Rock’s Guitar Gods – Avatars of the Sixties

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Rocks Guitar Gods Avatars of the Sixties

by

DEENA WEINSTEIN

Sharing in the romantic ideology of the 1960s, the guitar god (the virtuoso lead rock guitarist), epitomized

by Clapton, Townshend, and Hendrix, emerged as a result of technologythe electrification of the guitar

and high-powered amplificationwhich made the instrument a competitor to the singer and made possible

the creation of a mystique of musical prowess fused with effects of emotional authenticity and masculin-

ism. As a romantic hero, the guitar god presents a case that contests egalitarianism and promotes an ideal

of power based on personal distinction and exceptionalism in skill and dramatic performance, sustained

by a complex commercial support system. The guitar virtuosi of the sixties provided a model for future

generations of lead guitarists in rock bands and an inspiration to fans who buy their guitar brands and

accompany their heroes on air guitar and Guitar HeroTM. The guitar god both challenges and flaunts the

sixties youth culture.

Guitar gods. Guitar heroes. Guitar virtuosi. These are not simply descriptive terms;

they betray a cult of the guitarist in rock. Not the rhythm guitarist, but the riff-making,

soloing lead guitarists, who are usually the most accomplished musicians in rock bands

and are expected to evince artistry. Guitar gods are absent from genres that eschewat

least in nameromantic ideology and artistry, especially punk. They are ubiquitous in

blues-rock and the genres it sired, from psychedelia, through hard rock, heavy metal, and

all of their offspring. In those genres, the lead guitarist is the prime focus of the band.

Guitar gods were born of the sixties and could not have appeared as cultural icons until

then. This figure is also a phenomenon of that much storied decade, integral to its guid-

ing romantic ideas. Guitar gods represent a strand of romanticism that is often slighted

by or altogether absent from accounts of the culture of the sixties, teaching us that the

latter is polysemic and cannot be understood adequately in terms of any single theme

or grand narrative. How did the guitar god come to be? What are the components of the

icon? What does the guitar god tell us about sixties culture and its legacy that continues

through the present?

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140 Deena Weinstein

Technology

One of the conditions that made guitar gods possible, though not inevitable, was a

complex of guitar-related technological innovations. The electrification of the guitar

precedes rocks origins, having come into its own during the 1940s, especially in styles

of music that had been marginalized by the mainstream mediablues and country. Due

to its volume level, one of the electric guitars main impacts during that decade was to

allow small combos to replace big bands. With a guitar and amplifier, groups of four to

six musicians could somewhat inexpensively take to the road.

The development of many major and ancillary features of electric guitars was cre-

ated in interaction with guitar players. For instance, it was guitarist Les Paul who took

the pickup of an electrified phonograph and jammed it into the strings of a guitar to

amplify the sound of the strings.1 In the early stages of rock n roll, guitars vied with

saxophones and pianos as the key instrument of the emerging genre. (It was rock n

rolls hillbilly element, represented especially by Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins, that

gave the electric guitar its victory.) Once the guitar was electrified, it no longer needed

its resonating box. Inventive entrepreneur Leo Fender created the solid body electric

guitar as a mass produced item. Among other things, the more compact form of solid

body instruments enabled guitarists to move about on stage more easily. Yes, Chuck

Berry managed a great deal of movement with his hollow-bodied Gibson ES-355 and

Buddy Holly mainly stood still playing his Fender Stratocaster. Nonetheless, the Stra-

tocaster model and its solid-body brethren made possible the dramatic moves of the

guitar heroes of the following decades.

The solid-body guitar, although built on a slab of wood, lent itself to a host of fin-

ishes that no longer evoked its original material. Fenders first model, the Telecaster,

displayed the wood grain, but the next one, the Stratocaster, obscured it with finishes

that had metallic or plastic looks, resembling automobiles or childrens toys. Still today,

at stores like Guitar Center, one can find guitars with colors called chrome red, me-

tallic red, and candy-apple red. The electrified sound also permitted an alteration in

the solid-bodys shape from the traditional curved box. Some of the designs were made

to enhance dramatic impact, such as Gibsons Flying V. Others expanded the range of

sound, especially the radical cutaways which allowed playing frets at the necks base.

The high register of sound produced there became a trope of guitar gods.

The original amplification devices were increased in number and modified to enable

a broader range of sound. For Fender, adding more pickups was a concession to the

musicians who liked the different tones coming from each pickup position: brighter

and more metallic at the bridge and warmer and heavier toward the neck. Two pickups

gave more versatility and a broader range of tones to choose from.2 Other additions

included the tremolo and a wide assortment of effects pedals, such as those creating

1 Andr Millard, Inventing the Electric Guitar, in: The Electric Guitar: A History of an American

Icon, ed. Andr Millard (Baltimore, 2004), p. 47. 2 Millard, Solid body Electric Guitars, The Electric Guitar, p. 95.


141Rocks Guitar Gods Avatars of the Sixties

distortion or enabling sustained tones. Each of these adaptations allowed the musician

to customize his equipment and thus individualize his sound.

