Frank Zappa died 24 years ago today. It was a big loss for the music world, but Zappa has lived on through an unusually large body of work. From his debut "Freak Out" in 1966 until his final release, "The Yellow Shark," in 1993, Zappa put out around 50 albums that covered a staggering amount of territory—satirical and novelty songs, dinosaur riff rock, soundtrack music, jazz fusion, off-blues and reggae, doo-wop, guitar solo-driven instrumentals, avant-garde classical, and plenty of idiosyncraticmusic that is unclassifiable.
As a fan of almost four decades, and a lead guitarist of three, not seeing Zappa live is one of my biggest musical regrets. Fortunately for me and other Zappatistas, Frank's concerts are amply represented on YouTube. Among the many gems to be found is the live recording of "Zoot Allures" embedded below, which offers a prime exhibit of Zappa's undersung guitar prowess. Ever experimental, Zappa had a Floyd Rose tremolo system which kept his guitar in tune through frequent and extreme whammy bar manipulations and variable resonant frequency wiring which allowed him to marshal (and control) as much feedback as the venue could handle, making for a big, bold tone. The three-minute solo that begins at 2:31 is angular and unpredictable, coming in stops and starts and quick bursts of notes. The phrasing is well outside the Pentatonic box of most rock and blues guitarists, often moving horizontally along the neck, full of hammer-on pull-offs and isolated bends, moving in free-form cycles rather than building to a formula crescendo. Like much of Zappa's music, it may not sound pretty on the first listen, but repeated viewings reveal a sublime beauty. As Zappa famously said, "Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible."
For years, I didn't know that Prince was a bad-ass guitarist. I listened to him primarily during the height of his commercial popularity ("1999" and "Purple Rain"), before concert videos were readily available, and rarely heard stand alone solos that demanded attention; his leads on vinyl tended to be short lines that added color to the compositions. I was under the impression that he used the guitar mainly for songwriting, or as a prop to hide behind onstage, like Bruce Springsteen. Boy was I wrong.
The epiphany came when I first saw the video below, from the 2004 Rock Hall of Fame ceremony. Watch as Prince comes in at 3:38 with mad shred:
I viewed the clip several times, eyes (and ears) wide, and then filed it away in the mental recesses where treasured YouTube performance videos go to die. Flash forward to last April. I wasn't a huge Prince fan, but his passing hit me harder than the
deaths of other musical eminences this year. George Martin was 90; I was grateful he had lived as long as he did. David Bowie was 69 and had had drug problems early in his life, so I wasn't that surprised when he died. Paul Kantner had lived a full life and his best work was forty years in the rear view mirror. Ditto for Keith Emerson and Maurice White. Prince, by contrast, was relatively young and appeared to be still vibrant. Every time I saw him in media appearances, he was dressed to the nines and looked healthy. Ihad never read
anything about him using drugs or alcohol; I suspected he was a straight edge like most Jehovah's Witnesses. Just six weeks before his death he played the Paramount Theater in Oakland. Walking past the theater on my way to work, I saw his name on the marquee and assumed he would kill it, as he always did. As the shock set in in the days after his death, I came across a concert video I had never seen, Prince's rendition of "Whole Lotta Love."I'm generally skeptical of Led Zeppelin covers—because so few musical acts are capable of doing justice to the original songs—but this performance is an exception.
The above video captures much of what made Prince unique. The wicked falsetto vocal. The dandy threads. The beautiful, slinky women in Prince's backing band. The throwback psychedelic light show. And the sick lead guitar. Launching with the words "no format tonight," at :56, Prince puts on a guitar clinic of Hendrixian proportions, bringing a big, bold sound with soaring bends, tight vibratos, tasteful hammer-on pull-offs, and electrifying stagecraft. Considering the decline of the original batch of '60s six-string gods, and the dearth of new ones, Prince's passing may have robbed us of one of the last true guitar heroes.
