Features archive

May 2026

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22 articles

May 31
- “Bob said, ‘What’s that?’ I told him, ‘That’s one of your songs, man.’” Roger McGuinn says Bob Dylan didn't recognize his own song when the Byrds performed it for him
May 30
- “I said, ‘How come you didn't use these!?’” Steve Lukather says Eddie Van Halen’s unreleased recordings left him stunned
May 29
- “He said, ‘I’m done.’ That’s when I got the call.” Todd Rundgren recalls taking over Badfinger’s ‘Straight Up’ after George Harrison abandoned the troubled sessions
May 27
- “The stickers became part of the guitar. He couldn't take any off.” Alvin Lee's daughter tells how Gibson accidentally preserved his Woodstock ES-335 forever
May 26
- “So close that our knees would touch.” David Lee Roth fights tears as he recalls his earliest writing sessions with Eddie Van Halen
- “I said, ‘Bob, this is a folk song.’ He said, ‘No, listen to the lyrics.’” How Alice Cooper spun a 1960s ballad into his own glam-rock anthem
May 24
- “He was shaking the last time I saw him. He had the same thing that killed Lowell George.” Roger McGuinn and Keith Richards remember Gram Parsons, who laid a path for the ’70s California sound and died at 26
May 23
- “We smoked a lot of pot together, so that was really helpful.” How Neil Diamond, a bag of weed and a twice-rejected song turned a pair of struggling young guitarists into global stars
May 21
- “They didn’t attack the record. They attacked me.” When Cher tried to disappear into a hard rock band called Black Rose
May 20
- “We both laughed when he said that — but he was right.” Gary Moore on how Bob Daisley steered him toward a blues reinvention
May 18
- “A Beatle touched it.” The vintage charms of Watkins’ Rapier guitar line once enticed George Harrison. Now I understand why
- “Everyone goes on about the guitar, but I just love that voice.” Phil Manzanera on working with David Gilmour
May 17
- “I said it as a joke, but I think it spurred him a little bit.” What Neil Diamond really said to Bob Dylan backstage at The Last Waltz
- “Andy went home and tore the record apart.” Todd Rundgren on the tense sessions for XTC’s ‘Skylarking,’ the hit album that nearly broke up the band
May 15
- “It sounds like some sort of weird Eno art project.” Inside Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera and the “devilish experiment” that became 801, rock’s strangest supergroup
- “I had to teach him how to play again.” Pete Townshend put Eric Clapton on the road to recovery. Now he’s finally coming to the Crossroads Festival
May 13
- “Joe took it really badly.” Aerosmith producer Jack Douglas, who died May 11, on the time Steve Hunter replaced Joe Perry on “Train Kept A Rollin’”
May 9
- “He was angry I’d given away a No. 1 hit.” Neil Diamond says he was fired five times before the Monkees scored a hit with his song “I’m a Believer”
May 7
- “They were literally pushing each other out of the way.” Adrian Smith recalls Bruce Dickinson and Steve Harris’s stage battles in Iron Maiden
May 6
- ”Multiplying anything by the number 64 makes it huge.” How many pickups is too many? This guitar has 64
May 4
- “What am I gonna play on this song that’s got 18 Steve Vai guitar tracks on it?” Joe Satriani and Vai on the upcoming SatchVai album — and their plans for the group’s future
May 1
- “I had already died. I wasn’t afraid of death anymore.” Melissa Etheridge says a “heroic dose” of cannabis led to a life-changing awakening