Who Moved My Cheese Metal?

When Guitar Gods come up in conversation Eric Clapton and Eddie Van Halen are always two of the first names mentioned. As well they should be. There are a lot of really great guitarists out there so standing apart from the crowd is quite a challenge. Some make their name based on speed or, like Van Halen, popularizing a particular technique. Clapton got his nickname, Slowhand, while always being quite the smooth and emotional player even when burning it down.

There are some guitarists that just have something different about their style. They can play with blinding speed or make the guitar cry out with the darkest emotions of the blues. Joe Perry of Aerosmith is that kind of Guitar God.

Joe Perry has always impressed me as a musician from the very earliest years of Aerosmith. He is one of the best lead players you’re ever going to find but what really makes him special to my ear is the incredible tone he gets out of his guitars. His tone is so distinctive that I can’t think of another guitarist that I might compare it to.

Although he’s most known for using Gibson Les Paul models he also has used Fender Stratocasters many times over the years. Perry also does something quite unusual for a lead guitar player to get his sounds when required.

The into solo and tag line that keeps coming back through the song? Perry plays it on a six string bass.

That’s just cool!

Even by Judas Priest’s standards, this is not a terribly good record, though it was a nice little hit for them in 1982 — indeed, their biggest American hit.

Rob Halford’s vocal is pretty generic and in large part unintelligible, which is kind of a shame when you have lyrics like these: “Drive hard/I’m callin’ all the shots/I got an ace card/Comin’ down on the rocks.” So he’s driving, playing pool, playing cards, and doing something that involves coming down on rocks (perhaps skydiving). That is the sort of thing that should definitely be clearly enunciated.

This tune also has a brief guitar solo by Glenn Tipton (and it occurs to me that there are not very many rock stars named Glenn) that is, for lack of a better word, nifty.  Sure, he’s a speed demon, and he’s gonna make sure you know it, but Tipton gets a bluesy wail into this sexy solo that makes it vastly more soulful than the dopey song it’s attached to. Complex and precise, but it rocks.

“Out of the Blue” illustrates a couple of things about Roxy Music. (No embed allowed, alas, at least not of a good version. Country Life album cover image at link is pretty much NSFW.)

First, this is from 1974. And in this song alone, perhaps even in the intro alone, Roxy Music did about everything  the New Wave and New Romantic brigade of the ’80s were trying to get at. Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Ultravox, the amusing Human League and the unspeakable Spandau Ballet — Roxy Music had it covered, at least half a dozen years before. Though RM had only a couple of minor hits in the U.S., they were wildly popular in Europe and easily one of the most influential bands in pop history.

Bryan Ferry — a truly terrible singer, back when that still mattered — wrote all their stuff, and he had a pretentious streak and a weakness for nonsensical lyrics that were also picked up as habits by many of the bands that followed. He was also all but incapable of writing a hook, and quite capable of being desperately boring (see: “Bitter-Sweet”). What RM was doing needed some translating for pop fans, and that’s what the New Romantic crew and some New Wave acts did, occasionally with satisfying results.

But of course, Roxy Music also had Phil Manzanera, the Anglo-Colombian guitarist who had striking rock sensibilities within this smooth crew. In “Blue,” among all the dense production and the Euro-remoteness that’s not really offset by the relatively accessible lyrics, listen to when that screaming but still bell-like guitar kicks in, right at two minutes. It’s not shredding, it’s not vulgar, but it turns this tune from art pop into rock ‘n’ roll. And right about 3:30 — listen for the open chords followed by that seagull shriek. It’s one of the major guitar cliches of the ’80s, and Manzanera’s doing it in 1974.

“Killer Queen” is probably the most entertaining tribute to a tranny hooker* you are likely to hear on classic rock radio. Released in 1974, this was Queen’s first American hit, but they didn’t stick in the U.S. until a couple of years later. It’s a more or less a novelty tune, much influenced by the music hall fad of a few years earlier, but it was a nice move away from the heavier, proggy, and story-telling material Queen ran to on their first couple of albums.

