Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

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12-string Sorcerer or his Apprentice?

Jim
18
44%
Johnny
23
56%
 
Total votes: 41

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Canis lupus
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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby Canis lupus » 21 Mar 2017, 21:06

...finely poised, brothers.

I've now enabled vote switching, just in case you want to (now you know Rog is a Republican)

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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby Rayge » 21 Mar 2017, 21:21

Deebank wrote:
Matt Wilson wrote:Why start there when you can go back to The Searchers with "Needles and Pins?"


I see what your getting at - there is a lineage there. Was Needles and Pins out before Hard Day's Night - they were both 1964 I think?


The Searchers' Needles and Pins arrangement was copied from Jackie de Shannon's version. Maybe she invented indie?

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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby naughty boy » 21 Mar 2017, 21:47

Some fuckin high jinks again with aliases I see
Matt 'interesting' Wilson wrote:So I went from looking at the "I'm a Man" riff, to showing how the rave up was popular for awhile.

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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby Tactful Cactus » 21 Mar 2017, 22:29

The Byrds are getting a hard time here, they didn't come off the blocks at high speed but neither did the Beatles. McGuinns greatness came later when he married the folk rock sound with jazz on Eight Miles...nobody else did that in the top 40 sphere, so thats the brilliance that should be put up against Marr at his best

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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby Matt Wilson » 21 Mar 2017, 22:50

Tactful Cactus wrote:The Byrds are getting a hard time here, they didn't come off the blocks at high speed but neither did the Beatles. McGuinns greatness came later when he married the folk rock sound with jazz on Eight Miles...nobody else did that in the top 40 sphere, so thats the brilliance that should be put up against Marr at his best


Their brilliance was right there on display in 1965 before "Eight Miles High."

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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby zoomboogity » 21 Mar 2017, 23:28

Tactful Cactus wrote:they didn't come off the blocks at high speed but neither did the Beatles.


I don't know about that - their first album was pretty great from start to finish, and their sound was fully formed by then. Other people were responsible for that, along with McGuinn. Jim Dickson had them recording demos for a year before that, Crosby being the one who knew the studio owner. It wasn't until the session for Mr. Tambourine Man (the song) that the signature guitar sound was created, when engineer Ray Gerdhardt ran it through compressors. He did it only to protect the microphones from blowing out, as he did with any rock acts, so it was by accident, not design. And I think it was Crosby who introduced the band to the music of John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar. McGuinn was a good songwriter, but Gene Clark was truly great, and later on Crosby wrote some great ones too. (I'd say McGuinn and Hillman were tied for third.)

Timing was everything back then. It didn't occur to Lennon to write more "adult" songs until he heard Dylan, but he probably would have moved on anyway. A large portion of The Beatles' audience was pre-teen, and once you're 25, what would you have to say to a 10-year-old? Once those precedents had taken place, songwriters began maturing earlier. A lot of those West Coast '60s bands (Byrds, Love, Moby Grape, Buffalo Springfield) were writing adult music right from the start, even though they were barely out of their teens themselves. Zappa and Beefheart were the "old guys" in that scene, and even they were barely 25. Not to mention The Velvet Underground, but that's for another thread!
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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby ChrisB » 21 Mar 2017, 23:50

"Sweetheart of the Radio"?
Isn't that Adele? Johnny by a country mile....well, just a mile

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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby Bent Fabric » 22 Mar 2017, 01:23

zoomboogity wrote:McGuinn was a good songwriter, but Gene Clark was truly great, and later on Crosby wrote some great ones too. (I'd say McGuinn and Hillman were tied for third.)


I could not have said this any better.

I understand what I perceive to be McGuinn's motives for downplaying Clark and Crosby's contributions to his own success ("keeping it going" - while hardly a musical virtue - has a certain value), but...by my estimation, he is far less to "what I love about the Byrds" than Marr is to the equivalent appeal of the Smiths.

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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby Corporate whore » 22 Mar 2017, 07:54

Matt Wilson wrote:
Tactful Cactus wrote:The Byrds are getting a hard time here, they didn't come off the blocks at high speed but neither did the Beatles. McGuinns greatness came later when he married the folk rock sound with jazz on Eight Miles...nobody else did that in the top 40 sphere, so thats the brilliance that should be put up against Marr at his best


Their brilliance was right there on display in 1965 before "Eight Miles High."


Listen to Matt on this point.

