Madonna – Whole Lotta Love on Guitar

This has nothing to do with effects. Let’s just get that out of the way first. Yesterday, the internet was all a buzz with a video that Madonna posted on Instagram where she is playing the main guitar riff from Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love on guitar. I did one thing wrong… and that was to read some of the comments. Sometimes it’s a horrible idea to read the comments. Of course there are many people supportive and positive, yet there was a flood of so many people bashing the video. I have some thoughts on this.

First off, putting anything on the internet when you’re a celebrity is either part of the marketing machine, but other times, it can just be fun. In this video (shown below), appears to be just rocking out in her music space. To me, this was fun, and should be taken as that. No comparisons of how ‘you’ can play it better than that. Or how it’s not perfect, etc. To me, that took some guts to put it out there.

Channelling Led Zeppelin👻 Whole Lotta Love❤️#rebelheart

A video posted by Madonna (@madonna) on Jun 18, 2015 at 10:40pm PDT

Watching this video, sent me on a internet search about Madonna and guitar and found out she’s new to it. I don’t know much of Madonna besides the 80s stuff. There was an interesting read about Monte Pittman instructing her husband (Guy Ritchie) and later instructing Madonna. That lead me to this YouTube video posted in 2007, where she performed with Pittman on Letterman. This performance, you can clearly see that she is BRAND NEW to guitar, and had the balls to play it on Letterman.

Now, compared to that video to the Instagram video, she is making good progress. Also, remember, she doesn’t “need” to play guitar, but enjoys it, and clearly enjoys the challenge of playing the instrument. Think of yourself when you started, think about the road. It’s hard. It’s long. It’s intimidating and often filled with insecurities. I don’t know how to play Whole Lotta Love, but if I learned it right now, I wouldn’t have the guts to put it on Instagram for people to pick it apart.. and I’m nobody.

I think as guitar players, we should focus on encouragement. It doesn’t matter who is playing, but support people that are will to put stuff out there.