Slide Away
One minute and twenty-seven seconds into the new album from Jersey roots-punkers the Gaslight Anthem and there it is. "Great Expectations," the lead-off track, is roaring along, tense and taut, like the sound of thunder sped up and stretched out, then, an electric screech swoops in to herald the coming chorus. That noise is a pick slide--and I love it.
Effective though it may be, Gaslight guitarist Brian Fallon's use of the pick slide is far from original. In fact, the technique--which involves sliding the edge of the pick along the low strings of the guitar--is something of a sonic Zelig. Listen, and you can hear that unmistakable sound all over rock history. 1950s greaser guitar legend, Link Wray, ("Rumble") pick-slid like he was paid to. So did surf-guitar guru, Dick Dale. AC/DC's Angus Young knows well the power of a perfectly placed pick slide. When he does it--and he does it in almost every song; "Highway To Hell" has an especially good one--he sounds the way his band's lightning flash logo looks. Gaslight's spiritual forefather, Bruce Springsteen, spews pick slides all over his most guitar-centric album, 1978's Darkness On The Edge Of Town. Check the last minute of "Badlands" for the sound of the Boss at his most bad-assed. And Jack White, particularly with the Raconteurs, has proven himself a modern master of the technique.
But it's not just the rude, rough sound of the pick slide that I love. I love what the pick slide stands for. Unlike finger-tapping or fleet-fingered soloing, the pick slide is a guitar god move even stone-fingered players can execute. You literally just scrape the pick along the strings. It's guitar heroism at its most democratic. There's no coincidence that the artists I tapped above are pick slide devotees. They're all people's bands, with not a teased hairdo or holier than thou attitude among them.
So let's hear it for the pick slide, the most egalitarian and eardrum-bursting bit of guitar flash around. Or better, yet let's listen to one.
Eat your heart out, Angus.
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