I’ve always wondered how it is such a huge amount of popular music is guitar driven. Why?
As Elton John demonstrates, rock music doesn’t HAVE to be guitar driven, and modern pop music has spun off varieties of music, like hip hop, that don’t much use guitars… but for decades guitars have been incredible central to rock. It didn’t actually start this way. Early rock and roll was often piano driven.
Why guitars?
Because girls don’t throw their panties onstage for tuba players.
Back in the day famous piano players had plenty of female admirers.
Guitars are portable. A cheap guitar can be bought by people without a ton of money, like the British kids who discovered rock and blues and re-made them into what rock is today. Electric guitars can go very loud–up to eleven, I’m told–and have cool effects. And you can move around on stage and have fun.
Also let’s not forget the randomness of fashion and its snowball effect. Kids see a guitar oriented band, think it sounds cool, and try to emulate it.
Well Elton John is kind of a weeny. Not that he hasn’t usually had a guitarist in his band. OTOH Jerry Lee Lewis did ok.
It’s easier than lugging around an orchestra.
Everyone knew guitar groups were going out of style in 1962.
Well, at least Decca Records did…
Jethro Tull has the flute.
Dulcimers don’t rock.
Not just the guitar, but the electric guitar. Something about that distortion pissed people off, and kids love to love what irritates others.
Do people seriously still believe that the reason kids got into rock was to piss off their parents? Why are the same kids still listening to rock now that they’re in their 50s and 60s?
When I first heard rock and roll I immediately fell in love. I was just blown away by the sound and wanted to hear more. Annoying my parents was the last thing on my mind. I would have much preferred my parents to like or at least tolerate the music, so there wouldn’t be an argument when I played it. I don’t think this experience is much different from most other musicians and fans.
Kids did not get into rock to annoy their parents. Annoying their parents was a bonus.
More seriously, guitars were relative cheap instruments, especially if you started out with a low-end model (you can pick up one now at Wal-Mart for $40). They are also relatively easy to learn to play, even without formal lessons (violins, etc. are very difficult to learn). They allow you to sing and play at the same time (can’t do that with a wind or brass instrument). You can take them with you (try that with a piano). You don’t need a band.
Other instruments have some of these advantages, but few have all. Plus people found it more versatile than instruments like the banjo or ukulele.
So once you be proficient with an acoustic guitar, you then might move to electric. Nothing to relearn, plus the ability to play in front of larger groups.
Early groups were piano driven mostly because of amplification issues. Once guitars became electric, they took the lead.
Then those other tuba players ain’t doin’ it right.
Hold on. I KNOW you know electric guitars have been knocking around since Charlie Christian banged his first amplifier together out of plywood, used bits, and coconuts (for all I know) down in his grandmother’s basement in Texas in the late 30s. And then got to New York somehow, blew Benny Goodman’s mind, and got hired as the first real jazz guitar soloist.
After ten years of experimentation, Les Paul started building solid-body electric guitars for Gibson in 1952. The Fender Telecaster went on sale the same year.
The R&B bands that were (along with C&W groups) the forerunners of rock and roll were like small jazz bands: as well and piano and electric guitar, they featured trumpet, trombone, and a couple of saxes. As the 50s moved on, brass instruments gradually dropped out. But early rock and roll kept at least one tenor sax honker in the personnel.
Sex sells.
Unlike pianos, guitars are phallic. So are bass guitars, but with guitars you can make screeching and moaning sounds. Its sounds range from whisper to thunder.
Also, there’s much bigger degree of intimacy in experiencing live performance because guitar’s interface - the fretboard - is often facing the audience. You can watch the magic of fingers knitting the music right in front of your eyes. Keyboards are usually lying flat on the table/stand so you are not able to see clearly what a musician is doing. (and strap-on synths - the “keytars” came in the 80s when guitar was already well established as a king of the stage, and they just looked awkward)
Even today, audiences prefer to see at least some gadget with knobs rather than a laptop and computer mouse.
Am wondering if there’s a phallic component to it.
So you say, but Paganini said, “The violin is my mistress, but the guitar is my master.”
Interestingly, I just read a couple of days ago that the first documented panty throwing was at Little Richard. So pianos got some cred.
This goes back a long time. I asked a musicologist why symphony orchestras were built around stringed instruments rather than horns - since horns came first. She said, “because horns were made for outside, and strings were made for inside.”
The progenitors of rock and roll, ie., country, bluegrass, and blues, were based around stringed instruments played by soloists or small (compared to an orchestra) groups.