Aerosmith's Joe Perry was born in September 10, 1950. Joe has been a pretty regular fixture in the pages of Guitar Player – the decades of the magazine's life almost mirroring his life in 'America's greatest rock'n'roll band'. In May 2005, Perry was on the cover of GP, looking back over a lifetime of guitar plaing, with thoughtful and insightful takes on Eddie Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, live performance, and much more.

It doesn't take long to figure out when you've arrived at Joe Perry's house. Sure, as the gate to his rural Massachusetts estate opens you know you're on the property of someone of serious means. And when you head down the driveway and come to a pride of sleek and dangerous-looking European sports cars – as well as a golf cart, which is perhaps an even surer sign of sprawling luxury – the case strengthens that you may be at the residence of a rock icon who has sold more than 100 million albums.

But even when you reach the rustically beautiful main house, you still may wonder if you're in the right place. After all, this elegant spread could just as well belong to a CEO, a real estate mogul, or even a politician. How do we know this is indeed the home of the legendary Aerosmith guitarist?

The answer is above you: a custom weathervane that erases all doubts – a big, glorious, rusty iron Les Paul in the sky telling you which way the wind blows.

Taking all this in, one question comes to mind: What if? What if Perry hadn't reunited with Aerosmith in 1984? What if he and Steven Tyler hadn't made amends, recommenced touring, and soon thereafter shot the "Walk This Way" video with Run D.M.C. that simultaneously made hip-hop, rap rock, and – once again – Aerosmith mainstream commodities? What if Perry wasn't in a band that plays the Super Bowl on a semi-regular basis? What if his house wasn't a virtual Noah's Ark of vintage amps and guitars?

In other words, does the 54-year-old guitarist ever look back on all that has transpired and thank the stars that he didn't end up like Uli Jon Roth or Ritchie Blackmore – a legend without the band that made him famous?

"All the time," confesses Perry, settling down in front of his big Neve console at the Boneyard, the stunning home studio where nearly every note on Honkin' on Bobo and Just Push Play, the last two Aerosmith albums, was recorded.

"We constantly reflect on the legacy of Aerosmith, and, honestly, we shake our heads in amazement. It's a miracle that we're still together after 30-plus years."

It's a bittersweet afternoon for Perry. For one thing, it will be one of his last days spent in the Boneyard, at least in its current incarnation. Along with his wife, Billie, and their youngest child, Roman, he and his studio will soon move someplace even more serene – a 120-acre Vermont farm just two hours outside of Boston. But if there's even greater cause for reflection, it's because Perry is about to share with GP readers something very close to his heart-something that, so far, no one outside of his inner circle has heard: his first solo release since rejoining Aerosmith.

The album is simply called Joe Perry, and, as the laconic guitarist gives the faders a shove and a raging symphony of soaring, scorching riffs leaps out of the monitors, a hint of joy in his eyes makes it clear that this is perhaps the most passionate, honest, and heartfelt artistic statement of his career. And, wow, is that a different headspace than the one he was in when he tracked his first solo record.

So, how come it has been so long since your last solo album?

Between all the public appearances, touring, and recording, Aerosmith is definitely a full-time job. Plus, I'm getting pretty much everything I want out of the band creatively. But I've accumulated so much of my own material concurrently-some of which I recorded after Aerosmith sessions ended-it eventually had to come out. And I didn't want it to come out somewhere down the road as outtakes in a box set.

What's the biggest difference between Joe Perry and the solo albums you did during your split with Aerosmith in the early '80s?

Back then, there was a lot of anger-a lot of "f"** you" toward the other guys. That's why I didn't want to call this a Joe Perry Project album. It's a different time, a different place, and the album was recorded for different reasons.

That was a tenuous time for Aerosmith. And right around then, Eddie Van Halen hit the scene and claimed that when he met you, you brushed him off. Is that true?

At that point, we were definitely going downhill. Our live performances were suffering, we were really messed up on drugs, and we were dealing with the stress and strain of being in the band for nearly ten years. If we had had our wits, we would have taken a nice long vacation and looked at things on a bigger scale. At the same time, Van Halen was starting this new movement in guitar, because Eddie was a genius. He was single-handedly moving guitar to a whole new level. We were the preeminent stadium headliners who were starting to crumble, and here were these young upstarts coming up, just reaching the peak of their game, ready to fill our shoes.

I mean, I loved the first Van Halen record from the moment I heard it, and what was amazing about it was that it was full of stuff I'd heard before, yet it all sounded so new. For instance, that Echoplex sound Eddie did [at the end of "Eruption"] was such an old trick that I never would have done it, because I thought it was cheesy. But Eddie was from the next generation, and everything was new to him. And he was playing to a whole new batch of kids that didn't grow up with that stuff, so it was very smart for him to use tricks like that on top of his naturally brilliant playing.

Suddenly there was this whole West Coast guitar-slinger movement that he started, and it was like, "Man, they 're beating on our door." We were feeling the heat, so, yes, I'm sure there was a certain amount of jealousy going on with us at that time.

The first time I saw Aerosmith was when you had just rejoined the band. The arena was only half full, and you guys seemed visibly angry. To this day, it still stands as one of the greatest rock concerts I've ever seen.

We were in various stages of cleaning up, and we were out touring without a new record, but we didn't care. We were rediscovering our band and seeing things in a new light. We were just as excited as the fans were that we were back – and the fans that came out then were hardcore fans that had been with us since the beginning.

That night, you played a fiery version of "Red House" and then smashed your Stratocaster and hurled the pieces over the back of your stacks.

I haven't smashed a guitar in a while. It has become a bit of a cliché. But sometimes you do it, and it's totally unexpected, because you just want to add a certain immediacy to the show-a moment people will walk away with and remember forever.

And if it's done in the right spirit, you don't even notice how hard it is to actually break a guitar like that. But you might be surprised the first time you swing one into the floor, because that thing comes back at you like a baseball bat.

Is it possible to have too many guitars?

I currently have four or five hundred, and, truthfully, I'll never play them all. As much as I love them, I'm getting ready to sell some off. Obviously, I'll keep the ones that have sentimental or historical value, but there are many that I'd rather have out there getting played than just sitting in a box.

The guitar parts on 'Joe Perry' sound immense. How do you get that live arena sound in a small studio?

Well, I certainly don't drag in my concert rig! People forget that the Marshall stack was designed for the stage in an era when sound systems weren't very good. Back in the day, when Jimi and the Stones were out there playing, only the vocals and maybe a couple of drums would get miked. The Marshall was essentially a miniature P.A. system for your guitar. It's supposed to sound loud, it's supposed to shake the stage, and you're supposed to feel it when you're 20 feet away. Though I tend to play quieter and cleaner than I used to, I still need at least two 50- or 100-watt stacks, because I'll always prefer to feel the guitar coming directly off my amps.

But in the studio, I find smaller speakers and cabinets tend to record better. After all, simple physics dictate that the smaller the speaker, the more sound there is in a concentrated area for the microphone to pick up. For most of Hankin' on Bobo, I used a little Epiphone amp and an old Fender Champ. Joe Perry is an amalgamation of tracks-some going back as many as ten years-and, yes, a lot of them were performed through small amps, especially an Alessandro 10-watt head and speaker cube, an [Alessandro] Working Dog combo, and a bunch of old Champs. I also used a Carr Mercury combo, Gibson combos old and new, and even a classic Danelectro, among other things.

Rocks was recorded on a 16-track machine, whereas Just Push Play employed as many as 96 tracks. Where does Joe Perry fit into that range?

When you start double- and triple-tracking guitars to get the so-called "fatter" sound, you're asking for trouble. Some of my favorite records of all time feature one guitar, one speaker, and one microphone. So, ideally, that's where you want to be. One guitar played right can sound huger than five guitars all multitracked together. The spirit of this record is more like Rocks.

When you're doing an album like this one-where you're playing nearly every instrument except the drums-how do you possibly foresee how all your tones, riffs, and vocals are going to fit together?

It's all about leaving holes in the mix. One of the biggest mistakes people make is getting sounds that sound good on their own, and then expecting them to work in the final mix. If I soloed some of the bass tracks on this record for you, you'd hear nothing but subs and say, "I can't even tell what note that is." But when you blend it in with the other parts, it all makes sense.

And the same thing is true for guitars. For example, [Aerosmith co-guitarist] Brad Whitford and I have recorded so many records together that we instinctively know how to complement each other's sound before the first mic is even set up. That's what 30 years of songwriting, plotting, and planning will do for you.

There are some fantastic solos on this album. The "Hold on Me" solo opens with an amazingly vocal-like shriek.

That's me plugged through a DigiTech Whammy pedal and an [HHB Radius3] Fat Man tube compressor. To get that "vocal" sound, you really just have to keep fooling around until you find what you're after. It's always a battle to get overdrive and sustain without losing tone. Sometimes you have to bring down the drive so that you're forced into having to work the guitar a little harder.

How did that strikingly lyrical solo on "Can't Compare" go down?

That was a shocker. I had just plugged in my [reissue] Mary Kaye Strat, and I said, "Paul, let's see if we've got a sound." We did a take, and, honestly, I don't think I've ever played anything that came from as deep inside as that solo. It's totally pure, unadulterated, and straight from the heart, and it became a mini-movement within the song. It's a love song, and the solo is just a pure musical expression of the lyrics.

Getting a great take like that is what just about every guitarist prays for when the red light goes on. Any advice on how musicians can make the magic happen more often?

Sometimes you get tracks like that when you aren't even aware you're recording, so perhaps a total dissociation from any kind of pressure is part of it. That's probably why the coolest licks sometimes happen during a song's fadeout-it's like the guitarist is thinking, "Well, the song is over. Now I can relax and cut loose." On the other hand, sometimes that pressure works for you.

But one bit of practical advice I can offer is to make sure that from the get-go your signal path is always clean. Then, if you do play something magical, you can keep it. You don't want it ruined by a 60-cycle hum or a standing wave. Even if all you have is a one-channel project studio, make sure that when you cast that net there are no holes in it. And then just let it fly.

"Push Comes to Shove" has a bit of a swung-sixteenths funk pocket.

Yeah, I wanted to have some of that "Last Child"/"Walk This Way" feel on this record because we kind of skipped that vibe on Bobo-which I was little bummed about, because it's such a big part of Aerosmith's roots.

In the early to middle '70s, Aerosmith's strategy for success was to tour the states constantly. But let's say Joe Perry was your first album. I imagine your approach to breaking in would be quite different in this day and age.

Not really. We can't control the internet or cable television, but things really haven't changed that much. You still have to prove yourself as a live band, and you still have to catch a lucky break somewhere. If you're tenacious and talented and have good songs-and if you don't quit if nothing happens right away-you'll slowly build an audience, even if you never get picked up by VH1 or MTV. There are a lot of bands out there that will never make the cover of Rolling Stone, yet they deliver live, and they can still sell a couple of thousand CDs in every town they play. And that is in your control.

Many guitarists dream of playing gigantic concerts. Are there any downsides to the big stage that aspiring rock stars don't consider?

Well, first of all, you give up a lot of your life to do those kind of shows – to be on the road all the time, to put together huge tours, and to have it all come off with that level of production. On a show-to-show basis, though, I find that because of the energy required to put on that kind of performance-the adrenaline that gets so strong it sometimes makes my hands shake – I'll just never play as good in those circumstances as I do down here in my studio. Unless you plan on standing glued in front of your amps all night, you'll never get the same level of connection with the music.

The classic example of that is Jimi Hendrix. The Jimi you hear on all those early live bootleg tapes is so different than the Jimi you hear on his records. When he was out there trying to make a name for himself, he was putting all his energy into his rock and roll shows – burning guitars and all that stuff – and his guitar playing was all over the place. He was barely in tune. Of course, there's still brilliance there, but it's a different kind of brilliance than what he was doing in the studio.

And, in a sense, the same is true of an Aerosmith show. It's a visceral, physical experience, an athletic event, really, where the music is the vehicle for something bigger and more exciting. You may not have the purest technique or play the most perfect solo of your life at a big show like that, but you will bring the audience along with you wherever you go. It's a tradeoff, and I've come to grips with that.

In your 1979 GP cover story, you said that you didn't consider yourself "much of a guitar player." Has your perception of your skills changed over the years?

As far as being a guitar technician, I still feel the same way – I don't really have any technique to speak of. Anybody who is a real guitar player can listen to my playing and know that I wasn't schooled and that I didn't study music. I don't know jazz, music theory, or any of that stuff. It's all strictly feel. If there's a certain riff I'm hearing in my head that I want to play on the guitar, I'll fumble my way through the music until I can get it happening. I know a lot of players who can play Hendrix note for note, but I can't get into that. I could have gone down the technique road, but it never appealed to me. I never like things to sound too polished.

This interview was first published in Guitar Player, May 2005. For the latest information about Joe Perry, including tour dates, visit his website.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kaye decided to try something different.

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

Drummer Paul Humphrey glanced over at Kaye.

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

“And boom! The take came to life.

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

That was as close as Kaye got to Streisand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buddy Guy just turned 90 on July 30. As he undertakes his BG90 tour, he looks back on some 70 years of experience as a blues guitarist, performing on stages all over the world.

From the two-string diddly bow he made as a boy growing up in Louisiana to his first proper guitar — gifted to him by a stranger — to his rise in Chicago, where he was mentored by greats like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King and Guitar Slim, Guy rose to become a blues guitarist in his own right.

But as Guy tells Guitar Player, his blues expertise came the hard way. He was essentially a self-taught player, with little formal training beyond a couple of lessons with a high school music teacher who, to Guy’s chagrin, couldn’t show him the things he really wanted to learn.

“I moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to go to high school,” he recalled to Guitar Player in our January 1999 issue. “And they had a music teacher there, and I thought, ‘My God, I’ve got what I’ve always wanted. I’m gonna let this guy teach me how to play the guitar.’

“I went in, and the teacher showed me some scales, and I said, ‘I don’t wanna play that; I wanna play like this’ — I had a Muddy Waters record and a John Lee Hooker record at the time. He looked at me and said, ‘I can’t teach you that.’

“So I said, ‘Well, then I can’t take a music class!’

“I was so excited by the way Muddy played the slide, how B.B. King squeezed the strings, and how Lightnin’ Hopkins and T-Bone Walker played their things. I said, ‘If they don’t teach this in school, I’ve got to find it myself.’

“Nowadays,” Guy continued, “young people have advantages that I didn’t have. It wasn’t until 20 or 30 years ago that you even saw blues written in music notation — they claimed they couldn’t write it.”

Guy built on that natural guitar talent with a wealth of knowledge and skills he gained over his formative years. He then passed that knowledge on to players like Eric Clapton, who saw Guy onstage in England in the mid-1960s and was moved to form his own blues trio, Cream.

His influence lives on in a new breed of guitarists. That includes players like Gary Clark Jr., John Mayer and Jonny Lang, who learned to play blues authentically by watching — and learning — from the master, who honed his craft with a Fender Stratocaster in his hands.

One tremendous benefit that Guy did have — after moving to Chicago in 1957 — was seeing Chicago blues legends such as Muddy Waters, Wayne Bennett, Matt Murphy and Earl Hooker when they were at the height of their powers.

But no matter what a musician’s cultural advantages — or disadvantages — might be, Guy maintains that anyone with enough heart can play the blues.

“If you love the blues, you can play it. Every interview I’ve ever had, I get asked ‘Can a white man play the blues?’ I hate that question! It’s a human being, man. If I had eight fingers on my left hand, then I would say, ‘No, a white man probably can’t play like me.’

“But these guys, man — the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, this young Jonny Lang, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck, to name a few — there’s some things they do that I wish I had known.

“Look at athletes — boxers, football players, baseball players — they come in all sizes and all colors, and all those guys are great. Music is the same way. There’s no advantage or disadvantage. If you want to learn this thing, man, and you love it the way I love it, you can do it.”

Ritchie Blackmore’s ruthlessness is the stuff of rock lore. After forcing out Ian Gillan and dismissing bass guitarist Roger Glover from Deep Purple, he blindsided the remaining members in 1975 by bolting to form Rainbow. One album into that venture, he fired everyone but singer Ronnie James Dio and continued to rotate musicians in and out as they failed to meet his unforgiving standards.

That relentless, almost surgical pursuit of perfection was felt far beyond his own ranks; it reverberated through the generation of electric guitar players raised on his records. As Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins told Guitar Player in 1995, “Pound for pound, he’s one of the best soloists in history, but he’s such a dick that he’ll probably never get the credit he deserves.”

No one understood the paradox better than Blackmore himself. Asked one year later about his reputation for being difficult, he didn’t deflect. He indicted the entire enterprise.

“I hate show biz. I hate people who confine themselves to the system,” he told Guitar Player. “Why does everyone have to do the right interview at the right time, be on the right program, be politically correct, say the right things and be at the right parties? That gets up my nose. Why can’t I just play the guitar? It’s all I want to do.”

He wanted to play guitar so badly that the social glue binding bands together often became collateral damage. An early encounter with Eric Clapton makes the point.

“He was the big thing in the area back in ’67,” Blackmore recalled. “He was God — it said so all through London, so I believed it.”

When he saw Clapton perform, however, he was unsettled by his patience.

“He played very slowly with vibrato, which no one I knew bothered with because they were too interested in playing as fast as they could,” Blackmore said. “My feeling was, if you play vibrato you’re wasting time. ‘C’mon, let’s get on to the next note and show off!’

“I said to him, ‘You play with all this vibrato. That’s very different.’

“That was very stupid to say in retrospect. Of course he plays with vibrato, and why not?

“But I felt that he was the strange person to put so much emphasis on the vibrato. It was very pleasurable to the ear, but I thought he could be playing other notes.”

Of course a wide, vocal-like vibrato would become one of Blackmore’s signatures, fused with the velocity — and inhuman stage volume and guitar thrashing — that defined his early style. In time, he recognized the lesson.

“That’s thanks to Eric Clapton in a way,” he admitted. “It’s only now that it dawns on me that the guy knew what he was playing way back then, and I was the idiot for saying, ‘Why are you playing with a vibrato? Why are you bothering?’ That’s embarrassing.

“He was into Freddie King, but that didn’t do it for me then. Those guys were too slow for me. I wanted to hear something fast. Let’s go here!

“I was always so nervously charged that I had to be fast. I learned in reverse. I learned to be fast and now I’m trying to slow down and say something. Playing a fast solo, I suppose, is a bit like having two-second sex.”

If the bravado was bracing, the insecurity beneath it was even more revealing. Blackmore has long suggested that his difficulty with bandmates stemmed less from arrogance than from self-doubt.

“I’d love to play with another guitarist, although I’m still insecure, so that guitarist couldn’t be better than me,” he said. “I still go through life being very unsure of what I’m doing, and I cover that by appearing confident, as if I know exactly what I’m doing.

“But I have no idea. There’s a constant searching. Some days I tell myself I can play. And other days I think, ‘I’ve been playing for 38 years and I’m still floundering. Why am I so miserable with my guitar playing? I can’t seem to get it down!’ I’ll hear my solos and think, ‘Why did I accept that? I know damn well I can play better than that.’”

The studio, he conceded, is the most unforgiving environment of all.

“My best stuff is live, because I don’t have time to think; I just get on with it. But in the studio, I very rarely feel at ease. If someone points to me and says, ‘Play — we’re going to test you to see how good you are,’ I get self-conscious and disintegrate.

“I need a psychiatrist with me when I’m in the studio, going, ‘It’s all right, Ritchie. Nobody hates you, nobody’s testing you, nobody’s watching you.’”

He laughed at the absurdity — but only to a point.

“Sometimes I’ll talk to the producer: ‘Does the engineer play the guitar?’ ‘Yes, I think he does a bit.’ ‘How much? What is he into?’ Then I’ll have to sit behind the engineer, because I don’t want him looking at what I’m playing, because I’ll interpret that as him thinking I’m not playing very well. I took up the guitar because I felt insecure at school, and that insecurity is still there — that strange introversion.”

For English singer-songwriter and acoustic guitarist Ralph McTell, the third time was the charm. After striking out with two released versions of his 1970s classic “Streets of London,” the U.K. folk singer finally scored a hit when his third attempt at the gently fingerpicked folk classic met with approval from audiences, turning McTell’s fortunes around and garnering him his biggest hit of his career.

By then, some 10 years had passed since McTell wrote the tune as a 21-year-old playing for change in France.

“I was in Paris in the very cold winter of 1965,” McTell tells Guitar Player. “It was bitter and no one was busking, and people were sleeping out on the hot-air gratings over the Paris Metro. I noticed these old guys had taken their boots off on, put them under their head, and were sleeping out in the cold. And I thought, Now, there's a subject to write about here!

“Then I thought, Well, I can't write about Paris, as there already was a song called ‘The Poor People of Paris.’

"So decided I ought to write about the area that I knew about, which was London. The song is not about homelessness — it’s about alienation, about people that choose to live within society, but outside of it, like the city rough sleepers. I already had the music, and so I wrote the lyrics on top. It originally had three verses, but I added the fourth verse later, as I didn't think it ended properly.”

Though he had the song in his pocket at the time of his first album, 1968’s Eight Frames a Second, he left it off the disc due to its subject matter. “I had first offered the song to a friend of mine who was a semi-professional folk singer” McTellrecalls. “But he said, ‘Oh, no, that's too sad, I wouldn't want to do that.’”

McTell worried that the song would meet a similar reaction from audiences. But he was surprised.

“I remember the first time I performed it in a club, and thought he was absolutely right. There was a deadly silence for what seemed like ages after the song had finished,” he says. “And then a thunderous applause engulfed the room.”

By the time he was making his second album, 1969’s Spiral Staircase, he had more confidence in the tune. His producer, Gus Dudgeon — who would go on to find fame recording Elton John — was ecstatic upon hearing it. “He said, ‘You must put it on the record.’ And so we did.”

This initial recording was released but failed to attract any notice. In the meantime, McTell had some good exposure when he was booked to perform at the Isle of Wight Festival in August 1970. His set, performed on August 30, was warmly received by the crowd. (Also scheduled for that day was Jimi Hendrix with drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Billy Cox, though they didn't go on until the early hours of the 31st.)

Holding onto hope, McTell recorded "Streets of London" again for his 1971 U.S. album, You Well-Meaning Brought Me Here, where it suffered the same fate as his initial version.

The story would have ended there were it not for McTell’s manager’s insistence that it was hit material. Three years after making his second recording of the song, the guitarist went for a third attempt. “I again rerecorded it, in one take too, and gave it to Warner Brothers,” he says. "And bang, there was the hit!"

Released as a single on Warner’s Reprise label in 1974, “Streets of London” climbed the U.K. charts, peaking at number two. “My manager never wavered in his belief that ‘Streets of London’ had a future,” McTell says. The song went on to win McTell an Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically in 1975. By then it had been a decade since he wrote it.

For the earliest version of the tune, McTell played a Gibson J-45, purchased when he was 20. For the third, and most popular recording of it he played "a handmade guitar by a mate of mine called Keith Johns,” McTell reveals. “He only made a few guitars, and it was a copy of a black Gibson J-200, married to the neck of a J-45. It happened to be in the studio, so I used that guitar with a capo placed on the second fret.” As for his fingerstyle approach to the instrument, McTell employed a technique heavily informed by his love of early American blues players like Blind Blake and Blind Boy Fuller.

While “Streets of London” has allowed McTell to forge a prolific career, the song is better known in the United States via an early cover version recorded in 1971 by Roger Whittaker. “In the States, more people know Roger's version than they do of mine,” McTell says. “It’s the same in Germany too. When I listen to Roger’s version — and because I know my song — I actually can hear he's reading the lyric on one of the verses. I can hear that he's looking at the script.”

As it happens, “Streets of London” has proven a choice track for many performers. “A friend of mine did some research on it and found out that there over 400 registered covers,” McTell exclaims. “And there are thousands more on YouTube. It’s incredible. I don't want to single anyone out, but one of the versions that I'm very fond of is by the late Sinéad O'Connor. She did a lovely take of it, which somehow captures the naivety of someone who really cares about the situation.

“And I certainly did care about the situation when I wrote the song, but I was put off my own song by the slight negative reactions at the time about it being sad. I'm still amazed that the song has become almost a standard now. I still enjoy playing it and I love the reaction it gets. I usually invite the audience to join in if they remember any of the words, and they seem to want to join in too, which is great.”

Although he’s built up quite a catalog over his six-decade-long career, McTell doesn’t mind that “Streets of London” has forever marked him as a one-hit wonder. “I’m proud of that song, and I feel very fortunate,” he says. “I know it changed my life. I think there are many talented musicians and singers and writers out there that have never managed to get a song away, and I'm the first to acknowledge my weaknesses.

“I nod to people with bigger talent than me and better musicians and better writers. But I've been one of the lucky ones.”

All sorts of animals are represented in the Los Angeles area home of Twin Temple’s Alexandra and Zachary James — including game trophies and skeletons of a full-term baby they’ve named Rose and of an adult known as Charles, the latter from the Bethlem Royal Hospital in London that was nicknamed Bedlam for its gruesome psychiatric care practices.

“We’re collectors of all things kind of weird and macabre,” Alexandra acknowledges, “and our whole house is kind of like one giant… I was going to say ‘living,’ but dead memento mori. It’s like late ’50s to late ’60s records and a bunch of dead humans around. We’ve always been drawn to the darker side of things, darker stories in life.”

There’s also an elephant in Twin Temple’s room these days.

The group, which the married couple formed after tenures in other bands, has been operating since 2017 and started releasing its self-identified “satanic doo-wop” two years later. Though the sound has more in common with the Countrypolitan brand of the late ’50s and ’60s, the duo’s macabre and sometimes bloody imagery along with defining songs such as “Satan’s a Woman,” “I Am a Witch,” “Burn Your Bible” and “Let’s Have a Satanic Orgy” have courted favor from the metal and punk realms, including tours with Danzig and Ghost, among others.

It’s been a niche affair, but visible enough for someone like MAGA personality Alex Jones to decry Twin Temple as an “embodiment of pure evil.”

But the group really became international news this summer when country artist Charley Crockett dropped Twin Temple as an opening act after learning about the Jameses’ practices and stage proclivities. That led to the duo’s July 29 appearance on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, while Jack White invited them to open for him on September 29 at the Hollywood Palladium.

“It was shocking at first,” guitarist Zach tells us via Zoom. “We were a few days out from the [Crockett] shows starting. But I think all the support that everyone has shown since that’s happened has been so cool…and now we get to play a show with [White], which we’re obviously looking forward to. Overall we’re excited more people are hearing about the project — especially right now.”

The hubbub has, in fact, been fortuitous as Twin Temple will be releasing its fourth album, Doomed Lovers, on October 9. Produced by Shooter Jennings and recorded in the iconic Studio 3 at Sunset Sound in Hollywood, its eight songs find the duo at its most ambitious, lushing up its throwback melodies with a 37-piece Bulgarian orchestra, adding a romantic sweetness and sophistication to the dark underpinnings of Alexandra’s lyrics. The first single is called “Haunt Me,” which is exactly what Twin Temple is trying to do.

“I’m really inspired by the darker side of American history, and music,” says Alexandra. She faced profound and even horrific bigotry growing up mixed race (Korean-Caucasian) in the San Francisco Bay Area, an experience that’s impacted her worldview. “I love a good murder ballad. Obviously I love, like the necrotic, satanic lyrics of black metal. And then I love classic American storytelling, which I feel lives strongly in country music. Nobody can tell a story like Willie Nelson, or Loretta Lynn.

“A lot of people are like, ‘Oh, this is a gimmick. You’re not really Satanists. You don’t really mess with all that stuff.’ Well, come into our house and you will find we’re about that life. And definitely all these things kind of seep their way into my imagination, I think.”

Alexandra adds that Doomed Lovers follows “a four- or five-year really dark period for the duo,” both personally and professionally as it dealt with a variety of business issues before launching its own Pentagrammaton Records label. But she and Zach are, deservedly, all smiles about a current state of affairs that is, indeed, well beyond doom. And while their partnership is an equal collaboration, we took Zach aside for a look how guitar fits among Twin Temple’s sacraments, satanic and otherwise…

To deal with the obvious first — has it surprised you that Twin Temple and your music frightens people the way it does?

For sure, yeah. It’s interesting. It’s been entertaining to watch it unfold. I think it’s also a very American thing, being such a Christian nation. I think America is more satanic than anything, but that’s a whole other story. But it’s definitely a very American thing. We got to Europe and I’ve never had that kind of conversation there.

Part of it may be that Twin Temple doesn’t sound particularly satanic, or what most consider satanic.

Right. With, like, metal, it’s expected to have this kind of imagery. So part of this is cognitive distortion. It’s unexpected. People don’t think it’s real. It’s a really organic and natural thing, though. It wasn’t like we sat down one day and said, “Oh, I think it would be really interesting if we smashed these two seemingly opposite things together.” We were just really trying to develop something that truly represented us together. That’s how it came about.

How did you make your way into Satanism?

It’s something me and Alex both share. We feel like people are born Satanist. It’s just a way of viewing the world to us. It was really like finding there was a language and a vocabulary that did that. I think to us Satan is a symbol of rebellion and free will and autonomy. It’s part of this broader idea of the Left-Hand Path, which is kind of a humanist view. It’s a celebration of the human existence and the physical body as opposed to the repression and control that other religions like to propagate.

It was more of a discovery of, “Oh, this is what this is.” Punk rock, to me, has a lot of through lines with a lot of these same ideas that kind of push back against and subvert society norms and question things. For me, once I found that it made the whole thing resonate even more, and become even deeper.

