All language subtitles for zelezni 1922 (2)

This programme contains
some strong language.

This week I'm In A Rock 'N' Roll
Band takes the volume knob up to 11

and looks at the men with the talent
to write a soundtrack to our lives.

The undisputed heroes
of rock 'n' roll.

I used to get the crowd going crazy
just by playing long solos.

You're actually having sex with
70,000 people. It's awesome!

It's the guitar player,
the individual who can bring a whole
continent to its knees with

a combination of strumming,
windmilling, kerranging
and standing with their legs apart.

We go into what we call
the attack position.

Which is, that...

Men in the unique position
of triggering the full range of
emotions from their band mates.

It's a special breed.

Looney, anal, weird...

Freaks... Nice guys.

Tonight I'm a rock 'n' roll star

Tonight I'm a rock 'n' roll star

Tonight
I'm a rock 'n' roll star...

For the young wannabe rocker
weighing up his future, there are
two leading roles in a band

that catch everyone's eye.
And it's in the wee small hours,
the quieter moments,

that a young, impressionable mind
turns to dreaming of a rock 'n' roll
destiny and weighs up who's cooler,

singer or guitarist -
Morrissey or Marr? Mick or Keith?

Jagger or Richards? Richards.

Keith. Of course.

The guitarist was the cool one

and the singer was the
egotistical maniac.

Johnny Marr's much cooler
than Morrissey. By a mile.

Johnny Marr put up with Morrissey.

That makes him a cool dude.

With Slash and Axl, it's definitely
Slash...cos Axl's a twat!

The guitar player was always the
key guy that you could trust

and the singer was something else,
another entity altogether.

The coolest place is the guitarist.

The guitarist can be quiet and
interesting in the background.

You can maintain mystique
if you keep your mouth shut.

You're at the front,
but you're not at the front.

You can always
hide behind the singer.

They can weave round the back,

and step forward and completely
overshadow the singer.

Which is to say, the genius
is really behind the guitar.

For the budding young
guitarist entering not into

a casual involvement but, in fact,
a lifetime's quest to make

wooden and steel sing,

there's the crucial step
of finding a way to acquire their
first actual electric guitar.

And I think a lot of kids in the
early days, including me,

you'd be there
with a broom in the mirror.

And tennis, boy,
when I got a tennis racket

I was a rock star, man.

I thought I told you
to turn that thing off!

It is too late and it's too loud!

My mother used to get this
Sears catalogue, which was a
department store in America.

There was always two pages

that had these cheap musical
instruments on them

and I'd wait for that catalogue
to come to my house
and I would get that catalogue

and I'd find that page
and I would look at those musical
instruments like it was porn.

My grandmother took me
up to Shaftesbury Avenue.

There were all these
guitars in glass cases.

But they were all much too expensive
stuff, you know, for a ten-year-old.

It'd be the equivalent to going
out buying a real expensive car now.

I pestered my mum and
dad for about two years.

My dad was a truck driver, a lorry
driver so it was a real big expense.

The got me a Gibson SG.

I didn't realise how much they had
gone into debt and all this stuff
until way later.

I turned 13 on December 16th
and nine days later, Christmas Day,

found a solid body electric
guitar under the tree.

Turning 13 was one thing,

but turning 13 with
a guitar in hand was the big thing.

Open up your door

I can't see your face no more...

My dad was quite keen on me learning
to play the guitar, to say the least.

Me dad was a steel worker but he
used to play in bands at night.

He borrowed loads of guitars
off friends and left them.

there would be one in the bathroom,
one in the bedroom, one at the top of
the stairs when I was really little.

I kind of run past them
with my Action Man and...

Maybe... And me dad would be like...

You know, I can hear a bit of
guitar and then I'd go off and play
with Tonka toys or whatever.

But, it's always the
one that you can't have.

He got a '63 Strat and he
used to leave it under the sofa.

I remember I was off school ill
with a sore throat and I'd got

a plastic bowl full of peanuts and
raisins and this drink waiting,

watching the trade test card.

You'd get one cartoon
per day, which at that time I was
waiting for Mary, Mungo And Midge.

Seriously!

My mind got to thinking about

my dad's guitar.

Or, what was that thing
under there, you know,
that I wasn't allowed to touch.

I got this case out and managed
to figure out the catches.

It was literally one of
those hallelujah moments

where when I lifted up that thing,
I saw this thing. To a young boy,

it looked like a spaceship.

I won't part with this
thing for all the world.

It doesn't matter what you offer me.

