Following on from my chronicling of my favourite drummers and bass players, I thought it was high time to start considering the guitarists.
There are different layers of guitarists though; setting aside the basic rhythm guitar players for a moment, crucial as they can be to a band - let's look at those sonic beasts that can be game changers!
There are those that always end up around Top10 guitar hero lists, like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Slash and so on - there are the whizz-bang technically superior ones like Joe Satriani and Yngwie Malmstein, with lots of mind bogglingly high paced fretwork, but not always very much soul; then there are the slightly more soulful masters (and often under-appreciated) like Rory Gallagher, Gary Moore and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Lastly, there are the ones we like to refer to as 'alternative' guitar greats - think Johnny Marr or Peter Buck. First of all, I love both of them, but I have picked out six other guitarists who don't necessarily fall into the 'guitar god' category, but who, I believe, add something different to the mix when they play.
Ian McNabb:
Icicle Works, Solo
Robert Ian McNabb started out in his teens, playing in a cabaret band across the Working Men's Clubs of Northwest England. He wrote his first song, Apologise (I Will), aged fifteen, and in 1980 he was joined by Chris Sharrock and then Chris Layhe in the Icicle Works.
Across four albums with them, one more with that moniker but only session musicians, and a raft of solo records over the last three decades, McNabb has covered a staggering range of musical styles. An deft songwriter, at home writing everything from acoustic, to indie pop, to country rock to heavy grunge. Just check out the funk of Kiss Off or All The Daughters (Of Her Father's House), the proto-grunge of Nirvana, the balls out garage rock of Understanding Jane, or the plain epic like Here Comes Trouble or When It All Comes Down.
On his second solo album, Head Like A Rock, he truly lived out his country rock dream, persuading Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot from Crazy Horse (Neil Young's band) to back him on a number of tracks.
His playing is rarely showy, but just being able to adapt to these varied styles shows how versatile and accomplished a player he is. Also, although often playing as a three piece, the Icicle Works always managed to fill out their sound, and while Sharrock's drumming certainly helped, McNabb's guitar (and occasional keyboard twiddling) did much of the heavy lifting. The tracks below will give you a good idea of how good he is as a guitarist (and songwriter).
Ian McNabb: You Must Be Prepared To Dream (Live at Glastonbury, 1994 - a fantastic version, including Molina and Talbot)
Ian McNabb: Enabler (Music video for song from from 2017s Star Smile Strong)
Icicle Works: All The Daughters (Of Her Father's House) - (Official music video)
Icicle Works: When It All Comes Down (Live on The Whistle Test, 1985)
Icicle Works: Understanding Jane (Official music video)
Andy Gill:
Gang Of Four, Producer
When people talk about Andy Gill's guitar work in seminal art-punk band Gang Of Four, words like angular and jagged always spring up - or like Pitchfork neatly summed it up, like "metal splintering".
He tended to shy away from using the more popular valve amps, choosing transistor amps instead, giving him a much colder sound. Far Out said that he was, "A pioneer by definition, [Gill] pushed the boundaries of the guitar to their limits, and in doing so, he became one of the most crucial alternative players of all time."
They went on in their praise of his work: "In many ways, Gill was the first true British indie guitarist, cultivating an angular, almost glacial sound that nodded to the work of Talking Heads and Joy Division whilst also accomplishing something new." In picking out some of his tracks, they could expand on this. Damaged Goods, they said, features his "spiky and unrelenting" guitar, while Ether "adds slightly dissonant notes in the bridge to create a palpable sense of tension and atmosphere." Anthrax is all about the bursts of guitar, like a drone - "no guitarist was creating soundscapes such as this as the time." Meanwhile, Natural's Not In It provided us with the "definitive British guitar tone."
You can check out some of these below and make your own mind up, but many bands, including Red Hot Chili Peppers, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party and Rage Against The Machine, all owe a huge debt to Gang Of Four, and Gill's playing in particular. He also produced albums for the likes of RHCP, The Stranglers, Killing Joke and The Futureheads.
