Killing the blues
From rock to blues to electronica to Americana to folk and then into space. A story of why three chords just isn't enough...
A couple of weeks ago I read an interview with the mighty British folk-rock artist Richard Thompson about his new album Ship To Shore.
This particular section caught my eye and got me thinking.
“Players like James Burton were bending notes in more of a country way, which I thought was interesting, in some ways more relevant. I thought that the blues field when I was 18—there’s Peter Green, Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor—these U.K. blues guitarists were kind of slavishly imitating Buddy Guy and Otis Rush. I wanted to be a different kind of guitar player. So I took influence more from British traditional music, Celtic music, and country music.
In terms of rock guitarists who weren’t relying on blues licks, Jerry Garcia and David Lindley come to mind. But there aren’t a lot.
To me, there’s a lot of mediocre white blues guitar players. They kind of claim the blues as their cultural heritage; that’s a bit iffy. The yardstick for me is, are they contributing anything new, and are they as good or better than the people they base their style on? Often the case is no. There are exceptions, like David Lindley and Ry Cooder, who are wonderful musicians. If you’re a great musician, you’re a great musician. If you’re saying something new or different, I think that’s a real achievement.” - Richard Thompson interviewed by Dan Forte for Premier Guitar.
I don’t agree with everything Thompson is saying and believe that Clapton & Green and certainly Beck & Page took what the three Kings, Albert Collins, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush and a host of other American blues players were doing, and added a new dimension: aggression, attitude and tone.
But more importantly, they evolved the blues into something new and progressed to write songs outside the I-IV-V chord structure.
Green with Man Of The World and becoming ‘prog’ with The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown).
Clapton - who throughout his extensive career has kept a strong connection with the blues - has punctuated his albums with great songs such as Presence of the Lord (Blind Faith) and Layla (Derek and the Dominos).
Led Zeppelin II and III were built on the blues but pushed the genre into new areas which defined heavy rock.
Jeff Beck moved ahead at breakneck speed creating a genre all of his own with albums like Truth, Blow By Blow, Wired, Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop and There and Back - inspirational stuff.
Most early ‘60s British bands used the blues as a stepping stone to new original music - The Yardbirds, The Moody Blues, and The Beatles to mention a few.
It was these ‘morphed’ artists that influenced me.
All about the rock
My cousin Bill Robinson had a profound effect on my taste in music. Whilst living with my Auntie Mona he introduced me to early Rod Stewart, The Faces and Cat Stevens - artists that I still regularly listen to today. Ronnie Wood is still one of my favourite guitarists.
Halcyon days
I started playing guitar at the age of 16. It was the summer of 1974 and at the tail end of the halcyon days of British rock. I have written many posts about my journey and won’t replicate them here but a précis can be found in my tribute to Jeff Beck.
I knew nothing of the blues, thinking my favourite bands were totally original. How wrong can a person be? I was more green than grass.
Led Zeppelin I is littered with almost direct copies of some of the blues greats. Lazy from Deep Purple’s Made in Japan (my favourite live album of all time) is a 12-bar blues; Since I’ve Been Loving You from Led Zeppelin III (my first Zep album and a chordally extended blues) and Wishbone Ash’s killer live performance of Where Were You Tomorrow from Pilgrimage is another slightly modified blues tune of which I learned every note.
I bought Eric Clapton’s EC Was Here who - believe it or not - I only knew through Cream Live Volume 2, enjoying the more progressive material: Tales Of Brave Ulysses, White Room and of course Sunshine Of Your Love which is almost a blues.
EC Was Here really got me in a grip: Further on Up The Road, Have You Ever Loved A Woman, Ramblin’ On My Mind - all feature killer playing and in my opinion, his best work with feel, tone and an outstanding band.
I looked at the credits and saw the composers responsible. Billy Myles, Robert Johnson, Joe Medwick and Don Robey - who are these people?
This is where it all started as I delved back into these musicians and it was this album which led me to the blues.
