As Belew reveals to Guitar Player, his Stratocaster was certainly not the prettiest or most expensive example — just one that he could afford. And he rode it all the way to his breakout success as one of the premier Strat-slingers in history. Here, the guitarist talks us through his history with the Strat.

How did you come to own your first Strat?

I was in a band and had been playing drums, but I was starting to play guitar again. I’d always wanted a Strat, so I bought one with a natural wood finish at [Chuck Levin’s] Washington Music Center [in Maryland]. I drove up from Nashville and bought it off the rack — the plainest, simplest, cheapest Stratocaster that I could buy.

This was the same Strat you went to California with when you auditioned for Frank Zappa?

It was. I took it to California and auditioned with Frank. After I got the job, I used it during our three-month rehearsal and then on a two-month tour of the United States. But that Strat never returned to my house; it was lost in the shuffle. It’s out there somewhere.

How did you go about replacing it?

At the time, I was living here in Nashville. I went down to a little music store, and in the back they had a kind of really ugly Strat hanging on the wall. It was a brown sunburst, and it didn’t have a case. But that was okay, because with all the travel we were doing, I knew I would get a serious road case for it. I paid $285 for the Strat.

And that’s the guitar you ended up recording with while with Frank and beyond?

Yes. That’s the Stratocaster that I played on Frank’s records. And then I played it on David Bowie’s Lodger and toured the world with David with it. Then I played it with the Talking Heads, did the Remain in Light album with them, the Tom Tom Club album [with Talking Heads drummer and bassist Chris Frant\z and Tina Weymouth], Jerry Harrison’s solo debut, and so many other things.

Was that the same Strat you used in the 1980s with King Crimson?

It was. I played it with King Crimson on Discipline, and on my first solo record [Lone Rhino]. And then I finally switched to a guitar synthesizer. So that Strat has an amazing amount of history. It’s on a lot of records, and it only cost me 285 bucks!

What were some of the mods you performed on it?

When I first had one in the late ’70s, I put a [Alembic] Strat-o-blaster [preamp] in it. That really helped, but before that I just plugged the guitar straight into the amp. That’s the Stratocaster sound. It doesn’t have everything in terms of richness, overtones and sparkle... Well, maybe it does. It would depend heavily on the amp. But I’ve always gone into a compressor first, and that helped bring those sparkly notes and added sustain.

You found two winning Strats in succession in the 1970s. Is that indicative of the quality of older Stratocasters?

If you want to go right into the piece of wood called a Stratocaster, they’re different. You might pick one up and it seems flat sounding, but then you might try the one next to it and decide that it’s the one you should buy. I don’t know why that is. They’re made to the exact same tolerances, but they’re not the same.

What’s the key to finding the right one?

I think this is true for any guitar: It’s not about the sound coming off the guitar alone; it’s about how it feels under your fingers. Sometimes you pick up a guitar and it just feels right. I think that’s the Stratocaster you should have. For me, a Stratocaster is a fabulous tool. I think Leo Fender got it absolutely right, but there are other ways to go about it now and other improvements that have been made.

Do you prefer the depth of rosewood necks or the spank of maple?

I always loved rosewood necks. Recently I had some guitars made for the Talking Heads shows that I’ve been doing [Remain in Light] and I wanted to go back to Strats and get whatever was the best now. For example, I found a wonderful new tremolo to put on, and I went with a maple neck, thinking it was brighter for me. But I made a mistake; I think I’m a rosewood guy. I love the guitars, but if I had the chance to do it over again, I would have stuck with the rosewood.

You mentioned amps a moment ago. You’ve long championed the Roland Jazz Chorus. Is that what you’d choose to pair with a Strat, especially since it’s a great pedal platform?

Oh, gee. A Strat sounds great through a Fender amp. Now, with pedals… I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t play guitar — except acoustic guitar — without first putting it through a compressor. But that’s just me. Some people don’t like that sound. It seems to make the guitar hum a little better, and the notes have more sustain. I’ve always liked that.

But in general, Strats are really something. Once you have a good one and a good amp, you have 90 percent of the battle won. From there, it’s down to personal taste.

His second solo album, Surfing With the Alien, sounded like guitar music from the future when it was released in 1987. The record put him at the cutting edge of the guitar scene, and his reputation has only grown as some of his students — including Steve Vai, Alex Skolnick and Kirk Hammett — have become regarded as some of the best players around.

Satch's lofty status in the guitar world was emphasized over the past year with the reformation of the classic G3 lineup and his role performing Eddie Van Halen's parts in Sammy Hagar's Best of All Worlds tour. But with that said, he says he wants to see the next generation of guitarists go one better than him.

Speaking in the latest issue of Classic Rock, Satch says he’s already been usurped by today’s social media-savvy crop of players who are taking technical excellence to new heights.

“It's already happened,” he says when asked about discovering younger players who are better than him. “There's a couple of things to address here. Number one, if it doesn’t happen, the world is in deep trouble. We need newer, smarter people to solve the human condition in every field — scientists, doctors, writers. We need better, smarter, every single day. That's the whole point.

“We have children, and we raise better human beings to help us, so we don’t become extinct,” he expands. “And, if you're not excited about new players, then that's pretty sad. I'm excited about just about every player I see. I champion it, I always have.”

It turns out that, even at the height of his powers, he knew his days were numbered. He looked at his most famous apprentice and saw the future.

“I started out teaching, and I got used to the idea that Steve Vai was gonna walk in my door and blow my mind,” he says.

Of course, it’s only natural that the standard of guitar playing continues to rise. When Eddie Van Halen brought tapping techniques and whammy-bar dive bombs to the masses, it was revolutionary. For the modern-day player, those are often no more than key foundational skills. The more players that can execute those techniques, the more likely it is that some will build upon it, and take it further.

Satriani's apprentice-turned-master Steve Vai clearly shares the same sentiment. He's been tapping up the next generation of superstars for his annual Vai Academy event for years. Tim Henson, Yvette Young, Ichika Nito, and Mateus Asato all featured at the 2024 event.

He says he's “fascinated by their talent, technique, and creativity,” and it comes from a place of genuine joy. There is no ego to be bruised.

Satriani’s efforts to champion his fellow shredding superstars led to the formation of the G3 tour. While he has been the mainstay, the tour has played host to mega names like Yngwie Malmsteen, John Petrucci, and Robert Fripp, and fresh-faced talents like Guthrie Govan, Tosin Abasi, and a 19-year-old Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

Yet, he tells Classic Rock that not everyone thought the tour was a good idea. The powers that be didn’t want Satch in such close quarters as his competitors. But he says, “When I was fourteen, if I had a chance to see Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck together on the same stage, I'd think that was the greatest thing ever.”

Meanwhile, Satriani has defended Kurt Cobain, whose critics have branded him a sub-par guitar player. Satch has explained why he thinks Cobain's skillset shouldn't be so readily dismissed.

But the company must have felt confident about the semihollow archtop
it introduced in ’58. The ES-335 wasn’t allowed to linger on its own for long before it was joined by not one but two more-deluxe variations on the theme: the top-of-the-line ES-355, introduced later in 1958, and the ES-345, introduced in 1959, which sat right between the “3” and the “5” in features and adornments.

Initially called the ES-345T (for “Thinline”) and later the ES-345TD for “Thinline, Dual pickup ,” it had the same basic construction as the ES-335 and ES-355, made with a semihollow body built from laminated maple top, back and sides, and a solid-maple block down the center. To this was glued a mahogany neck with a rosewood fingerboard that was less fancy than the ES-355’s ebony with blocks, but its split-parallelogram inlays were still dressier than the ES-335’s rosewood with dot markers, and, later, small blocks.

Further elegance was found in the ES-345’s four-ply top binding and gold-plated hardware, while everything else was virtually identical to the appointments of its less-expensive sibling. The main exception was the deluxe wiring loom with six-position Varitone switch and stereo output, features that it shared with the ES-355. This configuration sent each pickup to different legs of the included “Y” cord for routing to individual amps or a single stereo combo, like Gibson’s own GA-79T.

For many players, the ES-345 hit the sweet spot between form and function, offering a little more glam than the ES-335 with the same easy playability and tonal versatility. Notable among those who have taken the middle ground are B.B. King, Elvin Bishop, Freddie King, George Harrison, Bob Weir, Steve Howe, Keith Richards, Joe Bonamassa, Jorma Kaukonen and several others. Often noted, too, is the fictional character Marty McFly from the movie Back to the Future, although the scene in which he duckwalks across the prom stage wielding a cherry ES-345 was set in 1955, four years before the model came along.

Despite its elevated features, however, the ES-345 has taken a back seat to the ES-335 in the collectability stakes, as has the ES-355, simply because their feature sets were just too ambitious. The standard-edition ES-345’s stereo output is a feature that many guitarists simply don’t care for, and many could do without the Varitone switch as well. The “stereo” features touted by some guitar and amp makers in the late ’50s and early ’60s never took off with players.

While it’s interesting to try out a stereo ES-345 today, many players through the years have converted their examples to mono to simplify their use. For one thing, the mono mod makes them easier to play with a standard cord and just a single traditional mono guitar amp. For another, the further simple modification of flipping the magnet in the neck pickup 180 degrees — reversing an alteration at the factory that created an out-of-phase middle position for a more dramatic stereo sound — restores an ES-345 to the in-phase sound when both pickups are engaged in mono, something the majority of guitar players prefer.

The Varitone switch itself accesses five different tone settings produced by sending the signal through an array of capacitors and a large choke, plus bypass. Many players feel that even the bypass setting sucks some tone from the signal, and most yank out this feature while undertaking a mono conversion (which itself is often easiest done by installing an entirely new control harness). Extracting not only the Varitone switch but also the bulky, heavy choke that enables its function removes around a full pound of weight from the guitar, which many ES-345 players find beneficial as well.

The majority of ES-345s produced in its first two years of existence carried Bigsby vibrato tailpieces, with other “hard-tail” versions given stopbar tailpieces. Around 1961, Gibson introduced its new “sideways” vibrola to the ES-345 and ES-355, as well as the new SG-bodied Les Paul Standard and Custom. These oddly configured devices produced a dip in pitch when the handle was pulled sideways. The function never became popular with players, although with their elaborate “tailfin” covers they arguably look pretty cool on the guitars that carry them. Gibson got the message, and ES-345s of the next few years wore either a Bigsby or a Gibson vibrato (a.k.a Maestro vibrola, in some literature). In the hardtail variant, from around 1965, the stopbar was replaced with a trapeze tailpiece like that used on fully hollow archtop electrics.

In 1962, Gibson began phasing out the hallowed PAF humbuckers it had used in the late ’50s and early ’60s and equipped these guitars with the Patent Number pickups that followed, so-called because the pickup design had finally earned its patent. Gibson changed the decal accordingly, although the number printed on it was inexplicably that for the patent awarded to one of the company’s bridge designs.

The Patent Number pickups used from late ’62 well into ’65 or so weren’t demonstrably different than the last iteration of PAFs, however, and still delivered classic vintage Gibson humbucker tone in a good semihollow guitar. Otherwise, ES-345s, along with their siblings, are known to be among some of the most versatile electrics ever made, excelling at blues, rock and roll, jazz, country, prog and even heavy rock. The bonus of elegantly elevated looks doesn’t hurt much either.

The theme for the type 2 diabetes drug has become an insidious part of American pop culture. But if you’re of a certain age, you might know the song by its original lyrics: “Oh, oh, oh, it’s magic — you know. Never believe it’s not so.” That’s how guitarist/bassist David Paton wrote it some 50 years with keyboardist Billy Lyall for their group Pilot. “Magic” was the Scottish act’s first and only major hit, topping the Canadian singles chart and hitting number five on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1975.

The tune originated like many others did: at Paton’s piano. “I always had a tape recorder above my piano when I wrote songs, and I would record anything,” he explains.

He already had the now-famous chorus when his wife planted the seed that led to the song’s creation early one morning.

“She just happened to say, ‘I’ve never been awake to see the daybreak,’ and it stuck with me,” he says. “I knew it was going to work with a little chorus that I had on my tape. I picked up my guitar and wrote the verse using her words.”

In 1974, Pilot — then a trio, with Paton on electric guitar, bass and vocals — signed with EMI Records and began working in Abbey Road Studios on “Magic” and the other songs that would appear on their debut, From the Album of the Same Name. But when Pilot turned the tapes over to the EMI, they were asked to perform additional work on “Magic.” “They told us, ‘You need an orchestration and more of a dynamic introduction’ — the original started with just a piano vamp before I started singing the chorus,” Paton explains.

It was while working on those additions that Paton invited Ian Bairnson to join as the group’s lead guitarist. “Ian had been coming to the Abbey Road Studios to listen, so since he was there in the studio, I asked him if he wanted to join the band,” Paton says. “So we recorded a more dynamic introduction for the sake of EMI, and Ian ended up playing guitar on that introduction while I played guitar on everything else.”

When it came to guitars, Paton went with a Rickenbacker 480. “I was always fascinated by Rickenbacker guitars but couldn’t afford one in those days,” he says. “When we started doing the album in Abbey Road, we rented in a lot of stuff including guitars, so I finally got to use a Rickenbacker, which I plugged into a miked up Marshall head with a 4x12 cabinet, and double-tracked the guitar. When it came to the bass, I used a Fender Precision through an Ampeg that was DI-ed.”

As for “Magic,” it didn’t make Paton rich — not at first anyway. Pilot would record two more albums — 1975’s Second Flight and 1976's Morin Heights, the latter without Lyall, who left to begin a solo career. The band split up in 1977, and Paton continued on as a studio and stage musician, working with artists like Kate Bush, Elton John and the prog-rock outfit the Alan Parsons Project (it was Parsons, a former Beatles engineer, who produced “Magic”). Paton even got to clock time with his idol Paul McCartney, singing backup on the Wings hit “Mull of Kintyre.”

But some 50 years after recording “Magic,” Paton got wind that his song had taken on a second life. “I knew that Ozempic were using ‘Magic’ because the publishing was coming in, and my earnings were suddenly going up,” he says. “Friends were phoning me and saying, ‘David, do you know your song's being played every 20 minutes here in the states on TV?’”

Originally, the commercials featured the work of an anonymous work-for-hire musical act. “Then I got a call from Ozempic asking me if I could get back to Abbey Road Studio and re-create what I’d already done in 1974 so that they could use a recording with just me playing,” Paton says. “Since I already had the drum track and piano part, all I had to do was go down to Studio Three at Abbey Road and re-record the bass, guitars and vocals. And on that version I used a Gibson Les Paul Standard for all the guitar parts.”

For all the newfound attention his song is receiving, Paton may have already had the best response to it in 2011, when he met another of his idols: the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson.

“One of Brian’s band members, guitarist Probyn Gregory, told me Brian loved my song and sang it all the time on their car journeys to their shows,” Paton explains. “He mentioned that they were coming to Glasgow for a show and asked whether I’d like to come along to the gig and meet Brian.”

Paton and his wife, Mary, attended and were introduced to Wilson afterward in his dressing room. “Brian looked up at me and said, ‘You wrote “Magic’? I wish I'd written that song!”

As they sat for a photograph, Paton noticed Wilson kept staring at him rather than at the camera. “When I made eye contact with him, he said to me, ‘Never believe it's not so,’” Paton says. “And it just meant so much to me.”

“That’s the great thing about guitar playing,” Foley says. “There’s always a new mountain to climb. I tend to be restless and adventurous in general, and that certainly extends to my guitar playing. I’ve spent a lot of my life playing the blues, and I’ll always return to it, but there’s other kinds of music I still want to learn.”

Such as? “Well, jazz, for sure,” she says. “I can’t play jazz — yet. Harmonically, I’m really challenged. I know if I were to really try to stretch myself, that’s where I would probably try to go.”

Foley recently heard she's received a Grammy nomination for “Best Traditional Blues Album” on behalf of One Guitar Woman. It's her first nomination, and one that is clearly well deserved. She was kind enough to take some time from her busy schedule to offer choice bits of advice for Guitar Player readers.

“There’s a lot of technical tips you can get out there, but to me a big part of guitar playing is mental,” she says. “It’s funny how a lot of players can talk themselves out of trying something new or breaking out of their boxes. Just remember: There’s no rights and no wrongs. Play fearlessly and it’ll all sort itself out.”

1. Ask Yourself Big Questions

“Learning the fundamentals of blues isn’t that difficult, really. Once you familiarize yourself with how the I, IV and V operate in the circle of fifths, you’re in a good place. To me, those are the primary colors you need in order to paint a picture. But what I find fascinating about the blues — and much of it is mysterious, in a way — is just how many ways there are to express yourself using only a few colors.

“Blues music asks you some big questions, like, Who am I? What do the blues mean to me? What do I really want to say? It almost dares you to expand your mind and express yourself through your playing. It wants you to go to a deeper place all the time. I find that fascinating. To me, it’s a challenge every time I play, like, How am I going to play this solo and these licks that have been regurgitated countless times for almost 100 years in a way that sounds fresh and alive? How am I going to make them sound like me?

“Asking yourself these types of questions is as important as any kind of technical practice you undertake. I guarantee you, whenever you listen to the greats, you
can bet they’ve asked themselves these questions. I know this sounds kind of spiritual, but when you get down to it, that’s really the essence of the blues. This is music born from a certain time and place, and whenever we play it, we’re paying homage to those spirits and keeping them alive.”

2. Tone Comes From Your Picking Hand

“Of course, you need decent equipment to get a good sound — a good-quality guitar and amp, decent strings that aren’t too old. But the real secret about tone is that it comes from your picking hand. Your fretting hand is doing one kind of work, but for the most part it’s flowing in the same kind of general moment. But your picking hand is where you control your tone. It’s surprising to me that so few people really talk about it.

“When I was coming up, I spent a lot of time watching people’s picking hands. I used to go see Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown a lot, and he had this amazing right-hand technique. He didn’t use a pick, and he did all these really interesting flourishes using all his fingers. It was like each finger was a paintbrush that he’d run across the strings. He could play fast and wild, but when I’d watch his right hand, it was like he put no effort into it. It was all graceful swing. That’s where his tone came from.

“In a different way, there was Albert Collins. He had another great right hand, and his tone could slice your head off. He used his fingers, too, and he played with very light strings. The way he dug his fingers into his strings and pulled the sound from them, it was like sparks flew.

“These kinds of players made an impression on me, and I decided to do away with a flatpick. I use a Golden Gate thumbpick, which I take on and off. Mostly I just play with my fingers so I can feel the flesh on the strings. What I like about that is how intimate it feels — there’s nothing that separates me from each string. I can pluck each string lightly, or I can dig in and get tough. I can run my fingers softly across the strings, or I can hit ’em hard. Playing this way, my tone comes straight from my picking hand, whether I’m going through an amp or not.”

3. If You Play Electric, Try an Acoustic

“It’s easy to let your pickups and amp do a lot of the work for you, but if you want to expand your playing — and if you want a dose of humility — pick up an acoustic from time to time. I started on an acoustic, so I’ve always felt comfortable playing one. The way I generate sound on it is vastly different than on an electric guitar. The sound basically comes from my stomach, which is pressed right against the instrument.

“It’s an unforgiving instrument, which freaks a lot of people out. This is especially true if you’re playing a nylon-string acoustic, which I’ve been doing a lot of lately. Don’t expect it to have the same behavior and response as your electric. It’s a whole different animal. So right away, adjust your expectations and approach. You’re going on a new adventure.

“I would also recommend people either use a thumbpick or an open hand when playing acoustic. There are so many things you can do using your whole hand, and you can experiment in so many ways. But be patient. You’re going to have to take baby steps. I remember my first flamenco guitar lesson: I had been playing for a couple of decades and I thought I was pretty good. I went for my first flamenco guitar lesson, which was open hand, no picks, on a nylon-string acoustic. Between the time signatures and the techniques, it was like I’d never played guitar before. Believe me, it was a good dose of humility.

“The more I played on a nylon-string acoustic, the more I fell in love with its sound and feel. I surrendered to the sound and didn’t fight it. And what was cool was when I found I could use a lot of the right-hand techniques I learned and apply them to my Telecaster playing. My fingers just flew across the strings.”

4. Embrace Your Suckiness

“We all hit a wall with our playing sometimes. I got in a rut myself with my blues playing. I’d been out on the road, and I could play different styles of electric blues, but then I started to think, What else is there? That’s when I started to get into learning flamenco and classical techniques. It was this mountain I wanted to climb, and the only way to do it was through baby steps.

“Whether you want to learn a different style of playing or not, the important thing is that you can’t give into your fear. If you’re trying something new or difficult, you can’t get freaked out if you suck at first. Keep going. In a way, you have to be honest and sort of embrace your suckiness. Say to yourself, Okay, I really suck at this, but I’m not going to stop. Each day you’ll be a little bit better, and one day you’ll be able to say, Hey, I don’t suck anymore.”

5. Speak Through Your Instrument

“Music is a conversation, and if you’re a guitar player, you’re speaking through your instrument. Think about it: If you’re having a conversation with somebody, are you just going to blather all over them and yell at them? That’s not a very effective way of communicating. Better to sit back and wait until it’s your turn to speak, and when you do, try to add something meaningful to the exchange.

“If you try to adopt this attitude, you’re going to find that you don’t have to say everything all at once to make a point. Jimmie Vaughan once told me, ‘Solos are
like little paragraphs in a story.’ That’s a lesson I took with me, and it’s guided me through the years. I don’t need to blather on in my solos. If I have something to say, I’ll say it. If I don’t, I won’t. If I perform a ballad that just requires me to play a melody, is that really so bad? I think not. That’s what I need to add to the conversation.”

But as Satriani tells Classic Rock, accommodating the players’ varying musical styles and idiosyncratic requests could be a chore at times. Take Fripp, who insisted on being an unlisted show opener and performing out of sight as attendees entered the venue during G3’s 2004 run.

“You have two extremes,” Satriani tells Classic Rock. “Like, Robert Fripp, who said, ‘No lights on me, I want to sit down and I want to be behind everybody.’ So it was sort of an ‘un-demand’, y’know?”

And then there’s Fripp’s polar opposite, the irrepressible Yngwie Malmsteen, who appeared on the 2003 tour, where he, Satch and Vai jammed on Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing."

“I mean, if you invite him, you have to just say, 'I know what I’m inviting,' ” Satch concedes. “To Yngwie’s credit, he always plays so great and always puts on the Yngwie Malmsteen show.

“The only problem that I would have is that sometimes he wouldn’t pay attention to other things happening onstage when his bit was done, because he’s just not used to not being the focus of the show. I’d say, ‘When Steve [Vai] is soloing, don’t throw your guitar up in the air right next to him, because he’s got his eyes closed. I don’t want him to get hit in the head.’”

Satch says launching G3 proved problematic simply because no one had ever done something like it before. Some guitarists’ managers saw it as a competition rather than a celebratory jaunt.

“The vibe back then was to keep the gunslinger guitar players away from each other,” he explains. “The record companies, the management — everyone was like, ‘Don’t stand next to that guy, because he’s your competitor.’

“So we had nice little arguments with them, saying, ‘This is different.’ This was something I felt the audience really wanted to see, because I wanted to see it. When I was 14, if I had a chance to see Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck together on the same stage, I’d think that was the greatest thing ever. I wouldn’t be thinking like a promoter, I’d be thinking like a fan.“

Considering that grunge essentially killed the whammy-bar wrangling, double-tapping guitar acrobatics that G3 would go on to celebrate, Satch he has no animosity. “I didn’t pay any attention to that, I guess,” he says, noting that his 1992 album, The Extremist, “came out as my love letter to the classic rock era, so it was a throwback record anyway. But when I emerged from the studio I realized, ‘Oh, it’s all Nirvana and Soundgarden.’ ”

And while many technically proficient guitarists love to slag Kurt Cobain’s rudimentary axe-handling skills, Satriani has nothing but praise for the way Nirvana’s frontman used his talents in service of his songs.

“He was a great guitar player,” Satch says. “You go back and look at Nirvana clips, and you realize this guy is playing everything he’s supposed to play. He’s not looking at what he’s playing, so obviously he really knows the instrument. And he’s playing with one of the greatest drummers of all time [Dave Grohl], so that wouldn’t have worked if he was not a good guitarist.”

Satch's appreciation for Cobain shouldn't come as a surprise to those who know him. After all, he, Vai and Guthrie Govan picked Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" as one of their show-closing jams on the 2016 G3 tour.

Satriani is coming off a busy year that saw him revive G3 with Vai and Johnson for a limited run of shows, perform Van Halen–era songs with Sammy Hagar on his Best of all Worlds tour, and tour with Vai. The new year looks like it will be just as busy. Last month he and Vai announced they’ll hit the road in June as the SatchVai Band for the Surfing with the Hydra tour. The road stint will be the first time in their nearly 50-year musical careers that the two electric guitar virtuosos have performed as band members. Their tour begins June 13, 2025 in Europe, with more dates to be announced.

In addition, Satch and Vai have been writing new music together, which means a SatchVai Band album can’t be far behind. Stay tuned.

The guitar shown here is not just any example of Abernethy’s cornerstone model but one built specifically for that icon of offset-leaning indie/alt/Americana, Jeff Tweedy, who kindly let GP divert it on the journey from its birthplace in Guadalupe, California, to the Wilco loft in Chicago, for a quick run through its paces. Although the rather Mustang-like upper bout and more bulbous lower bout may suggest otherwise, the Sonic Empress THC is made to a full 25–inch scale length, with a
width of 1.65 inches across the bone nut and a 12-inch radius to the Indian rose-
wood board. The bolt-on neck is made from tempered (a.k.a. roasted) maple,
and the body is made from tempered pine. Its Sonic Blue nitrocellulose lacquer finish has greened up nicely due to the factory aging of the clear coat, with further character added by Abernethy’s own hand distressing.

Elements of the general look and build approach — from the tempered pine and maple to the pre-aged finish — remind me of Dennis Fano’s work under his own name in the past, and more recently via his Novo brand. As it happens, there are just a few degrees of separation between the two builders. After graduating from high school, Abernethy apprenticed in guitar repair at a local shop, then jumped at an opportunity to work for Gene Baker. Over a period of about 15 years he worked and built guitars for Baker, Ernie Ball, National Resophonic, Fine Tuned Instruments and Premier Builders Guild — which was headed by Baker and made Fano guitars under license — before starting up his one-man shop in the late 2010s. If anything, though, Abernethy takes the “alternative-vintage” premise even further with a combination of elements that never really appeared together on any one production model before, plus plenty of original touches.

Yet for all the Sonic Empress’s funky Jaguar-meets-Japanese-meets-catalog-grade-guitar looks and features, it’s the sheer quality and playing feel that grab you when you pick it up. The neck has a beautifully rounded medium-C profile that’s virtually impossible not to like, whatever your usual favorite, and everything is utterly solid and well-honed.

Even the quirkier elements in evidence here — the colored slider-switch tips, fluted vibrato-arm tip, clear radio knobs and clear buttons on the open-gear Grover Sta-Tite tuners — are hand molded in-house and accordingly exhibit a high degree of custom-building. And if those pickups look like something you’d find on Teisco and other budget-level Japanese creations from the ’60s, you’re not wrong. Abernethy sources what he can of these vintage Kawai-made pickups and has them rewound as necessary by his pal Rob Banta at Gemini Pickups in Newburgh, New York.

“This particular build is kind of unique, not a standard option—although they are
all kind of unique,” Abernethy tells us. “I hadn’t really planned to build another like this because of the work involved casting the colored sliders, but when the Tweedy camp requested it, I took it as a personal challenge. The Kawai pickups are sweet, and I use them as often as I can find them. Rob is a brilliant pickup designer and has made some really killer old sets magical by rebuilding damaged ones with vintage-correct wire and components. They’re like the best-sounding Strat set but with bigger cajones. Ever wonder what it would be like to take an old Model T and retrofit it with a 350 V-8? This is kind of the same concept.”

