The rhythm section: An ode to music’s overlooked heroes
When assessing rock and pop’s greatest guitar masters, it’s all too easy to eschew the rhythm player and gun straight for that showboating lead.
Can’t blame ya, the clue’s in the name. ‘Lead’ is very much supposed to grab you in all its ostentatious arrest. Conjuring those magic melodies and making their axes sing like angelic sirens or Odin’s thunderous hammer, depending on the genre. In a rock world of Jimmy Pages and Eddie Van Halens, naturally, you’ll be distracted by the shredding bombast swagger before your eyes.
But the dependable rhythm section is arguably where the magic lies. The unmistakable X factor that holds the band’s aura together, the rhythm stands central to any musical unit, enmeshed on a deeper and more intimate level with the drums and bass, while propping the lead’s flaunting shimmer. Rhythm is where you’ll find the practical anchor for any big rock group, but never at the expense of the sex, the groove, the strut, the fire that burns in rock’s mystical centre.
An easy way to realise its essentiality is to hear anything from AC/DC and remove Malcolm Young’s primal riffs from their clod-rock attack. Now eight years since his passing, it becomes ever more apparent that Malcolm was the beating heart of the band. Like an extended arm of brotherly love, Malcolm was happy to take a seeming backseat to the younger Angus’ schoolboy, duckwalking solos in favour of a sturdy, stolid sense of time-keeping, and understanding the fine art of boiling down rock’s essential parts to its electric, visceral marrow.
Not that Malcolm didn’t imbue his rhythm section with a distinct flair. When casting his mind back to his favourite AC/DC riffs, Angus offered his thoughts on elder brother Malcolm’s unique backing guitar chops. “I would say, ‘Bad Boy Boogie’,” he once said, an honorific aptly capturing his no-nonsense approach to rockcraft. “[It] has got a flavour because it’s got a little bit of a twist in it. It sounds easy, but Malcolm had a little twist that I don’t think many could do […] How clever was he to do that? I still play it just for the fact that he just changed that little note around.”
There’s musical intelligence to any great rhythm guitarist, a sharp intuition that manages to oversee the operations. The Rolling Stones can count a roll call of fantastic leads, albeit in their idiosyncratic twinning fashion, with Ronnie Wood and Mick Taylor laying down scorching studio efforts, and Brian Jones often stepping to lead early on. But it’s inconceivable to envisage the Stones elevated to rock mythos without their human riff conjurer, Keith Richards. The spark that sets their golden age alight comes straight from Richards’ rhythm alchemy, lacing their country and blues mine with that brandishing energy, thrusting the ensemble to music’s hall of fame.
Plenty of rhythm guitarists would find celebrated roles for themselves, John Lennon, James Hetfield, Nile Rodgers, and Johnny Ramone all adding essential progressions to the spirit or fury of any given song. But rhythmic magic isn’t just confined to the guitar. Where would The Who be without the explosive synergy between John Entwistle’s bass attack and Keith Moon’s powerhouse percussion? Or The Funk Brothers’ James Jamerson and Benny Benjamin’s respective bass and drum pedigree that scored countless Motown sessions during the soul label’s heyday?
Geddy Lee perhaps summed just what kind of magic can be bottled by a band’s rhythm section when casting his mind back to an early witness of Led Zeppelin before their arena gobbling behemoth in a few short years, owing much to the influence set by bassist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham.
“I saw them in Toronto at a little place called The Rock Pile,” Lee reminisced. “We were in the second row, and when they played this song, it just blew me away. It reaffirmed for me all the creative potential in blending hard rock with progressive music. John Paul Jones was the unsung hero in that band.” Playing bass in the Rush power trio, Lee knows good rhythm energy when he sees it.
We shouldn’t ever elevate one role over the other. Great bands fire at their best in glorious, majestic synchronicity, but let’s never forget the essential sorcery of the prized rhythm player, and whenever rock’s age-old spell takes over and stirs, transports, or excites in the only way a plugged-in guitar can, raise a toast to the rhythm players who lent just as much a hand in making it happen.
