - Monotheist
Heaven & Hell - The Devil You Know
Judas Priest - Painkiller
Next: The Top 10 Worst Comeback Albums of All Time
Once upon a time, the mere act of strapping on an electric guitar and cranking up an amplifier marked one as an outsider, a rebellious badass who refused to live by the laws of a "decent" society.
But today's cookie-cutter rockers and forgettable pop janglers make studying for the priesthood seem like an edgier pursuit than playing guitar in a band.
Guitar World thought it might be instructive to salute some genuine rock weirdos — 25 individuals whose unique personalities and/or playing styles have been dictated not by popular trends, market research firms or knit-capped A&R guys, but by an all-consuming need to express themselves to the fullest.
Some have crashed and burned, especially when LSD was involved, and you probably wouldn't want to invite most them to dinner. But they're all colorful characters whose flying freak flags have contributed much to rock's rich tapestry.
Syd Barrett
Numerous books have been written about the late Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's original leader and rock's first serious acid casualty. His madcap antics range from the amusing (fixing Pat Boone with a murderous stare during an interview on Boone's TV show; styling his hair with Brylcreem and crushed Mandrax tablets) to the psychotic (locking a girlfriend in a bedroom for days with nothing to eat but crackers).
An incredibly inventive guitarist who combined an unorthodox slide technique with various echo units to create a truly "interstellar" sound, Syd unfortunately became synonymous with "losing one's shit entirely."
Hasil Adkins
The wildest one-man band in the history of recorded music, the late Hasil Adkins cranked out warped rockabilly paeans to sex, dancing and decapitation for many decades.
A manic-depressive lover man whose diet consisted entirely of meat, nicotine and endless cups of coffee, the Haze liked to scare visitors to his rural Appalachian abode with his collection of mannequin heads, and had been known to send unsolicited copies of his new records to the White House.
True connoisseurs of weirdness (including the Cramps, who covered Hasil's "She Said") worshiped his every primal clang and growl.
Buckethead
This reclusive, robotic guitarist (whose personal brand of shred encompasses the most out-there elements of art rock, heavy metal, hip-hop and free jazz) is never seen in public without a white mask on his face or a fried-chicken bucket on his head.
According to legend, the latter helps him harness the spirits of all slain and martyred chickens, without which he is powerless.
Buckethead has visited Disneyland hundreds of times (He even claims to have jammed with Haunted Mansion house band) and dreams of building his own surreal theme park, Bucketheadland. For more on that, head here.
Roky Erickson
Guitarist and founding member of the world's first psychedelic band, the 13th Floor Elevators, Erickson has claimed at times to be from Mars, and his songs are filled with convincing references to aliens, demons and reincarnation.
Busted for pot in 1969, he tried to beat the rap by pleading insanity. Although his habit of tripping four to five times a day might have already qualified Erickson for the nuthouse, the ensuing three-year incarceration (complete with Thorazine and shock treatments) in Texas' Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane certainly didn't help.
Roky recorded prolifically in the Seventies and Eighties, but he currently spends most of his time at home.
Roy Wood
The very definition of "weird beard," Wood has always cut a uniquely hirsute figure in the world of English rock. A worrying number of his songs for Sixties psych-pop legends the Move dealt with paranoia, insanity and mental anguish and allegedly resulted from the band's manager instructing Wood to "write about what you know."
An inventive guitarist capable of everything from shuddering power chords to delicate classical filigrees, Wood spent much of the Seventies cranking out Phil Spector-meets-Sha-Na-Na Fifties pastiches with Wizzard, doubtless scarring countless impressionable youngsters for life with his hideous glam-clown makeup.
Ace Frehley
Like the man himself, former Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley's playing remains maddeningly unpredictable — to this day, he can sound like a teenager who's just picked up his first electric — but he always injected Kiss with a jolt of electricity.
Ace's coked-out 1978 self-titled solo LP perfectly encapsulates his "life is one big joke" philosophy, but it's also one of the great bonehead rock albums of all time, right up there with the first Ramones record and Foghat Live.
