Who is the the best AOR guitarist?

[Burble]

Staying within the original bounds of discussion, I'd say Neil Schon.

Depending on your definitions of "AOR" or "best", I'd introduce two hitherto unmentioned options:

Chris Hayes with Huey Lewis and the News was one of the best role-playing guitarists I can think of. When he soloed, it was always what was called for in the context of the tune, his tone was always 100% right-on, and he was never distracting in a way that implied he was better guitar player than the gig called for. Check the solo on "Sooner or Later". Again, in the context of the tune, a great solo that sits where it should. Same with "Heart and Soul" or "New Drug". You're not going to think, "Man! That guy has chops to burn", like Lukather or those guys, but what he played always fit the tune and his tone was great.

Mike Slamer with City Boy was kind of the same way, except he wasn't fitting the role of an AOR or singles-oriented band like Huey Lewis. I don't even know how you'd classify City Boy, but Slamer was a cool and tasty player. Check out the solos on "Dear Jean" - they're a lexicon of '70s guitar licks, but his sense of phrase and line are awesome. Plus, again, if you want to talk about tone, he had the sound in spades.

Again, neither of these guys are going to compete with Lukather or Schon in the shred category. but as far as guitarists in AOR bands that did the perfect job, they're my favorites.

[Scott Bails]

Using Burble's criteria, I would submit Elliot Easton from The Cars, as well.

[progholio]

Using Burble's criteria, I would submit Elliot Easton from The Cars, as well.

Agreed, i recently read an article where the writer posed the idea of imagining the Cars music without Easton. Good god can that guy craft a solo or what??

For further exploration i highly suggest Elliot Easton's Tiki Gods, If you're into Ennio Morricone, Martin Denny or Dick Dale re-imagined by Easton and a couple of Wondermints this is a no brainer.

[Jerjo]

The tasteful work of Mike Campbell with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers should not be overlooked.

[-=RTFR666=-]

Agreed, i recently read an article where the writer posed the idea of imagining the Cars music without Easton. Good god can that guy craft a solo or what??

For further exploration i highly suggest Elliot Easton's Tiki Gods, If you're into Ennio Morricone, Martin Denny, Dick Dale along with Easton and a couple of Wondermints this is a no brainer.

NICE! I will have to pick this one up...

[kayfabe58]

Brad Gillis (sp?)...not a fan of Night Ranger at all, but his solos(not so much the other speed demon they had) were always interesting for that kind of dreck

[GuitarGeek]

Brad Gillis (sp?)...not a fan of Night Ranger at all, but his solos(not so much the other speed demon they had) were always interesting

I think Brad Gillis (yes, that's the correctly spelling) was just about the only guy in any of those 80's hard rock bands who really did anything interesting with the whammy bar. Everyone else was just doing whammy bar divebombs and imitating Eddie, but Brad came up with quite a few tricks of his own that set him apart, like flicking the bar (his so called "cricket" sound) and using the bar to bend into notes and such. There's a particular lick he plays at the end of Touch Of Madness where he hits a harmonic and plays this whole phrase by bending the arm up and down. And he does something similar on the intro of When You Close Your Eyes (actually, he plays the same melodic phrase, I think three different ways, one of which is bending into the notes with the bar).

I remember reading that he actually came out with this trick that imitated the sound of a Ferrari, I think it was, but the other guys in the band wouldn't let him use it on any of the records, because it sounded too much like the intro of Montrose's Bad Motor Scooter.

Jeff Watson is the other guitarist (or was the other guitarist, until he got fired, apparently, a few years ago), and yeah, I was never that impressed with his solos. He was good, but as you say, a lot of it was "Look at me play like Al DiMeola!". If you listen to songs like Don't Tell Me You Love Me or (You Can Still) Rock In America, you can hear a good contrast of their playing styles. In both cases, you hear Brad solo first, playing a sweet melodic solo with all those cool whammy bar moves, then Jeff comes in with a whole bunch of 32nd notes. And of course, Rock In America had Jeff's eight fingered two handed tapping thing on it, which years later he insisted was "definitely the first time" that had been seen on MTV.