The slide switches include an on/off at the upper horn for each of the pickups. Two more sliders on the lower horn include a phase-reverse for when either the neck or bridge pickup is used with the middle pickup, and a low-cut filter reminiscent of the “strangle switch” on the Fender Jaguar.

The most notable elements of the hardware set are the Descendant JM-style vibrato and Companion bridge, designed and manufactured by guitar maker Chris Swope. I reviewed these new designs in the Holiday 2022 issue and was impressed with how they improved string tension across the bridge, often a tone-eviscerating weak point of offset-style guitars. Abernethy agrees. “The Descendant trem and Companion bridge have become a staple on all my trem builds,” he says. “I love working with Chris, and the latest version of his trem is great. Plus, it’s a tad lighter than the Mastery, which makes a big difference when considering weight and the sum of all parts.”

Most observers will find plenty of noteworthy features at the other end of the guitar, too, where Abernethy’s headstock presents a style you don’t find on many electric guitars. “I’ve always loved the look of a slotted peg head,” he exclaims. “I think a lot of players are skeptical, being that their only experience with them is on an old classic guitar, but I think the stability on these is second to none. Plus, I’ve never seen anyone else utilize a one-inch quartersawn neck blank this way. I’m able
to get excellent downward pressure on the back of the nut without need for any string trees as well, so it’s kind of the best of both worlds between an angled and straight headstock.”

The Sonic Empress was a blast to test-drive through a 65amps London head and 2x12 cab, a tweed Deluxe-style 1x12 tube combo, and a Fractal FM9 into headphones. If the three single-coil pickups and access to in-between sounds makes you think “alt-Strat,” hold that thought. The pickups and switching combinations do yield incredible versatility and a wide range of voices, but the tones available are really quite unlike anything else. Think “Jaguar meets Jazzmaster meets mail-order guitar,” with the snarky edge of lower-wind pickups, a touch of gold-foil attitude, and plenty of depth and resonance imparted by the quality of the build, woods and hardware.

There’s tons of sparkle and shimmer from the bridge pickup, with no harshness.
I can see this being fantastic for recording sounds you’d expect to be getting from a Rickenbacker or any Fender offset, for example, but too often have trouble successfully achieving. While the pickups are a pretty low-output design, the end result is still surprisingly girthy, with a slightly gritty edge to the voice that adds texture and depth. Added to that, the Jaguar-style strangle switch was particularly sweet applied to the neck pickup, while the out-of-phase positions were very cool with a fuzz pedal engaged, eliciting a nasty, hairy scooped tone that’s great for funky psychedelic blues riffs.

To extend Abernethy’s car metaphor, the Sonic Empress is something of a Ferrari disguised as a Nissan Figaro, and tons of fun by any measure. Let's just say sending this guitar back on its journey to its owner wasn't easy.

CONTACT abernethyguitars.com

PRICE Starting at $4,200 direct

Since launching her YouTube channel in 2011, Lloyd has become an internationally recognized rock and metal guitarist. Her virtuoso skills — demonstrated in cover songs, original compositions and techniques videos — led to her landing a gig as a guitarist in Machine Gun Kelly’s touring group in 2022 and releasing her debut solo album, Imposter Syndrome, in 2023.

Along the way, Lloyd became the first female signature artist for Kiesel Guitars, an experience that allowed her to design her own model. In doing so, she says, she was able to create an instrument that not only meets her tonal requirements but also fits her frame and body shape.

Lloyd says she chose black limba for her signature model electric guitar not only because it has a warm, round tone similar to mahogany but also because its light weight makes it better suited to someone of her size.

“I really like that kind of tone,” she says of mahogany, “but I also wanted it to be really lightweight, because I'm very weak. I have little arms. I can't like stand and hold a super-heavy Les Paul for a two-hour gig and be able to throw it around and run around. That's just not really viable for me.”

Just as important, though, Lloyd says designing her own guitar meant she could develop a body shape that suits her own. While a guitar’s curves matters less when a player is standing, it matters particularly to women who play seated.

“I had trouble before, you know, because we have boobs,” she says. “Sometimes you get a guitar and the place where it cuts really hurts when it kind of leans into you.

“And that's something that people wouldn't really think, you know? If there's men making them, they wouldn't really think about that. But that's something we need to think about.

“So that's why the shape of mine fits really nicely and cradles my boob very well,” she adds with a laugh. “It really does make such a difference, because I spend a lot of time sitting down in front of the computer writing and stuff. When you stand up, I guess it doesn't make as much of a difference, but that's why I needed it to fit my frame. And then girls can go out and get something that they know is going to fit them and they're not going to have any issues with that.”

Lloyd — who uses EVH and Diezel guitar amplifiers and Boss effects pedals — made her big solo move in 2023 with her debut album, Imposter Syndrome. The record featured a range of guest singers, including Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale, who wrote lyrics for the title track and appeared in its music video.

In her interview with The Mistress Carrie Podcast, Lloyd also discusses the backlash she received when she began posting her performance videos online. She explains that she had been prepared for it by her guitar teacher, Mike Hurst, the British producer and guitarist, who had previously performed with singer Dusty Springfield.

“He was sort of like, ‘Because you're a girl, you can't just be a good guitarist — you have to be the best guitarist,'” she says.

“At the time I was really kind of upset about it. I was really like, Well why does that make a difference? I mean, I should be able to do what I want.

“’I’ve always like struggled with self-confidence or feeling like I wasn't the best at anything. That really kind of put me off for a little bit, but especially now I do kind of understand.”

In the end, Lloyd says she learned to take vindication from the haters.

“I think the thing for me was I really had good people around me,” she says. "And now, I kind of think, you know, a hate view is worth the same as a love view, you know? I always say, when you've got your first hate comment, you should go out and celebrate because that means you’re making it!”

Elsewhere in their talk, Lloyd reveals the first riffs she played correctly — “Wild Thing” and “Sweet Home Alabama” — and notes that she was able to score a PRS guitar when she nailed the guitar solo in Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”

“My dad said, ‘If you can play this whole solo, I'll get you this guitar. I just spent so long trying to nail this solo.”

Eventually she was able to perform tapping and got Eddie Van Halen’s “Eruption” under her fingers. “That was a moment for me,” she says. “I would not stop playing it constantly. I still play it constantly. I'm still like I can't believe I can do this.”

You can hear Lloyd's full interview with The Mistress Carrie Podcast below.

Allan Holdsworth has graced the cover of Guitar Player magazine at least three times and participated in numerous articles and interviews featuring the intricacies and techniques of his sound. Characterized by his unique chord progressions, complex solos, and use of legato phrasing, Allan’s innovative approach to guitar set him apart. He was a pioneer of the jazz fusion genre, influencing countless guitarists with his work in bands such as Soft Machine, Gong, and UK, as well as his solo career. Holdsworth’s groundbreaking albums, like Road Games and Metal Fatigue, showcased his technical prowess and creative genius, cementing his legacy as one of the most influential guitarists of our time.

Allan’s unparalleled approach to guitar playing and music production created an atmosphere of innovation and creativity in the studio. To my knowledge, no one has authored an article focused on Allan’s countless hours in the studio crafting his music. In this article, I’ll take you behind the scenes of those early sessions, sharing stories and technical insights and revealing Allan’s unwavering artistic integrity and unique personality. The photos accompanying this article come courtesy of Eddie Coralnick, who generously allowed us a glimpse into his personal archive of Holdsworth photos and mementos.

In the spring of ’83, the Music Grinder Recording Studio in Hollywood hired me to assist with a recording session for jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty with studio owner Gary Skardina behind the console. I was at the point in my career where I was still assisting sessions occasionally but also held a good measure of experience behind the console in the engineer’s chair. The session started as usual, with roadies and musicians hauling in and setting up gear. I noticed the guitar player loading in by himself and went over to give him a hand. I’d heard he was an incredible guitarist and expected him to be temperamental, but his demeanor spoke only of someone running late in L.A. traffic, not the capricious musician I’d expected. We slid his amp behind his chair, and I began to surround it with foam baffles to contain the sound.

“Is this going to be all right with you?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah, sure man, whatever you have to do.” We exchanged a few more words, and it struck me how polite and gentle he was, almost shy. I’d just met Allan Holdsworth for the first time.

Several months later, Allan returned to the Music Grinder to record a solo album. On Eddie Van Halen’s recommendation, he’d been signed to Warner Brothers by Ted Templeman, who served as executive producer for the project. The studio booked me to assist British engineer Jeremy Smith, whom Allan had hired to record the project. Jeremy recorded the basic tracks (bassist Jeff Berlin and drummer Chad Wackerman along with Allan) in the studio’s back room, featuring a 20-foot bow-truss ceiling, brick walls, and a concrete floor covered with a mosaic of carpets. It was one of L.A.’s best drum rooms (the same studio where Phill Collins recorded drums for the hit “Against All Odds.”)

After several days of tracking, Jeremy made rough mixes for Ted Templeman’s review. Ted thought the recordings sounded too washed out and wanted the tracks re-recorded in the smaller, tight-sounding room. I can still picture Allan’s face, drawn and lined with stress, as he walked through the control room. On top of having to re-record tracks Allan was happy with, the process ground down the budget. A few weeks later, studio owner Ron Felicia asked if I’d help Allan finish the album and do the work for only my assistant’s pay rate. I’d gotten to know Allan and liked him, so I jumped at the chance to work with him as an engineer.

That evening, as I set up the control room for the session, Allan walked in, set down his guitar case, and shook my hand.

“Hey, Robert, sorry man to put you through this. Ha, well, thanks for helping me out.” His unassuming friendliness set me at ease.

We carried in amps and cases of effects, walked the studio and discussed the setup. We put the amps in the control room and ran the speaker cable to the cabinets in the studio. With Allan playing in the control room, there was no need for a headphone cue system, making communication easier. It also allowed Allan to listen to the substantial control room monitors while he recorded his overdubs (Urei Time Align 813Bs with Altec 604 speakers) instead of a headphone mix. We discussed mic techniques: the British trend of micing a guitar amp from several feet back vs. close miking, placing the mic a few inches from the speaker. Allan wanted to experiment with everything. We’d change mics and listen, move mics and listen, change amps and speaker cabinets, listen and compare.

With his guitar wrapped around him, Allan would dial up a sound on an amp or an effect, play a little and tweak a little, his mind focused on the knobs and the sound, his large hands and fingers flying with an unearthly dexterity, spinning wild, unique musical riffs. I stood there with my attention ripped from the sound we were working on, stared at his hands, and listened to these musical phrases drop from his fingers like an afterthought. When I’d call his attention to it, he’d smile and go on tweaking without missing a beat.

Allan’s guitar sounds were not heavy metal, rock, or jazz. They covered a broader spectrum, with a natural low end and a smooth top, so he gravitated to better-quality mics capable of capturing it. For the most part, we used Neumann U87s in the sweet spot, halfway between the speaker edge and the cone about a foot back, where the sound is natural with a close presence.

On one of those first nights, he tried to describe the sound he was looking for as I attempted to dial it up on the Trident TSM console we were using. The EQ on the Trident TSM is different from most consoles, utilizing small faders instead of knobs. I thought, this guy knows what he wants.

“Here, let me show you how this EQ works.” I talked him through it and stepped back. He reached over the console, his head dropped, and he zoned in on the sound as he fiddled with the little faders and knobs. I thought, Oh, I know how to work with this guy; I just have to let him be a part of it. I’ve never felt territorial in the studio. I just want whatever is best for the session. It turned out to be what Allan needed: help navigating the muck and mire of the recording studio without opposition. He had a brilliant mind and a strong vision for what he wanted; my job was to make that happen.

We wrapped about midnight, I ran off a couple of cassette copies of the day’s work, and we headed home. On the way, I popped the tape into my car’s cassette player and pulled into a fast-food drive-through. I placed my order for a muffin-something and waited. Allan’s guitar solo poured from the car speakers, and the reality and depth of what we’d recorded hit me. Somehow, the technical details, taking notes, recording, and talking with Allan had distracted me enough that I hadn’t grasped what had happened. I’d heard Allan in the studio many times before, but sitting there, waiting for my breakfast sandwich, listening to his solo, it struck me. There was a physical sensation to my reaction, a flash like a dream or a memory, something old combined with the future. The tape sounded and felt much larger than the recording we’d just made.

One evening, Allan asked me to put up the song “Tokyo Dream.” I threaded the tape on the machine and pushed up a reference mix while Allan dialed up a guitar sound. It was common for him to experiment with different amps, cabinets, and processing, but this time, he had a sound in mind and was reaching for it. He moved with purpose, patching in delays and a combination of choruses. He was standing behind the console a few feet from me. He dropped his right index and middle fingers on the strings, using hammer-ons and slides, and this stunning Japanese chime flowed out of the speakers. When he was ready, I rolled the tape and dropped into record. I was mesmerized watching him. We recorded one track after another, and by the end of the night, Allan’s guitar parts filled the room with an intoxicating Asian charm. It didn’t seem possible that those sounds came from a guitar. Of all the songs I’ve recorded, “Tokyo Dream” is still one of my favorites.

Allan titled the album Road Games. There are no synthesizers on the album. It’s all guitar. Allan played the orchestral parts using various stereo chorus units: AMS 15-80 S, A/DA STD-1 Stereo Tap Delay, and stand-alone delays like the Yamaha D1500 with a slight LFO and short delay times, combined with longer, out-of-time delays for depth. He’d play one of his inventive chord voicings, ride the volume pedal up at the right moment, and gorgeous orchestral pads poured from the studio monitors. Road Games was nominated for Best Rock Instrumental Performance at the 1984 Grammy Awards. Along with bassist Jeff Berlin and Frank Zappa’s drummer Chad Wackerman, the album featured Cream vocalist Jack Bruce and former Juicy Lucy and Tempest frontman Paul Williams.

A year after Road Games, Allan invited me to help him with a new project. We spent months recording basic tracks, overdubs, and solos, again at the Music Grinder Recording Studios, along with “In the Mystery” and additional recording at Front Page Studio with engineers Dan Human, Dennis McKay, Biff Vincent, and Gary Wagner.

Allan embodied artistic integrity; it seemed as integral to him as the marrow in his bones. During a conversation one day, he said he didn’t understand why someone would hire him to play on their song and then give him specific directions. “If they’re hiring me, it must mean they know what I do. So, why would they want me to play like someone else?” he wondered.

One evening, Allan Pasqua came in to record his solo on “The Un-Merry-Go-Round.” Allan hung around while we set up and then stepped out to the lobby. After recording the solo, I brought Allan back into the control room to take a listen. All he said was, “Yeah, man,” and nodded his head. When Pasqua asked if he liked the solo, Allan responded, “Well, do you like it?” The freedom Allan extended to other musicians was unparalleled. He sought only their unfiltered musical expression on the recording, a level of trust and artistic liberty I have never witnessed before or since.

One morning at the Music Grinder, Allan walked in carrying an acoustic guitar. He wanted to try an acoustic solo on a song titled “Home.” We had already recorded several electric guitar solos, one of which he particularly liked, but he was looking for a different sound. Until then, I had never seen him play an acoustic guitar or even heard of him playing one. I set him up on a stool in the large room. I placed a Neumann U67 about 18 inches from the guitar, pointing towards the sound hole, and used an AKG C-414 aimed at the guitar body below the bridge to capture the rich, resonant wood sound.

Allan sat alone in that old room with the red brick walls, a skylight casting a twelve-foot rectangle of yellow light onto the floor. We recorded two takes; the second one is on the album. For the final mix, we spun in a recording Allan made at Goodman’s Pub in Hunslet-Leeds, England, using a Sony Walkman portable cassette recorder. The wooden clanking sounds in the song’s intro are from the hand pumps the bartenders were using to pull beer from the kegs. Allan named the album Metal Fatigue, released in 1985 on Enigma Records. The album features Chad Wackerman and Gary Husband on drums, Jimmy Johnson and Gary Willis on bass, Allan Pasqua on keys, and vocals by Paul Williams and Paul Korda. Daniel Gioffre of AllMusic called the album one of the most important fusion records of the ’80s and Holdsworth’s best work.

Recording an artist like Allan Holdsworth––or any vocalist or musician––is an intimate endeavor. You’re confined to a room with no windows for days, weeks, or months, and the creative process is fragile. I always felt deeply connected with the singers and musicians I recorded, aware that my thoughts and feelings could affect their performance. I would self-extinguish and maintain a neutral presence to keep my feelings out of their way, creating a clear opening for them to connect with their muse. This may sound like some crazy, esoteric voodoo, but it’s not. They needed me on their side.

Allan and I became friends, and I continued to assist him over the years, ultimately helping him compile and transfer his analog tapes to digital for his box set The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever –– a title he despised –– released a few months before his death in 2017. Working with Allan profoundly shaped my approach to music and recording. I consider myself fortunate to have been part of his creative journey. Allan’s music continues to inspire guitarists and music lovers worldwide, and I am grateful to have contributed to his legacy.

For all that, though, it’s still a relatively limited history up against those of the Marshall, Vox, and Hiwatt amps of the ’60s and ’70s. But if anyone can revive the Elpico mystique and propel it into the 21st century in appropriately legendary form, it’s Mitch Colby. Likely the most storied American figure in British amp history, Colby worked as an engineer for Marshall’s American distributor for 32 years, helped revive the Vox brand before it was handed over to Korg, and acquired and manufactured Park amps for about 10 years until 2022, when Hiwatt purchased the brand. In addition, hand-built designs under his own name have been highly respected this past decade or more, and his meticulous re-creation of Jimmy Page’s modified Marshall Super Bass from 1969 — dubbed the Sundragon — has established a new standard for classic-rock tone.

So if there’s anyone who can take an admittedly archaic circuit from the late ’40s or ’50s and make it all it should be in the perfect world where every “catalog-amp” is its best and most tonesome self… Well, you get the picture.

As seen in the accompanying photos, the original surf-green Elpico AC55 was a much smaller combo than Colby’s revamped creation, which is covered in black vinyl in this instance. The increased size of so many essential components — cabinet, speaker, transformers and a few others — is the most obvious tell in the general bigging-up of the format. Aside from that, the Colby Elpico AC55 retains all of the most characteristic quirks of the original, which help it to sound quite unlike any other familiar vintage amp.

As Colby tells us, “The original AC55 had lots of preamp gain with a lot of negative feedback in the output stage, a relatively unusual James tone stack, and an ultralinear power stage with a transformer with two four-ohm secondaries. In the new design I use both at all times—in parallel for the four-ohm setting and in series for 16-ohm.” The James tone stack Colby mentions is essentially a passive version of the active Baxandall stage occasionally used by Orange and Ampeg, and Dr. Z more recently, with wide-sweeping bass and treble controls.

Among his additions for increased versatility are a mid control, a master with bypass switch, independent three-way bright switches on each channel, a switch to cascade the two channels together for even more gain, and a line out with level control and switch for full or compensated response (a faux-cab voicing). Noting that the original’s third channel — Gram, for gramophone (record player) — was essentially useless for guitar, Colby has eliminated that one, while he’s revoiced the second of the original’s otherwise identical two Mic channels for greater tonal variety.

Otherwise, the Colby Elpico AC55 specs out like the classic British club tube amp, producing around 16 watts from a pair of EL84s, two 12AX7/ECC83s in the preamp, another in the phase inverter, and an EZ81 rectifier tube. The speaker is a Celestion G12H-25 Greenback, mounted to a birch-ply baffle in a solid-pine cab measuring 22 by 19 by nine inches and weighing 34 pounds. Which is to say, the Colby Elpico AC55 is a lot more amp than the original, while it stays true to its unusual and inspiring personality. It also looks fantastic in it black vinyl covering with white piping (other colors are available), with an expensive EC Collins Bluesbreaker-style pinstripe grille cloth filling the trapezoidal speaker cut-out, an echo of the original’s unique styling.

Inside, the circuit displays Colby’s proven knack for top-quality workmanship. The thick, welded aluminum chassis carries a rugged turret board handwired with top-shelf components, including Mallory coupling capacitors, MOD electrolytic caps, and a mix of carbon-comp and carbon-film resistors.

Tested with a Fender Telecaster and a Gibson ES-355, the Colby Elpico AC55 delivered lots of bark and no shortage of classic EL84 chime, but with quite a different voice than the usual British suspects. It has a somewhat thicker midrange than the Vox-inspired dual-EL84 designs that dominate this sector, though one that’s not outright “Marshally” either. There’s also an interesting combination of articulate attack backed by easy compression, which would seem to contradict each, yet are appealingly married in the amp’s playing response.

Even in Normal mode, there’s serious chunky grind when you drive the volume past noon, especially on channel two, which is thicker and slightly darker. Channel one, in contrast, is brighter and sparklier, while both deliver excellent headroom until you get their respective volume controls up past noon (in Normal mode) — all of which is impressively loud for a 16-watter when the master’s maxed.

Cobbled into a three-word takeaway, I’d call either channel “stout, yet clear,” which gives the AC55 more of a big-amp feel overall than that achieved by many other 16-watters. Flipped to Cascade mode to chain the first channel’s gain stage into the second, the AC55 becomes altogether fiercer. Not quite the Mesa/Boogie or Soldano we associate with cascading gain, but an aggressively rocky lead beastie that’s still inherently vintage-natured, and very enjoyable.

Compared to an original early ’60s AC55 that Colby sent along for testing, the re-creation has a lot more of everything, simply put, and is just a far more usable mid-sized amp for the modern player. But it does indeed retain the character of its 60-year-old forebearer, which delivers a juicy, rich, unique voice at far lesser volumes, and one that could still be very useful in front of a mic in the studio.

But would Dave Davies approve? I’d like to think so, and perhaps with Colby’s version on hand in the studio in 1964 he wouldn’t have had to go to such lengths to achieve his “You Really Got Me” signal chain. As he told me during a chat over tea and scones in a West London hotel many moons ago.

“I was getting really bored with this guitar sound — or lack of an interesting sound — and there was this radio-spares shop up the road, and they had a little green amplifier in there next to the radios, an Elpico. I got a single-edged Gillette razorblade and cut round the cone like this.” Here he indicated making slits from the center to the edge of the cone. “So it was all shredded but still on there, still intact. I played and I thought it was amazing, really freaky. I felt like an inventor! We just close-miked that in the studio, and also fed the same speaker output into the Vox AC30, which was kind of noisy but sounded good.”

You’ll need no such shenanigans with the Colby Elpico AC55. Simply engage the Cascade switch, crank it up and there’s thick, meaty tube overdrive aplenty, with nary a shredded speaker in sight. However you use it, this interesting new combo from a master of classic British tone is likely to prove extremely inspiring and surprisingly versatile, while also helping you stand out from the crowd sonically in the process.

SPECIFICATIONS

CONTACT colbyamps.com

PRICE $3,350 direct

CHANNELS 2

CONTROLS Volume 1, Volume 3, Bright 1, Bright 2, Treble, Middle, Bass, Master with on/off switch, Cascade switch

POWER 16 watts

TUBES Three 12AX7 preamp/PI tubes, two EL84 output tubes, EZ81 rectifier tube

EXTRAS Dual speaker outs with switch for 4Ω/8Ω or 16Ω, ¼" direct out with level control and switch for Full or Compensated Response

SIZE 22"x19"x9"

WEIGHT 34 lbs

ASSEMBLED IN USA

KUDOS A clever and extremely well-built re-creation of an under-recognized classic, and surprisingly versatile in its own right.

CONCERNS Its high cost might limit its reach, but that’s somewhat inevitable for an amp of this quality.

Johnny A’s current work combines his deepest passions from his childhood to the present day. He originally developed his signature chord-melody style by learning how to play the Beatles songbook as a solo electric player. After establishing himself as one of the premier contemporary instrumentalists, Johnny became a Yardbird in 2015, filling the lead guitar position once held by Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck. After Beck passed away in 2023, Johnny began doing a tribute named after his second studio album, 1969’s Beck-Ola.

Johnny A. combines the skills developed during his immersion in Beck’s lyrical, whammy-infused melodic style along with his deep love for Beatle songcraft on his latest single, a very Beck-ish take on the Fab Four’s “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” Profits from this single released on Thanksgiving Weekend benefit the Greater Boston Food Bank.

“You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” official video.

As for we can expect Johnny to play for this GP Presents show at Yoshi’s, he says:

“I’ll be doing my solo looping show [Just Me…And My Guitars] with some new material added and a bit more of a bluesy approach than previous shows.”

Read GP’s interview with Johnny where he reveals the secrets about his signature Master Built Strat.

Regardless of the axes he chooses to wield for a particular tune or project, players always flock to hear them in the hands of the man who can make six strings come together as a single voice. Come celebrate the New Year with Johnny A. at Yoshi’s as he celebrates his new Strat and pays homage to the Beatles, Jeff Beck and his own stellar catalog of solo material along the way.

Get tickets now.

WIN TICKETS!

For a chance to win a pair of tickets to GP Presents Johnny A. in Oakland, California, send an email to gp@jimmyleslie.com with “Johnny A.” in the subject and simply include a sentence about yourself and why you want to go.

Phone contact is greatly appreciated for confirmation.

Winner must provide their own transportation to Yoshi’s in Oakland, California and have their own accommodations in the Bay Area. Best of luck!

EVENT DETAILS

GP Presents Johnny A

Tuesday, January 7

Yoshi’s

Jack London Square, Oakland, California

Free GP magazines, Martin strings

Get tickets

“These albums are like snapshots of memories from my youth,” says Hale, whose electric guitar of choice is her signature Gibson Explorer. “Talking about them brings it all back to me. It’s like how you can be walking along and a certain smell makes you stop in your tracks. Suddenly, you’re lost in this beautiful nostalgia. You remember how you felt when you were a teenager, the kind of person you were back then. That’s such an important time in your life, and the music you listen to has such a profound impact on you.”

Sometimes when she’s onstage, a similar thought crosses Hale’s mind. “I’ll look out at the crowd and see all these young faces,” she says, “and I’ll think, ‘Are they going to remember this moment 20 years from now?’ I’d like to think so. I can see them singing our songs back to us, and in that instant the song isn’t ours anymore — it’s theirs. That’s one of the magical things about music: If it gets inside you, it’s yours, and nothing can take that away.”

Black Sabbath – Heaven and Hell (1980)

“First off, what an album cover! You’ve got the angels sitting around on their smoke break. It doesn’t get any better than that. My parents had a rather reckless abandon approach toward child rearing in that they generally let me listen to whatever I wanted. Even so, for a girl growing up in Pennsylvania, there was something a little dangerous about this record. It sounded dark and mysterious. It was my introduction to Black Sabbath, and oddly, it featured Ronnie James Dio. It wasn’t till later than I got into Ozzy.

“I had never heard Dio sing before, and man, did he blow me away. The whole album put me on this rollercoaster ride. Even though the things he was singing about were pretty far out — he was into dragons and swords and epic battles — he sang with such fervor and feeling. You believed him. That’s something I always tried to adhere to in my own work: Whatever I’m singing about, I have to believe it.”

Alice Cooper – Love It to Death (1971)

“This is the record that made me realize I was weird. I first heard it around 1996 or so, right before my brother and I started Halestorm. My friends were listening to Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey, which I wasn’t into at all. I was listening to classic rock from my parents’ generation. They gave me a few records, like, ‘Listen to this. This is real rock.’ One of the records they gave me was Alice Cooper's Love It to Death, and it hooked me right away.

“I remember going to a sleep-over at a friend’s house. Everybody brought their favorite CDs, so after a few hours of listening to pop stuff, somebody said, ‘Hey, we never heard any of Liz’s records.’ I put Love It to Death on the boombox, and I don’t think we got through the first chorus; they looked at me as if I had aliens coming out of my head. Then it was like, ‘Okay, let’s go back to Tara’s music.’

