After nine years away from the stage, guitarist Carlos Alomar is touring once again in memory of David Bowie and the D.A.M. Trio. Featuring drummer Dennis Davis, Alomar and bass guitarist George Murray — D.A.M. was an acronym made up from the initials of their last names — the trio backed up Bowie in the 1970s on critical albums like Young Americans, Station to Station, Low, “Heroes” and Lodger. on which the singer redefined his sound

Alomar has been working on the education side of things lately, but says the California wildfires of 2024 and the fact that he felt he could have lost his old pal in rhythm, bassist George Murray, influenced his decision to hit the road one last time. His celebration of life, family, and music is a reminder of his career recording and performing with rock and roll royalty, including Chuck Berry, David Bowie, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and many others.

To that end, Alomar dialed in with Guitar Player to dig into his memories of working with those greats.

“It’s fortuitous that it happened, but it never happened the same way every time,” he offers. “So I cherish the moments that we have, because those little moments in time should be cherished and shared, but never really repeated.”

Chuck Berry

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

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

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

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

“He turned around, walked out.

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

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

“But I also learned that you did not talk to Chuck. Chuck talked to you. And how do I remember him? As a mean drunk. [laughs] You only remember your last experience with someone. It’s like a song: You can do a whole song, but if you mess up the ending, all you remember is the messed-up ending. Chuck Berry is like that song. It was great. But at the end, he came and stunk that up real good.”

David Bowie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Lennon

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

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

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

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

Paul McCartney

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

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

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

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

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

When Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly picked up a Gibson ES-345 to perform “Johnny B. Goode” in Back to the Future, he did more than provide a key scene in the 1985 science fiction film. He inspired at least two of popular music’s most famous guitarists to pick up the instrument.

In a new interview with Parade, Fox says he’s personally heard from John Mayer and Coldplay’s Chris Martin, who told him they began playing guitar all because of his performance in the movie’s Enchantment Under the Sea dance.

“It’s all about the expression of joy in music,” the actor says, explaining why that scene connected with Mayer, Martin and so many others. “I love music and I love that scene.”

The one person he never heard from? The man whose song is at the heart of the film: “Johnny B. Goode” songwriter and guitarist Chuck Berry.

“I never heard from Chuck Berry,” Fox admits.

Perhaps Chuck was bothered that the Gibson ES-345 guitar Fox plays wasn’t actually around in 1955, the year in which the dance is set. It came out in 1959. In 1955, Berry was still playing the Gibson ES-350T he used to record his breakout hit, “Maybellene,” which was recorded and released that year.

The electric guitar Fox played was rented from Norman Harris, of Norman’s Rare Guitars fame. Although Harris advised the film team that the guitar was not period correct, they chose it for its looks, as Fox reveals in his new memoir, Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum.

Despite the anachronistic placement of the guitar, “the film’s art department simply picked the ES-345,” he writes, “because it evoked the iconic wine-red axe that Chuck Berry famously duckwalked across stages all over the world.”

In fact, Berry played not only the ES-345 but also the similar-looking ES-335 and ES-355 models. He loved his 355 so much that his family placed one with him in his casket, where it remains to this day.

As for that 345 used in the film? The semihollow guitar went missing after the scene was shot and is the focus of a global search led by Gibson, which has hired the investigative journalists who helped find Paul McCartney's lost Höfner violin bass to aid the hunt.

Fox recently shared his theory about what happened to the Back to the Future ES-345 and says he has an idea about why the guitar is still in hiding.

The actor also spoke with Parade about filming the scene, in which he mimes to a pre-recorded track, featuring singer Mark Campbell. He notes that, as a guitarist, he could play the instrument as required.

“The music was prerecorded before I got there,” he explains. “They played me the track and said, ‘Can you do this?’ and I said ‘Yeah, I can play it.”

Unfortunately, his singing skills weren’t up to snuff.

“I can’t sing a lick! I’m a terrible singer!” he admits. Besides, he says Campbell’s voice is a good match for his own.

“I love that this guy’s voice was in my timbre and in my range,” the actor says. “He could round off the notes and musicality that I could never do.”

Chuck Berry could be notoriously difficult to his backup bands. The rock and roll progenitor was known to use local pickup groups for his shows, giving many up-and-coming performers a chance to get real-world experience playing with an established artist. But as many discovered, Chuck liked to change things up onstage without alerting the band, creating some perilous moments for the musicians.

Unlike some of his peers, Nils Lofgren never had that rite of passage in his early years. But he did have a pair of memorable meetings with Berry once he became an established performer, including one particularly awful performance involving Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band playing live before a nationally televised audience.

Lofgren’s first meeting with the electric guitar–toting Father of Rock and Roll took place circa 1977 on the set of the following year's film American Hot Wax. The biopic about legendary DJ Alan Freed featured performances by rock and roll legends like Jerry Lee Lewis, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Berry.

The film was co-written and produced by Art Linson, who managed Lofgren's band Grin for a time. By then Lofgren was well established both with Neil Young's Crazy Horse and as a solo artist with a few albums of his own. Linson invited him to the theater where Berry’s performance was being filmed.

“Art said, ‘Come on, I want to introduce you to Chuck,’” Lofgren tells Guitar Player, “and I'm like, ‘I don't need to meet Chuck.’

“‘Oh, c’mon...’

“So we're at this theater and they're about to file in the extras — hundreds and hundreds of high school and college kids all dressed up like the ’50s. And Chuck's onstage in his beautiful, cream suit, just standing there waiting to eye all the people coming in. Probably looking at the girls, mostly.

“Art drags me out to the center of the stage and says, ‘Chuck, I want you to meet my friend Nils Lofgren, blah, blah, blah... He plays with Neil Young, he plays his own music. Say hi,’ and then he walks away and leaves me alone with Chuck.

“And Chuck's just standing there, ignoring me. I'm 5-3, he's like 6-2 or whatever, looks perfect.

“Finally, before I crawled off, I thought I'd ask a musician question. I said, ‘Hey, Mr. Berry, nice to meet you, sir. What kind of guitar are you playing these days?’

“He just ignored me, but then he slowly turned his head, looked down on me and waited a minute, then said, ‘Son, I play a six-string.’

“And that was my dismissal. It was classic! I just slithered off and said, ‘Art, don't you ever fuckin’ do that to me again.’”

(For the record, Chuck was well into playing Gibson ES-355 semihollow guitars by this point in his career, a model he loved so much that he was buried with one in his casket.)

Nearly 20 years later, Lofgren — then a member in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band — found himself in Berry’s company once again. This time he was onstage, backing the legend on his hit “Johnny B. Goode” on September 2, 1995. The occasion was the Concert for the Hall of Fame, at Cleveland's Municipal Stadium, a nearly seven-hour, nationally televised event to celebrate the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum that Labor Day Weekend.

Berry’s performance of “Johnny B. Goode” was the first of 68 songs performed that night by four generations of musicians, including Little Richard, Aretha Franklin, the Kinks, the Allman Brothers Band, John Mellencamp, the Pretenders, Bon Jovi and many more.

“Johnny B. Goode” was an appropriate start for such a show, and the performance — despite some obvious stage nerves — went off without a hitch.

But Berry's unpredictable nature wasn’t about to be kept down. It finally came out on the final song of the night, which, according to some reports, was supposed to be his 1957 hit “Rock and Roll Music.”

By then the show had been going on for nearly seven hours. The musicians onstage included not only Springsteen and the E Street Band but also guitarist G.E. Smith and the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde.

As Berry returned for the closing performance, he was clearly in freeform mode from the moment he began playing his guitar without announcing what he had planned.

“Yeah, we had one of those moments with Chuck,” Lofgren recalls with a laugh. “He was playing and moving keys and just not being a band leader. We were all trying to hang on. I remember the looks on all our faces.”

Apparently, the performance was so bad that no video of it exists on the Rock Hall’s YouTube channel — although it does host video of Lofgren explaining what went down that night.

“He's standing there, and he starts playing. We're all pros, so we started following along,” Lofgren says in the clip. “Somehow, a minute or two in, he shifts the song in gears and a key, without talking to us.

“Then he shifts keys again, and he shifts keys four or five times, I can only imagine to mess with us. I can't imagine what else has happened.”

Lofgren recalled the band members’ bewilderment. “We are making these horrible sounds, collectively, in front of a stadium — sold out! And we're looking at each other like, This can't be happening, right? We're not creating this thing we're listening to.Yes, we are.

“And at the height of it, when no one has an idea how to fix this, Chuck looks at us all and starts duck walking off the stage. He leaves the stage — leaves us all out there playing in six different keys, with no band leader, gets in a car and drives away.

“Now, if that's not rock and roll…”

As Lofgren tells Guitar Player, he and Springsteen took it all in good humor.

“In the van ride afterwards, riding back to the hotel, me and Bruce were howling and laughing uncontrollably at how bad we all sounded,” Lofgren says. “We were saying we haven't all sounded this confused and unsure and tenuous since we were, like, 14.

“You had to laugh. It was just one of those classic rock moments with one of our genius creators of the genre who still couldn’t help himself from messing with the musicians a bit. That's just embedded in him. And yet I don't think anyone really noticed except for us.

“It was still fun to play with him... and made for an even more historic night, ’cause that's part of rock and roll.”

Michael J. Fox delivered one of cinema’s great iconic scenes when he mimed to Chuck Berry’s hit song “Johnny B. Goode” in the 1988 movie Back to the Future. The film — for those who don’t already know it — centers on Fox’s character Marty McFly, a 1980s teen who travels back in time to 1955.

On the surface, the use of Berry’s tune for Fox’s big scene seems appropriate. His McFly performs "Johnny B. Goode" at a high school dance after he time travels to the mid 1950s, a time when Berry was earning his stripes to become the Father of Rock and Roll.

For the scene, Fox even played an electric guitar that was one of Berry’s favorites: a cherry red Gibson ES-345 semihollow. The very guitar Fox used in the movie is itself famous today: Once filming wrapped, the instrument disappeared and is now the subject of a newly launched search initiated by Gibson.

The Berry reference is certainly justified. The guitarist was a star in 1955 after he scored a hit from out of nowhere with his tune “Maybellene,” a revved-up country rocker with amusing lyrics delivered in Berry’s lightning-quick delivery.

The tune was a culture-shifting phenomenon that set the stage for more Chuck Berry hits to come, including “Roll Over Beethoven,” “School Days,” “Sweet Little Sixteen” and, of course, “Johnny B. Goode.” The latter song’s double-stop-studded introduction would become a favorite of budding guitarists in rock’s early era, an essential rite of passage to becoming a bona fide rock guitarist.

There’s just one problem with Back to the Future and Fox’s iconic scene.

Music aficionados will note that the scene in which he performs “Johnny B. Goode” is set in 1955. “Johnny B. Goode” wouldn't come out until 1958.

But that's not an issue. McFly is just giving the kids a glimpse into the music of their very near future.

The real problem is that ES-345 he borrows from the band that's performing at the dance. Gibson didn’t begin to design the model until 1958, basing it on the ES-335 introduced that year. For that matter, the ES-345 wasn’t available for purchase until the following year.

In other words, the only way McFly could have performed “Johnny B. Goode” on a Gibson ES-345 in 1955 is if he brought one with him — or stopped in some other time — say 1959? — on his travels back to the Eisenhower era.

Or maybe the guitarist for the band is a fellow time traveler too?

That unforced error joins several intentional anachronisms included in the scene. Fox astounds the audience with a performance inspired by Jimi Hendrix, Angus Young and Eddie Van Halen as he employs ear-screeching feedback, power chords and two-handed tapping.

As the music rolls to a stop, Fox turns to face his bewildered, silent audience.

“I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet,” he says.

“But your kids are gonna love it.”

Indeed they did. Chuck Berry went on to inspire the next wave of guitarists, from John Lennon and Keith Richards to Ace Frehley and Angus Young. Although his music aged out of the pop music parade, it remained timeless both for guitarists and fans of rock and roll’s first wave.

Berry died in 2018 just as he was hoping to revive his career with his first album in 18 years, and was buried with the model of guitar that became a staple of his live performance — not Gibson’s ES-345 but the ES-355.

It's a well-known fact that Chuck Berry was buried with a Gibson ES-355 semihollow electric guitar to keep him company in the afterlife.

But the story of how the guitar came to join Chuck in his eternal resting place hasn't been fully revealed, until now.

As his son, Charles Berry, explains, it's “a crazy story, but absolutely true.”

Berry passed away March 18, 2017, at the age of 90, in his home near Wentzville, Missouri, an exurb of St. Louis. The guitar great died with uncanny — and unfortunate — timing: His 20th studio album, Chuck, his first record in 18 years, was about to be released that June.

“After dad’s passing myself, my mother and my sister Melody were making arrangements for dad’s celebration of life, picking out the casket and all that kind of stuff,” Charles Berry tells us. “The mortuary says, ‘Mr. Berry, the casket company we work with can do anything you want. They can truly customize this casket.’ And my sister Melody says, ‘Could they, like, put a guitar on it?’

“Then mom and Melody talked some more: ‘Can we make a guitar that can go on the casket?’

“And I’m like, ‘What?! Have you lost your… No!’"

It was Melody who came up with the winning idea.

“She said, ‘How about if we make a guitar and have it inside the casket with him?’” Charles relates. “And my mom’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s a great idea!’

“They know I’m the guitar geek in the family, so they look at me and ask, ‘Can’t they do that? Or, why don’t we just use one of his guitars?’”

The idea of Chuck being buried with one of his treasured instruments would horrify most guitar fans and, especially, collectors and aficionados.

But Charles couldn’t even think that far ahead. He was focused on the physical problem of how to fit a semihollow guitar — even a thinline of the variety Chuck used for much of his career — inside a coffin.

