Ronnie Wood isn't letting the Rolling Stones' touring hiatus keep him off the road. With the band taking a break from live performances, the guitarist has been touring Europe and South America with his solo group, the Ammo Band, and has a rare U.S. solo show scheduled for March 22 at New York's Beacon Theatre. Tickets go on sale November 18.

“I’ve never had any time off,” Wood tells Rolling Stone. “Now that the Stones have got a little sabbatical, I’m making the most of it and keeping my chops together, using my fingers, and getting the blood running. It’s such a buzz, physically and mentally.”

The Rolling Stones had been expected to tour this year behind their latest album, Foreign Tongues, but Keith Richards reportedly wasn't ready to commit to another run of dates. Wood says the prospect of getting back on the road with the band remains appealing to him and Mick Jagger, but the decision rests with Richards.

“I am hoping [we’ll tour again], and so is Mick,” Wood says. “But we’re waiting for Keith to make his mind up. His attitude is ‘I’ve had enough touring for a bit,’ he said he wanted a little break.”

In the meantime, Wood has been enjoying the opportunity to revisit songs from across his career. His solo shows mix Rolling Stones favorites such as “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” and “It’s Only Rock and Roll” with Faces classics, solo material and covers made famous by Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner.

The guitarist says he relishes the freedom of putting together a set that draws from so many different corners of his musical life. He's also enjoying the challenge of leading his own band, which features longtime collaborators including bass guitarist Willie Weeks and drummer Andy Newmark.

“The best part is the element of risk, which is always great,” Wood says. “And each song is always on the verge of collapse. With me and Keith, we weave, but we don’t know where we’re going. With my solo band, I do drive a tight ship actually, even if I say it myself. I just love being a band leader, and I couldn’t have a better bunch of people to steer along.”

“I do think it’s a risk, this one,” guitarist Marcin says of his new single and video, “PANICATTACK.”

Then again, the Polish guitarist could say the same about nearly everything he’s done since winning the ninth season of his homeland’s TV competition Must Be the Music in 2015.

Marcin Patrzalek, 26, has combined his percussive playing style with classical, rock and Spanish influences to create a maverick approach that is distinctive — by design, and without apology.

“This is the kind of vibe I bring,” he tells Guitar Player via Zoom from Warsaw. “I like spice. I think musicians should be interesting and unapologetic. I don’t think everyone should just be wearing a black hoodie onstage and standing in one place, making sure they play the Lydian flat-7 correctly. That’s not me.”

And Marcin is well aware of why that’s the case.

“I didn’t grow up in a household where my dad was blasting Metallica and Slayer, or even like the Beatles or the Grateful Dead or something,” he explains. “I was discovering everything on my own, so I don’t have a frame of reference for, ‘Oh, this is the next step. This is what I should do.’ I just do stuff ’cause I like it, usually not what other people expect.

“Sometimes they bring a spark of controversy or discussion, but it never hurt me. It never had a negative impact on my life or career. It’s the opposite. I really want to be more bold in the choices I’m making, and more intentional.”

Nevertheless, Marcin expects “PANICATTACK” — which he’s been developing during the past two years, live and in the studio — will raise some eyebrows even among those who expect to be surprised whenever he releases something new.

With its mix of electric and acoustic guitar parts — the latter played on a prototype signature model he’s developing with Ibanez — the track has a darker, heavier bent than he’s explored before. The accompanying video follows suit. And after employing spoken word passages in the past, “PANICATTACK” also finds him vocalizing the title in a chorus kind of approach that’s more integrated as part of the song’s musical structure.

“I’ve done pieces before where I played on electric,” he says, “most notably, I guess, the ‘Art of Guitar’ track [with RJ Pasin], which ended up being really, really big for me. But with this one there is just way more meat to the electric guitar,” especially, he adds, in the middle section, which “is like a club kind of hardcore, heavy section. It’s something I think no one is really expecting of me.”

“PANICATTACK,” in fact, is filled with things Marcin hasn’t done before. Best to let him tick off the ways.

“It’s not as linear as I’ve done before. The whole song never reaches the one. The key of the song would be E minor, but in the hook it goes between B7 and A minor, so it goes between the Five and Four and never goes to the one. Same in the other verses; they stay not on the one.

“Then it goes into the club section with this four-on-the-floor beat, which I’ve never done before and is pretty rare, I think, in guitar music, and that’s the time when it does go to the one, to the E, but you’re really, really quickly slapped in the face with this thumping, super-fast abrasive, electronic section, and you also kind of leave that tonic center because it goes to the E double harmonic minor thing — E, F, G-sharp, that sort of sound.

“I wasn’t trying to think about it; I was just trying to play around the neck and this really weird stuff happened and it really shifts around a lot. I don’t think you necessarily hear it all immediately, which I like. I think I did a good job of hiding the more unique harmonies in a mainstream-sounding song. I don’t think a layperson would understand what I’m doing.”

As for his singing, Marcin — who’s experienced two panic attacks himself — was responding to a world on edge and wanted to capture that feeling with his voice as well as his guitar.

“If you want to have a clear meaning in a piece of music, it’s very hard to do, in my opinion, without some lyrical element,” he explains. “I think the subject matter is something that requires that on-the-nose treatment. It needs to be very loud and in your face, and I want it to feel like something anxiety-driven.

“I’m very proud of the fact I overcame my anxiety to put that in the song, because it’s a very new thing for me, a true vocalization. That’s another thing I’m crossing my fingers that people enjoy.”

Marcin calls “PANICATTACK” “a hint” about his next album, the follow-up to 2024’s Dragon in Harmony. “It’s like a transitional piece... that connects the ‘Art of Guitar’ and ‘How Music Works’ and all that crazy, technical stuff with Marcin to come,” he says. He promises that the album will “definitely be heavier,” with more electric guitar and strings as well as ’90s alternative rock influences — specifically Tool and Deftones. It will also feature more vocalizing, “more towards like what’s in ‘PANICATTACK,’ definitely not spoken word.”

And there will be guests — some of whom, he promises, “I think will be really, really major.”

“There’s also going to be a huge amount of melodic hooks; it’s a record of hooks, not noodles,” adds Marcin, who’s also handling all the writing, recording and music video direction himself. “I think it’s so miles ahead of the music I’ve been releasing before.”

Marcin will perform three sold-out shows in Warsaw in December before beginning a European tour in February, starting with the Art on Ice Swiss figure skating gala and then playing his own dates through April.

“I’m already getting angry DMs asking for other countries and continents,” he says. “That is actually going to happen. The tour is going to grow; I’m hoping to announce more cities very early next year. And as that is happening, I’m going to be revealing more and more of the album, more of the concept. There’s a lot going on.”

Joe Satriani found two very different things to admire in Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. One seemed capable of taking electric-guitar playing somewhere entirely unexpected with every performance. The other could hold a listener’s attention through an entire solo without ever seeming to run short of ideas.

Speaking with Q1043 New York, Satriani reflected on the contrasting styles of the two British guitar greats — and former Yardbirds members — whose influence helped shape his own musical development.

“That generation was very interesting, because they produced so many different personalities on guitar,” he said (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar). “And if I could take two, like you talk about Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. Completely different personalities as people and as musicians.”

Beck’s playing was an adventure in itself. Satriani recalled listening to his records and sometimes wondering where the guitar had gone, only for Beck to reappear with something completely unexpected.

“And his way of playing was so unusual. And then he would try things that were just so outrageous and sometimes they didn’t work out, but that was part of the experience. You got to experience Jeff Beck trying stuff out. And he would innovate because he couldn’t help himself but invent things every time he played.”

Clapton’s appeal was rooted in something quite different. Satriani was fascinated by his command of the solo, particularly his ability to develop an idea without losing the listener along the way. Cream’s “Crossroads” offered a prime example.

“What I heard was this unique thing — and this is really nitpicking for musicians — but Eric had this ability to sustain interest for whatever length of time he was given to play a solo. And ‘Crossroads’ is a perfect example. You start listening to it, and he doesn’t burn out.”

For Satriani, that consistency was remarkable. Clapton never seemed to exhaust his ideas or struggle to find his way through a performance. Beck, on the other hand, was prepared to risk failure in pursuit of something new.

“And you’d hear Jeff Beck try things and crash and burn and go out of tune and then come back in and do something else brilliant. And we’re talking about two equally brilliant guitar players that I love and are part of the foundation of my musicianship. But Eric’s thing that I noticed really early on was, ‘How does he do that? How does he sustain interest?’”

Satriani has previously gone into greater detail about the impact Beck had on him. In a 2023 Facebook post, he described the late guitarist as “a genius, a stunning original,” praising his seemingly endless capacity to surprise.

“He had an enormous impact on my guitar playing, my musicianship, and my soul,” Satriani wrote. “When I was a beginner, I would spend hours trying to jam along with his solo albums. I found his approach to the instrument so inspiring.”

He also remembered being drawn to Beck’s unconventional arrangements and aggressive guitar tones, adding that the guitarist was always unmistakably himself.

Clapton left an equally important mark. In a 2021 interview with Classic Rock, Satriani picked out From the Cradle as one of his favorite records from the guitarist’s blues period.

“I loved the way he approached that record by recording everything live. I was a fan of Clapton ever since I started playing guitar but that record was really remarkable.”

Brian Eno turned down the chance to reunite with Roxy Music for their 2022 farewell tour, citing environmental concerns, according to guitarist Phil Manzanera.

The band had not performed live in more than a decade when they embarked on their 50th-anniversary tour, which concluded with a sold-out show at London's O2 Arena in October 2022. It proved to be their final run of concerts, with Manzanera subsequently confirming that Roxy Music would never play live again.

Despite Eno's departure in 1973, Manzanera says the band hoped to bring him back into the fold for the occasion.

“In true Eno fashion he said, ‘I’m not flying anymore for environmental reasons,’” Manzanera tells Vulture.

Manzanera isn't inclined to second-guess his former bandmate's explanation.

“I’ll choose to believe it. He’s the same guy I met in 1971.”

Eno had made his reluctance to reunite clear well before the farewell tour. In a 2012 interview with The Independent, he said he had no interest in touring with Roxy Music again, despite maintaining good relationships with his former bandmates.

“It’s simply not my temperament to look back, which is why, for example, I could never tour with Roxy Music again,” he explained. “I keep telling them I don’t want to do it. They are nice people; they understand.”

For Manzanera, the 2022 shows provided an opportunity to give Roxy Music the kind of farewell he felt the band had long deserved, complete with a visual presentation befitting its legacy. The guitarist has also explained that the logistical challenges of touring Europe after Brexit helped convince the group to call it a day rather than try to extend their run.

“It was the first time we were ever able to play with the appropriate and well-presented iconography of Roxy Music,” he says.

“For a band like Roxy, that’s very important, because it’s always about music and image. I was finally able to show people what I do without the equipment blowing up. I could say good-bye. There will never be another Roxy gig.”

Eno's departure from Roxy Music didn't end his musical partnership with Manzanera. The two continued working together on the guitarist's solo projects, including his 1975 album Diamond Head, and as part of the 1976 music project 801.

Manzanera has previously told Guitar Player about the important role Eno played in shaping the sound of Roxy Music's first two albums. The pair frequently worked together, with Eno processing Manzanera’s electric-guitar signal through his electronic equipment and contributing to the performances.

“He and I used to do a lot of stuff together where he would treat my guitars through his EMS VCS3 synthesizer, and we both had Revox tape recorders,” Manzanera explained.

“So when you heard us doing stuff together, you’d have heard my guitar signal with echoes and distortion, and stuff like that, but you also would have heard my treated guitar sound through Eno’s oscillators and filters and things. He also had a DeArmond pedal modified to control the speed of our Revox tape recorders.”

Although Roxy Music have retired from the road, their legacy continues to receive attention through archival releases. The band is celebrating its 1973 album For Your Pleasure with a Super Deluxe Edition featuring previously unheard songwriting demos, studio outtakes, live recordings and previously unreleased performances.

Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins gave each other's careers a significant boost in 1967 with the song “Both Sides, Now.” But in a new interview with The Guardian, Collins says Mitchell, the song's writer, wasn't happy that she scored a major hit with it before Mitchell had a chance to record it herself.

Collins says she first heard the song — and met its writer — thanks to an early-morning phone call from Al Kooper, the musician and producer who played the signature organ lines on Bob Dylan's ”Like a Rolling Stone” and founded Blood, Sweat & Tears.

“I’m 48 years sober, but in the old days I drank,” Collins says. “One night in 1967, I was passed out and the phone rang at about 3 a.m. It was my friend Al Kooper. He said he’d been at a club and had run into this woman, Joni, who wrote songs. He put her on the phone and she sang ‘Both Sides, Now’ over the phone. It was brilliant. I said: ‘I’ll be right over.’ I recorded it the next day and it became a huge hit.”

Collins included her recording on her 1967 album Wildflowers. Released as a single in October 1968, it climbed to number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 by December and reached number six in Canada. The following year, it won a Grammy for Best Folk Performance. The recording also peaked at number three on Billboard’s Easy Listening chart and has since become one of Collins' signature songs.

“I don’t think Joni was too happy that I was the first to record it, but she was very generous and I’ve since recorded many of her songs. She was unknown then, so I’m proud that I was able to help introduce her to the world. She’s one of the great writers of all time.”

Mitchell has credited a passage in Saul Bellow's 1959 novel Henderson the Rain King with inspiring the song. In the book, the protagonist looks down at the clouds from an airplane while traveling to Africa. Mitchell happened to be reading the passage on a flight of her own when the idea for the song struck.

“I was reading ... Henderson the Rain King on a plane and early in the book Henderson ... is also up in a plane. He's on his way to Africa and he looks down and sees these clouds. I put down the book, looked out the window and saw clouds too, and I immediately started writing the song. I had no idea that the song would become as popular as it did.”

As with much of Mitchell's music, “Both Sides, Now” makes use of an alternate tuning. The song is played in open D (D-A-D-F#-A-D). In early live performances, Mitchell played it in G, using a capo at the fifth fret. For her 1969 studio recording, she placed the capo at the fourth fret of her 1956 Martin D-28, putting the song in F# major.

Mitchell recorded her own version for her second album, 1969's Clouds, before revisiting the song in a lush orchestral arrangement for her 2000 album Both Sides Now. But the success of Collins' recording had already created a curious situation: Because Collins released it first and took it into the Top 10 before Mitchell had secured a recording contract, many listeners assumed it was Collins' song.

The confusion persisted even after Mitchell released her own orchestral version. According to a 2001 report in the Globe and Mail, archived on Mitchell's official website, several people actually asked the songwriter how she had managed to get Judy Collins to let her have the song.

Twenty-five years ago today, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr reunited with George Harrison for the last time. The three surviving Beatles met for lunch in New York on November 12, 2001, while Harrison was receiving treatment for cancer. Just 17 days later, he was dead, aged 58.

Looking back on that final visit, McCartney recalled an afternoon filled with laughter and reminiscences rather than sadness. He also remembered an unusually tender moment between two friends who had known each other since childhood.

“We held hands,” McCartney told Uncut seven years later. “It’s funny, even at the height of our friendship, as guys, you would never hold hands. It just wasn’t a Liverpool thing. But it was lovely.”

“But it was really lovely, and the years just stripped back,” McCartney said of the visit.

Rather than dwell on Harrison's illness, the two friends found themselves reminiscing about their shared past. McCartney recalled one exchange in particular, when Harrison expressed frustration at being moved between treatment facilities.

“One of the things I remember him saying, because he’d been moved from Switzerland to a clinic in New York, and then to a clinic somewhere else because you sort of follow the treatment, he said ‘Can’t we just stop in one place?’ And I was going, ‘Yeah! Let’s go to Speke Hall!’”

Speke Hall, a Tudor manor house in Liverpool, was not far from the neighborhoods where the two musicians had grown up. McCartney's suggestion was a playful invitation to return to familiar surroundings, far removed from the medical treatment that had come to dominate Harrison's final months.

Their friendship had begun long before Beatlemania, when the two boys discovered they shared a passion for rock and roll and electric guitars.

“I first met George a long time ago, on the school bus,” McCartney told Uncut. “We occasionally would sit next to each other on the bus, and we found we had rock and roll in common, and guitars. Eventually, we made a guitar together. It turned out more like a Hawaiian guitar.

“It was a block of wood with strings on it. When I say we made it, I have to hand it to George, he was more the engineer than me. I stood by and made a few useless suggestions. Those kinds of things brought us closer together. We became friends.”

That friendship would eventually change the course of popular music. When McCartney and John Lennon realized neither of them had the skill to play lead guitar, McCartney knew exactly whom to recommend.

“Eventually, when we were looking for a guitar player, I suggested to John that I had this friend who was really good. So George came along one night, on an empty bus, on the top deck, somewhere around Woolton where John lived. And he pulled out his guitar and played ‘Raunchy,’” he said, referring to Bill Justis’s 1957 hit song. “And that was it — he was in the band.

“He was a bit too young, almost out of the age range for us, a little too baby-faced, but he was just a great player.”

Harrison joined the Quarrymen, the group that would evolve into the Beatles, while still a teenager. He would go on to become one of the most distinctive guitarists in rock, contributing to some of the band's most enduring recordings before establishing a successful solo career.

Looking back on their final meeting, McCartney captured the lifelong affection he felt for his friend.

“It was good,” he recalled. “It was like we were dreaming. He was my little baby brother, almost, because I’d known him that long.”

Queen were a unique band in that all four members individually wrote songs that topped the charts. Even the Beatles, whose songs have reached number one in the U.S. and U.K. a combined 38 times, can’t claim that distinction.

“Somebody to Love,” released on 1976’s A Day at the Races, turns 50 today (November 12). For Brian May, the song was not only a spiritual successor to their operatic epic “Bohemian Rhapsody,” but also an example of the band’s songwriting “sausage machine” operating at full tilt.

The track’s elaborate arrangements included layers of vocals designed to evoke a gospel choir, alongside an extravagant approach to May’s guitar harmonies that gave them an orchestral quality. There’s also one of the guitarist’s trademark melodic guitar solos, played with the neck and middle pickups of his Red Special out of phase to produce a “screamy” tone. But, speaking previously to Absolute Radio, May said the song was all about Freddie Mercury.

“Freddie wanted to be Aretha Franklin, you have to bear this in mind,” he said. “That explains everything. He loved Aretha, and this was his gospel epic.”

May, whose self-penned hits include “We Will Rock You,” “I Want It All” and “The Show Must Go On,” understood Mercury’s vision. He was happy to take a back seat as, five albums into their career, Queen’s songwriting machine was running smoothly.

“It kind of followed in the steps of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ in the sense that we were building up these multiple vocal parts, but this time we were being a gospel choir instead of an English choir,” May recalled. “Freddie came in very well prepared with a lot of vocal parts, and we just worked our way through them.

“It became something we called the sausage machine. We sort of followed our instincts, or whoever was leading at the time, and it’s a very good feeling. I remember thinking, ‘Yeah, this is going to be something great.’”

May’s description of the process suggests a band working with an almost assembly-line efficiency, with everyone knowing their parts and contributing to a larger whole. It was a rather different experience from the disagreements that surrounded the writing of “Don’t Stop Me Now”, or the raised eyebrows that followed Mercury’s proposed album title.

Following Mercury’s death, the remaining members of Queen performed the song with George Michael at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium in London on April 20, 1992. The performance has since become one of the most celebrated interpretations of the song.

“People like Mr. Michael — it was staggering to work with people of that caliber,” May later said of the performance (via Ultimate Classic Rock). “Without any kind of falseness, he was one of the great surprises to most people of the evening. I think in most people's feelings, he got closest to the range of Freddie himself.”

May has since clarified his position on touring and the future of Queen, while pouring cold water on hopes of a residency at the Sphere. He has also been looking back on Queen’s historic performance behind the Iron Curtain in Budapest, reflecting on the difficult feelings that revisiting the show has brought back.

Jimmy Page hasn’t been on a concert tour in more than a quarter-century, and the Led Zeppelin guitarist has no plans to change that. But while the prospect of returning to life on the road holds little appeal, he insists he hasn’t lost his desire to play.

Page, 82, last toured in 2000, when he joined forces with the Black Crowes for the Excess All Areas run. The collaboration brought together the legendary guitarist and the American rock band for a series of performances built around their shared love of blues and rock and roll. The tour was cut short after Page suffered a back injury, forcing the cancellation of its remaining dates.

Although he hasn’t embarked on another tour since, Page hasn’t entirely disappeared from the stage. His most high-profile appearance came in 2007, when he reunited with Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham for Led Zeppelin’s celebrated one-off concert at London’s O2 Arena. He also joined the Foo Fighters at Wembley Stadium that year, before performing alongside Leona Lewis at the 2008 Beijing Olympics closing ceremony.

In the years since, however, opportunities to see Page perform have become increasingly scarce. His most recent public appearance was at the 2023 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, where he paid tribute to Link Wray with a performance of “Rumble.”

