http://www.guitarjamdaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=46&task=vi
ew&id=162
Http://www.thebumpsquad.com
Http://www.myspace.com/thebumpsquad
By Larry Dobrow
Like my pal/personal guitar Yoda Nick Friese, I couldn't pull myself away
from the couch during Prince's Super Bowl halftime show. Unlike Nick,
however, my attentiveness had nothing to do with Prince's Telecaster
pyrotechnics. Rather, I'd consumed so much bean dip during the pregame show
and first half that I found myself chemically fused to the cushions. As I
waited for the paramedics to arrive with their gauze and blowtorches, I got
to thinking about Prince as a guitar player. His playing, it seems, has
always taken a back seat to just about everything else about him: his
arrival as a multi-instrument/songwriting/performing prodigy, the flash and
fanfare of his Purple Rain superstardom, the general weirdness (hello, Mr.
Glyph), the battles with his record companies and the self-indulgent musical
meanderings that followed, etc.
Yet even when you confine the discussion strictly to his guitar work, Prince
remains one of the most difficult players to wrap your head around. I'd
argue that, over the course of his 30-odd years in the public eye, Prince
has alternately been one of music's most overrated *and* underrated guitar
players. Consider:
Prince was underrated
when he first arrived on the scene with the most
joyous four-minute chunks of R&B since Motown's heyday. The questions being
asked back then were ones along the lines of, "Who is this brash kid with
his every-nine-months killer albums and do-it-himself flair? And those
sub-nostril wisps of hair don't truly qualify as a mustache, do they?" What
the pundits ignored were the fluid solos that lent a harder edge to the
songs and neatly counterbalanced the falsetto vocals. Check out the outro
run on "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?," in which a riff that bubbles under
the surface for much of the song comes exploding into the forefront. As far
as his rhythm playing goes, just listen to the chunky, funky chords that
serve as a cornerstone for the extended version of "1999," especially during
the "mommy, why does everybody have a bomb?" finale.
Prince was overrated
when mainstream listeners discovered him around the
time of Purple Rain. This isn't to say that the Hendrix blast at the end of
"Let's Go Crazy" or the feral squeal that opens "When Doves Cry" don't rank
among the seminal guitar moments of the 1980s. What distinguishes them,
however, is the musical creativity their placement within the context of
the songs, rather than the guitar work itself. For fans of his earlier
playing, the Purple Rain-era Prince should be remembered less for those two
flashes than for the soaring, melodic "Computer Blue" interlude.
Prince was underrated
when he stopped making music for the masses. After
1991's Diamond and Pearls (a.k.a. "the one in which Prince reminds us that
he can write mammothly catchy songs whenever he darn well feels like it")
and the unpronounceable-glyph-titled album that followed, the Artist Then
Known As Who-The-Hell-Knows-What basically screwed around for the rest of
the decade and the first few years of the one after it. A few hits
compilations, the mail-it-in funk of Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, a
sporadically metallic foray into Chaos and Disorder
Be honest: you stopped
paying attention, too. That said, while Prince might have stopped caring
about the songwriting process, he didn't skimp on the guitar. His
"after-show" performances from that era documented much more faithfully on
bootlegs than on the official One Night Alone
Live! release featured some
staggeringly inventive guitar, especially on the
shoulda-been-an-arena-rock-staple "Peach."
Prince was overrated
the second his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame performance
hit the Internet. Again, there was nothing wrong per se with his
slash-and-burn solo at the end of the "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" tribute
to George Harrison. It's that he didn't show anything that devoted fans
hadn't seen before, usually in a more music-friendly setting (you know, like
one not accessorized with 632 VH-1 cameras) and with a more stalwart backup
band. On the tour that followed, the verdict was similarly split: every
jaw-dropping guitar moment (especially his savage "Whole Lotta Love" cover)
was diminished by the overpracticed, Vegas feel of partial runs through his
hits (a few seconds of "1999" here, a verse of "Baby I'm a Star" there).
So in the wake of his Super Bowl triumph, where does Prince stand today as a
player? Frankly, I have no clue. Given his past unpredictability, his next
record is as likely to be a straightforward collection of pop-funk, a la
Musicology, as a compilation of electronica whale songs. Whatever it is,
here's hoping that the ol' Telecaster gets a workout at one point or
another.
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