When Zakk Wylde joined Ozzy Osbourne’s band, he had a tall order to fill: living up to the legacy of Osbourne’s previous guitarists Randy Rhoads and Jake E. Lee, as well as Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi.

Although he was barely 20 at the time, Wylde was up for the challenge. His bravado led to 1987’s No Rest for the Wicked, a bona fide metal masterpiece, loaded with touches of glam-meets-doom. The album was on-point for the 1980s.

“Going into it, I felt like I was standing where my heroes stood,” Wylde tells Guitar Player. “I came in after Jake and Randy, so — kind of like in baseball — I felt like I was the new catcher. And being a Sabbath freak, and loving all the stuff with Randy and Jake, it felt like I was wearing the Yankee pinstripes, so to speak.”

But paying homage to Sabbath and Ozzy’s 1980s solo work wasn’t going to cut it for the next album, 1991’s No More Tears. By the early ’90s, guitar music was changing, and Wylde knew that he and the music he made with Ozzy needed to change with it.

Which was just fine by Wylde, who had been listening to plenty of country and southern-tinged rock, like the Eagles, the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. He would inject those sounds into his guitar work on No More Tears.

And perhaps no song demonstrates it better than “Mama, I’m Coming Home,” a song that was and remains Ozzy Osbourne’s only top-40 hit as a solo artist.

“It’s like learning about foods from different countries and then mixing little parts of each into some new recipe,” Wylde says, explaining his meld of southern rock and metal. “The next thing you know, it’s like, ‘Wow, this tastes amazing! What is this?’”

Wylde boils the essence of “Mama, I’m Coming Home” down to his Ozzy’s shared chemistry, as well as the song’s lyrics, which were written by Motörhead bassist Lemmy Kilmister. As the story goes, Ozzy gave Lemmy a tape with of demos and expected to hear back from him in about a week. The bassist returned with lyrics for three of the songs within just hours. One of those was “Mama, I’m Coming Home.”

As Ozzy explained in the liner notes for his 1997 compilation, The Ozzman Cometh, the tune’s melody had been in his head for some time.

“I had been walking around with the melody in my head for a couple of years but never got a chance to finish it until I was working with Zakk on the No More Tears album,” he wrote. “At that time Zakk and I were doing a lot of writing on the piano.”

As for the song’s title? “‘Mama, I’m Coming Home’ was always something I’d say on the phone to my wife near the end of a tour.”

It’s not hard to see why Ozzy favored the song, with its strong melody and lyrics and Wylde’s mix of pretty acoustic and heavy electric guitar. Ozzy loved the tune so much that he included it in his final solo set at his and Black Sabbath’s Back to the Beginning farewell concert. It was the only song in his solo set that didn’t come from 1980’s The Blizzard of Ozz.

Ozzy clearly wasn’t alone in his affection for “Mama, I’m Coming Home.” The song has been covered by everyone from Carrie Underwood to Jelly Roll. Asked why he thinks the song resonates so strongly with people, Wylde shrugs.

“I think it’s just because it’s a ballad. That’s it right there.”

No More Tears, and “Mama, I’m Coming Home” specifically, saw you incorporating a diverse range of styles into your playing. How did that come about?

I used to sit up in front of the tour bus, and we’d be listening to the Eagles and Neil Young all night. So I was listening to that as we were going into the second album, No More Tears, and I started listening to more Allman Brothers, which was always around when I was growing up.

Southern rock was a big influence on your playing around that time.

Yeah. So I started getting into the Allmans, Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker and Molly Hatchet. I was listening to a lot of that when we were working on No More Tears, and that’s where a lot of the chicken-pickin’ stuff that came from. I was also into Albert Lee, who was like the first Yngwie. [laughs]

So the intro to “Mama, I’m Coming Home,” that’s all Skynyrd, Allmans, Albert Lee and country bends.So that was creeping into the music.

It’s funny, because at Back to the Beginning, Oz was like, “Zakky, we should do some writing.” He goes, “I really liked it when you started going through your Allman Brothers phase because it was heavy, but also melodic. It was just bashing all the time. We should do some more stuff like that.” So when I look back on that record, that’s pretty much where my head was at.

Can you remember what it was like for you and Ozzy as you were initially working “Mama, I’m Coming Home” out?

Me and [Wylde’s wife] Barb had an apartment in Burbank on Case Avenue, near a drug rehab. I think it was called Cry for Help, and it was across the street from this squatter's house It was a complete shoot and stab area, if you know what I mean. [laughs]

That’s where Ozzy and I wrote it, jamming on piano. I remember driving Ozzy over there in my car. I pulled into the driveway, and it was like rusted-out cars on cinderblocks, the grass was four feet high, the windows were smashed in, shutters were crooked, and there was a couch sitting on the front lawn with springs hanging out. [laughs]

I remember as we pulled into the driveway, Oz looked at me terrified, and was like, “Sharon’s paying you, isn’t she?” [laughs] And I go, “Oz, it’s a lot nicer on the inside!”

I couldn’t stop laughing. And he was looking at me, going, “Are you fucking with me?! Please tell me you’re fucking with me. At my age, my heart can’t handle things like this.” [laughs]

So we jammed on the piano, and Ozzy had that melody. I don’t know if it was just his love for the Beatles, but if you listen to those Sabbath records and everything he did with Randy Rhoads and Jake E. Lee, but Ozzy is just the king of melody.

Once you two had the song worked out, how did Lemmy enter the picture with the lyrics?

Oz just called him up in the afternoon: “Lemmy, can you write some lyrics?” And three hours later, Lemmy had three different sets of lyrics. [laughs] He thought it was gonna take Lemmy a couple of days just to get something that he was happy with. But Lemmy just went, “Here, I’ve got a bunch of lyrics for you right here.”.

When it came time to record “Mama, I’m Coming Home,” how did that go down?

Obviously, the solo is just my love for the Eagles — Joe Walsh and Don Felder. Even the lick at the end, that’s from “Hotel California.” It’s a Joe Walsh lick.

But as far as the rest of it goes, it’s all layered guitars, like what Jimmy Page did. It’s the Jimmy Page guitar army! [laughs]

How did you approach the acoustic opening portion of “Mama, I’m Coming Home?”

The intro is a 12-string and a six-string, and I’m doing octaves as well. So there’s actually three guitars going on there at the same time, That one came out really pretty.

It is pretty. And then it gets very heavy thereafter.

Yeah. Just before the second chorus, where Ozzy sings “I’ve seen your face a hundred times,” we have this lead in to it that goes dun, dun, dun— that’s complete Eagles right there. [laughs] It’s just a harmony line, so that’s a complete Don Felder and Joe Walsh kind of thing. And like I said before, I was learning from, and listening to all those bands, and digesting it to where it was in my DNA.

What guitars and amps did you use while recording “Mama, I’m Coming Home?”

I had my Les Pauls: I probably used the Grail, the Rebel, or my guitar with the red bull’s eye. It was one of those. For amps, it was the Marshall JCM800s, you know, the 100-watt heads, the 2203s, with 6550 Groove Tubes.

For the acoustic intro, I didn’t have the acoustics I use now, which are the Gibson Dove and the Wylde Audio acoustics. We could have rented a six or 12-string.

“Mama, I’m Coming Home” must have meant a lot to Ozzy, as it was the only solo song he chose to sing at Back to the Beginning that wasn’t from The Blizzard of Ozz record.

It was always part of the set. I remember when we played it back for the first time after it was done, we were all like, “Wow!” We were all excited about it. Yeah, Oz liked it.

I just look at when we did that song as a magical time. The second album, No More Tears, was a magical time for me, because I look back on listening to the Eagles, the Allmans, Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker, Molly Hatchet, and all that stuff that was sneaking into my playing. And obviously, “Mama, I’m Coming Home” was a byproduct of that.

Oz loved all that stuff, too. Like when we’d be listening to “Hotel California,” or whatever, Oz would go, “God, this is so good. I remember when this first came out,” and he be telling me about all the time Sabbath did a show with Skynyrd or the Eagles. [Black Sabbath and the Eagles performed at the California Jam on April 6, 1974, along with a host of other popular groups of the day.] He would be like, “Wow, that was pretty insane!” And if you look at those lineups, it was pretty crazy. But anyway, I look back on that all as just a magical time, man.

More than half a century since the release of “Layla,” one of the most iconic tracks in Eric Clapton’s canon, Rita Coolidge is still waiting to be credit for writing the outro’s piano lines.

Clapton's own signature is, of course, all over the eponymous 1970 track from Derek & the Dominos' Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, an album with an intriguing backstory of its own. The album is a uniquely personal entry in Clapton's catalog, written and recorded while the guitarist was in the throes of longing for Pattie Harrison, the wife of his famous Beatle pal George.

While the song's signature electric guitar riff was penned by the then largely unknown Duane Allman, who guested on the record, the tune was Clapton's entirely — up to the piano coda that concludes the song's final minutes. That final icing on the cake was written by Dominos drummer Jim Gordon and singer Coolidge.

Coolidge was hardly anonymous at the time. Like Clapton and the rest of his band, she had served in Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett's band, ground zero for Derek & the Dominos. Since then, Coolidge had gone on to record with artists that included Joe Cocker, Leon Russell — who wrote Cocker's hit "Delta Lady" for her — Stephen Stills and Clapton himself on his self-titled debut solo album.

As the singer explained in a TikTok post, she was in Miami's Criteria studio — the same facility where Layla was recorded — having her photo taken to promote her 1971 debut solo album, when she heard the song being played.

“I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, I recognize this music and know this music,'" she says. “They’re like, ‘You don’t know it, it’s a brand-new Eric Clapton record,’ and I said, ‘It’s my music!’ They took pictures of the veins popping out in my neck. I was so upset.”

Coolidge says, after hearing the song, she rushed to Tower Records, where, to her dismay, she found her name absent in the credits.

“I started trying to get in touch with Eric through Robert Stigwood, who was his manager at the time, and was just a mogul,” she recalls. “I got him finally on the phone, and I said, ‘I’m one of the writers, that’s my music.’ He said, ‘Yeah, what are you gonna do about it? You’re a girl. You don’t have the money to fight this. Let it go.’ And that was it.”

In her memoir, Delta Lady, Coolidge says Clapton heard her play the song during their previous recording sessions together, long before he’d woven it into “Layla’s” tapestry.

“We played the song for Eric Clapton in England,” she wrote. “I remember sitting at the piano in Olympic Studios while Eric listened to me play it. Jim and I left a cassette of the demo, hoping, of course, that he might cover it.”

Although he hasn't publicly addressed Coolidge's claims, Clapton told Guitar Player in 1985 that he had coaxed the song away from Gordon for use as the coda to "Layla."

"Jim Gordon wrote that and had been secretly going back into the studio and recording his own album, without any of us knowing it," Clapton told assistant editor Dan Forte. "And they were all love songs composed on the piano. And we caught him playing this one day and said, 'Come on, man. Can we have that?'

"So he was happy to give us that part. And we made the two pieces into one song."

While Clapton did give Gordon a co-writing credit for the song, Coolidge's part in Derek and the Dominos' short-lived legacy remains overlooked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As for the famous chorus?

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

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

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

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

Which is definitely a far cry from playing something dumb.

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

When Steve Cropper heard the mixes of his final album, he knew exactly what he thought of it.

“I finished the mixes about a week and a half before Steve passed, and we brought a CD to him at the medical facility,” songwriter and producer Jon Tiven recalls. “He called me the night before he passed to tell me how much he loved it. He was playing it for everyone who came to visit him, telling them it was the best record he’d ever made.”

That album — Watching the Tide — will arrive later this year, serving as a poignant final statement from one of the most influential guitarists in soul and rock history.

The record was largely completed before Cropper’s death in December, with 10 of its 11 tracks finished beforehand. Recorded at Nashville’s RCA Studio C, the album again pairs him with Tiven and is being released under the banner Steve Cropper & the Midnight Hour.

Like its predecessor Friendlytown, the project brings in a notable roster of collaborators. Eric Clapton appears on the lead single “Ticket First,” released May 7, while Ronnie Wood contributes to “Until Now.” Other guests include Billy Gibbons and Brian May, with May joining Cropper on the aptly titled “My Angels Are Calling.”

“Making music was Steve’s greatest joy,” Tiven says. “Steve was so encouraged by Friendlytown. He was adamant he wanted to do another record.”

Cropper’s career stretched back more than six decades. As the guitarist for Booker T. & the M.G.’s — the house band for Stax Records — he helped define the sound of southern soul and co-wrote classics including “(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay,” “Knock on Wood,” and “In the Midnight Hour.”

Beyond his work at Stax, Cropper built a formidable résumé as a session player and producer, working with artists such as Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Jeff Beck, Ringo Starr and Rod Stewart. He also appeared onscreen as a member of the Blues Brothers Band.

Along the way he earned multiple Grammys, including one for “(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay” and another with Booker T. & the M.G.’s for the 1995 track “Cruisin’.”

Despite that legacy, Cropper kept his advice to young guitarists simple. In one of his final major interviews, with Total Guitar in 2024, he said, “Do not get into this business for money. Do it for fun — and if you’re good, somewhere along the way someone will pay you.”

He described his own approach to the instrument as practical. “I use it as a tool,” he said of the electric guitar. “I couldn't afford to hire another guitarist on a lot of Stax records, so I learned to play rhythm and lead at the same time so when I was soloing the rhythm wouldn't drop out.”

Watching the Tide is scheduled for release Aug. 28 via Provogue Records / Artone Label Group.

Michael Beinhorn, the man behind the desk for Soundgarden’s six-time Platinum record Superunknown, says Chris Cornell’s writing at the time was misdirected. But one piece of advice changed everything and helped the guitarist give birth to one of their biggest songs.

The genre-bending Seattle band and Beinhorn began the project in a great place. Soundgarden were riding the success of their third studio album, Badmotorfinger, from three years earlier, with tracks like “Jesus Christ Pose” and “Rusty Cage” — later covered by Johnny Cash — putting them at the forefront of the contemporary rock scene.

Beinhorn, meanwhile, came into the sessions off the back of work with Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soul Asylum and Living Colour, his reputation in good standing.

Cornell, in particular, was churning out material for his band’s next record, eager to maintain the momentum its predecessor had generated. But Beinhorn felt everything he presented had a major flaw.

“He was trying to write songs for Soundgarden fans,” Beinhorn says (via Ultimate Guitar). “I strongly urged him against it, because my feeling is like, ‘Look, if you write the song and your band plays it, it’s going to sound like Soundgarden.’

“You don’t have to write songs that are going to please the constituency of your fans; they’re either going to stay fans or they won’t. All you have to do is write songs that you really love.

“About two weeks after that conversation, he sent me a cassette tape. There were four songs on it. The first was ‘Fell on Black Days,’ the last was ‘Black Hole Sun.’”

Both songs would go on to become two of Superunknown’s strongest tracks, the latter in particular garnering huge airtime on MTV, which at the time was a hugely influential platform. It would even win Best Metal/Hard Rock Video at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards.

“From the first few notes of ‘Black Hole Sun,’ I was like, ‘Oh my God! This is incredible,’” Beinhorn remembers. “I listened to the song many, many times. I just kept playing it over and over and over again, and I called him up, and I was like, ‘This is incredible. We’re ready to record now. You’ve basically got the most important track on the whole record, and it’s one of the best songs I’ve ever heard.’”

Ironically, the band’s lead guitarist, Kim Thayil, found a portion of that song unusual beneath his fingers. Taking Beinhorn’s advice to play only what felt good to the player, not what they thought their fans would like, Thayil left Cornell to track the electric guitar for that section.

“The ‘Black Hole Sun’ arpeggios were stylistically unusual for me,” he tells Guitar Player. “I’ve described it as sounding like the right side of a piano, or little fairies dancing on the head of a pin like ballerinas. It was very delicate, and I thought, ‘This is not me.’

“Every time I tried it, I would fuck up,” he concedes. “Finally, I told Chris, ‘You wrote the part — you track it!’ I thought he would do it better than me.”

Soundgarden was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year, which Thayil believes to be hugely important to Cornell’s legacy. The band is now working on a final album, completing demos recorded before Cornell’s passing in 2017.

Hands both old and new have put their imprint on this fall’s 30th anniversary incarnation of The Beatles Anthology – now streaming on Disney+ in an incredible Black Friday deal.

The 1995 docuseries, which was expanded to eight episodes for its home video release, is an outgrowth of longtime Beatles aide de camp and Apple chief Neil Aspinall’s proposed early ’70s project The Long and Winding Road, which was shelved due to animosities surrounding the Fabs’ breakup. It marked the first time the group — with John Lennon posthumously, of course — told its own story, and was fueled by two new singles: “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love,” both built from Lennon recording demos.

For the anniversary, the Anthology has added a ninth episode, directed by Oliver Murray, while the companion albums have grown with a fourth volume, overseen by Giles Martin — son of the late Beatles producer George Martin. It includes remixed versions of the singles as well as “Now and Then,” the purported “final” Beatles single that came out during 2023.

“People think there’s a huge planning system to what we do, and there really isn’t,” Martin told us when the latter was released. “We’re amateur at best — we just seem to get away with it. I suppose it has an element of high risk involved in it. I suppose I’m used to it; most of the work I do gets examined by people. But generally I get away with most things.”

The refreshed Anthology is not Martin’s first Beatles rodeo, of course. Having worked as an assistant for his father, he’s been working with the catalog since The Beatles: Rock Band in 2009 and also took part in recent reissue projects, including 50th anniversary editions of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles (a.k.a. the White Album) and Abbey Road, as well as the 2022 Revolver: Special Edition, Peter Jackson’s acclaimed The Beatles: Get Back documentary project and accompanying Let It Be: Special Edition, and much more. He’s also helmed reissues for Paul McCartney and George Harrison (as well as the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones and the Elton John Rocketman biopic).

It’s a tall order, not unlike a sacred duty. But after, really, a lifetime of being around the music, Martin says there’s no question about what his brief is on these projects.

“We don’t really discuss a plan, if you like, because it is what it is,” he explains. “My job is to represent as truthfully and as best I can what [the music] is. I never, ever wanted to change what the Beatles are playing. The heartbeat of the Beatles is always there.” That philosophy, he adds, has allowed for a kind of carte blanche whenever work begins on one of the endeavors.

“The direction really isn’t discussed,” he adds. “In any of these projects what happens is I’ll do a mix and select outtakes and send them to all of them, then discuss. I suppose I’m used to it; most of the work I do gets examined by people. One thing I’ve always tried to get across is the fact they were a four-piece band, and a really good four-piece band. They were a great band. The sum of them together is better than them individually. They all play the right things, and very economical, with great thought and great sympathy. That’s what I want to come through.”

Not surprisingly, one of Martin’s highlights over the years was “Now and Then,” another Lennon demo that was considered for The Beatles Anthology but was deemed to need too much work to be finished in time. In the new Episode 9, in fact, McCartney, Harrison and Starr are even shown starting to work on it, with the former noting that it “needs so much work we’re a bit terrified to get around to it.”

It was technology Peter Jackson and his team created at their New Zealand Park Road Post Production studio that finally allowed the Beatles team to clean up and isolate Lennon’s vocal and piano enough to build a song around it, using elements that Harrison, who died in 2001, had recorded during the mid ’90s, along with new contributions by McCartney and Starr.

“It was pretty much a new version of the song,” says Martin, who wasn’t even aware of its existence until McCartney played it to him during May 2022. “The things that were kept were George’s guitar, acoustic and electric, and obviously John’s voice, and I think that was about it, really. Paul redid the bass and Ringo redid the drums.

“It was only when we finished it and some people heard it and, ‘Omigod, this is gonna be huge!’ — that was the only time I remember thinking, ‘Okay…’

“I think had I thought that way to begin with I’d probably be a little nervous about it. But I’ve got Paul and I love him dearly and I have his trust, which I don’t take for granted. Whatever you do you hope it’s good enough. I’m working with some pretty good people, you know what I mean? So it’s trying to live up to the standards.”

For Anthology Episode 9 director Murray, meanwhile, “Now and Then” represents “a full circle moment.” He came into the Beatles camp as the director of a short promotional film that accompanied “Now and Then’s” release. He was then approached to create a new Anthology episode, which serves as a kind of epilogue and coda to the series in documenting the making of the series, including the recording of all three “new” songs with producer Jeff Lynne.

“It kind of relies on an understanding of exactly what happened throughout the ’90s, principally,” Murray says via Zoom from England. “But also Episode 9 needed to offer a new layer of self-reflection and step out of the familiar chronology that was so wonderfully done... It was a chance to sort of poke holes in the mythology, sometimes, and be able to linger on a subject where the earlier episodes couldn’t, ’cause they had the march of this story to tell.”

Murray considers the nearly hour-long episode “a ’90s time capsule,” showing the three surviving Beatles meeting, sitting on a blanket playing ukuleles on the lawn of Harrison’s Friar Park estate, or at a previously unseen gathering from 1994 in Abbey Road Studios. He also makes use of individual interviews that were done to promote Anthology and unearths a few grails — including a vintage clip of McCartney playing part of “Helter Skelter” acoustically and a close-up of Harrison coming up with his electric guitar part for “Real Love.”

“I love that,” he says. “It’s thin and powerful at the same time, his elasticity in bending the strings, but also a mighty sound. I almost forgot about the ‘Real Love’ stuff because I was so immersed in everything, but to put everything from the ’90s sessions together was fantastic — especially given that I started with the ‘Now and Then’ short film.”

Murray eschewed the idea of new interviews with McCartney and Starr. “It would have messed with the sense of time and place in this material,” he notes. And he feels that the punctuation mark Episode 9 puts on the Anthology is showing the three surviving Beatles were truly reunited, emotionally as well as physically, by the project.

“Even though they really hadn’t spent much time together at all... they sort of slip back in like a well-fitting glove with each other,” the director says. “It was an opportunity to see them talk about the weight of being a Beatle — dare I say the cost of being a Beatle.

“Obviously, it’s very melancholic when you hear just how difficult it is for them to embark on Anthology without John. Some of my favorite stuff is George talking about how cathartic it is to be able to use Anthology almost like therapy, but there’s always the anchor of John not being there, and how it reminds them that John never had this opportunity to look at their own legacy from outside of its shadow.

“It’s not an ending. It’s a handover,” Murray adds. “My North Star was my sense of this being a conversation between one generation and the next. Their songs are like a shared cultural language that gets passed on, and it evolves. That’s probably the hardest thing, to service people coming to the story for the first time and the people who know way more than I do — the superfans who know everything and are thirsty for even more.”

A new significant Beatles project has become a tradition every fall, and there’s more in the vaults to be considered in the future. But one thing Martin says we won’t see, or hear, is another “new” song à la the Anthology singles — despite Peter Jackson intimating otherwise when “Now and Then” was released.

“There’s no bigger Beatles fan than Peter Jackson, so, God bless him, he’d love that,” Martin says. “But it wouldn’t be the Beatles. What makes [‘Now and Then’] the Beatles is the fact George is there. We could take a John demo and Ringo and Paul could play on it, but that wouldn’t be the Beatles. You could take a George demo whatever, and it wouldn’t be the Beatles. You’d have to synthesize something.

“Why this song sounds like the Beatles is because it is the Beatles. There’s no Beatles plug-in, if you know what I mean. And lyrically it sounds like the last Beatles song. I think if we did things other than that, it wouldn’t be the Beatles. So this has to be the last Beatles song — sorry, Peter.”

The expanded The Beatles Anthology Collection is released today, November 21. The Beatles Anthology begins streaming with Episodes 1–3 on Wednesday, November 26 on Disney+, followed by Episodes 4–6 on Thursday, November 27 and Episodes 7–9 on Friday, November 28.

For all that's made of Stevie Nicks’ songwriting partnership with former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, her friendship with Tom Petty was arguably as big an influence on her career, certainly the solo half of it.

“In 1976, I’d been in Fleetwood Mac for about a year when I heard Tom Petty’s debut,” Nicks wrote about the guitarist in a 2004 tribute for Rolling Stone. “I became a fan right then.

“I loved the way Tom’s Florida swamp-dog voice sounded in cahoots with Mike Campbell's guitar and Benmont Tench's keyboards. Tom had the same influences we had — the Byrds, Neil Young, Crosby, Stills & Nash — but he dropped in lots of serious old blues. I became such a fan that if I hadn’t been in a band myself, I would have joined that one.”

Nicks didn’t hide her enthusiasm from Petty. The guitarist said that when he and Nicks met in 1978, he felt overwhelmed.

“She was this absolutely stoned-gone huge fan,” he told American Songwriter. “And it was her mission in life that I should write her a song.”

Nicks didn’t have to wait long for that to happen. In 1980, she prepared to record her debut solo album, Bella Donna. The producer chosen was Jimmy Iovine, the man behind Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers 1979 breakthrough, Damn the Torpedos. Iovine was at work on Hard Promises, the group’s 1981 followup, when he took on Nicks’ album.

The overlap between those productions meant Petty got a chance to hear Nicks’ album in progress. There was one thing both he and Iovine agreed on — they couldn’t hear a hit single on it. (Perhaps “Edge of Seventeen” hadn’t been recorded yet?)

“Both Tom and Jimmy said to me, in a brutally honest way, ‘You don’t have a single on this record,” Nicks recalled. “Tom is a great and loyal friend, but he’s also honest like that.”

Iovine asked Petty to write a song for Nicks. What he came up with was “Insider,” a song he wrote in a style he thought suited her.

"When I wrote that song, I wrote it very quickly — I mean maybe in 10, 15 minutes," he told Melody Maker in 1981. "I just wrote it all down on paper and then I just picked up the guitar and tried to sing each line out. It took me maybe an hour to do that."

Petty said Iovine was thrilled with the song.

“I remember bringing it to him, and he said, ‘God, when I asked for a song, I didn’t expect this!’” The praise stung Petty. He had begun to wonder if he was making a mistake giving the tune away. “I was really attached to it,” he recalled

By the time Nicks was recording it, Petty was glum about the whole endeavor. He recalled being in the studio as she was cutting her harmony vocals and how she could read the concern on his face.

“She walked back in and said, ‘How was it?’ I said, ‘It’s amazing,’” Petty told Musician in 1981. “She said, ‘I can tell by the look on your face, you don’t wanna give me this song. I’m giving it back to you right now.’ I really thought a lot of her for that.”

Feeling guilty, Petty offered Nicks a replacement he and Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell had just written: “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.” As Campbell recalled, he began writing the tune off a chord progression inspired by the drum intro to the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women.”

“I just put different chords to that feel, and gave it to Tom and he wrote these great words,” the guitarist explained in a video, where he demonstrated the song using his Fender Broadcaster, the same electric guitar he played on the song’s original recording.

“And we were working with Jimmy Iovine at the time, and he thought the song would work better as a duet, and he was actually right. So Stevie Nicks ended up singing along with Tom on this song.”

Petty said Nicks was thrilled with the new track.

“She says, ‘Wow! That’s why I wanted you to write me a song — it’s rock ’n’ roll, that’s what you do,’” he told Musician. “‘Insider' sounds like what I do.'

“And I thought, How dumb of me to think that she'd want me to write like her."

Sung as a duet by Nicks and Petty, with backing support from the Heartbreakers, “Stop Dragging My Heart Around” became the debut single from Bella Donna. The song rose quickly in the chart to peak at number three on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming both Nicks’ and the Heartbreakers’ biggest hit on that ledger.

Not everyone thought Petty made the right decision by giving it away. “Insider” appeared on Hard Promises, with backing vocals from Nicks and her sister, Lori. But while Petty thought highly of the tune, it failed to grab listeners or critics, one of whom singled out drummer Stan Lynch’s “cymbal-pinged weirdness” on the recording. The drummer wasn’t thrilled.

“As a trade-out for 'Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,' I didn’t think it was a good bargain at all,” Lynch said. “I remember [the discussion], ‘Well, we got “Insider,"' and I’m going, ‘Bad trade!’”

Nicks’ and Petty’s friendship endured for the remainder of his life. And, like a good friend, he was able to give her tough love when she needed it. After a stint in rehab in the early 1990s, she was insecure about relaunching her career and asked for his help writing songs.

“I didn't really expect the reaction I got, which was, ‘No, I won't,’” she wrote in Rolling Stone. “He said, ‘You are one of the premier songwriters in this business. Just write some great songs — that's what you do.’”

When they finally toured together in 2006, Petty gave her a platinum sheriff's badge inlaid with 24-karat gold and diamonds that read, To Our Honorary Heartbreaker. “It's probably the most beautiful piece of jewelry a man has ever given me, ever,” Nicks said.

Petty's sudden death from an accidental drug overdose on October 2, 2017, devastated her. “The loss of Tom Petty has just about broken my heart,” she said when she accepted the 2018 MusiCares Person of the Year Award; Petty won it the year before. “He was a great father and he was a great friend, and he was one of my best friends. My heart will never get over this.”

The one-two punch of Alive! and Destroyer made Kiss a success in the mid 1970s. In the summer of 1976, shortly after the release of Destroyer, Gene Simmons decided to use his newfound fame and fortune to help find and lead another group to the top of the charts. While in Los Angeles, he saw a young, unsigned Van Halen perform on the Sunset Strip and decided he would turn them into superstars.

He cut a demo tape with the group — Eddie Van Halen, drummer Alex Van Halen, singer David Lee Roth and bass guitar player Michael Anthony — at Village Recorder in L.A., then flew the group to New York City for overdubs and final production at Electric Lady Studios.

Nothing much came of the effort — Kiss’s management vetoed Simmons’ request to sign the group — but the bassist stayed friendly with Van Halen. (Simmons has said Eddie even tried to join Kiss in 1983 when he grew tired of leading his own band.)

As Simmons explains, while Van Halen were in New York City, he hired Eddie and Alex to help him record demos for three songs, including the Kiss hit “Christine Sixteen.” Simmons says he liked Eddie’s guitar solo on the cut so much that he made Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley copy it note for note.

“Around ’77, I wrote ‘Christine Sixteen’ and two other songs,” Simmons says. “On the way back from Japan, at one in the morning, I called Eddie and Alex and said, ‘I’ve got some songs — you want to help me do these demos?’ And they did.

“Eddie did the solo on ‘Christine Sixteen’ in one take. I loved it so much that I made Ace copy it note for note. So when you hear ‘Christine Sixteen,’ that’s Eddie’s solo you’re hearing, but copied by Ace.”

Granted, the solo is short on the kind of fireworks Eddie would soon be unleashing on Van Halen’s records, but it’s a tasty fill that shows young Ed’s maturity as a player. Whereas another guitarist might have used the opportunity to show off his chops, Ed gives the song just what it needs.

Simmons might have showed similar restraint. When it comes to crude and rude rock songs, they don’t get much worse than “Christine Sixteen,” which Kiss delivered on their 1977 album, Love Gun. The song concerns a 16-year-old girl, and the much older singer — Simmons was 27 at the time — who is spending too much time hanging around her high school waiting for a glimpse of her. Many radio stations banned the song. Others played it only during late-night broadcast hours.