Glenn Ross Campbell
The visionary behind Sixties garage-psych ravers the Misunderstood, Campbell could barely play a chord on a six-string guitar. But armed with a pedal steel and a fuzz box, he produced a mind-blowing squall that sounded like the missing link between Jeff Beck's work with the Yardbirds and Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced.
Inspired by his spiritually oriented mother, Campbell and his band toyed with the vibrational effects of feedback and light, sending unsuspecting audiences in to a communal trance with the sensory overload of their powerful performances. Sadly the Vietnam War draft destroyed the band after it had waxed only a handful of tracks.
Zal Cleminson
A visual cross between the Joker of Batman fame and Ronald McDonald, Cleminson was the musical lynchpin of Scottish glam terrorists the Sensation Alex Harvey Band.
Cleminson's contorted, grease-painted mug, green Lurex body stocking and synchronized dance moves invariably provoked an avalanche of catcalls and projectiles from audiences who didn't appreciate the SAHB's theatrical bent — ditto the band's "talent show" routine, wherein Cleminson recited Shakespeare while tap-dancing.
But his deft fretwork and monstrously fat sound endeared him to mid-Seventies rock fans with a taste for something beyond the usual arena fodder.
Dave Davies
Slashing his speakers to create that distorted "You Really Got Me" sound, Davies has clearly been thinking outside the box from the early Kinks days onward.
In the late Seventies, Davies became deeply interested in telepathy and mental visualization, and claims to have used these concepts to energize or heal concert audiences many times since then. In 1982, he was telepathically contacted by "five distinct intelligences" from another dimension, who significantly enhanced his consciousness and taught him the principles of "etheric magnetism."
Davies loves to scan the skies for UFOs, and extraterrestrial elements abound on Purusha and the Spiritual Planet, the techno/dance/New Age record he recorded in 1998 with is son Russell.
Euronymous
The mustachioed fret-mangler for Mayhem, Norway's original black metal band, Euronymous spent most of his downtime concocting explosive potions in his home laboratory, or presiding over pagan rituals and orgies in the basement of Hell, his Oslo record store.
When Mayhem's lead singer blew his own brains out with a shotgun, the guitarist harvested the scattered grey matter from the suicide scene, then gleefully ate it in a stew of ham, vegetables and paprika. The accumulated bad karma finally caught up with Euronymous in 1993, when he was stabbed to death by Count Grishnackh of rival black metal purveyors Burzum.
Link Wray
An intimidating enigma in dark shades, greasy pompadour and a black leather jacket, Link waxed guitar instrumentals so pungently crude, one of 'em (the 1958 hit "Rumble") was even banned on numerous radio station for being "too suggestive."
After losing a lung in his twenties to tuberculosis, Link let his cheap-ass guitars do most of the talking — or swearing, as the case may be. In the Fifties, he freaked out more than a few studio engineers with his primitive fuzz tone, achieved by punching holes in the speaker of his Premier amplifier.
Peter Green
The tastiest guitarist to emerge from the British blues boom of the Sixties, Peter Green was also the most troubled.
Originally a brash and arrogant player, the Fleetwood Mac founder decimated his ego with numerous LSD binges and became deeply uncomfortable with is modicum of fame and fortune. He gave most of his money and belonging away to charity — and unsuccessfully tried to convince his bandmates to do the same — and took to wearing flowing robes and crucifixes.
Green left the band in 1970 and was later institutionalized, where his schizophrenia was only worsened by repeated shock treatments. Although he still records and performs, the psychic scars from his ordeal remain.
Paul Leary
Ever the straight man to Gibby Haynes' psychotic jester, Leary gave up his stockbroker ambitions to wreak sonic vengeance on the world as the Butthole Surfers' lead guitarist.
With his permanently dilated pupils and Rockettes-style leg kicks — and, for a brief period, a hot-pink "sideways Mohawk"— Leary would have been the resident freak in any other band, but he was typically overshadowed by Haynes' lysergic meltdowns and the Buttholes' collection of surgical-training films.
Still, there was no denying the potency of Leary's bad-trip guitar grind, or his propensity for smashing and setting fire to his instruments at the beginning of a show. As he explained to Guitar World in 1991, "Why wait for the end, you know?"
