Compilations

If you wanted to come up with a single object, to depict the American pop culture of the '60s, an electric guitar would be as apt as any. By the end of the 1950s, the guitar had all but eclipsed the saxophone as the sound (and look) of rock'n'roll. Les Paul's TV appearances got the guitar sales ball rolling in the early '50s, and those sales doubled almost overnight when Elvis Presley appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1956. But the biggest boon to the industry came in 1964, when the Beatles' series of Sullivan shows tripled that figure. The sheer variety of musical styles that crowded for space on the airwaves in the '60s remains unequalled - everything from Slim Harpo to The Singing Nun, from The Four Tops to The Dave Clark Five. Likewise, the range of guitar playing (as well as the quality) is one of the things that makes this Legends volume so intriguing.

Duane Eddy established the concept of a guitar instrumentalist essentially taking the place of a singer with 1958's "Rebel-Rouser," but the notion of a band consisting almost entirely of electric guitars was proffered by The Fireballs and The Ventures. Of the two, The Ventures were the more successful; in fact, they remain the biggest-selling instrumental combo in rock history. Formed in 1959 when a bricklayer and a hod carrier (Bob Bogle and Don Wilson, respectively) met in Tacoma, Washington, and discovered that each played guitar, their initial influences were, according to Bogle, "Duane Eddy and a lot of Chet Atkins records, because they were all guitar." It's Bob Bogle, in fact, wang-barring the lead on "LULLABY OF THE LEAVES" - one of their numerous follow-ups in the mold of their 196O smash "Walk Don't Run" - with Wilson on rhythm, Nokie Edwards on bass, and Howie Johnson on drums. Bogle and Edwards later traded roles, and Johnson was replaced by Mel Taylor in 1963.

The '60s also introduced the concept of the guitar hero. Unlike the melodic frontman role pioneered by Duane Eddy or the slick-pickin' sideman niche filled by Scotty Moore or Cliff Gallup, the guitar hero was a pyrotechnic guitarslinger hitman. Though Eric Clapton is generally credited as being the first object of idolatry based on chops, the "Clapton is God" syndrome began after he left The Yardbirds and was playing the blues with John Mayall. His replacement, Jeff Beck, definitely upped the ante in terms of extroverted guitar eccentricity, on songs such as "I'm A Man" (the studio version), "Heart Full Of Soul," and "Shapes Of Things." "THE TRAIN KEPT A-ROLLIN'" finds Beck playing the Johnny Burnette burner in a more traditional rock'n'roll style - traditional, at least, for Beck. His style has undergone (and continues to undergo) more evolutions than that or any living rock guitarist, and in 1985 Clapton himself paid him the highest possible compliment: "I began to think of Jeff as probably being the finest guitar player that I'd ever seen. And I've been around."

If Lonnie Mack was never viewed as the guitar hero that Beck or Clapton were, it certainly wasn't for a lack of chops. Mack stormed out of Indiana and onto the charts in 1963 with an instrumental arrangement of Chuck Berry's "Memphis," using one of the most distinctive, powerful guitar voices already refined - and still intact with few alterations today. Like "Memphis," "CHICKEN PICKIN" muddles the lines between blues and country, which Lonnie insists are "about the closest musics there are," to come up with 100% roadhouse rock. Playing a heavy-strung Gibson Flying V especially equipped with a Bigsby whammy bar through a Magnatone amp with the vibrato cranked, Lonnie got a frenetic sound that remains unmatched.

Washington (which recently proclaimed "Louie Louie" as their official state song) was famous for their early-to-mid 60s raw brand of rock, as typified by The Kingsmen, The Wailers, and Paul Revere & The Raiders. But none were as wild as The Sonics - with Gerry Roshe (sometimes called "The White Little Richard") screaming such sinister gems as "Psycho," "Strychnine," and "THE WITCH," their first recording from 1964. Lead guitarist Larry Parypa, then 18, credits The Wailers (with guitarist Rich Dangel) with fathering the Northwest sound, and lists Duane Eddy, The Ventures, Link Wray and (later) Freddy King as influences. "I think it was the complete lack of accomplishment that resulted in sounding like a train wreck," he says in retrospect. "We didn't have technical expertise to do anything other than what we did." Parypa's Lonnie Mack-after-40-cups-of-coffee sound came from playing his Jazzmaster (with the low E string turned down to D) through the keyboardist's Magnatone amp.

