The music industry creates more stars than any other activity. If we actually think about it then a lot of our biggest heroes, idols and influences will be musicians. That’s not even taking into account just how much the music itself can influence us too. 

Of all the different genres and instruments it’s undoubtedly guitar music that is most well known. Guitarists have dominated the music scene since the 1950s with a wide variety of genres being blended together to create something unique. Guitarists of 50 years ago, and the music they created, is still having a profound impact on musicians today and what’s being produced. 

When we think of the best guitarists then a few names clearly spring to mind. Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen all were incredible writers, players and performers with their own unique style. These household names continue to dominate the guitar world and will likely continue to do so for another few decades at least. 

But what about the less well known names? Who else is producing the music that we love to listen to and why don’t we know about them? This article is about giving recognition to some of the hardest working musicians in the world. They may not have achieved universal stardom like the guitar heroes of the past, but they have still achieved a lot. Let’s take a look at the top 10.

10. Keb’ Mo’

Considering just how much Keb’ Mo’ has achieved in his career it’s amazing he isn’t a household name. Born Kevin Roosevelt Moore in Nashville Tennessee, Keb is an American blues musician who sings, plays and writes music. 

Keb is known for his catchy and easy to listen to music. While he primarily plays acoustic, he’s also incredible on electric guitar and can produce a wide variety of sounds. That coupled with his voice makes him great to listen to. You may check some popular electric on Guitarlisty.

Keb has released 13 solo albums and won 4 grammy awards. He’s had fairly consistent success for the last 35 years and continues to grow in popularity. 

9. Mark Tremonti

Given his track record and history, Mark Tremonti should really be a well known name. Mark was the lead songwriter and guitarist for Alter Bridge and Creed, two of the most well known and highest profit bands of all time. He’s also produced a number of solo albums which have been well received. 

Outside of his impressive song writing abilities, Mark is an incredibly talented player. He’s performed some of the most complex and interesting solos we’ve heard in the last decade, absolutely shredding the strings in live performances across the country.

Mark Tremonti has won several awards and was even named guitarist of the year by Guitar World magazine for 3 years running. It’s certainly a name that everyone should know, but very few seem to. 

8. Joe Bonamassa

Joe Bonamassa is probably one of the more well known names on the list, but arguably still doesn’t have as much recognition as he deserves. When he was only 12 he performed alongside BB King, and from there he’s gone from strength to strength. 

Joe has released 15 solo albums, of which 11 went on to become number 1 hits. He has an impressive track record of writing and releasing hit songs, even taking classic songs and reinventing them for the modern era. He has a huge range of guitars and equipment, with the perfect ear to pick up exactly what’s needed and when. 

Joe is admired in the music world for his impressive range, his mix of styles and his consistency throughout the years. He’s one of the biggest blues names in the industry and definitely one that everyone should know about. 

7. Keshav Dyar

Keshav Dyar is an Indian music sensation that’s been producing heavy metal Indian guitar music for decades. The Indian music scene has remained fairly contained but is now at breaking point. It’s likely in the next decade we’ll see an outpouring of Asian talent across the globe, with Keshav’s band Skyharbor leading the way. 

Keshav isn’t just a talented player, but a brilliant songwriter. He put together the entire debut album, Blinding White Noise, for his band which has had an overwhelmingly positive reception. Keshav uses an intricate and very deliberate style which focuses on the percussive elements. This strict playing contrasts with the creative music and makes something quite unique. 

Keshav Dyar certainly deserves to be known more widely, but it’s more to do with circumstance than any question of his talent. The Indian and Asian music scene isn’t quite as close to the Western side as it could be, but hopefully this will all change in the future. Until then, Keshav is a talent you should learn more about. 

6. Tosin Abasi 

Tosin Abasi is a jazz metal guitarist who has developed a brand of music that isn’t commonly seen. While jazz and metal can combine, Tosin has taken this to a new level and created a very interesting and unique sub genre which is much heavier than most. 

Tosin has a very angry and brutal style which is underpinned by a level of musical genius. His band, Animals as Leaders, has seen great success on the back of this and received critical acclaim internationally. It’s this ability to write and perform more challenging sounds which is why we believe Tosin should be more recognised than he is.

5. Guthrie Govan

Guthrie Govan is an English songwriter and guitarist who’s played with a number of well known bands such as Asia and The Young Punks. He’s also had a successful solo venture called Erotic Cakes. Guthrie opts for a mixed style and has shown he can turn his hand to whatever he wants. This has led to many of the greats recognising and praising his ability on the strings.

What’s most impressive about Guthrie is his versatility. Alongside writing and playing he’s worked with the legend Hans Zimmer to create film soundtracks. He’s also a music tutor and is helping others to pick up the craft. Certainly he’s a guitarist who deserves more recognition that he has today.

4. Paul Oritz

Paul Oritz of Chimp Spanner is another impressive instrumentalist who is perhaps not as well known as he could be. Paul has helped create both of Chimp Spanner’s successful instrumental albums which flit between very light and heavy music, keeping the listener wondering what’s next. 

Paul opts for a futuristic vibe and style using 7 or 8 strings to make his music. With fluidity and strong post production skills, Paul is an expert who deserves the respect of the music world. 

3. Eric Johnson

For those in the guitar world, Eric Johnson is very well known, but this fame has never made it much further afield. He’s been performing since the 1970s and has performed alongside Steve Vai and Joe Satriani. His style incorporates qualities of both blues and jazz, showcasing his musical talent to adapt and create as he goes. 

Eric has helped create and play hundreds of songs with well known artists. He’s not only an impressive guitarist, but also well accomplished on the drums, bass and piano. Reliable, consistent and talented, Eric Johnson is a name to remember. 

2. Felix Martin

Felix Martin is a Venezuelan talent and if you appreciate guitar music at all then who you really should know he is. Felix is unlike most artists and is almost exclusively self taught. He decided at an early age that he needed an extra string, but eventually went on to create a 14 string instrument that he uses going forward. 

Felix uses a two handed tapping style that makes use of every inch of those 14 strings. It allows him to develop his own unique style and even play rhythm and lead guitar simultaneously. He plays almost exclusively alone, writing and performing in a very intense way. 

Felix Martin is a once in a generation musical mind and it’s a crime that he isn’t more well known than he is. 

1.Gary Boyle

Gary Boyle is a UK born guitarist who is widely regarded as one of the underrated guitarists in the world. In the 60s Gary performed with Dusty Springfield, touring Europe and playing concerts across the US. From the 70s he became more of a session musician, writing and performing with various artists, creating jingles and working on movie soundtracks. 

Gary is a jazz fusion specialist, but also has the breadth to turn his hand to a wide variety of genres. He has proven himself able to adapt and perform as needed and because of his versatility he’s one of the best known talents that artists would ask for when they needed backing. Definitely one to look out for and listen more to if you get the opportunity. 

Who else should be on this list?

There are countless other acts who are performing day in, day out who deserve to be on this list. The truth is that while the biggest names had some insane skills, they didn’t always have to grind as hard as the people on this list and we should never take that for granted. 

Once you scratch the surface of the guitar scene you can see creativity and impressive talent everywhere. So don’t be afraid to broaden your horizons, and always seek out acts you haven’t heard of. This can lead you to find some hidden gems who will help you develop your tastes across genres. 

What about you? Who are your favourite guitarists active today?

Top 10 Modern Guitar Heroes from MyRareGuitars.com

Singer, songwriter, star guitarist. Glen Campbell had a fantastically rich musical career – spanning different genres, instruments and playing with some of the greatest names in music. Not to mention stints as TV presenter and award-nominated acting roles! With over 45 million records sold, Campbell was also a true crossover artist like few other musicians before or since – with 48 country hits and 34 pop hits between 1967 and 1980.

His attitude was the he didn’t really care about being bound to “genres”, but just about whether something was good:

“I felt my music wasn’t aiming at anybody. Everything I was doing was because it was a good song” he once said.

From a guitarist perspective, there’s no doubt he was an inspiration to many, being one of the most notable players of baritone guitars – and, for us fans of vintage and rare guitars, a look at his instruments over the years is nothing less than mouth-watering!

Here’s just a few reasons why Glen Campbell was such a musical legend, who won’t be forgotten:

1) He was a former member of the Wrecking Crew

The Wrecking Crew was the greatest assembly of session musicians ever – the L.A. group played in innumerable legendary sessions, and, with Campbell, performed on tracks by names such as Bobby Darin, Ricky Nelson, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, the Monkees, Nancy Sinatra, Merle Haggard, Jan and Dean, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and Phil Spector.

One of the session tracks featuring Campbell is The Beach Boys ‘I Get Around’:

Despite the Wrecking Crew featuring so many extremely talented people, only Glen went on to become such a massive solo star in his own right – some feat!

2) He was a touring member of The Beach Boys…

Carl Wilson and Glen Campbell ready for another Beach Boys gig

As part of the Wrecking Crew Glen also played on the sessions for Pet Sounds, but, before that, he also toured with the Beach Boys in 1964, replacing none other than Brian Wilson  on bass and vocal harmonies, while Wilson recovered from a nervous breakdown. No small job!

And once a Beach Boy, always a Beach Boy – Glen joined the band onstage on a number of other occasions since.

3) … and Brian Wilson was forever grateful

As a “thank you” to Campbell, Brian Wilson wrote him a wonderful song, ‘Guess I’m Dumb’, one of Glen Campbell’s finest moments – with the Beach Boys singing backing vocals!

Wilson, unsurprisingly, was one of the first to pay tribute to the news of Campbell’s passing:

4) Glen Campbell introduced America to Cream

During his stint as a TV show host, Campbell was the man who introduced Cream to mainstream America. His TV show brought together a very diverse mix of musical acts, which people paid attention to thanks to his popularity as a performer himself. Respect.

Coincidence – or not! – only 2 weeks after Cream’s appearance on Glen’s show, the band entered the Top 10 with “Sunshine Of Your Love”. Other songs on that same week’s Top 10 included The Doors (who Glen had once opened for) at #1 with “Hello, I Love You”. Mason Williams (who was a writer on Glen’s show) close behind with “Classical Gas” while the 5th Dimension (who appeared on Glen’s show & had big Jimmy Webb hits!) were on #3 with “Stoned Soul Picnic”. And that was not all – “Lady Willpower” by Gary Puckett & the Union Gap was at #7 featuring Glen on guitar, and the Vogues had their first Top 10 in three years with (the Glen Campbell-penned) “Turn Around, Look At Me”.

5) He was an award-nominated actor…

What was the last time you heard of a celebrated session musician who went on to join one of the biggest bands in the world, and who was also nominated for a Golden Globe? Exactly – but that was Glen Campbell for you… nominated for “Most Promising Newcomer” for his turn on the original ‘True Grit'(1969)! 

6) … and an Oscar-nominated songwriter!

Glen was brilliant until the end. After announcing his retirement due to Alzheimer’s, Glen recorded his final song, “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” with members of the Wrecking Crew, for the documentary “Glen Campbell…I’ll Be Me.” The result? A heart-breaking beauty that got him nominated for the Best Original Song Oscar at the 87th Academy Awards!

7) Glen inspired a generation of younger rock musicians

Like Johnny Cash before him, Campbell branched out to perform modern rock’n’roll songs in his later years, covering tracks from bands as diverse as U2, Foo Fighters and Green Day on one of his last albums. Musicians who lined up to work with him in his final records include Paul Westerberg from the Replacements (who wrote Ghost On The Canvas), Jellyfish, The Wallflowers singer Jakob Dylan, Chris Isaak, Rick Nielsen and Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins.

8) ‘Wichita Lineman’

The song, written by Jimmy Webb, is arguably Glen Campbell’s greatest moment. A timeless classic, which also inspired many guitarists to try a baritone guitar!

9) All those guitar solos…

At the end of the day, we can’t underestimate Glen Campbell as a guitarist… what a wonderful player! This video compilation says it all:

10) …and let’s not forget the guitars!

Besides having introduced the baritone guitars to many players, over the years he could be seen playing some amazing guitars, including many Mosrites which, as those who are familiar with My Rare Guitars will know, is one of our favourite brands!

Here’s some of our top Glen Campbell guitar photos:

Glen Campbell and a Mosrite 12-string

Glen Campbellin the studio with a Mosrite Celebrity III semi-acoustic

Glen Campbellin with a Ovation semi-acoustic

Glen Campbell and a Gretsch Country Gentleman

Glen Campbell and a customised Mosrite Californian dobro guitar

Young Glen Campbell with his Teico T60

Read more:

Glen Campbell: the guitar prodigy represented the best of pop and country

Remembering Glen Campbell (April 22, 1936 – August 8, 2017) from MyRareGuitars.com

It came as no surprise that the Washington Post’s The Slow Death Of The Electric Guitar article got everyone talking, a few weeks ago. After all, we all love guitars, so this couldn’t possibly be true! Or could it? The fact is, though, that even though nothing the article said was factually incorrect – hence the fact it was  a relevant read – the conclusions it came to where quite off the mark. Not quite fake news territory then, but misleading news. 

What was wrong about the Washington Post article?

The very title of the article seems to suggest that at some point, the guitar will simply die off – which is a totally ridiculous idea. 

Jimi Hendrix guitar on fire

Rock’n’roll is still alive and kicking – and while it does, so will the electric guitar. Even jazz is still alive and, while not a major chart concern, there’s still a wealth of jazz musicians making a living worldwide. So when it comes to electric guitars and rock’n’roll music – both of which penetrated popular culture far more deeply than jazz – you can amplify this for a thousand times, and realize we’re all in safe territory here, after all – any news about the demise of rock’n’roll and/or electric guitars is just nonsense.

With this in mind, we’ll discuss 5 points that show that the Washington Post article was simply… wrong!

1) The big brands are in trouble, not the electric guitar

One of the guys knows everything about guitars. The other one is Slash. Or so Henry Juszkiewicz probably thinks…

The nature of popular music and of the market have changed dramatically, that’s for sure – but that doesn’t mean the electric guitar will die anytime soon. The main problem with that article, is that it just gives too much importance to the big names such as Gibson, Fender, Guitar Center, and to mainstream music.  

We all know what happened to dinosaurs. And the same is bound to happen with people who think like dinos, in this business! Even though we all owe a lot to brands such as Gibson and Fender, who made some of the most legendary guitars ever, it doesn’t mean they are God-given gifts to mankind who should expect to have loyal customers no matter what, just because rock legends have played their instruments.

These brands are subject to the same market forces as any other, smaller brands – and if their products are not good enough or not available at the right price point, they won’t sell. What’s true to a bunch of bananas at your local market is true to a Gibson Mike McCready 1959 Les Paul Standard Vintage Gloss guitar. 

