Stevie Nicks’ relationship with Lindsey Buckingham, and the magic and drama it created during their time in Fleetwood Mac, is well documented. Her brief romance with Joe Walsh, however, is discussed far less often. For the Eagles guitarist, though, the relationship had a lasting impact — particularly on his approach to songwriting.

The pair dated in the mid-1980s, when both were deep into their respective solo careers. It was also a period when Walsh was still struggling with the drug and alcohol addictions that had already left their mark on the Eagles in the previous decade.

“She was special,” Walsh told Howard Stern in 2024. “We were seeking refuge in each other’s presence. There was [the drug] part of it, but we were both on the road, we had careers, and we were both lonely.”

Stern focused on the power-couple dynamic, and on the fact that Nicks seemed to have the complete package. Walsh, however, was less interested in romanticizing the relationship.

“The relationship came and ran its course, as rock and roll relationships do,” he said. “I don’t think either of us could have committed to a lasting relationship in this state that we were in. What made it possible was that we toured and spent all that time together.”

Eventually, they drifted apart. But before they did, Nicks played a role in Walsh’s 1985 solo album The Confessor.

“She rode shotgun with me on that album, and gave me some direction,” Walsh said. “She’s really good at the craft of songwriting. Left to my own devices, I will have 85 pieces of paper with a couple of words on each.”

Walsh’s approach to songwriting has always been somewhat ad hoc. At a spoken-word event in West Hollywood in 2012, he described the process this way:

“There’s a room in my head where I have all these bits and pieces, and when it’s time to write a song, I take them and put them on a table like a jigsaw puzzle and see what fits.”

His most popular and enduring songs often emerged from that unconventional process. “Life’s Been Good,” for example, was assembled from seemingly unrelated ideas, while “Life in the Fast Lane” grew out of a coordination exercise Walsh played on electric guitar to help him warm up before shows.

The lyrics to “Rocky Mountain Way,” meanwhile, came to him as he was mowing the lawn. He was so excited that he left the mower running while he wrote them down and inadvertently cut down his neighbor’s rose bushes.

There was spontaneity in Walsh’s process, and an element of discovery. Nicks, by contrast, was far more deliberate. Her songs began as stories, with the music coming later.

“It starts with a little inspiration; something will happen to me,” she told CBS of her approach to songwriting. “If a man walks by and smiles at me, and I go, ‘What a beautiful smile,’ I might write ‘The smile is the only thing I saw…’, then the poem is begun. If it gets finished and I think it’s good, then I’ll sit down at the piano.”

Walsh would eventually come to realize that his addictions had to be addressed before it was too late. His substance abuse was beginning to hurt the people around him.

“The hardest thing to do is pick up the phone and ask for help,” he said. “But there’s life after addiction, and it’s good.”

Today, Walsh is focused on making sure the Eagles go out in style, as their record-breaking Las Vegas Sphere residency looks set to be their final curtain call.

By the time he joined the Eagles in January 1974, Don Felder had a history with some of the era’s defining guitarists and songwriters. Growing up in Gainesville, Florida, he befriended Duane Allman (who taught him slide), Stephen Stills and Bernie Leadon, who would precede him in the Eagles.

Felder recently spoke with us about his adventures with all three guitarists. Here, he keeps the stories coming with anecdotes about another Gainesville pal named Tom Petty, as well as Joni Mitchell and his onetime Eagles’ co-guitarist Joe Walsh.

Tom Petty

“When I first met him I was teaching at Lipham Music, not getting paid but for every hour they would give me a $10 credit. So it would add up and I could use that money to upgrade my amp or my guitar or strings or stuff. Tom was like Stephen Stills — very enthusiastic. They both had charisma onstage; you really liked them, and they sold you on what they were doing.

“I remember the first time I went to see Tom perform, he had these two guitar players who were just plugged in and turned up way too loud. Tom was playing bass. He didn’t want to play bass. He was like, ‘A frontman shouldn’t be playing bass,’ and I wanted to go, ‘Well, Paul McCartney might disagree with you about that.’ But Tom also wanted to play guitar so he could write.

“So I went to see this show and he comes on and he’s got this blonde hair and he’s flipping his hair and shaking it. These two girls are standing next to me — why I chose to stand between two girls I’ll never know [laughs] — but they’re going, ‘Oh, he’s so great! He’s so this and that, and I love his voice!’ And he was kind of singing like Bob Dylan; that’s what was happening at the time, so he sounded more like a Bob Dylan knockoff than Tom Petty.

“But his two guitar players were horrible. I went to a rehearsal after that and said, ‘You stop playing when Tom’s singing. When Tom’s not singing, you can play. When he moves away from the mic, you can play and solo and do whatever you want. But these are songs. You have to support the vocals, not just play all over them.’

“So I kind of helped them a little bit. Then I moved to Boston and we lost touch. I didn’t really hear about him until his first album came out a few years later.”

Joni Mitchell

“Before I joined the Eagles I was working with a guy named David Blue. He was a New York kind of country-folk artist. He wrote ‘Outlaw Man’ for the Eagles’ Desperado album, and Graham Nash produced his album [1973’s Nice Baby and the Angel]. David Lindley played on the album, and I was hired to go work with David Blue on the road…and wound up playing with Crosby & Nash, who were headlining, after David Lindley got sick.

“David Blue really appreciated all the stuff I had done for him, and he was really good friends with Joni Mitchell. He said, ‘Joni’s making an album. She’d love to have you come in and play on it.’ I used to see her sitting outside this little deli, less than a quarter mile from my house.

“I’d go there a lot to eat breakfast, and she’d be sitting outside smoking a cigarette and having this little, teeny cup of the darkest espresso you can imagine. I’d always say hello to her, and Brian Wilson would be sitting in the same booth, having the same thing every day — exactly like he did over and over and over until he passed.

“So I went into the studio with her and gave her a hug. I don’t even remember the song or the title, what it was, and I don’t even know if they used it. [Editor’s note: They didn’t.] It was just really wonderful to have met her and have had the honor of playing with her, and being able to say hello to her at the deli. Just a lovely, lovely, really wonderful, talented person.

“And if you want to talk about originality, she was probably the most original female singing guitarist ever. Her tunings, her chord progressions, her vocal melodies over these complicated guitar changes were just spectacular. I don’t know any other female that’s been able to even come close to that level of quality and talent, to tell you the truth.”

Joe Walsh

“Well, Joe has a unique style of his own, and I love it. He and I really have diverse backgrounds, but out of complete respect for each other and admiration for each other, we were able to play together. Before he ever joined the Eagles, I did some shows with him; he had a band called Joe Walsh & Friends, and we opened for Elton John at Dodger Stadium. He had a TV show called Joe Walsh & Friends, too; I went down and jammed on a couple of songs with him for that.

“We would do this tango, this dance. Without having a conversation about it, we understood that when somebody goes up and starts playing high, you should be supporting underneath them — slower, lower, an octave down, a contrapuntal melody to what was happening up there.

“And then when he starts winding his way down, I’d start winding my way up. So we’d have this very subtle interplay between us, without saying a word, just by listening to what somebody was doing. And if they were off on a really hot run, you just support them.

“That’s really why I wrote the music bed which became ‘Hotel California.’ Joe had just joined the band and I wanted to do that thing we did together on an Eagles record. Glenn [Frey] and I had done something like that on a song right after I joined the band, but it was not of the same caliber or quality of what we did for ‘Hotel.’

“Joe comes up with great parts, so when we were tangoing back and forth he says, ‘We need to do something like diddly-diddly-diddly here.’ So I said, ‘What is diddly-diddly-diddly?’ and he goes [sings part], and if you listen to that progression, it’s a descending chromatic chord progression. It changed chords on every bar, going down, going down, going down, and then it comes back again.

“So we had to figure out what the diddly-diddly-diddly was on every bar so it went with the chord change on that bar. We literally recorded it bar by bar.”

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.

By the time Joe Walsh joined the Eagles in 1975, his reputation for hard living was already legendary.

The guitarist — who first rose to fame with the James Gang and their hit “Funk #49” and found solo success with “Rocky Mountain Way”— spent decades chasing the excesses that defined rock and roll in the 1970s and ’80s. Looking back now, he says the turning point came when he realized the lifestyle had stopped working.

“I chased it for 30 years,” the 78-year-old says. “Obviously, I thought I wasn’t drinking enough.”

The remark comes with the kind of hard-earned clarity that only arrives in hindsight. Walsh says getting sober in the 1990s ultimately became the key to sustaining one of rock’s longest-running careers.

Speaking recently with Sammy Hagar, the electric guitar legend reflected on the lessons he’s learned over more than five decades in music — from staying relevant across generations to confronting the addiction that nearly derailed his life.

“The reason I’m here,” Walsh said, “is if you can break through to a different generation than yours. If more than one generation is aware of your music, you can stick around for a while.”

He added another piece of advice with his trademark humor: “Don’t get famous for 15 minutes — just get famous a little bit and stay that way.”

But Walsh knows longevity in rock isn’t just about music. By the time he joined the Eagles — making his debut with the band on their landmark 1976 album Hotel California — his reputation for wild behavior was already well established.

Partying was often part of the routine, and Walsh’s antics sometimes bordered on destructive. As Eagles cofounder Don Henley has recalled, Walsh’s friendship with Keith Moon occasionally led to chaos on the road.

“We were beginning to get barred from some of the hotels we liked to stay in,” Henley once said.

Eventually, Walsh realized the lifestyle that once fueled him had begun to take control.

“If you have problems in your life that are directly the result of alcohol or whatever substance, you have a problem,” he said. “At some point, you work for it. It doesn’t work for you anymore.”

Addiction, he explained, has a way of convincing people they need it.

“Very subtly, without you noticing, whatever you’re on will convince you that you can’t do anything without it,” Walsh said. “Then it’s got you.”

For Walsh, recognizing that reality meant admitting he needed help — something he says was harder than any performance.

“The hardest thing to do is pick up the phone and ask for help,” he said. “But there’s life after addiction, and it’s good.”

With support from his Eagles bandmates, including Glenn Frey and Henley, Walsh entered recovery in 1993 and has been sober since 1994.

The experience later inspired the 2012 song “One Day at a Time,” in which he reflected on the daily commitment required to stay sober while encouraging others not to feel ashamed of addiction.

More than three decades later, Walsh says the decision to get sober ultimately gave him something he once risked losing: time — time to keep making music, time to reflect, and time to keep moving forward.

For a musician whose career now spans more than half a century, that clarity may be the most important lesson of all.

The Eagles have always straddled the border between country and rock, but when guitarist Bernie Leadon felt the scales had tipped too far toward the latter, he didn't hesitate to step away from the group.

One of These Nights, the band's fourth album, released in 1975, was their breakthrough record, yielding three top 10 singles in the U.S.: "One of These Nights," "Lyin' Eyes" and "Take It to the Limit". It was also the breaking point for Leadon, whose disillusionment with the band's rockier sound forced his exit later that year.

History dictates that his departure did little to deter the trajectory of a band on the up, with the group turning to James Gang and Barnstorm guitarist Joe Walsh, whom the band already knew well, as his successor. As the band pivoted into rockier territory (musically speaking, that is), there was no doubt that what the firebrand riffer took them to new levels.

“Joe, being a bona fide rock ‘n’ roll guitar slinger, was the perfect foil for Don Felder,” Don Henley says in the latest issue of Guitar World. “They propelled one another in a friendly-but-competitive sort of way. We had upped our horsepower.”

Henley means no disrespect to his former bandmate when he talks of Walsh’s gas-guzzling V8 engine playing style. He was — and still is — “a highly skilled musician,” he says. But fate had intervened, and Walsh gave the band a fresh edge.

Yet as successful as the marriage was, musically, Henley had his reservations about Walsh’s rockstar antics, which were fueled in part by the company he kept. The main culprit was Who drummer Keith Moon, who was famous for destroying hotel rooms.

“Keith Moon and Joe were good buddies,” Henley says, “and that, of course, led to some mischief.”

And much of the remaining decade saw Walsh engage in attention-getting pranks, from redesigning hotel floor plans with a chainsaw to running for president of the U.S. with the promise of free gas for all and a commitment to change the national anthem to his solo hit "Life's Been Good." .

“It was amusing for a little while,” Henley accepts, though not with a great deal of patience. “It eventually became a very expensive hobby, and we were beginning to get barred from some of the hotels we liked to stay in.

“So after a while the chainsaws got locked away in storage, and other kinds of dramas replaced the ‘remodeling’ of rooms and hallways,” Henley goes on. “But, at least Joe got a hit song out of it!”

Earlier this year, Henley recalled that he was only willing to regroup the band if the late Glenn Frey, who played with it for well over three decades, was replaced by his son, Deacon, citing a chance meeting with another rock icon as his source of inspiration.

In the same interview, he also revealed that the band's upcoming Las Vegas Sphere shows would be their last, bringing their storied career to a glitzy and oddly futuristic finish.

Elsewhere, Eagles guitarist Vince Gill has named his surprising early guitar heroes, and Walsh has proved his antics weren't Eagles exclusive, as the destruction of a neighbor's rose bush helped him land the gig in the first place.

In the April 1988 issue of Guitar Player, Joe Walsh shared with us "what I consider to be the 12 best all-time-forever guitar solos.

"They aren’t in any particular order," he said. "I don’t think the first one is better than the fifth one. My next favorite dozen solos would be by people who stole all the licks from these 12 guys, including me!"

Nearly 40 years on, it still makes for good reading. As for the solos, they're timeless.

“Stood Up” — Joe Maphis

“Joe Maphis on Ricky Nelson’s ‘Stood Up’ or James Burton on ‘Fools Rush In’ [from Ricky Nelson] — wow! Those guys and Carl Perkins — ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and all that stuff — didn’t have anybody to listen to. They didn’t know what they were doing. They didn’t even know it was rock and roll. They didn’t have a chance to study John Mayall’s Blues Breakers or Jimi Hendrix or Jeff Beck.

“I respect those guys because they didn’t cop any licks. They made those licks up, and that’s the foundation that all of us guitar players learned from. James Burton often played some incredible stuff with Ricky Nelson.”

“Walk—Don’t Run” — Bob Bogle

“I don’t really know if it’s a solo or not, but I’d have to say that ‘Walk—Don’t Run’ by the Ventures changed an awful lot of guitar players’ lives. It was one of the foundational instrumentals. It made instrumentals okay to do, and it led the way for things like the Surfaris’ ‘Wipe Out,’ the Tornadoes’ ‘Telstar’ and the Rockin’ Teens’ ‘Wild Weekend.’ It had been done before [by Johnny Smith as well as Chet Atkins], but with the Ventures, America discovered the tremolo bar.

“I didn’t even play guitar at that time, but I loved ‘Walk—Don’t Run.’ I was 13 when that came out in ’60, and I borrowed a guitar just to learn how to play that lead part. At the time, my mom was making me practice a stupid metal clarinet in orchestra.

“A lot of people ended up playing guitar because of that song. We used to look at the album cover of The Ventures and nobody could believe that there was a Fender Jazzmaster and a Fender Strat and a perfect Precision. Later on, the Ventures went to Mosrites, and those guitars stink!

“But that band and that particular song really paved the way for a whole new approach to instrumentals, and lead guitar became so much more important in the song.”

“Stairway to Heaven” — Jimmy Page

“Jimmy Page’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ solo is amazing. That’s classic Page. He is unique; he just comes from a different part of the cosmos. That whole song is his finest moment, and it’s one of the finest things ever in rock and roll.

“Jimmy says he used his Fender Tele for the solo in ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ but it sounds like it was done with the ’59 sunburst Gibson Les Paul that I gave him and he uses. I had that in the James Gang.

“I was just meeting him, and he said, ‘Man, I’ve got to get a Les Paul because I’m tired of this Telecaster. I can’t find one, and I’ve got to go back to England. It looks like the Yardbirds are going to break up, and every time I go into a store, the price goes up. $3,000.’

“At the time, he didn’t have that kind of money. I had a line on another Les Paul, so I gave him mine.”