As Simmons explained in the liner notes to his 2017 box set, The Gene Simmons Vault, the song was written as a retort to Kiss guitarist Paul Stanley.

“Paul would say, ‘Gene, all you ever write about are monster songs. Like ‘God of Thunder,’’’ Simmons wrote. In fact “God of Thunder” didn’t exist at the time Stanley said it; he just made the name up in the moment, but it sparked an idea. “And of course, he went home and wrote that song, as a semi-parody of a Gene song,” Simmons explained.

Simmons similarly challenged Stanley, telling him, “All you ever write are teenage girlie songs, like ‘Christine Sixteen.’

“And as soon as I heard myself say that, I quickly wrote it.”

Perhaps too quickly. With lyrics like “when I saw you coming out of school that day / that day I knew, I knew / I’ve got to have you,” “Christine Sixteen” is creepy and cringey.

Nevertheless, it reached a respectable number 25 on the Billboard charts.

Notably, “Christine Sixteen” isn’t the only time Frehley copied a solo. As Simmons told The Magnificent Others With Billy Corgan last February, the late Ace was a huge fan of Doors guitarist Robby Krieger and copied his electric guitar solo for “She,” a track from the 1975 Kiss album, Dressed to Kill. The Krieger solo comes from the Doors’ “Five to One,” from their 1968 album, Waiting for the Sun.

Gordon Lightfoot’s band had never played his new song before. They hadn’t even heard it.

But in December 1975, with unused studio time left on the clock while recording his 1976 album Summertime Dream, Lightfoot strapped on his 1967 Gibson B-45-12 12-string acoustic guitar and led the musicians through a take of a new tune: “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

Six and a half minutes later, they were done. One take was all it took.

“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” would go on to become a hit for the Canadian soft-rock balladeer, but it was something significantly more. In recounting the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald during a storm on Lake Superior on the night of November 10, 1975, Lightfoot immortalized a modern tragedy at a time when its pain was still keenly felt.

For the families of the men who died that night — all 29 perished — “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” enshrined the crew members’ seafaring lives and heroic deaths and ensured they would not be forgotten.

The largest ship on the Great Lakes when it launched on June 7, 1958, the 729-foot Edmund Fitzgerald was a workhorse freighter, carrying iron ore from Minnesota to ports that included Detroit and Toledo. It had a full cargo on November 10 when it was caught in a storm with near–hurricane force winds. The ship sank in Canadian waters on Lake Superior, about 17 miles from shore.

The captain’s last message, transmitted at 7:10 p.m., said, "We are holding our own.” What happened next remains a mystery. Soon after the update, the ship either was swamped by waves, suffered fatal structural or topside damage, or grounded on a shoal — possibly a combination of these — and sank. The entire crew of 29 perished. No bodies were ever recovered.

Lightfoot immediately felt a connection to the tragedy. A native of Orillia, a southern Ontario town situated almost equidistantly from Lakes Ontario, Erie and Huron, he knew those waters well. He’d seen the great ships pass through in his youth and, later, had boated on them, racing his custom-built 45-foot sloop, Golden Goose, in the annual Port Huron–to-Mackinac yacht races.

So when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down, Lightfoot was struck by the tragedy on a personal level. To his disappointment, the news quickly disappeared in the weeks afterward. Aside from one story — “The Cruelest Month,” which appeared in the November 24, 1975 issue of Newsweek, roughly two weeks after the disaster — there was little coverage.

"The Edmund Fitzgerald really seemed to go unnoticed at that time,” Lightfoot remarked. “Anything I'd seen in the newspapers or magazines were very short, brief articles. I felt I would like to expand upon the story of the sinking of the ship itself."

Over the next month he began working on a “rough draft” of the song, as his drummer Barry Keane described it in a 2022 interview. While he was intent on chronicling the ship’s final voyage — gathering what little was known at the time from those scant news reports — his passion for sailing lent authentic detail to his verses.

For his melody, Lightfoot drew upon an Irish folk song he’d heard as a child.

“I think it was one of the first pieces of music that registered to me as being a piece of music,” he said. “That’s where the melody comes from."

Lightfoot didn’t originally consider the song for inclusion on Summertime Dream. The tune was so fresh he hadn’t even bothered to show it to his band, which in addition to Keane included Terry Clements on acoustic and electric guitars, Pee Wee Charles on pedal steel and Rick Haynes on bass.

But with the album completed, and unused studio time available, Lightfoot decided to try out “the shipwreck song,” as he called it. They ran tape, just in case.

“Gordon gave me a nod around the third verse, I did a drum fill and came in and played,” Keane said. “We all played what we felt. And we played ‘til the end of the song. We had never heard the song.”

At 6:29 minutes in length — and with 14 four-line verses, no hook and no guitar solo — “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” seemed an unlikely song for radio play.

Nevertheless, after it was released as a single in August 1976, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” climbed up Canada’s hit parade to reach number one on November 20, 1976, roughly one year after the disaster. In the U.S. it hit the top spot on the Cashbox chart but stalled at number two on the Billboard single chart, held off by Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night.”

Given the lack of information available at the time, Lightfoot took artistic license with his lyrics. In one instance, he attributed the shipwreck to a hatch that was left open, allowing water to enter the vessel. Relatives of the crew members took issue with that; not only was it incorrect, but it implied the crew was responsible for the sinking.

To his credit, Lightfoot took those concerns to heart.

“I rewrote the line in order to avoid upsetting family members of crewmen that operated the ship’s hatches.”

He said changing the line made him even more proud of the song.

Lightfoot — whose musical friends included fellow Canadians Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Randy Bachman — died May 1, 2023. Over the years, he sang “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” many times, often in settings appropriate to the tune.

“We’ve been to all kinds of events,” he recalled in a 2010 interview. “I’ve been three times down to the Mariners’ Church in Detroit — one Sunday I sang in front of 18 sea captains, all lined up in a row.”

Lightfoot wrote scores of songs in his lifetime, including two that went to the top of the U.S. charts; “If You Could Read My Mind” and “Sundown.” But “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was the song he called his finest.

"I felt it was my job to write a song about it,” he told NPR, “and that people should be aware of the fact that it was not forgotten."

In the early 1970s, no prog group could claim to have had the success of Yes. Fragile, Close to the Edge and the live triple-LP Yessongs had established the British group as the most successful progressive-rock act of the era. Yes had every reason to believe fans would stick with them no matter what direction they took on their next album.

So they decided to throw in their lot with other groups of the day and create a concept album. And why not? It had certainly worked for the Who, which by that point had success with both Tommy and Quadrophenia, as well as for artists like David Bowie (Ziggy Stardust) and Pink Floyd (The Dark Side of the Moon), both of whom had recently established themselves as mainstream acts by doing so.

So what could go wrong? Well, plenty. To start with, there was the album’s ponderous name, Tales From Topographic Oceans. Inside, fans discovered four lengthy excursions that each took up a whole side of the double album. Not exactly easy listening. Although the record was a success on both sides of the Atlantic, it divided critics and fans alike with its ambitious musical aims.

But Tales also proved to be something of a line in the sand for keyboardist Rick Wakeman. Bored by the group’s new direction, he departed upon completion of the album’s tour and focused on his solo career.

Despite it all, Steve Howe looks fondly upon the album.

“It was a time of spreading our wings, a wonderful project where we went to the ends of the Earth to do it,” he told Guitar Player. “I don’t think we’d be the same group without it.”

Tales — which is getting a new release as a 15-disc Super Deluxe Edition boxed set this coming February — was the pet project of Howe and Yes singer Jon Anderson, the latter of whom was eager to continue exploring the longer song structures the group had created on Close to the Edge. He found a framework in the memoir Autobiography of a Yogi by the guru Paramahansa Yogananda. The book made a reference to the different levels and divisions within Hindu scriptures. Anderson thought that could be an interesting concept for an album.

Howe quickly got onboard. As it happened, the live Yessongs set gave the two artists more time than usual to work out their ideas.

“Jon would sing, and I’d noodle my riffs and things, and the band would listen and get their ideas. That’s how we did it,” Howe explains. “There was a rehearsal period, and then we went into the studio to start recording, and we were there for months and months. We kept plowing on until this thing was finished. It was a huge, huge undertaking.”

Despite writing the basic structures, Howe and Anderson encouraged the others to help flesh out the songs.

“Jon and I asked the guys to be as creative as they could: ‘Don’t complain that you don’t like it; find something to play, and then you’ll love it.’

“So there was a Yes-style credit for music by everybody, but of course Jon and I wrote the majority of the music, and they wouldn’t deny it. But all of them came up with a little bit to add to it, something they wanted to do. We just attempted to draw those things out of them so it was a worthwhile album.”

The result was an album that pushed Yes in new directions — which was one reason some fans had trouble with it.

“There are things in there you never would have thought Yes would do, particularly on side two,” Howe says, “some beautiful, unusual, folk-like, almost Jethro Tull–ish things. Then we got really out there on side three with time signatures and crazy stuff. And we were playing it live, because you couldn’t do it any way else.”

Howe says it was so complicated that he recalls getting lost at one juncture in the recording.

“The band was watching me, and I was watching them, and I didn’t know where they were!” he says. “But at some point we met.”

For the album, Howe set aside his Gibson ES-175 electric guitar — a staple of those early Yes albums — and switched to a Les Paul Jr. Which may be another reason why some listeners found Tales sounded quite different from its predecessors.

“Back in the ’70s I was searching to find out what guitar was the guitar, leaving the 175 aside a bit and trying all the stereo guitars and all of that,” Howe explains. “Obviously, I’m just so lucky to never lose sight of the fact that it was still me coming through, even if I played an ES-5 Switchmaster. It was still me.”

Given how excited he was by their work, Howe said he was taken aback by the polarized response to the album.

“I find it so funny that anybody criticizes this album on the basis that it was a concept album,” he says. “Out of the 22, 23 studio albums we made, one of them is a concept album called Tales From Topographic Oceans. Can you please allow us to make one concept record without getting on our case? We stuck our necks out with Tales, and some people wanted to chop our heads off for it.”

Time, however, hasn’t diminished his love for it.

“I’m still very proud of it and very pleased with it,” Howe says. I think Tales is totally epic, and I love it to bits.”

Shepherding Julian Lennon across the Atlantic during the summer of 1974 came with an unexpected bonus for Davey Johnstone.

John Lennon's first son and ex-wife, Cynthia Lennon, joined the Elton John crew on the S.S. France for the trip to New York City, where Lennon would be visiting his father. During the journey John, Johnstone and company were working up songs and arrangements for Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirty Cowboy, which they'd be recording at Caribou Ranch in Nederland, Colorado, where they'd also made the Caribou album earlier that year.

The session would also include a cover of the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," on which Lennon would play electric guitar and provide backing vocals under the pseudonym Dr. Winston O'Boogie.

"We were kind of chaperoning Julian, making sure he didn't get in too much trouble," Johnstone tells Guitar Player via Zoom from his home in California. "John met us at the New York Harbor, and it was quite a remarkable time. I'm a huge Beatles fan, so I'm going, 'Shit, this is John Lennon and he's enjoying our music.' There was talk of him coming to Caribou and hanging out for a couple of weeks, and we were like, 'Yeah, come, hang out!'

"And he did do that. He came to the ranch. I think we had pretty much finished Captain Fantastic when he arrived, which freed us up to do other things -- like 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.' I let him use my [1969 Les Paul] goldtop on the track, and we all played together. It was just a blast to do that, especially a song from Sgt. Pepper's. That was a really decent version of that song."

Elton John's version of "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," which came out as a standalone single during mid-November of 1974, hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and was certified Gold. The session also included the standalone single "Philadelphia Freedom." Both are included on a recently released 50th anniversary deluxe edition of Captain Fantastic... The Gold Top, sadly, was stolen some years later, Johnstone says.

Although John's Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour ended back in July of 2023, Johnstone — also the Rocket Man's longtime bandleader — has hardly been living a life of leisure.

"I don't think I've retired. I don't think I ever will retire," he says. "That's just the way I am. I'm really enjoying this part of my life. I get to revisit some of that older music by playing with the band occasionally, and I'm doing a lot of my own stuff."

The Scottish native, who started working with John during sessions for 1971's Madman Across the Water album before joining the band full-time, still performs the occasional private show with John — "maybe six a year instead of six a week," he says. "We're really having a lot of fun. It's much more enjoyable than all the work we did before."

But he also has other projects he's working on, including a new solo album Johnstone says he's finished, with his son Charlie — who also worked on Johnstone's last album, Deeper Than My Roots in 2022 — co-writing and engineering. Johnstone's first solo album, Smiling Face, came out during 1973, while he and John Jorgenson, who's also recorded and toured with John over the years, collaborated on Crop Circles in 1999.

"I'm really proud of this new record," says Johnstone, 74, who hopes to release it during the first half of 2026. "It's got a lot of older sensibilities. It's not a modern record by any stretch of the imagination, although Charlie is a modern engineer, so maybe it is a moder record.

"Charlie and I finished a couple months ago, and once a week I listen to the whole thing. It's blowing my mind — and I'm very self-critical. If I'm still loving it, I'm thinking people are really gonna like this record."

Johnstone — who spoke with us last year about key guitar moments from John’s 1973 smash Goodbye Yellow Brick Road — says he's also in the midst of writing a memoir, but he's particularly excited about a documentary that's in progress about the early Elton John band with himself, bass guitar player Dee Murray, drummer Nigel Olsson and, later, Ray Cooper. The project, he says, was inspired by a conversation 20 years ago with the late Murray's first wife, Anett.

"She called me one day and said not enough people know about Dee," Johnstone says. "There's not books about him, nobody knows. They don't have a clue about him, and he was such a brilliant player.

“So we started kicking ideas around. Over the years, we had to let it gather dust because Elton and his manager and husband, David Furnish, were doing their own documentary. Now that that's out we came back into it earlier this year and we've got a great team behind us, and we're very, very excited about it."

There's no timetable for the film's release as of yet, but Johnstone says he hopes it will engender a greater appreciation for how good the band was in its early 70s heyday, something that's hammered in, he says, on the new Captain Fantastic... set.

"When you hear the work we did, I'm always amazed by the level of musicianship," says Johnstone, who has shared five guitar tips with us. "The playing itself and the parts for each musician are so unique. Dare I say it, we were modeling ourselves on kind of a Beatles thing. I'm a huge Beatles fan, so we had that sensibility. It was a great band."

“You know, Michael is not one to show off,” Tom Petty said of Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell in an interview in Guitar Player’s August 1986 issue. “He thinks as a writer a lot, which sometimes I have to kick his ass about. I want to tell him, ‘Go ahead and give it to me.’”

When Campbell gave it, he gave it good. In one early session for the group’s debut single, “Breakdown,” the guitarist devised what became the song’s signature hook. But as Petty told us, the lick — a bluesy line that descends seductively from A to E an octave below — was originally buried in the song’s outro guitar solo. It took some assistance for him to hear it for what it was.

Fortunately, he had a little help.

“There's a story behind that,” Petty told us. “I wrote ‘Breakdown’ in the studio about 11 years ago, and the first version was seven minutes long, with this long guitar solo in the end.

“Everyone had gone home, and I was sitting there listening, and in walks Dwight Twilley.” The singer/guitarist, who is best known for his top 20 hit singles “I’m on Fire” and “Girls,” caught the tune as it was fading out, but not before he heard Campbell’s snakey descending riff buried in the solo.

“Twilley turns to me and says, ‘That's the lick, man! How come he only plays it once at the end of the song? It's the whole hook.’

“I listened back, and he was right,” Petty said. “So I called the band up — 4:00 in the morning — and told them to come back down. We did it again around the lick, took a couple takes, and there it was.”

As Campbell told us in the same issue that contained Petty’s interview, he used his 1950 Fender Broadcaster — the same electric guitar heard on “American Girl” — for the solo in “Breakdown.” He purchased it for $600 in 1976, along with a blackface Fender Deluxe Reverb, during the recording of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ debut album. "I felt my soul shake," Campbell said of hearing the Broadcaster through the Deluxe. He calls it “the guitar I can’t live without.”

“It's a good all-around guitar,” he explained to us in 1986. “For rhythms, solos, whatever — it always works. Anytime I'm stuck and can't get a sound, I just plug that one in.

“On ‘Breakdown,’ I think I was on the bass pickup for the intro and then I went to my treble pickup for the middle.”

Campbell recalled that once he and Petty salvaged the lick from the outro solo, he tried playing it with a slide. “I use a pill bottle with a ridge on it — One A Day vitamins, I think,” he explained.

Eventually, though, “we decided that the bottleneck was too bluesy. So I just played the part without the bottleneck and it worked. It’s just one of those things you stumble onto.”

It wasn’t the last time one of Petty’s songs would receive a new life. He nearly abandoned “I Won’t Back Down” until producer Jeff Lynne encouraged him to record it. The track became his first solo hit.

“People are always telling me, ‘That song helped me through the worst time of my life,’" Petty recalled of the tune.

As for “Breakdown," Petty told Guitar Player it’s the hook that saved the song.

“What he says is essential,” Petty said of Campbell. “The lick in ‘Breakdown’ — I can't imagine that song without it.”

Ace Frehley will be forever celebrated for his years with Kiss, the iconic group he cofounded in the 1970s with Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and Peter Criss.

But Frehley — who died on October 16 at the age of 74 from injuries after a fall at home — will also be remembered for his signature solo hit: “New York Groove,” released in 1978.

That was the year all four Kiss members issued solo albums. But only Ace scored a top 20 hit, when “New York Groove” reached No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was especially appropriate, since the electric guitarist was a Bronx-born native of the Big Apple.

Since then, “New York Groove” has remained popular in the New York area, where it’s become the Mets signature tune, played at home games to celebrate a win.

But as Ace explained, he had one regret about the song: He didn’t write it.

“A lot of people think I wrote ‘New York Groove,’” he told Louder in an interview published October 6. “It’s not a myth that I’ve perpetuated, but that’s the way it is.

“I wish I would’ve wrote the song, though. I would’ve made a lot more cash out of it,” he said with a laugh.

The foot-stomping three-chord tune was actually written by Russ Ballard, the British songwriter behind hits like Rainbow’s 1979 hit “Since You Been Gone” and “God Gave Rock and Roll to You,” originally recorded by Argent in 1973 and covered by Kiss, no less, in 1991 as "God Gave Rock '’N' Roll to You II," with modified lyrics.

Ballard told Louder he wrote the song while en route to New York City for the first time.

“While I was sitting on the plane, I got out a pen and paper and started thinking of the phrase ‘back in the New York groove,’” he said. “That’d be a good title for a song, I reckoned; the whole idea of someone going back to New York and singing about the experience.”

The tune was originally cut by the London-based glam-rock band Hello in 1975 and became a number nine hit in the U.K.

Strangely, Frehley had no recollection of hearing Hello’s version.

“Or maybe I have and I just can’t remember,” he told Louder. “Can you send me an MP3 of it?”

Freely said “New York Groove” became forever associated with him after “we realized we needed a more commercial song for inclusion on my solo record.”

“To be honest, I actually didn't want to record this song,” he told Guitar Player last year. “Eddie Kramer my producer, introduced me to it. He kept saying to me, ‘Ace, you’ve got to record this song,’ and I kept saying, ‘I don't think it has anything to do with any of the other songs.’

“But once we had finished recording a lot of the album in Connecticut, we went down to Manhattan to do the overdubs and vocals, and once we got down there, he finally talked me into doing it.”

He cut the track at Plaza Sound Studios above Radio City Music Hall on 51st Street, giving him a memorable view of the hall’s Rockettes dancers to go with the session.

“It was kinda cool because the Rockettes used to sun themselves on the roof,” he recalled to Louder. “These beautiful, semi-naked girls were constantly walking into the studio and checking out what was going on. So that was quite a nice recording environment.”

Ace also remembered that, on this particular session, he used his sunburst ‘59 Gibson Les Paul, one of the guitars he, unfortunately, parted ways with.

“I bought it in a guitar store, and it was really faded, but it was a great guitar,” he told Guitar Player. “Gibson actually ended up putting out a copy of it several years ago. They got ahold of a guy that owned it and did a version that was aged and a regular version too.”

Considering that Ace often stood in Simmons and Stanley’s creative shadow, it was a point of pride that he was the only Kiss member to have a solo hit. “I'm starting to come out of my shell and I'm going to get stronger,” he told People in 1980, noting that the song’s success gave him some clout in the group.

Despite that, he didn’t gloat over his achievement.

“It didn’t feel like I was getting one over on the other guys in Kiss,” he remarked to Louder. “It’s just something that happened. I was lucky that it came out as good as it did.

“I never really listened to the other three solo records, although I did put Gene’s on once. When I heard his version of ‘When You Wish Upon a Star,’ I had to pull it off the turntable, ha-ha-hargh!” The tune was originally a children’s favorite from the Disney animated film Pinocchio, but in Simmons’ hands it became a cringe-inducing oddity.

While “New York Groove” remains one of Ballard’s best-known tunes, he remains a little mystified by its success.

“I guess it surprised me because it’s so incredibly simple,” he says. “They say a good song will always sell. And there’s a lot of truth in that.”

Bruce Springsteen has built a deep catalog of songs about the lives of the working class, and their struggles, hopes and dreams. His subjects come from his own life and the people in it, but his music is so driven by characters that it’s often hard to determine where the real Bruce Springsteen is within his songs.

The main reason seems to be his desire to relate to others rather than make it all about himself.

“Really, I picked up the guitar because I wanted to talk to somebody,” he told Musician magazine in 1987. “That’s really about the size of it. That was my main interest. I had things to say, and mainly it was just, ‘Hey, hello. Here I am, there you are. Let’s start a band, let’s do something together.'”

But by the time he got to work on Born in the U.S.A. in January 1982, he was feeling disconnected from the life and career he'd created for himself. The runaway success of The River, his 1980 double album, had made him a breakout star, putting him at the top of the charts for the first time in his career and giving him his first major top 10 single with “Hungry Heart.”

But following up such a smash hit would prove difficult. The sessions for Born in the U.S.A. stretched on for two years, into early 1984. By then, Springsteen and the E Street Band had recorded more than 70 songs for the album.

Despite all their effort, producer Jon Landau felt the album lacked a single. Springsteen decided he’d had enough.

“Look, I've written 70 songs,” he snarled at Landau. “You want another one, you write it.”

His response revealed the agitation that had been brewing ever since the runaway success of The River. The pressure to follow it up with another hit record, combined with his intense feelings of alienation and exhaustion from his success, were grinding him down. Two years into the new record, he was looking for a spark to reignite his passion.

Landau’s challenge turned out to be exactly what he needed.

“Jon had been bothering me to write a single,” Springsteen told Musician. “Which is something he rarely does. But he did that day. And he wanted something direct. That seemed to be what he was hitting on me for at the time.”

But after two years spent writing and recording dozens of songs, Springsteen was sick of the whole project..

“I was angry,” he says. “I had written a lot of songs and was kind of fed up with the whole thing. We’d been making the record for a long time and I was bored with the whole situation.

“That particular night, I came home and sat on the edge of my bed, and the thing I remember thinking first was that we had a record, but it wasn’t necessarily finished; I could change the whole thing right now if I wanted to. That’s all I remember thinking.

“So I picked up the guitar and I had this line: ‘I get up in the morning, and I ain’t got nothing to say.’ I had that line for quite a while. Then I said, well, I’ve got to be direct; this is about me. What do I do? ‘I get up in the evening.’

“And that was it. The rest of the songs popped out. I realized I’m bored, I’m tired, I’m sick of no action.”

The song was “Dancing in the Dark,” the future lead single from Born in the U.S.A. Hearing it for the first time, Landau was convinced Springsteen had delivered the hit he asked for. Springsteen and the band cut six takes of the song on February 14. Roughly another month was spent making 58 mixes of it until everyone was satisfied.

Released on May 9, 1984, “Dancing in the Dark” didn’t disappoint. The song spent four weeks at number two on the Billboard Hot 100, stalled by the success of Duran Duran’s “The Reflex” and Prince’s “When Doves Cry.”

The track also established Springsteen’s presence on MTV with its music video, the first in his career. Directed by suspense film director Brian DePalma, it was shot as a performance video, with Springsteen pulling a female audience member — played by future Friends star Courtney Cox — onstage to dance with him at the song’s conclusion. The dancing bit meant Springsteen would be deprived of his Fender Telecaster, making him look more like a frontman that the electric guitar–toting performer he was known as at the time.

That, in turn, would be the first indelible image many people around the world would have of Springsteen, as “Dancing in the Dark” became a global hit and earned number one spots in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Australia, where it became the highest-selling single of the year. The record also brought him his first Grammy, for Best Rock Vocal Performance, in 1985.

It was all new territory for Springsteen… which is ultimately what the song was about — making your way in the darkness to find the light.

“You’ve got to constantly be stepping out into the dark, into that unknown place,” he told Musician. “Because that’s where the next day is.”

The Cars are revving up to release some new music by the original band members — all of them.

In the epilogue of his new book, The Cars: Let the Stories Be Told (Da Capo), author and Buffalo Tom frontman Bill Janovitz writes about a batch of recordings surviving Cars members Elliot Easton, Greg Hawkes and David Robinson have been working on from material left behind by the late Ric Ocasek. Singer-bass guitarist Benjamin Orr, who passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2000, is also represented.

“So far there’s five done now, with guitar overdubs and everything,” Easton tells Guitar Player.

Among the titles are “Just Can’t Stop,” “One by One,” “The Factory,” “Crossing the Line,” “Crazy Over You” and “Can’t Stop the Rain.” Of the latter, Janovitz writes that “Elliot’s 25-second solo…is sure to put smiles on the faces of fans, as it did for me. And he added a hook that runs through the song, completely transforming it from the version I heard months before.”

“They sound like Cars songs, they really do,” Easton says. “It was really sort of natural to fall back into that world and think, Okay, here’s a new Ric song. What do I want to do?’ And it was just kind of the same as before, that way.”

Hearing his deceased former bandmates’ voices on the tracks did not faze him, either. “I wouldn’t use the word spooky. It was just, Wow, okay, we’re going back to ‘Cars land,’ and that’s what it was. I had fun with it.

“The only ones we’re working on are ones with good, finished vocals,” Easton adds. “They’ve got good vocals ’cause Ric had a 24-track studio in his basement and could make good quality demos. So all the vocals are well-recorded. It’s not like that Beatles ‘Free as a Bird’ thing, where they got a cassette and had to process it and separate it from instruments to make it sound good. These are good, clean demos — recordings, I should say.”

Easton is not sure when, or how, the world will hear the songs, however. That’s up to the band’s manager, Jeff Kramer.

“You’d have to see what Jeff Kramer is thinking about doing with them, how he’s gonna release them,” Easton says. “It could be an EP. It could be a new song in a movie. They’ll come out one way or another. I just don’t know in what form yet. We’ll see what happens to them.”

According to Janovitz, Kramer suggested the surviving band members work on the new Cars songs in 2020, not long after Ocasek’s death on September 15, 2019, at the age of 75. His passing came less than a year after the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Kramer and longtime Cars associate David “Heg” Heglmeier sent Hawkes about 18 songs.

Together with producer Ed Valausaks and engineer Joel Edinberg, Hawkes began working on them at Q Division studios in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hawkes then brought in Robinson as well as Easton, who started to add his parts during the summer of 2024.

“I got to hear where they were originally and got to hear the progress and Elliot’s contributions, and it was illuminating,” Janovitz recalls. “It’s like, ‘Here’s the Cars.’ I heard the Ric demo, and now it’s a Cars song. Bingo!

“It was the real opportunity for me to hear the progress from demo to near completion of a Cars song — not exactly the way it worked when the band was actively recording, but similar.”

The band’s creative process is intricately detailed in Let the Stories Be Told, in which Janovitz documents the quintet’s complex internal politics and particularly Ocasek’s ascent to being perceived as the Cars’ main and, at times, sole creative force, despite Easton’s enormous contributions. That’s something the guitarist says is still a sore subject, even though he maintains that, “I love the Cars. I’m very proud of that music — and what I contributed to it.

“There was a little bit of friction, mostly between Ric and myself,” adds Easton, who studied at Berklee College of Music and brought influences ranging from folk to Bakersfield country, blues, the British Invasion, Muscle Shoals soul and classic rockers such as Cream.

“Ric might have thought what I was playing was a little too old school or something,” he says of the player with whom he shared electric guitar duties. “He was very, very into the new, everything new — that’s what he wanted. He once said to me, ‘I hate blues,’ and I was shocked, ’cause I thought, ‘How could you love rock and roll and hate blues?!’

“Some of those things kind of hurt me, because I think that in some ways, musically for Ric, some of what I did was some of his least favorite elements of the band.”

Easton was, famously, the only band member Ocasek did not mention during his Rock Hall acceptance speech. He also talked and joked around with Brandon Flowers of the Killers, who inducted the group, while Easton was making his own.

“I said some really nice things about his wonderful songs,” Easton remembers, “and then… he thanked everybody but me. Make of that what you want. He said he was really nervous and forgot and he was really sorry…. We occasionally talked in the years before he passed away, and I told him. I said, ‘That really fucked my head up.’ He goes, ‘I don’t need to be reminded of my failings.’ It wasn’t exactly an apology; it was his way of saying he was sorry, I guess. That was Ric. We had a very weird relationship at times.”

Easton — who went on to play in the all-star Empty Hearts and recently subbed for Waddy Wachtel in another “supergroup,” the Immediate Family — is very clear about his relationship as part of the Cars’ songs, however. “The songs were presented to us in this extremely skeletal form,” he says. “Ric would just play his kind of eighth-note style.

“But without what we did to them, they could’ve ended up just on a cassette sitting in a drawer. I think we turned them into Cars songs — whatever that means. When the five of us got ahold of them and started coming up with lines and hooks and intros and solos and counterpoint melodies and things to add to choruses and stuff, that’s what made them catchy.

“I used to think, What can I do with this piece of music, that will lift it and add something new?”

So should the Cars’ writing credits, which almost always went to Ocasek alone, have better reflected that input — as the Police’s Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland are alleging in a recent lawsuit against bandmate Sting.

“I had similar feelings,” Easton acknowledges. “I felt that. Y’know, a lot of bands do it differently; some bands just split everything four or five ways, regardless of who wrote the songs. In other bands musicians are credited for contributions, with maybe a little bit of the publishing.

“But Ric would always say, ‘Look, I started with the blank piece of paper, and I wrote the song.’ And the fact he wasn’t legally bound to share it or to even give anybody a little taste, just to acknowledge their contribution — he always chose not to. He wouldn’t even consider acknowledging our contributions that way; it would only end up as a fight, if somebody would press that issue.

“He was very sensitive about it. It was brought up, and it didn’t go well.”

Nevertheless, Easton remains confident that the riffs and contributions he made to Ocasek’s songs were part of what ultimately put them over the top.

