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Chapter 13: Blues Rock: The Infusion of Ol’ Rock ’n’ Roll
Heavy “Blooze”: The Infusion
of Hard Rock
Beginning in 1968, blues rock took a huge leap forward with the arrival of
early hard rock and metal bands like the Jeff Beck Group, Led Zeppelin, Deep
Purple, Black Sabbath, Ten Years After, Grand Funk Railroad, and Mountain.
Within a few years, hard rock guitarists in both the United States and the
United Kingdom were turning vintage blues licks into liquid metal with
screaming string bends, power chords, and heavy distortion from their
stacks of high-wattage tube amps.
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In this section, I cover the hard rock blues guitar greats: Jimmy Page, Leslie
West, and Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple.
Jimmy Page, frontrunner of the metal blues
The quintessential group from this heavy era was Led Zeppelin, led by ex-
Yardbirds guitarist Jimmy Page. A former London session guitarist, Page was
a jack of all trades: He played everything from speedy blues-box leads (“Good
Times, Bad Times”), country- and rockabilly-inspired breaks (“The Song
Remains the Same”), bottleneck slides (“You Shook Me”), and excellent
acoustic fingerstyles (“Bron-Yr-Aur”). The melodic jazz-pop of ’50s guitarist
Les Paul was also a major influence.
Page’s finest blues playing, however, may be on the epic minor key ballad
“Since I’ve Been Loving You” from Led Zeppelin III, a masterful mix of soulstirring
bends and heavy metal pyrotechnics. Later, Page’s playing moved
in a more progressive direction (with sophisticated studio-production
techniques — including an evolved use of effects — and a grand, orchestral
arranging approach to guitar-based rock), but his guitar work on the first four
Led Zeppelin albums was lovingly steeped in the electric-blues tradition.
Figure 13-4 shows how Page took the minor pentatonic scale and revved it up
to overdrive. To emulate Page’s playing, play largely in the minor pentatonic
scale, give your guitar plenty of amp distortion (more on that in Chapter 15),
don a Les Paul, bend with soul, and apply some tasty studio manipulation to
your recorded sound.
TEAM LinG