For about a decade, beginning in high school, I played bass in a string of rock bands. It was in this context that I learned much about being creative in a group setting. The debates and conversations in rehearsal spaces -- garages, basements, even a musty attic -- over how to make a song sound better presaged conversations in offices and seminar rooms about how to make research more convincing.
I also learned quite a bit about rhythm guitar. The lead guitarist is like the vocalist, flashy, attention-grabbing. The rhythm guitarist holds everything together. A bandmate once counseled me to listen carefully to how Izzy Stradlin -- not Slash -- powered Guns N' Roses. It was a tribute similar to the ones now circulating in the wake of Malcolm Young's death.
It is his brother, Angus, who occupied the spotlight. Yet Malcolm evinced a -- I was going to say "quiet," but let me instead say subtle -- musical genius.
Let me compare "Hells Bells" to the first movement of Beethoven's 5th symphony.
Both ominous minor-key compositions ("Hells Bells" more overtly so). And both centered around very simple musical motifs. The 5th, of course, has the four-note "fate" motif, repeated almost incessantly for the duration of the movement, in a variety of keys, in lieu of any traditionally singable melody. Perhaps the most famous four notes in music. For "Hell's Bells," the motivic element is three rather than four notes, arranged so that a descending step is immediately reversed to return to the opening pitch. As the first song on the first album AC/DC released following original singer Bon Scott's "death by misadventure," it subtly suggests resurrection. It is typically played as a syncopated phrase, again recalling Beethoven's rhythmic departures from the classical paradigm.
The song opens with a variation on this main theme, where the three note sequences are heard primarily descending in pitch, originating in the lead guitar. The three note motif follows the introduction, continuing into the verses, in the rhythm guitar. The rhythm guitar continues to echo the three-note sequence behind the lead guitar solo. The motif's final iteration definitively concludes the song.
Attention to detail. The great rhythm guitarists, occupying a position bridging the band's "rhythm section" and its melodic elements, succeed by their excruciating attention to detail.
Academic research, particularly in the sciences and social sciences where collaboration is the norm, is really not all that different. Some members of the research team drive the enterprise forward. They breed the lab mice, clean the data, run the analyses. Some members specialize in providing the interpretive flourishes, giving a TED talk the way Angus Young might prance about the stage with his trademark Gibson SG. But the best teams will have a Malcolm Young at their core.
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