Help on Rust Never Sleeps/Rockin' in the Free World sound

I won't rise to the bait, instead I'll recount a little story that's kind of on-topic.

A few months ago I had the day off work and decided to drop into my local guitar store for a cup of tea and a spot of guitar viewery. I got chatting to a guy of a similar age to me (early 50's) and we discussed some of our favourite guitarists. I don't remember his but I mentioned that I really like Neil Young. Anyway, the conversation turned to our respective guitar styles, his main thing was to learn songs perfectly, note-for-note and all that, in stark contrast to my good self as I've never learned anyone else's songs in my life and if I ever play one I don't give a crap if I get it note-for-note. Much the same as if I was an artist, I wouldn't be interested in copying another artist's work. Anyway, the other guy gives me a withering look bordering on contempt and says "Well I can see why you like Neil Young then."

And that, for several reasons, made me feel very happy. :mrgreen
 
PERFECT! I too don't give a rat's ass about slavishly copying other people's stuff note-for-note; I wanna create something NEW, something that sounds like ME and gives me satisfaction. Some musicians see me as lazy, or a dilettante, though I did develop a lot of technique before a spinal injury took a lot of it away. The artists I admire surprise me, because they don't sound like anyone else. Some of them DID slavishly learn things - Frank Zappa studying Lightning Hopkins, for example. Others come to mind that didn't. For example: Chris Whitley who purposely made himself 'ignorant' of the 'proper' way to play guitar - and invented a zillion new tunings and his own vocabulary.

You can walk into any guitar store these days and here a 15 year old play stuff that is probably technically beyond what ANY guitarist was doing in 1969 - but are they WRITING anything good, or just shredding away blizzards of empty notes? Technique is great, but it's still overrated. You can be a great artist with severely limited technique (Howlin' Wolf, Jean Michel Basquiat), but you can have all the technique in the world and still be artistically crippled (Segovia comes to mind, as does Misha Dichter: they are technically impeccable,and their playing has never sung to me the way Julian Bream's or Helen Grimaud's have).

Coldsummer said:
I won't rise to the bait, instead I'll recount a little story that's kind of on-topic.

A few months ago I had the day off work and decided to drop into my local guitar store for a cup of tea and a spot of guitar viewery. I got chatting to a guy of a similar age to me (early 50's) and we discussed some of our favourite guitarists. I don't remember his but I mentioned that I really like Neil Young. Anyway, the conversation turned to our respective guitar styles, his main thing was to learn songs perfectly, note-for-note and all that, in stark contrast to my good self as I've never learned anyone else's songs in my life and if I ever play one I don't give a crap if I get it note-for-note. Much the same as if I was an artist, I wouldn't be interested in copying another artist's work. Anyway, the other guy gives me a withering look bordering on contempt and says "Well I can see why you like Neil Young then."

And that, for several reasons, made me feel very happy. :mrgreen
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Been on two threads today that started innocently enough and then devolved into value judgments. I never asked anyone's opinion of Neil Young's playing, I asked for help in getting closer to his tone. It is amazing how the internet brings out the critic and troll in everyone (me included, at times, alas). It seems like no post, no matter how bland or simple can escape the need for folks to criticize and pass judgment.

This forum gives me hope - so many people like Yek and Cobbler and many others helping each other out. But sometimes it also reinforces my own misanthropic tendencies too, when people feel obliged to chime in with their value judgments.
 