Bryan Gregory
No one who saw Bryan Gregory onstage with the Cramps will forget the arresting spectacle of the stick-thin guitarist coaxing scorching feedback from a polka-dot Flying V (several years before Randy Rhoads wielded one!) while wiggling his ass and flicking lit cigarettes into the crowd.
With his pockmarked skin, viciously pointy fingernails and impossibly long bleached fringe, Gregory looked like a Times Square hooker returned from the dead, thus accomplishing the impressive feat of making bandmates Lux Interior and Poison Ivy seem positively normal.
Gregory allegedly left the band to join a snake-handling cult, though the Cramps have always maintained that his exit was drug related.
Wes Borland
It's one thing to put on a mask or makeup when everybody else in your band is doing it; it's another thing entirely to dress up as a randy satyr or acid-crazed monkey when the rest of your bandmates are all backward-baseball cap-wearin' slobs.
In Limp Bizkit, Borland's individualism extended not just to bizarre getups and mind-bending guitar noise but also to his very public discomfort with the band's dumbed-down shtick. Wes also has channeled his ADD-fueled energy into considerably more twisted projects like Goatslayer, Big Dumb Face and Eat the Day.
Jeff "Skunk" Baxter
Worried about American coming under missile attack from evildoers in faraway lands? No doubt you'll sleep easier knowing Jeff "Skunk" Baxter is counseling our elected officials on missile defense. That's right - he beret-wearing former Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan guitarist currently works for the U.S. Department of Defense as an adviser to the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.
Baxter apparently immersed himself in defense manuals and technical weapons texts while his bandmates were out partying, and now peppers his interviews with anecdotes that begin, "When I was in Afghanistan — well, I can't tell you why I was in Afghanistan, but when I was in Afghanistan..."
Robert Quine
The unlikeliest guitar hero to emerge from the New York City punk scene, the bald, bearded and bespectacled Quine looked more like a lawyer than a lead guitarist — before joining Richard Hell & the Voidoids, he'd actually spent three years writing tax law for Prentice Hall Publishing.
But Quine's musical presence was commanding as hell, and his ability to whip off the most mind-bendingly surreal solos without breaking a sweat won him work with such notorious hard-to-please figures as John Zorn, Tom Waits and Lou Reed.
And on Reed's The Blue Mask, Quine did something no guitarist has accomplished before or since: get a killer tone out of Peavey Bandit amplifier.
Tawl Ross
A sorely underrated player in the annals of P-Funkdom, rhythm guitarist Lucius "Tawl" Ross turned on George Clinton to the high-energy sounds of fellow Detroiters and the Stooges and the MC5, and his distorted, protopunk riffs perfectly complimented Eddie Hazel's freaky leads on the first three Funkadelic albums.
Tawl's voyage on the Mothership came to an abrupt ending 1971, following a tête-à-tête he'd had with his long-dead mother while tripping on a winning combination of raw speed and at least six hits of pure LSD. Though he briefly resurfaced int he Nineties, Tawl Ross essentially remains the Syd Barrett of funk.
Skip Spence
The West Coast psychedelic scene's answer to Syd Barrett, Alexander "Skip" Spence was a free spirit who took a serious wrong turn in 1968 during the recording of Moby Grape's second album: believing a bandmate to be possessed by Satan, Skip tried to "save" him with a fire ax.
After a stint in New York City's Bellevue Hospital, he wrote and played everything on Oar, a thoroughly deranged amalgam of folk, blues and psychedelia that's since become a cult classic. Unfortunately, Oar marked his last period of prolonged semi-lucidity; doomed to battle schizophrenia and substance abuse issues, Skip was in and out of various institutions until his death from cancer in 1999.
Ricky Wilson
Everyone associates B-52's with Fred Schneider's campy bark and the bewigged antics of Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson, but these perennial new wave faces wouldn't have gone far without the twangy licks of Cindy's guitarist brother, Ricky.
Heavily influenced by the disparate likes of Captain Beefheart and Joni Mitchell, Ricky (who allegedly learned guitar by playing along to TV commercials) used a variety of weird-ass tunings on his old Mosrite, dispensing with the D and G strings entirely.
