Clapton-era Yardbirds: the rough guide.

Educating myself on Clapton-era Yardbirds today.  Join me, won't you?

"Boom Boom" by the Yardbirds. A nice document of the band as a cohesive unit. Some of the live clips on YouTube are rather dire.  The weak link, to me, is Keith Relf, the singer/harmonica player of the band. While his limitations as a singer are readily apparent in the live clips, his harmonica playing is somewhat better.

The British blues rock boom yielded, in my opinion, few truly great native English blues singers. Those few that come to mind for me are Van Morrison (though he's technically Irish) and Mick Jagger. And by blues I don't mean necessarily the blues form or the blues repertoire, but the mode of singing practiced by certain African-American musicians starting around 1900 that was derived from slave work songs, and Islamic prayer chanting before that, in the Muslim areas of West Africa that supplied the slave trade. We're talking about a significant degree of cultural difference from suburban England in the 1960s. As a blues singer, Relf is just passable, but as a more waiflike version of Brian Jones, he's got the look of English rock in the mid 60s.


The Yardbirds again, with "Louise" from 1963.  Clapton is fleet with a variety of authentic blues licks, yet his performance is somewhat mannered - there is flash lick after flash lick, but little of his later restraint.

And the one that according to rumor served as the final straw to Clapton's dissatisfaction with the musical direction that the Yardbirds were taking. The main issue seems to have been that the tune was composed by pop hack Graham Gouldman, who also wrote for Herman's Hermits and the Hollies. The trendiest element of the record is the harpsichord, here represented by Jeff Beck's acoustic guitar with metal soundhole pickup. Other than that, it sounds structurally at least like blues-rock-pop of the London ilk, circa 1965. There's a good documentary clip here, featuring surviving Yardbirds Chris Dreja, Jim McCarty and Eric Clapton.








"All Your Love" from the Bluesbreakers' 1966 album, nicknamed "Beano". Clapton was featured in this band, and better represented than ever before. His cult in London had built up to this point, fed by his studied virtuosity and cool charisma. Clapton had by now traded his Tele and Vox AC30 for a 1960 Gibson Les Paul and Marshall combo.

Neil Young's Old Black: by request

My cousin Stephen, who incidentally suggested that I write this blog in the first place, sent some requests for posts the other day. One of them caught my eye - for a piece on Neil Young's "Old Black" Les Paul, the one he's used more or less constantly since 1969.

Dave Hunter wrote a fine piece about the guitar in 2008 on the Gibson Lifestyle site.  The article is from the series "Get That Tone" and while the article on Neil's heavily modified 1953 goldtop (apparently crudely painted with black matte paint) is informative to the extent that the guitar's provenance and modification history is known, the promised instructions for getting that tone are disappointing:

Short of modifying two pieces of prized vintage gear and building your own Whizzer, run a bright but powerful guitar into a simple, low-output tube amp and give it all the gusto and emotion you can muster. That, in the end, is what’s at the heart of the Neil Young guitar solo after all.

 I think that a microphonic Firebird pickup and a Bigsby help a lot too, along with a handwired, hot-biased low-wattage tube amp.

From an interview with Neil Young roadie (or is it roadeye?) Larry Cragg:

Cradled in a stand in front of the amps is the fuse for the dynamite, Young's trademark ax Old Black, a '53 Gold Top Les Paul some knothead daubed with black paint eons ago. Old Black's features include a Bigsby wang bar, which pulls strings and bends notes, and a Firebird pickup so sensitive you can talk through it. It's a demonic instrument. "Old Black doesn't sound like any other guitar," said Cragg, shaking his head.

Link:
And here's Neil himself speaking at length about his gear, including the famous Whizzer.

Gibson has no doubt taken note of the sales potential of a Neil Young model Les Paul, perhaps an exact copy of Old Black, relic'ed. And no doubt that Neil won't let it happen in his lifetime.

Of course, one-offs by individual builders can fly under the radar, like this beautiful replica of Old Black built by Juha Mäntymaa of Finland.

Guitar Player magazine again.

I just finished reading the interviews on rockcritics.com with various Guitar Player principals, including Jim Crockett, Tom Mulhern, Tom Wheeler, Joe Gore, Steven Rosen, James Rotondi and Michael Molenda, the current editor. I'd love to hear from Bud Eastman, the creator of the magazine back in 1967. But all of these men have something interesting to recount about their time working on the magazine. Each seems to have their own version of Guitar Player's so-called golden age, as is to be expected when reminiscences are on the menu.

