See the previous entries here:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

As you can see from our previous entries, the guitar riff has been a major part of music history. By the time the 1970s rolled along, all those influences had resulted in people being more willing to explore the music and to do so without boundaries.

And, they killed it. Yup… They’ll tell you dirty rotten lies, but they killed it. They killed the guitar riff.

This is where it died. It was horrible!

The murderers are a band called King Crimson. The genre they’d create would become known as “Progressive Rock.” They no longer thought in terms of a guitar riff. They thought with fancy terms such as ‘motif’ and ‘phrases.’

Now, to be fair, those could be considered guitar riffs. However, the new genre didn’t rely on the old ways and explored the new ways. They changed their artistic direction and that genre split off and much of it doesn’t have any guitar riffs at all.

Don’t believe me? Hell, let’s just have a listen of their song In the Court of the Crimson King from their album by the same title:

Hear the operatic influence? In ten minutes, when you think back to that song -- you will almost certainly not be thinking about the guitar driving the song, providing the simple overtone and compelling you to dance.

Crimson King is a bunch of murderers, is what they are!

Go on… I’ll wait… Go back and listen to it again. I told you that they murdered it! But, thankfully, it not only didn’t stay dead -- it even lived on in a genre they pioneered.

Ever hear of a band called Queen? Think carefully, ’cause when you remember those songs you might just be remembering some guitar riffs.

Here, listen to Fat Bottom Girls by Queen:

That’s right -- it kicks in at just about the 30 second mark. The riff had risen from the dead in Prog Rock. The 80s would murder the hell out of it again and with a different set of suspects. But King Crimson marks the first time the guitar riff had been really murdered and it spawned a whole horrible genre called Progressive Rock.

Hits: 4

See the previous entries here:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Last week, we spoke of distortion and how that was achieved -- by cramming a thumb through a speaker to recreate their crappy regular equipment. Well, that wasn’t the only way. The Kinks’ guitarist would cut his speakers, the Who would have a go at it, and even Led Zeppelin would take distortion to new levels.

Along the way, a man named Tony Iommi lost some fingers in an industrial accident and that changed his playing style -- and he added distortion to it.

Who is he? Just some guy. You might know him from Black Sabbath? Why not give this a listen:

That’s Black Sabbath doing their title track, Black Sabbath. What’s the riff in that one? Well, it starts right off with it. Those very first notes are really the start of the Heavy Metal genre as we know it today.

They had, for the most part, mastered the art of distortion and studio executives and producers no longer feared the sound. Previously, they had tried (usually) tried to get a clean tone from the guitar, with just a few exceptions such as those mentioned above.

This song came out in the mid-1960s and became a bit of a rebel song. It wasn’t one of the rebel songs that you’d hear from people who stayed home and protested the war, this was the song that went into battle with the Vietcong, and did so on fairly new devices that had been made smaller by the invention of the transistor.

This was a song for the angry youth. This was the song that sparked imaginations -- both good and bad. A goodly portion of the populace felt that it was Satan incarnate and, as we listen to the song, it’s probably easy to see why -- and the band’s name doesn’t really help change minds. Other people felt that this was the soundtrack to their lives. Just those few notes are often referred to as, “The Satanic notes!” Adults were not amused!

This music inspired and gave angst-filled teens something to latch onto during a very confusing era. Though the song originally came from over the water, it was quite appreciated by Americans and would inspire many of them to become musicians as well.

At the same time, people were legitimately frightened to meet the band and actually thought that the notes were satanic and were a way of casting spells on people. It is, however, one of the hallmark guitar riffs and has influenced a great deal of other music.

By now, our fourth installment, you should be able to recognize the riff. It’s those few simple notes. They’re simple, rhythmic, compelling, and are what you take with you when you listen to the song again in your head. As you can see, they change with the times. Sometimes, they even change within the same song!

I’d not go so far as to say that the music makes the changes to society, but I’d say there’s strong correlation between the guitar riff and history. Let’s examine some more next week?

Hits: 17

See the previous entries here:

Part 1
Part 2

Last week, we examined Johnny B. Goode and how that turned the world of music upside down and how it accompanied the changes in society and we even discussed how Americana influenced the world.

It was about that same time, the year was 1958 and this was just a couple of months later, that Link Wray released an instrumental known as Rumble.

If you examine the late 1950s, you’ll notice that we generally considered Johnny B. Goode to be, well, good. Rumble? Not so much.

Now, rock takes on an attitude. How much attitude? Well, it’s an instrumental. Go ahead, give it a listen:

There, you find just a few short chords and some bitchin’ solos. That’s all there is to it, right?

Of course not… If that was all there was to it, it’d not be on the list!

No, they banned that. Yup… It was banned by some stations in the United States. They banned that from radio! It was also one of the first songs to feature power chords, distortion, and made use of feedback. It’s from there that we’ve gained our association of those three traits as being ‘dark.’

This song sounded unlike anything else that had been heard at the time and it became associated with the gang culture that permeated the 1950s. As the title may indicate, it was pretty well associated with a rumble, or a fight between rival gangs that involved multiple people.

This is also notable because the way to get distortion back then was to simply poke holes in the speakers. Link Wray jammed a thumb through the speakers, much to the dismay of the studio that recorded the work.

