When Link Wray wails “Have you heard the news? There’s good rockin’ tonight” in his version of “Good Rockin’ Tonight” … it sounds like a threat that could topple civilization. And when he goes up the octave? Forget about it. Run for cover.
Link Wray’s “Rumble” was considered so dangerous at the time some radio stations refused to play it. It was banned – literally – in New York and Boston. There was fear that just HEARING the song – an instrumental, no less – would cause chaos, riots, actual “rumbles”. It’s one of the only instrumentals to ever be banned from radio play in America. And you know what? The song IS dangerous. The people who were afraid of it weren’t wrong. Those who were afraid of “Rumble” sensed correctly that the song was part of what was shattering the status quo. You listen to “Rumble” and you are altered. Nothing will ever be the same again.
“The first time I heard ‘Rumble’ … it was something that had so much profound attitude …” In the documentary It Might Get Loud, Jimmy Page listens to “Rumble, and then discusses with Jack White and Edge.
His “Fever” is pure sex.
Link Wray’s guitar-playing opened the way for others. It was that radical. Once people plugged in their guitars, following in the footsteps of Sister Rosetta Tharpe and other pioneers, “power chords” were always a possibility. But Link Wray is the one who discovered it, and pushed it, creating sounds that had never been heard before. He was playing around with interference in the late 1950s, a decade before Hendrix. Link Wray pushed those chords, the vibrato, the vibrations, the distortion, the interference and resonance, to their most extreme limits. In his hands, the sound becomes almost abstract, yet it never sacrifices power. Jimi Hendrix’s famous distorted version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” wouldn’t have been possible without Link Wray. Link Wray’s playing is aggressive. You can’t putter about watering plants when you’re listening to Link Wray. He will not stand for it.
I love Kim Morgan’s story of seeing Link Wray: “The crowd consisted of die-hard Rockabillies, a smattering of older people, varied Wray fans, me and my little sister. I stood in the front, hands on stage, and watched one of rock n’ roll’s most influential guitar Gods work his power — taking all that is raucous and dark and soulful and yes, light, and hypnotizing us. There were no bad vibes in that cramped crowd of potential rowdies. Moving on stage like the half-Shawnee he was, he worked us as if performing some kind of Native American rock and roll rain dance, while still playing down and dirty — music that made us feel alive and real and raw. And then dreamy — a seedy, sexy, soulful, demonic, beatific dream.”
I’m trying to picture just turning on the TV in 1959 and hearing … this.
Link Wray tells the story of how “Rumble” was born. (Naturally, I am happy about the shirt he is wearing). The song started as improvised “filler” at a record hop … but the kids heard the threat in the sound, the power of it, the sheer aggressive drive of it – they felt it immediately. Link Wray: “Now the kids are screaming because now something is happening.”
Speaking of Elvis, here’s Link Wray grinding out “Mystery Train,” live, in 1974. Even now, when his influence has so permeated our culture, and music, you can still pick his guitar out of a lineup and say “That. That’s Link Wray.”
“It’s the sexiest toughest chord change in all of rock ‘n roll.”
If you haven’t seen the documentary, Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World, I highly recommend it!
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
I love Jimmy Page’s terse summation of “Rumble”…”It gets more intense.” hahahahaha!
That’s the miracle of it, because the thousandth time you hear that opening riff, you’d bet it was impossible for anything, ever, to get “more intense!”
I know, right??
I think you would really enjoy Rumble (the doc) if you haven’t seen it yet!
It’s definitely on my list….Long list, short means (time and money)….I’m sure you know how that goes!….My Recommended by Sheila list alone could keep me busy for a couple of years.
I definitely know how that goes! This one is right up your alley.
Excellent piece. As a guitarist, I find Rumble fascinating. It’s component parts are so simple, so basic that in a music theory sense they barely exist above the level of a training exercise. But in Link Wray’s hands, that simplicity produced a work of genius. Complicated is easy, simple is hard.
Michael – wow, I love your comment! I love to hear from musicians – mainly because I don’t know how to verbalize what I’m hearing – outside the level of how it affects me, and my knowledge of how important/radical something was, in comparison to other things. I listen to “Rumble” and I can HEAR why people were afraid of it – and I can totally understand, just listening to it, why those teenagers at the record hop were so into it, when he started improvising it. It’s so PRESENT.
But speaking musically is not really my thing (which is why I love the Steven Van Zandt clip so much too.)
Why do you think in Link Wray’s hands the simplicity becomes genius? (Besides him being obviously a genius musician). It’s not in the structure, then, it’s in the sound itself? The reverb and distortion?
I suppose this is an unanswerable question … but there’s a reason people STILL want to talk about “Rumble” and I’m fascinated.
Thanks for your comment!