Now, speaking to The Sun (via LedZepNews.com) at the Music Industry Trust Awards in London, Page has explained why fans shouldn’t expect a return to touring. It’s the relentless travel and hotel-room routine that puts him off, rather than any waning enthusiasm for music.

“The whole sort of, ‘living out of a suitcase, bags go down at seven in the morning and then you leave for the plane at midday’, that doesn’t really appeal to me any more,” he says.

The guitarist is nevertheless keen to make one thing clear: he’s not finished playing.

“But the idea of playing does, and I am still playing – of course I am,” he adds.

That puts Page in contrast with his former Led Zeppelin bandmate Robert Plant, who continues to make touring a central part of his musical life. Plant recently announced a new series of U.K. and Ireland shows for summer 2027.

The five dates begin June 19 at Hampton Court Palace in London, with further performances at Lincoln Castle on June 24 and Scarborough Open Air Theatre on June 26. Plant will then play the Piece Hall in Halifax on June 27 before closing the run at Trinity College in Dublin on June 29.

Jimi Hendrix could soon have a place in your pocket. The late guitar legend has been chosen to represent Washington state in the U.S. Mint’s American Innovation $1 Coin Program, which issues limited-run coins celebrating notable American innovators.

Hendrix is the first musician selected for the initiative, which began in 2019 and recognizes notable innovators and inventions from across the country. Previous selections include Apple co-founder Steve Jobs for California and NASA for Texas. The 57-coin series will also include representatives from the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories.

Washington Governor Bob Ferguson made the final selection from a shortlist of five candidates put forward by a committee, citing both Hendrix’s musical achievements and his connection to the state.

“Picking just one example from the most innovative state in the nation was difficult, but Jimi Hendrix’s historic innovation on guitar and his deep roots in Washington make him a great choice to represent our state,” Ferguson says.

Hendrix’s nomination is now with the U.S. Mint, which will develop a design for the coin. The Secretary of the Treasury has final approval, and the finished dollar is scheduled to enter circulation in 2029.

Born in Seattle in 1942, Hendrix left his hometown to pursue a career as a musician, initially backing artists including Little Richard and the Isley Brothers. His breakthrough came after moving to England in 1966 and forming the Jimi Hendrix Experience with British musicians Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell. Within months, his explosive playing had made him the talk of the London music scene, leaving established stars like Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend scrambling .

Hendrix approached the electric guitar as an instrument with possibilities that extended far beyond conventional playing. He turned amplifier feedback into a musical tool, pushed fuzz and wah effects into new territory and combined the language of the blues with psychedelic rock. His performances also helped establish the Fender Stratocaster as one of rock’s defining instruments.

Nearly six decades after his death in 1970, Hendrix remains a touchstone for guitarists across generations. His combination of blues phrasing, psychedelic experimentation and fearless use of distortion and feedback helped expand the instrument’s vocabulary — and his recordings continue to offer a daunting benchmark for anyone who picks up an electric guitar.

Ask Joe Bonamassa about the most memorable moment he’s witnessed at a concert, and he doesn’t take long to answer. He immediately points to a performance by Jeff Beck at the 2010 Crossroads Guitar Festival in Bridgeview, Illinois.

It wasn’t simply because Beck had chosen to play one of the most stirring operatic compositions of all time. As he performed it with bassist Rhonda Smith, keyboardist Jason Rebello and drummer Narada Michael Walden, nature itself joined the performance — leaving Bonamassa speechless.

“My best Crossroads memory: 2010, Jeff Beck playing Nessun dorma,” he says in a social media post. “I was watching him play it from the stands.

“I snuck out front and as he was playing it, and it was starting to crescendo. This storm cloud had come over, and the clouds were purple. It was the most amazing visual to go along with some of the most amazing guitar playing I’ve ever heard in my entire life — that was Jeff Beck.”

The video clip captures exactly what Bonamassa witnessed: as the aria reaches its famous climax, a wide shot reveals dark clouds gathering above Beck as he delivers his dramatic finale.

Nessun dorma, popularized by opera legend Luciano Pavarotti, tells the story of a prince determined to win the affections of an uninterested princess. Written by Giacomo Puccini for his opera Turandot, it was first performed in 1926. Its closing declaration, “Vincerò” (“I will win”), later became synonymous with the 1990 soccer World Cup.

In 2010, Beck — who died in 2023 aged 78 — explained why he’d chosen the aria.

“I’m looking away from rock and roll into proper, serious melodies, which, for me, has been a good playground to look into,” he said.

“Pavarotti never ceases to amaze me. The bellowing — the big, deep, proper opera singing — is something I love. I was keen to try Nessun dorma, which he sang magnificently. My guitar is not a voice, and it’s not his voice; I played it like a spirited, bluesy thing. I was trying to make the guitar do things it’s not supposed to do.”

Prince's legendary performance of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” at the 2004 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony may have been more than a spectacular display of electric-guitar playing. According to revelations from an unreleased documentary about the musician, it was also an opportunity to settle a score with Rolling Stone.

The guitarist reportedly felt slighted after being omitted from the magazine’s 2003 list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. And when he took the stage the following year alongside Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood and Dhani Harrison to honor George Harrison, he apparently had something to prove.

Prince’s contribution to the Beatles classic became one of the most celebrated guitar performances of his career. Stepping forward for an extended solo, he unleashed a breathtaking display of melodic playing, high-speed runs and showmanship before tossing his guitar into the air and strutting offstage.

As a New York Times Magazine feature on an epic, nine-hour Prince documentary by Oscar-winning filmmaker Ezra Edelman revealed in 2024, the performance may have carried a more personal message.

“On its face, it’s a supreme expression of Prince’s superiority and bravura,” the magazine wrote. “But the film gives it a new context. Questlove, on the screen, talks about his disbelief, the previous year, when Rolling Stone made a list of the 100 greatest guitar players of all time, and Prince was left off it.”

The documentary reportedly suggests that Prince didn’t forget the omission, waiting for an opportunity to make his feelings known.

“Prince nursed these kinds of slights, and his commandeering of the stage — at an event associated with [founder] Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone — was, in part, an act of revenge,” the article continued. “There’s spite and aggression in the performance. But there’s also pain — in his wincing face, his apartness: a small, soigné Black man onstage with these rumpled white rockers.”

Whatever his motivation, the performance left a lasting impression on his fellow musicians. Petty, who was onstage with Prince that night, recalled recognizing that something extraordinary was happening as the guitarist launched into his solo.

“You see me nodding at him, to say, ‘Go on, go on.’ He just burned it up. You could feel the electricity of ‘something really big’s going down here,’” the late singer-songwriter told The New York Times in 2016, reflecting on Prince’s career following his death.

The performance has since become one of Prince’s most enduring musical moments, with Guitar Player previously naming it one of the greatest guitar solos in music history.

And perhaps Rolling Stone eventually got the message, too. In 2023, the magazine expanded its 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time ranking to 250 players, finally giving Prince his due with a number 14 placement. Then, in May 2026, it went considerably further. Its new 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time list placed Prince’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” performance at number 15 — while awarding the top spot to his solo on “Purple Rain.”

It’s quite a turnaround for a publication that had once left him off its list of the world’s greatest guitarists.

There’s an unfortunate footnote to the documentary revelations that originally brought Prince’s alleged motivation to light. Despite Edelman’s extensive work and access to the musician’s archives, his film will not be released. In February 2025, Netflix and Prince’s estate announced an agreement to scrap the project, with the estate instead developing a separate documentary featuring material from Prince’s vault.

Why wait for late November? If you need a fresh axe, a punchy new amp, or a few pedals to rebuild your board, you can jump the line right now. Early Black Friday guitar deals are ready to rock, with loads of retailers launching sales as soon as we swung into November. At Musician’s Friend, you can save up to 50% on guitar gear, including a huge range of guitars, amps, pedals, and more.

Since Guitar Center revamped Musician's Friend as its main hub for overstock and closeouts, I was curious to see what deals they'd bring to their first Black Friday run.

I’ve looked through the sale and spotted loads of early deals you can grab, including a fair few of our top-rated guitars, closeout deals on guitars that will be disappearing soon, and tasty discounts on pedals, amps, and even recording gear.

First up is the Epiphone '80s Explorer. If subtle isn't in your vocabulary, this one is for you. Epiphone nailed the classic '80s look and feel with this model. It comes loaded with active EMG pickups, making it built for high-gain rhythm work and fast, searing leads.

The neck profile feels fast, the body balance is surprisingly comfortable, and at $140 off, it's a solid pickup for anyone wanting to add some serious heavy-metal Metallica energy to their rack.

Next is the Guild Surfliner, which has $150 off, down to just $349.99. Guild went way off the beaten path with the Surfliner, and we love it. It brings a retro-cool aesthetic paired with a versatile pickup setup that covers everything from jangly surf tones to gritty garage rock.

This is a closeout deal. Once the stock clears out at $349.99, it's gone for good. At this price point, it makes a fantastic backup instrument or a fun platform for mods.

Lastly, there's the Schecter C-1 SLS Custom, which has $500 off. With this guitar, you get premium specs across the board, like a lightweight Swamp Ash body, an ultra-thin neck profile for effortless speed, and multi-voice Fishman Fluence Modern pickups.

Musician's Friend hasn't posted an exact end date for these discounts, but closeout stock on popular colorways usually dries up fast. If one of these guitars fits what you've been looking for, grabbing it before the main Black Friday rush hits is a smart move.

Mick Jagger only needs a television and an acoustic guitar to get the songwriting juices flowing — even if what's on the screen is rubbish. The Rolling Stones frontman says he recently found himself writing song ideas while watching TV at home, eventually having to switch off the distraction to keep the inspiration coming.

“I was sitting watching the TV last night in my flat,” Jagger tells Uncut (via Guitar.com). “I picked up my acoustic guitar and wrote four different things. I said, ‘Turn the TV off. This is rubbish!’ It was quite late and I was banging out these tunes. I put the TV back on after I’d done two.”

But the creative spark hadn't run its course. “Then I thought, ‘Hang on, I’ve got this idea…’ I turned off the TV and wrote two more.”

Jagger — whose songwriting partnership with Keith Richards ranks among the most successful in rock history — is careful to point out that the ideas aren't necessarily finished songs.

“I’m not saying they’re finished songs — they’re more like sketches. I thought, ‘Well, this is good going. You’ve got to do this every day.’ That’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been writing quite a lot. But for what I don’t know.”

The Rolling Stones recently released their 27th studio album, Foreign Tongues, following 2023's Hackney Diamonds. But they haven't confirmed plans to tour behind the new record. Their last road run came in 2024, in support of Hackney Diamonds. And according to bandmate Ronnie Wood, Keith Richards may be the one holding things up.

“Mick and I have already been promoting a little bit,” Wood said. “But we're waiting for Keith to settle down what he wants to do for his future, because he's a bit road weary at the moment. He said, ‘I don't want to do any more touring for a bit.’ So I thought, Well, I’m not gonna sit back and wait. So I’m going to get out there and play.”

Wood has since done just that with his AMMO band. Jagger, meanwhile, is already looking ahead to 2027, with the possibility of more live performances on his mind — whether with the Rolling Stones or on his own.

“I’d really like to do some shows,” he admits. “So that’s in my head. But if not the Stones, then any show!”

Willie Nelson has revealed that he twice asked his wife to let him die while battling COVID in 2022. The country legend has previously discussed his fight with the virus, but in his new memoir, The Last Leaf (via People), he offers a more detailed account of just how close he came to death.

The 93-year-old recalls waking up in his tour bus bed alongside Annie, his wife since 1991, and realizing how seriously ill he was.

“The distance from the bed to the bathroom is less than five feet. But I couldn’t get there. I couldn’t breathe.”

Annie activated a nebulizer to ease his chest congestion and gave him oxygen, but neither seemed to help. Around that time, the COVID test she'd administered came back positive.

“Paxlovid had just come out, and I knew [bandmate] Mickey Raphael had a prescription, which he gave to us,” Annie recalled. “By this time, you could breathe, but barely. We gave our drivers, Tony and Gates, the option to fly home, but they said no. They drove us back to Austin.

“In the back of the bus, you stayed isolated and grew sicker. I wasn’t sure you would make it. I alerted Dr. Greenwood that we were on our way and asked to have a mobile monoclonal antibody guy meet us.”

Nelson — well-known for his passion for weed — asked Annie how she'd known what to do.

“I’d worked all this out for months,” she told him. “I knew there was a good chance you’d catch it. I knew I needed to be ready. I also knew that taking you to a hospital was not an option. You’d have no chance of privacy, and hospitals are hotbeds of deadly viruses.”

When they arrived home, Nelson was carried to their bedroom, which Annie said “was already fitted out like a hospital.” But while they waited for the medication to take effect, his condition continued to deteriorate.

“Every labored breath caused you incredible pain,” she recalled. “I wanted to do more, but I’d done all I could. I just had to sit there and watch you suffer. It was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do.”

Nelson, who remembered “feeling excruciating pain in every cell of my body,” then asked Annie: “Am I right in remembering that I said, ‘Annie, you need to let me go’?”

She confirmed he had.

“But you wouldn’t let me,” he continued.

“What I actually said was, ‘Willie, if you die, I’ll kill you,’” she replied. “And you said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back in a minute.’ You were thinking about reincarnation, but I didn’t want to hear about reincarnation. I wanted you to understand that I was not about to let you go.”

The doctor returned the following day with medication that he warned could either cure Nelson or kill him. The singer's response was straightforward: “Either way, just give it to me.”

The treatment worked, but Annie told him he spent two weeks in “utter hell.”

Nelson then asked her one more time: “Did I ask you to let me die?”

“Yup, twice,” she replied. “The whole thing was a nightmare.”

The Last Leaf: Reflections on Late-Life Creativity — and My Longest Love Affair is available now via Penguin Press.

Buddy Guy was a hero to the electric guitar players of the British blues boom. When he first arrived in England with his trio in the mid-1960s, his high-energy style, built around amp overdrive, feedback and a potent mix of raw emotion and technical skill, made a lasting impression.

But while the blues guitar legend helped inspire a generation of British players, he felt they took his approach to extremes — particularly when it came to volume.

Guy even had to warn Jimi Hendrix about what awaited him in the clubs where those guitarists played. And Hendrix, as Guy points out, was hardly known for keeping things quiet.

“You’ll laugh, but I thought he used to play too loud,” Guy says of Hendrix in the December 2025 issue of Guitar World. “When I first came up, Muddy Waters and those guys had two little speakers at each corner of the blues club, and it was a clean sound.”

The British players, however, had a different idea of how loud the blues should be.

“When the British guys started playing, they had stacks of Marshalls! After I got to know Jimi, I’d go see him and [warn him], ‘Before you go in there, you ain’t gonna hear nothing.’ That type of sound just took over.

“That clean sound went away because, with the amplifiers, it was a dogfight. And then all the special effects came in, and Jimi, I think he was one of the greatest that ever took advantage of the special effects, because a lot of people used them after him.”

Despite their different approaches to the blues, Hendrix was a huge admirer of Guy, even going to see him perform in 1967. The two eventually met in New York, where Guy initially mistook Hendrix's signature stage moves for his own.

“I got invited to play in New York City. I was putting on the ‘Buddy Guy show,’ with my guitar behind my back and throwing it around,” he told Guitar Player of their first meeting. “And somebody said to me, ‘Look out, man, that’s Jimi Hendrix over there!’ — ’cause those were Jimi’s moves.

“But I said, ‘So what? Who the hell is that?’

“Eventually, Jimi came over to me and introduced himself. He said, ‘I just canceled a gig, ’cause I wanted to see you.’ And that’s how we became friends.”

Still, Guy wasn't interested in following Hendrix down the road of elaborate effects and increasingly adventurous guitar sounds. He preferred to stick with the blues players who had shaped his own musical upbringing.

“I was into Arthur Crudup, T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, and all the old blues guys,” Guy told GP on a separate occasion. “I wasn’t into all the special effects. I liked what Hendrix was doing when I heard it. But I decided to let him have that. I figured my time would come.”

Eric Clapton was another guitarist captivated by Guy's playing. In fact, Clapton has said that seeing Guy's power trio perform in London inspired him to leave John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and form Cream.

In related news, Guy has discussed the one thing every guitarist needs to play the blues and reflected on his slightly unusual relationship with his son.

“He didn’t know who I was until he could turn 21 and get into the blues clubs,” Guy has revealed. “He said, ‘Dad, I didn’t know you could play like that!’”

Tom Petty used music to raise his eldest daughter, Adria, introducing her to records he felt she needed to hear and encouraging her to study them closely. But when he caught her listening to one particular band, the “American Girl” songwriter decided it was time for a musical intervention.

As the driving force behind the Heartbreakers and a key member of the supergroup the Traveling Wilburys, Petty was one of the most beloved figures in American rock. He died in 2017, aged 66 — a loss his longtime foil, Mike Campbell, is still grieving. But his influence extended well beyond his catalog of timeless hits.

Born in November 1974, Adria arrived two years before Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released their self-titled debut, growing up alongside her father's burgeoning career. She has since established herself as a director, making music videos for Beyoncé, Coldplay, Kings of Leon and others.

In a new interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, Adria recalls how her father used records as a way to teach her about music.

“My dad would always walk in the room and throw a CD or a piece of vinyl on the bed, [and say] ‘Tell me what you think of this,’” she remembers. “We would sit down after I listened to it a lot and discuss it. I would listen to every record with my liner notes out, look at all the lyrics, look at who played on it, look at everything the artist intended, and then talk about it with him.”

Those listening sessions helped foster a lifelong connection between the two, while giving Adria an education that would inform her own creative career.

“There was a long love of music between us,” she says. “Just sort of, ‘Why is something good?’”

Not that they always agreed on what qualified. During her teens, Adria developed a taste for some bands that left her father less than impressed. Aerosmith, in particular, raised a few concerns.

“There were a lot of things I liked in my teens that he was really upset by,” she says. “In particular Aerosmith’s [1989 album] Pump was very concerning to him. When I was listening to, ‘Janie's Got a Gun,’ he was like, ‘I need to intervene here’ and he went and bought me a bunch of records.”

Among his counterprogramming were albums by Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan, including the latter's landmark Highway 61 Revisited. Petty was evidently hoping to broaden his daughter's musical horizons — and perhaps steer her away from what he considered a questionable detour.

The Hendrix recommendation is particularly interesting given the connection between the two guitarists. Although Hendrix is rightly celebrated for his solos, his rhythm playing was equally essential to his sound, even if it sometimes took a back seat to his more spectacular lead work. Petty shared that appreciation for the less flashy side of guitar playing, famously calling rhythm playing “a lost art” in a rediscovered 1997 interview with Guitar Player.

ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons has teamed up with Lithuanian singer, songwriter and theatrical performer Vidas Bareikis, who records as VB by the Sea, for a new single, “NPC,” released today, November 11.

The collaboration came together in unusual circumstances. Bareikis and Gibbons recorded the track in a hotel conference room in Tallinn, Estonia, just hours before ZZ Top kicked off its world tour.

In a November 8 Instagram post, Bareikis shared the story behind the session, describing how he and his team arranged to meet Gibbons before the show.

“To record @billyfgibbons, we had to fly to Tallinn for the first concert of ZZ Top’s world tour.

“Just a couple of hours before the show, we met in a hotel conference room that @talaz_ had already transformed into a recording studio. And in about an hour, we recorded my most incredible feature collaboration to date.

“And what made it so incredible wasn’t just the fact that we were working with a rock legend of this caliber, but even more so his rock ’n’ roll energy, kindness, and amazing sense of humor.

“Thank you, Billy, for the inspiration!”

Produced by Karolis Talutis, Martin Guigui, Brian A. Witkin and Gibbons, “NPC” marks Bareikis's debut release with Pacific Records.

The song takes its title from the video game term non-player character, referring to a character whose actions and dialogue are determined by programming rather than an actual player. Bareikis uses the concept to poke fun at people who go through life on autopilot, following predictable routines and chasing money, status and social approval without questioning their choices.

“NPC” is also the first preview of The Game, Bareikis's forthcoming concept album, which explores ambition, relationships, competition, success and failure through a video game-inspired narrative. The record blends rock music with theatrical storytelling, reflecting Bareikis's background in both disciplines.

Bareikis is an established performer in Lithuania, where his work spans music and theatre. A singer, songwriter, composer and theatre director, he has directed 26 theatrical productions and received the country's prestigious Golden Stage Cross award. He has also won multiple M.A.M.A. Awards, Lithuania's equivalent of the Grammys.

Gibbons, meanwhile, has spent more than five decades as one of rock's most recognizable guitarists. Best known as the founding guitarist and vocalist of ZZ Top, he first made his mark with psychedelic blues-rock group Moving Sidewalks, which opened for the Jimi Hendrix Experience. He has also released solo material and collaborated with a range of musicians beyond his work with the Texas trio, including legendary rocker Dion DiMucci.