“Let me put it this way to you,” he says. “Ric had a group with Ben called Milkwood that Greg played in. Nothing happened with it. They had a band before the Cars called Richard and the Rabbits. Nothing happened. There were other things they were doing.

“Then I joined them and something happened. What do you want me to say about that? I don’t mean it in any way as braggadocio. I just mean we had finally hit on a recipe that worked and put the songs across in a way that lots of people loved, and that didn’t happen until I came into the picture.

“I’m not trying to be immodest — I want to stress that. It’s just that when you put a bunch of ingredients into a pot, it becomes what it becomes, and that’s just how it was in the Cars. There’s a lot of different elements.”

In addition to the new book, the Cars’ past will be represented with the October 31 release of Heartbeat City (Deluxe Edition), a new treatment of the group’s quadruple platinum fifth studio album, which includes unreleased demos, alternate mixes and a full live concert from 1984 in Houston.

Ana Popovic did not title her latest album Dance to the Rhythm randomly.

“I love to dance,” the Serbian-born guitarist, singer, bandleader, songwriter and producer tells us via Zoom from her home in Los Angeles. “I think there should be more dance songs with guitar.”

That can be a tricky business, Popovic acknowledges. But on the new album she demonstrates her acumen for that particular fusion on tracks such as “Worked Up,” “Sho Nuf” and the title tune, working with regular cohort Corey LaDell “Buthel” Burns.

“There’s not a whole lot of it out there,” Popovic says, lamenting the lack of electric and acoustic guitar–based dance tracks. “It’s not something people like to mix. I love going to dance clubs all over the world, Ibiza or wherever, and there’s never a guitar. So I wanted to try to bring it together.”

How to do it in a manner that serves both the feet and the ears?

“You’ve got to showcase your guitar skills but interfere as little as possible with the song,” Popovic explains.

“On ‘Sho Nuf,’ for example, the solo kicks in at the very end, and by that time people are so hyped because they’ve been dancing, and you’re placing the solo on the right spot where it’s a great something new and it really helps the song. Because otherwise it’s the same old, same old, same old, right? So let’s put in some guitars. That’s my approach.

Her description, in fact, is akin to a DJ building the music to a frenzy, then landing the drop beat for additional impact.

“Exactly!” Popovic says. “I just wanted to try something new, really. And it is new. It’s something a lot of people don’t do, and why not? Prince was trying to have people dance and have some guitars woven into it. It’s just bringing something new to the table, and of course something the audience didn’t expect from me or saw coming.”

Popovic says some of her approach was inspired by Foggy, the new custom Stratocaster model — named after its fogged-mirror chrome color — she created with the Fender Custom Shop. While the 1964 Strat she bought in 2007 at Gruhn Guitars in Nashville is still her main axe, Popovic began working with Fender on Foggy during 2019 and throughout the lockdown and her battle with breast cancer, creating the unique color. It also has a C-profile neck with jumbo frets, and a combination of two ’60s-inspired Custom Shop single-coil pickups and a Seymour Duncan ’78 humbucking pickup in the bridge position.

“Foggy inspires that ‘other’ side of me that wants to break free from the old tradition,” Popovic explains. “It’s a modern tone, a little more modern than the ’64 Strat. It inspires the new approach and new grooves, so it can be put to work properly. The ’64 Strat is my main guitar, my road warrior and my right hand, but that’s why Foggy gets all the fun of exploring the unknown ground — new grooves, new styles.

“While in a lot of songs I combine the two guitars, they have distinctive differences as the ’64 is rooted in tradition and is very easy to manage. It plays like butter. It inspires me to get my best solos out, as it’s tested through time, and I know what to expect from it. Foggy needs time, and new sounds. It needs me to put in some time discovering the hidden, modern twist to my guitar playing that’s definitely in me.”

Nevertheless, Popovic adds, “I don’t think there’s a rule” to applying those touches to dance songs. “It’s whatever the song needs, wherever you want to take it,” she explains. “Of course playing guitar over tracks like that, you’ve got to be really in the pocket, and obviously I try to show off with licks and everything, but it’s still got to be heavily rooted in the pocket of the song.”

That, of course, goes for other tracks on Dance to the Rhythm — just out digitally, with physical formats coming October 30 — whether it’s the slower blues of “Dwell on the Feeling” or the sophisticated, sometimes jazz-flecked stylings on tracks such as “Soulution” and “California Chase.” (Popovic likens the former to Steely Dan).

Then there’s her rendition of Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” which Popovic infuses with Latin and jazz textures and adds a gospel-flavored backing vocal arrangement.

“It’s an incredible song, a phenomenal song — so what could we do with it? It’s so good as it is,” she notes. “I love songs with two different tempos, two different parts, two different anything. We kind of envisioned this… either funk or gospel. What if we turn that B part that’s kind of like ’70s hippie rock into gospel.

“We were in the studio and messing around with it, and we were like, ‘Well, let’s sing on this part. Let’s sing something that sounds a little bit churchy,’ and we built it from there. I think it’s a wonderful new way to play that song. I think it was a very successful way of keeping the actual character of the song but changing it, making something different and just refreshing it after all this time. It’s definitely added something.”

Simon himself hasn’t weighed in, but Popovic says his organization “started following me right away” after she posted a teaser of the track online.

“I hope he’s going to hear it,” she says. “I think we did it justice. I’m a huge fan, of course. I carefully pick my covers, and I haven’t done a Paul Simon song yet. This just screams for attention to me, of all his songs. They’re all great, but for this one I envisioned this as a great song for a bigger band… in a live situation. I just want to have songs like that.”

Popovic — who maintains bands that range from four to 11 members — will be in plenty of live situations in the near future. She’ll be taking her largest band on the upcoming Rhythm & Blues Cruise to Mexico and back during October, then heads to Europe in November and the U.S. West Coast and Hawaii during early December. More U.S. dates are already on tap for the new year as well.

“I think all of those new songs are gonna be fantastic live,” she says. “Some of these songs have been around for a long time; ‘Hardest Ticket in Town’ was the first song I wrote; this was years ago. ‘Hurts So Good’ had been floating around for three or four years, and I recorded multiple versions of it.

“I never give up on a song. At the same time I’m not gonna release it unless I’m 100 percent sure it’s reached its full potential. And then when it has, all I want to do is play it live.”

“Quirky.” That’s the word singer Rita Coolidge chooses when talking about Bob Dylan.

The folk legend has baffled many of his collaborators over the years. Former Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell recalls Dylan’s confusion over drum machines, remarking, “It won't follow me? What good is it?” Folk-rocker Roger McGuinn remembers how the guitarist fought to have his name taken off their co-write “Ballad of Easy Rider” because he was disappointed to discover the movie wasn’t the low-budget B-movie he had assumed it was.

Coolidge discovered Dylan’s temperamental nature for herself when she was singing backing vocals on “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” He composed the acoustic guitar–driven hit for the 1973 Sam Peckinpah western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which starred Dylan alongside singer-songwriter — and Coolidge’s future husband — Kris Kristofferson in the part of Billy the Kid. Coolidge had the small role of Maria.

She first met Dylan and his wife, Sara, on the movie’s set in Mexico City. Like many others, she found his ways a little odd.

“Bob would go into the wardrobe truck and decide which hat he was going to wear that day,” she told the Church Studio. “And then, for the next scene, if he was able to get another hat, he would.

“He had a thing.

“One day, I was at the house. Sara said, ‘Let me show you something.’ She opened the door and the closet was stacked this high with hats.

“So Bob was wearing his hats home. He'd go to work the next morning and Peckinpah would go, ‘Where's the hat you had last night?’ ‘Don't have it anymore.’

“They were all in his closet.”

In addition to acting in the film, Dylan wrote its score and songs, which included “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Coolidge was among the background singers on the track and recalls Dylan’s habit of making changes on the fly without alerting anyone.

“We’re trying to sing background with him, but he kept changing the lyrics,” she recalls. “So we'd get to the part where we're supposed to be singing with him — he's singing something else.

“He did that once at a Christmas party, or a New Year's Eve party,” she adds. “He was playing ‘Mr. Tambourine Man,’ and he kept rewriting lyrics, and everybody's trying to sing along. He's like, ‘No way, that's not the way I'm doing it tonight.’

“He’s a quirky guy.”

Consisting of just two short verses and a refrain, and lasting all of two and a half minutes, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” speaks directly to the scene for which it was written, showing the death of a frontier lawman, played by movie western actor Slim Pickens.

With its stark lyrics and bare-bones structure — the chords and melody are virtually the same from one line to the next — “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” was a beguiling tune with a strong spiritual bent at a time when evangelicalism and the spiritual movement were growing. The tune became a global hit and is notable as one of Dylan’s most famous post-1960s songs. It’s been covered by many artists, including Eric Clapton, Randy Crawford and, most famously, Guns N’ Roses, who gave the acoustic-rock classic an electric update.

Coolidge — who inspired Leon Russell to write Joe Cocker’s hit song “Delta Lady” — has certainly worked with her fill of unpredictable musicians. Kristofferson, with whom she released three albums, once famously landed a helicopter on Johnny Cash’s Nashville yard around 1969 just to hand him his demo tape. Coolidge was also both mystified and angered when Eric Clapton used her song “Time” — which she wrote with drummer Jim Gordon — as the piano coda for the Derek and the Dominos hit “Layla,” without giving her credit. She’s continue to crusade for a co-write on social media and in interviews.

Queen’s enigmatic guitarist Brian May has been behind some of the greatest songs to come from rock's classic era.

These days, the guitarist is singing the praises of a tune from 2013 that he calls “one of the best rock songs ever.”

His passion explains why May has lent his talents — and the iconic tone of his Red Special guitar – to a special reworking of the song: “Could Have Been Me,” the breakthrough single from British glam-rockers the Struts.

May somehow missed the song’s initial release, when it became the lead single for the Struts’ 2014 debut album, Everybody Wants. When he did eventually hear it, he was taken aback.

“I wish I'd heard that song when I was a kid,” May tells Classic Rock. “It’s a classic.”

The Struts formed in 2012, combining shades of Led Zeppelin, Queen, AC/DC and — oddly — Leonard Cohen into their unique brand of glam. Luke Spiller, the band's singer and songwriter, even recalls imitating Freddie Mercury and Bon Scott in front of the mirror when he was just 11.

“Could Have Been Me” earned the band a slot supporting the Rolling Stones in Paris in June 2014, a month before their debut LP hit the shelves. Spiller says s the chance to rework the song with one of the band's heroes has only compounded the tune's meaning.

“This song is all about seizing your dreams and living life to the fullest, no matter the obstacles,” Spiller divulges. “It’s a powerful anthem that reminds us to chase what sets our souls on fire.

“Collaborating with Brian on this track is a dream realized, and I can’t wait for you all to feel the energy and inspiration behind it.”

Much of that energy comes from May’s harmony-rich contributions. His guitar sings throughout, at times growling like a V8 engine, at others sprinkling the playfully camp panache that underpinned Queen's legendary music.

“It's one of the best rock songs ever,” May declares, noting, “It was actually bigger in America than it was in Britain: it passed people by over here, and it shouldn't have done.”

The song gained traction in the U.S. two years after its release, thanks to growing prominence on the radio, eventually peaking at number five on the Alternative Songs chart.

Notes May, “It's a very inspirational song: I don't want to look back and think I didn't live my life and take all the opportunities that were in front of me. I love that sentiment. It says everything that a kid needs to know when they're growing up.”

Oddly, the band’s label, Interscope, warned the band not to let May add too many guitars to the track, saying guitars aren’t in vogue.

No one bothered to pay them any mind.

“I could hardly believe I was hearing that,” May scoffs. “It’s ridiculous. The guitar is very much parallel to a human voice, and that's what makes it immortal. That's why people express themselves through guitar as well as through their voice. I don't think guitars are on the way out just yet!"

While May arms himself, of course, with the Red Special as an extension of his voice, Spiller’s voice and the swagger with which he delivers his performance on the song feel very close to home for their guest star.

“Working with Luke, I'm often thinking of Freddie,” May confesses. “There are a lot of similarities. They both have this unstoppable belief. They have incredible voices, they’re great songwriters, but they have that extra ingredient: ‘I’m going to do this, I’m going to let the world come to me.’ That’s what Freddie had, and that‘s what I see in Luke.”

“Hopefully, this song will go on to inspire many more people to take life by the scruff of the neck and drink it down deeply,” Spiller concludes. “Every day is a gift. Let’s celebrate them together.”

Mercury has been on Brian May’s mind a lot recently, with his first-ever signature guitar bestowed with a touching tribute to the late rock icon.

He’s also said he had to fight with him to get a guitar solo on one of Queen’s biggest hits — although another monster hit didn’t need one – and has discussed his favorite Queen deep cut. He says the band never plays the “magic” song live out of respect for Freddie.

As Andy Summer explains it, the Police’s biggest hit of all time wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for his guitar line.

“That song was going to be thrown out,” Summers told Guitarist in 2022. After making several attempts at the tune, bassist Sting and drummer Stewart Copeland were ready to give up. “Sting and Stewart could not agree on how the bass and drums were going to go.”

Summers had an idea of what the song needed — an ear-catching electric guitar riff to give it some interest. But as he says, it wasn’t about creating a starring role for himself.

“It was more about keeping those other bastards happy.”

Sting took the bait.

“Sting says, ‘Well, go on then, go in there and make it your own,’” Summers recalled. “And I did it in one take. They all stood up and clapped.

“And, of course, the fucking thing went right round the world, straight to number one in America. And the riff has become a kind of immortal guitar part that all guitar players have to learn.”

The riff is also now at the heart of a lawsuit. This past week brought the news that Summers and Copeland are suing Sting for “millions in lost royalties” from the hit tune. “Every Breath You Take” earns nearly $740,000 in royalties annually, according to The Daily Mail, but because it is credited only to Sting — under his full name, Gordon Matthew Sumner — he alone receives songwriting royalties

And he’s undoubtedly earned quite a payday from the now 42-year-old classic. The lead single from the trio's fifth and final studio album, Synchronicity, "Every Breath You Take" was a generational juggernaut that became the group's biggest hit.

It topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, spending eight weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 — the only time the Police ever hit that summit — and went on to win Grammy Awards for “Song of the Year” and "Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.”

To sweeten things further, it was the top-selling single of 1983 and the fifth best-seller of the 1980s.

All together it’s quite a legacy, and one that Summers and Copeland are now looking to add their names to.

Summers told Guitar Player just last year he was unhappy not to have a credit on it. In an interview to discuss his guitar playing on the track, he revealed how he transformed the tune with his arpeggiating, chorus-tinged lines, performed on his modified 1963 Fender Telecaster.

"There wasn't a guitar part on it when Sting wrote it,” Summers explains. “It was just him singing, with this Hammond organ kind of thing, like Billy Preston or something. It didn't sound like the Police at that point.”

For that matter, the Police barely existed. The band’s members were at odds with one another while making the similarly chart-topping, multi-Platinum Synchronicity with co-producer Hugh Padgham at AIR Studios in Montserrat. The delicate balance of creative visions and egos was splintering, particularly between Sting and Copeland.

Synchronicity would mark the end of the group's recording run, and the three musicians went their own ways after a tour to support the album.

"I think we were in a difficult position,” Summer tells Guitar Player. “Clearly, Sting wanted to leave the band, and yet we had this massive album all over the world."

But years later, Summers has one lingering issue with "Every Breath You Take.” He's long contended that he deserves a writing credit for it, since his riff became such a defining element of the song.

“I just went into the studio and I heard the chord sequence for it, and it immediately came to me to play the riff I came up with. It was very much in the Police guitar style, if you like.”

As for what inspired it, Summers believes his creation may have come from his early 1980s collaborations with Robert Fripp.

"At the time I'd made one record with Robert” — 1982’s I Advance Mask — "and I think we were due to make another one. I was looking for material.”

But he says the line’s harmonic structure also owes much to the classical guitar genre.

“One of the things I had engaged with in my life, especially when I was mad about classical guitar, was the Bartok string duos,” he says. “I would listen to and try to play these beautiful Bartok things. So I had that kind of harmony in my playing, to some extent.

“Bartok would take it much farther out to add a ninth rather than a third — that kind of thing. So it fit with my mental musical landscape at the time, and it was very natural for me to play that sort of thing.”

So natural, in fact, that — as he told Guitarist in 2022 — he made short work of it.

“When it came to the recording, we got it done on one take, actually,” he announced to Guitar Player.

As for the modded ’63 Tele behind the tune, it’s the same one Summers used to record the Police’s first four albums. Unlike a stock model, it features a Gibson PAF humbucker in the neck and a standard Tele single-coil in the bridge position mounted to the guitar rather than the bridge plate. The guitar also has a built-in preamp controlled by a toggle and another toggle for phase switching. Other mods include a brass bridge with individual saddles.

While another guitarist might have just strummed the song’s chords, Summers saw in its simple structure an opportunity to add a defining element, one worthy of a songwriting credit.

"There's no way that I would've gone in and strummed A, F sharp minor, D and E,” he says, calling out the song's underlying chords. “What I managed to do with that guitar lick was take it into a very hip other atmosphere that was completely moody and set the song up. Instead of just strumming some really stupid chords, I made something out of it.”

That’s hard to argue with. As Summers says, “Every Breath You Take” was nearly tossed out before his riff turned things around. At the time of his interview with Guitar Player, the song was just past two billion streams on Spotify alone. It's now past 2.8.

“Which makes my guitar riff one of the most-played riffs in history,” Summers contends. “Not too shabby.”

Indeed. But that success would undoubtedly be sweeter with a co-writing credit — and, of course, the royalties that go with it.

Sting is being sued by his former Police bandmates, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland, over “millions in lost royalties” from the group’s hit song “Every Breath You Take,” according to The Sun and People magazine.

Summers and Copeland have made a claim for “substantial” damages after years of legal disputes over the 1983 hit.

The song earns nearly $740,000 annually in royalties, according to The Daily Mail. Sting alone is credited for its creation, filed under the bass guitar player’s full name, Gordon Matthew Sumner.

“This has been coming for quite some time,” says a source cited by The Sun. “Lawyers tried repeatedly to reach an out-of-court settlement but hit a stalemate. Andy and Stewart decided there was no alternative than court so pressed the button. They say they are owed millions in lost royalties.”

Summers spoke with Guitar Player about his role in creating the hit, explaining that the song was going nowhere until he came up with his iconic electric guitar riff that outlines the chords of the verses.

"There wasn't a guitar part on it when Sting wrote it,” Summers told Guitar Player last year. “It was just him singing, with this Hammond organ kind of thing.

“I just went into the studio and I heard the chord sequence for it, and it immediately came to me to play the riff I came up with. It was very much in the Police guitar style, if you like.”

As the lead single from the trio's fifth and final studio album, Synchronicity, "Every Breath You Take" became the group's biggest hit, topping the charts on both sides of the pond and spending eight weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It went on to win Grammy Awards for “Song of the Year” and "Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.”

“It's now past two billion plays on Spotify, so it is actually the most-played song of all-time history,” Summers added. “Which makes my guitar riff one of the most-played riffs in history.

“Not too shabby.”

Queen had their share of disagreements over the years that the original classic quartet was still together.

Guitarist Brian May and singer Freddie Mercury disagreed over whether or not to put an electric guitar solo on one of the group’s biggest hits. May also thought the singer was overdoing it when he pushed the guitar solo to the fore on the final choruses to “We Are the Champions” until it clashed with the vocals. Mercury replied that “the guitar is fighting with the vocal here, and that’s the way it should be.”

May was further displeased when the band recorded the backing track to their hit “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” in his absence.

But those were minor grievances compared to the interband controversy that continues over one of Queen’s cult favorites: “I’m in Love With My Car.” The song was penned by drummer Roger Taylor as a coy ode to drivers who feel too much affection for their automobiles.

Among its choice lyrics were the couplets, “When I'm holding your wheel / all I hear is your gear. / When my hand’s on your grease gun / oh, it’s like a disease, son.”

“Brian was like, ‘Is this a joke?’” Taylor recalls in an interview with Mojo. “I said, ‘Look at all those people out washing their cars on a Sunday morning, lavishing attention on them — they probably love their cars more than they love their wives.’

“It’s a valid lyric, I think, but kind of tongue in cheek, too, obviously... cars and girls — what else is there?”

But what really bothered May was the decision to place the song on the B-side to Queen’s monumental 1975 hit “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Because record sales royalties are split evenly between a record’s A and B sides, the arrangement meant Taylor’s joke of a song went on to earn a ridiculous amount of money courtesy of a song that was Queen’s labor of love.

“We were aware of the injustice of ‘I’m in Love With My Car’ making as much money as ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’” May explained to Mojo. “It was a real sticking point for the band and it’s good we got through it.

“I think our sense of humor saved us. How long did it take me to get over it? Oh, quite a while.”

Indeed. The resentment even surfaced in the 2018 Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, where May’s onscreen twin complains about Taylor’s song getting an unfair advantage.

Apparently, May and Taylor have sparked on other occasions when the guitarist took a hand with the drummer’s songs.

“I think Roger would say to you that it’s very simplistic with him,” May says. “He thinks in barre chords on the whole. My contribution would be to come in and make the melodies work better.

“It’s a humble task but that’s what I’ve done on Roger’s songs — add a bit of color.”

Taylor is unhappy with the insinuation.

“Not really, no!” he snorts. “I don’t only think in barre chords — that’s a slightly arrogant statement to make.

“Brian’s a perfectionist and he will chase down the detail, but that didn’t mean I was going to let him fuck up my songs!”

His grievances aside, the drummer takes comfort in knowing his royalty haul from “I’m in Love With My Car” continues to get under May’s skin.

“He’s never forgiven me,” the drummer says. “And I’ve never stopped laughing about it!”

When Roger McGuinn inadvertently co-wrote “The Ballad of Easy Rider” with Bob Dylan for the Easy Rider soundtrack in 1969, he couldn’t have known that he was writing an anthem for the counterculture.

Then again, given McGuinn’s carefree nature and association with the laid-back vibe of the late-1960s hippy movement, perhaps he had an inclination that the folky track would come to define one of cinema’s greatest soundtracks.

What’s more, the song came at a time when, save for 1967’s The Graduate, film soundtracks featured orchestral scores rather than contemporary music. Easy yet Rider’s soundtrack was punctuated with songs of the day by Steppenwolf, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and McGuinn’s own group, the Byrds. To that end, his “Ballad of Easy Rider” drove home the point that Easy Rider was more than just another film — it was a work of art with a message.

McGuinn agrees. “I think it's great,” he tells Guitar Player. I love Steppenwolf, and it's really well done. You know, the songs they chose were really appropriate for the movie. And I thought the movie was a really good representation of the whole hippy thing, with LSD and pot.”

Of course, McGuinn wasn’t alone in putting together “The Ballad of Easy Rider.” He had help from Bob Dylan. The story goes that Peter Fonda — who co-wrote, co-produced and starred in the film — gave Dylan a private screening of Easy Rider in New York City, and asked him to write a theme for the movie.

Dylan didn’t like the film and was surprised to see it was a big-budget production. Rather than agree to write a song for it, he scrawled a verse on a napkin and told Fonda, “Give this to McGuinn. He’ll know what to do with it.”

Dylan’s response was characteristically cryptic, but he was right: McGuinn did know what to do with it. “I guess he knew I was able to take it and run with it,” McGuinn says with a shrug.

As for why, McGuinn credits his friendship with the enigmatic songwriter. “He and I had been friends,” McGuinn says. “When I lived in Malibu, he used to come over to my house, and we’d play guitars and shoot pool. So he handed the verse to me as a surrogate, I guess.”

Once McGuinn finished the song, he, Fonda, Byrds drummer Gene Parsons and Dennis Hopper — Fonda’s cowriter and costar in Easy Rider, as well as its director — hit the studio at Columbia Records to cut the simple track, which features McGuinn on guitar and vocals, and Parsons on harmonica.

McGuinn says he never got to talk with Dylan to see if he liked the song, nor did he have input from him while writing it. All he had was his prior experience and a hunch about what would work.

“I wasn't really a prolific songwriter,” McGuinn says. “I had a whimsical attitude about writing songs. Gene Parsons had turned me on to sea shanties around that time.

“But I wasn't really trying to convey a big message or anything like that. I wasn't a protest songwriter. I just wrote songs that appealed to me.”

Once he learned he’d received a songwriter credit for the song, Dylan insisted his name be taken off it. “He called me up at about three o’clock in the morning a couple of weeks later,” McGuinn says. “Bob said, ‘What’s this credit? I don’t need the money. You can take it off.’

“I said, ‘Okay.’ He didn’t want any association with it because he didn’t like the movie.”

Like most who participated in the making of Easy Rider, Dylan and McGuinn had no sense that the film and its music would become halcyon. But it did, and while Dylan may have disliked it, McGuinn is proud of their work and the film.

“We had no idea it was going to be a blockbuster,” McGuinn says. “But that’s the way it was.

“It was like the people who didn’t go to Woodstock, and then they saw what it became. I think Bob didn’t think it was going to be a successful movie and didn’t want his name associated with it. But people like it.”

You worked closely with Peter Fonda on Easy Rider. How did you two become friends?

I first met Peter back when I was working with Bobby Darin in Las Vegas. I used to do my 15-minute folk segment with him and then leave, and I’d walk up and down the strip in Vegas and go to different shows and stuff.

One night, Bobby said, “I’d like to take you out after the set, so stick around tonight because my wife and this young actor are coming over to see us, and it’s his first movie.”

So I stuck around, and [Darin’s wife, the film actress] Sandra Dee showed up with Peter Fonda. It turned out that Peter and I had a common friend, [Eugene] Stormy McDonald. Stormy had been a friend of mine since high school, and he was one of Peter’s best friends in college when they were in Tucson, Arizona. So that’s when I met Peter. It was around 1962, probably. And we maintained a friendship the whole time ever since then.

For the film, Peter wanted to use Bob Dylan’s “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” but couldn’t get copyright clearance, which led him to ask Bob to write the theme song for Easy Rider. How did it become a co-write between you two?

Peter flew to New York and screened the movie in a private screening room for Dylan. And Dylan wrote down some notes on a paper napkin, and said, “Here… give this to McGuinn. He’ll know what to do with it.” And then Peter flew back, gave me the napkin, and I finished the song.

Why do you think Bob had that sort of faith in you, considering how vague his direction was?

I guess he realized that I was a good arranger of his material, like I’d done with “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and so on. I wrote the tune, and then I wrote the second verse, and of course, he got a credit for it.

Do you know the origin of Dylan’s lyrics for the verse he gave you? Did they come from him watching the film?

Yeah, he saw the film. He saw the movie in that private screening room, and he didn’t like the ending of it. He didn’t think Peter and Dennis should have gotten shot like that at the end. And I think he thought it was going to be a low-budget B-movie. [laughs]

So the scale of the movie put Bob off?

Yeah. He didn’t want his name to be associated with it. So he just wrote down, “The river flows…” and if you look at the end of the movie, there’s a helicopter shot of a river around the place where Peter gets shot.

His verse goes, “The river flows, it flows to the sea, wherever that river flows, that’s where I want to be, flow river flow.” He wrote that, like, sort of chorus: “Let your water wash down.” And then I came up with the second verse: “All they wanted was to be free, and that’s the way it turned out to be.”

Is it true Dennis Hopper was initially confused by your meaning?

Yes. Dennis and I were getting on the elevator at Columbia Studios, and he said, “Hey, what’s that mean: ‘All they wanted was to be free, and that’s the way it turned out to be?’” I said, “Think about it, Dennis.”

And he went, “Oh, wow, man… that’s heavy.” [laughs]

You mentioned earlier that Bob received a writing credit for the song and that he wanted no association with it. But did he at least like the song?

No, no. I never… we never talked about the subject. But I figured it out… I mean, it was obvious what happened, and that even though he wasn’t super happy with the credit, you know… Bob is not the kind of guy that you can have a normal conversation with. [laughs] He talks in abstractions. But I think that’s natural because he’s a poet. It’s how he thinks.

What gear did you use on the film version of “The Ballad of Easy Rider,” and how did that differ from the Byrds’ re-recorded version that came later?

The guitar that I used on that, I think, was a Martin 12-string. But on the soundtrack, first of all, it was just Gene Parsons on harmonica, and me with the acoustic guitar and on vocals. That was it. It was just two instruments.

All I remember is that Dennis and Peter showed up when we recorded it. We booked a studio at Columbia Records, and it was just me and Gene Parsons. We did that because it was supposed to be like an acoustic thing, so we really didn’t need the whole band for it.

But on the Byrds' version, I definitely used different gear. It’s a whole other recording. That was my Rickenbacker 12-string, and Clarence White had his Telecaster with the B-Bender. And then, we had bass and drums, and everything.

It also featured an orchestra.

Yes. Our producer, Terry Melcher, added an orchestra, which sounded pretty. I remember Candice Bergen and Terry were a couple at the time, and so Candice came and listened to the playback of the orchestrated version of “Easy Rider.” And she said, “Oh, that’s so beautiful.”

The weariness of the lyrics seem to represent that the ’60s revolution was taking too long to come. Was that your intention?

Well, that’s kind of too philosophical for me to comment on. [laughs] I was just happy to be working, be on the road, and be recording. I was having a good time. So I didn’t really feel the weariness that you’re talking about.

Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Fairport Convention are among the many artists who’ve covered “The Ballad of Easy Rider.” Why do you think it’s resonated with so many people?

I have no idea! I guess they liked it. [laughs] I heard Bruce's version, but I don’t remember Tom or Fairport’s versions.

But it’s great! It’s always an honor when somebody covers your song. It had a good melody. I’m happy with how the melody came out, and it’s got some nice fingerpicking in it. And with the Byrds' version of it, the one with the orchestra and everything, it really is a very, very pretty recording.

While it’s the theme song to a counterculture film, it’s gentle, folky and almost biblical in its imagery. The song resonates with listeners regardless of their political affiliation. Was that irony sort of the point?

Well, it’s a melancholy song because two guys got killed. And all those two guys wanted was to be free — you know, it’s talking about how they got freed of their bodies but not freed of their cares and worries. So that was the kind of freedom that I was talking about.

Aside from The Graduate, Easy Rider was one of the first films to feature a soundtrack of contemporary songs rather than a score. Did you have a sense of how influential the film and its soundtrack would be?

I didn’t really know at first. And I guess I was kind of surprised at how popular it became. But from what Peter told me, the records that were on the soundtrack were there just as a placeholder, and he was going to have some other kind of music. But they saw it so many times with the placeholder music that they got to liking it that way.

Do you see parallels between the state of the country now and 1969 when Easy Rider came out?

No, not so much. We had a similar division of philosophies, I guess, you could say. But back then, we had the Vietnam War, and people who were pro war, and people who were against it. And we have a lot of that type of division now. I guess that’s the main similarity. But I think there was more of a freewheeling spirit back then.

Paul McCartney teased it on his Instagram, and today Apple Corps made it official: There is new Beatles product coming!