You could offer me 50 grand.
Offer me 50 grand and see
if I'd sell it to you.

It is the look of it and the fact

it's very, very simple.

This guitar, this Telecaster,
I first saw in a
music shop in Southend.

in the mid '60s.

These things used to cost

about £107, I think it was new.

This was a vast fortune then.

I couldn't possibly afford it.

I was a schoolboy
and my mum wouldn't let me
have anything on credit.

So I went in the shop and said, "If
you give me a little book and I can
pay you every week whatever I can."

So I used to do it on a Saturday,
pay him some money

and they would give me the guitar
for half an hour and let me play it
and I'd have to give it back.

I persuaded my girlfriend to
secretly...

Don't tell her mum and dad,
but to secretly draw the money

out of her Post Office savings

to pay it off, which she did.

I never did pay her back
but I did marry her though.

Once he gets the guitar,
the infant twanger enters
a crucial second stage.

He shuns all other activities and,
like a young buck with a budding
antler, he spends so much time

with it, the guitar becomes not so
much a companion, as an appendage.

I took it to school, I often took it
to work. I have a guitar in the loo,
all the time, actually.

I play in there a lot. It wasn't
until I found that Jimi Hendricks

used to carry his everywhere, in the
toilet and everywhere else, that
I began to feel relatively normal.

I'm like that on the phone quite
often, which is really not good.

When you go to bed you prop it up
at an angle so you can see it.

So the first thing you
see when you wake up is the guitar.

It was always there waiting.

It's almost like you're
possessed by the guitar.

When I was in my room,
playing that guitar, I couldn't care
if the world was burning down.

Weather men have warned that there's
worse weather on the way with
more gales and rain storms.

More than a dozen rivers in
South Wales overflowed their banks.

As long as I remember

The rain kept coming down...

My street got flooded
when I was about ten

and I had a
Les Paul Copy Hohner

and I cut out the Gibson logo
from The Guitarist magazine

and stuck it on top with tape.

I remember looking out of the window
and there was water
up to the window sill.

I turned around and there was water
running into the house.

Who'll stop the rain...?

I vividly remember
running underneath the settee
and pulling my Les Paul Copy out

and running upstairs and putting it
onto the highest point of the house,

which was the top
of my mother's wardrobe.

That was the most important
thing in the house at that point.

I let the school books and my school
uniform float down the street
but I kept the fucking Les Paul.

Complete with his new best friend,

what happens next is a magical
night time process involving
bedrooms, straps and mirrors.

I remember I used to
share a bedroom with my brother

and when it was time for him to
go to bed I still wanted to play.

I would decamp to my parents'
bedroom, they were watching
television downstairs and I'd

have the lights off and open the
curtains and have the street lights
coming through the bedroom.

I'd kind of stand
there and try and get...

the height of the guitar right.

I'd mess with the strap.

When I put it on,
my imagination lifted off.

I looked at myself in the
mirror and I could see myself

standing with the guitar so I can
imagine myself being in a band.

All I need to do now was find
the other people who would be

in this band with me.
Where could they possibly be?

There was a guitar teacher at
our school, a biology teacher,
called Brian Close. He got me going.

I think the first song I
learned was Tell Laura I Love Her.

Then he said,
"Have you got a bass player?"

I said, "Yeah, there's a guy, you
know." We had a funny bass player.

He used to have this amp in his room
and he'd put the wires in
the light switch.

He plugged it into their one
night and blew the power out.

Then, lo and behold,
a guy comes to my door, named John,

and he said, "I've heard you've
got a guitar, do you want a singer?"

I said, "Well, yeah, we do."
So he come in.

We did a show at a local
parish hall for half a crown.

I couldn't believe anybody danced to
us cos we had no drummer.

Everybody was doing all this,
you know, like twisting and I
said, "They're dancing to us."

And a bloke come up to me and he
said, "You're not too bad, are you?"
We were probably out of tune.

He said, "Well, get yourself
a drummer and I'll give you
five bob next time you come."

He was like that, you know.
That was my start.

Finished with my woman cos she
couldn't help me with my mind

People think I'm insane because
I am frowning all the time...

But in this epic journey,
this vision quest
of a young rock guitarist,

there are genuine
pitfalls and perils.

Some wrapped in real tales
of dark Satanic Mills.

Many years ago I was working in
a factory. I used to do welding.

There used to be somebody
that used to bend metal,

send it down to me and I'd weld it.

One day this person never came in

that was bending all the metal
and sheet metal and stuff.

So, they put me on this machine.

I had no idea how
to work this machine.