I was surprised by the rancor shown in reader comments, if not a little from the commentators, towards Michael Molenda. Molenda defends himself by pointing to the increasing subscriptions and newsstand sales, and Guitar Player is navigating the choppy waters of the print magazine business admirably. But for some, something has been lost in Guitar Player's change of ownership to large corporations heavily focused on the bottom line and thus encouraging a low-risk editorial policy.

I still buy the magazine from time to time and I think that aside from some clearly commercial cover story choices (the Matthew Bellamy cover this month has inspired some criticism on GP's Facebook page) the content is still reasonably diversified and the writing and editing are still of high quality.  To an extent, I don't really care who's on the cover - my favorite parts of the magazine are the fiddly bits in between the big articles - the lessons, the gear reviews, the spectacular (and sometimes spectacularly odd) advertisements. I can't imagine a time when I'll never pick up an issue.

Interview: Joe Gore.

Joe Gore is that rare thing, a relentlessly creative and successful guitarist (including credits on seminal Tom Waits and PJ Harvey recordings, as well as work with Courtney Love, DJ Shadow, Aimee Mann, Tracy Chapman, Kimya Dawson of the Moldy Peaches, the Eels, Les Claypool and John Cale) who also excels at a number of other pursuits. These include journalism - he was the senior editor of Guitar Player magazine for several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s - and large scale creative projects, like the gargantuan Clubbo website, a fictional record company with a deep back catalogue, all fake. I've admired Joe Gore's guitar playing and writing for many years, and am grateful that he agreed to answer a few of my questions via email.

You have a new project coming out this week - can you tell us something about this?

Mental 99 is a new band with my pal, drummer Dawn Richardson. We'd been wanting to do something together for years, and we finally got around to it. It's an instrumental duo, exploring the question of how much racket two players can create. 

There are a couple of things that I find exciting about the project, beyond the pleasure of playing with such a cool and creative drummer. 

1. Phantom bass syndrome. For various reasons, many of the projects I've been involved with for the last decade have had no bass player, and I've gotten increasingly into the idea of playing the bass and guitar roles simultaneously. Not necessarily in the Ted Greene/Charlie Hunter sense of true multi-voice counterpoint, so much as creating parts that straddle those two roles. I've played bari-guitars, or just low-tuned regular guitars, for ages, especially on the records I did with Tom Waits and PJ Harvey. Along the way, I just started hearing less in terms of bass vs. guitar, and more in terms of low/dark vs. high/bright. (Having said that, Dawn and I got to play a show recently in a quartet with Tracy Chapman and Flea, and it was exhilarating to play with a bassist again, especially one that talented!)

2. Pure sound fixation. For the last few years I've been geeking out on guitar sound — pure sound — to an unhealthy degree. I've done consulting/development work for various audio companies, some of which involved scrutinizing classic guitar tones. To better understand how those things work in the digital realm, I started building analog stompboxes and amps, and that became a parallel obsession. But it got to the point where I felt like a painter who had learned to mix amazing pigments, but never got around to painting anything. So one motivation for Mental 99 was to actually use some of the tools I'd worked on. 

3. Those who can't sing, don't. Playing instrumental music has always been a can of worms for me. I was a classical musician till my early 20s, and I still love classical music, though I don't play it. And while I dig jazz and have played it with some amazing artists, I've never really been a jazz musician. Plus, the jazz I'm drawn to tends to be highly arranged/composed stuff — I've always responded more to Ellington than to bop. (And I sincerely hate Real Book blowing sessions with round-robin soloing.) On the other hand, I love lots of kitschy instrumental music, like surf, easy listening, and Euro-cheese soundtracks. But my ear is too dissonant to play that stuff in a literal way. So I guess Mental 99 sounds at times like the Ventures playing Ellington, or Gang of Four playing the Ventures. Basically, people attempting music they have no business playing, sometimes with cool results. 

Anyway, I play everything on one guitar, a standard-scale James Trussart tele tuned down to CGCFAD (like regular dropped-D, transposed down a whole-step), into a laptop running Apple's MainStage. There are no amps or stompboxes, though the signal runs through a hardware looper before it reaches the mixing board/PA. I've done a zillion digital guitar recordings, but this is the first time I've been dumb enough to try it live. 

Here's a free song if anyone's curious. It was cut live in the studio with no overdubs — just drums and guitar/laptop going straight to disc. Though we did actually play a few minutes longer and edit out the boring bits. (Hey — Miles did it too!)

Could you talk about the Clubbo project from a guitar perspective? Specifically, how do you approach the faking of outdated guitar sounds?

