Fifty years ago, William Ackerman had little ambition beyond recording an album of original guitar instrumentals and releasing it on a homespun label he founded with his girlfriend, Anne Robinson. He didn’t expect to sell many copies, let alone launch a record company that would help redefine the acoustic guitar and introduce the world to players such as Michael Hedges.

“When I recorded my first record In Search of the Turtle’s Navel, I went to the record pressing plant and was told that the minimum order they would take was for 300 pieces,” Ackerman tells Guitar Player. “I thought that I would probably end up having 150 of those sitting in my closet for the rest of my life.

“And that’s really not an exaggeration, as I really thought I was never going to sell 300 copies of the album. And it obviously turned out to be very different.”

Ackerman gave about 20 copies to the Plowshare Bookstore in Palo Alto, hoping to sell a few. The store began playing the album, attracting customers’ attention. Sales quickly followed.

Around the same time, he renewed his friendship with a childhood next-door neighbor, Michael Kilmartin, who had first turned him on to guitar. Ackerman was 12 when he first heard Kilmartin play electric guitar. It was the moment he fell in love with the instrument.

“One day I was walking about a block up from the bookstore when I saw Michael, who I hadn’t seen for at least 15 years or so,” Ackerman recalls. “I said, ‘Michael, you’re the guy who first put a guitar in my hand, and I just did this little record.’ So I went back to the Plowshare Bookstore and handed him a copy.

“He called me up later that night and said, ‘This is really, really good. Can I have some more of these records?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ It later turned out that, at the time, he was the head of radio promotions at Fantasy Records, whose biggest act was Creedence Clearwater Revival. So he had a lot of control over things.

“He told me that he had sent the records to several major radio stations across the country, and all were reporting heavy airplay. I had to get on the phone and start talking to these radio people to thank them for playing it.

“So I did that. One of the radio stations in Seattle told me that my record was being played more than any record they had played in years. And they asked, ‘What are you doing next Saturday?’ I said, ‘Nothing in particular.’ And they said, ‘Let’s do a concert!’”

Having never played a paying concert before, Ackerman was hesitant, so he asked his guitar-playing cousin Alex De Grassi, who was working with him as part of his building crew, to accompany him. The pair drove up to Seattle and, when they arrived, were surprised by what they saw.

“It was the Seattle Opera House!” Ackerman exclaims. “We then walked into this huge, dark area, and this huge door opened, and I found myself suddenly on the stage in a room filled with 2,300 people! And that was the first paying gig I ever had in my life. At some point in the show, I ran out of music, so I told the audience that it was all I knew; otherwise, I would have to play these things all over again. And the audience went, ‘Do that!’

“As Alex was in the wings, I explained that my cousin was a much better guitarist than I am, so I would get him to join me. But Alex began waving his hands, going, ‘No, I don’t want to do this.’ But I walked up to him and said that the people wanted to hear him too.”

Within a few years, Windham Hill would become a major springboard for a new generation of groundbreaking acoustic guitarists, including De Grassi. One of the players who came to the fore was Michael Hedges, whom Ackerman discovered one evening while walking past the New Varsity Theater in Palo Alto.

“The owner of the venue happened to see me and kind of grabbed me and said, ‘You’ve got to hear this guitarist,’” he recalls. “So I went in and checked out the show, and it was Michael Hedges playing the guitar. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He was incredible.

“I remember taking out a pen and starting to write what I remembered of a Windham Hill contract, as I wanted to sign him there and then. Michael completely redefined what the guitar could be. And that was also, obviously, a wonderful thing to broaden this perspective of what Windham Hill offered.”

With Hedges onboard, Windham Hill expanded its audience, while he helped showcase the untapped sonic possibilities of the acoustic guitar.

“Michael took the acoustic guitar to a whole other level, as what he was doing on the guitar was absolutely unique,” Ackerman says. “It broadened what an acoustic guitar could be. It was another one of those things that defined what the label could do. That was really so important, because it was new and showed what things were possible. I loved what he did and, after having heard him play, told him he could do any damn thing he wanted.”

One element stood out across Windham Hill’s recordings: their distinctive, atmospheric guitar sound.

“As a guitarist, I know the sound of a guitar up close, so I wanted to have microphones really, really close,” he says. “And that really defined Windham Hill. And I think that was part of what made Windham Hill so unique. I mean, nobody was putting microphones in that proximity. Literally, nobody would even think to do it. And it worked.”

Ackerman says the recording process was usually straightforward.

“Because the players were all so talented, there wasn’t a hell of a lot of editing happening,” he says. “We might get three, five, or sometimes seven takes, and there was always one track that was really it. You might grab something from another one of the takes, but it would be very rarely done. We wouldn’t spend days doing edits, but there might be a few places where you had an incredibly great take but had a flaw, and we had a backup recording that we could fix with.”

Windham Hill also shared some of its aesthetic with Germany’s ECM Records, founded in 1969. Both labels developed distinctive recording styles and cultivated recognizable visual identities through carefully considered cover art.

Their catalogs, however, occupied different musical territories: ECM ranged across jazz, classical and experimental music, while Windham Hill became particularly associated with contemporary acoustic guitar and melodic instrumental music. Windham Hill’s covers, designed by Robinson, were minimalist, typically featuring nature photographs framed by generous white space.

The label’s distinctive sound and look helped it establish an identity that was difficult to categorize. Some journalists lumped it into the burgeoning “new age” category. Ackerman bristled at the association.

“A lot of writers just didn’t know where the fuck to put it, and so that pissed me off,” he says. “I never embraced it. What I wanted was for Windham Hill to be seen as a unique nation of music. And I think that we were pretty successful in doing that.”

Ackerman sold his share of Windham Hill to BMG in 1992. Co-founder Anne Robinson retained her stake until 1996, when she also sold to BMG. Windham Hill’s catalog is now part of Sony Music’s holdings.

“Though I wasn’t in the office anymore, I was still making judgments,” Ackerman explains. “It had become a corporation, and I was no longer close to all these people, so it was less something that I wanted to be around.”

That desire to establish Windham Hill as a distinct musical identity was central to what Ackerman wanted the label to represent.

Looking back, Ackerman is proud of what he achieved with Windham Hill, and of the generation of guitarists he helped introduce to the world. Was there anyone he wished he could have signed but never managed to?

“I would have loved to have been able to sign Pat Metheny,” he says. “He was a very sweet guy and I loved what Pat did. He was a fan of what we were doing and really thought that we were doing a wonderful thing. But, obviously, he had it nailed down with ECM with what he was doing.”

Still, Ackerman had helped bring Michael Hedges to a wider audience, and few artists better exemplified what Windham Hill stood for. Hedges expanded the possibilities of the acoustic guitar and inspired generations of players, becoming one of the most enduring figures in the label's legacy.

His impact was also a testament to what Ackerman had set out to achieve with Windham Hill: creating a home for distinctive musical voices and showing the world what the acoustic guitar could become.

“Michael was a genius and literally invented a whole new world for acoustic guitar. There are certainly other players that are perfect, but with Michael — and I’m not overstating it — what he could do with the acoustic guitar was outstanding.

“Of course, then every young guy in the world thought that all he had to do was slap a guitar and imitate Michael Hedges. But Michael was an enormous innovator who gave us a whole concept of what the potential was for the steel-string guitar. Here you had someone who moved out of almost a folky kind of thing with a steel-string, showing you that you could do this and that with it. It wasn’t going to work just to imitate somebody else. You’ve got to have something that is unique that you can present.

“And obviously Michael did that in spades. There was nobody really doing anything else. People were looking at this guitar player doing something that they’d never seen or heard before.”

On New Year’s Eve 1971, a 17-year-old Al Di Meola walked offstage after playing the gig of his young life with jazz pianist Barry Miles. A tape of the performance eventually landed in the hands of Chick Corea — and by 1974, Di Meola was performing in Corea’s band, Return to Forever, becoming famous with lines played on his now iconic 1971 Gibson Les Paul Custom electric.

It was a dramatic turn for the future fusion star. But there was one detail about that night he never told Corea, with whom he would spend the next three years. Di Meola may have played a blinder — but mentally he was in another universe.

The reason? His friend Mike Buyukas gave him the trip of his life as ’71 turned into ’72.

“Mike gave me a tab of acid, I swear to God. I’m really green at the time,” Di Meola told Guitar Player in 2024. “I said to Mike, ‘What is that?’ And he goes, ‘Oh, you’re going to love it! Don’t worry — the Beatles take this stuff.’

“So I wound up taking a tab of acid before the gig with Barry Miles, and I’m telling you, I was on a trip on that stage. I was everywhere in the world, just totally tripping out. I don’t remember anything I played, but when I heard it back, it was fucking awesome!

“I mean, it was lines that Allan Holdsworth would’ve loved to have played. And I don’t know how I played them.”

Di Meola looked up to Buyukas, who was seven years older. The two bonded over music, and Buyukas became a gateway to artists who would shape the young guitarist’s virtuosic, genre-blending sound.

“Mike and I used to sit in his living room and listen to new music, and that’s when I first heard Chick’s A.R.C. record” — Corea’s 1971 trio album with bass guitarist Dave Holland and drummer Barry Altschul — “and then the early Return to Forever with Airto Moreira and Flora Purim.

A few years later, while studying at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Di Meola saw Return to Forever live.

“Earl Klugh was playing guitar with them,” he recalls. “That was a short-lived interim period after Bill Connors had left the group.”

After the show, he called Buyukas and casually said something that would change everything.

“I just offhandedly said, ‘God, I’d love to play with that band.’”

Without prompting, Buyukas transferred the New Year’s Eve recording from reel-to-reel to cassette and took it into New York to track down Corea’s management.

“He just bugged the hell out of them until they would listen to it,” Di Meola says. “And that’s how I got the call from Chick saying they were knocked out by what they heard and that they’d love for me to join the band.”

“I don’t remember doing a tryout; I just remember joining,” he adds. “They called and said, ‘We need you to come to New York… right now!’ I was in a state of shock. Like, Holy shit — what do I do? So I packed, and in 10 minutes I was out the door.”

His debut gig a few days later was a small one — at New York’s celebrated Carnegie Hall.

Convincing his parents proved harder.

“My father’s sitting at the table with his white T-shirt on, looking at the paper. He puts it down and says, ‘What do you mean you’re playing Carnegie Hall? Get the hell out of here! You’re not playing Carnegie Hall. Stop it now!’

“This went on for an hour.”

Eventually Di Meola decided to bring them along.

“We get picked up by a limo, and my father gives his whole spiel on the way to Carnegie Hall. They’re in shock — they can’t believe this is happening.

“And my father says, ‘You know, I always said the way to get to Carnegie Hall is practice, practice, practice.’

“And I said to myself, Uh-uh. It’s acid, acid, acid.

“But I don’t recommend doing this, and I never did it again. But on that one night with Barry Miles, it worked for me. Oh my God! It was a great trip.”

Mark Knopfler has long been regarded as one of the premier electric guitar fingerstylists in the game. In recent years, though, Knopfler says, his playing has moved even more in the fingerstyle direction.

Though he still has reverence for the guitar pick, the Dire Straits man says that his move toward fingerstyle has been one of the byproducts of his overall shift in technique in the 2020s.

Speaking to Guitar Player in a 2024 interview, Knopfler revealed that he's “started using more and more fingerpicking and less and less plectruming.

“I think lack of use, plus three bouts of COVID, probably phased out the plectrum for me. I just kept losing them and would be fingerpicking more — not necessarily fingerpicking better, just more. And it proved to be just a bit more comfortable for me.”

That said, Knopfler — self-effacing throughout his discussion with GP — is on no high horse about his fondness for fingerpicking, even saying that using a pick is inherently better.

“I want to bow to the plectrum and say it’s a superior thing,” Knopfler said. “It’s louder. It’s faster. It’s got a better signal. It’s the best amplifier there is. I didn’t give it up until recently. I was capable of playing things with a plectrum quite a lot, and I would do all the rhythm parts with one all the time.”

Elsewhere in his chat with GP, Knopfler — to an arguably ridiculous extent — went in further on what he sees as the deficiencies as his playing, saying that his “grip on the guitar has gotten even worse.

“[His] songwriting — it takes you away from concentrating on playing, and it accentuates the simplicity of a lot of my stuff that I want out of the guitar,” the guitarist said.

“I’ve almost become a sort of a half-player in the sense that I only tend to play half the notes that are there that I could play, and my fingering is all wrong. I don’t hold the neck properly; I hold the neck like a plumber holds a hammer, not in a proper, artistic way.”

As they take their Last Hurrah Tour through North America — with Europe and Asia on tap for 2027 — L7 are discovering that parting is, indeed, sweet sorrow.

“We’re doing meet and greets on this tour, and it’s really great meeting all these fans,” says Donita Sparks, who formed the all-female alt-rock outfit with fellow singer-guitarist Suzi Gardner in 1985 in Los Angeles. “They’re just very, very sweet, and it gets emotional. One woman said we took her from puberty to menopause — wow.

“So it’s been great, wonderful. They get to tell us how they feel, and we tell them how we feel.”

But, Sparks adds, it’s not enough to change L7’s mind about packing it in, at least on the touring side.

“Oh, that’s highly doubtful,” Sparks says with a chuckle. “It’s just… time.”

L7 are certainly leaving with a legacy. The group scored with an amalgam of punk, metal, hardcore and alternative rock, with an occasional political bent to its lyrics. It had one major hit — “Pretend We’re Dead,” a top 10 Billboard Modern Rock Chart hit in 1992 — and released six albums before splitting up in 2001, then one more, Scatter the Rats, in 2019, after reforming in 2014. L7 were also a principal force behind Rock for Choice, an annual concert series from 1991 to 2001 that focused on women’s issues, and was the subject of a 2016 documentary, L7: Pretend We’re Dead.

Sparks and Gardner remain from the original lineup, while bassist Jennifer Finch passed away in July from brain cancer. That brought Janis Tanaka back for a second tenure with the group, while drummer Demetra Plakas has been part of the band since 1989. L7 may be going out, but they won’t do so quietly.

The Last Hurrah — say it ain’t so.

It is so. We reunited 11 years ago, and it was just supposed to be for, like, a year. Then people still wanted us around, so we had to make a record so we could have some fresh stuff out there, and we made a new single.

When we hit our 40th anniversary last year, we started to discuss wrapping up while we’re still on high, while we’re still loved and we’re still relevant, somehow, even 40 years later. We know what it feels like to sputter out; we did [in 2001], when the wheels fell off and that was it. It was very painful not to say goodbye to our fans.

So this is a different way to do it. And there have been some health concerns over the years. We’re not spring chickens. So it’s time.

Any second thoughts?

Oh, I don’t think so. It is really hard to say, like, “Goodbye, Cleveland… thank you for the years.” It gets heavy. It’s like, Fuck, these people have been fans for decades; or some of them are little kids and just got turned on to us, and they’re like, “Please, no, don’t break up.”

I think people are maybe a little bit starved for outspoken bands who have shit to say about the current situation, make cultural commentary, occasional political commentary, mixed with humor. I just think they’re starved for it. So for us to be saying goodbye, especially right now… it’s a weird thing. But we are.

What’s your overall feeling, or perspective, as you view an end to this road?

I feel very triumphant about our entire career. I always thought we were special. I always thought we were different. We knew we were unique. Looking back as objectively as I can, things I thought were weak spots were not — especially onstage, whether it was our playing or being in sync or in time with each other. I’ve seen live footage of us, and we were pretty fucking tight. We were, and we are, a pretty tight rock and roll band, so I look back in pride at that.

And, y’know, we gave back to the community with Rock for Choice, and we did a lot of benefits and were always outspoken, so we weren’t just these selfish rock whores who would take and take and take. We gave back, and we continue to do so.

Would I have liked it if we had been a bigger band? Absolutely. But these shows have been packed, so I feel like we’ve built an audience that cares about us and what we have to say, and that feels really good.

As a band of all women, for the most part, L7 broke down some barriers, especially in the hard rock world. Did you feel like pioneers at the time — or now?

Well, first of all, we did not start out to be an all-female band; we just couldn’t get guys to play with us. Our first drummer [Roy Koutsky] was a guy, and we were punk rockers doing, like, a very stripped-down metal thing. So many guys who played like that, who wanted to play metal, didn’t want to play with chicks. So we just slowly pieced the band together, and it turned out to be all female.

But we’re not hung up on being women. I would say most women in rock and roll are not hung up on being women. Maybe some pop stars are, but most women who are writing and performing and making records, they don’t give a fuck if they’re female or not, and it’s always been that way. I would bet you five bucks most women in music really don’t care about their gender.

For us, I would say the way we would describe ourselves as a band, being all female wouldn’t be the first adjective. It might be the second. I know some people would use it as the first adjective, that we’re all-female, but we wouldn’t, and we don’t.

Yet, do you feel like there are greater opportunities or more of an open door than maybe L7 had back in the mid ’80s?

I really don’t know. I’m older and considered, like, an elder spokesperson right now. We are a self-contained entity, so I don’t know what it’s like for your younger bands now. I hope for the younger bands that people don’t harp on it, the all-female thing, like they did for us.

I think sometimes when you’re a younger band, people tend to sexualize you more. We’re older, so people aren’t sexualizing us anymore. [laughs] But if you’re good-looking kids or whatever, people are just more fixated on it — the way you look, your gender, how you present yourself. But we’re kind of established, so we don’t get it as much.

The younger artists have an L7 to look up to, though. Who did you have?

The Ramones. I know you’re looking for a woman angle, but I’m telling you that’s not the case. Our favorite bands were the Ramones, the Rolling Stones. Of course we loved Blondie and Patti Smith and everyone, but it wasn’t because they were female. It was because they were great. We like greatness. It doesn’t matter if it’s a pussy or a penis, you gotta be good.

How did you and Suzi develop as a guitar tandem?

We both wanted to play rhythm and lead guitar. I would say I go for hookier stuff than she does; she likes it a little more jammy. She’s more Ozzy, I’m more Bowie; her older brother was really into hard rock, while my older sisters were into glitter rock, early punk rock, New Wave. I never had a Black Sabbath record or a Led Zeppelin record; I had other records, but she had those records.

I would say we started influencing each other as we went along. I’ve written heavy stuff and she’s written poppy stuff. Thankfully, our limited chops didn’t get us into doodley-doodley wankville.

We kept it simple. We’re not hung up on technique, or what we couldn’t do. If you’re playing scales all day long, you might start to sound like somebody else. But because of our limitations as musicians, we got into our own sound. We did what we could do, and that’s what made us unique.

We’re very different people, too. We didn’t go to school together. We weren’t big buddies or anything like that. We don’t hang out. We came together for the music. We collided on the underground scene of Los Angeles, and we both wanted to do the same thing. We were punk rockers, and we wanted to play hard rock.

You’re a Flying V girl. How did that happen?

I’ve probably got about 12 of ’em, mostly Epiphones. The first one was a rent payment from our first drummer, Roy, who was my roommate. I just thought it was very ironic for me to be playing a Flying V, because it looked so metal. And yet it was a cool look. No one was playing a V that I knew of as a punk rocker.

Then I found out later that Bob Mould played a V, but he was not on my radar at the time. That first V was in a museum in London — my fucked-up first V, covered in stickers of Elvis and Jesus, was in a museum next to Chrissie Hynde’s and Paul McCartney’s guitars, all these famous people. It’s like, “What is my piece of trash doing up there?”

But it looked cool, I have to say. It looked very punk rock. It’s currently in a case, which is also covered with stickers — and looks like a museum piece as well. People want to buy that guitar, but I’m not selling it yet.

Is there a favorite sticker?

I’ve got Jesus. I’ve got hot-rod flames on the back, which is really bitchin’. And then I’ve got Elvis and Frankenstein on the front. All the greats, right — Frankenstein, Elvis and Jesus.

We lost Jennifer Finch a few months ago. How is that sitting as you’re out on tour?

We were all so heartbroken. Y’know, I’m not sure I’ve processed it completely yet. When she passed, I had so many tasks to do for this tour. Every day my mantra was, like, “Just move the ball forward, just move the ball forward…” Every day I was slammed.

We do mention her onstage, and we had a Jennifer moment showing some photos of her, and it was just… “We can’t do that.” It was just too heavy. I got a little verklempt. Grief hits you and you’re in front of all these people and you get tears in your eyes. It’s just too much of a bummer right now.

We do respect her and thank her every night on stage, but showing photos with her birth date and death date was crazy intense. We’ll probably do something in Los Angeles on our final show [November 14], but as a nightly, major thing, it’s not happening.

What made her so right for L7?

Her stage presence made her a great bass player. She admittedly was not very musical, and she wasn’t a bass player when she joined our band. She had a lot of chutzpah.

She learned to play bass; I taught her a bit, so did her boyfriend. I said, “Play what we’re playing,” and at first it was just a wall of sound, playing the same notes. There weren’t bass runs or anything like that. She was more of a stage presence and a hustler than a musician, but it worked for what we were doing.

She was a dynamo onstage and someone who was really driven to make the band work and get somewhere. She was very driven, and she got very far with her limited musicality — those are her words, not mine.

Bringing back Janis at least provided a degree of continuity, then.

We hadn’t been in that much contact with Janis. We had some immediate shows coming when Jennifer was still sick. She thought she was gonna make the shows, if everything went well — which it did not.

So there’s a gal named Tsuzumi Okai in L.A. She’s a piano teacher by day and rock and roll bass player by night, and I knew her. She picks things up very fast, so she covered those shows.

Then we had a very short list. I contacted Janis, and she was available and in Southern California, which was great. She’s one of us; she had been in the band before, she knows our vernacular, she’s funny, she’s a little goofy, she’s politically in tune with us. She’s a punk rocker doing all kinds of music. She plays bluegrass in a band in San Francisco. So she’s perfect, and we’re happy to have her.

You have a new song out, “Loma Linda.” Where did that come from?

“Loma Linda” was on a hard drive, and Demetra and I had recorded the basic tracks ourselves when the band was kind of in flux, and Janis came in and played bass. It was unfinished, and Dee had been bugging me to release it for years. I thought, Y’know, we’re going to be kicking off this tour with Janis back in the band, and there’s been such heaviness in losing Jennifer Finch. Why don’t we finish this single and release it with the joy of having Janis back in the band and give the fans a treat… and maybe cheer people up a little bit. So we wrote a lyric and finished it.