“My head’s exploding,” he says, “’cause there’s only so much space inside, right?”

After further discussion, the two women prevailed upon him to contact Gibson to ask about customizing a guitar to fit inside the coffin.

Barry says he called the Nashville-based guitar maker and posed the question.

“There was dead silence on the other end of the phone for a minute," he says.

Eventually, he was referred to Tom Murphy, master artisan at the Gibson Custom Shop and the namesake creator of the Gibson Murphy Lab Collection. Charles says Murphy couldn’t have been nicer.

“He goes, ‘Charles, your dad is a treasure to us. We’ll just send you up a brand-new guitar and you can do whatever you want with it.'”

Gibson provided the red-finished ES-355 with a Maestro Vibrola, just like Chuck played for much of his career. Now Charles just needed a casket deep enough to accommodate his father and the ES-355.

“I had a contact with the casket company, so I got both parties on the line and said, ‘Okay, guys, you’ve got the general idea,’” he recalls. “The company found a casket in the system and said, ‘Well, y’know, there actually is enough room at the top…’

"So I said, ‘Okay, great, I’ve got to prepare for a funeral. Just keep me abreast of what’s going on.’”

Chuck's public viewing revealed the results of his family's effort. The ES-355 was mounted inside the coffin's lid, angled to match the guitarist's usual playing position, with the headstock pointed toward his feet. Between the strings was a white guitar pick bearing an image of a young Chuck playing a Gibson.

The viewing, held prior to the funeral on April 9, at the Pageant club in St. Louis, was attended by hundreds of mourners, including fans and fellow musicians like Paul Shaffer and Kiss bassist Gene Simmons, who offered an impromptu eulogy. The Rolling Stones sent a guitar-shaped floral arrangement with a note that read, “Thank you for the inspiration,” while letters were read from former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Paul McCartney and Little Richard.

The Gibson guitar displayed in the casket proved to be a memorable and touching tribute to Chuck. But apparently no one really thought the instrument would go with him to his final resting place.

“They were asking at the end of the service, ‘Mrs. Berry, we can take it out?’” Charles recalls. “And she goes, ‘No, no, no,’ it should go with him.’

“So when they’re about to say the benediction, they start to close the casket, and there was a gasp from everybody. There were probably 500 guitarists in the place, and I could hear, ‘Oh my god, they’re closing the casket with that guitar in it!’

“And eight years later, that’s where it still is, right now.”

Berry owned several Gibson ES guitars over the years, including ES-335, 345 and 355 models. He famously played an ES-350T to drive his amp into distortion on his breakthrough hit, “Maybellene,” from 1955. That guitar is now on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Charles still owns two of his father’s guitars and oversees the loan and donation of other instruments. He says Chuck “would go back and forth between the 335 and 345. But as soon as he got ahold of that first 335 he loved that, ’cause it still gave the full hollow-body tone but was a little smaller, a little heavier than the 350T.”

He adds that Chuck was especially fond of the 345 and 355 for their Varitone circuit and stereo outputs.

“He really liked the Varitone switch and twin outputs, so you could have the bridge pickup going one place and the neck pickup going to another. After 1968 or ’70, he used two Fender Dual Showman — two of those monsters — onstage, and he would get a Y-cord and plug the neck pickup into one amp and the neck pickup in the other and drive both of them.

“The secret weapon was the Varitone switch, because then he could change the phasing between the two pickups and get some sounds that were incredible.”

Berry liked the ES-355 so much that it was seen in his hands for much of his career from the 1970s onward. Fittingly, Gibson unveiled the Chuck Berry 1970s ES-355 as a limited-edition Murphy Lab Aged guitar in 2021.

Berry’s guitar tone and stylings would ultimately prove influential to a generation of guitar players, including John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan and countless others, several of whom “borrowed” his music for compositions of their own.

His stage moves, including his famous duck walk, would also inform Michael J. Fox’s antics in the movie Back to the Future, where the actor performs a rousing version of Chuck’s hit “Johnny B. Goode” in the movie’s Enchantment Under the Sea high school dance scene. But while Chuck’s guitars are accounted for, the Gibson ES-345 Fox used remains at large and is the focus of a search launched by Gibson.

Although they reshaped music as we know it, the Beatles never shied away from their influences. Their earliest albums included covers of songs by some of their favorite American artists, including Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Carl Perkins and groups from the Motown stable.

Those influences were rooted deep in their music sensibilities. George Harrison’s eye-catching Futurama guitar was bought so he could mimic his hero Holly at a time when Fender Stratocasters hadn’t yet made it to the U.K. Paul McCartney often doffed his hat to his forebearers, whether by channeling Little Richard's singing style or drawing Motown stylings into “Got to Get You into My Life.”

But perhaps the most obvious tribute to a fellow group was "Back in the U.S.S.R.," a McCartney composition from the 1968 White Album that was recorded with all the trimmings of a classic Beach Boys tune. And indeed, the Beatles were Beach Boys fans. John Lennon and McCartney were both heavily influenced by Brian Wilson's songs, arrangements and recordings on Pet Sounds, and they considered the group's multilayered harmonies as good as their own.

So how did "Back in the U.S.S.R." become a Beach Boys tribute? It got some help from a Beach Boy: Mike Love.

The Beatles met Love in February 1968, when they all went to study Transcendental Meditation in Rishikesh, India, with guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Lennon, McCartney and Harrison wrote a huge portion of the White Album while there, including "Back in the U.S.S.R."

The song had begun life in England as "I'm Backing the U.K.," a parody on the name of an early 1968 patriotic campaign called "I'm Backing Britain," aimed at boosting the country's economy.

Once in India, McCartney changed its title to "Back in the U.S.S.R." as a send-up of Chuck Berry’s “Back in the U.S.A.” The fact that the U.S.S.R. and U.S. were in the depths of the Cold War was part of the joke.

But the Beatles had plenty of fans behind the Iron Curtain as well, and McCartney's wry rewrite was a chance to pay homage with the tale of a Soviet traveler who's eager to escape America and return to his life in Russia.

“It’s tongue in cheek,” he said in Barry Miles 1997 biography, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now. "This is a traveling Russkie who has just flown in from Miami Beach. He’s come the other way. He can’t wait to get back to the Georgian mountains: ‘Georgia’s always on my mind’; there’s all sorts of little jokes in it."

Having some distance from the Cold War made that sort of humor possible. As McCartney told Forbes in 2023, "We were in the U.K., so I could poke fun at it in my own way.”

For that, some credit must go to Mike Love, particularly in the song's bridge, where the Beatles mimic the Beach Boys' early surfing songs, whose lyrics focused on the West Coast's beautiful girls.

“I was sitting at the breakfast table, and McCartney came down with his acoustic guitar, and he was playing ‘Back In the U.S.S.R.’," Love has stated. "I told him that what you ought to do is talk about the girls all around Russia, Ukraine and Georgia.

"He was plenty creative not to need any lyrical help from me, but I gave him the idea for that little section. I think it was light-hearted and humorous of them to do a take on the Beach Boys."

For his part, McCartney told Playboy in 1984, "I just liked the idea of Georgia girls and talking about places like the Ukraine as if they were California, you know? It was also 'hands across the water,' which I'm still conscious of. 'Cause they like us out there, even though the bosses in the Kremlin may not."

As Beatles songs go, "Back in the U.S.S.R." is the track that saw the group return to the simple guitar rock and roll of their youth. It was a remarkable change of style considering that just one year earlier the group had released some of its most ambitious recordings with the psychedelic-tinged Sgt.Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour releases.

Still, "Back in the U.S.S.R." is far from simple where its personnel is concerned. The recording features guitar contributions from Lennon (rhythm), McCartney (rhythm and lead) and Harrison (rhythm and solo), and all three play bass guitar. As Ringo Starr had temporarily quit the Beatles just before recording began — the fractious White Album sessions had left him feeling like an outsider — McCartney played the drums, but both Lennon and Harrison contributed to the drum track as well, likely in overdubs.

When released, "Back in the U.S.S.R." had a prime spot as the White Album's opening track. It made a humorous and approachable introduction to an album whose songs became increasingly varied, challenging and avant-garde over its four sides.

But for all McCartney's intended "tongue-in-cheek" approach, the song earned the group enemies on both sides of the political divide. The right-wing John Birch Society saw it as proof that the Fab Four were pushing a pro-Soviet agenda.

The left, meanwhile, found much to dislike, given that three months before the song's release, the Soviets had invaded Czechoslovakia, crushing the country's move toward democratic reforms. Coincidentally, the Beatles recorded the song on August 22 and 23, just days after the Soviet invasion on August 20.

Since the Beatles were banned in the U.S.S.R. at the time of the White Album's release, the Soviets would have only heard the track through bootlegged copies of the record and cassette transfers. The ban was lifted in the 1980s, paving the way for the group's records to find a new audience behind the Iron Curtain.

"Back in the U.S.S.R." had what may have been its premiere performance in the U.S.S.R. when Elton John covered it during a Soviet tour. Fans reportedly loved it, but the Russian authorities were far less pleased. Perhaps they felt mocked. Whatever the case, McCartney was banned from performing there in the 1980s.

It was likely a sore spot with him.

"Probably my single most important reason for going to Russia would be to play ['Back in the U.S.S.R']," he told biographer Barry Miles in his 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now.

He finally got his wish in May 2003, when he performed "Back in the U.S.S.R." in Moscow's Red Square. In an interview before the show, he admitted he'd known little of his subject when he wrote the tune.

"It was a mystical land then," he said. "It's nice to see the reality. I always suspected that people had big hearts. Now I know that's true."

The Brothers Osborne went through all kinds of hell while recording their last album, 2020’s Skeletons. Lead guitarist John Osborne came down with tinnitus. His singer-guitarist brother, TJ, was sidelined for a month with salmonella poisoning. The historic tornado that hit Nashville that year caused their studio to lose power, and COVID continued to ravage the community, requiring the country-rock duo to finish the album while in quarantine.

Things didn’t get easier as they prepared to record a follow-up, but this time the issues the brothers faced were more personal. TJ made headlines when he came out (making him the first openly gay artist on a major country music label), and he’s used his position to become a leader for a more inclusive country community.

Meanwhile, John struggled with depression and anxiety, leading him to seek help in a therapy retreat. “We’ve been through a lot, but we’ve had a lot of love and support,” John says. “And in many ways, we’re stronger as people and musicians. We channeled it all into our writing and wrote with our hearts wide open.”

Throughout his life, John viewed the guitar as a trusted friend that was always there, especially during tough times. But the double shot of mental health issues and ongoing tinnitus flattened him, and for the first time in a long time he put the guitar down.

“It was difficult at first, because I didn’t have my comfort blanket,” he says. “Once I worked on me, I was able to come back to the guitar and feel interested in it again. Now I feel like I’m a better player. It’s like I came back with a clean slate.” He pauses, then says decidedly, “But it’s only because I put in that work; otherwise, I’d be faking my way through.”

The new album, titled simply Brothers Osborne, is as musically potent as anything the duo has ever done. But not surprisingly, hook-filled, commercial bull’s-eyes like Who Says You Can’t Have Everything and Nobody’s Nobody display a newfound – and no doubt hard-earned – lyrical maturity.

One of the most distinctive elements of John’s playing is his ability to surprise, especially during solos, and on the country-funk groover Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That, he turns in a deliciously whacked-out industrial lead that’s sure to raise eyebrows.

“Our producer, Mike Elizondo, is a total gear nerd, so we’re kindred spirits,” John says. “He said he heard an Electro-Harmonix Bass Micro Synth on that solo, so I tried it out, and it sounded amazing! I couldn’t stop talking about it. My wife bought me one for my birthday, so you might hear more of that in the future. Anything can sound good in country music if you play from the heart.”

You and TJ really stretch the boundaries of country music, which begs the question: Do you consider yourself a country guitarist?

“I do. I grew up playing country music, and I learned a lot of the old stuff. The first song I learned was Your Cheating Heart by Hank Williams. I studied a lot of country guys – Don Rich, Roy Nichols… people like that – but then I branched out.

“I listened to Alan Jackson and heard this insane guitar playing by Brent Mason. Then Brad Paisley and Keith Urban took things to another level. Am I a country guitarist? Sure. But the genre is so wide, just like rock. I mean, Chuck Berry is a rock guitarist, but so is Buckethead.”

That said, you and TJ seem to be able to avoid country clichés, both lyrically and musically.

“It’s funny how country music gets such a bad rap. You ever hear people say, ‘I don’t like country music because it’s so lame,’ but they’ll mention a country artist they do like? They never say that about other genres. I listen to all genres of music, and there’s artists in each genre I don’t like, but I don’t put down the whole genre. [laughs]

“To me, it’s almost a philosophical question that comes down to authenticity. Luke Bryan is authentic because he isn’t trying to be Sturgill Simpson. Sturgill Simpson doesn’t try to be Luke Bryan. Same with Chris Stapleton. With TJ and me, we’re just being ourselves. Thank God people like what we do, because we don’t know how to be anything else.”

You’re interesting in that you play unexpected licks and solos, yet they seem to fit the material perfectly. And you don’t need a lot of space, either. Your solo in Who Says You Can’t Have Everything is very short and quirky, but it makes a point.

“In my view, the guitar and the song are joined at the hip. Some guys go, ‘I’ve got four bars, eight bars – I’ll noodle my way through.’ Why would you do that? If you’ve got four or eight bars as a lyricist, you wouldn’t say, ‘I’ll just sing whatever.’ I want what I play to be singable and memorable. That’s why one of the best guitarists for songs is Mike Campbell. Everything he plays matters.

“It took me a while to appreciate that, because when you’re young you just want to burn and impress girls. I love jamming and improvising, but that doesn’t work when you’re trying to play for the song. I don’t want to just kill dead space; I want to play something that sticks with you. It can be something adventurous or something simple, as long as it matters.”

