Carol Kaye’s bass lines have graced countless iconic albums and singles, TV themes and film soundtracks of the 1960s and early 1970s. Her work can be heard on classic tracks running the gamut from Sonny & Cher’s “The Beat Goes On” and the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” to “River Deep – Mountain High” by Ike & Tina Turner and Joe Cocker’s “Feelin’ Alright.”

With more than 10,000 recordings to her credit, Kaye is considered the most recorded bass guitar player of all time, but she actually started out as a session guitarist in the late 1950s. That’s her playing rhythm guitar on Ritchie Valens’ 1958 classic “La Bamba.” She also played electric guitar on the Beach Boys hits “Surfing’ U.S.A.” and “California Girls.”

In 1963 though, fate stepped in and forever changed her career trajectory.

“During the surf-rock craze, it was increasingly difficult to even like to play guitar on those dates,” she recalls. “Unlike the earlier sessions, it was not fun.

“So late in 1963, when a bass player didn't show up at Capitol Records, I was elected to play someone's Fender Precision. All of a sudden, it was fun to play music again, and I knew then that by playing and creating bass parts I could do studio work and be happy, and take care of my family.”

A combination of simplicity and ingenuity lay at the heart of Kaye’s distinctive bass tone.

“I only played with a hard pick but could quickly turn my tone knobs to simulate either a thick ‘fingers’ sound or a clicky high-end, like on the Nancy Sinatra dates,” she explains. “My pick-style was creating big waves in the recording industry in L.A., and suddenly all the producers had to have me. They loved my sounds and the funky parts I could create.”

Kaye also became an esteemed member of L.A.’s famed Wrecking Crew. (Notably, she chose not to be honored when the Crew was inducted in the Rock Hall last year.) The group of go-to session musicians was pivotal to forging Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound productions.

“Phil was fun and good to work for back in the ’60s, he paid us all well,” Kaye recalled of working with Spector. “He was a genius at sounds, and innovated so many things. He put extra mikes on the drums and guitars and was the first to use headphones for all the studio musicians in the studios.”

Looking back over her career Kaye recalls one memorable session in 1973 for Barbra Streisand’s hit single — and signature song — “The Way We Were,” the title track to her film and album of the same name. The date illustrates the importance of Kaye’s role in any session she was hired for.

As she recalls, the session for the December 1973 recording was huge. It included both a band and full orchestra, with Streisand herself singing live.

“For the first time in years, you saw everybody you had been recording with. All the string players, horn players were there, and it was fantastic to all play together in that large studio.”

But Kaye had no room to develop her own bass lines.

“Marvin Hamlisch, the songwriter, didn't want me to change any part of his written-out bass line in his arrangement,” she reveals.

As the session got underway, it was clear the song had legs.

“You knew it was going to be a biggie hit,” Kaye says.

But as the hours dragged on, nothing good was coming of it.

“Streisand, being a top pro, did about 33 straight takes,” the bassist recalls. “Nothing was wrong; we just hadn't hit that ‘hair-raising’ hit-take yet. The tune was sort of losing its potency.”

Kaye decided to try something different.

“I thought, To heck with playing the part as it was written. I just started playing. I was inventing on the bass.”

Drummer Paul Humphrey glanced over at Kaye.

“He smiled and changed his drum part too,” she recalls.

“And boom! The take came to life.

"I remember looking over at the booth where Barbra was, and she was holding a long note, while I was filling with arpeggios on the bass part, our eyes met and it was electricity. You knew this was the take. Man, was that fun.”

That was as close as Kaye got to Streisand.

“I wanted to meet her,” she says, “but the whole orchestra — probably 50 to 60 people — surrounded her.”

Besides, Kaye — always the most popular session bassist — had an early morning film call.

“I had to leave,” she says, “but that was a special date. A nice date with good feeling."

Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck were close friends and briefly shared the stage in the Yardbirds. But as Page recently revealed, his role in getting Beck into the band resulted in a special gift from his fellow guitarist — one that would remain with him through one of the most important chapters of his career.

The story goes back to 1965, when Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds to join John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Clapton recommended Page as his replacement, but Page, then barely 21 and already making a name for himself as a session guitarist in London, turned the opportunity down. Instead, he suggested Beck for the job.

It proved to be an inspired recommendation. Beck joined the Yardbirds and quickly began pushing the band into more adventurous territory, helping establish them as one of the most innovative groups on the British rock scene.

Beck evidently didn't forget who had put his name forward. After the Yardbirds signed a new record deal, he paid Page a visit at his parents’ home in Epsom — arriving in a newly purchased 1963 Corvette Stingray with an electric guitar in hand.

“I was still living with my parents at the time in Epsom. And I heard this car come roaring up,” Page recalls in Fender’s new documentary, The Fender Telecaster: The One That Started It All.

“I looked out the window and I saw this blue Stingray outside… and Jeff’s coming out and he’s holding this guitar. [I thought] ‘Oh, he’s come to have a play.’

“He knocked on the door and explained that [the Yardbirds] had just done a new deal and he bought the Stingray with it. Then he said, ‘Here, this is yours’ and gave me his 1959 Telecaster. He said, ‘This is yours for getting me in the Yardbirds.’ Well, obviously, I was really moved, you know, because there was a lot of love in that gesture of giving it to me.”

The 1959 Telecaster had already played a part in Beck’s early career. He had used it with the Deltones after borrowing it from bandmate John Owen, before moving on to the 1954 Fender Esquire that became his primary guitar. During his time in the Yardbirds, the Telecaster served as a backup and alternative to the Esquire.

By the time Beck handed it to Page, he had moved on to other guitars, making the Telecaster a particularly generous gift for a young British guitarist at a time when Fender instruments were difficult to come by in the U.K.

Page used the guitar throughout his time with the Yardbirds. Then, in 1968, it followed him into the next chapter of his career when the Yardbirds dissolved and he formed the New Yardbirds with John Paul Jones, John Bonham and Robert Plant.

By then he had customized it by adding round mirrors to the body, to reflect light back at the audience. But he soon stripped the finish off the guitar and painted it himself, with a psychedelic design.

“I painted it in one go over the course of an evening, finishing it the next day,” Page explained. “The pattern took on the imagery of a dragon. I was quite happy with the way it ended up. Now it was the Dragoncaster.”

The New Yardbirds soon became Led Zeppelin, and the Telecaster remained an important part of Page’s early work with the band.

“I played it on the last Yardbirds recordings at the Anderson Theater in New York and on Led Zeppelin,” Page says. “Once it was created and painted it became like the legendary Excalibur as it traveled from the Yardbirds to Led Zeppelin.”

Ry Cooder stands as one of the most influential and idiosyncratic guitarists in American music. He’s a restless stylist whose work has reshaped how roots traditions are understood and applied in a modern context.

Cooder emerged in the late 1960s as a prodigiously knowledgeable student of blues, folk, country and early rock and roll. Although he wasn’t widely known among the record-buying public, he was in demand as a session guitarist, which is how he came to work with the Rolling Stones in 1969. Keith Richards has long credited Cooder’s open tunings and feel for American vernacular styles as a formative influence on the Rolling Stones’ turn toward roots-based songwriting in the late ’60s and early ’70s.

Beyond his impact on fellow electric and acoustic guitarists, Cooder’s own career defies easy categorization. His early solo albums reimagined traditional material with scholarly rigor and emotional immediacy, while his session work made him a first-call collaborator for artists ranging from Captain Beefheart to Randy Newman. In later decades, he expanded his scope further, becoming an acclaimed film composer and a cultural bridge-builder through projects such as Buena Vista Social Club, which helped bring Cuban music to a global audience.

As he explained to Guitar Player in an interview that ran in our November 1993 issue, his introduction to guitar came almost as an act of grace following a devastating childhood accident.

“When I was about four and a half, I had this accident where I blinded myself in one eye with a kitchen knife. I had lots of little toy cars, and I was prying loose this part from one of them. The knife slipped and went right up into me, just sliced my eye right in half. Couldn’t do anything about it. Took it out.

“So I was despondent, quite withdrawn at that point. I just didn’t know what to do. I was a sensitive little kid. It was pretty rough. It was terrible trying to adjust and make sense out of such a horrendous thing, because kids don't think bad things are really going to happen, unless they're from El Salvador or South Central Los Angeles. They grow up knowing that down there, but your average little white kid, born and raised under more or less copacetic circumstances, cannot imagine personal danger like that. So I kind of went into a tailspin.

“Well, my folks were very good friends with this classical viola player who was blacklisted, Leo Breger. My dad's a big classical music fan, and they would listen to records and talk about conductors.

“So one night I’m laying in bed while they were out in the living room. I couldn’t sleep in those days; I was scared to go to sleep. He brings this thing in — I still have it — a Sears Silvertone tenor four-string. I’m laying on my back, and he puts it down on my stomach.

“I said, ‘What's that?’ And he said, ‘This is a guitar.’ Strum. Whoa! Right into the flesh.

“Hallelujah! Thank God! That was a rare example of some kind of intervention, of getting what you really need. And it went on from there. It was a way to make myself feel good.”

Cooder’s earliest lessons consisted of casual instruction from his father.

“My dad could play D, G and C chords and sing with the tunes, so I said, ‘What do I do?’ ‘Well, you put your hands here and put your hands there.’ So it gave me a place to go in my mind.

“Music was there, but how to get into it? How do you approach Handel or Beethoven? It wasn't the kind of household where you'd take professional piano or violin lessons. There wasn't that kind of vibe, and the guitar is, after all, do-it-yourself. You can make of it what you want to, and that's the great thing about it. It can be anything and everything to all kinds of people.”

He soon found inspiration from an unexpected encounter.

“One day I was waiting for the summer camp bus in front of my house. We lived by Douglas Aircraft, up here in Santa Monica, on the poor side of town. I had my guitar. I was going to take it to camp because I didn’t care for the activities. I thought if they would leave me alone, I'd sit under the tree and play.

“And this aircraft worker in his dungarees is walking along with his lunchbox. He sees me sitting there with a guitar, and he says, ‘Hi. You play that?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, kind of.’ And he goes, ‘I play a little. I’m a hillbilly.’ Whips out his flatpick, man, and wailed on it. Shit like I heard on the radio, Joe Maphis. This aircraft worker could rip and tear.

“He was somebody. I never knew his name; I never saw him again. I was too shy and too terrified to ask him who he was. I'll never forget that, though.

“When I was a kid, I was very attentive, and if I heard about somebody who was good or about a record, I'd run out. In those days, it was one-on-one, face-to-face. You could sit down with Jesse Fuller or Gary Davis or anybody.

“When I was little, I used to listen to the words on Woody Guthrie's Bound for Glory on Folkways. I wore it out. And then later we got to see these folk players, and they weren't big talkers. What did anybody ever say? ‘Where's that big-legged woman at?’ is what Bukka White was always asking.

“You know, ‘When am I going to get paid?’ says Brownie McGhee. It was just the atmosphere of the people. It was so amazing, what they radiate out.”

It’s nearly Labor Day weekend, which means that, as well as a well-deserved day off, workers in America also get the chance to save big on guitar gear! There are a lot of sales this weekend, but we wanted to shout out a massive up to 30% off guitars, basses, pedals, and more at Guitar Center.

The sale will continue through Labor Day weekend and beyond, ending on September 9th, meaning there’s not long to grab these deals while they’re still live.

To sweeten the deal, Guitar Center has also seen fit to slash prices on some exclusive instruments that won’t be available anywhere else this weekend.

We had a look through the sale ourselves, and we’ve managed to spot some epic deals we think are well worth the money.

Like this stunning Epiphone Les Paul Custom Quilt in Ocean Blue. With a carved mahogany body, quilted maple top, striking Ocean Blue finish, and '60s SlimTaper C neck, this classy, unusual guitar looks the part, but it also plays great and sounds fantastic! You can save $150 at Guitar Center right now.

This stunning Gretsch has a $70 reduction, and that midnight blue finish with gold hardware makes it a real head-turner. Dual Filter’Tron pickups are perfect for rock and roll guitar playing, while the treble bleed circuit ensures you can roll off the volume and still retain the clarity. Add in a Bigsby tremolo, and you’ve got yourself one amazing guitar for a lot less.

We love a Jazzmaster here at Guitar Player, and this affordable option from Fender is one of our favorites for sure. No other guitar really sounds like a Jazzmaster, and if you've been eyeing one for your collection, you won't find a better model at this price point. Save $176 right now at Guitar Center.

Now, obviously, there's a lot more on offer from this sale, so I highly recommend browsing the entire offering. You have until September 9 to get involved.

It’s no secret that Joe Bonamassa has assembled one of the most formidable electric guitar collections in modern blues.

Over the years, the guitarist has acquired some remarkable pieces: Tommy Bolin’s Les Paul, Lowell George’s once-lost Dumble Super Overdrive, a “museum-grade” Martin acoustic and a small army of vintage Gibson Les Paul ’Bursts.

But when it comes to the purchase that means the most to him, Bonamassa doesn’t hesitate.

Speaking recently on the No Cover Charge podcast, the bluesman revealed that his favorite acquisition isn’t the rarest or most valuable guitar in his vault — it’s the one he dreamed about as a kid.

“My favorite purchase was the one that meant the most to me,” he says. “The Howard Reed Strat. That was the one that meant the most because I had that guitar on my wall when I was 10 years old.

“Some people had Farrah Fawcett — I had the Howard Reed Strat.”

Reed isn’t exactly a household name. The guitarist briefly played with Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps in the 1950s. But his Stratocaster occupies a unique place in Fender lore.

Finished in custom black by Fender, it stands apart from the standard Brown Sunburst Stratocasters offered at the time.

“I will definitely say it’s the first one with a factory black custom color finish,” Bonamassa told Guitar Player in our January 2024 issue. Reed ordered the guitar from McCord Music Company in Dallas in 1955. “There are three definitive pictures from the late ’50s of Howard Reed playing the guitar.”

Bonamassa finally acquired the instrument in 2011 — on a day he remembers vividly.

“I [bought it] the day that I played the Ryman for the first time,” he says, referring to Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium. “I couldn’t believe I was in the same room as it. I had a reasonable expectation of what a Strat weighs.”

What he discovered was unexpected.

The Reed Strat tips the scales at 10 pounds — roughly three pounds heavier than a typical Stratocaster. Decades of heavy use have also left their mark, including significant wear on the back where the finish has been rubbed away through years of playing.

“It’s heavy,” Bonamassa admits, “but it ultimately represents my journey in the music business more than any of the guitars I can pull out.”

The guitar’s significance goes back to Bonamassa’s childhood.

“It was a Guitar World centerfold and I still have the original poster,” he says. “I had it tacked on my wall, and I thought it was the coolest Strat on the planet. I never thought that [25] years later I’d be picking it up.”

Today the instrument has come full circle. Bonamassa has loaned the guitar to the museum at the Ryman, where it’s displayed as part of the venue’s tribute to Nashville’s musical legacy.

And while the Reed Strat may be the most meaningful guitar he owns, Bonamassa has recently been reflecting on his gear collection more broadly — sharing advice on the best way to mic a guitar amp and revealing how the Los Angeles wildfires prompted him to rethink his gear-hoarding habits.

Ironically, though, the guitarist who most shaped Bonamassa’s playing wasn’t known for a Strat at all. His biggest inspiration built his reputation with a Telecaster.

Alex Van Halen is now a knight — and he received the honor in the Dutch city where he and Eddie spent their childhood.

The Van Halen drummer and co-founder was knighted Tuesday, September 1, in Nijmegen, the city where the brothers grew up before their family emigrated to the United States. Van Halen, who was born in Amsterdam, was appointed Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion (Ridder in de Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw), one of the Netherlands’ highest civilian honors.

The 73-year-old musician attended the ceremony at the Berchmanianum, the academy building of Radboud University, where Nijmegen mayor Hubert Bruls presented him with the royal decoration and praised his role in writing a “remarkable chapter in the history of rock music.”

Van Halen was characteristically modest when reflecting on the honor.

“My cousin organized most of this. I’m very grateful,” he said. “I think institutions like this are important in people’s lives because it adds a dignity and a gravity to what we do. Whether it’s actually deserved or not, that’s another question. But we can live up to it. That’s the whole thing, is you got to have something to live up to.”

Van Halen also signed Nijmegen’s Book of the City, a ceremonial volume reserved for distinguished visitors. His name now appears alongside those of Bruce Springsteen and King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands.

The ceremony had particular resonance given Van Halen’s enduring connection to Nijmegen. Alex and Eddie were born in Amsterdam and moved with their family to Nijmegen when they were young. The brothers lived there until their family emigrated to the United States in 1962, eventually settling in Pasadena, California.

“Alex still feels a connection with Nijmegen,” the city said in a statement, “and Nijmegen in turn honors the band.”

The connection between the Van Halen brothers and the city has been celebrated before. In 2019, part of Nijmegen’s Hunnerpark was temporarily renamed Van Halenplein, while a mural honoring Eddie was unveiled there.

Alex and Eddie went on to form the band that would bear their family name in California. After years of playing clubs and backyard parties, Van Halen broke through with its self-titled 1978 debut and became one of the biggest rock bands in the world. Alex and Eddie remained the constants throughout the band’s nearly five-decade history, until Eddie’s death in 2020.

Alex’s thunderous, precise drumming was a fundamental part of the band’s sound, powering classics including “Runnin’ with the Devil,” “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love,” “Unchained,” “Panama,” “Jump” and “Hot for Teacher.” Van Halen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.

Now, Van Halen is also working to preserve another part of that history: a collection of previously unreleased recordings he and Eddie made together.

Steve Lukather, who has been assisting Van Halen with the project, has been effusive about what he has heard. Speaking to Guitar Player earlier this year, Lukather dismissed the idea that the recordings are merely scraps being assembled for the sake of releasing something with Eddie’s name attached to it.

“I’m telling you, this is not throwaway shit,” Lukather said. “When I heard them, I said to Al, ‘How fucking come you didn’t use these?’ And the answer was because nobody could write to it. So if you think this is a bunch of throwaway crap that we’re trying to Mickey Mouse together to suck the dollar out of poor, unsuspecting Van Halen fans, it’s not.

“These are fucking finished tracks with Ed and Al, and Ed’s playing bass on a lot of it.”

Steve Vai has also heard some of the recordings. He recalled visiting Eddie at his home studio, where the guitarist pulled tapes from a room filled with archival recordings.

“I was up at Edward’s house once, in his studio,” Vai told Guitar Player. “He invited me. He had a room filled with tapes, and he was pulling them out and we were listening. He would just sit and record and play.

