Punk Performers & Theories Of Ideology ('Punk Mass' 1970 - )

Punk Performers & Theories Of Ideology ('Punk Mass' 1970 - ) Nov 14, 2020 23:35:02 GMT cypher likes this

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Post by petrolino on Nov 14, 2020 23:35:02 GMT

My Top 12 Punk Guitarists (Ranked)

# "The Figurehead" : Johnny Ramone (Tangerine Puppets / Ramones)

"The influence of the Ramones on the global music landscape over the past 40 years is immense. For many fans, the Ramones are a religion, and for even more, it’s a lifestyle. I had the opportunity to experience the depth of this firsthand by performing the songbook alongside Marky Ramone, the drummer of the classic Ramones lineup. I had to learn a lot about Johnny Ramone’s incendiary, raw guitar style, as well as how to create a rhythmically relentless wall-of-sound.
For many guitarists, playing Ramones tunes appears incredibly easy. How hard could it be to play four-chord songs? Nearly every guitar player thinks they can play any song from the repertoire, until they have to do it. But like many specialized areas, first impressions can be deceiving: It requires precision to get Johnny’s parts exactly right.
It’s definitely anti-punk to analyze, theorize, and reverse-engineer such a figure of punk-rock culture, but I don’t care. Let’s look at key characteristics of Johnny’ style and technique through the lens of rhythm, harmony, and lead.
The first thing you’ll notice when observing Johnny Ramone is his incessant use of downstrokes. Nearly all of the Ramones’ signature guitar sound stems from this technique. During my audition with Marky Ramone, one of our first interactions went something like this:

“Can you play downstrokes?”
“Yes!”
“Can you play downstrokes for 90 minutes?”

In short, if you’re not playing downstrokes all the time, you’re doing it wrong. You need the crunch, the attack, and the fullness that alternate strumming and upstrokes just can’t provide. And the songs are fast. Very fast. They are much faster than the studio recordings. (Listen to Loco Live—the tempos are insane!) Playing downstrokes that fast, that long, and that hard can be very taxing for your wrist and arm, so proper technique and posture is essential to develop speed without cramping up.
The key to playing fast downstrokes is to keep your arm relaxed and strum with the least amount of tension possible. Let your arm fall down naturally along your body. Play standing up and wear your guitar very, very low. From there, the wrist will do the work. Not only does it look cool (and that’s highly important), it’s also the most ideal and natural position to achieve optimal speed and endurance.
The second most noticeable element of Johnny Ramone’s guitar style is the use of full barre chords. A common misconception about Ramones songs is that they’re almost exclusively made of power chords, but if you listen closely, you’ll hear full chords played across all the strings. Sometimes, the fretting hand will mute the low or high string depending on the chord position being used. Attack all six strings as much as possible to give fullness to the sound. Use big movements, rather than smaller and more economical motion. Forget about finesse: The secret ingredient to the guitar sound is a physical, full-body approach to playing, fueled by passion, intensity, and attitude. Sling your guitar low, play hard, play fast, and play wide. Because the parts are so repetitive, make sure to stretch your wrist and arms before and after playing, and to warm up into the high speeds."

- Aurelien Budynek, Premier Guitar

'Questioningly' - Ramones

12) D. Boon (The Reactionaries / Minutemen / Nig-Heist)

'D. Boon’s name has survived as one of the greatest punk guitarists despite his band, the Minutemen, only being active for five years prior to his untimely death. They were political revolutionaries, encapsulating the core ethic of punk and alternative rock but never being bound by a particular style. It’s the numerous elements that guitarist and vocalist D. Boon incorporates into his playing that really sets him apart, building elements of free jazz, folk and funk into their California punk sound. D. Boon breaks down the walls between genres like no other punk player, yet he’s often overlooked because of the Minutemen’s firmly cult status.
Dennes Boon was in 1958 in San Pedro, California, meeting future band-mate Mike Watt at an early age. The two grew up together, with Boon soon taking up the guitar and Watt picking up the bass. They were influenced by bands like the Who when they first got started, but they soon became immersed in the sounds of punk acts like Richard Hell and the Voidoids and the Germs. After enlisting the help of another friend on drums, the trio took off to play the Sunset Strip circuit in LA before signing to Black Flag’s label.'

