h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hey everybody. I am the word on EC. Go look at my entries. Do please tell me more stuff about him so my entries can be more brilliant. And don't forget, I am here to talk about everyone's favourite guitarist.

Eric is so brilliant. Nobody plays better than him.

Do you like Steve Howe? If you don't know who that is, it's okay. He's a slight unknown to the general public. Do you play the guitar?

Jeez, I'd totally forgotten I'd even written that up there! How'd you dig it up? Did a search I guess...

Never heard of Steve Howe. Please tell me a bit about him. Reminds me of Gordon Giltrap. Never heard of him, but James Herbert reckons he's one of the greatest guitarists around.

I play bass guitar. Only been playing since September. Should be getting my own soon .

So now as well as Eric Clapton, I look up to people like Jack Bruce and Steve Harris.

Steve Howe plays for Yes. I don't know if you've heard of them either, but he's brilliant and has a really distinct style that I like. Actually, their bassist is good too. And, even though I don't like them, I hear that the bassist for Kiss is really good, too.

My friend's mum's boyfriend likes Yes. So it wouldn't be difficult for me to hear them.
Kiss got mentioned a few dozen times in Run To The Hills (Iron Maiden's biography). Ex Maiden singer (I think) Dennis Wilcock was a Kiss fan, that's why he was fired!

Ouch. Rick Wakeman dropped out of Yes because he was the only member that drank and ate meat... conflict of personalities, I guess... and I think the original Scorpions guitarist dropped out because he didn't think he was meeting their expectations.

That's pretty heavy, that Rick Wakeman thing. Have they got a problem with that sort of thing?
There have been 18 different people in Iron Maiden over the years. In the early days the problem usually was finding competant musicians. Such as the il-fated lineup of October 1979:
Steve Harris (bass)
Doug Sampson (guitar)
Paul Di'Anno (vocals)
Dave Murray (guitar)
Paul Todd (drums)
That line-up lasted two weeks. I think it was because Todd was crap.

An even worse one had a keyboard player and Thundersticks on drums. The keyboards just didn't work and Thundersticks was just plain incompetant. True story: in a pub gig, Thundersticks is doing a solo and making a pig's ear of it. The audience loses interest and start talking amongst themselves. Thundersticks gets up and shouts:"Shut up you cunts and listen to the maestro!" Quite funny really.

Paul Di'Anno was dropped in 1982 cos he was a complete burk, what with all his stupid behaviour, drink, drugs, and total recklessness. After that band members (Adrian Smith, Bruce Dickinson and Blaze Bayley) would drop out cos they felt like they needed to be free from Iron Maiden. Wanted to do their own thing, y'know?

I think it would be difficult to play or write with anyone who had such a sharply contrasting personality. John Lennon and Paul McCartney for example. They were at each other's throats in the end. That's my favorite band, the Beatles... Yes is just #2... and if you want to hear a good Yes album, pick 90125... and if you want to hear Steve Howe, pick Fragile because Steve Howe doesn't play in 90125.

Seeing the time difference in our postings, it would be safe to assume that you don't live in the UK, right?
Which is a shame because Rick Wakeman was on Never MInd The Buzzcocks, doing the intros round on a piano with Bill Bayley on a guitar.
They did a pretty good version of Sunshine Of Your Love, which I can play the first riff of on bass guitar.

I'm American, yes. But Yes is British. In fact, most of the music I listen to is British. My mom calls me a Europhile. Hey! I just remembered that Eric Clapton played lead in my favorite Beatles song: While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

Yeah! That's right! What album was it on? White Album? It's just we've got virtually every Beatles album on LP downstairs. I'll have to listen to it.

As you know Eric Clapton was involved in a bitter love triangle with George Harrison's wife, Patti Boyd. This inspired the song Layla, which hit #10, and Wonderful Tonight when Eric married Patti.

Yes, the White Album. It's right after the Continuing Adventures of Bungalow Bill and right before Happiness is a Warm Gun.

Bit of a classic, isn't it?

On Never Mind The Buzzcocks, they made this joke about the LP that John Lennon was carrying on him when he was shot got sold for £1.8m. The buyer returned it because he couldn't work out which hole to use on the turntable.

Bad taste?

In the book they've just done, on the list of auctions they have John Lennon's Bullet Proof Jacket (mint condition ie with hole in the middle). Not to mention Freddie Mercury's Condom (mint condition ie with hole in the middle) and Kurt Cobain's Head (mint condition etc).
Funny!