“The next morning, my dad asked me how the sleep-over went, and I said, ‘I don’t know, Dad. They didn’t like my music. They think I’m weird.’ He said that was a good thing. He said, ‘You listen to Alice Cooper not because it’s popular and the other kids listen to it. You listen to Alice Cooper because you love it, and that’s amazing.’ After that, I decided to do my own thing. I wasn’t going to be a follower. Honestly, I don’t think I would have written songs like ‘Freak Like Me,’ ‘Strange Girl’ or ‘I Am the Fire’ had I not gotten the confidence from Alice Cooper.”

Jeff Buckley – Grace (1994)

“I was a little late to Jeff Buckley — he had already passed away when I first heard him. I was introducing my guitar player, Joe [Hottinger], and my bass player, Josh [Smith], to Dio and stuff like that, and they were in introducing me to the Smashing Pumpkins and Jeff Buckley. The second I heard Grace, it opened up a new world for me.

“Vocally, Jeff Buckley was an anomaly — nobody ever sounded like him or ever will. But his songwriting and poetry were so unique that I didn’t even want to know what the songs were about, because I knew what they meant to me the first time I heard them.

“Right around the time I started listening to Jeff Buckley, I met the love of my life and the greatest love I’ve ever had in this world. We nerded out to Jeff Buckley — Grace was our bonding music. It’s just one of those things where I can listen to this album and be taken back to this almost naïve version of love, that first time when you understand what it means to you.”

Sevendust – Home (1999)

“A neighborhood friend of mine game me this record, and I couldn’t get enough of it. I think it was one of the first modern metal records that had a female guesting on it — that’s Skin from Skunk Anansie singing on the song ‘Licking Cream.’ I used to sing that chorus a capella for random sound guys when we had to check my mics. It was in my range and was easy for me to do.

“After becoming such a Sevendust fan, my band and I went to see them at the Chameleon Club in Lancaster. We saw their tour bus, and we were so brazen — we actually knocked on the door. The lead singer, Lajon, opened the door and invited us in, which was totally crazy. We hung out for a while, and I wound up giving them our EP demo that we’d just recorded. We said our goodbyes and went in the club to watch the show. And then the most incredible thing happened: Suddenly, we heard our song ‘It’s Not You’ playing over the PA. The band threw our EP on! We couldn’t believe it. What great guys, you know? I mean, who does that?”

Heart – The Road Home (1995)

“I knew Heart’s hits from the radio, but I hadn’t heard the band live until my mom got me this CD from a used record store. The version of ‘Crazy on You’ is probably 90 percent a capella — there’s a bit of organ swell in the background and a bit or strings — but it takes on a whole new dimension from the studio version. It's no longer this sexually charged rocker; now it’s about this young woman's struggle to be seen and acknowledged, and it’s fantastic.

“The vocal prowess of Ann Wilson — I mean, come on. It’s like she left blood on the stage the night they recorded this. Hearing her totally changed my mind about female vocalists. I was like, ‘Wow, girls can actually sing like this. And I’m a girl, too!’ It made the bridge to my dream of doing something awesome with what I had seem a little bit shorter.

“I got to meet Ann a few times, and I told her, The Road Home changed my life.’ She laughed and said, ‘The label wanted us to do it. We had no budget, and we had so many technical problems. We hated the whole night.’ Which blew my mind, because if Heart hadn’t put this record out, I don’t know what kind of singer I would be.”

Tool – Lateralus (2001)

“My little bro Arejay was getting really good on the drums. He had learned Tool’s song ‘Schism’ from the radio, so I thought that I should get him the whole album for his birthday. We just devoured it. I ended up getting really into it myself. Listening to their music was just like watching a horror film.

“I had a shitty waitress job, and I got us tickets to see Tool at Hershey Park. I was so stoked. Then Arejay did something to piss off our parents, so they wouldn’t allow him to go. I thought, Okay, this could be an opportunity to ask somebody out on a date, which I did. I asked this guy Nate, and he said yes. I was like, Sweet! We didn’t have great seats, but it didn’t matter — the show was amazing. I was singing every world. Halfway through, I looked at my date and saw that he had fallen asleep — total deal-breaker for me.

“So in a weird way, Tool’s Lateralus was a life-changer. My brother still teases me about it: ‘I wouldn’t have fallen asleep.’”

Michael W. Smith – Change Your World (1992)

“For about 10 years, I went through a deep Christian phase, and I really got into Michael W. Smith’s Change Your World. He was pretty dreamy, so that could have a lot to do with it. He was something like the Christian Bruce Springsteen — a kind of sexy Christian Bruce. I had a mad crush on this guy at school, and I would sing him songs from this album. It was a really important record to me in that way.

“My parents took us to see Michael at the Creation Festival — it’s like a contemporary Christian version of Lollapalooza or Coachella. We camped out and watched the show. I zeroed in on Michael with binoculars. I was just going through all those early sexy feelings. I hadn’t heard this album in a long, long time, but I got a little stoned and put it on recently. I didn’t make it all the way through, because it sounded pretty cheesy. My brother and I talked about seeing Christian bands like the Newsboys and DC Talk back in the day. DC Talk were doing the same tricks as Mötley Crüe — they had a rotating, upside-down drum kit. That was wild.”

Hanson – Middle of Nowhere (1997)

“We had just started the band. We were trying to get good gigs and have people notice us. Finally, we got on the front page of our local paper, and we were like, ‘Yes! We can actually do this.’ Then we saw Hanson on Saturday Night Live. Here was this band close to our age, and they’re playing ‘MMMBop,’ a song that makes no sense at all. ‘How in the world are they doing this? They’re playing SNL and we’re playing a bowling alley.’

“I got curious, though. I bought their DVD and the album Middle of Nowhere. We sat down and studied what Hanson were doing. We were like, ‘Okay, we need more harmonies. We need a drum breakdown’ — stuff like that. We weren’t trying to be Hanson; it was more like we were trying to crack the code: ‘What do they have that we don’t?’ It’s funny now — I still haven’t met Hanson, but if I did, I would tell them, ‘You were part of our curriculum.’”

Van Halen – Women and Children First (1980)

“The best Van Halen record — period. I love all their records, but this one is dangerous and vicious. It’s as if the band said, ‘We’re going in the studio and doing our thing, whether you like it or not. We really don’t care.’ There’s this element of ‘this is kind of wrong’ that I find so alluring. It’s dirty and weird. That opening to ‘Everybody Wants Some’ is chilling.

“’Romeo Delight’ is another one that blows me away. What a blitzing song! Like everything else on the record, it dances on the line of fun and evil. I’m really surprised that more people don’t cite this record as being one of Van Halen’s finest moments. My parents’ song is ‘Panama,’ if you can wrap your head around that. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but I gotta go with the cuts on Women and Children First. It sounds like something aliens would have recorded.”

Stevie Nicks – Bella Donna (1981)

“I think of this album as a gift for ‘future me,’ because the guys in my band are always telling me to do a solo album so they can have some time off. Here was Stevie Nicks, without Fleetwood Mac, absolutely defining herself. This is her fingerprint. She put herself under the microscope and really showed everybody what she was made of.

“The record is a grower, not a shower. The songs mean something different to me each time I listen to them. Actually, for a long time I wasn’t ready to listen to this album because I just wanted to listen to Fleetwood Mac. But as I got older, I started to listen to it, and it kind of forced me to ask myself some questions like, ‘Who am I without my band?’ That’s really something, when an album can provoke those kinds of thoughts. Believe me, very proud of the shadow I loom over Halestorm, but it's neat to take a beat and think, ‘If this were just me and I didn't have my support system around me, I think I'd still be all right. I’d find my way.’ Bella Donna is kind of a guide for me.”

The event in question was the Open Air Love & Peace Festival, held over the weekend of September 4 through 6, 1970, on the German island of Fehmarn, which Hendrix was set to headline on Saturday night.

This appearance would mark the final scheduled performance from Hendrix and the last incarnation of the Experience. The show saw the return of original drummer Mitch Mitchell and featured Hendrix’s army pal, and Band of Gypsy’s bassist, Billy Cox. The Fehmarn gig was the final stop of the band's 1970 Cry of Love Tour.

Other scheduled acts on the festival bill included Sly & the Family Stone, Canned Heat, the Faces, Ginger Baker's Air Force, Cactus, and the Rory Gallagher–fronted Taste. However, the latter two acts would eventually pull out due to the same issues that would impact Hendrix's set, but more on that in a bit.

The three German organizers were inspired by the success of the Isle of Wight Festival. Its 1970 edition, held from August 26 to 31, held roughly one week earlier, boasted six to seven hundred thousand attendees and at one point held a Guinness World Record for festival attendance. Hoping to piggyback on the festival’s popularity and book some of its acts, the Fehmarn organizers thought they might create a European version of Woodstock. However, things didn't quite go to plan.

Unfortunately, ticket sales were far below expectations. Some reports suggest that as few as 10,000 tickets were shifted. In the end perhaps 60,000 made actually attended the event, an unexpected crush that made for uncomfortable conditions throughout the event and blocked traffic to and from the concert, including transportation for the bands.

Hendrix was paid 70,000 Deutsche Marks — around $160,000 in today's money — along with his travel costs in advance for the appearance. The festival's success heavily relied on him as the Saturday headliner. The organizers hoped to capitalize on the popularity of the Woodstock festival film, which had hit European theaters earlier that summer and featured Hendrix’s performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” As a result, the guitarist’s face appeared alone on many of the event's promotional posters.

Unfortunately, the event was plagued with power issues from the start, as well as foul weather. Severe winds and storms battered the stage throughout Saturday's sets, and it was deemed unsafe for anyone to set foot on it — let alone plug anything in — until the weather cleared. Hendrix, who was scheduled to take the stage at 8 p.m. on Saturday evening, eventually began his set at noon the following day — with several thousand fans holding their place in the rain for the 16 hours in between.

No video of the set in its entirety appears to exist. However, portions of the band's performance, blending professionally shot footage with Super 8mm fan recordings, have made their way into bonus features of some official Hendrix releases over the years, with many still popping up online occasionally.

In one recently resurfaced clip, a crowdgoer captured the moment Hendrix finally took to the stage. The short clip begins with Hendrix — armed with the famed 1968 white "Woodstock" Stratocaster — being welcomed by a cacophony of boos and jeers.

Responding to the crowd, he says, "I don't give a fuck if you boo, as long as you boo in key, you mothers," before shedding some light on his tardiness. "We couldn't come on last night — it was just unbearable," Hendrix explained, referencing the torrid conditions he and the band endured upon finally arriving at the site.

Once Hendrix played the first few notes of the show opener, Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor," all appeared to be forgiven, and it was business as usual, with the Experience tearing through a stacked setlist that included classics from across his discography, such as "Spanish Castle Magic," "Hey Joe," "All Along the Watchtower," "Red House," and "Purple Haze," before closing with "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)."

The set also featured some new tracks that would eventually be released posthumously, such as "Freedom" and "Ezy Ryder."

This wasn't Hendrix's first rodeo when it came to unforeseen circumstances halting one of his performances, of course. Famously, at Woodstock the year before, he was scheduled to close the festival on Sunday night. However, significant delays pushed his set to 9 a.m. on Monday morning. In that instance, though, the audience's reaction was far more forgiving — perhaps a reflection of the '69 "flower power" and "Summer of Love" energy of the time. In contrast, the boos and jeers at this 1970 festival may have spoken to a harder-edged crowd reflecting the changing times — or maybe they were just fed up being stuck out in the rain.

In hindsight, we know the Open Air Love & Peace Festival show was the beginning of the end for Hendrix. However, with rumors of upcoming collaborations with Miles Davis and Jimi's need to constantly evolve as a player, you can't help but wonder where he might have gone next musically.

Just a week before the Fehmarn show, he told Melody Maker, "I'm back right now to where I started. I've given this era of music everything." Suggesting that he had grown "exhausted" and jaded with his current presentation, Hendrix added, "I can't think of anything new to add to it in its present state."

Hendrix's final time onstage would come two nights before he died, when he sat in for a couple of the closing numbers with the Animals frontman Eric Burdon and his new band War at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London on September 16, 1970 — a little shy of four years to the day when the then-unknown Hendrix played his first show just half a mile away at the Scotch of St. James.

The complete audio recording of the Jimi Hendrix Experience performing at the Open Air Love & Peace Festival — sneakily captured by the organizers using overhead mics onto a reel-to-reel at the side of the stage — was eventually released in 2005 as Live at the Isle of Fehmarn and lives on as an essential document of the guitar god's final official live performance. Whether CD sales have helped recoup any of the troubled event's financial losses, however, remains unknown.

Charlie Christian was born in Dallas in 1919 before his family resettled in Oklahoma. The Christians were poor, even by the low standards for a Black family of that era. Charlie was deeply influenced by Blind Lemon Jefferson and saxophonist Lester Young, and may have also drawn inspiration from guitarist Eddie Lang. I long to understand how he became a brilliant innovator, but maybe it’s a naive question.

I recall asking Buckethead about his guitar influences, only for him to reply, “The rides at Disneyland.” Sometimes one has to refrain from asking such questions and just accept what is. Charlie Christian seems like a case in point. He was what he was.

Charlie’s instrument of choice was a Gibson ES-150 electric hollowbody guitar with a single blade pickup. His model of electric guitar was commonly sold with a Gibson EH-150 tube amp, which had a single 10-inch speaker and produced 15 watts. Although he also played a Gibson ES-250 guitar through an EH-185 amp, Christian favored the ES-150. With this setup, he created a sound that has been likened to a “distorted saxophone.”

His big break came when he auditioned for the Benny Goodman Sextet in September 1939. Alongside band members Lionel Hampton on vibraphone, pianist Fletcher Henderson, bassist Artie Bernstein and drummer Nick Fatool, Christian became an integral part of the Goodman sound. He toured the states and was heard on the radio, and his contributions come through loud and clear on this album. Reportedly, Charlie contributed significantly to the band’s songwriting but was not credited. However, it’s here that we find his legacy, swinging hard and cutting through all the disadvantages.

The first Christian solo I learned from this album is from “Rose Room,” and it still amazes me. I never let this solo leave my fingertips and I review it every three or four months. I’ve looked at it from every angle, and the more I analyze it, the more I’m taken by its simplicity. I honestly don’t know if Charlie knew it, but he superimposes the minor 6th arpeggio over dominant 7th chords. If presented with an F7 chord, he’d play (from the 3rd fret, 1st string in 3rd position) G, Eb, C, A and (2nd fret, 3rd string, then back to 3rd position), G, F, Eb and C. Presto! This C minor 6 arpeggio is now an F9 arpeggio that creates an otherworldly beauty.

I think another factor in Charlie’s influence over a generation of guitarists is that his concepts are “doable.” On “Seven Come Eleven,” Charlie basically plays the blues over the “I Got Rhythm” A sections, thereby giving us mere mortals permission to solo over these changes without Pat Martino or Charlie Parker looming over our shoulders. Over the B section, Charlie incorporates minor-6th arpeggios with phrases that are lovely and high level but still very “guitar friendly.” These phrases usually remain in one position that throw us a lifeline of understanding. What he did with his reasonably sized toolbox was incredible. He showed us all the way.

Charlie suffered from tuberculosis and was forced to leave the Goodman tour in June 1941 to be hospitalized. I’ve read that while he was there, a “friend” paid a visit, bringing him reefer and prostitutes. The following day Charlie Christian was dead.

His legacy is substantial. He rose above his poor upbringing, broke the color barrier with Goodman, and basically risked his life to rise above the prejudice of that time while he redefined the role and voice of electric guitar. Along the way he almost inexplicably becoming one of the most influential electric guitarists of the 20th century. Listen and you’ll find an innovator who laid the groundwork for jazz, blues and rock electric guitar playing, and did it all in just two-and-a-half years before his untimely death.

Townshend credits three factors for influencing his use of amplifier feedback during his early playing days. The most relevant force was the sheer volume of the British group's stage show, which was in part an effort to impress his art school peers.

“I'm afraid I was an arty little sod and I was actually experimenting,” he said when asked if his feedback shenanigans were calculated or a happy accident. “I was at art school, surrounded by real intellectuals, people that were experimenting all the time. I was greatly impressed by all this and wanted to please these people.

“A lot of it was posing, trying to drag something out of the band that it was resisting. As I got louder, [bassist] John Entwistle got louder by inventing the 4x12 speaker cabinet, which he did with somebody up at Marshall. Then I got a 4x12 cabinet and put it on a chair, so then he invented the 8x12 cabinet, to get louder than me, and I invented the stack by getting two 4x12s and stacking them up."

But there was more to it than a volume war. Townshend says it was also a way to drown out the loudmouths in their audience.

“Our experimentations were all to do with our irritation with the audience, who heckled if you played a rhythm-and-blues song that they didn't know," he says. "You'd get blokes in the back with their pints of beer shouting, 'What's all this rubbish? Play some Shane Fenton!' And we just got louder as a result."

The upside to it all is that Townshend and the Who became known as rock's loudest band, a label that served them well as bands moved from clubs to arenas to stadiums in the 1970s and '80s.

“It shows that radical experimentation really is worth pursuing," he says. "Because even though it might feel stupid and pretentious if you do discover something new, it's your property and you're identified with it forever.”

Townshend accepts he wasn’t the only player who found feedback worth embracing, although not all players can agree on who got there first. Some point out that John Lennon was perhaps the first to use it intentionally and creatively when he employed it on the opening of his 1964 Beatles song "I Feel Fine." But Townshend says the use of feedback was gaining popularity with bands as early as 1963, when Jeff Beck used it with the Tridents, two years before he joined the Yardbirds.

“Other people stumbled on feedback at the same time as me,” Townshend says. “Jeff Beck was using it when Roger [Daltrey] went to see the Tridents rehearsing.

“He said, 'There's a shit-hot guitar player down the road and he's making sounds like you.' Then later, when we supported the Kinks, Dave Davies was adamant: 'I invented it, it wasn't John Lennon and it wasn't you!' ”

But Townshend pours cold water on Davies’ claim.

“I believe it was something people were discovering all over London. These big amps that Marshall were turning out — you couldn't stop the guitars feeding back!”

The origin of using feedback as a tactful play is admittedly blurry. But one thing Davies and Townshend can agree on is how their use of it differed. Davies was more animalistic. Townshend’s art school background, meanwhile, saw him longing for a more musical application.

“On 'Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere,' during the solo, on the note A I would flick a harmonic, get it feeding back, and then go 'dit-dit-dit-dar-dar' with the switch. And by standing at certain angles I could get incredible sounds out of it, some of which were just characteristics of the Rickenbacker body, which I stuffed with paper.

"You could control it and it could be very musical,” he goes on. “Certainly that sort of thing where you hit an open A chord and then take your fingers off the strings... the A string is still banging away but you're hearing the finger-off harmonics in the feedback.

"Then the vibrating A starts to stimulate harmonics in other strings, and it's just an extraordinary sound, like an enormous plane. It's a wonderful, optimistic sound and that was something that happened because I was posing — I'd put my arms out, let go of the chord then find that the resulting noise was better.”

The interview also saw Townshend discussing Jimi Hendrix’s talents. His fellow feedback-loving guitarist Jeff Beck said Jimi's arrival on the scene nearly ended his career. While Townshend was impressed by his chops, he didn't find him to be an original when it came to his more blues-based guitar playing and some of his stage antics, which included destroying his instruments as Townshend had been doing for years.

“Hendrix was a great player,” he says, “but he wasn't really creative. He was dealing in other people's ideas, old blues things and tricks that were either borrowed from Eric Clapton or the pyrotechnic things that he had caught off watching me.

“He used to follow the band around, watching, and then he suddenly appeared on stage doing all this stuff. But it was something else that made it extraordinary. Talk to the women who came in contact with him — he literally enchanted them. He was a pretty unremarkable kind of gnarled-looking guy, but he was a real enchanter.”

You can say the same thing about the man's picking technique. Wylde defies convention by holding his hand at an unusual angle to the strings. “That's the way it's always been," he says.

The subject came up when Wylde guested on Chris Shiflett’s Shred With Shifty podcast. And when it did, the guitarist pointed to a few other guitarists with unusual picking techniques, including Eddie Van Halen.

"I always tell everybody, King Edward would always hold the pick between his thumb and middle finger. I don't know how he does it like that.

“I think the only other one I know that actually has a hand at that kind of angle is Marty Friedman,” Wylde added. “And Marty's amazing. He picks everything, too."

While Van Halen is considered one of the greatest guitarists in rock, his technique is not one that guitar teachers would encourage. However, it makes a case for prioritizing your personal technique when it comes to crafting your sound and unique style as an electric guitar player.

Indeed, Eddie’s left-field approach to playing struck Dweezil Zappa when he first crossed paths with him as a child. He said having Eddie over at his house — he was there to visit his father, Frank — was “like having your own toy Eddie Van Halen”.

Watching him play close quarters, he saw how he tapped upward, rather than the more commonly seen downward motion. That helped Eddie sound like no one else, even if it went against the grain of so-called ‘proper technique’.

To that end, Wylde finds it strange that so many have bawked and obsessed over his technique. Especially when very few ever question the results.

“I've even heard some people be like, 'Bro, how do you pick like that?' or whatever. To me, I don't know. That's what it's always been,” he tells Shiflett.

In a recent discussion with Guitar Player about his top five tips for guitarists, Wylde said, “I’m always going over my technique and trying to better myself." His picking methods, however, are off the table.

“It’s not going to happen just by wishing it. And I come up with surprises all the time. I’ll be running through Pat Martino stuff, practicing his chromatic licks, and then I’ll say, ‘Hey, what if I incorporate that into Voodoo Chile?’ The more you play and practice, the more likely you are to stumble on those kinds of ideas.”

In related news, Wylde sat down with GP earlier this month to relive some of his most cherished Ozzy moments and discuss the stories behind some of his greatest tracks.

During the chat, he revealed how Ozzy’s ear for a hit is well-tuned, saying: “When I played 'I Don’t Wanna Change the World,' I was just messing around having a joke, riffing, singing crazy shit. But Ozzy heard something that clicked for him. When he picked up on the riff, I thought, Are you kidding? But he turned that into a Grammy-winning song.”

Ozzy, of course, gave Wylde his big break in the industry, having chosen an unknown talent to replace the outgoing Jake E. Lee, perhaps with the hope of replicating the glory days of Randy Rhoads.

In an alternate reality, things may have been different after Chris Impellitteri, a hot-shot speed-metal guitarist at the height of his powers at that moment, recently revealed he auditioned to replace Lee. If he did get the job, he says it would have brought big changes to the singer’s career.

Wylde is set to tour with Pantera again in 2025, calling it an “honor to be up there playing my buddy’s stuff every night,” adding, “I try to keep as faithful as possible to the original solos for nearly everything.”

But when it came to playing bass for Paul McCartney, he admits to being so scared that he didn’t look away from his fretboard for the first six months of their shows together.

In 2002, Paul McCartney was looking for a musician comfortable with jumping between electric guitar and bass, depending on what instrument he was playing.

Ray got the gig off a recommendation from McCartney's drummer and one-time bandmate, Abe Laboriel Jr. – with the Superbowl XXXVI pre-show set to be his baptism of fire. That meant standing alongside who he calls “rock and roll’s finest singer, bass player, producer, and arranger,” and holding his own.

“Learning to play bass and having the guts to stand next to Paul while doing so was a challenge and honor,” he reflects. “I didn’t even look up for the first six months for fear of losing my place, because he’s Paul freakin’ McCartney.”

He says “there is no way a musician can spend as much time around Paul as I have and not get some of that on you,” meaning he’s become far richer for the experience, 12 years on. But, he believes that if it weren’t for his time as musical director for the great Etta James, he never would have been able to pull off the gig.

“When I first got with Etta James, I had just turned 18 and was a little blond greenhorn from Glendale, California,” he explains. “Yet she took me in and kept me by her side for 15 years. We went from playing a cinderblock chitlin circuit blues gig in Colorado Springs to suddenly opening arenas and stadiums for the Rolling Stones.

“She offered me the experience of a lifetime,” he continues, “without which I may not have been the right guy for Paul McCartney those many years later.”

So, while battling through those early nerves, he recalled some of Etta’s wisdom:

“She said, ‘Brian, you’ve got to call on the warriors within!’ I believe she meant access that primal fire in your belly and play from there.”

Away from his work with Etta James, Ray has recorded with Smokey Robinson, Rita Coolidge, and Shakira, and gigged with many more still.

All those experiences helped ready him for the challenge of being part of McCartney's demanding band, which proved an education in itself.

“Paul told me one day, ‘We are visited by songs,’” he remembers. “Isn’t that a cool way to look at it? Inspiration through music, rhythm, lyrics, and harmony is being sent to us like little aliens in UFOs. It’s up to us as artists to be available and document it.”

Ray released his latest solo album, If The Earth Was Round, earlier this month. It’s a record that would not have been possible if it weren’t for the storied career that has got him this far.

“If wealth were measured by talented friendships,” Ray says, “I’d be the richest man on Earth.”

To read Brian Ray’s Guitar Player interview in full, head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy of the magazine. Dave Navarro is this month’s cover story, discussing why he turned down the chance to join Guns N’ Roses, and getting back on the road with Jane’s Addiction having suffered from Long Covid.

That one is “Message in a Bottle,” the lead track from 1979’s Reggatta de Blanc, the sophomore album from the Police. It’s hard to argue with Summers’ assessment. Beyond its chart success — it was the group’s first number one hit in the U.K. Singles Chart — “Message in a Bottle” shows Summers, bassist Sting and drummer Stewart Copeland performing at the top of their game on a song that gives each equal room to display their impressive chops. That’s especially true for Summers, whose massive, ear-catching guitar riff captivates from the moment the song begins.

“It’s a famous riff, and I have to admit, it’s hard to play,” he told Guitar Player in 2019. “People want to play it, but a lot of them can’t — the stretches are too big. You have to be a real guitarist to do it well."

While most young signed artists sweat out the dreaded sophomore slump, there were no concerns for the Police when they set out to make Reggatta de Blanc. Their debut, 1978’s Outlandos d’Amour, had been a smash thanks to the hit singles “Roxanne” and “Can’t Stand Losing You.” But as Summers reveals, Sting had an impressive backlog of material he’d been compiling for years since before the Police formed.

“He had this giant book — a big, thick, hardbound book — with pages that had lyrics all the way through it,” Summers told Classic Rock in 2017. “So we never really ran out of material.”

“Message in a Bottle” was among those unfinished works, but it existed in a much different form before the Police settled into London’s Surrey Sound Studios with producer Nigel Gray to make Reggatta de Blanc. "Sting had that riff for a while, but there was another tune with it originally,” Summers told L'Historia Bandidio in 1981. “He'd been fiddling about with it during our first American tour. Finally, he rearranged the riff slightly and came up with the song."

Naturally, Summers would put his own spin on it.

“Sting showed me the riff he had, but I embellished it,” the guitarist told Guitar Player. “I had the chops to make it swing and rock. I could tell right away it had something, and I was thrilled to play something that started to progress our style.”

Much as he would with the Police’s 1983 hit “Every Breath You Take,” Summers relied heavily on arpeggiating the notes of the chords Sting provided. “Rather than just strumming chords — C# minor, A, B, F# minor — I was outlining the figures in a way that integrated very well with Stewart’s hi-hat,” he told GP. “I should say that the recorded version of this song is the best drum track Stewart ever did.

“In the studio, we added a second guitar part, so there’s a harmony going on there. Then it goes into a more of a rock chorus, but the verse is the classic Police sound, again outlining the chord, which is tonic, fifth and added ninth.”

And it’s that “classic Police sound” that made the song so instantly identifiable to the young group’s growing audience. But as Summers explains, it was the result of a concerted effort by the trio.