- Punk Guitarists.com

'Viet Nam' - Minutemen

11) Greg Hetson (Redd Kross / Circle Jerks / Bad Religion / Punk Rock Karaoke)

"My dad was an audiophile vinyl junkie. He was into folk music and classical music and opera mostly. He would always take me to record stores, so I grew up with music playing in the house. I enjoyed most of the stuff and I picked up on the early FM freeform, super liberal, anti-war, protest stuff. That was the stuff that caught my attention as a kid. It was late ‘60s and early ‘70s."

- Greg Hetson, Juice

'Coup D'Etat' - Circle Jerks

10) Billy Zoom (X)

'X were the first punk act out of LA that was really taken seriously by critics and fans all across the US. They’re another band who broke the traditional punk mold, by fusing it with elements of blues, rockabilly and country. Although they shared the LA punk scene with other landmark acts like Black Flag, they stood out from the pack thanks to the impressive guitar work of Billy Zoom, who still holds his weight as one of the best guitarists in the history of punk. As a musician, you can pick something up from his distinctive style – which incorporates plenty of techniques such as hammer-ons – and his use of minor chords in his songwriting.
Billy Zoom (real name Ty Kindell) was the son of a musician, and he developed a wide-ranging taste from a young age. He’s a multi-instrumentalist, having picked up the banjo, accordion, violin, clarinet and saxophone alongside the guitar. Out of the nine instruments he knew how to play, it was the guitar that he really settled with. After playing in numerous R&B and soul acts, he found a role in several rockabilly bands before hearing the Ramones and deciding to apply his guitar style to the punk genre. He answered an ad and joined X in the mid-70s.'

- Punk Guitarists.com

'I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts' - X

09) Brian James (Bastard / London SS / The Subterraneans / The Damned / Tanz Der Youth / The Lords Of The New Church / The Dripping Lips) & Captain Sensible (Johnny Moped / The Damned)

"Well I just see what we played as a continuation of genuine Rock ‘n’ Roll. We had an attitude that had been missing for a long time. In the ‘60’s there were bands like The Yardbirds, the Stones and The Kinks and they all started with a groove that made me want to pick up a guiatar and play. Then there was the British Blues scene with John Mayall, Clapton and Peter Green and everyone was also looking to America and the Delta for influences like BB King and Freddy King; there was just so much emotion in that music. It was real and that was the sort of thing that really inspired me when I was starting out.
But then we had ‘Flower Power’ and it all just got too folky and lazy for my liking. Then it got worse with Prog Rock where emotion seemed to go out of the window completely and it seemed like you needed a bloody university degree to play it. Then we had that Tin Pan Alley nonsense of Glam Rock where song-writers and producers were running the show with bands being told what to sing and how to dress. It seemed to me that music had lost touch with the street. There was no dirt or nitty gritty and the only bands at the time I thought were worth bothering with were those like The Pink Fairies, they had a really good spirit. The real stuff was in the States as far as I was concerned, the New York Dolls, Velvet Underground, MC5 and The Stooges – they were my heroes, the beginning of what was ‘Punk’, or what came to be known as ‘punk’ anyway.
Someone took me to see the Pistols at a party and they played a Stooges song and I just thought “wow”! I was in a band called Bastard and we just couldn’t get a gig anywhere. We moved to Belgium where people were more relaxed and more into that sort of music. I just remember when I saw The Pistols thinking they were the perfect band for The Damned to make our debut with, they were a great band in the early days."

- Brian James, Louder Than War

'Problem Child' - The Damned

08) Frank Infante (Sniper / Blondie) & Chris Stein (The Stilettoes / Blondie)

“I was probably 11 or 12, and I was wandering around in Brooklyn in about 1961 and I heard electric guitar notes coming out of a gas station. I still remember the moment. It was very haunting – it sort of struck me, you know? After that, I got my first guitar – a Harmony single-pickup, double-cutaway kind of thing that my parents bought for me.

I was never a very technical guitar player, I was always a very emotional guitar player, like BB King or something, as opposed to Yngwie (Malmsteen)! Improvement was an ongoing process. I would go for a few years and then I would sort of plateau, then it would lift up again. I’m impressed nowadays how quickly I can learn something and have it stay in my head with muscle memory, but I’ve been playing for 50 years, so I guess it just becomes what it is.”