It shouldn’t be a surprise that people are not queuing around the block to pay $6699 for a Gibson Mike McCready 1959 Les Paul Standard Vintage Gloss…

It’s not that the electric guitar as an instrument is dying – it’s just that the biggest brands associated with it are, well, not in the best health:

“Gibson and Fender are in debt, and a third, PRS Guitars, had to cut staff and expand production of cheaper guitars” – The Washington Post

Is it any wonder??? For far too long, they’ve made guitars which are far too expensive and, sometimes, not even that great. Therefore, sales were bound to go down. What did anyone expect?

Many guitarists will tell you that a Squier Classic Vibe will look, feel and sound as good if not better than some more expensive Fenders, for instance.

And in fact, lots of people are still collecting guitars – but the notion that there’ll always be a vast demand for top-of-the-range expensive models is unrealistic – even though that’s exactly what Fender, Gibson and PRS expect.

There is still a (small) market for very expensive guitars, and that’s why many boutique luthiers still survive and even thrive. But the bigger brands are just counting on their name – and this is just not cutting it anymore. If a guitar is not good value-for-money, it won’t sell.

2) And YES: Guitar Heroes still matter!

Jack White is proof that modern guitar heroes DO exist

Baby Boomers became guitar collectors, but most younger people won’t  – however, this doesn’t mean they feel less inspired by guitar heroes than past generations.

Younger players have grown up in a world that’s increasingly unstable, with unstable jobs and future – not as many will have money to spare on very expensive guitar collections. 

“Now those boomers are retiring, downsizing and adjusting to fixed incomes. They’re looking to shed, not add to, their collections, and the younger generation isn’t stepping in to replace them.” – The Washington Post

Big brands need to realise that the era of the moneyed “Baby Boomers” buying lot sof guitars is coming to an end – and no amount of guitar-hero worshipping will change this. 

The Washington Post mistakenly assumes that younger people are not becoming collectors because they don’t have guitar heroes. This is not quite true.

There are still lots of people picking up a guitar and being inspired by the same idols who inspired their (grand)dads! Anyone can go to YouTube and feel inspired by the sounds and antics of all the great guitar heroes – Clapton, Hendrix, Page, Townshend and so on… even though they are not in the charts anymore, their music is actually more accessible than it has ever been!

Not to mention more recent names such as Kurt Cobain, Noel Gallagher, Jack White and Dan Auerbach, who still inspire many new guitarists. (as we know from sales of the Airline models, for instance…)

But are they going to spend mega bucks on a guitar collection just to copy their idols? Hell, no! 

Younger people can love Sixties Eric Clapton as much as anyone who grew up in the era, and still this wouldn’t make them spend thousands to buy a new The Journeyman Relic Eric Clapton Signature Strat!

3) Guitar x Amp x FX Pedals: It’s not all about guitars, you know…

Guitarists are NOT spending less on FX pedals… that’s for sure!

From a gigging guitarist perspective, it’s also important to notice that collecting expensive guitars is NOT necessarily top of the list for most people active in music, be it playing in bands or just making music at home. 

Why buy a super expensive guitar when you can spend the money on lots of cool FX pedals and valve amps? Jack White was a recent proof that you didn’t need to have an expensive guitar to create a great sound. But he had the help of a great Fender Twin Reverb, Electro-Harmonix Big Muff, Digitech Whammy etc.

There’s lots of bands playing with cheap or reasonably priced guitars – but at the same time using expensive valve amps, boutique FX pedals like the ones by Strymon… sometimes it’s not even a matter of money – but HOW you spend it. And in this day and age, expensive guitars will always lose, and quite often musicians will prefer second-hand guitars, but get brand new boutique fx pedals.  Which lead us to the next point…

4) The Booming Second-Hand Market

Buying second-hand is often a great option, from sites such as Reverb.com

The declining sale numbers for new guitars does not necessarily reflect a loss of popularity of the instrument. Well, it probably does a bit, but the point is that many guitarists prefer to buy second-hand instruments on sites such as Ebay and Reverb.com.  You can bet there are still many guitar collectors out there who buy lots of guitars – but the vast majority of them probably won’t be buying new models.

Also, is it realistic to expect that the market for brand new guitars (especially high-end Fender, Gibson, PRS…) should be an ever expanding one? Many guitar buyers are not that bothered about having a brand new instrument when they plan to buy a guitar. If you want to make your money go further, or want to get something maybe cool and more interesting, you might look at second-hand guitars, rare vintage guitars etc.

A guitar brand might even have “loyal” customers who’ve never bought more than one new guitar off them – if that! This kind of player won’t be helping the fortunes of a guitar brand like Gibson, because their commitment to the brand does not reflect on year-on-year sales.

5) Go to a gig & see it for yourself!

Is rock’n’roll dead? Is the electric guitar dying? Go tell Thee Oh Sees and their sell-out crowds…

The bottom line? It doesn’t matter if more or less people are buying brand news guitars, or how many bands in the Top 20 are inspiring kids to get guitar lessons! We don’t need Taylor Swift to save the electric guitar.

There are LOTS of people out there buying used gear, getting inspired by bands who’d never been in the Top 20, and learning instruments on their own. 

Young people still feel inspired by all the (fewer than before, sure) major acts who play guitar – but the point is, so many other bands not in the top of the charts are still out there, playing live to thousands of people at sold out gigs, festivals worldwide etc. Just go to a gig by acts such as Thee Oh Sees, Black Angels, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Courtney Barnett and so many others, and festivals such as SXSW, Austin Psych Fest etc and you’ll see that guitar music and rock’n’roll music is as alive as ever – if not more! 

It just feels that people who periodically announce the death of rock’n’roll and/or of the electric guitar actually know nothing about either. They’re both alive and well. At the end of the day, it’s up to each one of us to make sure this song remains the same…

BREAKING NEWS: The Guitar Is NOT Dead from MyRareGuitars.com

Funny thing: some of the greatest guitar heroes ever were British. Think Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, Peter Green, Richie Blackmore and so many others… but most of them had another thing in common – they were inspired by American music.

So we thought – why not do something different, and make a list of the greatest American guitarists?

Why would that be interesting? This is our list of guitarists who were made by America. This is just a top 10, trying to encompass players from many different styles and generations. There will be some missing… so share YOUR list with us, too! You may not agree with our choices but there’s no question about this – those are not just players who happen to have been born in the U.S.A. by a happy geological coincidence, but guitarists whose very music could’ve only have come from America, and nowhere else in the world… 

10) Elmore James: The Blues

The Blues is perhaps the most crucial of all American musical genres. It’s the source of all popular American music made after it, but so much more. It documents American history – especially a part of history that is perhaps not as well documented elsewhere. We could’ve chosen any of the great Blues guitarists such as B. B. King or Robert Johnson, but we’ll stick with Elmore James – his primal voice and guitar playing tell a whole story in their own right, and songs such as ‘Dust My Broom’ are informed not just by the simplicity of rural Blues, but also pointed to the electrified future of the genre – and by doing so, encapsulated the journey of many Black Americans in the early part of the 20th-century, from rural South to urban North.

9) J. Mascis: Noise, Grunge & the reaction to 80’s America

J. Mascis could be described as the greatest virtuoso of the so-called “grunge” scene, so we’ll pick him. A scene that spawned many bands worldwide, but which could’ve only have originated from America. The messy, f*cked up America of the Eighties, where if you couldn’t be a winner, you were a loser. But the “slackers” and Generation X-ers who loved rock’n’roll just wouldn’t fit with this world view – and the noisy music scene represented by bands such as Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr and which eventually exploded with Nirvana was a direct reaction to the mainstream 80s in the US, so this new kind of noise could’ve only have come from America!

8) Tom Verlaine: New York, New York

The proto-punk scene around CBGB’s in the mid-Seventies could’ve only have happened then, and only in New York. Bands such as Television translated the grittiness of a semi-apocalyptic New York City into rock music. To listen to Television is to be transported to that time and place. 

7) John Fahey: Rootsy Americana

John Fahey was one of the greatest acoustic guitar players ever. His best music harks back to an older, almost mythical America – a rural, simpler, pre-War America. His debut album, Blind Joe Death, was originally released as a “fake” album, supposedly containing old recordings by a forgotten bluesman. In a very American display of entrepreneurship, the album was the first ever “indie record”, self-financed by Fahey with the money he earned working at a gas station!

6) Dick Dale: Let’s go Surfing…

Well, we hear Australians are pretty good at surfing, but no one beats America when it comes to Surf Music! This is a sunny, optimistic and even naive style, that could’ve only have come from America, a child of the optimistic 50’s, and with the help of some all-American gear such as Fender amps and guitars! And no one played it better than Dick Dale! (Having said that… ‘Misirlou’ in particular is an adaptation of a traditional Middle East song! Listen here…)

5) Duane Allman: Drivin’ South

Duanne Allman was a players like few others – who could humble Clapton, who could play slide like few others, who had one of the best Les Paul tones. He could do seemingly so naturally what players such as Clapton actually laboriously studied for year – that fluid, bluesy guitar thing, you know… listening to Duane is like driving a convertible down a highway, on a sunny hot day somewhere, down South. Yep – great driving music, the likes of which only Americans could make!

4) Eddie Van Halen: California Dreamin’

Van Halen’s music couldn’t be more Californian if it tried. It’s loud, silly, colorful… it’s widescreen rock’n’roll. Silly, fun, sunny. And so is Eddie’s guitar style. What could be a bit “too much” for those who are not crazy about Eighties hard rock, is actually quite enjoyable if you’re listening to Eddie’s playing – a true innovator.

3) Jack White: Detroit Pop Art

Pop Art is one of the defining styles of American art from the past 100 years. It’s as American as apple pie. And Jack White is pure Pop Art, when you think about it: he’s all about bright primal colors, about style, and about making many people wonder what is real and what is fake, who is the true Jack White, why is he singing like Blind Willie McTell, and whether is it real blues or just a commercial copy? These questions of originality vs. imitation, commercialism vs. authenticity, are pretty much the same questions people asked when confronted with the work of Pop Art names such as Warhol. 

He’s got the same unstoppable lust for creating stuff and churning out his products that drove people as different as Henry Ford or Andy Warhol. The quality of his work speaks for itself – he’s a true post-modern blues player, deeply influenced my traditional American music – but with a shameless knack for turning it all into business, too! Could Jack White have come from anywhere but America? 

2) Stevie Ray Vaughan: Texas Flood

The great guitar duel that never happened – SRV versus Hendrix. Who was the best? Many, many people swear that Stevie was every bit as good as Hendrix, if not better. SRV was 100% the son of Texas, deeply influenced by his roots, as authentic and as Texan as it gets – and still a hugely influential player. Listen to SRV and you’ll have a taste of Texas with every note.

1) Jimi Hendrix: a melting pot, like America itself

Sure, Jimi was born and grew up in the United States, but could he be considered a truly “American” player, since his band The Jimi Hendrix Experience was formed in London, with two English musicians? Well… of course!

Jimi more than paid his dues on the road all over America, playing with people such as Little Richard, King Curtis and The Isley Brothers, and it was his rich musical influences that he took to England in 1966 – he certainly turned a few things upside down and kicked things up a few notches, but deep down, Jimi was an authentic blues man, full of soul, groove and a down-to-earth sincerity you would be hard-pressed to find in England at the time. Musically, and even racially (with his Cherokee heritage) Jimi was a true representation of that big melting pot which made America what it is.

No wonder that his legendary performance at Woodstock, playing the Star Spangled Banner, summed up America at the time better than most songs. And yes – he’s still the best! 

Did we forget anyone? Post your Top 10 in the comments below and let us know!

Top 10 Great American Guitarists from MyRareGuitars.com

The origins of Rock’n’Roll  are somewhat murky, and there are many contenders for what was supposed to be “the first rock song ever”. But Chuck Berry was without a doubt the true father of rock’n’roll. He’s the one person who truly personified its spirit, the seminal influence who laid down the foundations for all that was to come. The outsider. The guitar hero. The rebel. The songwriter. The outlaw. The poet. Oh, and so much more…

Rock’n’Roll Music! 

It could be argued that some artists who followed became more famous, made better albums, and recorded more hits… but none of them would’ve been the same without Chuck Berry, whose lyricism, and genius for simple, memorable songs set the template for the best which rock music had to offer thereafter. Berry songs fuelled The Beatles’ early sets (and final albums); inspired The Beach Boys’ first hit and The Rolling Stones’ debut single. His DNA lives on in pretty much any rock band and guitarist worth anything.

In the past decades his presence had been waning from the music scene and, sadly, perhaps the majority of millennials were not particularly aware of Chuck Berry’s music or influence – but even younger generations will have been touched by his influence… after all, most of them will be probably familiar with Back To The Future’s rock’n’roll ball scene, a delightful homage to Berry and one of the most classic scenes from that film!

Chuck Berry, the father of rock’n’roll…

The fact is – most of us grew up in a world were Chuck Berry and his music existed, a world where Chuck Berry was a fact of life, and where his songs were so interwoven in the fabric of our culture, that we didn’t even have to think about it, because he’s always been there…  so it’s hard – or even impossible – to imagine how rock music would’ve been without his influence. 

Anyone who’s seen the octogenarian Chuck Berry on stage, will know how fragile he was in his later years, hardly capable of playing his guitar anymore. Though it was an upsetting sight, and some will say he was being exploited by promoters or whoever, we can’t really agree with this view. Any musician passionate about music, and who understands the power of rock’n’roll music, will immediately understand it was something Chuck simply had to do. To play and perform for as long as he was able to, however he could. That’s rock’n’roll, and Chuck Berry was rock’n’roll. How could he do anything else?

And indeed, Chuck kept working. On his 90th birthday, on 18th October last year, it was announced that there would be a new Chuck Berry album, his first in more than thirty years, to be released later in 2017.

Listen! Chuck Berry’s new single, ‘Big Boys’:

‘Big Boys’ is the first taster for Chuck Berry’s upcoming new album, now sadly a posthumous release.

Chuck tracklisting:

1. “Wonderful Woman”
2. “Big Boys”
3. “You Go to My Head”
4. “3/4 Time (Enchiladas)”
5. “Darlin’”
6. “Lady B. Goode”
7. “She Still Loves You”
8. “Jamaica Moon”
9. “Dutchman”
10. “Eyes of Man”

Jeff Senn tribute to Chuck:

Here’s a little tribute our friend Jeff Senn made in Chuck’s homage, playing his new Continental model:

Chuck lives on, in anyone who really cares about guitars and about that magical crazy thing called rock’n’roll. We’ll miss you, Chuck, goodbye!

