When Guitars Ruled September: Seven Songs From the '70s Charts

Every September in the 1970s sounded a little different. Put the decade's September hits side by side, though, and a common thread comes through: the guitar could be a hook, a rhythm engine, a burst of noise or the sound that carried an entire song.

The '70s never had one guitar sound. A radio listener in September 1972 might hear the Raspberries turn a power chord into pop, then catch the warm acoustic lines of Bread's “The Guitar Man.” A few years later, Boston would make layered electric guitars sound enormous. By September 1979, the Knack's “My Sharona” was at No. 1 with a riff that barely gives the listener a second to settle in.

This is a trip across different Septembers of the decade, rather than a ranking from one chart week. Some songs hit hard; others show how much a restrained guitar part can do.

There's a practical reason September matters on the '70s charts. Labels pushed their fall records hard once summer singles ran out of road, so the back half of September tended to collect the songs a label actually believed in. Those records had to work on AM car radios, on FM album stations and on a portable speaker at a high school parking lot. A guitar part that survived all three had to be short, memorable and stubborn.

That pressure shows up in the playing. Almost none of the guitar hooks below take longer than four bars to state their idea. Almost all of them repeat that idea more often than a modern arranger would dare. And nearly every one of them was recorded to tape, in a room, with the whole band committing to a take rather than assembling one.

Raspberries — “Go All the Way” (1972)

Before power pop became a convenient label, “Go All the Way” made its case at full volume. It opens with a guitar figure that sounds ready to launch a hard rock record, then pivots into a bright, tightly arranged pop song. That change is the thrill: the guitars supply the force, while the melody makes the song impossible to shake.

Listen to how much work the opening does. Within seconds, you know the record has an edge. The chorus could have carried a gentler arrangement, but that guitar entrance gives the whole song its identity. It's an early '70s reminder that a memorable riff didn't have to stay in the hard rock lane.

What players can steal from it. The intro works because it is rhythmically stiff on purpose. The chords land hard on the beat with almost no swing, which makes the vocal entrance feel like a release. If you want that effect, resist the urge to embellish. Play fewer notes, push them into the amp a little harder, and let the following section breathe by comparison.

There's also a lesson in contrast. Eric Carmen wrote like someone raised on both Beatles harmony and the loudest records on the radio, and the band arranged accordingly: heavy guitars for the frame, clean vocal stacking for the middle. Most bands pick one. Raspberries refused to.

Bread — “The Guitar Man” (1972)

Bread took nearly the opposite route. “The Guitar Man” is measured and reflective, with guitar woven into the song's atmosphere instead of pushed to the front. Its subject is the pull a musician can have on an audience: a player arrives, the room listens, and for a while everyone follows the music.

That makes it an especially fitting song for a guitar publication. It understands something players recognize immediately. Sometimes the part that holds people isn't the loudest one. It's the one placed exactly where the song needs it.

The tone question. The lead line that answers the vocal is the whole trick of this record. It is clean enough to hear every finger movement, compressed enough to sustain, and mixed just behind the voice so it feels like a second narrator rather than a solo. If you're chasing it, start with a warm bridge-and-middle blend, a touch of compression, a slow tremolo or light chorus, and far less gain than instinct suggests.

It also rewards patience in the phrasing. The line does not rush to the top of the neck. It sits in one register, bends into notes rather than snapping to them, and leaves silence between phrases. For a lot of players, that restraint is harder to learn than any fast passage.

Grand Funk Railroad — “We're an American Band” (1973)

Few records announce themselves as confidently as this one. The beat arrives, the band locks in, and the song moves like it already knows the crowd will sing along. Its guitars serve that momentum. They aren't competing to take over every bar; they make the rhythm section feel bigger and keep the chorus charging forward.

“We're an American Band” also captures a particular kind of '70s rock success: a road song that sounded equally at home on the radio and from a stage. For guitar players, it's a useful lesson in restraint. A part can be simple, direct and exactly right.

Why the rhythm part works. The guitar plays with the snare, not around it. Every chord stab lands where the drummer is already hitting, which is why the track feels like one instrument instead of four. Producer Todd Rundgren mixed it with that in mind: dry, forward, very little reverb smearing the attack.

Try it at rehearsal. Take a groove your band already plays, strip the guitar down to the same rhythm the drums are stating, and listen to how much bigger the room gets. Most amateur rock recordings sound small because everybody is playing something different at once.

Elton John — “Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting” (1973)

Elton John's records are often remembered first for the piano and the voice. “Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting” gives the guitar plenty of room to shove its way into the picture. The song is all motion: a pounding rhythm, an urgent vocal and guitar that adds grit to its sharp edges.

