The Band- "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" (Robbie Robertson)

Available on: The Band (1969)
Solo bits: 2:52-3:39
If Robbie Robertson comes to be considered the guitar hero he deserves to be and "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" becomes his representative track, it will be in spite of Robertson's protests. A guitarist/songwriter who could play loosely with economic use of character while retaining an encyclopedic knowledge of all the disparate elements that would play a roll in rock music (i.e. country, blues, gospel), he makes perfect sense as a foil for someone like Bob Dylan, who he played with during his fabled electric tour of the mid-60s. During this time, as Robertson put it, the chances to show off were plentiful, and Robertson's chops were such that he would have made mincemeat of any normal front man who was not Dylan. When the Band finally broke with Dylan and set up shop in Big Pink, Robertson made the crucial decision of jettisoning guitar solos altogether in favor of a type of songwriting that would sound homier and more authentic than what he observed in the San Francisco psychedelic scene. Nothing wrong with that, really, but it also could have been the catalyst in making Robertson the de facto leader of a group whose original strength was that they were all powerfully capable musicians and songwriters. Maybe if Robertson was less disturbed by the sort of guitar playing being utilized by Jefferson Airplane and the like, he wouldn't have gotten burned out as fast. But that's a subject for another thesis.

The Band is, in case you didn't know, an amazing band. Truly, one of the best this world has ever seen and ever will see. In fact, I wager I listen to their first three albums Music From Big Pink, The Band, and Stage Fright more than I have any Dylan album, which I realize puts me into a minority. People talk about the Beatles as an insane cross-section of talented individuals, but in terms of sheer musicality and individuality, it's difficult to beat Robertson, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, and Levon fucking Helm. In addition, they are also one of the coolest- looking bands. I digress. Robertson must have realized this early on, that no matter how much he worked, he still wouldn't be considered the Band leader. So, he had to assert his dominance in other ways. He wrote most of the songs, and slowly phasing out the songwriting contributions of his fellow band members, for instance (even though he couldn't sing). However, this obviously wasn't good enough, as Robertson was merely considered to be doing his part in what was still ostensibly a democracy: though he wrote all the songs, he didn't sing lead on any of them (unlike the rest of them, sans Hudson), and he didn't play anything besides guitar. He was a good-looking guy, but nothing compared to the paragon of manliness that is Levon Helm (again, I'm editorializing). He compensating by bogarting all of Scorsese's interview time in The Last Waltz and placing himself squarely in the middle of the stage, even though, I repeat, he didn't sing. This is obviously a man in a conscious, anxious battle with his own ego.

I say all this because that's exactly what the guitar solo at the end of "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" sounds like--that is, a battle with ego. Throughout the entirety of The Band, wonderful album as it is, there is a conspicuous absence of solos, although Robertson offers several brilliant lead lines in songs like "Up On Cripple Creek" and "When You Awake" in lieu of this. On the last two songs, Robertson breaks this formula. "The Unfaithful Servant" has an acoustic solo at the end. It's not particularly groundbreaking but it's bracing enough and serves as a nice counterpoint to Danko's affected aches. "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)," the following song, is another creature entirely. This is a mode of songwriting that has no serious precedent as far as I can tell, especially in how the chorus is so spare and minimal as opposed to the verses. I have a theory that this song may have influenced the Pixies in some way. I know everyone talks about how they were the first to employ the quiet verse/loud chorus formula, but these same people fail to mention how Frank Black flipped that structure around in songs like "No. 13 Baby," where Santiago stops playing and all that's left is Kim Deal's bass and Dave Lovering's drums. Obviously this is far more harmonically complex and utilizes a lot of techniques the Pixies never used, but the point still stands.

"King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" is one of those storytelling songs Robertson was so fond of in those days. This one is about a farmer who has a tough time making it but survives due to his union membership, or something. Richard Manuel, the late pianist, sings it at a lower register than what we are used to. Levon Helm contributes the brilliant drumming, particularly during the chorus when he pauses and then taps the high-hat for a snaky-sounding effect. Hudson is somewhere in the back, pumping on the organ. Rick Danko plays the bass, clipped and deliberate as usual. But it's Robertson who is the obvious center of the song. Throughout, he plays guitar fills that almost seem like the start of solos, but then retreats. It's a great moment when the chorus comes along and Robertson reduces his playing to single notes, in tandem with Danko; it's the sort of moment where he deliberately underplays for fear of breaking into self-indulgence.