Gang Of Four: Damaged Goods (Live on Rockpalast, 1983)
Gang Of Four: Natural's Not In It (Live on Rockpalast, 1983)
Gang Of Four: Tattoo (Audio only - from comeback album Shrinkwrapped, 1995 - full of squally distorted guitar and lots of feedback - and a glorious chorus)
Gang Of Four: What We All Want (We're back to Rockpalast for perhaps their ultimate song - an ominous and pulsating track that is all about the interplay between guitar and bass)
Doug Gillard:
Guided By Voices, Nada Surf, Cobra Verde, Death Of Samantha
A key figure in the Ohio music scene, Doug Gillard spent a lot of his early professional years as a DJ at Cleveland State's WGSB. But he had started out in high school punk bands, before joining Death Of Samantha and then Cobra Verde, both with John Petkovic.
When Cobra Verde were brought in to back Robert Pollard for the Guided By Voices 1997 album Mag Earwhig!, a new relationship begun, with Gillard ending up staying until GBVs original demise in 2004, before rejoining the new look band in 2016.
Punk Rock Theory note that his "guitar playing is simultaneously rooted in rock n roll fundamentals while exploring the various voicing options of the instrument, equally at home supporting the vocal melody or stepping forward to deliver a dexterous solo. Doug isn't a flashy player, so it can take a minute to realiser just what a masterful player he is."
John Petkovic was a little more flowery in his summation of his former bandmates skills. "If you can explore your imagination, you'll never get 'old'. In that regard, little has changed with Doug when it comes to music - he just approaches it in the same way, attracted to sounds and parts. As a result, he's able to synthesise disparate pieces that other people wouldn't imagine fitting together until they saw the completed puzzle.... Doug deserves more attention, no doubt. But it's a larger thing - people are able to evaluate the name on the painting more than the painting. Doug has always been pretty dedicated to the painting, and that's a good thing."
Check out some of his work with GBV and Nada Surf.
GBV: I Am A Tree (Live in San Francisco, 2018 - one that Gillard wrote and totally owns)
GBV: Skills Like This (Audio only - Gillard goes full Pete Townshend)
Nada Surf: Waiting For Something (Official music video)
GBV: Back To The Lake (Live in Brooklyn, 2017 - one of Gillard's crowning guitar glories)
GBV: My Kind Of Soldier (Music video - a lasting tribute to the late, great Beatle Bob - a legendary fixture of the St Louis music scene)
D. Boon:
Minutemen
Dennes Boon grew up on old school classic rock like CCR, but was turned onto bands like The Who and Blue Oyster Cult by his high school buddy Mike Watt - in fact his name change to D. Boon was at least partly in homage to his hero E. Bloom of the latter band.
The two friends began to learn instruments - he was taught guitar by his mum, and then started copying songs from his favourite records. He also got lessons from Roy Mendez Lopez, who also taught him some flamenco and classical music. Watt would later recall - "Our first guitars were pawnshop. I think D. Boon had a Melody Plus. His cost $15 and mine was $13. Mine was a Teisco."
Boon would become known for barely using distortion on his guitar, there was also barely any bass or middle, with all of his sound being treble. While all of the band were highly proficient musicians, Premier Guitar felt that it was, "Boon's guitar playing that stood out as the band's most idiosyncratic element. Boon almost never played power chords or used distortion. His tone was abrasive, his comping [a jazz technique] - a hyperactive synthesis of 70s funk and British post-punk - was complex yet rhythmically tight, and his soloing, although influenced by his classic rock heroes, veered far from the blues scale and often incorporated unusual note choices and dissonance."
Rolling Stone Australia, while placing him at number 171 on their 2023 greatest guitarist list, noted how "he was mixing punk rock with jazz, country, and folk in a joyously jangled conversational dissonance that perfectly fit the ravenous epiphanies in the Minutemen's songs." Gary Waleik in the Observer called him a "prodigiously talented guitarist, a spectacular showman and a wonderful songwriter and singer."
Billboard called Minutemen "provocative art punk minimalists", with Premier Guitar adding that they "shattered the rock n roll rulebook, and in the process created a punk fuelled legacy of scaldingly eccentric music." Sadly, Boon didn't last long enough to enjoy that legacy, dying in a car crash in late 1985 - so who knows what more might have eventually come from this highly skilled burst of human energy.
Minutemen: Corona (Live in San Pedro, 1985 - you of course know it from Jackass - but it is so much better than that)
Minutemen: Two Beads At The End (Live in San Francisco, 1985 - what a groove, what a riff!)