Sheila,
I’m going to get into some guitar geekiness that might help explain the power of Rumble, at least as I see it. The first thing is the utter simplicity of it. There isn’t a chord or a riff in Rumble that a student who has been playing guitar for six weeks couldn’t handle. I’m not exaggerating: it really is that rudimentary. The four chords Wray uses are common first position chords with no fancy fingerings and the rhythm is just three strums. Half the notes in the little melodic run on played in the open strings and are not even fretted. I suspect Page and Van Zandt, like I am, are amazed at the audacity of it. It is so simple, but Wray puts it over with such elan.
As for the sound, the timbre of Rumble, that’s something else altogether. Prior to Rumble, distortion was incidental to the sound of electric guitar and something to be avoided if possible or minimized if not. All the early rockers like Scotty Moore with Elvis, Chuck Berry, Cliff Gallup with Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly, Danny Cedrone with Bill Haley played with a fairly clean tone.
What Wray figured out is that distortion produces a thicker, more complex timbre than a clean amplified tone. A vibrating guitar string is actually producing a number of pitches at once, the fundamental, the strong note that names it, i.e. A, F or C or whatever. There are also higher pitched notes called overtones that are usually almost subliminal. But with distortion, some overtones are more prominent. On a single string overtones are consonant but with chords some of the overtones can clash and sound dissonant, which adds to the fuzzy sound. Most of us find dissonance disturbing or disquieting and with distorted guitars, the dissonance is a bit subtle but it is there and I believe it affects the way we hear the song.
So why is Rumble a work of genius? You picked up on the swagger and immediacy of the performance, which I think is key. The construction of the song is so simple and it’s so easy to play you need supreme confidence to pull it off because there is almost nothing to play when performing it. The timbre of the song, the distorted sound, adds to the swagger and menace. It’s disquieting because of the rawness and sonic near-chaos and the dissonance. There is no singer, no lyrics, just a suggestion of a melody and a strong drumbeat. And attitude. Lots and lots of attitude. Also, he was first. The ability to make a guitar sound like that had been around for more than a decade but Link Wray was the one who figured it out. Rumble is blueprint for the way rock guitar was going to sound from then on.
Complicated can be beautiful. You’ve written so well on Shakespeare and there’s a guy who could write a line as complicated as anyone ever has. But I think, “Howl, howl, howl, howl,” might just be the simplest, most devastating, most heartbreaking words he ever wrote. I think Rumble is like “Howl, howl, howl, howl,” a raw emotion distilled to its purest form.
Michael
Michael – wow.
I can’t thank you enough for this.
I am going to be thinking about this all day now. You explain it so beautifully. I got goosebumps!
There’s so much to discuss.
Where does Hendrix fit in? Did he push it to some outer limit – with the fuzziness of those clashing overtones you mentioned? Where the melody itself vanishes and the “chaos” (controlled by him) takes over?
I love how you explain the sheer simplicity of the song – and how that simplicity is totally audacious. Amazing!
and “howl, howl, howl, howl …”
For real, I teared up a little.
Thank you for describing it in a way where I can totally grok it.
Now that you mention it – the clip of Page and Van Zandt – they both are just kind of laughing almost – the outrageous simplicity of what Wray did, and how powerful it is because of HOW he did it.
Amazing.
Yes, Jimi Hendrix really pushed the sonic boundaries. A bit more guitar geekery to maybe explain. Link Wray used a small 25-watt amp made by a company called Premier. When he played that concert when he and the band came up with Rumble, he was most likely getting the amp to distort by turning it way up and overdriving it. When he went to record Rumble in the studio that volume was too much for the studio to handle and he poked holes in the speaker to get that distorted tone at a lower volume level. As the distorted sound caught on, various companies started making effects pedals to replicate the fuzz tone at lower volumes. Fuzz guitar started popping up everywhere, not just in rock. Check out the Marty Robbins song from 1961 or so with a fuzz guitar solo plopped down in the middle. https://youtu.be/Q2WBBcH6OPU
Link Wray was pushing his amp to the limit in 1958 and that distorted sound was about the most he could get out of it. When Hendrix arrived on the scene, amps were vastly more powerful. A common stage set up for him was to use two Marshall 100-watt amps, effectively giving him a 200-watt set-up. Hendrix cranked the volume up and at those sound levels everything behaves differently. The notes on the guitar sustain longer, the chord tones blend in interesting ways, and the guitar itself is always on the verge of feedback.
Players like Lou Reed and Pete Townshend had been experimenting with extreme volume and they created some amazing music with it. But Jimi Hendrix was just technically a better guitarist and he was able to harness these sounds in a way no one else was able to. He was so charismatic, and such a good songwriter that he was able to introduce some fascinating noises to the pop mainstream. His influence on guitarists has been immense but I think because he died so young his reputation is sort of encased in amber. Players are perhaps wary of building on what he did, on embracing the creativity he embodied, and are instead content with trying to recreate and emulate his tones and techniques or, even worse, not play it all because it’s somehow sacred writ.
Interesting about Hendrix and sacred ground.
And I’m fascinated by Link Wray poking holes in the speaker!
So much great stuff here!
He’s the best – loved your memories of him on Facebook!