What’s the chicken and the egg here? Did the music precede the Satanism, or was it created out of that?

Me and Alexandra had bands in the past. We came up in the punk rock scene in Los Angeles; that’s where it started. We were playing music together, and we had these shared values and way of viewing the world. We viewed Twin Temple as our magical child, where we merge everything we love together, as our relationship deepened and as our love deepened. It’s a vessel for our true will, which gets into Aleister Crowley and the ideas of Thelema — the idea of knowing yourself and finding what you’re supposed to be doing here, and then doing that unapologetically.

So I think it was kind of a process of us both finding that. And a refinement process, too. We’re still refining what we truly want to be doing, and getting more and more detailed every day.

When did you start playing guitar?

It kind of started unconsciously when I was a few years old. Somehow I got ahold of a toy plastic guitar. I’ve seen home videos of me kinda hitting that thing and singing to a camera tripod. I think there was a natural inclination to make music, and that resurfaced in my early teens, when I started to find my own musical tastes. I got into punk rock again, as mentioned, and at that point I wanted to consciously pursue music and I found, like, Johnny Thunders. I dug his playing.

And then I went backward, to Chuck Berry. I remember sitting down in a room with some friends and trying to learn the rock-and-roll pinkie stuff that Chuck made famous, and at that point really committing and being like, “I want to be able to make this sound. I want to emulate that,” because I enjoy it so much.

You can certainly hear that journey back in time when you listen to Twin Temple.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it was just an exploration of finding the punk rock guitar players, Keith Richards even, and hearing little licks and going, “What is that from?” and listening to different blues artists and stuff. I think that’s at the core. I also think that, stylistically, it’s not about perfection. I think perfection is boring. It’s more about conveying an attitude and a feeling. I think Johnny Thunders’ mantra was it’s not what you play it’s how you play it. As much as I love musicianship, and that’s all part of it, when it comes to lead guitar work I’m far more fascinated with the imperfections and just, like, classic American rock and roll guitar. That’s what I’ve always loved, and still do.

What were some of the most impactful discoveries along the way?

I think, again, you could track it back to Johnny Thunders covering “Love is Strange,” like Mickey Baker and stuff like that. At the same time I’m listening to the local AM oldies stations and getting exposed to all this music. And then I think as I dig deeper I start figure out all these through-lines, like Lieber and Stoller to Phil Spector, Phil Spector to Brian Wilson, Brian Wilson to the Ramones. It’s like this strange lineage that just goes deeper and deeper. I loved things I was hearing, and I just got more and more obsessed and wanted to know more, wanted to know who did that, where did they get that from, how did they do that? A lot of obsessive listening for sure.

What particularly surprised you in that process?

I think Link Wray was a big one for me. There was so much attitude and emotion on his playing, but it’s also so simple. He’s not a flashy guitar player, but what an incredible guitar player he is. I mean, “Rumble,” that got banned for inciting riots! That was very inspiring.

And, again, songs like “Love Is Strange” and digging into Mickey Baker’s solo instrumental work and what an incredible guitar player he is. I think also it’s really tone-driven for me; I’ve always been very, very obsessed and interested in sound. I feel like the wrong guitar tone can ruin a great lick. It’s all part of the conversation, and the palette — like Bo Diddley, just a really emotive and cool tone and, again, simple but it conveys so much more to me. Obviously I respect someone who can face-melt with a lead, but that’s just not the stuff I’m looking for.

Certainly Twin Temple doesn’t entirely lend itself to displays of screaming guitar. How do you pick your shots?

With the records, I view the guitar in two different ways. There’s the lead guitar element, then there’s the more arranged, ensemble element, and I’m writing for it in different ways. I think in the songwriting process, as we’re sonically visualizing the arrangements, it’s like, “Okay, this song would be cool if there was a guitar part” or “This is a great opportunity for a counter melody, why don’t I put it on guitar ’cause it’s more kind of a rock and roll song.”

So it’s letting the song dictate where the guitar goes, and it’s usually an intuitive process. There’s not a lot of logic. It’s not like, “Well, we’re at the second chorus, so we better put a guitar solo in here” or something. I try to just let it naturally happen, but obviously I’m always gonna inject little moments, little blues lines or something. It’s just a different vibe. It’s trying to invoke the period we’re embracing, which is the late ’50s to early ’60s in particular, just kind of drawing from all that spinning around.

Has your gear changed over time to accommodate that?

Yeah, it did. In the early days I was a little more punk. There was more distortion, so using overdrive pedals all the time, or trying to push a tube amp. My old rig was very Johnny Thunders–coded; it was like a Twin Reverb and a Les Paul Junior, P90s. I remember when I was younger, before there were so many pedals and stuff, trying to find ways to mod out a master volume on the Twin. If you turn it up to 10 it’s going to sound great, but it’s also ear-splitting loud, so I never could get the tone right.

As soon as Twin Temple started I shifted to primarily clean tones. I shifted over to just strictly single coils. I think the first record is totally clean; there’s some tube breakup to give it an effect, but there’s no overly distorted guitars. There’s my Gibson 355, which is humbuckers but there’s a distinct change over to clean and, “Okay, we’re going to use reverb, we’re going to use tremolo and we’re going to use slap,” and then keeping it very period.

But for the newest record I expanded and used some fuzz for the first time. There were two songs where we used fuzz, like a Maestro copy, the “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” OG fuzz pedal. To me that was fun to bring in. You listen to the “Zippity Do Dah” record, which Billy Strange claims is one of the first fuzzes on record; he had a power tube go out during the session, which I always thought was cool. So it’s been fun to incorporate a little different tone and this record and just kind of bring in that, and an Ennio Morricone vibe as well.

Is there a particular writing process you and Alexandra have developed?

I think it changes a bit song to song, but on the whole Alexandra will bring a lyric and a melody idea, and typically I’ll write the accompaniment. Obviously we dip into each other’s creative processes throughout as well — she’ll bounce lyrics off me, and as we’re arranging I’m bouncing ideas off her all the time, like, “Oh, what if we do this” or whatever. So it’s collaborative along the way. We’re both very opinionated; there have been songs that we’ve torn our hair out for weeks at a time and we have to push pause on them and come back when we’re both amenable to one another’s opinion. [laughs]

“Haunt Me” is a good example of giving the guitar some prominence, but within the stylistic parameters.

I think that was the second song we decided to use some fuzz on. It’s layered with Bass VI and some of the rhythm guitars — this is the first time we’ve done this — it was chords on the baritone guitar because we wanted it to feel really, just heavy, a lot of body without having to rely too much on distortion. To me the voicing of the chords was referencing Link Wray as well; in “Rumble” I noticed in his voicings he’d have a lot of low fifths in the chords, and that gives it a lot of weight and meat.

Then there’s a rhythm guitar that’s just playing cowboy chords, but it’s on a baritone which, again, more heaviness. And then there’s that counter on the fuzz guitar which is doubled and the Bass VI, which to me has an early Stones feel. So, yeah, there’s a lot of references in there for the guitar. I think the overall theme is this American gospel kind of vibe, so trying to keep it within that wheelhouse was a goal as well.

What baritone did you use?

The baritone was a Danelectro, and we got a Fender Bass VI. On this record we went kind of crazy down the Bass VI rabbit hole. It was my technique to double the Bass VI with the tick-tack bass sound and the double bass and little walking lines in-between. It was funny ’cause now people EQ the kick drum to give you that cutting sound, but back then they had a mono speaker and not a lot of kick drums, so they wanted this extra layer to help the bass cut through. I love that sound, and us and Shooter got really obsessed with Bass VI on this record. We had the Squier Bass VI, we had a Fender Bass VI, we had the Dano baritone — I even strummed the Dano baritone with Bass VI strings at one point in time.

So you were like satanic mad scientists in the studio.

[laughs] Yeah, absolutely. We had things we knew we wanted to hear and sounds we were looking for, so there was a lot of experimentation — a bit of slap on the Bass VI, some spring reverb, just a lot of work dialing in the sound and using that as a template moving forward to other songs.

What else is in the guitar arsenal these days?

I do have a ’64 Fender Jag that I use on all the records; that’s my go-to. It’s the guitar Billy Strange was using back in those songs, and I love the real thin, cutting tone. Especially in these arrangements you need a guitar that’s going to cut, tone-wise. I also have an early, mid-’60s Barney Kessel archtop that I use on a lot of stuff, and I love Barney Kessel. He taught Phil Spector how to play guitar and is just a really cool player.

I use it a lot unplugged as well on the records; there’s a lot of flatwound, unplugged archtop for some of the acoustic tones. I don’t take the vintage ones on tour, though. I use reissues; I’ve got a ’54 Les Paul reissues with a P90 that I really love, and then I feel like the Twin Temple guitar I started with was the Gibson 355 Custom, like Chuck Berry but it’s a black finish instead of his cherry red.

Doomed Lovers’ title track gives the guitar some more space as well.

Yeah, I feel like that song is everything firing all at once. We actually had an entirely different version of that. We recorded it and it was “done,” and we had a week left in the sessions. There was something about it that just wasn’t right. I sat at the piano and stripped it back to the basic chords and melody and ended up reworking the entire song; by the time we got to the bridge the whole sonic identity just fell into place and the guitar work fell into place.

I’m a big fan of Jack Nitzsche, who was an arranger for Phil Spector and many others; he did a lot of this really great arranged kind of arpeggio work with guitars, where there’s this classical that meets rock ’n’ roll. So I feel like sonically in the chorus drawing on that, there’s this harmonized, arpeggiated guitar part that’s kind of a slow ensemble piece where there’s an acoustic archtop, an electric guitar and they’re all blending to kind of add to that. The bridge is kind of a nod to Tommy Tedesco; he’s a really playful, always has these nice little licks, but they’re kind of unhinged, like off a few notes, just something slightly weird about it, and I really love that.

So I think the bridge was one quick pass, a couple little noodles and we just left it ’cause everything else was so arranged. I like when the lead guitar has a kind of frantic, unhinged moment like that.

Were the songs written with the orchestra in mind?

That’s been a creative goal for a very long time… so it was a nightmare come true. Getting to have that on the record was just incredible. It was part of the thought process from the start, and we worked with another arranger who helped us notate all the ideas for the orchestra. It was incredible having that palate, knowing that we’ were going to have that instrumentation and being able to think that expansively. On the last record [2023’s God Is Dead] we had one song with strings, but it was very different; we had one player come in and just overdub and stack.

But to have the full orchestra, to just move the air and have them all playing together…I feel like the string parts we reference are very romantic and classic, so it was fun to have that palate. The strings were done in Bulgaria, but we were live streaming and it was like four in the morning on Skype and sitting in the darkness and watching it happen. It was so incredible. And hearing them talk about it and humming parts between takes and stuff… The musicians were getting a kick out of it as well. They said a lot of times they’re doing little calls for TV show or movies, so to have music with identity was refreshing for them as well.

How was the experience of working with Shooter?

It was great. He came to our show at the Wiltern in 2022. He just bought tickets and came to the show and a mutual friend was like, “Hey, Shooter’s here.” So we met him and quickly bonded over our shared love all things weird and all things classic American rock and roll. He proposed the idea of making a record, and over a long-winded couple of years the timing worked out.

And he’s got Studio 3 over at Sunset Sound, which he’s dubbed Sunset Mountain. It’s the room where Prince recorded Purple Rain; the grand piano we got to record a bunch of the songs on was the Purple Rain piano. There’s just so much history there, so it was cool to be able to work in that room and be part of that history.

And Shooter is such a supporter, and so knowledgeable as well when it comes to that music, too. It was fun to be able to collaborate with him. He played piano on a few of the tunes as well, so we got to bust out some Floyd Kramer stuff and explore that Countrypolitan sound. He’s well-versed in it but hasn’t done much of that on his records, so it was a fun lane for us to explore together.

Are there more songs that you did during the sessions but didn’t release?

Yeah, there’s a batch we started with — like, again, the original version of “Doomed Lovers” was completed but is unreleased, so there are some songs that didn’t make the cut, or that got repurposed. A lot of times we end up reworking songs, whether it be keeping the lyrics or keeping a root, but, “Let’s try this as a ballad” or “Let’s try this with more of a groove or a rhythm.” We do like to explore, and because of that sometimes things get scrapped and we come back to them in a different way. So yeah, there are some more songs, but I don’t think they’ll ever be heard. You never know, though.

Do you feel like Doomed Lovers is a lane Twin Temple will stay in? Where do you see it growing from here?

I think we’re always gonna love classic American music, and I think the heart of that is the late ’50s, early ’60s period. But it pans from the Brill Building in New York with Lieber and Stoller and Doc Pomus and all those great songwriting teams and even the producers — Shadow Morton and the Shangri-Las, and we really love all that stuff. Then to Nashville in that same period you’ve got RCA [Studios], and then out in Hollywood you’ve got Gold Star and Phil Spector and Jack Nitzsche and even Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood.

I feel like there’s so much to explore and learn and even just to reference. There’s more ideas but I think it’s always gonna be classic American. It’s always gonna be rock and roll. I’m not sure where the muse will take us next but it’ll always be always gonna be grounded in that, for sure.

Don Felder’s education with the Eagles is the reason he has an extensive collection of electric and acoustic guitars and equipment. It’s not just Gear Acquisition Syndrome.

His current studio setup includes a total of 19 instruments and 15 amps, but none of them are simply gathering dust. Instead, he employs them all to pursue the kind of results he achieved with Eagles classics like “Hotel California.”

“I loved and learned a lot playing in a band that had three electric guitar players,” Felder told Dr. Music, adding that it applied equally to his time alongside Joe Walsh and Glenn Frey as it had to his stint with Bernie Leadon and Frey.

“You can’t all play Gibson Les Pauls at the same time,” he continued. “The tonality of it — you can’t separate them. They’re just too unique.

“So if I play a guitar track on a Les Paul, I need to play another part on a Strat or a Tele or on a PRS or on different pickups. It’s always a different combination, so you don’t wind up with everything on the same bandwidth.”

He cited an example. “If I played a Les Paul, Walsh played a Strat, Glenn would play his Les Paul Junior that had different pickups. And we had these different amps. You could really define exactly the tone and the player in their own little space.”

Felder noted, “You need to place things sonically in separate positions. That was the [biggest] thing we learned making records where we had three guitar players playing at the same time.”

Of course, Felder’s guitar history goes back further than the Eagles. As he recently told Guitar Player, while growing up in Florida he crossed paths with everyone from Duane Allman to Tom Petty, Stephen Stills and his old Eagles bandmate Leadon.

Which is likely why he thinks it takes more than 10,000 hours of practice to become a solid guitar player.

“Well, 10,000 hours is only the beginning,” he said. “That gets you there, but you’ve got to stay there. Any time you start resting on your laurels when it comes to playing, you’re making a big mistake.”

Felder’s current North American tour dates run until November 6.

Suzanne Vega didn’t set out to change the music business. But by the end of the 1980s, the New York singer-songwriter had done exactly that in two very different ways.

Her success helped convince a record industry dominated by male executives that a woman with an acoustic guitar and a notebook full of original songs could be a major commercial success. Then, almost by accident, her voice on “Tom’s Diner” became an important tool in the development of a technology that would transform the way the world listened to music.

Vega had risen through New York’s folk-music scene before breaking through with her second album, the platinum-selling Solitude Standing in 1987. The record produced her signature U.S. Top 5 hit, “Luka,” and her success helped open the door for a new generation of women singer-songwriters.

“I think I was perceived as someone who had opened the door for women’s success,” Vega tells Guitar Player. “I think I showed the businessmen that this was a template that would work. And they saw that with Tracy Chapman, and then they saw that with all these other wonderful dynamic women, like Sinéad O’Connor and many that came out in the ’90s. And it continues today. There are so many women making all kinds of music and I think that’s the way it should have always been.”

At the time, much of the music business still regarded a woman writing her own songs and accompanying herself on guitar as an anomaly. Vega remembers being regarded as a novelty because she played guitar and wrote her own songs.

“When I was up and coming, a lot of people sort of thought that it was odd to have women playing guitars,” she says. “They thought of it as a ’70s movement or something, so I was still considered a novelty because I played guitar and wrote my own songs. Everyone thought of me as being both retro and futuristic. And I thought this was nonsense. Why shouldn’t women play the guitar and write songs? And of course, all these women before me had already been doing it.”

In 1989, Vega became the first woman to headline the long-running Glastonbury Festival in the U.K. The occasion was marred by a death threat from a stalker that prompted police to insist she wear a bulletproof vest for the performance.

“I was happy to be headlining Glastonbury Festival, but I certainly did not enjoy that whole drama that was going on backstage,” she recalls. “That was totally unexpected, but fortunately, it all ended fine. It all dissipated. The next day, it was never repeated. The threat stopped, and we were able to all go on with our lives.”

But Vega’s influence would soon extend far beyond the artists who followed her.

“Tom’s Diner,” the spare a cappella song that opened Solitude Standing in 1987, had been only a minor hit when it was released as a single in Europe that year, reaching number 58 in the U.K. Its stripped-down arrangement, however, made Vega’s voice unusually exposed — and that would prove significant a few years later.

In the early 1990s, German electrical engineer and mathematician Karlheinz Brandenburg was working on technology that would allow digital audio files to be compressed dramatically while retaining as much of their perceived sound quality as possible. He used the a cappella recording of “Tom’s Diner” as a reference while testing and refining the technology, helping make the song part of the story behind the development of the MP3 format.

Vega was eventually dubbed “the mother of the MP3.”

“I didn’t know what to make of it at first,” Vega says. “When I was told this story, I thought, what the heck is an MP3? But in the end, I am sort of tickled that I am part of history in a sense, that they used my voice to refine this thing called the MP3.

“I eventually met Karlheinz Brandenburg, and he’s a lovely man, very funny, and kind of a mad scientist type of person. And so, I enjoy that I have a role in history, and a small role in the technology of music.”

When she followed Solitude Standing with Days of Open Hand in 1990, Vega had the budget and freedom that came with a successful album. Rather than replicate the formula of its predecessor, she and her collaborators took a more experimental approach. The record received good reviews but failed to match the commercial impact of Solitude Standing.

“First of all, any formula you think is going to work, it’s not going to,” Vega says. “People give you advice and say, ‘Oh, here’s how it’s done.’ And the fact is that it’s all kind of the Wild West. You just have to do what works.

“After Solitude Standing was a big hit, I had a big budget and lots of time to make the follow-up album. And we worked really hard on that album probably for a whole year, getting every guitar part squeaky clean, and spending so much time looking at everything with a fine-toothed comb. And the album in the end did okay.”

Ironically, the song that made the biggest commercial impact that year was not on Days of Open Hand at all. British production duo DNA turned Vega’s a cappella “Tom’s Diner” into a dance track and scored a major hit.

“The thing that really did well in 1990 was this remake of ‘Tom’s Diner’ by two boys in a studio who had very little money, but had just a brilliant idea,” explains Vega. “They put together this funky remix of ‘Tom’s Diner’ on a weekend! And that was the thing that hit big that year.

“My album got pretty good reviews, but it didn’t hit the way that their version of ‘Tom’s Diner’ did. This taught me that all the good intentions and all the money and all the time that you put into something isn’t always the thing. The thing is the idea. Does the idea connect with an audience?

“And so that was a big learning point for me. I learned to trust my instincts more. So, the 99.9F° album, which came after both ‘Tom’s Diner’ and Days of Open Hand, was much wilder and much freer and was just a lot more fun. And I think that’s one of the most important things I learned.”

Bobby Whitlock was all of 22 when he and Eric Clapton set about forming Derek and the Dominos in England during the summer of 1970. A talented singer, organist and guitarist from Memphis, Whitlock forged a friendship with Clapton unlike any other musician. Beyond serving as his partner in the group’s creation, he was Clapton's co-writer on many of the songs on Derek and the Dominos’ only studio album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.

“‘I Looked Away’ was the very first one,” Whitlock told Guitar Player. “And then ‘Anyday,’ and then ‘Tell the Truth.’ It felt really natural for us to write together, because we were friends first and we weren’t writing to make money or anything like that. We were just writing songs to have something we could play together.”

The two men would go on to perform on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass album, lending their talents to — among other tracks — Harrison’s 1970 hit single, “My Sweet Lord.”

But it was with their own songs that they would make music history, along with bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon, as Derek and the Dominos. Toward the end of August, the quartet settled into Criteria Studios in Miami to begin their fruitful sessions for Layla.

But as close as they were, Whitlock understood that there was a deeper connection between Clapton and Duane Allman. The Allman Brothers Band guitarist was a late arrival to Derek and the Dominos. Although the Allmans weren’t famous at the time, Clapton knew Duane's guitar talents from his session work for Atlantic recording artists, in particular Wilson Pickett, whose 1969 cover of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” featured Duane's blazing fretwork.

“I remember hearing ‘Hey Jude’ by Wilson Pickett and calling either [Atlantic president] Ahmet Ertegun or Tom Dowd, and saying, ‘Who’s that guitar player?’” Clapton said. “To this day, I’ve never heard better rock guitar playing on an R&B record.”

As it happened, the Allman Brothers Band was playing a benefit concert at the Miami Beach Convention Center on the night of August 26, the first day of the Dominos’ sessions. Clapton and the band attended, after which Allman accompanied them back to Criteria for a jam. He never left.

Playing together — Clapton on Brownie, the 1956 Fender Stratocaster he’d purchased in 1967 during his tenure with Cream; Allman with his gold-top 1957 Gibson Les Paul — the two guitarists seemed to read each other’s moods and minds. “The sound of those two guitars together was perfect and complementary,” Whitlock said. “You just couldn’t have asked for anything better than that.”

As Whitlock explained, Clapton and Allman’s friendship was as symbiotic as their guitar playing. He witnessed many moments of camaraderie between them and recalls the profound impact it had on his own awareness of what they were accomplishing in the studio.

“One night after we had finished up recording for the day, we went on back to Eric’s room,” he recalled. “We were all drinking whisky and playing guitars, and I was listening to Eric and Duane talking about Robert Johnson, Elmore James and so on, and playing Bill Broonzy stuff.

“But I was standing there, leaning up against the wall and taking all this in, knowing that this is some really important stuff that’s going down, and I’m a witness to it. And these two young guys — we were all in our 20s — they were like two old, sage black blues guys talking it over with a bottle of whisky, and then playing the music, right there.

“And it was then that I took the photo of Eric and Duane together that’s in the album gatefold. It was the one time I felt truly privileged to be there, at the right time, the right place, and in the right frame of mind.”

Whitlock was also present when Allman worked his magic on Layla’s title track, devising the seven-note opening lick that is the song’s calling card. “Duane suggested it, and he came up with it,” Whitlock confirmed. “We already had the song together, but it just started out completely different when we worked it up in England. And Duane said, ‘How about starting it this way?’”

Perhaps playing off the desperation in Clapton’s lyrics, Allman cleverly lifted the first half of the opening melody from Albert King’s “As the Years Go Passing By,” where the bluesman sings, “There is nothing I can do if you leave me here to cry.” Whitlock recalls that, originally, Allman played the line slower than it appears on the recording. “It was Eric’s idea to play it fast,” he said. “Duane played it, but Eric sped it up.”

For all the great music and communal spirit that arose from those sessions, Clapton at one point disowned the album. Speaking of the Dominos in 1985, the guitarist groused, “We were a make-believe band. We were all hiding inside it: Derek and the Dominos — the whole thing.”

But Whitlock saw the artifice as something else — a chance for a band led by a world-famous guitarist known to many as "God" to stand on its own merits.

“It’s great music,” said Whitlock, who passed away August 10, 2025. “And it’s real. It became a success on its own, not because of promotion and not because of Eric Clapton.

“I remember when we were doing our tour of the United States. We were riding in a station wagon somewhere up in Minnesota, heading to a gig, and ‘My Sweet Lord’ comes on the radio. At the time, it was the number-one record in the country.

"And there we were, four guys in a car, heading to some little gig somewhere. I mean, we were the guys on a number-one record, and nobody even knew who the hell we were!”

“That’s my gift from the songwriting gods,” Randy Bachman says.

That gift is “Takin’ Care of Business,” Bachman’s 1974 hit single with Bachman-Turner Overdrive (BTO), and a staple of classic-rock radio ever since. But as the Canadian-born guitarist reveals to Guitar Player, his gift took a lot of hard work, rejection and patience to earn. Although it’s part of the BTO catalog, the song dates back to Bachman’s earlier group, the Guess Who, for whom he penned hits like “Undun” and co-wrote other smashes, like “American Woman” and “These Eyes,” with keyboardist and singer Burton Cummings.

But “Takin’ Care of Business” wouldn’t see the light of day until well after Bachman left the Guess Who in May 1970.

“That took me six or seven years to write,” he says. “I started it about ’67 at Scepter Studios in New York, where the Guess Who were recording.” Scepter had achieved fame in the early 1960s as the label for the Shirelles, Dionne Warwick and the Isley Brothers. The studio, though less successful, is notable now as the place where the Velvet Underground cut much of their debut record, The Velvet Underground & Nico, in April 1966.

At the outset, Bachman says, “I was trying to write a song like the Beatles’ ‘Paperback Writer’ — a day in the life of a guy — rather than write a love song.

“In fact, I was actually writing about Stanley Greenberg, who was the son of Florence Greenberg, who owned Scepter Records. She managed the Shirelles and Dionne Warwick, and she wrote [the Shirelles’ 1962 hit] ’Soldier Boy.’

“Her son Stanley Greenberg was the engineer, and he was blind. And every day coming to work, he would wear a white button-down shirt, a tweed tie, tweed jacket, tweed pants and brogue shoes. And this is in August in New York, when it’s 95 above and 95 humidity! We’re wearing ripped shirts, cut-off pants, ripped jeans and clogs, and he’s coming to work in a suit.

“We’d ask, ‘Stanley, why are you dressed this way? It’s so hot out there!’ He’d say, ‘I want to look like George Martin. I know this is what he wears.’

“‘Okay, you look like George Martin,’ I told him. ‘I want to write a song about you.’

“I wanted to call it ‘White Collar Man,’ ’cause he wore that white button-down shirt every day.”

Bachman decided he would tag along with Stanley that evening to draw inspiration for his song.

“So we leave at 10 o’clock at night,” Bachman continues. “And I asked him, ‘So what happens in the morning when you get up and go to work?' And he says, ‘Well, it’s crowded, and I take the 8:15 into the city.’

"And I start thinking: I wake up in the morning, the alarm clock’s warning, I take the 8:15 into the city. ‘And then what?,’ I asked him. He says, ‘I smell makeup and hairspray. The girls on the train are trying to do their makeup to look pretty for their jobs. And then I walk to work and start my slavin’ job to get my pay.’

“I thought, Great! There’s a song!"

While the verses that Bachman wrote up hewed closely to the song as it’s known today, the familiar chorus and its refrain were nonexistent. As Bachman explains, “Originally, when we got to the hook, the song stopped and we sang, ‘White Collar Man,’ the same as [sings] ‘Paperback Writer.’

The song’s debut was anything but successful.

“I played it for Burton Cummings, who hated it,” Bachman recalls. “He said, ‘The verses are great — but "White Collar Man?" Gag me with a drumstick! I’m never gonna do this song. We’ll get sued by Lennon and McCartney. Let me change the hook.’ I said, ‘No, it’s my song. I’ll find the hook!’

“So that song never made it onto any Guess Who album.”

By the latter half of 1970, Bachman was on his own, having left the Guess Who when tensions with Cummings reached the breaking point. He formed Bachman-Turner Overdrive with his brothers, guitarist Tim and drummer Robbie, and bassist and lead vocalist C.F. Turner. But Bachman hadn’t forgotten about “White Collar Man.”

“I’m driving to a gig one night,” he recalls, “and this DJ on the radio, who I knew very well, says, ‘This is Daryl B on CFUN radio, takin’ care of business!’ I thought, What a song title!”

Arriving at the gig, Bachman learned Turner had lost his voice and couldn’t sing. “So I had to sing the last set on a Saturday night in a rock and roll club,” he says. “And I’m not a singer.”

Staring down disaster, Bachman gamely took on vocal duties but was limited in what he could perform given his skills. After leading the band through improvised versions of various tunes, including Santana’s ”Oye Como Va" — “I don’t know Spanish but it was on the radio and everybody loved dancing to it, so I sang it phonetically” — Bachman was at a loss for what to play.

“And then a little light went on in my head,” he says. “I thought, This is your big chance for ‘White Collar Man!’ Put it together with the ‘takin’ care of business’ line you just heard on the radio. The band can’t say no — they are your hostage.

“I said to them, ‘Just play these three chords and follow me!’ And I starting singing, ‘You get up every morning the alarm clock’s warning...’ And when I got to the hook, I started singing, ‘Takin’ Care of Business.’”

By the next chorus he had the band singing along with him. “And I answered them with ‘Every day!’ and ‘Every way!’

“And then — boom — it hit me: This is a classic!”

The group recorded it a few weeks later, with Bachman playing his 1957 Gretsch 6120 electric guitar and taking lead vocals for the first time “Fred told me, ‘You should sing this,’” Bachman recalls of the session. “'You’ll be, like, my relief pitcher.’ It felt like a real BTO song.”

Released on Bachman-Turner Overdrive II, “Takin’ Care of Business” was released as a single in January 1974 and began a slow march up the charts, reaching number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 that August and remaining on the chart 20 weeks, the longest of any BTO song.

