FEATURE:
Baby, I’m a Star
IN THIS PHOTO: Prince performs during the Super Bowl XLI halftime press conference in 2007 with a custom guitar inspired by the Fender Telecaster Green Bay musician Jimmy Crimmins sold him in 1981 in Los Angeles/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
Prince: A Guitar God Like Nobody Else
___________
FORGIVE me for throwing together…
IN THIS PHOTO: Prince with his Love Symbol guitar in 1990/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Parke
a few articles without too much connection and narrative. I wanted to write about Prince because, on 21st April, it will be five years since the master died. I will cover a few other sides to his music and legacy before that date. Today, I wanted to highlight his guitar prowess. When ranking the greatest guitarists ever, many will go for Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page; others might select Jeff Beck or B.B. King. To me, Prince is one of the most individual and innovative of them all. In 2015, Rolling Stone placed Prince at number thirty-two. This was a year before his death and at a point in his career where, perhaps, he was not producing his best work. I think that such a low ranking deserves comeback (whether they would rank him higher given the chance I am not sure). Here is what they said:
“He played arguably the greatest power-ballad guitar solo in history ("Purple Rain"), and his solo on an all-star performance of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" during George Harrison's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2004 had jaws on the floor. But he can also bring the nasty funk like Jimmy Nolen and Nile Rodgers (listen to the groove magic of "Kiss") or shred like the fiercest metalhead ("When Doves Cry"). Sometimes his hottest playing simply functions as background – see "Gett Off" and "Dance On." Prince gets a lot of Hendrix comparisons, but he sees it differently: "If they really listened to my stuff, they'd hear more of a Santana influence than Jimi Hendrix," he once told Rolling Stone. "Hendrix played more blues, Santana played prettier." To Miles Davis, who collaborated with the Purple One toward the end of his life, Prince was a combination of "James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye… and Charlie Chaplin. How can you miss with that?"
Key Tracks: "Purple Rain," "Kiss," "When Doves Cry”.
I want to bring in some expansive and detailed features which highlight why Prince was such a trailblazing and hugely important guitarist. Maybe we take for granted what an epic guitarist he was without dissecting his technique and range. Last year, Guitar World placed Prince at number-eight in their rundown of the best axe wielders. This is how they described Prince’s chops:
“The Purple One’s ambition knew no bounds, just as he refused to be restrained by any one genre. An underrated guitarist as well as a songwriter-extraordinaire, here are five things you can learn from his sensational playing
There’s a famous Clapton anecdote; you’ve probably heard it. Slowhand was said to have been asked, ‘What’s it like to be the best guitar player alive?’ To which he responded, “I don’t know, ask Prince.”
But did he ever actually say that? Well, no, he didn’t. But the fact a completely fabricated quote (that’s also been attributed to Hendrix on Rory Gallagher) has been widely accepted speaks volumes about Prince Rogers Nelson, whose sudden death on 21st April, aged 57, shocked the world.
In response, Clapton would pay real tribute to the late legend for pulling him out of depression in 1984 when he saw Purple Rain and was instantly re-inspired. Many were introduced to him by the title track, but the few interviews he gave rarely focussed on his musicianship, especially a guitar approach that brought a remarkable Hendrix fire to his facets of James Brown funk and Little Richard showmanship.
He always played plenty of guitar, but was highly proficient in a number of instruments; a 19-year-old Prince played everything on his 1978 debut, For You.
“The key to longevity is to learn every aspect of music that you can,” he said in 2006. Prince certainly learned his lessons well, but let’s celebrate one thrilling aspect of Prince that is often overlooked; why he should be remembered as one of the greatest guitar players of all time.
Develop Talent With Hard Work
The idea that all Prince’s achievements were as effortless as his cool are a myth. Yes, he was clearly a naturally gifted musician and songwriter but he never stopped working on his craft, which is why he will be remembered as one of the greatest live showmen of all time.
He put painstaking hours in behind the scenes on the world’s stages and in his Paisley Park studio; he confirmed there’s vaults of unreleased recordings, and there’s even reports of him arriving to shows hours early in the 90s to personally set up the sound.