Well, Clubbo was an over-ambitious project I co-created with Elise Malmberg, a great singer, composer, engineer, and audio geek. It alleges to be a web site documenting the half-century history of Clubbo records, complete with music, album art, biographical essays, and various "historical" debris. It's all fake, of course. (BTW, here's the secret page with the real credits.) The site is hundreds of pages deep — even many of the "external" links are faked, leading to other bogus websites we made.

Guitar-wise, it was fun, because it was an excuse to play everything I never would have been caught dead doing under my own name. Southern rock? Shred metal? Jam band noodling? No prob! 

As for the recording techniques, 90% of it created in software — mimicking various historic recording chains via digital distortion, EQ, compression, and effects. One secret trick: heavy use of impulse-response reverbs made from quirky/crappy old gear.  

You recorded seven albums with Tom Waits, a musician with a singular aesthetic - did he give you any directives about what he wanted from you?

The direction is continuous — he directs every part, sculpting your performance with his facial expressions, body language, and amazing turns of phrase. ("Make it sound more poor." "Not bluegrass banjo — death banjo!"). He never suggests particular notes or parts, but directs the proceedings so completely that it always comes out sounding like Tom Waits music. Example: I was thrilled to bits to track a couple of Tom's song with Stewart Copeland on drums. Tom had Stewart play one of his fucked-up old circus drums, and coached him on the performances. In the end, Stewart sounded pretty much like the drummer on any post-Swordfish Waits album — which is to say, fucking amazing! Almost all Waits recordings are first or second takes. He hates when it starts sounding too rehearsed, or like you've worked out the perfect part. Better to sound like you've never played it before, mistakes and all. And not using a tuner is a definite plus.

I've heard some of your looping with the Apple MainStage software - what are the advantages to working with software, rather than a standalone device like the JamMan or the Boss looper?

I did some work for Logic, GarageBand and MainStage. (For those who don't use the software, I'll explain: Logic is Apple's pro recording software, sort of competing cousin to Pro Tools and Live. GarageBand is a light version of Logic, based on the same audio engine, that comes installed on most Macs, though sometimes GarageBand innovations trickle upstream into Logic. And MainStage is a Logic spinoff optimized for live performance.) 

The latest version of MainStage includes a powerful looping tool, but I haven't worked it into live performance yet — I use a hardware Boomerang III looper instead. The all-software looper is more powerful and open-ended, but I find it difficult to drive onstage, in large part because no one has made an ideal hardware controller for it. (Apogee's GIO is a great-sounding I/O that performs fantastically onstage, but it doesn't have enough footswitches to operate several loops simultaneously AND switch programs.) I prefer the Boomerang to all other options because of its great ergonomics — creator Mike Nelson put a lot of thought into creating a device you can truly pilot in real time. I also use a Kenton Killamix — basically, just a row of controller knobs and switches. Summary:  I loop with the Boomerang, switch programs and toggle effects with the GIO, and tweak virtual knobs with the Killamix. It's all very awkward, and it's taken me six months to obtain the vaguest hope of making it through a song without screwing up.   

I find it a bit ironic that I'm even talking about looping. Like many musicians I know, I've moved away from looping over the course of the last decade. Today's zeitgeist just seems to be more about imperfect, realtime playing. It's been years since I used a drum loop on anything (except maybe Clubbo tracks making fun of bad drum loop music). 

Still, I find that looping presents huge challenges — both hugely exciting and hugely daunting. The biggest problem is that looping tends to lock you in a specific musical structure: Play a part. Add counterpoint. Get thicker and thicker, then go silent or fade out. You can compile stunning textures, but the process gets tiresome. It's harder to make stop-on-a-dime changes, alternate between contrasting sections, introduce variations, or deviate from the itinerary on the fly. Those are the things I work on these days. I haven't mastered any of them, but I'm slowly improving. Or so I tell myself.  

Your tenure at Guitar Player magazine, from the late 80s to the mid 90s, represents some of the most interesting guitar journalism of the magazine's long history. Yet you told Steven Ward in 2008: “In retrospect, I was probably a bad fit for the gig. I hated the music industry. I hated guitar heroism. I hated guitar collectors. My passions were music and culture, where guitar occasionally plays a role. I love making music on guitars, but I have no sentiment about them. They’re hammers and nails to me." Are you proud of your work there? For you, what is missing from mainstream guitar journalism?

Well, I stand by those words. But at the same time, I loved working at the magazine and always felt extremely lucky to have been part of it. It was amazing to get paid to do so much stuff I probably would have done for free. I don't reread my work unless I have to, but I suspect that if I did, I'd be of two minds: I'd wince at how self-important I sounded, but I'd probably give myself a bit of credit for documenting some great music while it was being made. 