Although BTO called it quits in 1980, they reformed several times, most recently in 2023, albeit with a revised lineup that includes Bachman’s son Tal on vocals, guitar and piano. The reunion was a welcome celebration for Bachman, who was already glowing after recovering his Gretsch 6120, which was stolen in 1976.

As for “Takin’ Care of Business,” it lives on today on classic-rock radio, commercials, film and TV. The phrase has also become part of the modern lexicon for hourly and salaried employees everywhere, a richly deserved reward for Randy Bachman’s long, hard work.

“Of course, I could never play like him. I never tried. Only an idiot competes with Eddie Van Halen.”

So said Steve Vai to Rolling Stone in 2020, as he reflected on his friendship with Eddie. Vai certainly spoke from wisdom — after all, he was David Lee Roth’s guitarist after Roth left Van Halen. He knew what would be expected of him and that he needed to cut his own path to avoid being compared to and overshadowed by the great Eddie Van Halen.

“When I joined David Lee Roth’s band, it was great opportunity for me to play such well-constructed rock songs,” Vai said. “Of course, nobody can play them like Edward, but you do your best.”

Eddie was certainly aware of the guitarist who had taken his place alongside Roth. And while Ed knew his own talents were immense, he remained humble and believed other guitarists had something to teach him. Allan Holdsworth for example: Ed was a huge fan of the guitar giant and did everything he could to help him land a recording contract. With Ed, there was never competition, just a desire to play guitar and keep getting better.

So he kept his eye on Vai and was pleasantly surprised at what he heard. Unlike the numerous EVH clones, Vai combined his limits-stretching electric guitar techniques with lyrical melodies. Joe Satriani — who stepped into Ed's shoes on last year's Best of All Worlds tour — might impress you with his bluesy fusion, and Yngwie Malmsteen with his neoclassical chops. But Vai combined an almost operatic beauty with the sort of avant-garde eccentricities of his former employer, Frank Zappa.

And when Eddie heard Vai apply his magic to his own songs in Roth’s band, he was duly impressed.

“I’m going, ‘This guy is better at what I do than I am’, you know?” Eddie told interview Shaun Baxter in 1995.

“But,” Ed added, “ he lacked the vibe… the feel. He was technically very proficient but stiff. It always made me feel bad in a way. Because it made me feel like, ‘Wow, is that how people perceive me?’ ”

Vai stayed with Roth from 1985 through 1989, during which time he performed on the singer’s albums Eat ‘Em and Smile and Skyscraper. Once he was out, Ed felt it was safe to give him a call.

“The day after I left David Lee Roth’s band — I don’t know how Edward found out — but he called me,” Vai told Rolling Stone. “That was the start of a nice relationship and friendship.”

Vai recalled that they hung out frequently over a six-month period, during which he visited Ed’s 5150 Studios and was treated to private listening sessions of his work tapes. “He played me stuff that was never released,” Vai recalled. “I said, ‘Why don’t you make a solo record?’ And he always felt that the Van Halen records were his solo records.

"But this stuff he was playing me was really quite nice. It was all the things we loved about the way he played.”

While Ed considered Vai the one guitarist who out–Van Halened him, Vai believes Ed was a rock and roll game changer with only one peer.

“If I had to use my intuition,” he said, “it’s Hendrix, it’s Van Halen, in rock guitar. So many great guitarists came along and contributed, but those guys just did something for us that reshaped not just the way we played instruments, but the way we write the music, the way we dress, and the way we act onstage. It goes really deep. So I firmly feel that he was one of those monoliths.”

Vai certainly has his own share of fans who consider him a game changer. Tosin Abasi recently spoke of working 16 hours a day in a salmon processing factory in Alaska to buy his Steve Vai signature guitar.

For those who want to channel some of Steve's guitar mojo, his three top guitar tips will prove worthwhile.

When Randy Bachman learned in early 2025 that a bridge in Winnipeg was being renamed the Bachman-Turner Overpass, he knew it was time to resurrect a song he’d written — but never recorded — dedicated to his hometown. He duly regrouped with retired Bachman-Turner Overdrive vocalist Fred Turner to cut the tune. He even invited along an old friend from his time in the Canadian city.

“I went, ‘Wow, that’s incredible! I’ve got a song all about Winnipeg,’” Bachman tells Guitar Player. “I’ll rock it up with BTO. I’ll get Fred to sing on it, and I’ll get Neil to play on it.”

“Neil” would be Bachman’s Winnipeg pal from the 1960s, Neil Young, who uncorks a ragged glory end solo on the track. This isn’t the first time the two pals have appeared on record together — Young guested on Bachman’s 1997 song “Prairie Town,” and a year earlier they both collaborated on a cover of the Shadows’ “Spring Is Nearly Here” for a Hank Marvin and the Shadows tribute album.

Strangely, the two guitarists — who bonded as young players over their love of Gretsch electric guitars, a Fender combo and Hank Marvin — never started a band together in their early years. Bachman played in the Silvertones, who morphed into Chad Allan and the Expressions and scored a hit with “Shakin’ All Over,” before settling on the name the Guess Who. Young, meanwhile, performed with the Squires.

The two went their separate ways, but Bachman is happy whenever their musical paths cross, including whether in the studio, onstage, solo or with groups, including Young’s band Crazy Horse.

“Neil has always been very generous with his time,” Bachman says. “He’s invited me down to his studio. He played Toronto last year with the Horse. I went to see them, and they were phenomenal. He did every song that I or the audience ever wanted him to play — incredible songs.

“He was there with Daryl,” he says, referring to Young’s wife, actress Daryl Hannah. “I gave him an acoustic version of ‘60 Years Ago,’ and he emailed me back the next day and said, ‘I love this song. It's so historical. Daryl loves it. We're playing it on the bus all the time.’”

Bachman is currently on the road with Burton Cummings in a revamped lineup of his other famous group, the Guess Who. Their Takin’ It Back tour runs through August 25.

When you send a track to Neil for him to play on, do you give him any kind of direction.

[laughs] Let me just say this: Nobody tells Neil what to do.

That sort of figures. Still, one might assume you might given your long-standing relationship with him.

The relationship is pure respect of his artistic vision. When we did the Shadows song, there’s a part in the bridge where there’s a C7 — I’m playing rhythm and Neil’s playing lead. In that C7 there’s a B note, a C note and a C sharp note. It was like “Chopsticks.” I called Neil’s manager, Elliot Roberts, and asked, “Can I correct this mistake? There’s this weird thing in the middle.”

What was the response?

“Neil would prefer you to leave it alone and don't touch it. It was captured in the moment.” I said, “Okay.”

So that's kind of like the Godfather wants you to eat this plate of spaghetti and one meatball. You don't ask for another meatball.

Neil has said that your old band, the Silvertones, was the best group in Winnipeg in the early ‘60s. He cited you as being a big influence on him.

I played lead guitar because I played violin when I was a kid. The Silvertones were a cover band — we did the hit parade and songs from England. We knew all the Shadows songs, Cliff Richards, Shane Fenton and the Fentones, Johnny Kidd & the Pirates — that’s where we got “Shakin’ All Over” from. Neil’s band would copy that, but they wanted to be different from the Ventures because every band was doing “Walk, Don’t Run.”

So Neil’s band, the Squires, was doing what the Silvertones did.

Same thing. We would play a dance and not say a word. You’d play Ventures or “Sleepwalk” so the kids could waltz. You’d play instrumentals for an hour and a half.

When I joined the Silvertones, the band had a rare thing — an amplifier. Jim Kale had a Fender Concert amp. It had two channels, and each channel had two inputs, so we could put a microphone in one for the singer to sing. We had no P.A. system, so we put rhythm guitar, bass and my guitar into that amp. That was our P.A.

Whenever we weren’t playing, Neil would call up and say, “Are you guys playing a gig next weekend? Can we borrow the amplifier?”

Oh, so he liked your equipment.

Well, he wanted to be Hank Marvin. My piano player had a tape recorder, and if you moved the recording head a little bit you'd get an echo like Hank Marvin. We had no pedals, but suddenly I had an echo. Play with the tape a little and there was the sound of Hank Marvin and the Shadows. Neil loved that sound. That's why we played together on the Hank Marvin and the Shadows tribute album.

What do you remember about Neil’s playing style back then?

We were both very good players. He was like me — you're clumsy, and you do it night and day, and you get smoother and smoother. Everybody's clumsy at first. Just try to play an F chord. I mean, it's the hardest chord on guitar, whether they're using a barre with your finger or your thumb. It's really tough to play.

Did you guys hang out and play together?

No. He lived on one side of town, I lived on the other. We would meet on the bus. We were friends, and we both had the same dream. We wanted to be on the radio. We wanted to be like Hank Marvin or Elvis. There’s something about the brotherhood of guitar, especially if you both have a Gretsch and you both like Hank Marvin. You’d kind of help each other. I'd say, “I'd learned this lick.” He’d say, “Oh, but I play it down here.” And I’d say, “It’s easier up here.”

Did you do this kind of thing at gigs?

Yeah, at gigs. We didn't have that much time. I would show up with Jim Kale at Neil’s gigs. We would take the Concert amp, put it onstage. Neil would plug it in and test it. We would watch him play. Or I would be playing, and he’d be watching us. He'd say, “How do you play that?” “Oh, here's how you play that. You can play your A on the second fret, or the fifth fret, or the 10th fret or whatever.” “Oh, okay.”

It’s surprising you never played in the same band. Did you both buy Gretsches around the same time?

A Gretsch [6120 Chet Atkins] finally came in to Winnipeg Music Supply, and it was pumpkin orange. We had no idea, because you'd only see a Gretsch guitar on American Bandstand, and it was black and white. So I bought the Gretsch, but it didn’t sound right because it had the Filter’Trons. The guy called me back and said, “I’ve got the twangy one. It’s got DeArmond pickups. Gimme a hundred bucks, and I’ll give you the twangy one.”

I took mine back, and Neil bought it. That became his Gretsch that he played on “Mr. Soul” and “For What It’s Worth” on American Bandstand. I’ve got the other Gretsch that I played on “Takin’ Care of Business,” “Laughing,” all that stuff. Those two guitars became famous for both of us. They’re what we learned to play on and what we wrote and recorded with.

One could ask him the same question about you, but back then did you have any sort of inkling that he was special and going to make it?

I did, yeah. Other guys came and went in his band. Other guys came and went in my band. What was consistent was us, the look in our eyes of “We don’t care what happens or who quits the band. We were going forward. If you're coming with me, enjoy the ride. If you're not coming with me, get off the bus. You’re too heavy.”

When he went to Los Angeles, did you think of going there too?

Well, we had left first in ‘65 to go and do the Kingsman “Louie Louie” tour after we had a hit with “Shakin’ All Over.” When we left town, I sent him a postcard: “Opened in New York. Met Burt Bacharach, Ashford and Simpson, Dionne Warwick. You gotta get out of Winnipeg.” So he went to Thunder Bay, met Stephen Stills and started Buffalo Springfield.

Later on, did he ever float the idea of you joining CSNY?

No. He had his own world, and I was stuck in Winnipeg. By then, My son Tal was born. When nobody offers you a job and you've got a wife and a kid, you don't go somewhere with no work. You stay where the work is.

Still, it’s surprising that the two of you never played together in a band. It seems like it would have been the most natural thing.

Well, let me say this: I envy his relationship with Stephen Stills. I would love to be Stephen Stills, the other guitar player who answers him on “Down by the River.” When you're doing an eight-minute solo, I would love to do that. It’s never happened.

He's played many times in Vancouver. I would go see him and he'd say, “Get a guitar. Come on for the encore” I’d go, “Phenomenal!” I'd walk onstage and he would yell out, “’On Broadway!’” I’d go, “What?! Can’t we do ‘Down by the River?’” “Nah.”

So we would do “On Broadway” or “Up on the Roof” — some weird Drifters song. I’d say, “Neil, I want to play ‘Down by the River.’ I want to do ‘Southern Man.’ I want to show you that I can rip on these solos.” [laughs] You would just do whatever he wants.

Buddy Guy once had to reassure Albert King that he wasn’t trying to steal his guitar tricks.

The two blues legends were often booked on the same shows, and Guy recalls one particularly funny encounter during a soundcheck in Montreal. King, who was famously protective of his distinctive guitar style, spotted Guy sitting in the audience — and immediately turned his back.

“I didn’t play a lot with Albert, but we were often on the same show,” Guy told Guitar Player. “I’ll never forget one time in Montreal when Albert was doing his soundcheck. I was sitting in the audience, and he turned his back to me after he saw me out there. He said, ‘I ain’t going to let you see a damn thing.’

“I had to tell him, ‘Man, you’re left-handed. I can’t take shit from you no way, because I’m right-handed.’”

King was left-handed, but that wasn’t the only unusual aspect of his playing. He played a right-handed electric guitar upside down, with the high E string on top, and also used unorthodox alternate tunings.

Even so, King may have had reason to be cautious around Guy. He was certainly not shy about strutting his stuff in front of other guitarists, having famously shared stages with Rory Gallagher, B.B. King, Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan, among others.

Both King and Guy were known for their aggressive string-bending techniques and their sliding into pentatonic boxes. Neither man used a whammy bar, and perhaps King thought Guy might steal some ideas about technique from him.

As Guy revealed to Guitar Player, he did experiment once with a whammy bar early in his career while recording for Chess Records.

“I cut a side at Chess using a whammy bar, but they weren’t ready for it. They were like, ‘Nobody wants to hear that.’

“These days, though, I don’t put a whammy bar on my guitars. Honestly, I stopped back when I was using very light strings because it made them break easier, and I couldn’t afford to keep buying new ones.”

Guy also never attempted to play slide guitar, explaining that the technique required too much precision for the wild, attention-grabbing style he had developed.

“It’s because I was always wanted to be like Guitar Slim, and you can’t be wild and play a slide. You’ve got to be precise. You’ve got to sit there, and make that tone — like Derek Trucks.

“When I came out, I didn’t ever think I was a good guitar player, so I was trying to make people pay attention. I got that from Guitar Slim.

“I remember when I first saw his show. At the start, all I heard was a guitar. And then he came in the front door playing. I turned to see he had a 150-foot-long cable. I said, ‘That’s what I want to do. I want to be wild like Guitar Slim, and I want to be able to shake my wrist like B.B. King.’ But who can?”

Guy is currently on the road with his Buddy Guy 90 tour, which continues through September 2026. The run includes dates across the U.S., with upcoming performances scheduled in cities including Chicago, Atlantic City, Nashville and Denver.

Australian percussive acoustic-guitar wizard Tommy Emmanuel has played some huge gigs in his life. But few can have been more impactful than the time he and Martin Taylor entertained inmates at a high-security prison.

Emmanuel has headlined Nashville’s iconic Ryman Auditorium and Paris’ Olympia, where the Beatles enjoyed a historic 18-day residency in 1964. He has even upstaged Les Paul on his own turf — though he later lived to regret it. But in a new interview, the guitarist has reflected on one of the most unique audiences ever to experience his virtuosic yet calming presence.

“I’ve played to 15 inmates who are in there for life, for murder,” he tells Zakk Kuhn. “They were allowed to watch YouTube on Thursday afternoons for 45 minutes, and they all chose me to watch. So the prison system asked if I would come and meet with them. What a weird thing to think. But it was so wonderful.”

The first encounter came when Emmanuel was being filmed for an interview. As the cameras started rolling, Kuhn jovially asked him about his favorite film. Emmanuel answered The Shawshank Redemption, praising its “dialogue, story, and happy ending” — but the guitarist’s prison experience would soon go far beyond discussing a movie about life behind bars.

“A year later I came back with [guitarist] Martin Taylor,” he explains. “We were doing our swing music show, and we played to a much bigger group in an open space, and I can’t tell you the feeling of playing for these guys. We did about an hour set, and a big black guy came up afterward, and he just grabbed me in a bear hug, and he whispered in my ear, ‘We escaped for an hour.’ It was unbelievable.”

The prison, Emmanuel says, was San Quentin in California, the historic facility that has held inmates including Charles Manson and is the only prison in the state that houses a death row.

“There were four stages of security, and everyone was in there for life,” he recalls. “The first time I went in, I got into the third layer of security, and then all the alarms went off, and it was a lockdown; there was a fight between two gangs, and one guy was dead, stabbed to death right there. And I saw him. I saw blood everywhere. It was awful.”

The prison hospital was directly next to where Emmanuel was at that moment. “He was on a table, and he was wide open,” the guitarist says.

But the shocking incident didn’t stop the guitarist from going ahead with the performance.

“I kept going because I knew there were 12 guys in that room down there that I wanted to meet,” he states. “I had good security, but the guy who did the murdering was in a one-man cage like an animal. He really looked like a wild animal, but I didn’t want to engage with him. He’d just taken a life.”

That would have been enough of a brush with mortality to make many musicians turn around. Emmanuel is glad he didn’t.

“The guy who’d been there the longest was the guy who really advocated for me to come there,” the guitarist explains. “His name was Marty, and he gave me a beautiful painting that he’d done. It was the story of Jesus, and it was all in little pictures, and he so carefully drew it and gave it to me.

“They knew exactly what they wanted me to play,” he continues. “They’d already got in a conference about it. So I had to play ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’ ‘Lady Madonna,’ and ‘Guitar Boogie.’ They had a list for me, and they were saying, ‘Can you please play this for us?’”

It was an eye-opening experience from start to finish — and certainly very different from Emmanuel’s typical gig day.

“Sometimes Marty would speak up and say, ‘Would you mind showing us how you do that?’” he goes on. “They were just quiet-speaking guys who’d been in there a long time. The guards knew them very well, and there was a feeling of peace and collaboration in that room. It was quite different from what just happened outside. But that’s life for you.”

By now, Emmanuel is used to having unique fans. He has been gifted a guitar by a dying fan and once received a guitar lesson from Chet Atkins in a dream. His career has been anything but straightforward — and even by the standards of one of acoustic guitar’s most extraordinary performers, serenading murderers at San Quentin was an experience unlike any other.

Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton, also known as the Beano album, was released on the Decca label 60 years ago, on July 22, 1966. There are many groundbreaking aspects to the record, not the least of which is Clapton’s marriage of a Les Paul through a cranked Marshall amplifier, the electric guitar equivalent of the Wright Brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk.

This magic coupling was defined by the hands of a spry 21-year-old. His youthful mastery is jaw dropping, and his iconic sound is now a guitar industry standard that at that time reinvigorated interest in the almost forgotten Gibson Les Paul model.

Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck weren’t yet fully developed, Pete Townshend was more of a rhythm guy, Ritchie Blackmore wasn’t really a blues guy, Jimi Hendrix wouldn’t release Are You Experienced until a year later, and groups like Love, Jefferson Airplane, Them, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Creedence Clearwater Revival and other young acts of the day couldn’t stay in the same ring as Clapton.

Most guys were struggling to intonate bends and trying not to fall off the log. Meanwhile, E.C. was like Larry Bird.

Clapton wasn’t just all sound. He could swing. Pre-Blues Breakers guitarists like Bill Jennings, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian and dozens, if not hundreds, of others might swing harder, but they didn’t have his Les Paul-with-Marshall-on-10 sound and an innate sense of beyond-their-years phrasing.

There are many timeless moments on the Beano LP. The major 7th feedback note that ends “Steppin’ Out” is unexpected and sonically imaginative. I almost feel the floor of the recording studio vibrating on the “Key to Love” solo. It’s like a jacked stallion busting out of the gate.

“Have You Heard” has a great violent blues solo that sounds like Clapton is pissed he had to wait so long to play it. The Clapton vocal track, “Ramblin’ on my Mind,” introduced a generation of young kids to Robert Johnson, priming listeners to search for the source.

It’s not a perfect album. John Mayall ain’t no Steve Winwood, the multiple guitar tracks sometimes sound cluttered, and while “What I’d Say” might have been a showstopper in a London nightclub, it could have been left off the record. That said, the high points are stellar, and it’s all there on Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton.

In the years since its release, Clapton has sometimes put his foot deep into his mouth, but his doing so makes sense to me.

He famously refused to turn down at the Beano sessions. Engineers in lab coats were shocked at his ear-shattering volume. His “you’re with me or you’re against me” musical focus screams out from the grooves, along with an innate English aesthetic that was structured, organized and almost militaristic.

Clapton went on to grow a Bob Ross-style Afro that might have been a tribute to Hendrix, but he’d never play as loose, sexy and beautifully Black as Jimi did. All that said, when I listen to Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton, I don’t care about the ups and downs of decades with Eric Clapton; I just hear a young man reinventing electric blues.

When young students ask me what inspired me when I was learning, I might play them the swinging genius Clapton exhibits on “Hideaway,” where he whips the Freddie King gem into his vision. Yet, more times than not, it underwhelms the uninitiated listener.

I think I get it. The world is filled with blues lawyers playing ’59 Les Pauls and clowns like Steven Seagal playing beefed-up pentatonics. Listeners shouldn’t be confused by this, because not hearing the importance and impact of Eric Clapton on Blues Breakers is like watching Citizen Kane and observing, “Oh, it’s only a black-and-white movie.”

Clapton could reach the pre-internet youth with a guitar that sounded like a flamethrower, wrapped in a tidy white package with an acute fashion sense. He repackaged and reinterpreted the blues for a generation, and spliced blues into rock.

“Clapton is God” is too much for anyone to live up to, but Eric Clapton is undeniably one of the most influential and inspiring guitarists of his generation. Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton proves that with each listen.

Fifteen years after her death on July 23, 2011, Amy Winehouse remains best known for her singular voice and candid songwriting. But there’s another side to her musicianship that tends to get overlooked: Winehouse was an accomplished guitarist who used the instrument to shape her songs and develop a style that was entirely her own.

Take it from Pete Doherty, singer and guitarist for the Libertines, who once watched Winehouse play up close. As Doherty told MusicRadar in 2024, Winehouse had a distinctive approach to the instrument.

“Listen, I’ve actually sat in a room with her and a guitar,” he said, “watching those tiny hands finding all these weird jazz chords. And her strumming patterns… crazy, off-kilter timings. She made it look so effortless.”

From an early age, Winehouse made electric guitar integral to her songwriting and performing, using the instrument to pen her songs as well as perform them with a unique personal touch. She first fell in love with the Fender Stratocaster as a teenager, after her older brother acquired a used model.

“It was the most beautiful thing in the world,” Winehouse recalled during a 2004 interview. “It’s such a beautiful guitar. I mean it’s got to be probably the most attractive guitar there is.”

Winehouse wasn’t supposed to play her brother’s Stratocaster, but she would carefully sneak into his room and play it whenever she had the chance. By doing so, she slowly began to develop her chops. And when she finally acquired her own guitar — an acoustic model — the siblings amicably swapped instruments back and forth.

“I just played every day. No one said to me, ‘You’ve got to play for at least this amount of time.’ It was all I wanted to do.

“It’s so easy to teach yourself if you have love for guitar. People say to me all the time, ‘How come you taught yourself?’ And there’s things people can show you, but the truth is, if you learn how to play guitar off someone, you just kind of learn to play it like them, you know what I mean? And that’s why I can say that while I’m not even an adequate guitarist, I’m still a distinctive guitarist. I sound different.”

Inspired by the likes of Carole King, PJ Harvey and Shuggie Otis, Winehouse’s self-taught musicianship and remarkable gift for songwriting resulted in a unique playing style that perfectly complemented her voice and songwriting.

The two videos below offer a glimpse of Winehouse’s unusual relationship with the instrument.

First, in a 2003 performance of “Stronger Than Me” — from her debut album, Frank, released earlier that year — Winehouse wows the studio audience on the BBC’s live music show Later… with Jools Holland, her loose, jazz-inflected rhythm-guitar style providing the song’s harmonic foundation.

We then get to see a 20-year-old Winehouse up close as she performs with nothing more than her voice and a Stratocaster at London’s Wembley Arena. The 2004 Strat Pack concert celebrated the 50th anniversary of Fender’s iconic guitar and featured an all-star lineup that included David Gilmour, Ronnie Wood and Hank Marvin.

Finally, Winehouse discussed her love of guitar and the Stratocaster in particular in a video celebrating the model’s 50th anniversary.

Ozzy Osbourne knew he’d found a gem in the wild when he landed Randy Rhoads as his guitarist in late 1979. Rhoads was a virtuoso whose skillful use of two-handed tapping, intricate scale patterns and whammy-bar dive bombs gave Osbourne’s early solo albums the guitar pyrotechnics metal required in the early 1980s.

But Rhoads’ talent came at a cost to Osbourne, the former Black Sabbath singer who died a year ago on July 22. The guitarist practiced nearly all the time, including after hours on tour, which could drive Ozzy mad.

At the dawn of 1982 — the final year of his life — Rhoads received a custom pedalboard, one intended solely for practice, that would solve this problem. The board was built to his specifications by Jon Graves and Domenic Turlace of Zeus Audio Systems in Alhambra, California, which made a line of guitar pedals as well as mini guitar amps designed for practice. Randy’s pedalboard was presented to him on New Year's Eve, 1981, roughly two months into the tour for Ozzy’s second solo album, Diary of a Madman.

Keen-eyed Guitar Player readers got their first — and likely only — look at the board in a photo of Rhoads, taken by photographer Neil Zlozower, that ran in our November 1982 Rhoads tribute issue. Spread across two pages, the photo showed the guitarist practicing on a sofa alongside three of his electric guitars: his 1974 Gibson Les Paul Custom, Jackson Concorde and Karl Sandoval Custom Polka Dot Flying V.

Sitting on the floor in front of them was the tiny pedalboard, bearing a few obscured devices.

Two months after the photo ran, Graves and Turlace described the board in Guitar Player’s January 1983 issue in response to a reader’s question.

Although it was small, the pedalboard included a Boss Dr. Rhythm drum machine, three MXR pedals — a 6-Band graphic equalizer, a Commande Time Delay and a Micro Chorus — and a Zeus 8401 Mini Amp. Red in color, and roughly the size and dimensions of a brick, the 8401 mini amp had controls for preamp, volume and tone, plus preamp and external speaker outputs. A second amp with a 4 1/2–inch speaker was also provided for the Dr. Rhythm.

And because Ozzy was driven to distraction by Rhoads’ constant practicing, the pedalboard included an accessory designed to keep him happy.

"A unique feature is the 'Ozzy Jacks,' added at Ozzy Osbourne's request,” Turlace explained to GP. “These jacks provide separate signals from the gui­tar amp and rhythm machine for a head­phone mix, while shutting off the main speaker."

According to Graves, Ozzy had also requested a remote switch so that he could turn the pedalboard off from the next hotel room while on the road, because Randy tended to play into the wee hours. He probably wasn’t joking. It was never added.

The entire thing was built into an ABS plastic case salvaged from a Casio keyboard. (Some might say it’s the best use ever made of a Casio keyboard.) In addition, the lid included a battery pack as well as an AC adapter. Graves designed the pedalboard so that the battery would shut off when the lid was closed.

As a final touch, the board boasted a gold-plated plaque that read "Custom made by Zeus Audio Systems for Randy Rhoads,” along with his Rolls-Royce–style logo, bearing two R's.

In their response to our reader's question, the builders made clear they had no desire to repeat their efforts. “Anyone wishing to duplicate the pedalboard,” they said, “will have to build one themselves.”

Sadly, Rhoads would not get to use the device for long. He died tragically on March 19, 1982, when the small plane in which he was a passenger crashed during a tour stop in Leesburg, Florida.

Two years before Sammy Hagar became the lead singer and second guitarist in Van Halen, his former bandleader had some remarkably harsh words for his guitar playing.

“I just don’t think he is a good guitarist,” Ronnie Montrose told Guitar Player in 1983. “He’s adequate for what he does and just ends up using every cliché in the book. Although he does that well.”

Montrose was not some random critic. He had formed the hard-rock band that bore his name in 1973, with Hagar as its lead singer, and had fired him after the band’s first two albums. Hagar had since gone on to a successful solo career and would soon become one of the most famous singers in hard rock.

But Montrose still believed his former bandmate was a limited musician.

“I set that band up to be an experimental, integral, working rock and roll ensemble,” he explained in the October 1983 issue of Guitar Player. “I wanted it to become the American version of Led Zeppelin, because they were able to do acoustic things as well as metal. They were able to bring their audience with them. I wanted to get to the point where our audience would allow us to experiment.

“Unfortunately, it was not a creative situation, because the members of the ensemble were not of a creative nature. Sammy was the only one who had enough ambition to attempt creativity, but he was musically uneducated. A guitar to him was an accompaniment to vocals and a rock and roll performance.

“On the way home from a European tour, I told Sammy he had to go his own way and do what he was going to do, because I wanted to move in a different direction toward something that was more musically exciting and of a broader scope. I’m not saying this with any malice, but he has stayed on the same musical level, working in the same narrow rock vein.”

Montrose had formed his namesake band in 1973 with Hagar, bassist Bill Church and drummer Denny Carmassi. Their self-titled debut arrived the following year and became a landmark of American hard rock, with Hagar’s powerful vocals helping establish the band’s sound.

But the partnership did not last. Montrose and Hagar parted ways in 1975, and the singer went on to build a successful solo career. By the time Montrose gave his 1983 interview, Hagar had released several albums under his own name and was an established rock star.

Montrose, however, remained unimpressed by Hagar’s abilities as a guitarist.

When asked why he had never played in a band with another guitarist, he admitted that he enjoyed jamming with other six-stringers. But he had never considered Hagar a suitable musical partner.

