As for blues, the electric guitar revitalized the genre, as its versatility gave musicians fresh ways to express emotion. Beginning in the 1940s, a new, urban-edged style of blues, born in Chicago, was built entirely on amplified sound. Bluesmen like Muddy Waters and the Texan great T-Bone Walker (who has been called the Father of Electric Blues) also took up the amplified guitar and, along with Charlie Christian, inspired a new generation of performers, led by the likes of B. B. King.
During the 1950s blues-based music that had strayed too far from its roots became known as “rhythm and blues,” a term that was as nebulous then as it remains today. Eventually, of course, in the words of Muddy Waters, “The blues had a baby, and they named the baby rock and roll.” Early rockers clung to the notion that the baby was destined to take after its father, so they idolized and often imitated the great bluesmen. The blues remained an obsession for most rockers into the 1970s, and when the talent scout Danny Fields first heard the Ramones at CBGB’s in 1974, he was ecstatic at finally finding music that was “all rock and no blues”— chiefly because, like most punk bands, the Ramones were nowhere near good enough to play blues convincingly.
The most powerful demonstration of the electric guitar’s role as a sociopolitical symbol came at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when Bob Dylan, a tireless innovator in folk and blues idioms and a protest singer of solidly liberal values, plugged in an electric guitar amid boos and catcalls from the audience. On one level, it was a betrayal; the young genius who could have led a new generation of fans to the timeless joys of American folk music was instead (as the folkies saw it) pandering to the tastes of teenyboppers. More than that, however, Dylan’s act of plugging in symbolized the merger of the political left with the counterculture. The divergent paths Dylan’s music was taking were not what alienated fans; it was the electric guitar. Dylan could get as experimental as he wanted, and everything would have been fine as long as he didn’t plug in.
What gives the electric guitar such potency? For all the basic and straightforward nature of much rock music, the electric guitar’s most important quality may be its versatility. Once guitarists got accustomed to changing the sound by using tone and volume knobs and the tremolo bar, they began to look further. In the early 1960s artificial reverberation created the distinctive “surf-style” instrumental sound of the Ventures and, in Britain, the Shadows. Producers learned that feedback and interference could be their friends, developing circuits and devices that allowed fuzz, delay, wah-wah, compression, and a host of other embellishments to be invoked on demand.
The most influential master of manipulated sound in the 1960s was Jimi Hendrix, whose influence remains strong after nearly four decades. With techniques such as maneuvering the guitar’s tremolo arm and playing close to the amplifier, not to mention setting the guitar on fire, Hendrix achieved spectacular effects: “Sometimes I jump on the guitar. Sometimes I grind the strings against the frets. The more it grinds, the more it whines. Sometimes I rub up against the amplifier. Sometimes I play the guitar with my teeth, or with my elbow. I can’t remember all the things I do.”
Through the 1970s and 1980s rock guitarists continued experimenting. One genre emphasized raucous power chords, flashy solos, and overall loud volume. It came to be known as “heavy metal.” Eddie Van Halen, of the band Van Halen, experimented with stunts like dive-bombing, using the tremolo arm to drive the guitar’s lowest note even lower. Hendrix had done this, but he usually forced the guitar out of tune as a result. However, by the mid-1980s the inventor Floyd Rose had improved solid-body guitar tremolo systems, making it possible to dive-bomb repeatedly.
Guitarists increasingly regarded their instruments as identifying signatures and had makers customize them. Eddie Van Halen decorated his with colored sticky tape, while Prince had guitars of all shapes and sizes created for his stage performances. The country musician Junior Brown took the customization of his guitar a step further. To solve the problem of switching back and forth between a Spanish-style electric and a lap-steel electric, Brown put the two together to form a hybrid “guit-steel.”
In keeping with its status as a symbol of America, the electric guitar is the most democratic of instruments. It is extremely accessible in terms of both cost and learning curves. A beginner can manage a few chords after a lesson or two, and sometimes that’s all you need. And while electric-guitar players are still overwhelmingly male, women are increasingly making their mark. Once the very act of playing an electric guitar seemed inherently aggressive and masculine, but since the 1970s female guitarists like Bonnie Raitt and Joan Jett have become prominent. Raitt got her start playing blues, and her musical style continues to evolve, combining elements of blues, pop, and rock. Jett and her band the Blackhearts made a splash in the 1980s with their harder edge. Jett’s influence on the music scene earned her a place on Rolling Stone’s top 100 list, one of only two women included (the other was Joni Mitchell).
The electric guitar is a prime example of the law of unintended consequences. At first it just wanted to be heard, but it ended up taking over popular music and revolutionizing society along the way. Amplified musical technology is now at the forefront, and since most of the music we hear is electrified and synthesized, performing “unplugged” has become the exception rather than the rule. Today, more than seven decades after bursting onto the scene, the electric guitar is played and enjoyed worldwide and has achieved iconic status as a symbol of American culture.
MONICA M. SMITH is a historian and exhibit specialist at the Smithsonian Institution’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.
