First: A thank you to my friend Russell S. who did some digging on this topic and shared his insights with me. Russ is a musician himself, and counted Les Paul among his friends. He loves this stuff at least as much as I do, and always has interesting suggestions.
Second: There are whole college courses taught on rock
music, and the guitar is the iconic instrument of rock, so I make no pretense that any of what follows is even remotely nuanced or complete. I'm just trying to set a context for why it's special when a band has two lead guitarists.
Early electric guitar was mostly about strumming chords or
playing simple riffs to accompany vocalists. The transformation into what we call rock music really began
with blues guitarists, such as Sister Rosetta
Tharpe, the Kings (BB, Albert and Freddie, all unrelated) and Buddy Guy. For them, the guitar was a co-equal voice, not just an accompaniment. They experimented with riffs, extended melodies, technical effects, and solos, and pretty
much invented the vocabulary of rock music - it just took awhile for the world to catch on.
(Almost all Western popular music owes something to the blues. Here are some of my earlier posts on blues and the beginnings of rock:
http://zapatosjam.blogspot.com/2020/06/blues-and-origins-of-rock-1.html
http://zapatosjam.blogspot.com/2020/06/rock-1-1960s-part-1.html
http://zapatosjam.blogspot.com/2020/07/girls-rock-1-pioneers-leslie-gore-suzi.html )
The first full-fledged rock guitarists either came out of the blues world, or studied the great blues guitarists. One of the first to break out was Chuck Berry. He and the British guitarists who came along a decade later, like Peter Green, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page, along with the American Jimi Hendrix, idolized and emulated the great American blues musicians, while continuing to push the musical boundaries. They ultimately became the prototypes for the modern rock "guitar hero".
As the guitar part became more free-roaming and melody oriented, it left a space in the overall sound of a band. To retain the fullness of sound behind them, some bands added a second, “rhythm”
guitar. This musician would fill the traditional role of the guitar, strumming, keeping time, and backing the lead singer. Examples would include the surf-rock
bands, then groups like the Rolling Stones and AC/DC and later,
metal bands like Metallica. Of course, it was a short step from there to experimenting with twin leads.
The dual lead is magical when it works, but it is rare because there aren't that many great lead guitarists to start with, and then there is the question of chemistry between the two musicians. (There has been a recent explosion of bands with twin leads - more on that in another post) As rock became more guitar dominated, more bands began using multiple guitarists, but in most cases, the role of the guitars was still mainly to strum and support the vocals. True lead guitarists--people who can play long, seamless melodic runs, who can play fast or slow passages equally well, who can improvise—remained rare. Having two of them is still pretty radical.
The first real example of a band with two leads was the Yardbirds in 1966, when Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page briefly overlapped. The earliest to make it a permanent feature were the Allman Brothers and Derek and the Dominoes. Both lineups happened to feature Duane Allman, paired respectively with Dicky Betts and Eric Clapton. Allman died in a motorcycle accident in 1971, at the age of 24, but the idea lived on.
The Yardbirds: “Heart full of Soul”
There is almost no available footage of the band with both Beck and Page. This clip is a mashup of two others. The dandy with the psychedelic guitar and ruffled shirt is Page. The dude in the suit and tie is Beck. They overlapped for less than 6 months and then went on to (understatement of the year) form their own bands.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5IqXi0rnfQ
Derek and the Dominoes: “Layla”
Everyone has heard this a million times, but it’s always worth another listen. Clapton, using standard picking, Allman, playing slide, make their guitars sound almost like completely different instruments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TngViNw2pOo
Wishbone Ash: “Where were you tomorrow?”
Wishbone Ash were moderately popular during my college days, viewed as a “thinking person’s” rock band. I had not listened to them for at least 30 years. They were pioneers of the dual lead concept, and influenced a lot of bands that followed. This song has flashes of blues, country and straight-ahead rock. From 1973:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYvckvAepYk
Boston: “Don’t look back”
Boston’s debut album in 1976, had a huge impact. We had never heard soaring, multilayered vocal or guitar harmonies like this. The secret was founder Tom Scholz’s invention of a whole new mixing technology, including proprietary electronics. Boston have released six albums since that debut, and while they still have that amazing sound, the honest truth is they never recaptured the magic of that first album, because they pretty much ran out of ideas. Their biggest impact is that a generation of rock bands emulated their multi-layered arrangements, and a lot of audio technology companies licensed Scholz’s designs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvmNRXdb2ng
Judas Priest: “Sentinel”, live
Priest have a harsh and brutal image, but their songs are melodic and structured. They were early adopters of the dual lead concept, and as a live band (they’ve been touring on and off for 45 years) it is essential to their sound--backing tracks don’t cut it. Where mainstream rock was going for a layered sound, metal bands like Priest were about the pyrotechnic solos. This clip features a prototypical guitar duel, with the two leads taking turns shredding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fl7yNIPlGM
Wishbone Ash: “Real guitars have wings”
This is a mid-1990’s lineup, with only Andy Powell (audience left, with the Flying-V guitar) left of the original founders. It’s not about the solos, but about the harmonies and the way the voices of the guitars complement each other. The clip is not high-quality but it still works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fSA6Z1wqzU
Peter Green Splinter Group (Nigel Watson and Peter Green): “Man of the World”
Peter Green, co-founder of Fleetwood Mac, author of the song
that made Santana’s career, and once considered better than Eric Clapton, was
slipped bad drugs at a party and never fully recovered. He left
Fleetwood Mac, went into seclusion, and stopped playing. In
1997, his friend Nigel Watson coaxed him to come back out, forming the Peter
Green Splinter Group to give him a home.
Watson helped take care of him for the rest of their lives, enabling him to play on a semi-regular basis.
Here they are in 2009, playing one of Green’s original Fleetwood Mac
compositions. Watson died in late 2019, and Green died a
few months later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gXE3Z2USLU
