Feature archive

August 2025

Filter

Year
Month

14 articles

August 18
- “I just want it known I'm allowed to put four songs on the album, whatever happens.” John Lennon had a plan to keep the Beatles going into the 1970s. Paul McCartney rejected it. The rest is history
August 16
- “Termites eat through wood two times faster when listening to rock music.” How Snapple and a 1968 news story on Steve Miller led to an urban myth about head-banging insects and heavy metal
- “We were mixing ‘Frampton Comes Alive!’ and they just kept on coming in and borrowing all sorts of different stuff!” Peter Frampton says Ace Frehley and Paul Stanley used his guitars on Kiss’s smash 1975 live album
August 15
- "I don't think I knew four chords when I started recording. All the songs I liked you could play with two or three chords. We made a lot of noise, got into a lot of fights…" Johnny Cash looks back…
August 12
- "Try. Listen. Be patient. Don't worry about playing fast…" Back in 1974, Les Paul offered seven timeless bits of advice for guitarists
August 11
- "If you pick up a guitar and start copying Eddie Van Halen, you're going down a cul-de-sac…" How U2's The Edge ripped up the rule book
August 8
- “That was one of the most exciting moments in my musical career. Just the fact that it came out of nowhere.” Peter Frampton on Humble Pie’s out-of-the-blue hit tune
- “There were all these things I couldn’t have done in Greta Van Fleet. It wouldn’t have made much sense.” Jake Kiszka and Chris Turpin explain why Mirador is the twin-guitar fusion that's now rocking their world
August 4
- “It was magic. We were just jamming that day, but blues were very common to all of us.” Jack Bruce on the day he met Eric Clapton and how the guitarist changed his way of listening and playing
- “People are always telling me, ‘That song helped me through the worst time of my life.’” Tom Petty on how he almost didn’t record his first solo hit — and how George Harrison helped save the day
August 3
- “It’s like a monkey with arthritis, trying to go onstage and look young.” Keith Richards’ and Elton John’s long-running feud began with one disastrous Rolling Stones gig
August 2
- “He told the story that I got out of the helicopter with a beer in one hand and a tape in the other.” Kris Kristofferson on what really happened when he landed a helicopter in Johnny Cash’s yard to get his demo tape heard
August 1
- "It hit me like a ton of bricks: I’m playing live with Pink Floyd and trading licks with David Gilmour!” From jamming with Gilmour to getting guitar lessons from the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards — one guitarist has lived out every player’s fantasies
- “Paul never said, ‘We’re going to play Beatles songs.’ But before long, we were playing a lot of Beatles songs.” Robbie McIntosh reveals his “pinch me” moment as lead guitarist on Paul McCartney’s first-ever solo tour