I’m told that the good folks over at Rolling Stone.com have launched a list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs as a feature at their site to coincide with their Guitar Gods Issue that–like most great things in this world–is FOR SALE.
Click here to check it out.
As I write this, I haven’t seen it, but I’m sure it’s going to include a few listings that make me think “Oops, I left that one out.” Because that’s what this list business is all about. I write it up and then YOU remind me of the obvious ones I SHOULD’VE included. And I thank you for pointing out my stupid omissions. It won’t improve my grade, but it makes me a better person and that’s what this is all about.
According to the calendar hanging in my room, Keith Richards, the semi-living guitarist of Rolling Stones, Ltd., came up with the guitar riff for “Satisfaction” in a hotel room on May 6, 1965 and then fell back asleep. How Keith Richards could actually remember the exact date is a little suspect. If he hadn’t played the riff into a tape recorder in the first place, it might’ve been lost forever.
But to celebrate, List of the Day undertook the task of picking out 25 infamous guitar riffs that depending on your era were among the ones you mangled when you joined your first band. I often got stuck on the organ, so I was always pushing for a little “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” action. Because, believe me, “Kick Out the Jams” sounds lame on the organ.
Some picks were for variety’s sake. I could’ve picked 10 Hendrix tunes without pause. Or 10 Zeppelin. And the Ramones played mostly chords, so that sent them to the back of the line.
I haven’t yet seen what RS.com picked. And I’d really like to see what your lists would be like. So feel free to throw your faves in the comments!
25) “Enter Sandman“–Metallica: “Master Of Puppets” or “For Whom The Bells Tolls” or even “Fight Fire With Fire” might make for better overall riffs, but “Enter Sandman” has a presence that everyone in the room feels and I’ve seen some pretty bad bar bands tackle this one and still come out sounding as if they knew something about music.
24) “Sweet Child O’ Mine“–Guns n’ Roses: This is one of those Pavlovian riffs. You hear it start up and the entire song starts to play in your head. Whether you want it to or not. It’s the equivalent of someone yelling the song’s title and then 1-2-3-4, except it sounds better.
23) “Black Dog“–Led Zeppelin: Jimmy Page figured out the 1970s before anyone. As a guitar player he wasn’t about to let a lead singer score all the girls, so he made sure that his band based their tunes not on quaint little pop hooks, but guitar riffs that would send every teenager in America back to their bedrooms to woodshed and to scrutinize how it was done. Then he gave the songs titles that no one could figure out.
22) “Freebird“–Lynyrd Skynyrd: There’s a reason people still call out for this song and it goes beyond just because everyone always does. There was a time when this lonesome, whiny riff actually could make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. That year was sometime in the 1970s and ever since it’s become a cliché, but there’s a reason certain riffs become a cliché. They’re as natural as breathing.
21) “Jumping Jack Flash“–The Rolling Stones: Less a riff than a conglomeration of chords, but the Stones mastered the art of the chunky riff. Some would take “Brown Sugar.” I’d prefer “Gimme Shelter” by a hair. But of this old beast’s catalog, this still sounds fresh to me, while many others have grown tired thanks to the conspiracy of classic rock radio.
20) “Roadhouse Blues“–The Doors: The Doors were never known for their guitar riffs. “Five To One” is a great two-note buzzsaw, the rewrite of the Kinks for “Hello, I Love You” was nice, but this is the one sliding riff that every bar band in America has done to death usually at the request of a very inebriated audience member who refuses to shut up until it is played.
19) “Johnny B. Goode“–Chuck Berry: Considering how many songs have been written based on the “Chuck Berry” school of guitar and considering how many songs Chuck himself wrote based on this riff, tells me this is one immortal, undying riff. I’ve played it wrong for years.
18) “Kick Out The Jams“–MC5: Whether or not these revolutionaries actually had the catalog to be the great American wunderkinds of the ‘70s is debatable. Album productions, flawed concepts, inter-band squabbles, politics all rendered them a mess. But their signature tune and its signature riff never lost an ounce of momentum.
17) “Pipeline”–The Chantays: Surf Rock goes in and out of style, depending on the whims of fate. But this tune has been covered by enough punk bands and people of taste to ensure that even if you’ve never heard the Chantays version, you’ve heard someone do a good approximation.
