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21.06.08
Guitars and graphics
This is an adaptation of a talk given today by Michael Johnson at the Interesting 2008 conference.
I’ll admit that this is a slightly selfish theme for a talk; during the day I’m a graphic designer but at lunchtimes and night I’m an amateur guitarist. And in a way the two things rarely come together. So I thought it would be interesting to take the last century of graphics and guitar music and see if, or when, the two things ever do combine.
The earliest blues guitarists used small, parlour sized acoustic guitars, and often tried to play in a way that emulated the popular piano style of the time, ragtime. Gradually blues guitar developed as a style in its own right, and the earliest guitar heroes were born such as Robert Johnson. Legend has it that he popped out for a few beers but ended up selling his soul to the devil at a crossroads and received the ‘gift’ of the blues in return. 
At the turn of the century decorative design was a long way from beer and crossroads, having carried over the decorative styles of the Art and Crafts and the Viennese Secession. Illustrators such as Aubrey Beardsley and artists such as the Beggarstaff Brothers were the design poster-boys of the day (although no-one called them graphic designers, not yet).
After WW1 graphic design as we now know it began to develop, spurred on by the experiments of El Lissitsky and Malevitch, and institutionalised by Gropius’s Bauhaus. Most of the inspiration for the rest of the century’s design stems from this work, either by the Bauhaus’s own disciples, or by the parallel skills of people such as Piet Zwart.
What they were listening to as they pushed around their wood type is much harder to ascertain (although it seems that there is a link between Gropius and Mahler, the former having once had an affair with the latter’s estranged wife). Wagner of course was one of Hitler’s musical favourites (he loved to use it at rallies) and became the spur for some of the finest, earliest ‘agit’ work by John Heartfield, protesting against the Nazi dictator’s rule. 
Things were much simpler back in guitar-ville; Count Basie acquired a new guitarist in 1937, called Freddie Green, but Green became famous for only ever wanting to play rhythm, never lead. Django Reinhart excelled in Europe but it was Charlie Christian who was the first guitarist to make a mark with an electrified guitar. 
But post-war the saxophone was king, thanks to the likes of Charlie Parker. Parker’s phenomenal technique was daunting to most other musicians, especially guitarists, struggling with strings the width of industrial wire and unsophisticated instruments. Legend has it that Parker would often scribble down the ‘head’ for a track in the cab on the way to the studio, leaving the other musicians struggling to play the fusillade of notes that had appeared in his actual head.
Of course the graphics of the fifties has become iconic, either Blue Note album sleeves, or the development of mainstream graphics by Paul Rand and Saul Bass.
But still very little of this crossed over into guitar music: this was design for jazz music, or corporate America.
 It took the pioneering electric blues guitarists of the fifties to show everyone what was possible on an electric guitar, from Howling Wolf, to Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry. 
Of course when white guitarists tried to copy this sound, it came out sounding especially jangly and bizarre – I defy anyone to listen to Duane Eddy or the Shadows now for any period of time without laughing hysterically (although Hank Marvin can at least claim to play the first Stratocaster imported into this country).
Finally though, the sixties began to bring guitars and graphics together. Not only did The Beatles and The Stones steal well from their fifties heroes, but they commissioned great sleeves too. 
And rather than do poor, weaker covers of their blues heroes, guitarists such as Eric Clapton transformed tracks like Freddie Kings’s Hideaway. By making liberal use of a distorting amp (with his sound engineers holding their hands over the ears at the ensuing racket) Clapton introduced a new sound to the world’s guitar players.
But my two subjects were finally about to collide properly, courtesy of the psychedelic movement and two important events in London – an exhibition of Aubrey Beardsley at the V&A in 1966 and the arrival in town of a certain Jimi Hendrix. All of a sudden music and graphics were inseparable. 
Wes Wilson, Hapshash & The Coloured Coat, Milton Glaser’s iconic Dylan poster: these were all iconic designs and designers of the time whose worked became umbilically linked to the music. The arrival of the next wave of bands such as Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd saw a phase when the art displayed on the 12 inch sleeve was to become as critical as the music to a teenager’s memories of the period, and propelled sleeve designers such as Hipgnosis to stardom. 
But there’s only so many Roger Dean covers that the world can actually take, and it’s no surprise that Queen became so easy to lampoon in Wayne’s World. Rock music, with its twenty minute guitar and drum solos had become both ridiculous and ridiculed. Cue a musical and graphic revolution: Punk arrived using the work of designers such as situationist Jamie Reid to create a visual style to match the aural barrage. The Buzzcocks sleeves of Malcolm Garrett influenced another, new wave of designers, just as their 60s counterparts had done a decade earlier. 
But just as graphics was getting into it’s stride, with famous work from Peter Saville, Neville Brody (and later in the eighties, Mark Farrow and Vaughan Oliver) music mainly rejected the guitar. 
Much of eighties music is dominated by Duran Duran, the Human League, synthesisers and pop videos – the only guitar music to be heard came from a genre heavily influenced by the virtuoso Eddie Van Halen - poodle-haired rock was born. 
70s guitars shops had long banned the Zeppelin anthem, Stairway to Heaven, but soon added the Guns and Roses anthem, Sweet Child of Mine, to their list. If, by the end of the eighties, G’n’R were the world’s biggest rock band, that gives you an quick insight into how far the music had fallen.
Just as the decade before, and the decade before that, another musical and visual revolution came, right on cue, with grunge music and its graphics neatly intertwined.
In the UK, the 90s were dominated by guitar based music influenced by The La’s and propelled by a sales war between Oasis and Blur. The century ended with a series of newer bands turning to the designers of their favourite Zeppelin and Floyd covers, Hipgnosis, to do the same for them. And newer, rougher bands like the White Stripes carefully controlled their image, colour schemes and videos whilst reviving great, grungy, messy blues-fuelled rock. 
The last few years have seen an interesting twist to this story. Whilst Dragonforce would previously have been known only to fans of speed-thrash-metal, now they’re famous for supplying the most difficult track to play on the latest version of Guitar Hero. If you’re stuggling to play it for real (like me), there are legions of teenage bedroomers happy to show you their version on YouTube. Or 9-year olds prepared to show you how to do it on the game itself. 
Guitar Hero seems to have propelled a revival in all interest ‘Rock’ in general – AC/DC are back in the studio and this summer sees Whitesnake, Def Leppard and Kiss all playing the festivals in Europe. Soon you’ll be able to buy the Aerosmith version of the game itself, so if you’re struggling to master ‘Walk this Way’ don’t fret, you can just play the game version instead.
This revival, for once, isn’t being mirrored by graphics – music graphics has progressively shrunk from the size of the 12 inch album, to the CD, to a 50 pixel square picture on an iPod screen. Graphic designers are peddling their wares everywhere else, but not in music.
But if the pattern of the relationship of guitars and graphics reveals anything…
...it’s that the two don’t stay apart for long. In the sixties, seventies and nineties the two were umbilically linked together. So that means we’re due for the next big-thing, pretty soon.
Are you ready? PS this talk was delivered whilst playing the guitar, and involved some complex choreography with a rather complicated pedal board. This ended up being pretty amateurish, in case you were wondering, but luckily Interesting’s attendees didn’t boo me off (like they can in Guitar Hero). If you’re feeling brave you can watch quicktime of the last 80% of this speech, lo-res here, high res here.
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