Despite a $2 million royalties lawsuit currently playing out in a London courtroom, Stewart Copeland says his relationship with former Police bandmate Sting remains intact.

Copeland and Police electric guitar player Andy Summers are suing Sting, the band’s singer and bass player, over unpaid royalties they claim are owed to them. But Copeland tells Billboard that the legal battle is largely being handled by accountants and lawyers.

“They’re all arguing away,” he says. “For me, it’s, ‘Lemme know how it works out…’”

In fact, Copeland says he and Sting remain in regular contact, discussing “kids, Instagram memes, and bullshit” rather than legal disputes.

“I’m happy that we get along just fine,” he explains. “And it’s not because of satanic impulses or any of the human infirmities of jealousy, greed, pride, whatever. It’s because we had a spell where our music universes overlapped and we created some incredible stuff. We really achieved everything we needed to achieve.”

The comments come amid an ongoing dispute over Police royalties. The biggest development since the case was filed in January was the revelation that Sting had paid his former bandmates more than $800,000 after the lawsuit began — a figure Summers and Copeland argue falls well short of what they are owed.

For Copeland, however, the key to maintaining the friendship is simple: he and Sting no longer have to work together.

“As I’ve been saying a lot recently, Sting and I make music for different reasons, and it has a different place in our lives,” he says. “So we get along great as long as we’re not trying to make music together.”

That wasn’t always the case. During the Police’s rise from the late-’70s punk and new-wave scene to global superstardom, tensions between Sting, Copeland and electric guitar player Andy Summers became legendary. Although the trio sold tens of millions of albums and produced classics such as Synchronicity, the relationship between the band members was often volatile.

When the band reunited for a world tour in 2007, Copeland says they even brought in professionals he likens to marriage counselors to help smooth over old tensions.

The approach worked. The reunion proved successful enough for the band to extend the tour by another six months.

Nearly two decades later, Copeland suggests the old conflicts have finally been put into perspective. The music was worth it, the friendships survived, and the lawyers can worry about the rest.

As the Police settled into the studio to record Synchronicity in December 1982, they were a band on the verge of breaking up. By then, the trio had spent five years rising from the ranks of London’s post-punk scene to become stadium headliners and one of the most successful acts in the world.

Most bands in that position would have been looking ahead to a long future. The Police, however, seemed determined to leave at the height of their success.

According to Andy Summers, it all came down to Sting.

“It was a tough album, period. I mean, we had been together five years and were massively successful,” he says. “Sting was obviously feeling his oats and wanted to leave the band and go out on his own. In a sort of anal way, he was ready to finish off the contract, which was five albums.”

The recording sessions at AIR Studios on the Caribbean island of Montserrat have become legendary for the near-violent tension between bass guitarist Sting and drummer Stewart Copeland. Summers told Rick Beato the atmosphere became so unworkable that he hiked across the island to find Beatles producer Sir George Martin, who was staying nearby, and ask for help.

“We said we should get George Martin to come and produce us, because he owned AIR Studios, and he was just across the valley there. And so I got the job to go and get George Martin. So I walked off in the blazing Montserrat heat, knocked on the door, and he comes out.”

Summers recalls how Martin invited him inside and listened over a cup of tea as the guitarist unloaded his frustrations.

“‘We’re having some difficulty,’” he told the producer. “‘In fact, it’s like a screaming bitch fight.’”

“‘Oh yes, right. I’ve seen that before,’ he said.”

After hearing Summers out, Martin offered a few reassuring words.

“It was like he waved his magic wand,” Summers recalls. “He said, ‘Now, I think you should walk back over there. I think it’s going to be all right.’

“I hiked back to the other side of the island, and it was all right. We got to be very polite with each other: ‘Oh, would you like to do that? Oh, yes, of course. I’ll do that. Where would you like it, on the fourth fret or the fifth fret?’

“How amazing. It was the Martin Magic, I’m sure.”

Tempers cooled enough for the band to complete what would become its biggest hit, “Every Breath You Take.”

“The whole album was difficult, but ‘Every Breath You Take’ was going to go in the trash, basically. We thought it was too light and it wasn’t very good. It reached the point where we were all getting pretty tired of it and didn’t really want to do it.”

It was Summers’ contribution that ultimately saved the song.

“Sting said to me, ‘Go on, go in there and make it your own.’ We needed a guitar and I went in and almost instantly played the guitar line that is, of course, the signature of the song.”

Summers has since argued that he deserves a co-writing credit for the song’s instantly recognizable electric guitar riff. His contributions to “Every Breath You Take” are also among the reasons he and Stewart Copeland have said they are owed additional royalties from Sting.

As Summers recalls, everyone in the studio immediately recognized the song’s potential.

“The manager heard it and said, ‘I’m going straight to A&M. This is going to be a number one.’ And it was. That was our first number one in the U.S. It was number one for eight weeks straight.”

Still, the success of the song and the album — it was the band’s biggest seller — wasn’t enough to persuade Sting to stay.

“With the band’s contract fulfilled, he was ready to strike out on his own.

“Of course, any band would stay, naturally, because it was going so brilliantly well. We dominated the world. No one wanted us to break up, but Sting wanted to go and be the thing all on his own.”

“It’s a famous riff, and I have to admit it’s hard to play,” guitarist Andy Summers says. “People want to play it, but a lot of them can’t — the stretches are too big. You have to be a real guitarist to do it well.”

Summers is talking about “Message in a Bottle,” the cascading guitar showcase that opens Reggatta de Blanc, the 1979 sophomore album by the Police.

Released as the album’s lead track, the song became the band’s first number-one hit on the U.K. Singles Chart. More importantly, it captured the trio’s chemistry at full strength — Summers’ shimmering guitar riff, Sting’s elastic bass line and Stewart Copeland’s explosive drumming locking together into one of rock’s most instantly recognizable sounds.

“For me it’s the best of the Police,” Summers says. “There are a lot of other great tracks, but I’ve always particularly liked that one.”

The riff that defined the Police

While many young bands worry about the dreaded sophomore slump, the Police had no shortage of ideas when they began work on Reggatta de Blanc. Their debut album, Outlandos d'Amour, had already produced hits like Roxanne and Can't Stand Losing You. But according to Summers, Sting had been stockpiling material long before the band formed.

“He had this giant book — a big, thick, hardbound book — with pages that had lyrics all the way through it,” Summers told Classic Rock in 2017. “So we never really ran out of material.”

“Message in a Bottle” was one of those works in progress, though it sounded quite different in its earliest form before the band entered London’s Surrey Sound Studios with producer Nigel Gray.

“Sting had that riff for a while, but there was another tune with it originally,” Summers told L’Historia Bandidio in 1981. “He’d been fiddling about with it during our first American tour. Finally he rearranged the riff slightly and came up with the song.”

Summers immediately saw its potential — and helped transform it.

“Sting showed me the riff he had, but I embellished it,” he told Guitar Player. “I had the chops to make it swing and rock. I could tell right away it had something, and I was thrilled to play something that started to progress our style.”

Rather than simply strumming chords, Summers built the riff by arpeggiating the notes of the progression — a technique he would later use again on the Police’s 1983 hit “Every Breath You Take.”

“Rather than just strumming chords, I was outlining the figures in a way that integrated very well with Stewart’s hi-hat,” he explained.

In the studio, Summers layered a second guitar part over the original figure to create the track’s distinctive chiming harmony.

“Then it goes into more of a rock chorus,” he said. “But the verse is the classic Police sound — outlining the chord.”

That sound, Summers says, was the result of a deliberate effort by the band to shape Sting’s raw material into something uniquely theirs.

“Really the process was about: how could we take some of this basically raw material and ‘Police-ify’ it — make it sound like the way we sounded,” he told Classic Rock. “Which was of course the unique chemistry between the guitar, the bass line, the high vocals that Sting had then and Stewart’s unique drumming. Never to be repeated.”

The sound behind the riff

Summers’ guitar tone is a huge part of what makes the track instantly recognizable. While many listeners assume he used a chorus pedal — or perhaps his Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus amplifier — Summers has said the shimmering sound actually came from an Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress Flanger/Filter Matrix pedal.

He used the Electric Mistress extensively on Reggatta de Blanc and its follow-up, Zenyatta Mondatta. (Earlier, on Outlandos d’Amour, he had relied on an MXR Phase 90.)

The setting on “Message in a Bottle” leans more toward chorus than flange, but for players chasing Summers’ tone, the Electric Mistress remains the key ingredient.

Just as important was Summers’ modified early ’60s Fender Telecaster, which he used on many of the Police’s best-known recordings, including “Don't Stand So Close to Me,” “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” “Spirits in the Material World” and “Every Breath You Take.”

The guitar features a Gibson PAF humbucker in the neck position and a Tele single-coil mounted directly to the body at the bridge. A brass bridge plate, built-in preamp and phase switch helped Summers achieve the bright, glassy rhythm tone that became his signature.

How he acquired the instrument remains something of a mystery.

In a 1997 interview with Guitar World, Summers told writer Vic Garbarini the guitar had originally belonged to Eric Clapton. According to Summers, Clapton was using the Telecaster while recording Fresh Cream with Cream after his famous Les Paul — the one heard on Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton — had been stolen.

Summers said the two eventually traded instruments.

“I brought it to this session he was doing, and he immediately started using it,” he recalled. “That turned out to be the Fresh Cream album. So then I wound up with the Telecaster, which I played all through the Police and still use today.”

Other versions of the story differ. In some tellings, Summers has said he bought the already-modified guitar from one of his students in the early 1970s while studying classical guitar and composition at California State University. In a 2023 interview with Rick Beato, he said he sold Clapton a Les Paul for £200 and made no mention of the Telecaster being part of the deal.

However it came into his possession, the instrument became central to the Police’s sound.

As Summers told Garbarini, he used the Telecaster “almost exclusively onstage and in the studio pretty much up until the Ghost in the Machine album.”

A solo in the age of punk

Once the basic track for “Message in a Bottle” was finished, Summers faced a decision that wasn’t entirely welcome in the late-’70s punk climate: whether to add a guitar solo.

“We were coming out of a sort of religious punk scene, and guitar solos at that time were supposed to be a mark of the old guard,” he explained. “Stewart was vehement about that, but I was a great soloist, so of course I was soloing my ass off.”

The band ultimately left it in after Sting heard Summers’ take.

“As I started playing a solo over the end of the song, Sting went, ‘Oh, actually, this is really good. Keep it in, keep it in,’” Summers said. “It wasn’t up really loud, which I would’ve liked, but it was in there, with a lot of feeling.”

For Summers, the rhythm section’s contribution was just as important.

“I should say that the recorded version of this song is the best drum track Stewart ever did.”

By the time the song was finished, the band knew they had something special.

“Two A&R guys came down from A&M Records, sat down on the couch,” Summers recalled to Classic Rock. “We put that song on, and they were just smiling as widely as they could, because it was a killer track.”

Although the single reached only No. 74 on the Billboard Hot 100, it helped solidify the Police’s growing American audience — a breakthrough the band would fully capitalize on with “Every Breath You Take.”

The song also became a live staple, giving Summers plenty of opportunities to experiment with its famous opening riff.

“I’ve played it a lot of different ways, in a lot of different positions over the years,” he said. “Sometimes playing the second chord, the A, with the open A string rather than going to the obvious shape of the added-ninth chord. It’s pretty cool.”

Forty-five years later, the song remains his favorite from the band’s brief but influential run.

“For me, it’s still the best song Sting ever came up with,” Summers wrote in his memoir One Train Later. “And the best Police track.”

Andy Summers’ hit-making run with the Police was powered by a study in contrasts: a red 1962 Fender Stratocaster and a heavily modded early-’60s Telecaster of murky origin. The Strat delivered the shimmer; the Tele was the secret weapon — even if Summers initially hesitated to buy it.

He considers both guitars “major historical items,” now worth millions because of the provenance forged by his playing. The Tele, in particular, cut some of the band’s biggest tracks — “Roxanne,” “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” and “Every Breath You Take,” home to one of the most-played riffs in pop history.

For years, lore held that the guitar came via a swap with Eric Clapton, who’d allegedly used it on Fresh Cream. In a new interview with Kylie Olsson, Summers sticks to a different account: he bought it from an unknown electric guitar modder who has yet to step forward and claim credit for the instrument’s radical rewiring.

“It came through an era when everybody was messing around with their guitars,” Summers says. “When I got it, I said, ‘I don’t know if I want to,’ but I took it home and played it for hours.”

Any doubts about buying it from “this guy” — whom Summers once described as a student during his pre-Police days in California — quickly evaporated. The guitar’s customized circuitry gave it uncommon firepower.

“It’s a hybrid. This guy put a humbucker in the front, which is totally against the Telecaster thing,” he explains. “This little switch goes into overdrive — it’s like putting on a fuzz pedal. And you can combine the two pickups, which normally you wouldn’t be able to do on a Telecaster.”

The expanded tonal palette made it indispensable, particularly on “Every Breath You Take” — a song nearly left off the album and now at the center of an ongoing intraband legal dispute — as well as a string of other global hits.

The Tele also houses a built-in preamp — a mod associated with Frank Zappa — and an out-of-phase switch that helped Summers achieve his signature, glassy rhythmic bite.

“He wanted $200 for it,” Summers recalls. “I didn’t have the money, but I said, ‘I want it.’ I can’t even remember how I got the money. For years I’d just travel around, throw it in the back of a van, never really thinking about it. Now it’s an iconic instrument. It’s worth millions.”

Its provenance extends beyond the Police. In the early ’80s, as Summers wearied of writing pop songs, the Tele resurfaced alongside Robert Fripp during their left-field collaboration — a project their label doubted but whose success Summers calls the “ultimate FU” to the skeptics.

Elsewhere, he says he believes the story that Sting, desperate to halt one song’s recording, buried its demo in the garden.

It has also emerged that Sting paid Summers and Stewart Copeland $800,000 after they sued him — though their attorneys maintain they are owed considerably more.

Its provenance extends beyond the Police. In the early ’80s, as Summers wearied of writing pop songs, the Tele resurfaced alongside Robert Fripp during their left-field collaboration — a project their label doubted but whose success Summers calls the “ultimate FU” to the skeptics.

Elsewhere, he says he believes the story that Sting, desperate to halt one song’s recording, buried its demo in the garden.

It has also emerged that Sting paid Summers and Stewart Copeland $800,000 after they sued him — though their attorneys maintain they are owed considerably more.

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Andy Summers is one of the most influential guitar players of all time. But he has more than one trick in his bag: Summers is also a fine photographer and a gifted storyteller.

He’ll bring everything to the table for A Cracked Lens + A Missing String when GP Presents helps welcome him to the Presidio Theatre. The show is set to take place on the last Saturday in September out near the Golden Gate Bridge in the City by the Bay.

Long-time GP Presents followers and avid Summers fans might remember how cool it was when he headlined our Play It Forward fire relief benefit in 2018 after disaster struck Paradise, California. He played Police hits, including “Message in a Bottle,” on a Telecaster and offered deep insights on everything from his guitar playing to what it was really like to be on and offstage with the notoriously dysfunctional trio.

Summers’ stage presence has only sharpened over time, and he delivers everything with a quick wit while showing candid shots from behind the scenes where no other photographers had access.

Summers has plenty of new things to talk about as well. He's set to launch a new docu-series all about the guitar. Titled Global Guitar, the eight-episode series will focus on the impact that the acoustic and electric guitar have had on the world, as well as Summers’ interactions with different musicians united by their love of the humble stringed instrument.”

The guitarist has also been in the news of late for the lawsuit he and former Police drummer Stewart Copeland have brought against Sting, claiming they are owed more than $2 million in royalties.

Don’t miss this chance to hear all about everything directly from Summers! Come show your appreciation for his amazing career with the Police, Robert Fripp, and Circa Zero as well as his accomplished writing and photography. Again, the show is Saturday, September 27 in San Francisco at the Presidio Theatre.

Get your tickets now.

WIN TICKETS!

For a chance to win a pair of tickets to see Andy Summers in San Francisco, California, on Saturday, September 27, send an email and put “Summers” in the subject line. Include a sentence about yourself and why you want to go. Phone contact greatly appreciated for confirmation.

The winner must provide their own transportation to the Presidio Theatre in San Francisco, California, on Thursday, September 27, and have his or her own accommodations in the area.

Best of luck!

EVENT DETAILS

GP Presents Andy Summers: A Cracked Lens + A Missing String

Saturday, September 27

6:30 p.m. lobby; 7 p.m. auditorium doors; 7:30 p.m. show

The Presidio Theatre is in the Presidio of San Francisco

99 Moraga Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94129.

We'll be handing out free packs of Martin strings

Get your tickets now.

When the Police formed in 1977, the trio agreed to a royalty-sharing plan that would recognize each member’s contributions to the group’s finished work.

But according to new details in the lawsuit Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland have brought against Sting, things haven’t gone according to plan.

Initial reports about the lawsuit indicated it was over royalties for the group’s 1984 hit “Every Breath You Take.”

But a new report from The New York Times says it encompasses the broad swath of the group’s output credited to Sting, whose real name is Gordon Sumner.

In their lawsuit, Summers and Copeland claim they are owed “arranger’s fees” on income earned from the “digital exploitation” of the group’s catalog. According to the filing, the two men are owed In excess of $2 million.

The origin of their complaint goes back to the group’s initial agreement at the time that they formed. The trio verbally agreed that each would share with the other two 15 percent of the royalties from any song written for the group. Money from sales of sheet music and covers performed by other acts were omitted.

In 1981, they formalized the terms in a written agreement. The contract was revised in 1997 after Summers and Copeland said they had been underpaid by Sting, the band’s main songwriter and hit maker, “for a considerable period.”

Following a dispute about whether Sting should pay the others publishing shares for songs used in TV shows and movies, the three men inked a new contract in 2016, which aimed to resolve previous disputes about “arranger’s fees.”

In their new lawsuit, Copeland and Summers claim Sting has not paid them in full for the “digital exploitation” of the group’s songs. In his defense document, the bass guitarist claims he has made payment and owes them nothing more under the terms of the 2016 contract.

Sting’s lawyers called the new lawsuit “an illegitimate attempt” to reinterpret that agreement. They add that, depending on how the 2016 contract is interpreted, he may owe the others nothing from online use of songs he wrote for the group, and in fact may have “substantially overpaid” them.

The Police became one of rock’s biggest groups during their initial eight years together, from 1977 to 1984. Their catalog has continued to sell in the millions and earn substantial income from royalties on sales, broadcast, streaming, movies and TV shows and other forms of use.

Among the group’s biggest hits are “Roxanne,” “Message in a Bottle” and “Every Breath You Take,” the latter two of which feature Summers' signature electric guitar riffs. He considers his contributions to "Every Breath You Take" substantial enough that he has said he deserves co-writing credit for the song.

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.”

For many guitarists, Eric Clapton, even in his youngest, rawest form, was a revelation to the electric guitar.

Clapton was barely out of his teens by the time one super fan had spray-painted “Clapton is God” on a London wall in the mid-’60s. He was a member of both the Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers during that period, two bands which inadvertently earned a reputation for being production lines of guitar greats, and the hype around this particular hotshot almost single-handedly forged the cult of the guitar hero.

Andy Summers, though, was less overwrought by his talents, saying his heart and his tastes lay elsewhere.

Though Summers' earliest playing experiences were with British rhythm and blues group Zoot Money's Big Roll Band, he came from a very different school from Clapton. He would eventually ditch the U.K. scene to study classical guitar in Los Angeles. Despite later becoming a hit-maker in the Police, what turned him on, musically speaking, never changed.

So, while Clapton’s reputation reached fever pitch, Summers was deaf to the noise. He was focused on a rather different kind of guitar playing.

“When I was 14, my ears were trained by listening for hours on end to American jazz guitar players and trying to understand their solos and their lines, and that’s what I developed,” he told Let It Rock in late 2021.

“Then the blues scene developed in London, and people like Clapton came out of the woodwork, and the American blues singers took off. But my heart was in jazz — I liked Thelonious Monk, not Howlin’ Wolf!

“Blues is very simple to me, and it was not that interesting when everybody copied Eric back in those days. It’s too simple to play because it’s based on a five-note scale, and I had come way past that.”

Summers also says his songwriting partnership with bass player Sting, who was as musically well-traveled as he was, allowed the Police to find a sweet spot between pop and progression.

“We both had a lot of harmonic knowledge that was a sort of exterior to pop music per se,” he says. “You can tell that was different by the way we played songs like ‘Roxanne’ which started off as bossa nova, and it’s got more interesting chords, or ‘Walking on the Moon’ where the opening chord is not something you do in a pop group. It was a perfect blend of musical sensibilities put into another framework.”

Yet, despite the pair’s stylistic collaging, he did have his reservations. After five years filling the charts with hits like “Message in a Bottle” and “Roxanne”, Summers showed his true colors by striking an unlikely partnership with Robert Fripp.

He believed his talents were stagnating and that he was “musically hemmed” in by the group’s pop-minded approach. Despite not being a fan of King Crimson, he knew tuning into Fripp’s oddball, leftfield, and highly polyrhythmic playing would be the perfect antidote.

His record label, A&M, worried it was commercial suicide. Summers fought his corner.

“A&M, who the Police were selling trillions of records for, didn't want me to do it at all,” Summers reveals. “But they didn't want to piss me off, because I had too much power at that point.

“Robert and I were both famous players in our respective groups, so I thought there'd be a lot of interest in it. Then it went into the Top 60 in the charts. It was a real sort of 'fuck you' to the record company.”

More artful than accessible, the instrumental album wasn’t exactly going to dominate dance clubs, but it gave Summers musical freedom, and he cherished those moments.

“Robert and I had no idea what we were going to play,” he said. “We just sat with our guitars and various bits of equipment and started to discover what could be made between us. It allowed you to move into a whole other sphere.”

Andy Summers was at the height of his powers and fame when he took a sharp, unexpected sidestep to collaborate with King Crimson maverick Robert Fripp in the early ‘80s — and that was exactly the point.

By his admission, he felt he was stagnating, his talents “musically hemmed” in by a band that had proven a production line for simple, catchy hit singles. He wanted a fresh, far more experimental challenge. So the two records they would write together, he tells Prog, were “the ultimate 'fuck you' to the record company,” when they proved an improbable success.

Summer says he wasn’t even a fan of King Crimson’s musical, but he felt he and Fripp — who both hail from similar circles in Southern England — had a “cosmic connection.”

