"giving it a sound that was completely different from any other music." "What is it about the electric guitar that has made it the symbol ofan era?" "To understand why the auitar became... so much a symbol of a aeneration, you have to pick one up, hold it... plua it into a Marshall stack, and hit a chord." "Then you know." "When you're playina the auitar, it's an extension of your passions." "The fact that six strinas can be used in so many different ways." "It's an extension of myself." "It's part of me." "I think it's like tellina a story." "You've aot to have a punch line." "In some fashion... you wanted to communicate your feelinas to somebody." "You know, what you had to say." "You wanted to talk to somebody." "You didn't know how to do it, or somebodyjust wouldn't listen... until you had the guitar in your hand." "So what would rock 'n' roll be like without the electric auitar?" "Without the electric guitar, no rock 'n'roll." "No way." "It is the complete entity of music." "You can play the chord or the melody." "You can accompany yourself." "It's the perfect musical instrument." "I was tryina to teach this friend of mine how to do this." "He couldn't do it, so I said...." "Pardon the thina, but you have to say:" "Hey, motherfucker" "You're always cursina, you're always prayina... and you're always makina love." "It ain't "do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do."" "There are about 100 million musicians." "Most ofthem sounda lot alike." "But there's about 100... who immediately, from one note, you can tell who they are." "When you aet inside the note... you immediately put your finaerprints on it." "You're makina your own individual, unique statement." "Your soundreally comes from within." "The guitars and the amplifiers are an extension." "Ireally believe it's a God-given thing." "I don't think it's something you canjust chip, polish, and work on like that." "I think it's something that you're born with." "The concept ofa guitar hero..." "I think, relates to the concept of a Greek hero... or somebody who is somewhat superhuman." "A demiaod of some kind... who attains a certain place in the universe... and people look to him as somethina very special." "Everybody wants to be different." "So the guitar hero is, in some way..." "like the actor or the race-car driver.:" "somebody who's done something that nobody else can quite do." "When I was about 15 or 16 years old..." "I could turn on the radio and play alona with anythina I heard." "And I'm aoina, "Hey, I kind of know what I'm doina here, I auess."" "IrememberAlex used to go out on a date or something at 7.: 00." "I'dbe sitting thereplaying guitar on the edge ofmy bed... justjamming, learning stuff, doing my own stuff." "Eight hours later, he'd come strolling in." "I'd be sittina in the same place, still playina." "I don't how to explain, but the bua bit me, biatime." "I think when the Moors brouaht it over to Spain... this thina that's sort of shaped like a beautiful woman... the Spaniards knew a aood thina when they saw it." "It's just as sexy as hell." "I don't think there's anything else really like a guitar." "When llook at a shop window with guitars in it..." "I still feel the way that I used to when I was a kid... with his nose up against the glass." "It's just kind oflike walking into a candy store... and pickina." "The way the guitar smelled, a very specific smell." "It's like smellina... the smell of arass that you remember from when you were a kid." "It's that sort of thina." "It was very intense." "Ialways wanteda guitar, from as long as I can remember." "I remember seeina a picture in a maaazine and sayina to my dad, "I want that."" "I used toplay on tennis rackets andbits ofwood." "It's obsessive behavior ofthe very worst kind." "I aot my first electric auitar when I was 15, and that was it." "I was 9." "My parents aave me a auitar instead of a bicycle... and I was really pissed off because that's not what I wanted." "Eventually, lgot one when I was about 15... andl used toput it on the arm ofa chair, put my head on it, and fallasleep." "It's just really aone on from there." "I still fall asleep playina the auitar." "Ilove that idea ofthe relationship between the voice and the guitar." "It's also because the guitar can move." "You can move a guitar." "It's fluid." "It's not static, like a piano." "And you can bend it, like a voice." "You know, you can make it talk, in a way." "Some people hana them on their walls... or brina them out like a fine bottle of wine." "I love them as works of art, and I love the sound they make." "Mike Campbellandmyself really have never gotten over this disease." "We still scour the Recycler... to find vintaae auitars." "It's one of my...." "Iguess it's almost a vice now, because wejust love it." "Do you actually play all these?" "I play them and I cherish them." "This is at the top of the heap, riaht here." "There's no question about it." "Look at the flame on that one." "It's quite unbelievable." "This one is just perfect. 1959." " How much is it?" " Just listen for a minute." " The sustain, listen to it." " I'm not hearina anythina." "You would, thouah, if it were playina." "Now, this is special, too." "Look." "It's still aot the old taaaer on it, see?" "Never even played it." " You just bouaht it and" " Don't touch it." "I wasn't aonna touch it." "I was just pointina at it." " Don't point, even." " Don't even point?" " No." "It can't be played." "Never." " Can I look at it?" "No." "You've seen enouah of that one." "The electric guitar dates from the 1930s... when acoustic instruments were first wired for sound." "Soon, two inventors, Leo Fender and Les Paul... were experimenting with new types ofguitars... that could cleanly amplify a plucked string, even at a high volume." "To the big beat ofjump andblues bands... their electrifiedinstruments addedan equally big noise... that became synonymous with rock 'n'roll." "It was 1941." "Ihadbeen deep into experimenting... with semi-solid-bodiedguitars." "I finally said:" ""For once and for all, I'm aonna prove the point."" "Andl wouldproceed to build... this solidbody, which I calleda "log," an electric guitar." "The winas, I just hitched on here with this little bracket." "I put this thina toaether and went in there, and nobody noticed... that I was playing a solid-body guitar." "And they lovedit." "By 1950... the Gibson people said, "Les, can you come to Chicago?" ""We want to do something about this electric guitar."" "I didn't realize the electric auitar... was about to become a monster." "It's a weapon, really... above everythina else." "It was a weapon... which had a number of different values." "The loudness of it was very important." "The aun-like thina of it, the feelina of it, was very important." "I remember seeina Townshend playina... and doina these areat windmills and jumpina up in the air." "Rock 'n'roll is as physical as it is anything else." "So the idea ofjumping around, or rolling around... or whatever you want to do, set your guitar on fire... those are really all avenues to be explored." "The first time I saw the Stones play... we were behind the curtain at the St. Mary's Ballroom in Putney." "We'd warmed the audience up." "The Stones were about to ao on... andKeith Richards was limbering up." "He was getting down on his knees andgetting his bloodgoing." "One of the thinas that he did is he went like that with his arms." "And as he was doina that, the curtain opened... and he continued to do it as the curtain opened." "So, for about a year, I thought I wasjust copying my hero." "Literally, just copying." "Meanwhile, I then saw the Stones two or three times more... and Keith wasn't doina it." "I went up to him and said:" ""Do you mind that I copied..." ""your arm-swinaina technique?"" "He looked at me like I was a aerm... and I realized that he didn't remember doina it." "So lkept it in my act." "It was very much an act, but it didactually, in the end... become a part ofa guitar style which produceda sound that was unique." "It's like when you learn to talk... you imitate your parents." "That's what you do." "When you learn to play auitar, you start by imitatina other people." "I don't think there is another way." "Anythina you ever heard comes out in what you play." "So there's no way that it's actually yours." "You're just a sponae that sucks it up." "And you put out bits and don't even know how it aets there." "In the '50s, a generation ofyoung musicians... discovered the electric guitar." "Byplugging in andplaying blues and country licks... they createdrockabilly." "Country music was very simple." "It usually had three or four chords." "Elvis Presley walked riaht in and said:" ""Okay, I'm a country boy, but I want rock." "I want auys that play hard."" "So rockabilly... which was takina country music... and aivina it a very strona, very straiaht-ahead beat... ended up comina out like...." "The first time lactually heard Scotty Mooreplaying... was on the record Elvis recorded, Blue Moon of Kentucky." "And his sound was very unique at that time... because he was usina an echo amp." "That's how he actuallyperfected that sound.:" "playina the finaerstyle with a lot of reverb and usina the echo amp." "A auy like Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, or James Burton...." "That auy's a stone country auitar player, but he rocks it, man." "It's so solid." "Jimmy Burton was an absolute aroundbreaker as a player." "When I went to work with Ricky Nelson, we recordeda song calledHello Mary Lou." "I aet an awful lot of questions about that solo I played." "My style was created at a very early aae." "I'll demonstrate that with maybe a two-strina, chicken-pickina sound." "I don't consider it rockabilly." "I took country and rhythm and blues and mixed it toaether... and came out with more of a rock 'n' roll feel." "Then you aot a auy like Chuck Berry, who basically... droppedinto the scene, wrote 35 songs in four years, all classics... andinventeda style ofguitarplaying that, to this day... everybody sort ofhas topass through the Chuck Berryportal... to get to the next step." "Johnny B. Goode knocked me out." "It floored me." "That's when I knew what I wanted to do." "I learned to play auitar from those Chuck Berry records." " I wore a lot of those out." " A lot of people did." "It wasn't typicalr  b... but yet here was this different style ofguitar." "And Chuck played horn riffs on his auitar." "Those early auitar licks were nothina in the world but borrowed blues licks... that we just speeded up." "The thina that attracted me mainly to these early records... certainly the sort of... rock 'n' roll, and blues records of that '50s period... was the atmosphere that was on them." "And you could hear that there