Buddy Guy occupies a unique place in guitar history. He learned from blues giants including Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, Lightnin’ Hopkins and John Lee Hooker before going on to influence Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

As Buddy Guy enters the final week of his BG90 tour, celebrating his 90th birthday, it’s a fitting time to revisit a conversation with Guitar Player in which he explained why, despite everything that changed around him, he never felt the need to change himself. The tour, which launched in July, is scheduled to wrap up October 29 at the Graceland Soundstage in Memphis.

“I’ve learned a little more, but it’s still Buddy Guy,” he tells Guitar Player. “If you put me through a modern amplifier, somebody is going to say, ‘He don’t sound like he used to.’ Well, of course, the guitars and amps aren’t the same today. But the man is still the same. I’m using the same fingers I left Louisiana with.”

For Guy, that continuity wasn’t stubbornness so much as an understanding of where his music came from. The more he reflected on his own career, which began in 1953, the more he saw himself as part of a tradition rather than a singular talent.

“I can’t really say how my style has changed,” he said. “I used to tell T-Bone Walker, B.B., Lightnin’ Hopkins, Muddy, and John Lee Hooker — all those guys I learned from — that I didn’t have anything unique. Guess what they said? ‘Buddy, we got it from someone else, too.’”

The biggest lesson those legendary musicians passed on had little to do with technique.

“Oh, man, lesson number one is be cool,” Guy recalled. “They weren’t making any money, but they were having fun playing.”

Watching those pioneers of acoustic and electric blues shaped his outlook long before the genre found a larger audience through the British blues boom.

“I used to look at them and say, ‘Buddy, you ain’t never gonna be that good, and nobody is ever going to fill those shoes.’ Those guys weren’t superstars then, but I thought they were living the high life. It made me think, This is as high as you can go.

“Then the British groups got into the blues, and were able to live decently from it. But I still worked in the daytime. I drove a tow truck.”

Ironically, it was those same rock musicians who later helped introduce Guy to millions of listeners.

“It makes me feel great, because some of the things that people like Eric Clapton and Keith Richards and the late Stevie Ray Vaughan said about me have helped me more than any record company,” he said. “So many kids come up to me and say, ‘I didn’t know anything about you until I read what Eric Clapton said.’ That gives me a big lift.”

That gratitude didn’t stop Guy from acknowledging the inequalities he’d witnessed throughout his career.

“Let’s be honest — when you’re Black, it doesn’t matter how good a blues record you make, you’re not going to get it played on these big radio stations unless some super guy like Eric Clapton or Stevie Ray Vaughan plays the same thing you played,” he said.

“Blues has been like that ever since I’ve been alive. It has been ignored until some rock group gets it, plays it to big audiences, and tells them whose music it is.”

Still, Guy never lost faith in either the music or the people who loved it.

“I guess that’s why we still sing the blues,” he said. “I just look at it like a prizefighter — if I don’t get in that ring and risk getting knocked out, I ain’t got a chance to win.”

Brian May believes George Harrison deserves more recognition for his contributions to the electric guitar’s legacy. In his view, guitarists who dazzle with speed and fireworks have overshadowed the quieter virtues of the instrument — qualities Harrison possessed in abundance.

May knows a thing or two about making an electric guitar speak. He was crowned the world’s greatest guitarist in Total Guitar’s 2020 rankings, narrowly beating Jimi Hendrix to the top spot.

His work with his fabled Red Special is testament to his own formidable talent, though May’s playing often falls on the flashier end of the spectrum. Consider his solo on “Don’t Stop Me Now,” which he fought to include after Freddie Mercury argued that the song was better suited to piano. Yet, speaking to the Express in 2022, May explained why Harrison’s less showy approach deserves equal respect.

“At every stage in their career and their music development, they were models,” he said of the Beatles more broadly (via Far Out). “And they still are to me, I must say.

“They are the pinnacle of writing, performance and ethos of rock music,” May added. “They broke down so many barriers, they changed the world many times. I will always love The Beatles without any reservation.”

But membership in one of the most successful and influential bands in history doesn’t guarantee individual recognition. Harrison’s legacy has often been overshadowed by those around him. Within the Beatles, he struggled to make room for his songs alongside the dominant Lennon-McCartney partnership.

Outside the band, he was frequently measured against guitarists such as his good friend Eric Clapton, who once comprehensively beat him in a guitar duel, as well as Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix. May, however, believes Harrison’s playing deserves to be judged on its own merits.

“I love George, I love his playing,” he said. “I hold George in such reverence and I think he’s so underrated by the guitar community. Everyone raves about people who play fast, but if you look at the catalogue of stuff he’s produced, it’s colossal.”

Harrison’s songwriting was central to his legacy, and he enlisted Clapton to play the lead lines on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” — a move that helped bring the song to life while allowing Harrison’s composition to take center stage. Clapton’s contribution became one of rock’s most celebrated guitar performances, but the song itself remains a showcase for Harrison’s songwriting.

His achievements extended well beyond songwriting. His sitar playing established his pioneering credentials, while his slide guitar work became another defining part of his sound. Clapton was particularly impressed by Harrison’s slide playing. As Harrison once told Guitar Player, “if Eric gives me the thumbs up on a slide solo, it means more than half the population.”

Eric Johnson has also highlighted a quality that made Harrison special.

“George shows us that it's about the emotion and not the commotion of the guitar playing,” he once told Guitar World.

Fast, loud playing will always command attention. But Harrison’s legacy is a reminder that technical fireworks aren't the only measure of a great guitarist — and that sometimes the most enduring playing is the kind that serves the song.

Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Billy Corgan says his Christian faith is one reason he has maintained his friendship with Marilyn Manson, despite the singer facing multiple sexual assault allegations. While acknowledging that people have valid reasons to question their relationship, Corgan says he doesn’t believe Manson is guilty of the charges against him.

American actress Evan Rachel Wood was the first to publicly accuse Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, describing her “horrific” experiences during their on-and-off relationship between 2006 and 2010 in the documentary Phoenix Rising. Further allegations followed, including those made by Game of Thrones actress Esmé Bianco and another woman, both of whom reached out-of-court settlements with Manson. Other lawsuits have been dismissed.

Manson has denied the allegations. He is due in court in November 2027 after Judge Steve Cochran revived a 2021 lawsuit that had previously been dismissed twice. His inclusion on the bill for Slipknot’s 2027 world tour has also prompted a group of U.K. politicians to call for his removal. The tour is scheduled to begin at London’s Wembley Stadium.

Corgan, however, has remained publicly supportive of Manson. Asked about their friendship on a recent episode of the New York Times’ Popcast podcast, he explained that his Christian beliefs inform his decision to stand by his friend.

“That’s a valid question,” Corgan acknowledges (via Louder Sound). “I think that ultimately, as a Christian, you have to stand by your friends. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have an opinion, and that doesn’t mean you’re not critical.

“In his case — and I’m not here to adjudicate it — the D.A. looked at the case for five years. In some cases, I knew personal things behind the scenes that are not in the public sphere. I personally didn’t feel that he was guilty of the things he was being charged with, and ultimately, the fact that the D.A. didn’t pursue it [supports that].”

Corgan and Manson’s friendship stretches back three decades. The two acts even embarked on a co-headlining tour in 2015. Corgan says his personal experience of Manson has shaped his view of the allegations, despite the criticism that comes with continuing to associate with him.

“The person that I knew, and the way it all kind of went down, even though it was an elongated process, was commensurate with the person that I knew,” Corgan says. “I guess it’s one of those things where I don’t want the world to tell me who my friends are and who I should associate with.”

Their connection also extends beyond their own friendship. Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha is married to the twin sister of Lindsay Usich, Manson’s wife.

Corgan says the allegations have been difficult for Manson, adding that he has “inside baseball of the case.”

“I know certain people who are involved, and so you make those evaluations,” he says. “At the end of the day, I feel I made the right determination. People would ask me privately, ‘Well, what happens if…’ and I’d say, ‘If he’s guilty, or anybody in that situation is guilty, they should go to jail.’ But I don’t like the idea of… this kind of witch mob thing bothers me.”

Another musician who has continued working with Manson is guitarist and composer Tyler Bates, who has collaborated with the singer on four albums. Speaking to Guitar World earlier this year, Bates said he had done his “homework” before committing to working with Manson after the allegations emerged.

Robin Davey has accused Joe Bonamassa of damaging modern blues, claiming the guitarist’s influence has left a generation of players making music that is commercially driven, creatively stagnant and “devoid of soul.”

“The blues today has been screwed up by Joe Bonamassa,” says Davey, guitarist for American roots-rock band Beaux Gris Gris & the Apocalypse and the youngest player ever inducted into the British Blues Hall of Fame.

“His influence has permeated through the younger generations, and it hurts my ears. It is devoid of soul. It is all about maximizing profits and maximizing Joe’s ego.”

Davey’s comments coincide with the release of his second solo album, The Blues According to Gutbucket Slim, which he describes as his own vision of where the genre should go. He takes aim not only at Bonamassa but also at what he sees as the dominance of white blues guitarists on the festival circuit.

“I’m tired of the endless stream of white blues that dominates the Blues festival circuit,” he says. “These people can’t write songs; they have no creativity, and they all sound alike — their playing is so devoid of personality.”

Bonamassa, whose career began with high-profile support from B.B. King when he was still a child, remains one of the most prominent figures in contemporary blues. He recently appeared at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival and at celebrations for Buddy Guy’s 90th birthday. Davey’s assessment, however, is decidedly less flattering.

The British guitarist is not setting out to recreate the blues of an earlier generation. Instead, he wants to push the music in new directions, drawing on a range of influences that extend well beyond the genre.

“The album is my vision of what the blues can be,” he says. “I grew up listening to Beck, Rage Against the Machine, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Stevie Ray Vaughan and B.B. King. I grew up listening to Guy Forsyth, who sings a song on this record.”

The album incorporates elements of rap and hip-hop, with Davey ultimately envisioning a sound that falls somewhere between Jimi Hendrix and Gorillaz. He sees it as a challenge to the conventions that, in his view, have come to define modern blues.

“This album is not for the blues purists,” he says. “That generation is gone, and we as a new generation have to think differently about it.”

The record is Davey’s first solo release since 2010’s Blues Emporium, and he is under no illusions about its commercial prospects.

“This record will not be hugely successful,” he admits. “I don’t know if anyone will hear it, but I’m putting it out so that it may help people think differently about what the blues can be.”

Bonamassa, meanwhile, has recently been revisiting some of his own long-held views. The guitarist has acknowledged that he was wrong about digital amps and has also changed his tune on AI.

Apple has announced Fleetwood Mac: The Chain, the first fully authorized documentary about the band, premiering January 29, 2027. Directed by Frank Marshall, the film will tell Fleetwood Mac’s story through new interviews, archival material and the recollections of its members.

Fleetwood Mac was a storied group with an eight-year history when Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined them in late 1974. The group was founded by guitarist Peter Green, bass guitarist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood after the trio departed John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers in 1967. The band eventually added McVie’s then-wife Christine as keyboardist and singer, and endured several lineup changes through the early 1970s.

But aside from a few Green-era singles — including “Albatross,” “Oh Well” and “The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown)” — and 1973’s “Hypnotized,” cut by the group with guitarist and singer Bob Welch, they never enjoyed mainstream success.

That all changed once Buckingham and Nicks joined. The debut album from this lineup, 1975’s Fleetwood Mac would make them one of the 1970s’ most famous hit groups and pave the way for its smash follow-up, 1977’s Rumours.

It was shortly before Rumours’ release that Buckingham sat down with Guitar Player for what would be an increasingly rare press opportunity with the guitarist. His conversation with Dan Forte was among the first to detail not only how he and Nicks came to join the group but also his gear in his early years with the Mac.

The story behind Fleetwood Mac’s most successful lineup is legendary. After playing with their group Fritz for years, Buckingham and Nicks tried to make a go of it on their own. In 1973 they recorded their sole album, Buckingham Nicks, using a lineup of studio musicians that included guitarist Waddy Wachtel, who would go on to be Nicks’ main man in her hugely successful solo career.

The album was tracked by engineer Keith Olsen at Sound City studio in the San Fernando Valley. Everyone involved loved what they had created, but the album — which received a deluxe reissue from Rhino last year — failed to make a dent upon its release in September 1973.

Roughly a year later, Mick Fleetwood was looking for a studio in which to record Fleetwood Mac’s follow-up to Heroes Are Hard to Find. He visited Sound City, where he got his first listen to Buckingham and Nicks.

“About two months before we ended up cutting Fleetwood Mac [in January/February 1975], Mick was looking for a studio to use,” Buckingham explained. “Someone haphazardly turned him onto this place in San Fernando Valley called Sound City. So he talked to Keith Olsen out there, and Keith put on ‘Frozen Love’ from the Buckingham Nicks album to show him what the studio sounded like and what his work was like.”

Fleetwood loved what he heard in the duo’s music and performance, although as Buckingham explained to GP, the drummer wasn’t shopping for new musicians. Fleetwood Mac was intact at that point with guitarist and frontman Welch. “[Olsen] wasn't trying to showcase us,” Buckingham said, “because Bob Welch was already in the band at that time.”

That changed in just a matter of days.

“A week later Welch decided to leave the group, and Mick just acted intuitively and called up Keith to get in touch with us,” Buckingham explained.

Buckingham and Nicks had dinner with Fleetwood and the McVies, and by the end of the evening were invited to join the band and start recording on a tight schedule.

“We rehearsed for about two weeks and then just cut the LP,” Buckingham stated.

The guitarist was certainly familiar with Fleetwood Mac’s music. “Peter Green, oddly enough, had a little bit of influence on me,” he says. “I really liked his style of playing where a few notes mean a lot — even one note.”

That style would typify Buckingham’s tastefully minimal approach to performing solos and fills. At the same time, he said he felt no pressure to live up to any period of Fleetwood Mac’s history.

“There was never any conscious effort to try to fit into their styles other than, say, doing their [old] songs onstage,” he said. “But even so, I didn't listen to those records and try to copy what was on them. We just started playing, and that was what came out.

“I’ve never felt any need to try to fit into anyone else's shoes. I just do what I do, whatever. Maybe one of the reasons Fleetwood Mac has been able to survive for so long is that they've been able to change.”

On the recording of Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham used a Fender Stratocaster for his electric work. “Before I joined the band I'd been playing a Stratocaster, which I love dearly, but for some reason it didn't sound quite full enough live,” he said.

Onstage, Buckingham favored the white 20th anniversary model Gibson Les Paul Custom he was frequently photographed with at the time. The Strat would be set aside and used only for the Fleetwood Mac hit “Over My Head.” “I keep it tuned to open D onstage for ‘Over My Head,’” Buckingham said.

Sometime after recording Fleetwood Mac, Buckinham had Rick Turner from Alembic install his Stratoblaster onboard preamp booster in the guitar. His Turner-modified Strat, with the Stratoblaster gain at maximum and played through Hiwatt Custom 100 amps, would go on to become the celebrated guitar sound on Rumours.

“I still use a Stratocaster more in the studio than the Gibson,” Buckingham explained to GP, “but the Les Paul seems to be a very good, basic, solid stage guitar with a lot of output and fullness. I'm really happy with it.”

He also required an acoustic guitar for live performances of “Landslide,” the Stevie Nicks composition that became both a hit and a signature tune for her in the group.

“For ‘Landslide’ my acoustic is an Ovation onstage, although I used a Martin D-18 on the recording,” Buckinham said. “The Ovation’s got a built-in pickup; it’s great. It doesn’t really sound like an acoustic guitar, but it works so much better live than to mic a real acoustic.”

Around the time of this interview, and following the recording of Rumours, Buckingham switched from Hiwatts to Marshall Plexi 1959SLP heads.

“I used to use Hiwatts, but they all of a sudden somehow became real dirty-sounding,” he explained. “So I got Marshall 100-watts, and they seem to have a lot of bite. I use these tape recorder guts for fuzz.”

An important part of his sound back then resulted from the preamp from a Sony two-track tape recorder that he used in front of his amp.

“When I got out of Fritz and started doing lead, I bought a Sony 630 tape recorder deck for demo tapes,” he said. “Then I got an Ampeg four-track and started using the Sony two-track for slap echo and effects like that with the preamp output of the deck into an amp. It's just an amazing fuzz device.

“Since then I've taken the guts out of the preamp and put them in a little box, and that's what I use both onstage and in the studio. I also use a Roland Space Echo and a Cry Baby wah.”

But the gear meant nothing without Buckingham’s technique and background, which was itself unusual for a guitarist in 1970s rock. He grew up in the early 1960s during the folk boom.

“I listened to stuff like the Kingston Trio and Ian and Sylvia, which didn't highlight any really hot guitar,” he said. “I listened to Chet Atkins a little bit. The Travis-style, three-finger picking pattern got me into what I’m doing now.”

Buckingham was referring to his deft use of fingerpicking, which continued through his career in rock and became a hallmark of his playing style.

“That's the funny thing — I still don't use a flatpick,” he said. “I always use my fingers onstage; I kind of thrash out the lead with my fingernails. I don't use any picks at all, just the bare meat. My fingernails take quite a pummeling sometimes, but it's just something you get used to — I've got a lot of calluses on the ends of my fingers. The only time I ever used fingerpicks was for bluegrass banjo, but I never used a flatpick for anything.”

While promoting the debut album from his other band, Mirador, last year, Jake Kiszka promised that “there are some really interesting things that Greta Van Fleet is working on, really exciting things on the horizon.”

Then, in early May, the band alarmed fans with a cryptic social media post: “Thanks for the wild ride. Love, Josh, Jake, Sam & Daniel.” With nearly three years gone since its last album, 2023’s Starcatcher, and a lengthy stretch off the road, the message looked ominous. But Greta Van Fleet wasn’t breaking up. A few days later, the band was teasing new music with posts declaring, “We’re back, baby!” and “The trouble’s begun,” leading up to the release of its fifth album, Palace for the People.

Speaking via Zoom from the band’s current home base of Nashville, Kiszka explains that the original post was simply a lyric from the album’s first single, “Play Your Games.” “It was a bridge between comic relief and an accidental flub,” he says. “We thought it was really appropriate. Obviously it stirred the pot and garnered some attention. We’re full of surprises, y’know?”

The time away was intentional. After nearly a decade of rapid success, Kiszka says, the band needed time to process what it had experienced. That reflection helped shape Palace for the People, a 13-track album that expands Greta Van Fleet’s classic-rock and blues roots with global influences, strings, horns, percussion and orchestration. Working with new producer Mike Elizondo, the band has made its most expansive record yet — and will take it on the road in 2027 for the Into the Beginning tour, which launches February 3 in Savannah, Georgia, and runs through July 31, ending in the band’s home state of Michigan.

There was some concern from fans, even before the “wild ride” post, about what was going on while Greta was out of sight. Was there cause for that?

It was really interesting, because we were considering the lives we’d lived, what we’d done and gone through, and the world that we traveled.

I think we’d gotten home from tour, and it wasn’t two months before we all called each other. It was kind of like we were trained to do that in so many ways. That was the beginning of the conversation; we were calling each other, and it was only natural — “Let’s get together. Maybe we should do a record or something…” I think the concept of the record came together rather immediately.

Which was?

The record title came to the fore before we recorded everything. It was born from playing an iconic London venue, the Alexandra Palace, located upon this beautiful little hill. The locals somewhat affectionately nicknamed it “the palace of the people.” Josh caught on to that quite quickly, realizing we were playing a piece of history.

A lot of artists went through those halls before us — the White Stripes and all that — before moving on. It was a transition moment for us, too, in that the next time we’d be playing in London, we’d be playing the O2 Arena.

So we had that in mind when we started thinking about our next album. We knew that philosophically it was going to reflect the people, places, cultures, philosophies and ideas we’d encountered, along with the experiences we’d gathered over the last decade. It was that philosophy through which to create the music: How can we bottle that and express it with care? From the outset, we knew it was going to be ambitious.

You were also recording and touring with Mirador. How did that band allow you to expand, or diverge, from what you did in Greta, and what did you bring back to Greta from that experience?

That’s a good question, and I don’t entirely know. I began exploring open tunings prior to Mirador, but that group gave me a chance to delve into alternative tunings because we were pulling from some very ancient roots of music. In some ways, this record does that as well, in perhaps a broader sense.

But I also think Mirador’s music is so forceful and rudimentary. It really gets back to the bare bones of music, and rock and roll in particular. There’s some added aggression to these new tracks, and I probably wouldn’t have gone that far if I hadn’t been involved in Mirador. I pushed the volume up, pushed the gain and dug in a bit more. I think that’s territory I’ve always been hesitant to go too far into.

I don’t want to be aggressive for the sake of being aggressive; the light makes the heavy heavier, and the heavy makes the light lighter. That’s how I really think about things. But on Palace for the People, there’s a dimension that’s perhaps wider than we’ve heard Greta play before. Something like “Boughten Bliss” is so delicate, vulnerable and sensitive, while “Dreams You Hold” is a stark contrast. It’s really aggressive and heavy. I think there were moments with Mirador when I went a bit more aggressive and a bit heavier than I would have before.

What are some of the specifics about how point A took you to point B on Palace?

Interestingly enough, “Heya” must’ve been started around COVID time. We knew we were going to be doing a record kind of like this at some point, so I was already in that mindset.

We were called to do a private show in Hawaii, of all places. Everything was so shut down and quarantined that I ended up spending most of the time in my hotel room with an old [Gibson] L-00 acoustic.

