Practice Makes Bloody Perfect
What is the most wonderful aspect of the guitar? If you ask a guitarist, the answer may be all of them.
“There’s no end to what you can do with this instrument,” B.B. King told students in a workshop at Tufts University 35 years ago. “There’s very few people I’ve met who have really mastered it.”
The late blues guitarist and singer was one of the true innovators, developing an inimitable vibrato as a means to replicate the sound of the bottleneck slide on steel strings. In his hands, his beloved “Lucille” did not just sing. It screamed, purred, moaned, spat, and howled, too, expressing just about every emotion human beings have experienced.
There was also Jimi Hendrix, and Roy Buchanan, and Jimmy Page, and Andy Summers, and Jeff Beck, and Eddie Van Halen, and Keith Richards, and Wes Montgomery, and Richard Thompson, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and George Harrison, and George Benson, and the Edge, and Robert Fripp, and so many more who, each working with the same instrument, developed a sound all their own.
“Guitar is an endlessly fascinating instrument,” Mr. Summers, formerly of the innovative rock ’n’ roll band the Police, said last week from Brazil, where he was on tour. “You’ll get your style and play within it, but like all instruments, and music, there are infinite possibilities. It’s what keeps you going.”
“The guitar is the most popular instrument in the history of the world,” said G.E. Smith, who lives in Amagansett. “Because you can play chords and single-line melodies, it’s a great accompanying instrument, and it’s a great soloing instrument. It’s really the only instrument of its kind that you can do all that stuff with.”
The guitar is also portable. “I started hitchhiking at a very young age,” said the Israeli guitarist and singer David Broza, “and realized I couldn’t carry anything but a Spanish guitar on my back.” In this way, he was able to absorb influences far and wide, out of which came “a concoction, a fusion of the esoteric, deep, cultures” he was exploring.
Guild Hall in East Hampton will celebrate the astounding artistry of the guitar next week with the first Guitar Masters festival. From next Thursday through July 7, the venue will host ticketed performances by Mr. Summers (with Ralph Gibson, next Thursday); Mr. Thompson, formerly of Fairport Convention (with his son, the singer and songwriter Teddy Thompson, and Mr. Smith, Friday, July 6), and Mr. Broza and the guitarists Badi Assad and Brandon Ross (July 7). Guest appearances are promised throughout the festival. Show time for each concert is 8 p.m.
Each day will also feature a film. “Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police,” Mr. Summers’s thrilling autobiographical documentary, will screen next Thursday, preceded by the short film “Music for Lens and Guitar” by Mr. Gibson. The next day will see a screening of “Badi,” a documentary about Ms. Assad and her career, preceded by “The History of the Electric Guitar,” in which Mr. Smith documents the title in a single song. “East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem,” in which Mr. Broza delivers a message of equality and unity as Israeli and Palestinians make music together, will be shown on July 7. All films will screen at 4 p.m.
Also on July 7, Guild Hall will host a talk by the luthier Ken Parker and a book signing with Galadrielle Allman, daughter of the late guitarist Duane Allman, at 10:30 a.m.
Mr. Summers had spent more than a decade as a musician in London and Los Angeles when he joined Sting and Stewart Copeland in the Police, in 1977. “It was a life-changing experience,” he said, one that included “every emotion you can imagine, from deep loving to ultra violence.” Throughout it, though, “the centerpiece to me was the guitar playing. I had to play very well. That’s one reason the band was as good as it was. We were a very famous rock band, but a very good rock band . . . and playing well required maintenance. In other words, practice your bloody instrument.”
“Practice or die!” echoed Mr. Thompson, who will perform and talk with his son in “Portraits,” a series hosted by Mr. Smith. The guitar, he said, “is still an exploration. There are always possibilities on the instrument. If you’re not looking for those musical possibilities you’ve died as a musician. . . . It’s amazing how people have managed to bend the guitar in so many directions.”
Mr. Smith described “Portraits” as “music and conversation, not an interview by any stretch; we play as if we were sitting around in a living room, some guys with guitars.” He called himself “a huge Richard Thompson fan,” who he said is “one of the few guys who is equally great on electric and acoustic guitar — not too many others have been able to do both equally as good.”
Mr. Thompson, said Teddy Thompson, is among the guitarists who worked to develop their own sound, something that “is rarer and rarer,” he said. “A lot of the people at this show” — Guitar Masters — “have their own sound.”
For his part, Teddy Thompson called himself “just a strummer for a long time,” picking up the instrument for accompaniment. “I was that guy who strummed along for ages, and was too scared to get into anything fancy. But there’s so much to learn.”
The influence of early rock ’n’ roll is evident in his music. “The Everly Brothers — theirs was the first music that stopped me in my tracks,” he said. Sounds reminiscent of Don and Phil Everly, and Buddy Holly — guitarists, to a man — come to life in his music. “The guitar playing on all those records is not to be underestimated,” he said. “It’s so, so great. Talk about playing the right thing for the song.”
“David and myself, we have some similarities,” Ms. Assad said of Mr. Broza. “Both are guitar players, singers, composers, but we also have this extreme energy onstage. We perform like, ‘This is it, there is no tomorrow.’ ”
The younger sister of the celebrated guitarists Sergio and Odair Assad, she played the piano as a child, and might have lived in her brothers’ considerable shadow. But as their careers took off, the siblings’ father, an amateur musician who played the bandolim, a stringed instrument that evolved from the mandolin, had no one to play with. “So he invited this 14-year-old girl that spent her entire childhood trying to get the attention of this man” to accompany him on guitar. “For sure, I was very much influenced by my brothers,” she said. “But I had my own thirst, a craving for what this instrument is about.” Ms. Assad has taken the guitar on her own path, “my own melange of what I was interested in. I wasn’t searching for a specific thing, I was searching for my own thing. I didn’t know what it was. But it came naturally.”
“I’ve been playing for 50 years,” Mr. Broza said. “All these years, there isn’t a day I don’t have to renew a commitment to perform exercises, then experiment, then write new stuff, and it’s a little more demanding than my technique allows, so I have to improve.”
“It’s a mystery, how you can find your own sound,” Ms. Assad said. “It’s a mix of so many things — your personality, your dedication, your creativity, your own bravery, trying new stuff.”
For these musicians, the thrill has most definitely not gone, to misquote B.B. King’s 1969 hit. Theirs is a lifelong love affair carried out in public, in recordings and performance. “It’s amazing,” Mr. Smith said. “I’ll get up, it doesn’t matter if I’m feeling slow and tired, I’ll pick up the guitar, always. People ask me, are you nervous when you go out in front of 25,000 people? That’s the only time I’m not nervous. The rest of the time, I’m nervous! But I put that guitar on and I’m okay. It’s all I ever did since I was little kid. That’s home.”
I’ll pick up the guitar, always. People ask me, are you nervous when you go out in front of 25,000 people? That’s the only time I’m not nervous. The rest of the time, I’m nervous! But I put that guitar on and I’m okay. It’s all I ever did since I was little kid. That’s home.”
Tickets for Guitar Masters, produced by Taylor Barton, can be purchased individually for the concerts, films, and talks, and are available at the box office or at guildhall.org. A limited number of all-access passes are also available for the full weekend of events, including V.I.P. seating, access to the catered V.I.P. lounge, and entry to win a limited-edition Fender G.E. Smith Telecaster electric guitar.