CHUCK BERRY (Oct 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017)

Goodbye, Chuck Berry (1926 – 2017): The Father Of Rock’n’Roll from MyRareGuitars.com

George Harrison and his Gretsch G6128T Duo Jet guitar

If you somehow missed this story at Winter NAMM 2011…well…it’s time you heard about the George Harrison Tribute Duo Jet from Gretsch Guitars. If you’re a fan of the Beatles and George Harrison, then I probably don’t need to give you a background on his black Gretsch Duo Jet G6128T. It was the guitar he played in the early Cavern Club days, and there is a very interesting history behind Harrison’s Duo Jet. For more on that, check out this video:

You gotta admit: that is a pretty awesome story. And the builders at the Gretsch Custom Shop have gone all out in creating a replica of Harrison’s G6128T Duo Jet. I’ve never even heard of x-raying a guitar!

It turns out that the Gretsch Custom Shop George Harrison G6128T-GH Tribute Duo Jet will be a limited to a run of 60. It’s due out in May 2011, and if you want one, you better have your checkbook handy – the MSRP is $20,000. But if you’re a collector, this guitar is a must have, right?

For more on the George Harrison Tribute Duo Jet:

• GretschGuitars.com: Official page of the G6128T-GH Tribute guitar [link]
• USAtoday.com: George Harrison’s beloved guitar is reborn as a replica [link]

And just for fun, here is a gallery of George Harrison pictures, many of which show him with his beloved Gretsch Duo Jet:

George Harrison Gretsch Duo Jet G6128T-GH Tribute Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

Guitar Hero: Jimmy Page

But there are things you can do to help the process along and progress faster to the speed licks you’d like to be playing.

1. First the basics: Make sure your guitar is set up properly. If the action is too high, or the neck is warped, or the strings are too heavy or too light for your hands, it’s going to be hard to gain speed. It also won’t be as much fun to play.
2. Try different picks. Some people like thinner or thicker picks, and you might not be using the right one for you. Many shredders prefer smaller jazz-style picks to the traditional teardrop style. Go spend a couple bucks and pick a large selection of thicknesses and shapes to see what works best for you.
3. Use a metronome. I can’t emphasize enough how important this is. Start with a slow tempo on your metronome. Really slow. Like 52bpm. Pick out a scale or musical phrase you’d like to work on. When you can accomplish that phrase at that speed 5 times in a row without making a mistake, bump your metronome up just one notch. That’s generally 2-4 bpm faster. Go through the same process there, bumping it up a little bit each time. Within 15-20 minutes you’ll have that phrase blazing fast!
4. Work on your right hand. We tend to forget about our right hand a lot since the left is where all the action is. But your right hand is the engine driving the action. If it can’t move fast, it won’t matter how fast your left hand can go. Back to your metronome again, take just one note (preferably a fretted one) and practice playing 8th notes and 16th notes. Again bump the tempo up slowly until you’re reaching speeds you want to hear.
5. Practice left hand finger patterns. Scales and arpeggios are good also, but these 5 finger patterns will give you most every combination you need. Here they are:
   • 1-2-3-4
   • 1-3-2-4
   • 1-2-4-3
   • 1-4-2-3
   • 1-4-3-2.

   Do these on each string, in both directions, and on different areas of the neck. You can reverse them all.

6. Keep a written log of your progress. Using this “slow and grow” method, you may not notice that you’re getting faster in regular playing situations. I certainly didn’t. One day it snuck on me while I was listening to a recording from my gig the night before. I heard a blazing fast guitar lick and asked my girlfriend who the heck that was! She reminded me that I was the only guitarist in the band so it must have been me.

So, yes, it does take putting in the hours to get your speed going, but these tips will help you get there faster. As Eddie Van Halen said in a recent interview, “Just keep playing and playing and you’ll eventually find out who you are.”

Get at it!

Post by: Phil Johnson

How Your Guitar Heroes Learned to Play So Fast from MyRareGuitars.com

This will explain to some why I had never listened to Roy Buchanan till recently.

Roy Buchanan: Blues Guitar Legend

When you read as much about music, guitars, guitarists and guitar playing as I do there are certain names that continue to pop up as major players in the guitar world. People like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Billy Gibbons, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Peter Greene etc. Most of these people I had heard of and typically I’ve listened to their music for years as have many people. Probably everyone familiar with rock and roll has heard of Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix and people who know classic rock can easily recognize Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin. One name though, Roy Buchanan, kept popping up, and I could never pinpoint his music, or why some of the people I consider guitar legends, referred to him as one of their influences.

That is until recently…

While I was reading about rock and roll and preparing for the launch of The Soul of Rock ‘n’ Roll, I happened across a video of none other than Roy Buchanan playing “Hey Joe,” a song that was more well known because of the Jimi Hendrix version. I knew and loved the Hendrix version and having remembered hearing about Roy Buchanan so much I was intrigued. I watched the video and suddenly I had a new guitar idol.

This blues guitarist so expertly wrenched notes from his guitar that it sent shivers up my spine. Using a volume knob technique to create an almost violin like effect along with typical blues guitar techniques, and a whole lot of emotion, Mr. Roy Buchanan took the song I had only known because of Hendrix and created a slow blues, absolutely heart wrenching version unlike anything I had ever heard. It was raw, real and authentic that I was immediately blown away. I watched every video of Roy Buchanan I could find that night.

Roy’s playing seemed to come primarily out of emotion like blues, but with a noticeable technical expertise that was exciting but not showy. Plus, when he would work the volume knob on his guitar, he could actually make it sound like the guitar was crying. Well this works as an exciting technique, but it also allowed him to create very vocal sounding solos that had swells, dynamics and emphasis, just like a vocal soloist would use and that added so much soul to the solo.

When it comes to music, I’m impressed not so much by technical expertise on an instrument (although that can impress me too), but more so how well that musician can convey the emotions of the song, add to them and enhance the overall mood. Anyone can learn to play blindingly fast with a million notes, but when someone can make their soul speak through the instrument, thats what it is really all about. With his crying guitar and tonal range from smooth, round and transparent to bitingly sharp and gritty, Roy took these songs from slow and sad to hard edged an soulful at will. Truly a master of expression on guitar.

As I read more about Roy Buchanan I discovered that except amongst guitarists, specifically blues guitarists, his music is generally overlooked. That seems like such a shame. For me, music is about emotion, what it makes me feel and how well I can related to those feelings. This is why I gravitated towards blues as I grew older. Blues is probably the most emotion based genre of music there is as it’s primary focus is often heartbreak, a very emotional subject. The best musicians in any genre can convey their feelings and their soul through their music. Roy Buchanan was definitely one of the best at this in my book. His playing has had such an impact on how I play guitar that I only wish I could have found his music sooner. It has really inspired me to try and put every ounce of myself and my soul into my playing.

Maybe the music of Roy Buchanan is not for everyone as not everyone is into blues or guitar playing but for those of you who are into both and haven’t yet checked out the work of Roy Buchanan, you should. His blues is more earthy, and rustic that some of the famous Chicago blues players (B.B. King, Buddy Guy) and has a hint of jazz, but his passion is just as evident and the guitar playing is magical.

Some artists never received the recognition they truly deserve but if an artist can inspire others, than they are successful and because of how he has inspired other musicians, myself included, I think Roy Buchanan deserves a little more recognition. I hope more people are as inspired by Roy Buchanan’s music as I am.

Post by: Dave Nuzzo
D.A.N (Dave Nuzzo), is the Owner/Editor of The Soul of Rock ‘n’ Roll a music and rock ‘n’ roll oriented blog. The Soul of Rock ‘n’ Roll was design to promote the music that he likes, listens to and is passionate about. He discusses everything from Folk to Heavy Metal with the emphasis on Classic Rock, but also talks about the impact rock ‘n’ roll has on society, unknown bands, and playing music. If you’re interested in reading more rock ‘n’ roll articles from D.A.N., check out The Soul of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Rediscovering Roy Buchanan: Blues Guitar Legend from MyRareGuitars.com

Our first day in London included a visit with Chris Spedding

That afternoon we drove up to OXFORD to catch of Ian Hunter of Mott The Hoople fame. Unbelievable showman, he rocked the SOLD OUT show.

The next day we drove up to Nottingham in search of Robin Hood, but instead ran into John Cooper Clarke. For those of you unfamiliar with his work, your are missing out. John is one of the best comedians the UK has ever produced, and one of these days I will convince him to come back to North America to treat us to his twisted sense of humor. Here is a sample of what we heard: “A man goes to his doctor for his annual medical examination. Doctor says, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to stop masturbating”. The man exclaims, “Stop masturbating? WHY?” Doctor says, “Well, I’m trying to conduct a medical examination!”

Me with John Cooper Clarke, comedian

Next stop was Sheffield to visit some friends and check out the new JOY DIVISION movie, CONTROL. Great movie, even better because “Ian Curtis” in the movie is playing and EASTWOOD VG6 Guitar. =)

The Undertones

Up to Holmfirth to spend some time with one of the best bands around, The Undertones. The SOLD OUT audience was treated to a memorable set of non-stop hits. I can’t remember seeing a more appreciative group of fans. Just another band on the list of bands we need to get back over the pond. Thanks guys for your hospitality and for getting those EASTWOOD Guitars up on stage and put to good use!

Mike Robinson & Bill Nelson at Nelsonica 07

Next stop was YORK in the North of England. I’ve been planning this trip for a couple of years, and it finally came together. I had to opportunity to interview Bill Nelson, live on stage at Nelsonica 07. An incredible, memorable event. We will have the entire video interview available in the coming months, on-line. I’m hoping to get Bill to bring NELSONICA to North America in 2009. More info to come….

The next morning we braved the 5 hour drive, back down to London (in typical British weather and traffic) to get to the comeback show of Edwyn Collins. Worth twice the drive….

At the Edwyn Collins comeback show

Quite an emotional event. Edwyn suffered a near fatal brain hemorrhage in 2005 and had to relearn how to walk, talk, read and write. All his friends were on hand to support this comeback show, including the BBC, and what a show it was.

Colin Newman and his wife Malka Spigel, who are half of the band GITHEAD

After a day off in London, we made our way over to meet with Colin Newman and his wife Malka Spigel, who are half of the band GITHEAD. We visited them in their home studio, discussed the recent GITHEAD release and then popped out for a couple of pints to discuss the music industry in general. Colin gave me an advanced copy of the new WIRE release, READ & BURN. I will post a review in next months newsletter.

Last leg of the trip we spent with Pete Shelley of BUZZCOCKS fame

Last leg of the trip we spent with Pete Shelley of BUZZCOCKS fame. We are nearing completion of the soon to be released Limited Edition replica of Pete’s famous STARWAY guitar – here we are discussing final details. All the pickguards are signed, the custom signature hardshell fitted cases are in, the signed original photo’s are on their way, and the BUZZCOCKS leather straps are in production. We will be launching a contest in the next few weeks, so stay tuned. Send an email if you want some advanced photographs and specs.

UK Trip (October 2007) from MyRareGuitars.com

Johnny Winter: Guitar God, Rock & Roll Legend

When you talk about great authentic white blues guitar players, you are surely talking about some rarified company. The key word being authentic, and in my estimation authentic white blues guitar player means that when you listen to this person playing you think it’s a black man playing. Stevie Ray Vaughn a great blues guitar player always tried to get that real blues sound. When I saw Stevie Ray for the last time a few months before his death we spoke backstage at one of his shows and I told him “man you sounded like Albert King”, Stevie smiled and said that was the biggest compliment I could have ever given him. That is what we who strum the strings in the blues strive for, to sound like our idols, the great bluesmen. Johnny Winter did this as well as anyone, and proof of this is that he was accepted amongst the great bluesman as an equal, and shared the stage with many of them with great dignity and restraint.

Johnny was born John Dawson Winter in Beaumont Texas on February 23rd 1944. Johnny (as well as his brother Edgar) were born with albinism, and being an albino made Johnny stand out, but that did not stop him from playing music with his brother Edgar. His first record was recorded when Johnny was only 15 with his band Johnny and the Jammers, but it was Johnny’s self-titled first album on Columbia that established Johnny Winter as an A-List 60’s rock icon. His second album titled Second Winter was a three sided album (a double album with a blank forth side) that further marked Johnny as a guitar hero right up there with Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Mike Bloomfield.

Johnny Winter: Guitar God, Rock & Roll Legend

Johnny’s next few albums were also fantastic albums, Johnny Winter And (1970), and Johnny Winter And Live (1971) were big sellers and were just ass-kickin’ rock and roll records. Those two albums contained great tunes such as “Rock and Roll HootchieKoo” (penned by Johnny Winter And guitarist Rick Derringer) and “Mean Town Blues”.

Johnny Winter: Guitar God, Rock & Roll Legend

Johnny Winter’s years of drug addiction caught up to him in 1972 and after a hospital stay (no ‘rehab in the pre Betty Ford era) he released “Still Alive and Well” in 1973, this was to be Johnny’s last decent selling release.

Even though Johnny’s days of gold records were behind him his name alone could sell out any club, or 3000 seat venue. Johnny always delivered at a live show; his fiery approach to guitar playing was eaten up by audiences all over the world.

Johnny Winter: Guitar God, Rock & Roll Legend

As a slide guitar player (playing guitar using a glass bottle-neck or copper tube) Johnny was unparalleled in his day, just check his slide work on Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” from Johnny’s album “Second Winter”. And when you talk about sheer rock and roll guitar, Johnny Winter can stand up with any rock guitarist. His vibrato (the bending of notes on the guitar) which is the signature of any rock and blues guitarist is unmistakable.

Johnny Winter: Guitar God, Rock & Roll Legend

Johnny kept it real for the blues crowd as well, and in 1983 he produced a great record for blues legend Muddy Waters called “Hard Again”. Reticent of Muddy’s age Johnny laid back on his playing on the record and let Muddy control the dynamic range of the record, a great tribute to Muddy and Johnny as well.

To this day Johnny still can bring it live, even though he sometimes has to be led to the bandstand, which is no surprise when you understand that his lifestyle over the past 40 years makes Keith Richards look like Bruce Jenner.

Johnny Winter Guitar God, Rock and Roll Survivor, and most importantly, Legend of Rock and Roll.

Legends of Rock & Roll: Guitarist Johnny Winter from MyRareGuitars.com

Remember my friends knowing what guitars your favorite players play is part of getting a sound similar to them, but it is only a small part of it.