plyall said:
Boy - I'll probably start (another) flame war here - albeit without meaning to - I'm a child of the 60's rock era, and Neil was a pivotal part of that. However, there are two artists that I go out of my way to avoid listening to for ACADEMIC reasons: Neil Young and Jimmy Vaughn. I am actually afraid that if I listen to these gents that I may pick up some of their characteristics/stylings subconsciously. I find that Neil is the owner of the one-note-solo realm, and that Jimmy Vaughn is so simple that it's hard to believe that he's taking it seriously. I think both of them should be collared by the 'tone police'. At least Jimmy seems to bend and intonate his notes properly. These guys both remind me of the old Playboy music polls, where Eric Clapton always won best guitarist (did Neil also win?), Billy Preston won best keyboard player, etc. simply because of name recognition and the low musical IQ of the general readership. Oddly (to me), John Lennon and others loved him. Go figure. Could he sing? With CSNY certainly! With his solo work I tend to hear an imaginary Randy Jackson in my head going "it's pretty pitchy". Could he play? Well 'Harvest' and other albums showed that he was FUNCTIONAL on an acoustic. So was Cobain, sort of, but that's a separate can-o-worms. I guess the thing that surprises me most is that here, in this forum, where we have a majority of truly gifted guitar players, and some out-and-out guitar gods, why would Neil be singled out as someone to emulate/model/copy/tonally clone/be an inspiration/etc. ? As if it's not already obvious, I don't get it.
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It's funny that as I read this I'm sitting in a coffee shop and what they had on at the moment was a Fabulous Thunderbirds tune from the Jimmy Vaughan era. I'm one of those people who love both Neil and Jimmy Vaughan (though I liked Jimmy more with the Tbirds than with his own thing). I also love much more technical players, but in many cases in both rock and blues many players lack what's great about Neil and Jimmy. In Jimmy's case, it's the space and the pocket. I heard SRV and the Thunderbirds both several times (grew up in Texas, too). If I wanted to be wowed with blues guitar virtuosity (as well as speedy repetition of a lot of the same licks) I'd go hear SRV. If I wanted to dance, have a great night with a girlfriend/date and feel completely grooved to the bone, Tbirds all the way and Jimmy Vaughan is a big part of that. He's just a fantastic rhythm player. I love Neil, too. Great songwriter, his singing doesn't bother me and I absolutely love his guitar playing when he decided to rock out. He brings what is an essential element of some of the best guitar rock, controlled chaos. He's hanging on the edge with a rig that is barely contained (and sometimes not) from howling with out of control feedback. There's a huge sense of primal energy and there's also fantastic groove in the interact between he and Crazy Horse. A bunch of years ago I went to a Horde festival with a bunch of band I had heard a little of or not much but was interested in. Primus, Beck, Morphine, Ben Folds Five, Aquarium Rescue Unit, Big Head Todd, Leftover Salmon and lastly Neil (Medeski, Martin and Wood were supposed to play which was the other band I knew and wanted to hear). It was just astounding how much better Neil was than every other band by a huge factor. It's hard to explain what is so great about Neil's electric sound, but it's related to live Hendrix, emotive and visceral much more than intellectual. I get that Neil isn't for everybody, but he's definitely for me. Not all the time, but sometimes it's as good as anything.
 
I tend to think of Young's tone as requiring a lot of volume, along with playing with a lot of energy and abandonment. Might be where going old school into a real amp vs. the Axe FX becomes the better approach. I think I've dialed up something similar using the various tweed models in the Axe and my '59 Les Paul Special (has a great P90 in the bridge) at times.. but I usually ball park these types of things and roll, so likely not all that accurate. Main thing is volume.. I still struggle with playing at lowish volumes, although it's required these days. I really like the tone and use of Echoplex in the soundtrack work he did for the "Dead Man" movie.. I tend to go for that sound sometimes using my Strat, of all things. I think I tend to use the Swart amp for that, if I remember correctly.
 
Woooooooooooooooooo Hooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!

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Not enough mayhem here either. But thanks.

I am looking for his lead sound. he steps on the pedal and his device twiddles the knobs on his amp and the damn thing sounds like it's gonna explode - that's what I am looking for. I should have been more specific - it's the lead sound I am reaching for.
Womac911 said:
Hope this helps determine what is actually going on here with Rockin in the Free World. Tons of ratty breakup.


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funny_polymath said:
Not enough mayhem. The sound he gets is like an amp in its last moments, melting down. But thanks!
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Like in the lead sound in Hey Hey, My My? He kicks in a Mutron Octave Divider. That's what makes it go really crazy.

His max amp settings are akin to the sound on Cortez, The Killer, which doesn't really melt down. From here:

Here are Neil's Whizzer settings: For the highest volume, we have both the tone and the main volume on 12 and the second volume knob is at about 9.9. When it really compressed and breathing and screaming, that's whats going on. You can hear it on "Cortez". If we push it past 9.9 the sound goes away. The next button down moves his volume to 10, which just cleans it up. It's still broken up but its less garbled. The third button sets his volume on 6 with his that other volume still at 9.9 and the tone just down a little. The fourth preset moves one volume to 3,the other volume to 0, and backs the tone off a bit, its really bright and clean, almost country sounding.
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Add an Octave pedal to the tone in my clip and I'll bet you start to get there pretty quickly. And volume -- you need volume to keep the feedback loop working between the model and the guitar.
 
THanks!
iaresee said:
Like in the lead sound in Hey Hey, My My? He kicks in a Mutron Octave Divider. That's what makes it go really crazy.

His max amp settings are akin to the sound on Cortez, The Killer, which doesn't really melt down. From here:



Add an Octave pedal to the tone in my clip and I'll bet you start to get there pretty quickly. And volume -- you need volume to keep the feedback loop working between the model and the guitar.
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Volume definitely gets that infinite sustain, but there is something really identifiable about the base tone that I have not yet been able to re-create.

It's not the octave effect either.

E.g. the live version of Powderfinger; rhythm and lead.
 
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