Chords for Marcus King: My Life In Five Riffs

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Hey [Dm] everybody, Marcus [A] King here and [D] _
[A] showing you five riffs that changed and inspired [D] my
life and influenced my playing as it is today.
[N] So what I'm going to start off with is _ a tune that I remember listening to the vinyl of it.
There was an Allman Brothers record called Beginnings that was a double LP that was just
pretty much a compilation of the first and second record.
It was a re-release that Polydor did, I think, in the late 70s.
And it's a record that was in my dad's collection.
_ And I would listen to it constantly.
And this one particular _ tune was the opening track on the Allman Brothers self-titled
record.
And _ it was one that I would slow down and try to get all the little parts and
subtleties that Dickie and Dwayne were doing guitar wise.
_ And there's some really fantastic organ playing on there, too.
But [A#] if _ [Am] I'm not mistaken, it's a King Curtis tune, actually.
It goes like this.
[E] _ _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _
[C#m] _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ [Dm] _ _
[C#m] _ _ _ _ _ _ So
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[G#m] _ _ [A] _ that [N] was the first time I was introduced to tritones.
_ Later on, when I started studying jazz with my instructor, Steve Watson, hey, Steve, later
on, I learned more about tritones.
But that was my first experience with them.
And it blew my mind as a young kid.
And that track is still one of my favorites.
And just the tones and just the stylistic choices that they made playing wise, it that
was one of the first ones that really did it for me.
When I think about five riffs that really changed or influenced my life, my way of
playing, _ _ _ I guess another one would be, _ _ _ _ if we're going chronologically here, _ _ Pretty
Woman.
I think that's one of the greatest rock and roll guitar riffs _ _ _ _ of the 20th
century.
And I just had the I had the pleasure of working with Billy Sanford, who
played the riff on the session.
He's a sweetheart of a guy.
He's still still working.
I just worked with him in Nashville and this was the riff that he wrote that [F#] _ changed rock
[C] and roll and my [A#] life forever.
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_ _ _ _ _ _ That's rock and roll, man.
That's what it is.
For that tune specifically, it was just just [D] a representation of a good
[E] rock and riff [D] over like a top 40, I mean, pop song.
It was [E] popular.
It's day, you know, it's popular music.
So that was a riff that opened my eyes to see that there could be riffs on popular music
as well.
Leonard Skinner was a group with three or four, if you count Steve Gaines,
guitar players that really just _ _ just got it, you know, got the message across to me and
to every other young guitar player in the South.
You know, you listen to Dwayne and Dickie and you [Fm] were listening to Ed King and Toy
Caldwell.
You listen to all these cats, Roslington and Collins. _ _
So this one particular song, this is _ the first tune I remember sitting down and learning
by [E] myself, you know, _ [B] _ my folks had gone out to work and the guitar was my babysitter a
lot of the [Am] times. _
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[A] I started studying at the Fine Arts Center in Greenville, [A#] South Carolina.
That was a really special time for me.
[D#] School just wasn't doing it for me.
[F] I wasn't really feeling it, man, but I went to the Fine Arts Center and that's where I
was given an outlet to really study something that I that I dug and that I wanted to learn
more about.
And this is when I started studying jazz theory and jazz performance.
I started reading music a little bit.
I don't do that much anymore.
But _ _ yeah, [A#] studying with Steve Watson over there was a was a real, real kick.
And this was _ this was my final exam at the end of my first semester there.
It's a Charlie Parker tune, _ and I've underestimated this tune for the years since I've left that
school.
_ I still study a lot, but _ this particular tune, [G#] I've used it just as [A#] a finger [G#] exercise
to warm up.
I've underestimated the complexity of this tune and _ how intense it truly is.
So last night on the bus or early this morning, rather, I got to spend some time with _ _ _ the
band.
I remember being a teenager [N] and how this song kicked my ass in the first place.
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[E] _ _ _ _ _ Started getting [B] into Frank Zappa around the time I met my drummer, _ Jack Ryan, because I had
always known Zappa as like, _ you know, _ Bobby Brown goes downtown, you know, or Bobby Brown
goes down.
I knew that kind of stuff, you know, and I was always a fan of that kind of stuff.
Moving to Montana soon.
_ _ _ I was always a fan of that side of Zappa, but what I never really dug into was like the
earlier stuff, the instrumental stuff.
_ _ So the Grand [N] Wazoo was a record that really, _ really drew me in that Jack, my drummer, turned
me on to.
And that was a time when we were exchanging a lot of records, _ _ _ living in Greenville,
South Carolina together and just listening to music constantly.
And this was one record that we just about wore out to the nub.
_ And this particular riff for the song, Eat That Question, _ is a tune that we still play today
every now and then.
And it's just so _ _ melodic and so perfect.
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_ [Am] _ [E] Some _ _ _ _
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_ _ _ [B] great George Duke riffs on there, too, man, that's a track to check out.
Absolutely.
[E] _
I'm Marcus King.
[F#] Those are [A] five riffs [E] that changed or [A] influenced my playing in my [Em] life and still do.
_ [Am] Thank you so much for having me.
It's been a [F#] real pleasure.
Cheers.
_ _ _ _ [N] _