“And I’m listening to this stuff and, I’ll tell you, nobody plays like they do when they’re sitting in their room alone. It was a whole library of tapes, and it was such great stuff.

“So I’m sure there’s a lot there to play with, and it’ll be great,” Vai says. “And I’m really glad Alex is working with Luke. More than anybody I knew through the years, Luke and Edward were like this.” Vai crosses his fingers. “So that’s the best guy to help with this.”

Tony Levin recalled the experience of working on John Lennon’s final album Double Fantasy as a positive and upbeat one. The Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, Pink Floyd and Stevie Nicks bassist said Lennon made things so easy that anyone could have done his job.

While Levin was naturally aware of the ex-Beatle’s status, he didn’t know about the background to Double Fantasy, which marked a return to form after several years in the doldrums. That return to form was to remain in potential only when Lennon was shot dead weeks after the album’s launch in 1980.

Levin recently told Vinyl Guide that producer Jack Douglas had recommended him for the sessions. He recalled that Lennon’s first words when they met were, “They tell me you’re good. Just don’t play too many notes.”

“There was some tension in the air,“ Levin added, ”good tension, not at all a negative tension… He would be playing this piece and suddenly he’d say, ‘Stop! Stop fooling around!’ — like it wasn’t his idea. ‘Stop fooling around. Let’s do the take.’ And one-two, he’d count it off and that would be the take.”

Lennon was fooling around plenty, Levin added.

“I could tell he was really enjoying jamming and playing. In between takes he’d start playing, let’s say, Buddy Holly pieces and really having a ball with it. But later I realized that he hadn't been doing that in a long time.”

The bassist was also struck by Lennon’s style of working with wife and musical partner Yoko Ono.

“We would alternate [his] songs with Yoko's, which were… not only different musically, but she didn’t play an instrument. So she couldn't direct you in how to play it. So it was a different kind of experience, trying to come up with the groove or even the, not groove, but the basis of how to play her pieces.”

“John didn’t give any input on it,” he continued. “He was like the tea boy! He’d say, ‘Hey, you want some tea?’ [he’d] stay in the control room. [It was] very respectful and very impressive that they had that relationship.”

Referring again to Lennon’s comfortable attitude to the studio, Levin remembered: “John comes over and plays guitar for you and sings a song, and it’s there. It’s like, you know, 10,000 bass players could have played the right part on that song. And I was lucky to be the one who was there in the room.”

Eric Clapton disliked his 1992 album Unplugged so much that he tried to talk then Warner Brothers president Lenny Waronker out of releasing it. But more than 40 years later, Slowhand admits that the record changed the world’s perception of him.

Unplugged was recorded live in England as part of the MTV music series of the same name, which spawned a number of similar releases. The Clapton record — which features pared-down versions of “Layla,” “Tears in Heaven,” “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” and more — won three Grammys and became the best-selling live album of all time.

Clapton recalled his backstage negotiations in a recent interview with Guitar Center.

“I didn’t want it out,” he admits. “There’s a $100 bill on the wall of Lenny Waronker’s office that he won from me, because I said, ‘I bet you $100 it won’t even go into the top 50.’

“I wanted to do a deal with them, to put it out as a limited edition — just 500 copies or something. I just didn’t want to hear it anymore… I had a real aversion to it for a long time.”

Its success made him think again.

“I found out over the next 20 years or so that the Clapton on that album is the one people know. Because a lot of what I was doing before Unplugged was either too far one way or too underground or too poppy,” he says. “And I thought, ‘Well, I have to listen to this again.

“So, yeah, I have to acknowledge it — but I still have a funny thing about it. It’s just a little bit polite or something to me.”

One thing he doesn’t regret his his use of Martin guitars during the MTV filming session, which proved a godsend for both player and manufacturer. Chris Martin IV, the executive chairman of C.F. Martin & Company, once said the the album “saved the Martin guitar” brand while renewing interest in 000-style instruments.

“When I was a kid I saw a Martin dreadnought,” Clapton said of a memorable day in London. “There was a crowd gathered round this guitar case, and they opened the lid, and there was a dreadnought in there. I thought, Wow! One one day I’m going to have one of those. That’s the most beautiful shape. Picasso could have done that!”

His relationship with Martin continues with the recent release of his Crossroads 2026 range,

Christopher Cross apologized to Canadian fans for the latest round of trade-war measures taken by the U.S. against its northern neighbor, and jokingly predicted his comments might get him kicked out of his home country.

The guitarist was performing in Toronto on August 30 when he paused the show to speak out on Donald Trump’s introduction of new tariffs and his presidential signing order to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.” Canada has responded by announcing its own new tariffs, meaning that citizens of both nations could pay more for products as leaders Trump and Mark Carney continue to disagree.

“I want to tell you how much we love your country and appreciate your country very much,” Cross told the crowd at the RBC Amphitheatre. “I’m just very sorry and embarrassed that we have an asshole for a president.”

Cross then urged Canadians not to give up on America.

“We have an election coming up, and we’re gonna do our best to fix it,” he continued. “Then we’ll be buying all your shit again and you’ll be buying all our shit. We can be victims of corporate greed together!”

“Enough of my preaching here,” he said, wrapping up. “I’m sure you’ll be reading in the paper where I’ve been ejected from my country. But that’s okay — I wanted to say what I had to say.”

Cross — who once filled in for Ritchie Blackmore on Deep Purple’s first U.S. tour in 1970 — isn’t the first artist to speak out on the latest trade war escalation. In a recent episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, guest host Jelly Roll noted that toilet paper was included in the list of products subject to tariffs.

“You have to admit, there is something poetic about it being so expensive to wipe our ass just because the president’s full of shit,” he said.

Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson made his own point during the band’s August 29 concert in Toronto, referring to Trump’s attempt to rename Lake Ontario and his previous rebadging of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

“We got here, we crossed Lake Ontario, we will be crossing the Gulf of Mexico,” Dickinson told fans in Toronto. “It’s a ridiculous state of the world.”

Frank Zappa was fiercely passionate about music. When he loved an artist, he praised them to the hilt; when he thought an act was subpar, he was equally willing to let them know it.

Ian Anderson’s Jethro Tull fell firmly into the latter category. Zappa took repeated shots at the band, leaving Anderson — himself a huge Zappa fan — particularly stung. Years later, Anderson offered a theory for the electric guitar virtuoso’s hostility: he believed Zappa felt threatened by the success of British rock bands.

Zappa was never one to dilute his opinions. He took digs at the Beatles on the Mothers of Invention’s 1968 album We’re Only in It for the Money, and he expressed his dislike of the Velvet Underground and the “merchandising” nature of the Doors. In the late ’80s, he even incorporated a reggae-flavored version of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” into his live shows.

So when Anderson received an unexpected message from Zappa near the end of his life, he wasn’t sure how to respond.

“When Frank Zappa was terminally ill, I received a message to say he would like me to call him,” Anderson told Classic Rock in 2023. “I’d never met him. I was a fan, but my instinct was he really didn’t like Jethro Tull, so it was a little odd.”

Zappa had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1990 and died on December 4, 1993. Anderson wanted to return the call, but nerves got the better of him.

“I dialed the number three times,” Anderson recalled. “But each time I hung up in panic; I was embarrassed. What do you say to a dying man?”

Anderson never got another chance. Zappa died just weeks later, leaving the Tull frontman to regret his hesitation.

“From what I heard, he’d wanted to talk to a few people, just to say hi, and I was one of them,” Anderson said. “It wouldn’t have changed anything. Except I would have had my first and last words with one of the great original composers and performers of rock music history.”

Anderson has subsequently offered some insight into why Zappa may have had such a problem with Tull and other successful British bands.

“He rather resented us British bands — Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Deep Purple and so on,” he once told BBC Radio 2 (via Far Out). “We were going over there [to the U.S.] and making tons of money. Seemingly while he was struggling to run his band.”

Zappa’s former personal assistant, Pauline Butcher, offered a broader explanation for the lengths he went to establish himself as an artist.

“He worked out he wasn’t a pretty boy like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He didn’t play their kind of music, he didn’t even like it,” she told Classic Rock. “If he was going to get himself heard, he was going to have to do something radically different.

“He went out of his way to have outrageous photographs taken: the one on the toilet, the one with his pigtails sticking out like a spaniel, dressing up in women’s clothes,” she added. “All these things were calculated because he had to get himself attention.”

Whatever motivated Zappa’s attacks, they were difficult for Anderson to reconcile with his own admiration for the musician.

“People like Frank Zappa were rather disdainful of the British Invasion. They felt somehow threatened by it,” he said. “The memories I have were quite personally upsetting because I was a huge Frank Zappa fan. But he badmouthed us a couple of times publicly, and that was a bit hard to take.”

In related news, Zappa’s his former guitarist Adrian Belew has recalled his sobering last encounter with the late musician.

Anderson, meanwhile, has shared why he’s glad Jethro Tull rejected Woodstock and why he feels guilty about the band’s name.

Labor Day weekend isn’t here just yet, but we’re already starting to see some serious sales action for guitar players happening. One such discount is on one of my top-rated practice tools for guitarists, with the Positive Grid Spark Neo Core getting a massive 38% price reduction.

That’s $60 off an awesome silent practice option, great value for any guitar player. It’s a non-wireless option, so you need to plug a guitar cable into it, but it offers an immediacy that puts as few barriers between you and playing your guitar as possible.

I reviewed the Spark Neo Core last year and found its build quality to be really great. They’re covered in a durable rubber that’s textured like guitar amp Tolex. It means they feel like a proper bit of guitar gear rather than a delicate pair of headphones, and you won’t feel bad about chucking them in a backpack to take on the road with you.

There’s no messing about with wireless syncing or connectivity; just plug your guitar cable into the headphones and the other end into your guitar and away you go. There is a fully wireless option in the Positive Grid Spark Neo, but it’s considerably more expensive, and even more so with the Neo Core at the currently discounted rate.

The feel of wearing something on your head with a guitar cable plugged into it does take some getting used to, especially if you use heavy-duty cables. I had to spend some time finding the best position for the cable, but once that was done, it was plain sailing.

Although you can use them without the companion app, you’ll need to set it up initially to access the 33 amp simulations and 43 effects models. Once this is done, you can do away with the smartphone and change between four presets using the built-in buttons on the headphones themselves.

The sound is absolutely phenomenal, and you can tweak it to suit any style, whether you play country or heavy metal. The closed-back design of the headphones also makes them very engaging, as they block out all but the loudest external noises. With a huge array of useful practice tools built into the app, this is undoubtedly one of the cheapest ways to pick up a powerful addition to your practice regime this Labor Day weekend.

Led Zeppelin are often credited for creating some of the heaviest music in the hard-rock canon. But Jimmy Page, the group’s main songwriter, was anything but one-dimensional in his output.

Perhaps no track in the band’s catalog demonstrates this better than “The Rain Song,” the second cut on Zeppelin’s fifth album, 1973’s Houses of the Holy. Combining guitar work inspired by folk, blues and jazz with a sentimental orchestral score and Robert Plant’s romantic lyrics, “The Rain Song” is a track you either skip over or submit to.

But where did the inspiration for such an atypical Zeppelin track come from? Apparently from a Beatle: George Harrison.

Page explained the song’s genesis to former Guitar World editor Brad Tolinski in his book Light and Shade: Conversations With Jimmy Page. As he revealed, Harrison — newly solo following the Beatles’ breakup — was discussing Zeppelin’s music with the band’s drummer, John Bonham.

“George was talking to Bonzo one evening and said, ‘The problem with you guys is that you never do ballads.’ I said, ‘I’ll give him a ballad,’ and I wrote ‘Rain Song,’ which appears on Houses of the Holy.

“In fact,” Page continued, “you'll notice I even quote ‘Something’ in the song's first two chords.”

Page — who tuned his electric and acoustic guitars to D G C G C D for the track — does in fact follow the same descending progression heard in the verse from Harrison’s “Something,” from major to major 7 to 7.

The irony is that Harrison himself took his opening lyrics to “Something” from the James Taylor song “Something in the Way She Moves,” from Taylor’s 1968 self-titled debut. Harrison knew Taylor’s song well, since the folk singer was among the artists signed to the Beatles Apple label. Both he and Paul McCartney had been key in bringing Taylor aboard, and even contributed performances to his debut.

Harrison was correct in his appraisal of Zeppelin’s catalog, and Page was resolute in making his response. “The Rain Song” is profoundly unlike anything else the band created.

Page seemed the know the band was treading far from their well-beaten path. His working title for the tune was “Slush,” a word that among the Brits informally refers to something overly sentimental. The song’s orchestral passages, performed by bass guitarist John Paul Jones on a Mellotron, recall Muzak, the anonymous easy-listening music once commonly played in department stores for ambience.

While the song has its detractors (Rolling Stone’s reviewer slagged it and “No Quarter” as “drawn-out vehicles for the further display of Jones’ unknowledgeable use of Mellotron and synthesizer”), “The Rain Song” touched a nerve in many record buyers and future musicians, including producer Rick Rubin.

"I don't even know what kind of music this is,” Rubin declared in a 2010 artists picks feature for Rolling Stone. “It defies classification. There's such tasteful, beautiful detail in the guitar, and a triumphant feel when the drums come in — it's sad and moody and strong, all at the same time. I could listen to this song all day. That would be a good day."

And while there’s no denying that it’s the odd duck among the vibrant rockers on Houses of the Holy, “The Rain Song” is a fitting entry in a catalog that defied convention and both established and expanded the hard-rock repertoire. The track arguably paved the way for the power ballad.

While we don’t know if Harrison ever had a response to “The Rain Song,” we do know he wasn’t a fan of the heavier guitar sounds that players like Page pursued in the wake of Cream-era Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.

For that matter, we have a record of when Harrison first heard about Led Zeppelin in a January 1969 recording session during the making of Let It Be. Asked if he’s heard the album from Jimmy Page’s new band, Harrison seems a bit confused.

“Jimmy Page? Is he the one that was in the Yardbirds?” he asks.

Told it is indeed the very same Jimmy Page, Harrison pointedly demurs.

“Uh… I think is lunch ready?” he replies.

For years, the Who believed the original tapes for The Who by Numbers were gone.

That seemed like a reasonable assumption. The 1975 album had been recorded on two-inch multitrack tape, decades before digital storage made it possible to keep virtually unlimited copies of a recording. And in 2008, a catastrophic fire at Universal Studios Hollywood destroyed or damaged a vast archive of recordings, including tapes belonging to artists ranging from Billie Holiday and Buddy Holly to Chuck Berry, Tom Petty, Soundgarden and Steely Dan.

The Who by Numbers was widely believed to have been among them.

It wasn't. The tapes were sitting in plain sight at Sunset Sound in Hollywood. The person who eventually found them was Brian Kehew — a musician and keyboard technician who had worked with the Who, but whose expertise as an archivist and recording historian had turned him into something resembling a musical private detective.

Kehew had been called to Sunset Sound to examine tapes the Who had left behind. It was the sort of archival job that usually produces something interesting but hardly earth-shattering: a forgotten overdub, an alternate take or a stray piece of studio history.

Instead, he found the original multitrack tapes for The Who by Numbers.

“The band had been looking for the tapes for years, but this was one place they hadn’t thought to check,” Kehew explained in a 2024 interview with The New York Times.

The discovery was far more valuable than simply recovering a master recording. The tapes contained the original multitracks from the sessions, along with Pete Townshend’s demos and additional material that had not made the original album. Their survival has now made possible an expanded reissue of The Who by Numbers that would otherwise have been impossible in its present form.

Due out October 30, the super-deluxe edition of The Who by Numbers brings together 92 unreleased tracks and mixes, including 11 of Townshend’s original demos for the album. Among the gems is the recently revealed early mix of “Imagine a Man,” with vocals by Townshend.

For Townshend, the album is an unusually intimate document of the Who. Released in 1975, it followed Quadrophenia and preceded Who Are You, but its songs were considerably more inward-looking than the band’s grandest rock statements.

“The Who by Numbers is a tricky album to talk about,” Townshend says in an official statement accompanying the reissue. “It’s the only one where I allowed songs that were so personal to be used by the Who.”

Roger Daltrey sees that vulnerability as one of the album’s greatest strengths.

“In some ways, The Who by Numbers is my favorite [Who] album,” he says. “Songs like ‘Imagine a Man,’ ‘How Many Friends’ and ‘However Much I Booze’ expose our vulnerabilities, and the album is wonderful for that.”

The album had been recorded at Shepperton Studios’ soundstage in Surrey, England, using Ronnie Lane’s Mobile Studio. The same mobile recording setup had been used on Quadrophenia, while Shepperton had also hosted sessions connected with Rory Gallagher’s Irish Tour ’74 and Bad Company’s early albums.

But the reason The Who by Numbers tapes wound up in California was what happened next: the album was mixed at Sunset Sound, and the original two-inch multitrack reels remained at the Hollywood studio.

There they stayed, apparently forgotten.

Kehew was uniquely qualified to recognize what he had found. Alongside Kevin Ryan, he co-authored Recording the Beatles, an exhaustive examination of the equipment, techniques and recording practices used at Abbey Road Studios. He had also helped locate previously lost recordings by artists including Jimi Hendrix and David Bowie.

And unlike many archive specialists, he had a personal history with the Who. Kehew had worked as a touring musician and keyboard technician with the band, giving him both the technical knowledge to understand the tapes and the familiarity to recognize their significance.

The timing was particularly fortuitous. Kehew had recently joined forces with fellow industry veteran Danny White to establish Master Tape Rescue, an effort devoted to locating and preserving recordings that might otherwise disappear.

For Kehew, the Who by Numbers tapes became the kind of discovery that makes archival work worthwhile. What began as a routine examination at Sunset Sound had uncovered not only an album everyone thought was lost, but a far richer record of how the Who made it — from Townshend’s demos to performances that never appeared on the original LP.

In related news, Townshend and Daltrey have each confirmed they have reconciled with drummer Zak Starkey and are rehearsing again. The Who wrapped up their farewell tour last October but have remained open to future performances.

In the years since Freddie Mercury’s passing, his former fiancée Mary Austin has kept a low profile. Their nontraditional relationship has fascinated Queen fans for decades.

Now, in a rare interview, Austin describes the singer’s final weeks and described his final days as the British press hounded him, waiting outside his home and doctors’ offices, desperate for any news about the Queen singer’s deteriorating health.

Austin knew better than most what was happening behind the scenes. They remained close friends after he came out as bisexual, at a time when it was still very much taboo. When Mercury died in 1991, he left much of his estate to her.