As his career progressed, his shows became looser and his musicianship became more of a showcase of his theatrical abilities, with two shows a night not uncommon as the diminutive dynamo moved from arena to intimate late-night club. It was a reflection of a player who never stopped learning, and teaching others in the process, with his last live band, 3rdeyegirl, seeing him play rockier guitar again, too.
“One thing that I’ve learned from Prince is his amazing work ethic,” his bandmate Donna Grantis told TG. “Always doing your best. I think that’s a huge thing. I think, always giving your all, and putting the art first. It’s the dedication and the passion and the talent, all together. Just being so prolific. It’s really a way of life.”
Be a Slave to the Rhythm
Prince was funky from the start; he wrote his first song at age seven, and it was called Funk Machine. He was also a student of the Grand Master Funkateers; Brown, Bootsy, Sly, Clinton – while naming Sonny T (former New Power Generation guitarist), Tony Maiden (Rufus) and Ike Turner as key influences.
And this is the key to his DNA as a player; his masterful rhythm playing is what really set him apart. Being Prince, he had a distinct approach and opinion on the matter...
“I’m always trying to work in the bass notes when I’m playing funk rhythms,” Prince told Guitar Player magazine in a rare guitar chat back in 2004. “It’s the same way that Freddie Stone [Sly And The Family Stone guitarist] would always play the same parts as [bassist] Larry Graham, but just a tad higher.
“Kids don’t learn to play the right way anymore. When the Jackson 5 came up, they had to go through Smokey Robinson and the Funk Brothers, and that’s how they got it down. I want to be able to teach that stuff, because kids need to learn these things, and nobody is teaching them the basics.
“See, a lot of cats don’t work on their rhythm enough, and if you don’t have rhythm, you might as well take up needlepoint or something. I can’t stress it enough”.
Not to pile into those who rank Prince low as a guitarist or underestimate his chops but, as the anniversary of his death is coming up fairly soon, I wanted to illustrate and illuminate his majestic guitar work. Go Radio feel that Prince is the greatest of them all. They make some compelling arguments:
“But there’s one honorific that the we’re forgetting: Prince is the greatest guitarist of all time. Fight me.
Maybe it’s because The Purple One was a polymath talent who played every instrument on nearly all of his classic records, or maybe it’s just because he’s mainly thought of as an R&B singer rather than a towering rock god. The fact remains: Prince is regularly and criminally underrated as a guitarist.
Rolling Stone‘s top 100 list had him at a lowly #33, with some utterly ludicrous names ahead of him. Prince gets left all off these kind of lists all the time. Here’s a case for our dearly departed hometown hero using the 5 factors that define a guitarist’s greatness.
Chops
Aka “sheer unadulterated guitar-playing skill.” This should be a pretty easy case to make, as Prince was an apocalyptic shredder from the moment he burst onto the scene until the day of his untimely passing.
Observe, Exhibit A: “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad.” Prince was 20 when he wrote that solo. That’s four years younger than Jimi Hendrix was when he recorded Are You Experienced?.
Exhibit B: The year is 1985, and Prince sweeps the American Music Awards and rubs it all up in Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie’s faces with this thunderous clapback of a solo.
Exhibit C: Just in case you forgot about Prince melting 111 million faces simultaneously at Superbowl XLI, here it is again!
Creativity
This is what separates session guitarists with incredible skill but nothing new to say from the true guitar-slinging elite. Again, Prince scores incredibly high marks here for his innovative approach to the instrument, single-handedly creating a new language for R&B guitar by ushering it into the synthesizer era.
Along with being an early pioneer in the realm of guitar effects pedals, Prince can lay claim to two signature sounds: The paper-thin, metronomic stabbing on tracks like “Controversy” and the blistering harmonized leads present on songs like “Let’s Go Crazy.”
Versatility
The big secret about the usual “guitar greats” like Jimmy Page, Angus Young, Eric Clapton and the like is that they’re often one-trick ponies. Once they found a lane early in their careers, that was it. Even if we remove the significant factor that Prince was an exceptional pianist, drummer, and bassist, the Purple One’s sheer breadth of musical expertise on the guitar is dizzying.
