For four days, Israel's best artists will celebrate rock and guitars.
This will happen as part of the "Amplifier" festival, which will open tomorrow (Wednesday) in the production of the Enav Center for Culture and "Many Volume".
In a special project for Israel Hayom, the festival participants tell about their guitar heroes who influenced them and were a source of inspiration.
Ehud Banai - Michael Chapman
Michael Chapman was a mysterious man.
On the one hand, he is a loner, living with his partner Andrew in a secluded house in the north of England, and on the other hand, he loves traveling and direct and close contact with people.
His songs reflect the image of a man who loves to love, sometimes a little cynical and painful, but usually he has an amused view of this world, where he passes as an eternal vagabond with his guitar and his visor.
Ehud Banai in concert, photo: Orit Panini
He became famous in the early seventies and was very successful, but over the years he moved away from the electric sound, and from the nineties until his death about a year ago he performed alone with an acoustic guitar in small folk clubs.
His playing style is unique and unusual: even though he is fingered with only two fingers, his guitar sound sounds big, rich and symphonic.
In many of his instrumental pieces, Chapman changes the direction of the guitar to a certain chord, thus expanding the playing possibilities.
His playing influenced many young musicians of the new folk wave, and in his last decade he collaborated with musicians such as Steve Gunn, Riley Walker, and Thurston Moore who saw him as a mentor.
I created my instrumental album "Ash Katana" inspired by him.
One of my favorite pieces of Michael's playing is "Cado Lake", the name of a lake in Texas.
Michael paints the landscape with his fingers like a painting, one can imagine a small fire burning in the light of the rising dawn, the glow of the light on the water, the flight of a bird, wind in the treetops.
Michael Chapman - Kodak Ghosts
Rona Keenan - Eran Weitz
I have quite a few heroines and guitar heroes.
When I started playing it was George Harrison.
He was followed, predictably, by Jimi Hendrix, and since I grew up in the nineties, there was also a long episode with Slash from Guns and Roses, which I'd rather forget, although I do owe him the red Les Paul I got for my 14th birthday.
Later I discovered Elizabeth Cotton and Sister Rosetta Tharp and they were my new heroes, along with PJ Harvey and Mark Reeve (Tom Waits), who greatly influenced my playing.
Rona Keenan, photo: Or Ben Zarihan
But my real guitar hero is actually Eran Weitz.
I heard Eran for the first time at a small concert in Abraxas, and three and a half sounds were enough for me to know that I wanted him by my side.
It was in 2004 and since then until today our paths have not parted.
Eran has my favorite sound.
He is full of style and musicality, almost effortlessly, he never plays too much - only what is needed and where it is needed.
The hundreds of hours of playing together we accumulated over the years made him the best informal teacher I ever had.
Eran Weitz - Hi
Omri Kern - Jimi Hendrix
I like a lot of guitarists: Jimmy Page, George Harrison, Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Frusciante, Jeff Beck, Wes Montgomery, David Gilmour, Mark Knopfler, Danny Sanderson and quite a few more.
I thank all of them all my life, and from all of them I learned how to play the guitar since I started at the age of 6.
Omri Keren, photo: Itamar Kesselsi
But Hendrix is something else.
From him I didn't learn how to play, but why.
The sounds and the tempo in which they are played are not the point, it's all about the energy with him.
He is the one who helped me understand that the guitar is simply a tool that allows the soul to go out into the world and express feelings.
He is always there to remind me not to just play, and that if there is a sync between my soul and the guitar, it will just sound good.
It always works.
Jimi Hendrix - Little Wing
Giva Alon - Peter Green
I have a few guitar heroes, but I'll focus on someone who is underappreciated in my opinion (to say the least), Peter Green, founder of the legendary and bluesy Fleetwood Mac.
Without a doubt, he is one of the most special guitarists ever.
Geva Alon and De Pedro, photo: Karin Alon
Green is a player who took his time on the guitar, and his every touch was gold, every stretch was full of emotion and every string vibration shook the earth.
