Who Killed Rock Guitar?

Hint: It wasn't Neil young.

Many people ask, “Who killed rock and roll?” I could do a post on all the different answers to the question, or I could challenge the premise.

I have a different question.

“Who killed rock guitar?”

I want to talk a bit about my taste in music before I explore that question. I am very passionate about music. I LOVE the music that I think is good, and I HATE the music that I think is bad. I don’t think music written and performed as art should ever be used to sell something besides music. It makes me angry to hear a good rock record (or even a bad one) on television to sell something like a beer, a car, or a hamburger. Same goes for any kind of music. I certainly don’t want to hear Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” or Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” selling deoderant or real estate. That should be illegal.

In my aural world, different types of music are judged by different standards. I love the polish and shimmer of a Steely Dan record, the raw emotion and power of a Clash record, the technical prowess of a Jeff Beck record, and the coolness of a 50’s Miles Davis record. “Aja” played by the Ramones might be funny, but I wouldn’t want to hear it more than once.

Rock guitar. One of the great things about rock and roll is that you don’t have to be a virtuoso musician to play it. Some people go as far as to say that being a virtuoso disqualifies you has a rock musician, but I don’t agree. What disqualifies you is relying on virtuosity. Substituting chops for heart and soul. Joe Satriani and Jimi Hendrix are / were both virtuosos, but I know which one I’d pick every time. Put on a Satriani record, and I’m like, “yeah – he can play, now turn that off and put on some MUSIC!”

The guitar IS rock music. An early rock record that features kick-ass guitar is “You Really Got Me” by the Kinks. Not hard to play, but it was right. It cut to the bone. “Da-NaNa-Na-Na! Da-NaNa-Na-Na!” It wasn’t just the chords. It was the tone, the sound and the conviction of that riff.

Then there’s “Cinnamon Girl” by Neil Young. 1969. I am not a huge fan of his, but I do love some of his records, and “Cinnamon Girl” may be my favorite. It is hard rock, not heavy metal. That rich tube guitar sound, the deep, simple bass part, the sparse and powerful drums, the raw emotion that makes you reach for the volume button and turn it UP.

“DA-NANANA– DA NANA NAH!” (4 times – no guitar soloing just the riff 4 times – then)

“I wanna live with the Cinnamon Girl
So I can be happy the rest of my life
With the Cinnamon Girl”

Simple two part harmony, no bullshit, guitar-driven hard rock love song. Not misogynistic. Not angry or ironic. He loves her, and she loves him. The music and words evoke for me a woman with an ankle-length blue and white skirt, a white sleeveless blouse, sandals, beads. Long, light-brown, wavy hair. He’s a poet and a musician, and doesn’t just want her for the night, he wants her for the rest of his life, and expresses those feelings in a hard-rock song.

If it has a flaw, it is the words to the bridge, (which technically isn’t a bridge …) but at least they are honest:

“Pa sent me money now
I'm gonna make it somehow
I need another chance
You see your baby loves to dance
Yeah...yeah...yeah.”

Very cool guitar solo. Just a turn on the melody, and then back to the riff, played straight up and out until the last time where he messes around on the chord and then lets it ring. Clocks in at under 3 minutes, and you want to hear it again.

The man understood rock music, and rock guitar.

Fast forward to 1976. I can’t say for sure when it happened, but 1976 seems like the year that we left the 60’s behind for good. Maybe it was the beginning of Disco. Maybe it really started back in ’73 when Styx’s “Lady” first hit the airwaves. Maybe it is different for all of us, but for me it was when the first Boston album was released. I didn’t know it then; I even kind of liked it. I didn’t run out an buy it, but it didn’t seem that bad. I’d hear it in the car, at someone else’s house, in a bar, but it was in context with lots of other music. Might even hear "Cinnamon Girl" the same night.

Well, it was that bad. It was that damned processed guitar sound that did it. Tom Scholz, studio wizard, MIT graduate, and rock guitar murderer. The guitar on that first Boston album is to real rock guitar like Tang is to orange juice, like instant breakfast is to bacon and eggs, like pop tarts are to apple pie. It is ersatz. It is contrived. It is pre-packaged, test-marketed, focus-grouped plastic guitar, from the phony power crunch chords to the synthetic solo tones. It is fabricated, pasteurized, homogenized, crap.

Sure, we got all kinds of bands and records since then, and lots of them are good, but that guitar sound ushered in the new mainstream that was being played on the radio. Investment bankers and entrepreneurs decided it was time to invest in rock bands.

In retrospect, can’t we all see that it was Tom Scholz and his band who single-handedly turned rock guitar REPUBLICAN?

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Andy Rooney on The Cost of the Iraq War courtesy of Crooks and Liars.

The new Top 10 courtesy of The Democratic Underground.