Amplifiers were in wide use by the time rock n roll emerged in the 1950s, but were

not yet powerful enough to bring the lead guitarist to decisive prominence. In the early

1960s, Jim Marshall began producing amplifiers capable of a far louder and distorted

sound. His black-clad cabinets have become icons of volume. They are used in concert

not only for their sonic purpose, but also as props; some bands have cabinets on stage

that are devoid of electrical equipment and simply function as visual symbols of power.

The major innovators and manufacturers of electric guitars and god-worthy ampli-

fiers interacted intensively with musicians in the 1960s. At first Jim Marshall only

made amplifier cabinets, which he sold at his drum shop. As drummers began to drag

along their bands guitarists, Marshall realized that his manufacturer did not build the

amplifiers as reliably as and with the modifications these guitarists were demanding.

Eventually he and his staff began to make them in house. The 16-year-olds Townshend

and Blackmore were in the shop regularly talking to Jim about what they wanted from

their amps.3 Clapton and Hendrix were good customers too. Townsend recalls telling

Marshall: I need something bigger and louder I was demanding a more powerful

machine gun, and Jim Marshall was going to build it for me, and then we were going

to go out and blow people away, all around the world.4 Volume! Loud was a devel-

opment of the sixties, and it isnt only Spinal Tap that is still playing on 11. Robert

Duncan provides an interpretation: But mainly rock n roll liked loud because loud

meant passion, loud meant the pent anger of the age, and loud rock n roll thus became

an acting out of that anger and so some sort of return to the senses in the time of the

rational, the technological.5 Fender, too, had musicians on his guitar design team and

valued their input. The innovations allowed guitarists to tinker and innovate on their

own. Attempts by manufacturers to build effects into the instrument were rejected by

musicians who wanted the freedom to select and sequence them, so they could create

their own inimitable sound with some combination of flanger, chorus, delay, and/or

reverb.

Hendrix was not merely a player; he was deeply involved in the technological bases

for his unique sound. He experimented with controlled feedback from amplifiers,

fuzztone, wah-wah pedals, and whammy bars. He incorporated these with studio tech-

niques such as echo, backward overdubbing, panning, use of equalizers (filters), and

phase shifting to shape the sound of his guitar.6 He even arranged to have his roadie

learn about the amps at Marshalls. Hendrixs heroic status comes in part from these

innovations.

3 Rich Maloof, Jim Marshall: The Father of Loud (San Francisco, 2004), p. 39.4 Ibid.5 Robert Duncan, The Noise: Notes From a Rock n Roll Era (New York, 1984), p. 46.6 Susan Schmidt-Horning, Recording, The Electric Guitar, pp. 118-19.


142 Deena Weinstein

Ideology

Rock music erupted within the last great wave of romanticism in the Westthe formation

of the youth culture of the sixties. Georg Simmel7 argued that as a cultural expres-

sion of a social phenomenon, romanticism represented a compensatory reaction against

the impersonality and abstraction of modern metropolitan existence that privileged the

intellect over the emotions and objective functioning over subjective integrity. Roman-

ticism, according to Simmel, only appears within the modern urban context, bringing

forward anything that modern society marginalizes: nonrational experience, individual

and group distinctiveness, and Dionysian excess over and rebellion against disciplinary

social forms. For Simmel, the apotheosis of romanticism is to plunge into the formless

stream of life-experience and to refuse to submit to any form that channels, contains,

or trims it. Short of that limit, the romantic impulse is concentrated on the vindication

of group or personal individuality, which is known and affirmed through intuition and

inspiration rather than abstract reason.

Since its appearance at the turn of the nineteenth century, romanticism has been

primarily associated socially with youth. That term does not refer to a universal (bio-

logical) age group but to a historically and socially specific category of adolescents who

experience a prolonged transition from childhood dependency to adult responsibility.

Structurally, youth is an effect of the need for a highly specialized industrial society

to train people to perform its functions and to submit to its disciplines. The period of

extended education opens up for the adolescents who, herded together in schools, claim

a space of relative freedom shadowed by the destiny of eventual induction into the disci-

plines of the occupational system. The tension between present freedom and impending

discipline generates the panoply of self-assertive expressions, enthusiasms, acts and arts

of personal and group rebellion, and idiosyncrasies that define romanticism.8

As the modern period proceeded in time, with its intensive industrial and urban de-

velopment, the proliferation of specialties, and a rising standard of living, the number

and proportion of adolescents who experienced youth steadily increased. What began

as the angst, dandyism, and heroic posturing of haut-bourgeois adolescents in the first

half of the nineteenth century spread in the twentieth to the broad middle classes and

then to the working class. The prosperity of the United States after World War II and the

European economic miracle opened up a mass youth market at the same time that it

created the conditions for romantic reaction on an unprecedented scale. Enter the sixties

youth culture, of which rock music was an essential component.

7 Georg Simmel, Individual and Society in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Views of Life

(1917) and The Metropolis and Mental Life (1908), in: The Sociology of Georg Simmel, trans. & ed.

Kurt Wolff (New York, 1950).8 See Deena Weinstein, Rock: Youth and Its Music, Popular Music and Society IX (1983); id.,

Expendable Youth: The Rise and Fall of Youth Culture, in: Adolescents and their Music: If Its Too

Loud, Youre Too Old, ed. Jonathon Epstein (Hamden, CT, 1994); id., Alternative Youth: The Ironies of

Recapturing Youth Culture, Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Research 3 (February 1995).