The Beatles 1995 Anthology series will get a reboot this fall from Apple Corps Ltd, with a new, ninth episode in its documentary series, a new fourth volume in its music collection and a 25th Anniversary Edition of the Beatles Anthology book featuring the group's story told by all four Beatles and their associates.

The now nine-part Anthology documentary will stream exclusively on Disney+ beginning November 26. The new episode includes unseen behind-the-scenes footage of Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr reuniting between 1994 and 1995 to work on Anthology and reflecting on their shared life as the Beatles.

In addition, the entire series as been restored by Apple Corps’ production team, working with Peter Jackson’s Wingnut Films & Park Road Post teams and Giles Martin, son of Beatles producer George Martin, who has created new audio mixes for the majority of the featured music.

The Anthology 4 music collection, curated by Giles Martin, includes 13 previously unreleased demos and session recordings and other rare recordings. It also includes new mixes of the Beatles’ Anthology-associated hit singles “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” which have been given new mixes by their original producer Jeff Lynne, who has used modern tech to give new life to John Lennon's original vocals. The remixed single and restored music video, shown below, are out today.

The new mixes of both songs are placed alongside the band’s most recent single, 2023’s “Now and Then,” the last Beatles song. All three singles were created from rudimentary home demos John recorded in the 1970s, later completed with vocal and instrumental parts recorded by Paul, George and Ringo.

The entire Anthology series will now comprise 191 tracks which will be released on November 21 by Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe as digital collection, and in deluxe 12LP 180-gram vinyl and 8CD box sets. Both box sets include the original sleeve notes for Anthology 1, 2 and 3; the new Anthology 4 includes track notes written by Kevin Howlett and an introduction compiled from 1996 interviews recorded with the Beatles’ close friend and adviser Derek Taylor. The Beatles Store’s exclusive editions for both box sets add four 12-inch band photo art cards in a numbered envelope. The collection is available for pre-order.

As for the Beatles Anthology book, it comes out October 14 from Apple Corps Ltd. and Chronicle Books. Throughout its pages, John, Paul, George and Ringo share their honest, intimate and revelatory recollections of the band’s journey. Their memories are accompanied by impressions from their closest colleagues, including Neil Aspinall, George Martin, Derek Taylor and others. The bestselling 368-page book is beautifully illustrated with more than 1,300 photos, documents, artwork, and other memorabilia from the band’s archives. The book is available for pre-order.

The news will is sure to be welcomed by fans. From their global rise in 1963 to their final days in the early 1970s, the Beatles reshaped music. By the time they dominated the charts in 1964, they had swept away the acoustic-guitar driven folk movement, reshaped rock and roll and turned on millions of young people to pick up electric guitars and form bands of their own.

Despite the group's fractious breakup brought about by John Lennon's departure in September 1969, the group had a chance to continue on when Lennon offered up a plan that would have created a more equitable arrangement for its three main songwriters. Unfortunately, the band was too far gone by then.

Despite the Beatles' demise, they have continued to be one of the most influential groups in the 50-plus years since they broke up. No doubt millions of fans throughout the world are thrilled by the news that more Beatles music is on the way.

Deep Purple's 1973 hit "Smoke on the Water" is more than the band's biggest song — it's a guitar anthem that inspired countless budding musicians to pick up an electric guitar. Since its release, it's become one of the most iconic riffs in rock history, been forbidden from being played in numerous guitar shops, and grown into a cultural phenomenon.

Evidence of that last claim can be found in the very city where the song was recorded in 1971, two years prior to its release.

“The last time we were in Montreux, there were signs by the lake reading: 'No smoking on the water,'” Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover tells The Guardian. The band actually played a very literal version of the song during a recent visit to the Swiss city, which nestles at the foot of the Alps.

The song's creation has become part of rock and roll folklore. As has been documented many times, Deep Purple were set to record their 1972 album, Machine Head, at the Montreux casino's theater in December 1971 after it closed down for the winter. But at the last concert of the season, featuring Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, an audience member fired a flare gun that set the ceiling on fire and burned down the venue.

“It was pretty horrendous and frightening,” Blackmore recalls in an episode of Tales From the Tavern on his YouTube channel. “We were watching Frank, and we all had to get out of the building. Frank turned around and said, ‘I don't want people to panic,’ and with that, he jumped out of the window! The whole place burned down in 20 minutes.”

With nowhere to record, Deep Purple settled into a local Montreux theater, the Pavilion, which is where "Smoke on the Water" came into being with its famous guitar riff.

As Blackmore recalls, his goal was to keep things simple.

“I was always looking for a very simple riff to play,” he says. “I'd heard the Kinks play ‘You Really Got Me’, and the Stones were playing ‘Satisfaction,’ so I felt there was a commercial element of, if you want to be heard, you have to keep it simple.”

Although the riff is written in the blues scale and harmonized in parallel fourths, Blackmore claims he wrote it by tapping into his love of classical music. According to the guitarist, the famous passage is an interpretation of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 5. "I owe him a lot of money," the guitarist says. To perform it, he cast aside his guitar picks and opted to fingerpick instead.

Deep Purple were tracking the session using the Rolling Stones' Mobile Recording Unit — a storied piece of gear immortalized in the song's lyrics — when they had unexpected visitors.

“The police were banging on the door because we were making so much noise,” Blackmore says with a smile.

They completed the recording with assistance from their road crew. As Paice explains to The Guardian, “The roadies managed to hold the doors shut until we’d finished the take.”

“Luckily, we had a master take, and that was given to Ian Gillan to write the lyrics,” Blackmore continues.

“I didn't think it would be a hit, it was just something that Ian and I banged out on the spur of the moment. We were just having fun.”

However, the version of the track that made it onto the band’s sixth album, Machine Head, wasn’t the one they sent to the label.

“Warner Bros. in Los Angeles loved it but said it was too long for the radio, so unbeknownst to us, one of their engineers cut it down to four minutes,” Paice recalls. “The rest is history, as they say.”

Meanwhile, the band had begun playing the song on tour, as captured on the live album Made in Japan, and developed it even further.

“We’d been playing it for a year and had found all these little nooks and crannies to explore,” Paice explains. “The audience did the hand claps in time with the riff. Ian had trouble hearing through the monitors that night in Osaka, so at the end he says that wonderful line: ‘I want everything louder than everything else!’”

“Montreux has always been special to us because of what happened,” Glover concludes. “I never get tired of playing the song. Someone once said it’s like having a button that you press to make the audience go nuts.”

Meanwhile, Simon McBride, the band’s current lead guitarist, says many guitarists play the riff incorrectly and has revealed why Blackmore’s unique approach to the riff was so fundamental to its success.

And while we're on the subject of classic rock riffs, Dweezil Zappa has lamented the lack of riffs in modern music.

And in related news, Candice Night has also spoken about Blackmore’s ongoing health issues and when he can be expected to grace the stage again.

Away from being one of modern prog rock’s most celebrated songwriters, Steven Wilson has remixed a glut of classic albums – a task he once said was “the equivalent of polishing the Sistine Chapel.”

Since giving King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King a new sheen as part of the band's 40th anniversary celebrations in 2009, the Porcupine Tree man has taken on other projects for the likes of Yes, Guns N' Roses and Steve Hackett, among many others.

But his work revisiting select portions of Black Sabbath's catalog hit a rather sizable snag, and it forced him to take a new approach, particularly with Vol. 4 , where his remixes were limited to six of the original album's 10 tracks.

“The tapes were lost,” he tells Noise11. “That's a classic example, and this has happened a few times over the years with me. The will to do it was there. The record company wanted to do it, the manager wanted to do it, I wanted to do it.

“And then they couldn't find the tapes.”

Of course, Sabbath had notoriously bad luck with tapes. During the sessions for 1975’s Sabotage, recording engineer David Harris mistakenly wiped the original master of The Thrill of it All during production. His error was immortalized on the record's liner notes, with Harris credited as “tape operator and saboteur.”

However, not all hope was lost for Wilson. He was able to get his paws on the record, just in a less traditional sense.

“What they did find,” he says, “was some outtake reels of the band running through different takes of the songs. So we did what we could, which is I mixed these outtakes, which I think are fascinating if you're a fan of that record.

“To go back and hear the band running through many different takes of 'Supernaut' or 'Wheels of Confusion' — there's some great, great stuff there.”

Wilson had better luck when remixing its 1976's Technical Ecstasy, which would prove to be the penultimate album of Ozzy's first tenure in the band.

“Unlike Vol. 4, multitracks for all but one song from Technical Ecstasy were located,” he writes on his website. “So this time new stereo remixes were made, along with alternate mixes which remove many of the more symphonic overdubs, incorporating instead alternate guitar solos, vocal takes, and other overdubs not used in the original album mix.

“Additionally, there is an outtake of 'She’s Gone,' which, in contrast to the orchestral album version, is for the full electric band, including Mellotron choir, making it sound closer to the ballads from earlier Sabbath albums.”

Wilson's experiences with remixing and remastering classic albums have given him unique insights into the works as well as the talents of the artists involved. Speaking to Sound on Sound in 2019, Wilson said he learned a lot about Robert Fripp's genius when remixing their superlative debut album. He believes a lot of their aural excitement comes from one key factor of the recording process.

His latest remix project has put Pink Floyd's iconic Live at Pompeii album under his sonic microscope, and he's spoken at length with Guitar Player about the project.

And as far as new music is concerned, he says that writing his latest solo album, the expansive, epic whirlwind that is The Overview, saw him trying to redefine the modern guitar solo.

“Of all the songs I've written, I think I get the most feedback about that song,” Tom Petty said of “I Won’t Back Down” in the Peter Bogdanovich documentary Runnin’ Down a Dream. “And it is a personal song. When I did it, I sort of thought that I laid it out, you know, with no ambiguity at all — like, I just said it very plainly.

“And I kind of felt nervous about it, like maybe I should take it back and disguise it a little bit. But I'm glad I didn't — and it's very much like me.”

Released in April 1989 as the lead single from Petty’s first solo album, Full Moon Fever, “I Won’t Back Down” was indeed a personal song. It was inspired by a 1987 arson at Petty’s home in Encino, California.

As Petty, his then-wife Jane Benyon, and their daughter were eating breakfast one morning, they smelled smoke: Someone had broken into the house and set a wood staircase on fire with lighter fluid. Petty and his family escaped, but the house was destroyed, except for — miraculously — his basement recording studio.

“We were shaken for years by it,” Petty told Paul Zollo in the book Conversations With Tom Petty. “I wouldn’t even use the word ‘fire’ in a song or anything. It really frightened me. They didn’t just try to kill me, they tried to wipe out my whole family. And it was a hell of a day. It was my wife’s birthday.”

Petty and his wife rebuilt their house on the property. And he got a chart-topping anthem out of it: “I Won’t Back Down.” Its minimal lyrics are a statement of defiance in the face of hardship and about as straightforward a message as anyone has ever delivered in a song.

Beyond its obvious appeal as a infectious rock track, its stand-tough message has made it an appealing choice over the years for political campaigns, sporting events, labor union strikes and recovery efforts following natural disasters.

The song took on new significance for the country following the September 11 attacks, when it re-emerged as a popular radio tune. Petty and the Heartbreakers subsequently performed a version of it for America: A Tribute to Heroes, a telethon that raised funds for victims of the attack.

But as Petty told Guitar Player in his July 2006 cover story, he almost didn’t record it. Not only did it hit too close to home — literally, speaking — but its message felt too direct, especially for a songwriter who prefers a more elliptical style of writing.

“I thought ‘I Won't Back Down’ was too introspective,” Petty told GP. “I was hesitant with that one, because there's not much ambiguity or metaphor in it. It just says it.”

Petty was concerned enough that he consulted with his co-writer, Jeff Lynne, who also performed on and produced Full Moon Fever.

“I remember asking Jeff Lynne if he thought the song might be a little embarrassing. He said, ‘No. It feels great.’

“So I was surprised when it was received the way it was. People are always telling me, ‘That song helped me through the worst time of my life.’”

Petty typically preferred to be less literal in his songwriting, to give the listener room to project their own meaning onto a song. But he said “I Won’t Back Down” demonstrates that you have to let each creation be what it wants to be.

“The thing about songwriting is that there's an exception to every rule,” he told Guitar Player. It's hard to talk about it generally, because each song is so different. I think my best songs are the ones where you can find different levels of meaning in them. Those are the ones I find the most intriguing, but I don't always write that way.

“Sometimes, I'll write a linear kind of thing, such as ‘Into the Great Wide Open,’ which is just straight-on storytelling. But the ones I really like have a bit of ambiguity. I don't have a method that always works. The process is so random, and yet it keeps happening. I just look up every year or so, and I've got 10 more songs. It's not something I work at every day, but I kind of feel that I'm never done writing. I'm always looking for a song.”

And while “I Won’t Back Down” appeals to an iconic American image of going it alone against the system, Petty — who played acoustic rhythm guitar on the recording — got plenty of help when making the song. In addition to Mike Campbell on a Gretsch Clipper electric guitar, including the slide parts, the song features Petty's Traveling Wilburys bandmate George Harrison on acoustic guitar and backing vocals.

Harrison had another vital role in the song’s recording. He came to the rescue when Petty was too congested to sing.

“I had a terrible cold that day,” Petty told Mojo, “and George went to the store and bought a ginger root, boiled it and had me stick my head in the pot to get the ginger steam to open up my sinuses, and then I ran in and did the take.”

Released in April 1989, “I Won’t Back Down” reached the top spot on the Billboard U.S. Rock chart, an impressive achievement for his first solo single.

Roughly 25 years later, “I Won’t Back Down” returned to prominence once again when singer Sam Smith claimed to have inadvertently copied the song for his 2014 hit “Stay With Me.” The singer’s publisher agreed to credit Petty and Lynne as co-writers and pay them 12.5 percent of the song’s royalties.

Petty for his part said he believed Smith’s appropriation wasn’t intentional.

"All my years of songwriting have shown me these things can happen,” he said. “Most times you catch it before it gets out the studio door but in this case it got by. Sam's people were very understanding of our predicament and we easily came to an agreement.”

For fans of Al Nesbitt who have been anxiously awaiting his next move, Live in Seattle, the debut EP from Al Nesbitt & The Alchemy, promises to deliver something special. The advanced material from this EP gives evidence that this release is not just for guitarists and fans of guitar mastery, but also for a growing audience of listeners who have come to embrace the unique acoustic chemistry of Nesbitt’s instrumental compositions. Handily spanning musical genres that include Spanish, World, Pop, Rock, and Jazz, Nesbitt’s nylon-string acoustic guitar delivers visceral melodic themes that sweep listeners up and take them along on a mystical journey.

If you’ve seen the group live, I don’t really need to explain the impact that the ensemble has on an audience. However, for those who haven’t had the experience, let’s just say that their performances are not unlike the work of the ancient alchemists. The group’s efforts masterfully fuse the base materials of compelling and evocative melodies that flow through bold and sometimes shadowy musical frameworks buoying the listener along on a mystical journey, ultimately dropping them gently back into reality.

Live in Seattle captures Al Nesbitt & The Alchemy’s debut 2024 performance of five songs by four virtuoso instrumentalists: The well-known bass legend, Tony 'The Fretless Monster' Franklin; drummer, Curt 'Kirkee B' Bisquera, who has backed many musical giants; keyboardist and long-time musical collaborator, Jonathan Sindelman; and fiery nylon-string acoustic guitarist, Al Nesbitt, whose compositions provide a fertile launching pad for the group’s musical prowess.

Like so many powerful musical partnerships, the group came together around a gig. After accepting an invite from Seattle guitar icon, Tony Abreu, to open for his debut of Devilish Swing, Nesbitt found himself scrambling to pull an ensemble together due to the conflicting travel schedules of his usual Seattle players. Deciding to go big, he asked Franklin if he was available. The rest is history.

Nesbitt's compositions for A Million Shiny Things were inspired by macabre events and folklore that surrounds the many Hollywood celebrities who met up at L.A.’s famed Chateau Marmont, a hip hideout and notorious hangout for the rich and famous since the 1920s. A Million Shiny Things debuted at a one-night-only event held auspiciously on Friday the 13th at Madame Lou’s, Seattle's iconic Belltown music venue with its own ‘colorful’ past. The one-of-a-kind event turned out to be a genre-bending, mood-shifting, and downright spooky musical experience for the live audience. It not only captured the audience for the night, but also started a buzz about Nesbitt’s work. On the stage, the dynamic performance cemented the relationship between Nesbitt and the three virtuoso musicians that he had pulled together for the one-time performance at Madame Lou’s. “From the moment we took the stage, it was obvious something special was happening”, recalls Nesbitt. “We immediately recognized the powerful connection that we had with each other, the music, and with the audience.”

The A Million Shiny Things event set the stage for the Live in Seattle EP, where Nesbitt’s compositions were inspired by a more personal connection with Chateau Marmont–his own experiences at the famous Hollywood haunt. “Each of the rooms has its own personality,” he explains. “For example, the hotel’s room 53 is on the fifth floor overlooking the Sunset Strip. It’s special, and from the moment I was checked in, I felt a connection to the space and all that had happened there before me. I immediately opened my guitar case on the bed and started writing, piecing together ideas.” Nesbitt’s ideas come alive in the Room 53 single, recently released from Live in Seattle.

No stay at the Chateau would be complete without some personal indulgence; Perhaps an opportunity to disappear from the scene for a while, a mysterious tryst, or an adventurous night of debauchery with an alluring companion. But, as with so many of the hotel’s patrons, Nesbitt’s recollections of his personal adventure there are incomplete, and his ability to recall the events and timing is hazy. “Honestly, a lot about the weekend is a blur, but so often inspiration is fleeting. It's about being somewhere different doing different things,” he says. “As it was happening, I knew I had that music in me. I just hoped that it would all stick.” The events of that evening–the ones that Nesbitt can recall–became his inspiration for the next released single, The Lost Night.

For Nesbitt, making the recording of Live in Seattle was something special. “It was magical,” he recalls. “With minimal rehearsal, we were able to create a very unique live experience–strong musically, but also fluid and flowing. I’m so happy to have been able to make music with these legendary players. They were able to key into the dynamic nature of my compositions and be totally in tune with the emotion I was going for–be it a freight train or a quiet passage, the music never loses its intensity. Working with such gifted players in a live setting, well, it was just the ultimate inspiration for me.”

To keep the live feel of the event, tracks were mixed with minimal touch-ups. “We wanted to preserve every sonic aspect of a truly live experience,” Nesbitt recalls, “It was magical, and we wanted to capture that.” To that end, Nesbitt engaged master mix engineer and multiple Grammy award recipient, Steve Smith, to oversee the final production. “Steve’s work has been just beautiful. Everything has its own space in the mix, but each track becomes very cohesive and big when it needs to be.”

Nesbitt cites guitarists, Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin, as among his major influences and plays an unmodified Godin Grand Concert ACS-SA nylon string electric-acoustic on the Live in Seattle recording. “I love the sound on stage and the way the ACS-SA plays,” he says. Recently, Nesbitt has met with Godin designers about his ideas for custom Grand Concert design that would include the addition of two extra frets to extend the upper range on the E, B, and G strings.

Al Nesbitt & The Alchemy’s Room 53 and The Lost Night singles have been released and are available on the major streaming services including on Spotify. Three more songs will be available with the official release of the EP along with a bonus video for The Lost Night all scheduled to release on Friday, July 25th at 12am EST.

Cinema-quality video releases that include the official videos and promotional materials are available at the group’s Youtube channel where listeners can subscribe for more live sessions, behind-the-scenes clips, and exclusive content. For the most up-to-date details on performance dates and special events visit alnesbittalchemy.com. The group’s EPK provides detailed information about the band and contact information for booking.

2025 has been a busy year for Al Nesbitt & The Alchemy with the planned release of their debut EP Live in Seattle. Expect even more from this remarkable band in 2026 with more new music and more live shows.

Eddie Van Halen’s love of Eric Clapton’s Cream-era guitar playing is well known. The guitarist talked in depth about learning Clapton’s licks and solos note for note in his first-ever interview, with Jas Obrecht, in Guitar Player’s July 1978 issue.

What’s less well known is that Eddie had also learned the Who’s Live at Leeds album down to each of Pete Townshend’s riffs and solos.

In a new interview with Professor of Rock, former Van Halen bass guitarist Michael Anthony recalled his first jams with Eddie and his brother Alex, saying he was particularly impressed by Eddie’s ability to perform Townshend’s parts perfectly.

“When I jammed with Eddie and Alex that first time, they played some of their original stuff,” Anthony explains. “They were going through these time changes, and I’m like, ‘Whoa! What a trip!’

What's more, says Anthony, “He could play the whole Live at Leeds album, playing it note for note. It was just as good, if not better than Townshend!”

Released in 1970, Live at Leeds is celebrated as one of rock’s great live albums, and one that marked a turning point for the Who. By the dawn of the '70s, they’d become known as one of rock’s greatest performance acts, but they had yet to release a live album. They were also concerned that the success of 1969’s Tommy rock opera had boxed them in as an art-rock group.

The time was right for the Who to make a live album. They had recorded some shows from the Tommy tour but were unhappy with the sound. Early in 1970, they booked a pair of shows with the intent of recording them for an album. They included a February 14 concert at Leeds University and another the following day at Hull City Hall.

By this point Townshend’s stage gear consisted of 1968/’69 Gibson SG Specials in Cherry finish and a pair of customized master-volume Hiwatt CP103 “Super Who 100” heads, as well as a Shaftesbury Duo fuzz pedal. A WEM Copycat tape echo was applied to his guitar at the soundboard. Townshend would switch to using SG Specials in Polaris White finish in 1972. The SG would remain his main electric guitar until 1973, when he switched to the Les Paul Deluxe.

Townshend talent for coaxing a wide range of tones from such a simple rig was impressive. And, as it turns out, Van Halen wasn’t the only famous guitarist moved by Townshend’s work on Live at Leeds. Joe Satriani was blown away by the sound he was able to achieve from his gear, and picked the disc as one of the 10 albums that changed his life. He added that it would be his sole pick if he could choose only one.

“Pete Townshend, to me, is another one of those amazing musicians who put so much energy and originality into his playing,” Satch said. “He risks everything for the performance and the expression, which is another thing that I love dearly. When I see a performer just go crazy like that — and the fact that his rhythm playing is just unbelievable — I’m blown away. And his choices for guitar sounds are just unbelievable.

“It's the whole thing with him. He’s such an original. So if I had to pick one album, it would be Live at Leeds because I can’t even fathom the fact that he’s got the guitar on the right side and the reverb and the tape echo in the center. It’s just the craziest thing. I still don’t understand how that band, with those three guys playing, made such a beautiful sound where you didn’t want for another instrument. I still can’t understand it. It’s pure magic.”

Robert Plant has announced the release of his next solo album, which will feature him and his new group, Saving Grace, performing a collection of century-old music.

Likewise titled Saving Grace, the album is a treasury of songs from the past originally recorded by others. They include cuts made popular by legends like blues singer/guitarist Memphis Minnie, and gospel blues singer/acoustic guitarist Blind Willie Johnson.

But there are also newer songs first recorded by performers such as Moby Grape’s Bob Mosley, indie-folk act the Low Anthem, singer-songwriter Martha Scanlan, folk-rock artist Sarah Siskind, and Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk’s dream-pop band Low.

Plant calls Saving Grace — which arrives September 26 on Nonesuch Records — “a song book of the lost and found.”

You can hear Robert Plant and Saving Grace’s reimagined rendition of Low’s “Everybody’s Song,” which comes out today.

The genesis for Saving Grace was lockdown, when Plant connected with a diverse band of musicians in the English countryside who share his love of evocative song. The performers — vocalist Suzi Dian, drummer Oli Jefferson, guitarist Tony Kelsey, banjo and string player Matt Worley, and cellist Barney Morse-Brown — have spent the past six years developing the band's wide-ranging styles and personalities.

Through it all, Plant says, there has been a focus on joy and abandon.

“We laugh a lot, really. I think that suits me. I like laughing,” the singer says. “You know, I can't find any reason to be too serious about anything. I'm not jaded.

“The sweetness of the whole thing… These are sweet people and they are playing out all the stuff that they could never get out before. They have become unique stylists and together they seem to have landed in a most interesting place.”

Sharp-eyed music hounds will note this is not the first time Plant has worked his magic on tunes by Memphis Minnie and Blind Willie Johnson. The singer covered Minnie’s “When the Levee Breaks” and Johnson’s “In My Time of Dying” and “It’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine” while in Led Zeppelin.

Plant’s last album was Raise the Roof, his multiple Grammy–nominated 2021 reunion with Alison Krauss.

Saving Grace was recorded between April 2019 and January 2025 in the Cotswolds and on the Welsh Borders. It follows on Plant’s previous Nonesuch releases 2014’s lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar and 2017’s Carry Fire.

The release of Saving Grace will be accompanied by a fall tour that will mark the group’s first appearance in the U.S. and include an initial run of a dozen North American shows. See below for the full list of dates and visit robertplant.com/timetable for tickets.

Saving Grace is available for pre-order.

Robert Plant & Saving Grace Tour Dates

July 17 - Vienne, FR - Théâtre Antique

July 19 - Salon-de-Provence, FR - Château de l'Empéri

July 21 - Marciac, FR - Jazz in Marciac

July 23 - Carcassonne, FR - Festival de Carcassonne - Theatre Jean Deschamps

July 26 - Granada, ES - Palacio De Congresos De Granada

July 28 - Valencia, ES - Palau de les Arts

July 30 - Barcelona, ES - Teatro Liceo - Milleni Concert Series

October 30 - Wheeling, WV - Capitol Theatre Wheeling

November 2 - Charlottesville, VA - The Paramount Theater of Charlottesville

November 3 - Washington, DC - Lincoln Theatre

November 5 - Brooklyn, NY - Brooklyn Paramount

November 6 - Boston, MA - Boch Center Shubert Theatre

November 8 - Port Chester, NY - Capitol Theatre

November 10 - Toronto, ON - Massey Hall

November 12 - Chicago, IL - The Vic

November 13 - Chicago, IL - Old Town School of Folk Music

November 15 - Denver, CO - Ellie Caulkins Opera House

November 18 - Seattle, WA - The Moore Theatre

November 19 - Vancouver, BC - Vogue Theatre

November 21 - Oakland, CA - The Fox

November 22 - Los Angeles, CA - United Theater on Broadway

King Crimson guitarist and vocalist Jakko Jakszyk set the internet on fire this past July 7 when he told Goldmine the band is making a new album for the first time in 22 years.

"As we speak, we're doing a King Crimson studio album. When that will come out and what format or how — that's beyond my brief.

“But yeah, we've been doing it piecemeal, and then a couple of months ago, the management said, 'Can we?' So, yeah. I've been recording that with a view to it coming out in some format at some point. But who knows when?"

Jakszyk’s reveal was off the mark, according to Crimson manager David Singleton. Yes, Crimson are in the studio, he says, but an album project is not in the works, nor has there been any discussion about issuing what, if anything, comes from the effort.

Singleton released a statement via DGMLive, the website of Discipline Global Mobile (DGM), the record label founded by Fripp and Singleton, in which he makes a reference to late King Crimson drummer Bill Rieflin:

“Addressing the idea of some form of studio recording by the last incarnation of King Crimson, Bill Rieflin posed the excellent question ‘why make a studio album? There are excellent live recordings of all the songs out there already.’

“One possible answer would be an album the very sound of which no-one has ever heard before. A sound driven by the three drummers. And those drummers have now recorded studio versions of their parts — separately, so that there is perfect separation.

“So there is the seed of a new recording. Whether it is an album, whether it sees the light of day, whether it is something else is unknown. As is the outcome of any creative process.

“So yes, recordings have taken place. Getting excited about the possibility of a new album, as has apparently been happening, is somewhat premature. Carts before horses.”

King Crimson’s last studio album was 2003’s The Power to Believe. Extensive live recordings of past performances by Fripp and King Crimson continue to be released by DGM Live.

This isn’t the first time Jakszyk — who plays PRS electric guitars, including a custom PRS P24 model — has spoken out of turn. Shortly after joining Crimson in 2013 — where he replaced long-standing guitarist Adrian Belew — Jakszyk made the mistake of telling Classic Rock magazine what a nice guy Fripp is, earning him a rebuke from the guitarist.

As he recalled to Classic Album Review, he was asked if the notoriously fussy Fripp was difficult to work with.

“I said, ‘Look, all you can do is speak as you find,’” Jakszyk recalled. “And I said, ‘I gotta tell you that Robert has been incredibly supportive and encouraging. He hasn’t been difficult at all. It’s been amazing.’”

Shortly after the interview came out, Jakszyk was called on the rug during a rehearsal.

“Robert said, ‘Jakko, can I have a word, please?’

“And I thought, Oh, fuck…

“He called me over and said, ‘Jakko, I just read your interview with Classic Rock magazine.’ I went ‘Right.’ He said, ‘Yes. In the future, can you stop saying nice things about me? It’s ruining my reputation.’”

Indeed, Fripp — who suffered a heart attack last April and has been recovering — has a reputation as a taskmaster that was decades in the making, aided by interviews in which he gave unflinching assessments of guitarists like Eric Clapton, whose playing he described as “quite banal.”

Time will tell if Jakszyk’s original statement about a new Crimson record had any truth to it.

As Greta Van Fleet’s guitarist, Jake Kiszka has to create all the electric guitar riffs that fuel the Michigan rockers’ classic rock–leaning tunes.

But of course not all of Jake’s riffs make the cut. First they have to pass muster with his brother Josh, the group’s lead vocalist.

Now some of those riffs have found a new life with Mirador, the group Jake formed last year with Ida Mae guitarist Chris Turpin. That includes “Blood and Custard,” a track on the group’s upcoming debut album.

“I think that song is a perfect example of what type of things don’t necessarily translate in the world of Greta,” Kiszka tells Guitar World in a new interview.

Kiszka says the riff was inspired by the blues chestnut “Mean Old World” as recorded by Derek and the Dominos during the sessions for Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. The tune was written by blues legend T-Bone Walker, who recorded it in 1942 and again in 1956, between which time Chicago blues singer and harpist Little Walter cut a hit version in 1952.

Although the Derek & the Dominos version was not included on Layla, it appeared on the 1972 album Duane Allman: An Anthology and features Clapton and Allman playing slide on acoustic guitars in open G tuning.

“That was a riff I had for a long, long time,” Kiszka says. “It’s just been sitting on the shelf. I would say I was influenced by the Eric Clapton and Duane Allman song ‘Mean Old World,’ that kind of acoustic interpretation of a traditional blues song.”

He adds, “I wanted something with slide guitar on the record. Obviously, Chris is a great and very unique slide player, and I’m also known to play some slide, which I love doing. I put that riff to Chris and he loved it.”

It was Turpin who suggested the title “Blood and Custard,” a nickname once given to Selmer Truvoice combos of the 1950s and early 1960s that had a dark red–and-cream colorway. Kiszka calls the reference a good example of “guitar nerdism.”