Speaking with The Guardian, Austin reveals the chaos of the singer’s final weeks, and the lengths the press went to in pursuit of a story.

“They’d wait for him when he had doctors’ appointments and had to leave the house,” she says. “Freddie needed decoys. It got chaotic.”

Austin remembers one particularly grim exchange that showed just how intensely the British media was watching Mercury.

“The British media had a huge impact and sculpted the way he lived his life,” she says. “I remember a bike was coming through to collect [a] film. The courier asked if there was any news and someone shouted, ‘No, he’s not dead yet.’”

Mercury died on November 24, 1991, aged 45, having publicly confirmed that he had AIDS just one day earlier. Austin was with him during his final hours, when he was on morphine and drifting in and out of consciousness.

“I was holding his hand,” she recalls. “He was on morphine and in and out of consciousness, and he fell back to sleep. I stood there for quite a while, and he finally came round again, and he just said, ‘My old faithful.’ So I felt a bit like a dog. I wasn’t flattered.”

It was a typically Mercury moment in a relationship that had begun more than 20 years earlier. Austin met him in 1970, before Queen had released a record. They became lovers and eventually got engaged, but in 1976 Mercury told Austin he was bisexual, bringing their romantic relationship to an end.

That didn’t end their relationship. Quite the opposite: Austin remained one of the most important people in Mercury’s life.

“All my lovers ask me why they couldn’t replace Mary, but it’s impossible,” Mercury said in 1985. “The only friend I’ve got is Mary, and I don’t want anybody else. We believe in each other; that’s enough for me.”

Austin was around even before Queen had settled on its name. She recalls sitting in on a band meeting when Brian May suggested Build Your Own Boat. Mercury countered with Queen.

“They asked what I thought,” Austin remembers. “I said I preferred Build Your Own Boat.”

Did she really?

“Oh, no. I thought it was a terrible name. But Brian was my friend. I’d just met Freddie.”

Austin would remain part of Mercury’s inner circle for the rest of his life. After his death, she became the keeper of much of his personal archive — and eventually discovered something extraordinary in the boxes he had left behind.

Among Mercury’s belongings were handwritten lyrics for songs including “Don’t Stop Me Now,” “Killer Queen” and “Bohemian Rhapsody.” But Austin initially couldn’t bring herself to read them.

“I couldn’t look at the lyrics,” she says. “I felt as I did when I originally packed them – that they were his personal belongings and I was being offered an opportunity to delve into them, and I couldn’t do that.”

Eventually, she changed her mind, and the discovery helped inspire Freddie Mercury: A Life in Lyrics, a new book exploring his songwriting and the life behind his words.

Austin also reveals that one Queen song was written about her. She doesn’t definitively say whether “Love of My Life” was inspired by their relationship, but she confirms that “Lily of the Valley,” from 1974’s Sheer Heart Attack, was.

And there are still things Austin won’t discuss. Mercury entrusted her with the location of his ashes and asked her to keep it secret. She has honored that request for more than three decades.

It’s perhaps the clearest indication of the extraordinary place Austin occupied in Mercury’s life: She was the woman he loved, the friend he trusted and, after his death, the person he relied on to protect some of his most private wishes.

Meanwhile, a breakthrough moment in Queen’s history, their famous concert behind the Iron Curtain, is being released in 4K.

There are few more creative pedal makers working today than Queens, New York’s Death by Audio, although London’s Rainger FX might come close. Get the two collaborating and you can expect the result to be a wildly inventive device like the new Amp Crash. Part drive pedal, part mini-amp, it’s an inspiring noise-making tool for guitarists who like to push their sound to the edge.

Tapping cranked-amp sounds at a range of restricted volumes has been one of the more persistent goals of the electric-guitar community. While the Amp Crash might outwardly seem a reply to that conundrum, it’s far more.

In short, it feature a three-watt analog/solid-state amp, a two-inch speaker and a microphone in a box measuring approximately six by four by three inches and weighing around one and a half pounds. The internal mic picks up the sound of the internal speaker and routes it into your signal and on into any external amp. But it will also pick up the external amp’s signal as well. And that’s where the fun begins.

The Amp Crash has controls for gain and tone, as well as for DI out (the DI-tapped amp signal) and mic out, with an on/off switch for a mic gate control. There’s also a built-in digital effects unit with a three-way toggle switch to select reverb, echo or chorus, all of which share controls for depth and time.

Joining the single input and output jacks is an external speaker jack that lets you connect a larger extension cab with a rating of at least eight ohms. Alternatively, connecting a dummy plug or cable into this jack disables the internal speaker while keeping the mic output live, so it still picks up sound from the amp connected to the output. It’s all powered by an external nine-volt DC adapter rated to supply at least 300mA. A traditional foot switch turns it all on and off, bypassing the input signal directly to the output.

While all of that seems straightforward enough, I found it hard to get my head around this unit’s full potential until I started using it. And it’s worth noting that it’s easy to misinterpret the Amp Crash’s intentions if you’re not thinking outside the box.

The design is like putting a cheap, pocket-sized solid-state amp into a box with an equally cheap microphone. That is, you’re not getting cranked-vintage-tube-amp tone out of this thing, nor should you expect it.

What you do get is a surprisingly versatile bundle of noise-crafting and soundscape-creating possibilities. In my tests, the Amp Crash gave up the best of its goods once I started taking its name at face value and treating it like a busted and abused amp that’s part of a bigger signal chain.

I tested it using a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Junior with a single P90 pickup and a new ES-335 with humbuckers. I first tried it on its own as a ratty mini-amp-with-effects.

That was plenty of fun, but the Amp Crash showed its stuff when injected into Matchless Spitfire 1x12 combo and a ’64 Bassman head and 2x12 cab. Used as a drive pedal, it generated everything from subtly edgy overdrive to raspy, ratty, all-out fuzz-like sounds.

Taking that a step further quickly revealed this gizmo’s strength is in generating bountiful, ambient, semi-random yet semi-controllable feedback. Add in any of the three basic, yet rich and juicy effects and the howling, hovering textures broaden exponentially. Echo is arguably the most effective at this, and can be twisted into self-oscillation with the depth and time knobs rolled up. But I was fully hypnotized by the reverb and chorus effects, too.

Obviously, given the uncontrollable nature of such feedback, it’s something you’ll have to work with on the fly, especially on a live stage. But that’s part of the fun and what makes this such a creative tool. It’s also worth noting that there’s no blend or mix control — it’s all or nothing, varied in degrees of intensity according to the DI out and mic out controls.

I also tried the Amp Crash purely as mini-amp by patching the speaker output to an extension cab with a single 12-inch Eminence L12-40A. While I thought at first the Amp Crash in this context was a novelty at best, after working with the settings I found plenty to love in this usage too. This little three-watt solid-state circuit overdrives extremely easily. It really shines with the gain at around 2 o’clock or beyond and the tone high (to retain brightness). Roll down your guitar’s volume control for semi-clean tones and crank it up again when you want to roar.

Here I found no end of delectable overdrive sounds in the realm of the cranked tweed Champ or other single-ended (and perhaps semi-fried) vintage practice amp, and the Amp Crash would make a fantastic recording tool via this route alone. Add the output signal dialed to taste into another amp and you can still induce creative feedback sounds thanks to the internal mic remaining on even when its two-inch speaker is muted.

As I’ve said about other Death by Audio creations, this is an amazingly cool pedal that will undoubtedly open plenty of new sonic horizons for many creative electric-guitar players. And I’m sure I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of what it can do.

CONTACT Deathbyaudio.com

PRICE $395 street

CONTROLS Knobs for gain, tone, DI out, mic out, FX depth and time; three-way reverb/echo/chorus switch; mic gate switch; foot switch for on/off

EXTRAS Input, output, external speaker out, center-negative 9V DC adaptor input (300mA min)

SIZE 6"x3.75"x2.85" (including feet and knobs)

ASSEMBLED USA

PRO An incredibly inventive feedback generator and soundscape crafter, offering near-unlimited creative potential

CON It might be a little too wild and raw for those seeking more traditional cranked-amp sounds

Queen had their share of disagreements over the years that the original classic quartet was still together.

Guitarist Brian May and singer Freddie Mercury disagreed over whether or not to put an electric guitar solo on one of the group’s biggest hits. May also thought the singer was overdoing it when he pushed the lead guitar to the fore on the final choruses to “We Are the Champions” until it clashed with the vocals. And he was dismayed when the band recorded the backing track to their hit “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” in his absence.

But those were minor grievances compared to the intraband controversy that continues over one of Queen’s cult favorites: “I’m in Love With My Car.” The song was written by drummer Roger Taylor as a coy ode to drivers who feel too much affection for their automobiles.

Among its choice lyrics were the couplets, “When I'm holding your wheel / all I hear is your gear. / When my hand’s on your grease gun / oh, it’s like a disease, son.”

“Brian was like, ‘Is this a joke?’” Taylor recalls in an interview with Mojo. “I said, ‘Look at all those people out washing their cars on a Sunday morning, lavishing attention on them — they probably love their cars more than they love their wives.’

“It’s a valid lyric, I think, but kind of tongue in cheek, too, obviously... cars and girls — what else is there?”

But what really bothered May was the decision to place the song on the B-side to Queen’s monumental 1975 hit “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Because publishing royalties are split evenly between a record’s A and B sides, the arrangement meant Taylor’s joke of a song went on to earn a fair sum of money.

“We were aware of the injustice of ‘I’m in Love With My Car’ making as much money as ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’” May explained to Mojo. “It was a real sticking point for the band and it’s good we got through it.

“I think our sense of humor saved us. How long did it take me to get over it? Oh, quite a while.”

The resentment even surfaced in the 2018 Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, where May’s onscreen character complains about Taylor’s song getting an unfair advantage.

Apparently, May and Taylor have clashed on other occasions, including when the guitarist took a hand with the drummer’s songs.

“I think Roger would say to you that it’s very simplistic with him,” May says. “He thinks in barre chords on the whole. My contribution would be to come in and make the melodies work better.

“It’s a humble task but that’s what I’ve done on Roger’s songs — add a bit of color.”

Taylor is unhappy with the insinuation.

“Not really, no!” he snorts. “I don’t only think in barre chords — that’s a slightly arrogant statement to make.

“Brian’s a perfectionist and he will chase down the detail, but that didn’t mean I was going to let him fuck up my songs!”

His grievances aside, the drummer takes comfort knowing his royalty haul from “I’m in Love With My Car” continues to get under May’s skin.

“He’s never forgiven me,” the drummer says. “And I’ve never stopped laughing about it!”

Of all the guitars Robert Fripp has played, one stands out: the now-iconic 1959 Gibson Les Paul Custom he played across King Crimson’s classic works and his collaborations with artists that include David Bowie.

In 1967, a young Robert Fripp responded to a newspaper advertisement from Bournemouth-based brothers Michael and Peter Giles. They were looking for a singing keyboardist for a new project. Fripp could neither play keyboards nor sing, but he applied anyway and got the gig. The resulting band, Giles, Giles and Fripp, established an iconic songwriting partnership that laid the groundwork for prog-rock progenitors King Crimson.

A year after that advert went to print, the trio released their only album, The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp. Its hazy blend of jangling psychedelic pop, jazz, and classical music failed to find an audience, but it made a fan of a businessman by the name of Angus Hunking, whose generosity would make it possible for Fripp to buy the ’59 Custom.

“I bought it when Giles, Giles and Fripp were just about to become King Crimson,” Fripp tells Guitar World of the Les Paul’s origin story. “King Crimson were lent £7,000 by a businessman called Angus Hunking. He took an interest in us, and I believe £2,000 came in cash in a briefcase.”

Soon after, Fripp and Michael Giles, with whom he would form King Crimson, were shopping for a guitar in London’s West End.

“We went to a music shop on Shaftesbury Avenue,” Fripp says. “In the window was this Les Paul for £400.

“I asked for a cash discount. The shop assistant, a young man I disliked because of his attitude, said, ‘I could phone up Eric Clapton, and he’d come and buy it.’ And I thought, Then why haven’t you phoned him already?”

Fripp called the clerk’s bluff from a mile away.

“This young man was lying to me, and I didn’t like him,” he quips, before haggling a deal for £380.

According to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator, £380 in 1968, the year King Crimson formed, is equivalent to around £5,900 (approx. $8,000) in today’s economy. It wasn't an insignificant amount of money, even if it only made a small dent in their briefcase. Realistically, though, it would sell for far more than that were he to pop it on eBay.

“I went online today, and I found a pristine model the same as mine, advertised at $139,000,” Fripp gasps. “And that was an instrument without provenance.”

As he explains to GW, the guitar proved to be a workhorse. It featured on the band’s first seven records, breaking sonic ground again and again between 1969’s In the Court of the Crimson King and Red five years later. It would also be used to record his “celestial” guitar parts on David Bowie’s “Heroes,” which has sold 2.3 million copies worldwide.

The album’s title track has gotten a new lease of life in recent months thanks to its inclusion in the smash TV series Stranger Things.

Beyond that, the guitar would also be used during his collaborations with synth wizard Brian Eno.

After decades of toil, his staple guitar caught a break when a second ‘59 LP, bought in New York in 1978, took its place. Had he not stood his ground against that snarky guitar shop clerk, Robert Fripp’s story might read rather differently.

In related news, Fripp has laughed off rumors that King Crimson were back in the studio, while his interesting comments on Jimi Hendrix’s guitar playing have piqued the interest of many.

“We’re at a very interesting vortex,” Billy Gibbons says of his little ol’ band from Texas. “The band is enjoying being a hybrid. The legacy of ZZ Top solidified sometime in the not-too-distant past. I purposely say solidified, as in, it can’t be broken up. You could take a sledgehammer to it and the ZZ Top legacy would remain intact.”

That’s quite a statement considering that the original ZZ Top lineup is gone. With the recent death of drummer Frank Beard, coming five years after that of bass guitarist Dusty Hill, in 2021, Gibbons is the lone surviving member. Today, he plays his elecric guitar alongside bassist Elwood Francis and drummer Michael Monahan.

Carrying on without his longtime partners has been an emotional cross to bear. But his former bandmates made it easier by handpicking their replacements, as he explains in a new interview with Texas Monthly.

Gibbons said he received a call from Beard about eight months ago to say he wasn’t feeling up to performing.

“He said, ‘I’m experiencing some weakness in my bass drum foot, maybe up into the calf a little bit,’” Gibbons recalled. “We talked about Mike on that call. It was Frank’s suggestion that Mike keep his seat warm. I said, ‘Are you saying he’s the guy?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I think he felt like he was leaving us in a lurch. And to reassure him, I said, ‘Well, to be quite honest, I think we’re going to be just fine.’ Frank’s remark was, ‘Yeah, that’s what worries me.’ So at least we had a laugh.”

He said the situation was similar with Hill, who passed 10 days after he and Gibbons last spoke.

“Dusty went so quickly. It was stunning,” Gibbons said. He recalled sending Hill back to Texas after he appeared unwell on their post-COVID tour.

“After the performance, I said, ‘Dusty, go to Texas. Go to the doctor. We’ve got a few days off,’” Gibbons recalled. “He said, ‘If for any reason my return is tardy, give it to Elwood. Elwood knows everything. He’s been with us 30 years. You didn’t know this, but Elwood used to teach me bass parts.’ Dusty passed 10 days later.”

He recalled how Francis first fired up the group when he arrived.

“When Elwood stepped in, Frank really lit up. Frank was a curmudgeon. Across 50 years, I rarely saw the guy smile unless he was trying to poke fun at somebody. But once Elwood took the stage, I’d turn around and see Frank constantly looking at Elwood and smiling and laughing at the novelty of having this new guy who was on fire.”

Gibbons said Monahan had a similar impact, although the guitarist admitted their first show gave him a moment’s pause.

“I’d gotten into costume, and as I approached the stage, I was harboring a sense of slight uncertainty,” he recalled. “Then it struck me. I said, ‘Well, it is going to be slightly different, but you’ve been doing this for fifty years. Don’t change anything.’”

Gibbons said he’s received words of support from his fellow musicians that have confirmed he and the band are on the right path.

“I’ve gotten so many calls and texts from friends the last few days that have been reassuring,” the singer noted. “I got a nice one from Keith Richards. He didn’t say the show must go on. He just said, ‘I heard about it. I’ve done it.’ That’s all he said. It meant a lot and gave me a lot to think about.

“For me, the sun isn’t setting,” he continued. “I see it as a bright light. It’s not so different, but then again it is. We miss Dusty and Frank. We loved these guys. They were everything. And yet we’re following their instructions.”

ZZ Top’s U.S. tour continues through mid-October before traveling to Central and South America.

The Liverpool Cavern Club was famous as the spot where the Beatles found local fame in the early 1960s. It was there that Brian Epstein first saw the group on Thursday, February 9, 1961, and got the idea to manage the band, which led to their signing with George Martin’s Parlophone label the following year.

The club was such an important part of Beatles history and so beloved by the locals that in 1973, Liverpool officials allowed the Cavern to be purchased by the Merseyrail underground railway to create a ventilation shaft. When that proved unnecessary or infeasible, the property was turned into a parking lot. (Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?)

A new Cavern Club was built across the street, and it was there, on December 14, 1999, that original Beatle Paul McCartney made an appearance to promote his new album, Run Devil Run. For the occasion, he brought with him not one but two fellow legends: former Deep Purple drummer and founder Ian Paice, and guitar legend David Gilmour.

Paice and Gilmour had good reason to be on hand. Both had participated in the recording of Run Devil Run, an album that saw McCartney cover a dozen rock and roll classics and three originals. The album’s creation followed a year of mourning for McCartney’s wife and Wings partner, Linda.

McCartney wanted to cut the album quickly, just as the Beatles’ first albums had been made. To that end, he enlisted Chris Thomas — who had helped engineer the Beatles’ 1968 White Album and played keyboards on four of its cuts — to produce the album in Abbey Road’s Studio Two, where much of the Beatles catalog was tracked.

Gilmour, who played electric guitar and lap steel on the album, was certainly no stranger to McCartney, having played guitar solos on tracks from his albums Give My Regards to Broad Street, from 1984, and Flowers in the Dirt, from 1989. Even before then, Gilmour had been among the many guitarists — including Pete Townshend, Hank Marvin, Laurence Juber and Denny Laine — who performed on McCartney and Wings’ star-studded “Rockestra Theme,” from that group’s final album, 1979’s Back to the Egg.

