Newsgroup: it.arti.musica.strumenti.chitarra
Titolo: In memoria di Rory Gallagher (lungo)

Dedicato a chi si sente ganzino nel fare qualche scala veloce davanti a
negozianti
o a chi si esalta nel vedere funamboli con i ricciolini biondi fare
flessioni nel fare assoli a 1000 all'ora.
Dedicato anche a chi come me, rimpiange la classe, l'umanita' e l'immensa
bravura di questo semplice irlandese con la camicia a scacchi e la sua
strato sbertucciata .
L'intervista e' tratto da un giornale inglese dell'epoca.
SG- HYPOTHETICALLY, IF YOU WERE TEACHING blues guitar at a school. how would
you go about it?
RG-I'd keep it within a reasonably rigid blues framework. just to
keep it on center. A lot of it would depend on what music the
student had been exposed to. I mean. if your parents were
interested in music anyway~your father, for instance, had a
couple of Bill Broonzy or Lonnie Johnson albums--or you were
brought up listening to jazz programs on the BBC, where they'd
slot in the odd blues thing, you'd obviously have a head start.
Otherwise, you'd probably get into blues through rock and roll
through Chuck Berry or maybe "High Heeled Sneakers" by
Tommy Tucker. Then with the Rolling Stones era, you could sneak
into the blues thing that way. In my case, I started on the proverbial
Lonnie Donegan skiffle music trail, where I heard Lonnie doing
Leadbelly songs, such as "Rock Island Line" and "Bring Me A Li'l
Water Silvy." Before I even owned records by Woody Guthrie or
Big Bill Broonzy, I used to get library books out in Cork  because
you couldn't buy the albums in Britain~and I'd learn the lyrics to
these songs. But at the same time I was interested in rock and roll-
such as Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, and Fats
Domino. I was listening to both of these strains, because at lots of
points they'd cross. Once you get beyond the Chuck Berry/Eddie
Cochran thing, you begin to figure out that you've got Broonzy at
one end of the scale-and that goes right back to the old tradition
of Charley Patton-then John Lee Hooker has the Detroit electric
blues style, which evolved from his acoustic style. And you also get
the Josh White sort of folkie style of blues. You just have to listen
to a lot of records.
SG-Which records do you think are essential for someone who
wants to get into blues?
RG-I suppose you should go out and try to get a good compilation
first. like the Paul Oliver selections, The Story of the BluesRG
(Continued)-I & II [Columbia, G 30008 and Columbia (English), 66232, respec
tively]-which still have a couple of important people missing; for
instance, Muddy Waters isn't on either volume-which is insane.
But I suppose you'd have to go back to one of the main sources, say,
either Robert Johnson, Lemon Jefferson, Willie McTell, or
Leadbelly. The two Robert Johnson records on Columbia [King
Of The Delta Blues Singers, Vols. I & II, Columbia, CL 1654 and C
30034, respectively] are obviously cornerstones; you'd have to get
at least one of those. It's pretty hard to zone in on it, because some
guys mightn't get into Robert Johnson and might prefer, say, Willie
McTell. But if we try to break it down to the key blues albums, I
think that either Robert Johnson record would have to be
included. Then Blind Boy Fuller is another favorite of mine,
especially that album with Bull City Red and Sonny Terry, with
"Pistol Slapper Blues" on it [ Blind Boy Fuller, Blues Classics (Box
9195, Berkeley, CA 94709), II). I think that Broonzy album where
he does "Banker's Blues" [The Young Big Bill Broonzy, Yazoo,
1011] is an important one, because he was broadening the scale. It's
different from the ones he made around 1950, where it was blues
plus ballads. The Best Of Muddy Waters [reissued as Sail On,
Chess, 1539, and as part of Muddy Waters, Chess, 2ACMB-203)is
definitely an archetypal electric blues album.
SG-Do you think albums by people such as Elmore James and
Howlin' Wolf are important listening?