Apparently the riff itself was too guitar nerdy for his GVF bandmates, particularly Josh.

“I think Josh is very critical of guitar things,” he adds, “and it wasn’t something that he was particularly interested in. I don’t think it ever made it to the final stages.”

Kiszka indicated as much about Josh’s inclinations in our 2023 interview with the guitarist for the group’s album Starcatcher. He said the rather brief album track “Runaway Blues” began life in the studio as a jam.

“We were having a slow, sort of methodical day, and I just wanted to rip out something new,” Kiszka said. “Nobody was around, so I started playing that riff.“

Producer Dave Cobb “started freaking out,” he recalled, telling Kiszka, “That song needs to be on the record!”

And it is — but at just 1:17, it’s pretty short.

“The reason why it’s so short is because Josh didn’t like it, and he wanted it to be brief.”

It’s the year of The Lamb for Steve Hackett. Genesis is celebrating its 1974 concept album/song cycle/rock opera The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway with a belated, deluxe 50th anniversary box set whose release has been pushed back several times and is currently due in September.

But Hackett — who served as Genesis’s guitarist from 1971 to 1988 — is serving up some Lamb on his own. His new live album and video, The Lamb Stands Up Live at the Royal Albert Hall, recorded at the iconic London theater last October, comes out July 11, and he’ll be featuring Lamb highlights during upcoming tour dates in Europe and North America.

“It’s a watershed album,” Hackett tells us via Zoom from his home in England, and that may even be an understatement. Genesis’ sixth studio album and the follow-up to the previous year’s Selling England by the Pound multiplied the quintet’s already demonstrated creative ambitions manyfold, both musically and conceptually.

Inspired by a number of acknowledged works — including Carl Jungian psychological theories, John Bunyan’s Christian-themed allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress, West Side Story and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1971 Western film El Topo — frontman Peter Gabriel subjects Rael, a New York street youth/graffiti artist, to a trippy journey of self-discovery that includes encounters with carpet crawlers, supernatural anesthetists, Slippermen, flies on windshields and grand parades of lifeless packaging.

“Huh?!” you may say?

That was kind of the point.

Genesis’ instrumentalists, meanwhile — Hackett, keyboardist Tony Banks, guitarist/bassist Mike Rutherford and drummer Phil Collins — soundtracked the swirl of surrealistic adventure with music of scope, beauty and nuanced intricacy. The Lamb’s 23 tracks range from grand bombast to ambient orchestrations, all leading to the rocking, riffy catharsis of the closing track, “it.” Unapologetically indulgent, it’s a prog high-water mark that felt like a masterpiece when it was released and has aged well during the intervening years.

The Lamb was accompanied by an abundance of drama as well. The group decided on a double album before it began writing, working to task at Headley Grange, the former workhouse-turned-musicians-residence used by Led Zeppelin, among others. Gabriel dominated the conceptual process, and he also didn’t endear himself to his bandmates when he left the sessions for a time to work on a project with filmmaker William Friedkin.

He was also absent at times tending to his wife Jill’s pregnancy with their first child while the rest of the band worked in Wales, and he was still working on lyrics after the basic tracks had been recorded. The stage presentation of The Lamb also had to be prepared while the album was being finished, with mixing finalized just four days before the launch of a 102-date tour, where The Lamb was performed in its entirety.

The album and subsequent tour marked the end of Gabriel’s tenure with Genesis. He announced his impending departure to his bandmates during the road show, making it public after it ended on May 22, 1975, in France. He launched a solo career in 1977 while Genesis soldiered on with Collins stepping out front, a quartet until Hackett’s departure and then a trio that called it a day in March 2022.

The Lamb was a memorable last shot for that quintet lineup of the band, and Hackett is a willing witness to the continuing appeal of that seminal piece of work...

Let’s start with a general overview of The Lamb and why you think it continues to be such a tentpole.
I think it’s very well written. I think it was designed to be controversial in its day. It was possibly the most difficult album I’ve ever done. I like to think some albums are a little bit like the Immaculate Conception — everything was easy, it was wonderful, the angels came down, wonders were performed. [laughs]

On the other hand, with The Lamb it was a little bit like a breach birth. It came out screaming, yes, the aspect of The Omen, devil’s spawn, all of that — the band dogged by circumstance.

What you get is a band whose lead singer was about to depart, but with his swan song he was treating Genesis almost like it was an extension of a solo career by this point. And yet, in the midst of all that, we came up with what I think is an extraordinary album.

The writing process for The Lamb was a bit different than how Genesis had worked before, right?
The band, the four of us, were writing in one room, and Pete was in another room writing lyrics. Then we would convene and confer [laughs] and thrash out a kind of agreement about where to go next. Some things that were intended to be instrumental sections ended up becoming vocal sections.

It wasn’t as if there was an overarching presence or somebody guiding this — the missiles were firing in all directions, much like modern politics. I didn’t mind that Pete wanted to write all the words, but... it was a time where you had to have your helmet on, really, to make sure the album was completed under very difficult circumstances.

But it has its beautiful moments. It has virtuosic keyboard parts. It has beautiful lyrics. Sometimes they relate to each other, sometimes they don’t. There are beautiful tunes, like “The Chamber of 32 Doors,” which I think was actually less about Rael and more about Pete’s frame of mind at the time, a similar lyrical stance that he was taking a little bit later on with “Solsbury Hill” — “Where to go next? Do I stay or do I go?” He was very much on the fence at that time.

What did you feel like your charge was during this process?
I wasn’t really thinking like a guitarist; I was thinking as someone who was interested in improving the presentation of what the band could do. I felt The Lamb was less about guitar than Selling England by the Pound, which was very guitaristic. The Lamb has its moments, but it really felt like I had to sit back and let things happen.

Many people might have said, “Nope, I’m not putting up with that. I’m gonna steam in here…” But I was ever the diplomat; if you want to stay in a band you have to have a diplomatic approach. It doesn’t sound like most guitarists should be doing that. Most guitarists should be set on fire and charging into amps and playing it with your teeth and all the rest, or you’re coming up with diplomatic guitar parts, much the same as I suspect George Harrison had to do with the Beatles. ’Cause when you’ve got a battle of the giants going on, you’ve got to be content with the crumbs, in a way.

So how did you then make it satisfying for yourself as a player?
Well for me, there were certain parts — parts you can’t hear on the original mix. For instance, I’m soloing throughout “Carpet Crawlers,” and on later mixes you hear it loud and clear. But I was trying to be a distant violin.

I was influenced by Jeff Beck — there was a Yardbirds track called “Turn Into Earth” that sounded intriguing, like there was an electric guitar, but you could hardly hear it. It sounded like a distant violin. It sounds like perhaps they tried to lose the guitar on that track, and what came out was something that sounded quite extraordinary to me and mystical, and I thought, Let’s do that, something very quiet.

It ended up being so quiet that it was virtually mixed out of all existence. But it’s back there with some of the other mixes, particularly the Surround mix that Nick Davis did some years ago. Right at the beginning, I’m doing noises of a fly buzzing about and very cleverly, especially with the Surround, he managed to make that loop, that fly buzzing about everywhere. That was entirely left off the original mix of the album, as was lots of percussion stuff as well. I think the detail was just lost back in the day.

It was an even broader array of sources you were drawing from for The Lamb, too.
We were huge fans of Ian McDonald, late of King Crimson, soon to be forming Foreigner, of course doing a very different kind of music. We were all impressed by his multi-instrumental ability — sax one minute, Mellotron the next, flute the next, vocals.

The point that wasn’t lost on Genesis was that the band didn’t have to be something that functioned in one direction. It could be pan-genre — many different styles. You could be touched by jazz, influenced by classical music. You could come up with an epic style, or something that’s pastoral. I think the Lamb track “The Lamia,” for instance — if there was ever a pre-Raphaelite song, that was it, and the pre-Raphaelite artist movement was all part of what influenced that Greek mythology, which also influenced the band.

What are some of the songs that really stand out related to your contribution on guitar?

“Fly on the Windshield”: I had license to play the guitar and — particularly live — to do it as long as I wanted. Funnily enough the version at the Royal Albert Hall where [Marillion’s] Steve Rothery joined, we extended that moment, which is arguably on one chord, for seven or eight minutes, trading solos between the two of us.

It’s a piece that’s always haunted me. I’ve always felt there was more to it — orchestral in spirit, at the same time cinematic in one sense. We were influenced by the Ben Hur film score — the “Ramming Speed!” moment from Miklós Rózsa, the Hungarian composer who wrote lots of epic film soundtracks.

So here we are being influenced in 1974 by a film that had been made in 1959. That’s why you’ve got the very simple drums and the plod of the bass pedal whilst I get to solo over it, and the version that’s on The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is the band literally improvising, listening to each other. We are playing together at the same time, and it’s quite rare, I think, that you’ll get something like that without any overdubs.

Actually I lied, there’s a little bit of backwards guitar I threw in just to make it slightly more interesting. I was trying to be a distant screaming voice at times, the sound of the oarsman, the slaves being flogged within an inch of their lives.

How about “Hairless Heart”?
“Hairless Heart” was something I just wrote for fade-in guitar. So the first part of the melody’s mine, beautifully accompanied by Tony Banks on organ, these organ arpeggios with repeat each on them — very floaty, very beautiful. And then the second part of the melody where it goes louder and the drums come in, that’s Tony’s melody. Then it goes back to my melody, then Tony’s, then out.

It’s a relatively short piece, but it’s wonderful doing it live now. When you’ve got soprano sax taking lead on the second part — Tony’s melody — and it’s twinned with synth and other keyboards, it sounds orchestral. It gets to inhabit a very large region that perhaps it didn’t have originally. So it’s a giant version of what you’ve once heard.

“Cuckoo Cocoon” was you and your brother John’s creation, wasn’t it?
Yes, that was me. It was chord shapes that my brother showed me, and I turned it into a song. The song wasn’t John’s but John and I were living at home, we were talking about things all the time and we went on to work on Voyage of the Acolyte [Hackett’s 1975 solo debut].

“Cuckoo Cocoon,” that’s one of the guitar moments. That came from guitar; “Supernatural Anaesthetist,” that came from guitar; “it.” came from guitar, as did many other moments. There’s this kind of tussle going on for supremacy between very busy keyboards and very dense lyrical passages, and so you’ve got virtuosic accompaniment to things that should be very simple songs. It’s funny how that all worked, but as I say, it was really almost like going to war at times.

There’s a story about how “it.” became part of The Lamb, isn’t there?
There was. Mike Rutherford was writing stuff on 12-string and he came up with the sequence that we layered parts on the top of it. The song was built around his chord sequence. I came up with the salvos that would fly across all of that.

But I don’t really think of it as a guitar tune. I think at times, in order to heal this fracturing band, you had to be the glue. You have to use sticky gloss over so many moments.

The solo on “Counting Out Time?”
I had a Synthi Hi-Fli [multi-effects unit, made by EMS in 1972/’73 and used by David Gilmour among others], and it did a very wobbly thing. It would give you a vibrato that went above the note and below the note, so it would sound like somebody literally gurgling through the solo. It was the technology that was around at the time, putting things through analog synthesizers.

I was trying to play something in the style of Django Reinhardt except for this sound that bore no relation to what he would have played. But the notes were the kind of thing that you might have gotten from the Hot Club du France, or Paris with Stéphane Grappelli. That type of playing, earlier kind of 1930s-meet-1940s style of — I guess you would say trad-jazz, but kind of souped-up, almost bebop in a way. So I was taking the influence of that just to be as controversial as anything else.

Brian Eno is credited with “Enossification” on “In the Cage” and “The Grand Parade...”
It was Pete’s idea to invite him to do that. It was lovely working with him. He was a breath of fresh air; when Genesis was struggling to make sense of itself at times, he was able to come in and have none of that baggage and just suggest things.

He was talking about the importance of mastering, and he came in with little boxes of tricks you could put things through. It was good. It was almost like a sort of pixie or an elf-like approach to what we were doing. It culled it, gave it humor and took it into areas of production that perhaps as the band we wouldn’t have thought to go.

Genesis, by then, was like walking into a gentleman’s club that’s been established for several years, and sometimes things can get a little bit staid at times. So it was very nice for him to walk in and cut a swath through the existing band politics. I think it was important, and I think an important step toward Brian Eno’s eventual future as a gifted producer.

Are you happy with the latest mix of The Lamb that’s coming out on the box set?
I haven’t heard it. I tend to just sanction things. I don’t get in the way of that. I know that what tends to happen with band politics is that if someone insists on something, it’s likely not to happen. So I have a passive approach to that and I hope whoever’s mixing is gonna honor the detail that was lost originally, found later on, and it may well be lost again.

But I would point to that Surround mix that Nick Davis did and say that was damn good.

And then there’s the live version, I think from the Shrine [in Los Angeles]. It’ll be interesting to hear that again.

Meanwhile I busy myself by doing new things as well, recording new things. We moved into a new house, got a new studio, working with that, working on solo stuff, working on some stuff with Steve Rothery. So I stay very busy.

The latest of those is, of course, the new live album and video, and the tour.
The show that I’m doing is celebrating The Lamb. There’s also quite a bit of — or there was up to now — doing stuff from Selling England, but we’re changing that around because some areas have had that show already, so I’m gonna be giving them “Supper’s Ready” ’cause fans are always creaming for “Supper’s Ready” which takes care of about 25 minutes of anybody’s show. [laughs]

You’ll also be playing what you call “the best” of The Lamb. What’s the litmus for “best?”
Well, the songs I was involved with writing, I think — “Hairless Heart,” for instance. I wanted to do things where guitar was relevant to the plot, ’cause otherwise I’d be a bandleader and standing or sitting there entirely tacit where the guitar isn’t driving it.

But those moments where the guitar is driving it, we’re featuring those songs. So we get to feature “The Lamb Lies Down...,” the title track. “Fly on a Windshield” of course, for various reasons. Then it’s “Hairless Heart” followed by “Carpet Crawlers,” then we do a song that used to be called “The Light,” which became “Lilywhite Lilith,” then “The Lamia” then “it.” So it’s a mini tour of The Lamb where the guitar has something to say in each of those tunes.

We’ve all heard the adage about how music can tame the savage beast, and I’ve witnessed up close how the right tune can temporarily lift the fog of even a severe neurological disorder. When my father’s Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia progressed near the end of his time, the best remedy was to play an old favorite by an artist such as CCR. Not only would he spring back to life — he’d start dancing, smiling and singing along in a voice I never knew he had before.

Music therapy is real, and new experiments continue to provide exciting results. Case in point: Peppino D’Agostino’s new project, Calm the Storm. It’s a collaboration with musician and psychologist Dr. Barbara Minton, a board-certified neurofeedback specialist with expertise in reading brain scans. The soothing music on Calm the Storm is intentionally composed to help normalize brain networks associated with chronic pain, migraines and insomnia, and uses electroencephalogram (EEG) technology.

First, it sounds gorgeous! D’Agostino plays with a delightfully delicate touch on a nylon-string acoustic guitar, and Minton recorded her accompaniment on the pipe organ at San Francisco’s iconic Grace Cathedral, with its heavenly ambience.

Secondly, test results on a small group of volunteer listeners are quite encouraging, as many enjoyed real pain relief. And according to D’Agostino’s account of their first live gig, the experience can be transformative.

Calm the Storm contains a booklet with instructions on how to get best results from listening. The album is available from Music and Healing.

We spoke with Peppino about the development and results of Calm the Storm.

How did you get involved with Calm the Storm?

Dr. Barbara Minton approached me because she discovered that music with certain frequencies and bpms [beats per minute] could influence people that suffer from mental health issues, including migraine headaches and insomnia.

We got together in October of 2024, and I composed nine pieces of music within given parameters. The bpm was 60 through 90, and the guitar notes had to be between the low E string and the A at the fifth fret of the first string. So I had this canvas to work with, and I decided to use a nylon-string guitar.

You normally play steel-string, so I assume you chose nylon-string to get a mellower sound while playing with a very nonaggressive fingerstyle attack?

Right. Steel-string has a brighter sound, and the nylon-string is much smoother. But even playing a nylon-string and paying careful attention to the attack of my fingers on the strings, we still had to smooth things out in post-production. Anything that stands out can have negative effects on the listener, so it was very important to have a phenomenal sound engineer, Masaki Liu, who understands how to use techniques in Pro Tools such as putting a tiny fade in at the start of a note to make it sound even smoother, or using volume automation to duck the string noise of my hand sliding between fretboard positions.

What was the goal from a compositional standpoint?

Dr. Minton told me there are plenty of apps, such as Calm, that people use to relax, and the new-age kind of music they use is like water washing over your skin. It’s intentionally not very memorable, more textural than melodic.

For this project the idea was to create something that could trigger the brain and keep its interest. The intention was not to make the listener fall asleep but to relax. Therefore, the music is soft, with essential melodic content that’s engaging but not distracting, like a good movie soundtrack. It’s all slow, except one bossa nova called “Cool Breeze” that’s a bit different.

The music needed to be harmonically interesting as well. Too many predictable chord progressions become boring, so while some of them are rather predictable, some are not in order to keep the brain engaged.

People will judge this project, but from my standpoint it was challenging to respect these parameters and, at the same time, come up with relevant melodies.

How did the compositional process go down?

Dr. Minton needed to be there to guide me and keep me in line, which was a little concerning because I’ve always written on my own whenever and wherever inspiration strikes. In this case I had to put on my composer hat and be in a room with her eight hours a day. She was very respectful and mostly quiet, witnessing me and making occasional suggestions such as, “Can you try that melody an octave lower?” Or “Now let’s write like a church hymn in the key of E.” That yielded “Fairfield Hymn.”

When the compositions were ready, she added her pipe organ parts at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Ultimately, there’s the big sound of the pipe organ including the very low frequencies from the foot pedals combined with the delicate sound of my nylon string.

How do you feel about the results?

She collected data on her patients that suffer from migraines, and some of the results were rather remarkable. If they were in the middle a migraine, the music basically distracted the brain and put it in a state of relaxation. So it was effective from a scientific standpoint.

Now, it doesn’t work with everybody, and it’s not approved by the FDA, of course, but it made me very happy to find that this music has a positive medical impact on people.

I got to experience it for the first time when we played a live gig during a healing retreat at a Universal Church in Boise, Idaho. The audience was instructed to close their eyes and remain quiet throughout the entire performance, which was a bit strange for me. By the end of the concert, most of them wound up in what I can best describe as like a trance, while others were moved to tears.

The idea moving forward is to bring the same experience to wellness centers all over the world. And we’re going to start working on another album right away with a focus on making music for relief of PTSD.

As a band that made its name with outrageous makeup and costumes and a stage show that combined fire breathing and smoking guitar pickups, Kiss was certainly not known for its subtlety.

But as the group's producer Bob Ezrin says in a new interview, that's exactly why everyone sat up and paid attention when Kiss released a piano ballad devoid of the sonic trappings of electric guitar and pounding drums heard on their previous singles.

The song in question, is "Beck," from the group's fourth studio album, 1976's Destroyer. Co-written by Kiss drumer Peter Criss, his former bandmates Stan Penridge and Ezrin,

“It was such a big departure for them,” Ezrin tells CBS News’ The National.

But it was just what the band needed following a difficult start to their recording career. The three studio albums that preceded Destroyer — Kiss, Hotter Than Hell and Dressed to Kill — failed to capture the band at its best, in Paul Stanley’s estimation.

That changed with Alive!, the group's 1975 live album, which purported to capture the group's raw energy direct from the concert stage. In fact, the album was heavily reworked in the studio — even the audience was faked, according to some sources — but it didn't matter. Alive! was the hit the group needed. It not only saved their careers — it saved their label, Casablanca, from bankruptcy.

In a bid to continue moving in a more commercially viable direction, Kiss enlisted Ezrin’s production talents. The producer was renowned for his work behind the desk across a successful four-album run with Alice Cooper — from 1971's Love It to Death to 1973's Billion Dollar Babies — alongside his work with Lou Reed and Aerosmith. The band saw him as the Svengali who could take them to the next level.

Little did they expect Ezrin would do it with "Beth." Criss co-wrote the song with Penridge while the pair were members in the rock group Chelsea, several years before the drummer joined Kiss.

The tune was written in jest about Becky, the wife of their band's guitarist Mike Brand, who had an annoying habit of interrupting rehearsals with pestering phone calls. The original chorus featured the line, “I know you love complaining, but Beck what can I do?”

Ezrin immediately heard the song’s potential and set about revising it.

“The story about 'Beth' is that, politically, it was always important that the drummer gets at least one song,” Ezrin explains. (It's a lesson the Beatles learned all too well with their drummer, Ringo Starr.) “So we went through a bunch of songs that Peter Criss had.”

The producer, who had succeeded in bringing shock-rocker Alice Cooper a huge audience with singles like "I'm Eighteen," "School's Out" and “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” also believed it could solve one of the band’s biggest problems.

“I went to see them play live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to 9,000 pimply 15-year-old boys,” Ezrin says of Kiss in the mid 1970s. “There wasn’t a single girl in the audience.

“We started to talk about working together, and I reminded them of an old 1950s Marlon Brando movie called The Wild One, where he was the leader of a motorcycle gang and Lee Marvin was the leader of the rival gang.

“Lee Marvin and his gang were real bad guys. On Marlon Brandon’s side, yes, they were a motorcycle gang, but he had something — and of course, the girl in the town saw that something in him and thought maybe she could fix him. And a romance grew between them.

“So I said to those guys, ‘Right now you’re Lee Marvin. You’re everything that scares the girls of America, and I would like us to do something where you become Marlon Brando — where you can still be bad boys, but there has to be an element of vulnerability.

“You have to let the girls of America feel that maybe they could fix you.”

He says he sensed “a real opportunity” with Criss’s song, even though the original version of it “was a little more jaunty, a little less vulnerable. It was kind of like, ‘Screw you, me and the boys are gonna go play.’”

Ezrin set out to change that, first by centering the arrangement around piano.

“I slowed the song way down, and it just felt like suddenly it was almost like a lullaby," he says. "It became this gentle sweet thing. And I tweaked the lyrics because I wanted it to be about the singer being the one that was hurt.”

As such, “I know you love complaining” became the more sensitive, understanding, “I think I hear you calling.”

Ironically, for a song that helped humanize the band, Criss was the only member to perform on it. Ezrin played piano, and the New York Philharmonic provided the cinematic flourishes that gave the song its magic.

Perhaps because they were mere bystanders to the song’s creation — and the fact that it lacked their usual Black Sabbath frightening bravado — Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley weren't keen to include it on the album. Reportedly, manager Bill Aucoin fought against it on the grounds that his ex-wife's name was Beth.

The song was released as the B-side to the testosterone-fueled Destroyer track “Detroit Rock City,” but to everyone's surprise, radio stations began playing "Beth." Resigning themselves to the obvious, Kiss reissued the single with the sides reversed, and "Beth" went on to reach number seven on the Billboard chart, a height no other Kiss track has topped.

“People thought it was like heresy!” Ezrin says with a laugh. "What the hell is he doing? We had this band that was cock and balls and appealed to 15-year-old boys.

"But that was the point. That was the point."

The late ’60s and early ’70s heyday of rock music was unlike anything before or since. While much of the era's music has been preserved on record, many groovy grooves have slipped through the cracks. That where High Moon Records looks to rediscover and release the period's overlooked gems.

Co-founder George Baer Wallace made it his mission to put out worthy material from various times and places, and both he and Grammy-nominated reissue specialist Alec Palao have particularly strong connections to the underground West Coast scene. Wallace was inspired to co-found the label in 2010 after releasing Los Angeles–based Arthur Lee & Love’s would-be comeback album, Black Beauty, recorded in 1973 . Wallace and Palao share a deep appreciation for the bohemian romance of the psychedelic San Francisco rock and soul scene that facilitated the rise of the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Santana and so many other artists that went on to deliver classic albums.

GP readers might remember our coverage of the Ace of Cups, a pioneering all-female act that was a popular live attraction during San Francisco’s golden era. High Moon inspired the group to re-form for a proper studio album in 2018 that featured cameos from a who’s who of hippie rock luminaries including Bob Weir, Jorma Kaukonen, David Grisman and Steve Kimock. They followed up with 2020’s Sing Your Dreams. The Ace of Cups story is a heartwarming reminder that rock and roll never forgets.

High Moon has a new string of precious pearls from the Bay on its hands. Top of the bill is a killer live recording of Sly and the Family Stone from just before they got signed and blew up.

High Moon has also gained access to a treasure trove of live recordings from two historic SF venues, the Avalon Ballroom and the Matrix. Some are included on the fabulous new Jeannie Piersol anthology, The Nest, as well as on the label’s very latest release featuring underground acid-rock pioneers the Final Solution, Just Like Gold: Live at the Matrix 1966.

Sly and the Family Stone: The First Family — Live at the Winchester Cathedral 1967

There’s extra buzz about perhaps the most trailblazing band of the era right now thanks to the documentary Sly Lives! (A.k.a. The Burdon of Black Genius) , directed by Roots founder and Oscar-winning filmmaker Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and currently airing on Hulu. High Moon takes listeners back to where it all began with a sonic trip to the spring before the Summer of Love at the Winchester Cathedral, Redwood City, California, on March 26, 1967.

Located just south of San Francisco, Winchester Cathedral was a popular performance space for experimental music and an after-hours hot spot where members of bands from around the Bay Area would gather after gigs. The First Family — Live at the Winchester Cathedral is an incredible early document of Sly and the Family Stone just a few weeks after formation and doing their first residency, which led directly to signing with Epic Records. Talk about a big bang moment!

Rich Romanello, owner of the Winchester and manager of the Family Stone, made the recordings hoping to bottle the energy of the band’s popular after-hours performances. According to an online interview with drummer Greg Errico, they’d get done with a gig at the Winchester and then jam until sunrise.

This treasure on tape has been known about for a couple of decades but went unreleased until Record Store Day, April 12, 2025, when High Moon put out a deluxe limited edition pressed on clear translucent vinyl that comes with a 24-page 15,000-word booklet. Palao wrote the incredibly insightful liner notes and assembled the album that’s getting a wide regular release as well as a CD with extra material in July.

All the classic Family Stone cast is in place for their very first live recording with Sly Stone leading the charge on organ and guitar, Brother Freddie Stone on guitar, trombone and trumpet, Larry Graham thumpin’ and pluckin’ his bass, Greg Errico absolutely crushing the drums, and Jerry Martini and Cynthia Robinson in perfect synch on saxophone and on trumpet, respectively. They all sing like a chorus of soulful angels, and, man, they play their asses off!

Other than the first cut, “I Ain’t Got Nobody,” this is a collection of vintage soul covers. You can easily hear how their arrangement of Lou Courtney’s “Skate Now” will lead them right toward “Dance to the Music,” and how they’ll take the intro from “I Can’t Turn You Loose” and turn it into “You Can Make It If You Try.”

Brother Freddie Stone puts on a clinic for how to make funky mounds of music by pumping dominant-seventh chords all over the neck throughout the set, and he throws in some slinky lead breaks and bends on tunes such as “Show Me.” The most familiar cover is probably “Baby I Need Your Lovin’,” a Holland/Dozier/Holland composition made famous by the Four Tops. The First Family turn it into an eight-minute R&B opus. The group is impossibly tight, and the recording bristles with youthful energy.

On Live at the Winchester Cathedral 1967, Sly and the First Family take the listener to church in a most positively soulful Haight Street style. It’s downright uplifting.

Jeannie Piersol: The Nest

Jeannie Piersol’s unique voice was vital to the same musical community on the San Francisco Peninsula as Sly Stone, Jerry Garcia and Grace Slick. Piersol was close with Grace and her brother-in-law, guitarist Darby Slick, who famously penned “Somebody to Love,” which was released by the Great Society before Grace left for the Jefferson Airplane and their version became a smash hit. Piersol duetted with Grace in an early incarnation of the Great Society, before forming her own band, the Yellow Brick Road.

After taking a trip to India to study sarod, Darby Slick transformed the Yellow Brick Road into Hair, which like Sly and the Family Stone was a mixed bag both in terms of its multiracial makeup and its mashup of psychedelic and soul music.

Hair’s popularity at clubs including the Matrix let to Piersol getting signed by a Chess Records imprint called Cadet Concept. Slick and Piersol recorded with the venerable Chess stable of musicians in Chicago in 1968, resulting in a blend of rock and soul music with Indian accents.

Piersol’s two singles received airplay but didn’t sell particularly well, which led to her departure from the fertile Bay Area rock scene from whence she came. But she remained on the radar of collectors, and now High Moon has assembled the first anthology of her career, The Nest. The deluxe package comes with a 20-page LP booklet including a heartfelt 7,500-word essay from Palao.

“The Nest” is the first cut, and it’s a deep one. Right off the bat, you get the Indian influence of Slick’s sitar. Then it’s all about Piersol’s distinctly warbling vocal vibrato as she carries the tune for a couple of minutes backed by horns and a group of singers that includes Minnie Riperton of “Lovin’ You” fame. It almost sounds as if Sly and the Family Stone could be the backing band until a fuzzed-out electric guitar solo rips into the mix at about 2:12 and takes the tune into a psychedelic stratosphere for about a half a minute before the fade out takes over.

“Joined in Space” also features the sitar and is more of a slow-burning stick of musical incense full of psychedelic intrigue. “Gladys” sounds like the Jefferson Airplane doing a James Bond theme. “Your Sweet Inner Self” is a stand-out track with a fabulous combination of fuzzy and pristine clean guitar riffs. The Yellow Brick Road’s “Quivering” features a guitar solo full of, well, quivering licks that bring some of Frank Zappa’s early work with the Mothers of Invention to mind.

The FInal Solution: Just Like Gold: Live at the Matrix 1966

High Moon has a cache of unreleased tracks culled from a pair of legendary San Francisco venues: the fabled Avalon Ballroom, which hosted essentially every major San Francisco rock act, and a small but hugely influential night club called the Matrix where the Jefferson Airplane was once the house band.

Just as we were going to press High Moon dropped the Final Solution's Just Like Gold: Live at the Matrix 1966. The Final Solution was formed in 1965 by guitarist Ernie Fosselius and bassist Bob Knickerbocker, and rounded out by John Chance on drums and John Yager on guitar and vocals. The rather obscure act was filling in at the last minute for what was supposed to be a date with the Great Society.

The first thing that came to my mind when I put on the hypnotic opening track, “Tell Me Again,” was a similarity to “The End” by the Doors, who were likely playing a formative gig on the Sunset Strip around the same time. There are elements of folk combined with a proto-punk aesthetic and trippy tendencies that foreshadow the psychedelic movement. “If You Want” features a crazy guitar solo that does a darn good job of emulating a sitar. According to Palao, Fosselius was playing a homemade instrument.

“He attached a Fender neck to the body of an instrument that looked like a lute, so he was able to achieve those crazy bends,” Palao says. “One might assume he’s using a whammy bar, but he’s not. That’s him playing those bends facilitated by very loose action on the neck. There’s a photo of him holding the instrument in the booklet.”