I did go for a few lessons with Simon Lilley at Bolton Guitar Studio to improve my technique and help push me out of the habit of playing the pentatonic blues scale over everything.
He introduced me to the Super Session with Al Cooper, Stephen Stills and the mighty Mike Bloomfield. I was off into blues rock nirvana.
Acoustic just wasn’t cool
In those days I didn’t play a lot of acoustic guitar, preferring to rock out with monstrously loud Marshall, Orange, and Vox amplifiers and my weapon of choice being my Gibson Flying V which my parents bought for my 17th birthday and still stands proudly in my guitar racks.
Apart from Zeppelin’s folk-based songs, acoustic music wasn’t really on the agenda and at the time, didn’t understand the appeal of early blues men and women.
It took me until I was in my 30s to appreciate the raw power of these musicians. They created the roadmap for us all to follow and their work is the cornerstone of all contemporary popular music.
Moving on
I have played a lot of blues-based music live but other than studying players and techniques, rarely listen to the genre at home preferring a more eclectic experience.
Big Jim Sullivan
When Jim died I wrote a short tribute but in the context of this article, whilst recording Little Brother’s Survival album (which he co-produced with the late great Derek Lawrence) he was instrumental in forcing me to listen to the fucking chords and not just solo indiscriminately.
After this difficult record deal in the early ‘90s, I started a new group called The Disciple’s, a progressive blues band riding on the back of the new wave of blues music: Robert Cray, Gary Moore, Jeff Healey, Robben Ford et al.
It was a great band which released an EP on cassette tape and some of the tunes made it onto my first solo album, ThirtySix, which dropped in 2010.
ThirtySix
This record explored many of my influences, trying always to serve the song and underlying chords with my guitar parts and solos.
We feature tracks from this album in our gigs and Preacher, Still Got Time To Be My Baby and Sex Is The Key (from The Disciple’s period) together with Misgivings, Brother, I Like It Like That and All I Have Left (written during my break from music in the ‘00s) can be found spattered across our two live albums - Starlite Campbell Band Live! and Starlite Campbell Band Live! 2
I prefer the live versions…i
Music is music and I love it all (well, most of it)
Let’s face it, I am a whore for original music. Classical, jazz, indie, rock, experimental, I don’t care providing it makes me feel something and the song touches me lyrically.
I am sure you feel the same as sometimes you need to listen to a track, album or artist a fair few times before you start to get it.
Apart from the obvious exceptions such as More Than A Feeling and Don’t Stop Believing - which are just great songs - plus a few others, American AOR (and classic rock) passed me by as did the new wave of British heavy metal.
No Judas Priest, Saxon or Iron Maiden for me, but Magazine, Rage Against the Machine, Stereolab and Motörhead.
Even Neil Young didn’t float my boat until I heard John Peel play the full version of Like A Hurricane on his late-night show from Weld and now am a devoted fan.
Electronica
I was never a punk and never appreciated the music until later when I realised they were just rock bands with sunglasses on.
The Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, The Damned and the Clash wrote great powerful rock music, most of which is based on the I-IV-V of the blues. New wave and post-punk generated some great stuff with countless bands I adored, but it was alternative music and electronica that got me.
Kraftwerk, Neu and Cann from the ‘70s then Wang Chung, Human League, Soft Cell, and Gary Numan all were spinning on the turntable adjacent to Ten Years After, Roxy Music and the remarkable David Bowie, who alongside Led Zeppelin and Radiohead is my favourite musical artist of all time.
I have always loved keyboards, but until recently, have never owned or played them. This post from last year explores my love of electronic music.
Anti-solo
ThirtySix did very well selling a good number of CDs - yes, before music was essentially free.
Considering what to do next I started working with Mark Cleator and Suzy (before we were an item) on an electronic project, Electrolite, where we wrote an EP and decided to record and release it.