“Jeff’s Boogie” — Jeff Beck

“The Yardbirds’ ‘Jeff’s Boogie’ is pretty tough stuff. That was on Over Under Sideways Down. From what I can tell from Jeff’s technique in the early days, he studied Django Reinhardt and especially Les Paul. ‘Jeff’s Boogie’ was just a boogie shuffle, played with his old Telecaster that Seymour Duncan has now.

“That song has probably the finest collection of unique licks and tricks. At that point, Jeff’s licks and tricks were so far ahead of any American player. He epitomized the image of the lead guitar hero, and there was this mystique about the Yardbirds.

“Clapton was the original guitar player, then Jeff, and then Jimmy Page took over. They were it — the heaviest guitar players were or had been in the Yardbirds. And ‘Jeff’s Boogie’ — that shook me so much. I can play it note for note, but it took me a long time to figure all that out.”

“Crossroads” — Eric Clapton

“The Cream album with the live ‘Crossroads’ on it [1968’s Wheels of Fire] — that shook me up pretty good. ‘Badge’ and ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ are nice, but Eric Clapton’s work on ‘Crossroads’ is some testifying. He just got going.

“The James Gang played with Cream in Detroit once at the Grande Ballroom, and I sat right in front of Eric. His ‘Crossroads’ that night was very similar to what’s on [Wheels of Fire], but to hear anybody go like that for a good six minutes — incredible guitar. I was completely overwhelmed with the vast resources that Eric had, which so many other guitar players aren’t aware of.

“He never played the same lick twice in that solo, and I have the gut feeling that it was absolutely spontaneous. During that tour, he probably never played it the same two nights in a row. He was just blowing so freely! He and the guitar were one thing. You know, over the process of a tour, you kind of lock into — well, it gets to be like charts toward the end of the tour.

“I love ‘Crossroads’ because he was screaming. I mean, it’s the classic, total Clapton Get out of the way! I don’t care what you think; get out of the way. I’m not done playing yet!”

“And Your Bird Can Sing” — George Harrison & Paul McCartney

“George Harrison and Paul McCartney on ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ is pretty darn good. It’s a two-note solo and has an amazing voicing.

“I thought that George played that all at once, and I spent 15 minutes a day for maybe three weeks learning that solo note for note. In the very early James Gang in Cleveland, that was something that I could do that nobody else could do.

“It was like, ‘There’s this kid in the James Gang, and his name’s Walsh.’

‘Yeah, well, what about him?’

‘He can play “And Your Bird Can Sing!”’

“Years later, I got a chance to hang out with Ringo Starr and I asked him how in the world George did that. Ringo said, ‘He couldn’t! He double-tracked it.’ [In fact he and McCartney recorded the harmonized solo together.] I said,

‘You’re kidding. You mean I’m the only person on the planet that can play it?’ [laughs] Three weeks of my goddamned life — I wish I would have known that back then!”

“How High the Moon” — Les Paul

“Les Paul was one of the innovators of the early electric guitar, and he invented the trick of speeding the tape recorder up and slowing it down. You can hear that in ‘How High the Moon.’

“That song was influential to Jeff Beck. To me, Les Paul is very much it. Django Reinhardt is also someone to study, but you had to really be into him. Les Paul is just incomprehensible. And Chet Atkins, too, of course.”

“Purple Haze” — Jimi Hendrix

“‘Purple Haze’ blew everybody apart. It was like you almost had to be on acid to conceive what he was playing. You know, 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. 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.”

“Statesboro Blues” — Duane Allman

“Duane was it on slide. He’s really responsible for me learning how to play slide, and he’s the best that there’ll ever be. It’s incredible slide playing — the tone, his right-hand touch. He was ridiculously amazing.

“Duane and I were both born on the same day — November 20, 1947. I met him a couple of times — the James Gang, Allman Brothers, and Chuck Berry did some gigs — and Duane was nothing but a total gentleman. He played most of his parts in standard tuning, but he showed me the E tuning [low to high, E B E G# B E], which is what I use.

“He said, ‘Look. Go to the drugstore and get some Coricidin. Throw all the pills away, and use the bottle.’ That was his sound. They don’t make those bottles anymore; they have plastic bottles now. But the glass — instead of a chrome slide — is how he got his tone. Glass has such a wonderful texture.

“You know the picture of us on the motorcycle on James Gang Rides Again? When Duane wiped out, I got superstitious, and after about a week, I never rode my motorcycle again. I figured I’d rather drink beer, and you can’t do both. I got no business on a motorcycle; I’d rather play guitar and drink beer. I love Duane, and I dearly, dearly miss him. Imagine what he would have done if he were still alive.”

“Personal Manager Blues” — Albert King

“Albert King just hit it in ‘Personal Manager Blues’ It’s the classic, left-handed, strung-upside-down blues. It’s a favorite of mine because it’s some of the finest, simple, less-is-more guitar work that there is. Albert is so soulful, and he gets into those bends that right-handed guitarists have such a hard time comprehending.

“That’s why nobody can hardly play like him. It has to do with the direction of the bend, since he strings his guitar with the highest strings on top [toward his chin].”

“Luxury Liner” — Albert Lee

“Albert Lee really goes for it with Emmylou Harris, especially on his ‘Luxury Liner’ solo. That’s pretty much studying the James Burton and Joe Maphis styles.

“Albert is just so smooth. He has a ’53 Tele, and it’s all three-fingered picking; he doesn’t really use a pick. I can’t even comprehend what he’s doing. I tried to listen to it to figure out what he’s doing, and I gave up. I said, ‘Forget it!’

He plays weird scales that have to be played with a certain left-hand position. It’s a whole style all by itself. He’s brilliant at that, and I envy him. He makes me really, really nervous.

“It’s funny: He’s one of the guys who’s very nervous to get onstage with me — ’cause I can blow him away in certain styles — but when he cranks and gets going, I feel like a fucking idiot!”

Leo Kottke

“Anything that Leo Kottke ever recorded is one of my top 12 solos. Ah, man, he’s [whistles]. He’s very tough and unique, and I love him. John Fahey and Bert Jansch are good, too, but nobody can touch Leo Kottke on acoustic 12-string bottleneck.”

Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh and hit songwriter Jimmy Webb surprised an audience in Wichita, Kansas with an intimate version of Webb's classic "Wichita Lineman,” drawing raves from fans in the process.

The performance took place at Walsh’s 2025 VetsAid benefit concert on Saturday, November 14.

Webb posted a video of the performance on his Facebook page, writing, “It was an honor to make a surpirse visit to Wichita last night for Joe Walsh's VetsAid benefit. God Bless Joe for all he does to help out the vets." Since then, the video has drawn praise from die-hard fans and others who are praising Walsh for his years of support on behalf of U.S. veterans.

The performance means so much more when you realize Walsh — who is currently auctioning off electric guitars, amps and other gear from his career — is a native of Wichita. This year's VetsAid benefit, the first held in Wichita, was a homecoming for the rocker, one he was able to share with longtime friends and performers, including his Eagles cohort Vince Gill, Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks and Nathaniel Rateliff.

“It’s been a long-term goal of mine since we began VetsAid nearly 10 years ago to bring it all home to my native Wichita to serve Kansan veterans and their families," Walsh said when the 2025 lineup was announced. "It’s where my parents were both born and are buried, where I was born and where I will always feel a deep connection and sense of heritage and responsibility.

“It is with great pride and gratitude that our traveling circus of love and community will make a stop in Wichita in 2025 and that I can share the experience with my dear friends who also happen to be some of the greatest American musicians I know."

A Gold Star son, Walsh created VetsAid in 2017 as a way to raise money for veterans’ services organizations. Since then, his benefit concerts have garnered more than $4 million in grants, with proceeds from this year's concert going directly to groups in Kansas.

"Wichita Lineman" is a timeless hit Webb composed in 1968 as a followup to "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," a 1967 hit for Glen Campbell. Webb said he asked himself where the narrator of that earlier song might settle as he winds his way east. He chose Wichita. The inspiration for his lyrics came as he drove through the Oklahoma panhandle and saw a lineman working at the top of a telephone pole.

The song's aching depiction of loneliness struck Campbell deeply. "When I heard it I cried," he said, "because I was homesick." The song's producer, Al De Lory, was similarly moved. His uncle had been a lineman in California. "I could visualize my uncle up a pole in the middle of nowhere. I loved the song right away," he said.

A signature element of the song is the guitar solo, played by Campbell on a Danelectro bass guitar he borrowed from Wrecking Crew bassist Carol Kaye, who also performs on the track and devised its descending six-note intro. "What a thrill it was to cut 'Wichita Lineman' for Glen," she wrote in her website’s FAQ. "And yes, he borrowed my Dano 6-stg. bass guitar to play his famous solo on."

Kaye was among the artists honored with induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame earlier this month, on November 8. However, she elected not to attend, having stated earlier that the honor goes against the spirit of her life as a session musician.

At 77, Joe Walsh has racked up achievements and accolades in music that span decades, iconic artists and various genres. He’s been in the James Gang and the Eagles, turned guitarists like Pete Townshend onto some of their favorite electric guitars, and written enduring hits like “Life’s Been Good” and “A Life of Illusion.”

Walsh can now add “TikTok phenomenon” to his résumé. Over the past months, the guitarist’s 1973 hit “Rocky Mountain Way” has flown its way back onto the charts thanks to a TikTok trend where users post videos overlaid with the phrase “Unfortunately, I do love,” followed by a list of their bad habits and guilty pleasures. On video after video, “Rocky Mountain Way” provides the unapologetically ballsy soundtrack to accompany users’ bold and occasionally shameless revelations.

It’s not the first time the song has brought Walsh fame. It’s not even the second. “Rocky Mountain Way” — which features some of the guitarist’s classic swampy electric slide playing — has been a three-time charm for the him, going back to its origins.

After leaving his band James Gang in late 1971, Walsh relocated from Cleveland, Ohio to the Rocky Mountain State, Colorado, where he settled in Boulder. He and his band Barnstorm released their self-titled album in 1972, after which Walsh began work on a solo record with assistance from the group’s members: bass guitarist Kenny Passarelli, keyboardist Rocke Grace and drummer Joe Vitale.

The four musicians had written a jam they all liked, but Walsh was having a hard time coming up with lyrics for it. Inspiration struck him at a most unusual time.

“One day I was in my backyard in Boulder mowing the lawn, and I was thinking, Boy, I sure hope leaving the James Gang was a good idea,’because I hadn’t really surfaced as a solo act yet,” he explained to Rolling Stone in 2016. “I was almost there, but not quite. And then I looked up, and there were the Rocky Mountains.

“It was summer but you could still see snow on the back range. It just hit me how beautiful it all was, 5,000 feet up.

“And that was it. The words came: ‘Spent the last year Rocky Mountain way / Couldn’t get much higher.’

“And the second verse is about my old management — telling us this, telling us that, time to change the batter. I got all of that at once. And I ran inside to write it down before I forgot it.”

Unfortunately, Walsh left his lawn mower running. In his absence it began moving into his neighbor’s yard and destroying her prized rose bushes.

“Those lyrics wound up costing me, I don’t know, maybe 1,500 bucks, but it was well worth it,” Walsh said. “The neighbor, though, she was pissed. I said to her, ‘You don’t understand. I got the words.’ But she just looked at me.”

Released as the lead single from his solo debut, 1973’s The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get, “Rocky Mountain Way” hit number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100. It made him a star in his own right, ensuring his solo career would move ahead.

That seemed only fair, considering that the song was all about Walsh breaking free from James Gang and going his own way.

“I got kind of fed up with feeling sorry for myself, and I wanted to justify and feel good about leaving the James Gang, relocating, going for it on a survival basis,” he said in the book The Guitar Greats. ”I wanted to say, ‘Hey, whatever this is, I’m positive and I’m proud,’ and the words just kind of came out of feeling that way, rather than writing a song out of remorse.

“And it did turn out to be a special song for a lot of people. I think the attitude and the statement of that have a lot to do with it — it’s a positive song, and it’s basic rock and roll, which is what I really do."

Walsh’s follow-up albums, So What and the subsequent live album, You Can’t Argue With a Sick Mind, both hit the charts, continuing his streak.

By then he had become close friends with the Eagles. They shared a manager, Irving Azoff, and producer, Bill Szymczyk, and Walsh toured with the group, where he’d join them on their encores for hell-raising performances of — what else? — “Rocky Mountain Way.”

Those guest spots eventually opened the door for him to replace founding Eagles member Bernie Leadon, who had fallen out of favor with frontman Glenn Frey.

“For our encores, we’d put Joe Walsh in a road box,” Frey said in the 2013 documentary History of the Eagles. “There would be Joe with his Les Paul, and we would play ‘Rocky Mountain Way.’ As we’re playing, I keep thinking to myself, ‘Joe Walsh over Bernie Leadon?’”

Once Leadon was out, Walsh was in, bringing his harder rock sound to the fore with that of lead guitarist Don Felder. Together, the duo helped continue their winning streak with their work on songs like “Hotel California” and “Life in the Fast Lane,” a monster rocker built on a blazing electric guitar riff crafted by Walsh.

“One day, at rehearsal,” Don Henley recalled, “Joe just busted out that crazy riff and I said 'What the hell is that? We've got to figure out to make a song out of that.’”

Now, as “Rocky Mountain Way” once again brings Walsh back into the spotlight, the song is also introducing a new generation to the guitarist’s distinctive style, which combines memorable hooks with expressive phrasing and a grab-‘em-by-the-throat approach to slide guitar that he learned from no less than Duane Allman.

It’s a style of playing that has made fans of guitar greats that include icons like Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, the latter of whom said, “I don’t listen to many records, but I listen to his.”

And while he continues to perform with the Eagles — the group is currently playing a residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas through February 2026 — he remains a star in his own right. Which is why you’ll often come across the popular internet meme, “Even people who hate the Eagles are like, ‘but Joe Walsh is all right.’”

Don Felder helped the Eagles soar to the top of the charts when he wrote the music for their 1977 hit “Hotel California.” Although bandmates Don Henley and Glenn Frey built out the song's narrative theme and lyrics, the song's acoustic guitar-driven reggae rhythm and circular chord progression are the lure that pull listeners in and keep them hooked right up through Felder and Joe Walsh's anthemic solos.

Since the song's release, Felder and Walsh's guitar work on the outro to “Hotel California” has regularly been ranked as one of the greatest guitar solos of all time. It remains one of the standout dual-guitar workouts of the classic rock era.

For the band’s next album, 1979’s The Long Run, Felder says he wanted to showcase a different side to the band, and began writing a new muscular track that put his and Walsh’s talents at the fore. He called it “Heavy Metal.”

“It had a real kind of heavy hand to it,” he tells Guitarist. “I wrote it so that Joe and I could play even harder than we did — or edgier than we did — on ‘Hotel California,’ against each other. It had harmony parts, trading-off solos, and a much harder rock edge.”

The Long Run was tracked in five different studios over 18 months. But when it was finally released, “Heavy Metal.” was not among its tracks.

“We went in and recorded the basic track for The Long Run,” Felder reveals, “but never got around to finishing the lyrics. We had a basic track, but it just died in the Eagles’ vault.”

But Felder didn't forget it. Just a few years later, he was asked to contribute a song to the soundtrack of the 1981 animated sci-fi movie Heavy Metal. That gave him the impetus to finish the track, lyrics and all. It is undoubtedly the best-known Felder track apart from "Hotel California."

More than 40 years later, Felder still can't helped wondering what could have been.

“Without the title 'Heavy Metal,' that song could have, and should have, in my opinion, been finished on an Eagles record with Joe and me following up on ‘Hotel…’ with some dazzling guitar solos and stuff,” he says.

“It didn’t happen. We just didn’t have time. We had a tour booked and planned, and we were just dying to get through this record, the final mixes, cleaning up vocals, mastering and artwork.”

The creation of The Long Run had been anything but easy. The Eagles were running fast and dealing with personnel changes. Founding bass guitarist Randy Meisner had left before recording began and was replaced Timothy B. Schmit, making it the second Eagles album in a row to feature a revised lineup.

