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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood are among the most famous musicians to emerge from Britain's 1960s blues scene. Remarkably, each of them rose from the ranks of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers.

Although he was never as celebrated for his guitar playing as he was for helping to launch the careers of his sidemen, Mayall was an undeniably key figure in the history of rock, blues and even pop — it was he who turned Paul McCartney on to the charms of the Epiphone Casino, a guitar that his fellow Beatles guitarists John Lennon and George Harrison adopted as well.

On the one-year anniversary of his death, on July 22, 2024, Guitar Player celebrates Mayall's life by republishing our classic interview with him from our December 1970 issue.

John Mayall was an elder statesman of English blues who'd been transported to a life in Los Angeles when Guitar Player caught up with him for an interview in the December 1970 issue. By then his group the Bluesbreakers had been the breeding ground for Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor, each of whom was among the most celebrated electric guitar players of the day.

Contributing editor Fred Stuckey, who conducted the interview and wrote it up for the magazine, noted the irony of Mayall’s position in that first year of the new decade.

“In the middle of 1969, while the rock world was spewing out countless copies of Eric Clapton and the Cream’s hard rock sound, Mayall dropped the organ and drums for the harp and guitar and a subdued, low-volume blues. He hired Jon Mark on acoustic guitar and Johnny Almond on flute, tenor and alto. The end product was a much lauded tour, two record albums — The Turning Point and Empty Rooms — and a hit single, ‘Room to Move.’”

Mayall's restrained sound at the start of the decade revealed a more thoughtful approach to the blues and a propensity to continue evolving his music's sound and style. At the time of the interview, he had released USA Union, on which he retained the format and music direction but changed up his band to include Harvey Mandel on guitar, Larry Taylor on bass and Sugar Cane Harris on electric violin.

Stuckey found Mayall a willing interview subject — “choosing his words carefully and pausing to formulate his thoughts” — and noted his modesty:

“By his own admission, Mayall lacks the technical mastery of the guitar shared so uncommonly by the musicians he has worked with in the past. But he plays with the unpretentious, spirited air of a man who knows his idiom. Mayall knows 12-bar blues as well as Renoir knew nineteenth century French impressionism. And Mayall, while not particularly a guitarist, has influenced blues guitarists as much as anyone else in music.” This interview has been edited for brevity.

How have you been?
Just fine. It is sort of strange that Guitar Player would want to interview me, because the magazine is usually reserved for people who play the guitar. I can hold one in my hands and pluck a few notes, but it’s very hit and miss. I have no knowledge of music, you know.

That doesn’t seem to bother your fans. How did you happen to get into the business?

I heard a lot of music through my father’s record collection. He was a guitar player, and most of his records were of people like Django Reinhardt. I started playing the piano and the guitar around the same time, around age 13.

You see, I’ve always had different bands on different occasions long before I went into London to do it with professional interest. I had a band in Manchester, and when the R&B boom hit London, I moved there. I formed a band of London musicians, and it was just the same as usual. You ferret around to see who is available, and if anybody knows anybody who plays such and such an instrument. You get in touch with the musicians, report to the gig, and start playing.

When did you do your first recording?

The first album I made wasn’t released in the United States. They might release it again at some later date, because I’m no longer with that label, and the usual trick is to release everything you’ve got. It was done with Decca about a year before we did the record with Clapton, which is generally thought of to be the first album in the United States.

The one with Decca was a loser. It sold a thousand copies over one year — five hundred the first six months and five hundred and two the second six months. It was a live recording done at a place called Klooks Kleek, which was one of the places where I used to work when I first came to London. It was called John Mayall Plays John Mayall Live at Klooks Kleek, a very ungainly title.

How do you explain a young Englishman’s interest in blues even before it was appreciated on any scale in the country of its origin?

I don’t try to explain that at all. Music knows no geographical boundaries. Records have always been the property of every country. It is through records that you come into contact with music.

Why is it that Europeans, and particularly Englishmen, picked up the blues while the bulk of Americans weren’t even aware of the tradition of that form of American music?

That was always the case, and that is probably why the whole blues revival as such seemed to come from England. We never had the direct contact with the music as it was being played. We only had the records. As a result, Europeans are much more into record collecting and the research behind records. There is just greater interest over there.

This is a big place, and you tend to miss things that are on your own doorstep. French radio in particular has always had a lot of programs on jazz. An illustration is the fact that bluesmen like Memphis Slim have ended up living in France, because they were better received in Europe, and they actually could get work there. American Black blues singers have gone over there to get a name and then bounced back over here.

I remember reading the liner notes of the Crusade album. You made a plea for greater recognition of Black blues artists.

Yeah. That was primarily based upon the situation in England at that time. A great many of the bluesmen were being missed even though there are a lot of blues fans in the country, but individually they felt they were a minority group. They didn’t feel that they were being acknowledged as an audience by radio stations or the papers. They didn’t feel they were a large enough audience to make their point.

That over-exaggerated, inflammatory stuff was put on the back deliberately to get them to write into the musical papers and ask to hear more about “so and so.” They did that and people started to wake up until it reached the point where Melody Maker had a blues page every week.

Do you think that circumstance has dealt a bad deal to American Black bluesmen?

You can say that. If you feel something for the music and your own particular favorites, you do tend to think they have had a bad deal. And a lot of them have.

But the thing I’ve learned is that you really can’t make anybody like someone. It’s a bit disheartening to realize that you can introduce somebody who you think is good, but if people won’t go to the clubs to support them and buy their records, even though they’ve had every chance, there is nothing you can do about it. What it means is that their music, their particular style, doesn’t appeal to as many people as you would like it to. You can’t just decide that people should like a particular guy; they just won’t. Everything really depends on the merits of the guy’s music.

Do you remember when black records were “race” records?

Oh yeah, up until the late '40s. You know the Presley era was really the start of the first black performers coming out — Little Richard, Fats Domino and the rest. You know that thing in part grew out of the Presley thing. He was influenced by Black records and Black artists and he even did their tunes, but people didn’t pay any attention to those records until the Presley thing.

Why is it that sometimes Black blues recordings are less exciting or less appealing than white, rock blues?

Because that in essence is what they do; that is them. There are exceptions like B.B. King, people who have a style of their own. But they themselves can limit their market if they don’t progress — if they don’t break away from doing the same old thing. Some of the Black blues players who have made it, say 10 or 15 years ago, play the same numbers that made them famous and think that doing that will make them a star forever. You have to change because the generations, the people who buy the records, turn over so fast.

Do you credit your survival in the business with the fact that you’ve been willing to change?

Probably. It’s part of my character anyway. I don’t really like to do the same thing all the time. Besides, I don’t really consider myself to be a part of the music industry in certain respects. I don’t go along with the way the music business is —all the jive, the hype, and the commercial aspect of the thing. I don’t regard myself as being a part of that. I can separate myself from it and think how meaningless it is.

The structure of the rock business stinks. But most of the performers in the business seem to like it that way, and fair enough. That’s good for them. I’m not exactly an unknown when I come onstage, but I sort of inwardly treat the whole thing like that — that they haven’t heard me, and I’ve got to prove myself onstage from scratch. If you do make a name, when you walk out onstage you get a lot of appreciation, and half of the time they don’t understand what it is they’re supposed to appreciate.

But you’re supposed to be good, and that’s that. It’s a help in my case because it gives me the confidence to try something new, knowing that it won’t hit them that cold.

How did you run across Eric Clapton?

I hadn’t heard of him before we got together. You see, all bands in London are known to each other, but perhaps not the individuals that play in the bands. The Yardbirds were more popular on the club circuit than I was. They came up with a hit record, "For Your Love," which put them on the front page and the top of the charts. But it wasn’t a blues record that did it. Eric was working with them, and I guess wanted to stick to blues playing. The Yardbirds weren’t blues musicians as far as he was concerned. He got fed up and walked out on a big money-making thing.

Around the same time I heard that Yardbird record, and on the other side was a title called "Got to Hurry," with guitar by Eric Clapton. I was looking for a more satisfying guitarist, so I got his telephone number, and rang him up, and asked him to join. He said yes, and that was it. He was with me for nearly a year.

You never made it to the States with Clapton, right?

Yeah, Peter Green was with me after Eric. The first time I came to this country was with Mick Taylor in 1968. The first time we played Winterland in San Francisco was with Albert King and Jimi Hendrix. The lineup of the band then was the same as on The Diary of a Band and Crusade albums, except without John McVie. What happened was that when we were over here for the first time, the Clapton album [1966's Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton] had just been released. There was a confusing time lapse of over a year. That album was released a year after he had left me, and he was already in the Cream by then. People who had heard of Cream then found about this other one. They bought it and probably became aware of me through Eric.

How do you feel about the Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton album?

I feel about it like I feel about all the other albums. They’re just on wax or whatever. They’re just a representation of what the band was at the time. I like to listen to all of them. They all have good stuff on them. They show how the musicians played that I worked with, which is what I enjoy, otherwise they wouldn’t have been in the band.

Had Clapton reached a high point during the Bluesbreakers days?
He had reached a high point in comparison to his Yardbirds stuff. But I don’t think it’s anybody’s right to say that he is better or worse than what he did afterwards. It’s a matter of opinion. By the time he was finished with me he wasn’t playing very well at all, because he didn’t feel like it. He wanted to do something else. After a year with me he had developed his style to a point where he wanted to go still further but in another direction. His style was different with me than it was with the Cream, because he was responding to different sounds. He was influenced by different people.

That applies to most every musician. If you put them in with different people, they sound different because they’re playing different. The course of everyone’s development needs that. Otherwise, they go stagnant. I think that it’s really nice that you can get a musician who can be really satisfying in one band, and then he can develop in another band. You can hear another side of him. All good musicians are like that.

What do you think of the Eric Clapton album [Clapton’s 1970 self-titled debut featuring Delaney & Bonnie and Friends]?

To me it sounds like a Delaney and Bonnie album. That’s not to downgrade them; they do some nice things on records. And it’s not really surprising since Blind Faith was working with them. Even though the album is in his name, it’s really not his whole thing coming out. It’s got somebody else’s thing superimposed on it. He’s got a little outfit on the road now. And that’s the first time he’s taken it on his head to throw out all the superstar categories, get a band together, and play gigs for small money just for the sake of playing in small clubs. It is really commendable.

Clapton made the transition to a hard rock blues sound.

At that time Cream was totally original, so it was really an accomplished thing. But then everybody started to copy it, so everything you heard after that was a Cream copy. He couldn’t stand all that, being written about and everything.

Why didn’t you get into a harder sound?
I don’t want to get my ears blasted. I want to hear my musicians; I want to hear what they play. If you can’t hear who you want to listen to onstage, you don’t ask him to turn up; you ask everyone else to turn down. That way you get a listenable level. Just say that I didn’t want to join in. I took the risk and went the other way.

How did you run across Peter Green?

Peter is very funny. By the time Eric left we were getting known; the Clapton cult as such had started. So there were a lot of prospective guitarists. Actually, Eric left twice, so that was sort of a complication. He got the wanderlust. He went off to Greece with some friends of his to play over there. I had to find another guitar player. So I found one [Jeff Kribbett], and we were playing the same clubs, and it was known that Eric wasn’t with us anymore. The new guitarist wasn’t nearly as good, and he didn’t have that extra thing to make him a great guitarist.

Peter, this cockney kid, kept coming down to all the gigs and saying, “Hey, what are you doing with him; I’m much better than he is. Why don’t you let me play guitar for you. Why, he’s no good at all.” He got really nasty about it, so finally, I let him sit in. Peter worked about three gigs with me, and Eric came back. That really made Peter mad; he was just getting into it. Eric stayed another six months, and during that time Peter was in a band with Mick Fleetwood and Rod Stewart.

When Eric left again, I went straight away to Peter. But he didn’t really want to do it, because it had fallen through before. But eventually he did join. He really came in for a lot of bad things. At gigs people would say things like, "Where’s Clapton?" He had to have a lot of guts and determination to stick it out. He knew he wasn’t as good as Clapton, but he could be, you know.

How did Green happen to go his separate way?

The same way that everybody else did. They decide they’ve learned all they could or developed as far as they could in that structure, and it gives them the inspiration to take it further.

At that point, you found your third phenomenal guitarist, Mick Taylor.

Yeah, as it turned out. But at the time it really isn’t like that. You pick somebody you think is okay, and you go play clubs, and nobody pays much attention at first. It’s only a later turn of events that recognizes the talent there. The name comes later, and then it seems phenomenal that you could pick this winner out, you know.

Mick took a lot longer to develop his style than Eric or Peter. Mick is different than the two of them. Peter’s character is very pushy and he’s determined to prove himself. Mick was always a lazy person, not to knock him; he was just an easier-going personality. He took a lot longer to’ reach his peak, but he turned out to be phenomenal. [Like Clapton and Green before him, Taylor played a Les Paul Standard.]

What was it that you listened for when you first heard those three guitar players?

I don’t really know. I just need a guitarist, and I ask someone to do it in all good faith, hoping that they’ll be what I hope they will be. You put them in this loose environment, a very free thing where there are no arrangements and everybody gets to settle in and explore their own thing. Obviously, when you’re playing something different every night and it’s open to do that, then whoever it is is going to develop if he’s got the potential.

Did you direct them at all? Did you tell them what to play?

No more than I direct the musicians with me today. They look upon me as the bandleader, and it’s my responsibility if it goes wrong. They don’t have it hanging over their heads that it’s got to be good. All they’ve got to be concerned with is their own instrument. They’ve got this guy who points to them and says, “Okay, you take it.” And when they get that signal, they can do what they want. Then I’ll nod to someone else, or we will end it, or I’ll start singing.

