The Great "Rhythm" Guitar Players?

[robogone]

but, for example, when most people think of (or worse, imitate)EVH, do you think they're emulating his rhythm playing or his keyboard playing... nope, they're whaling thy're fingers doing faux-hammer-ons to "Eruption" or "Hot for Teacher" or whatever... just sayin'

You are of course welcome to your own opinion about what makes EVH great and I am entitled to mine. EVH is in fact a great lead player AND a great rythmn player. he belongs on this list as much as anyone else for the rythmn guitar parts he has come up with. Sorry if you don't agree.

Come on man, lose the attitude. No one is taking anything away from your choices, just pointing out that your list was mostly lead guitarists in bands with a rhythm guitarist.

Chill out and accept that they're just comments on your post.

[debra1rlo]

Bah. You're trying to give Chris cornell credit as "the" rythm guitarist because he strums a few chords while he sings? Gimme a break. Give the proper cvedit where its due. Anyway, this is becoming a tiring discussion.

Oh, really.... so I stopped discussing and went to bed... after which you added...

but, for example, when most people think of (or worse, imitate)EVH, do you think they're emulating his rhythm playing or his keyboard playing... nope, they're whaling thy're fingers doing faux-hammer-ons to "Eruption" or "Hot for Teacher" or whatever... just sayin'

You are of course welcome to your own opinion about what makes EVH great and I am entitled to mine. EVH is in fact a great lead player AND a great rythmn player. he belongs on this list as much as anyone else for the rythmn guitar parts he has come up with. Sorry if you don't agree.

Oh, I agree he's a great rhythm player and acknowledged that in my post which you conveniently edited to suit your needs... But you were right the first time... this IS a tiring discussion because you want to turn it into an argument even though I've twice agreed with what you said... whatever.

EDIT - muted... AHHHH... that's much better

[Dewdman42]

who started the argument? You're funny.

[TotcProductions]

The guys from that old Long Island band Vision of Disorder. Those guys could slide chords all over the guitar's neck fast and smooth as hell.

Not sure if that has anything to do with this topic really...but the subject line brought it to my mind.

peace

[Dewdman42]

I never heard of them before, but it sounds like it would qualify to me!

[Sleek Month]

No Dewdman, actually the 4 guitarists i just mentioned all have a 2nd guitarist in their band who did the bulk of the rhythm playing:
Joe Perry - Brad Whitford
Angus Young - Malcolm Young
Kim Thayil - Chris Cornell
Slash - Duff, etc.

Um...how come nobody is pointing out that Duff is GNR's bass player? Rhythym was Izzy.

I love how these threads show musical bias. You end up with people just naming their favorite players, and you end up with a list of a lot of "cool" players (Frank Black??? FFS!) while a lot of the true masters of the style go unlauded.

I will attempt to help remedy this with my perfect wisdom

Going by the original aegis, that being interpreted as "people who don't sound like they're doing anything extraordinary, but are nailing some sort of very difficult elusive groove or feel"...

Malcolm Young~ The best. He is the feel of AC/DC. It doesn't sound as if he's doing anything fancy, but it's his timing that propels those tunes.

James Hetfield~ The tightest heavy guitar ever. On all of the decent Metallica Albums, he plays all of the rhythym guitars, and locks with himself with a precision very few can.

Ron Wood~ Either with Keef or with Ian McLagen, he set the gold standard for boozy/swinging rhythym guitar. His interplay with either another guitar, as in the Stones, or with a keyboardist and vocalist, (He and Stewart play off each other), is surpassed by none.

Inseperable Pairs:

Joe Perry/Brad Whitford~there's really no lead/rhythym deliniation in A. Smith, they're both filling both roles...Joe just happens to have 14x the natural cool, so he gets the attention.

Buck Owens/Don Rich~ Tight as a gnat's ass. Buck and Don not only played in perfect complimentary sync, they also sang in perfect harmony, with the tightest locked rhythym ever...plus Don also played fiddle and occasional pedal steel.

KK Downing/Glen Tipton~ Those guys created the style for heavy rhythym, and each gives up more to the whole of the sound than anyone in perhaps any other band...imagine, excellent lead players, but with the discipline to just go :"Chug chug chug". A machine.