Something happened and the machine
hit the fingers and as I pulled back
I just pulled the ends off.

The bones were just
sticking out the end. That was that.

That was the end of my
guitar playing for a bit.

I was very depressed and down and
the manager of the factory came over

to the house to see how I was and
he brought an EP over.

I said, "What about it?"

He said, "That guy
only plays with two fingers."

It was Django Reinhardt.

So I got a Fairy Liquid bottle
and made myself some thimbles.

I melted it down
and made it into a ball.

I got a hot soldering iron and
poked it through big
enough to fit on my finger.

I just sat there for days, really,

just filing and rubbing it down till
it shaped a sort of a thimble.

But it kept slipping off the string,
it being plastic, so I had to find
something that would grip the string.

So I cut my old leather jacket up,
and the thimbles came out like this.

It's not very powerful
without the amp, is it?!

So, he's got all his fingers,
in some form or other.

A huddle of other musicians
are gathering around in a primal
relationship known as jamming.

The next step is to discover his
fate in rock 'n' roll folklore.

Is he a Simon Townshend
or a Pete Townshend?

A Dave or a Mark Knopfler?

A rhythm or a lead guitarist?

The lead guitarist
was always the most important.

He was your striker, he was the
one up front who could show off.

You were like a racing car
driver or something, and

the rhythm guitar player was just
the sort of, you know, a mechanic.

I think the lead guitarist is always
going for chicks and glory, isn't he?

I've got licence to play
all the snazzy bits.

Those were the parts, on
all the Gene Vincent records,

Race With The Devil, I mean, when
you've got a record that's like...

That would be enough, you know
what I mean? Then it's going...

I mean, that, to me,
was where I wanted to go.

Who needs to be going...?

So, he's made it,
he's the lead guitarist.

But what the young plucker
now needs to keep him there

and put a sheen on his swagger are
the bullets for his six-shooter -

the classic riffs.

I just sat and did that all day long,
you know?

Da-na-na-na-na,
da-na-na-na-na-na...

Can't believe I'm playing that.

My big breakthrough was learning
This Charming Man by The Smiths.

You see, it's just like,
I do it all the time, and now
I can't fucking remember it!

Oh, you motherless fuck!

It was something that I couldn't do.
Then all of a sudden I could do it.

And by the end of the day you can
play it. You've got it in your
toolbox, so to speak.

Carry it around and show your mates.

So you may have the riff
no-one else can play, and the
respect of your muso mates,

but what if your voice
isn't great and
you don't want to front the band?

What you're in search of is that
rare beast called the lead singer.

You go on a quest to find the
person who will complete you,
be your other half.

I think what guitarists are great at
is being a foil to the lead singer.

The great partnerships are
between the singer and the
guitar player, aren't they?

The front man is like the
quarterback of the situation,

if you want to put it in a kind of
a football team kind of way.

And the guitarist is like the flank.

He knows his contribution, and
he knows how important it is.

A quarterback has to run the squad.

Unless he gets somebody to throw
it to, they can't win the game.

There's something about a
certain form of rock 'n' roll,
which is very boys' own.

There is something that has a kind
of homoerotic paradigm in that.

When Jon and I met,
we kind of grew together.

We lived in an apartment together
in Philadelphia, we had no money,

no food, but there was a
lot of other things about.

We spent more time together
over the last 27 years

that we've been in a band than
we have spent with our families.

When you're on the
road, especially, you're always
together, it's what you do.

It is a form of,

a sexual coupling, almost.

Oh, we're halfway there

Oh, living on a prayer

Take my hand

We'll make it, I swear

Oh...

So you've found your life
partner to grow old with, to lead

you and your Cuban heels through
clouds of dry ice on paths of glory.

But now you're fully grown,
the lead singer will look to you,
the guitarist, to walk tall,

put your stamp on rock 'n' roll,
and invent the brand new riffs
that will shape the world.

In the film Let It Be,
Paul is at the piano,

and he turns to
George and says, got any riffs?

Cos that's what a
guitarist is supposed to have.

I'll think of a riff and
then I will write a song.

So I will think of this riff...

Write a song for that.

If there's something that I like

It's a way that woman walks...

And if there's something
I like better

It's the way she baby talks...

Like that.

It doesn't have to be, like,
you've got to go to school,

Berkeley of music, and everything
else, to come up with these things.

It's usually very simple.
Even as simple as...

One chord, one change, you
can stay there all day long
and throw a house party.

It has to say something.

It has to either make you want to
fight or fuck or something.