On Goodbye’s Kickin’ In, your licks and soloing are quite simple, but they’re as important as the lyrics.

“That one was quite a bit like Tom Petty and Mike Campbell. I played a Tele through a Princeton amp and got a real clean sound. It’s a bit of a Stones approach, too. I love the rhythm parts, and the solo is something like three notes, with tons of space.”

That’s what’s so surprising. A lot of guitarists would use that space to burn, but you went minimal. It’s reminiscent of Steve Cropper or Curtis Mayfield.

“There you go. I’m not saying, ‘Look at me.’ I’m saying, ‘Listen to the song.’ Cropper is a great example – keep it simple and singable. What did Miles Davis say? ‘Music is the space between the notes.’ It’s hard to remember that sometimes, because, as guitarists, our instincts are to fill up all the spaces.”

How do you seek new inspiration as a guitarist? Who are you listening to these days?

“I’ve gone back and listened to stuff I used to ignore, like all the pop music Tim Pierce played on. Toto was a band I didn’t have time for because it was my dad’s music, but now I listen to it and it blows my mind. I’ve become obsessed with sounds. Tame Impala – how is that guy [Kevin Parker] getting those sounds out of a guitar? I mean, you wouldn’t put him in a blues jam, but what he does is remarkable.”

On the other hand, it might be cool if he were in a blues jam.

“You know, you’re right. [laughs] That juxtaposition would be cool. That’s what I’m going for: If you’re inspired, it’ll come through in your playing, and it’ll sound cool with your music.”

• Brothers Osborne can be purchased or streamed now.

As a singer and guitarist, Sister Rosetta Tharpe did more than anyone to forge a connection between gospel and popular music. With her impassioned voice and twanging double-stop licks, she imbued her religious tunes with elements of jazz, blues, and a joyful hard-driving rhythm.

In doing so, she inspired artists like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Chuck Berry, and helped give birth to rock and roll, soul, and electric blues.

Gospel origins

Born on March 20, 1915, in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, Tharpe began playing guitar at the age of four. She traveled with her mother, an evangelist in the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), and they eventually settled in Chicago, where Tharpe was exposed to blues and jazz. She began performing at the Roberts Temple COGIC, where she became the star attraction at age six.

New York City, and defying convention

After a failed marriage to a preacher named Tommy Tharpe (some accounts say Thorpe). Tharpe moved to New York City and landed a gig at the Cotton Club, where she sang risqué songs, displeasing her many churchgoing fans. 

Rock Me 

In 1938, she signed with Decca Records, which saw novelty in a gospel singer who sang racy tunes. Her first hit was Rock Me, a hymn she sang as a straight love song. Tharpe followed it up with the raunchy hit I Want a Tall Skinny Papa, scandalizing the church further. The controversy convinced her to focus on gospel songs, which she delivered in her own upbeat way.

Tharpe's gear

By age 25, Tharpe was a pop star, having established herself as a stylistically distinctive singer and guitarist in a male-dominated industry. She played several guitars over the years, including a 1929 Gibson L-5, 1931 National Triolian, Gretsch G117 Double Anniversary, and a Gibson Les Paul goldtop with P90s. In the ’60s, she adopted a white 1961 Gibson SG/Les Paul Custom.

Shaping the future of the blues

In 1964, Tharpe joined Muddy Waters and other blues artists on the American Folk Blues Festival that toured Europe, where she undoubtedly influenced future electric blues guitarists. A film clip exists of her performing a thrilling rendition of Didn’t It Rain on a train station platform in Manchester, England. 

A career cut sadly short

Tharpe’s career was curtailed by a stroke in 1970, and one of her legs had to be amputated due to diabetes. She succumbed to another stroke on October 9, 1973, in Philadelphia. Though Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s contributions to popular music went unrecognized in her lifetime, she is rightly celebrated today as the Godmother of Rock and Roll.

On this day, in 1964, the Rolling Stones made their historical debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. The band kicked off their appearance on live national television to rapturous applause with a rendition of Chuck Berry’s Around and Around (originally the flip side to his 1958 Johnny B. Goode single).

Later in the show, the Stones performed their Time Is On My Side single. It was already creeping up the Billboard Hot 100 charts by the time the band appeared. It eventually peaked at number 6 the following month. It was the Stones' first hit on American soil as the British Invasion got underway following the Beatles’ record-breaking appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show earlier in February that year (when an estimated 73 million Americans tuned in to watch). 

As is obvious from the video, the audience struggles to contain themselves and Sullivan has to ask for quiet several times when trying to introduce them. In fact, CBS got many complaints after the broadcast and Ed Sullivan is said to have declared: “I promise you they’ll never be back on our show. It took me 17 years to build this show and I’m not going to have it destroyed in a matter of weeks.” 

The Stones’ manager tried to change Sullivan’s mind, but Ed wrote back before he would even consider booking them again, "I would like to learn from you, whether your young men have reformed in the matter of dress and shampoo.” 

But for guitar players, The Rolling Stones’ appearance is most notable for Keith Richards’ use of a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard. According to Gibson’s Head of Product Development, Mat Koehler, this was “the shot heard around the world,” that eventually brought the now iconic ‘Burst to the fore of the electric guitar world.

GP spoke to Richard Henry, a UK-based guitar dealer who has traded numerous ‘Bursts over the years, including the famous ‘Greeny’ Les Paul Standard. Now owned by Metallica’s Kirk Hammett the same guitar once belonged to guitar heroes Peter Green and Gary Moore.

He has also crossed paths with the infamous ‘Keith ‘Burst’ – a guitar that has passed through the hands of many a guitar legend over the decades…

Speaking of Richards’ old axe Henry told us: “The previous owner was a guy called John Bowen, who traded it in at Selmers [music store in London]. Keith bought it from there and famously used it on The Ed Sullivan Show in ’64.

“Later [in 1966] Clapton used it at the Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival. Jimmy Page also used it in the studio. Ian Stewart, the Stones’ Road Manager, sold it to Mick Taylor who used it with the Bluesbreakers. Taylor brought it back into the Stones’ camp when he joined the band. There’s footage of him playing it at Hyde Park [in 1969.]

The rumors are it either got stolen at the Marquee [Club in London], or it got stolen in France at Villa Nellcôte. It then eventually ended up in the hands of Cosmo Verrico from the Heavy Metal Kids. He had it for a short while and then sold it to [UFO and Whitesnake guitarist] Bernie Marsden.

“Bernie had it for about a week and flipped it. Later it went to a guy called Mike Jopp who owned it for many years. Dave Brewis at Rock Stars Guitars sold it for Mike to an American investor. I think it currently resides in a private collection in New York.

“Someone asked me what I thought was the most historically important ‘Burst. I said it’s not Jimmy Page’s. It’s not Peter Green’s [Greeny]. It’s not Mike Bloomfield’s. It’s not Eric Clapton’s. And it’s not Jeff Beck’s. It’s Keith Richards’ because he was the first pop star to use a ‘Burst.”

Elsewhere on the show, Brian Jones plays a prototype Vox MK III “Teardrop” guitar  and Bill Wyman plays his trusty Framus Star Bass. 

Keith Richards is interviewed in the current issue of Guitar Player, onsale now and available to buy here.

This scene may be better known today than the film in which it appears. 

Midway through Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll, Taylor Hackford’s 1987 documentary about Chuck Berry’s star-studded 60th birthday concert, Keith Richards convinces the guitar icon to let him take the lead on “Carol” during a rehearsal of the 1958 hit song. 

It was a tune Richards knew well, a Chuck cut that became a staple of the Rolling Stones’ set list in the 1960s.

As Keith breaks into the opening riff, Berry stops him to make what seems a minor correction to a double-stop slur near the top of the fourth measure. “That slur is starting right here,” Chuck says as he demonstrates. 

It takes Keith a few tries before he performs it to Berry’s satisfaction – “Perfect!” Chuck tells him enthusiastically – but as the song progresses beyond the intro, Keith messes up.

They start again, stop, and make another attempt, but Keith quickly forgets what he’s just been shown. 

Chuck taps him on the shoulder, and the music lurches to a halt. “You wanna get it right, let’s get it right!” he says pointedly. It’s a tense moment – the exacting master and the heedless student – and the anxiety it induces is evident in the musicians’ faces.

After all, Chuck could be famously short tempered. But the scene is instructive of more than the proper way to play the well-known opener. Like so many guitarists, Keith regards Chuck’s riffs as open to interpretation: Hit the notes and add your own articulation and personality – rough and sloppy, in Keith’s case. But this is Chuck’s band, and this is Chuck’s music.

Never mind that the concert under preparation was Keith’s idea, or that he is its musical director. Where Chuck Berry is concerned, every note matters.

Therein lies the heart of his music.

Chuck’s 1950s catalog may have given birth to the shaggy monster of rock and roll, but his music was defined by precision. Each song is a story, succinct but vivid with exacting detail, and told in Chuck’s most perfect diction. The riffs and licks are similarly clear and declarative, providing an emotional core to the narrative.

In creating the roots of rock and roll from disparate genres, Chuck used similar exactitude, drawing specific musical elements – T-Bone Walker’s double-stops, the twang of country and the stinging licks of the blues – to concoct the formula that would propel rock and roll forward and inspire everyone from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.

Keith Richards surely meant no disrespect to Chuck’s music. He was and remains a Chuck Berry superfan. But his down-and-dirty handling of a jewel from rock and roll’s seminal catalog is a reminder of just how ragged and abused those riffs became over the years as they were assimilated by other guitarists and regurgitated like misspoken quotes.

It’s worth spending time with those original recordings to hear them played exactly as the master intended.

Order Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll here.

In a long and highly successful recording career that began when he was just nine, George Benson has moved smoothly through various genres, initially playing straight jazz, usually in the small-combo format.

In 1976, with the album Breezin’, he made a surprising switch to smooth jazz, a genre which he could almost be said to have invented, and emerged as a capable vocalist. The album went to the top of Billboard’s Pop, Jazz and R&B charts, and produced the hit singles “This Masquerade” and “Breezin’.”

This transition into a mellow pop/R&B groove saw Benson achieve huge global success and score a string of Grammys. It was also something of a revelation. Prior to then, few were aware of his vocal abilities, and he has continued to mix and match vocal and instrumental work throughout his subsequent releases.

With his latest studio album, 2019’s Walking to New Orleans (Provogue Records), Benson delivered yet another surprise. Not only was it his first new release in six years, but it also found the guitarist making an unexpected diversion into classic R&B and 1950s rock and roll, with a focus on the music of Fats Domino and Chuck Berry.

The results are so satisfying that it begs asking why Benson hasn’t ventured down this path before.

While the Domino tracks are an obvious fit for his own warm vocal tone, the Berry songs work with equal success. Opting for a mix of well-known and less-obvious covers, Benson stamps his identity over all the material, bringing effective, concise, jazz-inflected solos and scat singing to the hard-swinging band arrangements.

Remarkably, the idea for the record came not from Benson but from his label. “It was a record company idea,” Benson says. “I thought myself that it was a little bit off the beaten path for a minute, but once I got into it, I could understand why they wanted to do it.”

The following interview appeared in the August 2019 issue of Guitar Player…

Why focus on Fats and Chuck in particular?

They were both great vocalists who had an instrument in their hand, so they were making two statements at one time. Good bands, good vibes, great feel, great songs, y’know? They both had a tremendous crossover audience as well.

What was your selection process?

We picked tracks where I could bounce off the ideas that were originally recorded. You are talking about two icons. That actually made me shy away at first, as they were both so good at what they did. I wondered what I could do that would mean anything. But you never know until you get into it. Once I started playing, I could see that nobody had ever heard these songs from a different point of view. It was exciting to do it.

Did you reject anything as you went along because it wasn’t working for your style?

Not really. We selected all the songs in the beginning, but a couple of them I didn’t know. Chuck’s “Havana Moon” was one that I’d never heard before. I think I knew all of Fats’ songs, but Chuck Berry had quite a list of incredible material, and there was a lot that I wasn’t aware of from his songbook. I did think we should stay away from anything of Chuck’s that was too familiar, as you don’t have a lot of freedom with this music. You could make one change and make a lot of people mad!

Was it as much fun to record as it sounds?

No doubt about that. I am so glad we went to Nashville to do it. I hadn’t recorded there since I did some recordings with Chet Atkins a long time ago. The band members were so incredible that I didn’t have to do a whole lot. They had been rehearsing the songs, and I just jumped right in the middle of them. We still worked out a few things after that though, making adjustments and adding a few ideas. But we didn’t want to get too far away from the original song.

I assume you used your signature Ibanez guitars for the sessions?

Yes, I used the [Ibanez] GB10 and also a D’Angelico jazz guitar. For amps, I used Fender Twins. The Twin has always been one of my favorite amps, because it does everything so well. What it has is clarity. There’s a lot of definition in the sound. I used a little darker tone on the album, and that’s one of the few amplifiers you can get away with doing that. It still has the punch without going to a tinny sound.

What keeps you enthusiastic and drives you forward year after year?

I’m amazed that the ideas don’t stop. Sometimes it gives me shivers. I’ll think, Why couldn’t I think like this 30 years ago? You start applying that to what you already know, or you bring things up to date, and it keeps you on top of it.

And there’s so many great writers today. The themes are always the same, of course: how we live, the relationship between a man and a woman, emotional romantic songs or songs to dance to. But each generation has its own way of doing things. If you keep your ears and your mind open, which is what I do, you can learn some wonderful things and be a part of it instead of sitting on the sidelines.

Do you play a lot at home when you’re not working?

