Guitar Jam

Whammy Bar: Marc Ribot

Marc Ribot kinda freaks me out, man.

From one song to the next, I never have any idea what I’m going to get from the guy. Afro-Cubano funk stylings? Rip-snortin’ electric banjitar riffs? Postmodern atonal frippery? He has done it all, much to his credit. But forgive me if I turn down the volume whenever a uniquely Ribotian (if that’s not a word, it should be) phrasing finds its way into an otherwise serviceable piece of music.

I find Ribot’s jagged slashes of sound to be annoyingly, frustratingly off-kilter. In my mind, he consistently and unrepentantly commits the worst guitar sin of all: his playing stands apart from and/or above the song. You know it’s a Marc Ribot fill/solo/interlude because it practically announces itself, as opposed to the more fluid, chameleonic ones favored by session men like, say, James Burton.

I’m most familiar with Ribot’s playing from his work with Elvis Costello, so let me confine my discussion to his particularly intrusive noisemaking on Spike and Mighty Like a Rose. While each of these records has its share of moments, even the biggest Elvis devotee (raising hand) tends to come down on the side of “great googly moogly, they are violently, obscenely overproduced.” There are chimes. There are flugelhorns. There are street gangs of background singers and noises that seem to have emanated from somewhere deep beneath sea level.

You’d think this circus-like sonic atmosphere would render Ribot’s contributions vaguely… what’s the word I’m looking for here… normal. Alas, he rises above the clamor, and then some. That isn’t a good thing.

His Spanish-guitar noodlings upset the Leonard Cohen murk of “After the Fall”; on “Chewing Gum,” it sounds like he’s playing along with another song, a considerably more disjointed one. He is credited with the “distant sound” on “Tramp the Dirt Down” and the “giant insect mutation & bug attack” on “Hurry Down Doomsday (The Bugs Are Taking Over)”; in both instances, those descriptions more or less do his gnarly contributions justice.

Then there’s his work on Costello’s mostly straightforward collection of covers, Kojak Variety. Ribot goes the high-tone, squeaky route once anew on “Everybody’s Crying Mercy” (to be fair, it’s not his fault that the song lasts a solid minute and a half longer than it should). If nothing else, his alternately twangy and dissonant solo on “Strange” echoes the song’s title. Then there’s his romp through Elvis’ cover of “Bama Lama Bama Loo,” which sounds like it was recorded backwards. In a bathtub. Under a garbage can. Being pelted with pebbles.

Yes, every so often, Ribot’s angular playing hits the mark: his discordant thrusts on Spike’s “Let Him Dangle” intensifies the song’s aura of malice, while his shards-of-glass fills on Tom Waits’ version of “Way Down in the Hole” enliven rather than grate.  And maybe I’d have a more favorable opinion of Ribot’s sonic versatility if I checked out his solo work, rather than merely basing an opinion entirely on his sideman gigs.

But I don’t think so. I’m not asking Ribot and his genius employers (that’s not sarcastic) to strive for musical conformity, but sometimes merely fitting in isn’t an entirely terrible idea. If any guitarist needs an occasional time-out in the corner, it’s Marc Ribot.

Whammy Bar: Yer So Good

By Larry Dobrow
For most of the great singer/songwriters of the modern era, it hasn’t mattered much which guitarist is playing behind them. Sure, it doesn’t hurt when Springsteen lures Nils Lofgren for the occasional tour, or when Dylan pulls Mike Bloomfield from out of the blues basement. But for the most part, support players for the truly elite songwriters are interchangeable.

You doubt this? Quick, tell me who handled most of the steel-guitar flourishes on Blood on the Tracks, or the chiming backdrop on Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. This isn’t to denigrate the playing; rather, it’s to suggest that the songs were so damn good in the first place that even musical garnish courtesy of “Polka King” Frankie Yankovic couldn’t have screwed them up.

Only one exception comes to mind: the songs of Tom Petty and the slide-guitar feints and bobs of longtime Heartbreaker Mike Campbell. Without Campbell’s nuanced, sturdy support, Petty’s ditties remain eminently hummable. With them, they soar.

We should’ve figured this out early on – say, the first time we heard “Breakdown,” Petty’s first hit. The song boasts exactly three chords and a melody that, to be generous, doesn’t exactly rival anything on Rubber Soul. Campbell, however, snakes a sharp descending riff between chorus and verse, one which meshes easily with the languid electric piano.

