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RE: Beck / RE: (TV) Richard Lloyd interview re. Hendrix



I can't say that I've ever heard much of Hendrix in RL's playing. A fact I feel is often overlooked in discussing Hendrix is what a great, fluid sense of rhythm the man - who, after all, played in R&B bands for years - had. Too much attention is paid to issues like feedback, distortion, and lead lines (and these are the things that Hendrix imitators often focus on too, because frankly, IMO, that rhythm sense is much deeper musically and harder to copy). Like any guitarist in a "power trio" (or anyone who's the sole guitarist in a larger group, like Pete Townsend - the Who often seem like a power trio in which the guitarist/vocalist has been split into two bodies), he had to carry both rhythm and lead, and he often played "rhythm leads" - novel chordal sequences rather than solo melodic lines. Seems like a more "jazz" thing to do, and worked well with the sadly late Mitch Mitchell's jazz-influenced drumming. I don't know that I've ever heard RL - or TV -
 do anything like that. Plus, Television's/TV's/RL's sense of rhythmi has always seemed more metronomic and "grid-like," which is one reason I've sometimes thought of them as almost like rock Bach. Let's face it, they play like white boys!

But I'm open to argument, in case there are all kinds of counterexamples to my statements above that I'm not recalling!

- Jesse

P.S. Answering Leo's question/comment of some days ago: Thanks for the nice words, Leo. I finished my dissertation in 2004, and am currently living in Philadelphia, being unemployed (too long a story to get into here). But I'm actually really busy, as I'm trying to finish writing up/revising some research papers from postdoctoral work prior to my being our of work. So I'd like to post more, but finding the time is hard - especially as I've never learned the art of brevity.
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