[aplodon]

If Shawn Lane counts, he should be high on the list.
He played with Black Oak Arkansas for a while.

What he did later, for example with Jonas Hellborg, is hardly AOR.

[GuitarGeek]

If Shawn Lane counts, he should be high on the list.
He played with Black Oak Arkansas for a while.

Did he actually play on any of their records? I know he played with them when he was a teenager, and supposedly BOA had been trying to recruit him for a couple years before he actually joined, but I've never been able to confirm that he played on any of their records. And I'm not interested in BOA overall enough to go and buy any of them to find out.

But do BOA really count as AOR? Did they get a lot of radio airplay? I don't ever remember hearing them on the radio.

[Jerjo]

They had one big AM radio hit back in the day: Jim Dandy. Their "epic" track, "Lord Have Mercy on My Soul" got some FM play. In the 70s they were one of those bands that would play any barn in the Midwest, whether supporting or headlining (like REO Speedwagon). I recall seeing them a couple times because there was someone else on the ticket I wanted to see. They could get a crowd revved up but their shtick never worked for me.

There were so many bands like that in the 70s, working that swath of the middle of the US between the Rockies and the Appalachians. Some broke out, like REO, but most couldn't get more than one or two songs to chart. As I recall I never head many of them on Canadian radio, probably because Canada had its own equivalent of working class hard rock bands playing smaller venues. That's where April Wine cut their teeth.

[JJ88]

'Jim Dandy' is the only BOA song I've ever knowingly heard in my life...same with 'Slow Ride' and Foghat.

Don't much care for the REO stuff in that vein...that 'meat and potatoes' guitars-before-the-tunes rock has never been my thing. I prefer the later hits...somewhat lyrically banal, yes, but I like the tunes.

[GuitarGeek]

The tasteful work of Mike Campbell with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers should not be overlooked.

Mike Campbell had one of the coolest guitars, actually a couple of the coolest guitars, specifically that red Telecaster with the humbuckers he's playing in the Refugee video, and also his Rickenbacker 625/12 prototype (the guitar Petty is holding on the cover of Damn The Torpedoes). I think Campbell said he bought the Rickenbacker from a guy who had an ad in the paper, for something like $200, and only years later, when they visited the Rickenbacker factory and he and Tom showed their guitars to the honchos there, that he found out the guitar's significance.

I always dug that spaghetti western guitar solo he does on You Got Lucky. In the video, he's miming it on a Gretsch, but I remember reading in Guitar Player that he used that same red Telecaster.

I remember reading a funny story about how he came up with the guitar riff on Breakdown. Apparently, originally the song had this long guitar solo, and he played that lick once or twice in the solo. And whoever it was Tom was hanging out with at the time, listened to the tape and said "That lick is the whole song, it shouldn't be just at the end". So Tom had to bring the back in the studio, and cook up an arrangement that centered around that riff, on the spot, and knock out it real quick.

Campbell co-wrote and played guitar on Don Henley's Boys Of Summer. I think I read that Mike had made a demo of the song as an instrumental, and Henley wrote a vocal melody and lyrics to it. They had to transpose the song down because it was in the wrong key for Henley's voice, so Mike had to re-record his guitar parts, and he said it was a pain in the ass trying to recreate the feel on the original demo.

[GuitarGeek]

'Jim Dandy' is the only BOA song I've ever knowingly heard in my life...

For a long time, that's the way it was for me, and I only remember hearing it in the 90's, when VH-1 was running a "70's flashback" show hosted by David Cassidy, and they played that song in one episode.

Much more recently, there was a documentary done about BOA that aired on VH-1 Classic, that had a few other songs in it, at least fragments, anyway. There wasn't much in anything I heard in either scenario to make me want to check them out (unlike, say The Outlaws or Skynyrd, both of whom I got into back in the 80's and 90's).

same with 'Slow Ride' and Foghat.

Believe it or not, Foghat were, for awhile at least, fixtures on MTV, in the early 80's. I think they actually aired a Foghat concert, and from that, they frequently aired a clip of Fool For The City, which was the first song I remember hearing from them. As I recall, Lonesome Dave was playing what looked to be a copy of one of Bo Diddley's rectangle guitars (which Dave Mustaine labeled as "ugly" on That Metal Show).