And having had one offbeat hit, albeit not a huge one (number 12 at Billboard), gave this eccentric band an opening with radio when they came out with “Bohemian Rhapsody” in early ’76. (We’re all so familiar with it now that it’s hard to remember just how odd “Rhapsody” was when it was new. Yes, it’s fantastic, but it still stands as one of the strangest massive hits in pop memory.)

And while introducing Queen in the U.S., “Killer Queen” also introduced to American ears the distinctive guitar of Brian May. The solo is agile and elegant (and fastidious and precise), and it’s also a showcase for the playfulness that is so key to May’s unmistakable style.

Multitracked guitars dip in and out, with a more conventional fill or two here and there (as about 1:02), but the real fun begins at around 1:30. It’s easy to remember this as a long guitar break, but in fact this mostly multitracked solo (if that is not a contradiction in terms) is only 30 seconds. But it is such a delightful match in tone and style(s) to Freddie’s charmingly insinuating vocal that they form a seamless whole, and the guitar break is effectively an extra verse to the song. Delightful.

*That the KQ is male is debatable, but perhaps not very. Cf: the name of the band.

Starting in the late 60′s on rare occasions the music world is treated to the spectacle of what are now known as “super groups.” The collaboration of members of previously well known and sucsessful bands getting together and creating something new is as old as rock itself but there are times when it really is something special. 

Most super groups are massively successful and create some of the best music you will ever hear such as Cream, Crosby, Stills & Nash, (with and without Neil Young), Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and perhaps the ultimate super group, theTraveling Wilburys consisting of George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynn.

When a Super group hits it big it really can be quite fun and amazing.

In 1989 one of my favorite super groups of all time formed.

Damn Yankees!

Tommy Shaw from Styx, Jack Blades from Night Ranger, Ted Nugent from his solo career and the Amboy Dukes and Michael Cartellone a well respected drummer who was relatively unknown at the time out of the New York rock club scene.

(NSFW!!! Starts out with one word of language, after that, no problem.)

“Come Again” from Damn Yankee’s eponymous debut album is a delightful exorcise in guitar madness.

Starting with Tommy Shaw’s lead vocals and twelve string guitar “Come Again” sounds very much like it could have been a song from Shaw’s early years with Styx. That is until the sledgehammer guitar chords come in at the bridge. At that point you can hear the very obvious nod to fellow member Ted Nugent in the vocal build to the chorus. If you ever imagined how Tommy Shaw might have sung Nugent’s “Stranglehold”, well, this is it.

Once propelled into the chorus by increasingly intense guitars and Jack Blades over the top harmonies the song explodes into a frenzy of guitar god happiness.

The energy from the band is incredible!

From the instrumental break to the end of the last chorus is a nearly uninterrupted blaze of fury from the Motor City Madman’s deadly guitar. Shaw and Blades’ vocal harmonies are so tight you could almost believe they are temporarily violating the laws of physics and are occupying the same time and space.

Blades’ steady bass and Michael Cartellone’s primal attack drumming are right on the edge of letting things spiral completely out of control as Shaw leads them through another round of choruses as Nugent is in real danger of going up in flames as he produces more tones per second than you could possibly count.

All the while I am sitting here grinning like an idiot loving every gloriously, ridiculously excessive note.

Having gone about as far as we can go, or possibly further, with falsettos, we launch a new theme here on WMMCM: Guitar gods!

Starting with the great Mark Knopfler, on what may not seem at first like one of Dire Straits’ particularly guitar-heavy tracks, although it is obviously one of their most beloved.

I do have to say that I think Pick Withers’ emotional drum track really grounds this song. But there is a lot going on from Knopfler too, with that softly played resonator guitar that opens the song, then backs way off, dipping in and out but not taking center stage the way the guitar does on other Straits songs. Instead, the guitar trades phrases throughout the song with Knopfler’s uncharacteristically expressive vocal.

Listen at right about 1:01 to hear what I mean, and in the first refrain, right after he sings “the movie song.” Sometimes it’s a fill, sometimes just a strummed chord, but the song turns into a conversation between voice and guitar, just as the lyrics remember conversations between the heartbroken Romeo and his opportunistic ex. The effect is most explicit just as the fade begins, where the guitar specifically echoes the melody of that hopelessly repeated, “You and me, babe, how ’bout it?”

Thirty years later, this still just kills, doesn’t it?