Bluesbreaker 'Beano'Album - How influential is it and what can you learn from it ?

Plectrum

The Beano album certainly did a lot to revive demand for Les Pauls as well boost demand for Marshalls. As for ripping off/knicking Freddie King's licks well he (FK) would have got them from someone else anyway. That's way these things happen. The Blues comes from a tradition where copying other people's stuff was normal. Robert Johnson's Come On In My Kitchen is his own lyrics put to Sam Chapman's Sitting On Top Of The World (which Cream covered very loosely on their Wheels On Fire album - although their version was attributed to Chester Burnett AKA Howling Wolf).

As for how influential the album was well IMHO just about every guitarist who plugs a Les Paul into a Marshall will have been influenced by it either directly or indirectly. As an introduction to the Blues though I feel people would be better off listening to the players who were Clapton and Mayall's inspiration.

rossi

The point is when The Beano came out it was the reference  and starting point for many who then went on and  discovered Albert King etc .We got our information by word of mouth and record sleeves .Usually in record shops .I spent hours in Imhofs at the top of Charing Cross Road  just reading sleeve notes or looking for US imports .It was probelem listening as teenage girls infested the sound booths .It was a good place to eye up birds though  and even meet one or two .There was no internet or guitar books ..Most of you lot have heard it all by now but we hadnt .I loved Elvis  early Sun stuff  but hadnt heard most of it as the  Sun album hadnt  been released or I had never seen it ,so I only found it later when a girlfriend owned  a copy .

wellsyboy

Strat54 said:

....or just listen to some Freddie King and skip Claptout

+1

Do what those heroes did - go back to where it started and your'e sound and technique will evolve from there

mburekenge

I think it's easy to say in hindsight how much better BB, Freddie, Albert etc are (and I'd agree, although it's personal taste at the end of the day). The fact is without the likes of Clapton and the rest of that Surrey delta lot giving it exposure it's unlikely that many of us would have even heard of them. 

As has been mentioned before in the thread, those dudes got those ideas and licks from the guys before them, and the guys before those guys.

Likewise, the impact of the Les Paul into cranked Marshall cannot be underestimated. This one is a fact regardless of personal opinion on the music itself. 

So I'd say that it is MASSIVELY influential, the likes of Dave Gilmour and Gary Moore have all said that it changed their lives, even Eddie Van Halen.

I rarely reach for it to listen to though. Give me a live Freddie King album any day.

pintspiller

Any Chuck Berry compilation.

Sassafras

pintspiller said:

Any Chuck Berry compilation.

Good point.
Probably more influential to songwriters than most of the old blues guys were.

professorben

impmann said:

Thats an interesting question.

Playing devils advocate just a little - surely though, that's only relevant if you want to replicate the past/go over well trodden ground?

"If I have seen further than most it's because I have stood on the shoulders of giants"

57Deluxe

you can learn the major to minor note interchanges in Clapton's riffs n licks - is peppered with them

english_bob

Cols said:

Ah, but the reason they're cliches is because just about every blues-rock guitarist since will have (directly or indirectly) been drawing from them.

Putting it into the context of #guitars4you original post, it's a superb place for an 'improving' guitarist to spend some time learning and building up your arsenal of licks and phrases.  Granted, there are later albums with more light and shade, but as a piece with all the essentials you'll need as a rock guitarist it's without peer.

I call this "Beatles syndrome"- when you weren't around at the time an influential album was released but come to it later in a world peppered with its influence it can sound dull- you've heard everything in it before because countless artists have spent the intervening years copying it.

IMO Clapton's compendium of inherited blues licks would make for a decent vocabulary for a beginner/intermediate player to start improvising with, and his tone and vibrato are well worth emulating. 

If that's the sort of guitar you want to play of course. Blues is increasingly irrelevant to modern styles of pop and rock.

impmann

english_bob said:

Blues is increasingly irrelevant to modern styles of pop and rock.

THAT right there, is the point I was making.

I'd also argue that spending too much time in that rabbit hole limits your playing - it did for me, for a long time.

Moe_Zambeek

impmann said:

I'd also argue that spending too much time in that rabbit hole limits your playing - it did for me, for a long time.

I could not agree more. I wasted many years stuck in a blues-based playing ecosystem, thinking that modes and other ways of playing and harmonising were only for shredders when they would make any player's vocabulary better.

Sassafras

impmann said:

english_bob said:

Blues is increasingly irrelevant to modern styles of pop and rock.

THAT right there, is the point I was making.

I'd also argue that spending too much time in that rabbit hole limits your playing - it did for me, for a long time.

I quite agree. Look how it's held back Joe Bonamassa. He could've really made something of his life if only he'd ditched the white blues.
  

impmann

Sassafras said:

impmann said:

english_bob said:

Blues is increasingly irrelevant to modern styles of pop and rock.

THAT right there, is the point I was making.

I'd also argue that spending too much time in that rabbit hole limits your playing - it did for me, for a long time.

I quite agree. Look how it's held back Joe Bonamassa. He could've really made something of his life if only he'd ditched the white blues.
  

Yes, he could have been interesting. ;-)

Teetonetal

I'd be completely ignoring all of the British blues guys and say go for the three kings. Get some building blocks and then move on.

Plectrum

Personally I'd say forget all that electric blues and go way back and learn some of the old acoustic delta blues. Then when you do listen to electric blues at least you'll know where they got it from.

thebreeze

The big influence on Clapton, who hasn't been mentioned yet, is/was JJ Cale.  I think JJ Cale is a great place to start because the song structures are usually straight forward and the guitars are usually clearly discernible.  The songs/albums also include a lot of space (as well as unexpected influences like jazz, latin and country) which make playing along to easy too.

richardhomer

thebreeze said:

The big influence on Clapton, who hasn't been mentioned yet, is/was JJ Cale.  I think JJ Cale is a great place to start because the song structures are usually straight forward and the guitars are usually clearly discernible.  The songs/albums also include a lot of space (as well as unexpected influences like jazz, latin and country) which make playing along to easy too.

As you know, I'm a massive J J Cale fan too.

His playing is a deceptive - there seems to be little going on - but his phrasing, sense of timing and dynamics are all his own - and not really matched by anyone else.

Five is a good introduction to his work.

guitars4you

richardhomer said:

thebreeze said:

The big influence on Clapton, who hasn't been mentioned yet, is/was JJ Cale.  I think JJ Cale is a great place to start because the song structures are usually straight forward and the guitars are usually clearly discernible.  The songs/albums also include a lot of space (as well as unexpected influences like jazz, latin and country) which make playing along to easy too.

As you know, I'm a massive J J Cale fan too.

His playing is a deceptive - there seems to be little going on - but his phrasing, sense of timing and dynamics are all his own - and not really matched by anyone else.

Five is a good introduction to his work.

totally agree regarding JJ Cale and his deceptive work - I find if you jam along with his songs it is hard to play so few notes that are so effective - less is more with good timing and phrasing is the key here and not as easy to play as you think - You can still work around your regular minor/major pentatonics scales, on the basis that you are only a slight bend way from the right note, but melody is more the key here as against certain 'formularised licks from blues'

he was a big influence to Mark Knopfler and Chris Rea as well and you can tell - song first approach