I also remember them showing a video for a song called Slipped Tripped (Fell In Love), or something like that, which played out as a murder mystery on a train, which I think might have been sort of a Hitchcock homage.

I don't ever remember hearing Slow Ride until way way later, when I started hearing it on classic rock radio.

Don't much care for the REO stuff in that vein...that 'meat and potatoes' guitars-before-the-tunes rock has never been my thing. I prefer the later hits...somewhat lyrically banal, yes, but I like the tunes.

It's not that the lyrics that are banal, so much as the ballad arrangements. The only thing that saved the band in that era was Richrath's guitar playing, and even that couldn't rescue the obnoxiously ubiquitous Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore. I much preferred the uptempo songs like Ridin' The Storm Out and I Do' Wanna Know.

[GuitarGeek]

There were so many bands like that in the 70s, working that swath of the middle of the US between the Rockies and the Appalachians. Some broke out, like REO, but most couldn't get more than one or two songs to chart. As I recall I never head many of them on Canadian radio, probably because Canada had its own equivalent of working class hard rock bands playing smaller venues. That's where April Wine cut their teeth.

My understanding was, to get airplay on Canadian radio, you basically have to be Canadian, also you have to record your record in Canada, as per the CanCon rules. I read one time one of Bryan Adams later records flopped in Canada, because it was recorded in LA or wherever, and thus it didn't meet the CanCon requirements, and hence didn't get the same kind of attention his earlier records (which I gather were actually recorded somewhere in Canada) had gotten on radio and Much Music, so there was a down turn in unit shifting.

Anyway, you mention April Wine. I never had any of their albums but I always liked their songs that MTV played. It's no secret I'm fond of If You See Kay, but I also like Enough Is Enough, Just Between You In Me (would you believe I heard that song in an appliance store a couple years ago?), Sign Of The Gypsy Queen, I Like To Rock, and there's a couple others I vaguely remember liking.

However, I Rock Myself To Sleep was a terrible song, no matter who sang it.

[JJ88]

There is an episode of the rather strange mid 70s 'history of music' series All You Need Is Love, which features Black Oak Arkansas as representatives of where popular music will be going!

As for the question, Neal Schon and Steve Lukather.

[pb2015]

Anyway, you mention April Wine. I never had any of their albums but I always liked their songs that MTV played. It's no secret I'm fond of If You See Kay, but I also like Enough Is Enough, Just Between You In Me (would you believe I heard that song in an appliance store a couple years ago?), Sign Of The Gypsy Queen, I Like To Rock, and there's a couple others I vaguely remember liking.

I listened to their 1972 album On Record with the hit "You Could Have Been A Lady" a few months ago. It's decent early 70's rock and has very weird Mellotron interludes between each song like something off an early Crimson album.

[mozo-pg]

Anyway, you mention April Wine. I never had any of their albums but I always liked their songs that MTV played. It's no secret I'm fond of If You See Kay, but I also like Enough Is Enough, Just Between You In Me (would you believe I heard that song in an appliance store a couple years ago?), Sign Of The Gypsy Queen, I Like To Rock, and there's a couple others I vaguely remember liking.

April Wine also does a decent cover of 21 Century Schizoid Man.

[proggosaurus]

I totally ignored Rik Emmett from that other Canadian trio Hold On, Lay It On The Line, Fight The Good Fight and Magic Power got a lot of airplay on AOR formatted radio stations in the US. he was definitely no slouch.

[GuitarGeek]

I totally ignored Rik Emmett from that other Canadian trio

No dude, Rush is the other Canadian trio. At least as far as I'm concerned.

The cool thing about Rik Emmett was that he played much more than just hard rock guitar. He had an acoustic guitar piece on each album, he had that sort of jazz/blues thing, Suitcase Blues, on Just A Game. He was really a much more well rounded player than most rock guitarists at that time.

If I remember correctly, he was also in charge of designing all of Triumph's albums covers, too.