Simultaneously I started to write on acoustic guitar utilizing an unholy number of open tunings and so…
Acoustic became cool…
I have owned some great acoustic guitars (remind me again why I sold my magnificent Gibson SJ45), but it was the purchase of my first Collings guitar that fully turned me on.
Over the years I have recorded a lot of rock ‘n roll and electronica but had no experience recording or producing this type of music, so enter Andy Seward.
Andy is a fabulous bass player and an expert at recording and producing acoustic music. His credits include records from Martin Simpson, Kate Rusby and John McCusker. I met him at a Martin Simpson gig on the Isle of Man where he was playing upright bass.
He taught me an awful lot about my guitar playing, singing, recording and production, the result being my second solo record, The Knife which is 90% acoustic and featured my first co-write with my now wife, Suzy Starlite.
Mark drove over from the Isle of Man with a car loaded up to the roof with a pile of analogue synthesisers. He arrived right in the middle of The Knife sessions at The Chairworks, Castleford and we recorded and mixed three tracks in three days.
Neither of the records had traditional solos. Why? They were unnecessary and wouldn’t serve the song!
From Americana and contemporary folk to ‘80s electrosleaze and back again in two weeks - a real shocker for my ThirtySix audience.
Blueberry Pie
The story of our romance and travels is part of another story. Still, following a short spell in France, we moved to Valencia, Spain and opened a commercial studio in the mountain village of Estivella. It was here Suzy developed as a bass player and we toured The Knife album in the UK and Europe.
She started by learning the work of four bass players, the story of which can be found in her series of articles for new bass players Walking The Bass Line in Bass Musician Magazine.
Not giving a lot of thought we wrote Blueberry Pie in two weeks, our internal brief being we needed to use only three chord intervals I-IV-V which we achieved with a few notable exceptions.
I had never engineered, produced and recorded a primarily blues album and wanted to pay homage to my favourite blues / R&B artists using a classic instrumental lineup of bass, guitar, drums, Hammond organ and Wurlitzer electric piano. We called my old mucker Steve Gibson and Johnny Henderson to play drums and keyboards respectively.
The album was recorded and mixed quickly then sent to Jon Astley for mastering. Suzy spent six months collating a database of worldwide blues music magazines and radio stations which she emailed when the album was released on February 1st, 2017.
We never expected it to do anything at all however Blueberry Pie is our most successful commercial release to date picking up top chart positions, sales, 5-star reviews and radio play worldwide.
This resulted in headline tours and top positions in festivals in Europe, the UK and Australia and on the back of this success, we decided to focus on the band, closing the studio, moving back to the Isle of Man and then Germany.
The difficult second album
I felt I had tipped my hat to the blues and needed to move on. Madness you may say, but as artists we wanted to explore new sounds, techniques, instrumentation and chord structures.
Lockdown
As with the rest of the world, COVID-19 stopped our career in its tracks, but we still had all our gear and had already started the next record which would become our second studio album The Language Of Curiosity.
We took material from our sessions in Valencia which were in different stages of completion. Take Time To Grow Old and The Language Of Curiosity are cases in point, the latter being radically different to what was first envisaged.
Tracking continued in Germany where we spent the majority of our time in lockdown, then recording the final tracks and mixing in our current studio near Lisboa, Portugal - phew…
The Language of Curiosity features a rich tapestry of stories, recorded in very difficult circumstances over a long period and we are proud of the set of songs.
Like a Rubik’s cube, it tells a multitude of stories from dating apps with Ride On Cowboy, the darkness of drugs in Said So, money-grabbing gatekeepers in the music and PR industry in Bad Sign, the futility of war in Distant Land, basic human rights in It Ain’t Right and more.
There are still three chord tracks on there and Lay It Out On Me - a straight-up minor blues - is one of my favourite tracks from my recording career.
Flying STARLITE.ONE
There has been a lot written about this album that doesn’t need duplication except to say that this album came quickly after The Language Of Curiosity, inspired by Starlite’s bizarre existential dream and filled with analogue synthesisers, loud guitars and a multitude of chords.
