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Post by Jules on Apr 4, 2020 8:51:22 GMT
Sadly, this facet of our dear Roland often seems to get overlooked. He's not entirely without fault - how often does he leave the solos to others or submerges his guitar in the mix until it's barely audible?* In fact, until I saw him do the solo of "Broken" in the Scenes from the Big Chair documentary, I just simply assumed he didn't have a lot of chops, but when you see him handle such a complicated passage, it becomes an absurd thought. But clearly, his main strength lies in tone and delivery. "Badman's Song" live from "Going to California" is a good example, he's really inspired (Oleta even shouts out "Go, Roland!"...), while the Knebworth version has him duelling with Neil Taylor and when Roland enters after Neil's first few bars, the guitar sound is just a revelation. Another favourite of mine is the solo in "Always in the Past", tremendous!
* Not a joke. Compare the Bob Clearmountain single mix of "Advice for the Young at Heart" with the TFF-mixed album version on "The Seeds of Love". The single mix has the guitar much higher in the mix. I'm not necessarily saying it's better but it clearly shows that TFF didn't want the song to have balls... and with the new stuff supposedly being more electronic, I'm afraid we won't hear much of him, once again...
So, any other songs you would nominate as good examples of Roland's guitar playing, and what do you think of it?
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