16) “I Feel Fine“–The Beatles: All said, I’d take “She Said, She Said” or “And Your Bird Can Sing,” but we’ll stick with the tunes that the band and their record company pushed on the public as hit singles. This one with its use of (gasp) feedback (were people conservative and corny back then or what?) and its string mangling complexity make you wonder why they bothered. I guess they wanted a challenge. This could’ve been a hit even without the difficult riff.
15) “Walk This Way“–Aerosmith: That this riff worked so well in a hip-hop context just goes to show you don’t know what you have even when you have it. I’m sure Joe Perry and Brad Whitford knew they had a decent riff to work off of when they played it back in the mid-’70s, but I’m also pretty sure that they didn’t hear it as being revolutionary or probably that much better than many of their other riffs. At this point, you wonder if they ever want to play it again. That is, until the money rolls in and then it probably seems like a good idea.
14) “Day Tripper“–The Beatles: Another one from the Fab Four where the riff is more important than the rest of the tune. And it’s a nice tune. But everyone tries to play this for the joy of the riff and who gets around to the rest of the song? Nobody.
13) “Heartbreaker“–Led Zeppelin: Just another great Jimmy Page riff. The only problem with listing any Led Zep riff is you’re immediately reminded of all the ones you’re leaving behind…so, yes, “The Ocean,” “The Immigrant Song,” “Living Loving Maid,” “In the Evening,” “Kashmir,” the list goes on…
12) “Smells Like Teen Spirit“–Nirvana: I don’t know whether I’m voting for the four chords that run throughout the song or the two notes that ring out when the chords fall away. Either way, it’s impossible to explain how weird, unusual and right this sounded the very first time I heard it. And how everyone argued over whether it was too easy to be for real. As a simpleton, I like simple.
11) “Crazy Train“–Ozzy Osbourne: This almost sounds like an Indian music scale if you play it a certain way. Ozzy says Randy saved his career and remembers the man with great reverence and if I met someone who gave me a riff that delivered a career comeback like “Crazy Train” did for Ozzy, well, yeah, I’d be pretty thankful as well. And name a couple of kids after him.
10) “Voodoo Child“–Jimi Hendrix: Another great riff remembered as much for how many other people screw it up. Stevie Ray Vaughan could pull it off note for note, but the guys who show up to woodshed at the local open mics need to stop murdering this legendary lick. It’s like a game of “Are You Serious?”
9) “Another One Bites The Dust“–Queen: I didn’t include any bass guitar riffs because I didn’t want to make things more confusing but I had to include this one. It gave bass players a reason to live. And as readers of this fine column know, I’m well aware that bass players frequently suffer from low self-esteem and feelings that the other people in the band don’t think very highly of them. This isn’t paranoia. This is usually dead on.
8) “Born To Run“–Bruce Springsteen: I don’t usually associate Bruce Springsteen with great guitar licks. He has a few decent ones here and there, but for a guy with a band that now features FOUR guitar players, it’s a wonder why. Then again, he also carries two keyboardists (RIP Danny Federici) and sticks Clarence with a tambourine when he doesn’t have a sax solo lined up. In all that racket, can anyone actually hear the tambourine?
7) “Back In Black“–AC/DC: It’s a tad sad and ironic that AC/DC are considered to be a legendary band with their singer Bon Scott. Yet, the album for which they are most noted is the one made in tribute to him after he died. So, in a sense, most people are more familiar with the less legendary edition of the group, the one that went on to become massively more successful and has lasted many times longer than the original incarnation. Me? I like Brian Johnson as a singer just fine. He sounds like my cat when you step on his tail. What’s not to like?
6) “Layla“–Derek and the Dominoes: Eric Clapton has made many regrettable albums and it’s easy to forget that he was once a fiery player who could reach true dynamic heights. Duane Allman, on the other hand, died before he could do any damage to his legacy. For practical reasons, I’ll always choose living over dying, but immortality is better than anything Clapton’s done in years.
5) “Iron Man“–Black Sabbath: Black Sabbath are another band chock full of great riffs for aspiring guitar players. Guys who can’t sing love to play Sabbath tunes because they know as the guitar player they get to be the real focal point of the band. So whether it’s “War Pigs,” “Paranoid,” “Sweet Leaf,” “Children Of The Grave,” “Hole In The Sky” or “Iron Man,” the guy holding the guitar controls the destiny of the band. Such power!
4) “Whole Lotta Love“–Led Zeppelin: Just had to sneak one last Jimmy Page riff in here. His tone alone is shivering. The tension of the little snap-back you hear weirds me out. How many notes are actually happening here? It counts out as two, but feels like five.