Indeed, Fripp’s polyrhythmic guitar playing were perfectly counterbalanced by Summers’ more tasteful interjections. Their debut release, 1982’s all-instrumental I Advance Masked, spent 11 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart.

Yet A&M, the Police’s label, thought such a release would do the band’s reputation more harm than good.

“A&M, who the Police were selling trillions of records for, didn't want me to do it at all,” Summers says. “But they didn't want to piss me off, because I had too much power at that point.

"Robert and I were both famous players in our respective groups, so I thought there'd be a lot of interest in it. Then it went into the Top 60 in the charts. It was a real sort of 'fuck you' to the record company.”

The guitarists had just two weeks in the studio together, due to Fripp's obligations on King Crimson's Three of a Perfect Pair album. But Fripp says the window of opportunity came at the ideal moment in his career.

“Working within King Crimson, my musical focus became increasingly defined and specialized,” he explains to Prog. “So what made Summers and Fripp work is that Andy was more able to move to me than I was to him.”

Summers, however, didn’t feel the project was about blending into one another’s foliage. He liked the idea of polarity.

“Robert and I are very disparate players," he says. "He ain't gonna play the blues with you. He's really good at playing these polyrhythmic lines. I'd never heard anybody else play quite like that. So I regarded his multi-rhythmic lines as the bones of the skeleton, and my function was to put on the flesh. We were figuring it out as we went along.

“Robert and I had no idea what we were going to play,” he continues. “We just sat with our guitars and various bits of equipment and started to discover what could be made between us.”

Although used sparingly, their mutual adoration for embracing strange things was epitomized by the record's employment of the Roland guitar synthesizer. Summers had already experimented with one on "Don't Stand So Close to Me," from the Police album Zenyatta Mondatta, while Fripp and Adrian Belew had brought the hot new technology into Crimson's world.

“It allowed you to move into a whole other sphere," Summers adds. "And I took the Police pedalboard into the studio with Robert, so instead of having two straight electric guitars going into two Fender Twin amps, we were able to bring more sonic color to the situation.”

Earlier this month, Robert Fripp revealed he had suffered a heart attack in April and received emergency treatment, but is on the road to recovery. He turned 70 last week.

Meanwhile, footage of Summers teaching John Mayer how to play the Police's most challenging song has emerged online, while the guitarist has spoken about another expectation-defying release and how Police bass guitar player Sting went to extreme measures to stop it in its tracks.

Andy Summers’ guitar talents shone so brightly in the Police because they were given so much room. Between Sting’s bass and Stewart Copeland’s drums, Summers had plenty of space to work his magic, and he did so with electric guitar lines that in many case defined the songs.

“Message in a Bottle” is just one example. The hit song is distinguished by a finger-wrenching arpeggiated riff that Summers’ considers one of the most difficult to perform. Even John Mayer had difficulty with it when he attempted to teach him.

“It’s a famous riff, and I have to admit, it’s hard to play,” Summers told Guitar Player in 2019. “People want to play it, but a lot of them can’t — the stretches are too big. You have to be a real guitarist to do it well."

And then there’s his chiming riff from “Every Breath You Take,” which outlines the chords simply but memorably.

“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,” Summers told us. It was very much in the Police guitar style, if you like.”

When you consider that “Every Breath You Take” has more than 2.6 billion plays on Spotify as of this writing, Summers’ effort is arguably the most streamed guitar riff in all of rock.

Despite his success writing riffs for Sting’s songs, Summers left the bassist cold when it came to his lone entry on the group’s 1980 studio album, Zenyatta Mondatta: the instrumental “Behind My Camel.”

Clocking in at 2:53, the song features an ominous eight-bar guitar riff that repeats continuously over a bed of synthesizer strings.

Sting hated it and refused to record his bass for the track, leaving Summers to do it for himself. While there was no shortage of ego conflicts among the trio, Sting’s rejection seems an extreme response.

Summers puts it down to “typical band stuff.”

“I liked it,” he says of the song. “I was always much more interested in weirder stuff, and the commercial hit songs always seemed to come out of Sting anyway.”

Summers recalled in Guitar Player’s September 1982 issue that he wrote the song in Ireland about three months before work began on Zenyatta Mondatta.

“I worked out the melody on an organ,” he explained. “It might have come out of my playing to a drum box. I got this machine that was set to bossa nova plus rock and tango rhythms.”

As tracking for Zenyatta Mondatta was wrapping up in August 1980, it became clear that they were short one song.

“We didn’t have enough songs to fill the album, and I had this ‘Behind My Camel’ thing,” Summer says. “I said, “How about doing this, then?” And Sting said, 'I’m not playing on that!'

“Stewart was actually up for working on it, so I just played the bass.

As Summers recalls, he plays Sting’s bass through the bassist’s rig. His guitar was either his 1963 Fender Telecaster Custom, which featured an onboard preamp and a Gibson PAF in the neck position or one of his Strats — either his 1954 or the red-finished 1961 model that his second most-used guitar with the Police after the Tele.

“Everything was moving so fast in the studio that I doubt I had time to think about it very much," Summers says. "I probably just got the bass in there with the kick drum.”

While the guitarist has never suggested it, Zenyatta Mondatta producer Nigel Gray believes the tune was meant as a joke. He points to its title for support.

"He didn't tell me this himself,” Gray says, “but I'm 98 percent sure the reason is this: What would you find behind a camel? A monumental pile of shit.”

Having failed to stop the song from being recorded, Sting says he attempted to fertilize the studio’s garden with the tape.

“I hated that song so much that, one day when I was in the studio, I found the tape lying on the table,” he told Revolver magazine in 2000. “So I took it around the back of the studio and actually buried it in the garden."

Though Sting was likely exaggerating, Summers has his doubts.

“I actually believe he did bury the tape in the garden,” he says with a laugh.

Despite Sting’s dislike for it, “Behind My Camel” made the cut. Better still, it earned the group the 1982 Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, the band's second win in that category.

“Well, obviously, I loved the irony,” Summers recalls. “I’m sure there was some smug self-satisfaction: ‘See? I fucking told you!’”

Rare backstage footage of John Mayer getting a guitar lesson from Andy Summers has emerged online.

Mayer and Kanye West linked up with the Police for an intriguing version of “Message in a Bottle” during their Live Earth performance in 2007 at the Giants Stadium in New Jersey, and it appears that Mayer needed a few pointers ahead of the spot.

The footage has been uploaded to Summers' YouTube channel, and he likely had a nostalgic and sympathetic chuckle at the clip, in which he’s sporting a Stratocaster rather than his preferred Fender cut, a Telecaster. Mayer, meanwhile, has a Martin 000C-28 Andy Summers signature acoustic guitar on his lap, and he looks hugely appreciative of Summers’ guidance.

In the short video, Mayer is seen trying to get to grips with the song’s chord pattern, with some visual aids helping ensure he was hitting the correct big, stretched-out shapes.

Mayer fingerpicks his way through the progression, with some words of encouragement — “That’s it… you got it!” — from Summers along the way, who understands the size of the task.

The song's iconic, chorused riff is actually Sting's doing, and Summers knows all too well of the pain trying to master its hand-wrenching chord shapes.

Speaking to Guitar Player in 2019, he confessed: “It’s a famous riff, and I have to admit, it’s hard to play. People want to play it, but a lot of them can’t — the stretches are too big. You have to be a real guitarist to do it well.

Once he's got the hang of it, everyone else — Sting, Stewart Copeland, and Kanye – can get involved with a quick backstage run-through, with a notable “F#!” coming from Summers at one stage. It appears that Mayer had switched to his signature OMJM acoustic for this final rehearsal.

The footage then cuts to the performance proper, in which, having switched to a Strat, Mayer kickstarts to a sizable cheer from a packed-out stadium.

The Police were headlining an evening that had seen Mayer perform in his own right earlier in the day. Other notable performances included the Dave Matthews Band, Bon Jovi, and The Smashing Pumpkins.

In related news, John Mayer has recently recalled how he was forced to put his brand-new Custom Shop Strat in the freezer “because I was so desperate to have something molecular happen to the guitar”. He has also offered cash-strapped young players solid gear-buying advice, saying this pedal is the next best thing to a real tube amp.

Elsewhere, Summers has revealed the role he played in writing “Every Breath You Take” and has even claimed its streaming success makes it his riff the most-played in history.

In the early ‘80s, Robert Fripp and Andy Summers formed an unlikely alliance, producing two experimental albums that, against all odds, found harmony by combining their contrasting, catch-all stadium rock and avant-garde progressive rock playing styles.

Their collective feat can now be deemed even more impressive after Summers admitted to Guitarist that he wasn’t a King Crimson fan going into the project. Yet he felt drawn to Fripp by a “cosmic connection” that willed their disparate sounds together.

“I wasn’t into King Crimson at all,” Summers says, bluntly. “Definitely not my kind of music.”

Yet fate and geography made their worlds collide.

“Robert and I come from the same area of England," Summers explains. "I was part of the Bournemouth music scene, and you heard about this ‘weird kid’ out in Wimborne — and it was Robert Fripp, because he has a certain style."

It didn't take long for their paths to cross. At age 16, Summers became the guitarist for a hotel band, but it didn't last long. "I got fired for trying to pick up hotel girls," he says. "And Robert took over the ‘guitar seat,’ let’s call it. So there’s a sort of cosmic connection there, I suppose.”

Years would pass and, as the ‘60s wound into the ‘70s, King Crimson were shocking audiences with their skin-prickling take on progressive rock.

Summers took a different path, however. After stints in various London bands, including Zoot Money's Big Roll Band, he moved to America where he spent five years studying classical guitar at university, before leaning on Fripp to help reconnect him with the music scene.

That would eventually lead him to working in various bands and take jobs as a session musician, which is where he met Sting and drummer Stewart Copeland on a recording gig. The three would form the Police soon after.

“I subsequently became the world’s most famous guitarist with the Police,” Summers says.

However, his talents and creativity went well beyond the band’s radio-friendly new wave sound. “I was starting to feel somewhat musically hemmed in by being in that band. I wanted to stretch my legs and play with somebody else, just to see how I’d do, almost like an experiment on myself.

Enter Fripp for a third time.

“At that time, Robert was living in New York, and I was there all the time," Summers explains. "So he popped into my mind: Oh yeah, Robert Fripp. He’s a good guitarist. Maybe we could do something together.

"It started with a fairly casual hook-up when we went to practice in a photographer’s flat in Soho.”

The casual nature of their hangouts soon developed into two records: I Advance Masked, in 1982, and, two years later, Bewitched.

A compilation of previously unheard cuts, Mother Hold the Candle Steady, was recently unearthed and released as part of a special Complete Recordings reissue. Speaking to On the Record last year, Summers said he was "knocked out" upon hearing the tracks and surprised to realize they'd been left on the cutting-room floor.

“I went, ‘God, why didn't we do this? Why was I throwing those out?’ Because I was essentially the producer," he explains. "But listening to some of these songs all these years later, I thought I'd listen to them and think, Oh, my god, well, I see why. They were no good. They're terrible. That's why we didn't use them.

“But they weren't. They're all really much like the other tracks that we actually put out. And my god, it's a good album.”

In related news, Steven Wilson has explained what he learned about Fripp and King Crimson's music when remixing their change-making debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King, while Steve Vai has championed Fripp's former foil, Adrian Belew, believing he is “underrated.”

Both guitarists have played under Frank Zappa and are now celebrating King Crimson's '80s output together in Beat — and Fripp was on hand to offer Vai some sage advice.

Summers, meanwhile, has told Guitar Player how the Police's evolution amid punk’s rise made him a better player, and he's claimed he's written the world's most-played guitar riff.

Despite fears that drum machines and synthesizers would eclipse the guitar in pop music, the 1980s were an incredibly fertile time for electric guitar. Virtuoso soloists like Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson landed instrumental tunes on mainstream rock radio. Steve Val was in heavy rotation on MTV playing with former Van Haien mouthpiece David Lee Roth, and even had a role in the hit film Crossroads.

Then there was Eddie Van Haien, who — after raising the rock world's collective eyebrows with his solos on 1978's Van Halen and '79s Van Halen II — kept the heat up throughout the '80s with a slew of crowd-pleasing albums. Van Halen's celebrity extended beyond guitar culture. He could be seen regularly on MTV and had a cameo on Michael Jackson's mega-single "Beat It."

But virtuoso shred wasn't the only game in town. Many bands — including the Smiths, Bauhaus and U2 — featured guitarists who consciously avoided six-string histrionics. These players were texturalists who used broad palettes of effects to color and shade their music. Their approach grew in popularity, and by the mid '80s, no serious working guitarist could show up at a gig or recording session without the requisite chorus, delay and flanger pedals, or a rack full of digital processors and multieffects.

With the 1980s several decades behind us, we decided to look at the players who molded the sound of guitar back then. We didn't do it for nostalgia's sake. After all, there's loads of inspiration to be found in the tones and ideas these players hatched back in the day. Fire up Metallica's Kill 'Em All and hear just how devastating power chords can be. Spin a Michael Hedges disc and you'll never again think of acoustic guitar as the electric's folky cousin. Throw on a Police album and you're bound to get some new tonal inspiration. Step into the Guitar Player time machine, and you'll see what we mean as we present the decade's most innovative guitarists. They launched a revolution that continues to this day.

Daniel Ash

The goth-influenced soundscapes of English art-rockers Bauhaus and subsequent splinter group Tones on Tail (basically Bauhaus, sans lead singer Peter Murphy) spotlighted Ash's edgy-but-atmospheric tones and creative use of noise. And even when TOT later changed their name to Love and Rockets, and ventured in a more song-oriented direction, Ash never strayed from his ideal of texture over flash. "I love the idea of music that sounds like it comes from another world, but you can still tap your foot to it," he told GP in 1994. "I always found the notion of solos comical — just ego wanking."

Though the EBow was an essential part of Ash's razory sound since the beginning (often pressed directly against the neck pickup), he also relied on delay, flange and tremolo pedals, and employed such tricks as banging on a reverb-equipped amp to coax guitar sounds that were indistinguishable from synths, samples or industrial machinery.

KEY TRACKS "Bela Lugosi's Dead," "Terror Couple Kill Colonel," "Stigmata Martyr," "Hot Trip to Heaven"

1980s GEAR Burns guitars, H&H IC100S amp, Heet Sound EBow, DOD chorus and tremolo pedals, Watkins Copicat tape echo — AT

Adrian Belew

In an era when many guitarists felt threatened by the expansive sonic possibilities of synthesizers, Belew single-handedly proved the guitar to be a limitless tool for unheard-of sounds that no synth could match — from beautiful whale moans to jarring electronic screams. His mind-blowing sonic assaults made him one of the preeminent experimental rock guitarists of the 1980s, and landed him work with King Crimson, Laurie Anderson and David Bowie (on 1979's Lodger, then as Bowie's musical director for the '86 Sound and Vision tour). And Belew's not just a "noise" guy — he's also a master of subtlety. Listen to the Tom Tom Club's hit "Genius of Love." What sounds like a steel drum is actually Belew tapping the strings with one hand while manipulating the resonance control of an ADA flanger.

Belew's contributions to Talking Heads' 1980 release, Remain in Light, still stand as some of rock guitar's most monumentally creative offerings. "Talking Head's music at the time was very funk driven, one-chord stuff — a huge canvas for a guitarist to go wild," Belew told GP in 1990.

KEY TRACKS "The Great Curve" (with Talking Heads). "Elephant Talk" (with King Crimson). "Big Electric Cat," "Twang Bar King" (solo)

1980s GEAR Fender Strat, two modified Fender Mustangs, Roland JC-120 amplifiers, Foxx Tone Machine, various Electro-Harmonix and MXR effects units — DF

Warren Cuccurullo

To legions of pop fans, Missing Persons was all about Dale Bozzio. But as self-conscious and tragically trendy as the L.A. band's image may have been, the "guys" (bassist Patrick O'Hearn, drummer Terry Bozzio, and guitarist Warren Cuccurullo) were absolutely murderous players. All were alumni of Frank Zappa bands, and Cuccurullo's obsession with electronics would help forge Missing Persons into one of the '80s most modern-sounding acts. His massively processed textures, lush distortion washes and soaring, synth-like lines added mystery and excitement to what were, for the most part, merely clever pop songs. And, like Missing Persons' costuming and staging, Cuccurullo's contribution to guitarcraft was scrupulously calculated.

"I want to cut my own niche in rock guitar playing," he said in a February 1985 GP interview. "I want to be easily identifiable and known as a little wiz."

KEY TRACKS "Destination Unknown," "Give," "Mental Hopscotch," "Walking in LA.," "Words"

1980s GEAR Gibson SG and ES-335, self-designed "Missing Link" solidbody (with two necks joined by a loop), custom Performance guitar, custom Vox (assembled from a Vox wah, a Vox neck, and Vox pickups), 100-watt Marshall head and 4x12 cabinet, Garvin X-100B head, Mesa/Boogie head, ADA Flanger, Foxx Tone Machine, Heet Sound EBow, Lexicon Prime Tune, Maestro Super Fuzz, Morley Echo/ Volume, Mu-Tron III, MXR Pitch Transposer — MM

Elliot Easton

With a sound that was as far from macho '70s rock as possible, the Cars were possibly the quintessential '80s band. Looking back on his days in the group, Elliot Easton feels it was no accident that they forged one of rock's most individual and identifiable sounds. "Our different influences made us sound the way we did," he says. "Certain factions of the band were into the technological advances — keyboards and things — while my influences were Moby Grape, the Grateful Dead, and a lot of Memphis soul and New Orleans R&B. There was always a creative rub in the band that made the Cars unique."

On the group's pre-'85 records — The Cars and Candy-O — Easton managed to sneak hot country guitar ("My Best Friend's Girl") and clever bluesy solos ("Bye Bye Love") into the band's poppy tunes. "I never related to the 'skinny-tie' scene," Easton says. “And I was never impressed with the punk-guitar ethic. That whole primitive style of guitar playing is just not what I'm about." What Easton is about is simple. "I think I have a knack for making a song happen," he told GP in '86. "And that's a big get-off for me."

KEY TRACKS "Cruiser," "Magic," "Shake It Up," "Since You're Gone"

1980s GEAR Fender Strat and Telecaster ("I'm a twanger at heart" he says), mono Gibson ES-355, Guild Nightbird and Flyer, Rickenbacker 12-string electric, custom-made Kramer solidbody, assorted Dean solidbodies, assorted amps (including Lab Series, Pearce, Marshall JCM 800, various Fenders and Mesa/Boogies), Boss delay and chorus, Pro Co Rat, Scholz Rockman — DF

The Edge

When the relentless, echo washed lines of "I Will Follow" hit the airwaves in 1980, it was immediately obvious that the world had changed. The cutting-yet-ambient guitar soundscapes were so different from anything else heard at the time that The Edge became an instant guitar hero. However, due to the band's youth — The Edge was only 19 when U2's debut was released — more than a few guitarists assumed that a non-technical player had simply stumbled onto a few glib tricks. Not so.

"I was struck by the fact that groups such as Television had a well-defined sound that was like no one else’s,” The Edge said in the June '85 issue of Guitar Player. "So when we started putting material together, it was always in my mind that we had to find what we could do that was different. The most important thing is that we maintain a certain originality in everything we do."

The Edge remained true to his quest for individuality throughout the '80s, providing fans with thrilling, almost cinematic textures, and challenging other guitarists to re-evaluate their relationship with their instrument "There's no reason on earth why guitar players should copy one another and end up sounding the same," he declared.

KEY TRACKS "Gloria," "I Will Follow," "Sunday Bloody Sunday," "Where the Streets Have No Name," "With or Without You"

1980s GEAR Gibson Explorer, Fender Strat and Tele, Vox AC30, Mesa/Boogie MK-IIC, Boss SCC-700 Effects Center, Electro-Harmonix Memory Man, Korg SDD-3000 digital delay, Yamaha D1500 digital delay and R1000 digital reverb, MXR Pitch Transposer — MM

Billy Gibbons

ZZ Top was already a huge concert act when the advent of MTV in the early '80s gave the "little ol' band from Texas" an opportunity to boogie its way to unprecedented heights. Video images of the bearded mysteriosos with their custom coupe accompanied hit after hit from the 1983 release Eliminator, and behind it all was Top's enigmatic guitarist, Billy Gibbons.

The trademark pick harmonics, stubby solos and grinding riffs that fueled Eliminator and the subsequent Afterburner were old tricks for Gibbons, but his streamlined approach to playing over sequenced grooves made it easy to forget that blues was still the magma at ZZ's core.

As Gibbons explained to GP in 1986, "Try as we might to spice up our sound with synthesizers and this and that, it basically comes down to a few moments of bluesiness that we want to hold onto. That's where we came from, and that's pretty much what we'd like to keep stabbing at."

KEY TRACKS "Dipping Low (In the Lap of Luxury)," "Planet of Women," "Sleeping Bag," "Velcro Fly," "Under Pressure"

1980s GEAR Dean Z, Tom Holmes customs, Strings & Things St. Blues (Strat-style guitar), Roland GR-700 synth, Fairlight digital workstation, Fender and Marshall amps, Scholz Rockman, Roland Dimension D, Ibanez rack effects — AT

Michael Hedges

While the electric guitar was everywhere in the 1980s, the decade also ushered in a rising interest in virtuoso solo acoustic guitar players. The Windham Hill label was the launching pad for many of these guitarists, including William Ackerman (who headed the label) and Alex de Grassi.

Then along came Michael Hedges — with a style that encompassed some of the lyrical, contrapuntal approaches of his labelmates, and also incorporated funky rhythms, minimalist song structures and jazz-inspired chord voicings. As Hedges said in the February '85 Guitar Player, “Ackerman and de Grassi have good rhythm. It's just not as kinetic as mine. They're great impressionists and romantic players, but that doesn't come naturally to me."

Hedges showcased his composing and performing chops on his '81 debut, Breakfast in the Field and the '84 followup, Aerial Boundaries. The latter album featured Hedges' stupefying, one-man-band arrangements, with percussive two-handed tapping and a host of extended-range tunings. Hedges had, in effect, broken the four-minute mile, forever expanding the boundaries of what players and listeners thought was possible in the solo-acoustic realm.

KEY TRACKS "Aerial Boundaries," "The Happy Couple," "Hot Type," "Rickover's Dream," "Spare Change"

1980s GEAR Martin D-28 and00-18, Dyer harp-guitar — AL

James Hetfield

"There was the real glammy stuff when we were starting out playing the clubs in L.A. — the Mötley Crües and the Ratts," James Hetfield said in the April '89 GP. "Music was based around the singer, and no one was really riffing."