was so much uraency aoina on... and, certainly with the blues, this sort of raw emotion." "As soon as the electric auitar became a feasible instrument... and became affordable enouah... the blues auys latched on to it immediately... because then their partner... could now sina and speak... with the same power and the same strenath... that their own voice could." "Since most rock 'n'roll style... in terms ofthe guitar, has blues roots... that marriagejust keeps getting stronger and stronger." "You don't have the giant chord structures to work with... andbuild these architecturalmusicpieces." "You have a 12-bar, three chord chanae." "That doesn't aive you much to hide behind." "I mean, you have to put your heart riaht up front... or you don't have anythina but three little chords." "So you start realizina how subtly aenius... these old players really were." "The blues is sort oflike Southern cooking." "It may not have all ofthe ingredients thatjazz wouldhave... that rock 'n'roll wouldhave." "You only have the three chord chanaes." "So you aot to be a very aood chef... to put each one of those in the riaht place." "T-Bone Walker was the first guy... that I ever sawplay the guitar." "The guitar seemed to sing with him... and I heard thinas like this...." "This guy couldjump up and do a split, one leg this way, the other back there... and still have the auitar up there." "I never did try that, but I did put the auitar up there." "But tryina that split, I didn't make it." "I was so crazy about it." "That's the way lam with the guitar." "When they startplaying the notes, andl try toplay them and can't, lgo.:" ""It probably wouldn't sound riaht for me, anyhow."" "So I ao the economy way." "Try to make it sound like, you know...." "If I'm sinaina, I hear myself." "When I'm not sinaina, I'm playina." "I think that, hadit not been for the British rockers... and then startina here in the U.S... with the kids startina here, and a lot of the rock 'n' roll players here... that the blues player...." "We wouldn't have lasted." "We wouldn't have had anyplace to ao or play." "We were only tryina to mimic... what our American idols were doina." "In a way, we were sellina it back to them." "Ifyou look at what blues music has been responsible for... the Stones and the Yardbirds...." "They were all really heavily influenced." "The Yardbirds, a British bandpopular in the '60s... introduced three legendary guitarists.:" "Eric Clapton..." "Jimmy Page... and JeffBeck." "I have done other music, after the Yardbirds." "Anyway, somebody told me I should be proud toniaht." "But I'm not, because they kicked me out." "They did." "Fuck them." "But the fact that there was this reputation with the Yardbirds...." "There'dbeen Eric with the Cream... and Jeffwas out andabout as well... and myself." "All Yardbirds auitarists." "It was quite a keen importance put on this unit." "Audiences were really looking out... to see what I was going to do with the Yardbirds." "There were many areas within it of what we used to call "free-form"... which was improvisation." "And I aot quite a nice little... sort of portfolio of riffs and thinas." "With Dazed and Confused, every night, it was different." "Obviously, there's the verses and certain links which are the same." "But it would be really different from the beainnina of the tour to the end... because it was a whole area for improvisation." "So this is how you aet the interplay between myself and Robert." "Curiously enough, the bow came to be, "Here we go back to the session days."" "But it was DavidMcCallum 's father...." "You know, The Man From U.N.C.L.E." "His father was a stringplayer." "He said, "Have you ever tried playing guitar with a bow?"" "Andl said, "No." "I don't know whether it would even work."" "He said, "You should try it." And then when I did..." "Io and behold, it became quite a feature." "The way that I was playing it... was sort ofakin to modern classical composers, like Paderewski." "But aaain, I was pushina it every niaht... to try and come up with somethina that I hadn't played the niaht before." "Now all these guitarplayers were inventing styles." "You listen to a Jimmy Page solo, you listen to Eric Clapton... you know who these people are, because they have invented a template... within which they work, and you know who that person is." "When I first heard Eric Clapton, I was shocked." "He was so aood, so youna." "Everyone was following Eric Clapton, which bandhe was in at the time." "Everyone played a Les Paul, looked like Eric, and wanted to play like Eric." "I tried very hard to soundlike Clapton." "He was my main inspiration on guitar." "For some reason, Clapton was the only one that touched me... the auy that made me want to play." "I used to think I couldmake any kind ofmusic... but the guitarplaying wouldalways be blues." "Andifl took a solo..." "I would always make sure that I could find some place... to put the blues in... so that I knew, even if nobody else did... that I always still had one foot on the path." "Pete Townshend called up Eric Clapton... and they'dnever spoken to each other before." "Pete said to Eric, "I want you to ao to the movies with me."" "And Eric went, "What?" "Okay."" "And they sat in the darkness of a movie theater." "Townshend told Clapton, "I've just seen this auy..." ""who's aonna put us all out of work, man."" "Out of the blue comes Jimi Hendrix." "He'dkind ofcome out ofnothing." "He just appeared." "Who is this?" "It was like hearina somebody from Mars playina the blues." "He was just a fantastic beina." "He was, like, from space." "What he actually did... was he did thinas which were actually maaical... and yet accompanied by these incredibly wild noises." "There was some kind of stranae alchemy aoina on." "He was an alchemist." "He not onlyplayed the guitar... heplayedat the guitar, heplayed on the guitar, heplayed with the guitar." "I mean, he approached it from every possible vector... that anybody could." "He took a lot ofthat andmade it into something... by demonstrating that there was actually such a thing... as physicalpoetry in rock." "Somethina that was very close to ballet." "Jimi couldn't help bejamming everywhere." "He'dgo everywhere with his guitar." "I mean, the auy lived with his auitar." "He slept with his auitar." "For me, it was an act, and for him it was an extension of what he was doina." "JimiHendrix hada beautifulharmonic, like an aurora borealis." "He wouldhit a note, and that note would beget another note andanother note." "He was a master sculptor of sound." "He did so much in three years ofplaying... ifnot four or so... that he influenced every aeneration beyond that time... in terms ofguitarplayers." "Thank you." "There's no doubt that the movina of a drivina beat... is somethina that's very sexual." "And because the electric auitar became the symbol of that music... there was a strona connection... between the body rhythm and the electric auitar." "I tend to think of the auitar as the instrument of rock 'n' roll... because it's an extension of what you've aot between your leas." "People thought I was weird because I would stay home on weekends... on Friday and Saturday night, playing my guitar." "But when I aot aood at playina auitar, boy, I aot all the pussy I wanted." "I think ifyou're looking for an example... ofthis sexualbeingplaying a guitar... the first guy that comes to mindis Slash, the guitarplayer for Guns N'Roses." "Everything that comes from him comes from his guitar." "He looks at it kind oflike a part ofhis own body." "Often, a musician can do to a woman what a lover cannot do to her." "I'm flattered that you're here after the gig, and you're knocking on my door... and you're beautiful, and all that." "But, at the same time, I cannot do to you... what my music does to your soul." "There's somethina romantic about that." "That's part of the romantic process." "Your auitar reflects that." "We were talking about Pete Townshend, and JimiHendrix... how they lookedat their instruments." "Ifyou're willing to destroy something that's such a part ofyou... that speaks volumes about yourpersonality." "Who saidlbroke beautifulguitars?" "Who said they were expensive?" "Who saidlreally broke them?" "What do you know?" "What's it aot to do with you?" "My fuckina auitar." "It's the brute force ofelectric guitar." "That E chord on an electric auitar, it's just briaht red." "Ijust always have this thing about notes, that they're really expensive... and that you shouldn't spend them, unless you really have to." "Ifyou have a great guitar anda great amplifier..." "I believe you can conquer the world." "Anybody seizes a Fender Stratocaster or an electric guitar... that's the symbol offreedom, choice... a whole generation ofa country that allowedpeople to have free thought." "It's an incredible instrument." "It's an incredible symbol." "In 1994, three generations ofelectric guitarplayers... gatheredat the House ofBlues to honor Les Paul... and to celebrate the instrument that he helped create." "A guitar is like an old friend." "It has been, many times, like the only friend... that was really there for me and there with me." "This is art." "This is not somethina that anybody can do." "Go ahead." "Anybody in this room, pick it up." "Imean, it's not easy." "This guitar here is such a pal." "It's a psychiatrist." "It's a doggone bartender." "It's a housewife." "This guy is everything." "Whenever I find that Igot a problem or something..." "I'llgopick my guitar up andplay it." "It's the greatestpalin the whole world." "Subtitles conformed by SOFTITLER" "Enalish" "The music in the '70s was more interestina than the music today." "The decline of the Roman Empire is what happened in the '70s, I think." "The '70s had a lot of aood stuff." "Every decade has aood stuff." "There were a lot of aood contributions that were made... and there was a lot of crap, too." "There's an awful lot of disco crap... and other stuff, as there has always been." "But now, I look back at the '70s... and I find thinas that were really very aood." "The areat stuff from The Eaales." " ZZ Top." " Stevie Wonder." " Fleetwood Mac." " Frank Zappa." " Sly and the Family Stone." " Little Feat." " Bob Marley." " Lynyrd Skynyrd." " Roxy Music." " Rod Stewart." " Led Zeppelin." " Marvin Gaye." " Aerosmith." " Bob Seaer." "Elton John." "I started in the '70s, for Christ's sake." "What a healthy time it was for music." "There was this huae circle, 360 dearees... each dearee beina a different musical cateaory." "Wonderful." "And it just aot to be more music." "Used to be, you had to bepretty big to make an album." "But suddenly, there were albums by people I had never heard of." "Ireally believe that in the '70s, there was a great combination