An official video for “NPC” is expected to follow, along with live performances in December.

Paul McCartney has been declared a billionaire by Forbes, which estimates the former Beatle's fortune at $1.4 billion, making him the world's third-wealthiest musician.

Only Jay-Z, whose wealth is estimated at $2.8 billion, and Taylor Swift, at around $2 billion, rank higher. According to Forbes, approximately $350 million of McCartney's fortune comes from his time with the Beatles. But it's what he did beyond the band that helped turn him into a billionaire.

The magazine notes that, six decades after singing that he “don't care too much for money,” McCartney has “sung, sued, countersued, toured and toiled his way to a $1.4 billion fortune.”

During the height of Beatlemania in the mid-'60s, however, the Fab Four saw surprisingly little of the money their success generated. Their record deal reportedly earned McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr less than a penny for every record sold. McCartney described the arrangement to Forbes in 2017 as “basically a slave contract.”

As the Beatles approached their end in 1969, McCartney began taking steps to ensure his future earnings would be on different terms. He established MPL Communications, a music publishing company that would protect his interests as a solo artist, while steadily expanding its catalog.

Among his acquisitions were the publishing rights to songs by Beatles inspiration Buddy Holly, along with Broadway scores and Christmas standards. The strategy has proved enormously lucrative, generating royalties whenever those songs are played or performed. As Forbes puts it, “Anytime 'Blue Suede Shoes' is streamed or a high school theater group performs Grease, McCartney gets paid.”

The magazine estimates MPL is now worth at least $250 million. Meanwhile, McCartney's solo career has produced 20 albums, and he has also worked to reclaim rights to the Beatles' back catalog. The band's company, Apple Corps, now generates around $50 million annually through streaming, vinyl sales and merchandise.

Of course, McCartney's considerable wealth is hardly a secret. His fame has long made his financial success a subject of public fascination, and in 1986 he was asked a particularly direct question: “Do you feel guilty about having so much money?”

His answer reflected his working-class upbringing in Liverpool, where he grew up in a council house watching his parents struggle to make ends meet.

“No,” he replied, before elaborating on why he didn't feel the need to apologize for his fortune.

“That was one of the things I thought, ‘God, this is going to be awkward because if I get money, I'm going to turn out like all those people who sort of [say] 'I'm sorry, I did well.' But I think, ‘Sod it,’ you know?

“I'd feel guilty if I had a fleet of Cadillacs and used a lot of petrol all the time,” he continued. “But I don't do that. I try to do good stuff with my money, I try to help a lot of things. I don't shout about it, so I'm not known as a great charity person. But I believe you shouldn't shout about it, [otherwise] I think it's more like a publicity stunt: ‘I've just given to save the children!’”

Although McCartney has generally preferred to keep his philanthropy out of the spotlight, he has supported a number of causes publicly. A vegetarian since 1975, he has long championed animal rights and regularly donated to PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). His late wife, Linda McCartney, also helped establish a successful plant-based food business.

He has additionally performed at numerous benefit events, including Live 8 in 2005 and One World: Together at Home during the COVID-19 pandemic. But he has never been particularly interested in publicizing his charitable contributions.

“I don't feel uncomfortable with it,” he added. “I think if I didn't have it, someone else would have it. And at least I feel like, to some degree, it's in good hands because I know what I do, and I'm into conservation. I'm into peace. I'm certainly not into any power trips.”

McCartney has plenty of musical activity on the horizon, too. He is set to reunite with Ringo Starr and Joe Walsh at VetsAid 2027. The two surviving Beatles have also announced a major new Beatles experience in their hometown of Liverpool.

The night Steve Vai left David Lee Roth's band, Eddie Van Halen called him out of the blue.

“I didn't even know how he knew,” Vai recalls. “He said, ‘You have to come over to my house,’ and we kind of struck up a friendship that was very heavy for, like, four months where we were virtually talking every day. It was weird.”

The timing was remarkable. Vai had spent the previous few years occupying the guitar spot in Roth's solo band — a role that inevitably invited comparisons with the man he'd replaced. But rather than becoming rivals, Vai and Eddie would develop a close friendship that lasted decades.

It's well documented that, after leaving Van Halen, Roth turned to Vai to launch his solo career — and, perhaps more importantly, make a play for Eddie's guitar-hero throne. Vai, however, has consistently maintained that he approached the job with respect, not competition.

Speaking with wrestler-turned-podcaster Chris Jericho alongside Joe Satriani — with whom Vai has just released the debut SatchVai album, The Sea of Emotion — Vai looked back on how he approached the high-profile assignment.

“I sharpened my knives,” he jokes when asked about joining Roth. “When Edward hit the scene and that first record came out, I remember thinking, ‘game on.’ He raised the bar for all of us.”

Still, Vai says he was nervous about joining Roth's band for only about a minute before embracing what was a hugely intimidating job. The partnership proved successful, even if Vai has since acknowledged that he was relatively inexperienced at the time.

Their debut, Eat 'Em and Smile, turned 40 this year and went platinum, as did its 1988 follow-up, Skyscraper. But that marked the end of Vai's time with Roth — and the beginning of an unexpected friendship.

How Eddie knew Vai had left Roth's band remains a mystery. Maybe it was coincidence, but the timing was extraordinary: On the very day Vai's tenure with Roth ended, his supposed rival reached out to welcome him into his world. Whatever tension might have existed between them gave way to a remarkably close friendship.

That friendship also gave Vai a rare opportunity to hear guitar riffs and solos that have yet to see the light of day — although Alex Van Halen and Steve Lukather are working to change that.

“During that period, I’d go up to his house and he would play me this amazing stuff because Edward was like an audio pack rat,” Vai continues. “He was showing me the studio that was being built at the time and he would just go in there and he'd record by himself all you know tons and tons of stuff. I just thought, ‘Make a solo record,’ but [he’d say], ‘No, I’m Van Halen.’”

Satriani, whom Roth touted in the 1990s, has since taken on an Eddie Van Halen-adjacent role in Sammy Hagar's Best of All Worlds band. Hagar has been full of praise for the way Satriani has approached the job. But Vai isn't convinced anyone can truly replicate his late friend's magic.

“I've heard so many people play his songs, play his parts, some people more authentically than others, some people more personally like themselves, and some people it's just an abysmal disaster,” he laughs. “But I’m yet to hear anybody, especially myself, have that DNA in their fingers.”

It's a big part of why Vai has refused to reproduce Eddie's solos note for note.

Meanwhile, after reports emerged that a second Crossroads film was in the works, with Vai potentially reprising his infamous shredding role, the guitarist has since shut down the rumors, explaining how a misunderstanding sparked the story.

Mike Campbell has found ways to keep Tom Petty close, even as he continues to come to terms with the loss of his longtime bandmate and musical partner.

Nearly nine years after Petty's death, the Heartbreakers guitarist says the grief remains very much a part of his life.

“It was like losing your right arm. Very hard — and a surprise — and I’m still grieving,” Campbell tells The Sun in a new interview.

Petty died aged 66 on October 2, 2017, less than a week after he and the Heartbreakers played their final concert together at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. His death was subsequently attributed to an accidental overdose involving several prescription medications, including painkillers he had been taking for a hip injury.

Campbell's connection with Petty stretched back nearly half a century. The two first crossed paths in 1970, when Campbell auditioned for Mudcrutch, the Florida band that preceded the formation of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The guitarist knew almost immediately that Petty was someone special.

“Tom was instantly unforgettable,” Campbell tells The Sun. “Of course, he had the long blond hair but he also had a swagger.

“He had this vibe around him of knowing where he was going — and he was smarter than anybody else in the room.

“The whole rock star thing came later. Tom lived at home [with his parents Earl and Kitty] and was a hippie dude like me.”

Their partnership would eventually produce some of rock's most enduring songs, among them “American Girl,” “Refugee,” “Don’t Do Me Like That” and “I Won’t Back Down.” But Campbell says the bond between them went well beyond what they accomplished in the studio or onstage.

“Tom and I were close, not necessarily to hang out all the time, but our musical and spiritual connection was about as strong as anybody can have,” he says.

That connection is something Campbell still feels when he takes Heartbreakers songs on the road with his current group, the Dirty Knobs. The set includes material he co-wrote with Petty, including “Runnin’ Down a Dream” and “You Got Lucky.”

For Campbell, revisiting the songs is a way to maintain a connection with his old friend.

“I like to perform Heartbreakers songs to keep them alive, to remember and revisit my time with Tom,” he says. “It is bittersweet but there are moments when I feel his spirit. He’s right behind me, saying, ‘Go man, go!’

“You might never get over the loss of your brother or your father or your mother or your best friend but you learn to cope. That’s what grief is.”

Campbell's latest comments arrive alongside the release of Origins 1971-1978, a box set issued November 6 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It revisits the group's early years, before their commercial breakthrough with 1979's Damn the Torpedoes.

The surviving Heartbreakers also recently had an opportunity to revisit that legacy together. In September, Campbell, keyboardist Benmont Tench, drummer Stan Lynch and bassist Ron Blair reunited for the first time since Petty's death, performing at the Americana Music Awards at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium. Country star Chris Stapleton joined them for the special appearance, as they worked through a selection of the band's best-loved songs.

As Mike Love’s health remains a concern, the Beach Boys have cancelled what was supposed to be their final show of 2026, adding to a growing list of scrapped dates and further clouding the band’s touring future.

The group had planned an extensive summer tour this year, but most of those dates were eventually cancelled because of an unspecified health issue affecting Love, the only original member still performing with the Beach Boys.

Two upcoming Florida shows, scheduled for November 11 and 12, have quietly been replaced by performances from John Stamos and the California Sound. The group features core members of the Beach Boys’ touring lineup, but it can't use the Beach Boys name, whose exclusive legal trademark is held by Love.

Now, the band has also pulled the plug on its November 13 show at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Bristol, Virginia. That leaves just one date on the Beach Boys’ itinerary: a May 8, 2027, performance in Alberta, Canada. That show was itself previously cancelled before being rescheduled.

Whether it will actually happen is another question. Two performances in Cincinnati and Nashville last month were widely framed as potentially Love’s final appearances with the Beach Boys. Stamos, who has a long history with the group, made no secret of the emotions surrounding the Nashville show.

“Tonight, at the Ryman, sharing the stage with Mike, I want to be completely present,” he wrote in a social media statement. “Hear every harmony, familiar joke and cheer… I want to cherish every second without feeling those seconds slipping away. That’s what I’m giving him.”

Love, for his part, told The New York Times in an email that he was concentrating on recovering from his health issues. But he also made clear how much performing still means to him, saying that “being onstage this past weekend fed my soul and gave me an incredible lift.” He added, “I’m putting my full energy into rehab so I can get back to the music and the best fans in the world.”

Concerns about Love’s health have been building for some time. Fans had already expressed alarm over his appearance during the Beach Boys’ 2025 tour, and the extensive cancellations this year have only added to the worry.

Al Jardine, another founding member who now tours with the Pet Sounds Band, was particularly troubled by what he saw when he encountered his former bandmate in October. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Jardine called Love’s condition “shocking” and said the experience had left him “really depressed”.

Jardine said Love had been “going through some health issues for quite a while”. Asked whether he thought the Beach Boys should continue performing with Love in his current condition, he didn't mince words.

“I would hope not,” he said. “That’s just not right, that I can see. Obviously, he’s a total pro. He wants to be onstage, but he just doesn’t know how not to do it. He doesn’t know what else to do, so I think he’s trapped.”

Stevie Wonder gave staff at a Greater Manchester restaurant a night to remember on November 8, stopping in for a meal after his sold-out Manchester concert — and leaving behind a £1,000 tip.

The soul legend had just performed at the city's 23,000-capacity Co-op Live arena as part of his Songs in the Key of Life 50th anniversary tour when he made an unexpected visit to Cafe Continental on Melbourne Street in nearby Stalybridge.

For the restaurant's owners, it was a dream visit they hadn't dared count on. They shared their excitement in a Facebook post the following day, along with a photo of Wonder chatting with them.

“Surreal things happen now and again. This is one of them! Pleasure to welcome Mr Stevie Wonder to the restaurant to close off his tour!” they wrote.

As co-owner Ryan Robinson explained to the Manchester Evening News, Wonder's entourage had been visiting for some time. Members of his touring band had become regular customers over the previous 18 months, while the singer's eldest daughter, Aisha, had also stopped by when visiting the U.K. The restaurant had first come to their attention through a TikTok video spotted by the daughter of Wonder's head of security.

“Every time they've visited, they've been like 'Stevie might come', and we were always just thinking that it would be amazing but we never expected anything from it,” Robinson said.

The call finally came on the night of the concert: Wonder was coming in, and the restaurant had to get ready in a hurry. Robinson described the last-minute preparations as “a bit of a scramble.”

The “Superstition” hitmaker arrived with his wife, younger daughter and members of his band and entourage. Robinson told Manchester's Finest the party was exceptionally down-to-earth and polite.

And then came the £1,000 tip — a generous surprise that gave the restaurant staff another reason to remember a night that was already pretty special.

Wonder still has one more U.K. date on his itinerary: a November 11 performance at Glasgow's OVO Hydro. After that, he'll head back to the U.S.

Few things are quite as rewarding as finding the right acoustic guitar, especially when it's an instrument you can see yourself playing for years to come. Fortunately, Taylor is making that prospect a little more appealing this holiday season, with $100 off selected models across some of its most popular ranges.

Running from November 1st through to December 31st, the Season of Savings promotion is available at participating retailers including Guitar Center and Sweetwater.

The promotion covers guitars from the 100, 200, 200 Plus, and 200 Deluxe Series, with savings of $100 in the US and between $130 and $160 CAD in Canada, depending on the model. That makes this a particularly appealing opportunity for anyone considering their first Taylor, as well as established players looking for a dependable acoustic without stretching their budget quite so far.

Taylor has also included several Studio models in the promotion, particularly the 314ce Studio, the 12-string 354ce Studio, and the 414ce Studio. These instruments offer a slightly different take on the traditional Taylor formula, combining carefully considered appointments with the brand’s established approach to smooth playability and bright, articulate tone.

For those considering a bigger investment, an additional $100 off makes these models even more worthy of your attention.

Below are three guitars I recommend taking a closer look at:

One thing I love about Taylor's current promotion is that it caters to a broad range of players. The 100 Series, in particular, is somewhere I would happily point an adult beginner looking to invest in an instrument that will remain rewarding as their playing develops.

The 114ce is a good example. Its torrefied solid spruce top, ES2 electronics and slender Taylor neck make it one of the most inviting and encouraging acoustics a beginner can play. Rather than feeling like an instrument you will need to replace after a year or two, it offers plenty of scope to grow into.

For more experienced players, the Studio models and higher-specification 200 Series instruments present an equally compelling proposition. The 224ce-K Deluxe has plenty of visual swagger, while the 414ce Studio offers a more understated approach to a premium acoustic.

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Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr will share a stage again in January, giving Beatles fans a rare opportunity to see the two surviving members of the band perform together. The occasion is the 10th anniversary of VetsAid, Joe Walsh’s annual benefit concert for U.S. military veterans.

The show is set for January 29, 2027, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. McCartney and Starr will be joined by an eclectic lineup featuring The Killers, The War on Drugs, St. Vincent and Lucius, with more performers still to be announced.

The VetsAid appearance will mark McCartney and Starr's first time sharing a stage since December 20, 2024, when Starr made a surprise appearance during the final night of McCartney's Got Back tour at London's O2 Arena. The two Beatles performed “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Helter Skelter.”

They've since reunited in the studio, too. Starr appeared on McCartney's latest album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, marking the former bandmates' first-ever duet on record with “Home to Us,” a reflection on their shared Liverpool roots.

For Walsh, the 2027 concert represents a milestone for an event he's organized annually since 2017. The Eagles guitarist — who is also Starr's brother-in-law — announced the lineup on social media, saying he'd “hit the jackpot” with the bookings.

VetsAid directs proceeds toward established veterans' charities, with an emphasis on organizations providing comprehensive support for former service members and their families, including physical, mental, emotional and spiritual care. The 2027 concert will benefit veterans in Nevada.

General ticket sales begin November 13 at 10 a.m. local time. Presales start November 10 at 10 a.m. local time.

Heart’s Ann Wilson and her sister Nancy had one mission when they performed “Stairway to Heaven” at the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors: impress Led Zeppelin. But standing in front of the band’s surviving members — and an audience packed with some of the world’s biggest stars — nearly got the better of them.

“We both kind of looked at each other with these big owl eyes,” Wilson recalled of the moments before they walked onstage.

The sisters ultimately pushed through their nerves, delivering a performance that moved the Zeppelin members to tears. And when they met Jimmy Page and Robert Plant afterward, they got the reaction they’d hoped for.

“They were very happy and said they really liked our performance,” Wilson tells Guitar World in a new interview. “That was a big deal because so many bands have tried to cover Zeppelin, and they don’t enjoy being covered by people that don’t feel it.”

The December 2, 2012, ceremony was a landmark moment for Wilson, who had grown up studying Page’s guitar work.

“Starting out as a guitar player, I’d sit at Jimmy Page’s knee and learn everything I could from the Zeppelin records,” she said, speaking metaphorically. “The thing about Jimmy is that method or scales don’t even figure in his repertoire. It’s just so crazy and dissonant: I guess it’s right-brain stuff.

“My favorite guitar moments are latter-day songs like ‘The Crunge’ or ‘No Quarter.’ Over the years we’d cross paths, and those guys always walked around with a serious gravitas. You didn’t feel like going up because they had their own atmosphere.”

Wilson also recalled the experience in a 2024 interview with Matt Pinfield of 955KLOS, describing how the scale of the production didn’t fully hit her until the afternoon rehearsal.

“I actually saw the production that had been planned for ’Stairway’ and all the different choir singers, and the way it all unfolded and got bigger and bigger and bigger,” she said. “And then I was like, ’Holy shit,’ that is going to be great."

The audience was another revelation.

“It’s like all these super famous people from all walks, not just music, but politics and television and movies. It was amazing. It was really a never-to-be-forgotten experience.”

Still, the sisters had to get past those last-minute jitters. As Wilson recalled, they looked at each other just before taking the stage and made a decision.

“We just decided not to. We just went, ’We’ll do this later. Let’s just go out right now and keep our eyes on the ball and do the song the way we know we can and make it good.’ The mission was to please the Led Zeppelin guys, really. And I think we did."

Afterward, the reception included a meal Wilson jokingly described as a “rubber chicken dinner.”

Wilson is the subject of the upcoming documentary Ann Wilson: In My Voice, arriving November 25.

Geese have honored Television guitarist Richard Lloyd following his death, performing a cover of the band's 1978 song “Ain't That Nothin'” during a November 7 concert in Philadelphia.

“Rest in peace, Richard Lloyd,” frontman Cameron Winter told the crowd at the Fillmore before the band launched into a brief rendition of the Television classic. Lloyd died earlier that day, aged 75, at his home in Tennessee following a battle with cancer.

The performance came after Geese played their own song “2122,” with the band retaining much of the upbeat instrumental arrangement of Television's original. Winter, however, brought a darker, more brooding quality to the song with his distinctive vocal delivery, giving the punk-rock classic a different character.

It wasn't the first time Geese had paid homage to the New York punk pioneers. In 2024, Winter and company used their Geesefest residency to perform another Television favorite, “Marquee Moon,” the title track from the band's landmark 1977 debut album.

Geese have also acknowledged the similarities between the two groups. Speaking to GQ in 2025, the band welcomed comparisons to their fellow New York rockers, while Winter was mindful of making sure their guitar riffs didn't come across as a “rip off” of Television songs such as “Guiding Light.”

The November 7 show was the first of two consecutive nights Geese had scheduled at the Fillmore. They returned to the Philadelphia venue on Sunday and are due to continue their 2026 North American tour with two shows in Boston on Tuesday, November 10.

Lloyd's death followed news in August that he had been diagnosed with bile duct cancer. Television had appealed to fans for financial support to help cover the cost of his treatment.

His passing comes less than four years after Television frontman Tom Verlaine died in January 2023, aged 73. The band's bass guitarist, Fred Smith, also died earlier this year, in February, aged 77.

Among those paying tribute to Lloyd following the news were Johnny Marr, whose guitar playing with the Smiths was heavily influenced by Television, and fellow musician Lloyd Cole.

Dweezil Zappa is back on the road and GP Presents is thrilled to partner with AEG Entertainment to welcome him in the Bay Area on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. His DZ20: Like Father, Like Son Tour celebrates 20 years scaling the musical mountain of material composed by his father Frank, and playing it authentically onstage with fresh energy.

“It’s an ever-evolving skill to be able to filter my playing through the Frank Zappa vocabulary and lens of influence,” Dweezil told GP’s Gary Graff, “but then at the speed of thought be able to have my own phrases come into the music. I rarely play complete solos note-for-note, but I do try to play specific phrases that give the identity and the flavor of the solo in the way my dad would play it, while using a sound that is evocative of the era.”