Indeed on this whole thread.
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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby Your Friendly Neighbourhood Postman » 22 Mar 2017, 11:20

Bent Fabric wrote:
zoomboogity wrote:McGuinn was a good songwriter, but Gene Clark was truly great, and later on Crosby wrote some great ones too. (I'd say McGuinn and Hillman were tied for third.)


I could not have said this any better.

I understand what I perceive to be McGuinn's motives for downplaying Clark and Crosby's contributions to his own success ("keeping it going" - while hardly a musical virtue - has a certain value), but...by my estimation, he is far less to "what I love about the Byrds" than Marr is to the equivalent appeal of the Smiths.


Gene Clark is one of the very few bona fide pop geniuses.

Everyone has his own Hall of Fame, no doubt; it is that league up there where the air is rare, and that can often very hardly be understood by even one's best friends.

Mine: Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks, Gene Clark, John Fahey. Touchstones. Potential newcomers: Van Morrison and Wayne Coyne.

It's all about decades-long listening habits. Nothing else.
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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby Twang » 22 Mar 2017, 17:49

Matt Wilson wrote:Yeah, but we could probably make a whole list of songs which sound like the Byrds pre-1965


Yes please

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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby zoomboogity » 22 Mar 2017, 22:07

Bride Of Sea Of Tunes wrote:
Bent Fabric wrote:
zoomboogity wrote:McGuinn was a good songwriter, but Gene Clark was truly great, and later on Crosby wrote some great ones too. (I'd say McGuinn and Hillman were tied for third.)


I could not have said this any better.

I understand what I perceive to be McGuinn's motives for downplaying Clark and Crosby's contributions to his own success ("keeping it going" - while hardly a musical virtue - has a certain value), but...by my estimation, he is far less to "what I love about the Byrds" than Marr is to the equivalent appeal of the Smiths.


Gene Clark is one of the very few bona fide pop geniuses.


The weird thing about Clark is how he made the jump. With other writers, you see their growth. But when you listen to the Preflyte demos, his writing wasn't even that special, just serviceable. A year later he was coming up with If You're Gone and Set You Free This Time - just this mysterious quantum leap into greatness. And he wasn't even 21 years old yet. They sure don't make 'em like him very often.

Back to McGuinn... there was a special alchemy to those guys which probably wouldn't have made as much of an impact if there were someone else besides him. Besides, it was he who got the whole ball rolling, trying to fuse folk music with a Beatles beat. He tried it in Greenwich Village without any success, and when he brought it to LA, it still didn't do much until Gene approached him after a solo gig at The Troubadour. Once the two of them started singing together, Crosby asked to join in. At that point, none of them had developed as writers; it took Clark one year to get there, McGuinn and Crosby another year after that. So a lot of things happened in retrospect that couldn't have been foreseen at the time.

It wasn't until I read Johnny Rogan's megabio that I realized the Byrds usually weren't even singing three-part harmonies - McGuinn and Clark singing the same melody with Crosby harmonizing. I guess the compression on the guitar and full overall production create the illusion of the harmonies sounding wider than they are.

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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby Hightea » 23 Mar 2017, 00:19

eek that a good match up. Fan of both.
MArr is the much better guitarist but McGuinn is no slouch.
McGuinn's timing(10-13 yr old), lyrics and vocals pushes my vote to him.

sorry Johnny
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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby Deebank » 23 Mar 2017, 09:36

zoomboogity wrote:
I guess the compression on the guitar and full overall production create the illusion of the harmonies sounding wider than they are.


The compression thing is important. I think one of the McGuinn signature 360/12s actually had a compressor built-in.It was almost as key to his sound as the Rickenbacker 360/12 itself.

I would hazard a very uneducated guess that heavy use of compression on his guitar may have been an effort to emulate the compression used by George Martin in Abbey Road - a lot of Beatles stuff is swamped in compression - I suppose at the time it was one of the few processes you could use to control and alter the sound.

It's a funny thing though that when I actually owned a Ric 360/12 I never tried to use it in classic compressed mode. I didn't own a compressor at the time, I thought they were a waste of time. I wasn't even sure what it was they did (I had played bass in my teens and my amp had a compressor switch that just seemed to reduce the volume).

Years later I picked up an old EH Soul Preacher at a boot sale (just because it was an old EH pedal - and cheap) and in the last band I was in I used it 90% of the time. Hardly ever switched it off. I'm still not sure what it actually did though :lol:

I feel I missed out :(
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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby Canis lupus » 23 Mar 2017, 12:21

Deebank wrote:

when I actually owned a Ric 360/12


...REALLY?! Wow :o

Brand New?
How much did you pay?
Colour (fireglo, right)?

