The Rolling Stones and Philosophy_ It's Just a Thought Away - Luke Dick [66]
Anyone who has played in a serious band, a band that has enjoyed at least some real power to draw in the people, knows that you might have a trillion hot licks, but no one wants to listen to that for more than about two minutes. What every lead player and lead singer has to have is a promethean lightning rod in the band, a point of origin in the rhythm section. For The Stones, that is and always was Keith. He’s the one who kidnaps the silence itself, with his leathery sneak attack and then herds it around at his whim. You think you can handle a date with that? If not, stay well out of his range. The whip is long and the lightning rod is very stiff, and he’ll keep you up for six days straight.
Maestro Tempo and Mr. Groove
But even Keith has to bend a knee at the right altar to receive the energy. He exists way beyond you, but he isn’t a god. It’s one thing to discover the grooves, and another thing to be able to call them up again, on demand. The power to recall a groove isn’t that rare—every good bar band has one or two members who can do as much. Sometimes it’s the drummer or the bass player, but commonly it’s the rhythm guitar player (and quite often he is also a singer). Watch next time you go to a bar. The “grooves guy” will be the one who starts most of the songs, whether with a count, or an intro lick, or even just a nod of the head. This is “finding” a groove again, not technically discovering it. From rehearsal, and huge repetition, the groove is already down inside his body. He doesn’t have to call it down from the air; he pulls it back up from the ground and re-connects it to its source.
Before the song starts, you will see one guy get still, for just a second; maybe he’ll look up, or look down, or close his eyes; then he will start moving his foot, or bob his head, or he might wave his pick above the strings in a rhythmic pattern. When the groove has made its way from the edges of his body to the center, has planted itself in the center as a pulse, and has worked its way back out to his extremities, he will move, as one unified being, into that groove. He will become the groove. All this only takes a second. That is how it happens, and this part isn’t too much different in a rock band than for the conductor of a symphony orchestra or the leader of a jazz band, or even a church choir director.
There is a difference, though. Whereas the conductor or choir director is finding the tempo from a full range of interpretive possibilities, and that initial tempo will then flow into and out of regular bends and eddies, the rock guitarist is just looking for the groove, which is an uneducated, hard-drinking, poor relation of tempo, who lives in a trailer across the tracks and wants to boink your underage daughter. Grooves are built on raw repetition in a way that tempos are not. The altogether “proper” determination of a tempo ought to consider how the music will sound. So Maestro Tempo treats Miss Sound like a lady, asks her for a proper date, spends some serious bucks on her, chats her up and listens to her titter and gossip, offers her the best wine, hopes for a peck on the cheek at the end of the night. Nobody gets hurt. Herman’s Hermits are looking for a tempo, and they’ll walk you to the door when they’re done with the song and tell Mrs. Brown’s daughter what a lovely time they had.
But Mr. Groove operates independently of how things sound. Sounds are a dime a dozen, and they’ll need to go to their knees if they want a ride on the wild horses. Mr. Groove has had plenty of sounds in his paws, and he isn’t easily impressed and never tamed, even when he decides to be gentle. In rock music, Mademoiselle Sound must conform to what Mr. Groove wants, and what he needs, to make it all feel good, and said Sound need not be, ought not be, clean or pristine. It’s better if she’s been around the block a time or two and has an attitude about it. Groove