Brown/who do we think they are, 5. Blackmore and Gillan’s Guitar and Voice Games Live in Japan: Rock Falsetto as an Auditory Spectacle

As Catherine Rudent demonstrates in Chapter 5, Gillan is very conscious of the R&B/Blues and Soul tradition of ‘parroting’ – that is, where a falsetto vocalist imitates or copies the notes of the guitar in a rising interchange and used it in studio recordings and especially 'live ' on staege. The central point that Rudent seeks to establish is that live performances, which are very different to the studio recordings, involve an extended segment of guitar vocal interchange which, in many respects, becomes the main part of the ‘live’ performance of the song; or rather that the song becomes secondary to the drama of the virtuosic rock falsetto auditory performance exhibited to the audience in these moments. For Rudent, these performances can be likened to a dialogue, or even a dual, where the stakes are high, particularly for the vocalist, since the guitar can reach heights that the voice cannot necessarily copy. The performance thus becomes a spectacle where audience expectation is manipulated , teased and ultimately satisfied as the guitar is silenced and the falsetto vibrato screams alone.