offashion... artistic sense, sona writina." "It was an incredible time." "Musically, itjust seems like in the '70s... everythina was an excuse for a party." "We're just havina a party." "It was okay to have a lot of money." "It was okay to flaunt it." "Everybody had an airplane." "Beautiful women, any time you wanted them." "Then came the cocaine." "Then came the booze." " Jack Daniel's." " Coanac." "Budweiser." "Don't drink anythina you can't see throuah." "Nobody knew that everything was bad for you yet." "Or that that could cause you to crash your car... or you're aoina to have to ao to rehab for that one." "It was a areat time to be alive." "The '70s was the time when music blossomed." "So many different styles and so many ideas." "The artist had developed the ability to create an income... to allow him some freedom." "It was definitely a fun time." "Lots of the bands that I was involved with:" "Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers... used that time to experiment." "There were so many different aspects to music... what was beina appreciated, what was actually beina... invested in by record companies." "The one good thing about the '70s, I would write 10 new songs... record them, aive them to a record company, and they'd say, "It's areat."" "No politics or anythina." "And if it did well, which they did, most of them... it would be up in the charts, and there would be no political...." "You know, "We don't hear a sinale."" "That sort of thina, which they do now a lot, to lots of people." "A band like Steely Dan probably would have...." "We couldn't aet arrested now." "Because it's, "What format are you in?"" ""Are you AC, are you AOR, are you CHR, are you fbi?"" ""I don't know."" "The music ofthe '70s was very unique... because it was reaching for origination." "In other words, you didn't have to...." "There was no aroups of artists copyina each other." "Everybody was reaching for their own originality." "And so I found that very interesting andall." "Andalso, the standards hadnot been set." "There were new standards, so everyone was going for new things." "There hadbeen enough time in the rock 'n'roll timeline... to be able to draw from that." "There hadbeen enough rock 'n'roll, the three-chordguys." "There was the rhythm andblues, and the blues ofthe '40s and '50s." "There was thejazz era." "There hadbeen enough rockabilly, enough country music." "You have the wellsprina, you can draw from a lot of different thinas." "A lot of the bands in the '70s did that." "I'd like to introduce Led Zeppelin to you." "On bass auitar, John Paul Jones." "On drums, John Bonham." "Lead auitar, Jimmy Paae." "And myself, Robert Plant." "I think one ofthe most exciting things about the music ofthe '70s... was it was a hybrid ofwhat came before it... but it stakedits own territory." "What Cream was doing, what Zeppelin was doing... was taking blues andpumping it up on steroids... and doina somethina that chanaed the nature of the beast." "See, the miracle about Zeppelin is that for fourpeople... to come toaether like that... and this alchemy that actually occurred there... it was just somethina that had...." "It was somethina that was, you know, written in the stars." "That it had to be." "Chemistry is another one of Paae's... sort of, philosophical overview terms." "I auess it was just luck... and the fact is that it worked really well." "Whatever it was, it was pretty honest, a little devious... and certainly not adverse... to a little bit of thievery, musically." "However, we're not the first people to have done that." "My vocalperformance comes from everywhere... whatever llistened to, that llike.:" "Ray Charles'howl on Drown ln My Own Tears... or Wynonie Harris or Louis Jordan." "There's loads and loads of stuff." "All that stuff, you throw it all in a blender... and throw the switch, and you've aot me." "I remember listenina to the first Zeppelin album, sayina it was like... such a areat...." "Like a breath of fresh air... for someone to be doina somethina acceptable, but yet so different, you know." "I haven't liked a sinale thina that they have done." "I hate the fact that I'm ever even sliahtly compared to them." "I never, ever liked them." "It's a problem for me,'cause as people, they are all really areat auys." "Just never liked the band." "I don't know whether I've just aot a block to them because they... became so much biaaer than The Who in so many ways... in their chosen field." "But I've never liked them." "The bands that were alternative then..." "like the JeffBeck Group and LedZeppelin... those were the alternative bands to the pop bands, like the Beatles... and the early Stones." "They were like the pop idols." "And then these bands that would come in and play the blues... and that kind of stuff, that was the underaround, rebellious music." "Now, you consider everyone's all jolly... and tiptoeing around, stoned on acid... having Woodstock, andaIllove, peace and sex and drugs androck 'n'roll... andall that's great, yeah." "But for us guys, who were living in this hole in the world... it wasn't that way." "And Tony Iommi said to me one day, "Wouldn't it be interesting..." ""toput this horror vibe to a musical thing?"" "And then we started to write "doomy music," we used to call it... or this death music, doom music." "I'llnever forget when Igot the first Black Sabbath album... andl took it home to myparents." "It starts with rain and thunder, and it's all this demonic devil stuff." "And I can see my mother and my father look at each other in amazement." "And they both simultaneously turn around to me and say:" ""Ozzy, are you sure you're just only drinkina the occasional beer here?"" "Ihate the word "heavy metal" because it's like...." "What musical connotations does it have?" "What's heavy metal?" "Lead?" "Where does the music come in there?" "It'dbe unfair to say that anybody who sings in the band... thinks that Led Zeppelin was ever hard rock or heavy metal... 'cause at least a third ofour music was acoustic." "To me, it's basically allrock 'n'roll." "Somepeopleplay a little faster, somepeopleplay a little slower... somepeopleplay it louder." "It's all basically really based on the blues." "Writing the blues, differentpeople write different ways." "But it's real easy to clutter up, especially when you're going for... a blues-type structure in the song." "If you want one cluttered up, send it to me." "I'll be alad to...." "It's difficult writing blues." "It would seem like it would be real simple, you know." "And you either aet it real trite... or it aets real conaested." "Our band started out, in a lot ofways... the way we evolved was instrumentally, with thejams." "We did a lot of jammina." "We would set up and we would play... and then we wouldlisten to Miles Davis, John Coltrane... and then the old blues cats, Robert Johnson, people like this." "There were a lot ofbands back in the early '70s... that didrelate to our music a lot." "Marshall Tucker, Charlie Daniels, Lynyrd Skynyrd... but nowadays it's not really fair to call the Allman Brothers... a southern rock band, you know." "Rock 'n' roll was pretty much born in the South." "So was the blues, a certain kind of blues, anyway." "And sayina "southern rock" is like sayina "rock rock."" "The rock 'n'roll white boys hadblues... which lnever wouldhave thought wouldbe happening." "So we had to find a new music." "And to me, the tempo of blues... riaht in the middle of rock 'n' roll, that midway point is funky music." "It was not fast, like rock 'n'roll... it was not all the way slow, like the blues... but it was basically the same three-chord changes." "We went back to James Brown, the two-four thing andjust a basic groove." "You couldn't define exactly what it was, so we called it "funkadelic."" "Two-four is basic dance music." "James Brown taught us... the one was more emphasis put on it." "The one is like that." "You can hit it on this end early... you can hit it in the middle, which is what most people try to do... or you can hit it late, but it's still in that... time zone of the one." "We were like... the last second, you know, riaht behind the beat, but hard." "We didit to a point that it was cartoonish." "So we exaggerated, you know, tillit was animated... and then with the costumes and the spaceship... it knocked your head off." "You'd walk around flinchina to yourself." "In the '70s, George Clinton andParliament Funkadelic... and Earth, Wind  Fire were very serious about our music... and who we were trying to touch." "I think that's one reason why the music of the '70s has not died." "Because it has a rejuvenatina quality about it." "Bob Marley made a great contribution in presenting us with reggae music... and creating more universal acceptance ofit." "I think Bob Marley's messaae was a universal messaae... so therefore it would touch everybody." "There's nothina that he can't sina about in those sonas." "It's the freedom that I relate to." "He was one ofthose Stevie Wonder-types.:" "true to the middle ofthe road." "He didn't favor no sides of a thina." "It was just, people should be toaether no matter what." "What is your specialmessage?" "Show peace and love and music, you know." "And liberty." "Imet Bob quite a few times." "We used to joke a lot because every time I saw him... he'd always have a spliff with a bia old brown paper baa... and I'm like, "That paper baa would choke me to death."" "Never mind the weed, but that paper baa would hurt." ""He wanted everything at the same time..." ""and was everything at the same time.:" ""Prophet, soulrebel, rasta man, herbsman..." ""wildman, andnaturalmystic man..." ""ladies'man, islandman, family man..." ""Rita 's man, soccer man, showman..." ""shaman, human, Jamaican!"" "The '70s was a very significant time for black musicians... because a lot of thinas had been wrestled with, you know... and kind of settled in everybody's mind by that time... about havina the couraae to just ao straiaht ahead... with what your eneray's about, and ao for it." "To me, Sly was an intellectual version... ofjames Brown andMotown." "How in the hell can anybody aet soul music... to be that tiaht, until it's poppina... and still have as much soul as the old-fashioned blues sinaers?" "He's, by far, one ofthe most brilliant songwriters there ever was." "He was a genius." "To be able to conceive of all different types ofmusic... and to fuse it into one thing, and to set new standards at that time... because prior to Sly... black musicians didn't sell a lot of albums, mostly sold sinale records." "So when Sly came along, he kind ofbroke that chain." "There was a concert I went to that I'llnever forget." "It was a Sly and the Family Stone concert." "The whole place was rockina." "Stupidly rockina." "I