Campbell has made a habit of doing this during his 30-year association with Petty. “Nightwatchman,” off Hard Promises, gets its kick from Campbell’s staccato chord deconstructions. “Runnin’ Down a Dream” is nothing without its howitzer of a lead riff, plus its extended guitar outro gives him a rare opportunity to break a sweat. “Echo,” one of the ignored classics in the Petty canon, might be the one that best showcases Campbell’s versatility and spot-on instincts: the restrained buildup, the chorus chime, then finally sonic emancipation in the coda.

Hell, Campbell salvages half of one of Petty’s lesser records, the tinny Into the Great Wide Open, almost by himself. Jeff Lynne’s too-bright production renders “Learning to Fly” an airy trifle; Campbell’s squeal of a slide solo offers needed turbulence. “The Dark of the Sun” and “Kings Highway” allow him to pull out the power chords, while “Built to Last” allows him to indulge himself in a few ambient wails. As for “Makin’ Some Noise,” one of Petty’s few dumbass-frat-boy moments, Campbell gives it much-needed personality in the form of an octave-jumping central riff.

Then there’s Campbell’s stalwart live work. No, there is no reason to rush out and buy a copy of TP’s Southern Accents tour document Pack Up the Plantation: Live!, unless you enjoy hearing live albums that sound like they were recorded from somewhere inside a roadie’s colon. There is, however, quite a valid reason to chase down bootlegs from recent Heartbreakers tours, especially the multinight stand at the Fillmore in 1997 (I have no idea where you’d find any of these – wink, wink). Somewhere mid-set, the band inevitably careens into an obscure oldie that has come to be known as “Guitar Boogie Shuffle.” On it, Campbell transforms into the unholy spawn of Chuck Berry and Dick Dale, playing with an abandon rarely heard on Petty studio records. It’s the glorious sound of musical liberation.

Separately, the guy looks like he hasn’t had a proper haircut in about 19 years. Coming from someone who has just been shorn – more or less under threat of arrest – in advance of a family function, that’s cause for further envy.

Anyway, to these ears, Mike Campbell pretty much puts to rest any debate over the greatest sidemen of the singer/songwriter era. Defined as much by what he does play as by what he doesn’t – no six-string frivolity here – Campbell deserves notice as one of the great blue-collar sonic craftsmen of this or any other era.

Whammy Bar: What if God Was One of Us?

By Larry Dobrow
To suggest that Eric Clapton is anything less than a guitar deity is, to most players, a sacrilege above all others, kind of the Stratocaster-set equivalent of Pope-bashing. It’s like dumping on Derek Jeter in the Bronx, like ripping the Clintons in any of the nine states they call home, like mocking David Schwimmer… um, on the set of “Friends” in 1997, maybe?

Alas, a recently published review of Clapton’s circa-2006 skills, which featured adjectives like “incendiary,” “nimble” and “singular,” has prompted me to dip my big toe into the cesspool of guitar blasphemy. My honest opinion – and I’m happy to argue this until the cows, or even Keith Richards, come home – is that Eric Clapton may well be the most overrated guitar player in the history of rock and roll.

This isn’t to say that ol’ Slowhand wasn’t once, as posters plastered around London famously proclaimed, God. His work with Cream fused boogie and the blues with seamless agility, while his brief tenure helming Derek and the Dominos saw him easily transition between languid pentatonics and spry pyrotechnics.

Since then, however, Clapton has pretty much coasted on his guitar-hero rep. By my rough calculation, he has played the same pentatonic- and bend-happy solo about 40,721 times since 1975. Which isn’t to say that it doesn’t sound as fluid and soulful as it did the first time out… but would a little variation kill you, guy?

Maybe my biggest problem with Clapton’s playing, old or new, is that it lacks any holy-lord-how’d-he-do-that? moments. Nearly every solo in the Clapton catalog, save possibly for the Live Cream Vol. 2 romp through “Steppin’ Out,” is decipherable by even moderately skilled axemen. Contrast this with the gnarliest fretwork of Stevie Ray Vaughan or Jimi Hendrix, which remains as impenetrably, frustratingly inimitable after 200 listens as it was after one.

Too, as opposed to his long-ago peers – Hendrix and Jimmy Page in particular – one can debate the influence that Clapton had on bluesmen of the generations that followed. For instance, I hear a lot of Clapton in Derek Trucks… but I also hear a lot of Albert Lee and Edgar Winter and Mike Bloomfield. On the other hand, the influence of Hendrix and Page spans musical genres – hard rock, funk, acoustic melancholia, you name it.