Rock was born in a historical conjuncture in which affluent youth rebelled against the

conformist organizational culture of the fifties in the context of emerging social move-

mentsespecially the civil rights movementand protest against the Vietnam War and

the attendant military draft in the United States. An American invention, rock spread

to England and later continental Europe, where it took on new features and eventually

became globalized. The two major sources of the romantic ideology that rationalized

rock as a discursive and artistic practice were American populism and the European

avant-garde, both of which, though they had widely different intellectual presuppositions,

reached the same conclusion that art should be an expression of authentic inspiration.

The roots of romantic populism in rock are musical rather than discursively ideo-

logical. The romantic reaction among American youth in the 1950s and into the early

1960s took the form of a resort to prestige from below through the appropriation of

musical styles associated with racial and economic groups that had been marginalized

by corporate modernization. Black blues, white folk and rural music, and to a lesser

degree jazz, were seen as authentic expressions of life in contrast to the bland and con-

trived mainstream pop music. At first, predominantly white middle-class youth imitated

their lower-class masters, but soon seized authenticity for themselves and began to

produce their own music, a tendency that eventually led to the centering of aspirations

to authenticity in the creative individual.

A similar process occurred at about the same time in England. There the source was

only in part the prestige from below of marginalized groups and their musical styles;

it was also the contestational high culture of the European avant-garde. The vehicle

of transmission of avant-garde ideals to British youth was the system of public art

schoolsunmatched in number anywhere else in the worldthat became repositories

and refuges for young people who were intelligent but had difficulty conforming to

mainstream organizational society. As Frith and Horne note, in England, the original

idea of rock authenticity came from a straightforward Romantic ideology of creativity.

For the 1960s art school beat musicians, true expression was defined against both bour-

geois and showbiz convention, and rock was differentiated from pop along the axes

of passion, commerce and complexity.9 The roster of British rock musicians is studded

with art-school students, including sixties guitar gods Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend,

Jimmy Page, and Syd Barrett. They and many others absorbed what Paul Stump calls the

art-school tradition, which championed individual creativity, genius and Romantic

personal adventurism in the arts.10 The American low road and the British high road led

to the same place for middle-class youth: a valorization of distinctiveness, individuality,

emotion, originality, and nonconformityall the marks of the modern reaction against

modernity.

The story of the romantic sources of rock sketched above elides many nuances and

tensionsthe conflict between group and individual conceptions of authenticity, the

9 Simon Frith and Howard Horne, Art into Pop (London, 1988), p. 148.10 Paul Stump, The Musics All That Matters: A History of Progressive Rock (London, 1997), p. 10.


144 Deena Weinstein

irony of an anti-commercial impulse finding its destiny in the corporate culture industry,

and the deployment of technology to carry the message of authenticitybut it remains

accurate in its outlines. After all the pulling and hauling, the individual artist uncom-

promisingly devoted to his own musicand rock was a masculinist practiceemerged

as the quintessence of romantic authenticity. And of all the positions and roles in rock

bands, the guitarist became the embodiment of that ideal.

Commercial Context

Beyond the technological innovations and zeitgeist of the sixties, guitar gods appeared

in a commercial context. The post-war affluence and attendant baby boom in the U.S.

and the U.K. created a significant youth market, for which rock was emblematic. By

the 1960s, the older music industry, using those on its periphery and outsiders, had

adapted to this new market like a horde of pickpockets in a crowd of Christmas shop-

pers. New kinds of mediators arose then too. Managers like Albert Grossman (Dylan),

Brian Epstein (the Beatles), and Andrew Oldham (the Rolling Stones) were sympathetic

to the romantic ideology. The changes in recording technology demanded and called

forth producers who were in tune with and wanted to cater to the artists. By the end of

1960s, specialized rock venues existed in the U.S. (from the start, the U.K. had the art

college circuit). Several festivals, notably the Monterey International Pop Festival in

1967 and Woodstock in 1969, elevated Jimi Hendrix to superstar status, and along with

him, enhanced the guitarists role.

The rock press shared the romantic ideology, although it was more interested in

political progressivism. The blues-basis of sixties rock, referencing African-American

musicians (or in Hendrixs case, presenting one) allowed guitar gods to receive a posi-

tive press. Starting with Led Zeppelins massive popularity and especially in the mid-

1970s when punk began to flourish, the mainstream rock press became antagonistic to

the masturbatory, boring guitar solo. In contrast, media catering to forms of rock

that valorized the guitar godespecially hard rock and heavy metalcontinued to give

guitarists very positive coverage.

Dramatic Performance

Despite being celebrated for their musictheir soundlead guitarists are also required

to give a dramatic visual performance. This allows them to rival the bands singer for the

spotlight (those who do their own singing tend to be less visually dramatic than those

who play with flamboyant vocalists). Performance also reinforces the romantic myth of

the guitar hero. The dramatic guitar performance has its roots in three key sixties play-

ers: Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, and Jimi Hendrix. Claptons look of concentration

and emotionality are one pole of the axis, the other end of which is the over-the-top

showmanship of Townshend and Hendrix.



