The Evolution of The Guitar's Use In Pop Music: Brief Version By Frank Zappa

"Good Guitar Stuff" or "Stereotypifications"?

Foreword by GP: Besides being one of the most advanced guitarists and composers in the rock field, Frank Zappa has consistently been one ofthe idiom's most outspoken satirists, both lyrically and on paper. HereFrank gives his own insightful view on the changing role of theinstrument in pop music. ----- GP

During the fifties it was rare to find a guitar solo on rock or R&Bsingles - it was usually the honk-squeak tenor sax syndrome taking upthe space between the dridge and the third verse. When a guitar washeard (usually on the blues or country items I was collecting), itsfunction bore little resemblance to today's collection of patheticlick-spewage and freeze-dried stereotypifications (all of you sensitiveguitar fans who actually get off on our current psuedo-academic era ofpolished efficiency had better read another article).

If you have access to them, take the time to listen to the guitar soloson "Three Hours Past Midnight" (Johnny Guitar Watson), "The Story Of MyLife" (Guitar Slim), or just about any of B.B. King's singles from that period. For my taste, these solos are exemplary because what is beingplayed is honest and, in a musical way, a direct extension of thepersonality of the men who played them. If I were a music critic, Iwould have to say that these values for me mean more than the ability toexecute clean lines or clouds of educated gnat-notes.

Other examples of good guitar stuff from that era might include "LucyMae Blues" (Frankie Lee Simms), "Happy Home" (Elmore James - even thoughElmore tended to play the same famous lick on every record, I got the feeling that he meant it), and the work of Hubert Sumlin (and Buddy Guya couple of times) on Howlin' Wolf's things. I'm sure there are otherhot items, but this is a short article.

Also, to be fair about it, there are some classic examples of sterilitythen too in the kind of rock solos on the Bill Haley singles and theobnoxious kleen-teen finger work on the New York-based R&B vocal quintetrecords (on labels like Gee, on the up-tempo numbers with theice-cream-cone chord changes).

Then we get to the Sixties. We get there partly because R&B was being produced to death (strings on Ray Charles and Fats Domino records, etc.)and because England was starting to ship back some recycled Fiftiesmusic, played by people who were younger and cuter than the originalconsumers (and who, especially in the case of Rolling Stones fans, hadnever heard the original recordings of their revamped Slim Harpo/MuddyWaters repertoire... and not only that, folks, if they *had* heard theoriginals, they probably wouldn't have liked them at all, since neitherof the original artists named above were as prance-worthy as MickJagger).

Obviously, part of the recycling process included the imitation of ChuckBerry guitar solos, B.B. King guitar solos, and even some abstractionsof John Lee Hooker guitar solos. The guitar was becoming more prevalentin backing arrangements on singles, especially as a rhythm instrument. Solos on most white-person records of that day and age tended to berhythmic also, especially in surf music. Almost everything thatsurvives in popular memory (the greatest hits, in other words) wasdesigned for the purpose of dancing - but mainly just to sell. TheSixties saw the beginnings of record production as a science in the service of commerce, with heavy emphasis on the repetition of successful formulas. The best that can be said about this period is that itbrought us Jeff Beck at his feedback apex, Jimi Hendrix at hisoverkill-volume bext, and Cream, which sort of legitimized jamming a lotonstage (so long as you could prove British descent, usually by reelingoff musical quotations from blues records which most Americans had neverheard [radio programming nerds made sure that you never heard any ofthat stuff because *Negroes were playing it*, and they did their best toprotect the young audiences of the Fifteies and early Sixties from sucha horrible culture shock, while over in England the better musicianswere lusting after vintage blues records, actually obtaining them, andhaving these records form the basis of their playing traditions]).

So briefly to review, I would characterize guitarism of the Fifties ashaving, at *its* best, exploratory qualities not possible before theadvent of heavy amplification and recording studio machinery; morerhythmic interest, and, in some instances, real humor, style, andpersonality. At it's worst, the guitarism of the Sixties brought usamateur strummery; several swift kicks at the Fender Twin Reverbsprings; the archtype of folk-rock 12-string swill (the predecessor ofthe horrible fake-sensitivity music we have today with the laid-back sensitive-type artist/singer/songwriter suffering person, posed againstthe wooden fence provided by the Warner Brothers Records art department,graciously rented to all the other record companies who needed it for*their* version of the same crap); and the first examples of the"psychedelic guitar solo" not to mention "Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida"-ism.

Obviously this is condensing and leaving out a lot, but I'm sure thatall of you entirely-too-modern persons who have read this far aregetting anxious for something more relevant to your lifestyle - andyou're absolutely right! A perspective of musical history has*absolutely no place in today's thrilling musical world*. Yes, that'sright, you heard right!

How could any of this information be useful to a musical world that hasreached a point of sophistication that accepts concepts like TheSuper-Group, The Best Guitar Player In The World, The Fastest GuitarPlayer In The World, The Prettiest Guitar Player In The World, TheLoudest Guitar Player In The World, The Guitar Player In The World WhoHas Collected The Most Oldest Guitars In The World (some of which havebeen played by dead guitar players who were actually musicians), and soforth?

The history of Pop Music has a habit of telling us who we really are -'cause if we weren't that way, we wouldn't have spent billions ofdollars on those records, would we? After careful training by media andmerchandising people, the entire population (even guitar players) hasbeen transmuted into a reasonably well-groomed, odor-free,consumer-amoeba which is kept alive only to service manufacturers andlives its life by the motto: biggest, fastest, loudest is most and best.

So forget about the past; it means nothing to you now (unless you canfind a way to play it louder/faster - which probably wouldn't be toohard since even infants today can play as fast as the earliestMahavishnuisms). Let's face it, once you learn the 28 or 29 mostcommonly used rock doo-dads (a few country licks, a little Albert King,a pentatonic scale here'n'there, get your heavy vibrato together) youare ready to live; to be what will be known in the future as "The GuitarPlayer of the Seventies". Yes, soon *you* will belong to the ages, andwhen you've finally got you album contract, and it finally comes out,and it sells ten million copies, and when every beginning guitar playersits at home and hears you wanking away at phenomenal speed with yourperfect fuzz and your thoroughly acceptable execution, and when thatlittle guy with his first guitar (him and the ten million other ones)says to himself" "Shit, I can do that," and proceeds to memorize everyawe-inspiring note, and then plays it faster than you... (maybe gets his32nd notes up around a dotted whole note = 208). And not only that,after learning your solo faster, he transposes it up a minor third,steals some of his mother's clothes, gets a job in a bar, getsdiscovered, gets a record contract (with an advance ten times biggerthan yours), makes an album (with a better budget than yours, becausehe's going to be the next big thing according to the executives at therecord company, and they don't mind spending a little extra for realtalent). And not only that, while you just figured out you can't playany faster because you haven't had any time to practice because you gotcoked out on the royalties of your first album (and you still have torecord ten more according to your contract), and it's time to do yoursecond album, and you've been asking recording engineers how a VSOworks, meanwhile the little guy with his mother's clothes on gets hisalbum out on the street, and it sells twenty million copies, andsomewhere out there, there's twenty million other little guys with theirfirst guitars, and they're listening to your recycled wank, and they'resaying...

***