With nearly 60 years of hindsight, having the Jimi Hendrix Experience open for the Monkees back in 1967 was clearly not a good idea.

Then again, it should have seemed so at the time — but not to Micky Dolenz, who considers himself “the one to blame for that little bit of insane rock and roll trivia.”

The lead singer of Monkees hits such as “Last Train to Clarksville” and “I’m a Believer,” Dolenz was an early Hendrix fan, from when he was playing in New York City as Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, and before his fateful move to England and the formation of the Experience there.

“I had seen him in New York at the Cafe Au Go Go with John Hammond,” Dolenz tells us. “His claim to fame was he’s the guy who plays guitar with his teeth.”

A little more than a year later, Dolenz spied Hendrix again with his new band members: drummer Mitch Mitchell and bass guitarist Noel Redding.

“I was at the Monterey Pop Festival and all of a sudden, onstage comes this trio dressed up in crazy stuff. And I look and say, ‘Hey, that’s the guy that played guitar with his teeth!’”

Dolenz was dazzled by Hendrix’s performance, which included him famously setting his Fender Stratocaster on fire and smashing the electric guitar to pieces.

“I remembered him… and I was blown away by him and, of course, his talent, and by Noel Redding and Mitch, too,” Dolenz recalls. “It was the most incredible rock blues that we’d ever heard. I was dumbfounded, as everybody was.”

That was in June 1967, by which time Dolenz and the Monkees had a hit NBC TV series, three chart-topping, multi-Platinum albums and three number one singles to their credit. At the time, they were in the midst of planning their first major U.S. tour.

“We were looking for an opening act,” Dolenz remembers, “and I suggested him to the producers of the show. I said, ‘Y’know, he’s very theatrical,’ which he was, of course. And the Monkees, to me, was essentially a theatrical act. We were a TV show, right?

“So I thought it was a good mix, and I loved his music. That had a lot to do with why I recommended it. I was like, ‘Wow, this would be great.’”

File that under “Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.”

Hendrix and company took the tour — over the strenuous objections of Chas Chandler, Hendrix’s producer/manager, who knew the Experience’s electric church would not play well to a female-dominated teen crowd bent on worshipping Dolenz and Monkees mates Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork, with whom Hendrix had become friendly at Monterey. Hendrix was subsequently Tork’s house guest in Laurel Hills, California as well.

Dick Clark, who promoted the tour, recalled later, “I’m positive that there must have been some concerns and skepticism raised, because anybody could have seen it was not a compatible coupling... That’s what [the Monkees] wanted, and the deal was made.

“They fancied themselves as being an attractive coupling. It wasn’t, and the audience was totally lost.”

The tour began on July 8, 1967 in Jacksonville, Florida, about two months after the release of Hendrix’s Are You Experienced album, followed by a sea cruise the next day to celebrate Mitchell’s birthday before a show in Miami that night. The reception was predictable, with Monkees-mania ruling and the Experience playing to chants of “We want the Monkees!” and “We want Davy!”

Less than two weeks into the tour Chandler met with Clark, who agreed to take the band off the bill. The promoter concocted a story that they’d received complaints — including one from the Daughters of the American Revolution — that Hendrix’s performance was “too erotic,” leading to the Experience being “barred from the tour” after eight shows.

Hendrix himself spoke to New Musical Express about the situation some time after.

“Firstly they gave us the ‘death’ spot on the show — right before the Monkees were due on. The audience just screamed and yelled for the Monkees. Finally, they agreed to let us go on first and things were much better. But we were not getting any billing — all the posters for the show just screamed out ‘Monkees!’

“Then some parents who brought their young kids complained that our act was vulgar. We decided it was just the wrong audience. I think they’re replacing me with Mickey Mouse.”

“He felt bad, we felt terrible,” Dolenz says now, “but he knew it wasn’t our fault, and we knew it wasn’t his fault. It comes with the territory. We knew he was still great, and believe you me, Jimi Hendrix would have done just fine without opening for the Monkees.”

Nevertheless, Dolenz adds, “We all became quite good friends. He was very kind, quiet, very gentle, not at all like his onstage persona. We really had a good time hanging out together.”

The Hendrix story is one Dolenz is fond of telling during his Songs and Stories solo shows. He is currently on his 60 Years of the Monkees tour, with dates running to November 13.

Years before Joe Walsh scored solo hits and sawed up hotel rooms with the Eagles, the guitarist was making his mark with the hard rock trio the James Gang. Which is how he came to meet and jam with Jimi Hendrix backstage at a club in 1970 where both acts were billed along with Sly & the Family Stone.

“It was in Youngstown, Ohio,” Walsh said in a 2012 interview with Howard Stern. The James Gang was opening the show and sharing a dressing room with Hendrix.

“We finished, came in, and he’s sitting playing his guitar,” the “Rocky Mountain Way” composer recalls. “And I come in with mine, and we had a jam. I showed him my guitar, and he showed me his.”

Walsh confirms that Hendrix was every bit as sensational as other guitarists have said. When he performed, he notes, the response was “‘what the hell are we doing?’ “That was generally thought by the community."

While he says Hendrix was a “wonderful” guy, his friendliness did little to diminish the weight of his reputation.

“Of course I’m intimidated by him,” Walsh confesses. “I mean, he had an aura; he had feathers on! It was terrifying.”

Still, Walsh had the presence of mind to take notes, hoping to extract the secrets behind Hendrix’s electric guitar magic during “three or four minutes” that felt like a master class.

“I paid attention to his guitar, like, how heavy or light the strings were, and what the action was, because he was a tough one,” says Walsh, who notes that his own guitar was a Les Paul.

“Because he was left-handed, everything was backward. That’s why he sounded like that. None of us right-handed guitar players could do what he was doing. And that’s why we couldn’t crack the code.”

Walsh leaned further into that theory speaking with Guitar Player last year, noting, “It was like you almost had to be on acid to conceive what he was playing.

“One of the reasons people have such a hard time playing like Jimi is that he used an upside-down right-handed Strat, so he had his tremolo bar on the top, by the low-E string,” he explained. “It’s so hard to play like that when you have a regular Strat with a tremolo bar below the high-E string. It requires a different technique.”

Stevie Ray Vaughan used a left-handed tremolo on his iconic right-handed "Number One" Stratocaster primarily as a tribute to Hendrix, whose music he first heard on an album that had been tossed in the trash. Nevertheless, while SRV may have come closest to capturing Jimi’s sonic soul, no one could top him, as Walsh attests.

Before he became one of rock’s most distinctive guitarists, Brian May was a teenager in southwest London trying to find his musical voice. Like many aspiring British players of the era, he was captivated by the guitar heroes emerging from the local club scene. But two musicians in particular would fundamentally alter the way he thought about the instrument: Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.

Speaking about his formative years in a school band called 1984, May recalled regularly performing soul covers by Sam & Dave and Otis Redding before Britain’s psychedelic explosion changed everything.

“We played a mixture of adapted soul stuff,” he said. “It was just pre-psychedelia. We used to try and do a couple of songs of our own. Luckily, as time went on, Pink Floyd, Cream, and Jimi Hendrix came along, and we started doing that.”

The first major revelation came from Eric Clapton during the guitarist’s tenure with the Yardbirds.

“Clapton was unbelievable, just so sparkling and fluid,” May said. “He was what turned me away from the Shadows style and sent me back to listening to B.B. King, Bo Diddley, and all those people I’d heard before.”

At the time, May admitted he had underestimated the blues, viewing it largely as a repetitive form.

“I thought it was all the same: 12-bar blues, and that was it,” he explained. “I didn’t realize the depth or emotion there was in it until I saw Eric Clapton doing it. That somehow made it accessible for me.”

Inspired by Clapton’s playing, May began tracing the guitarist’s influences and immersing himself in the records that had shaped the British blues boom.

“I went back and listened to his influences,” he said. “I listened to Clapton very closely, and to people like Mike Bloomfield on the first album by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.”

May was equally enthralled by Jeff Beck, who replaced Clapton in the Yardbirds and pushed the electric guitar into increasingly adventurous territory.

“I couldn't believe what he could do,” May recalled. “I remember seeing him put the guitar down, make it feedback, and play a whole tune without even touching the fingerboard. That was the first time I saw a Les Paul guitar. I saw a gig at the Marquee soon after Beck had joined, and Eric Clapton came on and jammed at the end. That was pretty amazing; I'll never forget that.“

But even the combined impact of those two British guitar giants could not prepare him for what came next.

After years of developing his own expressive approach to the instrument, May believed he was beginning to achieve the sounds he heard in his head.

“I was beginning to make the guitar sort of talk,” he recalled. “I always wanted the guitar to play for people, to talk the same way a vocal did and have feeling in it.”

Then he encountered Hendrix.

“When I saw Hendrix, I thought, Oh my God. This guy is doing everything that I was trying to do.”

The experience was humbling.

“He just made me feel like I couldn’t play,” May said. “It makes you feel very uncomfortable when you thought you knew everything that was going on, and then suddenly somebody comes along who seems to be doing all sorts of things you hadn’t even thought of.”

Initially, May suspected that some of Hendrix’s seemingly impossible sounds might have been studio trickery. Hearing the guitarist’s conversation-like soloing on “Stone Free,” he wondered whether recording techniques were responsible.

That skepticism vanished when he saw Hendrix perform live at London’s Savoy Theatre while supporting the Who.

“He completely blew me away,” May said. “I thought, ‘He’s it.’”

The impact was so overwhelming that May believed even one of Britain’s biggest bands couldn’t compete.

“The Who couldn’t follow him in those days,” he said. “Anybody in the world would find it hard to follow Hendrix.”

The lessons May absorbed from both players would remain central to his own style. From Clapton, he learned that blues guitar could communicate emotion and nuance — even if he did once earn Slowhand’s wrath when he and Eddie Van Halen dedicated a blues jam to the guitarist that Clapton called “so horrible.” From Hendrix, he discovered that the instrument’s expressive possibilities were far broader than he had imagined.

Those influences would eventually help shape the singular voice May developed with Queen — a style capable of singing, soaring, and, just as he had always wanted, making a guitar talk.

For most guitarists, playing a Jimi Hendrix Strat is the stuff of fantasy. For Ray Toro, it became a year-long reality — even if the Fender Stratocaster itself was, in his words, “beat to shit.”

Toro has always shown an appreciation for rock’s formative electric guitar heroes, and though he calls himself a die-hard “Les Paul guy,” the chance to spend time with a Hendrix Strat was too good to pass up.

Brian May’s stacked harmonies, Tom Petty’s gift for hitmaking and the Beatles’ boundary-pushing have all informed Toro’s voice on the instrument, albeit filtered through My Chemical Romance’s hyper-successful emo-rock lens. As a guitarist, he’s a prime example of how rock’s roots can be reshaped for modern audiences. One guitar, though, helped him connect with the past more than ever.

“I’m still a Les Paul player, but recently I had the chance to play one of Jimi Hendrix’s Strats,” he told Guitar World in a recently republished interview from 2011. “Totally mind-blowing.”

The interview appeared shortly after the release of the band’s fourth album, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, the follow-up to 2006’s Grammy-nominated The Black Parade. As Toro explained in it, Danger Days was difficult to make. The band was burnt out from touring behind The Black Parade and had trouble finding their footing.

When they did, it was in the proto-punk sounds of the 1960s and ’70s, with a heavy sprinkling of psychedelia. For Toro, the Hendrix Strat was particularly inspiring.

“This guy, Jimmy, from Mates Rehearsal Studios in California, had one,” Toro recalled. “I had shown up at the studio and didn’t have a guitar to play, so Jimmy let me use this Hendrix Strat that he got from Jimi’s old guitar tech.

“The thing was beat to shit,” he said, “but it was the best-playing guitar ever. I played it for a year — Jimmy let me use it in the studio. Man, I loved that.”

The year-long experience with one of Hendrix’s Fender Stratocasters — which, as a right-handed player, Toro could finally play the “right” way around — also made him rethink his own guitar arsenal.

“Live, I’m still a Les Paul guy, but playing Jimi Hendrix’s Strat really got me interested in Strats and other guitars,” Toro admitted. “In fact, I’m in desperate search for the ultimate Tele to play. If I can find one, I’m there.”

A similar sentiment has been voiced by modern blues heavyweight Kenny Wayne Shepherd, who has had the opportunity to play several historic Stratocasters courtesy of the late Jim Irsay, including David Gilmour’s Black Strat and Hendrix’s Woodstock Strat. For Shepherd, those experiences underscored just how far ahead of the curve Hendrix truly was.

“He was incredibly innovative, especially if you consider the technology — or the lack of technology — that was available to him back then,” Shepherd said (via Loudwire Nights on Demand).

“He had, like, three pedals in his rig, because that was basically every pedal available at the time. And it’s amazing — all the ideas and sounds he was able to create with such limited resources.”

As for Toro’s Telecaster quest, it appears to have paid off. A 2005 Custom Shop model became one of his most-used guitars on the band’s 2025 tour.

“It’s everything you’d want out of a Tele,” his tech, Josh Schreibeis, told Premier Guitar last year. “There’s a stretch of about five or six songs where it’s used, and it sounds amazing. For ‘Mama’ particularly, it’s really spanky. It’s perfect with a [Fender] Deluxe.”

The estates of Jimi Hendrix’s former Experience bandmates have lost a lawsuit seeking back royalties for their work on his recordings, after a High Court judge ruled that the relevant recording agreements clearly assigned copyright to the producers.

Bass guitarist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience with Hendrix in 1966. The trio went on to perform on Hendrix’s first three albums — Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland — as well as a range of singles and non-album tracks that helped define the electric guitarist’s breakthrough career.

The lawsuit, brought against Sony Music Entertainment UK, alleged that Redding and Mitchell were excluded from royalties during their lifetimes and “died in relative poverty,” despite the continued commercial success of Hendrix’s catalog. It further claimed that their successors were entitled to a share of ongoing revenues but had been excluded by the administrators of Hendrix’s estate.

Redding died in 2003 at age 57, and Mitchell died in 2008 at age 62.

Sony Music’s legal team argued that under the original recording agreements, copyright in the master recordings was held by the producers rather than the performing musicians.

The High Court of Justice rejected the estates’ claim. In a ruling issued April 28, Mr Justice Johnson said the contractual language was “clear and unequivocal.”

“The producers and the band members agreed that the producers would have the copyright throughout the world in the recordings,” he said. “There was no temporal or territorial limitation to this agreement.”

In the ruling, the court effectively upheld Sony’s interpretation of the agreements, finding that the contractual terms governed ownership of the recordings and left no scope for the claims advanced by the estates.

Following the decision, Janie Hendrix, sister of the late guitarist and chief executive of Experience Hendrix, said she had “nothing but positive memories of Noel and Mitch.”

“Experience Hendrix’s longstanding relationships with both reflect a consistent commitment to honoring and supporting the musicians who were part of Jimi Hendrix’s history,” she said.

The case also underscores the stark contrast between Hendrix’s financial position at the time of his death and the subsequent value of his catalog. When the electric guitar innovator died in 1970 at age 27, he reportedly had around $20,000 in his bank account and outstanding debts. Today, his estate is estimated to be worth more than $175 million, driven by ongoing royalties, licensing and merchandising.

Throughout his 60-year career, guitarist Dave Mason played on dozens of celebrated recordings and with many of classic rock’s biggest names. After getting his start in 1967 as a member of Traffic — alongside Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood — Mason pursued a solo career that saw him work on All Things Must Pass by George Harrison, with Paul McCartney and Wings on their first number one (“Listen to What the Man Said”), and in Fleetwood Mac, where he filled in from 1993 to 1995 as lead guitarist and vocalist during a post-Lindsey Buckingham/Stevie Nicks era.

Mason — who died on April 19, 2026, at the age of 79 — saw less fame on his own, despite his talents as a guitarist, singer and songwriter, but what success he had continues to shine through the years. His sole solo hit, 1977’s “We Just Disagree” (written by Jim Krueger), remains a favorite on classic rock radio.

For that matter, two of his songs became longstanding hits in the hands of other artists: “Only You Know and I Know” became a signature song for Delaney & Bonnie, while “Feelin’ Alright?” became a signature hit for Joe Cocker after it failed to catch fire for Traffic.

Indeed, Mason was something of a musical Zelig, using his myriad talents to accommodate the more famous artists in whose company he found himself. As a member of Delaney & Bonnie’s troupe in 1970, he found himself enlisted in the original incarnation of Derek and the Dominos, formed by Eric Clapton and other members of the Bramletts’ band. But after performing at the group’s debut gig, he declined to go any further due to drug use by both Clapton and drummer Jim Gordon.

“I knew all the guys and we worked well together. But unbeknownst to me, the problem was that Jim Gordon got Eric into heroin and things just bogged down,” he told Guitar Player in 2024. “That was the problem for me, so I just went, ‘You know, guys, I’m out.’

“I’ve never touched the stuff and I didn’t want to be around it. I was never into that laid-back junkie mentality, though it took me a long time and many people to understand what they were up to. My habit was the other way — stimulants. Like, ‘Let’s get going!’”

Mason was also in the room during the making of two Jimi Hendrix albums: Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland.

“I got to know Hendrix a bit when he was becoming a sensation in London,” Mason told Guitar Player. “You have to understand that in England in the ’60s, unlike America, everybody was all in one place: London.

“There were just four or five studios where we all worked, and three or four after-hours clubs where we hung out. So everybody ran into everybody in a manner that would be hard to understand if you weren’t there.”

As Hendrix manager Chas Chandler told Guitar World in 1992, the guitarist began hanging out steadily with Mason around the time he recorded Axis: Bold as Love in 1967.

“Traffic guitarist Dave Mason came to a lot of our sessions,” Chandler recalled. “One time he brought a sitar, which Hendrix picked up to play. After trying a song, Hendrix put it down and said, ‘That’s the last goddamn time I play that instrument.’ He was awful.”

Mason showed up in Hendrix’s world again during the recording of “All Along the Watchtower,” from 1968’s Electric Ladyland. Mason seemed to be in his element as a behind-the-scenes helper. According to the 1992 Guitar World article, he even chauffeured second engineer Andy Johns to his flat in south London to retrieve the 12-string guitar used on the track.

Mason played the 12-string on “All Along the Watchtower,” accompanied by Hendrix on a six-string acoustic and — as Mason reportedly said — “a pound of reverb.” Their accented rhythm pattern is the driving force behind the song, but engineer Eddie Kramer said it stymied Mason, who couldn’t determine when to change chords in the unusual rhythm pattern.

“Jimi kept screaming at him, ‘Get it right,’ because he couldn’t remember the changes,” Kramer told Guitar World in 1985.

Mason, ever helpful, stuck with Hendrix through the session.

“It took me 10 or 11 takes to get the timing on the intro right, and Jimi easily could have just done it,” he explained to Guitar Player. “I stayed and watched the whole session, with him putting bass and electric guitar on the track, and it was one of the most incredible, inspiring musical experiences I’ve ever had. Absolutely inspiring to watch him work.”

When bassist Noel Redding stormed out, exhausted by Hendrix’s perfectionist ways, Mason took over on bass, although Hendrix eventually overdubbed his own part.

Mason was content to play behind the scenes and remained clear-eyed and appreciative when it came to his role in music. “I’m kind of the Forrest Gump of rock,” Mason told USA Today in 2024.

The guitarist took a break from touring that year after the discovery of a serious but undisclosed heart ailment. His death was, reportedly, peaceful — Mason is said to have passed away in his chair after cooking dinner with his wife.

He wrote about his life and work in his memoir, Only You Know & I Know, and made the uncommon decision to include comments from his friends and collaborators — further evidence of his ability to work with others in pursuit of excellence.

“Originally I was going to let all the ex-wives say whatever they want. I thought that would have been fun,” Mason joked. “But then I thought the people who have been significant in my life, I wanted to get their take from another point of view.”

Todd Rundgren has made a career of surprising and sometimes confounding his fans. The first time was in 1973, when he abandoned the three-minute pop stylings of hits like “I Saw the Light” and “Hello It’s Me” to create the prog-psychedelic album A Wizard/A True Star.

The second occurred three years later, when he released his seventh solo release, Faithful.

Coming 12 months after his progressive-rock album Initiation, Faithful raised Toddophiles’ eyebrows with its first side, which included covers of songs by the Yardbirds, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. True to the title, the tracks were recorded to sound as faithful to the originals as possible, right down to the electric guitar tones of "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” and the layered harmonies of “Good Vibrations.”

For Rundgren, who produced the set and recorded it with members of his group Utopia — keyboardist Roger Powell, bassist John Siegler and drummer John “Willie” Wilcox — Faithful was both an exercise and a tribute.

“I was, in a sense, 10 years in the business at that point, and so much had changed,” he tells us via Zoom from his home in Hawaii. “When I turned 18 and graduated from high school, that was for me a banner year. It was the year Sgt. Pepper’s came out, so there were all kinds of cultural shifts going on.

“The most important thing from my standpoint was radio was not yet syndicated, before everybody was playing the same thing from the same playlist. So it was all local, and the local DJs and program directors had control over what got played.

“I remember listening to the radio in Philadelphia and you’d hear anything at all; it would be Judy Collins and then Bill Evans and a symphony orchestra and then the new Beatles single, then a blues record or something like that. There was a sort of freedom — and a lot of it was due to the Beatles, because they would constantly genre-hop and invent a new thing.

“So I wanted to pay tribute to that. That’s why all the songs are so different — a Bob Dylan song and a Beatles song, a Yardbirds song — all the bands I liked to hear. That’s also why it was all covers on side one, and why they were so sort of literal in terms of production. It was supposed to put you in a place 10 years prior.”

Two of Rundgren’s choices for Faithful — particularly the Yardbirds’ “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” and the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “If 6 Was 9” — also provided a fascinating primer in the evolution of his guitar approach and orientation. He had already imitated Hendrix on the track “Little Red Lights,” from his 1972 album Something/Anything?

“‘Little Red Lights’ is kind of my version of ‘Crosstown Traffic,’ and I use all of those Jimi techniques to make motorcycle noise and car rumbling noises and things like that.” He applied the same effect on Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell when producing it in 1975 and ’76. “It was just a fun, goofy trick that doesn’t have anything to do with playing — just kind of noise you make. It became a signature thing for Jimi Hendrix.”

But Rundgren says Hendrix wasn’t his initial influence.

“In those days there were kind of two camps. I came out of the Yardbirds camp — the Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck kind of things — and you played a Gibson guitar. I played a Les Paul, which had no wangle bar on it — no tremolo tailpiece on it. Jimi played a Stratocaster and made full use of the wangle bar. I personally didn’t have the sense of freedom that Jimi Hendrix had in the sense that he might not play the same thing every time.

“A lot of what I was listening to before that were kind of classical guitar solos that Beck and Clapton would play, and you would learn those literally in the same way you would learn every George Harrison guitar solo — literally. They’re like primers in guitar playing; you’d learn how to play this melody and be expected to play it at the drop of a hat.”

That was no easy feat, he adds.

“One of the seminal listening moments in my lifetime was when I heard ‘Shapes of Things’ on the radio. The way Jeff Beck played guitar wasn’t, like, playing guitar; it was imitating a sitar guitar, all weird kinds of intervals and weird kinds of pushes and trills and things like that.

“And I was totally freaked out: ‘This is a guitar? Wait a minute!’ It was one of the things that kind of cemented my love of the instrument: ‘You can do that with it as well?’ So, yes, I strove, like everyone else did, to try and figure out how that was done.

“And ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ was kind of like the same sort of thing. The remarkable thing was they did them in different studios. It wasn’t like a thing that they worked on and developed; they just extemporaneously would start flipping the tape around and splicing solos together and all sorts of nonlinear ways of creating a texture that was sort of mysterious, in that you weren’t sure what the melody was. Little fleeting bits of melody would come in and out of drones and whistles and all kinds of other effects.

“The Bluesbreakers album was also sort of a revelation, because nobody had completed a transformation like that in the way Eric Clapton had in his so-called woodshedding period. He went away as one kind of guitar player and came back as a completely different guitar player.

“And the combination of how he got that sound and the soloing on the record — suddenly that was my new god. Now I had to learn every single one of those solos and strive for that tone and play that guitar, the Les Paul.”

On his way to Hendrix and “to start thinking in other ways,” however, Rundgren crossed paths — literally, in this case — with Hendrix just once.

Living in New York during the late ’60s, he was a regular at Steve Paul’s The Scene, a famous no-alcohol club that hosted a who’s who of burgeoning rock bands. It was here Rundgren met brothers Hunt and Tony Sales, the drummer and bass guitarist, respectively, who backed him on his first two solo albums after he departed Nazz, the Philadelphia-based quartet he formed in 1967.

“It was notorious for having jam sessions after the regular show,” he recalls of The Scene, “so every night there’d be a jam session. That would often be the reason why you were there. Some nights you’d get up and jam; some nights you’d just watch.

“I was there one night and some kind of jam was going on. It might’ve been Duane Allman and Buddy Miles. If Duane’s got a guitar in his hands and he’s onstage, nobody gets a note in edgewise. He just never stops. He ignores every other guitar player. It’s not really a jam session when he was there.

“I was leaving one of these things, and as I’m walking out this kind of short guy with a big Afro walks by. I didn’t pay attention to who it was, and I heard later it was Jimi Hendrix. I guess the reason I missed him was I expected him to be taller. He was a relatively petite guy; even with his hair he wasn’t as tall as I was.

“So I guess I was expecting somebody else. We just walked right by each other. His Afro might have brushed my shoulder. That probably would’ve been my only opportunity to meet him.”

Rundgren, of course, has stayed busier than most artists since the release of Faithful. That includes touring; after a stretch last year as part of the Burt Bacharach Songbook in Concert trek, he’s heading out with his own Damned If I Do Tour, starting June 11 in St. Charles, Illinois, and running through July 19.

He’ll be joined by his regular crew of Kasim Sulton on bass, Prairie Prince on drums, Gil Assayas on keyboards, Bruce McDaniel on guitar and Bobby Strickland playing horns. The itinerary and other information can be found at todd-rundgren.com.

More than 65 years after it began, Carmine Appice still takes pride in the legacy of his band Cactus.

“I always knew Cactus was a musician’s band,” the drummer says.

Appice would know. Over a career that’s taken him from Vanilla Fudge to Beck, Bogert & Appice and a long run in Rod Stewart’s band, he’s played alongside some of rock’s biggest names while co-writing hits such as “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” and “Young Turks.”

Cactus, meanwhile, is still alive, with Appice the only original member remaining. Under the moniker he’s just released a new album, Temple of the Blues II, a follow-up to the 2024 all-star set that features guest appearances by Bumblefoot, Steve Morse, Pat Travers, Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, Ted Nugent, Billy Sheehan, Joe Lynn Turner, Dug Pinnick and many more. The album includes a variety of covers, among them a rendition of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Purple Haze,” sung by Melanie.

The Brooklyn-born drummer, who now resides in Florida, has built a résumé that also includes stints with Mike Bloomfield’s KGB, King Kobra, Pat Travers, Paul Stanley, Blue Murder with John Sykes, a tour with Ozzy Osbourne and extensive work with the late Rick Derringer. His love of guitar greats also led to a series of Guitar Zeus albums collaborating with his friends.

It’s a lot — and Appice wrote extensively about it in his 2016 memoir Stick It!: My Life of Sex, Drums & Rock ’n’ Roll. With a new Cactus album hitting, he shared additional memories via Zoom during a promotional visit to New York City.

Jimi Hendrix

“I’ve got Jimi stories from before he was Jimi Hendrix.

