Can punk rock really have guitar heroes?
What makes a guitar hero? On the surface, the answer seems obvious—it’s simply someone whose guitar playing makes them a hero to millions. Hendrix? Guitar hero. Van Halen? Ditto. Joni? You’d better believe it. All the usual names are there, but the more you think about it, the more one question arises: is it their skill with the instrument that makes them special, or is it the vibes? The presence of punk guitar heroes like Johnny Ramone, Steve Jones, and Billie Joe Armstrong answers that question fairly definitively—in favour of vibes.
Let’s be real here: none of them are known for their technical ability. Johnny especially took a perverse sense of pride in the fact that he knew precisely as much guitar as he needed to play Ramones songs and nothing else. Yet there’s an argument to be made that each of them has actually inspired more people to pick up and play the guitar than any Hendrix wig-out or Van Halen tapping extravaganza. After all, anyone with some coordination can play ‘American Idiot’. ‘Eruption’ makes people want to never play guitar again.
Steve Jones made the likes of Noel Gallagher and James Dean Bradfield want to pick up the guitar while playing an album that can be learned in an afternoon with time to spare. It’s not just how good he looked with a white Les Paul and some leather keks, though; it also helped that Never Mind The Bollocks has one of the best guitar sounds in rock history. At a time when the upper echelon of rock was people who learned all the wrong lessons from Hendrix, Page, and Co, people really needed to remember that guitar music could be immediate, aggressive, and simple, much like the band themselves.
However, you don’t want to start talking about these professionals with the same kind of patronising tone that Jack White used to describe Meg White’s drumming. Sure, none of their guitar parts were complicated; this was by design, but they were seriously good at what they did. Anyone who’s played guitar will tell you that trying to replicate Johnny Ramone’s maniacal downstrokes is ridiculously hard. Both Jones and Armstrong created and executed perfect riffs and hooks for the Pistols and Green Day, respectively.
It’s not to say that there aren’t punks who are as technically gifted as any shredder. Johnny Marr was inspired by The Stooges’ James Williamson, whose skills are legendary. Same with Jack White. What self-respecting emo band in the 21st century doesn’t have multiple guitar lines built around tapping lines that would make Eddie Van Halen proud? However, demanding that all guitar heroes or even “good” guitarists, in general, meet a certain technical standard creates a boundary, and there’s only one thing that a punk worth their salt does with boundaries.
Punk at its heart is accessible. There should be no gates to be kept or borders to be enforced. For something to be DIY, one must be able to do it themselves. If you shut yourself in your bedroom one teenage summer to learn ‘Through The Fire And Flames’ in full, good for you. We’re all very impressed. If that means you turn your nose up at some kid with a Strat copy and are happy to hammer out ‘Basket Case’, you haven’t just missed the point of punk rock. You’ve basically missed the point of rock and roll in general.
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