I remember thinking about these very interesting field recordings from the 1930s I’d heard from Alan Lomax — stuff from northern Europe, Poland and the mountain regions, where those musical traditions were so preserved that you’re hearing something probably 2,000 years old. It was weird. They were just vocals, and they sounded a lot like Josh singing. It was really goosebump-inducing ’cause I could hear this sort of human history in that.

So I would just play guitar against the recordings. I thought, That’s an interesting exercise — what could I find? Where are these vocals going, and what is that gonna make me play? I ended up in an open G-minor tuning, and the foundation of the guitar parts for “Heya” pretty much came from that.

That was my first time using that sort of free-form experimentation. I would’ve never written something in an open G-minor tuning.

And then “Lost in the Golden” sounds very Middle Eastern. That came about backstage while we were warming up. I think it was Daniel who came in and said, “What is that? That’s really strange.” Again, that was just an open G-major tuning, but, y’know, playing these strange chords pushes you more into that territory. It forces me to play in a way I wouldn’t normally, and then you start breaking the cycle and getting into uncharted territory.

Open G tuning is what John Lee Hooker would have used. “Lost in the Golden” doesn’t sound like Hooker at all, but for the solo section I actually pulled his lines into it, so that section, as a standalone, becomes a blues solo inside the context of something that’s very Eastern.

That’s an example of how a lot of this stuff gets tossed around, turned over and toiled with until it bends and breaks into something different, something original. Something avant-garde, really.

What other crazy open tunings did you use?

“Heart in the Beat” is a full step down from standard. There’s a Drop D tuning, which is a pretty typical alternative tuning as well, for “Call My Own.” “Boughten Bliss” was a strange tuning, too. I can’t remember what it was off the top of my head [laughs], but “Tear It Down” is capo one in standard because Josh wanted to sing it slightly higher.

What did you use for guitars this time?

There was a lot. We co-produced the record with Mike Elizondo, and Mike has a lot of guitars at his studio. I probably used more guitars on this record than on any I’ve recorded before, including previous Greta records and the Mirador record.

Of course, my number one, the beloved ’61 Les Paul, was used in some way on a lot of the tracks. Usually I would use one guitar to track, then pull in different guitars for the dubbing process. I might use one of Mike’s early-’60s or late-’50s Telecasters, or my B-Bender Tele that I use onstage. It’s a bit of a Frankenstein, with old T-Top humbuckers. I just love that guitar. When I’m not sure what guitar I need, I usually pull that out.

Here’s an interesting gear story: We were tracking “Born Into This,” the last track on the record. It was recorded live in one take; the only overdubs I did were on the choruses. That’s purely a live performance ’cause it kind of needed that. It needed to feel unhinged and a little bit untampered with.

We had this expression pedal that added delay when I pushed down. I think it was wired backward because when I pushed it down, the delay sounded backward. But it was so cool and interesting that I was like, “Y’know what? Leave it. This is actually more interesting.” So when you hear all the weird, spacey guitar sounds on that song, it’s because there was a delay pedal that wasn’t working right.

What led you to work with Mike on this album?

Greta is a very tight-knit group. It’s the three of us brothers and Daniel, and we all grew up together and have played our whole lives. So there’s a language there — a vernacular, a shorthand. For anybody to come into that chemistry is very challenging. The idea was that this record was so ambitious we needed somebody with an external perspective to help us capture it, rather than produce it ourselves.

We met with Mike, and it was immediate. He fell right into that chemistry. We had a lot of the songs already written, so from the onset, that first day, within a couple of hours, we looked at each other and knew Mike was the guy. He was really able to adapt to our process, how we work and our very tight-knit nature. He’s a musical tapestry; his knowledge and the database that lives in his head are incredible. He’d listened to a lot of the records we’d listened to.

Another thing that was really impressive, and important to this record, was that Mike grew up in Los Angeles and played all kinds of music. L.A. is such a multicultural hub. He was playing Cuban music in a bodega, working on rap records in a back-house studio or playing jazz with Greg Kurstin, whom we worked with on The Battle at Garden’s Gate. And if you look at his credits, he’s worked with everyone from Fiona Apple to Eminem. We knew he’d be able to help us capture the beautiful cultural influences that were crucial to this record.

How is this music going to be to play live?

Oh — exceptional. There was a great deal of thought behind how these songs would translate live, which I don’t think we’ve ever done in the past. On the very first Greta Van Fleet record, it was obvious how that was going to go. It was very stripped: guitar, drums, bass, vocals.

With this record, there are so many elements and so much complexity in the songwriting, but we’re always asking ourselves, “How are these gonna translate onstage, and what can we do to make these more devastating in a live sense?”

It’ll be brilliantly fun. Probably more than ever, I’m excited to play these songs live. There are crazy, frenetic production elements we’re developing now. We’re designing a lot of the stage stuff and rebuilding the live guitar rig, so there’s a lot that’s new on the horizon. We’re pushing into visual and sonic territory we haven’t explored before. It will be very interesting.

Twenty years after the release of Back to Black, Amy Winehouse remains best known for her singular voice and candid songwriting. But there’s another side to her musicianship that deserves to be remembered alongside the landmark album: Winehouse was a distinctive guitarist who used the instrument to shape her songs and develop a style entirely her own.

Take it from Pete Doherty, singer and guitarist for the Libertines, who once watched Winehouse play up close. As Doherty told MusicRadar in 2024, Winehouse had a distinctive approach to the instrument.

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

The anniversary celebrations have also brought Winehouse’s music back to the stage. On Wednesday, the Amy Winehouse Band reunited with original album producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi for a star-studded concert at London’s Roundhouse, performing Back to Black in full with guest vocalists including Corinne Bailey Rae, Jorja Smith and Yebba. The occasion offers another reason to revisit the musical instincts behind the album — including Winehouse’s distinctive approach to guitar.

Winehouse’s guitar playing was an extension of the same musical instincts that helped make Back to Black so distinctive. From an early age, she made electric guitar integral to her songwriting and performing, using the instrument to write songs and give them a personal touch. She first fell in love with the Fender Stratocaster as a teenager, after her older brother acquired a used model.

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

Winehouse wasn’t supposed to play her brother’s Stratocaster, but she would carefully sneak into his room to play it whenever she had the chance. Those sessions helped her develop her chops. When she finally acquired a guitar of her own — an acoustic model — the siblings amicably swapped instruments back and forth.

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

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

Inspired by artists including Carole King, PJ Harvey and Shuggie Otis, Winehouse developed a self-taught approach that complemented her remarkable songwriting and unmistakable voice. She may not have considered herself an accomplished guitarist, but her unconventional playing helped give her music a character all its own.

The videos below offer a glimpse of Winehouse’s unusual relationship with the instrument.

First, in a 2003 performance of “Stronger Than Me” — from her debut album, Frank, released earlier that year — Winehouse captivates the studio audience on the BBC’s live music show Later… With Jools Holland. Her loose, jazz-inflected rhythm-guitar playing provides the song’s harmonic foundation.

Next, we get an up-close look at a 20-year-old Winehouse performing with nothing more than her voice and a Stratocaster at London’s Wembley Arena. The 2004 Strat Pack concert celebrated the 50th anniversary of Fender’s iconic guitar and featured an all-star lineup that included David Gilmour, Ronnie Wood and Hank Marvin.

Finally, Winehouse discusses her love of guitar — and the Stratocaster in particular — in a video celebrating the model’s 50th anniversary.

By the mid-1980s, Alice Cooper's career had lost much of its momentum. Years of heavy drinking had taken a toll, and after helping define shock rock in the 1970s, he found himself struggling to connect in an era increasingly dominated by glam metal and MTV.

His early-'80s albums — Flush the Fashion, Zipper Catches Skin and DaDa — failed to gain commercial traction. After getting sober in 1983, Cooper set out to rebuild his career, but reclaiming relevance would require more than a refreshed image. He needed a harder-edged sound that could compete with the guitar-driven metal acts then filling arenas and dominating music television.

That presented a challenge. Cooper's longtime guitar collaborators, Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, had helped define his classic sound, but the mid-'80s demanded a different approach. To make an impact in the shred era, Cooper needed a guitarist who could deliver technical firepower while helping shape a contemporary metal identity.

He found exactly that in Kane Roberts. Just 24 years old, the muscular guitarist brought formidable chops, a larger-than-life stage presence and a knack for writing the kind of polished, hook-heavy metal that was thriving in the decade.

Roberts wasn’t a brand name — he was starting from the bottom. His background was even more unlikely than Cooper’s return to the limelight.

“I was dealing cards at illegal blackjack games to make money,” Roberts tells Guitar Player.

“It was at a hotel. They’d rent big conference rooms on the weekend, and they’d show me where all the guns were, I’d do that to survive.”

But he had dreams of making it as a musician.

“I had recorded a tape and given it to a company called Screen Jumps Publishing,” he explains. “And they gave it to Bob Ezrin.”

Ezrin had produced much of Cooper’s work in the ‘70s and, though he and Cooper didn’t work together in the 1980s, he was part of his trusted camp. Ezrin liked what he heard and invited Kane to meet with him, Cooper and Cooper’s manager, Shep Gordon.

“I went down there, and I sat in this room with Shep Gordon, Ezrin and Alice Cooper,” Roberts says. “Alice and I got along; we just started laughing. We immediately became friends.”

Before long, Roberts was Cooper’s new lead guitarist and a key creative partner in the singer’s comeback effort.

“We really got into it,” Roberts says. “I didn’t want Alice to seem like he just survived rehab. I wanted him to come back as a nuclear version of what he’d been.”

The challenge was to modernize Cooper’s sound without losing the qualities that had made him a star in the first place. Roberts believed the music needed a heavier, more contemporary edge to compete in a decade dominated by hard rock and metal.

“We had to upgrade the energy and the sound to make it much more metal,” Roberts explains, “because that’s where I came from.”

At the same time, neither musician wanted to abandon Cooper’s roots.

“We did need to preserve the history of that music and keep the essence of the classics,” Roberts says. “Alice and I agreed on that.”

The balance between reinvention and tradition was evident on Constrictor, released in 1986. Even the cover art nodded to Cooper’s past, depicting the singer entwined with a giant snake — imagery reminiscent of earlier albums such as Killer.

Musically, however, Constrictor was firmly of its era. Tracks like “Teenage Frankenstein” paired Cooper’s trademark theatrics with contemporary production and Roberts’ aggressive guitar work. The album and its supporting tour helped reestablish Cooper as a commercial force. Constrictor was certified Gold and reached Number 59 on the Billboard 200.

For Roberts, it was a promising start, but he believed the partnership had room to grow.

“For the second album, we hit the ground running,” he says. “We came off tour and started recording, and it was killer. We tore right through it, and the process was really good, as was our relationship.”

Roberts also became a prominent part of Cooper’s stage show. With his muscular physique, high-energy playing and arsenal of shred-approved electric guitars, including Kramers and Schecters. But his best known weapon of choice was a six-stringed machine gun that shot fire.

“Some kid called up Shep Gordon and said, ‘Hey, I have a guitar that might be good for the Alice Cooper tour,’” Roberts says. "Shep called me up and said, 'Hey, Kane, take a look at this and meet with this kid.' So I did."

Despite the strong working relationship between Cooper and Roberts, 1987’s Raise Your Fist and Yell did not build significantly on the momentum of Constrictor. Reviews were mixed, and while the album was certified Gold, it reached only Number 73 on the Billboard 200 — a step down from its predecessor’s Number 59 peak.

Still, Roberts’ reputation was rising. Geffen Records saw commercial potential in the guitarist’s combination of technical skill and larger-than-life image, and the label offered him a solo deal.

“It ended,” Roberts says of his time with Cooper. “I got a record deal with Geffen, and I think Cooper changed labels when he did his next record, too. It just ended. There wasn’t any controversy; we just stepped in different directions.”

Cooper did indeed move from MCA to Epic, and the stylistic direction he and Roberts had developed together continued into 1989’s Trash. The album embraced polished, radio-friendly hard rock, and its lead single, “Poison” — cowritten by Cooper, guitarist John McCurry and hitmaker Desmond Child — became Cooper’s biggest hit in years, reaching number seven in the United States and number two in the United Kingdom.

Roberts, meanwhile, launched his solo career with Geffen. His self-titled 1987 debut drew a modest response, but 1991’s Saints and Sinners found a more appreciative audience and later developed a cult following. The album included the single “Does Anybody Really Fall in Love Anymore?,” written by Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora and Diane Warren. The song had previously been recorded by Cher for her 1989 album Heart of Stone.

Roberts stops short of taking credit for Cooper’s late-'80s resurgence.

“It was more like Alice’s evolution,” he says. “I’m happy to have influenced that a little bit, but he takes the bull by the horns and runs with it wherever he wants to go.

Although the two discussed working together again over the years, a reunion did not materialize until 2022, when Roberts returned to Cooper’s band as a temporary replacement for Nita Strauss during her tour with Demi Lovato.

“Alice has had a great many guitarists shuffling in and out of this band,” Roberts says. “But I gotta be honest with you, I never expected to be called. His band has always been really good.”

Since completing that stint, Roberts has focused on his own projects. As he puts it, he is pursuing them “without the bullshit recording industry,” though he remains optimistic about whatever comes next.

“You have to have faith,” he says. “If you work hard enough, the world will beat a path to your door.”

“That’s just the way life operates,” he says. “I’m living proof of that. I worked very hard, and the only band that would ever hire me was Alice Cooper. He found me, this 230-pound guy playing guitar. It was like, ‘Who is gonna hire this guy?’ He was the only one. Alice never goes for the safe bet, and I think that’s awesome.”

The guitar that helped Joni Mitchell write timeless hits like “Both Sides, Now,” and “The Circle Game” survived a war zone, airline damage and years on the road, only to vanish around 1970.

Mitchell’s first four albums are the works on which she established herself as a folk talent for the ages. They not only introduced her singular voice and vision but also produced a durable repertoire that includes “Chelsea Morning,” “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Woodstock,” as well as the entirety of Blue — widely regarded as her masterpiece and one of the greatest albums of all time.

Remarkably, one guitar was central to each of those recordings: a 1956 Martin D-28. And before Mitchell became its keeper, it had already lived a full life.

She discovered the instrument while performing for troops at Fort Bragg. Although Mitchell is often associated with the 1960s counterculture, she told the CBC, “I was not a part of the anti-war movement.” Like other entertainers, including Bob Hope, she made a point of performing for servicemen. “I went the Bob Hope route because I had uncles who died in the war, and I thought it was a shame to blame the boys who were drafted.”

At the time, she was playing “a small-bodied Martin that didn’t have very good bass response.” One night after a show, an officer approached her.

“There was a captain there who’d been to Vietnam and returned, and he had two instruments that he’d taken with him,” Mitchell told Guitar Player. “I guess this whole place was a battlefield, and shrapnel hit his tent and demolished one guitar. The only surviving thing was a Martin D-28, which I’d always wanted but couldn’t afford.

“One night after I’d played, he told me, ‘Joni, you’re better than Peter, Paul and Mary, and you should have this guitar,’ and he told me the history of it. Being an independent girl, I said, ‘I couldn’t take it as a gift, but I’ll buy it off you.’

“So he sold it to me for nothing — really, far less than its value at the time. That guitar, which I used for at least my first four albums, was superb.

“It was a better D-28 than anybody ever heard. It was a 1956, built at a time when Martin was very selective. Their craftsmanship was at its pinnacle, I think. It wasn’t so mass-produced. Every acoustic player who ever touched that guitar just drooled over it.”

Its intonation, in particular, set it apart. A unique guitar stylist, Mitchell has long relied on open and alternate tunings, which she adopted after childhood polio made it difficult for her to form standard chord shapes. Those tunings demand an instrument that can maintain clarity and balance even under unusual string tensions.

“I need really good intonation,” she explained to Acoustic Guitar. “One of the signs of really good intonation is how flashy the harmonics are with a light touch. You should be able to get them to bloom like jewels.”

In that respect, the D-28 was ideal. “It just seemed to eat that up,” she told Guitar Player. “It traveled well, through hot and cold, and it was my true love.”

Unfortunately, life on the road took its toll. “It got cracked on the airlines,” Mitchell recalled. “Its face got crushed. It was repaired, but it never sounded right. It just died.

“After that, I became very promiscuous with guitars, and I could never find one with that balance and resonance.”

Soon afterward, the guitar disappeared entirely.

“It finally was stolen off a carousel in Maui, of all places, and that was the end of it. In the years that followed, I searched and bought old Martins, but nothing compared.”

In 1993 or ’94, she came close to recapturing the magic when she acquired a Martin D-45. That search also led her to Collings Guitars.

“The same dealer who sold me the D-45 introduced me to a new guitar maker called Collings, who fancies himself Martin reincarnated,” she said. “He’s making Martin clones, but in the old way — a small number a year, with the details that fell by the wayside as Martin moved into mass production.

“I picked up two more instruments that I think are really superb: a baby guitar with a 14-fret neck and a dreadnought. I need the long necks for my tunings, although I enjoy the wide, old 12-fret necks. So now I have an arsenal of acoustics to suit my music for the first time in my career.”

Mitchell’s legacy continues to deepen. Her archival collection, Joni Mitchell Archives — Vol. 4: The Asylum Years, recently earned her the Grammy Award for Best Historical Album, and she is set to receive a lifetime achievement honor from the Juno Awards — further recognition of an artist whose music helped define an era.

Fleetwood Mac will tell their story in their own words in Fleetwood Mac: The Chain, a fully authorized documentary directed by five-time Academy Award nominee Frank Marshall. The film will premiere globally on Apple TV on January 29, 2027, bringing together the memories and perspectives of Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.

The documentary traces the band's history from Buckingham and Nicks joining Fleetwood Mac on New Year's Eve 1974 through its rise to superstardom and the personal and professional turmoil that followed. It features previously unseen footage, new interviews and a deep dive into the catalog that helped Fleetwood Mac sell more than 220 million records worldwide.

The Chain explores the chemistry that made the band's music distinctive, as well as the complicated relationships that threatened to pull its members apart. The film's title comes from the song “The Chain,” the only track on the band's 1977 album Rumours credited to all five members.

“I'm fascinated by how this incredible story of enormous musical achievement came about,” Marshall said in 2024. “Fleetwood Mac somehow managed to merge their often chaotic and almost operatic personal lives into their own tale in real time, which then became legend. This will be a film about the music and the people who created it.”

The documentary's arrival coincides with the 50th anniversary of Rumours, one of rock's best-selling albums and the record that cemented Fleetwood Mac's status as global superstars. Its songs emerged from a period of upheaval within the band, as romantic breakups and personal tensions played out alongside the recording sessions.

The documentary also arrives amid renewed interest in the relationship between Buckingham and Nicks. When the pair reissued their 1973 debut album, Buckingham Nicks, in 2025, Nicks shared a letter she had written to her parents about Buckingham while recording the album, praising his guitar playing and predicting he would become one of the greats. The gesture offered a glimpse of their early bond after years of estrangement.

More recently, Buckingham said he and Nicks are “talking all the time now”, adding that 2027 should be a “pretty interesting year” and that “quite a few things will reveal themselves.” He stopped short of confirming any plans for a reunion or new music, but his comments have fueled speculation about what might come next.

The 1990s weren’t Black Sabbath’s strongest period, but Eddie Van Halen’s uncredited solo on “Evil Eye,” from the group’s 1994 album, Cross Purposes, has become the stuff of legend. And according to Tony Iommi, Van Halen hero deserves all the credit.

In a new interview, Iommi recalls how the pair’s surprise collaboration came about in 1993, when Van Halen invited himself to a Sabbath rehearsal. Iommi — who will release his fourth solo album, From the Dark, on October 23 — tells Planet Rock how a friendly invitation turned into a rare meeting between two of rock’s greatest players, complete with a last-minute trip to a music store.

“We had a house that we rented that we used to use for rehearsal,” Iommi recalls. “I’d always see him if he came to England, or when I’d be in L.A.; we’d always go out for dinner.”

On one particular occasion, however, Iommi’s schedule didn’t allow it.

“He called me up and I said, ‘We’re rehearsing tomorrow. I can’t,’” Iommi says. Van Halen saw an opportunity. “He said, ‘Oh, I’d love to do that.’”

“Do you want to come then?” Iommi asked. “All right, I’ll pick you up at the hotel and then we’ll go and get a guitar and whatever else. And that's what we did.”

As Iommi explained in 2024, the pair stopped at a local music store to pick up one of Van Halen’s own signature guitars. Once they arrived at the rehearsal space, the guest guitarist soon found his way into the music.

“We started playing a new song we were working on,” Iommi recalled (via Guitar World). “He started playing a solo.”

The performance became part of “Evil Eye,” which appeared on Black Sabbath’s 1994 album Cross Purposes. Contractual complications prevented Van Halen from receiving an official credit, but his solo survived on the finished recording. It remains the only known studio collaboration between the two guitarists.

There may be more from that day, too. Iommi has said a tape of the pair jamming on Black Sabbath riffs is somewhere in his home, although he apparently hasn’t tracked it down.

The session with Van Halen sounds like an uncomplicated meeting of musical minds. However, Iommi’s account of recording 13, Black Sabbath’s 2013 reunion album with Rubin, is another story entirely.

According to Iommi, Rubin largely communicated with the band through him, leaving the guitarist responsible for relaying instructions to his bandmates.

“We didn’t have time to absorb what we’d done because Rick wouldn’t talk to the others,” Iommi tells Planet Rock. “He talked to me, and I’d have to tell them.”