All-in-ones:

Graham Coxon~ Best player of the '90's. Nailing the funky and ghey thing in early Blur, working up to some seriously weird and innovative stuff in their later catalog.

Randy Rhoads~ Wrote the book on on really filling out a part. Sounds like two guys playing. Brilliant compositional sense.

Pete Townshend~ No explanation needed.

[Dominus]

Dave Mustaine!

..James Hetfield taught him everything he knows about rhythm guitar...

and then Dave taught Kerry King.


Mille Petrozza from Kreator.

[debra1rlo]

Um...how come nobody is pointing out that Duff is GNR's bass player? Rhythym was Izzy.

Sorry, I always get those 2 guys mixed up, I did mean Izzy... thanks for the correction.

I love how these threads show musical bias. You end up with people just naming their favorite players, and you end up with a list of a lot of "cool" players (Frank Black??? FFS!) while a lot of the true masters of the style go unlauded.

What's so wrong with liking a "cool" player, seems like he had to do something right to be considered "cool"... besides without Frank Black the trademark sound of Nirvana (which was heavily influenced by Frank & the Pixies) would be missing a key ingredient. Just sayin'... and ffs, at least I named someone who was actually a rhythm guitarist.

Malcolm Young~ The best. He is the feel of AC/DC. It doesn't sound as if he's doing anything fancy, but it's his timing that propels those tunes.

Thanks for recognizing that Malcolm was indeed the rhythm player for the bulk of AC/DC's music. "Highway To Hell" is my fave album by them, so many good tunes on that one.

Graham Coxon~ Best player of the '90's. Nailing the funky and ghey thing in early Blur, working up to some seriously weird and innovative stuff in their later catalog.

Don't get me wrong, I like him and he's good, but best player of the 90s? hmmmmm...

[Sleek Month]

What's so wrong with liking a "cool" player, seems like he had to do something right to be considered "cool"...

Because Frank Black isn't a great rhythym player. When I think Pixies, I don't really go:"Wow. The key element in this is the exceptional rhythym guitar of Frank Black", you know?

If anything, the guitar is just-kind-of-there on Pixies stuff.

...and putting Frank Black against a rhythym player like, say, Hetfield? It's just different levels of ability.

...but the Pixies have a certain indie cachet, so he gets mentioned.

besides without Frank Black the trademark sound of Nirvana (which was heavily influenced by Frank & the Pixies) would be missing a key ingredient. Just sayin'... and ffs, at least I named someone who was actually a rhythm guitarist.

Well, this is the crux of the cool vs. uncool debate.

Kurt also frequently said things to the effect of:"We sound exactly like Cheap Trick, but with heavier guitars"...yet nobody gives Cheap Trick credit for Nirvana.

...only "cool" bands. Yeah, the Pixies influenced the standard Nirvana dynamic of big chorus/little verse, but I can name you tons of Cheap Trick numbers that used that same dynamic years before the Pixies even existed.

But everybody loves an underdog, you know?

...and, of course, the irony is, that because of the sort of hipster historic revisionism that has taken place, and the Pixies status as a supposedly essential artist, they actually draw more now than Cheap Trick (and have greater sales potential), who are the actual underdogs.

[rockstar_not]

but, for example, when most people think of (or worse, imitate)EVH, do you think they're emulating his rhythm playing or his keyboard playing... nope, they're whaling thy're fingers doing faux-hammer-ons to "Eruption" or "Hot for Teacher" or whatever... just sayin'

You are of course welcome to your own opinion about what makes EVH great and I am entitled to mine. EVH is in fact a great lead player AND a great rythmn player. he belongs on this list as much as anyone else for the rythmn guitar parts he has come up with. Sorry if you don't agree.

+1

EVH, if he never did the eruption solo or hammer ons still set the high water mark for loud and fun rock and roll rhythm guitar in the late 70's early 80's. It's almost too bad he is famous for the other stuff. The straight ahead but crazy rhythm work on songs like 'Panama' is classic - his interplay between the pushing rhythm and the accents between phrases; with fluid grace, while looking completely stoned with a smile on his face: classic.