Are there any more things like that in the vault that might see the light of day?

Oh, I’m definitely going to release more L7 music. We have a lot of unfinished stuff on hard drives. We’ve got new songs cooking on the back burner, too.

I had a solo band, and I have unfinished tracks from that. So that’s my next project when I get home; I’m gonna do some reviewing, and even if we don’t tour, I still want to release things. People are digging “Loma Linda,” so why not finish some other things?

Fender Japan is celebrating Pokémon’s 30th anniversary with two limited-edition electric guitars inspired by the franchise’s original video games. But catching one won't be easy: both models are available exclusively through a lottery sale.

The Red Stratocaster and Green Telecaster feature elaborate pixel art drawn from the early Pokémon games, with sprites of the pocket monsters and their characters joined by a Poké Ball and a Game Boy Color. The artwork is displayed beneath semi-transparent pickguards that shift between fluorescent colors depending on the viewing angle. Even the pickguards’ edges get a pixelated treatment.

The video game references continue down the necks, where both guitars feature Poké Ball fretboard inlays. The Telecaster gets a maple fingerboard, while the Stratocaster has rosewood.

Under the hood, things are more conventional — at least initially. Both guitars feature traditional single-coil pickup configurations, but pulling up the push/pull volume knob adds an unexpected twist: an 8-bit sound effect that brings a little old-school video game audio to your playing. It's entirely unnecessary, of course, which is precisely what makes it so much fun.

Each guitar also gets a custom Pocket Monsters 30th Anniversary neck plate featuring a tiny Pikachu sprite.

The collaboration arrives just days after Ibanez unveiled its own anime-inspired partnership, teaming up with Dragon Ball Z for a special-edition guitar.

Fender Japan has been on an interesting run of pop-culture collaborations, too, with previous releases inspired by Game of Thrones, Monster Hunter and Godzilla. But there's a little more design ingenuity at work here, particularly in the way the pixel artwork is integrated into the guitars rather than simply applied as a graphic finish.

Both models ship with a hard case, a Pokémon guitar-pick set and a certificate of authenticity.

For anyone hoping to catch one, applications for the lottery sale are being accepted through Pokémon Center Online, where you can find further details. Given the extremely limited availability, the lottery may be the only way to get your hands on one.

Alice Cooper found his longtime manager in a room with Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. He has Hendrix to thank for the introduction.

Before breaking out as one of rock’s most iconic frontmen, Cooper rubbed shoulders with stars and soon-to-be legends. He ran in the same L.A. circles as the Doors in the ’60s and even shared a house with Pink Floyd.

But it was another, more unusual living arrangement that sparked an all-important moment in his career.

“In 1968, we were so poor in L.A. that we were living in the Chambers Brothers’ basement in Watts. Jimi Hendrix used to come over and they'd all smoke grass together, and we'd come out of the cellar like rats,” he tells Professor of Rock.

“Jimi was buying his grass from Shep Gordon, who at the time was just this New York kid that was selling grass to all these people at the Landmark Hotel.”

Beyond his knack for selling marijuana, Gordon didn't have much of a professional future mapped out. As Cooper recalls, Hendrix saw him as a walking target for the police.

“Jimi says, ‘You know, they're going to bust you, man. You're a young guy. You've got a lot of money and you don't have an occupation.’

“He said, ‘I know a band that needs a manager. You should be a manager.’

“So he brings us over. I opened the door, and I thought there was a smoke machine inside! I walk through this, and there's Jimi, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin. They're all sitting there getting high.”

It wasn't exactly the typical environment for a business meeting, but then again, this was rock and roll. Cooper was in the company of rock royalty — and three future members of the infamous 27 Club.

“Shep hands me a handful of marijuana. And this is when marijuana was really illegal in LA.

“And I went, ‘That’s our manager!’” Cooper continues.

“The very next day, we were supposed to sign with Frank Zappa’s [Straight Records]. We walked in, and Shep walked in, and they said, ‘Who's he?’ I said, ‘Oh, that's our manager.’ They said, ‘You didn't have a manager yesterday.’ I said, ‘Yeah, we got him last night.’”

More than five decades later, Gordon is still Cooper’s manager and a vital part of his success. Cooper says their arrangement has always been so informal, and their trust in one another so strong, that they still don't have a contract.

The band's first two albums, Pretties for You and Easy Action, failed to make much commercial impact. Their fortunes changed with their third, Love It to Death, as their partnership with producer Bob Ezrin began to take shape. Ezrin later encouraged the band to revisit the Pretties for You track “Reflected,” ultimately transforming it into the satirical political anthem "Elected," one of their biggest hits.

But the relentless schedule eventually took its toll, and by 1974 the original Alice Cooper Band had split. Its sound had been potently powered by Glen Buxton’s fiery lead guitar work.

“When we got Bob Ezrin, everything went through the roof,” Cooper says. “But after seven years, we never took time off. We just toured and toured. In those days, you made two albums a year.

“It was normal because if you didn't, somebody behind you was going to take you out. We had Bowie breathing down our neck. So we made two albums a year, writing these songs while on tour. The original band just burned out.”

The original lineup reunited for 2025’s The Revenge of Alice Cooper, with Buxton, who passed away in 1997, a notable absence. But his influence was still felt, thanks to a rediscovered riff that became part of the album. He even made a posthumous appearance on the record.

“I had a cassette of Glen and I, and Glen had an idea for this song he called ‘Astute Lobotomy,’” bass guitarist Dennis Dunaway explains to Guitar Player. “And that’s all he had: the title and this riff, definitely a fiery, Glen Buxton riff.

“His spirit was in the room with us the whole time,” Ezrin adds. “We talked about him more than we talked about anything else, I think.”

Cheap Trick are stepping away from touring after five decades on the road, announcing that they have withdrawn from several concerts scheduled for 2027 to take an extended break.

The decision will not affect the band's remaining 2026 dates. Cheap Trick are scheduled to resume their current tour November 5 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and will play their previously announced November shows before taking time off.

The announcement follows speculation about the band's future after several concert cancellations, including a February 13 appearance at Harrah's Cherokee Casino Resort. Earlier this month, the venue shared a statement attributed to Cheap Trick explaining that the band had decided to take an unspecified amount of time off after many years of touring.

On Thursday, October 29, the band addressed the situation directly in a social media statement, thanking fans for their concern and making a point of clarifying that the decision was not health-related.

“To clear things up, we've decided to take some time off after decades of touring because we need a break. Not for health reasons,” the statement read. “We'll play our November shows and then take our first break in 50 years.

“Thank you for all your support!”

The clarification comes after a worrying incident involving founding guitarist Rick Nielsen last month. During a concert in Aurora, Illinois, Nielsen left the stage after experiencing difficulty breathing, later returning to finish the performance seated. The episode prompted questions about his health, which the guitarist subsequently addressed in an interview with Nexstar's WTVO.

Nielsen said he had undergone an MRI and offered some reassuring news: “I have no cancer, so that's good news.”

Cheap Trick also canceled or postponed several concerts in June, citing “circumstances beyond our control” at the time.

The band, whose current lineup features three original members — Nielsen, singer Robin Zander and bass guitarist Tom Petersson — has maintained a remarkably busy touring schedule throughout its career. Drummer Bun E. Carlos stopped touring with the group in 2010, with Nielsen's son Daxx taking over behind the kit. Zander's son, Robin Taylor Zander, also performs with the band on rhythm guitar and vocals.

Cheap Trick broke through to mainstream success in 1979 with their live version of “I Want You to Want Me,” which became a top 10 hit in the U.S. Their signature songs also include “Surrender” and “Dream Police,” while they enjoyed another major commercial resurgence in the late 1980s when “The Flame” topped the U.S. charts.

They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016 and have performed more than 6,000 concerts since forming, selling more than 20 million albums along the way. Their 21st studio album, All Washed Up, arrived in November 2025.

In related news, Nielsen recently auctioned off his five-neck Hamer guitar, which sold for $313,600 — nearly twice its pre-auction estimate of $175,000.

The British blues boom of the 1960s owed everything to Black American musicians, but bands like the Yardbirds and the Rolling Stones helped bring the music to a wider audience in the U.K. Some added a flashier edge to the sound. For ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons, however, Peter Green captured the spirit of Chicago blues with an authenticity and economy of style that could have fooled listeners into thinking he was a native of the Windy City.

Green, who was born in London on this day in 1946, became a driving force behind Fleetwood Mac’s early success after leaving John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Mayall had even likened him to Eric Clapton during Green’s spell in the band.

Green is best known for songs such as the raucous blues rocker “Oh Well,” the darkly atmospheric “The Green Manalishi (with the Two Prong Crown)” and the dreamy instrumental “Albatross.” But for Gibbons, one less celebrated track stands out as an especially convincing demonstration of Green’s abilities.

“‘Stop Messin’ Round’ is as rock-solid a British take on down-home Chicago-style 12-bar blues as ever there was,” he once told Guitar World. “The six-string guitar work from Señor Green dispenses with frills and reminds me somewhat of the late, great Freddie King in terms of tone and approach.”

During his Fleetwood Mac years, Green played a 1959 Gibson Les Paul that has since become one of the most coveted instruments in guitar history. Now known as one of the Holy Grails of the electric guitar, it passed from Green to Gary Moore after Green’s struggles with drugs brought his time in the band to an end. After years away from the spotlight, Green eventually saw his former instrument become famous in its own right. Metallica’s Kirk Hammett is its third high-profile owner.

Dubbed Greeny, the guitar is renowned for its distinctive out-of-phase tone, a result of the unusual magnetic polarity of its neck pickup. Gibbons appreciates that character, too.

“Greeny took on a distinctive out-of-phase sound,” he says, “with that mysterious, magic something that deepened the undeniable appeal of the Fleetwood Mac sonic experience.”

But that tonal quirk isn’t what makes “Stop Messin’ Round” such a standout for Gibbons. He’s equally impressed by the song’s vocals, guitar playing and overall feel.

“Green’s stunning vocal and ferocious guitar work, the Fleetwood Mac studio thrust, [they] all have the kind of grit that makes the song as convincing as anything heard in Chicago’s Checkerboard or Pepper’s or Theresa’s back in the day,” Gibbons says. “It’s long been my go-to Peter Green exemplar. The feel is real and the playing is just what the material demands.”

Hammett has also helped extend Greeny’s legacy well beyond its original owner. The guitar regularly appears on Metallica’s stages, and he has shared it with a number of notable players. Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith, Al Di Meola and Blackberry Smoke’s Charlie Starr are among those who have had the opportunity to play the storied Les Paul.

Even Joe Bonamassa, one of the world’s most avid guitar collectors, once passed up the opportunity to buy Greeny. He believes the instrument is in the right hands with Hammett.

From mastering thrash metal with Testament to becoming an accomplished jazz player later in life, Alex Skolnick has proved himself a chameleonic guitar player. But there’s one athletic aspect of his playing that he still struggles with: high-speed picking.

Apart from David Gilmour, who long ago accepted that he wasn’t born to shred, most guitar players dream of picking at finger-blurring speeds. Yngwie Malmsteen built his career on a seemingly superhuman blend of speed and precision, but even accomplished players can struggle with the technique’s most demanding aspects.

Skolnick, who rose to prominence with metal icons Testament, is one such player. Guitar solos may be a big part of his repertoire, but that doesn’t mean fast playing comes easily to him.

“There’s an athletic quality to super fast picking that has to be very precise,” he explains to Guitar Interactive Magazine. “It’s even harder with two guitars because you can tell when somebody falls. With one guitar, you can kind of get away with it, there’s a lot more freedom.”

Skolnick isn’t alone in struggling with the demands of high-speed playing. Speaking to Guitar Player in 2022, Joe Bonamassa said that “at this point, everybody knows I can play fast,” and explained how he’d taken advice from Leslie West to cut his playing in half. But when he does turn up the speed, he has to work within his technical limitations. In a conversation with Guitar World two years earlier, he admitted that one particular technique had eluded him.

“I have absolutely no capacity to play anything using the legato technique,” he said. “Eric Johnson blends legato and picking perfectly in my opinion. I am an Al Di Meola school player, especially when it comes to faster playing. I pick literally every note unless I’m on stage playing a pretend rock star.”

By contrast, Allan Holdsworth was renowned for reaching blistering speeds through his use of legato, although his picking technique was formidable, too. Ultimately, guitarists develop their own approaches around their strengths and weaknesses.

Interestingly, Skolnick credits his late-career foray into jazz with making him a “stronger metal player,” particularly when it comes to timing and speed. His jazz journey began shortly after a brief stint as Ozzy Osbourne’s guitarist.

“I mostly focused on jazz for a long time, and then I found my way back into hard rock and metal,” he explains. “Of course, there's a lot of differences, but there are some common threads, and I think being around professional jazz musicians and being trained by very serious jazz musicians really made me focus on my timing.

“I wasn't aware of how much my timing needed work,” Skolnick admits. “When you play in a band and that's your main gig, you just get used to that. You fall into bad habits. You get used to your rhythm section, and you don't really think about keeping time as much on your own.

“But in a jazz situation, well, there's a lot more listening. You have to be on your toes. Sometimes the bandleader will ask you to take an intro, or have everybody else drop out so you’re just playing a capella, and that takes great timing. So I developed my timing playing jazz, and I think I was able to bring that to metal.

“I was listening to the bass and drums and finding the pocket,” he adds. “And then I later figured out that a lot of my favorite guitar players, you know, guys like Eddie Van Halen, for example, have this incredible sense of timing. That's partially why their work was so amazing. Eddie knew his way around a drum set, too!”

Since returning to metal, Skolnick has shared with Guitar Player his list of essential jazz albums for rock and metal players. He has also explained how an Allan Holdsworth solo serves as an exercise in “deep expression.”

Adrian Belew got his big break playing with Frank Zappa in the late 1970s, but it was David Bowie who helped propel him to the next level. After spotting the guitarist at a Zappa show in Berlin, Bowie wasted little time making him an offer. Zappa, however, wasn’t about to make the move easy.

“David asked Frank three questions,” Belew tells Ultimate Guitar of the meeting between the three musicians. “Frank answered all three of them with ‘Fuck you, Captain Tom.’ So we said, ‘Well, okay then,’ and we got up and left the building. Then David said to me, ‘I thought that went rather well.’ [laughs].”

The confrontation wasn’t necessarily the career-ending blow it might have seemed. Zappa had already told his musicians that they could remain on his payroll for three months after the tour or take other work while he turned his attention to a film project.

“There was only a little bit of time left on that tour,” Belew explains. “Frank had already told everyone that when we got back to the United States, he was going to rent a big editing machine, and he was going to be editing the live footage from New York, which would become the Baby Snakes movie. He figured that would take him three months. So, everyone was alerted that you could stay on his payroll retainer for three months, or you could go off and do other things.”

Bowie had a particular reason for seeking Belew out. Brian Eno had tipped him off that the guitarist was worth seeing, having caught Zappa’s show several days earlier. Bowie was looking for a guitarist for his Isolar II world tour, and Belew made a strong impression when the singer and Iggy Pop watched Zappa perform in Berlin.

“There was a part of the show where Frank took an extended 10-minute solo, leaving just Terry Bozzio [drums] and Patrick O’Hearn [bass] onstage, and the rest of us were supposed to walk off the stage at that point,” Belew recently told Guitar World. “As I was doing that, I looked over at the monitor guy, and there was David Bowie and Iggy Pop standing there.”

Belew seized the opportunity to introduce himself.

“I walked over and shook David’s hand and said, ‘I just want to really thank you for all your music,’” he recalls. “I didn’t even have time to say anything to Iggy before David said, ‘Well, good. How’d you like to be in my band?’”

Belew soon found himself recording guitar parts for Bowie’s album Lodger and touring with the singer. Although his first stint with Bowie was relatively brief — by 1980, he was recording guitar parts for Talking Heads’ Remain in Light — the experience gave him greater creative freedom and helped shape him as a player.

It was a path familiar to other musicians who passed through Zappa’s demanding band. Steve Vai, who joined in the early 1980s, would go on to play with David Lee Roth and later replace John Sykes in Whitesnake. Belew, meanwhile, would join Robert Fripp’s progressive rock band King Crimson, develop a distinctive signature guitar with Ken Parker and reunite with Vai in Beat.

Belew never returned to Zappa’s band, but he has since recalled his heart-wrenching final meeting with the man who helped launch his career.

Pete Townshend has revealed why he avoided listening to Led Zeppelin during the band’s heyday: He thought they were trying to steal The Who’s audience. The guitarist also pushed back on the idea that The Who helped create heavy metal, explaining why he struggled to connect with the genre — even as he acknowledged the musicianship of its leading bands.

The Who’s 1970 live album Live At Leeds is frequently cited as an important influence on heavy metal. Roger Daltrey has previously argued that the band played a major role in the genre’s development. Townshend, however, offered a more measured assessment in an interview with Classic Album Review.

“A lot of players cited it as giving them permission, in a sense, to go nuts, to stretch out and to jam,” he said. “I think Live At Leeds is probably as explosive as it got. Meanwhile, for example, at Woodstock, we played a good chunk of Tommy and then we played some heavy stuff as well. We did both.”

Townshend acknowledged the genre’s musical prowess but questioned its underlying ethos.

“Heavy metal was almost a religious philosophy. It was rooted in a sense of darkness and often irony, often ironically, I think. Also, the musicianship is extraordinary in heavy metal.”

His own listening habits, however, were surprisingly limited. “The only heavy metal I really listened to was AC/DC. I never really got into Led Zeppelin, which is strange,” he said.

Townshend has since made an effort to revisit the band’s catalog — and even reconnect with its guitarist. Praising Zeppelin’s ability to combine heavy music with softer songwriting and ballads, he revealed that he had recently tried to arrange lunch with Jimmy Page.

“I’ve recently been trying to get Jimmy Page to have lunch with me. I sent him a note recently saying, ‘I’ve been listening to all of the Zeppelin albums again.’

“And there's some fucking great stuff there. It's just that at the time I didn't like it that they were, in a sense, trying to pinch our audience!”

It wasn’t the first time Townshend had felt threatened by a guitarist pushing rock music into new territory. He recalled the arrival of Jimi Hendrix, whose powerful amplifiers, distortion and wah-wah pedal forced him to reassess what another guitarist could accomplish.

“I’d been through it before with Jimi Hendrix coming over with his big amplifiers and his distortion and his wah-wah pedal and everything else, and having to admit, ‘Wow, here is a guitar genius!’”

Townshend counted Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck among his friends. He said he was surprised by the range of Zeppelin’s music when he eventually gave the band a proper listen.

“I was kind of surprised, really, when I started to listen to Led Zeppelin, at the variations.”

As for Black Sabbath, Townshend said he had largely missed out on the band and others like them, despite recognizing their appeal. His reservations, he suggested, had as much to do with his own outlook as with the music.

“I don’t know about bands like Black Sabbath and so on because I really didn’t listen to them, despite the fact that I think they were great fun and enjoyable. I really love the parts of the music business where people don’t take themselves too seriously.

“That was my issue in my early days — I felt I was carrying a big cross, a big manifesto for rock and roll. I felt that it was important for me to deliver.”

Pete Townshend has destroyed countless guitars over the course of his career, but one of his most memorable victims has survived for more than 50 years. A fan rescued the remains of Townshend’s 1969 Gibson SG after the Who’s famously chaotic June 7, 1970, performance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House. Now, after decades in his possession, he’s preparing to hand the historic instrument over to Matt’s Guitar Shop in Paris.

The guitar, a cherry-red Gibson SG with two P90 pickups, met its fate during the show’s closing moments. As Binky Phillips, the fan who caught it, recalls in a new interview with Matt’s Guitar Shop, Townshend had been in a foul mood throughout the evening. But when the guitarist struck one of his Hiwatt cabinets and knocked the SG out of tune, his frustration boiled over.

“When Pete’s mad, you get a good show,” Phillips says with a smile.

The Who had been riding a wave of success with their rock opera, Tommy, but relentless touring had left the band exhausted. The Metropolitan Opera House, meanwhile, was an unusually prestigious setting for the group’s raucous performances. With a crowd of teenagers descending on the venue, the evening was poorly organized and tensions were running high.

The band nevertheless delivered a brilliant set. They even returned for an encore, something Phillips says was unusual for the Who at the time.

“Usually the stage was completely destroyed [by then], but Keith Moon didn't dump the drum kit, Pete didn’t break the guitar, so, they came back out, and they did ‘Shakin’ All Over,’” he recalls.

“Pete’s playing lead, and he’s got his eyes closed,” Phillips continues. “He hits the guitar on one of the Hiwatt cabinets, and it goes out of tune.”

Phillips, a regular in the front row at Who shows, says he noticed an immediate change in Townshend’s demeanor.

“He threw the guitar on the ground, stomped on it, and cracked off the head,” he remembers. “He shoots me this look, and I instantly get chills. I know what’s happening.”

Townshend then wrapped the guitar strap carefully around the broken instrument before approaching the edge of the stage.

“He walks to the very lip of the stage, looks at me and goes, ‘You ready?’ He stepped back about three steps, and he threw it really high, it arced, and I caught it by the horns. It was an absolutely dead perfect throw. A major league pitcher couldn't have done that.”

Phillips had caught the guitar, but keeping hold of it was another matter. As the house lights came up, dozens of fans rushed toward him.

“The lights came up, and about 60 kids are tearing down the aisles to get the guitar,” he says. “Everybody’s charging, and an usher, he was about 6'6" with long blonde hair, looked down at me. He goes, ‘You’ve been at every fucking Who show I’ve ever ushered. No one’s taking that from you!’”

The usher then turned on the advancing crowd, which quickly dispersed. One young girl remained, pleading with Phillips for a single guitar knob. He gave it to her, leaving that small piece of the SG as the only part of the instrument he no longer possesses.

Townshend’s guitar-smashing habit had begun long before that night. He was just 13 when he first discovered the cathartic power of smashing a guitar, with his grandmother the target of his anger on that occasion. The act eventually became a defining feature of the Who’s live shows.

In the band’s early days, when money was tight, Townshend would glue his guitars back together so he could destroy them again at the next performance. As the Who grew more successful, he no longer needed to salvage the pieces himself. Many of the instruments were lost, making Phillips’s rescued SG an especially unusual survivor.

The guitar has since been carefully repaired, and Phillips is now entrusting it to Matt’s Guitar Shop in Paris, the company that has also been showcasing Jeff Beck’s celebrated Yardburst Les Paul to high-profile players.

