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Great Non-Guitar Rock & Roll Songs ..


fred zappelin

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I`m sure this therad has been done before but I haven`t seen it so....

 

Name some great rockin' tunes that don't feature the guitar as the main ingredient....I guess my reason for doing this is that even though I love guitars, I feel that the element of the guitar in rock based music has been over emphasized to a degree.

 

I`ll start it by mentioning "Instant Karma" - Dr. Winston O Boogie

Bass, Drums & John Lennon on piano with reverb=dynamite

 

:p

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These songs had no guitar on them.

 

Lee Michaels - "You Know What I Mean"

Vocal, organ, and drums.

 

David Essex - "Rock On"

Vocals, bass, percussion, strings and horns.

 

Beatles - "Penny Lane"

Vocals, piano, harmonium (mic'd through a guitar amp), bass, drums, flute, percussion, bowed double bass, brass...George's contribution was ringing the fire engine bell.

 

 

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Originally posted by Ani

Dreamweaver - Gary Wright....


iirc, the music was performed primarily on synthesizers; heard he sucked in concert though...

 

 

I saw him open for Foreigner, back in the seventies, and he had like four or five guys on synths, plus a drummer, and the show was pretty damn good.

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Originally posted by cooterbrown

These songs had
no
guitar on them.


Lee Michaels - "You Know What I Mean"

Vocal, organ, and drums.


...[snip]

 

 

Lee Michaels... I saw him at LEAST seven times if not a few more starting in '68... I used to see him in a venue in Costa Mesa or Irvine, CA (maybe at the old fairgrounds facility or in an old barracks hall or something? It's so hazy) along with, at least a time or two, a band that called themselves CTA or Chicago Transit Authority. At the time they were kind of the "anti-Blood, Sweat, and Tears"... more rockin', lots of guitar AND jazzy horn workouts. I actually liked them quite a bit... it was a million miles from what they'd be in the late 70s as Chicago.

 

Anyhow Lee Michaels and THE drummer from hell, Frosty (God love him and God rest him) whose hands would often be bloody after his stickless solo late in the set... he was such a fixture on the local scene that I was SHOCKED when he got a little national exposure with a couple of singles.

 

 

Not purely guitarless by any stretch, but still not guitar-driven, I wouldn't say, was "Time of the Season"... Those minimal but sharp guitar chord stabs are a nice touch but it is the sound of the B3 that really, really dominates the tune -- including a cascade of overdub organ parts at the very end. Rod Argent was one of my favorite keyboaridsts of the era...

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So far we're all doing keyboard songs...

 

How about sax songs?

 

The fifties was lousy with sax rockers.

 

Trumpet... the Tijuana Brass wasn't exactly rock but I'm thinkin' there were a few legit rock or rock 'n' roll songs with trumpet.

 

How about harmonica... you could make a good case that more than a couple War songs were pretty much a vehicle for Lee Oskar's powerful yet elegant harp. He could send shivers up my back with that thing.

 

And, dang if there isn't an early 60s song that's just escaping the reach of my memory that I think featured a bagpipe solo? (But we might be well into Snoopy/Red Baron/Bismark novelty territory by now.)

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Originally posted by cooterbrown

I saw him open for Foreigner, back in the seventies, and he had like four or five guys on synths, plus a drummer, and the show was pretty damn good.

 

 

I always liked the song, but he only came to Kansas City the one time as far as I know. He was not very well received here from what I heard. Of course, he performed at Memorial Hall instead of one of the arenas or stadiums that were beginning to surface in the city. Memorial Hall was on it's way out for concert shows at that time. It was rumored that the backup musicians were not nearly as good as what Gary Wright had performed all the parts solo on his album release. Maybe he canned those performers and got new ones... this concert happened very shortly after he hit it big. I just remember a LOT of folks that went to that concert were really let down by the performance.

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