So I have the control to direct a very loose thing. If something good happens that’s unexpected, or not what I meant, then I let it go that way. It’s really a nice surprise. On the other hand, if something is going on that is a total bore or a disaster, even though the audience might be liking it, then you bring it to a quick finish.

There are no arrangements of the tunes at all?

Not really, no. Sometimes there’s a theme. Mainly they know the key that I call out, and the kind of beat that it is. The tunes are all on a 12-bar structure so there’s no problem there. It’s just a case of how to end it. It doesn’t really matter as long as you play and people hear genuine music coming out. I don’t think audiences are really that much concerned whether it collapses in a disaster or not, as long as they know that you know that it’s a disaster and make the best of it. You know, take it or leave it, and they laugh, and we laugh, and that’s it.

Like in a set the other night, they all came off the stage saying that they thought so and so was supposed to do this and that. What happened was that one of the numbers —a 12-bar sequence —had a middle bit that was all one chord. To get back to the progression again, somebody has to lead it in with the preceding four bars. I was nodding over to Harvey and Larry, and Harvey took it to mean that I wanted him to solo. So it never got out of it, and Harvey’s solo was really good. I thought it was fantastic and we’d keep it going a bit longer because the audience didn’t know it was supposed to end there. Nobody knew because it was good.

Things like that happen all the time. That’s the interesting thing about it. From a situation like that you learn. Something that sounded good you will use the next time where it hadn’t occurred to you before it happened. There are no patterns; it changes all the time.

How committed are you to the blues?

All I’m committed to is playing what I want to play and making sure that it is different. I try to force myself into new areas that are a challenge. Blues is the only thing I know, so it would have to be through that.

Do you have any musical training?

No. I wish I could play musical instruments with a bit of technical ability sometimes. But I don’t think it’s really important. I can’t change it; I couldn’t learn music, you know. It’s the best that I can do, and the spirit is there.

From what you said earlier, you don’t seem to have much faith in the taste of audiences.

Oh, I do. What I said about audiences was that they don’t realize how unrehearsed and how dangerous it all is. They assume that what they’re hearing has been worked on and arranged. But actually it isn’t. I just get on the phone to somebody, and say that we start work on such and such a date, and I’ll see you at the gig. That’s all it is.

What about you as a guitarist? You’ve been playing a Gibson Les Paul. Is that your favorite guitar?

Well, no. I didn’t choose it. The guitar I had before that was a Fender, and it went out of tune. So I told my road manager to get me a new one. So he got me a Les Paul, because he could get one cheap or something. I don’t know anything about those things.

You don’t worry about strings and all that?

Just as long as they’re not rusty. If they’re rusty and you do a slide up the neck, you’ve got a torn finger. I don’t really worry about instruments, because they’re just tools. I’m not proficient enough on them to think that matters. Stick an axe in me hand and I’ll see what I can do with it. It’s as simple as that.

Although he started out as a guitar player, Paul McCartney took on bass guitar duties for the Beatles in July 1961, while the group was performing in Hamburg. Until then, he’d been one of the band's three electric guitar players, along with John Lennon on rhythm guitar and George Harrison on lead guitar. On the occasion when bassist Stuart Sutcliffe failed to show up for performance, it fell to McCartney to take over for him. When Sutcliffe finally quit the group in July 1961, McCartney took on those duties full time.

But by 1965 he began to show his guitar talents on the Beatles’ recordings, most evidently on “Yesterday,” his solo performance from the group’s album Help!, which also saw him play lead guitar on the tracks “Ticket to Ride" and “Another Girl.”

While McCartney continues to play bass to this day, guitar has remained central to his musical life.

“I guess I think of myself as a guitar player, really,” he told Guitar Player in our July 1990 issue. “Mainly acoustic — that's my main instrument, I suppose.

"If I couldn't have any other instrument, I would have to have an acoustic guitar. I always take one on holiday, and most times I have one in the dressing room.”

By the time the Beatles recorded Revolver in 1966, McCartney was showing greater facility with the instrument. Most notable of his achievements on that album is his angular solo on Harrison’s “Taxman,” performed with his Epiphone Casino through an overdriven Vox amp. Although Harrison had attempted a solo, he was unhappy with it. As was often the case, McCartney had an idea of what the song needed.

“With ‘Taxman, I got the guitar and was playing around in the studio with the feedback and stuff,” McCartney told Guitar Player. “And I said to George, ‘Maybe you could play it like this.’ I can't quite remember how it happened that I played it, but it was probably one of those times when somebody says, ‘Well, why don't you do it then?’ rather than spending the time to get the idea over.

“And I don't think George was too miffed. But when people say, ‘Great solo on “Taxman,”’ I don't think he's too pleased to have to say, ‘Well, that was Paul, actually.’ I didn't really do much like that — just once or twice.

“I liked ‘Taxman,’ just because of what it was,” he added. “I was very inspired by Jimi Hendrix. It was really my first voyage into feedback. I had this friend in London, John MayaII of the Bluesbreakers, who used to play me a lot of records late at night — he was a kind of DJ-type guy. You'd go back to his place, and he'd sit you down, give you a drink, and say,’ Just check this out.’ He'd go over to his deck, and for hours he'd blast you with B.B. King, Eric Clapton—he was sort of showing me where all of Eric's stuff was from, you know.”

As McCartney has explained before, it was Mayall who led him to purchase his Epiphone Casino, a model that both Lennon and Harrison also began to play soon after. “He gave me a little evening's education in that. I was turned on after that, and I went and bought an Epiphone. So then I could wind up with the Vox amp and get some nice feedback.

“It was just before George was into that," he added. "In fact, I don't really think George did get too heavily into that kind of thing. George was generally a little more restrained in his guitar playing. He wasn't into heavy feedback.”

Regardless of his talent with guitar — and in spite of feeling that acoustic is his main instrument — McCartney never thought he should make it his main instrument within the Beatles.

“Not really, no. I'd always felt that the bass thing was really it, because we had to have a bass player,” he said. “At the very beginning, I did think, Well that's put shot to any plans I had of being a guitar player.

“But I got interested in bass as a lead instrument. I think around about the time of Sgt. Pepper — ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ and ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ — there were some pretty good bass lines. Like Motown. Like Brian Wilson's lines in the Beach Boys.”

McCartney added that, among his many guitar contributions to the Beatles, “Blackbird,” from the 1968 White Album, remains “one of my favorites.”

But while his fretwork and fingerpicking on that song are quite advanced, he admits he never learned how to fingerpick correctly.

“I normally use a flatpick,” he said. “John learned. I think I read recently he'd learned it off Donovan or one of Donovan's friends who were more into the folk thing, so they would fingerpick in the proper way — first string, third string, and all that. The proper thing.

“I got my own little sort of cheating way of doing it, so on ‘Blackbird’ I'm actually sort of pulling two strings all the time. But then, when it gets to the little fingerpicking sort of thing, it's not real. I figured anyway that everyone else was doing that correct stuff, so it wouldn't hurt. I was trying to emulate those folk players.”

Remarkably, McCartney revealed that it was Lennon — often considered the least accomplished of the group’s guitarists — who mastered fingerpicking.

“John was the only one who actually stuck at it and learned it,” McCartney explained, pointing to Lennon’s acoustic “Julia,” from the White Album. “If you listen to ‘Julia,’ he's playing properly with fingerpicking on that. I was always quite proud of the lad. I think he just had a friend who showed him, and so that's really a nice part on ‘Julia.’

“But I could never be bothered, really, learning things. I always sort of figure something out. Like, I've never had guitar lessons, bass lessons, piano lessons, music-writing lessons, songwriting lessons, or horse-riding lessons, for that matter, or painting — I do some of that. I always jump into things, and so by the time I'm ready for my first lesson, I'm beyond it. I always did try to have music lessons. I always tried to have someone teach me how to notate music, because I still don't know to this day.”

Likewise, McCartney said guitar, like piano, remains his main instrument when composing. With a bass, he told Guitar Player, “you come up with a groove, but when you're writing, you need the guitar or a piano. So I would always remember that first and foremost I started off as a guitar player.”

John Mayall deserves credit for bringing some great guitarists to the fore — Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor, to name a few.

But Mayall can also take a bow for bringing attention to a particular guitar model. Not the Gibson Les Paul Standard, which had been the choice of Clapton, Green and Taylor, but rather the more humble Epiphone Casino. And the band he did it with? None other than the Beatles.

As Paul McCartney related upon Mayall’s death on July 22, 2024, he and Mayall were close friends in the early 1960s.

“We would meet at one of the late-night music clubs and often go back to his house, where he had a huge and glorious collection of records,” McCartney wrote on his website. “During these moments he became a mentor and would educate me on a lot of the blues guitarists playing at the time.

“I would lounge back in the armchair, and he would play tracks by people like B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Albert King and many other great players. He would then play me tracks by Eric Clapton, who was later in his band, the Bluesbreakers. The more he played, the more I could see the links between all these great guitarists. Besides being very entertaining, it was a great education noticing the similarities between these stunning players.”

It was during one of those visits that Mayall turned McCartney onto the merits of the hollowbody electric guitar.

“I showed Paul my hollowbody guitar that I’d bought when I was in the army in Japan in 1955,” Mayall told Andy Babiuk in his book Beatles Gear. “When people get together and listen to records, they talk about all kinds of things related to the music, so obviously we must have touched upon the instruments and it struck home. He got a hollowbody after to get that tone.”

As McCartney explained, Mayall’s tutelage at those sessions convinced him to go for a Casino. “He gave me a little evening’s education. I was turned on after that and bought an Epiphone.”

McCartney acquired his 1962 sunburst Casino in late 1964. It was a right-handed model with a Bigsby vibrato, and he subsequently had it altered for left-hand playing by changing the nut and bridge and adding a strap button to the right-hand horn.

McCartney has at times forgotten the source of his Casino inspiration. In one telling, he credited Jimi Hendrix for turning him on to using feedback, saying, “I went into a shop on Charing Cross Road and asked the guys if they had a guitar that would feed back, because I was very much into Jimi Hendrix and that kind of thing.”

The only problem with that story? At the time McCartney acquired his Casino, Jimi Hendrix was still an unknown guitarist playing in Little Richards' band, the Upsetters, under the alias Maurice James.

Regardless, once McCartney purchased his Casino, he quickly put it to use on the Beatles’ album Help!, playing lead guitar with it on "The Night Before," “Another Girl” and “Ticket to Ride.” Later tracks that feature his handiwork on the Casino include his stunning Indian-inspired solo on Revolver’s “Taxman,” his dual-guitar leads with Harrison on that album’s track “And Your Bird Can Sing,” the Sgt. Pepper’s cut “Good Morning, Good Morning,” and of course the guitar solos near the conclusion of “The End,” from Abbey Road.

Once McCartney had demonstrated the merits of the hollowbody electric guitar, it didn’t take long for his bandmates John Lennon and George Harrison to purchase their own sunburst Casinos in spring 1966, either prior to or during the recording sessions for Revolver. Both were 1965 Casinos with a sunburst finish, only Harrison's had a Bigsby, while Lennon’s wore the standard Epiphone trapeze tailpiece.

Harrison used his Casino briefly in 1966, and can be seen with it in photos from the group’s U.S. tour that August, though he is more commonly seen playing a 1964 Gibson SG Standard during this time.

However, Lennon and the instrument became inseparable. His Casino was his main guitar through the remainder of the Beatles and into his work with the Plastic Ono Band. In 1968, he and Harrison sanded off the finish on their Casinos on the advice of British folk singer Donovan, who told them it would make the guitars sound better. Lennon apparently loved the results.

He can be seen playing his stripped Casino at the Rolling Stone’s Rock and Roll Circus with the Dirty Mac (whose members included Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell), through the sessions for Let It Be, as seen in the 2021 documentary The Beatles: Get Back, and with the Plastic Ono Band in 1969.

As for McCartney, the Casino remains his favorite to this day. Questioned about it in 1997, he said, “If I had to choose one electric guitar, it would be that guy.”

Count Henry "Coco" Montoya among those thrilled that the late John Mayall got his props from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, courtesy of a Musical Influence award at the induction ceremony in Cleveland. His only regret? "I wish he'd have been there," Montoya says while riding between gigs in the Midwest. "I wish it had happened sooner. But I'm glad it happened anyway."

Mayall passed away on July 22 at the age of 90, just three months prior to the event — though the honor was announced in April. It was well-deserved and, as Montoya notes, long overdue. As the acknowledged godfather of British blues, Mayall had a decades-long career that included leading the Bluesbreakers, a band that was home to many an August musician, including a trio of Gibson Les Paul–slingers: Eric Clapton, a pre–Rolling Stones Mick Taylor, and Peter Green, who went on to form Fleetwood Mac with former Bluesbreakers Mick Fleetwood and John McVie.

And Montoya.

The left-handed guitarist from California was part of a new Bluesbreakers in 1984, joining fellow guitarist Walter Trout and spending nearly 10 years in Mayall's company. "I was not in the music business anymore," recalls Montoya, who'd previously played drums for Albert Collins, who taught him his signature guitar stylings. "I had a day job. I was a bartender and he called me up at my work. Apparently he had heard me a couple weeks before, 'cause I still played on weekends, and he called me up to ask me if I was interested in being in his new formation of Bluesbreakers."

Predictably, Montoya — who was settled into life in at the Cat and Fiddle Pub in Laurel Canyon, owned by English musicians and frequented by others — hung up on him.

"John called me up a second time — 'No don't hang up. I really am interested in having you in the band.' So I went down and played an audition and got the job. He literally brought me back. I was quite surprised he picked me."

Montoya was also well aware of the shoes he was stepping into. "That's where it went from dream come true to being a nightmare," he remembers. "You're real excited at first, then we start to go out and go to Europe, and that's when the realization came on. I felt like I had to try and be all these guys — the Mick Taylors and Peter Greens and my hero, Eric Clapton — which you never can be. But the essence of what I played was hugely influenced by all those guys.