It doesn’t help that few of Clapton’s radio-friendly moments showcase his past virtuosity. Yes, the two-note volley that heralds the “After Midnight” solo remains a minimalist delight and yes, the opening riff to “Layla” still thrills. But of his other oft-aired hits, “Lay Down Sally” is more rhythmic quirk than guitar genius and “Cocaine” offers little beyond paint-by-numbers blues scales. The genuine sentiment and slyly descending riff of “Tears in Heaven” is undermined by its gauzy production; the overwrought sentiment and three-chord sludge of “Wonderful Tonight” could prompt a Buddhist to take up arms against his fellow man.

It’s quite likely, in fact, that those born after 1975 view Clapton more as a songwriter than a onetime guitar behemoth. This is wrong on many, many levels.

Either way, Eric Clapton has made an awful lot of worthy music in his 40 or so years in the public eye. Some of his solos are so sublime that they are etched into the memory as indelibly as the greatest melodies of any era. But if Clapton is God , well, them I'm losing my religion.

Whammy Bar: An Open Letter to Edward Van Halen

Dear Eddie,

Your pal Larry here… well, maybe “pal” is a bit too forward. But I’m almost positive we made eye contact at the Continental Airlines Arena (nee Brendan Byrne Arena) back in April of 1984. I was the short kid towards the front of section 120; you were either quite well-lubricated or inexplicably thrilled to find yourself in Jer-Z, judging by the gleam in your eyes and the arc of your grin.

Back then, you could do no wrong. A 100-minute concert that devoted 25 minutes to bass and drum solos? No problem. Amplification that made every thump of the bass drum sound like the thunder of an agitated colon? Fine by me. Guitar solos that strayed three keys away from the particular song they accompanied? Who cares? It was Eddie Fuckin’ Van Halen, man.

Guys had your poster on the wall, because you were cool. Girls had your poster on the wall, because you were DREAMY.

Alas, it lasted only so long. I can actually pinpoint the precise moment that you lost me: the second that Sammy Hagar plowed into the bridge of “Dreams” on 5150, the first VH album without Dave. When he warbled, “So baby dry your eyes/Save all the tears you’ve cried/Ohh that’s what dreams are made of,” it was all over. You could have been hammering simultaneously on six guitars and it wouldn’t have mattered.

A few more Sammy albums, another one with some other guy (“some other guy” being a charitable description), and a hits compilation/studio reunion with Dave followed shortly thereafter. And then, you disappeared.

Over the years, we’ve been treated to a handful of Eddie sightings. You toured with Sammy a summer or two ago. You popped up at a viewing party for the Oscars looking like the cryptkeeper. You apparently popped up with brother Alex in tow at a Kenny Chesney (!!!) concert a few weeks back (note: video has poor audio).

This is all well and good. But I write this note to urge you in the strongest possible terms – fine, to beg you – to start making music again. Real music, fueled by the gymnastic riffs of your earliest years: the low-octave crunch of “D.O.A.,” the harmonic hopscotch of “Top Jimmy,” the grit and metallic boogie of “Mean Streets.” The Chesney clip shows that you haven’t allowed yourself to get rusty; this suggests that your influence has spread to a whole new generation of musicians.

I confess that my request doesn’t come without a few qualifications. For one, either play with the old Van Halen or ditch Mike and Alex altogether. Just a guess here, but you might be able to find a few top-shelf conspirators for whatever project you have in mind. How about a power trio, sort of a more melodic/metallic Cream? An acoustic record with a different guest vocalist on each song? You always knew your way around a tight harmony. This could work.

Then you hit the mid-sized theaters, maybe with an occasional club date thrown in for good measure. Go ahead, charge Eagles/Rolling Stones prices for tickets. Nobody will hold it against you. Well, except the Communists.

Easy enough, right? You’ve still got it in you, I think. So to sum up: come back, Eddie, all is forgiven. And remember: a guitar is a terrible thing to waste.

Wailin’ and waitin’,
Larry D.

Whammy Bar: Tom Scholz: A Sonic Magician or Boom?

By Larry Dobrow
Upon acknowledging to friends or acquaintances that you admire the six-string stylings of Boston’s Tom Scholz, you are generally met with one of three different reactions: “They suck,” “You suck,” or “Dude, that guy sings like a girl.” To these self-appointed arbiters, I say: bah!

That’s right: Bah! Put that in your tube (amp) and smoke it.

Whatever issues you might have with his band’s super-smooth, radio-friendly ditties – which have aged better than the Stones’ late-1970s offerings – Scholz earns serious points for his melodic virtuosity and triple-reverse-wheelie-harmonized fills. Factor in his bona fides as a sound engineer, and Scholz is as much of a golden guitar God as anybody who picked up an axe during that decade. Also, his real first name is “Donald.” That bears noting.

