In the world of rock gui­tar, gear is king. And tech­nique, one might say, is queen. Both rule, but the equip­ment can receive an unfair share of roy­al treat­ment. There is good rea­son for this. Elec­tri­fied instru­ments play­ing elec­tric music require heaps of wires, cir­cuits, spe­cial­ized effects, and ampli­fiers to make the sounds we’ve come to asso­ciate with hard rock and heavy met­al. But those sounds didn’t come about by acci­dent. They were designed at par­tic­u­lar times by par­tic­u­lar gui­tarists and engineers—serious gear­heads. Per­haps the most obses­sive of them all is Bri­an May, whose flashy but taste­ful play­ing with Queen set the bar for pyrotech­nics artists and fel­low gear­heads like Eddie Van Halen. Maybe it’s his work as an astro­physi­cist (no, real­ly!) that inspired his sci­en­tif­ic approach to mak­ing music. Wher­ev­er it comes from, no one plays, and sounds, quite like Bri­an May.

In the video above from 1984, May gives lessons on how to play his famous licks and solos from eigh­teen Queen songs. But first, he gets into the tech­ni­cal specs of his ampli­fiers, effects, and his gui­tar, “Red Spe­cial,” an instru­ment of his own design and build that func­tioned like no oth­er at the time. Even today, no gui­tar but a Bri­an May sig­na­ture gui­tar—now mass-pro­duced—sounds like a Bri­an May gui­tar. At one point, May says, “I’ve had this gui­tar for 20 years, and it’s pret­ty much the only thing I can play to get the right sound.” He still feels the same way, as you can see in his much more recent “Rig Run­down,” that peri­od­ic delight of gui­tar geeks every­where in which famous gui­tarists show­case the gear that gets them “the right sound.”

May’s full immer­sion in the tech­ni­cal details of elec­tric gui­tars and ampli­fiers is rivaled only by his com­plex and intri­cate gui­tar lines. If you can keep up with him in the instruc­tion­al video at the top, you might just learn a thing or two about the so-called “lick.” Just above, how­ev­er, May helps guide us through an explo­ration of a much more direct and prim­i­tive means of expression—the riff. The BBC spe­cial also fea­tures such mas­ters of this repet­i­tive, rhyth­mic motif as Joan Jett, Wayne Kramer, Nile Rodgers, Tony Iom­mi, and Dave Davies, as well as—in archival footage—riff pio­neers Chuck Berry and Link Wray, each of them demon­strat­ing the ear­worms they’re known for. Bri­an May’s riffs—in “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” for example—may be more clas­si­cal than most, but they’re no less mem­o­rable. And after watch­ing his extend­ed les­son, you now know exact­ly how he built them, piece by piece.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an May’s Home­made Gui­tar, Made From Old Tables, Bike and Motor­cy­cle Parts & More

Gui­tarist Bri­an May Explains the Mak­ing of Queen’s Clas­sic Song, ‘Bohemi­an Rhap­sody’

Queen Doc­u­men­tary Pays Trib­ute to the Rock Band That Con­quered the World

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

By the time Char­lie Watts’ snare drum cracks into the recent­ly unearthed alter­nate acoustic take of “Wild Hors­es,” above, the song has already gath­ered as much momen­tum as the album ver­sion, its soul­ful minor chords fill­ing what­ev­er room you hap­pen to be lis­ten­ing to it in. Released with the video above as a teas­er for the extras-packed reis­sue of 1971’s Sticky Fin­gers, due out this May, the track replaces Mick Taylor’s elec­tric gui­tar with well-placed acoustic pluck­ing and almost jaun­ty rhythm play­ing by Kei­th. As Jag­ger belts them out, the lyrics “unzip” across the screen in a taste­ful homage to Andy Warhol’s expert­ly sleazy Sticky Fin­gers cov­er art.

Part boast, part lament, it’s no won­der “Wild Hors­es” is one of the Stones’ most pop­u­lar tunes. It seems that no mat­ter what gets added, or tak­en away, from it, the song remains a com­plete­ly trans­port­ing state­ment of loss and defi­ance. The song, stripped down to just vocals and acoustic gui­tars above, is utter­ly cap­ti­vat­ing with or with­out its elec­tric slide swells, honky-tonk piano, and vocal har­monies, a tes­ta­ment to Richards’ skill with coun­try song­writ­ing, much of which he’d picked up while hang­ing out with for­mer Byrd Gram Par­sons.

The song owes much to Par­sons’ 1968 “Hick­o­ry Wind,” and Par­sons even cov­ered “Wild Hors­es” as a most­ly acoustic coun­try bal­lad in 1970, the year before Sticky Fin­gers’ release. The Stones record­ed the song in 1969, and clear­ly knew they had some­thing spe­cial on their hands imme­di­ate­ly after­ward. Just above—starting at 0:40—see the band lis­ten back to anoth­er stripped down ver­sion of the album take at Mus­sel Shoals stu­dio in footage from the Maysles broth­ers’ Gimme Shel­ter.