It's got to have a kind of
energy to it.

The Sweet Child Of Mine thing, just
because I came up with that riff,

I might not necessarily
have done anything with it.

So, the fact that Izzy heard it, and
it inspired him to play some chords,

which then inspired Axl
to write some lyrics, and the song it
became, it was a group effort.

She's got a smile
and it seems to me

Reminds me of childhood memories

Where everything was as
fresh as the bright blue sky

Now and then when I see her face

It takes me away
to that special place

And if I stare too long

I'd probably break down and cry

Whoa, sweet child of mine

Whoa-oh-oh, sweet love of mine...

If only all bands could
knock together number one

songs with such louche camaraderie
and gay rock 'n' roll abandon.

The truth is,
when it comes to songwriting,

your new best friend, the lead
singer, doesn't always listen.

Songwriting is a healthy debate.

It's like, it is not an argument.
It's just a healthy debate.

It's supposed to be a democracy,
but of course it wasn't,

it was really more of a
dictatorship.

Not even a benign
dictatorship, actually!

The lead singer usually has an ego
larger than Saturn and all its rings.

Sting took the position
that he was the song writer.

He would not really sing anyone
else's songs, there were a couple
of incidents where I thought,

I've got better ones than
you've got for this one, mate.

But he was not about to sing them.

And The Police's debut single,
Roxanne, started life as a song that

jazz-loving Sting and his lead
guitarist saw very differently.

The first time I heard Roxanne was
actually at my flat in Putney,
where I was living at the time

and Sting was staying
with my wife and I.

And going to bed one night,
I heard him come up with this song,
he was playing a bossa nova.

Hang on, did someone say bossa nova?

On a nylon-stringed guitar, and it
was Roxanne. It was the first time
we had heard it, or I had heard it.

And actually Kate said to me,
this is really great, this song.

So, yeah, but it's bossa nova
and this is the punk scene.

We're going to get killed.

We ended up rehearsing at this
hairdresser's basement, up off the
Finchley Road,

on a memorable afternoon,
amongst wet plaster and concrete.

We said, let's try that Roxanne song.

And we were influenced
by reggae at that point.

I changed it into...

That locked the whole thing together.

So we had the straight
four-in-a-bar guitar,

and the drums
doing this kind of reggae feel,
and the baseline going...

Roxanne

You don't have to put on
the red light

Those days are over

You don't have to sell your body
to the night

Roxanne

You don't have to wear
that dress tonight

Walk the streets for money

You don't care
if it's wrong or if it's right

Roxanne

You don't have to
put on the red light

Roxanne

You don't have to
put on the red light, come on...

That was really the birth of Roxanne,
and we rehearsed it that afternoon.

And we came out feeling,
from that rehearsal,

very good about ourselves, we felt
like we had really created something.

Roxanne

Roxanne

Roxanne

Roxanne

Roxanne

Roxanne

Put on the red light

Put on the red light

Put on the red light

Put on the red light...

The Police showed that
singer and lead guitarist,

in their honeymoon period, can gel
and create not just a hit but
in fact the definitive band sound.

But there would still be
an important question in
the guitarist's mind -

how do I make sure
I get enough face time?

All right, everybody!

Let your hair down!

Want to see everybody
get up off their seat,

clap your hands, stamp your feet,
get down, get with it!

You have to remember, the lead
vocalist, when you become successful,

the lead vocalist,
usually of course the front man.

So he's going to get
the most shots on TV.

And then, of course, jealousies
creep in from the rest of the band.

The guitar player might not like
the singer doing all the interviews.

He doesn't like him getting
all the shots on television,

so he will have his way of
getting his shots on the television.

I certainly knew how
to get noticed, you see.

I always knew that clothes and,
you know, looking interesting,

would enhance me.

I would get noticed,

and I have no problem with that,
because I'm good at that.

I'd come walking on from the side
of the stage and immediately stick my
fist out, and I'd get right on

top of this high box, so you can
imagine I suddenly shoot up really

high, raise my arms in the air, and
you've arrived, you know what I mean?

It's a bit like the audience like you
doing something fun
because they will do it.

I get them to jump as well,
always get audiences
to do this kind of stuff.

Everybody say they feel all right!

In Wolverhampton, Dave Hill made
sure he got attention by having
giant guitar risers built for him.

But back in Essex, Dr Feelgood's
Wilko Johnson developed another
trick - an extra long guitar

lead allowing seemingly infinite
movement into frontman territory.

I mean, the whole point of
rock 'n' roll is to excite
people, entertain people.