“Joe had joined during the Hotel California album,” Felder told Guitar World. “When we got to The Long Run, we were right off the road, going into the studio, and nobody had a break or time to start writing. It was a difficult time personally, physically, emotionally, and creatively in every way.”

But he also saw magic in his tandem with Walsh, who had previously enjoyed success with the James Gang and in his solo career, which produced the hit "Rocky Mountain Way." Felder says their chemistry was instant.

“Joe and I always had a great personal relationship and a great deal of respect for each other,” he says. “We developed, without even talking about it, the ability to dance together, where somebody would take a step back and support the person who stepped forward, and that person would step back and support the other person to step forward.”

Felder has remade “Heavy Metal” for his new album, The Vault: Fifty Years of Music. As its title suggests, the album features new songs inspired by rediscovered recordings dating back to the Eagles.

“I write a lot of stuff, whether they see the light of day or not,” he tells Guitar Player. “I still drive down the freeway, and I’ll be singing a chorus into my cell phone. I do what I can to constantly produce.”

In related news, Felder has spoken with Guitar Player about the unlikely influences behind his guitar solo on the Eagles' hit "One of These Nights" and how an argument with Glenn Frey brought an end to the group's 1970s era.

In addition, the guitarist has reflected on how a young Tom Petty once arrived at his door and asked for guitar lessons.

The thorny subject of the greatest guitar solo of all time has long been a fiercely contested debate, probably because every solo is different. How do you compare, say, “Comfortably Numb” with “Crazy Train,” or “Stairway to Heaven” with “Sultans of Swing”? It’s impossible. Still, public opinion ebbs and flows, and we wanted to find out which solos currently rank among our readers as the greatest of them all.

So we ran a poll on GuitarPlayer.com to find out and here we present the results. We’ll take a look at the stories behind the songs and find out just what made those lead guitar breaks so great through conversations with Brian May, Kirk Hammett, Michael Schenker and others.

20. Gary Moore | “Still Got the Blues”

GUITARIST: GARY MOORE (1990)

The definitive blues guitar ballad.

Presented as the title track from his 1990 album, this wistful tune in A minor became Gary Moore’s calling card fairly late in his career, when he reinvented himself as a blues artist. There’s a point in the solo where you can hear the Belfast great switch from the neck humbucker to the bridge on the 1959 Les Paul Standard he nicknamed Stripe and start deviating from its main theme, mainly sticking within the A minor pentatonic scale, with a few notes from the Aeolian and harmonic minor scales.

Moore was plugged into his prototype Marshall JTM-45 reissue head with one of the company’s newly designed Guv’nor distortion pedals out in front. More than 30 years later, this remains one of the most raw and expressive blues tracks, with Moore almost fighting his guitar at points, yet never failing to deliver the goods

19. Metallica | “Fade To Black”

GUITARIST: Kirk Hammett (1984)

Metallica’s first ballad features some of Kirk’s most epic playing.

Recorded at Flemming Rasmussen’s Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen in February and March 1984, Ride the Lightning, Metallica’s sophomore album, was more progressive and stylistically greater in scope than the all-out thrash assault of their debut, Kill ’Em All. That change is evident on “Fade to Black,” which features acoustic guitars and a nonstandard structure more akin to the “Stairway to Heaven” school of songcraft. But it is the song’s timeless melodic solo that most vividly signals a stylistic shift in guitarist Kirk Hammett’s playing. And the signature element he employs for the last solo is arpeggios.

“I have been playing that song for so long now,” Kirk tells our sister publication Total Guitar. “For the very last solo, I know how I want to start it, but then I am in an area where I can improvise for 16, 18 or 24 bars, and then [drummer] Lars [Ulrich] will hit a certain fill, which means that it’s up and it’s time for the arpeggio part. And then I just slide right into those arpeggios.” And they are arpeggios played on two strings, Hammett specifies. “When guitar players first started incorporating arpeggios into their playing, before the whole Yngwie sweep-picking thing, arpeggios were played on two strings – not three or four strings,” he explains. “And that was what the vogue was at the time in the 1980s, so I have been playing those for a long time. I use my middle finger just to anchor my position on the neck.”

That’s a great tip from the man who plays the solos. But how should you tackle them yourself? First, there are two essential scales you’ll need to know: the B natural minor scale and the B Phrygian mode, both shown below. These cover you for the entire opening 30 bars, which, let’s face it, is a lot of music, so this is a good reason to learn a couple of shapes if ever there was one.

To make it simpler, most of your time is spent in the natural minor scale. Not until around bar 20 will you find yourself briefly landing on the C note, which appears in the Phrygian mode. The bottom line is that Hammett improvises this part of the solo live – and these are the shapes he uses.

Up next are those two-string arpeggio shapes, and they’re 16th notes – all of them! At 142 bpm, it’s pretty fast, but Hammett doesn’t pick every note, opting to use pull-offs to make those rapid licks easier. It’s definitely something to experiment with and if you’re still struggling, you could try adding in an occasional hammer‑on, too.

18. Steely Dan | “Kid Charlemagne”

GUITARIST: Larry Carlton (1976)

Messin’ with the “Kid.”

Steely Dan’s catalog is filled with remarkable guitar solos, but Larry Carlton’s brilliant work on The Royal Scam’s “Kid Charlemagne” remains the most celebrated. Carlton strings together a series of tasty phrases that follow the underlying chord changes with a blend of inside and outside playing that is technically mind bending and emotionally satisfying.

“I was pretty familiar with the tune, so I just improvised,” he tells Guitar Player. “People think I’m kidding when I say that, like I had worked the solo out beforehand, but I didn’t. It was straight improv, and it worked.” Very well, in fact. Perhaps more has been written about his solo than of the song itself.

Despite the acclaim, Carlton was, and remains, nonplussed. “When the record came out, there was a wonderful review of the tune in Billboard and they raved about the solo,” he says. “I put the record on and listened to it with my wife, and at the end of it I said, ‘I don’t know. It just sounds like me.’”

17. Cream | “Crossroads”

GUITARIST: Eric Clapton (1968)

The finest rock and roll cover of an acoustic blues song.

It started as a blues tune called “Cross Road Blues” by Robert Johnson and became one of the finest examples of natural ability, soulfulness and showmanship from a virtuosic 22-year-old guitarist named Eric Clapton. His reimagining of the song as “Crossroads” further cemented a legacy that by then had earned him the nickname God.

Famously recorded at San Francisco’s Fillmore West venue for supergroup Cream’s Wheels of Fire album, Clapton’s arrangement retains the soul and spirit of Johnson’s original but updates it for a contemporary audience raring to cut loose and be entertained by dazzlingly quick, passionate musicianship.

Remarkably, Clapton is no fan of the performance: He complains that the band lost the “one” in the first verse of his second solo break, thereby throwing off his phrasing. That’s perfectionism for you. For everyone else, this four-minute track remains a source of fascination more than 50 years on.

16. Eric Johnson | “Cliffs Of Dover”

GUITARIST: Eric Johnson (1990)

Heavenly tones from the Texan great.

This instrumental won Eric Johnson a Grammy for its exquisitely tasteful guitar playing and jaw-dropping tones. For the recordings, the Texan musician mainly stuck with his early ’60s ES-335, though he chose to use his 1964 “Virginia” Strat for the opening lead and parts of the main solo. The guitars were fed into a 100-watt Marshall Super Lead, with an Echoplex and BK Butler Tube Driver to help achieve those smooth, violin-like tones and warm sustain.

“I first heard him in 1986 on Live at Austin City Limits,” Joe Bonamassa told us in 2015. “It was ‘Cliffs of Dover,’ and it was just terrifyingly good guitar playing. I wasn’t even sure if it was real! Then I saw him live, and his tones were the best I’d ever heard. I wondered how this guy was getting all of these sounds out of his Strat. I’d never seen anybody have such a forward-thinking rig like that.”

15. Prince | “Purple Rain”

GUITARIST: Prince (1984)

The Purple One’s defining guitar moment.

The epic outro to “Purple Rain” – which takes up nearly two thirds of the song itself – stands out as some of Prince’s finest work on the six-string, wailing away in G minor pentatonic and occasionally including some more modal notes, like the minor 6th. There’s also that repeating motif that dances around the 2nd and minor 3rd intervals.

It’s simple and effective, setting things up for the vocal melody that comes in toward the end. It’s not a busy solo by any means. Rather, the Purple One chose to leave a lot of space in between the lines he played and focus on big hooks instead of monster licks.

Prince would extend the solo for up to 15 minutes in live performance. While there are many great live renditions of this track, his half-time performance for 2007’s Super Bowl in Miami is the stuff of legend. Shredding alone onstage in the middle of a storm, Prince seemed to be living the moment for which this song was written.

14. Deep Purple | “Highway Star”

GUITARIST: Ritchie Blackmore (1972)

Race with devil on English highway.

“I wrote that out note for note about a week before we recorded it,” Ritchie Blackmore said of his remarkable and most definitely memorable solo to “Highway Star.” “And that is one of the only times I have ever done that. I wanted it to sound like someone driving in a fast car, for it to be one of those songs you would listen to while speeding. And I wanted a very definite Bach sound, which is why I wrote it out – and why I played those very rigid arpeggios across that very familiar Bach progression – D minor, G minor, C major, A major. I believe that I was the first person to do that so obviously on the guitar, and I believe that that’s why it stood out and why people have enjoyed it so much.

“Over the years, I’ve always played that solo note for note, but it just got faster and faster onstage because we would drink more and more whisky. [Keyboardist] Jon [Lord] would have to play his already difficult part faster and faster, and he would get very annoyed about it.”

13. Guns N’ Roses | “Sweet Child O’ Mine”

GUITARIST: Slash (1988)

A game of two halves.

Slash’s solo on this Guns N’ Roses breakthrough single is rock guitar at its finest. The first half is laid-back and modal, built around the Eb minor scale with a few major 7ths thrown in for a harmonic-minor flavor. The second half is much more aggressive and bluesy, and sticks mainly to position one of the pentatonic scale an octave up the neck in the same key. The bends feel that much wider and the vibrato more pronounced.

Slash plays the first section on the neck pickup for thickness and warmth before switching over to the bridge for more bite, with his Cry Baby engaged. Perhaps most impressive is his off-the-cuff sense of feel and how he strings it all together, which is the mark of any great guitar solo. Remarkably, although Slash’s riff was responsible for the song’s creation, he wasn’t fond of the song originally. “We were a pretty hard driving band, and that was sort of an uptempo ballady type of a thing,” he said. “So it’s grown on me over the years.”

12. Ozzy Osbourne | “Crazy Train”

GUITARIST: Randy Rhoads (1980)

Fretboard fireworks galore on Ozzy’s Blizzard of Ozz comeback.

The Double-O has often cited Randy Rhoads as the man who saved his career – and when you hear the solo on “Crazy Train,” you understand why. Although Rhoads’ classical- and modal-based approach was far from Tony Iommi’s blues leanings, he was, like Ozzy’s old bandmate, a true inventor.

There’s a section toward the end of this solo that actually sounds like a train squealing off the tracks, thanks to the use of a chromatically ascending trill that then descends in key. Rhoads concludes the solo with a fast-picked F# minor pentatonic phrase before a rapid Aeolian legato run ending with a big bend on the 19th fret.

The shredder performed the solo with his customized Jackson guitar through a Marshall and a couple of 4x12s while sitting in the control room. “We’d plug the guitar directly into the console,” recalls Blizzard of Ozz engineer Max Norman. “We’d preamp it in the console and send it down to the amp from there. That way we could control the amount of gain that hit the amp.”

11. Michael Jackson | “Beat It”

GUITARIST: Eddie Van Halen (1982)

Breathtaking results from an unlikely pairing.

Asked to contribute guitar to Michael Jackson’s Thriller album, Pete Townshend declined but offered a suggestion: How about Eddie Van Halen? Jackson and producer Quincy Jones thought that was a great idea, and got Ed onboard to play the solo to “Beat It.” But after hearing the part where he was asked to solo, the guitarist was unhappy with the chord changes and had the engineer edit the tape to create a new pattern that better suited what he had in mind.

Ed knew Jackson might be surprised and possibly unhappy with his executive decision. “So I warned him before he listened,” he told CNN in 2012. “I said, ‘Look, I changed the middle section of your song.’ Now in my mind, he’s either going to have his bodyguards kick me out for butchering his song, or he’s going to like it. And so he gave it a listen, and he turned to me and went, ‘Wow, thank you so much for having the passion to not just come in and blaze a solo but to actually care about the song and make it better.’” And he did it for free.

10. The Beatles | “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”

GUITARIST: Eric Clapton (1968)

An uncredited Slowhand makes a rare guest appearance with the Fab Four.

By 1968, George Harrison was penning compositions that rivaled those of his bandmates John Lennon and Paul McCartney. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” was every bit as good as anything his musical partners wrote, but no one could get up the enthusiasm for it, so Harrison invited his pal Eric Clapton to play on the session, knowing it would put the Beatles on good behavior.

Using Harrison’s 1957 “Lucy” Gibson Les Paul through a Fender Deluxe amp, Clapton doesn’t so much mimic the haunting, aching main melody as he creates a harrowing song within a song. His descending bends and release notes, and that inimitable vibrato, are on full display and are appropriately tear-jerking, weaving a dramatic narrative that builds to a shattering climax.

9. Chicago | “25 OR 6 TO 4”

GUITARIST: Terry Kath (1969)

Wah-drenched ecstasy.

This magazine once described Terry Kath’s “25 or 6 to 4” solo as “Wes Montgomery meets Jimi Hendrix,” and it’s a fair point, as Kath was influenced first by jazz and, later, hard rock. As a founding member of the jazz-rock band Chicago, he held down guitar duties for the group until his tragic death from an accidentally self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1978.

Though his superb playing graced many tracks – notably “Introduction” and “Free Form Guitar,” both from the group’s 1969 debut, The Chicago Transit Authority – there’s no denying the power of his soloing on the group’s early hit “25 or 6 to 4.” Kath uses his wah generously to add emotion to his lines, giving them at times a frenetic despair.

Kath most likely played his Gibson SG Standard, as pictured on Chicago Transit Authority’s inner sleeve, using his favored string set, as revealed to GP: the high E string from a tenor set and a standard set for the rest, moved down one string (i.e. high E for the B string, B for the G string, and so on).

8. Lynyrd Skynyrd | “Free Bird”

GUITARIST: Allen Collins (1974)

The Bird is the word.

As it happens, the four-minute-and-24- second guitar solo that closes “Free Bird” was originally added to give singer Ronnie Van Zant a chance to rest his vocal cords during Lynyrd Skynyrd’s relentless performance schedule. At 143 bars long, the solo is far and away the most epic offering here (in fact, it’s 286 bars of recorded music because the whole thing is doubled).

The tune appeared on the group’s eponymous debut album in 1973, and guitarist Allen Collins delivered the lot on his 1964 Gibson Explorer. As Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Gary Rossington once told Guitar World, “The whole long jam was Allen Collins himself. He was bad. He was super bad! He was bad-to-the-bone bad. When we put the solo together, we liked the sound of the two guitars, and I could’ve gone out and played it with him. But the way he was doin’ it, he was just so hot! He just did it once and did it again, and it was done.”

7. Dire Straits | “Sultans Of Swing”

GUITARIST: Mark Knopfler

An understated guitar hero fingerpicks his way to glory.

Right when the world was crowning Eddie Van Halen the new King of Guitar, along came the rather unassuming Mark Knopfler – schooled in rockabilly, blues and jazz – who demonstrated that you didn’t need walls of distortion to turn heads.

Knopfler composed this pub-rock classic on a National steel guitar but thought it sounded “dull” – that is, until he picked up a Stratocaster, at which point the song “came alive.” Using nary a hint of grit on a Fender Twin, he fingerpicks not one but two standout solos.

The first features a lyrical section of elegant, Chet Atkins-style single-note and chordal bends that sigh and swoon with dreamy romanticism. In itself, that would be enough, but the outro solo is the real attention-grabber, on which Knopfler builds to a dazzling set of spitfire 16th-note arpeggios – cleanly played, precise and rousing every time you hear it.

