Connor Flys, Author at Pluckin' A

Players You Should Know 2: Steve Lynch

I love hair metal – I often find myself wishing I could’ve been born thirty years earlier, in Los Angeles, so I might have been able to join a band and make a huge amount of money from shredding, wearing tight clothes and having a lot of hair. But there would have been a notable downside of being involved in that scene – the cold, gut-wrenching dread of knowing that one day, my band might end up sharing a bill with Autograph, and I would therefore leave myself vulnerable to being totally upstaged by their astonishing guitarist, Steve Lynch.

Steve Lynch doesn’t seem to get the attention that many of his contemporaries do, possibly because Autograph never quite had the success of Motley Crue, Poison, Ratt and so on. That’s despite having a bunch of good tunes too. But if you want to hear a guitarist who could shred with precious few equals on the Sunset Strip, with not a single duff solo in his entire back catalogue, here’s your man. Oh, and he’s no relation to George, if you were wondering. Everyone assumes I mean George Lynch when I’m talking about Steve. I’m sick of people “correcting” me like some human equivalent of Google’s smug “did you mean…?” function. SHUT UP! WATCH STEVE!

Really, you need to watch him as much as you need to listen to him. I was introduced to his playing, unexpectedly, by hearing Autograph’s biggest hit ‘Turn Up the Radio’ on Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and being so mesmerised by the solo that I was actually compelled to stop the pixellated Lamborghini Countach clone that I’d stolen – and put on hold my requirement to go and extort money from a strip club owner, or something.

I heard a whole string of classically-inspired tapped arpeggios, the sort of post-Van Halen rock guitar idea that was everywhere in the mid-80s, but somehow a cut above. Further research led me to YouTube, whereupon I found a whole load of clips of Lynch, hairsprayed to the nines, demonstrating his own solos on his 80s instructional video The Two-Handed Guitarist. This title is no exaggeration, as his soloing makes more inventive use of both hands than just about anyone else who was recording at the time.

Forget your EVH-spec arpeggios with a single right-hand finger. Lynch’s solos almost always involve all eight fingers somewhere – whether crossing strings to create devilishly complex arpeggiated sequences which sound more like keyboard parts than guitar, or throwing in a load of picking-hand fingers across one string in a manner that is still rarely matched to this day. And of course, many of the other common 80s tricks are in there – take a drink every time you hear a dive bomb on a harmonic…

There are also lots of fantastic, not to mention challenging, picking-based ideas throughout his lead playing – the solo from Autograph’s ‘Crazy World’ being a notable example. Lynch certainly has a keen melodic ear but, perhaps unsurprisingly, his solos are hard to get right – his licks are often quite left-field in terms of the positioning required to play them, and that’s before even considering his astonishing tapping technique. Naturally, on the second Autograph album, That’s the Stuff, Lynch gets a minute-long unaccompanied solo spot, ‘Hammerhead’, which makes Eddie Van Halen’s ‘Eruption’ sound about as technically challenging as ‘Seven Nation Army’.

Autograph reformed and brought a new album out not long ago, but Lynch had already been keeping himself busy through the post-hair metal days with numerous other bands and solo projects, and now also devotes a large amount of time to teaching. He’s used various guitars over the years, although the one I associate with him is the awesome custom-painted Jackson used in The Two-Handed Guitarist video. I once saw something purporting to be one of his old guitars for sale online, a V-shaped Carvin with his usual choice of Kahler vibrato, and even the same “EKG” graphic (which is on most or all of his old guitars, and looks inarguably badass). I wish I’d bought it somehow. I’m quite sure it would have made me sound and play just like him…

Where to start:

Autograph – ‘Turn Up the Radio’ from Sign In Please (1984)

Autograph – ‘That’s the Stuff’ from That’s the Stuff (1985) – plus the video of Steve playing it!

Autograph – ‘Crazy World’ from That’s the Stuff (1985) – there’s a playthrough of this too.

Autograph – ‘Loud and Clear’ from Loud and Clear (1987) – and this!

Autograph – ‘She Never Looked That Good For Me’ from Loud and Clear (1987)

Top 5: ‘70s rock guitar solos

Don’t worry, it’s not another of those copy-and-paste lists of the exact same tracks you’ve seen a million times before. Stairway to Heaven, Hotel California, Eruption, Comfortably Numb and Bohemian Rhapsody are all banned. Because we can do better.

So, in no particular order:

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Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – ‘California’, from Watch (1978)

This utterly jaw-dropping solo from Dave Flett comes in at 1:50. When was the last time you heard a guitar scream like that?

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UFO – ‘Only You Can Rock Me’, from Obsession (1978)

A long-time favourite of mine at 2:10, this is Michael Schenker at his most beautifully melodic. Not a note out of place, and the fact it was most likely delivered on a white Flying V only makes it cooler.

–

Patto – ‘See You at the Dance Tonight’ from Hold Your Fire (1971)

Ollie Halsall, ripping shit up in a genuinely unprecedented manner, from 1:40. He’s such an interesting and little-discussed player, there’ll be a whole article devoted to him on here at some point. For now, have your jaw dropped by this:

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Queen – ‘Somebody to Love’, from A Day at the Races (1976)

Well, there had to be some Brian May on here somewhere – this, two minutes in, is undoubtedly some of his finest work. Again, never a note out of place and just perfectly phrased.

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Meat Loaf – ‘Bat Out of Hell’, from Bat Out of Hell (1976)

Todd Rundgren did this bloody thing in one take. It’s about six minutes into the original track but I think it’s best if you watch Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman’s recollections of how he did it. It’s absolutely staggering, and yet another reason to love Todd Rundgren.

