Today let’s look at a couple of crazy guitar licks from the song “Green-Eyed Lady” by Sugarloaf. Now, this song ain’t great. The melody and lyrics are throwaways. The bass line is copied right from a book of Guitar Exercises. Still, there are some valid reasons for liking this song – guitar reasons.
The two crazy licks in question appear at about two and a half minutes into the song, right before the organ solo. Example 1 (below) is a harmonized ascent of two voices, jumping up and double-backing in semitone intervals. The scale they reference is B Harmonic Minor and cycles through 3 sets of semitones (A# and B, C# and D, F# and G).
The second crazy guitar lick (below) is a descent that defies reason. It runs through a series of tritones, that get lazy in triplets, and fall chromatically towards the end.
If that ain’t Suck-Rock enough for you, check out the guitar solo from this song. This guy rips the shit out of these 16 bars. At around the 7th or 8th bar (15 seconds in), it sounds like he’s about to lose it. This is called Rocking at the Edge of Suck.
All of this guitar work was played by Bob Webber, co-founder of Sugarloaf. On the strength of this track alone, I can safely say he is my second favorite guitarist.
Who’s my favorite guitarist you ask?
Why, that would have to be Waddy Wachtel for his one-note playing on “Edge of Seventeen”.
yea waddy!