Let’s get to the nerd stuff first. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology grad with 34 U.S. patents to his name (for those counting at home, that’s 42 more than Slash has), Scholz either built or modified most of the equipment used to record Boston’s four albums. In addition, his Scholz Research & Development firm developed the doodad to which my parents owe some serious gratitude: the “Rockman” headphone amp. Sure, I can no longer hear any sound below 85 decibels, but for a little while there, I totally rocked – and I did so without infuriating the mountainous football players across the dormitory hall.

Separately, one wonders how many Scholz critics might upgrade their opinion of the guy if they knew about his Rockman ties. My best guess: eight. People who hate “More Than a Feeling” really, really, really, really hate “More Than a Feeling.” Musical wounds cut deep, you know.

But this is a guitar column and the primary reason Scholz deserves a fatherly pat on the back is for his sound. In the days before “Peace of Mind” came squealing out of the eight-track players nestled deep in rec-room shag carpeting, guitar players were seriously into overdrive. They also dug their sustain. Alas, nobody had figured out how to marry the two until the tech-savvy Scholz came along. When the first Boston album hit, it was a “eureka!” moment on par with the first “Charlie’s Angels” slo-mo beach sequence or the Hershey-engineered marriage of chocolate and peanut butter in the form of a Reese’s cup. Everything changed.

It didn’t hurt that Scholz settled upon the perfect musical context for that overdrive/sustain purr: arena rock as gargantuan and intimidating as Stonehenge itself. “Cool the Engines” likely doesn’t rank among the top 35,000,000 songs ever penned, yet its central riff is a marvel of post-Zeppelin boogie. It remains considerably easier to sing along with the fluid guitar lead of “Don’t Look Back” than with anything that ever spilled out of Paul Westerberg’s speakers. And anyone who claims not to dig the acoustic-guitar breakdown in the middle of “Long Time” (not to mention its electric rehash before the song’s final chorus) is a liar. A dirty, filthy, nun-hating liar.

No, I’m not especially fond of the mothership motif on the cover of each of Boston’s records. No, I don’t like hair-rock singers who define themselves as much by their pants as by their multi-octave yowl. But if you can get past these ugly details, Tom Scholz remains a sonic magician who can teach those who live for loudness an awful lot about melody and technology. That alone exonerates him for his role in the genesis of the power ballad.

Whammy Bar: Going Over The Edge

By Larry Dobrow
On “Silver and Gold,” off U2’s 1988 thou-shall-take-us-seriously opus Rattle and Hum, Bono punctuates his mid-song, do-gooder oratory with four words: “Edge, play the blues.” Duly encouraged, the fetchingly skullcap'd guitarist proceeds to finger approximately four notes, each blending into the next courtesy of his omnipresent echo box. His offering features nary a pentatonic nor a harmonic, much less anything poached from the repertoire of Mike Bloomfield or Albert King.

Forgive me, then, if I wonder how The Edge has somehow wormed his way into the great-guitarists-of-the-modern-era conversation. Do his delay-drenched noodlings enhance U2’s songs? Yeah. Is he what sober-minded music critics might call a “sonic innovator”? Sure, I’ll give him that. But is it possible to take him seriously as anything other than a savvy manipulator of guitar and synth technology? Hells, no.

This isn’t a knock on guitarists who obscure their riffs behind a wall of effects; players as diverse as David Gilmour and Adrian Belew have taken great advantage of the arsenal of pedals positioned just north of their road-worn boots. But one gets the impression that, were his wah-wah pedal to be seized by an overanxious groupie, Jimi Hendrix would still be able to bring the pain. If someone were to deprive The Edge of his arsenal of delays and choruses and flangers, he’d be exposed as almost entirely bereft of (fundamentals). The emperor would be stripped to his skivvies, so to speak.

Take what many Edge apologists regard as his finest moment, the alternately chiming and syncopated “New Year’s Day.” The song begins with bass and piano, with Edge’s guitar sounding only a few atmospheric grunts. After the first verse, however, Edge stomps on the delay pedal and doesn’t lay off; he thusly adds heft to a few garden-variety chord fragments and lengthens the slide-guitar squeal of the solo. The overall effect? Meh.

