"The electric guitar defined rock 'n'roll... 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... lo 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."