Remembering Deep Purple’s Jon Lord

Even though he’s a “mere” keyboard player of the pioneering Heavy Metal band Deep Purple, did Jon Lord manage to compose one of the most iconic guitar riffs in heavy metal history?

By: Ringo Bones 

Jon Lord passed away last July 17, 2012 aged 71 marking another sad day in the Heavy Metal Music world. Though he left a legacy that would certainly last as long as the Classical works of Mozart and Beethoven. As every under-40 guitarist today who’s getting formal music education, Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water is a much-do in any Heavy Metal guitar masterclass. 

Even though he’s a “mere” keyboard player for Deep Purple when the band started in 1968, Jon Lord managed to compose the most iconic Heavy metal guitar riff of all time – i.e. the main riff of Smoke on the Water. Like many iconic musicians of the 1960s, Jon Lord managed to combine the intricate structures of Classical Music and the immediacy of African-American Blues with the visceral impact of Heavy Metal Music. Making Deep Purple stand out against band that merely want to kick-ass by playing as loud as possible without any musical finesse. 

Remembering Dr. Jim Marshall OBE

Dubbed the "Father of Loud" for making rock guitarists be heard in the biggest stadiums, will Dr. Jim Marshall OBE's famed guitar amps continue to evolve without him?

By: Ringo Bones

Maybe its just me, but I always harbored this weird feeling that what Jim Marshall originally wanted was to build a Fender Champ with enough volume that could fill the world's largest arenas and concert stadiums - while keeping the original tone of the 6V6 tube equipped classic. Even though the famed guitar amplifier designer is no longer with us after passing away back in April 5 , 2012 aged 88, Dr. Jim Marshall OBE started one of the greatest "Amp Race" in the electric guitar playing world.

Back in 1962, three extraordinary prototypes were built in Hanwell, England which later became the coveted "Holy Grail" of guitar amplifiers in the electric guitar playing world. The original Marshall amps - the JTM45 Offset Halfstack - used KT66 tubes as the output tubes. Even though latter tube amp versions use 6L6 or the famed Mullard EL34 output tubes, the basic 12AX7 input tube configuration more or less remained the same.

Dr. Jim Marshall's class A triode/pentode switchable amp configuration not only made the amps easier to service while being used in tours and in excruciatingly loud "stadium rock" environments, but also left some room for "improvements" to make it more or less retain the tone of a 6V6 tubed Fender Champ. Famed amp modder Mike Soldano made a name for himself by designing his famed 1989 Soldano Super Lead Overdrive where Marshall left off.

Providing a list of famed musicians and guitarists that made a name for themselves might seem an exercise in yawnarama. But the first ones in the 1960s includes a who's who of the Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame, like Pete Townshend of The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath. Even until the 1990s, there are still a new generation of gifted musicians making a name for themselves by using Marshall amps to showcase their guitar playing skills like Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and Louise Post and Nina Gordon of Veruca Salt. And even though it is getting harder and harder for a new generation of skilled musicians in today's post NAPSTER music scene, Dr. Jim Marshall's famed guitar amplifier design will probably and surely continue to evolve.

Gary Moore 1952 – 2011

As one of the guitar hall of famers forever in his prime, the untimely passing of Gary Moore back in the 6th of February, 2011 while on holiday in Estepona, Spain had been a shock to all his fans around the world – including me. As one of the founding members of the now defunct legendary Irish group Thin Lizzy, the music world – especially his fans – are forever enthralled by Gary Moore’s guitar playing and song-writing skills.

Given my age, I only gained appreciation of Gary Moore’s post Thin Lizzy career with the regular airplay of Victims of the Future in our local FM stations back in 1984. While Gary Moore’s much-deserved runaway mainstream success outside of the core of his dedicated fanbase only happened after the release of Still Got the Blues in 1990 and After Hours in 1992.

From my perspective, what could be considered the “Golden Age” of Gary Moore’s musical career – both artistically and financially – was during the mid-1990s during the release of a Peter Green tribute album titled Blues For Greeny in 1995. Gary Moore even managed to coax the music press shy original guitarist and founding member of Fleetwood Mac, the legendary Peter Green, to come out of his self-imposed musical exile and got every guitar enthusiast the world over who were too young to have heard Peter Green first-hand gained much needed appreciation of legendary early Fleetwood Mac songs like Albatross and Need Your Love So Bad.