“We used to play the clubs in New York together when he was Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. Right up the block, 72nd Street and Broadway, there was a club called the Lighthouse. Back in the day it was all hookers and drug addicts who used to hang out there.

“We’d play these gigs — I would play 30 minutes with my band, he’d do 30 with his band — and at midnight there’d be a DJ to give us a break for an hour.

“We’d go across the street to a Black prostitute’s apartment and we smoked pot and we looked out the window at Broadway. Jimi would say, ‘Man, I want to make it. I want to get out of this stuff.’ I didn’t know what making it meant — but he really wanted to make it.

“Then when I had Vanilla Fudge and he was Jimi Hendrix, we were over in England and I went to this club called the Speakeasy. And there he was! He goes, ‘Who you with?’ I said, ‘Vanilla Fudge.’ He said, ‘Man, I love the Fudge,’ and that was the start of reuniting our friendship.

“We played I don’t know how many shows with Hendrix. The very first Cactus show was at a festival, I think in Philadelphia, with Jimi. We hung out with Hendrix all the time, and Jim McCarty went to London and hung out with him a day or two before he died.”

Jeff Beck (Beck, Bogert & Appice, aka BBA)

“Vince Martell was a great rhythm guitarist for the Fudge, but it was more of an organ band. Nobody played like him, and he had a really great feel for that.

“The thing that changed it for me was when we did a Coke commercial. They hired us to play a song for a radio commercial. Vinnie got sick, so Jeff Beck played with us. And he was freakin’ amazing.

“That’s when me and Tim said, ‘Wow, we’d love to play with Jeff Beck.’ A few years later we played on a bill with the Edwin Hawkins Singers, Ten Years After and the Jeff Beck Group, with Vanilla Fudge headlining. But then Led Zeppelin went up and jammed with the Jeff Beck Group — how do you follow that, right?

“But it was at that show [Led Zeppelin drummer] John Bonham came to me and said, ‘Hey, Jeff Beck wants to play with you and Tim [Bogert]. Here’s his number.’ And that’s what started it.

“I helped develop the jazz Jeff Beck. When we would drive in the car I would listen to Billy Cobham, Mahavishnu…. He didn’t know anything about that at the time. When Beck, Bogert & Appice broke up, I went to England and I played on Blow by Blow, but it didn’t work out ’cause they wanted it to be a Jeff Beck album, not Jeff Beck and Carmine Appice. [Appice’s parts were edited out and re-recorded due to the dispute.]

“Then I was jealous that the album sold two million copies. But I realized recently, in the last couple of years, that if I would’ve done that with Jeff Beck I wouldn’t have played with Rod Stewart. And Rod Stewart reinvented my whole career.”

Rod Stewart

“My friend Sandy Gennaro, who played with Cyndi Lauper and a bunch of people later, told me he’d just auditioned for Rod Stewart and didn’t get it. He said, ‘You should do it,’ and gave me the number for this guy Pete Buckland, who was the tour manager. We’d just done 30 shows with Cactus and the Faces, so I knew Pete Buckland. So I called him.

“I went to Rod’s house and went in. There was [guitarist] Jim Cregan and [bass guitarist] Phil Chen, who I knew from Blow by Blow. We played, and it was like magic. Rod was coming back the next day and we had a play with Rod, and he said, ‘Look, you got the gig if you want it. Just play like you played in Cactus.’

“That exploded my career again. I ended up co-writing ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy,’ the biggest song Rod’s ever had, and I co-wrote ‘Young Turks.’ I started doing clinics. Rod used to say, ‘Don’t just do clinics. Make them an event.’ So I did, and I started giving money to charity. It made it bigger. It just exploded my career again.

“I had a solo album come out, on Rod’s label, and he had already fired me from the band. When he wrote the intro for my autobiography, he said, ‘I fired Carmine. Fuck knows why.’ We ended up being friends again. We email each other; he doesn’t answer all the time — he’s Rod Stewart.”

Rick Derringer

“He was my friend from 1970, when he was working with Johnny Winter And. He lived in L.A., and we did a lot of stuff together. He produced Weird Al [Yankovic], and he wanted a better bass drum sound. He said, ‘Carmine, can you give me one or two of your bass drums?’ It’s funny that my bass drum’s on a Weird Al song — a bunch of ’em.

“We did the Derringer and Appice album. Later on I took Rick to Japan with me; it was me and Rick Derringer, [keyboardist/guitarist] Duane Hitchings, [Cheap Trick bass guitarist] Tom Petersson and Eric Carmen. That was such a weird combination with all of us playing [Carmen’s 1975 hit] ‘All by Myself,’ with Rick on guitar and all that. And we did another album, called Doing Business As, under the band name Derringer Bogert Appice.

“I was in touch with Rick and his wife a lot about some business stuff, and then he got really sick in January of last year. He had a triple bypass, he had diabetes — his toe had to be cut off. He wasn’t playing. The last conversation I had with him I said, ‘Don’t you miss playing?’ He said, ‘No, not that much. But I just ordered a new B.C. Rich electric. I’m looking forward to getting it.’ And he died the next day. That was terrible.”

After building a career as a pop and jazz session guitarist in 1960s London, John McLaughlin crossed the Atlantic in 1969 to join Tony Williams’ group Lifetime.

The move dropped him in the center of New York’s music scene, where he would spend time in Greenwich Village jamming with Jimi Hendrix and absorbing the city’s jazz culture.

It also resulted in him performing on an album that would become the foundation for the 1970s jazz-fusion genre: Miles Davis’s 1969 release, In a Silent Way.

As McLaughlin recalls, that session date came a mere two days after he arrived in America. It proved to be a decisive moment in his career when, at Davis’s urging, he was told to take the lead on Joe Zawinul’s title composition.

“Miles just happened to scoop me up, because he wanted a guitar player,” McLaughlin explains. “I was just at the right place at the right time. I’d been in New York for 48 hours, and suddenly I was in a studio with Miles, and, man, it was just unbelievable.

“This was a pivotal moment for Miles, and he’d never heard me play. But since I was playing with Tony Williams, I guess that encouraged Miles.”

Even so, McLaughlin admits he arrived at the session unnerved by Davis’s reputation.

“I came into the studio, and I was shaking," he recalls. "There were all these heavyweight session guys there. They looked at me and said, ‘Who are you?’ I said, ‘I’m the guitar player,’ and they said, ‘We’ve got another guitar player on this session.’”

Assuming Davis had a reason for bringing him in, the musicians handed McLaughlin a photocopied piano score. ”Which I couldn’t read,” he adds.

“And then Miles came in. We tried ‘In a Silent Way’ a couple of times, and he didn’t like it. I could feel the sweat pouring down. I knew there was no way I could do this piano score on guitar.”

Then, unexpectedly, Davis turned to him.

“He asked me to play it alone on the guitar.”

The only instruction he offered was characteristically opaque.

“Miles goes, ‘Play like you don’t know how to play guitar.’ It was the kind of thing he was known for saying. He’d make these cryptic statements and never really told anyone how to play.

“But it wiped my mind, and from that point I thought, ‘I’m here in a Miles Davis session. It’s do or die.’

“I basically threw out all the harmony and played it in E major. The recording light was already on, and the tune just went its own way from the start.

“I sweated a lot, but in the end, the actual direction of the recording of the tune was left to me by Miles himself.”

The result shocked even McLaughlin.

“Afterward, I was not only surprised that Miles really liked what I had done, I was astonished that he had been able to pull something out of me that I would never have imagined.”

McLaughlin would go on to appear on a run of Davis’s landmark recordings from the 1969–1972 fusion era, including Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, and On the Corner.

Despite his own groundbreaking work with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, he still credits Davis as the pivotal force in his career.

“Where would I be without Miles? I don’t even want to think. He’s been my hero since I was 15 or 16. He was my hero of heroes. The last thing I expected was to be playing with him.

“He was beautiful. I know he has a reputation for being very caustic, but he was just honest with everybody. He loved his musicians, and he took care of them.”

At the start of 1969, Jimi Hendrix was not a regular fixture on British television. In fact, his last appearance had come more than a year earlier, on August 24, 1967, when the electric guitar trailblazer made his fourth and final turn on Top of the Pops.

So when it was announced that Hendrix and the Experience would perform live on the January 4 edition of Happening for Lulu, anticipation ran high. The program, hosted by Scottish pop star Lulu — then best known in the U.S. for her 1966 hit “To Sir, With Love” — was hardly an obvious platform for one of rock’s most unpredictable acts. That mismatch would prove decisive.

The booking would result in Hendrix’s final appearance on British TV — and one of the most notorious. By the end of the broadcast, he had effectively ensured he wouldn’t be invited back.

The flashpoint came in the form of an unscripted tribute to Cream, the then-recently dissolved power trio featuring Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker.

Hendrix opened with a blistering, wah-drenched take on “Voodoo Chile,” then moved into “Hey Joe,” the song that had introduced him on record in late 1966. According to bass guitarist Noel Redding, producers had proposed bringing Lulu back onstage to share the final verse — an idea the band rejected outright.

Instead, just as the performance seemed to be concluding, Hendrix abruptly derailed the format.

“Well, let’s stop playing this rubbish and dedicate a song to Cream,” he told the audience. “Regardless of what group they might be, I’d like to dedicate this to Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce.”

With that, the Experience launched into an impromptu version of “Sunshine of Your Love.” It was loose, loud and — crucially — far longer than the show’s tightly controlled running time allowed. Producers made the decision to cut the show off in the middle of the performance, rather than run past their allotted time.

For the BBC, it was a breach of protocol they didn’t take lightly. Hendrix was subsequently barred from further appearances on BBC television and effectively shut out of its radio platforms.

He would die less than two years later, in September 1970, making the Lulu broadcast both his last British TV performance and a fitting encapsulation of his refusal to be contained by format, expectation or authority.

Looking back, Lulu has suggested the incident did more to enhance Hendrix’s legend than diminish it. Speaking years later, she recalled that the ban only amplified his appeal: the sense that anything might happen when he picked up a guitar — even, or especially, on live television.

“They wouldn’ta play him on the radio, then they wouldn’t put him on any television shows,” she recounted incorrectly, “but I think it made him more popular than ever.”

Others have framed Hendrix’s impact in similarly seismic terms. Jeff Beck would later say his arrival fundamentally reshaped the instrument’s possibilities, while Joe Walsh has ranked him alongside Beck and Clapton when naming the greatest guitar soloists — a measure of how enduring that brief, chaotic TV moment has proven to be.

Frank Zappa’s music was known for pushing boundaries, but his former guitarist Steve Vai says what he did to his collection of electric guitars was just as revolutionary. He even took a screwdriver to one of Jimi Hendrix’s most famous instruments.

Vai — who would later enjoy stints with David Lee Roth and Whitesnake following his time as Zappa’s onstage foil — learned a lot from the madcap musician. Beyond having his musical capabilities stretched to breaking point, and hearing Zappa prophesy his future as a guitarist, Vai also learned why he shouldn’t be afraid to hack away at his beloved instruments.

“Frank was completely irreverent when it came to guitars,” the guitarist tells the Rocktails with Ahmet Zappa podcast, hosted by Frank’s third child. “He manipulated them and did things to them at a time when it was taboo. Frank would have Midget Sloatman [his guitar tech] go into his little workshop and put in all these electronics.”

One great example of the Zappa-ification of a guitar is his Baby Snakes SG. Among its features were a custom onboard preamp with an 18 dB boost, phase switching and tone-shaping circuitry.

But the experiments weren’t limited to his own guitars. Zappa also modified a guitar Jimi Hendrix had used — and burned — at the 1968 Miami Pop Festival. He had been gifted the instrument in 1977 by Hendrix’s former roadie, Howard Parker, who had rescued it from being left in a dumpster after the show.

“He had the burnt pickups and everything removed,” Vai explains. “He put a parametric EQ in that Hendrix guitar. It was beautiful. And he would use all this stuff.”

It wasn’t long before his bandleader’s mad guitar science rubbed off on him.

“I started thinking, ‘I don’t have to play just a Strat or a Les Paul,’” Vai continues. “‘I can do whatever I want. Frank does it.’

“I went to Performance Guitar in Hollywood, and I said, ‘I want this, and I want that, and I want this,’ and I didn’t know anybody would care what I was doing.”

From his long-standing Ibanez signature JEM to his multi-necked Hydra — and, more recently, his twist on Brian May’s Red Special — Vai has since forged his own wacky luthiery legacy.

Speaking to MusicRadar in 2022, Vai credited Zappa’s “suck it and see” ethos as the precursor to his JEM guitars.

“Frank Zappa had no governor,” he said. “When it came to taking a guitar that Jimi Hendrix burned at a concert and then putting parametric EQs in it — it didn’t matter whose guitar it was. It looked cool. So I decided at one point — and this was simple, innocent, low-hanging fruit, not having any intention of making something that anybody else would be interested in except myself — and what that was, was the JEM.

“When you are doing things innocently, it’s not like you feel like you are being blasphemous. Like it’s blasphemous to put a whammy bar on a Les Paul? Fuck you! I’ll do what I want!”

Elsewhere, Vai has shocked Brian May by revealing a 1970s encounter the Queen guitarist was unaware of, and has named the one player he felt was even more revolutionary than Hendrix.

Jimi Hendrix changed the music so entirely in 1966 that, within months of his arrival in England, established guitarists were wrestling with how to respond. Jeff Beck told Guitar Player, “It was a horrible time, really. Not because of him, but because of the fact that he swept us all aside and put us in a bin.”

Pete Townshend, realizing he could never better or even equal Hendrix’s guitar talents, decided to focus on his song craft. “He came along and, kind of like in early punk, just swept everything aside,” Townshend told Guitar Player in 1989, in terms remarkably similar to Beck‘s. ”I had to learn to write, and it became like a new art, from a new angle.” The results were revealed in the Who’s pioneering 1969 rock opera, Tommy.

But what about Clapton? From the start, he knew he’d met his match in Hendrix. When, just a few weeks after his arrival in London, Jimi crashed a Cream gig and asked if he could play, Clapton was so stunned by what he heard that he had to leave the stage.

Rather than run from his challenger, Clapton forged a friendship with him. He also permed his hair and plugged his electric guitar into a wah pedal, making him the first, and most visible, guitarist in rock to try to channel Hendrix’s mojo.

But inside, Clapton was as frustrated as Beck and Townshend. That was partly because Hendrix had achieved what he had hoped to when he first saw Buddy Guy perform with a trio in London. Clapton had been so thoroughly convinced by Guy that he left John Mayall and the Blues Breakers in July 1966, at the height of his fame, to form Cream, with the intention of following in Guy’s footsteps with his own power trio.

But Hendrix got their first. What’s more, Hendrix was the real deal, not a copy.

“Although I was with Cream, I had fantasies of incorporating all of that Buddy Guy–like showman stuff into my act,” Clapton told Guitar Player in 2004. “But when Jimi showed up and did it all for real, it burst my bubble. I realized then that I had to look at Cream as a band, and forget about my little solo odyssey.”

Clapton was also floored that Hendrix, an American, had come to England to find fame. Like his fellow British musicians, Clapton was looking toward America as the place to stake his claim in rock.

“What was even more of a shock was that Hendrix was part of America coming to England to take over, while we were all going to America trying to take it by storm,” he said. “Cream was cutting Disraeli Gears at Atlantic Studios in New York while he was cutting Are You Experienced in London. Then, when we came back to England with that album, no one wanted to know, and I was pissed for a little while.”

Speaking of which, Disraeli Gears is the album that most shows Hendrix’s influence on Clapton. “I was full-tilt on the wah pedal for a year-and-a-half,” he says.

But Clapton was also cutting his own path. It was here that his famed “woman tone” came about, the result of rolling off his Gibson SG’s tone control.

“I used the bridge pickup, but with the tone control all the way off, so it was all just bottom end, and then I played on the high strings, getting a really fat tone and feeding back,” he explained. “I just played like that all the time. Even with power chords, there was never any variation in my tone.

“It was much later that I came to the Stratocaster, and I think that was because of Jimi. He could get more tonal variation out of that instrument than I ever thought possible. I knew about the Buddy Holly, thin bridge-pickup sound, but I didn't know that it was possible to get the Strat to sound really big, or get it to feed back in tune-which was very easy with a Les Paul. And then, when I started playing around with the Strat, I realized it was nice to be able to play clean, too.”

Like Beck and Townshend, Clapton eventually found a path through Hendrix’s scorched earth. Through the stripped-back roots music of Band guitarist Robbie Robertson and the influence of American country guitarist Delaney Bramlett and his group, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, Clapton was led to the birthplace of the blues and the music of Robert Johnson. Unlike the world of late 1960s blues rock, there was nothing to compete with — just music from which to live and learn.

“The blues is a strange phenomenon,” he concluded in his 2004 chat with Guitar Player. “I’ve always thought it was rather funny and ironic when I'd see footage of interviewers actually asking people like John Lee Hooker what the blues is. I've heard those old guys say some really funny things — either profound or ridiculous.

“My way of putting it is that it's a set of rules imbued with deep emotion. But, of course, that doesn't really describe anything at all. The blues is a strange phenomenon, and I'm certainly not bigger than it.”

“I’ve been lucky in my life with the people I’ve worked with,” says Andy Fairweather Low. “‘Blessed’ is the word I would use to best describe it.”

Prior to becoming a regular sideman for the likes of Eric Clapton and Roger Waters, and a gun-for-hire guitarist for sessions that included those for Gerry Rafferty, the Who, and David Crosby — to name but a few—the Welsh guitarist was lead vocalist with 1960s pop combo Amen Corner. During their run, he played gigs with acts of the day that included Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix.

Soon after their split in late 1969, he embarked on a prolific solo career. But it’s his work with Waters and Clapton — where Low featured on both recordings and tours—that etched his guitar-playing reputation into stone.

We tapped him for memories of his time with some of rock’s biggest artists, including Clapton, Waters, Hendrix, Pete Townshend and former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman.

Jimi Hendrix

“In November 1967, Amen Corner were on a U.K. package tour with Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, the Move, the Nice, Eire Apparent and the Outer Limits. [Northern Ireland’s Eire Apparent featured future Spooky Tooth/Wings guitarist Henry McCullough and were noted for having Hendrix produce and play on their only album].

“The shows were sometimes a bit lively and a bit out there, and the places we played were concrete town halls. In Sheffield, Jimi ended the set by smashing up the drums. Then in Newcastle, he sent his Flying V into the Marshall cab and proceeded to smash it.

“Apparently, Jimi liked our group. Kathy Etchingham, his girlfriend at the time, was asked what Jimi thought of the other acts on the bill, like Pink Floyd and the Nice. She said, ‘Well, actually Jimi didn’t really think too much about anything, but he did think that Amen Corner were all right.’

“A couple of years later, I was in New York and Jimi asked me to come down to the studio to do some backing vocals on a new version of ‘Stone Free.’ [The April 1969 sessions produced a finished track that was first released on the 1975 album Crash Landing.]

“[Engineer] Eddie Kramer was there taking care of everything, and my friend Roger Chapman was there as well. We both ended up putting backing vocals to the song. But in my humble opinion, the original ‘Stone Free’ was absolutely the best version.”

Bill Wyman

“The first time I saw Bill was with the Rolling Stones, at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, Wales, on February 28, 1964. That was the night that changed my whole life. That’s when I knew I wanted to be a guitar player.

“But my association with Bill began during the ARMS Charity Concerts in 1983. [The star-studded shows featuring Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and many others supported Action into Research for Multiple Sclerosis and were created by ex-Faces bassist Ronnie Lane, who had MS.]. That’s when our friendship really began. Because the tour was to raise money for Ronnie Lane, Bill then came up with the idea of putting an album together to raise even more money for the cause to help people with multiple sclerosis. So he put together the Willie & the Poor Boys album, and I got involved in that.

“While we’re making it, Bill had to go off to do some work with the Stones in Paris. He asked if I would produce a pair of songs for the album featuring Jimmy Page and Paul Rodgers while he was away. So I put a band together, with Jimmy Page on guitar, Paul on vocals and me on bass, and we did ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’’ and ‘These Arms of Mine.’ They turned out really well.

“Soon afterward, Bill and I were in a taxi on the way to do a breakfast TV show when he told me, ‘They’ve agreed to do a video for “These Arms of Mine,” but they don’t want you in it.’ The double whammy was when Bill’s manager asked to have Bill credited for my bass playing because he was known as a bassist.”

Pete Townshend

“The first time I saw Pete was with the Who in 1965, and I might add, there weren’t many people there either. But god, the energy!

“I was staying at [producer] Glyn Johns’ house while he was working on the Who’s Who Are You album and Pete said, ‘Tell Andy to come in to do some backing vocals.’ So I did and ended up singing on ‘Who Are You,’ and five other songs too.

“On that album Pete was plugging his guitar directly into the board. [Townshend had a preamp that he plugged into a compressor and straight into the mixing console, and which he says he “used a lot on Who Are You.”] Plugging into the board is generally a shit sound, but when Pete plugged in and banged an A chord… My god, the attack! You could cut metal with it. Nobody plays an A chord like Pete.”

Roger Waters

“My first encounter with Roger was on that November 1967 U.K. package tour with Jimi Hendrix. We had an issue. Our manager at the time was Ron King, who was an associate of the Krays [the famed British organized-crime kingpins Ronnie and Reggie Kray]. Roger had shouted at me — mind you I was still only a teenager — for touching a Leslie speaker. Ron heard it and told Roger, ‘If you do that again, I’ll break your fucking legs!’ Ron was connected. He meant it.

“I never understood the Floyd back then at all. I kept thinking to myself, Where’s the backbeat? Their first song in their short set on that tour was ‘Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,’ and the song absolutely baffled me. The irony is that it became my favorite song to play when I was in Roger’s band later on.

“Here’s how that happened: Eric Clapton had been in Roger’s band for his Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking album and tour. Afterward, when Roger made his Radio K.A.O.S. album, he reached out to me: ‘Roger Waters here, we’d like you to come up and see if we get on.’

“The night before I went to his studio, I had been working with Bill Wyman and had drunk at least a liter of a red wine. I woke up at 9:00 a.m., not feeling great. I rushed to the studio and Roger asked me to play on a track. And we didn’t just ‘get on’—we really got on!

“Soon afterward I went to work for Roger — for 24 years! He likes to laugh, and I like working with people who can laugh. I know what you’re thinking about Roger, but take it from me: I was there for 24 fabulous years. I wouldn’t have stayed if it wasn’t. I had a great time learning about how to put a show on, the dynamics, lighting, visuals… you name it.

“After that I did the In the Flesh tour, the Dark Side of the Moon Live tour… And we always had the best food, the best wine, the best travel, the best company. Roger gave me so much respect, loyalty, support and encouragement. He’s a true friend to this day, and a bloody force of nature.”

Eric Clapton

“My first tour with Eric Clapton was ARMS in 1984, but my first time as a member of his band was when he and his group backed George Harrison in 1990 on a tour of Japan. On the first day of rehearsals, Eric asked me to join his band permanently. From there, I ended up on the acoustic Unplugged album, and the rest is sort of my history with him.

“I’m so proud to be on From the Cradle. It’s my favorite Eric album, as he was absolutely playing at the top of his game. I’ve also been back in the band a few times since too. In fact, in 2023 I did three weeks in America with him, and we finished up at the Crossroads Guitar Festival.

“I loved every rehearsal, every recording, every live gig I did with Eric. I got paid well, I traveled well, I ate and slept well. It was wonderful to work for him. Eric liked to laugh too, and as I mentioned earlier, I like working for people who like to laugh and I never tired of listening to his playing and singing. I loved his voice. I learned so much just by watching him playing and being in his company. All he ever wanted for me was to be the best I could be. There was no competition with him. He would just say, ‘Go for it, Andy!’

“I never really wanted to take solos, as I’m more a rhythm guitar player. He’d nod to me, but I’d go, ‘No, no,’ as I believed the audience didn’t really want to hear from me. But then we were playing Hyde Park in 1996, in front of 150,000 people. By then we’d been on tour for about three months and I’d not taken any solos. Eric wandered over to me and nodded his head as if to say, Go, take a solo! And I went, ‘All right then, I will.’ He was very encouraging like that.”

When Jimi Hendrix traveled across the Atlantic to Britain, he made a monumental impact on London‘s blues-rock scene. But while native stars like Jeff Beck have famously explained how Hendrix “swept us all aside and put us in a bin,” Hendrix's tradition-shattering antics made it possible for guitarists to play and perform in ways they previously hadn't dared to.

“He was extreme with everything, and he pushed it,” Beck says in an interview clip posted to YouTube. “He made it possible for everybody to see what could be done with an electric guitar.

“I was doing similar things, but not in such an ostentatious way. I used to use a tape echo [a Klemt Echolette S NG51]. I never paid for it — I think I fell behind on my payments — but it was part of my act. I used to make a sample of a phrase, and then play it over and over, and play harmonies over it. Then I’d just put the guitar on top of the amp and let it do its own thing.”

Hendrix was said to be a great admirer of Beck, and was certainly well aware of his talents, particularly his work on the Yardbirds track “Shapes of Things.” And as Beck noted, when the dust settled, the world was a better place for a maverick like him.

“Hendrix came along and made it much more theatrical,” he explains. “He had bigger amps, and he made it possible for me to move in within those parameters with big amps and start getting a bit dangerous with it.”

In fact, Beck struggled to find his place in the scene for many years after Hendrix died. His time in the Yardbirds yielded success, but his early attempts at a solo career were hit and miss.

It wasn’t until the 1970s that he found his footing with 1975‘s Blow by Blow, a melting pot of trad blues and jazz fusion on which Beatles producer George Martin challenged him every step of the way. It was there that the real Jeff Beck emerged. It’s no wonder, then, that his famed Oxblood Les Paul, his weapon of choice during this era, smashed records when it went to auction last year.

Sadly, Beck‘s 2023 death left behind a pair of mysteries. There's the question of his prospective collaborative album with Mark Knopfler, as well as the now-missing PRS guitar Paul Reed Smith says Beck was head over heels about. .

Meanwhile, Mick Rogers claims he owns the last recorded work of Beck’s lifetime, but says there’s no issue stopping it from being released.

In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked the late Duane Allman as the second greatest guitarist of all time, bested only by Jimi Hendrix. Decades earlier, Hendrix's music had inspired the guitarist to go in a new direction, and it would define the rest of his tragically short-lived career.

The story comes from folk guitarist Jeff Hanna, who first discovered Allman’s talents when he and his brother Gregg were plying their trade as Allman Joys. For a while, Hanna — a cofounder of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band — lived with the brothers during a brief stay in Nashville, and later that year, when the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s first album was released, Allman began a journey that would take him down a new musical path.

“Duane was the first electric guitar guy I ever knew because I was an acoustic folky guy,” Hanna says in conversation with Otis Gibbs. “He played a Telecaster with a Strat neck at the time, and it had a fuzz box, I think it was a Fuzz Face, inside the guitar. He could sit in a room and play, not plugged in, and it was spellbinding. He was that good.”

However, he says the band didn't amplify his guitar playing in the right light, which is perhaps why the freedom of Hendrix's power trio arrested him as it did.

After a while of living together, he says that Duane Allman grew tired of their communal living situation and sourced his own apartment with Dirt Band drummer, Jimmy Fadden. Hanna was a frequent visitor.

“We were sitting in Duane’s apartment,” he recounts. “Are You Experienced had just come out, and we're all just going deep in marijuana. And I think we were there for, like, two days just getting stoned to listen to this record.

“After about the fourth or fifth playing of this album, Duane's got this little stinky amp and a Strat, and I'm going, ‘Well, that's not Jimi playing.’ It was Duane playing that stuff back at us, and we're all just going, ‘Damn.’”