With Metallica's first three records, Kill ‘Em All, Ride the Lightning, and Master of Puppets, Hetfield single-handedly changed that, and metal was never the same. Performed with Gibson Flying V or ESP Explorer-style guitars and Mesa/Boogie Mark II heads, Hetfield's punishing lock-step riffs spawned several copy-cat bands, as well as a legion of young, denim jacket-clad guitarists hell-bent on learning Metallica tunes — not the solos, but Hetfield's speedy power-chord riffs, performed almost solely on heavy downstrokes. "That's key!” he said. “It's tighter sounding and a lot chunkier.”

KEY TRACKS "Creeping Death," "Eye of the Beholder," "For Whom the Bell Tolls," "Four Horsemen," "Whiplash"

1980s GEAR Gibson Flying V, ESP Explorer-style solidbody (loaded with EMG pickups), Mesa/Boogie Mark II heads — DF

Allan Holdsworth

In 1980, Allan Holdsworth — a veteran of U.K., Bill Bruford, Tony Williams and Jean-Luc Ponty — formed his groundbreaking quartet, I.O.U. He described the band's music in the December '80 Guitar Player as having "some elements of jazz and rock, but we try not to be overly tricky."

Compared to what? The music on the band's '82 debut, I.O.U., was teeming with modulating time signatures and circuitous chord progressions — in other words, tricky. Holdsworth's unique style featured clarion-toned, legato solos and a unique chordal approach. Only guitarists with brave hearts and pliant hands worked their way through Holdsworth's '85 book of compositions Reaching for the Uncommon Chord.

Holdsworth began looking to guitar synths for new sounds around '85, but because he was prone to playing blazingly fast, synth controllers could barely make sense of what his hands were doing. He eventually found that the Synth-Axe could keep up, and he featured the instrument prominently on his '86 album, Atavachron.

KEY TRACKS "Devil Take the Hindmost," "Panic Station," "Road Games," "Three Sheets to the Wind," "Where Is One"

1980s GEAR Custom Charvel single-humbucker electrics, Ibanez AH-10, SynthAxe, various amps (including Hartley-Thompson, Pearce, Fender and Sundown), Steelmaster volume pedal, Yamaha E-1010 analog delay, two ADA STD-1 stereo tapped delays (one for clean tones, one for dirty). — AL

Eric Johnson

Like Roy Buchanan and Danny Gatton, Eric Johnson initially gained prominence as a result of other guitarists singing his praises. Steve Morse, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Johnny Wffiter and Billy Gibbons were among those who raved about Johnson in interviews. Not a prolific recording artist, Johnson developed his legendary rep based on a radical '84 Austin City Limits performance and the 1986 album Tones, his only release of the decade.

With a rocker's ears, a cellist's hands and an alchemist's curiosity, Johnson forged a signature sound from fluid, multi-octave arpeggios, buttery bends, cascading pentatonic runs, and chimey, close-voiced harmonies. He proved that one could coax sweet, violin-like sustain from a Strat while cruising up and down its fretboard with flawless intonation. It was Johnson who got guitarists thinking about cable impedance and directionality, the timbral differences between germanium and silicon transistors, and carbon-zinc and alkaline batteries. While the rest of the planet was exploring the multichannel amp, he perfected the triple-amp rig. By making us aware of each element in the signal chain, Johnson elevated electric guitar tone to a science.

KEY TRACKS "Cliffs of Dover," "Soulful Terrain," "Rail of Tears"

1980s GEAR '54 Fender Shut, two Fender Twin Reverbs (driving an open-back Marshall 4x12 cab), Dumble Steel String Singer, Dumble Overdrive Special, 100-watt Marshall heads driving Marshall 4x12 cabs, Ibanez TS-9 Tube Screamer, Paul C's Tube Driver, TC Electronic Sustainer, Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man, Echoplex — AE

Mark Knopfler

Using phasoidal Strat tones, poignant bends and snarky double-stops, Mark Knopfler established himself in the late '70s as a soulful and melodic player — and one who preferred to pick with his fingers! But in '85, with the release of Brothers in Arms, Knopfler and his band Dire Straits hit the musical jackpot. In addition to scoring massive worldwide sales, the album provided Knopfler an opportunity to stretch out as an arranger, songwriter and ensemble leader. His guitar tones expanded to include throaty Les Paul riffs and darker, distorted Strat lines, and he began to explore extended themes involving guitar, keyboards and woodwinds. Released when many listeners were buying their first CDs, Brothers in Arms also became an audio benchmark.

Even today, many engineers use tracks from this beautifully focused recording to fine-tune stage and studio sound systems. Many of Knopfler's new musical ideas emerged from his film scoring experiences, which began in '83 with the magical soundtrack to Local Hero. Cal, The Princess Bride, and Last Exit to Brooklyn followed.

No other guitarist has so successfully combined the twin careers of solo artist and film composer. For Knopfler, each discipline strengthens the other: His albums have become timbrally richer and more thematically complex, and his scores have benefited from his soaring solos and tinkling resonator guitar work.

KEY TRACKS "Brothers in Arms," "Going Home," "Money for Nothing," "Walk of Life"

1980s GEAR Strat-style Schecter with Seymour Duncan pickups, Strat-style Pensa-Suhr with EMG pickups, '53 Gibson Super 400, '58 Gibson Les Paul, '36 Style "0" National, Ovation Adamas, Gibson Chet Atkins solidbody classical, twin 100-watt Soldano heads driving two EV-loaded 4x12 Marshall cabs, rackmounted CryBaby wah, Ernie Ball volume pedal — AE

Steve Lukather

In every decade there's an elite group of studio guitarists who seem to get all the top sessions. In the '70s, it was Larry Carlton and Louie Shelton. In the '90s, Michael Landau, Tim Pierce and Brent Mason ruled the roost.

But in the '80s, it was Steve Lukather. His Reagan-era credits include albums by Eric Clapton, Stevie Nicks, Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Don Henley, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Joni Mitchell, Manhattan Transfer, Paul McCartney, Chet Atkins and many others. His tight chord work and tasty-yet-muscular solos helped sell literally hundreds of millions of records.

Lukather also had success with his own band Toto — particularly with the 1982 release Toto IV, which enjoyed multi-Platinum sales, hit singles and a sweep of that year's Grammy awards. Through it all, Luke has remained a regular guy who is just happy to play guitar. "I know I'm very lucky," he told GP in June 2000. "I've had the chance to work with all my heroes. My career is a dream come true."

KEY TRACKS 'Africa," "Rosanna" (with Toto). "Dirty Laundry" (with Don Henley). "Running with the Night" (with Lionel Ritchie). "She's a Beauty" (with the Tubes)

1980s GEAR '63 Fender Strat, '59 Gibson Les Paul, Gibson 15, custom Ibanez electrics, Paul Rivera–modified 100-watt Marshalls and Fender Deluxes, Fender Concert Lexicon Prime Time delay, Eventide H910 Harmonizer, Roland SRE-555 Chorus/Echo, various Ibanez multi-effectors — MB

George Lynch

One of the original hot-shot LA metal players, Dokken guitarist George Lynch had chops to burn but always kept them in check with a tasty vibrato and keen sense of melody. When Randy Rhoads left his guitar teaching job for the Ozzy Osbourne gig, he insisted Lynch fill his shoes and take over his students. Not a bad referral.

The majority of Lynch's Aqua Net–glazed fury can be found in his super-charged solos. "I think a typical George Lynch solo should have melody and build to a climax," he told GP in 1986. "Speed is also important. People may get down on that, but it's impressive and it gives the solo energy" Aside from his stellar lead work, Lynch's wicked, tritone-laced riffing absolutely defined the hard rock "hair band" sound for the next several years.

KEY TRACKS "It's Not Love," "Lightning Strikes," "Mr. Scary," "Paris Is Burning"

1980s GEAR Various custom guitars (including Charvel, ESP, and Kramer solidbodies), Aria acoustic, vintage Marshall heads and cabs, Randall amplifiers — DF

Yngwie Malmsteen

The Swedish shred king first hit our pages in Mike Varney's February 1983 Spotlight column. Soon after, Malmsteen came to the States and joined Hollywood metal-rockers Steeler. After working on their '83 album, Steeler, he quickly outgrew the band's limited scope and left to join Alcatrazz. His tenure didn't last long — after recording just one studio album, No Parole from Rock 'n' Roll, he left Alcatrazz to concentrate on his own band, Rising Force, where Malmsteen was finally able to realize his artistic vision.

With intricate original compositions — inspired by classical composers J.S. Bach and Nicolo Paganini — and extended-play solos, Malmsteen tolled the bell for all who had ears to hear: He was the new king of Shred Hill.

KEY TRACKS "Black Star," "Evil Eye," "Far Beyond the Sun" "Icarus' Dream Suite," "Marching Out."

1980s GEAR 1969 Fender Stratocaster (and other Strats of similar vintage, all with scalloped fingerboards), modified 1971 Marshall 50-watt heads, Marshall 4x12 cabinets (with Celestion G-65 speakers), DOD Overdrive Preamp 250, Korg SDD-1000 rackmount digital delay, Fender extra-heavy picks ("I couldn't play with anything else,' he said in the May '85 GP) — AL

Johnny Marr

Armed with a huge palette of tones and a savvy sense for turning oddball chord sequences into hit

songs, the Smith's Johnny Marr forged a guitar style that incorporated '60s primitivism, '70s funkiness

and gobs of Byrds-style chime. Two of the many things that set him apart from his '80s-era contemporaries were his disdain for guitar solos ("I like improvisation in the right place, but I find most solos corny") and his natural ability to create unique clashes by superimposing major and minor modes. "I use a thumbpick,” he told us, “because when you have all five fingers going, your fingers go to progressions you don't even know you're doing.”

Marr's bright, jangly tones always sounded huge without the benefit of distortion, and his spine-chilling slide intro on the pulsating "How Soon Is Now" remains one of the most distinctive guitar sounds ever recorded. Following the breakup of the Smiths in 1987, Marr appeared on albums by the Talking Heads, the Pretenders, Electronic, The The, Paul McCartney, Kirsty MacColl, Bryan Ferry and others.

KEY TRACKS "How Soon Is Now?,” "This Charming Man," "What Difference Does It Make?,” “The Headmaster Ritual," "The Violence of Truth"

1980s GEAR Epiphone Casino, Fender Strat, Gibson ES-335, Gibson Les Paul, Martin D-28, Rickenbacker 330, Fender Bassman, Fender Showman, Fender Twin Reverb, Mesa/Boogie Quad Preamp, Roland JC-120, Dunlop Cry Baby wah, Eventide Harmonizer, Roland GP-8, T.C. Electronic 2290, Yamaha GEP50 — AT

Prince

It's difficult to find an '80s artist more prolific or cutting-edge than Prince, who ushered in the decade with the release of Dirty Mind. On this record of slamming funk rhythms and catchy melodies, Prince was credited as playing guitar, bass, drums and keyboards — as well as singing, producing, arranging and writing all the tunes.

Controversy followed in '81, but it was his '83 album, 1999, that gave him his first taste of superstardom. The infectious title track, with its sinewy chord stabs and slippery wah figures, became an instant classic. Prince's dry, in-your-face rhythm parts set the standard for funk rock in the '80s. Purple Rain took things higher still, with strong tunes and even bolder guitar work. His trademark funk rhythms abound on Purple Rain, but it was the blazing solos on tunes such as "When Doves Cry" and "Let's Go Crazy" that turned guitarists' heads. With over-the top distortion, squealing feedback, and a flamboyant persona (that drew on Hendrix, Little Richard and James Brown influences), Prince the Guitar Hero had arrived.

Prince would go on to release six more albums in the '80s, changing stylistic gears with each record. This incessant self-reinvention confused and alienated some fans, but many of them were brought back into the fold with 1987's Sign O’ the Times, which showed Prince's heavier side (on the title track), as well as his pop stylings ("I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" and "U Got the Look").

KEY TRACKS "Baby I'm a Star," "Sign O’ the Times," "When Doves Cry" "I Would Die 4 U," "1999"

1980s GEAR Fender Telecaster, Hohner Tele copy, Mesa/Boogie amps, Boss pedals — MB

Trevor Rabin

Seminal prog-rock band Yes had apparently seen the rising and setting of its sun in the 1970s, with nine albums and several hits (including "Roundabout," "Long Distance Runaround" and "Yours Is No Disgrace"). Then, just as 1983 was winding up, South African guitarist/vocalist/producer Trevor Rabin brought his cache of songs to founding members Chris Squire (bass) and Jon Anderson (vocals), and resurrected Yes with the smash 90125, an album rife with slick production, radio-friendly hooks and tactile, layered guitars. Although Rabin's harmonized leads are arguably the most memorable color of his tonal spectrum, his inventive use of modern gear proffered a wealth of tones — from super-compressed clean to crunchy to sweetly sustaining. Even his acoustic guitar tones were amazingly distinctive. In short, Rabin's command of tonal shades proved him to be both a brilliant texturalist and a fiery lead player.

KEY TRACKS "Changes," "Hearts" and ”Owner of a Lonely Heart" (with Yes). "Can't Look Away," "Etoile Noir" (solo)

1980s GEAR '62 Fender Stratocaster (with Seymour Duncan stacked humbuckers and Schaller tuners), two Ernie Ball volume pedals (one for regular volume, one for echo volume), and various MXR pedals (including a Pitch Transposer, a Dyna Comp, a 10-Band graphic EQ, an analog delay, a Distortion+, a flanger and an envelope filter), MXR 15-band EQ and digital reverb rack units, Roland SRE-555 Chorus/Echo — SH

Vernon Reid

Besides blurring color lines as one of the few all-black hard rock bands on the scene, Living Colour launched a whole new sound with their ingenious blend of funk, avant-garde jazz and metal. Guitarist Vernon Reid's massive, Zeppelin-influenced rifling, grinding dissonance, and furiously chromatic solos were masterfully balanced with slithering dance grooves, complex chording and adventurous use of new technology, including samplers and guitar synths, that he combined with his ESP and Hamer Superstrats.

KEY TRACKS "Cult of Personality," "Glamour Boys," "Middle Man," "Open Letter to a Landlord"

1980s GEAR Hamer Chapparal and ESP Strat-style guitars with Floyd Rose tremolos and EMG pickups (two single-coils and a humbucker), Cry Baby wah, Korg volume pedal, Roland GP-8, DigiTech DSP-128, Dean Markley CD-120 1x12 combo and Fender Dual Showman head driving Fender 4x12s, Mesa/Boogie Quad Preamp and Strategy 400 power amp, ADA MP-1, Boogie 4x12 cabinets — SH

Randy Rhoads

Many thought Ozzy Osboume's career was finished when he was fired from the pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath in 1978. However, thanks to his discovery of the brilliant, classically trained guitarist Randy Rhoads, Osbourne emerged triumphant in 1980 with Blizzard of Ozz — an album that is still regarded as one of metal's finest. As one of the few hard rock guitarists of the early '80s who didn't jump on the Van Haien bandwagon, 22-year-old Rhoads introduced the world to a distinctive tone and unmistakable style that bristled with blinding pull-off licks, staccato rhythms, and chromatic solo flurries. Despite a sparse discography, Rhoads has gone down in history as one of heavy metal's most original guitarists.

KEY TRACKS "Crazy Train," "Dee," "Flying High Again," "I Don't Know"

1980s GEAR Gibson Les Paul, custom V-shaped electric with DiMarzio pickups, Grover Jackson–designed shark’s-fin guitars equipped with Seymour Duncan pickups, Dunlop Cry Baby, Korg delay, 100- watt Marshall heads through Marshall 4x12 cabinets with Altec speakers, MXR Distortion+, EQ, chorus, and flanger pedals — SH

joe Satriani

In the early '80s, Joe Satiani was a guitar teacher in Berkeley, California, with a couple of band projects and some sessions under his belt. By 1987, he was on the cover of every guitar magazine in the world, thanks to Surfing with the Alien.

With dazzling technique, high-energy tunes and extreme guitar tones, Satch proved that all the rumors of his greatness (some of which were started by his former student, Steve Vai) were true. And he did something that very few guitar heroes have done — sell records.

Surfing was a smash hit with guitarists and non-guitarists alike, and Satriani would enjoy further success with his subsequent releases and tours. He was also picked by Mick Jagger to go on the road and cover parts originally played by Keith Richards and Jeff Beck.

Looking back on his debutante decade, Satch told us, "Making the transition from giving lessons in the back of a store to being the Surfing with the Alien guy and Mick's lead guitarist was a completely mind- and life-altering experience."

KEY TRACKS "Circles," "Hordes of Locusts," "Ice 9," "Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing," "Satch Boogie"

1980s GEAR Homemade Strat-style guitars, Ibanez solidbodies, 100-watt Marshall amps, Scholz Rockman, Echoplexes, Boss CE-1 chorus — MB

Neal Schon

As a teenager in 1970, Neal Schon achieved Northern California royalty status by joining Carlos Santana's band. A couple of years later, Schon formed his own group, Journey, which became increasingly popular with its Santana-esque brand of jam rock. At the close of the '70s, however, Journey found their winningest formula when they added vocalist Steve Perry and moved in a more pop-rock direction. When the '80s rolled in, Schon was the guitarist — and one of the chief songwriters — of a veritable hit machine.

What set him apart from most other popsters of the decade, however, was his stellar guitar work. Schon's punchy, intricate rhythm parts — and his soaring leads that blended melodicism, dynamics and fiery chops — earned him unshakeable street cred among guitar freaks. His two albums with keyboard god Jan Hammer further cemented his rep as a player, making him the first choice as a jam partner when guitarists such as Gary Moore, Eddie Van Haien and Jeff Beck came to town.

KEY TRACKS "Walks Like a Lady" "Stone in Love," "Girl Can't Help It" (with Journey). "I'm Down," "No More Lies" (with Jan Hammer)

1980s GEAR 1963 Fender Strat, Gibson Les Pauls, Aria Pro II, various amps (including Peavey Mace, Fender, Marshall and Mesa/Boogies), Electro-Harmonix Hot Tubes — MB

John Scofield

Celebrating his blues and funk influences — and attacking the electric guitar as a truly electric instrument,

with bluesy bends and chorus-tweaked tones — John Scofield brought an earthy vibe to jazz's heady mindset. He was also one of the '80s most versatile jazz guitarists, performing with Miles Davis, pianist McCoy Tyner and the French National Orchestra.

"One thing I learned from Miles Davis," Scofield said in '84, "is not to be afraid to play what you hear. In other words, just play what you feel. Miles was a master of the fine art of letting things happen naturally"

Scofield spent much of the '80s expanding the progressive ideology that began with his Davis tenure by working with contemporary jazz-funk rhythm sections. Then in 1989, he bid the decade farewell with Time on My Hands, a stinting return to the acoustic jazz realm.

KEY TRACKS 'All the Things You Are," "Pick Hits," "Techno," "Who's Who" (solo). "What It Is" (with Miles Davis)

1980s GEAR Gibson ES-335 and ES-175, Ibanez Artist AS-200, Polytone Mini-Brute IV, Music Man 410-HD, Sundown amps, Ibanez stereo chorus and stereo reverb, Pro Co Rat, Boss Octaver — MM

Brian Setzer

They had the look, the attitude and the wild-boy flash of rockabilly rebels, but while MTV pumped up the fashion factor for video fanatics, the Stray Cats were more than mere cartoons. Credibility came howling from Brian Setzer's Gretsch 6120, with a lead style that honored the genre's heroes while simultaneously nudging rockabilly into uptown duds. Setzer was channeling Django Reinhardt and other jazz greats along with hellraisers such as Carl Perkins, Cliff Gallup and Paul Burlison.

"When I first heard Cliff Gallup," said Setzer in the September '83 Guitar Player, "he was kind of what I wanted to be — a jazzy rockabilly player. He really sent me."

But while Setzer's head was sometimes transcending rockabilly conventions, his tones were totally true blue. "I use the middle-pickup position on my Gretsch," he explained in '83. "I usually turn the presence up full on my Bassman, and the volume to about four or five — just to the point where it's about to distort. The volume is so low, I could play in my bedroom and it would be fine. I usually put the bass around five, and the treble up to eight. I set the echo for one repeat almost directly after the original note — bop, bop. It's pretty tight."

Shooting the Cats beyond the tattoos and haircuts of lesser rockabilly contenders was the fact that Setzer was absolutely immersed in the style. He got it. "The early rockabilly stuff is basically a country guitarist trying to play rock and roll guitar — which is a mixture of black blues and white country" he said. "It's a feel. A lot of people put the cart before the horse. They think they've got to buy a '58 Gretsch and an old Fender amp. That stuff is great, but you've got to have the feel."

KEY TRACKS "18 Miles to Memphis," "Double Talkin Baby" "Rock this Town," "(She's) Sexy & 17," "Stray Cat Strut"

1980s GEAR 1959 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins, '60s blond Fender Bassman, NCR Analog Delay, Dean Markley strings (.010 or .011 set) — MM

Robert Smith

As main guitarist and visionary for what has been called "the world's biggest cult band," Smith graced the nine Cure albums released during the '80s with moody, multicolored guitar. Listen to what lurks behind any of the Cure's hooky vocal melodies and you'll likely find complex patterns of intersecting guitar parts that swirl around the main line to create an energetic and enticing backdrop.

Able to visualize the entire song during the recording process, Smith typically recorded all the guitars himself, adding depth and color to his six-string tapestries by incorporating open tunings and tracking each part with varying degrees of distortion and/or effects.

Alternative instruments also factored heavily into Smith's sonic sculpting. As he told GP in 1992, "The whole Faith album [released in '81] has six-string bass. I think when people talk about the 'Cure sound,' they mean songs based on six-string bass guitar, acoustic guitar and the Solina (a.k.a. the ARP String Ensemble)." One of Smith's more oddball studio tricks involved detuning each of his guitars' high E strings a few cents apart to create natural chorusing effects when the individual tracks were mixed together.

KEY TRACKS "The Blood," "Fascination Street," "Love Cats," "Other Voices "

1980s GEAR Fender Jazzmaster, Gibson Chet Atkins, Ovation six- and 12-string acoustics, '62 Fender Bass VI, Peavey amps, Dunlop Cry Baby, Boss pedals (chorus, delay, flange, phase, and overdrive) — AT

Steve Stevens

A central figure in Billy Idol's aggressive mix of punk, new wave, heavy metal and dance music, Steve Stevens wrote the book on balancing texture and technique. “I try to avoid the lead guitar-solo syndrome," he told GP in 1984. "My approach is more sonic than actual notes — if you have a really brilliant sound together, you don't have to play all that many notes."