Townshend of The Who is well-known for his arm-twirling windmill and especially

that show stopping act in which he smashes his guitar in a frenzied passion. Townshend

claimed that his signature stunt was inspired by the aesthetic theory of his Ealing Art

College tutor, Gustav Metzger: Metzger advocated what he called auto-destructive

works of art, for example, the action painting he created by spraying acid on a sheet

of nylon. As Metzger explained them, such works were meant to evoke the apocalyptic

prospects opened up at Hiroshima.11

Playing guitar in Little Richards backup band in the early 1960s, Jimi Hendrix

learned how to woo a white audience at the feet of a masterwho had taught him by

example the value of flamboyant showmanship.12 In Britain during the fall of 1966,

Hendrix went Townshend one better: he ended his performances by making out of

his guitar a burnt offering, kneeling over it with mock reverence, pouring lighter fluid

on the instrument, setting it aflameand then, in a frenzy of feigned passion, smash-

ing the instrument up.13 After wowing the Brits, Hendrix brought his act back to the

States. At the Monterey Pop Festival, after playing the guitar behind his back, doing a

backward somersault and riding the guitar like a horse, he finally sprayed it with lighter

fluid, and set it on fire. And at the end of his set, when he sent his Fender up in flames,

the bonfire did not seem gratuitous. It seemed rather a gesture of innocent gratitude, a

burnt offering to the unknown pagan gods who had blessed this harvest of creativity,

and granted one man-child a moment of rare bliss.14 Not everyone was as impressed;

Robert Christgau called Hendrix a psychedelic Uncle Tom.15

The focus of the guitarists performance is a display of intense emotionality, alternat-

ing with looks of exertion and concentration. The repertoire of expressions and gestures

has by now become ritualized and mannered, understood, although not necessarily on a

conscious level, by the audience. Shows of exertion and concentration indicate that the

playing is difficult. Looks underscore the virtuosity, which is the antithesis of casual

routine. The signature gesture of visual emotionalityback arched, eyes closed, head

thrown back, mouth agapeis the defining expression of the guitarist, on stage and

as photographed in magazines. A rock photographer, whose pictures of guitarists have

been published in innumerable magazines, told me that this look is so clich that he and

his subjects have a term for it: the guitar face. The guitar face look is one of intense

pleasure; one might call it, without exaggeration, orgasmic.

The romantic ideology, in which the lead guitarist is embedded, demands authentic-

ity. Like the singer, he must demonstrate that this is his music, that the sounds he makes

express what he is feeling. Because the singers instrument, his voice, is embodied, his

emotion is directly conveyed. Indeed, some have argued that it is not the verbal meaning

11 James Miller, Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll 1947-1977 (New York, 1999), p. 267.12 Ibid.13 Ibid.14 Ibid., p. 268.15 Fred Goodman, The Mansion on The Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen, and the Head-On

Collision of Rock and Commerce (New York, 1997), p. 76.


146 Deena Weinstein

of a songs lyrics but the human emotionality of the singers voice that conveys the es-

sential meaning of a song.16 In contrast, the guitarists instrument is external to him, an

impersonal tool. He thus needs to register that the passion of the music emanating from

his instrument is his passion. This is the significance of his emotional body language,

his orgasmic look.

The guitarists dramatic performance is highlighted by its absence from the genre that

rejected the counterculture and its romanticismpunk. Punk eschewed romanticisms

rock metonym, the guitar god. (The end of the cultural sixties coincides with the crys-

tallization of punk in the mid-1970s.) No guitar solos allowed. The ethic is evinced in

punk initiator Johnny Ramones sonic and visual minimalism, and was parodied by Xs

Billy Zoom to deconstruct its familiar antithesis. On stage, Zoom stood stock stilla

mannequin, whose only moving parts were his hands and fingers. His facial expression

was unchanging, set into an eerie fixed smile, almost a rictus grin. Zoom explained:

Its kinda my trademarkoriginally I was kinda making fun of all those 70s rock

guitarists that made all those funny faces when they played Just making fun of those

guys thatacted like they were hurt, looking like they were doing something hard when

they werent.17

Guitar gods are worshipped, hence that reference to the deity. The legendary graffito,

Clapton is God, graced various walls and fences in London, starting when he played

with John Mayall in 1965 and could still be seen when I visited the city in 1979. The

guitarists fans emulate them during their performances; these gods are charismatic in the

strict Weberian sense of the term, perceived as embodying a transcendent gift. Playing

air guitar is an example of imitating the gods; such imitation is found in many religious

rites. The air-guitarists body movements and especially their fingers are essential to

their miming. Typically their facial expressions are not a copy of the orgasmic or con-

centrated expressions seen on stage; rather they are expressions of awewide-eyed and

slack-jawed. Air-guitarists are still widely seen in todays concert audiences, and also

on stage in numerous air-guitar contests.

Hero Worship

It seems that all of the guitar greats, and the not-so-very-greats as well, have their own

gods or heroes. Interviews always seem to get around to the question of whom they

most admire. They readily, with reverence and gusto, mention their guitar inspirations.

Despite the crucial element of individuality in the guitarists role, there is almost a ne-

cessity that they trace their own gift back to some mythic god.

16 Simon Frith, Why do Songs have Words? Music for Pleasure: Essays in the Sociology of Pop

(New York, 1988).17 David Staudacher, Back and Beyond: Before and After X: the Billy Zoom We Hardly Knew, The

Process (Summer 2000), p. 38.