6. The Jimi Hendrix Experience | “All Along The Watchtower”

GUITARIST: Jimi Hendrix (1968)

The greatest solo in a cover version.

This song tops any list of covers that are better than the original. Guitarists invariably refer to it as a Hendrix cover rather than a Bob Dylan original, proof of how much Hendrix made it his own. Jimi’s rhythm playing is astounding, both in the intro and in the deft chord/ melody work of the verses, and of course, there’s the small matter of four guitar solos to consider. The man many refer to as the best of all time makes the most of his Strat and Marshall rig here, but it’s his offering at the 2:20 mark that we’re interested in. Following an opening run of octaves, he gets into his stride with a typically blues-based minor pentatonic approach in C#.

At 2:32, the main solo explodes into a trademark combination of rhythm and lead, plus funky scratching on muted strings. It’s worth playing along with the scratches, trying to keep a loose wrist and consistent down-up strumming. Those few beats alone will teach you a lot about Jimi’s groove and feel.

To get the sound, select a bridge-position single-coil pickup, dial in delay at around 350ms, add compression for sustain and opt for a Vox wah pedal or something similar. You’ll hear the wind begin to howl.

5. Eagles | “Hotel California”

GUITARISTS: Don Felder & Joe Walsh (1977)

Those iconic twin-guitar harmony lines took the Eagles to new heights.

The title track from the Eagles’ fifth album, and without doubt the song the band will be most remembered for, “Hotel California” frequently tops greatest guitar solo polls. The solo begins at 4:20, forming an extended coda, over which guitarists Don Felder and Joe Walsh trade licks before joining together to play those iconic harmonized licks at 5:39.

As it turns out, those harmony lines work in a relatively simple fashion. Felder and Walsh play an arpeggio of every chord, and the harmony is created by one of the guitars always playing one note lower down in the chord. For example, the notes of the Bm chord are B, D and F#, so, if the higher guitar plays an F#, the lower guitar will play a D, and so on.

This nugget of information can take you a long way to mastering those descending arpeggios. We won’t go as far as to say you could easily work it out by ear, but if you know the chords to the song, it’s possible to jam along. And you can’t say that about many of the solos on this list!

4. Queen | “Bohemian Rhapsody”

GUITARIST: Brian May (1975)

It might just be the biggest rock song of all time.

Following Freddie Mercury’s 1991 death and a cameo moment in 1992’s Wayne’s World, “Bohemian Rhapsody” became a trigger point for a worldwide outpouring of affection and respect for Queen. Their renewed popularity would continue into the new millennium as Ben Elton’s We Will Rock You musical and the band’s discovery of a different way to exist behind frontman Adam Lambert brought their music to a new generation.

And “Bohemian Rhapsody”? Unsurprisingly, it’s Queen’s best-known song, and its brief nine-bar solo is a short and sweet musical interlude, bridging the verses to lead into what’s become known as the song’s “operatic section.” Those two words alone should warn you that this song shouldn’t work. There’s no chorus and, aside from two verses, no repetition. But of course it does work, and Brian May’s solo is the perfect melodic break.

His phrasing is loose and natural, moving across the backbeat rather than sticking to a rigidly timed grid. The fastest licks are expressive bursts, rather than repetitive noodling, and his articulate pre-bend and vibrato technique demonstrates his beautiful touch. Somehow, within the confines of the complex structure of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” this solo is made to order.

3. Led Zeppelin | “Stairway To Heaven”

GUITARIST: Jimmy Page (1971)

Heaven-sent soloing.

From the moment Jimmy Page plays the opening run on his ’59 Fender Telecaster, right through to the flurry of notes and the wailing bend that completes it, this is guitar-solo perfection – a masterpiece of composition. Rather than wander aimlessly, Page creates a song within a song.

The opening phrases set the scene, as he adds notes to the pentatonic scale to follow the song’s final chord progression. A rapid mid-solo repeating lick raises the bar before a game of question-and-answer with a haunting overdubbed guitar leads into that last flurry and bend. As we say, it’s all about the composition: licks that track the chord changes, the contour of the melody and the pacing of the widdly bits all take the listener on a journey.

Three takes were recorded (the other two allegedly still survive, presumably locked in a Led Zeppelin vault somewhere), all of them improvised, although Page has reportedly said that he had worked out the opening line. But while we’re all certainly curious to hear those solos, let’s face it: They’re not going to be any better than the one we’ve come to know and love all these years.

2. Van Halen | “Eruption”

GUITARIST: Eddie Van Halen (1978)

Eddie’s iconic solo that shook the world.

With its mix of fast legato hammer‑ons and pull-offs, pinched harmonics, whammy-bar dives and two-hand tapping, Eddie Van Halen’s mind-blowing instrumental guitar solo inspired a generation of guitar heroes. While the tapping gets the attention, his tone, blistering legato and creative note choices are all equally important. Amid all that virtuosity, Eddie still played with joyous rock and roll abandon.

Remarkably, Ed was never completely happy with the released recording. “I didn’t even play it right,” he told Guitar World. “There’s a mistake at the top end of it. Whenever I hear it, I always think, Man, I could’ve played it better.”

His admission aside, the track is a technical opus. The first eight bars are a bluesy affair, whose virtuoso legato licks perhaps recall the mojo of Jimmy Page’s breakdown solo in Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.” It’s a theme Eddie develops over the following eight bars, taking notes from the major and minor pentatonic scales to add chromatics.

His tapping finale is probably one of the least understood solo sections in rock history. Eddie’s taps are not always on the beat, which makes for tricky timing changes as he switches from tapping the first and fourth sextuplet notes to the third and sixth notes. From start to end, “Eruption” is a masterpiece that would take most guitarists a lifetime to perfect.

1. Pink Floyd | “Comfortably Numb”

GUITARIST: David Gilmour (1979)

Gilmour’s greatness comes through in waves.

In a 1992 interview with MTV’s Ray Cokes, Gilmour was asked what he thinks of Keith Richards’ theory that songs, lyrics and guitar solos are “just out there in the air and you sort of grab them.” Gilmour agreed. “I think he’s right. They sort of appear as if they are out there in the air. But I don’t know how they get there.” But the best ones he said, just happen. “The best ones do, but often you work very hard and struggle over them.”

Gilmour's two "Comfortably Numb" solos are certainly among his best, and it’s easy to understand why our readers voted his efforts to be the number-one pick in our poll. But the real question is, which of those two solos qualifies for inclusion? Whichever way you go — and granted, most fans prefer the first solo to the second — there's certainly plenty to justify the song's position at the top.

The tone is legendary. Gilmour’s signal chain consisted of his iconic black Strat, then featuring a DiMarzio FS-1 bridge pickup, into a HiWatt DR103, with the essential EHX Ram’s Head Big Muff pedal. The FS-1’s fatness and the Big Muff’s smoothness leave no hint of the harsh treble that can plague Strats. With some extra help from an MXR Dyna Comp, Gilmour had so much sustain that he could hold notes as long as he wanted. As in his live rig, he combined a WEM 4x12 cab with a Yamaha rotary speaker lower in the mix, to add subtle modulation. The epic delay was added in the mix.

The first solo, in D major, uses the Strat’s neck and bridge pickups together, permitted by a custom switching arrangement. His phrasing here is the more unconventional of the two, with arpeggios and sliding passages. Gilmour’s use of the bar for vibrato – aided by its shortened tremolo arm – again distinguishes him from typical bluesers, inspiring many a fusion player in the process. He rakes into the beginning of many of the phrases, similar to Brian May, extracting all the excitement he can from every note.

By comparison, the outro solo’s licks are more standard, with phrases similar to Hendrix’s. The passages at 4:57 and 5:12 could be from “All Along the Watchtower” or “Foxey Lady,” but in this epic track few listeners would make the connection. It sounds both masterful and improvised at the same time. Gilmour has explained he created this impression by recording five or six takes and compiling the finished solo from the best bits of each. The result is stunningly well written, with a combination of repetition and development that keeps the excitement building for two minutes. The Hendrix-style blues lick returns at 5:27, longer and more intricate than before. The aggressive double-stops first appear at 5:15, and by 5:35 he has turned that idea into a motif.

For the climax, Gilmour shoots up an octave just when it seems he’s wrung every inch of expression from his maple neck. He descends back down the neck, incorporating one of his spectacular three-fret bends on the way, and finishes with another take on that double stop motif. It has all the excitement of an improvised performance, and all the structure of a careful composition.

Both solos share brilliant rhythmic awareness. Gilmour uses triplets, sextuplets, 16th and 32nd notes freely, within the same phrase. And check out the effect at 5:10 when he plays a lick in 16th notes and then immediately repeats and expands in sextuplets. A good solo can have great tone, rhythms, melody or expression, but only a work of rare brilliance features them all to this degree.

Joe Walsh has cited Les Paul as one of his biggest inspirations, comparing the late luthier and guitarist to a mad scientist.

Although he tracked Hotel California with a Fender Telecaster, the Eagles guitarist is often seen with a Les Paul slung over his shoulder. As it happens, it was Walsh who convinced Jimmy Page to buy his now-famous Number 1 1959 Les Paul, the guitar that played a huge role in Led Zeppelin's music.

Yet, while Walsh's “quirky and funny” licks and playing style are a world away from the jazz of the guitar's creator, he says he finds Paul inspiring beyond his talents as a guitarist.

“He was one of the coolest people on the planet,” he told Rolling Stone in 2017. “I got a chance to hang out with him, and he was like this mad scientist that played guitar."

As for the story that made Paul his hero?

“He was in a car accident," Walsh explained, "and they said, ‘You’ll never play guitar again’ because he broke his arm in about four different places. He sat down, started playing, and said, ‘All right, set my arm like this. Put the cast on now.’ And he played great.”

Walsh, the co-author of one of the greatest guitar solos of all time, has used that fighting spirit as inspiration, singling out Paul as his biggest hero during his chat with Rolling Stone.

The incident in question happened in January 1948, when Paul and his playing partner (and soon to be wife) Mary Ford were at the height of their commercial powers. With Paul reportedly too ill to drive, Ford was behind the wheel when the car plunged off the side of a railroad overpass, dropping 20 feet into a ravine.

Paul's right arm and elbow were shattered, and the injuries were so severe that amputation was considered. Paul begged the doctors to save his arm, and eventually he was flown to Los Angeles where his arm was set, as he requested, at an angle of approximately 90 degrees, allowing him to continue to strum and pick his guitar. Paul went on to record several top-10 singles with Ford.

Three years later, Gibson began working with him on his electric guitar design, having first pitched his concept back in 1941.

Interestingly, a recently resurfaced interview has detailed how the Les Paul guitar nearly ended up being a Fender creation. Long before the Gibson were convinced of Les Paul's electric guitar concept, Leo Fender had tried to poach him for his own. In fact, it was the success of Fender’s Esquire and Broadcaster guitars that had seen Gibson have a change of heart.

In the end, he says “I gave Gibson all my secrets,” with the Les Paul Recording guitar the first instrument the firm created with those secrets. Though it may not be the most revered electric guitar ever made, it remained an old faithful for Les Paul until the very end, and it's an instrument with an interesting history.

Jimmy Page has played a number of electric guitars over the course of his career, including the Danelectro 3021, the Fender Telecaster, the Gibson Les Paul Deluxe and the double-neck Gibson EDS-1275, most famously used during live shows to perform Stairway to Heaven, among other classic Led Zeppelin songs.

But the guitar with which Page is most closely linked is his 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard with a sunburst finish, a guitar he played for many years of his career with Led Zeppelin. Page had owned and played a three-pickup Les Paul Custom in the early Sixties and played a Fender Telecaster while with the Yardbirds. He was still playing the Telecaster when Led Zeppelin played their first gigs in 1968.

But early the next year, Page bought the Les Paul Standard — his first — from Joe Walsh (who, Page says, “insisted that I buy it, and he was right”), paying $500 for it. He used it to record Zeppelin II that May. The guitar became and remained his favorite guitar throughout his years with Zeppelin, and as he acquired others, he started referring to it as Number 1.

Over the years, Page gave due credit to Eric Clapton for pairing up the Les Paul with a Marshall amp. “Eric was the first one to evolve the sound with the [Les Paul] and Marshall amps,” Page told Trouser Press in a 1977 interview. “He should have total credit for that.”

But Page continued that evolution in the Seventies with Led Zeppelin, demonstrating to guitarists what the Les Paul was capable of in the right hands.

In this vintage video, Page talks about his Number 1 and some of its unique aspects, such as the sealed Grover tuners and the push-pull knob that splits the bridge humbucker and lets him achieve a tone similar to that of Peter Green’s fabled Les Paul.

The clip was shot in 2003 when Gibson visited Page, presumably to create a reproduction of the model. In 2004, Gibson copied Page’s Number 1 for the company’s second run of Page signature models, with aging by luthier Tom Murphy. This run was limited to 25 copies signed by Page and a total of 150 copies with the Murphy-aged finish.

Earlier this year, Gibson rekindled its relationship with the Led Zeppelin legend, teaming up with him to create a new line of signature guitars, the first being an ultra-exclusive recreation of Page's 1969 EDS-1275 double-neck. Only available via the Gibson Garage, the meticulously built model is limited to a run of 50 Page-signed and -played instruments, at a cost of $50,000 each.

Nashville titan Vince Gill already had a hell of a resume before he was asked to join the Eagles in 2017. As the Eagles round out their career with their appropriately-named Long Goodbye tour, though, Gill has proven himself an invaluable – if unsung – part of the band's final lineup.

Given that the Eagles currently include Joe Walsh – co-author of one of the greatest guitar solos of all time – Gill isn't typically asked to provide much in the way of electric guitar fireworks onstage; and he's quite fine with that.

Speaking to Guitar World, Gill said that just getting to play the James Gang classic Funk 49 with Walsh has been worth the price of admission in itself. 

“I trade licks with Joe on Funk 49, which is amazing,” Gill said. “That’s enough for me, and my head would explode if I had to go back and forth with Joe on a song like Hotel California.”

Gill's connection with the Eagles' music runs deep, and, the guitarist said, dates back even to childhood.    

“Some nights,” Gill told GW, “I look over to the side and see Joe Walsh while we’re playing Rocky Mountain Way, and I’m transported back to being a kid in my bedroom trying to learn that song.

“I played it at every school dance and there’s even tapes of me singing Eagles songs when I was a kid [laughs]. It’s been pretty amazing to be a part of keeping the legacy of those songs going.”

Gill also discussed his stable of Les Pauls, mentioning that the most valuable Les Paul that he takes on tour is a reissue of Eric Clapton’s 1960 “Beano” model. This would seem to imply that perhaps Gill's most valuable Les Paul, a true-blue 'Burst, is not on the road with him – and not without good reason. 

Handed down to Gill from his one-time brother-in-law, the guitar holds enormous sentimental value. 

“I bought [a] ’59 Les Paul from my brother-in-law from my first marriage [to country singer Janis Oliver],” Gill told Guitar Aficionado in 2017. “We were great friends, and he owned this great ’59 sunburst since 1959. He’d played it his whole life but got sick a couple of years ago. He called me and said, ‘There’s not much they can do for me. I’m probably not gonna make it. You’ve always been my favorite guitar player. Will you buy my Les Paul?’

“I didn’t have a sunburst Les Paul in my collection, and I previously couldn’t justify the expense because I don’t play a Les Paul that much, but this one came along and I said, ‘There you go,’” Gill continued. “I got the one I was supposed to have. My friend played it for 40 years, and now it gets to live on and still make music.”

• For a full list of the Eagles' upcoming tour dates, and tickets, visit the band's website.

Although many genres – metal, jazz and classical, to name a few – embrace the fluidity and erudition of the guitarists who top their respective fields, punk and indie rock have always had an uneasy relationship with formal training and technical mastery. 

Isn’t it easier to break the rules if you don’t know them in the first place? Can authenticity, innocence and raw emotion survive in a player who spends too much time in the woodshed? In short, can you be cool and go to school? 

