ONE OF THE ICONIC GUITARS FOR JAZZ, BLUES AND ROCK FANS IS THE FENDER TELECASTER, BETTER KNOWN AS THE “TELE”. CREATED IN 1950, THIS SOLID BODY BEAUTY HAS CREATED A SOUND AND STYLE ALL IT’S OWN, WITH LEGIONS OF FANS STILL LOOKING FOR VINTAGE VERSIONS.
ONE OF THE ALL TIME SUPERSTARS OF THE TELE IS ARLEN ROTH, WHO’S CAREER HAS HAD HIM PLAY ON SESSIONS WITH THE LIKES OF BOB DYLAN, DUANE EDDY, PAUL BUTTERFIELD AND ART GARFUNKEL. HE WAS THE GUITARIST FOR THE FAMED BLUES MOVIE CROSSROADS, AND HE’S LITERALLY WRITTEN THE BOOK ON THE LENGTH, BREADTH AND WIDTH OF THE TELE IN A SERIES OF GUITAR BOOKS. FOR A NUMBER OF YEARS HE WAS THE EDITOR FOR GUITAR MAGAZINE, AND HIS INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEOS ARE LEGENDARY.
RECENTLY, HE’S RELEASED AN ALBUM (TELE-MASTERS) WHICH HAS HIM PLAYING CLASSIC BLUES, ROCK AND WESTERN SWING WITH A COLLECTION OF TODAY’S SIX STRING GUNSLINGERS. JOE BONAMASSA, VINCE GIL, STEVE CROPPER, ALBERT LEE AND JERRY DONAHUE ARE ONLY A HANDFUL OF THE ICONS FEATURED ON THIS ALBUM THAT IS A BALM TO THE EARS.
WE RECENTLY HAD A CHANCE TO SIT AT THE FEET OF MR. ROTH, LISTENING TO HIS WORDS OF WISDOM FROM HIS CONNECTICUT HOME. IF THIS DISCUSSION DOESN’T GET YOU OUT PRACTICING YOUR LICKS, NOTHING WILL!
WHAT IS THE MAJOR DIFFERENCE AND ADVANTAGE TO THE TELECASTER AS OPPOSED TO THE STRATOCASTER?
There’s a big difference. I usually go into a tactile description of what’s better.
For example, when you do a lot of studio work, the Tele just sits on your leg, it just stays there with no problem. It doesn’t get away from you.
When I’ve done overdubs with my Strats, I’ll be finishing a solo and the guitar will already be on the ground. It slides right off of your leg.
I think that a journeyman studio type guy (if you look back on the Muscle Shoals or Nashville sessions), they’re always sitting there with a Tele on the leg, and it’s not going anywhere.
That’s just how it holds.
But the thing about the Telecaster is that it really was the first solid body electric guitar. It’s uncanny how they got everything right the first time.
My ’53 Tele is considered one of the best in the world. My ’54 Strat was one of the first Strats that were made. The transition from the Strat to the Tele wasn’t that bad because they both had an ash body and a solid maple neck. The resonance, sound and feel is pretty similar, as is the response the guitar gets from the fingers.
The thing about a Telecaster is that it’s “form as function,” it’s a simple work of art, it’s beautiful, and it can do anything.
That’s the reason we did the album Telemasters. It ranges from “chicken pickin’ “ to jazz and everything in between.
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“the thing about the Telecaster is that it really was the first solid body electric guitar. It’s uncanny how they got everything right the first time”
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IN THE WORLD OF THE SAXOPHONE, COLEMAN HAWKINS WAS THE PROGENITOR. WHO WAS THE FIRST FIRST STANDARD BEARER FOR THE TELECASTER?
We dedicated this album to all of the great Telecaster masters of the past. But, the first guy was a guy named Jimmy Bryant. He was a Western Swing 356 player. He had a duet with “Speedy” West, who was a famous steel guitar player. They’d play a million licks, very jazzy and very western, and it had that bite and twang that Telecasters are now known for.
The kind of sound that I’m known for was first played by Roy Buchanan and my good buddy James Burton. Burton was a little bit clearer and twangier; Buchanan had that searing country and blues tone.
Jimmy Bryant in the late 40s to 50s was hand in hand with when it was invented. It started out as the Broadcaster in ’48. Then, they couldn’t use that name because Gretsch had a set of drums with that name. They then became the “Nocaster” as it had no name before it eventually became the Telecaster.
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“That’s the reason we did the album Telemasters. It ranges from “chicken pickin’ “ to jazz and everything in between”
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WHO BECAME THE GUY WHO WAS EITHER THE BRYANT ANTI-THESIS OR TOOK IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL, LIKE LESTER YOUNG AND CHARLIE PARKER DID TO COLEMAN HAWKINS?
