If you’re in your 50, 60’s or older, you will have grown up when there was a culture of guitar heroes. And the guitarists usually knew it, wearing the hippest clothes and generally being cool. The guitarist was a focus of attention. You couldn’t ignore someone like Ritchie Blackmore for example. He was no shrinking violet. Guitarists were charged with launching us to nirvana
If you think back, we all watched the guitarist much of the time during gigs. But does that happen any more? I’m not sure. I’m pretty sure the culture of the guitar hero is dead outside of retro bands and various old geezers from bands in the 70s. I suppose people like Satriani and Vai and Malmsteen who ruled the Guitarverse for the 80s and 90s are still producing great music but they’re 69, 65 and 62 respectively. Where are the 20-year-olds?
There are great guitarists out there making great music but take someone like Guthrie Govan, he’s more studious than an extravert guitar hero, even though he plays incredible stuff.
Certainly there’s no one like Angus Young any more even though ACDC’s music is recycled and influences many newer bands. Yet I suspect there’s still a demand for someone to put their foot up on the stage monitor and blast away; it’s just that there’s no one in a major band prepared to do it.
The guitar hero was one of the great things about bands back in the day, as you settled in for a 10-minute workout. In many ways it is what a certain vintage of listener thinks rock actually is. I suppose that we used to know everyone in any band. Or at least I did and I don’t think I was massively more nerdy than every other rock obsessive kid…OK, maybe I was. These days you might know one or two in a band but that’s it. I mean do you even know the name of Coldplay’s bassist. And they’re the biggest band in the world. There’s no way if you were into Zeppelin in the 70s that you wouldn’t know who played bass.
The whole infrastructure and detail of rock is more disposable and anonymous. You knew Brian May was distinct from Blackmore, from Clapton, Beck or Page. Now the music has a much less individual sound between bands, I guess.
I know it’s a generational thing and probably seems senseless to a 15-year-old now, whereas it was my whole world. And even today if the guitarist isn’t wearing the tightest pants, gurning furiously as they tear it up, foot on the monitor, it doesn't feel quite right. You can take the rock kid out of the 70s but you can’t take the rock out of the 70s kid.
Drawing "Rock Guitarist" by drawgood is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