Hero worship is an integral element of romanticism and was made its centerpiece by

Thomas Carlyle in the nineteenth century. Intrigued by the role of the great man in

history, Carlyle used his idea of the individual with transcendent gifts and overpower-

ing force of personality to criticize the emerging industrial society characterized by its

gray passion for moneythe cash nexus. For Carlyle, hero worship was a virtue that

formed the basis of a living tradition in contrast to modernitys social disconnection

and dead repetition.

Metal guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen, for example, eagerly discusses his own reverence:

From the moment I saw Jimi Hendrix I wanted to play. When the interviewer interjected

that he did not play in Hendrixs style, Malmsteen admitted the influence was more of an

inspirational nature: But he was cool. Far more than Hendrix, Malmsteens hero was

the nineteenth-century violinist Paganini, in some sense a true forerunner of the guitar

god: Since the very first day I heard Nicolo Paganini he has been engraved in my soul.

Ive lived for this guy. The appeal was flamboyant virtuosity. Malmsteen discovered

Paganini, as he did Hendrix, via television: I was watching television in Sweden and

I saw this Russian violinist playing Paganini. Man, he really ripped. I couldnt believe

my eyes and ears. I put a boom box in front of the TV and recorded it. I went out and

bought Paganinis Four Caprices. From then on Ive never been the same.18

Peter Green (dubbed the Green God) replaced Clapton in John Mayalls Bluesbreak-

ers in the 1960s and then went on to be an important member of the early Fleetwood

Mac. He said: I was inspired by Eric Clapton when he was in the Bluesbreakers

Eric played a line of thirds that impressed me, and I thought Id take it and develop it

in some way.19 Even the mega-heroes have heroes of their own. Hendrixs were John

Lee Hooker and Albert King.20 Most famous is Eric Claptons idolization of Robert

Johnson.

What Johnson represented to art school students like Claptonwas, to start, a matter of music: a com-

plexity of affect conveyed by guttural vocals, kinetic countermelodies, and a rhythmic attack so relent-

lessly choppy that, on a recording like Walkin Blues, the singer and his guitar achieve a feeling of

raw urgency rarely matched by later bands playing with amplified instruments. A model of impassioned

artistry, a song like Walkin Blues was also a perfect expression of (among other sentiments) unrequited

love; desolation and abandonment; and the untrammeled freedom of a young man unafraid to leave his

lonesome home. For a generation bored by the complacency and comfort of middle-class life, Johnsons

songs held out the image of another worldone that was liberated; fearful; thrilling.21

Claptons and others reverence for Johnson is not only based on his talent as a writer

and performer. The legend of how he acquired his guitar virtuosity influenced his at-

traction. Briefly, the story recounts how a mediocre guitarist goes to the crossroads

and sells his soul to the devil in return for otherworldly guitar skills. The significance

of the tale is that it shows that the talent to play brilliantly is not the result of those

18 Deena Dasein, Yngwie Malmsteen: Still Mixing Fire and Ice, C.A.M.M. 3 (April 1992), p. 9.19 Andy Ellis, Jumping at Shadows, Guitar Player 34 (November 2000), p. 86.20 Sheila Whiteley, Progressive Rock and Psychedelic Coding in the Work of Jimi Hendrix, Popular

Music 9 (1990), p. 40.21 Miller, Flowers in the Dustbin, p. 190.


148 Deena Weinstein

three tried and true methods: practice, practice, and practice. The myths relationship

to truth, however, is questionable. It seems that the original tale was not about Robert

Johnson; it concerned Tommy Johnson, an unrelated friend. Catherine Yronwode con-

tends that it was Robert Palmer who bears the responsibility for transferring Tommy

Johnsons crossroads story to Robert Johnson, probably because Robert Johnson was

so much better known and Palmer thought it made a better story. Yronwode, an expert

on crossroads mythologies, states:

Unfortunately, Palmer and the other European-American writers who propagated his fictional story were

unfamiliar with the teacher at the crossroads and they conflated Tommy Johnsons big black man with

Goethes Mephistopheles in Faust, and then painted false spooky images of those who received the

gift of learning. In particular, they took their cue from Faust to cast Robert Johnson into the role of a

tormented and tortured soul doomed to suffer the wrath of God. Needless to say, Palmers take on the

black man at the crossroads does not accord with oral histories collected in the South in the 1930s, the

time in which Robert and Tommy Johnson were friends.22

In the African-American folk tales, the gods of the crossroads were benefactors, providing

gifts and strength to those whom they favored, not devilish seducers. The Eurocentric

recasting of the legend, of course, fit right into the nineteenth-century romantic ideol-

ogy that defines the rock guitarist.

