Ritchie Blackmore says his reunion with Deep Purple on Wednesday night, August 12, for a performance of “Smoke on the Water” at Jones Beach near New York City was as emotional for him as it was for fans at the venue — and around the world.

“It was very moving because I went on very quickly and had to play immediately,” Blackmore told Guitar Player via email afterward. “I couldn’t warm up, but I wasn’t there to be playing correct notes. I was there to see old friends. I hadn’t seen in 40 years and were all getting older. I think we realized it could be the last time we see each other, maybe.”

Blackmore — who had not performed with Deep Purple since November 15, 1993, in Helsinki, Finland — says the “hell freezes over”–caliber event was his idea. In fact, he indicated the guest appearance would be happening during a live-streamed conversation with his wife and Blackmore’s Night bandmate Candice Night the evening before the Jones Beach concert.

“I woke up one morning thinking, the day before their show, ‘You know it would be good for the fans if I just got up for one song, probably ‘Smoke’ and just show that were not at each other’s throats and don’t hate each other,’” the guitarist tells Guitar Player.

“Candice, my wife, got me in touch with Ian Gillan and I said, ‘What do you think about me getting up for ‘Smoke?’ His exact words were, ‘It made me smile.’ He then put it to the band and it was thumbs-up all around.”

Nevertheless, Blackmore had some concerns. He hasn’t played full-on rock onstage since 2019 with his band Rainbow.

“I had my misgivings at first, as I didn’t know if I would be heard or too quiet or whatever,” he acknowledges. “I could see the guitarist [Simon McBride], who is very good, had a big amplifier, and I thought I’ll just bring a 50-watt amp, but luckily it all worked.

“It was tricky; I didn’t play anything too technical, as I felt I should stick to the rudiments of being simple. I still lost my place at one point, but it’s not why I was there. I was there to heal any wounds — but there weren’t any wounds. Everyone was like, we were in the army, all along the Western front and we were all getting together again. Very emotional moment.”

The appearance, and performance, was a clear triumph by all measures, with a visible bonhomie between the black-clad Blackmore and former Mark II bandmates Gillan, bass guitarist Roger Glover and drummer Ian Paice, with whom Blackmore co-founded Deep Purple during 1968 in London. The guitarist was with the band until his acrimonious first departure in 1975, then joined for a Mark II reunion from 1984 to 1993. He was part of 13 of the group’s 24 studio albums and co-wrote most of the band’s classic material.

“We’re two alpha guys,” Blackmore said of the past clashes between he and Gillan. “I’m used to running a band, and I think he’s used to running a band. So we clashed in the old days. But all that [has] changed.”

Blackmore came onstage to a huge ovation on Wednesday, smiling at the other musicians as he plugged in and prepared to play. He let McBride carry the main riff while he laced in some fills at the beginning and playing the mid-song solo, which touched on his past approach but incorporated some fresh touches. During the first verse Gillan sang with his hand on Blackmore’s shoulder, and in the third verse Blackmore grabbed Gillan’s wrist and had the frontman’s hand slapping on his guitar.

After the performance Gillan wrapped an arm around Blackmore’s shoulder and said, “A couple days ago I got a message from a local lad... saying, ‘I only live around the corner, do you mind if I come and jam with you? And I tell you it was an absolute pleasure to have back onstage the founding member, the great legend, the immortal Ritchie Blackmore.”

At one point Blackmore asked, “How come you’re getting so much taller than me?” to which Gillan replied, “It’s the other way around, mate. You’re shrinking.”

“Ian’s always been something like six-two,” Blackmore explained afterward. “I’m usually five-10 but I have herniated discs in my back that I’ve probably lost an inch to, so I was shorter... One of the problems that comes with age is you to get shorter as the back vertebrae compresses more.”

Wednesday’s choice of guitar, Blackmore added, “was a Strat I used to play in the ’80s. I changed the strings and practiced a little bit. I haven’t played a Strat properly for 30 years; I’ve done the occasional solo but I usually play acoustics around the house. I use my right and for finger picking with long nails, but playing the Strat I have to play with a plectrum and have very short nails. A whole different technique. My strings were .046 to .010,” a lighter gauge than he played previously.

The good feelings were on display immediately after the show. Both Night and Purple posted photos of everyone posting together after the show, some drinking from red Solo cups. (Night also posted a shot of Blackmore quaffing a beer prior to going on.) A message on the guitarist’s social media red, “Good night had by all, I hope. I know I had a great time. Thanks a lot lads. Carry on and have a good tour.”

Deep Purple’s post-show post called it “a big moment in rock history,” while Gillan’s own post read, “What a pleasure it was to welcome Ritchie Blackmore on stage with us to play Smoke last night... Thanks Ritchie, that meant a lot to many people; not least me.”

McBride shared a photo of himself with Blackmore backstage, reading, “My absolute pleasure to share the stage with this legend, such a great guy and an inspiration to all.”

Deep Purple are continuing their tour supporting the band’s latest album, Splat!, with dates running through November 19 in the Americas, Mexico and Europe. Earlier this year, meanwhile, Blackmore released a Rainbow box set The Temple of the King 1975–1976, chronicling the band’s first two studio albums along with rarities and concert recordings from 1976 in Germany.

When a guitarist as revered as Mark Knopfler tells you another guitarist is “one of the best I’ve ever heard,” you pay attention. The Dire Straits mastermind has spent decades being hailed as one of the greats himself, but when it came to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Knopfler heard something that went beyond the guitarist’s obvious Hendrix and blues influences.

In a 1991 TV documentary, A Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan — An Up Close Extra, Knopfler praised Vaughan’s ability to absorb his influences and turn them into something distinctly his own.

“He was one of the best,” Knopfler said. “He was really, really tremendous.”

Vaughan’s debut album with Double Trouble, Texas Flood, had already established him as a formidable electric-guitar hero. Released in 1983, it peaked at number 38 on the Billboard 200 and eventually went double Platinum in the U.S.

But Knopfler believed Vaughan’s greatest work was still to come.

“Later on, I thought that something was happening where the Hendrix and Buddy Guy influences were giving way to some really powerful stuff,” he said. “He’s one of the best I’ve ever heard. No question.”

That evolution was one of the things that made Vaughan so remarkable. He was deeply rooted in the blues, but he never sounded like a museum piece. His playing carried the influence of Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy and other blues and R&B giants, yet Vaughan had an unmistakable voice of his own.

David Bowie was among the first major stars to recognize that quality. After seeing Vaughan perform in Europe, Bowie described him as “just about the greatest new blues guitarist around” and recruited him to play on Let’s Dance. Vaughan’s searing guitar work on the 1983 album helped introduce him to a vastly larger audience.

Other guitar heroes would make similar observations. Eric Johnson called Vaughan a complete musician, while Steve Stevens praised his ability to retain the soul of the blues even when playing in settings far removed from traditional blues.

Vaughan’s rise was particularly striking because it came at a time when the blues was hardly the dominant force in guitar music. The decade belonged increasingly to hard rock and shred, but Vaughan emerged with a stripped-down, intensely expressive style that sounded almost defiantly old-school.

It wasn’t an immediate success everywhere. Huey Lewis recalled that Vaughan struggled initially when Double Trouble opened for Huey Lewis and the News, but by the end of the tour he had won over the audience.

Vaughan’s career was tragically brief, but his influence has only grown since his death in 1990. And among the many great guitarists who have praised him, Knopfler’s assessment carries particular weight: he wasn’t simply impressed by Vaughan’s technique. He heard a guitarist whose influences were evolving into something even more powerful — and who, in his estimation, became one of the best he had ever heard.

Eric Clapton was 21 when he left John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers in 1965, convinced he was heading toward something even deeper into the blues.

Instead, he spent the next three decades taking a remarkably circuitous route back to the place he had started.

When From the Cradle arrived in 1994, Clapton finally recognized the irony. The album was his first full-length studio statement devoted entirely to the blues since Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton, and he realized he was essentially making the record he had envisioned nearly 30 years earlier.

“It’s taken a lot of courage for me to go back,” he said. “I’m really retracing my steps back to John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers.”

After establishing himself as an electric-guitar blues hero with Mayall’s band, Clapton left in 1965 expecting to move into an even more hardcore blues setting. Instead, his next project was Cream, the groundbreaking power trio he formed with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker.

“When I was leaving John Mayall, in my head, I was going to an even more hardcore blues situation,” Clapton said. “Which backfired. Although it came out to be a great hybrid, it wasn’t my intention to go that way.”

Cream would, of course, become one of the most important bands in rock history. But its extended improvisations, psychedelic leanings and jazz influences took Clapton somewhere very different from the stripped-down blues he had imagined.

His subsequent career took him further still. Derek and the Dominos produced “Layla,” one of the defining songs of his career, while his solo work established him as a major rock star. There were also much darker periods, including his struggle with heroin addiction and the collapse of Derek and the Dominos, after which he nearly quit music altogether.

Yet the blues remained the thread running through it all.

By the early 1990s, Clapton had reached another turning point. His Unplugged album became a huge success, winning three Grammys and giving him the confidence to follow his instincts rather than chase another rock hit. With From the Cradle, he decided to stop circling the music that had first made him want to become a guitarist and immerse himself in it completely.

“Now what I’m doing is I’m going back to that jumping-off point,” he said. “It’s almost like I’m just leaving John Mayall now, and I’m producing my own blues band.”

The phrase “jumping-off point” is particularly revealing. Clapton wasn’t simply revisiting his past. He felt as if he were finally picking up the journey he had begun in 1965.

“It’s taken me 30 years of meandering around the backstreets to get there,” he said. “And I don’t know why. I always felt very afraid of being true to myself. But right now, I want to do it.”

He was also candid about why it had taken so long. When asked whether From the Cradle was an album he could have or should have made nearly 30 years earlier, Clapton agreed.

“It’s what I intended to do after the Yardbirds, before John Mayall,” he said. “Here was a period when this was the album I would’ve made, except I wouldn’t have had the gift — I maybe would’ve had the gift, but I wouldn’t have had the technique to do it. I would’ve collapsed.”

That distinction is important. At 21, Clapton had the ambition and the blues obsession, but he didn't yet have the experience to make the record he imagined. By 1994, after three decades of playing, recording, touring and living through some extraordinary highs and lows, he felt ready.

And he wasn't taking the responsibility lightly. From the Cradle found him tackling songs associated with blues giants including Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Elmore James and Freddie King. He described Muddy Waters' songs as particularly intimidating.

“Muddy’s songs have been the hardest,” Clapton said. “His music was the first that got to me and it remains some of the most important music in my life today. I love this man so much that I want to do it absolutely perfectly and, of course, that’s not possible.”

For Clapton, the album ultimately represented something more fundamental than a return to a particular sound.

“From the Cradle is ‘me’ in terms of my musical identity,” he said. “It’s where I’ve come from and what I mean. And wherever I go in the future will be the result of this.”

After 30 years of meandering, Clapton had finally arrived back at the place he had been trying to reach all along.

Ritchie Blackmore reunited with Deep Purple last night for the first time in 33 years, joining his former bandmates onstage at New York’s Jones Beach Theater for “Smoke on the Water.” It was a remarkable moment for a guitarist who has spent most of the past three decades at a distance from the band he co-founded in 1968.

But it wasn’t Blackmore’s first Deep Purple reunion — and the reason he helped bring the classic lineup back together in 1984 had, by his own account, a surprising amount to do with another group: the Police.

Blackmore had left Deep Purple in 1975 to form Rainbow with Ronnie James Dio. Nearly a decade later, he made the first move toward reuniting the classic Mark II lineup, bringing back vocalist Ian Gillan, bass guitarist Roger Glover, keyboardist Jon Lord and drummer Ian Paice.

Speaking to Metal Hammer in 1987, Blackmore explained what had convinced him that there was still a place for Deep Purple’s brand of heavy, blues-rooted rock. His explanation was blunt.

“I suddenly realized that there was a gap for this type of music because only ZZ Top were doing that aggressive stuff,” Blackmore said. “Everyone was playing like the Police. And can I state here that I hate the Police?”

The timing makes the comment even more revealing. The Police had just completed their extraordinary run of success with Synchronicity, their fifth and final studio album, released in 1983. It spawned hits including “Every Breath You Take” and “King of Pain,” topped charts around the world and led to a huge 1983–84 tour.

In other words, Blackmore was looking around at a rock scene increasingly influenced by the Police at almost exactly the moment the band was reaching the end of its own run. The trio would soon go on hiatus, eventually splitting for good in 1986.

But Blackmore clearly saw their sound as representative of something he felt was missing from rock. The Police’s polished blend of rock, reggae, new wave and pop was a world away from the hard-driving, blues-based sound he had helped establish with Deep Purple.

“There just wasn’t a band playing that earthy kind of rock,” Blackmore said. “Our music isn’t contrived, and there isn’t that sheen of gloss.”

When the interviewer reminded him that Glover had once suggested Deep Purple would always exist as long as the world needed the band, Blackmore offered his typically sardonic response.

“It’s quite a profound statement, and Roger doesn’t take drugs,” he said.

Then came the punchline: “As long as the world doesn’t need the Police, that’s all I care about.”

Blackmore’s comments shouldn’t be taken to mean the Police were literally the sole reason Deep Purple reunited. But they offer a revealing glimpse into what he believed was missing from rock music in the early 1980s — and why he felt there was still a place for Deep Purple’s heavier, more earthy sound.

The reunion produced Perfect Strangers in 1984, giving the Mark II lineup a second life after more than a decade apart. Blackmore would remain with the band until 1993, when he departed for the final time.

Now, 33 years after his last performance with Deep Purple, he has stood onstage with them again.

Martin is releasing two new Joe Bonamassa signature acoustic guitars inspired by his treasured 1937 Martin 00-18 shade-top.

The 00-18 Joe Bonamassa ($3,999.99) and 00-10E Retro Joe Bonamassa ($1,299.99) are available now from Martin dealers and at martinguitar.com.

Although he’s widely known as one of the foremost blues-rock guitarists today, Bonamassa is an acoustic player as well. He purchased the shade-top from John Shults at True Vintage Guitar, “who found it in Ohio and bought it from the original owners family,” Bonamassa revealed in a June 15 Facebook post. “Price tag of 45 dollars still on it.”

The new Martin guitars include a handcrafted Nazareth-built model and a more accessible version produced at Martin's Navojoa, Mexico facility. Both feature a custom 1937-style sunburst and carefully replicated top wear based on Bonamassa's original guitar, capturing the appearance of an instrument that has spent decades making music.

This collaboration is Bonamassa’s second with Martin, following on his 2024 Martin 000-45 Joe Bonamassa Limited Edition.

“If you told me when I was a kid that I'd be sitting here in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, with not one, but two signature guitars, I'd be like, ‘You’re out of your mind,’” Bonamassa said.

“This is the high-water mark for me, because you’re going, ‘It’s a Martin!’”

Handcrafted in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, the 00-18 Joe Bonamassa pairs a solid spruce top with genuine mahogany back and sides for a warm, clear, and responsive voice. Its compact 00 body offers balanced tone and comfortable playability equally well suited to blues, folk, fingerstyle playing, and songwriting.

Golden Era scalloped X-bracing delivers an open, dynamic response, while faux tortoise binding, the custom 1937-style sunburst, and replicated top wear faithfully reflect the appearance of Bonamassa's original pre-war instrument. A Golden Era Modified Low Oval neck profile with a standard taper provides a comfortable vintage-inspired feel.

Bonamassa brought an early prototype into the studio and compared it directly against his original 1937 Martin.

“When we put the mic in front of it, my producer said, 'I like that one better,’” Bonamassa recalled of the Nazareth-built model.

Each 00-18 Joe Bonamassa includes a hardshell case.

Crafted in Martin's Navojoa facility, the 00-10E Retro Joe Bonamassa pairs a solid spruce top with solid sapele back and sides for balanced tone, warmth, and focused projection. Its custom 1937-style sunburst and visually replicated top wear mirror the distinctive character of Bonamassa's original guitar. Scalloped spruce X-bracing supports a responsive acoustic voice, while a Performing Artist neck with a high-performance taper offers smooth, approachable playability.

The model also features Martin E1 electronics with volume, tone, and phase controls, along with a built-in chromatic tuner, making it equally at home onstage, in the studio, or around the house. Bonamassa personally tested the onboard electronics in live performance before approving the final production model.

Each 00-10E Retro Joe Bonamassa includes a softshell case.

Ritchie Blackmore reunited with Deep Purple last night for the first time in 33 years. And what better song for them to perform together than “Smoke on the Water,” the 1972 hit that best defined the band during Blackmore’s time with it.

“It was an absolute pleasure to have back onstage the founding member, the great legend, the immortal... Ritchie Blackmore!” singer Ian Gillan said afterward. “It was a great pleasure. I'll see you in the bar.”

Blackmore emerged from the side of the stage with his yellow Fender Stratocaster to cheers from the crowd at the Jones Beach Theater, near his home on Long Island.

Blackmore revealed the appearance during an Instagram Live with his wife Candice Night on August 11.

“There is something we wanted to mention about tomorrow night,” the 81-year-old guitarist said. “Well, it is a secret and I don’t want anybody to know, but I’ll probably get up and do an encore with the band, Deep Purple.”

Blackmore said he pitched the idea to Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan.

“I said, ‘How would you feel about if I got up just for an encore? Just one of the songs. I don’t want to intrude.’ And I said, ‘No pressure — just kind of [for] old times’ sake.’ I’m 81 now.

“So he seemed to love the idea, put it to the band, got a thumbs up, and it looks like we might be doing that.”

The show marked the first time Blackmore has performed with Deep Purple since 1993. It was also his first return to rock music since he re-formed Rainbow in 2016 for a series of concerts that continued into 2019.

Blackmore admitted the performance would be “kind of frightening,” given how little he plays rock music these days. Since 1997 he has performed with the Renaissance-inspired folk band Blackmore’s Night, which he formed with his partner, vocalist and lyricist Candice Night. The duo blends traditional medieval melodies with modern acoustic instrumentation.

The band’s fall 2025 tour was abruptly cancelled after Blackmore suffered a case of vertigo. He’s also dealt with a heart issue, gout and four herniated disks in his lumbar region.

In anticipation of his Deep Purple appearance, Blackmore said he had a lumbar injection just days before.

“It’s a special injection I have that enables me to stand in one spot,” he explained on Instagram Live, “because if I’m playing a Strat onstage, I have a hard time with the shoulders and the lumbar area.”

Johnny Marr was devastated when the Smiths acrimoniously collapsed in 1987, five years after he’d co-founded the cult independent rock band.

The guitarist read in the music press that his group were poised to fire him. Suspecting the story had been planted by lead singer Morrissey — as part of their increasingly angry communication breakdown — Marr decided to jump rather than be pushed, and found himself in a personal hell.