It was a moment that exemplified just how special the guitarist’s talents were. And just like how seeing Buddy Guy’s trio play in London inspired Eric Clapton to leave the Bluesbreakers and form Cream, Are You Experienced inspired Allman to form his own trio.

“He said, ‘Guess what I'm doing? I'm going to leave. I'm going to get a trio together!’ And he's just killing it, man. That was pretty ballsy to be playing the record, first off, and then saying ‘I can do that’ [laughs]. He loved Hendrix.”

However, unlike Clapton on the other side of the Atlantic, Allman’s trio dreams never quite materialized. In 2007, Dickey Betts told Guitar World that the trio — which included future Allman Brothers Band members Berry Oakley on bass, and Jai Johanny "Jaimoe" Johanson on drums — even secured a record deal with Atlantic, with early recordings captured at Muscle Shoals.

“Their group was supposed to be a power trio, like the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream,” he explains. “But Duane had to sing, and Jaimoe doesn’t play drums in that style at all.

“Berry brought back some demos of the stuff they were doing, and even though it was good, they weren’t going to be able to stand up next to Hendrix and guys like that.”

Allman instead found his calling in the much more expansive instrumentation of the Allman Brothers Band, carving his name into southern and blues rock folklore in the process.

Indeed, Betts once said he hated having to tackle Duane Allman’s slide parts, but knew he had to persevere if his band, continuing after he died in 1971, was going to honor him in the right way.

Later, his connection to Clapton became far more literal as he starred on Derek and the Dominos' only album, forming a remarkable partnership with Slowhand that embodied the blues tradition.

And elsewhere, Derek Trucks, who would become part of the Allman Brothers Band lineage years later, has named the slide player who was just as influential as Duane in making him a better slide guitar player.

Robert Fripp is an original who always brings something new to the instrument and gets something entirely unique out of it in return.

Rising to prominence in the late ‘60s, when Eric Clapton was deemed a deity and blues guitar was dominating the charts, Fripp separated himself from the pack with a left-field approach to songwriting and what could be achieved on guitar. His talents earned him praise from high-profile supporters, with no less than Jimi Hendrix once hailing King Crimson as the best band in the world.

But a look at Fripp's early comments about guitar and guitarists reveals that he wasn't much of a diplomat when it came to his peers.

“I've never really listened to guitarists, because they've never really interested me,” he told Guitar Player in 1974.

It was a year that yielded Starless and Bible Black and Red, two of King Crimson's landmark albums. Fripp was at the top of his game.

At that time, Clapton — following the demise of Cream and subsequent rise and fall of Blind Faith and Derek & the Dominos — was two albums into his solo career. Jimi Hendrix was four years gone, but a raft of stellar players had risen to take his place as guitar gods for the 1970s

Even so, Fripp had little to say about his instrument's lofty place in the world of popular music.

“I think the guitar is a pretty feeble instrument,” he continued. “Virtually nothing interests me about the guitar.”

Fripp's contrarian views on the instrument were shaped in childhood, where he was seduced by “the early Sun records with Scotty Moore” before he discovered traditional jazz at the age of 15. By then, he was no longer going with the cultural currents, a bias that helped him forge an identity of his own rather than one based on earlier genres and players. .

“I haven't been influenced by Hendrix and Clapton in the way that most people would say it,” he explained. “I don't think Hendrix was a guitarist. I very much doubt if he was interested in guitar playing as such. He was just a person who had something to say and got on and said it.”

Fripp had no similarly kind words for Clapton.

“Clapton I think is mostly quite banal, although he did some exciting things earlier in his life with Mayall. I saw Cream live once and I thought they were quite awful. Clapton's work since, I think, has been excessively tedious.”

Such comments come as no surprise to Steven Wilson. As the remixer behind several King Crimson anniversary reissues, he says Fripp's contrarian nature has often put him at odds with those around him.

“Every single Crimson record that’s ever come out was a battle,” Wilson states. “A battle between Robert and the rest of the band in some cases, a battle between Robert and the record company or the management or finances or touring schedules. Everything was against them, like the press telling them they were washed up.”

Rather than buckle to the whims of mainstream audiences, Fripp doubled down on his unique approach.

“I learned that a lot of Crimson records were similar to jazz and avant-garde jazz in the British jazz movement in the early '70s,” Wilson continues. “You realize that what made those records thrilling is that fact that the band were flying by the seat of their pants a lot of the time. The music was on the verge of falling apart in some respects.”

It’s interesting, then, that the one guitarist who escaped Fripp’s crosshairs during his 1974 GP interview was a guitarist that similarly challenged the status quo with his music: Jeff Beck, who was making waves at the time with his album Blow by Blow.

“Jeff Beck's guitar playing I can appreciate as good fun,” Fripp said. “It's where the guitarist and ‘poser-cum-ego tripper-cum-rock star-cum entertainer’ becomes all involved in the package. It's good fun, it's quite enjoyable, very exciting. I wish him all the best of luck.”

As the blues gave way to shred mania in the 1980s, Eddie Van Halen became the new Clapton, the new poster boy of the electric guitar, and the next player that every other guitarist aspired to be like.

Reflecting on the impact that had on the guitar scene last year, Wolfgang Van Halen theorized that his Dad “kind of ruined the musical landscape” during that period.

“Because,” he explains, “instead of everybody wanting to find out who they are, they wanted to be that.”

It’s often been rumored that Jimi Hendrix wanted to form a supergroup with Paul McCartney once the Beatles' breakup became imminent. Rock's two most-famous lefties teaming up sounds like a match made in heaven. But was there any truth in it?

Supposedly, a cablegram — a now outdated form of telegram — was sent to the Beatle in October 1969, on the same day that the “Paul McCartney is dead” rumor began to circulate. The offer is said to have come from producer Alan Douglas, who had put together Hendrix’s second outfit, the Band of Gypsys.

The rumored group would have consisted of Hendrix, Miles Davis and his go-to drummer, Tony Williams, with McCartney supposedly the missing piece of the puzzle.

The unofficial fan site The Paul McCartney Project says the former Beatle was invited to a recording session with the rest of the artists in New York, on October 22, 1969, the same day that he was traveling to Scotland to spend time with his family at his farm near Campbeltown.

The notion may sound tempting, but McCartney told Howard Stern in 2018 he has no evidence of a cablegram or any invitation being sent. .

“I never received one,” he said, adding, “There are lots of ‘what ifs.’"

As McCartney went on to explain, he was a Hendrix fan.

"I certainly love Jimi. I was one of the first people to see him in London,” he said, “and it was mind blowing.

“I was in a club late at night called the Bag of Nails, which is actually where I met Linda [Eastman, whom he'd later marry], and it was empty. I heard this sort of clunking noise — the sound of a jack plug going into a big amp — and it was Jimi, Noel [Redding, bass], and Mitch [Mitchell, drums]. It was the Jimi Hendrix Experience on the stage in the corner, and they played their whole act to virtually no one.”

Asked at what moment during the set he knew this mystery guitarist’s talents were extraordinary, he replies, “probably the first minute. The first second that he started playing guitar.

“That was a Friday night, it was just me and some friends,” he adds. “By Tuesday night, the word had got out. Now the club was steaming and packed for this new god in town.”

McCartney’s potential Jimi Hendrix link-up was not the only time a member of the Fab Four was involved in a would-be supergroup. In 1971, John Lennon tried to pull Eric Clapton out of his darkness by forming a band with him that could “bring the balls back to rock n’ roll.”

Both, tragically, never came to pass, and less than a year after the supposed offer was made, Jimi Hendrix was dead, all too soon.

As for McCartney, the 1970s proved to be a hit-and-miss decade, from his solo work to his second group, Wings. Discussing the rumors of his death in his new book, Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run, he said that “in so many ways, I was dead… a 27-year-old about-to-become-ex-Beatle.” The chance to work with a jazz legend and arguably the greatest guitar player to have ever lived would surely have filled the void left by the Beatles' demise.

Jimi Hendrix's bandmates signed away their rights to the music they created with the guitarist. But that hasn't stopped their estates from attempting to sue Sony Music Entertainment U.K. (SMEUK) over lost revenue.

Now London's High Court has cleared the way for their suit to commence.

The complaint states that bass guitarist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell have been “consistently excluded” from royalty payments over the years. Sony counters that both artists relinquished their right to the work in the 1970s — Redding earned $100,000, while Mitchell received $247,000 — which excludes them from further revenue shares.

Prior to Hendrix's death, the guitarist took 50 percent of the band's royalties, with Redding and Mitchell splitting the rest evenly. In forfeiting their rights to the work, the two musicians signed away their right to file future lawsuits. Their estates are seeking a royalty share in line with the group’s original split.

Hendrix, Redding, and Mitchell formed the Experience in the late 1960s as the virtuoso guitarist pivoted away from his session player days, which included stints with Little Richard and the Isley Brothers.

Together they produced three albums — Are You Experienced (1967), Axis: Bold as Love (1967), and Electric Ladyland (1968) — before Hendrix formed Band of Gypsys with Billy Cox and Buddy Miles.

Despite their success, Redding and MItchell died in “relative poverty” says Simon Malynicz KC, a specialist copyright lawyer who is representing the artists' estates.

Malynicz accuses Sony of being “a major multinational which refuses to recognize or remunerate their copyright and performers’ rights.”

He is fighting, he says, to “ensure not only that justice is done to the memory of Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, but it can also give effect to James Marshall Hendrix’s wishes.”

“Surely,” he argues, Jimi Hendrix, ”would have wanted his fellow musicians to receive everything to which they are entitled.”

Representing Sony, Robert Howe says the copyright for the group's’ three albums belongs to the producers, not the musicians, and adds that Redding and Mitchell had relinquished their rights to earnings when they sold their share of the rights in the 1970s.

He says neither artist prevented Hendrix’s estate from using their recordings in various ways while they were still alive. However, Redding threatened to sue for £3.26 million in lost earnings shortly before his death in 2003. Mitchell died in 2008

The Hendrix catalog has proved extremely profitable in the decades since it was created. Earnings have come through reissues, licensing and streaming, the latter of which did not exist until the mid 1990s via internet services. Today, streaming is the dominant format globally for music consumption.

A look at Spotify shows that the group's most-streamed song is "All Along the Watchtower," which has racked up over 827 million streams. With Spotify paying out roughly $0.003 per stream, the song may have generated as much as $2.48 million in revenue since Spotify launched in October 2008, just a month before Mitchell’s death.

Last year, London’s High Court ruled that the lawsuit could be filed despite the duo signing away their rights more than 50 years ago.

“No one is denying that Jimi Hendrix was one of, if not the, greatest guitarist of all time.” said Lawrence Abramson (via the Guardian), the lawyer who initiated the action by sending a cease-and-desist letter to Sony in late 2021. “But he didn’t make his recordings alone, and they could not have achieved any success without the contributions of Noel and Mitch.”

The case is expected to run until 18 December, with a written judgement to come some time after its conclusion.

Before he shot to fame with his own band, Jimi Hendrix cut his teeth playing with a hodgepodge of other musical acts.

There was his time in Little Richard's band, where he was fired for repeatedly showing up late and wearing flashy clothes that upstaged the star. He also enjoyed a brief stint with the dancing duo Buddy & Stacey, and worked with the Isley Brothers, with whom he lived for a short while.

And then there' his unusual impromptu show performing with a 1960s British pop singer by the name of Engelbert Humperdinck.

It happened in spring 1967 during Hendrix's early days with the Experience. In attempt to build upon the guitarist's growing fame, the Experience were placed on a U.K. tour opening for a motley bill of performers that included Cat Stevens, the American pop group the Walker Brothers and Humperdinck, who was the headliner. The singer was at the start of a long hit-making career with his second single, "Release Me," a chart topper in the U.K. and a number four hit in the U.S. .

Humperdinck knew Experience bass guitarist Noel Redding, who had previously played in his group. He didn't know Hendrix, but he was aware of his talent and the excitement that was building around him.

“He had to tour with people who were well known, so he was on my bill,” Humperdinck recalls (via app.com). “He did an amazing job.”

The run of dates launched at the Finsbury Park Astoria, where Hendrix set his guitar on fire for the first time on March 31, 1967. It was later on the same tour that he had his impromptu show with Humperdinck.

“One day, my guitarist didn’t show up for the date,” Humperdinck explained in an interview on his YouTube channel. “And he said, ‘Don’t worry, man, I’ll play for you.’

“I said, ‘You can't be out in the open, playing. You know, you're a star in your own right.’

“He said, ‘I tell you what I'll do: I'll play behind the curtain.’

In his interview app.com, Humperdinck says it was his idea for Hendrix to play offstage. “He was a star,” the singer tells the outlet. “I couldn’t put him onstage, could I?”

Regardless of how it happened, Humperdinck was impressed by Hendrix's performance.

“It felt as though there were three guitars behind me that night,” he told Classic Rock. “That’s how great he sounded. He was so solid and made everything sound massive.

“Afterwards, I said to the audience: ‘I don’t think you people realize, but the great Jimi Hendrix has just been playing guitar for me.’”

Humperdinck recalled other interactions with Hendrix that left an impression on him.

“He was an unusual character even back then,” he says. “But he was a really nice human being.

“I happened to comment one day, ‘Jimi, that’s a nice jacket,’ and he wanted to take it off his back to give it to me. I wish I’d have taken it now, at least I’d have had something very special from a very special man.”

Odd as that last claim may sound, Hendrix was famous for his generosity, and gave away everything from his clothes to his guitars. He was also known to assist other musicians, such as the time he helped the Alice Cooper Band score their first record deal and gave Pink Floyd a boost in an interview with Melody Maker.

And while Jimi’s gig with a pop crooner like Humperdinck may have been offbeat, it wasn't the strangest gig Hendrix ever played.

Reggae giant Jimmy Cliff was still working to make a name for himself when he was billed with another left-handed guitarist new to London's music scene.

“I used to play the clubs,” Cliff told Reggaeville in 2012. “I think I was playing in Nottingham. A week before my gig, they asked me, ‘There's this new guitarist, do you mind if he opens for you?’”

That new guitarist was Jimi Hendrix. The two men left a lasting impression on one another.

”I used to do two sets, so they said, ‘Do you mind if he does one set in between your two?’” Cliff explained. “I didn't mind. I didn't know him.”

Cliff had just completed his first set when Hendrix approached him.

”He came to me and said, ‘What's the name of your band, man?’ I said, ‘Jimmy Cliff and the Shakedown Sounds, and he said, ‘Maaaaan, you can sing! I can't sing. I can just play my guitar.’”

That sort of quip wasn’t unusual for Hendrix, who often downplayed his vocal talents and talked up other players, such as Rory Gallagher and Billy Gibbons, as far better talents than he was.

“Apparently, he didn't have all that much confidence in his singing. But then he went on, and he tore the place up,” Cliff said with a laugh. “After that, we became pretty close. Every time we were coming back from a gig up north or down south, we'd stop at a café and talk about how our gigs went and how things were going. He was one of the kindest people you could ever find.”

The two strangers in a strange land — and one certainly a lot colder than Cliff’s Jamaican home — confided in one another. Like Hendrix, music was something to be inspired by in a tough world. It became all he thought about.

Cliff, who would go on to become a pivotal figure in bringing reggae music to a global audience, died November 24, at age 81.

His wife, Latifa Chambers, announced his death via Instagram, revealing that the pioneer “has crossed over due to a seizure followed by pneumonia.”

Cliff was still a schoolboy when he scored his first record deal under rather unusual circumstances. He had written his first songs before he’d hit his teens, having constructed his first guitar from bamboo.

After moving to Kingston at age 14, he convinced Leslie Kong, the co-owner of a Kingston ice cream parlor and record store, to pivot into the music industry. The bold move worked. Kong launched the label Beverley's with Cliff, his first signing. His third single, "Hurricane Hattie," gained popularity when it was released in 1962. That prompted him to move to London, where the singer and guitarist — he played both acoustic and electric models — soon crossed paths with Hendrix.

“What else was there for people like me to do?” Cliff once mused about his music career in an interview with Mojo. “The polarization of the socio-economic scene in Jamaica meant there was hardly a middle class. There was the really rich or the really poor, and if you are really poor, you get a fairly average education, so you can learn a trade.

“But for a lot of people, they want more. Because the music industry was localized, it was there on the doorstep, people like me started thinking they’d give it a go because you just knock on a door and ask.

“It was like London in the ’70s with punk. It was like music is for everyone, we can all do it, just give it a try and see what happens.”

A decade after his first musical success, Cliff starred in 1972's The Harder They Come, Jamaica's first major commercial movie. The crime drama is widely considered the film that introduced reggae to England and the U.S., paving the way for Bob Marley and other greats of the genre.

Asked if he'd have achieved as much success had he never left the shores of Jamaica, Cliff replied, “I had to move to the U.K. to have the big hits. That’s what everyone did.

“Besides the Beatles and the Stones, all these other kinds of music were coming out of London. There was myself, Jimi Hendrix, and a lot of Americans, Africans, and West Indians coming over to stay. It was all one big exciting mix.”

By 1967, the tables had turned, with Cliff returning to Nottingham to support Hendrix at the Beachcomber Club. Their kinship was strong, and the impact they had on the music industry was even stronger.

A few days after the fact, Martin Barre is not yet aware that Jack White name-checked Jethro Tull as an influence during his acceptance speech for the White Stripes’ Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. But the forebear is nevertheless pleased.

“That’s brilliant,” Barre says when Guitar Player informs him of the shout-out. “He’s great. He’s a great, talented guy. I have a lot of respect for what the White Stripes produced — my family as well.”

But far be it from Barre, of all people — a professed (accurately) “expert on Jethro Tull” — to be surprised by that, or any, accolade.

“I have an immense respect for the brand,” he says from his home in Lancashire, England, overlooking the moors. Given his history — nearly 45 years and 20 albums, including classics such as Aqualung, Thick As a Brick, War Child and more — Barre is right to “sort of picture myself as a flag-bearer, carrying the banner” with his own band since 2013, including a current acoustic tour in the U.K. He’s also released eight albums of his own and contributed to recordings by fellow Tull alumni Mick Abrahams (who he replaced in 1968) and Clive Bunker, as well as Paul McCartney, the late John Wetton and Ten Years After’s Chick Churchill.

“I’m intensely proud of what Jethro Tull was, and Jack White saying that reinforces my belief that we’ve left something behind that’s indelible. People have taken notice and it’s inspired them down the line, and that’s something to be really proud of.”

Barre, 78, has funneled his Tull expertise into a memoir, A Trick of Memory: The Autobiography of Jethro Tull’s Guitarist, just out in the U.K. and due during January in the U.S. The 182-page book takes readers from his early days, growing up poor in Birmingham and being introduced to music by his father, an aspiring professional jazz clarinetist turned engineer, as well as his older sister Jeanne. It traces his journey through the 1960s music scene, playing saxophone and flute as well as electric guitar in R&B bands and encountering the heroes of the day, before joining Tull in 1968 and making his recording debut on the band’s second album, Stand Up.

It’s concisely told, with plenty of details and anecdotes — some positioned as sidebars dubbed “A Tull Tale” — along with appendixes about his favorite Tull songs, performances and venues to play. He also gets into the weeds about his gear, from his first guitar and amp — a Dallas Tuxedo with a Watkins Dominator combo — to a chapter titled “Guitars, Amps and Instruments of Torture.”

So there’s a lot — a whole life, in fact — to talk about before Barre has to depart for his next gig, getting into the stories behind the story he’s told...

Why a book?

I figure everybody has a story, and the worst thing that can happen is you don’t leave that behind and that story’s lost forever. As reluctant as I am to try and pretend that my story’s important, I want it on record. … Not on record, but for those who might be interested in just what happened in the ’50s and the ’60s and the ’70s and how that developed into what and who I am now. That’s why I did it.

What’s the story you wanted to tell?

The book is biased to the earlier part [of his life], and I leave the latter years to the abundant amounts of material that’s online about Tull, with all the facts and figures.

So it’s more about the preamble. In those days every event had the biggest impact, and the people I met had a big impact on me as well. They were formative years, and they’re quite dear to me. I just feel now, later in life, the things that are most important to me are those more private parts.

I’m not a rock star; I’m not a guitar hero. And, every day, to live a very ordinary life where 99 percent of the people I come into contact with either don’t know who I am or don’t care what I do...

There’s evidence, including in the book, that argues otherwise, you know.

[laughs] The achievement is history, you know? I can tell people that I played in Shea Stadium. I can tell people that we did three nights in a row at Madison Square Garden, we played in front of a quarter of a million people at the Isle of Wight, I played onstage at the Royal Albert Hall — and I’m so proud that I was able to do that. I don’t disown it; I’m really proud to have been there and privileged to have done those things. I think about them enough, but I don’t dwell on it.

My personality isn’t rooted in who I was and what I did; it’s rooted in who I am today and what I’m gonna be like tomorrow. What’s important to me is that I play the best I can and give a great performance and the quality of the music is of the highest standard I can produce. That’s my job, and I’m very intense in the way I approach it. But when I close the door at the end of the night, I’m just the guy next door. I don’t live a rock-star life, and I’m quite glad I don’t.

The book is definitely not a tell-all.

I just wanted it to be factual and positive. I think gossip is very frivolous, and it’s very private and subjective. It has no substance to it. The experiences I’ve had are sort of private little events, and I change my mind about them. One day if I think of something that happened as being terrible and how bad it was for me, then another time I may weigh the pros and cons and look at it from a different viewpoint.

I haven’t hidden anything at all, but I haven’t gone into personal relationships to a great degree — and there’s a few things that were redacted, expunged by the people who publish and proofread. There are a few fruity anecdotes that are missing. They’re not forgotten, just maybe something I’ll do another time, maybe a volume 2 when I live on a small island in the South Pacific. [laughs]

You talk about focusing on the early days, and it’s very striking and heartwarming how supportive your family was.

My dad had a tough life, but we were never made aware of it when we were kids. My parents put me and my sister before anything. They sheltered us from whatever things they were going through and gave us the positivity to be able to do what we were able to do.

My dad loved music; that’s what he wanted to do when he was 14, 15 years old and he couldn’t do it because his parents made him go into the family factory at an early age. So his passion was squashed, and he never talked about it. When I threw away my to-be career, my schooling and college to do something frivolous like being a musician, he didn’t say a word.

You write in the book about being blown away watching the guitar player in Mike Sheridan and the Nightriders at a youth club when you were young and then wanting to start playing yourself. What was the allure of guitar back then?

It was my sword. It was my... I could be really poetically, dramatically pretentious and say that like when medieval soldiers would fight for king and country, that sword was their emblem, their strength. That’s what the guitar was for me; it was my way out of what I didn’t like about what I was doing. It was the thing that was going to open up doors, possibly — and I could never know how many or how big those doors were going to be. I just saw it as something I could really put myself into.

I didn’t particularly love music enough to think that, Oh, I have to play music, and the guitar is going to be my instrument to get me on that pathway. I think it was just that guitar was a symbol, if you like, of a bit of freedom.

Were you a natural talent?

Oh no, no. Still not. I work on all my faults every day, and I do every day. I’m so far from being good enough for myself that it’s way off there. [points toward window] If you talk to people who I knew in those days, they always say, “Oh, yeah, you were always playing your guitar,” and I don’t remember it being like that. It was a slow process, ’cause there was no information. There was no YouTube or way to Google how to play “Stairway to Heaven” in two minutes flat. You had to work it out yourself, with no help.

But that’s great. You got to learn the neck of the guitar. Everything was a discovery, and I’ve always said that kids now might be in a place in a year, whereas it’s taken me 20, 30-plus years to get there. But I figured it out myself. I didn’t learn it from a book or a YouTube channel or from a teacher. I figured out chords, scales, all the beautiful relationship between all the elements of music. It became mine. Not somebody else’s.

You had some early and personal experiences with Jimi Hendrix.

I knew of his playing before I met him. We were in Rome playing soul music and some kid came from London to see us play and he had this sort of acetate demo disc. He said, “Have you heard of Jimi Hendrix? Have you heard his new single?” “No, I haven’t.”

So he played it, and it was “Purple Haze.” It was just a demo and I’m listening and I can’t understand how he’s made that sound. It was such a beautiful thing. And, of course, he tried to re-record it and he couldn’t get it any better, so they used the demo. I just remember listening to it, and it was such an alien situation, but it had such an impact on me.

And then you got to share a bill with him.

It was January 1969 and Tull was gonna be the support band with Hendrix onstage, and I’m absolutely terrified. I’d never come into contact with anybody more famous than Ian Anderson. [laughs] And I was in awe of Jethro Tull before I joined them because they were the best band I’d ever seen onstage, but this was a step beyond imagination. Here we are flying to Copenhagen, and that night I’m gonna meet the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and there he was onstage, and he’s kind and humble.

He’s interested in me and we’re talking and he’s this really nice person, and he’s saying, “You know, I really hate my voice.” And I’m like, Is this really Jimi Hendrix?

I didn’t know what to say. I said, “Your voice is unbelievably good,” but he truly hated his voice. It was an early lesson in humility, in him being accessible. He had no baggage. He didn’t have anything but himself to give, and he was beautifully honest. It was inspiring that somebody that good could be so nice. That was my first lesson of many — not all of them learning something positive.

Oh? What were some of those?

I can’t say! [laughs] I’ve met some of my heroes; let’s just say I’ve been disappointed in them. But you learn from everything.

You say that it’s important not to look for influences, lest you wind up just copying something. Explain that philosophy.

Everything that inspired me is music I can’t play, so by default I can’t copy it. It’s something I want to attain and would love to do, but it’s always something a little higher up. Three weeks ago I went to see Billy Strings at the Royal Albert Hall, and between him and his mandolin player — ’cause I love playing mandolin — I was grinning from ear to ear. Some people get depressed when they hear somebody so much better, but I just love the experience.

I’ve always really enjoyed watching somebody do something masterfully well. It inspired me, the need within myself to do better. I’m like, Right, you need to do better. I thought I did, and hearing them proves that.

I go to classical concerts to listen to the flute players, and I take a pair of binoculars and I’m on them the whole night, just loving every second because they’re amazing, amazing musicians, and I’m just a lowly, sort of wanna-be. I want to be a better flute player, and hearing them tells me why I want to be a better flute player.

You acknowledge some influence from Leslie West, however. Why is he an exception?

Yes, he’s very hard to ignore. I loved him to bits, and I think it was his attitude that influenced me more than anything. In that era, sort of very early ’70s, most bands were fairly distant and disconnected. There was a lot of competition and the biggest thing was the support group tried to blow the main act off the stage. That’s what you were trying to accomplish, so it wasn’t the friendliest of atmospheres.

Mountain was the support band, and they didn’t give a shit they were the support band; they were having the time of their lives. They were such a tight unit, so friendly and supportive of each other. You’d watch them onstage and the communication, the smiling, the little things they were doing between them was really special.

And, obviously, his playing was so beautiful — his phrasing and his beautiful pitch and vibrato, understated but yet beautifully performed. I wasn’t going to be Leslie West number two, but some things I did emulate, just learning from it rather than copying. And we became friends, as you do.

Also on the hero front, you write a bit about the cloak-and-dagger of being part of Paul McCartney’s Atlantic Ocean project in 1987. What was that like?