“Really, the process was about: how could we take some of this basically raw material and ‘Police-ify’ it — make it sound like the way we sounded,” he told Classic Rock. “Which was of course the unique chemistry between the guitar, the bass line, the high vocals that Sting had then and Stewart’s unique drumming. Never to be repeated.”

Of course Summers’ guitar tone plays a huge role in the song's instant recognition factor. While many assume Summers relied on a chorus pedal for the song, or possibly his Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus amp, he in fact used the Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress Flanger/Filter effect pedal for the majority of Regatta de Blanc and its follow-up, Zenyatta Mondatta. (He’d previously employed an MXR Phase 90 on Outlandos d'Amour.) The Electric Mistress setting is certainly more chorus the flange on “Message in a Bottle,” but for those looking to cop Summers’ tone, it's the pedal of choice.

Of course, much of the basic tone is down to Summer’s modified early 1960s Fender Telecaster. He used it to record many of the group’s best-known tracks, including "Roxanne," "Don't Stand So Close to Me," "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” "Spirits in the Material World" and "Every Breath You Take.” As Summers has explained, the Telecaster is modified with a Gibson PAF humbucker in the neck position and a Tele single-coil in the bridge position that's mounted directly to the body rather than the bridge plate. The guitar's stock bridge was swapped out for a brass plate with individual string saddles, while the electronics include a built-in preamp controlled with a toggle switch, and a second toggle for changing the pickup phase.

As for where the Telecaster came from, its history is somewhat muddled. Summers told Vic Garbarini in Guitar World’s December 1997 issue it was originally owned by Eric Clapton, whom Summers knew from performing on London’s 1960s music scene. He said Clapton, then recording his debut album with Cream, was using the Telecaster since his own Les Paul — the one he'd famously used on the Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton album — had been recently stolen. Summers claimed the two guitarists made a trade. “I brought it to this session he was doing, and he immediately started using it,” he told Garbarini. “That turned out to be the Fresh Cream album. So then I wound up with the Telecaster, which I played all through the Police and still use today.”

Since then, another version of the story has emerged in which Summers purchased the already modified guitar from one of his guitar students in the early 1970s while he was studying classical guitar and composition at Calfornia State University. Most recently, in 2023, he told Rick Beato he sold Clapton his Les Paul for £200 and made no mention of the Tele being part of the deal.

Regardless of how he came to own the guitar or when the modifications were made, the Telecaster's preamp and the out-of-phase switch helped Summers achieve the bright and crisp rhythms tones that became his hallmark. As he told Garbarini, the Telecaster was used “almost exclusively onstage and in the studio pretty much up until the Ghost in the Machine album.”

Once the basic tracks for “Message in a Bottle” were sorted out, Summers told Guitar Player he was faced with a decision that was difficult for the band in those waning days of the punk scene: whether or not to add a guitar solo.

“We were coming out of a sort of religious punk scene, and guitar solos at that time were supposed to be a mark of the old guard,” he explained. “Stewart was vehement about that, but I was a great soloist, so of course I was soloing my ass off.

“We were always in a weird position with that,” he adds. “As I started playing a solo over the end of the song, Sting went, ‘Oh, actually, this is really good. Keep it in, keep it in.’ It wasn’t up really loud, which I would’ve liked, but it was in there, with a lot of feeling.”

By the time the track was finished, the Police knew they had another hit on their hands. They didn’t have to fight with their label over it either. “Two A&R guys came down from A&M Records, sat down on the couch," Summers told Classic Rock. "We put that song on, and they were just smiling as widely as they could, because it was a killer track."

While the single reached only number 74 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, “Message in a Bottle” nevertheless solidified the group’s American fanbase, something they would fully exploit when they launched their first U.S. number one, “Every Breath You Take.” But from the beginning it was a massive concert favorite, and Summers has used the stage as an opportunity to develop his famous riff further.

“I’ve played it a lot of different ways, in a lot of different positions, over the years, just trying to do stuff with it,” he told Guitar Player. “Sometimes playing the second chord, the A, with the open A string, rather than going to the obvious sort of shape of the added-ninth chord. It’s pretty cool.”

Forty-five years on, the song remains his personal favorite from the Police’s short reign. "For me, it's still the best song Sting ever came up with,” Summers wrote in his book One Train Later, “and the best Police track.”

Devon Allman, Margo Price, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, and Susan Tedeschi have all name-checked the rising star, who has wowed audiences at the prestigious Newport Folk and Crossroads Festivals in recent years.

Yet, despite her success, she says many people in the music industry instantly have dismissed her.

“I get disrespected before I even play,” she tells Guitar World. “People take one look at me, a young female, and immediately get a thought in their head of what I am, and they don’t take me as seriously as they should.”

“For the most part, I feel equal,” she adds. “But there’s been a lot of times when I feel disrespected or lesser, which is not cool. At the same time, being young and a girl is an advantage. There’s a lot of other people who are in that position, so I view it as an advantage — and a disadvantage.”

Bowers also had to shake off accusations that she’s backed by wealthy parents having self-funded her debut record Wine on Venus (with the Hodge Podge band).

“I’m still paying off the record we made,” Bowers clears up. “People online are like, ‘Her parents paid for it,’ ‘She comes from a rich background’ or ‘Her family was in the music business.’ None of that’s true.”

“With every single show I play, I’m not seeing any of that money because it’s going toward the record. That’s how much I believed in it.”

Ultimately, though, she’s shrugged off the negativity aimed at her and let her music do the talking. Nancy Wilson of Heart has said she has “a significant” voice on the guitar, thanks in part to her ability to produce “melodically conversational shredding as opposed to just wanking off”.

Speaking of the positive effects of her rise to stardom before being old enough to order a drink to celebrate it, she said: “I see people my own age in the audience, and their minds are blown. I’m making this stuff sound new to them.”

But while the world knows Winehouse for her songwriting and singular voice, what few seem to appreciate is that she wrote many of her songs on guitar, an instrument at which she was quite adept.

Take it from Pete Doherty, singer and guitarist for the Libertines, who was romantically involved with Winehouse. As Doherty told MusicRadar last April, Winehouse had a flair for harmonic invention.

“Listen, I’ve actually sat in a room with her and a guitar,” he said, “watching those tiny hands finding all these weird jazz chords. And her strumming patterns… crazy, off-kilter timings. She made it look so effortless.”

From an early age, Winehouse made electric guitar integral to her songwriting and performing, a musical tool that helped her pen her songs as well as perform them with a unique personal touch. Known to favor the Stratocaster, Winehouse first discovered this timeless Fender model in her pre-teenage years when her older brother bought a used instrument.

“It was the most beautiful thing in the world,” recalled Winehouse during an interview in 2004. “It’s such a beautiful guitar. I mean it’s got to be probably the most attractive guitar there is.”

Though Winehouse was forbidden to touch her brother’s Stratocaster she would carefully sneak into his room and play it whenever she had the chance. With strategic access to the instrument, Winehouse slowly began to get her chops together. And when she finally acquired her own guitar — an acoustic model — the siblings amicably swapped instruments back and forth.

“I just played every day. No one said to me, ‘You’ve got to play for at least this amount of time,’ " Winehouse recalled. “It was all I wanted to do.

"It’s so easy to teach yourself if you have love for guitar. People say to me all the time, ‘How come you taught yourself?’ And there’s things people can show you, but the truth is, if you learn how to play guitar off someone, you just kind of learn to play it like them, you know what I mean? And that’s why I can say that while I’m not even an adequate guitarist, I’m still a distinctive guitarist. I sound different.”

She would eventually use a Stratocaster to perform some of her best-known songs. Inspired by the likes of Carole King, PJ Harvey, and Shuggie Otis, Winehouse’s self-tuition coupled with a remarkable gift for songwriting resulted in a unique playing style that was her perfect musical accompaniment.

In this 2003 performance of “Stronger Than Me” (from her debut album Frank, released earlier that year) Winehouse wows the studio audience assembled at the BBC’s live music show Later… with Jools Holland, her inimitable rhythm guitar style proving to be the perfect accompaniment.

Below, we get to see a 20-year-old Winehouse up close as she stuns the crowd at London’s Wembley Arena with nothing more than her voice and a Stratocaster. In this 2004 all-star event marking the 50th anniversary of Fender’s iconic Stratocaster she goes it alone against a backdrop of guitar legends, including David Gilmour , Ronnie Wood, and Hank Marvin.

Finally, here’s Amy discuss her love of guitar and the Stratocaster in particular in a video celebrating that model’s 50th anniversary.

While the Fab Four are rightfully regarded as trailblazers, there was a time when the Liverpudlians were doing the idolizing. For George Harrison, no one was better than Buddy Holly.

To be clear, Holly held sway over the entire group. John Lennon and founding bassist Stuart Sutcliffe took inspiration for the Beatles' name from Holly's group, the Crickets. His songwriting style would be equally inspirational to Lennon and Paul McCartney's early compositions.

But it was Harrison who, as the group's lead guitarst, felt Holly's influence most keenly in his playing.

“I think one of the greatest people for me was Buddy Holly,” he told Rock Around the World in 1974. “He was very good — exceptionally good.”

Harrison recalled trying to learn guitar with the help of a book that was far from complete. "A few months or a year later, I found, ‘Those stupid buggers have given me a manual that doesn’t show me all the notes!’ " he complained. "So then I had to start learning again.”

Holly’s influence was paramount to filling in the gaps in his knowledge.

“Buddy Holly was the first time I ever heard A to F-sharp minor,” he told the BBC in 1974. “Fantastic! He was opening up new worlds there. And then A to F, A, D, E, F and F# minor. He was sensational.”

Speaking to Guitar Player 13 years later for an interview in the magazine's November 1987 issue, Harrison showed that his passion for Holly’s music hadn’t diminished. He told contributing writer Dan Forte how he had created the emotive volume-swelling chords on the Beatles' 1965 tracks "Yes It Is," "Wait" and "I Need You": Unable to coordinate strumming the chords and raising his guitar's volume control at the precise moment, Harrison enlisted Lennon to turn the knob.

“So some of those," he said, "I played the part, and John would kneel down in front of me and turn my guitar's volume control.”

It was Forte who pointed out that Holly had done something similar for his 1957 hit "Peggy Sue." Unable to flick his pickup switch in time for his solo, Holly had Crickets guitarist Niki Sullivan move the switch from the neck position to the bridge position and back at the crucial junctures.

“Yeah, that's great stuff, isn't it?” Harrison replied. “That's still one of the greatest guitar solos of all time. Right till this day I could play you the 'Peggy Sue' solo any time, or 'Think It Over' or 'It's So Easy.' I knew all them tunes.”

And lest anyone forget, Harrison purchased his first electric guitar — a Futurama — in 1958 because it looked similar to the Fender Stratocaster that Holly played. Harrison would use the Futurama through many of the Beatles' early Hamburg gigs and on their first professional recordings with Tony Sheridan in June 1961. Although Harrison thought little of the guitar, it's now expected to fetch between $600,000 and $800,000 when it heads to the auction block in November.

Throughout his career, Harrison's admiration for other musicians proved as strong as ever. Former Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore has recently recalled the time in 1984 when Harrison sheepishly asked to jam with the band. Together, they treated an Australian crowd to a rendition of a Little Richard classic, with Harrison so deeply in his element that he didn’t notice Blackmore was playing in the wrong key.

While making a guest appearance on the Vinyl Obsession Podcast, the Mötley Crüe’s recruit also revealed that he bought the band's self-titled debut record simply because it gave a word of thanks to one of his heroes.

“I bought this from the cover alone because it said ‘Gene Simmons’," John 5 says, referring to the note of thanks to the Kiss bassist included on its cover. Simmons had believed in Van Halen's talent and recorded demoes of the group before they were signed. Says John 5, “I remember putting this on, and I think maybe this record was the one that gave me the biggest shock, because of the sound.”

John 5 would go on to play a role in the band’s musical canon when he made his commercial breakthrough in David Lee Roth’s solo band. Doing so was a "full circle" moment for him, considering that Eddie’s guitar work had unveiled a whole new world to him.

“Now, I was already playing guitar,” John 5 continues, but he says Eddie showed him a new world of possibilities in virtuosity, speed and showmanship. “It was like seeing a car, and then seeing a race car," he says. "I mean, Eddie’s playing really freaked me out.”

Eddie’s virtuosity was just one point of focus for a band that had plenty of fireworks up their collective sleeves — that includes Roth, bassist Michael Anthony and drummer Alex Van Halen. This, John 5 believes, helped Eddie shine even brighter.

“Without these four guys, it wouldn’t be the same — with Mikey’s vocals and his playing and Alex’s playing.”

Because of his connections with the band, John 5 was granted the honor of playing through Eddie’s live rig during the band’s A Different Kind of Truth era. That experience taught him something very important about guitar tone.

“It’s all in the hands,” he says. “It’s in his attack. It’s in his playing. That’s why he sounds like Eddie...because there was an attack and there was a certain way he really hit the strings. Same thing with Yngwie Malmsteen or people like that. They have a certain swing to them or a certain attack. And that’s how it was with Van Halen.”

John 5 — whose Telecaster obsession is well known — told Guitar Player that guitars were his “savior” as he battled with personal tragedy and mental health struggles in his life.

He talked the magazine through his 10 most prized Telecasters in the July 2024 issue, noting that he owns one from each year they’ve been produced. In the same interview, he revealed he played his “Goldie” Telecaster so much that doctors were concerned for his health.

Despite his deep association with glam rock and EVH flair, John 5 is a far more versatile guitarist than many would perceive at first glance For example, his chicken picking and banjo roll techniques, which form a huge part of his repertoire, are plucked from country music.

The guitarist’s long-awaited signature Telecaster, the Ghost, was released in 2023. Earlier this year, he called Fender’s new American Ultra II Series Tele “the perfect Telecaster in my eyes,” when putting it through its paces.

Meanwhile, the guitar world was treated to a brand-new Eddie Van Halen song in 2024. His brother, Alex, released "Unfinished," the final track they worked on together to promote his new memoir.

Scott Gorham says it nearly happened. Thin Lizzy’s longest-serving guitarist, Gorham has revealed that Vertigo Records was ready to drop them in 1976 after their first two albums failed to sell.

The guitarist had joined the Irish rockers two years prior alongside guitarist Brian Robertson, bassist/vocalist Phil Lynott and drummer Brian Downey. After penning a deal with Vertigo Records, they released Nightlife (1974) and Fighting (1975) to little fanfare, leaving all parties involved thirsting for success.

“Our first two albums were dismal failures,” Gorham admits to Classic Rock. “For the third, Jailbreak, we literally had everyone saying to us, ‘You’d better do it on this one or there’s the door. The record company, management, and I even think what few fans we had at that point were saying it.

"So we doubled our efforts,” he continues. “We demoed and demoed and demoed and wrote and wrote."

The result was Jailbreak, the album that would become Thin Lizzy's commercial breakthrough. The effort paid off in more ways than one. in addition to producing gems like "The Boys Are Back in Town," "Emerald" and Jailbreak's title track, the group's writing sessions delivered enough material for a second album. "That’s why Jailbreak and Johnny the Fox came out in the same year," Gorham explains. "We wrote probably two and a half albums’ worth of songs.”

Stockpiling songs proved useful after "The Boys are Back in Town" began infesting radio stations everywhere. Gorham knew that meant “we were gonna be on the road constantly,” so having a follow-up in their back pocket helped capitalize on the record's death-defying success.

Interestingly, Gorham recently revealed to Guitar Player that the original version of the song didn't have their trademark harmonies. Even after they were added, he was uncertain of its potential as a single. It was only after two American DJs became enamored with the track that the band and label had a change of heart. Then, Gorham says, the song “exploded all over America."

While the quartet's first two records were peppered with lead guitars, Jailbreak marked the first time Gorham and Robertson's twin harmonies became a hallmark of the group's sound. A score of bands, from Iron Maiden to UFO and Judas Priest, would draw influence from their dual-guitar attack. Gorham says it was at that moment he realized they'd stumbled upon something special.

“There was a review of Jailbreak in which the guy said something about ‘that classic Thin Lizzy sound of the twin guitars.’ I said to Robbo, ‘Hey, man, can you believe it — we got a sound!’

“That’s why you saw it in a lot of the Thin Lizzy songs, the twin-harmony sound,” he adds. “I would write specifically to put these harmony guitars in certain areas because I knew a lot of it would be like your second hook. You’ve got Phil doing his thing, he’s got his vocal hook. Now let’s go for the harmony-guitar second hook.”

After Johnny the Fox, Gorham wrote a further five albums with the band before Lynott's death in 1983. Their twin harmonies would remain a crucial calling card across those records as the band carved out an even deeper niche.

“I heard 'Waiting for an Alibi' on the radio the other day and I thought, God, that sounds great!" Gorham says. "It didn’t sound like anything we’d been listening to on the radio for the last hour and a half. I was kind of proud of ourselves for sticking to our guns. This is what we do. This is the way it’s gonna be played. This is the way we like it.”

Gorham’s guitar partners would come and go — Gary Moore replaced Robertson in 1980; he was succeeded by Snowy White and John Sykes — but it was his relationship with Lynott that proved the band’s bedrock.

“We were really comfortable with each other,” he says. “We had the same sense of humor. We pretty much liked the same of everything. It was always Phil and I after a show. He and I going to the club. He and I going to the bar.

“I think it was maybe kind of to the detriment of some of the other guys in the band, where they felt they were maybe being excluded a bit. I didn’t think so at the time.

“We would sit in his living room at his house in Kew with our acoustic guitars, hammering out these chords and song lines. We were egging each other on to write these songs, then present them to the rest of the band,.”

By then, some 10 years had passed since McTell wrote the tune as a 21-year-old playing for change in France.

“I was in Paris in the very cold winter of 1965,” McTell tells Guitar Player. “It was bitter and no one was busking, and people were sleeping out on the hot-air gratings over the Paris Metro. I noticed these old guys had taken their boots off on, put them under their head, and were sleeping out in the cold. And I thought, Now, there's a subject to write about here!

“Then I thought, Well, I can't write about Paris, as there already was a song called ‘The Poor People of Paris.’

"So decided I ought to write about the area that I knew about, which was London. The song is not about homelessness — it’s about alienation, about people that choose to live within society, but outside of it, like the city rough sleepers. I already had the music, and so I wrote the lyrics on top. It originally had three verses, but I added the fourth verse later, as I didn't think it ended properly.”

Though he had the song in his pocket at the time of his first album, 1968’s Eight Frames a Second, he left it off the disc due to its subject matter. “I had first offered the song to a friend of mine who was a semi-professional folk singer” McTellrecalls. “But he said, ‘Oh, no, that's too sad, I wouldn't want to do that.’”

McTell worried that the song would meet a similar reaction from audiences. But he was surprised.

“I remember the first time I performed it in a club, and thought he was absolutely right. There was a deadly silence for what seemed like ages after the song had finished,” he says. “And then a thunderous applause engulfed the room.”

By the time he was making his second album, 1969’s Spiral Staircase, he had more confidence in the tune. His producer, Gus Dudgeon — who would go on to find fame recording Elton John — was ecstatic upon hearing it. “He said, ‘You must put it on the record.’ And so we did.”

This initial recording was released but failed to attract any notice. In the meantime, McTell had some good exposure when he was booked to perform at the Isle of Wight Festival in August 1970. His set, performed on August 30, was warmly received by the crowd. (Also scheduled for that day was Jimi Hendrix with drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Billy Cox, though they didn't go on until the early hours of the 31st.)

Holding onto hope, McTell recorded "Streets of London" again for his 1971 U.S. album, You Well-Meaning Brought Me Here, where it suffered the same fate as his initial version.

The story would have ended there were it not for McTell’s manager’s insistence that it was hit material. Three years after making his second recording of the song, the guitarist went for a third attempt. “I again rerecorded it, in one take too, and gave it to Warner Brothers,” he says. "And bang, there was the hit!"

Released as a single on Warner’s Reprise label in 1974, “Streets of London” climbed the U.K. charts, peaking at number two. “My manager never wavered in his belief that ‘Streets of London’ had a future,” McTell says. The song went on to win McTell an Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically in 1975. By then it had been a decade since he wrote it.

For the earliest version of the tune, McTell played a Gibson J-45, purchased when he was 20. For the third, and most popular recording of it he played "a handmade guitar by a mate of mine called Keith Johns,” McTell reveals. “He only made a few guitars, and it was a copy of a black Gibson J-200, married to the neck of a J-45. It happened to be in the studio, so I used that guitar with a capo placed on the second fret.” As for his fingerstyle approach to the instrument, McTell employed a technique heavily informed by his love of early American blues players like Blind Blake and Blind Boy Fuller.

While “Streets of London” has allowed McTell to forge a prolific career, the song is better known in the United States via an early cover version recorded in 1971 by Roger Whittaker. “In the States, more people know Roger's version than they do of mine,” McTell says. “It’s the same in Germany too. When I listen to Roger’s version — and because I know my song — I actually can hear he's reading the lyric on one of the verses. I can hear that he's looking at the script.”

As it happens, “Streets of London” has proven a choice track for many performers. “A friend of mine did some research on it and found out that there over 400 registered covers,” McTell exclaims. “And there are thousands more on YouTube. It’s incredible. I don't want to single anyone out, but one of the versions that I'm very fond of is by the late Sinéad O'Connor. She did a lovely take of it, which somehow captures the naivety of someone who really cares about the situation.

“And I certainly did care about the situation when I wrote the song, but I was put off my own song by the slight negative reactions at the time about it being sad. I'm still amazed that the song has become almost a standard now. I still enjoy playing it and I love the reaction it gets. I usually invite the audience to join in if they remember any of the words, and they seem to want to join in too, which is great.”

Although he’s built up quite a catalog over his six-decade-long career, McTell doesn’t mind that “Streets of London” has forever marked him as a one-hit wonder. “I’m proud of that song, and I feel very fortunate,” he says. “I know it changed my life. I think there are many talented musicians and singers and writers out there that have never managed to get a song away, and I'm the first to acknowledge my weaknesses.

“I nod to people with bigger talent than me and better musicians and better writers. But I've been one of the lucky ones.”

In keeping with the group's gradual splintering during the late '60s, though – and simultaneous pursuit of more individual musical paths – the Fab Four experimented with a wider range of gear as the years went on.

As Paul McCartney told GP in a 1990 interview, though, his personal fondness for the Vox amps of the Beatles' early days never faded.

Asked by GP if he ever spent time at home toying with tones, Macca said, “I do that mainly in the studio, which is almost like home. I can go in and just goof, and sometimes I just work on guitar sounds. I can get a nice clean sound fairly easily.

“It's the pumped-up sounds that I like to experiment with,” McCartney continued, “I've got one of the old Vox AC30s that Jeff Beck used to call ‘the old Beatle bashers.’ I once asked him if he used them, and he said, ‘What? Those old Beatle bashers?’ Then he realized what he'd said [laughs].”

In the same interview, McCartney – typically pigeonholed as the Beatle most inclined to buttoned-up, more old school pop – expressed his personal preference for gnarlier rock tones, despite his reputation.

“I love the sound of them [Vox AC30s],” he said. “I actually love the straight sound. It's pokey. It's not too clean. I'm not a big fan of clean in rock and roll. It's funny, in a way, because I guess I've got a reputation for being a fairly clean rock and roller. But my taste doesn't extend that way.”

Just as so many guitarists were in the mid-1960s, McCartney – not to mention John Lennon and George Harrison – found himself influenced by the ferocious tones achieved by Eric Clapton in his work with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and Cream.

That aggression, in turn, influenced perhaps McCartney's finest guitar moment in the Beatles' catalog, his fiery guitar solo on the Harrison tune, Taxman.

“Turned on” – as he put it to GP in the same 1990 chat – after his exposure to the nascent British blues-rock scene, McCartney “went and bought an Epiphone. So then I could wind up with the Vox amp and get some nice feedback.”

That strumming as served him well, of course — to the tune of 15 albums of his own, and membership in the bands Brinsley Schwarz, Rockpile and Little Village. Along the way he’s produced eight albums for Elvis Costello and helmed efforts by the Damned, Graham Parker, Dr. Feelgood, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, John Hiatt, and his ex-wife Carlene Carter, plus individual songs for Johnny Cash and the Pretenders.

Lowe is also a songwriter's songwriter, a craftsman celebrated for his originality, ingenuity and melodic sensibility. Look no further than his folk-rock song “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding,” which Costello revved up into one of the hardest-rocking tunes in his catalog (produced by Lowe, no less). The song went on to earn him even greater notice — and financial rewards — when Curtis Stigers covered it for the 1992 soundtrack to the Whitney Houston–Kevin Costner film The Bodyguard, the first album with verified sales of more than one million in a single week. Lowe is the complete package whether he's writing, producing, holding a guitar or, almost as often, a bass.

"I started off in the skiffle days, playing a little four-string sort of ukulele thing," Lowe recalls. "And then my mom taught me a few chords on the guitar when I was quite young. We used to sing together. She wasn't trained but she was pretty good, and I remember thinking it was some kind of magic when two voices singing together produce a kind of third sound. That really knocked me out and fascinated me."

Although Lowe eventually began playing bass as well as electric and acoustic guitar, he soon found that all roads led to songwriting, and he claims to still be a student of that pursuit. "I always think of myself as a Tin Pan Alley jingle guy, really — a Brill Building sort of guy," he acknowledges. "I make artistic decisions when I write songs, but really I'm looking for people to cover them. I prefer other people doing my songs than me doing them, really.

"The arty-farty thing really came later on, when suddenly it's like, 'Oh, this pop thing, it’s both arty and farty.' I never thought like that when I was a kid."

That said, Lowe has perfectly happy to be recording his songs when he's working with Los Straitjackets. He joined forces with the masked surf-rock troupe on tour to promote his 2013 holiday album, Quality Street: A Seasonal Selection for All the Family, followed by a pair of subsequent EPs. The association has continued on this year's Indoor Safari, Lowe's first full-length album in 11 years, which combines those EP tracks with some new songs — including the group co-written opening track, "Went to a Party."

"They're definitely my kind of musicians," Lowe explains. "They make what they do seem really simple, but what they do is very, very nuanced and skillful. They were my backing group, so to speak, for only about 10 minutes. After that we realized we created a third entity that's us, and we do quite a lot of songs now which didn't exist when we first got together because they're songs I wrote with this in mind."

With Lowe and Los Straitjackets hitting the road again this fall, however, we took the opportunity to have him tell the stories behind five songs he says define his now 50-year career.

“(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding"

“I always think of ‘Peace, Love & Understanding’ as the first sort of original idea I had. I realized pretty quickly after I got into the music business that if I wanted to have any kind of longevity I had to learn to write songs. The way see it is everybody starts by rewriting their heroes' songs, and it's very obvious and quite easy to detect. It's not really stealing; you have to start somewhere. So like everybody else, that's what I did. Then one day when you're rewriting your sixth hero's catalog, you put a little bit of hero number one into a song you're writing, and two bits of hero number three, and suddenly it doesn't sound as much like anybody else. And it suddenly becomes your thing.

“I remember quite clearly, I woke up one morning and had this idea for a song called ‘(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding.’ I thought, 'That's a real mouthful. It doesn't exactly trip off the tongue, but it is actually an original idea." I couldn't believe that I'd actually made up something that no one else had done before. And I had this sophisticated thought, which was, ‘Don't mess this up. Don’t overwrite this thing. Let the title work for you. Keep the verse very simple; you've got a good tune there, don't overdo it.’ That was a really sophisticated songwriting idea to have.

“The funny thing is, it seems like a song that I know, but I didn't really have anything to do with it. I've heard so many covers of that song. The one I really like is the one the Holmes Brothers did; I like their version of it. But I've got versions of it by a bunch of Tahitian fisherman singing it on a beach somewhere… all kinds. And that's fantastic. I'm always really pleased when people do it, and mildly surprised. When I wrote it I had no idea it would have any kind of legacy. I just wanted a hit and thought this could be a hit song. Those were the terms I thought in back then.”

