The gang at Rolling Stone has come up with a list of the “100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time.” But who’s got time for that in the fast-page Internet age? Here’s their top 10 — the other 90 suck in comparison, right?
1. “Johnny B. Goode” Chuck Berry (1958)
“If you want to play rock & roll,” Joe Perry told Rolling Stone in 2004, “you have to start here.” Recorded 50 years ago, on January 6th, 1958, at the Chess Records studio in Chicago, Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” was the first great record about the joys and rewards of playing rock & roll guitar. It also has the single greatest rock & roll intro: a thrilling blast of high twang driven by Berry’s spearing notes, followed by a rhythm part that translates a boogie-woogie piano riff for the guitar. “He could play the guitar just like a-ringing a bell,” Berry sings in the first verse — a perfect description of his sound and the reverberations still running through every style of rock guitar, from the Beatles and the Stones on down. “It was beautiful, effortless, and his timing was perfection,” Keith Richards has said of Berry’s playing. “He is rhythm man supreme.” Berry wrote often about rock & roll and why it’s good for you — “Roll Over Beethoven” in 1956, “Rock and Roll Music” in ‘57 — but never better than in “Johnny B. Goode,” a true story about how playing music on a guitar can change your life forever.
2. “Purple Haze” The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967)
The riff is pure blues — the same kind of guitar figure Hendrix played nightly back on the R&B-club grind, as a sideman for Little Richard and the Isley Brothers. But in “Purple Haze,” Hendrix’s second British single and the first track on the U.S. version of his debut album, he declared himself a free man — “‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky” — and unveiled a new guitar language charged with spiritual hunger and the poetry possible in electricity and studio technology. “Guitar — you can play it or transcend it,” said Neil Young when he inducted Hendrix into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. “Jimi showed me that. I heard it, felt it and wanted to do it.” Hendrix wrote “Purple Haze” backstage at a London nightclub in December 1966 and recorded basic tracks with his band, the Experience, two weeks later. But the galactic travel came in overdubs recorded on February 3rd, 1967: Hendrix’s solos, swimming in echo and sparkling with harmonics, were put through an octave-boosting effect and played back at twice the speed. In less than three minutes, Hendrix opened a new age of expression on his instrument.
3. “Crossroads” Cream (1968)
Eric Clapton once described Cream’s music as “blues ancient and modern.” This track is what he meant. He was not yet 23 when he played this high-velocity version of the Robert Johnson song at San Francisco’s Winterland on March 10th, 1968. Everything in Clapton’s solos is grounded in the blues vocabulary but pointed to the future. “When Clapton soloed, he wrote wonderful symphonies from classic blues licks in that fantastic tone,” Little Steven Van Zandt told Rolling Stone in 2004. “You could sing his solos like songs in themselves.”
4. “You Really Got Me” The Kinks (1964)
It was, at first, “a jazz-type tune,” said Kinks singer Ray Davies, and the two-chord figure driving it was a sax line. “That’s what I liked at the time.” Then his brother Dave played it on guitar through an amp speaker he had poked with needles and shredded with a razor blade. (”It was a Gillette single-sided blade,” said Dave.) Dave’s solo — a tangle of zigzags and viciously bent notes — heralded the birth of Sixties garage and punk-rock guitar in one fell swoop. “I said I’d never write another song like it,” said Ray. “And I haven’t.”
5. “Brown Sugar” The Rolling Stones (1971)
“Satisfaction” may be the Rolling Stones’ most recognizable riff, but this Sticky Fingers hit — based on a gutbucket guitar part devised by Mick Jagger — is the band’s raunchy guitar pinnacle. Keith Richards’ secret weapon: He’s playing a guitar that’s missing its lowest string.
6. “Eruption” Van Halen (1978)
Eddie Van Halen’s 102-second mission statement was a piece he invented onstage: a solo showcase for his mastery of tone and technique, notably the rush of notes he produced with his fretboard tapping. An army of teens would try to duplicate it, emerging years later in every metal band of the Eighties.
7. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” The Beatles (1968)
This is a tale of two guitar giants at an empathic peak: George Harrison, who wrote this song on acoustic guitar in India, and Eric Clapton, who amplifies Harrison’s vocal dismay with a waterfall of blues fills. It’s the finest examaple of his jagged, late-Sixties tone.
