Guitar Heroes: Scrap Metal

Gretchen Menn: Scrap Metal
[purchase] 

The guitar, of course, is the signature instrument of rock music, and it should also come as no surprise that over the years, I’ve written about, or at least mentioned, most of my favorite guitarists on this blog and elsewhere. Never Eddie Van Halen, whose untimely loss inspired this theme, but he’s a guitarist whose talent I appreciated, but I never was a big fan of the music he created (and it was nice to see that most serious obituaries of EVH mentioned one of my true favorites, Allan Holdsworth, as a primary influence on him. Which sounds weird--as if I was happy that EVH died. I’m not.) 

So, rather than tread down another well-worn path, I decided to write about a great guitarist, about whom I know very little—Gretchen Menn. I first learned about Menn when my wife showed me something in a Smith College publication about her. Menn, a proud member of the class of ’97 (my wife is ’82; my daughter is ’15), was a music major at Smith, and it led me to check out her music. And it turns out that, in pretty much every way, Menn is a real badass.

According to her website bio, Menn, whose father was the editor in chief of Guitar Player magazine, studied classical guitar before moving on to rock and jazz. At Smith, she “convinced a professor to allow her to launch a special studies project on the music of Frank Zappa. Her analyses of “The Sheik Yerbouti Tango” and “The Girl in the Magnesium Dress” showed an interest in genre-bending composition that would manifest later in her original instrumentals.” 

After college, she went to flight school, flying regional jets before turning to a music career, playing in a few different projects before releasing her debut album, Hale Souls, from which our featured song, “Scrap Metal” comes. It’s a classic guitar shredding showcase, and as a shredder, Menn takes a backseat to no one. But she is much more than just a technical wizard. Again, quoting from her website, “[s]he has studied, in equal parts, the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Steve Morse, Frank Zappa, and Jimmy Page.” 

Speaking of Jimmy Page, Menn is the guitarist, playing Page’s parts, in Zepparella, an all-female Led Zeppelin tribute band. You can see her here channeling Page, bowed guitar and all:

In 2016, Menn released her second solo album, Abandon All Hope, a musical adaptation of Dante’s Inferno. Not surprisingly, it is a little more complex and varied in tone than her debut, and includes strings and other instruments (and a chorus), all orchestrated by Menn. Here’s the first track, “Shadows.”

Remedies: Mental Medication

U.K.: Mental Medication [purchase]

The original lineup of U.K. brought together some of the best at their instruments British prog rockers. The band was formed in the late 1970s by drummer Bill Bruford, who had played in Yes and King Crimson, and singer/bassist John Wetton, who had played with Bruford in King Crimson and had also been part of Roxy Music and Uriah Heep. Bruford and Wetton each recruited another musician, with Bruford bringing Allan Holdsworth, who had been with Soft Machine, Tony Williams’ Lifeline, Gong, and Jean-Luc Ponty, as well having played on Bruford’s debut solo album, and Wetton inviting Eddie Jobson, a keyboard player and violinist who had played with him in Roxy Music, and who was in Frank Zappa’s band.

U.K., the one and only album recorded by this lineup is considered by many to be a prog-rock classic. Excellent playing (of course) on interesting, unusual songs, featuring a true fusion of rock, jazz and classical influences, has made this one of my favorites—which is not surprising, considering that Bruford is probably my favorite drummer, Holdsworth is my favorite guitarist, and I have lots of respect for both Wetton and Jobson.

That being said, I have to admit that “Mental Medication” is not one of my favorite songs from the album. There’s something about Wetton’s vocals, particularly at the beginning, that I don’t love. But there’s a thrilling four minute stretch of instrumental music, including a guitar solo from Holdsworth that is both jaw dropping and subtle at the same time, and a violin solo from Jobson, all over Wetton’s stellar bass playing and Bruford’s signature drumming, that makes it worth a listen.

Sadly, after some extensive touring, tensions in the band led to Wetton and Jobson “firing” Holdsworth, and Bruford also left. Rather than find a new guitarist, the remaining members brought in drummer Terry Bozzio, also from Frank Zappa’s band, and recorded Danger Money as a trio. It isn’t a bad album, and actually spawned a minor hit, “Nothing to Lose.” After a live album, Wetton and Jobson themselves disagreed on the future of the band, and they broke up. A couple of years later Wetton formed Asia, with Steve Howe, Carl Palmer and Geoff Downes, which definitely sounded a lot like what U.K. might have sounded like if it tried for a more commercial sound.

Bruford took some of the songs that he had written for a second U.K. album and used them on his second solo album, the great One of a Kind (which also featured Holdsworth on guitar). There were a few Wetton/Jobson led reunions of U.K. over the years, featuring various drummers and guitarists, but the original lineup never got back together.

Sadly, both Wetton and Holdsworth died in 2017, which I commemorated here.

In Memoriam: Dead Guitarists

No, this isn’t an article about Jerry Garcia (who died in 1995) or Bob Weir (still very much alive).

