Why I love mick greens guitar playing

Voxman

Jimbro66 said:

Great video James. Mick has always been one of my favourite guitarists too. The characteristic rhythm style that you do very well and I also liked the way Mick would throw in some of those James Burton string bends too. Great player. My copies of Scull Wars and Out Of Their Sculls have been played to death  

Made a point this weekend to listen to some Mick Green playing including the whole of both these albums, and several tracks from the Shanghai albums. Found that I had heard a fair number of the Pirates tracks, without realising and making the connection of who they were.

're the Pirates, good, honest rock n roll/rhythm n blues stuff that was quite enjoyable but I found that Micks thinner and more jangly tone combined with his stocatto playing style began to sound a little samey and grated after a while. 

I can certainly appreciate why the Pirates were popular live in their day though, and Micks style was clearly a big influence not only on Wilko Johnson, but also Pete Townshend and others too. I wasn't familiar with Shanghai, but based on the 5 or 6 tracks I listened to, my view is that they were nothing special and perhaps not the best natural fit for Mick Greens rawer playing style, with lots of phaser tones that didn't work for me.

Clearly Mick was a competent and well regarded player, and in his heyday in the 60s I can appreciate why his style would likely have stuck out from other players.  But with apologies to all the fans on here, I'm not a great fan of that playing style, struggling to see him as a great player even though he was obviously an influence on others,... and I've probably been influenced myself by him even indirectly. Having said that, similarly Wilko Johnson and Pete Townshend are examples of other players that whilst I like on some things again I find both can be very samey and uninspiring after a while. 

Perhaps I'm just an ignorant Philistine not to hold him in quite the same high regard and gushing awe that others in this thread clearly do (and I don't mean that in any disparaging way, only from the perspective that we all like different things and are 'turned on' by different players), but it was nevertheless  certainly interesting to check him out.