Metro Pulse/Gamut/Guitar Heroes

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Remembering the golden days of Knoxville's Guitar Heroes

by Mike Gibson

When I was 19, I purchased my first real electric guitar. It was a gem—or a Jem, rather, an Ibanez Jem 777 Steve Vai model with 24 frets, Floyd Rose locking tremelo system with recessed whammy bar (for scooping freaky, way-sharp whang-bar licks as well as the roaring divebomb noises most players make with the contraptions), special fluroescent-pink Dimarzio pickups, and a monkey grip—a contoured "handle" carved out of the top portion of the body (for showy one-handed licks). It was the so-called floral pattern model, the most expensive of the Jem line, with a body and headstock burnished black and adorned with graceful, grainily-rendered pink and white carnations.

At $1,500, it was way more guitar than I needed; it still is, really, but I would nonetheless sooner cut off a limb than sell it. It's still perhaps my most treasured material possession. It's my nod, my link, if you will, to the guitar greatness to which I have long aspired, but only intermittently worked for. It's also my way of connecting with its namesake, Steve Vai, the lanky virtuoso with the serpentine tresses who went from a Frank Zappa sideman to David Lee Roth's resident head-cutter to a solo recording career as, well, a Guitar Hero.

Lord knows, I had more than my fair share of those when I first became enraptured with all things six-stringed, but Vai was first and foremost (if you haven't already seen the movie Crossroads, do yourself a favor and watch his incendiary cameo as Jack Butler, Satan's guitarist, in the "duel" that constitutes the film's last 15 minutes.)

But like most aspiring guitar geniuses, especially in the wild and wooly 1980s, I had my share of local Heroes, as well. On the outer limits of prosaic Oak Ridge, for instance, a fellow named Matt Wolfenbarger operated a tiny record store called Pegasus, which seemed to carry all of the heavy metal and other guitar-oriented records the chain stores either didn't carry or didn't carry enough of. Matt could play faster than anyone I had ever seen in my life to that point; he would stand in front of the cash register, axe in hand, playing breakneck minor-key scalar runs that traversed the entire fretboard for literally hours on end.

And then, of course, there was Don (Maddog) Rutherford, a tall, gaunt and weirdly-angled blonde kid, somewhere near my age, who played in a local trio dubbed the Relentless Blues Band. Fronted by a soulful African-American singer/ bassist, RBB played rocked-up cover versions of classic blues and Jimi Hendrix songs, with much of the show given over to Rutherford's burning, whammy- and feedback-laced blues-metal-fusion solos. He even played an axe just like mine, except his was a limited-edition Green model, signed by Steve Vai himself, a gauche psychedelic beauty that turned into a glowing lime hourglass when the lights went down and Maddog burned through one frenzied climax after another...

What is a Guitar Hero? Opinions vary. Most musicians will likely pay homage to their own favorite axemen with some awe-filled declaration to the effect of "————, he can play anything."

But technical competence and versatility alone don't really explain the phenomenon of guitar worship. Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley perhaps inspired more pimply kids to pick up a guitar than any single musician in the 1970s. Yet the spaceman's catchy, memorable simplicity and costumed cool had more to do with his iconic status than any comprehensive mastery of the instrument.

"If you have a song on the K-Tel 'riff-rock' compilation," says Sam Powers, bassist for Knoxville's Superdrag, "then by definition, you're a f***ing guitar hero."

Now a local hero in his own right, Mustard singer/guitarist Chris Cook remembers the formative years of his own playing, when as a child he would occasionally spend time at a close cousin's home. In the basement, his guitarist uncle's FM rock cover band would practice during the night, and the two youngsters were left upstairs to listen and wonder. "He was cool because he had the band that played downstairs, and we couldn't go down there," Cook remembers. "But I'd listen and try to hear what they played. He was the one who made me realize that this was something I could do."

A Knoxville music supporter and enabler for more than 15 years now, A.C. Entertainment's Benny Smith lays claim to considerable expertise: "I've worked with plenty of the so-called local heroes, some who were heroes in my mind, and some just in their own."