The Final Solution climbed the ladder high enough to share a bill at the Fillmore with Quicksilver Messenger Service, but they couldn’t land a recording contract and were defunct before the Summer of Love boom was over.

Just Like Gold: Live at the Matrix 1966 marks the first High Moon release in a series of planned recordings from the Matrix, which flourished from 1965 to 1971. High Moon says, “This debut release in the series provides an exciting and instructive listen for any collector or fan interested in the early San Francisco scene, and perfectly complements the 1966 archival live performance from Sons of Adam at the Avalon Ballroom found on Saturday’s Sons: The Complete Recordings 1964–1966.”

“I’m always aware about the concerns of the reissue or never released record world,” co-founder George Baer Wallace says. “That is why the High Moon label has extensive liner notes in the packages with rare and never seen photos. When appropriate there are bonus tracks.”

Palao adds, “I’m very fortunate to work with High Moon because they’re probably the only label currently putting their money where their mouth is in terms of the presentation, the deluxe packaging treatment for these artists that most labels wouldn’t feel are sexy or commercial enough to warrant it.

"The next thing coming is going to be a box set of recordings from the Avalon Ballroom. It will arrive in October to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the Family Dog, which is the organization that ran the Avalon.”

For information on these and other releases, visit High Moon Records.

Steven Wilson is well aware that his latest solo album, The Overview, is being touted and celebrated as a return to prog after the many other sonic adventures in his career.

But he's not buying it.

"I kind of avoid the word, to be honest," Wilson tells us via Zoom from London. "I'm extremely wary of the word prog or progressive because everybody has their own idea of exactly what it means. To some people it might mean something very old-fashioned, and of course this album is anything but an old-fashioned record."

Following Wilson's reunion with his band Porcupine Tree for 2022's Closure/Continuation and subsequent tour, as well as on the heels of remixing Yes' Close to the Edge for Dolby Atmos, The Overview conveys the ambitious intent we usually associate with prog. Its 43 minutes are divided into two long-form pieces — “Objects Outlive Us" and "The Overview" — with 10 identified segments between them.

Its theme is the Overview Effect, a phenomenon experienced by space travelers seeing Earth from their unique vantage point, and it is, appropriately, spacey. The soundscape is richly textured and nuanced, with virtuoso playing from Wilson, Porcupine Tree guitarist Randy McStine, keyboardist Adam Holzman and drummer Craig Blundell.

Wilson is also joined on the set by XTC's Andy Partridge, who wrote lyrics, while Wilson's wife, Rotem, provides spoken-word passages.

"The one thing I kind of find myself veering towards more is this expression conceptual rock," Wilson says of his approach to The Overview. "This is a very important distinction to me, the idea that I've returned to the long form. I think that is what people are celebrating, at least some of the people who like that aspect of some of my earlier work.

“There's a lot of musical elements all combining here, and you don't necessarily know where the music is going to take you when you start listening. I suppose that is one of the fundamental hallmarks of what people think of as progressive rock.

"You'll hear Mellotrons on this record, but you'll also hear the latest inversion in instrumentation and digital synthesis for me. It's a lot of things, but it definitely is a return to the long-form, conceptual rock."

Wilson is accompanying The Overview with a full-length film directed by longtime collaborator Miles Skarin, which will also be part of his upcoming solo tour, Wilson's first in seven years. It kicks off May 1 in Stockholm, Sweden, with European dates into mid June and a North American leg starting September 9 in San Francisco and running into October.

You handled the remix of Close to the Edge, then made The Overview — and maybe throw in the Porcupine Tree resumption. Are these interrelated?

I'm not sure about that. I think if you're talking about why this album is in the long form, I think that's because the concept suggested the long form. I wanted it to be about the Overview Effect that astronauts experience in space, and I wanted it to be about this idea of perspective and just how tiny the Earth and the human race are in relation to the universe. To me that immediately suggested something for the long form, a piece of cinema for the ears. It didn't make sense to me be thinking about it in terms of 10 separate songs; it made sense to me that this would be a continuous stream of music.

It's billed as two pieces, but the album really feels like a singular experience.

It's two different sides of the same coin. The first side of the album is really about the human side of it, and the second side is more about the science. And even then, it’s not as simple as that, because there’s little bit of each in both. I think that's the way I kind of rationalize these two separate pieces of music to be. The second half is more about the science and the sheer magnitude of space, and the first is about the human race and its relationship to it.

So how did those perspectives inspire your musical approach?

I think that knowing it was going to be something in the long form straightaway, it's more about how are you gonna take the listener on this journey? You're not trying to create a musical vocabulary for every piece of music; you kind of create some themes and explore those themes from every different angle imaginable. And that's kind of what I did on this record.

So, for example, most of the first side is based on the same 18-note sequence and the same bass line. You hear them in many different contexts, and you may not even be aware you're listening to the same musical motif, but you are. And that's something that you wouldn't normally get to do if you're writing five or six separate songs.

But when you're working in the long form you can take that in more kind of symphonic, classical approach where you have motifs — what Wagner called leitmotifs, what Stockhausen called formulas. That's kind of what The Overview is for me, so that was a different approach for me, one I've not used for awhile.

What's different about exploring that approach in 2025 compared to when you did it before — or maybe even when Yes and others did it back in the 70s?

I think I trusted the fact that I had a sound, and my sound is the result of all the different things I like. So when you listen to my records now you are gonna hear my love of pop. You're gonna hear my love of ambient. You're gonna hear my love of electronic, of post punk, of metal, of jazz, of old school progressive rock, of space rock, of psychedelia. they're all going to come through.

I've been making records for 30 years, so at this stage of my career I don't analyze that, and I don't try to be too self-conscious about what elements I'm putting together.

So this idea that my sound is kind of a hybrid of all the things I like — and, by the way, not only music. I think the biggest influence on this record was also cinema. It's very hard to be writing something about the universe without being conscious of, say, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey or Christopher Nolan's Interstellar or Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris. They're so dominant in terms of our notion of how we imagine the universe to be and those existential questions that it throws at us.

So I think a lot of the time I had those moves in my head rather than music or musical forms. I kind of trusted that all these different elements of my musical vocabulary would pull it all together. I guess the audience will be the judge of that, but that's the way I rationalize it, anyway.

After 30 years, as you mention, it seems like there's more confidence than rationalization.

Absolutely, and not only for musical reasons but also for reasons I think my listeners kind of expect that now. In a way that's something you have to earn, and sometimes it can take a whole career to earn that from your listeners. I think they know that each thing I'm going to do is going to be a bit different, but it's still going to sound like me at the end of the day, so they're prepared to go with me down these kind of rabbit holes — making an electronic pop record, making an old school conceptual rock record, making more post-punk influenced record.

Whatever it is I'm doing, I think most of the listeners are prepared to give me the benefit of the doubt and also recognize that anything I do ultimately will sound like me and become part of my continuum of work and accept that all these different things are a part of my musical personality.

How did the toolbox expand this time around?

One of the things I love about making records in 2025 is there's never been a more creative time. The possibilities of being creative have never been broader than they are now. We have all this wonderful vintage stuff, stuff from the past, whether it's piano, Fender Rhodes, Hammonds, Mellotrons, analog keyboards.

But we also have all of these incredible, new virtual instruments, digital plug-ins that allow us to twist and mutate sounds. I love it all, and I love to bring it all together. That is what you hear on The Overview.

That's why I would be very reluctant to think of this as a throwback or nostalgic album; it could only have been made in 2024, which is in fact when I made it.

The "Objects Meanwhile" segment of the "first side" seems like a good example of the kind of synthesis you're describing.

I think that's a great example. That's got a big metal riff in the middle of it as well, and it's got psychedelic stuff going around, whizzing. This is what I mean when I say that when I create this stuff I’m not really conscious of how I’m combining all these things. It's a very natural thing to me because I love all these styles, and it doesn't seem strange to me to put them together — at least it doesn't seem strange at the time.

I can retrospectively analyze it, like we are now, and say, "Well, actually that's kind of unconventional to do that," but at the time it's just a very intuitive, unselfconscious, unanalyzed process of me filtering these different things into a piece of music that keeps me interested. When you're a creator you're just trying to keep yourself interested and entertained and engaged in what you're doing, so it's only natural that you would bring in all these things that excite you.

What were you looking for Randy to provide when you brought him in for this?

Randy came in toward the end of the process essentially to be the solo voice when it came to guitar. I played most of the guitar parts myself — most of the bass guitar and most of the keyboards as well — but I wanted solos and I'd left these sort of expanses, and I didn't really know what I wanted but I knew I wanted something that wouldn't be obvious. What I love about Randy is he's young — compared to me, at least — and he is someone that understands the importance of sound in the process of creating a guitar solo.

By “sound” you mean...

I think a lot of old-school guitar players, they can play amazing — beautiful technique, beautiful feel. They can play beautiful solos. But sometimes they’re not so innovative with the actual sound, and this comes back to what we were talking about a few moments ago, about how the possibilities for sound now have become greater. And I think Randy understands that. He's somebody that's very familiar with experimenting with pedals, processing, digital and analogue.

And of course the obvious thing to say here is the sound very much affects the way you play, and I think sometimes guitar players forget that — or maybe they don't but the people who listen to guitar players forget that sometimes when you get sound it changes what you actually play.

Randy's a great example of someone who understands that, so we spent a lot of time actually looking for the right sound before we even approached how he was going to play and the kind of scale he was going to play. It was kind of a way to redefine the notion of the classic, extended rock electric guitar solo, and a lot of that was finding the right sound before we even approached what he was going to play.

Are you soloing at all on the album?

I play one very brief solo in the middle of side one, but the rest — there are three big solos — are Randy. I do like the guitar, but it's always been part of my tool box, if you like. My love affair is with making records, and guitars are a part of that.

But when you listen to someone who obviously has a lifelong love affair with an instrument like the guitar, like David Gilmour or Steve Howe, you can feel the integrity and you can feel the passion for it. But when I'm making records, it's pretty much a question of bringing people like Randy, and Adam Holzman, the keyboard player, towards the end to be the solo voices, to provide that more unexpected element — and surprise me as well.

Andy Partridge from XTC is always a surprise when he turns up doing something. How did he become part of this?

I very much think of the album as having themes, to continue with the kind of movie analogy. And for one of the scenes on side one of the album was where I wanted to contrast kind of observational writing — the lives of everyday people living in small towns, the kind of soap operas and small dramas people have every day of their lives — with the biggest kind of cosmic phenomena you can imagine; stars dying, black holes imploding, nebulas dying, this idea of perspective, the great and the small.

And I thought of Andy 'cause for me he's the best, probably along with Ray Davies of the Kinks, at writing observational songs. There's no one better, to me. So I called him up; I said, "Andy, I've got a commission for you" and explained what I wanted. I had a couple of images already in my mind to give him as an example, and he went away and did a phenomenal job and completely nailed it.

What can we expect from the live show when you start touring in May?

The second half of the show is going to be The Overview. I do feel like this is the kind of album I want to play from beginning to end — with the film I've commissioned to go with the piece. So it will be a very visual, very psychedelic, very cosmic experience, hopefully. And the first half of the show will be a journey through my back catalog, and I'm not going to say more than that except I'm looking for pieces of music which perhaps resonate with the theme of The Overview, so other pieces that have perhaps a more cosmic or space-interrelated theme.

Anything ahead for Porcupine Tree?

Well, you know, the band have come back. We had a great time making the record and touring. I don't know if we would tour again, but I think as long as we can find something new that we feel we can do within the context of the band we'd definitely record again.

I've never been one for closing doors completely — even though I did say that about Porcupine Tree before, but that was partly because I wanted people to focus at the time on what I was doing with my solo career. We keep in touch. We're good friends. We've talked about getting together to see what we might produce if we got back together again. So there's no reason to close the door.

Considering Close to the Edge, this was your second crack at remixing the album. What was it like going back, and what was different this time, eight years later?

I think I've learned a lot in the interim. It was an early one for me; very early on in my career as a remixer of classic albums...and the first Yes album I remixed. I was still learning. I was very proud of it, but I think I got a few things wrong in terms of keeping faith with the original mix. It's very important to me to try to respect all of the original decisions made by the original mixing engineers; in this case it was the legendary Eddie Offord, who did a phenomenal mix, and you cannot do better than that.

But of course I'm being hired to create special audio mixes — 5.1 before, and now Dolby Atmos. So I went back and tried to be more faithful to the original stereo mix before I worked in the Atmos realm, and I fixed a few things that I felt had been too revisionist in the [2013] remix. Some people may not be happy about that; they may prefer a more revisionist approach.

But I think my brief, always, in creating spacial audio mixes is to first of all respect the original mix to a point where it's almost interchangeable. With a little more experience this time I was able to do that.

Do you salivate when you get access to those tapes, with all the outtakes and everything from these landmark albums?

It depends if they're any good. [laughs] A lot of stuff that's on master tapes that haven't been released, you can understand why. I've had a few times over the years where I've found absolute gems that haven't been released — a whole Tangerine Dream album that had never been released in 1974, things like that. That's the sort of thing you can only hope for. Yes, specifically, they didn't record a lot that they didn't use. There were no golden-like finds in that respect with Yes.

Which albums would you still like to take a crack at?

Well, y'know, I've always said Kate Bush would be top of my list for remixing in spacial audio. But there are so many; the list is endless. I'd love to do more Floyd; I've just done Pink Floyd at Pompeii [out May 2], which was exciting because Floyd is really my favorite band. I think any artist like Floyd or Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel too, where there's a lot of sound design and a lot of layers and details to the music really lend themselves beautifully to being expanded into spacial audio. I doubt I'll run out of things to want to do, ever.

Rush already had one album under their belt when they went into Toronto Sound studio at the end of 1974 to record their sophomore set, Fly by Night. But the Canadian trio's endeavors 50 years ago marked what guitarist Alex Lifeson considers "a new start" for the band.

That year, 1975, featured not one but two impactful studio albums for Rush. Caress of Steel followed Fly by Night's Valentine's Day release by just nine months. It was a one-two punch that put the band on a new creative path and solidified its stature, providing beacons for where Rush would be headed. Key to that was Caress of Steel's side-long, six-part opus, "The Fountain of Lamneth,” which set a benchmark for the following year's triumphant 2112.

"For us it was quite a departure," Lifeson tells us via Zoom from his studio in Toronto ahead of Rush 50, a new 50-track compilation (out March 21) that includes both studio and live takes of the two albums' favorites such as "Anthem," "Fly by Night” and “By-Tor & the Snow Dog."

"We were stretching ourselves more and trying to find somewhere that we wanted to go as a band,” Lifeson explains.

That was made all the more impressive by the fact that, as Lifeson notes, "we were playing 250 shows a year back then. We would be out for three months, come home for a few days and then go back out. I think we spent a couple weeks in the studio on each of those albums. We didn't have much time."

Rush's self-titled 1974 debut and the tour to support it brought about many of the changes the trio would enact for its 1975 releases. The first was the arrival of co-producer Terry Brown late in the making of Rush.

"He saved the first record," Lifeson remembers. "The original mix of the first record was diabolical. It was horrible. We had an in-house engineer/producer, and he mixed it in, I think, two nights or one night or something, and it was terribly disappointing. And we had a couple songs on it that we hated, that we were talked into putting on 'cause they were more 'commercial,’ and all of this crap.

"So we went to Terry and asked if he could remix the record and make it sound more like a rock record rather than this dinky piece of crap that the other guy did. He had the pedigree we wanted. He was English, he came from a very robust musical family environment.

“We went back in to add some things and drop those crappy songs we hated and put in a couple newer songs. And that whole experience with Terry was so comfortable. We didn't work more than a week with him remixing and adding some new songs. It was really the perfect relationship for us. He had great ideas and we could trust him and leave stuff with him. It was a really great, balanced environment."

By the time they made Fly by Night, Lifeson and singer-bassist Geddy Lee were joined by Neil Peart, who came onboard in July 1974, during the Rush tour, to replace founding drummer John Rutsey. In addition to his impressive chops, Peart brought his skills as a lyricist. He dipped into the philosophy of novelist Ayn Rand for "Anthem" and created the multi-pronged fantasy battle in "By-Tor & the Snow Dog.”

“After touring for three or four months with Neil, we were so excited to go in the studio and make a record together," Lifeson says. "This was very fresh, very exciting."

Rush had some fairly lengthy tunes under their belt by this point. Rush tracks like "Working Man" and "Here Again" pushed past the seven-minute mark, while Fly by Night's "By-Tor and the Snow Dog” exceeded eight and a half minutes. The group would exceed those lengths on their next album, Caress of Steel. “The Necromancer” ran for 12 and a half minutes, while “The Fountain of Lamneth” extended to 20 minutes. The musical explorations also became more virtuosic and sophisticated, built on suite-like arrangements with intricate parts and changes.

"I think at the time it was just such a progressive rock thing to do these long, conceptual pieces," Lifeson explains. "We were fans of [the Who’s] Tommy. maybe not quite so much of Quadrophenia, and of course Pink Floyd with the way they were creating their records, Genesis with their long, conceptual pieces…

“That's the world we were in at the time. It was always in our blood, I think, to make records that way, more symphonic in concept with longer movements and moving within that context. It's a nice way to approach it."

At the time, of course, Lifeson did not have the arsenal of instruments and other gear that now decks out the wall and floor space of his studio. He owned a Gibson ES-335 semihollow and a 1970 Les Paul Standard electric guitar (he borrowed an acoustic guitar for the sessions), and was using Marshall amplifiers.

"Eventually I started turning things around,” he explains. “Hi-Watt, then back to Marshall and back and forth to other things."

But Lifeson adds that he did not feel at all limited by the smaller "tool box" at his disposal.

"I was getting so many different tones, even then," he notes. "I would think that if you ask any guitarist about their tone, it's not just one tone but a lot of tones. You can have a trademark tone, certainly, like David Gilmour does. But I hear things different for different songs and different ideas. Lyrics inform me, what the bass line is... All that stuff inspired me to mess around with my tone.

"I pulled back my volume on the guitar to around seven for the rhythm kind of playing, then up full for solos. I kind of relied on my hands and the guitar to create the kind of tone I wanted — cleaner. dirtier, whatever. Now, of course, you have so many tools you can create any kind of tones, but I've always really enjoyed that whole discovery of tone, and I was trying out a lot of things on those albums."

Unfortunately, the musical growth wasn’t always successful. The extended arrangements on tracks like “The Fountain of Lamneth" and “The Necromancer" were "something very new to us," Lifeson remembers. "It was, 'How do we put that together?' We were really feeling ourselves out. We were young and just trying to find the direction with that record."

Not everybody liked it at the time, however. Reviews were mixed, and radio stations who had warmed to Fly by Night didn't find Caress of Steel as accessible.

"That record didn't do very well," Lifeson acknowledges. Rush even called its subsequent road trek the Down the Tubes Tour because of the album’s commercial failure.

"People didn't respond to it. I remember playing Caress for Paul Stanley when we were touring with Kiss," Lifeson says. "We played it, and he had such a look on his face, like 'What the hell is this?' He started smiling and nodding, 'this is great guys...,' then nodding and quickly leaving.

"We were quite disappointed with that, because we thought we'd made something really, really special.”

But their frustration with Steel’s failure pushed them harder on their next album, 1976’s 2112.

“That's what really informed 2112. We were just doing the same thing we did with 'The Fountain of Lamneth,' but we were more pissed-off,” Lifeson reveals. “It was, 'We're gonna do this, and if it doesn't happen we'll just go home and get jobs, I guess. At least we'll go down in flames, fighting.”

2112 did indeed right the course — eventually, as it took awhile to gain momentum — and Rush maintained a steady and ambitious course until it ceased in 2017, with more side-long and conceptual work throughout.

"We were always about exploring and changing," Lifeson explains. "We didn’t really want to be just one thing. We always wanted to move forward from the last thing we did. that was part of that whole mindset."

Brown remained the band's "fourth member" through 1982's Signals and remains a friend, working on remixes for archival releases. Lifeson and Lee have remained best friends since Peart's death in 2020. They’ve performed together at special events — the South Park 25th Anniversary Concert and the Taylor Hawkins tribute concerts, both in 2022 — and still jam with one another, privately. Lee told Rush's story in his 2023 memoir My Effin' Life (his next book, 72 Stories, is due out June 10), Lifeson is part of the band Envy of None, whose second album, Stygian Waves, comes out March 28.

"I go over to Geddy’s house quite often," Lifeson says. "We're just gonna jam and cuck around. We wind up sitting on the couch and drinking coffee and laughing. That's our relationship, best buds.

“We'll always play together. We'll always do something musical together, I think. It doesn't matter whether people hear it or not."

As former Police bassist Sting hits the road for his Sting 3.0 tour, the time seems right to explore the making of the group’s 1983 hit "Every Breath You Take” — and, in particular, guitarist Andy Summers’ vital role in its creation and success.

The lead single from the trio's fifth and final studio album, Synchronicity, "Every Breath You Take" was a generational juggernaut that became the group's biggest hit. It topped the charts on both sides of the pond, spending eight weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 — the only time the Police ever hit that summit — and went on to win Grammy Awards for “Song of the Year” and "Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.”

Meanwhile, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors gave it an Ivor Novello Award for “Best Song Musically and Lyrically." To sweeten things further, it was the top-selling single of 1983 and the fifth best-seller of the 1980s.

Not bad for a deceptively romantic tune about obsession and the fury of the scorned.

That success, however, was a reward for the tune's difficult gestation. The Police — Sting, Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland — were at odds with one another while making the similarly chart-topping, multi-Platinum Synchronicity with co-producer Hugh Padgham at AIR Studios in Montserrat. The delicate balance of creative visions and egos was splintering, particularly between Sting and Copeland.

To smooth things over, Sting threw an olive branch to his bandmates by letting each compose and sing one track on the set: Summers delivered "Mother," and Copeland brought "Miss Gradenko." Nevertheless, Synchronicity would mark the end of the group's recording run, and the three musicians went their own ways after a tour to support the album.

But more than 40 years later, Summers has recovered from his Synchronicity PTSD. "I think we did a good job at the time," he tells Guitar Player via Zoom. "I think we were in a difficult position. Clearly, Sting wanted to leave the band, and yet we had this massive album all over the world."

That said, Summers has one lingering issue with "Every Breath You Take.” He's long contended that he deserves a writing credit for it, since his distinctive, chorus-tinged riff became such a defining element of the song.

"There wasn't a guitar part on it when Sting wrote it,” Summers explains. “It was just him singing, with this Hammond organ kind of thing, like Billy Preston or something. It didn't sound like the Police at that point.

“I just went into the studio and I heard the chord sequence for it, and it immediately came to me to play the riff I came up with. It was very much in the Police guitar style, if you like.”

As for what inspired his part, Summers believes it may have derived from his early 1980s collaborations with Robert Fripp. "At the time I'd made one record with Robert” — 1982’s I Advance Mask — "and I think we were due to make another one. I was looking for material.”

But Summers says the line’s harmonic structure owes much to the classical guitar genre. “One of the things I had engaged with in my life, especially when I was mad about classical guitar, was the Bartok string duos,” he says. “I would listen to and try to play these beautiful Bartok things. So I had that kind of harmony in my playing, to some extent. Bartok would take it much farther out to add a ninth rather than a third — that kind of thing. So it fit with my mental musical landscape at the time, and it was very natural for me to play that sort of thing. When it came to the recording, we got it done on one take, actually.”

While another guitarist might have just strummed the song’s chords, Summers saw in its simple structure an opportunity to add a defining element.

"There's no way that I would've gone in and strummed A, F sharp minor, D and E,” he says. “What I managed to do with that guitar lick was take it into a very hip other atmosphere that was completely moody and set the song up. Instead of just strumming some really stupid chords, I made something out of it.

“It's now past two billion plays on Spotify, so it is actually the most-played song of all-time history,” he adds. “Which makes my guitar riff one of the most-played riffs in history. Not too shabby.”

As a coda to the group’s history, “Every Breath You Take” begs the question of what might have happened had the Police stayed together. Summers is certain they could have had a much longer and even more successful run. “We could've gone on and done more and more,” he contends. “We were the biggest band in the world."

“Do They Know It’s Christmas?" isn't a guitar song, but several players took part in the Ethiopian famine relief charity record, which turns 40 this year. According to project organizer (and Boomtown Rats frontman) Bob Geldof, that includes “anybody who showed up and was banging a guitar” when the sessions went down on November 25 and 26, 1984.

For instance, the original track had Geldof, Midge Ure of Ultravox — who wrote and produced the song with Geldof — as well as Spandau Ballet's Gary Kemp and Paul Weller playing mostly acoustic. In fact, Weller — the former Jam guitarist who at the time was fronting the Style Council and had just scored a hit with “Shout to the Top” — recorded some electric guitar parts that went unused.

Guitars appeared on 1989’s Band Aid II release, courtesy of Chris Rea and Matt Aitken, the latter of the late-1980s Stock Aitken Waterman production team.

But it was Band Aid 20's lineup in 2004 that delivered the goods. It featured veritable guitar army consisting of Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, Busted's Charlie Simpson, and Dan and Justin Hawkins of the Darkness, plus Paul McCartney on bass.

Although guitarists were absent from 2014’s Band Aid 30, where the song was rewritten to reflect Africa's Ebola crisis, they’re all over the newly released “Band Aid – 2024 Ultimate Mix.” The track resurrects guitar contributions from Weller, Ure, Greenwood Albarn and Kemp and spotlights Justin Hawkin's electric harmony line in both the song and its video.

"Instead doing it again with this generation of performers, I thought, Why not take the three generations that made it happen and bang 'em on one single?" Geldof explains of the 2024 Mix, which was produced by Trevor Horn, who also co-produced the original "Do They Know It's Christmas?" at his Sarm East Studios (SST) in London.

Ure recalls that he "tried" to give guitar more prominence in that first edition of the song, which he and Geldof put together in response to an October 1984 BBC news report about the famine in Ethiopia.

"There's a bit of Weller in the footage of him trying some guitar parts," Ure notes. "There was nothing wrong with his guitar parts, nothing wrong with his playing at all. It just didn't fit in this electronic-based track. Everything on it was electronic until Phil Collins replaced my shoddy drum programming. It was the same within John Taylor from Duran. He came in and tried to put some bass on it, and again it didn't seem to fit with what was already there."

Ure recalls that Weller — who declined an interview request — “did a kind of picking thing with a clean sound. He's not a heavy distortion guy like me. It was kind of jangly, probably using one of my guitars, quite — dare I say — Smiths-like; that kind of jangly, picking thing that was going on at the time, kind of Johnny Marr type of playing. And like I said, it was all very good. I think even he saw it didn’t fit. He felt it didn’t sound right within that track."

Ure acknowledges that he felt married to what he had created for the day-long session (though some of the instrumental bits were recorded the day before)."That can be part of my problem as producer," he says. "Once you've heard something the same way for a few hours, or a few days, it's very difficult to pull it apart, replace parts. It just felt right kind of the way it was, and the guitar parts just didn't fit.

"The way tracks in those days were instigated, you were just blocking out the song, then you'd write the drum part of the song, and once the drum track was down you were kind of fixed, with the synthesized bass, keys and strings. And it was on tape, so very unlike today where you can kick things on and off and move the arrangement around to suit where everybody wanted to go. Back then you had to have the idea, a vision, and you didn't really change things around."

Ure does recall that he, Geldof, Weller and Kemp had fun playing the acoustic guitars during the sessions, even if they didn't wind up on the track. "There were a few guitars kicking around," he remembers. "A gut-string Spanish acoustic, an Ovation Balladeer. They might have been Trevor's or the studio's."

Both Geldof and Ure praise Horn's "2024 Ultimate Mix," the former calling it “genius," while Ure notes that "it was very clear the way...he's interwoven elements of all the recordings. I hear all these elements in there I had constructed, but it feels like a new song, which is great."

Surprisingly, while Ure — a continuing trustee of the Band Aid Charitable Trust — is thrilled with the accomplishments of "Do They Know It's Christmas?,” he has a more measured opinion of its musical merit.

"It's not that good," he says with a laugh. "It's kinda dodgy, kinda rough and ready. It's an Ultravox track. It's got the sounds I was using at the time. The style is Ultravox — despairing, a bit cinematic. It stars with the clanging of doom and ends in a singalong.

“Structurally it's the most bizarre thing,” he adds. “There's no chorus. The singalong thing at the end only came at the end of four days I spent piecing all the music bits together. Bob came to my studio and said, 'Look, we need to sing something like on John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 'Happy Christmas (War is Over).’ That's when we came up with the 'feed the world' part.

"As a production and a record it excelled. But as a song...both Bob and I have done better. There are many more things I'd like carved on my gravestone than, 'He's the guy who wrote half of 'Do They Know It's Christmas?’"

Since 1984 Band Aid nearly $180 million for emergency aid and long-term relief projects in Africa, including schools and orphanages. Though conceived as a one-off project, the initial song inspired other charitable all-star music efforts, such as USA For Africa and Canada's Northern Lights, as well as the Live Aid concerts in 1985 and the Live 8 shows in 2005.

In addition to the "2024 Ultimate Mix" and its video — including a new documentary about the original record now on the Band Aid YouTube channel — Geldof says a variety of events are planned to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Live Aid in 2025, including CNN and BBC documentaries and the return of the "Just For One Day: The Live Aid Musical" to London's West End with a special performance on July 13, the actual date of the concert.

Donations can be made via charity sites such as giveasyoulive.com or totalgiving.co.uk.

Mötley Crüe surged back on four Billboard charts this week. But the band doesn’t have a new album. The record getting all the raves is the 35-year-old classic Dr. Feelgood.

What's behind the rally? A new special-edition release of the 1989 hard-rock multi-Platinum seller that put the Crüe at number one on Billboard's Top 200 back in the day. Dr. Feelgood delivered five massive hit singles: “Kickstart My Heart,” "Don't Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)," "Without You," "Same Ol' Situation (S.O.S.)" and — the cut that got the party started — “Dr. Feelgood.”

But as former Crüe guitarist Mick Mars revealed years ago to Guitar World, his timeless electric guitar riffs from that album managed to make it onto another hard-rock classic: Aerosmith’s multi-Platinum smash Pump, which was being recorded in the same studio — Little Mountain Sound in Vancouver — at the time.

"Steven Tyler was doing vocals with producer Bruce Fairbairn next door,” Mars recalled, “and I remember them yelling at me, 'You’ve gotta turn your stuff down, Mick! It’s leaking into our vocals.' I didn’t turn down, though. I just told them, 'Hey, that’s the way I play — loud.' [laughs]

“So yeah, I’m all over the record they were doing. Somewhere in the mix, you’ll hear me.”

As many guitarists agree, Mars' guitar tones on Dr. Feelgood are among the best in hard rock. While his main amplifier was a 1973 100-watt Marshall Super Lead modded by José Arredondo, Mick has said he used multiple amps, including an unspecified Mesa/Boogie in combination with a Garnet amp for “low-end stuff.”

