Duane Eddy, King of the Twangy Guitar, Dead at 86
Duane Eddy, one of rock’s first guitar heroes and an idol of George Harrison, Jeff Beck, John Fogerty, Dan Auerbach, and many other guitar-slingers who followed, died Sunday at his home in Franklin, Tennessee. He was 86. A source close to the family confirmed Eddy’s death to Rolling Stone.
Released in 1958, Eddy’s “Rebel-’Rouser” wasn’t the first instrumental hit, but it was one of the most arresting. Arriving just a few years into the birth of rock & roll, “Rebel-’Rouser” announced that the raucous new genre was impacting even non-vocal music: The echoey, vibrato-drenched twang of Eddy’s guitar sounded like a space-age version of an Old West TV-series theme. Subsequent singles, like “Forty Miles of Bad Road,” built on that foundation.
“Duane was a huge influence on my guitar stylings and without Duane there’s no ‘Born to Run’ riff,” Bruce Springsteen said in an Instagram video tribute. “Duane, rest in peace, play on in that big house of a thousand guitars.”
“Duane’s guitar always sounded so cool, and yet his twangy melodies weren’t too hard for a kid to play along with, sort of,” X’s Billy Zoom tells RS. “He was a big influence on me.”
“Duane Eddy twanged the thang in the late Fifties and Sixties and you can hear his character sound appearing throughout the decades of popular music,” Jimmy Page wrote on Instagram, calling Eddy “a lovely man.” “He will be missed and my thoughts are with his family.”
Born in New York state, Eddy, who began playing guitar around the time he was in kindergarten, spent his teenage years in Arizona after his family relocated there. At a local radio station, he met producer and songwriter Lee Hazelwood and the two went on to record “Rebel Rouser,” a galloping blast of twangy guitar and saxophone.
“Rebel-’Rouser” ended up in the top 10, and Eddy followed it with other singles that capitalized on his signature sound, played with a red Gretsch guitar: The word twang appeared in the title of some of the nearly two dozen albums he released. Although he was associated with a style of music that sounded like landlocked surf music — inspired by the surrounding Arizona desert he once said — Eddy also pushed the boundaries of what was considered instrumental music at the time. He recorded an album of Bob Dylan covers gone twang, and another, Songs of Our Heritage, that focused on acoustic bluegrass. (Included was his version of “In the Pines,” later known to Nirvana fans as “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”)
Eddy’s style of instrumental music dipped in popularity as the Sixties began to wane, and Eddy pivoted to a producer role, working with, among others, Waylon Jennings. Coincidentally, Eddy was married to country singer Jessi Colter from 1960 to ’68 before she married Jennings in 1969.
A new appreciation for Eddy arrived in 1986. That year, Art of Noise recruited him for a techno remake of the theme for the Sixties TV detective series Peter Gunn, which Eddy had cut in 1960. That rebirth led to an all-new Eddy album the following year, with contributions from Harrison, Fogerty, Paul McCartney, Jeff Lynne, Ry Cooder, and David Lindley. In 1994, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Foreigner’s Mick Jones.
Eddy returned to music with 2011’s Road Trip, produced by British songwriter and producer Richard Hawley. In 2023, he appeared on Rolling Stone’s Greatest Guitarists of All Time list. “If there was any doubt left in the late 1950s that the guitar — not the saxophone — was rock & roll’s essential lead instrument, Duane Eddy settled the argument,” RS wrote. “See his 1958 single “Rebel Rouser,” curled with country twang and rippling with tremolo.”
He also became a regular collaborator of Dan Auerbach who enlisted him for his 2017 solo album Waiting on a Song. “Working with Dan Auerbach in the recording studio has been great for me. His infectious excitement reminded me of how much fun it can be,” Eddy told RS then. “I haven’t come across a more prolific songwriter, or a harder working artist in many years, if ever. But the best thing about him is that he’s become a really good friend.”