Around the same time, he also found himself spending “one long, incredible day with Paul McCartney and his late wife Linda, which provided him with the emotional energy he needed to carry on.

“Linda was so generous as a person,” Marr told Mojo. “She was asking me all about my life. And [Paul] was sat there, so I just told him about the breakup of the band. I looked to him and waited, and he just said, ‘That’s bands for you.’”

It wasn’t just the words; it was who they’d come from — McCartney had endured the same kind of hell when the Beatles had disintegrated in 1970, but he’d had time learn to live with it and move on.

“It’s such a brilliant answer coming from him,” Marr said. “Over the years I’ve been asked to give advice. There is just a time to say, ‘That’s bands for you.’”

Marr picked up his electric guitar and began to accept invitations to play sessions, where found “sanctuary.”

“I just have to give credit to the people I was working with,” he said. “Matt Johnson [The The] is one of my closest friends to this day. Bernard Sumner and Chrissie Hynde — that collection of people. I get very tight with people.”

He added, “If you’re looking at it like a CV, it seems to be flitting around a lot, but I know when I’ve got a good job — [like] playing with Bryan Ferry and turning up on his records. There’s a time to not look too deeply at stuff.”

Brian May has been warning about the dangers of AI for years, going back to his 2023 interview with Guitar Player when he warned, “I think we might look back on 2023 as the last year when humans really dominated the music scene.”

Now May has revealed an AI version of a Queen album cover to argue his case that humans don’t need the emerging technology.

The guitarist prompted a large language model platform to generate the cover image of 1980’s The Game — which featured the hit “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” — and what he got back urged him to restate his position.

“I asked Meta AI to show me what the cover of The Game album looked like,” May posted on Instagram. “This is what it gave me. Good job, eh?” He continued: “So this is the kind of intelligence that will soon be ruling the world? Well, great. Maybe this is the time to realize we actually don’t need AI!”

He turned fully serious as he addressed current plans to build AI service centers around the U.K., despite local community concerns over the establishments’ energy and water consumption. “I believe the price we are about to pay for this ‘inevitable’ development is way too high,” he said.

“We must not allow these hideous data centers to be built. They will destroy our beautiful country — like they are already destroying beautiful America.”

The electric guitar hero finished with a message to new British prime minister Andy Burnham, whose honeymoon period has been attracting calls for major political turnarounds. “Dear Andy — you must stop it now. Before it’s too late,“ May said.

Meanwhile, Spotify announced plans to badge music created by AI, to make users better aware of what they’re hearing. “Spotify is rolling out the ability to label artists as being an ‘AI Persona,’” the streaming platform said via X.

“The label can only be applied by creators themselves, or by Spotify if [we] detect an artist to be AI-generated. Artists labelled as an AI Persona will be excluded from personalised recommendations.”

The move follows the huge increase in tracks created via large language modelling systems. Rival platform Deezer recently confirmed that over 50 percent of daily uploads were non-human compositions. An earlier study suggested that 97 percent of listeners can’t tell the difference between a “real” composition and one created using AI.

For the first time in more than three decades, Ritchie Blackmore will join Deep Purple onstage when the band performs August 12 at the Northwell at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York.

Blackmore revealed the appearance during an Instagram Live with his wife Candice Night on August 11.

“There is something we wanted to mention about tomorrow night,” the 81-year-old guitarist said [via Blabbermouth]. “Well, it is a secret and I don’t want anybody to know, but I’m probably get up and do an encore with the band, Deep Purple. But you can’t tell anybody, and I know that this is gonna be kept a secret. And will it? I suppose so.”

Blackmore said he pitched the idea to Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan.

“I said, ‘How would you feel about if I got up just for an encore? Just one of the songs. I don’t want to intrude.’ And I said, ‘No pressure — just kind of [for] old times’ sake.’ I’m 81 now.

“So he seemed to love the idea, put it to the band, got a thumbs up, and it looks like we might be doing that.”

The show will see Blackmore onstage with current Deep Purple guitarist Simon McBride. Blackmore noted that he’ll be using “a small amplifier, but it‘s very loud. It’s what I use when I record.”

He says he’s also changed the strings on his Fender Stratocaster for the first time in years.

“I changed my strings on my Strat, which I haven’t done in over 25 years.”

But don’t expect Blackmore to play a full set.

“It’d probably just be the one number, as it’s been a while,” he said.

He was complimentary toward McBride, whom he called “a very good guitar player. As was, and is, [former Deep Purple guitarist] Steve Morse.”

The show will mark the first time Blackmore has performed with Deep Purple since 1993. It also marks his first return to rock music since he re-formed Rainbow in 2016 for a series of concerts that continued into 2019.

“It’ll be good to see the old guys again,” he said. “I think we’ll all be on crutches and wheelchairs and things, although I think the rest of them are okay.

“But, yes, it’s kind of frightening. I haven’t played rock in 25 years,“ he said, obviously forgetting his more recent Rainbow concerts. “I’ve been playing acoustic guitar for 25 years, and at first I was very uncomfortable playing it, but I got used to it, and now I’m used to playing the acoustic more so than the electric.’”

Since 1997 Blackmore has performed with the Renaissance-inspired folk band Blackmore’s Night, which he formed with his partner, vocalist and lyricist Candice Night. The duo blends traditional medieval melodies with modern acoustic instrumentation.

The band’s fall 2025 tour was abruptly cancelled after Blackmore suffered a case of vertigo. He’s also dealt with a heart issue, gout and four herniated disks in his lumbar region.

“I did have my injection in my lumbar area yesterday,” Blackmore said in his August 11 Instagram Live. “It’s a special injection I have that enables me to stand in one spot, because if I’m playing a Strat onstage, I have a hard time with the shoulders and the lumbar area.”

Minimalism met rock in 1972 when Pete Townshend wrote “Baba O’Riley.” The song’s cyclic, arpeggiating riff was inspired by the work of avant-garde composer Terry Riley and became the driving rhythmic force behind “Baba O’Riley,” the anthem that is itself the launch pad for Who’s Next, the band’s landmark 1972 album.

Although it’s often described as a synthesizer line, Townshend created the riff on a Lowrey Berkshire Deluxe TBO-1 home organ by using its “Marimba Repeat” setting, which gives it the sort of synthetic, percolating rhythmic pulse associated with early electronic synthesizer music.

As hooks go, it’s a great one, grabbing listeners’ ears, pulling them in and holding them hostage for the track’s full five-minute length.

Producer Tom Werman was among the listeners captivated by Townshend’s synth-like line. As it turns out, he liked it so much that he took it for his own when recording a pair of hits for Cheap Trick later in the decade.

The idea first struck him while recording “Surrender,” from the group’s 1978 album, Heaven Tonight. Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen wrote the tune as a "rock nursery rhyme" about his own youthful perception of his parents' "weirdness.”

“I wrote it at home late one night,” he told Guitar Player. “I was playing an unplugged electric guitar, and I had a rhythm thing going on. Then I started singing to myself: ‘Mother told me, yes, she told me, I’d meet girls like you.’ It kind of sounded like a nursery rhyme to me, only it was a rock nursery rhyme for somebody in high school wearing a leather jacket.

“I wrote down lyrics as I went. It was all kind of stream of consciousness, but a lot of it was true. ‘Mommy’s all right, daddy’s all right, they’re just a little bit weird.’ Whose parents aren’t weird? My parents were weird.” (This from a guy who plays a five-necked guitar?)

While hearing Nielsen pound out the song’s opening chords on his electric guitar, Werman had an idea. Maybe it was the song’s theme of teenage alienation that brought the music of Pete Townshend to mind. After all, the producer said, “Pete Townshend was always my main musical inspiration.”

Whatever it was, Werman got it in his head to use Townshend’s “Baba O’Riley” riff behind Nielsen’s power chords. “I just plain stole it,” he admitted.

“I took the keyboard riff from ‘Baba O’ Riley’ by the Who and I put it in ‘Surrender,’ because it sounded good and it supported Rick’s signature riffs,” Werman tells Guitar Player. “That was my main contribution to it.”

The song made the perfect opener for Heaven Tonight, an album of power-pop tunes made with radio-friendly production that positioned Cheap Trick as a group ready for arenas.

“I just loved what we did with ‘Surrender,’” Werman says. “We were all excited about the track. It wasn’t a huge hit, but it got a lot of airplay.

“Normally the song that opens up side one of an album is your choice for the strongest song on the record, and the first song on side one of Heaven Tonight was ‘Surrender.’ But there could have been a lot of those, because there are so many good songs on the album.”

Released as a single in June 1978, “Surrender” got Cheap Trick in the Hot 100 — at number 62 — and helped push Heaven Tonight to number 48. In Japan, the album notched in at number 11. Executives at the Japan headquarters of their label, Epic, took note and decided to release Cheap Trick at Budokan, a live document of the group’s recent spring concerts at the Tokyo arena.

That, in turn, gave “Surrender” a boost months later when At Budokan was released in the U.S., in February 1979. The album had a slow-burn success, thanks to the radio hits “I Want You to Want Me” and the group’s cover of the Fats Domino hit “Ain’t That a Shame.”

By then, Werman and Cheap Trick were ready to release Dream Police, the group’s fourth studio album. The record had been completed for months but was left on the shelf while At Budokan rode the charts, setting the stage for what would be the group’s most commercially successful studio album.

Dream Police was the perfect statement of Cheap Trick’s musical intentions, featuring longer songs with more ambitious production, including orchestrations. And for the album’s title track, Werman once again took inspiration from the Who’s “Baba O’Riley.”

“That synthesizer riff turned up again in the song ‘Dream Police,’” he says. “It was almost the same thing, and was done in half-time.”

It also featured actual string players rather than a synthesizer.

“Rick did a real string chart for ‘Dream Police,’” Werman confirms. “I think that’s the only time we used real strings on any song, except I used double cello on ‘Auf Wiedersehen,’ to double the bass.

“That album was a big deal. Initially, Heaven Tonight sold about seven or eight hundred thousand, which was a big improvement over its predecessor, In Color, which had sold about three hundred thousand copies. Then Dream Police sold a little over a million, so we were on the way up.”

Warren Haynes has spent more than four decades developing one of the most distinctive voices in blues-rock guitar. But before he became a fixture of the Allman Brothers Band, Gov’t Mule and the wider jam-band circuit, a handful of guitarists showed him just how far the instrument could go.

The 66-year-old guitarist recently revisited those early influences on the popular YouTube channel Track Star, where he was handed a pair of headphones on the streets of New York and asked to identify the songs being played for him. The challenge was easy enough for a musician with Haynes’ encyclopedic knowledge of guitar history, but the exercise prompted him to reflect on the players who first made him want to pick up the instrument.

“I first discovered Hendrix due to my oldest brother, who had Smash Hits,” he says of the first guitarist to turn him on to the sound of soul and heavy blues-rock. He picked out “Fire” in no time.

“Then I started hearing Cream and Johnny Winter, and it moved me and made me think about playing guitar.”

Hendrix was Haynes’ gateway to a new world of electric guitar music. “It was so different at that time than anything anybody’d ever heard,” he says, stressing that he isn’t exaggerating.

“I had two older brothers that had really great taste in music,” he adds. “So they played a lot of great stuff around the house.”

Still, it’s Eric Clapton, the second player in Haynes’ trifecta of heroes, who gets the most praise. He identifies “Lay Down Sally” within seconds.

“Clapton was probably my first guitar hero. He was millions of people’s first guitar hero,” he laughs. “He took the blues to another level. He just filtered it through his brain, his personality, and combined it with all the other influences that he grew up with and created this style of playing that no one had done before.”

As Haynes quips later in the video, “Freddie King taught him how to make love to a guitar.”

Haynes also recognizes that Clapton did little to hide his influences, from the Three Kings — Freddie, B.B. and Albert — to Buddy Guy. Clapton absorbed what those players were doing and helped introduce their music to British audiences, bringing the blues to a new generation while putting his own stamp on it.

By his own admission, Clapton benefited from growing up in a musically rich household. His father played everything from the Sensational Nightingales to the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi and Bobby “Blue” Bland. That education helped position Clapton to bring the blues to contemporary audiences, where he remained faithful to its roots while injecting it with his own psychedelic personality. His Cream legacy attests to that, although the band’s surprising pop influence is often overlooked.

It’s also worth noting that Haynes’ beloved 12-string Les Paul is a direct nod to Slowhand.

Winter’s music doesn’t make an appearance in the Track Star video, but Haynes’ reaction to his passing in 2014 says all that’s needed about the impact the “Rock Me Baby” hitmaker had on his life.

“He was an influence on every guitar player of my generation,” Haynes wrote in a statement published by JamBase. “If you were a guitarist from a younger generation, you were influenced by Johnny Winter whether you knew it or not.

“He was one of the few guitarists who created a style of playing that everyone who came later recognizes,” he added. “I treasured the few times we’ve played together over the years, and I was proud to call him my friend.”

Through his work with the Allman Brothers Band and his own group, Gov’t Mule — a band that will never say no to an extended guitar solo — Haynes has carved out his own path on the instrument. His standing in the scene was typified last year when, after years of talks, he finally worked with Gibson on a new signature guitar.

As for the magic of the Allman Brothers Band, Haynes says an imperfect secret sauce was key to their legacy.

Yet while Haynes believes Clapton brought the blues to contemporary audiences, the guitarist offered a somewhat cynical assessment of who has carried that tradition forward, saying that only one player has done likewise since.

Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello has often used the phrase “punk rock guilt” to describe one of the great contradictions of the grunge explosion: musicians raised on underground, anti-establishment music suddenly found themselves at the center of the mainstream.

In a 2006 interview, Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell suggested that the same conflict may have been part of the pressure surrounding Kurt Cobain.

Cornell was speaking while he and Morello were bandmates in Audioslave, promoting what would become the group’s third and final album, Revelations. Looking back at the grunge generation, Cornell remembered an awkward period when bands rooted in punk and underground culture were suddenly enjoying enormous commercial success.

“It felt to me like there was a definite awkward period, and what Tom Morello refers to as the ‘punk rock guilt,’” Cornell said. “This was the first generation of people who were raised on punk rock music and followed the punk rock Bible, but suddenly were having incredible commercial success.

"I think that what happened with Kurt Cobain is probably the easiest way to present that and say this was the worst example, I think, of the outcome of that kind of clash."

Morello later explained the idea in greater detail on Billy Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast. He pointed to the strange musical collision at the heart of the era: bands such as Soundgarden and Nirvana could love Kiss and Black Sabbath while simultaneously embracing Minor Threat, Fugazi and Bad Brains.

That contradiction became the sound of grunge: punk’s anti-establishment attitude combined with the weight and power of heavy rock.

But once that music became hugely successful, the contradiction became personal.

“There was a real synergy of awesome kick-ass music with ideas and art and poetry,” Morello said. “But there was a part of the ethos that was ‘I can’t stand the success that is happening because it makes me feel like I’ve betrayed principles.’”

Cornell — who, like Cobain, died by suicide, in 2017 — knew the feeling firsthand.

“When you would look through a magazine and see a Soundgarden or a Pearl Jam article, and then you turn the page, and it would be an article on Great White, we started feeling a little bit uncomfortable and self-conscious,” he explained. “Like, does that make us the same thing?”

For Nirvana, that contradiction was magnified beyond anything Soundgarden experienced.

Nevermind and In Utero both topped the U.S. charts. Each sold millions of copies worldwide and inspired a new breed of alt-rock electric guitarists. Nirvana transformed from an underground band to one of the biggest acts in the world.

Cobain openly acknowledged how difficult that transformation was. Speaking to Rolling Stone in January 1994, he described Nirvana's success as “fast and explosive.”

“I didn’t know how to deal with it,” he said. “If there was a Rock Star 101 course, I would have liked to take it. It might have helped me.”

Just three months later, he was dead.

That timing makes Cornell's comments haunting, but it would be too simplistic to suggest that “punk rock guilt” explains Cobain's suicide. His death was the result of deeply complicated personal circumstances, and no single cultural conflict can account for it.

What Cornell's theory does illuminate is the strange psychological territory occupied by Cobain and his peers. They had grown up believing that authenticity meant standing outside the mainstream. Then the mainstream came looking for them.

The irony was unavoidable: the music industry didn't destroy the underground by ignoring it. It destroyed the boundary between underground and mainstream by embracing it. For Cobain, that contradiction never seemed entirely resolved.

And perhaps that's one reason Nirvana's music still feels so conflicted — simultaneously triumphant and alienated, enormously popular yet deeply suspicious of its own popularity.

“Punk rock guilt” may not explain Kurt Cobain's death. But it may help explain the world in which he was trying to survive.

Billy Strings couldn’t say goodbye to his mother. But on So Much for Goodbyes, he’s finding a way to keep talking to her.

The bluegrass virtuoso was on the road last year, somewhere near Kentucky, when his wife called with the news that his mother, Debra Apostol, had died. She was 64. He never got the chance to say goodbye to the woman who raised him.

Releasing August 28, So Much for Goodbyes is Strings’ attempt to make sense of what happened. But its title carries a deeper meaning, too: His mother may be gone, but she’s still with him in the music, the memories and the art she left behind.

“It was a sad thing that I didn’t get to say goodbye,” he recalls to the New York Times. “But when I told my manager about the album title, he said, ‘I like that, ’cause it’s not really goodbye. She’s in everything, and she’s everywhere.’”

The bluegrass acoustic guitar virtuoso has the chops and accolades to match his reputation, including three Grammys. More importantly, his playing and songwriting have helped push bluegrass to new heights, with 2024’s Highway Prayers becoming the first bluegrass record to top the Billboard charts in 2022 years.

Whether Strings can repeat that feat — or go one better — with his fifth album remains to be seen. What’s already clear is just how personal the record is.

Strings wrote “Still I Crash” in the wake of his mother’s death, using the song to say the things he no longer could.

“That’s the one that’s pretty blatantly me talking to her, wondering where she went and why,” he explains. “[It’s me] explaining the fact I had to learn how to walk again, like a child. And just how difficult it is to be without her.”

His mother’s influence is less obvious on some of the other tracks, but it’s there all the same. Lead single “Mill Town Flood,” for instance, draws on Strings’ childhood hometown to tell the story of an alcoholic lumber worker who drinks his life away.

“I’m one of her greatest creations,” Strings says. “She was so artistic and so creative. [But] she struggled her whole life with different substance abuses, and she had a lot of unresolved trauma. I think her way of getting through that was medicating herself.

“She had an illness that she eventually succumbed to. She died of an overdose,” he adds. “It was a shock to me because I had no idea that she was using again. She seemed to be doing really well.