Stevens elevated the songs he and Idol wrote into a realm that blurred the line between Ozzy-approved pyrotechnics and Bauhaus-style noise-art. Wielding short, fierce solos, feedback assaults, trem-bar antics and sci-fl-style sound effects, he furnished Idol's Rebel Yell with wall-to-wall guitar. But when the following release, Whiplash Smile, took a more techo-oriented turn, the guitarist decided it was time to get his own band together.

Stevens' inventive guitar playing resurfaced in full force on his 1989 solo debut Atomic Playboys, a release that gave Stevens the opportunity to indulge his hard-rock side, as well as his interests in R&B, pop-jazz, and John McLaughlin–style acoustic work. "I never wanted to lose the acoustic part of my playing," Stevens said. "I always loved the way that people like Robert Fripp, Steve Howe and Steve Hackett could be acoustic players, but also utilize effects."

KEY TRACKS: "Atomic Playboys" (solo). "Eyes Without A Face," "Flesh For Fantasy" "Rebel Yell," "White Wedding" (with Billy Idol)

1980s GEAR '53 Gibson Les Paul, Hamer Steve Stevens Signature, custom Suhr Strat-style, custom Jackson, Guild acoustics, Roland GR-700 synth, Marshall IMP and KM 800 heads, Vox AC30, Boss effects (CS-2 compressor, 0C-2 Octaver, CE-2 chorus), Vox Clyde McCoy and Cry Baby wahs, Pro Co Rat, Eventide 999 Harmonizer, Lexicon PCM-41 multi-effector, Maestro Echoplex, Roland rack effects (SDE-3000, SRE-555, Dimension D), Scholz Rockman — AT

Andy Summers

The Police launched in 1978 with the release of Outlandos d'Amour, and the band hit their stride in the early '80s with Zenyatta Mondatta and Ghost in the Machine. Vocalist/bassist Sting was the Police's chief songwriter, but Andy Summers had a more vital role in shaping the band's sound. His novel chord voicings, off-beat (in both senses) rhythm grooves, and shimmering chorus and delay-laden tones were essential to Police hits such as "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da."

In the January 2001 issue of Guitar Player, Summers revealed that "procedure by negation" was the key to sculpting his unique guitar voice. "Back in my Police days," he said, "I thought, Everyone's still jamming on power chords. I don't want to do what everyone else is doing, so what am I left with?"

One thing Summers did to outstrip the Joneses was to avoid distortion or overdrive — except as a last resort. (The solo on "Driven to Tears" showcases his dirty side.) Another Summers-ism was to use add9 chords in place of standard barres and power chords. ("Every Breath You Take" is built almost entirely around major and minor add9 chords.) He also avoided the cliché of extended solos, favoring brief, personal anti-solos. (Check out his synthed-out breakdown on "Don't Stand So Close to Me.")

Ironically, Summers' innovations were embraced by legions of post-Police guitarists, rendering his specialties nearly as common as the generic affectations he sought to avoid.

KEY TRACKS "Driven To Tears," "Every Breath You Take," "Message in a Bottle," "One World," "Walking on the Moon"

1980s GEAR 1963 Fender Telecaster Custom (with Gibson humbucker in the neck position), Roland guitar synths (G-303 or G-707 controller guitar with GR-300 or GR-700 synth module), various amps (including Mesa/Boogies and Marshalls), Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress flanger, Musitronics Mu-Tron III envelope filter, Roland RE-301 Chorus Echo, Echoplec, MXR pedals (Distortion+, Phase 90, analog delay and Dyna Comp) — AL

Steve Vai

The first murmurings of Steve Vai's talent began when he was credited with "impossible guitar parts" on Frank Zappa's Man from Utopia. His first solo album, Flex-Able, showed what Vai could do when left to his own devices — namely, creating wacky tunes that proudly displayed his Zappa influence and his stunning chops. Filling the shoes vacated by Yngwie Malmsteen, Vai joined Alcatrazz for one incredible album, Disturbing the Peace. Criminally under-promoted and underappreciated, the album features songwriting, tones and arrangements that can hang with Vai's most celebrated work.

His next move, to David Lee Roth's band, brought Val squarely into the spotlight with one of the most high-profile rock gigs of the decade. He also recorded and/or toured with Whitesnake and PIL in a decade where it seemed as if there was nothing he couldn't do.

KEY TRACKS "The Attitude Song," "Viv Woman" (solo). "Jazz Discharge Party Hats" (with Frank Zappa). "Painted Lover" (with Alcatrazz). "Shy Boy," "Skyscraper" (with David Lee Roth)

1980s GEAR: '78 Fender Strat with DiMarzio X2N bridge pickup, custom Charvels, various Ibanez JEM models, Carvin X-100B amp, 100-watt Marshall, Roland SDE-3000 delay, Boss SD-1 Super OverDrive. — MB

Eddie Van Haien

Van Halen's 1978 debut — and Eddie Van Halen's "Eruption" solo, in particular — breathed new life into rock and sent hordes of guitarists scrambling to the woodshed. However, Van Halen continued to leave jaws agape throughout the '80s. Though two-handed tapping, whammy-bar abuse and raging staccato licks are the most conspicuous marks of his signature sound, Van Haien also surprised the guitar galaxy with deft slide work, intricate classical-flavored pieces and impeccable rhythm playing. His influence on subsequent generations simply can't be overstated. Eddie Van Halen stands as one of guitar's most far-reaching and important innovators.

KEY TRACKS "Cathedral," “Could This Be Magic," "Hot for Teacher," "Little Guitars" and "Mean Street"

1980s GEAR Charvel Strat-style guitar (with a '58 Strat bridge — later exchanged for a Floyd Rose — and a Gibson PAF humbucker), custom Kramers (with PAFs or Seymour Duncans and Floyd Roses), MXR Phase 90 and Flanger pedals, Echoplex, Lexicon PCM-70, Eventide 949 Harmonizer, Roland SDE-3000 delay, Variac-equipped 100-watt Marshall plead heads with Marshall 4x12s — SH

Stevie Ray Vaughan

At a time when drum machines ruled and it was hipper to own a Roland G-707 synth guitar than a '62 Strat, Stevie Ray Vaughan pushed bare-knuckle blues back onto the airwaves. Ironically, most listeners first heard Vaughan as a sideman on David Bowie's club-oriented Let's Dance. In '83, pop radio was dominated by new wave and synth bands, so Vaughan's stinging Strat tones and Albert King–inspired bends in "China Girl" and "Let's Dance" sounded downright revolutionary. That same year, Vaughan's bluesy debut, Texas Flood, hit the Top 40 and established the 29-year-old as a bona fide guitar hero. For the first time in more than a decade, it was cool to play blues.

For the next seven years, Vaughan never strayed from his roots, recording taut, guitar-driven R&B with his Lone Star confederates, Double Trouble. Whether reinterpreting Hendrix and Howlin' Wolf, or pounding out an original R&B shuffle, Vaughan infused each note with palpable tension. You can witness his blend of feral energy and superb technique in Live at the El Mocambo, a video shot in a sweaty Toronto nightclub in '83. Because of its unwavering honesty, Vaughan's music remains as popular as ever.

KEY TRACKS "Lenny," "Love Struck Baby," "Pride and Joy," "Texas Flood," "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)"

1980s GEAR '59 sunburst Fender Strat, a pair of sequentially serial-numbered '63 Fender Vibroverb 1x15 combos, Fender Vibratone, Ibanez TS-9 Tube Screamer — AE

Jamie West-Oram

Punctuating the Fixx's radio hits with his chorused, squeaky-clean Strat tones, Jamie West-Oram was one of the most identifiable guitarists on the '80s new wave front. Though his restrained funk rhythms, shimmering harmonics, palm-muted syncopations, and echo-drenched chordal washes marked him as mainly a texturalist, West-Oram also peppered his work with quirky whammy warbles, feedback-soaked squeals, and brief-but-cathartic solos. His unique sound earned him sideman gigs with many notable artists, including Tina Turner, Depeche Mode, Stevie Nicks and Brian Eno.

KEY TRACKS "One Thing Leads to Another," "Red Skies," "Saved by Zero," "Stand or Fall"

1980s GEAR Charvel Strat-style guitar (with Schecter neck, EMG single-coils, and a Floyd Rose tremolo), Marshall 50-watt heads with JBL-loaded 2x12s, Korg digital delay, Yamaha SPX-90, MXR stereo chorus, Pro Co Rat — SH

It may be difficult to appreciate nearly 50 years on, but when Andy Summers arrived on the rock scene with the Police in 1977, there was no one to compare him with. Using his Fender Telecaster, Fender Twin amp and a few effect pedals, Summers created an instantly identifiable and timeless guitar tone.

But it wasn’t just his tone. It was his fretwork and astute sense for when, where and how to fit his guitar lines into the propulsive rhythms provided by bassist Sting and drummer Stewart Copeland.

“There are so many reasons why we were a hit,” Summers told Guitar Player in 2022. “If I could narrow it down, I think the main thing about us was we didn’t sound like anybody else.

“It was something we were very conscious of. We didn’t want to sound like other bands. That was our natural instinct, but it could only have happened with the three of us. It’s a miracle of chemistry. If we were one person different, it would have been very different.”

Certainly, they would have been entirely different with anyone but Summers. The genius of Andy Summers, is that, by deconstructing rock, punk, jazz, classical music and blues, he created a sound and style that transcends time. He also explored sound design as something of a cinematic art, choosing to forge tones that didn't just enhance his melodic and harmonic forays but brought mystery, vibe and emotion to every electric guitar part.

The fact that he did this at the height of London’s punk movement is remarkable and demonstrates that the power of Summers’ approach — and the music of the Police — was in its subtlety.

“That was a trap we were aware of,” Summers told us in his June 2007 cover feature. “We started as a punk band, which lasted about five minutes because we weren’t really punks, but I think part of the freshness of what we did was because the tracks were so stripped down.

Moreover, he had the balls to walk away from what music had been and develop his guitar approach into something truly original. Back in the late '70s, when rock audiences had already absorbed blues, prog, metal and punk, hearing the sound of his clean, chorused and echoing guitar spewing ear-opening chord inversions was like, well, walking on the moon.

Summers had already had quite a career before the Police. He’d performed with Zoot Money, the Soft Machine and the Animals, as well as played sessions with various pop artists. Given his history, he was somewhat shocked to find himself in the midst of England’s mid-1970s punk craze.

“When the punk thing happened, it was get punk or get out of town,” he said. “For me, it was a horrible lowering of musical values. It was difficult to play these very simplistic songs at breakneck speed with total distortion while the audience was gobbing at you. This was rough.

“And, of course, that was definitely what was going on in the very first incarnation of the Police. Happily, it wasn't long before we got out of that, and started to slowly develop our own thing.”

The Police found their own niche through reggae, a genre that — unlike the hard rock of Led Zeppelin and their ilk — was still embraced in the London music scene.

“Around Christmas 1978, Stewart loaned Sting his reggae collection, and Sting started picking up on that bass-line approach, which resulted in his leaving more space in the songs," Summers explained. "At the same time, I got an Echoplex. There was no thought about using it as a tool to create my own sonic identity — I just thought it was cool.

“And as I started reacting to what Sting was playing — or not playing — I organically began opening up even more space by using the Echoplex to play interesting harmonies and rhythms. Suddenly, I was in this crucible with this reggae bass line and a very idiosyncratic drummer who played a lot of hi-hat, and a signature style started to emerge.”

Summers took advantage of that sonic space. But whereas another player might have filled at every opportunity, he approached it more as a jazz guitarist would.

“First, I wanted to exploit the openness of the band's arrangements," he said, "so I couldn't play Steve Jones–style, punk power chords. That would be like a piano player with all 10 fingers on the keyboard — it’s too much.

“I decided to create more space and air by stripping my chords down to fragments,” he explained. “I'd seldom play full chords that had a major or minor third in them, which I considered old-fashioned harmony. Instead, I explored a much cooler, sort of disinterested chord style that utilized sacked fifths or an added ninth to get the harmony moving without the obvious sentimental associations of major and minor thirds.

“Then, I tried to fit my guitar in between the bass and drums, which probably came from listening to a lot of Miles Davis. For me, interesting music has a lot of counterpoint, so I've always been very adamant that the other musicians don't play what I'm playing. I want everybody to play different parts, because that's where you get some tension in the music. Particularly in a trio setting, having three different parts interlocking makes for a much bigger and much more interesting sound.”

Perhaps because he was adding so much harmonic interest to the music, Summers didn’t need to rely on tone tricks like others before him. He developed his sound with the barest of setups.

“I had simple tools,” he said, “a Telecaster, a Fender Twin and maybe an MXR Phase 90. All sound and tone came from my hands and judicious twiddling of knobs on the Twin. But by 1979's Reggatta de Blanc, more colors were in the mix. Basically, I added effects as I could afford them.

“The next thing I got was a chorus, and that, along with the Echoplex, became very characteristic of the Police sound. I probably got up to four effects pedals taped to the floor before it became apparent we were going somewhere, and, in fact, I could afford a custom Pete Cornish pedalboard with a Mu-Tron, a couple of fuzz boxes, an envelope filter, chorus units and phasers,all of which I'd combine with the Echoplex.”

The genius of Summers’ approach is evident throughout the Police catalog. As he’s revealed in previous conversations with Guitar Player, his approach is more about crafting memorable guitar parts, such as the finger-wrenching riff to “Message in a Bottle” or the instantly identifiable arpeggiations that make “Every Breath You Take” a hypnotic listening experience.

“It's now past two billion plays on Spotify,” he told us back in 2024, “so it is actually the most-played song of all-time history. Which makes my guitar riff one of the most-played riffs in history. Not too shabby.”

Summers has also detailed some of his key sessions with the Police in previous conversations with Guitar Player. As always, his insights offer new ways to appreciate the group's music and his contributions to rock guitar.

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."

Electro-Harmonix has joined forces with Police electric guitar legend Andy Summers to create a new flanger pedal, appropriately named Walking on the Moon.

It's a fairly straightforward unit that – in both sound and looks – harkens back to the glory days of the Police, and their domination of the pop charts. You can hear the stompbox in action below.

At the heart of the Walking on the Moon pedal lies a trio of control knobs – Color, Range, and Rate. Rate, as you might imagine, sets the speed of the modulation (from "slow, smooth filter sweeps to jittering vibrato," EHX says), while Range adjusts the lower limit of the flanger sweep.

The Color control, meanwhile, adjusts the intensity of the flanger effect – from “subtle chorusing effects to classic jet woosh sounds.“

Another feature of note is the pedal's Filter Matrix mini-toggle, which removes the LFO from the circuit, thereby creating more of a fixed filter effect. The pedal also boasts dual (Dry and Flanged) outputs.

“This beautiful shimmering – which sort of made the sound bigger and more glamorous – became a sort of characteristic of my guitar sound," Summers said of the pedal in a press release. "A big part of my guitar sound at that time in The Police was the flange sound, which we have here today in this great new pedal.”

The Electro-Harmonix Andy Summers signature Walking on the Moon flanger includes true bypass switching, and a 9V adapter, and is available now for $129.  

For more info on the pedal, visit ehx.com.

***The following appeared in the Holiday 2019 issue of Guitar Player***

It’s a very good thing being Andy Summers, but perhaps not for the more obvious reason pop fans might surmise.

Sure, no one can say it wasn’t colossally awesome to be one-third of a legendary band that was once the biggest act in the world, won a whole bunch of Grammy Awards, sold millions of records, performed in arenas and stadiums across myriad countries and was inducted into the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame in 2003.

Believe it or not, Summers’ story has two elements that may be even more astounding than his being a member of the Police.

First – and this is a life lesson for all who dive headlong into the beautiful morass that is the arts – his creative curiosity never slowed. He kept exercising his muse and expanding his chops, and he continued to produce work.

In the musical arena, Summers has released 15 solo albums in addition to a goodly number of collaborative LPs and guest appearances. He has also composed or contributed to numerous film soundtracks.

But wait – there’s more!

He wrote his autobiography, One Train Later, in 2006 and has penned essays for other publications. His latest book, Fretted and Moaning, was released in 2021.

Then there’s the photography career: His magnificent black-and-white photographs have been collected in four volumes to date and celebrated in museum and art gallery exhibitions all over the planet.

In 2015, he executive produced the documentary Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police, which was directed by Andy Grieve and based on One Train Later.

The second element is that Summers is hardly in any kind of “Hey I’ve done tons of stuff and now it’s time to get off the Tilt-A-Whirl and rest” decline. In fact, he is almost as busy today as some ambitious youngster burning to rule the world.

A rocker who was semi-retired, either by choice or popular standing, certainly wouldn’t be jotting down in his or her Google calendar all the things Summers has done recently.

Here’s a brief list: He worked with the Fender Custom Shop and Leica to produce two limited editions: the Fender Custom Shop Monochrome Strat and the Leica M Monochrom Signature Camera.

He brought his solo multimedia show, A Certain Strangeness, where he improvises guitar to images culled from his photography book, to galleries in the Netherlands, France and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

And, in a wacky career boomerang of sorts, he toured with the Brazilian Police tribute band Call the Police (with bassist Rodrigo Santos and drummer João Barone), looking all fired up and happy in the group’s YouTube videos.

None of this takes into account the many days Summers goes to his studio to work on music, test new guitar gear, pore over photos, deal with any legacy Police business and strategize his next creative moves.

At the risk of appearing too high-brow, Summers’ tireless productivity shows yet again that true artists don’t slow down. Like Picasso, Balanchine and Hitchcock, you create because it’s what you do, and you do it until mortality comes calling.

While it would take volumes to dive comprehensively into every aspect of Summers’ artistic life, we can visit some touchstones of his musical approach with the Police and beyond.

We should all be lucky enough just to keep up.

The Police were birthed during that boiling cauldron of the punk-rock movement in London. What was that like for you, Sting and Stewart Copeland?

It was like this: You had to be punk or you couldn’t even think about getting a gig. You’d never get one, because the punk scene pretty much ruled everything in London. There was a sort of religious fervor about it, and it was a bad moment if you were offering something other than raw anguish, let’s say.

It was like a great recession of music. It was horrifying. Record companies were signing any old shit as fast as they could if they thought it was punk, and corporate-rock bands were changing their vibe and appearance almost overnight. Everything was out, except punk, and that was freaking everyone out. It was like some great lemming suicide rush to be in style.

Before I joined the band, Stewart was desperately trying to write something that was fast and furious. I’m sure Sting made some contributions in that regard, as well, but the timing wasn’t right for Sting to truly emerge as a songwriter in the punk era.

Before, after and during the early years of my being in the group, everyone involved was locked into just sustaining the band’s life, basically, by having the appearance of a punk band. It was all very dodgy, and it didn’t really work. We weren’t real punks, as it were. We were kind of fake. We could play fast and furious, but, yeah, we were suspect. We were sort of too good to be included in the scene.

Was Sting’s creativity hampered as a writer by the punk movement?

Oh, I didn’t mean to say that Sting didn’t emerge as a songwriter until after the punk thing. He was writing all the time, and he had a lot of songs already. He had “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” right from the start. But when I joined, the possibility that these types of songs could be played was revealed to him. The whole atmosphere changed.

The early resistance to the band is interesting to me, because in the States, punk was branching out into these pockets of punk poetry, art, journalism, acoustic punk, and so on. I loved that the early Police fused punk energy with reggae, and I remember being pissed off if a magazine or newspaper called you “blond posers” or dismissed the music.

It was an interesting time, that’s for sure. But what you said about punk music having different sounds is crucial, and one of the things about the punks was that they were okay with reggae.

However, I don’t believe we made it a political move. It wasn’t at all like, “Oh, let’s do reggae, then they’ll like us.” There was no deep analytical thought. We were just trying to pay the rent, and the reggae thing came slightly out of necessity and slightly out of our trying to do something different musically. It was pretty organic.

Soon, this thing started to pull itself together, and the true Police emerged. But not without lots of intensive rehearsal, I might add. We practiced all the time.

The Police’s punk-reggae hybrid may have been organic, but it had to bubble up from somewhere. What inspired or triggered the fusion?

Reggae and Bob Marley were definitely a heavy presence at the time. The music was very popular. You couldn’t get away from it. But, for us, the reggae influence was kind of a musical convenience, particularly for Sting. He could play those more spacey bass lines and sing over the top. He didn’t have to hammer out 16th-note or eighth-note bass lines in every song.

Instead, we could do something with reggae that would probably be acceptable in the punk scene. When these things came together, they eventually mutated into “Roxanne” and “Walking on the Moon.”

We also started to emerge organically from the whole politics of punk, as well as from trying desperately to get a gig, quite honestly.

I love that Sting didn’t want to play da-da-da-da-da all the time and sing. It’s amazing how attacking a creative or technical challenge can lead to something new and exciting.

Exactly. Sting is really brilliant at being able to play independent bass lines from his vocal melody. I mean, anyone could have said, “Well, we can play reggae bass lines too.” But you know what? It’s not very easy. In fact, it’s really difficult unless you’re talented, and Sting is talented.

For some other bassists who sang, I’m sure it was probably much easier to just hit eighth notes and get to singing.

What was typically the first thing you did when Sting would show you and Stewart a new song?

I’d always address the vocal, because I’d never want to play even a single note that would conflict with his singing. I had to take care to make sure whatever I did was being supportive to the melody, but once I changed the chord voicings to where I thought they should go from what Sting originally played, it all got a lot more interesting.

Some session players I’ve interviewed have said songwriters would often play open, folk-style chords to them, and they’d have to develop seductive parts from there. Did Sting provide similarly basic templates for you to work from?

No, it was never like that. He wouldn’t just strum a G chord. He’d always have the harmony down, but he would say, “Figure out what you want to do on the guitar.” And I would always try to do something different with his chord progressions – all the classic things I do, like arpeggiations, taking out the thirds of the chords, playing parallel fifths, or adding ninths, and the way I would use the Echoplex, so on and so forth.

It’s also whether you’d start on a downbeat or an offbeat, and how you’d react to whatever pattern the drummer is playing. For me, it was also about when to use muscle and when to use space.

On that note, can you talk about how you approached the trio format?