Phillips and the shop share a desire to see the SG remain more than a museum piece. He hopes it will be played again.

“I want someone to play it,” Phillips says. “I just think it should be seen. [Pete Townshend] the first guitar player who made rhythm guitar the lead instrument,” he adds, referring to the guitarist’s influential approach — even though Townshend himself never considered himself the Who’s lead player.

Townshend has also recently looked back on recording a Who classic with a future rock legend, with both musicians distracted by a beautiful woman. He has also suggested that the Who could still make another album, after previously threatening to turn to AI for a new solo record.

Neil Young has sued Donald Trump over the use of his classic song “Rockin’ in the Free World” at a recent political rally. It’s the second time Young has taken a Trump campaign organization to court over the 1989 track.

Trump’s campaign used the song without permission in 2020, prompting a lawsuit that was settled after the campaign reportedly agreed not to use it again without a license and Young’s permission. But the song was played at another rally in October 2026, prompting Young to seek $10 million in damages.

Young’s objections to Trump’s use of the song date back to 2015, when it was played at Trump Tower during the announcement of his presidential campaign. Young publicly objected, saying he would not have granted permission for its use in a political campaign. Trump used the song again in 2018, prompting another objection from Young, who said he had asked Trump to stop playing it. The dispute escalated into a copyright lawsuit in 2020, which also involved Young’s song “Devil’s Sidewalk.”

In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, according to The Guardian, Young’s lawyers argued that he had “suffered damage to his reputation and brand as a result of the implication that he supports Donald J Trump in any way.” They also cited the 2020 settlement, under which the campaign reportedly agreed that it “would never again use Rockin’ in the Free World without a license and permission from Young.”

The new lawsuit describes the song as “a blistering anthem that contrasts the hollow promises of American political rhetoric with the harsh realities faced by the poor, homeless and forgotten.”

“The lyrics paint vivid street-level portraits — a mother discarding her baby, addicts lost in despair, garbage piling in the shadows of prosperity — while the repeated chorus delivers a savage irony, celebrating freedom that clearly isn’t shared by all. In short, the song is the opposite of everything that Donald J Trump stands for,” the filing states.

Young’s lawyers specifically cited the song’s use at a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on October 12, adding that it had also been played “numerous times at other rallies designed to encourage Republican votes in the upcoming mid-term elections.”

The lawsuit seeks $10 million in damages and an injunction barring further use of the song at political events without permission. The 2020 settlement involved a different Trump political organization, and the new case names Trump 47 Committee Inc. as the defendant. The committee had not responded to requests for comment at the time of writing.

Young is far from the only musician to object to Trump’s use of their music. Bruce Springsteen has criticized Trump’s politics and the use of his music, while Rihanna sent a cease-and-desist letter in 2018 after Trump’s campaign played her song “Don’t Stop the Music” at a rally. Jack White also took legal action over the use of White Stripes music in a Trump campaign video in 2024.

For 15 years, Ace Frehley’s version of the story went unchallenged. In his 2011 memoir, No Regrets, the Kiss guitarist credited Gene Simmons with saving his life twice — once after he fell into a hotel swimming pool and again after he passed out in a bathtub.

Now the bass guitarist is offering his account, and he says the late electric guitarist got one important detail wrong: The bandmate Simmons pulled from the pool, he says, was drummer Peter Criss, not Frehley.

Simmons recounts both incidents on a new episode of EPIC Event Center’s Behind the Curtain, in what is believed to be the first time he has publicly told his side of either story.

According to Simmons, Frehley called him after years out of touch and asked him to read a chapter of No Regrets before it was published. “Tell me if it’s true,” Frehley said, “because I don’t remember all this stuff.”

The chapter described a tipsy Frehley diving into a hotel pool before Simmons, a former lifeguard, swam out to rescue him. Simmons hauled the guitarist from the water, turned him over and pumped the water out of him. Frehley’s book places the incident at a hotel in Atlanta.

“In essence,” Simmons says of the account, “saved his life.”

But when Frehley asked whether the story was accurate, Simmons told him it was — with one significant exception.

“I’m going, well, you know what? It was 99 percent accurate,” Simmons recalls. “But what one percent wasn’t accurate? I said, well, it wasn’t you. It was Peter Criss. You were passed out on the side. You didn’t even know it happened.”

In Simmons’ telling, the rescue happened, but Frehley mistakenly took Criss’s place in the story. The anecdote has appeared in print since 2011, making Simmons’ identification of Criss a new twist on a familiar piece of Kiss history.

Simmons also revisits the second incident Frehley described in No Regrets — a near-disaster involving a hotel bathtub during Kiss’s early touring days.

The band was opening for bigger acts and couldn’t afford separate hotel rooms. Simmons shared a room with Frehley, he explains, “because Paul couldn’t stand being with Ace.”

One night, Simmons went down to the hotel bar. A roadie soon came looking for him with a worrying report: fog was pouring from beneath Frehley’s door, the door felt hot to the touch, music was blaring and no one was answering.

“I hope he’s not passed out or dead,” Simmons remembers thinking.

The door was forced open, revealing steam hanging from the ceiling and Frehley unconscious in the bathtub. Hot water was running “right under his nose,” Simmons says, while a powerful boom box sat nearby. Had it tipped into the water, Simmons suggests, the consequences could have been fatal.

“Kids today have no idea what a boom box is,” he adds.

Simmons and the others carried Frehley to the bed, but the guitarist rolled off onto the floor in the darkness. The next morning, Frehley woke up asking what had happened the previous night — and why the hotel-room door was broken.

It wasn’t the first time Ace nearly lost his life.

Frehley had previously recounted the bathtub incident in No Regrets and in a 2020 interview with Loudwire, saying Simmons broke down the door and pulled him from the tub. Simmons’ new account adds details about the steam, the boom box and the roadie who alerted him to the situation.

The episode closes with a farewell to Simmons’ former roommate. Frehley died on October 16, 2025, at age 74.

Joe Bonamassa has appealed for help finding his bandmate’s missing amp head in Germany.

Josh Smith’s Two-Rock unit was last seen in Leverkusen, Germany, where the group performed with the WDR Big Band on October 15. At some point after the show, it went missing — and Smith would like to get it back.

“Friends, please help us retrieve Josh Smith’s Two-Rock head that was last seen at the WDR Big Band gig,” Bonamassa wrote on social media. “It is in a black Two-Rock road case with the letters JS stencilled on it. Any info please reach out as there is a generous reward for its safe return. Please email rachael@jr-adventures.com if you see it around.”

In a follow-up reply to a commenter, Bonamassa clarified that the amp had not been confirmed stolen.

“It's not officially stolen. It is missing at the moment,” he wrote, adding that there had been “a lot of audio and broadcast equipment on the night.”

This isn’t the first time Bonamassa has turned to the public for help recovering missing gear. In 2021, he appealed for the return of his Fender Custom Shop ’51 Nocaster, nicknamed “The Bludgeon,” after it went missing in transit while on its way to Guitar World for a review. The guitar was recovered within days, following a social media campaign that drew widespread attention.

Smith has played alongside Mick Jagger, Eric Johnson, Raphael Saadiq and others. His production credits include Eric Gales, Andy Timmons and Joanne Shaw Taylor.

In 2022, Smith told Guitar Player that he’d always wanted to explore big-band music. “I was always curious what it would sound like to do a very traditional Blue Note record, but with me playing like myself over the top of it,” he said.

That curiosity helped inspire Bird of Passage, an album he made with bassist Calvin Turner. “He wrote the record with me and arranged the horns. I’ve done a smaller R&B horn section before, but these arrangements have a vibe like Quincy Jones, Sinatra with Count Basie’s band, and Grant Green or Kenny Burrell with a big band. I wanted to keep it around that 38-minute Blue Note length, and I wanted to mostly play my Telecaster and use my normal tone.”

Smith continues to tour Europe with Bonamassa through November 11.

Robert Fripp has spent decades establishing himself as one of rock’s most exacting bandleaders, helping push guitar playing into new territory with King Crimson. But on the band’s first-ever performance, he made an exception to one of his most personal rules — and he’s never repeated it since.

After some bizarre musical experiments with his early group Giles, Giles and Fripp, the guitarist helped form what would become King Crimson. By the time the band recorded its genre-defining debut, In the Court of the Crimson King, however, original bass player Peter Giles had departed.

Before the album’s five tracks were committed to tape, the group made its live debut at London’s Speakeasy club in April 1969. And the occasion brought an unexpected guest onstage: Scottish folk singer Donovan.

Recalling the show in a new YouTube video with his wife, Toyah Willcox, Fripp describes it as “a very happy recollection.”

“We were a very big success; an unknown band,” he says. “At the end of it, a guest star stepped up to play with us.”

The moment was entirely spontaneous. The band played Donovan’s “Get Thy Bearings,” from his 1968 album The Hurdy Gurdy Man. At the end of the set, the singer joined them onstage — and borrowed Fripp’s guitar.

“We played a Donovan song, ‘Get Thy Bearings’,” Fripp recalls. “And at the end of our set Donovan came up, stood onstage and borrowed my Les Paul — may I say the only person who has before and since and after borrowed my guitar — to sit in and do ‘Get Thy Bearings’ with the band.”

Donovan was already an established name in the British music scene. The Hurdy Gurdy Man featured contributions from musicians who would go on to become Led Zeppelin members, while George Harrison had contributed lyrics to the title track, though they were ultimately omitted from the released version. His decision to join the fledgling King Crimson onstage was a memorable endorsement of the band’s emerging talent.

And the guitar he borrowed was no ordinary instrument.

Fripp had acquired his 1959 Gibson Les Paul Custom after businessman Angus Hunking loaned £7,000 to Giles, Giles and Fripp following the modest success of their sole album, The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp. Fripp took some of the money to a London music store, where a tough-nosed clerk tried to persuade him that Eric Clapton was interested in the £400 instrument. Fripp called his bluff and walked out with the guitar.

Given the instrument’s age and association with Fripp, it would likely command a six-figure sum today. But its most unusual distinction may be that, more than half a century ago, Donovan became the only person Fripp has ever allowed to borrow it.

Fripp and Toyah’s video also features a Halloween-themed cover of another Donovan song, “Season of the Witch,” complete with a suitably garish mask. The 1966 original has enjoyed a new wave of attention thanks in part to Lana Del Rey’s 2019 cover for the film Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Donovan has recalled how heartbreak, LSD and Jimmy Page helped shape the song.

Roy Halee helped turn a one-measure bass line by Bakithi Kumalo into one of the most recognizable hooks on Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” by playing the recording in reverse and placing it immediately after the original performance.

The idea began with Kumalo, whose fretless bass playing became a defining feature of Simon’s 1986 album Graceland. While recording “You Can Call Me Al,” the bassist was given the freedom to contribute his own musical ideas. What he came up with was a short, fluid passage that Halee, the album’s engineer, recognized as an opportunity to create something more unusual.

The result was a two-measure break that seems to fold back on itself, with Kumalo’s original line followed by its reversed counterpart. The effect became one of the song’s signature moments — and an example of how Halee’s studio ingenuity helped shape Graceland’s sound.

Author Kalvin Schmidt-Rimpler Dinh recounted the story during an appearance on Booked on Rock with Eric Senich. Dinh wrote Paul Simon’s Graceland, published by Bloomsbury as part of its 33⅓ Africa series.

“This particular session actually fell on Bakithi Kumalo’s birthday,” Dinh explained. “And Kumalo asked if he could basically contribute an idea to the song. And he came up with an idea that then Roy Halee had sort of in response to that, decided to play and then reverse. And that’s the iconic sort of break in the middle where it plays one line and then plays it backwards.”

Kumalo had no way of knowing that his improvised contribution would become such a memorable part of the recording. In a 2023 interview with Guitar World, he recalled the spontaneity of the session.

“That was my idea,” he said. “We were recording that song on my birthday, and there was space to fill, so Paul said, ‘Go ahead, Bakithi, do what you like.’ I just played — and they loved it. It was one take. Listening back, I didn’t know what happened; I thought it was from God, you know? I never planned it.”

Halee’s decision to reverse the line, however, created a problem when Kumalo had to reproduce the passage in concert. Playing the original line was one thing; matching its reversed version on a bass guitar was another. Dinh said Kumalo searched for a pedal that could recreate the effect, but found no suitable solution. He ultimately had to work out how to approximate it with his hands, playing the phrase in one direction and then reversing the movement himself.

“I think it’s important to acknowledge Roy Halee’s contribution there as well,” Dinh said. “Or that’s an instance where we can remember that the engineer is also doing a lot of work here.”

Halee’s role went beyond reversing the notes. Dinh noted that the engineer also made creative decisions about the bass guitar’s tone, volume and placement in the mix, helping determine how it drove the music. Simon and Kumalo have both acknowledged the importance of those studio choices to the bassist’s recorded sound.

Kumalo’s playing became central to Graceland, an album that brought Simon’s songwriting together with South African musicians and musical traditions following his 1985 trip to Johannesburg. Simon had contacted producer Hendrick Lebone, who had previously worked with Kumalo on traditional South African music. Lebone recommended the bassist, whose playing impressed Simon enough that he brought him to New York to complete the album.

The fretless bass lines Kumalo contributed gave Graceland much of its distinctive fluidity and rhythmic character. On “You Can Call Me Al,” one spontaneous idea, captured on Kumalo’s birthday and transformed by Halee in the studio, became a particularly enduring example of that contribution.

Eric Clapton was barely 20 when a piece of famous London graffiti declared that the British blues guitarist wasn’t just the greatest player in the world — he was God. But while the nickname stuck, Clapton himself has never been quite so convinced of his own greatness.

His reputation soared after he left the Yardbirds for John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, a move Clapton attributed to musical differences, although his former bandmate says class wars also played a part. The stint proved pivotal to his development, and he would go on to cement his standing as one of Britain’s premier guitarists with Cream before forming a powerful guitar tandem with Duane Allman in Derek & the Dominos.

Yet by 2006, Clapton was questioning whether his playing still measured up to his younger self.

Appearing on CBS’ Eye to Eye to promote his 17th solo album, Back Home, he was asked about a revealing admission that had been making the rounds: “I’m not as good as I once was.”

“That’s absolutely true,” he conceded. “It was on YouTube. I was just surfing [the internet] and I looked at YouTube: I put my name in, and I got a piece of footage of me from the mid-’90s when I was just playing blues songs.

“There were some things that I was doing that I think I’ve sort of unconsciously let go of,” he added. “I don’t do them anymore, probably because they’re too hard to do.”

The footage may have come from around the time of From the Cradle, Clapton’s acclaimed 1994 return to the blues after what he once described as a three-decade departure from his musical roots. Whatever the source, watching his younger self play had left him with a sobering impression of how much his technique had changed in roughly a decade.

“I mean, I still believe I can play with the same amount of emotion and feeling and expression that I’ve always set out to do,” he explained. “It’s just logic, isn’t it? The faculties have got to start wearing away at some point.”

It was a frank assessment from a guitarist whose reputation might suggest he had little left to prove. But Clapton has long been his own harshest critic, regularly finding fault with his performances and questioning whether he could have done more with less.

“I always overplay,” he confessed in 1986. “Whenever I listen back to stuff, I’m always disappointed. I hate listening to cassettes of shows. I listen sometimes, and think I could have done three notes to those 10. Just halved it and made it more meaningful. But it’s very difficult.”

That last admission gets to the heart of Clapton’s relationship with the blues. For him, playing well isn’t simply a matter of speed or technical ability. It’s about finding the right notes, making them count and knowing when to leave space.

His admiration for Jimi Hendrix offers another glimpse into the standards he sets for the music. Recalling the first time he saw Hendrix perform a Howlin’ Wolf staple, Clapton was struck by the difficulty of what he was hearing.

“I don’t know many people who can play that,” he said in 2012. “It’s a very, very tough piece of music. But Jimi did it, and then he put the guitar behind his back, and I thought, ‘My God, this is like Buddy Guy on acid.’”

Clapton has also been forthright in his criticism of other players’ approaches to the blues, including Eddie Van Halen’s, even though Van Halen knew Clapton’s “Crossroads” solos inside out. His judgments reflect a musician with deeply held ideas about what the blues demands — and how easily a player can miss the point.

That makes it worth taking Clapton’s verdict on his own decline with a pinch of salt. Perhaps the mid-’90s version of Slowhand really could play circles around his 2006 self. Or perhaps, as his earlier comments suggest, he was once again measuring himself against an impossibly high standard.

His struggles were not limited to the guitar. In 1998, Clapton spoke about feeling suicidal and coming close to quitting despite his fame and success. His self-criticism has long extended beyond the question of whether he can still play as well as he once did.

Clapton may hear limitations when he revisits his old performances. But his own assessment is only one part of the story. For generations of listeners, the playing that he scrutinizes so mercilessly remains a benchmark — and the guitarist who once inspired the declaration that he was God has never stopped trying to get better.

Jack White says he only met Prince once, but the guitarist had a key piece of advice for him — and it was something he was already ardently doing.

Aside from their shared love of Telecasters, the pair have plenty in common, with White likely drawing on the Purple One with his perpetual sonic and aesthetic reinventions. Case in point: when he revealed this anecdote to Stephen Colbert, he was sporting striking blue hair to match the look and feel of his fourth studio album, Fear of the Dawn.

White's Third Man Records had pressed an unreleased Prince album, Camille, in 2022. The album, recorded in 1986 but kept a secret for another 36 years, represents the kind of artistry White can deeply relate to.

“It's a record he made under a feminine avatar,” White had told Colbert of the record. “He sped his voice up on a tape machine to sound feminine, and he was going to release the whole album under the guise of Camille. It got on the presses, it had labels, and it was done. At the last second, he changed his mind and told Warner Brothers to cancel.”

It’s fitting then that Prince’s lesser-known alter ego — or alter alter ego, to be more precise — would be brought to light by White, a fellow lover of the weird and a defender of artistic expression. That led Colbert to ask if they’d ever crossed paths.

“I met him one time,” he replies. “It was at an after-party. He was incredibly nice. We talked about guitars a little bit. He told me, ‘No one will ever tell you how you play your guitar, Jack,’ and that was solid advice.”

“Have you ever let anyone tell you how to play your guitar?” Colbert responds.

“No,” is his answer. White’s career has been underpinned by a desire to make cheap guitars cool again, with his red 1964 JB Hutto Montgomery Ward Airline electric the jewel in the crown.

There is, however, a small caveat to White’s answer.

“One of your sound guys told me to turn down earlier,” he laughs. “So…”

Indeed, as Prince told Rolling Stone in 1981, “We do whatever we want, and those who cannot deal with it have a problem within themselves.” Neither artist is the type to be dictated to. And if you crossed Prince, as that magazine found out at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, he would make you regret it.

White, who has single-handedly helped shift countless Electro-Harmonix POG pedals throughout his career, recently discussed the differences between blues and rock guitarists, and his answers were incredibly illuminating.

He’s also added to his cluster of wild signature Fender gear by going to Van Halen’s favorite luthier for a guitar that combines the best of electric guitar and bass in a wholly unique way. It’s a beast.

Donnie Iris, the singer, guitarist and songwriter whose career spanned the Jaggerz’ No. 2 hit “The Rapper,” a stint with “Play That Funky Music” hitmakers Wild Cherry and the guitar-driven rock of Donnie Iris and the Cruisers, has died at 83.

The Pittsburgh music fixture passed away Monday, October 26, following a three-year battle with bladder cancer, according to friends and bandmates. With his soaring vocals, sharp pop instincts and the muscular guitar sound of hits including “Ah! Leah!” and “Love Is Like a Rock,” Iris built a six-decade career that made him a beloved figure in western Pennsylvania and beyond.

Iris first found national success with the Jaggerz, whose 1970 single “The Rapper” reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned the group a gold record. He later joined Wild Cherry as a guitarist and backing vocalist, connecting with keyboardist Mark Avsec. The two began developing a project of their own, laying the groundwork for Donnie Iris and the Cruisers.

The group’s 1980 debut, Back on the Streets, introduced the sound that would define Iris’ solo career: muscular guitar rock (Iris preferred a Fender Strat), prominent keyboards, tightly arranged harmonies and a lead vocal capable of soaring into a distinctive, high-register scream.

Its signature song, “Ah! Leah!,” began with a wordless vocal hook. Iris suggested turning the chant into a song about a woman named Leah, and the resulting track became a showcase for his remarkable voice. It reached number 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 after gaining early support from radio stations in Pittsburgh and Cleveland.

The Cruisers followed with King Cool in 1981, a title inspired by a concert review that dubbed Iris the “new king of cool.” The album produced two more Top 40 hits, “Love Is Like a Rock” and “My Girl,” establishing a run of songs that became staples of classic-rock radio, particularly in the region Iris called home.

As Iris told Songfacts, “Love Is Like a Rock" was a surprise success, reaching number nine on Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. The song originated as a studio jam.

“The group went into the studio and Marty Lee, our guitar player, came up with that riff,” he said. “We just kind of built around that riff, put the instrumentals down, and that's all we had. We just had what we thought was a good track — guitar, bass, drums. Then Mark and I were in the studio and we listened to the song and wrote the lyrics around the track.”

Born Dominic Ierace in New Castle, Pennsylvania, on February 28, 1943, Iris grew up in nearby Ellwood City. His mother played piano at church and encouraged him to sing as a child. He later gravitated toward rock and roll, R&B and the sounds of the British Invasion. After performing with local groups in high school and college, he helped form the Jaggerz in 1964.

The Jaggerz became a fixture of the western Pennsylvania club circuit, building their repertoire around Motown and British Invasion songs before landing a recording contract with Gamble Records. Iris wrote “The Rapper” after observing men trying to charm women in the clubs where the band performed. Its conversational verses and soulful groove struck a chord with listeners, establishing him as both a vocalist and songwriter.

Though his oversized glasses and idiosyncratic image set him apart from the era’s conventional rock frontmen, Iris had a voice that could compete with the genre’s most forceful singers. He credited Marvin Gaye as a major influence.

“Just everything about him,” Iris said of Gaye in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “His voice, his songs. He had that kind of scream to his voice. That's basically where I realized I could do some of that.”