Minutemen: I Felt Like A Gringo (Live in San Francisco, 1985 - anther electrifying jazz-funk riff)
Minutemen: King Of The Hill (Official music video)
Will Sargeant:
Echo & The Bunnymen, Electrafixion, Solo
As Louder Than War concluded, Will Sergeant is "one of the country's most respected guitarists always capable of surprise, of finding new or different ways to play his guitar."
Alex Maiolo in Reverb were even more effusive - "Sergeant was saying more with one or two notes than most guitarists did with 20." There were also lots of artistic allusion, "Sergeant is a total colourist who embraced his crafts and blurred lines as only a multidisciplinary artist could, painting with sound and sculpting melodies as a self-taught player."
Sergeant has used many different techniques over the years to get his sounds; there have been the EBow ones, then Zimbo which used scissors being pulled across the strings, or his common use of shredded picks. He would say himself, "I like trying to make a guitar sound less like a guitar", although he has also noted self-deprecatingly, "I've been bluffing for 44 years, that's not bad is it?"
Maiolo goes into even more depth on what makes Sergeant tick. "Most of the time, Sergeant's stock in trade is playing how others don't (or won't) and exploring when not to play, to add tension and release. He always delivers le note juste: parts so masterfully thought out and economical that it showcases his intent, not lack of ability. Unlike the sweep pickers, he mostly stands alone in his field - the patron saint of those who have no interest in shredding, preferring texture and happy accidents to laboriously studied technique."
Echo & The Bunnymen: Zimbo (From Live In Liverpool - Sergeant creating huge atmosphere)
Echo & The Bunnymen: Baseball Bill (Audio only - a great example of his use of subtlety and then going into overdrive for the chorus - from the great Evergreen album in 1997)
Echo & The Bunnymen: Seven Seas (Live - check out the twin neck guitar!)
Echo & The Bunnymen: The Cutter (Official music video)
Echo & The Bunnymen: The Killing Moon (Official music video - possibly the greatest single of them all? Sergeant's sweeps and that middle eight....)
Jeff Buckley:
Solo
Jeff Buckley's father Tim, who he barely knew, was a well known folk singer of the early 70s, while his mother, Mary Guibert was a classically trained pianist and cellist. Then there was his stepfather, who introduced him to bands like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and The Who.
He started on the guitar aged five, and had progressed to electric by thirteen. He was playing in high school jazz bands and also did a one year course at the Musician's Institute in Hollywood - the "biggest waste of time" except for the bits studying music theory. He was in bands playing roots, reggae and hard rock, and then in 1990, on moving to New York City, he was also introduced to the Qaw Wali music of Sufi Pakistan, particularly through Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
Chris Bond in Total Guitar assessed why Buckley never makes the usual greatest guitar player lists. "Jeff Buckley is an unsung guitar hero whose genius defies categorisation... Jeff's transcendent four octave range tenor voice and effortless falsetto forges a direct connection to the listener's hearts, and, of course, Grave is almost entirely devoid of conventional guitar solos. That makes Buckley an unlikely guitar hero then, but those complex arrangements and beautiful harmonies aren't lacking melodic guitar - it's just that the magic is in Buckley's rich chordal work."
There were diminished intervals (as in Hallelujah), jazz chords (Lover You Should've Come Over) and cycling arpeggios (Dream Brother). Former bandmate Michael Tighe told Music Radar, "he always tried to augment the chords to a degree, or leave certain notes out to make it sound a bit more hollow or unresolved."
Buckley was the complete package - and like Boon, who knows what might have happened with more years to mature and progress. There was only the one 'proper' album, Grace, before his sad demise in 1997, although Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk, released posthumously, gives a good indication that there was plenty more to follow. It was all in the delivery, with his playing showing a total freedom of spirit. Oh, and those vocals....
Jeff Buckley: The Sky Is A Landfill (Audio only - your taste of what could have been - from Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk)
Jeff Buckley: Last Goodbye (Live in Chicago, 1995 - making the complex look so effortless)
Jeff Buckley: Grace (Live on BBC Late Show, 1995 - again making it look so easy)
Jeff Buckley: Lover You Should've Come Over (Live in Chicago - perhaps my favourite)
Jeff Buckley: Hallelujah (Official music video - some say it was Cohen's original, some say the Wainwright one, but for me there is no doubt - Buckley's version is best. Everything about this is simply beautiful)
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