"There are so many great guitar players I've been blessed to work with," Narada Michael Walden tells us from his home in San Rafael, California.

Dude is not kidding.

Walden is, of course, best known as a hit-making and Grammy Award–winning producer for the likes of Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Starship and others. But his first big gig was drumming in the Mahavishnu Orchestra, playing with John McLaughlin and company over the course of three albums between 1974 and ’76.

Walden moved on to play with Tommy Bolin on Teaser and on tour; with Jeff Beck on Wired; on Allan Holdsworth's first solo album, Velvet Darkness; on three songs for Robert Fripp's Exposure, and with Carlos Santana.

A Michigan native who's released a dozen albums of his own, Walden was even in Journey for a minute, playing with the group at Lollapalooza in 2021 and co-producing its latest album, Freedom, in 2022.

That's a formidable track record of legends to play behind, and Walden has love for every one of them — which he expressed broadly on this trip down memory lane.

John McLaughlin

“I was living in Pasadena in '71 when they dropped that album The Inner Mounting Flame. I just happened to be in a record shop and had just enough money to buy it, and when I heard McLaughlin and Billy Cobham going, it was something like I'd never heard before, so precise, just killer. It just blew my mind. I would woodshed on that record and get introduced to that sound, practice my drums and just soak it in.

“When I moved to Connecticut I was able to go to a show. I knew John was into prayer and meditation life; his guru was Sri Chinmoy. After the show I was fortunate enough to meet a disciple, and he walked me around the back of the stage, where I met McLaughlin.

“I said, ‘I’m Michael Walden, and I want to be like you. I’ve never seen anything like that.’ He said, ‘It's largely to do with my prayer life, my meditation life. I’m going to see the guru at six in the morning back in Queens. Give me your number. I'll give you a phone call.’

“A week later, I'm living out in the middle of the woods in Canaan, Conn., and it's John on the phone. He said, ‘I want you to go to meditation and meet the guru in Norwalk, Conn.’ It changed my life. He wanted me to come down for weekly meditations, and I did.

“John would call me every now and then to meet him at this restaurant in Queens where I played on his guitar case, in 7. He realized I could hang with him a little bit. We played again at another meditation in the Village. The third time we jammed at my band's barn in Canaan, with Billy McCoy on piano and Ralphe Armstrong on bass.

“John scared the hell out of me. He looked at me with a stone face, playing so incredibly — but it was a stone face. I had to close my eyes to not get thrown by him and just keep up with him.

“Not long after that he said, ‘I want you to join my band.’ It happened over time; I think it's because I became a disciple and got in the same groove, meditation-wise and prayer-wise. And musically we hit it off because I was a real fan of his. I always wanted to be Jimi Hendrix's drummer, but Mahavishnu became my Hendrix. When I joined the band, it was a dream come true.

“I'm very indebted to Mahavishnu for opening the door to get me in. I didn't know how to make it; it's the hardest thing in the world to know how to make it. He opened that door. It was like he anointed me; without that I'm not even here. I went out to do great stuff in my life because of Vishnu.

“People don't understand that the love for music is so high. What McLaughlin taught me was to listen. And I learned to watch his body; his body would just rock when he got high. I saw him get out there and just become the music. It was so inspiring.”

Robert Fripp

“Robert Fripp came on my scene around '77, '78, when I was still in New York before I moved to California. I played a little club, McHale's, that all the musicians played in New York, a little bar up towards Harlem. Some heavy cats would be in there. I was in there playing one night and right by my bass drum was this little English-type gentleman with glasses on who reminded me of Robert Fripp. And it was him, with my bass drum right in his face!

“He said, ‘Would you come play on a recording with me?’ I said, ‘I’d be honored,’ ’cause I was really inspired by King Crimson when I was in high school; it was part of my DNA. So I went to the session the next day with myself and the great Tony Levin on bass, and Robert showed me a song called ‘Breathless.’ I just tore it up with everybody. It was just a little trio — electric guitar, bass and drums.

“[Fripp] was very grounded and very staid and kinda quiet. But when he'd say something it was like dropping a bomb. There's a section in ‘Breathless’ that goes into this odd meter and you had to really keep counting it — it'd go even meter, odd meter, even meter, odd meter, and you had to keep counting. I wanted to get over it so I could be free in it, but I wanted to make sure I didn't mess it up for him ’cause my love for him was so deep. I wanted to make sure I did good for him.”

Carlos Santana

“I met him in '73, in Mahavishnu's living room, when I went to his house the first time. Out of the kitchen, into the living room, walks the superstar Carlos Santana. When I was at Western Michigan University for three semesters, all the black kids from Detroit, when they wanted to get high and do their exams and study, Carlos Santana's first album [the Santana band’”s 1969 debut] would be on their stereos. That was their music of choice — funky and Latin and get-high music.

“So Carlos was a damn superstar, and here he is in John's house saying hi to me. I was just flabbergasted by meeting these great champions together; it wasn't long before they did the Love Devotion Surrender album.

“Carlos has always been the kind of guy that would talk about God all the time. You never meet anyone like that; a lot of people talk about God, but Carlos would talk about God all the time — ‘I’m just so grateful to be alive. I'm so grateful to have God in my heart…’

“That's his name: Devadip — the eye, the lamp, the light of God. That’s how he lives, and that's how he plays. He's crying. Those long notes, I equate it to holding lightning; he could hold lightning in his hand like Jimi would do, those long, crying notes. He'd be crying for God. He's very sensitive that way.

“And he wants you to cry with him. He doesn't want no bullshit. He doesn't want cute and clever. He wants the snot out of your nose. He wants your sweat out of your brow. If you can bleed, he wants you to bleed. He's one of those kinds of cats.”

Earlier this year, Sammy Hagar claimed that he’d written his latest single in a dream with the late Eddie Van Halen. The story met with bucketloads of skepticism by many, but it turns out Hagar isn’t the only musician to have received contact from the dead.

“I get visitations from Miles Davis sometimes, as well as B.B. King,” Carlos Santana says in a new, eye-opening interview with Guitar World. “Sometimes a dream is not a dream; someone has come back to communicate with you.”

That was the case, he believes, when Stevie Ray Vaughan entered his dreamscapes from beyond the grave.

“He was saying, ‘Carlos, where I am, I don’t have any fingers; I am only spirit.’ He missed putting his fingers on a guitar and making the speakers push air,” Santana recalls of his supernatural visitation. “He told me to call his brother Jimmie and ask him to lend me his amp, the #007 Dumble, and then play it with a Strat so he could feel it through me.

“You know that Ghost movie with Whoopi Goldberg?” he asks. “There’s a part where a ghost comes into her body so he can feel. That’s what Stevie was doing. He wanted to utilize my body and hands because he missed playing guitar.”

More cynical readers may view this tale as a rather elaborate plan to get his hands on one of the most coveted amps in history. It’s safe to say Jimmie Vaughan wasn’t completely sold at first, either. In fact, it was only after SRV’s guitar tech, René Martinez, revealed he’d had the same dream that Jimmie relinquished possession of the historic tube amp.

“The last person to borrow it was John Mayer,” Santana says. “Let’s just say Jimmie doesn’t loan that thing out very easily.”

As for the amp? Carlos says, “[It] sounded like everything I love about Peter Green when he played a certain kind of heavenly blues.”

Pressed for more recollections of the amp’s tones, the Mexican guitarist thinks back to a conversation he once had with his mother.

“She once asked me, ‘Mijo, do you like Whitney Houston?’ and I said, ‘Of course,’” he begins. “She then told me that when Whitney sang, her voice would become a legion of angels. I think my mom knew what she was talking about. Sometimes when you play, you channel things.

“I feel like I’m like [John F. Kennedy International Airport] and all these musicians are landing on me and sharing things,” he adds of his clairvoyant abilities. “I have to figure out what it all means.”

For a time, SRV's other famed Dumble amp, the Dumbleland 300 SL that dominated the Texas Flood sessions, was under the care of Ben Harper. Then he found a Dumble of his own at a yard sale, and when following the rite of passage of asking Alexander Dumble for permission to use the amp, the near-mythical amp builder uncovered its unlikely back story.

In related news, Santana has recalled the time he ignited the strangest of feuds with Gene Simmons. He’s also discussed details of his 1999 album, Supernatural, the record that finally saw him give Tube Screamers a try, and he's revealed who convinced him to do it.

Rock and roll has had its feuds. Kurt Cobain vs. Axl Rose, Dave Mustaine vs. Metallica, David Lee Roth vs. Sammy Hagar.

And lest anyone forget, John Lennon and Paul McCartney weren’t exactly friends in the years after the Beatles broke up.

But perhaps no feud in the history of rock is stranger than the one between a celebrated, spiritually driven electric guitar player and a makeup-clad bass guitar player who wears seven-inch platform boots.

Yes, we're talking about Carlos Santana and Gene Simmons.

Santana is famous for his view of music as divinely inspired. He said in 2000 that he communicates with an angel called Metatron, but he has also drawn on the so-called “saints” of guitar.

“I had only one concern when making my new record,” he explained to Guitar Player in 1999 while speaking about his then recently released hit album, Supernatural. “Would Jimi Hendrix like it if he were here? Would there be enough guitar? It's important for me to appease Jimi and Wes Montgomery, because I play for them, too.”

But Carlos was in a much less positive frame of mind in 2005 when it came to Kiss and, in particular, Gene Simmons.

“He's not a musician, he's an entertainer,” the guitarist declared. “A musician is Coltrane, Bob Marley. Kiss is Las Vegas entertainment, so he wouldn't know what music is anyway. That's why he wears all that stuff.

“Simmons hides his talent beneath costumes and makeup. A musician doesn’t need the mask or the mascara. There’s a difference between an entertainer and a musician.”

Santana would know. After all, he's performed with some of the greatest, including John McLaughlin.

Even so, it was an unusual statement coming from a guitarist better known for his messages of love and peace.

Simmons’ response was surprisingly diplomatic: “Not everyone likes the same meal,” he offered.

Besides, the bassist couldn’t entirely object to what Santana said. He has himself admitted that, from the start, Kiss aimed to bring a more entertaining element to music and, especially stage performance. It was something he and Kiss cofounder Paul Stanley felt was sorely missing from American rock and roll, but not from the British acts that the two musicians so deeply loved and admired.

“The thing that we liked was English music,” Simmons told Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast, "the Kinks and the Stones. American bands just weren't writing that kind of music, and the American bands didn't look that way.

“Especially Jimmy Page and Zeppelin. The guitar was worn way down on the crotch. They'd hit a chord and for no reason whatsoever the hand would swing up in the air, and a lot of these guys would do the Jesus Christ pose. American bands didn't do that. [British rock] was more theatrical and grand, and it was glamorous.”

And when he got the makeup on, Simmons was transformed. “It's in my DNA,” he said, referring to the time he scared the bejesus out of Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler while in full costume. “Once the war paint was on, I became the Demon.”

But four years later, it was apparent that Santana’s words had found their mark, and Simmons felt compelled to speak up. In a 2009 interview to talk about Kiss’s then-new Sonic Boom album, he let loose.

"It's time for us to go out and show the little boys how the big boys do it," the bassist declared. "I'm sick and tired of these bands like Carlos Santana looking at his shoes and thinking that's a rock concert.

"Get off the stage!"

Santana did not, of course.

And apparently Simmons hasn’t either. Although Kiss claimed to have brought their 50-year reign to an end in 2023, the glam rockers recently announced they’ll be returning for a one-off show in November of this year as part of the Kiss Army Storms Vegas event at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas.

The show will also feature a special performance from former Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick — who recently told us about his best and worst shows with Kiss — as well as other special guests.

Think you’ve heard the most jaw-dropping hardcore blues solos of all time? We don’t think you have until you’ve heard every solo on this list of what we consider the 50 greatest badass blues guitar solos of all time.

Let’s face it: Thousands up thousands of great blues solos have been played on the electric guitar, so you can imagine how daunting it was for us to narrow our selection down to just 50. For starters, we siphoned off more than a dozen artists and solos that have already been so widely celebrated that they hardly need additional mention. After all, who isn't already hip to Clapton's extraordinary solo on "Crossroads" or Jimi's on "Red House"?

We also excluded a few legendary players who were renowned for their acoustic guitar solos, but did little of note once they switched to electric, such as Tampa Red, along with several well-known guitarists that played fantastic electric blues, but didn't really take solos, like John Lee Hooker. And early on we decided not to include seminal acoustic blues players like Robert Johnson, Son House and Blind Willie Johnson, both because their numbers are too great, and because in most cases they played unaccompanied, and therefore didn't "solo" in the same sense as the artists on our list.

After fighting over which guitarists should be included, GP editors Matt Blackett, Art Thompson and Barry Cleveland enlisted additional aid from four blues-savvy contributors — Teja Gerken, Jimmy Leslie, Adam Levy and Michael Ross — and each member of the team was tasked with choosing the particular solo they wanted to spotlight. Whether you hail us as brilliant or bash us as bums, we at least hope that you'll dig reading this as much as we did writing it.

"Ohio" — Dan Auerbach (Black Keys)

Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach is never flashy, but he's naturally poignant, and the fuzz freak is largely responsible for the past decade's dirty blues resurgence. Auerbach eschews prominent guitar breaks, and almost never strays past the pentatonic box. "I'm not much of a solo guy," he told GP in his February 2012 feature. But I do love 'rips." Auerbach really rips near the end of the single "Ohio," which was released independently from 2010's Brothers. The Akron native's vibrato quivers like the shivers of a cold Midwestern winter. Auerbach eventually engages a wah, induces feedback, and then climbs up the fretboard with flurries of tremolo picking until he reaches a dramatic climax. —J.L.

"Deep Feeling" — Chuck Berry

Even though he recorded for Chess records, home of Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf, Charles Berry is not known as a blues guitarist but rather as one of the inventors of rock and roll. Nevertheless, this instrumental, released as the B-side to "School Day (Ring! Ring! Goes the Bell)," is a straight 12-bar blues. Well, maybe not completely straight, as Chuck throws in a V chord where you don't expect it, and, oh yeah, he performed it on an unusual pedal-steel guitar — thought to be a Gibson Electraharp. The country- style string bends might have been played by anyone, but the wolf-whistle slides are pure Berry. —M.R.

"Stormy Monday" — Dickey Betts (The Allman Brothers Band)

Half of one of the greatest guitar teams of all time, Richard Betts' job description involved going toe-to-toe with the genius of Duane Allman night after night. At Fillmore East, on an evening recorded for posterity, he had the unenviable task of following Duane's incendiary solo on the blues chestnut "Stormy Monday." After Duane comes Greg Allman's jazz waltz organ solo. As the band breaks it down from there, Betts begins his sliding, squeezing and screaming licks that build into a masterpiece of soul, lyricism, intonation and tone that give away nothing to his legendary partner. —M.R.

"Red Dog Speaks" — Elvin Bishop

How about some greasy slide playing over a slow blues in E? That's exactly what Elvin Bishop dishes up on "Red Dog Speaks" (from the album of the same title) and as a bonus, he describes his ax (Red Dog) in the song's lyrics. Want to hear a 1959 Gibson ES-345 Stereo really wail? Wait for Bishop to say, "Speak, Red Dog," and hang tight, as he unleashes a soulful solo that combines fretted notes and fluid slide playing in a relaxed, in-the-pocket manner that puts style and class ahead of showboating. —T.G.

"Albert's Shuffle" — Mike Bloomfield (Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper & Stephen Stills)

When Michael Bloomfield appeared on the scene with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1964 no one had ever heard guitar playing quite like that, nor did any previous blues album have a printed exhortation to "play this record loud." Indeed, Bloomfield's excitable, ahead-of-the-beat soloing had more to do with rock energy than blues mystery. It wasn't until 1968's Super Session, featuring Bloomfield with Al Kooper and Steven Stills, that Bloomfield settled into this pocket of more traditional blues playing, while retaining the desperate energy that set him apart from the traditionalists, and gave him his distinctive voice in the first place. —M.R.

"Blues Deluxe" — Joe Bonamassa

Bonamassa began his professional career when many lads are being Bar Mitzvahed. His early blues work was that of an impressionist: his solo on "Long Distance Blues" from 2003's Blues Deluxe is Joe doing Eric Clapton. In the decade since, Bonamassa has melded his influences and made them his own, honing a style of diamond precision playing and to-die-for tone. This slow blues from Jeff Beck's first solo record (itself a cover of B.B. King's "Gambler Blues") starts off with three minutes and 50 seconds of soloing that take you from B.B., through Clapton and Eric Johnson, all inflected with a heavy dose of Bonamassa. — M.R.

"Cry" — Doyle Bramhall II

If ever there was a guy to get a handle on the SRV attitude and fire without copping Stevie's licks, it's Doyle Bramhall II. On this slow 12/8 number, Bramhall gets all kinds of righteous Strat tones, including spooky tremolo, clanging semi cleans and a positively massive exploding-amp lead tone. He does a killer, thematic break mid-tune but saves his best stuff for the end of the song. For the outro solo, he coaxes awesome, howling feedback before leaning into his powerful bends that are jam-packed with emotion. His note choices and phrasing as fresh as always, due in part to playing lefty-strung righty, but Bramhall's super-deep pocket might be his greatest asset. —M.B.

"Okle Dokie Stomp" — Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown

You can hear echoes of the big-band era in Brown's recordings from the 1940s and early '50s. It's in the instrumentation— with an ensemble of horns, upright bass, and a drummer driving spang-a-lang on his ride cymbal. Rock-and-roll was about to happen, but hadn't quite. Music from this in-between period is sometimes called "jump blues," and Brown's instrumental "Okie Dolde Stomp" is a first-rate example. T- Bone Walker's influence is apparent here, particularly in a lick that Brown repeats: an up-bent 4 on the third string followed immediately by a 5 on the second string. Still, Gate had his own thing, and it's a whole lot of fun to listen to. —A.L.

"John's Blues" — Roy Buchanan

In 1971 PBS aired a documentary: Introducing Roy Buchanan a.k.a. The World's Greatest Unknown Guitarist, and the world's perception of what a Fender Telecaster could do was forever changed. Buchanan wrenched human cries and animal squeals out of this dead simple guitar design. His style of blues melded James Burton's chicken pickin' with Albert King's expressive bends, definitively illustrating the deep connection between country and blues. It is all here in "John's Blues" from his first record. This is the guitar tone and technique that inspired Danny Gatton, Gary Moore and Jim Campilongo, as well as causing Jeff Beck to dedicate "Cause We've Ended As Lovers" to Buchanan. — M.R.

"When My Train Pulls In" — Gary Clark Jr.

The second flight on the second track from buzz bluesman Gary Clark Jr.'s diverse major-label debut, Blak and Blu, is a gnarly fuzz/ wah solo that kicks off hissing. "We recorded that track first and cut it live in one take," the Epiphone Casino enthusiast revealed in his January 2013 GP cover feature. "I had my Fender Vibro-King, and stomped on all of my pedals for that solo." It peaks when Clark launches into a Chuck Berry–like lick at the 12th fret, and then starts incorporating the G at the 15th fret and the F# at the 14th fret on the high E string. "I'd been experimenting in that range," Clark revealed. "I played that lick over and over to build momentum. We were eager to prove ourselves, and there was an overwhelming sense of 'Let's go for it!’ “ — J.L.

"Feelin' Bad Blues" — Ry Cooder

In interviews over the years, slide guru Cooder has shared some juicy details about his hot-rodded guitars and unusual rigs. It's tempting to tag a particular pickup, compressor or amp when trying to pinpoint the source of his mystical sound, but let's face it — it's a touch thing. That's most apparent in his nakedest recordings, like this laid-back guitar-and-dolceola duet from the Crossroads soundtrack. Cooder has always shunned picks, and this cut shows just how adept he is with his bare hand. Working in open-D tuning, Cooder blurs the line between rhythm and lead. You may be inspired to take up a bottleneck and start practicing — or quit altogether. —A.L.

"Chicken in the Kitchen" — Robert Cray

Though he owes much of his success to a fairly slick, mainstream crossover sound, Robert Cray can play no-holds-barred blues with the best of them. Recorded live, "Chicken in the Kitchen" (on Cookin' in Mobile) not only features some of the most beautiful, sparkly, out-of-phase Strat tone you'll ever hear, it also has not one but two great solos. Number two, especially, is full of incredibly cohesive lines with blindsiding surprises, occasionally getting close enough to the edge that you start worrying whether Cray will make it out alive. —T.G.

"Shake 'Em on Down" — Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars)

The North Mississippi Allstars lived up to their name when they brought tribal elders R.L. Burnside, Jim Dickinson, and the whole neighborhood to Bonnaroo in 2004, where they documented history in progress. Luther Dickinson pays homage to the past while dragging classic Hill Country blues kicking and screaming into the present via groovy Gibsons, mighty Marshalls, and occasional echo and other effects. He does it to death with a Les Paul in open D on Fred McDowell's "Shake 'Em on Down," which kicks off Hill Country Revue as wickedly as it did the Allstars' debut CD, and, in turn, their career. When Dickinson lays a slide to the treble strings while thumbpicking the bass strings and incorporating optimal open ones, he brings the honeysuckle sweet and the dirty primitive together in glorious harmony. —A.L.

