Tim Brady - How the Electric Guitar Changed The Course of History, Aug. 2009

There’s nothing particularly exotic about the fact that I play electric guitar.  Millions upon millions of us do, mostly starting as young men (and a few women), with dreams of becoming rock stars and guitar icons.  If we are lucky, we eventually discover a fascinating musical instrument, and a vast world of musical expression, that can provide us with artistic challenges and rewards far more intense and personal than the simple (yet often elusive…) fame and fortune that we dreamed of the first time we strapped on a six string and plugged in.

There is something significantly more exotic about the fact that I play electric guitar but compose mostly symphonies, operas and chamber music, with a bit of electronics thrown in for good measure.  This is a much smaller club - perhaps numbering only a few hundred worldwide, no more than a handful who do it on a professional level, American Steven Mackie, the UK’s  Fred Frith and the Norwegian Terje Rypdal being the three others who readily come to mind.  Being a member of this strangely exclusive musical club give us a unique perspective on music, society and history.

On the one hand, we play electric guitar, an instrument officially invented in 1932, mass-produced at low cost in factories around the world like any consumer product, and essentially responsible for the creation of the massive popular music industry of the 20th century, glorified and commodified through the  media across the range of Western-style democracies around the globe. The instrument has no written history, no written repertoire, feeds off an aural and improvisational tradition, and is largely self-taught to its millions of practiconers.

On the other hand, we compose music based on the Western notated art-music tradition (usually referred to in cultural shorthand as “classical” music), a music that goes back 500 years (and more), comes with a huge and weighty written history, repertoire and educational tradition and which essentially dates from a pre-industrial, pre-capitalist, pre-democratic and artisanal era when life was taken at a totally different pace, with a completely different set of social expectations.  The contrast is pretty stark, but when you live in both worlds simultaneously, over time, you start to see the difference and similarities, you start to see how each music relates to its time and place, and how it affects the world around it.

So what does the electric guitar mean?  What happens if we turn the long historical lens of Western notated music on the short history of the electric guitar?

To start with, the electric guitar does actually come with some history.  Around the world, the tradition of plucked string instruments is very old - think of the Japanese koto, or Indian sitar, or the Persian seetar - all instruments that use some sort of pick to hit the strings.  The electric guitar is really just a 20th century version of this grand old tradition, an instrument that is half string (that’s what makes the note sound) and half percussion (we hit the string, not unlike a drum, we don’t bow it or create any sort of sustained sound with it, like a violin).  To me the electric guitar is much more related to this long, diverse musical history than it is to the more narrow, specific history of the Spanish (or “classical”) guitar

But that act of plugging in - now THAT makes a difference.  That’s what makes the electric guitar the driving force to understanding the 20th century (at least, my 20th century).

The late Les Paul (who died in August 2009 at the age of 94 - not all great guitarists die young, it turns out!) claims to have figured out the basic technique for guitar amplification in 1929.  Perhaps, but we know for sure the Rikenbacker Musical Instrument Company began selling “electric Spanish guitars” in 1932, promoting a strange guitar with a small, round-body prototype that is affectionately referred to as the “Frying  Pan”, here in electric guitar land. Ground Zero for the electric guitar.

What Les Paul did for sure is, from 1946 to 1956, create 3 technologies that completely changed humanity’s relationship to sound (and, by extension, to our conception of reality).
1 - the solid body guitar - decoupling sound of music from its basic acoustic origin
2 - overdubbing (sound on sound playing) - decoupling ensemble music from the need for an ensemble performance
3 - multi-track recording (sound isolated recording and mixing) - decoupling the recording and listening to music from the physical act of playing it in real time.

These three technologies were really the first step that our society was taking towards the virtual world we now inhabit - Cyber space, the Web, the idea of objectifying human experience through a technological storage and manipulation media (now all digital) - we could not have made these conceptual and technical leaps if the ground had not been prepared by this radical change in our relationship to music.  And it was a single, visionary electric guitarist who did it all.