The guitarist’s work on Run Devil Run occurred during a quiet period in his career. Pink Floyd had put out their 14th studio album, The Division Bell, in 1994, and would not release another until their final record, 2014’s The Endless River. All was likewise quiet on Gilmour’s solo career front.

In fact, two public performances were the main activities in Gilmour’s career following The Division Bell: They comprised McCartney’s 1999 Run Devil Run promotion and an appearance with the Who at their 1996 concert in London’s Hyde Park, a celebration of the group’s return to the stage after a seven-year hiatus. Gilmour performed on a pair of tunes from Quadrophenia, singing "The Dirty Jobs" and playing guitar on "Love Reign O'er Me.”

The guitarist’s performance with McCartney — during which he played a rather well-worn blonde Fender Telecaster — came close to satisfying a desire he’d had for years to play with the Beatles.

“I really wish I had been in the Beatles,” Gilmour told Mojo in 2016. “[They] taught me how to play guitar; I learnt everything. The bass parts, the lead, the rhythm, everything. They were fantastic.”

Recalling his participation in Run Devil Run, Gilmour told the magazine the experiencing brought him back to his childhood.

“I’m a kid, really,” he said. “You get into Studio Two at Abbey Road, you’re sitting there with Paul McCartney, and your guitar is plugged in. You think that’s an ordinary day’s work, but of course, it isn’t; it’s magical!”

And as Gilmour revealed in that same interview, it was he who convinced McCartney to perform a Beatles song at the Run Devil Run promotion at the Cavern: “I Saw Her Standing There,” the first song on the the first Beatles album, 1963’s Please Please Me.

“Managing to persuade him to sing ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ at the Cavern, with me doing the John Lennon parts, was absolutely fantastic,” he said.

“I’ve been in the Who, I’ve been in the Beatles, and I’ve been in Pink Floyd,” Gilmour concluded. “Top that, motherfucker!”

The performance was released as a DVD, Live at the Cavern Club, in 1999.

Olivia Rodrigo closed out her inaugural Daisy Chain Fields festival on August 30 with a very special guest: Stevie Nicks, who joined the pop star for a moving performance of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.”

Rodrigo had already brought out Alanis Morissette for “Ironic” and Sarah McLachlan for “Building a Mystery” and “Angel” during her festival-closing set. But the biggest surprise came when Rodrigo briefly left the stage, then returned hand-in-hand with Nicks.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Stevie Nicks!” Rodrigo announced as the crowd erupted.

The two then performed “Landslide,” accompanied only by longtime Nicks collaborator Waddy Wachtel on acoustic guitar. They traded vocals on the verses before joining together in harmony on the chorus, giving the Fleetwood Mac classic a striking cross-generational resonance.

For Nicks, “Landslide” has always been a deeply personal song. She wrote it in 1973, when her relationship with Lindsey Buckingham was under strain and she was beginning to wonder whether her lifelong dream of a music career would ever come true.

Nicks and Buckingham had traveled to Aspen, Colorado, where Buckingham began rehearsals for a one-month tour with the band of former Everly Brothers singer Don Everly. Buckingham expected the job to provide enough money for the couple to get by for a while, but Everly ended the tour early.

Buckingham returned to Aspen frustrated and angry. After a fight with Nicks, he took her car and left her there.

With help from her parents, Nicks bought a plane ticket back to Los Angeles. Distraught, she went to the home of their friend and producer Keith Olsen.

“She sat on the couch crying that she and Lindsey had had this fight,” Olsen recalled. “I got my guitar out and handed it to her and said, ‘Go in the bedroom and write about it.’ And that’s what she did. I fell asleep on the couch.”

Alone in Olsen’s bedroom, Nicks found herself thinking about the mountains she had just left behind.

“When you’re in Colorado and you’re surrounded by these incredible mountains, you think ‘avalanche,’” she later explained. “It meant the whole world could tumble around us and the landslide would bring you down.”

The song came quickly. When Olsen awoke, Nicks played him the new composition — one that would eventually become one of Fleetwood Mac’s most enduring songs after Buckingham and Nicks joined the group in 1975.

But “Landslide” was about more than the uncertain future of Nicks’ relationship with Buckingham. She was also confronting the possibility that the music career she had dreamed about since childhood might never happen.

That uncertainty found its way into one of the song’s most poignant lines: “Even children get older, and I’m getting older too.”

Years later, Nicks explained the song’s significance in the liner notes to Crystal Visions: The Very Best of Stevie Nicks.

“I wrote ‘Landslide’ about whether or not I was going to give it all one more chance,” she wrote. “You know the rest of the story.”

The rest of the story included Fleetwood Mac, whose arrival would transform Nicks’ career. “Landslide” became one of the group’s signature songs and, more than five decades after Nicks wrote it, remains a meditation on uncertainty, change and the fear of watching one version of your life disappear.

At Daisy Chain Fields, Nicks seemed to recognize something of her younger self in Rodrigo.

“She reminds me of me, when I was her age a hundred years ago,” Nicks told the crowd after the performance. “And I’m somewhat awestruck that she could do all this. Because it’s so hard, you have no idea, putting this [festival] together with all of these people. And she’s done it, with this grace.”

Rodrigo created Daisy Chain Fields in the spirit of the ’90s Lilith Fair, bringing together artists including Bikini Kill, the Breeders, Chappell Roan and Garbage. Net proceeds from the festival supported organizations advocating for women and girls, including the Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood and the National Women’s Law Center.

Dolly Parton was laid to rest Friday in a private funeral attended only by immediate family, according to her great-niece, Lainey Parton.

Parton died August 25 at age 80 following what her representatives described as a “brief battle with cancer.” Her funeral was held August 28 in Nashville, with the singer’s representatives previously saying the small, private service was being held “at Dolly’s request.”

Details of the service have not been made public. Parton was likely laid to rest beside her husband of nearly 60 years, Carl Dean, at Woodlawn Memorial Park and Mausoleum in Nashville, according to People. Dean died in March 2025 and was interred in a mausoleum at the cemetery.

A large plaque at the site bears both Dean and Parton’s names, their wedding date and a pair of intertwined wedding bands, along with images of two houses, including the home where Parton grew up. She left home at age 18, leaving behind a battered Martin acoustic guitar to launch a career that would make her a star and beloved figure.

Lainey shared her first public thoughts about the funeral in an Instagram post on August 29, accompanying her words with throwback photos of herself with her great-aunt.

“This is a really hard post for me to make. I wanted to wait until after my granny was laid to rest yesterday before I tried to put any of this into words,” Lainey wrote.

“From the time I was little, my granny always had a way of making me feel like I was enough. She never made my dreams feel too big or made me feel like I couldn’t do something. She believed in me before I even knew how to believe in myself,” she continued. “Most people can think of at least one bad memory with everyone in their family. I honestly can’t think of one with her.”

Lainey also reflected on the special role Parton played in her life, writing, “Because she couldn’t have kids of her own, she always made us feel like we were hers. She loved us that way, and I’ll forever be grateful for that.”

She recalled singing with Parton on her Smoky Mountain DNA album while she was a freshman in high school. Despite being nervous, Lainey said, Parton “had a way of making me feel like nothing bad could happen. She made me feel safe, confident, and like I belonged right there beside her.”

That support continued as Lainey grew older. When she told Parton she wanted to attend beauty school rather than college, Dolly “never questioned” the decision. She financially supported her through school and helped her launch her career.

“She didn’t just tell me to chase my dreams, she helped me get there,” Lainey wrote.

Lainey also recalled the opportunities she shared with Parton, including appearing in a movie with her, and said she was grateful to have those memories — things she could “watch, hear, and hold onto” after her death.

“It still doesn’t feel real that she’s gone,” Lainey wrote. “I’m going to miss her voice, her laugh, her hugs, and just knowing she was there. I’m even going to miss those 4 AM calls, and I’d give anything to see her name pop up on my phone again.”

She thanked those who had reached out with messages, flowers and other gestures of support, saying she had “noticed every single one” of them.

“I feel incredibly lucky that I got to call her my granny,” Lainey concluded. “Thank you for always believing in me, loving me, and making me feel like I could do anything. I love you, Granny. Always. 🤍.”

For most of his career, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter has been a studio guitarist. Though he’s best known for his time in Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, he’s been a prolific studio hound for longer than he was in either group. His specialty is guitar solos, and he’s laid down countless memorable moments on records, from Dan’s “Rikki, Don’t Lose That Number” to Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff,” which he dexterously performed with a used Burns Bison electric guitar he bought for $20.

“I kind of look at guitar playing on two levels,” Baxter says. “There’s the professional studio sausage method, where you go in and grind it out, and that’s not necessarily bad. It’s good music and you’re having a good time. To get a chance to do it and be of that caliber is one of the most wonderful things that could ever happen to a guitarist. A lot of guys say it kills them. Well, it’s what you make of it.

“The other level is when you really want to play and you’re with people who accept and like what you do. My specialty, if you could call it that, is guitar solos, obviously, even though I sit back and do the I-have-a-swimming-pool rhythm guitar sound that L.A., laid-back, it’s-all-paid-for studio musicians have. I do like to play solos, and the reason [Steely Dan’s] Walter [Becker] and Donald [Fagen] called me was they needed somebody to play solos.”

Of course, sometimes the sessions are something completely out of the ordinary. Baxter shared a few of his oddest jobs with us.

Steely Dan

“Walter and Donald had a certain concept of guitar playing, and they would attempt to get as close to that as possible vis-à-vis my abilities as a player. So the solos were sort of a combination of exorcism, displays of technique and all kinds of things.”

One of the most unusual sessions was for the group’s instrumental cover of Duke Ellington’s jazz tune “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo,” which appeared on Pretzel Logic. Covering a 1927 jazz tune with a modern rock band wasn’t the most obvious thing to do in 1974, but Baxter didn’t flinch. Far from it. He called it “the Steely Dan song I enjoyed recording the most.”

“Everybody picked a piece of it, and I said, ‘I’ll take the trombone solo and learn it on steel guitar,’” he told Guitar Player.

As he explained to Vulture, the steel guitar was a logical substitute, given it allowed him to slide between notes, like a trombonist would. “I had the idea to try it on pedal steel. Why the hell not? I worked on it for a good amount of time, and it was fun getting through that tunnel from one end to the other and playing that beautiful solo. I wanted the challenge, and I was really satisfied.”

The Doobie Brothers

Baxter admits he is sometimes surprised by what comes out of him when he just opens up and lets inspiration fly. Sometimes it seems as if a higher power is at work, such as when he cut tracks for Donna Summer’s backup band, Brooklyn Dreams, for their album Joy Ride. Once again, he had the Burns Bison in hand.

“My solo was in a style that was like I was mumbling in tongues or speaking in dreams, using languages that have been dead for thousands of years,” he says. “After I finished playing, Juergen Koppers, the engineer, looked at me and said, ‘Was ist das?’

“I said, ‘I don’t know. You better play it back.’”

Of course, sometimes you get there with the help of a little reefer.

“The solo on ‘How Do the Fools Survive’ on the Doobie Brothers’ Minute by Minute surprised me because that was a one-take job, where I just smoked a joint and was alone by myself with an engineer working in another room,” Baxter explains. “It was one of those lean-back-and-play things.”

Dolly Parton

Sometimes you have to color outside the lines, especially when artists find creative ways to explain what they want.

“Sometimes you get requests like, ‘Can you make it more green?’ or, ‘I need it to ooomph more,’” Baxter reveals. “So you say, ‘Okay,’ and think about all the times you’ve ever done sessions and people have said to you, ‘Boy, that really ooomphs,’ or ‘That sounds really green,’ and you start from there.”

One of his strangest requests came from Dolly Parton for the song “Baby, I’m Burnin’,” a perennial favorite from her 1978 album Heartbreaker that also served as the theme song to her 1987–1988 television series Dolly. The singer was looking for some explosive effects to play behind her vocals.

“Dolly Parton asked me to make fireworks one time,” he said. “I was working with my Roland guitar synthesizer, and she said, ‘Can you just make it, like, reds and greens and sparkles?’

“So I thought about it for a second, and then with one hand I played as many notes as I could while the other hand was working the Roland’s [pitch] transposer, slapping it back up and down. She was going, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s it. Whee!’

“There have been a couple of dates like that. I enjoy it. I get a lot of calls for steel guitar where they say, ‘Can you make it not sound like a steel guitar?’ That’s always a request. They want something different. They want a sound that has the fluidity of the steel guitar but doesn’t sound like ‘Six Days on the Road.’”

The Session That Never Happened

Baxter says that if you don’t know what to play, you shouldn’t.

“Sit back and wait because it’ll come.”

Or maybe it won’t. He recalls a session for Steely Dan producer Gary Katz that was like few others.

“He told me to bring all my stuff,” Baxter says. “I charged him triple scale because it was on a Saturday at a place way the hell out.”

He arrived with all his gear and set up. Then Katz played him an album’s worth of songs.

“He said, ‘Okay, I want you to listen to all these tunes and then tell me what you think we ought to do.’

“So I listened to 10 tunes, and each time one would finish I said I didn’t hear anything. When we finally finished, I said, ‘Gary, there’s really nothing you need. It sounds fine.’

“He said that was all he wanted to hear and paid me my money. Fair enough.

“You just don’t play sometimes. I found that one of the harder things to learn to say is, ‘There’s no need for it. You know, as much as I’d like to play on this track as a businessman, as a musician I know you don’t need it.’”

Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton didn’t set out to form a supergroup. It was just by luck that they discovered the extraordinary sound that happened when they put their voices together.

The proof came in 1987, when Trio turned that discovery into one of the biggest country albums of its era. It spent five weeks at number one on Billboard’s country chart, reached number six on the Billboard 200, won a Grammy and eventually sold millions of copies.

But the three singers had heard the magic more than a decade earlier. Soon after Ronstadt and Harris became friends in the early 1970s, they discovered they had a shared obsession.

“One of the first things we said to each other when we met was, ‘Who is your favorite girl singer?’” Harris recalled in a 1999 CBS interview. “And we both said, ‘Dolly.’”

The opportunity to meet their favorite singer came soon enough. Harris learned that Parton was in Los Angeles and invited her to her house.

“I called Linda and said ‘Dolly is coming over,’” Harris remembered.

Ronstadt arrived, Parton picked up an acoustic guitar, and the three began singing old songs. They quickly discovered that their voices did something none of them could do alone.

“The three voices create a fourth voice in a way,” Harris said.

Parton remembered the moment in a 2026 interview.

“So we started singing whatever that song was, and boy, I mean, everybody that was standing around in the room … it was just like a stillness. It was so beautiful.”

Parton was struck by how naturally the three voices fit.

“You would have thought we’d been singing together our whole lives,” she said. “It was such a beautiful sound.”

They took that sound to television, appearing together on Parton’s Dolly! variety show in 1976.

Then they tried to make a record. The first attempt came in 1978 when they recorded songs including “Mr. Sandman,” “Evangeline,” “My Blue Tears” and “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.” Unfortunately, nothing came of the effort. Each had a successful solo careers, and busy schedules, not to mention recording contracts with different labels.

While some of those recordings eventually surfaced on their individual albums, their dream of a trio remained just that.

Until 1986. The three reunited in the studio with producer George Massenburg, this time with a better idea of what they were trying to capture. They didn’t attempt to turn three superstar singers into a conventional vocal group. Instead, they let the songs determine how the voices should fit.

“We’d start a song where we try with everybody each singing a different part,” Ronstadt explained. “We’d just wait until the song would decide which way it liked best.”

Harris, who contributed acoustic guitar along with vocals, agreed. “The song would actually tell us once we would try.”

That is the secret you can hear throughout Trio. Parton’s high, unmistakable mountain voice, Harris’ crystalline phrasing and Ronstadt’s power remain completely distinct, yet the three constantly reshape themselves around the song.

The result was an album that sounded effortless — despite the fact that it had taken nearly a decade to get there.

And the women never seemed to lose sight of what made the whole thing special.

After Parton’s death in August 2026, Ronstadt remembered not just the records they made together, but the person she had known for decades.

“One of the most extraordinary musical experiences of my life was recording with her,” Ronstadt said.

In the end, Dolly was more than the singer Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris both loved. She was the musical connection that brought three singular voices into the same room — where, for a moment, they sounded less like three stars and more like a group that had been singing together all their lives.

Pink Floyd roadie and production manager Chris Adamson saw much of what went on behind the scenes during the group’s halcyon days in the 1970s, becoming firmly entrenched within the band’s inner circle.

“I was with them for a good 10 years, having begun working for them from around the time of Meddle,” Adamson recalls today. “I was with them through Obscured by Clouds, The Dark Side of the Moon and right up to them starting The Wall album. I was just a roadie but, in those days, I worked for the band full-time. They didn't tour like you do now, where you have a set period, and you build up to it and go. In those days, you'd even go out and do a couple of gigs on a weekend, or whatever else came in.

“And then when you weren't doing that, you did other things. I would take their wives out shopping. I even dug a pond for David Gilmour at his house in Epping Forest once. You just did all that sort of stuff. You became like a domestic helper, a butler of sorts. A jack of all trades, which was enjoyable.”

During the group’s recording sessions for The Dark Side of the Moon at Abbey Road Studios, Adamson was there front and center. He provided the title to “Any Colour You Like,” which he explains was one of his catchphrases: “Any color you like; they're all blue.” He also contributed several spoken-word fragments to two of the album’s tracks.

“The first voice you hear on that album is me,” Adamson reveals. He appears soon after the ticking clock on the opening track, “Speak to Me.” “I say, ‘I’ve been mad for fucking years, absolutely years…’ I also do the bit at the end of ‘Money.’”

He explains that the statements he and the other participants provided were answers to questions posed by the band.

“We were in the studio one day and Roger just gave us these cards with questions on them. We went and sat in the studio and you had to just read the questions to yourself. One was, ‘Do you think you’re going mad?’ Another was, ‘What do you think of the dark side of the moon?’ and ‘When was the last time you had a fight?’”

Adamson recalls some of the other participants.

“There is the Irish-sounding guy who was the doorman at Abbey Road, a guy called Roger ‘the Hat’ Manifold, who was a roadie and used to work for a band called Love Affair. There's also a woman on it too, Puddie, who at the time was going out with Pink Floyd road manager Peter Watts. She's the one who says, ‘Cruisin' for a bruisin’.’

“And the other two people on there are Henry McCullough, the guitarist out of Wings, and his wife. Ironically, the question they were answering was, ‘When was the last time you had a fight?’”

McCullough’s answer — “I don't know. I was really drunk at the time” — can be heard at the end of “Money.”