The Cruisers toured with acts including Hall & Oates, Loverboy, Nazareth and Bon Jovi. Their subsequent albums, The High and the Mighty (1982) and Fortune 410 (1983), failed to match the commercial success of their first two records, however. A lawsuit alleging that “Ah! Leah!” had been taken from a song submitted to the band’s label further complicated their career. The Cruisers ultimately prevailed, but the legal fight took a considerable toll.

Iris was dropped by MCA Records in 1984, yet he and the Cruisers continued recording, releasing No Muss... No Fuss in 1985 and several more albums in the decades that followed. Later releases included Ellwood City in 2006 and the holiday collection Ah! Leluiah! in 2010.

Although he never again matched his early national chart success, Iris remained a working musician with a loyal following. His annual birthday concerts became fixtures on the Pittsburgh-area calendar, drawing fans who had followed him from the Jaggerz through the Cruisers and beyond.

After battling bladder cancer and canceling performances for treatment, Iris returned to the stage in 2024. His final concert took place this past September 28, at the opening of Citizens Live at the Wylie in Pittsburgh. He announced his retirement from live performance on October 9.

In his retirement statement, Iris thanked the musicians, crew members, promoters, venues and fans who had sustained his career. “Music has given me far more than I could ever put into words,” he wrote. Tributes following his death included fellow musician Joe Grushecky’s praise for Iris as one of western Pennsylvania’s most beloved performers.

Gary Heffern, the singer for pioneering San Diego punk band the Penetrators, whose music inspired a young Eddie Vedder, has died at 72.

Heffern was found dead at his home in Rovaniemi, Finland, on October 18, just days after the Penetrators were inducted into the San Diego Music Hall of Fame on October 15. He had hoped to attend the ceremony but was unable to travel because of health issues, including complications from Type 2 diabetes. A cause of death has not been announced.

As frontman for the Penetrators from 1978 to 1984, Heffern helped establish San Diego’s early punk scene. The band built a devoted following through its energetic live shows, shared stages with the Ramones and the B-52’s, and became one of the city’s leading independent acts. At their peak, the Penetrators sold out Golden Hall, a roughly 3,000-capacity venue in downtown San Diego.

“They became the top dogs in San Diego around 1980 or ’81,” longtime San Diego DJ Jim McInnes said while inducting the band into the Hall of Fame. “They were so hot, they were able to sell out Golden Hall.”

Heffern’s influence reached well beyond San Diego. Members of U2 were among those inspired by the Penetrators, as was Vedder, who attended a performance by the band at San Dieguito High School as a teenager. Years later, the two musicians met through a mutual friend. When Heffern mentioned his former band, Vedder immediately recognized the name.

“You guys played at my high school!” the future Pearl Jam singer exclaimed.

The pair subsequently worked together on Heffern’s 1995 solo album, Painful Days. Vedder contributed vocals to the record’s closing track, a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Passing Through,” under the pseudonym Wes C. Addle.

The Penetrators’ impact on San Diego’s music community endured for decades. “Gary and the Penetrators were the ground zero of the punk scene here and he was able to convert a lot of people,” said Raul Sandelin, a Grossmont College professor who directed the 2019 documentary Gary Heffern’s Last Waltz. “He was a sweet, sensitive guy.”

Heffern moved to Seattle in 1984, where he began a new chapter as a singer-songwriter and guitarist. His solo recordings attracted a notable circle of admirers and collaborators, including R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin. He also performed with jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and befriended Chris Cornell, then a fellow employee at a Seattle-area seafood restaurant.

His 1990 solo album, Bald Tires in the Rain, opened with “Letter to San Diego,” a song that seemed to reflect his complicated relationship with the city he had left behind. He continued recording throughout the 1990s and 2000s, releasing Askew in 1993 and Consolation in 2008. His 2011 album, Gary Heffern & Beautiful People, was a collaboration with Finnish musicians. In 2014, he self-published Unholy Dreams, a collection of his songs and poems.

Born Veli-Matti Tervaniemi in Finland on August 20, 1954, Heffern came to the United States as a toddler with his older sister, Helena, after the two were adopted by an American family in San Diego. He later spoke publicly about the physical abuse he experienced growing up and the personal struggles that followed him into adulthood.

Around 2005, Heffern’s biological siblings in Finland contacted him, hoping to reconnect with their long-lost brother. He traveled to visit them and ultimately decided to stay, becoming a Finnish citizen. He settled in Rovaniemi, in the country’s northern Lapland region, where he continued making music while maintaining connections with friends in the United States.

Friends remembered Heffern as a musician whose warmth and openness transcended genres. Singer-songwriter Cindy Lee Berryhill, a longtime friend, mourned the loss of what she called a great punk-rock poet.

“I’m crushed to hear of the passing of our great punk rock poet, and dear friend Gary Heffern,” she wrote. “I had hoped he would come back to San Diego for his band The Penetrators’ induction into this week’s SD Music Hall of Fame, but he’d said his health was not well enough to travel. Still, I did not expect he’d leave the planet so soon. May your good and deeply caring poet-soul fly free, friend.”

Berryhill also recalled Heffern’s broad musical tastes and generous spirit. “He was incredibly open minded,” she said. “And I must say he had the kindest heart, a true-poets-soul-heart.”

David Ybarra, another longtime friend, described Heffern as “a titan amongst men” musically, while remembering him as a mentor and close friend. “He was the singer for the band The Penetrators, a monster, groundbreaking band,” Ybarra wrote. “That band was quite something, a movement, if you will.”

Peter Blackstock, a music writer who became a close friend of Heffern’s after meeting him in Seattle, recalled how the singer continued to connect with younger musicians even after moving beyond his punk-rock beginnings.

“It always impressed me how much the kids in the grunge scene in Seattle took to him because, by then, he was a singer-songwriter, not a grunge or punk guy,” Blackstock wrote. “But they saw in him a kindred spirit.”

Heffern’s connection to San Diego endured. He returned for performances over the years, including a 2011 Penetrators reunion at the Casbah and a 2019 appearance at the same venue that was filmed by Sandelin and released as Gary Heffern’s Last Waltz. The Hall of Fame induction offered a final recognition of the band’s place in the city’s musical history, though Heffern was unable to attend.

His final album, Midnight Sons, a collaboration with Norwegian musician Ed Pettersen, was released on October 23, five days after his death. The record includes “Goodbye,” a song written by Hawaii-based songwriter Lauren Elle Broido and recorded by Heffern years earlier. A video he made shortly before his death gave the song an added poignancy.

In the documentary Sweet Kisses From Mommy: The Gary Heffern Story, Heffern reflected on how he hoped to be remembered.

“What I ultimately try to do in life is leave something behind,” he said. “You know, ‘This is what Gary stood for; this is what he was about.’ I think that’s the most important thing to leave behind. I want to leave my mark.”

Although they started as indie-rock outsiders, the Goo Goo Dolls became mainstream rock favorites almost overnight when “Name” — an uncharacteristically mellow, acoustic guitar ballad — reached the top five of the U.S. singles chart in 1996. It was a bittersweet moment for the trio, which then featured singer/guitarist John Rzeznik, bassist Robby Takac and drummer Mike Malinin.

“We took some serious abuse from a chunk of our original fanbase,” Rzeznik recalls, “but we made a lot more new fans. I guess if people don’t want to stick with you once you break through, then what can you do?”

Undeterred by the backlash to “Name,” the band pushed further beyond its original sound three years later, when it recorded Rzeznik’s song “Iris” for the 1998 film City of Angels, giving it an orchestral arrangement. The move paid off: “Iris” reached the top 10 in the U.S. and several international charts.

The song has since become a streaming phenomenon, surpassing 3.81 billion plays on Spotify and ranking among the platform’s most-streamed tracks worldwide. The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” had edged ahead, with 3.83 billion streams at the time of writing.

“I never expected that to happen,” Rzeznik says. “It’s interesting to me that a song I wrote for a film should have such a big life of its own. I guess a lot of people will know the song and yet never even know who Goo Goo Dolls are.”

As Rzeznik tells Guitar Player, “Iris” marked a major turning point for the band, both commercially and musically.

“The scale of the success of this marked a major career shift for us as a band,” he says. “This was the one that really took everything up another level in terms of recognition and success, and it definitely shut the door on the portion of our career before that. I remember Robby and I looked at each other when the strings were being recorded, and we asked ourselves, ‘Should we really be doing this?’

“Then we both kind of agreed: Yeah, definitely. It was cool, you know? I’m glad we did it. Like anything in life, we took some shit for it, you know, but who cares? No matter what you do, you’re wrong I guess, but the rewards outweighed the crap we took from certain quarters.”

Rzeznik has long used alternate tunings to spur his creativity, and “Iris” was no exception.

“The tuning for this was B D D D D — I took the top E string off,” he explains. “I originally wrote it on a guitar with four strings, because I was trying to drop the notes in pitch, and I didn’t really know what I was doing.”

For the recording, Rzeznik brought in session guitarist Tim Pierce to play mandolin. But Pierce had other ideas. As he tells Guitar Player, he arrived prepared to play electric guitar, too, bringing his full rig to the studio.

“I thought, ‘This is a rock band. I’m not going to show up carrying a tiny mandolin case. I’m going to bring my rig and try to do some electric guitar.’ I called cartage and had them bring all my electric guitars and gear to the studio.

“I did three mandolin passes, which everybody liked. I went into the control room, and Rob Cavallo, the producer, looked at my gear and said, ‘We’ve got this other section — wanna try your hand at a solo?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ My secret plan was working.

“I found out later that the band was annoyed at me for bringing all my gear, but Rob was open-minded and said, ‘Let him play something on electric, and we’ll see what happens.’ And it started a love affair between me and the guys in the Goo Goo Dolls that's never ended.

“‘Iris’ is the biggest song I've ever played on. In some ways, it might be one of the best songs I've ever played on.”

Pierce isn’t alone in that assessment. “Iris” appeared on the Goo Goo Dolls’ Dizzy Up the Girl, released later in 1998. The album became the group’s most successful, selling more than four million copies.

Rzeznik has no qualms about Pierce’s decision to bring his electric-guitar rig to the session, especially given the results.

“I’m always much more concerned about the song than my ego,” he says, “so that means that if I think someone can come in and add something that will take it to another level, I’m happy to see what transpires. Tim Pierce played some great things on this — he came up with ideas that I would’ve never created, and the net outcome is that the song was improved.

“I learned early on that my limitations are not really limitations. I’m not a trained musician at all. Some people might consider that a limitation, but I don’t.”

The departure of Ozzy Osbourne marked the end of Black Sabbath’s classic lineup, leaving both sides to rebuild. Osbourne had to establish himself as a solo artist, while Tony Iommi and the remaining members of Sabbath needed a new singer to lead them into the band’s next chapter.

Osbourne found his answer in Randy Rhoads, a young guitarist he hired after bassist Bob Daisley had a premonition that Rhoads would lead the group to greatness.

Sabbath, meanwhile, recruited Ronnie James Dio, the diminutive powerhouse vocalist who had recently left Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow. After the two crossed paths at L.A.’s Rainbow Bar and Grill, Iommi and Dio clicked immediately. At their first jam session, they wrote “Children of the Sea,” a key track on 1980’s Heaven and Hell, Sabbath’s first album without Osbourne.

Winning over Osbourne’s devoted fans was never going to be easy, but Dio helped Sabbath reach its highest chart position since 1975’s Sabotage. Only the band’s blockbuster catalog albums Paranoid and Master of Reality had charted higher.

Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham was among those impressed by what Dio brought to Sabbath. Bonham, who had served as Iommi’s best man when the guitarist married Susan Snowden in 1973, was known for speaking his mind. But a compliment he intended for Dio came out badly enough that Iommi had to step in to prevent a confrontation.

“Yeah, there was some kind of a word,” Iommi recalled when discussing the incident with comedian Bill Burr in 2011. “John came to the gig when we played at Hammersmith in London. And we were going to go out after the show to a bar.”

According to a Black Sabbath fan site, the band played four consecutive nights at London’s Hammersmith Odeon from May 7 to 10, 1980, with Girlschool supporting. It’s unclear which performance Bonham attended, but it was during that London run that his comment sparked trouble.

“John’s drinking on the side of the stage, drinking Guinness,” Iommi recalled. “We came offstage, and as we walked past John, John said to me, ‘Oh, man, he’s got a great voice for a midget.’ And, of course, Ronnie heard that, and he didn’t really like that.

“He actually meant, ‘What a little body, and he’s got a big voice!’” Iommi explained. “But the way he said it…

“Of course, Ronnie popped up and… I won’t repeat what he said. They were gonna fight.”

Iommi found himself caught between the two men and managed to defuse the situation, telling them to “just get along.” Bonham would die just months later, on September 25, 1980, from alcohol-related causes.

Stevie Ray Vaughan was still a studio greenhorn when David Bowie invited him to play guitar on Let’s Dance in 1982.

At the time, the Texas electric blues guitarist was largely unknown outside regional circles. Vaughan had begun attracting attention with his band Double Trouble, but he had yet to release the debut album — Texas Flood — that would soon make him one of the most celebrated guitarists of his generation.

“That entire recording experience helped a whole bunch, and in a lot of ways,” Vaughan told Guitar Player in 1983. “I learned a lot about playing—particularly in terms of recording techniques — and about business.”

As album producer Nile Rodgers recalls, Vaughan quickly figured out not only how to approach the music but — just as importantly — how to fit into the room when he showed up with his “Number One” Fender Strat and 1964 Fender Vibroverb amp .

Rodgers remembers the guitarist’s reaction the first time he heard the title track in the control room.

“The look on his face when he first walked into the control room and heard ‘Let’s Dance’ was like, ‘Oh my God — I’m experiencing something important and magical. What do I do? How do I fit in on this thing? I have to get out of their way and just add spice.’

“I didn’t have to tell him anything. He instinctively knew his role was like, ‘The meal is fantastic—now here’s the dessert.’

“And, bang, he nailed it.”

Vaughan also understood that relationships in the studio mattered. Seeing how hard the musicians were working — and how little time they had to step away — he found a simple way to show his appreciation.

“He wanted to bond with them so that he’d be accepted as family, too,” Rodgers says. “He also knew we were making Let’s Dance like a Black record. White bands would book the studio for months and months, but Black records only got a few hours. We’d work an eight-hour shift because we had lower budgets than rock albums.

“So we would order our food at the beginning of the day so it was here when we took a break for lunch. We’d eat and — boom — back to work.

“Stevie saw we were doing that, and he called Sam’s BBQ in Austin, Texas, to order lunch for the day he came in. We didn’t know this, so we started putting in our lunch order, and Stevie said, ‘Y’all, I got lunch today.’

“The next thing you know, all this BBQ came in. I was like, ‘Check this dude out. He’s right up on the vibe.’ And from that moment, Stevie and I became like brothers.”

The sessions for Let’s Dance, released in 1983, would prove pivotal for both artists. The album became Bowie’s biggest commercial success, while Vaughan’s stinging blues guitar — heard on tracks like “Let’s Dance” and “China Girl” — helped give the sleek pop record an unexpected edge.

Within months of the album’s release, Vaughan issued Texas Flood and emerged as a major force in modern blues guitar — proof that the young musician who walked into Bowie’s studio eager to “add spice” was already bringing something special to the table.

While promoting the debut album from his other band, Mirador, last year, Jake Kiszka promised that “there are some really interesting things that Greta Van Fleet is working on, really exciting things on the horizon.”

Then, in early May, the band alarmed fans with a cryptic social media post: “Thanks for the wild ride. Love, Josh, Jake, Sam & Daniel.” With nearly three years gone since its last album, 2023’s Starcatcher, and a lengthy stretch off the road, the message looked ominous. But Greta Van Fleet wasn’t breaking up. A few days later, the band was teasing new music with posts declaring, “We’re back, baby!” and “The trouble’s begun,” leading up to the release of its fifth album, Palace for the People.

Speaking via Zoom from the band’s current home base of Nashville, Kiszka explains that the original post was simply a lyric from the album’s first single, “Play Your Games.” “It was a bridge between comic relief and an accidental flub,” he says. “We thought it was really appropriate. Obviously it stirred the pot and garnered some attention. We’re full of surprises, y’know?”

The time away was intentional. After nearly a decade of rapid success, Kiszka says, the band needed time to process what it had experienced. That reflection helped shape Palace for the People, a 13-track album that expands Greta Van Fleet’s classic-rock and blues roots with global influences, strings, horns, percussion and orchestration. Working with new producer Mike Elizondo, the band has made its most expansive record yet — and will take it on the road in 2027 for the Into the Beginning tour, which launches February 3 in Savannah, Georgia, and runs through July 31, ending in the band’s home state of Michigan.

There was some concern from fans, even before the “wild ride” post, about what was going on while Greta was out of sight. Was there cause for that?

It was really interesting, because we were considering the lives we’d lived, what we’d done and gone through, and the world that we traveled.

I think we’d gotten home from tour, and it wasn’t two months before we all called each other. It was kind of like we were trained to do that in so many ways. That was the beginning of the conversation; we were calling each other, and it was only natural — “Let’s get together. Maybe we should do a record or something…” I think the concept of the record came together rather immediately.

Which was?

The record title came to the fore before we recorded everything. It was born from playing an iconic London venue, the Alexandra Palace, located upon this beautiful little hill. The locals somewhat affectionately nicknamed it “the palace of the people.” Josh caught on to that quite quickly, realizing we were playing a piece of history.

A lot of artists went through those halls before us — the White Stripes and all that — before moving on. It was a transition moment for us, too, in that the next time we’d be playing in London, we’d be playing the O2 Arena.

So we had that in mind when we started thinking about our next album. We knew that philosophically it was going to reflect the people, places, cultures, philosophies and ideas we’d encountered, along with the experiences we’d gathered over the last decade. It was that philosophy through which to create the music: How can we bottle that and express it with care? From the outset, we knew it was going to be ambitious.

You were also recording and touring with Mirador. How did that band allow you to expand, or diverge, from what you did in Greta, and what did you bring back to Greta from that experience?

That’s a good question, and I don’t entirely know. I began exploring open tunings prior to Mirador, but that group gave me a chance to delve into alternative tunings because we were pulling from some very ancient roots of music. In some ways, this record does that as well, in perhaps a broader sense.

But I also think Mirador’s music is so forceful and rudimentary. It really gets back to the bare bones of music, and rock and roll in particular. There’s some added aggression to these new tracks, and I probably wouldn’t have gone that far if I hadn’t been involved in Mirador. I pushed the volume up, pushed the gain and dug in a bit more. I think that’s territory I’ve always been hesitant to go too far into.

I don’t want to be aggressive for the sake of being aggressive; the light makes the heavy heavier, and the heavy makes the light lighter. That’s how I really think about things. But on Palace for the People, there’s a dimension that’s perhaps wider than we’ve heard Greta play before. Something like “Boughten Bliss” is so delicate, vulnerable and sensitive, while “Dreams You Hold” is a stark contrast. It’s really aggressive and heavy. I think there were moments with Mirador when I went a bit more aggressive and a bit heavier than I would have before.

What are some of the specifics about how point A took you to point B on Palace?

Interestingly enough, “Heya” must’ve been started around COVID time. We knew we were going to be doing a record kind of like this at some point, so I was already in that mindset.

We were called to do a private show in Hawaii, of all places. Everything was so shut down and quarantined that I ended up spending most of the time in my hotel room with an old [Gibson] L-00 acoustic.

I remember thinking about these very interesting field recordings from the 1930s I’d heard from Alan Lomax — stuff from northern Europe, Poland and the mountain regions, where those musical traditions were so preserved that you’re hearing something probably 2,000 years old. It was weird. They were just vocals, and they sounded a lot like Josh singing. It was really goosebump-inducing ’cause I could hear this sort of human history in that.

So I would just play guitar against the recordings. I thought, That’s an interesting exercise — what could I find? Where are these vocals going, and what is that gonna make me play? I ended up in an open G-minor tuning, and the foundation of the guitar parts for “Heya” pretty much came from that.

That was my first time using that sort of free-form experimentation. I would’ve never written something in an open G-minor tuning.

And then “Lost in the Golden” sounds very Middle Eastern. That came about backstage while we were warming up. I think it was Daniel who came in and said, “What is that? That’s really strange.” Again, that was just an open G-major tuning, but, y’know, playing these strange chords pushes you more into that territory. It forces me to play in a way I wouldn’t normally, and then you start breaking the cycle and getting into uncharted territory.

Open G tuning is what John Lee Hooker would have used. “Lost in the Golden” doesn’t sound like Hooker at all, but for the solo section I actually pulled his lines into it, so that section, as a standalone, becomes a blues solo inside the context of something that’s very Eastern.

That’s an example of how a lot of this stuff gets tossed around, turned over and toiled with until it bends and breaks into something different, something original. Something avant-garde, really.

What other crazy open tunings did you use?

“Heart in the Beat” is a full step down from standard. There’s a Drop D tuning, which is a pretty typical alternative tuning as well, for “Call My Own.” “Boughten Bliss” was a strange tuning, too. I can’t remember what it was off the top of my head [laughs], but “Tear It Down” is capo one in standard because Josh wanted to sing it slightly higher.

What did you use for guitars this time?

There was a lot. We co-produced the record with Mike Elizondo, and Mike has a lot of guitars at his studio. I probably used more guitars on this record than on any I’ve recorded before, including previous Greta records and the Mirador record.

Of course, my number one, the beloved ’61 Les Paul, was used in some way on a lot of the tracks. Usually I would use one guitar to track, then pull in different guitars for the dubbing process. I might use one of Mike’s early-’60s or late-’50s Telecasters, or my B-Bender Tele that I use onstage. It’s a bit of a Frankenstein, with old T-Top humbuckers. I just love that guitar. When I’m not sure what guitar I need, I usually pull that out.

Here’s an interesting gear story: We were tracking “Born Into This,” the last track on the record. It was recorded live in one take; the only overdubs I did were on the choruses. That’s purely a live performance ’cause it kind of needed that. It needed to feel unhinged and a little bit untampered with.

We had this expression pedal that added delay when I pushed down. I think it was wired backward because when I pushed it down, the delay sounded backward. But it was so cool and interesting that I was like, “Y’know what? Leave it. This is actually more interesting.” So when you hear all the weird, spacey guitar sounds on that song, it’s because there was a delay pedal that wasn’t working right.

What led you to work with Mike on this album?

Greta is a very tight-knit group. It’s the three of us brothers and Daniel, and we all grew up together and have played our whole lives. So there’s a language there — a vernacular, a shorthand. For anybody to come into that chemistry is very challenging. The idea was that this record was so ambitious we needed somebody with an external perspective to help us capture it, rather than produce it ourselves.

