Eclectic Company: Guitar Is My Axe

When the mighty British guitarist Jeff Beck played "How High The Moon" with hip hot Irish rockabilly vocalist Imelda May as a tribute to Les Paul on the GRAMMY awards show last week, his rendering was a straightforward cover of the late jazz innovator's 1951 chart topper with vocalist wife Mary Ford. You can see and hear the Beck/May version on YouTube, and you can compare it to the Les Paul/Mary Ford version, also on YouTube.

Beck, who's usually credited with refining electronic distortion — that noisy, fuzzy, rumble-to-screech effect that almost defines heavy metal — is a manipulator of the electric guitar's sound and style in ways that are now beyond categorization. You can compare live and recorded versions of "Beck's Bolero" from his first LP, Truth., to get an idea of what I'm talking about. But when I first heard Beck, playing with the Yardbirds (he replaced Eric Clapton, and was later replaced by Jimmy Page) and out front with his own band in the latter half of the 1960s, he was that string-bending, blues-distorting English guitar guru, whining and wiggling up, under and around Rod Stewart's hoarse and rusty vocals. Listen to them perform their morphed version of the traditional ballad "Hangman" from 1969's Beck-Ola for a taste, again on YouTube.

Over the years, Beck's woven in and out of my consciousness (he was THE guitar hero to my bassplayer boyfriend who played Beck-Ola incessantly as make-out! music) as he's tried out various musical styles, many of them classifiable under the catch-all jazz fusion, but despite his sexy on-stage tough guy demeanor, and the sex-driving rhythms that set bones vibrating and blood thumping out there in the dark clubs and arenas, not much of what he's done since the early years has caught my ear so well as his standout tribute to his musical mentor. For its simplicity, its honesty, and its musical tastiness, it was probably the best performance of the GRAMMY show. And that brief, tangy throwback tune said everything to me about what I like about guitar sounds and why.

Some people like guitars best when they're bashed, hard, creating feedback and setting a mood-heightening tension in play. Others like to hear the smooth swirl of finger-rolled strings vibrating sweet sounds slowly. Some like bent notes and blues, others like harsh hammering and dissonance. Well I realize that my taste in guitar-playing is contextual — that is, on a hot summer night, bouncing in front of the band up onstage above me, bathed in the followspots and fresnels, I like loud, jangly, fast, thunk thunk thunk and skreeming. But in a living room or bar room session, with new and old good friends chorusing along, I like an elongated line, so smooth you can't hear the strings squeak as chords and bass runs chase each other around a few well-placed lead lines and riffing fills. Different strokes for different styles, and when I'm doing the playing, on my 20th Century Red Fender Telecaster, or on my 1969 rosewood back and sides dreadnaught Guild, I do my best to give each stroke justice.

I asked around and got this same theory from two guitar guys I love who have vastly different musical experiences. The first one, Bob Pfeifer, made his bones in the punk wars as guitarist and songwriter for the '80s Cleveland band Human Switchboard. Later he was president of Hollywood Records, the Disney label. These days, he writes and records his songs with friends from across the continent on miniature and handheld equipment you can find in a cellphone. Pfeifer told me his preferences "vary with the kind of music I like. Hendrix, obviously, that's the basis of many things. In hard rock I've got to go with Angus Young [of AC/DC]. The blues guitarist who gets the least credit is Mike Bloomfield. I put him in the same league with Clapton, Beck, Page. Another one who doesn't get the attention they should is Mick Taylor. There's [been] no better [Rolling] Stones than when he was playing with them. I think all three plug directly into their amplifiers," Pfeifer said, explaining that they bypass the banks of sound effects many guitarists use. "The sounds you hear, the variances, are really their playing," he said. "I'm not putting down great players like Eddie Van Halen or Joe Satriani," Pfeifer said, "but everyone knows the famous names. I'm into the underappreciated guitar players who are their equals."

And then there's my Lake Charles buddy Marcus Sawyer. Sawyer went out to L.A. and tried to make a living as a session player while plying his luck on the original music circuit. Now back in the Chuck, he teaches guitar at Swicegood, runs an efficient recording studio and record label, and plays in and manages bands of different styles. His favorite styles/guitarists? "It may be a bit unorthodox, but I like a dirty electric, maybe even a heavy metal sound for jazz guitar," Sawyer says. "I like the way it cuts through the other instruments on a solo, and give jazz a sharp edge, as opposed to a smooth and polished finish. Rock can mean ballads, anthems, jam out type songs — it really depends on what you're trying to accomplish, but as a general rule of thumb, I really like a nice tube amp with some straight up type of heavy distortion, not overdrive. For alt country, anything with tremolo, and short slapback delay usually works very well. In this kind of music, I prefer overdrive to straight up distortion. I really like the tones that Ricky van Shelton used to use, and I still use that as sort of a model to go by for anything country or alt-country. James Burton is also a big influence on how I'd LIKE to play, and what I like to hear in country.

"But If I had to pick a single guitar hero," Sawyer said, "it would be Frank Zappa, because he orchestrated so many things using his guitar as his maestro's baton. He played with ALL my other guitar heroes — Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon — the list goes on forever. His guitar style paved the way for a lot of experimental guitar sounds and guitar styles. He was a titan."