"I had forgotten the first rule of the blues, which is interpretation. And John called me out on it. We had a meeting, and he said, 'Look, I want that guy I saw play. I don't want an imitation of Eric Clapton. I don't want an imitation of Peter Green. They're not here. You are. When we play these songs I want you to stop imitating and be you.' That was very freeing. It really helped focus me back on that."

It was, however, a complicated situation. "Not only do you have the ghosts of guitarists past but I had Walter Trout on the other side of the stage," Montoya explains. "It's a lot of pressure. Every night was a test of your ego. It was a test of your abilities 'cause Walter would bring it every night, and he's incredible."

Montoya and Trout became close friends, but the former felt "it was a little tense for both of us 'cause the audience pretty much turned it into a boxing match. Walter would play a song and kill it, then in the next song I'd do my little bit. Sometimes I got over, sometimes I didn't. It was a unique situation. Everybody wanted a battle. We both got our share of appreciation from the crowd and stuff, but there were times when it was a little hard to deal with. But in the end, I think that made us play better."

Throughout the stint, which also included several albums, Montoya describes Mayall as "always supportive. Onstage he really gave you a lot of freedom to do exactly what you were supposed to be doing, inventing and interpreting songs every night. That was a blessing." Montoya was also grateful for Mayall's tutelage in running "a tight ship" with the Bluesbreakers, which he says "was incredibly influential in so many ways into the way I run my band now. He was really strict, steadfast. He let us know you're out there to work.

"I remember one time we were complaining, as musicians do, 'cause we didn't have a day off for three weeks. We'd tell him, 'John, we're on the Adriatic Sea here. Why not spend a day off, or two.' And he said, 'I didn't bring you out here to vacation. When we're done you can stay here if you want to.' "

During his Bluesbreakers tenure Montoya spoke with Mick Taylor, who opened for the band on a few occasions and was also supportive. He's never met Clapton, however, although Slowhand "did come to a show, but we didn't know he was there until after. He told John he wasn't going to be coming backstage and didn't want anyone to know he was there. He just wanted to hear the band, and from John said he really, really enjoyed it."

It was also during his Bluesbreakers days that Montoya received one of his signature custom guitars — a white offset double-cutaway Stratocaster made by Albert Molinaro of Guitars-R-Us (now Elite Guitars) in Hollywood. "We've known each other for many years, and he's a great friend," says Montoya, who also worked with Molinaro on a proposed recording project. "He made two for me.

“To be honest, I'm not such a guitar freak that I really know a lot about guitars, mechanically. I just play them. He just kinda knows the feeling of the guitar I like. He put Bill Lawrence pickups on them; I don't know Bill Lawrence from Ernie Ball from anybody else, but they sound great and I still have 'em to this day."

Montoya last saw Mayall at the Mahindra Blues Festival in Mumbai some years ago, where each guested during the others' set. "We got to hang out for a few days and had wonderful, fun times," recalls Montoya, who's "starting to think about" his next album a follow-up to 2023's Writing on the Wall. "We were constantly telling each other, 'We live 20 minutes away from each other in California. How come we never see each other?! We should be hanging out!' I said, 'Well, John, let's try to make a pact to do that. Let's get together.' Unfortunately we never did; he was on the road, I was on the road.

"And the next thing you know he took ill and left us, which is still devastating to me, even though I know it was time. He was a great man, somebody I love dearly. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing and be out there without his influence."

In the mid '60s, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers was a potent breeding ground for some of Britain's best blues guitarists, with Eric Clapton, Peter Green, and Mick Taylor all cutting their teeth in the band.

Given his reputation, Mayall was always on the lookout for the next sensation when it came to replacing the sizable shoes each of his lead guitarists left behind. As it turns out, Jeff Beck was in Mayall's crosshairs sometime after the guitarist departed from the Yardbirds, whom he played with from 1965 to 1966.

“John called my mum several times,” Beck said in a recently republished interview with Guitar World from 2010. “He found my mum’s number, and she said to me, ‘Oh, that John Mayall sounds very nice!’ [laughs]”

Considering what a spot in Mayall's group could do for a player's career, the offer had to be tantalizing. Beck, however, had his reasons for turning down the bluesman.

“I didn’t want to be playing blues all of the time,” he said. Beck also acknowledged the weight of expectation that would be on whomever took up the role.

“I’d seen Eric with them, and he was fantastic, really. He did the job better than I could have, and I just didn’t want to have that challenge. My musical taste was changing radically from 12-bar blues.

“I might have done better in that band than in the Yardbirds," he added. “But I certainly would not have been given the same kind of free rein to do the experimenting that I did in the Yardbirds.”

Mayall had seen Beck strut his stuff in the band, itself a production line for hot-shot blues players, and he didn't mince words when he spoke to Beck afterward.

“He was very straightforward," Beck recalled. "He never embellished or gave us any flowery comments about the gig. He said, ‘The audience loved it, but there was not much blues, was there?’ And I thought, Excuse me, but this isn’t a blues band. It sort of was, but he’s a purist.

“I didn’t want to be mimicking Chicago blues musicians forever. My thinking was, ‘We’re not them, we’re not Black. We’re British middle-class kids and let’s get on and do our own music.’”

It's not clear at which point in the band's revolving door of lead guitarists Mayall pursued Beck. The mention of Clapton, who saw Beck as a rival, suggests it may have been around the time Peter Green talked his way into a spot in the band, or just after his short reign.

Certainly, the period following his departure from the Yardbirds was difficult for Beck. He was caught off guard when Jimi Hendrix arrived in London in late 1966 and began forging a heavy, experimental blues rock that pointed the way forward for rock guitarists.

“For me, the first shockwave was Jimi Hendrix," Beck said. "That was the major thing that shook everybody up over here. Even though we’d all established ourselves as fairly safe in the guitar field, he came along and reset all of the rules in one evening.”

Hendrix, then, nearly derailed Beck's career entirely. Beck was desperate to prove his worth against the run of the current.

“Next thing you know, Eric was moving ahead with Cream, and it was kicking off in big chunks. But me, I was left with nothing,” he says with an air of sadness. “That was the hurtful part because I didn’t have anything to come back at them with.”

Beck previously spoke about this period in his life, telling Guitar Player, “I'd lost my girl, Hendrix had come and smeared everybody across the floor... it wasn't looking too rosy.”

Dusting himself off, he told Guitar World that he “scraped by” with drummer Cozy Powell for 1971’s Rough and Ready and 1972’s Jeff Beck Group albums, and compared his power trio with bass player Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice to “Cream on acid”.

It wasn’t until 1975’s now iconic Blow by Blow album that Beck found the groove that established him as a solo artist and guitar icon in his own right.

When the guitarist known as the King of the Blues says, “He has the sweetest tone I ever heard. He was the only one who gave me cold sweats,” you know it’s high praise. And that’s exactly what B.B. King said about the late Peter Green, who passed away on July 25, 2020.

A major figure in the late-1960s British blues boom, Green was considered by many to be the best electric blues guitarist of his time. “Peter in his prime in the ’60s was just without equal,” said John Mayall, who hired him as the Bluesbreakers’ guitarist when Eric Clapton left to form Cream.

For a few years it seemed Green would be among a small group of guitarists to shape the direction of blues-rock. He formed Fleetwood Mac in ’67, but their success was short-lived for the young guitarist.

By 1970, his mental health had begun to deteriorate, fueled by excessive drug use. By the decade’s end, he was a casualty of the rock era. “I was very critically ill for a while there, you might say,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1998. “I’m not really back yet.”

He was born Peter Allen Greenbaum on October 29, 1946, in Bethnal Green, North London. When he was 10, an older brother brought home a guitar, and Green had found his calling. He developed quickly on the instrument, becoming a formidable player. He was just 19 in 1966, when Mayall hired him.

Despite Clapton’s legendary status, Green proved a very worthy successor both onstage and on record, contributing stellar guitar work with his iconic 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard fed through a Marshall amp on Mayall’s revolutionary A Hard Road album. (The guitar, dubbed Greeny, was purchased by Metallica’s Kirk Hammett in 2014 for an undisclosed sum.)

Green made his vocal debut on two of the album’s tracks, You Don’t Love Me and The Same Way, and was featured on a pair of instrumentals: a cover of Freddie King’s The Stumble and his own composition, The Super-Natural. The latter track demonstrated not only Green’s distinctive tone with his ’59 ’Burst but also his beautifully quivering vibrato and ability to sustain notes for up to 10 seconds using harmonic feedback.

But his time with Mayall was short. In 1967, he formed his own band, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, featuring Jeremy Spencer (a brilliant 19-year-old guitarist many considered Green’s equal), bassist Bob Brunning, and drummer Mick Fleetwood, who had been fired by Mayall.

The lineup solidified when John McVie, another Mayall alumni, replaced Brunning. With the addition of Danny Kirwan the following year as a third guitarist, the band’s name was shortened to simply Fleetwood Mac.

A series of British hits soon followed: Black Magic Woman, Oh, Well, The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown), Man of the World, and Albatross, which George Harrison acknowledged was the inspiration for the Beatles’ Abbey Road track Sun King.

Remarkably, that year, 1969, Fleetwood Mac sold more singles in Britain than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined. But amid the group’s rise, Green began consuming prodigious amounts of LSD and mescaline.

He grew a beard, performed in long white robes with a crucifix, and expressed disillusionment about fame and money, while his behavior on- and offstage became increasingly erratic. After a May 1970 concert, he walked away from the band that he had started.

Things went from bad to worse over the next years. In 1977, when Fleetwood Mac’s most commercially successful lineup was enjoying massive popularity with Rumours, Green, suffering from schizophrenia, was in a psychiatric hospital undergoing electroconvulsive shock therapy.

Following his release, the guitarist was never really able to get his career back on track, even after his old friend, guitarist Nigel Watson, convinced him in 1997 to join forces in a new band they called the Peter Green Splinter Group.

The band released eight albums in less than seven years, but received little attention. It was readily apparent to anyone attending the band’s shows that promoters were only using Green’s name to sell tickets. Watson, in addition to doing all the singing, was providing the lead guitar work, with Green not contributing much musically.

When I spoke with Green for this interview in 2003, around the release of his record Reaching the Cold 100, he expressed regret for his drug use and spoke vividly of one harrowing incident.

“I was still taking LSD one night before I left my house and smashed a car windscreen with a jar,” he said. “I was hearing voices. I wanted them to stop, but they wouldn’t stop. I blamed the drugs for what I did. That’s what happens when you take LSD. Your mind plays tricks on you when you’re hallucinating. But that’s all in the past now.” Despite his years in the wilderness, Green was never forgotten.

When Mick Fleetwood launched an all-star tribute concert for him at the London Palladium on February 25, 2020, prominent musicians and longtime admirers of his playing and music – including Pete Townshend, Billy Gibbons, David Gilmour, Bill Wyman, and Mayall – turned out to pay homage to the guitarist, who had done so much for blues. Sadly, Green was too ill to attend.

Reading this unpublished interview again after so many years reminded me of Peter Green’s innate ability to charm and give generously, qualities that were equally obvious in his music.

Peter, what was the first music you heard as a boy that really inspired you?

“My brother used to bring home these skiffle records. One that we really liked was Freight Train by Chas [McDevitt] and Nancy Whiskey, but Lonnie Donegan was the real king of skiffle. I loved the way he played his guitar and thought I should have a go at it. My brother gave me a guitar, an old Spanish hand-me-down. I didn’t know any chords. I was just strumming the thing open.

“I didn’t even know how to tune the guitar properly. I would just tune it in some way that appealed to my ear. Just made up my own chords. I played the strum over with my right hand, and with my left hand would just hold the neck someway comfortably, but I wouldn’t put my finger on the fretboard yet. I first learned how to strum, or ‘jang,’ as I used to call it.”

At what point did you feel accomplished enough to play out where people could hear you?

“When I got a little older, my family moved to Putney, which I was very pleased about, because it was a big upgrading from the flats we used to live in. Here, there were orchids around the building, and apple and pear trees that we could eat off of.

“Most days I’d go down the street, and I would take my guitar and stand on the pavement side of the roadside of the building, just ‘janging’ – just standing there with a big smile on my face.”

You’ve cited Hank Marvin of the Shadows as a big early guitar hero of yours. What was it that most appealed to you about his guitar playing?

“That slinky sound. He had this gorgeous Fiesta Red Stratocaster, and he would get this very special Stratocaster sound from it. What I especially liked was the way he was very gentle with the tremolo arm. It was the coming of the use of the tremolo arm.”

When did you start learning to play the electric bass?

“At the time I was a young man, maybe only 17, if that, and I was still working part-time in the daytime as a French polisher, but in the evenings I was playing bass guitar with a group called the Muskrats. The guys lived halfway towards Richmond, in Sheen, so that’s where we would hold our rehearsals.

“I would also go watch the Yardbirds rehearse, and I started copying and learning from Paul Samwell-Smith, who was playing bass for the original version of the Yardbirds that Eric Clapton was in. I soon discovered that I could hold my bass the way the Yardbirds used to hold their guitars. This got me into some sort of really strange moods.”

Do you recall an early meeting with John Mayall?

“Yes. One day I went over to John’s house to apply for the job in such a way as to get it. John set his guitar aside and started playing the piano, while I played along with him. We recorded it, played it back, and it sounded fantastic. Absolutely lovely. The blues sounded absolutely gorgeous.”

There must have been a lot of pressure on you when you replaced Eric Clapton in Mayall’s group, especially when people were going around London scribbling things on walls like “Clapton is God.” Did you feel intimidated following in his footsteps? I mean, those were pretty big shoes to try to fill.