The sing-along cho­rus­es and over­all camp­fire vibe of The Glim­mer Twins’ bal­lad makes it an ide­al can­di­date for unplugged ses­sions, and the new­ly-debuted ver­sion at the top isn’t the only time The Stones have re-released an alter­nate acoustic take. Just above, see them live in the stu­dio record­ing a new ver­sion of “Wild Hors­es” for 1995’s Stripped, an album of most­ly-live, often acoustic rework­ings of songs like “Street Fight­ing Man” and “Let It Bleed” and cov­ers of Bud­dy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” and Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” Stripped may be an uneven album (hear on Youtube here), but Jag­ger and Richards’ bril­liant imi­ta­tions of coun­try music—like “Dead Flow­ers” and, espe­cial­ly, “Wild Horses”—shine as bright­ly as ever.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Rolling Stones Write “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il”: From Jean-Luc Godard’s ’68 Film One Plus One

Rare Print of Cen­sored 1972 Rolling Stones Con­cert Film Cock­suck­er Blues Goes on Sale for £25,000

The Rolling Stones Sing the Bea­t­les’ “Eight Days a Week” in a Hotel Room (1965)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Bil­lie Holiday’s name has been in the news late­ly for some rea­sons that remind us of the tragedies she sang about and those she endured. First, there was the sto­ry of the rather appalling­ly tone-deaf PR firm who thought one of Holiday’s most well-known record­ings, “Strange Fruit”—a song about lynch­ing—would make a great name for their brand. Then there were the new details in Johann Hari’s book Chas­ing the Scream of how Hol­i­day was hunt­ed, haunt­ed, and pos­si­bly framed by Fed­er­al Bureau of Nar­cotics head Har­ry Anslinger. These sto­ries com­pound the image of Hol­i­day as a trag­ic fig­ure, a casu­al­ty of soci­etal ills and per­son­al demons.

Hol­i­day may have doc­u­ment­ed her trou­bled life in her auto­bi­og­ra­phy, but she would have pre­ferred to be remem­bered for her music. Born 100 years ago today, the jazz songstress trans­mut­ed her per­son­al pain into beau­ty; her inter­pre­ta­tions of songs became stan­dards in their own right, and became unique­ly hers.

“God Bless the Child,” above, res­onates with Holiday’s own dif­fi­cult child­hood, shad­owed by neglect and loss, but she deliv­ers it as though all had been for­giv­en and redeemed. She sang through abu­sive rela­tion­ships and addic­tion and some pret­ty shab­by treat­ment by a racist indus­try.

For exam­ple, Bret Pri­mack tells the sto­ry in a Jaz­zTimes arti­cle of the Fox The­atre in Detroit forc­ing Hol­i­day to wear black­face in order to appear on stage with Count Basie’s Orches­tra. As Lady Day her­self remarked of the humil­i­at­ing episode, “There’s no damn busi­ness like show busi­ness. You have to smile to keep from throw­ing up.” Toward the end of her life, in 1956, she gave one of her last of 22 con­certs at Carnegie Hall (see her do her own com­po­si­tion “Fine and Mel­low” above). The rehearsals—wrote New York Times crit­ic Gilbert Mill­stein in the album lin­er notes—“had been desul­to­ry,” her voice “tin­ny and trailed off.” But at show­time, she appeared “poised and smil­ing,” singing “with strength undi­min­ished.” In his lin­er remarks, Nat Hentoff described Holiday’s “assur­ance of phras­ing and into­na­tion” and “an out­go­ing warmth, a pal­pa­ble eager­ness to reach out and touch the audi­ence,” a smile “often light­ly evi­dent on her lips and her eyes.”

In a ret­ro­spec­tive essay, Hentoff refers to the sad fact that “Bil­lie is most remem­bered as a victim—of her­self, of soci­ety” as well as “the myth that, toward the end, Lady invari­ably sound­ed like a cracked husk of what she had been years before.” While it’s cer­tain­ly true that she fell vic­tim to oth­ers’ designs and her own bad judg­ment, she had her share of tri­umphs as well, most of them on the stage. Even in 1959, the year of her death, when her prob­lems with alco­hol had wors­ened to a soon-to-be fatal degree, and her voice had lost some of its vital­i­ty, she per­formed with swag­ger and grace. See her above sing “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone” in one of her final live appear­ances. Holiday’s short, trag­ic life may have giv­en us plen­ty to talk about, but her mem­o­ry is best pre­served by lis­ten­ing to her sing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How “America’s First Drug Czar” Waged War Against Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends

Bil­lie Hol­i­day — The Life and Artistry of Lady Day: The Com­plete Film

Duke Ellington’s Sym­pho­ny in Black, Star­ring a 19-Year-old Bil­lie Hol­i­day

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness