Inteview: Duane Eddy, guitarist

Duane EDDY, the man dubbed the Titan of Twang by the mayor of his hometown Nashville, belongs to a steadily diminishing generation of six-string pioneers, such as the late Les Paul and Bert Weedon, who laid the groundwork before the term “guitar hero” came to be associated more readily with the electricity of Jimi Hendrix, the “heaviosity” of Jimmy Page or the virtuosity of Eric Clapton.

Eddy was the first of the nascent rock’n’roll guitarists to have his own signature model, the Guild DE-500. He was named No 1 Rock’n’Roll Instrumentalist of All Time by music industry bible Billboard. But his performing profile has been so low-key over the past two decades that you could be forgiven for not realising that he was still active. It seems that Duane Eddy himself didn’t even realise he was a live proposition.

“I thought I might be retired and not know it a couple of years ago,” he says, with the self-deprecating good humour that characterises his conversation. “I’d go out once in a while when somebody called to see if I wanted to do a show. But I was watching a lot of TV and staying home a lot…”

However, just as his name and his instantly recognisable low-slung twanging sound were revived in the mid-80s through his collaboration with The Art of Noise on a retooled version of his 1959 hit Peter Gunn – leading in turn to a self-titled album of collaborations with such august admirers as Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Ry Cooder, Steve Cropper and John Fogerty – so career resuscitation came yet again from the UK when he was introduced to new management and a new champion in the shape of Sheffield troubadour Richard Hawley. “Next thing I know I’m at Mojo Magazine getting an Icon award,” he says.

Hawley has produced Eddy’s latest album Road Trip, his first new release in 15 years. But the transatlantic mutual appreciation society predated their meeting. Hawley plays Eddy’s signature Gretsch 6120DE. On discovering this, Eddy bought a couple of Hawley’s albums and would ride round Nashville revelling in the scope of the sound. “I’d listen to a song of his and think ‘man, I’d like to jump in there with my guitar and just put a solo right in the middle of all that airiness and bigness’, so when we actually got in the studio it was a joy for me.”

Road Trip sounds like an effortless journey – 11 songs recorded in 11 days. “That’s because Richard Hawley is a heck of a producer,” says Eddy. “It was like going back to the late 50s with my producer Lee Hazlewood, that’s what we did. I wrote Rebel Rouser [his debut hit from 1958] in a session one morning, and many of the things I did [for this album] we wrote in the session. Hazlewood could make a record for 50 cents he said. And he could. He could do a record cheaper than anybody and make it sound more expensive. Richard Hawley’s got a bit of that. He’s an old soul. He got my sound.”

And what a sound. Eddy first picked up a guitar at the age of five. Inspired by the cowboy music of Gene Autry and the smoother Nashville sound of Chet Atkins, he went on to form his own country band. Hazlewood, meanwhile, was a local radio DJ with, as they say, good ears.

“He sat there listening to music on those great speakers they have there, analysing every record, so when it came to put a record together, he had no peer,” says Eddy. “He could mix those instruments and get them balanced and sounding right and then we set my guitar in amongst them and it worked like a charm.”

Eddy first hit upon the Twang when Hazlewood challenged him to compose an instrumental. “I thought I’ll try something high and low so I wrote [his first single] Moovin N Groovin which had a high part and a low part. I didn’t expect anything to happen with it but I thought it was an interesting experiment. I knew the low notes recorded better and I noticed that I had more power on the low notes so that’s what I incorporated and we threw some echo on it. When I went back in to do Rebel Rouser I used the tremolo and there we had my sound and my style. Since it worked so well, I thought ‘I found it, I’ll keep it’.”

Eddy has been as good as his word, cleaving to his spare, sonorous style over the decades. “I kind of treat it as my voice and people’s voices don’t change much. Over the years they get a little lower maybe. I couldn’t get any lower on the guitar… But the way I did change things was put it against different backgrounds.

“Sometimes you have a big string orchestra and other times you just have a small group. With the Art of Noise I had the avant-garde electronic thing. The guitar can fit against any kind of background, and it’s fun to experiment in those different genres.”

More than 50 years on from the birth of the Twang, Eddy still believes that there is mileage to uncover something new in the world of rock’n’roll guitar. “I don’t know if it’s possible for me to,” he says modestly, “but I’m sure some young kid will come along with something one of these days that will just blow everybody away. It depends on the individual and his soul.”

Soul, it seems, remains the key ingredient for Eddy.

“I always tried to put a lot of emotion into those things but it goes against the grain for some musicians. Their paramount thing is to have a great skill. ‘Look what I can do’ they say, show you how fast they can run up and down the neck of the guitar and how many notes they can play in four bars. That’s all well and good and I know some phenomenal guitar players that do that. But it has no soul. There’s no deep feeling. Give me one note by BB King or even a handful of notes by myself that will have much more feeling than their whole song.”

Eddy makes his point on Road Trip by paying tribute to Django Reinhardt, another formative influence, with the mischievous Twango. At the same time as honouring his own guitar heroes, he is conscientious about seeking out new music, being a fan of The Black Keys (“I can’t get over just drums and guitar making so much crazy music, it’s amazing”) and The Low Anthem (“that kid sings so good, it’d make you cry”) as well as Hawley, of whom he cannot speak glowingly enough. He also rates Hawley’s band, with whom he recorded Road Trip, so highly that he has adopted them as touring compadres on his current UK jaunt.

“I borrowed his manager and I borrowed his band,” he laughs. “Richard is very generous that way. Now if he’ll just loan me his wife I’ll be all set.”

• Duane Eddy plays Oran Mor, Glasgow, on 16 May