always wanted to have my concert be like that." "I said, "Gosh, I'll know..." ""I will have really made it to the top when my concerts do that."" "Stevie Wonder, "Little 'Tevie."" "We've watched Stevie grow up, even before we got to Motown." "He was so frisky when he was little... and, you know, he used to alwaysjump when he was performing." "Doina like that, and we used to say, "Okay, Steve." "Keep it up." ""You better aet somewhere and sit your little butt down, okay?"" ""I ain't aonna do that." Stevie jumped one time, jumped riaht off the staae." ""Okay." "Didn't we tell you to aet somewhere and sit down?"" "The interestina thina about Stevie Wonder is he broke away from the Motown mold." "He matured to the point where he said to Berry Gordy:" ""I aot to do what I do." "I want to create my kind of music."" "Stevie Wonder, going back to Talkina Book... he was playing all the instruments himself andplaying synthesizer." "It was areat." "Stevie was recording like 150 to 200 songs during this period... andhe did four ofthe greatest albums he ever didin his life.:" "Innervisions, and all those areat thinas." "And he just fell in." "I remember there were these two synthesizer players..." "Bob Maraouleff and a friend of his... and they had this huae, monstrous array of synthesizers." "In old-fashioned days, you had toput in plugs... and they had cords like telephone operators had toplug in... and they called this thina TONTO." "That was the name of it." "And Stevie just did some of the most miraculous thinas... and from thereon, the synthesizer became another child... that was a part of the vocabulary." "In the '70s, the artist had the opportunity to take the time in the studio... to spend the time that he deemednecessary... to really do his or her art, whether it was self-indulgent or not." "With Steely Dan, it used to take me six weeks... just to find a comfortable chair at $300 an hour." "It was pretty silly." "The biaaest problem with recordina studios... is the surfeit of options." "There are far too many thinas." "Can ljust hear the new Mellotron sound, please?" "That wasn't really quite exaggerated enough." "There always is an oscillation ofattraction between... going the whole hog with studio technology... which always goes over the top at somepoint." "The music of the early '70s was actually fairly tedious... as a result of people suddenly becomina possessed by the idea... that they were symphonic composers." "What Eno andl found that was the most interesting aspect ofthe new music... that we were doina at that time was actually... workina with synthesizers, but throwina the manuals away." "So we had no idea how the damn thinas worked." "It was the mistakes they made that we found more interestina than the stuff...." "Because these thinas are proarammed by hi-tech buffs... who don't have any sensibility of what can be done musically." "So they put in the stuff that they believe... musicians would want to use." "That's the stuff you really don't want to hear... because it's like fake strinas and thinas like that." "If you aet the wrona circuits aoina, you aet crackles... and farts comina out of these thinas." "It produces the most extraordinary sounds... and different ranae of textures." "There is music that is sacred to us... and that's what's caused this attitude in the studio." "An album like Sergeant Pepper... everyone thinks they have a Seraeant Pepper in them somewhere." "But if there is a Seraeant Pepper ofthe '70s... you'dhave to say that Dark Side of the Moon was it." "We were thinkina in the '70s, as we do today, of makina areat records... which means an album to me." "I mean, sinales seem like part of a different business." "We allbelievedin, or were aiming for, the same thing... which is perfection." "Everypiece ofmusic being magical... and uplifting and wonderful... and the lyrics doing whateverparticularjob they were doing... to that same extent." "So we were working towards a common goal." " Can we run back and drop it a bit?" " You can if you like." "Turn it down a bit." "Dark Side of the Moon was done atAbbey Road Studios." "At somepoint during that, I don't remember exactly when it was..." "Roger came up with the idea ofmaking it a piece about madness... andall the other things that it's about." "I think that I tend to bring musicality... andmelodies andall that sort ofstuff." "Roger was certainly a very goodmotivator... and, obviously, a great lyricist." "Roger was much more ruthless about musicalideas... where he'dbe happy to lose something ifit was for the greater good... ofmaking the sense ofthe whole album work." "He'd be happy to make a lovely-soundina piece of music disappear... into radio sound or somethina... that sounded really awful, if it was benefitina the whole piece." "Can I put this down?" "He wanted to use the ideas from the songs to get responses... from people, and we wrote out a series ofquestions... andgotpeople into the studio, and we interviewed... roadies and Jerry, the Irish doorman atAbbey Road." "A question like.:" ""When did you last hit someone?"" "And then the next question wouldbe.:" ""Were you in the riaht and would you do it aaain if the same thina happened?"" "Questions like: "What does the dark side of the moon mean to you?"" "And, of course, understandina that Dark Side ofthe Moon... was not yet the title of the album." "Or not, in as far as anyone else was concerned." "They were actually askina people what does the other side of the moon mean?" "Which is why Jerry, the Irish doorman, said:" ""There is no dark side of the moon, really." "It's all dark."" "Stuff like that, which, when you put it into a context on the record... suddenly develops its own, much more powerful meanina." "For me, rock 'n'rolljust means that there aren't any rules." "It's just whatever you want to do, however you want to do it." "People say it sounds soprofessional and so slick." "I'dhave to argue that, even today, I wouldn't say that my technique... or some ofthe others' techniques wereparticularly in the brilliant area." "Ifyou talk about technique, we were really crap when we started." "We really werepretty chronic." "We didn't have any technique at all." "Like I say, it shouldbe anything you want it to be, rock 'n'roll." "If it's movina any people in any way at all, then it's doina its job." "In the '70s, I don't know if you can pinpoint what was happenina... but a lot of influences were comina toaether and becomina refined." "Anda lot ofthe groups, you would find, would spendmonths doing a record... which was, at that time, unusual." "And Queen certainly brought in, I think, unconscious influences." "We were allbrought up contrary to the waypeople are brought up today." "We were brought up with all this kind of... show-type music around us, and with a lot of classical music around us." "So when we found that we hadall these incredible tools in the studio to use... we used them to make something which was... parallel to an orchestral arranaement, I suppose." "Bohemian Rhapsody itself, Freddie wouldnormally come in with notepaper... andhe would write out the chords that he wanted to sing." "Freddie hada lot ofpages ofthese things... and we went, "This is aoina to be...." "Take some time."" "If we make these harmonies, then we aot...." "We had this technique, which we called "the sausage machine."" "We would sing a line, all together in unison... till you'd have three of those, and we'd bounce it to one track." "We'd then do the next part, three, bounce that to one track." "The next part, the next part." "There would be like three or six or nine parts sometimes... and so, by the time you've finished, you had a lot of voices sinaina those parts." "If the '70s represent somethina which became refined..." "I think the best of the '70s had the balance." "You hadgroups who were able to make, in recorded work... something different and special... but were really excellent atperforming on stage." "So the two skills becameparallel, but different." "And certainly, if there was a criticism, thatpeople weren't... putting as much raw energy in, I think you had to be there." "It wasn't really lacking ifyou were in Madison Square Garden... or the Forum at a Queen show, or an Aerosmith show... or, you know, a Zeppelin show." "For me, it was very aut-wrenchina." "When I walked on stage, I thought, "Well, tonight lhave this opportunity..." ""to maybe reach somebody the way that I felt like I was reached..." ""when I was 15."" "I stillget butterflies." "I don't needany laxatives, because before that intro music goes on..." "I'm on and off that can like a fiddler's elbow." "We had a mission." "Our mission was to ao out on staae... andmake sure that we made believers out ofeverybody." "You're on, auys." "Rock 'n' roll!" " It's aonna be areat." " No, that's not an exit." " We don't want an exit." " That's true." " Let's not lose it, now." " Where the fuck is he?" "You know, he should be here." "You ao riaht straiaht throuah this door here, down the hall, turn riaht...." "This way." "Hello, Cleveland!" "You definitely get a buzz being up there." "You can very much aet cauaht up in what you're doina, trip over everythina." "You aot to keep one eye open and one eye shut." "I always liked those people that looked a little aloof and floatina around... and for myself, lgot to dance around monitors and speakers and wires... and enough ofthe arguments with people to tape it down." "If they can't, they don't." "Better for me that I don't trip and fall over." "You never know what to expect." "The stranaest of thinas happen in the middle of a show, you know." "I'm out there on a cherrypicker... that huge, long arm which reaches out over the audience." "The times that thina...." "It took half an hour to aet it back aaain." "And one niaht it would just break down and it was just stuck out there." "I finished Space Oddity, and I put the phone down." "I just didn't know what to do, because I'm just still stuck out there." "The audience is down there, andall these hands are coming up." ""What do I do?" "Do I do the rest of the show out there?"" "That was the early days of rock theater, I auess." "I had so many of those dreadful escapades." "We were supposed to breathe fire, and I really wanted it to hit the ceilina." "The ceilina was 40 feet up in the air, but in my mind I could reach it." "So the fireball that came out of my mouth was too bia." "And on the very first show that we did on a bia staae... the riaht side of my face cauaht fire, the hair and everythina." "I later realized that if I didn't spray my hair with hairspray, it wouldn't catch fire." "Because the stuff says clearly, "flammable."" ""Gene Simmons, this means you."" "Somebody threw a chicken on staae." "This was in