“She’s caused a lot of trauma in my life, but she’s kind of like a conundrum, because she’s such a beautiful, amazing, and artistic person. I’ve never met anybody like her.”

Her presence is perhaps most tangible on the album cover itself, which was created by his mother.

“We always talked about her making the artwork for my next record,” he explains. “She was an artist. She always was making art, these little shadow boxes and mixed media art. She would always be collecting these little trinkets, and pieces of junk, and she would take all this forgotten rusty crap, glue it together to make something beautiful.

“Even before I had any of the songs for this record, she was going to make the next cover. That was our dream.”

The dream was fulfilled in a way neither of them could have imagined.

“It was actually the piece that she was working on the night she died,” he reveals. “It was the last thing she touched.”

Now recovered and back on the road after a skateboarding incident brought his tour to an abrupt end in April, the Martin signature artist is embracing the catharsis of making the album — and the opportunity to break a cycle he knows all too well.

“I’m 10 years sober from alcohol, and I’m definitely drawing a line in the sand here,” he admits. “All this generational trauma has to stop with me, and I’m gonna give my son a very different life from mine.”

It’s been a year since Bob Weir and Dead & Company took over San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for three concerts, August 1–3, 2025, celebrating the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary. The shows — Weir’s last before his death on January 10, 2026 — were a fitting showcase for his singular approach to the guitar: the unconventional chord voicings, rhythmic invention and musical interplay that made him such an essential counterpart to Jerry Garcia.

That distinctive approach was reflected in Weir’s collection of guitars. Over the years he spent as a founding member of the Grateful Dead — and afterward with groups including RatDog, Furthur and Dead & Company — Weir acquired about 100 electric and acoustic models, he said in the 2015 documentary The Other One.

Yet Weir told Guitar Player in 1998 that two guitars in his collection stood above the rest: an early ’70s Gibson ES-335, which he affectionately called “an old sweetheart,” and an Ibanez George Benson model with an especially unusual back story.

“I was working with Ibanez on some designs in the mid ’70s,” Weir told us, “and they showed me a new guitar that had just come in from Japan. I played it a bit, and they told me they had made it for George Benson. I told them, ‘No, you didn’t. You can call the police or do whatever you’re going to do to me, but I’m taking it.’

“It still has Benson’s name on it, and I’ve written so many songs on that guitar. I don’t know if George knows that ever happened, and I’d like to apologize to him.”

The story says something about Weir’s relationship with the guitar — but so does his role in the Grateful Dead. He was never simply the band’s rhythm guitarist, filling in chords beneath Garcia’s solos. His unconventional voicings and constantly shifting rhythmic ideas were a crucial part of the music’s architecture.

No one articulated that better than Garcia, who told Guitar Player’s Jon Sievert in the October 1978 issue that Weir was “like my left hand.”

“We have a long, serious conversation going on musically, and the whole thing is of a complementary nature,” Garcia explained. “We have fun, and we’ve designed our playing to work against and with each other.

“His playing, in a way, really puts my playing in the only kind of meaningful context it could enjoy. That’s a hard idea to communicate, but any serious analysis of the Dead’s music would make it apparent that things are designed really appropriately.

“There are some passages, some kinds of ideas, that would really throw me if I had to create a harmonic bridge between all the things going on rhythmically with two drums and Phil [Lesh]’s innovative bass style. To solve that kind of problem as he does is extraordinary.”

Weir’s unconventional chord vocabulary had roots in his studies with blues guitarist Reverend Gary Davis, something Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna guitarist Jorma Kaukonen highlighted in an interview with Guitar Player late last year.

“Bobby’s a freaking genius on a lot of levels,” Kaukonen said. “He went and studied with Reverend Davis, and the chord shapes Bob used were Reverend Davis’s chord shapes, and these were not typical kinds of things most fingerstyle guitar players use. It was interesting, really interesting, ’cause he was playing with a pick, not his fingers. It was really cool, actually.”

That ability to approach the guitar from an unconventional angle remained central to Weir’s playing long after the Grateful Dead ended in 1995. He continued exploring the band’s music and his own songwriting through RatDog, Furthur and eventually Dead & Company, where he shared the stage with fellow Grateful Dead members Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, as well as John Mayer, Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Chimenti.

And Weir never seemed interested in simply preserving the past. In 1998, he told Guitar Player that the opportunity to keep reinventing himself was part of what made his post-Dead career so appealing.

“Not everybody gets a chance in midlife to reinvent himself,” he said, “and I’d be remiss to overlook that opportunity and challenge.”

A quarter-century later, he was still taking that challenge — and still finding new ways to make a guitar sound like nobody else’s.

History remembers Car Wheels on a Gravel Road as Lucinda Williams’ breakthrough — an album that helped define Americana and reshaped the singer-songwriter landscape.

Gurf Morlix recalls it differently. As Williams’ former guitarist and bandleader, his stylistic touch and musical fingerprints are all over the record and the three years it took to create it. The album’s liner notes bear this out in a brief but telling dedication: “To Donald, Ciambotti & Gurf: Thanks for the years of hard work & joy & the blood you sweat over this.”

But long before Car Wheels became a touchstone, Morlix was grinding it out on the margins, shaped by a hard-earned realism that never left him.

As an aspiring musician in Buffalo, New York, Morlix felt trapped in a local scene that “didn’t really seem conducive to making a living.” He wasn’t looking for hits or fame; Morlix was an old-school man’s-man type with a big heart and a warm, outlaw-country tone that felt pulled from an earlier era — music built for the twang-hungry faithful rather than the charts.

Still, nothing came easily.

“I had a bit of talent,” he tells Guitar Player. “But I couldn’t find like-minded people who wanted to play the same kind of music I did.

“I decided that Austin was the place to go — a great live music scene, hip college town and cheap rent. I was in heaven.”

So began the first of many moves that would define his life and career.

Lucinda Williams was part of that same Austin ecosystem, although Morlix didn’t meet her there. By the mid ’80s, he had pushed further west to Los Angeles, where their paths finally crossed.

“I’d moved out there ‘cause the Austin music scene started seeming a little small for me,” Morlix says. “She came out from Austin to do a sorta high profile gig. She was rehearsing a band of L.A. musicians. Her guitar player, David Grissom, was gonna fly out from Austin for the gig, but they asked me if I’d do some of the rehearsals just for fun.”

The chemistry was immediate, and Morlix soon became a fixture in Williams’ band. By the late ’80s he was serving as her bandleader.

“It worked well,” he says. “After a while, she moved out there, and I fell into playing with her. Bass, at first, and then lead guitar. We started doing gigs, and it worked well.”

Creatively, the two were aligned in a way that felt effortless. “It just worked organically,” Morlix explains. “She’d play me a new song, and I’d start playing along. Usually, I’d come up with the musical hooks right there, on the first or second pass. It was so natural.”

By 1988, Williams was ready to record her first album since 1980’s Happy Woman Blues. Until then, commercial success had eluded her. That changed with Lucinda Williams.

“We weren’t sure what would happen,” Morlix explains. “We had to do it really fast because of financial considerations and time constraints. We barely had any time to think. We made it in a week or two.”

The response was immediate and emphatic. Critics raved, and Williams was suddenly being mentioned alongside the era’s most respected songwriters, thanks to songs like “I Just Wanted to See You So Bad” and “Passionate Kisses.” The album is often credited with helping launch the alt-country movement. Morlix — as its producer, bandleader, and guitarist — was stunned by the reaction.

“It got played around the country,” he recalls, “though we didn’t know it. They cobbled together a national tour, and we were completely surprised to find lots of people showing up at the shows.”

Momentum carried Williams into the ’90s and 1992’s Sweet Old World, a slicker, more polished record that proved her success was no fluke. That same year, Mary Chapin Carpenter scored a major hit with her cover of “Passionate Kisses,” earning Williams a Grammy for Best Country Song at the 1994 awards.

For Morlix, however, the shine was wearing off. The larger budget for Sweet Old World brought new pressures — and new frustrations.

“And lots of time to overthink things,” he says. “As producer, I was actually having to look for places we could spend money. I had told the A&R person I could make the album for a tenth of our budget. He said, ‘Don’t ever say that. That’d ruin it for all of us.’”

An old-school musical maverick with a strong moral compass was now colliding head-on with the machinery of the music business. Those tensions would intensify during the making of Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

Between February and March 1995, Williams and Morlix were back in Austin recording the album’s initial sessions. Williams, however, was unhappy with her vocals. “I was trying to grow,” she told Billboard in 2018, reflecting on the album’s 20th anniversary. “I didn’t want to make another Sweet Old World.”

Morlix saw it differently. Despite his reservations about the record’s production, he loved the sounds he’d achieved on Sweet Old World. “I was playing a Telecaster, through either a blackface Fender Twin, or a Vox Super Beatle head going into a Marshall 4x12 cabinet,” he says. “I have never heard a better-sounding and more versatile tremolo than on that Vox amp.”

By his estimate, they’d completed nearly 90 percent of the album when Williams pulled the plug. She scrapped the sessions and relocated to Nashville, where she began spending time with guitarist and songwriter Steve Earle, who was close with producer Ray Kennedy. Before long, Williams asked Earle and Kennedy to re-record material she and Morlix had already tracked.

For Morlix, it was almost too much. He stepped down as producer and eventually walked away from Williams entirely, although he continued playing guitar as Car Wheels dragged on for the next three years.

“We were working on Car Wheels on a Gravel Road for forever and ever it seemed,” he says with a sigh. “She wasn’t feeling very good those days. The longer it went on, the worse it got.

“Making music is supposed to be joyful. What we were going through was not. Finally, it came to a head, and I quit.”

His exit coincided with Williams’ breakthrough. Car Wheels on a Gravel Road propelled her into the mainstream, powered by songs like “Metal Firecracker,” the Blaze Foley tribute “Drunken Angel,” the hip-hop-inflected “Joy” and the swaggering title track. The album reached number 65 on the Billboard 200, went Gold in the U.S., and was met with near-universal acclaim.

While Williams’ profile exploded, Morlix retreated.

“I didn’t pay much attention,” he insists. “It was all too fresh and raw.”

Commercial success changed nothing for him. “I learned that I can make great music with musicians I enjoy being around,” he says. “Getting out of that situation was the best move I’ve ever made.”

Morlix believes he’s never been fully credited for his role in shaping Car Wheels. Some associated with the album have suggested little of his playing made the final cut.

“All I know is they had a lot of guitarists come in to try playing in place of me, and to add other parts,” he counters. “Every part I played got used in the final mixes. The person who mixed it told me the producer stressed that there were to be no politics involved in the mixing process.”

Even so, he remains ambivalent about his own work on the record.

“The parts I played on Car Wheels, all of which are used on the album, were done with my 1956 Gretsch Duo Jet electric through a blackface Fender Pro Reverb,” he recalls.
“But it wasn’t my amp. I wasn’t quite happy with the sounds we got. I had hoped to redo my parts, but things got dark, and I decided I’d had enough.”

After leaving Williams’ band, the two artists diverged sharply. Morlix opted for a quieter path, focusing on his solo career and steering clear of the spotlight.

“I don’t have any regrets,” he says. “I did it all my way.

“I’ve turned down big money gigs with famous people ’cause I couldn’t see myself feeling good about having to play that music every night. And I’ve turned down offers from musicians I respect ‘cause the timing didn’t seem right, or something similar. I’ve been so lucky to be able to do what I do with no compromises.”

Listen closely to any Lucinda Williams album recorded since Car Wheels, and Morlix’s influence still lingers. The sonic vocabulary he helped establish remains baked into her music.

“I don’t really think about that,” Morlix says. “But I do know that we were on the ground floor of Americana music. There were not many similar acts at the time, but these days there are tens of thousands of people wanting to be part of it. It’s overwhelming.”

Morlix never left the music behind. Since stepping away from Williams, he’s released 19 solo albums, most recently 2025’s Bristlecone.

“Songwriting is not easy,” he says. “But it’s so rewarding when people tell you they are moved by a song you’ve written.”

He still plays daily and continues collecting gear. “I’ve got so many instruments and amps,” he says with a laugh. “I look at them as colors to paint with. My taste keeps evolving. I don’t play any better than I used to, but my desire to create keeps me moving.”

For the second time this year, Lindsey Buckingham has hinted that he and Stevie Nicks could have something new in the works, saying their renewed relationship has made next year “pretty interesting.”

The guitarist was speaking with E! about the forthcoming Fleetwood Mac documentary when he reflected on the healing that has taken place between himself and his former girlfriend and bandmate.

“I think the process of making that has been a very circular healing process for all of us,” Buckingham said.

Asked about the possibility of touring with Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham was more circumspect, suggesting that repairing his relationship with Nicks was more important than reuniting the band.

“When we left things in 2019, maybe as far as I was concerned, not in a very good place for all the wrong reasons,” he said. “No one was happy about it, and all of that has been healed and worked out.”

“Stevie and I are talking all the time now,” he added. “Next year should be a pretty interesting year, because I think quite a few things will reveal themselves.”

Whatever those “things” turn out to be, Buckingham's comments suggest that the long-fractured relationship between two of Fleetwood Mac's most important members has entered a new phase.

Buckingham and Nicks, who were romantically involved at the time, joined Fleetwood Mac on New Year's Eve 1974 after performing together as Buckingham Nicks. They became central figures in the band's hugely successful mid-'70s lineup, thanks to their songwriting and vocal talents, as well as Buckingham’s virtuoso fingerstyle approach on both acoustic and electric guitar. He remained with the group until 1987, while Nicks stayed until 1990. Both returned in 1997, but Buckingham was fired from the band in 2018.

The circumstances surrounding his exit were contentious. Buckingham subsequently told People that it was “all Stevie's doing,” claiming that Nicks had “basically gave the band an ultimatum that either I had to go or she would go.”

Nicks disputed that account, saying she had not demanded that Buckingham be fired and had instead removed herself from what she considered a toxic situation.

“I did not demand he be fired,” she said. “Frankly, I fired myself. I proactively removed myself from the band and a situation I considered to be toxic to my well-being. I was done. If the band went on without me, so be it.”

The first significant signs of a thaw came last year, when Buckingham Nicks, the duo's 1973 album, was reissued. Nicks shared a letter she wrote in 1973 in which she predicted Buckingham was destined for greatness. She also revealed that she and Buckingham had begun communicating again, despite the animosity that had followed his departure from Fleetwood Mac.

“Lindsey and I started talking about [the album] last night,” she said. “This whole thing seems really like yesterday to us.”

Buckingham then hinted at the possibility of a new collaboration with Nicks in a video shared on Instagram earlier this year. Looking ahead to 2026, he spoke about the renewed connection sparked by the Buckingham Nicks reissue.

“I think on a more general level, just the energy of what Buckingham Nicks did to sort of create a resurgence of connection between Stevie and myself, I think on a larger scale that seems to be something that's in the air,” he said.

“And what that translates to specifically, I wouldn't want to speculate yet, but I believe with all my heart it will translate to something good and something wonderful and something needed and something extremely appropriate.”

A Fleetwood Mac reunion, however, appears to be a different matter. Nicks has repeatedly ruled one out following the death of keyboardist and singer Christine McVie in 2022.

“Without Christine, no can do,” Nicks told Mojo. “There is no chance of putting Fleetwood Mac back together in any way. Without her, it just couldn't work.”

Buckingham has been more open to the possibility of returning to the band. In a 2024 interview with Conan O'Brien, he said he would reunite with Fleetwood Mac “in a heartbeat.”

“In a heartbeat, absolutely,” he said. “If there's more to come, if there's a way to heal that, that would be great. It would be very appropriate to close on a more circular note.”

For now, though, Buckingham's latest comments point toward something potentially more intriguing: not necessarily a Fleetwood Mac reunion, but a new chapter for Buckingham and Nicks themselves.

Dolly Parton has spent more than six decades becoming one of the most celebrated songwriters and performers in American music, and this year the Americana Music Association will honor her with its Lifetime Achievement Award. But before the global fame, the movie roles, the business empire and the timeless songs, there was a small Martin guitar given to a young girl with big dreams.

Parton will accept the honor via video at the 2026 Americana Honors & Awards, held at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium during AMERICANAFEST on September 16. The award recognizes artists whose careers have made an enduring impact on American roots music, and Parton’s legacy — from “Jolene” and “Coat of Many Colors” to “I Will Always Love You” and “9 to 5” — is built on the songwriting foundation she developed with that first instrument.

Parton has always favored smaller guitars. Throughout her career, she has played small-scale three-quarter acoustics and frequently performs with her custom Taylor GS Mini and Martin 5-18 Terz.

Her love of compact instruments traces back to her first guitar, a small Martin acoustic given to her by her uncle Lewis, a guitarist among the many musicians in her extended family.

“When he saw how serious I was about my music, he gave me his little Martin guitar,” Parton told Reverb. “It was my treasure.”

By the time Parton left home at 18 to pursue her music career, the guitar had already seen years of use and was too worn to bring on the road. She left it in the loft of her family’s home, planning to have it repaired once she had the money.

“My plan was always to — when I got money, when I got rich and famous — have it fixed up,” she explained.

But the instrument was lost in a house fire.

“But the loft burned out of our house, and burned up my guitar, so I only have the neck of that one,” Parton said. “But I have collected little Martin guitars all through the years. I have some classic little guitars, especially the Martins, the baby Martins.”

Those smaller Martins became a fitting match for Parton’s distinctive songwriting style — an intimate sound that helped shape songs that would eventually become standards across country and pop music.

Among them was “I Will Always Love You,” the farewell song she wrote after her professional partnership with Porter Wagoner came to an end. Wagoner had played a crucial role in launching Parton’s career, inviting her to join his syndicated television program, The Porter Wagoner Show, in 1967 and helping her secure a record deal with RCA.

“If it hadn’t been for Porter, I wouldn’t have written this song,” Parton said of “I Will Always Love You.” “It was kind of my goodbye song to Porter.”

The song became one of Parton’s defining compositions, and decades later it reached an even wider audience when Whitney Houston’s recording for The Bodyguard soundtrack topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 weeks. Parton’s decision decades earlier to retain her publishing rights — after declining Elvis Presley’s request for half the song’s publishing in exchange for recording it — ensured that she continued to benefit from one of the most successful songs ever written.

Now, as the Americana Music Association recognizes Parton’s extraordinary career, the story of her first guitar offers a reminder that before she became a country legend, she was simply a young songwriter holding a little Martin and dreaming about what music could become.

Robert Plant made a surprise appearance at a youth chess tournament in England on August 1 — and walked away with a loss to a 17-year-old local player.

The Led Zeppelin singer quietly attended the mayor’s junior charity tournament in Bewdley, Worcestershire, where he sat down for a game against George Walker. The local teenager ultimately won by resignation after Plant had to leave before the match could be completed.