That indirect approach sometimes left the other musicians in the dark. On one occasion, Rubin asked Iommi to come up with a song inspired by Sabbath’s “Planet Caravan” over a weekend, ready to record on the Monday.

“We were in Los Angeles, and I came back from the weekend off,” Iommi explains. “Rick phoned me on the fly and said, ‘Oh, could you come up with a song like ‘Planet Caravan’ to record on Monday?’ I thought, ‘Blimey!’”

Iommi worked on an idea and agreed to record it, but apparently nobody had told the rest of the band. When they arrived at the studio on Monday, Rubin announced that they would be recording Iommi’s new song.

“Rick said, ‘We’re going to put this song down,’ and Geezer [Butler, bass] went, ‘What song?’ ‘Well, Tony’s done a song. We’re going to put that down.’ Geezer went, ‘I don’t even know what it is!’”

They went ahead with the recording, but the process left a lasting impression on Iommi.

“We ended up putting it down,” he says, “but it was such an awkward situation.”

Elsewhere, Metallica’s James Hetfield — facing criticism over recent onstage comments that left Roger Waters frothing at the mouth — has called Iommi “the riff lord.”

And Iommi’s new bassist, Becky Baldwin, has revealed that she initially thought an invitation to work on his new solo album was a hoax.

Country Music Hall of Fame inductee John Anderson has died at 71, his family has confirmed.

The Florida-born singer and guitarist scored more than 40 entries on the country charts, including three of his biggest hits, “Swingin’,” “Straight Tequila Night” and “Seminole Wind.” He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2014 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2024.

“It is with the heaviest of hearts that we share the passing of our beloved husband, father, grandfather, and best friend,” his family said in a statement. “His music will live on, but for us, his greatest legacy will always be the love he gave his family and the memories we will carry with us forever. Please keep our family in your thoughts and prayers as we grieve this unimaginable loss.”

Anderson reportedly died in his sleep. His passing has prompted tributes from across the music world, including from artists who considered him a major influence.

Country star Blake Shelton, who sang with Anderson on the 2020 track “Tuesday I’ll Be Gone,” said the news was particularly painful.

“This one really hurts,” Shelton wrote. “I got the opportunity to find out that my hero wasn’t just the guy I hoped he’d be. He was so much more than that. John was my friend. I got to see him last Sunday and I don’t even know why but I told him I loved him. That is what fills my heart at this moment. My love and prayers go out to John’s family.”

Big & Rich singer John Rich described Anderson’s talents as “unmatched,” adding that he “was a massive influence on me in more ways than I can count.” Gwen Stefani said his music would remain “part of our family’s hearts forever,” while singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash, daughter of Johnny Cash, simply called him “a jewel.”

Anderson picked up an acoustic guitar at age seven. After graduating from high school, he moved to Nashville, where he worked odd jobs, including as a roofer at the Grand Ole Opry House, while playing clubs and pursuing a music career.

He signed with Warner Bros. Records in 1976, and a tour invitation from Merle Haggard in 1980 proved a pivotal moment. Haggard had helped turn Anderson’s musical interests from rock and roll toward country, although Anderson continued to cite Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones among his major influences.

In 1982, Anderson received a Grammy nomination for “I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be a Diamond Someday),” further establishing his reputation as a distinctive voice in country music.

Anderson also collaborated with Dolly Parton, recording a cover of Merle Haggard’s “Today I Started Loving You Again” for her 1996 album Treasures.

He also earned the respect of Johnny Cash, who became a mentor, peer and close friend. The two shared a commitment to traditional country music, and Anderson spent time at Cash’s historic cabin studio in Hendersonville, Tennessee, recording material there during his later career, including work associated with his 2020 album Years.

Health problems later threatened to derail Anderson’s career. In a 2020 Rolling Stone interview, he recalled being “almost 100 percent deaf there for about 6 or 7 months” after falling ill in 2017 and 2018.

He subsequently made a strong recovery, returning to the studio with the help of Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, a longtime admirer of his music. Auerbach produced Years, which introduced Anderson’s distinctive voice to a new audience and became his final studio album.

Anderson’s cause of death has not been disclosed.

The Offspring’s Noodles Wasserman has revealed in a new statement he has to step away from live performances due to a "fairly serious health issue."

The guitarist put the news out on the band’s Instagram account.

“It is with deep sadness that I have to announce that I need to step away from live performances for a while to deal with a sudden and fairly serious health issue.

“The rest of the band has my back, is super supportive and will keep rocking you all in my absence. I hope to be back on stage sooner rather than later. Until then, I will miss all of you with all of my heart.

“Thanks for keeping me in your thoughts. I really appreciate it.

—Noodles

No details about the health issue were shared. The Offspring have not said who will fill in for the guitarist on the band’s shows. Their next performance is scheduled for October 24 in Los Angeles. Two more shows are scheduled for November, and a third in January 2027.

Noodles, born Kevin Wasserman, joined the Offspring in 1985, one year after it was formed by vocalist/guitarist Bryan “Dexter” Holland and bass guitarist Greg Kriesel, a.k.a. Greg K. The group’s fortunes rose on the success of their 1994 hit “Come Out and Play” from their third studio album, Smash.

“That was the first song to take off, and we were still working that single when the album went Platinum,” Noodles told Guitar Player in 2024. “And then we were able to follow it up with ‘Self Esteem,’ which was just as big too.”

Kiss guitarist Tommy Thayer says the band’s upcoming Las Vegas event will celebrate the legacy of late guitarist Ace Frehley, with all four current members set to perform songs from his catalog.

Co-founder Frehley first left the band in 1982 and rejoined in 1995 before departing for a second and final time in 2002. Throughout the years, his relationship with former colleagues Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons — and his various replacements — was sometimes confrontational.

But Frehley’s unexpected death in 2025 at the age of 74 brought back memories of happier times. At their Land-Locked in Vegas event, taking place November 13 through 15, each of the four current Kiss members will choose a song from Frehley’s catalog to perform.

“It’s an important thing,” Thayer tells Ultimate Classic Rock. “That was a huge loss last year for everyone and I think it really hit us. I mean, particularly Paul and Gene. But it hit me too and it left an emptiness. There’s been some issues and interpersonal stuff through the years and this and that. But at the end of the day, I think everybody loves each other.”

Thayer also credits Frehley with helping shape Kiss’s identity and inspiring generations of guitarists.

“He was such an important part of creating what they did in the first place. Even for me personally, Ace Frehley was such a huge part of my teenage experience — learning to play guitar, learning to mimic his guitar parts and things, which to me were so quintessential and so signature at the time. He made a huge impact on a lot of people.”

Frehley’s best-known songs include the Kiss cuts “Shock Me,” “Cold Gin,” “Strange Ways” and “Into the Void,” and his solo hit “New York Groove.” He was reportedly working on a follow-up to his 2024 solo album 10,000 Volts when he fell down a flight of stairs and sustained serious head injuries. He died on October 16, 2025, after his life support was switched off.

“When something like that happens suddenly, and he’s gone, everybody kind of loses part of themselves, I guess, in a way,” Thayer adds. “I had the same feeling when Eddie Van Halen passed away. It leaves kind of a hole in your heart and your musical soul… it’s very strange.

“So we’ll be having a nice Ace tribute. It’s going to be well planned and everybody’s going to be involved. I think it's really appropriate.”

U.K. bassist Becky Baldwin has shared a playthrough video of “Stormwatcher,” a song from Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi’s upcoming solo album, From the Dark. But landing the gig was a surprise even to Baldwin, who initially suspected the offer was a hoax.

The 35-year-old musician, best known as a recent addition to Danish metal veterans Mercyful Fate, discussed how she came to play on Iommi’s album during a recent appearance on The Chronicles Of Podcast, hosted by Jamie Westwood and Tom Stevens.

“I got an email first on just some random Wednesday or something,” Baldwin recalled. “I think ‘Tony Iommi’ was the subject. I’m, like, ‘Oh, what’s this?’ And it said, ‘I’m Tony Iommi’s manager. Would you be interested in coming to the studio and listening to some stuff and seeing if you might like to work together with us?’”

Baldwin initially thought the message was fake, but after checking the sender’s credentials, she called to confirm it was legitimate.

The invitation was to play a song in the studio so the team could hear how she approached writing bass guitar lines and performed under recording pressure. The audition went well: Iommi’s team asked her to play on the rest of the album.

“I guess it was all right because they asked me to do the rest of the album,” she said.

Iommi had initially considered a more collaborative approach, similar to his 2000 solo album, Iommi, which featured an assortment of guest musicians. But he eventually decided a consistent lineup would give the new record a more cohesive sound.

Baldwin plays alongside Iommi, drummer Karl Brazil and Norwegian singer Jorn Lande on From the Dark.

The bassist’s path to the project began years earlier, when she started posting videos of herself covering songs by classic metal bands, including Black Sabbath. Those videos eventually caught the attention of Iommi’s producer, Mike Exeter.

“He said he’d been following me for a few years,” Baldwin explained. Exeter had been keeping an eye on musicians whose playing might suit his production work, and when Iommi needed a bassist, Baldwin was a natural candidate. She was local to the studio and had already posted covers of Sabbath songs, including “Children of the Sea.”

“So he showed Tony that, and Tony was, like, ‘Yeah, okay. Let’s bring her down for a jam and see if she likes the songs.’”

Baldwin had started making the videos with a specific goal: to show people in the music industry what she could do and the kind of work she wanted to land.

“I wanted to show people in the industry that I can actually play, and the kind of music that I like to play, and this is the kind of music I want to do, and please hire me,” she said. “So, actually, it worked.”

It just took a while. The videos helped Baldwin build an audience and secure endorsements, but for years they didn't seem to be bringing her closer to the musicians she hoped to work with.

“It felt like it was never gonna get me actually to work with the people that I wanted to work with,” she said. Now, after years of posting covers, one of those videos has helped her land a place on an album by one of heavy metal’s most influential electric-guitar players.

Today is Back to the Future Day, the annual October 21 celebration inspired by the date Marty McFly and Doc Brown travel to in Back to the Future Part II. The occasion offers a timely reminder of one of the original 1985 film’s enduring mysteries: the whereabouts of the cherry-red Gibson ES-345 that Michael J. Fox played as Marty McFly.

The guitar hasn’t been seen in more than four decades, but Fox has a theory about what happened to it.

The instrument was loaned to the production by Norman’s Rare Guitars, after the film’s props team changed course at the last minute from an original plan to use a Strat or a Gretsch with a Bigsby. The decision also led to an onscreen faux pas that has irked guitar enthusiasts ever since.

That didn’t stop the scene from inspiring generations of players. John Mayer and Coldplay’s Chris Martin are among the musicians who have cited Marty’s performance of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” as an influence on their decision to take up guitar. The ES-345 has since become one of the most recognizable guitars in movie history.

In June 2025, ahead of the film’s 40th anniversary, Gibson launched a global search to track down the missing electric guitar. The company also enlisted the team behind the Lost Bass Project, which helped locate Paul McCartney’s stolen Höfner 500/1 violin bass after it had been missing for 51 years.

Gibson’s search successfully tracked down the secondary guitar used in the sequel, Back to the Future Part II. But the main mystery — the whereabouts of the cherry-red ES-345 played during Marty McFly’s iconic “Johnny B. Goode” performance in the 1985 original — remains unsolved.

One potentially important clue is the guitar’s unusual block parallelogram inlay at the 12th fret, rather than the more familiar split parallelogram. That detail could help investigators distinguish the original instrument from similar guitars and rule out false leads.

Fox, who played Marty, has offered his own theory about where the guitar went after filming wrapped. In his memoir, Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum, the actor looks back on his career-defining role, which he prepared for at night after long days on the set of Family Ties.

“I wish I could claim to possess it, but I didn’t have the foresight to know how valuable it would become,” he writes (via Parade).

“Unfortunately, somebody did anticipate that and snagged it for themselves,” he continues. “Whether it’s in their active collection or stashed in their attic or home studio, they’re not speaking up.”

Gibson’s search generated headlines around the world and attracted numerous leads and tip-offs, but the original guitar remains missing. Fox suspects someone knows exactly where it is and is choosing to keep quiet.

“Perhaps,” he adds, “they’re waiting for the statute of limitations on vintage guitar theft to expire.”

The “Johnny B. Goode” sequence was particularly meaningful to Fox because it gave him the chance to pay tribute to some of his earliest guitar heroes.

“Guitar has always been a big part of my life,” Fox said. “When we talked about the ‘Enchantment Under the Sea’ scene, I sat down with the cinematographer and choreographer and said, ‘I want to riff through all of my favorite guitarists, like doing Jimi Hendrix behind the head, Pete Townshend doing a windmill, and the Eddie Van Halen hammer thing.’ It was so cool that they were open to that, and we laid it all out there.”

Gibson has also begun work on a documentary, Lost to the Future, chronicling the search for the guitar. Fox, however, is skeptical that the film will be released anytime soon.

“Apparently, the release of the documentary will come after the guitar is found,” he says, “if that ever happens.”

Meanwhile, Guitar Player reviewer Dave Hunter has revisited the ES-345’s place in Gibson’s history. Introduced as a more feature-rich alternative to the better-known ES-335, the semi-hollow model occupied a middle ground between the 335 and the flagship ES-355.

“It remains an underrated gem worth your time,” Hunter writes.

Beatles fans will soon be able to walk through re-creations of the band’s history using sets and props from Sam Mendes’s upcoming four-film biopic series. Apple Corps has announced plans for a 100,000-square-foot Beatles experience in Liverpool, bringing the group’s story home in a new attraction more than four times the size of the existing The Beatles Story museum.

“I can’t wait for people to be able to step into our story and share the experience,” Paul McCartney said in a statement announcing the project on October 20.

The new attraction will take visitors from the Beatles’ childhoods in postwar Liverpool through their formative years in Hamburg, the Cavern Club, Beatlemania and beyond. Recreated settings will include Abbey Road, Shea Stadium and the group’s Savile Row headquarters, with immersive technology and original artifacts helping bring the band’s journey to life. Some of the locations will incorporate sets and props from Mendes’s The Beatles: A Four-Film Cinematic Event, scheduled for worldwide release by Sony Pictures in April 2028.

“Filming recently in Liverpool for our four Beatles movies brought home just how extraordinary the band’s legacy in the city is,” Mendes said. “Their imprint can be felt everywhere. It’s particularly fitting that this new Beatles experience will be helping to support the next generation of talent coming from this extraordinary city.”

The attraction will relocate The Beatles Story from its current home at Albert Dock to the former St Johns Market at St Johns Shopping Centre, in the heart of Liverpool. Apple Corps will take over operation of the existing attraction in 2027, ahead of the move the following year.

The project will also extend into the city skyline. Apple Corps plans to take over the 400-foot St Johns Beacon tower for a Beatles-themed Yellow Submarine experience, featuring panoramic 360-degree views of Liverpool.

“I find it incredible and humbling that people are still interested in our story, and it’s very exciting to me that The Beatles Story and the Beacon are being transformed in such an exciting way in the heart of Liverpool city,” McCartney said. “The extraordinary plans the Apple Corps team have shown me for The Beatles Story take me right back to that journey, from Liverpool to the world and back home again. It couldn’t have happened without Liverpool.”

Ticket proceeds will contribute to the Apple Corps Liverpool Trust, a charitable initiative intended to support local artists and cultural projects.

The Liverpool attraction will be only the second permanent Beatles experience operated by Apple Corps, following a planned attraction at 3 Savile Row in London, due to open at the end of 2027. The Savile Row building was the original home of Apple Corps and was the site of the Beatles’ final live rooftop performance on January 30, 1969.

Mendes’s four films will each tell the Beatles’ story from the perspective of a different member. Paul Mescal will play McCartney, Joseph Quinn will portray George Harrison, Barry Keoghan will play Ringo Starr and Harris Dickinson will portray John Lennon.

Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer is back behind the kit with his bandmates, judging by new rehearsal photos shared ahead of the group’s two upcoming Los Angeles shows.

The band posted a series of pictures on Instagram on October 20, showing all five classic members — Kramer, singer Steven Tyler, guitarists Joe Perry and Brad Whitford, and bass guitarist Tom Hamilton — preparing for their return to the stage. “The bad boys from Boston are back,” the group wrote.

Kramer’s presence answers one of the biggest questions surrounding the shows, which were announced earlier this month. The founding drummer hasn’t performed live with Aerosmith since February 15, 2020, when he played the band’s Deuces Are Wild residency at the Park MGM in Las Vegas.

His final performance came after a turbulent period in the band’s history. Kramer had been sidelined following a shoulder injury in 2019, and a subsequent legal dispute with his bandmates over his return to the group spilled into public view. He rejoined Aerosmith onstage on February 10, 2020, after winning the right to audition for his place in the band, and played the remaining Las Vegas dates, including the February 15 show.

Now, more than six years later, Kramer appears poised to reunite with Tyler, Perry, Whitford and Hamilton for two special concerts at the Hollywood Bowl on October 29 and November 1. Billed as California, Dream On: Aerosmith & Friends, the shows will bring together an extensive roster of guest performers, with the lineup varying by night.

Among the artists announced are the Black Crowes, Run-DMC, Heart, Billy Idol, Sammy Hagar and Tom Morello, along with Guns N’ Roses members Slash and Duff McKagan, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, and Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell and bassist Mike Inez. Producer and musician Andrew Watt and bassist Don Was are also among the participants.

The concerts will mark Aerosmith’s first full-band live performances since the group abandoned its farewell tour in 2023 after Tyler suffered a fractured larynx. The band subsequently announced its retirement from touring in 2024, making the Hollywood Bowl appearances a particularly notable return.

In 1980 the Sony Walkman arrived in the US, presenting music fans with the novel experience of personal stereo. At a cost of $200 — about $800 today — 25,000 people per month purchased the TPS-L2 model and played cassettes on the move.

If you were around back then, chances are you recall hearing some of the era’s biggest hits on a Walkman. Among the top sellers of the day? Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A., and the Police's Synchronicity.

After countless Walkman models plus CD and MiniDisc versions, the brand faded out in the post iPod era. But now it’s back, and the premium, flashy-named NW-WM1ZM3 can be yours — for $5,899.99.

It contains balanced wiring, accepts wi-fi streaming and digital audio files and connects to your other devices via USB-C. Oh, and it’s gold plated, which is why it’s the most expensive Walkman of all time.

Sony said their aim was to provide “the finest portable sound experience for audiophiles,” adding, “Our flagship Walkman, meticulously refined from every possible angle in the service of peerless sound quality, the NW-WM1ZM3 incorporates the highest quality components, a precision-machined oxygen-free copper body, and a functional 5.5” screen, all backed by decades of world-leading audio engineering. Nothing else compares.”

The firm boasted features including gold screws which for “stable ground connection that delivers powerful bass, an expansive soundstage and smooth, extended high frequencies,” 35 hours of playback, 256GB of built-in memory with a microSD slot, S-Master HX digital amp, DSD remastering engine, Edge-AI DSEE ultimate upscaling, balanced headphone jacks, a vinyl effect filter, 360 Reality audio, look-ahead noise shaping, Android 16 OS and other stuff that lets you play music.

But if that’s too rich for your budget (even at $190 per month over 30 months), wait – because cheaper models are available. The NW-WM1AM3 model costs “just” $3,000 and the basic NW-ZX900 has a pocket-money price of only $1,900.

All three devices are available for pre-order now, with delivery predicted to begin in December. Sony haven’t said so, but it’s unlikely that accessories will include a hexagonal pen, a box of AA batteries or foam ear pads in a variety of exciting colors.

Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson, who recovered from tongue cancer in 2015, was forced to sing part of a recent show from offstage after smoke from flares lit by fans filled the stadium. Video from the band’s concert at Estadio Olímpico Atahualpa in Quito, Ecuador, shows Dickinson delivering lines of The Trooper from behind the set as flares burn in the crowd.

“I can’t sing if you light flares! I can’t breathe. If you want to light flares, go somewhere else, because this stuff is poisonous and pollutes the people around you,” he’s reported to have said from the stage.

As in many parts of the world, pyrotechnics are banned at Estadio Olímpico Atahualpa for security and safety reasons. Fans are searched before entry and any such devices are confiscated, while those who bypass the checks and set off fireworks inside face immediate ejection and banning. Those restrictions clearly didn’t deter a handful of determined rule-breakers in Quito, who set off flares on at least three occasions during the Maiden show.

Dickinson, 68, has warned fans in the past about smoke and vaping at concerts. In 2014, he was diagnosed with a small cancerous tumor at the back of his tongue. He completed seven weeks of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and was given the all-clear in May 2015. In 2022, he criticized a fan for smoking at a show in Greece, and elsewhere told the front row in Anaheim, California, that their weed fumes were disrupting his performance and that of bassist Steve Harris.

At a solo show in 2024, he said he and bassist Tanya O’Callaghan were suffering the effects of vaping. “My throat’s got work to do,” he pointed out on that occasion.

Maiden were expected to take a hiatus in 2027, but the band recently announced an unexpected North American leg of their Run For Your Lives world tour. The new run begins on April 14 in Tacoma, Washington, and ends on May 16 in Ocean City, Maryland.

George Harrison was known as the Quiet Beatle, the reserved, spiritual guitarist who preferred to stay out of the spotlight. But that familiar image captures only part of who he was, says Klaus Voormann, a close friend who knew Harrison long before the Beatles became global superstars.

Voormann met the Beatles in October 1960, when they were playing at Hamburg’s Kaiserkeller club, with Pete Best on drums and Stuart Sutcliffe on bass. He introduced them to his friend Astrid Kirchherr, the photographer who took their first professional-quality photos and helped establish their distinctive mop-top hairstyles.

An artist and bass player, Voormann went on to design the covers of Revolver and the Beatles’ Anthology albums. He also played in groups like Manfred Mann, performed sessions with Carly Simon and Lou Reed, and recorded on solo works by Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon.

But in a new interview in the December 2026 issue of Uncut, Voormann says Harrison never wanted to be a solo artist or a frontman.

“I don’t think he really ever wanted to be a solo artist,” he revelas. “He wanted to write songs and be part of the Beatles.”

Of the Beatles, Voormann says only Paul McCartney was a natural frontman.

“If you think back to the ’60s and seeing the Beatles onstage, Paul was the one who really had contact with the audience,” he says. “John didn’t have it, George didn’t have it and Pete Best didn’t have it at all...

“But George just wanted to play guitar and sing. He was fantastic, but he did not want to entertain an audience.”

Voormann also played on Harrison’s All Things Must Pass album, where he saw how the guitarist brought musicians together. Harrison, he recalls, created a warm, welcoming atmosphere in the studio.

“All the musicians loved George. They knew he was a very spiritual person, and he created a nice atmosphere in the studio. In contrast to John, he was always trying to make everything lovely. The lights were dimmed and he’d put joss sticks up on a little altar at the front, with a little figure. […] There was always something very melodic about George’s songs, very few hard edges.”

But Voormann says Harrison’s spiritual outlook coexisted with deep personal insecurity. The guitarist was more complicated than his serene public image suggested.

“One thing which I think is very important for people to know is that he was a very insecure, very complicated person. He was always searching for something, which was the religious part of him. You could even say he was a split personality.”

Voormann recalls that Harrison was in particularly bad shape in 1970, around the time of the Beatles’ breakup and the making of All Things Must Pass. Harrison was also spending time with Delaney & Bonnie and Eric Clapton.

“He would be coking like mad, he fucked his voice, he was in bad spirits. So he always seemed kind of conflicted. In one way he had the urge to be spiritual and very much down to earth, and wrote those songs where he's longing for that. But then suddenly — click — he's back and on the wrong side again.”

That complexity extended to Harrison’s relationships with other people. Although Voormann describes him as a caring and thoughtful friend, he says Harrison could also be sarcastic and cutting.

“That whole ‘quiet Beatle’ thing is nonsense. That was not a part of him.”

Harrison’s sharp tongue was on display when he encountered Formula One driver Michael Schumacher, a fan of the sport himself, at a party.

“He said, ‘Michael, you’re a fantastic driver. You’re so fast, it’s ridiculous. And you’ve won so many prizes, but you’re still an arsehole.’ That was typical of George.”

Harrison’s sense of humor also extended to practical jokes. Phil Collins has recalled how the guitarist once tricked him over his contribution to All Things Must Pass. Collins had played congas during the sessions but always wondered why his parts didn’t make the album.

Years later, Harrison sent him a tape he claimed contained an outtake from the sessions. On it, Collins’s conga playing was terribly out of time. Horrified by what he heard, Collins left the listening session feeling “angry, depressed and sad,” convinced he’d finally discovered why his contribution had been left off the record.

Only afterward did Harrison reveal that the tape was fake and the whole thing was a prank.

Collins eventually saw the funny side. “We eventually managed to have a laugh about it,” he said.

“And yeah, I swore at a Beatle.”

As Andy Summers explains it, the Police’s biggest hit wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for his guitar line.

“That song was going to be thrown out,” Summers told Guitarist in 2022 of the track “Every Breath You Take.“ After making several attempts at the tune, bassist Sting and drummer Stewart Copeland were ready to give up. “Sting and Stewart could not agree on how the bass and drums were going to go.”

Summers had an idea of what the song needed — an ear-catching electric guitar riff to give it some interest. But as he says, it wasn’t about creating a starring role for himself. “It was more about keeping those other bastards happy.”

Sting took the bait.

“Sting says, ‘Well, go on then, go in there and make it your own,’” Summers recalled. “And I did it in one take. They all stood up and clapped.

“And, of course, the fucking thing went right round the world, straight to number one in America. And the riff has become a kind of immortal guitar part that all guitar players have to learn.”

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

It was also the top-selling single of 1983 in the U.S. and the fifth best-selling single of the 1980s in the country.

Summers told Guitar Player in 2025 that he was unhappy not to have received a writing credit for the song. Discussing his guitar work on the track, he explained how he transformed the tune with his arpeggiated, chorus-tinged lines, played on his modified 1963 Fender Telecaster.

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

The demo for the song seems to bear him out.

By the time the band recorded Synchronicity with co-producer Hugh Padgham at AIR Studios in Montserrat, its members were increasingly at odds. The delicate balance of creative visions and egos was splintering, particularly between Sting and Copeland. The album would mark the end of the group’s recording run, and the three musicians went their separate ways after touring to support it.

“I think we were in a difficult position,” Summers told Guitar Player. “Clearly, Sting wanted to leave the band, and yet we had this massive album all over the world.”

More than four decades later, Summers still believes his riff deserves recognition as a defining contribution to “Every Breath You Take.”

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

As for what inspired it, Summers believes his creation may have stemmed from his early 1980s collaborations with Robert Fripp.

“At the time I’d made one record with Robert” — 1982’s I Advance Masked — “and I think we were due to make another one. I was looking for material.”

But he says the line’s harmonic structure also owes much to the classical guitar genre.

“One of the things I had engaged with in my life, especially when I was mad about classical guitar, was the Bartok string duos,” he says. “I would listen to and try to play these beautiful Bartok things. So I had that kind of harmony in my playing, to some extent.

“Bartok would take it much farther out to add a ninth rather than a third — that kind of thing. So it fit with my mental musical landscape at the time, and it was very natural for me to play that sort of thing.”

Summers says the riff came together quickly in the studio. “When it came to the recording, we got it done on one take, actually,” he told Guitar Player.

While another guitarist might have simply strummed the song’s chords, Summers saw an opportunity to add a defining element — one he believes merits a songwriting credit.

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

That’s hard to argue with. As Summers recalls, “Every Breath You Take” was nearly tossed out before his riff helped turn it into a worldwide hit.

At the time of his Guitar Player interview, the song had passed two billion streams on Spotify alone. It has since climbed to 3.8 billion.

“Which makes my guitar riff one of the most-played riffs in history,” Summers contends. “Not too shabby.”

Indeed. The riff has become one of the most recognizable in rock history. For Summers, however, the success of “Every Breath You Take” still comes with one unresolved question: why isn’t his contribution reflected in the songwriting credits?

Time and age have not impaired Lee Ritenour’s chops — or the veteran guitarist’s memory.

“I remember the stories,” the 74-year-old tells us via Zoom from his home studio in Malibu. “I love that a lot of times I can remember who was on the sessions, what happened — all of it.”

And rest assured there are a lot of stories, considering Ritenour has some 58 albums of his own — dating back 50 years to his first solo set, First Course — along with legendary sessions for the likes of Steely Dan, George Benson, Pink Floyd, Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Quincy Jones, B.B. King and a great many more.

Ritenour is adding yet another album to his legacy with the new concert disc Live at Ronnie Scott’s, which comes out October 23. The album was drawn from an eight-night run at the storied London venue last March.

“I picked 20 songs,” Ritenour says. “Everybody got the list in advance and audio samples and PDFs if they needed the score, but everybody knew the music.” They did not, however, know exactly when or how they’d be playing them each night.

“I call it as we go,” Ritenour explains. “I never do a set list, and that way it keeps everybody on edge, and it also keeps it spontaneous. It’s almost like the improvisation that goes into a fusion tune or a rock tune or a jazz tune or a ballad; we’re performing at that moment, and everyone’s got to stay sharp.”

That includes Ritenour. But the legend says he’s energized by the youthful players in his group, which includes his son Wes on drums, keyboardist Giorgi Mikadze, bass guitarist-vocalist Munir Hossn, harmonica player Gregoire Maret and vocalist Tatiana Para.

“Everybody’s in their 30s, 40s at most,” he says. “They have that same fresh energy that I had when I was in my 30s, and that brings it back to me and gives me energy.

“This kind of music I do has to be reinvented. It has to feature the players and bring out the best of those players as well — and by extension, the best out of me. So having a young band play these songs at Ronnie Scott’s … it kind of keeps me on my toes.”

Ritenour will finish the year with a handful of performances on the West Coast during November and a four-night stand at the Blue Note Tokyo in December.

In the meantime, we asked him to share a few of those stories from his long career.

George Benson

One of Ritenour’s favorite stories involves Benson’s 1989 Platinum release Give Me the Night, for which Ritenour played on seven of the 10 tracks. In particular, he remembers a session for the title track, which became a number four hit on the Billboard Hot 100.

“I was on most of the tracks playing rhythm guitar and sometimes helping George with his amps and stuff like that, being an overall help to Quincy. But all of a sudden I got a call one night at almost midnight. The studio [Kendun Recorders in Burbank] was 15 minutes from my house, coincidentally.

“Quincy says, ‘Ritenour, you gotta come down here. We’ve got an emergency.’ Apparently, a second engineer on the session had accidentally erased part of Benson’s solo on the title track. I said, ‘Well, where’s George?’ Quincy said, ‘He’s back in Hawaii. We’ve got to finish the mix tonight, and the last four bars of the solo are missing now.’

“So I come down and George’s guitar is there. His rig is there. I knew that setup because I helped dial it in. They had a cassette of the original mix of the solo, so I learned the last four bars and we punched it in. We did it a few times; I made sure the sound was the same.

“And Quincy said to me, ‘You have to promise never to tell George about this.’ ‘Okay, I promise.’

“Time moves on, and 20 years later George and I are walking in the airport, just shooting the breeze, and I thought, I’ve got to tell George the story. So I tell him, and he starts laughing his ass off.

“He says, ‘Well, I didn’t notice, and it was a hit, right?’ So all good!”

“I probably wish, with Quincy, I had been on some of those Michael Jackson sessions. By that time I had moved on and was doing my own albums, and Steve Lukather, Ray Parker Jr. and a couple other people were doing those Jackson albums. But at the time you think, ‘Man, that track turned out so great. I wish I had been on it.’”

Steve Lukather

Steve Lukather often tells the story of how Lee Ritenour saved him on a session early in his career by switching guitar parts with him. The session took place in the 1970s, for an artist neither guitarist has identified. The two already knew each other: Ritenour had played with Lukather’s future Toto bandmate David Paich and Paich’s father, Marty, before meeting Lukather at the Baked Potato in Los Angeles. We asked Ritenour to recount the story from his perspective.

“We were on this session with this R&B arranger [Gene Page],” Ritenour says. “I was supposed to play guitar one, which had just chords, changes and fills around the melody. It was relatively easy. Guitar two was doubling the bass part, and it was Wilton Felder playing the bass, and Wilton was one of the few bass players back in the day who could read well because originally he was a saxophone player with the Jazz Crusaders. So Wilton was on, and this arranger wrote really funky, syncopated bass lines that were not easy to read.

“So Steve has this part doubling the bass, and he’s late to the session and was nervous to begin with, ’cause he was the new kid on the session. He sits down, and the sheet music was just black with notes. I saw Steve’s face just go white; we already knew each other a little, and I was famous for being a sight reader, whereas Steve was more of a player-player.

“So I said, ‘Hey, Luke, why don’t you take guitar one and do the fills? I kinda know the song already, a little bit. I’ll take guitar two.’ So we switched parts, and he’s said for decades that I saved his ass on that session.”

David Gilmour

Among Ritenour’s most notable credits is his work on The Wall, Pink Floyd’s chart-topping, 23-times Platinum opus released in 1979. Brought in at the suggestion of co-producer Bob Ezrin, he’s credited with acoustic guitar on “Young Lust” and rhythm guitar on “One of My Turns,” and there have been reports over the years that Ritenour offered suggestions for David Gilmour’s iconic solo at the end of “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2.”

“That’s another one of those bands that, like Steely Dan, had huge budgets,” Ritenour says. “Budget was not a concern for Pink Floyd — rightfully so, considering they were one of the greatest bands in the world. They were one of the bands that made sure every part was right. That was one of the few times I entered into a band’s territory like that.

“Some people think I did the guitar solo on ‘Another Brick in the Wall.’ No, it was David. We did play double acoustic guitars together on another song, and they played me the solo on ‘Another Brick in the Wall,’ and I said, ‘That sounds cool.’ And, of course, the guitar sound is exquisite. They asked my opinion. I said it sounded great and left it at that.

“I’m very proud I’m on that record, and that I added some stuff to it. But it was still a Pink Floyd record. It’s like a player coming in and adding something to the Beatles; it was still the Beatles, come on.”

Jas Obrecht’s chance encounter with a then-unknown Eddie Van Halen on July 23, 1978, led to the guitarist’s first magazine interview, published in Guitar Player’s November 1978 issue. The two would meet again, including for a five-hour conversation in 1980 that explored Eddie’s approach to electric guitar, gear and modifications, his musical upbringing, and the techniques behind his groundbreaking playing.

Published in the magazine’s April 1980 issue, that interview found Van Halen discussing everything from his early music lessons to the importance of phrasing and his approach to guitar solos. He also shared his surprisingly dismissive initial reaction to one of Van Halen’s biggest early hits.

At the outset of the conversation, Obrecht asked Van Halen how he developed his speed. Born in the Netherlands, Eddie had moved to the U.S. with his family at age seven. His answer began with a characteristically humorous account of his classical training.

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

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

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

Some of that classical training found its way into Eddie’s guitar playing, even if he didn’t consciously set out to apply piano techniques to the instrument.

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

The conversation also turned to his solos — both how he approached them and what he wanted them to achieve. Asked what mattered most, Van Halen had a straightforward answer.

“Feeling,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s melodic or spontaneous. If it’s melodic and has no feeling, it’s screwed.”

That emphasis on feel informed an approach that left room for both careful composition and improvisation. Some solos were worked out in advance; others came together in the studio on the spot.

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

Other performances were more spontaneous.

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

That willingness to improvise carried over to the stage. Although Van Halen sometimes reproduced his recorded solos, he generally preferred to take a different approach each night.

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

Perhaps the most surprising revelation concerned “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love,” a song that became a defining part of Van Halen’s early catalog. Far from recognizing its potential immediately, Eddie initially thought it was a dud — and waited six months before playing it for his bandmates.

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

Robert Plant remains grateful for everything Led Zeppelin brought him — but he’s relieved to have long since moved on from that phase of his life.

Despite speculation surrounding the band’s 2007 reunion, Plant says it was always going to be a one-off as far as he was concerned. These days, he’s much happier living a less exposed life in an English village with a population of around 800.

“Tuesday night is bingo night,” Plant tells the Times. “You might win £25. Wednesday is misery corner at the local pub, where all the musicians who never quite made it on the Birmingham scene moan about their lot.”

He adds, “I’ve been a quasi big shot for so long, [but] in Worcestershire nobody gives a fuck. The most they say is, ‘All right, Bob — still doing a bit?’ ‘Well, I won five Grammys with Alison Krauss…’ ‘What’s a Grammy?’”

Plant compares the experience to living in Austin with Patty Griffin in the early 2010s.

“Patty and I walked up the street and cars would be crashing into each other. Eventually I had to say, ‘Patty, I think the Wolves are playing Arsenal on Saturday. I’ll see you soon.’”

Reflecting on his decision to leave the big time behind, Plant recalls: “Someone said, ‘Why does he turn his back on the majesty of Led Zeppelin? Why is Person A representing the power and the glory, while Plant goes to bingo in the Welsh borders?’”

He doesn’t name Jimmy Page, who’s clearly the person he’s referring to, but continues: “I’m so lucky to have grown into this guy instead of gritting my teeth and trying to keep something going. It felt like the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the king says, ‘One day, lad, all this will be yours.’ And his son says, ‘What, the curtains?’”

Countless larger-than-life fables surround Led Zeppelin’s heyday. Of that era, Plant says, “You learned that it was better not to refute any of the stories and just get on with it, because whatever Led Zeppelin was, it was definitely not glamorous.”

He adds, “My life is so much better for having worked with Jimmy Page, but you do have to deal with a very different personality. I know Roger Daltrey pretty well. He’s on the road at the moment, solo, and he’s free. I’ve been free for years.”

One thing that’s been missing from the 78-year-old singer’s recent output is new music. “I really want to write,” he explains. “But what we have going on around us right now is so vast, with a helplessness about everything and a national sense of panic in America, that my words have nothing to do with anything at all and it would just be trite.

“I want to entertain, sing as well as I can, crack jokes, send myself up and make people feel good. At this time in my life, that’s everything. That and getting out of bed.”

Metallica added another new track to their Las Vegas Sphere repertoire over the weekend, giving 1988 classic Harvester of Sorrow the giant visuals makeover. The band again kept their promise of delivering a “no repeat weekend,” with the set on Saturday (October 17) completely different from that on the preceding Thursday.

This time, though, reactions to the huge screen imagery was mixed. Many viewers were confused as they watched a man sharpening a knife blade on a whetstone while a goose – which some people thought was a duck – sat in a separate scene beside him and did what geese do.

“I mean Metallica is my most favorite band and I love Harvester of Sorrow,” one fan wrote on YouTube, “but what the hell was that?” A reply read: “I was expecting the grinding guy to harvest the goose at the end or something… I have no words.”

Additional comments included: “Graphic artist clearly took a break here” and “The duck was an odd choice,” while someone else attempted an explanation: “Geese symbolize teamwork, loyalty, vigilance, and spiritual guidance across many cultures and traditions…Although in this situation I think it represents some knuckleheaded goober got lazy and settled.”

Others pointed out that it was good to hear Harvester back in the band’s set, while one suggested: “People don't get it – the duck is Jason's bass.”

Several comments addressed the argument that Metallica shouldn’t have settled on the hi-tech Sphere to stage a residency, citing the idea that bands on stage are dwarfed by the presentation around them.The band themselves admitted to trepidation before the shows opened, with Lars Ulrich saying the concept was “overwhelming and fucking intimidating.”

He added: “We’re all fortunate enough to be able to do these shows, connect with these audiences and sort of reinvent the staging and all of it, all the time. But this is something else. This is another level.”

So much so that Slash recently reported Guns N’ Roses had considered a residency in the venue and then rejected the notion. “It’s not set up where you can set up a bunch of amps and really play live like the way we normally do,” the guitarist said. “It's really about the production, and it’s not so much about the band, although the band is playing.

“We were talking about doing it last year before this tour that we just did, and we opted for just doing a US tour and not just focusing on that one thing.”

Producer Andrew Watt has discussed how he aims to get the best out of musicians when an album is under production, comparing the wildly different approaches of The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Elton John and Michael Stipe.

The five-time Grammy winner and Oscar nominee started out as a pop producer before moving over to rock, with his most notable productions including Ozzy Osbourne’s Ordinary Man and Patient Number 9 plus the Stones’ Hackney Diamonds and Foreign Tongues.

Watt tells Rolling Stone that work on John’s next album has changed dramatically from the past, after the 79-year-old lost most of his eyesight. “Elton writes songs by reading a lyric,” the producer explains. “He’s going through life in a completely different way, [but] my God, the spirit of this man is unlike anything else.

“He’s one of the great melody writers ever. We could throw on some drums for him that made him feel a certain type of way, and he could just play to the drums and come up with melodies first.”

He adds that lyricist Bernie Taupin had adjusted too: “He was able to then listen to that, hear a basic rough little melody of Elton and come up with ideas. And then Elton is the master of putting Bernie’s lyrics down to the song. Once Bernie came up with the lyric, we’d put it on a huge screen. Elton would scan through it; he’d go little by little, and it was perfect.”

Watt praises R.E.M. vocalist Michael Stipe’s approach to his long-awaited solo album. “He’s extremely hard on himself. He kinda beats himself up, I think, in a healthy way. I’ve seen him write lyrics, throw them out, write them again.

“He’s wanting to make sure that he’s gonna say exactly what he wants to say, and make a sound that’s exactly how he wants it to sound. He’s working with a bunch of different people, and then finding his way around them. He’s one of the all-time greats, great songwriter, great lyricist, great melodist. And really fun to be around.”

The producer describes working with McCartney as a college education. “He’s fearless. He was kind of teaching me the way he works – you can write a song out of anything, and then sometimes you switch it up and go to a weird thing, which changes form a million different times.“

He continues: “It was kind of like, ‘Let me show you how we can use the studio.’ He loves playing characters… his imagination is unlike anyone else’s. Like Mozart, you know? … Bouncing around the studio and playing every different instrument. He’s incredible at coming up with the perfect part on every different instrument and not making you feel like he played any instrument worse than the other. I mean, it just sounds like someone who’s a master on each instrument.”

Watt recalls sitting among the Stones in the live room while working up songs. “I would be in that circle so I could watch how they’re interplaying with each other,” he says. “You don’t want it to ever be an arduous process with a band like that. They’re magic.

“My job would be to have a mic and call sections – ‘B section! Okay, let’s go back to the A section! Take it out on that!’ They’re playing the tune they made, and I’m arranging it kind of as it’s happening, in the moment.”

Asked if another Stones album is under discussion, Watt says: “I don’t know. I didn’t know if there was gonna be another one after [our] first one. If they call, I’m there. It’s the greatest honor of my life being around that band.”

Although he took influence from George Harrison, as a session player Roger McGuinn had been experimenting with 12-string guitar sounds long before he was captivated by the Beatles and Harrison’s use of the Rickenbacker 360/12.

“I always loved the sound of a 12-string because it sounds like a harpsichord,” he tells Guitar Player. “It's got so many nice overtones in it.”

After catching the Beatles' 1964 movie, A Hard Day’s Night, where Harrison brandished a 12-string Rickenbacker, McGuinn followed suit and picked up his own Rickenbacker, a 370/12. It was with this guitar that McGuinn went on to not only impact the guitar scene via his chiming clean tones but also launch folk-rock as a genre.

The proverbial musical patriarch of the folk-rock era was “Mr. Tambourine Man,” a song penned by Bob Dylan in 1965, which the Byrds covered and scored a hit with. At the time, McGuinn had no expectations, but when he looks back, he admits the track's importance.

“I'm happy with what we did,” he says. “I think it was innovative. I was trying to tune it for the AM radio audience, and it worked! I look back on it as a happy experience, really.”

As the ’60s progressed, McGuinn and the Byrds would influence the Beatles as well as Harrison, by turning him on to the sitar playing of Ravi Shankar. The Byrds eventually ventured into country, psychedelic rock and the merging of the two. His 12-string was never far from his reach, but he did eschew folk rock for a while.

Recently, though, with his Folk Den project, McGuinn has gotten back to his folk roots in its purest form.

“I just love it,” he says. “It’s historical. It's human history, and real people writing about real things that happened.

It’s something that should not get lost,” he adds. “I compare traditional folk music to Victorian architecture: You don't want to tear down a beautiful Victorian building and put up a steel and glass structure instead, right?”

What initially drew you to the 12-string Rickenbacker guitar?

Well, I’d been playing 12-string acoustic before that. I got into it because of Pete Seeger playing one, and Bob Gibson playing one. And I got into Lead Belly and the folk scene, so I was a 12-string player. Actually, I was a studio musician in New York, doing sessions for 12-string acoustic and five-string banjo for a lot of folk acts, including Judy Collins and Paul Simon.

How big of an influence was George Harrison on you as far as the 12-string electric guitar goes?

We all went to see the Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night, and copied down notes about what the Beatles were playing: that Ringo played Ludwig drums, Paul had that Höfner violin bass…

And then George came out with the Rickenbacker, which looked like a six-string from the front. They’d condensed the tuning pegs into a six-string format from the front, and they had another six sticking out of the back of the headstock. It was like a classical guitar, with a channeled head.

What did you think of that?

I went, “Wow, I love the sound of that.” I’d heard 12-string sounds on the radio before, like the Searchers and the Seekers — although I learned later that they were playing six-string guitars, but with another guitarist playing octaves, or something like that. But that 12-string sound was something that I loved.

It became very popular after the Byrds had a hit with “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

Yeah, after we got the hit, everybody got a Rickenbacker. The Beach Boys had one, Paul Revere & the Raiders had one. It was a new sound in rock and roll, and it came out of England.

You’re also an originator of folk rock. Is it also true that the Beatles were your inspiration for that style?

Yeah! The Beatles had first been a skiffle band called the Quarrymen, and skiffle is a form of folk music. So they were doing chords that were more than one, four and five; they were doing things that were more than subdominant and dominant chords. And they ere doing things in the middle of songs where they got into other minor chords, instead of just playing G, C and D major.

Did you ever talk with them about their influence on folk rock?

No, I never did. But there’s also a theory that the Animals invented folk rock by doing “House of the Rising Sun,” which had been a blues song that Bob Dylan recorded. But I don’t think it's the same, you know?

There’s a story that when the Byrds first heard “Mr. Tambourine Man,” David Crosby said, “The two-four folk beat isn’t going to cut it on radio.” Is that true?

Yeah. I realized when I heard the Beatles that they were onto something — that anything with a four-four beat was going to be a hit. So I rearranged “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

We had a demo that was originally recorded in New York by Bob [Dylan] and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, but Ramblin’ had too much to drink and was out of tune on the demo. [laughs] It actually wasn’t meant to be a demo; it was intended to be released, but Bob didn’t because Ramblin’ was out of tune.

So we got a copy of that, and that’s where we first learned it. And that version was four and a half minutes long, in two-four time, and out of tune.

That’s when Crosby said, “I don’t like it, man. Two-four time is never going to play on the radio.” And besides that, it was too long; radio wouldn’t play anything over two and a half minutes at that point.

Is it true that the Byrds’ manager, Jim Dickson, invited Bob to hear the Byrds rehearse the song? If so, what was his reaction?

Yeah, it was at World Pacific Studios, where we would rehearse. Jim let us come in there, play on the tape machines, and rehearse, and he invited Bob over.

Bob came over, and he was listening to us to this rock-inspired version of the song. I remember I played the song, and Bob said, “What’s that?” I said, “That’s one of your songs, man…”

He didn’t really recognize it, but he did like it and gave us his approval.

Bob was recording Highway 61 Revisited, the album where he really delved into folk rock, around the same time that the Byrds released “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Do you believe you influenced Bob’s rock leanings?

Well, you know, we all come from rock and roll. I was into Elvis and Gene Vincent and Carl Perkins. And Bob had played piano in rock and roll bands when he was a kid. So Bob was already there. He already had that in his system.

Your Back from Rio record is perhaps one of the greatest star-studded albums of the ’90s. It’s got Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Elvis Costello, David Crosby and Chris Hillman on it. How did that come about, and how do you look back on it now?

I feel great about it. It’s probably my best commercial release.

It came about because I went on the road with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Bob Dylan in Europe for what was called the Temples in Flames tour.

It was 1987, and we had a day off in Gothenburg, Sweden, and I had a tune. So I showed the tune to Tom, and he and I sat down and wrote “King of the Hill.” And then, Mike Campbell came in, and he had a four-track cassette studio in a briefcase.

So he recorded a demo of it, and we took that demo, and somehow got it to Arista Records, who signed me to a record deal. And then Tom helped me out with the recording, and so did Elvis and the other Byrds. It was a pretty cool project, and I’m still really happy with how it came out.

You’ve returned to folk music in its purest form with your Folk Den project. What led you back there?

I got concerned that it was going to get lost in the shuffle. All the new folk singers were singer/songwriters, and they weren’t doing the old, traditional songs. If you look at NPR's lists of traditional songs, like, only eight of the top 100 are traditional. So traditional music got kind of swept into the dustbin of history.

Do you see the tide turning to where there’s enough quality traditional folk music out there today?

Well, it depends on where you are. If you go to Scotland, there’s plenty of it. But if you go around the United States, you’re not going to find too much of it. It’s all kind of gone, but I’m doing my bit to keep it going by putting things up.

And it’s all for free. It’s a public service sponsored by UNC, North Carolina. I’ve got over 330 folk songs up there for free download on The Folk Den at mcguinn.com.

U2 have spent five decades releasing hit albums, playing to enormous audiences and collecting 22 Grammy Awards. But for guitarist The Edge, the reason to keep going is remarkably simple: he believes the band’s greatest work may still lie ahead of them.

“We genuinely think that we might just write the best song we’ve ever written next week, or do the best show we’ve ever done next tour,” The Edge says in a new interview with The New York Times.

The band are preparing to release Carnaval De Luz on November 13, their first full-length album of new material since 2017. The interview with The Edge and frontman Bono looks back at the group’s beginnings in Dublin, when singer Paul David Hewson (Bono), guitarist David Howell Evans (The Edge), bass guitarist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. were teenagers, and considers what has kept them together half a century later.

For Bono, the band’s identity has always carried a mythic dimension. He traces that impulse in part to the names he and his bandmates adopted in their early years, taking inspiration from the Ramones, whose members performed under pseudonyms.

“We wished to escape suburbia and discover these other selves, and we gave those other selves names,” Bono says. “The Ramones were key for us, and they are really well-drawn characters.”

But the names weren’t all about constructing larger-than-life rock stars. As The Edge recalls, humor played an equally important role in the band’s early identity.

“We laughed a lot at that age,” the guitarist says. “We would laugh at each other and ourselves and that was the deal. So the names were not necessarily designed for their heroic aspect.”

He then reveals just how far the group’s early nicknames were from the grand mythology Bono describes.

“Bono’s very first name was in fact Steinrich Van Haitian Bang Bang Bang, and then I was Inchicore for a while before I became The Edge. Adam for a while was known as Mrs. Byrnes, and Larry for some reason was the Jam Jar. We were borrowing a lot from Monty Python.”

Whatever the origins of their stage names, U2 went on to become one of the world’s most successful rock bands. The Edge, meanwhile, developed into one of rock’s most distinctive electric guitar stylists, building a minimalist, texture-driven sound around the rhythmic interplay of digital delay effects.

Yet he says the band’s ambition remains rooted in the possibility of doing something better than they have done before.

And for him, that means more than writing another hit or mounting another spectacular tour. He measures the band’s achievements against what he would want to experience as a fan, particularly when music reaches beyond entertainment and engages with larger ideas.

“When we talk about the best, we’re not thinking about rock ’n’ roll,” he says. “We’re thinking about our favorite bands and what, if I’m in the audience at a show, would I want to see and hear. So it’s where rock ’n’ roll collides with activism, where rock ’n’ roll collides with ideas from fine arts.”

The guitarist also points to the spiritual dimension of the band’s work, a quality he believes has been central to U2’s identity rather than something to be kept separate from their music.

“And I suppose a transcendent aspect as well. We’ve never thought it was necessary to hold back our own spiritual quests and questionings from our work. They are all expressed. And when we hit a song that has a transcendent quality, that’s the peak for me.”

Even after 50 years, The Edge hasn’t lost faith in what U2 can accomplish next.

“I really think we’re in with a shout of the best songs we’ve ever written, the best tours we’ve done, still. That’s why I’m still in this band.”

Jazz guitarist and revered tutor Les Wise was one of the first instructors at the iconic L.A. music school GIT (Guitar Institute of Technology), launched back in 1977 by Howard Roberts and Pat Hicks. During his time there, Les inspired thousands of keen students within an early guitar faculty that included Don Mock, Joe Diorio and Ron Eschete, plus guest clinicians such as Joe Pass, Robben Ford, Larry Carlton and Tommy Tedesco.

In this exclusive video lesson, Les shares some of his recollections from the golden age of GIT. In his expert opinion, the area that stood out the most was the intensive real-world live performance opportunities, where students were expected to perform multiple times a week in a wide variety of musical styles and scenarios. To illustrate this, Les shows here how he’d guide a student through an authentic jazz-blues who had limited time to prepare before hitting the bandstand with a live rhythm section.

Wise’s recommendation is a concept he calls “jazz chord pairs,” where he defines each harmonic event in the progression with two complementary voicings that are idiomatically authentic and allow the introduction of motion and rhythmic interest when comping.

His example jazz blues in F is shown below in chart form: three dominant 7 chords (F7, B♭7 and C7) enhanced with a “quick change” to the IV chord (B♭7) in bar 2 and a jazzy turnaround to end that includes D7 (the VI chord in F, made a dominant 7) and Gm7 (the II chord in F).

After performing five choruses in the video, Les defines his selection of chord pairs, starting with two voicings for F13, an extension of the F7 chord family. For B♭7, he moves between a high voicing for B♭13 and a lower-positioned B♭9. The selection of contrasting shapes allows Les to create question-and-answer rhythmic phrasing and add melodic motion.

As the examples progress, he adds further interest by sliding in and out of each shape and adds increasing syncopation and rhythmic density. There are some beautifully connected voice-leading moments here, particularly in the last bars of each 12-bar cycle. The aim is to consider each string independently, making melodic connections whenever possible. This can be achieved by either connecting via semitone steps or maintaining the same note where possible as the harmony shifts through the progression.

To begin, learn these ideas exactly as presented, then, once familiar, feel free to create variations and modifications as you see fit. You could consider choosing your own chord pairs for other types of chord, such as major 7 and minor 7 families. You could also transpose each example into a new key or apply similar concepts to a different piece. With Les’s strong foundational blocks for approaching jazz blues comping, you should find a wealth of new inspiration and vocabulary.

Example 1: Jazz-blues comping in F, first time

In his opening chorus, Les establishes each chord pair in keeping with the underlying harmonic structure for this Jazz Blues in the key of F. Each of the voicings selected are popular in jazz, and chosen to connect smoothly through the sequence in a stylistically appropriate way.

You’ll notice that it’s only in the last five bars that Les chooses voicings where the root is in the bass. Otherwise, he’s leaving the root note to the bass player. It will help you if/when transposing to a new key to know where the root note is in relation to every voicing, even if you don’t play it.

Example 2: Jazz-blues comping in F, second time

This time Les is using the same voicings, but he’s introducing each new chord from either a semitone above or below. It’s good to acknowledge the rhythmic placement here, with the semitone approach voicing, often positioned on the ‘and’ of beat four.

There are great examples of voice leading here, where each chord blends seamlessly into the next, in the final four bars. It’s worth committing some of these combination moves to memory, to create a vocabulary of chord licks and lines, rather like you might with single notes.

Example 3: Jazz-blues comping in F, third time

Here, you’re occasionally switching the order of chord pairings, so the motion now goes from low to high. Check out the tasty chord-licks in bars 9–12. In fact, you’ll see this exact combination a little later.

You’ll notice also that Les is using his thumb exclusively, using a brushing strumming motion to articulate all the notes. This gives a warm tone reminiscent of the legendary Wes Montgomery, who used his thumb. Of course, equally beautiful results can be achieved with fingers or a pick, but if this is new for you, we’d encourage you to give the approach a try.

Example 4: Jazz-blues comping in F, fourth time

In the next chorus, Les introduces more rhythmic variations and embellishments, mixing up the approaches with greater rhythmic density. Make sure to check out the chromatic descent in bars 7–8 and clock the exact same chord lick from Example 3 in bars 10–12.

Example 5: Jazz-blues comping in F, fifth time

For the final chorus, Les introduces yet more rhythmic variations, sliding embellishments and voice leading to build things to a crescendo from a dynamic intensity perspective. Two standout moments are the oblique motion idea in bars 7–8, with a high F sounding against the four descending chords connecting F13 to D13#9, and the parallel voicing used in bars 11–12 to outline F13-D17(b9#5)-G13-C7(b9#5), before resolving to F13 to finish.

Over the course of his long career, Vince Gill has been a session artist, a member of Pure Prairie League, a solo giant and, today, a member of the Eagles.

And he’s done it largely with a range of Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster electric guitars, as well as a nice selection of Gibson and Martin acoustics.

Given his somewhat infrequent use of a Les Paul, Gill never felt a need to add a vintage ‘Burst to his collection. But a sad and deeply personal twist of events brought one into his life.

“I bought a ’59 Les Paul from my brother-in-law from my first marriage [to country singer Janis Oliver],” Gill told Guitar Aficionado in 2017. “We were great friends, and he owned this great ’59 sunburst since 1959.

“He’d played it his whole life but got sick a couple of years ago. He called me and said, ‘There’s not much they can do for me. I’m probably not gonna make it. You’ve always been my favorite guitar player. Will you buy my Les Paul?’

“I didn’t have a sunburst Les Paul in my collection, and I previously couldn’t justify the expense because I don’t play a Les Paul that much, But this one came along and I said, ‘There you go,’” Gill continued. “I got the one I was supposed to have. My friend played it for 40 years, and now it gets to live on and still make music.”

The 'Burst occupies pride of place in Gill's collection, which is largely housed in his home studio. Of his collecting habit, Gill, with a chuckle, told Guitar Player in 2022, “I’m sure I’ve got a couple of hundred guitars, but I don’t have a boat or multiple houses or cars. I wouldn’t say it’s out of control, but it’s borderline.”

Gill has shared stories behind other guitars he owns, including the Martin D-28 Herringbone acoustic he purchased with his last dollar in the 1970s, then used to launch his career. He’s also spoke about the Telecaster he calls “the definitive guitar in my life.”

David Bowie worked with many guitarists throughout his long career, from Mick Ronson to Carlos Alomar, Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew and Reeves Gabrels. But there was one player he returned to several times, from the 1970s to the final years of his life: Earl Slick.

What did the Brooklyn-born guitarist give him that no other player did?

“I have theories about that,” Slick tells Guitar Player via Zoom, from the kitchen of his home in New York City, while smoking a morning cigarette and opening a bottle of Gatorade. “One of the things was that, when it came down to needing that rock and roll guitar player, that was always me or Mick. And Mick left us a long time ago.” (Ronson died in 1993.)

As for the others?

“All those guys are wonderful,” Slick says. “But none of them are rock players. So he came back to me for that. That’s when I got called in.”

Earl Slick was not a constant in David Bowie’s universe. Few were. But the guitarist — born Frank Medeloni nearly 73 years ago — was a mainstay. He arrived in 1974, following the demise of the Spiders From Mars and Ronson’s exit, to perform on Bowie’s Diamond Dogs tour. He played on the Young Americans and Station to Station albums soon after, then returned in 1983 for the Serious Moonlight Tour as a last-minute replacement for Stevie Ray Vaughan, who famously lent his electric guitar stylings to Let’s Dance, Bowie’s 1983 commercial smash.

Nearly 20 years would pass before Slick came back once again on the tour for Bowie’s 2002 album, Heathen. That led to him working on its follow-up, Reality, and performing on the subsequent A Reality Tour, a celebrated groundbreaking global stint that was the biggest and longest of Bowie’s career.

It was there that he witnessed Bowie’s heart attack on June 23, 2004 while onstage in Prague, along with his subsequent decline.

“It was amazing how he went from looking great to looking pretty ill — like, overnight,” Slick says. “We were just a month shy of a year being out.”

Bowie recovered, but he canceled the remaining shows and never toured again. Slick returned for his penultimate album, 2013's The Next Day, making him the only guitarist to have worked with Bowie over such an extended range of the performer's career.

His vital position in Bowie’s world was underscored last year in the box set David Bowie 6. I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002–2016). There among Bowie’s final albums, songs and performances was “Isn’t It Evening (The Revolutionary),” a track from Slick’s 2003 solo album, Zig Zag. Co-written with and featuring Bowie, it hit the Top 10 on several U.K. charts when it was re-released there in 2024.

Guitar Player asked Slick to weigh in on his impactful years with the chameleon of rock.

Was there much difference being Bowie’s “rock” guitarist compared to other things you’ve done?

Well, with David I did have to have a pedalboard to cover 40 years of recordings or whatever. And I hate pedals, especially overdrive pedals. But you needed certain things. You definitely needed two delay pedals just to cover “Heroes,” just to get it bouncing all over the place.

But I got a lot of free rein from David. I could literally change up bits and bobs during a show, and he liked it, actually. If you look through the concert videos, you’ll see really weird arrangements of songs and stuff. ’Cause you get bored if it’s the same song every night, so sometimes you change things up, and he liked that I did that. I had a lot of freedom to just ad lib, everywhere.

You’d been out of the Bowie orbit for about 15 years when he reached out to you around 2002. How did that come about?

Omigod. Reeves had left and David was looking for a guitar player, so his people tracked me down through a web site. It was called Slick-something-or-other, and it had all these old demos we kept putting out. That’s how he found me.

The webmaster called and said, “I just got this email. It’s a New York number and they seem to really want to get in touch with you.” He said it was from Isolar, and I said, “I know exactly who that is. It’s David.” [Isolar was the name for pair of Bowie’s tours in 1976 and 1978.]

The A Reality Tour was Bowie’s last and, many think, one of his best. What was your experience with it?

That was a fun record to play live, especially the rockers — the title track and stuff. It was the best touring band I ever played in with David. The combination of people — it was absolutely drama free, and I’ve never seen him that relaxed and happy on a tour, ever.

It was also the tour that was notoriously ended by his health issues. What do you recall from that Prague date when he had his heart attack?

It was a really weird gig. At first I couldn’t figure out what was going on. It was hotter than hell in the place, and I could see he was having a hard time hitting some notes. I thought he was just baked. We were all baked.

I think we were doing “The Jean Genie,” and he goes to me, “Keep vamping, just jam” — this, while he’s having a heart attack. Then he started grabbing his chest and the tour managers came over and dragged him off.

A few minutes later, he comes back and joins us. He lasted about a measure or two and then he walked off. They said that he had a blocked nerve, whatever that is, and that diagnosis was wrong.

We did the Hurricane Festival in Germany a couple days later; I went over to talk to him, and he was feeling horrible. We did the whole show and then we got a phone call saying, “Sit tight for a couple of days. David needs to rest. We’re gonna take a few days off.”

So we just hung out in Hamburg. Nobody’s saying anything to us.

And then we get phone calls saying, “Guys, we’re done. You gotta go home.” We didn’t get an explanation; we all knew he was probably getting some kind of surgery, but we weren’t getting any details about it.

When we did “Heroes” at the Hurricane Festival, I swear to God it’s one of the best vocal performances he ever did of it. Two hours later, probably, he was in the hospital.

Was the idea of him playing live again ever broached?

It was. We were working on The Next Day; just as I finished up my work on the track “Set the World on Fire.” We were listening back in the control room and he looks at me and goes, “This would just kick ass live.” I looked at him ready to say something, and he goes, “Don’t even think about it.” [laughs]

That was the discussion we had about going on tour again. That was the whole discussion, and he said, “Don’t think about it.” I could see it in his eyes. I’d been with him so long, I knew he was dead serious. He ain’t going nowhere.

It was disappointing, because I really thought we would have at least one good tour left in us. This was the summer of 2013, so it’s possible that he might’ve been ill already, with the cancer. We’ll never know, but I think it’s a possibility.

The Next Day was another kind of odd reconnection, wasn’t it?

Yeah, it was typical David. He started making that record around 2011, I think, and everybody who was brought in had to sign an NDA. I’m talking to some of the guys on the phone and nobody says a word.

In the meantime, this friend of mine, a surgeon, he built a car, a Cobra, and I had this blues gig I was doing near his house in Montclair, New Jersey. I go visit and he says, “Let’s go for a ride in the Cobra before we go to the gig.”

We drove for a little bit, and then the car started to do weird shit, like sputtering and stalling out. So he stops the car and two seconds later a big flame comes out of the engine. We call 911 and the fire department comes, and the cops come, and there’s TV. I guess one of the reporters figured out I was in the car and the word gets out on the Internet.

The next day I get a text from Bowie: “Oh God, I saw this accident. Are you okay?” I write back, “Yeah, I’m great, I’m fine. How are you?” “Good.” Then I get a few more messages over the course of the next day or two, like, “How you doin’? What have you been up to lately?” This is not a typical thing with him.

So finally I’m like, “Okay, are you trying to get to a point? What is it?” And he was, “Well, we’re making this record, and I need you to come in for a week or so and work on it.”

I swear to God, if we hadn’t blown up the car, I might not have been on that record. That’s just him: It’s out of sight, out of mind sometimes, and then it’s, “Wait a minute — Slicky could do this or that.”

Was there a standard operating procedure when you worked together?

We’d sit there and brainstorm, especially on the overdub bits. Both of us always like to have some kind of melodic lick in there somewhere, some signature in the song, and we’d just knock ideas around.

Like the lick on “Valentine’s Day,” the signature lick at the beginning, we sat there and bounced it around for about 10 or 15 minutes and that lick popped out and there it was. A lot of that kind of stuff was done on the fly; we never spent lots of time. As soon as we heard something that clicked, that was it. That’s the best stuff, when it just comes out from outer space or something.

What is your sense of the late-period Bowie compared to your previous years with him?

Well, back in the early days — this not speaking out of school, ’cause it’s pretty well known — a lot of drugs were involved, and a lot of cocaine. Between the drugs and him having management problems and all that, he was on another planet.

And then as the years went on he changed, like we all do. In the 2000s a sense of humor was there that was never there in the early days. He was funnier than hell, and he was more approachable. He turned into... I wouldn’t say a different person, but the real him came out.

How did you approach guitar choices for your work with Bowie?

I love Telecasters. I’ve always been a Tele player. But for the Heathen tour he said, “We do need a humbucker on some of this,” so I grabbed some Les Pauls, and by the A Reality Tour I was using pretty much my Les Pauls most of the show. I don’t think I used my Teles at all on that. I did have a Strat I used for a few things, but most of it was Les Paul.

Having “Isn’t It Evening (The Revolutionary)” on the box set is a nice postscript, especially after its success last year in the U.K.

That’s a weird one. I was living in Portland [circa 2002], and I just started to toodle around with my guitar, and all of a sudden I started coming up with stuff and recording bits and pieces. I ended up with a lot of them, so I called up Mark Plati and said, “When you get some time maybe we can cut an instrumental record. I got some good ideas.”

I didn’t realize he was in the studio when I called him. David was there, and David says, “Earl, I heard Mark say you guys were gonna do some recording. Maybe I’ll play some tambourine or something. Maybe I’ll even sing one, or we can write one.”

So I sent him a half-dozen bits and he picked the one that eventually turned into “Isn’t It Evening.” We recorded it, and we released it during the A Reality Tour, which turned out to be a bad idea, because my record got buried in there.

So I just sat with that track for years and thought, One of these days, I’ll release it as a single. Then Penguin Books approached me about the memoir [Slick’s recently published Guitar: Life and Music with David Bowie, John Lennon and Rock and Roll’s Greatest Heroes]. I said, “Ah, that’s the time to do it!”

So we rearranged it and it came out about two months after the book. It got on the charts and we had a hit single. Funny how timing works. And I’m really glad it’s on the box set, because it turned out to be his last hit.

Welcome to the Ultimate Eric Clapton Guitar Quiz, where we test your knowledge of his guitars and music with 10 questions.

From the celebrated electric guitars he played in the Yardbirds and Cream to the acoustic guitar he co-owned with George Harrison — they’re all here. We’ve even included some difficult questions about songs and live shows.

All the questions are multiple choice. Sign in or register for free and see where you end up on the leaderboard.

Allen Hinds is an L.A.-based guitarist, renowned as much for instrumental albums like Monkeys and Slides (2011) as for a stylistic vocabulary that has served artists like Natalie Cole, the Crusaders, Roberta Flack and Randy Crawford over the years.

For this tutorial, Allen demonstrates his fretting-hand legato technique and the ways it can be used to inspire new ideas for your own playing.

For many of these examples, Allen takes inspiration from previous legato masters like Eddie Van Halen and Allan Holdsworth. Both players used classic legato techniques, such as hammer-ons, finger slides, wide interval stretches and string skipping. Putting their influence into new contexts, Allen demonstrates how to establish small motifs or patterns that can be learnt easily. Once mastered, they function as both warm-up exercises and approaches to develop your soloing vocabulary.

Allen advises that, once you've learned the short patterns, play with your timing and implement them into different rhythmic subdivisions. For this way of working, it’s more about opening up the possibilities than learning the exact licks per se. Allen finds that this conceptual approach helps students get out of ruts by finding new channels to explore without micro-adherence to every single playing nuance.

To cultivate an effective hammer-on technique you have to be accurate with where your fingers hammer onto the string. Too close or too far back from the intended fret will deaden the sound. With pull-offs, make sure to actively pluck the string with the fretting-hand finger to sound the lower note as opposed to just lightly lifting it off the string.

Also be careful with the timing of the pull-off pluck, as it is possible to pull the string sharp. This upward pitch bend is a sound that Allan Holdsworth didn’t like, so he famously preferred to hammer-on for all his notes, even during descending runs. Not easy!

To keep it simple, all of the examples are in A Dorian (A B C D E F# G) with the F# note providing the Dorian flavor within the minor tonality. This is a popular scale for blues, soul and fusion as it works great over a minor 7 chord.

As many of the examples are performed free time, the notation is the most obvious and easy to use as regards rhythmic subdivisions. When practicing along with a groove as Allen does, we’d recommend using the subdivision in the notation as a starting point and then changing it up as you get more comfortable. Also, the time signature and groove style could be changed later on for new lead ideas.

All of these conceptual frameworks will work in other tonalities, and Allan advises to try placing these patterns into A major for different results.

Allen also advises practicing with a clean tone. This helps to develop power and authority with hammer-ons and pull-offs, as the notes need to be clearly heard. Using distortion compresses dynamics, so it’s easy for a poorly sounded note to still sound acceptable. Now, on to the examples.

Example 1a: 4-note pattern phrasing

In this first example, Allen demonstrates how effective a simple pattern of four notes can be. Once the pattern of pick, pull-off, hammer-on, pick is established, it can be applied to any part of the A Dorian fretboard roadmap. As the position shift is implemented, a cool-sounding double note (last and first notes of each grouping) is produced.

Example 1b: Introducing string skips

Here, Allen transfers the pattern to the third string, jumping over the second string. This introduces a wider interval leap to sound more interesting. Again, knowledge of the A Dorian mode fingering roadmap is important. Combining these first two examples provides a great framework for improvisation.

Example 2: String jumping and sliding

In this example, Allen introduces a new pattern. It starts on the third string with a down pick, hammer-on and pull-off followed by a fifth string pick, pull-off and hammer-on. This can be shifted up the fretboard to get more mileage, and Allen uses a finger slide to shift position.

Example 3: Groupings of 4

Here’s a colorful four-note pattern that Allen demonstrates, with pauses to talk, as reflected in our notation. In terms of technique, the pattern is pick, hammer-on, pull-off and hammer-on. Again, this can be shifted around using A Dorian and a three-notes-per-string fingering roadmap.

Example 4a: Descending while ascending the fretboard

Allen is a fan of using position shifts to open up various fingering possibilities. This example was inspired by Allan Holdsworth when he descended in pitch but actually ascended the fretboard. Using a two-notes-per-string approach, this sounds fluid and smooth.

Example 4b: Longer descending phrase while ascending

Further possibilities of extended position shifts are shown here. To catch all the nuances, consider using the slow-down feature on YouTube's playback settings when learning this.

Example 5a: Legato with chromaticism

Chromatics can add spice and new color to lead lines, especially when placed in sequential patterns. Inspired by Allan Holdsworth, with a nod to Eddie Van Halen too, the pattern here is pick, pull-off, pull-off, hammer-on and then a picked note on an adjacent string. This creates an intriguing "outside" modern-rock and fusion-based electric guitar sound.

Example 5b: More chromatics for legato spice

Here Allen stretches out and demonstrates how the simple chromatic motif from the previous example can be used to create interest. Pause markings (fermatas = a curve with a dot underneath it) are used at the end of each phrase, reflecting Allen's presentation.

Example 6a: Finger slides

Finger slides are a great way to add fluidity to phrases. In this example, several semitone intervals are played using a slide to get into the final notes.

Example 6b: Slides and same-fret/different-strings shifts

For this example, the slide-and-stretch idea is used across all six strings. The basic pattern is down-pick, finger slide and pull-off, with the large interval leaps grabbing the ear. Again, it’s well worth digesting this one slowly. We finish on a pleasantly floating A7sus4 chord with no confirming minor (or major) third.

Example 7: Legato and note doubling

This is a great demonstration of finger stretching to produce double notes across the second and third strings. While demonstrated fast, it’s important to start slowly to bed it in well.

Example 8a: Four notes for a wealth of variety

While this contains only four notes, the 8th-to-12th-fret stretch adds big intervals, and the varied ordering provides a lot of color. With a mix of picked and pulled-off notes, it's fascinating to hear and fun to play.

Example 8b: Working the legato stretch

To finish, Allen takes the conceptual framework established in Ex 8a and incorporates the third string into the 8th-and-12th-fret mix. It's a unique way to sound fusion-like (due to the legato) and bluesy (thanks to the diminished 5th, b5). The occasional B note (12th fret, second string) adds a richer 9th interval when playing over the Am7 chord.

Since the demise of the P.J. Harvey trio, it’s become increasingly rare to see Polly Jean behind a guitar onstage. On the tour for 1995’s To Bring You My Love — her third album and first proper solo release — she abandoned the instrument entirely for the first time, leaving the duty to two guitarists tasked with translating the album’s visceral textures: her longtime collaborator John Parish and session guitarist Joe Gore.

Gore recalled a recurring skepticism from fans when he joined the lineup: “‘Why? I love the way she plays!’”

“I knew what they meant,” Gore wrote in a feature for Guitar Player about his work with Harvey. “I too admired the instrumental ferocity that helped Polly attract a rabid global following and a blizzard of critical acclaim for her first three albums.”

As Harvey explained in that issue, the decision to abdicate her electric six-string responsibilities was a matter of physical economy and performance art.

“I only stopped playing live because of my singing,” she said. “My build isn't huge, so holding a guitar and singing is physically draining. I can't physically interpret the songs the way I want with a guitar.”

Ironically, Harvey was the primary architect of the album's guitar sound. While Parish was "doing more drumming than strumming," Gore noted his own role was "to splash texture and color around Polly's big riffs."

As she told us, following the 1993 dissolution of her trio, she found herself obsessed with the precision of her home recordings.

“I had no idea that I'd end up wanting to replicate my demos as much as I did,” she admitted. “I’d wanted to put a band together and let the songs develop different interpretations, but I found that I just couldn't live with that. I wanted things to be much more precise, and the only way was for me to do a lot of it myself.”

Parish and Gore were uniquely qualified for the challenge of reinterpreting Harvey’s guitar work in the live arena. Parish had discovered her when she was 17 and recruited her for his band, Automatic Dlamini, essentially serving as her instrumental mentor.

“While it's true that no one plays like Polly,” Gore noted, “John probably comes closer than anyone else.”

As for Gore, he met Harvey a couple of years earlier when interviewing her for the magazine. She was a fan of his work with Tom Waits, though they didn't actually plug in together until rehearsals in London.

Harvey may not claim virtuoso status, but her playing is defined by a singular, dramatic intensity.

“She's no hyper-technician,” Gore wrote, “but the 90-pound native of Dorsetshire renders her tough and ingenious riffs with enough violent emotion to make Tarantino flinch.”

She is also an innovator, occasionally utilizing an all-A tuning inspired by a roadie's stories of the Gary Glitter Band.

“On my last tour, my guitar roadie was talking about Gary Glitter, who he'd worked with,” Harvey told us. “He said the Glitter Band tuning was all strings to A, so I tried it out.”

Harvey called the sound “so fat and revolting. I just love the way the bottom string is tuned so low it flops like a washing line.”

But as she explained, To Bring You My Love was especially notable for the shift in how she approached her songwriting.

“For the first time, I'd start out by thinking of the mood I wanted to create,” she said. “Ninety percent of these songs started from wanting to build an atmospheric base.”

The shift in focus — from the technicality of the riff to the atmosphere of the performance — yielded a masterpiece. The album sold a million copies and produced the unlikely hit “Down By the Water,” a song about infanticide that nonetheless dominated U.S. radio.

Unburdened by the weight of the guitar, Harvey was free to inhabit the songs as a pure frontwoman, confident that her hand-picked duo would execute her vision. Of course, she also cited a more primal motivation.

“I’m having a fab-o time,” she teased. “I’ve got the most handsome band in the world, especially the guitar players. The only reason I picked them is so I can look at their behinds.”

Brian May and Freddie Mercury created some of Queen’s most enduring anthems, with the guitarist’s melodic precision providing the perfect counterbalance to Mercury’s theatrical brilliance. But when asked to name the most beautiful song his late bandmate ever wrote, May doesn’t point to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Somebody to Love” or any of Queen’s other towering classics.

Instead, he chooses a far less obvious track: “It’s a Hard Life.”

Released in 1984 as the third single from Queen’s 11th studio album, The Works, the song became the band’s third consecutive U.K. top 10 hit, peaking at number six. In the U.S., however, it stalled at number 72 — a modest showing compared with many of Queen’s biggest successes.

Despite that, it remains a song that holds deep personal meaning for May. Writing in the liner notes for Queen’s Greatest Video Hits 2 compilation in 2003, the guitarist described Mercury’s composition as one of the most revealing pieces his bandmate ever created.

“To my mind, it’s one of the most beautiful songs that Freddie ever wrote,” May said. “It’s straight from the heart, and he really opened up during the creation of it.”

The song arrived during a period when Queen were still capable of producing massive hits, including “Radio Ga Ga,” “I Want to Break Free,” and “Hammer to Fall.” Yet beneath its grand arrangement — Mercury’s soaring falsetto, ornate piano work, and May’s carefully placed electric guitar lines — “It’s a Hard Life” was ultimately a deeply personal song about relationships and emotional struggle.

For May, the most memorable part was watching Mercury reveal that side of himself during the writing process.

“I sat with him for hours and hours pouring over every word and trying to get the most out of it,” he recalled. “It’s a very revealing thing about how relationships are, and he was talking about his relationship.”

The song’s famously extravagant music video, filmed in Munich, Germany, might suggest otherwise. Mercury appears in the outfit Queen jokingly called “The Giant Mediterranean Prawn,” while May wields a skull-shaped guitar that was merely a prop. The video’s lavish setting and theatrical excess seemed at odds with the song’s emotional weight — and that was partly the point.

“To me it’s one of his loveliest songs, and on the face of it, I think I was mortified that he wanted to make this kind of video because it’s totally distracting,” May said. “This is a Freddie indulgence, and we indulged him. With pleasure I have to say.”

That willingness to indulge each other was a key part of Queen’s creative chemistry — although May has also revealed there were moments when he had to fight to get his own ideas heard, including when he pushed to include a guitar solo on one of the band’s biggest hits.

Sometimes itt can seem like there are more guitar virtuosos than ever before. A short scroll on Instagram, or a peruse on YouTube can be demoralizing and disincentivizing for most guitar players.

So how does one keep their head above water in a sea of virtuosos? “If I go to Instagram and I see somebody eight years old playing faster than anyone has ever played before, I’m happy,” Joe Satriani tells Guitar Interactive Magazine.

Of course, that’s easy for one of the world’s most respected shredders to say. But Satriani says that all players can benefit.

“I’m looking at it, going, ‘Maybe I can learn from that eight-year-old about how they’re holding their little finger or where they put their thumb,” he continues. “But that’s because I’m a guitar player, so I’m interested in the mechanical aspects of technique.

“But,” he also says, “it’s absurd to think that technique has anything to do with music, to a certain degree. Normal people hear music without the anxiety of technique. They either like it or they don’t.

"Us musicians, we can’t help it. We obsess about technique because we need it in order to play. The rest of the world does not perceive technique that way at all.”

Technique shouldn’t be something that players let get the better of them, because there will always be a better guitar player than you, he says. It’s the music beneath the techniques that matters.

“It’s the early ‘70s. You’re Lindsey Buckingham, and somebody gives you an Al Di Meola record,” Satriani develops. “Are you going to say, ‘Well, that’s it. I suck. Al Di Meola is God, I should just give up and work for the Post Office’”

He also turns to a late 70s post-punk classic, Gang of Four’s “Love Like Anthrax”, to further hammer home his point.

“I remember listening to the guitar part, which was just feeding back in a room for the entire song [no notes were being fretted],” he explains. He was a fan, despite it going against everything that, on paper, defines virtuosic guitar playing.

“I thought, ‘Why should I impose negativity on it because there’s not something that resembles practicing in it?’”

“We need technique,” he accepts. “When stuff is technique driven, it's not bad, but musicians need to know that it is distinctively technique-driven.

“There’s a time and a place to stand in front of a group and go, ‘Watch this! You’ve never seen this before’, and that’s totally valid. But it’s not going to hit the audience the same way as, say, a slow, beautiful melody, or a haunting series of chords. As long as the musician understands that and they’re cool with it, then everything’s okay.”

Elsewhere, the Ibanez artist has revealed he and Steve Vai relied on plugin tones for their new collaborative album. Mick Jagger has also explained how he nearly featured on one of Satriani’s albums, but the guitarist deleted his takes.

Welcome to the Ultimate Beatles Guitar Quiz, where we test your knowledge of the group’s guitars and players with 20 Fab questions.

From John Lennon’s acoustic guitars to George Harrison’s electrics and Paul McCartney’s basses — it’s all here, and more. We’ve even included tricky questions about the players’ histories and songs.

All the questions are multiple choice. Sign in or register for free and see where you end up on the leaderboard. Will your guitar gently weep, will you need a little help from your friends?

Make to the end and see if you know every little thing... or if you’re nowhere, man.

He's known as a vintage gear collector and a tone purist, who owns a museum’s worth of vintage gear at his Nerdville home but, with a new signature Fender Tone Master amp that's exclusively digital, Joe Bonamassa has revealed that he now thinks he got it wrong.

"This is the King Cork Sniffer with one of the largest amp collections in the world telling you that he is enjoying his digital version of a high-power Twin more than his tube ones,” he told Guitar World in a new video interview (below).

It’s an acknowledgement of how far modeling tech has come in recent history. “I wanted to be true north going, ‘Yeah, it’s tubes all the way. I’m taking this to the end of my career. I’ll be burning glass and filaments for the rest of my life.’ I probably would have said that in 2022 or ‘23, but we’re in ‘26 and honestly, the technology is incredible.”

He’s marvelled at how Fender has been able to take his “Steven Segal” Twin (named after the actor he bought it off) and “analyze each component, each resistor,” to make for a scrupulous copy.

The process was exhausting, too, taking two whole years. During that period, Fender sent him a Tone Master ‘59 Bassman, and he started to see the light.

“I plugged it in and I was like, ‘Yeah, this is what Bassmans do.’ A lot of this stuff is very symbiotic, it's ‘How does it feel under the strings?’ When I plugged it in, I was like, ‘This feels like a '59 Bassman. And I like it better. It’s tighter.’”

There are other benefits of digital gear, too. Again, Bonamassa is willing to concede. “When you lift a Twin, you have a certain expectation of what it will weigh,” he says. “Depending on the speaker, there's a certain expectation of how injured your back will be at the end of the night.”

The Tone Master recreation, meanwhile, features two lightweight Celestion speakers and weighs approximately 30lbs. That’s a lot more spine friendly, and a lot easier to cart about.

He adds that the Jensen P12N Alnico speakers that featured in a lot of the early Twin designs, “have a survival rate in my settings, of about 15 minutes.” That simply isn’t a concern for the Tone Master copy, and Bonamassa’s amp has already been taken to the stage.

Still, his “gluttonous, obnoxious” three-channel amp rig won’t be getting usurped anytime soon.

“You get this gigantic ball of guitar sound that covers all the frequencies,” he says. “And you’re not taxing one amp to do it all. One amp can not efficiently generate all those frequencies in the spectrum of a chord. There’s not enough headroom.”

Yngwie Malmsteen was an unknown teenager still living in his native Sweden when a Guitar Player Spotlight column changed his life. In the blink of an eye, he went from a wannabe hotshot to a player getting harassed by Kiss, who wanted him in the band.

It was a fairytale turnaround, and it all started with a cassette that had Guitar Player’s tastemaker, Mike Varney, drooling. It made him a guitar hero overnight.

“I sent this cassette tape to Guitar Player magazine, and it was me playing drums, bass, keyboards, guitar, obviously, and vocals. They went fucking ape shit,” he recalls to eonmusic. “And this guy, he would send my cassettes to everybody. I had people from Kiss and Night Ranger [calling me].”

Everyone wanted a slice of the Strat obsessive's talents. Not long after he packed a suitcase – supposedly involving little more than an electric guitar and a toothbrush – UFO came calling, too. Ultimately, he says Phil Mogg’s lack of organization saw him rejecting the Brits for Alcatrazz.

It was an offer he took after Kiss, who were “hot” on his talents at first, grew cold.

“I can’t remember all the people who would call,” Malmsteen expands. “I was still in Sweden. I was 18 years old, a kid. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. It was funny because I remember [with] Kiss — I don’t know if it was a manager or whoever called – but he kept [saying], ‘You’re hot, you’re hot.’ I’m like, ‘What the hell?’”

With English as his second language, the teenager had no idea what “hot” meant. But the number of phone calls helped work around the language barrier. It was obvious he was being courted.

“They wanted me to come over and join Kiss,” he says. “They asked me if I’m six foot tall, apparently they wanted me to be six foot and I’m more than that, so they didn’t call back.”

David Lee Roth was another close miss. It was 1985, and the singer, raging at Eddie Van Halen’s secret solo tracking session with Michael Jackson, quit Van Halen to go solo.

He wanted a guitarist to outgun his former bandmate, and while ex-Frank Zappa man Steve Vai ultimately got the gig, Malmsteen was also on Roth’s radar.

“I was on tour with my solo band, and I had a band called Talas as an opening act,” he explains. “The bass player was Billy Sheehan [who would become a key player in Roth’s band]. Roth would come to the shows all the time. He had just left Van Halen, and he wanted to get the hottest guitar player.”

Roth, having seen Malmsteen play, was clearly on the hook. But he gave the singer the cold shoulder.

"He told me he thought we could do a great thing together,” he relays. “I think he’s an awesome guy, and I really like the Van Halen albums with him. I probably should have done it, but I didn’t. I basically said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks. I’m honored, but I’m really on a roll now,’ which I kind of was.”

David Surkamp, frontman for the prog-rock band Pavlov’s Dog, has died at age 73. No cause of death has been disclosed.

The news was shared by Abbie Steiling, the band’s violinist and mandolinist, in a social media post on October 14.

“It is with the heaviest of hearts that we share the unexpected passing of our creative force, lead singer, and dear friend, David Surkamp, on October 13th,” Steiling wrote.

“David leaves behind a legacy of endless creativity, unmistakable artistry, and a body of music that has touched lives across generations and around the world. But anyone who knew and loved him knows that his legacy reaches far beyond the songs.”

“There are no words sufficient for a loss of this magnitude. We are heartbroken. We are grateful. We will carry David, his music, and the memories created with us always. Our deepest condolences are with Saylor, Evan, and the Surkamp family as well as the Pavlov’s Dog family as we walk together through this difficult time of grief.”

Steiling noted that Surkamp’s wife, Sara, died last November at age 72, and hoped he “has found peace with the love he has missed so dearly.”

Formed in St. Louis in the early 1970s, Pavlov’s Dog developed a distinctive sound that blended progressive rock with melodic songwriting, elaborate arrangements and instruments including violin, flute and Mellotron. Surkamp’s unusually high, expressive voice became one of the band’s defining characteristics.

As a cofounder of Pavlov’s Dog, Surkamp sang lead on the band’s 1975 debut, Pampered Menial, which featured the enduring fan favorite “Julia,” as well as its follow-up, At the Sound of the Bell, released in 1976. Despite earning a devoted following, the band split toward the end of the decade.

During the hiatus, Surkamp co-founded Hi-Fi with former Fairport Convention singer Ian Matthews, exploring a more straightforward rock sound. Pavlov’s Dog reunited in 1990 for Lost in America and continued to return to the stage and recording studio over the following decades.

The group resumed activity in 2006, with Sara Surkamp joining on acoustic guitar and additional vocals. David remained the band’s central creative presence through subsequent releases, including Wonderlust, released in 2025.

Metallica have released the official video for “The Call of Ktulu,” filmed during the opening night of their Life Burns Faster residency at the Las Vegas Sphere on October 1.

The instrumental is one of the highlights of Ride the Lightning, Metallica’s 1984 second album. Inspired by the horror fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, the nearly nine-minute track takes its name from the author’s short story The Call of Cthulhu, with the creature’s name deliberately respelled as “Ktulu.” The song was co-written by James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Cliff Burton and former Metallica guitarist Dave Mustaine, who received songwriting credit despite leaving the band before the album was recorded.

The Sphere performance brings the song’s ominous atmosphere to a venue built around immersive audiovisual effects. Since opening in September 2023, the 17,600-capacity arena has hosted residencies by artists including U2, Phish, Dead & Company and the Eagles. Its defining features include a wraparound 16K-resolution screen and Sphere Immersive Sound, an advanced audio system designed to deliver consistent sound throughout the venue.

Metallica’s residency runs through March 13, 2027, with 24 performances scheduled on Thursdays and Saturdays. Following the format of the band’s ongoing M72 world tour, each Thursday-Saturday pairing features two completely different set lists.

Drummer Lars Ulrich said the band knew it wanted to play the Sphere after attending U2’s concert during the venue’s opening run.

“About 12 seconds into the opening night of Sphere with U2 back in ’23, I thought, ‘We have to do this. It’s completely uncharted territory,’” Ulrich said. “This residency gives us another chance to reinvent how we interact with our fans in a live setting. We are beyond excited to share this with the world … and way fuckin’ psyched to go next level!”

Alice Cooper was getting high in his pool house when news broke on TV that John Lennon had been murdered. The shock, he says, turned his world upside down.

The shock rock icon has never hidden his love for the Beatles. He once said hearing the Fab Four’s “She Loves You” for the first time “literally changed something in my brain.” He went on to befriend Lennon during the former Beatle’s “Lost Weekend,” from 1973 to 1975, when he was separated from his wife, Yoko Ono, and spending time in New York City and Los Angeles. The two also moved in the same rock ’n’ roll circles, including the Hollywood Vampires, the famous drinking club Cooper helped establish in Los Angeles.

But Lennon’s death, on December 8, 1980, was more than the loss of a musical hero — one who had even been impressed by one of Cooper’s own songs. His murder also exposed a frightening reality for musicians.

Lennon was shot four times outside his New York apartment. Despite the best efforts of a Beatles-loving surgeon, he died at Roosevelt Hospital. Cooper understood the wider implications of the killing and the fear it would inspire throughout the music community.

“We were working… in my pool house, so we’re getting high, of course,” he tells Rolling Stone. “All of a sudden it comes on TV. And I’m telling you, it was like a vacuum.

“It was just like, ‘That can’t be right. Why him? Why not somebody political?’”

Cooper acknowledges that Lennon’s murder was not politically motivated. His killer, Mark David Chapman, had become fixated on Lennon, including his infamous remarks that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Whatever the motive, the killing left the “School’s Out” hitmaker fearful for his own safety.

“To this day,” he says, “it seems unreal. I could understand somebody having a grievance over a politician, but John, ‘Give Peace a Chance’? And then after it all unfolded, you realize it only had to do with an insane fan. It’s still just hard to digest that.”

Lennon’s murder also prompted other musicians to reflect on their own encounters with dangerous fans. Mark Knopfler, for instance, revisited his own brush with a crazed fan and wrote a song inspired by the experience that took him 16 years to complete.

For Cooper, the immediate effect was more personal: he began to worry that he, too, could be a target. He says other musicians felt the same way.

“I know that all of my friends started carrying [guns],” he continues. “I started carrying back then because all of a sudden it was a threat to all of us, even though we don’t put ourselves on the level of John Lennon.

“It scared a lot of musicians because it was a reality now. David Bowie used to talk about that all the time, and I kept going, ‘Dave, don’t talk about that.’”

Cooper has been promoting his new memoir, Devil on My Shoulder, discussing, among other things, his struggles with drug addiction during the 1970s.

After a short book tour, Cooper is set to return to the road for a new U.S. tour. Guitarist Nita Strauss will rejoin the band after taking much of the year off to welcome her first child. During her absence, she personally selected an unknown British shredder to fill in for her.

Meanwhile, another of Cooper’s bandmates, Tommy Henriksen, has shared the life advice that helped him land the gig — and explained how a guitar he found in a dumpster became one of his most cherished possessions.

Former black midi guitarist Geordie Greep has issued a new statement addressing sexual assault and rape allegations stemming from an encounter at a house party in the early hours of October 8, just hours before his scheduled performance in Vancouver, Canada. The woman who accused him has also shared further details of the alleged incident.

Flyers stating “Geordie Greep is a rapist” were distributed to concertgoers ahead of the show. Greep was due onstage at 8 p.m. but did not appear until two hours later, performing alone.

In a speech during the show, Greep denied the rape allegation, describing the incident as a “misunderstanding.” He said it involved an encounter at a house party the previous night that continued into the early hours of October 8. He also pledged the concert’s proceeds to an anti-violence organization and canceled the next three dates of his tour.

It has since emerged, via NME, that Greep’s keyboardist, Cameron Campbell, quit the band in response to the incident. Campbell and the woman who accused Greep, identified under the pseudonym “Laura,” have now shared further details in an interview with Paste.

Laura says she met Greep at a bar while drinking with a friend. According to Paste, she told Greep multiple times that she was in an exclusive relationship, including directly telling him herself.

When the bar closed, the group decided to continue the night at a friend’s apartment. During the walk there, Laura says, Greep exhibited “weird behavior,” though she adds that nothing seemed alarming or dangerous at the time.

Laura eventually fell asleep on her friend’s couch. At around 5 a.m., she says, she woke to find Greep kissing her.

“I don’t know for how long because I passed out, but I think I woke up fairly quickly,” she alleges. “His lips were on my lips, trying to make out with me, and then I pushed him off.”

Laura says she screamed in shock, alerting her friends to what was happening.

According to Paste, Campbell was not in the room but heard Laura yell at Greep to “get off” her. He says he “immediately” ran in to check on her. Greep was kicked out of the apartment but returned a few minutes later looking for his phone, prompting a second eviction.

Campbell says Laura was “crying and very visibly shaken up” by the incident. He also recalls that Greep was “still lurking around the building” afterward.

“After that, I knew that I was gonna quit,” Campbell says.

Campbell adds that he and his bandmates confronted Greep at soundcheck, telling him his behavior was out of order. When the musicians saw the flyers being distributed at the venue, the rest of Greep’s bandmates followed Campbell out.

Greep has since issued a new statement on Instagram, offering his account of the encounter and apologizing “for what I did.”

“I fell asleep in an armchair and, at around 6am, woke up,” he says of the party. “One of the women in the group was on a sofa opposite me alongside three other people who were with us that night.

“Throughout the night I had – I now realize mistakenly and stupidly – believed that she was interested in me. I went over to her and leaned down to kiss her. I kissed her once and she immediately responded negatively and pushed me away.

“I apologised and stepped away,” he continues. “She was understandably upset and told me to leave. She told me she had been asleep, which to my great regret, I honestly did not realize.

“I want to unreservedly apologise to her for what I did and for the distress and hurt I caused that night. It was a huge mistake. I feel awful about it and I am very sorry. I got it all wrong that night and I accept that.

“I understand the impact of my actions and take full accountability. I am not trying to minimize what happened in any way and, again, all I can say is how sorry I am.”

Roger Waters has launched a scathing attack on Metallica guitarist James Hetfield, branding him a “prick” amid a wider debate over the relationship between music and politics.

On October 10, during Metallica’s fourth of 10 shows at the Las Vegas Sphere, Hetfield appeared to take a shot at pop act Macklemore during a mid-show speech. He criticized musicians who use their platforms to push political views, seemingly referencing the controversy that saw Macklemore kicked off his tour with Ed Sheeran last month. All the other support acts, along with Sheeran’s own backing band, subsequently quit the tour in solidarity.

“Metallica is not here, like some other entertainers, to influence you with their bullshit, okay?” Hetfield said. “We’re here to forget about all of the outside shit.”

Waters, the former Pink Floyd frontman who has made political convictions a central part of his music and public persona, took issue with Hetfield’s seemingly apolitical stance. Speaking on Katie Halper’s podcast, he dismissed the Metallica guitarist in particularly harsh terms.

“Can we stop talking about this prick?” Waters snapped. “I’m so bored with him. He’s just showing that he’s a complete prick. He’s got an IQ of about three, and why we’re talking about him I honestly don’t know, because he’s a nobody.”

“He may have a few hundred million dollars or whatever, but he’s a prick, and he’s no musician,” Waters continued. “I heard them playing acoustic instruments, and they couldn’t. It was appalling.”

Hetfield’s comments also drew scrutiny from those who pointed out that Metallica’s own catalog includes songs addressing political and social issues. The band’s Sphere set opened with “Blackened,” which tackles environmental destruction, and closed in on its conclusion with “One,” a song about the horrors of war.

Nuclear annihilation, censorship and failures of the legal system have also featured in Metallica’s music over the years. The band’s high-profile lawsuit against file-sharing service Napster in 2000 further cemented its place in debates over music, technology and artistic control.

Waters, meanwhile, suggested Hetfield had missed a more fundamental lesson.

“I wish he had grown up with a mama or a dad or a friend or even a cousin or somebody in the family who took him to one side when he was little [and taught him kindness],” he said.

“It’s a shame this prick didn’t have somebody around him to explain that being kind is way more important than all that loud music and bouncing around and whatever.”

Interestingly, the day before Hetfield’s remarks, one of rock guitar’s most outspoken political figures, Tom Morello, offered a more nuanced take on the relationship between music and politics. Despite his own reputation as a politically engaged musician, Morello argued that artists don’t necessarily have to use their platforms to address political issues.

“My take is, in order for music to be great, it has to be authentic,” he told Star FM. “If I didn’t write songs about injustice, it would be false, and I couldn't make music that I think connected with people.

“Other bands — whether it’s Mötley Crüe writing about groupies and stuff — that’s authentic, so it comes across as something that’s powerful. So it’s like, ‘Don't make political music to please Tom Morello. Make music that’s honest to your heart, and that's how you can connect with people.’”

Morello’s comments took on added relevance in light of the Macklemore controversy, particularly when he explained what he sees as an artist’s responsibility.

“As an artist, you have one responsibility, and that's to tell the truth in your art,” he said. “If, however, you’re an artist that does have ideas about injustice in the world and you censor yourself because you’re afraid you’re gonna lose — the radio station’s not going to play you, or these fans are gonna write nasty comments — then that, to me, feels like you're doing yourself and your times a great disservice.”

Waters has also lambasted Sheeran for taking an apolitical stance amid the fallout from Macklemore’s removal from the tour.

Elsewhere, a Pink Floyd insider has lifted the lid on the factors that drove a wedge between Waters and David Gilmour. The bass player has also been dragged into Sammy Hagar’s recent public dispute with Alex Van Halen, who has since said he wants to bury the hatchet with his former bandmate.

As a member of the Beach Boys, Carl Wilson witnessed firsthand how the musical genius of his brother Brian shaped the band’s hit albums and singles throughout the 1960s.

But when Brian’s involvement decreased in the 1970s due to his mental health decline and substance abuse, Carl stepped up. Beginning with 1971’s Surf’s Up, he began contributing songs of his own over the following decade, including that album’s standout track “Long Promised Road.”

One of his preferred songwriting partners was a guitarist who could only dream of California’s sun and sand: Canadian musician Randy Bachman, best known for his work with the Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

Although Carl worked with other songwriters, he called Bachman his favorite “because he rocked, and I love to rock,” he explained in the 1993 television documentary The Beach Boys Today.

The two guitarists first crossed paths in the mid-1960s, eventually forming a close friendship that lasted until Wilson’s death in 1998.

“Growing up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where we had winter six months of the year, I was intrigued by the Beach Boys,” Bachman tells Guitar Player. “Hearing that these guys stood on a wooden board on a wave of the water, we didn’t know what surfing was in Canada! I mean, for us, it’s a toboggan or a sled, and you’re sliding down a hill on ice and snow.”

Bachman says he and the late Beach Boy shared much in common.

“We looked the same, and we were kind of what you would call husky guys,” he says. “We both had the same brown hair, the beard and everything, and we just hung out together all the time on the road when I was with the Guess Who and then years later when I had a band called Ironhorse, and we opened for the Beach Boys many times. I loved the guy like a brother. He was just a really sweet, wonderful guy.”

The two men began working together after Wilson heard Ironhorse on the radio and invited them to tour with the Beach Boys in 1979. Their three shows together led to more performances.

Bachman recalls, “In the middle of the tour, he said, ‘We have three days off. Do you want to come to Caribou Ranch with me and write some songs for the next Beach Boys album?’ He said that Brian had gone into rehab and they just kind of needed some impetus to get them going.

“So I went to Caribou Ranch with him, and we wrote some songs, including ‘Keepin’ the Summer Alive,’ which became the title of their next album.”

The two also wrote the Ironhorse song “What’s Your Hurry, Darlin’?” Bachman says the song’s arrangement paid tribute to the Beach Boys’ 1964 hit “Don’t Worry Baby,” which Carl sang.

During their songwriting session, Wilson had one request. “The Beach Boys would always say a prayer before they went on stage together, and when Carl came to my studio to write some songs and record the demos, it was the same thing,” Bachman explains. “Carl asked, ‘Do you mind if we say a prayer?’ So we’d dim the lights, hold our hands together and ask that the spirit be with us so we could create good music.”

Bachman says that despite the Beach Boys’ sunny pop style, Carl Wilson was a guitar rocker at heart. Songs like “Student Demonstration Time,” from their 1971 album Surf’s Up, showcase Wilson’s raucous guitar work. But due to Brian Wilson’s overpowering musical vision, Carl’s talent wasn’t allowed full expression.

“Carl was a rocker, but when you have a genius brother like Brian, you tend to be in their shadow,” Bachman explains. “You realize he is a genius, so you just let him go and do it. So Carl didn’t start to shine until Brian stayed home more.”

Wilson was so eager to have the band rock out more that he made an offer to Bachman to join the group for the recording sessions for Keepin’ the Summer Alive.

“He asked me if I would join the band, because they were having trouble with personnel,” Bachman reveals. “They couldn’t get the vibe that they wanted for the songs. He said, ‘We can’t play heavy enough, so could you get us to play like BTO?’ and asked if I could fly to Los Angeles and join them.

“But I was going through a divorce. I told Carl I couldn’t come, as I had got custody of my six kids, and if I left now, my ex-wife would go back to the court. And I was not going to lose my kids. So I missed out.”

Bachman believes that, as a guitarist, Wilson was totally underrated.

“I loved his guitar playing; it was very simple,” he affirms. “As you know, on most of the early records, it was Glen Campbell who played most of the lead guitar on those early songs, but Carl did play lead onstage. He wasn’t an Eddie Van Halen, but he was a really good guitar player, and he played almost like George Harrison, where you’d play the right part of the song.”

Bachman says Wilson also surrounded himself with “beautiful” instruments, including several electric guitars.

“His favorite guitar was a beautiful blonde, double-cut Gibson 335 with a gold Bigsby on it,” he says. “It was just gorgeous.

“And he had a Gibson ES-335 12-string, which I’d never seen before, and he actually left that at my studio when he came to record. He just had to fly home right away, so he left the guitar there. He said, ‘I’ll just leave it here for when I come back,’ but he never came back.”

When Wilson died, Bachman sent the guitar to his family.

“I sent it to his office for his children,” he says, “because I thought it wasn’t right if I kept the guitar.”

It was a final gesture of respect from one musical brother to another.

In a new interview with Billboard, Sammy Hagar says he wants to make peace with Alex Van Halen, even if the two can’t fully reconcile. The former Van Halen singer’s comments come after the drummer recently called him a “complete idiot.”

“I’ll put out an olive branch right now, and say it again a million times — I would love to bury the hatchet with Alex,” Hagar says. “I would love to be friends again. If we played music, mo’ better. That would be awesome… But I’m willing to forget anything and everything and be friends and bring the two eras together like they should be.

“It’s the crack in the world I wrote about 50 years ago,” Hagar continues, referring to his 1977 song “Crack in the World,” which he says predicted the divisions that now pit people against one another.

“He’s sticking with it, and why? I’m trying to get rid of that. Unification over separation. Let’s unify this world. That’s my dream and wish; if I could find a way to do that, there you go. That might be my future.”

The 73-year-old singer is responding to comments Alex made earlier this year in an interview with music journalist Marcelo Vieira for Brazilian magazine Roadie Crew. Asked about Hagar’s 2011 autobiography, Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock, which included unflattering accounts of the Van Halen brothers and Eddie Van Halen’s struggles with alcoholism, the drummer dismissed his former bandmate.

“I don’t know what he wrote, and I don’t want to know,” Alex replied. “In my opinion, Sammy Hagar is a complete idiot.”

Hagar addressed the insult in a September 17 interview with SiriusXM’s Eddie Trunk.

“Guilty as charged, first of all,” Hagar said with a laugh when Trunk asked about Alex’s remarks. “I’m probably the most successful idiot on the planet.”

But Hagar also took issue with Alex’s assertion that Van Halen “did our best work” with original frontman David Lee Roth, with whom the drummer recently reunited for a TEDx talk.

“What happened after Dave left is not the same band,” Alex said while promoting his 2024 memoir, Brothers. “I’m not saying it was better or worse or any of that … but the magic was in the first years, when we didn’t know what we were doing; when we were willing to try anything.”