You've been playing this song
for a while with a steady rhythm,

and sudden you realise there's
a bit of a rush coming on.

Wilko's like this psychotic nutter,
strutting around the stage, like a
madman, staring at the audience,

and looking to all the world

like that kid that would
always get duffed up at school.

If you're dancing down the
disco, dancing to a record

you really like, I mean, where did
that come from, what you're doing?

You just do it, don't you?
Well, it's the same thing, really.

Guitar solo coming in the middle of,
makes you feel like...

He kind of lead with the guitar.

The guitar was pulling him along
across the stage, it had a life of

its own, and he was doing
his best to hang on to it.

I have actually fallen
off stages and things.

But when this has happened, I'm proud
to say, I didn't miss a beat.

The roadies can pick you up and
you stand up again and off you go.

Note to emerging lead guitarist -
develop an attention-grabbing stage
technique that no-one else can do.

It's not easy to do a windmill.

No, I wouldn't do one of those.

I'd hurt my bloody hands, he
used to break his, let alone mine.

Like that, you just...

CYMBAL CLASH
And that happens.

And then take
a lesson from Pete Townshend -

declare your attention-grabbing
technique an artistic statement.

A lot of what I did was posing.

That famous image of me,

big nose, arm up in the air,
the guitar quite high.

You know, this is a fanfare,
we're coming, this is semaphore,
this is signalling, this is an

aeroplane, this is something else,
this is a propeller, this is energy.

I had had quite an arty farty
art school thing, and immediately

started to think in terms of, I am an
installation, we are an installation.

These are the sounds of war.

For a while, Pete was the undisputed
king of guitar posing, but without

a rock 'n' roll crystal ball,
how could he know what was coming?

How could he see the
contender for his crown
about to make his entrance?

The year was 1967.

New York City used to have
these festivals in Central Park
during the summer time.

My favourite band during that
summer was The Young Rascals.

I went to see them,

not knowing who was going to open up.

And the announcer comes up, and it's,
ladies and gentlemen, for the first

time in the United States,
here they are, from England...

First of all, this was the first time
that we ever saw Marshall stack amps.

I'm going,
"Check out those amps, they're as big
as the Empire State Building."

And of course he went on the floor,
and he was playing with his teeth,

and his peepee, whatever he
was playing with, you know!

After that, life, musically,
had changed in about half a second.
The Young Rascals come on,

we got up on our seats
and, boo, get the...!

I mean, this is the
band we came to see.

That was it.
After that, the whole thing changed.

What Townshend and Hendrix
changed forever

was the idea that just
playing the guitar was enough.

In rock 'n' roll, from then on,
the way you wrangled the guitar

and just plain held it
said everything about you.

So ferry 'cross the Mersey...

Crikey, lock up your daughters,
it's Gerry Marsden.

In the early days, certainly from
The Searchers and Gerry And
The Pacemakers and all that,

The Beatles even,
it was up here like this.

Love, love me do...

They've all got it pretty high,
because it's better for
their diaphragm. It's true.

If you can see your belly button
underneath it, it's not right.

Never like Haircut 100,
that's just really not good.

When you get your attitude right,
it affects the way you can play,
I think.

It's kind of like the way some
actors talk about

the way Alec Guinness used to get his
character by getting the right shoes,
you know.

I generally carry this can-opener,
you know.

You want to make sure that you've
got easy access to the church key.

If I wore it any higher,
you see, it would cause a collision.

I would say, below the
belt buckle starts to get into,

now you're talking attitude.

It's a boy thing, isn't it?

Playing the guitar.
It needs to be in the boy area.

There is an adorable
boyishness about it,

that you just think,
oh, OK, then, go on.

If you have it down here, you're not
going to be able to play anything.

Slash, where are you?

It is more
of an extension of you as a person,
if it's just sort of arm's length.

This is the thing about the guitar,
it is essentially about doing that.

That's playing the guitar.

That looks rubbish, doesn't it?

So it turns into
this, and, you know, that, standing
like that and going like this.

I've been in spoof bands,
and I've been in real bands,

and the stance
is pretty much the same.

You know, we don't stand up and play.

We've developed this
right from the start,

where you go into what we call
the attack position, which is that.

Legs apart,
guitar phalically pointed at

the audience members' faces.

If the guitar is jutting out
from your crotch to the audience,

there's quite a clear metaphor.

Directing
whatever it is at the crowd, you'd
sort of think, yeah, that's a cock.

It wouldn't happen in my band under
my watch, let me tell you that.

