199th & penultimate Chord Of The Week 27/5/17 - an A5 from "The Boys Are Back In Town" by Thin Lizzy

bigjon

For my second-to-last Chord Of The Week I was going to do another Allan Holdsworth chord, but when I was entering last week's Holdsworth Am9 in the index I saw that I've never done the classic A5 power chord, so here it is instead!

A5: x022xx

If you play the chord on it's own and let it sustain, on the back humbucker with an overdriven sound and a rock attitude, what song does it bring to mind? For me, it sounds like I'm starting to play Boys Are Back In Town by Thin Lizzy, but other famous songs based around this chord are All Right Now by Free, Highway To Hell and Hell's Bells by AC/DC.

My favourite riffs based around this chord, however, are all from more obscure songs. They include:
La Grange by ZZ Top
Metal Fatigue by Allan Holdsworth
Start The Car by Jude Cole
The Audience Is Listening by Steve Vai
Merciless by Mr Big
Satch Boogie by Joe Satriani

What are your favourite riffs and songs based on this chord?

See you next week for the 200th and final Chord Of The Week!

You can see the chord being played at 0:07 in this video - 

bigjon

Chord Of The Week Index updated with 199 discussions at
http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/598/chord-of-the-week-index

TTony

199???

Where did that time go!

Incredible effort @bigjon.

viz

There can't be many more useful chords left!

mike_l

I always think Flight of Icarus or Powerslave with that fingering, or for the x02xxx fingering, Jailbreak.

The extended x02255 is useful for a sustained chord.

missmisstreater

#BestChord

bigjon

viz said:

There can't be many more useful chords left!

There's a good year's worth of Holdsworth chords alone I could have done, plus I never even got round to starting the series of Eric Johnson chords I would have liked to do. In my general series on open and closed position chords, I never really got round to covering chords that weren't based on major or minor triads; diminished, augmented, quartal. Likewise melodic minor modal chords such as mMaj7ths and maj7#5 chords never really got covered, nor did whole tone / diminished scale symmetrical chords like 7#5 or mMaj7b5 chords.

bigjon

mike_l said:

The extended x02255 is useful for a sustained chord.

Indeed, and is used as an overdubbed 3rd guitar track to fill out the opening chord of All Right Now.

bigjon

Other favorites based around this chord which have occurred to me since yesterday are
Hole Hearted by Extreme
The Snooker theme ('Dragnet')

bingefeller

The massive sounding A5 at the start of Van Halen's Eruption and also in Van Halen's You Really Got Me and DOA. 

SimonC

bingefeller said:

The massive sounding A5 at the start of Van Halen's Eruption and also in Van Halen's You Really Got Me and DOA. 

The equally massive "Townsend windmill" A5 in Won't Get Fooled Again.

bingefeller

SimonC said:

bingefeller said:

The massive sounding A5 at the start of Van Halen's Eruption and also in Van Halen's You Really Got Me and DOA. 

The equally massive "Townsend windmill" A5 in Won't Get Fooled Again.

Isn't it funny how people associate one chord with one paticular song? I'd never thought about Won't Get Fooled Again.