“People who spent their time learning to copy other things, they never quite escape it”: Why so many guitarists are derivative, according to Talking Heads guitarist Jerry Harrison
They say imitation can be the sincerest form of flattery, but it can also limit a guitarist’s creativity. According to Jerry Harrison, if you cut your teeth mimicking famous riffs, you run the risk of never finding your own sound.
While budding guitarists tend to start off learning rock’s biggest tunes, the Talking Heads guitarist took a different approach. “I never learned to play guitar by trying to mimic other people,” he explains in the latest issue of Guitar World. He goes on to insist that “a lot of people who spent their time learning to copy other things, they never quite escape it”.
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His refusal to mimic guitar heroes has had a few drawbacks, though. “I’m also not the best person to go jam with,” he admits. “I don’t hear licks and changes that way. If I have to go play with someone, it’s like, ‘let me listen to it, give me a little preparation’ – because I just never made myself as facile at that.”
However, Harrison is firm in his belief that his approach has helped him carve out a distinctive sound. He harks back to his high school peers to expand on his point. While Harrison pieced together his style, he noticed that people around him all sounded uncannily familiar. “The ones who had learned every lick that Eric Clapton or Jeff Beck did… if you knew those records, you recognised the solos,” he says.
Of course, some people do manage to escape the trap of imitating the guitarists that came before them. “The best players finally got to the point where it felt like their own,” he admits.
He points out Kenny Wayne Shepherd as an example of a guitarist who wears his inspirations on his sleeve while pushing his own unique sound. When working alongside Shepherd to produce the 1997 record Trouble Is…, Harrison could hear the influences rooted in the blues rocker’s style.
“He’s obviously influenced by Stevie Ray Vaughan and studied Albert King and various other great blues players,” Harrison notes. “But when I hear him, I still feel like his internal mind is coming up with the licks, and they’re his at that moment.”
Harrison is set to embark on tour with King Crimson’s Adrian Belew this May. The Remain In Light tour, named after the 1980’s Talking Heads record of the same name, will see the pair performing Talking Heads classics, as well as some cuts from their solo careers.
Tickets for the Remain In Light tour are on sale now. The tour will kick off in Stockholm, before rounding off in June at the London O2 Indigo.
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