"So It Goes"

“I had a brief job tour-managing for Graham Parker & the Rumour. I produced their first album, Howlin' Wind — in fact, that was the first album I produced — and their manager Dave Robinson had also managed Brinsley Schwarz for awhile, and Brinsley himself was in Graham's group. They were going on tour with Thin Lizzy, who were enjoying some sort of surge of success at the time, and Robinson asked me if I would tour-manage them.

“I remember Thin Lizzy's ‘The Boys are Back in Town’ playing all the time on that tour. It had this little descending thing that just got under my skin and I started singing ‘and so it goes, so it goes, so it goes’ while I was walking around doing my tour manager duties. The song isn't really about much. It's a bunch of interesting words strung together.

“I was talking about ‘the kid’ who cut off his right arm, and a 50,000-watt stack. The ‘kid’ was [Thin Lizzy guitarist] Brian Robertson — that was his nickname. He was quite a rock star. He was a good lad, actually, but he'd occasionally throw rock-starry tantrums. I wouldn't have liked to be at the receiving end of one of them, but he was always great fun to watch, and as a spectator sport it was quite interesting.”

"American Squirm"

“That one came from the night I was with Elvis, the night he played on Saturday Night Live and changed the song he was gonna do right in the middle of doing another. [Costello switched from “Less Than Zero,” a song with a U.K.-centric theme, to “Radio Radio,” which hadn’t even been released yet]. He'd been rehearsing all day. When they came to do the live show, he decided to do another song, which completely threw everyone into this panic, which of course Mr. Costello and his cohort — which I was part of — thought was an extremely amusing thing to do. It didn't make us very popular, but we thought the Saturday Night Live people were a bit smug. We said, ‘Well, they're always going on about it being live. Deal with this!’ Elvis just thought, Let's throw a bit of a hand grenade into it and do a different song. And it had exactly the effect that was required.

“So I went back to the hotel and thought up ‘American Squirm.’ I supposed it was harmless, really. It was a good pop tune; there was nothing vindictive or cruel. It is of its time. It seems to me Americans loved that song, but no one ever really noticed it over here in the U.K.”

"Cruel to Be Kind"

“When Brinsley Schwarz was going, we were a very hard-working group. We did a lot of shows, especially when the pub-rock scene started in London. We played a lot of roots music, country songs, R&B... But one of the things we liked at the time was disco music. We loved that stuff, even though in that scene they thought it was a bit weird when we started playing a song by the O'Jays or something like that. One of the tunes we really liked was called ‘The Love I Lost,’ by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes. We tried to record it, but we couldn't do it justice. So I said, 'Okay, I’m gonna try to write a song like that,' 'cause it had a really fantastic, driving groove that would come in very handy for our shows. So I started trying to write a song like ‘The Love I Lost.’

“When the Brinsleys broke up, there's two songs that should've gone in the dustbin of history along with our other repertoire: ‘Peace, Love & Understanding’ and ‘Cruel to be Kind.’ ‘Cruel to Be Kind’ was pulled out by the great Gregg Geller, who signed me and Elvis to Columbia in the 70s. I handed over all the demos and all the unreleased stuff I had, and Gregg said, ‘I think this is a hit song.’ And I was like, ‘I don't think so, man. I've moved on. I've got a song about a dead movie star being eaten by a dog [the comically morbid ‘Marie Prevost’].’ He said, ‘I like that song, but I’m telling you, “Cruel to Be Kind” could be a hit.’ He kept on and on and on at me about that.

“I was in Rockpile at this time. We only made one album, but we made lots of records together. Labour of Lust was a Rockpile record, really. And I went to them one day and said, ‘Look boys, I'm really sorry about this but I've got this creaky old song like Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes and I'm getting leaned on to do this. Would you mind just giving me a hand with it?’ They didn't seem to mind nearly as much as I did. We had quite a lot of fun doing it, and I turned it in to Gregg. And lo and behold, he wasn't wrong.”

"Ragin' Eyes"

“It's a song that, when I recorded it, I didn't quite know what I had. It came along in the 1980s, when I was starting to lose my way a bit, for various reasons. I think it could’ve been more popular at the time if I'd been able to grasp what I had there, but it's a great little tune.

“I think I thought it was some sort of Cajun song or something like that. It couldn't make up its mind whether it needed to be played on a washboard or with a massive, like, ‘80s drum sound, so it wound up not being as effective as it would be if I recorded it now.

“Now, I'm much better at just taking the song idea at face value and letting it present itself. I wouldn't think, ‘Oh, this is a Cajun thing’ or ‘This is a pre-Beatles R&B thing’ and force it into that bag, whether it wanted to go there or not. I’m much better at letting them sort of breathe now. It's much better if you just let the song tell you want it wants to do and not be too hidebound about forcing it into some sort of rule-lined box.

“And that happened all the time. I hear songs from those days when I was in such a hurry. I seemed to write songs all the time, and I came up with good ideas, but I sort of sabotaged them very often by trying to rush to finish them. I've learned that all you've got to do is calm down and listen to the way it goes in your head and tease it out, instead of, ‘Oh, I know how this goes’ and slap two bad verses on the end. And some people love the two ugly verses I slapped onto the end of a song in 1975, but when I listen to them I think, ‘Nah, if only you'd taken your time about that and not think you could rush this along.’ I do that with Los Straitjackets from time to time, much better, to be honest. We've actually stopped doing it of late 'cause we're doing a whole lot of the newer songs. But we do a great version of ‘Ragin' Eyes.’ ”

“Here's this guy with long hair, a flannel shirt and he looked like he just came out of an auto factory playing some of the most gutbucket blues and rock you've ever heard,” Bonamassa had said of his first introduction to Gallagher while playing two of his most adored electric guitars earlier this year.

The chance to honor his legacy in Cork, Ireland, across three shows at the start of July is an exciting prospect, put in motion by the Gallagher family. It’s a move too that, in the wake of the sale of Rory’s iconic Stratocaster and a large portion of his other gear, shows that the family isn’t bequeathing its responsibility for keeping Rory’s flame burning any time soon. Bonamassa, one of the most celebrated and important bluesmen on the scene today, is the perfect man for the task.

“The idea came from the Gallagher family — Dónal [Rory’s younger brother and manager] and Daniel [his nephew and archivist] — and a gentleman from Ireland named Peter Aiken [promoter] who wanted to do something to celebrate next year’s 30th anniversary of Rory’s passing,” Bonamassa recently told Classic Rock. “When they reached out I said, ‘You had me at hello.’

“Then I thought about it and went, Shit, what did I just sign up for?”

When announcing the shows, Bonamassa had called the doubleheader — which has since been upgraded to three shows — “the biggest honor and challenge of my musical life.” He echoed that sentiment once more when speaking to CR.

“They will be,” he says. But there are caveats. “We’ve put together a great band featuring [bass guitarist] Aongus Ralston, [keyboardist] Lachy Doley, and [drummer] Jeremy Stacey [whose credits include King Crimson and Sheryl Crow]. Before starting rehearsal I told Dónal, Daniel, and Peter: ‘I’m not Rory; I don’t want to be a tribute act that replicates all the little glitches and mistakes. I’m going to be myself.’ And they said that’s exactly what they want. Having heard that, I could relax. It’s proven very popular, and from two shows it became three.”

Bonamassa recognizes that Gallagher’s stature isn’t as big in the States as on home soil. Still, via his father’s introduction, he quickly became one of his heroes and is basing his performances on the live album that got him hooked.

“I never thought I would be 47 years old — 48 by the time the shows happen — and doing a set of Rory based on [the legendary double live album] Irish Tour ’74, and doing it in Cork,” he muses. “But here we are. Let’s boogie.

“It won’t be perfect but it’ll be the best I can. You just have to go in there with conviction and show the fans how much the music means. But that’s me, I’ll never back down from a challenge.”

Bonamassa was 18 when Gallagher passed in 1995 meaning he never got the chance to meet his idol. Asked, then, what he’d say to him given the chance, he replied: “I would ask how he got so deeply into the blues. You can hear his Celtic influences, and there was a swing that he put into everything, but Rory really was the sum of his parts.

“He soaked up everything and put it all out in his own way,” he extends, before relaying a revelation he had while preparing for the shows. “The further we got into rehearsals, I began to realize that I was more deeply influenced by Rory even than [Eric] Clapton. I went: ‘Oh shit!’”

He admits that post-shows, “there’s every chance of a couple of Rory songs being Easter-egged into my live set,” but underscored that the show won’t be repeated verbatim.

Bonamassa was vocal about Gallagher’s legendary Strat remaining in Ireland beyond its sale, with Irish politicians and even the daughter of the man who sold Rory the instrument, for £100 in 1963, among the other voices wanting the same.

The campaign proved successful as the guitar was donated to the National Museum of Ireland after selling for $1.16 million in October.

The success of that campaign extends the likelihood of Bonamassa playing the Strat once more, after borrowing it for a soul-rendering take of Sloe Gin at London's Royal Albert Hall over a decade ago.

Whether the iconic instrument makes an appearance or not, it will be a special occasion for Bonamassa and the thousands that pack into Cork's Marquee, which has previously hosted Elton John, Bob Dylan, and Meat Loaf.

In the 1970s, David Cassidy was the biggest star in the world, outselling and breaking attendance records held by Elvis and the Beatles. Less known is that Cassidy has always been a total guitar freak. Here, the Partridge Family’s sex symbol reminisces about his coolest guitar moments.

“I was fortunate to see so many great bands as a teenager,” says Cassidy. “I saw Hendrix four times. I saw B.B. King at the Whiskey. The Buffalo Springfield played my high school. I saw Cream at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. The most influential guitarists for me were Hendrix and Clapton – they were 1 and 1a – and then B.B. King and Jeff Beck.

“When I got the role of Keith Partridge, they knew I could play and sing because I played Voodoo Child (Slight Return) before my screen test. After shooting The Partridge Family each day, I’d drive to United Western Recorders, and I’d work with session guitarists Louie Shelton, Tommy Tedesco, Dennis Budimir, and Larry Carlton on the show’s music. I’d ask Louie, ‘How did you do that?’ We usually put down three rhythm tracks a night. I spent five years recording almost 300 tracks with those guys.

“Eventually, I got to play with just about all of my inspirations. Mick Ronson and I talked about forming a band. We never ended up doing it, but he did play on my song Getting It in the Street. He just killed it. He was so aggressive.

“I got to play with Paul McCartney in Paris during the final dress rehearsals for the Wings Over America tour in 1975. We played some blues, One After 909, and Long Tall Sally. I knew every song the Beatles had written, and I sang John’s parts.

“I also became good friends with John Lennon. He came to my house on New Year’s Eve 1974, and we started playing early Beatles stuff, such as Mr. Moonlight and Please Please Me. I sang all of Paul’s parts. It was the thrill of my life.”

The 59th show of a tour that kicked off in 2022 and has taken McCartney's band to four continents treated fans to a career-spanning 36-song set list, including Beatles, Wings, and solo songs.

For the final show, he tapped Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood for a run through"Get Back," while Ringo Starr showed up to perform on "Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Helter Skelter," drawing a raucous reaction from the sold-out O2 Arena, London .

But "Get Back" was special for another reason: The song marked the first live appearance of McCartney’s original Höfner 500/1 violin bass in 50 years. The instrument, which was stolen in 1972, was found in early 2024 after a global search.

McCartney purchased the instrument in 1961 for £30 (approximately $37) from the Steinway Musikhaus store, during the Beatles’ famed Hamburg residency. It was also during this period that George Harrison bought his oddball Futurama guitar in lieu of a Stratocaster. That guitar, seen as the electric guitar that launched the Beatles, sold for $1.27m earlier this year.

The bass played a key role in the Beatles' early studio and stage work. It was used to track early hits like "Love Me Do" and "She Loves You" before being relegated to backup duties following major repair work in ‘64.

The bass reappeared in the 1968 music video for the Beatles' single "Revolution" and during the making of the Let It Be album. It can be seen in the 2021 documentary The Beatles: Get Back, where McCartney plays the bass while writing "Get Back."

Its last sighting was on January 21, 1969, just days before the Beatles’ iconic rooftop show at the Apple HQ on Saville Row, London. The bass was stolen in 1972 while McCartney and his group Wings were recording Red Rose Speedway in various London studios.

The Lost Bass Project was formed in September 2023 to help find the bass, which was discoverd in February 2024 in an attic in England.

“We received information that it had been stolen from the back of a van during the night of 10th October 1972, in the Notting Hill area of London,” the Lost Bass Project shared via a statement on its website.

“As a result of further publicity,” its statement continued, “someone living in a terraced house on the south coast of England remembered an old bass guitar that was in their attic. They soon realized just what they had. Within days it was back with Paul McCartney!”

McCartney was, understandably, as “excited as a schoolboy” to have the bass returned to him, and he kept true to his promise to fix it up and bring it back to the stage where it belongs.

“We've been looking for it for 50 years,” he proudly told his London crowd, “and I got it back. Here to make its first stage appearance in 50 years is my original bass.”

The show's finale saw Ringo Starr join his fellow former Beatle for "Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band" before they performed "Helter Skelter."

“It’s fantastic, playing with my old mate,” Starr told the exuberant arena before departing, leaving McCartney to conclude the show with "Carry That Weight" and "The End."

With any luck it won't be the last time McCartney tours. As he said to the crowd before leaving the stage, “All that remains to be said is, 'See you next time!'”

Those sounds influenced a young gun named Junior Marvin, who Mayer worked with in the mid 70s and who would be drafted into Bob Marley and the Wailers at a time when Marley wanted his group to evolve from what Mayer describes as a "raggedy-assed" musicians to proper reggae icons.

Mayer started from square one, tearing down Marley's rig and ensuring all involved in his midst were quite literally playing in tune. The result was what Mayer likens to perfection.

"When everything else is perfect, recording a song is pretty simple," he tells Guitar Player. “There’s nothing special about that for me," he says. "Anybody could walk into a recording studio, hit record, and if the other things are perfect, it's gonna sound good."

It's hard to argue with that, considering Mayer's work on Marley's iconic 1975 record Exodus. "I did everything I could in the studio to talk to Bob and Junior about how they could dial in what they heard in the brains," he says.

Mayer did the job. Exodus catapulted the Wailers from a poorly produced group from the beaches of Jamaica to a powerhouse. The result was the album's title track reaching number one in Jamaica, number 14 in Germany, and the top 20 in the U.K.

Exodus's laid-back vibe meshed perfectly with Marley and Marvin's inspired guitar playing. As a result, tracks like "Three Little Birds," "Jammin'" and "Waiting in Vain" became Marley classics — and FM radio staples.

Mayer is aware of all of this — and he'll be the first to tell you that he had a feeling about Exodus from the jump, meaning greatness wasn't just intended but inherent. "That record is very well thought of," he beams.

"I knew what a hit record sounded like. We had all the puzzle pieces come into place. Like with Hendrix and the Isley Brothers, I'd helped, but it wasn't a mistake that it sounded that good."

How did you find yourself in the engineer's chair for the recording of Bob Marley's Exodus?

I had a relationship with Junior Marvin before Junior signed on to work with Bob. We'd finished recording some original material in England in December 1976, so we'd spend a lot of time together while recording, alternating between New York and London.

Were you familiar with Bob going in?

With Junior, we'd recorded at Music Mountain in Jamaica, at Electric Lady in New York and Island Studios in London, so yeah, I was aware of Bob Marley through all of that. I'd come to see him a few times, and I knew Chris Blackwell [founder of Island Records and Bob Marley cohort]. Junior knew Chris too. But it wasn't until after we finished the record with Junior, and he signed on with Bob Marley and the Wailers, that I got to work with Bob.

Having worked with Junior before, do you have a good idea of how to get him to align with Bob's goals?

Junior was recruited into Bob's band to provide the rock and roll aspect to the Wailers, which they were lacking. Before the recordings started, Bob was aware that he needed to change direction so that the music had more international appeal.

They came to be because, obviously, they'd heard the work I was doing with the Isley Brothers, Rick James, Parliament Funkadelic, and all those bands that had crossed over into the mainstream market. When I went to America with Jimi Hendrix back in '68 and then worked with Stevie Wonder, these were artists who had ties to Motown and were given free rein.

To paint a picture, the idea was that Black artists in the '70s had a very difficult time in America as far as getting recognition because the music charts were more into white rock 'n' roll than R&B and soul. It was spread apart. So after Junior joined the Wailers, it helped because they became a bit more rock 'n' roll.

You helped dial in Junior's rig on the recording, right?

After Junior joined, I sent him some of what they requested, which was some new equipment. I went and bought some guitars for Junior in New York and sent them to him after I'd modified them.

Modifications and sounds like you’d used with Jimi Hendrix and Ernie Isley?

That included some of the effects we'd used with Ernie Isley and Jimi Hendrix. And then, of course, everybody started to sit up and say, "Yeah, well, who is this new guitar player that Bob Marley's changed to?" Junior was a bit more rock 'n' roll and was a complete departure from Bob's previous records.

You were close to Junior, but did you get on well with Bob?

Everything was going very well. I got invited down to Jamaica to meet Bob just before the One Love concert, and that's when I first met him. He was a very charming guy. I asked him, "What exactly do you want me to do? How can I help you?"

Bob said, "I want to sound more international." That was the right answer, mate. I said, "For you to go forward in music and take a step forward — especially in record sales and international recognition — you have to have a record that sounds great.”

I told him, “It has to stand up to the quality of what's around." He couldn't just come from an island and not have the same technological advantages that everybody else had. If he did that, his record would have sounded a big amateurish.

So the goal with Exodus was not just to overhaul Bob's sound but to showcase what Junior brought to the party en route to national recognition.

Bob's early albums were kind of tolerated because they came from the islands, you know what I mean? People didn't expect the records to have the same sonic qualities that all the other top artists had, or some of the other artists I was working with. So, yeah… that's how I got roped into it. [laughs]

What was the first order of business once you were in the studio?

The first thing I did after meeting Bob was completely set up all the guitars for him. I'd listened to the band live and said, "The whole band's completely out of tune. For us to go forward, the first thing to do is make the band solid, if not perfect."

In reggae, that's very important, as it is with any music oriented by bass. The bass and drum sounds had to be perfect, or else you lose the magical quality of the beat. The bass guitars had suffered being in Jamaica and needed a lot of work, so we started with that.

What was it like working on Bob and Junior's guitars?

I wanted to fix that up to give off a really authentic, top-quality sound. I moved on to Bob's guitars because Junior already had a guitar that I'd previously modified and had been used in concert and in the studio. I went through all of Bob's guitars, tuned them up, and rebuilt the whole guitar.

Every guitar that had been down in Jamaica for years had to be completely pulled apart and rebuilt because of what the humidity in the tropics would do to the electrics in the guitar. Once I made sure the band was mechanically sound, and actually in tune, and sounded perfect with all the harmonics resonating, that's when we could really get started. That was the beginning of it.

How did that inform the way Junior and Bob approached songs like "Waiting in Vain," "Three Little Birds," and "Jammin'?"

My job was working with Junior to get the right guitar sounds and with Bob. Once Bob's guitar was perfectly in tune, his approach to the song became different because of the way he played. The feeling, solos, and overall feeling of the record became different. This might sound mundane, but you can only record what's there.

In my case, the actual job became making good sounds, and after that, it was recording the sound. I didn't have to do anything. The bass and guitar sounds were perfect. Bob set the people up to play the vibe, and the performances were amazing—much better than before because they were all playing in tune.

Was there a trick to getting the most out of Junior, or was it all mostly free-form and vibe-based?

They were all very highly attuned to the vibrations and the perfection of it all. So, while putting together the tracks, Junior and I would go into the studio and discuss what he wanted to do, for example, "Waiting in Vain" or "Three Little Birds." Those tracks have my touch on them with the various guitar tones, and we worked together to select the perfect tones for each track.

What went into the selection process?

That's one of the secrets! You have the have the ability, and in my case, technical ability, to change the tone, and make it fit the track. That's why every track we recorded with Jimi Hendrix sounds so accessible. It's not just a case of buying a pedal, plugging it in, and playing.

It's more complicated than that. It's having the knowledge of being in the studio and using recording equipment and consoles to know exactly what sound you have to produce in the studio to make it come out well on record.

So if it wasn't just pedals, what was it?

You have to have a whole knowledge of the whole process of recording. It's about knowing where to put microphones and how they should sound in the studio. You had to really, really know how with some of these bands back then, you know, with how to actually tailor the sound so that they can record a song.

While putting together Exodus, did you have an inclination that you were helping make a special record?

Yeah, but at the same time, I'd been in the studio many times before when lots of famous records were made. I wasn't new to what a hit record sounded like. I had a good idea of what it should sound like, so, yeah, Exodus, after the tracks were put together, sounded really good. But the magic of Exodus isn't just that it's a really good collection of songs; there's more to it than that.

Expand on that for me.

Remember: A lot of the songs on Exodus have been recorded before. They weren't new. There were previous incarnations of "Three Little Birds," from what I remember. The difference, I think, with Bob and Exodus was the actual sound of that record. It's perfect. It sounds great.

The sound of the music, and the beat, just the whole thing, makes that record sound international. It doesn't sound like a raggedy bunch of Jamaican musicians. It's interesting and culturally different, but before that, they weren't producing the international quality of music that sounded like that.

Having said that, what are you most proud of when you look back on Exodus?

I've been involved with many records, but I've been involved with very involved in three or four, like, really great records, I think. Exodus is great. The sound of it is just unbelievable. But these things don't happen by accident, right? It doesn't happen by mistake.

The people involved in that record weren't just fortuitous; my sound, equipment, and electronics are on so many hit records. That's not me boasting; it's just the truth. But Bob and Junior were a pleasure to work with and making that record didn't happen by mistake.

It's like they say: you could get a well, a well-nourished orangutan with a pencil and a piece of white paper is not going to make a great picture. It was all the right pieces at the right time. It doesn't happen otherwise.

Open tunings have been favored by everyone from Jimmy Page to Tommy Emmanuel. They're extremely versatile, allowing players to escape the restrictions of standard tuning.

Trucks, though, is one of the most prominent names to adopt his preferred open E tuning — E B E G# B E — in which the open strings are tuned to an E major chord. In his recent interview on Chris Shiflett's Shred With Shifty channel, Trucks told the Foo Fighters guitarist — who calls Trucks “the best slide guitar player on earth right now" — why it suits him so well, especially when trading licks with players in more traditional tunings.

Trucks says his early experiences with the tuning saw him “find ways to mimic what you can do in standard tuning.” Then, he says, his horizons were expanded during his time playing in Frog Wings with his uncle, the late Allman Brothers drummer Butch Trucks, and guitarist Jimmy Herring.

“He’s a great guitar player,” Trucks says of Herring, adding, He's a great teacher, too. He was really interested in open E, and he was like, 'We should just get notepads and just write it out.'”

A long, tedious but ultimately liberating exercise followed.

“We would take just different modes, different chords, and write out the neck: ‘Where's this note everywhere on the neck?’ and visualize it. And then you're like, 'Oh shit, there's that chord there.’

“So we have these notebooks from sitting with Jimmy for years, it just kind of opens up a whole world,” he continues. “You put these three notes together anywhere on the neck — it's a version of an E chord. It's just different versions in it. But when you see it, you realize, 'Wow, there's a lot of them.' That opened up that whole world for me. You realize that it's all there.”

Because open E is so close to E standard, Trucks found those patterns were still relevant when playing in his preferred tuning, if only somewhat more difficult .While he has remained loyal to the open tuning for both regular and slide guitar playing, he believes both have their benefits and can work in harmony with each other.

“There's a lot of things that are really easy to do in standard tuning that you just got to get wide fingering in open E," he says. "But the beauty of it is, you end up not falling into the same stuff that most people would. Because what's easy for me is difficult in standard and vice versa. So you just end up playing a little differently.”

He also found it helped him to distinguish his voice as a lead player when sharing the stages with other greats and, in particular, when he’s played in bands with three electric guitar players.

“I noticed that came in handy naturally when I did that tour with Clapton and Doyle [Bramhall II],” Trucks relays. “It was three guitar players in the band, and I'm in open E at all times, Doyle's playing upside down, left-handed, and then Eric is playing in standard.

“So we were kind of never in each other's way, because it was three really different ways. You never fell in the same place; it kind of always spread out in a nice way, just naturally.”

Earlier this year, Trucks reunited with his fellow ABB alumnus Warren Haynes to complete a Greg Allman gem of a song, 20 years after he started writing it.

Haynes spoke to Guitar Player about resurrecting the incomplete track, believing “It just made sense,” that Trucks would play a part.

That followed Trucks' collaboration with Duane Betts on the 2023 single Stare at the Sun, which saw the pairing pay tribute to Betts' late father, Dickey Betts.

Though he still has reverence for the guitar pick, the Dire Straits man says that his move toward fingerstyle has been one of the byproducts of his overall shift in technique in the 2020s.

Speaking to Guitar Player in a recent interview, Knopfler revealed that he's “started using more and more fingerpicking and less and less plectruming.

“I think lack of use, plus three bouts of COVID, probably phased out the plectrum for me. I just kept losing them and would be fingerpicking more – not necessarily fingerpicking better, just more. And it proved to be just a bit more comfortable for me.”

That said, Knopfler – self-effacing throughout his discussion with GP – is on no high horse about his fondness for fingerpicking, even saying that using a pick is inherently better.

“I want to bow to the plectrum and say it’s a superior thing,” Knopfler said. “It’s louder. It’s faster. It’s got a better signal. It’s the best amplifier there is. I didn’t give it up until recently. I was capable of playing things with a plectrum quite a lot, and I would do all the rhythm parts with one all the time.”

Elsewhere in his chat with GP, Knopfler – to an arguably ridiculous extent – went in further on what he sees as the deficiencies as his playing, saying that his “grip on the guitar has gotten even worse.

“[His] songwriting – it takes you away from concentrating on playing, and it accentuates the simplicity of a lot of my stuff that I want out of the guitar,” the guitarist said.

“I’ve almost become a sort of a half-player in the sense that I only tend to play half the notes that are there that I could play, and my fingering is all wrong. I don’t hold the neck properly; I hold the neck like a plumber holds a hammer, not in a proper, artistic way.”

That interview, which ran in the magazine's April 1980 issue, included Ed's revealing statements about everything from his music lessons and guitar solos to his thoughts about one of Van Halen's biggest early hits, “Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love."

At the outset of the 1980 interview, Obrecht asked Van Halen how he developed his speed. Ed, who was born in Holland and moved with his family to the U.S. when he was seven, had a characteristically humorous story to share.

“Well, I'll tell you. They used to lock me in a little room and go, ‘Play fast!’” he began, with a laugh. “I was actually trained to be a classical pianist. I had this Russian teacher who couldn't speak a word of English, and he would just sit there with a ruler ready to slap my face if I made a mistake.

"This started in Holland, and both my brother and I took lessons. Then when we got to the U.S. my dad found another good teacher. Basically, that's where I got my ears developed, learned my theory, and got my fingers moving.

“Then when the Dave Clark Five and those bands came out, I wanted to go [plays the riff from "You Really Got Me"]. I didn't want to go clink, clink, clink. I still play piano, and I also play violin.”

As Ed revealed, some of his piano training translated to the guitar.

“Things like this are classical,” he said as he played the continuous left-hand tremolo technique from "Spanish Fly.” “I know that had some things psychologically come out, but I don't actually sit down at a piano and try to apply it to guitar.”

The interview also saw Ed provide insights into his solos — how he approached them and what he aimed to achieve with them.

“Feeling,” he said in response to the latter point. “I don't care if it's melodic or spontaneous. If it's melodic and has no feeling, it's screwed.”

To that end, Ed said he would sometimes write a solo and sometimes just go for it on the fly.

