David Arnold is one of our leading screen composers, having created the memorable scores to several James Bond films, Independence Day, A Life Less Ordinary and Godzilla, as well as TV series like Little Britain and Sherlock, and has recently been chosen to oversee the music for the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. You can follow him on Twitter here.
I love the sound of fuzz guitar: proper fuzz, that is, not ‘overdrive’. I used to hate it – its big, square, brick wall of noise felt really crude – but I grew to love it, probably because I noticed it appearing on my favourite records. Initially, this was on soul tracks I would hear on the radio and then later in the film collaborations of Leone and Morricone.
I don’t particularly like the sound of ‘rock’ guitars; their music all sounds too ‘thought about’. A fuzz sound, meanwhile, needs the player and what he or she is playing to be as musically affecting as the sound is unforgiving. I even played some on the song ‘As God Is My Witness’ when I produced the Dame Shirley Bassey album The Performance and, listening back to the tracks listed below, I think I’m going to have to find a film on which I can let loose with a little more fuzz.
Summer Breeze – Isley Brothers
This is a fabulous song: it’s easy on the ear and has glorious harmonies. The guitar is almost playing a string line, but the fuzz character completely changes the impact that strings would have had.
Goodbye to Love – The Carpenters
‘Goodbye to Love’ is favourite Carpenters song. It’s so unendingly bleak but also contains one of my favourite guitar solos ever. Smack in your face. It even makes you feel good about giving up on life completely.
Man With the Harmonica from Once Upon a Time in the West – Ennio Morricone
When I first heard them, Morricone’s astonishing spaghetti Western scores sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before. There’s pure menace in the guitar.
In A Gadda Da Vida – Iron Butterfly
This could almost be Spinal Tap: an American acid rock classic which holds hands with the riff from ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ while the band shakes their considerable hair around. Great organ solo, too. And it goes on for hours
I Wanna Be your Dog – The Stooges
Iggy Pop was one of the nicest, quietest men I’d ever met when we recorded together; it’s hard to believe it was the same man who would own the stage so completely whenever he played. This is punk rock – and I like punk rock. The guitar sound is mental.
I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – The Rolling Stones
Is this the most famous fuzz guitar riff ever? It could be – or that title could go to…
Purple Haze – Jimi Hendrix
Hendrix’s guitar sound changed the way everyone played in rock and blues music. There’s always talk of how he could make a guitar ‘sing’ but, to me, it was just impossible to tell where the man ended and the playing and the sound began. It was like he’d grown a guitar as a limb.
Easy – Commodores
This track, from when Lionel Richie had an afro and wore stage outfits with tassels and mirrors sewn on them, has a fantastic solo and the set up to it is amazing. When it lands, you’re so ready for it – and that it sounds like the classic fuzz of The Isley Brothers made it even better.
March of the Black Queen – Queen
I love Queen, and Brian May is still my favourite guitar player. You never get the feeling he’s purely improvising: all his solos have a place in the song and further your understanding and experience of it. And no one sounds anything like him. This six-minute and 30-second epic was a precursor to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ in many ways. It’s multi-layered, with several sections to the song; thousands of stacked vocals; and Brian’s guitars rocking every tone you could imagine. And all coming out of one homemade instrument.
Have you Seen Her? – The Chi-Lites
A great song to drive to, sing along to, and feel terribly self-indulgent to. The guitar shouldn’t really be where it is in this song – and it certainly shouldn’t sound the way it does – but, for some reason, the whole thing works. Gorgeous vocals from everyone present too.
You can listen to the playlist here.
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