My thing about playing in trios is that it has to be different parts all of the time. When people play what I play, it just seems dumb. I’ve had this trouble with other musicians where I would start playing something and they’d begin playing what I’m playing. No! Play against me, not with me. Then it starts to sound like music.

How so?

Call it counterpoint, I suppose. But this is really a deep thought about making music. How it happens for anyone is based on years of experience, how you feel time, and everything else. When you’re starting out, it’s sort of an unconscious process. Hopefully, you develop a feeling for it later and you can get more analytical about what you choose to play.

For me, in that context, we were three young guys becoming famous. This was really our moment, and it was sort of incumbent upon me to make the guitar interesting. I had to make the most of it. Being in a trio is about as naked as it can get, and I didn’t want to be a boring guitar player.

You played in the Animals in 1968 and came away with a deep knowledge of music and a lot of skill, but your sound was conventional. Then, in the Police, you became a wizard of effects and beautifully eccentric chord voicings. Was there a moment where this approach kicked in, or did it develop through experimentation?

That’s a good question. By the time of the Police, guitar technology was really starting to come about. During my earliest incarnations as a guitarist, there were just the tone controls on the amp and maybe I’d add a little reverb or vibrato.

Eventually, I’d try out a pedal with some novelty sound. When I joined the Police, I discovered the MXR Phase 90. “Oooh... It’s the sound of a jet flying over.” It was a big deal to me.

Because of the option for added sonic textures, or was there more to it?

Guitar effects suited me because it was all down to me to spread the guitar around over a one-to-two-hour show and make it sound interesting all the time. It wasn’t my sensibility at that point to just use a blasting, overdriven guitar tone in a trio. I wanted to do something else.

Perhaps, I’m a bit more fragile. I like delicate sounds and spacey sounds. But it kind of all came together in the Police, partly due to my personality and partly practical. You know, “Let’s keep changing the sound of the band a lot so that our concerts are more dimensional and exciting.”

It was an interesting challenge, and it was all very simple in the beginning. For example, I think I just had an MXR Dyna Comp, an Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress and an Echoplex when we recorded “Walking on the Moon.” But I became noted for using effects early on, and it gave the band a very distinctive sound.

Of course, it evolved from something simple – a few pedals – to a custom Pete Cornish pedalboard, which was state-of-the-art in England.

Some guitarists just stomp on a pedal and they’re done. But there was more light and shadow in what you did. It seemed that you would really marry a particular effect to just the right guitar part, and use a cool inversion to bring everything together in a way that was almost cinematic in its scope.

Put simply, the effects have to serve the music. Even today, when I compose, the starting point is a sonic thing – a quality. I sit in my studio with all these various devices, and at first it’s playful. I hook them up this way and that way to see what they can do. Suddenly, something may emerge from all of this electrical chemistry, and you identify it as fresh: “Well, I haven’t heard that!”

A sound can be the inspiration point. Often, I’ll record 32 or 64 bars of something – maybe playing freely, or maybe playing to a click track – and see what that promotes.

But how does what you choose to compose often sound so otherworldly, whether it’s a hit song in the Police or an instrumental from a solo record like Triboluminescence?

I think if you spend your life doing music – like with all things – you get more sophisticated, and you probably go more and more toward abstraction. This is certainly true for photography, and it’s true for music, as well.

Maybe you spend years doing all the things that are expected of you as you develop your art, and you can still follow all the rules and such when you want to, but you also start looking for new territories.

There’s all this information on the outside that you’ve spent a lifetime accumulating, and you also have to rely on the world inside your head. You don’t want to repeat yourself. Some of this process you can define, and some of it is indefinable.

I do know that you have to be very much engaged in the pursuit of finding new and unique ways to express your art. You certainly don’t want to be looking for commercial success.

I’m not playing around with these things trying to make a hit. I’m trying to stay interested.

Order Andy Summers' latest album, Harmonics of the Night, here.

So many guitarists of the late ’70s and ’80s were using the Roland stereo chorus in the studio that it’s sometimes difficult to parse if the sound was coming from an amp (such as the JC-120), a pedal (like the CE-1, CE-2 or CE-3 Chorus Ensemble) or a Dimension D rack unit.

Regardless, “that sound” is all over countless classic recordings from the era.

When used in the studio, the JC-120 provided a meatier rendition of the tone that players had previously achieved by DI’ing their tracks.

As noted by Steve Levine, producer for Culture Club, China Crisis and others, “In the right hands it’s quite a tone palette, you can do a lot with it. It does bridge the gap between being a regular amplifier and a kind of DI’d monster.”

Billy Duffy of the Cult and other projects derived the clean, chorused element of his signature tone from a JC-120, often used in combination with a Marshall JCM800 or other tube amp.

Although the Cult hit “She Sells Sanctuary” has a heavy feel that helped lodge it as a classic rocker amid the British New Wave boom of the mid ’80s, the guitar tone on the song is clear and clean, and slathered with JC-120 chorus.

“The signature sound of the first two Cult albums was the Gretsch and a Roland JC-120,” Duffy explains on BillyDuffy.Com. “The Roland is great for the early, chimey stuff, because of that chorus sound – which I can really only get out of the combos. Some guys get a great sound with just one amp, but I’ve never been able to do it.”

Johnny Marr’s use of chorus with the Smiths was generally pretty subtle, but also an essential ingredient of his sound on many classic tracks.

“The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” and “I Don’t Owe You Anything” from the Smiths’ self-titled debut album reveal a nuanced chorus tone that might have been JC-120, CE-1 or Boss CE-2, while the swirl is a little thicker on songs like “The Headmaster Ritual” and “I Want the One I Can’t Have” from the 1985 follow-up, Meat Is Murder.

Marr turned to that sound again for his latest solo album, 2022’s Fever Dreams, where we hear it prominently on “Receiver,” “Ariel” and other tracks, shining through what is otherwise a denser mix than heard on early Smiths records.

“For this album, I also dug out my old Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus amp,” he told Rod Brakes in Total Guitar magazine. “Transistor amps have a sonic presence that puts the sound right in your face. It’s sort of an Ennio Morricone sound.”

While Andy Summers’ seminal swirl on early Police hit “Message in a Bottle” is purported to be a combination of pedals, he is also a long-time devotee of the JC-120, and often had one in his touring rig with the band.

“The Roland JC-120 has been a staple in my collection of amplifiers for as long as I can remember,” he told Roland.com, “probably from the day it came out! I have used it on many recordings for its distinctive clarity of sound and always-superior chorus. If I am playing away from home and amps have to be supplied, my first choice is always the JC-120. It is a no-fail amp in just about every situation.”

While it might sound counter-intuitive, heavy metal icons Metallica have often turned to the JC-120 for the clean tones tracked by guitarists James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett.

Several songs on 1988’s …And Justice for All feature the amp, likely heard most prominently on “To Live Is to Die,” but also apparent in the mellower passages of “One” and the intro to the title track.

It’s no surprise, however, that a creative sonic sculptor like Adrian Belew might have fallen in love with the JC-120’s sound, as he did from the very first listen. “I first heard a JC-120 at a casual party in L.A. in 1977,” he told Roland. com. “Someone was playing some chords and noodling around – not very well in fact – but the sound mesmerized me.

“I had never heard an amp sound so pristine and beautiful. There was a shimmering clarity to every note. Then the player turned on the actual stereo chorusing. Wow! What an incredible sound. I nearly fell off my chair! I sat there speechless until I finally asked if I could play through it. Within the first two notes I played, I was madly in love with the JC-120.

“To me, the stereo chorusing and vibrato were the single most beautiful guitar sounds I’d ever heard an amp produce. I was in L.A. at the time rehearsing with Frank Zappa, my first big break in the music business. I told Frank about the amp, and the next day one showed up for us to investigate.

“Frank liked it enough to advance me the money to buy my first JC-120. I still have it ensconced in my studio. I still love it and still record with it.”

Belew’s first prominent use of the JC-120 appeared on the 1978 Zappa classic Sheik Yerbouti, but he also plastered the amp – with and without chorus and vibrato effects – on several tracks of David Bowie’s 1979 album, Lodger, the seminal Talking Heads super-group affair Remain in Light from 1980 and King Crimson’s 1981 smash, Discipline, which reveals that crystal-clear shimmer on Belew’s tour de force “Elephant Talk,” “Frame by Frame,” “Thela Hun Ginjeet,” “The Sheltering Sky” and others.

Visit the Roland website for more information on Jazz Chorus amps.

Click here for info on Boss chorus pedals.

It's pretty simple really: Whatever style of music you play if your rhythm stinks, you stink. And deserving or not, guitarists have a reputation for having less-than-perfect time.

But it’s not as if perfect meter makes you a perfect rhythm player. There’s something else. Something elusive. A swing, a feel, or a groove – you know it when you hear it, or feel it. Each player on this list has “it,” regardless of genre, and if there’s one lesson all of these players espouse it’s never take rhythm for granted. Ever.

Deciding who made the list was not easy, however. In fact, at times it seemed downright impossible. What was eventually agreed upon was that the players included had to have a visceral impact on the music via their rhythm chops. Good riffs alone weren’t enough. An artist’s influence was also factored in, as many players on this list single-handedly changed the course of music with their guitar and a groove.

As this list proves, rhythm guitar encompasses a multitude of musical disciplines. There isn’t one “right” way to play rhythm, but there is one truism: If it feels good, it is good.

50. Chuck Berry

Chuck Berry changed the rhythmic landscape of popular music forever. And his unique sense of groove and pocket is much deeper than it may seem upon first listen, as sideman extraordinaire and all around badass player Rick Vito pointed out in GP: “On many of his tunes, such as ‘Carol,’ ‘Little Queenie,’ and ‘Johnny B. Goode,’ you’ll find Chuck playing a rhythm that is a cross between an eighth-note downstroke shuffle and a straight eighth-note rock feel. But he changed the accents of the shuffle so that it mixed those two feels and made the groove jump and swing more.” 

In the end, the boundless energy and utter timelessness of Berry’s music speaks for itself. As does the fact that without him there would be no Beatles, no Stones, and maybe no rock and roll. 

Hail! Hail! Rock and roll!

49. Lindsey Buckingham

“I want to make the big picture as interesting as possible,” says Buckingham, who has merged pop songcraft and stellar guitar like few ever have. In fact, Buckingham strives for making everything he plays absolutely essential to the tune. His unbelievably inventive rhythm approach combines a wickedly precise right hand, propulsive fingerstyle figures that are informed by banjo rolls, and an attention to groove detail that can’t be denied. 

His ability to make multiple, and different, rhythm guitar parts work seamlessly in a tune (like on all of Rumours), is as classy as classy gets. 

LB is an incredible stylist whose sense of time was honed on Chet Atkins and Merle Travis – i.e. never lazy.

48. Maybelle Carter

To call Carter’s patented “Carter Scratch” rhythm guitar is selling it short – her style not only provided melody, harmony, and rhythm to the music of the Carter Family, it also laid the blueprint for all of country and folk music to come.

“I love Mother Maybelle’s playing,” Marty Stuart told GP. “I thought she had the most beautiful touch I have ever heard.” 

Equipped with her Gibson L-5, Carter would fill out the tunes by putting a melody on the bass strings with her thumb while alternating the chords on the treble strings with her index finger. 

Simple, yet beautifully effective.

47. Catfish Collins

As a member of the J.B.s, backing up James Brown, Collins’ work is featured on the classics “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine” and “Soul Power,” among many others. Also dig the killin’ instrumentals “The Grunt,” and “These Are the J.B.s.” 

Collins was with the Godfather of Soul for less than a year, eventually joining his brother Bootsy on Funkadelic’s 1972 album America Eats Its Young. He eventually played on a slew of Parliament albums (that’s Collins on the righteous funk anthem, “Flash Light.”) too. 

Sadly, Collins passed away in 2010, but he left a hell of a funky legacy with his classic, greasy take on funk guitar.

46. Steve Cropper

“A lot of people have asked me why I didn’t solo more,” said Steve Cropper in 1994. “All I could ever say was that, when I solo, I miss my rhythm too much.” 

Perhaps the ultimate team player, Cropper’s rhythm method displays a funkiness that transcends simple sixteenth-note chord chanks or overtly syncopated figures. Instead, Cropper’s weapon of choice is a sensei-like sense of when to strike with the perfect chord voicing, lick, or, well, nothing. 

“Otis Redding was a big influence on me,” said Cropper. “He made me think and play a lot more simply, so that different notes would really count dynamically – find a hole and plant something in there that means something.”

45. Bo Diddley

The only player on the list who actually has a rhythm named after him, Diddley – unlike a lot of guitarists – never worked as a sideman. “I always had my own group, he said. “I never played sideman for nobody.” 

With some of the funkiest tones known to man, Diddley relied on his mutated rumba, often chucking chord changes altogether and putting all of his chips down on the groove. Classic sides such as “I’m a Man” and “Hey Bo Diddley” sound as fresh now as the day they were cut. 

Tell me now, who do you love?

44. Lonnie Donegan

Many players on this list were instigators of a revolution, but it would be tough to find an artist who was on the ground floor of a bigger uprising than Donegan, as he inspired an entire generation of British kids to pick up a guitar and pound away on three chords. 

Arguably rhythm guitar playing in its purest form, Donegan popularized skiffle – a hopped up mixture of swing jazz, blues, and folk with a driving acoustic guitar serving as the engine to make it go. 

It’s not hard to imagine teenagers such as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Pete Townshend completely losing their minds upon hearing Donegan’s “Rock Island Line” for the very first time.

43. Cornell Dupree

“I’ll push my groove button and groove,” said the late, great Dupree, who passed away in 2011. Dupree played with more people than he could even remember – from Streisand to Ringo and Midler to Miles – but he’s most famous for his work with Aretha Franklin (Live at the Fillmore, and Amazing Grace are particularly savory), Donny Hathaway’s Live, and Dupree’s personal fave, King Curtis’ Live at the Fillmore West. 

Dupree’s signature rhythmic style was supple, exhibiting equal parts gritty funkiness and understated elegance. His ethos was “less is more.” 

If you have something to say, say it, and if you don’t, stay out of the way.

42. The Edge

Harmonic, rhythmic, and textural, The Edge is a triple threat of rhythm guitar goodness. On U2’s earlier records, such as Boy and War, he blew minds with his chimey echoes and efficient chord voicings, which packed an Ali-sized punch when combined with his huge sense of pocket and clockwork right hand. 

As the years wore on, his playing still exhibited the same elements, but on an even grander scale with The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree. 

As the ’90s dawned, The Edge began hammering out distorted slabs of aggro power chording and getting funkier. “Rock and roll started out as dance music, but somewhere along the way it lost its hips,” he told GP in 2000. “The emergence of hiphop and dance culture upped the ante in the rhythm department – and there’s no going back. 

"Listeners aren’t going to accept lazy rhythms anymore.”

41. Don Everly

When Keith Richards name checks you as having a profound influence on his rhythm style, well, you’re pretty damn influential. 

The Everly Brothers’ breathtaking harmonies soared over a bed of ingenious guitar playing that was based around Don’s clever intros and driving rhythms. “I tried to make my guitar sound like a drum – a rock and roll instrument for rhythm and rhythm fills,” he said. 

Another arrow in the Everly quiver was open tunings. “I couldn’t figure out why Bo Diddley sounded the way he did,” said Everly. “Chet Atkins told me he thought he may be in open tuning, and he was right. So I began using open tunings like G, and that made us sound like three guitars instead of two.”

40. The Funk Brothers

Robert White, Eddie Willis, and Joe Messina were the main 6-string components of Motown’s house band in the label’s heyday from the late ’50s to the early ’70s. An incredible string of hits – “My Girl,” “My Cherie Amour,” “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “Let’s Get it On,” to name but a few – weren’t just the product of amazing songwriters, they were also due to the arrangements the three guitarists played, and the care they took in crafting their parts. 

The group would meticulously work out their voicings, dividing the neck up to avoid muddying the arrangements. “Everybody knew his given job,” explains White. “Mine was rhythm, Eddie would play a bluesy fill, and Joe would usually read something or play backbeats.” 

Says Willis, “Joe was ‘king of the backbeats.’ Pianist/bandleader Earl Van Dyke swears that he never heard Messina miss a backbeat during his entire Motown career!”

39. João Gilberto

Gilberto is one of, if not the architect of bossa nova. Dig into any of the legendary guitarist/eccentric’s titles, especially his seminal late-’50s and early-’60s recordings, and you’ll find wonderfully understated rhythm playing that, even at its most subdued, undulates with a sexy, swaying groove. 

The tricky syncopations of Gilberto’s vocal melodies and his fingerpicked rhythms are a marvel, as he makes it all sound so completely effortless.

38. Freddie Green

“If you pruned the tree of jazz, Freddie Green would be the only person left,” says Jim Hall. “If you listen to one guitarist, study the way he plays rhythm with Count Basie.” 

Green was a master of making the guitar sink in the rhythm section. His use of two- and three-note voicings exclusively let the harmonically dense horn arrangements speak, yet allowed Green to add to the already formidable swing with his trademark fourto- the-bar rhythmic pulse. 

Green also chose to play unamplified. “It blends better with the bass and piano,” he told GP. Much of Green’s classic Basie work was done with Epiphone Emperor, Stromberg Master 400, and Gretsch Eldorado models.

37. Jim Hall

Hall’s playing has always rendered labels meaningless. His groundbreaking work with Bill Evans, Ella Fitzgerald, and Ben Webster shows his modern approach to harmony and sympathetic ear for playing in a group. 

“I learned from Jimmy Giuffre," he said, "who has a very compositional approach to performing jazz – that a group should be in an evolving state like a mobile, with each player acting and reacting as the music is taking shape.” 

To find new chord voicings, Hall turned readers on to this pearl in ’83: “Sometimes I’ll take two voices and either take them through a tune like “Body and Soul,” or play them against a pedal tone, like open A for instance. You can get some interesting things if you try to get the notes going in different directions.”

36. Richie Havens

His impassioned performance at Woodstock alone would be enough to ensure Havens’ place in the rhythm guitar Hall of Fame. And although the late guitarist had a very successful career since the day he opened the 1969 festival, Havens’ performance there did give the world its first “peak” at a guy with a moving, all-in, passionate acoustic rhythm guitar style. 

“I play so hard that I used to go through a guitar every year-anda- half,” he told GP. “To me, playing guitar is just part of getting the song across – it’s not really about being a great guitar player. 

"I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’m filling in the spaces I have to in order to be able to sing a song the way I really feel it.”

35. Jimi Hendrix

A school unto itself, Hendrix’s rhythm playing in many ways feels like an even deeper ocean than his astounding soloing. 

From “The Wind Cries Mary” and “May This Be Love” from Are You Experienced to his beautiful rhythm work on “Little Wing, “Castles Made of Sand,” and “Bold as Love” from Axis: Bold as Love, Hendrix rolled his Curtis Mayfield-inspired chordal movement and tasty flourishes into a style all his own. 

The culmination of that style comes on Electric Ladyland’s title track, which finds Hendrix expounding even further on the sultry double-stop slides and bubbling trills that connect the spacey, at times ambiguous, but always beautiful chord sequence.

34. James Hetfield

Metallica are one of the most influential metal bands ever, and Hetfield’s sound is the hugest part of that, which is really saying something. 

From the beginning with Kill Em’ All, Hetfield’s right-hand precision, speed, and power would set a standard that all aspiring metal rhythm guys would struggle to match. 

“Maybe it’s the German in me,” says Hetfield, “but I always want the rhythms to be precise. It’s hard to escape. It’s how I play.” 

The other thing that Hetfield popularized was the way to get the maximum heaviness out of riffs. “Downpicking is the key!” he exclaims. “It’s tighter sounding and a lot chunkier.” 

Who are we to argue?

33. Chrissie Hynde

With a punk rock attack and a melodic songwriting streak a mile wide, Hynde not only provides the emotional heft behind her tunes, she relishes the role of rhythm guitarist as ringleader. 

“I’m not a great player, but I make sure I surround myself with great players who’ll do their best work when they’re with me,” she explains. “I’ve got the vision, and all I can do is lead my band to glory. I’m the scrappy punk element,” she continues. 

“Sometimes if the playing gets too good, it can lack a certain something. You could hand a guitar to 50 players and the guy who started playing three months ago might play ‘Louie Louie’ better than Eric Clapton!”

32. Tony Iommi

The architect of all things heavy, Iommi fired the shot heard ’round the world with one simple, evil, and impossibly slow riff – “Black Sabbath,” from the band’s earth-shaking eponymous debut. 

From there it was one classic after another (“War Pigs,” “Iron Man,” Sweet Leaf,” “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,” etc.) on which Iommi continued to deliver on the promise he made on that first Sabbath record. 

But as the band evolved post-Ozzy, Iommi’s rhythm playing and songwriting evolved as well. The lead off track from Heaven and Hell, “Neon Knights,” served to put the world on notice that Iommi was much more than a sludgy doomsday riff machine – he was ready to put some speed behind his riffs. 

The title track to Mob Rules is also a killer, as is “The Sign of the Southern Cross,” where Iommi’s use of space makes his entry riffs extra punishing.

31. Danny Kortchmar

“It’s much easier to play a screamer solo over a heavy groove than it is to make that groove,” insists Kortchmar, who, aside from being an accomplished soloist, songwriter, and producer, was a rhythm specialist. 

Kootch found his way onto records by a who’s-who of heavy hitters including James Taylor, Carole King, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Don Henley, and Bonnie Raitt. 

Back in 1983, Kortchmar wrote a story in GP, In Defense of Rhythm Guitar. “A good rhythm guitarist will inspire people in the band to play better,” he said. “We can’t have a world full of guys playing screaming solos – there have to be guys who can play songs, who can play rhythm guitar.” 

As a pro’s pro, Kortchmar also dropped some science on how to get your feel together: “The interplay between people is what makes music, and that’s something you can’t practice at home. You have to get out in the world and do it.”

30. Alex Lifeson

“I’ve tried to develop a style that combines broad arpeggios and suspended chords,” explained Lifeson. “They’ve been my two main target areas. Suspensions have been my trick for many years to make a trio sound big.” 

Not very often are you treated to a body of rhythm work like Lifeson’s, from classic riff rock (“Working Man”) through heavy prog (“Xanadu”) onto the textural ’80s and ’90s, deftly riding the heavier sonic zeitgeist all the way to the present. 

Along the way, Lifeson has also incorporated more feels into his vernacular as well, including reggae (Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures) and funk (Roll the Bones). 

Lifeson has done it all, and never at the expense of his own personal voice.