There would be no Status
Quo-ing, duelling guitars.

No.

The point about men and
the attack position is

that if women don't appreciate it,
there's always another man who will.

In Quo's case,
he will be stood right next to you.

You'd start with the...
Because you... You know,

and then, because it's quite close,

you'd feel it, so we'd start moving
together, and that felt good.

But it really embarrassed my brother.
His friends said we looked like
a formation dance team.

And all this boy-on-boy guitar
action gives a certain permission
to the male rock 'n' roll audience.

Lots of people say that
about a concert, where there
are just no girls there.

There are none, it's just men
enjoying themselves.

Being physical.

But it's fine, because it's
just a song, but really,
what would you like to do?

Tear each other's clothes off.

In this veritable frenzy of male
bonding, our guitarist got busy,

extending not just his attack
position, but also, critically,
the size of his equipment.

They used to call this the wall of
death, but it has got shrunk down.

This bit here was probably one of
the loudest things on the planet.

Rick does like his volume.

For Caroline, I then go on to
this one, which is really dangerous.

Ha-ha! Right, watch your ears.

There's growing concern among health
experts in Britain that we are being
subjected to too much noise.

A pop group in full voice, as it
were, can produce just about the same

amount of noise as a 707 thundering
a few hundred feet overhead.

The worst trait in guitarists.
I think without fail,

is the need to turn up
the whole time.

It's power, power in
dynamics and power in ego, I suppose.

The sort of sledge hammer guitar.

This big guitar sound,

which sent out, it sends out weight,
moves air, I call it.

This is the type to what
we use on stage, but it is very
special, because if you can see...

Yeah. ..the numbers all go to 11.

Look, right across the board.

They do tend not to listen
to what else is going on.

What we do is, if we need that extra
push over the cliff, you know what
we do? Put it up to 11. Exactly.

Anyone who's in a rock band
is a fan of rock guitar.

Even if you're a drummer,
or a singer, the reason you're there

is because it gives you a hard-on in
the first place, hearing a guitar.

Why don't you just make 10 louder
and make 10 be the top number and
make that a little louder?

These go to 11.

If you're a fly on the wall
at a sound check, they'll go, "What
do you want to hear in your monitor?"

You go, "Well,
I need to hear some high hat,

some bass drum and some tom-toms,
need to hear the bass, bit of
lead guitar and the vocals, please."

"Thank you very much." And they'll
go round everybody accordingly,
till they come to the lead guitarist.

"What do you want to hear
in your monitors?" "Me."

What they offer at the
sound check is never what they...

They come on stage and suddenly
everything's much louder

than you thought it was going to be,
and so you start playing louder and
there's that whole thing...

And eventually, you run out of how
hard you can hit a drum kit.

With you, my love

Light shining through on you

Yes, I'm with you, my love...

I mean, we started off with Cream.
Jack and Eric
had one Marshall each,

and then they had two,

and then they had four.

To be where I'm going

In the sunshine of love...

Most of the gigs,

the only time I heard the drums
was playing a drum solo.

It was just incredibly loud.

And I'd get into the hotel after a
gig and my ears were just...roaring.

It was painful.
I mean, physically painful.

And it has damaged my hearing...

..from that moment until this.

With extraordinary volume also
comes an extraordinary temptation
for the rock 'n' roll guitarist,

very much of the American school -
the grandstanding,
centre-stage guitar solo.

Yeah, I mean I, basically,

ask God before
every show that I become a funnel,

and I try to get out of my body,

in a way, when I'm
playing guitar solos.

It's what musicians, their whole
lives, want to reach, is to fly.

You're just like so gone,
you can improvise, you can play

and that's when
you're really cooking, man.

That's the real shit.

It's like sex, man! When you get out
of your body, when you're actually
playing a song

and you're improvising a solo
in front of 20,000 people,
or 70,000 people in my case

sometimes, you're actually having
sex with 70,000 people. It's awesome!

What went wrong with guitar solos
was instead of being that

emotional wave that breaks in the
middle of the song before the tide
comes back out

and brings in
the rest of the song, they became
a thing in and of themselves.

There is a difference between
exploring musically

and somebody going
on a voyage up their own arse.

Lord, I can't change...

What did bug me was if you went to
see your favourite guitarist live

and then they dragged the solo out
three times as long. That bugged me.

I used to play very long guitar
solos in those days and that was

the thing, your eyes would close,
you'd go back and off you'd go.

20 minutes, I've gone on for like
20 minutes or something.

God, 25 minutes.

You'd end up throwing in a jazz bit.