[proggosaurus]

No dude, Rush is the other Canadian trio. At least as far as I'm concerned.

yeah, me too actually. I love the acoustic pieces on Triumph's albums. Ten Invitations From the Mistress of Mr. E is a fantastic acoustic album from Rik. it's hard to find at a decent price now though. I highly recommend Liberty Manifesto (2007) from Airtime (Rik and Mike Shotton) too. Liberty and Edge Of Your Mind

[GuitarGeek]

yeah, me too actually. I love the acoustic pieces on Triumph's albums. Ten Invitations From the Mistress of Mr. E is a fantastic acoustic album from Rik. it's hard to find at a decent price now though. I highly recommend Liberty Manifesto (2009) from Airtime (Rik and Mike Shotton) too. Liberty and Edge Of Your Mind

Yeah, I've never heard his solo albums, but I saw him in concert about 10 years ago. It was just him and another guitarist, and they played stuff off his solo records, along with a few things off the Triumph records. He also told some great stories between the songs. At one point, he was talking of how poorly opening bands get treated by audiences sometimes, and he tells of a show in Chicago, at the Aragon Ballroom, I think he said it was, when April Wine (who were opening for Triumph) got pelted by plastic cups from the audience. Rik's like, "And they didn't deserve it, they're a really good band!".

[klothos]

Besides anybody that played in Steely Dan on guitar or bass:

I preferred Barry Goudreau over Tom Scholz......

We consider Kansas prog but they were definitely an AOR staple back in da day so a vote for Kerry Livgren

Gary Richrath wasn't flashy or speedy but he had some very unusual, interesting, and very progressive phrasing in his soloing if one takes the time to analyze it

^Ditto with Elliot Easton

For AOR Country-Rock, I really like Russell Smith of Amazing Rhythm Aces

A guy I never ever hear named that I thought was a fantastic blues-rock player is Pete Haycock from Climax Blues Band

Andy Scott of Sweet and Joe Perry of Aerosmith are similar in the fact that they both go up-n-down in extremes from Absolute Brilliance to Juvenile "WTF?" noodling back to Absolute Brilliance back to juvenile noodling all through the course of one solo

Styx James JT Young was, to me, the better soloist in Styx. For example, his solo in "Renegade" was certainly a departure from the average fare of 1977 including hard trem dive-bombs before the era of locking tuners


BTW, my fave AOR bass players were:

Bob Daisley
Andy Frasier of Free
Paul Goddard of Atlanta Rhythm Section
George Mcardle of Little River Band
Leon Medica of Louisiana LeRoux
both Tom Sholz and Fran Sheehan - both played very similarly on Boston's albums with Sholz handling almost all the bass work on the first album
ELO's Kelly Groucutt ( great player - horrible tone)
John Deacon ( one of the few players I liked fundamental tone. Phatter than Groucutt's....However, I listened to a lot of his Isolated bass tracks on Youtube and many are Godawful by themselves, which was kind of a surprise)



---That is all --- I have spoken----

[proggosaurus]

^^Rik is a cool dude for sure! although I wasn't there, I remember hearing talk of Triumph's legendary performance at the 1983 US Festival back in the day. thankfully, it was finally released and I'll say this. they sure as hell weren't gonna be denied on that day!

[GuitarGeek]

I preferred Barry Goudreau over Tom Scholz......

I have to say, my favorite solos on those first two Boston albums (ie the intro and ending of Don't Look Back itself, Used To Bad News, and Long Time) are known to have been played by Goudreau. If the testimony of Fran Sheehan (I think) is to be believed, Scholz actually copped his playing style from Goudreau. I remember someone telling me he could always tell the difference between the two, even before it became publicly known who played what, because Goudreau's solo sound more natural, almost like something that was played spontaneously, while Scholz always sounded a bit forced and stiff, like he spent too much time thinking about them (which is actually probably true, so much as Scholz spent too much time thinking about every single note on the Boston records).

Mind you, if you listen to the RTZ and Orion records, or even Barry's solo record, his playing sounds really different from what you hear on the first couple Boston records.