Yeah, I play every day. The guitar is like my friend. It gave me the lifestyle that I live, though I do live a pretty modest lifestyle for the position I’m in. The guitar and my voice are what gave that to me. I always wanted to be like Charlie Christian. I didn’t like playing a whole lot of chords. In recent times, I have seen the value of learning those chords and playing harmonic things. I see now how important that is for making the guitar stand out as a frontline instrument, but my first influences were Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt playing the crap out of those single-note lines!

Do you have specific techniques that you work on? Are you trying out new things or working on your chops?

All of those things. When you do something new and different, people notice it right away. You get the comments, too, that show the truth in that. People will say, “Hey, man, I really like the way you changed such and such. Do more of that!” It keeps you motivated to be ahead of the game.

Looking back to that period in the ’70s and ’80s when you had global pop success, was it a conscious move in that direction, and did the criticism from the straight-jazz fraternity bother you?

There’s always criticism, whichever way you go. If you go left, they say you should’ve gone right, and vice versa. Quincy Jones settled it for me. He asked me one question: “George, do you wanna make the greatest jazz record in the world, or do you wanna go for the throat and see how successful you can be on the world market?” I laughed and said, “Quincy, let’s go for the throat, baby.”

Prior to achieving success in the 1970s, you hadn’t done much singing at all since you were a kid on those jump-blues recordings in the ’50s. Had that always been an ambition waiting to be fulfilled?

I thought that was all past me. Yes, as you say, I started out as a singer and made records when I was 10 years old in the vocal-group era of the late ’50s. To come back to it that late in life with “This Masquerade” and have Record of the Year at the Grammys, and to win 10 Grammys so far and have over 40 nominations – I never imagined my vocals would take me to that level.

Listening to those old songs from the ’50s, I thought “It Should’ve Been Me” [written by Memphis Curtis and a 1954 hit for Ray Charles] would’ve worked great on the album.

[laughs] I never thought about that, but y’know, maybe it would! By the way, the guitar player on that record – I think his name was Carl – he made records with everybody during that period. I didn’t play on those records in the ’50s, but I met him during one of my sessions when I was young. I asked him if I could have a look at his guitar when we were recording.

I played a bit for him, and he said, “You’re going to be a great guitar player.” I met him five years later, when I was 15, on a vocal group thing that I did, and again played his guitar. He said it again: “You are really going to be a great guitar player.” Things like that keep you going.

Given how successful you’ve been as a guitarist and a singer, if it came down to it and you had to go for one or the other, which would it be?

That would definitely be the guitar. I’m a guitar player before anything else.

Would psychedelic rock have happened at all were it not for Jeff Beck?

As Eric Clapton’s replacement in the Yardbirds, Beck kicked off his 20-month tenure with ingenuity at his first recording session with the group, in April 1965, for “Heart Full of Soul.”

Though he soon moved on to blues rock and jazz fusion, Beck established a template for psychedelia – as well as heavy metal – during his time with the Yardbirds that would be followed by countless future guitarists.

Here are five game-changing tracks from the electric guitar innovator’s mid-'60s psychedelic era…

1. “Heart Full of Soul”

Ground zero for psychedelic guitar, “Heart Full of Soul” shows how ready, willing and able Beck was to cut a new facet in the British Invasion’s rock gem by emulating a sitar with his Fender Esquire through a Sola Sound Tone Bender, with the D string droning beneath his fuzz-toned Indian-tinged riff.

It was the launch of a new exotic era for rock.

2. “Shapes of Things”

Beck upped the psychedelic ante by layering two guitar solos on this 1966 follow-up to “Heart Full of Soul.”

Beneath his slithery fuzz-toned lines, he demonstrates his creative use of controlled feedback and string bending to produce demonic howls that reportedly influenced the Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s “East-West” and Jimi Hendrix’s sonic experiments.

“I started finding the resonant points on the neck where it came in best,” Beck said. “I loved it because it was a most peculiar sound that contrasted wildly with a plucked string, this round trombone-like noise coming from nowhere.”

3. “Over Under Sideways Down”

After creating this cut’s infectious rockabilly bass line, Beck strapped on his guitar and came up with the tune’s topsy-turvy lead line.

"We needed an intro, and Jeff peeled one out, an instantly recognizable peal that completely took us by surprise,” drummer Jim McCarty recalled.

Once again, he serves up a fuzz-toned lead line that melds classic rock and roll rhythms with Eastern exoticism.

4. “Jeff’s Boogie”

This souped-up take on Chuck Berry’s “Guitar Boogie” shows not only Beck’s guitar virtuosity but also the diversity of his range through its incorporation of rock, jazz and blues licks.

Combining hammer-ons, pull-offs, double-stops, false harmonics and more, Beck is a speed demon who could very well have claimed to be the godfather of shred.

5. “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”

“We were on the threshold of this new thing,” Beck would say. “The Yardbirds were the first psychedelic band.”

No song demonstrates that better than this cut, one of just two that featured the Beck-Page guitar tandem.

Whereas Beck had previously relied on fuzz and exotic scales to produce his lysergic vibes, here he uses everything at his disposal to whip up a maelstrom of police sirens, revving motorcycle engines and squealing licks that send shivers up the spine. 

It’s the aural equivalent of a bad trip.

***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.

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

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

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

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

50. Chuck Berry

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

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

Hail! Hail! Rock and roll!

49. Lindsey Buckingham

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

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

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

48. Maybelle Carter

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

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

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

Simple, yet beautifully effective.

47. Catfish Collins

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

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

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

46. Steve Cropper

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

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

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

45. Bo Diddley

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

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

Tell me now, who do you love?

44. Lonnie Donegan

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

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

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

43. Cornell Dupree

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

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

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

42. The Edge

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

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

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

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

41. Don Everly

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

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

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

40. The Funk Brothers

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

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

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

39. João Gilberto

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

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

38. Freddie Green

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

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

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

37. Jim Hall

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

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

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

36. Richie Havens

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

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

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

35. Jimi Hendrix

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

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

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

34. James Hetfield

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

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

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

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

Who are we to argue?

33. Chrissie Hynde

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

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

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

32. Tony Iommi

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

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

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

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

31. Danny Kortchmar

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

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

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

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

30. Alex Lifeson

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

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

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

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

29. Tony Maiden

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

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

28. Bob Marley

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

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

27. Johnny Marr

Is there a guitarist more influential in Brit pop? 

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

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

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

26. Curtis Mayfield

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

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

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

25. Al McKay

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

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

24. Tom Morello

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

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

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

"It’s good enough for James Brown!”

23. Leo Nocentelli

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

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

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

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

22. Jimmy Nolen

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

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

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

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

Thanks Jimmy!

21. Jimmy Page

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

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

20. Joe Pass

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

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

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

19. Les Paul

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

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

18. Joe Perry

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

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

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

17. Prince

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

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

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

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

16. Johnny Ramone

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

Mission accomplished, Johnny. 

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

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

15. Jerry Reed

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

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

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

14. Django Reinhardt

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

Scary. 

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

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

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

13. Tony Rice

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

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

12. Keith Richards

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

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

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

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

11. Nile Rodgers

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

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

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

10. Rudolf Schenker

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

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

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

9. Earl Slick/Carlos Alomar

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

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

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

8. Steve Stevens

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

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

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

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

7. Andy Summers

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

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

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

6. Pete Townshend

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

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

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

5. Eddie Van Halen

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

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

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

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

4. Jimmie Vaughan

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

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

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

3. Alex Weir

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

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

Damn!

2. The Wrecking Crew

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

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

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

1. Malcolm Young

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

No, they haven’t. 

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

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

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

Today, on the anniversary of his passing, we remember Irish blues-rock legend Rory Gallagher.

Born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland, the first pieces Gallagher attempted to play were cowboy songs and Irish folk tunes on acoustic guitar, beginning at age nine.

American rock ‘n’ rollers such as Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Elvis Presley, and Chuck Berry had an early impression on the budding guitarist, though he discovered blues, à la Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, by way of Lonnie Donegan’s British skiffle hits.

At 15, Gallagher joined the Fontana Show Band, which toured England and Ireland. The constant work helped refine his playing, but the commercial nature of the repertoire caused him to look elsewhere for artistic satisfaction, jamming with the group's drummer and bassist in small clubs throughout Europe.

By 1966, Gallagher had formed Taste, the now legendary blues-rock trio, comprised of Eric Kitteringham on bass, Norman Demery on drums, and Gallagher on guitar, vocals, and, occasionally, saxophone.

In 1969, the group signed with Polydor Records, but had disbanded by the following year, at which point the guitarist began to pursue a solo career in earnest.

Throughout the ‘70s, Gallagher recorded a steady stream of solos albums, picking up legions of fans along the way and establishing himself as one of the era’s most influential guitarists.

In this interview extract from the March 1978 issue of Guitar Player, Gallagher talks about his various musical styles and techniques and the gear he used to arrive at his distinctive, energetic sound.

What he has to say about blues and rock ‘n’ roll should be required reading for any guitarist...

Hypothetically, if you were teaching blues guitar at a school, how would you go about it?

I’d keep it within a reasonably rigid blues framework, just to keep it on center. A lot of it would depend on what music the student had been exposed to.

I mean, if your parents were interested in music anyway – your father, for instance, had a couple of Bill Broonzy or Lonnie Johnson albums – or you were brought up listening to jazz programs on the BBC where they'd slot in the odd blues thing, you'd obviously have a head start.

Otherwise, you'd probably get into blues through rock 'n' roll – through Chuck Berry or maybe “High Heeled Sneakers” by Tommy Tucker. Then with the Rolling Stones era, you could sneak into the blues thing that way.

In my case, I started on the proverbial Lonnie Donegan skiffle music trail, where I heard Lonnie doing Leadbelly songs, such as “Rock Island Line” and “Bring Me A Lil' Water Silvy.”

Before I even owned records by Woody Guthrie or Big Bill Broonzy, I used to get library books out in Cork – because you couldn't buy the albums in Britain – and I’d learn the lyrics to these songs.

But at the same time I was interested in rock 'n' roll – such as Buddy Holly. Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, and Fats Domino. I was listening to both of these strains, because at lots of points they'd cross.

Once you get beyond the Chuck Berry/Eddie Cochran thing, you begin to figure out that you've got Broonzy at one end of the scale – and that goes right back to the old tradition of Charley Patton – then John Lee Hooker has the Detroit electric blues style, which evolved from his acoustic style.

And you also get the Josh White sort of folkie style of blues. You just have to listen to a lot of records.

Which records do you think are essential for someone who wants to get into blues?

I suppose you'd have to go back to one of the main sources, say, either Robert Johnson, Lemon Jefferson, Willie McTell, or Leadbelly. The two Robert Johnson records [King Of The Delta Blues Singers, Vols. I & II] are obviously cornerstones; you'd have to get at least one of those.

It’s pretty hard to zone in on it, because some guys mightn't get into Robert Johnson and might prefer, say, Willie McTell. But if we try to break it down to the key blues albums, I think that a Robert Johnson record would have to be included.

Then Blind Boy Fuller is another favorite of mine, especially that album With Bull City Red and Sonny Terry, with “Pistol Slapper Blues” on it.

I think that Broonzy album where he does “Banker’s Blues” [The Young Big Bill Broonzy] is an important one, because he was broadening the scale.

It’s different from the ones he made around 1950, where it was blues plus ballads.

The Best Of Muddy Waters [reissued as Sail On] is definitely an archetypal electric blues album.

Do you think albums by people such as Elmore James and Howlin’ Wolf are important listening?

Oh yeah. You'd have to get The Real Folk Blues by Wolf, with “Spoonful” and “Shake For Me” [reissued in part on Howlin’ Wolf: the Chess Box] for Hubert Sumlin’s electric blues guitar.

He's the great undiscovered, underrated lead player. And Wolf himself harks back vocally to Charley Patton, and, besides, he plays a little bit of slide guitar here and there, too – like on “Down In The Bottom.”

And his harmonica playing is important, even though everyone seems to write it off as just, “He plays harmonica.” I think he plays good gut-bucket harmonica.

Which of Elmore James's albums would you single out?

Its hard to pin down one album for him, because there are so many oddball ones. I've got one on Ember Records – just sort of a bargain label – and it was reruns of some of his stuff, like “Sunnyland,” “Standing At The Crossroads.” and “Dust My Broom” yet again.

I find that any Elmore James album is good.

What about the older country blues players?

In terms of intensity, Son House has to be listened to. Of all the blues players, that's probably the closest connection with Africa. I've got that one album, with “John the Revelator.” [The Legendary Father Of Folk Blues] That's an ace album.

If people come to hear you in concert, and they want to learn how to play guitar themselves, do you think it's more important for them to buy your records or these old records you spoke of?

To learn guitar? Well, I write a lot of my own stuff, so it's a cross between ego and the heritage thing.

If you want to play like Rory Gallagher, I think you'd buy my records. But if you want to pick up on whatever echoes of the bluesmen that I respect and love, certainly go ahead and buy some blues records.

In my case, I’d say the obvious influences would be Hubert Sumlin, Earl Hooker, and Buddy Guy, electrically; and, acoustically, Blind Boy Fuller and Blind Blake, though I can't get anywhere near what Blake does.

But you see, I never started out to become a strict recreator of the blues or even a modern young bluesman, as it were. I mean, I wanted to be me.

I'm a huge blues fan, but I still have a bit of Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly hovering around in my head, plus certain folk people, such as Doc Watson – a pretty wide range of listening.

What type of instrument would you recommend for an acoustic blues novice to start on?

With acoustic guitar, for the first couple of years at least, I think you should leave a wound third string on and really build up strength in the fingers. In other words, don't try bending strings the first week you buy the guitar.

Kids are lucky nowadays; you can get a Yamaha or something, and the cheaper model guitars are much better quality than they were years ago when you got this stuff with terrible action.

The first guitar I got cost just over four pounds, which was about twenty dollars then, in the good old days.