It’s a tricky one because I had to sign an NDA, and I never had or a copy of it, or lost it, so I’m not quite sure what I can say. I had a wonderful week with him. It was magic, the dream of my life come true, and it came at a great time because things were being a little taken for granted in the Tull camp at the time. We were in the middle of doing some album, very immersed in it, and I went to Ian and said, “Oh, I need a week off. There’s something I’d like to do.” And, of course, when I told him it was Paul McCartney… [laughs]

But it was nice for me, and it made me a stronger person because it was a terrifying experience to be in the presence and working for somebody on that level. But he was a fantastic person, just amazing, just full of energy and music never stopped. There are a couple stories — nothing nasty or negative, just sort of slightly amusing. If there’s a volume two [of the memoir] I’ll have to call his manager and say, “Can I tell the story?”

Did you feel any desire in the book to set the record straight about Jethro Tull and how the band worked and your contributions?

No, because if somebody wants to know, they’ll find out. It’s all there to absorb. You can hear everything. You can hear what I played, you can hear what John Evan played. You can hear what Jeffrey [Hammond Hammond] played, what Ian’s playing. There’s always going to be people who don’t like me and what I do and don’t like the fact I’m doing it without Ian, and vice versa. Who’s right? They’re all right, ’cause everybody has their own opinion and are entitled to have it.

What was the creative dynamic and process within Tull? Were you assigned parts or given free rein, or...?

It’s always been a mixture of both. Some things… like “Aqualung,” he wrote the whole riff, and the solo section I wrote, sort of based on the chords of the verse. Thick As a Brick was full of ideas from everybody — a lot from John Evan, who came up with amazing Hammond [organ] parts and ideas we developed into some of the instrumental passages.

So there was no formula. If I came to Ian with some idea he would listen. He would take on board everything that was on offer, and be very fair about it as well. There was no resistance. It was all the mixture of ideas and people working together.

Any favorite anecdotes about a song that developed from one of your ideas that became more than you may be expected?

“Paparazzi” [from Under Wraps] was one. I think later on in the years I was more confident with coming up with big ideas. I was beginning to write more rather than just practice and do a concert appearance. Under Wraps, with me and Peter [-John Vettese] and Ian was just a very enclosed situation where we were constantly thinking up ideas.

One day as we sat there, sort of having a cup of coffee, I said, “Look, I’ve got this riff I’ve written. Do you want to hear it?” “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” So I played it and they loved it, and that became the song. That was great. It was the first Tull song I wrote, and I loved having a bit more in the cooking pot.

Any further insights now, after doing the book, into why things went the way they did with Tull back in 2012?

No. I understand it completely because I had to analyze it for my own benefit. I needed to understand what was happening, why it was happening, how it was happening and put it into perspective. I didn’t want to be the injured party. I didn’t think I deserved to be. I just needed to know my own mind and what it was all about.

And I’m fine. I’m at peace, mentally. I know other guys that have been in Tull and had sort of an abrasive end and didn’t do so well coming to terms with it. It’s a tough business.

You’re kind of the guy keeping the Tull music alive in a way, because you’re pretty constantly out there and the current incarnation is a bit more episodic. Is there an appreciation from the audience that you’re doing it?

I don’t ask for reassurance. My reassurance is walking into a gig and, “Oh, you’re sold out tonight,” and I’m like, “Yeah!” That makes me feel great.

But, yeah, I’ve got a lot of self-belief, and it’s based on how powerful the music can be. I know I’ve got a great band. I know how good they are. But while everybody likes to hear good things, you must never, ever, ever take it to heart 100 percent because for every person that comes up and says, “You’re one of the most underrated guitar players, you are amazing, blah, blah, blah” you’ll get another one who, whether they say it or not, will think the exact opposite. You can’t believe one and not the other; that’s how I deal with it — “Well, that’s nice of you to say. It’s not particularly what I think, but I appreciate that you’re enthusiastic.”

There’s a lot of instrument and equipment detail in the book. Are you a big gearhead?

Less than a lot of people, mentioning no names. I don’t hold numerical values to what I have. I don’t have a valuable collection of guitars. I have maybe 10 vintage, but I love them and they sound great and they play great, and that’s their primary function being in my world. I use them and play them and they do a great job for me, otherwise they wouldn’t be here. None of my guitars are in cupboards; they’re all there to grab. And they come and go; I buy a guitar, sell a guitar, love one, love another more.

Are any of your vintage guitars from all the way back in the day? Do you still have the “Aqualung” guitar or something?

No. I do know where those guitars are, but I don’t miss them. They did a great job, but to be honest I moved on because I found something that did the job better. People say, “You’re completely stupid,” and maybe I am, but that’s what an instrument is to me. You give it a lot, it gives you a lot back, you move on. There’s no snobbery in me.

Are any of those older guitars owned by any one of note?

[shakes head] I’ve heard the names. It’s people who don’t play them; they just know what they’re worth.

What’s coming up for you?

Gigs, of course. I’m booking into 2027. And I want to do a record. I haven’t done a solo record for a long time [since Roads Less Travelled in 2018], so I want to spend a lot of time writing and recording. I’ve got two live albums I want to release as well.

Will we see you across the pond next year, maybe as the book comes out over here?

I’d like to come to America to talk about the book. America’s on hold right now. I’ve been there a lot done a lot of touring... to the detriment of other areas. So I need to redress the balance. I want to sit and think, and I want to come back with something that’s gonna be amazing, because I think it needs to be.

I’ve done a lot of tours with different headings — an Aqualung tour, a 50 years tour, a History of Tull. I need something that’s really going to hit the headlines in the Martin Barre Band world.

There’s no denying Jimi Hendrix changed the electric guitar game. But long before he ventured from New York City to London — where he sent shockwaves through the blues scene and nearly ended Jeff Beck’s career — another player sparked a revolution in the mind of future Queen guitarist Brian May.

May was in his early 20s by the end of the 1960s. Although Rory Gallagher would have the greatest influence on his guitar tone — inspiring him to adopt two hugely important pieces of gear into his rig — it was another British blues rock great who showed him what was possible with his instrument.

“He was incredible, nobody could play like that in those days,” May says of Deep Purple linchpin Ritchie Blackmore.

For May — who made his comments in the 2015 documentary The Ritchie Blackmore Story — it was the “wild and untamed” way Blackmore played that affected him most.

“It's hard to imagine,” he says. “It’s like going back to the time before there were wheels. People did not play like that in those days; you were looking at people who played jazz and were very safe and rather mellow.”

Blackmore's weapon of choice throughout the '60s was a 1961 Gibson ES-335, a guitar thrust upon him by future amp maker Jim Marshall,. That was the instrument with which he launched Deep Purple, and May was there right at the start of the journey, falling in love with their 1968 debut album, Shades of Deep Purple, while attending college.

Even then, Blackmore's reputation preceded him.

“Ritchie Blackmore already was a legend,” May explains. “I was together with [future Queen drummer] Roger [Taylor] at that point, and Roger had worked alongside Ritchie in his previous groups down in Cornwall.

“And Ritchie was a figure of mystery and wonder. He was able to play very fast, very accurately, and very passionately. He’s wanging the guitar all over the place, he’s using the tremolo bar, and making the whole thing into a completely different instrument.

“Ritchie came along and he's a fireball,” May continues. “He was beyond belief. His technique was incredible. Where that came from, I have no idea. And this was before Hendrix. Ritchie is a great creator and originator of the wild electric guitar.”

And yet, even with Blackmore’s sizable reputation, Deep Purple’s first few records had only middling success. It was only with the second line-up and the 1970 album In Rock that their fortunes began to turn. Coincidentally, it was the first record on which Blackmore played a Fender Strat, having made the switch after striking a deal with Eric Clapton’s roadie for one of Slowhand’s unused models.

The Mark II line-up came to a head with Blackmore as egos clashed. Although Blackmore had stuck around for a few more albums, he'd join forces with Ronnie James Dio in Rainbow before deciding life in the band wasn't what he'd expected.

Blackmore is now back out on the road after a series of health scares cast doubt on his future earlier this year. His rock days may be long behind him, but the impact he's had on the guitar world is still being felt.

Alice Cooper says Jimi Hendrix is responsible for turning his band’s fortunes around, thanks to a simple act that helped them land a record deal.

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

But it was another, more unusual living arrangement that sparked this all-important moment.

“In 1968, we were so poor in L.A. that we were living in the Chambers Brothers’ basement in Watts during the riots,” he tells Professor of Rock, referring to the uprising in the Watts neighborhood in August 1965. “Jimi Hendrix used to come over and they'd all smoke grass together, and we'd come out of the cellar like rats.

“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 drugs, Gordon didn’t have a lot going for him at the time. As Cooper says, 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’s not exactly the typical environment for a business meeting, but then again, this is rock and roll. It was the ‘60s, and Cooper was in the company of rock royalty — ironically, three future founding members of the so-called 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 [record label, Straight]. 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.’”

An incredible 55 years later, Gordon is still Cooper’s manager and a vital ingredient in his success through the decades. Cooper says such was the informality of their arrangement, and their trust in one another, that they still don't have a contract.

The band's first album, Pretties for You, wasn’t a success, but their third album changed the record as their collaborative partnership with Bob Ezrin got off to a flying start. Ezrin later encouraged the band to revisit the Pretties for You track “Reflected,” ultimately turning it into a parody political anthem, "Elected", one of their biggest hits.

But by the mid-’70s, the original Alice Cooper Band — potently powered by Glen Buxton’s fiery lead guitar work — was no more.

“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.”

They reunited for 2025’s The Revenge of Alice Cooper album, with Buxton, who passed in 1997, a notable absence. However, he still influenced the record courtesy of a rediscovered riff.

“I had a cassette of Glen and I, and Glen had an idea for this song he called ‘Astute Lobotomy,’” bass player 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.”

That, of course, meant Buxton’s boots needed to be filled, and Bob Ezrin has told Guitar Player how they found their man.

After leaving the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck turned to Ronnie Wood to help get the Jeff Beck Group off the ground. Although the future Rolling Stone initially formed part of the act's two-guitar lineup, he had swapped his electric guitar for bass by the time the band recorded their 1968 debut, Truth.

For anyone who knows Wood as a guitarist with one of the world's biggest bands — and the former guitarist of the Faces — seeing him on bass can be a little confusing.

However, in a new video on his YouTube channel, Wood reveals that he was excited by the “challenge” of the instrument change — and names the member of the group Deep Purple who inspired his move from six strings to four.

“I used to see the Yardbirds a lot at the Crawdaddy Club,” he recalls. “People were swinging from the rafters in there, sweat dripping from the ceiling; the atmosphere was incredible with the crescendos they used to do. They used to do a fast version of a Muddy Waters song called 'Mannish Boy'. Everybody would go crazy.

“So I said to Jeff, ‘If you ever think about leaving the Yardbirds, we should get together.’ And sure enough, he did leave, and he did ring me up and say, ‘Let's get together.’”

The first line-up saw Wood on rhythm guitar, with Dave Ambrose on bass, and various different drummers.” But it was a man who would later make his name in Deep Purple that seemingly — and inadvertently — put an end to the Beck-Wood guitar duo.

“One day after playing the 100 Club [in London], John Lord, who was living with me at the time — he was a in my brother's band the Artwoods — said, ‘It sounded really great with with two guitar players.’

“And Jeff said, ‘Ronnie, if you don't mind, would you consider playing bass?

For many, such a might have been a blow to the ego, especially given that Wood was far from a second-rate guitarist (even if Harvey Mandel somewhat bitterly maintains he should have landed the Stones gig instead). Wood, however, took it in stride.

“I said, ‘I love a challenge, I don't mind.’ When we went to America, we used to jam with Jimi Hendrix, and he’d say, ‘Hey Jeff, let the bass player have a solo!’ He loved my bass playing, so that was a feather in my cap.”

When Hendrix moved to the U.K., he’d briefly share a flat with Wood in Holland Park, London as theuir friendship blossomed. Wood, however, would return to his beloved six-string after two albums, forming the Faces with Rod Stewart in the early ‘70s. The band is now expected to release their first album since 1973 next year, after Kenney Jones, having written 11 new songs with Stewart and Wood.

It was his exploits in the Faces that helped Wood get the Stones gig, forming a near-telepathic partnership with Keith Richards.

“When Ronnie became available and suddenly walked in, that was it. There was no doubt,” Richards tells Guitar Player. “We pick it up and cover each other so that sometimes you can't really tell who's playing.”

Buddy Guy was a hero to the electric guitar players of the British blues boom. When he first showed up in England with his trio in the mid 1960s, he thrilled all of them with his revolutionary, high-energy style, using amp overdrive, feedback and a dynamic, approach that blended raw emotion with powerful technique.

But as the blues guitar legend says today, those same guitarists took what he did and went too far with it.

In fact, he even had to warn JImi Hendrix to watch his ears when he entered clubs where the British blues players plied their trade. And as he notes, Jimi was no slouch when it came to playing loud.

“You’ll laugh, but I thought he used to play too loud,” Guy says of Hendrix in the December 2025 issue of Guitar World magazine. “When I first came up, Muddy Waters and those guys had two little speakers at each corner of the blues club, and it was a clean sound.”

But he said even Hendrix was no match for the British blues guitarists of the time. “When the British guys started playing, they had stacks of Marshalls! After I got to know Jimi, I’d go see him and [warn him], ‘Before you go in there, you ain’t gonna hear nothing.’ That type of sound just took over.

“That clean sound went away because, with the amplifiers, it was a dogfight. And then all the special effects came in, and Jimi, I think he was one of the greatest that ever took advantage of the special effects, because a lot of people used them after him.”

Though Hendrix’s take on the blues was a world away from the cleaner, more controlled blues playing that Guy was accustomed to, they had a lot in common. Hendrix idolized Guy and went to see him perform in 1967.

“I got invited to play in New York City. I was putting on the ‘Buddy Guy show,’ with my guitar behind my back and throwing it around,” he told Guitar Player of their first meeting. “And somebody said to me, ‘Look out, man, that’s Jimi Hendrix over there!’ – ’cause those were Jimi’s moves.

“But I said, ‘So what? Who the hell is that?’

“Eventually, Jimi came over to me and introduced himself. He said, ‘I just canceled a gig, ’cause I wanted to see you.’ And that’s how we became friends.”

Still, there was a degree of separation to their receptive takes on the blues.

“I was into Arthur Crudup, T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, and all the old blues guys,” Guy told GP on a separate occasion. “I wasn’t into all the special effects. I liked what Hendrix was doing when I heard it. But I decided to let him have that. I figured my time would come.”

Eric Clapton was another player rapt by Guy’s talents. He says seeing his power trio play in London inspired him to leave the Bluesbreakers and start Cream.

In related news, Guy has discussed the one thing every guitarist needs to play the blues and has reflected on his slightly unusual relationship with his son.

“He didn’t know who I was until he could turn 21 and get into the blues clubs,” Guy has revealed. “He said, ‘Dad, I didn’t know you could play like that!’”

The late Lowell George made quite a name for himself in his short life. He was one of those rare musicians whose artistry seemed to spring from a place both ordinary and otherworldly. Born in Hollywood in 1945, he grew up surrounded by the sunshine optimism and seedy back alleys of Los Angeles, and his music always reflected that tension — equal parts ragged funk, bittersweet balladry, and a sly, mischievous wit.

As the founder and frontman of Little Feat, George blended rock, blues, country, and New Orleans–style grooves into a sound that was as impossible to pigeonhole as it was instantly recognizable. His slide guitar work had a greasy elegance, at once playful and devastating, while his lyrics painted vivid portraits of gamblers, drifters, and dreamers stumbling their way through America’s back roads and barrooms.

A former Frank Zappa sideman, George was a master of both precision and looseness, a craftsman who could coax the most unexpected colors out of a song while still making it feel lived-in and human. Yet for all his musical brilliance, he was also famously restless, conflicted, and often self-destructive, a man whose appetites seemed as large as his talent.

By the time of his untimely death at just 34, in 1979, Lowell George had left behind a legacy that still feels unfinished, yet utterly singular.

Guitar Player had the opportunity to talk with the guitar great for a feature story in our August 1976 issue. The conversation wandered through his history and choice of gear, including his preference for Fender Stratocasters and Dumble amplifiers, which developed after he received his first guitar-and-amp setup around the age of 17.

“I got a Fender Mustang and a Champ amp, but I didn’t like the sound so I started playing Stratocasters,” he said. “Then I went through a couple of Gibson ES-335s, but eventually I went back to Strats because I liked them too much.”

“I like Fender bridges because they’re more tunable. You can really get the tuning adjusted way up the neck, and that makes a big difference. I have three guitars that I use for studio work, and the Strat always winds up being the one I use the most because of its ability to be tuned and to stay that way all the way up the neck.”

When it came to his guitar of choice, George wasn’t fussy: He bought his Strats right off the rack — and for good reason.

“I try to buy a stock guitar so if it gets stolen I can replace it easily.”

As he told Guitar Player, he had owned about 50 guitars by the time he spoke with us, but he’d lost about 20 to theft.

“I’ve had 50,” he explained, “20 of which I no longer have because they’ve been stolen. Just turn your back for a second and they’re gone! If you play in bar bands in a town like Los Angeles, one wrong move, and it’s all over.

“One time we were playing some place north of San Francisco, and we had a trailer. We put all our equipment in it, and parked the thing in front of our apartment. I was saying to myself at the time, I’ll sleep by the window, and when they try to steal it, I’ll wake up and get them.

“I didn’t hear a thing, nor did anyone else, and it was gone the next morning. I lost a real nice Strat. But you know, it happens — I’ve lost 10 Strats, and I’ve had about 30. The attrition rate for me has been very high, but from what I understand from a lot of people in L.A., it’s been a lot higher lately for other musicians.

“For a while I was carrying my guitar with me everywhere I went, and the only time I’d put it down maybe was to move a Hammond B-3, and do you believe it, I’d be away for just a minute, and my guitar would be gone.”

George said losing guitars wasn’t the only big disappointment he encountered in his career. He said performing took away his confidence in himself, but it also helped him get over his ego and just focus on playing.

“Being in the music field can be a lot of fun, but it can also be a heartbreak. From the time I was 21, when I first started playing professionally, I thought I was hot stuff. From the time I was 23 until I was 28, I was completely under the impression that I wasn’t any good.

“Just recently I started not caring about it at all — I just play! A big stumbling block is one’s own attitude or vision of himself as a musician. I’ve known guys that are great guitar players, but they’ve got such high standards of themselves that they’re complete jerks, and nobody will play with them. And then there are those guys who are so scared!

To that point, he mentions a guitarist little remembered today.

“There’s a guy, Elliot Ingber from the group the Winged Eeled Fingerling — who is such an amazing guitar player but thinks he’s terrible. He played guitar on the Mothers’ Freak Out! album, and with Captain Beefheart.

“One time I was jamming with Elliot and Jimi Hendrix, and Hendrix stopped playing to listen to the guy! But in front of an audience, nothing — the guy’s scared stiff!”

As for Hendrix, George recalled that they met while the electric guitar icon was living in Beverly Hills around 1969. As for what he remembered most?

“Just that he was a real nice man, very pleasant and lighthearted,” he said. “He wasn’t trying to impress anybody. This was a couple of years before he died, when he got his new band together. He had a palatial estate, rented of course, in Beverly Hills, and all the guys were there outside the house jamming incredibly loud.”

From ultra-rare 1950s Broadcasters to Vernon Reid’s greatest-ever guitar find, Norman’s Rare Guitars in Tarzana, California has long since been home to some incredible vintage guitars.

And yet, the best-sounding Stratocaster in the store right now isn't a rare vintage model; it’s a midpriced Fender from 2018, one of the less-glamorous electric guitars in stock.

So says the store's Secret Stash Instagram page, where Norm's spotlights its more unusual wares.

“OK, I know what you’re thinking, and I will agree with you 2000%: it’s ugly as shit,” the post states. “But if you want probably the best-sounding Stratocaster in the house, then you might wanna get over the look.”

The model — a Fender Jimi Hendrix Stratocaster — was part of a limited-edition run of guitars in Ultraviolet finish that paid homage to the late guitar great. True to form, it features an alder body, a maple neck and fretboard, and a trio of vintage single-coil Strat pickups. It even has a reverse headstock, alluding to the fact that lefty Hendrix played right-handed guitars.

The guitar sold for the low price $1,080, but it has blown away Norman Harris, his team, and every customer who’s heard it.

“Ask anyone in the store, and they will tell you,” the post continues. “The other day, [L.A.–based guitarist Michael] Lemmo played it and everyone in the shop agreed this guitar holds up to any Strat we have, even the vintage ones.

“It’s just special. It has that thing and sounds ridiculous. I guarantee whoever gets this one will be thanking us.”

Unlike most sought-after Fenders, the Strat wasn’t made in its Corona, California factory but south of the border, in Mexico. Today, the company's Player, Player Plus and the retro-inspired Vintera series all come out of Ensenada.

Fender set up a manufacturing facility in Ensenada in 1987, just five years after it struck a deal to build its first guitars overseas, in Japan. Since then, Mexican Strats have built a reputation for sounds that belie their price tags. And the folks at Norman’s Rare Guitars can see why.

Meanwhile, Norman Harris has revealed he had the chance to buy George Harrison’s famed Gretsch Country Gentlemen, but saw it become the one that got away after he turned down the trade for one specific reason.

Over the years, the store has become an authority on vintage guitars and was responsible for putting a Cherry Red ES-345 in Marty McFly’s hands in the movie Back to the Future. However, the props team didn’t heed Harris’s advice when picking an instrument for the scene, and, as a result, they got some key details wrong.

The guitar hasn’t been seen since filming wrapped 40 years ago, leading Gibson to launch a worldwide search for an electric guitar that has inspired thousands to play.

Fender, meanwhile, has continued to roll out Hendrix-inspired Strats, complete with their Authentic Hendrix neck plates. But that love-it-or-hate-it Ultraviolet finish has been consigned to the history books.

“If you call me up to play, I’ve got to give you my best,” says Buddy Guy, whose ready-to-rumble attitude and no-holds-barred Strat attack have earned him eternal icon status.

Since B.B. King’s passing on May 14, 2015, Guy may have inherited the mantle of “Elder Blues Statesman,” but his in-your-face stage presence is a far cry from King’s gracious and kindly “grandfather” persona. Guy carries the torch with the devil-may-care attitude of a punk rocker.

“Thanks to the rappers, I can say whatever the fuck I damn well please these days,” announced Guy from the stage of the San Francisco Masonic while supporting Jeff Beck in 2016.

A few folks probably don’t appreciate Guy’s litany of f-bombs — or his over-the-top guitar antics — but most people find Guy’s firebrand blues a welcome presence in a genre watered down with each passing cliché. On his recent tours — Guy’s Damn Right Encore Tour wrapped this past August — the 89-year-old came across like a man possessed, as if he’s making up for lost time in the spotlight.

Throughout much of the ’70s and ’80s, Guy couldn’t even land a record deal, much less fathom being honored as a living legend at the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors by an African-American president.

No one can deny that Guy — who was born George Guy in Lettsworth, Louisiana — represents the ultimate long shot. The atomic energy he channels through a Fender Stratocaster and a Fender Bassman would be thrilling and impressive at any age, but it’s almost supernatural for an octogenarian to rock so hard.

In 2017, Guy sat down with Guitar Player to discuss the blues’ legacy, Jimi Hendrix and the finer points of his guitar tone. Here's what he had to tell us.

B.B. KING

Most blues musicians I learned my lessons from are no longer with us, and they didn’t print a lot of stuff about those guys. Every night I go to the stage, I stop and imagine the history of some of the guys like Lightnin’ Hopkins and T-Bone Walker.

The media didn’t get us until the British started playing blues. That’s when major newspapers started interviewing Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and people like that. Before then, we were playing to a 99.9 percent black audience. When the British started playing blues, the audience completely changed.

My late friend, B.B. King, and I were in Memphis once, and this lady ran up to him, and said, “Hey man, these white people are taking the blues from us.” B.B. said, “No, ma’am. They didn’t take it. You just quit listening to it.”

It’s a little lonesome now. B.B. and I talked about it before he passed away. As a matter of fact, we used to talk about it before Muddy and all of them passed away. They would tell me, “Man, if you outlive me, don’t let the blues die.” That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.

STRATOCASTERS

When I was coming up, it was Lightnin’ and T-Bone, and then up stepped B.B. King, Gatemouth Brown, and, of course, Guitar Slim. There weren't many guitar players way back when, because it was unheard of. You literally couldn't hear an acoustic guitar onstage. The guitar was getting obsolete until Leo Fender and Les Paul electrified it

When Leo Fender came up with that Strat, man, I didn’t know what the hell it was! Guitar Slim was the first I saw play one, and I thought it was a joke. But you had to keep the acoustic guitar out of the weather, and this solid piece of wood Leo came up with took more wear and tear. Guitar Slim’s Strat had scratches all over it. Well, you can’t do an acoustic like that. I’m not sure if Leo made the first solidbody, but his was the one that exploded. The Stratocaster got the guitar heard.

THE BASSMAN THAT GOT LEFT ON THE RUNWAY

Some people tell me I have a tone. I barely pay attention to that. Back when the British guys started mentioning my name, players like Jimmy Page would come up to me, and say, “Man, I didn’t know anyone could play blues like that on a Strat. What are you doing?”

The Chess brothers used to say, “If you want it played right — go get Buddy.” But even I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I got my tone from a ’57 Strat and an old Fender Bassman. You can’t get that tone anymore. The Fender people do a good job at trying to replicate that ’57 tone, but there’s something different about the wood, or something else that Leo took with him. I’ll tell you what else Leo took with him: whatever he had in that [original] Bassman transformer.

I turned the bass [control] all the way off from day one. There was no reason to do anything else, because that was exactly the sound I wanted. I never had to worry about changing the tone. All I would do was wrap up the guitar cord and come home. Nowadays, you get different tones at different clubs, but that thing had the same tone wherever I played — except some of the smaller clubs where grounding issues would produce a scratchy sound that you hardly hear anymore.

I’ve still got that old Bassman. I almost lost it when I went to Africa around 1969. I was sitting by the window watching my bags being loaded, and my amp was just sitting there. As the plane was going to take off, I jumped up. The stewardess said, “Mister, sit down. You’ve got your ticket for your bag.” I said, “My amp is out there past the wing of the plane!” They kept that amp for five years. When it finally came back to me, it was all rusted out.

JIMI HENDRIX

There’s a video clip of the night we met. When I first went to New York in 1967, I was into a solo with the guitar behind my head when somebody started hollering at me, “There’s Jimi Hendrix!” I was like, “Who in the hell is Jimi Hendrix?” And he came up and said, “Can I tape your show?” He had a reel-to-reel tape recorder.

I was into Arthur Crudup, T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, and all the old blues guys. I wasn’t into all the special effects. If I had been [into Hendrix], I probably would have got hooked myself. I liked what Hendrix was doing when I heard it. But I decided to let him have that. I figured my time would come.

THE WHAMMY BAR

I used a whammy bar. Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix would tell you that if you check your history. I cut a side at Chess [Records] using a whammy bar, but they weren't ready for it. They were like, “Nobody wants to hear that.”

These days, though, I don’t put a whammy bar on my guitars. Honestly, I stopped back when I was using very light strings because it made them break easier, and I couldn’t afford to keep buying new ones. Beck puts that whammy in the palm of his hand, and Stevie Ray Vaughan was good with that, too. Stevie, Beck, and Jimi are the best I’ve ever seen with that. A lot of guitar players couldn’t figure out how to work with it, but if you do it right — like Hendrix — it works.

ERIC CLAPTON, JIMMY PAGE & THE BRITISH BLUES BOOM

I couldn’t be B.B. or T-Bone, but they kept telling me, “Man, you got something there. You got a Buddy Guy tone.” I was so dumb. I didn’t even know that.