Something that sometimes makes me chuffed, sometimes it ticks me off. British music is imported everywhere. I go into a French hypermarket, and they're playing Golden Brown by The Stranglers over the tannoy (or whatever). On the coach, they're constantly playing Cher on French radio. And when I went to Australia, what do I hear o the radio? I'll Follow The Sun by The Beatles.

Rrgh. Bad taste, bad taste! Funny, though.

British music isn't quite as popular here in America. With the exception of Sting, Elton John (he's British, isn't he? Or have I lost my mind?), and the Spice Girls. Shudder now. Sting's not so bad, really...

I just noticed, though... I have about 14 albums in my CD collection (by "my" I mean OWNED by me... since I share a room with my brothers we don't really pay attention to who owns cd's):
The Very Best of Yes - Yes
Fragile - Yes
The Ladder - Yes
90125 - Yes
On Flame With Rock and Roll - Blue Oyster Cult
20th Century Masters - The Who
The Beatles (The White Album)- The Beatles
The Four Seasons - Vivaldi
Greatest Hits - Handel
Vault - Def Leppard
Best of Rockers 'n' Ballads - Scorpions
You Get What you Play For - REO Speedwagon
10 from 6 - Bad Company
Records - Foreigner

Note the amount of British albums, including Handel and Vivaldi (classical is music, too). The Scorpions are German. But on the whole, Americans don't listen to TOO much British music. What's popular now is "Boy Bands" such as 98 Degrees, N'Sync, Backstreet Boys (have you heard of them?), and post-grunge west coast punk bands such as Blink 182, Green Day, Beastie Boys, Offspring, etc, all of which I despise. It's sad. My brother has the other seven Beatles albums in the collective. Now I am finished with my music thesis.

At least you Americans have minds of your own when it comes to music. I think of the French and think 'if they love our music so much why can't the bastards eat our beef?'. Unrelated subjects, but I really do hate the French. I think that any Brit that doesn't must be a hippy or something.

You wanna see my albums, you can look on my homepage. I'm about to add one now.
I've got prety old-fashioned tastes. Most modern music (including The Offspring) I despise.
When The Offspring released Americana over here, the skids went ape over it. What with it's token swearing and being American. Skum. I mean, you want swearing, you can have The Sex Pistols. You want morbid subjects for yer songs, you can have Slayer (American , I believe?) I suppose the only reason the skids don't like Slayer is that they haven't been sprawled over Top Of The Popd or MTV a thousand times. If skids have to do any actual research for there music, like looking for new bands or things like that, then they won't like it.
The Offspring are a bunch of pussies who think they're hard cos they swear. Bryan Ferry's harder than The Offspring, for Chrissake!

Elton John is British, and he's gay (seriously). The Spice Girls are talentless lesbians, joining the rest of the 90s bands in jumping on the music industry bandwagon for their dole money.
Sting used to be kinda big ove here. His profile's died down a lot.
Backstreet Boys, yeah I've heard of them. Most boy bands tend to be made up of poofs, at least over here they are. Or am I only thinking of Boyzone? They're the only UK boy band left now!

Yeah, I just took a look at your album collection and read a few of your entries. Music is important to you, eh? And you never mentioned that you play the guitar...

And if they're looking for morbid topics, take a look at Black Sabbath!

Boyzone... sounds like the name of a gay bar.

Music is very important to me. Music and The Secret Of NIMh. I can take them very seriously sometimes (I've beaten up a few of my friends over them).

I haven't mentioned my guitar playing much because I don't have my own guitar yet. It's not quite as influential as the other stuff I've written.

Another joke from Never Mind The Buzzcocks: Boyzone was the name chosen in favour of their manager's suggestion, Boyzonly

Playing guitar is very cool. Chicks dig it.

People don't seem to understand bass guitar. When you say to them "I play the guitar" they either think of an acoustic and go "oh, cool" in a sarcastic way or go "way cool!" because they assume it's lead guitar and you'll be stringing solos out of your ass.

The bass gitar gives music it's oomph, it's life. My new Slayer album seems devoid of it. It sounds empty. Basses can also make good solos, like on Can't Find My Way Home (from Clapton's Philharmonic Night) or on Do What You Like by Blind Faith (an old Clapton band). I think it's a shame that nobody thinks of using the bass in a more pronounced way. You can get some great sounds out of it.

There's a song on the Yes album called Five Per Cent of Nothing that, besides the vocals and percussions, is ALL bass guitar... it's SO cool... Chris Squire is one heck of a player.