Who’s saying it’s dying? Well, in case you missed it, there was an article in the Washington Post recently entitled “Why my guitar gently weeps: The slow, secret death of the six-string electric. And why you should care.” It was written by Geoff Edgers who, if you read my Kinks series, is the same guy who went on a quixotic quest to bring the band back together and even made a documentary about it.

In case you can’t see the article, here’s a quick summary:

There are more guitar makers than ever before but the market isn’t growing.

In the past decade, electric guitar sales have plummeted, from about 1.5 million sold annually to just over 1 million. The two biggest companies, Gibson and Fender, are in debt, and a third, PRS Guitars, had to cut staff and expand production of cheaper guitars.

Guitar Center is $1.6 Billion in debt.

Boomers are retiring, downsizing and adjusting to fixed incomes. They’re looking to shed, not add to, their collections, and the younger generation isn’t stepping in to replace them.

Once upon a time, guitar culture was pervasive from records to radio to TV to movies (Back to the Future, Crossroads.) Now, not so much.

If in fact, the guitar is in decline, the question is why. Paul McCartney makes a good point:

“The electric guitar was new and fascinatingly exciting in a period before Jimi and immediately after. So you got loads of great players emulating guys like B.B. King and Buddy Guy, and you had a few generations there. Now, it’s more electronic music and kids listen differently. They don’t have guitar heroes like you and I did.”

“Music is music,” Linkin Park’s Brad Delson says. “These guys are all musical heroes, whatever cool instrument they play. And today, they’re gravitating toward programming beats on an Ableton. I don’t think that’s any less creative as playing bass. I’m open to the evolution as it unfolds. Musical genius is musical genius. It just takes different forms.”

Ok, so disclaimer. I play guitar and am a great, great lover of guitar in all its forms and styles – acoustic and electric, jazz, blues, rock, flamenco, etc. And to me, improvisation is the height of that skill. So yes, I’m biased.

I want to emphasize some of the points made above, namely that there was at one point in time an environment, a cauldron if you will, in which the guitar could grow. So you had early rockers such as Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, Scotty Moore, Carl Perkins, James Burton, Danny Cedrone. (Cedrone played the still awesome solo in “Rock Around the Clock” which inspired, at least, David Gilmour.)

That generation inspired the Brits (Clapton, Alvin Lee, Beck, Page), etc. All of them were playing blues and soloing there was key. And then, of course, the whole British Invasion and the Beatles with George Harrison. Harrison was not a blues-based guitarist or an improviser per se but he was incredibly influential.

So now you have this perfect storm: the cohort of 76 million baby boomers, this brand new thing called rock ‘n roll, the discovery of the largely electric guitar-based blues, and a bunch of incredibly talented musicians willing to experiment. Into this mix drops a (lest we forget) blues-based guitarist named Jimi Hendrix who inspires thousands (millions?) of people to pick up the guitar.

And so that was then. What about now? Well, as mentioned, blues is a big driver of improv lead playing. (As is jazz but jazz was IMHO, never a big driver of the electric guitar, not like rock.) So whither blues today?

Sure there are guys like John Mayer, Joe Bonamassa, Gary Clark, Jr. etc. But really the last big blues guy – I mean BIG – was Stevie Ray Vaughan. He was not only all over the radio but also all over MTV. But he died in 1990. Bands like Record Company and Black Keys are bluesy but the guitar isn’t primarily for soloing. (I don’t think Record Company even have one.)

And music, like it or not, has changed. There’s still a lot of great rock but it is no longer the dominant force it once was. It’s not in the forefront. That’s not just recent either. Even on a lot of the songs I do hear, like indie rock, I don’t hear a lot of soloing, verily though I wait in vain. Was there much real soloing on a U2 record? REM? And those guys started in the early Eighties.

Point being the guitar’s use as a solo instrument has been declining as a force in popular music for years now. My son is a rock fan for sure but not a big blues fan. He has no desire, as he put it, to shred on guitar. Yet he’s been playing for almost 10 years. He prefers to play textures, soundscapes. It’s not the guitar that’s dead. It’s soloing! Or if not dead, not popular. When’s the last time a song like “Hotel California” (2+ minute solo) or “Another Brick in the Wall (part 2) (1 1/2 minute solo) was mainstream?

There don’t seem to be any real guitar heroes. Or certainly not a ton of them like there used to be, all at the same time. Take a look at Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Guitarists when you get a chance. Of the 100, almost half (40) are no longer with us, most are at least In their 50’s, only two are relatively young (Jack White, 41; Derek Trucks, 38. And those guys aren’t new.)

So yeah, that generation is dying off and the new one ain’t hurrying to replace them. Question- if Rolling Stone wanted to do a Top 100 list of today’s guitarists, exclusive of that group, could they do it? I don’t think so.

I want to dispel one idea that Edgers mentioned. He did a TwitterChat on this subject. He said that kids today consider the instrument too hard. That’s just intergenerational “why aren’t they as good as us” bullshit. Being a virtuoso is one thing but that’s not what the article is about. Remember the punks? They couldn’t play shit but they picked up instruments anyway. Some fell away, some learned. The Clash got WAY better.

This is the thing – they always count rock n’ roll and hence the guitar, out. They did that in the early Sixties. “Guitar groups are on their way out,” the Beatles were told. Disco came in, guitars were out. For a while. Then SRV showed up. And the Allmans came surging back. Rock is dead they said in the early Nineties. Then Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam showed up.

From the article: “If there is a singular question in the guitar industry, it’s no different from what drives Apple. How do you get the product into a teenager’s hands? And once it’s there, how do you get them to fall in love with it?

Fender’s trying through lessons and a slew of online tools (Fender Tune, Fender Tone, Fender Riffstation). The Music Experience, a Florida-based company, has recruited PRS, Fender, Gibson and other companies to set up tents at festivals for people to try out guitars. There is also School of Rock, which has almost 200 branches across the country.”

Clearly they aren’t selling as many guitars these days but just as clearly, the electric guitar is still very much around. But a headline that says “Is the electric guitar no longer in the forefront?” just isn’t as sexy or compelling. The Post wrote the headline and worked the facts to support it. (Fake news!) 😂

So bottom line, is the electric guitar dead? Dude, not while I’m around. Of course, I won’t be around forever. So let me here both channel and misquote (the ghost of) Tom Joad:

“I’ll be all around in the dark. I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look. {Violins swelling.} Wherever there’s a band that needs a guitar – I’ll be there. Wherever there’s blues comin’ down the alley, I’ll be there. [Ladies weeping} When people are listening to Clapton playing “Crossroads,” Hendrix wailing on “Foxey Lady,” or Page laying down “Stairway,” I’ll be there too.” {Academy Award for overemoting goes to Music Enthusiast.}

The electric guitar dead? Not even hardly. Right now there’s some twelve-year-old kid out there – or more likely a whole lot of ’em -who’s gonna knock our socks off one day.

“Long live rock, be it dead or alive.” – Pete Townsend.

Article copyright Washington Post.

BTW, this guy, who I guess gives online lessons, makes some good points: (suggest avoiding the comments section unless you’re into that sort of thing. They devolve fairly quickly into the usual name-calling.)