That’s a big part of the big fun that happens whenever Dweezil plays his father’s music, the authentic classic rock-era tones he achieves with the historic gear he brings. Here’s what to expect on DZ20:

“I’m bringing a Roxy-era SG with some different pickups, and I’m bringing a Stratocaster with a humbucker in the bridge and two single-coils, so I’m able to get a lot of rhythm sounds I need for this tour. But we’re also playing ‘Wild Love’ and it has a crazy guitar solo section. This is from a live version my dad did around ’78.

“He goes into a totally crazy new landscape, and the tone he has is really cool ’cause it’s kind of three layers; a clean sound in the middle, and two different fuzz sounds on the left and right. It creates this 3D image that is super cool, and he’s just doing it with the Stratocaster.”

Dweezil is playing a few of his own compositions on this tour as well, including one that was a favorite of Frank’s.

“He came to see us play a show that I was doing in the early ’90s and we closed the show with ‘Purple Guitar,’” Dweezil recalls. “He liked that song and said, ‘You guys should open with that,’ so I took it as his request for this tour.”

We’ve done GP Presents promotions for several of Dweezil Zappa’s shows in the past, and they’re always thrilling in totally different ways and with different ensembles. Dweezil’s band for this tour is a “rocking teenage combo five-piece extravaganza” featuring Kurt Morgan on bass, Ryan Brown on drums, Bobby Victor on keys, and Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist Scheila Gonzalez.

“I wanted it to feel like you walked into the Whisky in the ’60s, but as if he also had the material of the mid-’70s, Dweezil explains. “So it’s kind of the quintessential rocking teenage combo version of everything. A five-piece means the music is more in your face. There’s an immediacy. And when he did a tour with a five-piece he really limited the material to certain things and certain eras. So, we’ve kind of done that, but I’ve also taken it a bit further.”

Come help support our favorite Zappa son celebrate two decades paying tribute to his father Frank on the DZ20 tour!

Our multi-generational Zappa salute happens on the last Sunday night in November, the 29th. If you’re planning to be in San Francisco over Thanksgiving Weekend, be sure to make plans with fellow Zappa zealots and get tickets for great seats in advance.

For more Dweez, read GP‘s October 2026 interview in which he talk in detail about DZ20, plus working with Eddie Van Halen and his ongoing project, “What the Hell Was I Thinking?”

WIN TICKETS!

For a chance to win a pair of tickets to see GP Presents Dweezil Zappa in San Francisco, send an email and put “DZ20” in the subject line. Please include a sentence about yourself and why you want to go.

Phone contact greatly appreciated for confirmation.

Winner must provide his or her own transportation to the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, California, on Sunday, November 29, and have his or her own accommodations in the Bay Area.

Best of luck!

EVENT DETAILS

GP Presents and Another Planet Entertainment welcome Dweezil Zappa

Sunday, November 29

The Castro Theatre

San Francisco, CA

8:00 p.m. show

Free Martin Strings at the GP Presents table in lobby

Opeth were forced to pull the plug on a concert in Colombia just hours before showtime after Mikael Åkerfeldt became so ill that he couldn’t make it through a single song at soundcheck.

The Swedish progressive metal band was due to perform November 8 at Royal Center in Bogotá as part of its ongoing Latin American tour. The trek began November 1 in Santiago, Chile, and is scheduled to wrap up November 11 in Mexico City.

The cancellation was announced on social media just hours before Sunday’s scheduled performance.

“Colombian brothers and sisters, it is with great regret that we must announce the cancellation of today’s show in Bogotá,” Opeth bass guitarist Martín Méndez said in a video shared on Facebook. “Our frontman, Mikael, has come down with a virus; he is suffering from a fever, vomiting, and diarrhea.

“We even attempted a soundcheck, but it proved impossible to get through even a single song. A doctor has also examined him and confirmed that it is indeed a virus.

“We are truly sorry that we cannot perform this concert, but we are only human. Our hope now is for Mikael to recover quickly so that we can go on to play the final show of the tour in Mexico.

“Thank you for your understanding and for your unwavering support.”

The setback comes as Opeth approach the end of a touring run that will be followed by an extended break. Earlier this month, bassist Martin Mendez told Brazil’s 89 A Rádio Rock that he and his bandmates plan to “take a pretty long break” once the Latin American dates are complete.

Åkerfeldt has previously spoken about the toll touring can take on him. In a February interview with Blabbermouth, he admitted that he doesn’t “particularly enjoy touring that much,” despite considering the performances themselves the high point.

“The shows in themselves are the highlight of the day, I would say,” he explained. “But if you’re not feeling it, they can also be a bit of a curse. I’ve been battling insomnia connected to touring, like nervousness. I put a lot of pressure on myself for some reason — more now than before.

“The insomnia has made me feel quite wobbly and insecure when we play shows. Once I’m up there, it’s kind of business as usual. After a couple of songs, I don’t feel as wobbly, and after a while, I might be able to enjoy it.”

Del Casher, the guitarist, session musician and inventor whose work helped bring the wah-wah pedal into the world of electric guitar, has died at the age of 88.

Casher died October 1 following a battle with cancer, according to a GoFundMe campaign established to support his wife, Eiko. News of his death was reported November 9.

Although Casher enjoyed a long career as a performer, composer and studio musician, his most enduring contribution came in the mid-1960s, when he recognized the musical possibilities of a tone-control circuit that would eventually transform the sound of electric guitar.

Working with Vox and its American parent company, Thomas Organ, Casher helped turn the circuit into a foot-operated effect that allowed guitarists to sweep through frequencies, producing the distinctive vocal-like sound that gave the wah pedal its name.

The story began in 1966, when Casher was working as a consultant for Vox and performing with the company's Ampliphonic Orchestra. He noticed that a variable tone control on one of the company's amplifiers produced an intriguing wah-like effect when adjusted from one position to another.

He immediately recognized its potential for guitar. "I want to sound like I can compete with a trumpet or a trombone," he recalled telling the company's engineering team, describing the expressive quality he wanted to achieve.

Casher persuaded the engineers to adapt the circuit into a foot-operated pedal, allowing guitarists to control the effect while playing. The development involved Thomas Organ engineers Brad Plunkett and Les Kushner, building on an earlier midrange-boost circuit developed by Vox engineer Dick Denney. Casher helped refine the sound for guitar and championed the idea at a time when the company's management envisioned the device primarily as an effect for trumpet and other horn players.

"They thought I was a crackpot," Casher later recalled.

Determined to demonstrate what the pedal could do, he recorded a promotional album showcasing its possibilities across blues, jazz, rock, country and other styles. He then took the prototype to music stores and industry events, demonstrating the effect to guitarists and trying to generate interest. The response was initially disappointing.

Casher even tried pitching the idea to James Brown, explaining that he believed the wah-wah represented the future of music. The Godfather of Soul wasn't convinced.

"I was describing to James Brown that the wah-wah pedal is really a thing of the future," Casher recalled. Brown's response was that he thought it was "a passing fad."

Casher eventually found a more receptive audience in Frank Zappa, with whom he had worked before the wah-wah's development. According to Casher, he gave Zappa a pedal and encouraged him to introduce the effect to Jimi Hendrix. Zappa helped bring it to Hendrix's attention, and the guitarist would go on to make the wah-wah an integral part of his sound.

Hendrix's use of the effect on his groundbreaking 1968 album Electric Ladyland helped establish it as one of rock's defining guitar sounds. His performance at Woodstock the following year further cemented its place in the electric guitar vocabulary.

Other major players quickly embraced the effect. Eric Clapton put it to memorable use with Cream on "White Room," while Jimmy Page, David Gilmour and Tony Iommi were among the guitarists who incorporated its distinctive vocal quality into their own playing. The wah-wah would become a staple of rock, funk and countless other styles.

Casher had actually been recording with the effect before many of those famous performances. Through his association with composer Vic Mizzy, he brought the wah-wah into film soundtracks, including The Traveling Saleslady and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, helping establish its distinctive voice beyond the recording studio.

Born in Hammond, Indiana, Casher moved to Hollywood after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh. One of his first major opportunities came as a guitarist on The Lawrence Welk Show. He subsequently toured with the Three Suns, the instrumental pop group behind the 1958 hit "Twilight Time."

It was while traveling with the group that Casher developed another important invention, the Ecco-Fonic, a portable tape-echo device that allowed musicians to use studio-style effects in live performance.

Casher also became an accomplished Los Angeles session musician, working alongside members of the celebrated Wrecking Crew. His career brought him into contact with performers including Gene Autry, Frank Sinatra and Sonny & Cher. He appeared alongside Elvis Presley in the 1964 film Roustabout and Jerry Lewis in The Patsy that same year.

His inventive streak extended well beyond the wah-wah. Casher developed the Fender Electronic Echo Chamber and helped introduce Roland's early guitar-synthesizer technology to American audiences. His work as a composer and producer continued for decades, including music for the children's television series The New Zoo Revue, for which he produced, arranged and performed on more than 200 episodes. He also composed the guitar-driven theme for NBC's Los Angeles newscasts, which remained in use for 18 years.

Despite the enormous influence of the wah-wah pedal, Casher sometimes felt his contribution to guitar history had been overlooked. In a 2011 interview with The New York Times, he expressed satisfaction at having helped introduce the effect but wished more guitarists knew about his role.

"I feel gratified that I was there at the beginning," he said. "I would just like guitar players to think of me once in a while. The only thing I ask is: remember me."

Steve Vai is dismissing reports that he's interested in reprising his role as guitar villain Jack Butler in a potential Crossroads sequel, explaining that a possible reunion with Ralph Macchio at NAMM was blown out of proportion.

Vai addressed the rumors while appearing with longtime friend and former guitar teacher Joe Satriani on Eddie Trunk's SiriusXM show, where the pair were discussing their new collaborative album, The Sea of Emotion, released November 6 under their SatchVai banner. .

The rumors surfaced earlier this month, when it was reported that a follow-up to the 1986 cult classic might be in the works. Screenwriter John Fusco and Macchio, who played aspiring blues guitarist Eugene “Lightning Boy” Martone, had apparently been discussing ideas for an anniversary project.

“And I said, 'We should do the freaking sequel.' He's like, 'No shit, really? Do you have an idea?' I said, 'Yeah, I have an idea for it.' So Ralph and I have talked about it. We've got a plan,” Fusco told Guitar World.

The report also claimed that “Steve Vai is game to reprise his role as metal-blues guitar master Jack Butler.”

But in a new interview with Eddie Trunk on SiriusXM, Vai pushed back on that suggestion, making clear that he has no plans to return to the movie.

“Well, that is a very funny rumor that I've been reading too. No,” he said (via UCR).

Asked whether there was anything to the sequel talk, Vai explained how a possible meeting with Macchio had apparently morphed into something much bigger.

“I think what happened was — and I'll just say this — I was contacted by somebody that said, 'Hey, you're going to be at NAMM. I know Ralph Macchio, and I spoke to him, and we thought it would be nice for you guys to meet.'”

The two haven't seen each other since making the movie, although Vai says he's heard from people over the years that Macchio has asked after him.

“I haven't seen him since I made the movie. And all through the years I've had people come up to me and say, 'Hey, I saw Ralph and he said to say hello,' and I would say, 'Well, when you see Ralph, you tell him I said hello.'”

A get-together at NAMM to mark the movie's 40th anniversary is still a possibility, Vai says. But that's apparently as far as things go.

“So there's a potential that we'll be able to kind of get together and chat during NAMM. And I think that got leaked, and you know how rumors are – it turned into, 'there's a rematch.'”

As for why he's not interested in making another Crossroads, Vai pointed to the scale of the original production and the challenge of recreating its most famous sequence: the climactic electric guitar duel between Jack Butler and Macchio's Eugene Martone.

“That movie was a $30 million production or whatever it was, and required a tremendous amount of direction and work. And how do you do something like that now? Like, how do you make a scene that stands up to [that one]? You know, you need a movie studio.”

The following story originally appeared in the October 1984 issue of Guitar Player.

Several hours before show time, Stevie Ray Vaughan sits alone on a weary couch in a backstage dressing room, his head buried in his trusty, albeit beat-up, Stratocaster. Dressed in Japanese happi coat, wide-brim black gaucho hat, black slacks, and pointed-toe shoes, Vaughan limbers up, and greets the occasional visitor with a vice-like handshake and a bit of tentative conversation. It's a ritual the slight but wiry Texan has been through countless times, but he still appears a bit nervous.

Once plugged in onstage, however a completely different Stevie Ray Vaughan emerges – cool, confident, flamboyant, and even a bit cocky. Before the crowd is finished applauding the opening instrumental, Testify (from his debut album, Texas Flood), he and the two-man rhythm section known as Double Trouble (bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton) launch into Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Chile (from the group's impressive follow-up, Couldn't Stand the Weather).

For the next 90 minutes, each vocal phrase, every guitar solo and fill, is delivered at full-throttle. Even during almost inaudible parts of his solo in the dirge-like Tin Pan Alley, Vaughan's intensity never subsides. He doesn't just play his guitar; he mauls it – as evidenced by the nonexistent finish and 1/4"-deep scratches on the face of his battered '59 Fender Strat.

By the end of the set, closing with Hendrix's sonic tour de force Third Stone From The Sun, Vaughan has played the guitar behind his head, off his shoulder like a violin, behind his back, and on the floor – standing over the cutaways with one hand firmly on the guitar's neck, the other pulling up on the vibrato bar.

While making vintage guitar collectors wince and teachers moan, Stevie Ray has given the biggest exposure in years to one of the most fundamental but unsung musical forms: the blues. And with every achievement and accolade he has received since he burst onto the charts on David Bowie's critically acclaimed album Let's Dance (lauded in large measure because of Stevie's searing guitar work), the 30-year-old has shared his honors with the bluesmen who preceded him and with the genre itself.

“Most of all, I'm glad to see the blues getting the recognition it deserves,” the guitarist has emphasized on more than one occasion.

After being lifted out of the Austin, Texas, blues scene to play on Let's Dance, Stevie Ray went back to his hometown group, Double Trouble, and teamed with A&R legend John Hammond to produce Texas Flood, which took top honors in Guitar Player's 1983 Readers Poll as Best Guitar Album.

In the same balloting, Vaughan racked up two more blue ribbons – completely dominating the New Talent category and edging out no less than Eric Clapton as Best Electric Blues player – to become the first triple-crown winner since Jeff Beck's 1976 hat trick.

With Texas Flood still selling strongly, Double Trouble released Couldn't Stand The Weather, which hit the Billboard pop chart on June 13 of this year at (144, leaped up to 63 in its second week, and bulleted to 37 and 31 in the following two weeks.) “What's happened, I guess,” drawls Vaughan, “is that we've come from playing clubs to where we can pretty much fill a 5,000-seat hall now. We just worked our butts off.”

Vaughan's popularity is as worthy of scrutiny as his phenomenal guitar playing. While numerous blues-based rockers have become guitar heroes after crossing over to the rock camp – including Clapton, Michael Bloomfield, and Jimi Hendrix – Stevie is the first since fellow Texan Johnny Winter (who also eventually drifted into out-and out rock and roll) to make the major leagues by sticking with the blues.

His videos of Love Struck Baby (from Flood), Couldn't Stand the Weather, and Cold Shot (from Weather) are in steady rotation on MTV's playlist, and Pride and Joy (from his debut LP) received substantial airplay on FM stations. He teamed with George Thorogood for a tribute to Chuck Berry at this year's Grammy awards, and has appeared on such unlikely TV shows as Solid Gold.

Most people's first exposure to Stevie Ray's searing solos, of course, was via Bowie's Let's Dance. But even though the material was not the type of R&B he had mined in Texas bars for more than a decade, Vaughan's razor-edged leads were pure blues, relying heavily on Albert King for tones and riffs.

Texas Flood revealed a debt to blues masters such as Jimmy Reed, Magic Sam, Lonnie Mack, Buddy Guy, and Hubert Sumlin, and paid that debt with interest. Opening for coliseum acts such as Men At Work, the Moody Blues, Huey Lewis and the News, and the Police – Stevie riveted audiences with his passionate homages to Jimi Hendrix, including Voodoo Chile, Little Wing, and Third Stone From The Sun.

While countless guitarists have been influenced by the creative genius of Hendrix, few have attempted to cover any of his songs.

There are several obvious similarities between Vaughan and the late southpaw – each led a trio, had incredible control of feedback and volume with a minimum of effects devices, and could sing adequately but not well enough to make it strictly as a vocalist. But what sets Stevie above other pretenders to the Hendrix throne is his ability to play lead and rhythm simultaneously – like Jimi, he fires a nonstop barrage of chords, licks, hammer-ons, pull-offs, and unorthodox tricks at the listener. Vaughan's guitar technique doesn't just impress; it overwhelms.

Instrumentals such as Rude Mood (from Texas Flood) and Scuttle Buttin' (Weather) are textbook studies of the pedal-to-the metal Vaughan style, while Lenny (Flood) is reminiscent of Hendrix' most sensitive ballads, and Stang's Swang (Weather) reveals a firm grounding in organ-trio guitarists such as Kenny Burrell, Grant Green, and early George Benson.

Unlike many other guitar-based trios, Double Trouble overdub next to nothing in the studio; the 12-inch pieces of vinyl are accurate representations of the sort of thing Vaughan & Co. have been playing onstage since they formed in 1978 – following Stevie Ray's stints with the Cobras and Triple Threat Revue.

Couldn't Stand The Weather made use of a few of Vaughan's Texas buddies – saxophonist Stan Harrison, Fabulous Thunderbirds drummer Fran Christina, and brother Jimmie Vaughan (guitarist/leader of the T-Birds) – and at press time, Stevie was finalizing plans to augment the trio further for his October debut at New York's Carnegie Hall. To be recorded for a possible live LP and video, the concert will tentatively include Jimmie Vaughan, organ legend Booker T. Jones, and the Tower Of Power horn section as special guests.

A lot has happened to Stevie Ray Vaughan since he was featured in the August '83 Guitar Player. In the following interview, he talks about his techniques and tricks, his major influences, his collection of Stratocasters, and the most important element to Double Trouble's sound: soul.

There seems to be a long tradition of Texas guitar players.

“Yeah. I don't know if any of us know what it is. It's just in the air, you know.”

Does the environment of friendly competition improve the caliber of the players?

“Sure, yeah. For some reason, nobody lets go of the soul of it. Same way with a lot of San Francisco players. There are a lot of musicians in the Bay Area who do remember how to play from their heart – as opposed to a lot of the things in LA that are missing that; it's just show time. But in Texas especially, there seems to be a lot of musicians interested in pulling for each other and working together, and it really, really helps a lot. It makes you a tighter unit, and it keeps you right in your heart. And that has a lot to do with your playing.”

Austin musicians definitely have strong feelings of community – even though a band like Asleep At The Wheel plays Western swing, the Fabulous Thunderbirds play blues, and Eric Johnson plays fusion.

“It doesn't matter. People still work together.”

Can you spot a Texas guitar player by hearing him?

“Oh yeah. I don't know what it is – I just can hear it. Maybe it's the water [laughs].”

What's the blues scene like in Austin?

“There's some crazy jam sessions going on down there. Hubert Sumlin is staying down there now, and Mel Brown is living there, and Lonnie Mack. He's a great cat. Also Buddy Guy comes down and hangs out for two or three weeks a month, just about.

“It ends up where all those guys are up there playing. And Mel Brown plays [Hammond] B-3 organ like nobody's business, too. Antone's closes down at 2:00, but it's nothing out of the ordinary for it to be 4:30 when the last set's over – after starting at midnight. A four-hour set ain't too bad.”

I heard stories years ago about a jam session at Antone's with B.B. King, yourself, and Luther Tucker.

“Yeah, that was the night B.B. scared me to death. He sat on his amp and played rhythm for me for about four songs. And then he stood up and played one note – [picks up an acoustic guitar and plays a high, stinging vibrato]. You know, one of those B.B. notes that make you go, 'Haaugh!'”

What you just played sounded exactly like B.B. Did you work on that a lot?

“Just listened.”

When you first took up guitar, was it blues that you were mainly attracted to?

“A lot – because of my brother Jimmie. He'd bring home records by B.B. and Buddy Guy. And he was the one who hit me with Lonnie Mack, too; the first record I ever bought was The Wham Of That Memphis Man. Jimmie brought home a Hendrix record, and I went, 'Whoa! What is this?' I'll never forget that.”

Did Jimmie show you things on guitar, or did you just pick up things from hearing him around the house?

“At first, he taught me a couple of things, and then he taught me how to teach myself – and that's the right way.”

Your brother was heavily influenced by another Texas bluesman, Freddie King. Did that style rub off on you as well?