Toronto." "I'm from Detroit." "I've never been on a farm in my life." "I said, "A chicken." "It's aot winas." "It'll fly."" "I threw it back in the audience." "I thouaht it was aoina to fly away into the sunset." "It went riaht into the audience, and the audience tore it to pieces... and threw the parts back up on staae." "The next thina I knew, it was..." ""Alice Cooper bites head off chicken and drinks the blood..." ""and tears the face," and all this stuff." "That's what the papers said the next day." "I aot a call from Frank Zappa, and he says, "Did you do that?"" "I said, "No." He said, "Don't tell anybody that." "They love it."" "The beauty of the '70s was... there was no MTV." "Not sayina that MTV is not any aood." "But if you liked a band or an artist... you had to physically ao to the aia." "So there was more excitement." ""I am aoina to ao and see Led Zeppelin, or I'm aoina to see the Rollina Stones."" "We used to have incredible acts opening up for us." "There were bands that were great bands, you know." "And you gotta go and follow them." "When KISS opened for us... there were flames leaping out ofthe stage." "And there's us four aoina, "How can we ever top that?"" "KISS believed the show was the endallandbe all ofeverything." "It should be overkill." "You know, everythina, too much." "Overload of senses." "The makeup just evolved." "Gene was crazy about horror films." "Andhe came up with this demon persona." "And what made it believable was we were really KISS world." "They did that stuff, and the audience lovedit." "They ate it up." "It was big-time wrestling." "It's like, the spectacle." "We were, like, shakina our heads." "We're just tryina to play music." "And we were aoina, "What are we aoina to have to do now?"" "About a year and a half into our existence, we were playina stadiums." "It really exploded bia-time." "That's when the makeup... really seepedinto the American consciousness." "That's when we became trappeda bit by the makeup." "We couldn't go to restaurants." "Our heads were wanted." "Initially, it was excitina, and then it aot to be... a little bit, sort of, too much." "There were KISS movies... and thepinballmachines, and the garbagepails, and you name it." "They wanted merchandise, they wanted toys. "We'll aive you toys."" "This is KISS." "Each sold separately." "And you can put them in any crazypose you want." "They were the first bandi ever saw have dolls, have games... have all these side things on." "I mean, those auys took it to home." "I think rock 'n' roll for the lonaest time was borina... especially the American bands, who were fat and ualy... and didn't really care about their appearance." "In fact, I remember aoina to see a lot of the San Francisco bands... and they'd literally turn their backs to you and play like that." "I thouaht it was the biaaest insult." ""What am I buyina a ticket for?" ""I could stay at home and put on the record." ""Why are you turnina your back to me?"" "Everybody was a little bit tired of peace and love." "Everybody aot tired of this, and everybody aot tired of, "Yeah, man."" "Something needed to happen that was a backlash... to all thatplacid, laid-back thing... and we hit it with everythina." "I wouldlike to thinkAlice Cooper opened the doors to theatrics." "Our band drove the stake throuah the heart of the Love Generation." "We werejust a rock 'n'rollband with a lot ofgoodideas." "It hada little Vegas, a little Broadway, but it was really rock 'n'roll." "The average kid hadno idea what to think... because he'd come in, he'd see the show, andhe livedin Columbus, Ohio... and he'd walk out of there aoina, "What was that?"" "That was like a truck hit him." "I thouaht it was nuts." "I was just so blown away when he huna himself... and he also had some aood sonas." "I don't care about anybody else that pulled off the makeup, seedy trip." "Imean, he was, like, the first one." "He was rock history for having done it in the firstplace... andhe was the only one that ever has been able topullit off... and do it so it was really cool." "Iplayed thepart ofAlice." "I createdhim." "I don't know where he comes from, to be honest with you." "Iknow that if they say 20 minutes to stage time... everybody leaves, and then I turn into Alice." "After that, for the next hour and a half, nobody aets near me." "The older I aet, the more that I realize what kind of escapist attraction there is... to takina on the role of somebody else." "Because I've been throuah that." "Ilove theater." "I thought it was great." "I thought it was a way ofdoing something exciting with the stage androck." "The idea ofa prefabricatedrock star... one that didn't exist, a sampledrock star..." "I thouaht was kind of cool." "The time that lreallyput it all together, andreally tried to make it work... was on the first tour ofthis character calledZiggy Stardust that I'd developed." "The theater elements were... somewhere between Clockwork Oranae andkabuki theater." "Just, you know, arab this and arab that." "A real raabaa of information that didn't actually make any real literal sense." "In interviews and stuff, I would just either quote James Dean or Nietzsche." "It didn't really matter because all the inaredients that went into it... people would interpret that, and I'd aaree with them." "He represents it all to me:" "Excitement, space." "I'm just a space cadet." "He's the commander." "I thouaht, "Golly, what power."" "I let the whole thina trickle over into my life to such a dearee that... it affected me dramatically, traumatically, for quite a few years durina the '70s." "Yes, I have a kind of stranae... psychosomatic death-wish thina." "Because I was so lost in Ziggy... it resultedin schizophrenia." "How much did Ziaay's death have to do with his own personality... or with circumstances in which he existed?" "Yeah, really it was his own personality... beina unable to cope with the circumstances he found himself in... which is being an almighty, prophet-like, superstar rocker." "He found that he didn't know what to do with it once he got there." "It's an archetype, really." "The definitive rock 'n' roll star." "It often happens." "I don't think anybody can really prepare themselves... for fame on the level that we've had." "When you try to think about what it'llbe like to be famous... you can only comprehendit within the scope ofwhat you've experienced... or what you know to be out there." "It's so beyond that." "There's hot-and-cold-running women... drugs, alcohol, food, limousines, jets... and you very quickly beain to believe that that's the way to live." "We 'repamperedbeyondbelief as rock 'n'roll superstars." "I still like to aet pampered." "I'm not beina hypocritical... but not to the dearees that we prance around and we're very spoiled." "Althouah I never tie my own shoelace." "I mean, never." "It's just not the thina done in rock 'n' roll." "Ironically, you become a rock star... because you don't want to do whatpeople tell you to do." "It's the classic thina." "You want to rebel, to have control of your own life." "What happens is, if you aet famous, you lose that control aaain... because so many people are lookina for pieces of you." "You've suddenly, like, you aot friends you thouaht you'd never have." "Hi, fellas." "How you doina?" "A lot ofpeople show up... and you have to kind ofsort out why they're showing up." "Yes, Bobbie Fleckman." "You know, like suckerfish, thosepeople on the sidelines." "Lawyers, managers... everybody's startina to call you, "Hey, babe."" "Everybody wants to start advising you on what to do... andlget confused, you know." "This is it." "I aot it." "I fuckina have it." "'Cause it plays off that." "There was this author a few years aao...." "I couldn't work out how thesepeople had thosejobs, andhow they retained them." "Because such an awful amount of them seemed to be such complete dickheads." "Artie Fufkin, Polymer Records." "I'm your promo man here in Chicaao." "Nice to meet you." "I love you auys." "When you're allowed the self-indulgence ofbeing anybody you want to be... andhaving somebody tell you that that's okay... it's very friahtenina." "And in a lot of ways, your art will suffer." "I think the '70s was the time... when that danger became most apparent... because that's really when everybody startedmaking a lot ofmoney." "When you have money, it buys you influence." "When you have influence, it buys you power." "Well, fame in the '70s... it equals power." "And then you have the power to aet what you want." "So we usedit toparty." "You know, we were the Toxic Twins." "And we had to live by night, andnot by day." "And we slept all day." "And that was marvelous, andit was fun." "When I aot sober, I'd aet pissed off that I didn't make love to all these women." "I was in the bathroom... with this auy and that auy, and this airl and that airl... just fillina my nose and fillina my arms." "I really didn't aet a chance to revel in it." "Remember this?" "The torture of fame and success and lots and lots of money... is not a subject that's auaranteed to win a lot of sympathy with other people." "It was fun for a lona time because it was just me and the boys... and our jet, you know." "I mean, how cool could that be?" "Ifyou are a millionaire at 20 years old, and you're unattached... you don't have any responsibility, except to have as much fun as you can." "At least that was the idea in the '70s." "There's more of a social conscience now than there was then." "At that time, it was just:" "Have fun." "It can be a veryprivileged existence." "I don't mean in terms ofmoney, but in reallife." "What you aet to spend your time doina." "I live a very privileaed life." "I have always thouaht it was my responsibility to talk about..." "life as it is for everybody." "If I want to write sonas that everybody can understand... then I can't be writina sonas about..." "Iivina behind a wall in Bel Air." "In my music, I use a personalnarrative to talk about things... that, in finalanalysis, are more or less universal." "Iflam doing it right, then they're not just about my life, but about your life, too." "It was put in my mind very early on... that you should discover yourself, find what it is andbring it out... and that's whatpeople willbe interestedin." "What you have inside." "What you have to say." "For me, writina sonas is like collectina or harvestina the residue of a life." "It's almost what happened when you take your experiences... and reflect on them, arranae them in some order." "A lot of the blues players came from very poor backarounds." "And they had this alft... of sinaina about the human element." "A lot of it was despair." "And makina people lauah at it." "Lot of stuff came out of anaer beina in rock 'n' roll bands." "It's how you do it." "You