At this point, there's not much that can be said about Jimi Hendrix that hasn't already been said thousands of times. Without question he changed the way virtually all electric guitarists who followed (regardless of style) played the instrument. Though he is often credited as the father of metal, his amalgam of blues, soul, and psychedelia (as overwhelming as it was) was far removed from the Rhoads/Malmsteen/Vai school of 64th-note excess. "HEY JOE," his first English single, shows his debt to such great R&B players as Bobby Womack, Curtis Mayfield, Steve Cropper, and Jimmy Johnson, particularly on the accompanying fills between verses. This version, from an October '68 Winterland performance, features an extended intro and outro drum solo. Incidentally, to clear up a common misconception that still persists: Yes, Jimi was left-handed and usually played right-handed-model guitars. BUT (and this is an important but) he would reverse the strings so as to play standard for a southpaw - as opposed to lefties such as Albert King, Otis Rush, and Dick Dale, who played "upside-down."

Chet Atkins the great finger-style country guitarist, was more an influence on rock guitar than part of the genre itself, but in 1960 he crossed over with his Teen Scene album. "BOO BOO STICK BEAT" (actually recorded in '59) revealed another aspect of Mr. Guitar, the electronics pioneer. Like Les Paul, Atkins was always monkeying with gadgets, such as reverb (evident on 1955's "Blue Ocean Echo") and tremolo (as far back as 1956's "Slinkey"). "Boo Boo Stick Beat's" innovation was a primitive wah-wah pedal - at least seven years before Clapton and Hendrix would employ the commercially available version of the effect on "Tales Of Brave Ulysses" and "Burning Of The Midnight Lamp," respectively.

[Photo of FRANK ZAPPA]

"NINE TYPES OF INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION," a Les-Paul-goes-to-hell track, from Uncle Meat by The Mothers Of Invention, shows the type of tape manipulation Frank Zappa was experimenting with in the late 60's (in this case, speeding up his guitar part). Though first and foremost an R&B devotee, Zappa's composing and guitar phrasing borrow heavily from 20th-century composers such as Stravinsky, Varese, and Webern. In a 1979 interview, he revealed another influence that came into play on Uncle Meat. "If there's any influence in Uncle Meat, it's from Conlon Nancarrow. He writes music for player-piano that is humanly impossible to perform. He writes all these bizarre canons and weird structures - punches them out on player-piano rolls. Some of it sounds like ragtime that's totally bionic - it'll kill you."

Zappa cohort Don "Captain Beefheart" Van Vliet recorded "ABBA ZABA" in 1966 with an early edition of His Magic Band featuring Alex St. Claire and Ry Cooder on guitars. As Beefheart expert (and avant-garde guitarist) Henry Kaiser points out, "It's Ry Cooder playing the bass solo - absolutely for sure - and the little guitar solo that follows. I heard that from [Beefheart drummer] John French, who was there." Recorded in 1966 for Safe As Milk, this cut predates Cooder's work with Taj Mahal and the subsequent solo albums that established him as one of the greatest slide guitarists of his generation.

When the instrumental surf music craze hit Southern California in 1961 (a couple of years before The Beach Boys began writing and singing songs popularizing the water sport), RCA enlisted a group of bandstand-vets from Boulder, Colorado - The Astronauts. With a few tunes supplied by Lee Hazlewood and even Henry Mancini (and excellent production and engineering from Al Schmitt and Dave Hassinger, respectively), the quintet all but mowed down the California competition with songs like "Baja" and "HOT-DOGGIN'." Rich Fifield led the three-guitar wave with his white Fender Jazzmaster and blonde Bandmaster amp.