As always, we find ourselves looking back on the past year, marveling sadly at the losses the music world has suffered. And as is my habit, I try to highlight some of the lesser known people who died, because the more famous have been lauded at length elsewhere. In fact, the first person I considered writing about, Maggie Roche, was the subject of an excellent piece in The New York Times Magazine, and I’m not going to try to compete with that—so read it at the link.

Instead, I decided to write about a few of the many guitarists that passed away in 2017, in many genres (and thanks to KKafa for writing so well about Larry Coryell, and Darius for writing about Walter Becker, so I don’t have to). There should probably be some sort of clever organizing principle, but I can’t think of one, so I’ll do it in order of the date they died:

Tommy Allsup: Rarely does a coin toss turn out to be a matter of life and death, but for Tommy Allsup, losing one to Ritchie Valens on a cold Iowa night in February, 1959 allowed him to escape the fate of Valens, Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper (and pilot Roger Peterson). But it would be wrong to focus only on Allsup’s luck—he was a fine musician, who was touring with Holly and went on to a long career as a musician, songwriter and producer. In addition to Holly, Allsup worked with Willie Nelson, Leon Russell, Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, Asleep at the Wheel, George Jones, Don McLean, Marty Robbins, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings (also left off the plane in Iowa that night), Earl Scruggs, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dwight Yoakum, and the Everly Brothers, among others. Admittedly, despite that long resume, it appears that pretty much everything ever written about Allsup includes a reference to the coin toss. You can hear him tell the story here. And here he is telling more stories about Holly, before playing “It’s So Easy:”




Allan Holdsworth: Holdsworth is probably the best known of the guitarists in this article, and in some circles, he is considered to be one of the most influential guitarists of all time. I’ve referred to him before, most recently in a piece about a Gong song, one of the many bands that he contributed to over the years. Here’s what I wrote then:

If you don’t know who Allan Holdsworth was (he passed away earlier this year), find his music on the Internet. Days before his death, a 12 CD box set of his solo albums from 1982-2003, entitled The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever, was released. The title was taken from a proclamation on the cover of an issue of Guitar Player in 2008, and it isn’t an overstatement. That’s not to say that there aren’t other guitarists who changed the way guitar was played, but he’s certainly one of them. He was the favorite guitarist of Eddie van Halen; Tom Morello and Frank Zappa, among others, have cited him as an influence. 

I really lack the vocabulary to explain why Holdsworth is also one of my favorite, if not my favorite, guitarist, so here’s a quote from Robben Ford, not a bad player in his own right: "I think Allan Holdsworth is the John Coltrane of the guitar. I don't think anyone can do as much with the guitar as Allan Holdsworth can." Apparently, he developed his style attempting to make the guitar sound more like a saxophone.

I may have first encountered Holdsworth from his Gong performances, or it might have been with his incredible playing in Bill Bruford’s band. And from there, I’ve listened to his solo work, his one great album with U.K., and his other recordings, with Tony Williams, Jean-Luc Ponty, Soft Machine and others. I saw him once, in the early 80s at the Bottom Line in NY, and it was a pretty incredible experience. Here he is playing with Bruford—the guitar solos kicks in at about 3:25, but don’t skip ahead—the band is too good:




Ray Phiri: Like Tommy Allsup, I suspect that most Americans, at least, are familiar with Ray Phiri for something that was really only a small part of his career. Phiri, a South African guitarist, singer, composer and arranger was featured on Paul Simon’s groundbreaking Graceland album, as well as its follow up, the more Brazilian-flavored Rhythm of The Saints. Ultimately, Phiri and Simon fell out over, as usual, issues relating to song credits and royalties. But in many ways, it was Phiri’s African/rock/blues fusion guitar, and his arrangements, that helped to turn Graceland into a huge hit for Simon. Nevertheless, Phiri’s career in South Africa, as the founder of The Cannibals and Stimela, and as an anti-apartheid activist is his most important legacy. That is why in 2011, the President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, awarded Phiri the Order of Ikhamanga, a national honor, citing “the successful use of arts as an instrument of social transformation.”

Here’s Simon’s “Boy In The Bubble” from the 1991 concert in Central Park, which was later released as a live album. Phiri has a brief solo at about 2:55. Also visible on stage is Cameroonian guitarist Vincent Nguini, who played and recorded with Simon for 30 years, and who died in December, 2017:




John Abercrombie: There was a time, when I was in college, and for a few years afterwards, that I listened to a lot of jazz on the ECM label, which I got into initially by listening to Pat Metheny, with whom Abercrombie shares some sensibilities. In addition to his own, fluid, understated virtuosity, Abercrombie regularly played with other great musicians, including drummer Jack DeJohnette, bassist Dave Holland (who together comprised the Gateway Trio), bassist George Mraz, and drummer Peter Erskine, among many others. I sort of lost track of Abercrombie in the 1980s and am not all that familiar with his later work. But I still occasionally enjoy some of those early ECM albums. Here’s a live recording of the Gateway Trio, which highlights Abercrombie’s playing, as well as Holland and DeJohnette (who is one of my favorite drummers):




