Another Guitar Solo, Eh?

I got a guitar when I was 11 or 12. My mother’s third husband gave me this little Fender Duo-Sonic II. It had scratchy-sounding slider switches and a rusty bridge. It was a short-scale instrument, and it fit well in my young hands.

I got lost in the sounds the strings made. I’d pick out melodies on one string at a time, sliding up and down the neck. I learned to play the melody from David Allan Coe’s “Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile.”

Dad ordered a little Sears amplifier that took a long time to come in. It sounded great to my ears though.

Turns out stepdad had given the guitar to me during a drunk blackout, though, so he didn’t remember where it had gone. A year or two later, after he and my mother broke up, he showed up at my house looking for it. I wasn’t home. I gather he wasn’t thrilled when Dad told him I’d sold it. I’d moved on to a neat little Peavey T-16 and a bigger amp.

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So I grew up worshipping at the altar of the guitar. I’d given up on popular music, mostly, delving into classic rock and blues.

Blues was experiencing a resurgence, led by the likes of SRV and Robert Cray. Lots of guys were off and running with the blues, stretching out their solos. Sometimes, as with SRV or Eric Clapton, the results could be startlingly good.

I moved every direction, listening to Eric Johnson’s shimmering tones, Albert King’s unearthly bends, Johnny Winter’s frenetic picking, Vernon Reid’s dive-bombing whammy techniques… anywhere I could find some mind-blowing new technique or sound, I was all into it.

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And something changed.

I got tired of it.

I got tired of all the endless soloing, all the “me me me” stuck into the middle (and beginning and end and all points in-between) of every guitar song. So many good songs were just turned inside out by endless bars of guitar noodling.

The guitar solo, which had been the part of the song I used to turn up, became just the opposite. Give me melody, give me voice, but don’t attack a perfectly good song with all those NOTES.

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I still try to find some balance. God knows I love to listen to Bad Brains or Helmet, which are clearly guitar-based bands, though not really built on guitar solos.

It’s hard to say how much is too much, but you know it when you hear it. And still, I can sit through “Sultans of Swing,” and like everyone else who loves that song, scat sing every note of that long solo. Knopfler’s lyricism on that one was remarkable to say the least.

And here I sit, watching the Eric Clapton Crossroads Guitar Festival 2007DVD, featuring so many of my former idols. Parts of it are tight and rock like heck, and parts, yeah, they just go on too long.

But Jeff Beck, boys and girls, never ceases to amaze me. His song “Where Were You?” defined a pivotal time in my life, and folks, it doesn’t even have any lyrics. None sung with words at least.

He’s the whole package, an endlessly inventive and technical player who still makes music that’s interesting to folks who aren’t just there seeking chops.

When I was taking guitar lessons, any teacher needed to be able to play his “Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers.” With all the crazy bends, whammy bar work and volume swells, it’s a bear to play. I gave up trying to learn it.

Listen to this clip.

And the bassist is Tal Wilkenfeld (born in 1986, y’all… wow), who holds her own, sounding like the reincarnation of Jaco Pastorius. Incredible.

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So yeah, it’s sort of a love-hate relationship I have with solos in general. I like to do it, sure, but I just can’t see as how it’s awfully interesting to the average listener, you know?

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I will be out of town through Wednesday, and I doubt I’ll be online much if at all. Y’all have a good week.