Re: (TV) Link Wray, RIP

[mike-tv@mjckeh.demon.co.uk]

Here's what John Cipollina had to say about early guitarists, especially Link Wray:

I've played music all my life and I was raised in a musical family. One day I was driving down the street and I hear this tune on the radio. I was still quite young. I look over at my mother and I go, "What's that?" and she goes. "It's an electric guitar." Not a guitar, it was an electric guitar. And I really identified with it, I thought, "Woah-woah-woah! You just said the F word, without saying any words." I mean, a lot of connotations, very rebellious.

That was '58, Mickey and Sylvia, "Love Is Strange." And it was that guitar lick where he bends it. I had played keyboards for years. I was raised in a keyboard family. Nobody in my family could bend a note on keyboard. And I heard that, I thought, "God, that's really cool!"

And guitars, I had heard guitars go, eu-chungoo-goo-goo, that's what they were doing, the big band guitars. I listened to a lot of that, and plus I listened to a lot of guitars, and I never considered electric guitars. They were electrified guitars. I had listened to a lot of Wes Montgomery, I had listened to a lot of Billy Strange, Tal Farlow. But when I heard Mickey Baker play these single note lines -- now I know what it is and I can approximate that tone and the mystery isn't there as it was at one time. But the point I was trying to make was, when I first heard it, I really related to it. That was the sound of then. That was current. That was what was happening.

And then in the meantime, there were all these guys like Scotty Moore amd James Burton, Link Wray, who were the early pioneers. When I first heard Link Wray, I thought that guy was just talking filth, he was swearing with the guitar. Didn't say one word!


all the best,
-- 
 Michael J. Cross    Visit http://michaelcross.me.uk for
 BSFA Magazine Index, Hull SF Group, J Cipollina & M Kurihara Discographies
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