Smoke That Rocked the World
Welcome to our first installment of RiffZoo’s weekly opinion page on guitar riffage; power music that has rocked the world. Each week, we’ll take a look at guitar passages from the past that have inspired all of us over the years – those sonic clusters and busters that we can’t ever seem to get out of our heads.
A note of warning though to the world at large, riff lovers like us are lurking amongst you and come in all shapes and sizes, young and old. We’re on the loading docks, in the boardrooms, on construction sites and trading floors. We are the musical (albeit perhaps middle-aged) underground. Start talkin’ guitar and riffs, and we quickly drop whatever we’re doing, or whomever we’re talking to at that moment and enter into another world of endless musical debate and conversation, no matter the setting.
Have you ever been in a business meeting, at a party with your significant other, on the job site, or just about anywhere else and gotten into a conversation about guitar and great guitar moments with someone just like you and not be able to shut up, launching into a non-ending conversation, the importance of which made no sense whatsoever to anyone around you (spouse, significant other or colleague) but made perfect sense to you and your newly found riffage friend? In your mind, was Jack Black’s curriculum in School of Rock a message of social and artistic importance that HAD to be taught? Well then, you are now home amongst your brethren.
Even though I myself have been playing for 30 years, this blog is not exclusively for players; it’s not solely focused on gear and notes, but rather the spirit and impact of the music. Air guitar players and headbangers young and old are welcome.
So, for our first entry into the RiffZoo, we’re going to look at the much maligned, often mocked and ridiculed, yet ultimately seminal event in riffage – Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple, the performance of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore specifically.
Recorded in the late fall of 1971 when Ritchie was only 26 years old, few other songs in history have so instinctively driven people to reflexively revert to playing air guitar. Few other songs have inspired as many people to pick up a guitar in the first place. Show of hands now…. for how many of you was this the first song you learned to play? I know it as mine.
With all due respect to Ian Gillan, Ian Paice, Jon Lord and Roger Glover, magnificent performances all, this is Ritchie’s moment. The guitar work here is a classic exercise in minimalist guitar playing. Coming off the heals of Fireball, with classics like Strange Kind of Woman, Machine Head (the album which Smoke is on) brought the band to a completely different level. Fireball was a great rock album. Machine Head however was a classic for the ages, and specifically a guitar performance by Ritchie Blackmore that compositionally could not have been foreseen at the time of Fireball. It’s the moment in my opinion, when he went from being a great guitar player, to one of the greats of all time.
To conjure up and being willing to put onto (at the time) vinyl such a simple, yet powerful chord progression like Smoke was musical risk taking. The power was in what he wasn’t playing.
In interviews, he claims they’re double stops he’s playing on the intro riff (no root note), simultaneously plucked with the thumb and index finger. The full, dominating sound of that stock Strat through that big ole Marshall (Major 200watt I believe), rattling through the halls of that hotel corridor with its natural reverb is otherworldly. Combined with the Hammond B3 organ of Jon Lord banging out the same, and it’s an aggressive, sonic assault.
The solo is pure genius. It is a composition in itself, which to me tells the whole story of “the fire” - it speaks to you. Then, playing the whole solo on the neck pickup and finally, just at the right time, the perfect moment of tension, he flicks to the bridge pickup with that twangy, gradually descending staccato released bend! What drama. Yet it’s such a simple solo, but so effective and memorable. I’ll bet any of you can sing it right now, a mark of a true classic.
Our flashback to this classic, and all classic riffage we will discuss in the future, requires that we must go back and revisit these songs, and play them LOUD, but……. it can be highly embarrassing to be caught listening to this music in 2006, especially if you are in your Brooks Brothers best on the commuter train to the floor, trying to keep up appearances as solid citizens, which we all must do. This then is our ultimate, stress-releasing, yet private guilty pleasure.
So, we connoisseurs of riffage owe a great debt to our friends at Apple for the iPod (and other personal music devices), which allow us to blast these classics into our drums and mind without incurring the astonished, snickering wrath from others regarding our surprising, adolescent they would argue, taste in music. Throw on the buds for this one, turn it up, and open-mindedly lose yourself in what a truly great and influential moment this song is in reality, and not what others may think about it.
Approach Smoke at its own merit. Laugh if you will, but I believe it stands the test of time, and as such is a logical first entry into the Zoo. I’m not saying it’s the best, just a great place to start our journey back in time.
As curator of the Zoo, it’s our mission to educate the younger generations of guitar players and music lovers about the roots of the music they now play and listen to. After all, it is very important stuff, isn’t it?
See you next week!
Welcome to our first installment of RiffZoo’s weekly opinion page on guitar riffage; power music that has rocked the world. Each week, we’ll take a look at guitar passages from the past that have inspired all of us over the years – those sonic clusters and busters that we can’t ever seem to get out of our heads.
A note of warning though to the world at large, riff lovers like us are lurking amongst you and come in all shapes and sizes, young and old. We’re on the loading docks, in the boardrooms, on construction sites and trading floors. We are the musical (albeit perhaps middle-aged) underground. Start talkin’ guitar and riffs, and we quickly drop whatever we’re doing, or whomever we’re talking to at that moment and enter into another world of endless musical debate and conversation, no matter the setting.
Have you ever been in a business meeting, at a party with your significant other, on the job site, or just about anywhere else and gotten into a conversation about guitar and great guitar moments with someone just like you and not be able to shut up, launching into a non-ending conversation, the importance of which made no sense whatsoever to anyone around you (spouse, significant other or colleague) but made perfect sense to you and your newly found riffage friend? In your mind, was Jack Black’s curriculum in School of Rock a message of social and artistic importance that HAD to be taught? Well then, you are now home amongst your brethren.
Even though I myself have been playing for 30 years, this blog is not exclusively for players; it’s not solely focused on gear and notes, but rather the spirit and impact of the music. Air guitar players and headbangers young and old are welcome.
So, for our first entry into the RiffZoo, we’re going to look at the much maligned, often mocked and ridiculed, yet ultimately seminal event in riffage – Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple, the performance of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore specifically.
Recorded in the late fall of 1971 when Ritchie was only 26 years old, few other songs in history have so instinctively driven people to reflexively revert to playing air guitar. Few other songs have inspired as many people to pick up a guitar in the first place. Show of hands now…. for how many of you was this the first song you learned to play? I know it as mine.
With all due respect to Ian Gillan, Ian Paice, Jon Lord and Roger Glover, magnificent performances all, this is Ritchie’s moment. The guitar work here is a classic exercise in minimalist guitar playing. Coming off the heals of Fireball, with classics like Strange Kind of Woman, Machine Head (the album which Smoke is on) brought the band to a completely different level. Fireball was a great rock album. Machine Head however was a classic for the ages, and specifically a guitar performance by Ritchie Blackmore that compositionally could not have been foreseen at the time of Fireball. It’s the moment in my opinion, when he went from being a great guitar player, to one of the greats of all time.
To conjure up and being willing to put onto (at the time) vinyl such a simple, yet powerful chord progression like Smoke was musical risk taking. The power was in what he wasn’t playing.
In interviews, he claims they’re double stops he’s playing on the intro riff (no root note), simultaneously plucked with the thumb and index finger. The full, dominating sound of that stock Strat through that big ole Marshall (Major 200watt I believe), rattling through the halls of that hotel corridor with its natural reverb is otherworldly. Combined with the Hammond B3 organ of Jon Lord banging out the same, and it’s an aggressive, sonic assault.
The solo is pure genius. It is a composition in itself, which to me tells the whole story of “the fire” - it speaks to you. Then, playing the whole solo on the neck pickup and finally, just at the right time, the perfect moment of tension, he flicks to the bridge pickup with that twangy, gradually descending staccato released bend! What drama. Yet it’s such a simple solo, but so effective and memorable. I’ll bet any of you can sing it right now, a mark of a true classic.
Our flashback to this classic, and all classic riffage we will discuss in the future, requires that we must go back and revisit these songs, and play them LOUD, but……. it can be highly embarrassing to be caught listening to this music in 2006, especially if you are in your Brooks Brothers best on the commuter train to the floor, trying to keep up appearances as solid citizens, which we all must do. This then is our ultimate, stress-releasing, yet private guilty pleasure.
So, we connoisseurs of riffage owe a great debt to our friends at Apple for the iPod (and other personal music devices), which allow us to blast these classics into our drums and mind without incurring the astonished, snickering wrath from others regarding our surprising, adolescent they would argue, taste in music. Throw on the buds for this one, turn it up, and open-mindedly lose yourself in what a truly great and influential moment this song is in reality, and not what others may think about it.
Approach Smoke at its own merit. Laugh if you will, but I believe it stands the test of time, and as such is a logical first entry into the Zoo. I’m not saying it’s the best, just a great place to start our journey back in time.
As curator of the Zoo, it’s our mission to educate the younger generations of guitar players and music lovers about the roots of the music they now play and listen to. After all, it is very important stuff, isn’t it?
See you next week!
posted by Johnny Riffer at 5:51 PM
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