8. “Stairway to Heaven” Led Zeppelin (1971)
“Stairway,” Jimmy Page told RS in 1975, “crystallized the essence of the band.” It’s a masterpiece of dramatic ascension: Page’s acoustic picking rising into chiming chords, which introduce the solo, a brilliant succession of phrases that steadily move toward rock & roll ecstasy.
9. “Statesboro Blues” The Allman Brothers Band (1971)
In 1968, Gregg Allman went to visit his older brother, Duane, on his 22nd birthday. Duane was sick in bed, so Gregg brought along a bottle of Coricidin pills for his fever and the debut album by guitarist Taj Mahal as a gift. “About two hours after I left, my phone rang,” Gregg remembers. ” ‘Baby brother, baby brother, get over here now!’ ” When Gregg got there, Duane had poured the pills out of the bottle, washed off the label and was using it as a slide to play “Statesboro Blues,” the old Blind Willie McTell song that Taj Mahal covered. Duane had never played slide before, says Gregg, but “he just picked it up and started burnin’. He was a natural.”
The song quickly became a part of the Allman Brothers Band’s repertoire, and Duane’s slide guitar became crucial to their sound. “Statesboro Blues” was the opening track on their legendary 1971 live double album, At Fillmore East, and ever since, the moaning and squealing opening licks have given fans chills at live shows. “It wasn’t something that Duane would play the same way every night,” says current Allmans guitarist Warren Haynes, one of many guitarists who have filled Duane’s shoes since he died in late 1971. “But in all of our heads, that’s the way it goes.”
There’s one thing the current band doesn’t try to replicate from the Fillmore East performance: At the end of Duane’s sublime “Statesboro” solo, the guitarist hits an off-key note that Gregg calls the “note from hell.” “He left it in because he knew I hated it,” says Gregg, claiming that the mistake only adds to the song’s legend. “It was live. It was something that happened.” EVAN SERPICK
10. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” Nirvana (1991)
Most of “Teen Spirit” came easy — Nirvana nailed it in three takes — but that crucial Kurt Cobain guitar intro required an overdub (”That pissed him off,” said producer Butch Vig). It was worth the effort: That riff, along with the band’s loud-quiet-loud dynamics, defined Nineties rock.
It’s a pretty lame list, if you ask me. “Johnny B. Goode” and “Purple Haze” are certainly top 10 material but most of the others aren’t. A lot of them aren’t event particularly good guitar songs.
Certainly, almost any AC/DC song you’ve ever heard of is better than “Stairway to Heaven” as a guitar jam. Indeed, so are quite a few Zeppelin songs, notably “Rock and Roll.” And where’s Lynyrd Skynrd’s “Freebird”? That’s gotta be in the top 10.
Source: “The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time” [Rolling Stone]
Only nine weeks after meeting, and less than three weeks since telling journalists he was “serious,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the ex-supermodel turned singer-songwriter wed in a civil ceremony Saturday morning morning in Paris.
The French President 53, who divorced in October, and the Italian-born Bruni were wed at 11 a.m. in the Presidential Office of the Elysee Palace, in a private civil ceremony before 30 family and friends.
Bruni, 39, who signed her wedding certificate “Mrs. Carla Bruni Sarkozy,” wore a white dress and looked “ravishing as usual,” according to Paris’s 8th Arrondissement Mayor Francois Lebel, who officiated the 20-minute ceremony.
Nicolas has only been divorced from Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz for a little over 3 months.
As mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Sarkozy met former fashion model and public relations executive Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz (great-granddaughter of composer Isaac Albéniz and of a Russian father), when he officiated at her wedding to television host Jacques Martin. In 1988, she left her husband for Sarkozy, and divorced Martin one year later. Sarkozy married her in October 1996, with witnesses Martin Bouygues and Bernard Arnault. They have one son, Louis, born 23 April 1997.
Between 2002 and 2005, the couple often appeared together on public occasions, with Cécilia Sarkozy acting as the chief aide for her husband. On 25 May 2005, however, the Swiss newspaper Le Matin revealed that she had left Sarkozy for French-Moroccan national Richard Attias, head of Publicis in New York. There were other accusations of a private nature in Le Matin, which lead to Sarkozy suing the paper. In the meantime, he was said to have had an affair with a journalist of Le Figaro, Anne Fulda.
