rock and roll musings by Tim Byrnes

GUITAR NOTES: THOUGHTS ON MAGNETS, WOOD AND WIRE

     Earlier this week I received an email from a cyber-aquaintance I regularly argue with on a nearby Christian-themed messageboard. Through  some overzealous routing by a mutual friend, distressed that the board was 'down', I received this message at my personal email address. This message, among others, was sent not only to myself but to various other 'members' of the board and they all related to what records we'd been listening to recenlty. My aquaintance, Jim, (I'd call him a cyber-friend but, basically I don't like him) sent a post singing the praises of Rush. To which I sent a somewhat snotty reply, being the farthest thing from a Rush fan in many, many counties.

     Basically what I said was 'Xians are one thing, but I gotta draw the line at Rush fans'. Tongue planted firmly in cheek I sent the message, thinking it would go to everyone on the list, but apparently my C.A. Jim was the only one to get this reply. And he got a little mad. Going to the newly ressurrected (ironic, huh?) mesage board later that day I found a reply from Jim which asked me the following, very good question.

     "Oh", it read, "and I suppose the guitar player in the Sex Pistols is better than Alex Lifeson?"

      Well, my first reaction was a less than subtle 'Hell, yeah" and I eventually replied about as much, but it got me to thinking, as the best cyberwarfare is wont to do. Now, I've been playing guitar for, oh my goodness, 35 years or so and I have a certain amount of technique and, as a rabid student of this music's history from both a musicological as well as a socialogical perspective and I've come to the conclusion that technique, while admirable, is less than even half the equation when it comes to making music that moves people.

     I'm not immune to the realities of Rush's musicianship, hell I know a good technician when I hear one, it's just that Rush, and 'prog rock' in general - with the possible exception of King Crimson - leaves me cold. Plain and as simple as that. However, the 3 to 4 chord manic bashing of, say, the Sex Pistols' Steve Jones, resonates in glory from the garage of my heart and soul. While I completely understand Jim's (and others') perplexity at my preference of a Jones to a Lifeson, mainly because the converse is true in my little world; how can anyone not like the Sex Pistols etc., I just don't share, among many, many other things with Jim, the conviction that more technique makes for a better guitarist.

     So what makes a great guitarist? To me it's a matter of trust. Is the player giving me all he/she's got and does he/she mean it? See technique is, by definition, quantifiable and measureable. Can the guitarist play 32nd note triplets against a 7/8 time signature? While sweep picking arpeggios? How developed is his/her sense of harmony? Like anything else quantifiable and measureable,  attaining the higher reaches is very, very difficult, but can be done by anyone with the manual dexterity, time and willingness to expend the effort. Yes, you too can be Yngwie J. Malmsteen with enough sweat equity!

     But as we all know (except for Yngwie himself and several counties in Florida) Yngwie has been releasing the same record for, what? 25 years now? Admittedly these records are filled with flawless neo-classical guitar playing, but unfortunatley in the service of songs that even a Neanderthal would call throwbacks. I purchased an Yngwie record, 'Oddyssey' I think, about 20 years ago and never made it through the entire record. While I did indeed marvel at the fretboard gymnastics the young Swede is obviously capable of, the novelty wore off rather quickly because, under the flash and melodicisms was very little beyong sub-Bad Company sexual rhetoric and chest thumping, mind numbing heavy metal.

     There, I've said it. Heavy Metal. The whole scene is rife with technically (more than) adept guitarists who have been spinning the same wheel for far too long, at least by my reckoning. Randy Rhodes? Same thing. Brilliant technician, but I can't sit through 2 verses and a chorus of Ozzy's pathetic bleatings to get to the guitar solo. Context, as the man said is everything, and try as I may, I cannot remove the solos from the songs and appreciate what so many 'technical' guitarists have been throwing down for years now. All because all the technique in the world will not, cannot, make any difference if the player is out of ideas and treading once again over well traveled territory.