“Sometimes it's spontaneous, sometimes it's set,” he explained. “Like the solo in ‘Runnin' With the Devil’ was set. And the same with ‘Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love.’ By ‘set’ I mean that I figured out something melodic instead of just going for it."

As for his spontaneous solos?

“ ’Ice Cream Man’ was one,” he said. “That was a first take. The solo in ‘You Really Got Me’ was totally spontaneous. Next time you listen to it, turn the balance to one side, because the way Ted [Templeman] produces, my guitar is always on one side. Listen to it-there's only one guitar, no overdubs. But it sounds full.”

Likewise, when performing onstage, Ed would sometimes play his solos as they are on the records, but more often he liked to try something new.

“I rarely repeat,” he said. “Sometimes I remember the way I did it on the record and kind of follow it, unless they are melodic solos like in ‘Runnin' With The Devil’ and ‘Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love.’ You know, if I start noodling around, kids go, ‘Hey, that ain't the same song!’”

Remarkably, Ed wasn't a big fan of "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" and hid it from the group for half a year.

"When I wrote ‘Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love’ I thought it was about the lamest song I ever wrote in my life," he remarked. "It took me six months before I even worked up the nerve to show the guys, but kids go nuts for it! I love the beginning — Am and G.”

Ed has been in the news again as of late, thanks to new documentary The Journey to Frankenstein, which traces the development of Ed's heavily modified Super Strat. The film follows his journey across a decade-long arc, as he modifies Les Pauls, Stratocasters and the Ibanez Destroyer in the search for his holy grail instrument.

In addition, Alex Van Halen recently announced his upcoming memoir, Brothers, which will feature the final song he worked on with his brother, "Unfinished." The 720-minute audiobook will also be available in physical and ebook formats.

The hard-working session player, best known for his stints with Lou Reed and Alice Cooper, adds that he was only just getting warmed up when the session was wrapped: “The next thing you know, it’s getting airplay all over the world.”

It was December 1973, and Hunter was working alongside longtime collaborator Bob Ezrin in Studio A at the Record Plant.

“He was editing the two-inch tape, which is very tedious,” Hunter relays. “So I left him alone and went out into the lobby to have a cigarette. And right across from me is the door to Studio C, which is the smaller studio. The door opens and it’s [producer] Jack Douglas. He looks at me and says, ‘You feel like playing?’”

Douglas was trying to mastermind the recording of what would be Aerosmith’s second album, Get Your Wings. The band’s self-titled debut, released earlier that year, had received little fanfare and the band was desperate for its follow-up not to face the same fate. So, cigarette in hand and with boredom to kill, Hunter agreed.

“I said, ‘I’d rather play than sit here,’” he continues. After Douglas had gotten permission from Ezrin to borrow his talent, Hunter “grabbed our favorite amp, which was an old Fender tweed, and brought it into Studio C.

“I walked in, and there was the whole band. So I said hi, and we all shook hands – no big to-do or anything. I remember distinctly meeting Brad [Whitford], because he was a really nice fella. Joe [Perry] was very quiet, and Steve Tyler was kinda crazy and full of energy. But they were really cool guys. I liked them.

“I really didn’t know how to act,” he goes on. “I never got any bad vibes off of anybody. They all seemed kinda tired, like they had been working really hard to finish the album. But I never got any kind of vibe about whether they liked me being there or not.”

Pleasantries exchanged, they got to work, but Hunter was surprised with how quickly the wrap was called.

“Jack set me up in the studio, plugged me in, and got this great guitar sound. I put the headphones on and asked him just to play the track so I could get used to it.

“I was noodling, just to find my way around, when Jack said, ‘This is gonna be great, man, but, you’re stepping on the vocals.’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t have vocals in my headphones.’

“So he fixed that and we did one or two passes, and Jack says, ‘Okay, that sounds great!’ I thought I was just getting warmed up, but they were very happy, and that was it. We took the amp back to Studio A and I went and finished my cigarette. The next thing you know, it’s getting airplay all over the world. I thought, Wow, that’s good!”

As GP has previously reported, who tracked the solos on Train Kept a Rollin’ had been a secret until 2020, when Hunter’s wife, Karen, let the cat out of the bag. Another sneaky nugget of info is that Joe Perry, despite playing Gibson Les Pauls on stage, recorded much of the band’s early material on Stratocasters.

Earlier this year, Aerosmith was forced to retire from touring amid Steven Tyler’s ongoing health issues.

The lead single from the trio's fifth and final studio album, Synchronicity, "Every Breath You Take" was a generational juggernaut that became the group's biggest hit. It topped the charts on both sides of the pond, spending eight weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 — the only time the Police ever hit that summit — and went on to win Grammy Awards for “Song of the Year” and "Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.”

Meanwhile, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors gave it an Ivor Novello Award for “Best Song Musically and Lyrically." To sweeten things further, it was the top-selling single of 1983 and the fifth best-seller of the 1980s.

Not bad for a deceptively romantic tune about obsession and the fury of the scorned.

That success, however, was a reward for the tune's difficult gestation. The Police — Sting, Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland — were at odds with one another while making the similarly chart-topping, multi-Platinum Synchronicity with co-producer Hugh Padgham at AIR Studios in Montserrat. The delicate balance of creative visions and egos was splintering, particularly between Sting and Copeland.

To smooth things over, Sting threw an olive branch to his bandmates by letting each compose and sing one track on the set: Summers delivered "Mother," and Copeland brought "Miss Gradenko." Nevertheless, Synchronicity would mark the end of the group's recording run, and the three musicians went their own ways after a tour to support the album.

But more than 40 years later, Summers has recovered from his Synchronicity PTSD. "I think we did a good job at the time," he tells Guitar Player via Zoom. "I think we were in a difficult position. Clearly, Sting wanted to leave the band, and yet we had this massive album all over the world."

That said, Summers has one lingering issue with "Every Breath You Take.” He's long contended that he deserves a writing credit for it, since his distinctive, chorus-tinged riff became such a defining element of the song.

"There wasn't a guitar part on it when Sting wrote it,” Summers explains. “It was just him singing, with this Hammond organ kind of thing, like Billy Preston or something. It didn't sound like the Police at that point.

“I just went into the studio and I heard the chord sequence for it, and it immediately came to me to play the riff I came up with. It was very much in the Police guitar style, if you like.”

As for what inspired his part, Summers believes it may have derived from his early 1980s collaborations with Robert Fripp. "At the time I'd made one record with Robert” — 1982’s I Advance Mask — "and I think we were due to make another one. I was looking for material.”

But Summers says the line’s harmonic structure owes much to the classical guitar genre. “One of the things I had engaged with in my life, especially when I was mad about classical guitar, was the Bartok string duos,” he says. “I would listen to and try to play these beautiful Bartok things. So I had that kind of harmony in my playing, to some extent. Bartok would take it much farther out to add a ninth rather than a third — that kind of thing. So it fit with my mental musical landscape at the time, and it was very natural for me to play that sort of thing. When it came to the recording, we got it done on one take, actually.”

While another guitarist might have just strummed the song’s chords, Summers saw in its simple structure an opportunity to add a defining element.

"There's no way that I would've gone in and strummed A, F sharp minor, D and E,” he says. “What I managed to do with that guitar lick was take it into a very hip other atmosphere that was completely moody and set the song up. Instead of just strumming some really stupid chords, I made something out of it.

“It's now past two billion plays on Spotify, so it is actually the most-played song of all-time history,” he adds. “Which makes my guitar riff one of the most-played riffs in history. Not too shabby.”

As a coda to the group’s history, “Every Breath You Take” begs the question of what might have happened had the Police stayed together. Summers is certain they could have had a much longer and even more successful run. “We could've gone on and done more and more,” he contends. “We were the biggest band in the world."

First, for the uninitiated, the advantages of a floating bridge — a tremolo bridge set so that the vibrato bar can both lower and raise strings in pitch — are many.

For one, a floating setup allows you to use the bar to apply tasteful vibrato that encircles notes from above and below, pitch-wise — the way a great singer or slide guitarist might —thus achieving that highly sought after “vocal” vibrato sound. (Non-floating tremolo bridges are dive-only, and can only lower notes.)

Secondly, for wilder moments, a floating bridge allows for not only divebomb sounds and, depending on your spring setup, trem “warbles,” but also reverse dives — we’re talking about those soaring melodic ascents in pitch you hear on such mesmerizing Stratocaster performances as Jeff Beck’s “Where Were You,” or Brad Gillis’s “Sister Christian” solo.

Finally, if the apocalyptic divebomb you just put your strings through seemed to leave your electric guitar slightly out of tune because one or more strings got a little bit caught in the nut on the way back up (a non-issue for locking-nut players), well, if you’re an experienced bar jockey, you know that a bonus feature of a floating bridge is that if you give the bar a small upward tug, it may pull strings pretty much perfectly back in tune.

As mentioned earlier, though, the most common problem you’ll face as a “floating” player is when you’re on the gig and want to switch to a tuning like dropped-D. This task is time consuming, because each time you change the tension on one string (i.e., twist its tuning peg), it also changes the other strings’ tensions, putting them out of tune. By the time you finish tuning the last string, you discover the previous five you just tuned are now out of tune again, and you have to start the process over … and over. You may find this task so tedious that you decide it’s easier to haul around to gigs a second guitar that’s already in the alternate tuning, rather than attempt a new tuning in the short time you have between songs.

Enter the Engl Hardtailer, which marks Engl’s first foray away from amplifiers and related gear and into guitar accessories. There have been several bridge-stabilizing devices over the years but you’ll be hard-pressed to find one more stable, compact, and bonehead simple to use than the Hardtailer.

Made in Germany and taking up no more real estate two standard guitar picks, the Hardtailer is easy to install and works on most block-and-springs-based tremolo systems, such as those popularized by Fender, Ibanez, and Floyd Rose — provided that, like most players who use floating bridges, you don’t have all five springs installed.

Before you get started with installation, though, it’s crucial to make sure your guitar’s action and general setup are exactly how you like them to be. And if you don’t have that little cavity routed into the face of your guitar behind the bridge (a common locking-trem feature that allows for sky-high reverse dives), it’s crucial to set your bridge’s pitch ascent maximum to your preference before starting the job.

(Tip: Many players use the G string as a measure. Scott Henderson, for example, has been known to set his bridge so that when he pulls the bar all the way up, it raises the G a major third, while other players may choose their max to be a minor third or less.)

Now, with your bridge in resting position (that is, floating at “zero point”), you’re ready to install. Before you decide to put a Hardtailer on your pristine ’62 Stratocaster, though, know that the product is not entirely non-invasive — it requires the drilling of four tiny wood screws into the guitar’s back cavity beneath the springs. With a smidge of mechanical ability and understanding, it’s an easy job, but there’s no shame in having your tech do it. I had Los Angeles guitar tech Seth Mayer install my test unit on an Ernie Ball Music Man Cutlass during routine guitar maintenance.

Designed by longtime Engl user and Munich-based guitarist Martin Kronbichler, the Hardtailer is small and lightweight and features an aluminum base and shaft. When the device is adjusted correctly and you slide the shaft out to its active position, it satisfyingly snaps into place, immovable, with its brass adjustment wheel just kissing the trem block, but not pushing on it (which would cause the strings to go flat), thus preventing the springs from pulling the block even one micrometer in the headstock (sharp) direction.

To adjust the Hardtailer properly, make sure the guitar is in your “floating” tuning (which, for typical players, will be standard tuning) and have an electronic guitar tuner active. Now, with the bridge at zero point, use a tiny screwdriver shaft or the long end of a hex wrench to adjust the brass knob until it just touches the block as described above. (For details on how to do this most precisely, as well as installation instructions, visit the Hardtailer’s online manual on Engl’s website.)

Once you’ve got the Hardtailer set up nicely, it lives up to its promise — it allows you to detune one or more strings without the other strings going sharp. And even if you don’t detune, engaging it essentially turns your floating guitar into a (here comes that word again) hardtail, allowing to rest your palm on the bridge without pulling the strings sharp. Epic wins!

Engaging the Hardtailer is also useful for (locking trem users will love this) holding the bridge steady during string changes. Life hack!

And, last but not least, one of my favorite features of the Hardtailer is the simple fact that it, unlike some competing devices, does not attach to your block or spring claw, so when it is not engaged, it has zero involvement with your guitar. In other words, when the Hardtailer is not in use, you will never know it’s there.

To move the shaft between active or inactive positions, simply unlock it by pulling up on the spring-loaded brass locking pin, which may resemble one of those finger-tightening screws found on various pieces of guitar hardware, but most certainly is not one. Then, slide the shaft the appropriate direction until the locking pin again snaps into place.

You’ll find you get good at this little maneuver and can reach behind your guitar and do it without looking — which is extremely helpful if you’re in floating mode and break a string and need to instantly get your remaining strings back in tune so you can finish out the song.

Shredders rejoice: The Hardtailer doesn’t care what type of saddles you have up top, which means that yes: It also works just fine with locking trems, including those rigged with EVH D-Tuna or Tone Vise Pitch Shifter string-detuning attachments.

So far, with my G set so I can yank it up a minor third (three half-steps) when floating, the Hardtailer delivers on its promise perfectly. My only concern with it is that when it’s engaged (which means the guitar is now “dive only”) and I’m applying subtle bar vibrato, I find it’s more prone to make a small tapping sound than a conventional dive-only tremolo setup (like a Stratocaster bridge set to rest on the body) might when let go of the bar. This sound results from the guitar’s metal bridge block contacting the Hardtailer’s brass wheel — but I don’t care! I’m in Dropped-D on a bridge that was floating a second ago!

(Tip: If this anomaly bugs you, affixing a small piece of cloth Band-Aid or similar — the sticky part, of course! — on the block where it meets the wheel minimizes this sound, but may require you shortening the shaft’s reach a little via adjustment of the wheel. But if you’re doing divebombs and other more aggressive bar antics, the tapping sound shouldn’t be an issue.)

It's also worth knowing that the Hardtailer is not 100 percent “set it and forget it.” You will have to adjust it from time to time. Did you raise your action? Adjust your truss rod? Change spring tension? Get on a plane in arid Aspen and get off in humid Key West? If so, you may have to turn that brass wheel one direction or the other to get the Hardtailer to again deliver Dropped-D perfectly in tune.

There’s also the price. To some players, $87 retail may feel like a significant cash outlay for such a tiny contraption. For me, though, this is a small price pay for a huge win — a perfectly engineered, feather-light, super solid German-built piece of gear that lets me quickly get in and out of dropped D without switching guitars. I can now do fly dates with a floating trem — sweet!

SPECIFICATIONS

CONTACT engl-amps.com

PRICE $87

MATERIALS High grade brass and aluminum

BUILT Germany

KUDOS Bonehead simple to operate. Tiny. Rock solid. Zero involvement with your guitar when not in use. Works!

CONCERNS Requires drilling of four small screw holes in guitar body’s spring cavity. Necessitates living without a backplate on your guitar. A bit spendy.

For Guitar Player's August 1976 issue, George was kind enough to share his approach to this tricky technique. His lesson and timeless advice are reprinted here.

My first encounter with octave solos was hearing a record by Django Reinhardt quite a few years before Wes Montgomery used them to any great extent. Django Reinhardt didn't dwell on octaves, but it was a part of his work. I started playing them immediately after hearing him use them. But to a great degree Wes Montgomery sort of mastered the octave concept. Plus he had a lot of finesse which gave it a much better presentation. I would imagine, since I came along after both of those artists, that I was more or less putting to use some of the things that they made available.

After recognizing their beauty and how octaves have a tendency to stick out, I realized that it was a good way to communicate. Since Wes gained such a wide popularity by using octaves, I realized there was something in them very appealing to the listener. It takes out the one-dimensional, thin sound and adds body to the electric guitar. It's a richer sound, because you're using the lower octave, which doesn't have quite the sharpness a higher note might have. This, I think, is comparable to the cornet as opposed to a trumpet — it's a much mellower sound, more pleasant to the ear.

I use octaves in several different ways, such as with chords, because sometimes by playing just octaves I feel my solo is very empty. I don't use them exclusively — I'm basically a single-line player — but when I want to add fullness, I'll use either octaves or certain formulas which use octaves.

Sometimes I'll take these formulas and play with them rhythmically, and that's when the fun starts. The octaves are tools from which I've derived a lot of different gimmicks to make them interesting and different from, say, those of Wes Montgomery or Django. I was very impressed by their uses of octaves — Wes using them in a very romantic and sentimental con- text that added a pretty side to even the funky things he played; and Django using them as a very dynamic interlude to what he was playing.

What I do with octaves began years ago when I heard a guy play this certain this formula, which consists of octaves and another note. I don't know if he played it accidentally or not, but I thought it was just gorgeous. I asked him to show it to me, and I always planned to use it one day.

In involves the use of a 6th tone in addition to the octave. I may use a G with an E and a G an octave higher, and then the 6th tone would move in and out depending on the change of the chord. For instance, if I was going to play in G minor, and during the G minor scale I was going to use the A tone, I would use A, F, A. This involves moving or positioning my fingers a half-step closer on the inside—which is the 6th. But that's only one formula [Fig. 1].

Another formula I use places the 5th and 4th in between the octave. I may play C, F, and C an octave higher to produce a certain sound, and that would also change positions as I change notes. To stay in context with the melodic scale, I might have to reposition the inside of the chord, which is the 4th, F, and change it to the 5th, G, in certain instances so that I don't clash with the harmony of things [Fig. 2].

Then there's another form I've recently discovered that has a D as the first note, then the 4th (in this case G), a B and another D. So it consists of the root, the 4th, the 6th, and then the octave [Fig. 3].

I started experimenting with these forms rhythmically, where instead of playing the root and the octave simultaneously, I'd play them at different times. I'd play them against each other, and it would sound like octaves in rhythm. Also I'd drop the pick at certain times and use a shape with the 4th in it to get a sound similar to [jazz pianists] Fats Waller or Erroll Garner.

So there are many different things that can be done with octaves. They have a definite color of their own, different from anything else on the guitar, and their possibilities are unlimited.

Octaves really excel on guitar because of the characteristics of the instrument. They do for the guitar what a mute does for a trumpet. There's nothing like a good trumpeter, but sometimes the instrument has a tendency to become hard and unpleasant because of the characteristics of the notes that come out of it. They can get harsh to the ear, but the mute takes that harshness out and leaves that pleasant sound —that brass sound that isn't too brassy.

With octaves, the low note has a tendency to round off that high shrill note. When you play a high note on the guitar, it can be very obnoxious to the ear. But when you add the octave, it softens it up by becoming a compromise between the two, because you don't really hear either note, but rather something in between. It's like a marriage!

Octaves have been used in a variety of different lights since Montgomery first popularized them. They sound very good in the background, as a matter of fact. You can use octaves to add a soft backdrop behind singers or other solo instruments, where strings might be used. When you play them behind a singer, they add definition to the background music, as opposed to chords which leave the matter open of what the listeners might choose to hear. They can pick out any note in the chord to listen to, whichever note has meaning to them. But the octave eliminates that; it says this is the color I want, and this is what I want you to hear in the background, and this is what you're going to hear.

I use octaves intermittently wherever I hear a need for them. They're incidental within any given place. Some good examples would be "When Love Has Gone" from Body Talk, "No Sooner Said Than Done" off Bad Benson, and "So This Is Love" on Breezin'.

But with octaves you have to find your own way. Listen and learn as much as you can, but then put it to your own use. It's certainly worth putting a little time into, and I'm sure that when you get tired and run out of ideas playing single-line, you'll find freshness and comfort in the octaves

Dreamcatcher Events and Ibanez have announced Breezin' With the Stars – an immersive four-day event with George Benson.

Taking place 3-6 January 2025 at the Wigwam Resort in Phoenix, Arizona, guests can rub shoulders with guitar greats including Steve Lukather, Cory Wong, and Tommy Emmanuel, alongside Benson, in an intimate but relaxed environment.

In addition to the insightful chat with the one-time Beatle, GP talked shop with Macca's longtime six-string partners, Brian Ray and Rusty Anderson.

Asked if McCartney ever gave him insight into the inner workings of his world-changing creative relationship with John Lennon, Ray replied in the affirmative, revealing in the process just how absurdly prolific and natural their songwriting method was.

“I asked Paul if he wrote to a title, or a little melody, or a riff or something, and he said, ‘No. It was always lyrics, music, melody, and guitars all at once,’” Ray said.

Further elaborating on the speed at which the duo were able to produce (“You have to remember that the Beatles did a record every six months,” Ray emphasized), the guitarist said, “Paul said that in the more than 300 songs he and John wrote, he could only remember one time where they got stuck, and that was when they were writing 'Drive My Car.' They thought the title wasn’t working, but they liked the song. So they took a break, had some tea, and changed it.”

So, what exactly changed about the brilliant Rubber Soul opener during that time? That, Ray insisted, would remain a secret.

“I won’t tell you the lyric they tossed, because that’s Paul’s right to do that. I don’t want to be the guy who tells everybody what 'Drive My Car' was originally written as. And, you know, even with the rewrite they still finished the song at the end of the day!”

As hardcore Beatles fans know by now, the original lyrics Paul came up with were "You can buy me golden rings." McCartney had already employed a similar trope using “diamond rings” in 1964’s “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “If You’ve Got Trouble,” a 1965 Help!-era track the group had recorded but discarded (it appears on the Anthology 2 compilation). For that matter, Lennon had used it in 1964’s “I Feel Fine.”

As McCartney told Barry Miles in Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, “This is one of the songs where John and I came nearest to having a dry session. The lyrics I brought in were something to do with golden rings, which is always fatal.”

McCartney said that he presented it to Lennon, who was struggled to come up with a replacement. “So we had a break, maybe had a cigarette or a cup of tea, then we came back to it, and somehow it became 'drive my car' instead of 'golden rings,’” he explained.

Considering Miles' book was published in 1997 — a good seven years before Ray spoke to Guitar Player interview — he could have safely told us the story after all.

Over his two decades with McCartney — and many years before that as a go-to session player — Ray has built up a formidable reputation in his own right, even teaming up with Gibson in 2019 for a rare signature SG Junior electric guitar (another, more recent, recipient of a signature SG Junior being punk-pop star Yungblud.)

Leo and company did just that with the Telecaster Custom in 1959, a mere nine years after it was introduced as the Broadcaster. The Telecaster Custom featured a bound body and a then-new rosewood fingerboard. The next change came nearly a decade later when Fender lightened the load of heavier ash stocks with the Thinline model, a chambered Telecaster with an f-hole on the upper bout.

But the Telecaster Thinline would soon undergo significant revisions of its own.
In 1971, Fender’s owner, CBS, began to implement a series of major design changes that would impact its guitars, including the Tele Thinline. Midway through that year, a version of the guitar appeared bearing the company’s new Wide Range Humbucker pickups.

Designed by Seth Lover, the former Gibson engineer behind the humbucking pickup, the Wide Range was designed to sound characteristically Fender — bright, crisp and articulate — while being fuller and more powerful, and rejecting 60-cycle hum. With it, Fender could finally compete in the rock territory dominated by Gibson.

The Wide Range pickup even looked somewhat like the full-size humbucker Lover had developed for Gibson a decade earlier, although it was approximately 3/8 inches longer and   inch wider, and had its visible adjustable pole pieces in a three-and-three formation, in opposing rows.

Significantly, those threaded pole pieces were made from CuNiFe magnets,
an alloy of copper, nickel and ferrite. This blend of metals produced a magnetic material hard enough to cut threads into (something not possible with alnico), allowing for adjustable pole pieces. Simultaneously, it retained the Fender pickup-design archetype of positioning the magnetic poles within the pickup’s coils, rather than using bar magnets beneath the coils, feeding steel poles within, as in the Gibson archetype. Such construction was a big part of the Fender tone formula, helping to retain the maker’s signature twang, even in a humbucking pickup.

Following their 1971 debut on the Telecaster Thinline, the Wide Range pickups showed up the following year in the neck position of the Telecaster Custom, with a traditional single-coil Tele pickup in the bridge position. The Custom also gained a new four-control layout and toggle-style pickup selector switch, similar to Gibson guitars.

The move was clearly designed to appeal to the many blues, rock and jazz players who for years had been modifying their Teles by adding a Gibson humbucker in the neck position for a thicker, warmer tone. An entirely new Telecaster, the Deluxe, was released in early ’73 according to most accounts and featured the Custom’s switching array, Wide Range humbuckers in the neck and bridge positions, and an enlarged Strat-style headstock.

The ’74 Telecaster Thinline shown here displays all the key features and so-called innovations introduced with the model’s redesign in 1971. They include Fender’s then-new “bullet” headstock-positioned truss-rod adjustment nut, as well as the three-screw neck attachment with Micro-Neck-Adjust (a.k.a. Tilt Neck) neck-angle adjustment bolt, all of which were seen on the Stratocaster beginning partway through 1971.

Rather than the standard Telecaster’s three tone-enhancing steel bridge saddles, these models employed the same die-cast Mazak (a.k.a. Zamak) saddles used on the Strat. This pot-metal alloy of zinc, aluminum, magnesium and copper allowed cheaper and easier component fabrication, but many guitarists found it detrimental to the guitars’ sustain and resonance, even if the six individual saddles arguably allowed for more precise intonation adjustment.

Promoted as beneficial new features at the time, the three-bolt neck and bullet-head adjustment nut have, together, long been regarded as the most obvious outward demarcation point between the “good” early CBS Stratocasters and the inferior examples that followed. Most Telecaster fans have similar feelings about their preferred model. Still, these solid, versatile early humbucker-loaded Fenders now retain a certain cache with rock, blues and roots players.

While the quality of Fender guitars made in the ’70s in general tends to be derided, and occasionally with good reason, the second version of the Telecaster Thinline has a lot going for it. Despite being aimed at the rock guitar market, the guitar proved more appealing to blues, punk, grunge, alternative and indie-rock players in the decades that followed.

The list of major names who have wielded one or another of these Wide Range Humbucker–equipped Teles — Thinline, Custom and Deluxe included — is long and includes Tab Benoit, Carrie Brownstein, Keith Richards, Leroy “Sugarfoot” Bonner, Thom Yorke, Chris Shiflett and several others.

Contributing editor Fred Stuckey, who conducted the interview and wrote it up for the magazine, noted the irony of Mayall’s position in that first year of the new decade: “In the middle of 1969, while the rock world was spewing out countless copies of Eric Clapton and the Cream’s hard rock sound, Mayall dropped the organ and drums for the harp and guitar and a subdued, low-volume blues. He hired Jon Mark on acoustic guitar and Johnny Almond on flute, tenor and alto. The end product was a much lauded tour, two record albums — The Turning Point and Empty Rooms — and a hit single, ‘Room to Move.’

Mayall's restrained sound at the start of the decade revealed a more thoughtful approach to the blues and a propensity to continue evolving his music's sound and style. At the time of the interview, Mayall had released USA Union, on which he retained the format and music direction but changed up his band to include Harvey Mandel on guitar, Larry Taylor on bass, and Sugar Cane Harris on electric violin.

Stuckey found Mayall a willing interview subject — “choosing his words carefully and pausing to formulate his thoughts” — and noted his modesty: “By his own admission, Mayall lacks the technical mastery of the guitar shared so uncommonly by the musicians he has worked with in the past. But he plays with the unpretentious, spirited air of a man who knows his idiom. Mayall knows 12-bar blues as well as Renoir knew nineteenth century French impressionism. And Mayall, while not particularly a guitarist, has influenced blues guitarists as much as anyone else in music.” This interview has been edited for brevity.

How have you been?
Just fine. It is sort of strange that Guitar Player would want to interview me, because the magazine is usually reserved for people who play the guitar. I can hold one in my hands and pluck a few notes, but it’s very hit and miss. I have no knowledge of music, you know.

That doesn’t seem to bother your fans. How did you happen to get into the business?

