The blues guitarist who warned Jimi Hendrix he was too loud: “You’ll laugh”
It doesn’t matter what kind of rock music you are listening to, whether it’s heavy metal or soft rock, it all comes from the blues.
It’s a pretty complicated genre of music, not in its technicality, but in the difficulty that lies around mastering it. When people talk about romanticism in music, they often think of classic composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, and while they make a point, true romanticism, especially for listeners in the modern age, lies in pockets of the blues.
Billy Gibbons talks about the blues incredibly well. While ZZ Top certainly exhibit some of the qualities of blues musicians, before they’re artists in their own right, they remain fans, and who better to talk about the moving nature of a genre than an avid listener who swears by it? Gibbons celebrates the simplicity in the blues as a style, but the complexity in getting to the heart of why it’s important.
“Well, the blues may only be three chords, but the complexity is fascinating,” said Gibbons, “I’ve listened to those old blues records forever. And I can still learn something from these guys. These giants.”
Romanticism within art doesn’t necessarily mean writing something that we would deem romantic, rather, it means writing something which is emotional. That emotion can be anything, from anger to joy and everything within the grey area of those two black and whites. When romanticism has evolved, such evolution has always been met with backlash. The musical world is laced with critics who hear emotion and don’t deem it genuine enough.
The electric guitar was met with this kind of criticism when it first became mainstream. While for a lot of jazz and blues musicians it was a lifeline because it allowed their solos to stand out while playing in a band, there were a lot of musical purists who turned their noses up at the instrument because they felt it was a hack. It acted as a cheat code, as people could play louder and embody emotion without themselves tapping into said emotion.
Blues musicians will no doubt have rolled their eyes at such a critique, and we as listeners with the power of hindsight know it didn’t get in the way of emotion but allowed musicians to heighten themselves instead. However, these criticisms don’t have an expiry date, as those same blues musicians who were rolling their eyes then also had choice words for the rockers who came about as a result of the blues. Buddy Guy in particular thought that a lot of rock musicians were playing too loudly, to the point that they can’t get their emotion out enough because the noise and distortion got in the way. He passed on this advice to Jimi Hendrix. Needless to say, Hendrix didn’t listen.
“Well, you know, after I met Jimi Hendrix… you’ll laugh, but I thought he used to play too loud,” said Guy. “When I first came up, Muddy Waters and those guys had two little speakers at each corner of the blues club, and it was a clean sound.”
He continued, “When the British guys started playing, they had stacks of Marshalls […] and when I got to know Jimi, I’d go see him and say, ‘Before you go in there, you ain’t gonna hear nothing’. That type of sound just took over.”