29. Tony Maiden

During their heyday in the ’70s, Rufus ruled the funk roost. And although lead vocalist Chaka Khan got most of the cheese, Maiden was in the engine room corralling jazzy changes into seemingly simple funky guitar parts that outlined the tunes perfectly, without ever taking your ear away from the vocal. 

In fact, Maiden enhanced everything around him. His playing throughout the classic “Sweet Thing” is dead sexy from the start, with an intro that is a textbook example of sultry sophisti-funk guitar.

28. Bob Marley

Music doesn’t get much more rhythmic than Marley’s, and any guitarist with a genuine interest in adding the reggae flavor to their palette would be well served to study what Marley and his cohorts Peter Tosh, Junior Marvin, and Early “Chinna” Smith committed to wax. 

Always restrained, never stiff sounding, and every upbeat skank the perfect note length (a skill really worth honing for all styles of rhythm guitar), Marley’s oeuvre is a lesson in rhythmic meditation.

27. Johnny Marr

Is there a guitarist more influential in Brit pop? 

Marr’s work with the Smiths showed the way for countless pop guitarists in the ’80s, ’90s, and beyond as he wrangled jangle and extended clean-toned arpeggios with a steadily grooving right-hand that would be equally at home in a dance band. 

Marr is also a master of using multiple guitars to create one big propulsive behemoth, with every part, lick, and chime accounted for. “I’ve always believed that any instrumentalist is basically just an accompanist to the singer and the words,” he said. “That’s borne out of being a fan of records before I was a fan of guitar players – I’m interested in melody, lyrics, and the overall song. 

"I don’t like to waste notes, not even one.”

26. Curtis Mayfield

Mayfield is one of a handful of players on this list who basically invented a style. His ultra-lyrical comping connects chord changes in wonderfully inventive ways, with slippery double-stops and octaves and fleeting hammer-ons, while never overshadowing the bigger musical message. 

“Because I play with my fingers and play a chord along with the melody, my style suggests two guitars and the little melodic movements are just part of it,” Mayfield told GP. 

Mayfield, who played exclusively in open F# tuning, was also a master of sublime wah, using it to accentuate parts and add textures.

25. Al McKay

One of the most visible purveyors of Jimmy Nolen-style funk guitar, McKay bolstered Earth, Wind & Fire’s sound throughout the ’70s on hits such as “Shining Star,” “Sing a Song,” and “Saturday Night.” 

The lefty sports an uncanny knack for seamlessly intertwining funky, palm-muted single-note lines and finger-tight chordal work (the intro to “September,” being one example which was cut with a Telecaster sporting a neckposition humbucker), all the while navigating the tune’s changes and staying out of the way of the dense horn, string, and vocal arrangements.

24. Tom Morello

“When it comes to riffage, I’m all about the 1st and 3rd fingers and the 3rd and 5th frets – the same two strings on the same dots.” That’s how Morello describes his slabs of powerful pentatonic plundering on all of Rage Against the Machine’s classic sides. 

Morello’s mojo lies in the fact that he doesn’t use a ton of distortion, and he doesn’t tune down to silly extremes. His means to an end is a relentless dedication to the downbeat – the one. 

“In all the music that’s richly satisfying to me,” says Morello, “the ones are huge and unrelenting. It’s not really a rule, but you’d be a fool to stray from it. 

"It’s good enough for James Brown!”

23. Leo Nocentelli

Aside from Jimmy Nolen, arguably no guitarist has had as big effect on funk guitar as Nocentelli. A master of staccato, single-note funk, and stinging, brash chords, Nocentelli deftly bobs and weaves in and around the Meters’ impossibly funky grooves. 

It’s no wonder the likes of Jimmy Page, Paul McCartney, and the Rolling Stones (who had the Meters open up for them on their 1975 tour) were huge fans of New Orleans’ funkiest export. 

Armed with a Fender Starcaster (although he did cut the group’s most popular tune, “Cissy Strut,” with a Gibson ES-175), Nocentelli has a funky sixth sense for knowing when to tightly double a bass line or when to latch onto (or dance around) the drummer’s syncopated hi-hat pattern. 

Aside from the Meters’ classic tracks, Nocentelli and the Meters can also be heard on Patti LaBelle’s “Lady Marmalade” and Robert Palmer’s Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley.

22. Jimmy Nolen

The Godfather of funk guitar. Beginning with a single sixteenth-note break on James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” Nolen defined the funk guitar style, both rhythmically and harmonically, with simple two- and three-note chord voicings. 

“I started developing that when I played with Johnny Otis back in the ’50s,” said Nolen, who used a Gibson ES-175 and a Gibson Switchmaster on his first recordings with Brown, before moving to a Les Paul Recording and a Japanese- made Fresher Straighter Strat copy. 

“See, we used to play with so many different drummers – some were good but some were lazy. So I used to just try and play and keep my rhythm going as much like a drum as I could.” 

For more of Nolen’s pioneering style, dig “Cold Sweat,” “There Was a Time,” “Give It Up or Turn It Loose,” and “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud.” 

Thanks Jimmy!

21. Jimmy Page

As much as he is remembered for being a heavy riff architect, much of Page’s rhythmic identity is based in ’50s rock and roll from influences such as Scotty Moore, James Burton, and Cliff Gallup. He also rolled a major wild card into his style, the whirling feel of Les Paul. 

When you throw all of that in with a hefty acoustic jones stoned on British Isles folk, an uncanny ear for modal tunings, and a good dose of riff thuggery (Johnny Ramone worshipped Page’s “Communication Breakdown” assault), you end up with one of the electric guitar’s most defining voices.

20. Joe Pass

An amazing solo guitarist and accompanist, Pass exhibited musical sophistication and sensitivity that are yet to be paralleled, including connecting the melodic dots with remarkable voice leading and walking bass lines. 

Pass’s four duet albums with Ella Fitzgerald are must haves (Take Love Easy, Fitzgerald and Pass…Again, Speak Love, and Easy Living), as are his series of Virtuoso recordings. 

“The best way to get the jazz feel,” says Pass, “is to play along with records or a group. It’s something you have to learn to inherently feel.”

19. Les Paul

Danny Gatton is one of the few guitarists that actually tried to cop Paul’s chops, and Jeff Beck did a full-scale tribute to the Great Man at the Iridium in New York City in 2010 – but nearly every guitarist from George Barnes to Jimmy Page acknowledges a debt of some sort to Paul. 

His mastery of jazz harmony and dizzying melody lines notwithstanding, Paul’s echo-enhanced, Django-influenced rhythmic foundations on unstoppable pop juggernauts such as “How High the Moon” and “Tiger Rag” shaped the course of commercial music for nearly a decade, and provided the template for slapback styles from rockabilly to country to surf and beyond.

18. Joe Perry

Although Perry’s classic work with Aerosmith operated squarely in the blues/rock vein, he never sounded clichéd or staid. With healthy dollops of Jimmy Page’s single-note funkiness, as well as some dirty Keith Richards chordal attitude, Perry rolled his influences into an inventive, grooving style that transcends simple classification. 

Perry’s willingness to mix in filthy tones only enhanced his funk factor (“Get It Up” from Draw the Line is just nasty), and his use of 6-string bass on “Back in the Saddle” and “Draw the Line” showed that he was always willing to think outside the blues box. 

“Your sense of groove has a lot to do with the guys you’re playing with,” Perry told GP. “If they’re really holding it down, you can float on top of it and drive the groove.”

17. Prince

“A lot of cats don’t work on their rhythm enough,” said Prince to GP in 2004. “And if you don’t have rhythm, you might as well take up needlepoint or something.” 

One listen to any of Prince’s tracks, from 1979’s Prince to 2016's Hit n Run Phase Two and it’s clear that the dude’s knitting skills probably sucked. 

“I’m always trying to work the bass notes when I’m playing funk rhythms,” he says, “the same way Freddie Stone from Sly and the Family Stone used to do it.” 

Prince’s rhythm style may be based on classic funk conventions, but his clever juxtaposition of tones and effects, as well as his undeniable rock rhythm chops, are a big reason why he’s such a heavy hitter.

16. Johnny Ramone

“I always wanted the guitar to sound like energy coming out of the amplifier,” said Ramone in ’85. “Not even like music or chords. I just wanted that energy.” 

Mission accomplished, Johnny. 

With his Mosrite plugged into a Marshall stack and a sledgehammer right-hand attack, Ramone wrote the book on punk guitar. “I was influenced by the New York Dolls, T. Rex, and Slade, but I can’t play any of their songs,” he said. “I can only play Ramones songs and the few covers that we do. 

"I just like to play punk rock, and that’s it – real loud rock and roll – no slow songs or soft songs.”

15. Jerry Reed

Being a hotshot session guy and an accomplished songwriter doesn’t hurt when it comes to having an evolved rhythm style. 

Reed’s rhythm guitar approach encompassed Atkins and stanky backwoods funk – the intro to “Guitar Man” being an excellent example of the former, and “Amos Moses” a superb specimen of the latter.

His playing on “Good Night, Irene” (from ’73’s Hot A’ Mighty) is a textbook example of a rhythm performance that acts as a solo, an accompaniment, and a hook as he flaunts hybrid picking chops mixed with hip chord grips and bends that would be comical if they weren’t so killer.

14. Django Reinhardt

If you can tear your ear away from his dazzling soloing long enough, you realize that Reinhardt’s rhythm chops are just as impressive. 

Scary. 

His relentless swing utilizes the ultra-percussive “la pompe” strumming technique which makes the drummerless ensemble swing with a steamroller intensity, pushing the soloist to greater improvisational heights. 

Pull out your metronome, get a chart for “Minor Swing,” and get crackin’. Then, work your way up to the much quicker “Limehouse Blues.” 

You may not aspire to play Gypsy jazz, but working on these tunes is a blast and a guaranteed groove enhancer.

13. Tony Rice

Long ago, Rice was considered the heir apparent to his late mentor, Clarence White. It didn’t take long, however, for Rice to forge his own identity, due in large part to the fact that he started to bring very nontraditional harmony to bluegrass music. 

Counting George Benson, Wes Montgomery, and Joni Mitchell as influences, Rice’s concept of time (he credits Dave Brubek’s “Take Five” for turning him onto odd time signatures) and colorful chord palette (he often cites Jerry Reed as having an influence on some of his dense, close-interval chords), coupled with his uncanny variations on simple rhythm patterns, have made him the bluegrass guitarist for a generation.

12. Keith Richards

Rock and roll’s high priest of groove, Richards’ lifetime of work with the Rolling Stones stands as a sonic monument to the hip-shaking power of rhythm guitar. 

His use of open-G tuning on nearly everything he’s done since the late ’60s spawned a style and sound that is still being imitated. “With open tunings, you can get a drone going so you have the effect of two chords playing against each other,” he told GP. “It’s a big sound.” 

Richards’ other contribution to the rock rhythm lexicon is the way he views the interplay between two guitars. “Rather than going for the separation of guitars, we try to get them to start to sound at a point where it doesn’t matter which guitar is doing what,” he explains. 

“They leap and weave through each other, so it becomes unimportant whether you’re listening to the rhythm or the lead because in actual effect, as a guitarist, you’re in the other player’s head, and he’s in yours.”

11. Nile Rodgers

“I really developed my style while playing jazz standards like ‘So What’ with my guitar teacher in a club,” says Rodgers. “He was comping in the traditional way, and I thought, ‘What am I going to do? He’s got it covered.’ So I tried to fill in the holes, swinging it like a drummer, and the whole club went ‘Whew! That is funky!’” 

The rest is history as Rodgers went on to cut some of the most groovin’ guitar playing known to man with Chic. 

His signature funkiness on “Le Freak” and “Good Times” have frustrated many a weekend warrior, as the riffs seem so simple, but getting them to sound and feel as good as Rodgers does, well, that’s the trick now, isn’t it?

10. Rudolf Schenker

“When something is in the pocket, it drives me,” says Schenker. “It gives me an outstanding power, like I’m surfing on a wave. When the groove isn’t right, I feel lost a little bit. It’s very hard work and it’s somehow not fun anymore.” 

Suffice to say, the groove is important to Schenker, who – aside from possessing one of the best combinations of savage tone and feel in the history of metal – has written some of the most timeless riffs as well. 

“I don’t care about the technical stuff,” he says. “What’s important to me is the attitude, the drive, and the feeling.”

9. Earl Slick/Carlos Alomar

“David Bowie’s Station to Station was the first time Carlos and I really zeroed in on how we should play together,” says Slick. “We mixed my rock thing in with Carlos’ funk thing and I think we came up with a pretty unique guitar combination – two guys who don’t play anything alike making it work.” 

Indeed. Slick and Alomar provided Bowie some legitimate funk and attitude during his Thin White Duke phase, creating chattering rhythmic figures (Alomar) and snarling chord bursts (Slick). 

Dig “Golden Years” and “Stay” from Station to Station for proof, and if that doesn’t convince you, listen to “Fame” from Young Americans. Oh my.

8. Steve Stevens

“I think of songs as environments, or little movies,” said Stevens in 1989. “And that usually dictates the sound I go for and the playing approach I take.” With Billy Idol in the ’80s, Stevens packed a cornucopia of rhythmic goodness into three-minute pop tunes better than anyone. His use of textures, noise, and good old-fashioned groove proved to be an unbeatable combination. 

“My playing reflects more of the English R&B sound,” says Stevens, distancing himself from ’80s texturalists such as Andy Summers and The Edge. “We’re similar to an extent, but I do it in Day-Glo! I play with a much more distorted sound.” 

As for his killer time and ability to hit the right chord at exactly the right time, Stevens says it’s simple: “Have a singer who will beat the piss out of you if you don’t stay in the pocket – that’s how I learned. 

"Billy Idol made me realize that technique is there as a secret weapon. If the guitar is full-on all the time, that’s pretty damn boring.”

7. Andy Summers

Sonically, Summers is possibly the most influential player on this list. His frothy chorus and dubapproved delays became irreplaceable cogs in the Police’s machine. But dig deeper and you find Summers’ grasp of reggae feels, as well as his propensity to extend chords (giving even the simplest progression, a modern makeover), were also a huge part of his sound. 

“I used to be in bands with keyboard players where we had to always watch out for what the other guy was doing harmonically, because there would be conflict,” he explains. 

“I didn’t have that restriction in the Police, so I could stretch chords out and make my rhythm parts more orchestral.”

6. Pete Townshend

To call Townshend’s rhythmic contributions to rock guitar “huge” doesn’t even begin to describe the influence he has had. Yet, it’s not as if he inspired a legion of Townshend sound-alikes. His style – which boasts an incredible right-hand strumming technique – has remained intensely singular and attached to the tunes that embody it. 

Townshend possess the ninja-like skill of knowing when one big chord will not only do the job, it’s big enough to be the hook (see “Won’t Get Fooled Again”). Those are some onions, my friend. 

More than anyone, Townshend has also shown how high an art form rhythm guitar can become in a rock and roll band.

5. Eddie Van Halen

Although his solos were fodder for nearly every guitarist growing up in the late ’70s/early ’80s, Van Halen’s rhythm work never got quite as much attention, which is a damn shame because there’s gold in them there riffs! 

You had your vicious metal chuggers (“Romeo Delight,” Light Up the Sky,” “D.O.A.”), some pretty stuff (the woefully underrated “Secrets”), and the weird (“Sinners Swing,” “House of Pain”). 

VH’s rhythm work was oftentimes just as gonzo as his solos, frequently exhibiting the same careening racecar vibe, and he didn’t necessarily come from a certain “school” of rhythm guitar. 

Like his soloing, his rhythm playing was intensely personal (the intro to “5150” is a textbook example of this) and seemingly easy to grasp on the surface, but once you dive in, you find there’s a lot to digest.

4. Jimmie Vaughan

Although he could certainly solo with the best of the blues cats, Vaughan’s calling card in the shred-heavy ’80s was as a blues rhythm specialist. 

“When I started out playing guitar, all I wanted to do was play that Jimmy Reed groove – it just feels real good,” Vaughan told GP. “Then I made it my business to figure out the guitar interplay between Reed and his co-guitarist Eddie Taylor. I tell you what, it sounds real easy when you first hear it, but listen closely. The way they lock and form that deep groove is not easy. It’s a whole other thing.” 

The same could be said for Vaughan’s rhythm work, as he makes it seem so easy – the sign of a true master.

3. Alex Weir

As part of the Brothers Johnson and Talking Heads, Weir was the ultimate funky ringer. This was especially true in Talking Heads, as evidenced by the epic concert film, Stop Making Sense. 

Working over a Music Man Sabre, Weir’s contributions to the Heads’ collective funk cannot be underestimated. “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” and his impossibly dope comping on “Burning Down the House” are as infectious as they are musical, and his guitar interplay with David Byrne on “Big Business/I Zimbra” is a clinic in relentless sixteenthnote funk. 

Damn!

2. The Wrecking Crew

This loose-knit collective of musicians played on a plethora of ’60s and early-’70s hits by everyone from the Carpenters to the Beach Boys to Simon & Garfunkel to the Monkees – the list goes on and on. And everybody knows you don’t get huge, timeless hits with lousy rhythm guitar work, right? 

The roster of guitarists in the Wrecking Crew goes from giants of jazz such as Barney Kessel and Howard Roberts to studio rats Tommy Tedesco and Carol Kaye to arranger/guitarists such as Al Casey and Billy Strange – all master sight-readers with impeccable feel. 

Cats such as Glen Campbell, Louie Shelton, Jerry Cole, and Mike Deasy (among others) could be counted on to deliver the snazzy new rock and roll rhythms of the day – noise that guys like Kessel and Tedesco hated – but they loved the paychecks!

1. Malcolm Young

Has anyone personified the role of a rhythm guitarist in a rock band better than Malcolm Young? 

No, they haven’t. 

In AC/DC, not only did he play some of the most swaggering, swinging, balls-to-the-wall rock and roll guitar ever, he did it with zero solos. Young knew exactly what his role was as a rhythm guitarist in a rock and roll band, and he thrived in it. 

“Learning an instrument has to be natural,” he said. “If you stop to think about playing, the feeling just goes.” Feel was always behind what Young did. Without it, he would be just a dude strumming chords. 

“It probably has something to do with the attitude I put into it. I don’t think what I do is hard, really. If it doesn’t swing, it doesn’t mean a thing. That’s about it.”

In the late 1970s and early ’80s, the synthesizer threatened to take over popular music, and legion were the pundits who lined up to ring the electric guitar’s death knell.

Then, just as guitarists were getting fit to burst with oscillator envy, Roland Corporation swooped in to save the day.

Introducing what were arguably the most functional and genuinely usable guitar synths yet to hit the scene, the Japanese music-electronics company presented a series of impressive modules that culminated in the whopping GR-700 of 1984.

While Roland’s guitar synth didn’t dominate popular music as a result, it wasn’t for a lack of trying.

Guitarists have been trying to make their instrument of choice sound like something other than itself ever since a pickup was first introduced to an amplifier.

Early players took aim at trumpets, saxophones and trombones. Loud, brash and packed with raspy character, they excelled as soloing instruments and let you be heard centerstage in a way that the early guitar rigs could not.

The fuzz box and wah-wah pedal were among the first efforts to make six-string electrics mimic brass instruments, though they became so much more in creative hands.

Soon after, more all-encompassing efforts hit the scene in the form of several iterations of “guitar organs” that were invariably packed with confusing controls and switches.

The game was on.

Once the keyboard-based synthesizer started making inroads into popular music in the late ’60s and early ’70s, however, that was the sound to beat – and guitarists badly wanted some of that otherworldly sonic goodness.

Hit-and-miss efforts came from the likes of the Hammond-Innovex Condor Guitar Synth of 1970, and several others before and after.

But it wasn’t until Roland entered the game in 1977 with the GR-500 system that many guitarists sensed that a true guitar synthesizer had finally arrived.

The GR-500 system consisted of the synthesizer module of that name and the dedicated GS-500 guitar, connected to it by a 24-pin cable.

The rig was functional but not particularly user-friendly. The GR-500 synth was a tabletop unit that required hands-on twiddling for patch changes, and the guitar was a somewhat cumbersome Les Paul-inspired affair, with a host of knobs and switches mounted to a big plastic plate on its lower bout, not radically different from the equally DIY-looking Gibson Les Paul Recording model, which was not a synth guitar.

The GS-500 was made in the FujiGen Gakki factory in Japan, which also made guitars for Greco, Ibanez and other notable brands.

In addition to the six-segment pickup (often called a hexaphonic, or divided, pickup) that sensed each individual string to trigger the synth unit, the GS-500 carried a single traditional electro-magnetic humbucking pickup in the bridge position, which was often considered a weakness of the design and didn’t do much for it doubling as a traditional electric guitar.

The large GR-500 synth control unit allowed the creation of several synth-like sounds by applying filters and effects to all six strings in its Polyensemble and Bass sections, but true synthesis as we know it occurred only in the monophonic Solo Melody section, which had a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), filter (VCF), amplifier (VCA) and low-frequency oscillator (LFO) for modulation, along with facilities to shape dynamics (i.e., an envelope) and the audio wave, much like a standard keyboard-based mono synthesizer.

The whole rig sounded pretty good when used right, but it was overly cumbersome from a guitarist’s perspective and didn’t gain much traction in the market beyond the bold experimentalists who gave it a shot.

It didn’t help that the rig cost nearly $1,000 in 1977, a sum that has the purchasing power of approximately $4,700 in 2022.

In 1980, Roland released the simpler GR-100 floor unit, followed by the similarly styled but more feature-laden GR-300 Polyphonic Synthesizer.

Both were far more intuitive for guitarists to use, and very relatable for players familiar with the larger effects pedals that were already proliferating under foot.

As basic as the GR-300 might have appeared when compared to keyboard synths available at the time, it offered a surprising amount of sonic power. Each string signal from the hexaphonic pickup had its own genuine VCO, while LFO rate and Hexa-Fuzz could also be applied at will.

There were also controls for VCF attack time and sensitivity, and decay was responsive to your playing technique, resulting in a feel far more guitar-like than the electronically controlled decay used in traditional synths.

In addition, the GR-300 had foot switches for on-the-fly selection of Duet (which added the fundamental of the guitar string pitches to the VCO), Pitch A and B (two pitch presets), Env Mod (created a “wow” effect by sweeping the filter cutoff up, and then down) and Env Inv (inverted the “wow” effect to sweep the cutoff frequency down, and then up).

