Welcome back my friends to the flamboyance that never ends, and please be welcome to yet another of our regular sprout-fuelled snuffles around the sweaty intergluteal cleft of popular culture.
I trust you all enjoyed a thoroughly splendid Christmas and I hope that at least some of you are now recovering adequately from a thoroughly splendid bout of well-earned, festive over-indulgence.
I must confess, I approach tonight’s topic with no little trepidation – and for good reason. When I produced an article exploring the work of some of my favourite bass players, the subsequent backlash in the comments (the comments that no one ever reads) was really quite significant and certainly far in excess of the normally affable indifference that usually greets my inane Friday night wittering. Puffins were quick to flock to the defence of their favourite thumpers and were not shy about berating me for omitting various notable practitioners. Blimey! Who could have possibly predicted that Going Postal would turn out to be such an enthusiastic hotbed of bottom end aficionados?*
*a rhetorical question, obviously…
So tonight, somewhat nervously, we shall increase our frequency range of consideration and take a look at some of my favourite guitarists, the plank spankers who, over the years, have made me sit up and take notice, startled me with their originality or, in a few select cases, made me want to throw my guitar in the bin and simply give up and walk away – Not Arf!
And I simply have to start with the late, great, Stevie Ray Vaughan, aka SRV. The man who detonated the blues and completely revived the Texas blues genre. His amusing and self-deprecating early-80’s promotional videos were beautifully timed to exploit the rise of MTV in the US, and when combined with his explosive Texas blues playing style, his enormous guitar playing ability saw him quickly rise to fame and fortune.
Vaughan’s approach to the guitar was ferocious and quite simply demanded attention. He channelled the spirit Jimi Hendrix via the style of Albert King (along with a soupçon of jazz and funk) through his utterly unique, fat, single coil guitar tone and his seemingly effortless and at times astonishing virtuosity. Vaughan was soon making his fellow plank spankers sit up and pay attention, and he remains, to this day, one of the most influential, imitated and copied electric blues guitarist of all time. Sadly, of course, his career was cut short by his early and untimely death in a helicopter crash in 1990. Nevertheless, his short but spectacular career is still inspiring (and startling) generations of guitarists.
Toni Iommi is not only an incredibly influential heavy metal plank spanker – and without the slightest scintilla of doubt a principal pillar in the development of the heavy metal rock genre – but he was also a truly inspirational figure to his fellow guitarists. In the early stages of his career, the co-founder of Black Sabbath accidentality developed his unique and genre-defining, doom-laden, guitar style after somewhat carelessly chopping off the tips of his middle and ring fingers on his fretting hand.
Guitarists tend to need their fingertips, as they come in very handy when playing strings. So this was the kind of industrial injury that might very well have halted the career progress of many a young guitarists. But not our Toni: he simply melted down some plastic bottles, fashioned a set of home-made prosthetics, popped them on the end of his stumps and just got on with it. His injuries forced him to tune down his guitar, use lighter gauge strings and, as a result, he quickly developed his trademark dark, brooding and menacing style that would come to define both his career and the template for heavy metal guitar in the 1970s.
In the opening to this article I mentioned guitarists who made me want throw my guitar in the bin, give up and walk away. Case in point: the late Alan Holdsworth. Holdsworth was influential among advanced guitarists, was considered one of the most technically accomplished guitarists in the business, and the first time is saw him play on stage I simply stood there in open-mouthed disbelief and genuinely considered giving up playing guitar.
He never cracked the big time, but Guitar World magazine once described him as being “as influential as Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix or Eddie Van Halen”. Frank Zappa called him one of the most interesting musicians “on the planet” and he has been described as “the John Coltrane of the guitar”.
Guitarists who have cited Holdsworth as an influence include Eddie Van Halen, Garry Moore, Joe Satriani, Alex Lifeson, Yngwie Malmsteen, John Frusciante, Tom Morello and many, many more; and in addition to his solo career, Holdsworth played with Soft Machine, Tony Williams’ Lifetime, Gong, Bruford, U.K. and level 42.
Holdsworth was always a guitarist’s guitarist and sadly remained largely unknown outside musicians’ circles. He was frequently criticised for being way too technical for the average listener (a criticism he acknowledged) and sadly his career was beset by over-indulgence (he liked a jar or two). Nevertheless, he remains a firm favourite of mine and I’ll never forget the almost visceral shock of seeing him play live for the very first time.
And speaking of guitarist’s guitarists, the late great Jeff Beck (plank spanker extraordinaire and all-round diamond geezer) always seemed uncomfortable with both his guitar hero tag and the fame and recognition it brought. He quit the Yardbirds, disbanded the Jeff Beck Group, turned down an offer to play at Woodstock, said no to the Rolling Stones and let various other bands and projects simply wither on the vine. But as much as he couldn’t be bothered with fame, Beck still wanted to master the electric guitar. His playing techniques evolved rapidly, finding inspiration in the jazz fusion scene of the early to mid-1970s, and he quickly earned his reputation as the guitarist’s guitarist – although he once self-depreciatingly described his playing style as little more than heavy skiffle.