The man could play everything from silky soul ballads to bombastic rock, and even stretched the far edges of the guitar’s sonic properties on more experimental tracks, like “Computer Blue.” Finally, if that wasn’t enough for you, the man was capable of captivating a room with just an acoustic guitar, and did so memorably during his MTV Unplugged performance.
Legacy and Influence
Flip on your favorite R&B record from the ’90s or aughts. Listen to the guitar. Who does it sound like? Yup. But let’s not stop there, what about your favorite hip-hop artists who used live guitar sounds on their beats? Prince again. Quite simply, Prince created the prototype for guitar sounds in the sample era, and his acolytes are innumerable and influential.
Just listen to Questlove talk about it in this panel discussion at NYU from last year. Even shredding rockers like Vernon Reid from Living Colour and Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine followed the formula set out by Prince. Unlike Hendrix, who perished too soon to truly see the scope of his influence as a player, Prince was able to interact with his legacy, and even riff on sounds his disciples found”.
I am finishing up soon. Before then, one final article argues why Prince was such an important and sensational guitarist. SLATE wrote passionately in 2016 about a player with a voice and style like nobody else:
“But in years since Prince’s position in the rock pantheon has remained unstable. On Rolling Stone’s list, he ranked 33rd, five spots beneath Johnny Ramone, a guitarist widely beloved for not being very good. Any list like this is stupid, but this is really, really stupid. Prince may have been the greatest guitarist of the post-Hendrix era and often seemed to carry Hendrix’s aura more intrepidly than anyone, most notably in his incredible versatility. Our pop-cultural memory of Hendrix is dominated by gnashing feedback squawls and pyrotechnics both figurative and literal, a misguided belief that his signature moments were the last few minutes of “Wild Thing” at Monterey or quoting “Taps” in the early morning at Woodstock. But Hendrix’s true greatness lay in his ability to do almost anything and everything with the instrument, from the dreamy Curtis Mayfield-isms of “Little Wing” to the psychedelic frenzy of “Purple Haze” to the chicken scratches and pentatonic howls of “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” to the sumptuous melodicism of “Burning of the Midnight Lamp.” Take a moment to watch this incredible footage of Hendrix covering Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” in 1967 (also at Monterey) and marvel at the flawlessness of his rhythm guitar playing.
Prince was an incredible singer, keyboardist, and drummer, too, but as a guitarist he leaves behind a truly singular body of work. There are so many spectacular performances, but one I keep coming back to is one of his earliest. “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?,” the second cut on his 1979 self-titled sophomore album, was Prince’s first single that found him working in a “rock” vein, all snarling guitars and thumping backbeat. It failed to make the Top 40 upon its release, but it’s one of the finest compositions in his early catalogue, a pristine love song whose heartsickness is belied by its near-impossible musical exuberance. “I play the fool when we’re together/ but I cry when we’re apart/ I couldn’t do you no better/ Don’t break what’s left of my broken heart,” sings Prince going into the first chorus, lyrics that sound simple but couldn’t articulate their sentiment any more perfectly.
And then at the end of the song the solo happens, a solid minute of sustained instrumental greatness. The guitar is saturated in distortion but it warms rather than scalds, tearing through beautiful melodies and exquisitely crafted phrases. It has blazing 16th-note runs; it has sustained, soaring vibratos that absolutely sing. It’s all here, everything from Mississippi John Hurt to Sister Rosetta Tharpe to B.B. King to Revolver to Hendrix to Clapton himself, pouring out of the fingers of a 20-year-old kid. There’s a sort of joyous fury and defiant reclamation to it, like someone who’s just heard his generation flip out over Van Halen’s “Eruption” (released the previous year) and is letting anyone within earshot know that he could do that, too, but chooses not to. To paraphrase another Minnesotan out of context, it’s the sound of when he was hungry, and it was their world. But they were wrong—it was always his”.
It is always tragic when we mark the anniversary of a great artist’s death. It is also important to celebrate their talent and place in our hearts. There are many reasons why Prince was so special and will never be equalled. One of those reasons is his intelligence and power when it came to his licks, riffs and guitar brilliance. Capable of explosions and raw passion in addition to subtleness, layers and finesse, he is, without doubt, one of the finest guitar players…
THE world has ever witnessed!