Garnet Amplifiers was a Winnipeg, Canada, company founded by Thomas Garnet "Gar" Gillies. He was repairing amps for bands like the Guess Who before he branched into making tube amps himself. Although the company had a U.S. distributor, and even signed a licensing deal to build solid-state amps for Gibson, Garnet wasn't well-known in the U.S.

Dr. Feelgood producer Bob Rock knew of the brand simply because he’s from Canada. Mars says Rock pushed him to use the amp, but the guitarist was reluctant at first.

"The Garnet amp was something Bob Rock brought in for me to use,” Mars recalled. “I said, 'This sounds like crap!' But Bob liked it because it sounded real trashy. I used it mostly for low-end stuff.

"Originally, I was using Mesa/Boogie amps for most of the low-end stuff, and that’s all I wanted to use, but Bob thought the Garnet would make for a nice blend.’ At first, I didn’t think so — I really didn’t like its sound at all; it was just so horrid.

“But in the end, Bob was right. The Mesa and the Garnet work well when mixed together. I never owned the amp, though. It was always Bob’s."

As for Mick's modified Marshall, the amp has become the stuff of legend. Richard Fortus of Guns N' Roses bought it from Mars in 2003. Prior to selling it in 2021, Fortus sent it to amp maker Dave Friedman for a tuneup. Friedman reported in a 2023 Tone Talk podcast that he may release a clone of the amp for a limited run.

Fortunately for fans of the Crüe, Guns and Marshall, Pete Thorn put the amp through its paces in a 2021 video on his YouTube channel.

As for the 35th anniversary Dr. Feelgood release, it's offered in several editions, including a deluxe three-disc boxset that includes the remastered album, demos and live tracks, and a 24-page replica tour book with previously unpublished live and behind-the-scenes photos, plus loads of souvenir items.

As of this writing, the 35th anniversary release has reached number 12 on Billboard’s Top Hard Rock Albums, the closest the LP has come to the top 10 on that chart; and number 29 on Top Album Sales, marking yet another a new high.

In addition to those two charts, Dr. Feelgood made its debuts on the Vinyl Albums and Top Rock & Alternative Albums charts, where it placed numbers 18 and 40, respectively.

“A lot of people look at the music of their youth as being more meaningful than something they heard just recently, and I don’t understand that at all,” says blues-rock electric guitar phenom Samantha Fish. “There’s a place for nostalgia, but I like to keep progressing. Music constantly moves and inspires me, and I’ve made so many discoveries during the past few years. There’s no reason why my musical journey had to stop when I was 14. At that age, you’re just getting started. And let’s be honest — there’s some music you might not appreciate till you’re older.”

Such is the case with Fish’s newfound love of Otis Redding. “There’s no way I would have understood him when I was a kid,” she says. “I couldn’t have felt the emotions he was putting across, how his performances came from such a place of hurt. I had to live a little myself. I had to feel my own pain. At the same time, there’s music I loved has a teenager, but now it affects me in a different way.” She laughs. “This list is like a snapshot of me right now. In five years, the choices could be all different.”

The Rolling Stones: Exile on Main St. (1972)

“Who doesn’t have a Rolling Stones record in their top 10, right? The Stones are one of my favorite bands of all time, and I love so much of their work, particularly Sticky Fingers. I could easily pick that record, but I feel like I’ve talked about it a hundred fucking times, so instead I’m going with Exile on Main St. here, which is often cited by a lot of people as one of the greatest records of all time. I can’t argue with that, really. This is such a special album with so many amazing songs. I grew up loving it, and it holds up in every way. In fact, as the years go by, it seems to mean more and more to me.

“It’s a double album that deserves to be a double album. There’s a lot of different styles and moods — you can kind of get lost in it. ‘Rocks Off’ is one kick-ass rocker, and then there’s ‘Stop Breaking Down,’ which is more blues rock. What can I say about ‘Rip This Joint’? It’s just massive. The whole album takes you on a journey of American music. My favorite song on the record is ‘Let It Loose.’ It’s kind of regarded as a B-side, and the band has never performed it live. For some reason, it just gets to me — maybe it’s the choir in the end. It’s a beautiful track.”

R.L. Burnside: A Ass Pocket of Whiskey (1996)

“Growing up, I was really into rock ‘n’ roll, and I was still way into rock when I started playing guitar. I gradually started to get interested in the blues, but I wanted to figure out which style of blues spoke to me. As you can imagine, if you’re a young guitar player in Kansas City, blues is all around you — it’s a tradition in the city. I did a deep dive into the blues, and eventually I wound up checking out the Fat Possum roster.

“Fat Possum records were this really cool mix of raw rock ‘n’ roll and a loose style of blues — some of them were kind of drum oriented. I became a fan of the whole roster, but I really took to R.L. Burnside’s A Ass Pocket of Whiskey. This was a collaboration between R.L. and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and it’s just amazing. To me, it defined a sound that a lot of rock bands emulated, especially in the early aughts. It’s one of my favorites, and I have no problem calling it a modern classic. If you haven’t checked it out, you’re missing something great.”

Aretha Franklin: Live at the Fillmore West (1971)

“I’ve always loved live albums — they’re sort of portraits of artists at important times in their careers. This record is really special, and as you can imagine, the performances are incredible. There’s a wonderful mix of material here, but Aretha’s rendition of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ — I mean, stand back. It just doesn’t get any better. She’s a powerhouse singer and an inspiration to anybody who loves soul music.

“I grew up hearing Aretha’s hits on the radio, but I didn’t discover this album till later on. I think I first heard it when I started touring, during one of those endless long drives I would do in a van. You’ve got eight hours and nothing but road ahead of you — all you can do is listen to music. This is an album that sort of snuck up on me, and I’m so glad it did. It’s so moving and exciting. There’s not a wasted moment on it; everything Aretha does just leaves your jaw on the floor. We never had a singer like her, and we never will again.”

B.B. King : Indianola Mississippi Seeds (1970)

“When I was a teenager and played around Kansas City, B.B.’s daughter, Shirley King, came to town. She was playing with a friend of mine, D.C. Bellamy, and I got to meet her. That was such a great time for me because I was so young — I was only 18. Shirley invited me to Chicago, where her dad was playing the Chicago Blues Festival. It was so cool, the way she was like, ‘Come on up to Chicago and hang out.’

“I remember getting in the car with my mom and driving to Chicago. It was my first road trip, and what made it really cool was my mother turning me on to Indianola Mississippi Seeds. She was like, ‘You need to check this album out.’ And wow, was she right. It’s one of those records that sticks with you; you remember everything about the moment you first heard it.

“Some of my favorite songs are on this record. I started covering a few of them when I had my first blues band; I wasn’t quite writing songs yet, so I was looking for cool things I could play that would fit into my repertoire. B.B.’s version of Leon Russell’s ‘Hummingbird’ is gorgeous. It became a hit and a real favorite with fans. You didn’t hear him do it live much later on, which would have been nice. I love that song so much.”

Guns N’ Roses: Appetite for Destruction (1987)

“I met Slash this past year and did a tour with him. I told him, ‘I almost had to fill out an SR-22 because of you.’ An SR-22 is an extra piece of paperwork that’s required for bad drivers when you take out car insurance. I can blame it all on the many, many speeding tickets I got driving around listening to Appetite for Destruction. Talk about a record having an impact on your life.

“Front to back, it’s an amazing album — a classic. It’s fiery and fun, and every song is awesome. It made me want to drive 95 miles per hour, and then I went out and did it. And everybody lived through it, so that’s a good thing.”

Betty Harris: Soul Perfection (1969)

“They’re remastering Betty Harris’ records right now, so they’re hard to find. Soul Perfection is a compilation of her hits up till 1969, although it omits ‘There’s a Break in the Road,’ which is arguably one of her most popular numbers. Even so, it’s a great roundup of some of her best songs, and anybody who wants to check her out would find this is a fantastic place to start.

“I’m such a Betty Harris fan. I found out about her when I was making my Chills & Fever record, and I wound up devouring her catalog. She’s got an amazing voice, and she packs so much emotion into her singing. She made most of her recordings with Allen Tousssaint producing, and you can hear his fingerprints all over the arrangements. I’m such a big fan of his, too. This is a beautiful record.”

Neil Young: After the Gold Rush (1970)

“All of Neil Young’s records are moody and dark, but this one’s extra moody and dark. I’ve loved his music since I was a kid — for some reason, he’s always spoken to me. He resonates with me.

“’Don’t Let it Bring You Down’ is one of my favorite songs, and we’ve been covering it for a couple of years. It’s so heavy, yet it’s poignant. ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ is perfectly sad Neil Young at his very best. Nobody can sound wounded and angry at the same time like him. His voice can just crush you to pieces. As an artist and writer, he’s way up there.”

Donny Hathaway: Live (1972)

“This is another great record I learned about in my 20s while driving in a van across the country. I was on a West Coast tour with Albert Castiglia, a fellow blues player, and he was like, ‘You need to put this record on in your van.’ The minute I heard it, I said, ‘Wow, that’s incredible!’ Now I'm a Donny Hathaway fan. That’s how it goes: You learn from other people.

“It’s a fantastic live record — actually, it’s a compilation of two live performances: One side is from the Bitter End in New York, and the other side is from the Troubadour in L.A. I’ve listened to it for years. Donny’s voice is unbelievable — sad, soulful and just beautiful in so many ways. I’ve found that a lot of musicians know about this album, and I’m glad that I found out about it, too.”

MC5: Kick Out the Jams (1969)

“This record came into my life fairly recently. I started getting hip to the Detroit rock and soul scene while I was making the Chills & Fever album. I was going through something of a musical evolution, just taking everything in, and eventually that led me to Kick Out the Jams. The title song is so powerful and ass kicking — it was our walk-on music for a while. I was like, ‘Man, we need to play this in our show.’

“I’ve become such an MC5 fan. They were punk in the very early days, and that’s where my heart is. The band was never mainstream; they weren’t something my parents listened to. Once you get into them, though, you’re really into them. This record really affected me at a time when I wanted to feel something in a big way. That’s what’s so cool about music: It’s never too late to find something great.”

Otis Redding: Complete & Unbelievable (1966)

“As a singer, I try to listen to the greatest vocalists around and try to learn how I can get better. I’ll never get close to the unique talent of Otis Redding, but I still listen to him and take in what I can. It’s amazing what he did in such a short time. He was pretty prolific, so he left us with a lot of music.

“I chose this album because it’s got incredible songs, like ‘Tennessee Waltz’ — I learned that one myself because of Otis’s version. He evokes so many emotions through his singing. He sings of love lost, but he celebrates new love, too. He encapsulates the entire spectrum of feelings — it’s in his delivery, his range and his tone. It’s like he lived an entire life and had such wisdom. It’s hard to believe he was only in his 20s when he recorded these songs.”

Brad Delson acknowledges it’s a bit strange to see someone else onstage playing guitar for Linkin Park these days.

"Yeah, it’s a different experience," Delson — who’s bowed out of the world tour for the band’s new album, From Zero, but remains part of the group. "It’s pretty cool in a way, ’cause I never got to see the show ever, in real time. If you’re onstage you don’t really get to see what’s going on.

"I remember being at the Forum and just watching it,” he says, referring to the band’s September 11 show in Inglewood, California. “We put a lot of love into the creative of the show. Even though I’m not onstage, I’m still intimately involved. I helped design the set list and the whole flow of the show, and every day we talk about the shows. It’s a huge labor of love."

And Delson — who co-founded Linkin Park as Xero during 1996 with high school friends Mike Shinoda and Rob Bourdon — is quick to note that Alex Feder, the former XYZ Affair guitarist who’s filling in for him onstage, "is my friend, and he’s doing a great job. So it’s win-win."

Delson’s decision not to tour caught fans off-guard and was recently described by Shinoda on the Zach Sang Show as "kind of a mental health thing… He doesn’t love the touring and the live show lifestyle." For his part, Delson clarifies that, "I really love being in the studio, and I feel like that’s where I’m most energized and I really thrive and I contribute the most. For me, it’s about making authentic, clear decisions and wanting to bring great energy to whatever I’m working on." He also gained some clarity during the seven years Linkin Park were off the road and intermittently active with archival projects following the 2017 suicide of vocalist Chester Bennington.

"The band got successful when we were very young, and we kind of went on this rocket ship for 20 years," Delson reflects. "In the time that we’ve had off while we haven’t been putting out new stuff, I think everyone’s had the space and fresh eyes to think about what’s energizing. And I think for all of us the decisions to do what we’re doing come from a place of opting in as opposed to having it just be habitual. That’s also why everything sounds so fresh and inspired."

And it undoubtedly explains why From Zero has become a global smash hit, debuting at number one on charts in 10 countries and number two on the Billboard 200, the highest debut for a rock album this year.

In so many words, change is good. And there’s been a lot of change in Linkin Park as the group has re-emerged this year.

Drummer Bourdon opted out of the reunion entirely, replaced by Colin Brittain, who’d worked with Shinoda previously. Also new to the band is vocalist Emily Armstrong from Dead Sara, another Shinoda discovery and someone who’s presence Delson credits with galvanizing him, Shinoda, bassist Dave "Phoenix" Farrell and programmer Joe Hahn to kick Linkin Park back into active gear as the sessions got underway at EastWest Studios in Hollywoods.

"We were just messing around, doing stuff in the studio, and Emily said at one point, ’Hey, I’m happy to just come here every day, whether you need me or not. I want to be around what’s happening.’ The amazing thing about this album was everything just kind of fell into place, naturally, just based on, ’Hey, this is fun. We like doing this. Let’s do more of it.’ It was the desire to just hang out together, be creative, and then the music led the way."

Delson describes crafting the 11 tracks on From Zero — written by Linkin Park with some help from others, including Mike Elizondo, Teddy swims, Nick Long of Dark Waves, Bea Miller— as like riding a proverbial bike as the band comfortably resumed its organic creation process based on trial and error, frank discussion and openness to the variety of opinions. "When I’m in the studio with the guitar, I’m not attached to it," explains Delson, adding that he actually plays piano at home more than guitar. "I always think as a songwriter first. If I feel like a song is better without guitar, I’m the first one to say ’Can we mute it?’ And if someone else plays a dope guitar part, I’m like, ’Thank you, one less thing to worry about.’

"Also, if someone’s temped to do something and I feel like it’s not as interesting as it could be, I’m like, ’I’d like to rewrite that’ or whatever. Some of these songs had guitar in them when I first started messing with them; some of that guitar is still there and some of that guitar got redone in the studio. Our process is to support what’s working. So if the guitar wasn’t super compelling, we’d just mute it and then write new guitar parts. There was a lot of experimenting going on."

As a case in point Delson says the track "Cut the Bridge" had "a lot of guitar that had been put into the earliest version" that didn’t sound right as the song was being developed. "I think Mike and I wrote new riffs for that for two or three days straight and wound up throwing all of those in the trash and going for this heavily effected version of something we had in the verse, which gave it a colorful, unexpected sound." "Overflow," he adds, was another From Zero song that "got rewritten multiple times until, kind of in the last troughs of the album process, we wrote an entirely new chorus."

Also challenging, from a different aspect, was the first single and opening track "The Emptiness Machine." "We really honed all the words to that; that was a really important part of the song, then ultimately finding the right placement in the song for Mike’s voice and Emily’s voice," Delson recalls. "Their range is so different...and it had to be in a key that worked for both their voices. If we lowered it too much it would lose power when Mike was singing it, ’cause she is singing an octave over it. They’re both pushing the boundaries of their natural range in that song; that’s one reason it feels like a rocket ship that’s about to come apart."

Throughout the recording of From Zero Delson used an orange Fender Stratocaster from the company’s Custom Shop — which he pulls out to show us during the Zoom conversation — along with his usual Paul Reed Smiths and the occasional Gibson SG. "With amps and effects, I’m agnostic," Delson adds. "Mike has so many cool pedals. We have cool amp simulators. There’s infinite choices. The part and the feel of the playing is the most important thing; you’re just flipping through presets and it’s what catches the ear in terms of what marries organically to the part. Usually we’ll write the part first and just toggle between sounds until we’re like, ’That sounds like the part, yeah!’"

Delson says that what he finds most stimulating about From Zero, however, is that it even as a new version of Linkin Park it hews back to the band’s earliest days, even before it was Linkin Park and had a label deal.

"We weren’t afraid to reach into the more signature bag of tools on this record," he explains. "I think on some previous records it was always ’Innovate! Innovate! Innovate!,’ always wanting to challenge ourselves to go somewhere new. I think because we had new elements” — i.e. band members — “already as part of the palette we didn’t hold back in terms of using things maybe that we used early on, just ways of writing and ways of playing.

"There was an aesthetic or vibe of some of our earliest demos, when we were called Xero. There were some songs on those very early demos that had a very clear aesthetic. You hear some of that on [2000’s] Hybrid Theory. I love how eclectic our discography is; that’s a super salient part of our identity as musicians. But on this album, I think we felt more liberated to use any of the tools we had previously played around with before, more like a lack of self-consciousness than a conscious decision to go somewhere specifically."

Even before its chart-topping performance, From Zero was a strong performer. "The Emptiness Machine" hit number one on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Airplay and Alternative Airplay charts in September, followed by "Heavy Is the Crown," "Over Each Other" and "Two Faced." After playing a handful of shows around the world in advance of the album’s release Linkin Park has announced an extensive 2025 road trek, starting January 31 in Mexico City and also traveling around the globe in arenas as well as festival appearances at Sick New World in Las Vegas, Sonic Temple in Ohio, Novarock in Austria and I-DAYS in Italy. And while Delson says "anything’s possible" when asked if he might hop onstage with the band at some point — or resume touring — it sounds more likely that he’ll be enjoying the festivities from afar.

"I would just say I’m having a lot of fun right now working on all the creative with my bandmates," Delson says. "It’s been a lot of fun and really rewarding. I’m excited people are finally getting to hear this record, and the streaming and everything is just crazy. There’s a lot of activity. It’s definitely up and running.”

On stage at El Club, a respectably divey club in his hometown of Detroit, for a Cinco de Mayo show in 2022, Wayne Kramer was preparing to play something more than 50 years in the making — a new MC5 song.

“Some bands take two years between albums,” Kramer told a packed house at what was, in fact, the first show by a new MC5 lineup. “Some bands take five years between albums. We take 50.” He then cranked up his famed American flag–painted Stratocaster to play the metallic riff that introduces “Heavy Lifting,” the title track from what is the first MC5 album since 1971’s High Time. It’s a 13-track set that fits the band’s legacy well. From its boldly topical lyricism to an electric guitar assault led by Kramer — with guest appearances from Tom Morello, Slash, Vernon Reid, Rise Against’s Tim McIlrath, Steve Salas and Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil — Heavy Lifting is a true testimonial to the original troupe’s jam-kicking power.

But much has changed in the two-and-a-half-year interim since that show. Kramer passed away from pancreatic cancer on February 2, in Los Angeles, at the age of 75. Two months later to the day, John Sinclair, MC5’s manager and mentor, also died. With MC5’s three other members — Rob Tyner, Fred “Sonic” Smith and Michael Davis — gone years before, that left drummer Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson as the band’s only living member, and he died on May 9, also aged 75, after suffering a debilitating heart attack the month before.

Sadly, his death came less than three weeks after the announcement that MC5 would receive an Award for Musical Achievement from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after six previous unsuccessful nominations.

If all that places a bit of a pall over the arrival of Heavy Lifting, however, those involved with finishing it are sworn to make sure the record’s release is a celebration, not a wake.

“The tragedy of all this,” Heavy Lifting producer Bob Ezrin says, “is that, because it took so long to get through all of the things on the business side, we missed being able to release it in Wayne’s lifetime. It’s also tragic that we missed having him be able to take it on the road. He was so looking forward to that, ’cause all the stuff was really fun to play, even in the studio. I’m still saddened by the fact that he died before he had a chance to see what people think about this and have the joy of doing it in front of an audience.”

For Brad Brooks, who co-wrote 10 of Heavy Lifting’s tracks and is the album’s primary singer, its release “is really super bittersweet, ’cause Wayne is not here. He and I had been talking so much about this coming year, and he was so excited. Losing Wayne’s a big hole in my life. It’s been very, very hard. But I’m so excited the album is coming out, and I’m pretty proud of what we did.

“But it also makes me sad because he should be here. It also kind of pisses me off. He should’ve been here way longer.”

The same, of course, could be said about the Motor City 5. Although Heavy Lifting is billed under the band’s name, the quintet’s original run lasted from 1963 to ’72, and they were a recording act for only four of those years. The MC5 formed in the blue-collar Detroit suburb of Lincoln Park, inspired by early rock and roll, Motown and James Brown, though later they picked up on John Coltrane, Sun Ra and other free-jazz improvisational influences. Their debut album — recorded live in concert during a Halloween weekend stand at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom — was named for the proto-punk anthem and statement of intent “Kick Out the Jams,” but the same performance concluded with the eight-minute-plus “Starship,” a screaming freak-out co-credited to Sun Ra.

“I think the band represented a sense of unlimited possibilities — that there could be a new kind of music and a new kind of politics, that there could be a new kind of lifestyle,” Kramer said in 2018 while celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Kick Out the Jams concerts. He would go on to recount the band’s saga in the Heavy Lifting track “The Edge of a Switchblade.” “Like any generation, we saw a seismic shift in the way we approached life. I think that spirit that anything is possible held up pretty well.”

“I believe the impact of the MC5 on all the subsequent rock and roll cannot be overstated,” says Don Was, the Grammy Award–winning producer who plays bass on most of Heavy Lifting. He was a longtime friend of Kramer’s as well, having attended MC5 shows at the Grande and collaborated with him starting with the earliest recordings of his band Was (Not Was), circa 1979. “They may not have sold many records, but it’s one of those bands where everyone who listened to them went out and started a band of their own. They were a very unique, very important band.”

John Sinclair was particularly impressed by the guitar tandem of Kramer and Smith when he began managing MC5. “They were very versatile for a couple of thugs from Lincoln Park,” he remarked shortly after Kramer’s death. “They had a special thing I never saw anybody else have, not even the Rolling Stones. They had their minds on big things. They wanted to be great… And they were willing to put in the work to do that.”

Those qualities connected as well with a young William DuVall, who would go on to join Alice in Chains in 2006. “The MC5 for me were like superheroes when I was about 11 years old,” says DuVall, who sings “The Edge of the Switchblade” alongside Slash. “They sort of fit perfectly into the nexus that I was already exploring: the nexus between really high-energy rock and free jazz. I couldn’t have scripted a cooler band from where I was sitting at the time. Just total freedom.”

MC5 made their mark both musically and politically. One significant show included an ill-fated performance outside the Democratic party’s violence-marred national convention during 1968 in Chicago. They became the musical mouthpiece for the Sinclair-led White Panther Party, an adjunct to the Black Panthers, whose 10-point manifesto advocated, among other things, “total assault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock and roll, dope and fucking in the streets.”

But the group imploded at the end of 1972, plowed under by pressures both external (police, record companies) and internal (drugs, mental health, acrimony).“I lost my brothers,” Kramer recalled. “We went our separate ways, like [the band] never happened. Denial on a large scale.” He killed that pain with some music but also drugs, eventually dealing and landing in the FMC Lexington Prison in Kentucky, in 1975.

The tide changed there. In jail he met jazz trumpeter Red Rodney, who played with Charlie Parker and became a “musical father” to Kramer, expanding his vistas and ambitions with what he called “a Berklee School of Music course in writing and arranging.” Upon his release, he felt inspired again. He started a solo career with The Hard Stuff in 1995 and worked with the likes of Bad Religion, Pere Ubu, Mudhoney, Marshall Crenshaw and others. He began scoring film and TV shows as well, started the record label MuscleTone with his wife, Margaret Saadi Kramer, and launched a U.S. wing of British troubadour Billy Bragg’s Jail Guitar Doors music therapy initiative for inmates.

Kramer never let go of the MC5, either. During 2004 he, Thompson and Davis toured as DKT/MC5 with a corps of guest musicians, Was among them. And in 2018, on the heels of his memoir The Hard Stuff (and a bout with saliva gland cancer), Kramer formed MC50, touring with Thayil and fellow Soundgarden alumnus Matt Cameron, Fugazi’s Brendan Canty, Faith No More’s Billy Gould and others.

“This is very much a continuation,” he explained at the time. “These guys have carried the message of the MC5 all the years, the message of self-determination and self-efficacy and all things are possible if you put in the work. They all live by that message and they’re playing their asses off. In a lot of ways it’s the realization of the spark that happened 50 years ago at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, to have a band that produces these high-energy rock shows that completely blow people’s minds, like it’s come to fruition.”

The MC50 troupe did record a new version of “Kick Out the Jams” that’s a bonus on Heavy Lifting, and Kramer did not rule out the possibility of creating new music under the MC5 moniker. But the real impetus came during 2020, from the dual punch of the pandemic and more than three years of the Donald Trump presidency, which was anathema to everything MC5 stood for.

“I went into a real pit of despair,” Kramer acknowledged during the spring of 2022, “and fortunately I have a wonderful therapist who told me, ‘Basta, Wayne! Basta! Get up! Go do something creative. Now, today!’ So I called up [Brooks] and said, ‘Hey, you want to try to write some songs?’ and we wrote a couple, and it was fun and it sounded pretty good and we wrote a few more, and they were sounding better and better, and the whole thing kind of snowballed on its own.”

Kramer had also been working with Alice Cooper on his Breadcrumbs EP and Detroit Stories album, produced by Ezrin, with whom he shared his own new music. “Everybody was saying, ‘Boy, this could be an MC5 record,’” Kramer recalled. “The more I thought about it… We were in such a dangerous time for our country, I thought, I’m gonna have to pull out all the stops and use the most powerful tools that I have at my disposal. And the MC5 always represented action and commitment and principle, and I think we’re gonna need all of that and more if our democracy is going to survive.”

Ezrin says Kramer first approached him about a film and album project that was also called Heavy Lifting, which the producer describes as “this very elaborate story about some criminals and about a heist and sticking it to the man and so on.” The larger concept seemed like a big lift, but the music… not so much.

“I thought this could be an MC5 project. Forget about the movie — what I would be more interested in would be creating a new MC5 album,” Ezrin says. “And it took [Kramer] really no time at all to come to the right conclusion, which was, Yes, of course what we need is an MC5 album, and of course that’s what we need today in this world, in this America we live in today. We need that voice.”

Some may have raised eyebrows about using the band name again (MC50 was its own kind of sidestep), but Kramer explained that “the MC5 never had a band agreement, so we all held the trademark. If the estate of Michael Davis wants to make an MC5 record, they’re well within their rights to do that.” But Kramer also sought to differentiate what he was doing by doing it under the banner of “We are all MC5,” a campaign that expanded the parameters of what was going on.

“My feeling was MC5 wasn’t five individuals,” Ezrin explains. “MC5 was a state of consciousness, a state of mind and, in a way, a political position. So what I said to Wayne was, ‘Listen, we are all MC5. We all come from that place... So in that sense anybody who wants to join and anybody who wants to take up the mantle here for not just musical reasons but also philosophical reasons, those people would be more than welcome.

“It was easy for me to say — I’m not an original member of the band. But looking at it as a fan, my feeling was that anybody who wanted to line up behind this banner was MC5. And that’s what ended up happening.”

It’s a position Kramer was comfortable with.“If you look at what the artist’s role in social change could be, it’s to carry a message,” he said in 2022. “What the MC5’s done since inception is to carry a message of self-efficacy, of taking action. We’re not handing out the jams or passing out the jams — we’re kicking out the motherfucking jams! This is about action — get up off the couch, go do something. If we don’t step up and make sure that we barricade our rights, then all the things we all love about living in America are gonna go away.”

Brooks met Kramer during the spring of 2019 at a Jeff Buckley tribute event in his home base of Oakland, California, and they became fast friends, bonding over their shared cancer and child-raising experiences. They began writing together during 2020, for the initial Heavy Lifting film concept, and Brooks well remembers getting the call. “Wayne said, ‘Hey, Brad, we’re making an MC5 record. You’re the singer of MC5,’” he recalls. “And I’m like, ‘Hold on bro…’”

As Brooks explains, the songs he and Kramer wrote were focused on current topics. “It’s not a retro record,” he says. “It was written about 2021, about the rise of Trump, George Floyd, the [January 6] insurrection, about the homeless situation after COVID. It had to be about now; [MC5] was always about now. They were all very observant cats about the times they were in. I was writing honestly about Oakland, but it does translate to Detroit and everywhere else, and to the state of the world.

“I felt a responsibility to honor the [MC5] name, and honor those guys and their commitment to the music and their commitment to the times.”

As for the musical approach, Brooks says Kramer “wanted to see what would be a more modern version of High Time... I was always talking to him about the Yardbirds’ Roger the Engineer, and Parliament-Funkadelic. ‘Change No Change’ we thought had a [Marvin Gaye] ‘Trouble Man’ vibe to it. That song is interesting because it’s pretty much the demo Wayne made. I feel like it captured the feeling of what I was seeing, and it’s still there.”

For his part Ezrin, along with Kramer, was after “that combination of funk, punk and power that was Detroit,” and of course part of the MC5’s makeup. Demos were exchanged, along with exacting suggestions and tweaks to tighten arrangements and refine lyrics. Tracking sessions with Kramer, Was and Paul McCartney’s drummer, Abe Laboriel Jr., took less than a week during November 2021 at Waystation studio in Coldwater Canyon. Studio owner and engineer Dave Way says the recording was “one of the best sessions of my 35-year career. Everybody was happy to be there and brought their very best. And they’re all badasses.”

“Having [Was and Laboriel] and Wayne on the floor meant there were fireworks from the first note,” recalls Ezrin, who co-wrote the Heavy Lifting tracks “Blind Eye” and “Barbarians at the Gate.” “They spurred each other on. They inspired each other. We had the demos so we knew the songs. We weren’t forced to work out the shape of the material. They developed and perfected their parts fairly quickly, together. They just got each other, and I pushed, like I do, to keep the energy level up and keep it alive.”

Was remembers that “there was never any pretense of, ‘Now you’re the bass player in the MC5.’ It was, ‘We’re making a record that’s meant to shine a light on the legacy and keep the ethos alive.” In doing that, he notes that, “I did think a lot about Michael Davis” and Davis’s isolated bass tracks that Kramer had provided for Was to study during the MC50 dates.

“The thing that really blew my mind was how much R&B there was in his bass playing,” Was says. “He listened very carefully to [Motown funk brother] James Jamerson, I think. There’s a lot of nuanced groove that gets washed away in the sea of guitar when you hear the mixes. I suspect that’s one reason why Wayne called me; I do think that particular way of blending R&B and rock and roll is a Detroit thing. I think he knew that’s where I come from.”