Then a classical bit.

I got longer and longer and longer
and longer and longer and longer...

You know what we call that?

"Look at me, look at me,
look at me, look at me!"

I just remember
these guitar auditions.

Some of the guitarists,
they'd just plug in and go...

And you'd try and say, "OK,
that's enough, thank you,"

and once I had to actually
pull his plug out.

And he was still doing that
and then looked around,
"Oh, there's no sound coming out."

Not that that stopped
the diddly-dee-ing.

In the video age, the
setting for the solo became
the stuff of fantasy,

guitarists swapping giant stage
risers for something more epic,
as in Guns 'n' Roses' November Rain.

I wanted to do a shot
where I was coming out of the church,

and I come out and do the guitar solo
out in front of the church.

It came out looking pretty dynamic,
all things considered.

Those shots they were taking
from the bottom of the helicopter,
between 10 and 15 feet over my head,

which was pretty close.

Slash in the attack position pretty
much owned the world and could move
Heaven, Earth and helicopters.

So where's the catch?

Adulation gives
our ego a sense of wellbeing.

And once you start getting that,
you start perpetuating your own
reality and your own ego.

RIFF FROM SMOKE ON THE WATER
BY DEEP PURPLE

Did inventing the most famous
rock 'n' roll riff of all time

and being anointed a guitar God
go to Ritchie Blackmore's head?

Who can say?

I think what characterises Ritchie
more than probably anything else,

including his remarkable
technical ability and so on,

is his seemingly unerring belief

that he knows best.

The California Jam in 1974

saw Richie take particular exception
to the TV coverage of the festival.

We were on stage about 25 seconds
when one of the several cameras they

were shooting with for ABC Television
came right into his face.

And he gently pushed it away.

It happened several more times,
so Ritchie attacked the
camera with his guitar...

..and I think
pretty much destroyed it.

By then, his rile was up.

He'd also arranged to load a
dummy Marshall amp stack with petrol.

But a roadie we had
put about eight times too much in.

And I was away on the other side
of the stage and it was like being
punched in the face,

the force of the explosion.

Of course, the member of the band
who can find all this prima donna
behaviour

really annoying
is the one the guitarist is supposed

to have a special relationship with
but has literally blown off stage -
the lead singer.

Guitarists are a weird breed.

Moody, anal, weird...freaks.

Nice guys.

Often, singers and guitarists
give off the vibe of a
couple breaking up.

All the time.

There's a certain angst that happens.

The Mick and Keith syndrome.

It creates a dynamic in the music
and you can feel that in a lot of
bands, and you know who they are.

That's the spice that makes it
interesting and compelling
and somehow translates,

to the public, to the audience,
and they get it.

You might not talk to each other for
a day or two but those gigs during
that period are pretty explosive.

One band in the '60s, the Yardbirds,

was a fountainhead
of lead guitarists,

Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and one
Jeff Beck all passing through...

..to the eternal annoyance
of lead singer, Keith Ralph.

I used to get the crowd going crazy
just by playing long solos.

I knew that
I was not just a side guitar player.

I realised that Keith was
the sideman,

the lead singer.

He used to record hate poems
and then play them to us.

It was quite scary, really.

During the shooting of Blow Up,
he started playing this hate tape.

Each one of us was named
and we were given our fate.

And I thought, "Oh,
this is not a comfortable space."

I think it was written in
ink by then that it wasn't
going to go on much longer.

After leaving the Yardbirds,
Jeff set up his own group
and defied the DNA of rock 'n' roll

as he made himself king of the band,
reigning over his novice lead
singer, a young Rod Stewart.

I've woken up on mornings
such as this

And thought exactly the
same as I'm thinking now...

We got on great at first,
until it said "Jeff Beck Group"

everywhere we went.
There was no mention of the lead,
"featuring Rod."

But I was the one selling
the tickets
and people were paying to see me.

I just thought,
"Well, wait a minute, I've taken you
from obscurity.

"You're now
on the big stage with me.

"Just behave yourself
and we'll see what happens."

So you can understand
someone with a massive ego,
vocalist, being left out.

I blew out Woodstock, the most
famous gig blown ever, I think.

And he hated me even
more after that,
because that was his big chance.

Imagine, having that removed
just several days before.

It's OK.

Then I had a car crash
and that was it.

He never came to see me in hospital.

When I came out of my coma, I
picked up Melody Maker to find out

he had joined the Faces.
Thank you very much!

