Guitarists From The United States

"If you can plug your guitar into an amp and make it sound good, that’s what it’s all about. The amp I really enjoy playing, especially when I’m traveling, is the Fender ’65 Twin Reverb. It’s got everything you need for live playing and it has great tone. That amp just works for me and it’s real trustworthy. When I travel on the road, I do use a little digital delay and maybe a little chorus, but I just like the sound of the guitar and playing something that I think people will appreciate and understand."

"At its crux, R.E.M. was a cavernous blend of sweeping desire, with its Rickenbacker-toting guitarist, Peter Buck, at its epicenter. While Buck is a capable songwriter and master crafter of memorable melodies, his approach to the guitar has always been simple. Through the idiosyncratic use of open strings and delicate chording to create chiming effects, Buck made a name for himself."

"Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and original-era Telecaster elder statesman James Burton boasts a straight, no-nonsense tone and impeccable phrasing as one of the first practitioners of the electric guitar solo. Telecaster chicken pickin’ basically starts with Burton, who lent his considerable Tele talent to artists including Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, John Denver, Elvis Costello and, most famously, Elvis Presley."

"Seemingly allergic to pentatonic scales and harboring an aggressively defiant swagger, Filipino-American indie hero Joey Santiago broke in with the Pixies in the late '80s. As originators of the loud/quiet/loud dynamic that would be perpetually mimicked in the '90s, Santiago and the Pixies should be considered true precursors to grunge."

"He was by no means a virtuoso or a hard worker, but as a founding member and the lead guitarist of The Replacements, Bob Stinson changed alt-rock forever. Known for being completely unhinged and often disastrously inhibited by copious amounts of drugs and alcohol, Stinson angrily attacked his guitar like a sloppy drunk on payday. Still, the six-stringer seemed to have a heaven-sent gift, and though he fought it through the use of intentionally abused guitars, garish technique and a punk rock attitude, his gift bled through."

"In the ’80s, Peter Buck’s clean, chime-y arpeggios defined the sound of alt-rock to come."

"If there's one electric jazz guitarist who can be said to be the living embodiment of the instrument's history, it's Bucky Pizzarelli. He plays rhythm guitar in the spirit of Freddie Green and is noted for his amazing chorded soloing."

"[Ellis was] an excellent bop-based guitarist with a slight country twang to his sound."

"A warm and gregarious guitarist, Bucky Pizzarelli carried the torch for traditional jazz and swing well into the 21st century. Influenced by innovative guitarists like Django Reinhardt and George Van Eps, Pizzarelli was known for his skill on both the six- and seven-string guitar."

"Staying high was my first priority; playing was second; girls were third. But the first thing really took all my energy."

"His guitar tone is both beefy and filth-ridden, setting a bar in 2004 that many hardcore bands have still been attempting to clear over the last 20 years."

"There are a lot of ways to do a solo album. One way is to take a tune and work it out, decide on changes, intro, and ending, modulations, tempos – work it out, and go in and do it. What I did, though, was just go in, and somebody would say 'Why don't you play How High The Moon?' I'd say 'Yeah, that might be nice.' I had no tempo in mind, no key, necessarily. I just tried to make it from beginning to end. I found myself getting into traps and having to get out of them."

"One of the finest guitarists to emerge after the death of Charlie Christian, Barney Kessel was a reliable bop soloist throughout his career."

"In high school, if you were playing any kind of music that wasn't dance, or just something that was really different—you know, rock, metal or hard rock, anything like that—then you needed to look like it. You needed to look like a bad dude, and we just looked like normal dudes....It wasn't about trying to impress everybody, because we looked at those types of people as weenies trying to do that stuff ... We just wore our normal stuff and we didn't really think about it. It just kind of happened that way and I think because we were searching for an extreme style, coupled with this no image, who-cares-what-we-look-like thing, then I think we fit in to that new movement that we discovered a little ways later, the whole Bay Area thrash scene."

"Lyrically, Doug Martsch let his Charlie Brown pessimism run rampant, yet he offsets his downbeat quips with genuinely comforting reassurances that we all feel overwhelmed and off-balance sometimes, finding solace in shared misery."

"Joe Pass did the near-impossible. He was able to play up-tempo versions of bop tunes such as "Cherokee" and "How High the Moon" unaccompanied on the guitar. Unlike Stanley Jordan, Pass used conventional (but superb) technique, and his Virtuoso series on Pablo still sounds remarkable decades later."

"You don't often see a musician that is able to play jazz. And even less often do you stumble upon a guitar player that's as nearly as good as Joe Pass was. And what made him so unique and great was his chord-melody style playing combined with fingerpicking and impeccable improvisational skills. Joe didn't really need a whole band as he often performed solo or in duo and trio formations."