Technological Prowess and Instrumental Symbolism

Lead guitarists heroes are, as they readily admit, their influences. And they also influence

their choice of guitar brand. In his study of New York bands, Gay concludes: Guitarists

who claim musical allegiance to Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix, for example, view the

use of a Fender Stratocaster with a Marshall amp as the eleventh commandment from

God.23 Interviews and profiles of guitar greats always include that key factoidtheir

guitar type. For example, an interview with the former Guns N Roses guitarist reports,

Slashs ears eventually led him to the rig that emulated the sound of his heroes: a Les

Paul and a Marshall.24

Guitar gods are not only players; they also serve to merchandize equipment, whether

or not they are paid shills. They are the link between the product and the manufactur-

ers profit. The sales of guitars far outrun the sales of other rock instruments. Acolytes

worship a specific god and genuflect to him by buying the same equipment, or their

signature model. But neophytes are also anxious to learn about the entire apparatus. The

guitar-focused media oblige. Consider, for example, what Slash says in an interview:

22 Catherine Yronwode, The Crossroads in Hoodoo Magic and the Ritual of Selling Yourself to the

Devil, (1995), http://www.luckymojo.com/crossroads.html. 23 Leslie C. Gay Jr., Acting up, Talking Tech: New York Rock Musicians and Their Metaphors of

Technology, Ethnomusicology 42 (1998), p. 86. 24 Lisa Sharken, Slash & Burn, Guitar Player 34 (2000), p. 72.



I used my Slash Marshall head and one 4x12 cabinetthe same rig I always play through. I use two

heads onstage and two 4x12s to switch from clean to dirty sounds, but only one half-stack is used at a

time. The head for the clean sound is set up with Groove Tubes KT88s, and the settings are: Presence 0,

Bass 9, Middle 3, Treble 5, Output Master 10, Lead Master 0, and Input Gain 4.25

Fussing with equipment to create their individualized sound is a key requirement of

the lead guitarists role. Millard goes so far as to state that the guitar innovations of the

1960s changed musical practice from production to consumption, that choosing the right

piece of sound had become as important as creating it.26 The photographer mentioned

above told me that the crucial element in his images of guitarists was providing enough

clarity in the picture to show the position of the knobs. He also mentioned the numerous

letters received by a magazine when he did a photo shoot in which he asked the player

simply to grab his instrument. The problem was that the player literally did so, putting

his hand on the neck merely to hold it. The letter writers wanted to know if he invented

a new chord.

The instruments looks, not merely their sound, is also a crucial issue. Gorgeous

well-polished woods or bright metallic colors borrowed from hot-rod cars, some in

garish patterns, are staples for bringing out the dramatic dimension of the guitarists

performance. For blues-rockers, like Rory Gallagher and Stevie Ray Vaughn, a well-

worn look is preferred.

Post-sixties guitar mediathe innumerable books, magazines, and websitesprovide

enthusiasts with aesthetic guidance. They indicate who deserves to be in the pantheon

and what is worthy to emulate, with features like 100 Greatest Guitarists, 10 Famous

Guitar Intros, 100 Greatest Solos of All Time, Best Solo of the Millennium, Top

100 Guitar Solos of All-Time, and The 50 Heaviest Riffs of All Time. Despite all

this encouragement to imitate, young guitarists are exhorted to do their own thing, to

be romantic individualists. Follow the music that you love, and work on what comes

natural to you. Dont try to shadow anybody elses style or jump on whats trendy,

Slash advises.27

The guitar has become more than a sound-producing instrument. It is the icon of rock,

incorporated into the brand logos of rock museums, cafes, and musical equipment stores.

The whole guitar-destruction routine pioneered by Townshend and Hendrix underscores

the more-than-instrumental value of the instrument.

Cultural totem, phallic symbol, protest sign, hot rodthe guitar has always been rocks central figure.

Like the Old Testament sacrifice of the slaughtered lamb, smashing a guitar is really an act of faith and

loveor at least a crime of passion. Far from killing the instruments honor, smashing adds to its glory

and instills a layer of political and cultural meaning to the act of playing.28

25 Ibid.26 Millard, Conclusion, The Electric Guitar, p. 213.27 Sharken, Slash & Burn, p. 72. 28 James Rotondi, Is Rock Guitar Dead...or Does it Just Smell Funny? Guitar Player 31 (September

1997).


150 Deena Weinstein

In all the world religions, creation and destruction are paired in a deity.

Just as would-be guitar gods are obsessive about their heroes and their guitars, suc-

cessful lead guitarists make a fetish of their instruments. Even though they are faithful

to one particular instrument, once they have money, they tend to buy many others, typi-

cally vintage models. Oh, I have about 50 guitars, Peter Green tells a Guitar Player

interviewer. Im a collector of guitars. Nothing seems to stop me from buying.29 In

this respect, Green is typical. At auction and on Ebay, the price of collectible guitars

is steep and getting higher. The preference for older models goes beyond fetishism and

investment. During the 1960s, major guitar companies were bought up by conglomer-

ates. Fender, for example, was taken over by CBS. Many have argued that the buy-outs

lowered the quality of the guitars. Control by conglomerates also severely reduced the

innovation of the companies and eventually gave rise to custom shops.

Another seemingly irrational practice of guitarists of all stripes is their tendency

to have a guitar constantly in their hands. Hanging with friends, family, fans, or band

mates, watching TV alone or seated on a moving tour-busthey are absentmindedly and

silently fingering their instrument. This behavior can be read as neurotic or masturba-

tory, but it has the practical effect of keeping fingers and hands limber and imprinting

chords and runs into the nervous system. Even when they are not holding it, most lead

guitarists want to have their guitar at the ready everywhere, including, they readily admit,

at their bedsides, at home, or on the road. Here again, an appeal to neurosis is possible,

but there is also a practical explanation. The lead guitarist is enjoined, is required by

the romantic ideology, to write his own music. That same ideology deems the creation

of music to be an inspiration, not some common task that one can plan to accomplish.