For Mary Timony, studying jazz and classical guitar in a specialized high-school program and college provided her with the ability to make artistic decisions with an intent unfettered by limitations. It’s a talent the Washington, D.C., native has exercised since the early ’90s while blazing a fiercely original path as a solo artist and in bands like Autoclave, Helium, Wild Flag, and Ex Hex. 

As a result, when Timony embraces indie-rock tropes, like a predilection for Fender Jazzmasters and alternate tunings, it’s by choice, not default. As her many fans will agree, it’s no wonder she was ranked in the top 100 of Rolling Stone’s recent “250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” list. 

Untame the Tiger (Merge Records), Timony’s first solo album in more than a decade and a half, was recorded during a challenging period for the guitarist. 

“Both of my parents got sick, and I was caretaking,” she says. “My dad got dementia, my mom got cancer, so I was the primary caregiver for both of them. And a long-term relationship had ended right before that, so suddenly my life just was very different and really stressful.”

Despite what could seem like insurmountable challenges, the full breadth of Timony’s musical, vocal, and disarming lyrical skills are on display on Untame the Tiger. From the expansive, orchestrated guitar workout of album opener No Thirds to the propulsive new wave of Dominoes and the crunchy baroque riffery of Summer, there’s no lack of inspired playing, but never to the detriment of the songs themselves. 

“I love guitar,” says Timony, who teaches the instrument as well. “But I’ve always thought of it as my blueprint for what the song is, rather than thinking about what I’m doing on the instrument. Songs and lyrics are way more important to me.” 

Let’s start at the beginning. When did you discover the guitar? 

“I started viola lessons in third grade, and I played in the quartet at school, but I was a typical kid, just like, 'I don’t like practicing. This is boring.' Then, my brother was really getting into rock music, and my parents gave him a guitar for Christmas, and he started writing songs. Suddenly, I was like, 'Oh, you can write songs with a guitar! Music can be really fun, because you can be creative with it and you can use it to sing and accompany yourself.' But I was still just a super-depressed kid and always sick and stuff. 

“My mom realized I would probably like this public music high school called Duke Ellington School of the Arts, and that was the best experience. As soon as I started going, everything changed.” 

Life turned from black and white to color? 

“Yeah! Once I started being able to play guitar all day, I was like, 'Whoa, life can be kind of exciting and fun!' We’d just hang out in the room and jam with other kids, and my teacher was this awesome R&B and jazz guy. 

“We had a masterclass with Joe Pass, and we went to see Stanley Jordan and meet him. There was a music business seminar with Maurice White, I believe, from Earth, Wind & Fire. And we had an instrumental guitar band that played at the local supermarket and at the post office pavilion. Oh – and Dionne Warwick spoke at our graduation!”

Did you go to college for music? 

“I went to Boston University for classical guitar for one year. It was a great place for orchestral instruments, but to be honest, the guitar program was terrible. All the teacher did was talk about Rhode Island history and furniture. I was like, 'What the fuck is this?' Then I had this total meltdown. I was like, 'I am so sick of studying music. This is bullshit. I just want to write and play three-chord songs and be at punk shows'.”

Were you a fan of the D.C. punk and hardcore scene during the period when you were studying guitar? 

“I don’t think I would’ve done music without being around that. There were kids who were 15 and were going on tour and making their own records. It was super-inspiring, and also it was kind of spiritual and religious, because nobody cared about making money. That said, though I liked some of the D.C. hardcore bands, some of it was way too masculine and not musical enough for me. 

“That’s the negative side to punk that I resent: When you’re in a community of people who don’t really learn from history or are making things up, the bar is low for how good you’re supposed to get at your instrument. There’s this amateurism thing, which can sometimes be great, but it’s annoying when it’s not good.” 

As someone with formal musical training, did you think it was possible to fit into that scene as a guitarist? 

“I feel like people that are under a certain age, maybe 35, have no idea what it was like before the internet, when you had to really search things out and genres were much less fluid than they are now. I felt like I had to choose one and had a real meltdown about, 'What is my music? What is the music that I’m learning, and how does it relate to this punk stuff?' And I just couldn’t figure out how to make it all make sense. 

“I felt very compartmentalized. I was going to this high school, and practicing a lot, and that was one personality I had. And then there was the person that went to punk shows, and they didn’t match. And then my real true self is someone who loves Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and Jimi Hendrix. 

“It just took me a second in my early 20s to be like, 'Wait, what is my voice? And do I have to join one of these groups, or can I just be myself and combine them?' It definitely took gaining some confidence to figure out what I would make if I were going to make something.” 

Where does Richard Thompson figure into the equation of your musical heroes? You used the drummer Dave Mattacks, who played with Fairport Convention and on Richard and Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out the Lights, on several tracks on Untame the Tiger. 

“Richard Thompson is absolutely one of my favorites. A friend of mine does a drum podcast and had interviewed Dave Mattacks and was like, 'Dude, you should totally get him on your record.' I was like, 'What the fuck? That’s not possible.' I was almost too scared to do it, but part of getting older, and also part of dealing with my parents’ illness, is that everything went into perspective. I stopped letting all of my hang-ups guide me. So I was able to be like, 'Yeah, okay, let’s call up Dave Mattacks.'

“And it happened, and it was fucking amazing; I would say one of the highlights of my life. We recorded at Studio 606, which is the Foo Fighters’ place in LA.”

But most of the guitars for the record were recorded in your basement? 

“Yes. My friend Dennis Kane and I would try every guitar I had until we got the right sound. We didn’t have a time limit. We would do two weeks of tracking, throw it out, start over again. I can’t even tell you how much stuff I threw out.” 

What were the main guitars and amps you used? 

“The main electric guitars were my 1966 Jazzmaster, which I’ve had since Helium, a Saul Koll Junior Glide, a 1964 Epiphone Sorrento, a 1977 doublecutaway Les Paul Special, and a Mulhauser Designs Bravo with a TV Jones T-Armond in the neck and a Suhr Thornbucker in the bridge. 

“The main amps were my silverface Fender Champ, my blackface, mid-’60s Bassman, an Orange Rockerverb, and a Swart STR-Tweed. And then in terms of microphones, we used a Neumann TLM 103 condenser mic and a Shure SM57.”

The sounds are very pure, and it doesn’t sound like many pedals were involved. 

“I don’t like pedals. I’ve gone through a lot of phases with them and definitely had a huge pedalboard at one point. You have 15 pedals on your pedalboard and your tone sucks. I was like, 'Oh, this is too much. Dial it back.' Joe Walsh, who I love, and Hendrix and all these guys, they didn’t use a bunch of pedals. So I just like being very careful about which ones I use. In a way, pedals are their own instrument. It’s like a synthesizer, basically.” 

Untame the Tiger isn’t what you’d call an “acoustic record,” but a lot of the rhythm guitar parts on the album are played on acoustic. How did you decide that was the way to go? 

“I think I had overdone the distortion a little bit in the past, and I wanted to dial it back and get a cleaner sound. I had a big realization that all my favorite records by bands like the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Fairport Convention had a lot of acoustic guitars on them. I wanted this record to be more real sounding. Also, when you start with distorted guitars, things start to sound really small.” 

Was there a specific acoustic that you favored for the rhythm tracks? 

“I had gotten my grandmother’s 1931 Gibson L-0 – she even scratched her name in it – from an aunt. It was just sitting in an attic, like, for 60 years, and she shipped it to me in the mail. She doesn’t know anything about guitar, so it was in a box without a case, just rattling around, and it was kind of messed up. But I got it worked on, and it sounds amazing! It’s the main acoustic on the record.” 

Why did you choose to use an EBow on Untame the Tiger where you might have used keyboards or strings? 

“I’ve done it on other records. I like it because it’s like feedback, but it’s more controlled, and it’s really fun. Another reason is because my right arm was extremely tense for the past seven years, and I’d almost gotten to where I felt I couldn’t play guitar anymore, because when I recorded, everything was ahead of the beat, and it sounded shitty. 

“I almost got to the point where I was like, 'I guess I just suck on guitar'. I would try to practice, and not get any better. And then last year, I got the chance to work with a friend of mine who is a really incredible classical player, and he was watching me play and he fucking figured out what I was doing.

“It was so dumb – I just wasn’t resting my arm on the guitar enough! I was so anxious, and worked up, but as soon as I realized what was wrong, started loosening up and went to a chiropractor, my arm started working better and I just redid all the stuff I’d been struggling with. And I got it in just a few takes.” 

You recently ranked 95th in Rolling Stone’s 250 Greatest Guitarists list. What was your reaction? 

“I was incredibly honored, because that means a lot to me. It was super-amazing. I’m glad to see that the qualities people use to pick who is on there are not just flashiness. So I’m glad it’s changing, but I’m also really, really aware of all of the gender stuff that goes on around a list like that. But also, these lists are baloney. Because my favorite guitar players are, like, below me? Give me a fucking break. Everyone knows Rory Gallagher and Joe Walsh are the best!”

Smart Guitar: Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan got more than guitar lessons from Mary Timony

Although only 24, Lindsey Jordan of Snail Mail has already accomplished more than most guitarists will in a lifetime. 

Snail Mail’s two albums, 2018’s Lush and 2021’s Valentine, have received universal critical praise, and the guitar skills that she has developed since starting to play at the age of five earned her a spot on Rolling Stone’s recent “250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” list, alongside Mary Timony. Here, Jordan explains how taking lessons from Timony set her on an upward trajectory. 

How did you come to take lessons from Mary? 

“I had a friend who was taking lessons with her, and I was like, ‘That’s cool, I would love to do that.’ I’d already been playing guitar for a really long time, but Mary’s a hero of mine. I’ve never been anywhere near a teacher that makes that kind of creative shit. So much open-tuning stuff and innovative stuff.” 

What did you work on in the lessons? 

“I told her, 'I know my basics and then some, but I feel like I have so much to learn from you.' So, there was different stuff. We were doing the Beatles’ And Your Bird Can Sing guitar-monies at some point. We also worked on See No Evil by Television, and we did a lot of jamming. 

“I also was showing her a lot of the stuff I was writing in open tunings. And then, of course, I copied some Mary Timony guitar tunings on our album Lush, ’cause it got to a point where I was getting tired of open D and standard.”

Did she give you any career advice? 

“I came to her with every single problem when Snail Mail was coming up, and she’s just super-insightful. I felt really lucky to have her in my corner, because she’s also just the nicest person I’ve ever met. If I can have a lasting career that keeps the integrity the way hers has and keeps the flame of creative passion alive, then I’m doing good.”

• Mary Timony's Untame the Tiger is set for a February 23 release via Merge Records. Pre-order the album here

Guitarists old enough to have had their early exposure to the instrument through mail-order catalogs are likely to remember the outsized presence of Carvin guitars, amplifiers and PA systems. As a kid in the early ’80s, I was drawn to order my first Carvin catalog by an ad in the back of Guitar Player. I never did order anything significant, other than a replacement pickup for my Yamaha SG-2000 (Carvin declared its 22-pole M22 humbucker to be the hottest pickup available at the time).

By then Carvin was no small operation, manufacturing 600 guitars a month on essentially a custom-order basis, and selling them direct to the consumer. The company had evolved out of much humbler origins that dated back as far as those of its California neighbor, Fender.

Founder Lowell C. Kiesel started making and selling pickups out of his own garage in Southern California in 1946, before scaling up to full lap-steel guitars the following year. In 1949, he dropped his surname from the company’s moniker and replaced it with a contraction made from the names of his two sons, Carson and Gavin.

Just a few years later, Lowell was making guitars and amplifiers that could have been considered rivals to those of his neighbor Leo Fender, were it not for the fact that they were rarely seen outside their Southern California environs.

By 1954, Carvin was as much a seller of guitar parts as it was of entire instruments and amps, and often promoted its “build your own” opportunities. It even acted as an authorized dealer for Martin and Fender guitars.

Through the ’50s, however, Carvin’s own distinct styling began to take shape as the company made greater efforts to make its place in the electric guitar market. The 1960 Model 3-SGB shown in these pages represents a design Carvin launched in 1956 and offered unchanged until shortly after this one was made, when it evolved into the offset-double-cutaway 31-SGB.

Notably, Carvin was no longer a Fender reseller by this time, although the 31-SGB boasted a distinctly Strat-like profile, albeit with squared-off body edges and a less elegant shape overall. As photos of the 3-SGB reveal, the guitar’s aesthetic was rather DIY, with a crudely cut pickguard, a prominent truss-rod nut at the body end of the neck, a plastic tailpiece partnering a fixed version of Bigsby’s rocking aluminum bridge and an understated brand decal on its six-a-side headstock.

Regardless of the basic appearance, the guitars were well put together, and this and other models benefited from Carvin’s own AP-6 pickups, with adjustable poles. The units were designed somewhat like Gibson’s P-90 single-coils but with a cleaner, tighter sound. Considered something of a minor classic, these are the same pickups Semie Moseley used on early Mosrite guitars of the late ’50s, including the famed Joe Maphis double-neck model, and they deliver an appealingly edgy twang, with a little bite and sting to it. Perhaps not coincidentally, Carvin came out with its own double-neck in 1959 – available with either mando or bass on the second neck – and Moseley began winding his own pickups shortly after.

Carvin catalogs from 1956 through ’60 display a practice the company would continue to use through the following decades: offering the guitar at a “wholesale” price of $119.90 when purchased direct (essentially the only option), which was made to look like more of a bargain thanks to the $220 “list” price printed alongside it.

Through much of the ’60s and into the mid ’70s, Carvin acquired its necks from German guitar maker Höfner and bolted them to its own bodies. The company was already showing a propensity for using solid maple, but the house-made pickups remained a big part of the unique selling proposition.

The 1970 SS-65 seen here shows that Carvin’s overall builds hadn’t evolved much over the course of the decade, other than adopting some styling akin to the more affordable Japanese guitars of the day. Available with a three-tone sunburst finish as standard, the model sported a body clearly inspired by Fender’s offsets models – the Jazzmaster and Jaguar – and carried the AP-6 pickups, but it arguably displayed a little more refinement than seen on its predecessors.

In 1973, some Carvin designs began leaning toward the Gibson camp (albeit still rendered with a preponderance of maple), as seen in the 1974 Model CM95 shown here. The company also introduced color to its catalog for the first time, and a glossier promotional aesthetic was in evidence. The guitar still carried a bolt-on Höfner neck, with a zero-fret in this instance, but now had two humbucking AP-6 pickups (even though earlier single-coil AP-6 units were seen in the color catalog photo of the model, possibly an earlier prototype).

Rather surprisingly, the CM95 included a genuine Gibson Tune-o-matic bridge, and was sold with an optional Bigsby vibrato, which has been removed from our featured example.

Just another couple years on, Carvin would enter its modern era, making guitars with the coil-taps and phase switches that were popular in the day, and beginning to make its own necks in-house – and set-necks at that – in 1978.

A number of prominent artists eventually helped deliver greater exposure. Steve Vai endorsed the brand beginning in the ’80s, followed by Allan Holdsworth in the ’90s and Joe Walsh in the 2000s. The Vai Legacy series of amps and pedals arguably brought Carvin more acceptance among elite players than the guitars themselves ever did.

Lowell C. Kiesel passed away in 2009, and in 2015 the company split into Kiesel Guitars and Carvin Corporation, the latter of which makes amplifiers and PA gear.

ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS

• Bolt-on maple necks, for a time made by Höfner (until 1978)
• Hard eastern maple bodies
• Carvin AP-6 single-coil pickups
• Some Bigsby and Gibson hardware
• Rudimentary esthetics

Wielding his black Gibson Les Paul, Electric Light Orchestra mastermind Jeff Lynne performed a mesmerizing version of the Electric Light Orchestra 1977 classic “Mr. Blue Sky” in honor of his induction into the 2023 Songwriters Hall of Fame. 

The 52nd annual star-studded event, held June 15 at New York’s Marriott Marquis, honored a melting pot of songwriters from multiple genres, including rock, pop, country, theater, and hip-hop. 