At a time when Dire Straits and Van Halen ruled the rock roost, Ricky's thrift shop, surf-meets-spaghetti western sound was a total revelation.
Hound Dog Taylor
Born with six fingers on each hand, Theodore Roosevelt "Hound Dog" Taylor once drunkenly tried to remove his extra digits with a razor blade. Thankfully, he was only partially successful, leaving his left hand intact to execute his wild Elmore James-in-crystal meth slide runs.
Despite his clownish stage persona, Hound Dog loved to fight with his bandmates, and even wounded HouseRockers guitarist Brewer Phillips with a handgun when one dissing session got out of hand. A devotee of $50 pawnshop guitars and busted amps, Hound Dog rarely practiced, and he never performed sober. "When I die," he sagely predicted, "they'll say, 'He couldn't play shit, but he sure made it sound good!'"
Marc Bolan
He claimed to know only five chords, but nobody ever whipped a Les Paul with as much effete elan as the TRex main man. The bisexual elf's Freudian fixation on guitar flagellation began during his stint with mod provocateurs John's Children (wherein he routinely beat his ax with chains during live shows) and continued long after he'd morphed from acoustic folkie to high-heeled glam warrior.
Bolan's weirdo credentials were more confirmed by his impressive string of gibberish-laden hits — songs like "Metal Guru,""Hot Love" and "Telegram Sam" so brilliantly walked the line between genius and idiocy, no one is sure to this day which is which.
Jim Martin
"I'm from outer space and I'm here to kill you all," was a favorite between-song threat of the erstwhile Faith No More guitarist, and frankly it wasn't hard to believe him.
With his Furry Freak Brother beard and man — the latter gradually turning into an unsightly "reverse Mohawk," thanks to pattern baldness — his penchant for wearing several pairs of sunglasses at once and his unapologetic love for classic rock, "Big Sick Ugly Jim" always seemed the odd man out in the groundbreaking funk-metal band.
Since parting ways with FNM in 1994, the reclusive Martin as lent his searing tones to a handful of projects but his main interest seems to be growing giant pumpkins that tip the scales at well over 800 pounds.
Bobby Beausoleil
The pretty boy of the Manson Family (Charles, not Marilyn), Beausoleil was a talented musician who played rhythm guitar in Arthur Lee's Love, back when they were still known as the Grass Roots. In 1967, Beausoleil landed a gig playing guitar and sitar for the Magick Powerhouse of Oz, and 11-piece rock band formed by filmmaker Kenneth Anger to provide soundtrack to his occult film Lucifer Rising.
After a headed argument, Beausoleil stole Anger's car, camera equipment and 1,600 feet of his film — the latter of which he gave to Manson, who buried it in the desert and demanded $10,000 in ransom. While in prison, Beausoleil has built a wide array of electronic instruments, including the Syntar, a stringless, digital, touch-controlled guitar.
Angus Young
Angus is such an established member of the rock pantheon, most of us don't even flinch when AC/DC's diminutive lead axman duck-walks across the stage in full schoolboy drag, despite the fact the dude is several decades past his 16th birthday.
But how's this for a job description: not only do you sport a velvet jacket-shorts-and-cap look on a nightly basis but you do it while playing impossibly loud blues licks, punctuating each performance with a striptease and a full moon of the audience. If that isn't a weird way to make your living for nearly 30 years, we don't know what is.
Guitar World presents everything you need to turn your smartphone or tablet into an extension of your guitar, including apps that will advance your playing, improve your tone, record your songs and maybe teach you something along the way.
Everything you need to get playing is already on your phone or tablet. You just need the app to get it going. GuitarToolKit is that app.
It offers a tuner, an interactive and extensive chord chart, a drum-machine-like metronome and other features to get you on the right track.
It can be customized for seven- and 12-string instruments, basses, banjos, mandolins and more, making it a go-to resource for the building blocks of metal, country, jazz or beyond. It was even designed with lefties in mind.