Sarkozy and Cécilia ultimately divorced in October 15, 2007.
Who is Carla Bruni?
Born Carla Bruni Tedeschi, December 23rd 1967, in Turin, Italy, she grew up in France from the age of five and later attended boarding school in Switzerland. She eventually returned to Paris to study art and architecture, but left school at 19 to become a model full-time.
Heiress to Italian tire manufacturing Pirelli fortune, Bruni signed with City Models at age 19 and her career began. Paul Marciano, president and creative director of Guess? Inc., came across her picture among a stack of composite cards of aspiring models and chose her to model with Estelle Hallyday in ad campaigns for Guess? jeans. Bruni subsequently worked for a number of designers and fashion houses, such as Christian Dior, Paco Rabanne, Sonia Rykiel, Christian Lacroix, Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano, Yves Saint-Laurent, Chanel, Versace, and others. By the 1990s, Bruni was among the 20 highest-paid fashion models, earning $7.5 million a year. While modeling, Bruni dated Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger and Donald Trump.
[Some NSFW photos below the fold. Click thumbnails for a larger view.]
In 1997, Bruni quit the world of fashion, to devote herself to music. She sent her lyrics to Julien Clerc in 1999, based on which he composed seven tracks on his 2000 album Si j’étais elle.
In 2002, her debut album Quelqu’un m’a dit, produced by ex-lover Louis Bertignac, was released in Europe with success in Francophone countries. Three songs from the album appear in Hans Canosa’s 2005 American film Conversations with Other Women. The song “Le plus beau du quartier” was used in H&M’s Christmas 2006 commercial.
Rumors are circling that Britney Spears might be checking into rehab for the third time this year after the events at court this week. Supposedly she is set to check into Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Center in Antigua on Saturday.
According to a “friend” of Britney:
“Britney’s team has been working closely with her attorneys to figure out a way to get the babies back from Kevin. She’s surrendering herself to rehab for treatment of depression and alcohol so that there’s no questioning if she is drinking or missing any future tests.
She’s got to pull her life together or else she’ll lose the kids for good. She will do whatever her legal team and those closest to her thinks is best if it means she gets Preston and Jayden back. She’s getting the help she needs and everyone is hoping she goes through with it this time.”
Alli Sims has said the rumors simply are not true. I think I’m with Alli - homegirl will never seek help for her problems because she doesn’t think she has any. If tanning, Starbucks, and checking into luxe hotels are her response to losing custody, there’s no way she’s going to rehab.
Keeley Hazell hails from the other side of the pond. She actually comes from the same town as Jude Law and Eric Clapton. You’ll find all kinds of other interesting details about her on the official Keeley Hazell web site. Oh yeah, there are more pictures of her there too. Plenty from ZOO Magazine. Girl likes to walk around without a shirt on. Some NSFW.
Source: “Keeley Hazell is Topless Again in Zoo Magazine” [egotastic]
I’m seriously getting dizzy with all this nonsense. Just when you think she’s going to get the help she needs, she escapes and heads back to the bar. This is not the actions of a woman who is trying to keep custody of her children.
Sources tell ET that BRITNEY SPEARS left Promises residential treatment center in Malibu, CA early this morning — less than 24 hours after checking into the facility.
Following the news that she was in rehab, her manager LARRY RUDOLPH released a statement Tuesday, saying, “Britney Spears has voluntarily checked herself into an undisclosed rehab facility today. We ask that the media respect her privacy as well as those of her family and friends at this time.”
It all started over the weekend, when Britney made headlines by taking a pair of electric shears to her head and shaving off all of her hair. The mom of two small children visited a Tarzana, Calif. hair salon on Friday, and asked veteran stylist ESTHER TOGNOZZI to shave her head.
“All of a sudden there were people knocking on my door saying, ‘Open the door,’ and they said Britney Spears needs to come in,” Tognozzi tells ET.
“She sat on my chair and wanted her hair shaved off and I said, ‘I’m not doing it,’” she continues. “I said, ‘Maybe you’re having, you know, a hormonal moment [and] tomorrow will be different, let’s talk about it,’ and she said, ‘No I want my hair shaved off.’” When Tognozzi hesitated, Brit used a pair of electric clippers to shave her hair off herself. “[She] came over and sat in this chair … and proceeded shaving off her hair.”
