Entertainment For Lively Minds
One's too many, and a hundred ain't enough...
Posted by skirky on 11 April 2009 - 1:27pm.
Playing a gig last night the promoter, who doubles up as an occasional roadie, mentions that Snow Patrol hired Wembley Arena for a week-long fine-tuning prior to going out on tour and that he counted in twenty nine guitars. Sweet Jesus - twenty nine? They've only got two songs! What's the appropriate number of guitars to take onstage? I must confess I sometimes take a spare, but y'know strings ocasionally break. Obviously if you're Rick Nielsen than just the one, but with all the variations you might need built in will do.
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Jimmy Page
I saw the Unledded Tour with Jimmy Page / Robert Plant. I counted something like 12-15 guitars played by Pagey in the space of 2 hours (including various different Les Paul models). Needless to say the total number of guitar necks exceeded this count by some way.
His guitar tech earned his money that night...
John Fogerty
Glastonbury 2007.
Great, great show, but I swear he changed his guitar for every single song he played.
Aerosmith in 76, too
A different vintage Les Paul every song - who would take that many hard-to-insure instruments on the road now ?
RT
always seems to have just the one.
RT
He uses just one when he plays acoustic. I remember seeing him at the Fleadh a few years ago; when he broke a string he led an audience call-and-response of Twist and Shout as he changed and tuned the new string (all in about 2 minutes). Very impressive!
Electric, he has been playing a Ferrington, with a Strat for a few songs. I'm not a guitarist or gear-head, but those who are might find this page from RT's website enlightening: http://www.richardthompson-music.com/gearandtunings.asp
RT - Twisting & Shouting
Yes, I saw him do the same thing (with the same song) at a festival in the late '80s. It was incredibly impressive. I'm sure he didn't break the string deliberately, but with a crowd-pleasing ace up your sleeve like the call and response 'T&S' you could hardly blame him if he actually built it into his act...
Jackson Browne
On the Solo Acoustic tour a few years back he had 14 guitars on stage with him.
It could be a real pain in the neck. He finished one song got up, went to the rack, selected another guitar, returned to his seat, someone shouted a request, he agreed to do it, got up, went to the rack...
Edit: Forgot to say that guitar excess isn't stopping us going to see Jackson tomorrow night.
Jackson, Royal Albert Hall, April 12th
Jackson had a band this time and he limited his guitar use. I wasn't really paying too much attention to guitar changes (probably no more than 2 acoustics and 2 electrics) because I was engrossed with the gig.
I went with low expectations, partly because of our seat location at the back of the circle and partly because I anticipated a performance going through the motions.
How wrong I was. He was superb. Old songs, old songs rearranged (the new Doctor My Eyes, never my favourite JB song, is brilliant) and new songs together with a great band. His two backing singers Alethea and Chavonne were given a lot more to do than provide harmonies and a few oohs and aahs.
I know some years ago the RAH did a lot of work on the acoustics. The last time I had a seat so far back was about 20 years ago and the sound was abysmal. We risked it this time because MrsP is a huge JB fan, we found out about the gig late and the extra date hadn't been announced. I won't say the sound was perfect, but it was more than acceptable. So good on them.
Jackon Browne II
I saw him a few weeks ago and you are spot on. Like you I went with no great expectations and was stunned by the re-working of his old material - esp. Doctor My Eyes & Lives In the Balance. The new songs seemed to work better live than on the last album too.
Oddly - are we leading parallel lives? - I saw him in a recently re-furbished, although much less grand, venue - the Ulster Hall in Belfast now basking in a £9M re-fit. No noticeable improvement in the acoustics but they did have a nice new floor.
Stephen Stills 2008 solo gigs ... terrible show ... and ...
after every song he stepped back from the mic and took a little bow, while a roadie shuffled on and plugged in a new guitar. After every single song! I'm guessing there must have been about twenty in the wings, although I don't think I ever saw more than one onstage at any one time ... so there may just have been two. Anyway ...
You're right about the Jackson Browne solo tour Carl. And he rather sheepishly told a story on that tour about being outraged at the rock star excess when he first met Stephen Stills around 1970 and realised he had a separate trailer just to carry his tour guitars.
On Friday...
...I saw a band at a local club. There must have been about 15 people watching them, and their local profile is slightly above nil. All this obscurity didn't stop them having a rack (yep, a great big rack) of guitars to the side of the stage, with about eight guitars neatly laid out. During the mercifully brief gig the two guitarists constantly swapped guitars, to the bemusement of those there.
I've seen a lot of bands recently where they obviously have far more money than talent.
I stand corrected
We did another gig over the weekend and our bass player pointed out that it was thirty seven, not twenty nine.
Having said that, a friend and I did once form a band purely so that we could put every single guitar, bass, mandolin and bouzouki we owned on stands at the back of the stage. We were called The Perfectly Good Guitars, a seven-piece, and even then I think we only got up to about eleven.
Robert Cray..
..seemed to change to a different (but exactly the same sounding) Strat for every song when I saw him last (before I nodded off, that is)
During the late '70s, Pete Townshend
used a series of 9 almost-matching Les Paul Deluxes (Deluces?), each of which was numbered with a big white Letraset numeral on the body.
http://www.thewho.net/whotabs/lpdeluxe.htm
They should do what Nick Harper does......
and change the broken string whilst still playing on!! See at 2 mins 30 secs in.
I've nodded off at a Robert Cray gig too
He has some good cd's and has written some great songs but he has no stage presence whatsoever and performs his songs exactly as they are on cd.
Costello changes his guitar more frequently than his limited ability as a guitarist warrants.
Girls Aloud
They seem to manage without any at all. Arf arf.
I seem to remember there's several guitars onstage
at a Girls Aloud show. The musicians play them :-)