Gibson SG Electric Guitar

Gibson SG: Tony Iommi, Angus Young, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Frank Zappa, Eric Clapton

Fender Telecaster Electric Guitar

Fender Telecaster (stock): Roy Buchanan, James Burton, Steve Cropper, Muddy Waters, Joe Messina

Telecaster (modified): Mike Stern, Keith Richards, Danny Gatton, Clarence White

Gibson ES-335 Electric Guitar

Gibson ES-335: Larry Carlton, Dave Edmunds, Johnny “Guitar” Watson

Gibson ES-345: Freddie King, Alvin Lee, Elvin Bishop

Gibson ES-355: Chuck Berry, B.B. Kink, Keith Richards

Fender Stratocaster Electric Guitar

Fender Stratocaster (stock): Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Mark Knophler, David Gilmour

Fender Stratocaster (modified): Hiram Bullock, Robbie Robertson, Adrian Belew, Stevie Ray Vaughn

Gretsch 6120 Archtop Electric Guitar

Gretsch 6120: Brian Setzer, Chet Atkins, Eddie Cochran

Gibson Les Paul Electric Guitar

Gibson Les Paul: Mike Bloomfield, Slash, Joe Perry, Duane Allman, Jimmy Page

Gibson Firebird Electric Guitar

Gibson Firebird: Johnny Winter, Eric Clapton, Howlin’ Wolf, Stevie Winwood, Pat Hare, Clarence Gatemouth Brown

Gibson Flying V: Albert King: Jimi Hendrix

Gibson Melody Maker: Joan Jett

Gibson Byrdland: Ted Nugent, Roy Clark, Eric Clapton

Gibson Les Paul Junior Electric Guitar

Gibson Les Paul Junior: Lesley West, John Lennon, Bob Marley, Johnny Thunders, Mick Jones

Fender Jazzmaster Electric Guitar

Fender Jazzmaster: Elvis Costello, Thurston Moore & Lee Ranaldo, Kevin Shields, J Mascis

Rickenbacker 12-string Electric Guitar

Rickenbacker 12-string: George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roger McGuinn

Airline H44 Electric Guitar

Airline Resoglas Electric Guitar

Airline/Supro Resoglas: J.B. Hutto, Jack White, PJ Harvey

Epiphone Sheraton Electric Guitar

Epiphone Riviera/Sheraton: John Lennon, Otis Rush, George Harrison, John Lee Hooker

Gibson L5-CES Archtop Electric Guitar

Gibson L5-CES: Wes Montgomery, Scotty Moore, Paul Simon (L5S)

Other Notables:

• Gretsch Country Gentleman: George Harrison, Steven Stills, David Crosby
• Mosrite (several models): The Ventures, Joe Maphis, Rick Wilson (B-52’s), Johnny Ramone
• Silvertone/Danelectro: Jimmy Page, Link Wray, Hubert Sumlin, Elmore James, R.L. Burnside
• Kay Electrics: Jimmy Reed, Howlin Wolf, Lonnie Johnson

So if you are interested in getting a sound similar to any of these artists, a good place to start is with their guitar choices. I would say that may be 20% of it, the amplifier would be another 20% and the rest is technique, approach, and attitude.

There are some other aspects that would affect your sound, the type of picks you use, the gauge of your strings, and any effects you might use.

In my world I would say use as few effects as you can, I know they are part of the song, blah,blah blah. If you need a harmonic effect like a chorus but feel you need to flange at some point in the show get one of those multi units like the Line 6. And remember the more pedals you use the farther away are you from the sound of your guitar.

Now as far as the amps go, those of you who are familiar with my column know I am a traditionalist. As far as I can see there are three categories of amplifiers.

Clean Amps:
These amps are clean sounding, with plenty of headroom and eq to pick from. Twin Reverbs, Ampeg, and Lab Series amps are a few. Also some of the older Peavey solid state amps are real clean amps. You can always get a dirty sound with your favorite pedal if you need it.

Dirty Amps:
Marshall JCM 800 and 900 Series amps, many tweed Fenders, the 100 watt army of amps like Crate, Krank, Soldano, and Randall. These amps will give you the sound you are looking for, if that sound is a crunchy compressed full sound.

Channel switching amps:
These amps are for cats that need both clean and dirty and like the idea of the two sounds coming from the same amp. These amps are personified by Mesa Boogies, Rivera era Fenders, and combos like the Marshall TCM Series.

And remember folks – “got and questions?”..”go lean on Shell’s Answer Man”.

Famous Guitarists & Their Guitars from MyRareGuitars.com

Eddie Cochran: Early Rock Star, Guitarist, Rockabilly Pioneer

Along with Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran was the prototype for the guitar playing, lead singer, an iconic image that we all came to recognize later with players like Eric Clapton, and, Jimi Hendrix. But unlike Holly, Eddie possessed Hollywood good looks, those good looks got Eddie a role in the movie “The Girl Can’t Help it”. Due to his untimely death that was to be Eddies only movie role. The few live performances that I have seen over the years show Eddie to be a consummate performer who was comfortable onstage and in front of a crowd. Eddies voice was also a real treat, versatile and very dynamic as he could transition between uptempo rockers and ballads.

Eddie Cochran was born in Albert Lea, Minnesota on October 3rd 1938, Eddie studied music in school (drums and piano) but Eddie gravitated toward the guitar his family had lying around the house, playing mostly country music. In 1955 Eddie’s family moved to Bell Gardens, California, where he hooked up with a few buddies from his junior high school. It was with that band that Eddie (at an American Legion gig) met Hank Cochran, although they were not related they formed a duo called the Cochran Brothers in an attempt to cash in on the popularity of family acts. Eddie amazingly at the age of only 18 got work as a session musician and also began writing songs. Soon thereafter Eddie went solo and scored his first hit record called Sittin’ in the Balcony one of the few songs Eddie recorded that he did not write.

Eddie Cochran: Early Rock Star, Guitarist, Rockabilly Pioneer

Eddie toured and recorded for almost the entire two years he was famous, it was on one of these tours he met Buddy Holly; they became friends and developed a healthy rivalry. Eddie was heartbroken upon hearing the news of the plane crash on February 2nd, 1959 in which Holly along with Richie Valens and the Big Bopper were killed. Eddie reacted as many songwriters would; he wrote a song called Three Stars dedicated to the fallen rockers, you can hear Cochran’s voice crack during the verse he wrote about Buddy Holly.

Eddie’s influence on guitar players is enormous, just check out guitar genius Brian Setzer (Stray Cats) strutting around the stage playing Eddie’s signature Gretsch 6120 model guitar. Eddie was also the first rock guitar player to modify his guitar when he added a Gibson Dog Ear P90 pickup to his Gretsch 6120 axe.

Eddies life ended on that fateful night in April of 1960 while a passenger in a London taxi cab that hit a lamppost on Rowden Hill in Chippenham, Wiltshire. Eddie was the only fatality of the crash; the other passengers were Eddie’s fiancée songwriter Sharon Sheeley and fellow rocker Gene Vincent. The cab driver George Martin was convicted of dangerous driving, fined 50 pounds, sentenced to 6 months in jail and had his driving privileges suspended for 15 years.

Eddie Cochran, meteoric figure, promising multi media mega-star, and without question, Legend of Rock and Roll.

Peace to all in Rock and Roll Heaven……you know they got a helluva band!

Eddie Cochran: Early Rock Star, Rockabilly Pioneer from MyRareGuitars.com

This is one of those articles.

Hold on, though. There’s more to it than that. This is the story of a personal journey through the world of music that begins humbly and ends just as humbly as it started. The fact that your reporter (should I say “moi”?) has experienced it at all is amazing enough, for under any other circumstances I might not have found myself in circumstances that presented so ripe an opportunity to learn and understand that most sensuous, invigorating, physically challenging and just plain righteous of musical instruments: the guitar.

Would you rather watch TV or play guitar?

Guitarists: Defining the Breeds

The world of the guitar, from what I’ve seen of the various “shows” held here and there, is populated with individuals whom one could classify into three types: There are collectors who couldn’t give a damn about playing but are attracted by aesthetic or monetary value; there are players who’d probably be better off collecting; and there are those who appreciate how truly awful it is to play poorly and therefore practice like hell out of fear that one day they’ll awaken to find they’re a better fit for category two. (For a hint, reread this paragraph.)

I am one of the individuals from the third category. I live to play the guitar, and if it weren’t for the fact that I’m a responsible adult I’d play the guitar night and day. Actually, it’s as much the music as the instrument – maybe more. Put it this way: To play really well, and play like you mean it, you have to dig in to that fretboard. You have to drive the sludge of misguided assumption and fear out of your hands and out of your brain. To do that takes commitment. It isn’t for babies.

Think about it. To play your best means sacrificing those precious hours in front of the flat-screen, where you might otherwise be perfectly happy growing a big TV butt and shrinking your brain while undertalented, overpaid inflata-babes drive up the advertising revenues and your reserves of testosterone. However, to get to the point where you know that what you’re playing is meaningful and clear of hype. To do that, you’ll have to take your treasured six-stringer through neighborhoods you don’t want to live in . . . at least, not permanently.

If you want to play well, practice hard. That’s what I learned early on in my adventure. On the path I’ve taken, there were players with minds to match their hands; people who saved the partying for after the gig, not before it; people who worked and worked and worked and worked at being better musicians, better thinkers and better teachers. I’ve been fortunate to know these people, and I’ve applied those lessons throughout my career as a journalist and musician.

The Twin Horizons

I soon learned that the many possibilities within the timber of the guitar would establish a certain mark upon which I could focus my own musical efforts. That mark became a line that separated what I was capable of from what I wasn’t yet capable of doing, so in that sense the mark was like the horizon itself. For instance, I knew from the first moment I touched a guitar that it was what I wanted, but it was when I found myself in a circle of very expressive players that I knew the instrument would always hold more than my efforts could reveal. That’s what the guitar is, though. It’s a mystery, or a kind of kaleidoscope. The more you turn it and twist it, the more it displays its infinite randomness and potential. And that’s what makes it so damn fun to play. But the more you play, the more the guitar becomes a philosophy. It’s an approach to listening—a way of sensing and feeling—that lets you know it’s okay to strive and fail before you try and succeed. In that way the guitar is one of the world’s great gifts, which is why so many talented artists have told me that their songs and solos seem to appear from out of nowhere. A good friend recently said there’s no such thing as musical genius. Instead, he said, there’s only the act of channeling from a sphere of creativity that’s far too big for one mind to perceive or identify. It made sense to me. Certainly it’d be more fun to pull some incredible theme out of thin air, or maybe out of a dream, than to feel it was some godlike and wholly intentional act: “That’s it, I’ve done it. I’ve just produced another masterpiece, the likes of which the world shall not see a-gain.” There’s way too much pressure in that. It’ll give you acne.

Well, on with the story. You’ll be impressed, I think, because it’s entirely true and free of exaggeration. It might be a bit more intense than what you’ve experienced on your trip, but then it might not be. After all, the story is really more about the experiences than about—well, moi—so the commonalities will reveal themselves as I relate the events. But hopefully those events will help us define a new philosophy, based partly on the old ones but enriched with something newer and less moi-centric. Here goes:

George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" was all over the radio

It was a long time ago that I began to play the guitar. I was in the eighth grade, and George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” was all over the radio. I’d already learned to play the drums, but since there was little chance that my parents would allow a second set of tubs in the house (the drums belonged to an older brother), I figured my chances would be better with the more compact and more “affordable” guitar. There was one of those in the house too, and it belonged to another brother. I’d been watching him for quite a while, experimenting with his little Orpheus tiger-striped acoustic in the rare dogpoop sunburst. Actually, what I really wanted most was just to pluck those six strings from low to high and follow with a single strum, which was a symbol of the old “Peter Gunn” TV show. Anyway, Guitar Brother eventually relinquished the Orpheus, but rather than deciding I should keep and treasure it the aforementioned two jerks joined with still another brother in destroying it. (Perhaps my oldest brother would have stopped them if he were there. No, he’s classically educated and hates rock ‘n’ roll, so he would’ve helped ‘em.) Hey, but at least it was fun to watch. It also showed me, right at the start of my life as a guitar addict, that there’s always another deal to be had somewhere. So, having owned the Orpheus only a matter of hours and suddenly finding myself without it, I became immersed in the culture of hunter-gatherers. Guitar Bro’ moved up to a Japanese-built Orlando classical, and I got a neighbor’s cast-off Mexican gut-string with the “Missing Tuner Button” feature.

Gibson Hummingbird Acoustic Guitar

One day Guitar Bro’ came home with a replacement for his Orlando, but this one wasn’t about to find itself skewered over a piece of rebar like the Orpheus had. It was a ’63 Gibson Hummingbird in mint–and I mean mint–condition, which had been closeted for eight years by a guy who couldn’t stand the thought of scratching it. (His everyday guitar was a Martin.) From the moment I heard that H-bird, with its thunderous and metallic bass end, woody lower mids and ringing trebles, I knew it would become the sonic standard by which I’d judge every other acoustic guitar. Put it this way: My brother still has it, and I still want it. I want that bitchin’ cherry-sunburst finish, the frets that are wide as skateboard wheels, the fully intact pickguard, the dual-trapezoid inlays, and everything else. Oh, and I’ll take the beat-up Victoria case, with key.

I suffered through a long succession of cheapo guitars, all of them quality-challenged except for the Orlando classical I’d inherited when my brother bought the Gibson. (The Orlando had some truly outrageous Brazilian rosewood. Today, something like that would be a thousand dollars.) But it really didn’t matter to me how bad the instruments were, because I’d practice at least two hours every day, beginning immediately after school. The guitar gave me the power to create chord progressions that reflected the influences of my musical upbringing: the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Stones, Dylan, and the theme from “Bonanza.”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Are You Experienced?

Hendrix, Live at Leeds & The Threshold of a Dream

Interestingly, I wasn’t yet hip to the electric guitar when I first heard Are You Experienced blasting out of the hi-fi in a neighbor’s garage down the street. I wasn’t really aware that Jimi was doing all that with a Strat, but sonically it struck me as some of the most powerful and poetic sound I’d ever heard. Over the years I thought about it—becoming a Hendrix freak in the process—and eventually I realized that the instrument and technique are tools that serve the music, not the other way around. In some schools of thought it’s called transparency.

Music was going all the time in my family’s house. And that, I suspect, is where this particular upbringing differed from others. Oh, there was the occasional silence—after all, it wasn’t an insane asylum or a supermarket—but listening to music was a pretty serious pursuit. As much as we gave our time to it, we gave our imagination to it. So, listening wasn’t just a matter of hearing, it was a matter of believing . . . and the music had to be great before we would believe in it. The fundamental distinction is that music wasn’t entertainment in that house, nor was it something we were “allowed” to have “once we’d reached a certain age.” Admittedly we were Anglophiles or even Europhiles, but that’s because there was so much orchestral music to be heard. It was a sensibility that encouraged a real affection for groups like the Moody Blues, as well as later bands like Hatfield and the North. They had everything: melody, harmonic sophistication, musicianship, great production. The haunting improvisations of the Norwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal, and the sonorous melodies of German bassist Eberhard Weber were a revelation too. Listening to their music teaches you that jazz was never strictly an American art form; there’s a classical-based contingent that’s every bit as important.