The songstress was then spotted at a Los Angeles-area tattoo parlor, where she got two new pieces of body art.
This shocking move comes on the heels of People magazine’s report that last week the singer checked in and abruptly checked out of ERIC CLAPTON’s Crossroads Centre, a rehab facility in Antigua, leaving after just one day and returning to Southern California on Friday.
Ever since separating from Federline in November, Britney has been making headlines for her party-hopping and no-panty-wearing ways.
Besides being caught numerous times by paparazzi flashing her goods while getting in and out of her rides, she has also been spotted everywhere, from Malibu to Las Vegas to New York City, making the rounds at the hottest clubs.
First she was seen out a number of times with PARIS HILTON. Soon that friendship reportedly fizzled, and Britney started spending time with ISAAC COHEN until their reported recent split.
I didn’t know that Robin Leech, of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous fame, was a blogger.
Mr. Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams himself says:
The shock photos of Britney Spears’ shaven bald head caused more buzz at hairstylist to the stars Michael Boychuck’s salons at AMP in the Palms and QUA Salon at Caesars Palace than when Dennis Rodman came in for a haircut and coloring! Britney, who was video’d by LA’s KABC with the new bald look at a Los Angeles tattoo parlor yesterday, was at AMP less than three weeks ago seeking help here for her hair in hopes of a public relations and professional comeback
I learned that her hair was so badly damaged from repeated cheap-peroxide bleachings that it had broken off and thinned to the point where bald-spots had begun to appear. Britney had used extensions to cover up the damage. Michael treated and softened the remaining hair enhancing its natural darker shade. But no sooner did she show the new look during NYC’s Fashion Week than she changed it back to blonde yet again.
In Manhattan, there were lurid tabloid tales of her late-night binge of parties, dancing with female strippers and a PEOPLE Magazine report that she’d gone in for rehab at Eric Clapton’s drug and alcohol Crossroads Clinic in Antigua in the Caribbean. Apparently she checked out within 24 hours. I used to live on Antigua and we knew that Crossroads was probably the toughest and most spartan of clincs in a sense the last resort for rehab. If Britney did go there and bolt because of the boot-camp facilities, no surprise. But with expensive jets on standby to ferry her across country, it’s easy for her to turn up back in Los Angeles. But her shaven head has set off a whirlwind of controversy with everybody asking if this is the final stages of a major breakdown.
US Magazine reported that Spears went into a hair parlor to get her head shaved and that when the hair stylist refused to shave her head, Spears grabbed the clippers and shaved it herself.
A Los Angeles television station grabbed footage of her Friday night at a tattoo parlor in the San Fernando Valley. She was there to get a couple of tiny tattoos on her wrist, a pair of pink and red lips. Us Weekly magazine reported that she also got a black, white and pink cross tattooed on her lower hip.
A parlor employee said Spears showed up unannounced and stayed for about 90 minutes, while dozens of fans, photographers and gawkers gathered outside.
The employee told US Magazine that Spears was agitated when she arrived at the tattoo parlor and that when someone asked her why she shaved her head, Spears said, “I don’t want anyone touching me. I’m tired of everybody touching me.”
The woman said Spears “wasn’t making sense at all” and that it seemed like she wasn’t in a good place. She said Spears was “totally freaking out.”
“She was a nightmare to deal with,” the woman told the magazine. “She was screaming and flipping out from the pain and wiggling her body all around.”
Police eventually arrived to control the crowd and help Spears’ bodyguards guide her into a waiting SUV. And by that time, she had covered her head with the hood of a sweatshirt.
As for the new bald look, one fan who’s not terribly thrilled said, “It looks terrible.”
Earlier in the week, Spears checked into a rehabilitation facility and then quickly checked out, People Magazine reported. People reported that the pop diva checked herself into Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Centre in Antigua but left after one day.
Meanwhile, an e-mail on Tuesday from Spears’ former assistant said the pop star needs to get her act together because she is headed for “rock bottom.”
Felicia Culotta worked for the 25-year-old pop star for nearly 10 years.
Culotta wrote an e-mail that was posted on the Web site ThatOtherBlog.com. It was addressed to “Ruben” who reportedly runs the Web site.
Since filing for divorce from Kevin Federline in November, Spears has drawn criticism for her drinking, partying and sloppy appearance.
In her e-mail, Culotta said that Spears’ family and close friends are trying to help her. Culotta said she is now working as a corporate flight attendant and living in Mississippi.
Gina Orr, Spears’ publicist at Jive Records, couldn’t be reached at her office and didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail from the Associated Press asking for comment.
James Blunt ’s “Goodbye My Lover” is the song most requested at British funerals and remembrance services, closely followed by Robbie Williams ’s “Angels,” according to a survey released on Monday. Is this supposed to be an honor?
Research for the Bereavement Register found just over a half (51 percent) of people ask for a specific song be played at their funeral and 79 percent have talked with family and friends about possible song choices. The survey of 5,000 people also uncovered some unusual final choices for the final goodbye with rock songs like “I’ll Sleep When I am Dead” by Bon Jovi , competing with classical tracks and soul.
“The top 20 really shows how far we have come in terms of saying goodbye. Gone are the days dirges of yore, instead we are seeing contemporary music that is easier to relate to,” said Mark Roy, founder of the Bereavement Register, which removes the names and addresses of people who have died from databases to reduce junk mail.
“Everyone has a favorite song that means something very special to them, often connected to a particular time and place. When the song is played this can be a very emotive reminder of that person,” he said in a statement.
The top 10 requested songs were:
1 - “Goodbye My Lover” - James Blunt
2 - “Angels” - Robbie Williams
3 - “I’ve Had The Time Of My Life” - Jennifer Warnes and Bill Medley
4 - “Wind Beneath My Wings” - Bette Midler
5 - “Pie Jesu” - Requiem
6 - “Candle In The Wind” - Elton John
7 - “With Or Without You” - U2
8 - “Tears In Heaven” - Eric Clapton
9 - “Every Breath You Take - The Police
10 -”Unchained Melody” - Righteous Brothers
Eric Clapton concerts are once again a place to get a Cocaine fix.
Eric Clapton is playing “Cocaine” in concert again. The recovering drug addict and alcoholic, who founded the Crossroads Centre addiction recovery center on the Caribbean island of Antigua, stopped performing the song written by J.J. Cale when he first got sober.
“I thought that it might be giving the wrong message to people who were in the same boat as me,” Clapton recently told The Associated Press. “But further investigation proved … the song, if anything, if it’s not even ambivalent, it’s an anti-drug song. And so I thought that might be a better way to do it, to approach it from a more positive point of view. And carry on performing it as not a pro-drug song, but just as a reality check about what it does.”
Clapton’s band shouts out “dirty cocaine” during the song.
“It’s one of those songs that you can take it any way you like,” Clapton told the AP. “But it very clearly says in the opening verse, `If you wanna get down, down on the ground,’ I mean, that’s, I think, the focal point of the song. That’s what the song’s about, is that, you know, there’s a price.”
Clapton also said he missed playing “Cocaine,” with its signature guitar riff, “just purely from a musical point of view.”
It’s a pretty cool song and, frankly, I’m not sure the message was ever particularly clear. Whether getting “down, down on the ground” is a good or bad thing is a matter of personal interpretation. Frankly, I’m not sure anyone is going to make a decision to snort or not based on a guitar anthem, anyway.
Only nine weeks after meeting, and less than three weeks since telling journalists he was “serious,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the ex-supermodel turned singer-songwriter wed in a civil ceremony Saturday morning morning in Paris.
“Britney’s team has been working closely with her attorneys to figure out a way to get the babies back from Kevin. She’s surrendering herself to rehab for treatment of depression and alcohol so that there’s no questioning if she is drinking or missing any future tests. 
Sources tell ET that BRITNEY SPEARS left Promises residential treatment center in Malibu, CA early this morning — less than 24 hours after checking into the facility.
The shock photos of Britney Spears’ shaven bald head caused more buzz at hairstylist to the stars Michael Boychuck’s salons at AMP in the Palms and QUA Salon at Caesars Palace than when Dennis Rodman came in for a haircut and coloring! Britney, who was video’d by LA’s KABC with the new bald look at a Los Angeles tattoo parlor yesterday, was at AMP less than three weeks ago seeking help here for her hair in hopes of a public relations and professional comeback
