Listomania: Air Guitar Heroes

Forget about all that macho shit
and learn how to play guitar.
from "Play Guitar" by John Mellencamp

I was taking a shower the other day, and doing some thinking while I was in there. Now, I shower pretty much every day, and I think every day as well (my wife would disagree with the thinking part), but the shower I refer to here was taken about 3 days ago, and I refer to it because I was making a mental list while cleaning my personal exterior.

The end of a year is always a time to make lists. You see them in the newspapers and magazines, on TV and the Internet: 10 most memorable news stories, 10 most influential people of the year, etc. The lists are almost always in groups of ten, even though there are twelve months in the year. And it’s always the most memorable of something, or the best of something else. Who decides this, and quite frankly, who gives a damn about any of it?

Well, now I’m going to give you something that you can give a damn about. While I was showering the other day, I was reflecting on a matter truly important in the grand scheme of things: What are my favorite songs to play air guitar to?

Not that you’ll ever catch me playing air guitar. It’s an act I performed with far greater frequency in my misspent youth, but there are still occasions when I hear a song on the radio that still makes me want to pretend to strap on an imaginary guitar and be a hero in front of a crowd that’s nowhere else but in my mind.

Here then, fresh out of the shower stall and still dripping wet, is that list:

1. "Crossroads" from Wheels of Fire by Cream. Always loved this song, always will. It's simple blues based hard rock, and the two solos by Eric Clapton are fairly simple as well, nothing tricky, nothing fancy. Just fast fingerwork and that feeling of immediacy that you get with a live performance. Every time I hear "Crossroads" I want to strap on my pretend Fender Strat and go to town. Even if I'm in the car, which leads to some interesting driving.

Cream, from their farewell concert in 1968. Kind of fun to watch the lads, all bad teeth and pasty complexions:


2. "White Room," again from Wheels of Fire by Cream. The best wah-wah pedal on any song, ever. Clapton's use of the wah-wah here is just so much more melodic than anyone else could have done, before or since; it's sounds like an intrinsic element of the song, rather than the contrivance that the wah-wah sounded like so often back in the late '60s. When you hear the wah-wah kick in on "White Room" you won't be able to resist stepping on that imaginary pedal yourself as you play your imaginary guitar. I know I can't.

Jack Bruce sounds like crap here, also from their farewell concert, but the music sounds great:


3. "Great White Buffalo" from Double Live Gonzo by Ted Nugent. This guy was gonzo alright. He was fast and loose and just plain crazy. He was indeed the Motor City Madman. Now, I'm not a huge fan of Nugent. A lot of his schtick seems a little lame, especially his antics from back in the day: swingin' around the stage like a Midwestern Tarzan, shacking up with a teen-age chick, all very silly. Still...on "Great White Buffalo" Terrible Ted makes his axe sound both awesomely heavy and beautifully delicate. Really quite impressive for someone who thinks he looks good in a loin cloth.

4. "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" from Electric Ladyland by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. No other guitarist is so revered in rock n' roll, not even Clapton, and for good reason. This song may have some of the best guitar work ever captured in a studio. There is experimentation and performance of the highest (and I do mean high) caliber, without any boring excess. Nothing, not the guitar work nor the song itself, goes on for too long. Everything is just perfect on "Voodoo Child." How could anyone listen to this song and not want to play guitar, real or air, like Jimi? Oh, lawd, yeah, I'm a voodoo chile...

Hendrix was pretty adept at the wah-wah pedal too. From Woodstock:


5. "Summertime Blues" from Live at Leeds by the Who. Hearing this song always makes me want to smash something. I want to run, I want to jump, I want to windmill my arms and mistreat my guitar until it makes a wonderful noise. This song must be played loud for maximum effect!

Let's face it, Pete Townshend is not cut from the same cloth as a Jimi Hendrix or an Eric Clapton, but he knew how to get such deleriously delightful noise from his guitar, like an angel playing a jackhammer, and it never sounds better than on this cover of the Eddie Cochran song on Live at Leeds.

From Woodstock:


I do have to give a great big shout out to "In a Hand or a Face" from The Who by Numbers. The electric guitar sound on this song, particularly at the beginning, is a pure rock sound, a sound of metal scraping against metal. Do what you have to to obtain The Who by Numbers, beg, borrow, cheat, or steal, but by God, obtain it and blast it out through both speakers, play it all night long.