“There’s never been any question of allowing Sammy to pick up a guitar,” Montrose said. “There was no way you could ever interplay in a jam with him.”

By 1983, Montrose was pursuing a musical path that was far removed from the heavy rock of his namesake band. After leaving Montrose, he had moved into increasingly experimental territory and released Open Fire, a 1978 all-instrumental album featuring acoustic guitar, mandolin, synthesizer and a 30-piece orchestra.

The record was not a commercial success. In fact, Hagar apparently enjoyed telling a story about the reaction of one particularly unhappy Montrose fan.

“The best line I’ve heard about that album from a Montrose fan was told to me by Sammy Hagar,” Montrose recalled. “Sammy was playing somewhere in the South, and the guy came up and asked if he had heard my latest album. When Sammy said he had, the guy said, ‘Boy, I bought a copy of that thing, took it home and put it on, and it fucking made my stereo gag.’”

Montrose was amused by the story, but he did not regret making the album.

“Warner Brothers was shell-shocked by that album, but I opened up an audience with it that I will never regret,” he said. “That album enabled me to do a soundtrack for a Canadian film about skiing called Powderheads. It also enabled me to go to Japan with Tony Williams.”

But Montrose’s career would never reach the commercial heights enjoyed by Hagar, who blamed the guitarist’s self-destructive tendencies for his lack of success. Just two years after the guitarist offered his assessment of his former singer, Hagar joined Van Halen, replacing David Lee Roth and embarking on a new chapter that would make him one of the biggest stars in rock.

Montrose, meanwhile, remained committed to the idea that he had been more than the heavy-metal electric guitar player who first made his name with Hagar.

“People who wondered who the real Ronnie Montrose was had to see he was both,” he said.

Four years after Montrose gave his assessment of Hagar, no less than Eddie Van Halen weighed in on Sammy’s guitar talents. Speaking to Guitar Player alongside the singer for an interview in the October 1987 issue, Van Halen noted Hagar’s passion and ability to inspire.

“He gets the point across very well,” Eddie said. “He’s a soulful player. He’s inspired the hell out of me, writing-wise. I ripped one of his licks off — which he ripped from Neal Schon,” he added with a laugh.

But it was Sammy who got the last laugh — at the expense of his former guitarist.

“Actually, it’s an old Ronnie Montrose lick that was invented by Jimmy Page or Jeff Beck,” he said.

Offered Van Halen, “You do it best.”

Tommy Emmanuel was just 11 when his father died. In the aftermath, he found solace in the music of Chet Atkins, a guitar hero who would become, in effect, a surrogate father.

“My father had just passed away, and I would live inside Chet's albums. He was my world,” the acoustic guitar marvel tells Guitar Player.

But listening to Atkins' music was not enough. Emmanuel wanted to reach the man who had given him so much comfort, and so the young Australian guitarist wrote to his hero.

“I wrote a letter telling him that I was his big fan in Australia, and that I was trying to play like him,” he continues. “He wrote back and sent me a nice photograph, and we stayed in touch.”

Atkins remained a constant presence in Emmanuel's thoughts. The young guitarist was particularly fascinated by the way Atkins could make his electric guitar sound almost like a harp, weaving harmonics and natural notes together to create something that seemed, to Emmanuel, almost impossible to reproduce.

“Chet Atkins totally pioneered that sound, and he was the first to record it,” Emmanuel says. “I was 16 when I first heard it, and I couldn't figure out the technique.”

The answer came to Emmanuel in a dream.

“I had a dream where Chet came out with his red guitar, and he showed me how,” he says. “When I woke up the next morning, I got my guitar and I figured it out by remembering the dream. It was as if my subconscious worked it out and told my conscious self how to do it.”

The technique involves reaching the picking hand over the fretboard and pinching out harmonics by placing the index finger at a harmonic location on the same string as a fretted note below, then plucking with the thumb — all while incorporating natural notes on other strings.

It is a demanding technique, one that requires the player to make several things happen at once while maintaining enough control to allow every note to speak. Emmanuel eventually heard Lenny Breau — whom Atkins discovered and championed in the 1960s — perform it and realized just how far the technique could be taken.

“Lenny took it to a level that no one else has reached ever since,” he says.

“It is a beautiful technique, and the key is making sure the harmonic and natural notes ring out with bell-like qualities together. When you do it at speed, the ear shouldn't know which one is which. They should all blend together.

“The further your thumb is away from your index finger when you pluck down, the more note you'll get out of the harmonic. You want the string to speak, but if your index finger and thumb are too close together you'll choke the sound out of the harmonic.

“You've got to concentrate. It requires great strength in your left hand to hold down positions with real control and clarity.”

Emmanuel uses the technique liberally in his performance of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” And as he explains, there is no shortcut to mastering it.

“You've got to practice until your hand aches like hell,” Emmanuel says. “Many players don't sound clear, like a bell. They sound fuzzy from being too focused on the right hand without having a strong enough foundation from the left hand.”

All the while, Atkins remained at the top of Emmanuel's mind. Seven years after first contacting the guitar master, the young guitarist found another way to reach him.

“When I was about 18, a friend recorded me playing in his lounge room, and sent the tape to Chet. I got a mysterious letter out of the blue from Chet that included his office address and phone number. It said, ‘When you come to America, call me, and we'll get together.’ I couldn't believe it.”

Emmanuel eventually made the journey to America, relocating from Australia to Nashville in 1997. Two years later, Atkins honored him with the title of Certified Guitar Player, recognizing his lifetime contribution to the art of fingerpicking.

For Emmanuel, the moment represented something far more profound than a professional accolade. The man whose records had once given solace to a grieving 11-year-old was now standing before him, acknowledging him as one of the world's great fingerstyle guitarists.

“I was stunned and so moved by this gesture of appreciation from my hero,” Emmanuel wrote on Facebook. “And as he handed it to me, he said, ‘Don't let your kids play with it, they'll drop it on their toes!’

“It was a great night in my life. I played ‘Guitar Boogie’ with its composer, Arthur Smith, ‘Windy and Warm’ with Chet and Paul Yandell, a spirited set with my brother, Phil, and finished the night out jamming with all my pals at the Chet Convention. Ahhh, those were the days!”

“There are a million different ways to play these silly things,” Vince Gill says of electric guitar, “and I enjoy finding subtle ways of being different on any instrument I play.”

For Gill, those subtle differences often begin with his hands. His fretting and picking fingers allow him to make the guitar speak with a fluency and nuance that can change dramatically from one instrument to the next. And while he is perfectly comfortable with a pick, he often prefers to let his fingers do the talking.

He notices the difference particularly when he plays a Telecaster.

“What’s interesting about a Telecaster is the way you pull with the meat of your finger sounds different than with a pick,” he explains. “Those subtle differences are important to how the note blooms.”

When he plays a Stratocaster, fingerstyle is Gill’s preferred approach.

“When I play a Strat, most of the time, I play it with my fingers. I learned that from Mark Knopfler, who plays everything with the meat of his fingers,” Gill says. “It is shocking how different it sounds. With a pick, it’s very precise, but with fingers, it’s three times rounder and sweeter.”

Gill finds it remarkable that so many guitarists immediately reach for a pick rather than take the time to develop their technique with their fingers. To him, the hands are one of the most important parts of a player’s sound — far more important than simply owning the right gear.

“Most people don’t understand how much your hands have to do with it,” he notes. “I did a show with Keith Urban where we were the resident guitar players. He had his rig set up, and he said, ‘Vince, come over here and play through this.’ I plugged in, played, and he goes, ‘You just sound like you.’

“It’s funny. You can buy a Marshall and a ’59 Les Paul, but you’re not going to sound like Jimmy Page. You may want to, but the reason we all sound like we do is because of our hands, as much as anything.”

The Telecaster, of course, has long been a central part of Gill’s sizable guitar arsenal. He says he first became interested in the instrument after he “stumbled upon Albert Lee.”

“Albert Lee was such a huge inspiration as far as me wanting a Telecaster.”

Gill’s first Telecaster was a white 1953 model he purchased in 1978. He has owned plenty of Telecasters since then, but none has come close to matching that first one.

“I have had probably 20 or 30 since, and none can hold a candle to it,” Gill says.

He bought the guitar from an Oklahoma City guitar shop owned by Bob Woods.

“He and Larry Briggs, who is huge in the vintage world, had gotten together for a big guitar trade. I was in the store just hanging out. Bob had taken in all these guitars, including that white ’53 Telecaster. I played it and said, ‘Oh my God, this one suits me right here. What will you take for it?’ He said, ‘$450.’ I said, ‘Okay, sold.’ It became the iconic guitar of my life.”

The guitar’s finish is original, as is nearly everything else, with the exception of the front pickup and a couple of pots.

“The front pickup wore out, but the back pickup is original,” he says. “The whole point of that guitar is the back pickup.”

Gill’s fluid string bends have occasionally led people to assume that his Telecaster is equipped with a B-Bender. Nothing could be further from the truth. He recalls a session with Rodney Crowell and Rosanne Cash’s band, the Cherry Bombs, when Hank DeVito was the steel player.

“Hank said, ‘Can I play your guitar?’” Gill recalls. “He strapped it on and started jerking and pulling on the neck. He goes, ‘Where’s the B-Bender?’ I said, ‘There isn’t one.’ He says, ‘Yeah, there is. I hear it every night.’ I said, ‘No, it’s just my fingers.’ I didn’t even know that there was such a thing.”

For Gill, that story gets to the heart of what makes a guitarist’s voice distinctive. The instrument matters, of course. So do the amplifier, pickups and technique. But ultimately, the sound comes from the player—and from the countless small decisions made by the hands holding the guitar.

Peter Gabriel spent a decade building Genesis from a group of school friends into one of progressive rock’s most ambitious bands. He had formed the band in 1967 and fronted it through its transformation into a major international act.

But by 1975, following the group’s ambitious double concept record The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, he was gone. Gabriel’s departure from Genesis was driven by a combination of personal and professional pressures, but his first solo single turned that moment of uncertainty into song.

“Solsbury Hill,” released in 1977, was inspired by what Gabriel described as a spiritual experience atop the hill in Somerset, England — one that helped him come to terms with leaving behind the band he had led for close to a decade.

“It’s about being prepared to lose what you have for what you might get,” Gabriel later said of the song. “It’s about letting go.”

The song itself sounds like a musical expression of that leap into the unknown. Built around a complex, Travis-picked acoustic guitar part in an unusual 7/4 meter, “Solsbury Hill” was recorded at the very end of the sessions for Gabriel’s self-titled debut album. The guitarist who played that intricate part, Steve Hunter, initially wasn’t sure he could pull it off.

Famous for his work with Alice Cooper and Lou Reed, Hunter was among the studio musicians — alongside the likes of Robert Fripp — selected by Gabriel and producer Bob Ezrin to help launch the singer’s career away from Genesis.

“In my opinion, ‘Solsbury Hill’ is one of the most perfectly written and produced pop songs ever,” Hunter says. “It was also one of the most interesting sessions for me. We were doing the album and Peter was having some trouble with a couple of lines of lyrics in ‘Solsbury Hill,’ so we kept putting it off.”

Ezrin was unhappy with Gabriel’s original last line of the chorus. By the time the singer came up with the solution, the sessions were nearly over.

“It ended up being the last song we recorded,” Hunter says. “Literally, the day after we recorded it, all the New York musicians were scheduled to fly back to New York. Robert Fripp had already flown back to England because he had sessions scheduled. I didn’t even know if we were going to record it.”

Hunter’s introduction to the tune came during a private session with Gabriel and Ezrin.

“Bob and Peter took me into Bob’s office at Nimbus 9 Studio up in Toronto. Peter played it for me on the piano, and I realized it was in an odd meter, which petrified me, because I’d never played in an odd meter before, other than 5/4.”

The song is mostly in 7/4, switching to 4/4 for the final two measures of the chorus. Despite his trepidation, Hunter was immediately impressed by the composition.

“I thought it was an amazing song. You could tell right away just from the piano and the vocal.

“Bob said, ‘I have this idea. I thought we could do some Travis picking on this, with acoustic guitars.’ He showed me what he was looking for, because he plays guitar, so between he, Peter and I, we worked out the guitar part.

“Again, I was petrified, ’cause now I had to play Travis picking and adjust it to play in 7/4, and I wasn’t sure I was gonna be able to do that. But the song is so well written that when I sat down to work out the guitar part, it just sort of fell under my fingers, and it really wasn’t a burden.”

Hunter used a Martin acoustic to record his part, triple-tracking the guitar to create the distinctive shimmering effect heard on the finished recording.

“I recorded three acoustic guitars playing the same thing. The first was recorded at normal speed, and we changed the speed of the tape a tiny bit slower and faster for the other two takes to get a very small difference in tuning. When you hear the three of them together, it’s this beautiful chorus effect.

“It was a fabulous thing, and probably one of the most difficult things I had done up to then. But it was really good for me to do it, and I’m really, really proud of that song.”

That intricate acoustic pattern became the musical foundation for Gabriel’s first major statement outside Genesis. “Solsbury Hill” went on to become a Top 20 hit in the U.K., peaking at number 13, and reached number 68 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S.

But its real significance was more personal. Gabriel had spent nearly 10 years leading the band he had helped create. Now he was standing on his own, with no guarantee that the next step would work.

The song’s message was to let go of what he had built and accept the uncertainty of what might come next. Nearly five decades later, “Solsbury Hill” remains one of the clearest musical documents of that leap — a song about leaving Genesis behind, and finding the courage to discover what came after.

Derek Trucks was already a force in the blues when Eric Clapton came calling in 2006.

The guitarist had joined the Allman Brothers Band as a teenager and by his early 20s had established himself as one of the most accomplished players of his generation — particularly when it came to slide guitar. So when Clapton reached out to him, it was a significant moment in Trucks’ career.

But Trucks didn’t initially know it was Clapton calling.

“I was here at home playing poker with my grandfather and dad and brother and a bunch of friends, and I remember just getting a call on my cellphone,” Trucks says in a recent interview with Alan Paul.

“It was like, ‘Hello. This is a message for Derek Trucks. This is Eric Clapton. This may sound like a hoax but it’s not,’” Trucks recalls. “It was amazing. I was like, ‘What is going on?’ [The message said], ‘When you get a chance, call me back.’’

This was 2006, when returning an international call wasn’t always as simple as tapping a name in your contacts. Trucks says he needed a specific international calling plan to return the call.

“I had to go down to the Verizon store the next day and get an international plan so I could call him back.”

As it turned out, the call was legitimate. Clapton invited Trucks to join the sessions for The Road to Escondido, his 2006 collaboration with J.J. Cale that also featured a star-studded cast of musicians.

Despite his experience, Trucks suspects Clapton’s invitation was a kind of audition — “more of a ‘make sure we could hang and make sure you’re not a total knucklehead’ situation,” he said.

Apparently, Trucks passed the test. He would go on to join Clapton’s touring band in 2007, and the pair continued to collaborate over the years. They reunited for The Breeze: An Appreciation of J.J. Cale in 2014, an album celebrating the influential songwriter whose music had shaped both guitarists.

But the relationship began with a missed call, a voicemail and a trip to the Verizon store to buy an international calling plan — because when Eric Clapton calls, you probably want to make sure you can call him back.

It’s not hard to get Little River Band guitarist Graeham Goble to reminisce about “Reminiscing.” The 1978 single was the Australian group’s most successful in the U.S., peaking at number three on both the Billboard 200 and Cash Box charts.

It was named Australian Record of the Year at the 1978 King of Pop Awards and was honored by Broadcast Music International (BMI) for five million plays on American radio, the most for any Australian pop song up to that point.

It was also, somewhat surprisingly, a favorite of the late John Lennon during his affair with former assistant May Pang, which continued from the mid 1970s to the latter years of the decade .

“She wrote in her book, Loving John, that they would lay in bed listening to ‘Reminiscing,’” Goble says, “and he was asking her to play it again and again and again. That was pretty amazing.”

Originally released as the second single from LRB’s fourth album, Sleeper Catcher, “Reminiscing” can be found on the new LRB compilation, Ultimate Hits. Still in Melbourne where the band was formed, Goble has nothing but fond memories of “Reminiscing” and all that came in its wake.

“It was inspired by my love of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s musicals, ’cause I was 12 years of age when we got a black-and-white television in Adelaide,” Goble explains. “The programs I immediately loved were all the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers, Rogers and Hammerstein musicals — all of that American romantic era. A lot of my songwriting, but particularly ‘Reminiscing,’ was about the life I wished I had, putting myself into those situations I saw in the movies.

The song arrived in April 1977, when the group was in Melbourne for a TV appearance. “We were in the green room, just playing our guitars,” Goble says. “The lead guitarist, David Briggs, was showing me some jazz chords, one of which was a C9 chord, a shape I never knew about.

“When I came home after the television show, I picked up my Martin 000-18 acoustic and played that chord. Immediately, I had this melody and lyric, all at the same time, almost like it was a spiritual download that just flowed through me. In about a half an hour, the whole thing was finished, and I had this very different song with key changes and quite a lot of jazz chords — quite a sophisticated piece!”

As Goble recalls, the Little River Band made two attempts at recording the song before they struck gold. “The keyboard player I wanted for it was Peter Jones, and he was not available,” he says. “So I was forced to pick another player, and it didn’t work. And then we did it with a second player and that didn’t work out, either.

“Then I heard Peter Jones had come back into town. So under protest from some of the guys, mainly from [vocalist] Glenn Shorrock, they reluctantly agreed to give it a third go. As soon as we sat down with Peter, the whole thing came together. Our guitarist Beeb [Birtles] played a syncopated riff from the third verse to the very end of the song, which I really loved. It was a lovely lift to the latter part of the record.”

In addition to “Reminiscing,” Sleeper Catcher included “Lady,” another song with which the LRB would make their name in America. Although Goble and the band were convinced they’d recorded something special, their label, Capitol, had trouble hearing it. “We waited five weeks with no response,” Goble says.

“They eventually Telexed us and said, ‘We think the album is great but we can’t hear any singles’ — and they had ‘Reminiscing’ and ‘Lady,’ our two biggest singles of all time!”

Eventually the label decided to take a chance on “Reminiscing.” “They said, ‘But we really don’t know if it will connect at all.’ Within a couple weeks it went ballistic, right to number one in New York and number three on Billboard.”

Goble calls it “our pinnacle song. It’s double any other song we’ve ever had in terms of listens. It’s been in a lot of movies, and a lot of soundtracks. Sinatra said he thought it was the best ’70s song in the world, though he never recorded it.

“But when John Lennon calls your song one of his favorites, does that really matter?”

By the time he joined the Eagles in January 1974, Don Felder had a history with some of the era’s defining guitarists and songwriters. Growing up in Gainesville, Florida, he befriended Duane Allman (who taught him slide), Stephen Stills and Bernie Leadon, who would precede him in the Eagles.

Felder recently spoke with us about his adventures with all three guitarists. Here, he keeps the stories coming with anecdotes about another Gainesville pal named Tom Petty, as well as Joni Mitchell and his onetime Eagles’ co-guitarist Joe Walsh.

Tom Petty

“When I first met him I was teaching at Lipham Music, not getting paid but for every hour they would give me a $10 credit. So it would add up and I could use that money to upgrade my amp or my guitar or strings or stuff. Tom was like Stephen Stills — very enthusiastic. They both had charisma onstage; you really liked them, and they sold you on what they were doing.

“I remember the first time I went to see Tom perform, he had these two guitar players who were just plugged in and turned up way too loud. Tom was playing bass. He didn’t want to play bass. He was like, ‘A frontman shouldn’t be playing bass,’ and I wanted to go, ‘Well, Paul McCartney might disagree with you about that.’ But Tom also wanted to play guitar so he could write.

“So I went to see this show and he comes on and he’s got this blonde hair and he’s flipping his hair and shaking it. These two girls are standing next to me — why I chose to stand between two girls I’ll never know [laughs] — but they’re going, ‘Oh, he’s so great! He’s so this and that, and I love his voice!’ And he was kind of singing like Bob Dylan; that’s what was happening at the time, so he sounded more like a Bob Dylan knockoff than Tom Petty.

“But his two guitar players were horrible. I went to a rehearsal after that and said, ‘You stop playing when Tom’s singing. When Tom’s not singing, you can play. When he moves away from the mic, you can play and solo and do whatever you want. But these are songs. You have to support the vocals, not just play all over them.’

“So I kind of helped them a little bit. Then I moved to Boston and we lost touch. I didn’t really hear about him until his first album came out a few years later.”

Joni Mitchell

“Before I joined the Eagles I was working with a guy named David Blue. He was a New York kind of country-folk artist. He wrote ‘Outlaw Man’ for the Eagles’ Desperado album, and Graham Nash produced his album [1973’s Nice Baby and the Angel]. David Lindley played on the album, and I was hired to go work with David Blue on the road…and wound up playing with Crosby & Nash, who were headlining, after David Lindley got sick.

“David Blue really appreciated all the stuff I had done for him, and he was really good friends with Joni Mitchell. He said, ‘Joni’s making an album. She’d love to have you come in and play on it.’ I used to see her sitting outside this little deli, less than a quarter mile from my house.

“I’d go there a lot to eat breakfast, and she’d be sitting outside smoking a cigarette and having this little, teeny cup of the darkest espresso you can imagine. I’d always say hello to her, and Brian Wilson would be sitting in the same booth, having the same thing every day — exactly like he did over and over and over until he passed.

“So I went into the studio with her and gave her a hug. I don’t even remember the song or the title, what it was, and I don’t even know if they used it. [Editor’s note: They didn’t.] It was just really wonderful to have met her and have had the honor of playing with her, and being able to say hello to her at the deli. Just a lovely, lovely, really wonderful, talented person.

“And if you want to talk about originality, she was probably the most original female singing guitarist ever. Her tunings, her chord progressions, her vocal melodies over these complicated guitar changes were just spectacular. I don’t know any other female that’s been able to even come close to that level of quality and talent, to tell you the truth.”

Joe Walsh

“Well, Joe has a unique style of his own, and I love it. He and I really have diverse backgrounds, but out of complete respect for each other and admiration for each other, we were able to play together. Before he ever joined the Eagles, I did some shows with him; he had a band called Joe Walsh & Friends, and we opened for Elton John at Dodger Stadium. He had a TV show called Joe Walsh & Friends, too; I went down and jammed on a couple of songs with him for that.

“We would do this tango, this dance. Without having a conversation about it, we understood that when somebody goes up and starts playing high, you should be supporting underneath them — slower, lower, an octave down, a contrapuntal melody to what was happening up there.

“And then when he starts winding his way down, I’d start winding my way up. So we’d have this very subtle interplay between us, without saying a word, just by listening to what somebody was doing. And if they were off on a really hot run, you just support them.

“That’s really why I wrote the music bed which became ‘Hotel California.’ Joe had just joined the band and I wanted to do that thing we did together on an Eagles record. Glenn [Frey] and I had done something like that on a song right after I joined the band, but it was not of the same caliber or quality of what we did for ‘Hotel.’

“Joe comes up with great parts, so when we were tangoing back and forth he says, ‘We need to do something like diddly-diddly-diddly here.’ So I said, ‘What is diddly-diddly-diddly?’ and he goes [sings part], and if you listen to that progression, it’s a descending chromatic chord progression. It changed chords on every bar, going down, going down, going down, and then it comes back again.

“So we had to figure out what the diddly-diddly-diddly was on every bar so it went with the chord change on that bar. We literally recorded it bar by bar.”

Nita Strauss may be on maternity leave from the rock and roll road, but she’s still been playing plenty of guitar for an audience of a special one.

On May 28, Strauss and her husband, drummer Josh Villalta, welcomed their first child, Maxwell James. Strauss tells us via Zoom from home in Louisiana that she’s “just loving this season now, with a vengeance,” including playing music in Max’s nursery, where she keeps a couple of her signature Ibanez JIVA electric guitars and a Marshall JCM 900 half-stack.

“It’s a good vibe in our nursery, let me tell ya,” Strauss says as Max coos in the background. “He’s just sort of listening in awe right now. I wish everybody listened to me with as much awe as he does,” she adds with a laugh. “It’s fun; I’ve got two of my tour JIVAs in here and a nice comfy chair to sit in, so it’s a good practice setup.”

She adds that, with normal infant needs, Max “has more wardrobe changes than I do these days.”

There’s no drum kit in the nursery — yet — but Strauss reports that dad is getting into the act as well.

“Josh, he’s always just tapping on things and moving Max in the rhythm of different songs. The drummer vibe is already strong — which is terrifying.”

Strauss’ pregnancy required a leave of absence from her regular gig with Alice Cooper’s band during this year’s touring cycle, but we’ll be hearing something new from her next month. Strauss recorded an instrumental version of “1979” for Sending Hearts to All My Dearies — A Tribute to the Smashing Pumpkins, a band-sanctioned salute that comes out digitally August 14 and on vinyl October 16.

Her involvement with the project started during the pandemic, around the time she and Villalta were moving from Los Angeles.

“We were driving out of California,” she recalls. “It was a really emotional time, during the pandemic. Josh and I bought our first house and we loaded up the car and the dogs and everything. I had really held all the emotion in.

“Then we got on the freeway and the radio started playing ‘1979,’ and that unlocked that emotional block I had built up during the move and packing, and I just burst into tears. It just took me back to high school and cruising around in the car with my friends, listening to Smashing Pumpkins.”

Given the massive popularity of “1979,” Strauss didn’t assume the song was still available when she signed onto the project.

“I threw out ‘1979,’ thinking there’s no way that song is still available — and it was. [English singer Barns Courtney does a vocal version of it as well on the tribute, which also features contributions from Tame Impala, Des Rocs, Between the Buried and Me and others.] So I was excited, and I got to put a pretty unique spin on the song.”

Doing it as an instrumental fits that description, of course.

“The first thing I think anybody would’ve thought of is, Who are you gonna get to sing on it? But when I recorded this I hadn’t even put out any music with singers. That was pre-‘Dead Inside’ [with David Draiman], pre-any of the guest vocalist stuff I’ve done. I had only approached making my music from an instrumental standpoint. It didn’t occur to me until much later on, when it was finished, that maybe I should’ve gotten a singer on it.

“But I enjoy putting that kind of spin on songs that I like. And ‘1979’ has such a great melody that lent itself so easily to play on guitar. It just felt natural to approach it from that standpoint.

“I think it came out cool. When I listened back, I had sort of forgotten how many liberties I took with it, especially with the shuffle of the tempo at the very beginning; it starts out very moody and half-time, very different. But I did play it with a lot of reverence for the band and for the original track. I hope that comes across to the band and to the fans.”

In addition to “1979” and playing for baby Max, Strauss has also started work on her third solo album, the follow-up to 2023’s The Call of the Void.

“I started working on that about a year and a half ago, with the idea I was going to be taking some time off,” she says. “I’ve got 10 or 11 songs banked and pretty well fleshed out, sort of ready for either solos or guest singers. It’s in a good place, so it’s looking like new music by the end of this year or next year.”

She’ll resume her regular gameday duties with the Los Angeles Rams during the upcoming NFL season as well, and Strauss plans to be back in the Cooper camp for its next tour. (Anna Cara took her place during maternity leave.) Cooper is currently touring Europe with the Hollywood Vampires and will be promoting a new memoir, Devil on My Shoulder, this fall.

“Bringing a stroller and all the baby stuff on the road is gonna present a new challenge,” she acknowledges. But Max may well earn his keep as well.

“Oh, I guarantee he’s gonna make his way into the show when we go out with Coop,” Strauss says. “There’ll be some Billion Dollar Babies gag or something that they want to do.

“One fun thing about the Coop tour is everybody’s put to work onstage, everybody from the merch girl to the stagehands to anybody and everybody. My guitar tech is out in a black jumpsuit killing Alice at one point or another in the show. So if Max is out on tour, they’re gonna make him work.”

The Rolling Stones release their 25th studio album, Foreign Tongues, today, so it seems like the right time to visit this classic interview with Keith Richards from April 1983. It was a good time for the Stones. As GP Editor Tom Wheeler wrote in his original intro (abridged below), "In most respects the Stones have few peers, and in terms of sheer durability they have none, having somehow survived at or near the top of the rockpile for the last two-thirds of rock and roll's entire history.

"They've gone the distance and still pack a heavyweight punch: Their latest albums (Tattoo You and the live concert LP Still Life) are among their most vital works, and their most recent tour was astonishingly successful – four million fans applied for the New York tickets alone." Who would have thought that 43 years later, they would still be doing it?

Back in 1964 when Lennon and McCartney wanted to hold your hand, Jagger and Richards were walkin' the dog. Constantly compared to the Beatles and often to The Who, the Rolling Stones staked out their original turf with gritty music and a don't-mess-with-me stance. The Beatles disintegrated a dozen years ago, and the Who say they've unpacked their road cases for the last time. The Stones are in the studio, and they're not about to bid farewell to anyone.

Keith Richards stands in the eye of the hurricane. Around him swirls a rock and roll empire with 20 years history and mystery, success and excess, acclaim and controversy. He and his mates have been called many things by discerning critics and impassioned fans. One description recurs: The World's Greatest Rock And Roll Band.

Some reasons for all this are apparent. First, Keith's confederates could hardly be more impressive: Mick Jagger, rock's most prominent singer; guitarist Ron Wood, already a star when he joined the group in 1975; plus a drummer Charlie Watts and bassist Bill Wyman, a powerhouse rhythm section revered the world over by fans and fellow musicians alike. Other strengths are equally obvious – the consistently fine Jagger/Richards compositions, the dynamic arrangements, the meticulous recording. Just as important is the way Keith Richards changes chords from G to C.