“Yeah, it did. I had that instrumental album of his [Let's Hide Away And Dance Away]. Jimmie used to know him pretty well, but Freddie wouldn't talk to me in public. In private, but not in public. I guess I was a young white boy he didn't want to be seen with [laughs]. I played with him once, sitting around a table when no one was around.”

What specifics did you get from various players?

“I got a lot of the fast things I do from Lonnie Mack – just the ideas and the phrasing. Like on Scuttle Buttin'. [plays a barrage of chicken-picked pull-offs]. That's really a Lonnie Mack thing – that's dedicated to him. I got a lot of turnarounds from Freddie King.”

Who were the main blues players you heard on records?

“Well, let's run 'em down. There was Buddy Guy, Muddy, of course, and all the various guitar players who were with him [including Jimmy Rogers and Pat Hare], Hubert Sumlin, Lonnie Mack, B.B., Albert King, Freddie, Albert Collins, Guitar Slim – he'd just turn it all the way up. I can just imagine people saying, 'Slim, why do you always play so loud?' 'Because it sounds like this' [laughs].”

Johnny Winter was the first white Texan bluesman to make it on a big scale. Were you influenced much by him?

“Yes, although I hadn't heard him as much then. I listened more to people like Albert Collins, Albert and Freddie King, [and] Johnny Guitar Watson. But around '71 or '72, I got to jam a lot with Johnny over at Tommy Shannon's house – that was a little bit after his initial big success.”

How did you meet Tommy Shannon and Chris Layton?

“I've known Tommy for years and years – since about '69. I was in Dallas playing at this after-hours place called the Fog, and he'd just left Johnny Winter. He claims that he walked in and saw this little person playing guitar [laughs]. I was 15 or something – wasn't supposed to be in that club.

“We've played together in bands off and on ever since. Chris and I have been together about six years, I guess. I met him through Joe Sublett of the Cobras – they were roommates. I went over to the house once and Chris was in the kitchen with his headphones on, blasting away on the drums. When he was finished, I told him I needed a drummer, so he quit his other band.”

Was he basically a blues drummer when you found him?

“No, but he could do it. Took him about 15 minutes to learn how to do a rub shuffle right. A lot of it was just natural.”

Did you play in clubs in Dallas before you moved to Austin?

“Yeah. I could make decent money there, playing the Cellar, but it wasn't the kind of place you'd want to hang too long. That was the only place that let me do what I wanted to do – because nobody cared about shit there. They just had strippers and crabs everywhere [laughs]. If you really wanted to come in there and play, they'd let you. A couple of times, people would get pissed and start shooting at the stage. You had to duck and keep playing [laughs].

“I played there from age 14 until I was 18. There was a Cellar in Dallas and one in Fort Worth. We'd play two sets in one town, drive to the other club, and play two more sets. We got 90 bucks a night per person, and we were never awake during the day, so there wasn't any way to spend it.

“I was trying to stay as close to this kind of music as I could, but at the same time I was going through a phase of playing through Marshalls – just turning up to 10 and being a teenager. I remember doing some Allman Brothers songs, which I liked at the time – skirting the outskirts – but we were also doing Buddy Guy and B.B. King stuff.”

Have you had a hard time playing blues as an opening act to major rock bands?

“No, the audiences reacted real well to it. I think more of the people on the Moody Blues tour were aware of what we were doing. When we played with Men At Work, it was still a lot of fun, but there were mainly 13-, 14-, and 15-year-olds, and a few of them knew how to slingshot dimes, you know [laughs]. But a lot of those kids really went for it, even though they weren't expecting it.”

Your playing on Let's Dance isn't along the lines of Texas Flood; it's more like Albert King.

“I kind of wanted to see how many places Albert King's stuff would fit. It always does. I love that man. When that album first came out, Albert heard it. He said, '[sneering] Yeah, I heard you doin' all my shit on there. I'm gonna go up there and do some of yours" [laughs].

“We were doing this TV show right outside of Toronto – Hamilton, I think – and during the lunch break, Albert went around to everybody in there looking for an emery board. I didn't think anything of it. We were jamming on the last song, Outskirts Of Town, and it comes to the solo, and he goes, 'Get it, Stevie!' I started off, and I look over and he's pulling out this damn emery board, filing his nails, sort of giving me this sidelong glance [laughs].

“I loved it! Lookin' at me like, 'Uh-huh, I got you swinging by your toes.' He's a heavy cat.”

Do you ever play with your thumb to get an Albert King sound?

“I play with a pick and a finger. I used the round end of the pick, too. You break less of them and don't get tangled up in the strings. Sometimes I play with both together, or I'll palm the pick and use my fingers, or sometimes I'll just 'Hubert' it [play with bare fingers a la Hubert Sumlin].”

Is that to get a variety of tones?

“Different tones, different moods. It depends on how the amps are working that night, how dead the strings are, how much I can hear, how crazy I'm feeling.”

On Cold Shot, did you play through a Leslie speaker to get that underwater sound?

“It's a Fender Vibratone, which is basically like a Leslie. It's a 10" speaker with a Styrofoam rotor in front of it – so the speaker is stationary, but a drum with a slit in it revolves – and then you mike it from both sides.”

On Couldn't Stand The Weather, were there any tracks where you cut a rhythm part and overdubbed a lead, or vice versa?

“No, on some of the songs I just played and then did the vocal later – which sometimes is a mistake, because you play differently when you're not singing than you would if you were singing along. A lot of times the licks won't match the phrasing of the vocals. Most of the solos were cut live. I redid one line in Voodoo, because my amp went crazy on me. The punch-in didn't come off very well; it still doesn't sound right to me.”

Texas Flood sounds like there are hardly any overdubs.

“There aren't. Only if I broke a string or something.”

So you played the lead and rhythm in the same take, rather than laying down a rhythm track and soloing over it later?

“Right. We redid a few vocals, but some of them were live, too. That was mainly to go back if a word was left out or not real clear, plus, we got a better vocal sound by redoing them. I don't think that's cheating too much.”

Do you set up in the studio the same as onstage, or do you use drum booths and headphones, etc.?

“The first record, we pretty much set up like we do onstage, but we did have a few baffles between us. We went ahead and used headphones like on one ear. We couldn't see the control room; it was at the other end of this place with a bunch of stuff in between and no window. I like it a lot that way.

“That was at Jackson Browne's rehearsal studio called Downtown, in LA. For Couldn't Stand The Weather, we were in the Power Station [in New York], and all the walls separating the rooms are glass, so we were separated but we could still see each other. So I could go in and play louder than shit.”

Do you usually record pretty loud?

“Sometimes. Sometimes real quiet, like on Tin Pan Alley.”

What about Voodoo Chile?

“Had it up as loud as I could – and I was in the same room with it.”

Do you use the same amps in the studio as onstage?

“Yes. Two Fender Vibroverbs – they came out in '63; they're number 5 and 6 off the production line, but I bought them in two different places at two different times.

“It's basically like a Super Reverb with a 15 and a shorter cabinet, and it has no midrange knob – it's preset on 4, I think. My favorite setup used to be two Vibroverbs and two Supers – just stack 'em up. Just let the Vibroverbs handle the bottom. I had one Super set clean, and the other where I could just turn it up or down wherever I wanted it.”

You don't use the Super Reverbs now?

“Right now, I use a Howard Dumble 150-watt. He calls it the Steel String Singer, I call it the King Tone Consoul [laughs] – that's s-o-u-l. It's like an overgrown Fender tube amp. Some Dumbles – like the Overdrive Special – you've got to know what you're doing with them, because they'll get away from you and take you with 'em.”

Was John Hammond in the studio for the first album?

“No, he wasn't there at all, except for the mixdown and the mastering. This time he was there a lot for the recording.”

Do you have any guitars not in the Strat family?

“I have a 1958 Gibson dot-neck ES-335 and a '48 Airline that's a bit smaller but the same shape as a Barney Kessel Kay. It's got three pickups with a 4-position toggle switch – bass, middle, treble, or all three. I've got an old Rickenbacker prototype with a flat top, and I'm giving that to Hubert [Sumlin]. And I've got this 1928 National that belonged to Blind Boy Fuller. Byron Barr, my guitar roadie, gave it to me.

“Sometimes I'll pull it out at the end of a set and sit down and play Rude Mood or a little slide. I'd planned on using it on the last record, but we got sidetracked and never got around to it.”

Do you play slide in open tuning?

“I usually just tune up the G string to Ab and leave everything else the same.”

How did you go about recreating the sounds you heard on Hendrix's records?

“You just keep listening and trying to find the sound, because it's in your hands as much as anything. It's the way you play. There are different techniques to playing everybody's styles, and it's not just necessarily the amp or the guitar. It's the way you pick, the way you hold the guitar.

“For instance, T-Bone [Walker] played like this most of the time [holds guitar horizontally, away from his body], and the tone is different when you play that way. Can you hear the difference? [Holds guitar against his body and plays the same licks – gets a bassier tone]. It's the way your fingers hit the strings, and you're more prone to pick closer to the neck when you hold the guitar like T-Bone.”

Your '59 Strat has the vibrato bar anchored off the bass side of the bridge. Did you set it up that way because Jimi Hendrix's guitar bodies were upside down?

“Well, I started listening to people and noticed that when Otis Rush used one, he had it on the top – he played upside-down. And Hendrix had the guitar upside-down, except he strung it regular. It seemed to me that the people who did that the best had it on top, so I moved mine. Sometimes it does get in the way. I've had it tear my sleeve halfway off.”

So instead of working it with the little finger of your picking hand, it lays right in the middle of your palm.

“Yeah, and I've got the springs set up so I couldn't move it with my little finger anyway. It's pretty tight, with four springs tightened all the way up. That's how I can do Third Stone From The Sun and still be in tune. See, I have my old Strat set up where it won't go up at all. On my newer Strats, the vibrato handles are on the bottom, in the regular place. The orange one and Lenny, the brown one, both of their vibratos will go pretty far up and down as well, and they're set up a lot lighter.

“All the guitars have personalities of their own and feel completely different. They each have different sounds. Like the brown one sounds real good for jazzy-type things or Lenny. It's a '63 or '64 that my wife, whose name is Lenny, found for me.”

What about the old beat-up one?

“That's my first wife [laughs]. The new one with my name on the fretboard, I call Main, for main guitar. It's a Hamiltone, build by James Hamilton of Buffalo, New York. It's basically Strat-shaped but a little thicker, and the construction of the neck is pretty much like a [Gibson] Super 400, except it goes all the way through the body. So the vibrato is on the neck, basically – dead center right there. You can pop the low E string, and the whole guitar has this reverb you can hear even without an amp, because of the springs being in the neck.

“It's got an ebony fretboard that's the same width as my beat-up '59, and then they added binding on the outside of that, because I have big hands and I always play barre chords with my thumb wrapped around. What happens a lot of times is my thumb will end up pushing the low E string accidentally. So the wider neck keeps me from doing that.

“The pickups in there now are EMGs with a little computer chip preamp in them, so there's a battery in the guitar, of course. I like that a lot. They say that the battery will last six months, but I can hear it going down – you can hear it in the tone; it gets fuzzier, like it's straining. When it's got a brand-new battery in there, it sounds clear as a bell, and smooth. It'll sing to you.”

You've also got a white Strat with three Danelectro "lipstick tube" pickups.

“That was put together by Charley Wirz at Charley's Guitar Shop, Dallas, Texas. He also gave me the yellow one with the pickup in the bass position. That one is hollowed out from the neck to the bridge, because the guy from Vanilla Fudge had put four humbucking pickups in there. It's got a pretty cool tone. Charley then came up with the design for the white one with the Danelectros. He also found me the orange 1960.

“All of the Strats have bass frets. I get them from Gibson, or I use Dunlop jumbo bass frets, the biggest ones I can get. I don't have to replace them twice a year, and there's a lot more sustain. It's a lot easier to get under the strings when you use big strings like I do. You can work yourself to death with those little frets. Instead of the note fading out when you bend a string, it'll get bigger when you bend with the jumbo frets.”

Do any of your Strats have maple necks?

“Yeah, Lenny does. It's got a real clear tone, and the pickups are microphonic – you can hear it when you hit the pickguard. But when you play it soft, it sounds great. When I first got the guitar, it had a rosewood fingerboard, but it was thinner, and that bothered me. So I put a copy of a Fender maple neck on there that Billy Gibbons gave me.

“I like the rosewood necks usually, because for one thing, when you sweat, you don't get blisters. It seems like the finish on a maple neck gets hotter and there's more friction. As hard as I play and as much as I sweat, I get sore enough as it is. There's a fatter sound on the rosewood, as far as I can tell; it's not as bright. The ebony fretboard seems a little bit clearer, but it's fat, too.”

Which guitars have you recorded with most?

“Lenny on the song Lenny, and everything else has been the '59. I'd like to record with the one with the Danelectro pickups; I like it a lot.”

How do you do some of the tricks you do onstage – like getting the whole guitar behind your back so fast?

“As I'm spinning around, I'm taking the strap loose and the guitar pivots behind my back, and then I rehook it behind my back. It's really playing the same way, except you've got to hold the guitar out a little bit, and you just can't see as well.”

In Third Stone From The Sun, you have the guitar laying on the stage while you straddle it, pulling up on the neck with one hand and on the wang bar with the other.

“Yeah, I wouldn't recommend that anybody do that on their 335 [laughs]. A Stratocaster's a pretty tough thing, though. Then I figured out how to get the guitar to rumble. I put it on the middle pickup, turn the tone knob down, grab it by the wang bar, and just shake it on the floor.”

Do you use any effects besides the wah-wah on the Hendrix tunes?

“Just an Ibanez Tube Screamer. I have Univibes, but I don't use them. I use the Vibrotone for that effect. I don't have any straight distortion devices; I use the Tube Screamer for that.”

Who works on your guitars?

“Charley Wirz or Michael Stevens in Austin, depending on who's available and what I'm having done. Certain things, both of them do very well; other things, one of them does better.”

Do you string all the Strats the same?

“Yeah, I use a .013, a .015, or .016 depending on what shape my fingers are in, .019 plain, .028, .038, .060 or .056. If I go down to an .018 on the G string, it feels like a rubber band to me.”

Do you have 3-way or 5-way switches on the Strats?

“5-way. I use all the positions for different tones.”

With the amount of amplification you use, do you still pick fairly hard with your right hand?

“Yeah, terribly. That's just how I play. Sometimes I literally pull the strings off. I can deaden a set of strings completely after one set, because I play 'em hard and do a lot of this – [snaps bass string] – to get bottom notes, like Albert Collins. Sometimes, though, I play really soft. That's probably the best Albert King tone I can get.”

When you got the '59 Strat, was it as beat-up as it looks now?

“[Laughs] It wasn't in real good shape. You could still get a jar of model car paint and go around the edges to make it look decent, but that continued to wear off. You asked if I pick hard – well, look at the top of the guitar [which is worn away a good 1/4"]. That's from picking.

“It's gradually sounding different, because I let it dry out too much. I bet if I start oiling it up, it'll start fattening up some. The body is a '59, but the neck is a '62, I believe. In the body, it says, 'LF.59.' I came to find out that was Louis Fuentes, not Leo Fender. But Louis Fuentes was a good cat. You never heard a Stratocaster sound real meaty like that one.”

The tendency on the part of most white blues-rock artists has been to eventually drift more towards mainstream rock.

“We try to keep it going in both directions. There's no reason for us to leave behind what we've got, you know, but there is a good reason to expand on it. I'd like to keep it as a trio, keep that identity, but I have nothing against playing with great horn players or keyboard players or other guitar players – or more than one drummer, even.”

Stang's Swang is still blues, but it's a departure from the type of stuff you're known for.

“I wrote that four or five years ago. I like guys like Kenny Burrell and Grant Green a lot. I like Django Reinhardt a lot, too, and Wes [Montgomery], of course.”

What's the turnaround on that song – IIVs?

“I don't know. I don't know what key I'm in sometimes. I just try to listen.”

Are you completely self-taught when it comes to any theoretical vocabulary?

“I don't know any of that stuff.”

What about the chord voicings you use?

“I just look for things that sound right.”

So if you're playing something like, say, a diminished 7th...

“I don't know it. I almost learned how to read chord charts doing some of those Bowie things. But as soon as I learned how to read the charts, they took the charts away. Most of the time, I'd listen to a couple of run-throughs while he was doing his vocals, to get an idea of where the song was going. Then I'd figure out in my head where this Albert King lick or that Albert King lick would fit [laughs].”

Tributes have been shared for Television guitarist and co-founder Richard Lloyd, with Johnny Marr and Lloyd Cole among those remembering the influential musician, who died Saturday at the age of 75.

Marr, whose guitar playing with the Smiths was heavily influenced by Television's pioneering sound, remembered Lloyd as “a true inspiration,” while Cole praised the guitarist's contribution to the songs that made the band so distinctive.

“R.I.P Richard Lloyd. A seeker and finder and a true inspiration with and without the guitar,” Marr wrote on Instagram. “It was an honour to know him and a blessing to have been a fan. Thank you Richard. Carry on my friend.”

Cole, meanwhile, recalled seeing Television just once, but said Lloyd's playing made a lasting impression.

“RIP Richard Lloyd. I only saw Television once – all those amazing riffs that drive the songs – Richard played them all,” he wrote on X.

Television’s Instagram also shared a statement on social media following the death of their co-founder.

“We are so very sad that Richard Lloyd has today passed away at the age of 75,” the band wrote. “Deepest condolences to Sheila and to all of his family and friends.”

Lloyd died at his home in Chattanooga, Tennessee, following a battle with cholangiocarcinoma, a form of bile duct cancer. His family confirmed that his wife, Sheila, and their dog, Willie Mays, were with him when he died. He had been diagnosed with the disease in March.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1951, Lloyd moved to New York as a child and became immersed in the city's emerging underground music scene. In 1973, he joined forces with singer and guitarist Tom Verlaine, bass guitarist Richard Hell and drummer Billy Ficca to form Television.

The group became one of the first bands to establish a regular presence at CBGB, the Manhattan club that would become the epicenter of New York's burgeoning punk movement. But Television stood apart from many of their contemporaries, favoring intricate arrangements and extended instrumental passages over punk's more stripped-down approach.

Central to that sound was the guitar interplay between Lloyd and Verlaine. Their contrasting styles gave Television a distinctive musical identity, with interlocking lines, angular riffs and extended solos that pushed the possibilities of a two-guitar rock band.

The partnership reached its peak on Television's 1977 debut, Marquee Moon. The album's 10-minute title track remains one of rock's defining guitar performances, with Lloyd and Verlaine trading and intertwining melodic phrases across an expansive instrumental journey. Songs including "See No Evil," "Friction" and "Venus" further showcased their remarkable chemistry.

Television released a second album, Adventure, in 1978 before splitting later that year. Their influence, however, continued to grow, helping lay the groundwork for generations of post-punk, alternative and indie rock bands. Marr's tribute offers a particularly telling example of the reach of their guitar innovations.

Lloyd's career extended well beyond Television. He went solo with Alchemy in 1979 and went on to release a series of albums, including Field of Fire (1986) and The Countdown (2018). He also became a sought-after collaborator, contributing his distinctive guitar work to several albums by Matthew Sweet, including Girlfriend (1991), Altered Beast (1993) and 100% Fun (1995).

Television reunited in the early 1990s, releasing a self-titled third album in 1992. Lloyd continued performing with the group before departing in 2007 to concentrate on his solo career. He also chronicled his experiences in the New York rock scene in his 2017 memoir, Everything Is Combustible: Television, CBGB's and Five Decades of Rock and Roll.

Lloyd's death comes less than four years after Verlaine died in January 2023, aged 73.

Richard Lloyd, the co-founding guitarist of Television whose intricate, interlocking guitar work helped redefine rock music in the 1970s, has died at the age of 75.

Lloyd died Saturday, November 7, at his home in Chattanooga, Tennessee, according to a statement from his family reported by Rolling Stone. His wife, Sheila, and their dog, Willie Mays, were with him. The cause of death was cholangiocarcinoma, a form of bile duct cancer. He was diagnosed with the disease in March.

Born October 25, 1951, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Lloyd grew up with an interest in music and initially studied drums before turning to guitar. After moving to New York, he became part of the city's burgeoning underground rock scene, where he would help lay the groundwork for American punk.

In 1973, Lloyd joined forces with singer-guitarist Tom Verlaine, bass guitarist Richard Hell and drummer Billy Ficca to form Television. The group became a fixture at CBGB, the downtown Manhattan club that would serve as a launching pad for the New York punk movement. Lloyd later claimed that he had helped establish the venue as a rock club by arranging for Television to play there in 1974, opening the door for other emerging acts.

Television's 1977 debut, Marquee Moon, remains one of rock's most influential guitar albums. Its 10-minute title track, in particular, showcased the remarkable musical chemistry between Lloyd — playing a 1961 Fender Stratocaster — and Verlaine, on a late-’50s Jazzmaster. Rather than relying on the power chords and blunt aggression associated with punk, the two guitarists developed an intricate musical conversation built on intertwining melodies, unexpected harmonic turns and extended instrumental passages.

