Wow! This is a big one and no mistake. A bit like the Desert Islands Discs again.
One of my favourite guitarists of all time is Richard Thompson. He's just not scared at all. I've been watching the darkness and basking in the sunshine of his guitar playing for thirty years and I don't think I've ever seen him repeat himself in all that time. How's about the live Tear Stained Letter from the Watching The Dark boxset? How can you get more out of a plank of wood than that? How's about the live Calvary Cross from Guitar Vocal? How's about the time he burned the speaker out in my brand new Randall amp in California? Smokin', literally! I love his electric playing and I love his acoustic playing too. But what a songwriter too!
Sir Martin Carthy is also a hero for me. I've been watching him for over thirty years and I still can't figure out what the hell he's doing. Sheer genius. There's no one plays the guitar like Sir Martin. Especially on the electric, where he's a hooligan!
Dan Ar Braz is wonderful in the freedom of his playing, again on electric or acoustic. I've been very lucky to have recorded six albums with Dan and he blows me away all the time. I feel very privileged to count him as a friend and Jan and I will be visiting him in Brittany next month.
Django Reinhardt still takes my breath away, some 70 years after his best recordings. My dad was seven then! He inspires me every day and I even got to play in a Django band for a while back in the seventies. Timeless. His electric playing is not so great though
Nic Jones was another acoustic guitar hero. I went to see him at the MSG in Manchester (no, not MonoSodium Glutamate, but the Manchester Sports Guild club, where incidentally I also saw Sir Martin for the first time) and I went to get his autograph. He was so nice to me. I was about 15 and cheeky. He took all the time he had between his first and second sets to talk me through his tunings, even giving me chord diagrams, telling me what books of folksongs to check out and gave me his phone number so that I could ask him anything I wanted at any time. I was too shy to use it though and I was devastated when he had his accident. Hero.
I met Ike Isaacs whose name maybe some of the older members of the board will recognise. Ike played with George Shearing back when I was still in nappies and after a long session career became the other guitarist with Diz Disley in Stephane Grappelli's comeback in the 70s. The first issue of Guitar magazine about 1973 or 74 featured one of his solo guitar pieces. I tracked down the volume of these and arranged them for string quartet while I was at music college in Huddersfield. Soon after he was in town with Stephane and I went to get the autograph. I presented him with my score of his pieces. He seemed knocked out and invited me to London for a weekend when he was playing at the Festival Hall with Stephane. I stayed with him in Wembley and he seemed like a long lost uncle.The day of the gig he got all these old guitars out. A Gibson L5, a Stromboli and an old Epiphone maybe. Details are hazy here, but I remember Derek Bailey came round to saw a hole in an old Gibson in order to put a Charlie Christian pickup in it. Anyway, Ike asked me which guitar sounded best that day. I can't remember which it was but he said, "Yes, I agree", and that was the guitar he used on the gig! What a gent. He went to live in Australia where he died. What a nice man.
I love Robert Fripp. I think he must have a brain the size of a planet. He's always new and greatly underrated. I like Adrian Belew too, and whatever happened to Allan Holdsworth?
Jimi Hendrix, Keef Richards, Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page, David Rhodes, Jerry Donahue, Ritchie Blackmore in the early days, George Harrison, Martin Barre, Ralph McTell, Dave Gilmour, Simon Nicol, Michael Landau, Paul Harwood (yet to be discovered, from Shrewsbury - fabulous fingerstyle soloist!), BB King, David Grisman, Doc Watson, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Johnny Marr, Bert Jansch, Eric Stewart, Kevin Dempsey, Kieran Halpin (who has a similar right arm technique to Keith Moon!), Bucky Pizzarelli, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Mark Bodell, Mark Kelly (Altan), Jerry Douglas, Martin Taylor, PJ Wright and all my other favourites I've missed out...
Bassists:
Rod Clements, Dave Pegg, Jeff Berlin, Sir Danny Thompson, Alan Thomson, Pat Donaldson, Miranda Sykes, Niels Henning Orsted Pederson, Jimmy Johnson, Lee Sklar, John Entwistle, Mick Bennion, Jim Lee (Slade), Overend Watts, Sir Tony Levin, Sir Pete Zorn and sometimes the things that come out of my own bass are pretty good too (I had some great teachers).
Basically, if they turn you on, they have the magic and that's who you should be listening to!
Maart