“I’ll never forget writing this song,” Lynne told the black-tie audience. “Back in 1977 in Switzerland, I was staying in a chalet in the Alps getting ready to start what became the double album Out of the Blue. For two weeks, it had been dark and misty, and I hadn’t written a bloody thing. Then one morning, I woke up, the sun was shining, the sky was blue and suddenly I could see the Alps. In the next two weeks I wrote 14 songs, including this one.”

During his induction speech, Lynne recalled how his unique and distinctive sound was shaped as a child in the 1950’s. “My musical education began with a longwave radio and a record player in the living room with my family in Birmingham, listening to the classical music my dad preferred. 

“This technology bought the whole world into our home, one song at a time. Everything I needed to know about the power of music. I would search the radio for pop music. Each song was like a two-minute miracle, and I knew that was exactly what I wanted to do.” 

Joe Walsh presented Lynne with his award and performed a rousing version of the ELO classic “Don’t Bring Me Down.” Walsh infused the song with his unique, wiry guitar licks, performed on a sunburst Fender Esquire.

“The first time the world heard Jeff’s band Electric Light Orchestra, heads exploded,” Walsh said during his speech. “Nobody had heard anything quite like ELO. Who were these guys? How many were there? There had to be at least 30. Nope, pretty much one guy.

“All of this is due to Jeff’s writing and wizardry in the studio. He’s a good musician who can conceive and incorporate full orchestrations while the song is being born long before other songwriters could imagine a world where all that could exist. It’s that unmatched talent he has, to take a great song, bring it to life, and turn it into an unforgettable record.”

Producer/songwriter Glen Ballard was also one of the evening’s honorees. Ballard’s speech touched on the winding road that led from an early job opening mail for Elton John’s label Rocket Records to writing for and producing albums for Alanis Morissette, Aerosmith, Van Halen, and Michael Jackson.

“The journey of a songwriter is quixotic and occasionally exotic," he reflected. "Never a straight line but sometimes serpentine.”

On the red carpet prior to the event, Ballard spoke about working with Van Halen in the mid ‘90s:

“I only wrote three songs with the group, but I did spend almost a year with Ed Van Halen. It was a very educational time for me. I almost gave up guitar playing, after spending so much time watching him play! Who can play like that? I used to watch him warm up for an hour every day. Ain’t nobody else picking up a guitar with Ed in the room! He was an incredible musician, incredibly dedicated and I miss him dearly.”

Recounting his breakthrough record – Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morrisette – Ballard said: “Working with Alanis was a walk in the park. We just had fun. We got together twenty times, and we wrote twenty songs. Everyone thinks she was angry. No! She was laughing all the way. We were having fun. She would come to the studio with a notebook full of stuff and I would start a riff and it was organically built from there.”

In addition to Lynne and Ballard, other inductees into the Hall’s class this year include New Jack Swing pioneer Teddy Riley, Nashville songwriter Liz Rose, and Grammy-winning songwriter Gloria Estefan, who enters the Hall as the first Latina female inductee.

Theater legend Tim Rice was presented with the prestigious Johnny Mercer Award for musical excellence, and Post Malone was honored with the Hal David Starlight Award for young songwriters making a significant impact in music today.

On the red carpet prior to the event, several Song Hall inductees and hitmakers recounted the writing sessions that produced classic hits and offered advice for creating songs. 

Desmond Child (songwriter “Livin’ on a Prayer,” “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)”:

“I co-wrote ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ with Richie Sambora and Jon Bon Jovi and that was a magical moment. When we wrote it, we started with the story. I was on piano and Richie was on acoustic guitar and Jon was writing lyrics. That riff was developed during the production phase when Jon and Richie were rehearsing and building the song with their producer Bruce Fairbairn.”

“Writing songs has always been a sacred circle. I don’t even think about music until it’s time to write. Then I show up with a blank pad and paper with whoever is writing with me, and we start. And magic happens. I’m so grateful for the career I’ve had. I’ve worked hard, but I’ve also been very lucky.”

Post-Malone

“It’s so cool to see people tell a story and other people listen and relate to that story and have it helped them. It’s super cool to reach out to people through music and lyrics. I don’t know if it’s good or not. But it makes people feel something and that makes me super excited.”

Paul Williams (Grammy winner and ASCAP President) on AI technology: 

“The latest fight is going to be AI and to use it effectively. It’s important to say ‘yes’ but it’s also important to say ‘no’ if our music is used. As my wife says, ‘they’re selling pancakes and they’re using your batter.’ But ASCAP is up for the fight.”

Glen Ballard:

“My advice to songwriters is to listen to the greatest songwriters ever and everything that is on the radio. Find the difference between those things and write as frequently as possible. Don’t sit around and wait for inspiration. If you’re not inspired, go take a walk or overhear a conversation on the subway. There’s something you can write about. Allow yourself to be inspired. Be courageous to take chances and try not to copy.”

Liz Rose on the writing session that produced Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush”:

“We were just writing a song. We didn’t have much time because we had another session coming up. Lori had the idea. Hillary sat down and started playing the guitar and sang the first four lines. We didn’t even know what it was about, just that it was a cool song. We wrote in about 45 minutes.’

I have worked as a professional music transcriber for most of my life, transferring music (especially guitar music) from the air to the page. Even before that, as a kid, I would always be doing what I then called “figuring stuff out,” trying to decipher the magic I heard in my favorite musicians’ playing. One day, I was struck by Louis Armstrong’s trumpet solo on one of my dad’s old recordings, and I knew right away I had to play it, in particular, one especially cool-sounding phrase. Once I figured it out, I quickly realized it was something I already knew how to play. I recalled that this had happened a couple of times before, and I had simply shrugged it off.

But this time, it made me stop and think. As it turned out, I had stumbled onto one of the most important lessons I would learn about music: What made me want to learn that solo wasn’t as much the notes as how Armstrong played them. In comedy, this is known as delivery. In music, we call it style, or phrasing – that elusive element imbuing notes with a special personal quality that makes you want to listen again and again, even though you already know the “punchline.”

Joe Walsh is a master of phrasing, and it’s no coincidence he also has a legendary sense of humor. Throughout his time with James Gang, his solo career and, of course, his continuing run with the Eagles, Walsh has written or co-written many classic songs and created some of the most memorable and catchy guitar parts committed to tape. There’s even an internet meme floating around that says, “Even people who hate the Eagles are like, ‘but Joe Walsh is alright.’” Let’s explore what makes this celebrated guitarist’s playing so much fun to listen to, while we learn more concretely what phrasing is all about, and how focusing on it can help each of us find our unique guitar voice.

One of the most memorable licks Walsh has recorded is one of his earliest. It kicks off the classic tune “Funk #49” from James Gang’s 1970 album James Gang Rides Again. The lick is quirky and kind of funny – just like the man himself – and Ex. 1 brings this curious phrase to mind.

At first, it might seem a bit tricky: Sound the first note normally, with your pick. Then, while continuing to hold the bend, sound the deadened note that follows by lightly resting your pick-hand middle finger on the underside of the G string as you attack it with your pick.

The subsequent note is then plucked with that same middle finger, and the pattern repeats. Using a combination of both pick and fingers in this way or simultaneously is known as hybrid picking. If you try playing the phrase without deadening the string, you’ll see how quickly the magic vanishes.

Also, notice how some of the pitches sounded during the long release (the three-quarter- and one-quarter-step bends) can’t be found conventionally on the fretboard, but, as guitarists, we can exploit our ability to bend strings to sound the pitches “in the cracks” between the fretted notes.

Ex. 2 offers another lick inspired by Walsh’s playing in this song. Using a backward rake, a ghost bend – a silently bent note struck to sound only its release – and a droning open string, Walsh again conveys his colorful personality with just a few notes.

A hallmark of Walsh’s style is his sly use of decorative nuances, such as bends, finger slides, vibrato and more. Nuances are a key part of phrasing, and Joe uses them in all sorts of nifty ways.

In 1971, the guitarist left James Gang and formed the band Barnstorm with drummer Joe Vitale. That outfit’s second and final release, The Smoker You Drink The Player You Get, was released under Walsh’s name and included the juggernaut FM radio staple “Rocky Mountain Way.” In it, the guitarist adds some of his characteristically swampy electric slide playing, as well as some of his trademark lead work, aided by the use of a talk box.

The song also showcases Walsh’s talent for writing super-catchy and memorable riffs, which often reside in the guitar’s lower register. Ex. 3 is inspired by the riff featured in the song’s breakdown section and is similarly based on the E minor pentatonic scale (E, G, A, B, D).

Notice how almost all of the notes have some sort of nuance attached, whether it be a finger slide, vibrato or a dot on top indicating it’s to be played staccato, or short. Here, the deadened notes are played softly, adding some rhythmic “bounce,” and are sounded by lightly resting your 3rd finger on the 6th string’s 7th fret as you pick.

The guitarist was shown how to play slide by none other than the great Duane Allman, and Ex. 4 is inspired by Walsh’s take-no-prisoners approach to slide.

While his guitar is tuned to open E, (low to high, E, B, E, G#, B, E), you really only need to tune your G string up to G# to be able to play this phrase, as the notes all fall on the top three strings.

Notice again how almost every note has a slide or vibrato indicated. Covered further in my “What Should I Practice?” lessons in the September and October 2022 issues of Guitar Player, nuances like the ones we’re exploring here are often thought of as the “little things,” but they have enormous potential to add personality and style to your playing.

In 1975, Walsh made his Eagles debut, appearing on the band’s fifth studio album, Hotel California. It includes the classic title track that features, during its outro, the epic trading-licks solo that Walsh shares with fellow lead guitarist Don Felder.

A couple of songs later, the Eagles hit again with, this time with the Walsh co-write “Life in the Fast Lane,” which emerged from a low-register pentatonic riff the guitarist had been using as a warm-up. Throughout the song, he also crafted some tasty melodic fills, which inform Ex. 5.

Here, bends are used in more of a country style, similar to what a pedal-steel guitarist might play. Be sure to see the suggested fingerings included in this example, and notice in bar 2 how the gradual nature of the bend and release reveal the satisfying tension that’s found in between the guitar’s fretted pitches.

Ex. 6 brings to mind Walsh’s playing in the song’s outro solo, where he again uses ghost bends in his own inimitable way.

The rhythm of our example’s first bend release is notated strictly, but to summon the full desired effect, make the release as gradual as possible, its lowest point reached just a hair before you strike the following note.

As with pitch, what’s found in the space between concrete rhythms is often where the musical magic lies. Relying on your ears more than your eyes will go a long way toward getting these examples to sound just right.

Walsh’s lead playing is often blues-based, but he also has a penchant for inserting catchy melodic phrases that aren’t born from this style.

An example can be heard in the outro of “In My Car,” from his 1987 solo album, Got Any Gum?. Joe both literally and figuratively reaches outside the (pentatonic) box to create a memorable hook that’s repeated over the chord changes. Ex. 7 is inspired by this hooky phrase.

Walsh also shows his contemplative side in his songwriting, as heard in a passage from the title track to his 1985 solo album, The Confessor.

In the intro, the guitarist uses double drop-D tuning (low to high, D, A, D, G, B, D) to add a lovely part, which mixes open strings and fretted notes on a clean electric guitar.

Ex. 8 is reminiscent of his playing here.

A pair of Walsh’s classic rhythm guitar parts can be found in “Life’s Been Good,” from his 1978 solo album, But Seriously, Folks…

Inspired by the song’s intro, Ex. 9 is a hummable riff created by a mix of single notes and chords. Notice how the muted strums in the final bar add some rhythmic spice.

Ex. 10 is influenced by the acoustic guitar interlude in this track and is composed of a series of triads that create another irresistible melodic line.

In this way, Walsh’s songs almost always have numerous instrumental hooks, courtesy of his catchy guitar riffs.

Joe will sometimes take a simple rhythm guitar idea but play it in a way that’s rhythmically skewed, often using syncopation – accentuating the weak part of a beat, also known as the “and” or “upbeat.”

Ex. 11 is reminiscent of “I Can Play That Rock & Roll,” from his humorously titled 1983 solo album, You Bought It – You Name It.

Note how the use of space, offset by chordal stabs on the upbeats, keeps us on our toes. Listen to the riff a few times, until you’re able to sing it. It will definitely help make for a quicker transition to your guitar.

Let’s close out this lesson with a look at Walsh’s guitar work in “Turn to Stone,” from his first official solo record, So What, released in 1974, one year before he joined the Eagles.

Ex. 12 is not unlike one of his solos, a plaintive cry that acts as a foil to the soothing Crosby, Stills & Nash-like vocal harmonies that precede it. As before, let the releases fall away without going for any specific rhythm. They should be free and easy, and, like Walsh, you should have some fun, too.

With his guitar, Joe Walsh conveys to the world his offbeat personality and wry sense of humor, with surprising directness. He accomplishes this by, among other things, finding the magic that can be created by focusing on not only what notes you play but also how you play them.

This is one of the vast musical spaces where one’s own unique voice as a guitarist can be discovered and claimed.

We’ve had more than a few momentous anniversaries in 2022. Some of the greatest milestones include 70 years of the Gibson Les Paul; 60 years of Marshall amps; and 60 years of the fuzz pedal (beginning with Maestro’s FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone). 

Also this year, music gear innovator Roland celebrates their 50th anniversary. And where would we be without Roland’s offshoot guitar brand, Boss? Those compact pedals that appeared in 1977, so influential in their design, have since become an icon of the guitar world. 

Famed for their effects pedals, Boss now offers a massive range of gear including amps, guitar synthesizers and accessories. 

And while newer guitar amplifiers like the Katana and Cube ranges have drawn widespread attention in recent years, vintage gearheads will be pleased to discover Roland has just unveiled a limited-edition model of arguably the most iconic amp to come out of Japan: the legendary JC-120 Jazz Chorus.

Appearing with a gorgeous natural cherry wood veneer and open-pore finish, the JC-120 Jazz Chorus Roland 50th Anniversary Limited Edition features a dark grey grille cloth and a commemorative badge individually stamped with the unit’s serial number (xxx/350).

Having remained in production since its release in 1975, the JC-120 Jazz Chorus claims the title of Roland’s longest-running product. Its influence cannot be overstated. In addition to several spinoff amp designs such as the mid-sized JC-40 and ultracompact JC-22, the JC-120 spawned the world’s first chorus pedal.

Putting them on the map as an effects pedal innovator, the CE-1 Chorus Ensemble – the first Boss pedal – was launched in 1976. Famed for its deep, luscious sound, many argue this standalone chorus unit has not been outclassed since its introduction.

Countless guitarists have used the Roland JC-120 over the years. Prized for its clarity, articulation and depth of tone, this solid-state workhorse has served artists as diverse as the Smiths’ Johnny Marr, U2’s the Edge, Muse’s Matthew Bellamy, the Eagles’ Joe Walsh and Hawkwind’s Dave Brock.

A decades-long staple of the stage, the Roland JC-120 is also a go-to amp in the studio. For punchy clean tones it can be hard to beat. And that deep, 3D chorus sound is something to behold when miked in stereo.

We love the look of this version of Roland’s modern classic. But with 350 being released worldwide, you’ll be lucky to get your hands on one.

Roland says the JC-120 Jazz Chorus Roland 50th Anniversary Limited Edition will be available in the U.S. for pre-order from select Boss retailers in December 2022 and in-store in February 2023 priced $1,999.99.

Good luck! 

And congratulations, Roland. Here’s to another half century of music innovation.

Visit the Roland website for more information.

Vince Gill is a country music legend, racking up 22 Grammys and selling more than 26 million albums. Although part of Nashville’s ultimate power couple, with his wife Amy Grant, Gill is one of the friendliest and most unassuming stars one could meet.

Gifted with a distinctive voice, possessing the power to move even the hardest of hearts to tears, he is also an incredible guitarist who can play in any style.

Beyond his own extensive catalog, he’s contributed to more than a thousand recordings by other artists.

“I always aspired to be the guy who gets to play on other people’s records,” he tells Guitar Player. “I never had a hairbrush in my hand in front of the mirror pretending to be Elvis; I always had my head down studying the harmonies and the guitar parts on records.