His own definition of the phenomenon is as far-reaching and insightful as any. "A guitar hero is a guy who's on stage, playing, and after his show, you know that at least one or two kids will go out the next day and grab a guitar."

In 1980, when punk and the earliest strains of hyperamplified modern metal were just beginning to slap the face of a music world beset with disco and FM mustache rock, local radio station Rock 104 WIMZ (now more correctly designated 103.5) held a battle-of-the-bands contest downtown that many still point to as a defining moment in Knoxville music.

The hands-down winner of the contest was the four-piece unit Balboa, featuring the dual guitar attack of Terry Hill and Hector Qirko. Former Metro Pulse contributor John Sewell, veteran (as both a bassist and singer) of countless local punk and hard-rock outfits since 1982, was there, as was "anyone who played in any significant new wave or punk band for the next five years.

"That show blew everyone away," says Sewell, now in his late 30s. "It's the reason a lot of people still consider Terry to be the best. Hector was great, but Terry was the 'cool guy.' He was older than everyone, and the rock kids worshipped him like a god. He seemed scary, like he had seen and done all these things no one else had. If you got to hang out with Terry, that was the greatest."

Smith calls Hill "as artistic a guitarist as any I've worked with; and along with that he had a lot of technical expertise." Hill's colorful style, which combined prog-rock precision with heady experimentation and a remarkable feel for electronic effects, later anchored local post-punk outfit Wh-wh (which featured vocalist Brian Waldschlager), as well as innumerable solo efforts.

Qirko, an exceptionally tasteful blues stylist, later made waves as leader of his own blues band, and as head of the Irregulars unit that often backs local poet-rocker R.B. Morris.

Most of the prominent local rock guitarists of the 1980s absorbed something from those two players; perhaps they were inspired by that seminal Balboa show, or maybe they took lessons from either Qirko or Hill. And those players who fell into neither category probably took their cues from someone who did.

Two of the remarkable guitarists who emerged from that milieu were burly, tattooed axe-mangler Carl Snow and Van Halen-obsessed Bearden kid David Teague, the foundation of Knoxville's Koro in 1982. That hardcore unit set out to be "the fastest, tightest band in the world...and they came damn close," remarks Sewell. "They blew everybody else out of the boat. The first time I heard them, they scared me."

The singular ferocity of the outfit (their lone 7-inch is now a punk-rock collector's item) owed much to the skills of those two players. Both were chameleons, capable of adapting their styles to multiple contexts, but best-known for their fast, impeccably tight rhythms and rabid solos. "Carl is as talented a musician as has ever been in Knoxville; he can play anything effortlessly, and he can write it out on music paper," says Sewell.

Snow played in a handful of other locally-renowned outfits (Red, Whitey...), as did Teague. But Teague's questing took him to points West, where he would record an independent album with the Los Angeles band Muzza Chunka. The band later broke up, but the six-string deities smiled on this particular son of Knoxville guitartistry. Today, he's a member of the long-running and very successful punk band the Dickies and has appeared on the group's last two albums.

As the '80s moved toward their inevitable denouement, Heavy Metal holding its mighty sway, guitar one-upsmanship became the sine qua non of playing in a successful hard-rock outfit. "All the punk bands had gone metal," remembers Sewell. "Every few years, there was a new young guy who came along and could play better and faster than the last bunch."

Even players like Rutherford (who also moved to L.A., where he worked for a time with underground metal legend Wino), were supplanted by youngsters like Mick Murphy and Manning Jenkins, the dueling guitarists of Bearden-based funk-thrash band Hypertribe, or Travis Wyrick, a founding member of Knoxville's quintessential hair-metal unit Sage.

With long tresses and a charmingly boyish smile, Wyrick and his Sage-mates were forever on the brink of "making it" throughout their seven-year run, at times playing arena shows with the likes of Bon Jovi and Bad Company. And the band owed no small part of their local success to the outrageously flashy guitar work of Wyrick and his sometime-bandmate "Super" Dave Akers. "As a guitarist, it was a real icon type of thing," remembers Wyrick, now 31, father of three and owner of his own recording studio. "The fans were unbelievably supportive of what you did. I played six to eight hours of guitar a day; I was addicted."