Even the Chess brothers told me. When I first went in there, they didn’t want to hear my noise. But when Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton all said, “I’ve been listening to Buddy,” the Chess brothers said, “Wait a minute. Let him come in and do what he wants.”

I was surprised. I said, “Man, what are you talking about?” They said, “These British guitar players are selling millions, and they’re eating up the shit you’ve been playing!”

As a young guitarist on London’s mid-1960s music scene, David Gilmour had a chance to catch any number of famous and up-and-coming musical artists. He was still a couple of years from joining Pink Floyd when he decided to stop into Blaises Club, a gambling casino located in a hotel basement, on December 21, 1966.

“When I was living in London, and I was completely broke — and this is long before I joined Pink Floyd — there was a club in South Kensington called Blaises,” he tells Rick Beato. “And if you were a member of that club — and it cost five pounds or something to be a member — you could go free from Monday to Thursday, or Tuesday to Thursday. So I'd go there quite a lot, because it was free.

“And one night, I went in there, and it was rammed with people. All the Beatles, and all the stones were in there. I thought, This is a little bit unusual!”

Gilmour soon discovered what had drawn London’s biggest musical acts to the club that night. Following a set by Brian Auger and the Trinity, a slim figure made his way onstage.

“A kid came in with a guitar case, got up on the stage, opened his guitar case and put [the guitar] on the wrong way round,” GIlmour recalls. “He plugged into an amp and started, and the entire place was just —.”

He gives a look of astonishment.

“Jaws dropped. It was absolutely extraordinary.

“I went out the next day, trying to find records by this character Jimi Hendrix. And there was James Hendricks, of [American vocalese trio] Lambert, Hendricks, Lambert and Ross.

“But he didn’t exist.

In fact, Hendrix’s first record, “Hey Joe,” had been released five days earlier, on December 16, 1966, but perhaps the spellings of his first and last names confused record shop workers. Either way, Hendrix’s first album, Are You Experienced, wouldn’t come out until May 12, 1967, nearly five months later. When it did, Gilmour was ready, with money in hand.

“As soon as it came along,” he says, “I thought, Yes, Jimi!! I want a slice of that!”

Gilmour became such a Hendrix devotee that he sought out every opportunity to see him perform. That led to his extraordinary experience running the PA for the guitarist's set at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival.

“I helped mix the sound for Hendrix at the Isle of Wight in 1970," Gilmour revealed to Prog magazine in 2019. “Not a lot of people know that.”

The 1970 festival, the last of three consecutive music events on the island, was held from August 26 to 30 and is acknowledged as the largest music festival of its time, even bigger than Woodstock. Artists who performed include Rory Gallagher, the Doors, the Who, Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, Jethro Tull and Free, among many others.

Hendrix performed in the early hours of August 31 with drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Billy Cox. His set, however, was plagued by problems from the sound system, with the chatter from the security personnel’s walkie-talkies heard at one point during his performance of “Machine Gun.”

Although Pink Floyd’s sound system was used for the festival, the group didn’t perform. Gilmour says he was there simply as an attendee.

“I went down to go to it and I was camping in a tent, just being a punter,” he told Prog. “And I went backstage where our main roadie guy, Peter Watts, was trying to deal with all the mayhem, with Charlie Watkins of [British musical instrument maker] WEM, and they were very nervous. They were going to have to mix Hendrix’s sound. I did some mixing stuff in those days, and they said ‘Help! Help!’ so I did."

Gilmour recalled working from the side of the stage with a WEM Audiomaster mixer. He would eventually come to own the very guitar strap Hendrix used at the Isle of Wight and attach it to his Black Strat, the famed Fender electric guitar he played on classic Pink Floyd cuts like “Money,” “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” and “Comfortably Numb.”

“My lovely wife Polly [Samson] bought me, as a present, a Jimi Hendrix strap, that you can see,” he told Prog. As he explained to the interviewer, it was not a copy of a Jimi Hendrix strap but the real thing. “No, the Jimi Hendrix strap, that he’s [wearing at] a lot of his later shows, at the Isle of Wight in 1970,” he explained.

He added that he didn’t get a chance to meet Hendrix at the festival. “Not then. I had met him previous to that, once,” he offers. “I didn’t know him.”

Despite his fondness for Hendrix’s style and choice of main guitar — a Fender Stratocaster — Gilmour never attempted to emulate him. His own style is slower, more fluid than fiery, owing in large part to his inability to play fast.

“I wasn’t gifted with enormous speed on the guitar,” he told Beato in a previous interview. “There were years when I was younger where I thought I could get that if I practiced enough. But it just wasn’t ever really going to happen.”

In related news, Gilmour recently revealed that he is at work on his followup to last year’s solo record, Luck and Strange.

John McLaughlin had a chance to jam with Jimi Hendrix. It could have resulted in glorious meeting of two supremely talented guitarists. Instead, he says, it was a “disaster.”

And it was all because of money.

McLaughlin and Hendrix met in New York City in March 1969, a transitional period for Jimi. By then he had released three albums with his first group, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, which featured drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding. By the time he and McLaughlin met, the Experience was in the slow and painful process of breaking up. That would ultimately lead Hendrix to the creation of his next group, Band of Gypsys, with bassist Billy Cox and drummer Buddy Miles.

McLaughlin, meanwhile, had recorded his debut solo album, Extrapolation, two months earlier. Before that, he'd played with Ginger Baker in the Graham Bond Quartet — a band which Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson credits as a precursor to progressive rock — given guitar lessons to Jimmy Page, and played alongside Experience drummer Mitchell in Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames. His stock wasn't quite as high as Hendrix's, but he arrived in New York that spring with a fierce reputation, nevertheless.

The jam happened during a party at the Record Plant studio, where Hendrix had tracked portions of Electric Ladyland the year before. McLaughlin, who was in the city performing with Tony Williams at the Village Vanguard, had been invited by Mitchell, who had attended their show.

“It was a bit of a disaster,” McLaughlin tells Ultimate Guitar of the scene at the Record Plant. “I walked into the studio with Mitch Mitchell, and it was loud. There was a big party going on, and that's where I met Buddy Miles for the first time. We hooked up and became friends."

McLaughlin says "quite a few guitar players" besides Hendrix were present.

“The problem is, the only guitar I had was a Gibson Hummingbird,” he says of Gibson's first square-shoulder dreadnought acoustic guitar. It was an instrument more typically found in the hands of folk players than one brandished for late-night jam sessions with Jimi Hendrix.

“I'd run out of money when I was in the U.K. and Europe,” McLaughlin explains of his atypical instrument of choice. “I'd moved to Europe by that time, and I had to sell my really nice Gibson guitar because I didn't have any money." The Hummingbird, he notes, "was pretty cheap," and he had outfitted it with a DeArmond sound hole pickup.

"At that volume, I plugged my guitar in, and it was instant feedback. It was really hard to play. It was unfortunate, because I needed a solidbody guitar on that session.”

Fortuitously, a portion of the jam was captured on tape and is available on YouTube. Dave Holland features on bass, with Buddy Miles behind the kit. Above all, Hendrix's instantly recognizable phrasing cuts through the mix. It might not have gone down as McLaughlin's finest showing of his talents — at least in his eyes — but he nevertheless cherishes the memory.

“I met Jimi,” he says with a smile. “He was a sweet guy. And I met him again, subsequently, where we had a chance to talk. And he was just totally unpretentious.

“I think he knew he was causing quite a revolution on the electric guitar. He certainly affected me, and about another five million guitar players. He was a one-man revolution on the guitar. It was unbelievable what he was doing, with a wah-wah pedal and a Marshall amp. That was it.”

In a previous interview, McLaughlin claimed that the jam took place between 2 am and 8 am, making it one for the night owls and party animals, in true rock and roll fashion.

Speaking of Hendrix's inspiration, Pete Townshend has stated that the virtuoso led him to write the Who's breakthrough album, Tommy, in 1969, and a rare clip that resurfaced in January of a young Jimi Hendrix proves he was destined for greatness.

McLaughlin released his latest live release, Live at Montreux Jazz Festival 2022, last month.

"It was a pivotal moment for my sound," Jimmy Page has said of when he met electronics wizard Roger Mayer at Surbiton, a suburb in South West London not far from his home in Epsom and Jeff Beck’s in Wallington. It was the early 1960s, and Mayer, who had worked for the Admiralty, had begun turning his attention to electric guitar effects.

“He asked me if I needed anything for my guitar,” Page continued. “He came over to my house one day and I played him a song with electric distortion and said, ‘I want to find a way to sustain it.’ He went away and came back with this box with an on/off switch — that meant you could control the distortion.”

As Mayer told Guitar Player in 2023, Page and Beck were among his earliest customers.

"I met Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page at the same time when I first started going to local music venues where they played around here — what we called the ‘Surrey Delta’ — in ’62, ’63, when I was a teenager. Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page started out playing what you might call youth clubs, where kids used to get together.”

Both were interested in fuzz, which they’d heard on that record Page had spun for Mayer: the Ventures’ tune “The 2000 Pound Bee.”

“We sat there listening to it and Jimmy said, ‘Can we do this?’ I think they went up to a music shop in Shaftsbury Avenue to have a look at a Maestro [FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone], but it didn’t have enough sustain. I said, ‘I can improve it,’ so Jimmy said, ‘Okay, Rog. See what you can do.’”

Mayer tweaked the circuit, he said, “from square one, really. As a scientist, I could come up with an alternative solution — one that’s better.”

As Page told Uncut, Mayer’s invention revolutionized the guitarist’s sound. "It was phenomenal," he says. "When I started taking it to sessions, the other guitarists were blown away. The blood drained from their faces. But the guys doing the arrangements loved it."

Page was less interested in what he called Mayer’s "other box,” an octave-doubler with fuzz. "It was difficult to control in the studio from the guitar, so I said it wasn’t for me," he recalled.

Another guitarist would put Mayer’s octave-doubler to use: Jimi Hendrix. The American guitarist was making waves in England by the time Mayer met him at a club in 1967. According to the inventor, two weeks later he was in the studio as Hendrix was overdubbing the solo to “Purple Haze,” using his “other box,” the Octavia.

Mayer — who would famously help another guitarist, Bob Marley, completely revamp his tone — subsequently worked with Hendrix on his next album, Axis: Bold as Love, and then accompanied him and his group on their 1968 tour of America.

As Mayer told Guitar Player in our May 2012 issue, in the days before the effects box explosion, inventors like himself often worked directly with guitarists and studio engineers to create effects to their specification, a truly bespoke approach that was essential to the development of both new sounds and the pedal market that would emerge in the 1970s. He gave us insights into his method of working with Hendrix, the guitarist who was perhaps most interested in new sounds at the time.

What were some of the sonic goals you and Hendrix discussed when you started working together?

We talked about creating new soundscapes. Jimi was most interested in making new sounds for the records, because if you were going to be successful back then, you had to have a hit record. He felt he needed to be on the cutting edge with new sounds, so we were following a sort of Formula One racing approach, where you had constant development to keep moving on.

After Hendrix’s success with the Octavia, did you think the effect should be available to other guitar players?

No. This was a time when most recording studios manufactured their own consoles and other gear, and the electronics side of it was highly proprietary and quite secretive, really. When I was making effects for Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Jimi, I was one of their best-kept secrets.

Did Hendrix express interest in having a definitive sound?

Jimi wasn’t as interested in having a definitive sound as he was in having the right sound for the soul. His sounds had to be crafted for each particular song, and Jimi knew that if he got the right tone, it could be almost magical. He and I talked about what hadn’t been done, and one of the main things was panning the signal so as to move the sound around in the mix while manipulating the echo to create different spatial awareness.

To our way of thinking, echo was a way of adding more information and color to the sound in order to create ambience and a sense of mood alteration. Like if we panned the echo left to right while changing its EQ, suddenly the guitar could sound like a spaceship coming toward you. So using a combination of tape delay and EMT echo plates, and by manipulating the delay, the panning, and the EQ, we were able to make the music move and sound more three-dimensional.

Jimi was the happiest when he was getting sounds that were spinning in his head onto records. If he had a new idea for something, it wasn’t a matter of how much it was going to cost. It was always, “When can we do it?”

Does it surprise you that the sounds Hendrix got using fuzz, wah, and feedback are still considered the holy grail by guitarists?

Well, after Jimi did “Voodoo Chile” and some other records, there really wasn’t much else you could do with a wah. Jimi was so prolific in the way he used things like feedback and distortion, so it’s pretty hard to come up with something else that sounds as fresh — especially when it has to be incorporated into the framework of a great song.

What was the most important thing you learned from Hendrix?

Dream the impossible and have the spirit to play to the edge. That’s what Jimi showed me.

Jeff Beck’s love for Jimi Hendrix was well known in his lifetime. He frequently mentioned Hendrix in interviews, sharing stories about their interactions and their occasional adventure jamming or hanging out.

It’s been equally well established that Beck felt Hendrix sidelined his career and took the shine off his rising star when the American guitarist arrived in London in late 1966. In seemingly no time at all, Hendrix was the player everyone was talking about.

Meanwhile, Beck was struggling to find his groove in the wake of his departure from the Yardbirds.

“It was a horrible time, really,” he told Guitar Player associate editor Barry Cleveland in 2003. “Not because of him, but because of the fact that he swept us all aside and put us in a bin. I think that was more the case for us than for the public at large, who were happy to have us all.

“But I know how it felt having a girl ring up and ask, ‘Did you hear Jimi Hendrix?’”

Despite the difficulty Hendrix caused him, Beck was filled with admiration for his talent and nearly obsessive commitment to electric guitar .

In 1989, Beck had an opportunity to work with another iconic Strat slinger: Stevie Ray Vaughan. Five years after they performed “Jeff's Boogie” at a CBS Records convention in Hawaii, the two legends were paired up on the Fire Meets the Fury tour, which saw them co-headline a 30-date stint put together by their label, Epic Records. The tour was as sensational as it sounds today and became one of the highest-grossing music road shows of 1989.

As it was wrapping up, Beck and SRV sat down with Guitar Player’s Matt Resnicoff and Joe Gore for a historic interview, a meeting made all the more significant when Stevie Ray died not long afterward.

The interview is filled with great moments, and as often happened where Beck was concerned, the subject of Hendrix came up. It was here that Beck made a comparison between Hendrix and SRV that was especially meaningful given his familiarity with Jimi.

Jeff, what was it like to jam with Hendrix?

STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN Yeah, good question.

JEFF BECK What was it like? Well... it was awful! [laughs] The first time, I felt like a peanut, like a fucking hole would have opened up and swallowed me.

The thing that puts it right is the fact that there’s a genuine love Jimi had for my style as well, which I couldn’t believe. Then I realized that Jimi was not a messiah; he was a very genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, music-loving person. He didn’t give a damn about the reputation, the showbiz razzmatazz.

All he was interested in were the licks and what you were feeling like…. It was just sadness that we couldn’t nurture the friendship a bit more. In those days, life was just totally crazy. He would be off in a 24-hours-a-day lifestyle, and I couldn’t keep up with it. I had to have my sleep. He was a boogier — a club here, club there — and he’d be jamming ’til 5:00 in the morning.

My lifestyle was never destined to be like that, so I just had to say, “Adios, Jim, I gotta go to bed!”

I felt very amateurish alongside him, because he lived and breathed it. You’re very similar to Jimi in that way. I’m just a part-time employee.

SRV I don’t know about that one. [laughs]

BECK I’m not in love with the guitar as much as you are or Jimi is — was. I just pick it up and play it sometimes. [laughs]

Beck wasn’t exaggerating about his on-again-off-again relationship with the instrument. Much of his free time was spent working on his collection of vintage hot rods and Corvettes.

“I feel really guilty,” he continued on. “Whatever I choose to do, it always robs me of something. The guitar robs me of my time building rods, and the rods take their toll on the playing.

“But the payoff is the refreshment on both sides. By building, I’m able to completely steep myself in physical things, and all the time I’m doing that, I’m thinking of licks and music, which I’m not able to do sitting with a guitar.

“That’s probably the reason I’m able to maintain a modicum of interest in music after 30-odd years.”

Sadly, SRV would — like Hendrix — die early, leaving a void in the guitar world, and a legacy that remains vibrant to this day.

As for Beck, he would renew his solo career in earnest near the turn of the millennium and continue to amaze us all with his ability to make his guitar speak in ways no other could, using his fingers —no pick — volume control and whammy bar. Not bad for “a part-time employee” of the guitar.

This interview originally appeared in the March 1996 issue of Guitar Player.

Down an unpaved road deep in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley, a sign announces "Delaney & Mamo's Rock 'N' Roll Ranch." Sundry farm animals greet new arrivals, and Delaney Bramlett graciously invites visitors into the makeshift control room of his recording studio, a converted toolshed. Blasting from the small speakers are welcome reminders of rock's earthy foundations in country, gospel, R&B, and blues.

A gifted songwriter, singer, producer, and bandleader — and a tasteful, southern-flavored guitar picker — Delaney Bramlett has never wavered from the musical formula that helped this son of a Mississippi sharecropper vault from the seedy bars and honky tonks of Southern California to the upper echelons of rock during the late '60s and early '70s.

At a time when British rock superstars were trying to connect directly with the American music that inspired them, Delaney Bramlett would welcome them to Los Angeles with open arms and one of the hottest bands around: Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, the gospel/R&B/rock revue centered around Delaney and his ex-wife, Bonnie. The group created a buzz in the industry with their second album, 1969’s The Original Delaney & Bonnie & Friends (Accept No Substitute). By the early 1970s, they were enjoying hits with their songs “Never Ending Song of Love” and, an FM staple in the 1970s, “Only You Know and I Know.”

"At that time Delaney & Bonnie were magical," says famed Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler.

The musicians in Bramlett's circle — including Jim Keltner, Leon Russell, J. J. Cale, Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle, Jim Gordon, Rita Coolidge, Jim Price, and Bobby Keys — helped fuel Eric Clapton's Derek & the Dominos, George Harrison's All Things Must Pass assemblage, Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen, John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band, and the Rolling Stones' horn section, as well as Delaney & Bonnie's own exuberant albums Accept No Substitute and On Tour With Eric Clapton.

From a guitarist's perspective, however, Delaney's ultimate trick was persuading some of rock's greatest players — Clapton, Harrison, Duane Allman, and Jimi Hendrix — to take time off from their own careers to serve as his sidemen. Factor in James Burton, the Ventures Jerry McGee, singer/songwriter J. J. Cale, and country-pop session ace "Thumbs" Carllile, and the list of guitarists who worked alongside Bramlett starts to look like a who's who of the era's top players.

Clapton in particular owes much to Bramlett — not just for providing an escape hatch from an increasingly confining guitarist-as-gunslinger role in Cream and Blind Faith, but for helping to give the then-ambivalent guitar legend the confidence to step forward as a lead vocalist and solo artist.

"I was in total awe of Delaney," Clapton has acknowledged. "He was the first person to instill in me a sense of purpose."

While Bramlett produced Clapton’s self-titled 1970 debut, Bonnie assisted the guitarist writing many of its songs, including the hit “Let It Rain.”

Bramlett's own records are filled with tasty, homegrown guitar work that echoes his Delta roots.

"He's probably one of the best rhythm guitar players in the world," avers Delaney Bonnie/Derek & the Dominos cohort Bobby Whitlock. "He comes up with some of the hippest, coolest riffs and rhythm patterns of any guitar player except maybe Steve Cropper."

But Bramlett's playing on record is so intermingled with that of the great players who have served as "Friends" that it's sometimes difficult to know where Delaney's down-home picking ends and the more agile stylings of some of his stellar sidemen begin. Bramlett's acoustic guitar playing comes from bottleneck Delta blues, while his electric guitar work is often distinguished by twin-guitar harmonies.

These characteristics also color the work of Clapton, Harrison, and Allman, especially after they collaborated with Bramlett. (While Allman played harmony-style with Dickey Betts in the Allman Brothers, he — and they — were clearly influenced by Bramlett's unapologetically rootsy approach. In fact, the version of Robert Johnson's "Come On In My Kitchen" that the Allmans played through the late end of their career bears a strong resemblance to the arrangement on Delaney & Bonnie's Motel Shot album, which features Duane.)

"Delaney's rhythm guitar playing was the foundation of his music," Wexler states. "Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Dave Mason — these were English blues buffs who learned from phonograph records, But they didn't have the mud between the toes and the church down the road with the hootin' and hollerin'. Delaney was their conduit — and so was Duane — to the reality of the life from which this music sprang."

The breakup of Delaney and Bonnie, increasing family obligations, struggles with drugs and alcohol, and changing musical fashions led to a lower profile for Delaney during the decades of disco, punk, and heavy metal. Now, proud to see his daughter, Bekka, recruited as lead vocalist in the new Fleetwood Mac, and pleased that musical trends are veering in a rootsier direction, Bramlett hopes to reconnect with a business that may be coming back around to his kind of music.

What first attracted you to the guitar?

My mom wanted me to play the piano. We had a piano teacher, and she played terrible. I thought if I took lessons from her it was sissy, cause she played real sissy. I said, "Nah," and I took up the guitar.

I played mandolin and fiddle a little bit when I was a kid, and I played bass at the Palomino Club when I got to Los Angeles, but I always come back to the guitar. I guess that was my first love.

When I was seven my mom asked me, "What if Santy Claus brought you a guitar — would you learn it?" "Yeah!" On Christmas morning there it was, a [Sears department store] Playtime in a big old cardboard box My uncle still has it, and I'm gonna get it.

I did my first TV show when I was 10. I won a big contest, Purnell's Pride Chicken. The stars of that show was Slim and Spec Rhodes, hillbilly artists.

Later on I did Elvis's first tour down there. We had a two- or three-piece act. I only did two shows. The Colonel [Tom Parker] would pay, like, 30 girls for every show to get up and start screamin'. Back then he was just like everyone else, just a starving picker, a truck driver. Our opening show was in our Randolf High auditorium, so you can imagine how big he was. The town consisted of two service stations.

Did you learn from lessons?

No, just from watchin' somebody play: R.C. Weatherall. He was a black guy that would sit on the back porch and play after we would get through workin' in the fields. I can play a little bit like him still. He'd play odd, real odd. He didn't care how he tuned it. He could tune it like a regular tuning, and he'd still play all that stuff that I ain't never figured out. Or he could tune it open, play slide.

Remember the old long Coke bottles? He'd whack it off and then get them rocks and smooth it off. He was one of the all-time greats. I probably learned more from him than anybody.

I wish that someone had done somethin' with him. He didn't know how to get out of Mississippi. I'm sure he's still there, an old man. I looked for him last time I was down there, but I couldn't find him.

Who were some other early influences?

Robert Johnson, Hubert Sumlin and Elmore James. In those days in country music, they didn't introduce their guitar players much, and you'd have to go look and find 'em out. Like Ernest Tubb might say, "Ahh, Billy Byrd!" when he would take a solo.

I always loved Hank Garland, but I could never even try to play like him — he was way beyond me. And Grady Martin, who played on "El Paso" by Marty Robbins. Later on, I'd say Pops Staples was one of my all-time favorites. And Albert King, he was an original.

How did you break into session work?'

When I first came out here I used to be the kid that would sit in the studios all the time. I'd go from one studio to the next and sit in the corner. Everybody kinda thought I was with somebody else, so they wouldn't ask me to leave.

I went to a lot of sessions with [country musician and producer] Cliffie Stone, just learnin', watchin' what to play, how to run a board, how to try to get real pure sounds.

Then I was in band that played what they called "continuous music" at the Saddle Club. The music never stopped. One guy would take a break, and you'd switch over to his instrument, and just keep switching when each guy took a break I'd play guitar, bass, drums.

When I finally got to Where I could play worth a shit, I played on some sessions for Willie Nelson — when his hair was shorter. Of course I never got paid for it, cause they didn't know who I was. They just said, "Can you play guitar?" "Yeah." "All right."

And then I played on a George Jones session when I went down to Nashville. I played sticks on a cardboard box 'cause the drummer that always did the session didn't show up. [Country impresario] Harlan Howard, who'd sorta taken me under his wing, knew I could keep a beat. He said, "Can you pound that thing on the two and four?" I said, "Sure."

Is it true that you sang on demos for Elvis?

When I first got to California I was just out of the Navy, 19 years old. Ben Weisman, a songwriter, heard me singing in a nightclub. He wrote about 80 or 90 songs for Elvis, and he offered me a deal to sing demos. I had to sing exactly like Elvis, and I got $25 per song. I can still sing just like him.

When did you start writing songs?

When I was in junior high. I wrote the first song that Clint Eastwood ever sang, for a TV series he was in years ago. [Eastwood was starring in the hit show Rawhide.] They were starting to make a big star out of him, and I wrote this song called "Searchin' for Somewhere." It sounded like he cut it sitting in the middle of the desert, sitting by a cactus bush. Him and a guitar and a harmonica. He's a terrible singer. [laughs]

You've played with many of the best. What do you look for in a guitarist?

It's their playing attitude, their tones. I don't look for a speed freak that shows me every note you can do in one bar. I hate that stuff. It's somebody that plays from the heart. It's not the technology of the damn thing, it's what comes out when he does it. Playing in the right place and knowing when to shut up. I think holes is the biggest part of music, if you put it in the right spot. Everybody wants to fill up every little gap.

How do you compare the various players you've worked with?

Eric's a great guitar player, and so is George, and they don't play anything alike. Duane Allman, I kind a set him aside. To me, he was the epitome of rock and roll and R&B both.

Then there's Cornell Dupree — a stylist, a wonderful, wonderful guitarist. He was King Curtis's guitar player. He was strictly R&B. And then there's Thumbs Carllile — complete genius. Didn't play like nobody but Thumbs. His own style. I got mine — it's called "scratchy rhythm-lead."

You use a lot of double- and even triple-guitar harmonies.

I was always a freak for that stuff. Since I was a kid, I'd sit around and work up a lick, then I'd work up a harmony to it, then another harmony. I just thought that was gorgeous. I figured if they can do it with a violin section, why can't they do it with a guitar? That was my idea. I'm sure a lot of people were doing it a long time before I thought of it, but I can't think of anybody that really influenced me at it.

Were you doing harmony stuff before the Allman Brothers?

The twin stuff? Oh, yeah. I mean, they might have been sittin' somewhere in a closet doin' it too while I was doin' it, and they were really good at it. Of course all those licks, that was Duane. Not taking anything away from Dickey — he can hold his own. But he was playing on Duane's coattails — those were Duane's licks.

When you played with Clapton and Harrison, would you each work out specific parts?

Sure. See, a lot of people, they're too embarrassed to say, "Let's work out a part." No — I work out everything. I want it to be right We'd say, "I'll play this part, you play that one. You don't like that one? Okay, let me try that one." Playin' off the top of your head is great, and when you get onstage you can always jam and do that. Still, when it comes time, hit that ol' dilly doggy and do it.

It seems pretty remarkable that players like Harrison and Clapton would be willing to put their own careers aside to be sidemen for you.

Well, that made it real easy for me. I could have a cigarette while they took the solo. [laughs]

Did their playing become more "Americanized" after playing with you?

Well, that's the southern blues thing that I just naturally play, because that's where I'm from. They liked that, and of course when you like something, you're gonna go for it. We all showed each other stuff. They'd ask me, "How'd you do that?" and then say, "God, that's simple! I wouldn't have even thought of that."

Everybody shows things. There ain't no new lick. It's just the interpretation of how you wanna play that lick. That lick's been played before we were a threat, you know what I mean? Them licks have been played for a million years.

Does Harrison play on On Tour With Eric Clapton?