don't punch your wife or aet drunk." "Write a sona about it." "I'll fix your ass." "At the time when we were doing Rumours, there was this rather unusual situation... within the workings ofthe band... where you had two couples that were in theprocess ofbreaking up... during the making ofthe album." "So you had all this cross-dialoaue aoina on." "You had John McVie and Christine McVie breaking up." "You had Stevie andmyselfbreaking up." "Go Your Own Way was a song basically directedat Stevie." "Go Your Own Way was Lindsey talking to Stevie... or not talking to Stevie." "It was basically, "On your bike, airl."" "Whenever that song was at its peak... that was Stevie and Lindseyplaying out whatever roles they wereplaying out." "Some heavy stuff went on with that sona." "The Rumours album went way through the ceiling." "At somepoint, it became a phenomenon... in which the sales and the success ofit... really became disproportionate to what the music itself was." "Ialways perceivedit as having something to do with the fact... that it was a musical soap opera and I think all of that came throuah." "The emotion of that, the truthfulness of that came throuah on the arooves." "The Rumours album turned into a freak, really." "We weren't going to complain about it, andall the interviewers wouldgo on.:" ""Well, how much money have you made?" "That's what, 15million albums now?"" "But we aot throuah it and then we went into a situation... where the likes of Peter Frampton, the Bee Gees... a lot of these bands were sellina a lot of albums." "Bia numbers that hadn't been done before." "Frampton Comes Alive was releasedin January 1976... and it became... this ai-normous record-breakina record... and became the biaaest-sellina record of all time." "The 55,000 that showed up today atAnaheim... were there because ofonly oneperson.:" "The 26-year-old Englishman whose name is magic enough... to have all these rock fans standing out in the hot sun... from 1.: 00 in the afternoon to 8.: 00 tonight." "There were quite a few boom years there." "There were a lot of people who were realizina... that you couldmake a ton ofmoney offofconcerts on a large scale." "We were certainly in the middle ofthat... until the bottom dropped out of that, which was not a bad thina." "The way, I think, Frampton Comes Alive changed the industry... was that it made everybody realize... that there were a lot ofpeople out there, morepeople than usual... that couldbuy a record." "There was a biaaer audience than they'd thouaht... which turned it into a much biaaer business almost overniaht." "Do ya?" "Yes!" "Frampton Comes Alive... was the first sort ofgenerally recognized multi-platinum album." "And when people realized you could make that much money... sellina records, they became disinterested in frinae artists." "People within the industry became disinterested in frinae artists." "People started investina everythina in these meaa-platinum artists." "And that amount of money also attracted... corporations that had no essential interest in music." "They had only interest in money-producina enterprises... of any kind." "Gulf and Western started buyina up record companies... and record companies started beina run from accountina offices... rather than from A  R offices." "Definitely it was a new aame, as you would say, a new ball aame." "There was the corporate thina in the '70s... where people were makina bia stadium shows... and the music didn't seem to be quite as aood as it should have... or it didn't seem to be beina made for quite the riaht reasons... and you were having certain things that weren't so good, thrust down your throat." "Time to aet records on the radio." "We have a shot this week." "The album is a smash." "There's such a buzz aoina on." "Out of siaht." "It is a monster." "That was the beainnina of that." "There is this adage in the business... that if somethina works, run it into the around." "Here are 10 Frampton albums for jocks." "There are very few moves in popular music now... which haven't already been plotted out and considered... by some major corporation who will put the money behind them." "There are not many accidents." "They aot to the point to where they were puttina thinas on you... to measure your heartbeat to see what sonas would work." "When you try to do music like that... and put it on the assembly line as a commodity... it chanaes every time." "Up until that live album came out..." "I'dalwaysjust sat down, wherever I was, wherever I'dgone to write... and written for myself." "I knew I had to write an album... but I was basically writina stuff for my own enjoyment." "Then Frampton Comes Alive comes along, andlgo, "What do they want now?"" "And all of a sudden, the way I was thinkina about writina chanaed." "There was a pressure to write for other people instead of myself." "The only way artists... can do thinas is to do it for themselves... and trying to second-guess... what thepublic wants or likes is kind ofa fool's game." "Thank you." "When you got to the '70s... ourselves, Earth, Wind  Fire, Sly and the Family Stone... who was an influence on all of us... had music where you can dance, and it was still rock 'n' roll." "It was dance music." "So we went on and on... and as the funk bands started comina out... they really started dancina, and that became money for the companies." "The companies tried to isolate... the part of the record that worked, that made you dance." "So your first notion is that it's a drumbeat... but the mistake is that it's not one drumbeat." "When they started isolatina it to one drumbeat and one sound... don't nothina aet on your nerves... more than some rhythmic that's the same thina over and over aaain." "It's like makina love with one stroke." "To tell you the facts, that is." "The machine age took its revenge, I think, on music... and disco music became the antithesis ofwhat music used to be... which was a way to communicate." "The music, instead of beina an anthem... or instead of beina a voice, became an accompaniment." "It was almost the anthem ofalienation." "Halls were full ofpeople who were mindlessly dancing... to a rhythm that was basically a machine." "I think that it was kind ofhard for the whitepeople to get into..." "R  B music because the beat is so sophisticated... and hard for... the kind of dancina that the white people are used to doina." "This clearly defined beat that is so apparent in disco music... now makes it easier to learn to do our kind of dancina." "There you ao." "Riaht foot on front." "Riaht foot, left foot." "Havina fun?" "Most rock 'n' rollers that I knew had a real problem with disco." "I like a lot of disco music, but I detest most of it." "I really hate disco." "I just remember disco and hatina it so much." "Number one:" "You could do it all on machines... so you didn't need any people, and that put a lot of people out of work." "The record companies wouldn't aive us a second look... so we really didn't have any choice... other than play disco music... and we weren't about to do that." "Disco got so big andit was generic." "The record companies didn't have to deal with thepersonality." "They didn't have to aive bia contracts..." "like they had to do with the rock 'n' rollers." "They made it real bia." "With rock 'n' roll... there was a drastic, violent reaction to disco." "A huge box containing thousands ofdisco records was blown up." "We are free aaain." "Fans stormed out onto the field in the thousands." "Disco records were hurledlike Frisbees." "Bonfires were set." "Fistfights broke out." "Our aoal in the '70s was to destroy disco." "We saw that as a terrible menace to music." "What you need, man?" "Choppina up the old drum machine, are you?" "We have to remember the most important thing about rock is the attitude." "Because, you know, it's not supposed to be really aood." "I think Petty is great." "Refuaee was the most amazing sounding record." "Iremember kicking the door open." "The areat thina about Petty... is the simplicity." "He's a areat sonawriter." "Damn The Torpedoes was very important for me because... in the writing I founda jumping-offplace." "I found, like, "This is what I do."" "'Cause you don't know." "You do some of this, you do some of that... and then suddenly..." ""Oh, this is what we do." ""And this is our sound." ""This isn't the Byrds or anybody else." "This is us."" "The aood thina about rock music in my mind... it will ao for a while, and then it will aet very predictable, and then... they're just bound to shake it up aaain." "And I love the little times when they shake it up." "In the '70s, I suppose I was aware... that there was a connection with the fans, thepeople that came to see you." "There was a areater connection to be made than was beina made at the time." "When we went to do our show... my idea was that the show shouldbe part circus, partpoliticalrally... part spiritualmeeting, part danceparty." "You had to go back to thephysical in the end, lalways felt." "It was like, it sort of beaan with the physical... and you're supposed to end with the physical." "I have seen Bruce, yes." "It's a lona concert." "It was very lona." "He's excellent, he's very talented, but that was... when he obviously didn't have anywhere to go after the show." "Hejustplayed for about five, maybe even six hours." "It was rather lona." "That's all I can stand." "How I ended upplaying that long..." "I'm not really sure." "It sort of just happened." "I can't stand no more!" "In the end, the idea was... there wouldbe some sort ofphysicalliberation... and, "You get their ass moving, and the spirit will follow."" "Also, playing to thepoint ofexhaustion was important to me." "The No Nukes show was a lot offun... and our slot was immediately before Bruce Sprinasteen... who was headlinina that niaht." "It was his birthday, I think." "Andpeople were yelling "Bruce," allnight long." "Too bad the auy's name wasn't Melvin or somethina." "Jackson Browne, at the side ofthe stage, he says to me.:" ""Listen, if you ao on, and you think they're booina you..." ""don't aet thrown because they're really just sayina 'Bruce."'" "And I said, "What's the difference?"" "The '70s for me was a time when I felt really grounded... in the music that I was making." "For me, that was the decade when I was sort ofjust kind oftelling my story... focusing on what I thought that might be, what it might be about... tryina to not make the mistakes... that I'd seen some other people make, or slip into... not aet distracted... by too many of the different types of choices... and keepina basically the idea of the music... and the audience in front of me as the essential thina... and as this thina that aave my own story meanina." "I didn't see myself as some gifted, genius-type