Wyrick entered several of the guitar "head-cutting" contests frequently held at local clubs in the late 1980s, taking first place in four of them. In the only local contest in which he was relegated to second place, he lost to Murphy. "Mick—he was the man," says Wyrick, still in awe.

"That's really when the whole guitar-hero thing peaked, in the late '80s," says Sewell. "Manning and Mick came along, and they scared the hell out of everybody. They were 17, and they played tighter and faster than everyone, and they were younger and better-looking. They were sort of the last wave of that whole phenomenon."

It's been pretty well-documented, by critics, writers, and other idiots, that the early '90s saw another sea change in the world of popular music. "Kurt Cobain came out, and leads weren't cool anymore," says Wyrick. His declaration has been oft-repeated—an over-simplification, but not a wholly groundless one.

"Personally, I was glad to see it go. I had to spend so much time just to keep up my chops..."

Several of the aforementioned Knoxville players—Teague, Murphy, Jenkins, Rutherford—moved to California, or some other allegedly more fertile guitar Utopia. Many of the others simply receded from the public eye. There were still great guitar players, still musicians about whom someone might say, "That guy, he can play anything."

But priorities had irrevocably altered, and suddenly the Guitar Heroes didn't seem quite so heroic; gone were the days of the flashy Strat-manglers, all bouffant coifs and phallic poses. In their place was a new breed of six-string svengali, players whose stage moves, solo dazzle and spotlight chops took a back seat to rhythmic synergy, songwriting, musical versatility. Smith touts players like former V-roys singer/guitarist Scott Miller, now a solo recording artist for the Sugar Hill label, as exemplars of that new aesthetic.

"People forget how good (Miller) is because his singing and songwriting are so good, because the V-roys were so good," says Smith, thrashing out a Miller-esque air-guitar lick from a swivel chair at the desk of his downtown office. "Now, when he's playing live and he goes into the break in 'Ciderville Saturday Night' (a recently-penned Miller tune), I see jaws just drop throughout the crowd. The thing everyone always says is, 'I didn't know he could do that.'"

And even old-school Heroes, like local blooze-man "Detroit" Dave Meer, have adapted with the changing times, bringing a heretofore unheard restraint to once-burning solo exhibitions. A long-time Knoxville musician and lead guitarist for blues wailer Michael Crawley's band throughout the 1990s, Meer once goaded crowds at torporous beer halls and muggy frat hovels into a cheering, foot-stomping frenzy with his piston-armed picking and sheer single-note brilliance.

"I used to play real wild; I called it 'scanner' mode," Meer chuckles, relaxing at home on a Saturday evening with the family that perhaps helped tame his Mad Musician's instincts. "I'd get people coming up to ask 'How often do you make that thing catch on fire?' I'm older and less wild now. I did that guitar hero thing for a few years, and it took all the fun out of it for me. It's really not what's important."

As for myself,my own efforts at copping the Heroic licks and unremittant swagger of those '80s metal virtuosos grew ever more infrequent; my tastes maintained a hesher bent, but gravitated toward guys like Jane's Addiction's Dave Navarro and Chili Pepper John Frusciante—players whose licks owed more to taste and texture, to groove and guts and sense of Song, less-so to deftness and dexterity, to showy aural or visual display.

But to this day, I still have my Jem, the Ibanez 777 Steve Vai model with the Floyd Rose locking tremelo system and the hot-pink Dimarzio pickups. Twenty-four frets, with the floral pattern design. And the monkey grip. Ah, yes, the monkey grip...

And every now and again, I still pull it out of the case and try to pull off a Van Halen all-hands-on-neck maneuver—or two—or fumble through some keening minor-key picking pattern half-remembered from Steve Vai or Yngwie Malmsteen or some other poodle-coifed former axe guru. And then I'm once again the worshipful teen reverently fondling my over-priced guitar, with a double-decker case full of cherished cassettes and a stack of dog-eared guitar magazines.

At those times, I feel every bit the rock star, the vainglorious Guitar Hero I know I'll never truly be.