Other Truth and Beauty guitar essays:
Click here for "The Second Coming: Stevie Ray Vaughan," a first-hand account of Vaughan's final concert
here for"The heaviest New Year's Eve guitar jam ever: Hendrix
does 'Machine Gun'"
here for "The underappreciated ingenuity of Robbie Krieger"
here for "Great Guitar Solos, #8: Freddie King's 'San-Ho-Zay'"
Seventy years ago today, the universe yielded up Robby Krieger, later to become the lone introvert in the Doors. Sharing space and time with outsized personalities such as the Lizard King, one of the most captivating lead singers ever, the hyper-talented and ever-voluble Ray Manzarek (who spent the second half of his life proselytizing about the Doors’ sizable legacy in a non-stop hepcat patter), and John Densmore—the activist and stubborn conscience of the band who unilaterally blocked the sale of "Light My Fire" to Cadillac for a $15,000,000 payday—the soft-spoken guitarist tended to be overshadowed and undersung. But Krieger's contributions were essential to the Doors’ unique sound, what Manzarek referred to as a "four-sided diamond."
When the Doors were gathering tracks for their debut album, they were short of original material, so the band members parted for a few days to write songs. Upon his return, Robbie offered up the arrangement that would become “Light My Fire,” the mega-hit which launched the band.
Teenyboppers heard the three-minute single, but album track listeners were treated to a seven-minute version with a heady instrumental jam which features two extended solos. Following Ray Manzarek’s mesmerizing solo was a tall order, but Krieger keeps things interesting when he comes in at 3:18. Unlike most of the rock players of his day, he didn’t follow the blues power template of Mike Bloomfield, Eric Clapton, and forebears such as B.B. King; his solo is all clean channel finesse—colorful flamenco flutters and hammer-on pull-offs perfectly fitted to the huge pocket created by Densmore and Manzarek.
The last song on The Doors’ second album, “Strange Days,” is the epic “When the Music’s Over.” In one of the most powerful introductions committed to acetate, Ray Manzarek opens by vamping on the main theme, and is soon joined by Densmore, the two of them building tension that is released with Jim Morrison's blood-curdling shriek and Krieger’s big mystical wash of feedback. As Manzarek’s hypnotic organ and Morrison’s apocalyptic lyrics take center stage, Krieger stays in the background, doubling Manzarek or darting out quick little blues fills, until he plays what he later called his favorite solo, at 2:54.
Once, when asked what he was thinking about while he took solos in concert (with no expression on his face), Krieger said “my goldfish,” and it shows here. Unlike the muscular, virtuosic leads of contemporaries such as Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page, Krieger’s solo is not a demonstration of chops or a climbing route to a crescendo but a mood reflecting his interest in the modal approach of Indian music. It is a perfect acid rock solo: oblique and multi-layered, a miasma of shapes and colors swimming around freely in your ears simultaneously in both the left and right channels.
One of the gems on the Doors’ third album, "Waiting for the Sun," is “Spanish Caravan.” Borrowing from the classical piece "Asturias," this song showcases yet another side of Robbie’s guitar voicings—fleet, nylon-stringed, flamenco finger picking.
The Doors’ final album, “L.A. Woman,” had several blues tracks. Manzarek, a Chicago native, had always had a foot in the blues. Years of cigarettes and heavy drinking had deepened Morrison’s voice, transforming his persona from that of a slinky and mystical shaman to a full-throated, whiskey-besotted bluesman. And the simplicity of blues arrangements appealed to the group after the departure of their long-time producer, Paul Rothchild, early in the sessions.
“Been Down So Long,” based on a '60s cult novel, is simple and stark. Driven by a pulsing bass line and bone-dry four-four drums, Manzarek's absence gives added emphasis to Krieger's tasty blues fills. While he didn’t possess the lightning-quick slide skills of Johnny Winter or the prowess of Duane Allman, Robbie was handy with the bottleneck, as evidenced by the eye-popping, Delta-influenced solos at 1:34 and 3:08.
“Crawling King Snake” was an ancient standard previously recorded by blues giants John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf. The Doors’ version is appropriately gritty, stripped-down, and true to the original spirit of the song. Robbie’s solo at 1:48, a model in dirty blues, is filled with jagged flurries of notes that cut like shards of glass.