The album also featured the songs "See No Evil," "Friction" and "Venus." Television followed it with Adventure in 1978, but internal tensions and limited commercial success contributed to the band's breakup later that year.

Lloyd launched a solo career with Alchemy in 1979, followed by Field of Fire in 1986 and the live album Real Time in 1987. He also established himself as a distinctive collaborator, most notably contributing guitar to Matthew Sweet's acclaimed albums Girlfriend (1991), Altered Beast (1993) and 100% Fun (1995). His jagged, unpredictable playing provided a striking counterpoint to Sweet's melodic power pop.

Television reunited in the early 1990s, recording a self-titled third album in 1992 and periodically performing together in the years that followed. Lloyd eventually departed in 2007, continuing to record and perform under his own name. His later solo releases included The Radiant Monkey (2007), The Jamie Neverts Story (2009), Rosedale (2016) and The Countdown (2018).

Lloyd also documented his remarkable journey through the New York rock scene in his 2017 memoir, Everything Is Combustible: Television, CBGB's and Five Decades of Rock and Roll.

In a 2023 interview with Guitar Player, Lloyd discussed The Countdown, his approach to recording and the connection between his music and visual art. He described experiencing synesthesia, a condition in which the senses overlap, explaining that playing music brought colors to mind and painting felt like a musical experience.

“I’ve been painting for about three years now,” he said. “I suffer — or maybe I’m blessed — with synesthesia, where one sense blends into another.”

Read the full Guitar Player interview with Richard Lloyd here.

It’s been 45 years since Stray Cats released their first two albums — Stray Cats in February 1981 (featuring “Runaway Boys,” “Rock This Town” and “Stray Cat Strut”) and its follow-up, Gonna Ball, in November. Both were recorded in England while the band was living there, the former co-produced by Dave Edmunds with singer-guitarist Brian Setzer.

At the time, Stray Cats were the toast of the British music world, lauded by the likes of Led Zeppelin, the Who and the Rolling Stones, which had the rockabilly trio open their shows during the band’s 1981 American tour. Setzer, not surprisingly, remembers that embrace fondly.

“All the great British bands that all the Americans admired loved the Stray Cats and totally understood what we were doing,” Setzer tells us via phone from his home in Minnesota. “Where the American bands were all trying to be English bands, the English bands looked at us like, ‘This is the real thing.’

“They really embraced rockabilly and knew what it was. They had lived through the whole Teddy Boy thing. They knew Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran. Their influences were Scotty Moore and Cliff Gallup.

“So when we came over there and hit the airwaves and hit the television, they really rolled out the red carpet for us. It was an amazing experience.”

Among his “million stories” from that time, Setzer recalls that the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards rolled out a red carpet at his home one day for a memorable session.

“He invited me over, and he had about four or five Les Paul Customs lying on the floor, with the Elvis Presley Sun Sessions playing. I picked up a guitar and I went, ‘Oh, he must’ve broken a string. It’s only got five strings.’ I picked up another one, same thing. I said, ‘Keith, your guitars only have five strings!’

“He explained to me his tuning and how he played. I said, ‘I can’t play these things.’ Luckily I brought my guitar with me, and I think we started just jamming on The Sun Sessions — ‘Baby Let’s Play House,’ ‘That’s All Right (Mama)’…”

Setzer, of course, was and remains a Gretsch man. He’ll have his three main G6120s electrics with him on Stray Cats’ upcoming summer tour, which starts July 24 in Las Vegas. The trek finds him back in good health after having to cancel a planned run last year while overcoming an incapacitating autoimmune disease and an equally debilitating addiction to the over-the-counter drink Kratom.

But he tells us that he’s had some surprising experiences on the Gibson front recently, after acquiring a 1960-vintage Les Paul Sunburst and a 1959 Flying V.

“I did it because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. It was definitely a good choice,” says Setzer, who was more enamored with one than the other.

“The Les Paul is an incredibly constructed guitar. I get it,” he reports. “It plays in tune all the way up, all the way down. The pickups definitely have their own characteristics, a very unique sound. At the end of the day it’s not my sound, but I totally get it. They’re beautifully made, and they play beautifully.”

The Flying V was more to his liking, however.

“Check this out: I recorded myself just playing live in the studio, playing the Flying V on some tracks and the Gretsch on others. Do you know, I couldn’t tell the difference — which tells me the Flying V is a very twangy-sounding Gibson guitar, not like a Les Paul at all, even though it has the humbucking pickups and that very unique sound.

“I suppose it had a bit more sustain with those big humbuckers, but it’s so close [to the Gretsch], going through the chorus echo. I suppose if you took off the echo you could differentiate it a little more, but not much. They’re totally unique guitars, very different sounding than a Les Paul.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That video launched a career,” King says.

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

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

Keith Richards is the king of putdowns. Bruce Springsteen? “To me, it’s pretentious,” he told Rolling Stone in 1988. Prince? “To me, it’s kid stuff.” Guns N’ Roses? “I admire their guts. But too much posing.”

But no fellow rocker has earned the Telecaster-toting guitarist’s ire as much as Elton John. It’s bad enough that Richards has taken every opportunity to refer to John in interviews by his homely birth name, Reginald Dwight — he’s also leveled some of his harshest snipes at the piano-playing rocker. In response, Elton — a musician every bit as bitchy as Keef — has given back in equal measure.

To be fair, there’s nothing unusual about feuds between rockers. They all have egos — and opinions. Even Carlos Santana, known for his beneficent and spiritual demeanor, has a dark streak. Remember when he famously put down Kiss in 2000, launching a years-long fight between the two men?

But Keith and Elton’s spat has been among the longest-running, and certainly most enjoyable to watch, over the years.

Apparently it began at a 1975 Rolling Stones concert in Fort Collins, Colorado, during the group’s Tour of the Americas ’75. It was the band’s first road show with Ronnie Wood, who replaced Mick Taylor following his comparatively brief stint in the band. With no new album to announce — It’s Only Rock ’N Roll had come out more than seven months earlier — the band was simply trying out its new lineup and giving fans more of what they wanted.

Unfortunately, everyone got a little too much at the July 20 show in Fort Collins at Hughes Stadium. Midway through the show, the Stones brought Elton onstage to play piano and sing along as they performed their hit “Honky Tonk Women.” Introduced by Mick Jagger as “Reg from Watford,” Elton appeared onstage wearing a Los Angeles Dodgers windbreaker and a cowboy hat.

He performed “Honky Tonk Women,” then played along on another 10 songs. The Stones’ keyboardists, Billy Preston and Ian Stewart, were put off by his endless noodling. The band struggled to get him to leave, and even the audience began to boo.

As John explained in his autobiography, Rocketman, his behavior was all down to the effects of cocaine, which was quickly becoming everyone’s drug of choice in the 1970s.

“Cocaine gave me too much confidence for my own good,” he wrote. “If I hadn’t been coked out of my head when the Rolling Stones turned up in Colorado and asked me to come onstage with them, I might have just performed ‘Honky Tonk Women,’ waved to the crowd and made my exit. Instead, I decided it was going so well, I’d stay on and jam along to the rest of their set, without first taking the precaution of asking the Stones if they wanted an auxiliary keyboard player.”

“For a while, I thought Keith Richards kept staring at me because he was awestruck by the brilliance of my improvised contributions to their oeuvre. After a few songs, it finally penetrated my brain that the expression on his face wasn’t really suggestive of profound musical appreciation. I quickly scuttled off, noting as I went that Keith was still staring at me in a manner that suggested we’d be discussing this later, and decided it might be best if I didn’t hang around for the after-show party.”

Years later, Richards was still fuming. Asked in that same Rolling Stone article above what he thought of Elton’s then-current top-10 single, “I Don’t Wanna Go On With You Like That,” he replied, “Lovely bloke, but posing.”

Elton took the sniping in stride. But it was Richards’ next zinger that got under his skin.

When Elton’s friend Princess Diana died in 1997, he reframed his 1973 hit “Candle in the Wind,” an ode to Marilyn Monroe, as a tribute to the late member of the royal family.

Keith stuck the knife in. “Songs for Dead Blondes,” he declared of the two tunes in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that October. “I’d find it difficult to ride on the back of something like that myself, but Reg is showbiz.”

Elton responded in kind in an interview with The Daily News that same month.

“I’m glad I’ve given up drugs and alcohol,” he griped. “It would be awful to be like Keith Richards. He’s pathetic, poor thing. It’s like a monkey with arthritis, trying to go onstage and look young.

“I have great respect for the Stones but they would have been better if they had thrown Keith out 15 years ago. … I just think he’s an asshole and I have for a long time.”

Elton was apparently still seething in 2011 when he took aim at Richards’ new autobiography, Life, in which the guitarist revealed some details about Mick Jagger’s anatomy that would be better left unsaid.

“I was a bit put off by hearing about the bit about Mick Jagger’s penis,” Elton huffed. “If I said that [John’s songwriting partner] Bernie Taupin was a miserable twat and had a small penis, he’d probably never talk to me again. It’s like, why do that?”

With no end in sight to the feud, Ronnie Wood intervened to get the two men to call a truce. When Keef and Elton showed up for the GQ Awards in London on September 8, 2015, relations were cordial enough for them to pose for a photo together.

Apparently, all was forgiven on both sides when Elton joined the Stones for a guest appearance on the tracks “Get Close” and “Live by the Sword” from their 2023 album, Hackney Diamonds. John was thrilled to finally become part of the Rolling Stones family, alongside guests that included Paul McCartney.

But Keith couldn’t help using the collaboration for a bit of self-aggrandizement, noting that it was Elton — not the Stones — who was basking in reflected glory.

“Everyone’s a fan of the Rolling Stones. Just like Paul, Elton was like, ‘I just fucking played with the Rolling Stones.’”

The story goes that Eric Clapton was inspired to form his power trio Cream after seeing Buddy Guy perform with his trio in England. With the release of their debut album, Fresh Cream, in 1966, Clapton and his group would influence American guitarist Leslie West to follow suit and pursue a power trio of his own: Mountain.

“When I heard Fresh Cream I was shocked,” the late guitarist told us in our March 2014 issue. “I couldn’t believe what the hell was going on. The guitar sounded like a voice, the voice sounded like a guitar — I didn’t know what was up.”

Cream’s next album, 1967’s psychedelic-inspired Disraeli Gears, took things up several notches, thanks to its adventurous production and arrangements, courtesy of the group’s new producer Felix Pappalardi.

“And sure enough, when Disraeli Gears came out, I looked and saw that it was produced by Felix Pappalardi,” West said.

The name was very familiar to him.

“He had produced a couple of songs for my first group, the Vagrants. I remember saying to my brother — who was the bass player in the Vagrants — ‘Holy shit, that’s the same Felix that produced us!’ My brother said, ‘So how come we don’t sound like Cream?’ He thought we sucked because we didn’t practice enough. I started practicing a lot after that.”

West went on to hire Pappalardi as the bass guitarist and producer for his 1969 debut solo album, Mountain, which included drummer N.D. Smart rounding out the power-trio lineup. Listeners assumed Mountain was the band’s name. As a result, when West and Pappalardi subsequently decided to make it official, it was a foregone conclusion they would call it Mountain.

They hired drummer Corky Laing, whose previous band, Energy, had been produced by Pappalardi. West was convinced they needed to remain a trio, but Pappalardi thought Mountain might appear to be riding Cream's coattails, especially given his past involvement with the group. He believed the addition of a fourth member would solve the problem, so they hired keyboardist Steve Knight.

“That was because Felix didn’t want us to look or sound like Cream,” West confirmed. “And it worked on some songs — like ‘Theme From an Imaginary Western,’ ‘Don’t Look Around’ and ‘Nantucket Sleighride.’

“But we eventually dropped the keyboard. The organ was a nice pad, though, and I had to work a lot harder with the trio.”

If West was happy working with Pappalardi, he was even more thrilled when he got to play with Cream’s bassist, Jack Bruce, in his follow-up group, West, Bruce and Laing.

“When [Felix] decided he didn’t want to go on the road anymore, we started West, Bruce and Laing,” West says. “I think Jack Bruce was the most talented musician I’ve ever played with. If it weren’t for drugs, we might even still be playing together.”

In the same interview, West noted that he liked to keep everything simple. His electric guitar of choice in Mountain was a Gibson Les Paul Junior with a single P90 pickup. And although he didn’t play fast or use all the fingers on his fretting hand, he managed to carve out his own niche by making the most of his talents.

“I’m very lucky. I’m not a fast player and I only play with my first and third fingers, but I focused more on melody, tone and vibrato,” he said. He complemented those skills with his unique picking technique that employed pinch harmonics.

“That’s what I do best, rather than try to play fast, which I can’t. Nothing bothers me more than somebody who’s playing fast and sloppy and missing notes all over the place.

“When I was growing up, a lot of guys did speed, and when you talked to them you couldn’t understand a word they were saying. With speed-freak guitar players it’s like, ‘Where’s the downbeat?’”

West made a point of telling guitarists to keep their speed in check at every opportunity. Jared James Nichols told Guitar Player he was once the recipient of West’s wisdom when he was booked to open for the guitarist at B.B. King’s in New York City. Prior to the show, the two men had an impromptu session.

“We started jamming — it was really cool,” Nichols told Guitar Player. “Finally, he stopped playing and looked at me, and serious as can be he said, ‘Slow the fuck down!’ He meant it.”

After soundcheck, West sat down to give Nichols a bit of heartfelt advice. “He said that he really liked my vibrato and tone,” Nichols said. “I remember him saying, ‘You’ve got great feel and a nice touch. Don’t sacrifice all of that for speed.’ I’ll tell you, it meant a lot to me, and I really took it to heart.”

Anika Nilles has a particular Rush song she'd love to bring back to the band's set list — one that hasn't been performed live in more than 40 years.

The drummer, who joined Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson for their Fifty Something reunion tour earlier this summer, has already developed a wish list of material she'd like to tackle with the Canadian rock legends. One track in particular stands out: “Kid Gloves,” from the band's 1984 album Grace Under Pressure.

“I told Geddy, if I can ever have a wish list song, can we do that one? And he was like, ‘Oh, that’s interesting,’” she tells USA Today. “I play it a little bit in the dressing room just for fun. I love the grooves, the buildup and everything. I love the harmonies and the vibe.”

It's a deep cut with a long history in Rush's live repertoire. “Kid Gloves” featured regularly in the band's concerts during the 1984 tour supporting Grace Under Pressure, but hasn't appeared in a set since. According to Setlist.fm, its last outing came during the first of two Honolulu shows in November of that year, where it was played between “Closer to the Heart” and “YYZ.”

Nilles has had some formidable expectations to contend with since taking over the drum stool once occupied by the late Neil Peart, who died in 2020 following a private battle with cancer. But she's made a strong impression on Rush fans, earning praise for her musicianship as well as the humor she's brought to the reunion. She's also spoken warmly about the support she's received from Lee and Lifeson as she's found her footing in the band.

That relationship will enter a new phase next year when Rush brings its Elevate From the Norm residency to the Sphere in Las Vegas, beginning May 21, 2027. Nilles has been to the city only once before, so the prospect of performing at the cutting-edge venue — and getting to explore Las Vegas — is especially appealing.

“Everything is new for me there,” she says. “I saw video of No Doubt and Metallica and U2 and that was great.”

For Lee, the residency is an opportunity he once thought Rush had missed. When the band announced the shows, he reflected on how perfectly the venue's visual capabilities would complement the elaborate production Rush has built its live shows around.

“When I first heard of Sphere, I thought to myself, ‘Wow, what a shame that Rush is no longer touring, because this venue sounds tailor made for the kind of visual attitude with which we have always designed our shows,'" he said in a press release. "Normally we spend months designing the visual effects for our shows and this scenario seemed like the cherry on top of the ice cream for our design team. But life is nothing if not surprising and now, here we are, living and touring in the present tense and we are able to make that particular dream come true."

The first round of presales for Rush's Las Vegas residency begins today, November 6, with additional presales scheduled for next week. Tickets go on sale to the general public November 13. More information is available at the band's official website.

Every guitarist knows the feeling of sitting down with guitar in hand, determined to finally conquer something critical on the fretboard, only to get lost in an endless line-up of disjointed YouTube videos. Without a coherent development path, all you end up with is a collection of random party tricks rather than true guitar fluency. Now, breaking out of that is as easy as taking advantage of this Guitar Tricks Black Friday deal – get an entire year, plus loads of extras, for only $99 (rather than the usual $899).

When we rounded up the market in our guide to the best online guitar lessons, Guitar Tricks earned our coveted "Best overall", and for good reason. We found Guitar Tricks to be the most well-rounded platform, offering something for players at every level, whether you’re looking for specific techniques, artist studies, song lessons (of which there’s over 800), or simply better structure to your lessons.

For fresh players or anyone dusting off a guitar after a hiatus, Guitar Tricks strips away paralysis by analysis. Its Core Learning System guides you methodically from basic physical mechanics like alternate picking and open chords through to rhythm timing and introductory lead work. Best of all, it doesn't leave you stranded in sterile exercise drills; skills are immediately applied to authentic riffs. Once you conquer the essentials, the curriculum branches neatly into dedicated style-based paths covering blues, rock, country, and acoustic.

But you don’t just get the basic lessons package with this deal. The bumper Black Friday bundle includes a range of tools and materials to keep you inspired for a very long time. Here’s a quick breakdown of what you get:

• Yearly subscription price (normally $359)
• Custom Lesson Plan (normally $99)
• Premium Bootcamp Access (normally $79)
• 100 Essential Licks Series (normally $79)
• Ultimate Beginner Guide (normally $29)
• Guitar Setup Guide (normally $29)
• Guitar Soloing Guide ebook (normally $29)
• 4 Bonus Learning Tools (normally $196)

All this is only $99 for a limited time, which works out at just $8.25 per month. You’ll pay more than that for a pack of strings! And with the 60-day money back guarantee, there’s zero risk to giving it a go.

• 👉 This way to more Black Friday guitar deals

Okay, let’s be honest, waiting around until late November for official Black Friday guitar deals is exhausting. Black Friday itself is still a few weeks away, but you don't have to wait until the big day to score huge savings on top guitar gear.

Many major retailers and top brands are already rolling out early Black Friday deals, giving guitarists a head start on holiday shopping before stock sells out.

Plus, shopping early means you get first pick of the gear before stock runs out, and you avoid the headache of peak holiday shipping delays.

I’ve sifted through the noise and rounded up the top early Black Friday guitar and gear sales live right now so you can dive straight in.

In the UK?

Nile Rodgers has accused critics of being hypocritical for objecting to his use of artificial intelligence, arguing that people who routinely rely on AI-powered technology shouldn't take issue with his using it to create a music video.

The Chic co-founder sparked a backlash on Instagram earlier this week after sharing a behind-the-scenes clip of himself being digitally captured for an upcoming project. Rodgers described the process as “creating an AI me,” calling it “next level” and expressing excitement about the finished result.

“I envisioned stories with incredible environments and music. It’s future time!” he wrote, citing the Eagles' residency at Las Vegas' Sphere as inspiration.

Not everyone was enthusiastic. Several Instagram followers questioned his decision to embrace AI. One expressed disappointment, another suggested there were better ways to preserve his legacy, and a third asked: “What is happening with old artists using AI?!”

Rodgers wasn't prepared to accept the criticism. Responding to one commenter who dismissed AI-generated content as “some kind of magic for old ppl,” the producer challenged them to wait until they'd seen the finished work.

“Do you have a problem with CGI? I can’t believe you’d go on record without even seeing what I’m doing.

“Oh well… sending love anyway. Let me know after you see the work if you feel the same way your brain is taking you❤️.”

The project turns out to be a video for Rodgers' 2020 charity recording of ‘The Christmas Song,’ featuring Rebecca Ferguson. Subsequent posts offered a glimpse of the production, including images of the two performers alongside an enormous fuzzy creature, a collection of cuddly animals in the audience, and a festive green-and-gold title card.

When another follower questioned the decision to use AI for a charitable project, Rodgers offered a more detailed account of the creative process, insisting the technology hadn't simply been left to generate the visuals on its own.

“We created everything. Mood boards, storyboards and did it the same way we’d do a film,” he explained.

“The AI did what we told it to do and we painstakingly created every second you’ll see on the screen. My director is a TV director. We did it setup by setup. If this were a traditional film, it would’ve cost about $100,000.”

Rodgers, who has famously played a white Stratocaster through nearly all his career, also turned the criticism back on his detractors, arguing that their everyday reliance on technology makes their objections difficult to justify.

“By the way, you’re using AI daily. You just hit me on Instagram. You’re being hypocritical. It’s OK for you to use AI in your way, but you have problem with my way. Do you use Google, or get driving directions? Look at your own daily actions and check how much you use AI. Love, Nile.”