^Ditto with Elliot Easton

I still think Since You've Gone has one of the most amazing guitar solos. One string, no picking, and no E-bow.

Andy Scott of Sweet and Joe Perry of Aerosmith are similar in the fact that they both go up-n-down in extremes from Absolute Brilliance to Juvenile "WTF?" noodling back to Absolute Brilliance back to juvenile noodling all through the course of one solo

Examples, in the case of Perry, please? I thought his playing on all the 70's era Aerosmith records was fantastic. Of course, we now know that solo on Train Kept A-Rollin' isn't actually him, but in general his playing on a lot of those records is fantastic.

But my favorite Aerosmith guitar solo, on the song You See Me Crying, was played by Brad Whitford. I believe that's Whitford playing lead on Kings And Queens, also.

John Deacon ( one of the few players I liked fundamental tone. Phatter than Groucutt's....However, I listened to a lot of his Isolated bass tracks on Youtube and many are Godawful by themselves, which was kind of a surprise)

Soloing Deacon's bass tracks strikes me as being pretty redundant. You can tell just from listen to the records he's not doing anything that's going to be interesting to listen to on it's own. Thunderfingers, he wasn't. But sometimes that's what you need. Not every bassist needs to out-Ox The Ox, know wot I mean?






---That is all --- I have spoken----[/QUOTE]

[GuitarGeek]

^^Rik is a cool dude for sure! although I wasn't there, I remember hearing talk of Triumph's legendary performance at the 1983 US Festival back in the day. thankfully, it was finally released and I'll say this. they sure as hell weren't gonna be denied on that day!

Ya know, I remember renting that video from the local videostore (I think it was an Erol's at that point, before they got bought by another company, can't remember if that would have been Blockbuster, or if there was a intermediate company...but anyway). I ended up hooking up two VCR's and dubbing a copy, which I watched again and again and again, largely to see Rik playing that Ibanez doubleneck on Magic Power and Never Surrender.

The thing that always bugged me, though, was when you first see them go onstage, you can see Rik has that red Dean Z (or whatever that model was called), that he's seen playing later on When The Lights Go Down. But after Steve Wozniak introduces the band, and they launch into, I think Allied Forces is the first song on the video, he's playing his old Framus Akkerman. Forever, I wondered what the deal was, if they left out a song, or if When The Lights Go Down wasn't actually the opening song.

I think around the time DVD came out, someone on whichever service mentioned that the set actually opened with Too Much Thinking, which made sense, because I remember him being interviewed in Guitar Player where he said he got the red Dean to play that song and When The Lights Go Down onstage, because he used the whammy bar on those two solos (played on a guitar with a non-locking tremolo, so he needed something that would stay in tune onstage, hence the Kahler equipped Dean). Course, we still don't know why Too Much Thinking was left off. Always thought that was a cool song (did a great segue between that and Rocka Rolla by Judas Priest on my radio show).

Speaking of Dean guitars, I remember Dean Zelinsky being interviewed back in the 90's, around the time his original guitars (the ones from the 70's and early 80's, with the inverted V headstocks) became a hot commodity after Dimebag started playing them. Anyway, he was asked if there were any guitars he wished he had kept, and the two he named were guitars he gave to two guys who are mentioned in this thread:

1. He made a custom left handed Flying V for Elliot Easton, with gold hardware just everywhere you could have gold hardware, he even put gold strings on it. So he gives it to Easton, and apparently the first show Easton played it, he got upset about something and smashed the guitar. Dean said, "If I had known he was going to do that, I wouldn't have given it to him".

2. What Dean called the one and only true Dean doubleneck. He gave it to Rik Emmett, who then sent him a letter saying it was a nice guitar, but he would never use it, because he had just signed an endorsement deal with Yamaha, who were building him a custom doubleneck (which is the guitar he's playing on the cover of Guitar Player, whichever issue it was in 85, I think, that he was on the cover). Apparently, Dean wanted the guitar back and Rik refused. I kinda asked Rik about that when I saw him play, and he said something, "I don't think it's right to give someone a guitar, then ask for it back", which I suppose was a fair point.