Good Guitar Stuff Or Stereotypifications? The Evolution Of The Guitar's Use in Pop Music [Short Version]
by Frank Zappa
During the '50s it was rare to find a guitar solo on rock or R&B singles - it was usually the honk-squeak tenor sax syndrome taking up the space between the bridge and the third verse. When a guitar was
heard (usually on the blues or country blues items I was collecting), its function bore little resemblance to today's collection of pathetic lick-spewage and freeze-dried stereotypifications. (All of you sensitive
guitar fans who actually get off on our current pseudo-academic era of polished efficiency had better read another article.)
If you have access to them, take the time to listen to the guitar solos on "Three Hours Past Midnight" (Johnny Guitar Watson), The Story Of My Life (Guitar Slim), or just about any of B.B.King's singles from that period. For my taste, these solos are exemplary because what is being played seems honest and, in a musical way, a direct extension of the personality of the men who played them. If I were a
music critic, I would have to say that these values for me mean more than the ability to execute clean lines or clouds of educated gnat-notes.
Other examples of good guitar stuff from that era might include "Lucy Mae Blues" (Frankie Lee Simms), "Happy Home" (Elmore James - even though Elmore tended to play the same famous lick on every
record, I got the feeling he meant it), and the work of Hubert Sumlin (and Buddy Guy couple of times) on Howlin' Wolf's things. I'm sure there are other hot items, but this is a short article.
Also to be fair about it, there were some classic examples of sterility then, too, in the kind of rock solos on the Bill Haley singles and the obnoxious cleen-teen finger work on the New York based R&B
vocal quintet records (on labels like Gee, on the up tempo numbers with the ice-cream-cone chord changes).
Then we get to the '60s. We get there partly because R&B was being produced to death (strings on Ray Charles and Fats Domino records, etc.) and because England was starting to ship back some
recycled '50s music, played by people who were younger and cuter than the original performers, to be consumed by people who were younger and cuter than the original consumers (and who, especially in
the case of Rolling Stones fans, had never heard the original recordings of their revamped Slim Harpo/Muddy Waters repertoire...and not only that, folks; if they had heard the originals, they probably
wouldn't have liked them at all, since neither of the original artists named above were a prance-worthy as Mick Jagger).
Obviously, part of the recycling process included the imitation of Chuck Berry guitar solos, B.B.King solos, and even some abstractions of John Lee Hooker guitar solos. The guitar was becoming more
prevalent in backing arrangements on singles, especially as a rhythm instrument. Solos on mostly white-person records of that day and age tended to be rhythmic also, especially in surf music. Almost
everything that survives in popular memory (the greatest hits, in other words) was designed for the purpose of dancing - but mainly just to sell. The '60s saw the beginnings of record production as a science in
the service of commerce, with heavy emphasis on the repetition of successful formulas. The best that can be said about this period is that it brought us Jeff Beck at his feedback apex, Jimi Hendrix at his
overkill -volume best, and Cream, which sort of legitimized jamming a lot onstage (so long as you could prove British decent, usually by reeling off musical quotations from blues records which most Americans
had never heard. [Radio programming nerds made sure you never heard any of that stuff because Negroes were playing it, and they did their best to protect the young audiences of the '50s and early '60s from
such a horrible culture shock, while over in England the better musicians were lusting after vintage blues records, actually obtaining them, and having these records from the basis of their playing traditions.
So briefly to review: I would have to characterize guitarism of the '50s as having, in its best cases, some real humor, style, and personality, and, in its worst cases, mechanical sterility and lack of musical
interest.
I would characterize the '60s as having, at its best, exploratory qualities not possible before the advent of heavy amplification and recording studio machinery; more rhythmic interest; and, in some instances,
real humor, style, and personality. At its worst, the guitarism of the '60s brought us amateur strummery; several swift kicks at the Fender Twin Reverb springs; the archetype of folk-rock 12 string swill (the
predecessor of the horrible fake-sensitive type artist/singer/songwriter/suffering person, posed against a wooden fence provided by the Warner Bros.. Records art department, graciously rented to all the other
record companies who needed it for their version of the same crap); and the first examples of the "psychedelic guitar solo," not to mention Inna-Godda-Da-Vida-ism.
Obviously, this is condensing and leaving out a lot, but I'm sure that all of you entirely -too-modern persons who have read this far are getting anxious for something more relevant to your life style - and
you're probably right! A perspective of musical history has absolutely no place in today's thrilling musical world. Yes, that's right, you heard right!
How could any of this information be useful to a musical world that has reached a point of sophistication that accepts concepts like The Super-Group, The Best Guitar Player In the World, The Fastest
Guitar Player In The World, The Prettiest Guitar Player In The World, The Loudest Guitar Player In The World, The Guitar Player In The World Who Has Collected The Most Oldest Guitars In The World
(some of which have been played by dead guitar players who were actually musicians) and so forth?
The history of Pop Music has a habit of telling us who we really are - 'cause if we weren't that way we wouldn't have spent billions of dollars on those records, would we? After careful training by the
media and merchandising people, the entire population (even guitar players) has been transmuted into a reasonable well-groomed, ordor free, consumer-amoeba that is kept alive only to service manufacturers
and lives its life by the motto: biggest, fastest, loudest is most and best.
So forget about the past; it means nothing to you now (unless you can find a way to play it louder/faster - which probably wouldn't be too hard since even infants today can play as fast as the earliest
Mahavishnuisms). Let's face it, once you learn the 28 or 29 most commonly used rock guitar doodads ( a few country licks, a little Albert King, a pentatonic scale here 'n' there, get yer heavy vibrato
together), you are ready to live; to be what will be known in the future as "The Guitar Player Of The '70s." Yes, soon you will belong to the ages, and when you've finally got your album contract, and it finally
comes out, and it sells 10,000,000 copies, and when every beginning guitar player sits at home and hears you wanking away at phenomenal speed with your perfect fuzz and your thoroughly acceptable
execution, and when that little guy with his first guitar (him and the 10,000,000 other ones) says to himself: "Shit, I can do that," and proceeds to memorize every awe-inspiring note, and then plays it faster than
you...(maybe gets his thirty-second-notes up to around a dotted whole note = 208). And not only that; after leaning your solo faster, he transposes it up a minor third, steals some of his mother's clothes, gets
a job in a bar, gets discovered, gets a record contract (with an advance 10 times bigger than yours), makes an album (with a better budget than yours because he's going to be the next big thing, according to
the executives at the record company, and they don't mind spending a little extra for real talent). And not only that; while you just figured out you can't play any faster because you got coked out on the
royalties of your first album (and you still have to record 10 more according to your contract), and it's time to do your second album, and you've been asking recording engineers how a VSO works,
meanwhile the little guy with his mother's clothes on gets his album out on the street, and it sells 20,000,000 copies, and somewhere out there , there's 20,000,000 other little guys with their first guitars and
they're listening to your recycled wank, and they're saying....
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