RG-Oh yeah. You'd have to get The Real Folk Blues by Wolf, with
"Spoonful" and "Shake For Me" [reissued in part on Howlin'
Wolf, Chess, 2ACMB-201] for Hubert Sumlin's electric blues
guitar. He's the great undiscovered, underrated lead player. And
Wolf himself harks back vocally to Charley Patton, and, besides,
he plays a little bit of slide guitar here and there, too-like on
"Down In The Bottom." And his harmonica playing is important,
even though everyone seems to write it off as just, "He plays
harmonica." I think he plays good gut-bucket harmonica.
SG-Which of Elmore James's albums would you single out?
RG-It's hard to pin down one album for him, because there are so
many oddball ones. I've got one on Ember Records-just sort of a
bargain label-and it was reruns of some of his stuff, like
"Sunnyland," "Standing At The Crossroads," and "Dust My
Broom" yet again. I find that any Elmore James album is good. He
played a Kay, I think, with some odd pickup. For electric slide, Earl
Hooker is another favorite of mine. There are three players who
use that same famous lick: Earl Hooker used it on "You Shook Me"
by Muddy Waters; Muddy uses it all the time; and I think it came
from Robert Nighthawk, who did "Sweet Black Angel." He's got a
very mellow slide sound, but it's all in standard tuning-nothing's
in open tunings. So let's see: Muddy's important; Elmore James is
important; John Lee Hooker; Hubert Sumlin; and the man,
Howlin' Wolf. I suppose the best thing to do after you get a couple
of compilations is to see which person really turns you on, then try
to follow that strain.
SG-What about the older country blues players?
RG-In terms of intensity, Son House has to be listened to. Of all the
blues players, that's probably the closest connection with Africa.
I've got that one album, with "John The Revelator" [legendary
Father Of Folk Blues. Columbia, CS 9217]; that's an ace album.
SG-If people come to hear you in concert, and they want to learn
how to play guitar themselves, do you think it's more important for
them to buy your records or these old records you spoke of'?
RG-To learn guitar? Well, I write a lot of my own stuff, so it's a cross
between ego and the heritage thing. If you want to play like Rory
Gallagher, I think you'd buy my records. But if you want to pick up
on whatever echoes of the bluesmen that I respect and love,
certainly go ahead and buy some blues records. In my case, I'd say
the obvious influences would be Hubert Sumlin, Earl Hooker, and
Buddy Guy electrically; and acoustically, Blind Boy Fuller and
Blind Blake, though I can't get anywhere near what Blake does.
But you see, I never started out to become a strict recreator of the
blues or even a modern young bluesman, as it were, I mean, I
wanted to be me.  I'm a huge blues fan, but I still have a bit of Eddie
Cochran and Buddy Holly hovering around inside my head, plus
certain folk people, such as Doc Watson--a pretty wide range of listening.
SG-When you're performing, though, don't you consider yourself
mainly a blues-oriented musician?
RG-Yes, I do, but I think that I've always strived to forge ahead. At
some point, when I'm forty or fifty, I hope I'll have a very distinct
sound, as Elmore or Muddy did, so that when you turn on the
radio-that's Rory Gallagher. It's a thin line between studying the
blues and listening to an awful lot of it on one hand, and loving the
stuff and doing some blues numbers in your own style on the other
hand. It's hard to break it down into percentages, because some
nights we might do something like "Messing With The Kid," a well-
known Junior Wells song, or "Bullfrog Blues," or "Rag Mama,"
the Blind Boy Fuller tune. By the songs I pick to do, you can see the
kind of people I like. I like the slightly ragtime-ish blues players,
but then again, I like Hooker.
SG-Your changes of style seem to depend in part upon what
instrument you are playing; whereas you seem to lean to ward a lot
of the acoustic ragtime blues people, when you play elecinc you go
into a completely different area of blues music.
RG-Well, I'm a great fan of all the Kings-the Alberts, the B.B.s,
and the Freddies. I wouldn't want to say that these people have
been overrated, because that would be an absolute insult; but I
think they've been recognized to the point where the Earl Hookers
and Hubert Sumlins have been underrated. And the guitar player
who was with Wolf before Sumlin, Willie Johnson, was a hot
player as well.
SG-What type of instrument would you recommend for an acoustic
blues novice to start on?