- Chris Stein, Music Radar

'Slow Motion' - Blondie

07) East Bay Ray (Cruisin' / Dead Kennedys / The Killer Smiles)

"East Bay Ray, who was born in Oakland, California, in 1958 as Raymond Pepperell, is a punk icon. His band, the Dead Kennedys, launched what critics call the second wave of American punk and defined the sound of hardcore. Their music was aggressive, defiant, and the polar opposite of the synthesized cheese popular in the ’80s.
Their influence was immediate, too, spawning armies of copycats, and is still felt a generation later. Classic bands like Slayer, newcomers like Deafheaven’s Kerry McCoy, and many others cite them as a primary influence. Their controversial name and radical politics got them a lot of attention, but their legacy is their great songwriting and high-caliber musicianship. The Dead Kennedys spent countless hours crafting songs, perfecting arrangements, sculpting tones, modding gear, and nerding out in the studio. And their solid work ethic and professionalism stood in stark contrast to the mediocrity so prevalent in DIY punk.
The Dead Kennedys took their art seriously and were anything but one-dimensional. They played hardcore — East Bay Ray can rifle through quick successions of distorted power chords with the best of them—but they were much more than that. Spaghetti-western twang, slapback echo, and unorthodox clean tones were also integral to their sound. East Bay Ray toured with a vintage Echoplex, although he kept it in the rear of the stage on his amp and away from diving moshers. And he crafted a tone that had much more in common with ’60s surf than the sounds usually associated with punk and heavy metal. His diverse influences include his father’s collection of swing and delta blues 78s, Merle Haggard, the Ohio Players, and the music his mother listened to.
“My mother was into things like the Weavers, Pete Seeger, and Frank Sinatra,” he says. “And my father took my younger brother and I to see Lightnin’ Hopkins — we were too young to drive. We also had him take us to see Muddy Waters, who we’d learned about through the Rolling Stones.”
In 1986, when the Dead Kennedys called it quits — at least until reuniting with a new singer in 2001 — East Bay Ray stayed busy recording and producing. He played on Sidi Mansour, an album of Algerian Raï music by vocalist Cheikha Rimitti that also features Robert Fripp and Flea. He was involved in projects with groups like Hed PE, Frenchy and the Punk, Pearl Harbor, Skrapyard, and many others. He’s featured on Amanda Palmer’s “Guitar Hero” and recorded with Killer Smiles, his collaboration with Skip (aka Ron Greer, also the singer in the current DKs incarnation). He will be back on the road with the Dead Kennedys this summer."

- Tzvi Gluckin, 'Forgotten Heroes : East Bay Ray'

'The Man With The Dogs' - Dead Kennedys

06) Paul Weller (The Jam / The Style Council)

"It had fallen out of fashion, but the Rickenbacker, with its Swinging Sixties, Carnaby Street vibe, not to mention its unique jangly chime, was the obvious choice for The Jam.
The guitar company was founded in Los Angeles by a Swiss tool and dye maker Adolph Rickenbacker - a distant cousin of the celebrated First World War flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker. In the early 1930s, Adolph developed the first commercially successful electric guitar, a cast aluminium Hawaiian model.
It was three decades later, however, that the brand became famous, with a series of thin, hollow-body electrics designed by a German emigrant, Roger Rossmeisl, whose father was also a guitar maker. Initially marketed as the Capri series, the guitars featured a novel construction in which a solid body was partly hollowed-out from the rear, the electronics were installed, and then a wooden back was fitted. The German heritage is evident in the Teutonic design: "cat's eye" sound holes, triangular markers and recessed top carve. With its plain cosmetic appearance, the twin pickup 330 (which initially retailed at a modest $259.50) was the workhorse of the full-size range, while the more rounded 360 was a more upmarket version costing $50 more.
By the mid-1960s, Rickenbacker was in the enviable position of having its instruments in the hands of all three of the guitar-playing Beatles. John Lennon's three-quarter-sized model 325 was bought in Hamburg in 1960, while Paul McCartney acquired his left-handed 4001S bass (later used on Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) in 1965.
As a result of the Fab Four's endorsement, numerous other Beat-era bands adopted the brand. Gerry Marsden (Gerry and The Pacemakers), Hilton Valentine (The Animals), Denny Laine (The Moody Blues) and the Kinks bass-player Peter Quaife all played Rics at one time or another. Roger McGuinn of The Byrds cites George Harrison's use of a Ric 360-12 as the reason he abandoned his acoustic in favour of a Rickenbacker 12-string - in the process giving birth to the folk/rock movement. But after The Beatles, the most visible proponent of the brand was The Who's Pete Townshend - although he was, of course, as famous for smashing Rickenbackers as for playing them.
The arrival of Jimi Hendrix and the advent of blues-based rock spelled the end of the line for the jangly pop sound of the Sixties. Heavier sounds required new gear and so Rickenbackers and amplifiers such as Vox AC-30s were cast aside in favour of Gibson Les Pauls and Marshall Stacks - until they became as much part of The Jam's image as the spray-paint logo, bowling shoes and target insignia.
Although arguably not the most versatile of guitars, Rickenbackers possess a unique, jangly chime that can't be duplicated on any other guitar; think of the celebrated opening chord to The Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night", or the introduction to The Byrds' version of Bob Dylan's "Mr Tambourine Man". But it is not just their sound that ensures Rickenbackers enduring popularity among players and collectors alike; the Rickenbacker look - the antithesis of metal and heavy rock - immediately conjures up the Swinging Sixties and Carnaby Street cool.
In the wake of Paul Weller, Rickenbackers enjoyed a renaissance in the 1980s, when Susanna Hoffs (The Bangles), Peter Buck (REM) and Tom Petty began using them. More recently, Rickenbackers have reappeared in the hands of musicians in some of the most credible bands around, including Pete Doherty and Carl Barât when they were in The Libertines, Bob Hardy, the Franz Ferdinand bassist, and Chris Urbanowicz of the Editors."