The GR-100 and GR-300 were partnered by three new FujiGen Gakki-made guitars: the Stratocaster-like G-505, with three single-coil pickups; the set-neck, asymmetrical-double-cutaway G-303, with dual humbuckers; and the neck-through G-808, a seemingly Alembic-inspired creation based on the existing Greco GO1000 model, also with dual humbuckers.

Two years later, the dual-humbucker, bolt-neck G-202 joined them.

All had Roland’s hexaphonic pickup mounted just in front of the bridge, and carried a simpler and more intuitive control section.

Each also had the ubiquitous 24-pin connector for the cable that sent voltage-control from the guitar to the synth unit.

For many players who noticed such things back in the day, the G-808 and GR-300 are probably most familiar due to their use by Pat Metheny.

The jazz guitar player wholeheartedly embraced the technology (though it didn’t entirely replace his beloved ES-175), and he even later modified the G-808 guitar controller for use with a far more complex Synclavier synthesizer.

In 1984, Roland shot its last major broadside at the concept of the guitar-control-plus-synth-module rig in the form of the GR-700 and G-707 pairing.

The latter was an unashamedly modernist odd duck with a wedge-shaped body and a carbon-fiber stabilizer bar extending above the neck and connected at the headstock to improve rigidity (did we once think all guitars would soon look like this?).

By all accounts it actually performed very well, but it was clearly an awkward beast to play as well as to look at, in the eyes of many observers.

Plenty of synth-curious guitarists eschewed it in favor of the existing G-202, G-303, G-505 and G-808 guitar controllers, which partnered just fine with the GR-700.

But the synth unit itself represented a quantum leap in functionality and sound processing over its predecessors.

Packing a true polyphonic synth engine derived from Roland’s existing keyboard-controlled JX3P, the GR-700 offered two DCOs per voice for each of its six voices, plus independent envelopes for each voice, along with several other advanced functions, such as programmable memory and the first MIDI output on any Roland guitar synth.

Eleven foot switches provided access to banks, presets and editing functions, while the previous units’ knobs had given way to a control screen with multi-function touch-buttons and an LCD readout.

There was also an attachable PG-200 unit from Roland’s JX3P synth to make programming easier in an age before computer-based gear editing programs were available.

John Abercrombie, Robert Fripp, Al DiMeola and Jimmy Page all made use of the G-707/GR-700, and country-pop guitarist and comedian Jim Stafford played one on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, partly for comic effect.

In due course, Roland figured out that a separate hex pickup and control bundle that could be attached to virtually any existing electric guitar was the way to go, and the company has rolled through an impressive range of synth units ever since.

The quirkiness and bygone-cutting-edge charm of these early units still has a great appeal for many players today, though, and GR synths from Roland’s first decade of the venture have attained a certain collectability on the 21st century market.

That, and any and all of them can be surprisingly versatile creative tools.

For information on Roland's latest Boss guitar synthesizer gear click here.

When it was issued in 1992, The Police – Greatest Hits became a multimillion seller on CD, but its availability on vinyl was limited.

To mark its 30-year anniversary, the 16-cut set (which, not surprisingly, packs in monsters like “Message in a Bottle,” “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” Every Breath You Take” and loads more) is getting the deluxe vinyl makeover.

Each track has been remastered at Abbey Road and cut at half-speed, and the package contains two heavyweight LPs and expanded artwork, along with other bells and whistles.

For guitarist Andy Summers, along with his former Police bandmates (bassist-singer Sting and drummer Stewart Copeland), approving remixes of tracks he recorded 40 years ago is all part of the job, but he’s enthusiastic about the new vinyl edition.

“It’s superior audio, so why wouldn’t we want it out?” he tells Guitar Player.

He admits that listening to past work with the Police is the last thing he does on purpose, but on occasion he’ll hear a track while out in public, and his ears will perk up.

“It can happen at the weirdest times,” he reveals. “I’ll be in a bar in Mexico, and a Police song will come on, and I’ll go, ‘Wow, that’s really good.’ It’s interesting. You get away from something you did, and suddenly you’ll get a new take on it. It’s happened to me all over the world.”

In a remarkable career that lasted just under a decade – the trio formed in London in 1977 and called it quits in 1986 – the Police grew from a gritty pub-rock act that fused aggressive punk with elements of reggae to become a stadium-filling rock group that performed highly ambitious and sophisticated smash hits.

And unlike most bands that exist well past their shelf life, the trio didn’t stick around and start sucking.

They released five dynamite albums – Outlandos d’Amour, Reggatta de Blanc, Zenyatta Mondatta, Ghost in the Machine and Synchronicity – and left the building, their legacy complete and untarnished.

“There are so many reasons why we were a hit,” Summers tells us. “If I could narrow it down, I think the main thing about us was we didn’t sound like anybody else.

“It was something we were very conscious of. We didn’t want to sound like other bands. That was our natural instinct, but it could only have happened with the three of us. It’s a miracle of chemistry. If we were one person different, it would have been very different.”

Summers’ contribution to that chemistry cannot be overstated.

By the time he joined the Police, he was already fully formed as a player, having studied classical and jazz guitar, and he boasted a performing resume on both sides of the Atlantic (for a brief time, he was a member of Eric Burdon and the Animals).

With the Police, he dispensed with the blues-based licks and rote solos so prevalent in the ’70s and pioneered a crafty blend of minimalism built around tight but memorable riffs (played mainly on a 1961 Telecaster), shimmering chord voicings and an individualistic use of pedal effects that magnified the band’s sound in ways that were both thrilling and mysterious.

“I was a fairly trained guitarist, but I needed to open things up onstage,” Summers says.

“For me, the pedal thing started with the [MXR] Phase 90. We were playing for an hour, hour and a half, and there was just the three of us – we didn’t have keyboards to fall back on. I had to make the guitar sound interesting, and then these pedals turned up.

“I added more pedals and worked out all sorts of combinations. Before long, I had a big Pete Cornish pedalboard with eight or nine boxes, but it basically started with the Phase 90.”

By the time of the Police’s second album, 1979’s Reggatta de Blanc, his playing style and sound began to infiltrate the lexicon of other guitarists, a trend he became keenly aware of.

“We were a hot item, and people saw how successful we were, and yes, I certainly noticed a lot of players aping – I’ll say ‘copying’ – me,” he says.

“We were so popular and everybody thought, That’s how to get a hot sound. But that’s just where my ear went.”

The Police’s lean-and-mean ethos extended to their studio recordings, and even when they enjoyed lavish budgets and were able to work in the spiffiest facilities in the world (Synchronicity was cut at George Martin’s AIR Studios in Montserrat), they resisted the temptation to overburden their songs with superfluous instrumentation.

“That was a trap we were aware of,” Summers says. “We started as a punk band, which lasted about five minutes because we weren’t really punks, but I think part of the freshness of what we did was because the tracks were so stripped down.

“I never got into the army of guitars. The music was made out of the actual parts we were playing instead of multitracking. We tried to keep things as close as we could to the trio sound, and that made it easy for me to play the songs onstage, because I wasn’t missing six parts.”

He pauses, then adds with a laugh, “Of course, you have to be talented to do that. You have to be good.”

1. “Message In a Bottle” by the Police from Reggatta De Blanc (1979)

“Sting showed me the riff he had, but I embellished it. I had the chops to make it swing and rock. I could tell right away it had something, and I was thrilled to play something that started to progress our style.

“Rather than just strumming chords – C# minor, A, B, F# minor – I was outlining the figures in a way that integrated very well with Stewart’s hi-hat. I should say that the recorded version of this song is the best drum track Stewart ever did.

“In the studio, we added a second guitar part, so there’s a harmony going on there. Then it goes into a more of a rock chorus, but the verse is the classic Police sound, again outlining the chord, which is tonic, fifth and added ninth.

“I overdubbed some soloing. We were coming out of a sort of religious punk scene, and guitar solos at that time were supposed to be a mark of the old guard. Stewart was vehement about that, but I was a great soloist, so of course I was soloing my ass off.

“We were always in a weird position with that. As I started playing a solo over the end of the song, Sting went, ‘Oh, actually, this is really good. Keep it in, keep it in.’ It wasn’t up really loud, which I would’ve liked, but it was in there, with a lot of feeling.

“It’s a famous riff, and I have to admit, it’s hard to play. People want to play it, but a lot of them can’t – the stretches are too big. You have to be a real guitarist to do it well.

“I’ve played it a lot of different ways, in a lot of different positions, over the years, just trying to do stuff with it, sometimes playing the second chord, the A with the open A string, rather than going to the obvious sort of shape of the added-ninth chord. It’s pretty cool.”

2. “Bring On the Night” by the Police from Reggatta De Blanc (1979)

“It has that fingerpicked verse section. One thing that Sting and I shared was a love for classical guitar. As it turned out, I’d played classical guitar for years – I studied it for years at school in America.

“Once Sting and I got together, I discovered that he was a bit of a nut for classical guitar, as well. I would often play him classical guitar pieces – [Heitor] Villa-Lobos or some Bach – because I knew the stuff very well.

“He came up with this little pattern in A minor that was very easy for me to play – it was sort of in A minor and all over an A note. He had the part, but of course, I could play it. It wasn’t standard rock at all.

“I liked the atmosphere of the song. I put in that muted opening part before the main verse section. We played it like that in concert a lot. The solo of the song is rather striking. None of it was worked out beforehand. It was all sort of spontaneous, really, just me in the moment.

“It seemed like the appropriate, anguished response to the lyrics of the song. We kept all the noises in. I supposed that was our punk ethos coming in. You can’t be all po-faced about all of this.”

3. “Reggatta De Blanc” by the Police from Reggatta De Blanc (1979)

“It came about from jamming onstage. We didn’t have a lot of material at the time, so we had to stretch things out. Toward the end of our show, we’d play ‘Can’t Stand Losing You,’ and then we’d have this huge jam in the middle where I would play all sorts of stuff on the guitar. I used the Echoplex a lot.

“Sting and I would do this droning D pedal. It would go on for a while, and I’d do all these harmonics at the seventh fret and different whammy things. I learned the harmonics thing from Lenny Breau in Nashville. He was one of the greatest guitarists ever.

“Over time, this jam developed. Sting started doing some sort of incantatory thing to the audience, and we’d all be changing along together. Stewart was wailing on the hi-hat. We would build things up and get ready, and at the appropriate moment we would take off on that B to A movement.

“I would hit the fuzz and play this little riff, and we’d have thousands of people going nuts. You didn’t need to do more than that if your feel was right. We were very locked in as a unit, so we could come up with this stuff. It was great fun.

“We won a Grammy for that song. I mean, it’s true that we were very popular and could have just said ‘hello’ and gotten an award for it. But I was quite pleased about it, actually, because that piece of music was very typical of our trio.

“It was our thing, so to get a Grammy for something that had grown so organically out of our sweat onstage, it was very satisfying. And, of course, it didn’t sound like anything else.”

4. “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” by the Police from Zenyatta Mondatta (1980)

“By this point, we had the Police’s stylistic approach pretty much nailed down. It didn’t matter what the chord structure was or what kind of music we were playing; we could make it sound like the Police.

“On ‘De Do Do Do,’ I do a slightly rhythmic approach to playing the chords as opposed to just banging them out. I sort of fingerpicked the outlines of each chord, which made it sound different.

“I think this was a factor in making our songs endure. If you played them with big barre chords, they would sound old and ordinary.

“One thing in particular I would do is avoid a major or minor third in favor of a second. This song starts on an A chord, but I wouldn’t play the C# of A major. Instead, I’d play B, which is the second of that scale.

“I’d pluck between the fifth string, third string or fourth string with a slightly damped upstroke picking pattern. This was typical of what I’d do. It made the parts more interesting and less corny.

“We were recording pretty quickly, but I didn’t want to rush through my parts. I do this solo over kind of a weird section, and I knew I needed to work it out rather than just improvise it in one go.

“I said to Sting and Stewart, ‘Give me half an hour to come up with something.’ It worked out pretty well.”

5. “Driven to Tears” by the Police from Zenyatta Mondatta (1980)

“It’s quite a complicated arrangement. We’d have these creative jams, and Sting would eventually start wailing on the top and I’d play all kinds of stuff. They weren’t conventional guitar solos, but they were these big sounds and some passages, all kinds of stuff.

“With this song, I don’t think we did play it onstage before we recorded it; I think we just did it on the spot. It’s a classic situation where, six months after you record it, you go, ‘Oh, shit. I wish we’d done that when we recorded it.’ I know we played it a few different ways, moving it up and back in keys.

“I’m pretty sure I used my Telecaster. I had my amp on 11 for the solo – it was really loud, because it sounded appropriate for that sort of dissonant, chromatic solo. But I didn’t play standard blues guitar licks, which would’ve brought it down.

“It had to be something angry because of the lyrical content, which is basically about war and suffering.

“Feedback in the studio has always been an interesting technical thing. You don’t want to stand in front of the amp; you have to sort of contrive a way to get the sound while standing away from the amp so you don’t get your ears blasted.

“I think it was done in one take. We all heard it and went, ‘That’s it. It’s got it.’ I never played it onstage the same way twice. That’s kind of a prog-rock thing, where all the solos are completely worked out and rehearsed note for note.

“We were very loose onstage. Songs got extended, not in a fussy way, but in a way that just kind of expanded their scope. I think that made things more exciting.”

Order the new The Police – Greatest Hits deluxe vinyl release here.

The Police were one of the most popular bands in the world for several years in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and Andy Summers’s inventive electric guitar work was a huge part of that success.

Although they blended upbeat punk, pop and elements of ska into a sound all their own, each of the three musicians that comprised the lineup – including drummer Stuart Copeland and lead singer/bassist Gordon Sumner (a.k.a. Sting) – had backgrounds in jazz and prog-rock.

Summers had started gigging with local jazz outfits in his hometown of Bournemouth, England while still in his teens, and moved to London shortly after to join Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band.

Following stints with Soft Machine and the Animals in the late ’60s, he took a left turn by enrolling at the University of California, Los Angeles to major in classical guitar for four years.

By the late ’70s, Summers’ style and sound were leagues apart from the power chords and extended heavy rock soloing of the day’s guitar heroes, his playing laced with atmospherics, jagged rhythmic counterpoint and off-kilter arpeggios.

And Boss’s revolutionary CE-1 Chorus Ensemble pedal formed a huge part of his signature tone.

Boss parent company Roland first delivered its stereo-chorus circuit within the Roland JC-120 and JC-60 Jazz Chorus solid state amplifiers of 1975.

The same effect was packaged into an outboard box as the Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble the following year, and a legend was born.

Purportedly the first effect to use analog bucket-brigade chips (BBD) in its circuit, the CE-1 has tone that is deep, thick, spatial and multi-dimensional, and while it sounds great in mono, it is truly otherworldly when used in stereo.

Summers’ creative use of the unit kicked off a chorus pedal revolution that has barely waned to this day.

With their long-awaited new album – Radiate Like This – due to land in May, Warpaint are currently warming up to hit the road again.

It’s been a while. The quartet’s latest long-player follows up 2016’s Heads Up and, like so many other lockdown records, was tracked with band members in separate locations.

“It’s the first time we’ve ever made an album like that,” said founding guitarist and vocalist Emily Kokal. “But in a weird way, it made us take our time with everything. The process felt more meditative, less rushed.”

And while the music world eagerly awaits the release of Warpaint’s most recent studio effort, here Kokal takes time to reminisce about some of her earliest musical memories.

What are some of your earliest memories of music?

My parents had the Police album Ghost in the Machine and I remember “Spirits in the Material World” being one of my favorites. But the first thing I sang along to was the song “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” [from Zenyatta Mondatta.]

My mom says they were some of my first words. [laughs] After a few weeks of hearing it, one day I just started singing along!

Also, she used to sing “Sweet Baby James” by James Taylor to me every night. She would sing five or six songs to me every night and I think that’s a big part of why I became a musician.

What made you want to write songs?

When I was about 6 or 7 years old, I remember listening to the War album by U2, being struck by the seriousness of the lyrics, and asking my mom, “What does it mean, ‘We eat and drink while tomorrow they die?’”

To me, as a kid, it was a powerful image. As was the album cover. I was just so transfixed by it as a child. I was attracted to how much it made me feel a little bit afraid.

That was a turning point. I realized then that music can be rebellious, but also something people can use to help and educate each other.

What was the first song you learned to play?

I come from a pretty musical family and my grandmother had a piano. There were all sorts of books in the bench – stuff like Frank Sinatra and Engelbert Humperdinck – so I learned a little bit about music from that.

As far as guitar goes, my mom had a Beatles book and I learned “I Will.” That was the first time I taught myself guitar chords.

What was your first band, and did you do any covers?

When I was 20, I was in a band called Little Two’s in Eugene, Oregon. And if you listen to the record, I sung a little moment of “Strawberry Fields Forever” on the song “Shabasta.”

The first song that I ever covered properly was “Looking for You” [by Nino Ferrer.] Theresa [Wayman, Warpaint guitarist and vocalist] and I played it together when we were teenagers in high school. That was the first thing we ever did together. We learned it together, played the same chords and sang in harmony.

Which of your songs would you play to someone who’s never heard your music before?

“Burgundy.” I think it’s one of the most live-sounding recordings we have. The vocal was recorded at the same time as the music. I think it lands close to our vibe.

Is there an electric guitar solo you’d hold up as one of the best there is?

“Maggot Brain.” George Clinton told [Eddie Hazel] to think of the saddest thing he could – that his mother had died. I get emotional even thinking about it. It’s so powerful. It has such a primal voice.

Is there a riff you wish you’d written?

“1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)” by Jimi Hendrix. I didn’t know he wrote riffs like that. I always thought Hendrix was cool, but when I heard that song it instantly became my favorite.

Is there a song that reminds you of home when you’re out on the road?

My mom is a huge fan of Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Jackson Browne so I grew up with a lot of really emotional, heavy folk music, and the Bonnie Raitt cover of Joni Mitchell’s “That Song About the Midway” gets me every time. I can’t even remember a time in my life without that song. 

Bonnie Raitt nailed it in a bluesy fashion. It’s beautiful. I have a soft spot for the musical sincerity of that time. I miss the sincerity of that era, but I think it’s coming round again. It’ll be less cool to be cool as the political climate gets a little bit darker.

Have you got any songwriting tips?

To any aspiring songwriters, I would recommend trying to have your lyrics ready as soon as possible because once you have the melody it can be really hard to go back and try to plug in phonetically. Try to come with your purpose right away.

I often write in rhyme naturally, so that happens almost of its own accord. But I think trying to come in with an emotion later is tricky. I personally try to capture the feeling of the lyrical content, but I have made things very difficult for myself in the past trying to figure out lyrics later. I can change a melody easily if the lyrics are already there.

Are there any Warpaint songs you had to really fight to get finished?

“New Song” nearly didn’t make it. It was one of the last songs to be included [on Heads Up.]

Jen [Lee Lindberg, Warpaint bassist] gave me her demo which was mostly the whole song, and I was trying to work things out lyrically, but I got a little intimidated by it. I changed it a lot and I kind of gave up on it. But then I played it to Jake [Bercovici] our producer and he was like, ‘Are you kidding me? This song is done!’

Ultimately, I like to feel the least amount of resistance when it comes to writing music. Otherwise, I feel like I’m getting in my own way. I just want to be a conduit for whatever’s coming through me.

Pre-order the new Warpaint album Radiate Like This here.

On this day, in 1966, the psychedelic supergroup known as Cream – comprising Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker – released their debut album, Fresh Cream.

Bolstered by the pioneering pop-rock single I Feel Free the album hit the U.K. top ten in January 1967 – the same month it was launched in the U.S.

Although many people associate Cream-era Clapton with an SG Standard, in this 1966 promotional TV clip of the band miming to “Wrapping Paper and “Sweet Wine” the young guitarist can be seen playing a Gibson Les Paul Standard.

Famously using a ‘Burst paired with a Marshall in the 1966 Bluesbreakers sessions, a 21-year-old Clapton established a touchstone of blues-rock guitar tone.

However, by the time the Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton album was released in July ’66, Clapton was already rehearsing with Cream – during which time his beloved ‘Beano’ ‘Burst was stolen.

While Clapton never got a chance to record or perform in public with Cream using the Beano ‘Burst he did manage to borrow a few guitars in the meantime, notably Keith Richards’ Bigsby-fitted 'Burst (as used on the Rolling Stones 1964 The Ed Sullivan Show appearance.)

Before the summer was out, Clapton would score another ‘Burst – this time from Andy Summers – using it to record Fresh Cream with. Unfortunately, the precious instrument would suffer a headstock break within months, prompting Clapton’s move towards a Gibson SG Standard.

Though the guitarist acquired a third ‘Burst towards the end of Cream’s short two-year lifespan that guitar did not hang around for long. It’s fair to say Clapton had a run of bad luck with ‘Bursts in the early days. Nonetheless, he did much to popularize the now iconic electric guitar during the ‘60s. Indeed, the single-cutaway Les Paul has since become Gibson’s most successful electric guitar design.

Buy Fresh Cream here.

You might think that the vast majority of rock riffs are in minor keys, but not so! A close study of the rock and pop guitar repertoire over the decades discloses a multitude of major tonality-based riffs.

The major scale and its close relative, the Lydian mode, are terrific sources for creating captivating and mostly bright-sounding riffs that can evoke all sorts of emotions, ranging from love, elation and triumph to mystery and even melancholy.

In this lesson, we’ll explore, arrange and deconstruct various riffs based on both the major scale and the Lydian mode.

Ionian (Major-Scale) Riffs

Throughout this lesson, the major scale will be referenced by its modal name, Ionian. As such, the C major scale (C D E F G A B) can also be called the C Ionian mode.

1950s – ‘70s

First up is a rollicking riff inspired by “La Bamba,” the smash hit by 1950s rock and roll star Ritchie Valens (Ex. 1).

The riff is based on the chord tones of the I-IV-V progression (C-F-G7) and hits every note of C Ionian. An early example of a bona fide guitar riff, it undoubtedly influenced future guitarists and riff writers. You’ll hear echoes of the original in later hits such as Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman.”

Ex. 2 is based on “Funk Brother” Robert White’s iconic intro to the Temptations’ classic Motown hit “My Girl.” Also in C Ionian, the melody cruises along the structure of the C-to-F chord cycle courtesy of C major pentatonic (C D E G A) and F major pentatonic (F G A C D) phrases. (Both of these five-note scales are diatonic to C Ionian, containing common notes.)