RG-With acoustic guitar, for the first couple of years at least, I think
you should leave a wound third string on and really build up
strength in the fingers. In other words, don't try bending strings the
first week you buy the guitar. Kids are lucky nowadays; you can get
a Yamaha or something, and the cheaper model guitars are much
better quality than they were years ago
when you got this stuff with terrible action.
The first guitar I got cost just over four
pounds, which was about twenty dollars
then, in the good old days. After a while
you get that urge to say, "To hell with
this~I'm going to bend this string," in-
stead of sliding up. But you have to build
that up.
SG-But do you think a student should start
out with, say; a wooden Yamaha or a
metal-bodied National such as you some-
times play?
RG-Well, let's put it this way: lf you're a kid
with ears the size of the moon and an
amazing sense of direction, who heard Son
House or Blind Boy Fuller or any of the
National steel-body players and said,
"They're the people I want to play like,"
then go ahead and buy the National,
because that's a great place to start. [Editor's Note:
National-style instruments are man-
ufactured by National's successor, Original
Musical Instruments, 18108 Redondo Cir.,
Huntington Beach, CA 92648.] But if you
start with a National, you're talking about
a guitar that weighs quite a bit.
SG-Do you find that the National has any
technical problems or limitations in terms
of sound?
RG-Well, on the one I have, the neck joins
the body at the twelfth fret, which is
unfortunate. I prefer the fourteenth fret,
but I can live with that. You just have to
ride over the body with the slide. The
action on it isn't bad, and the tuning is
good. Obviously, it's loud and banjo-like,
and there's only a certain amount of sus
tain in it, but I think that it slightly dictates
what you play.
SG-Could you explain that?
RG-For instance, you don't really bend
strings much on a National; you use it
more as a straightforward, heavy-playing
ragtime guitar, or you play in the Son
House bottleneck school.
SG-Do you have any problems miking that
guitar onstage, or do you use a contact
pickup?
RG-I've tried everything on it. I've tried
contact mikes, and they just don't work.
You have to use the resonator as the
microphone. I think Bill Lawrence is making
 a new pickup that fits onto five-string
banjos~you just clamp it onto the end of
the neck~so something like that might
work. But it's debatable whether you'd be
getting a true reproduction of that reso
phonic sound. I just put a microphone in
front of the resonator and hope for the
best. I use sort of medium-gauge bronze
stnngs~I float around between Earth-
wood, Darco, Guild, and D'Merle~and
you just build up power and volume your
self.
SG-Do you use a wound or an unwound
third string on the National?
RG-A wound third, because the numbers I
happen to play need that fairly stiff action.
I don't do any Broonzy~type bending with
light strings on the National. whereas on a
Martin acoustic I probably would.
SG-Do you use an acoustic onstage?
RG-I do; I play a Martin D-35. I use the
National for things like "Pistol Slapper
Blues," which I play faster than Blind Boy
Fuller did, and a J. B. Hutto song called
"Too Much Alcohol," which he plays elec
tric, of course. There's always the nature of
the banjo in the National, I find, and you
have to play it sort of like that. I do
anyway.
SG-Do you play acoustic with a plectrum
or your fingers?
RG-With a plectrum and the fingers. I fool
around with National metal fingerpicks
and the plastic ones sometimes.
SG-How is your Martin set up?
RG-Well, that's set up with the same strings,
because at present I'm doing numbers like
Leadbelly's "Out On The Western Plain," where the tuning is D A D G A D[low
to high] It's a D tuning, except that the G
remains a G.
SG-That's a very English, folk, Baroque
tuning a Ia Bert Jansch and John Ren
bourn. How do you use that playing the
blues?
RG-Yeah, that's right. Well, I'm a fan of
that school. "Out On The Western Plain"
was always one of my schoolboy favorites,
because of the lyrics. I thought, "Here's
Leadbelly singing a song about cowboys,"
and it didn't seem to be a part of the black
culture. But as it turns out, there were
black cowboys. So I was fiddling around
with slack D, or whatever they call it, and I
found that there's an instant unison. If you
use a two-fret interval on the second and
third strings, you can go up like a dulcimer
or a sitar. At any point up the neck, if you
hit the second string at a certain fret and hit
the third string two frets up, then those
notes are the same. You get a kind of raga,
dulcimer type of thing. So it seemed such a
nice idea to do the Leadbelly song in that
semi-Celtic-cum-whatever style. It's never
quite major or minor, so you can do tricks
with it.