The solo itself is one of those album-capping solos that I am particularly fond of. Yet even here, Robertson deliberately underplays. Given where it's placed in the song and how Robertson has set up the dynamics so far, this makes perfect sense. It's the kind of solo that's meant to sound quiet, but that doesn't mean it's any less intense. In fact, Robertson ratchets up the tension by trying to maintain that sort of feeling instead of going into all sorts of crazy directions. You can tell that some notes are barely being plucked, but it never seems like he's playing a wrong note. In interviews, Robertson has noted how hard it was to play a solo like that, which depends both on perfect timing and an insane sense of dynamics, and it seems here that he found the perfect medium between showing off his blooze skills from the Dylan days and acting like the socially responsible songwriter he obviously wants to be. Therein lies the tension, and therein lies the success of the solo.

I particularly like the end, where the instruments start picking up again, and Robertson plays two notes in tandem before breaking off into more familiar territory. The song ends so abruptly that you wonder where Robertson could have gone from there, but something tells that this isn't a situation, like "Little Wing," where the song is simply the victim of bad editing. Everything has a purpose, and it makes you appreciate the minute beforehand that much more.

Pavement- "The Hexx" (Stephen Malkmus)

Available on: Terror Twilight (1999)
Solo Bits: 3:36-4:28

I like to think that Stephen Malkmus became a great lead guitarist and soloist without even realizing it. In several interviews, particularly in Pavement's early days, Malkmus would talk about how the majority of guitarists he most admired were rhythm guitarists, and he felt his own inner jamminess was unremarkable by comparison. Of course this didn't stop Malkmus from playing extended guitar solos that became longer and more conventional as his career progressed (his recent solo album Real Emotional Trash is the culmination of all these disparate Dead and Television influences manifesting themselves in long, awesome yet empty guitar solos). This mirrored Pavement's rise from Fall-influenced indie stalwart to modern classic rockers. Malkmus was always in charge of Pavement (really, someone try to convince me that Spiral Stairs did anything), and by being acting as the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter, he set himself up as a Hendrix type as opposed to, say, a Mark E. Smith.

Malkmus was also, of course, way too laconic and guarded onstage to act as if he was the guitar genius that he was. As a result, he's not generally thought of as a guitar hero, at least not compared to other 90's stalwarts like Kurt Cobain, Graham Coxon, Jonny Greenwood, Kevin Shields, Doug Martsch, and a few others. What these guitarists all have in common is that they all tried in different ways to act like they weren't guitar heroes--but really, they probably knew they were, and took their role as an opportunity to fuck with audience expectations of guitar heroics. In terms of sheer ability, Malkmus could play as well as any of them, save perhaps Coxon and Greenwood. There are many cases of Malkmus' guitar genius at work on even the earliest of Pavement albums, but for me his crowning achievement is the second-to-last song on their last album Terror Twilight, which is entitled "The Hexx."

"The Hexx" stands out, as the title might suggest, as Pavement's spookiest song, a swirling dirge with an odd riff at the center that transforms into a righteous if obscure chorus. Placed as it is on Terror Twilight, it has an odd cleansing effect, given how tuneful and even pleasant the rest of the album sounds (Pavement was in full-fledged pop mode by this point). In fact, I'm surprised that this song even exists, given how puzzling and atonal the main riff is. However, several listens have confirmed to me that it works perfectly within the context of the song, and is in fact a very good example of Malkmus transforming odd noodlings into beautiful songs that automatically strike the listener as classic tunes. This is a gift that few possess.

The song starts out with the aforementioned riff, played by Malkmus, who also starts off singing about "Capistrano swallow" and God swallowing peoples' radars and stuff like that. Eventually the drums and bass kick in, as well as another guitar, although its purpose in the mix is negligible in my opinion until the very end of the song. After working through some very Pavement-sounding lyrics, the riff dissolves into some delicious chord changes, wherein Malkmus aches, "but I...I, I...saw you...reeling in the parking lot," with the "parking lot" part being reinforced by a sharper, more typical riff. After that business is done, Malkmus whispers something that sounds like, "for the pauper's grave," and the chords disappear into the stratosphere, leaving the arch-angular riff to fend for itself again. More nondescript noises are piled on. The drums come back, and finally, out of the ether, Malkmus plays his solo.