“No, because it was me who said he was God. [laughs] I was the one who kind of found him in my God-sort-of dreams. God was causing it. Someone said to me, ‘Clapton’s not God.’ I said, ‘Yes, he is, and that’s a guarantee!’ Then I saw the God quotes in the paper and thought, ‘Well, it didn’t come from me, from my discovery, from my sort of confession.’ I suppose I was destined to follow in Eric Clapton’s footsteps. A lot of people were saying that at the time.”

This seems like almost a very clichéd question, but people have debated over the years whether a white musician can play the blues with the same authenticity as a black person.

“I’m an honorable guy, so I would say I’m not really playing blues myself. If there is any discrepancy or debate about what you’re asking, I went to a club in New Orleans once with someone who wouldn’t allow what his privilege was, and he made me remember that blues is brown-skin music.

“He was a very clever bloke, very, very good with words, and he said to me, ‘When I go out to see blues played, I know what color skin I want to see doing it.’ I said, ‘Well, of course, obviously,’ so perhaps that’s the ultimate answer.”

Back in the ’70s, you lost a lot of time from your career when you were hospitalized. What memories do you have of that period?

“It wasn’t my idea. I was tricked into going into the hospital and then being forced to take these tranquilizers, which was my most hated thing. I would say, ‘Look, I’m just trying to stay awake,’ but you ain’t gonna be able to do that. You’re left half asleep, with a sudden drop in identity, what I call ‘falsely complimented.’ They also tricked me into having the ECT [electroconvulsive therapy].

“This doctor kept saying to me, ‘Let me first give you a little injection,’ and I said, ‘No, no, no!’ but he did it anyway. The whole time I was there, I was just trying to survive and routining. No pleasures, no luxuries, just going on the food lines, walking around and around, and watching television.”

I know your many fans are delighted seeing you back onstage.

“Well, when I first started doing shows again, it felt really strange, but I’ve since experienced the joy of feeling what it’s like playing with other people again.”

It must be great having Nigel with you.

“Believe me or not, it’s really him having me with him, even though he’s more of a worldly person. He’s more of a realist who conducts matters over cold ground.”

When you’re performing, is it much easier having Nigel doing all the singing?

“Yes, it is easier, because I can concentrate more on guitar. I do like to sing, but I’d hardly consider myself a vocalist. I would hope to be considered a guitarist.”

Do you have any particular favorite blues guitarists?

“Well, I would start off with Skip James. And who’s the one who did the song about a candyman?”

I think you’re referring to Mississippi John Hurt.

“Yes, a great fingerpicking style, that right hand of his. What I’m into now is more the right hand of a player.”

Of course, you made a terrific tribute album to Robert Johnson [1998’s The Robert Johnson Songbook].

“You’re talking about a really great guitar player. Went through some very troubled times, but a great player. Absolutely.”

What type of gear are you currently using, starting with amps?

“Right now I’m using a [Fender] Prosonic with 10-inch speakers and 18-inch speaker cabinets. I’ve got a Vox that I don’t use any more, except sometimes in the studio. I used to have a Vox bass amp with a lot of treble settings that I used for my first guitar playing, and also a Fender Blues DeVille that went to my guitar tech.”

What about guitars? Are you still mainly using Stratocasters and your Howard Roberts Fusion?

“The Howard Roberts is still settling in nicely onstage, and I have two Stratocasters, one of which I use for slide. I never thought I would do that, but the pickups sound so good. It sounds like Hawaiian guitar pickups.”

And the Harmony Meteor?

“Oh, yeah, I’m still using that too. It’s a fabulous guitar, and I also have an Epiphone. I was using them both onstage together, which was interesting.”

And for guitar strings, nine or 10 gauge?

“I would never touch a nine or a 10. I actually prefer 11s or 12s, and at one time used 13s. Especially for slide, I prefer really heavy strings. And I also prefer playing without a pick, because I don’t want to have to think about it.”

Which guitars do you find work best for slide?

“I have a pink Stratocaster with a lovely suede case that was given to me as a birthday present from one of the boys at Fender. I use that mostly for rhythm. For the lead parts onstage I like to use my Seafoam Green Stratocaster.”

Are there any particular guitars that you find are better suited to studio work, and vice versa?

“No, I’m usually in the dark about things like that, so we try getting a balance between different ones, and if something doesn’t sound right, we’ll try something else. We do try using different guitars in the studio, so sometimes I find myself playing something that’s really strange to me.”

Do you find as much enjoyment using acoustics in the studio as electrics?

“Whatever the tune is, I’ll have a go at it, and we’ll figure out what it needs. I do get nervous playing acoustics in the studio, because it’s very hard to get a good sound. Many times the sound comes out flat.”

You once said you’d never play a Les Paul again. What made you say that at the time?

“Well, l don’t know. It was an interesting thing to have, but a bit too heavy for me. The other day, I saw one and kind of liked it, so I might keep an eye out for another one. Sometimes when you’ve got something really perfect, you don’t realize it. I once had a mahogany one with an ebony finish and three pickups [a Les Paul Custom].

“I felt like buying it and sending it to Eric Clapton, but he’s probably already got one. In some ways, I regret ever buying a Les Paul guitar. I sort of overshadowed his breakthrough. I still feel sort of unaccomplished though, so I bought an electric piano to have in my house. I fiddle around with it. It’s quite nice, you know.”

When you saw the massive success Fleetwood Mac was having with the Rumours album, did you ever regret leaving and not being a part of it?

“Once or twice I felt if I was to go back with them, or just do something like a guest appearance at a few shows, that would be okay, but I guess I just needed a lift.”

How did it feel being with the group at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction [in 1998]? Was that really a special thing for you?

“Nobody understands what that whole thing is all about. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame… Inducted? Vinducted? Theraducted? I don’t really accept anything like that. I’ll have to think more about it and tell you the next time we talk.”

Is it harder now coming up with the inspiration for new songs?

“Not harder, but I’m always studying the development, or lack of development, in the old songs that I do. Always studying. That’s where my sort of creative forces of energies would be applying themselves to. It can be found there on the old songs that we do – see if we can improve on them in any way.”

Looking back on the troubled times you’ve been through, do you have any personal regrets?

“No, I think it’s better to have suffered in life and been uncomfortable than comfortable. If you’re comfortable in life, I think the blues might evade you. Suffering is something holy, something very sad. If you grow up a rich kid with no problems, you miss a lot.”

When you left Fleetwood Mac, you felt that it was wrong for rock stars to make massive sums of money. Do you still think that’s true?

“No. Back then, the acidheads had a different opinion, but I have no proof that rock stars have any money. They’ve never given any to me or taken me to any lavish restaurants! It could be interesting to say that rock stars have a lot of money, to take away the original sin; if the rock star keeps on rocking, he’s going to be repeating himself. They all do seem to have something I haven’t got, but they can keep it. It’s something I don’t want. [laughs] It gets to be more than a curse.”

Some of the world's biggest and best guitar players have taken to social media to salute John Mayall after it was announced the blues legend had passed away at 90.

Though his work with the Bluesbreakers is perhaps best known for launching the career of a litany of household names, a surge of heartfelt tributes have instead remembered the man himself; his talent, and the legacy that he’s left behind, which extends far beyond shining the limelight on others.

Mayall produced more than 50 albums across a tireless 60-year career, with A Hard Road (1967), USA Union (1970), and Back To The Roots (1971) a trio of highlights.

His magnum opus, however, will always be 1966’s Eric Clapton-powered Blues Breakers: John Mayall with Eric Clapton (AKA The Beano Album).

Joe Bonamassa, a blues guitar luminary in his own right, reflected on the importance that album held for generations of guitarists in a poignant Instagram post.

“I loved this man. I loved this man's music,” he said. “Any suburban white kid at all interested in the blues from the 60s, 70's, 80's, or 90's learned to play guitar from the 'Beano' album.

“John's importance in music is as profound as the guitarists he hired. Yes, he employed Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Mick Fleetwood, Mickey Waller, Andy Fraser, Walter Trout, and countless other legends of the blues with The Bluesbreakers, but there is something more though than just his musical legacy.

“He was a wonderful guy that changed the game for all of us, made us all smile and appreciate the blues and the work ethic that is required to be a lifelong touring musician.”

A teary Eric Clapton took to Instagram to say a few words about his friend, John, who famously brought Clapton into the Bluesbreakers after he had left the Yardbirds and was on the brink of giving up on music.

“I want to say thank you, chiefly, for rescuing me from oblivion and god knows what when I was a young man when I decided I was going to quit music,” he says, the emotion wavering in his voice.

“He found me, and he took me into his home and asked me to join his band. I stayed with him and learned all I have to draw on today in terms of technique and desire to play the kind of music I love to play. I did all my research in his home, in his record collection.

“[Playing in his band] was a fantastic experience. He was my mentor and a surrogate father. He gave me the courage and enthusiasm to express myself without fear or limit.”

Walter Trout, who – as Bonamassa alludes to – featured in a later iteration of the Bluesbreakers, paid homage to a man who “will always be my musical mentor,” saying: “We just lost a giant. I loved him like a father, and I always will.”

Mick Jagger also paid his respects. Taking to X, the vocalist underlined the role Mayall’s Bluesbreakers played in the legacy of the Rolling Stones.

“He was a great pioneer of British blues and had a wonderful eye for talented young musicians,” he said, “including Mick Taylor – who he recommended to me after Brian Jones died – ushering in a new era for the Stones.”

His bandmate Ronnie Wood called Mayall “an important figure in the English blues scene” who “nurtured the talent of many great guitarists”. He concluded his tribute by saying that the Macclesfield-born musician was “a walking encyclopedia of American and English blues and a musical trailblazer for all of us.”

Progressive rock legend Steve Hackett called Mayall “a true champion of the blues,” in his tribute, saying that “he remains a huge inspiration to me and a legion of other musicians.”

Black Sabbath bass player, Geezer Butler, meanwhild echoed a sentiment that is as true for heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath as it is for numerous other bands.

“Sad to hear of John Mayall’s passing,” he says. “His album with Eric Clapton as the Bluesbreakers inspired tons of British bands.

“Safe to say without that album there probably wouldn’t be a Black Sabbath and definitely not a [pre-Sabbath iteration] Polka Talk Blues Band! RIP John Mayall, thanks for the inspiration.”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – a pantheon of greats he will be inducted into later this year – called him, simply, the “godfather” of the blues.

John Mayall, one of the most important players in the history of blues guitar, has died aged 90. 

The legendary British guitarist was the mastermind behind the Bluesbreakers, helping launch the careers of some of the most prestigious blues and rock musicians to ever grace the stage. 

Those names include Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood, Mick Taylor, Jack Bruce, and John McVie. But his talents extended far beyond providing a platform for other luminaries, he was a hugely celebrated songwriter and performer in his own right. 

Mayall’s family published a statement confirming the news, having passed away surrounded by his family in his California home on Monday (July 22).   

The statement reads: “It is with heavy hearts that we bear the news that John Mayall passed away peacefully in his California home yesterday, July 22, 2024, surrounded by his loving family. 

“Health issues that forced John to end his epic touring career have finally led to peace for one of this world’s greatest road warriors. John Mayall gave us ninety years of tireless efforts to educate, inspire, and entertain.

“We, the Mayall family, cannot thank his fans and long list of bandmembers enough for the support and love we were blessed to experience secondhand over the last six decades. 

“Keep on playing the blues somewhere, John. We love you.”

Mayall, born in Macclesfield, England in 1933, picked up the guitar at an early age, influenced by his father’s collection of blues and jazz records. 

His first proper electric guitar – a semi-electric Weldone hollow body made on a shoestring budget – came after a period of playing the banjo and ukelele. He purchased it in Japan in 1954, while on a week’s leave from the Army.

“It’s the guitar that’s on the cover of [Mayall’s 1967 album] The Blues Alone,” he told Guitar World. “I did all the fancy carved engraving to make it look more distinctive. It started out as a regular six-string guitar, but I tried making it into a 12-string. It was a great guitar.”

Mayall moved to London in the early ‘60s, chasing his dreams of becoming a professional musician, masterminding the Bluesbreakers in February ‘63. 

His Bluesbreakers collective would go on to feature a dizzying array of talented musicians, many of whom forged their own storied careers as a result of the band’s springboard. 

Eric Clapton is arguably the most prolific alumnus. As Clapton once regaled to Guitar Player, Mayall resurrected the guitarist’s floundering career in the wake of his departure from another virtuoso breeding ground, the Yardbirds. 

“I was 19 when I left the Yardbirds,” Clapton told GP in 1967. “I intended to give up then. But John Mayall offered me a job and I took it because I needed the bread, and I needed some kind of identity too, because I was very down.“ 

The Mayall-Clapton partnership would then forge Blues Breakers: John Mayall with Eric Clapton (AKA The Beano Album) in 1966. Today it is heralded as, not just one of the all-time classic blues albums, but a trailblazer that inspired the sound of generations of players. 

The album's recording session was immortalized by Eric Clapton who, through a desire to crank the volume, pioneered the now staple combination of a Les Paul played through a hard-pushed Marshall tube amp. 

Looking back on the sessions, Clapton told Guitar Player in 1985: “I remember reading an interview with [engineer] Gus Dudgeon where he said that I put my amp in a certain place, and he went over and put a mic in front of it, and I said, ‘No, put the microphone over there on the other side of the room because I’m going to play loud.’ I think that sounds like it would be true.”

Clapton’s amp of choice was a 1962 2x12 45-watt Marshall combo tube amp, which forever after became known as a Bluesbreaker. The thick and creamy tones of his PAF-loaded Les Paul were another crucial ingredient in the iconic tone.  

