The Expressway to Yr Skull

#NOISE#

There's something about the guitar, or more specifically the electric guitar. Don't ask me why, but somehow a cult has built up around it; people blame Jimi Hendrix for this, but he wasn't the first person to play the blues. But either way you look at it, people have the misconception that playing guitar is some sort of great feat, and that to produce a simple melody line requires years of practice, slaving over your instrument for ages.

People also have misconceptions of what constitutes great guitar playing; solos, for example, are pretty pointless and not nearly as hard to play as chords. Quite probably, a lot of the stereotypical 'guitar heroes' couldn't even play some of the more difficult barre chords. But I don't have a problem with musical incompetence; in fact, I'm beginning to think that a lack of training is behind most of the best music around. Once you strip away all the crap, all the stuff which is there for no other reason than for showing off, you're left with melody, lyrics, rhythm. Or in other words, music.

All the best bands in history are essentially simple; it's the riffs that Hendrix will be remembered for, not the solos. Great bands, from Joy Division to the Sex Pistols, didn't necessarily feel the need to show off how fast they can move their fingers, but rather were more concerned with making music. Or, in the case of the 'Pistols, with destroying music.

So, noise, or more specifically, guitar noise. Somehow making a load of random noise on a guitar sounds really good, while on any other instrument (with the possible exception of an analogue synth) it just sounds like crap.

I don't know, maybe the love of discordance and dissonance, which has been present in everything from Hendrix to Neil Young to Jeff Buckley to Radiohead to Nirvana to Sonic Youth, is just the replacement of the guitar solo. But if the guitar solo is just harmonically-correct nonsense masquerading as skill, then noise masquerades as nothing: it's there, and to create it requires more mechanical ingenuity than musical training. Which is good.

SONIC COOKBOOK: HOW TO NOISE