Part of Adamson’s job involved working closely with David Gilmour, particularly when setting up his electric guitars, amps and effects in the recording studio. It was a responsibility he took on from the moment he came onboard. In this role, he inadvertently became responsible for one of the most unusual sounds on “Echoes,” recorded during the Meddle sessions.

“Where you hear what sounds like a seagull screeching was due to me being in a rush one day wiring all of David’s pedalboard,” Adamson explains. “That caused me to wire the wah-wah pedal the wrong way around. So when he went to switch it on, that was the sound he got, but David loved it.

“So then I had to have that incorporated into his pedalboard so that he could play it. I had a switch made that would switch it back to a regular wah-wah pedal or switch it so he could get that screeching sound whenever he wanted. So that all came about from just an accident of me rushing and plugging it in the wrong way.”

In keeping with Floyd’s experimental spirit, the success of The Dark Side of the Moon encouraged the group to begin hatching plans for an album built entirely around non-musical sounds. Tentatively titled Household Objects, the project would eventually be shelved, but not before the band created material from everything from cans and bottles to a vacuum cleaner. Adamson was assigned to seek out the objects.

“They were going to use objects, such as airplane elastic that could be stretched over a table with a matchbox under it to get a bass sound,” he explains. “And a stiff brush on a wooden floor for a snare sound.

“I spent ages with Rick going around department stores buying bits of things that you could make any kind of noise from. And eventually we'd got three basic tracks down. When we came to put some footsteps on one track, though, we could never get them in sync. And that’s where we found out that the metronome we were using at Abbey Road Studios was always going out of tempo on the sixth beat. So all the tracks became useless. They did end up using a lot of bits and pieces from the tracks on other albums.”

Adamson considers Gilmour “one of those magical guitar players with such an identifiable sound.” To him, the three principals of Pink Floyd — Gilmour, Waters and Wright — were all masters of sonic exploration.

“It was the age when synthesizers of all sorts started to appear with loads of sounds,” he says. “And they all used to use Binson Echorecs too, which were delay units made out of a metal disc in Italy. They had these heads around it where you could set the delay or could change it. On a lot of the tracks, when you hear Roger playing bass, it’s being played through a Binson and then through an Echoplex.”

Adamson says tape echo was a commonly used effect, with the band employing various tricks to extend the loop.

“They’d have a two-inch tape machine, and then positioned right across the room we'd have a drumstick and use it to hold the length of tape while it spun so we could get a really long loop to create a delay. They were real explorers of music.”

The critical and commercial success of The Dark Side of the Moon transformed Pink Floyd from a cult band into one of the biggest groups on the planet. For Adamson, who had been there through the experiments, the breakthrough was as dramatic as it was unexpected.

“The Floyd were a sort of cult band before then, but that album just launched them into the stratosphere,” says Adamson. “I don't know why it did, but it did, and it just happened at the right time. It was monstrous.”

For someone who had spent years wiring pedalboards, hunting down odd noises and doing whatever jobs the band needed, Adamson had witnessed the transformation from unusually close range. Pink Floyd had gone from an experimental cult act to a global phenomenon — and he had been there for the strange, messy and often accidental moments that helped make it happen.

Adrian Belew took a particular approach to his voluminous body of work for others, outside of his membership in King Crimson and the Bears and his solo albums.

“I was always confident I’ll find something that’s unique to me and that will work for their music,” Belew — whose résumé includes David Bowie, Talking Heads, Nine Inch Nails and many more — tells us via Zoom from his home in north-central Tennessee. “That’s what it’s all about for me. They don’t ask me to come in and play like somebody else. They don’t give me instructions very much. They just let me go and I’ll give them a few different choices and then go in and do them.”

The exception to that rule? Paul Simon. Belew was the first non-African musician to play on Simon’s celebrated Graceland album, which turned 40 this month. He created parts on his Roland GR700 guitar synthesizer for “The Boy in the Bubble,” “Crazy Love, Vol. II” and the horn riff for “You Can Call Me Al,” as well as straight guitar on “Under African Skies.”

“Paul Simon was one person who had everything very specific,” Belew says. “‘I want you to play this’ [sings the “You Can Call Me Al” riff], and then I would play it and he’d say, ‘Okay, now try it with a little bit of tremolo on there … No, not that. Try it this way’

“He usually had something very specific in mind, so it was working with him to get that.”

The culture-blending Graceland, in fact, was as much of a surprise for Belew as it was for Simon’s listeners. The electric guitar virtuoso was two albums into his solo career when he got the call to come to the Record Plant in New York to work on Simon’s new album.

“I was booked in there by myself, with Paul and Roy [Halee], his engineer,” Belew recalls. “I came in a little early, and Roy was playing some music in the studio control room. It was African music. I thought, Wow, this is confusing; maybe he’ll switch to the Paul stuff in a minute.

“So I went in and listened for a while, and then Paul arrived and he said, ‘Let’s get some coffee out here, just kinda get to know each other.’

“And I said, ‘Oh, I just was hearing that music; I guess Roy had the wrong tape up’ — I made a joke. Paul said, ‘How so?’ I said, ‘That’s not your music, right?’ He said, ‘Oh yeah, it is.’ I said, ‘Well, okay. I don’t really get that,’ and he said, ‘Well, great, come into the control room and I’ll play you some stuff. I have words for all this stuff, some words, so I’ll sing them to you, the words that I do have.’”

The first song, Belew remembers, was “The Boy in the Bubble,” which opens the album. “He stood next to me, his mouth pretty close to my ear, and he sang these parts. That gave me absolute chills — I mean, Paul Simon singing quietly in your ear like that? Come on. And then, of course, I understood: ‘My God, this guy has completely revisited his career and done something entirely different to it. And genius.’”

The rest of the process was largely trial and error as Belew, Simon and Halee worked on the other songs.

“Every day I was just searching for sounds,” Belew says. “I had all these programs; I would basically say, ‘Okay, lemme think about this,’ and then go play something with that sound. Then I’d try another one. That was the process. The beginning of ‘You Can Call Me Al,’ originally the horn section was me; I had built, like, four different types of saxophone sounds.

“It was a lengthy process, just deciding which of my sounds he wanted in his music. And invariably he would always say, ‘Can I see that guitar?’” Belew laughs. “And then he sat there and sat there and played the sound for 10 minutes.”

Belew is justifiably proud to have been part of Graceland, which was top five on the Billboard 200 chart and certified five-times Platinum. Critically acclaimed — albeit criticized by some for violating a United Nations–mandated cultural boycott of still-apartheid South Africa — Graceland won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1987 and in 2006 was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.

Even better? “He was the first person who ever sent me a Gold record, even though I’d been on many Gold records again,” says Belew, who also played on Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors album the same year and on Simon’s follow-up, The Rhythm of the Saints, in 1990. “I’ll always love him for that. He’s a great guy.”

These days, Belew is busy with Beat, joining King Crimson bandmate Tony Levin and guitarist Steve Vai in recreating the Crimson catalog of the early ’80s. (Tool’s Danny Carey played drums through the group’s recent tour of Europe; Terry Bozzio will take his place for a North American tour that begins October 9 in Santa Cruz, California.) With Robert Fripp’s blessing — and periodic assistance — the troupe has been a hit with fans and released a live album last year, and Belew says the continued demand is surprising, but only to a degree.

“I knew from all my years on Facebook and things there was sort of a pent-up need for this music, and the last King Crimson didn’t play any of it, so I wanted to bring the music back and give it its day,” explains Belew, who’s planning to focus on his solo work next year.

“The real surprise is that this music is really as timeless as I thought it was, and it’s being enjoyed by all age groups now — not just old guys. There’s never been anything like it, before or since, in terms of the compositions and the way the band played together, with lots of different, odd time signatures and so many things going on at once. And yet part of the body of it was singable melodies and things you could relate to. It wasn’t just all outside, heavy instrumentals.”

Belew promises that Beat will be expanding its repertoire during the new dates, too.

“We’re adding in some of the double-trio music from the ’90s, maybe another surprise or two,” he says. “I figure that having four or five different pieces, taking out some of the others and also having a completely different drummer approach … the object for me is to make sure the show is different enough that even if you’ve seen it before you’ll walk out going, ‘I’m glad I saw it again.’ That’s the goal.”

The Who said goodbye to performing last year. Now they’re rehearsing again.

Roger Daltrey revealed the unexpected development during his solo show at Las Vegas’ Encore Theatre, where he made a passing reference to the Who’s current rehearsals while performing “Who Are You” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” According to The Las Vegas Review-Journal, Daltrey said the rehearsals “sounded great.”

The revelation comes less than a year after the Who completed what was billed as their final tour. The Song Is Over wrapped in October 2025, bringing the band’s latest farewell to a close — or so it seemed.

There’s no word yet on what the Who are rehearsing for, or whether the sessions will lead to new performances. But the news is particularly striking because the band’s future appeared decidedly uncertain after the farewell tour, with Daltrey and Pete Townshend having repeatedly described the run as their last.

And there’s another remarkable twist: Zak Starkey is apparently back behind the drum kit. Starkey was the Who’s drummer from 1996 until 2025, when he was fired in the chaotic run-up to the farewell tour. Daltrey’s solo-band drummer Scott Devours ultimately replaced him for the shows.

Now Starkey has confirmed that he has reunited with the Who for rehearsals.

“The rehearsal was great,” Starkey said in an Instagram post. “I don't think we've ever rehearsed as tough as that. Usually, we drink tea and talk about what time we're going home!”

Whatever comes next, the reunion represents a remarkable development that could lead to a performance or recording. While Daltrey has historically been skeptical about the necessity of a new record, Townshend — whose electric guitar exploits are a thing of legend — has expressed a strong desire to record a follow-up to their 2019 album, WHO.

The primary constraint on their timeline is Daltrey's vocal longevity. Townshend noted that ensuring the 82-year-old frontman's voice stays in good shape amidst minor health issues is their central priority for future commitments

Daltrey has even suggested that his own solo career may be nearing its conclusion. In May, he said that after 17 years of touring with various solo bands, “a less grueling life becomes more attractive.”

“After finishing the Who's final tour of the U.S., it's time for me as a solo artist to possibly do the same,” Daltrey said. “After touring solo with different bands of musicians for the last 17 years, a less grueling life becomes more attractive — I'll see.”

Daltrey has also already ruled out one potential destination if the Who do return to the stage. Asked about Las Vegas’ Sphere, he said he wasn’t convinced the venue suited the band.

“I think the management may have had talks about playing there, but when I think about it, I don't know whether it really interests me,” Daltrey told the Review-Journal. “I think the Sphere's got its place... it is an extraordinary thing, but I like the energy from a show just to come from the stage.”

Queen have unveiled a new 4K trailer for Queen: Budapest, the band’s landmark 1986 concert film, ahead of its 40th-anniversary release in theaters this fall.

Set to the group's hit “We Are the Champions,” the 100-second trailer previews the newly restored film, which captures Queen performing in Budapest on July 27, 1986, during the Magic tour. The concert was a historic event: Queen became the first major Western rock band to perform a stadium show behind the Iron Curtain.

The footage has been remastered in 4K by Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post Production, using material shot by 17 cameras around the concert. The original multitrack tapes have also been remastered for the new release.

“It’s going to be definitively the most real experience ever of us, Queen, in our glory days,” Brian May said when the anniversary edition was announced. “I think people will get lost in it and even forget they’re watching a film.”

The new trailer offers glimpses of Queen both onstage and behind the scenes, capturing the scale of the band’s historic visit to Hungary at the height of their live power.

For May — who performs with his Red Special home-made electric guitar in hand — the significance of the concert went far beyond the performance itself. Fans in Eastern Europe had spent years listening to Queen through bootleg recordings, making the chance to see the band in person an extraordinary moment.

“For years, fans behind the Iron Curtain had been able to listen to Queen music only on illegal cassettes. It was a forbidden thing to listen to rock bands like us, so to see them play in a live show would have been unthinkable,” May said.

“This concert, when they could finally come and see us live in person and interact with us, was a huge emotional moment for them and also for us. It felt like a very big deal — you could feel that incredible energy,” May added. “There will never be an event quite like that again.”

Queen: Budapest will arrive in theaters and select IMAX venues on October 7, followed by a wider release on October 30 in Blu-ray, DVD, triple-vinyl, double-CD and digital formats.

A video showing Les Paul’s longtime home, workshop and recording laboratory in Mahwah, New Jersey, in its final days before demolition has surfaced, offering a look inside the property before it was razed earlier this month.

The video was shot by guitarist, collector and recording-studio owner Perry Margouleff, who narrates the footage as he walks through the deteriorating property. It shows the rooms and workspaces where Paul developed his ideas for the solidbody electric guitar, recording techniques and other musical innovations over several decades.

Paul’s Mahwah home was demolished this month after the property was sold for a reported $990,000. The property had remained largely intact after Paul’s death in 2009, although much of the equipment associated with his work was eventually moved elsewhere.

Margouleff says in the video that he learned that the property was scheduled to be demolished and went there with a friend to document it.

“It made me sick,” Margouleff says in the video. “That house was not just where Les Paul lived. It was his workshop; his journey of dreams.”

Margouleff is a longtime collector of American guitars and vintage recording equipment. He also founded Pie Studios on Long Island’s North Shore, where artists including the Rolling Stones and Bad Brains have recorded.

His video focuses on the condition of the Mahwah property and the significance of its rooms to Paul’s work. He also raises questions about the decision to demolish the house and directs criticism toward Michael Braunstein, executive director of the Les Paul Foundation.

“A name kept coming up when trying to get to the bottom of who did this,” Margouleff says. “Michael Braunstein moved all the gear to Los Angeles and apparently sold the property to be razed.”

Braunstein previously described the Mahwah property as essentially “four walls” in discussing the decision to move Paul’s equipment. Much of the equipment associated with Paul’s recording work is now housed at the Les Paul Recording Studio in Hollywood, which opened in March 2025.

The Mahwah property had a long history of visitors from the music world. Jimmy Page and Eddie Van Halen were among the guitarists known to have visited Paul there.

Paul’s son Gene has also criticized the handling of his father’s legacy. In an August 25 Facebook post, he said Braunstein “took control of everything” following Paul’s death.

“The entire family found ourselves on the outside looking in,” Gene wrote. “We are seldom consulted about anything regarding my father’s estate, his money, or his legacy. Suffice it to say, we have never been happy about this arrangement.”

In a subsequent statement, Gene expanded on his concerns about the Mahwah property, saying Braunstein had told him after Paul’s death that having the home designated as a historic landmark, or otherwise preserving it, was impossible. Gene says he accepted that explanation for years, along with the idea that the only practical alternative to demolition would have been turning the property into a museum.

He now questions both assumptions, arguing that preservation did not necessarily require the home to operate as a museum. He also says he has begun looking into whether the property could have qualified for historic designation and whether such a nomination was ever pursued.

“My father’s Mahwah home wasn’t simply an old house where a famous man once lived,” Gene said. “It was a place where Les Paul lived, worked, experimented and helped change the way the world makes and records music.”

Gene now describes the years of deterioration before the demolition as “demolition by neglect.”

For now, the video provides a record of what remained of the property shortly before it was demolished, while Gene Paul’s questions leave open a broader issue: whether Les Paul’s Mahwah home could have been preserved, and whether that possibility was ever seriously pursued.

Boston guitarist Tom Scholz has shared a rare live recording of “More Than a Feeling,” captured during the band’s 2017 Hyper Space tour — and it offers a glimpse of Boston onstage that fans have never officially been given before.

The recording arrives as Boston celebrates the 50th anniversary of their legendary self-titled debut album, which was released on August 25, 1976. Earlier this week, the band announced an expanded edition of Boston featuring previously unreleased “lost demos.”

Now Scholz has reached further into the vaults, sharing what he calls “one of the last available recordings” of the band performing its signature song live.

In a new Facebook update shared August 27, he explained that the recording isn’t a polished studio reconstruction, but an unvarnished document of the band in concert.

“Everyone is familiar with the recording of ‘More Than a Feeling’ Brad [Delp] and I performed in 1976, so now, 50 years later, I’d like to offer one of the last available recordings of the song performed live by the band Boston in 2017,” he detailed.

“This is not a studio remix of a multitrack recording, but the actual stereo feed from the mixing console to the sound system speakers. The mistakes (mostly mine), and oddities of a live mix in a large venue are all there. Gary Pihl has edited some actual video footage from the show. Enjoy!”

The release is notable because, despite Boston’s extensive history on the road and the existence of numerous unofficial concert recordings, the band has never issued an authorized live album.

But Scholz’s post ultimately looks far beyond the 2017 performance. Fifty years after Boston transformed his career, he’s still reflecting on just how unlikely that breakthrough was.

“In 1975, with singer Brad Delp and drummer Jim Masdea, I finished my final demo recording number six of my songs that were recorded, arranged, played and produced the way I wanted to hear them. I wasn’t expecting any success,” he explained in the Facebook update. “My demos had been universally rejected for years — now I was just making one last recording of my best songs before I threw in the towel at age 29.

“I was not surprised when almost every record company rejected them again — including Epic,” Scholz remembered. “By now, I figured my musical tastes were just a lot different than most people’s, but surprisingly, after Epic had a good listen to “More Than a Feeling,” Brad and I received a contract offer. (Thank you Tom Werman at Epic for having ears!)”

Even then, Scholz wasn’t convinced that signing a record deal would lead to a hit. After years of rejection, he had little reason to expect otherwise. What he did have was the chance to finally make what he considered a real record — albeit one that was still being created in his basement.

The rest is rock history. Boston became a blockbuster, “More Than a Feeling” became an enduring classic with a memorable electric guitar riff, and the music Scholz had nearly abandoned ended up reaching millions of people.

Half a century later, he’s still hearing from listeners about what those songs have meant to them.

“After six years of discouragement, Boston suddenly blanketed the radio airwaves! The ultimate success was the result of you, our listeners and fans,” he said. “The variety of stories I’ve heard of people who were helped through hard times by this music (I’m one of those stories!), and the number of lives that have been saved by the donations made possible, have all made the enormous work effort more than worth it.

“Thank you all for an amazing run.”

Even the most celebrated, seemingly indomitable guitar players have influences; they have heroes they try to emulate. David Gilmour, a master craftsman of guitar solos, is no exception. In fact, following in the footsteps of one guitarist left him terrified.

Gilmour once said that he developed his “tuneful” approach to soloing after a reluctant acceptance that, try as he might, he would never be a shredder. It helped him weave into his own lane. But it wasn’t always like that.