He was so precise in the sounds he chooses and also in his sound that it's hard to get confused when you hear him and you always know it's him.
He is without a doubt one of the guitarists that has influenced me the most, and I highly recommend researching him, especially the early Fleetwood Mac albums and the A Hard Road album by John Mayall and the Blues Breakers, on which he played and sang.
These are masterpieces one by one.
Peter Green - In the Skies
Tamar Eisenman - Annie DiFranco
I got to know Annie DiFranco's music when I was 17. On the beach of the island of Santorini in Greece, a guy approached me and told me that I looked like her (I was bald at the time and I didn't look like Shaneid Akonor).
I didn't know her, but I remembered the name and when I returned to Jerusalem I went into "Taur Records" and bought her only CD that was in the store.
Not So Soft.
My heroine plays the acoustic guitar, but in many ways for me she played the acoustic in a unique way that sometimes it was heard that the acoustic guitar changes its shape and sounds like all kinds of guitars - just not like the sound of a "normal" acoustic guitar.
Tamar Eisenman, photo: Dor Malka
This effect had a great impact on me and from that moment I followed her music as much as possible (at that time).
I learned that you can also play punk rock on an acoustic guitar, that you can connect it to all kinds of effects, that you can play it very loud, and play slap and much more.
In short, an early lesson in creative and outside-the-box thinking.
This is not an easy task, the acoustic guitar is transparent and not very forgiving (especially when you connect it to an amplifier), but it opens a window to a wonderful creative dimension.
Annie DiFranco, singer-songwriter, exhibition artist, has already released 22 albums and performs around the world.
Last month I went to see her show with her new album in New York.
She is definitely a rare breed of folk singer.
In every song she changes guitar and it's not annoying, it's accurate, and every guitar is a song.
Ani DiFranco - Napoleon
Baruch Ben Yitzchak (Roquefort) - Jimmy Page
My guitar hero is Jimmy Page, the guitarist with the "crooked" technique and the barbaric touch.
From the age of 19, Page was considered a talented session guitarist, who managed to amaze with his playing super producers of that time who brought him to recordings as the "magic powder".
Roquefort, photo: Public Relations
He is perhaps the most influential guitarist, thanks to whom the Gibson company still sells Les Paul models.
How much time and how much money was thrown to try and crack the secret of sound distortion and its fuzz.
Several sound legends were around him and of course we must not forget that he built and created the sound of Led Zeppelin, including the drum sound that still sounds fresh and kicking.
Jimmy Page - Dixie Fried
Yishai Berger (Tavernock) - Ken Saringpalve
A guitar hero to me can be any number of things, but the perfect formula will always be one who writes, sings and plays as well.
People who play guitar well is great, but the coolest thing there is to write a song with two chords in the verse and three chords in the chorus - and be able to make it sound like there's a lot more to it than that.
Tabrank, photo: Dodo Rosen
In the case of Ken Saringpalve, the power pop legend "The Poses", this is exactly the case.
That's what he's been doing throughout the career of this amazing band from Seattle.
Is it any wonder that he later played with Big Star, R.I.M. and Gogon?
I don't think so.
He is a genius guitarist and writes amazing songs that I had the good fortune to witness in Tel Aviv in 2008 at Levantine 7.
The Posies - Dream All Day
Haim Binyamini (Tabranek) - Yizhar Ashdot
My mother says that when she went to the hospital to give birth to me, the premiere of the single "Radio Hezk" by Thislam was played on the radio.
At the age of 11 I had the opportunity to buy my first cassette at the music store, and after that week I happened to see him playing on TV, I chose Bizar Ashdot.
At the age of 26, I became a stage technician for Yizhar for a few years and met the exact opposite of the cliché that suggests we never meet our heroes.
Yizhar is always looking for and finds a way to renew himself, the left guitar always sounds perfect and his songs are always the most beautiful.
Yizhar Ashdot - ladders and ropes
The "Amplifier" festival will be held between December 10-07 at the Enav Center.
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