We met with Mike, and it was immediate. He fell right into that chemistry. We had a lot of the songs already written, so from the onset, that first day, within a couple of hours, we looked at each other and knew Mike was the guy. He was really able to adapt to our process, how we work and our very tight-knit nature. He’s a musical tapestry; his knowledge and the database that lives in his head are incredible. He’d listened to a lot of the records we’d listened to.

Another thing that was really impressive, and important to this record, was that Mike grew up in Los Angeles and played all kinds of music. L.A. is such a multicultural hub. He was playing Cuban music in a bodega, working on rap records in a back-house studio or playing jazz with Greg Kurstin, whom we worked with on The Battle at Garden’s Gate. And if you look at his credits, he’s worked with everyone from Fiona Apple to Eminem. We knew he’d be able to help us capture the beautiful cultural influences that were crucial to this record.

How is this music going to be to play live?

Oh — exceptional. There was a great deal of thought behind how these songs would translate live, which I don’t think we’ve ever done in the past. On the very first Greta Van Fleet record, it was obvious how that was going to go. It was very stripped: guitar, drums, bass, vocals.

With this record, there are so many elements and so much complexity in the songwriting, but we’re always asking ourselves, “How are these gonna translate onstage, and what can we do to make these more devastating in a live sense?”

It’ll be brilliantly fun. Probably more than ever, I’m excited to play these songs live. There are crazy, frenetic production elements we’re developing now. We’re designing a lot of the stage stuff and rebuilding the live guitar rig, so there’s a lot that’s new on the horizon. We’re pushing into visual and sonic territory we haven’t explored before. It will be very interesting.

He was a link in a chain of New Orleans pianists that includes Professor Longhair, Huey “Piano” Smith, Allen Toussaint and James Booker.

But the late Mac “Dr. John” Rebennack started out as a guitar player in the early 1950s, intent on playing country blues until he was dissuaded from the idea. In his autobiography, Under a Hoodoo Moon: The Life of Dr. John the Night Tripper, Mac described how his first teacher, Fats Domino guitarist Walter “Papoose” Nelson, steered him away from trying to become a Lightnin’ Hopkins clone.

“Papoose listened to my chops and said, ‘Man, you can’t play that outta-meter, foot-beater jive and get a job.’ He insisted I learn to read music and got me listening to guys like Billy Butler and Mickey Baker.”

Mac became a session player at J&M Studios in New Orleans, backing artists such as Earl King, James Booker and Lee Dorsey, as well as Little Richard and Professor Longhair, with whom he also performed.

Beyond session work on electric and acoustic guitar, Rebennack played in his own band, Mac Rebennack and the Skyliners, and performed with his high school friend Ronnie Barron throughout New Orleans.

Guitar would likely have remained his main instrument if it hadn’t been for an incident on Christmas Eve in ’61.

“We was at a motel in Jacksonville, Florida, getting ready to go to a gig, when our singer Ronnie Barron disappeared,” Rebennack recalled. “I found him being pistol-whipped by the motel owner, who’d caught Ronnie with his old lady.

“As I tried to wrestle the gun away from the guy, it went off. I looked down and saw the second finger of my left hand dangling by a thread.”

Doctors managed to reattach the finger, and a short spell playing primarily bass guitar, Mac eventually regained most of its use and returned to playing guitar. “I just developed a way to play around it, like Django.”

At the same time, Rebennack went on to develop his talents as a premier New Orleans–style pianist, blending funk, boogie-woogie, blues and jazz into a unique, syncopated, “double-fisted” approach. In the mid 1960s, he created his Dr. John the Night Tripper persona and, in 1973, scored a top-10 hit with “Right Place, Wrong Time.”

Rebennack continued to play guitar on records and stages and, according to his friend, guitarist Shane Theriot — who has no shortage of great Dr. John stories — owned a Gibson ES-335 semihollow purchased from James Burton. Mac told Guitar Player in 1994 that many of the tunes on his then-new album, Television, were worked up on his original choice of instrument.

“I find that some grooves lay almost directly out of the guitar, just from the nature of the instrument being something that you stroke,” he said. “The whole concept of the New Orleans rhythm style is to support the rhythm section. If you play a solo, you’ve gotta keep enough of a comp going so the groove don’t get lost.”

Had he not been injured, there’s every reason to believe Mac would have continued as a first-call regional guitarist. Instead, the injury redirected him toward piano — and, ultimately, immortality as Dr. John the Night Tripper.

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.

Berry 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 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.

Buddy Guy occupies a unique place in guitar history. He learned from blues giants including Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, Lightnin’ Hopkins and John Lee Hooker before going on to influence Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

As Buddy Guy enters the final week of his BG90 tour, celebrating his 90th birthday, it’s a fitting time to revisit a conversation with Guitar Player in which he explained why, despite everything that changed around him, he never felt the need to change himself. The tour, which launched in July, is scheduled to wrap up October 29 at the Graceland Soundstage in Memphis.

“I’ve learned a little more, but it’s still Buddy Guy,” he tells Guitar Player. “If you put me through a modern amplifier, somebody is going to say, ‘He don’t sound like he used to.’ Well, of course, the guitars and amps aren’t the same today. But the man is still the same. I’m using the same fingers I left Louisiana with.”

For Guy, that continuity wasn’t stubbornness so much as an understanding of where his music came from. The more he reflected on his own career, which began in 1953, the more he saw himself as part of a tradition rather than a singular talent.

“I can’t really say how my style has changed,” he said. “I used to tell T-Bone Walker, B.B., Lightnin’ Hopkins, Muddy, and John Lee Hooker — all those guys I learned from — that I didn’t have anything unique. Guess what they said? ‘Buddy, we got it from someone else, too.’”

The biggest lesson those legendary musicians passed on had little to do with technique.

“Oh, man, lesson number one is be cool,” Guy recalled. “They weren’t making any money, but they were having fun playing.”

Watching those pioneers of acoustic and electric blues shaped his outlook long before the genre found a larger audience through the British blues boom.

“I used to look at them and say, ‘Buddy, you ain’t never gonna be that good, and nobody is ever going to fill those shoes.’ Those guys weren’t superstars then, but I thought they were living the high life. It made me think, This is as high as you can go.

“Then the British groups got into the blues, and were able to live decently from it. But I still worked in the daytime. I drove a tow truck.”

Ironically, it was those same rock musicians who later helped introduce Guy to millions of listeners.

“It makes me feel great, because some of the things that people like Eric Clapton and Keith Richards and the late Stevie Ray Vaughan said about me have helped me more than any record company,” he said. “So many kids come up to me and say, ‘I didn’t know anything about you until I read what Eric Clapton said.’ That gives me a big lift.”

That gratitude didn’t stop Guy from acknowledging the inequalities he’d witnessed throughout his career.

“Let’s be honest — when you’re Black, it doesn’t matter how good a blues record you make, you’re not going to get it played on these big radio stations unless some super guy like Eric Clapton or Stevie Ray Vaughan plays the same thing you played,” he said.

“Blues has been like that ever since I’ve been alive. It has been ignored until some rock group gets it, plays it to big audiences, and tells them whose music it is.”

Still, Guy never lost faith in either the music or the people who loved it.

“I guess that’s why we still sing the blues,” he said. “I just look at it like a prizefighter — if I don’t get in that ring and risk getting knocked out, I ain’t got a chance to win.”

Brian May believes George Harrison deserves more recognition for his contributions to the electric guitar’s legacy. In his view, guitarists who dazzle with speed and fireworks have overshadowed the quieter virtues of the instrument — qualities Harrison possessed in abundance.

May knows a thing or two about making an electric guitar speak. He was crowned the world’s greatest guitarist in Total Guitar’s 2020 rankings, narrowly beating Jimi Hendrix to the top spot.

His work with his fabled Red Special is testament to his own formidable talent, though May’s playing often falls on the flashier end of the spectrum. Consider his solo on “Don’t Stop Me Now,” which he fought to include after Freddie Mercury argued that the song was better suited to piano. Yet, speaking to the Express in 2022, May explained why Harrison’s less showy approach deserves equal respect.

“At every stage in their career and their music development, they were models,” he said of the Beatles more broadly (via Far Out). “And they still are to me, I must say.

“They are the pinnacle of writing, performance and ethos of rock music,” May added. “They broke down so many barriers, they changed the world many times. I will always love The Beatles without any reservation.”

But membership in one of the most successful and influential bands in history doesn’t guarantee individual recognition. Harrison’s legacy has often been overshadowed by those around him. Within the Beatles, he struggled to make room for his songs alongside the dominant Lennon-McCartney partnership.

Outside the band, he was frequently measured against guitarists such as his good friend Eric Clapton, who once comprehensively beat him in a guitar duel, as well as Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix. May, however, believes Harrison’s playing deserves to be judged on its own merits.

“I love George, I love his playing,” he said. “I hold George in such reverence and I think he’s so underrated by the guitar community. Everyone raves about people who play fast, but if you look at the catalogue of stuff he’s produced, it’s colossal.”

Harrison’s songwriting was central to his legacy, and he enlisted Clapton to play the lead lines on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” — a move that helped bring the song to life while allowing Harrison’s composition to take center stage. Clapton’s contribution became one of rock’s most celebrated guitar performances, but the song itself remains a showcase for Harrison’s songwriting.

His achievements extended well beyond songwriting. His sitar playing established his pioneering credentials, while his slide guitar work became another defining part of his sound. Clapton was particularly impressed by Harrison’s slide playing. As Harrison once told Guitar Player, “if Eric gives me the thumbs up on a slide solo, it means more than half the population.”

Eric Johnson has also highlighted a quality that made Harrison special.

“George shows us that it's about the emotion and not the commotion of the guitar playing,” he once told Guitar World.

Fast, loud playing will always command attention. But Harrison’s legacy is a reminder that technical fireworks aren't the only measure of a great guitarist — and that sometimes the most enduring playing is the kind that serves the song.

Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Billy Corgan says his Christian faith is one reason he has maintained his friendship with Marilyn Manson, despite the singer facing multiple sexual assault allegations. While acknowledging that people have valid reasons to question their relationship, Corgan says he doesn’t believe Manson is guilty of the charges against him.

American actress Evan Rachel Wood was the first to publicly accuse Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, describing her “horrific” experiences during their on-and-off relationship between 2006 and 2010 in the documentary Phoenix Rising. Further allegations followed, including those made by Game of Thrones actress Esmé Bianco and another woman, both of whom reached out-of-court settlements with Manson. Other lawsuits have been dismissed.

Manson has denied the allegations. He is due in court in November 2027 after Judge Steve Cochran revived a 2021 lawsuit that had previously been dismissed twice. His inclusion on the bill for Slipknot’s 2027 world tour has also prompted a group of U.K. politicians to call for his removal. The tour is scheduled to begin at London’s Wembley Stadium.

Corgan, however, has remained publicly supportive of Manson. Asked about their friendship on a recent episode of the New York Times’ Popcast podcast, he explained that his Christian beliefs inform his decision to stand by his friend.

“That’s a valid question,” Corgan acknowledges (via Louder Sound). “I think that ultimately, as a Christian, you have to stand by your friends. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have an opinion, and that doesn’t mean you’re not critical.

“In his case — and I’m not here to adjudicate it — the D.A. looked at the case for five years. In some cases, I knew personal things behind the scenes that are not in the public sphere. I personally didn’t feel that he was guilty of the things he was being charged with, and ultimately, the fact that the D.A. didn’t pursue it [supports that].”

Corgan and Manson’s friendship stretches back three decades. The two acts even embarked on a co-headlining tour in 2015. Corgan says his personal experience of Manson has shaped his view of the allegations, despite the criticism that comes with continuing to associate with him.

“The person that I knew, and the way it all kind of went down, even though it was an elongated process, was commensurate with the person that I knew,” Corgan says. “I guess it’s one of those things where I don’t want the world to tell me who my friends are and who I should associate with.”

Their connection also extends beyond their own friendship. Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha is married to the twin sister of Lindsay Usich, Manson’s wife.

Corgan says the allegations have been difficult for Manson, adding that he has “inside baseball of the case.”

“I know certain people who are involved, and so you make those evaluations,” he says. “At the end of the day, I feel I made the right determination. People would ask me privately, ‘Well, what happens if…’ and I’d say, ‘If he’s guilty, or anybody in that situation is guilty, they should go to jail.’ But I don’t like the idea of… this kind of witch mob thing bothers me.”

Another musician who has continued working with Manson is guitarist and composer Tyler Bates, who has collaborated with the singer on four albums. Speaking to Guitar World earlier this year, Bates said he had done his “homework” before committing to working with Manson after the allegations emerged.

Robin Davey has accused Joe Bonamassa of damaging modern blues, claiming the guitarist’s influence has left a generation of players making music that is commercially driven, creatively stagnant and “devoid of soul.”

“The blues today has been screwed up by Joe Bonamassa,” says Davey, guitarist for American roots-rock band Beaux Gris Gris & the Apocalypse and the youngest player ever inducted into the British Blues Hall of Fame.

“His influence has permeated through the younger generations, and it hurts my ears. It is devoid of soul. It is all about maximizing profits and maximizing Joe’s ego.”

Davey’s comments coincide with the release of his second solo album, The Blues According to Gutbucket Slim, which he describes as his own vision of where the genre should go. He takes aim not only at Bonamassa but also at what he sees as the dominance of white blues guitarists on the festival circuit.

“I’m tired of the endless stream of white blues that dominates the Blues festival circuit,” he says. “These people can’t write songs; they have no creativity, and they all sound alike — their playing is so devoid of personality.”

Bonamassa, whose career began with high-profile support from B.B. King when he was still a child, remains one of the most prominent figures in contemporary blues. He recently appeared at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival and at celebrations for Buddy Guy’s 90th birthday. Davey’s assessment, however, is decidedly less flattering.

The British guitarist is not setting out to recreate the blues of an earlier generation. Instead, he wants to push the music in new directions, drawing on a range of influences that extend well beyond the genre.

“The album is my vision of what the blues can be,” he says. “I grew up listening to Beck, Rage Against the Machine, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Stevie Ray Vaughan and B.B. King. I grew up listening to Guy Forsyth, who sings a song on this record.”

The album incorporates elements of rap and hip-hop, with Davey ultimately envisioning a sound that falls somewhere between Jimi Hendrix and Gorillaz. He sees it as a challenge to the conventions that, in his view, have come to define modern blues.

“This album is not for the blues purists,” he says. “That generation is gone, and we as a new generation have to think differently about it.”

The record is Davey’s first solo release since 2010’s Blues Emporium, and he is under no illusions about its commercial prospects.

“This record will not be hugely successful,” he admits. “I don’t know if anyone will hear it, but I’m putting it out so that it may help people think differently about what the blues can be.”

Bonamassa, meanwhile, has recently been revisiting some of his own long-held views. The guitarist has acknowledged that he was wrong about digital amps and has also changed his tune on AI.

Apple has announced Fleetwood Mac: The Chain, the first fully authorized documentary about the band, premiering January 29, 2027. Directed by Frank Marshall, the film will tell Fleetwood Mac’s story through new interviews, archival material and the recollections of its members.

Fleetwood Mac was a storied group with an eight-year history when Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined them in late 1974. The group was founded by guitarist Peter Green, bass guitarist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood after the trio departed John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers in 1967. The band eventually added McVie’s then-wife Christine as keyboardist and singer, and endured several lineup changes through the early 1970s.

But aside from a few Green-era singles — including “Albatross,” “Oh Well” and “The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown)” — and 1973’s “Hypnotized,” cut by the group with guitarist and singer Bob Welch, they never enjoyed mainstream success.

That all changed once Buckingham and Nicks joined. The debut album from this lineup, 1975’s Fleetwood Mac would make them one of the 1970s’ most famous hit groups and pave the way for its smash follow-up, 1977’s Rumours.

It was shortly before Rumours’ release that Buckingham sat down with Guitar Player for what would be an increasingly rare press opportunity with the guitarist. His conversation with Dan Forte was among the first to detail not only how he and Nicks came to join the group but also his gear in his early years with the Mac.

The story behind Fleetwood Mac’s most successful lineup is legendary. After playing with their group Fritz for years, Buckingham and Nicks tried to make a go of it on their own. In 1973 they recorded their sole album, Buckingham Nicks, using a lineup of studio musicians that included guitarist Waddy Wachtel, who would go on to be Nicks’ main man in her hugely successful solo career.

The album was tracked by engineer Keith Olsen at Sound City studio in the San Fernando Valley. Everyone involved loved what they had created, but the album — which received a deluxe reissue from Rhino last year — failed to make a dent upon its release in September 1973.

Roughly a year later, Mick Fleetwood was looking for a studio in which to record Fleetwood Mac’s follow-up to Heroes Are Hard to Find. He visited Sound City, where he got his first listen to Buckingham and Nicks.

“About two months before we ended up cutting Fleetwood Mac [in January/February 1975], Mick was looking for a studio to use,” Buckingham explained. “Someone haphazardly turned him onto this place in San Fernando Valley called Sound City. So he talked to Keith Olsen out there, and Keith put on ‘Frozen Love’ from the Buckingham Nicks album to show him what the studio sounded like and what his work was like.”

Fleetwood loved what he heard in the duo’s music and performance, although as Buckingham explained to GP, the drummer wasn’t shopping for new musicians. Fleetwood Mac was intact at that point with guitarist and frontman Welch. “[Olsen] wasn't trying to showcase us,” Buckingham said, “because Bob Welch was already in the band at that time.”

That changed in just a matter of days.

“A week later Welch decided to leave the group, and Mick just acted intuitively and called up Keith to get in touch with us,” Buckingham explained.

Buckingham and Nicks had dinner with Fleetwood and the McVies, and by the end of the evening were invited to join the band and start recording on a tight schedule.

“We rehearsed for about two weeks and then just cut the LP,” Buckingham stated.

The guitarist was certainly familiar with Fleetwood Mac’s music. “Peter Green, oddly enough, had a little bit of influence on me,” he says. “I really liked his style of playing where a few notes mean a lot — even one note.”

That style would typify Buckingham’s tastefully minimal approach to performing solos and fills. At the same time, he said he felt no pressure to live up to any period of Fleetwood Mac’s history.

“There was never any conscious effort to try to fit into their styles other than, say, doing their [old] songs onstage,” he said. “But even so, I didn't listen to those records and try to copy what was on them. We just started playing, and that was what came out.

“I’ve never felt any need to try to fit into anyone else's shoes. I just do what I do, whatever. Maybe one of the reasons Fleetwood Mac has been able to survive for so long is that they've been able to change.”

On the recording of Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham used a Fender Stratocaster for his electric work. “Before I joined the band I'd been playing a Stratocaster, which I love dearly, but for some reason it didn't sound quite full enough live,” he said.

Onstage, Buckingham favored the white 20th anniversary model Gibson Les Paul Custom he was frequently photographed with at the time. The Strat would be set aside and used only for the Fleetwood Mac hit “Over My Head.” “I keep it tuned to open D onstage for ‘Over My Head,’” Buckingham said.

Sometime after recording Fleetwood Mac, Buckinham had Rick Turner from Alembic install his Stratoblaster onboard preamp booster in the guitar. His Turner-modified Strat, with the Stratoblaster gain at maximum and played through Hiwatt Custom 100 amps, would go on to become the celebrated guitar sound on Rumours.

“I still use a Stratocaster more in the studio than the Gibson,” Buckingham explained to GP, “but the Les Paul seems to be a very good, basic, solid stage guitar with a lot of output and fullness. I'm really happy with it.”

He also required an acoustic guitar for live performances of “Landslide,” the Stevie Nicks composition that became both a hit and a signature tune for her in the group.

“For ‘Landslide’ my acoustic is an Ovation onstage, although I used a Martin D-18 on the recording,” Buckinham said. “The Ovation’s got a built-in pickup; it’s great. It doesn’t really sound like an acoustic guitar, but it works so much better live than to mic a real acoustic.”

Around the time of this interview, and following the recording of Rumours, Buckingham switched from Hiwatts to Marshall Plexi 1959SLP heads.

“I used to use Hiwatts, but they all of a sudden somehow became real dirty-sounding,” he explained. “So I got Marshall 100-watts, and they seem to have a lot of bite. I use these tape recorder guts for fuzz.”

An important part of his sound back then resulted from the preamp from a Sony two-track tape recorder that he used in front of his amp.

“When I got out of Fritz and started doing lead, I bought a Sony 630 tape recorder deck for demo tapes,” he said. “Then I got an Ampeg four-track and started using the Sony two-track for slap echo and effects like that with the preamp output of the deck into an amp. It's just an amazing fuzz device.

“Since then I've taken the guts out of the preamp and put them in a little box, and that's what I use both onstage and in the studio. I also use a Roland Space Echo and a Cry Baby wah.”

But the gear meant nothing without Buckingham’s technique and background, which was itself unusual for a guitarist in 1970s rock. He grew up in the early 1960s during the folk boom.

“I listened to stuff like the Kingston Trio and Ian and Sylvia, which didn't highlight any really hot guitar,” he said. “I listened to Chet Atkins a little bit. The Travis-style, three-finger picking pattern got me into what I’m doing now.”

Buckingham was referring to his deft use of fingerpicking, which continued through his career in rock and became a hallmark of his playing style.

“That's the funny thing — I still don't use a flatpick,” he said. “I always use my fingers onstage; I kind of thrash out the lead with my fingernails. I don't use any picks at all, just the bare meat. My fingernails take quite a pummeling sometimes, but it's just something you get used to — I've got a lot of calluses on the ends of my fingers. The only time I ever used fingerpicks was for bluegrass banjo, but I never used a flatpick for anything.”

Twenty years after the release of Back to Black, Amy Winehouse remains best known for her singular voice and candid songwriting. But there’s another side to her musicianship that deserves to be remembered alongside the landmark album: Winehouse was a distinctive guitarist who used the instrument to shape her songs and develop a style entirely her own.

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

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

The anniversary celebrations have also brought Winehouse’s music back to the stage. On Wednesday, the Amy Winehouse Band reunited with original album producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi for a star-studded concert at London’s Roundhouse, performing Back to Black in full with guest vocalists including Corinne Bailey Rae, Jorja Smith and Yebba. The occasion offers another reason to revisit the musical instincts behind the album — including Winehouse’s distinctive approach to guitar.