SG-That particular tuning is from the
English folk guitar school, isn't it?
RG-Right. You can stick the Irish in there
as well, because I'm sure bagpipe music
had something to do with all of that,
somewhere along the way. But that was
what you could call a happy accident-
getting that Celtic, British Isles, Baroque
thing clashing with a blues song.
SG-How do you have your Martin miked
onstage?
RG-I've got one of those little Ibanez bolt
things. I find that the Ibanez has a bit more
bite than the Barcus-Berry. If the place is
small enough, I skip the pickup and play
straight through the house microphone. I
prefer to do that, because you can control
the volume yourself. And when I use the
contact pickup, I use the mike as well, so
it's a blend of the two.
SG-By controlling the sound with your
hands, do you mean damping the strings?
RG-Pressure on the strings, with your left
or right hand. You can move slightly off
mike or into the mike. You can just use
yourself as a volume control.
SG-How is that sound different from the
contact mike?
RG-Well, it's a fairly one~dimensional,
compressed sound with a pickup, because,
although it's as true as you can get to the
natural acoustic sound, I don't think it's
exactly there. But I can live with it. Ideally,
what I'd like to have is another, lighter
f-hole guitar onstage, with light-gauge
strings for string-bending styles, but in the
present repertoire I don't have any songs
for that sort of thing.
SG-What other acoustic things do you do?
RG-I sometimes do this instrumental of my
own called "Unmilitary Two-Step" [see
p. 87)-it's a cakewalk type of thing in C. I
find that dread noughts need more medium
gauge strings, whereas the OM or f-hole
models, the smaller ones, would obviously
have to have light-gauge.
SG-What do you use for an electric guitar?
RG-I have two different electrics.  I have a Fender
Stratocaster with Fender light-guage Rock and
Roll strings, which I use for basic playing and
some slide work in straight tuning.  I also have a
Fender Telecaster for A tuning and other open
tunings, for songs like "Bullfrog Blues".
SG-Why the Stratocaster?
RG-Well, that's the eternal argument among Fender fans. Buddy Holly had a
Strat, and
as a child you go after the appearance of a
guitar; I don't care what anyone says. You
look at the shape of the thing, and that's it.
I've tried Gibsons, but I'm not a great fan
of humbucking pickups.
SG-Why is that?
RG-Because as you bring down the volume
from 10 to 9 to 8, after that~forget it; the
guitar loses its sensitivity and drive. Where-
as with the single~coil or P-90 pickups
--one of the old Gibson units with the black
or white plastic covers~the volume con
trol goes down nice and gradually, and
even at 6 the guitar is still doing something.
I like a good bright tone, and I like the out-
of-phase sound you can get with the switch
set between the normal positions on a Strat.
It's comfortable, the scale seems right, and
I like having the machine heads on one side-
it just seems to make sense.  But if you want,
say, a more luxurious, fatter sound, the Gibson
guitar certainly would do the job, and it's got
an extra fret--if anybody ever touches that
fret; I'm sure they don't.
SG-Is your Strat modified in any way?
RG-It's practically straight off the rack; the only
modification is that the tone control for the
middle pickup is now a master volume control,
because over the years I've found that when you jump
from the middle pickup to the lead, or treble, pickup,
you couldn't adjust it.
SG-Why do you usually switch to the Telecaster for slide?
RG-I thought it had a certain steel guitar
type of tone which would work well with
slide, but I was frustrated with the rhythm
pickup-I thought it was too thin. So I put
a Strat pickup there, and it remained that
way for a year; then I said, "To hell with it--
I'll do the Telecaster a la Strat," so now
I've got two Strat pickups and a Tele lead
pickup and a five-way Strat toggle switch.