The first thing one will notice is that this is a remarkably bluesy solo for a song whose structure seems so ostensibly anti-blues: there's no real tonal center to hold onto, but Malkmus somehow manages to fit in a whole minute of perfectly-controlled blues playing. It sounds like he is playing laconically at first, and he never really gets around to building up speed, but somehow he manages to bypass that and ratchet up the tension simply by playing tiny, perfectly considered groups of notes that never really overlap with each other. Malkmus isn't afraid to wail on the same note over and over, nor is he really concerned with going up and down the fret board. He finds a happy medium, and plays his heart out without coming across as either showy or bored. The end of the solo is really nothing more than an arpeggio that remains constant through the growing sea of noise, and even as it changes around him, he once again finds the tonal center before breaking with it altogether and leading to the triumphal finish.

It's possible with solos like "The Hexx" that you won't really get it the first time you hear it. I know I didn't. It's such a small work of art that it's barely noticeable, especially on an album so full of good moments, but if you pay attention long enough, you see that Malkmus managed to challenge the entire entire idea of what a solo must sound like and where it should fit in, and for this, someone must recognize this beautiful moment for what it is. Listen to it five times in a row, and I guarantee you will know what I mean. Sometimes great expression means facing the challenges your own work faces in a way people won't immediately recognize.

Funkadelic- "Maggot Brain" (Eddie Hazel)

Available on: Maggot Brain (1971)
Solo Bits: 1:15-10:19


Making "Maggot Brain" my inaugural choice, my candidate for solo par excellence, was not as hard a decision as I thought it might be. In actuality, it was the only logical place I could start, for several reasons. First and primary among them is that I know this song (as well as the rest of the album) inside and out as a result of a failed attempt at writing a biography of Eddie Hazel a few years back. Also, it is a very long and intense solo that's well-regarded by guitarists of all stripes, particularly by Hendrix acolytes, 80's indie rockers (it was once covered by J. Mascis & The Fog with Mike Watt), and alternative jam bands (Ween wrote a tribute to Hazel entitled "A Tear For Eddie," that did a decent job of imitating the hypnotic qualities of Hazel's playing). It's also probably singlehandedly responsible for Hazel's reputation, which is unfair considering his playing was always excellent, but at least it's the kind of thing that gets Funkadelic noticed in outlets like Rolling Stone. And what's more, the song is nothing more than extended guitar solo, bookended by brief monologues from George Clinton.

It's kind of a famous story in P-funk lore, and, for once, the evidence shows that the incident in question probably happened: after working out the basic idea for the track, George Clinton told Eddie Hazel to, "Play like your mama just died," and he did exactly that (Eddie's mother Brenda is still alive, by the way, and is the executor of his estate as well as responsible for distributing Eddie posthumous jam recordings). For the ten minutes and eighteen seconds that constitute this track, Eddie Hazel attacks, commands, and distorts one's emotions in a way only few artists can claim to do. Throughout the rest of his recording career, going up through his solo album Games, Dames, & Guitar Things (which I recommend if you can get a copy from Rhino), he would contribute uniformly excellent guitar leads, alternately dazzling in their technical ability and emotionally gut-wrenching, yet in the end it all comes down to "Maggot Brain." Few artists have been so defined by one book, or one painting, or one movie, let alone one ten-minute electric guitar solo. It is his ultimate triumph and, considering his later output, his tragedy.

The only instruments heard on this song, other than guitar, are a muted keyboard and an occasional, reverb-heavy snare hit. As far as I know, it is as austere a recording as had been yet attempted by George Clinton, a far cry from the sort of work he would do later, with 40+ members on stage at any given time, including the guy that works the flashlight. When Eddie's guitar comes in at 1:14, it sounds tired, dismissive. He plays small clusters of notes, leaving gaps where one recognizes how empty the recording sounds without his guitar front and center. He starts playing faster, slowly piling on the effects. Within the next five minutes he goes through all the stages of grieving for his lost mother: anger, denial, helplessness, acceptance. His guitar sounds, at different times, like it's crying, screaming, talking, laughing. At points he starts playing incredibly fast clusters of notes, as if losing control of his mind or his ability to live, but then pulls back, anchoring what few notes he plays in a wash of reverb. Like Hendrix, Hazel's playing runs counter to the notion of masturbatory satisfaction that came to typify guitarists of succeeding decades (even the good ones). It sounds like a genuine attempt at exorcism.