Although The Yardbirds' first English LP was Five Live Yardbirds, the live material from that set didn't initially come out in America (as one side of Having A Rave Up) until after the group's debut studio album, For Your Love, was released in the States. And although the liner notes to both credited Beck, all of the live stuff and most of For Your Love's studio tracks (seven out of eleven, recorded 1964 and '65) actually featured the quintet's previous lead man, 19-year-old Eric Clapton. E.C.'s lead on "I AIN'T GOT YOU" is a mere 25 seconds, but such a stinging, high-volume attack had rarely been heard on a rock disc. Clapton's obsession with the blues and The Yardbirds' with pop success caused him to split just as the single "For Your Love" was climbing the charts. "I was made to feel I was a freak," he said in 1985. "They all wanted the simple things of success and the charts, and what was wrong with that?" Photos of The Yardbirds from this period show Clapton with a number of guitars - a Gibson ES-335, a Telecaster, a Jazzmaster - but he recalls recording mainly with the Tele.

[Photo of STEVE CROPPER]

Steve Cropper is best known for his non pareil rhythm guitar playing with Booker T & The MG's, Otis Redding, and Sam & Dave, as well as his knack for writing R&B hits, such as "In The Midnight Hour," "Knock On Wood," and "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay." But as he displays on the MG's "RED BEANS AND RICE," he can also deliver gutsy solos with the best of them. Always concerned more with the overall song than showing off, this team player described the Stax attitude in 1978 thusly "It had to do with the atmosphere - find a hole and plant something in there that meant something. The main idea not what you played; it was what you didn't play. The less you played, the more it meant."

Dave Edmunds is best known these days for his hillbilly based solo albums and rootsy production work !h The Stray Cats and The Fabulous Thunderbirds. But as a member of Love Sculpture, the Welshman first dabbled in blues (Blues Helping, recorded in 1968) and then an abrupt 180-degree with "SABRE DANCE," from Forms And Feelings. "When I look back on it, I think. 'What the hell was I trying to do?'" he said in '83. "I cannot figure it out. All I can think of was there was a band called The Nice with Keith Emerson in it, and they used to play about with some classics. So I was trying to do on guitar what Keith Emerson was doing on Hammond organ."

Another candidate for the Jolt Cola theme song is Dick Dale's surf classic "MISIRLOU." Although the advent of surf music is usually traced to Dale's 1961 hit "Let's Go Trippin'," the guitarist claims he was already forging the style two or three years earlier. "People get these dates from the release dates ["Misirlou" hit the streets in '62]," he points out, "not when the song was being performed and recorded." A stickler about the proper equipment, the King of the Surf Guitar says, "I invented that music with Leo Fender, who came up with the Showman amp. And the only surfing sound comes from a fullbore Stratocaster." Another equipment innovation was Fender's outboard reverb unit, which came out in 1961, but Dick clarifies, "Let's Go Trippin'" and the original 'Misirlou' - everything on Surfer's Choice - were played without a reverb unit. It was the power of me using .060-gauge strings and cranking my Showman with the Lansing D-130 15" speaker." Dale's Gatling gun, double-picked staccato came from his roots. "My father's Lebanese, and I used to play the Arabic drum with my uncle as a kid and listen to the guys play the oud with a turkey quill, doing 'Misirlou,' while a woman belly-danced. "

The Shadows, featuring lead guitarist Hank B. Marvin, are often referred to as England's equivalent of The Ventures. But whereas, prior to The Beatles' domination of both countries, The Ventures were easily one of the biggest rock groups in America, The Shadows were practically the only rock band in the UK. When not backing singer Cliff Richard, The Shadows' instrumental efforts, such as "APACHE," were turning a generation of England's youth onto the electric guitar, just as Lonnie Donegan had spawned innumerable skittle groups a few years earlier. One such disciple was Dire Straits' Mark Knopfier, who, when he later brought Marvin onstage to play his theme from Local Hero (a comeback hit for The Shadows), explained that his dream as a young boy was to have "a red guitar," referring to Marvin's red Stratocaster, his trademark even though the Burns company later issued a model that bore his name. (Ironically, a cover version of "Apache" by Holland's Jorgen Ingman beat The Shadows' original to the American charts, and the group never achieved much success in the U.S.).