While Jeff survived the loss of Rod
and as a solo guitarist moved on
to new heights in his career,

a different fate awaited
Dr Feelgood's Wilko
when things began to unravel

with the band mates he'd known
from childhood in Canvey Island.

Some of the tension certainly
on my side was the worry
of having to write songs.

It's OK at first. You do your
first album and you've got to keep

writing them and writing them under
pressure, which just makes it harder.

It got to the stage where
Lee and I could hardly stand
the sight of each other.

We were recording our fourth album
and this argument exploded,
all night long,

me sitting there and them
sitting around me in a circle,
having a go one by one.

It wasn't like,
"We dispense with your services,"

or me, "I shall take my talents
elsewhere." Nothing like that.

It was just, "Fuck you!"

And that was the end of it.

When I was out of the band,
I was absolutely...

lost.

I didn't know what to do. I proceeded
to make all the wrong moves.

I didn't have anything.

I didn't have any manager or nothing,
nobody to consult.

Yeah, it was quite freaky, really.

I did not see any of them
for many years.

In fact, it was at Lee's funeral
we actually

all met together again.

As you can imagine,
that was quite poignant.

Not that these pictures are making
any comment about lead singers and
lead guitarists in the 1970s,

but by the end of that decade, the
notion of lead anything in the band

was considered dinosaur-like,
as punk and its Stalinist rules

took exception to guitar heroes.

I don't have any heroes.
They're all useless.

There was a set of rules laid
down by punk.

You don't play solos.
You don't bend notes.

You write everything
with three chords.

Actually, that sounds quite good.

In the years that followed, the
rock 'n' roll guitarist grew up.

No longer a a mannish boy

exuding the smell of power
chords and thrusting solos,

more a one-man orchestra
painting colour and texture.

I'd just try and match
the sound with the emotion.

It's a good thing
if there vulnerability in it.

In a three-decade span
through Britpop and beyond,

the axe-wielding beast
beloved of rock 'n' roll
became rarer and harder to spot.

As solos shrank,

the volume knobs were turned
to a level marked tasteful.

In bands around in
my generation, from this decade,

there hasn't been a lot
of lead guitarists, you know?

From the Killers or the Strokes,
the Libertines, whatever.

Maybe the lead guitarist is a dead
art now, a dying art form.

And maybe somebody needs to come
along and just grab it by the balls.

Could that scrotum-tickler
be one Matt Bellamy of Muse?

Shoe-gazing indie strummers
look away now.

I think England took itself a
little bit too seriously in the 90s.

Britpop ruined the
rock scene a bit because...

English rock bands are best when
they go out and take the piss
out themselves and the world.

There's that sort of
technological end to it.

Sort of bleeping and squeaking.

I think it sums up what
it's like now, in the world.

Sort of high-tech warfare.

Muse is the war in Afghanistan.

Discuss.

I think live, we do have that kind
of Guitar Hero cheesy rock vibe

that has always surprised people
when they come to see us live,

and see me doing full knee-slides,

rock poses, playing behind my neck
and trashing guitars and all that.

People find it quite surprising
because they didn't expect that.

Through the advent of these new
video games like Guitar Hero

and Rock Band and things like that,

it's coming back.

I'm serious, man. Because I see more
kids playing guitar now,

like early teens, 12 years old,
11 years old,

that are trying to play lead solos.

Come up to me and ask me
about, "Hey, how did you do that?

What's that about?" They go,

Yeah, I got your thing on
Guitar Hero," you know?

They're trying to play like
Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck.

They're trying to emulate
guys that are on those games.

They're trying to be us, which is
great. It's cool, you know?

The beauty about it is I don't
think we need gods in heaven,

and I certainly don't think
that we need gods on earth.

What's beautiful about music

is the fact that it's made
by ordinary human beings.

We're just ordinary
blokes from Runcorn

or Cheshire or Glasgow or wherever.

That's what I've always found
amazing - that some guy walking

down the street can be on stage
and make it sound like you're
on another planet.

That's what's beautiful about music.

Now it's over to you. A shortlist of
the ten greatest guitarists ever,

as chosen by a panel of music
experts, awaits at our website:

We need you to pick your favourite
guitarists of all time

and all will be revealed in a
special live show next month.

While next week, chocks away,

as the shy retiring member of the
band takes a bow - the drummer.

The beat of the band and
the butt of all jokes.

How do you know when it's
a drummer at the door?

He knocks three times
and comes in late.

With an appetite for destruction,
and an eternal feeling of
being misunderstood.

I think most people look at drummers
like we're these Neanderthals that
just beat things up for a living.

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