       Now having said all that, I have to mention the exceptions that proves the rule: ACDC have indeed been releasing the same record for over 20 years, as have bands like the Ramones and ZZ Top. The difference is, I like ACDC's record, as well as the Ramones' - still not wild about ZZ Top - and while Angus Young has technique up the wazoo (especially his vibrato, criminally under-rated), he never sounds like he's playing just to look at his fingers. There's a heart connected to the scales and runs in Angus' case, in Johnny Ramone's case and in Billy Gibbon's case. They each tell their own story (as does Lifeson, I suppose, just that his story tells me nothing) and work withing a pre-chosen framework. Hey, not all of us can have the stylistic breadth of, say, Chuck Berry, but Berry brought more to the table than playing guitar  like a-ringing a bell. He brought poetry. Yngwie J Malmsteen (Millionaire, I own a mansion and a yacht!) simply doesn't.

     Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, much like Johnny Thunders before him in the New York Dolls, brought the Chuck Berry vocabulary into a new world, kicking and screaming and serving new purpose. Far from the almost country/western gait of 'Maybelline' or even the street corner sway of 'Personality Crisis', the guitar on 'Bollocks' burned like an electrical storm and served notice to a complacent rock and roll (lulled to a virtual sleep by megalithic, bloated bands like Zeppelin and yes, Rush) that a new sherrif was in town and it didn't give a rats ass about technique, because communication was key. Connection was key. Breaking down the artist/audience barrier was key. And while watching a vastly 'better' (more technically proficient) guitarist might be more impressive in a generally athletic way, rock and roll is art and as such needs to tell the listener something other than 'I'm a better guitar player than you."

     So yes, I think Steve Jones is a 'better' guitar player than Alex Lifeson because I feel that what he brings to the world is better, as in more good, more righteous, if you will. There's more emotion, to me, in the roar of a player who's barely holding on to the song, but means it from every fiber of his being than the thousands of hours of dweedly dweedle commited to time by players like Lifeson and Malmsteen. Again, as a guitarist, I do appreciate technique in the service of something higher, such as can be found in the work of Steve Vai (a very spiritual cat, his weedwhacking tells a story, at least to me.), Eric Johnson (a beautifully lyrical player, very Bill Nelson although, much like Nelson, I wish he wouldn't write lyrics.), the ever-amazing Jeff Beck (as Richie Blacmore once said 'He's got notes on his guitar that just aren't on mine!), the undeservedly obscure Richard Thompson (think Mark Knopfler will balls), Robert Fripp ( the thinking man's rock player) and the list goes on. Well, actually that's about it on technically adept players for me.

      But when, say, Neil Young is bending that high E string on the 21st fret for the 25th time in 'Cortez the Killer' I don't care about technique, I am moved by the power of that solo. When Lou Reed knelt down in front of his Peavy Bandit in 1983 at the Bottom Line urging waves of feedback to flow over our heads, yes, anyone could do it, but he did and I was moved by the power of that solo. When Sonic Youth in all their glory, bash and smash detuned Fender Jaguars into submission and create a whole new sound, I am moved by the creation, not the means by which it was created. Hell, Bruce Springsteen's played things that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, something neither Lifeson nor Malmsteen have ever been able to do!

     And if I live to be 199, I'll never 'get' Rush, but then Jim'll probably never 'get' the Sex Pistols either so I guess we're even.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 19:05 | link | comments (3)

Comments:

#1  09 December 2005 - 19:59

 

Wait a minute, tim.... you mean you DON'T like your "dark side" after all???

:P

Seriously, good thoughts.

burninglight

#2  20 December 2005 - 10:05

 

Tim,
Found your blog completely by accident but was quickly sucked in due to your location (I'm a near-Boulder native) and musical tastes (I used to be the rock/pop/kitchen sink crit at a daily paper in Denver eons ago) and the fact that we're about the same age.
Anyway, your Rush vs Pistols piece is a masterpiece. Wish I'd written it way back when after getting hate mail for what I thought was a fairly reasoned slag of Getty Lee et al at Fiddler's Green. Sigh.
I think the opening act had a guy who ''played'' a chainsaw...

Anonymous

#3  20 December 2005 - 12:05

 

i second that emotion

howard

Comments: