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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]
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normgregory.com linked with All Time Guitar Songs & Bill Murray
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Let’s read that again, shall we?
Rolling Stones guitarist and rock n’ roll bad boy Keith Richards has become the new public face of Louis Vuitton.
Alrighty then.
 Rolling Stones guitarist and rock-and-roll bad boy Keith Richards is to become the new public face of Louis Vuitton, the French luxury fashion house said on Tuesday.
For his first ever ad campaign, the 64-year-old Richards — who has a rocky history of drug use — is seen cradling his guitar on a hotel-room bed, the lights part obscured by skull-print black drapes.
“Some journeys cannot be put into words. New York. 3 am. Blues in C,” runs the slogal of the ad, shot by US photographer Annie Leibovitz and due to appear in the magazine press next month.
Richards plans to donate the fee for the ad to the Climate Project, launched by Nobel-winning former US vice-president Al Gore and backed by Louis Vuitton.
Famous faces stars to have represented Vuitton in the past include former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, French screen icon Catherine Deneuve, and US actresses Scarlett Johansson and Uma Thurman.
Style and class meets snorting blow off a hooker’s ass… nice. Only one thing comes to mind though….
source: Stones guitarist is new frontman for Louis Vuitton [yahoo news]
Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones has written an autobiography, and even though you thought stories about Keith Richards couldn’t get any crazier (snorting your dad’s ashes, anyone?), they just might.
What’s weird about this story is that Keith was mad at Ronnie for doing drugs. Apparently freebasing was just a step too far.
Ronnie recalls:
 “After a row with Keith one day, he stormed off to get his gun. I warned everyone to ‘clear the decks’. Keith came back with his Derringer gun, pointed it at me and yelled, ‘You f***ing b*****d Woody!’.
“But I had my own gun, a .44 Magnum. I didn’t have any bullets for it but I calmly pulled it out. And that was the last time Keith pulled a gun on me - until the next time.”
Keith may have been right about Ronnie’s drug use though. Ronnie admits that he became so addicted to coke he once banned his kids from eating meringues in the house after he mistook a white crumb for a chunk of the drug and tried to smoke it.
And still, the band has no plans to retire. Mick Jagger said recently,
“I’m sure the Rolling Stones will do more things and more records and more tours. We’ve got no plans to stop any of that really. As far as I’m concerned I’m sure we’ll continue.”
It’s amazing that these guys are still alive - maybe cocaine is the fountain of youth. It’s just a matter of whether you want to be coherent in your old age.
Source: “Rolling Stones In Gun Fight” [Celebitchy]
Britney Spears is having a rough go of it these days. Sure, the VMA comeback performance was disastrous, but that’s about the least of her worries right now. In more important news, TMZ reports that Britney Spears is losing her lawyer.
This morning the custody battle between Britney and Kevin Federline was set to start, and apparently Brit’s lawyer Laura Wasser is submitting legal papers formally withdrawing as her attorney. The new lawyer is supposed to be Marci Levine.
Rumor has it that Britney was a problem client because she never listened to the advice Wasser gave her. But I have another theory - if this is true, I think Britney is trying to stall. There’s no way a new lawyer can try a case the day she’s hired by the client, so the hearing would have be postponed. But that’s just my opinion.
And in other, and much more bizarre Britney news, it seems she’s been banned from Chateau Marmont because guests complained of her behavior. The “weird” behavior allegedly includes smearing a plate of high dollar food all over her face and grossing out the other patrons.
A source said:
“The diners were disgusted. You wouldn’t expect that from a teenager in a fast-food joint.”
Damn, Britney. There’s no way you’re winning custody if you’re two steps away from the insane asylum.
What others are saying:
- dlisted says, “Boo! I was hoping Brit would represent herself in court. Can you imagine? Comedy! She’s probably watched enough Divorce Court while eating Bon Bons to get the gist of things.”
- Celebrity Dirty Laundry says, “After last week’s disasterous ‘performance’ at the MTV Video Music Awards, you would think it couldn’t get any more humiliating for pop-tard Britney Spears. But you would be wrong.”
- Best Week Ever says, “To put this into perspective, here is a list of things that DIDN’T get famous people banned from the hotel:
–Led Zeppelin rode their motorcycles through the lobby one time, not to mention all the unspeakable/illegal things they regularly did to groupies in their hotel rooms.
–Jim Morrison hurt his back while dangling from a drain pipe, trying to swing from the roof into the window of his hotel room.
–Hunter S. Thompson was often a guest. Enough said.
–Even worse, Lindsay Lohan LIVED there during her “coke phase”.
–Scarlett Johansson may or may not have boned Benicio Del Toro in an elevator.
–Keith Richards once set himself on fire after consuming an entire bottle of 150-proof vodka.
–Frank Sinatra broke one of Sammy Davis Jr.’s legs by the pool to win a drunken bet with Dean Martin.
–Colin Farrell once killed a hooker to get an erection in his private bungalow.
–It was Hitler’s favorite hotel whenever he visited LA.
So, you know, this is pretty bad.”
Source: “CHATEAU MARMONT BANS BRIT FOR BATTY BEHAVIOR: REPORT” [Page Six]; “Wasser to Britney — You’re Someone Else’s Problem Now” [TMZ]
Image courtesy of Picture Perfect, for use on Gone Hollywood
At last nights MTV Video Music Awards, Britney Spears wasn’t the only one making an ass out of herself. Kid Rock and Tommy Lee got into it after Kid Rock reportedly punched Tommy Lee in the face. Kid Rock says that Tommy Lee instigated the fight by taunting him, saying “I never hit nobody for nothing before. I told him to shut the f–k up.”
As MTV VJ Sway reported during the post-show telecast:
“Tommy Lee was sitting by Diddy. [Kid Rock] just walked up and decked him!”
According to an onlooker in the audience, “They had each other at the necks, they were practically strangling each other.” Another eyewitness saw Tommy Lee escorted out, “screaming the f-word over and over again.” He was taken out into main casino in front of thousands of fans.
Jamie Foxx added his two cents while presenting the Best New Artist award with Jennifer Garner. “Stop all of this white-on-white crime. Tommy Lee and Kid Rock fighting like black folks – it’s hilarious.” Foxx, added, “Who won? I was in the bathroom. Pamela Anderson has got a hard choice to make.”
Diddy wanted to get in on the fun too, and while he introduced the final performance he said, “I was supposed to be doing this with Kid Rock, but you know, we got to stop the violence. It’s not just hip-hop artists that fight.”
The police eventually came to Kid Rock’s hotel room and cited him for misdemeanor battery.
Seriously, Kid Rock? You choose the VMAs to punch Tommy Lee? It just kind of takes the hardcore out of the fight when you’re doing it in front of preteen fans who vote on Moon Men winners. I’m just sayin’.
What others are saying:
- Mollygood says, “Still no word as to why the security team didn’t let the idiots kill each other.”
- In Touch says, “Pamela Anderson’s two ex-husbands really don’t like each other.”
- Celebrity Smack says, “And he didn’t open handed bitch slap him either, according to a witness, ‘Tommy got it pretty bad.’ Well yeah! Tommy Lee is a little scrawny dude and was probably wasted. That would be like kicking Keith Richards ass. It wouldn’t take much.”
- celebitchy says, “Maybe that’s why tensions were high when Rock ran into Lee. Even if Lee hasn’t rekindled his relationship with the mother of his children, he still gets to see her often enough and I doubt she has much to do with Rock.”
- Glitterati says, “How much do you want to bet they planned that to get a little attention for both of them? I mean, it’s not like you get into a relationship with Pam Anderson thinking you’ve got her attention always and forever, or that she’s never had a man before you.”
- dlisted says, “Why didn’t MTV show this shit?! It would’ve been better than the crap they put onstage! Nothing says entertainment like two old has-beens duking it out.”
- Best Week Ever says, “Kid Rock and Tommy Lee got kicked out of last night’s VMA Awards after getting into a fistfight over which one of them was the most irrelevant aging rocker in the room. Thank god Axl Rose wasn’t on hand, because there would have been an all-out riot.”
- A Socialite’s Life says, “If Tommy Lee pressed those charges after starting shit, he is a sissy man. Tattoos and piercings and previous overdoses don’t make you a badass. Rednecks will school you. They will put down their can of Bud and their corncob pipe, whoop your ass, and then sit back down and resume listening to Toby Keith. Respect.”
Source: “Tommy Lee, Kid Rock Brawl at VMAs” [People]; “Rock Cited for Battery after Tommy Tussle” [TMZ]
UPDATE (Allie): Tommy issued a statement, via his own personal blog:
Yeah!! …..here I am minding my own biz having a great time with my friend Criss Angel (magician) and watching the MTV awards in the front row saying hello to all my friends……Pamela comes and sits on my lap who I love and adore….and also say hello to my friend Travis Barker and his wife!…..and i get a text from another friend P. Diddy and he says come sit with me…..and he’s sitting with Miss HOT Megan FOX so I go over and sit with P! Not a minute later and Alicia Keys starts her amazing performance….(”I apologize sweetie…..I had nothing to do with the timing and disrespect”)……back to the stupid-ness!!….so….. I get a tap on the shoulder from Kid Pebble…I stand up and embrace him with a semi hug and say “Hey dude…What up”?? He punches me in the face…..well if ya wanna call it that!?….more like a bitch slap!…….Wuss!! Anyway….i go to knock this jealous country bumpkin the f$%k OUT….and before I can have a meeting with my fist and his ugly ass mug ….security guards… grab me and haul my ass outta the award show! So I’m fine and of course leave to my room with police and owner of the Palm’s George Maloof……the rest is paper work and bullshit!… Anyway…… I would like to apologize to Alicia and George and MTV for the disrespectful bullshit caused by a piece of shit called Kid Pebble!!
Much Love always!!…..Tommy!!
Keith Richards was not happy with a bad review after a show in Sweden earlier this month, and then traveled to London where he ate a cigarette on stage in protest of a smoking ban being put in place.
In a Swedish newspaper the Rolling Stones got two stars and Keith was given a personal zero stars with the quote “Keith was very drunk.” Richards responded with,
 “This is a first! Never before have I risen to the bait of a bad review. But this time… I have to stand up for our incredible Gothenburg audience and for fans all over Sweden…to say that you owe them, and us, an apology,” Richards said in a statement released to the newspaper.
“You have a duty to wield the power of the press with honesty and integrity. There were 56,000 people in Ullevi stadium who bought a ticket to our concert - and experienced a completely different show than the one you “reviewed”. How dare you cheapen the experience for them - and for the hundreds of thousands of other people across Sweden who weren’t at Ullevi and only have your “review” to go on. Write the truth. It was a good show.”
The Rolling Stones then gave a show in London on August 26th where Richards proceeded to eat a cigarette in protest of a previous smoking ban put in place. That show ended a two year tour and is rumored to be the band’s last-ever -so Keith will have to find other ways to entertain us.
Source: “Keith Richards lashes out at Swedish tabloids” [thelocal]
Keith Richards is getting paid big bucks to write his memoir - $7.3 million to be exact. Little, Brown, and Company will publish it in 2010. That’s a lot of money for someone who falls out of coconut trees and snorts their father’s ashes.
“It will be his life’s story,” Little, Brown publisher Michael Pietsch said Tuesday. “For nearly 50 years, he has been at the very center of the vortex of stardom and of entertainment as a cultural force. He’s a thread running through the whole thing.”
Richards’ life and work have fascinated millions, but his is hardly an untold story. Richards, 63, has been interviewed countless times, speaking candidly about his music, heroin addiction, love life and battles with Jagger. He is quoted extensively in “According to the Rolling Stones,” an authorized oral history published in 2003.
“All those interviews have been scattered over decades,” Pietsch says. “To have the story of his own life in one book, there’s no experience like that. And there will be stories he has never uttered before.”
The book will probably be interesting, but who knows if any of it will be true. They’d be better off interviewing some groupies. Their memory has got to be a little better.
Source: music.yahoo
In the latest issue of GQ men’s magazine, Sir Richard Branson talks about joining the mile-high club and taking cocaine, ectasy, and Viagra.
The British entrepreneur said “It was “every man’s dream”, adding that he had to wipe handprints off the toilet mirror following the high-flying high jinks.
“I was sitting in economy on a Freddie Laker flight, next to this very attractive lady, as we headed to Los Angeles,” said the boss of Virgin Atlantic.
“We got chatting and it went a bit further. And it was every man’s dream, to be honest. I was about 19,” the tycoon boasted.
“I remember getting off the plane and she turned to me and said, ‘Look, it’s slightly embarrassing but I am meeting my husband at arrivals, would you mind holding back a bit’. But it was a memorable flight.
Regarding the drugs:
“(With Viagra) I had to tie something around my trousers for the rest of the next day to make sure nothing showed.”
He admitted: “I took ecstasy once… but it didn’t have a massive effect on me.”
Of cocaine, he added: “I suspect I’ve tried it, yes.”
And he said Keith Richards, the hell-raising Rolling Stones guitarist, was the “first person to teach me how to roll a joint”.
“I haven’t tried skunk (a strong variety of cannabis); I have smoked cannabis, though. I went with my son on his gap year, for God’s sake. We learnt to surf and had some nights where we laughed our heads off for eight hours.”
Take note Lindsay Lohan, if you do these things, just don’t get caught.
Source: news.com.au
Keith Richards was only kidding when he told a London gossip mag that he snorted his dad’s ashes, MTV’s Kurt Loder reports.
Maybe you saw that Keith Richards item that started popping up all over the place on Tuesday (April 3) — the one about how he’d admitted to snorting the ashes of his late father after his body had been cremated? Great story, right? And yet, like so much in the world of celebrity journalism, totally untrue.
 In case you missed it, this little yarn first appeared in the pages of London’s notoriously unreliable New Musical Express. The magazine quoted the Rolling Stones guitarist as saying, “The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared. … It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.”
This wildly dubious quote proved irresistible to newspapers, wire services and TV and online outlets on both sides of the Atlantic, from The Associated Press to Forbes, The Drudge Report, Breitbart and E! Online. In fact, it was such a great story that nobody bothered trying to confirm it with a Richards representative — why spoil the fun with facts?
In a buzz-killing mood, though, we decided to check with Richards’ longtime manager, Jane Rose. We asked her about the dad-snorting quotes in the NME interview. She responded with an e-mail: “Said in jest,” she explained. “Can’t believe anyone took [it] seriously.”
Of course, his manager could be lying now. And, really, it’s not a particularly funny joke.
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