New Moon Edition March 2024
Some questions will never be resolved. Before he passed away, Chuck E. Weiss and I had one of those discussions. We had known each other since we were little kids. I’d watched him over the years become a legend in the neighborhood, then all over town, and finally a force to be reckoned with in La-La land itself. Through it all, he was the same amazing character with an unshakeable sense of himself.
Among many other things, Chuck knew music. He loved it, lived it, played it, taught it, and eventually made a career hosting it at The Viper Room with partner Johnny Depp. When cancer struck him several years ago, he told me several different organs were affected. “I got the boxed set,” he said.
Our conversation veered off into guitar players. Who was the best? One of those asks for which there’s no answer. People usually start off with Hendrix and move on from there to all the other contenders to the throne. Chuck and I both mentioned Jeff Beck. “Hendrix went to London to learn what he could from Beck,” Chuck said. “That’s a great story. Never heard it before,” I said. “I don’t know if it’s true, but I always thought so,” he said. “Still a great story,” said I. “Yeah, I guess it is,” he said and let go with that deep, rumbling laugh of his. Sadly it was the last time we ever spoke, but I’ll always remember the sound of his laughter.
Many years ago, Keith Richards was asked, “Who are the great guitar players out there today?” “I don’t know their names,” he said, “but they’re all fifteen years old.” When Eric Clapton was asked how it felt to be the greatest, he said, “Go ask Prince.” Bob Dylan said Mike Bloomfield was the best he ever heard. That’s a measure of how impossible it is to resolve the question.
And that’s just talking rock guitar. There are many dozens of jazz guitarists who might show them all a thing or two. I never heard of Billy Strings until a few years back. Same with Tommy Emmanuel. They are monster players. We could mention hundreds more who deserve consideration. Maybe if there’s no answer, the better question is: who cares? We can just give thanks for all the great talent that comes our way.
Songwriting is another matter. There are so many great players but not nearly as many great singer-songwriters. Frank Sinatra never wrote a song. Neither did Tony Bennett. They got hold of the great tunes from Tin Pan Alley and made them theirs. That began to change when rock ‘n’ roll came along. Elvis never wrote a song, but Smokey Robinson did. And Sam Cooke, and Buddy Holly, and maybe the greatest of them all was Chuck Berry. But it really began to change in the Sixties.
Bob Dylan heads any list of the great ones. He was one of the principal forces that moved the art out of the Brill Building and established the role of the highly successful singer-songwriter. Brian Wilson was among the very greatest of them all. The Beatles, of course, and many others that made up the British Invasion got the suits to sit up and take notice. Then came the explosion of creativity in the latter half of the decade and into the Seventies. Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Marvin Gaye, Carole King, herself a refugee from the Brill Building, Curtis Mayfield, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Prince, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley and Glenn Frye, Tom Waits, and the lady who immortalized Chuck E. in song, the extraordinary Rickie Lee Jones.
There are dozens more I’ve failed to mention, including Willie and Waylon and the boys, and the generations of country, rock, jazz and folk singer-songwriters who followed them. And, too, so many great ones back in the day who garnered a lot of respect if not the huge financial success of those mentioned here – Townes Van Zandt, John Hiatt, Jackson Browne, Fred Neil, and John Prine immediately come to mind. The point is that when those artists were writing and performing their music, they gained greater control of their creative process because they were making the suits a pile of money. The music they made was so brilliant, innovative, and creative we still call it the Classic Era of Rock Music. It was, and is, simply beautiful.