After a while you get that urge to say, “To hell with this – I’m going to bend this string,” instead of sliding up. But you have to build that up.

But do you think a student should start out with, say, a wooden Yamaha or a metal-bodied National such as you sometimes play?

Well, lets put it this way: If you're a kid with ears the size of the moon and an amazing sense of direction, who heard Son House or Blind Boy Fuller or any of the National steel-body players and said, “They're the people I want to play like,” then go ahead and buy the National, because that's a great place to start.

But if you start with a National. you're talking about a guitar that weighs quite a bit.

Do you use a wound or an unwound third string on the National?

A wound third, because the numbers I happen to play need that fairly stiff action. I don't do any Broonzy-type bending with light strings on the National, whereas on a Martin acoustic I probably would.

Do you use an acoustic onstage?

I do; I play a Martin D-35. I use the National for things like “Pistol Slapper Blues,” which I play faster than Blind Boy Fuller did, and a J.B. Hutto song called “Too Much Alcohol,” which he plays electric, of course.

There's always the nature of the banjo in the National, I find, and you have to play it sort of like that. I do anyway.

Do you play acoustic with a plectrum or your fingers?

With a plectrum and the fingers. I fool around with National metal fingerpicks and the plastic ones sometimes.

How is your Martin set up?

Well, that's set up with the same strings, because at present I'm doing numbers like Leadbelly’s “Out On The Western Plain,” where the tuning is D - A - D - G - A - D [low to high]. It’s [open] D tuning, except that the G remains a G [rather than major third/F#.]

What do you use for an electric guitar?

I have two different electrics. I have a [Fender] Stratocaster with Fender light gauge Rock And Roll strings, which I use for basic playing and some slide work in straight tuning.

I also have a [Fender] Telecaster for A tuning and other open tunings, for songs like “Bullfrog Blues.”

Why the Stratocaster?

Well, that's the eternal argument among Fender fans. Buddy Holly had a Strat, and as a child you go after the appearance of a guitar; I don't care what anyone says. You look at the shape of the thing, and that's it. I've tried Gibsons, but I'm not a great fan of humbucking pickups.

Why is that?

Because as you bring down the volume from 10 to 9 to 8, after that – forget it; the guitar loses its sensitivity and drive.

Whereas with the single-coil or P-90 pickups – one of the old Gibson units with the black or white plastic covers – the volume control goes down nice and gradually, and even at 6 the guitar is still doing something.

Why do you usually switch to the Telecaster for slide?

I like a good bright tone, and I like the out-of-phase sound you can get with the switch set between the normal positions on a Strat.

Its comfortable, the scale seems right, and I like having the machine heads on one side – it just seems to make sense.

But if you want, say, a more luxurious, fatter sound, the Gibson guitar certainly would do the job, and it's got an extra fret – if anybody ever touches that fret; I'm sure they don't.

I thought it had a certain steel guitar type of tone which would work well with slide, but I was frustrated with the rhythm [neck/front] pickup – I thought it was too thin. So I put a Strat pickup there, and it remained that way for a year.

Then I said, “To hell with it – I’ll do the Telecaster à la Strat,” so now I've got two Strat pickups and a Tele lead pickup and a five-way Strat toggle switch.

It’s like the best of both worlds with the Telecaster lead pickup, which is slightly hotter than a Stratocaster’s.

What do you use for a slide?

It depends; I shift around. I sometimes use a bottleneck on my ring finger for electric stuff; otherwise I've got two stainless steel tubes, which I sometimes use on my small finger or the ring finger. They get a more stinging, Muddy Waters sound.

You get a different sound depending on what slide you use. For instance, if you're playing slide on a National with a glass slide, forget it.  You have to have something like steel or, even better, copper. Son House used copper, and I've got one of those as well.

What type of amplification do you use?

For years I used a Vox AC30, which is the best all-around European amp I've ever come across. I still have it. The Shadows used to use them, and the Beatles used them, so you know it was the popular amp.

But I found that when using the [Dallas Rangemaster] treble booster, that along with the treble boost you got a built-in gain, because the transistors were fairly primitive.

If I used the normal input – which was very bassy, as opposed to the brilliant input – I could get that nice rough edge without getting into a very fuzzy sound.

I used that for years, and I've had odds and sods in between, but then I moved on to an old Fifties tweed Fender Twin, which I still have.

Then I got into a tweed Fender Bassman, and recently I got a Fender Concert, which is an old brown one, from around 1959, with four 10” speakers.

I use a Hawk booster through that just to roughen it up a bit, or if it's a quiet number I plug straight in and keep the guitar clean sounding.

Do you think it's advantageous to learn acoustic before moving on to electric?

Well, I played acoustic for two or three years before I bought an electric. I wasn't particularly interested in electric for the first couple of years, because I was a Lonnie Donegan fan.

I think it's better to start on acoustic and then get into electric, but you could get into a fistfight over that. I mean, some people would say, “To hell with acoustic guitar; it never existed. You've got to get a solidbody right away.”

Fair enough, but I think they're missing out. Even if you're going to become the consummate 1978 electric guitarist, I think you're missing out on an awful lot, if only for the fun of playing an acoustic guitar at home as a hobby.

And it's nice to go from the acoustic, where even at the best of times the action is fairly taut, to the electric with light strings, where you float around like jelly. If you're always playing on light-gauge strings, you'll never really build up strength and subsequently real volume without turning up your amp yet again.

Are there any other techniques that you can adapt from acoustic to electric?

If you never played acoustic the odds would probably be three-to-one that you might never get into, say, playing with a plectrum and fingers or ever get interested in the various acoustic right-hand things.

I think if you're just playing with a flatpick full-time, you're only half playing the guitar.

So would you advise learning to fingerpick with bare fingers, with fingerpicks, or with a plectrum and the fingers?

Well, if you could wave a magic wand, you should tell the person to try all forms and be familiar with them all – anything instead of just using the plectrum alone.

I think at some point in every song you're going to need the fingers.

If you're interested in classical guitar, it's nice to get a couple of years training at that, and then you'd have very strong hands, and you could skip thumbpicks and metal picks or whatever.

Do you use fingerpicks mainly for volume, or do you use them for a specific sound?

I would use them for volume, you know, and to save wear and tear.

If I were a highly developed thumb-and-fingers person I’d just use the bare skin, but you do get the real sharp, biting sound with the metal claws.

Gary Davis just used the one plastic fingerpick, and he seemed to make great sense out of that.

So you think it's very important for a student to learn to use their fingers as well as a pick.

Yeah, even if they never touch folk or blues music. Of course, the sky's the limit nowadays, and I suppose for Chuck Berry rock 'n' roll it doesn't matter too much, but even Keith Richards uses his fingers on things like “Honky Tonk Woman.”

Do you think it's important for a guitarist to learn to read music?

I did it by ear, listening to records. I never had a teacher, and I regret that I can’t read music. I went into the library once and got Teach Yourself How To Read Music or something, and it said, “Sit down at your piano.” We didn't have a piano, so that went down the chute.

Then I worked out F, A, and C and gave up, because I was too impulsive, and I was already delighted that I could play “Lost John” and a couple of other songs.

Then, next thing, I was playing blues and rock 'n' roll, which is fairly instinctive and primitive stuff anyway. But later on you start getting beyond the open tunings and ragtime blues, you know, and you're listening to someone like Diango Reinhardt or modern jazz guitarists, even bossa nova stuff like Charlie Byrd, and you begin to feel a little inadequate if you're an all-around guitar fan.

So you get a couple of books on chords and try to make sense of that. That's where the reading would probably come in; it would help if you were a bit of a jazz fan.

When recording with other musicians, do you find that not knowing written music limits your ability to communicate ideas in the studio?

No, that's no problem. Because you can hum it to them or play it on the guitar. I don't think that's the drawback; the only drawback is if you were interested in playing a classical piece verbatim, or you wanted to play a Charlie Christian solo and really wanted to find out all the notes that he played and the harmony and theory thing behind it.

Sometimes you say. “To hell with it; it doesn't matter anyway,” but it kind of does matter. I’d say a year or two of just learning a little bit of theory wouldn't do any harm. Even tablature foxes me; I have no head for mathematics.

What advice could you give in terms of practicing the guitar?

Well, it's like the old cliché: You have to love the instrument and the idea of the instrument and the whole aura of the thing, and that will dictate how much you practice, really.

I don't think you have to sit down for eight hours a day or anything, but if you're really interested, you'll probably do that anyway in the early stages – and even after that, between trying to write songs and experimenting with notes and loosening your fingers.

I think you're bound to get in an hour or two a day anyway, although some guys say they only play five minutes a day outside the gig.

Could you offer any advice for guitarists wanting to become professionals?

If you wanted to get into, say, electric blues, I’d get into a band as soon as possible, no matter how bad it is.

Don’t be too proud – get into some kind of band; get playing with a drummer. That's essential for electric blues.

If you want to play acoustic music on your own, just hurry up and get a gig if you can; get out there and play in front of people.

You feel that playing in front of people is an important thing to do as soon as possible?

Yes, it brings something out. I know for a fact that if I'm off the road for a long spell, even if I'm rehearsing like mad and playing a lot at home, the real crunch comes when I get out in front of people.

The things you thought were really hot in rehearsal don't make any sense, because quite often you've forgotten the basic drive.

In rehearsals sometimes the basics get glossed over, because you're fooling around too much with the frilly stuff. If you get out there in front of an audience, drop your pick or break a string, that toughens you up, and it brings out projection in your playing.

You have to direct your playing somewhere – unless you want to sit in a room like the painter looking at the painting he's just done, and he won't show it to anybody.

You do get people like that, who think there's no one in the city who's good enough to play with. But even acoustic players should get to a folk club and listen to other people, play with other people.

There's always a thin line between studying the old records by the old masters and trying to develop yourself. I think both can be done at the same time, because if you forget the old masters, you miss out on a whole heritage and a whole world, really.

But you shouldn't get too clogged up with the old stuff to the point where you won't be moving on yourself, because you won't end up like an old master yourself anyway, you know.

Order the Rory Gallagher 1971 debut solo album 50th anniversary edition here.

By the mid-1950s, Chuck Berry had begun writing songs and felt he was ready to record them. In May 1955, he drove from St. Louis to Chicago, where he planned to see his idol, Muddy Waters, perform a Friday night show.

“And I listened to him for his entire set,” Chuck recalled to NPR in 2000. “When he was over, I went up to him, I asked him for his autograph and told him that I played guitar.”

But Chuck had something more on his mind. “How do you get in touch with a record company?” he asked. Muddy suggested he try his boss, Leonard Chess, over at Chess Records.

That Monday morning, Chuck intercepted Chess as he walked into the studio and made his pitch. Chess told him to return in a week with a demo.

Chuck came back with his band and four new songs, including “Wee Wee Hours” and “Ida May.” The latter was a rocked-up number inspired in part by the traditional “hillbilly” tune “Ida Red,” made popular by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys in 1938.

“And we set the band up, and we played all four of them,” Chuck said. He was sure “Wee Wee Hours” would be the song to clinch the deal, but Chess was taken by “Ida May” – except he didn’t like the title, which he considered too country sounding.

“And that was a problem, so nobody could think of a name,” pianist Johnnie Johnson recalled. “We looked up on the windowsill, and there was a mascara box up there with ‘Maybellene’ written on it. And Leonard Chess said, ‘Why don’t we name the damn thing “Maybellene”?’”

That suited Chuck, who changed the lyrics and took the songwriting credit.

The May 21, 1955, session features, in addition to Johnson, the trio’s drummer, Ebby Hardy, and blues giant Willie Dixon on bass. It took 36 takes to get the song recorded to everyone’s satisfaction. But considering it was Chuck’s first time in a recording studio, the session was an unqualified success.

Afterward, the guitarist went back to St. Louis and waited to hear what would happen with his song. Weeks went by with no word from Chess. Then, by chance on an August day, Chuck heard the record on the radio while passing by the tailor’s shop where he’d bought his high school graduation coat.

“I passed by the shop until the song played out, you know? I didn’t want anybody to see me listening,” he told NPR. “But it was ‘Maybellene’ I was listening to.”

When the song finished, Chuck ran the 20-some blocks home to tell everyone. “Knocked me out to hear myself, you know.”

Soon “Maybellene” was having the same effect on radio listeners.

From the first bar, it was clear that this was something new. Chuck’s electric guitar is raw, energetic and infectious, relentlessly rhythmic and driving behind the vocal, then piercing through with heaps of his classic attitude in the solo.

The track featured Chuck’s modernized, up-tempo version of the T-Bone style with even more double-stops and string bends. What’s more, the song’s guitar sound was markedly different to the clean, chiming tones that came from Walker’s Gibson ES-250.

Chuck’s guitar, a Gibson ES-350T, drove his amp into distortion, adding a real sense of anarchy to the music.

With its combination of blues guitar and country stylings, “Maybellene” became a huge hit with record buyers of all races, hitting numbers one and five on the R&B and Billboard Best Sellers charts, respectively.

Where would we be without Chuck Berry? A legend among legends, the Father of Rock ‘n’ Roll has given us such definitive classics as “Maybellene,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Johnny B. Goode" and many more besides.

We've heard plenty about those timeless tunes, but what are some of Berry's lesser-known bangers? 

Here are ten of the best from under the radar…

1) “Deep Feeling” from ‘After School Session’ (1957)

Chuck plays a pedal steel on this slow, bluesy instrumental, and the results are impressive enough to make you wonder what might have happened if he’d kept at it.

Here, as in all his standard guitar playing, he demonstrates his supreme gift for melody and expression, using a Fender 400 Hawaiian/Country Western pedal steel guitar that, reportedly, he bought sometime in the 1950s.