Just three months after “L.A. Woman” hit record store shelves, Jim Morrison was found dead in a Paris bathtub. The surviving Doors recorded two more albums with Ray Manzarek on vocals, but the magic was gone. In the decades since, Krieger has made guest appearances, collaborated with John Densmore and Ray Manzarek, and released solo albums, but ultimately, the recordings that shine brightest are his rich and versatile stylings for the original lineup of the Doors, the four-sided diamond.
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Other Truth and Beauty guitar hero essays:
Click here for "The Second Coming: Stevie Ray Vaughan," a first-hand account of Vaughan's final concert
here for"The heaviest New Year's Eve guitar jam ever: Hendrix
does 'Machine Gun'"
here for "Great Guitar Solos, #8: Freddie King's 'San-Ho-Zay'"
According to Caught in the Crossfire, by Joe Patoski and Bill Crawford, Stevie Ray Vaughan was up to a daily intake of seven grams of cocaine and a fifth of Crown Royal by the time he bottomed out, in 1986.
After a breakdown and a visit to the ER, Vaughan got clean for the first time in over 15 years. Sobriety, in concert with a deep spiritual focus and regular AA meetings, did wonders for Vaughan mentally and physically, but he worried about his guitar playing, which had been fueled by drink and drugs for so long. Would he be able to light up the guitar without his chemical crutches?
The fireworks on Vaughan's next album (In Step) and the shows in support of that release proved that his concerns were misplaced. In October of 1989, a few months after In Step came out, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble played their home town of Austin, where Vaughan had been a struggling musician for over a decade, couch surfing and gigging for peanuts, before David Bowie plucked him from obscurity for the multi-platinumLet's Dance album.
My favorite performance from the Austin City Limits show is the rendition of "Leave My Girl Alone," a tune written by Vaughan's good friend, blues titan Buddy Guy. The song is simple and heartfelt, the guitar and voice up front as the rest of the band hang back. The singing is passionate; when Vaughan says "you better leave my little girl alone," you believe him. The guitar fills are a model in economy and bite. And the solo, from 2:11-3:40, is epic: Vaughan rips into his guitar with raw blues power, for the most part bypassing the big, juicy bends and wide vibratos that were his specialty in favor of ferocious runs that stop and start on a dime.
This Saturday, on what would have been Stevie's 61st birthday, blues fans and six-string aficionados alike will mourn the early passing and celebrate the lasting legacy of the last true guitar hero.
Freddie King is the least known of the three major blues guitarists with the King surname, but while B.B. and Albert King gained more notoriety, Freddie was potent in his own rite. Like many a great blues player, King hailed from Texas, where he learned an old school acoustic fingerpicking style which he later adapted to the electric guitar. Though he sang, King made his mark with instrumentals, particularly "Hide Away," a #5 Billboard R & B hit later interpreted by many a bluesman, including Stevie Ray Vaughan and a young and hungry Eric Clapton. One of King's other biggest releases was "San-Ho-Zay," presented below in a 1966 performance on "The Beat." There's much to like visually in the period details of this video (the go-go dancers, the raised platforms, the pastel colors of the studio, the crisply-dressed uptown band) and King's oh-so-pretty tomato red Gibson. Musically, King typified a less-is-more lead guitar style which was the norm before Jimi Hendrix and the Yardbirds alums sexed things up with volume, effects pedals, and advanced technique. King doesn't waste a note in this compact piece. There's no showing off or reckless abandon, just spicy nuts-and-bolts playing: tasteful bends, tight vibratos, barbed stops and starts. And he does it with no gimmicks, nothing but a clean Gibson tone. Much as I love the dynamism of King's descendants, sometimes there's no substitute for pure blues feeling.