"Blues After Hours" — Hollywood Fats

Fats is one of the more obscure players on our list, but if you've got an appetite for the blues then you really need to put some Fats in your diet. His style was somehow brash and classy all at once. Most frequently seen wielding an ES-335, he was an itinerant sideman who did stints with the Blasters, Muddy Waters and Canned Heat. For raw blues power, though, it's hard to beat his playing with his own Hollywood Fats Band. On the sultry "Blues After Hours" (from Deep on America / Larger Than Life, Vol. 2), he delivers a textbook example of how to build a solo from a humble beginning to a searing climax, and then how to wind it back down for the subsequent vocal verse. —A.L.

"Prison of Love" — Robben Ford

The word "uptown" is sometimes used to describe blues with more jazz-inspired harmonies — chords beyond the common I, IV, and V. Ford can take the blues farther uptown than just about anybody, as this minor-key shuffle from his 1992 record Robben Ford & the Blue Line illustrates so colorfully. He stays in familiar pentatonic territory for the first four bars, and then shades his phrases with canny chromaticism in the next four. He plays even more ear-tweaking lines in the next few measures before taking the express train back downtown for a gritty finish. —A.L.

"The Change in Me" — Eric Gales

Based on a riff that borrows heavily from ZZ Top's "La Grange," Eric Gales' "The Change in Me" is a hard-driving rocker of a tune, and Gales plays highly melodic fills to provide a dynamic counterpoint to the crunchy theme. Demonstrated by several YouTube clips of the song, Gales varies the actual solo considerably from one night to the next, often employing a modern-sounding, delay-drenched high-gain tone and a great ability to allow the solo to alternately breathe and burn. —T.G.

"Bullfrog Blues" — Rory Gallagher

It's no easy task to choose a favorite Rory Gallagher blues solo, but his slide work on "Bullfrog Blues" is a serious contender. Leaving his trademark Strat behind (several YouTube videos show him playing a Gretsch Corvette), Gallagher gets to work in open-A tuning, with a capo on the second fret. The solo itself uses licks in the I, IV and V chord positions at the fifth, seventh and 12th frets, and it isn't unlike Gallagher's acoustic bottleneck work, though a ferocious amount of gain yields one of the meanest electric slide tones that you'll ever encounter. —T.G.

"Please Send Me Someone to Love" — Amos Garrett

In 1974, Amos Garrett's solo on Maria Muldaur's "Midnight at the Oasis" was all over the AM airwaves. It gobsmacked guitarists worldwide with its triple-string bends and unusual phrasing — but the previous year Garrett had already blown minds with his spectacular solo on this Percy Mayfield classic. The Canadian guitarist navigates the changes more like Benny Carter than Albert King. His trademark double-stop bends and large-interval, two-string pull-offs, facilitated by his huge hands, are nothing short of astonishing. The two choruses here are perfectly constructed, and were, in fact, composed. To improvise something this flawless would be superhuman. — M.R.

"Blues Newburg" — Danny Gatton

Danny Gatton had such a great grasp of country, jazz, rockabilly and blues that it's tough to pin down when he was at his bluesiest, but this tour de force is as good a place as any to start. It's got only about one percent of what the guy was capable of, and that means excellent bends on the high and low strings, amazing single-note and chord melody, wicked vibrato, faux pedal-steel licks, blazing runs, breakneck chromatic passages, volume swells, and lots, lots more — all played with impeccable time. Boy, do we miss this guy! —M.B.

"Sure Got Cold After the Rain Fell" — Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top)

Billy G. is one of the finest blues players around, but ZZ Top's boogie-oriented repertoire tends to overshadow a tune like this slow-burn gem from the 1972 album, Rio Grande Mud. The song isn't in the classic 12-bar mold, but Gibbons decorates the 12/8 groove as if it were. Deploying a moderately distorted tone for the licks he plays over a clean arpeggiated rhythm figure, Gibbons shows his usual mastery of note choice and placement, building his solo to create maximum emotion during the song's extended outro. — A.T.

"The Blue" — David Gilmour

You could say David Gilmour has never played anything that wasn't the blues — after all, Pink Floyd was named for blues musicians Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. Gilmour's tone and vibrato have always been touchstones of the modern electric blues sound. Though he played a number of awesome solos with Pink Floyd, "The Blue," from his own 2006 record, Islands, deserves mention for several reasons. Reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross," the solo quickly pushes the envelope with evocative whammy pedal work, which continues throughout, seamlessly woven into classic Gilmour licks delivered with the gorgeous tone and pocket that make him a guitar legend. —M.R.

"Lonesome Dave" — David Grissom

Already astounding when he made the classic Live at Liberty Lunch with Joe Ely in 1990, Grissom has refined his style through the years in stints with Storyville (featuring the SRV rhythm section) and the Dixie Chicks. It is all there in "Lonesome Dave," from his first solo record: the Danny Gatton organ pedal point, the pedal-steel licks (Grissom taught himself to do B-Bender licks without a B-Bender), and the ZZ Top grind. Imagine Bluesbreakers Clapton and Billy Gibbons meet Brent Mason and Albert Lee and you get the idea. Throughout, Grissom's innate taste and musicality let him be jaw dropping without being flashy. —M.R.

"How Blue Can You Get" — Jeff Healey

Healey's blindness and unconventional playing style never hindered his ability to turn in amazing guitar performances, one of many being "How Blue Can You Get" from his posthumous 2008 release, Mess of Blues. Healey burns white hot here, pulling off wickedly fast lines and dramatic bends that defy the physical realities of holding a guitar flat on his lap. And if that's not enough, visit YouTube to also see what a gifted jazz trumpeter Healey was. What an incredible musician! —A.T.

"Blue Guitar" — Earl Hooker

Earl Zebedee Hooker, first cousin to John Lee, recorded this instrumental on May 3, 1961, and It was released the following year. A short time later, Muddy Waters overdubbed vocals onto the track, renamed it "You Shook Me," and released it under his own name. Now a blues staple — covered famously by Page and Beck among many others — Hooker played his immortal slide licks in standard tuning, which was novel for a Chicago blues guitarist at the time. He went on to experiment with echo, wah and other effects, attracting the attention of Jimi Hendrix for one, but this early recording, sans Muddy, showcases one of the most original stylists of all time. —B.C.

"It Hurts Me Too" — Elmore James

No doubt, "Dust My Broom" is slide guitarist James' signature song, but there's so much more mojo to be found in his cover of Tampa Red's "It Hurts Me Too,” if only for his sound. (You can bet your best bottleneck that Ry Cooder has listened to this recording more than a few times.) James takes full advantage of this throaty tone, letting his notes speak in vocal-like phrases. Whatever there is to say in open-D tuning, James says it here, with astounding character and confidence. Blues doesn't get much bluer than this. —A.L.

"Texas" — Eric Johnson

This session for Johnson's 2010 sonically superior release Up Close features guests Jimmie Vaughan and Steve Miller (vocals), who dropped by his studio and inspired him to rise to the occasion. The famously fickle and laborious Strat cat played a '59 Les Paul Standard dubbed "Buddy" through a Fuzz Face and a 100-watt Marshall on the solo—a first-take monster in the moment. Brandishing a sizzling tone and feeding off of Miller's vocal setup, Johnson's searing first solo soars to the heavens. Perfectly timed major thirds sound surprisingly blue, and EJ incorporates just enough diminished and chromatic runs to add spice without pushing too far beyond the boundaries of the blues. —J.L.

"Playing Around" — Lonnie Johnson

Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson is best known to guitarists for his groundbreaking acoustic six- and 12-string work in the late '20s, including his celebrated duets with jazz guitarist Eddie Lang in 1929, and his 1927 recording "6/88 Glide," featuring what is now widely considered to be the first flatpicked single-note guitar solo. But Johnson's career continued for decades after that, and in 1947 he began playing electric. You'll find great electric solos scattered throughout his subsequent tunes, but the brief but rocking romp on 1949's "Playing Around" notably foreshadows moves that early rockers such as Eddie Cochran, Cliff Gallup and Scotty Moore will explore a few years later. —B.C.

"Born into This" — Wilson T. King

"I was listening to Eddie Hazel on 'Super Stupid' and Jimi's Band of Gypsys when I recorded this," Wilson T. King says, "and I wanted a future blues style of real whiplash out of the bends and tones." Well, he got it, while wielding a '69 Strat with DiMarzio Fast Track pickups played through an early '80s Marshall 2104 2x12 combo cranked way up, and using only his fingers. King is known for pushing the blues envelope in new directions, and this particularly passionate example of that predilection would, no doubt, elicit a big grin from Jimi. —B.C.

"Chief's Blues" — Greg Koch

Although he's known for his monstrous chops, Greg Koch displays tasty restraint for most of this slow blues, and the results are simply delicious. Much as the native people did with the mighty buffalo, Koch uses every part of the scale on these amazing seven minutes, blending major, minor and chromatic lines brilliantly over the changes and milking several notes out of every bend. It's hard to pick the coolest part, but a strong contender would have to be his jarring, pre-bent, triple-stop descending groans. This solo has it all: space, dynamics, humor, sensitivity and bombast, with damn near every lick being of the "must steal" variety. Yes sir! —M.B.

"Wind In Denver" — Sonny Landreth

Louisiana's singular slideman delivers a pinnacle performance on this track that only appears officially on his landmark live recording released in 2005, Grant Street. He tells GP that he achieved the gargantuan stereo tone playing a '66 Strat in open D minor tuning (D, A, D, F, A, D, low to high) through a Matchless HD30 with a 2x12 onstage and a 100-watt Dumble Overdrive Special pushing a 2x12 located offstage in a former freezer storeroom for maximum ambiance. "I was going for that wonderful 'Voodoo Child' vibe that still gets me every time I hear it," Landreth says. Sonny probably has the most evolved technique in slide blues history, and on "Wind in Denver" he delivers a host of hallmarks such fretting notes behind the slide and coaxing heavenly harmonics with a level of unbridled moxy that makes the solo truly monumental. —J.L.

"A Quitter Never Wins" — Jonny Lang

The baddest blues showcase on then teen sensation Jonny Lang's 1997 major-label debut, Lie to Me, is still his showstopper on 2010's Live at the Ryman. In his July 2010 feature he told GP that Albert Collins inspired him to become a Tele player, and Tab Benoit inspired him further. "When I heard his tone I freaked out — the Thinline Tele with humbuckers became the staple for me after that," he said. GP relayed that Lang eventually placed a P90 pickup between the two humbuckers, and he features the classic single-coil during the fiery intro and first solo on Tinsley Ellis' tune at the Ryman. He cuts into the second solo with sheer reckless abandon. —J.L.

"I'm Going Home" — Alvin Lee (Ten Years After)

It's hard to think of Alvin Lee without taking note of his solo in Ten Years After's "I'm Going Home." The band first recorded the song on its 1968 release Undead, and it upped the fast shuffle's octane level during its performance at the Woodstock festival. Playing his iconic "Big Red" 1959 Gibson ES-335, Lee takes the unusual step to start his solo accompanied only by drums for a full 24 bars, playing without the comfort of harmonic guidance from the band. He then proceeds to play one of the most blistering and fluid, Chuck Berry–influenced solos you'll ever come across. —T.G.

"Out of My Mind" — John Mayer

Regardless of whether or not you're into John Mayer's songwriting or vocal style, it's hard to argue with the fact that the guy has chops. Sure, he may not be the most original player to come along, but whether on acoustic, electric, lead or rhythm guitar, he is clearly in command. Eschewing the slick production found on much of his work, Mayer takes a decidedly more raw approach on the live recording of "Out of My Mind" (on Try!), giving his ES-335 a pentatonic workout with great vibrato, slightly overdriven, fat tone, and an excellent climax before resuming his vocal duties. —T.G.

"Still Got the Blues" — Gary Moore

Moore emerged from early British fusion and then spent his career alternating between turning out hard rock and blues records. It would be easy to go with any of his incendiary solos on a straight blues tune, or one of his letter-perfect recreations of Peter Green on Blues for Greeny, but "Still Got the Blues" is pure Moore. Okay, this cycle of fifths progression is not "the blues" per se, but its sharp-five-to-five resolution is blues approved. More importantly, the yearning in the gorgeous melody that Moore milks on the final solo, before tearing the roof of the sucker, is what the blues is all about. —M.R.

"Steroids" — Oz Noy

Oz Noy can get so far outside so quickly that it's easy to think that what he plays is not blues. Despite the funk and fusion elements that he throws in here, the fact is he's playing wild, vibey, blues-on-acid on this tune. We could all add a heaping helping of freshness to our 12-bar playing if we adopted one iota of Noy's phrasing, note choices, or fearlessness that are so abundant on this song. —M.B.

"Three Time Loser" — Bonnie Raitt

While blues and contemporary pop are not always an easy coupling, Raitt has been interlacing the two for decades now with consistently cool results. This track from her 1977 album, Sweet Forgiveness, is a high-water mark. The chord progression here has nothing to do with the customary 12-bar form, but Raitt's supernatural slide work infuses the song with deep blues feeling. Nobody else can make a quarter-tone glissando sound so expansive, and her overdriven Strat tone burns the way whiskey does going down your gullet. Listen close to hear her widen her vibrato and pluck harmonics in the final ride out. Pure swagger. —AL

"Greasy Kid Stuff" — Kid Ramos

Known for his explosive lead work on a Tele or Strat, and the ballsy sound he gets from a Vox AC30 with a stand-alone reverb, Kid Ramos has played with the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Roomful of Blues, James Hannan, and the Mannish Boys. He has also recorded several solo albums, including 2001's Greasy Kid Stuff, where he makes the instrumental title track jump with his fierce attack and fat tone. Check out YouTube to see Ramos tearing it up in a variety of situations, including on a baritone Tele with Los Fabulocos on "Burnin' the Chicken." —AT

"It's My Own Fault" — Otis Rush

Rush takes three solos on this track from the 1967 album Chicago/The Blues/Today!, Vol. 2. His first, in the song's intro, is amazing from the get-go, not because it's a display of guitar fireworks, but precisely because it's not. Phrase by phrase, Rush uses his Epiphone Riviera to masterfully tell a story here. After a couple of vocal verses, he ventures higher up the neck, ramping the thrill factor. His final break is just four stop-time measures to set up the saxophonist's solo, with a staggering impact-to-bar ratio. Rush was a southpaw who played his righty-strung guitar upside down, with the high E on top. This gives his bends an unusual sound because he's pushing the strings where most guitarists would pull, and vice versa. —A.L.

"Blues for Salvador" — Carlos Santana

Santana may not be though of as a blues player per se, and "Blues for Salvador," the title track of his 1987 solo album isn't a standard blues form. But by playing nearly six continuous minutes of intensely bluesy melodic work Santana laid down a masterpiece that helped him win a Grammy in 1989 for "Best Rock Instrumental Performance." Robben Ford later covered the song, and Santana has played it in concert with Buddy Guy, the Wayne Shorter Group and Mexican guitar star Javier Batiz. —A.T.

"Blue on Black" — Kenny Wayne Shepherd

When Louisiana native Kenny Wayne Shepherd broke big while still a teenager in the mid '90s, he was heralded as the next Stevie Ray Vaughan. Of course, nobody is ever the next SRV, but Shepherd's highly rhythmic Southern Strat histrionics clearly owe a debt to Austin's patron guitar player. And like SRV, KWS has a knack for turning stock blues licks into memorable, melodic moments via clever phrasing. You know a player — especially a bluesman — believes he's made a statement when he sticks close to the recorded version of a solo onstage night after night, year after year. "Blue on Black" is case in point. It's hook-laden licks get under your skin and stick in your brain whether it's the original version on 1997's Trouble or 2010's Live! In Chicago. —J.L.

"Three Hundred Pounds of Joy” — Hubert Sumlin

Released as a single on the Chicago-based Chess label in 1963 — with Howlin' Wolf leading the session — this is Sumlin's nonpareil. He plays teasing fills at the top of each verse, with an assured attack and shuddering vibrato, finally launching into his solo midway through the song. He begins with an unusual high-E string bend from the minor 3 up to the 4, falls a few steps back down the minor-pentatonic scale, then repeats the phrase twice more with slight variations. It's a spunky start, and he never relents. In a genre where clichés are an easy pitfall, this is one of the most unique solos ever rendered on a popular recording. —A.L.

"Wild About You Baby" — Hound Dog Taylor

Famously called “the Ramones of the blues" by The Village Voice, Hound Dog Taylor and his band the House Rockers played a ferociously raw kind of boogie blues. Based on the familiar "Dust My Broom" slide riff, "Wild About You Baby" (from Hound Dog Taylor and the House Rockers) is all about a game of call-and-response between the vocals and the guitar. When the time comes for Taylor to solo, he doesn't stray far from the main riff, and his note choices are perfect examples of a solo taking the place of a vocal line. —T.G.

"Slow Blues" — Mick Taylor

Released on Mick Taylor's self-titled post–Rolling Stones solo album, "Slow Blues" is a study in how to avoid mere noodling while essentially blowing for the entire duration of an instrumental track. The fact that "Slow Blues" uses a very cool, modified 12-bar progression with a distinctive bass line and chorused-sounding 13th chords taking the place of an actual melody certainly helps in keeping the tune engaging, but Taylor's throaty, reverb-drenched tone and dynamic playing keep the tune moving forward in a way that is not to be taken for granted in such an extended solo exploration. —T.G.

"Jesus Is Everywhere" — Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Tharpe may not have considered herself a blues artist, favoring gospel songs as she did throughout her career. But when you listen to her live 1964 recording of "Jesus Is Everywhere" — from The Authorized Sister Rosetta Tharpe Collection —the gap between sacred and secular doesn't seem so wide. Armed with a thumbpick, and backed by a bassist and drummer who sound like two thirds of the best rockabilly trio you've ever heard, Tharpe digs in hard on her early '60s SG-style Les Paul Custom. The first half of her solo is relatively straightforward, but when she starts swerving and swooping you'll wonder which way is up. Glory, glory! —A.L.

"Whisky Train" — Robin Tower (Procol Harum)

Like Hendrix, to whom he is overly, if not unfairly, compared, Robin Trower's blues roots run deep. Fifty years into his solo career, he still makes records worth listening to, these days filled with more classic blues tunes than ever. Still, the best example of his rooted playing might be "Whisky Train," a tune he wrote for Procol Harum's fourth album. The song could be considered one long cowbell-driven guitar solo, with Trower riding one of the great guitar riffs over and over, occasionally answering brief Gary Booker vocal sections with short modern blues excursions that preview his style as a solo artist. —M.R.

"I Know" — Derek Trucks (The Derek Trucks Band)

"Nearly everything I do on guitar has a foundation in blues music," says freak of nature Derek Trucks who primarily plays a Gibson SG tuned to open E with a large Dunlop Pyrex slide through a cranked Fender Super Reverb to conjure his signature, liquid fire tone. The way Trucks furthers Duane Allman's electric bottleneck style via Eastern-influenced microtones is mesmerizing. The Derek Trucks Band's 2010 release, Roadsongs, is a supreme document. His "Key to the Highway" solo reaches the highest zenith, but "I Know" is extraordinarily interesting as it progresses from droning raga into a swinging R&B feelgood number with one of the most musical, uplifting major-2 blues solos ever recorded. —J.L.

"Miracles & Demons (Part 2)" — Eddie Turner

A master at creating spooky atmospherics — such as those infusing several Otis Taylor records — Turner is also a funky and hard-rocking psychedelic bluesman in the Hendrix tradition, as evidenced on this track. Rooted in a repeating 6/8 figure played on dual resonators, with Turner's haunting vocals and wicked, wah-inflected, heavily echoed solo intertwining throughout, the tune showcases his ability to simultaneously wail and conjure uncanny sonics via Custom Shop Strats, a '59 tweed Deluxe, a Budda Twinmaster, a Roland RE-301 tape echo and other magical implements. —B.C.

"Tuff Enuff” — Jimmie Vaughan (The Fabulous Thunderbirds)

The other Vaughan is as cool as the other side of the pillow, especially compared to his fire-spitting brother. They both favor Strats, but the similarities pretty much end there. Jimmie rarely plays fast or dirty, and is never flash. He mostly sticks to stabbing single notes within a traditional framework, giving them plenty of space to breathe. Jimmie Vaughan reminds us that less notes can certainly mean more, and the solo on the title track from the Fabulous Thunderbirds' 1986 album, Tuff Enuff, is a shining example. Vaughan doesn't usually do effects, but in this instance shimmering reverb and delay add remarkable depth to his sparse phrasing. It's hard to find better evidence of a pure blues solo building a perfect bridge to a crossover hit. —J.L.

"Call It Stormy Monday" — T-Bone Walker

Chances are, you're not old enough to remember the impact this song made when it was originally released in 1947. (By way of perspective, Clapton was only two years old then, and the first Stratocaster was still seven years off.) So you may listen now and find yourself thinking, What's the big whoop? I've heard other guitarists play that stuff. The big whoop is: Walker invented that stuff. Without his influence, there might've been no B.B. King, no Chuck Berry, and no Gatemouth Brown. Go back to the source and listen, taking note of Walker's rhythmic sophistication. Sure, there are eighth-notes and sixteenths and some triplets. But such subdivisions were never more elastic than in Walker's hands. — A.L.