I heard a lot of music through my father’s record collection. He was a guitar player, and most of his records were of people like Django Reinhardt. I started playing the piano and the guitar around the same time, around age 13.

You see, I’ve always had different bands on different occasions long before I went into London to do it with professional interest. I had a band in Manchester, and when the R&B boom hit London, I moved there. I formed a band of London musicians, and it was just the same as usual. You ferret around to see who is available, and if anybody knows anybody who plays such and such an instrument. You get in touch with the musicians, report to the gig, and start playing.

When did you do your first recording?

The first album I made wasn’t released in the United States. They might release it again at some later date, because I’m no longer with that label, and the usual trick is to release everything you’ve got. It was done with Decca about a year before we did the record with Clapton, which is generally thought of to be the first album in the United States.

The one with Decca was a loser. It sold a thousand copies over one year — five hundred the first six months and five hundred and two the second six months. It was a live recording done at a place called Klooks Kleek, which was one of the places where I used to work when I first came to London. It was called John Mayall Plays John Mayall Live at Klooks Kleek, a very ungainly title.

How do you explain a young Englishman’s interest in blues even before it was appreciated on any scale in the country of its origin?

I don’t try to explain that at all. Music knows no geographical boundaries. Records have always been the property of every country. It is through records that you come into contact with music.

Why is it that Europeans, and particularly Englishmen, picked up the blues while the bulk of Americans weren’t even aware of the tradition of that form of American music?

That was always the case, and that is probably why the whole blues revival as such seemed to come from England. We never had the direct contact with the music as it was being played. We only had the records. As a result, Europeans are much more into record collecting and the research behind records. There is just greater interest over there.

This is a big place, and you tend to miss things that are on your own doorstep. French radio in particular has always had a lot of programs on jazz. An illustration is the fact that bluesmen like Memphis Slim have ended up living in France, because they were better received in Europe, and they actually could get work there. American Black blues singers have gone over there to get a name and then bounced back over here.

I remember reading the liner notes of the Crusade album. You made a plea for greater recognition of Black blues artists.

Yeah. That was primarily based upon the situation in England at that time. A great many of the bluesmen were being missed even though there are a lot of blues fans in the country, but individually they felt they were a minority group. They didn’t feel that they were being acknowledged as an audience by radio stations or the papers. They didn’t feel they were a large enough audience to make their point.

That over-exaggerated, inflammatory stuff was put on the back deliberately to get them to write into the musical papers and ask to hear more about “so and so.” They did that and people started to wake up until it reached the point where Melody Maker had a blues page every week.

Do you think that circumstance has dealt a bad deal to American Black bluesmen?

You can say that. If you feel something for the music and your own particular favorites, you do tend to think they have had a bad deal. And a lot of them have.

But the thing I’ve learned is that you really can’t make anybody like someone. It’s a bit disheartening to realize that you can introduce somebody who you think is good, but if people won’t go to the clubs to support them and buy their records, even though they’ve had every chance, there is nothing you can do about it. What it means is that their music, their particular style, doesn’t appeal to as many people as you would like it to. You can’t just decide that people should like a particular guy; they just won’t. Everything really depends on the merits of the guy’s music.

Do you remember when black records were “race” records?

Oh yeah, up until the late '40s. You know the Presley era was really the start of the first black performers coming out — Little Richard, Fats Domino and the rest. You know that thing in part grew out of the Presley thing. He was influenced by Black records and Black artists and he even did their tunes, but people didn’t pay any attention to those records until the Presley thing.

Why is it that sometimes Black blues recordings are less exciting or less appealing than white, rock blues?

Because that in essence is what they do; that is them. There are exceptions like B.B. King, people who have a style of their own. But they themselves can limit their market if they don’t progress — if they don’t break away from doing the same old thing. Some of the Black blues players who have made it, say 10 or 15 years ago, play the same numbers that made them famous and think that doing that will make them a star forever. You have to change because the generations, the people who buy the records, turn over so fast.

Do you credit your survival in the business with the fact that you’ve been willing to change?

Probably. It’s part of my character anyway. I don’t really like to do the same thing all the time. Besides, I don’t really consider myself to be a part of the music industry in certain respects. I don’t go along with the way the music business is —all the jive, the hype, and the commercial aspect of the thing. I don’t regard myself as being a part of that. I can separate myself from it and think how meaningless it is.

The structure of the rock business stinks. But most of the performers in the business seem to like it that way, and fair enough. That’s good for them. I’m not exactly an unknown when I come onstage, but I sort of inwardly treat the whole thing like that — that they haven’t heard me, and I’ve got to prove myself onstage from scratch. If you do make a name, when you walk out onstage you get a lot of appreciation, and half of the time they don’t understand what it is they’re supposed to appreciate.

But you’re supposed to be good, and that’s that. It’s a help in my case because it gives me the confidence to try something new, knowing that it won’t hit them that cold.

How did you run across Eric Clapton?

I hadn’t heard of him before we got together. You see, all bands in London are known to each other, but perhaps not the individuals that play in the bands. The Yardbirds were more popular on the club circuit than I was. They came up with a hit record, "For Your Love," which put them on the front page and the top of the charts. But it wasn’t a blues record that did it. Eric was working with them, and I guess wanted to stick to blues playing. The Yardbirds weren’t blues musicians as far as he was concerned. He got fed up and walked out on a big money-making thing.

Around the same time I heard that Yardbird record, and on the other side was a title called "Got to Hurry," with guitar by Eric Clapton. I was looking for a more satisfying guitarist, so I got his telephone number, and rang him up, and asked him to join. He said yes, and that was it. He was with me for nearly a year.

You never made it to the States with Clapton, right?

Yeah, Peter Green was with me after Eric. The first time I came to this country was with Mick Taylor in 1968. The first time we played Winterland in San Francisco was with Albert King and Jimi Hendrix. The lineup of the band then was the same as on The Diary of a Band and Crusade albums, except without John McVie. What happened was that when we were over here for the first time, the Clapton album [1966's Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton] had just been released. There was a confusing time lapse of over a year. That album was released a year after he had left me, and he was already in the Cream by then. People who had heard of Cream then found about this other one. They bought it and probably became aware of me through Eric.

How do you feel about the Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton album?

I feel about it like I feel about all the other albums. They’re just on wax or whatever. They’re just a representation of what the band was at the time. I like to listen to all of them. They all have good stuff on them. They show how the musicians played that I worked with, which is what I enjoy, otherwise they wouldn’t have been in the band.

Had Clapton reached a high point during the Bluesbreakers days?
He had reached a high point in comparison to his Yardbirds stuff. But I don’t think it’s anybody’s right to say that he is better or worse than what he did afterwards. It’s a matter of opinion. By the time he was finished with me he wasn’t playing very well at all, because he didn’t feel like it. He wanted to do something else. After a year with me he had developed his style to a point where he wanted to go still further but in another direction. His style was different with me than it was with the Cream, because he was responding to different sounds. He was influenced by different people.

That applies to most every musician. If you put them in with different people, they sound different because they’re playing different. The course of everyone’s development needs that. Otherwise, they go stagnant. I think that it’s really nice that you can get a musician who can be really satisfying in one band, and then he can develop in another band. You can hear another side of him. All good musicians are like that.

What do you think of the Eric Clapton album [Clapton’s 1970 self-titled debut featuring Delaney & Bonnie and Friends]?

To me it sounds like a Delaney and Bonnie album. That’s not to downgrade them; they do some nice things on records. And it’s not really surprising since Blind Faith was working with them. Even though the album is in his name, it’s really not his whole thing coming out. It’s got somebody else’s thing superimposed on it. He’s got a little outfit on the road now. And that’s the first time he’s taken it on his head to throw out all the superstar categories, get a band together, and play gigs for small money just for the sake of playing in small clubs. It is really commendable.

Clapton made the transition to a hard rock blues sound.

At that time Cream was totally original, so it was really an accomplished thing. But then everybody started to copy it, so everything you heard after that was a Cream copy. He couldn’t stand all that, being written about and everything.

Why didn’t you get into a harder sound?
I don’t want to get my ears blasted. I want to hear my musicians; I want to hear what they play. If you can’t hear who you want to listen to onstage, you don’t ask him to turn up; you ask everyone else to turn down. That way you get a listenable level. Just say that I didn’t want to join in. I took the risk and went the other way.

How did you run across Peter Green?

Peter is very funny. By the time Eric left we were getting known; the Clapton cult as such had started. So there were a lot of prospective guitarists. Actually, Eric left twice, so that was sort of a complication. He got the wanderlust. He went off to Greece with some friends of his to play over there. I had to find another guitar player. So I found one [Jeff Kribbett], and we were playing the same clubs, and it was known that Eric wasn’t with us anymore. The new guitarist wasn’t nearly as good, and he didn’t have that extra thing to make him a great guitarist.

Peter, this cockney kid, kept coming down to all the gigs and saying, “Hey, what are you doing with him; I’m much better than he is. Why don’t you let me play guitar for you. Why, he’s no good at all.” He got really nasty about it, so finally, I let him sit in. Peter worked about three gigs with me, and Eric came back. That really made Peter mad; he was just getting into it. Eric stayed another six months, and during that time Peter was in a band with Mick Fleetwood and Rod Stewart.

When Eric left again, I went straight away to Peter. But he didn’t really want to do it, because it had fallen through before. But eventually he did join. He really came in for a lot of bad things. At gigs people would say things like, "Where’s Clapton?" He had to have a lot of guts and determination to stick it out. He knew he wasn’t as good as Clapton, but he could be, you know.

How did Green happen to go his separate way?

The same way that everybody else did. They decide they’ve learned all they could or developed as far as they could in that structure, and it gives them the inspiration to take it further.

At that point, you found your third phenomenal guitarist, Mick Taylor.

Yeah, as it turned out. But at the time it really isn’t like that. You pick somebody you think is okay, and you go play clubs, and nobody pays much attention at first. It’s only a later turn of events that recognizes the talent there. The name comes later, and then it seems phenomenal that you could pick this winner out, you know.

Mick took a lot longer to develop his style than Eric or Peter. Mick is different than the two of them. Peter’s character is very pushy and he’s determined to prove himself. Mick was always a lazy person, not to knock him; he was just an easier-going personality. He took a lot longer to’ reach his peak, but he turned out to be phenomenal. [Like Clapton and Green before him, Taylor played a Les Paul Standard.]

What was it that you listened for when you first heard those three guitar players?

I don’t really know. I just need a guitarist, and I ask someone to do it in all good faith, hoping that they’ll be what I hope they will be. You put them in this loose environment, a very free thing where there are no arrangements and everybody gets to settle in and explore their own thing. Obviously, when you’re playing something different every night and it’s open to do that, then whoever it is is going to develop if he’s got the potential.

Did you direct them at all? Did you tell them what to play?

No more than I direct the musicians with me today. They look upon me as the bandleader, and it’s my responsibility if it goes wrong. They don’t have it hanging over their heads that it’s got to be good. All they’ve got to be concerned with is their own instrument. They’ve got this guy who points to them and says, “Okay, you take it.” And when they get that signal, they can do what they want. Then I’ll nod to someone else, or we will end it, or I’ll start singing.

So I have the control to direct a very loose thing. If something good happens that’s unexpected, or not what I meant, then I let it go that way. It’s really a nice surprise. On the other hand, if something is going on that is a total bore or a disaster, even though the audience might be liking it, then you bring it to a quick finish.

There are no arrangements of the tunes at all?

Not really, no. Sometimes there’s a theme. Mainly they know the key that I call out, and the kind of beat that it is. The tunes are all on a 12-bar structure so there’s no problem there. It’s just a case of how to end it. It doesn’t really matter as long as you play and people hear genuine music coming out. I don’t think audiences are really that much concerned whether it collapses in a disaster or not, as long as they know that you know that it’s a disaster and make the best of it. You know, take it or leave it, and they laugh, and we laugh, and that’s it.

Like in a set the other night, they all came off the stage saying that they thought so and so was supposed to do this and that. What happened was that one of the numbers —a 12-bar sequence —had a middle bit that was all one chord. To get back to the progression again, somebody has to lead it in with the preceding four bars. I was nodding over to Harvey and Larry, and Harvey took it to mean that I wanted him to solo. So it never got out of it, and Harvey’s solo was really good. I thought it was fantastic and we’d keep it going a bit longer because the audience didn’t know it was supposed to end there. Nobody knew because it was good.

Things like that happen all the time. That’s the interesting thing about it. From a situation like that you learn. Something that sounded good you will use the next time where it hadn’t occurred to you before it happened. There are no patterns; it changes all the time.

How committed are you to the blues?

All I’m committed to is playing what I want to play and making sure that it is different. I try to force myself into new areas that are a challenge. Blues is the only thing I know, so it would have to be through that.

Do you have any musical training?

No. I wish I could play musical instruments with a bit of technical ability sometimes. But I don’t think it’s really important. I can’t change it; I couldn’t learn music, you know. It’s the best that I can do, and the spirit is there.

From what you said earlier, you don’t seem to have much faith in the taste of audiences.

Oh, I do. What I said about audiences was that they don’t realize how unrehearsed and how dangerous it all is. They assume that what they’re hearing has been worked on and arranged. But actually it isn’t. I just get on the phone to somebody, and say that we start work on such and such a date, and I’ll see you at the gig. That’s all it is.

What about you as a guitarist? You’ve been playing a Gibson Les Paul. Is that your favorite guitar?

Well, no. I didn’t choose it. The guitar I had before that was a Fender, and it went out of tune. So I told my road manager to get me a new one. So he got me a Les Paul, because he could get one cheap or something. I don’t know anything about those things.

You don’t worry about strings and all that?

Just as long as they’re not rusty. If they’re rusty and you do a slide up the neck, you’ve got a torn finger. I don’t really worry about instruments, because they’re just tools. I’m not proficient enough on them to think that matters. Stick an axe in me hand and I’ll see what I can do with it. It’s as simple as that.

Heavily inspired by ‘50s and ‘60s combo amps, the Spring King was an oversized box with a real spring reverb tank inside and a kick pad you could stomp to create all sorts of sproingy sonic chaos.

The only problem for most guitarists was the pedal's size — 10.5 by 7.5 by 3 inches — which made it difficult to place on crowded pedalboards, although its size and yellow enclosure made it a pretty easy target to hit on dark stages.

After a lengthy absence, the Spring King is back in a slim "post Ozempic"-sized enclosure that retains the true spring goodness and stomp-savvy wackiness of the original.

The pedal still features a real spring in its core, and controls for tweaking its tone and reverb length, but its kick pad and individual volume control for wet/dry mix have been lost in the downsizing process.

But rest assured, the Spring King can still be kicked, thanks to its rugged die-cast housing. It also features a true bypass footswitch and a small light that illuminates when the pedal is on.

It’s worth noting that the input and output jacks and the DC input for its nine-volt power supply are side-mounted. The only obvious place to kick, then, is the back of the enclosure, which ensures the Spring King will have a place at the player's front of the pedalboard.

As R.J. Ronquillo's demo of the pedal demonstrates, placing both dials at two o'clock offers a snappy and resonant surf-rock 'verb, with a long, natural tail when the reverb length is maxed.

The new Spring King costs $199, but as of this writing it's available only at Thomann and is still absent from Danelectro’s website.

With Fame, Music Store aims to produce a luxurious electric guitar with an economy price tag, and the Forum IV Modern seems designed to fit the bill. The guitar is loaded with premium features that include a GraphTech Resomax Tune-o-matic bridge with a Ghost piezo pickup system that augments a pair of coil-splitting Seymour Duncan humbuckers. Gotoh locking tuners adorn the shapely headstock, capping off an ebony fingerboard that features a winged 20th Anniversary inlay at the 12th fret.

All instruments in the Fame Forum IV Modern 20th Anniversary Series feature hand-selected premium burl poplar tops with unique grain and individual finish. Having viewed the guitar online, I was curious to see if it looked as cool in person as it did virtually, and I can confirm that it does. Removing it from the gig bag revealed a stunning contoured top that lived up to my expectations. Players can browse through the product variants at musicstore.com and choose the exact guitar they find most appealing by serial number.

This review unit was chosen for GP, and I couldn’t have made a better selection myself. Its poplar burl has got a planetary vibe, rippled blue and tan, almost like islands in an ocean, with streaks of clouds above. I’ve got a gang of stringed instruments hanging on my walls and must admit that it stands out as the fairest of them all. I showed it off at a respected recording studio and a backline company where folks see tons of guitars, and the Forum IV Modern struck everybody with its wow factor.

Players who have seen their share of solidbody electric guitars, including yours truly, will quickly notice the similarities between the Fame Forum IV and the hallmarks of a particular high-profile American manufacturer famous for its fancy double-cutaway designs. Some were quick to judge by comparison, but not everyone shared that opinion. One music biz veteran at the backline company said, “It looks like it has its own authority, to me. It looks like a beast!”

I plugged it into a Bogner amp, and it sounded beastly too as I ran some southern-style Dickey Betts licks. Gain tones were sweet and creamy from the pair of Duncans, which include an SH-2N Jazz in the neck position and an SH-4JB in the bridge. Power chords were robust, and single notes seemed to burst out like bubbles. You can feel the impressive body resonance and sustain even without amplification. With the guitar plugged into a Fender Deluxe tube combo at the studio, clean tones were strong and clear, and I got off entering slinky Strat territory via the coil tap.

Pulling the volume knob up to engage the Ghost piezo in the bridge saddles delivers even more pronounced clean pop with every pluck. You can blend in as much as you desire via the tone knob, which becomes a piezo volume with the Ghost system engaged. With the tone knob turned far left, the blend is at full piezo. I set it that way and tested the guitar through a Taylor Circa ’74 acoustic amp, achieving a respectable acoustic-electric tone. Unfortunately, the magnetic and piezo signals are summed — I know, because I tried to create a dual-amp situation with a stereo cable — so you’re limited to a single amp. But you probably won’t mind, given the myriad tones available.

Playability out of the bag was pretty good and it could be great given a few fine-tuning tweaks by a setup pro. The action was a bit high for my taste for fretted playing, particularly way up in the short rows on this 24-fret lead machine, but I loved it for slide licks. You can play a 12-bar blues in E all above the 12th fret, which is so nice. The neck is voluptuous, with a D profile, and while I normally prefer a smaller neck with more of a C shape, this one felt pretty good to me. The fret edges were nice and smooth all the way up and down the fretboard, which is made of firm, dark ebony. The Gotoh locking tuners did a fine job of homing in and securing the variety of tunings I tried out.

The bottom line is that Fame hit its mark. For about $1.3k, you get a beautifully crafted guitar capable of a broad tonal spectrum, with nice playability. The Forum IV Modern feels hearty and sturdy, but not too heavy in hand. The hurdles Fame faces are primarily about brand familiarity, the aforementioned similarity to another guitar maker and availability in America. Fame has no stateside retail distribution, so you must order from Music Store and pay about $50 for shipping overseas, which the website says takes five to 15 days — not too bad, all things considered. Though if you do have to phone customer service for any reason, bear in mind that you’ll be calling an overseas number.

In the end, what you get in the Fame Forum IV Modern 20th Anniversary is a beautiful beast with a carved top and a set neck for an attainable street price, and it sure seems like a sweet guitar from a brand celebrating 20 years in business. I wasn’t eager to ship it all the way back to Europe, but that was mainly because I truly dig the guitar, not because of the hassles of mailing it. I’d recommend taking a good look at the model online and reaching out to Fame with any questions that you have.

SPECIFICATIONS

Fame Forum IV Modern

CONTACT fame-guitars.de

PRICE $1,308 street with gig bag

NUT Black Tusq

NECK Sapele mahogany with D profile

FRETBOARD Ebony with “20 Years” winged inlay, 24.72” scale, 12” radius

FRETS 24

TUNERS Gotoh locking

BODY Khaya mahogany with poplar burl top

BRIDGE Graph Tech Resomax Tune-o-matic with Ghost piezo pickup system (bridge saddles) and active preamp

PICKUPS Seymour Duncan SH-2N Jazz (neck) and SH-4 JB (bridge)

FACTORY STRINGS D’Addario .010–.046 set

CONTROLS Three-way magnetic pickup selector, mini-switch coil-tap, volume knob with push/pull piezo activate, tone knob/piezo blend

WEIGHT 5.8 lbs (as tested)

BUILT Czech Republic

KUDOS Stunning looks, fine craftsmanship and broad tonal versatility at exceptional value

CONCERNS Overseas shipping and service may be a problem for some buyers. Summed magnetic and piezo signal means no splitting into dual electric/acoustic amps

Bernie Tormé and Nightranger's Brad Gillis temporarily filled in for the late Rhoads after Gary Moore had turned down an offer to join. When Rhoads' first permanent successor, Jake E. Lee, left after two albums, the rumor mill started up all over again.

At that point in time Chris Impellitteri was considered one of the fastest shredders in the world thanks to his neoclassical exploits in Impellitteri. In a new chat with Guitar World, he reveals he’d been approached by Ozzy’s wife and manager, Sharon, for the job. Recalling exact details proved hazy, but his guesses do align with the end of Lee’s reign in the band.

“Let me not exaggerate that, because it's been so many years,” Impellitteri says. “What I remember — and I don’t know if Jake was still in the band – is that I was living in an apartment and I had roommates.

“I came home one night from rehearsal, and my roommate goes, ‘Oh you've got to listen to this message,’ which said, ‘This is Sharon Osbourne. Me and Ozzy have been checking you out, and we really love your guitar playing. We want you to come down and audition.’”

Impellitteri had his own band at the time, and the Osbournes' interest in him demonstrates just how his talents outshone those of his group. “I got a lot of attention for it,” he recently told Guitar Player of his talents. “Sometimes that overshadowed the band. It's been a constant tug of war trying to bring the real fans back into focus that the band's not just me."

Although Impellitteri had just signed a record deal with Relativity Records, he auditioned anyway.

“I talked to Sharon, and I think Ozzy, probably three to five times,” he continues. “There was some back and forth. They basically just asked if I would come down and play with them.”

He says he played two or three songs with the band, and that they were “very interested” in the prospect of him joining. Ultimately, he missed out to a young, unknown guitarist by the name of Zakk Wylde.

But Impellitteri admits his own preference was for Ozzy's early solo albums with Rhoads and thinks he would have been the wrong choice for where the Osbourne was headed.

“I would have wanted to do something more like Blizzard of Ozz or Diary of a Madman,” he says, referring to the singer's first two solo albums. Impellitteri believes Zakk and the songs he wrote with the singer "elevated Ozzy.

"So imagine if you had this little brat kid like me, going, ‘No, no, no, we're going to do another Diary of a Madman,’" he said, laughing.

Wylde made his Ozzy debut with 1988's No Rest for the Wicked, and he says parts of that record were informed by the foundation Rhoads and Lee had laid down before them.

“I’m obviously aware of some of the great rhythm guitar parts that have been laid down in the past, like Jake E. Lee’s work on 'Bark at the Moon' and Randy Rhoads’ on 'Crazy Train,'” he says. “Those songs are part of my education as a guitarist.

“All the things I absorbed like a sponge found their way into my own playing. It’s not stealing or borrowing; it just becomes a part of your knowledge. I’m pouring little elements of a whole bunch of things into the mix and coming up with something new that I probably wouldn’t have created if I hadn’t spent the time working out what those great players had done.”

Meanwhile, Jake E. Lee, who is recovering after being shot multiple times near his Las Vegas home, has reflected on his time in Ozzy’s band and the comparisons that were naturally drawn between their playing styles.

“I don’t think it’s wrong for certain people to like my style of playing better. It’s about who speaks to you,” he had said, believing he and Rhoads excelled at different things.

Apparently, he's not done.

In a new Christmas message to his fans, the former Pink Floyd guitar virtuoso says there is more to come in 2025, a year he promises will be just as busy for him.

“We've had a very long, busy year making the album, bringing it out, going on tour, meeting me new people, new collaborators.," he says with a dulcimer in his lap. “One way or another we've wound up with a team of people that are an absolute joy to play with and to be with,” he continues, “and I'd like to do it again... starting now!”

With that, the prog legend treats us to a bit of music on the dulcimer, one of several intriguing instruments included on Luck and Strange, along with a Cümbüş guitar and his 1945 Martin D-18. .

“It's a very ancient instrument that came from Europe at some point,” Gilmour says of the dulcimer, which features on "The Piper’s Call." “It's been widely adopted in America — the Appalachian dulcimer. This one was made in Italy. An Italian friend of mine, his girlfriend's father made it for me. I've had it for over 40 years, but I don't really know how to play it.”

If its thin but rich tones sound familiar, that’s because Brian Jones played one on the Rolling Stones' track "Lady Jane," released in 1966. Jones had adopted the instrument after becoming fixated by American folksinger Richard Fariña.

In related news, Gilmour has just released a special live version of "The Piper’s Call." Recorded at the opening night show of the Luck and Strange tour in Brighton, it features his daughter Romany — whom he recently played a surprise duet with in a Brighton pub — on vocals.

To bring the song to life, Gilmour delved deep into his guitar collection. Its rhythms were tracked on a Stratocaster, and its solo comes from a Les Paul, while a Rickenbacker Frying Pan lap steel and an oddball 12-string are also featured.

Luck and Strange arrived in September shortly after Gilmour hyped it up as the best thing he’d written since Dark Side of the Moon. Thankfully, his words weren’t just hyperbole. The record finds the Pink Floyd man at his best and people seem to agree: It topped the charts in eight countries.

GIlmour told Guitar Player about recording "The Piper's Call" in his cover feature for the November issue,

“The song started with me strumming on a ukulele,” he says, “A Martin ’50s ukulele I think it is — and that’s the two chords that I swap over at the beginning. There’s a lot of Strat on there as well, going through my Zoom [multi-effects] processing box that I’ve used for 30 years; I can’t even remember what it’s called, but it’s got a lower octave and a vibrato, and that’s somewhere in there.

“The other thing in there is a 12-string fretless banjo made by a guy in Turkey. I bought it there in a little shop in a coastal village. It’s very tricky to play ‘cause it’s got 12 strings and it’s fretless. It’s got a very Eastern sound to it, which I love.”

Yet, despite his addiction to acquiring intriguing and rare pieces of gear, Gilmour isn't precious about most of the instruments owns. Instead, he's deemed them “the tools of my trade,” and says there are only three guitars he'd never sell. Gilmour’s once-mainstay Black Strat became the most expensive guitar sold at auction when it fetched just under $4 million in 2019.

Meanwhile, superstar producer Bob Ezrin has revealed Gilmour's little-known secret behind his enviable guitar tone, saying: “If you gave that guy a ukulele and a Pignose amp, he'd make it sound like the solo in Comfortably Numb.”

Rory’s brother and former manager, Dónal, had been charged with its safekeeping the guitarist's gear since his death in 1995. But before the collection left his family’s possession, Guitarist gave Joe Bonamassa the opportunity to play some of Rory's other prized electric guitars .

Lifelong Gallagher fan Bonamassa understands why the clamor around the auction was so laser-focused on that Strat — a 1961 model that Gallagher bought for £100 in 1963.

“A lot of the narrative is that Rory only used one guitar for his whole life," Bonamassa says. "He had a lot of guitars and a lot of amps. But he's most known for using the '61 Strat.”

Bonamassa's father introduced him to Gallagher's music through the guitarist's Live in Europe album. Joe recalled the impression the Irish rocker made on him.

“Here's this guy with long hair, a flannel shirt and he looked like he just came out of an auto factory playing some of the most gutbucket blues and rock you've ever heard.”

The beat-up Strat quickly became an extension of Gallagher, the “working class hero,” but, despite people’s affiliation between man and relic’d Strat, Bonamassa believes Gallagher saw his instruments as merely “tools…different instruments for different things.”

Another Strat, a ‘58 model with a maple fretboard, served as his go-to backup. Bonamassa explained what he believes is the very human reason Gallagher was drawn to the Fender model.