The Sparkling Storefront

Unshakeable faith can make for a lonely devotion, particularly when you follow something as nebulous and mystifying as music. But as luck would one day have it, a little shop was opening on a commercial street not far away, just down the street from the liquor store. And on the plain stucco edifice over the storefront a guy was spray-painting the image of a cherry-sunburst Les Paul. Wow. I was in high school by this time, and I was totally ready for a place like that. Not that I’d ever held a real Les Paul, but I’d ogled them in the display cases up at the music store in the mall. But I knew this was going to be different. It had to be, because I could clearly sense it. Shoot, I could smell those old guitars and musty little amps from out on the street. And there were two or three guys in the shop, just casually talking and playing. I scooted past the scaffolding and stepped inside.

Man, the sound was awesome. I can still see this quiet little gentleman sitting cross-kneed on a stool, cranking big, beautiful blues out of a ’68 Les Paul Custom and a blackface Fender Deluxe. He’d slur, squawk and bend those riffs in a way that was so filthy-dirty and lowdown, I knew I just had to get some of that. The sound was huge and authoritative, but at the same time the man’s approach was perfectly languid. It was one of those moments when you simply have to assume the music comes to you. You prepare, you perfect your tools, and then you lay back and play it. Awesome!

Thankfully, the owners of the vintage shop recognized me as one of their own: a happily addicted adolescent guitar nut who’d do anything to taste that magical concoction of six strings and twenty-odd frets. Maybe they thought I might even buy one of the seven or so ’55 Goldtops that adorned the walls there. Think of that: I was this nice Catholic kid whose every move betrayed a lack of experience in the world, and I was hangin’ out with guys who owned and sold some of the most righteous guitars ever made! I went there nearly every day, and tried not to be an ignorant little punk. That was the hard part.

Other people started hanging out at the shop too, and quickly it became a haven for players from throughout the South Bay. (That’s basically the part of Southern California occupied by Long Beach, which I also learned had an inordinately high number of monster guitarists.) If you were deemed by the owner to be good enough, and careful enough, then you could take the guitars off the hangers and play them. The deal with the shop was this: It wasn’t so much the guitar or the amp as an example of collectible history or an indicator of market value. Instead this was a place in search of the perfect recipe. To that end, everything was considered in excruciatingly precise detail. Fretboards were cleaned and conditioned (with linseed oil, now considered a possible carcinogen), pickups and wiring were inspected, and the amps were taken through a comprehensive auditioning process in two key environments–the carpeted, rough-pine paneled shop, and a crude cinder-block storage room at the back. There were catalogs of tubes and transformers, and there was a constant procession of speakers. These guys would put just about anything in a tube amp: Altec, JBL, Gauss, Jensen, Celestion, Eminence, and eventually some cheap no-name jobs with paper domes and extra-large voice coils. If an amp or guitar had the potential to sound great, the people at the shop could get it there.

Fender was the amp of choice at the shop.

What to Play?

Fender was the amp of choice at the shop. But these were no longer standard-issue Fenders. A local technician who’d developed a relationship with the shop owners had come up with a way to install a “clipper circuit” in place of the tremolo control. A friend told me it effectively electrified the front panel, but I hardly cared. Once I got up the nerve to say, “Mom, I need a blackface Fender Twin Reverb with master volume for my new gig”–and finding that she’d go for it–I was ready for my new moniker: “The Mayor of Solotown.” Sure, I tried the Marshall route eventually, courtesy of a road-weary hundred-watter that had been stripped of its vinyl, together with a similarly raped slant cab whose basket-weave grille was decorated with the residue of beer and barf. I just hated the thing. It sounded so dead – so devoid of ambience. I just couldn’t seem to play the room with it like I could with the open-back stuff. Another member of the inner circle urged me to keep the Marshall, saying it just needed fresh tubes. (Actually, he was right.) Well, a little reverb could’ve helped too! So, I took it back to the shop and got two amps: a silverface Twin circa ’70-’71, and an Ampeg VT-22 of roughly the same vintage. Man, that was nuts. I had way too much power, feedback that was totally controllable per distance and proximity, and the juicy Ampeg “cone-cry” that Marshall designs, good as they might have been, didn’t have. Those two amps worked together almost intuitively, and they made my little ’76 rock-maple Osborne solid-body sing like Pavarotti with his meatballs in a vice. I still think it was one of the most amazing sounds I’ve ever heard.

A benefit of being a familiar face was that I could hang around at the shop and play all these incredible guitars, but honestly the owners didn’t expect me to pony up for something truly vintage. I’d just walk in, and within a few minutes I’d be playing a ’57 three-pickup Custom – a guitar that was so good it could almost play itself. I could pick up a Goldtop with those delicious off-white soapbars and a stoptail, or even the co-owner’s customized Olympic white “studio Strat” with Mighty Mite brass hardware, EMG active pickups and a shimmed Jazzmaster neck, and blow out the licks till my fingernails bled. Over time I bought this guitar and that, like a scarred-up Guild Aristocrat and a fabulous mid-’60s Kazuo Yairi replica of a Martin 0018. And of course they knew I’d buy the ’63 ES-345 that someone had stripped bare with a steak knife and spray-lacquered. But no one ever said, “Hey, why don’t you buy something.” We of the inner circle even helped sell guitars, because we could make them sound like they should. I’d demo guitars for buyers all the time, and if I played it they’d probably buy it.

Once, though, I demoed a guitar for a kid just about my age, and I almost wished I hadn’t. I’d been at home practicing like crazy, and after a while I decided I’d visit the shop. There was this kid there, and he was interested in a particular Les Paul (a white Custom, I think). The manager said to me, “Hey, play something to show what this guitar can do.” So, I sat down and . . . and . . . found that I just couldn’t seem to play for beans. It was as if I was just too tired. Maybe I just felt like a trained monkey. In any case, all the whiplash-inducing improvisational skill I’d developed was singularly absent from my cells, and I just plain stunk on that guitar.

The kid still wanted the Les Paul

The kid still wanted the Les Paul. But once he’d left the shop, I told the manager I felt lousy about having played so poorly. His response was one of the profound surprises of my life up to that point: “So, you’ve been playing too much,” he said. “Now it’s time to just listen for a while.” It was far more wisdom than I deserved, but that’s the kind of friend this guy was capable of being. He was honest, and in his business he was equally so. It was another lesson: Be a listener. Listen to others, listen to your intuition, and listen to the silence that coincides with the noise. There’s a musical comparison too, I think. So much of what passes for kick-ass product these days is exactly that, a product that’s out to prove it can kick your ass. Time was, when there was a give-and-take in even the gnarliest music. There was an ebb and flow, and the tension and release that has characterized so much of the best music.

Our favorite albums

The Immersion Diversion

Clearly I was learning more about playing the guitar than I could have at any music school. It was everything in one package: musical, philosophical, technical, aesthetic, nostalgic and futuristic. There was a massive influx of ideas and tastes running from Delta blues and Africana to British progressive rock, on to German and Dutch hard rock, and tongue-in-cheek quasi-classical stuff from the studios and piazzas of Milan. We believed we should be able to grasp it all, and that we should be able to play it all. But that was part of the era. Perhaps none of us had a master’s degree in music, but there was a constant and intensive exchange of ideas and information. We’d bring in our favorite records by King Crimson, Automatic Man, Soft Machine, Caravan, Golden Earring, Be-Bop Deluxe, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Frank Zappa, and even the maniacally virtuoso French ensemble Magma. We’d listen to Taj Mahal, Leon Redbone, Tom Waits, Neil Young, and of course Jeff Beck. The power, the greatness and the grittiness of all that would get mixed together, and there at the confluence of it all we felt that absolutely anything was possible.

The guitars at the shop were generally a cut above, but the one that really had it all was a Flying V dating from about September 1957. It had a honey-colored Korina body so gorgeous, and a neck profile so perfect, that simply holding it was enough to make you forsake any other electric instrument. More than any Les Paul, Strat or Tele, it was the guitar. The tone was monumentally hot—bright, sassy and almost too sensuous for words–and the action over those polished frets and board edges was like something you dream of. And guess what? We used to play that sucker all the time, usually through the shop’s number-one Deluxe with that juicy master-volume setup. Man, it was so effing beautiful! But wait, you’d better steel your nerves for this, because it’ll either make you laugh like an idiot or cry like a baby. Ready? I’ll continue.

Birth of an Angel, and Others

Word had it that our beautiful “V” had been sold to a buyer somewhere down in Texas. But since it was obviously too special to be shipped, his plan was to drive out to the coast and pick it up. We never saw it leave the shop, nor could we have handled seeing it go. But a week or so later the shop manager told us the news. He made the report with an “ouch” of a smile that said all too clearly, “Easy come, easy go.” It turned out that the man who’d purchased the “V” only made it about halfway home with the guitar. He’d been running hard across the Arizona desert in his ’50s Ford pickup when suddenly he caught a whiff of smoke. Something smelled funny, like maybe rubber or wiring. Then he saw the flames licking the edges of the hood up front. Soon there was billowing smoke, fire was everywhere, and just one thing to do: pull over and get the hell out of that truck. He released the door, kicked it open, headed across the blacktop for the opposite shoulder and Kablooey!!! A gigantic pressure wave knocked him on his butt, from which position he could see a mushroom of molten iron and oil roiling toward the blue.

Damn. The Flying V was in the Ford.

It was then that he remembered: The Flying V was in the Ford. He had set it up front with him, leaning it against the bench seat so that he could admire it as he drove along. But as the truck flamed itself to a crisp on that Southwestern highway, the soul of one almighty and godlike guitar silently winged its way to Heaven.

Other axes came and went, and we enjoyed them all. There were baby-blue Strats, Mustangs with racing stripes, Teles and Esquires, a Firebird V that a customer bought and had edge-radiused and refinished wine red, a particularly fine Les Paul Standard with the top refinished in translucent clover honey (like orange juice), and a ’58 blond dotneck 335 that I sincerely wish I’d put on layaway. And if your pickups weren’t up to snuff, good ol’ Bill the shop manager would fix that. He pulled the stock Hi-A units out of my Osborne and replaced them with DiMarzio PAFs that he’d hotrodded with longer magnets. He also installed some pre-amped EMGs and a five-way switch in my Ibanez Challenger II “Buddy Holly” Strat replica. Damn, what a great guitar that was. Wait, there’s something in my eye. Just a minute, the tears will pass.

Excuse me. Once in a while I remember letting that one go.

Robin Trower, Guitarist (Procol Harum)

Fame However Fleeting

Big-time guitarists would come to the shop, too, usually after hours. For example, it was said that Robin Trower came in one night to audition three ’57 Strats that had been brought in for his consideration. And once I was invited to “drop by” with my guitar when Larry Carlton was scheduled to come in and try a caramel-sunburst ES. I was there for it, just waiting. Eventually he showed up, and after a few minutes he took a seat adjacent to me, on one of those funky squash-colored naugahyde ottomans that every guitar shop ought to have. He just started doing his thing, so I immediately jumped in with mine. It sounded good to me, and I could tell he was diggin’ it, so we played that way for at least half an hour. Eventually I packed up my guitar, but I loitered long enough to listen in as Carlton finished his business with the management of the shop. (He said he liked the ES but that the neck would need some work, which I took to mean reshaping.) Then, when I got home, Bill called from the shop and said, “So, after you left, Carlton goes, ‘Jeez, who was that kid!? He’s great!'” It was nothing, really. When you’ve been living and breathing Wishbone Ash for months, and practicing every waking hour, you aren’t going to feel intimidated by a few Steely Dan riffs.

Larry Carlton, Guitarist & Composer

Life goes on, and eventually I was too busy to visit the vintage shop very often. There was a change in management anyway, so the vibe was noticeably absent. In time I became a full-time writer, covering my favorite subject as an editor and contributor with various magazines. But in all the years since those days, when music focused our minds and fueled our fingers, I have yet to hear more than a handful of guitarists who can touch some of the players I knew from that little vintage guitar shop in Long Beach. I’ve lived in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and Tokyo, and I’ve met, interviewed and studied with brilliant players. Latin, world music, rock, metal, the studio scene, fusion, and etcetera: all have their names and signatures. But when you find a place where you can immerse yourself in the art of the guitar—where you’re totally free of inhibitions and ready to learn from players of every genre—then there’s no question about it. That’s where you’ll find musicians who are quicker, faster, more fluid, funnier, more powerful, more dedicated, better equipped to improvise and easily equipped to out-rock any of the supposed masters from this or any crop in recent memory. Simply put, it’s the place.

Jeff Beck, Guitarist (The Yardbirds)

The Philosophy Part

What did I learn, and what sort of philosophy emerged from my experiences there? Well, to review them and sum up I’d say it’s as important to attempt as to succeed; that the process is nothing without the quest for the process; that it’s all for nothing but never simply for entertainment; that it’s always worthwhile to want to be the best, even though there is never one “best”; that one should listen to the lessons of accident and random occurrence; that the person that makes the music, though the music fulfills the person; and that if you don’t play as if it were your very last time on this little blue planet, then you’re just wasting your time.

I also learned that you can play almost any kind of guitar you want and sound as good as you want. For instance, I don’t think any of the best players from this particular circle had the money it took to own one of the best guitars in the shop. In fact, I know they didn’t. Those guitars are intentionally priced to remain beyond the reach of the player, so that they’ll neither suffer from player wear nor embarrass the collector who can afford them but can’t actually play. But if you think we ever discussed it or worried about it, you’d be wrong. As I said earlier, we could play the vintage gear nearly anytime we wanted, and it was great. But then we’d head for our own guitars. I had my Osborne, which, if you can imagine, looks like a Rickenbacker 325 with a Mosrite headstock and Gibson-style hardware. Jeff had his lucite Dan Armstrong. Ronnie had a Strat with a fat little Tele neck on it, and Martin had an early issue of the Ibanez Artist in that nice violin finish. With the exception of my Osborne, nearly everything we owned was pre-owned, and certainly everything we played needed some serious tweaking due to overuse.

It’s still a challenge to defend an older guitar against a newer, better-built one. And since I nearly played the Osborne to death—to the point that I’d often fall asleep with it on my chest—I’ve placed it in the deep freeze until I can resurrect it. Instead, I play any of several guitars. For example, I had a superstrat built at ESP Craft House Tokyo in ’85. I hand-picked all the components myself, right down to the slab of northern ash, birds-eye neck and Bill Lawrence pickups. I even had the luthier assemble a Kahler Pro trem with a combination of brass and stainless parts. It has an oiled neck with a lacquered fingerboard, and the body is translucent cranberry. (Don’t ask how I put a belt-buckle dent in the top of the guitar.) Then I have a Yamaha SBG1300TS double-cutaway in gothic black. It weighs more than a Toyota and has a baseball-bat neck, but what resonance! There’s also an early ‘60s Eko model 200 “Mascot” archtop in showroom shape, aged to a delicate apricot blond. It’s small, but like many Eko acoustics it’s loud and very responsive, with tremendous sustain. And I have a four-pickup Eko Cobra that, despite the uprooted frets and shrunken pickguard, still manages to produce a sound that Stevie would’ve swapped his axe for. My current favorite, though, is a beautiful Eastwood Sidejack Deluxe in caramel sunburst. The fretboard is so slick and fast, I just can’t stay away from it. If I were to characterize its sound, I’d say it conjures the tonal balance of a Firebird, or maybe a super-hot Tele. There’s a “long scale” quality about the sound, which I really like.