Though Gary Moore went on to release still more albums during the rest of the 1990s – like his return to his rock roots album titled Dark Days in Paradise in 1997, the post Napster music biz environment had been unkind to Gary Moore’s career and still badly needed exposure for new fans. The only news that I can get of a new Gary Moore album release during the first decade of the 21st Century was via “word of mouth” by his on-line fanbase – very strange indeed?

Even though Gary Moore is no longer with us, his music will live on. Not only through the sizable discography of his Thin Lizzy era and solo music career, but also through guitar enthusiasts around the world playing their very own rendition of Gary Moore’s legendary guitar solos. As of late, friends of mine who are very skilled guitar enthusiasts had been doing their renditions of Gary Moore’s Victims of the Future through their 6550 tubed Marshall amps in a rather pensively poignant manner – though I prefer Gary Moore’s more blues-based works played on a Mullard EL34 equipped Marshalls or a very early KT66 equipped Marshall half-stack.

- Ringo Bones

The Tibetan Freedom Concert: Rock Guitar’s Watershed Moment?

Casual rockers will probably see the event as political activism taking over music, but is the Tibetan Freedom Concert a watershed moment that would send rock guitar into the 21st Century?


By: Ringo Bones


Remember the September 1997 Guitar Player magazine cover story “Who Killed Rock Guitar?” At that moment in time, rock guitar was fast becoming staid and hackneyed when record labels were busy signing copycat acts of leading alternative rock trendsetters like they were going out of fashion. Thus diluting the impact of alternative rock where a few years before record label execs and the music buying public seems to have reached a consensus during the first half of the 1990s. So rock guitar became bland and boring during the dying days of the 20th Century and most rock guitar enthusiasts were wondering whether it too would pass away along with the 20th Century.

Then came the Tibetan Freedom Concert where a new generation of creative guitarists made a collective voice that rock guitar won’t go away as passively as the 20th Century – so to speak. Or more accurately, the concert’s popularity around June 1998 where even the most casual MTV viewer eventually got aware of the politics surrounding the Free Tibet movement – in a musical way during its duration between 1996 to 2001. This concert organized by the Beastie Boys and the Milarepa fund eventually made the cause of Tibetan independence no longer a mere trivial matter to America’s MTV generation.

On the rock guitar front, one of the guitarists that pointed the way of the guitar’s future in the 21st Century was Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. Whose unique playing style had served as a very creative backdrop in their efforts of spreading an idealized version of Marxist-Leninist socialism like Eisenstein’s Potemkin did decades before. They are one loud rocking version of Revolutionary Idealism.

Fortunately for a generation of kids weaned on David Geffen’s brand of alternative rock, the Tibetan Freedom Concert served as a surprisingly popular introduction to Tibetan culture. And more importantly to their spiritual leader – His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet - into exile after the country was unlawfully annexed by the People’s Republic of China back in 1959.

The on-going popularity of the world music movement during the latter half of the 1990s eventually allowed traditional Tibetan musicians acquire a young American fanbase via the Tibetan Freedom concert. Like Yungchen Lhamo famed as the female voice of Tibet and Nawang Khechog, a famed Tibetan meditation music and world music composer and Grammy nominee. Chaksam-pa a non-profit traditional Tibetan dance and opera company based in the San Francisco Bay Area, California whose name means Bridge-Builder. And Dadon a three-member band being lead by Dadon Dawadolma – another female Tibetan singer who won the hearts of post-Cobain grunge. At least its better than that dog-and-pony show recently put forth by Beijing extolling how Tibet got better after they unlawfully annexed it back in 1959. Is the Tibetan Freedom concert music beyond rock guitar? At least it works like it says on the tin.

Mpingo: Viable Guitar Tonewood?

More famous in hi-fi circles as a resonance-controlling widget, does Mpingo qualify as a viable material to make good sounding guitars from?


By: Ringo Bones


The hype probably began in the 1990s where various widgets made out Mpingo seems to an inexplicable ability to improve the sound quality of hi-fi systems just by placing Mpingo made cones and other widgets strategically in various parts of your hi-fi. Some hi-fi enthusiasts have even suggested that a piece of Mpingo should be mortised into the bell of Miles Davis’ trumpet or he uses a mute made out of one. Maybe it works more being fashioned as a woodwind instrument like a clarinet to be played by Benny Goodman. With such impeccable credentials, does Mpingo truly be a viable source of tonewood in order to make a more musical sounding guitar for the 21st Century?