ofguy." "I felt I was a hard-working guy." "I workedreally hardat learning toplay... andl workedhard at learning to write and sing... and I always felt like..." "I was the auy in the front row or the third row... that picked a auitar up and aot onstaae." "I think it comes down to theperformer and the audience... and that's what it's about, in some fashion." "It can be any room." "I've hadgreat nights in little clubs in New Jersey... where you felt as alive andheightened as in any bigplace you everplayed." "One, two, three, four...." "When it happens, there's some direct recognition... ofsome sort ofmutualhumanity... and a aood time is had by all." "I think music changed when Bruce Springsteen came on the scene." "I think if it wasn't for Bruce Sprinasteen... we may have aone in a very scary direction." "We may have aotten to the point where disco music ruled... and then I would have had to quit." "My fellowAmericans... our lona national niahtmare is over." "Subtitles conformed by SOFTITLER" "Enalish" "giving it a sound that was completely different from any other music." "What is it about the electric guitar that has made it the symbol of an era?" "To understand why the guitar became... so much a symbol of a generation, you have to pick one up, hold it... plug it into a Marshall stack, and hit a chord." "Then you know." "When you're playing the guitar, it's an extension of your passions." "The fact that six strings can be used in so many different ways." "It's an extension of myself." "It's part of me." "I think it's like telling a story." "You've got to have a punch line." "In some fashion... you wanted to communicate your feelings to somebody." "You know, what you had to say." "You wanted to talk to somebody." "You didn't know how to do it, or somebody just wouldn't listen... until you had the guitar in your hand." "So what would rock 'n' roll be like without the electric guitar?" "Without the electric guitar, no rock 'n'roll." "No way." "It is the complete entity of music." "You can play the chord or the melody." "You can accompany yourself." "It's the perfect musical instrument." "I was trying to teach this friend of mine how to do this." "He couldn't do it, so I said..." "Pardon the thing, but you have to say:" "Hey, motherfucker" "You're always cursing, you're always praying... and you're always making love." "It ain't "do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do."" "There are about 100 million musicians." "Most of them sound a lot alike." "But there's about 100... who immediately, from one note, you can tell who they are." "When you get inside the note... you immediately put your fingerprints on it." "You're making your own individual, unique statement." "Your sound really comes from within." "The guitars and the amplifiers are an extension." "I really believe it's a God-given thing." "I don't think it's something you can just chip, polish, and work on like that." "I think it's something that you're born with." "The concept of a guitar hero..." "I think, relates to the concept of a Greek hero... or somebody who is somewhat superhuman." "A demigod of some kind... who attains a certain place in the universe... and people look to him as something very special." "Everybody wants to be different." "So the guitar hero is, in some way... like the actor or the race-car driver:" "Somebody who's done something that nobody else can quite do." "When I was about 15 or 16 years old..." "I could turn on the radio and play along with anything I heard." "And I'm going, "Hey, I kind of know what I'm doing here, I guess."" "I remember Alex used to go out on a date or something at 7:00." "I'd be sitting there playing guitar on the edge of my bed... just jamming, learning stuff, doing my own stuff." "Eight hours later, he'd come strolling in." "I'd be sitting in the same place, still playing." "I don't know how to explain, but the bug bit me, bigtime." "I think when the Moors brought it over to Spain... this thing that's sort of shaped like a beautiful woman... the Spaniards knew a good thing when they saw it." "It's just as sexy as hell." "I don't think there's anything else really like a guitar." "When I look at a shop window with guitars in it..." "I still feel the way that I used to when I was a kid... with his nose up against the glass." "It's just kind of like walking into a candy store... and picking." "The way the guitar smelled, a very specific smell." "It's like smelling... the smell of grass that you remember from when you were a kid." "It's that sort of thing." "It was very intense." "I always wanted a guitar, from as long as I can remember." "I remember seeing a picture in a magazine and saying to my dad, "I want that."" "I used to play on tennis rackets and bits of wood." "It's obsessive behavior of the very worst kind." "I got my first electric guitar when I was 15, and that was it." "I was 9." "My parents gave me a guitar instead of a bicycle... and I was really pissed off because that's not what I wanted." "Eventually, I got one when I was about 15... and I used to put it on the arm of a chair, put my head on it, and fall asleep." "It's just really gone on from there." "I still fall asleep playing the guitar." "I love that idea of the relationship between the voice and the guitar." "It's also because the guitar can move." "You can move a guitar." "It's fluid." "It's not static, like a piano." "And you can bend it, like a voice." "You know, you can make it talk, in a way." "Some people hang them on their walls... or bring them out like a fine bottle of wine." "I love them as works of art, and I love the sound they make." "Mike Campbell and myself really have never gotten over this disease." "We still scour the Recycler... to find vintage guitars." "It's one of my..." "I guess it's almost a vice now, because we just love it." "Do you actually play all these?" "I play them and I cherish them." "This is at the top of the heap, right here." "There's no question about it." "Look at the flame on that one." "It's quite unbelievable." "This one is just perfect. 1959." " How much is it?" " Just listen for a minute." " The sustain, listen to it." " I'm not hearing anything." "You would, though, if it were playing." "Now, this is special, too." "Look." "It's still got the old tagger on it, see?" "Never even played it." " You just bought it and..." " Don't touch it." "I wasn't gonna touch it." "I was just pointing at it." " Don't point, even." " Don't even point?" " No." "It can't be played." "Never." " Can I look at it?" "No." "You've seen enough of that one." "The electric guitar dates from the 1930s... when acoustic instruments were first wired for sound." "Soon, two inventors, Leo Fender and Les Paul... were experimenting with new types of guitars... that could cleanly amplify a plucked string, even at a high volume." "To the big beat of jump and blues bands... their electrified instruments added an equally big noise... that became synonymous with rock 'n'roll." "It was 1941." "I had been deep into experimenting... with semi-solid-bodied guitars." "I finally said:" ""For once and for all, I'm gonna prove the point."" "And I would proceed to build... this solid body, which I called a "log," an electric guitar." "The wings, I just hitched on here with this little bracket." "I put this thing together and went in there, and nobody noticed... that I was playing a solid-body guitar." "And they loved it." "By 1950... the Gibson people said, '"Les, can you come to Chicago?" "'"We want to do something about this electric guitar. '"" "I didn't realize the electric guitar... was about to become a monster." "It's a weapon, really... above everything else." "It was a weapon... which had a number of different values." "The loudness of it was very important." "The gun-like thing of it, the feeling of it, was very important." "I remember seeing Townshend playing... and doing these great windmills and jumping up in the air." "Rock 'n'roll is as physical as it is anything else." "So the idea of jumping around, or rolling around... or whatever you want to do, set your guitar on fire... those are really all avenues to be explored." "The first time I saw the Stones play... we were behind the curtain at the St. Mary's Ballroom in Putney." "We'd warmed the audience up." "The Stones were about to go on... and Keith Richards was limbering up." "He was getting down on his knees and getting his blood going." "One of the things that he did is he went like that with his arms." "And as he was doing that, the curtain opened... and he continued to do it as the curtain opened." "So, for about a year, I thought I was just copying my hero." "Literally, just copying." "Meanwhile, I then saw the Stones two or three times more... and Keith wasn't doing it." "I went up to him and said:" ""Do you mind that I copied..." ""your arm-swinging technique?"" "He looked at me like I was a germ... and I realized that he didn't remember doing it." "So I kept it in my act." "It was very much an act, but it did actually, in the end... become a part of a guitar style which produced a sound that was unique." "It's like when you learn to talk... you imitate your parents." "That's what you do." "When you learn to play guitar, you start by imitating other people." "I don't think there is another way." "Anything you ever heard comes out in what you play." "So there's no way that it's actually yours." "You're just a sponge that sucks it up." "And you put out bits and don't even know how it gets there." "In the '50s, a generation of young musicians... discovered the electric guitar." "By plugging in and playing blues and country licks... they created rockabilly." "Country music was very simple." "It usually had three or four chords." "Elvis Presley walked right in and said:" ""Okay, I'm a country boy, but I want rock." "I want guys that play hard."" "So rockabilly... which was taking country music... and giving it a very strong, very straight-ahead beat... ended up coming out like..." "The first time I actually heard Scotty Moore playing... was on the record Elvis recorded, Blue Moon of Kentucky." "And his sound was very unique at that time... because he was using an echo amp." "That's how he actually perfected that sound:" "Playing the fingerstyle with a lot of reverb and using the echo amp." "A guy like Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, or James Burton..." "That guy's a stone country guitar player, but he rocks it, man." "It's so solid." "Jimmy Burton was an absolute groundbreaker as a player." "When I went to work with Ricky Nelson, we recorded a song called Hello Mary Lou." "I get an awful lot of questions about that solo I played." "My style was created at a very early age." "I'll demonstrate that with maybe a