The band is built around a two-guitar sound, itself an extension of Richards' own uniqueness. He helped blur forever the line between lead and rhythm guitar, substituting a riffing technique in which melodic embellishments are grafted onto a vigorous rhythmic treatment of chords, partial chords, and low-register lines. He often employs a 5-string open tuning (with or without capo) that facilitates adding the melodic notes to a major chord--particularly the 4th, the 6th, and the 9th. Among many examples, "Brown Sugar" is a classic killer.

Keith's most obvious influence is Chuck Berry. The original "Carol" is a textbook of Berry's double-string licks and was covered on The Rolling Stones, the debut album. Keith has had a taste for Berry flavoring ever since. Perhaps his most highly stylized nod to the St. Louis rocker is his long solo in "Bitch," where Keith repeatedly turns the beat around, turns it inside out – weaving through the horns, sneaking up on the back-beat, making the style his own.

Chuck Berry adapted boogie-woogie piano techniques for the guitar's lower register, and this distinctive two-string rhythm pattern became another Stones staple. Richards made his mark on its development by sometimes slowing it down, piledriving the downbeat, and stoking up the tone to a grand raunch: a-ronk a-ronk a-ronk.

Richards' role in the group has been analyzed countless times. The consensus: Without Keith Richards there wouldn't be a Rolling Stones. Ron Wood explains, "In other bands they follow the drummer; the Stones follow Keith, and they always have." While some have even asserted that "Keith Richards is the Rolling Stones," the guitarist himself is the first to stress that any band member's indispensability is a two-way street: "The musicians are there to serve the band. All that matters is whether something furthers the overall sound."

Keith's vision is rooted in a keen awareness of the power of the guitar – acoustic or electric – not only as a rhythm or solo instrument, but as a musical paintbrush capable of immense sonic canvases. He conceives a complex sound and knows how to get it. And yet to him a piece of music, like a real band, is a living, breathing creature existing apart from his conception of it. So while a particular project may be planned, Keith's sense of the music's own inherent magic keeps him flexible and spontaneous, adjusting as he goes.

On many contemporary recording sessions, musicians are put in compartments to minimize leakage (one instrument "leaking" into another's microphone), and the result is a compressed sound that fills every niche. Stones records are virtual opposites, roaring with heavy artillery but airy and spacious as well. While every sound counts, the spaces, the holes, are no less important.

The band's raw materials may be the deceptively simple basics of rhythm and blues, but with the air crashing around like a cyclone, the effect is complex, even abstract.

Rough edges on doubled guitars may be as important as seamless overlaps. An "extra" guitar part – mixed far in the distance to work on subconscious levels – may be as essential as obvious elements. As co-producer (credited or uncredited) on virtually every record, Keith Richards has proved to be both a master of the bold stroke and a subtle colorist, evoking not only the thunder and lightning but also a sky to put it in. For the Rolling Stones, atmosphere is everything.

For many the sound and fury of the band is a transcendental experience. Although the musicians are gifted, the songs excellent, and the recordings finely tuned, the effect is not so much that of hearing sophisticated technicians processed through state-of-the-art technology. It's more like hearing the world's greatest garage band in the world's biggest garage.

Up in his hotel room (classic Keith Richards, it is part Versailles Palace, part blues dive), Keith's dad Bert is smoking a pipe, and his son Marlon – who could dial room service before he could read – is drawing. A cassette bag is crammed with rockabilly, early Dylan, reggae, unmixed Stones, the raunchiest R&B, and more. An old Everly Brothers hit is playing, and delighted Keith Richards identifies a distinctive lead guitar lick: "Chet Atkins!"

An hour later, Keith is in the corner playing piano like Ray Charles and singing ballads to himself in a voice cracked with emotion. He plays a wistful "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and then launches into some Jerry Lee Lewis, his foot bashing the floor in tempo.

Ron Wood blows in and warmly embraces his partner-in-guitar. In minutes, the two old friends are plugged in, guitars barely in tune, jamming on a medium-tempo 12-bar blues in A. Keith leans over to the black Fender Deluxe Reverb and twists the volume knob from 2 to 6. Ron Wood grins and rips into a solo. The real Keith Richards goes a-ronk a-ronk a-ronk.

Chuck Berry was a major influence on your guitar style.

That's quite a left hand he's got there [laughs].

Are the reports true that he punched you in the face?

Yeah, a little while back he did. I came up behind him to say hello. He didn't know it was me and didn't want to be bothered, but I got a nice note from him a little later, actually.

The "Bitch" solo is in a Chuck Berry style...

Which I do every night.

...and the beat turns around several times. Was that completely spontaneous, or semi-planned?

Maybe listeners knew a year or six months later that the beat turned around, but at the moment I wasn't conscious of that. It comes so naturally, as it's always happened, and it's always given that extra kick when the right moment comes back down again.

That's what rock and roll records are all about. I mean, nowadays it's "rock" music. But rock and roll records should be two minutes, 35 seconds long, and it doesn't matter if you ramble on longer after that. It should be, you know – wang, concise, right there. Rambling on and on, blah blah blah, repeating things for no point – I mean, rock and roll is in one way a highly structured music played in a very unstructured way, and it's those things like turning the beat around that we'd get hung up on when we were starting out: "Did you hear what we just did? We totally turned the beat around [laughs]!" If it's done with conviction, if nothing is forced, if it flows in, then it gives quite an extra kick to it.

You turn the beat around often. There's the intro to "Start Me Up," where it turns around twice in the first ten seconds, "Little Queenie," where Charlie turns around the intro, and the end of the bass part on "Street Fighting Man," which you played yourself.

Right. You can do that in a band that's got enough confidence not to collapse when it happens. It can make things much more interesting, and it sounds great as long as nobody's fazed by it. You have to be able to keep it straight, thinking about what you're doing at the moment and also about where you're going to take it. I guess that just comes from 20 years, same location.

So many of the things you play, if you were to put them on paper and analyze them musically....

What a mess [laughs]!

For example, the opening of "Start Me Up" is a simple chord change, and yet it's recognizable as the Rolling Stones. The sound is so specific. Would altering anything about it – the echo, tone setting, string gauge – change the impact?

I just can't get the things to sound any different [laughs]. They always come out just about the same when it comes to recording, because without really thinking about it I shift slowly as I go. And no matter where I start, no matter what the guitar or the string, sooner or later I'll get to where the rest of the band is going.

It's sort of a trademark sound, but it's more than that because of the way I go about getting it, working it through with what's going on, rather than getting the sound first and then pushing it on the band. A lot of it is adjusting to Ronnie, and Ronnie to me, which brings a certain continuity as well as a certain flexibility.

You've often mentioned the two-guitar sound as a cornerstone of the band. On Still Life there's a different kind of interplay – probably tighter than ever.

Well, Ron's getting better [laughs]. I think that's due to the fact that Ron and I have been working together now since '75, and the more we play together the tighter we get it.

It sounds like you and he are two sides of the same coin, like you could almost change places.

We do [laughs]. If he drops a cigarette I'll play his bit, and we'll realize later that I've covered for him or he's covered for me. And you think at the time, "Oh, my God, what a gap," but when you listen to the tape, you find that it's been fixed right there at the moment, in a very un-thought-about way. We pick it up and cover each other so that sometimes you can't really tell who's playing.

When Ron joined in 1975, did the band have to make a change in the way you interact or rehearse?

No, that was the beauty of it. He was already so familiar with our stuff. After Mick Taylor left, we rehearsed for about six months with a lot of good guitar players from all over the world. And we could work with them, you know; they could work with us. But when Ronnie became available and suddenly walked in, that was it, there was no doubt. It was easy.

With Mick Taylor's style so well defined as a lead guitarist, there seemed to be a clear distinction between the two of you.

It was much harder to get a Rolling Stones sound with Mick Taylor. It was much more lead and rhythm, one way or the other. As fabulous as he is as a lead guitarist, he wasn't a great rhythm player, so we ended up taking roles. When Brian and I started, it was never like that. It's much easier than with Brian, personally.

But also with Ron, the basic way we play is much more similar, and this isn't in any way to knock Mick. I mean, he's a fantastic guitar player. But even if he couldn't play shit, I'd love the guy. But chemically we didn't have that flexibility in the band. It was, "You do this, and I'll do that, and never the twain shall meet." With Ron, if he drops his pick, then I can play his lick until he picks it up, and you can't even tell the difference.

Had you and Ron worked together very much before he joined the group?

Yes, for about 18 months. And I did a lot of work on Ronnie's first and second solo albums. He's never been the same since.

Have you found that your styles affected each other, now that you've been working together for several years?

Yeah, that's what's great about it. I neglect something, and he makes up for it. That's the great thing about two guitar players, because if you get it right, you know when to lift one of his licks, and vice versa, without thinking about it. He lifts more of mine than I do of his [laughs].

When the two of you are onstage, how much of your interaction is subject to change?

It depends on the sound system. If you're going to make a change, you need to hear what you're doing in the first place, so a lot of that gets down to technicalities of the stage monitoring. On our last tour in '81 we had those long ramps out to the sides of the stage. The idea of having that stage is to get out where most performers don't get with audiences of that size. Well, if the monitors aren't working out there, and you're just making signs at the sound guys instead of concentrating on your playing, then you forget it, just leave it. But if the sound's good and you can hear everything, then you tend to give it a bit more, adjust more to what's going on, change as you go.

Do you have much trouble communicating onstage at that volume?

It's all done by semaphore and eye signals. It's the only way you can really do it. But the thing is, there isn't that much need for communication or looking at each other, except when things go wrong. Otherwise the communication is just through the music. But if things are going wrong, then everybody's looking at me: "How's he going to get out of this?"

Your records have sort of an indoor sound, the effect of enclosed space. Are you happy with your outdoor concert sound?

Never totally satisfied with live things, no. If you were, you wouldn't keep trying to make it better. But I'm not disappointed with it. You just look forward to being able to do it better. You're always wondering about the people way at the back, what they're hearing. There are so many people and they're so far away – you have no idea what's being heard out there. You're hoping for the best and taking it for granted that the sound crew are doing the job for you and giving out the sound onstage as much as possible to everywhere in the place. But there's the one problem, always that nagging doubt there – they're not all getting it the way they should.

Your live versions of songs are often faster than their studio counterparts – for example, "Shattered" on Still Life. Is that intentional, to make it more exciting for the audience, or is it the adrenaline of performing?

It's the tempo of the whole gig, the adrenaline – especially the huge gigs. The show just takes its own speed from the start, and you go with it. It might be great or it might be terrible, but the tempos one night may be twice as fast as the night after. And you can always learn when you listen back, you see? You may find, "Wow, that should've been that tempo all along--we made the record too slow [laughs]!"

On the live version of "Just My Imagination," in the second half the guitar figure changes some notes and sustains others for a country feel, almost like a pedal steel feeling.

That's Ron and me doing the parts together, and you get that sustaining thing. We aren't using a pull-string or a lot of slide right now, but Ron plays pedal steel, a bit on "Shattered" and "Faraway Eyes." Country music's a part of the way we do that kind of thing, and it comes through even if it's done with straight guitars sort of pulling up against each other.

Isn't there some slide in "Neighbours" on Tattoo You?

No, but it sounds like it. Ron plays that solo, and a lot of his things on regular guitar sound like they're slide. He's wangled a way of playing it without them, because he keeps losing them [laughs]. At the start of that solo he's bending about four strings. Sounds like slide.

On Still Life's "Let Spend The Night Together," is that a 12-string doubling the vocal melody on the interlude, which ends with "keep on smilin' baby"?

That's one reason we haven't done that one a lot on stage – we could never figure a way 'round that middle bit. No 12-string – just the two run-of-the-mill guitars together, doin' it tight.

The mix of the two guitars on Still Life adjusts in places to the parts you're playing. Is that sort of detail up to your discretion?

Well, I listen for those things, but I may not be there for the first mix. Especially with live stuff, I'd rather let the guy who recorded it get his work into it. Then I get sent the dubs. From the whole tour you have several takes of each song to pick from.

The set opened with "Under My Thumb," and it's hard to get the right take, because you're playing right there early, when everybody's trying to get together and nobody knows what's going on. Every night it takes 15 minutes for the sound guys and the recording guys and everybody to fall in and get adjusted, so choosing the take for the first number requires a bit of work.

The endings, too. You always wish you could get a couple of takes of the beginning and ending of a show as good as it is in the middle. But every night it's a different problem – you're in a different place, so you see what happens when you get going and take it from there.

On recent tours you've taken occasional breaks from the outdoor arenas, getting into clubs. Do you miss the smaller venues?

Yeah, always. You hate to do the same thing all the time. I love playing the ballparks and the domes, you know. For the satisfaction of the band it gives you a terrific buzz – so many people. But by doing just one thing all the time you forget how to do anything else. You just become good at playing the domes and never learn anything else again.

I've always found that if you put in a few 3,000-seaters on the tour, and even 300, it gives the band itself a confidence quite apart from anything else. Then you can deal with 300 people or 90,000 and know how to play it. And probably the band feels that working in one of the nice old places like the Fox Theater in Atlanta is kind of more satisfying most of the time.

Because of the immediacy?

Yeah. The sound isn't dissipated totally, and you don't have to worry about the wind factor and things like that. It's much simpler and easier to get – it's just [snaps fingers] turn it up, get to it.

Didn't you change to Mesa/Boogie amplifiers on this last tour?

The '81 tour of the States was the first time we used the big Mesa/Boogie amp and speaker setups on the road, but we've been using Boogie amps in the studio since about '77, and on the stage since the '78 tour, slaving small Boogies through Ampeg cabinets.

Do you pay much attention to speakers?

No. I only think about them when I don't like 'em. If I plug in and to me it sounds like crap, then I ask a question, but otherwise, I leave it, because there are guys far more versed. I don't know what speakers are coming out every year. I find something and I stick with it for five or six years. It's like some of the gadgets I use. Guys who work with us and are close to us, will say, "You should try this: I think this is going to add to what you're doing." I might try it, although I don't go around looking at specifications and all that.

Were you using any effects onstage in '81?

An MXR analog delay on a few numbers, and a phaser on "Beast Of Burden" and on or two others.

How about the very unusual sound on "Shattered"?

That was the MXR phaser – the 100 model – and I damped the guitar. That's what gives it that sound on the studio version as well.

What kind of wireless systems were you and Ron using on the last tour? Can you get the right tones as easily?

We've been using Nady wireless things since '78, and the tone is a lot better, because cords get stepped on and knotted up and they start rattling a little bit, and you lose tone.

In the last few years there's been a new aspect of your tone – more distinct, with a slight click, almost like a slap bass in rockabilly. "Hang Fire" and "She's So Cold" are examples, and especially the last section of "Little T&A."

It's our equivalent of that rockabilly thing. I think you'll find that comes from using a lot of analog delay on Ron's guitar or my guitar or both of them, and I dampen it. That'll give you that ticka-tacka-ticka. I always use that green MXR analog delay. I'm told it's quite out of date now and old-fashioned, but I got it free and I forgot that time marches on and they make better ones or so they say. I don't know. I've worked very well with those MXR things, and they've been very reliable.

Which guitar are you playing for that sort of stripped-down rockabilly sound on "Little T&A"?

A Telecaster, a '57 set up in 5-string tuning. It's open G 5-string, without the heavy string. Right there from the bottom up it's: G, D, G, B, D. The whole idea of getting rid of the sixth string in the open tuning was having the root on the bottom.

The suspended chords in the verses of that song are typical of your riffing style.

That's just one of the things you can do with open tuning. You can get a drone going, so you have the effect of two chords playing against each other. One hangs on because you've just got to move one finger – or two at the most – to change the chord, so you've still got the other strings ringing. It's a big sound.

Mick was using an Ovation Adamas steel-string on the tour. Were you satisfied with the instrument's performance?

I think they're very nice-sounding guitars. A nice neck. But I can never get used to that shape, that... dish. They're probably the best way of amplifying an acoustic guitar and having it still sound like an acoustic. There's no doubt. Probably a million readers will write in and say the Stones don't use acoustic guitar that much onstage, so we don't know shit, but for what we need, for a couple of numbers, it's adequate.

How did you come about acquiring your new guitars?

Friends of mine introduced me to Doug Young, who built them. After seeing some of his things, I knew he was capable of exceptionally fine work, so I more or less commissioned him to build me a guitar. He ended up making me two – the red one is a gift for my girlfriend, actually. Basically, that's the lowdown.

Did you specify exactly what you wanted?

Not really. We didn't have to say very much about it. I was very impressed by the things I saw, and I wanted a similar guitar for myself. But it's also this patronage that players and builders can get involved with – Renaissance man, and all that, the old system of someone like me encouraging guys like Doug. His guitars are too good not to be given help.

So you didn't request a certain wood for the fingerboard, a certain pickup design?

Not too much, no. I said, "Make me a guitar." I figure that's the difference between working with an artist, as opposed to just anyone. I mean, if you want a suit made, you don't want to have to tell the tailor how to do everything. You want to find someone who doesn't need all that, you see? It's more, "I want to see what you can build for me." There are very few people like that. Most people, you have to sit on their ass and watch them: with Doug I just left him to it. I was in Paris for months, recording. I'd almost forgotten it was going on until I saw what he'd done.

Have you had a chance to play them in the studio yet?

Not in the studio, but I went out and banged on them a bit. I'll be back in the studio soon, and then we'll beat them into shape [laughs].

After playing hundreds of guitars, what quality in these instruments made you take notice?

It's a recognition you develop. I think, and I'm sort of instinctive about these things – sit down and play it, feel it. I knew that Doug was thinking along the same lines as myself, but far ahead, because I'm not technical. Only after the event of building it when I've got it in my hands, can I know what's right. I can't say, "Well, it was the magnificent electronics," or "the wonderful bonding of the woods," and each specific thing. It was simply a fine instrument. Lovely wood!

Can you judge the sound of an electric before you plug it in?

Maybe to a certain extent. If the neck and the action feel right, you're more than halfway home, even before hearing the electronics. Things like weight and the density of the wood indicate certain things, but you simply need to play it to really tell. And it doesn't take long.

On record you've used several very different types of guitars – Gibson Les Pauls and ES-335s, Fender Telecasters, and others. And yet a listener can tell right away that it's you, from stylistic clues, but also from the sound alone.

I use a whole load of different guitars, that's true, but they're not all that dissimilar in type. I mean, ninety percent are probably Telecasters, old ones, but more than that, you can't really separate style and sound, you see. People do separate them when they're talking about music, but all of that often misses the whole point.

You're suggesting that the style is the sound?

Yes, part of it, more than any particular tone setting or pickup or anything like that. I'll just adjust to the sound of the track as we go – the sound of the bass drum and especially Ronnie's guitar. The style is adjusting along with the sound. There's never a conscious effort to get that "Honky Tonk Woman" tone or a thing like that. You may get it or you may not. But that's not what you're thinking about. You're thinking about the track.

Some people were amazed to read in your first Guitar Player cover story that on "Street Fighting Man" there are no electric guitars.

Two acoustics, one of them put through the first Philips cassette player they made. It was overloaded, recorded on that, and then hooked up through a little extension speaker, and then onto the studio tape through a microphone.

You've paid quite a bit of attention to acoustic guitars in rock music.

Well, I started on acoustic guitar, and you have to recognize what it's got to offer. But also you can't say it's an acoustic guitar sound, actually, because with the cassette player and then a microphone and then the tape, really it's just a different process of electrifying it. You see, I couldn't have done that song or that record in that way with a straight electric, or the sustain would have been too much. It would have flooded too much. The reason I did that one like that was because I already had the sound right there on the guitar before we recorded. I just loved it, and when I wrote the thing I thought, "I'm not going to get a better sound than this." And "Jumpin' Jack Flash" is the same, too. That's acoustic guitar.

Early Everly Brothers records have huge acoustic guitar sounds. Were any of them influential?

Yeah, all of their records, and also there's the fact that the first major tour we ever did was supporting the Everly Brothers, Little Richard, and Bo Diddley. Plenty to learn [laughs] in a real short time, following those guys around. The Everlys came on with just their trio and themselves, and it was great. On their recordings there is a certain power in the steel-string.

It's a different instrument from electric – not that different in the way you play it, but in terms of the sound. There are times when an acoustic guitar will make a track. You'll be despairing, nothing working, hashing away, Take 43 on electric guitar, and somebody will say, "Why don't you try it on acoustic?" And you try it one time and you've got it.

What kind of acoustics do you like to use?

Old Martins – several types of them – and certain Gibsons, particularly old Hummingbirds.

Do you have a certain kind of room that you like to record in?

Yes, but it's hard to tell whether it'll work until we get in there. And when we find a room I hate to lose it. Over the years we've been through four or five or maybe more of these ace rooms. Sometimes you walk in and it just happens, but whether it takes a long time or not to produce the sound you want, you don't want to lose it.

We're still working in the same place now that we've been in since Some Girls, a good big room. Pathe Marconi is the name – it's EMI's studio in Paris. The room we use is what they consider their sort of storeroom for the orchestra, or a rehearsal place. It's not Studio A, B, or C. It doesn't even have a number.

How important is the sound of the room itself?

The room is as important as the band and the producer and the song and the engineer. The room is at least as important as all that to the total sound. You can't separate rock and roll music instrument by instrument. You destroy the whole structure of it. Rock and roll music can only be recorded by jamming the sound all together.

Once you've got something to work right in the studio, do you try to use all the same equipment onstage?

Yeah, pretty much, just a larger version. I've never found the Stones or anybody else made great records by using huge stacks in the studio and blasting away. You can get very powerful-sounding records playing very quietly, and with relatively small amps. Small amps turned way up have the tension you're trying to get anyway, and it sounds big. It also gets back to that recognition of the acoustic guitar and what it can do, and what you can get if you're thinking of the mix right from the beginning and all the way through the recording.

Years ago, the mixing technique on many of your records broke quite a few rules. Did you realize from the outset of your career that a new way of mixing would be necessary?

We knew we wanted it without knowing the way to get it. It was just what sounded right to us, and also because we were brought up in the era when a four-track was a rarity. We started recording at a point when the best sound you got was all air and all the room sound and everything was leakage and jammed together, and the vocal fought its battle with the rest of the instruments.

We tried it the usual way, but whenever we brought the vocals up we'd never like the mix as much. What always amazed me was that if the record was popular, most people would know the words – at least the key ones – within a few weeks, no matter how much the voice was buried. Years back, in the studio, I always thought about those other records where the voice was too far forward, so you never really got a sound. You just got a vocalist with some accompaniment.

Which wasn't what you were after?

Not for us, but you see, you've got to treat each type of music in the appropriate fashion. I mean, if you're mixing the Everly Brothers, then you've got those fantastic goddamn voices and you put them out front as much as you can! But even those guys never sacrificed the sound of the record for the sound of their voices. They had it all there, quite a light sound, but always very powerful as well, never wimpy.

Did record companies ever tell you or your producers and engineers that you should be mixing Mick Jagger like the Everly Brothers?

They'd try, but we set it up so there was no way they had anything to say about it. They'd complain, and we'd tell them to @#$%& off.

Do you ever splice takes, either rhythm tracks or solos?

Sometimes. Not so much on solos. We tend to record them real long – go on and on, but as long as I know that somewhere in that seven or eight or eleven minutes there is that two-and-a-half minutes that says it all, then I don't mind going on, because I'll ferret it out and find it.

Is it too soon to start talking about what's on the next album?

I can only report that it's going magnificently for us, so much stuff coming out and starting to sound real good. We've only been in the studio a little over two weeks, which is only like a warm-up, and we've cut about a dozen cassettes of tape already. Everybody's happy about it. When we're done, we'll start thinking about the next tour.

In the choruses of "Honky Tonk Woman" and "Start Me Up," the bass leaves huge holes for the guitars to fill. Does Bill Wyman get a lot of direction from you in that regard, or is that something he's always done on his own?

I would say in the late '60s, early '70s, Bill would be given more direction – not always the right direction [laughs] – but Mick and I would be more inclined to say, "Do this and that." Sometimes he comes and asks, but less and less. You know, relationships change.

But Bill, he's kind of like Charlie. He just keeps [long pause] amazing me. He just keeps getting better. He's not always what I'm expecting. I know he's good, and he's always there. But I kind of take his playing for granted. And then when I listen to what he's doing, I realize he's not always playing the same thing. He's much better than we think. You see, we're the world's worst Rolling Stones critics [laughs]. We tear the shit apart before anybody gets a chance to hear it.

Do you practice very much aside from band rehearsals for tours or recording sessions?

In a way I do, because the guitar is always there, and I always play it or the piano. I do it in bursts. You kind of wait for it. You can't force it and sit down and say, "Now I'm going to write a hit song."

You've recorded a lot of material on your own – just vocals with piano or guitar. Do you plan to ever release any of it?

No, not releasing it as such. I just do it because I like to play a lot of great songs for myself, and it helps me to write. The way I write songs is to sit down and play 25 great songs by other people and hope that one of mine drips off the end.

Have many of the songs that you've written for the Stones been composed on the piano?

Sometimes, yeah. I'm such an amateur on piano, and that can help. You play guitar every night and get to know it so well, and a lot of great songs are really accidents. On the piano, I may come across something I wouldn't have done on guitar.

You've sung lead on some of the band's hits, and sang "Little T&A" on the last tour, but none of your lead vocals are included on the album.

Well, if I sing the lead vocals, then what's he going to do [laughs]? There's quite a bit for each of us to think about already. And I do sing lots of parts with Mick, always.

For years Mick has been reported to be a proficient guitar player, and yet he only started to play a lot onstage during the Still Life tour. Why now?

I think he feels a little more confident about it. He's a fine drummer, too. And he's not bad on keyboards, in his own way – in the same way that I am, fiddling about to write and to get some interesting ideas.

One thing that's held Mick back with guitar onstage is that playing is one thing – knowing how to get an instantly good sound off the amp is another. That is something he's still got to work on. It keeps him back from doing so much, because if it doesn't sound good to him in the first six bars, he doesn't have the experience and the knowledge of dealing with the amplifier. He might be playing great, but he's got a shitty sound on the amp – and then he's got his singing to think about.

Are you playing much National or Dobro these days?

Not doing as much of that as I'd like – that goes with not living anywhere in particular. You need to sort of sit down every day and do that. I hate to travel with instruments like that. I think you just need a certain environment when you're playing like that, and since that's not the way we are able to live, and probably wouldn't anyway, I don't get as much of a chance. You know, some things you don't get as much of a chance to do as you wish you had.

For young guitarists who are into Chuck Berry or the Rolling Stones today, what do they face, trying to make records now? Compared to when you started, what's different?

24-track machines. Otherwise, not that much has changed from what we faced. There's all this stuff about new equipment and changing styles and all that, but the point is, you still face a lot of rip-off artists, and you face a lot of work.

You and Pete Townshend seem to have much in common, at least on the surface – the components of your styles, your use of the guitar, the way your bands are compared in the press. Do you feel any particular kinship with him?

You mean Trousers? Now let me see – one reason for that is probably that we started playing the same clubs almost at the same time. I never took credit for this, but apparently he said that he lifted that arm swing he does from seeing me. I don't recall doing it, but I guess if he says so, he did. It's something I've never been aware of. In certain respects, yeah, we're both coming out in the same place at the same time, more than anything else.

He was quoted as saying that there comes a time for a band to retire, to pass on the torch, so to speak, to younger bands.

I love Peter, but the time to stop is when you can't do it anymore, or when you're fed up. There's no passing on of the goddamn torches. Other people will pick them up anyway, and besides, that's not the point. I don't know if he was accurately quoted, but other people have said it anyway when they can't think of anything else to say.

You see, if rock and roll is what you do, then that's what you do, and that's all. You don't sort of say, "Oh, now I give up and I'll hand it on to this band who I think is quite good." You don't hand it on that way. Pete already handed it on, the same as we did, to some young guys that are playing now, the way we played Chuck Berry. It's not, "Here, I've got to hand you a document." It's the records that you've done that the younger players have listened to and grown up with and sat around learning.

What would you like to be doing a year from now?

Accepting a platinum record, for one thing [laughs]. I'd like nothing to change too much, just to do what we do, but be able to do it better.

After one of your court trials you commented on systems of justice and juries of your peers, and how that all related to being a musician.

Yeah, I was trying to make the point that when I am thrown in a court, or anybody like myself is thrown in court, the jury has got absolutely no experience in the musician's way of life, so they're not your peers. I know justice is often rough and so on, but they don't know what it's like to be on the road for 20 years, and I can't explain it to them now. So I was saying, give me a jury of my peers, with Chuck Berry, with Muddy Waters. And put Ron in there, too [laughs] – I mean, I can drop him a few bucks.

People keep calling you the world's greatest rock and roll band, and they have been for a long time.

It's embarrassing.

Are there any drawbacks to their saying that?

Yeah, you've gotta keep being it [laughs]! I've decided that every night there's another world's greatest rock and roll band, because one night somebody has an off gig, and some other shit band has a great gig. That's one of the great things about rock and roll – every night there's a different world's greatest band.

We've been maybe a little more consistent, for whatever reason, mainly when we're going together on a tour and also because we've managed to stick together. The chemistry – that's got nothing to do with musicianship. It's got to do with personality and characters and being able to live with each other for 20 years.