I first saw "Woodstock" in the mid-'80s, when most rock and pop was weightless and overproduced, with all the shelf life of a stale fart. As a teen bohemian-in-training trapped in what was in many ways a plastic, reactionary era, I found the movie fascinating. For over three hours I was transported to a time when personal growth and exploration didn't take a backseat to getting ahead, when brotherhood was more prevalent—and infinitely more hip—than greed, when the young men didn't look like frat boys and the women had long, straight, natural hair instead of those godawful '80s perms. Musically, Woodstock remains a rock festival without peer, a distinction which is likely to stick due to the scale of the event and the quality of the bands. The list of soulful, high-caliber acts that performed on those four days 45 years ago is staggering: Jimi Hendrix; The Who; Santana; Sly & the Family Stone; The Band; Ravi Shankar; Janis Joplin; Johnny Winter; Creedence Clearwater Revival; Ten Years After; Crosby, Stills, & Nash; Jefferson Airplane; Blood, Sweat, & Tears; Joe Cocker; Joan Baez; Arlo Guthrie. Woodstock's high points could fill multiple posts, but I will focus on just five key moments. Richie Havens, one of the lesser-known acts at Woodstock, opened the festival. The first performance that appears in the documentary is Havens' closer, "Freedom." Never before have I seen a musician move an audience of 200,000 with just an acoustic guitar, his voice, and a lone conga player.
This turbo-charged rendition of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" features the Who early in their career, firing on all cylinders (see: Pete Townshend's windmills, Keith Moon's kinetic drumming, Roger Daltrey's microphone lassoing). Added bonuses include Townshend's sonic performance art at the conclusion of this video and the heady split-screen footage spliced together from seven cameras positioned around the stage.
The backdrop to Woodstock was the United States' futile and bloody involvement in Vietnam. Country Joe, the relatively obscure leader of Country Joe & the Fish, captured the zeitgeist with an anti-war protest song, the "I Feel I'm Fixin' to Die Rag." Interesting historical footnote: a young Martin Scorsese, serving as an editor of the documentary, came up with the bouncing ball-on-white lyrics effect that comes in at 1:42.
Ten Years After was one of my most potent Woodstock discoveries. Other than hearing "I'd Love to Change the World" every once in a while on classic rock radio, I had no familiarity with the band. After I saw this rousing clip, Ten Years After—and virtuoso lead guitarist Alvin Lee—became a permanent part of my musical landscape.
Alvin Lee was not the only bonafide guitar hero at Woodstock. Carlos Santana, then just 22 years old, led his band through an epic version of "Soul Sacrifice." From the sheer size of the crowd to the percussion orgy break (2:11) to the most bad-ass rock drum solo this side of "Moby Dick" (3:07) to the molten guitar solo that followed and the random shots of audience members caught in musical ecstasy, it doesn't get any better than this.
Buckethead turns 45 today. Though perhaps best known to the general public for his mask and unique headgear, Bucket is an exceptionally versatile musician with sizzling guitar chops. In two decades on the music scene, he has collaborated with Mike Patton (Faith No More), Iggy Pop, and Bootsy Collins, and ably manned the lead guitar post in a Guns 'n' Roses re-boot. He has created a sprawling catalog of experimental solo releases which incorporate multiple genres, from metal to funk to hip-hop to electronica to moody instrumental ballads to jam rock and even hints of new age music. And when the moment is right, Bucket can transform himself into a robotic dancer. The video below from Bonnaroo features Buckethead in big company: the fearsome Primus rhythm section (Les Claypool on bass, Brain on drums) and Bernie Worrell, the emeritus keyboardist from Parliament-Funkadelic. Buckethead is capable of dizzyingly fast shred guitar, but here he lays down a molten, blues-based jam over a deep pocket, an example of the heady blend of technique and feeling Buckethead can draw on. In whatever context(s) he chooses to pursue, Buckethead will continue to generate original music and wicked fretboard work for many years to come.