The finished video is scheduled to arrive November 20. But Rodgers' explanation of the project also revealed a more personal reason for making it: his own experience with cancer and the encouragement he received from a young child during his recovery.

“When I had my 1st bout of cancer, it was a child who coached me and gave me courage to fight,” he wrote.

“I know a lot of children who are bedridden and ill. Their main form of entertainment is the iPad or other such devices. I produced ‘The Christmas Song’ to give them a little joy during the holiday season.”

Rodgers said the video would give the song's storyline a playful twist, while introducing him to a new creative circle. He plans to share additional previews as the team works toward the November 20 release.

This isn't the first time Rodgers has spoken out in favor of AI. As Consequence previously reported, he defended generative technology in 2023, dismissing the argument that AI-generated music is “fake” as something that “sounds like noise to me.”

“The drum machine and sequencer have been wonderful tools. There are bands that could never have had a record if it wasn’t for a sequencer,” he said.

For Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, making a record together was inevitable.

It was just a question of when. Now, 52 years after Satriani began giving Vai guitar lessons while they were teenagers growing up on Long Island, it’s happened.

The Sea of Emotion, which comes out November 6, is a labor of love the two guitar heroes have spent much of the last two years making between other projects. Those include Satriani’s membership in Sammy Hagar’s Van Halen-saluting Best of All Worlds Band and Vai’s assignment to the Robert Fripp seat in the King Crimson spin-off Beat.

For guitar fans, it’s the arrival of a sonic summit meeting that’s been on many a wish list. For Satriani, 70, and Vai, 66, it’s the culmination of a lifetime of work and mutual admiration.

Vai remembers those lessons with Satriani as “glorified jam sessions,” sitting back-to-back in Satriani’s backyard, playing unamplified and learning to intuit what each other were doing.

“That was an incredible training,” Vai tells us during a joint Zoom with Satriani. “When you do something like that, you develop a listening atmosphere, so to speak. For me that’s one of the highlights of being a musician, sharing that space with somebody else.”

Their ambitions led each to California for long careers spent mostly in parallel as they released their own albums and worked in bands: Satriani with Deep Purple, Mick Jagger, the Greg Kihn Band and the all-star Chickenfoot; three-time Grammy Award winner Vai with Frank Zappa, Alcatrazz, David Lee Roth and Whitesnake. They intersected on many occasions, primarily during the Satriani-organized G3 tours that started in 1996.

During 2024, meanwhile, Satriani and Vai toured together with their own bands and teamed up on the encores. When management suggested having something original to play together, they recorded “The Sea of Emotion, Pt. 1,” which set the idea of a full-fledged band of their own, and an album, in motion.

This year SatchVai released two more songs — “I Wanna Play My Guitar,” featuring Glenn Hughes on vocals, and “Dancing” — while completing The Sea of Emotion remotely, with producer/keyboardist Eric Caudieux assembling contributions from a rotating cast of musicians. Drummer Kenny Aronoff and bass guitarist Marco Mendoza joined SatchVai on tour during the summer, along with guitarist Pete Thorn.

The album runs a wide stylistic gamut, from the hard-charging “Mayhem” and “Bronco Freight Train” to the lively “Dancing,” an interpretation of a song by Italian singer Paolo Conte. “The Feeling I Know” builds majestically from a quiet start, while “Old Sins Have Long Shadows” leans toward fusion. The centerpiece, of course, is the three-part “The Sea of Emotion,” more than 17 minutes of collaborative combustion that pushes the pair to new peaks of prowess.

Neither Satriani, who resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, nor Vai, who is based in San Diego, was in need of a career statement at this point, but The Sea of Emotion is certainly one. Call it a summit or a master class; it’s how two generational talents finally found a moment to join forces and do something they, and the rest of the world, have been waiting for.

So... what took so long?

SATRIANI [laughs] We certainly thought that when the time was right, it would happen. We couldn’t figure out ahead of time, with our schedules, like, “This year we’re gonna do it” or something like that. We knew a project like this was gonna take us away from all those other things we wanted to do. So without talking about it, we figured it would happen when it happened. And it did, quite organically.

VAI It’s something we always considered in the back of our minds, but we were forging our careers and we had a lot of ideas for our solo music. This album had a little bit of an odd chronology, because Joe and I had all these other gigs going on, and the evolution of making the record was kind of organic. We never actually sat there and thought, “Hey, do you want to make a record together?” It just happened. We knew.

All good things come to those who wait, then.

SATRIANI I’m glad we waited for it, in a way. Now we’re remarkably older, and we’ve had this benefit of a crazy roller coaster of success. So there was such a relaxed attitude toward, “What are we gonna write?” and “What kind of album are we gonna do?” We simply never talked about it.

If we’d tried it before, when we were really trying to prove ourselves and take advantage of our sudden successes, we would’ve brought that anxiety into the studio and would’ve had a lot of pressure from outside sources, labels and things like that. Doing it now, we were able to let it just happen.

VAI When people who know Joe and I listen to it, they’ll obviously know if something was Joe’s or mine. And there are songs here like that.

But there are others that were just an idea, a couple of chords or a riff or something, and we built them up going back and forth with each other. I don’t collaborate like that very often; I’m usually the master and commander of every note, so it was really great to be in an environment where it was so creative.

SATRIANI What keeps coming to my mind is coming to terms with the fact that we’ve made this record that has this compositional weight to it that’s really something. It’s not a record that I would’ve made on my own, and I don’t think Steve would’ve made on his own.

Somehow when we get together we make this third thing we weren’t expecting that’s really greater than the sum of its parts. That’s how it feels now that I’ve forgotten all the fader moves and the edits and everything; I can just listen as a normal human being, and these songs are intense. They’re beautiful and unexpected and have all these cool little Easter eggs everywhere. It’s just really nice.

Easter eggs? Explain...

SATRIANI The biggest one, really, is the fact there’s a recording of us playing when we were teenagers that I had made during a guitar lesson we were doing in my childhood bedroom. Steve kept that tape and transferred it to digital and decided to write a song based on those few minutes of us trying to work out a lesson built around something I was writing at the time.

If people didn’t know this story they’d probably think it’s the weirdest introduction to a song they’ve ever heard, but what a perfect way for “The Sea of Emotion, Part 3” to start — going back to an actual recording of us playing as teenagers. I think that’s pretty amazing.

Making the album, what did you learn about each other and each other’s playing that you didn’t know — or could not have known from the ways you’ve worked together before?

VAI I think for me, many things were reinforced based on my perspective of what I was expecting — things like quality of melody, quality of rhythm, instincts for ideas and sections and things like that. One of the things that didn’t surprise me was Joe’s instantaneous inventiveness, just sitting there and playing. The riffs come organically, frequently, and they just sound so inspired. I’m in the next room going, “What is he doing?! We’ve got to record that and make a song out of it!” It’s constant, and it’s cool. It was constant inspiration and education.

SATRIANI I had this sort of revelation the other day, when I was listening to the album. I was surprised because I thought I knew how crazy Steve was, but as we progressed writing and recording this album remotely, you’d be waiting a day or a week or a month for the other part to arrive. And then you’d get it and you’d think, “What the hell is that?! That’s insane!” And that happens over and over again.

So I thought I knew how crazy Steve was until we got to the very end of the record, and I thought, “I did not know he was that crazy!”

VAI [laughs] I can’t help it. Sorry.

SATRIANI I even went back to his other records, like, “How did I miss that?” And, no, he’s been more conservative in the past. He got even crazier on this album, where I thought maybe he would have done the opposite.

VAI I blame you for that.

So how reactive were you to each other during this process? Did the interaction really make Steve crazier, and then what did that bring out of Joe?

VAI The nice thing is I don’t think we felt limitations from the outside world...from what the industry is doing, from what technology is doing. I would receive something from Joe, and to reflect on what he was just saying, I was feeling the same way. It’s rare to hear something innovative and new in just a little riff or something, but there were so many of those.

Like, I remember when I received the “Zoot Suit Riot” solo. I was stunned. In the back of your mind, you’re not competing but you’re trying to up your game based on how the other guy is upping his game. For me that means you’ve got to go a little more crazy. You’ve got to think a little bit more out of the box.

So after I heard that “Zoot Suit Riot” solo and especially the little, tickling riff on the end of it [sings], I’m like, “What the fuck is he doing?!” Then it’s like, “Okay, I’m taking the straitjacket off. What can I do? Where’s the weird Steve Vai?” — within reason.

SATRIANI [laughs] No. No reason.

VAI So the riffs turn more into a guilty pleasure as opposed to being appropriate for the songs, and that was fun. It was so fun. I think we both went to places we may never have gone on our own. It needed that chemistry, that chemical soup of both of our DNAs. It was really fantastic.

SATRIANI The first time I heard “Zoot Suit Riot” I thought, This is a Steve Vai show. In my mind, I could see how Steve would set the stage up, what he would wear, how the song would go down based on the entire presentation beyond just the cool guitar parts and the interesting melody and all the cool rhythms. I just never write music like that.

So all of a sudden I’m in this position where I’m hearing it and I’ve got to grow into this, somehow. Steve has offered this amazing piece of music up, and I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna play, because I’ve never inhabited it before. So it doesn’t surprise me that I would play something that would surprise Steve, because he’s surprised me.

And that whole process played out over and over again on this record. There are spots in each song where one of us offered something and the other one would respond like, “Wow, that’s crazy. What am I gonna do now? I’ve got to somehow up my game in this fun process.”

“Dancing” is emblematic of that. What’s the story there?

VAI Many years ago, in the early ’80s, I found this Paolo Conte track; he’s an Italian, kind of pop singer, very famous. I just fell in love with it and kept listening to it through the years, and I would keep imagining it as a guitar track. So I kept it in the back of my mind and just thought, “Well, one day...,” ’cause I wanted to do it with another guitar player.

When we started doing this album, I sent it to Joe and said, “I got a crazy idea here. I love this track. I want to make all the horns that are on it the guitar tracks and beef up the arrangement.” I thought he’d say, “What, are you crazy? This is not rock and roll!” or whatever, but he came back and said, “I don’t know what I’m gonna play on this, but I trust your insanity,” so we did it.

SATRIANI I like the idea that it showcases some of Steve’s bizarre ideas about what you can do with the guitar and the guitar arrangement of a song. It was really a product of just pure fun, me putting on my guitar and going, “What the hell am I gonna play on this track that’s got, like, 18 Steve Vai guitar tracks on it?”

Glenn Hughes recently announced a retirement from touring and live performances due to health reasons. That must make it mean more to have him singing on “I Wanna Play My Guitar.”

SATRIANI I have great memories of that session. That was the only time Steve and I were together at a session for this record. We were at the Harmony Hut, Steve’s studio, and Eric was there with us, along with Glenn. That was pretty magical, just watching Glenn sing.

And, y’know, the odd part about it is I’m the only one who ever hired Glenn Hughes to not sing on an entire album. This was What Happens Next [Satriani’s 2018 album featuring Hughes on bass guitar], and it was the funniest thing just to watch him not be able to sing, ’cause in-between takes he’d be singing things that would’ve been appropriate for the songs. He just couldn’t help it. I thought, “Oh, damn, I should’ve written a vocal album for him.”

So it was really great to watch him sing on this, just hour after hour getting better and better with every vocal take he’d do, and just trying different things. He’s a magical singer.

Was there any particular piece of gear or some kind of technique that was part of the album what you felt was brand new or, just out of the ordinary?

SATRIANI Well, the main weird thing is that Steve and I recorded this album not using any amplifiers and microphones on our guitars, I don’t think, other than the recording from years back.

VAI I used my [signature Carvin] Legacy [amp] for the rhythm on “Part 3,” but that was it. There were a couple of really nice moments that were a little left of center for what we normally do, such as “The Sea of Emotion, Part 2” and the nylon-string Joe plays. That’s a really beautiful part, and very different from the past.

SATRIANI Today, if you’re 18 years old making an album, the thought of going into a studio with microphones and engineers is, like, so old-school. Everyone goes direct. They’re all using plug-ins and some way of just recording directly.

Steve and I love the art of recording with microphones and speakers and outboard gear and tape and everything. We have so much experience with the traditional way of recording guitar.

I’ve done a lot of DI recording over the years, but I still really love being in a studio, the whole chaotic circus element of it, and watching an engineer with a great set of ears find the right tone.

How about guitars?

SATRIANI I used my ’58 Esquire again. It’s been on every record since ’92, when I picked it up. I used it for a slide solo on “Bronco Freight Train.” Everything else was pretty normal — just my most recent [Ibanez] JS guitars that happened to be hanging out in the room for those few days where I’d be home. And I always use this crazy choral sitar Sterling Ball made for me that’s a seven-string, sitar-style neck and harp strings. That was one of the more bizarre instruments I used.

VAI All my guitars were pretty conventional, but one of the things I like to do is try to experiment with the existing gear that’s available and do things with it maybe I haven’t done before. The DigiTech Whammy Pedal has so much potential in creating sounds and riffs that are not just the conventional thing. The solo I did on “Part 2” of “The Sea of Emotion” — at the end there’s these chord changes, and I’m doing this fast, kind of hammering riff, and the whammy bar is used to change the register of the riff on various notes. That was something I hadn’t really done, so it was more of a stretching of an existing piece of gear.

SatchVai looks like a going concern, then?

VAI Joe and I kind of work in the moment. We never even talked about putting a band together until it just happened; it just felt like the time was right. So I think that’s gonna be the M.O. moving forward.

I know that we are interested in getting back to being our own generals and entering back into our own creative impulses on a solo level. But it was such a fun process, and it was easy and creative. I can’t imagine not working together again, even if in the future it’s just sharing tracks and creating like that.

SATRIANI Really, the most important thing is we created the music. We made a fantastic album. To me that’s the most important thing. That’s always been my main desire, to make an original album. You can play 300 shows a year, or 10, but if there’s no document, if there’s no original music, you’re kind of nowhere. That’s the thing that’ll always be there and stand the test of time. People can go and visit it any time, no matter where we are.

AC/DC’s Brian Johnson has recalled how he wrote the lyrics to “You Shook Me All Night Long” in a matter of hours — and how Malcolm Young immediately recognized the song’s potential. The story comes from a 2011 appearance on The Howard Stern Show, whose full 38-minute interview with the singer has just been released on YouTube.

Johnson joined AC/DC in 1980, following the death of former frontman Bon Scott, as the Australian rockers began work on the follow-up to 1979’s Highway to Hell. The resulting album, Back in Black, would become one of rock’s biggest records. Its opening track, “You Shook Me All Night Long,” was also the first song Johnson wrote with guitar-playing brothers Angus and Malcolm Young.

“The first song I had to write was ‘You Shook Me All Night Long,’” Johnson recalled. “And I remember sitting there. This is when my passion with cars comes in. The first line I wrote was, ‘She was a fast machine, she kept her motor clean, she was the best damn woman…,’ and I went, ‘I’m writing it with cars again.’

“And I give it to Mal the next morning. He’s going, ‘Are you writing about cars?’ I went, ‘No, I’m trying to get the women and the car.’ And he says, ‘Ah, no worries, man. It sounds great.’ And that was it.”

Johnson said Malcolm was still raving about the song the morning after they recorded it. The guitarist wanted to hear it again, prompting Johnson to make a bold assessment of what they had created.

“We just had a little cassette player in this little house we had. And then the next morning, Mal put it on again. He said, ‘I’m gonna listen to this again, mate.’ I sat, and I just went, ‘Y’know, I think that might be the best rock and roll song I’ve ever heard in my life.’ ‘What?’ ‘I’m telling you, I think that’s the best rock and roll song.’ And Mal said, ‘You could be right, mate.’”

The song came together quickly, Johnson explained, partly because he knew the pressure was on to deliver a worthy follow-up to Highway to Hell. In a separate interview with Absolute Radio, he recalled that Angus and Malcolm already had the title in mind when they began working on the track.

“The boys had a title,” he said. “Malcolm and Angus said, ‘Listen, we’ve got this song. It’s called ‘Shook Me All Night Long.’ That’s what we want the song to be called.’ And if you listen to the chords, [the chorus] just fell into place, so I can’t claim any credit on that thing.”

Johnson also remembered feeling the need to impress his new bandmates as he tackled his first songwriting assignment.

“It was as quick as it had to be, which was that night. I guess I had to try and impress somebody,” he said. “It was just a thing that came at the time, and I still think it’s one of the greatest rock and roll riffs I’ve ever heard in my life.”

History has certainly been kind to the song. “You Shook Me All Night Long” became one of AC/DC’s signature tracks and their first single to reach the U.S. Top 40. It remains one of the band’s most popular recordings, with more than 1.8 billion streams on Spotify.

Rush will celebrate two classic albums when they take over the Las Vegas Sphere for a five-show residency next summer. The performances will mark another milestone in the Canadian prog giants’ celebrated return to the stage, with full-album renditions of 2112 and Moving Pictures planned for the run.

Rush seemed to have exited stage left for the last time in the summer of 2015, only to make a surprise comeback last year. Former Jeff Beck drummer Annika Nilles, the gutsy musician chosen to fill the late Neil Peart’s drum throne, will join Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson for the newly announced shows.

The five performances will take place at the futuristic venue on May 21, 23, 26, 28 and 30. The setlists will include full performances of 1976’s transformative album, 2112, and Moving Pictures, the 1981 release that went five-times Platinum.

In an official statement, bass player and vocalist Lee said he and Lifeson are working hard to concoct “some new madness” to suit the high-tech venue (via Rolling Stone).

When Moving Pictures gets played in full, Lifeson will get to revisit one of his favorite guitar solos in a venue that would have seemed like science fiction when the idea was first dreamed up during a bitterly cold Quebec winter. The guitarist has singled out his work on “Limelight” as a particular source of pride.

“I remember recording this solo because we had speakers set up outside to catch the delays and some echoes,” he told Behind The Vinyl in 2016.

Moving Pictures was recorded at Le Studio (later renamed Studio Morin Heights), where the band had also made the previous year’s Permanent Waves. It would become something of a second home for Rush, who went on to record Signals, Grace Under Pressure, Presto, Roll the Bones and Counterparts there.

Lifeson says his Hentor Sportscaster and beloved ES-355, “Whitey,” accounted for much of the guitar work on the album. The “Limelight” solo, meanwhile, finds him at perhaps his most expressive.

“I really am proud of this solo,” he said. “We did it in five or six takes, and we did a compilation of those takes to arrive at what we have. But what really moves me about this solo is its lonely character, which really fits the mood and tone of the lyrics that Neil wrote about this song.”

Peart wrote “Limelight” about his discomfort with the public and media attention that the trio’s success had brought them. Lifeson was keen to extend that sense of isolation through his 26-bar solo.

“It's a very elastic solo,” he added. “It moves around, and the delays cascade and overlap. It ends with a very high point – literally a high point, high E string at the top of the neck – and it's a very dynamic build.”

That emphasis on dynamics, and on making a solo contribute to a song's narrative, is something Lifeson has also discussed when talking about Envy of None's second album with Guitar Player. The project helped him rediscover his love of soloing.

Speaking to Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett last year, Lifeson also reiterated the importance of knowing when to stop rather than overworking a part.

“I really wanted to echo that feeling,” he said. “But I find after five or six takes, I start repeating myself. I get bored with it. I'm impulsive when it comes to that sort of thing, whereas Geddy needs to hear everything wrong before he knows what's right. So he'll spend hours and hours doing stuff. I like to spend minutes.

“It has a lot of languid movements; bends and pulls and drops, and notes that come in and creep up,” he said of the solo. “And when I first heard the comp, I thought it really reflected the emotional character of the song; of being disconnected and living a life that's on a stage and not real.”

During Rush's hiatus, Lifeson found himself being hired by a multitude of different bands, and he says he enjoyed shattering their expectations. He's also credited a Beatle with inspiring the band's reunion – although Lee has a different account of what brought Rush back together.

Keith Richards isn't in a hurry to get the Rolling Stones back on the road, according to bandmate Ronnie Wood, who says the guitarist wants a break from touring.

The Stones released their latest album, Foreign Tongues, in July, but have yet to announce any live dates in support of it. Wood says he and Mick Jagger have already begun promoting the record, but their plans for the road depend on Richards deciding what he wants to do next.

In a new interview with Otro Día Perdido, Wood explained why he's chosen to get out and play rather than wait for his bandmates.

“Well, we had a great producer with Andrew Watt,” Wood says. “He helped us with Hackney Diamonds, and then we did a continuation in a way through to the album called Foreign Tongues. And that's where we've left it at the moment.

“And Mick and I have already been promoting a little bit. But we're waiting for Keith to settle down what he wants to do for his future, because he's a bit road weary at the moment. He said. ‘I don't want to do any more touring for a bit.’ So I thought, Well, I'm not gonna sit back and wait. So I'm going to get out there and play.”