Walker, a Led Zeppelin fan, told the BBC he didn’t recognize Plant when they first began playing — and was stunned when he realized who his opponent was.

“He’s one of my favorite music artists,” Walker said. “My mum and sister like him as well. The odds are tiny; I didn’t even know he was in the area at the time.”

Despite the unusual circumstances, Walker said Plant was a gracious opponent.

“He was really decent,” Walker said. “I won by resignation because he had to quickly go, but it was a good game.”

Kidderminster Chess Club chairman John Wrench said Plant’s appearance was kept quiet ahead of the event.

“We were really delighted to have him along, and it adds a bit of prestige to the event,” Wrench said. “We couldn’t publicize the fact that he was going to be there, but we were aware there was a strong chance he was gonna show.”

Wrench added that some of the young competitors didn’t immediately recognize the rock legend in their midst.

“Some of the youngsters — remember this was an under-18 chess tournament — they thought, ‘Robert who?’” he said. “It seems strange to people of a certain generation; but once you make them aware that he’s a rock legend, I think they get it.”

As for Plant’s chess skills, Wrench offered a measured assessment: “I think he has the potential to be good, with a bit of practice.”

Few guitarists have enjoyed a front-row seat to as much music history as Carlos Alomar. Beyond his decades with David Bowie, the guitarist worked closely with John Lennon during the former Beatle's most creatively fertile post-Beatles years, shared unforgettable moments with Paul McCartney and even found himself onstage with rock ’n’ roll pioneer Chuck Berry.

Last year, Alomar returned to the road after a nine-year hiatus, reuniting with drummer Dennis Davis and bass guitarist George Murray as the D.A.M. Trio. Together, the three musicians formed the powerhouse rhythm section that helped Bowie reshape his sound on a landmark run of albums, including Young Americans, Station to Station, Low, “Heroes” and Lodger.

When Alomar spoke with Guitar Player, he reflected on those experiences with the perspective of someone who knows such moments can't be recreated. “It’s fortuitous that it happened, but it never happened the same way every time,” he says. “So I cherish the moments that we have, because those little moments in time should be cherished and shared, but never really repeated.”

Chuck Berry

“I got this phone call to do a job at the Rye Playland [in Rye, New York, north of New York City]. It was an amusement park, but they had entertainment there under the giant tent and everything. I get there and in walks Chuck Berry with his electric guitar. He walks right up to us and says, ‘When I do like this’ — and he takes his headstock and moves it sideways — ‘you stop.’

“‘And when I do like this’ — and he moves his headstock up and down — ‘you play.’ That was it.

“He turns around to walk out, and I said, ‘Come on…’ I was maybe in my early 20s and naive. I said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Berry, are we gonna rehearse?’

“That man turned around and looked at me and said, ‘Boy, I ain’t gonna rehearse rock and roll.’

“He turned around, walked out.

“We hit that stage in true form. And every time that headstock went up, every time that headstock went sideways — bam! I mean, it was amazing, and to this day, I still kind of conduct the same way that Chuck Berry did. [laughs]

“To me, the biggest lesson was you don’t rehearse rock and roll. You either know it, or you don’t.

“But I also learned that you did not talk to Chuck — Chuck talked to you. And how do I remember him? As a mean drunk. [laughs] You only remember your last experience with someone.

“It’s like a song: You can do a whole song, but if you mess up the ending, all you remember is the messed-up ending. Chuck Berry is like that song. It was great. But at the end, he came and stunk that up real good.”

David Bowie

“I was a session musician for RCA Studios when I got called to work on David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs album. I was in a session, and in comes this thin, 98-pound, translucent dude with white skin, orange hair, fedora — everything. I was like, ‘Whoa, dude, you look like crap. You need to come to my house and get a home-cooked meal.’ [laughs]

“Little did I know he would take me up on it. We got on really, really well. I took him to the Apollo Theater, and he met [comedian] Richard Pryor, of all people, who was opening for [soul group] the Main Ingredient, which I was playing with. And then, I took him to the Latin clubs to hear some Latin music. We just hung out. There was no work.

“His intelligence was really amazing. I started talking to him about the chitlin circuit and James Brown — man, I found out at that moment how much the Brits studied Black music. Not only was I impressed with his intellect and his knowledge, but I was also impressed with his accent. You gotta remember, I was a kid from the Bronx, and I’m speaking to a Brit with that weird accent. So I was very curious.

“Eventually, he told me he was doing his Diamond Dogs album, but there was no money. There was no way I was gonna drop my gig with the Main Ingredient for this gig with no-paying David Bowie. [laughs]

“So I turned him down. Then later, after the Diamond Dogs album and tour, I got another phone call, and I turned him down again. He was very disappointed. I told him, ‘I’m married. I can’t take a pay cut like this.’ David said, ‘I’ll take care of it.’

“And that was it. He took care of it. So from there we formed the band that relaunched his career with Young Americans.

“The last time I talked to David was at a birthday party. I didn’t realize that he was under the grip of his own demise. Although we had a good time, I didn’t realize that was our goodbye. That was it. Later on, I found out what was happening, and then of course, it affected me deeply. It was a pretty brutal year.”

John Lennon

“One day, I was in the studio, and in walked David Bowie with John Lennon and May Pang [Lennon’s girlfriend during his separation from Yoko Ono]. At the time, I didn’t really know who David Bowie was. But hell, I knew who John Lennon was. And John Lennon was a character who understood who he was.

“We had the groove down for ‘Fame’ [Alomar wrote the song’s underlying funk riff], but that was all we had at the time — not even the words. John came in with just an acoustic guitar, and they said, ‘Would you like to play?’ and he said, ‘Sure.’ And every time he would play, he would sigh the word ‘fame.’

“They left to go to dinner and invited me, but I decided to stay and put some parts down. But I kept hearing that sound that John had been making. So we isolated his track, and we could hear him playing the guitar and saying ‘fame.’

“And that’s how the song became ‘Fame.’ It was my first number one hit. I was young and sandwiched between David Bowie and John Lennon on the song.”

Paul McCartney

“I had just finished writing with Mick Jagger when I was invite to work with Paul on his next album [1986’s Press to Play] at his studio, Hogg Hill Mill, in England.

“He was just the most endearing individual, very self-effacing, and his family was just so inviting and friendly. We walked upstairs to a studio filled with equipment. There were the Vox amplifier, the Höfner bass, the Mellotrons… I was drooling, man. [laughs]

“As I’m taking all that in, the man proceeded to roll the biggest spliff I’ve ever seen in my life. [laughs] I thought I was back in Jamaica! We talked about all kinds of music, and the Black experience. Again, I was reminded of the way the British studied R&B music and their curiosity, and, with all due respect, the way they always give proper respect to the African-American experience, the blues, and all the music we’ve done. They really hold it in high esteem, and rightfully so, you know?

“So he played me his first track, and I said, ‘Oh, sorry, Paul, I like what I hear, but I don’t hear myself in that.’ Same with the second track. I said, ‘Respectfully, I think it’s just great, so that I wouldn’t touch that one.’

“When we got to the third song, I said, ‘Oh, yeah, I hear something in that!’ So I’m just practicing, you know, putting little things out there. Little did I know that Paul was recording all of that. The minute I got the record home, I listened to it, and was like, ‘Oh, my God, I thought I was just practicing!’ So it was just a wonderful experience.”

When Black Sabbath and Van Halen toured together in 1978, the veteran metal pioneers found themselves sharing the bill with a young band led by a guitar phenomenon named Eddie Van Halen.

The tour came at a pivotal moment for both groups. Black Sabbath were on the road behind Never Say Die!, the final album to feature Ozzy Osbourne before his dismissal the following year. Van Halen, meanwhile, were riding high on their blockbuster self-titled debut, with Eddie’s revolutionary electric guitar playing — showcased most famously on “Eruption” — turning the band into rock’s hottest new attraction.

Osbourne would later admit the upstarts were blowing Sabbath off the stage. But according to David Lee Roth, one unforgettable night in Tennessee nearly landed him in even bigger trouble, after Tony Iommi accused him of making the Black Sabbath frontman disappear.

Recalling the incident in a new YouTube video, Roth says he and Osbourne spent the evening partying together before the bands headed to their next stop.

“Ozzy and I are partying. We’re partying like demon buccaneers,” Roth recalls. “I was a ball of muscle in those days, man. If somebody said, ‘We’ve got to get up at 6:00 in the morning because we get on the bus,’ we’d stay up.”

After leaving Nashville, Van Halen checked into its hotel in Memphis and played that night’s show. But Osbourne never turned up.

“Then they burst through the door,” Roth says. “Tony Iommi is screaming at me: ‘What did you do to Ozzy?!’ I’m not in charge of Ozzy, but Ozzy’s disappeared.”

With Osbourne missing and tensions already running high within Black Sabbath, the situation quickly escalated. Roth says he was even asked whether he could replace Osbourne for the evening’s show.

“When I said I couldn’t learn the lyrics, they canceled the show,” he recalls.

The situation quickly became surreal.

“Now the FBI and everybody are back at the hotel because Oz has disappeared,” Roth says. “We think he’s been kidnapped. They’re sitting on the floors. The press is there. They have the cameras. The police are combing the airport all night long. Still no Ozzy, and I’m getting blamed for the entire thing. It’s getting scary.”

Then the elevator doors opened.

“He’s in his fucking pajamas,” Roth laughs. “He walks out of the elevator into a lobby full of FBI, CIA, local police, news media, and television cameras. Finally, everybody stops looking at me.”

The explanation, Roth says, was pure Ozzy.

Still carrying the room key from the band’s previous hotel in Nashville, Osbourne mistakenly assumed it belonged to his room in Memphis. He found the matching room number, walked in while housekeeping was cleaning, threw the maid out, climbed into bed and slept for nearly 18 hours.

“He throws her out,” Roth says. “He slams the door, falls face down on the Sealy Posturepedic mattress, and sleeps for almost the next 18 hours.”

For anyone who thinks Roth is exaggerating, his anecdote is supported by Greg Renoff, author of Van Halen Rising

Roth freely admits he played a part in Osbourne’s “stone stupor,” but the misunderstanding ultimately became another classic chapter in the singer’s long history of outrageous tour stories. It also remains one of the most memorable tales from the infamous 1978 trek that paired Black Sabbath’s fading original lineup with the young Van Halen, a band on the verge of becoming rock’s next superstars.

Tony Iommi will release his first solo album in 21 years later this year, and the Black Sabbath guitarist has assembled a core lineup that gives From the Dark a true band feel.

For bass guitarist Becky Baldwin, however, her first session with Iommi was a nerve-racking experience. The Birmingham musician admits she was convinced she had blown her chance before she had even left the studio.

Reflecting on the experience eight months later, Baldwin recalls how nervous she was when she first walked into the room to record with one of her musical heroes.

“This photo was taken at the end of our first recording session, on the day we met,” she writes on Instagram. “I still couldn’t believe that this great honor could be real, and I was so nervous recording in front of Tony with no preparation.

“I was sure they’d look for another bass player once I left the room. I asked, ‘Could we get a quick photo together, in case I never see you again?’”

According to Baldwin, Iommi laughed off her concerns.

“Tony just laughed and said, ‘You’ll be back here in two weeks for the next session!’ But he granted my request. And I still didn’t really believe him.”

The guitarist was true to his word. Baldwin returned to complete the remaining bass parts for From the Dark, and she now finds herself as part of Iommi’s new band alongside drummer Karl Brazil and vocalist Jorn Lande, whose powerful voice recalls the Ronnie James Dio era of Black Sabbath.

The album’s first single, “World Alone,” arrived last week, giving fans their first taste of the new lineup.

“Fast forward eight months and here we are,” Baldwin says. “The nerves faded, and I did get to record the rest of the bass tracks for Tony’s incredible album. I am so proud to be a part of this, and we’re so thrilled with the results. I have to believe it’s all real now.”

Baldwin’s place on the record was not guaranteed, though. Iommi initially hoped to reunite with his longtime Black Sabbath bandmate Geezer Butler for the project.

“I wanted him, but he couldn’t do it,” Iommi explains. “He’s doing his own album, I think… he couldn’t come to England. I wanted to get it done and finally get it out.”

The guitarist says Baldwin was the natural alternative.

“Becky lives in Birmingham, she’s a really good player, and she plays in Geezer’s style,” he says. “I thought, ‘Let’s give it a try.’ And she was good.”

While Baldwin is the newest member of Iommi’s musical family, one of his oldest collaborators will also appear on From the Dark: Brian May.

The Queen guitarist is the only guest feature on the album, continuing a friendship and musical partnership that stretches back decades.

“We’ve done a couple of album tracks [before],” Iommi tells Rolling Stone. “He’s a very, very close friend.”

May previously contributed an electric guitar solo to Black Sabbath’s Tony Martin-fronted album Headless Cross, appearing on “When Death Calls.” More than a decade later, he reunited with Iommi for the guitarist’s 2000 solo album Iommi, playing alongside Dave Grohl on “Goodbye Lament.”

Their latest collaboration, “Death Awake,” continues that relationship — although Iommi says there could have been even more.

“I did say to him, ‘Do you want to play on something else?’” he recalls. “He said, ‘No, no. Your solos are good. I don’t need to play.’”

Joe Bonamassa owns more than 600 guitars, including some of the world’s most coveted vintage instruments. But when asked to name one of his favorites, the blues star didn’t reach for a pristine six-figure Les Paul or rare Fender.

Instead, he picked a heavily modified 1968 Fender Telecaster.

Speaking to Guitar Center, Bonamassa explained that the guitar’s appeal has little to do with originality or collector value. In fact, its previous owner permanently altered it by routing the body to accommodate a pair of Gibson PAF humbuckers — one of the most sought-after pickups ever made.

Bonamassa isn’t the first guitarist to embrace the combination. Eddie Van Halen famously loaded Gibson PAF humbuckers into his legendary Frankenstein.

“I bought this guitar from a guy in Daytona Beach, Florida about 15 years ago. It wasn’t a lot of money,” Bonamassa says. “I plugged it in, and it was magic.”

“It’s basically a Gibson Les Paul jammed into a Fender Telecaster,” he continues. “But the difference is you have a maple neck and an ash body. And they sound great. Sometimes a hybrid can turn out to be the best.”

That recipe gives the guitar a distinctly different voice from a traditional Les Paul, whose mahogany body and neck produce a warmer, thicker sound. Bonamassa says the Telecaster’s ash body and maple neck bring extra clarity and bite to the vintage Gibson pickups.

“That’s the beauty of a Fender Telecaster,” he says. “You can pretty much do anything to it. The ash body does something cool with the humbucking pickups.”

He also points to the electric guitar’s 500k potentiometers, which help brighten the PAFs and tighten their high end, creating a remarkably versatile instrument.

“Now, do I suggest going out there and buying a very expensive vintage Telecaster, taking a pin router to it and jamming a whole bunch of pickups in there? No,” he says. “If they’re already modified, then that’s the beauty of it. You can save yourself some money and have literally just a utility plank that can play anything.”

That’s exactly how Bonamassa uses it.

“I’ve used this guitar for jazz fusion gigs; I’ve used it for rock gigs. I’ve used it for everything, because it has so much flexibility.”

He laughs that audiences often underestimate the instrument before hearing it in action.

“This is one of my favorite secret weapons,” he says. “When I bring it out, people discount it. Then they hear it.”

The guitar now bears plenty of battle scars—many of them Bonamassa’s own—after years of regular use.

Its status as one of the most-played guitars in his collection is especially notable given Bonamassa’s changing attitude toward collecting. After the devastating Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year, the blues guitarist said he has begun curtailing his relentless pursuit of vintage gear, placing greater value on the instruments he already owns.

For Bonamassa, this modified Telecaster is proof that a guitar doesn’t have to be museum-grade to earn a permanent place in the rotation. Sometimes the best instrument is simply the one that makes you want to keep playing.

Joe Bonamassa has a blunt message for the “armchair quarterbacks” and keyboard warriors who fuel toxic guitar culture online.

The blues guitar star says social media has made it easier than ever for musicians to become targets of relentless criticism, with every mistake amplified by commenters more interested in declaring winners and losers than appreciating the music.

“In the U.S., we have this term called ‘armchair quarterback,’ right?” Bonamassa tells Guitar Interactive Magazine. “That means I can sit in my chair and say to Tom Brady, ‘I could have thrown that ball better than you.’”

Bonamassa says that mentality has spread to the guitar world, where players are routinely torn apart online over the smallest mistakes.

He points to one infamous example: Nick Jonas’ widely mocked performance with Kelsea Ballerini at the 2016 ACM Awards. Jonas fluffed a guitar solo during the live broadcast in front of an estimated 11 million viewers, and the clip quickly spread across social media, spawning countless jokes, reaction videos and harsh criticism.

“There’s that classic one,” Bonamassa says. “It caused this guy to go into therapy. He goes out and clams? We’ve all done that. Everybody’s done that, like, ‘I didn’t even know what I was thinking.’ But the vitriol. It’s like, ‘What do you want him to do? Burn his guitar in effigy, or jump off a cliff?’”

Jonas later admitted the incident had a profound impact on him.

“In retrospect, I can kind of laugh about how big I thought it was,” he said. “But it did travel more than I wish it would have—and it did cause me to go into therapy.”

Recalling the performance, Jonas explained how quickly things unraveled.

“I’ve rehearsed it a million times… and as I walked towards her [Ballerini], I just went completely blank. I hit a wrong note and blacked out. I clocked that it was wrong and I couldn’t stop.”

For Bonamassa, the same competitive mindset extends beyond isolated mistakes. He says audiences often turn collaborative performances into imaginary electric-guitar duels, even when the musicians themselves are simply enjoying the moment.

“Kenny Wayne Shepherd and I have been on stage a lot together over the last five or six years. It’s not a competition,” he says. “Warren Haynes and I have been on stage a lot. We look at it like it’s fun, because we’re having fun.”

Yet some fans still approach those performances like head-cutting contests, expecting one guitarist to emerge victorious.

“What do they expect?” Bonamassa asks. “A trophy at the end? A cash prize? A judge that goes, ‘I declare the winner…’ like a fucking boxing match?”

For Bonamassa, that mentality misses the point entirely. Live music isn’t a sporting event, and treating every missed note or shared jam as a contest only makes the guitar community poorer for it.

Jimi Hendrix revolutionized rock guitar with Are You Experienced, but Todd Rundgren believes he didn’t truly become the artist we remember until Axis: Bold as Love.

Much has been written about the sea change Hendrix’s arrival in Britain sparked. Eric Clapton, already hailed as an electric-guitar god, suddenly had another deity to contend with, while Jeff Beck very nearly hung up his guitar for good.

