Oops, I did it again – I did the clickbait heading. Sorry.
Sometimes it’s good to dig back into the musical roots of your heroes. But sometimes it doesn’t work. That’s what this post is about.
The common wisdom of the ages (and the old farts in the music biz) is that you shouldn’t just listen to your heroes, but you should dig back in time and listen to the music that THEY were influenced by, as if it’s a more “pure” form of music. Sometimes that can work great. Here’s my own personal example of when it worked.
In college I took a course called “Intro to Jazz,” but the course was waaay more than an intro. We listened to decades worth of great music. Being a guitarist (mostly), I was super interested in the music of Charlie Christian. This is where guitar solos in popular music started! Charlie’s playing really spoke to me, and it still does, to this day. We went on and listened to all of the other great jazz guitarists over time, some of whom “improved” on what Charlie accomplished, but none of those players really connected with me the way Charlie did. What a wonderful gift that night was, when our professor dropped the needle on an old Benny Goodman record and I heard Charlie’s playing.
But sometimes it just plain doesn’t work. And mostly, for me at least, this seems the rule rather than the exception. A good example of this is that when I was a teenager, I was a big KISS fan. I dug songs like “Love Her All I Can.” I read semi-recently an interview with Paul Stanley where he said that he was heavily influenced by The Raspberries. So I went back and listened to The Raspberries. And I didn’t like any of it. At all. Yes, Paul had “ripped them off,” but what he’d really done was improved on them.
Another example was Stevie Ray Vaughn. I really dug his playing a lot, which made me dig into his roots, which included a lot of Jimi Hendrix. And I’m not old enough to remember when Hendrix hit the scene and changed everything, but I can tell you this – when I listen to Hendrix, I’m not that ino Jimi’s guitar playing. To my ears, Stevie took what Jimi had done and improved on it. Some old farts will really hate me for saying that, but music is art and art is subjective. From a historical perspective, Jimi changed modern music and is one of the most important guitarists ever. But in terms of what I actually want to listen to, give me Stevie’s playing.
It is a good idea to give a listen to the people your heroes listened to. But don’t be surprised if you find they evolved or improved on what their heroes did. It’s all part of the evolution of music. Hell, some folks would tell you that no one has written good music since Beethoven, which was over 200 years ago. You can’t compare Rush 2212 to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, but I’d rather listen to Rush 2112. There’s lots of historically important music I don’t like.
One disclaimer – there’s a difference between saying I don’t like Hendrix vs saying that I don’t think Hendrix is any good. There’s plenty of good music that I don’t like. When I was younger, I couldn’t say that. If I didn’t like it, then it sucked. But age brings wisdom – or at least an understanding that you don’t know everything. Jimi influenced a lot of my heroes. Little Wing is great. Except those stupid bells.