- Paul Alcantara, The Independent

'The Modern World' - The Jam

05) Greg Ginn (Black Flag / Nig-Heist / Gone / Confront James / Mojack)

"There’s something about a Greg Ginn guitar solo. The Black Flag driving force and mainman tore up the rule book with his guitar and his lead breaks are like nothing else. The early eighties LA based hardcore band already had a distinctive sound with Ginn’s dominating sludge rhythm guitar work dominating the songs but when he pealed off for a solo the effect is mesmerising.

Where most guitar solos are basically the guitar player w*nking off or the point of the song that needs filling, Ginn cranked the volume and the glorious head f*ck of the rush of electricity. Somehow he made the guitar sound like it was going backwards, the breaks are a flurry of totally unexpected notes that follow no pattern or rules and take you on an intense and weird trip.

They are like free jazz, the Greatful Dead, Black Sabbath, psychedelia and a whole host of off the wall influences cranked through the stripped down, aggressive rush of punk whilst inventing hardcore and creating a template for post hardcore - ask Thurston Moore - the true inheritor of the Ginn guitar mangle who even stands on stage and plays in the same shapes as Ginn.

You can like Black Flag for a lot of things - the pure aggression, the funny and dark songs, the dark humour of the sleeves drawn by Greg Ginn’s brother, their pile driving aesthetic, their inventiveness and their total lack of compromise but it’s the point in the song when Gregg Ginn just goes off one one when it all comes home to a point of pure genius. Those sick, note splurges, the amazing, dissonant against-the-notes lead stuff that he does mark him out as one of the great guitarists and that’s not even counting his knack for creating the great riffs that are the chassis of the Black Flag songs.
His work aesthetic was legendary, driving the band through six hour rehearsals and endless tours and its this passion and intensity that you can feel in the music that make Black Flag one of the key bands of the period. It’s this total commitment and belligerent genius that gives his music its pure genius."

- John Robb, Louder Than War

'Jealous Again' ~ Black Flag

04) Ivan Julian (The Voidoids / Lovelies) & Robert Quine (The Voidoids)

"By many peoples' standards, my playing is very primitive but by punk standards, I'm a virtuoso. People on the local rock scene in the early '70s treated me very condescendingly. After we played CBGB's in October '76 for the first time, these people respected me. To me, the positive thing about it was we were pulling out these old influences like the Velvet Underground and the Stooges that were gone.
As for a scene, to be thrown in the same category ... Blondie? Talking Heads? The Heartbreakers? The Shirts? It was just a catch-all thing. If you happened to be a band in the town, you were in the right place at the right time. Blondie had the biggest hit and that was a disco song. They're nice people though. There was a social scene but I couldn't really say there was a music scene. It did give people alternatives to disco, the Eagles, Carole King, James Taylor. That's the one thing we all had in common. It gave people a place to play. People could come to New York, play CBGB's and have a contract, like the B-52's who were great.
What came of it? Nothing. What was going on in the '80s? Nothing. It was even worse than the '70s. I never really followed grunge. When I'm at a record store, I walk past all the recent releases and look for an obscure Eddie Cochran or Link Wray release. There are a few people that are really good now. The Pretenders are really great - I think she's really talented. She's from Akron too. I'd like to be on one track with them but I hear she's a perfectionist. J.J. Cale is a real idol of mine. His interviews are the greatest. He had a hit and his manager says 'you got a hit, you gotta tour.' He says 'well, if I got me a hit, why do I have to go out on the road?' I turned Lou Reed onto him and that's all you'd hear from his hotel room - they both had that two chord thing down too."