"Ball and Biscuit" — Jack White (The White Stripes)

Jack White kicked the blues straight in the nuts on "Ball and Biscuit" utilizing a bizarre, ferocious sound the likes of which had never before been heard in the history of America's senior guitar genre. No "real" bluesman would have imagined such blasphemy as a Detroit garage punk playing a plastic guitar (a 1964 Montgomery Ward Airline) with a fuzz-drenched, Whammy-infected tone on a blues romp. White made it his signature tone, and his signature guitar album, Elephant, landed him his first Guitar Player cover story on the June 2003 issue. The bombastic trio of solos throughout White's sideways statement "Ball and Biscuit" play like a blues from hell trilogy. — J.L.

Anyone who's heard Grace Bowers' incendiary debut album, Wine on Venus, can hear there's a bit of an old soul inside the 18-year-old wunderkind electric guitar player from Nashville (by way of her native Bay Area). And the 10 albums she identifies as changing her life display it.

All but two are of late-'60s and early '70s vintage, and five are from acts that performed at the first Woodstock Music and Music and Art Fair.

"I do tend to lean toward the older stuff," says Bowers, who began playing guitar when she was nine but got serious during her early teens, when she also started buying records. "I think what all these albums have in common is how real they are and how they capture the artists' spirit, or their originality. None of them are perfect, but they all have a unique sound. They all have great guitar on them, too, so that's a big draw for me. I can pick things from each record that have specifically influenced me."

The independently released Wine on Venus attests to that, as Bowers crafts songs and arrangements and plays in a manner that's at once retro and contemporary — timeless, as we like to say. It's helped her get plenty of notice, too, from a gamut of TV appearances and sharing stages with Bob Weir & Wolf Bros, Billy Idol and the Allman Betts Family Revival to accolades from the Recording Academy. Bowers played the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville on her 18th birthday, joined Dolly Parton on her Pet Gala TV special, performed at the NCAA Men's Final Four Tip-Off Tailgate and ushered in 2025 with Lainey Wilson on CBS's New Year's Eve Live.

So what's next? More touring with her band, the Hodge Podge, including bookings at Bonnaroo, Innings and other festivals, as well as trips to Europe and Japan. "All the while I'm still writing new music," Bowers adds, and she's contemplating a live release as well.

"I'm super happy with how everything's going," she says. "This is everything I wished I was doing a year or two ago, and now it's happening. I love being on the road and getting to see all the different places we're going."

These 10 albums, meanwhile, offer an insightful look at where Bowers comes from.

Maggot Brain — Funkadelic (1971)

"This is probably one of if not my favorite album of all time. I still remember hearing 'Hit It and Quit It' the first time — which, by the way, was just a year or two ago — and just being absolutely blown away. Because I was getting booked to play shows and was doing covers, I was trying to figure out what my sound was going to be. I didn't really have answer to that until I heard Maggot Brain.

"I love everything about it. My favorites are 'Can You Get to That' — which Mavis Staples also did a great version of — 'You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks' and, obviously, 'Hit It and Quit It.' I love everything about it. I definitely pull a lot of inspiration from that record specifically, and Funkadelic and Parliament as a whole."

Awaken, My Love — Childish Gambino (2016)

"This one's super cool, because at the time when he released it, it was different from the albums he had previously put out. It's very experimental and combines a lot of genres, but mainly R&B. Some songs lean kinda funky and some are maybe more rock, but, really, I would say it's an R&B record. And the way it's written and produced, it's so musical and all of the ideas are very unique. There's not a lot of people making music like he does. That's definitely my favorite album of his."

D&B Together — Delaney & Bonnie (1972)

"I think they're one of the most underrated groups of all time. I feel like they don't get brought up in conversation enough but they created some of these great songs that inspired people like Eric Clapton. He's on the album, which his awesome. And Bonnie Bramlett's singing voice and style remind me a lot of Susan Tedeschi.

"A lot of people know 'Comin' Home,' but every single song on the album is so good. When I first heard them I was going through a huge '60s and '70s classic rock phase. A lot of that's kind of hit and miss for me, 'cause it can all sound the same, but I feel like you can put on any song of their and enjoy it. It doesn't get old."

An Evening With Silk Sonic — Silk Sonic (Bruno Mars and Anderson.Paak) (2021)

"You could tell me this was made in the '70s and I would 100 percent believe you. It combines all the best elements of '70s frunk and R&B, and the music videos they made for it definitely drew from that era in music. But at the same time it's not a throwback; it's fresh and original, and it's their own take on it. I wish they would make another one, 'cause it's so good."

Climbing — Mountain (1970)

"Leslie West is probably my favorite guitar player of all time. This was Mountain's first-ever record, after they played Woodstock, and it had 'Theme From an Imaginary Western On It.' The solo that Leslie takes on that is one of the most perfectly crafted guitar solos ever. His tone — not even just on this album, his tone in general — was so good. He's one of those players you can recognize right away. It's that distinct.

"Leslie was just so inventive, and he wasn't a shredder. He didn't play really fast, but when he did play he meant it. He almost played with, like, punctuation if that makes sense — his phrasing was so unique and original. A lot of people try to imitate that now, but I feel like he was the first guy to really play like that. Obviously he drew from a lot of blues players, but he had his own way of doing it."

Fresh — Sly & the Family Stone (1973)

"They'd already been established for a while when they put this out. There's still lots of funk but so many R&B elements, too, especially in the bass playing. What I like about this album is that, while the songs cover a range of styles, they all have the same sound — they must have recorded it in the same room, in the same studio and with the same instruments.

"A lot of records today have many different sounds to them, but this one is consistent through and through. It's got an energy that makes it stand out from the rest of their albums. I wanted to capture a bit of that when I went into the studio, so we used the same instruments on every song, with the same settings and all that."

Rags to Rufus — Rufus (1974)

"This was definitely my favorite work Chaka Khan has ever done. The song 'Rags to Rufus' is a huge inspiration for my use of wah when I play rhythm guitar; it's an instrumental and it kind of stays the same the whole time, which is cool. It reminds me of Billy Preston's 'Outta Space,' but there's still a modern sound to it, like it was ahead of its time.

"And the songwriting on this album is incredible. 'Tell Me Something Good' is on it, but everything is really strong. Chaka Khan was really young — like 19 or 20 — when she recorded this, which is crazy. She has such a range in her voice and so many different sounds she could get, and her vibrato was really unique and something you would definitely pick out: 'Oh, that's Chaka Khan.' She left that mark on everything she recorded."

Santana — Santana (1969)

"This is their very first album, and it came out a couple weeks after they played Woodstock. When I first got it, I was listening to it every single day. I was obsessed with it. I would listen to it top to bottom, every time, in order, because the songs faded into one another. It was meant to be listened to like that. In 1969 you couldn't just go on Spotify and skip around songs. I also love Carlos Santana's guitar playing and the drums and the percussion. He brought so many elements together in rock and gave it a Latin influence that hadn't really been heard before. He changed the game a bit."

Deja Vu — Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (1970)

"An absolute supergroup. I love all of those guys on their own, too, especially Neil Young. But seeing what they could write and what sounds they could get when they all come together was just insane, especially their vocal harmonies. There's nothing else like that. It's kind of haunting in a way. A song like 'Helplessly Hoping' is so beautiful. When you get musicians like that in a room together, it just creates something so special.

"I've heard people shit on Stephen Stills' guitar playing, and Neil's too. But it's the same thing as with Leslie West: When they played something, they meant it, and you can hear that in their playing. Some people say their tone sucked or they didn't know how to play, and maybe they weren't the best guitar players of all time, but that's the beauty of it. If there were mistakes, they left them in. That's what makes it sound so real. On these older records they didn't have the tools to go in and perfect everything so they had to leave the imperfections in, and that's what makes them so special."

Band of Gypsys — Band of Gypsys (1970)

"That has Billy Cox on bass and Buddy Miles on drums. Buddy Miles is one of my favorites, too, and those three together were crazy. This was Hendrix's first time playing with these two, and it's the only record we have of them. And just to think how much more music we could've gotten if he hadn't passed away so young. Band of Gypsys is like a glimpse into what could have been. Those three meshed so well together, and they had a real chemistry, and that definitely comes out in the playing and the jams they went into.

"This album definitely had a huge influence on my guitar plying. I remember going back and learning all these songs as Hendrix played them and then kind of doing my own thing with it. It gave me a great base to build from. Being able to learn that stuff and see how Hendrix phrases things and how he wrote riffs and the way he structured songs really left a mark on me."

Guitarists love their vintage guitars, ascribing mystical and even magical powers to their aged tonewoods, hardware and finish.

Paul Reed Smith says it's all rubbish.

Speaking to American Musical Supply, the celebrated luthier distances himself from the "old is always better" adage. "Nobody thinks that a new vet can get outmaneuvered by an old vet," he said. "But everybody thinks an old guitar can outmaneuver a new guitar. I just don't buy it.”

Smith says he's not alone in his thinking. He points to numerous guitarists, like Widespread Panic's Jimmy Herring, who have espoused the merits of new guitars.

“Jimmy Herring was the first person to say to me ‘My PRS's will do things my vintage guitars won't do,'" Smith says. "I thought that was a beautiful comment.”

The allure of vintage guitars has only grown over the past 40 years, as the market for them has imbued even modest models from the 1960s with an aura of mystique.

No less a player than David Gilmour has weighed in the subject. Speaking about the guitars featured on his latest solo album, Luck and Strange — a record he calls his best LP since Dark Side of the Moon — the former Pink Floyd guitarist said vintage guitars always sound better than modern builds, noting, “All these pieces of wood gradually become in harmony with each other over years of playing.”

Smith isn't buying it. For that matter, he's not particular about tonewood, noting “the species is less relevant than the qualities of the wood," and has ridiculed snobbery of where certain woods are sourced from. He's said Guatemalan fence posts can make for quality guitars just as much as Honduran mahogany

To that end, PRS has been happy to experiment with left-field wood choices like Urban Ironbark, and wood alternatives for fretboards, like Richlite and Ebonol.

Expanding on those beliefs, Smith now says that where a guitar is made shouldn’t be a primary concern for guitar and bass players.

“I’ve always believed that it’s not about the country that an instrument is made in. It’s always been about the skill level of the guitar makers,” he says in a new Premier Guitar column.

“When we first started traveling to overseas guitar manufacturing facilities, we found that almost all their training over the decades had been to go fast, while our teaching about how to make instruments was about how to go well.

“Once they knew how to go well, the guitars they produce are of the same caliber as what we make here. So, as a definitive statement, the country a guitar is made in does not matter much. The skill and care of the instrument makers does matter.”

Outlining an example to back up his argument, he says that when Carlos Santana had asked for a more affordable version of his signature guitar, his solution was to manufacture it abroad.

“When we brought him the prototype, he was impressed, and his comment was, ‘This was made in America, right?’ And I said, ‘No. This was made overseas.’ The contract for his approval was on the table, and he leaned over and signed it as fast as he could.”

Instead of fixating on what wood and an electric guitar's place of origin, Smith underscores the importance of getting instruments in player's hands above all else.

“You should evaluate it the same way, regardless of country of manufacture,” he concludes. “How does it look, how does it feel in your hands, how does it sound acoustically, how does it sound electrically, and most importantly, will it do the job you want it to do?

The following interview originally appeared in the August 1999 issue of Guitar Player.

“I had only one concern when making my new record,” says Carlos Santana. “Would Jimi Hendrix like it if he were here? Would there be enough guitar? It's important for me to appease Jimi and Wes Montgomery, because I play for them, too.”

We're sitting in Santana's large rehearsal hall in San Rafael, California. Surrounded by bright wall hangings depicting his musical heroes – John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Charlie Parker, and Bob Marley – Santana is describing the genesis of his latest album, Supernatural. 

Featuring collaborations with an intriguing assortment of musicians – including Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, Dave Matthews, Everlast, Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty, Eagle Eye Cherry, Ozomatli, and the Dust Brothers – this release is Santana's debut on Arista Records.

“We're still finishing some tracks,” Santana explains, as he cues up “Love of My Life,” a song he co-wrote with Dave Matthews. “In fact, right after this interview I'm going into the studio to put some guitar on 'The Calling,' which I wrote with Eric Clapton. It's time to put that one to bed.”

As the punchy intro to “Love of My Life” emerges from the boom box, Santana's head bobs with the music. “You know what? There is enough guitar in there!”

Santana holds passionate views on a variety of subjects, and whether discussing songwriting, tone, and soloing – or such hot-button topics as spirit guides, self-validation, synchronicity, senility, and suicide – he presents his thoughts calmly, without a hint of rock-star posturing. Santana's speech is as distinctive as his playing, and he weaves his colorful tales of music and mysticism with unguarded sincerity.

Even if you don't share all of his beliefs, his ideas will get you thinking about the guitar and its role in our lives. Santana has survived more than three decades in the fickle music business without losing an iota of his enthusiasm for the 6-string and its great players. We can all learn from that.

Your new record is a remarkably collaborative effort. How did this come about?

“Through meditations and dreams, I received these instructions: 'We want you to hook up with people at junior high schools, high schools, and universities. We're going to get you back into radio airplay.' I said, 'okay,' because a lot of young people are not happy unless they are miserable. You can tell by what's happening at the schools. The vibrations of this music and the resonance in the lyrics will present these people with new options. 

“I don't want them to feel like me or think like me – we're all individuals, and we're all unique. But with our music, we're presenting a new octave – a new menu. This menu says: 'We are multi-dimensional spirits dwelling in the flesh, solely for the purpose of evolution.'

“You see, if you take the time to crystallize your intentions, motives, and purpose, and direct them for the highest good of life and people on the planet – behold, you get synchronicity. I'll give you an example. Working with [Arista label head] Clive Davis, we got hooked up with Lauryn Hill. She said, 'Oh man, I love your music. Since I was a child, I listened to 'Samba Pa Ti' – I even wanted to put lyrics to it.' So, Lauryn invited me to play with her at the Grammy Awards. Playing with her was my first time there.”

And what a night – she won five Grammys.

“Yes, she cleaned up. Eric Clapton was in the audience, and he saw us perform. After the show, he called and said, 'Look man, I heard that people at Arista were trying to contact me to play on your new record. I've been going through some serious changes in my life, and I was at a really critical point, but things are better now. Do you still hear me on your album? Is there room for me?' To hear Eric say that! I grew up listening to him, Peter Green and Michael Bloomfield.”

Then what happened?

“Well, my spirits are Miles Davis and Bill Graham [the impresario, not the evangelist]. Even though they've left the physical world, they still come in my dreams and give me instructions. So when Eric asked if there was room for him on the record, I could hear Bill saying, 'No, you schmuck, you're too late!' So I'm on the phone having a conversation with Bill and Eric at the same time. 

“To Bill, I said, 'Wait. Maybe you can talk to him like that, but I can't.' And to Eric, I said, 'Yeah, but you know what? I wouldn't think of dipping you into something that has already been recorded. Why don't you come over, and we'll write something from scratch?

“And that's how we started. We went through a couple of things and settled on something I had written, but never recorded. It has a Prince bass groove, but it's very swampy – you could hear John Lee Hooker or the Staple Singers playing it.”

So that's synchronicity at work?

“Exactly. Here's another example: Last summer, I asked an artist named Michael Rios to create a poster for us. I marked some passages in a few books and asked him to start with those ideas and then continue with his own vision. Do you know what's really amazing? The images for lyrics that Dave Matthews, Everlast, Wyclef, Lauryn Hill, and Eagle Eye Cherry brought to the album are all in the poster! I didn't tell them to look at it or anything. So, I know there is something happening.

“It was like that from '69 until '73, and then it went somewhere else. Now it's happening again with this music. I'm in total awe of how fast and smooth things have been. Nobody has had a cow, nobody is bugged out – and there are a lot of producers, engineers, and artists involved with this record. They're putting their best foot forward and all being very gracious. I keep pinching myself. I feel very incidental – I just show up, we see each other's eyes, we hear the music, and we start recording.”

How do you describe your music?

“I don't see myself playing black music or white music or gray music. I play rainbow music. It's like diamonds – all the colors are there, but it's still clear.”

What's the process when you co-write a song with, say, Dave Matthews? Do you send tapes back and forth, or do you write in the studio?

“There's a story behind that one. When my father passed away two or three years ago, I didn't listen to music for four days – that's a long time for me. I was picking up my son from school, and I thought, okay, time to listen to some radio. I turned on a classical station, and the first thing I heard was this melody [gently sings a slow, six-note theme]. The melody just stayed with me. They didn't say who the composer was, but I thought it was Strauss.

“I wanted to find out what this was, so I went to the classical music section at Tower Records and said, 'All I have is this melody.' I sang it, and the guy goes, 'Oh yeah. Brahms' Concerto No. 2.' They get me the CD, and that's the song! I said, 'Damn, you guys are good!'

“So, I brought this melody to Dave Matthews in New York. I said, 'I hear this with a 1999 bass.' I also recited these lines:

You're the love of my life/You're the breath of my prayers/Take my hand, lead me there/ With you is where I want to be

“Dave sat down and – bam – wrote the song lyrics right there on the spot, and we recorded it.”

Your guitar melody swings a bit more than the Brahms theme.

“If Brahms were alive today, he would swing it, too, because it's what's happening. Listen to Dave's phrasing – he sang it like Billie Holiday or Frank Sinatra – way behind the beat. It's that human thing. Only squares sing in the middle.”

As always, your guitar sound is very vocal.

“When you listen to vocalists like Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick, you learn to phrase differently. For a long time, I wouldn't listen to guitar players – Joe Pass, Pat Martino, Jim Hall – because I felt that was another generation's music. I felt my music was blues and rock. But now, I'm discovering all this music by Jim Hall, Kenny Burrell, and Wes Montgomery, and it's like, 'Oh, this guy is burning just as hard, but with a different fire.' 

“I'm able to check out all the guitar players, take what I need, and still make those notes like Miles – you know, when you hit that note, you don't want to breathe until you finish with it. You go [exhales].

“Miles, Peter Green – there are very few people who make you hold your breath until that note is ended. You literally feel like you've got a colic in your stomach. You get goose bumps. I love musicians who make you want to cry and laugh at the same time. When they go for it, you go with them, and you don't come back until they come back. [Laughs.] There are not that many players who can consistently do that. Potentially, we all should be doing it.”

Were you listening to any particular musicians while working on this album?

“I was listening to Peter Green, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis.”

What were you listening for?

“Peter Green for his legato tones. I mean, the first four or five years of Peter Green, because lately he plays more like Pat Martino. Staccato notes – [like] John Coltrane. And from Miles, you get the alchemy of making 50,000 notes into five. But with those five, you shake the world. 

“That was Miles' supreme gift. He could play two or three notes and, man or woman, you'd just go, 'Oh, my God.' Listen to Sketches of Spain. Play your guitar and try to keep up with the notes, the way he holds them, the breath of it. That's the voice of angels, man.

“You see, great music comes not from thinking, but from pure emotion. As the Grateful Dead people say, 'it's when the music plays you.' You make the best music when you're not conscious of doing it. I've been saying these things since the beginning. 

“I remember getting in trouble with Frank Zappa – I'm pretty sure he coined the phrase, 'shut up and play your guitar' for people like me, because we talk a lot! But I am passionate about turning on massive amounts of kids and pulling them out of that miserable state. I want to turn them over.

“You don't have to be Jimi Hendrix or Charlie Parker – you can get it done in your own way. God made the world round so we can all have center stage. Everybody is important, as long as you're doing it from your heart. Frustration and depression lead to homicide and genocide, but inspiration and vision lead to a spiritual orgasm.”

Can you describe this?

“It's where you're constantly happy, and you don't have to feel weird when people say, 'Man, what are you laughing about?' I'm laughing because I know the secret of life. And the secret of life is that I have validated my existence. I know that I am worth more than my house, my bank account, or any physical thing. When I hit that note – if I hit it correctly – I'm just as important as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, or anybody. Because when I hit that note, I hit the umbilical cord of anybody who is listening.

“When you hit a note like that people say, 'What kind of guitar is that? What kind of speakers are you using? What kind of strings?' No, man. It's not all that – it's the note. Now when you explain this to kids, they say, 'Really? I can do that too?' Sure. We can teach you how to put five things into one note. [To illustrate, Santana holds out the karate edge of his hand, and then rotates it to reveal his palm and five fingers.] These are the ingredients for being a complete communicator: Soul, heart, mind, body, cojones. One note.

“I validated my existence before I got out of high school. People would ask, 'What are you going to do when you leave school?' I'd say, 'I'm going to play with Michael Bloomfield and B.B. King.' They thought I was crazy! I'd say, 'Why are you laughing?' They'd say, 'Man, you're tripping.' 'No, you're tripping because you don't know what you want to do. I know what I want to do, and I know who I'm going to be doing it with. And I'm going to play with those people.