It is the antithesis of those 9 to 5 cubicle workers at the Brill Building in New York in

the 1950s, churning out pop songs day in and day out. Under the sign of romanticism,

inspiration comes at its own whim.

Malmsteen states: As a composer, Im extremely spontaneous, a very spur of the

moment kind of guy, like anywhere, any time I pick a guitar up and compose. My guitar

solos that I do each and every night on stage are never the same night to night, so as a

performer Im composing every night.30 Moreover, writing music for the rock guitar is

unlike writing classical music. Rock does not rely on the musical notation system, not

only because many self-taught musicians cannot read music. Even with the introduction

of tablature notation, the full sound (bending the strings, use of distortion pedals, etc.)

cannot be readily captured on paper. Creation of the text is done on an instrument and

then recorded, rather than first being notated on paper. Classical music allows a deaf

Beethoven to create a magnificent symphony; there are no deaf rock composers.

29 Ellis, Jumping at Shadows, p. 86.30 Dasein, Yngwie Malmsteen, p. 8.



Masculinity

Where are all the guitar goddesses, the guitar heroines, the guitar virtuosas? Just think

about it: how many women have actually been innovative, technically accomplished

lead guitarists? John Strohm asks. None! There arent any.31 The pantheon of rock

guitar greats is a male club with a no-girls-allowed sign prominently displayed. It isnt

that women cannot play. But you can count the number of good female lead guitarists

on your fingers and have enough left to play an E7th chord: Hearts Nancy Wilson,

Nashville Pussys Ruyter Suys, and only a few others. It is almost like that awful joke

about female preachers being like talking dogs: it isnt that they do it well, but that they

do it at all. In the United States, according to Music Trades Magazine, women buy just

7 percent of all the electric guitars.32

Why are lead guitarists almost exclusively men? The masculinity built into that role

has several explanations. At the most basic level, it is because rock itself is masculinist.

Coates notes that rock was metonymic for authenticity and pop for artifice, authentic

rock became masculine and artificial pop became feminine. In the gender hierarchy of

rock culture, the masculine represented higher status and values and thus reinforced

traditional gender hegemony.33

Clawson analyzed the makeup of the bands appearing in Rolling Stones Top 100

Albums from 1967-1987. Only 6.6 percent of bands had female instrumentalists of

any type. Clawson accounts for the paucity of women instrumentalists in rock bands

by noting that [t]he band is the elemental unit in rock as an ensemble music. It is the

critical institutional locus of learning and initiation; and significantly, the early band is,

both socially and culturally, a formation of masculine adolescence.34 She found that

in her sample of Boston bands, women first began to play a rock instrument at age 19,

males at age 13.35

A complex of explanations for the masculinism in the lead guitarists role relates

directly to the electric guitar itself and its place in the band. The instrument is seen to

embody masculine traits. John Strohm, for example, states: The amplified electric guitar

was perceived as an instrument of great power, and this was the main reason that its play-

ing in public was restricted to males. Electric guitars were seen as a mans preserve.36

The term lead guitar aptly describes this position, because it is the dominant role in

the band. Western society may not be as patriarchal as it once was, but dominating roles

are still seen to be the province of men. Women are the support players in life I think

31 John Strohm, Women Guitarists: Gender Issues in Alternative Rock, The Electric Guitar, p. 182. 32 David Segal, The Great Divide: Fretting Over the Lack of Guitar Divas, Chicago Tribune (Sep-

tember 15, 2004), p. 7.33 Norma Coates, (R)evolution now? Rock and the Political Potential of Gender, Sexing the Groove:

Popular Music and Gender, ed. Sheila Whiteley (London, 2000), p. 52. 34 Mary Ann Clawson, Masculinity and Skill Acquisition in the Adolescent Rock Band, Popular

Music 18 (1999), p. 103.35 Ibid., p. 106.36 Strohm, Women Guitarists: Gender Issues in Alternative Rock, p. 186.


152 Deena Weinstein

we nurture, we support, Hearts Nancy Wilson says. I really get off on playing lead,

but that feels more like an ego pose to me.37 The Great Kat, one of the few women

who have attempted to perform as a guitar god, shows how deeply gender difference is

embedded in the myth and role, even when it appears to be subverted. The speed-metal

guitarist (ne Katherine Thomas, a Julliard-trained classical violinist) has been profiled

in People magazine38 and has released several indie-label albums. A gifted player, her

stage show

is based on the conceit that she is the reincarnation of Beethoven, and that Ludwignot Claptonis

God. With cursing tantrums and demands for adoration she played a game with her mostly male audience,

slandering their masculinity and abusing them verbally. She found eager takers for symbolic humiliation

on stage. Her gig was a mild and inexpensive form of hiring a dominatrix.39

The guitar is also seen as a phallic symbol. Segal states: The paradigmatic rock pose

belongs to Chuck Berry: legs apart, instrument pointed straight at the crowd. Symbols

dont get more phallic.40 Some models of the guitar are more masculine than others.

