EDDIE! YNGWIE! STEVIE RAY! SATCH! THE EDGE! THE EIGHTIES WERE ARGUABLY THE MOST INNOVATIVE DECADE IN GUITAR HISTORY. JOIN US AS WE SALUTE THE SHREDDERS, THE PUNKS, THE BLUESMEN AND ALL THE BLAZING SIX-STRING GUNSLINGERS WHO MADE IT SPECIAL
WRITTEN BY BRAD TOLINSKI
LOUD, FAST AND OUT OF CONTROL, PART 1
BIGGER, BRIGHTER AND MORE COLORFUL THAN A
finalist on RuPaul’s Drag Race, the Eighties were not about subtlety. Fashion was dominated by gigantic shoulder pads, big hair, neon clothes and the mini-est of skirts. The theaters were glutted with high-concept blockbusters like Lethal Weapon, The Terminator, Die Hard and Escape from New York, and TV was fueled by extravagant, over-the-top prime-time soap operas like Dynasty and Dallas.
And most significantly, on August 1, 1981, MTV, the 24-hour music cable channel, was launched, creating a billion-dollar musical space race to see who could create the most jaw-dropping, attention-grabbing video.
What was a guitarist to do? Whether consciously or subconsciously, many metal, rock, blues, jazz — and even acoustic — guitarists embraced the spirit of the times by developing flashy new techniques played on exotic-looking guitars through rigs that looked more like a NASA space station than the antique stomp boxes used by Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page.
As the great guitar virtuoso Steve Vai explained in Nöthin’ But a Good Time, Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock’s excellent oral history of Eighties metal, “When the Eighties came along, the shift was more towards the rock star thing. Entertainment. But at the same time there was a desire to play the shit out of [the guitar]. We loved playing instruments.”
While some of the excesses of the decade were more than a little embarrassing in retrospect — silver spandex pants and a pink Dinky SuperStrat played through a Tom Scholz Rockman, anyone?
— much of the musicianship still holds up and remains impressively solid. And lucky for us, Guitar World, which printed its first issue in July 1980, was around to witness just about all of it.
THE BIG BANG THEORY
IT’S A STORY that’s been told many times, but the Eighties guitar renaissance officially started two years earlier in 1978, when Van Halen’s self-titled debut album was released. The record sounded unlike anything heard before, largely due to Eddie Van Halen’s remarkable playing and tone. While the opening track “