Winehouse’s guitar playing was an extension of the same musical instincts that helped make Back to Black so distinctive. From an early age, she made electric guitar integral to her songwriting and performing, using the instrument to write songs and give them a personal touch. She first fell in love with the Fender Stratocaster as a teenager, after her older brother acquired a used model.

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

Winehouse wasn’t supposed to play her brother’s Stratocaster, but she would carefully sneak into his room to play it whenever she had the chance. Those sessions helped her develop her chops. When she finally acquired a guitar of her own — an acoustic model — the siblings amicably swapped instruments back and forth.

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

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

Inspired by artists including Carole King, PJ Harvey and Shuggie Otis, Winehouse developed a self-taught approach that complemented her remarkable songwriting and unmistakable voice. She may not have considered herself an accomplished guitarist, but her unconventional playing helped give her music a character all its own.

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

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

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

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

By the mid-1980s, Alice Cooper's career had lost much of its momentum. Years of heavy drinking had taken a toll, and after helping define shock rock in the 1970s, he found himself struggling to connect in an era increasingly dominated by glam metal and MTV.

His early-'80s albums — Flush the Fashion, Zipper Catches Skin and DaDa — failed to gain commercial traction. After getting sober in 1983, Cooper set out to rebuild his career, but reclaiming relevance would require more than a refreshed image. He needed a harder-edged sound that could compete with the guitar-driven metal acts then filling arenas and dominating music television.

That presented a challenge. Cooper's longtime guitar collaborators, Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, had helped define his classic sound, but the mid-'80s demanded a different approach. To make an impact in the shred era, Cooper needed a guitarist who could deliver technical firepower while helping shape a contemporary metal identity.

He found exactly that in Kane Roberts. Just 24 years old, the muscular guitarist brought formidable chops, a larger-than-life stage presence and a knack for writing the kind of polished, hook-heavy metal that was thriving in the decade.

Roberts wasn’t a brand name — he was starting from the bottom. His background was even more unlikely than Cooper’s return to the limelight.

“I was dealing cards at illegal blackjack games to make money,” Roberts tells Guitar Player.

“It was at a hotel. They’d rent big conference rooms on the weekend, and they’d show me where all the guns were, I’d do that to survive.”

But he had dreams of making it as a musician.

“I had recorded a tape and given it to a company called Screen Jumps Publishing,” he explains. “And they gave it to Bob Ezrin.”

Ezrin had produced much of Cooper’s work in the ‘70s and, though he and Cooper didn’t work together in the 1980s, he was part of his trusted camp. Ezrin liked what he heard and invited Kane to meet with him, Cooper and Cooper’s manager, Shep Gordon.

“I went down there, and I sat in this room with Shep Gordon, Ezrin and Alice Cooper,” Roberts says. “Alice and I got along; we just started laughing. We immediately became friends.”

Before long, Roberts was Cooper’s new lead guitarist and a key creative partner in the singer’s comeback effort.

“We really got into it,” Roberts says. “I didn’t want Alice to seem like he just survived rehab. I wanted him to come back as a nuclear version of what he’d been.”

The challenge was to modernize Cooper’s sound without losing the qualities that had made him a star in the first place. Roberts believed the music needed a heavier, more contemporary edge to compete in a decade dominated by hard rock and metal.

“We had to upgrade the energy and the sound to make it much more metal,” Roberts explains, “because that’s where I came from.”

At the same time, neither musician wanted to abandon Cooper’s roots.

“We did need to preserve the history of that music and keep the essence of the classics,” Roberts says. “Alice and I agreed on that.”

The balance between reinvention and tradition was evident on Constrictor, released in 1986. Even the cover art nodded to Cooper’s past, depicting the singer entwined with a giant snake — imagery reminiscent of earlier albums such as Killer.

Musically, however, Constrictor was firmly of its era. Tracks like “Teenage Frankenstein” paired Cooper’s trademark theatrics with contemporary production and Roberts’ aggressive guitar work. The album and its supporting tour helped reestablish Cooper as a commercial force. Constrictor was certified Gold and reached Number 59 on the Billboard 200.

For Roberts, it was a promising start, but he believed the partnership had room to grow.

“For the second album, we hit the ground running,” he says. “We came off tour and started recording, and it was killer. We tore right through it, and the process was really good, as was our relationship.”

Roberts also became a prominent part of Cooper’s stage show. With his muscular physique, high-energy playing and arsenal of shred-approved electric guitars, including Kramers and Schecters. But his best known weapon of choice was a six-stringed machine gun that shot fire.

“Some kid called up Shep Gordon and said, ‘Hey, I have a guitar that might be good for the Alice Cooper tour,’” Roberts says. "Shep called me up and said, 'Hey, Kane, take a look at this and meet with this kid.' So I did."

Despite the strong working relationship between Cooper and Roberts, 1987’s Raise Your Fist and Yell did not build significantly on the momentum of Constrictor. Reviews were mixed, and while the album was certified Gold, it reached only Number 73 on the Billboard 200 — a step down from its predecessor’s Number 59 peak.

Still, Roberts’ reputation was rising. Geffen Records saw commercial potential in the guitarist’s combination of technical skill and larger-than-life image, and the label offered him a solo deal.

“It ended,” Roberts says of his time with Cooper. “I got a record deal with Geffen, and I think Cooper changed labels when he did his next record, too. It just ended. There wasn’t any controversy; we just stepped in different directions.”

Cooper did indeed move from MCA to Epic, and the stylistic direction he and Roberts had developed together continued into 1989’s Trash. The album embraced polished, radio-friendly hard rock, and its lead single, “Poison” — cowritten by Cooper, guitarist John McCurry and hitmaker Desmond Child — became Cooper’s biggest hit in years, reaching number seven in the United States and number two in the United Kingdom.

Roberts, meanwhile, launched his solo career with Geffen. His self-titled 1987 debut drew a modest response, but 1991’s Saints and Sinners found a more appreciative audience and later developed a cult following. The album included the single “Does Anybody Really Fall in Love Anymore?,” written by Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora and Diane Warren. The song had previously been recorded by Cher for her 1989 album Heart of Stone.

Roberts stops short of taking credit for Cooper’s late-'80s resurgence.

“It was more like Alice’s evolution,” he says. “I’m happy to have influenced that a little bit, but he takes the bull by the horns and runs with it wherever he wants to go.

Although the two discussed working together again over the years, a reunion did not materialize until 2022, when Roberts returned to Cooper’s band as a temporary replacement for Nita Strauss during her tour with Demi Lovato.

“Alice has had a great many guitarists shuffling in and out of this band,” Roberts says. “But I gotta be honest with you, I never expected to be called. His band has always been really good.”

Since completing that stint, Roberts has focused on his own projects. As he puts it, he is pursuing them “without the bullshit recording industry,” though he remains optimistic about whatever comes next.

“You have to have faith,” he says. “If you work hard enough, the world will beat a path to your door.”

“That’s just the way life operates,” he says. “I’m living proof of that. I worked very hard, and the only band that would ever hire me was Alice Cooper. He found me, this 230-pound guy playing guitar. It was like, ‘Who is gonna hire this guy?’ He was the only one. Alice never goes for the safe bet, and I think that’s awesome.”

The guitar that helped Joni Mitchell write timeless hits like “Both Sides, Now,” and “The Circle Game” survived a war zone, airline damage and years on the road, only to vanish around 1970.

Mitchell’s first four albums are the works on which she established herself as a folk talent for the ages. They not only introduced her singular voice and vision but also produced a durable repertoire that includes “Chelsea Morning,” “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Woodstock,” as well as the entirety of Blue — widely regarded as her masterpiece and one of the greatest albums of all time.

Remarkably, one guitar was central to each of those recordings: a 1956 Martin D-28. And before Mitchell became its keeper, it had already lived a full life.

She discovered the instrument while performing for troops at Fort Bragg. Although Mitchell is often associated with the 1960s counterculture, she told the CBC, “I was not a part of the anti-war movement.” Like other entertainers, including Bob Hope, she made a point of performing for servicemen. “I went the Bob Hope route because I had uncles who died in the war, and I thought it was a shame to blame the boys who were drafted.”

At the time, she was playing “a small-bodied Martin that didn’t have very good bass response.” One night after a show, an officer approached her.

“There was a captain there who’d been to Vietnam and returned, and he had two instruments that he’d taken with him,” Mitchell told Guitar Player. “I guess this whole place was a battlefield, and shrapnel hit his tent and demolished one guitar. The only surviving thing was a Martin D-28, which I’d always wanted but couldn’t afford.

“One night after I’d played, he told me, ‘Joni, you’re better than Peter, Paul and Mary, and you should have this guitar,’ and he told me the history of it. Being an independent girl, I said, ‘I couldn’t take it as a gift, but I’ll buy it off you.’

“So he sold it to me for nothing — really, far less than its value at the time. That guitar, which I used for at least my first four albums, was superb.

“It was a better D-28 than anybody ever heard. It was a 1956, built at a time when Martin was very selective. Their craftsmanship was at its pinnacle, I think. It wasn’t so mass-produced. Every acoustic player who ever touched that guitar just drooled over it.”

Its intonation, in particular, set it apart. A unique guitar stylist, Mitchell has long relied on open and alternate tunings, which she adopted after childhood polio made it difficult for her to form standard chord shapes. Those tunings demand an instrument that can maintain clarity and balance even under unusual string tensions.

“I need really good intonation,” she explained to Acoustic Guitar. “One of the signs of really good intonation is how flashy the harmonics are with a light touch. You should be able to get them to bloom like jewels.”

In that respect, the D-28 was ideal. “It just seemed to eat that up,” she told Guitar Player. “It traveled well, through hot and cold, and it was my true love.”

Unfortunately, life on the road took its toll. “It got cracked on the airlines,” Mitchell recalled. “Its face got crushed. It was repaired, but it never sounded right. It just died.

“After that, I became very promiscuous with guitars, and I could never find one with that balance and resonance.”

Soon afterward, the guitar disappeared entirely.

“It finally was stolen off a carousel in Maui, of all places, and that was the end of it. In the years that followed, I searched and bought old Martins, but nothing compared.”

In 1993 or ’94, she came close to recapturing the magic when she acquired a Martin D-45. That search also led her to Collings Guitars.

“The same dealer who sold me the D-45 introduced me to a new guitar maker called Collings, who fancies himself Martin reincarnated,” she said. “He’s making Martin clones, but in the old way — a small number a year, with the details that fell by the wayside as Martin moved into mass production.

“I picked up two more instruments that I think are really superb: a baby guitar with a 14-fret neck and a dreadnought. I need the long necks for my tunings, although I enjoy the wide, old 12-fret necks. So now I have an arsenal of acoustics to suit my music for the first time in my career.”

Mitchell’s legacy continues to deepen. Her archival collection, Joni Mitchell Archives — Vol. 4: The Asylum Years, recently earned her the Grammy Award for Best Historical Album, and she is set to receive a lifetime achievement honor from the Juno Awards — further recognition of an artist whose music helped define an era.

The 1990s weren’t Black Sabbath’s strongest period, but Eddie Van Halen’s uncredited solo on “Evil Eye,” from the group’s 1994 album, Cross Purposes, has become the stuff of legend. And according to Tony Iommi, Van Halen hero deserves all the credit.

In a new interview, Iommi recalls how the pair’s surprise collaboration came about in 1993, when Van Halen invited himself to a Sabbath rehearsal. Iommi — who will release his fourth solo album, From the Dark, on October 23 — tells Planet Rock how a friendly invitation turned into a rare meeting between two of rock’s greatest players, complete with a last-minute trip to a music store.

“We had a house that we rented that we used to use for rehearsal,” Iommi recalls. “I’d always see him if he came to England, or when I’d be in L.A.; we’d always go out for dinner.”

On one particular occasion, however, Iommi’s schedule didn’t allow it.

“He called me up and I said, ‘We’re rehearsing tomorrow. I can’t,’” Iommi says. Van Halen saw an opportunity. “He said, ‘Oh, I’d love to do that.’”

“Do you want to come then?” Iommi asked. “All right, I’ll pick you up at the hotel and then we’ll go and get a guitar and whatever else. And that's what we did.”

As Iommi explained in 2024, the pair stopped at a local music store to pick up one of Van Halen’s own signature guitars. Once they arrived at the rehearsal space, the guest guitarist soon found his way into the music.

“We started playing a new song we were working on,” Iommi recalled (via Guitar World). “He started playing a solo.”

The performance became part of “Evil Eye,” which appeared on Black Sabbath’s 1994 album Cross Purposes. Contractual complications prevented Van Halen from receiving an official credit, but his solo survived on the finished recording. It remains the only known studio collaboration between the two guitarists.

There may be more from that day, too. Iommi has said a tape of the pair jamming on Black Sabbath riffs is somewhere in his home, although he apparently hasn’t tracked it down.

The session with Van Halen sounds like an uncomplicated meeting of musical minds. However, Iommi’s account of recording 13, Black Sabbath’s 2013 reunion album with Rubin, is another story entirely.

According to Iommi, Rubin largely communicated with the band through him, leaving the guitarist responsible for relaying instructions to his bandmates.

“We didn’t have time to absorb what we’d done because Rick wouldn’t talk to the others,” Iommi tells Planet Rock. “He talked to me, and I’d have to tell them.”

That indirect approach sometimes left the other musicians in the dark. On one occasion, Rubin asked Iommi to come up with a song inspired by Sabbath’s “Planet Caravan” over a weekend, ready to record on the Monday.

“We were in Los Angeles, and I came back from the weekend off,” Iommi explains. “Rick phoned me on the fly and said, ‘Oh, could you come up with a song like ‘Planet Caravan’ to record on Monday?’ I thought, ‘Blimey!’”

Iommi worked on an idea and agreed to record it, but apparently nobody had told the rest of the band. When they arrived at the studio on Monday, Rubin announced that they would be recording Iommi’s new song.

“Rick said, ‘We’re going to put this song down,’ and Geezer [Butler, bass] went, ‘What song?’ ‘Well, Tony’s done a song. We’re going to put that down.’ Geezer went, ‘I don’t even know what it is!’”

They went ahead with the recording, but the process left a lasting impression on Iommi.

“We ended up putting it down,” he says, “but it was such an awkward situation.”

Elsewhere, Metallica’s James Hetfield — facing criticism over recent onstage comments that left Roger Waters frothing at the mouth — has called Iommi “the riff lord.”

And Iommi’s new bassist, Becky Baldwin, has revealed that she initially thought an invitation to work on his new solo album was a hoax.

Country Music Hall of Fame inductee John Anderson has died at 71, his family has confirmed.

The Florida-born singer and guitarist scored more than 40 entries on the country charts, including three of his biggest hits, “Swingin’,” “Straight Tequila Night” and “Seminole Wind.” He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2014 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2024.

“It is with the heaviest of hearts that we share the passing of our beloved husband, father, grandfather, and best friend,” his family said in a statement. “His music will live on, but for us, his greatest legacy will always be the love he gave his family and the memories we will carry with us forever. Please keep our family in your thoughts and prayers as we grieve this unimaginable loss.”

Anderson reportedly died in his sleep. His passing has prompted tributes from across the music world, including from artists who considered him a major influence.

Country star Blake Shelton, who sang with Anderson on the 2020 track “Tuesday I’ll Be Gone,” said the news was particularly painful.

“This one really hurts,” Shelton wrote. “I got the opportunity to find out that my hero wasn’t just the guy I hoped he’d be. He was so much more than that. John was my friend. I got to see him last Sunday and I don’t even know why but I told him I loved him. That is what fills my heart at this moment. My love and prayers go out to John’s family.”

Big & Rich singer John Rich described Anderson’s talents as “unmatched,” adding that he “was a massive influence on me in more ways than I can count.” Gwen Stefani said his music would remain “part of our family’s hearts forever,” while singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash, daughter of Johnny Cash, simply called him “a jewel.”

Anderson picked up an acoustic guitar at age seven. After graduating from high school, he moved to Nashville, where he worked odd jobs, including as a roofer at the Grand Ole Opry House, while playing clubs and pursuing a music career.

He signed with Warner Bros. Records in 1976, and a tour invitation from Merle Haggard in 1980 proved a pivotal moment. Haggard had helped turn Anderson’s musical interests from rock and roll toward country, although Anderson continued to cite Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones among his major influences.

In 1982, Anderson received a Grammy nomination for “I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be a Diamond Someday),” further establishing his reputation as a distinctive voice in country music.

Anderson also collaborated with Dolly Parton, recording a cover of Merle Haggard’s “Today I Started Loving You Again” for her 1996 album Treasures.

He also earned the respect of Johnny Cash, who became a mentor, peer and close friend. The two shared a commitment to traditional country music, and Anderson spent time at Cash’s historic cabin studio in Hendersonville, Tennessee, recording material there during his later career, including work associated with his 2020 album Years.

Health problems later threatened to derail Anderson’s career. In a 2020 Rolling Stone interview, he recalled being “almost 100 percent deaf there for about 6 or 7 months” after falling ill in 2017 and 2018.

He subsequently made a strong recovery, returning to the studio with the help of Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, a longtime admirer of his music. Auerbach produced Years, which introduced Anderson’s distinctive voice to a new audience and became his final studio album.

Anderson’s cause of death has not been disclosed.

The Offspring’s Noodles Wasserman has revealed in a new statement he has to step away from live performances due to a "fairly serious health issue."

The guitarist put the news out on the band’s Instagram account.

“It is with deep sadness that I have to announce that I need to step away from live performances for a while to deal with a sudden and fairly serious health issue.

“The rest of the band has my back, is super supportive and will keep rocking you all in my absence. I hope to be back on stage sooner rather than later. Until then, I will miss all of you with all of my heart.

“Thanks for keeping me in your thoughts. I really appreciate it.

—Noodles

No details about the health issue were shared. The Offspring have not said who will fill in for the guitarist on the band’s shows. Their next performance is scheduled for October 24 in Los Angeles. Two more shows are scheduled for November, and a third in January 2027.

Noodles, born Kevin Wasserman, joined the Offspring in 1985, one year after it was formed by vocalist/guitarist Bryan “Dexter” Holland and bass guitarist Greg Kriesel, a.k.a. Greg K. The group’s fortunes rose on the success of their 1994 hit “Come Out and Play” from their third studio album, Smash.

“That was the first song to take off, and we were still working that single when the album went Platinum,” Noodles told Guitar Player in 2024. “And then we were able to follow it up with ‘Self Esteem,’ which was just as big too.”

Kiss guitarist Tommy Thayer says the band’s upcoming Las Vegas event will celebrate the legacy of late guitarist Ace Frehley, with all four current members set to perform songs from his catalog.

Co-founder Frehley first left the band in 1982 and rejoined in 1995 before departing for a second and final time in 2002. Throughout the years, his relationship with former colleagues Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons — and his various replacements — was sometimes confrontational.

But Frehley’s unexpected death in 2025 at the age of 74 brought back memories of happier times. At their Land-Locked in Vegas event, taking place November 13 through 15, each of the four current Kiss members will choose a song from Frehley’s catalog to perform.

“It’s an important thing,” Thayer tells Ultimate Classic Rock. “That was a huge loss last year for everyone and I think it really hit us. I mean, particularly Paul and Gene. But it hit me too and it left an emptiness. There’s been some issues and interpersonal stuff through the years and this and that. But at the end of the day, I think everybody loves each other.”

Thayer also credits Frehley with helping shape Kiss’s identity and inspiring generations of guitarists.

“He was such an important part of creating what they did in the first place. Even for me personally, Ace Frehley was such a huge part of my teenage experience — learning to play guitar, learning to mimic his guitar parts and things, which to me were so quintessential and so signature at the time. He made a huge impact on a lot of people.”

Frehley’s best-known songs include the Kiss cuts “Shock Me,” “Cold Gin,” “Strange Ways” and “Into the Void,” and his solo hit “New York Groove.” He was reportedly working on a follow-up to his 2024 solo album 10,000 Volts when he fell down a flight of stairs and sustained serious head injuries. He died on October 16, 2025, after his life support was switched off.

“When something like that happens suddenly, and he’s gone, everybody kind of loses part of themselves, I guess, in a way,” Thayer adds. “I had the same feeling when Eddie Van Halen passed away. It leaves kind of a hole in your heart and your musical soul… it’s very strange.

“So we’ll be having a nice Ace tribute. It’s going to be well planned and everybody’s going to be involved. I think it's really appropriate.”

U.K. bassist Becky Baldwin has shared a playthrough video of “Stormwatcher,” a song from Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi’s upcoming solo album, From the Dark. But landing the gig was a surprise even to Baldwin, who initially suspected the offer was a hoax.

The 35-year-old musician, best known as a recent addition to Danish metal veterans Mercyful Fate, discussed how she came to play on Iommi’s album during a recent appearance on The Chronicles Of Podcast, hosted by Jamie Westwood and Tom Stevens.

“I got an email first on just some random Wednesday or something,” Baldwin recalled. “I think ‘Tony Iommi’ was the subject. I’m, like, ‘Oh, what’s this?’ And it said, ‘I’m Tony Iommi’s manager. Would you be interested in coming to the studio and listening to some stuff and seeing if you might like to work together with us?’”

Baldwin initially thought the message was fake, but after checking the sender’s credentials, she called to confirm it was legitimate.

The invitation was to play a song in the studio so the team could hear how she approached writing bass guitar lines and performed under recording pressure. The audition went well: Iommi’s team asked her to play on the rest of the album.

“I guess it was all right because they asked me to do the rest of the album,” she said.

Iommi had initially considered a more collaborative approach, similar to his 2000 solo album, Iommi, which featured an assortment of guest musicians. But he eventually decided a consistent lineup would give the new record a more cohesive sound.

Baldwin plays alongside Iommi, drummer Karl Brazil and Norwegian singer Jorn Lande on From the Dark.

The bassist’s path to the project began years earlier, when she started posting videos of herself covering songs by classic metal bands, including Black Sabbath. Those videos eventually caught the attention of Iommi’s producer, Mike Exeter.

“He said he’d been following me for a few years,” Baldwin explained. Exeter had been keeping an eye on musicians whose playing might suit his production work, and when Iommi needed a bassist, Baldwin was a natural candidate. She was local to the studio and had already posted covers of Sabbath songs, including “Children of the Sea.”