It's like the best of both worlds with the
Telecaster lead pickup, which is slightly
hotter than a Stratocaster's.
SG-Is it strung the same as the Stratocaster?
RG-No, it's kind of a blend; it's more like
medium-gauge. I have something like an
.013 for the first, then .015, an unwound
.018, and so on. On the Strat, it's as they
come out of the packet-I think it's .010,
.012, .015, .026, .032, .038. That seems to
be about the most balanced set I could
find. I would prefer something like an .040
on the bottom-which I sometimes stick
on if I have it handy-because I think the
bottom end is a little too light for me.
SG-Is the action higher on the Telecaster
for the slide work?
RG-The action on the Strat is quite high as
well. I like high action, like on an acoustic.
The heavier-gauge strings on the Telecaster
are a bit more taut anyway, so I don't have
to raise the bridge. You can play not only
slide, but regular guitar on it.
SG-What do you use for a slide?
RG-It depends; I shift around. I sometimes
use a bottleneck on my ring finger for
electric stuff; otherwise I've got two stain
less steel tubes, which I sometimes use on
my small finger or the ring finger. They get
a more stinging, Muddy Waters sound.
You get a different sound depending on
what slide you use. For instance, if you're
playing slide on a National with a glass
slide, forget it. You have to have something
like steel or, even better, copper. Son
House used copper, and I've got one of
those as well.
SG-Were these slides store-bought items,
or did you just go to a hardware shop?
RG-I went to a hardware shop and got the
proverbial bit of piping chopped up and
got a Brillo pad out and shone it up.
There's a bit of surface noise there, but Son
House has that sound; it's best, because it
clings to the strings. I used to use copper on
electric as well, but I found that the
stainless steel was a pretty good compro
misc between the copper or bronze and the
glass. Glass is nice, because it works a little
more like a Hawaiian or lap steel guitar; it's
sweeter and softer. I change my mind every
couple of gigs.
SG-With four guitars onstage~the Strat, the Tele,
the Martin, and the National~is it difficult to
adapt from one to another in terms of each
instrument's feel?
RG-I think you probably do it subconsciously if you
play an awful lot.  It never troubles me particularly;
I just get ready for it.  I know it's going to be
slightly heavier strings or whatever.  For instance,
on the National the neck joins the body at the 12th
fret; but even though you have medium strings, you
might be in D tuning, which is kind of slack
anyway, so you're not called upon to bend the string
up two tones or something.  The only thing that
throws me is moving from plectrum and fingers,
which I use on the electric, to the thumbpick and
fingerpicks.  After doing, say, an hour of electric
stuff, then switching to acoustic and putting on
fingerpicks, I can't quite do it. If I were playing a straight
folk club gig I could probably manage it.
When I'm playing around at home I just
use my bare fingers, even on electric. Just
the thumb and first finger, because that's
another sound as well; there's a different
arch involved in the hand. Once in a blue
moon all the odd tunings throw me, but
I'm crazy about tunings. There's a lot that
can still be done there. In the rock and roll
field I don't think that that's been truly
tapped yet.
SG-Playing rock and roll in open tunings?
RG-Well, not so much open tunings, but the
odd tunings like D, A, D, G. A, D, or that
kind of Celtic one Davy Graham was
using-E, A, D, E, A, E-it's another
bagpipe one.
SG-What type of amplification do you use?
RG-For years I used a Vox AC-30, which is
the best all-around European amp I've ever
come across. I still have it. The Shadows
used to use them, and the Beatles used
them, so you know it was the popular amp.
But I found that when using the treble
booster, that along with the treble boost
you got a built-in gain, because the tran
sistors were fairly primitive. If I used the
normal input~which was very bassy, as
opposed to the brilliant input-I could get
that nice rough edge without getting into a
very fuzzy sound. I used that for years, and
I've had odds and sods in between, but then
I moved on to an old Fifties tweed Fender
Twin, which I still have. Then I got into a
tweed Fender Bassman, and recently I got
a Fender Concest, which is an old brown
one, from around 1959, with four 10"
speakers. I use a Hawk booster through
that just to roughen it up a bit, or if it's a
quiet number I plug straight in and keep
the guitar clean sounding.