You’ve diligently learned Dimebag Darrell’s solo to “Cemetery Gates,” but a day before the big gig your singer finally admits he can’t actually reach the really, really high note Phil Anselmo sings toward the end of the song.
No worries. TabToolKit lets you upload and download tab files and transpose them to any key to suit the rest of your bandmates.
The beautifully designed app also offers standard and tab notation, MIDI multitrack playback for full scores, instrument guides (for learning fretboard placement) and more. No matter where you, you can be a Cowboy from Hell.
Guitar Tabs are an essential part of learning, so it would only make sense that guitarists would want to access every single one of Ultimate-Guitar’s more than 600,000 tabs on a whim.
Better yet, the app can play the music to the site’s 150,000-plus Tab Pro offerings with loop and tempo control, and it offers a tuner, metronome and chord library.
If you regularly visit JamPlay online for its video guitar lessons, you’ll love JamPlay Mobile, which brings hundreds of guitar lessons for beginning and experienced players of acoustic and electric guitar to your mobile device.
The app provides access to instructional videos and backing tracks, as well as utilities like chord and scale libraries, a metronome and a tuner. The chord library features thousands of chord voices with audio playback, while the scale library provides scales in all 12 keys, also with audio playback. Best of all, new lessons and backing tracks are added frequently, with no app updates or fees required.
Despite what your guitar teacher might have told you, your whammy bar will never let you sound exactly like Johnny & Santo playing “Sleepwalk” on a steel guitar (unless you happen to be Jeff Beck). But Steel Guitar will.
This fun app lets you simulate the experience with its easy-to-operate emulations of lap, eight-string, Nashville- and Texas-style steel guitars, as well as a number of distortion and effects options.
Although pricey by basic app standards, Chord! offers a comprehensive interactive chord encyclopedia based on interval relationships, giving users many different inversions and fingerings.
It also offers interactive scales with alternate fingering and optional piano displays. Next time your jazz-bo keyboard player starts jamming on a C major 13 chord, you can find the perfect scale in which to improvise.
When it comes to practice, nothing beats playing with a full ensemble.
The Guitar Jam Tracks series of apps provide full-band backing tracks for rock, reggae, jazz, “humbucker blues” and acoustic blues, delivering the ultimate experience in woodshedding. App developer Ninebuzz also offers a Scale Trainer & Practice Buddy app for $4.99.
In addition to the five previously mentioned styles, it includes an in-app purchase option for Garage Rock and the ability to float in tracks you’ve written in GarageBand and other apps.
Since inspiration often strikes at inconvenient times, GarageBand can be a songwriter’s most invaluable tool, especially if you’re far away from your instrument.
With realistic-sounding virtual-guitar tones that can be strummed as chords, regimented into scales (including exotic-sounding Klezmer and “South-East Asian” scales) or played as standard fretted notes, GarageBand makes it easy to sketch out song ideas. It also offers amps and effects to suit practically any kind of music.
And because it offers simulated bass, drums, keyboards, strings, a sampler and even a virtual amp that you can plug into using an audio interface, you can write full demos and even smartly produced and mixed songs.
Recording enthusiasts know the power of the “bus” on a console: it’s what keeps everything connected.
Now a recording-obsessed app developer has created a program that works like a bussing system between music apps, allowing users ostensibly to rout the signals from numerous apps—including AmpKit, Amplitube, StompBox and Animoog (see all below)—into GarageBand or other recording apps. Finally, your tone is always at your fingertips.
Earlier this year, guitarist Alex Skolnick told Guitar World that he uses AmpKit+ almost religiously for warm-ups, whether he’s running through the blazing solos and riffs that he’s co-written with Testament or the jazzy chordings and improv ideas he plays in his eponymous trio.
That’s because AmpKit+ replicates the sounds of four amps—the Peavey ValveKing and 3120, as well as vintage “British” and “Colonel” amps—and the effects of 10 stomp boxes, plus mic and cabinet options. In-app purchases include more options, such as the Peavey 6505+, but those on a budget can check out the free version of AmpKit, which offers the ValveKing and a pared-down selection of effects.