See? There’s nothing outlandishly expensive. Sure, the Osborne is rare, with a serial number of “0003.” The ESP is tailor-made, and the Eko 200 is a sweetheart Django machine – a total rocket. But I treat each of them as a tool to help reach an artistic goal. It doesn’t take a fabulously expensive guitar to succeed in this respect. Instead you’ll want a guitar that doesn’t hold you back. You can play a guitar that challenges you, but a challenge is distinct from a hindrance. If the pickups are too hot or tend to feed back, you can pull back from “11.” When the intonation is off in the octave register, you can adjust it or deal with it. When there’s a tendency to play one guitar a bit more staccato than you’d like, you can simply relax and play more legato. You can even pick harder, or play fingerstyle, and achieve a similar result. Just make the instrument your own. Teach that guitar how to play and how to sound its best. Then it can teach you in return.

So, if you’re out there, Martin, Ronnie, Rob, Mark, Bill, and especially my old friend Jeffrey, I want to thank you for making me a part of the group. You’ve taught me more than I could ever say, and you’ll always be among my true guitar heroes.

Life in Guitarland from MyRareGuitars.com

Not everyone is so easily fooled by the argument that one form or style of music is better or more valid than another. There really are guitarists who can walk either street, reflecting the mood with appropriate ease and authority. But since they realize it’s no use distancing one path from the other, they just allow the two routes to mingle and intersect, creating a style that’s more relevant to the music and the moment.

The truth is, playing it all requires a measure of self-assuredness. Call it arrogance, or call it balls. But if you can rip off those three-octave runs, play the big chords and take it to Chicago in one go, then you’re too cool for school. You’re ready to get out there and do it.

Jazz Guitarist Mike Stern

The Man with the Axe

Mike Stern is one of those lucky few: a guitarist who can do it all. Though he’s known for the depth and precision of his jazzy ballads and rip-snortin’ fusion instrumentals, he’s equally respected for the woozy bends and woody tone of his paeans to the greats of blues and rock. Listen to any of his many excellent releases (all of which remain active in the Atlantic catalog), and you’ll caught by the power of his deceivingly subtle blend. He’ll start off a solo slowly, with notes that rise and fall like the undulations of a woman in the throes of romance. Those few moaning notes soon take on the tone of spoken utterances, urging the action. The speed builds, the intervals become more dramatic. The whole thing rises to a crescendo of volcanic proportions, climbing to the very pinnacles of stately, guitaristic glory. (Sounds like sex, doesn’t it?)

It’s really remarkable that Stern can sustain those levels of excitement over the course of solos that are much longer than is typical of either the jazz genre or rock. After all, these aren’t cheap little power ballads, they’re full-blown hotrods of composition and jazz improvisation. That’s right, they’re long and they’re loud. It’s convenient to compare Stern’s manner of opening to the sound of the late blues master Roy Buchanan (whose ancient Telecaster he would one day own), and rock archetype Jeff Beck. But those guitarists, despite their brilliance, didn’t leap the song format and compose for entire groups of musicians. Mike Stern has.

Early exposure to many kinds of music gave Stern a head start in his ability perceive the melody, or the long line, at the heart of a piece. His mother was a big influence there, being a fan of the great composers and jazz artists alike. Their home in D.C. was always alight with sound. As he says, “My mom used to play a lot of classical records around the house. I got into that, along with a lot of jazz. But I still listened to the Beatles, the Stones, Jeff Beck and Hendrix.” Which makes complete sense, since the Beatles, Hendrix and the best of their day couldn’t have done what they did without considerable background as listeners.

Early Explorations

Mike was born in January 1953, into a family based in the Boston area. Later on they moved to Washington, D.C., where, at his mom’s insistence, he took up the piano. By the age of 12, however, he’d made a decision about what he should play. And it wasn’t going to be the piano. Soon came the fateful six-string, an unassuming plywood job with nylon strings. “I took a few lessons,” he says, “but after a while I started playing by ear. I did that for a long time, and it just felt right. So, now it’s whatever gets to my heart. It could be simple, or whatever. In those days it was simple by necessity, because I didn’t have very much knowledge. Later I began studying more, because I wanted to grow and improve my understanding. I dug jazz, but I’d learned to play rock and blues by listening to records. Still, when I took my mom’s jazz records into my room and tried to play along with that stuff, I’d get lost right away. To be honest, I felt like I was in a rut playing only rock and blues.”

Mike Stern with Band Mike enrolled at the Berklee College of Music in 1971, just a few blocks from Fenway Park and the legendary Red Sox, and began a more in-depth exploration of jazz. That was where he finally got serious about it, thanks to the encouragement of guitar instructors such as Mick Goodrick and a very young Pat Methany, who had also been a student of Goodrick. Along the way he developed a deep respect for jazz guitar, notably the innovation of Wes Montgomery and the delicate touch of Jim Hall. Goodrick, however, was known to use an approach that was esoteric, in that he’d focus not on the instrument but on the individual.

Goodrick’s way of saying it was, “You are who you are first, and your music is secondary. Your playing reflects that relationship, so in turn you have to represent what your vibe is.” It was his way of saying the player comes first. Really, though, the music itself tends to do that. When the music is real, it comes through in a positive way, and that’s really powerful. People put their energy into something that at the very worst is harmless and at the very best is incredibly great. I think we need a lot more of that kind of thing.”

Goin’ Home

Stern eventually began to feel he should leave the academic environment of Berklee and return to D.C. So, home he went, and before long he was playing rock and blues gigs throughout the region. “I’d studied with Pat Methany for about a year, before I went home. Eventually I went back to Berklee, and Pat told me then: ‘School is great, but you gotta get out and play.’”

It was the message Mike needed to hear. He decided that he’d have to work harder than ever to make something happen, and by 1976 he was ready for the next step up the ladder. Word got out that the long-established band Blood Sweat & Tears was looking for a guitarist, and Stern was among the many who took the test. “There were all kinds of cats auditioning for that band, but [drummer] Bobby Colomby gave me the call. I auditioned just for the sake of doing it, and I got the gig. Man, if you can get that kind of experience, it will do so much!”

The spot in BS&T proved to be a lucky one, even though the band was well past its days as a hit machine. Still, BS&T was never a band that suffered fools lightly, and Mike knew he was working in the company of some seriously talented players. Among them was Jaco Pastorius, a former drummer who had quickly made a name for himself as the self-proclaimed king of the electric bass. The two quickly struck up a friendship, and since then Jaco’s unmistakable mastery of the fretless Precision bass has remained an inspiration for Stern.

New York: The Core Issue

Things change within and without, so Mike knew that Boston couldn’t be his home base forever. Besides, now that he was gigging with career performers and studio veterans, he wasn’t going to be sitting around the house much. So, once his career was off the ground he made the move to New York. He got used to the pace of it easily enough, and soon he and his girlfriend Leni (whom he eventually married) were offered a loft above his favorite jazz haunt, 55 Grand St. They just couldn’t say no to that. Imagine you’re actually living at the hippest little spot in town, and that you can actually gig right there. You’d be tempted to think there was actually a choice between brushing your teeth and plugging in your guitar. It made for an interesting lifestyle, and Mike became known as the guy who lived where he worked . . . in a manner of speaking.

Typically, Stern is humble about the way he’d become so much a part of that elite circle. It’s not about him, it’s about his friends and the memories and experiences they provided. “Jaco used to hang out a lot,” Mike says. “He’d always nudge me along. He and Pat seemed to have a lot more faith in my playing than I did. So, that was an interesting period. As time passed I was able to play a lot better, and I used to jam with Jaco all the time. He’d come up to New York, and we’d just play and play. So, it turned out that I frequently got to jam with people who were way better than I was, which helped me get my shit together.”

The guitar is always a big part of Stern’s life, but his discipline with the instrument has resulted from the combined influence of a busy circuit, a cadre of talented musicians, and the drive to acquire knowledge. “No matter what I’m doing,” says Mike, “I try to get a little place lined up where I can play. For example, I was playing with Bill Evans, the saxophonist, at a place called “Michael’s,” which is closed now. And Bill told me he’d be hitting the road with Miles. But I was also playing with Billy Cobham at the Bottom Line, there in Manhattan, so Evans brought Miles down. Eventually I got the call to do that gig. In fact, the title for “Fat Time” [from Davis’ classic The Man with the Horn] was taken from the nickname they gave me.”

Stern made his stage debut with Miles at the Kix club in Boston in June of ’81. That performance would see release as We Want Miles, the second of his three records with the band. This leg of the gig lasted for two years, producing a series of recordings that would get the jazz and rock communities buzzing with news of a guy with fret-melting prowess on the guitar. Three of the era’s most powerful sets—The Man with the Horn, We Want Miles, Miles! Miles! Miles! (Live in Japan) and Star People—showcased the journeyman guitarist. His sound blended the primal energy and sensual textures of his long-time hero Jimi Hendrix with the harmonic breadth of Wes Montgomery. “Fat Time” remains an awe-inspiring example of the monumental structures that Stern can create with a solid-body axe and a touch of chorus.

Jazz Guitarist Mike Stern

A Sense of Self

Jaco’s influence up to this point had been positive in many ways, but of course there was also a negative aspect to it. Despite the benefits of being able to play together whenever they liked, the pair had taken the party route a bit too often. Excessive alcohol consumption had begun to wear on the guitarist, depleting his energies and stressing his home life. So, after a while it was clear that he needed to chill out. Fortunately the job with Miles was still open to him, so Mike returned for another year’s work with the maestro. Then, around the next corner he found work with Steps Ahead, the progress and highly respected ensemble featuring vibraphone virtuoso Mike Mainieri. That led to a spot in a Brecker Brothers’ quintet, which would again mean a lot more experience.

The years following were busy ones for Mike, and right through 1986 he worked with one headlining act after another. Still, there was a need to see what he could do on his own terms. It was an insistent (some might say innocent or even dangerous) curiosity about life outside the bubble. It was 1986, and with his second stay in the Miles Davis unit drawing to a close he’d managed to put together a band with saxophonist Bob Berg (now deceased) for the recording of his first solo LP, Upside Downside. The record made its debut on Atlantic Records, marking the start of a ten-disc tenure that would create a spot for Stern among the leaders of modern jazz guitar. Upside was the record that made it possible for him to make music under his own name, entirely on his own terms. That was pivotal in Stern’s career not just because it followed on the heels of the Miles Davis records, but because it was the guitarist’s signature as a writer and musician. Cuts like “After You,” “Little Shoes” and the title tune were proof of his ability to create music that could stand on the basis of its solid, song-like structure and cohesive melodies. To put it in other words, Mike Stern made music that was intriguingly elaborate but totally memorable. The icing on the cake was a set of solos that just totally f***ing burned. (The writer remembers asking a friend and session guitarist in L.A. if he’d heard Upside, and his immediate response was, “Jeez, could ya get any more intense!?” That’s the effect this record had on even the most astute players.)

The critical success and very respectable sales of Upside Downside were encouraging for Stern and the powers-that-be at Atlantic. And because he knew from the start that doing a solo record was the right move from a personal standpoint, he’d also earned the freedom to compose music that suited his own rules (or lack of them) as a modern electric guitarist. What followed Upside Downside was the ’88 disc Time in Place, which offered a similar blend of bop-inspired rockers and emotive ballads, but with a slightly more “mature” sound thanks to the contributions of players like drummer Peter Erskine, keyboardist Jim Beard and organist Don Grolnick. The next year, though, Stern lit it up again on Jigsaw, with the New York-based guitarist Steve Khan as producer.

What Stern succeeded in doing, over the next several albums as the leader and soloist in various formats, was to make an otherwise technocentric genre work on his terms. And those terms would include a range of music and themes from an increasingly colorful palette, covering everything from standards to hard bop to music of a more global perspective. There was simply no way to lock him in or tie him down. If you liked what Mike Stern did, you’d go wherever the trip took you.

Labels Are for Cans

Stern’s previous works emphasize the textures that multiple instruments create when they collide and intertwine—like the two parallel roads that in some miraculous way intersect. But the recent CD Voices again resists the temptation to stick with the tried and true. Instead it combines Mike’s guitar with the ensemble voices of singer/bassist Richard Bona, Philip Hamilton, Elizabeth Kontomanou and the singer/percussionist Arto Tuncboyaciyan (whose talents have helped make Al Di Meola’s World Sinfonia projects so provocative). This is occasionally called “vocalese,” which is an attractive way of saying “singing without words.” But if you’re tempted to assume it’s more of that generic “marina music” for happy times and empty heads, forget it. One listen to the somber “Still There” or the gut-wrenchingly real “What Might Have Been,” and you’ll understand why some people wear sunglasses around the clock.

Major-label music is very strictly packaged today, of course, and the industry’s lawyers and dealmakers have a disproportionate say in the process of planning and marketing a project. It’s a circumstance that has polarized the industry, on one hand feeding the wealth of puppet entertainers while cutting off the opportunities for musicians who should be just as deserving. One can’t deny that in a world where real music can be seen as odd, and where very few people would bother to invent music if it didn’t already exist—the general population needs to be told what kind of music is preferable or valid. Like the guitarist who feels the need to “be” a bluesman or a jazzer, the casual listener can feel put off or even insulted by music that’s beyond his experience. The industry simply attempts to eliminate the problem. Quality has nothing to do with it.

So, in a way it’s amazing that we can still buy music that’s made by people like Mike Stern. He simply does what he does, when he wants and with the musicians he wants. For those of us who bust our butts to play our best, it’s an important message: The idea isn’t to be different but to be true to oneself, and in so doing be different.

“I never have anybody to answer to,” he says. “So far, I’ve been very free to do just what I’ve wanted. That’s one thing: I feel as if there’s been plenty of effort to make sure I have that creative flexibility. At some point I’d even love to write for more instruments, and for different kinds of instruments. I have a pretty good idea of what I want from people in the group context.”

Mike Stern’s career as a guitarist mirrors the quest that so many of us face as dedicated players. For many it’s a quandary, given the options and the indefinable nature of the art. Here’s the guy who loved blues and rock so much that he nearly played the life out of the stuff, but who ultimately found himself at a critical intersection. He didn’t turn back or come to a screeching halt. He just kept going.

