Your Favorite late 60's and 70's guitar players

[billhart22]

Got to check out Rick Witkowski...........damn, how did I miss the guy??

Bill

[BruceM]

OK, I'm going to avoid all the obvious popular recording/touring guitarists of the day, and just list a few obscure guys that I was lucky enough to see in the nightclubs while in college during the mid-70's. I went to the University of Illinois from 74-78.

My favorite bar band at the time was Slink Rand. Slink was a tall skinny dude that could play the shit out of the guitar, and his band was extremely tight and covered all the popular rock of the day. Zep, ZZ top, Stones, Queen, etc... They had a singer that could pull it off, too. Still one of my main rock influences to this day, simply for providing the live-rock soundtrack of all my favorite bands on a regular basis.

Rick Nielsen & CT, prior to their first album. The songs, the voice, the wall-of-sound and Rick's showmanship was outstanding when he was young and hungry. He was extremely manic onstage in the bars.

Luther Allison made the circuit once or twice a year, and I saw him a number of times. He was kind of hammy onstage, but he had some cool blues tunes and could really play some stinging leads.

Anyone heard of Harvey Mandel? He also showed up once or twice a year, and was the first jaw-dropping guitarist I had seen, by virtue of his tone as well as his guitar virtuosity. He was the first guitarist I saw that had a huge array of foot pedals, and changed his tone dramatically to suit the song. And in a small club, you could get up close and watch all this going on. He was primarily an instrumentalist, and I'm trying to remember if I ever heard him play with vocals. Don't think so. He had a number of good albums out then, and I've got a few on vinyl, but haven't listened to him in years. When the Stones were auditioning for a replacement guitarist, rumour has it the Harvey was on the short list.

Ahhh, the good ole days.

Edited to add: I pulled the following from Harvey Mandel's bio on allmusic.com. Very interesting, and Shangrenade is the album I listened to a lot at that time...

In the mid-'70s, when the Rolling Stones were looking for a replacement for Mick Taylor, Mandel auditioned for a spot in the group; although he lost to Ron Wood, his guitar does appear on two cuts on the Stones' 1976 album, Black & Blue. Recording intermittently since then as a solo artist and a sessionman, his influence on the contemporary scene is felt via the two-handed fretboard tapping technique that he introduced on his 1973 album Shangrenade, later employed by Eddie Van Halen, Stanley Jordan, and Steve Vai.

[tomteriffic]

Bruce, +1 for all of those guys. CT, the Slink Rand Group and Harvey Mandel were regulars on the Chicago scene at that time as well and Slink used to play a joint that was a very short walk from where I lived at the time. Seemed to be in a regular rotation with Duke Tumatoe and the All-Star Frogs. Luther Allison and CT were pretty regular around there too. Slink could flat-out tear it up in just about any pop-rock style you could think of.

Oh and Gary Richrath and the boys were just zooming up and down I-55 between Chicago & St. Louis every couple of weeks, it seemed.

Harvey put out several solo albums. I saw him with Mayall at one point. He was a jaw-dropper live, but the two records of his that I bought (The Snake and ????) were fantastic chops and no energy.

[MCChris]

Edited to add: I pulled the following from Harvey Mandel's bio on allmusic.com. Very interesting, and Shangrenade is the album I listened to a lot at that time...

In the mid-'70s, when the Rolling Stones were looking for a replacement for Mick Taylor, Mandel auditioned for a spot in the group; although he lost to Ron Wood, his guitar does appear on two cuts on the Stones' 1976 album, Black & Blue.

Is that Mandel doing the lead on "Hand of Fate"? I always thought it was Mick Taylor and that was a holdover track from either Goats Head Soup or It's Only Rock n Roll. Within the past month I was informed on another board (Gear Page, maybe?) that it wasn't Taylor. Sure sounds like him to my ears. Great solo!

[SteveB]

Billy Gibbons ... tone, phrasing, style.. I'm Bad / Nationwide still blows me away

The entire Deguello album is a clinic in tasty, laid back pocket playing. BG is THE MAN.

Robin Trower, Bridge of Sighs. One of the top 5 guitar albums EVER.

the Young Brothers.

Perry/Whitford.

The Motor City Madman.

Iommi. proto-prog-metal.

EVH. the best at mixing rhythm with lead.

Can you tell my high-school years were 78-81?