In 1985, a decade after Pink Floyd were arguably at the height of their powers and had successfully followed up The Dark Side of the Moon with an album that exhausted Gilmour, he spoke to Guitar Classics. In the interview, he was asked to dissect his guitar-playing DNA.

“I was a blues fan, but I was an all-around music fan,” he explained of his early days (via Far Out). “For me, it was Lead Belly through B.B. King and later Eric Clapton, Roy Buchanan, Jeff Beck, Eddie Van Halen and anyone you care to mention.”

His influences were widespread, and he wasn’t closed off to newer players bringing fresh ideas to the table. In fact, he celebrated those innovators, adding: “Mark Knopfler has a lovely, refreshing guitar style. He brought back something that seemed to have gone astray in guitar playing.”

He tried to copy a number of those players, to extract knowledge from them. But for a man who has written more iconic solos than most, there was one player he held in even higher regard.

“I was trying to learn 12-string acoustic guitar like Lead Belly,” he says. “At the same time, I was trying to learn lead guitar like Hank Marvin and later Clapton. All of those different things had their moments and filtered through my learning process. These days I don’t listen to other people to steal their licks, although I’m sure Mark Knopfler and Eddie Van Halen still influence me.”

As for the solo he wishes he wrote, he name-drops Peter Green’s cut on Fleetwood Mac’s 1968 instrumental track, “Albatross”. Years later, he was asked to cover the song at Mick Fleetwood & Friends’ tribute concert to Green, at London’s Palladium on February 20th, 2020. Green would die just months later.

Fleetwood had personally invited Gilmour to feature. It put the fear of God into him.

“He had so much reverence for Peter Green’s playing and who Peter was and the songs,” the drummer told Rolling Stone. “He initially got cold feet. He was like, ‘I don’t know if I can interpret Peter’s work. It’s so amazing. Maybe I can’t do that…At the moment, I’m sort of passing on the idea. But later on, if this happens, I may gather enough courage.’”

Gather the courage he did, but with a degree of separation between him and Green. He opted to play pedal steel, rather than electric guitar.

Yet the song proves the point that all guitarists have their muses. Green has said that “Albatross” was written in direct reference to two tracks: Santo & Johnny’s “Sleep Walk” and “The Last Meal”, a John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers track from Clapton’s revered era with the group. He had craved a bluesier take on Hawaiian-style playing, and the song stuck to Gilmour like glue.

Meanwhile, Gilmour has named this player as one every guitarist should study. He’s also confessed to never learning one of his most famous solos.

Eddie Van Halen’s arrival on the scene in the late 1970s bowled over a generation of guitar players and kickstarted a shred revolution. But it wasn’t just contemporary players left aghast; plenty of the old guard were won over, too.

Eric Clapton had a famous disagreement with the virtuoso regarding their definition of the blues. But ZZ Top’s bandleader, a perennial bridge between the classic bluesmanship of the three Kings and fresh, outside-the-box thinking, understood Van Halen’s mind-boggling approach from the start.

“I knew him well from the very first record,” Gibbons told Eddie Trunk shortly after his counterpart’s passing in 2020 (via Far Out). “And he was actually, as it came to pass, a neighbor, very close to the house back in Los Angeles.”

Naturally, it didn’t take long for the two players, who have made plenty of innovations on the electric guitar, to link up.

“I first heard the words, ‘Hey, man, there’s a guy that plays some interesting guitar riffs, maybe you should get together,’” he recalls, “only to discover that sitting in the record bin was the first Van Halen record. They had already picked up steam, and fortunately, I was able to go out and catch a live show, and that blew my mind. I said, ‘Oh my gosh, these guys have got it going on.’”

That was often people’s reaction when they first heard Van Halen play. Hearing “Eruption” for the first time was game changing for Alex Skolnick; Jerry Cantrell says EVH and Jimi Hendrix “tilted the world on its axis.” Joe Satriani, meanwhile, said that he “scared the hell out of a million guitarists because he was so damn good” (via BBC).

Gibbons was equally as moved.

“He was always ready to deliver,” he said. “Even [with] the most ferocious riffs and with that technique, it was really gratifying to be in front of a guy who genuinely appreciated and enjoyed every single moment.

“Eddie’s technical prowess is nearly unsurpassed,” he then said. “When it comes to hammer-ons, he’s one of the guys who not only did it best, but did it fast; he did it furiously.”

Two-handed tapping was, of course, Eddie Van Halen’s calling card. It’s a technique that would go on to dominate the next decade-plus of guitar music. It saw his left hand constantly hammering, and he has credited Jimmy Page for the inspiration.

Yet others have claimed they invented tapping first, with Harvey Mendal saying Eddie copied it from him. Rocky Athas and Brian May have also been mentioned. And while Joe Satriani once said he started tapping before hearing any of his soon-to-be-hero’s music, Gibbons was experiencing the exact stroke of fated luck.

“Eruption,” never intended as a solo, was released in 1978, after being recorded in September ’77. Five years earlier, Gibbons did a bit of tapping himself on the Tres Hombres cut “Beer Drinkers and Hellraisers.”

As it turns out, it came about spontaneously.

“Totally by accident,” Gibbons assured Guitar Player in February 2016. “As Frank Beard — our man with no beard — waited for the tape to roll, I was attempting to illustrate with Dusty [Hill, bass] the high note for the bass guitar track.

“I held the low fret down and tapped the high octave, and that did it. Dusty leaned back and said, ‘Man, do that and do it again!’”

He says he never fully incorporated it into the ZZ sound out of respect for Eddie’s legacy.

“Well, it’s still in the technique corral,” he said, nodding. “Van Halen made it a regular thing, and now it’s a genuine part of the player’s approach to shred. I dig it.”

Tim Curry, the actor and singer who became an icon as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, died August 25 at age 80. But outside his film and television work, Curry left behind one particularly strange piece of musical history: “I Do the Rock,” his 1979 one-hit wonder that turned a rapid-fire catalog of celebrities, politicians and cultural figures into a gloriously theatrical rock song.

“I do the rock — it’s stimulating,” Curry said in the original press material for Fearless, the album that contained the song.

The line was more than a joke. Curry was serious about his music career, even as his success in Rocky Horror threatened to make him permanently associated with Frank-N-Furter. The Fearless press material described Curry as an artist who had entered rock without being weighed down by its traditions, instead bringing his own “wit, intelligence and panache” to the form.

For Fearless, Curry reunited with two musicians he had worked with on his 1978 debut album, Read My Lips: composer and keyboardist Michael Kamen and guitarist Dick Wagner. This time, Wagner and Kamen produced the record together, with Wagner also playing guitar and contributing to several of its songs.

Wagner was hardly an anonymous studio player. His résumé included extensive work with Alice Cooper as well as Lou Reed and Kiss, frequently working alongside session ace Steve Hunter. Wagner brought a formidable rock pedigree to Curry's deliberately theatrical music.

“Tim and I got along really well,” Wagner recalled in a 2013 interview with AntiMusic. “We wrote a lot of songs together for his album.” Wagner said Curry had asked him and Kamen to produce Fearless, and that they produced it, played on it and wrote songs with Curry.

Wagner also offered a particularly revealing assessment of Curry's musical ambitions: “He’s an intellectual actor really who wanted to have a singing career too.” He acknowledged that the career did not ultimately work out as Curry had hoped, but added, “we did make some good music together.”

One of those pieces of “good music” was “I Do the Rock,” the album's gloriously eccentric centerpiece. Written by Curry, the song turns a rapid-fire catalogue of celebrities, politicians, intellectuals and pop-culture figures into a declaration of purpose. Its lyrics name-check everyone from John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Albert Einstein and Friedrich Nietzsche to Liza Minnelli, Farrah Fawcett, John Travolta, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

The musicians surrounding Curry were every bit as serious. Wagner played lead and acoustic guitar, Kamen supplied keyboards, oboe and synthesizer, and the rhythm section included Motown bassist Bob Babbitt and drummer Charles Collins. David Sanborn contributed alto saxophone, while Bob Kulick also played guitar.

The result was an unusual collision of Curry's theatrical instincts and a genuine late-'70s rock band. A contemporary HiFi/Stereo Review called “I Do the Rock” a “tour de force,” describing it as Noel Coward–style patter about the political, social and jet-set personalities of the day, backed by a riff.

“I Do the Rock” became Curry's only U.S. Billboard Hot 100 entry, peaking at number 91 in late 1979. Fearless itself reached 53 on the Billboard 200, making it the most commercially successful album of Curry's recording career.

The album was recorded at the Hit Factory in New York and Long View Farm Recording Studio in Massachusetts, with a formidable cast of musicians including Motown bassist Bob Babbitt, drummer Charles Collins, guitarist Bob Kulick, keyboardist Bette Sussman and saxophonist David Sanborn.

For Curry, though, the point was never simply to prove that he could make a rock record. He wanted to step outside the safety of his most famous character and connect with an audience as himself.

His music career ultimately didn't become the second act he had envisioned. But Fearless remains a fascinating record of Curry trying to make that transition — backed by musicians of serious rock pedigree and determined to be taken seriously as more than Frank-N-Furter.

For an actor who spent his career inhabiting unforgettable characters, it was one of the rare occasions when Tim Curry was determined to let audiences hear the artist underneath them.

For years, Dolly Parton knew which emotional song would be played in her memory when she passed away. But no matter how obvious a choice, it wasn’t her own.

Thinking ahead, she’d also prepared a song to be released on he 100th birthday in 2046, whether she was there for the centenary or not.

“I’m sure they’ll be playing ‘I Will Always Love You’ when I die, just like they did with Whitney Houston,” Parton told Entertainment Weekly in 2014 (via Billboard). She released the song in 1974, as a tribute to her music industry mentor Porter Wagoner as she moved on toward a solo career. Houston’s version also became a hit in 1992.

Parton recalled of Houston’s 2012 funeral: “When they picked her coffin up and started in on that song, I started to cry, and I thought, ‘Oh my Lord.’ That’s when it hit me that she was really gone.”

Nevertheless, Parton preferred a different song for her own memorial — and it’s not even one of her own. Instead, it’s an old gospel number.

“There’s a song called ‘If We Never Meet Again,’” she explained. “It’s an old country-gospel church song that talks about, ‘If we never meet again this side of Heaven, I will meet you on that beautiful shore: ‘Where the charming roses bloom forever and where separations come no more.’

“That was my daddy’s favorite. We did sing it at his funeral, and I would like it to be sung at mine.”

Parton, who died on August 25 at age 80 after a brief battle with cancer, spent some time thinking about her legacy, because in 2015 she prepared a song which isn’t to be released until her centennial year. It’s titled “My Place in History” and it’s locked in a time capsule, complete with a CD player in case the format has been lost to time by then.

The capsule can be seen at Dollywood's DreamMore Resort and Spa in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where it was placed on display when the establishment opened in 2015. In her 2020 memoir Songteller: My Life in Lyrics (via Mental Floss), she recalled being told she’d be “long dead” by the time the box was to be opened.

“I said, ‘Well, maybe not… I’ve seen people live to be older than that.’ It’s kind of weird or strange that they would ask me to write this mystery song. I don’t know if I want to live to be 100 or not. But you never know. I might, and if I do, I’m going to be at that opening.”

Boston marked the 50th anniversary of their self-titled debut album by announcing a 50th-anniversary edition — although it won’t arrive until 2027. But Impex Records said the upcoming version will differ from previous reissues because it’s being assembled in collaboration with bandleader Tom Scholz.

The guitarist, inventor and producer endured steep challenges to deliver the original record, first released on August 25, 1976. His exacting audio requirements and determination to retain control of the product made its path to success a difficult one.

In fact, it took seven years to complete the 11-track project.

“I started around 1969,” he told Classic Rock in 2023. “That was when I wrote my first song, Foreplay. It’s ironic that the first piece I ever wrote appeared on a best-selling 17-million-plus album.

“From there it was a long, long string of doing everything from buying time in so-called professional recording studios. Back in the ’70s that was incredibly expensive. Then, after I had blown enough money doing that and realized it was just gonna cost too much, I decided I would put my own little demo studio together.”

Scholz received a series of rejections before Epic signed Boston — and demanded that the tracks they’d heard be re-recorded in a “proper” studio.

“I knew I couldn’t… I’d gotten used to working alone,” he said.

That’s when producer John Boylan offered a sneaky solution. “I would make the record in my basement and wouldn’t tell anybody, and he would take a couple guys he knew out to L.A.,” Scholz explained. “They would record some songs out there, and Epic would think all the recording was done in L.A.”

Former coguitarist Barry Goudreau recalled the episode in an interview with Guitar Player.

“All of us, except for Tom, flew out to California and did some recording out there to give the label the impression that we were recording the album in L.A. with John Boylan,” he said. “But Tom was just doing it in the basement, and pretty much replicating what he’d already done on the demo. And if you compare the two, they’re really close.”

Regardless, Boston’s record hit pay dirt, with hits like "More Than a Feeling" — which beautifully merged acoustic and electric guitars — "Peace of Mind" and "Foreplay/Long Time." The album continues to receives airplay on classic rock radio to this day.

Impex described the 2027 release as “the most authentic version of this oft-reissued classic,” and added, “Wishing to offer something truly unique to the millions of Boston fans who’ve supported the band through the years, Tom has — for the very first time — dug deep into his massive archive of recordings to find the long-lost, previously unreleased demos he famously shopped to the labels before being signed by Epic Records.

“He painstakingly restored and remastered these elusive treasures with the help of producer, digital expert and Boston guitarist Gary Pihl, exclusively for this 50th-anniversary release.”

Full details have yet to be revealed, but the anniversary package is available for pre-order now in black vinyl, gold vinyl and SACD/hybrid formats.

With Labor Day set to arrive on September 7th, Sweetwater has seriously jumped the gun with the launch of its massive up-to-50% off sale. So far, it’s the first of the big music retailers to go live with a sale, making it the ideal place to bag an early Labor Day deal on guitar gear.

There are some serious brands represented in the sale, with Fender, Marshall, Line 6, Electro-Harmonix, and loads more. I’d expect this sale to run at least until Labor Day itself, and likely a few days beyond that based on past coverage of sales.

I’ve had a look through the full sale, and there are some seriously great deals available for guitarists. The first I spied is a cool $200 off this unique Fender American Professional II GT11 Stratocaster. It’s got a 11-inch fretboard radius, which makes it a really fast-playing instrument, and quite unlike anything else in the Fender stable.

For those who need to build up their stocks of electric guitar strings, you can get a great deal on Ernie Ball Slinkys at the moment. Just buy a 3-pack, and you’ll get another set completely free, saving you a nice $8.99. It’s available on the Regular Slinky and Super Slinky sets.

There’s also a great saving on a limited edition JHS Good Vibrations pedal, with a huge $100 discount. It’s an all-analog, bulb-driven Uni-Vibe-style unit that delivers a lovely warble to your tones. It’s a big pedal, but for those who love vintage tones, it’s the real deal.

A recording of John Lennon and Paul McCartney working on Beatles classic “Day Tripper” has been released, after having lived in storage since it was made in 1965.
The final version of the song was released in December that year, as a double-A side with “We Can Work It Out,” and reached number one in the U.K. and number five in the U.S.. Both songs were tracked during sessions for their sixth album, Rubber Soul.

In the newly released “Day Tripper (Songwriting Work Tape),” John Lennon and Paul McCartney are heard laying down the structure and trying vocal styles using an acoustic guitar and an electric.

At one point they cut the take with a fit of the giggles, then later Lennon says “I can’t balance this…” after another attempt. Later still, the pair giggle again after Lennon’s delivery of the line ‘I tried to please her.’

The song was created by Lennon, initially as a folk-rock style piece, before McCartney helped with a verse and they turned it into the trademark style. “Day trippers are people who go on a day trip, right?“ Lennon told Playboy in 1980. “Usually on a ferry boat or something. But [the song] was kind of [saying], ‘You're just a weekend hippie.’”

In his the 1997 memoir, Many Years From Now, McCartney described it as “a tongue-in-cheek song about someone who was committed only in part to the idea. Whereas we saw ourselves as full-time trippers.”

The work tape is one of a number of bonus tracks to be packaged with the special edition of Rubber Soul, which arrives on October 2. Produced by Giles Martin with assistance from engineer Sam Okell, the box set also includes new stereo and Dolby Atmos versions of the record, the Capitol edition as released in the U.S., and the original British mono mix. It’s available for pre-order in multiple formats.

When Dolly Parton, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr recorded “Let It Be” for her 2023 album, Rockstar, it marked a historic meeting of English and Nashville music royalty.

“I just sent them a love note through their managers, and I just said what I was doing,” the late country icon told NPR in 2023. “And I said, ‘I didn’t want to put you on the spot, but I’d love to have you sing with me on my rock album. And if you’re interested, call me at this number.’”

Dolly had already recorded “Let It Be” when she got the idea to contact Paul McCartney. “And so I contacted him. He was so gracious.

“And then I thought, Well, we got to have Ringo, because that’s the last of the Beatles. So I asked Ringo if he would do it. Same thing: ‘I’d be glad to do it.’”

The recording was another milestone in the career of Parton, the hit-making singer-songwriter and acoustic guitarist, who turns 80 on January 19.

But it turns out she had already met both Beatles years earlier, in the 1970s. What’s more, each occasion had been memorable for reasons that had nothing to do with the Beatles.

Dolly met McCartney and his first wife, Linda, on June 16, 1974, backstage at Opryland in Nashville, Tennessee. Paul and Linda were in town with their family for a six-week stay, during which time they recorded a quartet of non-album singles with their group Wings, including the number three hit “Junior’s Farm.”

During their time in Nashville, the McCartneys decided to attend the Grand Masters Fiddling Contest taking place at Opryland. When intermission came, they were invited backstage, where they met Dolly and country star Porter Wagoner and were photographed by Jack Corn for a story in The Tennessean.

Coincidentally, the event was special for another reason: It marked the last appearance Dolly and Wagoner made together in the 1970s. They had teamed up as a duo in 1967, a few years after Dolly left behind her family and first Martin guitar and set off on a music career. She and Wagoner had performed their final concert as a duo one week before meeting the McCartneys, on June 9. (Their split was the impetus for her to write her hit “I Will Always Love You” as thanks to Wagoner for all he had done for her career.)