It doesn’t end here - the electric guitar turns out to be a major player in the struggle for human rights.

It boils down to Charlie Christian - the young, black Texas guitar player who, from 1939 to 1942, invented the guitar solo as we now know it (the sometimes legendary abuse of this noble tradition is not Charlie’s fault - how could he have anticipated your nephew’s garage band?)

Charlie played with the VERY white and the VERY famous swing clarinetist Benny Goodman - they took the stage together at Carnegie Hall and did a historic 30-minute jam on the song “Rose Room” that made people ask two questions:
1) What the f*** is he doing with that guitar?
2) If a black man and a white man can be equals on stage and play glorious music together, why can’t they live together as equals?

Once you’ve asked that second question, the racist, unjust society that had been the norm for hundreds, if not thousands, of years just does not make much sense any more.  Black musicians - many of them electric guitarists - were at the forefront of this larger social transformation, the struggle for equality and justice, which became one of the through-lines of the 20th century.

But the transformative power of the electric guitar goes further yet - we are talking of nothing short of a full-fledge social revolution. (As they say on infomercials - “Wait! There’s More!”)

The idea that each individual is a unique person, with something to say and the right to express their own uniqueness has been around for a long time, but it has usually been well-hidden at best, more often it has been positively mistrusted and frequently brutally repressed.  Throughout history, most societies have enforced rigid conformity in all aspects - religious, economic, social, moral, sexual.  The individual - well, maybe, perhaps, sometimes, in moderation, OK…in theory, but never in practice!!

The sequence of events that lead us to the early 1960s created conditions where this rigid conformity was beginning to crumble (at least in the Western world).  The intense cultural and economic pressure of World War Two, followed by a period of epic economic and educational growth in the West gave the average person, possibly for the first time ever, the time and means to start questioning their place in society.  Turns out, not everyone was so happy doing what they were told.

Then came The Beatles and, 5 years later , Jimi Hendrix.  They became lightning rods for the expression of the value of the individual, and of creativity, as a basic part of society, of celebrating diversity and difference rather than conformity and homogeneity. Their instrument of choice - the electric guitar.

Which brings us to my 20th century, specifically July 11, 1972: my 16th birthday and my first electric guitar (a brand new, bright red Hagstrom Swede guitar and an used Fender Bassman amp - a gift from very indulgent parents, I openly admit it). So I want to be a rock star - turns out my interest and talent lies in learning all sorts of strange chords and scales and melodies that have no place in the 3 minute song format.

So I use that personal freedom and learn more about the incredible world of music - something humanity has been doing for at least 30,000 years (and not just since they invented the iPod), and which is far richer, and far more diverse and profound, than we are generally led to believe.  After a few decades of trying, I start to realise that categorisation that we use for music is causing me more harm then good, as an artist, and I quickly chuck it out the window.

Electric guitar and opera - why not?  Improvising with an orchestra - let’s go!  These seemingly irreconcilable ways of music making are just that - only “seemingly” irreconcilable.  If you use your imagination, just about anything is possible, if you ask the right questions and let it happen.

This is not about “rocking the classics”, this is about getting to the heart of a musical tradition and to the heart of humanity’s musical language, and trying to create an artistic statement based on what can be done with music, rather than on what has been done with music.

By bringing together “seemingly” opposed traditions, the idea is to expand the potential for music expression, to expand our understanding of how musicians (and people) can interact, and to force us to question all our basic assumptions about music, art, society and life.  To try to find new answers.

As a musical process, it can lead to great works or artistic catastrophes, as there are no guarantees when it comes to artistic creation. And artistic expression and beauty are their own goals, their own justification.

But as a social process it is an effective model for dealing with complex, diverse human activities - it makes us look at the deep connections, rather than the superficial characteristics, of what we do, as individuals and as a society.  And in the 21st century, with over 6 billion people struggling to find a way to work together, there could be something we can learn from this seemingly arcane field of artistic endeavor, and it might be how the electric guitar can help change the 21st century.