People have been predicting the end of the Stones...

...from the beginning [laughs]!

With the kind of life you seem to lead, longevity might appear to be the last thing you'd be able to gain. What's the secret?

The secret is, there is no secret. It's finding people that not only play well with you, but that you can get along with. There's no constant battle about who's Mister Big, none of those problems. When I see Charlie and Bill – I ain't seen 'em for a few weeks – it's like a pleasure. Ron says we're his closest friends. I guess that's the only secret.

Is that what it means to play in a band?

Most people don't know what a band is. People have heroes, and they copy them – I mean, we copied things very carefully when we started. But you don't get this picture and then do everything to fit it. You do what you do.

The musicians are there to contribute to the band sound. The band isn't there for showing off solos or egos. A lick on a record – it doesn't matter who played it. All that matters is how it fits. The chemistry to work together like that has to be there. You have to work on it, always – figure out what to do with it.

But basically it's not an intellectual thing you can think up and just put there. It has to be there. You have to find it.

This interview was originally published in the April 1983 issue of Guitar Player. The Rolling Stones' new album, Foreign Tongues, is out now.

When Neil Young sat down for an interview with Guitar Player in 1992, grunge had upended the guitar world and reignited a long-running debate over technique versus expression. More than three decades later, his views on the 1990s return to punk-infused music still feels strikingly relevant.

“It’s just rock and roll, but it’s real rock and roll,” he told GP associate editor Jas Obrecht. “Punk and rock and roll are all the same thing. What has degenerated from it — what ‘rock and roll’ is now — is not rock and roll. It’s pop. It’s fabricated for the masses. It’s an imitation — a shoddy semblance of what it was. It’s Perry Como music compared to real rock and roll.”

Young's argument was bigger than the changing tastes of the early '90s. To him, the divide wasn't between punk and classic rock, or grunge and shred. It was between music driven by expression and music shaped for mass consumption.

“Remember when it all started?” he continued. “There was real rock and roll, and then that other music your parents listened to. It’s like rock and roll now is the music that our parents listened to. It’s, like, gone.”

That philosophy extended directly to his guitar playing. When asked what he looks for in an electric guitar solo, Young didn’t bring up speed, precision or technique— he was focused on a sensation.

“Elevation. You can feel it. That’s all I’m looking for,” he said. “You can tell I don’t care about bad notes. I listen for the whole band on my solos. You can call it a solo, because that’s a good way to describe it, but it’s really an instrumental. It’s the whole band that’s playing.”

That perspective also informed his view of formal music education. The 1980s shred boom led to a massive influx of guitarists to Berklee College of Music and music schools like the Musicians Institute. Young saw it as the beginning of the end.

“It paints a pretty doomed picture of the future, doesn’t it?” he asked. “First of all, it doesn’t matter if you can play a scale. It doesn’t matter if your technique is good. If you have feelings you want to get out through music, that’s what matters. If you have the ability to express yourself, and you feel good when you do it, then that’s why you do it. The technical side of it is a complete boring drag, as far as I’m concerned.”

Young — who has steadfastly played a 1953 Gibson Les Paul and 1959 tweed Fender Deluxe for the better part of 60 years — also acknowledged that technical virtuosity has never been his goal.

“I can’t play fast. I don’t even know the scales. A lot of the notes I go for are notes that I know aren’t there. They’re just not there, so you can hit any note.”

But his comments weren’t a dismissal of technical ability. In fact, he reserved some of his highest praise for two of rock’s most celebrated virtuosos.

“I appreciate these guys who play great. I’m impressed by metal bands with their scale guys. I mean, Joe Satriani and Eddie Van Halen are genius guitar players. They’re unbelievable musicians of the highest caliber.

“But I can’t relate to it. One note is enough.”

Call him Forrest Gump, if you want (or Zelig), but Don Felder played with Duane Allman, Stephen Stills, Tom Petty and Bernie Leadon — all before he left his native Gainesville, Florida.

Though he’d worked with the jazz-rock band Flow, singer-songwriter David Blue and Crosby & Nash during the early ’70s, Felder really made his name when he joined the Eagles in 1974. He stayed with the group until his controversial dismissal in 2001, co-writing “Hotel California” as well as “Victim of Love,” “Visions” (on which he also sang lead), “Those Shoes,” “Too Many Hands” and “The Disco Strangler.”

On his own, meanwhile, he’s released four solo albums — including the all-star guest-packed American Rock ’n’ Roll in 2019 and last year’s The Vault — Fifty Years of Music — and contributed to the soundtracks of Heavy Metal and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He also published a bestselling memoir, Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles (1974–2001), in 2008.

Right now you can find Felder on the road, opening shows for the Guess Who — with Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman — into August. During a tour break, he took a few minutes to tour us through his famous guitar friends and their impact on his life and career.

Duane Allman

“Duane and Gregg used to live during the summer in Daytona Beach with their mom. There were no gigs, really, for local bands in Gainesville except fraternity parties and this one bar named Dub’s Steer Room, which me and [Tom] Petty and everybody played at one time or another. So we would go to Daytona Beach with my band with Bernie [Leadon] and play on the pier. I was in Rufus Thomas’s backup band one weekend, and we would play little dance clubs for teens and that kind of stuff.

“And then we met Duane and Gregg. We went into this bar after we finished playing and listened to them play. They had a drummer named Maynard who was missing his front teeth, and he played smiling, with no teeth. I don’t remember who was playing bass. But they were amazing. They were by far superior to every other band that I had ever seen live.

“So we became friends. When they got off work and we got off work, we’d go over to a little deli and have eggs at one o’clock in the morning, eat breakfast before we went to bed. And because Bernie and I lived in Gainesville, we’d have to drive over and do a show and then drive back that night because we couldn’t afford a hotel. So quite frequently we’d go over to the Allmans’ house after we ate breakfast and crash there.

“One day we were there, Duane picked up a slide; he was sitting on the floor playing slide with this Coricidin bottle. I said, ‘How do you do that? You’ve got to show me how to do that!’ I’d never played slide before, so he showed me the basic tuning and how to pull down on the fifths and slowly bend a little flat on the minor third and those sorts of really basic things. But he was light years ahead of any and everybody I’d ever seen play slide.

“Slide, to me, is a lot nastier than fretted guitar. It gets really raw, and the only other slide I’d ever seen played was some old African American blues players that just tuned to open tuning and would be playing not just notes but mostly just sliding around. Duane took it to a whole other level of it being melodic, where you could copy or repeat parts — it wasn’t just somebody playing a million notes. He’d taken the sound of that instrument and made it actually his own, with all new sounds and feelings and everything.

“So I never really tried to copy because, like I said, he was light years ahead of me, and I play a lot simpler, more melodic stuff, because I’m not a shredder. You should just be able to take the skills you learn from other people and make your own stamp, like your own signature, the way Duane did.

“We were in battles of the bands in Gainesville; there was this store, Lipham Music, that provided any band in central Florida with drums, bass, PA, mics, guitars, amps, anything — on credit. They had a yearly battle of the bands in the parking lot, and I have the distinct honor of having lost three battles of the bands to the Allman Brothers.

“It didn’t matter what name they were playing under; I remember the last one, it was the Allman Brothers Band with Dickey Betts, the whole band, and they were just ferocious. They were on fire. Then they disappeared; they just took off, and the next thing I knew it was At Fillmore East, and they were off and running.”

Stephen Stills

“The drummer in one of my first bands, the Continentals, met Stephen at a frat party and told us about him. I think Stephen Stills had gone to some military high school and hated it and went AWOL and showed up in Gainesville and got enrolled in Gainesville High School for his senior year. I was 14 or 15, something like that, and my mom would drive us around, because we didn’t have driver’s licenses or cars, to do these little gigs, like playing for women’s tea parties where they had finger sandwiches and cups of tea and they’d be discussing flower gardens, and we’d be sitting in the corner with two acoustic guitars, playing and singing, kind of putting some music in the room.

“And in that band, the Continentals, we were playing fraternity parties, and we would play Gatorland, which was a bar right on the corner across the field from the University of Florida football field, and on Saturdays right after home football games that bar would just fill up, packed, hundreds of people jammed in there to drink and party and celebrate or whatever it was. So we’d play that and Dub’s Steer Room and a bunch of sleazy little clubs around town.

“Stephen was never a shredder, but he had great charisma, and his voice was great. He was in the Gainesville High School choir — I was, too. He was very enthusiastic, and as soon as he graduated Stephen left Gainesville and moved out to California. The next time I saw or heard from him it was Woodstock and it was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young on stage. I was, ‘Oh my God, that’s Stephen! What’s he doing up there?! Holy cow!’ Then I went, ‘Hell, if he can do it, I can do it.’ It gave me renewed enthusiasm about pursuing music as a full-time career.”

Bernie Leadon

“A couple weeks after Stephen moved to California I had gotten on a Greyhound bus and rode up to Lake City, probably an hour or an hour and a half, and I played a little women’s tea party by myself. I played acoustic and sang for the gals, and I came back and got off the bus and expected my mom to pick me up.

“And this guy comes walking up and he saw I had a guitar and said, ‘Are you Don Felder?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘I went to the music store and asked who the best guitar player was in Gainesville, and they said you. Then I called your mom and asked if it would be okay if I picked you up and brought you home.’

æNow, that was a long time ago; you’d never let your kid get in a stranger’s car and drive off today. So I went, ‘Okay,’ and put my guitar in the back.

“Bernie had a beautiful Martin guitar and he had his banjo back there, too. So he comes into my house and my bedroom and sits down and just plays all this amazing flatpicking stuff. Then he takes out his banjo and just slays me with his talent on that, too. So we put together two bands — he was in the Continentals after Stephen left, which later became the Maundy Quartet, which was much more English-sounding to go with the British Invasion.

“Then I went and got a really good Martin and we had a bluegrass band that would play during the week at barbecues and stuff like that. We had a guy who worked for the Florida Fish and Game Commission who had a plane that could land on lakes, so we would fly all over the place in this little state plane — which was probably unauthorized use — and go play these little barbecues and stuff around central Florida, then fly back and go home.

“So Bernie was a really key person in my music development. He really broadened my country and bluegrass skills beyond what I ever knew, because when I met him I was more into electric guitars and rock and roll than flatpicking and banjo. But since we had those two bands I was forced to learn how to do other stuff, which I’m grateful for now, of course.

“It turned out as soon as Bernie graduated he moved to California, too; he was from California originally and just did not really like Gainesville. The next thing I know he’s in the Flying Burrito Brothers and working with Gram Parsons and really worked his way into that California deal out there. He kept calling me: ‘What are you doing in New York? The music business isn’t happening there — move to California! It’s happening here.’ Finally I took his advice and packed up and drove across the country.”

This interview originally ran in Guitar Player’s October 1986 issue.

Steve Vai is the most exciting hard-rock guitarist since, well, Eddie Van Halen. He is as unique in his own way as Van Halen or Adrian Belew — or Allan Holdsworth, for that matter — are in theirs. Flashy, funny, and unpredictable, he boldly goes forth where no man has gone before. And now, performing for his biggest audiences ever with David Lee Roth, he may well become a touchstone for new directions in rock guitar.

On Eat ’Em and Smile, Roth’s group is rounded out by former big band drummer Gregg Bissonette and the inimitable Billy Sheehan. The pairing of players the caliber of Vai and bassist Sheehan is almost unprecedented in rock, and it works.

From the album’s opening sounds — Dave’s conversation with Steve’s talking guitar in “Yankee Rose” — it’s clear that listeners are in for an extraordinary performance. The musicians deal in swampy grooves, uptown blues, big band jazz, and heavy metal. Stunning unison fingertaps on bass and guitar break new ground. Vai laces his fills and solos with amazing whammy feats and unexpected turns. At the heart of it all is his unique personality and sense of humor — his attitude, as he calls it.

Vai first met singer David Lee Roth at a Hollywood after-hours club. At odds with the rest of his band Van Halen, Dave tapped Steve for songs for his upcoming movie Crazy from the Heat. When Van Halen reformed with singer Sammy Hagar and the Crazy from the Heat film deal fell through, Dave asked Steve to help him form a band.

The duo composed “Yankee Rose,” “Goin’ Crazy!,” “Elephant Gun,” “Big Trouble,” “Bump and Grind,” and “Ladies’ Nite in Buffalo?,” and brought in producer Ted Templeman to man the consoles at Fantasy Studios in California and the Power Station in New York.

On the day of this interview, Vai was home preparing for a year-long tour. Afterwards, he plans to record another solo album.

Do you feel much pressure replacing a famous guitar sound behind a famous voice?

No. I don’t feel like I was replacing Eddie, but I know we’ve got to go out there and prove ourselves. This is one of my biggest stabs, and I’m aware that every single thing I do is going to be under a microscope. But I can’t think of that, or else it’s not going to allow me to be at my best. I was nervous for about a minute, and then I said, “Forget it. It’s not worth my energy.” A lot of energy goes into being nervous.

How does playing with David Lee Roth stack up to past projects?

It’s completely different. I’m freer to do a lot more things. He pushes me; he really likes to hear a lot of guitar. When I think I’m just about to go on the verge of overplaying, he says, “No, keep going.” Dave’s very constructive. He’s a crazy man [laughs], but he really knows what he’s doing. I trust the guy. I’m thoroughly enjoying the gig, and I’m honored to be here.

What’s it like working with Billy Sheehan? Was there ever a danger of overkill?

[laughs] There always is a danger of overkill with me and him on the same stage! I had seen Billy perform before with his band Talas, and I was pretty amazed by his technical prowess. But I thought that I could never play with a guy like that. He’s really good, but he plays like a guitar player. I was nervous when I heard that he was going to be doing the gig. I thought, how is this going to work? Upon rapping with him, though, I realized that he’s a very mature musician. He respects me as a guitar player, and together we work things out. We set aside places for each guy to do his thing. There are really no weird vibes or attitudes. Our relationship gets closer every day. We do some pretty funny stuff together, which you’ll hear and see onstage.

The unison two-handed bass and guitar parts in “Shy Boy” may well be unprecedented in rock.

Yeah. See, that’s why Dave’s a really smart guy. That’s why he got Billy and me — for things like that. It’s funny — people think it sounds so amazing, but Bill and I are scratching the surface of what we’re going to be doing together in the future. Honest.

Is it tough confining yourself to 4/4 after all your time with Frank Zappa?

I can play in odd meters just as well as I can play in 4/4. But no, I don’t find it hard at all, because there are things that I have to do inside of this 4/4 framework that are different than what I had to do with Frank. Now I get to express myself more as Steve Vai, as opposed to expressing myself as Steve Vai playing Frank Zappa’s music.

Does much trial-and-error go into the parts you come up with, or do you work them out before playing them?

When I’m writing a song, my best stuff usually comes when I pick up the guitar and play. “Goin’ Crazy!” was like that. I had been working with Ry Cooder on Crossroads, and he inspired me. I’d be playing all these notes, and Ry would sit down and start tapping his foot and playing these grooves — and I felt embarrassed. God, man, this guy knows where the beat is! This guy’s got serious soul. You ask him to play thirty-second notes in 10/16 time, and forget it. But I was very moved.

One day he was warming up, getting ready to lay down a track, and I couldn’t have paid enough money to be able to watch what he did in a half-hour. Later on, I was in Dave’s basement, picked up my guitar, and said, “I wonder how he fingerpicks like that?” I started using three fingers to play this lick that I used to flatpick, and that’s how the “Goin’ Crazy!” lick came out.

Writing, for me, is a reflection of my state of mind at the time. I wrote “Big Trouble” in a hotel room in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was a beautiful day out, I loved being on the road, and five minutes before we had to get onto the bus, I picked up my guitar and blam — the song came out verbatim. Then there are things like “Ladies’ Nite in Buffalo?” which took a long time. I pieced it together a little bit each day. It’s more of a construction.

Do you come up with lyrics, too?

No. Dave comes up with all the lyrics and every ounce of vocal melodies, like he always has in the past on all those Van Halen albums. I come in with different guitar parts, and we collaborate at putting them together. Sometimes the band pieces the music together before the lyrics are written. We try to get it tight before Dave comes down and does his thing. Then he helps get the arrangement together, we work it up, and he starts doing his vocals. If he’s working on a vocal line, I might say, “Why don’t you try it like this?” And he might make suggestions about a guitar lick. It’s a really nice chemistry.

Did it take less time to record Roth's album than, say, Alcatrazz’s Disturbing the Peace?

It took less time than Alcatrazz, but more time than the average Van Halen album because we had horns to do and stuff like that. At times I didn’t know if I liked it or not, because I wasn’t quite used to Dave’s and Ted’s approach. But then I realized, boy, it’s really fun. Get in there and do it. We kept about 50 percent of what Dave sang on the basic tracks.

I’m used to sitting in the studio and tweaking and playing and punching and tweaking some more and EQ’ing and punching again. With this, it’s get in there and kill the guy with the ball. It really works.

Were you constantly aware of how the music would translate to the stage?

Yeah. A lot of it’s live, and then I doubled many of the guitar parts. I’ll give an example: The rhythm guitar in “Yankee Rose” was played all the way through, and then I doubled the whole thing verbatim. The halftime section in the middle had this nice little arpeggiated chordal thing that was kind of open and bare. So I said, “Let me try putting a solo on it. Let me try something weird.” I hooked up a couple delays set to some long delay, checked my volume, and made sure I was in tune, and they rolled the tape. They liked what I did and kept it.

For the solo at the end, Dave said, “You should try to do something that’s going to be very animated in the video.” He had seen the Alcatrazz video where I shove the guitar between my legs and throw it down, so he wanted something like that. I said, “Hey, sure. What am I here for?”

Were the talking wah-wah guitar and vocal exchanges at the beginning of “Yankee Rose” cut at the same time?

Oh, yeah. When Dave and I first started doing that, we sat and just talked to each other for hours like that.

Was the opening of “Shy Boy” recorded at a high volume?

[laughs] When we did that, I was in the studio, as opposed to sitting in the control room or being isolated from my amps. I ran over to the amp at the beginning of that song, got down, and let it feed back like crazy. I ended up doubling that really fast lick when the band comes in. And then I just played through the whole song with one guitar — a couple of punches here and there.

How did you and Billy cut the unison duet?

That whole thing was almost all done live. I cleaned up a couple parts on it — I’m not going to tell you, “Yeah, sure, I went into the studio, plugged in, and just wailed.” That happens a lot on this record, but there are times where I wanted to clean up little things. The very first part of the “Shy Boy” solo was done on the original track, and it wasn’t doubled. I just played along and then stopped. I overdubbed the second part, the real fast thing, and doubled it. You can hear it when it comes in: it’s panned left and right.

For the siren effect, I switched on my delay, which was set to like a 792-millisecond delay with a lot of echo. I hit a harmonic and pulled up on the tremolo bar. If the pitch rises slowly, the echo pitch rises too, but it’s a little delayed. This creates a real dissonance.

Is that your horn arrangement in “I’m Easy”?

Yeah. I wrote the score and directed the horn section. You should have seen it: I had snakeskin pants on, my hair was flipped out, and I was sitting in this director’s chair with a baton in one hand and a big score in the other. Twelve of New York’s best studio players were there, and I’m going, “Okay, now, can you make this a little more staccato over here?” [laughs] That was a pretty straight-ahead arrangement.

I loved doing that — Berklee training, you know. I’ve always written big band charts. I have a stack of orchestra scores that I’m waiting to hear one of these days when I’ve got the money to have them done. I love big band music. Listen to Frank Sinatra and Count Basie at the Sands — incredible stuff, man, conducted and arranged by Quincy Jones. It’s so big, it’s like heavy metal in a sense. There’s a lot of energy to it.

What inspired you to play blues fills through that track?

I originally comped through the whole thing with a tinkly clean guitar tone, but it was a lot more complicated. It was real voice-leading and had a lot of movement. Ted gave me the idea to maybe put bluesy-sounding guitar over the whole thing. So after I recorded the laid-back comp guitar, we did the horns. Then I did the guitar over the top of it with my pink Jackson.

My tone and everything I play on that is a reflection of Ted Templeman getting me to do it, because I always view myself as being the world’s worst blues player. I’m always thinking, “This isn’t working; this isn’t happening.” I enjoy it in a sense, but I’m not an authentic blues player. But Ted kept saying, “It sounds good. Keep going.” So I said okay, and just did it.

How do you finger the very last note of the solo?

I just tapped it with my right-hand finger. It’s not a harmonic, but you can do it with your tongue right on the harmonic [picks up guitar and quickly demonstrates]. Sounds great and feels tingly.

How do you think up strange approaches like that?

It’s weird; I don’t know what comes over me sometimes. It’s like walking into a room where there’s a putter and a cup five yards away. You hit the ball, you know it’s going to go right into the cup, and it does. You’d scare the greatest putter alive.

Sometimes you just know when it’s going to connect. You don’t know why it does it, and you can try it again but it will never happen. Every now and then when I’m playing, that happens. I feel like I’m in a frenzy or something. I could know a solo perfectly, but when I get in front of people and play it, I might do something completely different that’s twice as good. I feed off of other people’s energy. When the sound is there and the attitude is right, I get so excited.

I wonder if it’s good for me sometimes. I just get crazy. And with Dave, this is the situation where it happens most of all.

How did you put together “Ladies’ Nite in Buffalo?”

The whole album was written, but there was a certain area that we wanted to attack that wasn’t quite established by Dave yet — something in a dance area, something that had sort of a cool New York sound. I went to work and came in with a completed demo, except for the vocals. My demo was much more elaborate, but Ted decided to chop a lot of stuff out, which was probably for the best of the song.

We had all the parts, and we just exchanged some of the spots, like the chorus became the bridge. Then Dave just did his vocals on top of it.

It’s interesting how that riff expands as it goes along.

There were originally three different guitars — one track just for solos, one for the chorus melody, and one for stuff so it all overlapped. When we were recording it, the band needed a scratch guitar track to lay parts down with, so I said, “Okay, let me try to play all three guitar parts at the same time.”

I threw on my guitar, didn’t even tune up or play with the settings on the amp, and bang — one time through, we did it. I was going to redo all the guitars later on, but Ted liked the feel that I produced just from sitting in there with no pressure or anything.

Of course, being an artist I hemmed and hawed: “I want to do it again. There are mistakes, blah blah, woof woof.” But they convinced me that it was really beautiful the way it was.

Did you double part of the solo?

Yeah, the second half. It’s funny — I started out with a completely different solo in mind, and just when the tape was rolling, I said, “Ah, the hell with it,” and that’s what came out.

At the beginning of the solo, I hit a note and used the bar to play a melody. The second half of the solo was originally the first half — the sextuplets. I decided to build it, add some speed to it, and climax — that’s a high G that I’m stretching to. And doubling always gives something like that a nice effect.

What was your approach on “Goin’ Crazy!” and “Tobacco Road”?

“Goin’ Crazy!” is just one pass all the way through, except for the solo, because I wanted to have a rhythm guitar underneath it.

“Tobacco Road” was almost one take all the way through; I broke a string during the solo, and I had to punch in the last lick. One of the most uncanny things that ever happened to me in the studio occurred during “Tobacco Road”: if you listen to the last time Dave sings “In the middle of Tobacco Road,” the guitar goes bill and says “tobacco” right along with Dave. It’ll never happen again in a million years.

Of all the songs on the album, “Elephant Gun” seems to have the most Vai-like characteristics.

Yeah, the sort of high-energy approach. I literally did that one time through and then doubled it. We were in a rush to finish it, and we had another few minutes in the studio before Cyndi Lauper had her time booked. I said, “Let me double this. I know what it’s going to sound like.” And nobody thought I could do it in five minutes. I said, “Just let me try it. Roll the tape.” Plugged in, rolled the tape, and boom — done.

You must have a phenomenal memory.

No. I just work really hard. I’ve got a good memory, but it’s short. We worked out a lot of “Elephant Gun” in the basement. Bill and I are doing a lot of stuff in there together.

Did you work out the “Big Trouble” solo in advance?

I knew what I was going to do. First, I did the song with the band and doubled it. There was one lick in the bridge section that I couldn’t get quite right; I had to do it a couple of times. We did a first take on the solo, but it was a little sloppy here and there, so I did the same thing again and the parts were cleaned up. I had a blast doing that solo. It always moves me.

Your fills in that tune come in at the same volume as Dave’s vocals.

I was riding the guitar on the mix because I knew where all the fills are. So every time there was a fill, I’d throw it up there.

A few seconds into the solo, you get a very different tone for a few notes.

Where it sort of sounds like an Indian from Venus?

You take the Floyd Rose tremolo bar, turn it around so the handle’s back over the fine tuner for the high E, and pull up on it. I bounce the bar on my hand. The most traditional way of playing the vibrato bar is to just push it down. I have my guitars rigged so that I can pull up on the bar so the strings go sharp. I do that by routing out the guitar.

You can raise the pitch when the bar is in standard position, but it’s cooler when you turn it around and bounce it. I don’t pull it all the way back, but just enough to make it go sharp about a half- or whole-step. If you do it real sharp and fast, it gives a cute little effect. If you push back or pull up far enough on the bar, the strings fret out. That’s how I got the little mouse sound.

What’s the first sound in the “Bump and Grind” solo?

You take a scruffy pick and scratch it across the high strings. That solo sounds like ponies on ice. And then there’s one sound where I pulled the B string off the fingerboard.

I also ran up to the microphone stand and went rrrr, rubbing my strings on it and hitting the volume control so the echo would produce that effect. Originally, that solo started off really different. There was a lot of hammering, but I wanted to stay away from that a little bit. The last part of “Big Trouble,” where it plays really fast, is all hammer stuff.

What can you say about “That’s Life”?

I recorded it with a big Ibanez jazz guitar, just bopping through the chords. You should see the arrangement that we did beforehand — it was completely balls-to-the-walls. I was really rocking it out, and that’s the way we’ve decided to do it onstage.

At 33 minutes, Eat ’Em and Smile is a fairly short album. Were other songs recorded?

A lot of songs. We had quite a few, but we wanted to print the album at a very hot level in the disc. When you do that, you have to keep it short because the louder you cut and the more bottom you have on the record, the deeper the grooves are.

What guitars did you use for the project?

I recorded about 80 percent of the album with my green Charvel [a Strat-style model, serial number 3733]. The others were the pink Jackson and a couple of Guilds. I used a Coral Electric Sitar on a couple things, but it never made it to vinyl. I also had a beautiful Guild 12-string and a Fender 12-string, and I may have used an Ibanez on a couple of tracks for background things.

How did you route your signal?

For my live setup, I went directly into the amps — either the Carvin X-100Bs or, for the dirty stuff, Marshalls that were modified by Lee Jackson or Jose Arredondo. On “Shy Boy” and “Tobacco Road,” the Jackson-modified amp is on the left and the Jose amp is on the right. A lot of the other stuff is just the Carvin amp going directly into a cabinet, and that’s it.

I split the amps in stereo with a Roland SDE-3000 delay and miked it from there, and maybe I went into a Boss overdrive or something. I used a little AMS digital reverb on a couple of things, and an Eventide SP-2016 signal processor that does everything — you can make your own effects. It’s got auto-panning, stereo panning, stereo chorusing, stereo flanging, big rooms, little rooms. It has this one patch called “dual robots.” It’s ridiculous, really amazing.

There are a couple of songs where the tone was put through maybe a pitch-bend or a little Harmonizer.

Do you sense competition with other rock guitarists?

Consciously, I don’t participate in competing with them. But subconsciously I can’t tell you whether I do or not. I would suspect that somewhere in there, Steve Vai is a very competitive person. I would very much not mind being in the greatest rock band of the day. Everybody is striving for something out there. But I really don’t feel like I’m competing with people, because everybody expresses themselves differently. There’s enough success to go around.

More than most players, you’ve managed to push far past your roots.

My influences are the same as anybody’s, in the sense that they are events. But when people play an instrument, it’s very personal because they are creating a complete reflection of their personality. What you create is what you are, and what you are is a product of your experiences in life. I don’t mean to say that if somebody is a sloppy player, they’re a sloppy person. It goes far beyond probably what you or I can analyze, but it’s there and it’s naked. If you’ve got your head on straight enough, you can see right into it. There’s no hiding who you are when you create music.

I could sit here and say I love Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page. Sure, they inspired me, but what brought me to be turned on by that music? Attitude is a big part of the way you play. I practiced endlessly when I was young. I still do, but what I do now is the way I feel now. An event that happens tomorrow could completely change the way you approach everything. You could have the same equipment and know the same scales, exercises, and bends, but they’re going to sound completely different. You’re a different person.

So your personal relationships have more impact on your style than other musicians do?

Exactly. There was a point in my late teens where I thought it was really cool to be miserable and hate things and think that people were assholes, because then people gave me my space. And then I realized that it was just an act of my ego and that I was becoming a miserable person. The world started to take on an ugly glow.

I reached a point in life where, through the grace of God, I went into a dark night of the soul. I realized that many of the things I loved to do weren’t good for me, and I said I don’t need this. I can play you tapes that I made back then, and you wouldn’t believe the same cat was doing it. “Chronic Insomnia” [from Vai’s Flex-Able Leftovers] came out of that period, as well as darker things that I can’t even bring myself to listen to.

And that stuff wasn’t an accident — I could duplicate it for years. But I don’t want to go there anymore; there are other places I can go now. I was very lucky to have supportive people around me. My parents were the greatest. God bless them. Going on the road with Frank Zappa at such a young age was a bit traumatic, but I started appreciating other people’s efforts. I began to realize that you have to be compassionate to the way anybody expresses himself and try to home in on the beautiful things that a person tries to do. I became a happier person, and I was able to relate to people better.