Diehard fans will recall the lengthy tracking shot of Chuck playing a Fender 400 solo at home that closes Taylor Hackford’s excellent 1987 biopic, Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll.

2) “Rockin’ At the Philharmonic” from ‘One Dozen Berrys’ (1957)

The influence of both Louis Jordan and Bob Willis are evident on this instrumental, as Chuck plays jazzy licks with a swinging rhythm section, complete with the era’s requisite slapback echo.

Chuck takes his time warming up, favoring single-note lines and throwing in hammer-ons and rakes before digging in with double-stops on the second verse.

The song’s title is likely a play on the Jazz at the Philharmonic series of recordings and tours that were popular between 1945 and 1957.

3) “Let It Rock” from ‘Rockin’ at the Hops’ (1960)

Chuck’s talent for creating concise vignettes is all over this driving tune as he tells the story of an unscheduled train bearing down on a work crew gambling on the tracks.

His deft double-stops mimic the sound of the approaching engine, a bit of playfulness that reminds you how much emotion and storytelling Chuck conveyed in his guitar playing alone.

Just 1:42 minutes in length, the song blows by so fast you might miss it, but many artists, from the Rolling Stones to a young Bob Seger on his stellar Smokin’ OP’s album, caught this train and created their own memorable journey.

4) “Nadine (Is It You?)” Single (1964)

The first track Chuck issued after his 1963 release from prison, “Nadine (Is It You?)” is an update of “Maybellene,” as he spies his “future bride” all over town but is always just one step behind her.

The usual Berry conveyances – namely Cadillacs, but also city buses and Yellow cabs – are here in abundance, along with regional references (Chuck calls out to Nadine by “campaign shouting like a southern diplomat”) that help the track slot neatly into his established stylistic format.

The piano and saxes carry the lead on this shimmying boogie, but the guitarist leads the charge with his tasty sliding double-stop intro riff.

5) “You Two” from ‘St. Louis to Liverpool’ (1964)

Having influenced the British Invasion bands, Chuck emerged from prison just as those acts were transforming the pop landscape.

In response, he put out a pair of albums – St. Louis to Liverpool and Chuck Berry in London – that attempted to reclaim his place in the mainstream with a mix of rockers and softer pop tunes, like the sophisticated “You Two.”

“Listening to my idol Nat Cole prompted me to sing sentimental songs with distinct diction,” Chuck wrote in his autobiography, and “You Two” exemplifies this perfectly. It’s a smooth, swinging hipster tune about a “cozy clan of four” on a double date in the country air.

 Chuck’s electric guitar solo here could fit as well into any of his standard rock and rollers, demonstrating the seemingly effortless malleability of his style.

6) “Liverpool Drive” from ‘St. Louis to Liverpool’ (1964)

Released as the B side to the hit “No Particular Place to Go,” “Liverpool Drive” is little more than a fun jaunt up and down the fretboard, and it’s refreshing to hear Chuck and his band play with such enthusiasm and abandon.

The mood is more St. Louis than Liverpool, but Chuck concludes the tune with a Beatles-esque 7-9 chord.

7) “I Want To Be Your Driver” from ‘Chuck Berry in London’ (1965)

As on St. Louis to Liverpool, Chuck attempted to evolve beyond his tried-and-true formula on Chuck Berry in London, delivering stronger blues guitar numbers and even funk.

“I Want to Be Your Driver” oozes with double entendres and possibly served as an influence for the Beatles’ “Drive My Car.”

Chuck sings higher and more insistently than usual, using his solo break to lower the temperature with some seductively slinky double-stop licks played an octave below the song’s melody to vary the mood.

From his cutting guitar tone to the cavernous reverb and Merseybeat drumming, he convincingly created a space for himself in a pop landscape that owed so much back to him.

8) “Butterscotch” from ‘Chuck Berry in London’ (1965)

Not the Freddie King cut. Chuck’s “Butterscotch” is a funky instrumental workout that features some of his most incisive and inspired soloing. His familiar bent double-stops are all over this one, but he rarely soloed as forcefully or passionately as he does here.

Despite claiming to be “Recorded in London,” five of this album’s 13 tracks were made in Chicago with the Jules Blattner Group, whom Chuck knew from their performances at the Butterscotch Lounge in St. Louis.

This track is supposedly his reworking of Blattner’s own “Butterscotch Twist,” though it’s hard to see any connection beyond the title.

9) “Tulane” from ‘Back Home’ (1970)

Chuck’s return to Chess Records in 1970 after a few years at the Mercury label saw him update his sound once again.

The harmonica playing of “Boogie” Bob Baldori dominates many of these later recordings, relegating Chuck’s guitar work to the background, as on this taut rocker about Johnny and Tulane, a headshop-owning couple busted by the cops for their illicit stash.

As a result, the thrill comes not from Chuck’s guitar playing but from his gift for storytelling, something that was in short supply in the later years of his recording career.

10) “Wuden’t Me” from ‘Rockit’ (1979)

Racism was a subtext in Chuck’s earlier songs, like “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” and “Promised Land.”

It comes to the fore on this 1979 track, where he relates the tale of a young man down South who runs a stop sign and is tossed in jail after being refused his basic rights. Breaking out, he’s pursued by a Grand Dragon posse and bloodhounds before a trucker bearing a swastika and KKK arm patch stops to give him a lift.

Chuck is in wry humor on this rollicking country rocker and turns in some fine riffing on the chorus, but once again it’s his gift for storytelling that makes it all work.

Browse the Chuck Berry catalog here.

On this day, in 1965, Bob Dylan released his first top 40 Billboard Hot 100 single, “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” 

Clocking in at just two minutes and 20 seconds, this lively song may be punchy but it is jam-packed with profound rhymes reflecting mid-’60s counterculture that many have likened to a prototypical rap style.

But Dylan was influenced by beat poetry of another kind.

As a student in the late ‘50s, it was the literary works of Beat Generation writers – notably Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg – that captured the young musician’s imagination. Indeed, the song’s title is partly inspired by Kerouac’s ’58 novella The Subterraneans, while Dylan's fast-paced lyrical stream is indicative of the late author’s Benzedrine-fueled writing style.

Harlan Howard (1927-2002) once described country music as “three chords and the truth,” and the same thing could be said for “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” 

If you want to play along, this simple I-IV-V strummer is all cowboy chords (E/Em, A7 and B7) pitched up using a capo on the fifth fret.

These standard blues chords, along with the song's title, show Dylan’s increasing tendency at the time towards incorporating elements of rock ‘n’ roll in his music. 

“It’s from Chuck Berry, a bit of ‘Too Much Monkey Business',” Dylan told the Los Angeles Times in 2004.

“Subterranean Homesick Blues” is the lead track from Dylan’s fifth studio album, Bringing It All Back Home. With electric guitars featuring heavily in the recording, this album signaled a change in direction away from his acoustic guitar-led songs of the early ‘60s.

Although the recording alienated some fans it was the first of Dylan’s LPs to break into the top 10. Since its release, “Subterranean Homesick Blues" has remained popular while being covered numerous times by artists as diverse as Mountain, Jim Weider and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Considered a progenitor of music videos, this clip accompanying the song first appeared in the 1965 English tour documentary, Don’t Look Back. 

The one-shot film features legendary beat poet Allen Ginsberg and musician Bob Neuwirthand conversing in the background. They, along with Donovan, wrote the lyric cards Dylan flips through as the song progresses.

Browse Bob Dylan's catalog here.

Countless guitarists have lifted Chuck Berry’s electric guitar licks and riffs, which seems only fair, considering that Berry stole some of them himself. 

But when did it cross the line? Apparently whenever Chuck said so. 

Here are five blatant thefts from the Berry patch...

1) The Beach Boys | “Surfin’ U.S.A.” (1963)

This Beach Boys hit is essentially Chuck’s “Sweet Little Sixteen” with new lyrics penned by Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson and singer Mike Love, who was uncredited.

Wilson liked how Berry’s lyrics named key places in the U.S. and thought a song that gave a shout out to California’s top surf spots could be a hit.

“I just took ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ and rewrote it into something of our own,” Wilson told The Los Angeles Times in 2015.

While the Leonard Chess biopic Cadillac Records depicts Berry (played by Mos Def) as being angry about Wilson’s appropriation of his music, in reality the guitarist liked “Surfin’ U.S.A.” and reportedly even complimented the Beach Boys.

“We ran into Chuck Berry in Copenhagen and he told us he loves ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’,” guitarist Carl Wilson recalled.

But that didn’t stop him from demanding his cut.

Beach Boys manager Murray Wilson (the father of Brian and his brothers) gave the song to Berry’s publisher, Arc Music, and for a while the song was credited solely to Berry, although in later years it has been shared by Berry and Wilson.

2) The Beach Boys | “Fun, Fun, Fun” (1964)

These guys again! You’d be forgiven for hearing Carl Wilson’s opening guitar solo to this early Beach Boys hit and thinking it was a cover of “Johnny B. Goode” – it’s nearly identical to Berry’s timeless intro to his 1958 classic track.

But Berry didn’t sue, and he likely couldn’t have, considering that he had himself copped the lines from Carl Hogan’s intro to the Louis Jordan’s 1946 tune “Ain’t That Just Like a Woman (They’ll Do It Every Time).”

Citing his influences, Berry said, “The main guy was Louis Jordan. I wanted to sing like Nat Cole, with lyrics like Louis Jordan, with the swing of Bennie Goodman with Charlie Christian on guitar, playing Carl Hogan’s riffs, with the soul of Muddy Waters.”

3) The Beatles | “I Saw Her Standing There” (1963)

“From the first minute we heard the great guitar intro to ‘Sweet Little Sixteen,’ we became fans of the great Chuck Berry,” Paul McCartney wrote upon Berry’s passing. “We learnt so many things from him which led us into a dream world of rock ’n’ roll music.”

Like his Beatle bandmate John Lennon, who was famously known to pinch Berry (see below), the bassist appropriated the bass line to this early Beatles cut from Berry’s catalog, specifically the track “I’m Talking About You,” which the Beatles performed on the BBC in 1963.

“I played exactly the same notes as he did and it fitted our number perfectly,” McCartney revealed in his autobiography, Many Years From Now. “Even now, when I tell people, I find few of them believe me; therefore, I maintain that a bass riff hasn’t got to be original.”

4) The Beatles | “Come Together” (1969)

John Lennon’s opening composition from Abbey Road begins by lifting a pair of lines from the second verse of Berry’s 1956 cut “You Can’t Catch Me,” with a minor alteration: Lennon sings “Here come ol’ flattop, he come groovin’ up slowly,” while Berry’s original was, “Here come a flattop, he was movin’ up with me.”

Originally played at a faster tempo than it appears on Abbey Road, “Come Together” was too close to Berry’s tune for McCartney, who suggested the Beatles give the song a different groove to help disguise the obvious similarities in the lyrics and melody.

“I said, ‘Let’s slow it down with a swampy bass-and-drums vibe.’ I came up with a bass line and it all flowed from there.”

That didn’t stop Berry’s publisher Big Seven Music from filing a claim of copyright infringement. 

The case was settled out of court after Lennon agreed to record three songs from Big Seven’s catalog.

5) The Yardbirds | “Jeff’s Boogie” (1966)

This hyperspeed instrumental showcase is a highlight of Roger the Engineer, the Yardbirds’ psychedelic rock effort featuring Jeff Beck, who takes his cues here from Berry’s 1958 romp “Guitar Boogie.”

Berry’s version may be his own take on Arthur Smith’s 1948 12-bar Western swing track that bears the same name, which makes sense when you consider that Berry’s music was a fusion of R&B and country.

Beck’s version became a staple of his live shows, and he performed it with Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1984 (see the Live in Honolulu DVD) and during their 1989 tour.

Browse the Chuck Berry catalog here.

Available on CD, vinyl and digitally across all platforms from April 15, Edgar Winter’s talent-packed new album, Brother Johnny, pays tribute to his Firebird-toting blues brother – the late, great Johnny Winter (1944-2014) – with a collection of songs featuring some of the biggest names in the guitar world.

A legend among legends, Johnny Winter’s continued reverence has prompted a sizeable host of well-known guitar players to contribute to the recording. Several years in the making this 17-track collection (which includes two original numbers penned by Edgar Winter) was curated with producer Ross Hogarth in order to demonstrate Johnny Winter’s storied evolution as an artist.

“Many people immediately started trying to convince me to do a Johnny Winter tribute album,” said Edgar, reflecting on the days following his brother’s passing back in 2014. “But I was totally devastated, and the timing just didn't feel right to me. It wasn’t until after I completed the Rock ‘N’ Blues Fest, a tour we were meant to do together with our respective bands, that the idea of a tribute record started to take form.

“There was such an overwhelming outpouring of love and respect for Johnny, I began to realise it was not just business people sensing an opportunity here; it was Johnny's true, loyal, and devoted fans and our fellow musicians, many of whom are on this record, who wanted to see this happen as well.”

Among those featured on Brother Johnny include electric guitar luminaries Joe Bonamassa, Robben Ford, Billy Gibbons, Warren Haynes, Steve Lukather, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Derek Trucks, Joe Walsh, and Phil X.

Kicking off the album’s release Quarto Valley Records has unveiled the “Johnny B. Goode” single – a song that remained in Johnny Winter’s setlist up until the end. Vocals are provided by Winter and Joe Walsh while fellow Texan, John Mellencamp guitarist David Grissom, delivers a dynamite performance of Chuck Berry's timeless rock ‘n’ roll masterpiece.

"All I want for Christmas is a rock ‘n’ roll electric guitar," sings Chuck Berry (1926-2017) – a sentiment shared by many a guitarist since the father of rock ‘n’ roll released his recording of “Run Rudolph Run” in 1958.

