Where are all the new guitar heros?

And it's too bad, too, 'cause Lifeson's a damn good guitarist. But you can tell even by listening to the early '80's stuff off of Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures, and especially Signals, his guitar solos were becoming shorter and shorter and more simpler. At least in comparison to their longer epics from the '70's ("La Villa Stangiato" from Hemispheres from 1978 comes to mind). Maybe the occasional instrumental here and there featured a memorable solo ("YYZ", etc.), but other than that...

 

See, that's the thing- less, shorter, or even no solos isn't a "shame." It's just a different and sometimes more mature approach to playing guitar within the context of the group.

There are quite a few players whom I consider "guitar" heroes with whom I'm be thrilled if they never played a solo (Howe, Lifeson, Fripp, Page, Richards, Mustain, etc).

But then there are guys like Satriani and all my favorite jazzers who have to take lots of solos to make me happy.

 

Ok let me use this not as a slant towards the author, but let's put a stop to this kind of anti-punk thing immediately.

Steve Jones did solo in that band, and they were purty good solos too. Nothing fancy, but what the music needed. He was/is very competent.

Jack White is a great guitarist - in the Ron Ashton/Beck in the Yardbirds school of guitaring. I've seen him live and he does know how to shred the fretboard quite well thank you. Check out his playing on The Go's first album "Whatcha Doin'". (Sub Pop)

Punk didn't kill the guitar - synth music killed the guitar - so let's not revive the art rock vs. punk rock battle again. It seems just so...1976.

Peace brother - it ain't you I am having issue with, ok?

 

Definitely Robert Randolph - no one can touch him on the steel. Also, I am a big fan of Luther Dicksonson of the North Mississippi All-Stars...talk about a group of players. However, they are backing off the blues and seem to be going the "jam band" route, which is unfortunate in my opinion. I wouldn't have minded if they stuck with the Kimbrough/Burnside style of blues and cranked out variations of their debut, Shake Hands with Shorty...

 

At one time you had to know your instrument and play it well!
GONE...The standard of GUITAR talent is out the window on today's TOP 100...The Indie Artists have much untapped talent and will stay that way if the Music Biz continues in the path it's going If it sells, it stays...over and over again...Until the next moneymaker. I agree on the GRUNGE

 

A good friend of mine, who has been a professional guitar player for over thirty years, recently saw this kid play at a club in Phoenix. Said he was amazing.

http://www.nicksterling.com/

Well, you never know.

 

If you haven't heard him yet, I'd say don't waste your time. I watched him do a live concert on my local cable outlet and I don't think he is good at all. He is fairly popular on the jam band circuit from what I understand, but those folks are mostly all on drugs.

 

How about a Dobro God....Jerry Douglas of Union Station!

 

Gotta agree with Joe Bonamassa. If you like rockin' blues and blisterin' guitar licks you are really missing out on something great if you don't check him out. Of all the new guys out there he is definitely on top of my list.

 

Yeah! I saw him with Union Station on PBS and I was like: Whoooooo! I didn't know his name though. I need to pick up some Union Station and some solo Jerry Douglas too.

 

Why are people blaming grunge/punk/MTV for this?

"You can play a song with one note."
-- Bob Dylan on page 49 of the Live 1975 booklet

I rest my case.

 

I used to think MTV was to blame, but I have coworkers who are TOOL fans but can't stand to listen to a drum solo from a live album of my choice.

I don't mean to thread crap but I know people who buy concert tickets to their favorite band and WANT to sit out on the lawn where you can't see anything at the local outddor venue when there are still good seats down close. Jeez, we used to stand in line for hours trying to come up with those seats.

 

And 80's punk at least produced some interesting guitarists with innovative, distinctive styles. Bob Stinson of the Replacements, Curt Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets, and of course Bob Mould of Husker Du all came up with some amazing solos at times.

 

The subject is GUITAR solos...not one note songs...Can't imagine a blistering one note lead break!

Reread my post...Your putting the style in, not me...I made a broad based statement in general, I guess -you- feel that way?, as you filled in the blanks...I never mentioned MTV or Punk? and only agreed on the already mentioned grunge......

I'm curious, Are you a guitarist? I am, a Pnenominal one
I haven't heard great guitar in years...I'm not blaming, just making an observation...

 

Nirvana wasn't really to blame, but they were the band that put an end to guitar heroes. If you remember before Nirvana, hair metal was the big thing. There was a big focus on the lead guitar player. The guitar players had to have technical skill and everyone was trying to outdo each with ridiculous stunts. Does anyone remember Paul Gilbert and his power drill? I direct you to Rule 17 of Buddyhead's Rules Of Rock:

17) Cordless guitars are only ok if your first name is Eddie, your last name is Van Halen, and you kick ass at playing a guitar with a power drill. If this is not the case, don't venture there.

Then Nirvana came around and suddenly all those bands just looked plain silly. Suddenly it was uncool to be proficient at your instrument.

You can point to The Sex Pistols, Bob Dylan or whoever. I'll pick Guitar Gable and his one note solo on Slim Harpo's "I'm A King Bee". "Buzz awhile, sting it then." But technical proficiency was still lauded by the public at large before and after these artists. It was Nirvana that changed the cultural zeitgeist on a large scale.

 

And let me add that maybe Nirvana is not to blame. Maybe it is the idiots who played guitar with power drills.

 

When/where did this happen? I fired up a Google search but came up with nothing.

 

'Cinnamon Girl'?

 

Thanks for the link Mike!

 

I think most new muscians are more about image and copying Nirvana and other bands from 10 years ago so no one knows their instruments worth a damn. I don't hear solos from these new guys because they don't even know how!!

 

Yeah... most of them can't play

 

Woah...take a big step back. I'm actually a fan of Punk. I'm glad they did away with a lot of the excess noodling of the '70's. I'd much rather hear no solo than some lame, drawn out meandering affair that goes nowhere. I love a good guitar solo, but a lot of what was out there wasn't that good and it ended up as too obligatory rather than inspired. I didn't say Punk killed the guitar, but Punk did largely do away with soloing of all kinds(please don't tell me you consider Television to be Punk). Punk worshipped the DIY ethos - it wasn't about technical prowess. Nirvana and bands like them did away with solos largely because of their adherence to that ethos.

 

Re-reading all of the posts, I think that we are confusing 2 separate trends.

The first is a trend (which I believe started with Punk) to move away from solos and what was felt to be too great a reliance on technical prowess. To me this is neither good or bad but just different. I love Punk, I also love progressive rock, and some jam bands. It's a different approach to rock music, not necessarily better or worse. A lot of the Rush comments in this thread relate to this. Alex Lifeson is still an awesome guitarist, but he doesn't solo to anywhere near the same extent as he did in the '70's.

The second trend is a general decline (which I believe started in the late '70's but has really accelerated in the last 5 years) in the quality of popular, mainstream rock (please note that I said "popular, mainstream," I think there's a lot of quality music today outside of the mainstream). This decline manifests itself in both the quality of the musicianship (you wouldn't want most of these bands soloing, because they would suck) and the quality of the songs. I think you can lay the blame for this on several things: the takeover of the music business by giant corporations and the resulting mass marketing of the music, MTV (which is part of that corporate dominance of mainstream rock), and the consolidation of radio in the hands of a few (really one - Clear Channel) corporate giants. This second trend is explored in detail in the related thread: "Theory on why 'Modern Rock' stinks."