3) “Purple Haze“–Jimi Hendrix: I’ve heard hundreds of people play this lick. No one sounds like Hendrix. And it isn’t just a matter of tone. It’s a matter of feel. The word genius gets thrown around pretty carelessly. “Oh, look, Jim parallel parked the car today. He’s a genius.” No, that’s luck. This is genius.
2) “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction“–The Rolling Stones: Here’s the proof that sometimes what is simplest is best. Occam’s Razor as it applies to music. The extra fuzztone helped, but really writing this lick must now feel like discovering water or having written “Happy Birthday.” It’s that obvious.
1) “Smoke On The Water“–Deep Purple: I was never in a band that actually played this song. I’ve never known anyone who’s been in a band that’s played this song. But I’ve never met a guitar player who didn’t play the opening lick for hours upon receiving their first electric guitar. It’s so prevalent, it’s more like a catchphrase than a riff.
With Weezer out with a new album, it reminded us here at List Of the Day (actually it’s just me, but I talk to myself enough to engage the plural) that there were other bands that also existed in the 1990s. And most of them, regardless of what they sounded like, got marketed as “indie” (even if on a major label), alternative (even if they sounded like the Eagles with distortion pedals), or punk (grab a safety pin and say “Oi!”).
Were Pearl Jam or Stone Temple Pilots or Nine Inch Nails really alternative groups back in the 1990s? I suppose Trent Reznor was scratching out a new sound, and Pearl Jam may have sounded like Blood, Sweat and Tears on “the clear” but their business practices and general outlook on life once they’d sold 10 million copies of their first album was pretty much a “leave us be” kind of approach. Hole were terrible. Rancid sounded like the Clash, but much worse. Bad Religion somehow got popular. And Fugazi made dull records but managed to put their Marxist anti-consumerist values to the test and stayed true to their ideals until the end. Bravo for that.
This time around I decided to really mess with you. That’s right. I put SOLO ACTS on the list. Because even the best solo performers hire someone to play behind them. And while I still compromised the list a tad to include bands that sold a few records here–I mean, Beck was a hero to most, but he always seemed a little forced to me–I did manage to put some of my personal faves way higher on the list than any other listening human would. I did Nirvana the favor of keeping them in the Top 10 out of pure crass cynicism. And Smashing Pumpkins were ignored because they’re not alternative, they’re Queen.
I also short-changed the British big time. (Belle & Sebastian are Scottish.) Somehow, it seems like they should have their own list someday, a place where Pulp and Blur and Oasis can duke it out without a bunch of loudmouth Americans getting in the way.
I had over 75 bands on this initial list and everyone included had to start in the first half of the 1990s to qualify. While cutting L7 was easy, trashing the unforgivable Goo Goo Dolls was natural, and losing Radiohead made me chuckle (oh, the hatemail), seeing the dude from Palace sent to the scrapheap made me a little sad until I realized, some day there will be an alt.country list that I can sneak him and Richard Buckner onto! But until then, we’ll stick with this crap. (And for those wondering, the Yo La Tengo snub was deliberate, too. I love plenty of dull, sleepy music, but not from Hoboken.)
25) Sebadoh: By acting like he didn’t care and singing as if he had a cold, Lou Barlow made sloppy half-assed albums that always included a couple of heart-tugging tunes that made girls weep and boys think to themselves “I gotta try that.” That’s right kids, even the losers get lucky sometimes!
24) Dinosaur Jr.: From the band that gave us Lou Barlow and Sebadoh, number 25 on this list (just look above you), Dinosaur Jr. became the ruling party for J. Mascis whose idea of a good time is making everyone in his audience completely deaf. He has essentially written the same three or four songs over and over and done so with just enough skill to make it seem irrelevant. As long as you like the songs he writes, who cares about diversity or variety. Just sit around and play video games and pretend your life isn’t going down the toilet. Works for me.
23) Sonic Youth: The band that wouldn’t die. No one can kill these guys. They will be making albums long after the rest of us are locked up in retirement communities or buried in landfills. And they will continue to do so without ever properly tuning their guitars. They will continue to spout abstract poetry and fans will argue over what moves were “too rock,” “too commercial,” “too experimental” and “too over with.” Each new generation will like them for three to five albums and eventually move on to breed children and attend soccer games much to their inner horror.