What are the drawbacks of being a rock guitar hero?

Well, I never really saw myself that way, so it’s hard for me to comment. There are so many great players, I can’t consider myself a hero. I’m a reckless player. I’m sloppy sometimes, but I love playing. It’s very hard for me at times, and then sometimes it’s so easy, I just lose my mind.

The kids are going to listen to what I do, and if they like it, they’ll try to cop some of it. And then they’re going to realize that this is the starting point, and that they’ve got to take it a lot higher than this. So to stroke myself and say, “I’m a guitar hero” will be very embarrassing in the future when somebody comes along and does what I’m doing at a technically infinite level.

What do you think the future holds for rock guitar?

I can visualize what the next step could be, but I’m not sure I can explain it. It’s an approach where there’s no technical or physical limitations — except, of course, the impossible ones. This kid might be in kindergarten or whatever, but somebody’s going to come along who thinks of something like speed with a completely different attitude than what everybody thinks of it now.

Speed is just going to be a silly device to make a very serious point. I could even see myself doing it, but it would take total concentration for a long period of time to develop this new approach. This person will do things that nobody else is doing, whether it be with unequivocal speed, vibrato bar work, a new device that could be put on a guitar, or a new piece of outboard gear. It could be anything. But it will take imagination and a certain personality. And then, of course, everybody will jump on it.

What are your views on young players mimicking their favorite guitarists?

Jumping on something right away and copying it verbatim shows you where you’re standing. It’s an insecurity statement. I don’t want to freak anybody out, but it’s saying, “I can’t come up with things on my own. I’ve got to grab this.” This is not to say that it’s not beneficial to cop somebody else’s stuff. I’ve copped a lot of Hendrix; that’s how I got the basic foundation of my whole way of approaching chords.

But there’s a fine line between inspiration and loss of identity. That’s something kids should be really careful of. Ask yourself; you’ll always know. When you’re doing it, there’s a little voice that’s telling you whether it’s the right thing to do, or whether you’re doing too much of it. You’ve got to listen to that voice and believe it.

It’s always fun to do what somebody else is doing, and maybe even play it faster or with more vibrato, but still, you’re better than that because you’re your own person and you can be original.

What’s your ultimate goal?

My goal in life is to be internally happy. I love music, but there are other things. To sit here and say, “Well, my goal is to have my own studio, to make my own records” — that’s petty. I can make my own music on a cassette player if I want. One match, and the whole studio is gone. One axe, and my hand is off. One car accident, and I might never see you again.

I accept that these things are possible, but believe me, I have a great time in life. I very much appreciate being able to do what I like. You might laugh, but if I wasn’t a musician, I probably wouldn’t mind being a mailman. Look at it — you get to exercise. You get to walk in the rain and sun; you meet people. It’s your attitude that’s going to make you happy.

It’s awfully nice to know that you can make somebody else happy, too, but the only way that you can do that is to first make yourself happy.

When all is said and done, your sense of humor seems to be at the very heart of your playing.

Good. I don’t want people to think I’m too serious. All the musicians who are reading this have a sense of humor. Apply it to your music. That’s where all the diversity comes from.

On 7 July, 1967, the Beatles released All You Need Is Love, a song that seemed to capture the spirit of the Summer of Love. The song had been debuted live just twelve days earlier, in extraordinary circumstances: in front of a load of friends – including Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Keith Moon and Graham Nash – for a BBC broadcast that went live to 14 different countries and an audience of over 400 million.

Now that's a pressure gig.

The Our World program was not intended to be the global launch of the new Beatles single All You Need Is Love, but that's how it turned out. Our World was the first ever international satellite television show, with segments from all the participating countries. The UK's segment featured The Beatles, with a song either written by John Lennon especially for the occasion, or chosen because its message could be easily understood by its international audience. (McCartney thinks it was the latter.)

The backing track for the song had already been laid down at Olympic studios a couple of weeks before and overdubs added at Abbey Road. The One World broadcast cued up the performance as though the viewers were catching the band just as they were about to nail the final take. It wasn't a complete ruse: Lennon was singing live, McCartney playing bass live, and George Harrison would play guitar live. (Live drums would have leaked into the other mics, so Ringo was spared.)

Below is the original broadcast and a new colorised version.

The way sound Engineer Geoff Emerick remembers it, the day before the broadcast, Brian Epstein talked the band into rush-releasing the performance as a single.

"John, of course, was keen," says Emerick, in his book Here, There And Everywhere, "it was his song, after all. It didn't take much effort to talk Paul into it, either... Only George Harrison was reluctant; presumably he was worried that he might muff his solo, even though it was only four bars long. He was finally persuaded when George Martin assured him that we could stay late afterward and do any necessary repair work.”

Of the performance itself, he adds: "John came through like a trouper, delivering an amazing vocal despite his nervousness and the plug of chewing gum in his mouth that he forgot to remove just before we went on air. Paul's playing, as always, was solid, with no gaffs, and even George Harrison's solo was reasonably good, though he did hit a clunker at the end."

He did hit a clunker – seemingly starting to play after the fourth bar, before stopping to let the orchestra in. An easy mistake to make, it's meant that the solo (around 4:08 on the original video, 1:19 on the new version) has appeared on "Worst Solos Ever" lists ever since.

Which is harsh. Everyone makes mistakes, after all. The question is: Why didn't they fix it later? The following day, Lennon laid down a new vocal and Ringo added new drum parts – why didn't the guitarist perfect his solo?

It's a question that's vexed Beatles fans and guitar players for decades.

Emerick thinks that Harrison was just assured it could be fixed in production: “From the very first playback, the four Beatles were knocked out by what they were hearing. Harrison winced a little during his guitar solo, but Richard [assistant engineer Richard Lush] took the initiative and reassured him, saying, 'It'll be fine; we'll put a little wobble on it and it will be great.' In the end, all we had to do was add the effect and duck the last bad note.”

The band were also up against a tight deadline. The single was released on July 7, just 12 days after the performance, a quick turnaround in 1967.

And maybe The Beatles were no longer striving for perfection. In his definitive book, Revolution In The Head, Ian MacDonald suggests that, after the rigours of Sgt Pepper, the band were happy to leave in some imperfections.

To paraphrase Lennon: there's nothing you can play that can't be played. It's easy. Unless, that is, there's 400 million people watching.

When J.J. Cale died in July, 2013, he left behind not only a stunning body of work filled with gorgeous songs and tasteful guitar playing, but a whole load of guitar players who discovered him via YouTube and were left wondering: "What kinda crazy guitar is THAT?"

Believe it or not, this electric guitar – that was Cale's number one guitar for many years – started life as a Harmony H162 acoustic guitar (pictured below).

When it was severely damaged during a flight, military-trained electronics expert Cale, who had also worked as a sound engineer, set about transforming it.

Marc O'Hara of The Unique Guitar Blog says: "He took the back off of the guitar, and put a cutaway on it. He used a series of metal rods and anchors to hold the body together.

"He also installed five pickups on the guitars top plus. Four of the pickups are Gibson, two of which are low impedance for recording direct. The other bar type pickup came from a Sears Silvertone guitar, it was manufactured by Dan Electro. It also had a Fishman piezo pickups in the saddle. The guitar has three high impedance outs and one low. These pickups would occasionally be swapped out. The low impedance pickups were the ones that allowed him to plug directly into a recording console, much like Les Paul's personal guitar.

"This guitar had seven control knobs, countless wires, buttons and switches, four outputs, and a big red light. He never bothered to put the back of the guitar on again. That way so he would have easy access for repairs and adjusting the action by means of a couple coins he had wedged into the thing."

Watch J.J. talk through the guitar in this clip (including describing how he punched a hole in it with a hammer so that he can fit a microphone!):

It shouldn't work, but it did. The guitar was used on many of his early, classic records.

It deteriorated over the years and became unsalvageable, even for Cale.

"I played a Stratocaster for some time after that," said Cale, "and also messed around with Les Pauls and 335s. The Harmony was good because it was an acoustic guitar and that got me into songwriting.”

See him in action with it, playing his classic song After Midnight, at Paradise Studios in LA, 1979, with Leon Russell. J.J.'s wife Christine Lakeland and session ace Bill Boatman are also on guitar.

The Allman Brothers Band’s 1971 double album At Fillmore East is often and rightly proclaimed rock’s greatest live release. Fifty years on, it still sounds fresh, inspired and utterly original. It is the gold standard of blues-based rock and roll, but it’s easy to lose sight of what a radical album At Fillmore East really was.

It took a lot of guts for the Allmans and their record label to release a two-LP live album as their third release. After all, when it came out in July 1971, the band was something of a commercial flop.

Although they drew raves for their marathon live shows that combined the Grateful Dead’s go-anywhere jam ethos with a far superior musical precision, their first two releases caused barely a ripple in the marketplace. The band’s self-titled 1969 debut sold fewer than 35,000 copies, and the following year’s Idlewild South did only marginally better despite two singles, “Midnight Rider” and “Revival.” The band struggled to understand why.

“When the first record came out at number 200 with an anchor and dropped off the face of the earth, my brother and I did not get discouraged,” Gregg Allman recalled, a few years before his death in 2017. “But I thought Idlewild South was a much better record, and when that died on the vine, I thought, Damn, maybe we were wrong about this group.”

But the lackluster sales didn’t match the increasingly large and rabid crowds the band drew on its relentlessly paced tours. Fans loved the Allman Brothers’ rare combination of blues, jazz, rock and country, and their willingness to play until somebody pulled the plug. Finally, it dawned on the band and its management that a live album was the only way to capture the group’s real essence.

What resulted was a recording of two shows at New York City’s famed Fillmore East, an album that still stands as a testament to a great band at the peak of its power. Sadly, it would prove to be the final record completed by guitarist Duane Allman, who died shortly after its release. As such, it has become an epitaph for both him and the Allman Brothers Band 'Mark 1'.

“That album captured the band in all their glory,” producer Tom Dowd said in a 1998 interview. Dowd, who died in 2002, was behind the boards for nearly a dozen Allman Brothers albums, including At Fillmore East, and worked with everyone from John Coltrane and Ray Charles to Cream and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

“The Allmans have always had a perpetual swing sensation that is unique in rock. They swing like they’re playing jazz when they play things that are tangential to the blues, and even when they play heavy rock. They’re never vertical but always going forward, and it’s always a groove.”

Certainly, the improvisation and length of the tunes on At Fillmore East was more similar to jazz than rock, with just seven songs spread over four vinyl sides, capturing the Allmans in all their bluesy, sonic fury. “You Don’t Love Me” and “Whipping Post” both occupied full album sides, while “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” clocked in at 13 minutes.

Still, from the clarion slide guitar of “Statesboro Blues” that opens the album to the booming timpani roll of “Whipping Post” that closes it, there is nary a wasted note in the 78 minutes of Fillmore’s music.

Propelled upward and onward by bassist Berry Oakley, whose free-range style uniquely roamed the middle of the band’s sound, and the rhythmic onslaught of double drummers Jaimoe and the late Butch Trucks, the group seemed ready to blast off in any direction at any time.

Dickey Betts and Duane Allman spurred each other on to new heights of fretboard ferocity and creativity while pioneering guitar harmonies. Gregg Allman’s authentic blues singing and surging organ vamps kept even the most ambitious jams firmly rooted to terra firma.

“There’s nothing too complicated about what makes Fillmore a great album,” Betts offers. “The thing is, we were a hell of a band and we just got a good recording that captured what we sounded like.” Adds Jaimoe, “Fillmore was both a particularly great performance and a typical night.”

To truly understand the album, it helps to recognize just how hungry and desperate the band was at the time of its release. Then-manager and Capricorn Records president Phil Walden readily admitted he had begun to consider cashing in his chips and cutting his losses.

“It seemed like I had just been wrong and that they were never going to catch on,” Walden, who died in 2006, said in a 1990 interview. “People just didn’t grasp what the Allmans were all about musically or any other way. But they kept touring, state by state, city by city, going across the country, establishing themselves as the best live band around, and building a base.”

Gregg Allman said the band played more than 300 nights in 1970, traveling most of the off days, a claim that seems only a slight exaggeration. As they continued to crisscross the country, jammed together in first a Ford Econoline van and then a Winnebago, their sound evolved and deepened.

It’s a process well known to the hardcore tape traders who exchange copies of these shows like so many pieces of holy grail. But there was a price to pay. “That kind of schedule puts a lot of wear and tear on your ass,” Allman said.

Recalls booking agent Jonny Podell, “I started booking the band in June 1969. Phil Walden said, ‘Get them dates. I don’t care if it’s Portland, Oregon, on Monday and Portland, Maine, on Tuesday.’ I tried to do a little better, but that’s what we did, and they never complained.

“This was run like a machine, like a military unit. There were six in the band, and management provided them with first five, then six crew, making maybe $100 a night, which was pretty unusual for the time and really quite extravagant.”

The first two weeks of September 1971, just after At Fillmore East was released, provide a snapshot of the band’s grueling schedule. The Allmans played Montreal on September 3 and Miami the following night. They had five days off, during which they went into Miami’s Criteria Studios with Dowd and laid down the first tracks for Betts’ “Blue Sky,” which would appear on their next studio album, Eat a Peach.

They then played September 10 in Passaic, New Jersey, the following night in Clemson, South Carolina, and the night after that in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. The band then had three days off and played September 16 in New Orleans.

“Don’t ask me how we did it, because I don’t know,” the band’s onetime tour manager Willie Perkins offered. “My own naïveté probably helped me, because we just did what was asked and made the gigs that were booked. But God! We used to call them ‘dartboard tours,’ because it seemed like someone had made the bookings by throwing darts at a map. We were zigzagging everywhere.”

With all that hard touring paying off and their fan base steadily growing by word of mouth, the band decided that it needed to capitalize on its concert success. The solution became apparent: Record a live album.

“We simply realized that we were a better live band than studio outfit because we were always ready to experiment — offstage as well as on, I may add,” Gregg explained. “And the audience was a big part of what we did up there, which is something that couldn’t be duplicated in a studio. A light bulb finally went off: We need to make a live album.”

Once the decision to record live was made — not an obvious choice in 1971, when live rock albums were still in their infancy — the choice of venue was simple. Promoter Bill Graham was an early and important supporter of the band, booking the Allmans repeatedly in his bicoastal rock emporiums, the Fillmore East, in New York, and the Fillmore West, in San Francisco, where they established themselves as an elite band.

The Allman Brothers Band had made their Fillmore debut on December 26, 1969, opening for Blood, Sweat & Tears for three nights. Graham promised he would have them back soon and often, paired with more appropriate acts. Two weeks later, they opened four shows for Buddy Guy and B.B. King at the Fillmore West. The following month they were back in New York for three nights with the Grateful Dead. These shows were crucial in establishing the band and exposing it to a wider and more sympathetic audience.

Something particularly special was happening between the Allman Brothers and fans in New York, which remained their most supportive audience throughout their career (they played their final show there, at the Beacon Theatre, on October 28, 2014). In those dark ages of rock promotion, the Fillmores were a significant step above all other venues.

“The Fillmores were so professionally run, compared to anything else at the time,” Perkins says. “And Graham would gamble on acts, bringing in jazz and blues and the Trinidad/Tripoli String Band, and he had taken a chance on the Brothers, which everyone appreciated and remembered. He never paid anyone top dollar at the Fillmore. A lot of bands went off to other promoters as a result, and Bill would feel like they had turned their back on him. But we loved playing there.”

“New York crowds have always been great,” says Betts, who parted ways with the Allman Brothers in 2000. “But what made the Fillmore a special place was Bill Graham. He was the best promoter rock has ever had, and you could feel his influence in every single little thing at the Fillmore.”

“He called a spade a spade — and not necessarily in a loving way,” Allman added. “Mr. Graham was a stern man, the most tell-it-like-it-is person I have ever met, and at first it was off-putting. But he was the most fair person, too, and after knowing him for while, you realized that this guy, unlike most of the other fuckers out there, was on the straight and narrow.”

To cut the album, the band was booked into the Fillmore for three nights — March 11, 12 and 13, 1971 — as the middle act between opener Elvin Bishop and headliner Johnny Winter. The label and the band both wanted Dowd to produce the recording, but he was in Ghana working on recording the movie soundtrack for Soul to Soul, a concert featuring Wilson Picket, Aretha Frankin, Louis Armstrong, James Brown and Booker T & the MGs.

“I got off a plane from Africa and called Atlantic to let them know I was back, and Jerry Wexler said, ‘Thank God! We’re recording the Allman Brothers live, and the truck is already booked,’” Dowd said. “So I stayed up in New York for a few days longer than I had planned.”

A mobile recording studio was parked on the street outside the theater, with Dowd and a small crew set up inside. “It was a good truck, with a 16-track machine and a great, tough-as-nails staff who took care of business,” Dowd recalled. “They were all set to go.

“When I got there, I gave them a couple of suggestions and clued them as to what to expect and how to employ the 16 tracks, because we had two drummers and two lead guitar players, which was unusual, and it took some foresight to properly capture the dynamics.”

Years later, the band members insisted the horn would have worked out fine.

“Juicy was playing baritone and would play basically along with the bass,” Gregg Allman said. “We knew we were recording three nights and probably just figured we’d get it the next night if it didn’t work out. We wanted to give ourselves plenty of times to do it because we didn’t want to go back and overdub anything, because then it wouldn’t have been a real live album. “

Adds Jaimoe, “Dowd started flipping out when he heard the horn, but that’s something that could have worked. There’s no way that it would have ruined anything that was going on. It wasn’t distracting anyone, and it was so powerful.”

Betts probably sums up the Allman Brothers’ thought process best. “We were just having fun, and everyone dug it,” he says. Though it was wiped from a few tracks (no one can quite remember which), Doucette’s fine harp playing adds an extra dimension to “You Don’t Love Me” and “Done Somebody Wrong.”

“Doucette had played with the band a lot, so he was a lot more cohesive with what they were doing,” Perkins states. “Duane loved horns, but he would also listen to reason, and I don’t think he put up any fight with Dowd.”

Doucette was actually a frequent performer with the band, an old friend of Duane’s who had been offered a full-time position in the band but turned it down because he didn’t want it to “feel like a job.” “Duane was trying to shoehorn me in there,” Doucette explains. “He and I were great friends and we really liked playing together and hanging out.

“I wouldn’t trade playing in the Allman Brothers for anything, but they were complete. They didn’t really need me, and I wasn’t a joiner. I wanted my relationship with the band exactly how it was, and I asked Duane if I could do that. I said, ‘I’ll show up, I’ll play, you pay me, we’ll laugh and have fun, I’ll split.’”

The harmonica player says Duane not only wanted him as a member but fully intended to add a horn section to the Allman Brothers’ lineup. “The plan was to bring on the horns full time,” Doucette says. “Duane would have liked to have 16 pieces. Duane had six different projects that he wanted to do, and he just thought he could do it all at once on the same bandstand.”

Each night after playing, the band and Dowd would head uptown to the Atlantic Records studio and listen to playbacks of the night’s performance. “We would just grab some beers and sandwiches and go through the show,” Dowd explained. “That way, the next night, they knew exactly what they had and which songs they didn’t have to play again.”

The band was thrilled just to be able to listen back to what they had played, a rare occurrence at the time. “We loved having that opportunity,” Betts says. “We just thought, Hey, this is cool! I didn’t know I did that. That sounds pretty neat. We were just enjoying ourselves, because we would get a chance to listen to our performances. We didn’t do a lot of [mixboard] recordings, and we weren’t real hung up on the recording industry anyhow. We just played, and if they wanted to record it, they could.

“We were young and headstrong,” he adds. “‘We’re gonna play. You do what you want.’”

The power of the music captured on At Fillmore East was in the group improvisation, the fact that six extremely unique musical voices were expressing themselves as one complete entity. At the heart of the group’s sound was Betts and Duane Allman, who reinvented the concept of two-guitar rock bands. Rather than having one player who was primarily a rhythm player backing a soloist, the group had two dynamic lead players.

While Duane Allman is probably most remembered and revered for his dynamic slide playing, he was a fully formed, mature guitarist. Betts, while often in Allman’s shadow, was also a wide-ranging, distinct stylist from the start. The pair had a broad range of techniques for playing together, often forming intricate, interlocking patterns with one another and/or bassist Berry Oakley, setting the stage for dramatic flights of improvised solos. And, uniquely, they often played harmonies together, a true rock and roll innovation that has been picked up on by countless bands.

“From our first time playing together, Duane started picking up on things I played and offering a harmony, and we’d build whole jams off of that,” Betts says. “We worked stuff out naturally because we were both lead players. We got those ideas from jazz horn players like Miles Davis and John Coltrane and fiddle lines from western swing music. I listened to a lot of country and string [bluegrass] music growing up. I played mandolin, ukulele and fiddle before I ever touched a guitar, which may be where a lot of the major keys I play come from.

“It’s very hard to go freestyle with two guitars. Most bands with two guitarists either have everything worked out or stay out of each other’s way, because it’s easy to sound like two cats fighting if you’re not careful. But it was very natural how Duane and I put our guitars together. He would almost always wait for me, or sometimes Oakley, to come up with a melody, and then he would join in on my riff with the harmony.”

The two drummers had a similarly easy and unique playing style, heard to full and perfect effect on At Fillmore East. Trucks and Jaimoe rarely played the same thing at the same time. Instead they played complementary parts that pushed the band to great heights and offered not only increased power but greater depth.

Trucks provided a hard-driving beat while Jaimoe deepened the groove and pushed up against the songs with all kinds of interesting concepts and rhythms. Jaimoe was deeply rooted in jazz and often played patterns and riffs straight off of Jimmy Cobb’s work on Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue album. He had also introduced the band to the album and to John Coltrane, both of which had a huge impact on the Allmans. This jazz influence can be heard throughout the expansive but never long-winded playing on At Fillmore East.

The symbiotic relationships between the two drummers and two guitarists carried throughout the band, which functioned like one organism with a single giant beating heart. Says Doucette, “You take any one of the six guys out and the whole thing doesn’t exist. This was a band of men. There weren’t any kids in it, despite our young ages. We’d all worked. We’d all been on the road and taken responsibility, and it came through in the music.”

Also central to their strength and appeal was the depth and maturity of Gregg Allman’s songwriting and singing. Though just in his early 20s, he conjured up the power and world-weary heaviness of the greatest blues singers.

Recalls Doucette, “I knew Duane for a long time but had never heard Gregg sing until the first time I played with the Allman Brothers Band. Gregory starts playing that organ and singing, and I went, Woah. Now here’s a guy who’s in worse pain than I am. He pushed all that pain into his music and combined it with his artistry into something very special and unique.”

Doucette remembers another Fillmore East date when Albert King came to jam with the group on a slow blues. “He’s up there in a lime-green suit, sucking on his pipe and doing his thing,” he says. “Then Gregg starts singing, and Albert damn near bit through his pipe. He’s never heard this voice before, and he’s looking around, literally swiveling his head trying to figure out who’s singing, and he sees this skinny blonde behind the organ just killing it and couldn’t believe it was him.”

Using only the last two nights recorded at the Fillmore, the Allman Brothers ended up with enough great material left over to fill more than half of their follow-up album, Eat a Peach, including the epic nearly 44-minute “Mountain Jam,” performed directly after the 23-minute “Whipping Post” heard on Fillmore.

“We just felt like we could play all night, and sometimes we did,” Betts recalls. “We could really hit the note. There’s not a single fix on Fillmore. Everything you hear there is how we played it.”

A few months after cutting the album, the members were in Capricorn Records’ Macon, Georgia, studio laying tracks when they learned that the live album was done and cover art had to be selected immediately.

“We wanted to come up with something, because, left to their own devices, the people at Atlantic did horrible things,” Gregg recalled. “I mean, these were the people who superimposed a picture of Sam and Dave onto a turtle [for the cover of the soul duo’s Hold On I’m Coming album]! We wanted to make sure that the cover was as meat and potatoes as the band, so someone said, ‘Let’s just take a damn picture and make it look like we’re standing in the alley waiting to go onstage.’”

Photographer Jim Marshall arrived and snapped the group sitting on their road cases outside the Macon studio.

“We were up at daylight to take the photo for the album cover, and we were all in a real grumpy mood,” Betts recalls. “The photographer wanted us out there then, and we thought it was dumb. We figured it didn’t make a damn bit of difference what the cover was or what time we took it.

“This dude Duane knew came walking down the sidewalk, and Duane jumped up and ran over and got a joint from this guy, then came back and sat down. We were all laughing, and that’s the photo captured on the cover. If you look at Duane’s hand, you can see him hiding something there. He had copped and sat down with a mischievous grin.”

On the backside of the album, the crew stood in the musicians’ place, probably the first and last time roadies have ever been so prominently featured on an album cover. “That was my brother’s idea,” Gregg revealed. “The crew always played a special role in our band. It goes back to the very beginning, when we lived off the disability checks of Red Dog and Twiggs [Lyndon, tour manager]. It was like, ‘Want a job? Got any money?’ Putting them in a damn picture was the least we could do. They were the unsung heroes.”

The crew members at the time considered themselves a part of the band. They were paid the same $90-a-week salary, and the word was Duane issued an edict that if money was tight the crew should always be paid first. “We felt like we were part of the band,” says crew member Kim Payne, one of those featured on At Fillmore East. “It was truly more of a brotherhood than any kind of employee/employer relationship. Everyone was equal.”

Adds road manager Perkins, “Once, on my birthday, Duane asked for a $100 advance. I said, ‘Are you sure? You’ve already taken a lot,’ and he said, ‘I’m sure.’ So I filled out the receipt, he signed it, I gave him $100 and he handed it to me and said, ‘Happy birthday. Make sure that goes to my account and not the band’s.’”

“Duane truly appreciated everybody and understood that everybody was a piece of a puzzle,” Jaimoe says. “We all play together and every part is equally important, and that goes for the bus driver too. What you gonna do? Play all night and then drive the bus? Duane always said, ‘We’re all equal in this band.’ And that included the crew.”

Just 90 days after recording the album and just before its release, the Allman Brothers Band closed the Fillmore East down. The group was personally selected by Graham to be the hallowed venue’s final band after he had shocked everyone by announcing he was shutting the doors. “He closed the Fillmore with three nights and wanted us on all three, which I though was the kindest gesture and coolest thing,” Allman said.

“We were just dumbstruck when we found out that we were gonna close the Fillmore,” Butch Trucks said. “Can you think of a bigger honor at that time? Everyone wanted in on that gig. The Beach Boys showed up and unloaded all their stuff and said they’d have to play last, and Graham said, ‘Well, just pack up your shit. I have my closing band.' So the Beach Boys had to swallow their pride.

“The next-to-last night, we played until the morning, and we did things that we had never thought of before or since. Those are the moments that have always made this thing work.”

Graham’s insistence that the relatively unknown Allman Brothers must be the Fillmore East’s final band must have seemed bold, even wacky, to most observers. But just weeks after the club shuttered its doors for good, At Fillmore East came out, forever linking the band and the venue in the pop-culture pantheon. Yet, the recording was almost never released in its extended, double-album form. “Atlantic/Atco rejected the idea of releasing a double-live album,” Walden said.

“[Atlantic executive] Jerry Wexler thought it was ridiculous to preserve all these jams. But we explained to them that the Allman Brothers were the people’s band, that playing was what they were all about, and that a phonograph record was confining to a group like this.”

Walden won out and was proven right when the record — “people priced” at three dollars below standard list for a double album — slowly became a hit and the Allman Brothers became the most heralded band in the nation. Rolling Stone proclaimed the Allmans “the best damn rock ’n’ roll band” in the country, and by the fall, At Fillmore East was the Allman Brothers Band’s first Gold album.

“All of a sudden, here comes fame and fortune,” Gregg recalled. “In a three- or four-week period, we went from rags to riches — from living on a three-dollar-a-day per diem to, ‘Get anything you want, boys!’”

Still, things were not easy within the band. They entered Criteria Studios with Dowd and recorded three songs in just about a week, then took a break and returned to the road for a short run of shows, ending on October 17, 1971, at the Painter’s Mill Music Fair in Owings Mill, Maryland. It had been a trying few months, with drugs and the band’s hard-charging lifestyle catching up with many of them, including Duane.

“Duane never stuck a needle in his arm, but he would snort heroin a lot,” Trucks said. “One night in the summer of ’71, in San Francisco, Duane followed me to my hotel room and jumped in my face. He said, ‘I’m pissed off! When Dickey gets up to play, the rhythm section is pumping away, and when I get up there you’re laying back and not pushing at all.’ I looked him dead in the eye and said, ‘Duane, you’re so fucked up on that smack that you’re not giving us anything.’

“He looked me in the eye and walked out the door. I think he knew I was telling him the truth and that’s what he wanted to hear. He needed someone to tell him what he already knew. It was one of the few times I had the balls to get in his face.”

“It was nuts,” Doucette adds. “Everything was everywhere.”

With almost everyone in the band and crew struggling with heroin addictions, Duane, Oakley, Payne and crew member Red Dog flew to Buffalo and checked into the Linwood-Bryant Hospital for a week of rehab. A receipt shows the band’s general bank account purchased five round-trip tickets on Eastern Airlines from Macon to Buffalo for $369. Gregg was supposed to go as well, and a hospital receipt shows he was one of the people for whom a deposit was paid. Apparently, he changed his mind at the last minute.