A few years and a cross-country journey later, Dolly met Ringo Starr courtesy of Ken Mansfield, the former U.S. manager of the Beatles’ Apple Records, as well as a Grammy Award–winning producer. The time was the late 1970s, and the place was Los Angeles, where Mansfield was luring Nashville stars in an attempt to break the rock-and-roll stronghold on clubs along the Sunset Strip. Waylon Jennings and Dolly were among the country artists who picked up their acoustic guitars and made the move west.

Several years before then, Starr had settled in Los Angeles, where he remained close with Mansfield. As a lifelong country music fan, the former Beatle was thrilled with the Nashville expatriates and spent one memorable evening watching Waylon Jennings perform and hanging out with him afterward.

It turned out Starr was eager to meet Dolly.

“He was very intrigued by Dolly’s career,” Mansfield wrote in his entertaining 2007 memoir, The White Book. Dolly was, he writes, “a giant Beatles fan and, knowing that I had worked with them, had jokingly mentioned that someday she would like to meet them, Ringo in particular.”

In short order, Mansfield arranged dinner at his home for a small group, including Dolly and Ringo. Neither knew the other would be there.

“Both invitees were thrilled at the surprise,” Mansfield wrote, “and the intimacy of the evening really made the whole thing very special.”

Special — but not eventful. That is, not until Mansfield’s friend Stewart Levine crashed the party. Levine was a producer of note, with clients who included Simply Red, B.B. King, Lionel Richie, Sly Stone, Patti LaBelle and Joe Cocker. He was also a huge Dolly Parton fan and was dying to meet her. Unfortunately, Mansfield insisted the guest list should be small, “to keep the focus on just Ringo and Dolly spending time together.”

Levine didn’t care. Shortly after dinner, he rang Mansfield’s doorbell. When the host answered the door, the producer muscled his way in, leading to a noisy confrontation.

As the men argued in the hallway, Dolly suddenly appeared. Seeing Levine, she stopped in her tracks and stared at him wide-eyed.

“After a very pregnant pause, Dolly began to speak and in a stuttering, shaky voice asked Stewart if he was Stewart Levine, the famous producer,” Mansfield wrote.

Struggling to comprehend what was happening, Levine mumbled “yes” as Dolly gazed lovingly at him.

“She continued to explain that in her lifetime she never expected that she would ever get the chance to be in the same room with Stewart Levine, let alone have the privilege of meeting him,” Mansfield wrote. “She went on further saying that she was a giant fan of his and had absolutely adored him from afar for quite a long time.

“She then delivered the fatal blow by announcing that she was going to have to leave the room for fear that she would no longer be able to contain herself and might jump his bones right in front of everyone,” Mansfield recalled.

“She made an abrupt about-face, as if fearful of being unable to control her emotions, and returned to the living room.”

The men stood speechless for a long while. Eventually they made their way to the living room where Dolly and the others were waiting. As they appeared, everyone burst into laughter.

It had all been a joke. Hearing the commotion after Levine forced his way in, Mansfield’s wife explained to Dolly that the producer was infatuated with her, and Dolly decided to have a little fun at his expense.

“I think Stewart was so stunned by what had gone down that he wasn't even the least bit disappointed that Dolly didn’t really have the hots for him,” Mansfield wrote.

Although Dolly had met her second Beatle that evening, she managed to make the night memorable for an entirely different reason.

Dolly Parton died after a brief fight with cancer, her representatives said in a statement on Tuesday.

Parton died earlier in the day, surrounded by loved ones at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville. The country icon was admitted to the hospital on Friday. The statement provided no other details about her illness.

“Our beloved Dolly Parton spent her life and career bringing joy, laughter, hope and integrity into everything she touched,” the statement said.

Parton pushed back on rumors that she was ill in her final days. In an interview with People — published, coincidentally, the same day she was admitted to the hospital — the singer assured her fans that she was simply fatigued and in poor health due to kidney stones and caring for her husband, Carl Dean, who died in March 2025.

It was obvious to fans that Parton was not well. Concerns for her health arose after she postponed a Las Vegas residency last year due to unspecified health problems that required her to be closer to her home near Nashville. The residency was ultimately canceled in May. Parton said at the time she was dealing with kidney stones and digestive issues.

Just over a week ago, she canceled a scheduled appearance at her Dollywood amusement park. Visitors were instead shown a video in which she said she had been dealing with dizziness and dehydration and was cautioned from traveling by her doctors .

In her last known interview, with People, she said she was still intent on continuing to work. That included the forthcoming Life of Many Colors Museum in Nashville, which will celebrate her life and career

“Even though I’m still healin’, I’m still workin’! You know me — as I’ve often said — I’ve dreamed myself into a corner, and I still have so many things I want to achieve, so I’m gonna keep on working as long as I can to see everything come to life.”

Tributes to the country icon have continued throughout the day, and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee ordered flags across the state lowered “in memory of Dolly Parton, Tennessee’s favorite daughter.”

Dolly Parton’s death has prompted an outpouring of tributes from across the musical spectrum, with rockers including Jack White, Slash and Steve Stevens among those mourning the loss of the country icon.

White summed up the feeling in characteristically vivid terms, writing that the singer earned “Instant Sainthood.” Stevens also shared his memories of the singer-songwriter, while Parton’s goddaughter Miley Cyrus — who had performed alongside her on numerous occasions — called it a “devastating day for humanity.”

Perhaps the most appropriate quote came from Parton’s corner of the music world, country singer Kacey Musgraves, who wrote on X, “The world feels a lot less sparkly all of a sudden.”

Parton died at 80 on August 25 following a period of health problems that had forced her to cancel her Las Vegas residency and step back from some public appearances. Her passing brings an end to one of the most extraordinary careers in popular music — one that stretched from the Appalachian roots of her childhood to country superstardom, Hollywood, Broadway and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Few artists have united music fans across such a broad spectrum. Parton’s songs reached far beyond country, from the universal workplace anthem “9 to 5” to “I Will Always Love You,” while her collaborations with rock artists on her Rockstar album cemented her status as an artist whose appeal transcended genre.

And for all the rhinestones and larger-than-life image, the acoustic guitar remained central to Parton’s story. It was there from the beginning, when a young Dolly received a Martin acoustic guitar that would become one of the formative instruments of her career — a humble reminder of the musician beneath the icon.

Dolly Parton always had a preference for small guitars. Over the years, she played small-scale three-quarter acoustic guitars and frequently performed with her custom Taylor GS Mini and Martin 5-18 Terz.

The country music icon, who passed away at age 80 on August 25, explained that her love of these smaller-bodied instruments goes back to her very first guitar, a small Martin acoustic given to her by her uncle Lewis, a guitarist who was just one of many musicians in Parton’s extended family.

“When he saw how serious I was about my music, he gave me his little Martin guitar,” Parton told Reverb. “It was my treasure.”

By the time she left home to begin her career at age 18, the Martin was too beat up to take on the road. Parton left it in the loft of her family home, hoping to have it repaired.

“My plan was always to — when I got money, when I got rich and famous — have it fixed up,” she said.

Unfortunately, the guitar was a victim of a fire.

“But the loft burned out of our house, and burned up my guitar, so I only have the neck of that one,” Parton said. “But I have collected little Martin guitars all through the years. I have some classic little guitars, especially the Martins, the baby Martins.”

Those small-bodied guitars have played a vital role in her career as a performer and songwriter of hits like “Jolene,” “Nine to Five” and “I Will Always Love You,” which she wrote as a farewell to her mentor and professional partner, Porter Wagoner.

In 1967, Wagoner invited 21-year-old Parton to a weekly spot on his syndicated TV program, The Porter Wagoner Show. It boosted her popularity, which led Wagoner to convince his label, RCA, to sign her. Her first single, a duet with Wagoner of the Tom Paxton song “The Last Thing on My Mind,” reached the top 10 in January 1968 and began a six-year run of almost uninterrupted top-10 singles for the pair.

“I Will Always Love You” was released in 1974 after their partnership ended and became a number one hit.

“If it hadn’t been for Porter, I wouldn’t have written this song,” Parton said. “It was kind of my goodbye song to Porter.”

The song became one of Parton’s defining compositions, and decades later it reached an even wider audience when Whitney Houston’s recording for The Bodyguard soundtrack topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 weeks. Parton’s decision decades earlier to retain her publishing rights — after declining Elvis Presley’s request for half the song’s publishing in exchange for recording it — ensured that she continued to benefit from one of the most successful songs ever written.

Dolly Parton, the country icon whose outsized voice, songwriting and unmistakable style made her one of the most beloved figures in popular music, has died at 80.

No official cause of death has been issued at this time. Parton was admitted to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, on August 21 for unknown reasons. She resided in Brentwood, just south of the city.

The “9 to 5” and “Jolene” singer’s death was announced by her family in a video message shared on her social media pages, bringing an end to a career that stretched across more than six decades and made Parton a cultural force far beyond country music.

“This video announcement is something Dolly asked of me years ago, before I fully absorbed it as a future reality,” Bryan Seaver, Parton’s nephew, said in the video. “As her head of security for more than two decades, a role my father Larry held before me, I have imagined the heaviness of this moment, but haven't truly felt it until now. It is an honor, an honor that is mixed with absolute pride and great sadness.”

Seaver continued, “Dolly has lived in the light, and is in the arms of Jesus, surely met by [her husband] Carl, her parents, and countless others who have watched her and longed for her to meet them in the heavens.”

“She never saw a door she couldn't open, and the doors she opened made and changed history,” Seaver said. “My family and I have shared a lifetime of beautiful memories with Dolly, but so have you. She has always been on your television, your record player, your CD, and on your phone playlist, becoming an extended part of your family, whether you liked it or not.”

Seaver added that Parton requested to be laid to rest “in a beautiful bed of plush cotton, because after a life wearing heavy rhinestones, she finally deserves to be comfortable and have some rest.”

“Rest in peace, Aunt Dolly, Aunt Granny, Gigi,” he continued. “My God bless Dolly Parton, and may God bless you all. She will always love you.”

Parton had spoken in recent days about health issues involving her compromised immune system and digestive problems. She said she had neglected her own health while caring for her husband, Carl Dean, who died in March 2025.

“I am dealing with some health issues that I just didn’t pay attention to when I was watching over Carl,” Parton told People on Friday, August 21, the day she was admitted to a hospital. “It’s not like I haven’t been through hard times with my health,” she added, recalling that she was “down for several months with female issues” in the early 1980s.

Opeth leader Mikael Åkerfeldt has never hidden his adoration for rock’s greatest guitar heroes, but none looms larger for him than Deep Purple and Rainbow legend Ritchie Blackmore. So when Opeth and Blackmore’s Rainbow were booked for the same festival in Spain, Åkerfeldt didn’t just look forward to seeing his hero — he stalked him backstage.

Speaking to Loudwire, the 52-year-old recalls that there was no hesitation when Opeth were invited to play the 2019 Rock the Coast festival in Málaga. Blackmore was going to be there, so the answer was an immediate yes.

“I figured there’s a chance I’ll maybe be able to nod to him from a distance,” he says. “I didn’t think I was going to shake his hand and take a picture with him or whatever. But we arrived there, and I was sitting outside our little cubicle dressing room waiting for Blackmore like a stalker.”

Opeth were among the festival’s star attractions at the 10th-century Sohail Castle, with Blackmore’s recently reformed Rainbow and the Scorpions headlining the weekend. Åkerfeldt, meanwhile, was watching the cars arrive backstage.

“Is it him? No, it’s just Judas Priest,” he recalls. “Then another car comes along, and it’s Blackmore in the backseat with his wife [Candice Night]. I was like, ‘Oh my god, that’s him.’ And he drives straight into his own sealed-off section of the backstage area. And he never walks out.”

That wasn’t entirely surprising. Blackmore has long kept his distance from the rock-star circus, once telling The Guardian, “I’m not a guy who likes jamming and having fun. Music is very serious.” He also famously had little interest in the sort of backstage socializing that Eddie Van Halen embraced.

Åkerfeldt still had one potential ace up his sleeve: Opeth keyboard player Jens Johansson, who had previously played on Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force and worked with Allan Holdsworth. Johansson was also Swedish, so perhaps he could arrange an introduction.

“No chance,” Johansson told him.

So Åkerfeldt settled for watching Rainbow. But then the promoter approached him with some news.

“Ritchie Blackmore is in a bad mood,” he was told.

“Okay, why is that?”

“Well, his dressing room is too close to the stage. He thinks it’s too noisy.”

Åkerfeldt quickly realized that Opeth were about to become the source of Blackmore’s irritation: they were playing immediately before Rainbow.

“And I was like, ‘Okay, he’s going to hate us the most because we’re going to interfere with his preparation for the show.’”

But then Blackmore’s guitar tech offered Åkerfeldt exactly what he had been hoping for. He could stand at the side of the stage and watch Rainbow’s set.

“That’s really what I wanted to do,” Åkerfeldt says. “I wanted to see what he’s doing between the songs. How he’s moving, walking around, all that stuff.”

And then Blackmore delivered.

“We were standing there, and it was such a fantastic show. Fantastic. They played ‘Stargazer,’ and at the end of the solo I thought, ‘I’m going to start crying.’ It was so good I missed my plane back home the next morning.”

In related news, Blackmore recently spoke with Guitar Player about his historic reunion with Deep Purple on August 12, saying, “I think we realized it could be the last time we see each other.”

Les Paul’s son says he wants answers about the circumstances surrounding the destruction of his father’s longtime home, workshop and recording studio in Mahwah, New Jersey.

The property at 78 Deerhaven Road was recently demolished following a reported $990,000 sale to private developers. For music historians, the site was far more than a family residence: It was the working laboratory where Paul developed groundbreaking recording technology and experimented with innovations that helped shape the modern electric guitar.

The demolition has sparked further controversy following statements from the Les Paul Foundation’s official channels. Executive director Michael Braunstein described the historic property as merely “four walls” while promoting a new commercial studio in Los Angeles. The remark has drawn criticism from members of the music community, guitar historians and Paul’s family, who argue that the Mahwah property represented an important piece of music history.

Gene Paul, Les Paul’s son, has now publicly challenged the foundation’s account, describing the loss of the family home as deeply painful and questioning how the property was handled.

“I’m not an attorney. I’m a son,” Gene Paul says. “And right now, I’m a heartbroken son. A few days ago, I saw my father’s home, our family home, gutted. It made me sick. That house was not just where Les Paul lived. It was his workshop. It was his laboratory. It was his journey of dreams.”

The Mahwah property was the setting for some of Paul’s most consequential experiments. He developed his pioneering multitrack recording techniques there, worked on pickup designs and recorded television appearances with Mary Ford. Over the years, the workshop also attracted some of the biggest names in guitar, including Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Eddie Van Halen, who visited Paul to discuss music and technology.

In a Facebook post made August 25, Gene Paul explained how the property came to pass from his family to the Les Paul Foundation.

“When my dad died, control of the Les Paul Foundation and ALL things connected to his estate, his money, his royalties and his legacy did not pass to me or our family. The entire family found ourselves on the outside looking in,” he writes.

“Michael Braunstein, who controls the Foundation, took control of everything, and the family was never invited in, or invited to sit on the board of directors, and we are seldom consulted about anything regarding my father's estate, his money or his legacy.

“Suffice it to say, we have never been happy about this arrangement.”

Gene Paul says the family was given no advance warning of the demolition and was not given an opportunity to enter the house before it was destroyed. A statement from the Les Paul Legacy Group says that people close to Paul made a last-minute effort to save historically significant material, including handwritten research notes and Paul’s workbenches. According to the group, some of those items were found in rooms that had suffered water damage and mold after years of alleged neglect by the foundation.

Paul is also questioning what became of the reported $990,000 proceeds from the property sale.

“What happens to that money?” he asked.

“My father had children and a family. Was that ever considered? Nobody talked to us about it. And now that the house is gone, where is the historical marker at the entrance to Deerhaven Road telling future generations that Les Paul lived here? I think my father’s family, his friends, his fans and everyone whose life has been touched by his work deserve some answers.”

My love of weird electric guitars has helped me meet many people who share my fascination for these instruments. Around the time I began contributing to Guitar Player 25 years ago, I met kindred spirit Mike Robinson, who ran the site MyRareGuitars.com. It was from there that he eventually started Eastwood Guitars, where he has been re-creating some of the vintage guitar world’s hard-to-find classic whack jobs.

The La Baye 2x4 was the first guitar off his line way back in 2014, and it is still in production. The example shown here is from the second run, in 2024, and is the second piece I’ve bought from Eastwood.

Originally made in 1967 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, by luthier Dan Helland, the La Baye 2x4 grew out of an idea Helland had developed around 1964 or ’65 while working at Henri’s Music, an area music-store chain owned by Henri Czachor.

Around the same time, Holman-Woodell Inc. of Neodesha, Kansas, had begun making guitars for Wurlitzer, the piano and organ manufacturer, but that arrangement fell apart in 1967 when the guitars’ finishes began to flake. Helland entered the picture soon after, combining his unconventional two-by-four bodies with Holman-Woodell necks in an attempt to keep the company in the guitar business.

Unfortunately, the La Baye 2x4 was an absolute flop, selling only about 45 instruments, including 12-string and bass models. But 10 years later, Devo’s Bob Mothersbaugh (a.k.a. Bob 1) used one in a couple of the group’s videos, most notably the quirky and jerky rendition of the Stones’ classic “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” which helped cement the guitar’s cult status.

The shape recalls Les Paul’s Log guitar, the crude two-by-four lab guitar that was the basis for his experiments with solidbody guitar design. (Helland’s son says his father wasn't aware of the Log.) But whereas Paul’s design was essentially a neck-through design, the La Baye 2x4 features a two-by-four body bolted to a neck, similar to the original design.

Due to the lack of space on the front of the guitar, the control knobs are located on the upper bout, which proves to be pretty convenient. But other than the look of this guitar, there’s nothing weird about it. This is a quality build, with modern and familiar components.

It’s not the easiest thing to play while sitting, but the La Baye 2x4 is really meant to be onstage anyway. Some players find the guitar a bit headstock-heavy and opt to move the strap pins around to compensate for this, but I find it’s quite comfortable to play while standing just as it is. The neck is fast, the medium-jumbo frets are dressed beautifully, the action is low, and the neck contour is quite reminiscent of a modern Fender, Charvel, Ibanez or Schecter with a modern C-shape.

The original La Baye 2x4 came stock with Holman-Woodell pickups, just like the ones used on the 1960s American-made Wurlitzer guitars. Eastwood fitted this baby with a pair of nicely voiced P90-style pickups, each with its own set of volume and tone controls. In the spirit of P90s, these single-coils are bright and loud, but the neck pickup offers plenty of jazz mojo with the tone dialed back a bit, so it’s a versatile-sounding guitar as well.