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Other Truth and Beauty guitar hero essays:
Click here for "Eddie Van Halen's 'Fair Warning': an Appreciation"
here for "The Second Coming: Stevie Ray Vaughan," a first-hand account of Vaughan's final concert
here for"It was 70 years ago today: an appreciation of Jimi Hendrix"
"Eddie Van Halen ruined guitar!" yelled the drunken ROTC guy standing just inches from my face. House party. 1991. The conversation had been very civil up to that point. I'd started with hey, we went to the same high school. That was all I had, as we were several years apart in age and had only met once before—a brief introduction through a mutual friend by the nickname of "Jamestown." Plus, I was a humanities student; he was in Business. I was a liberal longhair; he was a crew cut conservative. So I reached for the universal and asked what kind of music he listened to. He liked the blues. I liked blues too. Did he play guitar? He did. So did I. More progress. What guitarists did he like? Things were headed in the right direction until I asked him what he thought about Eddie Van Halen, one of my favorite guitarists. As we stood with cups of watered-down keg beer in hand and a loud party going on all around us he foamed over, blaming all the ills of '80s hyper-technical guitar playing on the virtuosic Eddie. He hated Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Eric Johnson, not to mention the legions of Eddie's hair metal imitators. I let him vent to his heart's content; it was obvious he was a blues purist. Still, I was a little surprised by the venom. I loved old school blues guitar too, but...Eddie was the most innovative rock guitarist since Jimi Hendrix. And he was an accomplished composer/arranger. And, like Jimmy Page, he was a studio rat who was integral to the production process, the very sound of his band. And he sang sweet background vocals. And he was a humble team player; he played to the song and had no need to hog the spotlight. And rather than choose between Stratocasters and Gibsons like most mortals, he crafted his own hybrid guitars. And ultimately, The Mighty Van Halen towered over all the other acts who'd copied and
Eddie's arsenal, 1980
diluted Eddie's gifts. Blaming Van Halen for guitar shredders with no feeling or originality would be like blaming Steven Spielberg and George Lucas for every piece of shit big budget epic that employed the marketable formulas of "Star Wars" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" without any of the creativity or directorial skill that made those movies so entertaining. Bum rap. Apparently some people just weren't grabbed by the mystique of the brown sound. Two years before this diatribe I'd sat in an apartment right across the street as a friend of a friend plugged his guitar in. I'd just started playing at the time; my capabilities began and ended with a few major chords, stumbles through the Pentatonic scale, and the opening riff of "Purple Haze." But what I lacked in skill, I made up in enthusiasm; I was very excited about electric guitar. The guitarist was tall and thin with long blond hair and glasses. He wore jeans and a t-shirt. No nonsense. I asked him if he knew any Van Halen. As I looked on with rapt attention he played the introduction to "Mean Street" virtually note for note, performing a miracle before my eyes.
25 years later this moment in time still stands out, as does "Fair Warning," the album "Mean Street" appeared on. "Fair Warning" was the dark Van Halen album. The dreary
brown and black cover art features a figure running head first into a brick wall and a man in a yellow shirt pinned to the ground as he gets pummeled. The album contained no hits; there were no soft, radio-ready songs, no honey to attract the faint of heart. Rumor has it that "Fair Warning" was Eddie's angry album. In addition to the push-pull between introvert and extrovert, Eddie and David Lee Roth fought over creative control. Eddie wanted more time in the studio and more clout for his studio companion, Donn Landee, the band's sound engineer. Roth was allies with the producer, Ted Templeman, who focused on singles and didn't fancy Eddie's desire to tinker and experiment in the studio. Within a few years, Eddie would win this battle by building a studio in his home, but at the time "Fair Warning" was recorded, he had to make do. The result was the purest, edgiest Van Halen release with the most intense guitar fireworks. "Mean Street" opened the album and set the tone. And it showed who was the boss on "Fair Warning."
There is much for the practicing electric guitarist (or astute listener) to appreciate in this song. The tapped notes in the introduction come in quietly at first, as if rumbling up from under the surface, then increase in volume. I've always loved the counterpoint between the fierce tapped notes and the bright harmonics, all capped by the prehistoric whammy bar-with-feedback sound which howls then fades out in stereo, opening a chasm which is filled on the left channel by the opening riff. And what of the main riff? As a friend once said, it's "like a chainsaw ripping through a sequoia." The main theme backed by Alex's swinging drums are sinew with swagger. Then there's a tasty bridge at 2:06. Roth's words "dance, baby" are a perfect complement to the slinky, phasered rhythm guitar line. Eddie ladles more gravy on after the solo-verse-chorus, at 3:22. As the band brings things down, he fills the space with subtle volume modulations, then leads the march to the finish with his patented blood-curdling pick slide. The sound sculpture outro is yet another example of what set Eddie apart from his peers. "So This Is Love?" is the first song I heard off of "Fair Warning." In the early '80s, when MTV exclusively played music videos, I saw a live version of "So This Is Love?" At the time, I wasn't into Van Halen, but something about the energy of the performance stayed with me.