The little echoes you hear (or at least think you hear), make you feel things long after they have actually been played, but then at a certain point the other instruments drop out completely. Eddie keeps playing, employing more of what would stereotypically be called "funk" playing (palm-muting, rigorous rhythyms), which is funny given that he has no rhythm section to work off of. The result is an emotional lull. He's not hitting the high notes he normally hits, which means maybe he's in the middle of pondering something, or maybe he's in denial. In any case, in a jarring move, the back instruments come back, and Eddie is back where he started.

During the early reign of Funkadelic, this would be Eddie's solo showcase onstage, where he would emerge from a manufactured purple fog dressed in some garish pimp's outfit with a Les Paul guitar, letting all the manufactured pain bubble for the crowd to drink up. He would look intently at his guitar and move his head, cringing and bobbing along with what he was playing. Who knows what was going through his head when he played it? I was never able to see him play the song live, so I will never know firsthand what sort of reactions he could wring out of people by playing certain notes, but I know he could make people cry, and there's a short list of guitarists who could do that.

Critics of popular music tend to throw around the word "virtuoso" pretty liberally when referring to musical artists of a particular expressive power. Certainly Eddie Hazel is often tagged with this admittedly well-intentioned compliment, but doing so does a disservice to the amount of craft and imagination he was able to put into his playing. Eddie Hazel was no "virtuoso," at least not by the terms that virtuosity is often defined (like most rhythm & blues guitarists of the time, he was not one to notate his music, nor was he likely to play lightning fast scalar solos or indulge in fret-tapping)--he was simply a blues guitarist, and the more one looks at the Steve Vais and Joe Satrianis of the world, the more it becomes abundantly clear that blues playing has nothing to do with virtuosity. I don't think I'm generalizing when I say that electric blues playing has never been about playing fast or effortlessly--on the contrary, it's about striving, sweating, desperately searching for some sort of truth or happiness in the form of a well-placed note, upon which the blues player realizes that this note is far from perfect, and the journey must continue. The tone of melancholy that pervade 99% of guitar blues is, at its basest level, the guitarist struggling to achieve transcendence, possibly as a way of communicating with his or her audience, possibly as a way of keeping the hell hound temporarily off the trail.

I run the risk of not being sufficiently specific. On a purely technical level, and Hazel is as perfect an example as one can think of, blues guitarists often use fairly simple patterns and often involve the same notes played over and over again. What gives the guitar a special edge over many blues instruments is that, as a string instrument, it allows the player to bend the string and therefore slightly change the pitch, which simultaneously provides the player with two advantages: first, it can give the note a more interesting "crying" tone, moving the pitch back and forth as if it was a weeping baby, and second, it allows the guitarist to cover up for any mistake by bending the note to a more pleasing pitch. From the earliest delta blues records to Led Zeppelin, even untrained ears can pick up moments on studio albums where the guitarist flubs a note and quickly covers it up by bending it or moving it back to the original note.

Professional musicians wouldn't like to admit it, but it's pretty easy for even a novice guitarist to play a convincingly "bluesy" solo if he sticks to the same three or four notes in a particular pattern (I submit Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird" as the absolute nadir of bendy three-note solos). But in the end, it's not about that. Great blues guitarists have personality and vocabulary that they make their own--they might play the same three notes over and over, but it's three notes that no one else would play in that particular way at that particular time. There's a reason one can tell that it's clearly Hazel and not fellow Funkadelic guitarist Michael Hampton playing the solo on, say, "Red Hot Mama," and it comes down to the fact that listeners learn to notice the particular choices that great, unique guitarists can make, even on the dime.

Eddie Hazel was a master and should continue to be respected as such. His later drug addiction didn't really do him any favors, and I think he could have exceeded "Maggot Brain" had he not become so dependent, but who knows? "Maggot Brain" is as austere, thoughtful, and emotionally riveting as any extended solo I have ever heard.

An introduction for those in need

Hello.

The title of this blog should be self-explanatory, but for those who want some sort of road map, I'll oblige. I am a 21-year old student, writer and musician who can usually be found posting here, on a variety of subjects ranging from politics and religion and mathematics to music and art. The purpose of this blog is a bit more specialized. I have considered myself a connoisseur of the many dimensions that a guitar solo can take: as a philosophical rejoinder to a song's melodic or lyrical content; as an expression of creative virtuosity; as an attempt at achieving new and previously unattainable levels of expression; as an opportunity to mess with structure or melody, to "kick out the jams," if you will, the guitar solo is a malleable creature that remains as relevant to the art of music-making as ever. Plainly put, there are just some that I like listening to a lot, for a bevy of different reasons. This blog is intended as a celebration presented in periodic essays.