“So he showed Tony that, and Tony was, like, ‘Yeah, okay. Let’s bring her down for a jam and see if she likes the songs.’”

Baldwin had started making the videos with a specific goal: to show people in the music industry what she could do and the kind of work she wanted to land.

“I wanted to show people in the industry that I can actually play, and the kind of music that I like to play, and this is the kind of music I want to do, and please hire me,” she said. “So, actually, it worked.”

It just took a while. The videos helped Baldwin build an audience and secure endorsements, but for years they didn't seem to be bringing her closer to the musicians she hoped to work with.

“It felt like it was never gonna get me actually to work with the people that I wanted to work with,” she said. Now, after years of posting covers, one of those videos has helped her land a place on an album by one of heavy metal’s most influential electric-guitar players.

Today is Back to the Future Day, the annual October 21 celebration inspired by the date Marty McFly and Doc Brown travel to in Back to the Future Part II. The occasion offers a timely reminder of one of the original 1985 film’s enduring mysteries: the whereabouts of the cherry-red Gibson ES-345 that Michael J. Fox played as Marty McFly.

The guitar hasn’t been seen in more than four decades, but Fox has a theory about what happened to it.

The instrument was loaned to the production by Norman’s Rare Guitars, after the film’s props team changed course at the last minute from an original plan to use a Strat or a Gretsch with a Bigsby. The decision also led to an onscreen faux pas that has irked guitar enthusiasts ever since.

That didn’t stop the scene from inspiring generations of players. John Mayer and Coldplay’s Chris Martin are among the musicians who have cited Marty’s performance of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” as an influence on their decision to take up guitar. The ES-345 has since become one of the most recognizable guitars in movie history.

In June 2025, ahead of the film’s 40th anniversary, Gibson launched a global search to track down the missing electric guitar. The company also enlisted the team behind the Lost Bass Project, which helped locate Paul McCartney’s stolen Höfner 500/1 violin bass after it had been missing for 51 years.

Gibson’s search successfully tracked down the secondary guitar used in the sequel, Back to the Future Part II. But the main mystery — the whereabouts of the cherry-red ES-345 played during Marty McFly’s iconic “Johnny B. Goode” performance in the 1985 original — remains unsolved.

One potentially important clue is the guitar’s unusual block parallelogram inlay at the 12th fret, rather than the more familiar split parallelogram. That detail could help investigators distinguish the original instrument from similar guitars and rule out false leads.

Fox, who played Marty, has offered his own theory about where the guitar went after filming wrapped. In his memoir, Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum, the actor looks back on his career-defining role, which he prepared for at night after long days on the set of Family Ties.

“I wish I could claim to possess it, but I didn’t have the foresight to know how valuable it would become,” he writes (via Parade).

“Unfortunately, somebody did anticipate that and snagged it for themselves,” he continues. “Whether it’s in their active collection or stashed in their attic or home studio, they’re not speaking up.”

Gibson’s search generated headlines around the world and attracted numerous leads and tip-offs, but the original guitar remains missing. Fox suspects someone knows exactly where it is and is choosing to keep quiet.

“Perhaps,” he adds, “they’re waiting for the statute of limitations on vintage guitar theft to expire.”

The “Johnny B. Goode” sequence was particularly meaningful to Fox because it gave him the chance to pay tribute to some of his earliest guitar heroes.

“Guitar has always been a big part of my life,” Fox said. “When we talked about the ‘Enchantment Under the Sea’ scene, I sat down with the cinematographer and choreographer and said, ‘I want to riff through all of my favorite guitarists, like doing Jimi Hendrix behind the head, Pete Townshend doing a windmill, and the Eddie Van Halen hammer thing.’ It was so cool that they were open to that, and we laid it all out there.”

Gibson has also begun work on a documentary, Lost to the Future, chronicling the search for the guitar. Fox, however, is skeptical that the film will be released anytime soon.

“Apparently, the release of the documentary will come after the guitar is found,” he says, “if that ever happens.”

Meanwhile, Guitar Player reviewer Dave Hunter has revisited the ES-345’s place in Gibson’s history. Introduced as a more feature-rich alternative to the better-known ES-335, the semi-hollow model occupied a middle ground between the 335 and the flagship ES-355.

“It remains an underrated gem worth your time,” Hunter writes.

George Harrison was known as the Quiet Beatle, the reserved, spiritual guitarist who preferred to stay out of the spotlight. But that familiar image captures only part of who he was, says Klaus Voormann, a close friend who knew Harrison long before the Beatles became global superstars.

Voormann met the Beatles in October 1960, when they were playing at Hamburg’s Kaiserkeller club, with Pete Best on drums and Stuart Sutcliffe on bass. He introduced them to his friend Astrid Kirchherr, the photographer who took their first professional-quality photos and helped establish their distinctive mop-top hairstyles.

An artist and bass player, Voormann went on to design the covers of Revolver and the Beatles’ Anthology albums. He also played in groups like Manfred Mann, performed sessions with Carly Simon and Lou Reed, and recorded on solo works by Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon.

But in a new interview in the December 2026 issue of Uncut, Voormann says Harrison never wanted to be a solo artist or a frontman.

“I don’t think he really ever wanted to be a solo artist,” he revelas. “He wanted to write songs and be part of the Beatles.”

Of the Beatles, Voormann says only Paul McCartney was a natural frontman.

“If you think back to the ’60s and seeing the Beatles onstage, Paul was the one who really had contact with the audience,” he says. “John didn’t have it, George didn’t have it and Pete Best didn’t have it at all...

“But George just wanted to play guitar and sing. He was fantastic, but he did not want to entertain an audience.”

Voormann also played on Harrison’s All Things Must Pass album, where he saw how the guitarist brought musicians together. Harrison, he recalls, created a warm, welcoming atmosphere in the studio.

“All the musicians loved George. They knew he was a very spiritual person, and he created a nice atmosphere in the studio. In contrast to John, he was always trying to make everything lovely. The lights were dimmed and he’d put joss sticks up on a little altar at the front, with a little figure. […] There was always something very melodic about George’s songs, very few hard edges.”

But Voormann says Harrison’s spiritual outlook coexisted with deep personal insecurity. The guitarist was more complicated than his serene public image suggested.

“One thing which I think is very important for people to know is that he was a very insecure, very complicated person. He was always searching for something, which was the religious part of him. You could even say he was a split personality.”

Voormann recalls that Harrison was in particularly bad shape in 1970, around the time of the Beatles’ breakup and the making of All Things Must Pass. Harrison was also spending time with Delaney & Bonnie and Eric Clapton.

“He would be coking like mad, he fucked his voice, he was in bad spirits. So he always seemed kind of conflicted. In one way he had the urge to be spiritual and very much down to earth, and wrote those songs where he's longing for that. But then suddenly — click — he's back and on the wrong side again.”

That complexity extended to Harrison’s relationships with other people. Although Voormann describes him as a caring and thoughtful friend, he says Harrison could also be sarcastic and cutting.

“That whole ‘quiet Beatle’ thing is nonsense. That was not a part of him.”

Harrison’s sharp tongue was on display when he encountered Formula One driver Michael Schumacher, a fan of the sport himself, at a party.

“He said, ‘Michael, you’re a fantastic driver. You’re so fast, it’s ridiculous. And you’ve won so many prizes, but you’re still an arsehole.’ That was typical of George.”

Harrison’s sense of humor also extended to practical jokes. Phil Collins has recalled how the guitarist once tricked him over his contribution to All Things Must Pass. Collins had played congas during the sessions but always wondered why his parts didn’t make the album.

Years later, Harrison sent him a tape he claimed contained an outtake from the sessions. On it, Collins’s conga playing was terribly out of time. Horrified by what he heard, Collins left the listening session feeling “angry, depressed and sad,” convinced he’d finally discovered why his contribution had been left off the record.

Only afterward did Harrison reveal that the tape was fake and the whole thing was a prank.

Collins eventually saw the funny side. “We eventually managed to have a laugh about it,” he said.

“And yeah, I swore at a Beatle.”

Time and age have not impaired Lee Ritenour’s chops — or the veteran guitarist’s memory.

“I remember the stories,” the 74-year-old tells us via Zoom from his home studio in Malibu. “I love that a lot of times I can remember who was on the sessions, what happened — all of it.”

And rest assured there are a lot of stories, considering Ritenour has some 58 albums of his own — dating back 50 years to his first solo set, First Course — along with legendary sessions for the likes of Steely Dan, George Benson, Pink Floyd, Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Quincy Jones, B.B. King and a great many more.

Ritenour is adding yet another album to his legacy with the new concert disc Live at Ronnie Scott’s, which comes out October 23. The album was drawn from an eight-night run at the storied London venue last March.

“I picked 20 songs,” Ritenour says. “Everybody got the list in advance and audio samples and PDFs if they needed the score, but everybody knew the music.” They did not, however, know exactly when or how they’d be playing them each night.

“I call it as we go,” Ritenour explains. “I never do a set list, and that way it keeps everybody on edge, and it also keeps it spontaneous. It’s almost like the improvisation that goes into a fusion tune or a rock tune or a jazz tune or a ballad; we’re performing at that moment, and everyone’s got to stay sharp.”

That includes Ritenour. But the legend says he’s energized by the youthful players in his group, which includes his son Wes on drums, keyboardist Giorgi Mikadze, bass guitarist-vocalist Munir Hossn, harmonica player Gregoire Maret and vocalist Tatiana Para.

“Everybody’s in their 30s, 40s at most,” he says. “They have that same fresh energy that I had when I was in my 30s, and that brings it back to me and gives me energy.

“This kind of music I do has to be reinvented. It has to feature the players and bring out the best of those players as well — and by extension, the best out of me. So having a young band play these songs at Ronnie Scott’s … it kind of keeps me on my toes.”

Ritenour will finish the year with a handful of performances on the West Coast during November and a four-night stand at the Blue Note Tokyo in December.

In the meantime, we asked him to share a few of those stories from his long career.

George Benson

One of Ritenour’s favorite stories involves Benson’s 1989 Platinum release Give Me the Night, for which Ritenour played on seven of the 10 tracks. In particular, he remembers a session for the title track, which became a number four hit on the Billboard Hot 100.

“I was on most of the tracks playing rhythm guitar and sometimes helping George with his amps and stuff like that, being an overall help to Quincy. But all of a sudden I got a call one night at almost midnight. The studio [Kendun Recorders in Burbank] was 15 minutes from my house, coincidentally.

“Quincy says, ‘Ritenour, you gotta come down here. We’ve got an emergency.’ Apparently, a second engineer on the session had accidentally erased part of Benson’s solo on the title track. I said, ‘Well, where’s George?’ Quincy said, ‘He’s back in Hawaii. We’ve got to finish the mix tonight, and the last four bars of the solo are missing now.’

“So I come down and George’s guitar is there. His rig is there. I knew that setup because I helped dial it in. They had a cassette of the original mix of the solo, so I learned the last four bars and we punched it in. We did it a few times; I made sure the sound was the same.

“And Quincy said to me, ‘You have to promise never to tell George about this.’ ‘Okay, I promise.’

“Time moves on, and 20 years later George and I are walking in the airport, just shooting the breeze, and I thought, I’ve got to tell George the story. So I tell him, and he starts laughing his ass off.

“He says, ‘Well, I didn’t notice, and it was a hit, right?’ So all good!”

“I probably wish, with Quincy, I had been on some of those Michael Jackson sessions. By that time I had moved on and was doing my own albums, and Steve Lukather, Ray Parker Jr. and a couple other people were doing those Jackson albums. But at the time you think, ‘Man, that track turned out so great. I wish I had been on it.’”

Steve Lukather

Steve Lukather often tells the story of how Lee Ritenour saved him on a session early in his career by switching guitar parts with him. The session took place in the 1970s, for an artist neither guitarist has identified. The two already knew each other: Ritenour had played with Lukather’s future Toto bandmate David Paich and Paich’s father, Marty, before meeting Lukather at the Baked Potato in Los Angeles. We asked Ritenour to recount the story from his perspective.

“We were on this session with this R&B arranger [Gene Page],” Ritenour says. “I was supposed to play guitar one, which had just chords, changes and fills around the melody. It was relatively easy. Guitar two was doubling the bass part, and it was Wilton Felder playing the bass, and Wilton was one of the few bass players back in the day who could read well because originally he was a saxophone player with the Jazz Crusaders. So Wilton was on, and this arranger wrote really funky, syncopated bass lines that were not easy to read.

“So Steve has this part doubling the bass, and he’s late to the session and was nervous to begin with, ’cause he was the new kid on the session. He sits down, and the sheet music was just black with notes. I saw Steve’s face just go white; we already knew each other a little, and I was famous for being a sight reader, whereas Steve was more of a player-player.

“So I said, ‘Hey, Luke, why don’t you take guitar one and do the fills? I kinda know the song already, a little bit. I’ll take guitar two.’ So we switched parts, and he’s said for decades that I saved his ass on that session.”

David Gilmour

Among Ritenour’s most notable credits is his work on The Wall, Pink Floyd’s chart-topping, 23-times Platinum opus released in 1979. Brought in at the suggestion of co-producer Bob Ezrin, he’s credited with acoustic guitar on “Young Lust” and rhythm guitar on “One of My Turns,” and there have been reports over the years that Ritenour offered suggestions for David Gilmour’s iconic solo at the end of “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2.”

“That’s another one of those bands that, like Steely Dan, had huge budgets,” Ritenour says. “Budget was not a concern for Pink Floyd — rightfully so, considering they were one of the greatest bands in the world. They were one of the bands that made sure every part was right. That was one of the few times I entered into a band’s territory like that.

“Some people think I did the guitar solo on ‘Another Brick in the Wall.’ No, it was David. We did play double acoustic guitars together on another song, and they played me the solo on ‘Another Brick in the Wall,’ and I said, ‘That sounds cool.’ And, of course, the guitar sound is exquisite. They asked my opinion. I said it sounded great and left it at that.

“I’m very proud I’m on that record, and that I added some stuff to it. But it was still a Pink Floyd record. It’s like a player coming in and adding something to the Beatles; it was still the Beatles, come on.”

Jas Obrecht’s chance encounter with a then-unknown Eddie Van Halen on July 23, 1978, led to the guitarist’s first magazine interview, published in Guitar Player’s November 1978 issue. The two would meet again, including for a five-hour conversation in 1980 that explored Eddie’s approach to electric guitar, gear and modifications, his musical upbringing, and the techniques behind his groundbreaking playing.

Published in the magazine’s April 1980 issue, that interview found Van Halen discussing everything from his early music lessons to the importance of phrasing and his approach to guitar solos. He also shared his surprisingly dismissive initial reaction to one of Van Halen’s biggest early hits.

At the outset of the conversation, Obrecht asked Van Halen how he developed his speed. Born in the Netherlands, Eddie had moved to the U.S. with his family at age seven. His answer began with a characteristically humorous account of his classical training.

“Well, I’ll tell you. They used to lock me in a little room and go, ‘Play fast!’” he began with a laugh. “I was actually trained to be a classical pianist. I had this Russian teacher who couldn’t speak a word of English, and he would just sit there with a ruler ready to slap my face if I made a mistake.

“This started in Holland, and both my brother and I took lessons. Then when we got to the U.S. my dad found another good teacher. Basically, that’s where I got my ears developed, learned my theory, and got my fingers moving.

“Then when the Dave Clark Five and those bands came out, I wanted to go [plays the riff from ‘You Really Got Me’]. I didn’t want to go clink, clink, clink. I still play piano, and I also play violin.”

Some of that classical training found its way into Eddie’s guitar playing, even if he didn’t consciously set out to apply piano techniques to the instrument.

“Things like this are classical,” he said, demonstrating the continuous left-hand tremolo technique heard in “Spanish Fly.” “I know that had some things psychologically come out, but I don’t actually sit down at a piano and try to apply it to guitar.”

The conversation also turned to his solos — both how he approached them and what he wanted them to achieve. Asked what mattered most, Van Halen had a straightforward answer.

“Feeling,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s melodic or spontaneous. If it’s melodic and has no feeling, it’s screwed.”

That emphasis on feel informed an approach that left room for both careful composition and improvisation. Some solos were worked out in advance; others came together in the studio on the spot.

“Sometimes it’s spontaneous, sometimes it’s set,” he explained. “Like the solo in ‘Runnin’ With the Devil’ was set. And the same with ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love.’ By ‘set’ I mean that I figured out something melodic instead of just going for it.”

Other performances were more spontaneous.

“‘Ice Cream Man’ was one,” he said. “That was a first take. The solo in ‘You Really Got Me’ was totally spontaneous. Next time you listen to it, turn the balance to one side, because the way Ted [Templeman] produces, my guitar is always on one side. Listen to it — there’s only one guitar, no overdubs. But it sounds full.”

That willingness to improvise carried over to the stage. Although Van Halen sometimes reproduced his recorded solos, he generally preferred to take a different approach each night.

“I rarely repeat,” he said. “Sometimes I remember the way I did it on the record and kind of follow it, unless they are melodic solos like in ‘Runnin’ With the Devil’ and ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love.’ You know, if I start noodling around, kids go, ‘Hey, that ain’t the same song!’”

Perhaps the most surprising revelation concerned “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love,” a song that became a defining part of Van Halen’s early catalog. Far from recognizing its potential immediately, Eddie initially thought it was a dud — and waited six months before playing it for his bandmates.

“When I wrote ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love’ I thought it was about the lamest song I ever wrote in my life,” he remarked. “It took me six months before I even worked up the nerve to show the guys, but kids go nuts for it! I love the beginning — Am and G.”

Producer Andrew Watt has discussed how he aims to get the best out of musicians when an album is under production, comparing the wildly different approaches of The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Elton John and Michael Stipe.

The five-time Grammy winner and Oscar nominee started out as a pop producer before moving over to rock, with his most notable productions including Ozzy Osbourne’s Ordinary Man and Patient Number 9 plus the Stones’ Hackney Diamonds and Foreign Tongues.

Watt tells Rolling Stone that work on John’s next album has changed dramatically from the past, after the 79-year-old lost most of his eyesight. “Elton writes songs by reading a lyric,” the producer explains. “He’s going through life in a completely different way, [but] my God, the spirit of this man is unlike anything else.

“He’s one of the great melody writers ever. We could throw on some drums for him that made him feel a certain type of way, and he could just play to the drums and come up with melodies first.”

He adds that lyricist Bernie Taupin had adjusted too: “He was able to then listen to that, hear a basic rough little melody of Elton and come up with ideas. And then Elton is the master of putting Bernie’s lyrics down to the song. Once Bernie came up with the lyric, we’d put it on a huge screen. Elton would scan through it; he’d go little by little, and it was perfect.”

Watt praises R.E.M. vocalist Michael Stipe’s approach to his long-awaited solo album. “He’s extremely hard on himself. He kinda beats himself up, I think, in a healthy way. I’ve seen him write lyrics, throw them out, write them again.

“He’s wanting to make sure that he’s gonna say exactly what he wants to say, and make a sound that’s exactly how he wants it to sound. He’s working with a bunch of different people, and then finding his way around them. He’s one of the all-time greats, great songwriter, great lyricist, great melodist. And really fun to be around.”

The producer describes working with McCartney as a college education. “He’s fearless. He was kind of teaching me the way he works – you can write a song out of anything, and then sometimes you switch it up and go to a weird thing, which changes form a million different times.“

He continues: “It was kind of like, ‘Let me show you how we can use the studio.’ He loves playing characters… his imagination is unlike anyone else’s. Like Mozart, you know? … Bouncing around the studio and playing every different instrument. He’s incredible at coming up with the perfect part on every different instrument and not making you feel like he played any instrument worse than the other. I mean, it just sounds like someone who’s a master on each instrument.”

Watt recalls sitting among the Stones in the live room while working up songs. “I would be in that circle so I could watch how they’re interplaying with each other,” he says. “You don’t want it to ever be an arduous process with a band like that. They’re magic.

“My job would be to have a mic and call sections – ‘B section! Okay, let’s go back to the A section! Take it out on that!’ They’re playing the tune they made, and I’m arranging it kind of as it’s happening, in the moment.”

Asked if another Stones album is under discussion, Watt says: “I don’t know. I didn’t know if there was gonna be another one after [our] first one. If they call, I’m there. It’s the greatest honor of my life being around that band.”

Although he took influence from George Harrison, as a session player Roger McGuinn had been experimenting with 12-string guitar sounds long before he was captivated by the Beatles and Harrison’s use of the Rickenbacker 360/12.

“I always loved the sound of a 12-string because it sounds like a harpsichord,” he tells Guitar Player. “It's got so many nice overtones in it.”

After catching the Beatles' 1964 movie, A Hard Day’s Night, where Harrison brandished a 12-string Rickenbacker, McGuinn followed suit and picked up his own Rickenbacker, a 370/12. It was with this guitar that McGuinn went on to not only impact the guitar scene via his chiming clean tones but also launch folk-rock as a genre.

The proverbial musical patriarch of the folk-rock era was “Mr. Tambourine Man,” a song penned by Bob Dylan in 1965, which the Byrds covered and scored a hit with. At the time, McGuinn had no expectations, but when he looks back, he admits the track's importance.

“I'm happy with what we did,” he says. “I think it was innovative. I was trying to tune it for the AM radio audience, and it worked! I look back on it as a happy experience, really.”

As the ’60s progressed, McGuinn and the Byrds would influence the Beatles as well as Harrison, by turning him on to the sitar playing of Ravi Shankar. The Byrds eventually ventured into country, psychedelic rock and the merging of the two. His 12-string was never far from his reach, but he did eschew folk rock for a while.

Recently, though, with his Folk Den project, McGuinn has gotten back to his folk roots in its purest form.

“I just love it,” he says. “It’s historical. It's human history, and real people writing about real things that happened.

It’s something that should not get lost,” he adds. “I compare traditional folk music to Victorian architecture: You don't want to tear down a beautiful Victorian building and put up a steel and glass structure instead, right?”

What initially drew you to the 12-string Rickenbacker guitar?

Well, I’d been playing 12-string acoustic before that. I got into it because of Pete Seeger playing one, and Bob Gibson playing one. And I got into Lead Belly and the folk scene, so I was a 12-string player. Actually, I was a studio musician in New York, doing sessions for 12-string acoustic and five-string banjo for a lot of folk acts, including Judy Collins and Paul Simon.

How big of an influence was George Harrison on you as far as the 12-string electric guitar goes?