“Once you learn to validate your existence, you have the wind in your sails – where do you want to go? – and you can never commit suicide. I would say that as great as Danny Gatton was, he never took the time to validate his existence. When you feel that the world is not appreciating your genius, you're already setting yourself up to be a victim. There are a lot of musicians like that: 'My manager ripped me off. My record company ripped me off. I'm going to eat beans, but I'm not going to play what they want me to play.'”

Which albums inspire you?

“Tell everybody to hear Spellbinder by Gabor Szabo. That is a must for anybody who plays guitar. He's the person who I credit with pulling me out of B.B. King. B.B. had us in a headlock – Michael Bloomfield, Peter Green – we were all under his spell. Gabor played like a Gypsy, but different from Paco de Lucia. I first heard Gabor with [drummer] Chico Hamilton. The band had no piano player. It was just congas, timbales, and drums with Gabor and [bassist] Ron Carter. It sounded unbelievable.”

So Spellbinder is one of those “Holy Grail” recordings?

“Exactly. Also 'The Supernatural' by Peter Green, Bola Sete's At the Monterey Jazz Festival, and Wes Montgomery's Goin' Out of My Head. Unplug the phone, sit down with these, and you're in for a real surprise.”

If someone was searching for essential Santana, which of your records would you recommend?

“For pure songs, Abraxas. For pure guitar, I would say Caravanserai. Neal Schon and I played really well on that album. At the time, the Allman Brothers had two guitar players. I remember Miles [Davis] was really upset with me because I had another guitarist, but I told him, 'I think Neal is a great guitar player, and that's what I hear right now.' I believe it worked.

“Later, Neal went to do his thing with Journey, and because I still craved to play with another guitarist, I played with John McLaughlin. Once I got that craving out of the way, I wanted to learn why I was so fascinated with Coltrane and that sky-church music, as Jimi called it. So I got together with [pianist and harpist] Alice Coltrane, and I found out why she writes, and how she writes those celestial strings. It's important for guitarists to listen to her and [tenor saxophonist] Pharoah Sanders.”

How do you write songs? Do you keep a tape recorder running to document your ideas?

“All the time. I play for two or three hours and keep flipping tapes. I mark them and then come in the next day and listen to them. After a half an hour, I might say, 'Ooh – right there. Let me transfer this.' I keep another tape recorder filled with little nuggets of all that rambling. That's what I present to Eric or Dave Matthews.”

So it's a two-stage process – first you capture inspiration, then later you organize those magic moments so you can play them for people.

“Right. That's what I've been doing since I can remember. It works for me. Late at night, if I want to check in with my internal internet, I load the tape recorder, get some nice tones, and play. And sometimes it's okay to watch TV with the sound off. Maybe you're playing music to a car chase, and the next day you go, 'What was I thinking?' Well, you were watching TV and putting music to it.”

I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about tone and how you got it on this record.

“I'm very honored to be working with René Martinez, who worked with Stevie Ray Vaughan. René can play the hell out of the Segovia guitar. I should be his roadie! He told me everything that Stevie Ray went through to get his tone on tape. Amps all over the place – in the kitchen, bathroom, halls, and everything. Everybody has to find out what works for them.”

What works for you?

“Well, I bring my amps and microphones to every studio, because I found out that when you position certain microphones in a certain way, the room doesn't matter after a while. I have one microphone placed at the amplifier and another one positioned farther back so you can hear [claps] the ghost sound. You can't get that with knobs. They just give you an emulation.”

As you recorded Supernatural in several different studios, was it difficult to get a consistent tone?

“Sometimes I would say, 'Look man, you're giving me a snapshot of me. Imagine I'm a singer – you're only giving me head tones, nose tones, and throat tones. I want the chest tones and belly tones – even toe tones! Give me the whole thing. That's why I've got a Marshall.' 

“The technician might say, 'I don't know what you mean.' I'd say, 'You want to know what I mean? Open the damn door.' As soon as he'd open the studio door, I'd say, 'Hear that sound coming in? I want that in the speakers. I don't want to sound compressed and chopped. I don't sound like that.' Sometimes, I'll help place the microphones – and now I even bring my own engineer, Jim Gaines.

“The only thing that I have is my tone. That's like my face. Your tone is your fingerprint and your personality. Don't mess with that. Otherwise, you can get anyone from L.A. who just does it with pedals and sounds like a beer commercial. That's okay for them, but I learned by listening to T-Bone Walker and Peter Green, so I have a tone.”

You mentioned Marshalls. What amps did you use for this record?

“I used Marshalls, Boogies, and Twins. I went through my six Marshalls and got rid of the ones that weren't consistent. Some you plug in and it's glorious. Some you have to baby-sit and change diapers and change tubes. I found the ones that are happening in the studio or a coliseum or anywhere, and I kept those. We mark them – these speakers go with this head. That way, you're not shooting in the dark. You know exactly what you're going for when you're recording.”

Are you still playing your signature PRS?

“Still the PRS, although with Eric, we both played Strats because I wanted to keep it even. It's such a pretty tone. Because of René, I finally played through a Tube Screamer. In the past I always said, 'I'll never use those things because I want to sound like me.' I would just mark the floor in the places where my guitar sustains. When I'm onstage, there are marks for this song, marks for that song....”

Do you mark the studio floor, too?

“Oh yes. At first I told René that I didn't want to play a Strat, because to make it sustain, I'd have to play so loud that I didn't know if I could have babies! So he goes, 'You don't have to play that loud. Try this Tube Screamer.' So we plug it in and – bam – it sustains right through a Twin or a Marshall. 

“You can still talk, but you're sustaining furiously. I said, 'Oh, I shouldn't have been so bullheaded. I'm so stubborn.' And he says, 'You didn't know. Stevie used pedals to sustain.' I went, 'No kidding? I thought he was just loud.'

“It has been a real education working with René. In fact, the entire process of making this album is new to me. Even though I've been recording since '67, all of a sudden I'm thrown into a whole new way of doing things. I really like it – it's fresh and very challenging.”

Any advice for fellow guitarists?

“The last thing I want to say is that whether you play blues, bluegrass, or jazz – whatever – realize that when you get older, you either get senile or become gracious. There's no in-between.

“You become senile when you think the world short-changed you, or everybody wakes up to screw you. You become gracious when you realize that you have something the world needs, and people are happy to see you when you come into the room. Your wrinkles either show that you're nasty, cranky, and senile, or that you're always smiling.

“That's why I hang around with Wayne Shorter, John Lee Hooker, Herbie Hancock – people who have passion. I've never seen them bored. I'm like a kid – I'm 51 years old, but I still feel like 17. I got the recent Guitar Player at my house yesterday, and I sat down and read it. It's the only magazine I read from beginning to end, nonstop.

“Most magazines are very biased into one octave. Your magazine covers women and men, the gifted and the beginners, brilliant and crazy garage bands – all of it – and I relate to that. Whether you've got a green mohawk or a suit and a tie, it's still the same: Are you saying something valid? Are you contributing, bringing new flowers that we haven't seen in the garden?

“I'm looking at the new guitars and new amplifiers like a painter discovering new brushes or mediums. That fascination with instruments and sound and texture hasn't gone yet. It's really fun.”

The so-called lawsuit-era copy guitars made in Japan during the 1970s and ’80s have developed a cult following in recent years, seducing today’s guitarists for their ability to often surpass the quality of the American-made originals from the same period. But the most successful and acclaimed Japanese guitar of the late ’70s wasn’t a direct copy of anything. Instead, the Yamaha SG-2000 was a creative and original design – a “Les Paul killer” that proved to be an able assassin in the hands of a long line of big-name players, starting with none other than Carlos Santana.

Flashback, if you will, to the mid ’70s, when American-made electric guitars weren’t quite what they used to be. The Gibson Les Paul was coming off a run as the rock and blues-rock guitar to own, but everyone was chasing the relatively few versions that were made between 1958 and ’60, and those were reaching insane prices for the day: “Two thousand dollars for a used guitar? Are you crazy!?”

Meanwhile, Carlos Santana had segued from Gibson SGs to Les Pauls in a tone quest that was very much still underway when Yamaha approached him to endorse its new guitar, most likely the SG-175, released in 1974 or early ’75. Ostensibly a modified Les Paul, its neck was glued into a thick solid-mahogany body – albeit one with pointy dual cutaways – and sported dual humbucking pickups and other Gibson-inspired appointments. Yet, as far as Santana was concerned, it wasn’t quite there.

Feeling the effort was a little lightweight and lacking in sustain, Santana told Guitar Player in 1978, “I sat down with them and said, ‘Look, I can’t play the guitar, man.’ I asked them to put a big chunk of metal right where the tailpiece is. You hit it and it’s like hitting a grand piano – it really resonates.”

Yamaha took these suggestions, and others, and ran with them, initiating an R&D and prototyping period that spanned nearly two years. The final results still looked something like a double-cutaway Les Paul – or a Les Paul Custom, given the elegant adornments – but the guitar was built like nothing else on the planet. Unveiled in 1976, the SG-2000 boasted myriad features and complex construction that seemed destined to define how top-tier electric guitars would be built from then on. That didn’t happen, but that isn’t to say Yamaha failed in its overall achievement either. Included in this ground-up redesign were:

• A neck-through-body construction, with a multi-piece laminate forming both the body core and the neck
• A proprietary T-Cross System construction of the body and neck, which used boards of mahogany and maple glued together at opposing vertical and horizontal orientations, plus a three-piece maple top
• An ebony fingerboard with mother-of-pearl, split-arrow inlays
• Extremely bend-friendly jumbo frets
• A brass sustain block sunken into a channel in the top of the body beneath the bridge
• Enclosed, permanently lubricated tuners with a highly efficient 15:1 gear ratio
• Fully shielded Alnico V humbucking pickups with three-point mounting for easy tilt adjustment
• A ribcage contour in the upper back for more comfortable playing
• In-house control knobs with fluted sides for easy gripping

Aside from these details, the SG-2000 was just made very, very well, displaying an overall level of quality, fit and finish that put many similar American-made examples of the time to shame. Plus, it had a look that celebrated its intended elitism, with seven-ply body binding, five-ply headstock binding, gold-plated hardware and a decorative scrolling engraved in the tailpiece, along with other upscale details.

Although the model was often compared to the Les Paul it was intended to “kill,” Yamaha had clearly taken pride in the design and made every effort to create an entirely different guitar, despite some outward similarities. Back to back, even the body shapes are more different than they might at first appear, the SG-2000’s lines describing what would be a more fully rounded upper bout (if the cutaways continued) and a shallower waist.

Big-name players lined up to play it, and the SG-2000 made one of the sharpest ascents into the hierarchy of premium electric guitars experienced by any new model, much less one designed and manufactured in Japan, when the country was still largely known for producing copies.

Santana embraced the new design, playing a couple of custom-made models with abundant decorative inlays (available briefly in 1976 as a Limited Edition Devadip model). He used it widely between 1977 and his move to Paul Reed Smith guitars sometime after 1982, an era that many longtime fans believe features some of his most distinctive and toneful playing. 

Standout moments include the live takes of “Europa” and “Let the Children Play/Jugando” from Moonflower; “Well All Right,” “Open Invitation” and “Wham!” from Inner Secrets; and similarly juicy SG-2000-meets-Boogie adventures from the albums Zebop! and Marathon.

Scottish new-wave guitarist John McGeoch logged several genre-defining moments playing his SG-2000 with Magazine and Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bill Nelson embraced one with Be Bop Deluxe, and Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera, Little Feat’s Paul Barrere, Boz Scaggs and Al Di Meola all frequently played Yamaha’s dominant electric.

As memorable as any of these are, some of the most distinctive examples of the guitar in action arguably came after Scottish guitarist Stuart Adamson ported his SG-2000 over from punk band the Skids when he formed Big Country in 1981. Alongside co-guitarist Bruce Watson, who also frequently played an SG-2000, Adamson applied the Yamaha electric to channel Celtic folk modes into hooky high-gain guitar riffs, logging hits like “In a Big Country” and “Fields of Fire” in the process.

Promoted alongside the SG-2000 were the SG-1500 – which initially had a set neck with sustain block before moving to neck-through construction without sustain block in 1981 – and the set-neck SG-1000, plus a handful of lesser variations. The upper-tier SG-3000, less often seen, was adorned with abalone purfling and split abalone and mother-of-pearl position markers, special pickups and other highly decorative treatments.

The SG-2000 itself has occasionally been available from Yamaha in reissue forms, sometimes more prominently so in the domestic Japanese market, while used examples have begun enjoying collectible status.

Essential Ingredients

• Gold-plated hardware
• Maple and mahogany neck-through-body “T-Cross System” construction
• 24.75-inch scale length
• Dual open-frame Alnico V Yamaha humbucking pickups
• Modified Tune-o-matic–style bridge mounted atop a brass sustain block
• Multi-ply body and headstock binding

“When it comes to marriage or relationships, I’m a one-person person,” says Carlos Santana, who married his drummer, Cindy Blackman, after proposing to her onstage at a gig in Illinois. “But when it comes to guitars,” he adds, “I’m definitely not a one-guitar person.”

However, Carlos has been pretty brand-loyal over the course of his almost 50-year career. He was a staunch Gibson man in the years following his eponymous band’s debut at Woodstock. The SG he played at that historic 1969 festival didn’t last very long, but one magical Les Paul served him through Santana’s classic golden period, from 1970 to 1972, when he made Abraxas, Santana III and Caravanserai.

Carlos switched to Yamahas in the mid Seventies, designing his own model in collaboration with the Japanese guitar-making giant. But ever since the early Eighties, he has been one of the foremost advocates of Paul Reed Smith guitars.

He rode a PRS to fame on his phenomenal 1999 comeback album, Supernatural, and on many other outstanding recordings. Smith himself will tell you that Santana can be demanding when it comes to guitars. Much like the renowned guitar maker, Carlos has a great ear and can assess a guitar’s tonal virtues after playing just a few notes or chords on it.

“As soon as I hear it, I can tell if it’s gonna be a lamp or something that can go onstage,” he says, and laughs. “You can tell when a guitar sounds all nasal and weird. All you can do with it is wire it up for a light bulb and put a lampshade on it. That’s all it’s good for. It may look nice, but if it doesn’t have the tone I want, I’m not interested.

“Some people might add a lot of pedals to fix the tone, but that’s not for me. It’s gotta be straight from my fingers to the amplifier. If it don’t sound good like that, you’re not gonna fix it with a mixing board or computers.”

Still, Santana isn’t averse to picking up the occasional Strat or other guitar, as long as the tone is there. Pulling out some of his finest instruments, he just can’t resist plugging a few into an amp and letting rip. 

1968 Gibson Les Paul Custom

This instrument, a refinished maple-top Les Paul, is pretty much the holy grail of Santana guitars. Carlos purchased it at Prune Music in San Francisco in 1970, shortly after his group’s big breakthrough. It was a replacement for the red Gibson SG he played at Woodstock.

“That SG wouldn’t stay in tune, so I destroyed it,” he says. “At the time, if I wanted a new guitar, I had to ask the band, ’cause we were all paying for it. The band didn’t want to get me a new guitar, so I destroyed the SG. Then I had to get a new one. This guitar was my main workhorse for at least seven albums. It’s got the tone, the feel. You grab it and it’s ready to go.”

This is the guitar that generated the fiery leads on “Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen,” “Oye Como Va,” and, indeed, just about everything else on the classic Abraxas album from 1970, as well as the inspired discs that followed in its wake.

PRS Santana Model Prototype

Master guitar builder Paul Reed Smith began showing Santana his guitars in 1976, just as Smith was launching his business. The instrument that hooked Santana was the legendary Paul Reed Smith Golden Eagle, the first maple-top guitar Smith ever built, owned by Heart’s Howard Leese.

Carlos borrowed the guitar to play the leads on his 1981 Zebop! album and fell in love with the instrument.

“It had a very rich, low, masculine tone,” he recalls. It was like, ‘Ooh, I’ve been playing a soprano, and this is a tenor.’”

Santana commissioned Smith to start building guitars for him. The guitars that Smith custom-built for Santana in the Eighties would eventually become the basis for the PRS Santana II model. The one guitar that particularly pleased Carlos was the model seen here, known in the Santana camp simply as Number Two.

PRS Santana II “Supernatural”

“This guitar really is supernatural. I played most of the Supernatural songs on it. There is the Woodstock guitar and there is the Supernatural guitar. Those are huge doors to walk through.”

Of the many guitars that Paul Reed Smith has made for Carlos, this one holds a very special place in the guitarist’s collection. It arrived just as Carlos was beginning work on Supernatural, which would usher in an exciting new phase of his career.

Carlos has often spoken of being divinely guided in creating Supernatural, and the guitar’s appearance seems providential.

Carlos calls it his Red Coral guitar. He knew there was something unique about it as soon as he picked it up. “It was the tonality, the weight of it, and the feel of it,” he says. “And the color: a beautiful orangey, salmon red. A lot of times, the color of a guitar changes the mood for me. And what can you do without the right mood?

1952/1953 Gibson Les Paul

Another historic Les Paul in Santana’s collection is this instrument that belonged to the late blues master Mike Bloomfield. “He was one of my first heroes,” Carlos says. “Before I heard Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix, I heard Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop in the Butterfield Blues Band in 1965. So I treasure this guitar.”

It was Bloomfield who gave Carlos his first shot at notoriety, inviting him onstage to jam at the Fillmore West. The event led to Santana’s discovery by Fillmore owner and entrepreneur Bill Graham.

Also notable is the fact that this Les Paul was originally a gold top and was subsequently refinished with a flame top. In addition to the refinish job, the original trapeze tailpiece has been replaced with a Tune-o-matic, and humbuckers have taken the place of the original P-90s.

1963 Fender Stratocaster

Carlos picked up this Strat at a Guitar Center sale several years ago. He recalls, “They told me, ‘Some guy in Ukiah [California] had this under his bed for years.’” He bought the guitar on the spot and used it to play his interpretation of “Little Wing” on Guitar Heaven.

Carlos has fond memories of a recent gig at which he played this Strat through Stevie Ray Vaughan’s legendary Dumble Steel String Singer amp.

“When I got this guitar, I had the same dream over and over, where Stevie Ray came to me,” he says. “In the dream, Stevie Ray said, ‘Listen, Carlos, you know where I am, man. I’m not in the body anymore. And where I am, I have no fingers. I’m just pure light. But I miss the sound and feel of my guitar. Please call my brother Jimmie and ask him to lend you my Steel String Singer. I need to feel your fingers through this amplifier.’

“A few nights later, I had the dream again. So I called Jimmie Vaughan and asked to borrow the amp, and he was like, ‘Hell no!’ But then René Martinez, who was Stevie Ray’s guitar tech, had the same dream too. He called Jimmie and told him. Next thing I knew, the amp arrived.

“The amp and the Strat came in time for a gig at Madison Square Garden. I plugged the guitar into the amp at soundcheck, and it was like...whoosssh! I said, ‘I wanna play the whole concert with this!’”

Steve Lukather will never forget the first time he played with Jeff Beck. It was at a huge outdoor concert in Japan in 1986 featuring sets from Beck and Carlos Santana, with a young Lukather guesting in both bands.

“I was ecstatic,” the guitarist says. “I mean, Carlos and Jeff – these were my heroes. I love Carlos, but Jeff’s playing hit me hard, just as much as Hendrix’s or anyone else’s from the post-Beatles era. I’m up there with Beck, having the time of my life, and so honored to be there, but I’m also super nervous. I’m just 26 or 27, in awe, going, ‘This is like some wet dream I had when I was a kid. How am I supposed to play with Jeff Beck?’”

Nor will Lukather forget the final time he shared a bill with Beck, last summer at a festival in France.

“Fucking Jeff,” remembers Lukather, who was playing with Toto that night. “He’s about to go onstage and says to me, ‘Don’t expect too much. I haven’t been playing much lately.’ And then he walks out and just eviscerates the venue and rips the place apart.

“Everybody was screaming after everything he played. I’m at the monitor board just dancing, hands in the air, going, ‘Jeff!’”

But Lukather’s most memorable time spent with Beck may have been the autumn of 1997, when Beck hired him as a producer.

“We did about six weeks at David Gilmour’s studio on the Thames, starting about three days after Princess Diana died,” Lukather recalls. “I got to see it all up close – the whole process of how Jeff liked to do things.

“He’d have a Marshall miked up in the live room, but he liked to play in the control room, with a little delay and reverb going in the monitors, and with a Fender Champ at his feet, facing up at his guitar.

“Jeff was so magical. I don’t think I ever saw him tune a guitar. He would pick up a guitar that was like rotted and out of tune. I’d go, ‘Jesus, Jeff, these strings are like 20 years old. Is this a B string where the high E should be?’ and he’d go, ‘Whatever,’ and play it, and it would be perfect.

“He had perfect pitch, and he didn’t know it, because he didn’t understand what that might be. ‘F#13’ meant nothing to him, because he was completely unschooled. But if you played it for him, he’d figure it out – and probably make it weirder!

“He was playing modal stuff back with the Yardbirds and didn’t even know it. The worst thing that could have ever happened to Jeff Beck would be for him to take lessons and learn how to do things properly. If that had happened, there would be no Jeff Beck.