Mayall dedicated a six-decade career to the music he loved, and there’s a long list of players who wouldn’t be much without his influence. He released more than 50 albums and will, at long last, be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame later this year. 

“I’m proud of everything I’ve done,” a then 86-year-old Mayall told Guitar World. “I’m glad people still enjoy listening to my music. I’ve never had any hit records or things that you might think would be important, but whatever I’ve done, I’m glad it still exists.” 

This article originally appeared in the June 1967 issue of Guitar Player.

Cream is just that – three jazz veterans skimmed off the top of British rock. Since their U.S. arrival a year ago, they have continued to groove growing audiences with one of the best avant-garde sounds in the electric scene.

Their sound has firm roots in the extemporaneous beat of 20-year-old drummer, Ginger Baker. But what has made Cream rise to the top is the mindbending styles of guitarists Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce. 22-year-old Eric, whose lead guitar unwinds on top of the staging provided by Jack and Ginger, has been called one of the best artists of his kind in the world – by such guitarists as Mike Bloomfield and Jerry Garcia.

Eric Clapton is a veteran of the original and much-lauded Yardbirds, and has worked with blues artist John Mayall.

“I was 19 when I left the Yardbirds. I intended to give up then. But John Mayall offered me a job and I took it because I needed the bread, and I needed some kind of identity too, because I was very down.“

Eric played with Mayall for a year and a half and picked up the double cutaway Gibson he still uses today. He worked lead as well – as setting-up most of the group’s new arrangements. Finishing that gig, he left for Greece.

“I was about 20 or 21 and I took some musicians with me. We had this big thing about working our way around the world as a band. We got to Greece and broke up.“

Then, there was the time in Greece that Clapton had to escape from a club...

“I couldn’t get my amp out of the club because they would have cut my hands off, so I just managed to get away with my guitar.“

After that, Eric returned to the States and joined up again with Mayall, remaining with him until Cream was formed. Eric had started playing the guitar at 16, a Kay electric with an old Vox amp his parents had bought for him. He claims his “hanging-around“ with guitarists was the reason for his dismissal from the art school near London that he was attending. He began by teaching himself to play folk-blues.

“I found out all I could about the different Delta styles – people like Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton. The musical thought which was going through the whole thing interested me, and it still does. I find it incredibly fascinating because there ware a lot of things which just can’t be explained – like the inventiveness going around at that time.“

Blues echoes throughout Eric’s work, whether he is trying to play blues or not – but it is a different style of blues, Eric’s own style.

“Everything I play is structurally blues,“ he says. “If you ask me to play baroque or Indian music, or something except blues, I wouldn’t be able to. Whether or not I’m playing pure blues isn’t the point, but whether or not I’m playing it good or bad is.“ 

Since he began playing in Cream almost two years ago, Eric feels he has grown – that he has learned to expand on his sense of timing. As we have seen, he admits his sound is not strictly blues because Cream is unique, a mixture of the different styles each of the trio brought with him to the group.

“Our music cannot be categorized, because a lot of the material we play is not blues – it’s another thing completely, probably brand new.“

Jack Bruce is a quiet Scotsman who came to Cream from Manfred Mann. He plays bass and writes and sings most of the vocals, but he does not claim to be a “lyric writer or poet.“ 

“When I write words for songs they are very simple thoughts that could come to anyone’s mind – that normally occur to people.“

When he was 13, Jack had studied both the bass and the cello, but circumstances allowed the cello to win out during his earlier years.

“There happened to be a bass in school which I played because it was there. It was a big bass and I was only about four feet tall, so I tried standing on chairs and things but it really didn’t work. 

“This teacher there was an old-time bass player and he was really great. He told me to go away and come back when I was big enough, so in the meantime I played cello. I started playing bass again after I left school and I picked it up in two days. It was a natural thing.“

Charlie Mingus was one of the first musicians to influence Jack. “He was doing the same things I was, only he was doing them better,“ he says. 

Jack played with several groups and found he would be better off with an electric, because as the music grew louder, his string bass was coming on weaker and weaker.

“I didn’t know anything about amplification, so I just got these amplifiers and tied bits of wire from one to another in this big, huge pile. It was a fantastic sound, but it blew me up, so I decided I had to go and buy some real stuff.“

This led Jack to get a Fender six-string bass and a Vox amp. Cream has two albums out on Atco labels, Fresh Cream, and more recently, Disraeli Gears. Jack claims things simply happened during their recording sessions.

“We don’t really know what songs we’re going to do when we go into the studio. I read an article in a magazine lately about how the Beatles recorded Baby You’re A Rich Man, and the way they did it is almost exactly the same way we record. We get a good sound track and then fool around with it.“ 

The group recorded Disraeli Gears in four days as sort of an “impromptu thing.“ Eric calls the album “kind of a cross between what we are like in the studio and what we’re like on stage.“

Both Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton record through the board, instead of using an open mic. 

“I’ve been forced to go through the board,“ says Jack. “In England, they heard my sound and it was so unlike any bass sound that they thought it was wrong, and would take my amp away.“

When recording they use only one amplifier apiece, a Marshall. But on stage they build a different sound, using two separate 100-watt amps, each amp running through two large cabinets, with each cabinet holding four twelve-inch speakers. They don’t rely on feedback for intensity. Eric is opposed to feedback because he admits he has never been able to really control it.

“You see,“ he says. “our sound is like an old blues sound, but heavily amplified. The sound I’ve always wanted and like is the sound that all those people used on the very early records of Muddy Waters, you get it? It’s that sound, only much louder. I think a lot of people are getting hung-up about getting mechanical sound. They’re trying to invent ways of doing it to hide the fact they can’t do it with their fingers.“

So Cream makes music, their own kind of music. Blues, rock, jazz, call it what you want. Even they have difficulty defining it.

As Jack says, “You can talk about the things that happen when you’re making music, but you can’t talk about the music itself because it’s a sound. It doesn’t translate the same way words do.“

Two landmark guitar releases, both solo debuts, came along within a few months of each other in 1968 to open my youthful ears and blow my 14-year-old mind. And yet, one so completely overshadowed the other as to render it to relative obscurity. I’m referring to the near-simultaneous releases of Jeff Beck’s Truth, which came out on July 29 of that year, and Harvey Mandel’s Cristo Redentor, issued that November.

Beck, of course, was already famous, having succeeded Eric Clapton in the wildly popular Yardbirds in 1965 and appeared with the band the following year in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow-Up. He also had major-label backing for his solo debut, courtesy of Epic Records. Mandel had already put in his time on Chicago’s active blues scene, making his recording debut in 1966 on Barry Goldberg’s Blowing My Mind and appearing on 1967’s Stand Back! Here Comes Charley Musselwhite’s Southside Band, a seminal recording that, along with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s East-West released that same year, bridged the gap between blues and rock and roll.

Harvey’s solo debut on the smaller Dutch-American Philips Records – the same label that had released albums by Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel and the Singing Nun – simply did not have the visibility or promotional muscle to compete against a major-label juggernaut like Epic.

While both albums were life-altering experiences for listeners back then, and they continue to stagger to this day, Mandel’s instrumental solo debut was an overlooked masterpiece. Produced by Abe “Voco” Kesh (née Keshishian), a San Francisco radio DJ and producer who helmed Blue Cheer’s Vincebus Eruptum (which included their hit cover of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues”), Mandel’s Cristo Redentor was a landmark melding of rock, jazz, blues, country, quasi-classical and soul, with some experimental guitar work thrown in for good measure.

That includes his use of backward guitar effects, a manual tape-flipping process introduced by the Beatles on “I’m Only Sleeping,” from 1966’s Revolver, and perfected by Jimi Hendrix on the title track to 1967’s Are You Experienced. Harvey’s infinite sustain on his Les Paul goldtop – his entire solo on the title track consists of a single note sustained over the percolating groove for an astounding 56 bars – is why he was later dubbed the Sustain King.

Cristo Redentor was ahead of its time and still sounds fresh and invigorating today. Accurately described in reviews in 1968 as a “gently psychedelic album,” it garnered enough underground attention from guitar aficionados to help launch Mandel’s solo career. He was invited to join Canned Heat in 1969 and appeared with the group at the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival, where his controlled use of feedback near the end of the band’s signature tune, “On the Road Again,” and wicked finger vibrato and string bends on the shuffling “I’m Her Man” were highlights of his performance.

Harvey would subsequently join forces with blues violinist Sugarcane Harris to form the band Pure Food and Drug Act and also play with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers in 1971. He was later recruited to play on the Rolling Stones’ 1976 album, Black and Blue, unleashing his patented licks on the funky “Hot Stuff” and the ballad “Memory Motel.”

On his own, Mandel quickly followed up the success of Cristo Redentor with 1969’s Righteous, with string and horn arrangements by noted jazz arranger Shorty Rogers, and 1970’s Games Guitars Play, which featured more of his signature sustain tones and backward guitar effects. After parting company with Philips, he released a succession of four albums on the Janus label, including 1972’s The Snake and 1973’s Shangrenade, the latter of which introduced his use of two-handed tapping on the fretboard, a trick that would later be picked up by a young Eddie Van Halen after seeing Harvey performing at the Whisky a Go Go on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood.

Following the release of 1974’s Feel the Sound, Mandel would experience a 20-year recording drought before putting out his eighth album as a leader, 1994’s Twist City. He has released 11 albums since then, the most recent being 2022’s Who’s Calling, his second for the Tompkins Square label. Created in the privacy of his home studio, utilizing primarily his ornately painted Parker Fly Mojo with DiMarzio pickups (which he’s dubbed his Snake guitar) directly into Pro Tools, Harvey’s latest has him interacting intuitively with pre-recorded rhythm tracks laid down by bassist Andy Hess and drummer Ryan Jewell, both of whom also recorded live in the studio with Mandel on 2016’s Snake Pit.

Dazzling chops and sustain lines abound on tracks like “Robo Snake,” “Crazy Town” and the title track. And his use of tightly orchestrated overdubbed guitar parts on tunes like “Moon Talk” and the funky “See You Around” give the effect of Harvey playing through a harmonizer.

Though plagued since 2011 by health issues – he’s mounted a GoFundMe page to help defray the cost of multiple cancer surgeries – the Sustain King is still wailing with abandon at the age of 77, as Who’s Calling so readily reveals.

It was a great treat for me to interview Harvey Mandel, who I first saw play at Humpin’ Hannah’s in Milwaukee, circa 1972. He was calling from his home in San Francisco.

This new album was done very differently than your previous ones.

Yes, Who’s Calling was completely different than Snake Pit. We did that all live at Fantasy Studios. In fact, we were one of the last to go in there and actually record live before they permanently closed the place. So the new record was an idea of Josh Rosenthal from Tompkins Square Records, who also did the Snake Pit album. He put the two guys, bass player and drummer, in a studio and just had them lay a few different grooves down. Then they gave it to me, and everything else you’re hearing is me in Pro Tools with my guitar and a few toys.

I was actually able to take chunks of their stuff and, through musical trickery, through knowing how to work Pro Tools so well, I was able to come up with every one of those songs that sound really original. They were all built off of these simple little beats and drum things. And the entire thing was done with no amplifier. I would put the guitar through a few pedals and then into Pro Tools.

And I don’t like to brag, but technically, playing-wise, this is definitely some of the best that I’ve ever done. If you heard the rhythm tracks just by themselves, it would be hard for you to imagine how I ever came up with what I did on these songs. But I just heard it my mind and knew what I could do. 

I’d go into my little studio with the Pro Tools setup and do a hundred takes if I felt like it, just experimenting with different ways to play over those rhythms. I always try to come up with some magic for each song. I’m not a music guy, where I can sit and read notes or transcribe a solo and all that. I just never got into that. But God gave me a good ear.

It sounds like you’re a very intuitive cat.

I can hear what’s good for songs, especially in the studio by myself. If you go in with a band, the bass player knows his part, the drummer knows his part, it’s live in the studio and you can only take it so far. But when in my home studio, I can experiment and come up with all kinds of weird shit that I would never be able to do in a regular studio situation without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in studio time. But I could sit here in my own studio for four or five hours and come up with total magic.

To me, that’s the best way. I hear a song, the track is all worked up, it’s all EQ’d, it’s all ready to go, and I can lay the magic right in there where I want it.

What guitars are you currently playing?

I have eight or nine guitars that are my special ones that I use on everything. If I want to get a Strat sound, I have a John Petrucci Music Man guitar. And then I’ve got three custom Ken Parker guitars that I got way back when they first came out. These are the original ones, the best of Parker back then, because that’s when Ken was doing all the work himself.

I remember Pat Martino played a Parker Fly for a while.

Yeah. That’s how I got into the Parker thing. I was at the NAMM show and I had just gone over to see Pat Martino, who I was friends with. He was there with the Parker representative, and he said to the guy, “You should get Harvey Mandel on Parker.” The next thing you know, a few days later, I got a brand-new first Parker guitar in the mail. And after that, I ended up with another two or three of them.

The one custom job they made for me, I call it my Snake Guitar. It’s got all that beautiful artwork and stuff. That’s probably the main one that I use now. I played it quite a bit on Who’s Talking. And for special things I have all these other guitars. But my main all-round guitar is the Snake Guitar. I can play all the blues and can do all the bending; I can do all the creative shit. And the neck is not so big that I can’t chord it properly. That’s still my best all-round guitar.

Does your Snake Guitar have a whammy bar on it?

Yes, but not a real dive-bomb whammy, like the Ibanez JEM 7, the Steve Vai guitar that I got. You can grab the whammy bar on that thing and swing it around without breaking the guitar. It’s a whole different system. The Parker whammy is a different system than a Floyd Rose, who really got it all together with the whammy. I would like to get a setup like that on the Snake Guitar. But I don’t do a lot of crazy whammy stuff on that guitar. I have other guitars so I can do all the crazy stuff. Whatever is called for, I have the guitar that’ll take care of business.