All the way through it. He's called "Mysterioso." He had quite a few of those kinda names.

Is it always you on rhythm, Eric on lead, George on second lead?

It would depend on the song and mood at the time. George, more than anyone I know, is one to work it all out in advance. I showed him what I did on the slide. He was amazed by it because I use all kinda different tunings. I got some weird ones. The D is the weirdest one. The top string's gotta be an F# — you need a light string to pull it up that far. I used that on some of Eric's things that I produced.

After touring with Clapton and Harrison you gigged with John Lennon.

When I first did a tour over there [in the U.K. and Europe] with Eric and them, we were rehearsing in Eric's house, and he had some Orange amps. They were godawful things, man, but they were loud. They'd knock a house down. God, they had a tone.

John was just wonderful. He called up and said, "Would y'all be the Plastic Ono Band?" And we said, "Shit, yeah. Show us to the stage." They had a whole line of them Oranges, and we blew' em all up into shreds.

I loved John. To me, he was the Beatles. But they were all great. The English Invasion took over for a while. They were kinda doin' their version of southern music, and kids over here are so dumb, they thought that was original. When we started playin' it, they thought we was copyin' them!

Are there one or two tracks that exemplify your guitar style?

Oh, probably "Comin' Home" and "Where There's a Will There's a Way" [both are on The Best of Delaney & Bonnie and Delaney & Bonnie On Tour With Eric Clapton]. That "Comin' Home" was pretty exciting — it just flew off the top of my head, that intro thing. I think we cut that at United Western studios, which is now Called Ocean Way. I did "Comin' Home" twice. The studio version I like best, I think. On the live version we all take solos, sometimes all in one whack.

That's one good thing about having a lot of guitar players. If they're really good, they won't get in each other's way. And I think Dave Mason was actually on that stage at the same time, too, but I don't think you'll hear anybody steppin' on toes. I think me and Eric swapped off in the middle of the studio version.

Do you recall what kind of amp you used on "Comin' Home"? You got a real gritty sound

It was this Fender Champ that I had souped up with this Lansing instead of the little ol' Champ speaker, and I had big tubes put in it. It still had that Champ sound, but with more power.

Eric fell in love with the damn thing, and George did too. I gave one to Eric, one to George, and one to Jimmy Page, 'cause they all loved 'em. That whole recording and Eric's album [1970’s Eric Clapton] was done with Champs.

We even figured out a way to use them onstage, using them as preamps on top of big amps. We blew a few of 'em up before we found out how to do it I can still hear Eric using it in the studio. I can recognize the sound.

You produced that first Clapton solo album.

We'd just finished our album and went directly into the studio to do his. I told Eric, "You should put out an album on your own." He said, "I can't sing." I said, "God gives you a talent. You don't use it, he'll take it away. Better sing."

I worked for many months to teach him how to phrase, how to say certain things, before we did the album. And he said, "Can I cut your songs.?" We started over in England, then we came back here. God, we was all over the place on that album.

It was a real departure from Eric's guitar-hero image.

I did it on purpose to try to establish him as a singer. I mixed the vocals over the guitar. The guitars, they're tasty — he played enough. But he wanted to get away from the English sound. He wanted that sound I was gettin', that Southern sound.

By then you were using the Let It Be Rosewood Telecaster that George gave you. [In December 1969, Harrison gave Bramlett the Rosewood Telecaster he used in the making of Let It Be. The guitar now belongs to Harrison’s estate.]

I played that Tele mostly tuned to an open chord for slide. Most of the time I was playing that guitar that Duane gave me [a 1961 sunburst Fender Stratocaster]. We'd all snatch guitars. I don't remember it song by song, but Eric would say, "I wanna play that one a while," and I'd say, "Give me this one."

How did you and Duane come to know each other?

Through [Atlantic Records producer] Jerry Wexler. I was gettin' ready to do an album. Jerry said, "Who would you like?" I said, "Ry Cooder." He said, "Do you want someone to play real blues or someone to play California blues?" I said, "I want real blues."

He said, "Let's do Duane." I said, "Yep, you got that right." That was way back yonder. We just fell in love with each other, and it started from there.

Duane was the best [slide player] there ever was, the best there ever will be. He said, "You play wonderful, but it's real Mississippi blues. Can I show you somethin' to just stretch it out a little bit? Let me hear how you play." I said, "I don't wanna play in front of you."

He said, "Let me hear you," and I started playin'. He's goin', "How'd you do that?" and I said, "How'd I do fuckin' what?" He said, "That! I want to know." I said, "I learned that from R.C. Weatherall, the black guy that lived with us in Mississippi — he taught me that shit."

So he showed me techniques, and I showed him all that raw crap that R.C. showed me. We got to be such friends that it was just ridiculous.

Your house was something of a way station for traveling musicians.

Duane would stay here. Albert King used to rehearse in my home studio right up until he died. Gram Parsons used to call whenever I was about to leave to go on the road. He'd show up and hang out with Mamo [Delaney's mother). She'd make him coffee, and he'd say, "You don't know what you've got, man."

Even Jimi Hendrix played in your band.

Jimi played with me even before Eric, if memory serves. This was at the height of his popularity. My guitarist at the time, Jerry McGee, was drafted out to tour with Kris Kristofferson, I think we were performing in Los Angeles at the Palladium. I was backstage in the dressing room feelin' down because I didn't have a replacement.

All of a sudden this shadow of this guy holdin' a guitar comes across the room. Jimi said, "Can I play with you tonight?" and I went, "You bet your sweet bippy!”

And he stayed on for several weeks at least. I also remember running into him later when we would cross on the road when I was with Eric. Jimi was a very quiet, soft-spoken kind of guy, but he'd be excited to show us these new gadgets he'd get. He'd wave us over, open up his bag, pull out a new one, and demonstrate for us.

But when he played with us, he just played straight, no effects. And he could really play. He was so tasty Then every once in a while he'd whip the guitar between his legs, or behind his back, just bein' Jimi, 'cause he could do that.

Do you see today's music coming back around your way?

In the two fields I'm really concerned with — country and rock/R&B — I sure do feel it coming back around. Country music went a little too far. I can't tell the difference between those guys with the hats and the musicians don't give a shit — they're makin' their $100,000 a year.

But you can only take a certain thing so far, and all of a sudden it's not country anymore. You can only take R&B and rock and roll so far before it's not that anymore.

But people are starvin' to death to hear it jump back again. Pick up a guitar and sing "You Win Again" like Hank Williams, and people are gonna stop and listen. They're hungry for it.

So is your new stuff country, rock, R&B, or what?

Some of all of the above. It's just my music. I'll say it again, like Jimi Hendrix said. We were sittin' around with Jimi, and we said, "What do you call it? Gospel?' No. "Real rock and roll?" No.

Then Jimi said, "Spiritual, that's all. Just tell 'em, 'It's spiritual. It feels good.'"

Stephen Stills is considered one of the great leaders of the 1960s West Coast folk-rock renaissance. From his work with Buffalo Springfield to his long tenure with Crosby, Stills & Nash — and sometimes Young — he’s largely celebrated today for his vocal prowess in harmony with the latter group and his songwriting. Stills tunes like “For What It’s Worth,” “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” “Helplessly Hoping” and “Carry On” remain popular several decades on, making them a testament to his talents and enduring relevance.

But Stills’ considerable guitar talents tend to be overlooked. Whether on acoustic guitar — such as the prewar Martins he’s favorted — or electric —including Gretsch White Falcons, Fender Stratocasters and Gibson Les Paul Custom — Stills proved himself a technically virtuoso and fiery performer. He got his first guitar, a Kay hollowbody electric, in 1962 at the age of 17 and began teaching himself, his interests shaped by blues and country as well as Latin music.

Stills was so talented as a player and songwriting that Randy Bachman recently admitted to stealing from him — a fact that was not lost on Stills.

It wasn’t until the late 1960s that Stills began to take an interest in lead guitar playing. Like so many of his peers, he was influenced by Jimi Hendrix. But unlike everyone else, Stills got his lessons directly from Jimi — not just one but countless.

“I followed the dude around for two years learning how to play lead guitar,” he recalled to Guitar Player in 1976. “I literally followed him like he was my guru. People thought I was a groupie, but I wasn’t; I was going to music school.”

His friendship with Hendrix led Stills to jam with the likes of Buddy Miles — who drummed with Hendrix in Band of Gypsys — and Johnny Winter. But much of his time with Hendrix was spent one on one.

“Jimi and I played for 14 hours once at my house in Malibu,” he said. “We must have made up 15 rock and roll songs, but forgot them all because it wasn’t taped. We just played for the ocean.”

Stills said it was Hendrix who pushed him to play lead.

“He kicked me in the butt one night,” he recalled. “I was playing rhythm with my eyes closed, and he said, ‘Go on. Play lead!’”

Fortunately, the two guitarists would spend some time in the studio together. Hendrix played lead guitar on "Old Times, Good Times,” from Stills' self-titled 1970 album. They also recorded Stills’ song “$20 Fine” on September 30, 1969, which was released on the 2018 posthumous Hendrix release Both Sides of the Sky, and a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock,” with Hendrix on bass and vocals.

“Jimi and I got together as much as we could,” Stills said. “I always thought a good blues [rhythm] section that would take time to learn Jimi’s vamps and stuff would have really just set him free. God knows what he was hearing. I really didn’t hit my stride, though, until after he died. If he was still around, we’d be inseparable by now.”

Stills also clocked time with Duane Allman when Duane and his brother Gregg were performing in Hour Glass, the group they formed in Los Angeles in 1967. Hour Glass opened for acts like the Doors and Buffalo Springfield, which is how Stills came to befriend Duane.

“Every time we’d hit the same place at the same time, it was, ‘C’mon let’s play. Get the band. Who wants to play drums? Who wants to play bass? Let’s play, play, play.’”

Those jams with Allman added new aspects to what he’d picked up from Hendrix.

“The great thing about jams is learning — learning how to copy the other guy’s riffs,” Stills said. “A guy lays down a rhythm riff, you play against that. Then when it’s his turn, play the same rhythm he was playing with the same accents and so on.

“I’ll tell you, sometimes when I’m onstage now I see ghosts as I play my guitar. Sometimes they’re laughing at me. Sometimes they’re saying ‘right on.’”

Stills shared some of his hard-earned secrets about soloing and rhythm.

“The secret of rhythm — like my folk experience — is learning to Travis pick: getting rhythm in the thumb, getting with the bass, and getting that push beat to it. If you’re using a flatpick, you can go the same way. You learn how to palm. You learn which position is the best to get the most out of a chord, because rhythm is basically dividing the chord into two parts. You’ve got the bass and treble, and you divide the measure up and play brmmm, chick, brmmm, chick. You’ve got to divide them up and use the damper in between.”

“There are relatively few great rhythm players in rock. Peter Townshend is one, Eric Clapton, Joe Walsh is one of the greatest, and Jimi Hendrix was actually a great rhythm player.”

On the subject of soloing, he noted the importance of practicing scales, saying it gave him the confidence he needed to take flight. Thanks to the skills he developed, he said, “You run up the neck, and you don’t miss and hit those awful, sour notes. The mistakes I make now are when my finger falls off a string or something.” He started out practicing scales “down at the bottom of the guitar,” he explained: “the seventh scale, the major scale, the minor scale, and the major seventh scale.”

The bottom line, he said, is that there are no shortcuts. “No man, there really aren’t any. It’s the old developing of the fingers thing. A lot of young kids start out being lead guitar players and consequently turn into terrible rhythm guitarists. One thing you must learn is how to be a good, strong, effective rhythm player, or you’re just out of it. You’re useless to anybody else.”

And when it comes to speed, Stills said he favors musicality over miles per hour.

“Playing fast is not necessarily best,” he added. “It’s what you play when. In a way, too, it’s a question of taste. I mean, the taste of the public could leave me right behind. But I’m basically a blues cat, and one well-placed blues lick can just rip your heart out. That’s the theory I work on.”

Although they were an American soul group, the Isley Brothers were the linchpin between two of rock and roll’s most influential artists: the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix.

In February 1964, Hendrix became aguitarist with the Isley’s group. He’d been living with the family at their home in Englewood, New Jersey, after quitting the chitlin circuit and deciding to try his luck up in New York City. The Isley’s took him in and reportedly bought him a sunburst Fender Jazzmaster, after his previous electric guitar, a Duo-Sonic, was stolen. That March, Jimi cut his first professional recording with the Isley’s, “Testify,” and went on to tour with the group for much of that year.

As for the Beatles, they’d been covering the Isley’s 1959 hit “Shout,” as well as their 1962 smash “Twist and Shout” soon after it was released. They’d even made the latter tune the rousing closing number of their set when they performed in 1963 on Sunday Night at the London Palladium and The Royal Variety Performance, where John Lennon instructed the assembled royalty to “rattle your jewelry.”

The Beatles would go on to make the song the final track on their debut album, Please Please Me and eventually performed it in the U.S. when they made their February 23, 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

As guitarist Ernie Isley recalled in a 2014 interview with The Hub, the Isleys met the Beatles in England. “When they found out we lived in New Jersey, they said when they came back to New York they wanted to come by our home,” he said. “I think it would have been a bit much: because under the same roof it would have been the Isley Brothers, the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. And they would have heard him play.”

That meeting never happened, but Isley does recall watching the Beatles make their debut on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. Sitting next to him on the living room sofa was none other than Jimi Hendrix.

Later that year, Hendrix would go on tour with the group, where he would perform “Twist and Shout.” Isley likes to imagine what might have happened if the Beatles had seen them perform.

“You know, if divine grace had happened and John Lennon showed up,” he says, “that would’ve had us asking, ‘Are we ready for the second coming?’”

Guitar Player dialed in with Ernie to discuss the Beatles, Hendrix and their intertwined history, starting with “Twist and Shout” and a historic Fab Four appearance on television in 1964.

The Beatles and the Isley Brothers have a bit of a connection because of “Shout” and “Twist and Shout.” Can you remember the first time you all saw them, which was while Jimi Hendrix was staying at your house?

When the Beatles were first on The Ed Sullivan Show, I was sitting on the left-hand side of the couch, Marvin [Isley] was sitting on the right-hand side and Jimi Hendrix was in the middle. And Ed Sullivan said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles!”

Was the reaction the typical shock and awe that most from that era recall experiencing?

Well, there was no clap of thunder, or nothing like that. You don’t know what the future holds, and we didn’t know the guy on the couch was kind of an electric guitar deity. We just knew he played extremely well.

So the Isley Brothers weren’t threatened by the Beatles?

A few days went by, and there was a meeting between the band members. We thought, This English group has changed everything. That’s not hype. But while we didn’t know what’s going to happen to any of the American artists as a result of the Beatles, we figured we were going to be all right.”

My brother Kelly said, “They’ve got two guitar players, but we’ve got Jimi.” And I looked over at Jimi, and he was grinning from ear to ear. And, of course, it was true.

Did you ever get to talk with any of the Beatles about their version of “Twist and Shout”?

Yes. Many years later, Ronald [Isley] and I were playing in Upstate New York, at the Perleman Estate; the Perleman family owned Revlon Cosmetics. After we played, I was signing autographs and taking selfies, and when I got to our table, my wife, Tracy, said, “Paul McCartney is over there.”

She pointed, and he was about four or five tables away.

So I weaved my way through the tables and got to where he was, and tapped him on the shoulder. He stood up at his full height and gave me a bear hug that just about cut my wind off! And we were laughing and hollering at each other at the same time.

What did you say to each other?

I was saying, “Paul, you, Ringo, George and John are wonderful.” And he said, “Ernie, if not for the Isley Brothers, the Beatles would still be in Liverpool.” And we got onstage with him, and we did “Twist and Shout.” It was the first public performance of the Isley’s and the Beatles together, and of course, everyone went nuts. And that was the last song that was done that night.

Around the time the Beatles first came to America, they said something to the effect of wanting to visit you. They didn’t, but if they had, I have to imagine it’s possible the Beatles and Jimi would have met.

Yeah, under the same roof. And they would have heard him in 1964. And if they’d heard him there, they would have been in shock! Because it’s like, “Do you hear what, and how this guy is playing, and the way he plays?” It would have been a shock to them.

After Jimi Hendrix blew up, he came back to see the Isley Brothers in 1967. Do you remember that?

I remember that he’d been in England. We were like, “England? What’s he doing there?” And this was before Are You Experienced came out, but we had a history, you know? And then, in 1969, we were going to do a festival show at Yankee Stadium.

We phoned Jimi and said, “We’re doing this concert at Yankee Stadium, we’d like you to do it.” He said, “Oh, man, I’d love to. But let me get back in touch with my people, and I’ll let you know.” And a few days went by, and he called back, and said, “Kelly, I would love to do it, but I’ve got this commitment…”

This was in early June of 1969, and he said, “It’s something called the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, in Upstate, New York, in August. The promoters are concerned that if I play Yankee Stadium, and although it’s in early June, it might hurt ticket sales.” Of course, that just shows he didn’t have a crystal ball, either.

The electric guitar has had some iconic silver screen moments. Steve Vai's virtuoso performance as a guitar-touting devil in Crossroads and Steve Cropper's Blues Brothers spot immediately spring to mind.

But few have proven as influential as the climactic scene in 1985's highest-grossing film, Back to the Future.

Michael J. Fox’s protagonist, Marty McFly, flummoxed audiences with a rousing take of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” at the Enchantment Under the Sea school dance. Comically, the song he played wouldn’t actually be released for another three years, leading to the iconic line, “I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet... but your kids are gonna love it.”

21st-century guitar hero John Mayer says he took up the guitar because of the film. It prompted Coldplay’s Chris Martin to form his chart-smashing group, and there are likely thousands of similar tales beyond theirs, including a few people currently within Gibson's ranks.

However, the cherry red Gibson ES-345 used for the shoot hasn’t been seen in the 40 years since. The people behind the sequel had failed to track it down for use in the follow-up film, and decades later, the guitar world is none the wiser as to where it went.

Gibson is now imploring fans who have any clues to its whereabouts to step forward.

The guitar was rented from Norman Harris, of Norman’s Rare Guitars fame. Against Norm's advice, the film's prop master chose a different guitar than what was agreed upon after a last-minute change of heart.

“The propmaster originally came in and said, ‘We want something red with a whammy bar. It’s 1955.’ So I said, ‘Well, maybe a Stratocaster, or certain Gretsch guitars that have Bigsbys.,’ Harris says (via Guitar.com).

“They came in and the art director chose another guitar – an ES-5. Then the day that they were gonna shoot, whoever was in charge said, ‘Wait a sec! I want a red guitar with a vibrato on…’ So they ran back to us, brought back the ES-5, and took this ES-345.

“I said, ‘Look, they didn’t come out with these guitars until 1958. I just wanna warn you…’ They said, ‘We’re taking artistic liberty!’ Back then, they figured, ‘It’s a guitar, who’s gonna know?’”

So the guitar used in Back to the Future was actually from the future. It's quite poetic.

But where it went afterward remains a mystery. Logically, it was likely sold, but Gibson is determined to track it down and retrace the steps it has since made.

“I started searching for this guitar back in 2009 on my first day on the job at Norman’s Rare Guitars,” says Mark Agnesi, who is now the director of brand experience at Gibson.

“After 16 years of searching, I’m so excited to get the entire guitar community together to help find the guitar that made me and so many other guitarists of my generation want to learn to play.”

“This is one of the most exciting moments at Gibson for me,” adds Gibson president and CEO Cesar Gueikian. “Back to he Future is one of the most significant movies of my life, and the Enchantment Under the Sea school dance scene marked me musically in a profound way. To everyone out there who is as passionate as I am about this iconic film, please help us find it!”

Bob Gale, whose film script changed the lives of many, says he was “astonished to learn this beloved cinematic artifact had apparently disappeared into the space-time continuum.

“Since we don’t have a functioning time machine,” he continues, “this effort is probably our best chance to solve a decades-long mystery.”

Michael J. Fox, a guitar player in his own right, took great care to ensure the scene was as authentic as possible. He even took the time to study some of his guitar-slinging heroes.

“Guitar has always been a big part of my life,” he says. “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.

“I’m really happy with the scene because it was an expression of my love for guitar and all the great players,” he continues. “I didn’t realize the influence the scene had on people.”

The search for the guitar is set to be documented in a new film, Lost to the Future, which will see those involved with the making of the sci-fi smash hit, including Fox, Gale and Christopher Lloyd search every corner of the earth for the cherished guitar.

The film Gibson Films production will be directed by Doc Crotzer (Glee, Sons of Anarchy) and will “guide viewers in the global hunt for this legendary instrument from long-forgotten film prop warehouses, fascinating vintage guitar shops, auction houses, and shadowy back alleys.”

Fans with information regarding the guitar's websites can contact Gibson, via LostToTheFuture.com, or call 1-855-345-1955.

Like many young guitarists in the early 1960s, Queen guitarist Brian May was influenced by the original wave of rock and roll. He was also more song-oriented in his approach, focused on rhythm rather than lead.

“I love playing rhythm and that's the way I started,” he told Guitar Player in our March 2012 issue. “When I was a kid I just played acoustic guitar and strummed and sang. I sang Everly Brothers songs, Tommy Steele songs, Elvis songs — so rhythm guitar is where I come from.”

But as music changed, so did May’s ambitions. His early lead work was influenced by the Shadows, whose electric guitar instrumentals were based in large part around the song's main melody. May said the group was "the most metallic thing out at the time.”

But by 1965, May had his head turned around by two new guitarists on the scene: Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. It was because of them that he began to look beyond the Shadows style of guitar playing he grew up on and got serious about developing his blues and rock chops.

He was particularly impressed by Clapton.

“Absolutely. Clapton from the very beginning, because I used to go and see the Yardbirds. We did a couple of their songs," he said.

“Clapton was unbelievable, just so sparkling and fluid. He was what turned me away from the Shadows style and sent me back to listen­ing to B.B. King, Bo Diddley and all those people who I'd heard.

“But I thought it was all the same: 12-bar blues, and that was it. I didn't realize the depth or emotion there was in it until I saw Eric Clapton doing it. That somehow made it accessible for me.

“After I went back and listened to his influences, I listened to Clapton very closely and people like Mike Bloomfield on the first album with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which had all those classics.

“Jeff Beck was an influence too, extremely. I couldn't believe what he could do. I remember seeing him put the guitar down, make it feedback. and play a whole tune without even touching the finger­board. That was the first time I saw a Les Paul guitar. I saw a gig at the Marquee soon after Beck had joined, and Eric Clapton came on and jammed at the end. That was pretty amazing; I'll never forget that.”

It was also around this time May caught a show by another newcomer on the London scene who would prove influential to him: Jimi Hendrix.

“I thought after seeing [Clapton and Beck], I'd seen it all. I had been playing all that time, and I could play that style. I was beginning to make the guitar sort of talk. I always wanted the guitar to play for people, to talk the same way a vocal did and have feeling in it. I didn't want it to be an accompanying instrument.

“Then when I saw Hendrix, I thought, Oh. my God. This guy is doing everything that I was trying to do. He just made me feel like I couldn't play.

“It’s a funny thing: It makes you feel very uncomfortable when you thought you knew everything that was going on, and then suddenly somebody comes along who seems to be doing all sorts of things which you hadn't even thought of, never mind find yourself able to play.

“I heard him play on a single of ‘Hey Joe,’ and on the flip side there's an amazing solo on ‘Stone Free,’ where he's talking to the guitar and it's talk­ing back to him. I thought, Well. he can't really be that good. He must have done that with studio technique.

“Then when I saw him for the first time supporting the Who at the Savoy Theatre in London, he just completely blew me away. I thought, He's it. The Who couldn't follow him in those days and they were really hot, big news in England. Any­body in the world would find it hard to follow Hendrix.”

Pete Townshend has attested to that. The Who guitarist told Guitar Player how Hendrix’s arrival in London in 1966 devastated his confidence as a guitarist. Ultimately, though, he said his inability to compete at Hendrix’s level pushed him to create more ambitious songs, which in turn led to the creation of the Who’s breakthrough album, Tommy.

“And what that actually did was provide me with records that sold in America, somehow,” Townshend said.

As for May, he would eventually find his own path and develop a signature style that remains one of rock’s most stylistically and tonally unique. As he’s explained, some credit is due to Rory Gallagher, who turned him on to the virtues of a Vox AC30 combo amp and a Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster when May met the guitarist backstage at London's Marquee club following Gallagher’s performance.

“I found a Treble Booster,” he said. “I plugged it in with my guitar, turned it all the way up and it just melted my stomach. That’s my sound.”

One of the funniest “rock life” stories I’ve heard is when China Kantner Isler — who I first became aware of when she was a VJ on MTV back in the ’80s — told me what it was like being a teenager and getting picked up after school by her famous mother, Grace Slick.

“She would show up in her DeLorean with the gull-wing doors, and she’d have crazy hair and knee-high boots,” says Isler, “and I’d be like, ‘Mom! Go away. You’re embarrassing me.’”

That’s right: Even if it’s the mid ’80s and your mom is all over the radio with multiple number-ones, has music videos in constant rotation and is driving the bad-ass car from the biggest teen blockbuster of the day, Back to the Future, she is still not cool.

“That’s one of the universal truths,” says Slick on the latest episode of my podcast, No Guitar Is Safe. “No matter whether they're good, bad, ugly, old, young, famous or not, parents are just embarrassing.”

But embarrassing her kid after school is probably the only time Grace Slick has not been cool.

From being one of the first women ever to front a major rock band (Jefferson Airplane) to being a founding member of the band’s next evolution — multi-Platinum ’70s arena rock heroes Jefferson Starship — to topping the Billboard charts in the ’80s with phase three of the band, Starship, to retiring to Malibu to become a successful painter of ’60s musicians and beyond (who better to paint the era?), Grace Slick has always been cool, relevant, outspoken and gloriously unfiltered.

And from sharing bills with Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia and other future legends at ’60s festivals such as Monterey, Woodstock and Altamont, to playing and recording with iconic bandmates such as Jorma Kaukonen, Craig Chaquico, David Freiberg and the late, great 12-string strummer (and father of her daughter) Paul Kantner, Slick has known and worked with several notable electric and acoustic guitar players.

Heck, even I'm proud to say that, as lead guitarist of Jefferson Starship since 2012, I've worked with Slick. (She co-wrote a recent Jefferson Starship single with Cathy Richardson, the band’s current lead singer, and myself, called “It’s About Time.”) And becoming friends with her, China and the rest of the Jefferson family over the years has been a thrill.

Which is one reason I was able to get Slick to, for probably the first time ever, sit down for a lengthy interview focused primarily on guitar.

Our mutual friend and bandmate, David Freiberg, told me that a highlight of playing Monterey was being able to see all the other acts, including being side-stage when Hendrix famously took a can of lighter fluid to his Strat. Were you up there for that moment as well?

Yes, I was. Monterey was the best of all those festivals. Woodstock has been heavily lauded as “a generation getting together, and isn't that so wonderful?” But half a million people in a wet field? No. Ruining your shoes in mud that was a foot deep trying to get to a bathroom half a mile away? Not fun.

And they’d fly you in on helicopter just before your set, so you couldn’t really watch the other acts. And it ran late. You’re supposed to go on at 9 p.m., but instead you’re trying to sing Airplane songs at 6 a.m. the next morning.

Monterey was nicer — smaller, good weather — and it had curtains on the side of the stage so you could go up there and watch the other bands. Most of us had heard Ravi Shankar, we'd heard Jimi Hendrix, we'd heard the Who, but now we finally got to see these guys. And watching Jimi Hendrix burn his guitar — I mean, now it’d be nothing, but at the time, that was just a spectacular move. Our jaws were on the floor.