Wood is currently touring in support of Fearless: Anthology 1965–2025, a career-spanning compilation that draws on his work with the Birds, the Creation, the Jeff Beck Group, Faces, the Rolling Stones and his solo projects.

Richards' reluctance to tour may also be influenced by his arthritis. In a 2023 interview with BBC Radio 4's Today, he discussed the condition and its effect on his playing.

“I don’t have any pain: it’s a sort of benign version. [But] I think if I’ve slowed down a little bit it’s probably due more to age.”

Wood's Fearless tour wraps up November 10 with a performance at the Movistar Arena in Santiago, Chile.

The making of the Rolling Stones' landmark 10th album, Exile on Main St., was turbulent at best. Despite Keith Richards' drug issues, disjointed sessions, gear theft and plenty of internal disharmony, however, the band emerged with a classic.

Much of the album was recorded at the Stones' French retreat, Nellcôte, using relatively modest recording equipment. That didn't stop it from making a huge impact on audiences in the US and UK. And Richards believes the recording technology that followed actually made it harder to capture the kind of performances that had made the album so special.

Writing in his 2010 autobiography, Life, the guitarist posed a pertinent question.

“Very soon after Exile…, so much technology came in that even the smartest engineer in the world didn’t know what was really going on,” he said. “How come I could get a drum sound back in Denmark Street with one microphone, and now with fifteen microphones I get a drum sound that’s like someone shitting on a tin roof?”

Eight years separate the Stones' self-titled debut, recorded at London's fabled Regent Sound Studios on Denmark Street, and the release of Exile. In the intervening years, the Beatles had helped push recording technology forward, with Rubber Soul marking a particularly revolutionary moment. The band employed clever studio tricks to expand the possibilities of recorded music, and as the record industry boomed, other artists and engineers followed suit.

But Richards wasn't convinced that more sophisticated technology necessarily meant better recordings. Much like guitarists who believe that no matter how advanced amp modeling technology becomes, it will never quite replicate the magic of a cranked tube amp, he felt that the recording industry had lost sight of what mattered.

“Everybody got carried away with technology and slowly they’re swimming back,” he said. “I always felt that I was actually fighting technology, that it was no help at all. And that’s why it would take so long to do things.”

He singles out the recording of Goats Head Soup, the Stones' follow-up to Exile, as an example. Engineer Rob Fraboni, Richards recalls, was caught up in the “notion that if you didn’t have fifteen microphones on a drum kit, you didn’t know what you were doing.” The album was a commercial success, but Richards wasn't sold on the approach to recording it.

“The bass player would be battened off, so they were all in their little pigeonholes and cubicles,” Richards recalled. “You’re playing in this enormous room and not using any of it. This idea of separation is the total antithesis of rock and roll, which is a bunch of guys in a room making a sound and just capturing it.”

Exile, by contrast, captured the Stones playing together in the basement at Nellcôte, with the musicians feeding off one another rather than being isolated in separate recording spaces.

“It’s the sound they make together, not separated,” Richards argued. “This mythical bullshit about stereo and high tech and Dolby, it’s just totally against the whole grain of what music should be.”

There's an interesting wrinkle to Richards' argument, though: Stones frontman Mick Jagger has also expressed reservations about Exile's sound, suggesting that the disarray surrounding the band at the time found its way onto the record.

The Stones' last two albums – 2023's Hackney Diamonds and this year's Foreign Tongues – were recorded with producer Andrew Watt, who has his own innovative ideas about making records sound their best. Whether Richards has warmed to the modern recording process is another question.

Upscaled footage of Led Zeppelin’s performance at the Bath Festival in June 1970 has appeared online, capturing the band giving “Immigrant Song” its live debut, months before the track was released.

The three-day festival of blues and progressive music saw Led Zeppelin headline a bill that included Pink Floyd, Colosseum, Santana, Steppenwolf and John Mayall, whose lineup at the time included Peter Green. The show would prove a turning point for the band.

Guitarist Jimmy Page had built Led Zeppelin from the ashes of the Yardbirds in the late 1960s. Although his plans to develop a partnership with Jeff Beck had fallen short of expectations — producing a song the pair argued over for decades — Page had succeeded in assembling a band that would help pave the way for heavy metal. Its biggest early successes, however, had come on the other side of the Atlantic.

The Bath Festival performance helped change that, winning over British audiences as an estimated 200,000 people gathered for a show that stretched to around three hours. The band reportedly played five encores.

More than 80 minutes of footage from the event emerged online in August, described as “a monumental addition to the Led Zeppelin canon.” Now, YouTube account The Unfinished Self has enhanced the footage of the band performing “Immigrant Song” to 4K resolution.

The video finds Page dressed in a knee-length coat and fisherman’s bucket hat, attacking what appears to be his “Number 1” Les Paul like it owes him money. Legend has it that the Bath Festival performance was captured on a multitrack recorder, but the recording was subsequently destroyed because the band didn't consider its performance good enough.

What's particularly interesting is how the roughness of this version of “Immigrant Song” adds to the track's cut and thrust. Rather than playing the tremolo-flecked chords that feature in the studio recording's verses, Page continues hammering away at the riff. The performance's ragged edges give the song an even more animalistic quality. Its mystery chord is also present.

The set came after the release of the band's extreme second album, Led Zeppelin II, which was also intended as a retort to the group's early critics, including one Rolling Stone reviewer who dismissed Page's songwriting as “weak, unimaginative.”

The festival itself was chaotic in several respects. The gates were knocked down, allowing a huge influx of people onto the site, while Fairport Convention got stuck in traffic and had to hitch a ride with the Hells Angels to reach the Royal Bath and West Showground in Shepton Mallet, Somerset.

According to organizer Freddy Bannister, the bikers subsequently took control of security and began beating up attendees. Bannister, who had sold his family home to pay the bands in advance, eventually had to pay the Angels to leave, as he recalled in Louder Sound.

Despite the mayhem, the event's success would help inspire a young Michael Eavis to create Glastonbury Festival, whose inaugural edition took place just months later, with T. Rex headlining.

Elsewhere, Jimmy Page's best-kept secret has opened up about making pedals for some of the world's greatest guitar players.

Few of the guitars that belonged to country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons are around today. Much like the man himself — who died of a morphine-and-tequila overdose in 1973 at the age of 26 — his instruments tended to have disastrously short but eventful lives, creating exquisite, game-changing music before making an untimely exit. Many were lost in a fire at Parsons’ home in L.A.’s Laurel Canyon not long before his death.

But two that survive are very much the alpha and omega of Parsons’ guitar history. There’s his small-body 1963 Martin 00-21 flattop acoustic guitar, currently owned by his former music and romantic partner Emmylou Harris, which dates from Parsons’ earliest days as a young up-and-coming participant in the mid-’60s folk boom. Then there’s the custom acoustic made by luthier David Russell Young in 1973, an instrument that dates from Parsons’ final days and was prominently played on the legendary Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels tour of that same year. The guitar sold for $125,000 at auction in 2014.

In the decade that separates these guitars, Parsons played a key role in bringing country music out of the honky-tonks and into the forefront of rock music through his landmark work with the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, and as a solo artist. In the process, he opened up a rich vein of songcraft rooted in the heartbreak tropes of country balladry, yet fused with post-’60s existential angst.

It’s safe to say there would be no Eagles without Gram Parsons. Eagles guitarist Bernie Leadon even played alongside him for a while in the Flying Burrito Brothers. In terms of more contemporary music, Parsons is one of the patriarchs of what we now call alt-country and Americana. His own preferred phrase was “American Cosmic Music.” Call it what you will, the whole twangy crew from Wilco to Neko Case to Jim Lauderdale to Lucius are, in one way or another, the children of Gram Parsons.

Of course, country music was at the party from the earliest days of rock and roll. The music of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis was a jumped-up shotgun wedding of country and blues, but after the British Invasion, country music fell by the wayside as rock artists started taking their music more seriously in the ’60s.

When rock musicians did perform country songs, they generally relegated it to novelty status, as heard on mid-decade hits like the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Nashville Cats” and the Beatles cover of Buck Owens’ “Act Naturally,” which exploited the witty side of country lyricism.

But country’s more somber side and growing associations with social and political conservatism (which reached a peak in Merle Haggard’s 1969 single “Okie from Muskogee”) were definitely off-putting to many late-’60s rock music fans, who started to build a dividing line between the two genres.

At Gram Parsons’ urging, the Byrds crossed that line in 1968 with Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Today, the album is hailed as an ambitious landmark work in the country-rock movement, but it was a commercial failure in its time. Chief Byrd Jim (Roger) McGuinn had intended it to be a celebration of 20th century American music thus far, from folk to electronic, but Parsons pushed things in more of a stone-country direction. With his boyish good looks, well-heeled southern charm, and prodigious musical talent, he could be very persuasive.

“Gram was really a strong musical force,” McGuinn said in 1990. “I just let him go and went along with it because it was fun. I was having a good time with it. We went to Nudie’s” — Hollywood tailor Nudie Cohn, known for his flamboyant Western-style suits — “and got some country clothes and cowboy hats. I got a Cadillac and got into the whole country thing. I started listening to country radio and talking with a southern accent. It was like Halloween or something for a long, extended period.”

By contextualizing songwriters like Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie alongside Merle Haggard, the Louvin Brothers, and Stax tunesmith William Bell, Sweetheart of the Rodeo broadened the perspective of the variegated sources that make up rock’s roots. The album also introduced the world to Parsons’ own prodigious songwriting gifts. The winsome bittersweet nostalgia of “Hickory Wind” and the cosmic cowboy philosophy of “One Hundred Years from Now” announced the arrival of a major new voice in popular music.

But Parsons’ time with the Byrds was short. Always restless and erratic in behavior — almost as if he knew how little time he had — Parsons went on to co-found the Flying Burrito Brothers with fellow ex-Byrd Chris Hillman in 1968. His two albums with that group — The Gilded Palace of Sin, in 1969, and Burrito Deluxe the following year — brought Parsons’ songwriting into diamond-sharp focus.

His love of country music’s florid lyrics and ostentatious costumes was matched by his choice of gear. Onstage and in the studio, he favored big, ornate cowboy guitars—Gibson J-200s and Hummingbirds and Epiphone Frontiers. With their mustache bridges and pickguards decorated with flora and fauna, these flashy guitars are very much in the same tradition as Nudie Cohn’s Western suits, which Parsons brought into vogue among rock musicians.

But his take on country tradition was uniquely his own and quintessentially rock and roll. For example, his most well-known Nudie suit, also in the Country Music Hall of Fame collection, features embroidered images of marijuana leaves and naked women.

Given his fondness for a big guitar and a filled fruit jar, not to mention his encyclopedic knowledge of country music, Parsons made an ideal buddy for Keith Richards as the ’60s gave way to the ’70s. It’s an exaggeration to say that Parsons turned the Stones on to country music. Long before Parsons came along, Richards was copping licks from George Jones’ guitarist Charlie Carter when the Stones toured Texas in the mid Sixties.

But Parsons put Jagger and Richards hip to some of the music’s finer points. Gram and his soon-to-be-wife Gretchen Burrell lived for a while at Richards’ house in the South of France, where they were part of the notorious ongoing upstairs party while the Stones were working on Exile on Main St. in the grand villa’s basement.

There is some speculation that Parsons played a songwriting role on country-flavored Stones tracks like “Wild Horses,” “Dead Flowers” and “Sweet Virginia,” but such things are hard to prove. People also wonder if Parsons played guitar on any Exile tracks, though Richards says that he never did.

“But why he didn’t is a good question,” Richards said in 2004. “Gram and I would play a lot upstairs in the living area, and he would play with Mick [Taylor] a lot up there.

“But Gram was a little shy, and we were too busy to say, ‘Hey, Gram, come down here; we need another guitar.’ He would distance himself from us when we were working. He’d come and listen. a bit, but that was it.

“If I have a friend — and Gram was my friend — Mick sometimes gives off a vibe like, ‘You can’t be my friend if you’re his.’ That could have a bit to do with why Gram’s not playing on the record.”

By the autumn of 1972, Parsons was back in L.A., signed to Reprise Records as a solo artist, and at work on his first album under the deal, GP. Around that time, he came through the doors of Westwood Music, just south of UCLA, looking for a new guitar. The store’s owner, Fred Walecki, knew him well, as he’d sold Gram a few guitars and hung with him. At the time, Westwood Music was at the epicenter of L.A.’s burgeoning country, rock, and folk guitar scene.

“Gram was a party kid,” Walecki recalls. “He was in love with the spike [intravenous drugs]. but he wasn’t like some horrible nodding-out drug addict. Gram was like an angel. He was so innocent in a lot of ways.”

Parsons knew what he wanted: a guitar like the one Walecki had recently sold to Merle Haggard’s wife, which was made by luthier David Russell Young and ornamented with the maker’s extraordinary fretboard and headstock inlay work, a floral pattern often called the Tree of Life. This kind of instrument was very much in Parson’s style: flashy and floral, but also elegant and classy. Walecki commissioned Russell to build an instrument for Parsons, which became Parsons’ stage guitar. The guitar figured prominently in the Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels Tour of 1973.

The nominal goal of this traveling country-rock soap opera-cum-circus was to promote GP. The album was actually a tough sell at the time, although it is now recognized as a classic, rich in poignant southern vignettes and honky-tonk weepers like “She” and “A Song for You,” sweetened by mournful pedal steel, fiddle, and gospel vocal harmonies coming at you like Jesus and his angels beaming down from the nearest cloud.

On the record, Parsons was backed by the crème de la crème of Elvis Presley’s stage band: guitar legend James Burton, keyboardist Glen D. Hardin, and drummer Ron Tutt, as well as country legends Buddy Emmons and Al Perkins on pedal steel and Byron Berline on fiddle.

GP also benefits from angel-voiced contributions of Emmylou Harris. Chris Hillman brought the young up-and-coming singer into the fold. Walecki notes, “Chris’s idea, as I recall, was to get Emmylou Harris to come in, sing on Gram’s album, and then sing on his own album. We had quite the little society.”

Right from the start, Harris and Parsons shared a deep musical empathy, their voices twining in the best country-duo tradition of Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton, George Jones and Tammy Wynette, and Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn. For many years, Harris’s main guitar was a ’60s Gibson J-200 that Gram had given her.

Their musical bond, moreover, was starting to blossom into romance. Harris didn’t want to move in on Gram’s marriage to Gretchen, but she could see that that union was rapidly dissolving. So Emmylou chose to bide her time. If only she’d known how little was left.

Harris exerted a beneficial influence on Parsons. “When I heard the news that Emmylou and Gram had fallen in love, I was happy for them,” Walecki recounts. “Especially the news that she wasn’t tolerating the drugs and alcohol, so he was on the straight and narrow.”

But it was probably too late at that point. Even though Parsons was just in his mid 20s, his health was already seriously compromised by years of abusing booze and dope. “He was shaking the last time I saw him,” Walecki recalls. “Literally. He had pancreatitis, the same thing that killed Lowell George. It was one of those things where he could never get high ever again.”

Harris valiantly worked with Parsons to put together a follow-up to GP. Their plan was to make a duo album, again in the grand country tradition of mixed-gender duets. But Parsons wasn’t in the best of shape, and the songs weren’t coming easily without the familiar aids of drugs and alcohol.

“He was writing for the next album,” Walecki says, “and I don’t think he believed that he could go to that place and write songs without using something as a bridge to get there.”

Even so, Parsons was able to come up with two of his greatest songs, the multivalent trucker/traveling musician’s prayer “In My Hour of Darkness” and the anthemic “Return of the Grievous Angel,” tracks that would soon serve as a eulogy of sorts for the troubled singer. Harris helped him put together the former, and Boston poet Thomas Brown contributed the lyrics for the latter, which celebrated “the truckers and the kickers and the cowboy angels, and a good saloon in every single town.”

With this new material, some leftovers from Parson’s back pages, a few inspired covers, and superb support from Burton, Hardin, Tutt, and a cadre of top country session players, Parsons and Harris cut an album that stands as one of Parsons’ very finest moments. It was to have been titled Sleepless Nights and jointly credited to Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, but fate had something else in store.

While on a vacation getaway with friends at Joshua Tree National Monument, Parsons took a fatal dose of morphine, mixed with tequila, presumably by accident. He died on September 19, 1973. After his death, Gretchen Parsons had Emmylou Harris’s name and likeness deleted from the album’s front cover. With a few changes in the running order, the disc was retitled Grievous Angel.

The epithet is ideally suited to Parsons, a man frequently described as angelic by those who knew him. But he was an angel who carried a grievous burden, one that rendered short his days on this earth but allowed him to leave behind a rich musical legacy that is still thriving today.

Music's landscape changed dramatically in the late 1960s, as the electric guitar became an increasingly powerful force of expression in rock. That evolution owed as much to advances in amplification and effects as it did to the players who came to define the era, including Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix.

At the same time, guitarists like Keith Richards and George Harrison were taking a different approach, drawing on the styles that preceded the British rock boom while developing a more expressive, blues-inspired way of playing. Harrison, in particular, came to appreciate the slower, single-note lead style heard in the playing of the Band's Robbie Robertson and his friend Eric Clapton.

But he wanted little to do with the heavier rock that followed. In his view, Clapton had already taken the electric guitar somewhere new and more forceful with his power trio Cream.

Where the instrument went after that, however, was simply too much for his taste.

“As far as listening to it, I’d rather hear someone like Little Richard or Larry Williams,” he once recalled (via Rolling Stone). “I never liked all that stuff in the late '60s after Cream had broken up — all those Les Paul guitars screaming and distorting.”

Clapton had been at the forefront of the British blues explosion following his departure from the Yardbirds in 1965, when he joined John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. But after leaving to form his own loud and energetic power trio, inspired by seeing Buddy Guy play in London, he helped push the blues into considerably more aggressive territory.

Although Cream was fundamentally a blues-rock band, with strong elements of jazz woven into its sound, the group's musical fusion helped pave the way for the hard rock and heavy metal scenes that followed. Even Clapton came to recognize the band's influence in the years afterward.

“I think we were one of the early heavy metal bands without knowing it,” Clapton has previously said. “After we disbanded, Led Zeppelin filled the void.”

While hard rock would go on to produce plenty of accomplished virtuosos, Harrison remained more drawn to an expressive, understated approach to guitar playing than to the excesses of the genre.

“I like subtlety, like Ry Cooder and Eric Clapton,” he said. “Eric is fantastic. He could blow all those people off the stage if he wanted to, but he’s more subtle than that.

“And personally I’d rather hear three notes hit really sweet than to hear a whole lot of notes from some guitar player whose ears are so blown out he can’t hear the difference between a flat and a sharp.”

Harrison's praise for Clapton is particularly interesting given the complicated history between the two men. They had reportedly engaged in a guitar duel over their mutual love for Pattie Boyd, Harrison's wife at the time. Clapton had become infatuated with Boyd around 1970, inspiring his anguished declaration of love in "Layla," from Derek and the Dominos' Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs (although the song has since become the subject of plagiarism claims).

Intriguingly, in his Rolling Stone interview, Harrison made no mention of the guitarist he considered responsible for the “greatest guitar solo of all time.”

Guitar practice amps are often regarded as unglamorous things; means to an end, save for the occasional breakout brilliance of something like Peavey’s Decade Too. Positive Grid is one brand determined to cut through that general unglamorousness, with a dedicated approach to creating practice-friendly devices that put creativity and simplicity at their core. Whether it’s the whimsy of a pocket-sized 5W mini amp or the tonal endlessness of a silent-practice headphone amp system, Positive Grid’s on the pulse – and, for Black Friday, throwing you another bone in the shape of this early Black Friday sale.

There’s something for every guitarist in the Positive Grid roster. For the guitarist after an unobtrusive way to practice at home, without sacrificing tonal expression or gratification, there’s the Positive Grid Spark Neo Core: a pair of wireless Bluetooth headphones, into which you can also plug your guitar and benefit from dozens of amp models and effects courtesy of the Spark app.

For the on-the-go guitarist, the Spark Go is a rechargeable 5W practice amp in an unbelievably small body. Again, a plethora of well-formed digital amp and effects models await, as does Bluetooth speaker functionality and a gratifyingly big volume knob. Per our glowing 5-star review a little while back, “it’s hard to believe just how full and clear this little amp sounds. After five minutes of noodling, you quickly forget you’re playing through a device that’s not much bigger than the phone running the app.”

For me, the deal most worth shouting about is the Positive Grid Reactor 50W – a solid-state amp with digital tone-generation technology, accessible via the Reactor smartphone app. It’s an amp just as at-home in the practice room as it could be on the stage, and it’s robust enough to manage both; all this is already a bargain at $349, but for now it’s discounted to just below $250.

There’s more to discover than these three stellar entrants in Positive Grid’s Black Friday sale, too. Wireless systems, portable amps and tone-generation software are all discounted, and all well worth a look-in at their new ultra-accessible prices.

• Explore more of this year’s best Black Friday guitar deals