SG-Do you feel that the old Fender amps
are better than the newer Fenders?
RG-They seem to warm up sooner. They
wouldn't have the wide tonal range that the
new Fenders have~particularly the new
Fender Super Twin, which has a graphic
equalizer, a master volume control, over-
drive, and all that~but I probably have
some interest in old amps over and above
the actual music because of their appear
ance and because the guys in the Fifties
used them. But I do find that they really
have an atmospheric sound. I've never
been a fan of the hundred-watt stacks; that
just hasn't appealed to me. I always like a
Twin or a 4x 10 speaker setup. And some of
those hundred-watt stacks really only give
you about fifty watts, while an AC-30 is a
genuine thirty watts. Instead of a wall of
sound, where you lose your song because
it's spread out among eight speakers. I'd
rather see a small amp turned to 8 or 9 and
really hopping off the chair.
SG-Do you use the same setup in the studio?
RG-Yes, same thing, plus I have an old Magnatone,
which went out through Sears, Roebuck in the States.
Generally, I end up using the AC-30 or one of the old
Fenders.  I like to do lead parts live, so you obviously
have to have an amp that will be fairly loud, so the
other guys in the studio can hear you.
SG-Do you think it's advantageous to learn acoustic
before moving on to electric?
RG-Well, I played acoustic for two or three years
before I bought an electric  I wasn't particularly
interested in electric for the first couple of years,
because I was a Lonnie Donegan fan.  I think it's
better to start on acoustic and then get into electric,
but you could bet into a fistfight over that.  I mean,
some people would say, "To hell with the acoustic
guitar; it never existed.  You've got to get a solid-
body right away."  Fair enough, but I think they're
missing out.  Even if you're going to become the
consummate 1978 electric guitarist, I think you're
missing out on an awful lot, if only for the fun of
playing an acoustic guitar at home as a hobby.
And it's nice to go from the acoustic, where even
at the best of times the action is fairly taut, to the
electric with light strings, where you float around
like jelly.  If you're always playing on light-guage
strings, you'll never really build up strength and
subsequently real volume without turning up your
amp yet again.
SG-Are there any other techniques that you can
adapt from acoustic to electric?
RG-If you never played acoustic the odds would
probably be three-to-one that you might never get
into, say, playing with a  plectrum and fingers or
ever get interested in the various acoustic right-
hand things.  I think if you're just playing with a
flatpick full-time, you're only half playing the guitar.
SG-When you use both the flatpick and your fingers,
are you fingerpicking with the middle and ring fingers?
RG-Yes, sort of a James Burton type of thing.  Obviously,
if you're just chopping chords you don't use the fingers.
Sometimes you might do the little harmonic tricks
where you clip the string and get a squeal, but if you
want to get a jingly-jangly thing, use your fingers.
SG-Where did you pick that up?
RG-I began playing just straightforward plectrum style,
but a things went along it just seemed to fall into place.
Besides, I played in some dance bands and show bands
in Ireland, where as often as not we didn't have a rhythm
guitarist, so you'd play the rhythm part as well as the lead.
Say you were doing a Shadows song--they were like the
English Ventures--you'd have to fit in the melody and a
form of rhythm.  That's probably where I got it from,
plus Ricky Nelson records with James Burton on guitar.
He was obviously using his thumb and fingers or a pick
and fingers.
SG-So would you advise learning to fingerpick with bare
fingers, with flatpicks, or with a plectrum and the fingers?
RG-Well, if you could wave a magic wand, you should
tell the person to try all forms and be familiar with them
all--anything instead of just using the plectrum alone.
I think at some point in every song you're going to need
the fingers.  If you're interested in classical guitar, it's nice
to get a couple of years training at that, and then you'd
have very strong hands, and you could skip thumbpicks
and metal picks or whatever.
SG-Do you use fingerpicks mainly for volume, or do you
use them for a specific sound?
RG-I would use them for volume, you know, and to save
wear and tear.  If I were a highly developed thumb-and-
fingers person I'd just use the bare skin, but you do get
the real sharp, biting sound with the metal claws.  Gary
Davis just used the one plastic fingerpick, and he seemed
to make great sense out of that.
