The three guitarists Dave Grohl insists “people had their asses blown out by”
There are several parts of the 1960s that will never come back. Most for a very good reason, but some that make you understand why so many people hold that decade as the pinnacle of pop culture and, in some minds, human civilisation in general. While he may be more associated with the stadium-slaying hard rock post the 1970s, Dave Grohl might just be one of those people.
Grohl may have come up through the Washington, DC hardcore scene, but he’s always been a classicist at heart. He’s a man who may have gotten his start in a scene that was progressive to the point of radicalism. However, at heart, he’s someone who’s learnt pop music via playing through a Beatles songbook, and that fascination with the 1960s never left him.
One can understand where he’s coming from. The ’60s are a time so profoundly separated from today that it can often feel like looking at an alternative past from a speculative fiction book. After all, the period’s proof of the strange fact that, once upon a time, a blues guitarist could have the kind of pop clout that an in-demand producer has today.
The blues didn’t exist in the mothballed, museum-piece niche it exists in today; it was pop music with a capital P. People worshipped blues players the way they worship Metro Boomin, 9lives or Jack Antonoff today, but, as Grohl points out, it was a small, brief part of history. After all, if we think about that time and the rapid pace at which trends pass today, the 1960s give today a run for its money.
How did Dave Grohl illustrate those changing times?
Dave Grohl illustrated this in a piece he wrote for Rolling Stone celebrating one of his genuine musical heroes. One who came to define the thunderous rock scene of the 1970s, but who showed better than anyone else how that scene was built on what everyone had learned in the 1960s. In this, Grohl names three of that decade’s icons, claiming that someone learned from them and did it better.
He says, “People had their asses blown out by [Jimi] Hendrix and Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, but Page took it to a whole new level, and he did it in such a beautifully human and imperfect way. He plays the guitar like an old bluesman on acid.”
I think my favourite part of that whole quote is how typically Dave Grohl it all is. What else do you call making a very salient, in-depth point about the history of pop music while also talking about people having “their asses blown out”. Classic Dave.
He is right, though. Hendrix, in particular, was the catalyst for blues music being twinned with psychedelic music and the sounds of modern pop. Releasing it from the bounds of the traditional 12-bar, he simultaneously made it more expressive and accessible. Jimmy Page and his work with Led Zeppelin was the progression of that, where he took the lessons laid down by Hendrix and put them to work in stadiums.
So, in a way, you could think of what happened in the 1960s as never happening again. No one is going to care about blues guitarists as much as they did in those days. Perhaps if you look a little deeper, you’ll see the truth of the matter, though. That music is progressing just as quickly and just as excitingly as it did back then, and if you keep an eye on the evolution of modern music, you’ll find something that will hit you just as hard as anything made by those guitar legends.