Released in 1967, Are You Experienced was an immediate success. Rundgren, however, believes the leap from that record to Axis: Bold as Love, released just seven months later, was astonishing.

“At first I didn’t know what to think about him,” Rundgren says in a video posted to Hendrix’s official YouTube channel. “Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Peter Green all played Gibson guitars, which had a certain sound. And they were all very heavily influenced by the original blues masters, so they tended to play a lot of the same licks. I wanted to be like them.

“Jimi was playing a Fender Stratocaster and the sound was very different,” he adds. “He wasn’t as precise as everyone else seemed to be; it was a little bit wild and noisy. At first, he depended a little bit on the blues, R&B, and a new thing he was working on. But he hadn’t fully ripened.”

For Rundgren — who recalled nearly jamming with Jimi in Greenwich Village — Hendrix’s second album marked a dramatic shift. The guitarist had found not only a more distinctive musical voice, but a richer imagination as a songwriter.

“That was just a whole new thing,” he says of Axis: Bold as Love. “Not just simply in terms of the guitar playing, but Jimi had evolved as a songwriter. He was creating this whole fantastic universe of dragonflies, castles; things that were fun to imagine and [you could] think of the songs as a soundtrack.

“You could tell that he was really maturing as a songwriter because some of the songs got covered to death by other artists like ‘Little Wing’. This, to me, was the first real Jimi Hendrix album. It still stands the test of time for what you can do with a guitar, and for a lyrical style that very few black artists were using at the time. He had an imagination that was unexpected from somebody who had worked his way up as an R&B guitar player.”

Hendrix’s evolution was remarkably swift. Are You Experienced? announced one of rock’s most exciting new talents, but Axis: Bold as Love revealed an artist who had already begun moving beyond the blues vocabulary that shaped his years as an R&B sideman with artists including the Isley Brothers and Little Richard.

Rundgren’s point goes beyond Hendrix’s technical brilliance. For him, the guitarist’s greatest breakthrough was not simply the revolutionary sound he created with the Stratocaster, but the way he transformed his influences into an entirely new musical world.

Although David Lee Roth never matched Van Halen’s success as a solo artist, he assembled one of the most formidable backing bands of the era. Alongside Steve Vai — whom Roth saw as the ideal foil to Eddie Van Halen — he recruited drummer Gregg Bissonette and virtuoso bass guitarist Billy Sheehan, who would later find massive success with Mr. Big.

But Sheehan was the first to head for the exit, saying Roth’s second solo album drained the joy from making music.

Released in 1986, Eat ’Em and Smile was an immediate success. Led by the MTV staple “Yankee Rose,” the album showcased the chemistry between Roth, Vai, Sheehan and Bissonette, eventually earning Platinum certification in the U.S. Vai, who has long insisted he never viewed himself as Eddie Van Halen’s replacement or rival, quickly emerged as Roth’s secret weapon.

Things changed on 1988’s Skyscraper. With keyboardist Brett Tuggle brought in as Roth pursued a more polished, radio-friendly sound, Sheehan says the atmosphere that had made the debut so enjoyable disappeared.

“Skyscraper was a whole different world,” he tells Rock Interview Series. “It’s not a record I really gravitated towards when it was done. It seemed kind of stiff to me.”

Looking back, Sheehan believes the band’s working methods were reflected in the music itself.

“With Eat ’Em and Smile we were hanging out, having fun, playing in one room, and we wrote the stuff together,” he recalls. “It was for fun, and we’d go out afterward and have some drinks, have a couple of beers at the end of rehearsal. We had a riot — it was a great hang. Skyscraper was different.”

Commercially, the album kept Roth’s momentum going, reaching No. 6 on the Billboard 200 and eventually selling more than two million copies. The bassist, however, wasn’t enjoying the band’s new direction.

“When we recorded it, we recorded one guy at a time,” he says. “I’d go into the studio, and there’d be nobody there but me and the producer. I played to Gregg’s drums and a rough [cut] of Steve’s guitar, and then I’d leave. Then one of the other guys would go in.

“Something happened, and the whole atmosphere changed. That’s why, at the end of that, I was out of the band because it was not my thing.”

While Sheehan decided to move on after the album was completed, Vai remained committed to Roth’s vision, at least through the subsequent tour. Speaking to Guitar World around the time Skyscraper was released, he made it clear he wasn’t looking for an exit.

“I get a lot of offers to play on other records and stuff that I don’t do because we’re building a band image here,” he said. “I don’t want to be looked at as a studio musician.”

He also addressed Sheehan’s departure with characteristic diplomacy.

“When two people get together, and they’re playing music, and everything goes fine until one of them wants to do something different, it’s best to get together and talk about it. If one of them decides to move on, that’s it. It was Dave’s decision, but it’s best for Bill, and it’s best for Dave; that’s at least the way I feel about it. It’s not like the Van Halen extravaganza.”

Vai remained with Roth through the Skyscraper tour before leaving in 1989 to join Whitesnake. Jason Becker succeeded him for A Little Ain’t Enough, but Roth’s solo career never again reached the commercial heights of those first two albums. For Sheehan, though, the decision to leave had never been about chart positions. Once the fun disappeared, it was time to move on.

In related news, David Lee Roth recently announced he was canceling dates on his tour, prompting a response from his Van Halen successor, Sammy Hagar.

When asked to reach for greatness, most musicians dig deep into their soul for inspiration or a brainstorm that will take their performance to the top.

But when Journey were cutting their monster hit “Don’t Stop Believin’,” Neal Schon says the group’s producers had a different sort of direction for him.

“They said, ‘Play something dumb,’” the guitarist reveals in a new interview with Rick Beato.

It’s not exactly what you’d expect to hear when you’re recording a tune about holding onto faith.

But, sometimes, that’s how hits are made.

“Don’t Stop Believin’” reached the top 10 in 1981, when it was released as a single from Journey’s seventh studio album, Escape. Since then, it’s become a cultural phenomenon. In addition to its use in the 2007 series finale of The Sopranos, the song is played in the eighth inning at San Francisco Giants home games. Former Journey vocalist Steve Perry, who sings on the original, even led the hometown crowd in a singalong during the Giants’ 2014 World Series game.

Today, “Don’t Stop Believin’” is in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. It’s a credit not only to the song’s sales success — its sold more than 18 million copies — but to its cultural significance as well.

“It's crazy. When we wrote it, I thought there was something there, you know — when we were messing around with it in the studio," Neal Schon says.

"When I went back in the studio to listen after we cut it and it was coming together [in the] mix, I looked at the guys, and I go, 'I think there's something here that's special, that's going to be bigger than this whole record.'

“And not until this many decades later, did it happen. But it did happen."

And perhaps that all comes back to that request from producers Kevin Elson and Mike Stone: Play something dumb.

Schon’s response was to come up with what he calls a “chunky rhythm part” — a meat-and-potatoes chord pattern that can be heard as the song starts rolling along in top gear in the third verse.

And to the producers’ credit, it was just what the song needed.

“It's like a Bachman-Turner Overdrive, ‘Taking Care of Business' kind of rhythm part,” Schon says. “And it just kind of worked. When you listen to it, you don't even really notice it, but if you take it out, then you go, ‘What happened to it?’

“It wasn't my idea — I came up with the rhythm part,” Schon says. "But that's what a good producer will do for you — make you search a little bit."

“Don’t Stop Believin’” was a co-write between Schon, Perry and keyboardist and rhythm guitarist Jonathan Cain, who had recently joined Journey. As Schon told Guitar Player in 2023, Cain brought the chord progression, for which the guitarist suggested a Motown-style bass groove to move it along.

“Jon had the ‘Don’t stop believin’’ chorus, so we moved on trying to create the rest of the song,” he says. “I came up with the B section — ‘Strangers, waiting.’ Perry goes, ‘Oh, that’s perfect,’ so we threw it together. Those were the main pieces of the song.”

As for the famous chorus?

“It doesn’t happen until the end,” Schon points out. “I don’t think any song that’s become as big has ever had that. The first rule of songwriting is, ‘Don’t bore us, get to the chorus!’

“But we broke it — and had a hit! And the song works because it has something very interesting and melodic moving it along.”

When recording his guitar parts, Schon used his black 1977 Gibson Les Paul electric guitar, an instrument that he used for much of Escape and Journey's subsequent tour. It fetched $250,000 at auction in 2021.

As he recalls, his big guitar contribution to the song — aside from his anthemic solo — was the rapidly arpeggiating guitar part that introduces the second verse. “It was like something you might hear in a symphony and it felt like it was helping the track move along.”

Which is definitely a far cry from playing something dumb.

But, hey, whatever works. After all, no less than Forbes magazine named “Don’t Stop Believin’” the Biggest Song of All Time in its March 2024 issue. Maybe there’s something to be said for keeping things simple.

Few guitarists have developed a sound as distinctive as David Gilmour. But the Pink Floyd legend has always been open about the players who helped shape it.

While Gilmour would eventually become known for his lyrical phrasing and expressive bends, he spent his formative years studying the guitarists he admired. One album, in particular, became an important part of his education in electric-guitar playing: Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton.

Released in 1966, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers’ landmark album captured Eric Clapton at the forefront of Britain’s blues boom following his departure from the Yardbirds. Combining blues standards like Freddie King’s “Hideaway” and Robert Johnson’s “Ramblin’ on My Mind” with originals such as “Double Crossing Time,” it became essential listening for aspiring guitarists — including a young David Gilmour.

Gilmour has often said he was never interested in building his reputation on speed. Instead, he gravitated toward the melodic playing of the Shadows’ Hank Marvin. But when it came to developing his blues guitar vocabulary, Clapton’s work with John Mayall proved just as important.

“All of those guys were incredible,” Gilmour once said. “I spent time trying to learn how to play their licks perfectly. I would suggest any young player should try to sit down and do that. You will wind up knowing how to play their stuff quite well.”

For Gilmour, learning Clapton’s solos wasn’t about imitation for its own sake. It was about building a musical vocabulary that would eventually become his own.

“Eventually,” he added, “you will find your own style from that. It forces its way out of the copying.”

Alongside Clapton’s blues playing and Marvin’s melodic approach, Gilmour found the foundations of a style that would later define Pink Floyd. Although his music ultimately moved well beyond traditional blues, he has always maintained that those influences never disappeared.

Speaking to Guitar World in 1988, Gilmour recalled that he also spent his early years studying Jimi Hendrix and Howlin’ Wolf.

“When I was young, I actually sat down and learned many of the classic blues solos by Eric and Hendrix, as well as studying old Howlin’ Wolf records,” he said. Although he no longer consciously thinks in blues clichés, he added, “the blues run pretty deep” in his playing.

While Gilmour has admitted he feels “a certain sort of jealousy“ over Clapton’s talent and reputation, he’s chosen not to compete with him. Instead, Gilmour built his reputation on phrasing, dynamics, and tone. To that end, Clapton’s influence was an important part of that journey, alongside Marvin, Hendrix, and the blues pioneers whose music helped shape one of rock’s most recognizable guitar voices.

It goes without saying that John McLaughlin is an outright legend. A jazz-fusion hero on steroids, the electric guitarist has worked with everyone from Miles Davis and Carlos Santana to Tony Williams and Al Di Meola.

But when asked which of his many moments onstage and on record he’s most proud of, McLaughlin hesitates.

“It’s such a hard question,” McLaughlin tells Guitar Player. “I really have no idea. You’d have to give me at least a day to think about it. I have so many memories that are engraved in my mind.”

One of his earliest comes from his days in the Graham Bond Organization, which he helped found in 1963 with organist Graham Bond and a combustible rhythm section: bass guitarist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker. Within a few years, the pair would go on to form Cream with guitarist Eric Clapton.

McLaughlin had a front-row seat to Bruce and Baker’s infamous clashes.

“They were unbelievable together, but they just got under each other’s noses all the time,” McLaughlin says, laughing at the memory. “It was unbelievable. I mean, the second I heard them play together with Graham Bond, I thought, ‘That’s it. I’m in.’ And those two, man — onstage they were kicking my butt. They were wonderful, and just what I needed.

“But every now and then, during the bass solo, which was done with an upright bass, Ginger would get impatient and start making commentary.

“He would say, ‘Come on, get a move on!’ And then there would be other times, onstage and off, where Ginger would say to Jack, ‘Your time is all fucking wrong!’

“And Jack would say, ‘You don’t fucking tell me my time is wrong!’

“And I remember one night, Ginger got so bored with Jack’s bass solo that he started throwing drumsticks at him.”

McLaughlin says he wasn’t present when Bruce finally got his revenge on Baker, but by all accounts the moment was explosive.

“Ginger was throwing the sticks at Jack too hard, and Jack turned around, took his upright bass and smashed it down on Ginger’s drums.

“I know when Eric Clapton was with them in Cream, he didn’t like it. I know Eric suffered, and I did, too.”

Despite his efforts, McLaughlin found it impossible to make the two men get along.

“I’d say, ‘Shit. Relax. Just play music and be happy.’ But they couldn’t stop.”

And yet, somehow, Bruce and Baker managed to turn their animosity into musical gold.

“When they worked together, they were dynamite,” McLaughlin says. “Ginger had a groove, and Jack just jumped on it, you know? I loved the beat they’d put down, and I know Eric did, too. They were amazing together.

“And their fighting was absolutely, without a doubt, part of their chemistry. I mean, emotions run high — and listen: music needs emotion. It needs strong emotions, and one of the things about them was that they had some strong emotions.”

In the early 1980s, drugs were woven into the fabric of rock and roll — often celebrated, rarely questioned, and sometimes deadly. Chrissie Hynde lived through that era from the front lines with the Pretenders, and decades later, she still carries the guilt of losing two of her closest bandmates to addiction.

The Ohio-born guitarist formed the Pretenders in London in 1978 alongside guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, bass guitarist Pete Farndon and drummer Martin Chambers. Their self-titled debut album arrived the following year, introducing a band that combined punk’s urgency with classic pop songwriting and Hynde’s distinctive rhythm guitar style.

The group’s rise was swift, but so was the devastation that followed. By 1982, both Honeyman-Scott and Farndon were dead, their lives cut short by drug-related problems. Looking back, Hynde has admitted she feels she should have done more to help them.

“I am guilty,” she told Record Collector in 2023. “It’s not a big word if you are guilty. It’s big if you feel guilty and you’re not guilty. If you really are guilty, then you should put your hand up and say, ‘Guilty as charged.’”

During the same interview, Hynde reflected on the culture surrounding the band’s early years and acknowledged that she was part of an environment where drug use had become normalized.

“I didn’t discourage the drug-taking, and I was part of it,” she said. “Not that I was their mother, and we went on the road, and it was very hardcore.”

Hynde’s memories also reflect just how normalized drug use had become in the rock world of the early 1980s. Her first encounter with Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister, which she recalled in her memoir Reckless: My Life as a Pretender, is a striking example of the era’s excess.

“The first time I clapped eyes on him was in a shop on the King’s Road. We exchanged no words at all,” she wrote. “He eyed me up and down, moved in close, dipped the silver tube he wore on a chain around his neck into a plastic bag of white powder, shoved it up my snout, then turned around and walked out. I was up for three days.”

For Hynde, though, the consequences of that culture were far from a rock ’n’ roll anecdote.

The Pretenders’ second album, Pretenders II, arrived in 1981 as the band’s profile continued to grow, but behind the scenes Farndon’s drug use had become increasingly destructive. He was eventually dismissed from the group and died less than a year later from complications related to his addiction.

Just two days after Farndon’s departure, Honeyman-Scott — who had attended the meeting where the bassist was removed — died from heart failure caused by cocaine use. The loss was devastating for Hynde, particularly because she had played a role in the decision to fire Farndon.

“I was having problems with Pete,” Hynde recalled. “So, perhaps not guilty, but there’s an element of wishing you’d done better.”

Honeyman-Scott’s death was the loss that hit especially hard. His melodic, inventive electric guitar playing had become central to the Pretenders’ identity, and Hynde has repeatedly spoken about the lasting impact he left on generations of players.

“Every guitar player I’ve had since James Honeyman-Scott has been influenced by him, for example: Johnny Marr [who briefly joined the band in 1987],” she said. “The moment James came to my front door, I knew we’d be in a band together. It’s insane: Jimmy died aged 25. Only guitar players remember him, and yet he was the sound of the Pretenders.”

For Hynde, losing Honeyman-Scott and Farndon also marked the end of the band’s original spirit.

“Since Pete and Jimmy died and because I’ve had to replace people, it’s now kind of like a Pretenders tribute band,” she said.

The Pretenders would continue for decades, with Hynde remaining the one constant at the center of the group. But the shadow of those early losses has never fully disappeared — particularly the absence of Honeyman-Scott, whose innovative guitar work helped define the band’s first era.

Tony Iommi says he never expected Ozzy Osbourne to die so soon, despite years of watching his longtime friend battle serious health problems.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, the Black Sabbath electric guitar riff master has reflected on the band’s emotional farewell concert, revealed the contents of the final text message Osbourne sent him, and admitted he’s still struggling to accept that his bandmate of nearly 60 years is gone.

“I didn’t expect him to go overnight,” Iommi says. “Blimey. It was a hell of a shock, really.”

The two had been friends and collaborators since forming Black Sabbath in 1968, remaining close throughout their respective health battles and regularly checking in on one another.

Looking back on Black Sabbath’s farewell performance, Iommi says the show felt unlike anything the band had experienced before.

“On the night, it felt very strange for me because obviously we’d never been onstage with Ozzy in a throne before, sitting down,” he says. “He was always jumping around, pulling faces, and making me and Geezer laugh. But on this occasion, I couldn’t see him because he’s in that throne at the front.”

With drummer Bill Ward back behind the kit for the first time in two decades, Iommi also spent much of the set standing closer to his longtime bandmate.

“Bill wanted me to stand back by him just because he was unsure of some bits. And so I did.”

Watching the performance back has only made the experience more emotional. Although he knew Osbourne’s health had been deteriorating, Iommi says he “didn’t expect it to happen that quick.”

He also revealed the final exchange the pair shared before Osbourne’s death.

“He texted me the night before, funny enough, and said he weren’t feeling great and so on. But obviously, most of our conversations to each other have been, ‘How are you feeling? How’s this? How’s that?’ And so it was just another conversation,” Iommi recalls. “I didn’t expect him to go overnight. Blimey. It was a hell of a shock, really.”

The guitarist says the pair leaned on one another throughout years of health struggles.

“We did stay in touch a lot. And he was going through so many different things and constantly in and out of hospital and having this done and that done. And again, he stood by me when I was diagnosed with cancer. He called me every day. So we’ve been supportive of each other. I do miss our conversations.”