There’s a three-way pickup selector, Kluson-style tuners, and a Tune-o-matic intonatable bridge. As an option, I was able to order mine with a “Les Trem” vibrato that works very smoothly. The 22-fret maple neck has a rosewood fingerboard and cream binding with mother-of-pearl dot inlays.

I bought mine new, from the factory, for about $800; the tremolo was an additional cost of $200. That seems like a bargain considering that original La Bayes from the 1960s are fetching from three to six thousand online.

Obviously, it rules because of its looks, but it’s also a great-playing and great-sounding guitar. I’d be more than happy to play this for a whole set. Weighing in at around six pounds, it’s light and versatile. And man, what an attention-getter!

Thanks to Mike Robinson at Eastwood for walking me through the order process. Important to note, I didn’t identify myself as being from a guitar magazine; I wanted to be treated just as he’d treat anyone. I was not disappointed. The guitar is a great value; it shipped in a gigbag just when they said it would, and I received email updates with shipping status. Nice job, guys!

The 1969 Woodstock festival produced some of rock’s most iconic guitar moments: Richie Havens strumming his beat-up open-tuned Guild D-40 acoustic as he improvised “Freedom.” Pete Townshend taking his Gibson SG to Abbie Hoffman’s head after the political activist interrupted the Who’s set. And Jimi Hendrix playing “The Star Spangled Banner” on a white Fender Stratocaster.

Among those standouts performances is Ten Years After’s Alvin Lee leading the group through “I’m Going Home” while playing the heavily stickered and modified Gibson ES-335 he called Big Red. The instrument would go on to become one of the most recognizable and prized electric guitars in rock history, and is currently under lock and key in the possession of his daughter Jasmin.

The guitar’s legend began in 1963 when Lee purchased it for £45 with a fitted case from Jack Brentnall’s, a musical instrument store in his hometown of Nottingham, England. By the time Big Red made its live debut a few years later, Lee had already begun modifying the instrument. The first distinctive change was the addition of a Fender single-coil pickup in the middle position, between the guitar’s two PAF humbuckers, giving it a brighter, sharper tone when needed.

“I now have a Gibson which sounds like a Tele just when I want it to,” Lee explained in an August 1975 interview with International Musician & Recording World.

At the same time, he began covering the instrument with stickers: peace signs, psychedelic decals, astrological imagery and the logo of the Ten Years After Music Lovers Society. By the time Lee walked onstage at Woodstock, Big Red already looked unlike any other Gibson in rock.

“Dad was always tinkering with the guitar doing stuff with it,” Jasmin tells Guitar Player. “In early 1970, he took the Bigsby off and replaced it with a TP-6 tailpiece with fine tuners. And because of that, he put more stickers on it.”

Ironically, the guitar’s appearance was permanently frozen in time by accident. During a 1972 show at London’s Marquee Club, Lee threw the guitar in the air and smashed the neck against the venue’s low ceiling.

“He used to throw it around quite a lot onstage,” Jasmin says. “Unfortunately on this particular night he threw it up and broke the dot-inlaid neck right off the guitar.”

Lee sent Big Red to Gibson for repairs. When it returned, the original neck had been replaced with a block-inlay version, and all the stickers had been lacquered over.

“The stickers became part of the guitar,” Jasmin says. “He couldn't take any off or change them.”

Gibson’s unsolicited preservation act ultimately helped turn Big Red into an artifact of classic rock history. It also obscured the guitar’s date of manufacture. Lee referred to it as a 1958 model, but without the original neck, it’s impossible to know.

Lee continued using the guitar throughout the 1970s and into the ’80s, but as its value climbed he gradually retired it from the stage. By 1992, insurance costs forced him to place it in storage altogether.

Years later, Gibson attempted to produce a signature replica, resulting in a painstaking Woodstock 50th-anniversary re-creation in 2019.

“Gibson actually worked quite closely with Dad on this guitar,” Jasmin says. “They sent him quite a few prototypes, but he was like, ‘Nope, nope, that’s not right.’”

Today, the original Big Red remains secured in storage while its replicas hang at Dean St. Studios in London. The Lee family hopes the original instrument will eventually find a new owner who understands both its musical significance and the decades of history embedded in every scratch, modification and sticker sealed beneath its lacquer finish.

While Norman’s Rare Guitars has built its reputation as one of the world’s premier vintage guitar shops, Norman Harris’ influence extends far beyond buying and selling old instruments. For decades, he’s also used the store’s considerable reach to help young musicians find an audience.

That side of Harris’ legacy is highlighted in the recent documentary Norman’s Rare Guitars, which explores not only the store’s celebrity clientele and vintage electric and acoustic guitar treasures but also the musicians who’ve found exposure through its popular “Guitar of the Day” videos.

“The way he helps struggling artists that come through the store, like, ‘Hey, come play a song, we’ll put it on our YouTube channel,’” Joe Bonamassa says in the film.

“And you can sit on that sofa, and you can play, and they’ll put it out,” adds Malcolm McDowell. “It’s such an important place for a young musician to go and get a little exposure. He nurtures.”

A quick scroll through the store’s YouTube channel reveals countless young players showcasing everything from blues and country to rock and fingerstyle guitar. For many, the videos provided exposure they might not have found elsewhere.

“He’s finding musicians and bands that he thinks are worth breaking, sets them up in here, and makes them play,” actor Kiefer Sutherland says. “He’s actually making a difference.”

One musician who benefited directly from that exposure is slide guitarist ace Sarah Rogo, who later became a regular presenter on the channel.

“Norm’s platform definitely helped elevate my platform a lot,” she says. “With the YouTube algorithm, someone will punch in the name of a unique guitar, and Norman’s Rare Guitars is the first place that pops up, and they’ll see me playing the guitar. Billy Gibbons called the store one day and said, ‘Who’s that girl playing the resonator guitars?’”

But perhaps the most notable success story to emerge from the channel is Marcus King.

Mark Agnesi, who managed the store before joining Gibson, remembers filming a young King during a visit to the shop.

“I remember when he came into the store,” Agnesi recalls. “We start rolling the video, he starts playing, and then he opens his mouth and starts singing. It stopped you dead in your tracks; it was like, ‘Oh my god, I am watching the real deal right now, this kid is gonna have a serious career.’”

Agnesi’s prediction proved accurate. Since then, King has released seven albums, earned a Grammy nomination, and landed signature gear deals with Gibson and Orange.

“That video launched a career,” King says.

The clip eventually surpassed two million views, and Bonamassa was among those who took notice. According to Agnesi, Bonamassa’s reaction was simple: it wasn’t a question of whether King would make it, but when — and that time was already arriving.

As Harris puts it in the film, “giving back is very important.” Through Norman’s Rare Guitars, he’s done far more than connect players with vintage instruments; he’s helped connect promising musicians with the audiences they needed to reach.

Alex Lifeson has revealed how Paul McCartney helped convince him and Geddy Lee to get Rush back on the road, following an encounter between the three musicians after the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert at London’s O2 Arena in 2022.

Lifeson recalled that McCartney was surprisingly adamant that the members of Rush should keep performing. At the time, Lifeson was still unsure about returning to the road following the death of Rush drummer Neil Peart in 2020.

Speaking to Radio Futuro in a recent interview, Lifeson explained that he and Lee were having drinks with members of Foo Fighters and other guests after the tribute when McCartney stopped by. The former Beatle told them he had enjoyed their performance and asked whether they were touring.

“Geddy said, ‘Well, no, we're not on tour. We recently lost our drummer, and Alex is not really interested in going back on the road.’”

That brought an emphatic response from McCartney.

“And he said, ‘Oh, no, no, no! You must! This is what we do. This is who we are. Ringo says, “That's in our blood. It's in our DNA. We must get out and do it.” And he said, “Look at me. I'm in my 80s now, and I'm still touring and still working because that's what I do, and that's what you must do.”’”

Lifeson then tried to turn the conversation into a joke, telling the former Beatle that he would consider returning to the road if the Beatle managed Rush. McCartney didn’t miss a beat.

“And I said, ‘Well, okay. I'll consider it if you manage us.’ And he laughed and said, ‘Okay, I'll manage you.’ And then I said, ‘Okay, and also, you have to be our caterer.’ He said, ‘Okay, I'll be your caterer.’ I regretted it immediately because he's a vegan, so we all laughed about it, and it stuck with us.”

Even so, Lifeson took McCartney’s advice to heart.

“You know, you can't argue with a Beatle if they tell you you should go back on the road. You better get ready to go back on the road.”

The conversation was one small moment in what would become a much longer journey back to the stage. Rush’s eventual Fifty Something reunion tour was hardly a foregone conclusion.

Lifeson and Lee spent years wrestling with whether they should continue as Rush at all. There was the question of whether it felt right to carry on without Peart, as well as the seemingly impossible task of finding a drummer who could help them recreate the chemistry of the classic lineup. Eventually, they found that drummer in Anika Nilles.

Lifeson’s comments in 2023 and 2024 only added to the uncertainty — and, as Lee recently admitted, sometimes got on the bass guitarist’s nerves. But the two musicians had already begun thinking seriously about doing something together again after their appearance at the Taylor Hawkins tribute.

McCartney’s intervention, Lifeson’s account suggests, gave them another nudge in that direction. And now, more than three years after that conversation at the O2, Lifeson and Lee have finally hoisted the Rush banner again.

Richard Lloyd, the co-founding guitarist of Television, has been diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, a serious form of bile duct cancer, and a GoFundMe has been launched to help him and his wife, Sheila, cope with the financial impact of his illness.

The fundraiser was launched by Lloyd’s Richard Lloyd Group bandmate Sean Seymour, who is asking fans to donate to help cover Lloyd’s medical expenses, living costs and other expenses resulting from his inability to work while Sheila acts as his full-time caregiver.

Lloyd was the co-guitarist alongside Tom Verlaine in Television, where his intricate electric guitar lines formed a critical part of the band’s distinctive sound. Along with groups including the Ramones and Patti Smith Group, Television was a driving force behind the transformation of CBGB into the defining club of New York City’s 1970s punk scene.

According to Seymour, Lloyd has “tumors in his liver, including one located dangerously close to a major blood vessel.” Because of the tumor’s location, doctors cannot safely operate to remove it at this time.

Lloyd has been in the ICU seven times and has suffered serious complications, including sepsis twice, as well as other problems involving his liver and kidneys.

“And through all of this,” Seymour wrote, “he’s fighting.”

Lloyd is currently unable to tour, leaving him without his primary source of income as a working musician.

“Richard is currently unable to tour,” Seymour wrote. “For a working musician, that’s devastating, not only because performing is what he loves, but because touring is his primary source of income.”

Seymour said there had also been “unresolved royalty issues going back roughly two years, creating another significant financial strain at an already incredibly difficult time,” while Lloyd is also being overwhelmed by what Seymour described as “crushing medical expenses.”

“Richard has spent decades giving his music to other people,” Seymour wrote. “Now it’s our turn to give something back to him. If Richard’s music has meant something to you — if you’ve listened to Marquee Moon, seen Television perform, followed Richard’s career, or simply know and love him as a person — please consider donating.”

Seymour also urged those unable to donate to share the fundraiser, saying that doing so “may be just as important as giving.”

“I’ve been lucky enough to stand beside Richard on stage for the past four years,” he wrote. “Right now, I’d like to stand beside him in a different way. Let’s help Richard and Sheila get through this.”

The GoFundMe also includes a message from Lloyd.

“I am usually a pretty upbeat person and I am taking this in stride,” he writes, “but it has become very difficult on our own and financially we are strapped. That’s why I’m asking for your help.

“If you can see your way clear to make a donation please do that. Otherwise, please pass it around to your friends that might help and people that know me.”

Donations have already come in from Patti Smith and Susan Tweedy, wife of Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy. The target fundraising goal is $80,000, and at the time of writing, the campaign is just shy of the halfway mark.

Visit GoFundMe to donate to Richard Lloyd’s campaign.

Guests on Billy Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast have brought up some fascinating anecdotes in recent months. Gene Simmons told how Ace Frehley lifted a guitar solo from the Doors for a Kiss track. Zakk Wylde revealed how a chance to work with Guns N’ Roses sidelined his career with Ozzy Osbourne.

But few have delivered a history-changing story quite like Elliot Mintz. A friend of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Mintz has challenged the long-held belief that Lennon and Paul McCartney last met on April 25, 1976. According to that rather sad tale, McCartney turned up unannounced at Lennon’s New York apartment at the Dakota and was turned away by Lennon, who was busy with his son, Sean. Supposedly, the two former musical partners never met again.

Mintz, however, says the two men crossed paths two years later, during the Christmas holiday. And he knows, he says, because John and Yoko invited him over.

“They invite me to Dakota to spend one of the Christmas days with them,” Mintz tells Corgan. “And I go up to the Dakota, and I notice in the living room, there’s a vase with a single branch of a tree. That’s their Christmas decoration.

“I sat down on the white couch in the white living room, and we’re just making small talk,” he goes on. “Then there’s a knock on the door after the intercom. [Lennon] opens it, and Paul and Linda McCartney walk in.”

Mintz, who had been a radio DJ in the 1960s and went on to become a TV personality, had become friendly with Lennon over the years. But he says this was his first meeting with the other half of the iconic Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership.

“We sat and we talked for a while. It wasn’t overly jubilant. It wasn’t icy. It was just correct,” he says.

The McCartneys then suggested they go to Manhattan celebrity hotspot Elaine’s.

“Elaine’s had a reputation,” Mintz states. “I mean, you walk in and there’s Woody Allen, Gore Vidal, and there’s Tom Wolf and all those people. But the food was miserable, and everybody knew it.”

Leafing through the menu did little to inspire. Then an idea struck.

“Linda said, ‘You know, there’s a great pizza place not far from here. Really thin-crusted pizza. Do you think you could get a pizza delivered here?’ And she said it directly to me. Who else was she going to suggest it to? ‘Yoko, would you drop the dime?’”

Knowing that Elaine’s could be “problematic,” they arranged to have the pizza “delivered through the back door. It was taken out of the cardboard box,” Mintz explains, “put on Elaine’s beautiful plates, and brought out so a casual observer would think it’s a dish that they hadn’t seen yet.”

With the sun setting, the group retreated to Lennon’s white living room, and soon it was just the two Beatles and Mintz.

“John and Paul kind of wandered over to this very, very tall window that looked down upon the west side of Manhattan,” Mintz says. As he was still on the couch, he could hear only “spasms” of their conversation.

“It was small talk,” he says. “Nothing of substance. But I do recall Paul asking John, ‘So, are you making any music these days?’, and John replying, ‘No. My time is with my baby,’” he said, referring to Sean, who was born in 1975. “‘What about you?’

“And Paul says, ‘I’m always making music. I make music every day of my life. I can’t stop making music.’”

McCartney was always writing, sometimes solo, sometimes with Linda and, by the 1980s, with guests that included Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Elvis Costello.

Mintz believes that if Lennon had taken the bait, the pair could have “sat in the living room and changed the face of contemporary music one more time.” But that didn’t happen. The McCartneys were gone within the hour.

Corgan’s interviewee admits that this final-ever meeting of two of music’s greatest minds was “anticlimactic,” and yet it perhaps still represents a more touching final moment for their partnership than the alternative that has been passed down through history.

Narada Michael Walden has built a career as a first-call percussionist for some of the world’s most celebrated electric guitar virtuosos. His résumé includes work with John McLaughlin in Mahavishnu Orchestra, Carlos Santana, Robert Fripp, Neal Schon and Jeff Beck, with whom he says he recorded an album’s worth of unreleased material.

Among the six-string luminaries on that list is a more tragic figure: Tommy Bolin.

The two met in 1975, by which point Bolin had emerged as one of rock’s fastest-rising stars. After a stint in the James Gang — where he replaced Domenic Troiano, who had replaced Joe Walsh — Bolin elevated his profile with his explosive performance on Spectrum, the 1973 solo debut by Billy Cobham.

Widely regarded as a foundational jazz-fusion release, Spectrum helped codify the genre’s high-velocity, technically demanding aesthetic. The record fused rock aggression with jazz sophistication, influencing players like Beck and helping define fusion’s 1970s sound. Bolin’s fiery, Echoplex-driven tone on tracks such as “Stratus” and “Quadrant 4” became his breakout statement.

The album’s success led Bolin to a contract with Nemperor Records and his 1975 solo debut, Teaser. It was during this period that Walden and Bolin connected, although Walden had been aware of him for years.

“I knew about him from a band called Zephyr, which came on the scene when I was in high school in Kalamazoo, Michigan,” he tells Guitar Player. “It was just bad-boy guitar, like Grand Funk Railroad, Mark Farner. I loved all that stuff.

“We met through [Nemperor co-founder] Nat Weiss, and Tommy said, ‘Come play on my album,’” Walden continues. “So I went down.” The track they recorded was “Marching Power,” an instrumental standout featuring keyboardist Jan Hammer and saxophonist David Sanborn.

“We were walking down the street after we cut the song and Tommy was like, ‘I’m gonna go on a tour. Want to come with me?’ Damn right! I wanted more rock exposure, which I hadn't had with playing jazz-rock fusion. Playing with him gonna be more of that.”

Before that could happen, Bolin had another commitment. The visibility he gained from Spectrum had put him on the radar of Deep Purple, who were seeking a replacement for Ritchie Blackmore. Bolin joined the band and recorded 1975’s Come Taste the Band. The decision to tour behind the album delayed his plans to perform behind Teaser.

His tenure in Deep Purple proved brief, however. By the end of the tour, he was battling a heroin addiction. When the group disbanded in 1976, Bolin resumed his solo career and assembled a touring band that included Walden, bassist Reggie McBride of Stevie Wonder’s band, keyboardist Mark Stein of Vanilla Fudge and saxophonist Norma Jean Bell.

“We were hot!” Walden says. “But Tommy, God bless his heart, after we got back to New York to play at the Bottom Line, he drank too much and he had to lean on the pole. It embarrassed me that he was that drunk in New York.”

By then, Bolin was struggling with severe alcohol abuse and heroin addiction, which would lead to his death just months later, on December 4, 1976.

The Bottom Line concert proved decisive for Walden.

“That was my last show. I had to leave the band, and I felt terrible ’cause we were closer than bread and butter,” Walden says. “I loved Tommy. He was part Native American, like me, so we had that blood mixture going on. It had that soul.

“But I couldn't be around the alcohol and drug thing too much, which wound up taking him out.”