new series on guitarists

I’m starting a new series today on guitarists.  My aim here is not to create some kind of list of the greatest guitarists ever – I leave this to Rolling Stone - but rather to simply reflect on my favorite players, or at least players who I think did something worthwhile and worth talking about.

I have very definite ideas about what makes a good guitar player, and technical prowess is not part of my equation.  The example of Yngwie Malmsteen is particularly instructive.  He is without question the fastest shredder I’ve ever heard.  His signature sweep arpeggios don’t seem humanly possible, which is admirable or at least noteworthy as technique. But is there any emotional resonance there, anything you walk away with other than, ‘gee, that’s some awfully fast playing’? Not really. I would go further and say that there’s so much technical virtuosity on display in his playing that the music borders on being unmusical, if that makes sense.  This is just my opinion, of course, but I need more than speed.  I need the guitarist to touch my soul.  I realize this is both a tall order and highly subjective, though no more so than some sort purportedly ‘objective’ list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. 

Another guy to consider is in this vein is Joe Satriani.  While he definitely plays with a fair bit of fury and has much more to offer me on an emotional level than Malmsteen, his records tend to make me feel as if I’m observing a demonstration at a guitar player’s clinic.  There’s an interesting dialectic at work, where sheer perfection makes the music turn back on itself.  The things I do and the people I encounter in my life are never as unblemished as a Joe Satriani guitar solo.  So I don’t really relate to his music, though on an intellectual level I admire how profoundly knowledgeable he is about all aspects of the guitar and guitar playing.

The case of Robert Fripp is interesting, too.  From what I can tell, there’s really two Robert Fripps,. The first Robert Fripp is Fripp the theoretical genius (TG). Fripp, TG, is the inventor of Frippertronics, and the guitarist you hear on many of the latter-day King Crimson records, as well as a few solo records and collaborative projects with guys like Andy Summers. Fripp, TG’s playing is sterile and strikes me as being a weird kind of highly processed quasi-muzak (I would put Frank Zappa in the same category, though on technically-complex albums like Lumpy Gravy, Zappa achieves scattered moments of whimsical warmth of a kind you’d never hear from Fripp, TG). Fripp TG, makes muzak without the pleasing hooks, those bits of ear candy that help drown out the terrifying sound of the dentist’s drill and/or make the time pass as the elevator climbs up to the 50^th floor. If Burt Bacharach and the late Hal David made muzak to ease the worried minds of neurotic middle aged adults who were too old to turn on and tune out, Fripp, TG, makes muzak for androids programmed to be perfectly rational in games of chance where complex probabilistic calculations need to be made quickly and efficiently.

But then there’s the other Fripp, Fripp the intuitive feeler (IF), whose subtle acoustic arpeggios (along with Greg Lake’s vocals) make Epitaph one of the most haunting songs you’ll ever hear.  With the exception of that first King Crimson album, my feeling is that Fripp has always been best suited as a session player, better at interpreting the ideas of others than he is at executing his own vision.  There’s no shame in this.  Conception and execution are two different skills, and their often separated. The architect doesn’t build the bulding and Steve Jobs didn’t assemble iPhones in a Chinese Sweat Shop at the point of a bayonet.

When I think of Fripp, IF, what comes immediately to mind are the layers of guitars he adds throughout Eno’s Here Come the Warm Jets and the hypnotic feedback he adds to Bowie’s Heroes, giving the song such a distinctly Euro-Romantic vibe, which is obviously exactly what Bowie wanted him to do.  In both cases, the playing achieves an intense emotionality that has little to do with being a TG.

Eddie Van Halen is another split personality.  There’s Shreddy Eddie, from Pasadena, with his patented fret board tapping, aped by so many Hair Metal bands and pimply stock boys working the floor at Guitar Center and Sam Ash. I can take or leave Shreddy Eddie. For me, there are two things make Eddie Van Halen a great guitarist, and neither of them are his ability to play fast. 

The first key to his greatness is his guitar tone.  Nobody gets that tone except Eddie.  You could buy exactly the same gear he uses down to the screws that hold his Marshall cabinets together, and you could hire his guitar tech to make the specs on your EVH guitar exactly the same as his, down to the minutest detail, and you would still not be able to get his tone. He just has some weird mystical power in his hands. It’s why even good Van Halen cover bands - Atomic Punks, anyone? - never really sound convincing.  It’ll always sound, at best, like Van Halen with a chromosome missing   Eddie’s tone was never better than on Fair Warning, an album that failed commercially but which for me is their best.  The second thing that makes Eddie great is the balls-out way he plays devastatingly simple guitar riffs, like the ones you hear on Unchained and Little Guitars.  The tone and the aggression together do much more for me than the frenetic speed of his tapped-out arpeggios.

These random thoughts are all just by way of getting a new series started.  Look for my posts in the days to come…