Andr Millard contends that the Flying V is understood to be the ultimate expression

of the electric guitars phallic imagery.41 In a discussion of guitar heroes, Millard and

McSwain state: In the world of rock n roll the guitar was an inescapable symbol of

masculinity, and the dynamics of the performance were filled with sexually significant

actions and meanings.42 Hendrixs performance emphasized sexual symbolism, espe-

cially his physical interaction with his guitar rubbing it against his crotch, bumping and

grinding on it.43 Feminist theorist Camille Paglia proffers a psychological explanation

for the guitarists masculine mystique:

For an adolescent boy, your guitar speaks for you, it says what you cant say in real life, its the pain

you cant express, its rage, hormones pumping. Women can be strangers and all of a sudden have an

intimate conversation. Boys cant do that. The guitar for a boy speaks to an aggressive sexual impulse

and suppressed emotionality, the things that boys cant share, even with other members of the band. Its

a combination of rage and reserve and ego.44

Conclusion

In his critical study of the politics of the sixties, David Burner notes: A period with any

life and energy, of course, is going to breed conflicts, which in turn sharpen and further

invigorate ideas.45 As a time of significant social and cultural change, the sixties were

37 Segal, The Great Divide, p.7.38 The Great Kat, Who Dumped Mozart for Metal Mania, People 29 (April 4, 1988).39 Deena Dasein, Great Kat at the Avalon, C.A.M.M. 3 (July 15, 1992), p .8.40 Segal, The Great Divide, p. 7.41 Millard, Playing with Power, The Electric Guitar, p. 127.42 Millard with Rebecca McSwain, The Guitar Hero, The Electric Guitar, p. 157.43 Millard, Playing with Power, The Electric Guitar, p. 160. 44 Segal, The Great Divide, p. 7.45 David Burner, Making Peace with the 60s (Princeton, 1996), p. 75.



rife with conflict within and between multifarious tendencies, not only political, none of

which achieved hegemony and the complex of which never attained reconciliation and

synthesis. A familiar received narrative of the sixties presents it as a cultural formation

dominated by political progressivism, protest against the establishment and valorization

of participatory democracy, social justice, personal authenticity, communalism, pursuit

of ecstatic experience, and a return to simplicityall of which coexist in relative tension

under the sign of romanticism.

The figure of the guitar god shares in some of those themes, especially the value

placed on authenticity and ecstatic experience, but it contests some of the others, pos-

ing hero-worship against democracy, individualism against communalism, and techno-

logical dependency against simplicity. The pursuit of personal authenticity and ecstatic

experience mark the guitar god as clearly within the romantic paradigm adumbrated in

the received narrative, but the other elements lead in a different, still romantic, direc-

tion that resonates with major tendencies in the sixties beyond political progressivism

and the counter-culture. Although political progressivism, egalitarianism, movements

advancing the causes of marginalized groups, and a participatory and communal ethos

were undeniably integral to the sixties, so was hero-worshiping. Just to name a few

larger-than-life figures that paraded across the mediascape, consider, for example, JFK,

Martin Luther King, Jr., Muhammad Ali, Bobby Fisher, and the Beatles.

Although the idea of going back to nature surely played a role in sixties culture,

it is arguable that a fascination with technology was the dominant tendency throughout

the decadethe birth-control pill that sparked the sexual revolution, the hegemony

of television and the image culture, the man on the moon, and, of course, the counter-

cultures conscious-expanding drugs. Equality and the assertion of previously mar-

ginalized groups were certainly popular ideals in the sixties, but patriarchal attitudes

were entrenched in mainstream and counterculture alike during the decade; feminism

only came into its own in the 1970s. The figure of the guitar god weaves its various

components into a distinctive strand of romanticism that combines personal authentic-

ity and emotional sublimity and expressiveness with hero-worship, bringing forward

the nineteenth-century figure of the virtuoso and the embrace of industrial technology,

continuing the early twentieth-century futurist ideal of the fusion of man and machine,

with an accent on the first term.

Since the emergence of the guitar god as an avatar of the sixties, that figure has been

challenged in music by the far more democratic ideals of punk rock, yet its corethe

marriage of flesh and technology in a personalized synthesishas arguably become a

dominant cultural tendency. And the sixties guitar gods still haunt contemporary culture,

as ghosts, as their acolytes, and for a few, as their aging selves. Websites devoted to

the gods proliferate, magazines publish lists of the greatest virtuosi, air guitar contests

abound, and a best-selling video game is Guitar Hero.


154 Deena Weinstein

In part, of course, guitar gods are an object of nostalgia. But they are more than

that. In postmodern culture, nothing is erased and everything is archived, waiting to be

called forth from the standing reserve of signifiers. There will probablyif history

is not entirely deadbe another wave of romanticism and, when that happens, another

incarnation of the heroic virtuoso will make an appearance. The term god or hero

is an artifact of ideology, and yet it is not inappropriate to characterize a figure who,

through material and ideational culture, has become a metonym for an entire form of

music that is itself a metonym for an era.

Anschrift der Autorin: DePaul University, Department of Sociology, 990 West Fullerton Avenue, Suite 1100, Chicago, IL 60614, USA


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Rock’s Guitar Gods – Avatars of the Sixties