Phi Yaan-Zek is a stunning guitarist and composer with influences ranging from Zappa to Stravinsky, The Cardigans to Mahavishnu Orchestra. His impressive CV includes working with musicians such as Mike Keneally (Frank Zappa), Marco Minnemann and Ron Thal (Bumblefoot) as well as eleven eclectic albums. Not afraid to mix pop with avant-garde, virtuosic chops and heartfelt melodic lines, his playing is a sonic kaleidoscopic especially on his last album, Inner Cosmic Spiral (2025). In this video feature, Phi shares his musical expertise by outlining six of his favorite phrases, sequences and patterns derived from the Melodic Minor scale.

For today, we’re treating the Melodic Minor as a collection of notes that ascends and descends using the same intervals. Specifically, these are as follows: Root-2-b3-4-5-6-7. In the key of C, C Melodic Minor contains the notes C-D-Eb-F-G-A-B. The major 6th (A) and major 7 (B) in a minor context gives the overall scale and resulting chords a bright sophistication with intriguing chordal and modal options.

If you're already savvy to the major scale and its related modes, there are two perspectives you might find useful to appreciate the Melodic Minor.

First, you could see this as a 'tweaked' major scale, (C major: C-D-E-F-G-A-B), that changes the major 3rd (E) to a minor 3rd (Eb). All other notes stay the same.

Alternatively, take the Dorian mode (R-2-b3-4-5-6-b7) and raise the 7th from a minor 7 to a major 7. All other notes stay the same. C Dorian is C-D-Eb-F-G-A-Bb so that final Bb note will change to B to create C Melodic Minor.

Both perspectives have their advantages and this concept of taking a mode and changing just one note follows over to naming of the subsequent modes derived from the Melodic Minor. In the examples that follow, you’ll see this in action with names such as Mixolydian b6 (Mixolydian with a b6), Lydian Augmented (Lydian with a #5), or Lydian Dominant (Lydian with a b7).

There’s a lot to take in here so start by learning the examples as written, alongside Phi’s rationale and demonstration on the video. Once you’re familiar with each concept, aim to create similar ideas of your own invention. Phi’s playing is often lightning fast, but remember these examples sound equally impressive and beautiful through a range of tempos. Take them at your own pace and enjoy!

Example 1: Eb augmented arpeggio

Phi begins his exploration of Melodic Minor by highlighting an Eb Augmented arpeggio (Eb-G-B), built from the third degree of the C Melodic Minor scale (C-D-Eb-F-G-A-B). Whilst our bass line ultimately resolves to Eb, implying an Ebmaj7#5 (Eb-G-B-D), Phi superimposes these Melodic Minor structures freely. So this phrase could be used against multiple harmonic options found within this scale, such Cm6, F7, G7 and even B7alt. Phi exploits the symmetry found within the augmented triad by moving his initial phrase up and down by a major 3rd, the distance of four frets.

Example 2: Eb augmented arpeggio

Here Phi superimposes a melodic figure using open strings, once again derived from an Eb Augmented framework. Here the bass is implying a G7 tonality, the V7 chord taken from the harmonized C Melodic Minor (Cmmaj7-Dm7-Ebmaj7#5-F7-G7-Am7b5-Bm7b5). Similarly, you’re moving the initial phrase down the fretboard in four fret leaps, although the decorative notes on the second string are sculpted to fit into the parental C Melodic Minor framework (R-2-b3-4-5-6-7). Rhythmically, after the four beat count-in, you’re shifting to 7/8. Work closely with the audio and follow the notation and tab.

Example 3: E Minor Pentatonic with F (b2) and C# (6) notes

Bluesy Melodic Minor action from Phi here! If you harmonize the Melodic Minor in 7th chords, you’ll find a handy m7 chord that forms from the 2nd degree. In this case, we’re taking about Em7 (E-G-B-D) built from the second interval in D Melodic Minor (D-E-F-G-A-B-C#). You’ll also notice an A, which when added to Em7 creates E Minor Pentatonic scale. Phi phrases around this E Minor Pentatonic whilst the bass implies an A7 tonality - all this can be found within the D Melodic Minor universe. He adds additional color by including both F and C#, the b2 and major 6th when viewed from the perspective of E minor.

Example 4: Wide intervals with D Dorian Pentatonic and E Dorian Pentatonic

There isn’t an obvious Minor Pentatonic constructed from the root of D Melodic Minor, due to the major 7th interval (C#). You can, however, switch this major 7th out and swap it with a major 6th (B), providing the minor 6 or Dorian Pentatonic (R-b3-4-5-6), beloved of jazz/blues maestro Robben Ford. Conveniently, you can do the same thing with the E Minor Pentatonic, giving a pair of Dorian Pentatonics from both the root (Dm6add11) and 2nd (Em6add11). Here, Phi’s using string skipping and three-note-per-string fingerings to create a modern sounding line using wide intervals, with lots of hammer-ons and pull-offs.

Example 5: String skipping with G Mixolydian b6

Phi turns the heat up with this string skipped example, leaping from the fifth string all the way to the second string. You're in G Mixolydian b6 (G-A-B-C-D-Eb-F), the fifth mode of C Melodic Minor. You could also think of this as F Lydian Dominant (F-G-A-B-C-D-Eb), the fourth mode of C Melodic Minor. Either way, you’re dealing with the same note pool (C-D-Eb-F-G-A-B). Phi employs a sweeping upstroke to make the transition between the first and second string for the final flurry in the penultimate bar.

Example 6: String skipping with F9#11 arpeggio

Phi's final phrase again uses string skipping, legato and symmetrical fingerings to create a cascading sheet of sound, derived from F Lydian Dominant, the fourth mode of C Melodic Minor (F-G-A-B-C-D-Eb). Don’t be too concerned about following the rhythms here, the idea is to get the shapes under your fingers and create fluid connected patterns in the moment. You might find these wide stretches easier with your guitar strap a little higher than usual. Keep your thumb lower at the back of the neck, and make sure you’re warmed up fully before attempting to get these lines anywhere near full speed.

Phi Yaan-Zek in action

Phi Yaan-Zek: My Favourite UFO

From Phi Yaan-Zek's album Interdimensional Garden Party, My Favourite UFO features Phi Yaan-Zek (vocals, guitars, percussion), Ellie Williams (vocals), Rob Groucutt (vocals), Lalle Larsson (keyboards), Bryan Beller (bass), and Morgan Ågren (drums, percussion). The prog rock 'Vai meets Zappa' flavors make for a great song with luscious vocals and intricate guitar playing.

Jason Becker looked back on his 1996 meeting with Eddie Van Halen, and listed some of the things the late guitarist had done for him.

Becker was at the start of a promising career when he was diagnosed with wasting illness ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) around 1989, aged just 20. It quickly became impossible for him to perform live and he had to leave David Lee Roth’s band, although he’s continued making music ever since.

Asked by Ultimate Guitar about the time Van Halen first came to meet him, Becker replied: “It was very bittersweet. I couldn’t really talk. My voice was so weak, and it took so much energy. [Partner] Serrana and my parents were the only ones who could barely understand me. I hadn’t started using the communication system my dad invented yet, so I didn’t say much.”

He continued: “Eddie brought me a guitar, but he went in another room with my mom and cried, and told her he felt stupid bringing it because I couldn’t play. He was very affectionate, hugging and kissing my head. He really wished David Lee Roth had come too, and had stayed in touch with me.“

The pair made a public service announcement for a health telethon run by the Muscular Dystrophy Association. At the time, Becker was struggling to breathe in a sitting position, so he had to push his lower jaw out to create an airway. Despite that, he noted, “The MDA had asked him to do a satellite thing from LA, but he wouldn't do it unless he could come meet me in person.”

Becker was still making music, albeit much more slowly, and in 1996 released second album Perspective. “He really loved it," he said of Van Halen. “He said he did music like that, but Warner Bros. didn’t want to put it out… He made Warner release Perspective and got them to give a really nice advance, which was sorely needed. He also gave my family money privately.”

He added: “ALS takes a huge toll on everyone; Eddie understood that instinctively, as does the whole guitar community and fans through the years. I wish he was here to see the non-profit Serrana and I co-founded. He would be proud, and probably involved. Through generosity from fans and others, we’ve been able to give significant financial assistance to 15 people with ALS, so far, helping them remain cared for at home, as I have been.”

Meanwhile, Alex Van Halen announced a limited-edition book titled simply Van Halen. It comes packaged with a 7-inch vinyl disc containing Glitter, a previously-unreleased demo from 1974 (although it’s been bootlegged over the years). Only the signed Collector edition remains available for pre-order, complete with clamshell case and souvenir keyring and picks.

Dave Mustaine looked back on a period of Megadeth history in which he said too many mistakes were made – leaving him feeling “queazy“ about the album they’d made.

Risk, released in 1999, was their eighth record, but it was recorded during a difficult time. Drummer Nick Menza had left and Marty Friedman was ready to go too. On top of that, Mustaine felt his position as band leader was being questioned. But he suggested there was a relatively easy way to repair the record – record a faster version.

“The band was about as fragmented as we could be,” he told Ultimate Guitar. “Marty didn’t want to be in the band anymore, we had a manager named Bud Prager…and the drummer we had at the time was Jimmy DeGrasso.”

He added: “The music on that record would have been great if it was a Dave Mustaine solo record. But I think because it said ‘Megadeth,’ people expected something a little bit faster.”

He explained why the songs had been produced at a slower pace: “The beats per minute thing popped up again. That happened during Youthanasia. Max Norman produced that record; he’d said that the secret to singles is 120 beats per minute. And after I worked with Max, I hadn’t heard that again until when we did Risk. If it didn’t say ‘Megadeth’ and said ‘Dave Mustaine,’ it would be fine as a solo record… It makes me queasy when I think about that period.”

He cited another element of the album he didn’t like: the song Crush ‘Em. “I had said that I didn’t want to do that. And Bud Prager kept insisting. He did have the credentials when he said, ‘Look, we had a number one single with Trust on the last record. You had five radio singles.’ And when someone says that, and they can back it up with the proof, you kind of want to listen to them. Because they did make things happen for us.”

But he’d come to realise that thinking had been wrong. “The other thing that was not taken into account was – we’re not a singles band. We’re a band that makes thrash metal. And like, with the [current] album, the reason it was number one is because it was approached as a thrash metal band."

With Megadeth approaching the end of their career, it’s unlikely Risk will be revisited. And maybe Mustaine doesn’t mind. “There were just, I think, too many mistakes going on in that period,” he reflected, “because there was so much fragmentation. It was being pulled in different directions. My leadership was being questioned all the time.”

Bruce Springsteen has confirmed that he used to sweat so much during concerts that it would short-circuit his favourite Telecaster, and explained how the issue was resolved.

The Boss is one of a number of big-name Tele fans who’ve been discussing their relationship with the guitar to mark its 75th anniversary.

In Fender’s official video he showed off the instrument he’s had since 1972, happily describing it as a “mutt.” He said: “When I signed my first record contract, I was going to get to buy a new guitar, and I knew I wanted a Telecaster.”

Constructed out of a 1950s Tele body and an Esquire neck – as seen on the cover of 1975 album Born to Run – and costing him $185 (around $1,480 today), he had a preamp added because his cable was so long that it caused signal dropout.

He continued: “I had to insulate the entire inside of the guitar with rubber, because I was sweating so much that, halfway through the show, the guitar would short out. I’d lose all my highs and it would just sound like crap – and it was in the days when I was only using one guitar for the entire show.

“And so they insulated the entire guitar with rubber, so that when water came pouring down it continued to play.”

Illustrating his passion for the Tele, he recalled being mistakenly asked by the LA Times to write an appreciation of the Fender Strat. “I wrote this whole note back, going: ‘No! It’s a Telecaster… The Telecaster is a different animal!”

He added: “When I have this guitar on, I don’t feel like I have a guitar on … I feel like it’s some extension of your physical self. I may take it in the coffin with me if I go!”

Ever since amp modeling, digital signal processing (DSP), and circuit miniaturization collided several years ago we’ve been served up more and more functionality in smaller and smaller packages.

The brand-new Spark Pedal from Positive Grid arguably maxes out the equation, especially when you factor in the fourth parameter of price. For the cost of a meal for two at a fine restaurant — with maybe a glass of wine each but a shared dessert — this compact box carries all the guitar-tone crafting a novice to intermediate player will likely need for jamming or home recording, while also providing an impressively compact and versatile backup or fly rig for more experienced musicians.

This little bundle of sonic alchemy runs on Positive Grid’s HD Tone Engine, the same high-definition DSP used in the company’s flagship Spark 2 practice amp. Available blocks include 33 amp models, 43 effects and access to more than 100,000 sounds through Positive Grid’s online ToneCloud community. Plus, players can easily load or use any of their previously saved presets from other products in the Spark family, or upload those created here for use elsewhere.

Guitarists who have dabbled in compact modelers will be familiar with the multifunctionality that’s essential to packing so much into such tight quarters. If you’re new to the format the user manual will make for better full instruction than space allows for here, but suffice it to say the Spark’s five control knobs all perform different duties depending on what mode you’re in, whether dialing in the amp or selecting and editing FX parameters.

These include drive/gain (which also selects between boost, OD, distortion, fuzz); mod/bass (tremolo, chorus, phaser, flanger); delay/mid (digital, vintage, multi, reverse); and reverb/treble (studio, chamber, hall, ambient). Three foot switches double up for preset selection and looper functions, with double-switch presses changing between these modes and the two preset banks with three presets each, for a total of six available on the unit at any one time.

Several more presets are available via the Spark App for iOS and Android over Bluetooth, which is also where you’ll do most of the heavy lifting for editing if you want to go beyond what’s available onboard. Although, to be fair, its clear graphics and mostly WYSIWYG performance generally makes the task more “light lifting” at most.

And if the physical controls can occasionally be a little touchy to dial in precisely when making parameter changes on the hardware unit itself (understandable, considering the tight confines), the app offers much easier fine-tuning. For even lighter lifting, delve into Spark AI: describe the tone in your head or choose from a list of prompts and Spark AI will generate it for you.

I tested the Spark pedal with a Fender Telecaster and a Gibson Les Paul, direct into headphones, a recording interface and through a couple of different amps and one powered FRFR cab. Short answer: There’s a lot to love here, and the fact that it costs just $200 makes it all the more impressive.

In some ways the experience reminded me of checking out the first compact modeling units of more than 25 years ago — like the DigiTech RP100, Korg AX100G, or even the first kidney bean Line 6 POD multieffects processors— given the plethora of sounds available in the mind-bogglingly tiny box and the potential hours lost to twiddling, playing, and twiddling again.

And that’s a good thing: there’s always a place for easy access to countless recreations of classic tones and boundless inspiration all from an affordable, sandwich-sized unit with the potential to kickstart the playing of many a future rock hero.

Sonically, while the Spark touches all the important bases via its many cleverly named recreations of seminal vintage and modern British and American amps, it can’t be expected to match the full sonic veracity of today’s popular larger (or even smaller) units from leading makers like Fractal, Line 6, or Neural DSP for overall realism and sound quality. However, it can match or better the performance of several of the best modelers of years gone by while offering more up-to-date editing facilities, and that counts for a lot at this price.

As with many budget modelers, I found overdriven and high-gain sounds more convincing, and ultimately more satisfying, than clean tones as a whole. This is likely because it’s easier to suspend reality as a player riffing through a slathering of heavy distortion and endless sustain than it is through a nuanced clean tone, which is far more revealing.

Some of my favorites from the preset menu included Blues Ark, a slightly overdriven ’60s Fender amp with Tube Screamer; British Accent, a crunchy Orange amp model with treble boost in front; and Millenial Lead, a modded Marshall model; but anything with a little hair on it proved a lot of fun. That said, the Matchless model found in the “Match DC” amp block wasn’t at all dissatisfying, and could provide plenty of trenchant cleans when needed.

Putting Spark AI to the test also produced some interesting options. I tried “crunchy classic-rock tone” and “clean-with-bite country twang” and the system delivered pretty well, although many guitarists might want to further adjust the settings a little to achieve optimal results. The looper worked well, too, and was easy to get to grips with. Although, as is often the case, it required some clever tap dancing, especially when employed with other parameter changes on the fly.

Ultimately, the Spark Pedal delivers an impressive combination of design, functionality and affordability. Considering the wealth of good-sounding tone it holds within a box that sits easily in the accessory pouch of most gigbags, that’s quite an achievement.

CONTACT positivegrid.com

PRICE $199 street

CONTROLS Multifunction knobs for drive/gain, mod/bass, vol/amp-FX type, delay/mid, reverb/treble. Three multifunction foot switches for presets (6 onboard in two banks of 3) and looper

CONNECTIONS Single ¼" input, L and R ¼" outputs, ¼" expression pedal jack, MIDI In and Out, USB Type-C for Charging/Service, 1/8" headphone out, power in

POWER USB-C

MANUFACTURED Vietnam

PRO A huge bundle of very capable amp and effects modeling tones in a compact, affordable box

CON Can be a little touchy to dial in some settings using the unit alone

In the early 1990s, Metallica were arguably one of the biggest bands on the planet, selling out stadiums worldwide with ease. But despite their packed schedule, two members were plotting a very different kind of side project.

Plans were mooted in 1992, at a time when Metallica and Guns N’ Roses had embarked on a massive co-headline tour – and one that nearly deafened Jeff Beck. Jason Newsted, the band’s then-bass player, says he and Kirk Hammett wanted to start a blues band.

The revelation comes from a newly unearthed interview the pair gave to Raw Power that year and republished by Sunset Vinyl. At that point, Newsted had been in the band for six years, having been sworn in to replace the late Cliff Burton. Yet the bassist says it took them that long to really hit it off and the blues was a shared passion.

“We’ve been jamming,” Hammett said, with Newsted then taking over, adding: “We’d watch one song from Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan and do our version of it.

"Everybody's taking in different influences, different than what people would expect us to be doing. Kirk and I have really been starting to indulge heavily in the blues. I listen to a lot of older folk blues and stuff and Kirk's really got turned on Robert Johnson and those kind of things."

While it was typically Newsted handling vocals – he served as backing vocalist in the band – Hammett said he’d get behind the mic “depending on how many beers I’ve had.” It was, he explains, their “after-hours indulgence.”

The proposed project band even had a HQ in mind.

“I’m building a studio in my house; it’s almost done,” Newsted revealed. “A full 24-track digital. We’ve already asked a lot of people to come and play, people that we talked about earlier, Andreas [Kisser, Sepultura] and Greg Hall from Sacred Reich, and horn players and different things. I’m going to put all kinds of stuff together. So, I can say yes, there are plans to do some other music for sure.”

“Yeah, we’re going to form a blues band,” Hammett returned. “[We want to] have a bunch of guest appearances by other musicians, and just see how it goes.”

“I’m fired up,” Newsted went on. “There’s one guy at home that I’ve been writing blues songs [with]; we’ve already got quite a few songs put together. So, when the time comes about a year from now or whatever, it’ll happen.”

But not even the best-laid plans come to fruition, with Metallica’s relentless touring schedule the likely culprit.

One name on their potential feature list was John Campbell, who was causing a stir in the New York scene. He’s one of the cool guys like [Eric] Clapton,” Newsted had purred. “He’s one of the few Mississippi Delta-style players around nowadays.”

Campbell, however, left the world all too soon, dying of a heart attack in 1993.

Hammett’s love of the blues runs deeper than his metal-minded day job suggests, and he even delivered a ‘How to play like Stevie Ray Vaughan’ Guitar World lesson in 2019.

“Ironically, I was never really into Stevie while he was alive,” he confessed at the top of his lesson. “Then, shortly after he died, I got hold of a video of him playing a live show and was just totally blown away by his timing, his tone, his feel, his vibrato, his phrasing - everything. Some people are just born to play guitar, and Stevie was definitely one of them.”

Hammett’s ownership of Peter Green’s infamous Greeny Les Paul is another sign of the guitarist’s appreciation for blues greats, so perhaps there’s time for a bluesy Metallica album yet.

The ever-outspoken Gene Simmons has opened up about Ace Frehley’s on-and-off relationship with Kiss, including a striking anecdote about his struggles with the pace of life in the band.

In his typically entertaining fashion, the bass player once recalled how he was ready to throw fists during Frehley’s audition for the band in 1973, only for his playing to change everything. Together, they produced 11 albums, as Kiss battled their way to superstardom, and cemented their place as one of America’s biggest bands.

But Frehley’s time in the band was disjointed, leaving the group twice, in 1982 and 2002. His last show was at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, with his omission from the band’s grand Madison Square Garden farewell in 2022 a sore point for the guitarist.

Simmons, who came under fire for controversial comments following his passing last November, has now suggested Frehley didn’t have it in him to go the distance with the glam rockers.

“It’s so hard for the fans. It’s heartbreaking,” he tells The Moynihan Report. “Ace had a massive influence on guitar players — Dimebag Darrell, Mike McCready, Metallica, just everybody across the line.

“But not everybody’s designed in their DNA to run a marathon,” he adds. “Some people just have a short race.”

Another player who idolized Frehley was Eddie Van Halen, and the premier shredder was reportedly eager to fill his platformed boots following his first exit. Ace had grown frustrated with the band’s change in direction, and played only a small role in the creation of Music from “The Elder” in ‘81.

“Ace told me to my face when he was leaving the band, ‘I’m gonna have a solo career ‘cause if I go out on tour again, I’m gonna kill myself,’” Simmons develops. “The psychological pressures affect different people in different ways.

“I have no problem with anything,” he says. “I’m voraciously ambitious and love the attention, money, and fame. But it doesn’t affect everybody the same way.”

Frehley’s solo career got off to a flying start. All four members of the band – completed by co-guitarist Paul Stanley and drummer Peter Criss – issued eponymous solo records in 1978. Sandwiched between the releases of Love Gun (1977) and Dynasty (1979), Frehley’s album outsold his bandmates, creating parallels with George Harrison’s first post-Beatles record, All Things Must Pass.

But as he did in November, Simmons was eager to highlight Frehley’s substance abuse problems and his struggles with life in Kiss.

“I’m not a shrink, but I think it starts with who you are in your own skin,” he believes. “Regular people every day drink themselves until they’re numb and can’t even walk, and use drugs and become drug addicts, even when nobody’s watching, just because they’re not comfortable in their own skin.

“Ace and Peter handled it for a few years, and then they were in and out of the band three different times. And it breaks the heart of fans…”

In April, Simmons opened up about the future of Kiss, with avatar shows and being bigger than Mickey Mouse as topics of conversation. Guitarist Tommy Thayer, who replaced Frehley in 2002, has now confirmed that new music is very much happening.

Speaking to Guitar World, he says he has recorded “a great new song that Paul wrote,” while detailing the band’s grandiose next steps.

“Kiss has always believed in making things an event,” he details. “So whatever new music comes, it has to feel special and have a reason for existing. You don’t make another Kiss record just because you’re supposed to make another Kiss record.”

It feels like Sammy Hagar has been in the mood for rebuilding bridges in recent months, and so he’s refused to bite back after Alex Van Halen called him a “complete idiot”.

The Red Rocker, who fronted Van Halen for four albums, has replied to his former bandmate’s comments, but sought to douse, rather than fan, the flames amid their latest dispute.

Speaking in an interview with Brazil’s Roadie Crew magazine, Alex Van Halen gave a scathing review of Hagar’s 2011 autobiography, Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock. The catch is, he hasn’t even read it.

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

Read it or not, the book did cause a stir upon its release, given that Hagar had given a frank and rather unsettling account of Eddie Van Halen’s alcohol issues and interpersonal friction within the band. The book’s tell-all nature even led one woman to file a defamation lawsuit against him, claiming his words broke a legal agreement dating back to the 1980s.

Naturally, the story flooded news feeds. It didn’t take long for the drummer’s comments to reach a man he played alongside for 13 years, across two spells, but Hagar has remained level-headed. He soon weighed in on the story, commenting on an Instagram post from Rock Celebrities.

“This comment and post are so unnecessary at this time in our lives,” he wrote. “But I guess the truth hurts sometimes. Peace already.”

Hagar has been shut out of all things Van Halen since his second tenure ended in 2005. In 2022, he blamed Alex for stopping a tribute tour for the late Eddie Van Halen– although the drummer has since turned the blame on David Lee Roth.

That prompted him to form his own tribute tour, the Best of All Worlds, with longtime bass player Michael Anthony and Joe Satriani, whom DLR actually tried to poach for his own Van Halen tribute band in the ‘90s.

Notably, neither Hagar nor David Lee Roth is playing a part in the final Van Halen record that Alex Van Halen and Steve Lukather are working on together.

Usually, bitterness shared between Hagar and Alex Van Halen isn’t all that surprising, but both seem to have been burying the hatchet of late. Hagar made a heartfelt post following David Lee Roth’s sudden tour cancellation in July, and Alex shocked everyone by appearing on a TED Talk with Roth that same month. It had been 11 years since they last shared a stage.

Them again, Alex recently said the band did their best work with Roth at the helm, so it’s clear not every hatchet is on his ‘to bury’ list.

Lukather, meanwhile, can’t believe the unreleased Van Halen songs he’s currently working on haven’t seen the light of day sooner, given their quality. He’s also assured fans that the record is far from a throwaway cash grab. Steve Vai, in turn, has vouched for the reams of genius that decorate the late virtuoso’s archive.

Kim Thayil offered an intriguing description of Soundgarden’s upcoming album, which features material written and recorded by Chris Cornell before his death in 2017. And with no release date yet confirmed, it’s likely to arrive a decade after the tragedy.

Personal disputes got in the way of early plans to complete the work, but after they were resolved the band rolled into action and the end is in sight. Guitarist Thayil was heavily involved in the process, which he said were unlike his previous studio experiences.

“It was very different,” he told KOMO News. “You don’t start at one point with song ideas and demos and record the drums and build it. We had to work in a different direction. The songs were by and large done, but the recordings and the performances weren’t, except for what we had with the vocals and some drums.”

He continued: “It was very forensic in nature. And, again, spending a lot of time in the studio listening to the material… presented a lot of enthusiasm, an opportunity for us – but it's also a little bit difficult. You’re constantly balancing the duty towards the material and towards a beloved friend’s work. and our work together. So it was very unusual.”

Asked what fans should expect from what will be Soundgarden’s seventh album, following 2012’s King Animal, Thayil said: “There are quirky elements. It’s very introspective. I mean, all of our work has been somewhat that way, but this is a little bit more so. And if you can imagine a lullaby paired with psychedelia, that's kind of what's going on there.”

He said he couldn’t choose a favourite song from the expected 8-to-10 track title because it was “always changing,” and added: “We’ve been working on this on and off for a few years, and I think every song has been my favorite at some point!”

He confirmed that a release date was still under discussion, partly as a result of the band’s history since Cornell’s death. “We’re dealing with the record label, trying to work out contractual understandings. And you have to think about the promotion, the production... all those processes are in motion.

“And again, it's very different. It’s been so many years, a lot of these contractual obligations expired – so we have to kind of work them out again.”

Soundgarden will play the halftime show at the Seattle Seahawks’ season-opening game against New England Patriots on September 9. They’ll be joined by old friends Taylor Momsen and Mike McCready for the set.

Former Deep Purple vocalist Joe Lynn Turner has discussed his positive feelings about Ritchie Blackmore’s brief reunion with the band.

Blackmore made a guest appearance with the current lineup in August, performing signature track Smoke on the Water – a moment current guitarist Simon McBride said he’d been proud to have a small part in.

Turner fronted Blackmore’s band Rainbow in the early ‘80s before winding up as Ian Gillan’s replacement in Purple in 1989. That ‘Mark V’ lineup only lasted two years before Gillan returned.

Turner confirmed he’d seen video of the reunion moment, telling Cassius Morris: “I really, honestly, sincerely hope that healing had happened. I honestly hope it was not a dog-and-pony show, as we say – that it wasn’t just for publicity or notoriety. I really hope that Ritchie and Ian have sort of buried the hatchet – that they’re healing, that there’s no animosity.”

He continued: “Everybody’s so much older, and time and life is short. I hope they all realize that the nonsense everybody went through back then doesn’t mean anything compared to what they did together as a unit.”

Turner said he didn’t want to critique the actual performance, saying of Blackmore: “He’s 80 years old, he’s slowing down, he’s got certain ailments and all that. That’s not the important part. I think it shows people you’ve got to let things go. You cannot carry anger and hate – it’s absolutely destructive in our lives.”

He offered a note of positivity himself: “Those guys created incredible music. They were my heroes. I sat with my guitar and learned every Blackmore lick possible. I was honored and blessed to play with them.”

Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi has revealed that his last ever conversation with Ozzy Osbourne was the night before the Prince of Darkness' death.

Ozzy died on July 22, 2025, just weeks after the Back To The Beginning farewell show at his hometown of Birmingham, England.

Tony Iommi told the Loudwire Nights radio show: "I spoke to him the night before he passed.

"He said to me, ‘I really feel tired and really worn out’. I said, ‘Well, you’re bound to really, it’s been a lot of stress and pressure and stuff like that’.

"And the next thing, the next day, gone."

He has struggled to accept that Ozzy was no longer with us, he said, and explained that even the final show was difficult because of Ozzy's mobility issues. “It was difficult because seeing Ozzy sitting in a throne is not the way I see him.

"Always onstage, he's been running around and [would] pull a face jokingly. We always had a little laugh onstage and enjoy when he'd run about.”

“But at Back to the Beginning, of course, he's in a throne and I couldn't see him, which felt very unusual. But it was a great moment, and I'm really glad we could get the opportunity to do it, because I mean, God, we didn't know he was going to go that quick. But he did... There's memories that will remain there, from rehearsals to the whole thing... I am glad that we could do that gig."

Iommi releases a new solo album, From The Dark, on October 23. The album sees him joined throughout by Jorn Lande, who shares writing credits on all songs, as well as bassist Becky Baldwin and drummer Karl Brazil, co-produced by Tony and Mike Exeter, his long-time creative partner, co-writer, producer and audio engineer.

Many fans view Pink Floyd’s 1983 album The Final Cut as effectively a Roger Waters solo outing, with the recording plagued by growing tensions within the band. Waters officially left Pink Floyd in 1985, and many assumed that would be the end of the group.

It wasn’t. Not long after Waters’ departure, David Gilmour and Nick Mason reconvened with plans for a new Pink Floyd album. They also brought keyboardist Rick Wright back into the fold after he had been unceremoniously fired by Waters during the making of The Wall.

The resulting album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason, surfaced in 1987. But its release ignited a bitter feud and legal battle between Gilmour and Waters over the right to use the Pink Floyd name.

The dispute was eventually settled out of court, with Gilmour’s camp retaining the right to carry on as Pink Floyd. But what had caused the acrimony that had been simmering behind the scenes for years?

For longtime Pink Floyd roadie and tour manager Chris Adamson, it can be traced to one thing.

“What messed them up was the age-old thing — wives!” Adamson tells Guitar Player. “Before that, there was none of that thing going on. David and Roger really complemented each other. But then the wives got involved.”

Adamson — who recently shared his recollections of Floyd during the making of Meddle and The Dark Side of the Moon — believes the group’s internal dynamics began to fray once Gilmour and Waters entered new relationships following the breakdown of their first marriages.

“With all the original wives, the band and all of us used to go on holiday together, the wives, the kids, everyone,” he says.

That changed in the late 1970s. Waters had been married Judith Trim, but their marriage ended in 1975. While on tour in America, the bass guitarist met Carolyne Christie, who worked for EG, the management company whose roster included Roxy Music, King Crimson, T. Rex and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, among other artists.

“They ended up living together and then getting married and having two kids together and everything. But she was incredibly strong — demanding, whatever. She basically said to Roger one day, ‘What the hell do you need those other guys for?’

“And that’s when the rot set in. That started the split.”

Adamson’s recounting is given further weight in Mark Blake’s 2008 biography of Pink Floyd, Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd. “Carolyne was landed gentry, and had all the attitudes associated with her class, and she seemed to have this huge effect on Waters,” Blake writes, noting that “he seemed to change completely.”

Adamson says a similar scenario played out in Gilmour’s personal life in the early 1990s. He had been married to artist and former model Virginia “Ginger” Hasenbein since 1975, but they divorced in 1990. He soon began dating English novelist and journalist Polly Samson, whom he married in 1994.

“By this time the split had happened in the band,” Adamson says, “but she pushed any chance for a reunion right out the door when she said to Dave, ‘What the hell do you need them for?’”

The Wall co-producer Bob Ezrin told Blake that Samson’s presence in the band further fueled the internal tensions.

“It wasn’t easy at first,” he said. “It put a strain on the boys’ club, and it was almost clichéd to have the new woman coming in and then get involved in the career.”

Even Gilmour acknowledged in a Mojo interview that “Polly has a tendency to ruffle everyone’s feathers. I’m not aware of her having ruffled Nick or Rick’s feathers, but she certainly ruffled the management’s.”

Years later, Adamson was working with John Mayer at London’s Royal Albert Hall when he decided to approach Gilmour in the hope of mending the rift between him and Waters.

“I really did think I could get the band back together. I was at the bar with Dave and he introduced me to his new wife. She was all very friendly until she found out I was from the past. Then suddenly the long knives came out.

“I remember standing at a bar with Dave and asking him, ‘Is there any chance of you and Roger getting together?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘Not a fuckin’ chance now.’”

Adamson believes the death of Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright in 2008 severed the remaining thread keeping the group’s former members united. The four musicians last shared a stage in 2005, when Pink Floyd reunited for Live 8.

Gilmour’s most recent public performance with Waters was in 2011, when he made a surprise appearance at Waters’ The Wall Live tour to perform his iconic guitar solos on “Comfortably Numb.”

In the years since, Gilmour and Waters have moved even further apart. In 2023, Samson publicly attacked Waters over his political views in a tweet in which she called him “anti-Semitic” and a “Putin apologist,” among a long list of other accusations.

Gilmour subsequently responded: “Every word demonstrably true.” Significantly, he insists Pink Floyd will not regroup.

So while Adamson believes time can heal old wounds, he thinks Pink Floyd’s rift has gone too far to repair.

“Getting the band together is never going to happen,” he says. “When Rick passed away, things continued to drift apart. And unfortunately that situation is how it is today.”

Keith Richards has named the guitarist who turned him on to Fender guitars, prompting his early-career move from Gibson instruments. As the Rolling Stones rose to fame in the 1960s, he was mainly seen with a ’59 Les Paul Standard and a Hummingbird acoustic – although he played a Telecaster on occasion.

But around 1970 his change of allegiance was cemented when Eric Clapton gave him a 1950s Tele, and Richards never looked back. In a recent interview marking the guitar’s 75th anniversary, he remembered how the change came about.

“For a lot of the ’60s, my main work was with Gibsons,” Richards said. “I wanted that bottom full end. Really, I got into the Fender, especially the Telecaster, when I was hanging around with Ry Cooder for a while. We were playing around with tunings. He was showing me this five-string open tuning on G.”

He continued: “I just got interested in it, and I found [it was] the only guitar that could really sustain the chords and give you a beautiful, I don’t know – There’s no words for it. Every note is in place. And then I started to really discover what Leo [Fender] had invented. This is where I feel at home.”

He went on to say that his choice of guitar was partly down to the people he performs with. “The Stones is a two-guitar band – you try and match your guitar to what the other guy’s playing, you know? It was Brian Jones for most of the ’60s. He loved to say, ‘You play that, and in that case I’ll play this.’”

Richards – who once revealed the Stones colleague he’d found most difficult to lock in with – reflected: “I mean it’s a piece of wood with some electronics on it. But these things can take on a soul of their own. You get affectionate about these things.”

Twenty-three years ago today, Warren Zevon died of mesothelioma at the age of 56. More than two decades later, one of the most poignant reminders of his legacy came when David Letterman brought Zevon’s guitar to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

On November 8, 2025, Letterman inducted his friend into the Hall at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. Beside him was an all-grey Modulus Blackknife electric guitar — the instrument Zevon had played every time he appeared on The Late Show With David Letterman, and which he had given to Letterman shortly before his death.

“It was the last time I saw Warren — that was 22 years ago,” Letterman told the audience.

Zevon’s final appearance on The Late Show took place September 30, 2002, less than a year before his death. But what happened backstage that night, away from the cameras and audience, was far more personal.

“He’s got the guitar there that he’s used every time he’s appeared on our show,” Letterman recalled. “And as we’re chatting… he picks up the guitar and he puts it in the guitar case, closes the guitar case, he hands it to me and he says, ‘Take care of this for me.’”

Letterman says the gesture brought him to tears.

“Warren and I hugged,” he recalled, “and I said, ‘Warren, I just love your music.’”

Letterman did as Zevon, saving its return to the stage for a momentous occasion.

“This is the guitar,” Letterman said at Zevon’s induction, gesturing toward the instrument beside him, “and tonight, by God, it’s going back to work.”

He handed the guitar to the Killers’ Dave Keuning, and the band launched into Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” They were joined by guitarist Waddy Wachtel, who had worked with Zevon on seven consecutive studio albums. It was a fitting tribute to an artist whose career was defined by his singular combination of literate songwriting, dark humor and hard-edged rock and roll.

Zevon had graduated from session musician and jingle composer to celebrated solo artist. His early session work included appearances with the Turtles and the Everly Brothers, as well as guitarist David Lindley. Wachtel, meanwhile, was a crucial collaborator throughout Zevon’s career, and also drafted him to play keyboards on the Everly Brothers’ 1972 album Stories We Could Tell and its subsequent tour dates.

Zevon’s greatest commercial success came with 1978’s Excitable Boy, which Wachtel co-produced with Jackson Browne. The album produced his signature song, “Werewolves of London,” featuring Fleetwood Mac bass guitarist John McVie.

According to Zevon biographer James Campion, even that song nearly slipped through the cracks.

“Werewolves of London” was fleshed out during a booze-filled jam session, Campion recalled, but Zevon had consumed enough that he forgot the whole thing the following day.

“The next day, he forgot the whole thing,” Campion said. “He comes in the studio and Jackson's in there at the board, and Waddy says, ‘Play that song — that thing you played last night.’ ‘What song?’ ‘Y’know, the ‘Werewolf’ song.’ Warren’s like, ‘What are you talking about?’”

“He forgot!”

Zevon’s final Late Show appearance, meanwhile, produced another moment that has become inseparable from his legacy. Letterman asked him if he had learned anything about life and death over the course of his lifetime. Zevon’s answer was characteristically concise: “How much you're supposed to enjoy every sandwich.”

Alex Van Halen has reignited his long-running feud with Sammy Hagar, calling his former Van Halen bandmate a “complete idiot” while dismissing Hagar’s 2011 autobiography, Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock.

The latest round of insults comes via an interview with Brazil’s Roadie Crew magazine. The recently knighted drummer was asked to offer his thoughts about the autobiographies written by Van Halen’s two classic-era frontmen: David Lee Roth’s Crazy From the Heart and Hagar’s Red.

His assessment of Roth’s book was largely positive, describing it as “quite entertaining” and saying it “faithfully reflects [Roth’s] sense of humor.”

“While the text is somewhat abstract and occasionally loses the thread, it remains a very interesting perspective on that era,” Alex added.

He was far less charitable when it came to Hagar, whose book chronicled some of Eddie Van Halen’s struggles with alcoholism and included other unflattering accounts of the guitarist. Alex dismissed the book out of hand.

“I don't know what he wrote, and I don't want to know,” the drummer said. “In my opinion, Sammy Hagar is a complete idiot.”

Alex’s latest comment is just the latest volley in a war of words that has gone on for years. In 2024, he disparaged Hagar’s Best of All Worlds tour, which featured former Van Halen bass guitarist Michael Anthony alongside Hagar, guitarist Joe Satriani and drummer Jason Bonham, saying the lineup wasn’t “doing the band justice.”

Hagar had reportedly invited Alex to join the tour in an attempt to put their differences aside. When the drummer didn’t respond, Hagar grew increasingly frustrated.

“Al, you’re fine. Just leave me alone. I’ll leave you alone. Everything’s good,” Hagar told Rolling Stone in 2025. “I’m making you money, by the way, Al. I’m out there selling Van Halen records and keeping the name alive, keeping the music alive.”

In the same interview, Hagar suggested that Alex was “angry” because “he seems like he doesn’t want to play drums or can’t play drums anymore.”

Hagar later criticized Alex’s 2024 autobiography, Brothers, in which the drummer largely ignored Hagar’s years in Van Halen, calling the omission “blasphemy.” The singer took another shot at Alex last March, comparing their relationship to the famously fractured partnership between Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and Roger Waters.

“I’m the biggest Pink Floyd fan,” Hagar told Classic Rock. “I see David Gilmour say, ‘I will never play with Roger Waters again,’ and I know what he means. I feel that way about Alex Van Halen. They’re negative people.”

Hagar also explained why he remains enthusiastic about the Best of All Worlds project, arguing that the lineup offers the closest thing fans can get to the Van Halen experience today.

“Because frickin’ Mike Anthony’s in the band, I feel good about playing a lot of Van Halen stuff, ’cause no one will ever hear it again,” he said. “That was the biggest part of my career — everybody’s career, for God’s sake. It was the biggest band in the world.”

Notably, Alex recently spoke glowingly of Roth, calling the former Van Halen singer “a poet” and saying, “We did our best work with Dave.” His contrasting views of Van Halen’s two classic-era frontmen underscore just how little the decades-old feud with Hagar has faded.

After a slow start to his recording career, Neil Diamond began breaking through in 1966, placing “Solitary Man” at number 55 on the Billboard Hot 100 and then landing his first Top 10 hit with “Cherry, Cherry” (number six) just three months later.

He also had a number one hit that year — just not as a performer. Diamond wrote “I’m a Believer,” which the Monkees took to the top of the charts.

“The head of my record company was very angry — I’d given away a number one hit — but I was thrilled,” Diamond told us some years ago. “See, I was a songwriter, first and foremost. I kind of reluctantly became a recording artist, you know? I wanted to write songs and have other people record them … but nobody would record my stuff, so I had to sing the songs myself.”

That reluctance came after a difficult apprenticeship. During an eight-year stretch in the early ’60s, Diamond was fired by five different songwriting houses.

“So having the Monkees get the number one was as good as if I had recorded it, honestly,” he added.

Interestingly, Diamond — who recorded a version of the song for his 1967 album Just for You — considered “I’m a Believer” to be a country song when he wrote it; he envisioned country music star Eddy Arnold recording it.

“I thought it would be a great song for him,” Diamond noted. Music executive Don Kirshner, who knew Diamond from New York’s Tin Pan Alley and was working with the Monkees’ TV producers, steered it to the group instead.

“We had a lot of great songs from great songwriters,” recalls the Monkees’ Micky Dolenz, who sang lead on “I’m a Believer.” “Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, Neil Sedaka, Carole Bayer Sager… Neil Diamond. It was the best of the best. You had to pinch yourself when you got these songs.”

Diamond — who also wrote “Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)” for the Monkees — pitched “I’m a Believer” to the Fifth Estate as well; the group included it on its 1967 album Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead.

The guitarist performed the song faithfully in concert for decades but revisited it on his 2010 covers album Dreams, treating it as “a very gentle, reflective ballad,” played with acoustic guitar accompaniment. The approach he said “opened the song up completely. It opened my eyes about exploring that direction with some of the other songs as well … That’s what keeps it exciting.”

Diamond went on to score 38 Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and became one of popular music’s most iconic performers, sequined shirts and all. He has been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and has received a Kennedy Center Honor and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

He stopped touring in 2018 after announcing a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis and has largely stepped back from music since, making only rare public appearances — although he did support A Beautiful Noise, the 2022 stage musical based on his life.

Now Diamond is re-emerging, somewhat. This week saw the release of Wild Heart, his first album of new songs since Melody Road in 2014. The material actually dates back to Home Before Dark (2008), his chart-topping second collaboration with producer Rick Rubin (Beastie Boys, Slayer, Red Hot Chili Peppers).

Rubin — fresh off his American Recordings work with Johnny Cash — first teamed with Diamond on 12 Songs in 2005. Using a small circle of players that included Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, Billy Preston, Jellyfish’s Roger Joseph Manning Jr. and Beck guitarist Smokey Hormel, Rubin pushed Diamond toward a stripped-down, live-in-the-room approach. Campbell, Tench and Hormel returned for Home Before Dark.

“I did listen to a bunch of the artists that Rick produced,” Diamond said at the time, “but there were a lot of early things that Rick liked that he wanted me to hear. We set up a meeting at his place, sat down and listened to music and chatted … every week for maybe six months.

“And for the most part what Rick played were my early records — things I hadn’t heard or thought about in decades. It was an interesting learning experience to go back to my old material and get a fresh take on it.”

Rubin’s goal was simple: strip the music down to Diamond’s voice, guitar and the song itself. Diamond initially resisted.

“I hadn’t played guitar on my records since ‘Cherry, Cherry’ and ‘Kentucky Woman,’ thinking there were other guitar players who could do it much better,” he said. “Pretty much every day I would argue that point with Rick. But he wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted my voice and my playing, as unadorned and truthful and minimalist as possible.”

It didn’t take long for Diamond to come around.

“Three or four recordings into this thing I realized he was absolutely right and began to enjoy the playing and singing experience. I realized I could perform my music with the simplicity of just my voice and guitar.”

Tench remembers the sessions fondly, noting that the musicians had to “twist Diamond’s arm a little bit.”

“But the songs are just wonderful and he’s a great guy and really fun to be with — and obviously he’s a great songwriter,” Tench said. One night during the Home Before Dark sessions, Diamond asked the band to stay late. Campbell agreed on one condition: “Sure, if you’ll play ‘Cherry Cherry’ with us.”

“And so we played ‘Cherry Cherry’ with Neil,” Tench recalled, “and that was a treat.”

Campbell remembers the sessions just as fondly.

“We had a lot of fun,” he says. “Neil was real excitable. He’d come in with a song he wrote the night before and say, ‘That’s great, that’s great … Oh wait, maybe I’m just suffering from new-song euphoria.’ He had a great sense of humor and was really supportive of the players, and he had a lot of stories about the old days. We had a blast.”

Squeeze canceled their concert at Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia, on Thursday night after a tour bus worker was fatally crushed in an accident on the venue’s property.

According to FOX 5 DC, the worker was underneath a tour bus when equipment supporting the vehicle malfunctioned, causing the bus to fall on top of him. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The worker’s identity has not been publicly released.

Wolf Trap subsequently announced that the evening’s performance had been canceled.

“There was an accident involving a member of the community at Wolf Trap National Park today, tragically resulting in a loss of life,” the venue said in a statement. “Out of respect, tonight’s show has been canceled.”

Squeeze expressed their condolences in a statement of their own.

“Squeeze are deeply saddened and shocked by an incident that occurred at the venue earlier today, which resulted in the loss of a life,” the band said. “After discussions with the venue and the relevant authorities, the decision was made to cancel this evening’s performance. We will work with the promoter and venue regarding the possibility of rescheduling the show and will communicate further information to ticket holders as soon as it is available. Our thoughts remain with everyone affected by this tragic event.”

Squeeze are currently touring North America in support of Trixies, their first album of new material in eight years. Released in March, the album has an unusual history: It features songs written by founding members Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook around the time Squeeze formed in 1973, but which remained unrecorded for more than five decades.

Formed in London in 1973, Squeeze became one of the defining British new wave bands of the late 1970s and early ’80s, with enduring songs including “Up the Junction,” “Pulling Mussels From the Shell,” “Cool for Cats” and “Tempted.” Difford and Tilbrook have remained at the center of the band through its various breakups and reunions.

Squeeze’s North American tour is currently scheduled to continue Friday, September 4, at Rose Music Hall in Huber Heights, Ohio.

By the summer of 1969, John Fogerty had taken Creedence Clearwater Revival from obscurity to the upper reaches of the charts. “Proud Mary,” “Bad Moon Rising” and “Green River” had all been number two hits. But they were punctuated by singles that failed to make much of a dent: “I Put a Spell on You,” “Lodi” and “Commotion.”

“I said, well, basically I’m now a one-hit wonder,” the guitarist toldRick Beato. “And I also realized It took us so long to get here; now you only get five minutes to do the next step because the spotlight will move on to Led Zeppelin or somebody.  It’ll just be over for you if you don’t come up with it now.'"

Fogerty was afraid everything he built was going to be lost if the band didn’t have another hit, and fast. Which is one reason why CCR released a total of three albums in 1969: Fogerty was on fire, writing new songs at every turn.

“Fogerty told us that if we were ever off the charts, then we would be forgotten,” drummer Doug Clifford told Goldmine in 2013. “To make it worse, it might sound funny, but we had double-sided hits, and that was kind of a curse, as we were burning through material twice as fast. If we'd spread it out, we would not have had to put out three albums in one year.”

The guitarist was taking inspiration from everywhere, and in 1969 it was impossible to not be affected by the Vietnam War. It was a catalyst behind the decade's counterculture revolution. Anti-war sentiment was a rallying cry for the rock and roll generation when they gathered that August in upstate New York for the Woodstock festival, where CCR had made a late-night stand.

When Fogerty looked at the news, he saw all the young men wounded and dying in the conflict. But he also saw how advantage was keeping many of the country’s politically privileged men from going to fight and die in a war their own fathers insisted was necessary.

He was enraged. And he put it all in one song: “Fortunate Son,” from the group’s third album of 1969, Willy and the Poor Boys.

But unlike other songs he labored over, Fogerty says “Fortunate Son” came out in a blast.

“’Fortunate Son’ was the shortest song I ever wrote — about 20 minutes,” he tells Beato. “This is 1969. All the political and cultural stuff, is just brewing in my mind.”

Fogerty had the music together and “a vague idea” of the subject matter. He took it and nothing else — not even an acoustic guitar — into a room to do some writing.

“But I literally went into the bedroom with a little tablet and a pen, thinking the song was going to be called ‘Favorite Son.’” It’s a phrase used by state delegates when nominating a presidential candidate.

Aside from that, however, Fogerty says, “I had no lines of the song at all.

“And suddenly I’m sitting there, and I [thought], ‘Some folks are born, made to wave…’ Oh, that's pretty good!

“And somewhere, ‘Favorite Son’ flipped into ‘Fortunate Son.’”

As for Fogerty’s fears of slipping down the charts and becoming obsolete, he didn’t have to worry. “Fortunate Son” was released as a double A-side single with “Down on the Corner,” the lead track from Willy and the Poor Boys. Both songs reached number three on the charts, and helped keep CCR’s fortunes alive.