two-string, chicken-picking sound." "I don't consider it rockabilly." "I took country and rhythm and blues and mixed it together... and came out with more of a rock 'n' roll feel." "Then you got a guy like Chuck Berry, who basically... dropped into the scene, wrote 35 songs in four years, all classics... and invented a style of guitar playing that, to this day... everybody sort of has to pass through the Chuck Berry portal... to get to the next step." "Johnny B. Goode knocked me out." "It floored me." "That's when I knew what I wanted to do." "I learned to play guitar from those Chuck Berry records." " I wore a lot of those out." " A lot of people did." "It wasn't typical r  b... but yet here was this different style of guitar." "And Chuck played horn riffs on his guitar." "Those early guitar licks were nothing in the world but borrowed blues licks... that we just speeded up." "The thing that attracted me mainly to these early records... certainly the sort of... rock 'n' roll, and blues records of that '50s period... was the atmosphere that was on them." "And you could hear that there was so much urgency going on... and, certainly with the blues, this sort of raw emotion." "As soon as the electric guitar became a feasible instrument... and became affordable enough... the blues guys latched on to it immediately... because then their partner... could now sing and speak... with the same power and the same strength... that their own voice could." "Since most rock 'n'roll style... in terms of the guitar, has blues roots... that marriage just keeps getting stronger and stronger." "You don't have the giant chord structures to work with... and build these architectural music pieces." "You have a 12-bar, three chord change." "That doesn't give you much to hide behind." "I mean, you have to put your heart right up front... or you don't have anything but three little chords." "So you start realizing how subtly genius... these old players really were." "The blues is sort of like Southern cooking." "It may not have all of the ingredients that jazz would have... that rock 'n'roll would have." "You only have the three chord changes." "So you got to be a very good chef... to put each one of those in the right place." "T" " Bone Walker was the first guy... that I ever saw play the guitar." "The guitar seemed to sing with him... and I heard things like this..." "This guy could jump up and do a split, one leg this way, the other back there... and still have the guitar up there." "I never did try that, but I did put the guitar up there." "But trying that split, I didn't make it." "I was so crazy about it." "That's the way I am with the guitar." "When thy start playing the notes, and I try to play them and can't, I go:" ""It probably wouldn't sound right for me, anyhow."" "So I go the economy way." "Try to make it sound like, you know..." "If I'm singing, I hear myself." "When I'm not singing, I'm playing." "I think that, had it not been for the British rockers... and then starting here in the U. S... with the kids starting here, and a lot of the rock 'n' roll players here... that the blues player..." "We wouldn't have lasted." "We wouldn't have had anyplace to go or play." "We were only trying to mimic... what our American idols were doing." "In a way, we were selling it back to them." "If you look at what blues music has been responsible for... the Stones and the Yardbirds..." "They were all really heavily influenced." "The Yardbirds, a British band popular in the '60s... introduced three legendary guitarists:" "Eric Clapton..." "Jimmy Page... and Jeff Beck." "I have done other music, after the Yardbirds." "Anyway, somebody told me I should be proud tonight." "But I'm not, because they kicked me out." "They did." "Fuck them." "But the fact that there was this reputation with the Yardbirds..." "There'd been Eric with the Cream... and Jeff was out and about as well... and myself." "All Yardbirds guitarists." "It was quite a keen importance put on this unit." "Audiences were really looking out... to see what I was going to do with the Yardbirds." "There were many areas within it of what we used to call "free-form"... which was improvisation." "And I got quite a nice little... sort of portfolio of riffs and things." "With Dazed and Confused, every night, it was different." "Obviously, there's the verses and certain links which are the same." "But it would be really different from the beginning of the tour to the end... because it was a whole area for improvisation." "So this is how you get the interplay between myself and Robert." "Curiously enough, the bow came to be, '"Here we go back to the session days. '"" "But it was David McCallum 's father..." "You know, The Man From U.N.C.L.E." "His father was a string player." "He said, '"Have you ever tried playing guitar with a bow?" "'"" "And I said, '"No." "I don't know whether it would even work. '"" "He said, "You should try it." And then when I did..." "Io and behold, it became quite a feature." "The way that I was playing it... was sort of akin to modern classical composers, like Paderewski." "But again, I was pushing it every night... to try and come up with something that I hadn't played the night before." "Now all these guitar players were inventing styles." "You listen to a Jimmy Page solo, you listen to Eric Clapton... you know who these people are, because they have invented a template... within which they work, and you know who that person is." "When I first heard Eric Clapton, I was shocked." "He was so good, so young." "Everyone was following Eric Clapton, which band he was in at the time." "Everyone played a Les Paul, looked like Eric, and wanted to play like Eric." "I tried very hard to sound like Clapton." "He was my main inspiration on guitar." "For some reason, Clapton was the only one that touched me... the guy that made me want to play." "I used to think I could make any kind of music... but the guitar playing would always be blues." "And if I took a solo..." "I would always make sure that I could find some place... to put the blues in... so that I knew, even if nobody else did... that I always still had one foot on the path." "Pete Townshend called up Eric Clapton... and they'd never spoken to each other before." "Pete said to Eric, "I want you to go to the movies with me."" "And Eric went, "What?" "Okay."" "And they sat in the darkness of a movie theater." "Townshend told Clapton, "I've just seen this guy..." ""who's gonna put us all out of work, man."" "Out of the blue comes Jimi Hendrix." "He'd kind of come out of nothing." "He just appeared." "Who is this?" "It was like hearing somebody from Mars playing the blues." "He was just a fantastic being." "He was, like, from space." "What he actually did... was he did things which were actually magical... and yet accompanied by these incredibly wild noises." "There was some kind of strange alchemy going on." "He was an alchemist." "He not only played the guitar... he played at the guitar, he played on the guitar, he played with the guitar." "I mean, he approached it from every possible vector... that anybody could." "He took a lot of that and made it into something... by demonstrating that there was actually such a thing... as physical poetry in rock." "Something that was very close to ballet." "Jimi couldn't help be jamming everywhere." "He'd go everywhere with his guitar." "I mean, the guy lived with his guitar." "He slept with his guitar." "For me, it was an act, and for him it was an extension of what he was doing." "Jimi Hendrix had a beautiful harmonic, like an aurora borealis." "He would hit a note, and that note would beget another note and another note." "He was a master sculptor of sound." "He did so much in three years of playing... if not four or so... that he influenced every generation beyond that time... in terms of guitar players." "Thank you." "There's no doubt that the moving of a driving beat... is something that's very sexual." "And because the electric guitar became the symbol of that music... there was a strong connection... between the body rhythm and the electric guitar." "I tend to think of the guitar as the instrument of rock 'n' roll... because it's an extension of what you've got between your legs." "People thought I was weird because I would stay home on weekends... on Friday and Saturday night, playing my guitar." "But when I got good at playing guitar, boy, I got all the pussy I wanted." "I think if you're looking for an example... of this sexual being playing a guitar... the first guy that comes to mind is Slash, the guitar player for Guns N'Roses." "Everything that comes from him comes from his guitar." "He looks at it kind of like a part of his own body." "Often, a musician can do to a woman what a lover cannot do to her." "I'm flattered that you're here after the gig, and you're knocking on my door... and you're beautiful, and all that." "But, at the same time, I cannot do to you... what my music does to your soul." "There's something romantic about that." "That's part of the romantic process." "Your guitar reflects that." "We were talking about Pete Townshend, and Jimi Hendrix... how they looked at their instruments." "If you're willing to destroy something that's such a part of you... that speaks volumes about your personality." "Who said I broke beautiful guitars?" "Who said they were expensive?" "Who said I really broke them?" "What do you know?" "What's it got to do with you?" "My fucking guitar." "It's the brute force of electric guitar." "That E chord on an electric guitar, it's just bright red." "I just always have this thing about notes, that they're really expensive... and that you shouldn't spend them, unless you really have to." "If you have a great guitar and a great amplifier..." "I believe you can conquer the world." "Anybody seizes a Fender Stratocaster or an electric guitar... that's the symbol of freedom, choice... a whole generation of a country that allowed people to have free thought." "It's an incredible instrument." "It's an incredible symbol." "In 1994, three generations of electric guitar players... gathered at the House of Blues to honor Les Paul... and to celebrate the instrument that he helped create." "A guitar is like an old friend." "It has been, many times, like the only friend... that was really there for me and there with me." "This is art." "This is not something that anybody can do." "Go ahead." "Anybody in this room, pick it up." "I mean, it's not easy." "This guitar here is such a pal." "It's a psychiatrist." "It's a doggone bartender." "It's a housewife." "This guy is everything." "Whenever I find that I got a problem or something..." "I'll go pick my guitar up and play it." "It's the greatest pal in the whole world." "English"