The journeyman with Eddie’s rig would sound close in terms of the overall guitar sound (the guitar, the amp, the effects, etc), it would likely be a really close approximation. But due to the way Eddie plays with his hands, his fretting of notes, his pick attack, his hammer-ons, fingertapping, etc he’d still sound less like Eddie and more like himself, but the reverse wouldn’t be true. If Eddie played on the journeyman’s rig, set to the journeyman’s specs, Eddie would sound more like Eddie than the journeyman.
And yes, a steel acoustic will tend to sound much more like an electric played though and amp on it’s cleanest channel/setting, ie, no distortion at all, than a nylon string.
Indeed, that riff is dead simple, and really a test of how good the amp sounds on the lowest note of concert tuning.
Absolutely! I’ve seen him countless times. I had a friend of a friend exclaim that he’s better than SRV after a show. The longer time goes on, the more I think he may be right.
To that list, I’ll add: Gilbert. Detune the E and A extremely for an intro, then play them as if they’re a whammy bar for the rest of the song.
I like most of yours, but this is just on a different level. A monster intro for a monster song.
Hell yes, when that song gets stuck in my head, it’s the opening riff that sparks it.
And to break the rawk love: Buckaroo by Buck Owens! 'Course, the intro riff is the main part of the song.
I am probably being whooshed here, but most likely all these songs were played by — and arranged by the players themselves (sometimes writing their whole part themselves). I would imagine Danny Tedesco played guitar on all of those cuts.
Right, sorry. Denny is the son and Tommy is the father, and I didn’t get either one right.
I do know that Tork and Nesmith could play even before the TV show, and that Micky Dolens learned to play drums later, even that Davy was a Broadway star as a child. I even know that Steven Stills auditioned but was not considered attractive enough to be cast and recommended Peter Tork. But in the movie Peter Tork makes a point of saying the instrumental tracks were already recorded and the guys just came in to lay down vocals over them – and how pissed he was standing there outside the recording studio with his guitar case in hand.
The actual cast did eventually record and tour their own songs, but I don’t believe they were ever given the go ahead to perform the music the producers owned (and they wanted to do their own music anyway). I may be wrong, but my understanding is that there are two “Monkees!” catalogs owned by different groups and they did not ever cross over.
Wow, this is a tough one and a whole lot have been already mentioned…as a Deadhead, there are a lot, but my favorites are the opening to “Morning Dew” and “St. Stephen”…but if I had to name one, it’d be the Dick Wagner/Steve Hunter “Intro” for “Sweet Jane” on Lou Reed’s “Rock and Roll Animal” album…those two tore it up for a bunch of Alice Cooper songs as well…
The bass guitar line on that song is also funky enough to qualify on its own merits.
I thought I’d be breaking the rules a bit here, because the first thing that popped to my mind was a counter-example, but I’m glad to see I wouldn’t be the first. So along the lines of:
I have to throw in Eric Johnson’s “Cliffs Of Dover”. It’s a great piece and one of my favorite guitar compositions because it’s not excessively “brilliant” or “masterful”, but it’s simply joyous throughout — I’ve described it as “a Snoopy dance in guitar form” — which is why IMHO it isn’t well-served by that bit of fuckery in the intro, and doesn’t really find its way until the drumroll.
Wow, I JUST listened to this, like an hour ago. For the first time in decades.
The thing is, I was waiting for the Cool Hook… and it took forever to show up. Guitar noodling, long intro, drums, oh, is this the hook? No, it’s a cool progression, but it’s not The Hook… oh, THERE it is!
But it was worth waiting for. Joyous Snoopy dance, indeed.
Sorry if I provided any misinformation, I seem to stand corrected. (However…)
Near the beginning of the movie, they mention that the session players were never credited and most were fine with that as long as they got paid. Plas Johnson was bitter (and you could tell he still was all those years later); his view was that he wrote and played signature riffs on number one records and didn’t get a credit on the jacket. Carol Kaye and Tommy Tedesco were both raking in tons of jing and couldn’t care less about their name on an album jacket. Hal Blaine seemed to only want the recognition of the other musicians (he holds some unbelievable record for playing on consecutive number one hits – or possibly for playing on 100 number one hits in a single year), he didn’t care what the public thought or knew.
As far as I know, every Beach Boys album listed the Beach Boys as the musicians and while they did tour and play the songs — they never played a single note on the later albums, and that is well documented.
Ol’e Nessie (at first I thought of KC’s “Frame by Frame”, but then realised, naw, quite different.) Mother Puncher (heh - bet this took a while to learn)
“Holiday in Cambodia” is another one that comes to mind, but may be a little bit of cheating, as I’m including the bass guitar parts of the intro as part of the opening “guitar” riff.