For those unfamiliar with the material, Mpingo is a dense African swamp-ebony hardwood that has been manufactured by hi-fi accessories makers – like Shun Mook for example - as a resonance-controlling widget like cones and LP record clamps. On their brochures, Shun Mook says Mpingo wood absorbs resonance, but I find this explanation somewhat inadequate. And as of late, there still is scant evidence that Mpingo absorbs resonance better than other hardwoods more commonly used in the guitar making / luthier industry like Honduran mahogany, ordinary ebony, or even nitrocellulose lacquered maple used in making Gibson Les Pauls.

During the early days when large-scale guitar manufacturing was at its infancy, Martin & Co. – famed for their acoustic guitars that are as expensive as entry-level South Korean made family sedans – used ordinary ebony as their original tonewood of choice back in the 1920s. But as time went by and due to the increasing scarcity of prized ebony, many luthiers / guitar makers shifted to using South American and South East Asian mahogany and other related tropical hardwoods. Currently, ordinary ebony had been dethroned by Hawaiian koa as the ultimate tonewood of choice. Mpingo, at present, is still untested as a guitar making material. But as you may know, both hi-fi enthusiasts and guitar makers probably already know by now that a prized dense African swamp-ebony hardwood called Mpingo is somewhat rare and a species has probably the fecundity of a great white shark. Which is probably the reason why it is not coomonly used as a guitar making material due to its rarity and expense. And also explains the reason why Mpingo is seldom seen in pieces larger than a bowling ball.

Does Guitar Based Classical Music Still Exist?

Given that most of us harbors several surprisingly “wrong” versions of the topic, but is Classical Music (Western European Classical Music) played on a guitar – for all intents and purposes – already dead in the 21st Century?


By: Ringo Bones


I used to think that it is so, but the funk metal band Scatterbrain playing WA Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca using electric guitar, bass, and a Rock drum kit on their Scamboogery album doesn’t really pass muster as true-blue Classical music played on guitar. Neither does Taylor Swift with her custom 12-string guitar played through a 10,000-watt PA system connected to a 130dB sound pressure level-capable speaker system so that she can be heard throughout the 10,000-acre venue of a state fair qualify as Classical music. Nor does Yngwie Malmsteen playing a heavily arpeggiated Nicolò Paganini piece through his custom Fender Strat and a bank of Marshall stacks when the same piece of music should be played through a “Balokovic” Guarneri del Gesu violin to qualify as true Classical music. And so does Jennifer Batten playing Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee using her electric guitar through a Marshall amp. Given that the Classical music previously mentioned will probably the only ones likely to be played on mainstream FM radio, is guitar-based Western European Classical Music really dead in the 21st Century?

When Andrés Segovia first popularized what is now referred to as the classical guitar more than a century ago, folk and Classical Music were only the genres of music played on such instrument. Most Western European Classical Music that were played on Segovia’s newfangled guitar were often compositions from previous great composers like Mozart and Bach (Bach Guitar Recital) are “rearranged” to be played on Segovia’s newfangled musical instrument. Even the Vivaldi Guitar Concerto in D Major music piece was probably composed way before the invention of Segovia’s guitar.

The first guitar virtuoso to popularize guitar-based Classical Music in the 20th Century is Julian Bream whose debut guitar recital at Cheltenham in 1947 aged 13 also probably made him as the first bona fide post World War II teen idol as he played with the London Symphony Orchestra. Influenced by Andrés Segovia and Francisco Tàrrega and recognized as one of the most important classical guitarist of the 20th Century. Julian Bream was also very successful in renewing popular interest in the Renaissance lute. Though from the perspective of today's teen-aged girl groupies, Julian Bream's post-war teen idol status is about as far removed from the Jonas Brothers as you can get.

During the early 1990s, Nicola Hall, a female Classical Music guitarist using an Andrés Segovia-style nylon stringed guitar did manage to briefly make guitar-based Classical Music register in the late 20th Century's music industry’s radar. With the release of her Virtuoso Transcriptions for Solo Guitar, some “brave” FM stations in my neck of the woods often played this particular Nicola Hall album on air after Yngwie Malmsteen popularized the high-decibel side of guitar-based Classical Music back in 1992. Given the dearth of “Classically-trained” musicians using the guitar to play Classical Music, is the guitar for all intents and purposes a “Rock n’ Roll” instrument?

