It was in the eighties that the definition of the term “great guitar player” changed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the fifties, a “great guitar player” was the likes of James Burton.<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Elvis’ longtime lead guitar player ws pretty typical of the era; combining blues, R&B and country-western styles into a fluid melange.<\/p>\n<p>In the sixties, of course, the guitar came into its own as the dominant instrument – with the idea of the “lead guitar player” coming into its own as a genre. It’s easy to name guitar players from the era – George Harrison, Pete Weir, Dave Davies, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck – but eventually most roads led to Jimi Hendrix:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/y_n_P40sEaM\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>…who plugged the blues into some newly-cheap technology (in this case, transistorized guitar effects like the “fuzz box”, the phase shifter and the wah-wah pedal), creating a mixture that matched the psychedelic <em>id<\/em> of the era.<\/p>\n<p>The seventies, as far as the guitar went, was largely about making the guitar a melodic element in a band’s sound; see guitarists as diverse as George Harrison, David Gilmour, Nils Lofgren, and Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd and the list goes on and on…<\/p>\n<p>Now, Van Halen did get its start in the seventies.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/z_lwocmL9dQ\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>But that first Van Halen album, coming out six years after Hendrix’ death, was the start (at least commercially) of several trends that changed the way people perceived what made “great” guitar:\u00a0almost supernatural dexterity and fingerboard acrobatics; disconnection of the instrument from the “genre” – “explosive guitar” almost became a genre of its own; focus on the guitar as an “event”…<\/p>\n<p>….and, most of all, the beginning of the idea of the guitar player as a “virtuoso”, in a very classical sense, complete with extended pyrotechnic soloing that borrowed everything from the classical <em>obligato<\/em>\u00a0but the name.<\/p>\n<p>Randy Rhodes, of course, is the first name people go to. Ozzy Ozbourne’s iconic guitar player (seen here in a fanboy video that actually is a pretty good overview of his career)…<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UVJKlOkrgt0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>…is the next name most people go to. It’s amazing to watch him do things with (guitar players only here) full-on picking that sound like they’re hammer-ons. <\/p>\n<p>And then there’s Steve Vai.<\/p>\n<p>Vai, so freakishly talented that Frank Zappa, himself no slouch on the instrument, called him a “stunt guitarist”, was a prodigy on the instrument from his teens. Zappa plucked him from Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music at age 20 to transcribe his own solos, and then tour with him, Vai has been the “Oh, yeah, how about…” trump card in a hundred gazillion “who’s the best guitar player” arguments in the past thirty years. <\/p>\n<p>Here’s an example (recorded in 2004, but a good example of how Vai’s played for thirty years now)..<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/j_7iRZzlSzI\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>…not only of his sheer virtuosity (which descends into comedy around the 4:50 mark), but of why he, and so much of the genre, bores me stiff. <\/p>\n<p>You heard me right.<\/p>\n<p>This much talent, speed and virtuosity eventually wears you down. It’s predictable. It’s like watching a computer executing a mathematician’s formula. It’s so fast, so tight, so perfect, that it’s not just dull, but it wears me down. <\/p>\n<p>And bear in mind that I say it’s “wearing-down dull” with the greatest respect! Like I’ve written a slew of times, I appreciate music on a couple of levels; an intellectual appreciation for technical talent, and an emotional response to a piece of music that grabs me in the liver.<\/p>\n<p>Vai, and a horde of similar players, were part of a trend that still dominates the instrument today; people with stunning chops whose musicianship is mind-numbingly proficient, and with any emotional response squeezed out. <\/p>\n<p>I’m going to rewind this post back to Hendrix; I need to wake up. <\/p>\n<p>Anyway – it was a trend that started in the eighties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was in the eighties that the definition of the term “great guitar player” changed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-real-eighties"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23663"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24435,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23663\/revisions\/24435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}