I guess legend has it that he was trying to outdo the Who, because he knew they were likely going to come up there and smash their instruments.

Yeah. But Jimi was such an amazing guitar player that it was okay for him to do that. He wasn't doing it because he couldn't play. He could also play his ass off.

Let’s talk about your song, “White Rabbit,” one of my favorite rock songs of all time. How did you and Jorma come up with that modal, psychedelic lead guitar thing he plays over the intro?

It's funny that it is classified as a rock song, because it's not anywhere near rock — it's a Spanish march. As for Jorma’s part, I happen to like Spanish music a lot, including flamenco guitar, so maybe it was inspired by that. I can listen to Spanish guitar instrumentals all day long. I don't know why — I'm Norwegian, you know — but flamenco guitar just knocks my socks off.

Speaking of Spain, I love the album Sketches of Spain, by Miles Davis. I know it’s not a guitar album, but I once listened to that album for 24 hours straight. I took acid and put it on over and over and over. And it’s burned into my brain. So, musically speaking, “White Rabbit” is kind of an extension of Sketches of Spain and Ravel's Bolero.

The song also kind of rips off Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, because the lyrics were written at parents, because parents kept asking us, “Why do you take all these drugs?” So the song responds with, “Okay, do you remember the stories that you read to us when we were little, like Alice in Wonderland? Well, Alice takes at least five different drugs in that book. One makes her high, one makes her low, et cetera. Or take Sleeping Beauty — why do you think she’s sleeping? Somebody knocked her out with some drugs! And by the way, what’s that you’re having with dinner? Alcohol? Well alcohol is also a drug — it just happens to be legal. Same with cigarettes.”

Honestly, standing up to all that stuff was easier than shit.

A top-five rock song for me is “Somebody to Love,” written by guitarist Darby Slick, brother of your first husband, Gerald Slick. It really connects. I’ll see a 10-year-old out in the audience attending their first concert, and by the second chorus they’re singing along.

That's interesting, because while I like it, it's not one of my top five. I mean, I like … Pink Floyd. I love Pink Floyd's guitar player, David Gilmour — I love his choices of what to play.

One of my favorite songs is Dire Straits doing “Sultans of Swing.” God, they just play together so well on that song — everything just fits together. The guitar, the bass, the choice of the casual singing approach on the lead vocal — it’s all fantastic. I just love that song.

One unforgettable guitarist and bandleader we’ve both played with — you starting back when you joined Jefferson Airplane — is Paul Kantner.

Well, Paul was not a virtuoso musician, but he knew how to structure a song with a 12-string guitar. That was his thing. Folk songs, kind of, on a 12-string, turned up to about 11 …

… On each amp! So that makes 22. Because he would crank those Rickenbackers through a pair of Fender Twins, each on 11.

Jack [Casady] and Jorma would look at each other like, “My God in heaven,” because he’d have that 12-string turned up so loud. We’re all kind of half deaf now, those of us who are still alive.

But I was given, fortunately, a very loud voice — though I have a vocal range of about four notes. I've always been jealous of, like, Barbra Streisand and Linda Ronstadt, for example. These ranges that they have! And Cathy, too — she's a much better rock singer than I was. She's got a bigger range and more power.

In the early days, the guitars were so loud we couldn’t hear our own voices. And then, finally, they invented monitor speakers, so we could hear what we're doing. It really helps you sing in tune if you can hear your own voice.

Monitors weren’t always perfect though. We were playing a summer festival on the East Coast with the Who, and the monitors were fucked up, and it pissed off Roger Daltrey. Now, no one wants the band to have bad sound — not the sound guy, not the audience — but shit happens, and at this show things were messed up, so Roger kicked the monitors off the stage.

Roger is actually a very sweet man, really pleasant, and I really enjoy talking with him, but I thought, Well, that's an interesting move. Roger’s not a happy camper tonight.

Okay, let’s talk “We Built This City” for a second, because, like “Sara” and “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” it was a huge hit for Starship, yet Blender magazine infamously lambasted it as being the worst song of all time. Nowadays, we play it with more of a rock edge — I actually play some of the synthesizer parts on guitar — and it sounds a meaner and heavier. What I’m getting at is it’s actually a well-constructed, perhaps underrated song.

See, I actually agree with the Blender article, because of the lyrics. “We built this city”? Which city? There's no city built on rock and roll. Rock and roll is too new. New York, Madrid, London weren’t built on rock and roll. Los Angeles wasn’t either — it was built on oranges and oil and the entertainment industry. San Francisco was built on the gold rush. I mean, there just isn't any city built on rock and roll. So it's a dumb remark.

Now, I love Bernie Taupin, who wrote the lyrics. He’s great, but we all have our moments. I was stunned that song went to number one.

One of my favorite lyrics comes from your song “Fast Buck Freddie,” which you wrote with Craig Chaquico. The line I’m thinking of is very simple, yet could be an inspiring mantra for any musician: “Sing it now while you still have a song.” Where did that come from?

Speaking of guitar players, Craig was really good. He was much younger than we were, but he had a very good sense of playing for the song instead of just playing all over everything, as many lead guitar players tend to do. He knew where to come in and do some fancy shit and then shut up.

As for the lyric you mention, I was thinking about people who drop their incentive. They don't keep going. They give up their dream and turn into a blob that attends local barbecues with their friends.

The dream happens when you're young. When you’re young, you pursue your dream for a while. You really go at it. And then later you might figure out, Oh, maybe I'm not good at this, or not good enough.

Or the dream takes too much work, so you work at something else. You give up your dream. So, I was saying, “Sing it now, while you still have a song. Try to keep your song going.”

Quotes edited for clarity and brevity. To hear the complete 80-minute interview with Grace Slick, stream Episode 183 of No Guitar Is Safe, hosted by Jude Gold, wherever you get your podcasts.

Pete Townshend says he's fed up with fans who continue to request Who songs at his solo shows and suggests AI may provide a solution.

Speaking to The Times, Townshend suggested he could turn to AI to create faux Who songs. The guitarist, whose music often draws inspiration from his background in art school, says doing so would allow him to focus on his myriad current projects while satisfying fans who desire his earlier musical styles

“I have a solo career,” he stresses. “I have all this art school stuff going on. It is a tremendous irritation to Who fans that I don’t just stick to the old catalog and do it until I die.

“If I told AI, ‘Write a load of Pete Townshend songs like he used to in 1973,’ a lot of Who fans would be really pleased.”

As evidence, he points to the Beatles' success using AI to turn an old John Lennon demo it “Now and Then,” which claimed Best Rock Performance at this year’s Grammys. It should be noted, however, that former Beatle Paul McCartney said AI was used simply to extract Lennon's voice from his demo for the song, which remained unfinished at his death.

Of course, AI has been used to create original recordings in the styles of various artists and genres. Alex Van Halen has expressed an interest in using the technology to create songs from demos and audio clips Eddie Van Halen left unfinished.

Townshend recently saw his Quadrophenia opus made over as Quadrophenia, a Mod Ballet, with orchestrations by his wife, Rachel Fuller He told The Times the new ballet gets closer to expressing the message of his 1973 creation with the Who, which is, he says, "about spiritual resolve, about tryinh to get back to being a young person."

"What nobody noticed was the spiritual message of Quadrophenia," he says. "So I’ll be honest and say that when it came to the first workshop of the ballet, I wasn’t expecting much.

"Then I saw it: no rock and roll bullshit, no drummer whiting out halfway through the show, the original message of the piece embodied by the movement of these young dancers. It meant Quadrophenia had another life.”

However, he was adamant that the story's ending and the fate of its hero, Jimmy, should remain ambiguous.

“I’ve been accused of having a dramaturgical failing by not ending my stories,” he says. “I’ve always thought, That’s not my job. That’s your job. You end the story.”

Of course Townshend is no stranger to merging rock and roll with the classical arts. His 1969 creation Tommy was a rock opera that he was inspired to make after realizing he could never compete as a guitarist at the level of his late-1960s contemporaries Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.

“I suppose I went away and got very confused for a bit," he said of that era. "I asked my wife to marry me before it was too late [laughs], and started work on Tommy a bit later. I did actually feel stripped, to some extent, and I took refuge in my writing.”

The Who have just wrapped up two more shows at their annual charity bash for the Teenage Cancer Trust at London’s Royal Albert Hall – their first live appearances since last year’s frivolities. But the band are by no means a done deal – even if he admits his devotion to the Who isn't as “absolute” as vocalist Roger Daltrey's.

Rather, he’s got plenty to keep him occupied. He’s just turned the band’s landmark rock opera “Quadrophenia” into a ballet, having opened the Townshend Studio, a new teaching and creative center at the University of West London in Ealing last autumn. His solo career still has life in it too. As such, he’s growing tired of fans focusing solely on the former glories of his parent band.

You could say Andy Fairweather Low has a charmed life. The guitarist and singer has recorded or performed with artists ranging from the Who to Roger Waters to Eric Clapton to George Harrison and Joe Satriani.

But undoubtedly the biggest name on his lengthy resume is that of Jimi Hendrix. Fairweather Low had the honor of jamming with the guitarist twice, during which they swapped guitar and bass duties.

While the versatile guitarist says he played poorly the second time — he blames the hour: it was 3 a.m. — it proved good enough for Hendrix, who would later tap him up for a reprised version of a one of his hits.

The two jams took place on consecutive days in London during the 1960s while Fairweather Low played in his pop group, Amen Corner. Though they may mean nothing to Americans, Amen Corner — which included guitarist Neil Jones, bassist Clive Taylor and drummer Dennis Byron — enjoyed late-1960s hits in the U.K., including a cover of "Bend Me, Shape Me," a U.S. hit by the American Breed.

Amen Corner's gig would later act as a springboard for Fairweather Low's later career as a touring guitarist. But not before he rubbed shoulders with Hendrix.

“He'd been on Top of the Pops, so the word is out,” Fairweather Low tells Guitarist. “Amen Corner had a residency at the Speakeasy, and one night Jimi is there and wants to play. So he borrows Clive's bass, flips it upside down, and we do Otis Redding’s 'I Can’t Turn You Loose.'

“The next night, he wanted to play guitar, so he took Neil's guitar, flipped it upside down, I took the bass,” Fairweather Low says of their second musical bout. “So, it was Dennis, me and Hendrix.”

It’s a memory that will, naturally, live long in the Welshman’s memory — but not for his playing.

“I have to say,” he says, defending his honor, “it was three o'clock in the morning, and I wasn't very good! You gotta learn somewhere, though, eh?”

Still, Hendrix was impressed enough to seek out the guitarist when he decided to remake his 1966 hit “Stone Free” for U.S. audiences and bolster the track with guest musicians.

“It's 1969, I'm in New York, and I get a phone call. 'Jimi's in the studio. Would you come down and do some vocals?'” Fairweather Low recalls. “'He's recutting “Stone Free.”' Roger Chapman is also there, so we did it.”

(Chapman was a British vocalist with the progressive-rock group Family.)

The track had originally been released as the B-side to “Hey Joe,” but Hendrix was eager to revise the song, with Fairweather Low and Chapman on backing vocal.

Unfortunately, Reprise Records wasn’t convinced and put out the original version instead. Fairweather Low is inclined to agree with their decision.

“It's not a good version,” he sighs. “There's only one version of 'Stone Free.' ”

Thankfully for Hendrix fans, the track was released years later, along with extended live versions, which were often dragged out well past the 10-minute mark.

It wasn't the only time that Fairweather Low provided backing vocals for rock legends as he sung on the Who's 1978 LP Who Are You before handling rhythm guitar on Joe Satriani's sixth, self-titled album.

He also spent 22 years as a member of Roger Waters' band, and in 1991 became part of Beatles folklore when he joined George Harrison's band for a tour of Japan. He would have been honored to have played his part had he not discovered how many guitarists were offered the spot before him.

“We were having a meal in Japan, and George gets up and says, ‘Andy was not the first choice. There were seven guitarists, and he was the seventh choice.’” Fairweather Low relays. “Gary Moore was one, Alvin Lee was another, and eventually it came to me.”

Harrison and the guitarist had first crossed paths backstage at a Ry Cooder show. This somehow led Harrison to believe he had decent slide guitar chops. He didn’t.

“The first song we played when I went over was 'Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth),' ” Fairweather Low explains. “I knew it inside out, but I said, ‘George, I’m the rhythm player, you play the slide. It doesn’t make any sense.’ Well, I learned the solo, but, believe me, there were so many nights I didn’t sleep!”

In related news, rare footage of Hendrix's dramatic final performance at the Open Air Love & Peace Festival in Germany in 1970 has surfaced online with the guitarist hitting back at a hostile audience, saying: “I don't give a fuck if you boo, as long as you boo in key, you mothers…”

And Billy Gibbons has recounted how he became friends with Hendrix and how touring with him in 1968 laid the foundations for ZZ Top.

If you had to guess what was in Jimi Hendrix’s record collection, what might you imagine? Buddy Guy? Muddy Waters? Bob Dylan? You’d be correct with each of those responses.

As Guitar Player learned when we spoke with Jimi’s former girlfriend Kathy Etchingham-Page in 1996, his collection included those artists and much more.

Etchingham lived with Jimi in various London flats from 1966 to '69, including one at 23 Brook Street, Mayfair, next door to a house once occupied by George Frideric Handel. There they amassed close to 100 albums, ranging from Chicago blues to folk to classical to complete obscura.

'"Jimi would buy out of curiosity,” Etchingham remembers. "Often he'd go through the record racks, look at something for a moment and buy it. Then he'd listen to it once and never play it again."

Many of Jimi's discs were blues records — not surprising perhaps, given his own music and his status as the late-'60s most influential electric guitar player. She remembers Elmore James as a staple, and, judging from the records he collected, Muddy Waters and Llghtnin' Hopkins were also big favorites. Testament Records' Down on Stovall's Plantation album reissued Muddy's 1941 and '42 Library of Congress 78s.

Etchingham clearly recalls Jimi going out of his way to get a copy of Electric Mud. Muddy himself regarded the album as an experiment in psychedelia gone awry, proclaiming, "If you've got to have big amplifiers and wah-wahs and equipment to make your guitar say different things, well, hell, you can't play no blues."

Jimi's copy of Waters’ The Real Folk Blues, though, more than delivered the goods, with classic renditions of "Mannish Boy," "Screamin' and Cryin'" and "Little Geneva," as did his copy of More Real Folk Blues, released the following year. Jimi's passion for Lightnin' Hopkins is revealed by his collecting the Texas blues great's Soul Blues, Lightnin' Strikes, Something Blue, The Roots of Lightnin' Hopkins and Earth Blues.

His collection’s only John Lee Hooker album, Live at Cafe Au Go-Go, was recorded live in '66 with the full Waters band, including Muddy on guitar and Otis Spann on piano. Jimi also owned copies of The Best of Elmore James, The New Jimmy Reed Album, Stand Back — Here Comes Charlie Musselwhite's South Side Band, The Driving Blues of Smokey Smothers, Sonny Boy Williamson II's Down And Out Blues and More Real Folk Blues, Howlin' Wolf's More Real Folk Blues, Guitar Slim and Jelly Belly's Carolina Blues, and the Arhoolie label's Lowell Fulson. Junior Wells' It's My Life, Baby could give him a good dose of primal Buddy Guy whenever needed.

Oddly enough, there were no B.B. King titles among Jimi's remaining albums — Etchingham reports that many were permanently borrowed — but he did own Albert King's utterly essential Live Wire/Blues Power, as well as John Mayall's Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton, Crusade with Mick Taylor, and A Hard Road with Peter Green.

Besides Muddy's Stovall’s Plantation album, Hendrix’s other prewar blues records were the hard-to-find Bootleg Rum Dum Blues by Blind Blake, Washboard Sam's Classic Blues, Sonny Boy Williamson I's Classic Blues, and Lead Belly's Take This Hammer, which was Folkways' first 10-inch album. Jimi's blues anthologies were Delmark's essential Chicago/The Blues/Today! set, as well as American Folk Blues Festival, We Sing the Blues and Original Golden Hits of the Great Blues Singers, Vol. II.

"People will argue with me, but I tell you, that guy was a bluesman," Kathy insists. "That's what really got him. That's where his heart really lay. Anybody who tells me he would have become a jazz musician — well, balls to them.

“The way Jimi was, if he was with a jazz musician he liked jazz, if he was with a folk singer, he liked folk. But what he really liked and what he really played at home was the blues."

Their collection also boasted one of the Columbia Robert Johnson albums, given to Jirni by Yardbirds manager Giorgio Gomelsky when the pair visited him at Polydor's Oxford Street offices.

Jimi had a number of interesting and progressive folk albums, such as Sophisticated Beggar by Roy Harper, whose sidemen frequently included Jimmy Page and John Bonham. He also owned Tim Buckley’s 1967 second album, Goodbye and Hello, which began Buckley's foray into jazz-tinged, vocal gymnastic folk-rock, and old Greenwich Village buddy Richie Havens' Electric Havens and Mixed Bag.

Dylan, of course, was a perennial favorite of Jimi's, and he wore out copies of Bob's Highway 61 Revisited, Greatest Hits, Nashville Skyline and John Wesley Harding. This latter, notes Etchingham, was brought over from the U.S. and yielded Hendrix's most famous cover tune, ''All Along the Watchtower.'

"He'd listen to it time and time again," she recalls. Jirni considered covering "I Dreamed Saw St. Augustine," but according to Etchingham he deemed it "too personal." John Wesley Harding was also the source of another Hendrix cover, "Drifter's Escape."

The few jazz records that remain in Jimi’s collection include Jimmy Smith & Wes Montgomery's classic The Dynamic Duo and the Charles Lloyd Quartet's Journey Within, which featured the warm, adventurous tenor sax and flute excursions that made Lloyd popular among both jazz and pop sets in the late '60s. Jimi was also hip to Boston-based jazz pianist Jaki Byard's Freedom Together and Sunshine of My Soul. Byard frequently worked with another of Jirni's favorite jazz artists, the late saxophone iconoclast Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

As for rock and roll? Jimi was an Elvis fan since his youth, and his early rock LPs included Eddie Cochran and Little Richard titles. But otherwise, Hendrix’s supply of fellow pop and rock acts was relatively limited, although he had copies of the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour and Abbey Road, the Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request, Joe Cocker's With a Little Help From My Friends, and Vanilla Fudge's eponymous debut featuring their remake of "You Keep Me Hanging On," which was a huge hit in the U.K. in 1967.

He owned albums featuring past and future jam partners as well, notably Delaney & Bonnie's Home and the Spencer Davis Group's Autumn '66, which featured a young Steve Winwood, who'd play organ on Electric Ladyland's "Voodoo Child." The Bonzo Dog Band's 1968 satirical gem The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse was probably given to him by the Bonzo Band's Viv Stanshall, and his buddy Eric Burdon probably gave him the copy of the Animals' The Twain Shall Meet.

The Temptations' 1969 release Puzzle People, which featured the smash "I Can't Get Next To You,” was filed near James Brown's aptly titled Ain't It Funky, Dr. John's second album, Babylon, Canned Heat's self-titled 1967 debut, and the Bee Gees' first album, which Etchingham describe as "one of the first records in the collection. We used to listen to that quite a lot. Jimi thought their harmonies were really great."

The more esoteric titles in Hendrix' collection included George Harrison's 1968 solo album Wonderwall Music, a bit of proto-arnbient soundtrack music with some Indian instrumentation. An early supporter of Indian classical music, Rolling Stone Brian Jones, a close pal, gave Jimi copies of Ravi Shankar's Sounds of the Sitar and karnatak vocalist Subbulakshmi's The Sounds of Subbulakshmi.

The collection also included some amazingly oddball artifacts, such The Zodiac: Cosmic Sounds, an early synthesizer album featuring Paul Beaver playing original music for each of the astrological signs. Bach on the Pedal Harpsichord was the work of E. Power Biggs, a renowned classical pipe organist, and French electronic music pioneer Pierre Henry was represented by Le Voyage. Even more obscure were Friar Tuck’s Friar Tuck and His Psychedelic Guitar and The Parable of Arable Land by the Red Krayola With the Familiar Ugly.

Kathy remembers that Hendrix was no anal-retentive audiophile."He was terrible-never put the records back in the sleeves," Etchingharn says with a laugh. "They were all over the floor, and that's why they were all so damaged. If he particularly treasured an album, he'd put it away, but otherwise..."

Given all that was in his collection, if you had to take a guess at Jimi’s favorite album, what would it be? Muddy? Dylan?

According to Etchingham, it was Bill Cosby's comedy LP I Started Out as a Child, one of several albums by the now-disgraced comedian she describes as "Jimi's absolute favorites. He just loved them, and he'd play them for everyone who came by our flat."

A gifted mimic, Jimi could easily imitate Cosby's voice, as well as that of British talk-show host David Frost, whose Frost Report on Britain albums were also a source of much laughter during Jimi's days in London. "Jimi was just getting into English stuff then," Etchingham recalls, "and by that time he understood the British sense of hum or and the nuances of the language."

When GP asked Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera to name the 10 albums that changed his life, he laughed.

“How long have you got?”

Of course, time wasn’t an issue, which is a good thing, as Manzanera, who, in addition to Roxy Music, has collaborated with everyone from good pal David Gilmour to John Cale, along with embarking on a lengthy solo career. Along the way, he's become famous for playing the Cardinal Red Gibson Firebird VII electric guitar that's been a constant companion since his days with Roxy.

To that end, if you dug into Manzanera’s records, you know that his influences run the gamut, meaning they’re not strictly guitar-based. “I love Mozart,” he says. “It’s like rock and roll — it has a great beat. I’ve always been attracted to music with a strong feel and pulse to it.”

But that doesn’t mean Manzanera — who recently shared with us the stories behind his top five tracks — isn’t into guitar music, too. He holds a special place for Jeff Beck, who, like Manzanera, was never content to just be a strummer.

“Without a shadow of a doubt, Jeff Beck was the best British guitarist ever,” he says. “He could do things that nobody else could do. And technically, his sense of pitch was extraordinary.”

Before revealing his 10 choices, Manzanera continues, saying, “I can keep going. I could go on forever. There’s just so many great albums in so many different genres. There’s just been so much great music over the last 50 years. I love all different kinds of stuff.”

Revolver — The Beatles (1966)

“It shouldn’t come as a surprise that when Brian Eno and I had a chance to do an experimental record called 801 Live with our band 801, we chose ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.’ It’s a track you should never attempt live, because it’s an amazing construction made in the studio using tape loops. But we did it a live version anyway and made it the first track on the album.

“Revolver was important as the first album where the Beatles used the studio as an instrument. It showed what was possible.”

Are You Experienced — The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967)

“You have to remember, there was nothing like him when he arrived. It was just a mind-blowing thing to guitarists. When I first saw him on Top of the Pops in England, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was just so incredibly exciting. He was doing things that defied anything that I’d seen before or read about in any ‘teach yourself guitar’ books. He showed us all what could be done.”

My Generation — The Who (1965)

“Roxy Music was an art rock band, and at the time of this album, the Who made their statement that they were the first art-rock band. Pete Townshend played with feedback, and what he did was a statement of art that really appealed to me. The interesting thing was the person who taught him at art school was the same person who taught Brian Eno when he was in art school. What they got from it was a way of thinking and a sort of attitude toward music.

“But, obviously, the great thing about Pete is that he could write amazing songs and lyrics as well as put them across with the real strength of the sound of his guitar playing. And it was also at this time that you get the arrival of the big Marshall 4x12 speaker cabinets, as well as Pete Townshend, Clapton, and soon after, Hendrix. These were all guitarists who were able to control feedback from their guitars.

"And My Generation is where it started. It really wasn’t much in evidence before they unleashed sonic experience.”

In a Silent Way — Miles Davis (1969)

“The thing that I took from Miles was his sonority, his idea of what pitch was. It’s a different kind of in-between-the-cracks kind of attitude, with space and improvisation. It’s not as if you stuck a tuner on his trumpet said, ‘That’s out of tune’ — because it’s not. And as far as I know, with those sessions, he would just play and then choose the bits he liked and stick it all together.

“I was thinking about this the other day: You can give any title to an album you like, but it doesn’t describe that album. And that’s true here, especially the title track itself. There’s a sort of calmness about it, and with beauty; it’s very much like a sort of painting. The sounds Miles painted are the absolute essence of less is more and are about tone and texture. That’s what I took from him.”

Sketches of Spain — Miles Davis (1960)

“Sketches of Spain is based on Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. Miles didn’t just copy what Rodrigo wrote but did an impressionistic version of it, so you almost get abstract art. In that period, with how things worked in the ’60s, there was a lot of improvisation and experimentation of sound — and that’s what I love about it all.

“Funnily enough, that’s what we’ve returned to now with my new project with Andy Mackay. It’s about 80 percent of his input, though it’s not jazz. It’s about sound, texture and space, and it’s about being in the moment. So we don’t expect big audiences for that, but we’re very happy to get small again, make it intimate, and connect with the audience.”

Canciones de Mi Padre — Linda Ronstadt (1987)

“I love this album, which is Linda Ronstadt singing in Spanish, and it was beautiful. I had no idea of her Mexican background and no idea that she could speak Spanish. So in a lot of those songs — and remember, the title of the album is ‘Concerning songs of my father’ — they’re like classic, evergreen songs, and she does them so incredibly well. And those are songs that I grew up listening to and knowing while in Cuba. I come back to this album a lot, actually. I love her voice.”

Led Zeppelin — Led Zeppelin (1969)

“Jimmy Page’s playing on the first Led Zeppelin album — we just hadn’t heard someone let loose like that. And John Paul Jones and the power trio, with, of course, Robert Plant, whose voice was just absolutely, well, you just can’t do a three-piece without having an incredible singer.

“Those guys had so much experience, meaning John Paul Jones and Page playing sessions, and they could really play. It’s not easy to play those twelve-string parts on double-neck guitars, and the way they looked was just exciting, and it was a very exciting kind of music. I mean, you could say that about Jeff Beck with Rod Stewart, too. That was a little bit like what they could have been like.”

Pablo Honey — Radiohead (1993)

“Some of the guitar playing was just jaw-dropping. They’re doing these crazy things, and you’re thinking, How did you do that? That is very, very rare. You could hear people making technically brilliant sounds and things like that, but the combination of this sort of very advanced level musicianship and the songs they brought to a musical environment was great. They were definitely a unique band.”

Fresh Garbage — Spirit (1968)

“I loved the band Spirit from the West Coast of America. I love Randy California’s guitar playing and the way he seemed to be able to play with harmony. It still baffles me how he did it. One of my friends came back from being over in LA, saw them, and came back raving about them. But for me, with Spirit, the most important album was Fresh Garbage, which was just fantastic.”

The Soft Machine — The Soft Machine (1968)

“The first Soft Machine album was fantastic. I loved the way that Mike Ratledge played the Hammond organ through a fuzz box so that it sounded a bit like a guitar. And in the end, it sounded like the guitar playing that Robert Fripp ended up doing. So that was my ultimate ambition: to sound like the organ playing of Mike Ratledge on Soft Machine’s albums.”

Phil Manzanera's memoir, Revolución to Roxy, was published in 2024 and is available for purchase.

Jimi Hendrix’s arrival in London in September 1966 was a storm no one had forecast. Within months, he had assembled the Jimi Hendrix Experience and released three top-10 singles. In doing so, he reshaped England's rock and roll hierarchy, which until then had been dominated by players like Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend

As Townshend told Guitar Player in his September 1989 cover feature, Hendrix forced guitarists like him and Eric Clapton to find new relevance and re-think their approach to music.