A Gibson devotee, Berry became synonymous with the company’s thinline semi-hollowbody electric guitars launched that year. Already known for playing an ES-350T thinline hollowbody electric, Berry was an early adopter of the ES-335, -345 and -355 instruments and continues to help popularize these iconic guitars to this day.

Indeed, earlier this year Gibson introduced the Chuck Berry 1970s ES-355 to their ES (Electric Spanish) line alongside the Chuck Berry 1955 ES-350T.

Berry’s cut of "Run Rudolph Run" made it well into the Billboard Hot 100 in December 1958. It eventually became a top ten-selling single earlier this year – several decades following its original release.

Over time, “Run Rudolph Run” has established itself as a firm seasonal favorite, with countless artists having recorded their own version of this generations-old rock ‘n’ roll Christmas classic.

We’ve compiled a playlist of ten of our favorites. Everyone has theirs, so in no particular order…

Brian Setzer

Lemmy, Billy F. Gibbons and Dave Grohl

Keith Richards

L.A. Guns

Lynyrd Skynyrd

Grateful Dead

Foo Fighters

Cheap Trick

Sheryl Crow

Dwight Yoakam

We hope you enjoyed listening. Stay tuned for more over the Christmas period, and from all of us at Guitar Player - happy holidays!

Rock ‘n’ roll progenitor Chuck Berry needs no introduction. Following a genre-defining 64-year career his pioneering technique remains woven into the fabric of modern electric guitar playing. 

Paying tribute to the rock ‘n’ roll legend, Gibson have unveiled a brand-new signature model – the Chuck Berry 1970s ES-355.

This follows the limited-edition release of the Chuck Berry 1955 ES-350T. Berry famously played the thinline hollowbody ES-350T model as well as semi-hollowbody thinline double-cutaway electric ES-335, ES-345, and ES-355 models following their introduction in the late '50s. 

Interestingly, Berry was also an early adopter of the Les Paul, using a Custom model in the early part of his career.

The Gibson Chuck Berry 1970s ES-355 is a recreation of Berry’s treasured 1978 ES-355 model and comes in a transparent Wine Red finish. This color is similar to the 355’s introductory Cherry finish and was available alongside Walnut and Sunburst finishes as standard for the ES-355TDSV in Gibson’s 1978 catalog.

The ES-355 was introduced in 1958 as an upmarket version of the new ES-335. By the following year, two versions were available: the mono ES-355TD and the stereo ES-355TD-SV. Decoded, this rather lengthy moniker translates as follows: Electric Spanish Thinline Dual-Pickup Stereo Varitone.

The chickenhead knob 6-way Varitone switch – a simple capacitor/filter array – allows various tone ‘presets’ to be selected and can also be found on some mono output guitars. It’s featured on the new Chuck Berry model, complimenting the broad range of tones available from the instrument’s dual Custombucker Alnico 5 pickups.

Staying true to the original, the Gibson Chuck Berry 1970s ES-355 features a maple laminate construction with spruce bracing and a maple centerblock, along with a 3-piece maple neck (volute included) and ebony fingerboard. Typical 355 appointments also include multiple-ply binding and gold hardware throughout, with eye-catching large block fretboard markers and 5-piece split diamond headstock inlays.

This collectible Murphy Lab Aged guitar is currently priced at $6,999.00 and is available in a limited run of only 100 instruments. Shipping with a custom-made red-lined 70s-stye case this unique piece of rock ‘n’ roll history also includes a captain's hat and conduit bracket/finger holder along with a numbered certificate of authenticity.

Visit Gibson's webite for more information on the Chuck Berry 1970s ES-355.

James Burton. Elvis Presley. A Fender Paisley Red Telecaster. “Johnny B. Goode.” How could that combo possibly get any better? If Burton played the guitar behind his head, of course.

Self-taught Telecaster master Burton gained notoriety as a session guitarist throughout the 1950s and ‘60s, starring on a host of landmark recordings such as Dale Hawkins’ “Susie Q” while enjoying a longstanding working relationship with American pop pioneer Ricky Nelson. By the late ‘60s, Burton had gained an enviable reputation and was in high demand, turning down gigs for both Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley.

Eventually, in 1969, Burton joined Elvis as guitarist and bandleader, staying with the group until Elvis’ untimely passing in 1977. A star of the show in his own right, Elvis would often call out Burton on stage, using the cue, "Play it, James," before he ripped into a solo using his Fender Paisley Red Telecaster.

In the late-60s, Fender further experimented with the form of the Telecaster and introduced a variety of striking new finishes. In ‘68, while attempting to embrace flower power, the company released two distinctly lysergic Telecaster finishes in tandem with the Telecaster Bass: Paisley Red and Blue Flower. It was, however, just a brief stop at the love in, as both finishes were discontinued the following year, making these models a rare sight.

“Paisley Red pulsates with every beat and swirls in a blinding carousel of color forms and tones. Fender shines again,” proclaims an advert for the Paisley Red Tele, while its Blue Flower counterpart reads, “Blue Flower bursts forth in a dazzling array of subtle purple and green patterns. Never before has such an exciting profusion of color been offered.”

Hey, it was the 60s!

Burton is one of few well-known electric guitar players to have embraced the Paisley Red Telecaster (albeit somewhat reluctantly to begin with) after Fender contacted him directly in '69, just prior to Elvis’ Las Vegas residency shows. “I took it to Vegas,” Burton told an interviewer for Musicians Hall of Fame. “It took me two weeks into the show to break it out and play it on stage. There was no telling what Elvis might say on stage and freak out or something.  

“But anyway, I took it out and he loved it. He never said anything on stage but in between shows he called me and asked me about that guitar. He said, “Where did you get that?” you know, and I said, “Well, Fender called me and gave it to me, and it took me a while to break it out and play it.” He said, “No, it’s great; sounds great, looks great.” He loved it."

“We’ve been working hard! Let’s take a break and jam a little bit,” yells Chuck Berry in this classic 80s clip. And we couldn’t agree more. It is the holiday weekend after all.

Often cited as the ‘Father of rock ‘n’ roll' Chuck Berry moved to Chicago in the mid-50s where he met Muddy Waters and became immersed in the Chicago blues scene. After signing to Chess Records, Berry released his first single with the label – the 1955 rock ‘n’ roll groundbreaker “Maybellene” – which soon made him a million-selling number one hit artist. More genre-defining bangers followed, including “Roll Over Beethoven” in ’56, “Rock & Roll Music” in ’57, and “Johnny B. Goode” in ’58.

In this clip, the rock ‘n’ roll founding father is joined by his protégés Eric Clapton and Keith Richards for a dynamite 12-bar blues jam. While Berry is seen playing his familiar Gibson ES-355, the British blues guitar gods have each opted for a Fender Stratocaster – Clapton, an early slab rosewood ‘board sunburst model with a ‘mint’ nitrate ‘guard, and Richards a Mary Kaye 50s-style maple neck model with gold hardware and a blond finish. 

While Richards and Berry were known to fall out occasionally (indeed, the pair even came to blows on one occasion) they certainly look like they’re having fun here, and their mutual love for each other’s guitar playing is palpable. We hope you find this short video as inspiring as we did and that you get to do some jamming of your own this holiday weekend. 

Buy the 1987 Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll documentary soundtrack here

The following is an excerpt from GP's November 1977 cover story on Keith Richards.

Almost every sentence ever written about The Rolling Stones begins with the word “Mick,” and ends with the word “Jagger” – which is odd, considering that four-fifths of the band’s personnel has remained constant throughout the group’s 14- year, 24-album history. 

And from the band's inception as England’s top rhythm and blues outfit, to its present status as one of the world’s most powerful and influential rock and roll bands, the Stones’ principal guitar player has been Keith Richards.

How did you and Brian Jones relate as guitarists?

Really fantastic. But, later, Brian got fed up with the guitar, and he started to wander around to every other instrument. He found that he had this facility for any instrument that might be lying in the studio. He’d play vibraphone, marimba, or harp – even though he’d never touched them before. 

He had this incredible concentration, where he could apply it all, and in an hour or so, he’d have it down enough to be used on the record.

When you two first started playing together, who did what?

We were both feeling each other out, because we were all very much into electric Chicago blues. Our styles varied a lot. I was personally more into the commercial stuff from Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, and Jimmy Reed. 

For some reason, these were the people Brian had never heard of. He was more towards Elmore James, B.B. King, and Howlin’ Wolf.

On the early Stones tracks, did you work more out of chord forms, or were your lines based on scales or single- or two-string patterns?

I love two-string stuff. That was mainly the influence of Chuck Berry. What interested me about him was the way he could step out of the rhythm part with such ease, throwing in a nice simple riff, and then drop straight into the feel of it again.

Obviously, a lot of your style comes from Chuck Berry.

Oh, without a doubt. When I was learning guitar, I spent so long learning from him and his records.

Do you play off Charlie Watts’ drum accents?

We tend to play very much together. I have to hear Charlie, and I think he has to hear me. I love playing with Charlie – he knocks me out every time.

How do you interact musically with Bill Wyman?

I don’t really know what to say about Bill, because he is, like, the perfect anchor between Charlie and myself. To me, his strong point is that he’s always there, but he’s always unobtrusive. And, for me, straight-ahead rock and roll bass should be there, but you should feel it – it should never stick out so that you actually notice it more than anything else. 

A bass should be something that you can walk on, and not have to worry whether there are going to be any holes there.

How was your playing relationship with Mick Taylor?

Always very good. It was a different thing for me. There is no way I can compare it to playing with Brian, because it had been so long since Brian had been interested in the guitar at all. I had almost gotten used to doing it all myself – which I never really liked. I couldn’t bear being the only guitarist in a band, because the real kick for me is getting those rhythms going, and playing off another guitar. But I learned a lot from Mick Taylor, because he is such a beautiful musician. 

When he was with us, it was a time when there was probably more distinction between rhythm guitar and lead guitar than at any other time in the Stones. The thing with musicians as fluid as Mick Taylor is that it’s hard to keep their interest. They get bored – especially in such a necessarily restricted and limited music as rock and roll. 

That is the whole fascination with rock and roll and blues – the monotony of it, and the limitations of it, and how far you can take those limitations, and still come up with something new.

You’re using a lot more chords onstage than you have in the past.

It’s true. Now – especially with [co-guitarist] Ron Wood – the band is playing a lot more the way it did when Brian and I used to play at the beginning. We used to play a lot more rhythm stuff. We’d do away with the differences between lead and rhythm guitar. 

It’s like, you can’t go into a shop, and ask for a “lead guitar.” You’re a guitar player, and you play a guitar. What’s interesting about rock and roll for me is that if there are two guitarists, and they’re playing well together and they really jell, there seems to be infinite possibilities open. It comes to the point where you’re not conscious anymore of who’s doing what. 

It’s not at all a split thing. It’s like two instruments becoming one sound. It’s never been the technique thing with me. I’ll never be a George Benson or a John McLaughlin, and I’ve never tried to be. I’ve never been into just playing, as such. I’ve been more interested in creating sounds, and something that has a real atmosphere and feel to it.

A signed 1967 Gibson ES-345 owned and played by Chuck Berry is headed to the auction block.

The Cherry Red guitar is being auctioned by Gotta Have Rock and Roll – the same firm that's also in the process of auctioning Eric Clapton's 1954 hardtail Strat – and features Berry's signature, and a drawing, in black felt pen.

Sporting the serial number 000037, the guitar comes from Berry's personal collection, and was given to businessman Mike Malone following its use in a private performance in Seattle on April 13, 2002.

Bidding for the guitar is now open, with the minimum bid set at $200,000. It's expected to sell for between $300,000 - $500,000. 

It comes with a full letter of provenance from Mike Malone, a Gotta Have Rock & Roll Certificate of Authenticity, and a copy of the William Morris Agency contract for Berry to perform at the private gathering in Seattle.

For more info on the guitar, stop by gottahaverockandroll.com.

The trailer for Chuck Berry; The Original King of Rock 'N' Roll, the first official Chuck Berry documentary, has been released. You can check it out below.

Available now on video-on-demand platforms – and on DVD and Blu-ray on November 27 – the film was directed by Jon Brewer, whose other credits include documentaries on B.B. King, Mick Ronson, Alice Cooper, Nat King Cole, Jimi Hendrix and more.

The trailer for the documentary features the first-ever interview with Berry's widow, Themetta “Toddy” Suggs, plus appearances from Cooper, Keith Richards, Nils Lofgren, Steve Van Zandt, Gary Clark Jr. and more.

"I got through to the family and talked to his widow, who was very charming,” Brewer told Below The Line. “She had never done an interview before because [Berry] wouldn’t let her do it. Then, we built the story. When a man is dead, you have to create the story and find it within actions he has done and did.

“He created the teenager. If you think back on it, it was cars and soda parlors and hanging out in what was then the ‘hood. It was always these wonderful stories that he told. That went down very well – a lot of kids related to his lyrics."

Chuck Berry; The Original King of Rock 'N' Roll is available now on Amazon, Availtin, Cool Nerd Kiosk, Direct TV, Dish, Doc N Roll, Fandango, Google Play, inDemand, iTunes, Sling TV, Tubi, Vimeo, Vudu and Xbox.

In a guitarist’s life, few things are as fun and gratifying as jamming out on a 12-bar blues progression with a friend, a band or even by yourself. 

And sure, the soloing part is a blast, but as with many different musical styles, your primary role in blues guitar is in most cases to accompany a singer or other featured instrumentalist who is playing a melody. 

So if you’re feeling limited by your blues comping (chord, or rhythm guitar, playing) ability and vocabulary and are searching for inspiration in those areas, this lesson presents a variety of tried-and-true chords, riff patterns and fills that will help fortify your blues comping arsenal. 

All of these can be applied to various tempos, grooves and playing scenarios, so grab your favorite axe and let’s get started! 

