Andy Summers was, besides Eddie Van Halen and Stevie Ray Vaughn, prolly the most influential guitarist of the 1980’s. His ambient, sound-wash style defined the use of effects for the next 15 years, alongside The Edge (his partner in effects-laden crime, but without Summers’ technical/jazz chops). Your assertion is simply factually inaccurate.
And folks are welcome to state they don’t like Geddy Lee - heck, I am not much of a Rush fan myself - but to claim he is untalented, even on a relative basis, is just foolishness. Pish tosh.
The bass parts in “Love Buzz” are pretty memorable. The bass line is the hook to the song, and Krist does lots of funky improvization in Kurt’s “noise collage” solo.
Both songs show that Krist wasn’t untalented. Usually unremarkable, maybe, but not untalented.
True - heck, the intro to Lithium is enough to show he can hold a groove well.
The problem with Krist is that he was/is a bit of a doofus - too tall for his own good, prone to blurting silliness at awards shows, or beaning himself with a tossed bass - he doesn’t help his case…
Well, that and the fact that he basically was the band. Compare the dismal, uninspired albums that the surviving trio released under the Doors name in 1971-72 to anything they recorded with Morrison. No contest.
I wouldn’t call Krist Novoselic untalented, but he was definitely outshined by the raw charisma of Kurt and the musical talent of Dave. Krist was a perfectly capable musician flanked by two effing geniuses.
Yeah, I didn’t really account for the Keith factor; however, there were times that it seems his part could’ve been stronger, and I can’t imagine why Keith wouldn’t have wanted it stronger; different era, I guess. I do like Wyman’s lines in some songs and don’t think he’s bad at all, just the weakest link.
It wasn’t an assertion, it was an opinion. You’re free to disagree, and you clearly do. No big deal. You probably disagree with my other opinions in this thread, too. Most people do.
Sorry - I get feisty about guitar; it’s a sickness.
(and, by the way - I was going with early 80’s - Slash came in during the late 80’s. Knopfler was huge, too. Rhoads tucked in behind Eddie (Yngwie was niche) and Johnny Marr and Steve Stevens were part of the ambient-effects gang.
I wouldn’t characterize them as dismal or uninspired. In fact, over the life of the band Robby Krieger wrote about half of their material, so it wasn’t necessarily the content. The musical skill was there as well.
The problem is that they continued to use the Doors as their name. The albums were different, and while that’s OK for The Soft Parade because Jim was there, it’s not OK without Jim. People were expecting something other than what they got, and the albums suffered in comparison, especially Other Voices.
Had they simply taken the expedient of changing the band name expectations would have been reduced and the albums might be seen in a different light today. Seriously, how many people do you know that have actually heard the albums? Very few have or can remember anything about them except for the “fact” that they aren’t any good because Jim wasn’t there, if they even know the albums exist.
The full musical talent of Dave wasn’t at all evident in Nirvana, where (apart from a single B-side released late in their career) his sole duty was to drum very loud to Kurt’s songs. It wasn’t until the Foo Fighters that the world realized what a great singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist he was.
I firmly believe that Dave Grohl is one of the best true musicians of his generation, but you’re right, in that I’m pretty sure in 1994 nobody thought he’d end up being bigger than Kurt.
Richie Edwards from Manic Street Preachers, together with Nicky Wire, wrote the lyrics for the first 4 albums (the 4th in absentia - having disappeared, presumed dead, after album 3).
Where he fits in relation to this OP though is that he is possibly (hyperbole alert) “the worst guitarist ever” to feature for a relatively successful group. Apparently he played on none of their records - James Dean Bradfield laid down all the guitar tracks - and there are legendary stories about his guitar effectively being turned off when they played live. There is even a story that, at a Japanese festival, the socund techs thought, since Bradfield was singing, that Edwards must be the lead guitarist and turned up his amp - only for it to be apparent that he was barely forming chords. I think he even claimed that his role was to write the lyrics and pose with the guitar.
On one level, very talented - few Manic Street Preachers songs post Everything Must Go are lyrically as good as the stuff that Richie Edwards wrote. But musically, incredibly bad.
That’s because he didn’t. He did last a long longer. He’s a better drummer than any of those other things as far as I’m concerned, which isn’t to say he’s not talented. I don’t think I’d ever heard of anyone recording an album basically on their own before he did it for the Foo Fighters’ first album.
You have it backwards: the only reason as many people heard those albums as did was precisely because they were credited to the Doors. Those albums did sell; not in the numbers the Doors were accustomed to, but they charted respectably (though Full Circle less so than Other Voices) and certainly didn’t go unheard. By contrast, once they started releasing music not under the Doors name–Manzarek as a solo artist, doing some really good, adventurous stuff, and the remaining Doors (with new singer Jess Roden) evolving into the Butts Band–they flopped dismally.
As for the quality of the albums, I will admit to never having given Full Circle a totally fair shake, never having bought my own copy after being subjected to dreck like “I’m Horny, I’m Stoned,” “Variety Is the Spice of Life,” and “In the Eye of the Sun” on the previous album. But to my mind, they had exactly one really good song–“Ships w/Sails”–over the course of two albums.
He never got close to Cobain’s success or significance (other than riding his coattails in Nirvana), and his solo career was basically just ok. Nothing special or groundbreaking. Functional power pop. His musicianship and songwriting are fine, but nothing extraordinary. He never held a candle to Kurt’s genius.
Dennis Wilson didn’t bring a lot to the Beach Boys besides pedestrian drumming and some raspy vocals. Of course he was the only one who surfed, so he had that going for him.