“I’m very lucky to have a solo career and to play on so many records. Even when my record company used to ask me to cut back on the sessions for other artists, I refused. To me, it’s a harder job to bring something meaningful to someone else’s record than it is to create your own music.”

On top of his amazing recording career, Gill has been a member of the Eagles since 2017.

It’s a dream gig for the guitarist, who was a fan of both the Eagles and Joe Walsh long before he ever found success himself.

When Gill joined the Eagles, they initially planned to play a handful of live dates, but the response to the shows reinvigorated the band’s enthusiasm, and they’ve continued to tour ever since, interrupted only by the pandemic.

As for whether he’s now a permanent member of the band, Gill replies, “So they tell me!”

For him, it’s all about the legacy of the Eagles’ songbook. “Those songs have been so powerful for nearly 50 years,” he says. “I just feel that my role is to help keep this great collection of songs going.

“That’s been the great lesson for me, that what creates longevity is great songs. There are a couple of real highlights for me every night. I love to play ‘Desperado’, which I’ve loved all my life, and to get to play power chords for Joe on ‘Rocky Mountain Way.’

“I played that song when I was about 14 years old in a garage band. [laughs] Actually, I look forward to every song.”

Given Gill’s years of solo success, it is interesting to ponder the different challenges the role of band member presents to him.

“I’m perfectly happy where I’m not the main focus, but I’m also very comfortable to be the frontman in my own shows,” he reveals. “I’ve done both roles for so long now that they both feel real natural to me.

“The coolest thing Don Henley said about me is when he was asked why they picked a country guy. He said, ‘Because he knows how to be in a band.’”

As for the prospect of a new Eagles studio album? “I would be the most wrong guy to ask,” he says with a laugh.

“That’s what I love about getting to do this: I don’t have to decide anything. I would suspect not, from the way that things have unfolded, but I don’t know if it would be appropriate in some ways.”

Gill’s love of the guitar is reflected in his home studio, which resembles a top-shelf music store.

There are racks of vintage Martins, and cabinets with drawers containing old Stratocasters, Telecasters and Les Pauls.

“I’m sure I’ve got a couple of hundred guitars, but I don’t have a boat or multiple houses or cars. I wouldn’t say it’s out of control, but it’s borderline.

“Having said that, I see myself as a painter with musical instruments, and each guitar gives me a different color for my painting. I don’t buy them and sell them to make money; I keep pretty much everything. I guess it’s a hobby that makes a lot of sense.”

Many of those guitars were previously housed in the Soundcheck storage complex in Nashville, but after the 2010 flood that saw many artists lose priceless instruments, Gill decided to keep everything at home.

“I live high up a hill; I think I’m pretty flood-proof now – unless Noah comes back. If the ark goes by, it won’t matter anyway.”

As far as Gill’s solo work is concerned, there are a number of projects in hand to follow on from 2019’s Okie.

“I’ve almost finished an album that I did with Paul Franklin, the great steel-guitar player, called Bakersfield, where we play half Buck Owens songs and half Merle Haggard songs,” he reveals.

“I’ve been working on some Ray Price songs, and I’ve also written a bunch of new songs. I think I’ll probably make two or three records in the not-too-distant future.”

Given his ample guitar chops, Gill is often asked whether he’d ever make an all-instrumental album.

“I’m really a songwriter, and I really love to create songs,” he offers. “Having said that, if I were to do an instrumental album, I’d want it to reflect my chameleon-like approach to the guitar – maybe have some smooth jazz, bluegrass, blues, some rock or whatever.

“Actually, I’ve got a studio in my house and a lot of time on my hands these days, so maybe I might.”

After more than 40 years in the business, Gill takes nothing for granted. “Every time I play, I feel like it might be the last time,” he says. “I never phone it in. I play the best that I possibly can, every single time.

“It’s so deep that it’s as simple as taking a breath. I was playing the guitar this morning, and when I put it down, I thought, When people ask who’s your best friend, I’d say the guitar is. It’s always been there when I needed it, and it’s never let me down.”

When it came to picking five songs to represent such a vast body of work, Gill was candid about his rationale.

“I think in a couple of days’ time they might be completely different,” he says. “But I tried to go with songs that had a real significance for me, rather than songs that were all about the guitar solos, because I think there is more to me than just being a guitar player.”

1. “Liza Jane” from ‘Pocketful of Gold’ (1991)

“I guess there’s a little of the J.J. Cale feel about this song – maybe a touch of Eric Clapton’s ‘Lay Down Sally’ about it. As with most solos, the one on here was the result of editing myself and trying to hone down what I was playing to get something that really fit the song.

"I chose this track because I think it epitomizes the biggest perception about the way that I play, with chicken picking and the bends. I think it is possibly the most identifiable solo that I’ve ever played. Lyrically, it’s certainly not War and Peace [laughs], but there are certain songs where their purpose is a vehicle to play on, and the whole idea was to create something for me to play guitar on.

“It’s interesting in country music that there aren’t a ton of guitar gods, like in rock and blues. I knew that going in, that my chances of having a successful career as a country artist would be more for having my songs and singing than as a guitar player. The guitar player in me got a little fired up for this one.

“Country has always been loyal to the guitar, even in its very earliest days, way back to Mother Maybelle Carter and Jimmie Rodgers. Everyone forgets that the first great lead guitar player in country was a woman.

“I’ve gotten to play this song live with some great players, like Albert Lee and Danny Gatton, and those are some special moments.

“I played my white Telecaster on this one, which has been my main Tele for my whole career. I found it in 1978 for $450. It was the first Fender that I ever bought, and the best. It was obviously meant to be.”

2. “Look At Us” from ‘Pocketful of Gold’ (1991)

“I chose this because of the steel-guitar solo by John Hughey. He was a really iconic steel-guitar player. He played in my band for about 15 years. He played on all the Conway Twitty country records – a legendary steel-guitar player.

“I always wanted to have a musician who was part of the identity of the music I make, like Don Rich with Buck Owens, and John was that for me in a really big way. That solo is one that steel guitarists look to as one of the greatest ever played.

“The interesting thing about this song is that when I first came up with the idea and the lyrics, it was about a couple who separate, so it wasn’t a celebration of an enduring relationship. Me being me, it was going to be a breakup song. [laughs]

“The guy I wrote it with, Max Barnes, said to me, ‘You’re going the wrong way with it.’ [laughs] The change in the direction of the song was really the key to its popularity.

“I’ve received so many thousands of videos and pictures of couples who’ve been together for years, saying how much this song means to them. I’m glad I was wise enough to take Max’s advice.”

3. “Go Rest High On That Mountain” from 'When Love Finds You' (1994)

“I think hands down, if somebody is going to remember a song of mine from my career – the one that had the biggest impact – it would be this one.

“I think that is largely in part because of the sentiment behind it. I wrote it after the death of my brother, but nobody knew at the time that it was going to become a mainstay funeral song like ‘Amazing Grace.’

“The beauty is that it wasn’t even a big hit record; it was a song that provided an awful lot of comfort to people in their hardest times, and to me that matters way more than a hit record. It cuts deeper.

“I love the playing on this song. The music is so haunting. Stuart Duncan’s fiddle solo is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard. Patti Loveless and Ricky Skaggs sing harmonies, and there are so many elements of the entirety of my life wrapped up in this song.

“It sounds like a sad song; I guess it is sad, but for me the real beauty of it is that, although it is about despair, the essence of hope is in there.

“I took a little inspiration from some of my heroes for the intro and the fills – people like Mark Knopfler, who taught me about playing with the meat of my fingers instead of a pick.”

4. “Whenever You Come Around” from 'When Love Finds You' (1994)

“When I look through my catalog of songs, I think this might be my favorite one to play and sing. This song takes me back to a time that was impactful and changed my life. I love the melody and also the angst in the lyrics.

“I wrote it after I met my wife, Amy, for the first time, and I thought, I’ve met this beautiful human being; I’m really taken by her, but nothing’s going to happen.

“The sense of melancholy was really powerful for me when I wrote it. I’m an emotional and romantic guy; I love the blue side of music and melancholy. It’s all going to come out in my music and lyrics.

“I’m not crazy about happy songs, I never have been, and I never will be. I want to hear the angst and the emotion.

“I used a Strat on this one, again just using the meat of my fingers to get the tone. A lot of people have preconceptions of what I am, but I’m a little bit of a chameleon. I can take a Les Paul and fire it up and do what those things do, or play a Strat or a Tele, and I think it’s all down to the ability to hear the differences and the subtleties of those instruments.

“I always reach for a guitar that serves the song best when I’m deciding what to play.”

5. “Young Man’s Town” from 'Next Big Thing' (2003)

“I chose this song because I think it might be one of the best songs lyrically that I’ve ever written.

“The sentiment of that song, the passage of time – I think it was the first time that I ever really channeled Merle Haggard in a song that I was really proud of, because he’s always been my favorite. I’ve written other songs that sound a little Haggardy, that were close but not quite there, but this one hit the nail for me.

“I remember when I started playing with the Eagles, this is the song that Don Henley told me was his favorite song that I’d ever done, which really meant a lot to me.

“For the solo, I tried to keep the melody at the forefront. I’ve always believed that solo playing should not stray away completely from the melody of the song. On slower songs in particular, I always try to dance around the melody.

“My mindset has always been to think, If you had to sing this solo, what would you sing?, and then I try to play that.

“The reverse is also true actually, that I will sometimes try to sing what I might play. Melody doesn’t seem to be as common in today’s music. I’ve always wanted to be moved by music rather than impressed by it.”

Bakersfield by Vince Gill & Paul Franklin is out now. You can order it here.

Browse the Vince Gill catalog here.

Almost as disturbing as Tommy Bolin’s death itself (on December 4, 1976) was the fact that the 25-year-old musician's fatal drug overdose occurred just when he was emerging as a noted guitarist in progressive rock and jazz-rock circles.

After being summoned to fill the shoes of first Joe Walsh in James Gang and later Ritchie Blackmore in Deep Purple, Bolin could have easily been saddled with the title of 'best replacement guitarist.'

But his less publicized musical history reveals a journeyman musician whose versatility was matched by a restlessness to work and learn, the end result crystallizing into Bolin's own electric guitar style.

Born in Sioux City, Iowa, Bolin dropped out of high school at sixteen, and migrated to Denver where he formed a band called Zephyr in 1968. 

He recorded on two of the group's three albums: their eponymous 1969 debut and 1971's Going Back to Colorado.

After serving a blues guitar apprenticeship on the road with Albert King for a year, he made his way to New York and its budding jazz-rock scene in 1973.

His reputation had expanded to the point where Billy Cobham picked him for the session work on Spectrum, the drummer's noted solo debut that Jeff Beck often credits as a major influence in sparking his jazz pursuits.

Months later, Joe Walsh recommended Tommy for the lead slot in James Gang. He appeared on two of the group's albums in the one year he was with the band: Bang in 1973 and Miami in 1974.

In mid-summer of 1975, Bolin replaced Blackmore in Deep Purple, co-writing seven of the tunes on their Come Taste The Band LP.

Realizing perhaps that in his work with these two bands, coupled with a solo effort (Teaser), he'd written 33 songs in four albums, Bolin signed with Columbia to pursue his own career.

He had been touring with his own band following the release of his LP Private Eyes when he was found dead in a Miami hotel room.

The following interview extract was conducted on October 7, just two months before his death, and originally appeared in the March 1977 issue of Guitar Player…

What did you learn from playing behind Albert King?

I learned a lot about lead; learned that you don't have to blow your cookies in the first bar.

At that time, I was playing everything I knew when I took a lead. And he said, "Man, just say it all with one note."

He taught me that it was much harder to be simple than to be complicated during solos. If you blow your cookies in the first bar, you have nowhere to go.

Blues is really good that way. It teaches you to develop coherent solos, because the form you're playing over is so basic. You have to develop leads that go someplace.

The neatest compliment I ever got was when I was playing with Albert King at an indoor concert in Boulder, Colorado. He used to let me take solos, and I was very into playing that day.

After the concert he came up to me and said, " You got me today, but I'll get you tomorrow."

I really respect him. He's a beautiful player.

Why all the interest in so many styles, and how did you handle them all?

They were just gigs that came up. I'd rather work than not. I was very lucky to be able to play in all those extremes.

It was difficult following a guy like Ritchie Blackmore. When someone is the focal point of a group like he was, it's very hard to replace them. After a while, it just got to be pointless.

The way I got involved in jazz-rock was through a flute player named Jeremy Steig. He played on the second Zephyr album.

He showed me various jazz relationships and put them into a rock perspective, and then through him I met a lot of New York people like Cobham and [keyboardist] Jan Hammer.

Cobham called me for the Spectrum session, and I said, "I don't know how to read, man." He said it was okay.

So I went to the studio, and he handed me a chart. I told him again I didn't again I didn't know how to read, so we had a day of rehearsal, then cut the album in two days.

In rehearsal I'd just find out the changes – for example, Am to D9 to G6 to E13 – and play around those chords and changes.

I learned quite a bit through those people. You can't help but learn. All the different styles I've played have really helped me as a guitarist and helped me develop my own way of playing.

I have my own style, but it's different for each kind of music. There are certain little characteristic things every player has.

Browse the Tommy Bolin catalog here.

While the talk box achieved its greatest popularity in the early part of the ‘70s thanks to Bob Heil, the concept existed in a variety of forms long before he brought his device to market.

It was Alvino Rey who first popularized, if not invented, the effect in the late 1930s, using a throat contact mic to make his steel guitar speak. Rey had the mic wired in reverse to act as a speaker and fed his amplified signal into it. As he performed, his wife, Luise, stood offstage, wearing the device and mouthing the words to the song as Rey’s steel guitar tones emerged from her lips.

The same concept was behind the Sonovox, developed by Gilbert Wright in 1939 and demonstrated by a young Lucille Ball in a newsreel.

Rey’s bit of ventriloquism was put to use as the voice of Stringy the Talking Steel Guitar, a freakish-looking puppet that sang “St. Louis Blues” in the 1944 film Jam Session.

The talk box as we know it today was created by Nashville steel guitarist Bill West by sealing an eight-inch speaker in a box, from which extended a length of tubing for the player’s mouth. Steel guitarist Pete Drake put West’s device to use on his 1964 cut “Forever,” and the novelty quickly caught on.

Drake began selling the device himself, marketing it as the Talking Music Actuator. West’s talk box eventually found its way into the rig of Joe Walsh, who would go on to use it on his 1973 hit, “Rocky Mountain Way,” the first record on which most people in the classic-rock era heard the effect.

By then, Kustom Electronics had gotten into the act with the Bag, a shoulder-slung device introduced in 1969 and used by Joe Perry on Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” in 1975 and by Jeff Beck that same year on “She’s a Woman” from Blow by Blow.

But all those devices were relatively low wattage. It took Heil’s high-powered Talk Box to make the effect viable for use on stadium and arena stages. He and Walsh made their prototype together on a Sunday afternoon.

“We grabbed a 250-watt JBL, built a low-pass filter, got all the plumbing together, and voilà – the Talk Box,” Heil recalled.

Enter Peter Frampton, who had first heard the effect when Drake played on sessions for George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass album, on which Frampton also performed.

Frampton – who knew Heil from his days as soundman for Humble Pie – used his Talk Box on 1975’s “Show Me the Way” but made his biggest impression with it on “Do You Feel Like We Do,” from his 1976 smash live album, Frampton Comes Alive!

“People went nuts when I went to use the talk box,” he told Guitar Player. “Hey, everybody needs a gimmick, and this was mine.”

Since then it’s become a useful tool in the mouths of guitarists ranging from Richie Sambora to Jerry Cantrell.

Check out the MXR M222 Talk Box here.

Texas-based guitarist, producer and songwriter Lance Keltner has released a music video accompanying his hard-rocking new single “Train Of Misery" taken from the forthcoming album, Lance Keltner & Nuevo Retro.

Recorded at Ice Cream Factory Studio in Austin, Texas, blues-rock maestro Keltner’s fifth studio long-player is loaded with 10 tracks comprising new material plus a handful of rejuvenated numbers from the catalog.