“When we started recording, Jeff said to me, ‘No matter what it is, I don’t want it to sound normal, or like anyone else. If it’s one note, I want to find a really weird way to play that one note.’ So he’d do the note as a false harmonic or faux slide or something. He was always looking for sounds that were new and different.

“It was actually hard to record him, because, as a fan, I loved everything he did, but as a producer it would be difficult to say, ‘What happens if you try this another way, or do another take?’ I asked him to double something once and he goes, ‘Oh, okay, you want me to be “studio guy,”’ even though he had doubled things before on earlier records. To him, stuff like that was studio trickery.

“One time, I put a 50 or 60 millisecond delay to the left, getting a sound kind of like that beautiful stereo wah sound he had on ‘Ain’t Superstitious,’ and he says, ‘I don’t know, man, I did that 30 years ago.’”

Lukather is proud of the tracks he did with Beck, but the memory may be a tad bittersweet.

“We had about eight songs done, and he played amazing stuff on there,” Lukather says. “But one day he heard the band Prodigy and suddenly caught techno fever. He wanted to make a record like that, so we never got a chance to finish. “Jeff probably has 10 or 11 unfinished albums hidden somewhere. Still, recording him was one of the greatest times of my life.

“Jeff was like Pavarotti or Jaco or Holdsworth – a guy who took things to another level. His playing has that thing that you can’t learn. It’s extra. Some people get a little extra, some don’t. 

"He was the only cat who could play one note and everybody else would put their guitars back in their cases and go, ‘I’m outta here.’

“He had the fattest live guitar sound I’ve ever heard – two Plexis dimed behind the stage, old-school – but you can’t re-create it. It was in his heart and in his hands. It was his voice. The fact that I’ll never be able to stand on the side of the stage and watch him play live again, well, I’m busted up over it.”

***The following appeared in the January 2020 issue of Guitar Player***

I was blown away by the story of Fanny, the band June Millington and her sister Jean formed in the mid 1960s.

The group signed to Reprise and broke out in 1970 as one of the first all-female rock and roll bands to enjoy major-label status.

But Fanny wasn’t a gimmick. The group’s members were serious about their playing and worked hard to be competent on their instruments and tight as a group.

They came up in the ’60’s California music scene alongside groups like the Grateful Dead, Santana, Jefferson Airplane and Little Feat.

Although Fanny never broke out with a million-selling hit record, their place in rock history is undisputed.

June has a sage-like wisdom and an extraordinary depth as a player. She spoke with me about being part of the late-’60s rock scene.

Fanny had an amazing run. What was it like chasing a music career at that time?

We were a hard-working band, let me tell you. We worked 24/7. Let’s say I did a gig: I would make a point to ask whoever was good on the bill if they wanted to jam, and could they teach me something?

After that, I would go to see a really good band and sit in the front row, and I’d watch how they did it. I remember standing in front of the Grateful Dead at UC Davis, and that was the first time I thought to myself, How does Jerry Garcia do that?

By that time I must have been 16 or 17. I could drive myself to San Francisco, and I’d always stand right in front of the guitar player. So I wound up standing right in front of Jimi Hendrix. Same with Albert King, and Cream. And there would be this little kid standing next to me, and we’d be jockeying for that spot, always standing right next to each other. [laughs]

And then, when the first Santana album came out, I saw Carlos’ picture and realized, Oh my God! That’s that kid! He and I were doing the same thing.

Back then, there wasn’t any place you could get the information, and moreover, you couldn’t get the information because people were making it up on the spot. So that’s what I did, 24/7, and, essentially, that’s what the band did.

Who were your favorite guitar players?

Jimi Hendrix is at the top of the list. I have to say Albert King, too. Actually, other than Jerry Garcia, the first gig I saw was in San Francisco, and it was a double bill with Jimi Hendrix and Albert King. I’m telling you, the top of my head exploded. It was unbelievable.

I was standing right in front of them. So that kind of viscerally put it in my DNA. From that point on, I was nonstop when it came to the guitar. I was probably 17 then.

By the time we went down to L.A., Lowell George had become one of my best friends. We spent a lot of time playing together. He used to come over to our basement and jam. I met Lowell at a jam in the [San Fernando] Valley, and we both enjoyed each other. I mean, we were really close.

I didn’t play the blues, and I remember Lowell came over one evening and said, “June, you can’t play rock and roll and have this career without learning how to play this kind of music.” He pulled out a doobie and got really high, and he put on Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters.

With Lowell, it was like being in college. He was a great teacher, ’cause it wasn’t just your licks – it was your tone. A whole bunch of us were trying to figure out how to get great sound from amps, and we were always changing amps and fooling around with different tubes. We were developing our sounds.

I had a ’57 Les Paul then, and I still do. I still use it. People say I shouldn’t even travel with it any more. But that thing plays me in ways that other guitars can’t, you know? I don’t even really play when I play that guitar. It just, like, happens!

Order Fanny: The Right to Rock here.

For more information about Sue Foley, visit suefoley.com.

Santana issued Abraxas, their second studio album, in 1970. Although the release isn’t always perfect, pound for pound it remains the most focused and concise album from Carlos Santana’s group, which at the time featured keyboardist Gregg Rolie, bassist David Brown, drummer Michael Shrieve, and percussionists José “Chepito” Areas and Michael Carabello.

Consider Carlos’ iconic solo on “Black Magic Woman.” Most of us know it by heart, and it rings like a familiar nursery rhyme we’ve heard since childhood. It’s the melodic centerpiece of the tune, and a wank-free zone at that.

“Samba Pa Ti,” my personal favorite track, made a huge impact on me. It’s a powerful, melodic performance, retaining the song’s core mood without losing its ability to captivate, something Santana did so well.

To me, this instrumental is almost on par with Santo & Johnny’s “Sleep Walk”: It conjures distilled emotions and captures one’s imagination so well that it could almost inspire a book or movie. I still marvel at how Carlos never self-indulgently leaves the scripted mood while effortlessly walking a tightrope of melodic understatement.

On “Samba Pa Ti,” we are offered a front-row seat to his talent for musical storytelling. If I were to make the perfect Santana group record, I might Frankenstein Abraxas and Santana III, the latter of which has some “out of the park” home runs.

They include “Jungle Strut,” which sounds like what you might get if the Allman Brothers were born in Cuba and started a revolution. 

Guitarist Neil Schon, then new to the group, comes on like gangbusters and elevates Carlos to new shredding heights.

Schon’s solo on “Everybody’s Everything” sounds like Eric Clapton after drinking three gallons from the Fountain of Youth. That said, Abraxas is a more realized body of work than Santana III, with the group’s ambitious musicality caged within catchy pop structures.

The tracks are played by a band accustomed to facing an audience, and determined to move its listeners. In essence, the Santana group is one of the greatest bar bands of all time.

Carlos Santana’s elegant melodicism and sensibility made a deep impression on my own approach, and I still apply the tools he gave me. I try to remain close to the integrity of the song, and soulfulness is best when wrangled intimately from the fretboard.

The most important lesson I derived from him is that having your own distinct voice is the ultimate goal.

On some of his post-Santana group playing, Carlos let notes sustain to the point where a listener might go make a sandwich and come back without missing anything.

But his solo work on Love Devotion Surrender with John McLaughlin, the title track to 1973’s Welcome, and the songs “Promise of a Fisherman” (from 1974’s Borboletta) and “Europa” (from 1976’s Amigos) stand as examples of an artist successfully seeking to grow.

Carlos remains a master storyteller who expresses himself through his instrument.

Order the Santana classic Abraxas here.

***The following originally appeared in the June 2011 issue of Guitar Player***

Certain guitar solos are infused with magic. They may or may or may not be technically challenging, flashy, or otherwise virtuoso, but they have that special something that sets them apart from what came before, and they typically alert guitarists everywhere that their world has forever changed. 

What’s more, those magic solos tend to inspire legions of guitarists to attempt to unlock their technical and tonal mysteries, and permeate the six-string community’s collective unconscious, re-emerging later as direct and indirect influences on individual players’ styles. Somewhat paradoxically, however, there is no consensus on which solos have achieved this iconic status.

When we began working on this story, we came up with a lengthy list of solos to include. Our first task was to set up some guidelines. We decided to limit the list to electric rock solos, along with blues and jazz-rock fusion solos that influenced rock. We also set a limit of one solo per artist.

At that point, there were still many more than 40 solos on the list, so we had to make some hard choices. To start, guitarists who were hugely influential overall, but couldn’t be tied to an ultra-influential solo – such as Tony Iommi and George Harrison – were cut. 

We then had to narrow down our selections to just one for each artist, which was difficult for someone like Eric Clapton, whose entries at that point included “Crossroads,” his cover of Freddie King’s “Hideaway” on the Blues Breakers album, and his historic wah workout on “White Room.” Once the smoke cleared, however, we had reached consensus. 

The solos are organized chronologically – including those that fall within the same year – because we thought it would be instructive to see how they relate to each other historically. 

We hope that you like we came up with and perhaps even discover an overlooked gem or two for yourself...

1. Elmore James “Dust My Broom” (1951)

Jimi Hendrix originally called himself Jimmy James and Maurice James in homage to Elmore, and every bluesman since the ‘50s – particularly slide players – owes something to the King of the Slide Guitar. 

Played in an open-D tuning (D, A, D, F#, A, D, low to high), probably on a Kay flattop or Harmony Sovereign with a D’Armond pickup, the slide hook on this tune, and the solo based on it, reappear countless times throughout blues and rock music.

2. Les Paul “How High the Moon” (1951)

The super-syncopated, slap-back soaked runs, chukka-chukka doublestops with bluesy bends, plucky cascading figures, and idiosyncratic ornamentations in Paul’s two solos helped propel this standard up the charts, and further established Paul as the most creative electric guitar player of his generation. 

It was recorded with his “old Epiphone” – a.k.a. “the Clunker” and “the Breadwinner” – with custom-wound hot pickups and other major modifications.

3. Scotty Moore “That’s Alright, Mama” (1954)

Armed with his Gibson ES-295 through a ‘52 Fender Deluxe, Scotty Moore, bassist Bill Black, and their bud Elvis, had no idea what a firestorm they were about to create with this early single. 

Moore’s simple, to the- point style covered the drummer-less bases quite easily with a fat tone and swinging musicality, giving this rather hillbilly ensemble some dangerous sonic heft.

His break on “That’s Alright, Mama” inspired everyone from George Harrison to Keith Richards to Jimmy Page, as well as Danny Gatton, who never missed an opportunity to throw a Moore homage in the middle of one of his famed rockabilly rave ups. 

Moore’s barking double-stops and approximation of a tic-tac bass line on “Mama” are as hooky as it gets, making this solo one of the most important ever.

4. Eddie Cochran “Sittin’ in the Balcony” (1957)

Slinging a 1955 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins Hollow Body 'G'-branded guitar with a Gibson P-90 in the neck slot, Cochran, with his iconic presence and echo-drenched tones, hugely impacted early rockers – such as Lennon and McCartney, who bonded over Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock” upon meeting in 1957 – and innumerable players thereafter, particularly Brian Setzer. 

The twangy solo on Cochran’s first hit, “Sittin’ In the Balcony,” crackles with the influence of his heroes Chet Atkins, Joe Maphis, and Johnny Smith.

5. Chuck Berry “Johnny B. Goode” (1958)

While some people might not consider this song’s intro a “solo,” it might be the most important rock guitar part ever recorded. 

The doublestops essentially usher in the post-Elvis rock era, and the tone and balls of this iconic part would echo in the playing of George Harrison, Keith Richards, Eddie Van Halen, and Angus Young... and that's just one tenth of one percent of the players who have copped these licks. 

Listen to it again. You’ll see.

6. Hank Marvin “Apache” (1960)

A primary influence on nearly every British guitarist of a certain age, Marvin created a dreamy, echo-y sound on this #1 U.K. hit that was achieved by playing his Stratocaster – the first in England – through a Meazzi Echomatic tape delay and a Vox AC30 tube amp. 

Marvin mostly used the bridge pickup, but picked near the neck, and palmed the vibrato arm to impart his trademark twang.

7. Freddie King “Hideaway” (1960)

Freddie (a.k.a. Freddy) King cobbled “Hideaway” out of parts lifted from tunes by Hound Dog Taylor, Jimmy McCracklin, Robert Lockwood Jr., and even Henry Mancini. 

Between the breaks where he recycled bits of “The Walk” and “Peter Gunn,” King played stinging solos that he plucked on a P-90 equipped Les Paul using a plastic thumbpick and metal fingerpick. 

Eric Clapton did his own version of the tune on John Mayall’s 1966 album, Blues Breakers, and the success of “Hideaway” made it a launch pad for a number of other King instrumentals that would further his notoriety as one of the top blues guitarists of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

8. James Burton “Hello Mary Lou” (1961)

Having turned pro as a teenager on the Louisiana Hayride, Burton was a seasoned vet by the time he became the lead player in Ricky Nelson’s band, which was featured regularly on the TV show The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. 

Burton was a great rock and roll player, as evidenced by his Chuck Berry-style solo on “Believe What I Say,” but he also inspired legions of pickers with his explosively twangy lead break on “Hello Mary Lou.” 

Burton’s playing on Merle Haggard’s early ‘60s hits like “Mama Tried” and “Swingin’ Doors,” inspired the late, great Roy Nichols, who said, “I learned a lot from Burton, and I copied some of his licks, but I couldn’t copy him to a ‘T’.”

9. Jeff Beck “Over Under Sideways Down” (1966)

Along with the Rolling Stones, no band inspired more hard-edged guitar-wielding maniacs than the Yardbirds. Beck’s playing on their classic garage rock anthem is, like much of his playing at this time, inspired by the groovy sounds of the sitar. 

Equal parts spacey modal madness and meth-infused pentatonic fury, it still ranks as some of Beck’s most inspired playing, and that says a lot. 

And not only was Beck’s otherworldly playing inspirational to a generation of guitarists, but his punky stage demeanor and nasty sonic streak (a ‘54 Fender Esquire into a Tone Bender fuzz and AC30), served notice to everyone that a new sheriff was in town, and he was kicking ass.

10. Albert King “Born Under a Bad Sign” (1967)

If Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix lift your licks lock, stock, and barrel, your influence has been spread very far and very wide. In fact, one can make the case that Albert King was the most influential King, just by virtue of the not-so-subtle tributes by his admirers. 

King Albert’s authoritative bends and economical phrasing are required study for anyone who wants to play blues-rock guitar. On this cut, the Velvet Bulldozer lives up to his nickname, making his Gibson Flying V moan, scream, and move mountains with sweeping bends and a stinging tone that delivers all of the nuances in his playing. 

It also proves that, even though SRV and Clapton could “do” Albert, they were never really even close. 

11. Eric Clapton “Crossroads” (1968)

This one is a giant among giants. Little did Slowhand know, after he walked off the Winterland stage in San Francisco, he had created a template setting the standard for expressive, lyrical, howling blues-rock guitar. 

Armed with a ‘64 Gibson ES-335 and a couple of non-master volume 100-watt Marshall stacks, Clapton’s first break is a textbook example of how to build a solo’s intensity, while the second manages to kick it up one more notch for maximum climax. 

Not a duff note in the bunch, impeccably phrased, and with a vibrato that’s as classy as they come, Clapton could have never played another note and he’d still be one of the most influential players ever. 

12. Jimi Hendrix “All Along the Watchtower” (1968)

One can only guess what sort of “light bulb” moment Jimi experienced when he first heard this tune from Bob Dylan’s 1967 album John Wesley Harding. Maybe it was the biblical references in the lyrics, or the great melody – or perhaps just the wide-open space for improvising afforded by the four-chord progression. 

Whatever it was, the version that appeared on Hendrix’ Electric Ladyland album gave rise to one of Jimi’s most memorable solo outings. Playing soulfully and inventively using a wah and fuzz, Hendrix reinvented “All Along the Watchtower” to such a degree that it’s sometimes easy to forget who actually wrote the tune!

13. Peter Green “Black Magic Woman” (1968)

B.B. King once said of Green, “He has the sweetest tone I ever heard; he was the only one who gave me the cold sweats.” After establishing himself as a masterful blues stylist in John Mayall’s band, Green quickly evolved both as a player and a songwriter with Fleetwood Mac. 

On his D minor tour-de-force “Black Magic Woman,” Green pulls off an incredibly captivating melody, and his beautiful phrasing and soulful bending on a Les Paul with “magnetically out of phase” pickups was pure gold. 

Carlos Santana made the song a huge hit on Abraxas, and Green was also influential on Irish blues rocker Gary Moore, who would own – and eventually sell – Green’s famous Gibson. 

14. Robert Fripp “21st Century Schizoid Man” (1969)

Fripp’s serpentine solo on this alarmingly virtuosic track combines a supersaturated sustained tone with atypical intervallic movement, non-bluesy bends and trills, and note choices and phrasing that had more in common with Coltrane than Clapton. 

Playing a three-pickup ‘59 Les Paul Custom through a Marshall stack and probably either a Burns Buzzaround or a Colorsound Tone Bender, he recorded the seminal progressive rock solo.

15. Jimmy Page “Heartbreaker” (1969)

Selecting the most influential Page solo led to a heated debate. 

But the squawking tone of a ‘58 Les Paul into a Marshall SLP 1969 Super Lead, maniacal cluster picking, wicked hammer-ons and pull-offs, and behind-the-nut G-string bending in the first solo on “Heartbreaker” – not to mention the smoking second solo – explain why everyone from Brian May to Steve Vai to Steve Morse have hailed it as a definitive guitar solo.

16. B.B. King “The Thrill is Gone” (1969)

With a tone sweeter and thicker than molasses, B.B. King graced this song with one of his most emotive blues solos of all time. King knew what the tune called for in context of the highly produced album Completely Well (his first with strings), and it wasn’t about showboating. 

Far from it, judging by the way he grooves so succulently behind the beat. Besides being a big hit for B.B., “The Thrill is Gone” showed guitarists the power of playing slow and cool. 

In an era when Johnny Winter was introducing blues-rock shredding, B.B. King’s huge vibrato and deep soul defined what “playing from the heart” was all about. 

17. Leslie West “Mississippi Queen” (1970)

Leslie West’s massive and massively influential tone on Climbing! – which included “Mississippi Queen” – was created by playing through a Sunn Coliseum P.A. head and four 4x12 speaker cabinets. 

“The head had four microphone inputs and a master volume control, huge transformers and gigantic KT88 tubes, and the cabinets were loaded with Eminence speakers, which never hurt your ears, even with the treble all the way up,” West told GP in 2010. 

He was playing Gibson Les Paul Juniors at the time, and used a single-cutaway 1956 Jr. with a single P-90, strung with La Bella Electric Guitar strings (with a .010 banjo string for the high E and the other strings moved down one to create a light-gauge set) on the track. 

The song reached #21 on the Billboard charts, assuring that West’s signature sound was heard across the country and around the world.

18. Duane Allman “Statesboro Blues” (1971)

By 1970 Duane Allman and Dickey Betts had forged one of the most iconic guitar sounds of all time with their harmonized melodies on songs like “Revival” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” 

But as far as slide players went, few at the time got more acclaim than Duane himself, after the 1971 release of The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East. Duane’s slick phrasing and fat, singing tone on the opening track of the double live album was inspired by hearing Taj Mahal’s rendition of the song with Jesse Ed Davis on slide. 

Sonny Landreth, who remembers seeing the Allman Brothers at the time, recalls: “That huge tone that Duane got when he played slide on a Les Paul through a Marshall was a real game changer. I don’t remember anyone else who had a sound like that back then.”

19. John McLaughlin “Meeting of the Spirits” (1971)

Although he had already done revolutionary work with Tony Williams’ Lifetime, Miles Davis, and as a solo artist, McLaughlin’s combination of molten Gibson-through-cranked-Marshall distortion, impossibly fast and complex yet ultra-precise picking, and unique phrasing on The Inner Mounting Flame shattered all existing concepts of “electric guitarist” and lit the fuse of fusion.

20. Ritchie Blackmore “Highway Star” (1972)

Actually a harmonized pair of solos, the tasty bends, rapid-fire triplets, and whammy manipulations on this Strat-into-a-Marshall-amp (via a reel-to-reel tape recorder preamp) solo make it one of Blackmore’s most memorable.

The Deep Purple guitarist’s influence on legions of rock and metal shedders from Morse to Malmsteen to Mustaine is undisputable.

21. Billy Gibbons “La Grange” (1973) 

Gibbons made his mark on this classic shuffle with two solos. 

The first, done on a ‘55 Strat, enters screaming with that classic rear pickup Fender bite, before Gibbons flips to the front pickup for a swinging double-stop workout and some liquid pentatonic runs delivered with his impeccable sense of time and swing. 

But it’s the track’s second solo that the guitarist is most famous for, and the one that every hard rock player would study, due to Gibbons’ insane pinch harmonics. With his “Pearly Gates” ‘59 Les Paul, the Reverend squawks, grunts, and chokes out so many pinch harmonics that it would be laughable if it wasn’t so damm bad ass. 

22. Brian May “Bohemian Rhapsody” (1975) 

Brian May’s touch, tone, and orchestral instincts have proven impossible to imitate, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying. 

His majestic lines on this classic are quintessential May, with precise picking, impeccable phrasing, and a bold, loud sound. 

The solo’s placement in the mix was influential, informing how bands such as Boston and Styx featured their solos. You’ve got to assume Dr. May’s harmonized lines at the end of the song got Tom Scholz’s attention as well.

23. Larry Carlton “Kid Charlemagne” (1976)

Carlton was already a session legend known for his smooth-as-silk lines that were reminiscent of Wes, Pass, and Trane when he cut this Steely track. 

But when Mr. 335 combined a rock dude’s tone with a jazzer’s harmonic sensibilities, he created the standard by which every jazz rocker would be judged. 

Ask Steve Lukather, Robben Ford, or Mike Stern what impact this solo had on them. 

Alright then.

24. Carlos Santana “Europa (Earth’s Cry, Heaven’s Smile)” (1976)

Santana masterfully caresses the tune’s main melody with his trademark singing sustain and thick tone, never quite giving up the goods until the outro solo where he lets it all hang out in an outpouring of soulful yet wicked playing. 

He displays a fluid, tactile control at all times, and his tone is more open-sounding and less compressed than in recent years. 

And when he kicks the wah on, look out – he ratchets up the intensity tenfold, just when you think it can’t go any higher. Simply put, “Europa” is a study in pace, melodicism, and space – as well as good, old fashion burning!

25. Al Di Meola “Race with Devil on Spanish Highway” (1977)

Sure, there were people who could play fast before Di Meola, but nobody had made it such a central part of their deal before Big Al came along. 

Di Meola’s picking ability coupled with his sick, self-described “mutola” technique raised the bar for audacious shred and players interested in pushing the limits of picking. 

Far from being a pattern-minded monotone shredder, Di Meola’s Latin influences and his compositional sense have always made his displays of virtuosity supremely musical. 

And for all of the shred haters, Di Meola proved that the emotional impact of many notes is just as valid as a few well-placed ones. 

26. Eddie Van Halen “Eruption” (1978)

What can you say about this cadenza from hell? Cut in 1978, this has to be one of the most influential pieces of guitar playing ever. 

EVH took a Strat with a humbucker, an MXR Phase 90, and a plexi Marshall, and then played some supercharged Clapton licks that boggled just about every 6-stringer’s mind in the world. 

It was Van Halen’s two-handed tapping that truly grabbed everyone’s attention, however, and made this the most recognizable solo of the next two decades. “Eruption” made an impact on millions of rock dudes and seemingly every kid who set foot inside a Guitar Center.

27. Allan Holdsworth “In the Dead of Night” (1978)

As Bill Bruford put it, this solo was, “94 seconds of liquid passion married to a blinding technical facility that was to go down in the annals of rock guitar history. 

"All the hallmarks of his brilliant playing were there in this solo: poise, pace, melody, the Slonimsky interval jumps, the whammy bar, and all over a killer groove.”

28. Mark Knopfler “Sultans of Swing” (1978) 

When Mark Knopfler released this fingerpicked two-pickup masterpiece, he showed guitarists that you don’t need distortion or a plectrum to rock. 

With a Strat on the bridge and middle pickups, a Fender Twin Reverb and a Roland JC-120, Knopfler played two deft, bouncy solos that referenced Chet Atkins with snappy popped notes, crying bends, and clever arpeggios. 

Along the way he influenced just about every clean tone for the next 20 years. When people talk about an “out of phase” Strat tone, they’re talking about this tune.

29. Michael Schenker “Rock Bottom” (1979)

The 1970s was a great time for live records, with classics from Frampton, Lizzy, and Ted Nugent, but one of the sweetest solos to grace a double LP came from UFO’s Michael Schenker. 

The extended break on this tune has everything great about Schenker: melody, dynamics, tone for days, and burning. 

This lead would fascinate rockers all over the world, including George Lynch, Vinnie Moore, Akira Takahashi, and Kirk Hammett.

30. David Gilmour “Comfortably Numb” (1979)

Few solos can match the vibe of Gilmour’s work on this iconic piece. 

Playing a ‘79 black Stratocaster with a ‘62 neck and DiMarzios through Hiwatts and Yamaha RA-200 rotating speaker cabinets, Gilmour transformed what are essentially blues licks into a signature statement that affected the molecules in myriad musical minds. 

This is arguably his crowning achievement as a soloist.

31. Angus Young “You Shook Me All Night Long” (1980)

It serves to reason that a song that is all about getting it on should have a solo that is sexy, right? 

Damn straight. 

Young’s turn on this global hit finds him harnessing his kinetic blues tendencies into a steamy, attitude-laden solo that is actually kind of funky. 

His tasteful major pentatonic flavorings as well as his gorgeous tone – thanks to a wound up old Marshall and a Gibson SG – are the icing on the cake of his impeccable groove, intonation, and phrasing.

32. Randy Rhoads “Crazy Train” (1980)

After Van Halen, it wasn’t easy for an L.A. rocker to make a mark, but Randall Rhoads did so in a big way on his debut with Ozzy. 

Rhoads took what he had gleaned from Mick Ronson, Gary Moore, and Bach, and synthesized it into this metal tour de force. 

He wasn’t the first guy to blend classical music and rock, but he was absolutely the gateway drug for players like Zakk Wylde and Tom Morello.

33. Stevie Ray Vaughan “Pride and Joy” (1983)

The second cut on SRV’s debut album, Texas Flood, “Pride and Joy” blasted onto the airwaves courtesy of a great melody, catchy lyrics, and a gamechanging solo in which Vaughan threw down a barrage of killer licks with a gargantuan tone from his Fender/Dumble rig. 

SRV’s deft songwriting and his Albert King/Hendrix-influenced style succeeded in making what was fundamentally a classic “tay-hass” shuffle into a huge AOR hit that every classic rocker is expected to cover in perpetuity. 

Bottom line is, after SRV came along, anyone who thought they could play blues with fire and passion got a schoolin’ the size of Texas.

34. Yngwie Malmsteen “Black Star” (1984)

Mike Varney’s rep as a finder of great guitarists was already solid when he wrote about a kid from Sweden with a funny name in 1983. 

Many players’ first exposure to Malmsteen was on this shred fest. With his blinding speed, dazzling classical arpeggios, gorgeous Strat-into-Marshall tone, and larger than life vibrato, he didn’t raise the bar for rock technique – he obliterated it. 

Yngwie changed the game forever with this one, just ask any rocker who has swept an arpeggio since then.

35. George Lynch “The Hunter” (1985)

Dokken's George Lynch has inspired countless rock and metal players for nearly 30 years with his perfect blend of structured melodicism and off-the-rails fury – all in the space of a 16-bar solo. 

This solo is a perfect example, as he eases into it with memorable, understated melodic motifs that are helped along with some thick-ass tone and sick vibrato. 

Halfway through, however, Lynch begins to turn up the jets. Alternate picking, sweep picking, and legato playing become one within a single winding phrase, giving him a sound and style that are difficult to ape. 

However, Lynch did show the way for shred-obsessed guitarists on how to structure a meaningful statement in the middle of a tune and leave an everlasting mark. In fact, his solos are the only thing that don’t sound dated about Dokken.

36. Kirk Hammett “Master of Puppets” (1986)

Kirk Hammett’s influences include his teacher Joe Satriani, Michael Schenker, and Thin Lizzy. And nowhere are those influences more prominent than on this tune. 

Hammett’s whammy bar work and speed picking would inspire countless kids to notch their mids, cram their theory, and play blazing solos over chugging grooves.

37. Joe Satriani “Always with Me, Always with You” (1987)

Satriani is obviously known as a master technician, but it’s his melodic side that has left the biggest imprint on guitardom. 

This sweet ballad showcases Satch’s singing tone, skillful ornamentation, and ability to blend the tasty with the jaw dropping. 

The reach of this solo is apparent in hundreds of instrumental guitar records, country ballads, movie soundtracks, and car commercials.

38. Kurt Cobain “Come As You Are” (1991)

Although he took about as many solos and Johnny Ramone, the late Nirvana guitar anti-hero played a memorable one in this song from 1991. 

Presumably using a Boss DS-1 for dirt and an Electro-Harmonix Small Clone chorus for the warbly modulation, Cobain simply quoted the vocal melody in a snotty, vibey way, and the kids went crazy. 

Suddenly, young players – many with a sanctimonious disdain for ‘80s-style wanking – were taking a break from strumming through songs and trying their hands at playing single-note lines.

39. Zakk Wylde “No More Tears” (1991)

Logic dictates that Zakk Wylde was doomed to failure when he got the gig with Ozzy. 

A blond kid with a Les Paul? Really? 

But then people got a taste of his huge tone, squealing harmonics, and rapid-fire pentatonics and a new star was born. 

On this tune Zakk channeled Rhoads, Billy Gibbons, and Frank Marino into a solo that was emblematic of the new generation of metalheads.

40. Dimebag Darrell “The Great Southern Trendkill” (1996)

The post-Van Halen, post-Randy Rhoads world was in dire need of a champion when Darrell Abbott came on the scene. 

He took the styles of those guys, mixed in some Ace Frehley, some Lynyrd Skynyrd, and a heapin’ helpin’ of moonshine and created the ass-kicking solo here. 

Dime made it cool to love Holdsworth, EVH, and Billy Gibbons all in the same song.

Happy birthday to Latin rock pioneer Carlos Santana!

In addition to being a great friend to Guitar Player over the years, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer has endeavored to fire up the magazine’s creative juices by hipping the staff to noteworthy under-the-radar guitarists, as well as sending us music that has inspired him.

But his influence runs deeper still.

“I’d like to talk about intangibles,” he said when he spoke to us about a cover story back in 2008.

“I’d like to get beyond those physical things and think about the roles of the heart and mind in making music.”

Here are five great lessons from that inspirational interview…

1) Be of Service

There’s a part of me that loves learning from musicians such as John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed, B.B. King, and Miles Davis. But there’s also a part of me that wants to invest – like Desmond Tutu or the Dalai Lama or Harry Belafonte – in the healing of the common man.

So it’s not enough for me to play music, learn from all these guys, and be recognized worldwide. I also want to serve – to be of service.

We are capable of creating miracles ourselves, and the greatest miracle is to create a masterpiece of joy out of your life with no excuses.

2) See the Connections 

When people have asked me to define “multi-dimensional,” I say that it’s not being stuck or stuck up. When you start thinking that you’re superior or inferior – that’s being stuck. Your fear has betrayed you.

Being free is seeing the beauty of you in everybody else. You say, “I can see myself in this guy and that guy. I want to phrase like Otis Redding and Nat King Cole and Wes Montgomery.”

You see the connections between what you do, and what all the musicians before you have done, and between what every musician is doing right now.

So I’m grateful that your magazine is here, because you remind people that we’re all in it together. Guitar Player is multi-dimensional.

3) Let Go

Everyone has a heart, of course, so it typically comes down to how much you are willing to let it come out. How fast can you get to your heart and not let anything get in the way – children, the rent, the set list, taxes…

How fast can you get to that place in your heart where you don’t even have to think about what to play, because the notes will play themselves? Those are the best notes.

Listen, carrying a melody is very difficult for a musician, because in order to carry a melody, you have to let go.

A lot of people carry chords and speed. Let them go. Let go of everything you have learned, and, in return, receive the thing that will be channeled through you.

4) Be Willing

What is this intangible world that Jimi Hendrix and Beethoven dipped into? You can call it hocus pocus or whatever, but this world exists. How often are you willing to dip into it? Do you dip into it at all?

…I love music that makes me feel like I’m seven years old, going to the movies for the first time and experiencing Panavision. That’s why we love Jimi Hendrix – he assaults all of our senses. His music has a wide circumference.

Hendrix is another name for a bridge to the unknown, because what he was playing, even he couldn’t reproduce sometimes. He couldn’t quantize it – as much as he might have tried to get back there by taking seven tabs of acid and a little bit of wine and some coke.

Sometimes, it’s nothing – just the willingness. The willingness to take a deep breath and take what was given to you. It’s inside you, as John Lee Hooker said, and it has to come out.

5) Use Your Imagination

I don’t need to take acid or mescaline to trip anymore, but I learned enough from that stuff to realize what Einstein meant when he said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Your imagination is your best equipment, and you cannot learn it or earn it – it was given to you. Take it. It’s yours.

You don’t have to go down to the crossroads, and wait for a black cat or the full moon. You don’t have to sell yourself to the devil. What for? You have God’s love, and what can be better than that?

Whether you’re Yngwie Malmsteen or Steve Vai or Joe Satriani or John Scofield, you just need to shut everything off and utilize the main television – your imagination.

You see, the ultimate destination for guitar players is to create heaven and wonderment for both themselves and the listeners.

If you’re not doing that, you’re just shucking and jiving.

Order Santana's Blessings and Miracles here.

Black Sabbath meets Chicago!” Ozzy Osbourne exclaims, clapping his hands with great enthusiasm after Austin band Brown Sabbath slays the Sabbath chestnut “Fairies Wear Boots” for him in person – complete with conga drums and a wicked Latin brass section – at a small bar in East Austin.

“There are a lot of [Black Sabbath] cover bands,” Ozzy notes a minute later, on an episode of A&E’s Ozzy & Jack’s World Detour, “but this, by far, is such a unique way of doing it. I’m really impressed. Your playing is fuckin’ great.”

Recalling the moment from his Lechehouse studio on the outskirts of Austin, the band’s guitarist Beto Martinez – he’s the one ripping the song’s massive main riffs and fiery triplet-driven outro solo on a red Gibson ES-333 – displays the same relaxed and humble bearing he brings to all his imaginative projects, and man, there are a lot of them.

Brown Sabbath is itself an outgrowth of Beto’s big-band, Brownout, which he helped form with future Black Pumas guitarist Adrian Quesada.

But even Brownout was an outgrowth of Beto’s acclaimed nine-piece “Latin funk orchestra,” Grupo Fantasma, which took home a Grammy for Best Latin Rock/Alternative album on behalf of their acclaimed album El Existential in 2011, and were a favorite backing band for Prince for several years.

Add to that Martinez’s other eclectic bands, including Money Chicha, Los Sundowns, Ocote Soul Sounds (with Quesada), his latest project, Caramelo Haze, and more, along with his production work at Lechehouse – for which he’s been recently nominated for an Austin Music Award – and you have the makings of a new kind of Texas guitar legend.

Unlike the vintage blues guitar tradition that Stevie Ray Vaughan and Charlie Sexton drew on so expertly, Martinez’s mix springs from a bicultural grounding in classic and contemporary Latin sounds from Peru, Cuba, Colombia and his parents’ native Mexico, along with his teenage obsession with red-blooded American metal acts, from Metallica to Pantera.

“When I first got into guitar,” the 44-year-old says, “it was all about hard rock and heavy metal. The first album I bought was Quiet Riot’s Metal Health, and then I discovered Metallica’s ...And Justice for All, followed by Appetite for Destruction by Guns N’ Roses.”

Martinez’s next phase of discovery included a “full force” induction into the music and techniques of Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa, the two players from whom he began to model his own expressive work with the Dunlop Cry Baby wah-wah pedal, which you’ll find to some degree on nearly all of his recordings.

“It’s pretty much an extension of my foot,” Martinez says with a laugh. “I suppose the easy reference point with me and the wah-wah, because I’m Latin, would be Carlos Santana, whose music I do love.

“But I more remember Zappa talking about how the wah-wah could be used for a speech-like sound,” he continues, “and that’s what I’ve always gone for.

“I very rarely do full sweeps with the wah, or pump it in regular rhythms. It’s more about giving my playing that ‘talking’ quality, keeping it positioned near the middle of the throw, and making more subtle moves on it as I play.

“I admit it’s become something of a stylistic signature for me. It’s so natural for me, in fact, that I don’t even think about using it anymore. I actually have to think about not using it!”

Other key elements of Beto’s sound include Fender tube amps, especially his trusty Fender Deluxe Reverb.

His clutch of pedals includes an EarthQuaker Devices Dunes that he describes as his “essential overdrive/boost,” and a Behringer UV-300 Ultra Vibrato.

“The Behringer literally costs less than dinner,” Martinez jokes, “and yet that’s the one I get asked ‘What’s making that sound?’ about the most. It’s definitely my secret weapon.”

Martinez’s not-so-secret weapon? His trusty red 2004 Gibson ES-333, on which he executes savvy double-stop R&B figures, funky slash chords, surf-approved bottom-string riffs, and, of course, those burning Dorian- and pentatonic-based solos.

But if you want to get to the core of what makes his style and sound so distinct, and what makes him an increasingly important player in the legacy of the electric guitar, you have to dig deeper.

In particular, Martinez reflects and refracts the influence of many Latin electric guitar players (and Latin and Afro-Cuban musical genres) that you may have never heard of, and that’s a big part of what makes exploring his work such a worthwhile pursuit.

In his combo Money Chicha, for example, you’re hearing Martinez and his crack band – including the remarkably gifted drummer John Speice IV, also of Grupo Fantasma and Brownout – casting their singular spell over the chicha style, a Peruvian form derived from Colombian cumbia.

The hynotic but danceable cumbia, evocative of traditional Andean huayno music, surf and psychedelic rock, is typically played with electric guitars and synthesizers, and leans heavily on the pentatonic scale.

Martinez, though, is just as likely to inject harmonic minor or diminished melodies into it, as well.

“The pioneers of chicha guitar in the ’60s and ’70s were so expressive and so revolutionary with their tone and technique,” Martinez says, name-checking bands like Los Destellos, Los Shapis and Los Hijos del Sol, “but their music barely made it out of regional South America until now.”

Among those chicha pioneers, he explains, are giants like Peruvian guitarist José Luis Carballo, of the Lima band La Nueva Crema, which translates as “The New Cream;” Enrique Delgado from Los Destellos; and Bernardo Hernández, a.k.a. Manzanita, who fronted the band Manzanita y Su Conjunto with his explosive, wickedly rhythmically melodic guitar figures that almost suggest a Peruvian Dick Dale or Les Paul.

Another player Martinez readily recommends checking out is the late Cuban fusion guitarist Carlos Emilio Morales – he passed away in 2014 at the age of 75 – of the celebrated band Irakere.

“If you listen to Morales’ playing and the whole band on the album Irakere Live, it’s absolutely insane what they’re pulling off live,” Martinez raves.

He’s quite right; for polyrhythmic jazz fusion at its finest, even Weather Report would have been hard pressed to match the simply outrageous syncopated ensemble playing (and singing!) on display on this masterful set.

“One other player I really want to mention is the great Colombian guitarist Abelardo Carbonó, who sadly passed away very recently,” Martinez adds.

“Carbonó was sort of the godfather of Colombian cumbia and psychedelic guitar music, and he developed his own genre, called champeta, which is very West African in nature – almost like soukous – and very melodic.

“Y’know, whenever Latin psychedelic guitar is discussed,” Martinez adds, “it seems like Santana is the only person who’s mentioned. And I love Santana. But I think that it’s vital for people to recognize that there are many other important players and subgenres in the history of Latin rock and psychedelia.”

Order El Existential by Grupo Fantasma here.

Discover more from Beto Martinez here.

Although it became one of the hottest guitar amps among pro players from the mid-1970s to the ’80s, the Mesa/Boogie seemed utterly designed to propel the singing, sustainful tone and playing style of Carlos Santana, who adopted it as his amp in the 1970s.

For that matter, Santana literally named the thing.

Mesa/Boogie founder Randall Smith was working as an amp repairman in 1969 in the small San Francisco shop Prune Music when he decided to play a trick on Barry Melton, lead guitarist with Country Joe and the Fish.

Smith gutted Melton’s Fender Princeton, installed a modified 50-watt Fender Bassman-style tube amp, squeezed in a 12-inch speaker and took it to the front of the shop, where Carlos Santana was hanging out.

“He just wailed through that little amp until people were blocking the sidewalk,” Smith later recalled.

“When he stopped playing he turned and said, ‘Shit man. That little thing really boogies!’”

As demand grew, Smith continued modifying Princetons. When the supply dried up, he began making the amps – eventually known as the Boogie Mark I – from the ground up.

The key to the wailing, saturated tone lay in Smith’s chaining together of several tube stages in the preamp, a technique known as “cascading gain,” and under Santana’s fingers the result was sustain that could last for days.

The ‘70s also proved fruitful for Santana on the gear front when he began a collaboration with Japanese guitar building titan Yamaha.

After a somewhat uncomfortable bedding in period (“I sat down with them and said, ‘Look, I can’t play the guitar, man,” Santana told Guitar Player in 1978) the team eventually settled on a design that was not only befitting for a guitarist of Santana's caliber but progressive also.

“I asked them to put a big chunk of metal right where the tailpiece is," recalled Santana. "You hit it and it’s like hitting a grand piano – it really resonates.”

Boasting fine tonewoods and a neck-through construction, along with the tone- and sustain-enhancing T-Cross System and brass Sustain Plate (the aforementioned “big chunk of metal,”) the new SG2000 model firmly established Yamaha as a bona fide pro level guitar builder.

