THE PLAYERS
The value of playing your 45 singles at 33 1/3 . . .

New Musical Express/The Guitar Book, ca 1972, pp. 14-15
By Rex Anderson

LOL CREME (particularly) and the rest of 10cc (occasionally) proffer advice to guitarists from the very portals of the dreaded Top Of The Pops. REX ANDERSON learns how they learned Hank Marvin solos and has his opinion on the therapeutic value of the chords of A and E endorsed . . .

ALLOW ME, dear reader, to set the somewhat confused scene. BBC Television, I am given to understand, have something they call Top Of The Pops which I have never seen but occasionally heard from the dressing rooms in the bowels of the mighty broadcasting company's TV studios in Shepherds Bush.

These dressing rooms are as you'd expect the star dressing rooms of a vast Government-run corporation to be — stark and cream like the medical examination rooms in school.

And it was here I sat with Lol Creme, of 10cc, playing a word game and trying to gather my wits for the interview.

It had been decided that, since 10cc were opening the TOTP show we would wait until they'd finished before doing the interview.

Also it would be a good opportunity for me to put the man at his ease in my presence . . . Now all I needed was someone to calm me down.

What finally occurred was that the TOTP people (I wonder if they do read The Times) blew it — several times.

Every time we started to start the interview 10cc got called back to do another take of their number.

By the time the interview did get under way we were all sitting on tenterhooks anyway waiting for the knock on the door which would herald yet another attempt to get it right.

There was nothing wrong with what 10cc had done, you understand. It was gremlins in the recording process that caused the trouble.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that we did the interview with us all sitting around nervously waiting for the worst. But eventually, note-book away, we relaxed and had a really good rap about guitar in general. The trouble is, with no notebook, it's difficult remembering everything afterwards . . .

LOL CREME with two different Gibson SGs
ERIC STEWART/Les Paul	CREME/Hayman solid

This is the conversation I want to recall and if I attribute things to people who didn't say them (the rest of 10cc were also there) then I'm sorry.

Graham Gouldman had been talking about the age old chestnut: "In my day there were people like Chuck Berry and Duane Eddy to imitate. Who do kids today imitiate? You can hardly start out copying Clapton or Santana."

Eric Stewart, I think, threw in something about how hard it was to learn to play numbers by buying sheet music which, while it probably gave a good representation, was never able to follow the original song note for note.

Which leads to the fact that you can't really accuse Lol, Eric or Graham of being obscure or difficult in their guitar playing. They're competent, imaginative, even original musicians — but there's nothing there that can't be imitated.

Lol Creme, like many a plunker in this day and age, got his first guitar at the age of 12 — "Because the guy next door had one and I was dead jealous."

It's odd how some people can pick up the most amazing things just by watching other musicians, whereas personally I learn a lot by watching, but need parts to be repeated and explained. The infant Menuhin was one of these prodigies — at the age of three he watched a friend of the family playing the violin, immediately picked it up, tucked it under his little chin, held the bow in its correct position and began to play. It sounded like a cat being eaten by a VCS Three.

Young Lol Creme was another. He says: "I already knew all the basic chords because I'd seen the guy next door playing them."

This is a good bit: "I learned the chords of A and E in the first day and from that I started working things out for myself. Most guitar tutors never give you those chords to start with — which is silly because they're easy to play, and immediately you are making a beautiful sound which is very encouraging."

He admits that at that stage technically he probably made a lot of mistakes.

Lol, you must realise, was doing all this at the time The Shadows were at their height. So were the rest of the band. And Hank Marvin was a great little guitarist to imitate.

There were tracks like "Apache" and "Rebel Rouser" Graham recalls. The trick was to buy the 45 singles and play them at 33 1/3. You ended up playing in the wrong key, but you sorted out what all the notes were.

So imagine it's 1959. The local group thing has just started. Lol formed a local group. He's still 12. He's been playing his cheap Spanish guitar — which his parents bought him while on holiday in Spain, for less than a year.

"The great thing," says Lol or Kevin or someone, is that when you start to play with other people you really start to develop fast and you can't do it early enough."

There is some discussion here about the fact that you need to try out a lot of styles, which you inevitably steal from other musicians, before you finally settle on one of your own.

The funny thing is that most musicians, and especially guitarists, can play in a number of styles extremely well. They become popular for one particular style, probably the one they like most anyway, and their public always expect them to play in that style.

Lol: "No-one ever bought sheet music. You learned through memory. You moved through many different phases of music: Pop, rock, C&W, jazz, Django Reinhardt.

"If you're interested in the instrument you listen to all kinds of music. These things come out when you develop your own style."

Adds Eric: "It's like a filing system of known chord sequences. And when you play on your own you try to make up for the backing you haven't got — tunes combined with chords to fill in. So in that way both lead lines and rhythm should develop alongside one another."

The tunes you play later become lead licks and the backing becomes the chord sequences. Says Lol: "Now I only play lead licks when I have a specific idea. If it works it stays. I'd rather think about it first and play a simple idea rather than a complicated arrangement. I'm not very impressed with flash guitar players.

"Speed doesn't matter. It's far more important to have a good melody line or a funky lick. The only parts of McLaughlin I get off on are the melodic parts. You can respect the guy's technique, but I'd much rather listen to Ry Cooder who is simple, or Carlos Santana, who combines technique and melody.

"The emphasis in learning must be on playing basic scales, to gain control through your hands so you are in charge. But what usually goes wrong is that people start playing from the hands and not from the brain. Hendrix had only just got that together when he disappeared."

Now I understand the problem of teaching your hands to play and then letting them get on with it without thinking — which is a tough one and Lol is quite right — but did Hendrix suffer from it, and just play with his hands instead of from the brain? Well, maybe he needs examining in a new light.

Meanwhile how do you stop your fingers from doing all the walking?

"I have a technique. I invent tunings. A lot of the songs we've written are based on different tunings. And if you find a different tuning you've go to learn all over again. It messes you up and gives you new inspiration.

"Your fingers get into cliches. Like it's easy to get from A to A minor, but if the guitar is tuned differently you can't do that. That's why we invented the Gizmo (a secret 10 c.c. device which gives continuous sustain). It means you have to re-learn.

Now, what about instruments?

"Recently, I've done everything on electric guitar and piano. My Strat has a great neck. It's very easy and it's a lovely thing to write on. With some guitars, as soon as you pick them up you get licks off them.

"That Les Paul (he'd been using a Les Paul for the TOTP thing) is not very good for heavy licks. It's great for funky thick, chunky sounds."

There then ensues an interesting discussion about the merits of learning on a light action or a heavy action (meaning, of course, the nearness of the strings to the fingerboard and the susequent difficulty of pressing them down). The pros and cons of this are that a light action is encouraging and helps the beginner to find his way about without feeling like forgetting shapes that he can't hold down.

On the other hand a heavy action, on a cheap guitar, tends to sort out the sheep from the goats. Only a real enthusiast will stick with it, and you get more volume anyway from a high action. When the heavy-action beginner finally gets a good guitar, he'll find that playing it is as easy as falling off a studio control desk.

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