Fogerty has spent much of his post-CCR days fighting to reclaim the rights to the material with which he made his name. His new album is a celebration of that battle ending after 50 tireless years. The pain of the band's demise also saw him give away his prized Rickenbacker 325.

“I was hurt. I was damaged. I gave it away to end that chapter of my life,” he said of his decision to leave it behind. Yet, miraculously, it wound up back in his hands, perhaps standing as a precursor for what was about to follow.”

Billy Gibbons confirmed that the death of ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard will not bring an end to the band.

Beard passed August 17, at the age of 77 after spending 57 years in the trio, mostly with Gibbons and Dusty Hill, who died in 2021. The bass guitarist was replaced by Elwood Francis.

Beard hadn’t been on the road for some time as a result of his illness, with Michael Monahan taking his place on their current tour. The trip resumed in Eagle Pass, Texas, on August 21, after a handful of cancellations..

“Elwood and I lost a great friend and collaborator, and the world lost one of the most naturally innovative drummers and a great and true son of Texas,” Gibbons told Variety in a statement. “His signature backbeat was key to keeping ZZ on top.

“The band which he was part for six decades is going to keep on keeping on, as he had wished.”

The fact that Beard was the only member of ZZ Top without facial hair has been commented on for decades, with some unaware that the drummer always used his birth name.

Ultimate Classic Rock reported that, in their early years, neither Gibbons nor Hill had grown whiskers. The change came when the band returned from a two-year hiatus in 1979.

“I had a beard, but it wasn’t near the beard[s] they had,” Beard said. “I shaved it right after we got back together when I saw.”

Added Gibbons, “Frank didn’t mind being beardless. After all, he had the name – and he could go in the shopping mall without being interrupted.” In a separate interview he admitted: “We’d gotten really, really lazy. Nobody had bothered to shave. In simple terms, that’s exactly how it started.”

Hill’s death leaves Gibbons as the group’s only surviving original member. Asked in 2018 about the secret to their longevity, the electric-guitar slinger told Rock And Roll Garage, “There are two lingering questions. One of them says, ‘How does the guy with the name Frank Beard end up playing between you two guys with two-foot chin whiskers?’ We still don’t know!

“And the second question is, ‘Gosh, you guys have held it together longer than most marriages.’ The secret is, of course, two words: separate buses.”

Thin Lizzy should have been everything Irish guitarist Eric Bell had ever wanted. At first, it was. But by 1973, his dream gig had become unsustainable.

“At the start, it was fabulous,” Bell tells Guitar Player. “It was my dream, come true. We formed Thin Lizzy, and it was fabulous.”

The band’s early years were a blur of hash, Guinness and, eventually, harder drugs. Bell says the musicians were permanently stoned, but that didn’t stop them from having a great time making their first three albums: 1971’s Thin Lizzy, 1972’s Shades of a Blue Orphanage and 1973’s Vagabonds of the Western World. The latter featured Bell’s best-known recording with the band, their version of “Whiskey in the Jar.”

“It was great,” says Bell, who last year released Acoustic Sessions, an album that re-imagines songs from the group’s first there albums — including “Whisky in the Jar” — in acoustic guitar arrangements.

But Bell’s relationship with drugs and alcohol was changing. He was drinking more, smoking increasingly strong marijuana and watching his social and family life fall apart. Living alone in a grungy attic in London, he reached a point where he could no longer separate performing from getting high.

Before one show, he found himself sober and unable to settle. A crowd was waiting outside, but there were no drugs available. Bell picked up his guitar and immediately felt that something was wrong.

“And it felt horrible.”

A joint eventually appeared, and Bell says the transformation was immediate.

“All of a sudden, I’m Eric Clapton,” he says, laughing.

The moment also forced him to confront how dependent he had become. “Eric, you’ve got a problem here, man,” he remembers thinking. “You can’t play when you’re straight.”

Thin Lizzy’s relentless touring schedule left little room for Bell to deal with the problem. He says he needed a few weeks away from the road, but management refused. After shows, he would tell himself to have one drink, pack up and go to bed. Instead, the whiskey and dope would come out, and the cycle would begin again.

“I couldn’t stop. And it got worse and worse.”

The breaking point came on New Year’s Eve 1973, when Thin Lizzy played Queen’s University in Belfast.

Bell arrived early and found a table in the dressing room stocked with bottles of alcohol. He tried to keep himself under control, but by the time he strapped on his Stratocaster and walked onstage, he was completely intoxicated.

“I didn’t know where I was,” he says. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I surely should have cancelled the gig.”

Instead, the band played. Bell lasted three songs.

Throughout the performance, he says, a voice in his head was telling him to leave. He knew he needed professional help and knew he could not continue, but he was too far gone to act on either realization.

Eventually, he threw his guitar into the air and kicked his amplifiers offstage before staggering away and collapsing.

A roadie ordered him back onstage. Bell was hauled to his feet and placed back onstage. Someone handed him his guitar, but no one thought to retune it.

“The guitar was completely out of tune," Bell recalls. “I must have sounded like Ravi Shankar on acid. It had to be fucking awful.”

The following day, Thin Lizzy’s management called from London, demanding to know what had happened. Bell replied that he’d quit. The band was halfway through its Irish tour. Though they tried to persuade him to stay, Bell insisted he was finished.

“They realized I wasn’t going to do it, and said, ‘Is that your last word?’ I said, ‘Yeah…’

“And they said, ‘Right — we’re getting Gary Moore to finish the tour,’ and slammed the phone down.”

Just like that, Eric Bell’s dream gig was over.

In retrospect, Bell believes the disastrous final show may have saved his life.

“I just kind of whittled about, wondering what to do with myself,” he says. “But yeah, I’d say that what happened probably saved my life.”

Bell rebounded and landed a gig with the equally hard-drinking Noel Redding later in the 1970s. He never rejoined Thin Lizzy, although he reunited with Phil Lynott in the studio for the Jimi Hendrix tribute “Song for Jimmy.” Bell says most of his playing did not make the final recording.

Thin Lizzy briefly continued with Gary Moore before replacing him with Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson, whose twin-guitar harmonies would become central to the band’s sound on songs such as “Jailbreak” and “The Boys Are Back in Town.”

Bell still owns the Stratocaster he threw that night in Belfast. He has had a long time to consider what happened — and what it took to get back to playing without drugs and alcohol.

“I didn’t have the willpower to stop. I could get drunk very easily. If I had two or three whiskeys, I was anybody’s, you know?”

“And my Strat that I tossed in the air, I still have it. I think it’s finally just forgiven me. But man, it was hard. It took me forever to be able to play guitar straight again.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kaye decided to try something different.

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

Drummer Paul Humphrey glanced over at Kaye.

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

“And boom! The take came to life.

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

That was as close as Kaye got to Streisand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He soon found inspiration from an unexpected encounter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What he discovered was unexpected.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Van Halen was characteristically modest when reflecting on the honor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lennon was fooling around plenty, Levin added.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Its success made him think again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cross then urged Canadians not to give up on America.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There they stayed, apparently forgotten.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did she really?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CONTACT Deathbyaudio.com

PRICE $395 street

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

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

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

ASSEMBLED USA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taylor is unhappy with the insinuation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Steely Dan

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

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

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

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

The Doobie Brothers

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

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

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

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

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

Dolly Parton

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Session That Never Happened

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parton remembered the moment in a 2026 interview.

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

Parton was struck by how naturally the three voices fit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adamson recalls some of the other participants.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thank you all for an amazing run.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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