Yamaha guitars were later played by the likes of John McGeoch who famously used an SG1000 with Siouxsie and the Banshees.

More recent proponents of the SG series include Ed O’Brien, Johnny Marr and John Frusciante.

In this 1977 clip, Santana is seen playing his custom built Yamaha with a Mesa/Boogie rig. Evidently, the guitarist is a great deal happier with his instrument by this stage.

“[Yamaha] go out of their way to make good instruments,” he told Guitar Player in the same 1978 interview. “You can feel it when you pick up that guitar.”

We recently asked a handful of some of the guitar world's best-known players to recommend their favorite lesser-known solos.

Here’s what Metallica’s electric guitar whizz Kirk Hammett had to say…

1) UFO | “Rock Bottom” from ‘Strangers in the Night’

GUITARIST: Michael Schenker

“I love the version on Phenomenon, but on the live version from Strangers in the Night, Schenker shows the full breadth of his playing style. He plays melodically, he plays modally. He has this European sensibility in his note choices. He ups the intensity of the song slowly, and at one point he does a harmony line with the keyboards. The intensity builds as he plays with more and more energy, until the drum break in the middle. Then the chord change hits. He pushes the intensity dial up to 13, playing toward this crazy, emotional, dynamic conclusion. It’s wonderful and beautiful, and I have so much reverence for it.”

2) Judas Priest | “Beyond the Realms of Death” from ‘Stained Class’

GUITARIST: Glenn Tipton

“That middle solo by Glenn Tipton is amazing. His sense of melody is astounding, but it’s also his tone. It’s so great, and every single passage he plays makes sense melodically. It’s really catchy and hummable, and you can sing along to it.”

3) Santana | “She’s Not There” from ‘Moonflower’

GUITARIST: Carlos Santana

“His use of the wah pedal, his attack and energy across the three solos in the song... He uses a couple of techniques that are a little off the cuff – super-long delay time, and pressing on the string behind the bridge to give a whammy-bar effect. The phrasing and tone on these solos are amazing.”

Pick up Santana’s Moonflower here.

Get Stained Class by Judas Priest here.

Grab UFO’s live album Strangers in the Night here.

In the first part of our lesson in navigating the last four bars of a blues guitar progression – the so-called “blues turnaround” – we looked at the styles of T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, Albert King, Peter Green and Eric Clapton. In this second part we conclude our study with a look at how guitar greats Carlos Santana, Gary Moore, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robben Ford and Larry Carlton create soulful and harmonically effective melodies in their turnarounds, adding melodic and harmonic interest and resolution that leads the song back to the start of a new verse.

As we saw previously, a turnaround is usually improvised and generally occurs in the last two bars of a blues or jazz standard. In the context of a 12-bar blues progression, the vocal melody typically concludes at the beginning of the 10th bar, so instead of simply sitting on the tonic, or “one,” chord for two more bars, a chordal turnaround is inserted in bars 11 and 12 to provide interest and forward momentum for the progression to loop back to its start.

Turnaround licks are frequently played over four chords (two per bar), usually I-IV-I-V or the jazzier I-VI-ii-V (lowercase Roman numerals indicate minor-type chords), but there are many variations, as these lessons demonstrate. The chord types may be diatonic or non-diatonic (based on the parent scale of the key, or not) and are also influenced by the style of blues (major versus minor).

As per the previous lesson, each player will be represented here with three examples that cover major and minor keys and feature a range of grooves and tempos. In addition, because some licks can be interchanged between major and minor keys, our examples will start on the same root note. Once again, the examples are presented as they would occur in the last four bars of a 12-bar blues progression – bars 9 through 12. Remember that turnarounds also function as intros and can be used to launch a blues song or guitar solo.

Carlos Santana’s famously Latin-influenced style and thick, singing tone provide a unique flavor to his blues playing. Performed in the key of F minor, the Santana-style turnaround changes in Ex. 1 (bars 11 and 12) are a variation on a jazzy i-VI-II-V progression, with tritone substitutions applied to what would be the VI and V chords (D and C), which become bIII (Ab) and bII (Gb), respectively. The lead melody in these bars begins on an Fm7 arpeggio (F Ab C Eb), which then follows the chromatically descending chord sequence by targeting the 5th of each chord.

Throughout his career, Santana has excelled at the moody minor blues style, as shown in Ex. 2’s i-vi-ii-V turnaround, also played in the key of F minor. Interestingly, while the progression is based overall on the F natural minor scale (F G Ab Bb C Db Eb), with its minor, or “flatted,” sixth and seventh scale degrees (Db and Eb), the vi chord in the turnaround, Dm7b5, is rooted on the major sixth scale degree, which is “borrowed” from the parallel F melodic minor scale (F G Ab Bb C D E).

Notice how this is highlighted in bar 11, perfectly outlining the underlying Dm7b5 chord. Likewise, the V chord in bar 12, C7aug, is native to the parallel F harmonic minor scale (F G Ab Bb C Db E). This kind of use of modal mixture – borrowing notes and chords from different, parallel modes based on the same root – adds color to a progression by offering different “flavors” of major or minor to the harmony.

Ex. 3 offers a Santana-inspired I-VI-ii-V turnaround phrase in the key of F major, in which the VI chord (D7) is non-diatonic, meaning not native to the parent F major scale, but is rather the temporary V chord of the ii chord, Gm, or, more simply, the “V of ii.” Notice how the third of D7, F#, is deliberately played on beat three of bar 11. Targeting a chord tone on the change in this way, especially the third, fifth or seventh. is a highly effective technique to employ to achieve a harmonically strong melody.

Gary Moore’s blues soloing style was soulfully passionate and hard hitting, often characterized by wide, ferocious finger vibrato and a bold, high-gain tone, but he also had a softer, jazzier side, which informs Ex. 4. Played in the key of G, the progression here includes a I-VI-ii-V turnaround (G7-E7- Am7-D7). Notice the way notes from the parallel scales G major pentatonic (G A B D E) and G minor pentatonic (G Bb C D F) are liberally combined and how in bars 11 and 12 the use of notes from G minor pentatonic add altered tensions to the E7 and D7 chords.

Moore also explored fusion with his band Colosseum II in the mid ’70s, and Ex. 5’s I-bVI-ii-V turnaround in the key go G minor (Gm-Ebmaj7-Am7b5-D7#9) is idiomatic to that style. The melody notes here are based mostly on G minor pentatonic, but notice in bar 11 the addition of the second, or ninth, A, and how the G harmonic minor scale (G A Bb C D Eb F#) is employed in bar 12 to generate D Phrygian-dominant sounds over the D7#9 chord.

Ex. 6 is a Moore-style solo passage played over a medium blues shuffle in the key of G, with a standard I-IV-I-V turnaround in bars 11 and 12 (G7-C7- G7-D7). Despite the use of nothing more than the G minor pentatonic scale, with the exception of the first note, A, which alludes to D minor pentatonic (D F G A C) over the V chord, D7, every chord change is beautifully acknowledged and outlined, due to the placement of the notes.

Stevie Ray Vaughan pioneered a blues rebirth in the ’80s, achieving a bold, muscular and distinctive electric guitar voice while remaining faithful to the heritage and language of the blues. 

Performed in the key of A, Ex. 7 presents an SRV-style lead phrase played over a I-Ib7-IV-IVm-I-V turnaround with a descending bass line (achieved through the use of chord inversions) that illustrates how parallel major and minor pentatonic sounds can be mixed, T-Bone Walker-style, to create licks that are both cool- and warm-sounding. Notice the inclusion in bar 11 of the high B note, which is the ninth of A. This note lends a sophisticated, “uptown” quality to the melody.

Played in the key of A minor, the i-iv-i-V turnaround in Ex. 8 (Am-Dm-Am-E7#9) is another example of “forward thinking.” Here, the first chord of the turnaround, Am, is anticipated with an A minor pentatonic lick at the end of bar 10. Notice also the trademark SRV hybrid-picked double-stops with grace-note hammer-ons in bar 11, which create a soulful, organ-like sound. In bar 12, A minor pentatonic licks provide altered tensions to the V chord, E7#9, with C serving as the #5, or b13, relative to E.

Presented in the key of A, Ex. 9 is a perfect example of how to simplify your turnaround approach, à la Stevie. Here, think only of the I and IV chords, A7 and D7. By ensuring your ideas and phrasing are strong, you can play over the entire sequence with an A blues-scale (A C D Eb E G) lick that concludes on the V chord (E7) on beat three of bar 12. Remember, it always sounds good to anticipate the resolution a beat or a half a beat early, as demonstrated here.

Robben Ford spent many years working as a sideman for acts that included the Yellow Jackets and Miles Davis before he set the world alight with his 1988 solo album, Talk to Your Daughter. The record showcased his virtuoso bluesy-fusion style, which he delivered with a fat, organic tone that many other players try to emulate. Ex. 10 shows a simple, yet effective Ford-style approach to a turnaround in the key of B that applies a descending phrase in bar 11, which creates a cool-sounding contrary motion against the ascending bass line.

Ex. 11 is a Ford-style phrase played over a i-vi-ii-V turnaround in the key of B minor. Remember that the vi chord in a minor turnaround (G#m7b5, in this case) is almost always rooted on the major sixth interval, relative to the tonic key (see Ex. 2). This is highlighted in bar 11 here, where a G# note is played on beat three. In bar 12, the ii chord (C#m7b5) is intentionally and effectively ignored to allow more time and space for a lick based on the tense-sounding F# Super-locrian mode (F# G A Bb C D E) to play out across the entire bar. This provides a strong, welcome resolution to the Bm tonic chord in bar 13 (bar 1 of the next 12-bar chorus).

Ford will frequently add the major-sixth interval to the minor pentatonic, allowing him to create a 13th sound over the tonic chord, as demonstrated in bar 11 of the I-IV-I-V turnaround shown in the key of B in Ex. 12. As the progression moves to the IV chord (E7), the tonic minor blues scale (B D E F F# A) is used to craft a long, rolling-and-tumbling phase that fits the chord perfectly. In bar 12 the B major tonality is acknowledged with a double-stop hammer-on, from the minor third of B, D, to the major third, D#. Note how the lick concludes on the b7 of the V chord, F#7, on beat three, with a chromatic “walk-down from F# to F to E.

Larry Carlton’s early influences included jazz guitarists Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery and blues virtuoso B.B. King. His blues playing is marked by beautifully sophisticated and tasteful phrasing that’s never overly complex, and always features his trademark wide dynamic range. Played in the key of E, Ex. 13 is a jazzy-bluesy turnaround in Carlton’s style. Note the use of the B.B. King “blues box” in tonic position throughout bar 11 and later transposed to fit the V chord (B7) in the following bar (starting with the bend to the 14th fret).

Ex. 14, in the key of E minor, offers a Carlton-style phrase played over a i-bVI-ii-V minor turnaround (Em-Cmaj7- F#m7b5-B7aug). The bVI chord in a minor turnaround shares the essential chord tones of the tonic minor and can effectively be ignored, hence the cool double-stop fourths in bar 12 that seem to float across the changes. These are followed in bar 13 by a major-sixth double-stop that outlines the ii chord’s b3 and b5 (A and C, respectively).

Ex. 15 wraps up our lesson with a Carlton-style phrase shown in the key of D and played over a I-VI-i-V turnaround (D7-B7-Em7-A7). In this final lick there’s a reminder of the effectiveness of mixing parallel major and minor pentatonic scales in your turnaround licks, in this case D major pentatonic (D E F# A B) and D minor pentatonic (D F G A C).

In bar 11 the D major tonality is enhanced by chromatically approaching the major third, F#, from a half step below, via a decorative finger slide. The rest of the lick draws from D minor pentatonic, highlighting chord tones and color notes from the accompanying harmony. Carlton does this effortlessly, and to achieve his level of easy sophistication will take dedicated practice and listening.

With guest spots from Vernon Reid, John McLaughlin, Kirk Hammett and Carlos Santana, drummer Cindy Blackman Santana’s latest album – Give the Drummer Some – has its focus firmly on guitarists.

It might surprise people that your wife, a drummer, created such a weighty electric guitar record.

Perhaps, but I can see it quite clearly because of the core principles of who she is. She’s Tony Williams Lifetime, so that’s John McLaughlin. But there’s also Cream and Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix. She’s all of that.

Is there any difference in how you two work when she’s playing in Santana or when you’re playing on her music?

You know, it’s different for me, because for the last 25 years I’ve been the director or the producer. Playing on Cindy’s album was very relaxing for me, because all I had to do was listen to the music and do my best to complement each song. I wanted to please my wife and the music, so that came easily. [laughs] It was a privilege. And I mean that with honor and with zest and joy. Cindy’s record was presented before me as a gift, and I liked being in a position to be directed or pointed toward something.

Your playing throughout is spectacular, particularly what you did on “Imagine.”

That track blew me away. I had no idea what was going to be coming out of the speakers when they played it for me. I had no preconceived thoughts about what I was going to do. So when they turned it up, I immediately felt like a kid who could jump up and down on a bed. I looked at it like, Okay, I’m in AC/DC or Led Zeppelin. I’m in Queen! I was given the chance to tear it up, and that’s what I did. I brought the energy. I mean, we have reverence for the Beatles and John Lennon, but I wasn’t thinking of those confinements

Can you talk a little bit about playing with Vernon Reid on “Black Pearl”?

Oh, that was great. I loved Vernon from the beginning. I think one of the main things that Vernon and I have in common, besides playing the guitar, is that we both love Dionne Warwick and Sonny Sharrock – Dionne for the way she carries a melody, and Sonny Sharrock for how he was this tornado, a force of nature.

One thing I’m looking to do is make an album that honors his music. I would have Sonny’s band but also invite different musicians – Vernon, Jeff Beck, Eric Johnson, Kirk Hammett – just playing nothing but Sonny Sharrock music. It’s a dream I have.

It’s interesting that John McLaughlin is on Cindy’s album. You guys go back a long way, to at least 1973, when you recorded Love Devotion Surrender together.

That’s true. I’d love to do something else with him in the future. Maybe I’ll invite him to participate in this Sonny Sharrock adventure. But I love what he did on Cindy’s record. Everybody played so beautifully.

And you know, something else I want to say: Thank you for having the passion to keep the six strings alive. Your spiritual frequency, the frequency of this magazine, is very much needed. We need to create a whole new army of guitar players – not guitar heroes, not that. We need real guitar players. I’m watching a new wave of youngsters, under 12 years old, coming out with some divine, mean intentions. So that’s encouraging.

Visit Cindy Blackman Santana's website to order Give the Drummer Some.

Happy birthday to Carlos Santana – the guitar legend who continues to blow the minds of fans well over half a century after he blew the minds of some 400,000 Woodstock festival goers back in the Summer of ’69. 

But it wasn’t just the fans’ minds that were blown on that fateful August afternoon. 

The “ocean of hair and teeth and arms” that was Woodstock was already looking pretty trippy to Carlos Santana when he touched down in the helicopter. And though he now had two feet on the ground, the following events were anything but down-to-earth.

Following a ‘brief exchange’ with Jerry Garcia, Carlos walked away full of the festival spirit and feeling safe in the knowledge that he had several hours to kill before the acid wore off. After all, it was to be the biggest performance of his career.

Any sense of serenity was short-lived, however, as he was soon informed, “If you don’t play now, you’re not going to play at all. You need to go on right now.” Alas, peaking on his trip, he made his way to the stage in trepidation, praying only to stay in tune and in time.

“Everything became another dimension,” he recalls.

In heroic fashion, Carlos went far beyond merely holding it together – even though the neck of his early ‘60s Gibson SG Special “felt like a snake” in his hands. But tame that 'snake' he did! 

While Carlos himself has often been quoted as finding this uncomfortable viewing (understandable) his masterful performance ultimately went down in history as one of Woodstock's most iconic moments.

Get the full Woodstock movie here.

This is pretty much the holy grail of Santana guitars. It’s the one that generated the fiery leads on “Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen,” “Oye Como Va,” and, indeed, just about everything else on Abraxas, as well as the inspired discs that followed in its wake. 

Carlos purchased this refinished maple-top Les Paul at Prune Music in San Francisco in 1970, shortly after his group’s breakthrough at Woodstock. It was a replacement for the red Gibson SG he played at the music festival.  

“That SG wouldn’t stay in tune, so I destroyed it,” Santana says. “At the time, if I wanted a new guitar, I had to ask the band, ’cause we were all paying for it. The band didn’t want to get me a new guitar, so I destroyed the SG. Then I had to get a new one.”

In 1975, Carlos began his relationship with Yamaha, and the Gibson saw less use. However, he notes, “this guitar was my main workhorse for at least seven albums. It’s got the tone, the feel. You grab it and it’s ready to go.”

”To me, there are two kinds of guitar players,” Carlos Santana says. “Some people go up and down, or left and right, and some people go deeper in a different way by bending the strings. 

"Because once you bend the strings, you’re messing with microtones. And microtones are the ones that give people chills. It brings tears to their eyes. There’s something about the sound of a microtone that reminds molecules to scream.  

“Once you bend the note a certain way, like Otis Rush, Ali Farka Touré, or B.B., Albert, or Freddie King, you get attention in a different way, because you start to sound more like a woman’s voice. So for me, playing guitar is beautiful in many ways, like a Segovia way or Paco de Lucía way.

“But when you stop and bend the notes – even when it’s just nylon strings – if you bend them a little bit, people go, ‘Oooooh.’ It gets sacred and sexy really quick.” Sacred and sexy is one way to describe the cover of Abraxas, the Santana group’s second album, released more than 50 years ago in 1970.

Its title refers to a deity associated with early Christians’ mystic practices, though the meaning of the word has been lost. It may be a reference to “the salvation of the cross.” And indeed, the painting on the album’s front presents a surreal and sensual interpretation of a sacred moment.

Titled Annunciation, and painted by German-French painter Mati Klarwein, it depicts the angel Gabriel as a winged, bright-red female form straddling a conga drum in a landscape filled with fruits, flowers, and other fertility symbols, pointing to the heavens as it reveals to a Black, naked Virgin Mary that she will conceive the son of God.

Meanwhile, the back cover carries a quotation from German author Herman Hesse, who called Abraxas “the god who was both god and devil.”

“We stood before it and began to freeze inside from the exertion,” it reads. “We questioned the painting, berated it, made love to it, prayed to it: We called it mother, called it whore and slut, called it our beloved, called it Abraxas...”

But sacred and sexy are also apt descriptions of the music on Abraxas, in which Santana took their blues-rock jazz fusion to exotic new realms that celebrate the spiritual and carnal. Among the tracks is the band’s hit Latin-rock cover of the Peter Green–penned Fleetwood Mac song “Black Magic Woman” and a hard-driving rendition of Tito Puente’s party favorite “Oye Como Va.”

Both songs would become hits, pushing the album to the top of the charts and securing Santana’s place in rock history following their breakout success at Woodstock. The band had played an electrifying set at the festival on August 16, 1969, giving them a massive career boost just two weeks before the release of their self-titled full-length debut.

The album’s second single, “Evil Ways,” became a Top 10 hit in the U.S. But as the demand for a follow-up rose, there was just one problem: After performing the same songs for the last three years, Santana was out of material.

The band went off to write and hunt for songs, and each member came back with very different contributions. Gregg Rolie, Santana’s keyboardist and lead singer, brought his own vocal-driven rock tunes, as well as “Black Magic Woman.”

Percussionist José “Chepito” Areas contributed two Afro-Caribbean pieces that showcased his timbale chops, while percussionist Michael Carabello created a meditative mood setter with elusive wind chimes, cymbal swells, and majestic piano chords. Carlos Santana took his wah pedal and set it to a half-open position to make his Gibson cry through the wistful instrumental “Samba Pa Ti.”

As much of a classic as that ballad is today, his bandmates were not convinced it belonged on the album.

He also teamed up with pianist Alberto Gianquito to co-write an epic jazz-rock ride through briskly shifting time and key signatures, and suggested that the band should cover Puente’s “Oye Como Va.” Bassist Dave Brown would serve as the album’s engineer together with John Fiore, while Michael Shrieve once again played drums.

Sessions for Abraxas took place at Wally Heider and Pacific Recording Studios in the Bay Area in April 1970, with Santana and Fred Catero co-producing.

Catero was a New York producer and engineer who’d relocated to San Francisco to work for Columbia, where he recorded albums with Sly & the Family Stone (Life), Big Brother & the Holding Company (Cheap Thrills), and Cuban percussionist and bandleader Mongo Santamaría (Stone Soul).

“We knew that Fred had recorded with Mongo Santamaría, so he knew how to record congas,” Santana says. “I think we were the only ones besides Motown and George Benson who had congas, electric guitars, and Hammond organ. But we brought a lot more street dirt.”

After a month in the studio, the band released Abraxas on September 23, 1970 to a mixed critical reception. Today, it’s widely regarded as their most essential album and a rock and roll masterpiece.

Carlos Santana took time to speak with Guitar Player about the song selection and recording process of Abraxas, the role of his guitar and the gear he used for different songs, and how he sees his band’s creation 50 years later.