Either way, you’ll need Peavey’s AmpKit LiNK, which ranges from $19.99 to $99.99, depending on the model. Like other apps mentioned here, AmpKit+ has Audiobus support.
Like the PC and Mac programs of the same name, IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube offers digital stomp boxes and selectable head, cab and mic options.
App users can mix and match 11 stomp boxes, five amps, five cabs and two mics in the full version and a more basic rig in the free edition of the app.
In-app purchase options include a handy four-track recorder and a few more effects for writing on the go. Also available are branded versions of AmpliTube that offer the unique sounds of Slash, Jimi Hendrix and Fender amps for $14.99. Like AmpKit, AmpliTube requires its own endemic interface, the iRig, which retails for $39.99, and it has Audiobus support
The DigiTech Stomp Shop app is the perfect companion to DigiTech’s iStomp stomp box.
The iStomp, which costs $149, is a standard-size pedal that can be completely reconfigured by loading in any of DigiTech’s growing list of e-pedals, which include reverbs, choruses, delays, various DigiTech and DOD effects, and much more. The iStomp performs all of the effect processing internally and comes with 10 free e-pedals.
Of course, you’ll want to add more, which is where the Stomp Shop app comes in. Once you have it on your iPod, iPhone or iPad, simply connect the device to the iStomp with the DigiTech Smart Cable, and start buying and downloading new effects from the e-pedal store in about as long as it takes to purchase a song.
a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/digitech-stomp-shop/id481957668?mt=8">Harman International Industries, free
While its graphics resemble a multi-effect pedal, they can also can replicate the look of rack-mountable gear, giving guitarists several approaches to dialing in the perfect tone and experimenting with the signal chain.
StompBox contains 17 effects, including seven types of distortion and a Whammy-style pedal, as well as tools like a four-track loop recorder, a metronome and a tuner.
You can chain up to 12 simultaneous effects, save 12 banks of six patches and do much more. Plus, StompBox works with various connectors, including the iRig and AmpKit LiNK, and has AudioBus support.
Taylor EQ lets you enhance the sound of any Taylor guitar to get the most out of it.
Select from a range of EQ presets designed by Taylor Guitars engineers to optimize the tone of Taylor’s signature body shapes, including the GA, GS, GC, dreadnought, T5 and GS Mini.
The app is also customizable with a six-band parametric EQ and a useful compressor-limiter. It’s versatile, too, since it will work with many iOS guitar adapters, but developer Sonoma Wire Works offers its own GuitarJack for $149.
Why should keyboard players have all the fun? With Shredder, any guitarist can turn his ax into a synth, with no special pickup required.
The app boasts a true analog synth engine that’s fully programmable, with two oscillators, a three-pass resonant filter, dual individually configurable LFOs and much more.
Shredder includes several signature effect stomp boxes, a harmonizer that builds up to three intervals and, with the right connector, MIDI compatibility.
FourTrack offers a portable recording studio on your iPad for less than what a block of cassettes would have cost you at the peak of four-track fever.
Better yet, it sounds better than your dad’s old Portastudio, since it records at CD quality, and offers a metronome as well as drum beats by Death Cab for Cutie’s Jason McGerr.
And since it’s made by the same developers who created Taylor EQ (see above), it offers that app’s functions (as well as those of GuitarTone, another amp and effects modeling app) and it interfaces with the company’s GuitarJack port.
For those who enjoy multitracking at its most primal, Overdub lets you record sounds and get that fuzzy, vintage quality when overdubbing with them. It’s great for artists who work with loops and for indie-rockers who like a little grit in their recordings.
The app even feels like a recording relic, thanks to cassette imagery (with a Memorex tape on display!) and groovy fast-forward, eject and tracking sounds.
Savageapps made a splash with iAmBeatBox, an app that lets you create loop-oriented tunes with an innovative “magic gem” interface.
iAmGuitar is a different sort of creature but no less interesting, turning your iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad into a virtual guitar that you can pick and strum. Choose between an electric guitar or six- and 12-string acoustic variations, select the key in which you want to play and press the chord “buttons” on the virtual fretboard.
