13

As one who has rarely passed a day over the past forty something years without listening to rock or related electronic music for at least an hour and sometimes more, I should, in the spirit of Henry Miller (who, incidentally, despised rock 'n' roll), be able to draw up quite a long list of, let us say, guitarists – electric, electric/acoustic, and even acoustic – who have impressed me during the course of that time, that is, from about 1967 to the present day, and so I am going to attempt a comprehensive list, not necessarily in order of merit (a tall order, to say the least!), of such guitarists in the expectation of being able to stretch it to well over a hundred names.

Thus: Michael Schenker, Jeff Beck, Gary Moore, Snowy White, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, Rory Gallagher, David Gilmour, Jerry Garcia, John Scofield, Allan Holdsworth, Robert Fripp, Bernhard Beibl, Zakk Wylde, Tony Iommi, Michael Amott, Robin Trower, Larry Coryell, Al DiMeola, Mick Taylor, Peter Green, Philip Donnelly, Pete Townshend, Ronnie Wood, John McLaughlin, Steve Khan, Jimmy Page, Steve Howe, John Martyn, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Neil Young, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Gary Duncan, Robbie Krieger, Tommy Bolin, Alvin Lee, Arthur Lee, Bill Connors, Walter Trout, Frank Zappa, Sandro Oliver, Janick Gers, Dave Murray, Adrian Smith, Philip Campbell, David O'List, Richie Blackmore, Steve Morse, Warren Haynes, Dickie Betts, Duane Allman, Martin Barre, Mick Abrahams, Edgar Broughton, Gerald Gradwohl, Jimi Hendrix, Gary Boyle, Dave Evans (the Edge), John Etheridge, Juan Martín, Albert Lee, Jan Akkerman, Daryl Stuermer, Philip Catherine, Larry Carlton, Clem Clempson, Daevid Allen, Tony McPhee, Marc Bonilla, Kirk Hammett, James Hetfield, Scott Gorham, John Sykes, Brian Robertson, Freddie White, Bernie Torme, Eric Bell, Buddy Whittington, Kevin Peek, Zlatko Perica, Marino, Paco de Lucia, Juan Valdivia, JJ Marsh, Keith Richards, Adam Seymour, Robbie McIntosh, Jim Sullivan, B.B. King, Corrado Rustici, John Abercrombie, Terje Rypdal, Ewald Pfleger, Stan Webb, Ray Gomez, Ake Ziedén, Phil Palmer, Anthony Drennan, Robbie Mildenberger, Jean-Marie Pompidor, Harvey Mandel, Brian May, Mark Knopfler, George Benson, Pat Metheny, Lenny Kravitz, Joe Gooch, Adrian Belew, Mark Barratt, and Lee Ritenour.

If I've missed anybody of musical substance from this off-the-top-of-my-head informal list of contemporary guitarists, rock or otherwise, it may well be because they were never part of my musical universe, so to speak, and are therefore either unknown to me or, for one reason or another, are people I am musically indifferent about if not, in a way, totally uninterested in. For these are the guitarists who, at one time or another, have impressed me most, and I confess that I still listen to many of them today, some five decades after I first became aware of the power and musical significance of the electric guitar and, indeed, of guitars played in a modern idiom in general.

Having revealed a tendency towards the appreciation of over a hundred contemporary guitarists, I suppose I may as well obviate or preclude any accusations of instrumental bias by supplementing this with as many keyboard players as memory, conditioned by decades of involvement, will permit, beginning with Keith Emerson, probably my favourite all-time keyboardist, and continuing with the estimable likes of Jon Lord, Dave Greenslade, Rick Wakeman, Chick Corea, Jan Hammer, Steve Winwood (also a guitarist), David Sancious (also a guitarist), Edgar Froese (also a guitarist), Stu Goldberg, Barry Miles, Herbie Hancock, George Duke, Philippe Saisse, John Mayall (also a guitarist). Mike Ratledge, Karl Jenkins, Steve McDonald, Greg Allman, Brian Auger, Thorsten Quaeschning, Thijs Van Leer, Ronan Hardiman, Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner, Zawinul, Vangelis, Per Wiberg, Colin Townes, Massimo Giuntoli. Don Airey, Patrick Moraz, Allan Zavod, Jean-Michel Jarre, Howard Jones, Steve Gray, Chick Churchill, Vincent Crane, Rainer Bruninghaus, Chris Franke, and Johannes Schmoeling. Well short of a hundred, I know, but then again keyboardists are a rarer – and, on the whole, less popular – breed of musician than guitarists, are they not?

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Noticed an interesting window display in a Palmers Green shop today (13/11/13) in which Buddha figurines had been placed on a shelf above one featuring a number of dragon figurines or sculptures that should, in the nature of such an arrangement, have been physically bound or constrained for want of a fire-breathing capacity and any evidence of interest from above, that is, from the self-absorbed Buddhas.

Certainly this display struck me as having some moral and even logical significance, much as I normally interpret such a significance in terms of a gender distinction between psychically free males and somatically pseudo-bound females, the former saved to psychic peace-of-mind and the latter counter-damned to somatic constraints the product, in no small measure, of male hegemonic control which renders them less female (in free soma and bound psyche) than pseudo-female (in pseudo-bound soma and pseudo-free psyche), and therefore as mirroring, in reverse ratio terms (1:3 as against 3:1), the free psyche and bound soma of the hegemonic male who, like the Buddhas referred to above, would be blessed with fidelity (truth) to gender instead of being cursed or, rather, pseudo-cursed, like the pseudo-female, with having to go against the grain of one's gender to an extent which puts one in the position of a neutralized dragon existing under the saintly heel or, if that sounds too narrow, of a lion and/or wolf that 'lies down', through neutralization, with the 'lamb of god' that stands over it as metaphysics over pseudo-metachemistry or, in simple parlance, stands on a higher plane, if not shelf, from that which is fated to remain gender subordinate, as pseudo-space under time, in consequence. But, of course, my logic and the common run of things in the world are two entirely different things, incapable, seemingly, of reconciliation.

Britain is the land, par excellence, where transcendentalism and idealism are 'beyond the pale' of what is taken seriously, namely the materialism and fundamentalism which characterize the rule a metachemical roost in which things are judged from a scientific as opposed to religious standpoint, and what is not amenable to empirical verification is treated as of little or no account, even as non-existent. Which is why there is scant respect for the soul in any land dominated by will.

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