- Robert Quine, Perfect Sound Forever

'Another World' ~ Richard Hell And The Voidoids

03) John McGeoch (Magazine / Visage / Siouxsie And The Banshees / The Armoury Show / Public Image Ltd / Pacific)

"He was in Howard Devoto's massively influential Magazine; he spent an enormously productive three years in Siouxsie and the Banshees before going on to join ex-Sex Pistol John Lydon in PIL. While John McGeoch's back catalogue is matched by few British guitarists of his generation, his influence continues to reverberate. A host of young bands - from The Strokes to The Rapture - owes something to the myriad of sounds McGeoch pioneered. Equally, he has been credited as an inspiration by U2 and most of the world's biggest rock bands. The Red Hot Chili Peppers' John Frusciante recently said that he taught himself to play "learning all John McGeoch's stuff in Magazine and Siouxsie and the Banshees".
McGeoch was born in Greenock, Strathclyde, but moved in his teens to Manchester, where he immersed himself into the fledgling punk scene. In April 1977, an advert led to a meeting with Devoto, who had just left Buzzocks and was looking to explore new forms of music beyond three-chord punk. McGeoch proved the perfect foil. The young guitarist's memorable riff - a sound like an elastic band building to snap - fuelled the band's classic debut single, Shot By Both Sides, an outsider anthem which reached Number 41 in January 1978 and ushered in the post-punk era. McGeoch featured on the band's first three classic albums, Real Life (1978), Secondhand Daylight (1979) and The Correct Use Of Soap (1980), developing his trade mark of getting guitars to make unusual but powerful sounds. However, he quit the band in 1980, disappointed by the lack of commercial success to match critical acclaim.
McGeoch had already guested with bands such as the Skids and Generation X, but now began moonlighting with Magazine colleagues, the bass player Barry Adamson and the keyboard player Dave Formula in clubland guru Steve Strange's synthesiser band, Visage, formed with members of Ultravox. Although McGeoch saw the band as a joke, smash hits such as Fade To Grey signposted the era of Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet. His next projects would prove equally creatively and commercially rewarding.
After being asked to join the Banshees, McGeoch featured on, arguably, their most enduring albums, Kaleidoscope (1980), JuJu (1981) and A Kiss In The Dreamhouse (1982). The hit singles of the period - particularly 1980s Happy House and Israel - featured some of McGeoch's most spellbinding work, hypnotic circular rhythms conjured from icy guitar notes and echo. However, eventually the stresses of touring and drinking led to a nervous breakdown, and McGeoch found himself in hospital and out of the band.
An unsuccessful tie-in with Skids' Richard Jobson (1984-86) in The Armoury Show was followed by another largely glorious spell with Lydon's PIL, a band he admired greatly - largely because of Lydon's lyrics - and was reputed to have been first asked to join in 1984. Eventually clambering onboard in 1986, he transformed PIL from a left-field, experimental outfit into a provocative, marauding rock band. McGeoch moved to Los Angeles and went on to become PIL's longest-serving member bar Lydon, staying until the band dissipated in 1992.
After his return to England, work on more dance-oriented material with Heaven 17's Glenn Gregory and a projected band, Pacific, with Spandau Ballet's John Keeble, came to nothing. For the first time, the pioneer found himself stranded in another era. He qualified as a nurse in 1995 ..."

- Dave Simpson, The Guardian

"In addition to being a great guitarist, people forget that John McGeoch was also a fantastic saxophone player."