Hagar replaced Roth in 1985 and went on to front Van Halen through a commercially successful run. Speaking to Trunk, he argued that Alex’s characterization overlooks what the band accomplished during that era.

“We sold 40-some million records, four number-one albums, and you just scratch that off of your brother’s legacy, saying, ‘No, that never happened.’ You don’t even want to acknowledge it.”

This isn’t the first time Hagar has offered an olive branch. When Trunk asked what he would do if Alex showed up at Hagar’s Van Halen-celebrating Best of All Worlds Tour residency in Las Vegas, the singer said he would welcome his former bandmate without hesitation.

“Alex? Oh, come in. Oh, 100 percent, I’ll grab him, I’ll kiss him right on the lips. … I’d treat him like the person that I used to love and I could still love.”

This interview appeared in Guitar Player’s August 1976 issue.

Eric Clapton is now 31 years old. For more than a decade he has been *the* rock guitarist.

Doubtless there are “better known” guitarists such as George Harrison and rock’s “creative genius” on the instrument remains the late Jimi Hendrix, but it would be hard to find anyone to match Clapton’s longevity and consistency as a lead guitarist in the rock field.

When Hendrix’s future manager, Chas Chandler, first approached Jimi with the idea of moving to England, one of the young guitarist’s first questions was, “Will I get to meet Eric Clapton?”

In past Guitar Player readers’ polls, Eric has always placed high, winning Best Rock Guitarist four consecutive years, from 1971 to 1974, then taking a surprise first place in the blues category as a write-in candidate last year. He was also voted Overall Best Guitarist in 1973.

Beginning guitar at around age seventeen, Clapton — born March 30, 1945, in Ripley, England — was a charter member of The Yardbirds, a band whose influence is still strongly felt by many hard rock units. Here his gutsy, aggressive, improvised blues licks established Clapton as one of the first noticeable lead guitarists of that era. Like the American blues bands they emulated, The Yardbirds put the guitar leads and fills into the forefront of their overall sound.

Their first recording, Five Live Yardbirds, was released in England in 1964 when Slowhand, as he was once known, was nineteen years old. Just as the group was beginning to realize a degree of international pop notoriety, Eric quit to concentrate on the blues to be replaced on lead guitar by Jeff Beck and later Jimmy Page. Though For Your Love, the Yardbirds’ first LP released in the U.S., pictured only Beck on the cover, it was in fact Clapton’s guitar which highlighted eight of the album’s eleven tracks.

Already heavily into country blues artists like Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Boy Fuller and Robert Johnson, Clapton then joined John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and totally immersed himself in Chicago blues. It was during this period that the name Eric Clapton took on a somewhat mythical, cult-figure status in Britain. Like the “Bird Lives” syndrome that swept through bebop havens after the death of Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, the slogan “Clapton is God” could be found scrawled on signposts, sides of buildings and even rocks across England’s countryside.

Within days after leaving the Bluesbreakers, Cream was formed. Consisting of three virtuoso soloists — drummer Ginger Baker, bassist Jack Bruce and “E.C.” on guitar — Cream was perhaps the first rock band to successfully combine a free-form musical concept with mass appeal. They were also one of the first rock groups to earn a large following based on their instrumental abilities, rather than catchy “hits,” extravagant stage acts, or personality promotion. They were simply very creative musicians and widely accepted as such.

When Cream made its “Farewell” tour in 1969, barely two years and four albums after its inception, the veteran guitarist had just turned 24.

This super-trio was succeeded by an even shorter-lived quartet, Blind Faith with keyboardist Steve Winwood, bassist Rick Grech, Baker and Clapton. After an extended hiatus from performing “live, Clapton emerged in the role of sideman to Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, his first American group [see GP, June ’70). Here he met and played with what later became the nucleus of Derek and the Dominos which also included co-guitar great Duane Allman on their premiere album, Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs.

With the Dominos’ breakup and another three-year absence from the music scene, Eric’s current lineup was formed, piece by piece, while recording 461 Ocean Boulevard at Miami’s Criteria Studios.

The following exclusive interview took place on May 7, 1976 in Los Angeles, where Clapton was putting the final overdubs on his upcoming RSO album, to be released later this year. Along with Eric’s electric, acoustic, slide and Dobro work, the LP features Ron Wood, Jesse Ed Davis and Eric’s second guitarist George Terry, plus a duet with Bob Dylan on “Sign Language.”

Here, E.C. talks about his guitar playing today and its role in his present band.

After Derek and the Dominos you had sort of a layoff from performing 'live.' How did you get back into playing guitar?

It was nothing sudden; I don’t think I’ve ever really stopped for very long. You just develop a different set of chops for concerts than you do for recording or just sitting around writing. In the last two years they’ve been getting better and better onstage. And then they kind of wear down when I’m off. When you’re in the studio, you can’t really stretch out much. You have more license to experiment onstage.

That seems the opposite policy of guitarists who say they’ll only try new licks in the studio, where they can go back and erase or redo any mistakes.

Well, in the studio what always affects me is the fact that I know I’m going to hear it back. So I don’t want to make any kind of mistake if I know there’s a chance I might hear it on the tape.

Do you still ever practice, sit down and run scales?

I never have done that, but I do sort of play around quite a lot. I can’t play just to silence, though, I have to be prompted into it by listening to something or hearing something on the radio.

In an interview Paul Kossoff said that in 1974 you were better on guitar than ever before [see GP, July ’76]. Do you think you’re still improving?

I think I’m improving all the time, in my own particular fashion. The chances are that I’m probably slipping behind the times in my tastes or my direction. But when it comes down to my personal approach and playing the guitar, I’m still learning and kind of progressing. I’m pretty sure of that. You always know when you come to a dead end, then you have to make up your mind about what you’re going to do. I haven’t felt that too many times yet.

When you get into a new style, like reggae, do you have to alter your technique much?

I don’t have to adapt much for anything like that. It’s not difficult to play that way. What I always find the most difficult is keeping up my technique of just playing lead in any situation. What I would find hardest of all would be to be featured in a jazz composition of some kind and have to play a solo lead over strange chords. But things like reggae and just popular songs of any kind are always pretty simple.

Have you ever gotten into jazz?

Well, the one thing that hung me up straight away was that technique they have of double-picking, up and down. I use both down strokes and up strokes, but I’ve never been able to do that fast thing. Any of those guys seem to be able to do that.

What about jazz chording?

Well, that’s another situation. Watch any of those guys, like George Benson or someone. The amount of fret positions they can get out of, say, three or four chords, you know, I just don’t know about that stuff. [laughs]

Being self-taught, where did your chord background come from?

I just listened to records and tried to figure out which strings they were hitting at the same time.

Instead of barre chords, you seem to play down at the nut a lot.

Those were the chords I learned. I also think when you’re using light strings, you tend to become a bit insecure about going up the neck too far with big, full chords. Because what will sound right at the bottom of the neck with light strings, by the time you’ve taken out twelve frets it could be out of tune.

You’ve played blues right from the beginning, but only recently got into playing slide which is an integral part of blues.

I always used to play slide just on the acoustic guitar, and that was never employed onstage, and consequently it never got on record either. I think what really got me interested in it as an electric approach was seeing Duane [Allman] take it to another place. There were very few people playing electric slide that were doing anything new, it was just the Elmore James licks, and everyone knows those. No one was opening it up until Duane showed up and played it a completely different way. That sort of made me think about taking it up.

Are there any similarities between your electric slide technique and Duane’s?

No, not a great amount, because I approach it more like George Harrison. Duane would play strictly blues lines; they were always innovative, but they were always in the blues vein. I’m somewhere in between him and George, who invents melodic lines often on the scales.

What do you use for a slide?

A glass tube about the width of the neck of the guitar, so I can get all the strings covered. It’s a thick one [an Isis medium].

Do you have any special guitar setup for slide?

Yes, a Gibson ES-335. But it hasn’t got a high nut, I just raise it at the bridge. I don’t play it down at the bottom much; I usually keep it up near the top [high] frets. I use the same strings as I do normally on the other guitars; Ernie Ball Super Slinky — 009, 011, 016, 024, 032, 042 [Ed. Note: Eric’s road manager, Willy Spears, says that the last time the strings were changed on this guitar was mid-1974. Normally, Clapton’s strings are changed only when they break, except for the high three which Spears sometimes changes when he feels they’re going dead. Willy says, “He won’t even let me buff them.”]

Do you play slide in standard tuning or open chords?

I use open G [low to high, D, G, D, G, B, D] most of the time, for acoustic and electric. I prefer G, because you get more of a country sound; it’s more melodic.

Do you ever use open tunings when not playing slide?

Yes, on “Tell The Truth” [Layla and Derek and the Dominos In Concert], that’s tuned in open [possibly E tuning; notation illegible in source]. But I wasn’t playing slide; I was just making chords in open tuning. If you tried to transpose them onto a straight guitar, it would be very difficult. It’s like a barre A on the 5th fret. I’m holding down the fifth and third strings in a sort of E7 shape — holding it on and taking it off.

That comes directly from Keith Richards. Some of the Stones’ things like “Street Fighting Man” [Beggars Banquet] where he’s got all these great guitar sounds — he just tunes it to an open chord and invents fingerings.

After Cream, where you were the only guitarist, how did you come to form bands that always included a second lead guitarist?

I wanted a variety of performances, because I don’t think I could do those things as well as those guys do theirs. There were certain songs that I felt required their technique. I didn’t want to just attempt it and get a second best by doing it myself.

Is there anything in particular that you look for in another guitarist?

No, it depends more on their personalities if they’re well-composed kinds of musicians who don’t have to show off. I like to have someone in the band who’s stable, you know, who can play and get on with people that really is most important. I don’t like to play with people who’ve got to prove themselves.

Did it get tiring playing in bands, like Cream, where you had to solo constantly?

Absolutely, it really did. Sometimes you just end up playing every lick you know before the end of the set, and then you’re fucked, you know, because you’re just repeating yourself over and over again. I’ve really become more devoted to the song itself and the presentation of the actual music. I think jamming, unless it’s got a goal at the end of it, is pretty much a waste of time. It’s just like exercising or something. If you’re jamming, and something comes out of it, and you make something that you can stand hearing again and has a form and turns people on, okay. I think musicians, as they grow older, usually become interested in doing something more lasting. It’s a very youthful thing to go around and jam with everyone who’s known kind of like sowing wild oats. Then you’ve just got to settle down and make everything count and make sure that it’s worthy of being heard again, not just a throwaway.

When you play with another guitarist, rather than straight rhythm chording, you often throw in little riffs and counter melodies.

As a rule, I actually prefer to play rhythm or let whoever else I’m playing with take the stage. But there are times when I just can’t resist joining in.

In the beginning, was it hard for you to coordinate singing and playing at the same time?

Well, for as long as I’ve been playing the guitar I’ve been singing and playing. Not anything difficult, you know; I couldn’t play a lead line and sing a different line independently, like what Hendrix could do.

You were one of the first people Jimi Hendrix jammed with when he went to England. What was he playing like at that stage?

He did the whole show, he did two songs and pulled out every stop. He did everything that he did for the rest of his career in those two songs. It just blew the audience away, they’d never seen anything like it before. He wasn’t into his clothes scene at that point, I think, he was just wearing jeans and a jacket of some kind. But his technique and his vibrato were just as strong.

Being a British bandleader with an all-American group, does this create any musical conflicts?

Musically, I don’t think so, because we cut our teeth on the same kind of music the blues and R&B. We were listening to the same stuff at approximately the same time just in two different places. The only real difference is in the life-styles.

What causes you to switch guitars over the years?

It’s a fad, I think. Like, at the Concert for Bangladesh I was playing a Gibson Byrdland. If you remember, Chuck Berry had a lot of publicity photographs taken with a Byrdland, and that looked like a very delicious guitar. I couldn’t get hold of an old one with the black pickups, so I got one with humbuckers instead.

Were there any feedback problems using a full-box guitar?

Yes, that’s one thing I never accounted for. You have to really be careful, especially on the low, bass strings.

What other guitars do you own?

Let’s just say I have a selection of Gibsons and Fenders and a few Martins. The Stratocaster is my basic stage guitar. I’ve also got a Switchmaster, the old Carl Perkins type and a lot of good old acoustics — f-holes and flat tops — and an old mandolin-guitar.

Do you have any specially made guitars?

I’ve got a wood-body Dobro with a Martin-type neck, reworked by Randy Wood [of Old Time Pickin' Parlor, Nashville]. I got it at George Gruhn’s shop in Nashville. I also have a 12-string made by a guitar maker in England called Zemaitis [see GP, October ’70 and April ’75]. It’s reputed to be the biggest 12-string in the world. It’s about the same dimensions as a mariachi bass. He really did a beautiful job.

What’s your main acoustic guitar?

A Martin D-28. It’s got a pickup built into the bridge called a Hot Dot [Barcus-Berry], and they’re really good. I don’t know the pros and cons about miking an acoustic live, but all the sound people I’ve worked with have said it’s a hassle, because the microphone will pick up wind and leakage from the other instruments. The dynamics just go mad if you back off three or four inches.

Do you always use a flatpick?

Yes, I use a heavy pick made by Ernie Ball. I think it’s the exact same thickness and gauge as a Fender heavy. I’ve never kept the fingerpicking up long enough. I do play around like that for my own pleasure at home sometimes, but I wouldn’t be able to cut it professionally.

What about your changes in amplifiers over the years?

Music Man is my favorite now [HD 130 Reverb), because they have dual volume controls. You can use them in the studio at low volume and still get a fair amount of distortion, just as if it were a really big amp. I also like their sound, they’re just like Fenders in fact, I think Leo [Fender] had a big part in designing them. [Actually, Tom Walker who worked for the Fender company from 1948 until 1969 was Music Man’s main designer, although many of the ideas were passed on from Leo Fender during their association in Fender’s pre-CBS days.]

Were the amps you used previously more suited to your sound at that time?

They [Music Mans] could have been used with Cream. You can get exactly the same sound as you would with a Marshall, but then you can take it down to the same sound as a Champ. It’s really got a wide range. [Roadie Willie Spears reports that Eric’s amps are beefed up, with the bias up all the way, by Walker at Music Man. This HD 130 Reverb has special open-back cabinets, as opposed to the folded horn type, with JBL 120 speakers. Eric also uses a Leslie cabinet, with JBL components, for which he has had a special foot switch devised by Keyboard Products and modified by Fred Meyers, soundman for Santana. This switch has fast/slow and on/off positions, so that the guitar can go either straight through the amp, through both the amp and the Leslie (fast or slow), or through just the Leslie at either fast or slow speeds-as on “Badge” (History of Eric Clapton and Eric Clapton’s Rainbow Concert) The only other effects pedal Clapton uses is a Cry Baby wah-wah.]

Why do you record at such low volumes?

There’s less interference, less noise. I like to record a lot of tracks as 'live' as possible, including voice. So if you’ve got a really loud amp, you’re going to leak onto everyone else’s track, and you won’t be able to sing either. I also like to record tracks without cans [headphones]; I like to hear the sound the room is making itself, rather than the balance coming through the board and into the cans. I recorded “Motherless Children” [461 Ocean Boulevard] with just a Pignose mini amp.

Do you plan on presenting any more older bluesmen, like the records you did with Howlin’ Wolf [The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions] and Freddy King [Burglar].

It would probably come up. Those kinds of things are usually on the spur of the moment, like within a week’s notice. There’s no one I can think of right now that I would go out of my way to do. With Wolf, on “Red Rooster,” he was very, very vehement about it being done right. Because he considered us to be English and foreigners, and therefore we wouldn’t have heard the song, right? So he just got his guitar out and said, “This is how it goes.” It’s not on the album, unfortunately, but he played it all the way through once on his own with us just sitting there listening. He was playing slide Dobro, and it was just bloody amazing! And he said, “Okay, you try it.” So we all tried playing it like him, but it didn’t really sound right, so I said, “Well, why don’t you do it with us?” And that’s the bit that got on the record.

Do you think those sessions, mixing a blues stalwart with several rock greats, come off well?

That one came off. But I am actually biased against those things. My ego told me to listen to the one I did with Howlin' Wolf, and I liked that because I like the Wolf anyway, whatever he did. He never could go wrong, because you could put him in with, oh, Buddy Rich or someone, and he’d still dominate the show. The other reason I did that session was that for a long time I’d really wanted to meet his guitarist, Hubert Sumlin, because he did some things that freaked me out when I was picking up the guitar that stuff on “Goin Down Slow,” just the weirdest playing. He’s truly amazing!

In last year’s GP readers’ poll you won Best Blues Guitarist as a write-in vote, so obviously people still think of you at a “blues guitarist.” Is that how you think of yourself?

Yes, that’s what I do best. That is really my personal style. If I’m put into any other kind of situation, I’d have to fly blind. In the blues format I can just almost lose consciousness; it’s like seeing in the dark.

Former Beach Boys guitar player Al Jardine says he was shocked to see footage of Mike Love struggling during the Beach Boys’ performance at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium on Sunday, October 11.

The two founding members performed together for years before animosity and legal battles drove them apart. But those longstanding differences took a back seat as Jardine spoke to Rolling Stone about his concern for Love’s health and well-being.

Jardine was scheduled to perform with other surviving members of the Beach Boys when he saw the footage.

“It’s shocking and I was really depressed,” Jardine said of the 85-year-old Love. “I had to really shake myself out of it just to get onstage. Just the optics of it were just awful and I’m speechless.”

Love, who has fronted the Beach Boys for years, remained seated throughout the Ryman performance, occasionally contributing background vocals.

Jardine said Love had been “going through some health issues for quite a while.” Asked whether he believed the Beach Boys should continue performing with Love, Jardine didn’t mince words.

“I would hope not,” he said. “That’s just not right, that I can see. Obviously, he’s a total pro. He wants to be onstage, but he just doesn’t know how not to do it. He doesn’t know what else to do, so I think he’s trapped.”

The pair’s relationship has also been marked by legal disputes. Love sued Jardine several times over his use of the Beach Boys name, including in 2003, when he challenged Jardine’s decision to tour under names such as Beach Boys Family & Friends, Al Jardine, Beach Boy and Al Jardine of the Beach Boys. Love argued that the performances amounted to unfair competition with the group he led.

The full extent of Love’s current health problems remains unclear. But ahead of the Ryman show, actor John Stamos — a longtime friend of Love’s and an occasional guest performer with the Beach Boys — shared a sobering assessment of his condition. The performance came after the band postponed a planned six-week summer tour in July, saying Love needed time to “recharge.”

“My beloved friend, father figure, musical hero and mentor, Mike Love, is facing serious health challenges,” Stamos wrote. He offered no further details about Love’s condition, though Love had revealed on Instagram in June that he was struggling in the wake of his sister Maureen’s death and was also dealing with bronchitis and COVID.

Stamos said the outlook remained uncertain, even as those close to Love hoped he would be able to keep performing. “We hope he’ll be doing what he loves for years to come, but we don’t know what the future holds. We have tonight.”

He also described Love’s determination to continue touring despite concerns from those around him. “Mike is a fighter. Despite doctors, family and friends urging him to focus on his health, he insists on being on stage. He says he needs his band, the audience, his friends and drummer surrounding him to lift him up.”

Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson died in 2025.

The Beach Boys still have several performances on the calendar, including a November 11 appearance at Walt Disney World’s Epcot theme park in Orlando, Florida, and a November 13 show at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Bristol, Virginia. Their schedule also includes a May 8, 2027, performance at River Cree Resort and Casino in Enoch, Alberta, Canada.

Jimmy Page said he was delighted to have Led Zeppelin’s signature track Stairway to Heaven appear in the new trailer for upcoming Narnia movie The Magician’s Nephew.

Set before the events of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, the blockbuster version of CS Lewis’ fourth novel in the series stars Daniel Craig, Meryl Streep and others. The two-and-a-half minute trailer is backed with sections of the classic song throughout. Page and bandmate Robert Plant have alway been extremely cautious in allowing their music to be used.

“I had the privilege of meeting Greta Gerwig, a powerhouse in the world of cinema,” Page said via social media, referring to the movie’s writer and director. “She is a switched-on creative, as seen by way of Little Women, Lady Bird and Barbie, and the soon-to-be-released Narnia movie. I am thrilled that she chose Stairway to Heaven in the trailer for her film.”

Gerwig told Variety that she’d met Page and Plant and shown them an early cut of the movie in the hope of convincing them to grant usage rights. Describing her take on Narnia as “a world made out of music,” she said: “It’s an epic song, and narratively, about a spiritual journey, a path of fake idols and wrong roads you can go down. It made sense to introduce the world. I was so moved that they allowed me to use this song. They saw the heart and story of the film.”

The movie, which arrives on February 12, was also inspired by her love for the music of David Bowie, the Rolling Stones and Todd Rundgren. “I hope they laugh. I hope they cry. I hope they feel like they’ve been on an adventure,” Gerwig said of those who see her film. “I hope when they leave the theater, they want to make something – a song or a cake or a painting. Making something is an act of hope.”

Plant was famously inspired by the writings of Lewis and his friend JRR Tolkien, with many Zeppelin songs making direct or indirect references to Narnia or Middle-earth. In 2022 he admitted: “I was developing all the time with what I felt and what I was surrounded by. Although sadly some of it was – there were maybe one or two too many, well, hobbits!”

In 2025 he told Stephen Colbert: “Tolkien was a master… he opened the door to all that sort of dark age meander of history,” recalling childhood journeys through the landscape that had inspired the writer.