And BTW, I'm not a VH fanboy; don't own a single record by them, but each time a VH song comes on the radio, I sit up and take notice to what's coming out the right speaker. That's where they usually panned him if I recall correctly.

-Scott

[Sleek Month]

Oh, and the Graham Coxon thing is both sincere and a challenge. Of the '90's generation, who is better?

...and don't go naming some blues revivalist hack or metal shredder. I'm talking all-around, for-the-song playing.

[robogone]

On the Cheap Trick vs Pixies thing, that happens a lot, and I think in the case of Cheap Trick, their music hasn't aged as well as the Pixies so obviously the Pixies will get more mentions.

Agreed on Frank Black though, it's kind of there, not there, but take it away and you wouldn't have the Pixies sound.

[Mokafix]

Bjorn Berge?



http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=KDOrSRCH6 ... re=related

http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=WAcNz-ERt90

[debra1rlo]

What's so wrong with liking a "cool" player, seems like he had to do something right to be considered "cool"...

Because Frank Black isn't a great rhythym player. When I think Pixies, I don't really go:"Wow. The key element in this is the exceptional rhythym guitar of Frank Black", you know?

If anything, the guitar is just-kind-of-there on Pixies stuff.

...and putting Frank Black against a rhythym player like, say, Hetfield? It's just different levels of ability.

...but the Pixies have a certain indie cachet, so he gets mentioned.

Fair enough. Although I think Frank's guitar playing is great in a subtle way and the music of the Pixies spoke to me in a way Metallica's didn't (though I can still appreciate their abilities and talent), it's just my opinion anyway...

besides without Frank Black the trademark sound of Nirvana (which was heavily influenced by Frank & the Pixies) would be missing a key ingredient. Just sayin'... and ffs, at least I named someone who was actually a rhythm guitarist.

Well, this is the crux of the cool vs. uncool debate.

Kurt also frequently said things to the effect of:"We sound exactly like Cheap Trick, but with heavier guitars"...yet nobody gives Cheap Trick credit for Nirvana.

But I've read Kurt saying that about a lot of bands like the Pixies and R.E.M. too... And we must remember, musicians sometimes like to joke around a bit with music journalists, so who knows... Kind of OT, but I read once in Rolling Stone where Paul Westerberg of the Replacements said their band was influenced heavily by Elton John. Perhaps, but I think he may have been fuckin' with their heads some too.

It's funny you see that influence in Nirvana, because I didn't notice that... However, imho, it was the first Foo Fighters album (where Dave Grohl played ALL the parts) that showed a lot more of Cheap Trick's influence than anything Nirvana ever did.

...only "cool" bands. Yeah, the Pixies influenced the standard Nirvana dynamic of big chorus/little verse, but I can name you tons of Cheap Trick numbers that used that same dynamic years before the Pixies even existed.

But everybody loves an underdog, you know?

...and, of course, the irony is, that because of the sort of hipster historic revisionism that has taken place, and the Pixies status as a supposedly essential artist, they actually draw more now than Cheap Trick (and have greater sales potential), who are the actual underdogs.

Interesting argument, I could see how you might feel that way, Cheap Trick were one of the biggest bands of the late 70s/early 80s and lost a lot of their audience during the 90s...

The difference, imho: "The Flame", that was the beginning of the end... don't get me wrong, I love the Trick's early stuff, it was some of the formative music of my teenage years... but they totally lost me as a fan when they started doing power ballads (at the advice of some record company suit as they have indicated on Steve Jones radio program here in LA last year). I do respect that they have been more in control of their career and making good music again over the past few years.

OTOH, The Pixies have remained fiercely independent and have expressed themselves musically on their own terms and called it quits on their own terms, instead turning into a corporate shill and grinding it out until we all lost interest. People want to hear the Pixies music now because they didn't put out a bunch of stuff because of record company obligations so we'd get burned out on them. Some of us in the post-punk generation respect that sort of thing... and it's cool if you don't.

[jancivil]

IKE WILLIS