Strumming at the edges of the screen produces quieter tones, and velocity strumming allows for realistic playing dynamics. For on-the-go fun or songwriting, iAmGuitar is a player’s perfect companion.
Admit it: You love playing guitar, but some part of you wishes you could add some killer back-up vocals to your band.
Or maybe even just kick your singer out altogether and take the reins.
For those of us still building confidence, vocal coaches Susan and Wolf Carr—whose client list has included members of Alice in Chains, Mastodon, Modest Mouse and Grizzly Bear—have developed an iPhone-only app that offers vocal warm-ups for practically every singing style that will set you on your path to the mic stand.
Drum machines have a long lineage in rock, having filled the drum stool at some point for artists like the Jesus and Mary Chain, Smashing Pumpkins, Big Black and Godflesh.
And while many guitarists might recoil from the idea of learning how a drum kit works, a drum machine, like the one replicated in the DM-1 app, makes for a workable alternative for people who cannot (or will not) work with a drummer.
This intuitive app is MIDI friendly and offers samples from 86 electronic kits, 21 vintage sets and 65 in-house-produced sounds, each with customizable effects for making full song sequences.
Developed by Moog—the company that revolutionized sound in the Sixties with its commercially successful modular synthesizers—Animoog mimics the functions of a real Moog synthesizer.
You can create sounds from scratch using the graphical XY screen and sync what you play to MIDI (using an in-app purchase) and record right in the program. AudioBus support means you can direct Animoog’s sounds to other apps for even more mind-blowing sonic fun.
Developed in association with Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess, Tachyon lets you blend the timbres of any two instruments—piano, electric guitar, industrial buzz-saw sounds and so on—in any octave range and then play the resulting hybrid.
Ever wanted to play a guitar-violin? Here’s your chance.
Even cooler, as you slide your fingers over the screen, a field of twinkling stars morphs into the shape of the instrument you’ve selected to play.
Developed for the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Guitar Heroes exhibit in 2011, Met Guitars is a multimedia treasure trove of information on the history of our favorite instrument.
Video features focus on early guitars from Northern Italy and New York and go in-depth on the accomplishments of luthiers John D’Angelico, James D’Aquisto and John Monteleone. The app includes demonstrations that include audio of Chet Atkins playing a 1950 D’Angelico, and interviews with Monteleone.
Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the Quiet Beatle’s gear gets a thorough examination in this app, licensed by the Harrison Estate.
Full 360-degree imaging allows you to see the Gretsch, Rickenbacker, Fender and other guitars Harrison used, as well as the dings and scratches.
Beatles enthusiasts will also marvel at audio introductions to the guitars by Harrison himself and at the nerdy, in-depth histories the developers included for each instrument and witty commentary by Conan O’Brien and insightful memories by George’s son, Dhani.
There’s nothing like a little Jimi Hendrix to inspire you. Now you can get a regular dose of his genius right on your phone, courtesy of The Complete Experience. The app provides succinct overviews of the six-string revolutionary’s biography, discography, studio life and more, and it plays some of his greatest recorded moments to give you the motivation you need.
Wow … had to dust off the ol’ cassette deck for this one! Sure, faster shredders may have been left off this list, but arpeggio for arpeggio, these 10 albums strike the finest balance between tasteful melody and, “No way did he just play that!”
Note: For those of you born after 1985, a cassette is a small, flat plastic cartridge that contains a spool of 1/8-inch audiotape. Cassette players, although now nearly obsolete, are most commonly found in cheap rental cars.
10. Greg Howe (Shrapnel, 1988)Greg Howe A funk-savvy speedster, Greg Howe injected the shred scene with some much-needed shake and soul. The funkdafied “Kick It All Over” kicks off the festivities, and the following track, “The Pepper Shake,” offers a spicy display of Howe’s legato and alternate-picking chops.
09. Speed Metal Symphony (Shrapnel, 1987)CacophonySpeed Metal Symphony, a mighty opus featuring first-chair guitar virtuosos Marty Friedman and Jason Becker, uses “speed metal” rhythm beds and shifting time signatures to help break up the cacophonous onslaught of all-out shred.
To see the rest of the list, check out the photo gallery below!