The group spent less than a week in rehab, and then checked out. Duane spent a day in New York City, visiting with guitarist John Hammond and other friends.

“He came over to my loft and we played acoustic guitars and had a blast for hours,” Hammond recalls. “I so wish I had taped it! He seemed to be in really good spirits, his head clear and excited to go on. Things were happening for them. The live album had come out and was a hit, and they were playing bigger places. Their star was rising. Which seemed exactly as it should be.

“We talked about him perhaps producing an album for me. There were all these songs that I played in my show that I talked to him about recording, and he said that he would like to be involved. There was nothing concrete, but he was talking business: what percent he would take, and this and that.

“I was not a business guy like that, and he was very together about the band, his finances, dealing with the business end of things. He was a very bright guy who knew how talented he was and wasn’t going to take himself lightly.”

Duane returned to Macon on October 28, 1971. That night, he visited Red Dog, the roadie who had been in rehab with him and whose loyalty to the guitarist was profound enough to call him an acolyte.

“He wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to slide back into doing heroin, to make sure I was all right,” Red Dog recalled in a 1986 interview. “He sat on my couch, squeezing my arm and looking me right in the eye, and said, ‘You haven’t done any, have you?’ and I said, ‘No, man.’ And I fired right back on him: ‘Hey, have you?’”

The next day, Duane called Thom Doucette in Florida to check in on his old friend. Doucette had abruptly left the band on the road and returned home because of his own struggles with addiction. He had cleaned himself up and was thrilled to hear a vitality in his friend’s voice that indicated he too was overcoming his problems.

“He sounded great,” Doucette says. “He jumped through the phone, with an urgency in his voice, that shouted, ‘It’s me. It’s Duane! I’m back!’

“He goes, ‘You doing all right?’ and I said, ‘Man, never better. I’m grooving and the fish are running. This is it, baby.’ He said, ‘I’ll be down tonight. I already booked a reservation. I’m gonna ride down to the office, get my mail and get some money. We’ll go fishing, and then we’re going back to work.’ I wasn’t so sure about going back to work with the band, but I was so happy to hear from him.”

Shortly after hanging up with Doucette, Duane rode his motorcycle over to the group’s communal home, The Big House, where they were getting ready for a birthday party for Oakley’s wife, Linda. After visiting for a while, Duane got on his Harley-Davidson Sportster, which had been modified with extended forks that made it harder to handle.

Coming up over a hill and dropping down, Duane saw a flatbed lumber truck blocking his way. He pushed his bike to the left to swerve around the truck, but realized he was not going to make it and dropped his bike to avoid a collision. He hit the ground hard, the bike landing atop him.

Duane was alive and initially seemed okay, but he fell unconscious in the ambulance and had catastrophic head and chest injuries. As word of the accident began to circulate to band members and other family friends around Macon, many people began to drift toward the waiting room at the medical center.

“I was at my house when I got the call and went to the hospital,” recalls band friend and producer Johnny Sandlin. “I was hoping it wasn’t too bad and was planning on going in to see him. Guys were ending up in the emergency room from messing around with horses or bikes all the time.”

As the group gathered, someone emerged from the operating room with the unthinkable news: Duane had died in surgery three hours after the accident. The cause of death was listed as “severe injury of abdomen and head.”

“It was just unacceptable that he was gone,” Trucks remarked. “Unfathomable. I walked around stunned for weeks.”

At his funeral, Red Dog placed a joint in Duane’s pocket. Gregg gave his brother a silver dollar. Someone else added one of the Coricidin bottles Duane used as slides.

“We were all in shock,” Linda Oakley said. “It was like our guts had been torn out.”

Cowboy guitarist Scott Boyer, an old friend of Duane and Gregg’s summed up the feeling of the entire band and larger musical community: “It was inconceivable how someone that alive could be dead.”

Duane had lived to see the band’s breakthrough coming, but was not able to fully experience it.

“We worked so hard so long to get there. Then, bam! He was gone,” Gregg Allman said. “At the time, I thought, Shit, my brother really got shortchanged, because he never quite got to see what he had accomplished. I felt that way for years, but I’ve slowly come to realize that he left a hell of a legacy for dying at the age of 24 years old.

“And a lot of it has to do with the Fillmore album. I still listen to it and I marvel at how fresh his licks are and how great his tone is. That boy was one of a kind, man, just like Oakley was. The chance that all six of us would meet up and form a band is, like, unbelievable.”

Allman paused for a second to exhale a long breath and lets out a little chuckle.

“If you want to hear what I’m talking about, go get you that album.”

Nearly everything you need to know about Charlie Christian can be learned from the compilation album Charlie Christian — The Genius of the Electric Guitar. Released on Columbia Records in 1987, this album has most of his classic performances, including “Rose Room,” “Seven Come Eleven,” “Wholly Cats,” “Air Mail Special” and other great sides. Charlie gave us a lot in his all-too-brief career, before he died on March 2, 1942, at the age of 25.

Charlie Christian was born in Dallas in 1919 before his family resettled in Oklahoma. The Christians were poor, even by the low standards for a Black family of that era. Charlie was deeply influenced by Blind Lemon Jefferson and saxophonist Lester Young, and may have also drawn inspiration from guitarist Eddie Lang. I long to understand how he became a brilliant innovator, but maybe it’s a naive question.

I recall asking Buckethead about his guitar influences, only for him to reply, “The rides at Disneyland.” Sometimes one has to refrain from asking such questions and just accept what is. Charlie Christian seems like a case in point. He was what he was.

Charlie’s instrument of choice was a Gibson ES-150 electric hollowbody guitar with a single blade pickup. His model of electric guitar was commonly sold with a Gibson EH-150 tube amp, which had a single 10-inch speaker and produced 15 watts. Although he also played a Gibson ES-250 guitar through an EH-185 amp, Christian favored the ES-150. With this setup, he created a sound that has been likened to a “distorted saxophone.”

His big break came when he auditioned for the Benny Goodman Sextet in September 1939. Alongside band members Lionel Hampton on vibraphone, pianist Fletcher Henderson, bassist Artie Bernstein and drummer Nick Fatool, Christian became an integral part of the Goodman sound. He toured the states and was heard on the radio, and his contributions come through loud and clear on this album.

Reportedly, Charlie contributed significantly to the band’s songwriting but was not credited. However, it’s here that we find his legacy, swinging hard and cutting through all the disadvantages.

The first Christian solo I learned from this album is from “Rose Room,” and it still amazes me. I never let this solo leave my fingertips and I review it every three or four months. I’ve looked at it from every angle, and the more I analyze it, the more I’m taken by its simplicity.

I honestly don’t know if Charlie knew it, but he superimposes the minor 6th arpeggio over dominant 7th chords. If presented with an F7 chord, he’d play (from the 3rd fret, 1st string in 3rd position) G, Eb, C, A and (2nd fret, 3rd string, then back to 3rd position), G, F, Eb and C. Presto! This C minor 6 arpeggio is now an F9 arpeggio that creates an otherworldly beauty.

I think another factor in Charlie’s influence over a generation of guitarists is that his concepts are “doable.” On “Seven Come Eleven,” Charlie basically plays the blues over the “I Got Rhythm” A sections, thereby giving us mere mortals permission to solo over these changes without Pat Martino or Charlie Parker looming over our shoulders.

Over the B section, Charlie incorporates minor-6th arpeggios with phrases that are lovely and high level but still very “guitar friendly.” These phrases usually remain in one position that throw us a lifeline of understanding. What he did with his reasonably sized toolbox was incredible. He showed us all the way.

Charlie suffered from tuberculosis and was forced to leave the Goodman tour in June 1941 to be hospitalized. I’ve read that while he was there, a “friend” paid a visit, bringing him reefer and prostitutes. The following day Charlie Christian was dead.

His legacy is substantial. He rose above his poor upbringing, broke the color barrier with Goodman, and basically risked his life to rise above the prejudice of that time while he redefined the role and voice of electric guitar. Along the way he almost inexplicably becoming one of the most influential electric guitarists of the 20th century.

Listen and you’ll find an innovator who laid the groundwork for jazz, blues and rock electric guitar playing, and did it all in just two-and-a-half years before his untimely death.

Few guitar performances have stunned audiences quite like Prince’s appearance at George Harrison’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction on March 15, 2004.

Joining Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood and Harrison’s son, Dhani, for a tribute performance of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” Prince stepped forward at the song’s climax and unleashed a breathtaking solo on his custom Hohner Mad Cat electric guitar. Blending fluid technique, fearless phrasing and effortless showmanship, he left viewers — and even his fellow performers — in awe.

Billy Gibbons was one of them.

Although the ZZ Top guitarist had long admired Prince as a songwriter and showman, he admits he had no idea just how formidable he was as a guitarist until that performance.

“I didn’t really know Prince to be that accomplished as a guitarist,” Gibbons told Dan Rather for AXS TV. “I knew he held a guitar, but I didn’t really see him play it much. But that one appearance at the close of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction awards really caught me off guard, and I started listening intently.”

The revelation came at just the right time. Not long afterward, while ZZ Top were on tour, Gibbons found himself crossing paths with Prince in New York City.

“I was in Manhattan, and we had made an appearance,” Gibbons recalled. “It was late at night, and I was looking for a place to get something to eat.”

His favorite late-night spot in the Meatpacking District was closed for renovations, but the venue across the street was buzzing.

“There was another place that had recently opened. I had never seen it before, but there was great fanfare going on. I saw Brazilian-looking dancers up on top of the bar. The music was so loud, I said, ‘Well, I gotta go.’”

After taking a look around, Gibbons says, “A large guy came up and tapped me on the shoulder. He said, ‘Somebody wants to speak to you.’”

The man pointed toward a lone figure sitting in a banquette. It was Prince.

“He said, ‘I just would like to talk guitar.’ And I said, ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place.’”

The two spent the next two hours, as Gibbons puts it, “peeling the onion,” swapping ideas and techniques until nearly dawn.

“We sat for a good two hours talking about how to do this and how to do that. This was now going on till 4:30, five in the morning. And I said, ‘By the way, can you teach me how to play that guitar figure that opens up your great song “When Doves Cry”?’

“And he said, ‘Well, I fell into it by accident. I haven’t been able to play it like that ever since. Let’s go learn it!’

“But yeah,” Gibbons says with a laugh, “Prince was a prince.”

Buddy Guy occupies a unique place in guitar history. He learned from blues giants including Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, Lightnin’ Hopkins and John Lee Hooker before going on to influence Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

As the blues legend prepares to celebrate his 90th birthday in July by returning to the road on his BG90 tour, it’s a fitting time to revisit a conversation with Guitar Player in which he explained why, despite everything that changed around him, he never felt the need to change himself.

“I’ve learned a little more, but it’s still Buddy Guy,” he told Guitar Player in 2001. “If you put me through a modern amplifier, somebody is going to say, ‘He don’t sound like he used to.’ Well, of course, the guitars and amps aren’t the same today. But the man is still the same. I’m using the same fingers I left Louisiana with.”

For Guy, that continuity wasn’t stubbornness so much as an understanding of where his music came from. The more he reflected on his own career, which began in 1953, the more he saw himself as part of a tradition rather than a singular talent.

“I can’t really say how my style has changed,” he said. “I used to tell T-Bone Walker, B.B., Lightnin’ Hopkins, Muddy, and John Lee Hooker — all those guys I learned from — that I didn’t have anything unique. Guess what they said? ‘Buddy, we got it from someone else, too.’”

The biggest lesson those legendary musicians passed on had little to do with technique.

“Oh, man, lesson number one is be cool,” Guy recalled. “They weren’t making any money, but they were having fun playing.”

Watching those pioneers of acoustic and electric blues shaped his outlook long before the genre found a larger audience through the British blues boom.

“I used to look at them and say, ‘Buddy, you ain’t never gonna be that good, and nobody is ever going to fill those shoes.’ Those guys weren’t superstars then, but I thought they were living the high life. It made me think, This is as high as you can go.

“Then the British groups got into the blues, and were able to live decently from it. But I still worked in the daytime. I drove a tow truck.”

Ironically, it was those same rock musicians who later helped introduce Guy to millions of listeners.

“It makes me feel great, because some of the things that people like Eric Clapton and Keith Richards and the late Stevie Ray Vaughan said about me have helped me more than any record company,” he said. “So many kids come up to me and say, “I didn’t know anything about you until I read what Eric Clapton said.’ That gives me a big lift.”

That gratitude didn’t stop Guy from acknowledging the inequalities he’d witnessed throughout his career.

“Let’s be honest — when you’re Black, it doesn’t matter how good a blues record you make, you’re not going to get it played on these big radio stations unless some super guy like Eric Clapton or Stevie Ray Vaughan plays the same thing you played,” he said.

“Blues has been like that ever since I’ve been alive. It has been ignored until some rock group gets it, plays it to big audiences, and tells them whose music it is.”

Still, Guy never lost faith in either the music or the people who loved it.

“I guess that’s why we still sing the blues,” he said. “I just look at it like a prizefighter — if I don’t get in that ring and risk getting knocked out, I ain’t got a chance to win.”

By the time Robert Smith first stepped onstage with the Cure in the late 1970s, the band was already unlike anything else in Britain’s post-punk landscape. Angular and brooding, melodic yet mercurial, the Cure’s sound was built as much on mood as on notes.

And at the heart of it all was Smith’s electric guitar — raw, textural, and often deliberately “wrong.”

As he told Guitar Player in our September 1992 issue, it all has to do with how he hears music — not as technically perfect but as floating in a world where Earth’s physics don’t apply. It’s why he deliberately messes with the pitch of his guitar, sometimes by using modulation pedals, other times by adjusting the varispeed on a tape recorder, or — more likely, and more simply — by detuning his high E string “by a few cents” with his electronic tuner.

“I don't know what it adds,” he said, “but the guitar just doesn't sound quite right to me normally.”

While detuning is a common tool among guitarists looking for heavier or darker tones, Smith has wielded it like a sculptor, reshaping his guitar into something far more individually expressive.

On early albums like Seventeen Seconds and Faith, Smith would often detune his guitar a whole step or more, giving tracks like “A Forest” a ghostly, underwater quality. Rather than add lush overdubs or rely on synths to build atmosphere, he leaned into the natural warble and drift that comes from slack strings and unanchored tuning.

“And the way you play affects the perceived tuning,” he added, explaining that both he and former Cure guitarist Porl Thompson have completely opposite playing styles. “If Porl and I tune together and play the same thing, but he plays hard and I play soft, it will sound completely off.”

That sense of fragility became a trademark. Whether it was the jangling melancholy of Pornography or the dream-pop shimmer of Disintegration, Smith’s use of alternate tunings and semi-detuned guitars helped define the Cure’s evolving sound. In the studio, it gave songs an otherworldly tension — chords didn’t resolve in the usual way, and melodies floated oddly above shifting harmonic foundations.

“A lot of the things on our record that sound like heavy chorusing are actually just detuned instruments,” Smith told Guitar Player. “The only drawback to that is that onstage it's very confusing sometimes, especially with a lot of phasing effects going on. It turns into this overwhelming pulsing sound, and you can't hear anything.”

In the studio, however, Smith has more ability to create textures as he pleases. “I often defy the tuners, particularly with keyboard overdubs,” he says. “I even change the speed of the tape to detune some parts.”

This can sometimes have unintended results, such as when he forgot to reset the tape deck’s varispeed control while working on the hit “Friday I’m in Love,” from the Cure’s 1992 album Wish. The song is a quarter-tone sharp, halfway between D and E flat.

“I was playing with the varispeed and forgot to turn it off,” Smith explained. “But the whole feel changed, and the fact that it's the only song on Wish that's not in concert pitch really lifts it out and makes it sound different. After working on the record for months, hearing something a quarter-tone off makes your brain take a step backwards.”

Smith’s aesthetic extends to his gear, as it has from the start. One of his prized studio guitars has been a Fender Jazzmaster fitted with a pickup from a cheap Woolworth’s Top 20 electric guitar, which he says he bought for £20 in 1978.

“I took it in to record our first album, along with a little WEM combo amp,” he says of the Woolworth Top 20. “[Manager/producer] Chris Parry, who was paying for the record, said, ‘You can’t use that!’”

Smith decided to get a Fender Jazzmaster after spotting Elvis Costello playing one on an appearance on Top of the Pops.

“We went out and bought a Fender Jazzmaster, and I immediately had the Top 20 pickup installed in it,” he said. “That really upset Chris. I played the entire Three Imaginary Boys album through a Top 20 pickup.”

It’s a brilliant guitar,” he added, “though I actually bought it because of how it looked.”

While that may upset purists, it’s the reason Smith has been such a unique and influential guitarist and continues to shape music today as he collaborates with Olivia Rodrigo and the Rolling Stones on their new albums.

Leslie West is decidedly modest when it comes to “Mississippi Queen,” the rock behemoth that put his band Mountain on the map when it was released in 1970.

“The song’s got three chords,” the late guitarist told Guitar Player. “Any idiot can play it.” He chuckles, then adds rather immodestly, “I just happen to play it better than anybody.”

West admitted that the track — driven by West’s fierce electric guitar leads — “has just everything you need to make it a winner. You’ve got the cowbell, the riff is pretty damn good, and it sounds incredible. It feels like it wants to jump out of your car radio. To me, it sounds like a big, thick milkshake. It’s rich and chocolatey. Who doesn’t love that?”

“Mississippi Queen” was the opening track on Climbing!, the debut album from the four-piece, which included West, bassist/producer Felix Pappalardi, drummer Corky Laing and keyboardist Steve Knight.

As West pointed out, the song doesn’t wear out its welcome. “The whole thing is two and a half minutes,” he exclaimed. “It’s over before it starts. People ask me, ‘Why didn’t you make it longer?’ What would be the point? At two minutes, you don’t get bored.”

The song came to him at a moment when he was having some success. After releasing Mountain in 1969, West expanded the project into a full band, Mountain, which made its debut at Woodstock in August that year, creating high anticipation for what would be the group’s first album.

“Thanks to my first record company check, I had this huge apartment on Park Avenue,” the New York City native explained. “I thought, Now that I have this place, I’d better do something to keep it. So I was messing around with this riff and these chords.

“I had this thing I used to do – it was my ‘bedroom sound.’ I’d put this little amp on my bed and position it so it was shooting right into the pillow. I cranked it up all the way, and it sounded like a truck. It really worked with this new idea I had.’

It turned out that Laing had already composed some lyrics that were just waiting for a song. “So when Corky heard my riff and chords, he showed me what he had,” West continued. “I said, ‘Okay, I think this can be something. Let me work on it.’”

Laing’s friend David Rea came up with a few lines for the chorus, and the song was complete. They entered the studio without even having rehearsed it.

"We never actually played the song ’til we recorded it,” West said, “but I had a sense that it would come together.”

It did so very quickly in a matter of a few attempts.

“There’s this story on Wikipedia that we did all these takes,” West said. “What a load of crap. We did maybe two takes.

“And the story goes that Corky got bored, so he started playing the cowbell. Also crap. The cowbell was always in there. The first time we played it, Felix said, ‘Count the fuckin’ song off!’ Corky had a cowbell on his kit, and that’s what he used to count it off. After that, we were in.

“It’s only one guitar track on the rhythm – a Les Paul TV Jr. into a 50-watt Marshall that went into a Sunn 12-inch cabinet. I knew how to make it sound extra fat. I overdubbed the leads, and we were done.”

Almost. Against West’s wishes, Pappalardi added a piano to the recording, which can be heard playing a trill near the end.

“Felix stuck a little piano on the track,” West explained, “which I always hated.”

Although West didn’t consider the song a potential hit, he was encouraged after demoing it for no less than Jimi Hendrix.

“We recorded at Studio A of the Record Plant, and Jimi Hendrix was in Studio B,” he said. “I played him some of the album we were making, including ‘Mississippi Queen,’ and his eyes got wide. Seeing how impressed he was made me feel like we were on to something.”

The label agreed. It released “Mississippi Queen” as the lead single from Climbing! To ensure DJs pushed the song, radio station promo copies of the record had the song on both sides “so DJs couldn’t get creative and play the flipside instead,” West explained. “The single only got to number 21, but I think it could have gone a lot higher. I don’t know how they decide these charts. I mean, radio stations were playing the hell out of it.

“Live, the reaction was always enormous. People freaked out the second we started playing it. We stretched it out a bit onstage, because two minutes is pretty short, and we usually saved it for the encore. I learned a long time ago to go out on a high note.

“It’s a song that keeps on giving,” noted West, who died in 2020. A lot of people have covered it. I like most of the versions, but I really like the one that Ozzy Osbourne did. I even played on it. The song has been sampled something like 2,000 times. Every time I hear it, I call my accountant.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can you spot a Texas guitar player by hearing him?

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

What's the blues scene like in Austin?

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

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

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

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

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

“Just listened.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

What specifics did you get from various players?

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

Who were the main blues players you heard on records?

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

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

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

How did you meet Tommy Shannon and Chris Layton?

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

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

Was he basically a blues drummer when you found him?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is that to get a variety of tones?

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

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

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

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

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

Texas Flood sounds like there are hardly any overdubs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you usually record pretty loud?

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

What about Voodoo Chile?

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

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

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

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

You don't use the Super Reverbs now?

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

Was John Hammond in the studio for the first album?

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

Do you have any guitars not in the Strat family?

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

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

Do you play slide in open tuning?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What about the old beat-up one?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do any of your Strats have maple necks?

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

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

Which guitars have you recorded with most?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who works on your guitars?

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

Do you string all the Strats the same?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What's the turnaround on that song – IIVs?

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

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

“I don't know any of that stuff.”

What about the chord voicings you use?

“I just look for things that sound right.”

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

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

The murder of John Lennon on December 8, 1980, sent shockwaves through the music world. For Mark Knopfler, it also sparked an idea that would eventually become one of the most unusual songs of his solo career.

Lennon's killer was an obsessed fan, and the tragedy forced musicians everywhere to confront the darker side of fame. Knopfler found himself thinking about that subject through the lens of his own experiences, particularly a German autograph hunter named Rüdiger who regularly appeared outside Dire Straits concerts.

The idea came quickly.

“I wrote the lyrics to ‘Rüdiger’ without changing a word right after John Lennon was assassinated,” Knopfler told Vulture.

While the lyrics arrived almost immediately, the music did not. Knopfler has often described himself as a songwriter first and a guitarist second, believing that songs emerge in their own time rather than through force of will.

“There are definitely some that hang around in the junkyard out the back in bits,” he explained. “One song took 16 years. Other songs can take 16 minutes.”

In this case, he was talking about “Rüdiger.” Although the lyrics were written in the immediate aftermath of Lennon's death, the song remained unfinished until it appeared on his 1996 solo debut, Golden Heart.

The finished track — an acoustic-led number with weeping clean electric guitar lines — tells the true story of a devoted fan who followed Knopfler from show to show in search of an autograph. While Rüdiger was harmless, the song's origins reveal how Lennon's murder prompted Knopfler to reflect on the fine line between admiration and obsession.

That long gestation period was entirely in keeping with Knopfler's approach to songwriting. Rather than chase ideas that aren't working, he prefers to leave them alone until inspiration returns.

“I enjoy songwriting so much, but if it's not working, I'll get up and leave it,” he said while promoting One Deep River in 2024. “I know it'll be alright if I come back to it, eventually.”

For Knopfler, “Rüdiger” became proof of that philosophy: a song born from one of rock's darkest moments, but one that took 16 years to find its final form.

Lenny Kravitz learned plenty about vintage electric guitars from Tom Petty and Mike Campbell. But one of the best lessons came later, when a man facing jail time pulled into a parking lot with a car full of vintage instruments — including the Les Paul that would become Kravitz’s number-one studio guitar.

Kravitz says his education in vintage gear began when he opened for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers following the release of his album Let Love Rule. Campbell, in particular, owns a number of classics, including the Fender Broadcaster he calls “the guitar I can’t live without.”

“When Let Love Rule came out, I opened for Tom Petty, and he and Mike Campbell taught me so much about vintage guitars,” Kravitz recalled. “I’m talking about ’89, when you could still find good things at really great prices. I’d go with Tom and Mike to stores in each city, and at that stage I couldn’t afford the things that they could, but I felt that they were educating me.”

Once albums like Mama Said and Are You Gonna Go My Way turned him into a major star, Kravitz was finally able to put those lessons to use.

“I really started to pick up a lot of great guitars,” he said. “People used to show up in the parking lot, find somebody from the crew and ask them to tell me that they had guitars to sell.”

One encounter proved particularly memorable.

“I got word that this guy was in the parking lot selling guitars,” Kravitz recalled. “And he, unfortunately, was facing jail time and needed to get a lawyer. I went out to his car, and I probably bought five guitars that day.”

The haul included a ’57 Telecaster, an early-’50s Stratocaster and a ’53 Les Paul Goldtop conversion that quickly became one of the most important guitars in his collection.

“It became my number one studio Les Paul from that time to now. It’s got a great Les Paul bite, and the distortion is really smooth and even, from the high end to the mids to the low. It’s on the slightly cleaner side — the pickups are not hot, but they’re just perfect. This has been on every album since I got it, starting with Are You Gonna Go My Way.”

There’s no doubt Eddie Van Halen was one of the most influential guitarists of his generation. Although he has his detractors, Van Halen’s playing helped ignite an electric guitar revolution built on virtuosity that came to dominate the 1980s.

But Van Halen believed many of the guitarists who followed in his wake misunderstood what he was actually doing. Speaking with Dweezil Zappa for a 1995 Guitar Player interview, he argued that an emphasis on speed and flash missed the point of his playing, which — at its core — was about feel, not technical display.

“I’ve influenced a batch of people in a certain period of time, and I think those people missed my point,” he said. “They took what they learned from me and made it very sterile and too calculated, too typewriter-perfect. I won’t name any names.

“People got sick of that type of flash guitar playing, whereas I never considered what I did flash. It was natural to me. I still play the same.”

Van Halen acknowledged that he, too, was shaped by earlier players, most notably Eric Clapton. But even as he absorbed those influences, he insisted his own playing quickly moved in a direction rooted less in imitation than in instinct.

“Eric Clapton was my god and everybody else’s,” he said. “I said that once in an interview: ‘That’s the guy I grew up on, but I don’t play anything like him.’ And it came back to haunt me. They took it like I was being an uppity prick about it. I didn’t mean that at all. I just meant that if you listen to Clapton and listen to me, it’s two completely different styles, even though he’s the guy I grew up on.“

Nevertheless, Van Halen took one rule from Clapton: a solo should tell a story.

“The shit he does… he spoke when he played,” he said of Clapton. “After having grown up on that, I thought that every time I solo I should make it like that too.”

By the end of the 1980s and into the early ’90s, guitar music began shifting away from the excesses of shred toward a more stripped-down aesthetic associated with grunge and alternative rock. Van Halen viewed that change not as a rejection of his era but as part of a recurring cycle in popular music.

Nevertheless, he found the results uninspiring.

“Nowadays it’s almost like solos are interchangeable. You can put a disc on and listen to a solo on one song and you might as well put it in any song because they don’t mean anything. It’s basically just beating off, and there’s no point to it.

“I think the reason why people play the way they do now is because it all broke down. Where could guitar have gone from where people in the ’80s took it? It was so flash it got ridiculous. So shit — the natural thing is to break it down to the lowest common denominator and start over.”

Ed wasn’t dismissive of newer players as a group, however. Even artists who stood outside technical orthodoxy, like Kurt Cobain, could still be making meaningful musical statements.

“He was still speaking,” Van Halen said of the Nirvana guitarist — a point that Joe Satriani recently made. “He was still expressing himself through one string or one note or whatever. But some people’s lack of technique doesn’t work.”

Ultimately, Van Halen saw the ebb and flow of guitar styles as cyclical rather than permanent — an ongoing reset between extremes of complexity and simplicity.

“The natural thing is to break it down to the lowest common denominator and start over,” he said. “And it’s just gonna build right back up. It’s almost like every ten years it happens. This is phase two of disco and punk. We survived the first one, and we’re going to survive this one too.”

We've all seen the classic, grainy clips of Jimmy Page dragging a violin bow across the strings of his Telecaster or Les Paul to produce eerie, evil, previously unimaginable sounds.

He did it frequently in the twilight years of the Yardbirds and whipped it out again in the early days of Led Zeppelin.

Given the fact that violins, cellos, violas and other bowed instruments had already existed for centuries, it's not so shocking, profound and/or mind-blowing that an enterprising young Brit should decide to apply the concept to the world of electric guitars.

But was Page first rock star to do so? Not exactly.

U.K. guitarist Eddie Phillips beat him to it by a few years, it seems. According to some sources, Phillips first took "bow to guitar string" in 1963 and as a member of the Mark Four in the mid-Sixties. That band evolved into the Creation — a respected yet still commonly overlooked Swinging Sixties London band.

“With feedback came the violin bow idea," Phillips told journalist Chris Hunt in 1988. "I just wanted to make the guitar sound different to what it should sound like. I don't even know why I cottoned on to that idea, really, but it just felt like a good idea and a good visual thing as well, just to try and get a sound out of the guitar that no one had ever heard before, something that was against the rules.

"I was aware that [Page] was doing it in 1967 because we did a tour with the Stones in Germany, and one of the roadies was an ex-Jimmy Page roadie, and he said, ‘Oh, I see you're doing that, I've just been working with Jimmy and he's doing that.' By that time I'd been doing it for four years. That's all I can say really…