Four Epic British Guitarists
Britain has played a remarkably important role in shaping the world as we know it. For starters, they've given us the English language, which is now a global language. Through their rich literary tradition, we've made the acquaintance of Catherine and Heathcliff, Frodo Baggins, Ebenezer Scrooge, Mr. Darcy and Lady Macbeth, as well as a cornucopia of classic children's characters like Peter Pan, Mary Poppins, Harry Potter and Alice of Wonderland fame. Many of our most beloved tea brands (Lipton, Twinings) and blends (Earl Grey, English Breakfast) are British, as are Monty Python, Charles Darwin, Burberry and the Bentley. Rugby, soccer, tennis, and extreme ironing (yes, it's a bona fide sport) are just some of the games that originated in Britain, as did fish and chips and Viagra.
And when it comes to music, Britain boasts the cream of the crop: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who, Sabbath, Zeppelin, Queen and Pink Floyd, The Clash. Guitar phenoms like Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Brian May, David Gilmour, and Pete Townshend all call Britain home. With the world swept up in Olympic fever, all eyes are on London. What better time than now to write on some of the guitarists who have helped put the "Great" in Britain.
Robin Trower (Procol Harum, Robin Trower Band)
Robin Leonard Trower was born in Catford, South East London, England, on March 9, 1945, and grew up in the seaside resort of Southend-on-Sea, Essex. This blues-rock virtuoso began teaching himself to play at age 14 using a cheap old steel-string cello guitar. His influences were blues masters like B.B. King, Hubert Sumlin, and Albert King. Aside from some knowledge of major and minor chords, Trower has no grasp of musical theory. "I've never had lessons," he says. "All the stuff I do is what I make up. Early on I never had any contact with other guitarists, I never sat down and had them explain to me all the different things you can do with the instrument. I was messing about."
Trower's career has spanned nearly five decades now. He began playing guitar professionally as a teen for a number of bands, the best known of which was The Paramounts, before he found fame with the UK prog-rock band Procol Harum, who topped the UK charts for six weeks in 1967 with the Bach-inspired "A Whiter Shade of Pale". After playing with Procol Harum through the release of their fifth album, Robin struck out on his own to make the kind of heavy blues other guitarists rave about to this day.
With James Dewar on bass and vocals, and Reg Isadore on drums, the Robin Trower Band released their debut album in 1973 to little fanfare. A year later, and after a change in drummers, the trio put out their second effort, Bridge of Sighs, which shot Robin's career into the stratosphere. The album's mix of blues and psychedelia, coupled with Trower's incendiary guitar, caused critics to remark on his strong similarity to Jimi Hendrix and bestow on him the nickname "The White Hendrix."
Trower was an inspiration to many other guitar legends, among them King Crimson's Robert Fripp who says, "Robin Trower is one of the very few English guitarists that have mastered bends and wobbles. Not only has he got inside them, with an instinctive knowing of their affective power, but they went to live inside his hands." He adds that, "It is the rare English guitarist who has been able to stand alongside American guitarists and play with an equal authority…This was a man who hung himself on the details: the quality of sound, nuances of each inflection and tearing bend, and abandonment to the feel of the moment."
Ritchie Blackmore (Deep Purple, Rainbow, Blackmore's Night)
Richard Hugh "Ritchie" Blackmore was born on April 14, 1945, in Weston-super-Mare, England. The Blackmores moved to Heston, Middlesex (now Greater London), when Ritchie was 2. As a boy, he showed an early interest in music, which prompted his father to buy him his first guitar at age 11. But the gift came with a string attached. "He said if I was going to play this thing, he was either going to have someone teach it to me properly, or he was going to smash me across the head with it," says Blackmore. So Ritchie's father enrolled him in classical guitar lessons for a year. "It got me on to the right footing, using all the fingers and the right strokes of the plectrum and the nonsense that goes with it."
Ritchie left school at age 15 and started work as an apprentice radio mechanic at nearby Heathrow Airport. He was also taking lessons from Big Jim Sullivan at the time, a well-known session musician four years his senior. As his playing improved, Ritchie took work as a session player for Joe Meek's music productions. He performed in many different bands, appearing on several albums and making a name for himself among the skilled musicians. Throughout the 1960s Ritchie worked with several different artists such as Heinz, Neil Christian and the Crusaders, Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages, and The Three Musketeers. He was also a member of the instrumental band The Outlaws.
In 1968 Blackmore co-founded the hard rock group Deep Purple along with organist Jon Lord. His simple riff on "Smoke on the Water" resonated with fans the world over and played a large role in propelling Deep Purple, and subsequently Ritchie Blackmore, to icon status.
Blackmore left Deep Purple in 1975 over creative differences. He was also itching to perform in what had originated as a side project called Rainbow with the then little-known Ronnie James Dio. Rainbow was influenced strongly by classical and medieval music, a passion shared by both men. Blackmore even learned to play cello to write the masterful single "Stargazer" for the band's second album, Rising.
Over the years Ritchie Blackmore would oscillate between various incarnations of Deep Purple and Rainbow, ultimately leaving both bands to form the Renaissance-influenced folk project Blackmore's Night along with Candice Night in 1997. The husband-and-wife duo not only took on traditional compositions from the 1500s, but also injected classic Rainbow tracks with a touch of New Age flavor. Their latest album, Autumn Sky, was released in 2010.