6. "God Save the Queen" from Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols by the Sex Pistols. Truly the finest hour of British punk. One of the greatest rock albums ever, Never Mind the Bollocks is chock full of great straight forward rock and roll. "God Save the Queen" in particular is just so full of insouciance, and it sounds damn good. Steve Jones is really one of the most underrated guitarists, probably because he really doesn't have too much more than this album on his musical resume, but does any man really need more? "God Save the Queen" is a full frontal assault on the senses; to Jones' credit, he wasn't a one note wonder and was able to change style slightly from one track to another, playing with a wee bit of, dare I say it, subtlety on "Pretty Vacant" while being totally in your face, in a plodding Black Sabbath sort of way, on "Anarchy in the U.K." Every cut is a winner on this classic album, and "God Save the Queen" never fails to get me moving.



7. "Paranoid" from Paranoid by Black Sabbath. From the millisecond I hear the guitar intro by Tony Iommi I want to bang my head. 'Nuff said.

Original music video for "Paranoid"; too funny:


8. "Black Dog" from the untitled fourth album by Led Zeppelin. I suppose one shouldn't compile a list of air guitar heroes without mentioning Jimmy Page. Listen, I have a complicated relationship with Zeppelin. Love some of their stuff, like about half of Physical Graffiti, hate some of their stuff, like "Stairway to Heaven." If I never hear that song again, it will be too soon. While songs like "The Rover" and "Trampled Underfoot" I think represent some of the greatest work in rock, others, like the aforementioned "Stairway' represent some of the worst in self-indulgent excess. But I digress. I came to praise Jimmy Page for his muscular sounding guitar at the end of "Black Dog," not to bury him. That bit Page plays at the end of the song sounds like a guitar on steroids. It sure is fine, man, it's something else.

9. "Mother Knows Best" from Rumour and Sigh by Richard Thompson. Thompson isn't a guy who normally comes to mind when ranking guitar greats, but there aren't too many that are better. And he certainly doesn't look like a guitar god; he looks like an actuary or an accountant or a professor. Whatever. This is a great song with some of the finest playing I've ever heard. There is a fluidity to the sound, sort of like an electric current of water. Thompson has been around since the late '60s and I think you can hear a bit of him in Mark Knopfler's playing.

I like the sepia tone of this film, odd since it was shot in 1991, not 1891; it's grainy and hummy, but you get the gist of Mr. Thompson's genius:


10. "Junior's Farm" by Paul McCartney and Wings; originally released as a 45 (you know, one of those small pieces of vinyl), it can be found on the Wingspan collection. Whaaa...? Wings? What the...? I love this song. I don't care who knows it. It's got great guitar work by the late Jimmy McCulloch and whenever I hear it I imagine myself in front of a crowd, blazing away on my axe like McCullogh did. So there.

I guess the song takes me back to a time, back to whatever was good about my childhood, and that glorious period of time when I first discovered great rock 'n roll:


Honorable mentions: Toys in the Attic is filled with great work by Joe Perry from beginning to end, and the album is, I think, Aerosmith's finest moment, but the brilliance of "Adam's Apple" in particular must be acknowledged. The guitar, especially at the beginning of the song, is like barbed wire being wrapped around your brain. In a good sort of way. And on "Sweet Emotion," when the guitar slams in after almost a minute of foreplay, well, that's just too cool for school.


The sound of Ron Asheton on Raw Power by Iggy and the Stooges is the blueprint by which Steve Jones worked. The playing itself is nothing fancy, but "Raw Power" and "Search and Destroy" always gets me to my feet and jumping around, not playing air guitar so much as leaping like an electrocuted lizard, like an Iggy Pop.

On a more refined note, the playing by Adrian Belew and Robert Fripp on King Crimson's Beat LP is outstanding, particularly on "Neal and Jack and Me." Check it out, if you can find it.

Who wouldn't want to be Keith Richards? I mean, not all the time, that would be a bit much, but just once in a while, like when he's playing "Happy."

I could go on, but I'll stop with Neil Young. Most people probably don't think of him in the guitar god mold, but check out his monster chops on Rust Never Sleeps. The guitar on "Hey Hey, My My, (Into the Black)" sound positively heavy metal, but the delicate fluidity on "Powderfinger" is something to behold.


I'm such an addendummy: In my original post, my brain froze and I forgot to mention AC/DC. What better band to play air guitar to than these Three Stooges of rock 'n roll. Any song will, because they're all essentially the same but if I must pick one: While I played "Rock 'n Roll Damnation" every day before high school my junior year, I think no one born with a living soul can sit perfectly still while listening to "Whole Lotta Rosie." That song was meant for head banging and air guitar playing.