Basic Blues Chording

Let’s begin by getting acquainted with a collection of short, standard blues chord-playing patterns that can be mixed and matched in any variety of ways. Before we get into the examples, let’s consider a few notes about them:

1. For the purpose of economizing space, the first five examples are presented back to back, or side by side on one line, and in 2/4 meter with repeat brackets. Each of these two-beat patterns would typically be played twice across a bar of 4/4 meter.

2. The pick-hand palm muting instructions (P.M.) and staccato markings (those little black dots below some of the note heads, which tell you to reduce the note’s duration by 50 percent) are articulation suggestions that offer a starting point. 

Feel free to use little or no palm muting at all, and experiment with normal (non-staccato) articulations and various accents. Ultimately, the choice of how to attack a note is up to the individual player, and the subtle differences in touch and textures make a deceptively simple style ever interesting and exciting.

3. Although blues progressions and rhythm patterns can be played in a variety of keys, for the sake of continuity and comparison here, all of the examples in this lesson are presented in the key of G. 

Additionally, they’re all performed with a swing-eighths, or shuffle, feel, which is based on an undercurrent of eighth-note triplets, but alternatively, each example can be played with an even-eighths, or “straight-eighths,” feel, like that heard in the Chuck Berry blues-rock classic “Johnny B. Goode” and also “The House Is Rockin’,” as famously recorded by the late, great Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Ex. 1 shows the foundational root-5th/root-6th boogie pattern that’s been around since before Robert Johnson went into a recording studio and laid down “Sweet Home Chicago” way back in 1936. 

Fashioned to complement and/or imply a G7 harmony (G, B, D, F), the riff is based on a root-5th G5 power chord structure (G, D) with a complementary root-6th (G, E) embellishment added on beat 2 to provide some movement.

Regarding the chord fingerings indicated below the tab, if you’re having trouble making that two-fret stretch between fingers 3 and 4 (the ring finger and pinkie), try substituting your 2nd finger (the middle) for the 3rd, using your 1st and 2nd fingers to form the foundational root-5th power-chord shape.

Ex. 2 offers a subtle variation on our initial riff pattern that has just a single strum on the root-6th embellishment followed by an immediate return to the root-5th power chord.

Ex. 3 puts a rhythmic and melodic twist on the pattern with a triplet-fueled hammer-on move. A well-known example of this pattern in action can be found in the intro to the acoustic guitar riff in the song “Revolution 1” by the Beatles (the slow version from The Beatles, a.k.a. the White Album).

Ex. 4 features an inherently bluesy handoff from the minor, or flatted, 3rd, Bb, to the major third, B, on the low E string. The Bb note provides a passing “blue-note rub.”

Ex. 5 also incorporates this minor-to-major-3rd ploy, here combined with the triplet rhythm introduced in Ex. 3.

Our next set of figures is based on the same root-5th/root-6th pattern, but with an added b7 (F is the b7 of a G7 chord, which is spelled G, B, D, F). Formula-wise, this gives us root-5th/root-6th/root-b7th.

Ex. 6 lays out the pattern utilizing a steady stream of dyads (two-note chords). This is a cool and fat-sounding riff, but the required pinkie stretch up to F at the 8th fret on the A string can make it somewhat arduous to play for guitarists with small hands.

Ex. 7 offers one alternative solution, which separates the notes and allows you to momentarily let go of the low G root note while reaching up to grab the F.

If you’re still having trouble fretting that F note comfortably, Ex. 8 offers yet another option, which relocates the note to the D string’s 3rd fret. This approach easily facilitates the sustaining of the foundational root-5th power chord structure throughout the entire figure.

Ex. 9 provides a cool-sounding and challenging road test for setting all of these riff patterns in motion.

The layout is a basic 12-bar blues progression in the key of G: four bars on the I (one) chord, which has an implied G7 tonality, followed by two bars on the IV (four) chord, which alludes to C7 (C, E, G, Bb), then back to the I for two bars (7 and 8). 

The next three bars (9–11) descend from the V (five) chord, an implied D7 (D, F#, A, C) to the IV and then back to the I.

The progression is capped off in bar 12 with a brief return to the V chord (D7), which brings us back to the I (G7) in bar 1 of the next 12-bar chorus.

As the first four bars stay rooted on the implied G7 tonality of the I chord, that affords us plenty of time to juggle several of the riff ideas that were introduced earlier. The text notation above the TAB staff identifies the previous short riff patterns from Examples 1-8 that are being dispatched here at any given moment.

In bars 5 and 6, the patterns from Examples 7, 5 and 3 are shifted up to 8th position and applied to the IV chord, the implied C7. 

Bar 7 marks the return to the I chord, where we encounter the pinkie-saving riff option from Ex. 8 followed by the bluesy minor-to-major- 3rd figure from Ex. 4 and a chromatic single-note climb (C - C# - D) to the root of the ensuing V chord, the implied D7, which we get to on the downbeat of bar 9. 

Here we transplant the G7 riff from Ex. 8 over to the A and D strings and move it up two frets to align with the D7 chord. (Note: All of the riff patterns in Examples 1–8 are transferable to this next higher pair of adjacent strings.) 

In bar 10, the pattern from bar 9 shifts down two frets to describe the implied C7 chord. Bar 11 moves back over to the bottom two strings for the return to the I (G7), followed by the aforementioned turnaround to the V chord, which satisfyingly sets up the curtain-closing G5 chord.

Adding Some Flair

Now we’re going to add pizazz to the meat-and-potatoes riff patterns learned so far. Ex. 10 is inspired by the churning riffs that drive such blues classics as “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man” (Willie Dixon), “I’m a Man” (Bo Diddley) and “Mannish Boy” (Muddy Waters). 

Again, fashioned to describe a G7 tonality in a blues shuffle setting, the example is rooted upon a foundational G5 power chord shape and interspersed with passing triads and broken chord voicings on the higher strings, all played in 3rd position and built around what would be a full six-string G7 barre-chord shape, which is never actually played here.

The pickup bar features the primary move: a passing C/G triad shape (voiced with the 5th, G, as the lowest note, or “in the bass”) and a partial G7 chord enhanced with a decorative grace-note hammer-on from Bb to B. The result is a soulful, down-home gospel-style move, which happens again at the end of bar 2.

The other highlight occurs on beat 4 of bar 1. Essentially a reversal of the previous move, it’s launched by a higher G major triad inversion, which is again decorated by a b3 grace-note hammer-on and is then answered by a stripped-down voicing of C6 (C, E, G, A) with its 5th, G, omitted.

Any blues soloist worth their salt has a bagful of turnaround licks - licks crafted for the final two bars of a blues progression - but you needn’t wait for your solo to throw one in.

Rhythm players often join in on the fun when the progression turns back around to the top. Ex. 11 features a classic passage that could be inserted in the turnaround bars of a blues progression in G (bars 11 and 12). 

While harmonically complex, it’s based on a simple idea - an ascending chromatic melody (B - C - C# - D) that targets the root of the impending V chord, D7 (refer to bars 8 and 12 of Ex. 9).

A counterpart, or counterpoint, line meanwhile descends chromatically to meet the same target D note an octave below (F - E - Eb - D). Together, the two lines imply the indicated chords while creating musically interesting contrary motion.

Ex. 12 puts these riff ideas to the challenge over the same basic 12-bar progression used in Ex. 9. The riff from Ex. 10 is dispatched to drive the first part of the progression. In bar 4, a single-note climb up the low E string anticipates the implied C7 chord, and the same riff idea is transported up to the 8th fret. 

Notice that this IV-chord riff arrives one beat early - what’s known as an anticipation - just like the I-chord riff did in the pickup bar that preceded bar 1.

Bar 7 zips back down to 3rd position for the I chord (G7), which is likewise anticipated by a beat at the end of bar 6.

Bar 8 climbs back up the low E string, approaching 10th position for the targeted V-chord (D7) in bar 9. Here the riff is rhythmically reconstructed and then answered in like fashion for the C7 chord in bar 10, two frets lower. Bars 11 and 12 wrap things up nicely with the turnaround passage from Ex. 11.

Jump Blues

Our next category of blues rhythm guitar explores ideas that fit the jump blues style. Jump blues is an uptempo form of the blues shuffle that also typically features more harmonically sophisticated and jazzy, or “uptown,” chord voicings played on the higher strings, especially major 6 and dominant-9 chord qualities, which emulate the signature sounds of a big-band horn section. (Listen to T-Bone Walker’s “T-Bone Shuffle” to hear a typical example.) 

The style was a major influence on early rock and roll and rockabilly, with the song “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & His Comets (featuring guitarist Danny Cedrone) being a primary example.

Ex. 13 illustrates a variety of chord voicings that would be likely candidates for the 12-bar blues progression in the key of G that we’ve been working with.

The first three are suitable variations to use over the I chord, G7. The G6 (G, B, D, E) exudes a jazzy flavor. Moving this shape down two frets casts a passing G9 (no3) tonality (G, D, F, A), voiced with the b7, F, in the bass. (Check out Lonnie Mack’s version of “Memphis” for an excellent example of these two chords at work.) 

The G9 (G, B, D, F, A) is a ubiquitous chord shape found in many modern musical styles, especially blues and jazz, as well as R&B, soul and funk.

Many guitarists often omit the root note and allow the bass player to provide it in the lower register, which can make for a tighter rhythm-section sound overall.

Next, we encounter five voicings that could be used for the IV-chord (C7). The C6 shape was discussed in Ex. 10, and the C9 chord (C, E, G, Bb, D) that follows is a transposed version of the G9 voicing and shape we just encountered, so let’s skip to the first C9/Bb chord.

This shape is often used in conjunction with the C6 voicing in the same manner as the G6 and G9/F chords - it’s the same grip, shifted down two frets. The second C9/Bb voicing (see bar 4) is an intriguing shape that’s often slid along the fretboard chromatically, in a pseudo–chord-melody style. The C9/E and D9/F# voicings that follow are commonly used uptown substitutions for stock dominant-7 chords.

Finally, the inverted D9/C voicing (D9: D, F#, A, C, E) which omits the 5th, A, has a bold, punchy sound that’s very appealing. Many blues guitarists refer to this as the “Hideaway” chord, in reference to Freddie King’s celebrated use of it in his classic recording of that song. 

Again, notice that most of the chord shapes in this example are voiced on the higher strings, which lends them a bright sound that helps the voicings really pop out in the mix, just like horn-section stabs.

Ex. 14 creatively applies the above set of voicings to our working 12-bar blues progression template in the key of G.

Bars 1-4 establish a familiar melodic theme, courtesy of the slippery juggling of G6 and G9/F voicings. Bars 5 and 6 (the IV-chord section of the progression) respond to the theme via C6 and C9/Bb shapes. Bars 7 and 8 present a variation of the initial I-chord riff that’s capped with a chromatically ascending C#9–D9 handoff, which slides into place at the end of bar 8 and into bar 9. 

A series of dominant-9 chord inversions ensues, followed by a crafty, triple-stop-fueled turnaround figure in bar 11, and the performance goes out with a group of root-position, dominant-9 shapes.

Jazz Blues Comping

Some guitarists may not know it, but much traditional jazz music is heavily steeped in the blues. Emphasis on the eighth-note upbeats (rather than the downbeats) of blues shuffle rhythms results in what is known as the swing feel.

In terms of comping, the chief difference between the two styles is that jazz chords generally tend to be more harmonically complex than blues grips and are typically played in a sparser rhythm, with more “holes of silence” between chord stabs.

Check out the chord frames illustrated in Ex. 15a. These represent common jazz voicings that could serve as anchor chords to navigate a jazz blues in G. As you play through them, take notice of the highest note in each voicing. 

These are the melody notes that help the player decide which voicing to use to create the desired voice-leading or chord-melody passages.

The chords that are shown in Ex. 15b can be used as passing chords and substitutions to help add greater harmonic interest to the basic I - IV - V form.

Believe it or not, Ex. 16 is based on the same I - IV - V blues progression that we’ve been using throughout this lesson. This version, however, has been fancied up, or reharmonized, using jazz methodology. The first variation occurs in the second bar, with an early arrival, or preview, of the IV chord.

Often referred to as the “quick change to the IV,” this move, which is followed by a return to the I chord in bar 3, is also a common occurrence in traditional blues.

The chords Dm11 (D, F, A, C, E, G) and Db9#11 (Db, F, Ab, Cb, Eb, G) are inserted in bar 4 to provide a strong voice-leading pull to the IV chord. (Also at play here is a mini ii - V - I passage with a chromatic tri-tone substitution: Temporarily thinking in the key of C, the Dm11 serves as the ii - two minor - chord, the Db9 - #11 - is a tri-tone sub standing in for the G7 chord - rooted three whole tones away - and the C13sus4 is the target I chord.

Bar 6 hosts a pair of diminished seven chords (C#dim7: C#, E, G, Bb, and Edim7: E, G, Bb, Db) that serve a #IVdim7 function, which provides a compelling pull back to the I chord, which in this case is a G13/F voicing.

This grip is used to carve a chromatic passage that leads to the E6 chord (E, G#, B, C#) in bar 8. (The E6 chord and E9 chords function as a VI7 chord substitution in this progression.)

The substitutions in bars 9 and 10 provide a ii - V progression in the key of G, with the G13/F voicing at the top of bar 11 serving as the targeted I chord.

The final stream of chords in bars 11 and 12 forms a complex turnaround passage based on a jazz-style I - VI - ii - V - I cadence. The lowest note in each voicing falls in line with the notes a jazz bassist might choose to play in a “walking” bass line in this style.

Although the transcribed rhythm calls for quarter-note strumming (use downstrokes), inserting a few fret-handmuted upstroke strums, or “chucks,” on certain eighth-note upbeats here and there will help to provide a strong swing feel.