22) Pavement: By acting smarter than everyone else, they became smarter than everyone else. And by having friends in the music business who liked to tell everyone how smart they were, it became fact. To me? The Tom Petty of Alternative Rock. A couple of nice tunes per album with a bunch of filler that only the diehards need to understand. The rest of us can go shopping for furniture.
21) Flaming Lips: Ambitious young scamps whose workaholic ways guaranteed them a staying power no one expected when the Lips first burst on the scene in the mid-‘80s. Who would’ve known that Wayne Coyne would have such ambition in him, such single-minded devotion to being so weird? To releasing an album that required four CD players to listen to?
20) Cracker: David Lowery was once in Camper Van Beethoven. Who would’ve thought he’d have even more success with his follow-up? I think he did. “Low” was a pretty sizable hit and they kept making records that had decent tunes on them, which probably meant that they didn’t do so well, since writing decent tunes is often the death knell for songwriters. You gotta write crappy and stupid if you want hits. Everyone knows that!
19) Beck: The post-modern Dylan? The just-in-time Donovan? The England Dan and John Ford Coley for the hipster set? The Doobie Brothers without the brothers? The man is a performer wrapped inside a recording studio hiding behind a sampler that’s been hitting him in the head repeatedly. He never makes the same move twice. Unless he forgets what his last move was. Then he might. He doesn’t look like he’s paying attention, but someone in his management must be. Or maybe he does everything while he sleeps. Some sleep aids make people gamble and eat without them even realizing it. Maybe it’s like that.
18) Weezer: Am I supposed to like these guys or hate them? Take them seriously or figure they’re being ironic? Do I get it or are they getting me? Hmmn, why does this scenario seem so familiar to me? Why does it seem as if I’ve somehow been here myself? A parallel universe? Psychic vibes? Bloodbrothers fighting a war against intellect and the right to be stupid? I think it’s over my head.
17) Giant Sand: An interview with Howe Gelb of Giant Sand usually goes something like this: You say, “Hello, Howe, how are you today?” And then Howe begins explaining how he is and then recounts everything that happened to him since the making of his latest album. At which point, 45 minutes have elapsed and he has answered all your questions without you even having to ask anything more. You simply say, “Thank you, Howe” and hang up the phone.
16) Afghan Whigs: Greg Dulli was always destined for semi-greatness. In another era, with Andrew Loog Oldham promoting him, he might’ve been huge. Instead, he had to settle for mostly hated. He makes my fan club look like a gentlemen’s auxiliary. But no matter many slings people take at this poor chap, he comes back stronger, angrier and more seductive. Black Love still sounds like a film noir where nobody survives. But they must because he went on to the Twilight Singers and the Gutter Twins with Mark Lanegan, where he continues to entertain and irritate with maximum efficiency. But stop hitting on my sister!
15) The Breeders: The one time I interviewed these folks was one of the most surreal moments of my incredible and useless journalism career. They were throwing the phone to each other, pretending to be someone else and giving answers that were mostly unprintable or incoherent. They were having so much fun at my expense that I decided to just go with it and play along. I even promised them I would listen to their album afterwards. I think I did. And I think it was pretty good.
14) Belle And Sebastian: What began as a school project turned out to be full employment for a large group of Scottish youth. If we had programs like this in the United States, we’d have even more bands living in Brooklyn! There might be a reason we don’t support these kinds of things. And while I avoided most “twee” things for this particular column, I couldn’t ignore these folks. They almost make me feel like dancing but that would be going too far.
13) Elliott Smith: Weird to think this guy was ever alive. Listening to his albums today, especially the self-tilted one and Either/Or–it’s like hearing a ghost. His elegant quiet, his compulsive misery, his inability to sound happy even when he’s imagining himself singing a Beatles tune indicates the sound of a man not long for the earth. Sad but not surprising. What were his options? Join Sigur Ros?
12) Mudhoney: The boys who were supposed to be Nirvana. Yes, Mudhoney were there first and everyone was convinced that if the universe worked right, they would one day be rich and famous and the kids would understand. But these guys never really went about it the right way and the kids didn’t really care. The kids were happy with the Green Day. They didn’t want stuff this messy.
11) PJ Harvey: It’s no wonder she ended up duetting with Nick Cave. She’s like his mirror image in a girl package. Her blues can get a little trying, but her quiet whisperings and her piano stuff is unnerving in its eerie solitude. And while there were once rumblings that PJ Harvey was a band, she was pretty quick to stop that idea.