Then there’s Achtung Baby, the band’s most enduring artistic statement but one miscast as a “guitar record.” For every neat-o trick – notably the distorted cough that kicks off “Zoo Station” and the grunged-down riff that backstops “The Fly” – there are five that fall somewhere between distracting and annoying. The showy octaves exercise during the chorus of “Even Better Than the Real Thing” jerks listeners away from the melody, while the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink guitar assault of “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” sends an already disjointed melody towards musical anarchy. On the flip side, “Tryin’ to Throw Your Arms Around the World” practically, begs for something a bit ballsier than the quiet-chimes treatment Edge gives it.

To be sure, Edge’s oeuvre has its moments. The jingle-jangle thang serves songs as diverse as “Bad” and “Surrender” equally well. He’s capable of a gloriously noisy solo when the spirit moves him, as evinced by the four-measure sprint tucked within “Trip Through Your Wires.” And say what you want about its four-note simplicity, but the opening riff to “I Will Follow” remains an aural adrenaline shot some 25 years after it first careened off the turntable.

These rare flashes of six-string mettle, though, don’t entirely offset a career that’s been more obfuscation than inspiration. To summarize, then: The Edge is an intermittently sublime sonic architect, but a wildly overrated riffsman. Bone up on your fundamentals, kid.

Whammy Bar: Lindsey Buckingham

Welcome to Guitar Jam's newest column - Whammy Bar - written by Larry Dobrow. Each week, Larry will explore the underrated and overrated guitar players fueled with his colorful tone and creativity.

As the individual primarily responsible for Fleetwood Mac’s transformation from blues belters into lite-FM mainstays, Lindsey Buckingham has committed more than his share of musical crimes against humanity. He will be judged, in this life or the next, as an unindicted conspirator on every Stevie Nicks composition after “Sara.” He will be roundly mocked for the echo-y “tell me tell me lies” refrain on the smarm-rock classic “Little Lies.” He will be relieved of the right to vote for idly sitting back as “Don’t Stop” – an otherwise harmless ditty – devolved into a rosy-cheeked political rallying cry.

As a guitar player, however, he’s beyond reproach. Rarely given his due as one of the few melody-first players with bona fide chops, Buckingham’s syrupy production belies the inventiveness and ferocity of his playing. Think Pete Townshend, minus the power chords and appetite for self-destruction.

Dexterity is a terrible skill in the wrong hands – witness the 648-notes-per-measure torment of Steve Vai and his shredding brethren – but Buckingham deploys his nimbleness with great restraint. Witness the staccato flutter of the song-ending “Gypsy” solo, the aural sprint of his acoustic introduction to “Don’t Back Down,” the immediacy that his hammer-happy pulls and plucks lend to the live reinvention of tinny ‘80s hit “Big Love.”

His harmonic creativity even salvages otherwise noisome drum-machine exercises like “Holiday Road,” otherwise known as “dude, that song where Christie Brinkley totally strips in the car, dude” from the first National Lampoon’s Vacation flick. Try to piece together the garble of notes Lindsey packs into his ascending/descending late-song run, a riff worthy of Jimmy Page. Then try playing it on the bulky Rick Turner Model 1 guitar with which he plies his trade. The best-case scenario: you’ll remember to place the guitar back in its case before you stomp away in frustration. The worst: your neighbors will wonder what prompted you to propel a shiny guitar through your bay windows.

What further separates Buckingham from his melodic peers is the whole versatility thing (and yes, I realize that “versatile” is almost an insult in this era of musical multitasking). The spacey chimes and trills of “Trouble” have precisely nothing in common with the murky stomp of “That’s Enough For Me,” which doesn't’t seem even peripherally related to the metallic squeals of live staple “I’m So Afraid.” Then there’s “Never Going Back Again,” one of the few ‘70s-troubadour moments that doesn't’t inspire homicidal rage among discerning listeners. At once subtle and intricate, the song’s spry-fingered accompaniment ultimately redeems its plaintive lyrics and vocal yowls.

Anyway, to answer your question: No, I’m not asking you to purchase a slew of Fleetwood Mac discs and Buckingham solo platters (though Tusk remains a worthy addition to any collection) just so you know what I’m talking about here. But even if you loathe “Go Your Own Way” with every fiber of your being, humor me with this quick exercise. The next time the song peals from the speakers at your local CVS, take a moment to appreciate the solos that bookend its final chorus: the first, in which a trio of notes are held until the precise moment they threaten to degenerate into feedback; and the second, in which he lets loose with a flurry of musical jabs and haymakers.

Lindsey Buckingham made a lot of execrable records in his day, but his wildly inventive riffery (riffitude? riffishness?) makes it considerably easier not to hold that against him. In other words: love the playa, hate his game. Or something like that.