Months after Osbourne’s death, Iommi admits the loss still doesn’t feel real.

“It’s been really strange. I still don’t feel like he’s gone because when I look on YouTube or whatever, there’s something to do with Ozzy, and I see him again and again,” he says. “It’s almost like he’s still here. It’s really peculiar. Only we were in touch so many times. That’s what I miss.”

Iommi is preparing to release his first solo album in 21 years. From the Dark arrives October 23 via BMG and features Norwegian vocalist Jørn Lande, Mercyful Fate bass guitarist Becky Baldwin and former Robbie Williams drummer Karl Brazil.

When Richie Sambora walked away from Bon Jovi in 2013, fans were left wondering how one of rock’s most successful partnerships could fall apart.

More than 30 years after the guitarist and Jon Bon Jovi helped turn a New Jersey club band into a global phenomenon, Sambora says his departure was not caused by one argument or one moment of frustration. Instead, it was the result of years of personal struggles, creative differences and a partnership that had slowly lost its balance.

Speaking in his cover feature for Guitar Player’s August 2024 issue, Sambora reflected on the circumstances behind his exit — a departure revisited in Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, the four-part documentary series chronicling the band’s 40-year history.

“I probably should have left after The Circle,” Sambora said, referring to Bon Jovi’s 2009 album. “Because I was really getting unhappy.”

For Sambora, the problem was not fame, touring or the demands of being in one of the biggest bands in the world. It was the feeling that his voice — creatively and personally — was no longer being heard.

“When you’re together for 32 years, and especially when you’re in close quarters and you go through all that kind of stuff, there’s a lot of disagreements,” he said. “But my talent and my passion were just being expelled a bit.”

That was a difficult position for a musician who had been central to Bon Jovi’s identity from the beginning.

Together, Sambora and Jon Bon Jovi formed one of rock’s most successful songwriting partnerships, creating defining hits including “Livin’ on a Prayer,” “Wanted Dead or Alive” and “You Give Love a Bad Name.” While Jon supplied the unmistakable voice and frontman presence, Sambora brought the signature electric and acoustic guitar riffs, vocal harmonies and blues-based musicianship that helped separate Bon Jovi from its arena-rock peers.

“I was also a fan of his,” Sambora said of Jon. “I could write Jon better than he could, almost.”

But as Bon Jovi grew into a global brand, Sambora felt the creative dynamic that had fueled the band was changing.

The guitarist has said he never wanted the group to revolve around him. He believed in Bon Jovi as a collective and took pride in everything they had built together.

“It wasn’t called Sambora. Cool — I didn’t want it to be,” he said. “We came up with a band name — Bon Jovi.”

The breaking point came during the recording of 2013’s What About Now. After completing his solo album Aftermath of the Lowdown, Sambora returned to Bon Jovi energized and ready to contribute.

Instead, he found a different creative environment. The band, he told Jon, felt “stale.”

“Look, if anybody told Jon the truth, it was me,” he said.

Jon Bon Jovi and producer John Shanks had already written much of the material, leaving Sambora feeling like his role had changed from creative partner to supporting player.

“Jon just said, ‘Well, you don’t have to worry about preparing anything. Me and [producer John] Shanks and everybody, we wrote all these songs. Don’t worry about it. Just come to the studio,’” Sambora recalled.

His response showed how much the situation had changed.

“I said, ‘Play me a song.’ And he did. And I said, ‘That doesn’t sound like Bon Jovi.’ You know why? Because I was that part of the nucleus.”

For Sambora, the issue was not simply about songwriting credits. It was about the chemistry that had defined the band disappearing.

That became clear during the recording of “The Fighter.” Sambora believed he could elevate the song’s acoustic guitar part, drawing on decades of experience shaping Bon Jovi’s sound.

Instead, producer John Shanks played the part.

“I went, ‘Do you want to just make it that way? Okay,’” Sambora said. “See? Not a band.”

By March 2013, Sambora had stepped away from the What About Now tour and was replaced by Phil X. Although the decision surprised fans, Sambora says he had already reached his limit.

“I wouldn’t have been able to stay,” he said. “It was too much at that point.”

Rather than pointing to one single cause, Sambora describes his departure as the result of years of accumulated pressure — including family issues, the challenges of life in a massive rock band and a breakdown in communication.

“There was obviously an amalgamation of a shitload of things over a 31-and-a-half-year period,” he said. “We couldn’t talk at that point. We weren’t talking — we weren’t communicating.”

Despite the split, Sambora remains proud of what Bon Jovi achieved. His frustration with Thank You, Goodnight was not that the documentary explored the band’s struggles — it was that he felt it overlooked the extraordinary connection the band created with millions of fans.

“What the documentary missed was the unbelievable feeling of being on the world stage and your songs hitting people in the heart — making people happy, keeping them company,” he said.

Sambora has relived those moments on occasion. In 2018, he reunited with Bon Jovi for the band’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. He did it again in 2023, performing alongside Phil X and Orianthi at a Rock for Responders Benefit Concert in San Pedro, California.

And while Sambora’s return to Bon Jovi has remained uncertain, he says he would still be open to it.

“The reason I said, ‘Yes, I would go back to the band, and I would go back to the band now,’ is because of the fans,” he said.

More than a decade after his departure, the story of Richie Sambora and Bon Jovi remains one of rock’s great unfinished chapters: a partnership that created some of the biggest songs of the era, but one that ultimately could not survive the pressures that came with becoming one of the biggest bands in the world.

Two well-worn Kramer guitars that belonged to Eddie Van Halen have gone up for auction — complete with what are claimed to be cigarette butts the guitarist smoked, still wedged beneath the low strings behind the nut.

The electric guitars are among the headline lots in Backstage Auctions’ latest sale, which runs through August 8. Listed as “Edward Van Halen 1986 Zeke Clark Customized 5150 Kramer Guitar” and “Edward Van Halen 1987 Zeke Clark Customized 5150 Kramer Guitar,” each carries a starting bid of $50,000.

While their exact recording history can’t be verified, Backstage Auctions president Jacques van Gool says there’s little doubt the guitars saw extensive studio use during one of Van Halen’s most successful periods.

“Those two guitars were definitely and extensively used by Eddie in the studio,” van Gool said during an appearance on Final Resonance TV. “They were never taken out on the road. But Zeke doesn’t remember if those guitars were used on recordings. Most likely they were. But again, you cannot just fill in blanks. I mean, you either know or you don’t. And even if you know, then I always say, ‘We have proof.’

“But they have so much wear and tear on them and the usual cigarette burns on the headstock and all that good stuff. It’s fantastic that those pieces survived and that he hung on to them.”

Among the guitars’ more unusual features are the cigarette butts reportedly smoked by Van Halen himself, each left tucked beneath the strings on the headstock — a small but unmistakably personal detail that has become one of the auction’s biggest talking points.

Final Resonance TV host Jeff Goebel added that former Van Halen guitar technician Zeke Clark had shared the story behind the instruments, explaining that Van Halen initially had Clark build them to prove his abilities before keeping them as backup guitars.

“These were ones that Eddie made [Zeke] build to kind of get Ed’s approval of his skills,” Goebel said. “Then he had these as sort of backups, as well.”

Clark’s connection gives the instruments particularly strong provenance. A respected luthier and technician, he worked as Eddie Van Halen’s lead guitar and amp tech from 1985 to 1993, overseeing the guitarist’s gear throughout the 5150, OU812 and For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge eras.

According to the auction listing, Clark’s career also included building, repairing and maintaining equipment for artists including Prince, Sammy Hagar, Journey, Heart and Poison.

The sale features dozens of Van Halen-related artifacts drawn from the collections of Clark and longtime Van Halen associate Nick D’Andrea, offering collectors a rare glimpse inside the guitarist’s inner circle. Few lots, however, are likely to attract as much attention as the two battered Kramer guitars — not least because they still bear traces of Van Halen’s daily habits decades after they left his hands.

Bidding remains open through August 8. For collectors willing to meet the hefty opening price, the sale offers the chance to own not only two studio-used Kramer guitars with impeccable provenance, but also an unusually intimate piece of Eddie Van Halen history.

When a die-hard fan spray-painted “Clapton is God” on a London wall in the middle of the British blues boom, it was evident that a modernized interpretation of the blues had successfully captured the imagination of contemporary audiences.

By Clapton's own admission, playing the blues, let alone reshaping it for a new era, required not superhuman talent but plain-old hard work. As he continued to push the genre forward in Cream — after a glimpse of Buddy Guy's live show convinced to form his own power trio —– other artists helped take it to new places in the following decades. Clapton believes Robert Cray did that better than anyone.

“It’s the most difficult thing to write, a modern blues,” Clapton told Rolling Stone in 2017 mused. “The only person I know who can do it well is Robert Cray. It comes straight out of him. I saw him recently this year, and he’s still doing it. He’s on fire, the real thing.

“I wish I could be like that,” he added. “Really, I’m a musician. I try to be a singer and songwriter, and it’s interesting to me. But I would never think of myself as that.”

Clapton, of course, speaks with humility — his success includes 17 Grammy awards. But he felt Cray had the whole package, with his guitar playing and voice working together in perfect harmony.

Despite getting a metaphorical pat on the back from a blues legend, Cray wasn't a purist. Part of his brilliance came from the fact that he peppered his blues with elements of gospel and soul, the musical styles of his upbringing. Blues was, in fact, not his primary source of inspiration.

“My dad would play gospel music on Sundays,” he tells Guitar Player. “It was Swan Silvertones, Sensational Nightingales, the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi — and Alabama — and all kinds of stuff like that. During the week, it would be Ray Charles, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, Sarah Vaughan...

“It’s funny, because as a kid I heard all that music, and then, as kids do, of course, you listen to your own music. When I got into my late teens and picked up the blues bug, I started taking my parents’ records from the house, and then embellished that collection by buying my own records. So getting the gospel music or getting Curtis Mayfield or the Impressions was all just part of what I grew up on.”

He also played an accidental role in inspiring the hit film The Blues Brothers, having played bass previously in the house band from the film Animal House. While those two instances are comedic footnotes to a journeyman career, Cray is as authentic as modern blues can get.

Unfortunately, for all of Cray's and Clapton's mutual admiration, their friendship wouldn't last. Cray took exception to his friend's decision to sing some lines on Van Morrison's anti-lockdown song, "Stand and Deliver," and ended their relationship.

As he told Clapton, he was particularly taken aback by the lines “Do you wanna be a free man / Or do you wanna be a slave? Do you wanna wear these chains / Until you’re lying in the grave?”

“His reaction back to me was that he was referring to slaves from, you know, England from way back,” Cray told The Washington Post.

Cray, who was born in Georgia during segregation, found the reply wanting. He was further dismayed to see a photo of Clapton and guitarist Jimmie Vaughan posing with Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, in September 2021. As The Washington Post noted, Abbot had “recently signed the country’s most restrictive abortion law and a Republican-backed measure to limit who can vote in the state.”

In addition, Abbott is opposed to vaccination mandates, as is Clapton, who has posted statements against vaccines and described scientific data as "propaganda."

In response to the photo, Clapton's business manager Michael Eaton said at the time that posing with the governor didn't amount to an endorsement of his positions.

“[Clapton] is a great believer in freedom of choice which drives his position on vaccinations,” said Eaton. “And his views on other matters would reflect that belief in freedom of choice.”

It all brings to mind the old saying: You may lose your friends, but you never lose the blues.

Samantha Fish believes the future of blues guitar is in safe hands — and she can point to five players leading the charge.

The Kansas City guitarist, who was championed by the likes of Joe Bonamassa, Slash and Devon Allman as she emerged from the blues underground, has singled out a handful of contemporaries carrying the blues-rock torch into a new era. At the top of her list are Christone Kingfish Ingram and Derek Trucks.

“I just got off the road with Christone Kingfish Ingram, and he’s pretty amazing,” she tells Guitar World. The pair recently shared the bill on Slash’s S.E.R.P.E.N.T. festival alongside Warren Haynes, Grace Bowers, Larkin Poe, Eric Gales and plenty of others.

Her praise for Trucks is even stronger.

“I think Derek Trucks is one of the greatest there is,” she says, “not just in blues playing but any playing. He’s an alien.”

Trucks has been performing for almost his entire life. He landed his first paid gig at age 11 and was playing blues clubs with Buddy Guy before his 13th birthday — experiences that, he later revealed, taught him one of his most important lessons about performing.

Fish’s remaining picks are no less enthusiastic.

“I like Gary Clark Jr.,” she says. “He’s very tasteful, and he’s got a great tone.

“Eric Gales is incredible,” she adds. “He just blows everybody away. Luther Dickinson is one of my favorite contemporaries, too. He’s awesome.”

As for Fish herself, she’s credited 10 albums with shaping both her life and her vibrant guitar style. Alongside the more obvious picks — “Who doesn’t have a Rolling Stones record in their top 10?” she asked Guitar Player last year — sits one intriguing outlier: the MC5’s Kick Out the Jams.

“This record came into my life fairly recently,” she explains. “I started getting hip to the Detroit rock and soul scene while I was making the Chills & Fever album. I was going through something of a musical evolution, just taking everything in, and eventually that led me to Kick Out the Jams.

“They were punk in the very early days, and that’s where my heart is. Once you get into them, though, you’re really into them. This record really affected me at a time when I wanted to feel something in a big way.”

She’s also detailed the five most important riffs in her life, saying one R.L. Burnside song shaped her musical upbringing and served as a four-minute masterclass in groove.

Fish believes today’s blues players should continue pushing the genre forward rather than treating it as something to preserve unchanged. Speaking to Guitar World last August, she argued that the music has always evolved through artists willing to challenge expectations.

“Even when Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf went electric, which is what we consider to be traditional blues now, they were outsiders. People were saying, ‘This isn’t blues.’ And now it’s our gold standard. It’s the artist’s job to push boundaries and find their voice.

“And, of course, you worry about losing people. You worry about gaining people. That’s the business side of what we do. But at the end of the day, I feel like you have to make art that you can stand by. The rest of it, it kind of sorts itself out.”

Guitar Player Presents is proud to partner with AEG to welcome ZZ Top with special guest Cheap Trick for a double set of classic guitar rock on a scenic mountain top.

Billy Gibbons has spent more than five decades proving that feel beats flash. His playing is instantly recognizable, whether it’s the fat, vocal-like lead tone, the economy of his phrasing, or the way he threads blues, boogie and rock into riffs that have become part of the electric guitar canon. Songs like “La Grange,” “Tush,” “Jesus Just Left Chicago,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” and “Gimme All Your Lovin’” remain master classes in serving the song while leaving an unmistakable signature.

Rick Nielsen has built a career on the same principle from a different angle. A world-class collector of vintage guitars and one of rock’s great entertainers, he’s also the architect behind Cheap Trick’s blend of Beatles-worthy hooks, hard rock muscle, and razor-sharp rhythm guitar. From the enduring power of At Budokan to the band’s latest material, Nielsen’s inventive playing and infectious stage presence have made Cheap Trick one of rock’s most consistently rewarding live acts.

WIN TICKETS!

For a chance to win a pair of tickets to see ZZ Top and Cheap Trick in Saratoga, California, on Saturday, August 8, send an email and put “ZZ Trick” in the subject line. Include a sentence about yourself and why you want to go. Phone contact greatly appreciated for confirmation.

Winner must provide their own transportation to the Mountain Winery in Saratoga, California, and have their own accommodations in the area. Best of luck!

EVENT DETAILS

GP Presents ZZ Top with special guest Cheap Trick

Saturday, August 8
5:30 p.m. doors, 7:30 p.m. show
The Mountain Winery
Saratoga, CA

We’ll be handing out free packs of Martin strings.

Modest Mouse have dropped guitarist Simon O’Connor from their tour lineup following allegations he sent inappropriate messages and a meme to an underage fan.

O’Connor subsequently apologized to the fan, claiming he had confused her with someone who had been harassing him.

“Simon O’Connor will not be joining us on the upcoming tour,” the band posted on Instagram. “The good news is that Seth Jabour of Les Savy Fav will be jumping in to play guitar. We look forward to being out there with you all.”

As reported here previously, the allegations surfaced last weekend on Reddit, when the fan shared screenshots of O’Connor’s messages. After realizing his error, O’Connor apologized. The woman wrote back that she had assumed someone had hacked his account.

“Wish I was hacked just had a party night and looking at everything with one eye ya know,” O’Connor replied.

“But you did blindside me with a gaggle of likes and then very little intro besides bikini pics so we are both to blame,” he wrote in a followup.

In her Reddit post, the fan explained that she was 16 at the time of their exchange, and noted that her birthday was “the first thing in my bio.” She said O’Connor had viewed a story with a countdown to her 17th birthday, and she provided screenshots to back her claims.

Responding in a Reddit post of his own, O’Connor explained that he had been trolled repeatedly by someone else who used multiple accounts and believed the fan was that person.

“After a few minutes, I realized that I had made a mistake and this was not the person who I had dealt with before,” he wrote. “I unsent the messages and immediately ceased communication. I’m genuinely sorry to the person who received those messages. They didn’t deserve to be put in that position, and I’m sorry for the stress and attention this has brought them. I know some people will choose not to believe me, and I understand that. I can’t change what’s happened. All I can do is tell the truth, take responsibility for my mistake, and apologize.”

Fans replying to Modest Mouse’s Instagram announcement have been supportive of the move to drop O’Connor.

“Good news for people who love good news,” wrote one.

“Sorry you guys had your names attached to that previous guitarist, yall are some incredible musicians and deserve better people in your corner,” wrote another.

O’Connor has played guitar for Modest Mouse since 2021 and is on their new album, An Eraser and a Maze.

During the 11 years Rush spent on hiatus, Alex Lifeson kept busy. He released two albums with his band Envy of None, appeared on records by artists across the musical spectrum and developed a peculiar habit: disappointing the musicians who hired him.

It sounds like the last thing a guitarist of Lifeson’s stature would want to do. After all, artists don’t call Alex Lifeson because they’re looking for an anonymous session player. They call him because they want the guitarist behind Rush’s most iconic textures, unusual chord voicings and endlessly inventive approach to the instrument.

But that was exactly the expectation he wanted to escape.

Not that Lifeson was ever a stranger to guest appearances. Before Rush stepped away from the stage — seemingly for good — in 2015, he had already lent his talents to outside projects, from a soaring guitar solo on Porcupine Tree’s epic “Anesthetize” to helping fellow Canadians Platinum Blonde with some lead work in 1986.

Still, his approach changed after Rush’s final tour cycle ended. In the years that followed, Lifeson wasn’t interested in simply reminding people why they loved Rush. He wanted to find out what else he could do.