10) Nirvana: These young men changed everything. Well, not everything. But certainly the bank accounts of not just people who worked for them, but even the bank accounts of bands who once had a career before they showed up. Just ask the guys in Winger or any hair metal band what happened to their show business receipts once “Smells Like Teen Spirit” got ahold of MTV and radio stations across the land. Not everyone profited at Kurt Cobain’s expense.
9) Guided By Voices: Bob Pollard wrote 10,000 songs during this decade and he released every one of them twice. Or so it seems. He has become a legend if only by sheer numbers. And why not? Quantity is quality sometimes.
8) Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds: The Lord of Darkness came into the ‘90s with The Good Son and then rolled out a procession of albums that in retrospect just get better and better. He threw off the more affected Southern Gothic Snake Blues for his own weird ballad lust and a healthy dose of Arthur Janov-inspired primordial yelping. That he actually caught on in some small way is beyond strange. Since it seemed as if he was almost going out of his way to annoy anyone who would dare befriend him. In other words, don’t lend him money.
7) Vic Chesnutt: There’s a reason Michael Stipe wanted to get this guy into a recording studio. He knew he’d found a local talent who deserved to be less local. And while not everyone will enjoy his voice or comprehend his twists of phrase, that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to eat crappy hot dogs for the rest of our lives. No, we can dig into a delicious Vic burger where his southern charm spices up tales of brave sissies. Athens, Georgia’s finest songwriter in a wheelchair? Even from that position, he can kick our butts.
6) The Fall: Mark E. Smith will never run out of ideas. Because he’s redefined the idea of what an “idea” is. It’s pretty much anything he can get away with. Just as “The Fall” consists of whomever he decides. Whether he’s been getting better or worse is a matter of personal mood. Some days it seems like he’s a bit off. Other times, it all makes sense. The Fall operate the opposite of an old man’s digestive tract, where a good day is any day you’re close to regular. For the Fall, you’re looking to be “irregular” because that’s where the magic happens.
5) Mark Lanegan: The Screaming Trees were his day gig. His solo career was where he belonged. This dark, serious blues singer has always had the ear of the cognoscenti–from Kurt Cobain (who learned at his feet) to Greg Dulli (who now collaborates)–and with good reason. The man has a Leonard Cohen gravitas attached to his Nick Cave heart of darkness. And he’ll kill you if you disagree.
4) Julian Cope: Who would’ve thought a guy from a British ‘80s psychedelic group–that would be the Teardrop Explodes–would end up churning out some of his best work a decade later after flunking the pop charts? But artistic freedom’s just another phrase for self-indulgence, but if the self-indulger has a lifetime of good influences under his belt–in Cope’s case Krautrock and the Stooges–then you’re more likely to get something worth looking into. Vacuum cleaners suck by nature, but if you’re cleaning a gold mine, whaddaya got?
3) American Music Club: They’ve tried to put it back together. But some moments in time are simply the confluence of factors beyond anyone’s control. And for a flicker, this unlikely group–the pedal steel player was their secret weapon and he looked like an accountant–bopped and weaved among the sadcore, the hard rock (they opened for Pearl Jam and were pelted with garbage), the ambient and turned everything into cataclysmic, earth-shattering heartbreak. The Restless Stranger, Engine, California, United Kingdom, Everclear, Mercury, San Francisco, each album presented new options and new difficulties, like a game you can never actually win. But you keep playing because your luck eventually has to turn. Doesn’t it?
2) Red House Painters: It’s Mr. Sun Kil Moon to you these days, but Mark Kozelek crept into the ‘90s with long, slow tunes that altered reality as we knew it. The rules of rock were rewritten by this incredibly patient songwriter. Imagine, if you will, sitting at the DMV or standing in line at any bureaucratic office and enjoying yourself. That’s how revolutionary this band was. Like Big Ben, they changed the nature of time itself.
1) Tom Waits: The man is an industry all too himself. Hung around as a beatnik in the ‘70s, turned to Captain Beefheart for the ’80s and then fired off more bizarre shots in the ‘90s and onward. Every picture tells a story but the man is so brilliantly out of focus that the picture becomes an afterthought. Someone tell him to take his thumb off the lens. The going got weird and the weird turned pro. And when he goes on late night talk shows, the night immediately gets even later.
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They are my favourite You must see
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Dynamic Day
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