If you go back to Cristo Redentor and Righteous, your tone is so warm and creamy. I’m guessing it’s a Les Paul.

Not totally. I had some other Gibson axes on that album too, maybe an ES-355 for some things. I go through periods. I had a Gibson period; I had a Strat period. I like the Ibanez. Truth is, there’s so many good guitars today it’s hard to pick one from another. But I’m really happy I got the Parker guitars. They’re so light. They’re good for my little body. I have small hands, so it’s easier for me to control that one. It’s much harder for me to play, like, a full-sized Strat or other guitars like that, because my hand isn’t as big. If you look at Steve Vai’s fingers, the guy’s got, like, giant long fingers. I’m just the opposite. I got small hands.

Do you still have that Les Paul from Cristo Redentor in your arsenal?

No, that’s a sad story. I had this guitar tech guy in Chicago who was doing a lot of stuff for me – it wasn’t long after I did Baby Batter [1971] – and he tried to put a Floyd Rose on that guitar. But to do it, he had to scoop out a hunk of wood in the back to put the springs in. As soon as he did that and we put the guitar back together, it was ruined. The sustain was gone and we could never get that guitar to sound right again. I ended up giving it away. It was one of the best guitars I ever had. The tone was astronomical. I could get another Les Paul, but it wouldn’t be the same.

Cristo Redentor was an amazing landmark. When it first came out, and even now, it sounds like a revelation. The stuff that you’re innovating on that record is unbelievable. You open with this Duke Pearson tune with strings, and you injected backward guitar throughout that record. Where were you coming from with all that?

That had to do with my producer, Abe Kesh. With my crazy stuff and his crazy ideas and all the stuff we put together, we came up with a lot of original sounds.

How did you pull off the backward guitar on Cristo Redentor and Games Guitars Play?

Back then, I had to do it the hard way. We had to get the two-inch reel, turn it around on the machine and play over a certain section. So all I could do is determine the beat to make sure that I was locked in and in the right spot. And just through experience and experimentation, I was able to play licks that worked. So when they put the tape back on proper and you’re listening to it going in the right direction, it sounded perfect the way I did it. I didn’t plan it out, but I had the ability to hear the tape backwards.

And it was a miracle, because I was flying by the seat of my pants. It was the first time I was ever doing any of that stuff in the studio, but it all worked out great. I’d know where the beat was, and I was able to set up the section with the ingenuity of, “This is where I was going to be utilizing that effect.” And I could start a little early, go a little late, and we just edited that out. No problem.

Nowadays, I can get a lot of that sound just from pedals. I don’t have to worry about syncing up a backward part by turning the tape over and recording. With Pro Tools, you can turn shit around. You can do anything. Anything you can do with the tape machine, you can do with Pro Tools, if you know what you’re doing.

One of the things that really jumped out at me when I heard Baby Batter for the first time, and when I listen to it now, is the very aggressive finger vibrato that you got going on that album. It’s like B.B. King on steroids.

Yeah, there’s no whammy bar in there. That was just pure Les Paul and my fingers. That’s one of the things I’m good at. I’m good at getting the sustain. I can imitate all the different vibratos – a B.B. King vibrato, an Albert King vibrato. Sometimes I pull the string down, sometimes I push it up. Sometimes I shake the entire neck up and down. Other times I shake just the wrist. B.B. King’s a wrist guy.

So when I was learning, I tried to learn all the different ways you could do it, and my own style came out of that. So now when I’m playing, I’m not even thinking about it. When I hit a certain note and it needs a vibrato, one will automatically be put on there without even having to think about it. If it’s in my mind, it’s already there in my fingers.

You must have gained some of that knowledge from seeing all the real-deal blues cats coming up in Chicago.

Definitely. I used to play down at Twist City all the time. All the good guys were down there, so I was lucky. I got to see everybody. I jammed with Buddy Guy so many times. When you watch Buddy Guy, even though he’s a wild man… he’s not technically real perfect, you know, because he gets a lot of weird sounds on the instrument. But he can play his ass off. Unbelievable bending and shaking and vibrato. And I was able to see that every night in person. It soaked into my brain, and it wasn’t long before I could imitate and do that same stuff.

So you got these things ingrained in you, but you also put a really unique spin on it – your own vocabulary, so to speak.

I try to. Nobody can be the best guitar player. There’s no such thing as the best. I can name the top 10 guys, and each one of them is total magic within themselves. And I’m just trying to be one of those. I have a certain style. I can play certain licks and stuff that nobody else would do exactly that same way.

You’ve been a complete original your entire career. And yet you never broke through to that level of visibility that some guitarists have attained.

It’s unfortunate that I didn’t ever get with a band like a Van Halen, where I had, like, a pop band to get hits, because that’s how those guys all got known. I didn’t get well known because, by the time it might’ve happened, Canned Heat had petered out and I was off on my own. And not being a lead singer was a handicap, of course. I was never able to record any good pop songs, so I ended up being an instrumentalist.

Unless you’re like a Jeff Beck or a Pat Martino, it’s very hard to have a career just doing instrumentals. But I’ve done it on my own level.

You mentioned Van Halen. And, of course, a lot of people have noted that you were doing two-handed tapping long before Eddie Van Halen ever did.

He actually came to the Whisky a Go Go when I was playing there one night in L.A. and saw me do the finger-tapping thing. And, of course, he took off with it – went his own way and did it great. But he totally got the idea from me. He totally took my thing and went nuts with it and did his thing. And now, for the past 40 years, the whole world has been doing finger tapping.

You initiated that technique on your 1973 album, Shangrenade.

Yeah, every song, every note of guitar you’re hearing on that record, except for the rhythm playing, I’m doing finger tapping. All those melodies, everything I did is total finger-tap style. And everything wasn’t about doing the real fast thing like Eddie Van Halen did. It’s more slow melodies, some soloing, but still going back and forth from one hand to the other, totally tapping. It’s all fingertips.

Are you still tapping on your records?

Just a very little bit here and there. Of course, we’re hearing some similarities on occasion, but every one of my records is different. Different style, sound, guitar, toys, studio and vibe.

On some of the songs from Who’s Calling, it sounds like you’re doing fingerstyle comping, like on “Crazy Town.”

I’m playing with fingers on every song. I don’t play with the pick. I haven’t played with a pick now in over 10 years. Everything you’re hearing is my thumb and my three fingers on the right hand – mostly the thumb and middle finger. I call it hybrid picking, but there’s no pick – it’s all fingers. I can get that fatter, fleshier tone using my fingers. I could do the same lick with a pick and it won’t sound the same; it’s always a little thinner, a little tinnier.

The fingers give a magic sound. And I just happened to do it one day on the gig, and I thought, Let me try to play all of the songs without using the pick. So I did it all night, and it was the best I’ve played in years. After that I said, “That’s it. I’m done with the pick.” And now it’s just natural for me to work that way.

And it doesn’t effect your speed on your solos?

No. The only thing a pick can do that I can’t do is, like, shred metal guitar. That’s not my bag anyway.

But look at jazz players like Joe Pass, who can play incredible runs at fast speeds. And he used to play with his fingers. It depends on the person. If it’s in your mind, if you can hear it, if you can see it and you’re good enough, you can get away with it.

Wes Montgomery played lines that were so unbelievably fluid, all without a pick.

Yes. He could take his thumb and make it work like a pick. I can’t quite do it all with the thumb, so I use thumb and middle finger, which is different than everyone else. I’ll use my thumb and my other fingers for chording, claw style.

Other times I’m just using my thumb and middle finger for playing single-note lines and I’ll have all the speed I need. And using fingers, it all comes out sounding perfect. Playing with a pick can be great in the hands of the right person. I’m not that person. I’m not as good with the pick as I am with my fingers.

On some of the tracks on Who’s Calling, like “Robo Snake,” “Moon Talk” and “Last Walk,” it sounds like you’re playing through a harmonizer.

Not a harmonizer on the guitar as far as an effect, but rather harmonizing with real guitars doing it. All the parts you hear are me playing them. There is no harmonizer on any of this record.

You did that on past recordings as well, like on Games Guitars Play, where you had a multiple harmony guitars thing, sort of like the Allman Brothers.

Yeah, on all my records, if you’re hearing harmonies, you’re hearing the real guitars doing parts. I can’t even think of anything that I’ve done where I used a harmonizer. And I have those tools. I have the Eventide H9 Harmonizer, which I can get just about any guitar sound on planet earth with. The equipment I have now is good because I surely can get all the different sounds that I want. I can imitate or innovate.

Do you listen back to your old records?

No. Once I make a record, I’ve already heard it 100 times. After that, I’m done with it. Once in a while I’ll go back for the fun of it and listen to Baby Batter and go, “Damn! I actually could play good!” And that was, like, 50 years ago. Of course, everyone does all that stuff now, but back then very few people played like that.

“The blues had a baby,” goes the old Muddy Waters line, “and they named it rock and roll.”

By the early 1960s, though, the family tree had started to get incestuous, as the scratchy, haunting Delta porch songs of yore were hijacked on both sides of the Atlantic by a new strain of blues that applied speed, attitude, volume and chest hair.

Blues had met rock. And it was the start of a beautiful relationship.

Conventional wisdom tells us that blues rock peaked in the mid to late ’60s, and it’s a watertight argument.

From that five-year period alone came world-shaking albums from icons including Cream, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Peter Green’s original Fleetwood Mac.

If you don’t remember the 1960s, then you probably weren’t there. (Or you were too high.)

As the decade drew to a close, the blues-fueled energy of the early ’60s mod clubs had drifted, and all-night dancing had been replaced by a laid-back, dope-smoking vibe.

Key players such as John Mayall, Eric Clapton and Peter Green reached a crossroads in their careers, as the blues scene split between purists and those following the path toward out-and-out rock.

Meanwhile, the likes of Free, Humble Pie, Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull took their first steps toward ’70s greatness.

British, Irish and American heroes took the blues, made it their own and turned it into the full-throttle rock that we know today: from the rough-edged ’70s swagger of Rory Gallagher to Jimmy Page, whose love of blues informed Led Zeppelin’s dazzling career.

Many rock subgenres blossom but then wither on the vine. Others are simply cynical media inventions, coined to lump disparate acts into an editorial-friendly pigeonhole.

Blues rock is different. Unlike, say, acid folk or prog jazz, the two ingredients are co-dependent, joined at the hip in both sentiment and musical content.

“No matter what direction rock goes in, it has to stay with the blues,” Eric Clapton once said, “because that’s the spine and body of it.” And if anybody would know, he would. His blistering Les Paul/Marshall tone on John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers’ 1966 debut Beano album defined the blues rock sound.

Celebrating their 60th anniversary this year, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers is a blues rock institution whose alumni also include Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Walter Trout and many other notable musicians.

In this live clip from the 2008 Montreux Jazz Festival, blues rock luminary Gary Moore joins John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers for a stunning rendition of “So Many Roads.”

Trading solos with Buddy Whittington, the late Irish guitar legend’s performance is fire.

Often cited as the best blues guitar player to emerge from England, Peter Green began his brief career with the unenviable task of replacing Eric Clapton in John Mayall's band. Recorded in '66, A Hard Road – the second Bluesbreakers studio album – proved Green and his '59 Les Paul were up to the task.

While sharing Clapton's respect for American bluesmen, the 21-year-old Green had his own take on Les Paul tone.

His quick, stinging vibrato; penchant for clean, cutting timbres (often drenched with reverb); acute sense of dynamics; and unmatched melodic subtlety set him apart from all English blues players before or since.

Green's haunting, 10-second-long sustained notes in the instrumental "The Super-Natural" established him as England's new tone god.

After a short stay in the Bluesbreakers, Green left to form Fleetwood Mac, which played its first gig at the '67 Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival.

Green wrote prolifically for the band, penning "Albatross" (rumored to have inspired the Beatles' "Sun King"), "Black Magic Woman," "Rattlesnake Shake," and "Oh Well."

In early '68, the group's debut album, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, reached #4 on the British charts. Soon Green added the 18-year-old Danny Kirwan – whose beautiful playing bore an uncanny resemblance to Green's own – to create a twin Les Paul lineup.

In '70, Green abruptly left Mac and the music biz. He sold his magic Paul – with its unique, snarky honk and mysteriously wired pickups – to Gary Moore, who used it to record Blues for Greeny, a 1995 collection of 11 Green originals rendered with tone and heart.

During his brief career, Green played through a variety of tube amps – including a Marshall head and 4x12 cab (A Hard Road) and Orange half-stacks (early Mac).

Most often, however, he wailed through silverface Fender Twin Reverb and Deluxe combos.

Peter Green’s famous '59 Les Paul – now dubbed ‘Greeny’ – currently belongs to Kirk Hammett who acquired the iconic electric guitar from U.K. guitar dealer Richard Henry.

“I rolled into London and I called him up and said, ‘Hey, Rich. What have you got for me? Anything interesting?’” recalled Hammett.

“I plugged it in and I checked the bridge pickup. It sounded nice, bright, full. Great tone. The tonal spectrum was very, very smooth from low to high. I checked the neck pickup. I thought, ‘Oh my God. This is so nice.’ It has that full-on Still Got The Blues sound; I recognised it instantly.

“Then, you know, I put it in the middle position and started playing and all of a sudden, I was like, ‘Holy… Lord!’ I looked up at Richard and I said, ‘I’m not giving this guitar back to you guys.’”

Hammett, who regularly plays Greeny live and in the studio, wowed the audience at an all-star Peter Green tribute performance hosted by Mick Fleetwood at the London Palladium in 2020.

