In 2020, during that interminable, soul-sapping period of house arrest known as lockdown, I started work on two book projects.
One was about charismatic warlords of the Ancient World. Not the usual suspects: no dazzling Caesar or psychopathic Alexander. Other great and terrible men, heroic and courageous, tyrannical and cruel; the perfect characters for a boys’ own foray into the fields of glory. History as high adventure! A belated sequel to, and improvement on, For the Glory of Rome… It did not progress beyond an outline and some rough character sketches.
The other project concerned guitar gods and heroes. Visitors to Flickr soon become aware of my devotion to certain doyens of heavy guitar. The book concept was an examination of the charisma, greatness and failings of my favourite guitarists, categorized as gods, demigods and heroes. Exemplars of virtus and gloria. No strangers to hubris.
The gods: Eric Clapton (‘66-‘68), Ritchie Blackmore, Michael Schenker, Uli Jon Roth and Randy Rhoads. The demigods: Leslie West, Tony Iommi, Angus Young, Gary Moore, John Sykes, the dioscuri of Lizzy, Priest and Maiden. The heroes: Eric Bell, Tommy Bolin, Dave Meniketti, Vivian Campbell, Slash, Doug Aldrich, the Hawkins brothers, Richie Faulkner, Laurence Archer and Søren Anderson.
There would be necessary discussion of the great innovators (Beck, Hendrix, Page and Van Halen), numerous honourable mentions and cameos, and appendices about gear and trivia (the most metal guitar? Adrian Smith’s black Lado Earth as featured in the ‘Aces High’ video, obviously).
It did not progress beyond an outline and the acquisition of a pile of vintage guitar magazines.
Man has got to know his limitations, as Dave Mustaine (channeling Clint Eastwood) might say. This mediocre, self-taught bedroom guitarist quickly realised he lacked the necessary musical knowledge and vocabularly. Kerrang-ese like ‘riffage’, ‘shredding’, ‘tasty licks’, ‘fretboard heroics’ and ‘blazing/blistering/searing/soaring solo’ can carry one only so far. Anyhoo, the job had already been done by the expert contributors to the Alchemy profiles at Dinosaur Rock Guitar. (Also, the age of the guitar hero is waning. The true guitar hero is an increasingly rare and aged beast. He is the product of a distant epoch, a twentieth century boy who, unlike the youthful legion of technically accomplished but characterless TikTok supershredders, mastered his art in the testing conditions of the pre-internet era. There may be some riffs left to discover but he already has the best ones.)
And yet…
The subject retains its appeal, especially investigating the psychology of the lords of rock and metal. The unwilling, the insecure and self-sabotaging; the complacent virtuosos and the mercurial maestros; the egomaniacs; the complex personalities and the rounded characters.
I got used to the image of being a guitar hero — after all, it was my aim when I was young — but I got angry when people said, "Michael Schenker is God," because I was very sensitive about those things.
Wunderkind, loner and alcoholic. An enthusiastic participant in a one-sided rivalry with an older, more successful sibling. Known by the unflattering, but not entirely undeserved, sobriquet ‘Mad Mikey’. Schenker, despite it all, has endured.
John Sykes would make an equally fascinating case study.
The death of Sykes prompted emotional tributes and by-numbers obituaries (Guardian, Telegraph), but the most revealing portraits emerged in videos posted by his associates on YouTube. Broadcaster Eddie Trunk, producer Michael Nielsen and bandmate Carmine Appice describe a brilliant musician and a difficult, wilful and introverted man.
Sykes’ dramatic arc is cinematic and ultimately tragic. The NWOBHM apprenticeship, rise to prominence with Thin Lizzy, rock stardom with Whitesnake, and the great betrayal by Coverdale; disappointment, bitterness, depression;1 the intermittent returns to action with Blue Murder, a resurrected Lizzy and as a solo artist; the abandoned projects and shelved recordings; retreat, illness, death. How we cried when he was fallen! No last hurrah for the leonine demigod but, like those who have gone before, Sykes’ immortality is assured on the sonic plane. Guitar heroes never really die.
On Sykes’ bouts of depression, note the comments of Tony Franklin and Carmine Appice in interviews with Full In Bloom. Cf. C. Appice & I. Gittins, Stick It! (Chicago 2016), 201.