What do I dislike about mainstream guitar journalism? The same thing every guitarist hates about it: It's doesn't always reflect my personal taste! But I feel the editors at the top mags are doing a stellar job in the face of the dual declines of the music industry and the print medium. Theirs is not an easy gig!

If I did anything valuable, it was being a conduit: exposing readers to something great they might not otherwise have encountered, be it a new player, a forgotten one, a great stompbox, or a cool tuning trick. Fortunately, players can now obtain all those things more easily than ever online. It's a trade-off — the "experts" usually can't make a living writing for consumer music mags these days, so we must rely on the amateur fanatics. The things we encounter online might not be especially well written or edited, but they're passionate and intense—and often shockingly good. 

Here's a personal example from when I started building stompboxes a couple of years ago. I didn't know electronics, yet I fancied myself an expert. I'd reviewed hundreds of pedals. I had access to amazing collections of museum-quality gear. I knew the big-name manufacturers and got paid to scrutinize their latest creations. I owned a formidable collection myself, and had used them in great studios with great artists, engineers, and producers. So I ventured into the DIY community with the most condescending of attitudes. I thought it would be, "I built me my very own Tube Screamer, and it's durn-near good as a store-bought one!"

Needless to say, I was a fucking idiot. 

I learned far more about stompboxes from the collective wisdom of the DIY community that I would have learned in 50 years at a guitar magazine. That's no swipe at the magazines — it's just that old-school print can't rival the depth of such a large and vibrant virtual community as the one at, say, freestompboxes.org. And I can't believe some of the amazing labor-of-love websites, like beavis audio and gaussmarkov! They're packed with great info, beautifully presented. So while it's bad time to make a living dispensing that information, it's a great time to consume it!

My thanks to Joe Gore for taking the time to answer my questions.

Guitar Player magazine.

The first issue that I ever bought of Guitar Player was this one, from 1982. The cover story was on John Entwistle's vintage guitar collection, and I could not have asked for a more enticing entree into the world of guitar journalism. I had been playing about four months when I started to reach for more information about the instrument, and I've never stopped reading and thinking about it.
I'm currently enjoying this multipart oral history on the Guitar Player editors through the years and cutting a videotaped interview with boutique effects pedal manufacturer Andrew Kilpatrick that will appear in the next few days.

Fender Pro Junior: I'm lovin' it.

I'm loving my Fender Pro Junior again. This amp, that I got in trade for my Blues Junior a few years ago, has been an up and down affair for me. On one hand, it's a great-sounding little amp, with a warm and organic overdrive that's hard to find on modern amps.  On the other, it has given me quite a few problems, like excessive hum and hiss, a disintegrating input jack and melting tube sockets. These problems are well-documented on forums and I've had it repaired three times now.

I've used the Pro Junior primarily as a jazz amp - my former employer Jeff Healey used one as well in his Jazz Wizards and it works very well with archtop guitars. But since this last repair, I've found the rock and roll voice of the Pro Junior. There's something vocal and pretty about the EL84 overdrive, something that I've found rare on Fender amps of late. I'm even tempted to buy another one, as David Barrett does with his Rivera Super Champs, to chain together for bigger gigs.

Interview: David Love.

David Love is a versatile and busy professional guitarist and singer based in Toronto. He has been a member of the Randy Bachman/Burton Cummings band (featuring the two principals from the legendary Canadian rock band the Guess Who) since 2005, and has played with Cummings since 1996. He has performed all over Canada and the United States, and earlier this year travelled to the Canadian Forces base in Kandahar, Afghanistan to perform with his band the Carpet Frogs. He kindly agreed to answer a few questions via email.

How important is authentic gear when trying to get vintage tones?

Well, it’s important to me to be inspired by the tones I’m getting. Having authentic gear – the same model of guitar and amp -  gives me a sort of confidence in my performance. I think the audience enjoys it too – at least the guitar players in the audience do or so they’ve told me.

Could you describe your guitar rig?
 

With The Frogs, we do anything from Johnny Cash to Led Zeppelin so I have to have gear that allows me to dial in a wide variety of tones. With Burton, I have to try to replicate the tones of some pretty iconic records. Burton is quite insistent on trying to reproduce those sounds faithfully.  Primarily, I use my Koch Multitone 100 watt three channel head and a Koch 2 X 12 cabinet. Some guys gasp at the prospect of somebody still using high powered heads but I like the clean headroom I can get from it. It will give super clean sparkly Fender tones as well as that dry Marshall bark.