SG-Do you see any advantage to the plectrum and fingers
over thumbpick and fingerpicks?
RG-The advantage of the plectrum and fingers is that you
can forget about the fingers at certain points where, say,
you're doing a Buddy Holly number or an Eddie Cochran
thing or a modern blues, where the fingers don't really
come in, where you really have to sledgehammer the
guitar.  If you were trying to play a rock and roll or
electric blues thing, fingerpicks might become a little bit
cumbersome--although they never seemed to get in
Freddie King's way; he only used the thumbpick and one
metal fingerpick, which surprised me.  Then there's an
English guitarist, Tony McPhee, who plays with the
thumb and one finger.  I think John Hammond does it
as well, although he picks, too.  Johnny Winter plays
with a thumbpick and his bare finger, kind of like
Muddy Waters, although Muddy uses a pick on his
index finger.  Let's put it this way: If you want to
play a lot of electric blues or electric blues-cum-
rock or whatever, the plectrum plus the fingers
is probably the best common denominator.  Then
acoustically you can imitate the Doc Watson style.
But to be true to the old ethnic folk and blues
traditions I guess you really should be at least
familiar with using your thumb and fingers, because
there are certain numbers where the plectrum is a
hindrance.
SG-Would a plectrum be a hindrance when you're
slapping the string on some tunes?
RG-I can get away with that, oddly enough, but that
depends on how difficult the piece is.  For instance,
I don't think you could do a Blind Blake piece with
plectrum and fingers, but you'd at least manage a
version of it.  It depends on how true to the old
version you're trying to get.  Maybe you're just
playing it for fun; maybe you're doing it for very
aesthetic reasons.  Most young guitar players
nowadays, even if they've only been listening to
people like the Beatles, must know that they
couldn't do all those things with just a plectrum.
Even like "Dear Prudence" on the Beatles' "white
album" [THE BEATLES, Apple SWBO-101]--that's
a D tuning or something, and Lennon is playing
with his fingers--he's always been quite fond of that.
SG-So you think it's very important for a student
to learn to use his fingers as well as a pick...?
RG-Yeah, even if he never touches folk or blues music.
Of course, the sky's the limit nowadays, and I suppose
for Chuck Berry rock and roll it doesn't matter too much,
but even Keith Richard uses his fingers on things like
"Honky Tonk Women".
SG-Do you use any effects devices?
RG-Well, there are a million and one pedals around,
and I have a phase shifter I use once in a blue moon
in the studio, but I think that's been sort of overused.
My favorite of all the gimmicks is the vibrato or
tremolo--the old Bo Diddley sound.  That's fantastic
with distortion, because it really plays tricks with
the rhythm and it foxes the player.  I like to overdrive
the amp, as opposed to using a fuzz box.  Better
still, get a dirty Fender Champ and play the lead
on that through a bigger amp.  And I still prefer
to get a wah-wah effect by working the guitar's
tone control manually.  I think it's more fun, and
that's where the Fender guitar comes in and has
a slight advantage over most Gibsons.  Most
Gibsons have two volume controls and two tone
controls, and they're too far away to reach, and
that's a bit of a drag.  The Strat is ideal, because
you can get the crying sound with the volume and
tone controls.
SG-Do you think it's important for a guitarist to
learn to read music?
RG-I did it by ear, listening to records.  I never had
a teacher, and I regret tht I can't read music.  I
went to the library once and got "Teach Yourself
How to Read Music" or something, and it said,
"Sit down at your piano".  We didn't have a piano,
so that went down the chute.  Then I worked out
F, A and C and gave up, because I was too
impulsive, and I was already delighted that I
could play "Lost John" and a couple of other
songs.  Then, next thing, I was playing blues
and rock and roll, which is fairly instinctive and
primitive stuff anyway.  But later on you start
getting beyond the open tunings and ragtime
blues, you know, and you're listening to someone
like Django Reinhardt or modern jazz guitarists,
even bossa nova stuff like Charlie Byrd, and you
begin to feel a little inadequate if you're an all-
around guitar fan.  So you get a couple of books
on chords and try to make sense of that.  That's
where the reading would probably come in; it
would help if you were a bit of a jazz fan.