“It did shift my emphasis,” he told us. “I suppose like a lot of people — like Eric — for a while there I think we gave up. And then we started again.”

The result would lead Townshend to craft Tommy, his first of several rock masterpieces and the Who's critical and commercial breakthrough in the U.K. and America.

But long before that happened, Townshend was reeling from the impact of the Hendrix juggernaut. He and Clapton weren’t the only electric guitar heroes of the day floored by the American guitarist. Jeff Beck also revealed how Hendrix “swept us all aside and put us in a bin.”

Townshend’s circumstances were unique, however. For a start, Hendrix was too close for comfort. Literally.

“We were on the same record label,” Townshend told Guitar Player. “He was discovered by [Animals bassist] Chas Chandler and brought over and went onto Track, which we co-owned at the time. So he was actually on our record label!”

Moreover, Townshend — unlike Clapton and Beck — had developed his own highly physical guitar style: windmilling his strumming arm, stalking the stage and destroying his guitars and amps at the end of a show. Hendrix put all these to use in his performance, and went further by setting his Fender Stratocaster on fire at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. In doing so, he co-opted the key elements of Townshend’s identity as a performer.

While Townshend recognized that Hendrix was “dealing in other people's ideas, old blues things and tricks” and employing “the pyrotechnic things that he had caught off watching me,” the effect on him was devastating.

“It destroyed me,” Townshend said. “Absolutely, completely destroyed me.”

But it was Hendrix’s impact on the music itself that affected Townshend most. As successful white artists playing music inspired by Black musicians, the Who — like other British Invasion acts — had built entire careers and identities. Hendrix reclaimed the music inspired by Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and other Black rock and roll originators, leaving Townshend feeling like a pale imitation.

“I mean, I was glad to be alive, but it was horrifying. Because he took back Black music,” Townshend said. “He took R&B back. He came and stole it back. He made it very evident that that's what he was doing. He'd been out on the road with people like Little Richard, had done that hard work, and then he'd come over to the U.K. And when he took his music back, he took a lot of the trimmings back, too.”

Those trimmings — the physicality and equipment destruction — had until then been Townshend's alone. Seeing a guitarist as skilled as Hendrix come along and claim it all for himself caused Townshend to retreat and recalibrate, as it did Clapton and Beck.

“It was very strange for Eric and me,” he says. “We went and watched Jimi at about 10 London shows together, and [Clapton] wasn't with a girl at the time, so it was just me, my wife-to-be Karen, and Eric, going to see this monstrous man."

Townshend was further intimidated by Hendrix's obvious love for Clapton, and his apparent disregard for him.

"It got to the point where Eric would go up to pay his respects every night, and one day I got up to pay my respects, and he was hugging Eric, but not me — he was kind of giving me a limp handshake — just because Eric was capable of making the right kind of approach to him. It was a difficult time.”

If Hendrix intended to demoralize Townshend, he didn’t need to try. Jimi’s innate confidence left other men feeling inadequate.

“You have to remember the other thing about him, that he was astonishingly sexual,” Townshend said, “and I was there with my wife, you know, the girl I loved. And you could just sense this whole thing in the room where every woman would just [claps] at a snap of a finger. I mean, there were situations sometimes where Jimi would do it. He wasn't particularly in control of his ego at the time. There was this slightly prince-like quality about him, this kind of imp at work. I found him very charming, very easy, a very sweet guy.

“You know, I just kept hearing stories. I mean, one story I've heard — I think I might have been there — was the night that he went up to Marianne Faithfull when she was there with Mick [Jagger], and said in her ear, ‘What are you doing with this asshole?’ There were moments like that when he would be very, very attracted to somebody and felt that he would actually be able to get them, and he just couldn't resist trying. There were no boundaries, and that really scared me.

“And slowly but surely, Jimi became sure of himself. I'm talking about the first two weeks he was in London. You know, it was a new band, and they were just taking London by fucking storm! You can't believe it. You'd look around and the audience was just full of record company people and music business people.”

Eventually, Hendrix’s effect on Townshend cut to his core, impacting his identity as a man and creator, and even his psyche.

“I suppose I went away and got very confused for a bit. I kind of groped around, I had a lot of spiritual problems. I asked my wife to marry me before it was too late [laughs], and started work on Tommy a bit later. I just sort of felt that I hadn't the emotional equipment, really, the physical equipment, the natural psychic genius of somebody like Jimi, and realized that what I had was a bunch of gimmicks which he had come and taken away from me and attached to not only the black R&B from whence they came, but also added a whole new dimension. I did actually feel stripped, to some extent, and I took refuge in my writing.

“The weirdest thing of the lot is that, although people really, really value those early years, the Who was not a particularly important band at that time. We were at the end of an era; under normal circumstances the band should have just disappeared. But because he came along and, kind of like in early punk, just swept everything aside, I had to learn to write, and it became like a new art, from a new angle.”

But Hendrix’s success in England and, eventually, America would also help pave the way for the Who to find success in the States. Both acts made their debut at Monterey Pop in June 1967, after which they went on to become established recording artists in America. For the Who, it began shortly after Monterey with the September 1967 release of "I Can See for Miles," Townshend's psychedelic-rock masterpiece and the group's first top-10 single in the U.S. Townshend understood that, as much as Hendrix stripped him of the music and trappings he used in the Who’s first era, he also laid a way for the group to move on and build a new audience.

“And what that actually did was provide me with records that sold in America, somehow,” Townshend said. “I don't know why that is.”

Billy Gibbons was 20 years old when he formed ZZ Top, and the power trio has defined his life ever since. With the dawn of the ‘70s just over the horizon, Gibbons had shaped his band around two of his biggest influences ± Cream and Jimi Hendrix — in 1969, and his legacy might not still be being talked about today if it weren’t for the way they inspired the bright-eyed guitarist.

“Make no mistake, ZZ Top didn’t just happen upon becoming a trio because it was easier; it’s a lot more challenging,” he tells Classic Rock of the band’s origins. “Hendrix and Cream were at the top of the chart as far as ZZ Top’s book was concerned, and it was through those early influential days of attempting to emulate those sounds and styles that brought us together.”

The band’s foundations were laid while he was still strutting his stuff in his pre-ZZ outfit, Moving Sidewalks. Before the British blues explosion had properly ignited, Gibbons was turned on by the psychedelic sounds of Roky Erikson’s 13th Floor Elevators, molding a very similar sound. Their less-than-subtle nod of a single, "99th Floor," paved the way for a change-making touring opportunity.

“That release led to additional airplay and touring opportunities, including teaming up with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, who became our friends and mentors,” he told Guitar Player last year. “As I remember it, I played a Fender Jazzmaster through a Vox Super Beatle, and a Hohner harp through a Fender Bassman.”

Seeing Hendrix up close sparked something in Gibbons. It’s an experience he relives with CR.

“We toured with him in 1968. It was a real mind-bender and eye-opener, to say the least,” he remembers. “As most now know, Jimi Hendrix, either consciously or subconsciously, made a decision to invent things to do with a Fender Stratocaster that it had not necessarily been intended for. He did it very well, too.

“I was 18 at the time,” he details, “and somehow the organizers saw fit to book us in the hotel room across the hall to his room. That was convenient to ask him the obvious question: ‘How do you do that?’

“I remember that this was a long time before hotels had stereos in their rooms, and each day there would be the delivery of a rather heavy and cumbersome hi-fi console player that was the size of a small Buick. It was dutifully installed for Hendrix to be able to listen to his favorite discs.

“The one I really remember him playing the ass off,” Gibbons goes on, “was the first Jeff Beck Group album, Truth. Hendrix was mad about it, totally OTT [over the top] about Jeff’s playing.”

There’s a strange bittersweet irony in Hendrix’s Beck obsession. In search of a more receptive audience, he soon traveled to the UK and proceeded to blow everyone who laid eyes and ears on him away. So much so that Beck, a man who the guitarist was humbly obsessed with, considered quitting the business entirely.

“Oddly enough, Hendrix was all too willing and ready to include blues licks in his arsenal of guitar offerings, which had fallen out of favor in the States with most black entertainers,” Gibbons adds. “I got to play onstage with him at the time, but it was what went on behind the scenes that really captured the magic of the moment.”

And so, by the time the Moving Sidewalks disbanded a year later, Cream were at the height of their powers, and Hendrix was making serious waves on the other side of the Atlantic. Gibbons was keen to channel some of that energy into his new endeavor, with the things he learned from his hangs, on and of the stage, with Hendrix stuffed tightly into his back pocket.

Eric Clapton’s ZZ Top legacy can be seen slung around Gibbons’ shoulder every time he steps on stage; his ‘59 ‘Pearly Gates’ Les Paul. Seeing Clapton’s Sunburst Gibson Les Paul on the back cover of his Bluesbreakers record prompted him to track down the out-of-production guitar and own one for himself.

He too had taken a leaf out of Clapton’s book and decided to grow his fingernails, and that left its mark on his beloved electric guitar.

“What I hadn’t counted on was that the fingernail of the little finger started digging into the pickguard, leaving scratches,” he says.

Today, the Reverend is still going strong and says new music from ZZ Top – the first since bassist Dusty Hill’s passing – and his solo project, the BFGs is on the way. Without Hendrix and Cream’s influence, Gibbons may have never hopped off the psychedelic rock train and be the man that is so celebrated today.

When it comes to guitar in modern music, Dweezil Zappa says the guitar riff has lost its place as the hook of the song, or even part of the song at all.

It’s no secret that the electric guitar has faded in stature within popular music since the 1990s. Some outliers buck the trend, of course. Taylor Swift’s popularity has helped shine a fresh light on the acoustic guitar as a songwriting tool, and contemporary pop queens Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan find themselves in the center of a guitar solo revival.

But for the most part, the decline of the instrument has ultimately starved modern music of guitar riffs.

“A riff, in general, is a thing that has disappeared from modern music,” Zappa tells Matt Pinfield. “It used to be that you would have a singular type of phrase that was played on a guitar mainly, and — because of the personality of the guitarist, and the tone, and the vibe of it — you got into the song straight away. It wasn’t about all these other production elements. It was the real hook of the song.”

Taking Zappa’s comments at surface level, it would be easy to dismiss them as mere nostalgia chasing. Dig a little deeper, though, and it becomes an interesting observation of how songwriting, as an art form and a product has developed beyond the riff and the earworm it represented.

“You had guys like Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore and Jimi Hendrix that were great at writing these small, micro-encapsulated things that would stick in your head," Zappa says. "That also inspired you to pick up the guitar because it was so cool-sounding that you’re like, ‘I gotta find a way to do that.’”

Zappa has previously spoken about how he became obsessed with Van Halen’s music after hearing "Eruption" for the first time, which sent him down his pathway to shred. Little would he know his guitar hero would come to his house less than a year later, allowing him the rare chance to learn from him up close. Soon after, Eddie Van Halen showed up at his school talent show to gift him a rare Kramer guitar.

But apart from those lucky close encounters, Dweezil and so many impressionable teens like him were motivated to take up guitar by the power of guitar riffs.

Zappa points to some classic examples of rock tunes that remain popular today, many generations on, as evidence of the guitar power and the important role guitarists used to play in music writing.

“‘Smoke on the Water,’ ‘Purple Haze’ and songs that have these immediate things where you get into it as soon as you hear the guitar — that’s a really interesting way of thinking about how songs were written back in the day and what guitar players brought,” Zappa adds.

“‘Smoke on the Water’ is one of those riffs because it’s simple sounding. Compared to other things, it is easier to play on guitar, but it’s the feel and the timing and the way that he attacks the strings that gives it the personality that makes you really go, ‘Oh yeah, I’m into this.’”

As Deep Purple’s latest recruit, Simon McBride recently revealed, however, it’s a riff that many guitarists play wrong. The Irishman has stepped into Steve Morse's shoes after a lengthy 28-year spell as the band's lead guitarist and he's found that, when it comes to that iconic riff, simplicity is best.

“Some people overcomplicate the ‘Smoke’ riff by playing it like a guitar player — you know, they throw vibrato and other things into it – but then the riff loses its essence,” McBride says. “You just have to keep it simple. There are plenty of other places in the set for me to try new things.”

Dweezil doesn't go as far as to voice concerns about whether that could contribute to lower numbers of people wanting to learn the instrument, but it’s certainly clear that mainstream music is light on riffs and those eye-opening moments they can bestow on listeners the world over.

Some guitarists are inherently connected to certain guitars and amplifiers. David Gilmour has played numerous electric guitars and oddball instruments throughout his playing days, but he will always be associated with his Black Cat Fender Stratocaster. Likewise, AC/DC’s guitarists wouldn’t look right onstage without a wall of Marshall amps behind them.

For Brian May, his unique Red Special guitar and an unwavering allegiance to Vox AC30 amps have underpinned his entire career. However, he has now admitted that he did have a brief flirtation with a different kind of amplifier. But after Jimi Hendrix left him redfaced, he headed back to the safety of his familiar Vox.

The Queen guitarist’s pairing of his Red Special and a Vox AC30 is one of rock and roll’s most iconic duos. However, in a new conversation with Guitarist, he reveals that he broke that partnership up — for one night only.

Marshall stacks were commonplace in the early 1970s as the loudness wars — waged in part by the much-reported Ronnie Wood and Pete Townshend rivalry — raged on. May was well aware of these ear-splitting shenanigans and admitted that he had wanted a piece of the action. Then the perfect opportunity to experiment presented itself.

“We played one show at Olympia [in London],” May says, setting the scene. “Top of the bill was Jimi Hendrix and everybody essentially played through the same gear. So I plugged into a Marshall stack with my guitar and treble booster. I turned it all the way up, and it sounded so awful. I could hardly play.”

May isn’t the only guitarist to have struggled to hit the ground running with a new piece of gear, but this wasn’t exactly a setting with much room for error.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he continues. “It sounded like an angry wasp. It didn’t have any depth or articulation, I couldn’t play chords. It was a really hard experience for me.”

But getting a brilliant tone proved no trouble for the headline act: Jimi Hendrix.

“After we’d played,” May says, “I stayed behind backstage and I looked through between the amps as Jimi came onstage, plugged into that same amp — and it sounded like a cataclysm.” He's remained a Vox loyalist since.

May is still recovering from the stroke he suffered last summer and has now opened up on the experience, which led to inevitable questions regarding his future as a guitar player.

“It went through my mind,” he accepts. “When I suddenly couldn’t control this left arm, it was quite scary. I had no idea what was going on. I phoned my doctor and she said, ‘Okay, I think you’re having a minor stroke. Dial 999, get in the ambulance and I’ll see you there.’

“But even at the worst time,” he goes on, “although I couldn’t control where the arm was, I could control my fingers. So I thought, ‘I’m probably not really in danger.’ I’m all right now. I’m just taking it slow.”

And in the spirit of Marshall stacks, Ritchie Blackmore says he got the loudest Marshall ever made but had to keep two secrets.

B.B. King had enjoyed a long friendship and musical relationship with Eric Clapton prior to his interview with Guitar Player in the October 2000 issue. That year he and Clapton released Riding With the King, their first collaborative album, a number-one entry on Billboard’s’ Top Blues Albums chart and the winner of the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album. He told us how Clapton and his fellow guitarists in the British blues boom opened the door for his success, and gave us insights into the night in 1967 when they jammed in New York City.

“In the early years, I thought that everybody seemed to get a break but me,” B.B. King tells Guitar Player. “I wasn't bitter about it, I figured they got a break because they deserved it. But I thought I did, too.”

B.B. King’s name, face, music and heavenly finger vibrato were known far and wide long before the 20th century came to a close. But for the first half of his life, King toiled in near obscurity. His recording career was sustained largely by occasional hit singles on the U.S. R&B chart. He released 13 albums before one of them — 1968’s Blues on Top of Blues — reached any U.S. chart. It hit number 46 on the U.S. R&B roster. Its follow-up, Lucille, released later that same year, marked his first appearance on the Billboard 200 Albums chart.

It was but a prelude to what came next. As 1969 arrived, King kept busy, releasing a pair of albums that would make him an institution unto himself. The first, Live & Well, became his first album to crack the Top 100. The second, Completely Well, soared to number 38, reached number five on the R&B chart and earned King a Grammy for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. It also gave him a hit with the tune that will forever be his signature song, "The Thrill Is Gone."

King acknowledges his hard-won success was helped along by the popularity of the British blues boom.

“Finally — finally — when the kids started to play blues, they opened up a lot of doors for B.B. King,” he says. “I pray on it sometimes, and I say, ‘Thank God—better late than never.’ ”

But to make it through those years of obscurity, B.B. explains, it took a positive outlook.

“I was never bitter,” he offers. “I don't feel I have a reason or a right to be bitter. No, I didn't get the recognition that I thought I deserved, but why should I be bitter about it? You can't make people love you.” He laughs. “They love you if they want to. When it comes to playing, if you do it well and keep at it, somebody is going to appreciate it.”

Rather than pass blame onto others, B.B. accepts that, if there is a fault, it’s his own.

“When I feel that I'm not recognized now, I figure a lot of it has to do with what I didn't do back then, or what I'm not doing today,” he says. “That's the way I see it. Sure, anytime you're in a lineup trying to get a job and someone else gets picked, you wonder, Why didn't they pick me? But that's the way life is.”

As B.B. acknowledges, a new generation discovered him in the late 1960s after guitarists like Eric Clapton and Keith Richards began singing his praises, alongside bluesmen like Muddy Waters.

And while there are many great moments in an artist’s career that exist only in memory, we have photos of when B.B. King met Eric Clapton, and his rise to broader popularity began. It was the night he and Clapton famously jammed at New York City’s Cafe Au Go Go. The event is captured in a few prosaic snapshots that include guitarist Elvin Bishop. King is playing his Gibson ES-355 electric guitar, while Clapton — wearing his Cream-era bouffant hairstyle — strums the Fool, his psychedelic-finished Gibson SG.

“Ha, ha! And look at me — I'm wearing boots,” B.B. says, viewing the photos. “I haven't worn boots for years, but this was during the early rock and roll era, and boots were popular. And look at us — we're sitting on those Fenders.”

King confirms it was, to the best of his memory, the first time he and Clapton met. And while he can't recall if the jam happened during a show or after hours, he swears Jimi Hendrix and Al Kooper of Blood, Sweat & Tears were there as well. If his recollections are accurate, there may even be a recording of that night’s jam on a tape somewhere in the Hendrix estate.

“I remember Jimi recording what we played that night,” King says. “He was supposed to give us a tape, but he died before I got mine. When I die, if I can find Jimi, he's going to give me my tape!” B.B. laughs and slaps his knee. “Because that was a memorable occasion. It has been a lot of years of fun, man.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maggot Brain — Funkadelic (1971)

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

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

Awaken, My Love — Childish Gambino (2016)

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

D&B Together — Delaney & Bonnie (1972)

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

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

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

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

Climbing — Mountain (1970)

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

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

Fresh — Sly & the Family Stone (1973)

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

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

Rags to Rufus — Rufus (1974)

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

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

Santana — Santana (1969)

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

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

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

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

Band of Gypsys — Band of Gypsys (1970)

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

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

When someone utters the name Jimi Hendrix, minds are instantly cast to Are You Experienced, Electric Ladyland, and that Monterey Pop Festival performance. Although Hendrix’s time at the summit of the guitar-playing hierarchy was short he died just three years after Are You Experienced — he’d spent years as an anonymous sideman for many acts before then.

After the Isley Brothers had brought them under their wing, he went on to play with Ike & Tina Turner, Wilson Pickett, and Little Richard, who ultimately fired him for an apparent preference for girls over professionalism. And that’s just naming a few of the many stars he worked with.

To those who simply want to fawn over the guitarist at the height of his powers, those embryonic years are a mere footnote in his history. But they were vital experiences that shaped him into the world-beater he would become.

Unfortunately, recordings of Hendrix’s pre-fame days — when he typically traded licks as James Marshall — are as common as rocking horse droppings. Yet one survives. It’s from 1965, with Hendrix as the backing guitarist for the singing and dancing duo Buddy & Stacey as they performed on the TV show Night Train.

Hendrix’s screen time is limited to the occasional cameo as his head pokes out at left on the screen, behind the duo. They're center stage while the guitarist is sandwiched between the drummer and another guitarist, standing in front of a Fender amp.

The band's take on Junior Walker's :Shotgun" is fairly tame until the 1:20 mark when, beneath the lead lines of their saxophonist, Hendrix starts to dig in. He starts to riff in a trade-off with the sax, a bite coming out of his guitar — a right-handed Fender flipped the other way around — as he reluctantly keeps one foot on the brakes, despite sounding like it's the last thing he wants to do.

In a recent conversation with Guitar World, Ernie Isley, who spent several years looking up to the man his family welcomed into their home in the early ‘60s, says he knew they’d found a guitar player like no other.

“If you asked me, ‘Who’s the best player out there?’ I’d say, ‘Jimi Hendrix.’ But not because of what’s in your headphones blasting left to right, but because of what I heard him play in my living room without an amplifier,” he says.

Hendrix needed a place to stay when the band hired him in ‘61 and so he moved into a spare room in the Isley’s home.

The pair were sitting on a couch together when they saw the Beatles' explosive Ed Sullivan showcase in ’64, which caused panic from their bandleader.

“There was a thunderclap in our house,” Isley recalls. “A few days went by, and there was a band meeting in our house, and my eldest brother, O’Kelly, took the floor and said, ‘Everything’s changed. This English group, the Beatles, isn’t all hype. In terms of rock and roll music, I don’t think we’ll be all right.’”

Jeff Beck would come to share a similar sentiment about Hendrix when he first arrived in the UK. But Isley somehow knew that Hendrix would survive the shake-up the Fab Four gave America.

“Since he was in the house, he was always playing; he practiced a lot,” he says. “I was surprised he practiced so much because he was actually that good. But he practiced before rehearsal, during rehearsal, after rehearsal, on off days, and during Saturday cartoons.”

Bill Frisell, who first saw Hendrix in 1968, described him as “shocking,” having impressed The Monkees by playing the guitar with his teeth one year earlier.

He was the real deal by the time Are You Experienced? changed the face of guitar music in 1967, the days his cut his teeth as a sideman paving the way for stardom. Tragically, he wasn't around long enough to witness the sea change he caused.

If you asked those fortunate enough to see Jimi Hendrix perform live at one of his 350 or so shows during his short career to describe the experience, words like "amazing," "electrifying," "otherworldly," "loud" and "unpredictable" would likely rank high among their descriptive choices. However, for his final scheduled performance — at a festival marred by technical issues, rain delays, traffic chaos, a lack of facilities and eventual cancellations — the unpredictable element was whether the guitar icon would show up at all.

The event in question was the Open Air Love & Peace Festival, held over the weekend of September 4 through 6, 1970, on the German island of Fehmarn, which Hendrix was set to headline on Saturday night.

This appearance would mark the final scheduled performance from Hendrix and the last incarnation of the Experience. The show saw the return of original drummer Mitch Mitchell and featured Hendrix’s army pal, and Band of Gypsy’s bassist, Billy Cox. The Fehmarn gig was the final stop of the band's 1970 Cry of Love Tour.

Other scheduled acts on the festival bill included Sly & the Family Stone, Canned Heat, the Faces, Ginger Baker's Air Force, Cactus, and the Rory Gallagher–fronted Taste. However, the latter two acts would eventually pull out due to the same issues that would impact Hendrix's set, but more on that in a bit.

The three German organizers were inspired by the success of the Isle of Wight Festival. Its 1970 edition, held from August 26 to 31, held roughly one week earlier, boasted six to seven hundred thousand attendees and at one point held a Guinness World Record for festival attendance. Hoping to piggyback on the festival’s popularity and book some of its acts, the Fehmarn organizers thought they might create a European version of Woodstock. However, things didn't quite go to plan.

Unfortunately, ticket sales were far below expectations. Some reports suggest that as few as 10,000 tickets were shifted. In the end perhaps 60,000 made actually attended the event, an unexpected crush that made for uncomfortable conditions throughout the event and blocked traffic to and from the concert, including transportation for the bands.

Hendrix was paid 70,000 Deutsche Marks — around $160,000 in today's money — along with his travel costs in advance for the appearance. The festival's success heavily relied on him as the Saturday headliner. The organizers hoped to capitalize on the popularity of the Woodstock festival film, which had hit European theaters earlier that summer and featured Hendrix’s performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” As a result, the guitarist’s face appeared alone on many of the event's promotional posters.

Unfortunately, the event was plagued with power issues from the start, as well as foul weather. Severe winds and storms battered the stage throughout Saturday's sets, and it was deemed unsafe for anyone to set foot on it — let alone plug anything in — until the weather cleared. Hendrix, who was scheduled to take the stage at 8 p.m. on Saturday evening, eventually began his set at noon the following day — with several thousand fans holding their place in the rain for the 16 hours in between.

No video of the set in its entirety appears to exist. However, portions of the band's performance, blending professionally shot footage with Super 8mm fan recordings, have made their way into bonus features of some official Hendrix releases over the years, with many still popping up online occasionally.

In one recently resurfaced clip, a crowdgoer captured the moment Hendrix finally took to the stage. The short clip begins with Hendrix — armed with the famed 1968 white "Woodstock" Stratocaster — being welcomed by a cacophony of boos and jeers.

Responding to the crowd, he says, "I don't give a fuck if you boo, as long as you boo in key, you mothers," before shedding some light on his tardiness. "We couldn't come on last night — it was just unbearable," Hendrix explained, referencing the torrid conditions he and the band endured upon finally arriving at the site.

Once Hendrix played the first few notes of the show opener, Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor," all appeared to be forgiven, and it was business as usual, with the Experience tearing through a stacked setlist that included classics from across his discography, such as "Spanish Castle Magic," "Hey Joe," "All Along the Watchtower," "Red House," and "Purple Haze," before closing with "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)."

The set also featured some new tracks that would eventually be released posthumously, such as "Freedom" and "Ezy Ryder."

This wasn't Hendrix's first rodeo when it came to unforeseen circumstances halting one of his performances, of course. Famously, at Woodstock the year before, he was scheduled to close the festival on Sunday night. However, significant delays pushed his set to 9 a.m. on Monday morning. In that instance, though, the audience's reaction was far more forgiving — perhaps a reflection of the '69 "flower power" and "Summer of Love" energy of the time. In contrast, the boos and jeers at this 1970 festival may have spoken to a harder-edged crowd reflecting the changing times — or maybe they were just fed up being stuck out in the rain.

In hindsight, we know the Open Air Love & Peace Festival show was the beginning of the end for Hendrix. However, with rumors of upcoming collaborations with Miles Davis and Jimi's need to constantly evolve as a player, you can't help but wonder where he might have gone next musically.

Just a week before the Fehmarn show, he told Melody Maker, "I'm back right now to where I started. I've given this era of music everything." Suggesting that he had grown "exhausted" and jaded with his current presentation, Hendrix added, "I can't think of anything new to add to it in its present state."

Hendrix's final time onstage would come two nights before he died, when he sat in for a couple of the closing numbers with the Animals frontman Eric Burdon and his new band War at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London on September 16, 1970 — a little shy of four years to the day when the then-unknown Hendrix played his first show just half a mile away at the Scotch of St. James.

The complete audio recording of the Jimi Hendrix Experience performing at the Open Air Love & Peace Festival — sneakily captured by the organizers using overhead mics onto a reel-to-reel at the side of the stage — was eventually released in 2005 as Live at the Isle of Fehmarn and lives on as an essential document of the guitar god's final official live performance. Whether CD sales have helped recoup any of the troubled event's financial losses, however, remains unknown.