“In the last four years, I’ve been doing these other projects,” he told Sweetwater in 2020, midway through his post-Rush run of collaborations. “What’s challenging and what’s so attractive to me about those projects is, when someone asks me to play on their record, I think they think that they’re going to get Alex Lifeson.”

But as anyone who has followed Rush’s constantly evolving sound knows, Lifeson has never been interested in standing still.

“What I like to do is to completely disappoint them and do something that they would never expect,” he said with a smile. “I like to come out of left field, and that’s really a lot of fun for me.”

One of his first major post-Rush collaborations came on Triumph guitarist Rik Emmett’s solo album RES9. There, Lifeson delivered a pair of more traditional blues-rock solos, showing that he could still step into a familiar language when he wanted to.

After that, however, things became much stranger.

While working with Steven Wilson collaborator Marco Minnemann on Borrego, Lifeson leaned heavily into unusual effects, reversed guitar parts, and experimental textures.

Then came an unexpected collaboration with Orange County stoner-rock veterans Fu Manchu, where he approached the guitar less as a lead instrument and more as a source of atmosphere, rhythm, and noise.

“The track was already quite dense with a riffy guitar presence, and it forced me to think in terms of rhythm, ambiance and edge,” he told Guitar World in 2018.

According to Fu Manchu guitarist Scott Hill, the band ended up with exactly the kind of contribution Lifeson was chasing: “awesome riffs, sci-fi effects, and pick slides.” Across the song’s sprawling 18-minute runtime, Lifeson had room to explore every corner of the sonic landscape.

Elsewhere, in 2019, he appeared alongside Slash, Joe Satriani, and Mick Fleetwood on Don Felder’s American Rock ’N’ Roll. That same year, he contributed mandolin and ambient guitar textures to The Mute Gods’ Atheists and Believers.

His most unconventional guest appearance may have come on Tom Morello’s solo track “I Have Seen the Way,” where he shared guitar duties with Metallica’s Kirk Hammett. The song is filled with electronic glitches, heavily processed tones, and jagged, wah-soaked electric guitar sounds — a long way from the image of the classic prog-rock virtuoso many fans still carried in their heads.

That was the entire point.

Lifeson wasn’t searching for projects that allowed him to recreate the past. He wanted opportunities that pushed him outside his comfort zone, where he could experiment without becoming a caricature of himself.

“A lot of stuff now that I’m doing, I’m manipulating guitar sounds so it doesn’t sound like a guitar,” he explained. “Sometimes it sounds like a brass instrument. Sometimes it sounds like a stringed violin, or sometimes it’s just a rhythmic noise. There are so many ways you can process [the job].”

After a career spent being recognized as Alex Lifeson, the guitarist spent the years after Rush exploring what it meant to surprise people who thought they already knew what he sounded like.

Now, with Rush once again part of the conversation and the possibility of new music not entirely dismissed, those years of experimentation may prove valuable. The past decade-plus didn’t just give Lifeson new collaborators — it gave him new tools, new instincts, and perhaps new ways to turn progressive rock back up to 11.

Guitar stars from multiple generations have paid tribute to Glen Hansard, the Oscar-winning Irish singer-songwriter who died in a motorcycle crash in Dublin on July 29 at the age of 56.

Best known as the frontman of the Frames and for his starring role in the acclaimed 2007 musical drama Once, Hansard built a career that took him from busking on the streets of Dublin to international recognition. The film, which he co-created with Markéta Irglová, earned an Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Falling Slowly,” the duet the pair wrote and performed for the movie’s soundtrack.

The Irish Independent reports that Hansard was involved in a single-vehicle crash in the early hours of Wednesday, July 29, in Dublin.

Ed Sheeran was among the first to pay tribute to a musician whose career he had closely followed.

“Heartbroken to hear the news about Glen,” a post on his Instagram Story reads. “He was such an incredible human—an incredible force. I am grateful for the times we spent together. Sending so much love to his family.”

Like Sheeran, Hansard began his career busking before finding success with his band the Frames. He later gained wider attention with his acting debut in the 1991 comedy-drama The Commitments and went on to become one of Ireland’s most respected singer-songwriters.

His career included collaborations with artists such as Eddie Vedder, an appearance on The Simpsons as an Irish busker in “In the Name of the Grandfather” (season 20), and performances alongside some of the biggest names in music. But beyond his accomplishments, it was Hansard’s warmth and generosity that left the deepest impression on those who knew him.

Writing on X following news of his death, Bono reflected on the unique presence Hansard brought to the world.

“Sometimes I would wonder if Glen Hansard really existed,” he said. “He was such an angelic presence… not otherworldly… in fact, very present this presence… A smiling rascal if you needed him to be… this most musical and mischievous archangel of Ballymun [Ireland]. No airs, plenty of graces.”

Bruce Springsteen, who shared a stage with Hansard in Kilkenny, Ireland, in 2013, also remembered his friend’s spirit.

“Here on E Street, we are heartbroken over the death of Glen Hansard,” he wrote. “We met in Ireland many years ago, and he was always nothing but a great musician, a good friend and a generous and gracious man. Always positive, smiling and ready to sing. God bless him and his loved ones.”

For guitar fans, Hansard was inseparable from one particular instrument: his Takamine NP-15 acoustic guitar, affectionately nicknamed “The Horse.”

Purchased from a Dublin music store in 1990, the guitar became his constant companion, eventually developing a large wear mark in its cedar top from years of playing.

“As rhe Horse worked harder and harder, its working-class cred began to show, as a hole started to develop in the cedar top where Glen’s fingernails and pick fell naturally on the thin finish,” a post on the Takamine website reads. “By that time Glen had developed a bond with the guitar, so rather than put it out to pasture, he just kept playing it. Today, it’s one of the most recognizable and iconic instruments in guitardom.”

Hansard began busking at just 13 years old and later credited the guitar with changing the course of his life.

“I got all my education on the street,” he told RTÉ Radio.

“My uncle’s guitar was left in my house, and I learned how to play it, and that saved me,” he said. “I was on a kind of a trajectory, getting into the drugs, just getting into that slightly dodgy spot. My girlfriend at the time gave me a Bob Dylan cassette when I was about 12 and a half, as I was heading down a rough road. I listened to Bob Dylan, and my whole world flipped.”

“I stayed in the bedroom,” he added. “I played Bob Dylan songs every day. I learned my craft. I decided music was all I cared about. My uncle was a musician. I wanted to be like him, but I also set sail towards whatever Bob Dylan was doing.”

Hansard spent the rest of his life chasing that dream, turning a love of songs, guitars and street performance into a career that inspired generations of musicians.

Even after six decades of Beatlemania, the Beatles are still capable of springing genuine surprises.

The forthcoming Rubber Soul Special Edition, which comes out October 2, will include a previously unheard John Lennon song. A home demo of “Little Girl” was discovered on a tape reel from Lennon’s archive, and so little was known about it that there hadn’t even been whispers of its existence.

Rolling Stone has had a sneak preview of the track and describes it as “a fragile, gorgeous, bittersweet little tune.” It features nothing but Lennon’s voice and acoustic guitar. The song appears to be a tender love song, putting it a world away from another Lennon composition written during the Rubber Soul sessions that contains the phrase “Little Girl” — the dark and disturbing “Run for Your Life.”

The project’s producer, Giles Martin, says the song’s sudden emergence is “surprising.”

“It came from the Lennon Estate — I think it was Sean,” he tells Rolling Stone. “It was one of those things where they say, ‘Oh, and then there’s this.’

“Like with all that stuff, I wasn’t sure whether people knew about it or not, or whether it was on YouTube,” he adds. “Quite often I’ll find something and go, ‘This is amazing.’ Then someone goes, ‘Yeah, it’s on YouTube. Everybody knows about that.’ I’m always the last person to know.”

In this instance, it really is a diamond in the rough. Discovered on a Lennon tape reel, Martin ultimately spliced together two sections to complete the 2:17 recording.

Martin says discoveries like this satisfy fans’ enduring appetite for unheard Beatles music.

“Apart from ‘It’s another song that would have made the album,’ there’s an insatiable desire for something more,” he says. “But I think it’s good to see all of the pencil drawings before you see the picture.”

The exact origins of the song are still unknown, but Martin and his team have deduced that it can be no older than the summer of 1965, given that it includes a tweaked Paul McCartney hook later heard on the Help! track “I’ve Just Seen a Face.”

Yet the song’s emergence from obscurity shouldn’t be wholly surprising, given the mad-dash nature of Rubber Soul’s creation. Much of the album was written in London following the band’s U.S. tour in August 1965, with their marijuana-fueled encounters with Bob Dylan still fresh in their minds.

Their manager, Brian Epstein, and producer, George Martin, had agreed that another album in time for Christmas was good for business, despite Help! having been released only weeks earlier. The band scrambled to write new material, with many songs arriving at Abbey Road unfinished. Given those frantic circumstances, the idea that one composition slipped through the cracks — despite Beatlemania and the exhaustive documentation of the group’s career — doesn’t seem quite so far-fetched.

Some songs have already been rescued from those sessions, with the bluesy instrumental “12-Bar Original” eventually finding its way onto Anthology 2.

Rolling Stone reports that many of the demo’s lyrics are placeholders; there’s a lot of “I love you” and “la la la,” as though Lennon is feeling his way through the song in real time. Speculation about the inspiration for the mysterious little girl ranges from a postcard sent by a Japanese fan to a nod to Brian Wilson’s “The Little Girl I Once Knew.”

The unanswered questions only add to the track’s mystique, reinforcing the remarkable fact that, more than half a century after Beatlemania and the Beatles’ breakup, the band’s story can still produce genuine surprises.

“Little Girl” isn’t the first Lennon demo to surface decades after it was recorded, and, judging by this latest discovery, it may not be the last.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Beatles are set to revisit Rubber Soul, their transformative 1965 album that blended folk, baroque pop, soul, and early psychedelic experimentation — a record that captured a year when popular music was rapidly expanding in every direction. Bob Dylan was one of the artists helping push those boundaries.

Dylan’s influence could be heard in the Beatles’ increasingly introspective songwriting, particularly on John Lennon’s “Norwegian Wood” and “Girl,” as the band moved beyond the youthful optimism of their early years. But while the Beatles were absorbing elements of Dylan’s folk-driven approach, Dylan himself was undergoing a revolution of his own.

In 1965, Dylan released Highway 61 Revisited, an electrified masterpiece that pushed beyond the conventions of traditional folk and embraced the power of a full rock band. Months later, when he brought that sound to the stage — with Robbie Robertson along playing a Fender Telecaster — and the world was stunned. He was even branded “Judas” during a show at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, U.K., in May 1966.many fans felt betrayed — but George Harrison, himself a songwriter constantly looking toward the future, saw the change as a natural progression.

The Beatles’ sixth album will arrive October 2 as an expansive new box set featuring a new stereo mix by Giles Martin and Sam Okell, alongside previously unheard session recordings and home demos. The collection offers fans an unprecedented glimpse into the making of a record that marked a major turning point for the band.

The shift represented by Rubber Soul had roots in the Beatles’ famous 1964 meeting with Dylan, an encounter Paul McCartney later described as a life-changing experience. Dylan introduced the band to marijuana that night, and McCartney later joked that he had discovered “the meaning of life.” The meeting helped reinforce the creative connection between two artists who were both beginning to move beyond the limits placed on them by their audiences.

For the Beatles, that meant songs that explored new emotional territory, from Lennon’s enigmatic “Norwegian Wood” and the aching “Girl” to McCartney’s elegant “Michelle” and the dark, unsettling “Run For Your Life.” The group was leaving behind the straightforward charm of its early singles and embracing something more complex.

Dylan’s own transformation was even more dramatic. When he performed with an electric band at the Newport Folk Festival in July 1965, some members of the folk community reacted with outrage. By the time he toured the U.K. the following year, the backlash had intensified, culminating in the infamous moment when an audience member shouted “Judas” at his concert at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in May 1966.

But when Harrison saw Dylan perform his electric set at London’s Royal Albert Hall, he couldn’t understand the controversy.

“The set was in two halves, and in the first half, he came out and did his usual thing with the guitar and the harmonica,” Harrison recalled. “Then in the second half he came out with the band.”

The Beatles guitarist understood why some fans were unsettled. Many had embraced Dylan as a symbol of the folk revival and saw the electric performances as a rejection of that identity.

“A lot of them were really uptight. They were like, ‘Hey, he’s forsaken the folk,’” Harrison said. “But Bob just came out and said, ‘Well, you know, you all may know this song. Remember how it goes? Well, here’s how it goes now!’ and they just went off wailing.”

Harrison, however, saw the performance differently.

“It was a great show. I mean, it was ragged, but that is the nature of Bob: raggedy,” he said. “And all through that second half, people were getting up and walking out, and shouting, and it was controversial.”

More than 60 years later, Dylan’s decision to embrace electric guitars and instrumentation seems less like a betrayal and more like a defining moment in rock history. Musician and author Dr. CP Lee has described the “Judas” incident as one of “the pivotal moments in popular music in the 20th Century,” capturing the divide between tradition and experimentation that defined the era.

Dylan, for his part, appeared unfazed. As recalled in the book Dylan on Dylan: The Essential Interviews, he responded to criticism of his Newport performance by telling one journalist, “They must be pretty rich, to be able to go some place and boo. I couldn’t afford it if I was in their shoes.”

And Harrison agreed with Dylan’s instinct to keep moving forward.

“It was interesting. It seemed natural,” Harrison said. “There’s a limit to what you can do just with acoustics; it didn’t seem that Bob should particularly be limited to just doing that. It seemed kind of a natural progression.”

Tony Iommi has announced his first solo album in years, From the Dark, and given fans an early taste with the release of its lead single, “World Alone.”

The album, due October 23 via BMG, arrives little more than a year after Black Sabbath’s farewell Back to the Beginning concert in Birmingham, England, and marks a new chapter for the pioneering heavy metal guitarist.

“World Alone,” which premiered today during a special streaming event in Iommi’s hometown near Birmingham’s Black Sabbath Bridge, pairs the guitarist with acclaimed Norwegian vocalist Jorn Lande. Driven by Iommi’s trademark downtuned riffs and soaring lead guitar work, the song is accompanied by a dystopian-themed video in which a character known as “The Believer” must survive a twisted video game to find salvation.

Lande sings on all eight tracks on From the Dark and shares songwriting credits with Iommi throughout the album. The lineup is completed by bass guitarist Becky Baldwin and drummer Karl Brazil, while Iommi co-produced the record with longtime collaborator Mike Exeter.

“It’s an album we’ve really enjoyed making,” Iommi said. “We’re not trying to prove anything — it’s a great album, it rocks!”

According to the track list, From the Dark opens with “Over the Violent Sun” before moving through songs including “Black Times,” “World Alone,” “Beyond the Dead,” “Stormwatcher,” “Death Wake,” “Return of the Arbalist” and the closing epic, “Legacy.” Lande’s lyrics explore dystopian themes, mortality and resilience, while Iommi’s guitar work remains rooted in the crushing, riff-driven style that helped define heavy metal.

A limited-edition seven-inch vinyl single of “World Alone,” backed with an instrumental version, will be released September 4. The song will also be featured on Gibson’s Learn to Play Guitar app.

From the Dark will be available in multiple vinyl and CD editions, including deluxe versions featuring expanded packaging and bonus tracks.

Iommi’s return comes after an eventful few years. In 2023, he collaborated with the Birmingham Royal Ballet on Black Sabbath – The Ballet, while 2025 saw the original Black Sabbath lineup reunite for the landmark Back to the Beginning farewell concert in Birmingham — Ozzy Osbourne’s final performance before his death just weeks later.

Widely regarded as one of the architects of heavy metal, Iommi helped forge Black Sabbath's groundbreaking sound after adapting his electric-guitar playing style following the industrial accident that cost him the tips of two fingers early in his career. Across six decades, he has earned Grammy Awards, induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and numerous honors in the U.K., including being appointed an MBE earlier this year.

With From the Dark, Iommi returns to center stage with his first collection of new solo material since 2005’s Fused, proving that the creative spark behind some of heavy metal’s most influential riffs continues to burn.

Derek Trucks stands among the most commanding slide guitar players of his generation, known for a style that’s deeply soulful, technically fluid and unmistakably vocal in character.

His foundation was laid early. Before he reached his teens, he was already sharing stages with Buddy Guy and Bob Dylan. By 20, he had joined the Allman Brothers Band, and later co-founded the Tedeschi Trucks Band with his wife, Susan Tedeschi.

Asked how he developed such mastery, Trucks points to several core influences.

“I think it’s important to listen to vocalists and have that in mind,” he tells Ultimate Guitar. “It’s all ear training, it’s all intonation.”

His earliest inspirations were slide guitar pioneers Elmore James and Duane Allman. From them, he absorbed the fundamentals of lyrical phrasing — a quality that also defines electric guitarists like David Gilmour.

But the breakthrough came when he turned to Indian classical music.

“Then it was listening to a lot of Indian classical,” he says of his progression. “The sarod is a fretless instrument. That was a great way into the vocalization.”

The sarod’s fluid, gliding phrasing offered Trucks an expressive vocabulary, one that helped distinguish his guitar style from the slide legends before him.

No figure influenced him more than sarod master Ali Akbar Khan. Trucks first heard Khan at age 14 and called it “a life-changing event.”

“The power of the sound, the dedication and devotion of the musicians — it was so obvious,” Trucks said of Khan's impact upon the musician’s death in 2009. “It re-emphasized the belief in what you love about music.

“When I heard the news [of Khan’s death], it was like losing Ray Charles, or John Coltrane, or Charlie Parker, you know? There probably couldn’t be two to three musicians like him in the world.”

In a related story, Trucks — along with former Allman Brothers bandmate Warren Haynes — has credited an obscure 1997 album as another game changer for his playing.

Linda Perhacs, the acclaimed singer-songwriter whose 1970 cult classic Parallelograms went on to influence generations of folk musicians, has been reported missing. Friends and collaborators — including her former manager Laurel Stearns, composer Julia Holter and DubLab co-founder Mark “Frosty” McNeill — say they have been unable to contact her for the past eight months.

In a statement shared with The New York Times, Stearns said the 82-year-old disappeared after she was discharged from an assisted living facility in Northridge, California, where she had been receiving care for dementia.

According to Stearns, Perhacs left the facility under the supervision of a legal guardian, but friends say repeated attempts to reach both the singer and her guardian have gone unanswered.

“Since that time, numerous friends and longtime collaborators report they have been unable to establish direct contact with her,” Stearns said in the statement. “Repeated attempts to communicate with her guardian have also, they say, gone unanswered.”

“Our main priority at this time is to spread awareness in hopes of finding Linda safe and comfortable,” Stearns added in an email.