Fast forward to the summer of 1984. By this point, I'd discovered Van Halen through the release of their most commercially successful album, "1984." I was a rabid fan; Van Halen was my favorite band. I was eager to see live footage of the band, but there wasn't much available in the pre-Internet days. One fine summer day I was watching MTV at a friend's house. For a teenager, Jamestown had a seriously tricked-out space—a basement with plush carpeting, nice furniture, a color television, cable, a quality stereo, a refrigerator stocked with cold A & W cream soda. And his parents almost never came downstairs. Jamestown was a huge Van Halen fan too, and a huge fan of music in general. He was big into metal and hard rock, but seemed to see everyone live; he had a closet full of concert jerseys. The rock video we were watching ended and MTV flashed the song credits in white print. We waited. A few seconds later, the opening shots of a concert audience came on, followed by footage of David Lee Roth hoisting a bottle of whiskey. Could it be? It was the long lost concert video of "So This Is Love?" Jamestown, 13 at the time, stood on an Ottoman and whooped. My consciousness was totally immersed in the music and images for all 3:45 of the video.I wouldn't see it again for almost twenty years, until the invention of YouTube. The closest thing to a hit on "Fair Warning" is "Unchained," which has the party spirit many people associate with Van Halen. The opening is textbook VH: start with a jagged riff, add drums, mix in an "all right!" from David Lee Roth, a pulsating bass line, and off we go, with some Tarzan yelps for good measure. Below is a live version from 1981. Alex Van Halen's ring of fire, lit during the crescendo at 3:54, inspired a couple of clean-scrubbed, middle-class kids in the neighborhood to try a similar trick at home. The result? One casualty (a detached garage, in ashes), lessons learned, a timeless conversation piece.
My favorite part of "Fair Warning" is the two-song medley which closes the album. "Sunday Afternoon in the Park" is an instrumental that features some of Alex Van Halen's heaviest, most primal drumming. And in stark contrast to the bright, cheesy pop sound of the synthesizer explorations on future Van Halen albums—saltpeter to the legendary Van Halen virility—the synth tones on this tune are so dark and ominous that you can cut 'em with a butcher knife.
"Sunday Afternoon in the Park" leads directly into "One Foot out the Door." After the deep-pocketed, sluggish beat of "Park," "One Foot out the Door" sounds as if it has been shot out of a cannon, reflecting the immediacy in the narrative. The drum fill before the second verse (at 2:22) is brutal and the tempo change-up just before the solo, at 2:51, is one of those delectable little touches that come when an artist is at the height of their powers.
As if he's dumping out all of the additional musical ideas he wants to fit onto this masterpiece, Eddie re-asserts his ownership of "Fair Warning" with the epic, minute-long outro solo at 2:53. Eddie dispenses with simple and clean note articulation in favor of a heady blend of tapping, wide bends, stutter-step blues phrases, watery scale runs, and whammy-bar magic in the form of shrieks, dives, and assorted whale sounds. The final minute of "Fair Warning" is an exclamation point to an album's worth of the most innovative, bad-ass electric guitar since Hendrix left us. When it comes to sonic invention, no rock guitarist has equaled it since.
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Other "Truth and Beauty" guitar hero essays:
Click here for "The heaviest New Year's Eve guitar jam ever: Hendrix does 'Machine Gun'"
here for "The Second Coming: Stevie Ray Vaughan," a first-hand account of Vaughan's final concert
here for"It was 70 years ago today: an appreciation of Jimi Hendrix"
