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Dave Davies of The Kinks: riff pioneer
© Michael Ochs Archives/Corbis

In the beginning there were the blues and the blues were, well – in their purest form – little more than guitar riffs: simple licks repeated over and over. But it was upon these solid foundation stones that rock 'n' roll's glittering palace would be built.

In terms of evolution, '50s blues tracks like Muddy Waters' Hoochie Coochie Man and Howlin' Wolf's Smokestack Lightning represent rock's pre-Cambrian age. No chord changes – just a simple, direct message to the heart and soul. Some say they've never been bettered.

"Soon enough, rock 'n' roll would add rhythm to the blues and the result was a cultural explosion that changed everything"

Soon enough though, rock 'n' roll would add rhythm to the blues and the result was a cultural explosion that changed everything. Tempos increased; song construction grew more complex. Among the pioneers who mapped out this new frontier was Chuck Berry, who transferred what were effectively boogie woogie piano lines to his Gibson guitar. His use of double-string licks added a sophistication that would be a huge influence on successive generations of guitarists.

But even at this early stage there was a reaction, a yearning to return rock to its simplest state. Take Link Wray, whose 1958 record Rumble was based around a riff containing a mere three notes. Darker and more menacing than anything else around at the time, Rumble remains the only instrumental record to be slapped a broadcasting ban, its riff so dangerous the radio listeners of the late '50s had to be shielded from its bad-assed scowl.

Bad-assed scowling, however, was largely off the agenda in the early '60s. Whilst the Beatles tended not to write songs around riffs (at least not until Day Tripper), their long-haired rivals, The Rolling Stones, based most of their initial songwriting efforts around sped-up blues licks. Their first UK number one, The Last Time, is almost entirely a curling Chuck Berry riff.

But it is Satisfaction that remains their first claim to riff immortality. The story goes that Keith originally envisaged it on a horn section and only played it through his Gibson fuzzbox for guide purposes. Jaws consequently dropped and the rest of the band proclaimed the song as good as complete.

Even before that, another British band had laid down a marker in the development of the riff. You Really Got Me is nothing more than a two-chord phrase repeated with rough distortion, provided when Dave Davies reputedly sliced the speaker cone of his amp. It would be a trick Davies would repeat on All Day And All Of The Night before he and his brother Ray set sail for more refined musical waters.

Complicating matters

Ground-breaking riff-writers they certainly were, but this British crop of mid '60s guitarists – Davies, Richards, Townsend, Clapton – would eventually find themselves put in the shade by the arrival of American Jimi Hendrix. As well as bringing an unheard of showmanship, Hendrix broadened the potential of the instrument like nobody before or since.

Next page: From Hendrix to Hetfield

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