Phil Miller: I’ve written numerous times about bands and musicians from the Canterbury Scene, of which Phil Miller was a significant part. Miller, who was a member of Matching Mole, Hatfield And The North, National Health (which I wrote about here), and other bands, was a fluid and nimble player, whose soloing was imaginative and avoided cliché, but was also a skilled accompanist. I never had the chance to see any of Miller’s bands live, but have long enjoyed his recordings, particularly with National Health. And, based on this video, I wish that I had seen them (you can skip the first minute of noise, if you must):


Bonus Dead Bass Player--John Wetton: The bass is a type of guitar, right? And Wetton is probably more famous that anyone above, having had some actual hits, with Asia in the 80s. Wetton died just shy of two months after Greg Lake, another bass player with a similar voice, who Wetton ultimately succeeded in King Crimson (Lake, interestingly, briefly replaced Wetton in Asia, years later). In addition to playing in King Crimson, on three of their best albums, Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Starless and Bible Black, and Red, Wetton was a member of U.K., which originally included Holdsworth (and Bruford and Eddie Jobson), as well as Roxy Music, Uriah Heep, Wishbone Ash, and other bands, and collaborated with many musicians, including Phil Manzanera, Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, Steve Hackett, and Geoff Downes. Here’s a link where you can download an unreleased track of Wetton playing with Robert Fripp and Phil Collins, and here’s a video of a live U.K. performance with the original lineup, synced to the album track:

Shadows: Shadows Of

[purchase]

I’ve written about Gong before, a couple of times, and mentioned them in passing. They are a band that I really enjoy, and nevertheless remain pretty obscure. You could probably get a doctorate in the band’s history—it has formed, splintered, reformed, renamed, and changed members more times than one can count. Nevertheless, there’s a website that tries to chronicle Gong's various changes and permutations (as well as other bands from the Canterbury Scene).

I got into Gong through its late 1970s-early 1980s incarnation as a fusion band led by Pierre Moerlen, featuring lots of mallet percussion. The original, spacy, psychedelic version of the band was less interesting to me—although there was brilliance, there was also lots of weird, hard to listen to stuff to wade through. For the most part, the Moerlen-led band was tight, had interesting songs with an unusual amount of percussion and, maybe most importantly, featured incredible musicians, including Allan Holdsworth on guitar. If you don’t know who Allan Holdsworth was (he passed away earlier this year), find his music on the Internet. Days before his death, a 12 CD box set of his solo albums from 1982-2003, entitled The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever, was released. The title was taken from a proclamation on the cover of an issue of Guitar Player in 2008, and it isn’t an overstatement. That’s not to say that there aren’t other guitarists who changed the way guitar was played, but he’s certainly one of them. He was the favorite guitarist of Eddie van Halen; Tom Morello and Frank Zappa, among others, have cited him as an influence.

But the main reason that I’m going back to the Gong well for this theme, which has many possible topics, is that I recently had a chance to meet another of the musicians who played on this song, percussionist Mino Cinélu. Cinélu later played drums for Holdsworth, was in Weather Report, played with, among others, Pat Metheny, Peter Gabriel, Miles Davis, Sting, Kate Bush, Herbie Hancock and Branford Marsalis, and led his  own bands. Mino participated in a panel that I attended recently about copyright law and music, which was led and organized by my friend Heather--who makes her second appearance in SMM--and also featured prominent lawyers and a musicologist who have been involved in some of the most well-known music copyright cases in recent years. Although I’m a lawyer, that’s not my field, and it was fascinating.

Afterwards, we, of course, repaired to the bar for drinks, and I had a chance to chat with Mino, mentioning that I was a huge fan of Gong (particularly the one album of theirs that he appeared on), and Holdsworth, and had participated in an interview with Pierre Moerlen when he, and another formation of Gong, played at Princeton when I was a student. He couldn’t have been a nicer guy, and we’ve been in contact a few times since, most recently to confirm that he, in fact, performed in the live version of “Shadows Of” from the video above, because the Internet shockingly had conflicting information.

It was recorded at the Reading Festival in 1976, and featured Pierre Moerlen and his brother Benoit, also a percussionist, Holdsworth, bass player Francis Moze, percussionist Mirelle Bauer, woodwind player Didier Malherbe and Cinélu. Although the sound quality isn’t great, the performance is, despite the fact that it lacks the amazing acoustic guitar solo of the original, which was a rarity for Holdsworth (or, for that matter, Malherbe's great flute solo).

The Reading Festival that year was a prog-fest, although not exclusively. Other performers included Camel, Phil Manzanera/801, and Brand X. Other non-prog acts included AC/DC (listed in very small type), Black Oak Arkansas, Rory Gallagher (both in very big type), Ted Nugent, and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. And, as they say, many, many more.