Buzz Osborne: “Guitarists are the most conservative people on the planet. You can’t get them to do anything left of centre”
Buzz Osborne believes guitarists are “the most conservative people on the planet” musically speaking and has called on today’s guitar players to be more “adventurous” and “try something new”.
While there’s still plenty being done to push guitar music into the 2020s, especially by younger virtuosos who have built up sizeable followings online, the Melvins guitarist is still advocating for there to be a greater sense of progress.
READ MORE: Buzz Osborne on four decades of Melvins: “Once I stopped thinking I had to do things a certain way, the whole world opened up to me”
“I wish guitar players were more adventurous. But they’re just not,” he says in a new interview with Total Guitar. “They seem like the most conservative people on the face of the planet. You can’t get them to do anything left of centre.”
“Try something new. You might just like it!” he implores.
Elsewhere in the interview, Osborne goes on to discuss why it was that the Melvins couldn’t be neatly categorised into any particular musical movement.
“I’ve always thought we’re offering something that was not the norm,” he says. “We’re not part of any musical genre. We get lumped into the grunge thing, but those bands don’t sound like us. I’ve always felt we were a different kind of animal.”
It turns out that some of that philosophy was inspired by one of his literary heroes.
“Well, one of my favourite authors is Flannery O’Connor,” he reveals. “She said about the books that she was writing, ‘If they’re not controversial, then they’re not any good.’ I’ve never forgotten that.”
“Another thing I really liked was when Gene Simmons said, ‘Be as peculiar as possible.’ I’ve repeated that over and over.”
In other news, Osborne recently explained why he believes Jimi Hendrix‘s “weird” guitar playing style “doesn’t make any sense”.
“Hendrix played weird!” he said. “His technique is wrong. Everything is out of tune, everything is wrong, but he’s the best. If he’s the best, then wouldn’t you want to teach people that sensibility?”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