Blackmore is known as one of the first guitarists to fuse classical music elements with blues rock. He also brought medieval and baroque influences to his music. His staccato lead style is perhaps the most distinctive and recognizable element of his playing. Blackmore's often quite heavy-handed, but is also capable of being beautifully delicate, moving between the fast and flashy and the slow and melodic with grace and ease. And he is an absolute riff monster. "Blackmore epitomized this fascination I had with the bare essence of rock 'n' roll, this element of danger," Metallica's Lars Ulrich tells Rolling Stone. "Deep Purple, in their finest moments, were more unpredictable than Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin."
Jeff Beck (The Yardbirds, The Jeff Beck Group)
Geoffrey Arnold "Jeff" Beck was born in Wallington, Surrey, England, on June 24, 1944. He says he heard his first electric guitar at age 6 when Les Paul's "How High the Moon" played on the radio. When he asked his mother (who didn't approve of the guitar and wanted her son to play the piano) what it was he'd heard, she replied it was an electric guitar and it was all tricks. From that instant, Jeff says, he knew the guitar was for him.
As a teenager Jeff learned to play a borrowed guitar and made several attempts to build his own instrument, first by gluing and bolting together cigar boxes for the body and an unsanded fence-post for the neck, with model aircraft control-lines and frets simply painted on. His early bands were the Deltones and the Tridents, but Beck didn’t really begin to make waves on the international rock scene until he joined The Yardbirds, where he succeeded Eric Clapton. (Beck, himself, was later replaced by future Led Zeppelin guitarist, Jimmy Page.) Beck led this trailblazing blues-rock group through its most successful and creative period, which included the groundbreaking singles “Heart Full of Soul,” “I’m a Man” and “Shapes of Things.” His quixotic career has also included membership in two hard-hitting lineups of the Jeff Beck Group and a pair of albums from the mid-1970s (Blow by Blow and Wired) that set a new standard for instrumental rock. (Check out "Cause We've Ended as Lovers" from Blow by Blow.) Jeff Beck is one of a relative handful of musicians who have been twice inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame—once with The Yardbirds and once as a solo artist and bandleader.
Beck's not only compelling for what he plays, but how he plays it. While some guitarists use racks of gear to create sound, Beck prefers a simple, natural approach that emphasizes manual dexterity over gadgets. He stopped regular use of a pick in the 1980s and uses his fingers for greater speed and control over the fretboard. Beck adds deft twists of the volume and tone knobs to shape the notes as he’s playing them and further bends sounds with his whammy bar and wah-wah pedal. “Finding ways to use the same guitar people have been using for 50 years to make sounds that no one has heard before is truly what gets me off," he says. "I love it when people hear my music but can’t figure out what instrument I’m playing. What a cool compliment.”
Beck has kept a low profile throughout his illustrious career, preferring to let the music speak for itself. His albums in recent years have been few and far between, thanks to his all-consuming hobby of rebuilding hot rods. His most recent album, Emotion & Commotion, was released in 2010.
Peter Green (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, Fleetwood Mac, Peter Green Splinter Group)
Born Peter Allen Greenbaum on October 29, 1946, in Bethnal Green, East London, England, Peter learned to play the guitar after his brother Michael taught him only a few chords. By age 11, Peter was teaching himself. His main musical influences were Hank Marvin from The Shadows, B.B. King, and Muddy Waters.
Peter shortened his surname to "Green" when he began playing professionally at age 15. He started his career in a little band called Bobby Denim and the Dominoes, performing chart favorites and rock 'n' roll classics. He went on to join the R&B band the Muskrats, and then played bass in the Tridents. In 1966 Green played lead guitar in Peter Bardens' Looners where he first met Mick Fleetwood, the band's drummer.
After three months with Bardens' group, Green had the opportunity to fill in for Eric Clapton in John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers for three concerts. Soon after, when Clapton departed the Bluesbreakers to form Cream, Green became a full-time member of Mayall's band. One of his bandmates in the Bluesbreakers at that time was bassist John McVie.
Green went on to form Fleetwood Mac, originally a traditional blues band, in 1967 with Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, all three of whom were expatriates from the Bluesbreakers. Plagued by mental illness brought on by drug use, however, Green left Fleetwood Mac just three years later, gave away all his money, and largely withdrew from music. Peter did enjoy a brief solo career back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and found some success in the late 1990s with the Peter Green Splinter Group, whose eighth and final album, Reaching the Cold 100, was released in 2003.
Once one of the most feted guitarists in British rock, Peter Green's playing—first as Eric Clapton's replacement in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and then in Fleetwood Mac—is at times heart-stoppingly beautiful. (Check out his "Black Magic Woman," which was later covered with great success by Santana.) Few guitarists can claim to have made an electric guitar sound so sweet, so soulful or so lyrical. "He has the sweetest tone I ever heard," says B.B. King. "He was the only one who gave me the cold sweats."
Great Britain is a hotbed of musical talent. For every guitarist I've included here, there are many, equally deserving, that I've omitted—names like Richard Thompson, Gary Moore, Mark Knopfler, George Harrison, John McLaughlin, Johnny Marr. And the list goes on and on. Who are some of your British favorites?
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