Structurally, it's pretty simple: I will generally focus on one song, and more particularly the guitar solo within that song. The art of soloing is something I don't think is written about very often, or at least very well. You can read about the latest meathead rocker or classic rock relic talking about their tuneless and exhibitionistic wonking in articles and interviews with Guitar World and (the slightly less offensive) Guitar Player magazine, but all they do is basically teach aspiring worthless guitar showoffs to play exactly like whatever 70's icon or flavor of the month is on the cover (I mean, seriously, how many times can they put Jimmy Page on the damn thing?). I plan to try something more authentic. I have a reasonably strong background in music theory as well as critical theory; additionally, I was a guitarist and songwriter in my own band, and I've played a few solos in my time, so I have some idea of what it's like to pull off something fantastic. Conversely, I know what it's like to sink like a dead weight when one's ideas outstretch one's technical ability, and vice versa. You shouldn't expect anything written here to be too esoteric, but occasionally I might get caught up in some subject that you might find to be less than relevant to the matter at hand. Such is the ineffable nature of music.

I will take careful consideration as to what constitutes a guitar solo, and occasionally I may have arguments with myself as well as others as to what qualifies as a full-blown solo and what is merely a longish guitar riff or something else entirely. I believe it's fairly well-established that guitar solos can be both scrupulously pre-written (as was the standard practice of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, who devised many of his solos first as vocal melodies) and completely off the cuff (as was the case, apparently, with Eric Clapton's "Sunshine of Your Love" solo, as well as a lot of punks like Johnny Thunders), so the notion of the guitar solo being completely an improvised art is pretty much a dead one. Yet, other questions can muddy things a bit. What about something like Joey Santiago's brief interlude in the Pixies' "Hey"? What about Johnny Ramone's solo for "I Wanna Be Sedated," which according to Slate is the same note played 65 times? Surely, there's no rule as to how many notes a solo needs to be in order to qualify, nor is there any specified length. Yet, I wouldn't argue that, say, the last few seconds of Prince's "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" wouldn't qualify, being the same note played twice. Additionally people will sometimes talk about Robert Fripp's "chord solos," which barely count in my book, but who knows? What about when two guitarists try soloing at the same time? Does it count as "a solo"? What about the occasional bass solo (I may talk about one I particularly love, from Blondie's "Atomic")? These are all questions I will have to wrestle with. I hope I am up to the challenge, and I hope that people here will try disagreeing with me.

I will choose, I admit, from a very hegemonic and male-oriented pool of guitar pioneers. However, don't expect me to feature typical meathead "rawk" songs. While there's no way I can go about this blog without discussing the holy trinity of Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton (although you can expect severe criticisms of Clapton to be leveled, particularly post-1970) I don't think it is necessary to devote one iota of processing power to that wildly overinflated and overplayed "Freebird" solo. While many may think that Van Halen's "Eruption" is among the greatest guitar solos ever, I would much sooner include more esoteric choices from the Vibrators, the Band, John McLaughlin, Built To Spill, and Public Image Ltd. Expect me to do a lot of genre-crossing, particularly in the areas of funk (with indisputable greats like Prince and Eddie Hazel, the latter of whom will be the subject of my first real post), folk (Richard Thompson) and even rap music (Outkast's "B.O.B." counts!). Similarly, expect me to consider recent music as well as music from classic rock's heyday, and I may even dip my toes into earlier 50's music as well. I think, however, I will limit myself to only covering stuff written after the advent of the electric guitar. This is not a Guitar World-sanctioned blog by any means, and expect me to talk a lot of shit about onanist guitar icons like Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen. I will probably have little, if anything, to say about them. On the other hand, I will probably talk about Zappa a lot.

This should be a fun exercise. Critics don't talk about solos a lot, but for a lot of us they hold a particular expressive power which is alien to most segments of the population that prefer more immediate and obvious pleasures; with that in mind, I dedicate this blog to the brave guitarists that took the instrument one step further, courting controversy and making enemies along the way, but ultimately emerging successful and inspiring millions. To them, and to those who love them, is this blog meant for.