Mike Stern: Figuring It All Out from MyRareGuitars.com

Slinky: Link Wray & the Wraymen

Link learned the guitar at the age of nine from a carnie named Hambone, in town with the Barnum and Bailey Circus. They began their friendship when Hambone noticed Link strumming an old acoustic on his parents’ front porch. As an army brat, Link was used to a nomadic lifestyle. By the age of fifteen he was paying twenty dollars a night to sit in with country-great Tex Ritter, so he could continue to learn his craft.

Lacking the technical know-how of the jazz luminaries of the day, TalFarlow and Django Reinhardt being his favorites, and unable to sing due to the loss of a lung to childhood tuberculosis, Link began to experiment with his sound. He tried such original ideas as poking holes in his amplifier speakers to get a new kind of distortion. Teaming with his brother Doug and first cousin Shorty, The Wraymenwere born. Prestigious venues and Top 20 success followed in 1958, when Rumble (actually titled Oddball by Link) made the Charts.

Link Wray

This ushered in the era of the guitar instrumental, and Link stayed ahead of the pack by using unique guitars and the electronics of the day, creating probably one of the first home studios. He called it the Three Track Shack because it was housed in a shed and had only one three-track tape recorder, ;state of the art for the time. By merging chugging blues, surf twang, and psychedelia into a sound that was soulful, irreverent, and individual, Link Wray created a new music. Some people call it Rock and Roll.

A friend of mine had every Link Wray album. My education began by playing each of these albums over and over. So when Link came to town, it was the show I had been waiting. We plotted and planned, bought tickets and then lost them, bought them again. Two nights later we were ready to go. I slicked up my shoes and slimed up my hair in true Rockabilly fashion, donning a western shirt embossed with tigers. My friend was dressed to dazzle in a late 50s ruby red velvet dress and a pair of knee-high stiletto boots.

Link Wray with a Supro Dual Tone Guitar

We arrived as Link roared into Rumble. The thrust and the volume of the song was even more powerful live. Link stood firm and anchored the band with ultra-fuzz arpeggio riffs, keeping the trio in tow. With his lanky lumbering frame, a fierce ponytail, and motorcycle jacket, he hunched into his guitar. It was incredible that the man producing this wall of brute sonic strength was in his seventies. As he roared along, I realized that this timeless music has never been more alive. After Jack the Ripper, Rawhide, and Ace of Spades (some were played twice during the evening), he launched into one of his more way-out songs. He cranked it all the way up and I realized this was probably the last song of the night.

Link Wray concert ticket (October 2000)

My friend and I rushed forward to witness the rollicking rave-up. We slid in next to the stage, and with a wail of his guitar he seemed to play off of us alone, looking our way with an expression of childlike wonder. I figured he had his eye on my lady friend. Then something remarkable occurred. He walked over to face me, continuing to play. As the eyes of a shaman stared into mine, he strummed with his right hand and motioned for me to play the neck. And there I was, dear reader, simultaneously reaping the riffage with the legend himself. As tom toms rolled and cymbals crashed and the electric bass pounded to a climax, Link looked directly at me and nodded as though we had shared an intimate secret. In the next moment he was center stage again, commanding the final surge of power and sound to ecstatic applause. My friend also reveled in the moment, a firsthand witness to a dream come true.

Link Wray on stage

All the greats have come across Link at one point in their musical development. He didn’t live to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but was inducted into its Rockabilly counterpart. Bob Dylan, hearing of Link’s death, covered Rumble last week. Neil Young once said, if he could see any band in the world, he would chose Link Wray and The Wraymen. Simply put, the king is gone, but he is not forgotten.

Post by: Devin Patrick

The Night I Played Link Wray’s Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

Music, though, can fool even the most eager listener. Why? Because to appreciate music–really, to understand it–we first try to define what it is. That’s a benefit, but it’s also a bias. But when you find something you can identify with, it becomes something you crave. You’ll want to know more about it. That’s the case with jazz guitar great John Abercrombie. It’s amazing to think that in his playing one can discern the influences of so many great players yet immediately tell, from the very first note, that none other than he could be playing.

John Abercrombie on the cover of DownBeat Magazine

“Probably the first important guitarist I listened to was Barney Kessel,” he says. “He was the first ‘jazz’ guitarist I ever heard. At that time I was trying to make the transition from blues, rock ‘n’ roll, and R&B players like Chuck Berry. Still, Kessel had a really twangy sound. It was a funky, bluesy, even country kind of sound.”

It was a constant drive . . . a hunger. There was so much to hear, and so much to learn. As a young man, Abercrombie listened to everything he could get by artists such as Jimmy Rainey and Tal Farlow, the latter of whom was considered something of a phenomenon in his day. “Eventually I was fortunate to hear George Benson, and he was just terrifying. And then I heard Pat Martino, and Kenny Burrell.

“But then I heard Wes,” says the guitarist after a short pause. “There was something so natural about the way he played. I used to see him play all the time, back in Boston. I could sit and watch him all night.”

The drive to play–to understand, explore and perfect–hasn’t diminished. The quiet, working-class guy with the moustache continues doing what he does best, as a composer of singularly moving music and a player of the first order.

John Abercrombie was born in December 16, 1944 in Port Chester, New York. Port Chester is sandwiched between the town of Rye (think Barbara Bush) and Greenwich, Connecticut (try not to think of Martha Stewart), two of the ritziest enclaves on the Eastern seaboard. It was the latter place that John called home, though his wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where caviar was standard fare. As he puts it, “I came from the slums of Greenwich. Believe me, there are working-class neighborhoods in all the upscale towns around that area.”

Neither was it a particularly musical household, he says. “In fact, there was no music in the family. My parents liked music, and they bought me a record player, but they didn’t listen to jazz or classical records. Just the radio, maybe, but it wasn’t an important part of their lives.

“The music was just in me,” he adds. “I was into R&B, rock ‘n’ roll, and all that. But as I got a bit older, I decided I wanted to really study the guitar. My parents supported me in it, since they knew I had a good time playing. But then I got really serious, which sort of scared them. I mean, coming from a small town in the late 1950s and ‘60s, and deciding I wanted to go to school and study jazz? Nobody even knew what it was, much less anyone coming from a small town. It was a strange time.”

The avenues were limited in terms of formal jazz studies in the early ‘60s, but they were even more limited for anyone wanting to become a jazz guitarist. After all, the pop phenomenon was relatively new, and the six-string had to overcome a considerable credibility problem. So, John had just a couple of choices, one of which was the Berklee College of Music. Luckily, he was young enough to indulge his dream and give it all the energy it required. If it didn’t pan out, it didn’t pan out. So, once he graduated from high school in June of ’62, he headed up the coast to Boston.

He breathed deep the atmosphere of this earthly jazz heaven, and after a few years he received a diploma certifying him as a musician of professional standing. But he had little interest in making a hobby of the guitar. He wanted to gig, and he’d trained like an athlete in order to do so. Eventually the opportunity came, in the form of an audition for one of those jazzy, funky R&B units that populated the club circuits in cities of the period.

“It was around ’67,” he says. “During my last year of school I hooked up with an organist named Johnny ‘Hammond’ Smith. I was all set to audition for him, and I was really excited, because this was going to be a real jazz gig playing a selection of stuff every night. You had to be able to comp and solo, and do the R&B stuff. It was a great experience. I had to learn lots of songs and get up onstage and play, night after night. Of course, my schoolwork had started to suffer as a result, because I’d realized that this was the real school.”

The guitarist made his first professional recording–an LP called “Nasty”–with Smith in ’68. The band consisted of Smith at the B3, Houston Person on sax, and Grady Tate on drums. Abercrombie toured with the band for a year-and-a-half, playing a gritty, crowd-pleasing mix of tunes. But this was a time of significant cultural change, during which the youth of America, inflamed by their forced involvement in a war overseas and by the exposure of political corruption and corporate collusion, took to the streets and campuses in protest. This could be heard in music, too, most notably in the ferocious guitar playing and poetical psychedelic blues of Jimi Hendrix, who had gone to London in the mid-‘60s and come back as a bearer of the Freak Flag for millions.

“The fusion thing had started to happen,” Abercrombie says, “and all the musicians were listening to Hendrix. Around that time I joined a fusion band called Dreams, which was fronted by the Brecker brothers with Randy on horn, Michael on sax and Barry Rogers on trombone. Billy Cobham was on the drums. The band was holding try-outs, hoping to find a guy who could play rock guitar. So, I went down and auditioned. I’d grown up playing rock and R&B, I’d studied jazz at school, and I’d played all sorts of stuff with Johnny ‘Hammond’ Smith, so I felt pretty much at home with what they were trying to do. They gave me the spot, which was great. I was even going to switch guitars. With Johnny I’d been playing a Gibson L5, but with the fusion stuff it had to be a Les Paul.”

It seemed the guitarist wouldn’t be leaving Boston anytime soon, at least not with all the contacts he was making. But even though Boston is a bona fide metropolis, it’s still a New England city, small by world standards. That meant only one thing: Eventually he’d have to take that first bite out of the Big Apple. The ticket to Gotham arrived in the form of a gig with Chico Hamilton. John moved into an apartment there with his girlfriend, and he quickly found that the spot in Hamilton’s band meant he’d be writing too.

“That was my first professional experience writing music,” Abercrombie explains, “because Chico didn’t write anything. But he’d played with Larry Coryell and Gabor Szabo, and he really liked guitar players. I was still young and full of testosterone, and I wanted to get in there and really do it. I played lots of notes, and I used lots of distortion.”

Abercrombie was by that time identified as a part of the Brecker Brothers scene. But a new group was being put together by heavyweight drummer Billy Cobham, again featuring Mike and Randy on sax and horn. “It was interesting that Billy would give us all a call. That was going to be the Billy Cobham Band, because the Mahavishnu Orchestra was breaking up and his plan was definitely to continue playing. Now, when this guy played, you knew it. And when we played, the decibel level was so intense you could see it. It was frighteningly loud.”

Abercrombie, though, hadn’t forgotten what he’d set out to be in the first place: a jazz guitarist. To him, the Billy Cobham Band wasn’t a jazz group but a variation on the fusion motif. “There was no emphasis on harmony,” he says, “and there was basically no jazz rhythm. Looking back at that time, I think of the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Weather Report as the two most listenable groups of the genre. Of course, all those guys had played with Miles, and with Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter in there, Weather Report had a great deal of harmony. I think that was probably the most memorable music of the whole fusion period. The rest of it, even though it involved some amazing musicians, didn’t interest me. It was way over the top, like a circus.”

Fate stepped in again. Abercrombie’s reverberant tone, so somber yet brimming with emotion, had caught the attention of another gifted young guitarist: Ralph Towner. “I got together with Ralph in New York,” he says. “In fact, he’s the one who got me together with ECM Records. He’d done stuff with [Norwegian saxophonist/composer] Jan Garbarek, and also with [German bassist/composer] Eberhard Weber. I started meeting all these people, and one day Manfred Eicher [founder/executive producer of ECM] asked me to make a record. Manfred had heard me play on a record I’d done with an Italian trumpeter named Enrico Rava, and apparently there was something in my playing that he liked. First he recommended that I do a couple of things with [soprano saxophonist] Dave Liebman, and then he said, ‘I think you’re ready to do your own record.’ I certainly didn’t feel that way, but one day I just sat down and started writing some tunes.”

A sound was beginning to take shape in Abercrombie’s head, and part of the concept involved the polyrhythmic approach of his good friend Jack DeJohnette, the brilliant jazz drummer. The two got in touch, whereupon Abercrombie also called up a former roommate, the Czech keyboardist and Mahavishnu alumnus Jan Hammer. “I told Jack and Jan, ‘This is how I want my record to be, with an organ sound . . . . ‘” The result was Timeless, a set highlighted by intense improvisations and slow, moody tone poems. But Timeless was more than simply the newest rung on the ladder for a fast-rising guitarist. It was an artistic success that brought enthusiastic response from lovers of jazz, fusion and new music. Here was an electric guitarist who could play in a trio with the likes of Hammer and DeJohnette, who could contribute significantly as a composer, and who was enough of an individual to resist sounding like yet another John McLaughlin imitator. The feeling was of someone very new, yet of someone who had been around. From the first groove of the record, Abercrombie had stepped into the upper echelon of modern guitardom.

“Timeless was the first recording under my own name. I wrote about four of the tunes on it, so at that point I realized I had a knack for writing. Actually, I hadn’t done much of it until that record. This got me into writing more, and eventually having my own band.”

It was a time when the guitar was the measure of musicianship. Perhaps it was unfair even to him, but with Timeless Abercrombie had set the bar almost too high. How could he hope to follow it? The answer was simple: Do something different the next time around. So, he recorded Works, a solo collection resplendent in layers of John’s now-classic sound. Like its predecessor, it offered a trademark blend of harmonic sophistication and remarkable single-string technique. Indeed, Abercrombie’s style and approach proved a perfect match for the “ECM sound,” which conveyed a heavy sense of solitude through the use reverberation and other ambient techniques. This isn’t to say ECM ever pandered to the music-as-wallpaper crowd. The ECM label welcomed diversity and change, but it’s safe to say it wouldn’t put out the welcome mat for weeny players. Being the creation of a musician who was equally skilled as an engineer, and populated with a stable of gifted European and American artists, it stood out as a venue for those who sought more from music than what the usual, market-driven categories could offer. So, Abercrombie–having started at ECM with a trio before going solo–returned for his third outing with a quartet featuring Ritchie Beirach on keyboards, Czech bassist George Mraz and Peter Donald on drums.

“I had become a leader at that point,” Abercrombie says. “It was the mid ‘70s, and soon we were touring Europe and the States. The band continued until the early ‘80s, but by that time I’d hooked up with [drummer] Peter Erskine. He was moving back to New York from L.A., and he said we should get together. On a free night we went down to hear the Bill Evans Trio, which had Marc Johnson on bass. Hearing Marc just blew my mind. I was floored by his playing, and he said the feelings were mutual, which I felt was a great compliment. So, Erskine, Johnson and I put together a trio, and at that point we got into more of an electric style. I started using a guitar synthesizer, which a lot of people seemed to think I should never have done. The band lasted four or five years. My quartet had made four records for ECM, but ultimately this trio made five.”

The Hammond B3 organ is arguably the most imitated electric keyboard on the planet. Not surprisingly, Abercrombie, who had come up in Johnny “Hammond” Smith’s band and then featured the organ on Timeless would want to keep the vibe going. However, it would mean another change in personnel, and an end to the trio with Peter Erskine and Marc Johnson.