I might put myself into that category, because very early on I wrote some books on technique that no one had heard or taught before. That made my name at the very young age of 16-17. I was already blowing people’s minds with what I did on the Telecaster, Strat and Les Paul.
A lot of the guys on this album influenced me, but Clarence White was a huge influence. He was with the Byrds. The first album that he appeared on with them, he did this thing where he and Gene Parsons bent the B string; it’s called the “Parsons-White B Bender.”
It was on the Byrds album Younger Than Yesterday and there were two songs; “Time Between” and “Girl With No Name.” Chris Hillman wrote both songs and brought him in on the session. The problem is that there is no credit for him on the album.
I was a big Byrds fan, and I heard this album and could tell that something mechanical was pulling that string, but I didn’t know what it was. I started emulating it with my fingers and came up with a whole new style.
When I was in Japan, I had an interpreter on this tour, and he showed me a book about the bridge from Clarence White to me, and how I developed a string bending technique based on what was being done before. It sounded like a steel guitar, but I knew it wasn’t one. That really shook the world as far as Telecaster playing.
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“everything that you learn by rote is not going to matter unless you can take it somewhere else”
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A SAX PLAYER WORKS ON LONG TONES. IS THERE ANYTHING SIMILAR FOR A GUITARIST TO DO TO IMPROVE HIS SOUND?
You are singing through your fingers.
When I talk to students, I tell them that the problem with a windplayer is that they can only play one note at a time, no matter how fat or big the sound is. We can do double stops, arpeggiate and do five notes at a time, so the tone is in the fingers.
I’m not a big believers in pedals and effects. A lot of guys use effects to get that kind of sustain. For me, the effect is the wire going from the guitar to the amp, so the key is in choosing the right guitar-amp combination for that particular tune or show.
It’s usually something very simple like a vintage Telecaster through a vintage Princeton amp or Deluxe reverb amp. Fender to Fender; I like that sound.
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“You are singing through your fingers”
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THERE ARE BASIC RULES OF WHAT NOT TO DO WITH A SAX, LIKE RE-VARNISH IT. ARE THERE CERTAIN UNWRITTEN RULES OF WHAT TO AVOID WITH TELECASTERS?
Some of them have three or two pickups, and the Esquire has only one pickup.
You never want to refinish it. Too many of them back in the old days were stripped. I don’t think it effects the sound as much as the value.
What I don’t like is when Telecasters (and guitars in general) started getting into the polyurethane finish as opposed to the lacquer finish. The natural age adds so much to it, with the work of my fingers wearing off the lacquer. People do have a tendency to hot rod their guitars. That’s their choice, but it’s not my thing.
WHEN YOU WATCH A GUITARIST, WHAT DO YOU LOOK FOR, AND WHAT IS YOUR PET PEEVE?
What I look for most is the right hand, the picking hand. That’s the hand that launches everything. The left hand can learn a million notes, but if can’t get there with the right, nothing happens.
My pet peeve is not with guitarists, but with students who don’t listen to me.
The other pet peeve is again with the right hand. If somebody can’t adapt to finger style; if they can only pick. I always try to get people to be well rounded. You need to play with pick, pick and fingers, and then just fingers. It’s important to branch out and, as Art Garfunkel said to me, “be in control with the six members of your orchestra.” He was talking about my guitar playing, and after I sent him an album of my versions of Simon and Garfunkel songs, he said that I was in control of the six members of my orchestra.
The right hand has to have the ability to do that. If you’re only playing with a pick, you’re only going across strings. With your fingers you can actually grab them and stop them.
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“The left hand can learn a million notes, but if can’t get there with the right, nothing happens”
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YOUR LATEST ALBUM, TELEMASTERS, IS PURE COMFORT FOOD. WHERE WOULD THE TELE BE WITHOUT THE BLUES BOOGIE SHUFFLE?
I don’t know if any of us would even be here without the blues shuffle. (laughs)
A lot of that is going on in the album. We have some shufflin’ with Jack Pearson, me Joe Bonamassa and all that. ”Key to the Highway” was more of a funk thing, but the reason we did it that way was because the blues shuffle version was first, so we’re just taking a play on it.
The Tele wouldn’t be anywhere without it. Think of all of the endless jam sessions and work outs you can do with any musicians, anywhere in the world. It’s like “Hey, I just arrived from Finland; let’s play some blues.”
The shuffle is everything.
When I was doing the movie Crossroads with Ralph Maccio, the director Walter Hill didn’t know a thing about the guitar, but he picked up on the term “shuffle.” He’d be directing a scene , and he told me “Arlen, I need Ralph here to just shuffle along.” (laughs) We’re not in Buffalo, ya know!