We recorded a series of podcasts about the recording and associated tour which are available on VIBES and Spotify.
In episode #134, we play the album in full with some insider chat about how we made it. Grab a suitable beverage and enjoy…
So what’s the point?
I don’t criticise any artist for their output as that’s up to their feelings and ways of expression. Some artists evolve and some remain within their comfort zone and that of their audience.
Playing it safe
AC/DC, Kraftwerk and Status Quo have successfully made the same record over and over again. Alternatively, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie and Radiohead progressed taking their fans with them.
Many guitar players have extended the blues from a solo perspective using substituted chords and scales pushing the blues into jazz & rock, Robben Ford, Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour, Steve Lukather, Dan Auerbach, Eric Johnson, Michael Landau and Julian Lage being fine examples amongst a multitude of excellence.
“Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on” - Guess who.
I have never played it safe and would lose the will to live if I were banging out the same solos over the same chords year in and year out unless I was Joe of course…
What does Joe do?
“I have learned unfortunatly that people want to hear me overplay over blues rock changes - so this is what we do” - Joe Bonamassa, August 28th, 2018
Joe’s not wrong as he is giving his audience exactly what they want, and pay for.
I love his passion for guitar and guitarists from the ‘60s British blues explosion and also admire his deep knowledge, enthusiasm and love of loud amps onstage - a kindred spirit!
He makes a great living out of his playing and people love what he does - good for him.
Am I envious? Of course. He has achieved what most guitar players - and musicians - aspire to. Fame, money, freedom and an increasing army of players trying to emulate his success - thereby lies my problem.
We all stand on the shoulders of giants, which in my humble opinion should give us a view to look further, build on what’s happened before and create something dynamic and new.
Country, folk and blues music seem to all suffer from stagnation, but even country colossi Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson occasionally step out of their genre roles.
To me, the blues is the prime culprit and sometimes I think that the song and lyrics are just an excuse so someone can take a solo, slavishly wanking off with pentatonic nonsense. There, I’ve said it…
In conclusion…
Below is a playlist featuring a selection of artists that started in the blues and ended up somewhere totally different. It’s not extensive, just a taster.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the subject. Just comment below and I will come right back to you.
Killing the blues
And finally, I had to finish with the wonderful Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. While Page has stuck as the curator of Led Zeppelin material, Plant has moved on beautifully.
Although T Bone Burnett’s production is to die for, I still think it’s been overcompressed in the mastering but a great song by artists moving along.
Much love
Simon
I remember being struck by a TV interview with Bill Bruford many years ago, in which he was chatting about punk rock and said something like: “If you say to people that rock music is made up of three chords,” Bruford ponders, “there will always be guys, especially in the UK, who say, ‘What if we added a fourth chord and put it into 5/4?’” (The quotation is taken from a drumming magazine piece in 2007 that I found via Google - it's slightly different in emphasis from I recall him saying on the telly.) I thought it nicely captured the tension between the primal essence of rock'n'roll, and the desire to stretch the possibilities. And I can get enthused about both ends of the spectrum, from Dr Feelgood to Rush, say, and many points in-between. (One of the most interesting things about Steely Dan, I often think, is simply their deployment of "jazz" chords that flip things in interesting directions.)
I love your para about "wanking off with pentatonic nonsense", or as I often describe it, noodling. And to add a different spin to your point, I wrote a piece a few years back about how a lot of guitarists don't seem to recognise the (connected) criticality of the song and the singing: https://bit.ly/3vyMdUq.
Have to disagree with you on one point though. I have never got on board with Raising Sand. There are some great songs in there, but I find the general vibe suffocating. Maybe that's down to your sense of over-compression, I don't know. I feel like all the spontaneity has been sucked out of Plant's performance. It's not that I can't take seriously downbeat stuff, and I'd submit artists like London trio The Jujubes and Mississippi's Robert Connely Farr in evidence.
Anyway, an interesting and stimulating piece Simon - and excuse the somewhat disjointed response!