It's the sound of a band leaning into rock and roll without tidying up the excitement. The guitar doesn't merely decorate the arrangement. It helps make the song feel unruly, which is precisely what the title promises.

Davey Johnstone's contribution. Johnstone came to the band from a folk and acoustic background, and that shows in how he voices chords: he leaves strings ringing where a straight rock player would mute, so the riff has a jangle underneath the distortion. The result is a guitar part that pushes hard without turning into mud, which matters on a track that already has a piano occupying the midrange.

It is also a good argument for arranging around another instrument. Johnstone plays in the spaces the piano leaves, and the piano returns the favor. Two players fighting for the same frequency range would have flattened this song.

The Isley Brothers — “That Lady” (1973)

Ernie Isley's guitar makes “That Lady” impossible to file under one neat description. The groove has room to breathe, the vocals glide across it, and then the lead guitar arrives with a biting, expressive sound that changes the temperature of the record.

This is why a look at guitar music on the '70s charts has to reach beyond conventional rock. “That Lady” shows how naturally a bold electric guitar voice could live inside a soul and funk hit. The soloing doesn't interrupt the groove; it raises the stakes.

The sound. Isley's lead tone is fuzz run through a phaser, and the combination is the point: the fuzz gives it a vocal, singing sustain, while the phaser keeps the note moving so long tones never sit still. Played dry, the same lines would sound thin. Played with that swirl, they float over the rhythm section like a horn section would.

Phrasing-wise, he treats the solo like a call and response with the vocal rather than a feature spot. Short statements, rests, then an answer. Anyone learning to solo over a groove should study the rests as carefully as the notes.

Boston — “More Than a Feeling” (1976)

Some guitar records sound big because they're loud. “More Than a Feeling” sounds big because every layer has a purpose. Its acoustic opening draws you close before the electric guitars widen the frame. When the chorus arrives, the sound seems to expand in every direction.

Tom Scholz's arrangement helped make Boston instantly recognizable. Yet the song still works at its simplest level: an opening you remember, a chorus you can sing and guitar tones that reward another listen. “More Than a Feeling” entered the Hot 100 in September 1976, making it one of the clearest examples of a September chart song built around the possibilities of the electric guitar.

Layering, not volume. Scholz built the record largely on his own terms, engineering as much as playing, and the guitars are stacked in tiers: acoustic for the intro and verses, a mid-gain rhythm bed spread wide, and lead lines placed dead center. Nothing is doubled for the sake of doubling. Each layer occupies a different width and a different frequency band.

The famous tone is also cleaner than most people assume. It sustains, but it is not saturated. If your attempt at the chorus sounds like a wall of mush, the fix is almost always less gain and more careful panning, not a bigger amp.

The Knack — “My Sharona” (1979)

By the decade's final September, “My Sharona” was sitting at the top of the Hot 100. Its riff is lean, insistent and instantly recognizable. There's little mystery about how the song grabs attention: the guitar states its idea, the band falls behind it, and the record keeps finding ways to bring that idea back.

The extended guitar break gives the song another dimension. A listener drawn in by the hook gets a reminder that this is a band playing, stretching and pushing against the tight shape of a hit single. As a closing snapshot of the '70s, it feels appropriate: the guitar was still finding new ways onto pop radio.

The riff is a drum part. Strip away pitch and the hook is pure rhythm — a stuttering figure that lands against the kick and snare like a hand clap. That is why it survives being hummed, tapped on a steering wheel or played on one string. Berton Averre's solo then does the opposite: it opens up, runs long and reminds you the band could actually play.

New wave gets described as a reaction against '70s rock excess, but records like this one show the overlap. The production is tight and modern for 1979, and the guitar work underneath is still rooted in the same riff-first thinking that opened the decade.

What September teaches about '70s guitar

Put these seven side by side and a few habits repeat. The hooks are short. The tones are less distorted than memory suggests. The parts are arranged around the vocal rather than over it. And the guitar is almost never the only hook in the song — it works alongside a chorus, a groove or a drum pattern that is doing equal work.

There's also a range here that later decades narrowed. In a single decade of Septembers, the guitar is a pop battering ram, a quiet storyteller, a rhythm anchor, a fuzz-and-phaser lead voice, an orchestral layering tool and a new wave hook machine. No one told these players what a guitar record was supposed to sound like, so they each answered the question differently.

Put the needle back at the start

These seven records don't tell the whole story of September in the '70s. They do show how wide the guitar's role had become. It could supply the first jolt of a Raspberries single, sit gently inside a Bread song, light up the Isley Brothers' groove, fill every corner of a Boston chorus or drive the biggest hit of September 1979.

If you want to hear the decade properly, play them in order and listen for what each band chose not to do. The space is where the personality lives.

Which one are you playing first—and what September '70s guitar song belongs beside them?