Both Ezrin and Brooks say Kramer’s approach was characteristically straightforward and clean. Most of the album was played with his signature Fender Stratocaster, although Ezrin notes that Kramer was “a quintessential guitar guy. He had a lot of other axes to choose from when we were looking for different sounds and stuff.” But, Brooks adds with a laugh, “Wayne’s not a pedal guy, right? He’ll use effects here and there, but his studio is filled with pedals that he’s never used.”

That doesn’t mean Kramer’s playing is simple by any measure, Ezrin cautions. “Wayne is such a versatile and interestingly schooled guitar player,” he says. “He had a really great sense of rhythm. He channels his inner Motown star and has a very R&B approach to things, rhythmically, so he’s very funky. And then once he studied jazz, he became not only funky and punky but he also had some harmonically sophisticated constructs with the songs on the record, moments in some of the songs that are on a high level, from my point of view.

“He’s very good at coming up with riffs, too. Riffs are not very easy, especially the simple ones. They’re very much like a motif is in classical music. But he’s a great riff man. When you listen to ‘Boys Play With Matches,’ from the new album, that guitar riff — that’s fantastic!”

Soundgarden’s Thayil — who calls MC5 “probably my favorite band” — gained his own appreciation for Kramer’s method while playing alongside the guitarist in MC50. “It’s a little bit more involved than I thought,” acknowledges Thayil, whose playing is featured on an alternate mix of “The Edge of a Switchblade.” “Just offhand, from listening to the albums, the songs all seem pretty simple, like, three-chord songs that are just pounding their way repetitively. But the arrangements are dynamic, so there are little rhythmic emphases here and there to kind of break it up. When you’re young, you don’t understand that. It takes a while to recognize and learn nuance and dynamics, and there’s a lot of that in [Wayne’s] playing, in MC5 and after.”

Once Heavy Lifting’s basic tracks were together, Kramer and Ezrin began reaching out to guests for overdubs. “We would discuss it, have a conversation,” Ezrin remembers. “In most cases they were friends of Wayne’s that we were reaching out to. They would discuss what it was Wayne and I had agreed we were missing and that we were looking for. Wayne would give them their marching orders. They would send me samples and examples of what it was they were about to do and we’d make adjustments. And sometimes it would be perfect and amazing.”

Living Colour’s Vernon Reid met Kramer prior to the pandemic, when both were instructors at one of Morello’s guitar workshops. Reid was surprised and happy to be asked to play on the track “Can’t Be Found,” one of two that also feature MC5 drummer Dennis Thompson. “The idea of an MC5 record... you can’t take something like that lightly,” Reid says.“I didn’t. But Wayne was such an encouraging person. He’s a positive, feisty dude. He was kind of like, ‘Do you! Do what you feel. Don’t think.’ So I listened to it and tried to absorb the tune and get a vibe for it, and it worked out.”

Morello, meanwhile, was one of the first guests involved in the project. He co-wrote Heavy Lifting’s title track and plays on it as well. “When I found out the song was co-written by him, it was a foregone conclusion he was gonna play on it,” Ezrin says. “And of course I got him to sing on it, too, on the chorus.” Slash was similarly “an easy ask” for “The Edge of the Switchblade.” “It was exactly the right song for him to be part of,” Ezrin says. “I didn’t have to say anything; what I wanted was pure Slash, just ‘Go be yourself. Play like you play musically. It’s a simple progression.’ It just called for that kind of Slash sensibility.

DuVall, another veteran of the DKT/MC5 shows, says he was “honored” to be vocalizing Kramer’s story about the band and channeled his pre-adolescent fandom into his performance. “I was just going for that thing I feel like Rob Tyner and the entire band were able to embody, which is that bridge between soul and rock and roll and, of course, experimental music, free jazz, high-energy kind of ecstatic music. I still feel like that soul/rock and roll junction is firmly there, and so I tried to bring that, which is natural for me to do anyway.”

Ezrin feels it’s also important that Thompson, who recorded his drum parts back in Michigan, contributed to Heavy Lifting. “He was one of the most important drummers of the era and obviously an original member, an OG — the only one left standing beside Wayne at that point,” the producer says. “So it was very important that we got both of them on the record to the extent that we could, and I think Dennis did a really good job.”

Fans got their first taste of Heavy Lifting when Kramer released the title track in conjunction with the 2022 spring tour of the Brooks-fronted MC5 lineup, which Kramer called “the best band yet.” The group was also playing “The American Ruse,” another politically pointed song that did not make the final track list. “There were other songs that were part of the other [movie] project,” Ezrin notes. “But from the time we were in the studio until the end, it was the same group of songs.”

Heavy Lifting comes out amidst a spate of MC5 activity this fall. In addition to the long overdue Rock Hall honor, a new book, MC5: An Oral Biography of Rock’s Most Revolutionary Band — comprised of the late Ben Edmonds’ original interviews and finished by Detroit-born writers Brad Tolinski and Jaan Uhelszki — has been published. And, fittingly, the group will be honored in its hometown of Lincoln Park. Kramer’s absence will be felt, as will Sinclair’s, Thompson’s and the other band members — but the Heavy Lifting team is confident that the album will stand as a fitting finale and one last set of vital jams kicked out under the MC5 banner.

“I’m gratified that when we finished the album, Wayne sent me a note and just said, ‘This is great. I love it,’ and I feel really good about that,” Brooks says. “We didn’t finish with any regrets. He loved every song, every mix, and all of us were excited about it. That he was happy, satisfied, excited and fulfilled by the process and by the record itself — that’s great. I feel good that I could play some role in helping him to realize one of his dreams.”

There’s a reason the Toadies’ 1994 alt-rock hit Possum Kingdom remains a classic 30 years on: It has a knockout guitar riff, slamming ensemble playing, impassioned vocals and a ghoulish lyric about a murderer who haunted Possum Kingdom Lake in North Texas in search of a woman to take as his bride. As the song explains, one night the killer found his victim, and horror ensued.

There’s just one caveat.

“It was complete B.S.,” says Vaden Todd Lewis, the band’s singer-guitarist and chief songwriter. But Todd stuck to his story at the time, and as a result, he says, “fans came up with their own interpretations that involved serial killers and the occult.” He chuckles. “But it’s cool that people dig it. I can’t complain.”

The origins of Possum Kingdom are found in an earlier Lewis song, I Burn, which was inspired by his “hell on wheels” girlfriend of that time. “I had a dream in which she got me to this party where I set myself on fire as a way of reaching otherworldliness,” he says. “After I wrote it, I was like, ‘I’m breaking up with her.’”

Instead, Lewis decided to continue the theme in a new song. “I thought, What would this guy do now?” he says. “He’s smoke, so now he has to convince somebody to do the same thing so he’ll have a partner. That’s what Possum Kingdom is about.”

Lewis found that his lyrics suited a syncopated riff and rhythm chord pattern he’d come up with while noodling on his Epiphone Les Paul. “It’s in 7/4 and 4/4, but the words fit, so I kept writing,” he explains. “I had fun smooshing it all together.” Using a cardboard box for drum accompaniment, he laid down a demo on a Tascam four-track recorder and played it for the band. “They changed little flourishes, but the meat of it was there.”

The Texas-based Toadies – which included lead guitarist Charles Mooney III, bassist Lisa Umbarger and drummer Mark Reznicek – recorded the track for their self-produced 1993 indie EP, Pleather. “We did five songs in five hours,” Lewis recalls. The release caught the attention of Interscope Records, who signed the band to a sizeable deal. With a major-label budget and the hot production team of Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf (fresh off a big hit with Beck’s Loser), the Toadies set about recording their debut album at Record Two Mendocino in Comptche, California.

There was one catch, however: The label strongly suggested that the band remake Possum Kingdom. “Nobody said outright, ‘That song is why we signed you’ – which is good, because I would have resisted,” Lewis says. “But they wore me down. I was like, it’s a decent song – fine. At least I’ll get to hear it the way I want.”

Lewis attempted to perform his parts on a Gibson Melody Maker (“I played it through some sort of homemade amp,” he recalls), but the instrument wouldn’t stay in tune. Eventually, he switched to his trusty Epiphone Les Paul. Darrel Herbert, who replaced original lead guitarist Mooney in 1993, re-created the lines that Lewis had written. Recalls Lewis, “I remember listening to the recording on my headphones and thinking, Wow, this sounds really great! This is what it’s supposed to sound like.”

Possum Kingdom was an immediate radio hit, reaching the top five on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart. Its accompanying video, which alternated shots of the band in performance with eerie images of a body bag being dragged from the water, scored big on MTV. The combination fueled massive sales, and before long the album Rubberneck was a million seller.

As for the song’s legacy, one which has been mythologized by everyone from vampire enthusiasts to conspiracy theorists, Lewis is now happy to let sleeping urban legends lie. “For a while, it was out of control,” he says. “I had goth kids in Florida coming to shows, and they had so many crazy ideas of what the song meant. We did a documentary a while back, and I finally came clean and was like, ‘No, this is what it’s really about. I was just pissed off at a girl.’”

Warren Haynes has a deep catalog that includes songs he’s written for the Allman Brothers Band, Gov’t Mule and his solo releases, not to mention tunes composed with and for other artists.

But when it comes to the songs he covers, no cut resonates with listeners like Haynes’ take on U2’s “One.” Originally recorded and released on the group’s 1991 album Achtung Baby, “One” has become celebrated as one of the group's finest songs from an era in which they radically transformed their sound.

Unlike U2’s official release, Haynes’ moving performance of “One” is a solo affair, with just him singing over his own acoustic guitar accompaniment.

We asked him to tell us the story behind his eloquent cover, shared below in a special recording made for Classic Rock magazine in 2015. Here’s what he told us.

"Well, let's go back...When Acthtung Baby came out, my wife Stefani was doing A&R at Island Records, so she got an advance copy of the record a long while before it came out. I listened to the whole thing and really dug the entire record; I think it's one of their best. But that song made a particular impression on me. It was different than anything I had heard them do.

"I was walking down the street a few months later, after the record came out, and there was this guy walking down the street, and he was kind of in his own zone. He was one of those guys who was drawing attention to himself by singing at the top of his lungs on a New York City sidewalk as he walked, and he was singing the bridge of 'One': [sings] 'Love is the temple, love the higher law....' And I happened to recognize the tune and realized how different his approach was to it. And I was, like, 'Wow, that is really cool. That song can totally be interpreted a whole different way.'

"So fast forward, Stefani and I were driving to Boston. I was gonna do a solo acoustic performance at the House of Blues there and [original Gov't Mule bassist] Allen Woody was gonna join me. It's a three- or four-hour drive, and I was thinking about what I could do that I'd never done before. And I thought, Oh, maybe that gospel version of 'One' would be really cool. So I just did it that night for the first time, and it was really fun, really different, really effective from the original version.

"That began my history of playing my interpretation of that tune. I did it at the Bonnaroo solo performance that turned out to be a live album in 2004. I don't do it that often; I think it just depends on the audience and how long it's been since I've sung it, and if I think it would be a nice addition to a particular set list. I actually was doing it occasionally with the symphony earlier this year when I did some of those shows. We had an arrangement done for it, and it's gonna be on the live recording that comes out next year with the [Asheville, North Carolina] Symphony.

"From a guitar standpoint I'm actually making less of it than U2 did. I'm just playing it like a folk song, with cowboy chords. It just kind of felt it that way. It's very understated, for me. There’s not a lot of interpretive interplay with what I'm doing. I'm just focusing on laying down the core rhythm of playing it. It's nice for the accompaniment of the melody and the sort of gospel interpretation of it. And when we play it with a band or the symphony, it leaves space for everybody else to kind of do their own thing.

"I heard a rumor that Bono had heard my version and liked it. I don't even remember who told me that. I hate to speculate, but I'd hope they like it."

The latest Warren Haynes Band album, Million Voices Whisper, was released November 1. Haynes is co-host of the Soulshine concert for hurricane benefit relief, which takes place this Sunday, November 24, at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The show will be live-streamed free via YouTube.

Haynes' annual New Year's Run with Gov't Mule plays December 28 in New Haven, Conn., and Dec. 30-31 at the Beacon Theatre in New York — launching a 30th anniversary celebration for the band that will include special concert appearances and archival releases. The Warren Haynes Band tours in February, and he's also planning to release a remixed 30th anniversary edition of his first solo album, 1993's Tales of Ordinary Madness, with bonus tracks.

It’s common for an artist, having evolved and mastered their craft over a long career, to look back upon their debut with a sense of derision. For Judas Priest, revisiting and giving 1974 album Rocka Rolla the version it deserves has been on their Christmas list for half a century.

Longtime producer Tom Allom, whose 12 production credits include British Steel, Screaming for Vengeance and 2018's Firepower, was tasked with the heavy lifting. He worked with engineer Luie Stylianou to digitize the original tapes and give the recordings a new lease of life more in keeping with the band’s original vision.

Former guitarist K.K. Downing has spoken highly of the results, feeling he is now able to reclaim the album 50 years later.

“We kind of had to leave the baby on the doorstep and walk away at the time,” he tells the UCR podcast. “It's great to feel a part of them, and the albums feel a part of me again.”

Downing, who left the band in 2011, said it was vital that the new mix maintain the “integrity” and “antiquity” of what Rocka Rolla was about, while fixing the blemishes that undermined its original release.

“It's a much better experience,” he says in a separate episode. “There's coughs and squeaks and rattles, but it's good. It enables the listener to actually be in that studio room with us while we were doing those recordings in such an antique kind of style, where we all stood there playing the song from beginning to end.

“If somebody got it wrong, you'd have to start all over again. I think all of that has been captured, which is a good feeling.”

Bass player Ian Hill, who has been in the band since 1970, says the band were “disappointed” when they heard the final mix all those years ago.

"It was all done on a very low shoestring budget, during nighttime hours, because studio time was cheaper during the night,” he explains. “We slept in the van outside the studios, got cleaned up in the facilities there, and worked overnight. So really, it was always going to have its faults.

“We had to make some decisions about the sonic direction we would take it in,” Stylianou adds. “We tried to start from as neutral a canvas as possible and not have any preconceptions of what should be done to the material. From my perspective, it was all about what was required in terms of mixing.

“We were also very conscious not to take it sonically away from the '70s," Allom adds. “Back in those days, we didn't use a lot of reverb on stuff, so we kept it true to the era in which it was made.

“Luie was very good at doing things like putting a bit of room on the drums because there are some very good digital reverbs that create very realistic room sound.”

Allom believes the record presented a more primal version of the band that would become the Judas Priest we know today, which is why it sounds so different.

“They weren't particularly heavy,” he says of the band. “The only similarity to them musically with the subsequent albums was Rob Halford's voice, to be honest. The guitar tones were nowhere near as developed as they became with later albums. So we were kind of working with an open manuscript and using our own collective judgment.”

The Allom and Stylianou partnership is now giving its follow-up, Sad Wings of Destiny, the same treatment and it further highlighted the “step forward” the band had made between releases.

“It's taken us by surprise what was lurking on the multi-tracks,” Allom reveals. “It's sounding pretty energetic and we're very excited."

On his departure from the band 13 years ago, Downing recently told Guitar Player: “It's a very weird situation, and I don't think I'll ever understand it.”

He's kept himself busy with K.K. Priest since, as well as his K.K.’s Steel Mill music venue.

“As to whether the door for me is open,” he concludes, “who knows?”

In case you've been living under a rock—or on The Dark Side of the Moon, for that matter—David Gilmour's brand-new studio album Luck and Strange dropped last month, and the Pink Floyd legend has been doing his fair share of interviews and appearances to promote it.

While in New York City for a run of shows at Madison Square Garden to close out the 2024 tour, Gilmour stopped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon for a performance and a rare chat that brought up some unusual topics.

During the show, Gilmour found himself reflecting on one of music's most enduring conspiracy theories: the unusual synchronicity between Pink Floyd's seminal album The Dark Side of the Moon and the 1939 film classic The Wizard of Oz.

As some Pink Floyd fans discovered in the mid 1980s — coincident with the VHS home rental boom — if you start The Dark Side of the Moon at the third roar of the MGM lion, the album aligns eerily well with scenes in the movie. Some examples include “Time” playing during a sequence involving clocks; the “Brain Damage” lyric "The lunatic is on the grass," coinciding with the Scarecrow's whimsical dancing (he has no brain, of course); and the album’s overarching themes of time, conflict, and mental illness mirroring the film's storyline.

When asked about the theory during the interview, Gilmour acknowledged to Fallon, tongue in cheek, "There are these strange coincidences. I'll call them coincidences."

Conspiracy theories in music are nothing new. They range from hidden messages in Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" and numerous Ozzy Osbourne tracks to claims that Paul McCartney died in the mid 1960s and was replaced in the Beatles by a doppelgänger. As far-fetched as some of these may be, the coincidences between Dark Side and The Wizard of Oz are a little too on the nose to ignore.

But if the matter is entirely unintentional, what could be the explanation for it? This type of phenomenon is often attributed to apophenia, the human tendency to find meaningful patterns in unrelated things. Pink Floyd's mystique during the pre-internet era — undoubtedly combined with some fans’ recreational drug use — no doubt made any correlations between the two more obvious.

Although Floyd has never officially acknowledged any intentional influence, and drummer Nick Mason once dismissed the theory as "absolute nonsense," Gilmour told Fallon he has seen some of the synchronicities. "People have done the donkey work, the chore work, and added it on YouTube. You can watch bits of it. It's kind of amazing," he said with a grin.

Gilmour's take on the "connection" came out during a Fallon segment that also included a playful "True or False" game, with Gilmour addressing some of the myths surrounding his life. From his modest modeling days to a famous picture of him and Paul McCartney with "a great big joint in my hand," the 78-year-old legend admits it scuppered his chances of warding his kids off smoking.

Later on in the show, Gilmour joined Fallon's house band, the Roots, for a rendition of his single, “Dark and Velvet Nights.”

Whether you believe the Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz connection is deliberate or just a case of apophenia, like every other conspiracy theory, it will probably live on forever. As Gilmour puts it, someone on YouTube has done the "donkey work," so you can check it out yourself and decide.

“Breezin’’” may be the song that made George Benson a pop-music star, but it took some convincing for the guitarist to record it in 1976 for the album of the same name. The act or persuasion was performed by none other than the song’s composer, Bobby Womack.

But “Breezin’” wasn’t some untested tune. The song had been recorded several times before Benson tried his hand at it.

A guitarist and singer, Womack was a long-established composer and guitarist before Benson put his signature style on the cut. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Cooke was discovered by soul singer Sam Cooke in the 1950s while a member of the gospel act the Womack Brothers. Cooke changed their name to the Valentinos and produced their breakout hit, “Looking for a Love,” in 1962.

Their next hit, a tune by Womack called “It’s All Over Now,” got the attention of an up-and-coming British group by the name of the Rolling Stones. Although Womack protested the group’s request to cover the song — he was opposed to white artists having success with Black artists’ music — Cooke convinced him it would be good for his career. Womack relented, and the Stones’ cover went on to become their first number-one hit.

Over the decade, Womack's songs would be recorded by Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin, and by the turn of the decade he was playing guitar with Janis Joplin, appearing on her posthumous album Pearl, which also features his song “Trust Me.”

By he early 1970s, Womack was recording and collaborating with Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo on his album High Contrast, produced by Tommy LiPuma for his new label, Blue Thumb. It was here that “Breezin’” first appeared. Although Womack wrote lyrics for the song, he and Szabo cut it as an instrumental and made it the lead track for the album, which features three other Womack contributions alongside a trio of Szabo compositions.

Released as a single, “Breezin’” did well, reaching number 43 on the Billboard R&B charts that year. Soon after it proved popular in Jamaica, where it was covered by Mike Chung & the Now Generation in 1972 and the Boris Gardiner Happening in 1973. Meanwhile, the U.S. soul-funk group Sammy Gordon & the Hiphuggers released their own soul version of it in 1972.

But listen to those versions and you’ll notice somethings missing: the famous double-stop lick Benson plays between verses. That simple phrase is the song’s calling card, but it wasn’t on the original recording or those that followed in the years immediately after its release.

Even without it, Tommy LiPuma knew the tune still had gas in the tank. By 1976 he was producing George Benson’s new album, and he was convinced the guitarist should try his hand at Womack’s song.

But getting Benson onboard was difficult.

“The funny thing is, I didn’t think I should record it,” Benson says. “It had already been done [at least] two times before, and Bobby Womack’s recording of it [with Szabo] was magnificent — great rhythm, beautiful bass line. I thought, I can’t do anything better with it. Leave it alone."

But LiPuma didn't give up. "Finally, I said, ‘I’ll consider it, but can you get Bobby Womack to come to the studio?'" Benson asked. "'Maybe he can give me a new idea.’ ”

At LiPuma’s invitation, Womack came to Capitol Records’ studio in Hollywood, where the sessions were going down. As it happened, Womack knew what his song was missing — a hit-making lick. And he already knew what it should be.

“Bobby came in and he went, ‘Da-da-da-da-da-da-da DUH-daaa!’” Benson recalls, singing the song’s famous double-stop lick. “That’s the lick everybody knows. It was something he always wanted to put on his record.

"I said, ‘That’s the only thing you think I should do?’ And he said, ‘Sure. It’s the way I want to hear it.’

“So I went with that little change to the melody, and it made all the difference in the world. That was the line that took ‘Breezin’’ to the public. It was the big hook.”

Benson’s choice of electric guitar for the recording was his Gibson Johnny Smith. As he recently explained to Guitarist, he bought it from a man who retrieved from his girlfriend’s former beau. “His girlfriend sent him to her old boyfriend's house to get the guitar she had just bought for him before they broke up," Benson explained.

"He went over there and knocked on the guy's door. I'd call that brave! The guy came to the door and said, 'No, man, not my guitar!' He said, 'Yep, you've got to give it up.'"

The man subsequently sold the instrument to Benson. "He didn't play guitar and said, 'Man, I've got a guitar here, and somebody said you might be interested.' I said, 'Let me see it.' It was an old Johnny Smith guitar."

Benson quickly realized the guitar wasn't that old, nor was it budget model. "I knew what it was worth,” he says, “but I made him an offer of about half of what it was really worth. He said, 'Man, can't you give me more than that?’ I said, 'Okay, I'll add another $50.' He said, 'Well, that’s more than the other guys, you got it.' "

The guitar made its debut on the Breezin’ album.

“I used two things I’d never played before,” Benson tells Guitar Player about recording the album. “The first was this brand-new Gibson Johnny Smith guitar.” The second? “I took it to the studio and put it through a Polytone amplifier. The company wanted me to use their amps, so I decided to give one a try. The two things together gave me a sound I never had before.”

Of course, “Breezin’” isn’t the only hit from the album. The single was preceded by the album cut “This Masquerade,” the number 10 Billboard Hot 100 release that made Benson a star. “Breezin’” didn’t do quite as well on the charts — it hit number 63 on the Hot 100 and number 13 on Billboard’s Easy Listening chart — but it’s become the defining guitar instrumental in his deep catalog that includes more than 40 albums across a genre-hopping career that never shied away from six-string experimentation.

George Benson is now launching a new chapter with Breezin' With the Stars, his four-day workshop-meets-interactive music event. He also recently announced the sale of some of his most iconic guitars, including his iconic Gibson Johnny Smith, which is now currently listed on Reverb for a whopping $999,999.

Since its appearance on The Allman Brothers Band’s 1994 album Where It All Begins, the rousing, gospel-tinged track “Soulshine” has become one of the best-loved songs in the group’s canon. “The whole thing blows me away,” says the tune’s writer, Warren Haynes. “When I wrote it, I never thought it would be an Allman Brothers song, but of course, once I heard Gregg Allman sing it, it was obvious to me that it should be sung by him. What he did with it was utterly amazing.”

In 1987, Haynes, who had played guitar for David Allen Coe and the Nighthawks, was living in Nashville. While driving one day, a song idea hit him out of the blue, and he knew it was special. Only problem was, he didn’t have a pen and paper with him, and he was at least 20 minutes from his house. “I didn’t have a guitar or any paper, so I did the only thing I could,” he says. “I sang the melody over and over so I wouldn’t forget it. I had the song mostly worked out in my head – verses, choruses and lyrics – and when I got home, I raced inside and grabbed an acoustic guitar. I had to make a cassette recording of it as fast as I could. It was pretty bare bones, but at least I got it all down.”

Haynes would later make a proper studio demo of the song, on which he worked out a memorable guitar hook line. He considered the number for his first solo album, Tales of Ordinary Madness, but instead he suggested it to a friend, blues singer and guitarist Larry McCray, who recorded it for his 1993 album, Delta Hurricane. “Larry did a great job of it,” Haynes says. “When I wrote it, I thought the ultimate version would be a duet between Ray Charles and B.B. King. Larry opened some shows for B.B., and he told me that B.B. loved the song and asked him where he got it.”

A year later, Haynes, now a member of Allman Brothers Band, was recording Where It All Begins with the group at a Florida soundstage operated by Burt Reynolds. “[Producer] Tom Dowd set it up that way so we had a live concert atmosphere,” Haynes recalls. “We had lights and monitors, the whole bit. We just didn’t have headphones.”

The band made fast work tracking all the material they’d rehearsed, and as they were ahead of schedule, Dowd asked if there were any more songs suitable for recording. To Haynes’ astonishment, Gregg Allman brought up “Soulshine.” Fellow guitarist Dickey Betts had already left for the day and couldn’t be reached, so the band, minus Betts, cut the song live off the floor. “I think we did one or two takes,” Haynes says. “Some songs you need to labor over; this one poured right out of us. We were on a real roll.”

Haynes (on a relatively new Les Paul through a Soldano amp) played two brilliantly faceted guitar solos while making sure to leave space for Betts to overdub his own equally expressive leads. “I would have preferred for us to play together, looking each other in the eye, but I can’t argue with how the solos turned out,” he says. “The only thing that rubs me about the recording is the rhythm guitar sound. Normally, I would play lower chords and Dickey played chords up high. When he finally recorded his parts and sent me the tape, I heard that he’d played solos and some fills, but no rhythms. Had I known he wasn’t going to play rhythm, I would have done a different pattern.”

“Soulshine” was immediately lauded as one of the standout tracks on Where It All Begins, and it quickly became an Allmans live staple. Over time, Gregg Allman and Haynes would take turns singing verses while harmonizing on choruses, and Derek Trucks, who joined in 1999, performed slide guitar solos on sections once played by Betts (he left the band in 2000).

“It’s thrilling to me how many lives the song has had,” Haynes says. “I play it to this day with Gov’t Mule, and there’s been some great covers of the song, like the one we did with Little Milton (on Gov’t Mule’s The Deep End, Volume 1, 2001). We played it acoustically at Bonnaroo with Vusi Mahlasela singing on it, and it still gives me chills when I hear it. Of course, the Allman Brothers’ interpretation is the most famous one. Gregg Allman had his own nuances and phrasing. His way of putting a song across was truly special.”

With some two dozen co-writes on Thin Lizzy songs, Scott Gorham must certainly have a favorite. Indeed he does, and it's a tune released 50 years ago today: "She Knows," the opening cut on Nightlife, the American-born guitarist's first album with the Irish rock group.

" ‘She Knows’ actually ended up being the first song on my first album with Thin Lizzy," Gorham told American Songwriter when asked which of his songs has a special meaning for him. "So I’m kinda proud of that!"

A co-write between Gorham and Thin Lizzy bassist/vocalist Phil Lynott, "She Knows" is the product of a friendship that began under unusual circumstances. When the band's original guitarist, Eric Bell, left, he was briefly replaced by Irish rock guitarist Gary Moore before Gorham and Brian Robertson stepped in.

The Lynott/Gorham partnership would soon become the band’s bedrock, but it started with a case of mistaken identity.

“So I’m in this African Dinner Club,” Gorham told Hot Press in 2020. “Out of nowhere I hear this voice, ‘Are you Scott?’ It was Phil, but I thought he was one of the guys that worked there.

“I said, ‘Yeah, I’m supposed to meet a guy called Phil who’s with a band called Thin Lizzy. Can you show me what room they’re in?’ And he said, ‘Yeah I’m Phil’. And that sort of threw me — because he was Black with an Irish accent!”

Gorham, born in Glendale, California, was reaching the final throes of his six-month stay in London, but had connected with Lynott through a mutual friend.

“I knew absolutely nothing about them,” Gorham says of the band he was to audition for. “But Phil was great from the very beginning. He had that big flashy smile of his.”

The guitarist soon understood that the band's sound would need a drastic makeover. While early Thin Lizzy tunes like "Whiskey in the Jar" and "The Rocker" had shown promise, the group had failed to make much of an impression on the record-buying public. Gorham had ideas for how to move the group forward from their first three albums using their new guitar tandem.

“There’s so much more you can accomplish musically with two guitars,” Gorham says. “I personally didn’t want to have anything to do with those first three albums. In my mind, this was a different group. We were starting from scratch.

“I remember saying to Phil that we need to stand on our own two feet, so we ought to drop old numbers and just head out on our own — and that included 'Whiskey In the Jar' and 'The Rocker.' And Phil agreed!”

Standing on their own feet would require new material. In a new interview with Guitar Player, Gorham has relayed how the seeds of the soon-to-be-iconic partnership were sown.

“It was at the rehearsals for the Nightlife album, and I think we were on a break," he tells Guitar Player. "I still had my guitar on, and I had this riff. I played it, and Phil said, ‘Is that yours? Is there any more to that?’ I said, ‘Well, yeah,’ and I played the next bit. Phil looked at me and said, ‘Do you mind if I write some lyrics to that?’ I said, ‘Are you kidding me? Hell, yes!’ And you know, I thought he did a great job on that.

“And once that was done, I couldn’t wait to get into the studio, record it and put some extra instrumentation in there — more percussion, and that kind of thing. It was at times like that I realized something has the possibility of being a really cool song.”

If Gorham’s previous comments are to go by, Lynott’s ability to create a supportive and creative environment in the band was vital.

“Right off the bat, Phil encouraged everybody to write,” he told American Songwriter in 2013. “He didn’t want to be the lone ranger, writing guy. He always wanted to be able to write with other people.

Of the fateful moment "She Knows" came to life, he adds: “I just started, you know, banging out that riff that you hear right at the top of the song and he and I finished the song, got the verses together, and the chorus and all that.”

Though the writing environment proved fruitful, both Nightlife and its follow-up, 1975's Fighting , flopped. Gorham goes as far to call them “dismal failures” with Vertigo Records consequently issuing them a ‘do-or-die’ warning as they set to work on 1976's Jailbreak.

“We had everyone saying to us, ‘You’d better do it on this one or there’s the door!’” he recalls. The band and label would butt heads over what its singles should be, but when two American DJs got a hold of "The Boys are Back in Town," Thin Lizzy suddenly “exploded all over America”.

After that, Nightlife and Fighting saw a resurgence in popularity, with the band’s twin-guitar attack paving the way for a surge of harmony-lavished bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and UFO.

Perhaps if Gorham had never ushered out that riff in rehearsal, the history of Thin Lizzy would be very different.