SG-When recording with other musicians, do you
find that not knowing written music limits your
ability to communicate ideas in the studio?
No, that's no problem, because you can hum it to
them or play it on the guitar.  I don't think that's
the drawback; the only drawback is if you were
interested in playing a classical piece verbatim,
or you wanted to play a Charlie Christian solo
and really wanted to find out all the notes that
he played and the harmony and theory thing
behind it.  Sometimes you say, "To hell with it;
it doesn't matter anyway," but it kind of does
matter.  I'd say a year or two of just learning a
little bit of theory wouldn't do any harm.  Even
tablature foxes me; I have no head for math-
ematics.
SG-What advice could you give in terms of
practicing the guitar?
RG-Well, it's like the old cliche: You have to
love the instrument and the idea of the instrument
and the whole aura of the thing, and that will
dictate how much you practice, really.  I don't
think you have to sit down for eight hours a day
or anything, but if you're really interested you'll
probably do that anyway in the early stages--
and even after that, between trying to write
songs and experimenting with notes and
loosening your fingers.  I think you're bound to
get in an hour or two a day anyway, although
some guys say they only play five minutes a
day outside the gig.
SG-Do you find yourself playing a lot during
the day?
RG-Quite a lot, yeah, in fits and starts.  If I
have a complete day off I play a bit after
breakfast, for fifteen minutes or so, to begin
with.
SG-Are there any specific exercises you play?
RG-Nothing specific, no.  I just try to get the
old muscles loosened.  Sometimes I'm
working on a song, or I might play along with
a record for the hell of it.  You try not to be
lazy; you try to do something that's a step
ahead.  The best all-around thing is a ragtime
piece or a classical piece.  Even if you're the
hammiest classical player in the world--which
I am--it's very good exercise.
SG-On acoustic guitar?
RG-On acoustic, yeah.  Of course, on electric
this is where the famous fingers and plectrum
come in.  See, if you're playing electric guitar
on your own, and the guys in the band aren't
around, it's very hard to just play notes.
You're bound to start sticking in a chord and
keeping the A string going while you're doing
a bit of a lead.  It seems inevitable, you know.
SG-Could you offer any advice for guitarists
wanting to become professionals?
RG-If you wanted to get into say, electric
blues, I'd get into a band as soon as
possible, no matter how bad it is.  Don't be
too proud--get into some kind of band; get
playing with a drummer.  That's essential
for electric blues.  If you want to play
acoustic music on your own, just hurry up
and get a gig if you can; get out there and
play in front of people.
SG-You feel that playing in front of people is
an important thing to do as soon as possible?
Yes, it brings something out.  I know for a fact
that if I'm off the road for a long spell, even if
I'm rehearsing like mad and playing a lot at
home, the real crunch comes when I get out in
front of people.  The things you thought were
really hot in rehearsal don't make any sense,
because quite often you've forgotten the basic
drive.  In rehearsals sometimes the basics
get glossed over, because you're fooling
around too much with the frilly stuff.  If you
get out there in front of an audience, drop your
pick or break a string, that toughens you up,
and it brings out projection in your playing.
You have to direct your playing somewhere--
unless you want to sit in a room like a painter
looking at the painting he's just done, and he
won't show it to anybody.  You do get people
like that, who think there's no one in the city
who's good enough to play with.  But even
acoustic players should get to a folk club and
listen to other people, play with other people.
There's always a thin line between studying
the old records by the old masters and trying
to develop yourself.  I think both can be done
at the same time, because if you forget the
old masters you miss out on a whole
heritage and a whole world, really.  But you
shouldn't get too clogged up with the old
stuff to the point where you won't be moving
on yourself, because you won't end up
like an old master yourself anyway, you know.
--
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semplicemente grande Rory. what's goin on, morning sun,i could have had
religion sono gran bei pezzi.onore a un chitarrista che è sempre stato
ingiustamente sottovalutato

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