Either way, this sound would come to be associated with the rock you know and love. It didn’t have the wide appeal of Johnny B. Goode, but it did have the notoriety of being banned from the airwaves and only being an instrumental.

The banning? Well, that only helped its popularity among the kind of people that the song was meant to speak to. It had initially been a live jam and the audience loved it so much that they made the band repeat it four times in a single night.

It should be noted that it wasn’t banned in every radio market, just some of them. The reasons for banning it usually were summed up as they believed the song prompted and glorified juvenile delinquency and that was just not something America was ready for in 1958!

But, the story of rock moves on and many have since given the song much acclaim. Those are the same tones you’re already intimately familiar with and that riff has since gone on to be mimicked and used for a variety of tasks. We will see you next week with our next installment of the history of Rock and Roll by way of the guitar riff.

Hits: 29

See the previous entry here:

Part 1

Today, we continue our series on the history of Rock And Roll through the eyes of the guitar riff. It wasn’t until 1958 when things began to change, and the world was turned on its head.

I realize that this is might be confusing, but let’s unpack this. First, I want you to listen to Roll Over Beethoven by Chuck Berry.

No. That’s not a guitar riff. That’s a guitar intro. You won’t hear it repeated and driving the song. You hear an intro, a very early bitchin’ solo, and then you hear the rest of the instruments actually doing the driving of the song.

Now, listen to this:

Hear it? It’s still pretty quiet back then, but in its day that was considered screaming loud and it took the world of rock music by storm. It was that song, Johnny B. Goode, that was etched into the golden record, attached to the Voyager spacecraft, and launched on a journey across the universe.

No? Don’t hear it? Go back and listen again. Ignore the intro. Ignore the bitchin’ solos. Listen carefully -- between the solo and single-note playing and you’ll hear the very first guitar riff in a recording that got any significant airtime.

Wanna try to hear it even better? (Don’t worry, there’s a madness to my method. I’m trying to train your ears so that you can start to listen to music a little different than you might be used to! Like I said in the first entry into this series, get in the car ’cause we’re going on an adventure!)

Yup… Now, ignore that silliness that sounds fancy. Pay attention to the sole guitar, at just about the 20 second mark.

That’s a guitar riff and that’s pretty much when America lost its damned mind! People began to see things in a new light. That song was one of the songs that crossed the racial barrier. It appealed to people across racial, class, and even cultural divides.

Think it’s new? Not even close. Here, you can hear a very similar, almost identical, rendition with trumpets.

Note: I said that it was the first time the guitar riff had been popularly used in Rock And Roll -- it’d been in the Rhythm And Blues for quite some time.

In fact, in the Johnny B. Goode song, it was initially intended to be played on the piano. The difference here, is that it is now a guitar riff and played at higher volumes.

The guitar has a new roll, it is no longer a passive thing that punctuates the rhythm, it has become the rhythm and, by extension, it has become the song. It has become the riff.

So, where does the story go from here?

Well, as the guitar riff entered the popular music, many changes in culture happened at the same time. America was taking the world by storm and our culture was extending to be shared across the globe, along with some of our values.

We’d just recently finished our conflict in Korea, our open involvement in Vietnam hadn’t really begun, and the American kids were starting to act a little weird. Those people born near the start of WWII had reached the days of adulthood and had finished high school.

But, some of them weren’t interested in living the American Dream. Some of them wanted to explore new ideas, new ways of thinking, and to try to change the world. Rock And Roll was one of the things they’d take with them.

America, and by her influence the world, would step in new directions. We’d worry about things like civil rights, equality, expression, liberty, and art. We’d fret about nuclear destruction of mankind. We’d start to campaign against war and violence. We’d examine what it meant to be human.

And, along the way, the guitar riff would be their constant companion -- changing as much as we did. We will see you next week with our next installation of the history of rock as told by examining the guitar riff.

Hits: 28

Today, we are going to begin a wonderful journey through the magic of rock and roll, but to do this we need to learn and agree on a definition. Today, we’re going to concentrate on one word.

That word is ‘riff.’

What is a riff? That’s a complicated subject and a very good question. The riff is not the solo. That’s a common misconception. The riff is the melodic, rhythmic, and simple part of the song.

No, it’s not new. Think of the 1812 Overture. Think of Beethoven’s 5th. Think of Flight of the Bumblebee. Those are not guitar, but those are riffs. We are going to concentrate on the guitar riff.

When you keep the song stuck in your head, and remember it afterwards, you’re probably recollecting the riff part of the music. That’s the part that sticks with you and a good way to describe them is compelling -- sometimes even compelling people to wiggle their hips and move their feet.

When I say, “Smoke on the Water,” you don’t think about the bitchin’ solo -- you recall the riff. That’s what the riff is -- and it hasn’t always been done on guitar.

In fact, the early days of Rock And Roll had the riff filled in by piano and even trumpets. It was the blues influence that gave us the guitar riff as we know it today. This isn’t an early example, this is just an example of that blues influence:

That is a guitar riff. Can you hear it? If you can hear it, then you’ll perhaps be interested in joining us in the remainder of this series. If you can’t hear it, don’t worry. I’ll be training your ears to hear it along the way, as it can sometimes be a bit subtle. To make it more confusing, some songs will contain more than one guitar riff!

Get in the car! We’re going on an adventure! Stay tuned for next week, when we’ll continue to examine the history of rock and roll by understanding the guitar riff!

Hits: 35