From my point of view, I think it is unfair to blame the Rock n’ Roll musicians, given my rather very eclectic taste in music. Though it is safe to squarely put the blame on the music industry executives for not doing their part for popularizing guitar-based Classical Music. Maybe Classical Music lovers will just be resigned to hope that the suave, bearded Italian named Andrea Bocelli – who despite of having an excellent voice – is yet to pick up a Segovia-style guitar. Or maybe someone should give some half-Ukrainian half-Uyghur red haired green-eyed 13-year-old girl who plays a blisteringly fast version of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee on a Segovia-style Classical guitar a recording contract.

Gregg Wright: The Forgotten Great Guitarist of Michael Jackson?

Once famously known for almost upstaging the King of Pop, does Gregg Wright still register in the consciousness of most Michael Jackson fans and guitar enthusiasts?


By: Ringo Bones


Yes, there’s truth behind the legend that Gregg Wright almost upstaged Michael Jackson – the undisputed King of Pop – on one of the dates of the “disastrous” Don “Bride of Frankenstein” King backed Victory Tour of the 1984 Jackson 5 / The Jacksons reunion concert. But does anybody – especially Michael Jackson fans and guitar enthusiasts – still care about Gregg Wright and his former adventurous guitar sessions with the King of Pop this day and age?

More famously known for his guitar work with Michael Jackson and Mick Fleetwood / Fleetwood Mac, Gregg Wright is an artist in his own right, despite of a number of critics shelving him as a mere Jimi Hendrix clone. And sadder still – especially in my neck of the woods – Gregg Wright’s music, be it in CD or vinyl form, are few and far between. Only working musicians – all of them older than 40 - knew him in my neck of the woods, reminiscent of the popularity of Lonesome Crow era Scorpions in America.

The only “album” of Gregg Wright that I’m lucky enough to acquire is his Gregg Wright’s Left Hook album titled “Round One”. As luck would have it, I managed to find this CD being sold in our local garage sale about a month ago. Round One is Gregg Wright’s self-produced debut CD, which Wright also originally sold during his concert tours in the UK and Europe back in 1995. After being well received by his fans, the debut CD managed to sell thousands of copies – which sadly is mere peanuts in comparison to the millions sold by Britney and those Boy-Bands. Ironic being it was Michael Jackson who made the concept of Boy-Bands a very lucrative music biz proposition.

Gregg Wright’s Left Hook is the name of the band on the “Round One” album with Gregg Wright himself performing the main guitar and vocal duties; Backed by Mick Broadbent on bass guitar and backing vocal duties and Keith Line on drums and backing vocals. The “Round One” album is rather short at just about 29 minutes long – an EP would have been more apt. On first listen, the songs may sound fairly ordinary. But it does possess a habit of pointing to the future of Modern Blues / Rock Fusion. Especially when you consider Gregg Wright’s guitar playing, which sounds like what kind of music Jimi Hendrix would be doing if he is still alive.

Although Gregg Wright’s very “enjoyable” mimicry of Jimi Hendrix – especially the flamboyant stage costumes and the signature upside down Strat - will only irk further the critics who labels Wright as just another Hendrix clone. Yes, Jimi’s influence is unmistakable, but Gregg managed to add his own vibrant punch into this veritable musical slugfest and therefore can’t be accused of just being another run-of-the-mill Hendrix clone.

Given the band’s overall performance on Round One, Gregg Wright’s Left Hook – to me – is a band worthy enough to go through an 18-hour 2,000 US dollar plane ride just to experience them live. And Gregg Wright’s stint with Michael Jackson and the rest of the Jackson 5 on that ill-fated Victory Tour is probably the closest thing we’ll ever experience of the Jackson 5 playing at the 1969 Woodstock or a Jimi Hendrix collaboration. Gregg Wright could have been the “It Factor” of Michael Jackson’s This is It Tour. Sadly, the untimely passing of Michael Jackson back in June 25, 2009 put an end to that and Gregg Wright could suffer that terrible wasting disease that affects a sizable number of great artisans known as anonymity.