With some of those scenes Hill told me “Arlen, I don’t know what’s going on here, so you direct the scene.” So I sat in the director’s chair in the middle of a Mississippi cotton field, and I’m directing a scene. It was a thrill!
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“I don’t know if any of us would even be here without the blues shuffle…the shuffle is everything”
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YOU’VE PLAYED ON SESSIONS WITH BOB DYLAN, JOHN PRINE AND RY COODER. DO THEY TELL YOU WHAT TO DO? WHAT MAKES FOR A TOUGH SESSION?
The really bad sessions are the ones where they fall in love with you cause they’ve seen you “live” being yourself. Then, you go into the studio and they say, “Can you play it like Clapton?”
One time I took my ‘54 Strat and I threw it 20 feet across the studio after 12 hours of perfect takes, and they accidently sent screaming feedback into my headphones, almost taking my head off. I just lost it. Just like Jack Bruce did in a TV studio with me, but it went 40 feet. (laughs)
One of my most nerve-racking sessions was when I got called in to play steel guitar in New York for a film score for a movie called Simon (with Alan Arkin). There were all these philharmonic level instruments reading everything (and I don’t read music), and I’m there with my little steel and tweed amp sitting a looking at two arm lengths of sheet music. For Hawaiian guitar! I still remember the melody to this day because it was so traumatic.
When I went to see the movie with my parents, I listened for the music, and for all of that torture they only included about 2 seconds of it in the film.
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“I can say “I love you”, that’s it; but when you play that, it can mean 8,000 different things. You’re connecting to a deeper part of the soul”
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YOU’VE WRITTEN A BUNCH OF BOOKS ON GUITAR LICKS. WHAT IS THE VALUE OF MEMORIING THESE LICKS AS OPPOSED TO JUST STARTING ON YOUR OWN WITH EXPERIMENTATION?
My books are all about individual styles that I know just from learning in the School of Hard Knocks. With My company Hot Licks-I’ve done 240 videos with 180 different artists.
It’s like self-taught music being passed on to other musicians so that they can teach themselves. In the end, we all teach ourselves.
I’ll hear a riff by Buddy Guy, and I want to get that little thing down. You grab snapshots from other artists to inspire you, but in the end it’s got to come out as you.
To this day people will come up to me and ask to play such and such. They’ll tell me the song, and of course I know it, but then I realize that I’ve never actually played the song; I’ve just internalized it. The musical archtypes are happening.
It comes down to training your ear, and if you don’t have the ear everything that you learn by rote is not going to matter unless you can take it somewhere else.
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“You grab snapshots from other artists to inspire you, but in the end it’s got to come out as you…In the end we all teach ourselves”
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OF ALL THE TELEMASTERS, WHO WOULD YOU PLAY $500 TO SEE?
Clarence White, because what he did was so unique and such a huge influence on me.
But everyone has their own individual sound. Joe Bonamassa’s work on the album was a direct reference and tribute to Albert Collins. It sounds exactly like Collins, which Joe is capable of doing, as he can sound like 800 different guitar players.
AT THIS STAGE OF YOUR CAREER, WHAT MOTIVATES YOU?
I lost my first daughter and my wife (in a fatal 1998 car accident), so for me to find any motivation is very hard. I have to ask that question to myself every morning, sometimes several times a day. 2950
What really motivates me is my surviving daughter, Lexie, who’s an excellent musician in her own right. Also, making music is my life breath. It’s the only time that I’m 100% at peace with myself and locked in with my feelings and emotions, which can get very deep.
As an instrumentalist, I feel notes can say so much more than words. I can say “I love you”, that’s it; but when you play that, it can mean 8,000 different things. You’re connecting to a deeper part of the soul.
It’s all about making music, going out and playing, and yet it’s so frustrating getting gigs these days. Why don’t people understand that I need playing like I need air?
They worry if I can put people in the seats, and I tell them, “Shut up; I’ll put plenty of people in the seats. I just need to breathe!”
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“be in control with the six members of your orchestra.”
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IT’S INSPIRING TO HEAR A MAN SO DEDICATED TO HIS CRAFT, PARTICULARLY AS HE USES IT TO ASSUAGE THE DIFFICULTIES IN HIS LIFE. THAT IS ONE OF THE BENEFITS OF MUSIC. AS DAVID PLAYED THE HARP TO CONSOLE KING SAUL, SO ARLEN ROTH PLAYS GUITAR TO GIVE COMFORT, BOTH TO HIMSELF AND HIS LEGION OF FANS. BOTH HE AND US ARE THE BENEFICIARIS.