–

Honourable mentions – there are so many I wish I could fit in, even beyond these extra five:

Eddie Money – ‘Two Tickets to Paradise’, played by Jimmy Lyon (1977)
Boston – ‘Foreplay/Long Time’, played by Barry Goodreau (1976)
Mahogany Rush – ‘Tryin’ Anyway’, played by Frank Marino (1975)
Thin Lizzy – ‘Waiting For an Alibi’, played by Gary Moore and Scott Gorham (1978)
Toto – ‘Hold the Line’, played by Steve Lukather (1978)

Players You Should Know 1: Ian Thornley

Ian Thornley is amazing. Best known as the frontman, primary songwriter and lead guitarist for the Canadian/American rock band Big Wreck, he has been releasing material since the late 90s and if you’re into modern rock guitar, he’s someone you just NEED to be paying attention to.

A friend introduced me to Big Wreck’s music a couple of years ago – the track “Ladylike”, from their 2001 album The Pleasure and the Greed was the first I heard. It had a really awesome main riff which cycled round insistently, driving everything along, and I was impressed by Ian’s voice too, but thought I had the measure of it after a minute or two – a moderately handy rock guitarist with a good set of lungs on him. But then… a blazing solo, after the second chorus. Far from your standard late-90s post grunge fare – I wasn’t expecting it at all, and I was instantly very curious to hear more from this band, and see if that solo was a fluke…

Reader, it was not.

I delved into Big Wreck at full speed – looking back to their first album, which contains two of their biggest hits, but actually finding more of interest in their recent material. Their 2012 comeback album Albatross is heavy on killer guitar parts, but the one that took me most by surprise, to the point of laughing out loud in sheer incredulity, is the solo in “A Million Days”, in which Thornley doesn’t so much turn up the heat as just let a firework off, indoors. He channels Steve Morse, reeling off blazing-fast chromatic runs and wide, dramatic-sounding bends, and I was stunned. The rest of the album contains yet more of note, and the follow-up Ghosts is even better, if anything – the title track on that album contains a faintly “SRV on Let’s Dance” solo which has to be heard to be believed. Helps, of course, that the rest of the band are killer – as is the songwriting.

Thornley’s playing is quite fusion-inflected, but also incorporates a large amount of classic rock and blues influence, and he can shred with the very best too – I can confirm this after spending a very tiring and physically-taxing couple of days working out his ridiculous lead break at the close of “I Digress”. But here’s the kicker – that astonishing lead playing is just one facet of his musicality. He’s a mean slide player too, for example. He has a whole bunch of tasty riffs and rhythm parts to his name, and is given to working with a multitude of dropped, baritone or even open tunings – the aforementioned “Ladylike” is in open Db minor, for example. And then there’s his voice… if you like Chris Cornell, or perhaps Richie Kotzen, then Thornley’s voice will appeal – particularly in the early days of Big Wreck, Soundgarden comparisons were made frequently.

As for his guitar tone… well, it’s fantastic. One of my favourite examples is the enormous, thick and room-filling rhythm sound from new track “Voices”, on which the guitars are tuned all the way down to a low Ab – to considerable effect. Thornley has used a wide array of different gear over his career so far, but most recently he’s been using Suhr guitars and amps.

Recent albums, including their very latest, the newly released … but for the sun, have shown no let-up in Thornley’s astonishing guitar and vocal prowess, and he is undoubtedly a player who should be on any rock guitarist’s radar.

Where to start:

Big Wreck – “Ghosts” from Ghosts (2014)

Big Wreck – “Albatross” from Albatross (2012)

Big Wreck – “I Digress” from Ghosts (2014)

Big Wreck – “War Baby” from Ghosts (2014)

Big Wreck – “Voices” from … but for the sun (2019)

New Bass Day…

Yup, it’s a guitar blog by a guitar player, and one of the very first things I’ve written for it is about a bass. But that’s the way it’s worked out – the most recent bit of gear to arrive at Pluckin’ A Towers is my new low-end machine. I’ve had a few over the years, only feeling able to justify one at a time since I’m not a “proper” bass player, but none have quite stuck. I had an Ibanez SR five-string which was very nice, sold that to fund an American-made Fender Dimension Bass five-string which was also very nice, but the bass I couldn’t erase from the back of my mind, over all those years, was a Warwick Thumb, and it had to be the neck-through five-string version.

So I’ve bought one of those.

The Fender sold a week or two ago, and then only a couple of days later, this beautiful example of a Thumb 5 NT appeared on Facebook Marketplace, and for a price I could actually afford having sold the Fender. Jumped on it so damn hard I almost twisted my ankle, obviously.

It turned up a few days ago and I’ve barely put it down – partly because it sounds and feels so great, and partly because it’s so heavy that lifting it off my lap to put it down is a physical effort I’m rarely willing to put myself through.

There will be a fuller review of it in due course, but for now I thought I’d just put up a nice photo or two of it. If you check out my Instagram, you can see a clip or two of it as well.

Let’s get plucked.

Hello all.

Welcome to Pluckin’ A.

It’s a guitar blog, and it’ll probably do more or less what you expect a guitar blog to do. There will be gear reviews, there will be other stuff about guitars (and basses), and amps, and effects, and musicians, and musicianship. I’ve linked up my Instagram so you can see bits of my playing, which I hope will illustrate what I’m talking about.

I love writing, I always have, and I hope that comes across as you read what I’ll be posting. I also love playing guitar (as you’d hope, I guess), and I love waffling on about guitars to anyone who dares engage me in conversation, so starting this site did seem like something of a natural step.

If you want to find out more about the verbose long-haired chap who is throwing these words at you, click the “About the Author” link. And make sure you keep checking back – there should be plenty going on. After all, if you give me an opportunity to waffle on about guitars, then just try and stop me from doing it.