...and what did you manage to play (well) on it? It's not easy, is it? (I could only afford a 330/12 - needed a loan for that: £1050, 25 years ago).

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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby Deebank » 23 Mar 2017, 12:40

:{ wrote:
Deebank wrote:

when I actually owned a Ric 360/12


...REALLY?! Wow :o

Brand New?
How much did you pay?
Colour (fireglo, right)?

...and what did you manage to play (well) on it? It's not easy, is it? (I could only afford a 330/12 - needed a loan for that: £1050, 25 years ago).


Second hand. It was actually (a very 80s) lipstick red with black hardware :lol:
Still beautiful though even if the rosewood fingerboard clashed slightly. I would have preferred a Jetglow but beggars can't be choosers.

And I got it for a miniscule £450 ish (plus I part exed the afore-mentioned bass amp and a then popular Aria TA30 thinline semi) this was in the early 90s. I loved that guitar so much and took it everywhere - I practically slept with it.

Of course you have to modify your playing style - not bent notes etc, and it is a one-trick pony but it did sound very pretty. I found I could strum away and do nice REM type arpeggios. The music my band played was a bit more 'left field' though and didn't really suit the guitar sadly - no jangle whatsoever :( and everything through distortion - you couldn't actually hear that it was a 12 string being used :lol:

That said my friend Neil (Urthona) uses a custom Fender electric 12 to devastating effect totally fuzzed up - so perhaps I should have persevered.

I sold the Ric to Andy's Guitar Workshop late of Denmark Street London - they tried to source me a couple of guitars in return (a Bond Electraglide or a Steinberger :lol: sacrilege!) for a decent price and in the end opted for a Fender Jazzmaster which has been a brilliant guitar - but do I regret selling the Ric? Every day! :(
I've been talking about writing a book - 25 years of TEFL - for a few years now. I've got it in me.

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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby Canis lupus » 23 Mar 2017, 12:56

Nice post, D.
Busy at work right now, reply to follow later tonight
;)

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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby Your Friendly Neighbourhood Postman » 23 Mar 2017, 14:34

Who's the sad shoegazing AOP that tipped the scales toward Marr?
On the whole, I'd rather be in Wallenpaupack.

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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby Quaco » 23 Mar 2017, 16:09

Deebank wrote:Of course you have to modify your playing style - not bent notes etc

I have been back listening to The Byrds recently, and McGuinn's greatness is starting to come through again. He's always seemed a bit limited, for all the reasons so far mentioned -- invent something truly cool then forsake it, always wanting things just so, not pushing his talent very far, tendency to take the mundane road -- but those Byrds records tell a different story. His singing is great (stuff like "John Riley" is gorgeous, not just his Dylan-ish thing, and then there's the apex that is YTY and NBB), his songwriting is the crucial "supersonic" aspect (mixed with Clark's downbeat misty ballads) that gave them their image, and most of all, his guitar playing is out of this world. It's truly good and special and creative all along ... and then you get to things like "I See You" and "Eight Miles High", which are simply highpoints of the era ("My Generation" "You Really Got Me" "A Day in the Life" type stuff), and feel like a real MOMENT, a flash of inspiration. No two takes of "Eight Miles High" can ever be the same. And that 12-string sound -- it's amazing how versatile it was. It was a brand-new sound, and he put it on just about every track (I can't think of too many bands who invented a new sound based on one instrument, though The Moody Blues and Pinder's mellotron is one other example), and it always sounded great. He found interesting things to do with it all throughout those album, including bending notes ("What's Hapening?!?!" "Why"), which is one of my favorite effects, strange and eerie.
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Re: Roger McGUINN v Johnny MARR

Postby Deebank » 23 Mar 2017, 16:49

:{ wrote:Nice post, D.
Busy at work right now, reply to follow later tonight
;)


The guy I bought the Ric off (Gary) had just started a small second hand shop (which turned into Brighton's massive GAK store). I went into his shop (it was really a stall) to buy a Charvelle Surfcaster like this one - same seafoam green colour:

Image

The Ric caught my eye and it seemed silly to buy this 'trying too hard' ersatz Rickenbacker when I could get the real thing (by chucking in a load of other gear and some more moolah) and a 12 string too!

I have mentioned this deal to Gary since then and he winces - mind you he's never in the shop these days!
I've been talking about writing a book - 25 years of TEFL - for a few years now. I've got it in me.

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