After Woodstock, the band was in need of new songs. How did you pick the selection of tunes that appeared on Abraxas? Was there any debate among the band members about which ones should be included on the album? 

From what I remember, some things were very easy, because we trusted one another. Other things were a little challenging, because some people had a different idea of what was rock and roll and what was not. I had to put my foot down for “Oye Como Va” because I thought it was like “Louie Louie” – a forever Friday and Saturday party song. 

There are certain songs, like “Who Let the Dogs Out,” “Macarena,” or “La Bamba,” that go viral really quickly. I had a feeling that “Oye Como Va” was that kind of party song that makes people drop their sorrows or problems. The other song where I had to put my foot down was “Samba Pa Ti.” I said, “It’s going on the album! Otherwise you’ll have to get another guitar player!” 

Sometimes you have to fight for space on an album. It’s a healthy thing, because you’re letting people know. Plus we were all learning how to create within the compound of a band. We had developed our sound for three to four years before that album came out, because we were touring a lot. And for the first three or four albums, we did things as a band, and then, eventually, it became my band.

What was the mix of personalities like in that version of the band? 

You know, we were like San Francisco street mutts. [Concert promoter] Bill Graham was the one who told us that we were something that we had no idea we were. He thought we were really different from all the other bands in San Francisco. 

The beauty of that [version of] Santana was, although I never went to college, it was a bit like a dormitory: In this room you have a person who’s totally into the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, in here you have someone into Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix, and then you have another person who’s totally into Coltrane and Miles. 

And with every room that I go into, I’m learning something. I’m into Gábor Szabó, Baba Olatunji, and also Coltrane. Abraxas is an amalgamation of all those who we love. It’s just that when we played it, it sounded like us.

Who suggested the title? 

Michael Carabello was very instrumental in how the album looked and sounded. I believe he suggested the name, and he also brought the album cover. Michael and I are still very close. 

But I’m also really grateful to Michael Shrieve, Gregg Rolie, Chepito, and Dave Brown. Everybody – even the people like Alberto Gianquinto, the piano player who used to play with James Cotton, and [then–road manager] Ron Estrada and [personal manager] Stan Marcum, who found me playing in the streets, while I was still in Mission High School.

Abraxas is such an eclectic album. You’ve got psychedelic rock tunes with heavy riffs and Hammond organ, an upbeat Latin party hit, songs that sound like spiritual incantations with Afro-Caribbean percussion and group vocals, and a jazz-fusion instrumental where you’re all really stretching out. Did Fred Catero get what you were going for, or did you have to lead him?

He was very sweet and giving, to allow the musicians to accept and get past one another to create the music. Just like Teo Macero with Miles [producing Bitches Brew], he had to wait for the songs to enter and the musicians to get out of the way. But we were learning together.

What was your process for tracking guitars? 

We used three microphones for every instrument in order to also capture the room, because that’s what the ears hear. We never put microphones totally in front of the speakers. 

One was far in front of them, and one was way away in a corner by the ceiling. And I’d work with every microphone, spending five minutes with each one to open them up like an aperture on a camera, because you’re letting information come in. 

Otherwise it’ll sound very thin and annoying, like you’re playing through the mixing board or a pedal. I don’t use pedals, other than a wah-wah, because as soon as you use pedals, you sound like you’ve got a mask. 

When people ask me, “But how do you get your sound?” I say my sound is my heart, my fingers, and my emotions. It’s not like I need to have a package of ingredients. No, no, no, it’s not like that. You are the sound. Your emotions, your feeling, and your passion.

At this point were you still using the red Gibson SG Special that you’d played at Woodstock? 

No, by that time I had moved on to two other guitars. I had one that kind of looked like Bob Marley’s guitar [a mahogany Gibson Les Paul Special], and then I went and got a Les Paul Custom, cherry red with yellow. 

That’s because the one that I played at Woodstock, unfortunately, wouldn’t stay in tune. In the past I’ve said that guitar was like wrestling a snake, but really it was that the neck kept moving, and then the intonation changes drastically and pretty bad. So I got rid of that guitar.

What was your intention for your guitar tone? 

The intention was: What would a sound that’s combining Wes Montgomery, Otis Rush, and Gábor Szabó be like? Or a little bit of Jimi Hendrix with Paco de Lucía? And that’s what I was doing with “Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen” and “Oye Como Va.” Eventually, though, I didn’t have to think like that anymore.

What kind of gear did you use to get the sound that you wanted? In your autobiography, The Universal Tone, you mention using a Boogie amp, but some say that you used a Fender Twin, possibly modified by Bob Gallien? 

It was before all that. I was using two to three Twins, because I was copying the sound of Michael Bloomfield, Peter Green, and some of B.B. It wasn’t until ’72 that Boogies were created. 

I also used a Marshall on “Hope You’re Feeling Better,” and that was a little different for me, because I wasn’t used to hearing the tone from my hands sound so brash and big. 

Even though I’d heard Jimi and Eric Clapton, it’s very daunting to handle a Marshall full on. It’s like wrestling with a big, electric gorilla. So on “Samba Pa Ti” and all of that, I was still using the Fender Twin.

You didn’t have a lot of guests on the album. It’s the band plus Alberto Gianquinto on piano [“Incident at Neshabur”] and Rico Reyes on backing vocals and percussion [“Oye Como Va,” “El Nicoya”].

Yeah, I think we were more guarded with just the band in the beginning. Bill Graham had told us, “You don’t even know what a song is. You guys play a bunch of ass jams with no beginning and no end!” And we were like, “Wha?” He invited us to his office and played “Evil Ways” [written by Clarence Henry] as he explained where the intro, verse, and chorus are. 

We weren’t used to dealing with songs like that. Gregg and I, we just jammed to stuff like the Jazz Crusaders. So it was Bill Graham and Alberto Gianquinto who made us make a song complete, and within three to four minutes instead of within 14 minutes. But it worked.

It would be great to hear stories behind some of the songs. Let’s start with the opening track, “Singing Winds, Crying Beasts.”

I remember quoting “Eleanor Rigby” by the Beatles, but not sounding like them. Gregg and Michael [Carabello] had created this mood, and I wanted to make my guitar sound like a violin and a lady crying in the night because she can’t find her baby. 

What about “Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen”? 

“Black Magic Woman” was played for the first time at a sound check in Fresno at a parking lot. Gregg wanted to do this Peter Green song, and I had heard of him a lot, but not that song. So when we started it off, I thought I should try a little bit of Wes Montgomery with a bit of Otis Rush. And that was it. “Gypsy Queen” is pure Gábor Szabó with a little Jimi.

What do you remember from “Incident at Neshabur”?

That’s the beginning of me wanting to be and sound like Miles, bending notes and getting all inside your heart. See, the beginning of it [sings the guitar riff] came from Alberto. He and I wrote the song, but he had lyrics which went. “Can you dig, can you do, can you do the pimp thing?”

And the words at very end of the riff went, “Go ahead brother, right on.” When I heard that, I was like “Really? Okay.” The other part [sings the melody that takes the song into the second, meditative part] has two chords that are a bit like “Fool on the Hill.” I just took those two chords and played everything that I was hearing at the time.

It seems like it would be hard to release this type of album today and achieve the kind of commercial success you had. What do you think?

That’s a very good question. I think the times back then were a lot more expansive. Nowadays, people create words like alternative reality and artificial intelligence, and this generation maybe wouldn’t know what to do with an Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, or Miles Davis. In the ’60s, people were expanding their consciousness. Today, they don’t do that as much.

How do you see your creation 50 years later?

By the grace of God, I see this creation right out there with the Beatles’ Abbey Road and Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. Not on top, not below. Right with ’em.

• Abraxas is available now on all formats, including vinyl, via Sony Legacy.

From the most ornate of custom electrics to the simplest of parlor acoustics, Paul Reed Smith has designed all kinds of guitars over the course of his illustrious career.

As Smith told John Mayer in a recent Zoom chat however, there are some ideas that are so out there – putting more than two dozen onboard effects into a guitar, for instance – that not even he can make them work properly.

“Carlos Santana and I worked on this project for a long time,” Smith told Mayer. “We put about 25 tones in the guitar that you could rotate through different people’s pedalboards. You would set the pedalboard, and then you would have all that circuitry on a DSP in the guitar.”

“And so I built him this big pedalboard and it had [EarthQuaker Devices] Bit Commanders and all these wild-sounding pedals on ‘em. I put tape over the whole thing so he couldn’t see it. He just had switches to hit.”

“It sounded immense," Smith continued. "And I wanted to put it in the guitar so somebody sitting in the store just goes, click click click… I think it’s a good idea. Never gonna make it.”

Mayer, for his part, was intrigued by the idea. “I love hearing about things that are good ideas that nobody’s gonna want,” he said. “It excites me tremendously!”

You can watch Smith and Mayer's entire chat – which also covers Mayer's signature PRS, the much-talked-about Silver Sky – in the video above.

Listeners might approach Cindy Blackman Santana’s new album, Give the Drummer Some (Copperline Music Group), with the expectation that it’s chock full of drum solos and percussion pieces. And they would be very, very wrong. 

With the exception of one unaccompanied drum spot (a tour de force called “Mother Earth”), the expansive, 17-track disc is a veritable guitar fan’s dream, with each song serving as a playground for heavyweights such as Vernon Reid, John McLaughlin and Kirk Hammett to stretch out and roam freely. 

And for good measure, Cindy’s husband, Carlos Santana, is more than aptly represented. The guitar icon lends his signature solos to eight dizzying cuts.

“The guitar is one of my favorite instruments, so the album reflects that,” Blackman Santana says. “The music that I’m doing just lends itself to the guitar. I love the way guitar players think. 

“I love playing with them and interacting with them. The album is called Give the Drummer Some, so yeah, I’m having a good time with what they give me. It’s not always about drum solos.”

Blackman Santana freely admits that she isn’t much of a guitarist herself (“I can play barre chords, but I’m no soloist”), but she basks in collaborating with six-string masters. During her career, she’s performed with a diverse array of virtuosos ranging from Larry Coryell to Buckethead. 

From 1992 to 2007, she served as Lenny Kravitz’s drummer before returning for a 2014–’15 tour, and for the past decade she’s been a mainstay on the drummer’s throne for the band Santana (she and Carlos married in 2010). 

“Each time I get to play with a guitar player, it’s like we go on a new journey together,” she says. “Whether we’re playing rock or blues or jazz, it’s always inspiring and exciting.”

Give the Drummer Some is a potpourri of styles. “Superbad” (which features a gritty, turbocharged solo by McLaughlin) is an ultra-funky groover, and “You Don’t Wanna Break My Heart” (dotted with Carlos’ affecting wah-drenched leads) is a poignant love ballad, while “Evolution Revolution” (a pairing of Reid and Hammett at their badass best) is hard-charging metal. 

There’s fun and frolicking party jams (“She’s Got it Goin’ On,” “Everybody’s Dancin’”), spellbinding art rock (“Social Justice”) and a tribute to Miles Davis (“Miles Away”).

One of the album’s highlights is its first single, an extraordinary rock-funk re-inventing of John Lennon’s classic “Imagine.”

The stomping track not only serves as a stunning showcase for Blackman Santana’s dulcet vocals, it also affords Carlos the opportunity to detonate an explosion of guitar psychedelia.

“Oh, my goodness, he smoked that song!” the drummer raves. “We did something pretty different with the song. We turned it into a real joyous celebration. Carlos fell in love with it the first time I played him the idea of where we were going with it.”

You’re the drummer for Santana, but here Carlos is playing guitar on your record. Any difference in how the two of you work together when you’re the boss?

[laughs] “The boss” - that’s funny. The differences are subtle, but overall there’s no big difference in how we work together. The process is different because they’re my songs, but in terms of the creativity, it’s sort of the same. If there’s something I’m looking for in a particular song, I might say, “Hey, how about trying this?” 

But there’s really not a lot of that with Carlos. That happens in his band, too. He might say, “Hey, Cindy, can you try this?” Sometimes he’ll say, “I want some woof!” It’s really a lot of sharing, a lot of trust, and that happens in both situations.

A lot of the time, I hear drummers say they follow the bassist, and vice versa. As a drummer, do you have a particular way of homing in on what a guitarist is doing?

It’s a lot of give and take, because you have to listen to each other. A lot of guitar players tend to be leaders, and they want you to follow them. But sometimes you can drive them, too. You work out ways to push them. Sometimes you do it aggressively, and other times you do it non-aggressively. 

It’s a conversation. Each person takes turns at being the glue in the band. I played with Lenny Kravitz for such a long time, and that’s a guitar-driven band. Lenny is playing guitar and so is Craig Ross, so there’s a lot of guitar happening. 

And Lenny writes songs from a guitar perspective - the tunes are born out of riffs and guitar grooves. So I had to really key into where he’s placing those grooves. You can’t just go in and play; you have to take a moment and listen to what the guitar is doing. Over time, it becomes natural to you.

Is that what took place when you used to play with Larry Coryell?

Absolutely. I learned when to drive it a little or when to let Larry do his thing and guide me. That was an experience that felt very natural. I played with Larry in the ’90s, and then before he passed he called me to do something with him again. 

We got together after not playing together for a while, and he said, “Cindy, you just play with guitar so well. Stuff that I have to tell other drummers to do, or get them to do, you just do naturally. It’s just second nature for you.” What a great compliment. It’s a telepathy thing, and you develop it over time.

While you were prepping songs for this album, would you play Carlos certain things to get his feedback, or to entice him into playing on them?

Absolutely. I would play him stuff and ask, “What you think about this?” He would give me his opinion, so finally I’d say, “Well, how would you like to play on this?” And he’d chuckle and say, “Oh, yeah? Are you kidding? Of course I will!” I remember playing him a song that [bassist] Matt Garrison and I were working on, “Social Justice.” 

I said, “Carlos I’m really hearing you on this.” And he said, “Well, what would I play on that?” Because we weren’t playing just a straight backbeat; it was flipping around a lot. I told him that I wanted him to explore his sound and stretch it out over some of the dense things we were doing. He loved the concept, so he went for it.

What if Carlos had an idea that you didn’t like? Would that get weird?

You know, if there was something that I wasn’t hearing, I would just say, “Hey, how about you try this? Let’s compare the two approaches.” Carlos has great ears, obviously, so I trust his instincts. On the other hand, he wants to make the song better, so he’s humble enough to say, “Let’s go with your thing.”

You’ve worked with Vernon extensively in the past. In fact, you played together in the band Spectrum Road. I’m wondering what kind of musical dialogue the two of you share.

Oh, my goodness, we have so much in common. We both adore Tony Williams Lifetime. We love George Benson, Carlos and Hendrix. We spend a lot of time talking about textures and grooves; we both love to explore sound. 

Vernon’s playing is so exciting and inspirational to me. He has such a vast knowledge of music, and he creates a soundstage when he plays. It all just comes from the person he is. He gives off a positive vibration, and you hear it in his playing.

Vernon and Carlos do some beautiful jazz-blues work together on “Black Pearl.” How did that come about?

That was one of those magical tracks that happened pretty spontaneously. We were playing and the two of them started riffing off each other, but it was all based on the groove and the mood of the song. The way they vibed together was so cool.

There was no ego or one-upmanship; it was just mutual support and creativity, and you can hear that in their playing. When Carlos is playing, you hear Vernon doing amazing stuff under him, and vice versa. There were all of these cool lines they would play to complement each other. It was great to listen to two masters doing their thing.

You and John McLaughlin have a really spirited back and forth on “We Came to Play.” It sounds like the two of you are having the time of your lives.

We did that piece together, and it was a beautiful thing. The title says it all - “We came to play.” He did have a good time, and he reached out to me a couple months later and said, “What else are you doing for your record?” He wanted to play more, and that’s how I got him on “Superbad.”

John and Carlos have a history together. Did you think about pairing them?

I would have loved to. I actually had a chance to play with them at Montreux [in 2011], when John sat in with Santana. Seeing the two of them work off each other - it’s just watching two innovators. 

Both of them started off on the violin, which might explain a little about their feel and tone. John is such a brilliant talent. He has this harmonic knowledge that runs deep. Yeah, the combination of the two… Maybe the next record. [laughs]

Did you give any of the guitarists direction as to what to play, or were you more like, “I’ve got a racehorse here. I’m just going to let him go”?

A little of both. Yeah, the racehorse thing - that’s a good analogy. A lot of times, we would send them templates of the songs so they could just go for it and play what they felt. 

I mean, these guys are so musical that I knew I could trust they would give me back something beautiful. There were maybe a couple of times where I might say, “Hey, can you drop off a little here,” or, “I’d love a little more of that.” But for the most part, you just let those cats go.

Your reworking of John Lennon’s “Imagine” is quite striking. It’s such a crunchy guitar rocker now.

It is. [Producer] Narada [Michael Walden] asked me if there was a song I wanted to cover, and I said my number-one choice was “Imagine,” but I said I wanted it to be more rock-funk. 

Knowing my history with Lenny Kravitz, Narada mentioned what Lenny did with “American Woman,” which I thought was the perfect groove and feel. So we vibed on that and explored how to rock the song out. The lyrics and the melody are the same, but the treatment is totally different.

Kirk Hammett and Vernon are a great fit on “Evolution Revolution.” At times, they’re almost indistinguishable.

Yeah, that’s wild. I didn’t know they would complement each other so well. That song started out as an instrumental, but as I was listening to it I thought it should be a vocal song, so I wrote words for it. I had mentioned Kirk to Carlos, but for some reason I just thought there was no way he would do it. 

I said, “He’s the guitar player for Metallica. He won’t play on my record.” I didn’t even know him. But Carlos said, “Well, why don’t you ask him?” You know, simple as that. So I wrote a little note and sent it with the track to Kirk’s assistant, and Kirk came back with a “yes.” I was thrilled.

Vernon had played on it already, and he did a long, jaw-dropping solo. Kirk is so musical, so we created some space in the track for him to play more. He riffed on what Vernon did, and it came out great. You would think that the two of them sat down and worked out their parts. They sound so fiery together.

There are no concerts for the foreseeable future, but when you can play again, do you think you might bring some of the guest guitarists on your record out on tour?

I will be back playing with Santana, but as for my own tour, we’ll see. Aurelien Budynek is the guitarist in my band, so he’ll certainly be there. I love playing with Vernon, so hopefully he can do shows with me. I’m hoping that Carlos will do some of it as well. We’ll see.

So, your people will just have to talk to his people. 

[laughs] Exactly!

• Cindy Blackman Santana's new album, Give the Drummer Some, is out now via Copperline.

In the Fall 2010 issue of our late sister magazine, Guitar Aficionado, we ran a feature on Carlos Santana's guitar collection. Here's one of the groovy instruments that we couldn't squeeze into the article!

In the mid Eighties, Santana began to work with the visual artist Michael Rios, whose hallucinogenic, “magical realist” style is almost telepathically in sync with the guitarist’s musical aesthetic and spiritual vision. 

Rios has created numerous posters, graphics, silk-screened t-shirts and album covers for Santana, notably the cover art for the multiplatinum Supernatural in 1999.

Rios also designed this guitar for Santana, painting the body of a Fernandes Strat-style guitar that was later retrofitted with a Fender neck. 

When Rios presented the instrument to Santana, the guitarist was struck by one image in particular - the disembodied hand on the upper body bout, with a glowing triangular shape resting in the palm.

“Every time I took LSD, I would lose all sense of everything,” Santana told GA at the time, “I always found a guitar pick in the middle of my hand. And I’d say, ‘This thing has something to do with who I am and what I do in this lifetime.’ 

"Whether I had lost all identity of being Carlos Santana or being Mexican or whatever, there was always a pick in my hand, and that somehow connected me with my purpose in life. 

"I never told Michael Rios about any of that. But look on that guitar, there’s a pick in the hand. See that? I don’t know how Michael knew that. But that was the only thing that brought me back out of LSD. Some people never came back.”

Luckily, Stevie Ray Vaughan got around in the Eighties, jamming with pretty much everyone from Jeff Beck to Eric Clapton to B.B. King to Albert King to ...

OK, maybe not everyone. But he certainly played with a host of blues and classic-rock legends, including Carlos Santana.

Above, check out some pro-shot - and just plain incredible - footage of Santana jamming with Stevie Ray Vaughan; Stevie's big brother, Jimmie Vaughan of the Fabulous Thunderbirds; and lefty guitarist Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos in early October 1988.

The show, which is available on a bootleg DVD (or so I'm told), took place at the Pacific Amphitheater in Costa Mesa, California.

You'll want to jump ahead to the 14:23 mark in the top video, which is when Santana's guests take the stage. They kick things off with "Everybody's Everything," a rollicking track with blues changes from Santana's 1971 self-titled album, during which SRV goes to town on a doubleneck Danelectro (the bottom neck sounds like a baritone).

But it only gets better from there. We see Santana exchange solos with Stevie, Jimmie and Cesar, all of whom were in great form that night. 

The medley of songs continues into the second video, where there are more closeups of SRV and his (or someone's) doubleneck guitar in action. This is also some of the best late-Eighties playing by Jimmie that I've ever seen.

Enjoy!