“The Strat is a desert island guitar," he says. "You can pretty much do anything with it. You can play the blues, rock, you can play anything." And of course Rory was inspired to play the Stratocaster because his hero Buddy Holly did. "We all buy our guitar heroes' guitars," Bonamassa says. "I'm no different, Rory was no different.

Bonamassa also commented on the guitar itself.

“I don't know where he got this,” he says. “They weren't growing on trees. He probably bought it on the road in America from a little music store for the low hundreds of dollars. They're $45,000 now.

“This one's pretty cool because the logo is still intact. On a lot of '58s the logo flaked off. They were changing the process a little bit.”

Quizzed on why Gallagher bounced between the two different models, Bonamassa pointed towards the maple fretboard of the '58.

“There's a considerable sound difference between an all-maple Strat like this, and '61 Strat which would have been a slab rosewood fingerboard, meaning that the back and is maple, and there's a large slab of Brazilian rosewood on the front. It gives it a warmer, more rock sound.

“The '58s tend to be more glassy. If you're a Strat connoisseur like Rory, you want a rosewood and a maple neck, depending on the song. I prefer a maple neck because of Buddy Guy.”

It seemed Rory preferred the ballsier sound of rosewood.

It's believed that the finish, pickups, knobs and pickup switch are original parts. Bonamassa theorizes that the one-ply pickguard would have been changed out in the '80s or '90s. Extensive wear on the rear of the guitar shows how much Gallagher gigged with it, while it also reveals that its tremolo has been blocked off. He was never known to use whammy bars.

Away from Strats, Gallagher also played his '59 Fender Esquire. Its body shows signs of heavy scarring made worse after it was crushed on an airport runway. That was one of the very few occasions the guitar ever left his side since he came to own it.

Esquires were a single-pickup sidekick to the Telecaster, but it was soon modded with an after-market neck pickup. He wasn't the only one to do so.

“If everyone in the '70s buying these for $100 knew these would be worth five figures, no one would modify them,” Bonamassa reflects. “These were tools, they weren't collectibles.”

The earliest photos of Gallagher playing the guitar date to 1971. The guitar’s neckplate features the crudely engraved legend “Property Of Buzz Harding, Greensburg Kansas," a hint to its pre-Gallagher origins.

Bonamassa notes that the guitar hasn't been touched since Gallagher died in 1995. “A guitar that sits for 30 years will need a bit of work," he offers. "It's up to the buyer whether they wanna keep Rory's strings on it — which have been on it an effing long time — and get it back up playing.

“I think the worst-case scenario is someone hangs it on their wall and brags to their rich buddies that they bought it. These things are tools and they should make music again.

“The action seems like it was set up for slide. Rory tended to like monster frets and these are really monster frets. It's a great, honest instrument.”

However, he says “the coolest thing” about the guitar is the strap that comes with it. “That's his DNA right there,” he smiles. “It's very cool to have the guitar strap and the tape he used [to hold it together].”

Reflecting on his time playing the two instruments, he says “it's clear these were tools to Rory,” and believes that “a good part of this collection will be back out there making music,” keeping the spirit of Rory Gallagher alive.

Rory’s ‘61 Strat sold for $1.16 million and has since been donated to the National Museum of Ireland. It came after a GoFundMe page — set up by the daughter of the man who sold Rory the guitar — and Irish politicians lobbied for it to stay in Ireland.

Entirely self-made, she is one of the first truly independent or “indie” artists, establishing her very own record label, Righteous Babe Records, in 1990, at only 19 years of age. Since then, she has released 20 studio albums on Righteous Babe, as well as those of over 30 other recording artists who are or have been on the label’s roster. Her most recent release is 2021’s Revolutionary Love, which features a string quartet, among a host of other instruments.

DiFranco considers folk icon Pete Seeger to be one of her primary mentors (he made a guest appearance on her 2012 album ¿Which Side Are You On?), and, like Seeger, she is outspoken politically, championing causes such as LGBTQ and abortion rights. A woman of many talents, in 2023, Ani authored her first children’s book, The Knowing, and, in February of 2024, made her Broadway debut as Persephone in Hadestown, which won multiple Tony awards in 2019, including Best Musical. But at her core, she is at once a unique and original guitarist and a songwriter of great depth. So, for this lesson, we’ll embark on a tuning journey through her songs, carefully curated so as to require as few tuning-peg turns as possible.

Some business first, though, as we’d be remiss not to talk about the guitarist’s unorthodox approach to playing fingerstyle. DiFranco strums or plucks her strings with her fingers, but to achieve her often aggressive style, she applies thick, plastic fingernails, made by Nailene. On occasion, one of her strummed onslaughts will cause one to fly off, so she reinforces them with black electrical tape, down to her second knuckle, to keep them securely in place. In the event that a nail does happen to fly off, it’ll conveniently stick to the tape, allowing her to quickly reapply it. Plus, it protects her skin from the beating it would take from how hard she often strums. (If you have an interest in following Ani's example, check out our informative guide to acrylic nails.)

Despite using all sorts of open and alternate tunings, Ani’s catalog is also chock full of songs in standard tuning, and that’s where we’ll begin. The guitarist began playing in bars and coffee shops in Buffalo, New York at just nine years old, accompanying her guitar teacher and mentor, Michael Meldrum; she quickly learned that it was no easy feat to attract the attention of bar patrons, who were there more to drink than to listen to an unknown folk singer. This led her to develop a powerful and dynamic style, with sudden bursts of volume, as if to say, “Hey! I’m over here!”

A perfect example of this is “Both Hands” from her debut album, Ani DiFranco (1990), which inspired Ex. 1. DiFranco is quite adept at plucking in such a way as to create a smooth and gradual uptick in volume, known as a crescendo. Before attempting the entire example, simply repeat the first bar, with the goal being to seamlessly move from soft (“p” for piano) to loud (“f” for forte) as you swell through the dynamic range. Once you’re ready to tackle the entire progression, the main challenge will be to quickly go from each chord’s final loud pluck — the accent mark indicates to pluck with just a little extra oomph — to immediately playing the next chord softly. Lastly, each chord should be plucked as staccato (short) as possible, by quickly resting your pick-hand fingers on the strings directly after each one is played.

Ani wrestles with her own identity in “In or Out,” from 1992’s Imperfectly. (She came out as bisexual in her 20s.) The song gives us an introduction to the guitarist’s signature aggressive strumming style, where her guitar is again in standard tuning, this time capo-ed at the 2nd fret. Ex. 2 brings the song to mind and employs two of her approaches to creating memorable guitar parts. The guitarist will often move a single chord shape around the neck, adjusting the fingering to stay in key or add colorful notes. These shapes often include a host of jangly open strings, creating a swirling sonic landscape that lends a welcome fullness, especially when playing solo, which the guitarist often does.

Keeping your pick-hand relaxed, strum with the tips of your fingers. You need not apply Ani’s aforementioned fake nails, but they do facilitate a more percussive attack. This effect is especially noticeable on beat 2 of each bar; deaden the strings with your fret hand (indicated with X’s), striking them with gusto, and giving the illusion of the sharp attack of a snare drum. DiFranco frequently plays through an amplifier (more on this later), and this effect is made extra impactful by using some reverb. The example ends with some aggressive Ani-style strumming, so hit those accented beats hard! Lastly, note the indicated strum pattern.

Now that we’ve gotten a feel for the guitarist’s playing style, let’s begin to explore her creativity with tunings. One often thinks of tuning strings down, but tuning them up is also a fine option. (One just has to be mindful of string breakage; if tuning up more than roughly a whole step, lighter gauge strings are recommended.) For the title track to 1995’s Not a Pretty Girl, DiFranco does both, tuning her 5th string up to B, her 4th string down to that very same pitch and her 1st string down to D, resulting in what could be called “open Em7 tuning” (E, B, B, G, B, D).

Ex. 3 is reminiscent of this ballad. The guitarist finds a chord shape that works well in the tuning, moving it around the neck (again with slight variations). Notice the rasquedo markings on beat 3 of each bar; in this case, it means to strike the strings by fanning your fingers out one at a time to create an arpeggiated effect, as heard in the Spanish flamenco guitar style. Begin with your index finger or pinky first, whichever is more comfortable. Songwriters like Ani often employ these tunings to discover new chord voicings with note combinations that would be difficult, if not impossible, to play in standard tuning. This often results in chord shapes that are unique, but still as comfortable to play on the fretboard as the familiar standard-tuned variety. Note how this particular tuning allows for unisons in bars 1 (beat 1) and 4 (beat 3) and how they create a hypnotic, droning effect. Strum with your nails as before; play the single notes with your thumb (indicated with “p”).

“Independence Day” from 1998’s Little Plastic Castles explores themes of love, war and the nature of relationships. Ex. 4 is along the lines of a brief interlude in the song, and features some nifty hammer-ons and finger slides. The tuning is just a minor alteration from the previous one, with the 3rd string lowered to F# and the 1st raised back to E. Ringing open strings support the low fretted notes, evoking a dreamy vibe.

Ex. 5 is inspired by “Blood in the Boardroom,” from 1993’s Puddle Dive, in which Ani narrates the thoughts of a woman getting her period in the midst of a male-dominated business meeting. In DADGAD tuning, she forthrightly strums big power chords and sus2 voicings. Notice in the example how adding the sus2 couldn’t be more convenient, as it simply requires fretting one additional note; making this change would be awkward as part of a barre chord in standard tuning. Plus, DADGAD tuning allows for power chords comprising all six strings, sounding open and atmospheric, which is again of great advantage when playing solo.

Let’s take a quick break to explore DiFranco’s gear. She mainly plays a variety of Alvarez guitars (including a baritone), but also has an assortment of others that includes an old Martin D-28. In the studio and on stage, she mic’s her guitar, mixing it with a direct signal — but there’s more: She currently achieves her variety of acoustic tones by employing two Magnatone Twilighter amplifiers from the ’60s, which are no longer made. One is set for an overdriven tone, while the other is cleaner, often with tremolo added. Ultimately, she mixes the mic’d and direct signals with the two amp tones to achieve the sound she desires.The guitarist summons some intriguing tones, an example of which can be heard in her 2017 NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert, available on YouTube.

Ex. 6 is not unlike DeFranco’s lovely intro to “Even More,” from 2017’s Binary, in which she varies DADGAD tuning ever so slightly by lowering the 1st string to C (low to high: D, A, D, G, A, C). Open-string-based hammer-ons and pull-offs sound more curiously melodic as they climb up the neck, mixing with the bass notes and an open G-string drone. The harmonics in the last bar, beautifully dissonant, offer another feature of altered tunings, as this combination of natural harmonics would be virtually impossible to play in standard.

In “Two Little Girls,” from Little Plastic Castles, DiFranco tells the story of two friends who first meet as teenagers. Here, she uses a different variation of DADGAD, this time with the 4th string lowered to C (D, A, C, G, A, D), and don’t forget to tune your 1st string back up to D! The guitarist employs a variation of Carter-style picking, a type of playing named for Maybelle Carter, who introduced it as a member of the Carter Family band in the 1920s. In this style, the featured melody is played on the guitar’s lower strings with accompaniment above, instead of the usual other way around. In Ex. 7, reminiscent of the song’s intro, notice that all of the notes on the 5th string are to be fretted with your middle finger, as indicated below the tab.

Our final destination is a lush, low tuning (C, G, C, G, C, D). The previous tuning is altered by lowering the 6th string even further to C and the 5th string to G, then tuning the 2nd string up to C. Ex. 8 is inspired by “Falling Is Like This,” from 1994’s Out of Range, a song about balancing the joy of finding new love with the poignant awareness of its possible demise. Here, DiFranco combines some of the approaches she used above; octave hammer-ons and finger slides are juxtaposed with droning open strings, plucked in a descending pattern. The overall result has an ethereal quality, evoking both hope and despair.

The songs DiFranco mines from her cornucopia of tunings often blossom with airy voicings, suspended chords and harmonically-nondescript but rich, colorful soundscapes; the tunings covered in this lesson are a mere introduction to the palette of colors she creatively draws upon for her emotive songwriting. DIY musicians of all sorts who have followed her owe a warm debt of gratitude to this uncommon and innovative artist.

While guitars may have had a diminishing presence in the charts in recent decades, some of those best-selling artists are starting to buck that trend and bring guitar solos back to the ears of the masses.

Rodrigo has been playing a special purple version of St Vincent's Ernie Ball Music Man signature guitar, tuned to drop D, on her Guts shows. “We’re all playing power chords and screaming,” she says, citing bands like Hole and L7 as major inspirations.

Roan's lead guitarist Devon Eisenbarger, meanwhile, has spoken of the “band vibe” that her live show delivers, with plenty of opportunities to shred each night.

Rodrigo and Roan's latest albums — Guts and The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, respectively — were produced by Grammy-nominated producer Dan Nigro, who started out as guitarist for the indie band As Tall as Lions. But he never pushed solos onto the singers — they wanted them outright.

“My brain is like, ‘Guitar solos are dated because I listen to Metallica, and Metallica's guitar solos are from the ’80s,' ” Nigro tells Rolling Stone’s Brian Hiatt.

“That's why I love working with Chappell and love working with Olivia, because their reference points are always current because of their age. And so I'm always learning.”

The pop-punk undercurrent of Rodrigo's music lends itself quite naturally to solos. The fuzzed-out licks of her song "Bad Idea Right?" — which gets some DigiTech Whammy love on its live version — is just one such example.

But it's a more surprising facet of Roan's '80s synth-pop.

“I remember when she heard the part after the bridge, she was like, ‘No, I want a guitar solo,’ " Nigro says of "Pink Pony Club." He considered her new direction telling, since earlier versions of the song had been more synth heavy in that section.

“I went in, worked on it and sent her a version,” he continues. “She was like, ‘It needs to be more melodic.’ ”

Reconvening with Lo Moon guitarist Sam Stewart, who plays guitar across the record, they “workshopped what you hear now,” which is a Neal Schon–esque, chorus-tinted figure with echoes of Don't Stop Believing.

“I think it was a second pass that we made it super melodic,” he remembers, “and she loved it.”

Eisenbarger says that, onstage, guitars are even more prominent. “I attribute a lot of that to her music director, Heather Baker, who's a kick-ass guitar player," she says. "She added guitar parts where there weren’t any on the albums. It’s been really fun to have guitar actually be prominent.”

Rodrigo's live band, meanwhile, is made entirely of women and nonbinary musicians, and they were assembled to put on a rock show.

“I grew up loving rock music,” she told Rolling Stone. “I love girl rock bands and riot grrrl bands. I loved Hole, Sleater-Kinney, L7, Babes in Toyland. I was really inspired by them, and I think that’s why I wanted to have an all-girl band up onstage.”

Granted, neither artist has quite gone into shred-fest territory yet, but with more than 870 million Spotify streams between those two songs alone, augmented by guitar-heavy live shows, it could turn the tides on the fate of guitars in popular music.

And with Rogrigo championing rock music, and exposing her fans to guitar bands — she even had The Breeders support her for 10 dates of the Guts tour — the future of the guitar in mainstream music just got a lot brighter.

By the time BTO settled in to work on Not Fragile in mid 1974, the group had two albums under its belt and a pair of hits with “Let It Ride” and “Takin’ Care of Business.” The band had been formed by the former Guess Who guitarist and his brothers — guitarist Tim and drummer Robbie — with bassist C.F. Turner in 1973. By 1974, Tim had left, replaced by Blair Thornton. Given that both of BTO's earlier hits had come from their previous album, their label, Mercury Records, had high expectations for Not Fragile.

But throughout the album’s creation, “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” was nothing more than “a work song,” as Bachman puts it.

“I was trying to write something that had a nice, quiet, jangly verse and then a big, powerful chorus,” he says. “It had a powerful intro where you had a rhythm guitar, then it would quiet down so that you say something lyrically and tell a story, and then you’d get to the big hook. I’d kick in the Big Muff fuzz and play the heavy chorus.”

As the group’s frontman and producer, Bachman was a busy man in the studio. While the group played through the song’s hook, he milled about the room, adjusting mics.

“I was the producer, so I got the band playing,” he says. “And while that was going on I moved the bass mic, changed the snare mic and got the sounds together.”

But because the track wasn’t anything more than a work in progress, Bachman didn’t sweat the details. Listen closely to the guitar on the song’s chorus and you’ll hear it for yourself. “The guitar isn’t even in tune on that song,” Bachman says. “I hadn't even tuned it yet. But we liked the sound.”

That guitar was none other than Bachman's orange-finish 1957 Gretsch 6120, the electric guitar featured on classic Guess Who albums and hit singles, including “American Woman,” and on BTO cuts like “Let It Ride,” “Roll On Down the Highway” and “Takin’ Care of Business." Stolen in 1976, the guitar was found after an extensive hunt and returned to Bachman in 2022.

As for the lyrics, Bachman didn’t have anything. Not yet, anyway. But he had an idea. “Growing up, I was the oldest brother of four boys,” he says. “We teased each other all the time. So I wanted to make it an inside joke with them”

Specifically, Bachman chose his brother Gary to be the butt of the joke. As he’s explained elsewhere, his brother had a stutter when he was growing up. “I said, ‘I think I'm gonna stutter over this and sing anything I can think of.' I figured I'd mix one copy and send it off to my brothers,” he says. “It’s the ultimate tease, because even though we were grown up and in our 30s, we were still pulling rank on each other.”

Bachman's finished lyrics tell the tale of a “devil woman” who steals away the heart of the young, inexperienced narrator and teaches him “something you never will forget.” The stutter he affected when singing it only served to reinforce the victim’s tongue-tied state of mind.

Given that the song was intended as a joke, “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” was nowhere to be found in the running order for Not Fragile when BTO presented it to Charlie Fach, the former vice president of A&R for Mercury Records. At that point, the album had just eight songs.

“So we play him the songs,” Bachman explains, “and he says, ‘That's a really great album. I like it, but I don't hear a single to follow "Let It Ride" and "Takin' Care of Business." ’

“Then the engineer, Mark Smith, says, ‘Want to play him that work track?’

“I said, ‘No, no. No way!’ And Charlie goes, ‘There's another track?’ ”

By that point Bachman had little choice but to play him “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.”

“And he says, ‘This is phenomenal! There's nothing like this on the radio. It's cute. It's unique. Let's go with it!’

“I said, ‘But it doesn't fit. We’ve got four songs on each side, and if you have too many, you can’t get the record loud enough.’ ” At the time, it was common for an album to have roughly 20 or so minutes of music per side to avoid groove cramming, which reduces audio fidelity.

“So he says, ‘Take the four longest songs and put 'em on one side, and then we'll squeeze this on and make it all fit.’ ”

Bachman has said elsewhere that he agreed to include “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” only if he could re-do the vocals without the stutter, as he was certain no one would appreciate the “in joke.” Reportedly the label hated the revision and insisted on releasing it with the original vocals.

Still, it wasn’t as easy as that. The song need some sweetening on the intro and breaks after each chorus to add a little melodic interest. “I was mixing the song at Sound City in Van Nuys,” Bachman explains, “when I got the idea to put that guitar line on the intro and in-between the chorus and verse. But I wanted it to sound different, so I ran my guitar through a Leslie speaker and put some echo on it. And that’s how we got the song onto the second side of the album.”

Mercury certainly heard a hit in the track, and the label wasn't wrong. Released as a single in September 1974, “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” got a response unlike anything the band had previously received. The song hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart — a first and only achievement for BTO — and became the group’s first of two number-one’s in their home country of Canada. It topped the charts in Germany, New Zealand and South Africa, among other countries, and reached number two in the U.K., giving the band unprecedented exposure outside of North America.

“It sold over a million copies and went to number one in 22 countries,” Bachman says. “I was baffled by the whole thing.”

Bachman was even more surprised when the Stuttering Foundation of America named it the top stuttering song of all time in 2011, beating out the Who’s “My Generation,” David Bowie’s “Changes” and Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets.” As the foundation explained, the fact that the song was about a real person — and that Gary went on to overcome stuttering with speech therapy — made all the difference. More importantly, the agency said every time Bachman told the story in interviews, the Stuttering Foundation received a burst of new inquiries from people asking about speech therapy.

At the end of the day, Bachman has no regrets about how his joke turned out. “I’ve even got a big, framed certificate from the Stuttering Foundation," he says, "calling it the best stuttering song of all time."

A gift card is an ideal solution for the recipient who is a little too particular about their music gear. Going down this route takes all the guesswork out of buying a gift, allowing your loved one to choose exactly what they wanted in the first place – and they have plenty to choose from on the Fender site.  

It's worth noting that Fender is currently running multiple sales this holiday season, so it's never been more affordable to bag one of these iconic instruments. For a limited time, you'll find $200 off the American Professional II range, $150 off Vintera II and $100 off select Player Plus guitars. 

Fifty years to the day after they first opened on October 15th, 1974, Taylor unveiled the retrospective Legacy Collection with three models inspired by Taylor's original rosewood and spruce 800 Series: the Dreadnought Legacy 810e, Jumbo Legacy 815e, and 12-string Jumbo Legacy 855e; plus two additional models honoring Bob Taylor's iconic Grand Auditorium body style: the rosewood/cedar Legacy 714ce and the mahogany/cedar Legacy 514ce on review here.

The first three harken back to Taylor’s earliest guitars. The Grand Auditoriums pay homage to the body style Taylor introduced on its 20th anniversary in 1994 and became the company flagship. I simply had to review a Legacy 514ce because I’ve got more experience playing a Taylor 514ce than any other acoustic.

Flash back to the fall of 2008 when the United States was heading into a major recession, and I had to shelve plans to have a custom acoustic guitar built. Frets editorship at GP was still far off in the future, and I was on the hunt for a special deal. A friend at an insurance company called to report a curious case where a reverend at a church had reported a guitar stolen. He found it after the claim was settled with a replacement, and the insurance company was holding an internal auction for the recovered original. I made a bid sight unseen for what turned out to be a 1998 Taylor 514ce, which became my Christmas miracle.

The Grand Auditorium body was perfect for me for the same reasons as so many players. Here was an acoustic guitar that had exceptional playability with a cutaway and an onboard Fishman dual-element electronic system that made it particularly stageworthy. It was exactly the kind of acoustic a Stratocaster player could bring to a gig and feel comfortable on mixing a few folky tunes into an otherwise electric set.

I eventually came to develop a real appreciation for the unique wood combination of mahogany back and sides with a cedar top. This guitar sounded a bit warmer than most Taylors featuring spruce tops and other woods for the back and sides. Even as I became Frets Editor in 2016 and went on to evaluate tons of acoustics including myriad modern Taylors, there was something special about that old “Reverend,” which has remained a primary stage and studio axe.

All the while, Taylor has been tweaking the 514ce. Powers redesigned it with V-Class bracing in 2018. Another interesting change happened in 2022 when Taylor re-designed the 500 Series with a new, more sustainable tonewood — Urban Ironbark — replacing mahogany, and a torrefied Sitka spruce top replacing western red cedar. The 514ce had evolved into a different beast. I reviewed it in the Holiday 2022 issue noting that it sounded better in many ways, but also simply different than the classic mahogany-and-cedar guitar of yore. So it makes sense that of all the Grand Auditoriums to be considered for Legacy treatment, the 514ce would be chosen.

According to Taylor, “These retrospective models reflect the full scope of our history by blending foundational design elements with key developments along the way.” The first 100 guitars of each Legacy model built feature an interior label personally signed by Taylor founders Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug, which was nice to notice when taking the Legacy 514ce out of its brown hardshell case.

My first reaction was sheer joy. It was almost like meeting my wife again for the first time. There she was, looking as beautiful as I remembered but had almost forgotten after nearly two decades going everywhere together from the beach to the stage. There’s something special about a glossy natural finish on a fine piece of western red cedar that appears slightly unusual, yet familiar and classy. Golden hardware on the headstock and a three-ring green abalone rosette add the right amount of elegance without being obnoxious. A faux tortoiseshell binding with just a thin white strip does a nice job bringing the top with its ebony bridge and white Micarta saddle together with back and sides made of solid neo-tropical mahogany.

The neck profile feels slightly different, as it’s made to modern Taylor specs “designed to optimize playability and allow for easy micro adjustability.” Even as used to the old neck as I am, which pre-dates the modern Taylor neck, I’d say that the new one indeed plays a bit better, and the difference in having fabulous new frets and wonderfully-not wonky tuners is huge. There is some weird way in which the old neck seems to deliver the fretboard up on a platform that I appreciate. It seems to accommodate an aggressive attack and deliver individual notes with distinct projection, but the Legacy offers similar stability with greater nuance, dynamic range, resonance and sustain.

The sound of the Legacy is very similar to my “classic” 514ce. I’d say it’s even more like an original 514ce than the current 514ce Urban Ironbark with its different woods and bracing. The Legacy 514ce features good old-fashioned X bracing along with what Taylor calls a “relief rout.” It’s got a generally more traditional tone that’s also a bit warmer and softer than most Taylors because of the mahogany-and-cedar combination that is so familiar to fans of the classic 500 Series. The rap on red cedar is often that it’s liable to give in under an aggressive attack because of its softness, but in my experience it holds up just fine, and it can actually take quite a beating. And I find that the coupling with mahogany yields great balance with plenty of articulation.

If I had to summarize the comparison of these two 514s head to head, I’d say the classic one has a more fundamentally focused and robust tone whereas the Legacy 514ce sounds a bit more open, responsive to a lighter touch, and has some of modern Taylor’s more harmonically complex sound, even if it’s not all the way to the ultra high-fidelity, holistically tuned tone of a V-Class design.

Regarding the amplified tone, the main thing I noticed about the top side was the lack of old-fashioned preamp controls. Of course, Taylor updated the vintage Fishman Prefix found on my classic 514ce, but interestingly, not with its Expression System 2. In this case, a simple L.R. Baggs Element VTC system consists of an undersaddle piezo with flywheel controls for volume and tone tucked away in the upper lip of the sound hole. So not only is there no huge preamp panel built into the upper side — there’s nothing at all.

And while it took a while for me to get used to not having the many controls of the old Fishman preamp at my fingertips, I found the base sound of the Baggs with the tone control set dead in the middle to respectfully represent the acoustic hallmarks of the instrument.

The Legacy 514ce embodies this model’s all-purpose nature, both sonically and in terms of playability. This Grand Auditorium with its Venetian cutaway accommodates all sorts of attacks from delicate fingerpicking to precision flatpicking, and it does well with percussive playing too. All in all, this extremely versatile instrument can accommodate pretty much any style. I’d recommend the Legacy 514ce to any fan of traditional Taylor tone, and pretty much any player looking for a flexible acoustic-electric instrument. Kudos to Taylor for honoring a Bob Taylor classic in the 500 Series with a faithful recreation in the form of the Legacy 514ce.

SPECIFICATIONS

Legacy 514ce

CONTACT taylorguitars.com

PRICE $3,399 street, hardshell case included

NUT WIDTH 1.75", white Tusq

NECK Neo-tropical mahogany, satin finish, mother-of-pearl small diamond inlays

FRETBOARD West African ebony, 25.5" scale

FRETS 20

TUNERS Taylor gold plated with gold buttons

BODY Solid neo-tropical mahogany back & sides, solid western red cedar top (X-bracing with relief rout)

BRIDGE West African ebony with compensated white Micarta saddle

ELECTRONICS L.R. Baggs Element VTC with volume and treble controls mounted in sound hole

POWER 9V battery pack

FACTORY STRINGS D’Addario XS Coated Phosphor Bronze Light gauges .012 - .053

WEIGHT 4.3 lbs (as tested)

BUILT USA

KUDOS Ideal all-purpose workhorse built according to Bob Taylor’ original design with great playability and uniquely warm-yet-articulate tone. A consummate classic Taylor Grand Auditorium

CONCERNS None