Listening to the elegance of Quicksilver Messenger Service's "GOLD AND SILVER" as well as early non-vocal tunes by groups like Country Joe & The Fish and Jefferson Airplane - it's regrettable that the Rock Instrumental has become such an endangered species. San Francisco's Quicksilver featured two excellent lead guitarists in Gary Duncan and the late John Cipollina. Duncan has the more cello-like tone of the two, while Cipollina, with the brighter sound, consistently makes use of his Gibson SG's tremolo arm. In 1973, Cipollina told Guitar Player's Jon Sievert about one of his early rock inspirations: "I heard Mickey Baker of Mickey & Sylvia playing 'Love Is Strange,' and I was hooked, I was completely awed by the imagery surrounding the electric guitar."

[Photo of JOHN CIPOLLINA & GARY DUNCAN]

There's been a lot of debate over the years as to who actually played what on The Byrds' recordings, but as Byrds expert and producer (of Never Before) Bob Hyde says, "No one played 12-string on The Byrds' records except for Roger McGuinn - nobody. McGuinn was the only band member on the single 'Mr. Tambourine Man' [with sessionmen such as drummer Hal Blaine and bassist Ray Pohlman], but on 'IT WON'T BE WRONG' [and everything else] it was the original five Byrds." The electric 12-string in question was, of course, the Rickenbacker model 360/12, which McGuinn was inspired to buy after seeing The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night. As he wrote in his foreward to Richard Smith's book The Complete History Of Rickenbacker Guitars, "In my opinion, The Byrds' sound would have been impossible without the invention of the Rickenbacker 12-string electric guitar."

Even more controversy has surrounded The Kinks' 1964 garage anthem "YOU REALLY COT ME." Did Dave Davies play the guitar solo? Or was it Jimmy Page during his studio heyday? Yes and no. Yes, 17-year-old Davies was responsible for that mess o' noise. No, Jimmy Page was not there. Page, who worked on several Shel Talmy productions around that time, took credit for the lead in more than a couple of interviews. But in 1977, following a string of expletives, Davies stated in no uncertain terms, "Jimmy Page did not play the guitar solo on 'You Really Got Me' - that's really a lie. I guess it must be very important for him to say that." In recent years, interviews with both Dave and his brother Ray, as well as producer Talmy, have reaffirmed what anyone who saw The Kinks' 1965 appearance on Shindig already knew. As Ray said in a televised interview for VH-1, "If he never plays another note, I think that 12 bars put him in the history books." He also recalled swearing at Dave just before the take, which obviously brought out his younger brother's aggression. Another contributing factor was a wimpy-sounding amp that Dave modified by slitting the speaker cones with a razor.

"BALL AND CHAIN" by Big Brother & The Holding Company is far from an example of guitar virtuosity, but is a fitting time-capsule of San Francisco's psychedelic scene circa 1967, Big Brother was often bad-rapped as not having instrumental abilities worthy of their incandescent singer Janis Joplin - which was probably true. But somehow Janis' subsequent recordings never had the organic band feel or charm of her first sides with The Holding Company. Sam Andrews, James Gurley, and bassist Peter Albin would alternate on lead, rhythm, and bass (in fact, in live performance Janis would occasionally play bass on a song or two), but "Ball And Chain" was always Gurley's showpiece, a fuzz 'n' feedback tour de force.

As eclectic as this set is, it still only runs the '60s guitar gamut from A to about J. Due to licensing obstacles, a few guitar greats of the decade (in particular, George Harrison and Keith Richards) could not be included; in other cases, there just wasn't space. So for K to Z (well, to T at any rate) - from Alvin Lee to Barry Melton to Jimmy Page - you'll have to wait for Legends Of Guitar - Rock, The '60s, Vol, 2.

-Dan Forte