When he performed, it really wasn’t unusual to find as much rock royalty in the audience of a Jeff Back gig as there was on the stage. His control of the electric guitar was unmatched, and his touch and tone were unique. As others have noted, if you browse the usual popular video platforms, you can easily find endless video tutorials that will teach you how the mimic the sound and style of almost any famous guitarist, but almost none that will teach you how to play like Jeff Beck – and that’s largely because hardly anyone can. I had the honour of working with him on a couple of tours. He was a diamond geezer and he remains a much missed favourite.
And from one famous member of the Yardbirds to another: Jimmy Page. Before Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page had already made a tremendous impact on the ’60s music scene due to his time with the Yardbirds and his extensive gun-for-hire work as a top-notch session guitarist. However, in 1968 he cemented his status as a bona-fide rock guitar legend when he formed Led Zeppelin and proceeded to utterly re-define the limits of rock ‘n’ roll superstardom and the “excess all areas” approach to fame and fortune that Led Zeppelin would come to epitomise. The phrase “legend in his own lifetime” could easily have been coined to describe Page, and although his career was certainly not without controversy, he remains an incredibly influential musician and a bona fide guitar rock god.
I should also give a mention to the American jazz musician and composer, Pat Metheny. To call Metheny a seriously talented chap really is something of an substantial understatement. He has, over the course of his career, trousered 20 Grammy Awards in 10 separate musical categories – a feat quite unmatched by any other musician and composer. He is also a plank spanker of no small repute.
As a teenager, he was approached by the University of Miami and offered a scholarship at the faculty of music. He accepted, but his talent was such that after just a few weeks at the university he was offered a professorship. He eventually moved to Boston to teach at the very prestigious Berklee College of Music. This kid was a genuine prodigy.
I first became aware of Metheny when he was a member of Joni Mitchell’s band in the mid to late ’70s, and I became a hopeless devotee when I heard him play an early Roland guitar synthesizer. Back then I was a gigging musician and still fancied myself as something of a mean plank-spanker (I was of course entirely delusional). However, delusional or not, I was given the opportunity to play one of Roland’s new-fangled guitar synths. Unfortunately, after just a few hours of experimentation, I honestly wanted to smash the damn thing to pieces in utter frustration.
It was an absolute pig of an instrument, incredibly difficult to play, and I could barely make it fart, let alone drag any form of recognisable music from it. It was a staggeringly truculent beast and seemed to me to be completely unusable as a performance instrument. So when I later heard Metheny produce effortlessly fluid, beautifully coherent and, above all, wonderfully musical performances on the very same model of instrument, I knew I was in the presence of greatness.
If anyone wants an introduction to the work of this wonderful and highly influential musician, I would recommend starting with his tremendous 1983 live album, Travels, and, as can clearly be seen in the following video, his penchant for very Friday night-appropriate shorts.
And as we’re talking about influential guitarists, we simply have to doff our cap to the one-and-only Chuck Berry – the man who almost single handedly invented rock & roll guitar. Even today, his 1956 recording of Johnny B. Goode is startling in it’s influential rock guitar originality. His licks, riffs and techniques have been copied and adapted by countless guitarists, and when discussing the subject of rock guitar and rock guitar techniques, Keith Richards described Chuck Berry as the musical “granddaddy of us all”. And he wasn’t exaggerating, as Chuck Berry remains one of the most influential rock guitarists of all time.
And sticking the subject of influential guitarists, we should probably mention one James Marshall Hendrix, the American rock guitarist who, it has to be said, could play a bit. Jimi Hendrix remains one of the most (arguably the most) iconic plank spankers in rock ‘n’ roll history. He was rock guitar’s original and greatest showman (playing his guitar with his teeth or behind his back – even setting fire to his unfortunate instruments on stage). But beneath all the flash and theatrical style, there was genuine talent and real musical ability; and once he burst on the UK music scene in the mid-1960s, he very quickly established his position as a true master of his chosen instrument and rock’s premier guitarist.
Sadly, the career of Jimi Hendrix lasted for only about 8 years, but many of his contemporaries would later spend their entire careers studying, copying, adapting and evolving the dazzling rock guitar templates and techniques Jimi casually and seemingly effortlessly deployed. Hendrix obliterated cultural barriers, would often leave his audience gaping in awe, and influenced the development of rock, metal, funk, blues and much, much more. He was a true innovator and genuinely changed the course of electric guitar playing for ever.
Anyway, I see the pineapple quiche has been consumed, the Babycham quaffed and my nuts have all nibbled. So for now, dear Puffins, I think that’s probably quite enough of my random Boxing Day ramblings for this evening. So I shall say TTFN to one and all and wish you a very happy, healthy and prosperous new year.
May all your pillows be tasty, your gardens inclined and your puddles well jumped.
Goodnight, and may your frog go with you – Not ‘arf!
Featured Image: Christmas at the Pabst Mansion by Michael Barera via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0
© Ivory Cutlery 2025