I always take my Rickenbacker 360-12 string with me because we like to do a lot of British invasion stuff. It is strung with Pyramid Gold flatwounds like Harrison, McGuinn, and Townsend used on their Rickenbacker 12 strings.

My main six string guitar is a 2005 G & L ASAT Deluxe which is Leo Fender’s spin on his Telecaster design. Mine has Seymour Duncan pick ups that I can switch from single coil to humbucking which allows me to cover a lot of ground sonically.

My pedal board consists of an Ernie Ball VP Jr. volume pedal, a Peterson Strobostomp II, a Diamond Compressor, a Keeley compressor, a Keeler Push overdrive, a Diamond Memory Lane analog delay, and a Catalinbread Semaphore tremolo and is powered by a Voodoo Labs isolated power supply.

My acoustic rig is either my Gibson J-185 or my Gibson J-160E into a Peterson Strobostomp II, Fishman Spectrum DI, and a Radial JDI Direct Box.

I use Evidence Audio cables.

You've been working for some time with Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings. How did that come about?

The Carpet Frogs had a Thursday night residency at some joint in Toronto many years back. One night, a friend of ours, who happened to be Burton Cummings’ road manager, walked in the place with Burton in tow. Burton was in town doing one of his Up Close and Alone shows and our friend, Sam, said “Come and see this band with me – you’ll love them.” We invited Burton up with us to do some of his favourite cover tunes and 5 hours later, we were friends. Burton got an offer to do a show but the promoter requested that he have a full band with him. Burton remembered our jam that night and called us to ask if we’d like to do a gig or two with him. Of course, we jumped at the chance. That was 12 years ago. We’ve been his band ever since.

When talk of a reunited Randy Bachman/Burton Cummings project came up in 2005, Burton insisted that they use our band. It’s been a pretty cool ride playing with those guys – they are Canadian music royalty. Playing for Randy and Burton has taken me all over the U.S. and Canada.

How do you approach working out guitar arrangements for the Bachman/Cummings live shows?

We are told what songs to learn. I go to the original recordings, the internet, youtube.com, tablature sites, sheet music – whatever - to nail down the parts. We all show up at soundcheck – there are no rehearsals – and you had better know your parts. Usually, the other guitarist (Michael Zweig or Tim Bovaconti) and I will watch what Randy is doing and try to pick the alternate part on the record and stay out of Randy’s way.

The same thing goes when learning a Burton Cummings tune. We’ll assign each other the parts and play them for him to get his reaction. Usually, if he nods his head and just rocks out, we know we’re on the right track!

I’ve been pretty fortunate to be able to play in Bachman Cummings and The Burton Cummings Band with a couple of outstanding Toronto guitarists: Michael Zweig and Tim Bovaconti.

You've been in the music business for quite a while. Do any hard-learned lessons come to mind?

Yes – you ain’t all that and a bag of chips – even if you are. If one is serious about being a professional musician in Canada, one soon realizes that you’re not going to be on a tour bus playing stadiums every week. Being a player means working and gigging – period. You may play for 160,000 people one week and playing the local pub the next. It goes with the territory in this country. If you can scratch out a living doing what you love in the Canadian music business, you are a raging success in my book.

What is your philosophy of teaching guitar?

I work primarily with adult learners who come to me to fast-track the art of singing and playing the guitar. I am not a very learned musician or a technically gifted player – I don’t read notation very well so my emphasis is on blending performance skills with guitar ability. My expertise lies in singing and playing the guitar and entertaining. That’s something that a lot of people want to know how to do and I help them do it.

Any career highlights that you'd like to share?

I am a child of the 60s and I grew up on The Guess Who so the first time I played "These Eyes" and "No Sugar Tonight" with Randy and Burton on a big stage in front of tens of thousands of people, I had an out-of-body experience!

Highlights? Let’s see…. (in no particular order)

Playing Live 8 in 2005 and ending up on the DVD

Doing a CBC special with Randy and Burton

Recording with Randy and Burton

Opening for Bon Jovi

Flying in a private jet

Seeing Canada from a tour bus

Watching Deep Purple sidestage

Playing for 160,000 people in Tennessee

Playing on the same bill with Mark Farner of Grand Funk

Playing on the same bill as and meeting Sir Elton John

Playing on the same bill with The Moody Blues

Having my Mom and Dad watch me play at the Molson Amphitheatre

Playing the 2010 Olympics with Burton

Playing in Afghanistan for our troops

Being interviewed for Gitbox Culture!

Thanks very much to David Love for taking the time to answer my questions.