“I really wanted to do something with the organ, ‘cause I’d always loved that sound. I had an old friend named Dan Wall, who said he’d like to do something with me, and I had another friend named Adam Nussbaum, who’s a great drummer. (I know a lot of great drummers.) So, the new trio became an organ trio.” Two studio records were produced, followed by a live set.

Jazzers seem so accustomed to their lot. Apparently they think nothing of grouping, disbanding, regrouping, recording and renaming. And while others might think of it as a liability or a barrier to the achievement of a good old-fashioned reputation, for these guys it can mean a degree of freedom they wouldn’t have otherwise. Hell, if you’re good enough to go from standards to meterless improvisation, who’d try to stop you? Thus Abercrombie, by welcoming prodigal string players and percussionists alike, has achieved longevity in his career and diversity in his musical output.

Now It Gets Personal

Abercrombie is known as much for understated melodic embellishments and soft yet persistent vibrato as he is for the sound he gets with his guitar. Where one artist would favor a very dry, very present sound–or where another might employ a touch of slapback to give it some projection–Abercrombie seems to play the room rather than the amp. His sound, which originates at the soundboard soft and muted, reaches the listener’s ear through a complex series of reflections, so that there is as much “air” in the notes as there is attack or decay. Well-known players from contemporary jazz and the studio world have made big money with the help of chorus, shelving and other time-delay techniques, but Abercrombie’s sonic palette stands apart for its purity and sincerity. Even when he rocks, it still manages to sound beautiful. So, where did he get such a rich, echoing sound? It’d be easy to assume he picked it up in church, or amid the hallways and high ceilings of some cavernous old house. But that’d be wrong.

“I could never have found that kind of sound in our house,” Abercrombie says. “My bedroom was tiny, and the room I used for practice was little more than a closet. But when I was young I had a teacher named Bill Frienz. He’d come over for a half-hour, and he could play some jazzy things. One day he came by with this little reverb unit. We tried it out, and it was such an attractive sound. From that point on I was really taken with the spaciousness of the way things could sound. That’s what I like about some of the old Miles records. You could tell they were getting a bit of reverb, even though it wasn’t a lot. This little Fender thing was amazingly cool. Still, in those days there wasn’t much of a choice in terms of amps. There was tremolo, but nobody really used it except to play like Duane Eddy. You had nothing to compare to, so you just relied on your amp. Most of my amps had spring reverb, which I always used. So, I guess you can blame it all on that.

“Years later I got an Echoplex, but I never really figured out how to use those things. I remember the first digital reverb I came across. I was working a gig in Munich, and everybody knew how much I loved reverb. Somebody suggested I try a unit by Dynacord. I went down to the local music store and plugged it in, and immediately I had to have it. It cost everything I was going to make that week. I still have it, in fact.”

Abercrombie credits his love of echo to the fabled Fender design, with its tube-driven signal path and integral springs. According to Keith Gregory at Gruhn Guitars in Nashville, that would be a “Fender Reverb Unit.” Introduced in 1961, the Reverb featured a brown Tolex covering with a flat logo and a leather handle. The face panel was also brown, as were the knobs and a plastic domed switch. It incorporated a two-spring pan and a footswitch with a ¼” jack.

The amplifier is somewhat less critical in the equation. For lives dates Abercrombie will usually request a Mesa-Boogie or a Roland Jazz Chorus. At home he routes his signal through a Mesa-Boogie preamp and then into a Walter Woods stereo power amplifier, and then augments it with a Boss SE-50 reverb and a multi-effects unit.

“For a while I was so involved with synthesizers that it became an obsession. But eventually I had to get away from that, because the sound started to feel very synthetic. Basically, I gave all the stuff away, but I still have that Roland GR-300.”

A Unique Choice of Instrument

The soft yet persistent tone so readily associated with John Abercrombie is more often obtained through use of a solid-body guitar than a semi-acoustic or full-bodied archtop. That shouldn’t be so surprising, though, since the modern solid-body has undergone a considerable degree of scientific analysis and artistic endeavor, resulting in a number of instruments that are more playable and more accommodating than their predecessors. Abercrombie’s choice, then, is a Brian Moore DC1. “Basically, it’s a Les Paul style of guitar,” he says. “I tend toward a solid-body, Les Paul sort of sound, anyway. I have an Ibanez solid-body, too, and a Tele-style guitar by Roger Sadowsky.”

He still loves a good archtop, though, as is clear from his descriptions of two key instruments: “I have an old Gibson ES-175 from the late ’50s. It needs serious work, but it’s definitely the guitar I’ll never sell. I also have one made by Jim Mapson, out in California. It’s a little, shallow archtop, and that guitar is probably one of the most amazing ones I own. I can’t play it real loud—there’s a limit to how far it will go–but it has one of the fattest sounds I’ve ever heard.”

About the Music

If Abercrombie’s sound and touch succeed in evoking a sense of place, then the music he plays is equally a part of that success. With Abercrombie there is no discussion of a particular piece being assembled simply for the purpose of giving the players “a chance to show off their chops.” Despite his easy affability, there exists in Abercrombie a fierce drive to explore the inner environs of his imagination. After all, this isn’t kid stuff. This isn’t guitar for the sake of itself, in which the instrument’s make and model matter as much as anything else.

Asked whether he’d describe himself as primarily a guitarist or composer, Abercrombie says, “I’m a little bit of both, really. Jim Hall once said he was ‘a musician who happened to play the guitar.’ I feel that way, too. But he’d agree that we’re all still guitarists. I think you have to work at it, to a certain extent.”

The pull of jazz and its harmonic vocabulary is such that it leads Abercrombie to say, “I’d love to do an album of standards and play them kind of straight.” But he could easily go that route, having demonstrated his facility with chord melodies in the trio format. Still, his personal mode of expression isn’t so traditional. “When I compose, I don’t create music that’s straight. I have to follow my train of thought. Ultimately, I look at it as a positive thing, ‘cause I can go in any direction I want. Other guitarists might say, “Oh, that’s Abercrombie. He’s crazy, so he can just go with what he feels like doing.” That doesn’t mean there’s any less work involved, since I have to try and follow my own creative impulse rather than rely on what has come before.”

A Personal Ethic

Given the very personal nature of Abercrombie’s music, one might expect him to shy away from requests to share his knowledge. Actually, though, he teaches guitar at the college level. To Abercrombie it’s really more about the mind of the musician. And in the long run it’s more practical than what you’d get from a school of hot licks.

“I don’t have any specific goal when I teach, really,” he confesses. “You know, I try to give my students things that are helpful, encouraging or even disillusioning. I try to get them to play a little more like what they really hear, which means they have to play less. They have to think about the chords, not the scales. That lets them hear the music regardless of the changes in key.

“Playing less is actually very hard for the students to do, because they’re often too busy thinking about scales. That kind of habit can get you into big trouble. I find that rock players can use the scales more than jazz players, ‘cause they’re not playing through different keys. They’re thinking in terms of modes. But in jazz, if you start playing the notes of the scale, it sounds kind of funny. You have to go back and start thinking about the chords.”

All in the Wrist

An understanding of chords and their implied movements is certainly apparent in Abercrombie’s playing. Few other guitarists can delineate the structure of a piece with such admirable economy, and fewer still can give it such a beautiful sense of nuance. In his playing nothing is wasted, nor is there any allegiance to lounge riffs and pentatonic fluff. Instead you’ll find a sense of melody that enhances the perception of harmony and dynamics. His vibrato is certainly part of that. As much a classical rubato as the thumb-hinged grasp of blues origin, it’s remarkably fluid and personal. Added to that is a technique of relaxing the note from a whole-step bend or even a minor third. All this serves as a form of sonic signature, expressing his reverence for emotion.

So, what makes Abercrombie’s playing so approachable despite its depth and sonority? How is it possible to make a single note linger in memory for years? Perhaps it’s the patience that is so evident in his approach. Here the listener can readily sense the infinitesimal offset between the right and left hands, which, following on the slight muting of notes as they’re fretted, makes every sound one that’s eagerly anticipated.

“I think many musicians are aware that they have to be entertainers. So, with fusion stuff and the music that came later, there was an element of athleticism involved. There’s less of that in jazz music, or at least certain forms of it. Jazz playing in general requires a level of interaction, but a good fusion player wouldn’t necessarily have to do that. You could have blazing technique but not have to interact with the drummer. But with jazz, it becomes really obvious if you can’t relate to the rest of the band.”

The Point of Arrival

He may downplay his own technique, but there is a wealth of wisdom in Abercrombie’s playing. What’s apparent is that the knowledge of chords, the ability to compose and other skills acquired during his years in school have been refined over the course of a career as one of the finest guitarists in modern jazz. Abercrombie has managed to transcend the traditional approach to his idiom and reached a point where the physicality of playing the guitar becomes transparent.

“I’ve always gravitated toward horizontal playing,” he explains. “That’s how you can get places and play more melodically. I think of the guitar as a voice from bottom note to top. I was always taught based on positions, but I realized early on that alternate picking wasn’t the way I should go. I practice scales a lot, and I have a way of sliding between positions in the same scale without a lot of effort. So, you can learn where all the notes are on all the strings, but when you improvise on a chord progression using only one or two strings you can play more melodically without having to move across all the strings.”

The concept says a lot about the Abercrombie began his musical life as a guitarist rather than moving from another instrument, as so many others have done. Listening to those lines, which can burn in the mind yet just as readily elude the hands, it’s clear that the notes are meaningful as individual events and as components in a chord structure. It’s a quality that sets his guitar apart from other instruments.

“The only time I think more like a piano player is when I play chordally, as when I comp by using my fingers to pluck all the notes at once. Actually, I think of counterpoint more in terms of question-and-answer. I’ll play a phrase and then answer it with another phrase or line. They’re contrapuntal, but they’re not happening at the same time.”

It’s abundantly clear to John Abercrombie that to play well the guitarist should listen to the conversation going on between the other instruments in the group. Don’t play too much, he says. Stay off the soapbox until the time is right. Still, you have to be ready to do it. Remember, you’re playing for people who might be casual listeners at best, and at any rate many of them won’t be musicians.

Abercrombie needn’t preach his talents, nor should he play with any less of the economy for which he’s known. Like a Japanese fan once told me, “Basically . . . his music is best.” One need only interpret this to mean that Abercrombie has the brains and good sense to play from the heart. It means he always plays what’s right for the moment. There’s no better testament than that.

Author’s Note: Larry Payne is a professional writer whose work has been featured in Guitar Player, Guitar for the Practicing Musician, Guitar Extra, Virgin Records’ Dogma, Music Connection and many others. He’s also a fluent guitarist and occasional collector of vintage instruments. Among his current favorites are an early ’60s Eko Model 200 small-bodied archtop, a 1984 Yamaha SBG1300TS through-body unit, his custom-made ESP Craft House Superstrat, and his new Eastwood Sidejack.

John Abercrombie: Straight Talk on a Crooked Road from MyRareGuitars.com

JD’s was kind of an upscale country sort of place, and countr was not really my bag in those days. But, because of knowing Richard, I could get in free, and they did occasionally have a few decent acts, such as the Everly Bros, or Johnny Rivers -so I had been there a few times. At about this point in time, however, JD’s had a “house band” known as Waylon Jennings and the Waylors. Waylon was a young ex-disc jockey, who had just come up to Phoenix from Texas. His only claim to fame up to that point was a brief stint with Buddy Holly’s band, before that fateful “day the music died.” I’d seen Waylon’s act a couple times, and thought he was actually pretty decent for a local guy. He did a lot of country- folk, or folk-rock kind of stuff then, including several Dylan songs, and a cool version of House of the Rising Sun. He was actually a very good guitarist, a fact which kind of got lost in his later stardom.

Waylon Jennings

Anyway, getting back to my story, my friend Richard one day called me up and said that he was looking for a guitar for Waylon – a Telecaster (he had to spell it out, as he had never heard the word before). Knowing that I occasionally wheeled & dealed with guitars, he thought maybe I could help him get a line on one -cheap, he added, as Waylon was poor.

I said, “that’s what he already has, Richard, that thing he’s got all gaudied up with carved leather and his name all over it”. He said, “yeah, all that leather & inlays & stuff, cost him a lot. He wants to save it for important shows, and get a backup for practice & stuff”.

It just so happens that I had an old Tele, at the time. I had taken it in on a trade for a Japanese Teisco. Some guy at school wanted it, because he thought it looked liked George Harrsion’s Country Gentleman. Anyway, the Tele was just sitting in the closet, as I was into Strats & Gibson SG’s, more proper rock ‘n roll guitars. Teles were for the country dudes, in my book. Besides this one was really OLD (that was not really thought of as a good thing in those days – we wanted new stuff!) I’d say it was at least 10 years old, and it was really plain looking, what with it’s clear finish and matching maple fretboard.

So, Richard picked me up that night, and off we headed to JD’s, guitar in tow. We sat through Waylon’s first set, then we went backstage to show him the Tele. I kept apologizing for it being so old, but Waylon didn’t seem to mind. He was noodling around on it and seemed to like it. He asked, “How much?” I said I would take a hundred bucks.

He said, “how ’bout seventy five?” I said OK (I think I had paid about $25.00 for the Teisco.) He said something about coming back next week for my money. I said , “fine, but I’m not leaving the guitar.” He ignored me for a while, as if we were finished, but he didn’t seem to want to put down the old Tele. Finally Richard piped in and said, “Come on Waylon, pay the dude.” Waylon said he was broke, but the guys in the band managed to come up with the $75.00, and I left, just thankful that I had actually gotten paid, and a bit ticked off that I hadn’t held out for the full hundred.

I never saw Waylon again. Richard told me later that he had done the leather and inlay thing on my guitar too, and that it had become his favorite. I didn’t care. By then I had sold most of my stuff to accumulate the exorbitant total of $398.00, plus tax, to buy a brand new Mosrite.

Like most 60’s guitar dudes, I watched the values of those old guitars climb over the next 30 years or so. “Old” eventually became “Vintage”, and so on. I probably gave away a few hundred thousand dollars worth of guitars, when all is said and done. But that one old Tele, somehow sticks in my mind.

As you well know, Waylon didn’t stay too much longer at JD’s. Just before his recent premature death from diabetes complications, there was an ad in Vintage guitar magazine, selling off a bunch of his old equipment, as they knew he wouldn’t be touring any more.

There were a couple old 50’s Teles, decked out with the leather, etc., going for somewhere between $25,000.00 and $30,000.00. But a guy I know in Nashville, said there was a really special one, that Waylon wouldn’t sell -his favorite. I meant to try and get in touch with Waylon before he died, to ask him where he got that one special 50’s Tele, but unfortunately I waited too long. Maybe I’m better off not to know, anyway.

Post by: Tim Robinette

Ol’ Waylon Jennings from MyRareGuitars.com