In this example, the major seventh, B, is thrown in to sweeten the pot. To achieve the desired tone, pick the strings with your thumb, using a strong attack.

Ex. 3 demonstrates how the sweet R&B stylings of the 1950s and early ’60s were transformed in classic rock. Equal parts Jimi Hendrix (“Angel,” “May This Be Love” and “The Wind Cries Mary”) and the Beatles (“Sun King” and “Don’t Let Me Down”), this riff in E Ionian (E F# G# A B C# D#) is fortified with sliding-fourths intervals and hammer/pull dyads that are scattered across the fretboard. This style, which pays homage to R&B pioneers like Curtis Mayfield, Cornell Dupree and others, is challenging to master.

Although it’s not generally recognized as a guitar riff per se (multiple instruments double the line on the original recording), the intro to Brian Wilson’s “California Girls” – a 1965 hit for the Beach Boys – signifies a shining moment in the ’60s Ionian repertoire. The offset rhythm of the melodic passage alone is worth the price of admission. Cast from B Ionian (B C# D# E F# G# A# ), Ex. 4 is a subtle reimagining of this classic riff, embellished with a bluesy half-step bend.

Jumping ahead to the ’70s, Ex. 5 is a twangy, folk-rock riff inspired by Mike Campbell’s 12-string rhythm work in “Listen to Her Heart” by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. Drawing from the groundbreaking 12-string riffs of the ’60s as crafted by such players as the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn and the Beatles’ George Harrison, it’s primarily chordal, outlining A, Asus4 and Asus2, all of which live within the A Ionian mode (A B C# E D E F# G#). It kicks up a notch in bar 2 with a driving single-note bass line played on the A string.

Ex. 6 epitomizes Eric Clapton’s mid-1970s blues guitar pop stylings. G Ionian (G A B C D E F#) by nature, it’s an amalgamation of his main riff lines in “Wonderful Tonight.” Voiced high on the neck for ease of bending (Clapton played most of the riff in seventh position), the melody avoids the major seventh degree (F#), relying chiefly on G major pentatonic note choices (G A B D E), with an added C note in the conclusion of the phrase.

Paul McCartney and Wings’ smash 1974 hit “Band on the Run” may hold the record for the longest guitar introduction comprised entirely of fourths dyads. (Nile Rodgers’ riff that kicks off David Bowie’s “China Girl” would come in a close second.) Ex. 7 serves up a slice of the aforementioned iconic intro, then caps it off with a pair of inverted Em and F# m triads.

Let’s close out our ’70s segment with a riff so infectious, the composer felt the need to transpose it to five different keys over the course of the arrangement! We’re talking about John “Cougar” Mellencamp’s late-’70s hit, “I Need a Lover.” Ex. 8 offers a variation on the riff in an E Ionian setting. As a musical exercise, you may want to try your hand at transposing the phrase to other keys. Staying true to the original song, try to hit the keys of A, Bb, B and F#.

1980s and Beyond

The dawn of the 1980s ushered in the era of MTV and jangly-riff songs built around open chords. Cashing in big time on both trends, the unstoppable Rolling Stones hit the decade running with “Waiting on a Friend.”

Not only does the main riff jangle in a way similar to Ex. 9, the song also produced one of the most popular MTV videos of that time period. Be sure to throw on a chorus pedal or a touch of light flanging to up the sparkle factor on this C Lydian riff.

Journey are another group that benefited in a big way from the onslaught of the fledgling MTV network. Ex. 10 blends elements from two of the group’s most popular major-mode-based songs, “Any Way You Want It” and “Don’t Stop Believin’,” into an E Ionian single-note riff enhanced with bold finger vibrato (a signature element of lead guitarist Neal Schon’s style) and chords.

You probably wouldn’t associate AC/ DC with the Ionian mode, yet there it is, firmly ensconced in the chord/melody-style intro to “You Shook Me All Night Long.” Granted, Angus Young throws in a couple of chromatic passing tones, but he makes liberal use of the G Ionian mode, including the major seventh. Ex. 11 reimagines the original riff in the key of A Ionian, mainly so that the open A string can fortify the key center. Keep your index finger barred across the top four strings throughout the entire passage.

Few guitarists, or musicians for that matter, have as sensitive a touch as Jeff Beck, who is revered for his ability to interpret a melody in a variety of emotive ways. The intro to his 1985 hit cover of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” (originally recorded by the Impressions in 1965) exposes the fingerstyle electric guitarist’s uncanny chord-melody instincts. His lead fills that complement Rod Stewart’s vocal phrases throughout the song are downright stunning, but the intro riff is a definite standout.

Ex. 12 offers a similarly styled phrase based on the D Ionian mode (D E F# G A B C#) and meant to be performed fingerstyle, much as one would on a classical acoustic guitar. Play this passage with a lot of expression and dynamics.

Ex. 13 is a lovely acoustic example that springs from another rather unexpected source, namely Zakk Wylde. Inspired by the burly guitarist’s cascading intro riff to Ozzy Ozbourne’s 1992 hit single “Mama, I’m Coming Home,” it’s an E Ionian–based melody that similarly descends the G string and is interwoven with open B and high E notes. The original figure walks straight down the scale, but this derivative phrase mixes in a dash of George Harrison’s down-up-down melodic contour from the early Beatles hit “Please Please Me.”

Texas-born guitar virtuoso Eric Johnson has been at the forefront of modern high-tech electric guitar for the past three decades. Ex. 14 pays tribute to the Lone-Star Tone Czar with an arpeggio-laced example crafted from C Ionian. You’ll hear Johnson play similarly styled lines in his Ionian-based tour de force, “Cliffs of Dover.”

Lydian Riffs

Everyone knows what it feels like when they don’t get enough sleep the night before. Things seem just a little bit “off.” In a way, that’s what the Lydian mode is like when compared to Ionian. While the two scales are almost identical in structure, Lydian has a raised fourth degree (C Ionian: C D E F G A B; C Lydian: C D E F# G A B).

Subtle but significant, the raised fourth degree gives the Lydian mode a dreamlike, mysterious and wistful quality. Perhaps that’s why many film score composers use it in scenes of childhood innocence, dream sequences and reflection. (Check out the soundtrack to the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird.)

Let’s now explore some guitar riffs and musical passages that employ this emotion-evoking mode.

Based on the A Lydian mode (A B C# D# E F# G#), Ex. 15 illustrates a common occurrence in Lydian progressions – the establishment of a I major chord (in this case, A) coupled with a II major (B) and often fueled with a droning tonic pedal tone, in this case provided by the open fifth string. Essentially a loose composite of Mike Campbell and Tom Petty’s guitar figures in “Here Comes My Girl,” the passage casts an anticipatory mood, as they did in support of Petty’s spoken verses.

Ex. 16 is inspired by Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham’s acoustic intro to Stevie Nick’s song “Sara.” Harmonized from E Lydian (E F# G# A# B C# D#), it’s also set against a tonic drone (in this case, the open low E string) and is driven by a I-II (E-F#) chord sequence. Also included is an arpeggiated G# m chord (G# -B-D#), which is the iii chord in E Lydian. Notice how the passage evokes a wistful, melancholy mood that befits the lyrics of the song itself.

Ex. 17 brings to mind the rhythm riffs in Joe Satriani’s Lydian showcase, “Flying in a Blue Dream.” (Satch had employed an alternate tuning on the original recording, while this example is presented in standard tuning.) The first two bars are in F Lydian (F G A B C D E). The Fsus2(add#11) chord suggests a partial G triad over an F bass note that gives way to an F major chord, thus establishing the toggling I-II chord sequence (albeit backward this time) that we’ve discussed.

Bars 3 and 4 modulate directly to C Lydian, where once again the chords suggest a I-II trade-off, here in the new key. In Satriani’s original composition, the creative guitarist improvises corresponding Lydian melodies over each new set of chord changes: C Lydian over the C chord types, F Lydian over the F chords, Ab Lydian over the Ab chords and G Lydian over the G chords.

Ex. 18 is inspired by one of several Lydian passages in Journey’s arena rocker “Escape.” Based on A Lydian, it also features a driving tonic pedal tone that reinforces the ubiquitous I-II chord sequence (A-B). This example also includes a V-chord triad (E is the V chord in A Lydian). Strive to “wiggle” the marked triads with aggressive finger vibrato. Don’t be afraid to shake the guitar neck.

The octave-doubled melody line in Ex. 19 recalls the distinct E Lydian-based interlude in the Who’s “Who Are You.” Be careful to mute the unused string that lies between the two notes of each fretted octave. This is effectively accomplished by using the fleshy underside of your fret-hand index finger to mute the B string in the first four shapes and the G string on the remaining ones.

Based on A Lydian, Ex. 20 is inspired by Joe Walsh’s hypnotic intro to “Theme from Boat Weirdos,” an instrumental track from his 1978 hit album, But Seriously, Folks… Walsh is a master of crafty guitar figures, wherein the use of strategically placed open strings facilitates the performance of unusual chord voicings that would otherwise be unplayable using fretted notes alone. The picking pattern is the key to unlocking the melodic puzzle here and offers a creative springboard for devising similarly styled creations of your own.

Ex. 21 is the shortest and perhaps most straight-ahead offering in this lesson so far. An endlessly cycled riff cast from C Lydian, it brings to mind XTC’s 1989 hit single “Mayor of Simpleton.” The riff’s quirky charm is mainly due to the ringing open-G string, a technique used to great effect in Blue Öyster Cult’s similarly styled minor-key riff for “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.”

Ex. 22 is also in C Lydian and is a rearrangement of the intro and outro passages of Christopher Cross’s yacht-rock smash hit, “Sailing.” Cross had employed an alternate tuning for that song, which is in the key of D, but this arrangement and new key make for similarly haunting riff that’s playable in standard tuning.

Ex. 23 is in the style of Police guitarist Andy Summers. Essentially a composite of the bubbling piano and synthesizer parts heard on the verses of “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” (which cycles around the G Lydian mode: G A B C# D E F#), it’s highly representative of the unique parts that the ground-breaking guitarist played during his tenure in the iconic band.

Ex. 24 heralds the Lydian mode’s “Big ’80s!” style. Inspired by the way-huge synth intro to Tears for Fears’ “Head Over Heels,” it drops straight down the C Lydian mode in bars 1 and 2. Bars 3 and 4 are inspired by the “answering” guitar line heard on the original recording.

Our final example, Ex. 25, is a fun mash-up that’s equal parts Jimmy Page (inspired by his playing on “Over the Hills and Far Away” and “Dancing Days”) and Steve Howe (recalling his solo break in “Sound Chaser”). An open-position, G-Lydian extravaganza, it makes good use of the technique of using single and double hammer-ons and pull-offs in various combinations with open strings, something for which innovative and exciting guitarists are known.

Back in the so-called glory years of the record industry, label executives often came off as some bizarre personality fusion of Stalin and Santa Claus. Recording artists would often see the benevolent side of slaps on the backs, manipulative but encouraging verbal cheerleading (“We’re gonna make you a star, kid!”) and a promotional machine that appeared to have love for their albums alone.

Of course, if an artist ever had the gumption to request an audit of their royalty account, these smiling faces would transform into fiery demons looking to obliterate their career with a scorched-earth intensity. These very same execs also loved to embrace almost superstitious truisms about “things that need to happen to create a hit act or identify a dog.”

One of these prophetic markers was the all-important third album. To understand this concept, you need to shift your consciousness back a few decades to an era when major labels actually invested in talent and sought to groom artists for success.

Typically, a record label would “carry” a band’s losses through albums one and two, but if they didn’t score significant chart and/or sales action with album three, they might be cut loose from the corporate umbilical cord, often never to be heard from again.

For the Police, that line in the sand was their 1980 album, Zenyatta Mondatta.

“It was a crazy and bizarre time,” Andy Summers remembers. “We had some good hits off of our first two albums, and we were doing well in the States, but we hadn’t broken wide open there yet. You can’t believe how much pressure there was for us to make it in America. ‘Gotta make it in America. Gotta make it in America. Gotta make it in America.’ This was yelled at us like a mantra by our manager. So Zenyatta was perceived as the possible breakthrough album.”

You’d think the label would have moved heaven and earth to ensure the Police had the time, support and resources to deliver a worldwide smash. That didn’t happen.

In reality, the mountain of importance being placed on the third album wasn’t exactly mirrored by long and studious preproduction and songwriting phases, or a creatively nurturing recording plan. Not that Summers, bassist/vocalist Sting and drummer Stewart Copeland were accustomed to any inflated ’70s-style rock-star treatment. The band’s first album, 1978’s Outlandos d’Amour, basically had a recording budget of near zero, which forced the musicians to grab cheap time at Surrey Sound whenever it was convenient for the studio.

“We were desperate and struggling during that first album,” Summers says. “For the most part, we would record on Sunday afternoons, when we could go in for free. We pieced the album together, recording in two-hour increments, once a week, for more than six months. But one good thing about that is we were able to improve the album as we went along. We’d listen to the songs repeatedly, and we’d abandon any tracks that we felt weren’t good enough.”

Reportedly, the recording costs reached a massively stingy level of just £2,000 (approximately $3,800 in 1978) – an incredible investment vs. return proposition, as Outlandos produced three hit singles: “Roxanne,” “Can’t Stand Losing You” and “So Lonely.”

To be fair, A&M Records did see potential before the Police were set to record their second album, 1979’s Reggatta de Blanc. But they approached this opportunity by doing what record companies tended to do at the time, which was try to compel the musicians to record in a large, expensive studio with a big-name producer.

The band was having none of that. Instead, they scurried back to Surrey Sound, managed to schedule four weeks of recording over several months, and kept the expenses down to a still very miserly studio budget of between £6,000 and £9,000 (approximately $13,275 to $19,912 in 1979). Despite a lack of new songs at the ready when actual recording started, Reggatta de Blanc delivered four hit singles: “Message in a Bottle” (bearing one of the hippest electric guitar intros ever), “Walking on the Moon,” “Bring on the Night” and “The Bed’s Too Big Without You.”

It seems laughable that a band would have to approach a third album as a “make or break” situation after it clocked seven international hits, but that’s exactly what the Police were facing during the summer of 1980. Their chances of success were helped, perhaps, by a recording budget that inflated to £35,000, thanks to the efforts of co-producer Nigel Gray. But three potential storms – all caused by the band’s expanding fortunes – put a giant dent into even this benefit.

First, Summers, Sting and Copeland had to get out of town. The comfort of recording once again at Surrey Sound, their home base for Outlandos d’Amour and Reggatta de Blanc, was denied because they could not work at a studio in England for tax reasons. Their creativity was to become a tax exile at Wisseloord Studios in the Netherlands.

Second, nonstop tour commitments would leave the Police with just four weeks to record and mix the album before they would have to leave for yet another round of concert appearances.

Third, the band wouldn’t even get four undisturbed weeks, because they were booked to perform at festivals back in England and Ireland, right in the middle of their studio sessions.

This is the story of three creative musicians with their backs against the wall so many times that even the most impulsive gambler in a film-noir thriller wouldn’t bet on a happy ending for them. And yet, this trio makes its breakthrough album and becomes a legendary musical force.

Hard work pays off. Talent wins out. Miracles do happen. The gambler should have placed that bet.

You’ve pretty much said that Zenyatta Mondatta was a critically important album, and then these time and travel impediments dropped into your laps. Did those pressures affect everyone’s temperament and creativity, or did you take it in stride and get to work?

It was all pretty fraught, actually. By the time we got to Zenyatta, we were working 24/7. Then we were shipped off to this place to make the record, and we really didn’t know what we were going to do, unless, of course, Sting had some songs up his sleeve.

There was definitely outside pressure to make an enormously successful album, but that didn’t bother us much. We were like, “They want hits. What are they talking about? Almost everything we do is a hit.” [laughs] Once we started recording, the sessions were going well, but in the third week – in the heat of making the album – we were taken out of the studio for a week to do these stupid festivals.

Did you wonder, “So how important is this album for our career if they’re pulling us out of the studio for a gig?”

Sure. Of course. But the truth was, as a band, we were so into recording the album. We were still riding that early rush of big success. We were ferociously playing all the time. Seven nights a week. We were completely together, super tight and really into our thing. We weren’t messing about. We knew how to make any song sound like the Police. We had it down by Zenyatta, and we could make a great record really fast. We’d proven that before.

Back in those days, however, whenever an album was viewed as a potential hit, the record company’s A&R people often jumped into the mix. There would be all these suggestions for the artists, such as, say, “There’s a number-one song right now that has a backward acoustic guitar sound, and we really need that on your record.” How much label interference did the band have to deal with?

Well, none. I was very jealous about making my parts sound like me. I wasn’t ready to be instructed. [laughs] The record companies always wanted you to sound like something else that had been a hit. I think that has been the way it is since the beginning of record labels. In any media – music, movies, whatever – you tend to have squares running the scene.

Let me give you a classic example from the early Police days. The second track we put out was “Can’t Stand Losing You.” We did our mix, and we presented it to the record company. But their attitude was, “All right, boys, we’ll take it over from here. We’ll remix this and make it a hit.” Their thought was that we couldn’t do that. What did we know? We were just kids.

So they took the track to five different engineers and producers, who tried to remix what we had already done. In the end, they gave up and admitted, “Your mix is the best.” And, you know what? They never bothered us again. Ever. They trusted us. The label’s attitude after that was, “Don’t fuck with the magic.”

At least they were smart enough to realize that.

Yeah. They woke up pretty quickly to have a “Just let them do it” approach. But to put this in greater perspective, it was the peak period of the recording industry, and the executives tended to be very invasive. They wanted control. And at first, they couldn’t believe these three young kids didn’t need to be guided to success.

It also probably drove them mad that we were producing our records. But, miraculously, they realized they shouldn’t mess with this magical little band that was having hit after hit all over the world. That was almost unheard of at the time.

How did the three of you work together to create the tracks for Zenyatta Mondatta?

Obviously, Sting is the main songwriter. But what makes these tracks what they are is the way the three of us play together – the sound of the band. It’s another one of those classic music-making things, really. A guy has a song, and what you end up with doesn’t sound remotely like what you started with.

Yes, the songwriter is well represented, but with a good band, you also have the chemistry of the guys who made the thing. I think what makes Police music so unique, and what makes it still hold up today, is that each of us was very aggressive about how his part would go. All Police tracks are the products of tight compromise, because we were very intense about searching for a different sound. In fact, if we had any political stance, it was not to sound like anyone else.

But you were also a band that produced a lot of hit songs. Did any commercial pop strategies enter into the creation of your records?

The whole thing is kind of miraculous, because we never thought, ‘How can we make a hit?’ All we had to do was be the Police.

When Sting showed you and Stewart his songs for Zenyatta, and you two did your thing and added your own bits to the tracks, did he ever get ruffled and say something like, “Hey, that wasn’t how I was envisioning this song. Why are you messing with it?”

No, no. He would get it immediately. He’d say, “Now, it’s sounding like something.” He was fine with providing the bones and letting Stewart and I help put some flesh on it and build it into a body. It’s like taking a sketch and bringing all the color and brushwork to it. You add all these other elements and the song becomes larger than life – which is what we were always looking for.

And, don’t forget, Sting was involved in this whole process, as well. He didn’t hand the song to us and disappear. He was part of the band chemistry that defined the Police. And because we were always playing together, we almost automatically knew the moves that would make a song sound like our band. We got really good at that.

Can we play a quick word-association game with some of the songs on Zenyatta Mondatta? Could you give me one sentence about “Don’t Stand So Close to Me”?

A cute little guitar riff – sort of a rip-off of “Rock and Roll Woman” by Buffalo Springfield.

“Driven to Tears”?

There’s a strong political message in the lyrics that has held up through the years, and it’s fun to play.

What about “When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What’s Still Around”?

I think Sting demonstrated it to Stewart and I on acoustic guitar with these C9, D9 and Am chords. Very simple stuff. When I got ahold of it, I played things such as a G11 and an Am11 through chorus and echo. Then Stewart added his stuff and the song went to a whole other place. It’s also a classic example of a trio with three distinct parts working together to create a whole.

“Canary in a Coal Mine”?

That was a big rhythm part. I remember it was sort of difficult to get down. I don’t actually listen to this stuff ever, by the way. Just so you know. I think people assume you sit around and listen to your old records all day long.

Understood. Let’s just stop. But I am curious about the almost comedic situation around your song, “Behind My Camel.” Sting hated it, refused to play on it and allegedly buried the tape so the track couldn’t be completed. Stewart seemed indifferent. It certainly isn’t a pop song, but it balances the material on Zenyatta Mondatta quite nicely, and it’s a brilliantly moody instrumental. Why all the agita?

Typical band stuff, I guess. I liked it. I was always much more interested in weirder stuff, and the commercial hit songs always seemed to come out of Sting anyway. But we didn’t have enough songs to fill the album, and I had this “Behind My Camel” thing. I said, “How about doing this, then?” And Sting said, “I’m not playing on that!” I actually believe he did bury the tape in the garden. [laughs] Stewart was actually up for working on it, so I just played the bass.

I’m assuming it was Sting’s bass you used for the track?

Yeah. I’m sure it was.

Did you plug direct into the board or go through his amp rig?

Playing direct through the desk was probably a move that was more sophisticated than we were at that point. I imagine that I played the bass through Sting’s rig.

Did anything in particular inspire the bass line?

Everything was moving so fast in the studio that I doubt I had time to think about it very much. I probably just got the bass in there with the kick drum.

When the song went on to win the 1982 Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, did you allow yourself a bit of laugh at Sting’s expense?

Well, obviously, I loved the irony. I’m sure there was some smug self-satisfaction. See? I fucking told you!

The pop-culture mythology about Zenyatta Mondatta is that you, Sting and Stewart didn’t really love the album, even though it finally broke the band big in America and served up two top-10 singles, “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” and “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da.” Is this alleged dislike myth or truth?

There’s some truth to it. Sure. I can only speak for myself, but I think Zenyatta Mondatta might be remembered more for how everything was so crazy at the time we recorded it. We were becoming the hottest band in the world, and with all the resulting demands and expectations. The studio time being shortened by the festival gigs and having to worry about leaving for an imminent tour certainly didn’t help.

For example, we had mixed the entire album before leaving for the festivals, and when we came back to the studio, we listened to the mixes all over again, and we thought they were shit. What could we do? We remixed every song on the album in one night. Then we left for the tour early in the morning. I remember as we were leaving, we thought, Oh well. We’ve probably blown it.

Click here to buy Zenyatta Mondatta.