- Kid Creeper, 'Best Of British : London Punk's The Only Punk So Shove It'

Magazine - 'Shot By Both Sides'

"Magazine were also one of my favourite bands and that they came from the same city as me was a marvel. It didn't make any difference to what I thought of their music, but it was definitely a bonus. As a teenager I was very critical at the state of guitar playing and the usual cliché-ridden approach that was either blues rock or prog rock. It didn't mean anything to my generation. In John McGeoch, Magazine had a guitar player who was modern and relevant and interesting, while Howard Devoto was, and still is, one of my favourite ever lyricists.
There is a thought that the first couple of records for many bands are the ones that are considered seminal. As is the case with Wire, I think that when bands break away from their first seminal albums - in Magazine's case that was Real Life and Secondhand Daylight - and they take somewhat of a left turn, it is really interesting. On The Correct Use Of Soap, Magazine did something original and almost ahead of themselves. There is a lot of space on The Correct Use Of Soap and I think it is better than the first two records. The space means that John McGeoch can really stretch out. Songs like 'Philadelphia' and 'Because You're Frightened' are based on guitar-playing that is utterly unique. It is one of those records that you can say that if it came out now, it would still not only be fresh but ahead of the race."

- Johnny Marr, The Quietus

"All the great stuff comes out of inspiration, doesn’t it? A lot of guitarists like to play blues: If you’re going to play blues, dig deep. Try and do something different with it. We were always inspired by people like Sonic Youth — the way they kind of mutilated their instruments, the retuning. We were lucky that post-punk had the golden era of guitarists. People like Johnny Marr, John McGeoch, the Edge — all these people were doing something really, really different and unique, and not necessarily playing the blues."

- Ed O'Brien, Premier Guitar

"My favourite guitarist of all time."

- Siouxsie Sioux on John McGeoch

'I Want To Burn Again' - Magazine

02) Steve Diggle (Buzzcocks / Flag Of Convenience) & Pete Shelley (Buzzcocks)

'The Buzzcocks debut album Another Music in a Different Kitchen, as well as follow ups Love Bites and A Different Kind of Tension helped to establish the Buzzcocks as one of the most important bands of the Punk era. Pete Shelley's songs - melodic, full of energy and lyricism - set the template for much of the rock music that was to come - and the Buzzcocks were a huge influence in early 90's Grunge music. Kurt Cobain was a big fan of the band, and a reformed Buzzcocks supported Nirvana on their last ever tour.'

- Eastwood Guitars

Buzzcocks - 'Love Is Lies'

"I was a conscientious objector to work. Being on the dole was great back then; you could write songs and figure yourself out. You didn’t have much money but money wasn’t in the equation then, you just had big ideas. [Musicians] all seem to have names like Tarquin nowadays. That’s not a very rock ‘n’ roll name, is it?
I had a six-pound Spanish guitar that had been hanging on the wall, and you’d tune it up the best you could but it went out of tune all the time. I learnt how to play “Ode to Joy” on a couple of strings and I think that was the beginning of the little motifs in the Buzzcocks. Had I been like the posh kids in South Manchester whose daddies bought them all the gear and then sold it for a pair of skis or something, then who knows?
I was living in a house share taking acid, as we were all trying to figure out the universe. I think one went into a mental hospital, and the middle-class ones went up to the Himalayas looking for gurus. When they came back, I said, ‘I’ve joined a punk band and I’m sniffing speed. The world has f*cking changed since you were away, and particularly for me.’ "

- Steve Diggle, Huck

'I Believe' - Buzzcocks

01) Richard Lloyd (Television / Rocket From The Tombs) & Tom Verlaine (Neon Boys / Television)

"Tom [Verlaine] plays lead guitar with angular inverted passion like a thousand bluebirds screaming ... he is blessed with long veined hands reminiscent of the great poet strangler ..."

- Patti Smith, The Wonder

Television - 'Elevation'

"I went to see John Lee Hooker in Boston, at the Jazz Workshop on Boylston Street. Back then, I just walked into the dressing room and sat down. Eventually, he took notice of me and he said — he pointed his finger at me, and he said, “And you, young man, what do you do?” I said, “I play guitar.” He said, “Are you good?” I said, “I don’t know.” He said, “No, no, no. You’re great. I can tell. Come over here and I’ll tell you the secret of playing the electric guitar.”
Then he cupped his hands and he whispered in my ear, “Take off all the strings but one and learn the one string up and down and down and up and bend it and shake it until the women go ‘oooo.’ Then put two strings on and learn two strings up and down and down and up.” I went home, but I didn’t take the strings off. I couldn’t afford to take them off — I didn’t have a replacement set. But I did practice what I call vertical knowledge, which is up and down pitch on a single string, a great deal."

- Richard Lloyd, Premier Guitar

'Days' - Television