Scheduled for release in July via National Treasure Records in association with MARS Label Group, the work sees a revitalized Keltner returning with newfound perspective after winning a battle against Covid-19 that nearly cost him his life.

For that reason, Keltner sees Lance Keltner & Nuevo Retro as both a personal and creative rebirth.

“I contracted Covid in January 2021,” explains Keltner. “At the time, I was convinced that I might die, and I think the hospital staff was right there with me on that. But then, on the fifth night I was in the hospital, I had an incredible spiritual experience that changed everything for me.

“At three AM that night, my room lit up,” he continues. “I can't really describe it, but I felt elated, and I was at total peace. A voice clearly told me that I was not going to die in that place. It also told me to never touch alcohol again, and that if I made music my priority again, everything else would fall into place.

“After that, we signed a new recording contract. I took two months to recover, and then we cut 15 songs in two weeks. So I lived, and I think that I made the best record I’ve ever done.”

After releasing his eponymous solo debut via East West Records America in 1992, Keltner went on to record three more albums prior to his latest. He has toured extensively throughout Europe and is currently planning to hit the road in the U.S. in support of the new record.

Speaking of his new single “Train Of Misery" Keltner says he was inspired by the lingering memory of a homeless person sitting on a railway platform in downtown Austin.

"Years ago, my bandmate Cole [Hanson] and I moved into an apartment in downtown Austin,” recalls Keltner. “From the balcony we could see a train platform, and on that platform lived a homeless man. 

“He read the paper, he talked to himself, he was troubled. Cole and I picked up two guitars and imagined his story through the song."

In true Texas blues guitar style, Keltner is known to favor the Fender Stratocaster, though he also uses Charles Whitfill guitars and a CHC Guitars custom model.

As pictured above, he is also a fan of Nashville-based Teye Guitars – creators of some of the most stunning-looking axes around.

Interestingly, Keltner is the owner of Smart Belle – an Austin-based guitar gear firm producing guitar amps and effects used by pro players such as Joe Walsh, Tommy Shaw (Styx), and Frankie Sullivan (Survivor).

Visit Lance Keltner’s website for more information.

On this day, in 1944, blues guitar phenom Johnny Winter was born in Beaumont, Texas. 

Famed the world over for his fiery, virtuosic technique and soulful, strident tone (often courtesy of a Gibson Firebird) he kicked off his decades-long recording career at just 15 years of age.

Honoring his late brother’s musical genius, Edgar Winter will be releasing a tribute album titled Brother Johnny on April 15 via Quarto Valley Records.

Curated by Edgar Winter and producer Ross Hogarth, Brother Johnny retraces the guitarist’s career and evolution as one of the greatest blues artists the world has ever known.

Boasting a stellar line-up of musicians including Joe Bonamassa, Robben Ford, Billy Gibbons, Keb’ Mo’, Steve Lukather, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Derek Trucks, Joe Walsh and Phil X, the album has already attracted much excitement from reviewers. (Word is, it rocks!)

Known for his love of the Rolling Stones, Johnny Winter’s catalog includes covers of “Jumpin' Jack Flash" (from 1971’s Live Johnny Winter And); “Silver Train" and "Let It Bleed" (from 1973’s Still Alive and Well); and “Stray Cat Blues” (from 1974’s Saints & Sinners.)

And in this classic clip from the BBC live music television show The Old Grey Whistle Test, Johnny Winter is on fire as he blazes through a high-octane performance of the Stones’ “Jumpin' Jack Flash" alongside Tin House guitarist Floyd Radford.

Listening to the recording, it’s interesting to be able to clearly hear the differences in sound and compare notes between Johnny Winter’s Gibson Firebird V pickups and the standard/full-size humbuckers of Radford’s Gibson ES-355.

Both are great examples of benchmark blues rock guitar tone.

Pre-order Brother Johnny by Edgar Winter here.

Edgar Winter has unveiled the second single – "Mean Town Blues" – from his forthcoming Brother Johnny album. 

Available via Quarto Valley Records, the new LP is due to be released on April 15 this year and features a stellar line-up of guest musicians.

Among those paying tribute to the late, great bluesman on Brother Johnny are Robben Ford, Billy Gibbons, Keb’ Mo’, Steve Lukather, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Derek Trucks, Joe Walsh and Phil X.

The new single, “Mean Town Blues,” features Joe Bonamassa on slide guitar, Sean Hurley on bass, and Gregg Bissonette on drums.

“To me, this is one of the most important tracks on the album,” said Edgar Winter, “and probably the most difficult to replicate the original feel on.

“I wanted only guitar, bass, and drums, exactly like Johnny’s original blues trio. But I didn’t know of anyone out there who naturally played slide the way Johnny did.

“I thought Joe Bonamassa did such an incredible job with Johnny’s regular guitar style, I wonder if he could do the same thing with the slide? And amazingly, he did it!”

Curated by Edgar Winter and producer Ross Hogarth, Brother Johnny is a sonic celebration of one of the greatest electric blues guitar players in music history.

Retracing Johnny Winter’s evolution as a guitarist, this epic 17-track romp through the years is a touching homage from one brother to another.

Commenting on the song “Mean Town Blues” Edgar Winter said: “If there’s one song that best epitomizes and brings all those elements together to represent the many aspects of who Johnny was in the early days, that song would have to be “Mean Town Blues.”

“Every time I hear it, I think, now that’s Real Johnny Winter. It just captures the essence of everything he was.”

Stream the “Mean Town Blues” single here.

Pre-order Brother Johnny by Edgar Winter here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Acclaimed filmmaker Lance Bangs (the Rolling Stones, Nirvana, R.E.M.) has written and directed the official music video for George Harrison’s smash hit "My Sweet Lord" over half a century following its original release. The song appeared on Harrison’s 7x platinum 1970 triple solo album All Things Must Pass (his third long-player following 1968’s Wonderwall Music and 1969’s Electronic Sound) and was the Beatle’s first single as a solo artist. Achieving phenomenal worldwide success, "My Sweet Lord" went on to become the biggest selling single of 1971 in the U.K. and topped the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S.

Bangs’ unmissable music video pays tribute to Harrison’s legacy in the world of music and comedy (HandMade Films) with a suitably iconic cast that includes a host of actors, musicians, comedians and other creatives. Some of those making an appearance were especially close to Harrison – notably Olivia and Dhani Harrison, along with bandmates Ringo Starr and Jeff Lynne.

Echoing the sentiments of the song, the “metaphysical special agent” protagonists – played by Fred Armisen and Vanessa Bayer – search for the unseen, yet they can’t see for looking. “Making this was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life,” said Bangs. “The approach was to represent the song visually while these agents and inspectors kept missing the metaphysical wonder around them… George threaded a sense of humor through all of his videos, so we kept that spirit and filled the cast with friends and admirers of his music, many coming from the current comedy landscape.”

The new “My Sweet Lord” video features the 2020 mix by Paul Hicks (the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, John Lennon) as featured on the recent 50th Anniversary editions of All Things Must Pass.

Speaking of the new releases (which include Uber Deluxe and Super Deluxe box sets, CDs, vinyl, downloads and streams) Dhani Harrison said, "Since the 50th anniversary stereo mix release of the title track to my father’s legendary All Things Must Pass album in 2020, my dear pal Paul Hicks and I have continued to dig through mountains of tapes to restore and present the rest of this newly remixed and expanded edition of the album."

Browse George Harrison’s catalog here.

Anyone paying attention to Pete Townshend’s guitar tone at the dawn of the 1970s would have noticed a distinct change with the release of Who’s Next. This was due to a gift he’d received from his pal and fellow guitarist Joe Walsh in 1970: a 1959 Gretsch 6120.  

The two players met in early 1970, when Walsh’s rock trio, the James Gang, opened for the Who at a show in Pittsburgh. Townshend was impressed by the band and invited the group to open for the Who on their European tour.  

“He really identified with what we were doing,” Walsh told Rolling Stone in 1975. “Pete’s a very melodic player, and so am I. He told me that he appreciated my playing. I was flattered beyond belief, because I didn’t think I was that good." 

“Pete and I really hit it off,” Walsh added. “We had the same frustrations about working with a three-piece group.” Like Townshend, Walsh was writing songs that proved difficult for his trio to perform onstage. 

“I was writing with harmony, and nobody could sing them; I was writing for piano and we couldn’t play one onstage. I was frustrated,” he said. 

“Townshend had finished Tommy and was going through the same changes. We got along so well that I gave him the fat orange Gretsch guitar that he used on Who’s Next and Clapton’s Rainbow Concert.”

As Townshend explained to Guitar Player for its May/June 1972 issue, he and the Gretsch 6120 weren’t exactly love at first sight. 

PT: I opened the case and it was bright orange, and I thought, Ugh! It’s horrible, I hate it. I went home and went into my studio and plugged it in, and it totally wrecked me out. It’s the best guitar I’ve got now. 

GP: Doesn’t it have a mellow sound, though? It doesn’t chunck, does it? 

PT: Oh, I used that guitar on every track on Who’s Next. It’s the best guitar I’ve ever had. It’s the finest guitar I’ve ever owned, it’s the loudest guitar I’ve ever owned. It is so loud, man, it whips any pickup that I’ve ever come across. It’s maybe six or seven times louder than anything I’ve come across. If I plugged it in my amp tonight, normally I’d be working on volume 6 or 7, but I would work this guitar on 1.” 

Though it’s mentioned less often, Walsh included a Fender Bandmaster amp with three 10-inch speakers as part of the gift. As Townshend revealed to Guitar World’s Chris Gill in 1993, he used the Gretsch and Bandmaster together with an Edwards pedal-steel volume pedal. “When I get those three things out and put them in a chain,” he said, “it’s a sound from paradise.”

“Won't Get Fooled Again” is one of The Who’s most defining records. Edited down to just over three-and-a-half minutes and originally released as a single in June 1971, the song became a top ten hit in the UK. This time 50 years ago, the same single was busy climbing its way up the US Billboard Hot 100, eventually peaking at number 16.

The full eight-and-a-half-minute version appears as the closing number on the band's 1971 album Who's Next, released later in August 1971. Pete Townshend achieved his iconic electric guitar tone for the recording using a Filter’Tron-loaded 1959 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins Hollow Body going into a 1959 Fender Bandmaster via an Edwards Light Beam volume pedal. Gifted to Townshend by Joe Walsh this setup subsequently became his go-to studio rig.

“I think the significant moments have actually had a lot to do with guitars, actual guitars,” Townshend told GP back in 1989. “Like being given an orange Gretsch [6120 Chet Atkins Hollow Body] and an Edwards [volume] pedal by Joe Walsh, and being told exactly how to set up the amp to produce that amazing Neil Young noise, and using that sound on “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “Bargain.”

Speaking of the guitar, amp, and pedal in another GP interview from 1993 the guitarist comments: “When I get those three things out and put them in a chain, it’s a sound from paradise. If I try to fuck with it and say, “Wouldn’t it be interesting if I took the Gretsch and put it through a Zoom pedal,” it doesn’t work. It’s got to be just that combination of stuff.”

Performed here live using a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe (modified with a DiMarzio pickup) and a wall of Hiwatts at Shepperton Studios on 25 May 1978, this rendition of "Won't Get Fooled Again" was shot for the closing sequence of the band's 1979 rockumentary The Kids Are Alright.

While the sequence captures Townshend at his peak – complete with windmills and knee-slide – the performance is notable for being Keith Moon’s last appearance with the band before his untimely passing in September 1978 aged 32.

Buy Who's Next here.

At 81 years old, Ringo Starr shows no signs of slowing down, citing his vegetarian diet and “staying active” as part of his recipe for longevity. “Staying active” indeed, Starr’s lengthy and continued solo career is now in its sixth decade – a musical voyage which began in 1970 with his aptly named debut album, Sentimental Journey.

Quickly following up this year’s Zoom In EP, Starr has announced his latest EP titled Change the World is now available to order (see link below). Much like Zoom In, Starr’s new extended play record – due out on September 24 – was tracked at his Roccabella West studio and features an assortment of guest artists.

Among the throng of guest musicians appearing on Change the World is Toto founder and Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band member Steve Lukather who co-penned the EP’s lead single "Let's Change The World" with Joseph Williams (son of film composer John Williams). Both Lukather and Williams also play on the track.

Adding further electric guitar hero status to the recording is Eagles and fellow Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band guitarist Joe Walsh who appears on the EP’s closing number, “Rock Around the Clock.” A record-breaking hit in the mid-‘50s for rock ‘n’ roll pioneers Bill Haley & His Comets, "Rock Around the Clock” was a highly influential song for The Beatles, with John Lennon telling Playboy in the early ‘80s, "I had no idea about doing music as a way of life until rock 'n' roll hit me… It was "Rock Around the Clock"." 

Interestingly, Starr also played drums alongside The Who’s Keith Moon on the Lennon-produced Harry Nilsson version of "Rock Around the Clock” from Nilsson's 1974 album Pussy Cats.

"I've been saying I only want to release EPs at this point and this is the next one,” says Starr. “What a blessing it's been during this year to have a studio here at home and be able to collaborate with so many great musicians, some I've worked with before and some new friends." 

Pre-order Ringo Starr’s Change the World here.

PRS guitars has teamed up with Joe Walsh to create the new McCarty 594 Singlecut Joe Walsh Limited Edition guitar.

The singlecut features a bound, 24.594” scale length mahogany neck and a Brazilian rosewood fretboard with 22 stainless steel frets and PRS's signature bird inlays.

It's fitted with a pair of PRS 58/15 LT+ pickups, controlled by two volume and two tone controls with push/pull coil taps, and a three-way switch.

Unique visual appointments on the guitar, meanwhile, include Paul Reed Smith’s handwritten signature on the front of the headstock, and Walsh’s signature on the backplate.

“I don’t like new guitars, but out of the box this is absolutely perfect," Walsh said of his new signature model in a statement. "All the stuff on a new guitar that I always have to try to fix, is already done here. Out of the box. Thank you, Paul.”

"Joe's endorsement of the McCarty 594 Singlecut Joe Walsh Limited Edition means the world to me," added Smith. "We work very hard to keep pushing the guitar-making craft forward without losing sight of its rich history. 

"The McCarty models have always embodied that balance, and to have a player like Joe Walsh say we’ve nailed it is heartwarming.”

Limited to just 200 pieces worldwide, the PRS McCarty 594 Singlecut Joe Walsh Limited Edition is available now. Its price has yet to be revealed as of press time.

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

Like many groups that stick around for years, the Eagles had their share of lineup changes. Cofounding guitarist Bernie Leadon left in 1975 and was replaced by Joe Walsh, only to return for the group’s tour from 2013 through 2015. 

Bassist Randy Meisner split in 1977 and had his spot filled by Timothy B. Schmit. Guitarist Don Felder joined in 1974 and remained until the group’s breakup in 1980, then rejoined in 1994 before he was fired in 2001.

As it happens, the only time all seven Eagles members shared a stage was when the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. The lineup - which included the late guitarist Glenn Frey and drummer Don Henley, along with Leadon, Meisner, Felder, Walsh and Schmit - performed their first hit, “Take It Easy,” and their biggest, “Hotel California.”

Viewers were understandably expecting fireworks. The band’s breakup in 1980 had been acrimonious, and Frey had at one point stopped speaking with the others. Instead, the band members set aside the past and took the occasion to reflect on their history and success.

Perhaps no one in the Eagles who spoke that night was as eloquent as Frey. Speaking last, he said, “Obviously, what’s going on tonight is a lot bigger than any of the individuals onstage. And a lot has been talked about and speculated about over the last 27 years about whether or not we got along. We got along fine. We just disagreed a lot. Tell me one worthwhile relationship that has not had peaks and valleys.

“You cannot play music with people for very long if you don’t genuinely like them. I guarantee you that over the nine years the Eagles were together during the 1970s, and the three years we were together during our reunion, the best of times ranked in the 95th percentile and the worst of times ranked in the very small percentile that obviously everyone but the seven of us have dwelled on for a long, long time. Get over it.”

Enjoy this blast from the past.