"Chris just called me and said, “Hey, we need an emergency bass player. Do you want come jam?” So, I learned the songs, practiced with them a few times, and knocked out the album. I had history with Chris and a long history with Eric Cutler. We really knew each other. It was all smooth. I consider myself lucky to have been a part of Autopsy and all the history around them."

"A harmonically advanced cool-toned and subtle guitarist, Jim Hall was an inspiration to many guitarists, including some (such as Bill Frisell) who sound nothing like him."

"For many listeners and admirers, Hall's burnished tone and understated approach connote the sonic equivelant of watercolors, haiku, or gentle poetic lyrics. Known as much for the notes he doesn't play, Hall is a complete original. That delicate, sensitive style, with its exquisite note choices, introspective moods, and disciplined restraint, has been his calling card and lasting legacy as generations of ostentatious technicians have come and gone through the turn of history."

"My parents were academics and not thrilled about me joining a thrash metal band. They were older than most of my friends’ parents so didn’t even have that rock’n’roll background. Their wishes for me were to get a PhD, just like them. There were a few points that convinced them I hadn’t made a terrible choice, though. The first was when Testament supported Judas Priest at the Oakland Coliseum [in 1990], which showed that this was more than just a neighbourhood band. They were also happy when I started writing columns for guitar magazines, because they always respected writing."

"Defining hardcore is like defining falling in love -- definitions really miss the point. You don't need a definition to know if you're in love or not -- you just know it. You just feel real hardcore when you experience it."

"The punk rock scene started to get a little stodgy, and a little bit demanding in terms of like laying down the parameters of what was ok to do. And that was not punk rock to us. I got off on doing whatever the fuck I wanna do, period."

"I joined [Fugazi] in a staggered way. I joined after the band had already been playing together and writing songs for a few months. I'd always been a guitar player - I was in five bands before Fugazi and I played guitar in all of them - but I didn't see room for another guitar in Fugazi with the way the songs were. So my concept was I'd be like Flavor Flav or something; a guy who sang occasionally and played a different role, offsetting things. When we started playing shows, I was so used to having a guitar, I had to struggle to find a way to occupy myself."

"When I was young, I was always over the top because I was so fucked up. Not "fucked up" as in "wasted" but more mentally "fucked up". And I was really jacked up. So [the emotive nature of my bands] came out of that. I mean, before I was in Rites of Spring, I was in a band called Insurrection with Brendan, the Fugazi drummer who I've played with in every band I've been in.. And our music was like Motorhead and Discharge and Venom - shit like that. That was what the band sounded like. And we weren't very good! But nobody was calling THAT "emo." Then when we started Rites of Spring, I guess we got more serious about what we were trying to do. But I didn't actually sing in Insurrection. In Rites of Spring, I decided to sing and that's what came out. Because when I was young, I was nuts."

"I've never recognized 'emo' as a genre of music. I always thought it was the most retarded term ever. I know there is this generic commonplace that every band that gets labeled with that term hates it. They feel scandalized by it. But honestly, I just thought that all the bands I played in were punk rock bands. The reason I think it's so stupid is that – what, like the Bad Brains weren't emotional? What – they were robots or something? It just doesn't make any sense to me."

"When we couldn’t find sleep, things were better then"

"Ooh-wee-hoo, I look just like Buddy Holly"

"You take your car to work, I’ll take my board And when you’re out of fuel, I’m still afloat."

"You can’t resist her, she’s in your bones [...] And so it seems, only in dreams"

"I’m dumb, she’s a lesbian I thought I had found the one We were good as married in my mind But married in my mind’s no good."

"The workers are going home"

"What’s with these homies dissin’ my girl? Why do they gotta front?"

"Goddamn, you half-Japanese girls do it to me every time"

"Tonight, I’m down on my knees Tonight, I’m begging you please Tonight, tonight, please Oh, why can’t I be makin’ love come true?"

"You’re the prettiest mermaid in the souvenir shop But if you’re coming home this late, you know you’d better be drunk."

"The doctor put her hands over my liver She told me my resentment’s getting smaller"

"Good neighbors make good fences."

"It’s the mercy I can’t take."

"Day-one chip on your dresser get loaded at your house"

"I woke up in my childhood bed wishing I was someone else feeling sorry for myself When I remembered someone’s kid is dead"

"I was dressed for success But success, it never comes"

"What if it’s all black, baby, all the time?"

"Wish I could write songs about anything other than death."

"I’ll wrap Orion’s belt around my neck and kick the chair out."

"Good God, when’re you gonna call it off Climb down off the cross and change your mind? All right, then, I’ll go to hell"

"Brock has a knack for spinning the bleakness of late-stage capitalism into postmodern poetry, finding romance in trailer parks and truck stop bathrooms."

"You remain turned away Turning further every day"

"The people in her songs seem to naturally settle into realms of instability and ambiguity."

"Beat myself till I’m bloody, and I’ll give you a ringside seat."