David Bowie's Rebel Rebel-Main Verse Section

For this post I am going to give some hints about playing the main verse part for Rebel Rebel by David Bowie. It can be suprisingly tricky to get the notes to ring out accurately while getting your playing hand in position for the next chord (the E chord). It involves palm muting, positioning and anticipating the playing hand positions so that the part sounds smooth.

I have checked out YouTube videos and I have seen different guitarists showing how to play the main verse part in different ways. Some are showing the part being played as a slide up from D to E on the B string and the E chord part that's right after as more open. When I hear this song, I hear more arpeggiated chords than slides or individual notes. If you look at some of the actual David Bowie concert videos (I provide a link to the AOL Sessions video below, a version I love which features a little opening riff for this song that you may have heard in recent live versions of the song, and described in the tab) you will see that the guitarist(s) play the riff as more of a broken chord/arpeggio than sliding up and using more individual notes. Doing the riff like this makes it more smooth and actually (I think) more easy to play.

First off-this song is in regular tuning, its in the key of D. On the original recording, the guitar seems to have a slight delay or echo, maybe a little chorus, and a touch of overdrive.

Here is some tab and stuff to play that main riff:




To play the main verse guitar part, I hold a D suspended 2(nd) chord, and then hit the D string, (letting it ring throughout the first little part of the riff), pick the E string open, and the D on the 3rd fret-B string, hit the A/C# notes on the G and B strings respectively, (which infers an A chord). I slide my 1st finger down to the G# to hold the E chord. See the tab for expanation.

When I get to the E part, I strum up (hence the arrows) from the open B string (of the E chord) twice and then, holding the E chord I pick the E on the 4th string/2nd fret and use my pinky to pull off from the C# to the open B string, picking up in an arpeggio (B, G# E, and then D-4th string open) As the D-4th string is played I slide my 1st finger to the A-2nd fret 3rd string, and place my 3rd finger on the D-3rd fret-which is back to that D sus 2 chord that we began with.

That's pretty much it! Sorry if I made this more complicated than it had to be! I was trying to complement and add to the tab, but I don't know if I succeeded!

Here is the player for the original studio version of Rebel Rebel :



Here is a link for the video which has that cool little intro part:
http://video.aol.com/video/music-david-bowie-rebel-rebel-aol-/1123610

*Next time I will be describing how to play Foreigner's Cold as Ice (the main part that's played on keyboard) with the solo. See you then!


Related Tags: David+Bowie Rebel+Rebel rock+and+roll