“It was amazing,” said Hammett. “It was a full circle thing for me having Peter Green’s guitar and playing “The Green Manalishi.” That song has been with me for a very, very long time. And to be able to play it with Mick Fleetwood and a bunch of other players who just understand that era of Fleetwood Mac was an amazing thing.

“Greeny was so at home with that song, and all the tones were just sitting there waiting to be used inside of her. It was a transcendental experience. When it came time to do the solo, I dug deep. I didn’t know what I was going to play, but having Greeny in my hands and with that Marshall Bluesbreaker and with that band, I knew I was going to be okay.”

For years, the Beck-Strat marriage has been fruitful and faithful – can you imagine Jeff Beck's groundbreaking '70s and '80s records without his alternately refined/skunky Strat tones and lithesome whammy bar wizardry? 

But you don't have to rewrite history to put a Paul in his hands.

In the wake of Beck's mid-'60s stint in the Yardbirds, he formed the Jeff Beck Group, whose 1968 album, Truth, is a showcase for his brief love affair with the Les Paul electric guitar.

Beck's fuzzed-out fills behind Rod Stewart's vocals on "Shapes of Things" whet our appetite for the main course, which Beck delivers in his subsequent solo. Here, his wailing tone is somewhere between Janis Joplin's boozy alto and an air-raid siren dipped in honey.

A Fender man while with the Yardbirds, Beck turned to the Paul after being impressed by Clapton's stellar Les Paul work with John Mayall.

In the December '73 issue of Guitar Player, Beck said that one of the things he dug about the Les Paul was its robust feel. "Fenders are cheap in feel," he remarked. "You pick up a Les Paul and it's heavy and it really means something – it means business.

“The Fender was nice because you could grip it like a weapon and really chunk out the chords, but when you came to the more subtle stuff it wasn't there. After a while I got so used to the Les Paul, there was no turning back. I picked up my Fender and thought, 'How the hell did I ever play this?'"

Beck eventually found the answer to that one and became disenchanted with Pauls, contending, "I think I can sound more like myself with a Strat." (Blow by Blow, in '75, marked the end of his Paul fling.)

Ah, we'll always have Truth.

Order Truth here.

Rock was rapidly shedding its roll in the mid-1960s, but if we had to name the first electric guitar player to prominently define rock-guitar tone, it would have to be Eric Clapton.

Slowhand was a devotee of the blues and had left the Yardbirds in early 1965 when they adopted a poppier sound.

He hitched up with John Mayall’s Blues Breakers for some live dates before heading across Europe in a pickup band, but the best part of a year later, he was ready to put some real hair on that blues guitar tone, enforcing new demands on standard studio practices in the process.

In May 1966, Clapton, Mayall, bassist John McVie (later of Fleetwood Mac) and drummer Hughie Flint entered Decca Studios in West Hampstead, London to record their first studio album, Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton.

The featured guitarist brought with him a Marshall model 1962 2x12 tube amp combo and a sunburst Gibson Les Paul Standard, and declared that he was “going to play loud.”

One of the best accounts of the session has Clapton quoting the engineer’s recollection, rather than probing his own. As Clapton told Dan Forte for Guitar Player in 1985, “I remember reading an interview with [engineer] Gus Dudgeon where he said that I put my amp in a certain place, and he went over and put a mic in front of it, and I said, ‘No, put the microphone over there on the other side of the room because I’m going to play loud.’ I think that sounds like it would be true.”

And Clapton did play loud, pushing his 45-watt Marshall combo – forever after known as a Bluesbreaker – into juicy, trenchant overdrive, made all the thicker and creamier by his PAF-loaded Les Paul.

Almost overnight, this became the sound burgeoning rockers were chasing the world over. For more than 50 years since, “that tone” has never looked back.

Buy the Beano album here.

• Start recording with the best acoustic guitar mics

Award-winning blues guitarist Larry McCray has released the second single – “Breaking News” – from his forthcoming album Blues Without You.

Produced by Joe Bonamassa and Josh Smith, Blues Without You will be released on March 25 via Keeping the Blues Alive Records (KTBA Records.)

One of the great bluesmen of the American Rust Belt, McCray holds a very special place in Bonamassa’s heart.

“Larry McCray is a legend,” he says. “In the spirit of B.B. King, Luther Allison and Little Milton, Larry is among the greats.”

Over the years, McCray has performed alongside some of the biggest names in blues guitar including B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Albert King, John Mayall, Johnny Winter, Robert Cray, Keb’ Mo’, Jimmie Vaughan and Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

Guesting on Larry McCray’s latest 12-track long-player are Joe Bonamassa, Warren Haynes, Joanna Connor, and Reese Wynans.

Speaking of Blues Without You, McCray said, “Writing this album made me feel proud, as it allows others to see me as more than a blues musician.

“The songs are reflective of my broad taste in music styles and the subject matter, although personal at times, is relatable to anyone’s life. Hopefully, the words and message of the songs will help others express their feelings in a similar synopsis."

Following up The Gibson Sessions, Blues Without You is McCray’s first album in seven years and is a result of having hooked up with a team of people whom he feels are kindred spirits.

“I feel totally reborn, with a whole new career,” says the guitarist, “and I'm optimistic about what the future holds.

“But truthfully speaking, sometimes I do wish it would have happened 30 years ago. I would have been much more qualified for the job at that age than at 62.”

It’s never too late, we say!

Pre-order Blues Without You here.

Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton, also known as the Beano album, was released on the Decca label in 1966. There are many groundbreaking aspects to the record, not the least of which is Clapton’s marriage of a Les Paul through a cranked Marshall amplifier, the electric guitar equivalent of the Wright Brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk.

This magic coupling was defined by the hands of a spry 21-year-old. His youthful mastery is jaw dropping, and his iconic sound is now a guitar industry standard that at that time reinvigorated interest in the almost forgotten Gibson Les Paul model.

Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck weren’t yet fully developed, Pete Townshend was more of a rhythm guy, Ritchie Blackmore wasn’t really a blues guy, Jimi Hendrix wouldn’t release Are You Experienced until a year later, and groups like Love, Jefferson Airplane, Them, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Creedence Clearwater Revival and other young acts of the day couldn’t stay in the same ring as Clapton.

Most guys were struggling to intonate bends and trying not to fall off the log. Meanwhile, E.C. was like Larry Bird.

Clapton wasn’t just all sound. He could swing. Pre-Blues Breakers guitarists like Bill Jennings, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian and dozens, if not hundreds, of others might swing harder, but they didn’t have his Les Paul-with-Marshall-on-10 sound and an innate sense of beyond-their-years phrasing.

There are many timeless moments on the Beano LP. The major 7th feedback note that ends “Steppin’ Out” is unexpected and sonically imaginative. I almost feel the floor of the recording studio vibrating on the “Key to Love” solo. It’s like a jacked stallion busting out of the gate.

“Have You Heard” has a great violent blues solo that sounds like Clapton is pissed he had to wait so long to play it. The Clapton vocal track, “Ramblin’ on my Mind,” introduced a generation of young kids to Robert Johnson, priming listeners to search for the source.

It’s not a perfect album. John Mayall ain’t no Steve Winwood, the multiple guitar tracks sometimes sound cluttered, and while “What I’d Say” might have been a showstopper in a London nightclub, it could have been left off the record. That said, the high points are stellar, and it’s all there on Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton.

In the years since its release, Clapton has sometimes put his foot deep into his mouth, but his doing so makes sense to me.

He famously refused to turn down at the Beano sessions. Engineers in lab coats were shocked at his ear-shattering volume. His “you’re with me or you’re against me” musical focus screams out from the grooves, along with an innate English aesthetic that was structured, organized and almost militaristic.

Clapton went on to grow a Bob Ross-style Afro that might have been a tribute to Hendrix, but he’d never play as loose, sexy and beautifully Black as Jimi did. All that said, when I listen to Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton, I don’t care about the ups and downs of decades with Eric Clapton; I just hear a young man reinventing electric blues.

When young students ask me what inspired me when I was learning, I might play them the swinging genius Clapton exhibits on “Hideaway,” where he whips the Freddie King gem into his vision. Yet, more times than not, it underwhelms the uninitiated listener.

I think I get it. The world is filled with blues lawyers playing ’59 Les Pauls and clowns like Steven Seagal playing beefed-up pentatonics. Listeners shouldn’t be confused by this, because not hearing the importance and impact of Eric Clapton on Blues Breakers is like watching Citizen Kane and observing, “Oh, it’s only a black-and-white movie.”

Clapton could reach the pre-internet youth with a guitar that sounded like a flamethrower, wrapped in a tidy white package with an acute fashion sense. He repackaged and reinterpreted the blues for a generation, and spliced blues into rock.

“Clapton is God” is too much for anyone to live up to, but Eric Clapton is undeniably one of the most influential and inspiring guitarists of his generation. Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton proves that with each listen.

Pick up a copy of Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton here.

Jim Campilongo has 14 critically acclaimed instrumental records available on vinyl, CD and digital download here.

As its name suggests a blues turnaround is a section of music that comes at the end of a verse, giving it harmonic interest and resolution and leading the song back to the start of a new verse, which is almost always a repeat of the first, in terms of form.

Generally speaking, a turnaround occurs in the last two bars of a blues or jazz standard, whether it’s an eight-, 12-, 16-, 24- or 32-bar form. In the context of a standard 12-bar blues progression, the melody generally concludes at the beginning of the 10th bar, so instead of simply sitting on the tonic, or “one,” chord for two more bars, a chordal turnaround is inserted in bars 11 and 12 to maintain interest and forward momentum and create a strong setup for a repetition and “looping” of the progression.

Turnaround licks are typically improvised and are generally built around the framework of four chords (two per bar), usually I-IV-I-V but sometimes the jazzier I-VI-ii-V (lowercase Roman numerals indicate minor-type chords). As you’ll see in this lesson, there are many variations on these two basic forms.

The chord types may be diatonic or non-diatonic (based on the parent scale of the key, or not) and are also influenced by the style of blues (major versus minor). It’s generally understood that professional players will be familiar with the harmonic intricacies generated by the many permutations of these two basic forms.

In both parts of this two-part lesson, we’ll study lead licks played over blues guitar turnarounds in the styles of 10 of the genre’s most influential players of all time. Each player will be represented with three examples that cover major and minor keys, and because some licks can often be interchanged between major and minor keys, our examples will start on the same root note and feature a range of grooves and tempos.

Instead of illustrating the turnaround in isolation, the examples are presented as they would occur in the last four bars of a 12-bar blues progression – bars 9 through 12. And because turnarounds are also frequently used as intros, these examples can also serve as useful ways to kick off a song or guitar solo in a blues tune.

Because turnarounds customarily occur at the end of the vocal melody, they provide a clear space and musical opening that the guitarist can fill, whether they’re soloing or not. Not surprisingly, different players have their own approach to turnarounds. Some plow through the changes with pentatonic-based ideas, taking little heed of the chords, while others carefully target notes in each underlying chord to create a melodic shape.

It takes practice to deftly negotiate this sequence and make your playing sound relaxed and casual, but the time spent doing so will improve your improvisational and soloing skills tremendously. The turnaround contains all the chords of the blues but in condensed form, so you really need to keep on top of the changes and nail those target notes.

Technique Focus: Scale Choices

To get the most out of this lesson, make sure you can play these scales in all five CAGED positions and familiarize yourself with the suggested applications. 

MINOR PENTATONIC: R-b3-4-5-b7

Use this form in the I-chord position over the I, IV and V chords. It can also be transposed to start on the root of the V chord but can only be transposed to the root of the iv chord in a minor key. Also, you can freely add the blues-scale’s b5 passing tone to this scale.

MIXOLYDIAN MODE: R-2-3-4-5-6-b7

Use in tonic position over the I chord. It can also be transposed to the IV and V chords.

MAJOR PENTATONIC: R-2-3-5-6

Use in tonic position over I and V. It can also be transposed to the IV chord. Also, you can freely add the blues-scale’s b5 passing tone to this scale, as the b3.

PHRYGIAN-DOMINANT MODE: R-b2-3-4-5-b6-b7

Play this scale over the V or V7 chord in a minor key. This is the harmonic minor scale’s fifth mode and is the same as playing the tonic harmonic minor scale of that key.

THE B.B. KING “BLUES BOX”: R-2-4-5-6

Use in tonic position over all chords, but bend the B string only a half step when playing over the IV chord.

SUPER-LOCRIAN MODE: R-b2-b3-3-b5-b6-b7

Use in root position over an altered-dominant chord, such as 7b9, 7#9, 7b5, 7#5, or any combination of these. This is the same as playing the melodic minor scale rooted a half step above the altered[1]dominant chord’s root.

Let’s begin with a T-Bone Walker–style lick played over a I-IV-I-V turnaround in the key of G (G7 C9 G7 D7aug). T-Bone’s jazzy and harmonically adept style has influenced countless players, and echoes of his pioneering approach can be heard in the playing of guitarists ranging from Chuck Berry to Jimmy Page.

Walker’s solos frequently featured the major second (or ninth) and major sixth from the Mixolydian mode (in this case, the notes A and E from G Mixolydian: G A B C D E F), as demonstrated in bars 9 and 12 of Ex. 1. Notice that the minor third, relative to G, Bb, is played over, and only over, the IV chord, where it effectively highlights the b7 of C9.

Walker’s style also informs the i-iv-i-V minor turnaround in the key of A minor shown in Ex. 2. Here, the IV chord is dominant in bar 10 (D9) but minor (iv, Dm) in bar 11, during the turnaround. To avoid any harmonic clashes, you can play the tonic A minor pentatonic scale (A C D E G) over both incarnations of the IV chord, as demonstrated here.