Fernando Perdomo, who co-produced Perhacs’s two most recent albums, said he filed a report with Los Angeles County Adult Protective Services on Monday after efforts to locate the singer proved unsuccessful.

Perdomo also shared a video on social media explaining that he tried contacting Perhacs about six weeks ago, only to learn she had been removed from the care facility by her legal guardian.

“Her next of kin’s number, which we had — which we used to have contact with him — he’s not answering phone calls,” Perdomo said in the video. “I think he might have blocked us.”

Speaking with Page Six on Tuesday, Perdomo said, “My biggest fear is that she was just dropped off on the street somewhere.”

Stearns later clarified that the legal guardian referenced in her statement has been “unresponsive.” The guardian’s identity has not been disclosed.

On Monday, Stearns, Perdomo and three other collaborators issued a public appeal on social media asking anyone with information about Perhacs’s whereabouts to come forward.

“Please help us locate Linda to ensure her wellbeing,” they wrote.

Perhacs was working as a dental hygienist in Los Angeles during the late 1960s while writing songs in her spare time. Among her patients was Leonard Rosenman, the film and TV composer whose credits include East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, who helped launch her music career.

Although Parallelograms attracted little attention upon its 1970 release, it was rediscovered in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Featuring acoustic guitar with Perhacs’ multilayered vocals and subtle electronic effects provided by Rosenman, Parallelograms earned a devoted following and became a touchstone for psychedelic and experimental folk artists. Those influenced by the album include Sufjan Stevens, Joanna Newsom, and Devendra Banhart.

Perhacs’ music later reached new audiences when “If You Were My Man” appeared in Daft Punk’s 2006 film Electroma. More than four decades after her debut, Perhacs returned with The Soul of All Natural Things in 2014, followed by I’m a Harmony in 2017, both of which featured collaborations with Holter.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” is now half a century old, but it’s not getting any easier to play, says Brian May.

The Queen guitarist explains that the hit song is so complex it requires him to “keep my wits about me” every time he plays it.

Clocking in at nearly six minutes and containing several distinct sections, including May’s own guitar solo, the song combines elements of balladry, opera and rock in one of contemporary music’s most beguiling — and challenging — musical works.

May, who was present while singer Freddie Mercury composed the tune, says he was inspired as he heard it take shape.

“The idea for all the instrumental stuff in ‘Rhapsody’ was growing while I was listening to him developing the song,” May tells Rolling Stone. “Freddie had some amazingly lateral thought processes. It was always easier for me to play on his songs than mine, ’cause there was so much stimulation coming.”

Fifty years on, some stimulation is still required to play the song’s guitar parts, including May’s celebrated solo. Recorded with his Red Special electric guitar into a Dallas Rangemaster treble booster, a custom-built Deacy amp and a wet/dry/wet setup of multiple Vox AC30 combos, May’s big moment in “Bohemian Rhapsody” is regularly cited as one of the greatest guitar solos in rock history. Its presence in the song is entirely due to May deciding he wanted to, in effect, sing a verse on guitar.

But May says that, like the rest of the tune, it isn’t exactly ingrained in his muscle memory.

“‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is never that easy to play, even after all these years,” he admits. “I still have to keep my wits about me or I’ll fall off the train.”

Part of the challenge is, no doubt, the layered vocal harmonies. As May reveals, Queen were inspired by none other than the Beatles, whose three-part harmonies on their recordings influenced countless groups.

In particular, May says the vocals in “Bohemian Rhapsody” were influenced by the Fab Four’s “Because,” a gorgeous, complex piece of sonic magic from 1969’s Abbey Road.

“We were transfixed,” the guitarist says. “I can feel the shivers going up my spine. We thought, ‘Oh, my God, that has to be the most daring piece of pure harmony we’ve ever heard.’”

The Beatles achieved the effect by stacking their vocal harmonies in the studio to create an even bigger sound than their three singers — John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison — could produce on their own. May says that technique inspired Queen to overdub their voices countless times to create a chorale effect.

But it wasn’t just “Because.” Even an earlier track like 1964’s mesmerizing “This Boy” helped inspire Queen’s approach.

“It was everything the Beatles did,” May says. “We were able to sort of take up where the Beatles left off.”

Don’t expect to see May performing “Bohemian Rhapsody” in the U.S. anytime soon. The guitarist was eyeing a Queen + Adam Lambert residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas after seeing an Eagles concert there last year.

But the Trump administration’s ICE enforcement tactics — which have been linked to numerous deaths, including those of U.S. citizens — forced him to reconsider.

“America is a dangerous place at the moment, so you have to take that into account,” May told the Daily Mail. “It’s very sad because I feel like Queen grew up in America and we love it, but it’s not what it was. Everyone is thinking twice about going there at the moment.”

It may be more than 60 years since the Kinks–Beatles rivalry was at its peak, but Dave Davies isn’t letting sleeping dogs lie.

Speaking at a new Kinks artwork exhibition at the Gibson Garage in London, the guitarist took aim at two members of the Beatles while naming the only one he says he genuinely liked.

In conversation with British tabloid The Mirror at the launch of The Kinks: Brothers, Davies didn’t hold back when asked about the Fab Four and the long-running rivalry between the two bands.

“John Lennon didn’t like the Kinks, he really didn’t,” Davies said, confirming something he has long suggested. “In fact, John Lennon didn’t really like anybody!”

Paul McCartney, who recently released his nostalgia-tinged album The Boys from Dungeon Lane, also came in for criticism. Davies said the 18-time Grammy winner “wrote a few decent songs,” but offered little more by way of praise.

Ringo Starr, who duets with McCartney on Dungeon Lane, escaped mention altogether. Instead, Davies reserved his warmest words for George Harrison.

“George Harrison was the only one I really liked,” he said. “He was the nicest guy.”

The roots of the Kinks’ rivalry with the Beatles are widely traced to a Bournemouth show in the summer of 1964, where the Kinks opened for the Liverpool band. According to later accounts, Lennon approached Davies before the show and made several cutting remarks, including a dig at the Kinks’ lack of hit records.

Writing in his 1994 autobiography, X-Ray, Kinks frontman Ray Davies suggested Lennon’s put-down stemmed from insecurity. He claimed the audience was calling for the Kinks to return to the stage for an encore just as the Beatles were preparing to perform.

If so, Lennon’s comments quickly proved ill-timed. Just days later, “You Really Got Me” topped the U.K. charts and reached the top 10 in the U.S., Australia, Canada, Ireland and Sweden. In a fitting twist, it displaced the Beatles single “A Hard Day’s Night” from the number one spot.

The song — later introduced to a new generation through Van Halen’s explosive cover — became one of electric-guitar rock’s defining moments. Davies famously slashed the speaker cone of his guitar amp with a razor blade to create the raw distortion that helped lay the groundwork for modern rock guitar.

This has already been a busy year for Davies. In March, he pushed back against transphobia accusations made by electronica artist Moby, and he has also criticized a new Kinks biography, saying it contains “misinformation.”

The renewed attention has also prompted fresh questions about a possible Kinks reunion, with Davies suggesting his relationship with older brother Ray may finally be improving.

“We enjoy each other’s company,” he recently said (via MusicRadar). “We have fluctuated between getting on really well and not getting on at all over the years, but there’s always been telepathy, since childhood... Never say never.”

Former Van Halen bandmates Alex Van Halen and David Lee Roth are set to appear at an event this week, but it doesn’t look to be the reunion many Van Halen fans will be hoping for.

The Van Halen drummer and their three-time vocalist are set to appear at a TEDxFargo event in North Dakota this Thursday, July 30, 11 years after Van Halen wrapped touring A Different Kind of Truth. That final show, at the Hollywood Bowl on October 4, 2015, would prove to be the band’s last, with Eddie Van Halen passing five years and two days later.

Now the pair, who have both been booked as guest speakers at the event, are set for a surprise reunion of sorts, but don’t expect them to be sharing the stage in a physical sense. They’ve been booked for a “virtual talk” together with artist Robert Vargas, the man responsible for the EVH mural on the side of Guitar Center Hollywood.

“Three icons. One stage. One conversation you won’t want to miss,” the event’s official announcement states. The filming, it adds, will take place this week and will be uploaded to YouTube in the coming weeks for those who can’t attend the event in person.

It should be a fascinating conversation, given the duo’s checkered past. On the one hand, Van Halen blames Roth for the failed Van Halen tribute tour. On the other, he recently praised singer’s talent and work in Van Halen, saying, “We did our best work with Dave.”

“To me, Dave was a poet,“ Van Halen said. “It was the confluence of the complete opposite ends of the spectrum that made it happen. And it was brilliant soup — until it wasn’t.”

The TEDxFargo event features more than 40 guest speakers across two days, taking place at the Brewhalla entertainment space. It’s an unlikely place to see two musicians who conquered the music world reunite alongside Eddie’s revolutionary talents.

It will also be a surprise public appearance from Roth, given that just last week he was forced to pull the plug on his current U.S. tour, which has seen him reminiscing about his early songwriting adventures with Eddie. Sammy Hagar then offered some kind words of support to the man he replaced in 1985.

The TEDxFargo announcement comes as Alex Van Halen and Steve Lukather continue to complete one last Van Halen album, which is made up of material EVH recorded before his passing. Lukather says the material left him stunned, but it looks like both Roth and Hagar have been frozen out of the project.

Bad Company frontman Paul Rogers has already declined an invitation to get involved, while former VH bass guitarist Michael Anthony believes the record doesn’t need a singer.

Modest Mouse guitarist Simon O’Connor has been accused of sending inappropriate messages to a minor on Instagram.

The allegations were made over this past weekend on Reddit and included screenshots that allege he sent a sexually explicit meme to the 16-year-old fan and a suggestive message about her “bikini pics.”

O’Connor has responded to the allegations by saying he mistook the fan’s account for that of someone else who has been following him.

The claims emerged on Reddit when the fan shared screenshots of her conversation with O’Connor. After liking the guitarist’s posts, the fan had received a DM from the guitarist that said “SIMON calls your bluff BUZZ”, alongside a picture of people playing the game Simon Says. A second screenshot included a suggestive meme. O’Connor then sent an apology, to which the fan said she assumed his account had been hacked.

“Wish I was hacked just had a party night and looking at everything with one eye ya know,” O’Connor replied. The fan responded, “ohh boy get a good night of sleep.”

Connor then wrote, “But you did blindside me with a gaggle of likes and then very little intro besides bikini pics so we are both to blame.“ He then unsent the message and sent another that read, ”I did it again.“

The fan wrote that although she is now 17, this had happened while she was 16. She also shared a screenshot showing O’Connor had viewed a post of a countdown to her 17th birthday.

“for context i am currently 17 years old but this happened right before my birthday, so i was still 16. i have a public instagram but its very niche, ive been following bands i like for a while so i have been following simon for a few years. late at night i checked stories and i spam liked whatever it was simon had put on his story. he came into my DMs and sent me an erotic image (to say the least) while giving me the excuse he had been partying or whatever, continuing to message me. my age is the first thing in my bio. i reached out to several people within the indie music fandom and nobody with a platform cared. i think more people should know about this. im hesitant to put screenshots here but i do have them!”

O’Connor responded to the allegations in a Reddit post of his own, saying he thought the fan was another person who has repeatedly reached out to him through social media accounts.

“Throughout my adult life, there has been a person who has popped up from time to time with the intention of, for lack of a better term, messing with me. This person creates multiple social media accounts and deletes them… but always posts similar photos that I often recognize from previous accounts. After a long night, I picked my phone up to discover that a similar profile had been interacting (“likes” to be specific) with some of my instagram posts and stories. I assumed that this was the same person I had dealt with before and, with poor judgement, I decided to reach out with a tasteless meme, a sticker that read “Simon calls your bluff,” and an attempt to indicate that I recognized the “barrage of likes” and similar photo content from the previous profiles…. Almost a “gotcha.” After a few minutes, I realized that I had made a mistake and this was not the person who I had dealt with before. I unsent the messages and immediately ceased communication.

“I'm genuinely sorry to the person who received those messages. They didn’t deserve to be put in that position, and I’m sorry for the stress and attention this has brought them.

“I know some people will choose not to believe me, and I understand that. I can’t change what's happened. All I can do is tell the truth, take responsibility for my mistake, and apologize.”

O’Connor joined Modest Mouse in 2021 and contributed to their latest album, An Eraser and a Maze, released this past June.

The British Invasion was reaching its height when the Rolling Stones made their first tour of America in 1965. Session guitar ace Waddy Wachtel cut school to see them perform at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on May 1. Although the Stones were typically greeted by throngs of screaming fans wherever they appeared, the Brooklyn crowd gave them an atypically cool reception.

“People were there to see the Tokens, this vocal group from New York who were opening for them,” the guitarist recalls. “They left when the Stones came on.

“The place was almost empty, and there’s the Stones coming out, starting with ‘Not Fade Away.’ It was so fantastic. It just took you away.”

Wachtel would go on to become a top-tier guitarist himself, performing with the likes of Linda Ronstadt, Stevie Nicks, Warren Zevon, Bob Dylan, and many others. Given his résumé, it’s no surprise he eventually crossed paths with Richards. The first time came while Wachtel was on tour with Ronstadt’s band.

“When we were on tour in England back in the mid ’70s, Keith came to the show and we spent a lot of quality time together,” he remembers

It must have been time well spent, because Richards had Wachtel in mind when he formed his backing group, the X-Pensive Winos, for his 1988 debut solo album, Talk Is Cheap.

“I got a call from an English attorney saying Keith was trying to find me. I went, ‘Well, you found me — why don’t you give him my number?’ The guy said, ‘Listen, he’s at Larrabee Studios.’

“They were working on the Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll movie,” he says, referring to the 1987 Chuck Berry biopic for which Richards served as guitarist and bandleader.

“He says, ‘Give him a call.’”

“So I called Keith up, and he says, ‘Waddy, I’m putting a band together, and you’re the other guitar player.’ I went, ‘Really?!’ He says, ‘Really. No auditions for this band. You’re it,’ which knocked me out of the park.”

When Wachtel joined Richards and drummer Steve Jordan for rehearsals in New York City, he learned Keith had even picked out the guitar he wanted him to play.

“Keith goes, ‘You don’t need to bring a guitar.’ So I get there and open up this case he had for me.” Inside was a Gibson Les Paul TV model, the same instrument that had been Wachtel’s first electric guitar.

“I open it up and there it is. I go, ‘Well, this is my first electric guitar!’ He goes, ‘Yeah, that’s the ‘Tumbling Dice’ guitar.’”

Wachtel went on to play on all three of Richards’ solo albums with the Winos and co-produce the second, 1992’s Main Offender. He says Richards was a joy to work with through all of it.

“There’d be times where things would bog down — you know how it is in the studio. Things break down, and you can’t get the right setup. I’d look at him and go, ‘Keith, I’m sorry it’s taking so long.’ He’d say, ‘No worries, mate, no worries. I’ve been here before. It’s no biggie.’”

One memory, in particular, sums up Richards’ history and his effortless cool. It comes from when they were tracking Main Offender at the Site in San Rafael, California.

“One day we were in this living room area — Keith’s bedroom was above it. We were taking a break, late afternoon, and he went upstairs to lie down for a bit. We were watching TV, and all of a sudden this Beatles concert comes on — at Shea Stadium or something like that. It was just monstrous screaming — girls losing their minds.

“We’re sitting there watching this, and all of a sudden Keith comes walking down the stairs. He looks at the TV from across the room and just goes, ‘Done that.’

“Steve and I looked at each other and went, ‘Yeah, right. It’s that guy.’

“He’s such a lovely guy — so warm and personable and beautiful. But he’s that guy — he’s that Rolling Stone who was screamed at for the first five years. They never heard anything they were playing onstage.”

Unless, of course, you count that first Rolling Stones show Wachtel caught years earlier in Brooklyn.

Stevie Nicks’ relationship with Lindsey Buckingham, and the magic and drama it created during their time in Fleetwood Mac, is well documented. Her brief romance with Joe Walsh, however, is discussed far less often. For the Eagles guitarist, though, the relationship had a lasting impact — particularly on his approach to songwriting.

The pair dated in the mid-1980s, when both were deep into their respective solo careers. It was also a period when Walsh was still struggling with the drug and alcohol addictions that had already left their mark on the Eagles in the previous decade.

“She was special,” Walsh told Howard Stern in 2024. “We were seeking refuge in each other’s presence. There was [the drug] part of it, but we were both on the road, we had careers, and we were both lonely.”

Stern focused on the power-couple dynamic, and on the fact that Nicks seemed to have the complete package. Walsh, however, was less interested in romanticizing the relationship.

“The relationship came and ran its course, as rock and roll relationships do,” he said. “I don’t think either of us could have committed to a lasting relationship in this state that we were in. What made it possible was that we toured and spent all that time together.”

Eventually, they drifted apart. But before they did, Nicks played a role in Walsh’s 1985 solo album The Confessor.

“She rode shotgun with me on that album, and gave me some direction,” Walsh said. “She’s really good at the craft of songwriting. Left to my own devices, I will have 85 pieces of paper with a couple of words on each.”

Walsh’s approach to songwriting has always been somewhat ad hoc. At a spoken-word event in West Hollywood in 2012, he described the process this way:

“There’s a room in my head where I have all these bits and pieces, and when it’s time to write a song, I take them and put them on a table like a jigsaw puzzle and see what fits.”

His most popular and enduring songs often emerged from that unconventional process. “Life’s Been Good,” for example, was assembled from seemingly unrelated ideas, while “Life in the Fast Lane” grew out of a coordination exercise Walsh played on electric guitar to help him warm up before shows.

The lyrics to “Rocky Mountain Way,” meanwhile, came to him as he was mowing the lawn. He was so excited that he left the mower running while he wrote them down and inadvertently cut down his neighbor’s rose bushes.

There was spontaneity in Walsh’s process, and an element of discovery. Nicks, by contrast, was far more deliberate. Her songs began as stories, with the music coming later.

“It starts with a little inspiration; something will happen to me,” she told CBS of her approach to songwriting. “If a man walks by and smiles at me, and I go, ‘What a beautiful smile,’ I might write ‘The smile is the only thing I saw…’, then the poem is begun. If it gets finished and I think it’s good, then I’ll sit down at the piano.”

Walsh would eventually come to realize that his addictions had to be addressed before it was too late. His substance abuse was beginning to hurt the people around him.

“The hardest thing to do is pick up the phone and ask for help,” he said. “But there’s life after addiction, and it’s good.”

Today, Walsh is focused on making sure the Eagles go out in style, as their record-breaking Las Vegas Sphere residency looks set to be their final curtain call.