We all went to see the Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night, and copied down notes about what the Beatles were playing: that Ringo played Ludwig drums, Paul had that Höfner violin bass…

And then George came out with the Rickenbacker, which looked like a six-string from the front. They’d condensed the tuning pegs into a six-string format from the front, and they had another six sticking out of the back of the headstock. It was like a classical guitar, with a channeled head.

What did you think of that?

I went, “Wow, I love the sound of that.” I’d heard 12-string sounds on the radio before, like the Searchers and the Seekers — although I learned later that they were playing six-string guitars, but with another guitarist playing octaves, or something like that. But that 12-string sound was something that I loved.

It became very popular after the Byrds had a hit with “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

Yeah, after we got the hit, everybody got a Rickenbacker. The Beach Boys had one, Paul Revere & the Raiders had one. It was a new sound in rock and roll, and it came out of England.

You’re also an originator of folk rock. Is it also true that the Beatles were your inspiration for that style?

Yeah! The Beatles had first been a skiffle band called the Quarrymen, and skiffle is a form of folk music. So they were doing chords that were more than one, four and five; they were doing things that were more than subdominant and dominant chords. And they ere doing things in the middle of songs where they got into other minor chords, instead of just playing G, C and D major.

Did you ever talk with them about their influence on folk rock?

No, I never did. But there’s also a theory that the Animals invented folk rock by doing “House of the Rising Sun,” which had been a blues song that Bob Dylan recorded. But I don’t think it's the same, you know?

There’s a story that when the Byrds first heard “Mr. Tambourine Man,” David Crosby said, “The two-four folk beat isn’t going to cut it on radio.” Is that true?

Yeah. I realized when I heard the Beatles that they were onto something — that anything with a four-four beat was going to be a hit. So I rearranged “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

We had a demo that was originally recorded in New York by Bob [Dylan] and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, but Ramblin’ had too much to drink and was out of tune on the demo. [laughs] It actually wasn’t meant to be a demo; it was intended to be released, but Bob didn’t because Ramblin’ was out of tune.

So we got a copy of that, and that’s where we first learned it. And that version was four and a half minutes long, in two-four time, and out of tune.

That’s when Crosby said, “I don’t like it, man. Two-four time is never going to play on the radio.” And besides that, it was too long; radio wouldn’t play anything over two and a half minutes at that point.

Is it true that the Byrds’ manager, Jim Dickson, invited Bob to hear the Byrds rehearse the song? If so, what was his reaction?

Yeah, it was at World Pacific Studios, where we would rehearse. Jim let us come in there, play on the tape machines, and rehearse, and he invited Bob over.

Bob came over, and he was listening to us to this rock-inspired version of the song. I remember I played the song, and Bob said, “What’s that?” I said, “That’s one of your songs, man…”

He didn’t really recognize it, but he did like it and gave us his approval.

Bob was recording Highway 61 Revisited, the album where he really delved into folk rock, around the same time that the Byrds released “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Do you believe you influenced Bob’s rock leanings?

Well, you know, we all come from rock and roll. I was into Elvis and Gene Vincent and Carl Perkins. And Bob had played piano in rock and roll bands when he was a kid. So Bob was already there. He already had that in his system.

Your Back from Rio record is perhaps one of the greatest star-studded albums of the ’90s. It’s got Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Elvis Costello, David Crosby and Chris Hillman on it. How did that come about, and how do you look back on it now?

I feel great about it. It’s probably my best commercial release.

It came about because I went on the road with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Bob Dylan in Europe for what was called the Temples in Flames tour.

It was 1987, and we had a day off in Gothenburg, Sweden, and I had a tune. So I showed the tune to Tom, and he and I sat down and wrote “King of the Hill.” And then, Mike Campbell came in, and he had a four-track cassette studio in a briefcase.

So he recorded a demo of it, and we took that demo, and somehow got it to Arista Records, who signed me to a record deal. And then Tom helped me out with the recording, and so did Elvis and the other Byrds. It was a pretty cool project, and I’m still really happy with how it came out.

You’ve returned to folk music in its purest form with your Folk Den project. What led you back there?

I got concerned that it was going to get lost in the shuffle. All the new folk singers were singer/songwriters, and they weren’t doing the old, traditional songs. If you look at NPR's lists of traditional songs, like, only eight of the top 100 are traditional. So traditional music got kind of swept into the dustbin of history.

Do you see the tide turning to where there’s enough quality traditional folk music out there today?

Well, it depends on where you are. If you go to Scotland, there’s plenty of it. But if you go around the United States, you’re not going to find too much of it. It’s all kind of gone, but I’m doing my bit to keep it going by putting things up.

And it’s all for free. It’s a public service sponsored by UNC, North Carolina. I’ve got over 330 folk songs up there for free download on The Folk Den at mcguinn.com.

David Bowie worked with many guitarists throughout his long career, from Mick Ronson to Carlos Alomar, Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew and Reeves Gabrels. But there was one player he returned to several times, from the 1970s to the final years of his life: Earl Slick.

What did the Brooklyn-born guitarist give him that no other player did?

“I have theories about that,” Slick tells Guitar Player via Zoom, from the kitchen of his home in New York City, while smoking a morning cigarette and opening a bottle of Gatorade. “One of the things was that, when it came down to needing that rock and roll guitar player, that was always me or Mick. And Mick left us a long time ago.” (Ronson died in 1993.)

As for the others?

“All those guys are wonderful,” Slick says. “But none of them are rock players. So he came back to me for that. That’s when I got called in.”

Earl Slick was not a constant in David Bowie’s universe. Few were. But the guitarist — born Frank Medeloni nearly 73 years ago — was a mainstay. He arrived in 1974, following the demise of the Spiders From Mars and Ronson’s exit, to perform on Bowie’s Diamond Dogs tour. He played on the Young Americans and Station to Station albums soon after, then returned in 1983 for the Serious Moonlight Tour as a last-minute replacement for Stevie Ray Vaughan, who famously lent his electric guitar stylings to Let’s Dance, Bowie’s 1983 commercial smash.

Nearly 20 years would pass before Slick came back once again on the tour for Bowie’s 2002 album, Heathen. That led to him working on its follow-up, Reality, and performing on the subsequent A Reality Tour, a celebrated groundbreaking global stint that was the biggest and longest of Bowie’s career.

It was there that he witnessed Bowie’s heart attack on June 23, 2004 while onstage in Prague, along with his subsequent decline.

“It was amazing how he went from looking great to looking pretty ill — like, overnight,” Slick says. “We were just a month shy of a year being out.”

Bowie recovered, but he canceled the remaining shows and never toured again. Slick returned for his penultimate album, 2013's The Next Day, making him the only guitarist to have worked with Bowie over such an extended range of the performer's career.

His vital position in Bowie’s world was underscored last year in the box set David Bowie 6. I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002–2016). There among Bowie’s final albums, songs and performances was “Isn’t It Evening (The Revolutionary),” a track from Slick’s 2003 solo album, Zig Zag. Co-written with and featuring Bowie, it hit the Top 10 on several U.K. charts when it was re-released there in 2024.

Guitar Player asked Slick to weigh in on his impactful years with the chameleon of rock.

Was there much difference being Bowie’s “rock” guitarist compared to other things you’ve done?

Well, with David I did have to have a pedalboard to cover 40 years of recordings or whatever. And I hate pedals, especially overdrive pedals. But you needed certain things. You definitely needed two delay pedals just to cover “Heroes,” just to get it bouncing all over the place.

But I got a lot of free rein from David. I could literally change up bits and bobs during a show, and he liked it, actually. If you look through the concert videos, you’ll see really weird arrangements of songs and stuff. ’Cause you get bored if it’s the same song every night, so sometimes you change things up, and he liked that I did that. I had a lot of freedom to just ad lib, everywhere.

You’d been out of the Bowie orbit for about 15 years when he reached out to you around 2002. How did that come about?

Omigod. Reeves had left and David was looking for a guitar player, so his people tracked me down through a web site. It was called Slick-something-or-other, and it had all these old demos we kept putting out. That’s how he found me.

The webmaster called and said, “I just got this email. It’s a New York number and they seem to really want to get in touch with you.” He said it was from Isolar, and I said, “I know exactly who that is. It’s David.” [Isolar was the name for pair of Bowie’s tours in 1976 and 1978.]

The A Reality Tour was Bowie’s last and, many think, one of his best. What was your experience with it?

That was a fun record to play live, especially the rockers — the title track and stuff. It was the best touring band I ever played in with David. The combination of people — it was absolutely drama free, and I’ve never seen him that relaxed and happy on a tour, ever.

It was also the tour that was notoriously ended by his health issues. What do you recall from that Prague date when he had his heart attack?

It was a really weird gig. At first I couldn’t figure out what was going on. It was hotter than hell in the place, and I could see he was having a hard time hitting some notes. I thought he was just baked. We were all baked.

I think we were doing “The Jean Genie,” and he goes to me, “Keep vamping, just jam” — this, while he’s having a heart attack. Then he started grabbing his chest and the tour managers came over and dragged him off.

A few minutes later, he comes back and joins us. He lasted about a measure or two and then he walked off. They said that he had a blocked nerve, whatever that is, and that diagnosis was wrong.

We did the Hurricane Festival in Germany a couple days later; I went over to talk to him, and he was feeling horrible. We did the whole show and then we got a phone call saying, “Sit tight for a couple of days. David needs to rest. We’re gonna take a few days off.”

So we just hung out in Hamburg. Nobody’s saying anything to us.

And then we get phone calls saying, “Guys, we’re done. You gotta go home.” We didn’t get an explanation; we all knew he was probably getting some kind of surgery, but we weren’t getting any details about it.

When we did “Heroes” at the Hurricane Festival, I swear to God it’s one of the best vocal performances he ever did of it. Two hours later, probably, he was in the hospital.

Was the idea of him playing live again ever broached?

It was. We were working on The Next Day; just as I finished up my work on the track “Set the World on Fire.” We were listening back in the control room and he looks at me and goes, “This would just kick ass live.” I looked at him ready to say something, and he goes, “Don’t even think about it.” [laughs]

That was the discussion we had about going on tour again. That was the whole discussion, and he said, “Don’t think about it.” I could see it in his eyes. I’d been with him so long, I knew he was dead serious. He ain’t going nowhere.

It was disappointing, because I really thought we would have at least one good tour left in us. This was the summer of 2013, so it’s possible that he might’ve been ill already, with the cancer. We’ll never know, but I think it’s a possibility.

The Next Day was another kind of odd reconnection, wasn’t it?

Yeah, it was typical David. He started making that record around 2011, I think, and everybody who was brought in had to sign an NDA. I’m talking to some of the guys on the phone and nobody says a word.

In the meantime, this friend of mine, a surgeon, he built a car, a Cobra, and I had this blues gig I was doing near his house in Montclair, New Jersey. I go visit and he says, “Let’s go for a ride in the Cobra before we go to the gig.”

We drove for a little bit, and then the car started to do weird shit, like sputtering and stalling out. So he stops the car and two seconds later a big flame comes out of the engine. We call 911 and the fire department comes, and the cops come, and there’s TV. I guess one of the reporters figured out I was in the car and the word gets out on the Internet.

The next day I get a text from Bowie: “Oh God, I saw this accident. Are you okay?” I write back, “Yeah, I’m great, I’m fine. How are you?” “Good.” Then I get a few more messages over the course of the next day or two, like, “How you doin’? What have you been up to lately?” This is not a typical thing with him.

So finally I’m like, “Okay, are you trying to get to a point? What is it?” And he was, “Well, we’re making this record, and I need you to come in for a week or so and work on it.”

I swear to God, if we hadn’t blown up the car, I might not have been on that record. That’s just him: It’s out of sight, out of mind sometimes, and then it’s, “Wait a minute — Slicky could do this or that.”

Was there a standard operating procedure when you worked together?

We’d sit there and brainstorm, especially on the overdub bits. Both of us always like to have some kind of melodic lick in there somewhere, some signature in the song, and we’d just knock ideas around.

Like the lick on “Valentine’s Day,” the signature lick at the beginning, we sat there and bounced it around for about 10 or 15 minutes and that lick popped out and there it was. A lot of that kind of stuff was done on the fly; we never spent lots of time. As soon as we heard something that clicked, that was it. That’s the best stuff, when it just comes out from outer space or something.

What is your sense of the late-period Bowie compared to your previous years with him?

Well, back in the early days — this not speaking out of school, ’cause it’s pretty well known — a lot of drugs were involved, and a lot of cocaine. Between the drugs and him having management problems and all that, he was on another planet.

And then as the years went on he changed, like we all do. In the 2000s a sense of humor was there that was never there in the early days. He was funnier than hell, and he was more approachable. He turned into... I wouldn’t say a different person, but the real him came out.

How did you approach guitar choices for your work with Bowie?

I love Telecasters. I’ve always been a Tele player. But for the Heathen tour he said, “We do need a humbucker on some of this,” so I grabbed some Les Pauls, and by the A Reality Tour I was using pretty much my Les Pauls most of the show. I don’t think I used my Teles at all on that. I did have a Strat I used for a few things, but most of it was Les Paul.

Having “Isn’t It Evening (The Revolutionary)” on the box set is a nice postscript, especially after its success last year in the U.K.

That’s a weird one. I was living in Portland [circa 2002], and I just started to toodle around with my guitar, and all of a sudden I started coming up with stuff and recording bits and pieces. I ended up with a lot of them, so I called up Mark Plati and said, “When you get some time maybe we can cut an instrumental record. I got some good ideas.”

I didn’t realize he was in the studio when I called him. David was there, and David says, “Earl, I heard Mark say you guys were gonna do some recording. Maybe I’ll play some tambourine or something. Maybe I’ll even sing one, or we can write one.”

So I sent him a half-dozen bits and he picked the one that eventually turned into “Isn’t It Evening.” We recorded it, and we released it during the A Reality Tour, which turned out to be a bad idea, because my record got buried in there.

So I just sat with that track for years and thought, One of these days, I’ll release it as a single. Then Penguin Books approached me about the memoir [Slick’s recently published Guitar: Life and Music with David Bowie, John Lennon and Rock and Roll’s Greatest Heroes]. I said, “Ah, that’s the time to do it!”

So we rearranged it and it came out about two months after the book. It got on the charts and we had a hit single. Funny how timing works. And I’m really glad it’s on the box set, because it turned out to be his last hit.

Since the demise of the P.J. Harvey trio, it’s become increasingly rare to see Polly Jean behind a guitar onstage. On the tour for 1995’s To Bring You My Love — her third album and first proper solo release — she abandoned the instrument entirely for the first time, leaving the duty to two guitarists tasked with translating the album’s visceral textures: her longtime collaborator John Parish and session guitarist Joe Gore.

Gore recalled a recurring skepticism from fans when he joined the lineup: “‘Why? I love the way she plays!’”

“I knew what they meant,” Gore wrote in a feature for Guitar Player about his work with Harvey. “I too admired the instrumental ferocity that helped Polly attract a rabid global following and a blizzard of critical acclaim for her first three albums.”

As Harvey explained in that issue, the decision to abdicate her electric six-string responsibilities was a matter of physical economy and performance art.

“I only stopped playing live because of my singing,” she said. “My build isn't huge, so holding a guitar and singing is physically draining. I can't physically interpret the songs the way I want with a guitar.”

Ironically, Harvey was the primary architect of the album's guitar sound. While Parish was "doing more drumming than strumming," Gore noted his own role was "to splash texture and color around Polly's big riffs."

As she told us, following the 1993 dissolution of her trio, she found herself obsessed with the precision of her home recordings.

“I had no idea that I'd end up wanting to replicate my demos as much as I did,” she admitted. “I’d wanted to put a band together and let the songs develop different interpretations, but I found that I just couldn't live with that. I wanted things to be much more precise, and the only way was for me to do a lot of it myself.”

Parish and Gore were uniquely qualified for the challenge of reinterpreting Harvey’s guitar work in the live arena. Parish had discovered her when she was 17 and recruited her for his band, Automatic Dlamini, essentially serving as her instrumental mentor.

“While it's true that no one plays like Polly,” Gore noted, “John probably comes closer than anyone else.”

As for Gore, he met Harvey a couple of years earlier when interviewing her for the magazine. She was a fan of his work with Tom Waits, though they didn't actually plug in together until rehearsals in London.

Harvey may not claim virtuoso status, but her playing is defined by a singular, dramatic intensity.

“She's no hyper-technician,” Gore wrote, “but the 90-pound native of Dorsetshire renders her tough and ingenious riffs with enough violent emotion to make Tarantino flinch.”

She is also an innovator, occasionally utilizing an all-A tuning inspired by a roadie's stories of the Gary Glitter Band.

“On my last tour, my guitar roadie was talking about Gary Glitter, who he'd worked with,” Harvey told us. “He said the Glitter Band tuning was all strings to A, so I tried it out.”

Harvey called the sound “so fat and revolting. I just love the way the bottom string is tuned so low it flops like a washing line.”

But as she explained, To Bring You My Love was especially notable for the shift in how she approached her songwriting.

“For the first time, I'd start out by thinking of the mood I wanted to create,” she said. “Ninety percent of these songs started from wanting to build an atmospheric base.”

The shift in focus — from the technicality of the riff to the atmosphere of the performance — yielded a masterpiece. The album sold a million copies and produced the unlikely hit “Down By the Water,” a song about infanticide that nonetheless dominated U.S. radio.

Unburdened by the weight of the guitar, Harvey was free to inhabit the songs as a pure frontwoman, confident that her hand-picked duo would execute her vision. Of course, she also cited a more primal motivation.

“I’m having a fab-o time,” she teased. “I’ve got the most handsome band in the world, especially the guitar players. The only reason I picked them is so I can look at their behinds.”

Brian May and Freddie Mercury created some of Queen’s most enduring anthems, with the guitarist’s melodic precision providing the perfect counterbalance to Mercury’s theatrical brilliance. But when asked to name the most beautiful song his late bandmate ever wrote, May doesn’t point to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Somebody to Love” or any of Queen’s other towering classics.

Instead, he chooses a far less obvious track: “It’s a Hard Life.”

Released in 1984 as the third single from Queen’s 11th studio album, The Works, the song became the band’s third consecutive U.K. top 10 hit, peaking at number six. In the U.S., however, it stalled at number 72 — a modest showing compared with many of Queen’s biggest successes.

Despite that, it remains a song that holds deep personal meaning for May. Writing in the liner notes for Queen’s Greatest Video Hits 2 compilation in 2003, the guitarist described Mercury’s composition as one of the most revealing pieces his bandmate ever created.

“To my mind, it’s one of the most beautiful songs that Freddie ever wrote,” May said. “It’s straight from the heart, and he really opened up during the creation of it.”

The song arrived during a period when Queen were still capable of producing massive hits, including “Radio Ga Ga,” “I Want to Break Free,” and “Hammer to Fall.” Yet beneath its grand arrangement — Mercury’s soaring falsetto, ornate piano work, and May’s carefully placed electric guitar lines — “It’s a Hard Life” was ultimately a deeply personal song about relationships and emotional struggle.

For May, the most memorable part was watching Mercury reveal that side of himself during the writing process.

“I sat with him for hours and hours pouring over every word and trying to get the most out of it,” he recalled. “It’s a very revealing thing about how relationships are, and he was talking about his relationship.”

The song’s famously extravagant music video, filmed in Munich, Germany, might suggest otherwise. Mercury appears in the outfit Queen jokingly called “The Giant Mediterranean Prawn,” while May wields a skull-shaped guitar that was merely a prop. The video’s lavish setting and theatrical excess seemed at odds with the song’s emotional weight — and that was partly the point.

“To me it’s one of his loveliest songs, and on the face of it, I think I was mortified that he wanted to make this kind of video because it’s totally distracting,” May said. “This is a Freddie indulgence, and we indulged him. With pleasure I have to say.”

That willingness to indulge each other was a key part of Queen’s creative chemistry — although May has also revealed there were moments when he had to fight to get his own ideas heard, including when he pushed to include a guitar solo on one of the band’s biggest hits.

Sometimes itt can seem like there are more guitar virtuosos than ever before. A short scroll on Instagram, or a peruse on YouTube can be demoralizing and disincentivizing for most guitar players.

So how does one keep their head above water in a sea of virtuosos? “If I go to Instagram and I see somebody eight years old playing faster than anyone has ever played before, I’m happy,” Joe Satriani tells Guitar Interactive Magazine.

Of course, that’s easy for one of the world’s most respected shredders to say. But Satriani says that all players can benefit.

“I’m looking at it, going, ‘Maybe I can learn from that eight-year-old about how they’re holding their little finger or where they put their thumb,” he continues. “But that’s because I’m a guitar player, so I’m interested in the mechanical aspects of technique.

“But,” he also says, “it’s absurd to think that technique has anything to do with music, to a certain degree. Normal people hear music without the anxiety of technique. They either like it or they don’t.

"Us musicians, we can’t help it. We obsess about technique because we need it in order to play. The rest of the world does not perceive technique that way at all.”

Technique shouldn’t be something that players let get the better of them, because there will always be a better guitar player than you, he says. It’s the music beneath the techniques that matters.

“It’s the early ‘70s. You’re Lindsey Buckingham, and somebody gives you an Al Di Meola record,” Satriani develops. “Are you going to say, ‘Well, that’s it. I suck. Al Di Meola is God, I should just give up and work for the Post Office’”

He also turns to a late 70s post-punk classic, Gang of Four’s “Love Like Anthrax”, to further hammer home his point.

“I remember listening to the guitar part, which was just feeding back in a room for the entire song [no notes were being fretted],” he explains. He was a fan, despite it going against everything that, on paper, defines virtuosic guitar playing.

“I thought, ‘Why should I impose negativity on it because there’s not something that resembles practicing in it?’”

“We need technique,” he accepts. “When stuff is technique driven, it's not bad, but musicians need to know that it is distinctively technique-driven.

“There’s a time and a place to stand in front of a group and go, ‘Watch this! You’ve never seen this before’, and that’s totally valid. But it’s not going to hit the audience the same way as, say, a slow, beautiful melody, or a haunting series of chords. As long as the musician understands that and they’re cool with it, then everything’s okay.”

Elsewhere, the Ibanez artist has revealed he and Steve Vai relied on plugin tones for their new collaborative album. Mick Jagger has also explained how he nearly featured on one of Satriani’s albums, but the guitarist deleted his takes.