That unusual lick in the first bar is created by applying an augmented triad to the root of the V chord and then ascending in whole tones, referencing the whole-tone scale) This is a harmonically sophisticated idea and showcases T-Bone’s musical depth.

Presented in the key of A major, Ex. 3 offers a phrase played over a jazzy I-VI-ii-V turnaround in T-Bone’s style. To negotiate the more complex chord movement in this example, the A Mixolydian mode (A B C# D E F#G) is extended over the dominant VI chord (F#7) to imply an F#7b9 sound (via the note A), which is a move frequently employed by jazz guitarists, such as T-Bone’s contemporary back in the 1940s, the great Charlie Christian.

In bar 12, the fifth of the ii chord, Bm7 (E) is highlighted, followed by a walk down the A minor pentatonic scale over the E7 chord, which includes what would be the #5 tension tone of that chord, C (or B#).

The great B.B. King is another blues guitarist celebrated for his impeccable note choices and phrasing. B.B.’s signature go-to pattern was a hybrid major-/minor-pentatonic “blues box,” which is based around the root note of the song’s key (typically played on the B string), with the major sixth played below it and the major second, perfect fourth and perfect fifth played above it. The guitarist would typically bend the major second up a half step to the minor third, or up a whole step to the major third, and would also often bend the fifth up a whole step to the major sixth, or one and one half steps to the minor seventh. In so doing, the guitarist would greatly expand his palette of note choices and musical colors.

Ex. 4 features King-style licks played over the final four bars of a 12-bar blues in the key of Bb, with a harmonically complex bass-line “walk-up” turnaround in bars 11 and 12 that features the use of a first-inversion chord and a diminished seven, but this can be approached as a more straightforward I-IV-I-V turnaround.

Ex. 5 offers an example of how B.B. would solo over the last four bars of a minor blues progression in the key of B minor that includes a i-bVI-ii-V turnaround (Bm Gmaj7 C#m7b5 F#7#9). The bVI chord (in this case, Gmaj7) is commonly encountered in a minor blues progression; it can be either major (with or without the major seventh) or dominant, but never minor.

This entire turnaround is skillfully negotiated by hitting just the right “color tones” over each chord, all achieved in this example with just the B minor pentatonic scale (B D E F# A), with the major second, C#, added, which is borrowed from the B Dorian mode (B C# D E F# G# A).

B.B. also had a penchant for occasionally beginning a turnaround lick before the turnaround begins, as in bar 10 of Ex. 6, which leads into a jazz-flavored I-VI-ii-V turnaround in the key of Bb major (Bb7 G7 Cm7 F7).

The turnaround phrase begins by chromatically encircling the third of the tonic Bb chord, D. This creates tension, which is resolved perfectly on beat one of bar 11 by landing squarely on the Bb root note. In bar 12, the tonic major arpeggio, Bb, flows into a chromatically descending blues-scale phrase (resolving on Eb, the b7 of F7), which beautifully outlines the Cm7-F7 chord change.

The legendary Albert King was famed for his wide, howling “over-bends” of a minor third (equal to three frets) and sometimes a major third (equal to four frets) and fiery delivery, as exemplified in the line played in the key of C over Ex. 7’s descending I-I7-IV-iv-I-V turnaround. The apparent complexity of this six-chord sequence can be approached as a more basic I-IV-I-V turnaround and negotiated with nothing more than the tonic C blues scale (C Eb F Gb G Bb), as demonstrated here.

The minor pentatonic or blues scale (which additionally includes the b5) can indeed almost always be applied as a blanket approach over an entire turnaround sequence, but it is only really effective when the relevant chord tones are targeted, as demonstrated in Ex. 8, an Albert King-style i-iv-i-V turnaround in the key of C minor.

Notice how the phrasing here is always anticipating the chord changes. This is the only way to achieve slick and musical results. Albert is often thought of as a “simplistic” player, but this clear sophistication belies that view.

Played in the key of C major, Ex. 9 is another Albert-inspired turnaround phrase, one that illustrates an even looser approach to the basic I-IV-I-V turnaround. Here, a strong C minor pentatonic (C Eb F G Bb) lick is forced over the sequence and resolves satisfyingly to the V chord, G7.

This approach exemplifies a great way to start getting your turnaround chops together. Simply think of the sequence as a bar and a half on the I chord followed by two beats on the V, but be sure to anticipate the resolution to the V chord, as shown here. A “late” resolution – meaning on the beat – will just sound wrong in this context!

Peter Green was a precocious master of the blues. His signature finger vibrato and controlled phrasing were already fully developed by the time he joined John Mayall’s backing group, the Bluesbreakers, at the tender age of 19.

The melodic lick played in the key of C minor over the descending i-iv-i-v-i-V7 descending turnaround in Ex. 10 illustrates how adept Green’s approach was when dealing with a complex minor-key turnaround such as this (with the use of both minor and dominant V chords and inversions), using nothing more than the tonic minor pentatonic scale, in this case C minor pentatonic.

Also in the key of C minor, Ex. 11 offers another Green-style lead phrase, this one played over two bars on the iv chord, Fm, followed by a i-bVII-bVI-V turnaround: Cm Bb6 Ab7 G7 Cm. The chromatic bVI7-V7 chord sequence (Ab7 G7) is very common in minor turnarounds but can be approached as a regular i-V7 sequence since the bVI chord shares critical notes with the tonic minor chord, namely the root and minor third.

Notice how the C minor pentatonic melody is used to generate altered-dominant tensions over the all-important G7 chord in bar 12, with the tonic note, C, phrased on the upbeat. Green really knew how to nail a solo!

The blues scale contains the über-cool b5 interval, a note that is all too frequently employed merely as a passing note for creating fast licks. In Ex. 12’s I-I7-IV-iv-I-V turnaround in the key of C (C7 C7/Bb F/A Fm/Ab C/G G7), inverted chords are used to create an pleasingly effective descending harmony line. Notice also how the phrase effectively resolves to the V chord, G7, illustrating total rhythmic and harmonic control.

Let’s wrap up this first half of our lesson with three examples in the style of the great Eric Clapton, Green’s Bluesbreakers predecessor. Clapton’s blues playing with the Bluesbreakers in the mid-’60s demonstrated a deep understanding of the genre that belied his youth and suburban background. His phrasing has always been impeccable, infused with fiery licks and B.B. King-style “thumb off the neck” finger vibrato.

In Ex. 13, the climbing bass line of a I-I7-IV-#IVdim-I-V7 turnaround in the key of E (E E7/G# A A#dim7) is juxtaposed by a contrary-motion descending melody line, resolving tidily to the V chord, B7.  

Oblique unison bends figured prominently in Clapton’s early soloing style, and they’re featured in bar 11 of Ex. 14, at the start of a i-iv-i-V-i minor turnaround in the key of E minor. This simple lick is typical of Clapton’s economical phrasing style, outlining the four turnaround chords with precision and clarity.

Played in the key of E major, our final Clapton-style example, Ex. 15, illustrates the effectiveness of the major pentatonic scale, in this case E major pentatonic (E F# G# B C#) when applied to a I-IV-I-V turnaround sequence.

Notice how the fourth, A, borrowed from the parallel E minor pentatonic scale, is added to provide the root of the IV chord, A7, on beat three of bar 11. It’s important to note here that you should avoid playing the tonic major third (in this case, G#) over the IV chord (A7, in this case), as doing so creates an unpleasant harmonic clash.

Next time, we’ll finish up our lesson with a fresh batch of blues turnaround lick and phrases in the styles of Carlos Santana, Gary Moore, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robben Ford and Larry Carlton. See you then!

Back in 2019, GP caught up with Steve Hackett to talk about his album At the Edge of Light. Conceptually speaking, the album is as deep as the Mariana Trench, drawing from scholarly lyrical themes, historical touchstones, collaborations with global musicians and instrumentation, and the comfort of friends and family.

But leading the charge is Hackett’s exquisitely impassioned electric guitar playing, soaring like a beacon of hope.

There is a heck of a lot of fireworks to your playing on the album.

Thank you. But I really didn’t want to play heroically the whole time. When I was a younger player, I wanted to show much more proficiency. But I tend to think that too much of a demonstration of chops becomes wearing for the average visitor to your album. I think people can get really tired of all those salvos by the fastest guitarists on earth.

Primarily, I’m interested in music – in serving the best interest of the song, which serves the best interest of the album. You see, I think of an album as a journey, and I love albums because I think they are, at best, agents for transformation.

We are in a post-Sgt. Pepper’s world at the moment, but when the Beatles released that album in 1967, suddenly there was no such thing as the mainstream. Suddenly, India was as relevant to the commercial success of that very broad-based album as anything else.

Most of the ideas on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band were in cameo, and I keep coming back to that model. I was a humble guitar player when I heard that album – an aspiring one – but the celebration of details was not lost on me.

So did Sgt. Pepper’s change your entire approach to music making then?

Well, sometimes, I would still listen to whatever John Mayall was doing with his latest guitarist – and he had a whole parade of wonderful players – and I would practice those licks. But, of course, the blues boom died at the end of the 1960s, and it was obvious to everyone that music was on the turn.

The Beatles had all the money and manpower to get anybody from anywhere. Who wouldn’t work with the Beatles? But, because of them, lesser mortals were incorporating smaller forces and making broad-based music through a pan-genre approach. These people were casting ears on jazz, blues, classical, pop, rock and all the rest, and it was a truly interesting time.

I couldn’t help but be greatly influenced by all of that – the fact that musicians had assimilated the Beatles approach and were coming up with their own versions. Genesis, for example, was a spin-off or a footnote to what the Beatles had done. I guess we were all splinters off the big tree.

Purchase Steve Hackett’s latest album – Surrender of Silence – directly from his website here.

Blues guitar legend John Mayall has announced his retirement from touring.

In a Facebook post, the 87-year-old Mayall – who for decades led the enormously influential Bluesbreakers – cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and his advancing age as the primary reasons to "hang up my road shoes."

“I have decided, due to the risks of the pandemic and my advancing age, that it is time for me to hang up my road shoes," Mayall wrote. "As a result I will be radically reducing my touring schedule and will be limiting my performances to local shows near my home in California, and the occasional concert further afield. 

“My epic road dog days however have come to an end. I want to thank my audience for all the wonderful decades of shows, your infectious enthusiasm for my music and for your support throughout my many musical incarnations. It has been a privilege to have spent my life doing what I love and having you along for the ride with me through all of it.”

With Mayall at the helm and on rhythm guitar, the Bluesbreakers became a proving ground for a virtual revolving door of electric guitar heroes in the '60s and '70s, with the likes of Peter Green, Mick Taylor, and, most famously, Eric Clapton all taking the lead guitar slot in the band before moving on to bigger stages.

Cream bassist Jack Bruce, Frank Zappa drummer Aynsley Dunbar, and Fleetwood Mac's rhythm section of bassist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood also all got their start with the Bluesbreakers.

Though the Bluesbreakers' halcyon days of yore were long behind him, Mayall – with and without his famous band – maintained a solid touring schedule well into his mid-80s. Though he's scaling down his live commitments, Mayall's still not done creating new music, as evidenced by his announcement – in the same statement – of a new studio album called The Sun Is Shining Down.

“I’m proud of what we came up with and excited to share it with you,” Mayall said of the album, which is set for release on January 21, 2022.

Carolyn Wonderland hails from Houston, Texas. Besides being a great singer, she is an amazing guitarist and multi-instrumentalist who is also proficient on trumpet, accordion, piano, mandolin and lap steel.

When she’s not on tour with her own band, she’s out walking in the footsteps of giants like Eric Clapton, Peter Green, and Mick Taylor while touring and playing lead blues guitar with British blues legend John Mayall.

Wonderland released her first album, Groove Milk, in 1993, and issued her latest, Moon Goes Missing, in 2017. Having recently signed to Alligator Records (the "first female guitar hero" in the label's 50-year history) Wonderland's forthcoming long-player, Tempting Fate, is due out on October 8.

When did you first pick up the guitar?

[Early on] I didn’t play a whole lot in front of people. I’d play rhythm, but I had Little Screamin’ Kenny [Houston guitarist Kenneth Blanchet] playing guitar in the band, and he was one of my favorites, so I kind of thought I was superfluous. But then there’d be gigs where we’d be missing a guitar player, and so I was like, 'Well, okay, I can play the tunes I wrote ’cause I know how they go.' 

Eventually, it came to be that I had a tour but no guitar player, and I wasn’t gonna cancel it, so I just learned really quickly.

Did you have any musical history in your family?

Oh, yeah. Pretty much everyone on my mom’s side plays. My grandma was a steel player, and my pop played ragtime and big-band piano stuff. My mom sang, and she played acoustic guitar in a band called Badlands. So there were always guitars around. I started playing piano when I was about five, and I started writing songs when I was about eight.

You’re known and marketed as a blues artist, but you also touch on a lot of styles in your playing, and you seem to draw a lot of creative inspiration from your political and world views. How do you bring that all together?

I play a lot of blues and rootsy stuff as well as soul, gospel and a little country. There’s also experimental rock and roll, like my [2003] song “Bloodless Revolution.”

A lot of my stuff’s been really political, just ’cause that’s what’s going on and that’s what’s been speaking to me. My songs of peace are not necessarily just about peace between countries but about peace between folks. I’m trying to find hope or a solution, instead of just pointing out the problems.

The bottom line is, there’s no “us and them.” We’re all us. Even the folks who you think you detest. They’re your children, they’re your brother, they’re your father. They’re all of it. So I guess I’m just trying to find a way to be more loving myself.

*** After touring the world with John Mayall the past few years, Wonderland has recently signed to Alligator Records and has a new album – Tempting Fate – and tour on the way. Visit carolynwonderland.com for more information ***