There’s no doubt Eddie Van Halen was one of the most influential guitarists of his generation. Although he has his detractors, Van Halen’s playing helped ignite an electric guitar revolution built on virtuosity that came to dominate the 1980s.

But Van Halen believed many of the guitarists who followed in his wake misunderstood what he was actually doing. Speaking with Dweezil Zappa for a 1995 Guitar Player interview, he argued that an emphasis on speed and flash missed the point of his playing, which — at its core — was about feel, not technical display.

“I’ve influenced a batch of people in a certain period of time, and I think those people missed my point,” he said. “They took what they learned from me and made it very sterile and too calculated, too typewriter-perfect. I won’t name any names.

“People got sick of that type of flash guitar playing, whereas I never considered what I did flash. It was natural to me. I still play the same.”

Van Halen acknowledged that he, too, was shaped by earlier players, most notably Eric Clapton. But even as he absorbed those influences, he insisted his own playing quickly moved in a direction rooted less in imitation than in instinct.

“Eric Clapton was my god and everybody else’s,” he said. “I said that once in an interview: ‘That’s the guy I grew up on, but I don’t play anything like him.’ And it came back to haunt me. They took it like I was being an uppity prick about it. I didn’t mean that at all. I just meant that if you listen to Clapton and listen to me, it’s two completely different styles, even though he’s the guy I grew up on.“

Nevertheless, Van Halen took one rule from Clapton: a solo should tell a story.

“The shit he does… he spoke when he played,” he said of Clapton. “After having grown up on that, I thought that every time I solo I should make it like that too.”

By the end of the 1980s and into the early ’90s, guitar music began shifting away from the excesses of shred toward a more stripped-down aesthetic associated with grunge and alternative rock. Van Halen viewed that change not as a rejection of his era but as part of a recurring cycle in popular music.

Nevertheless, he found the results uninspiring.

“Nowadays it’s almost like solos are interchangeable. You can put a disc on and listen to a solo on one song and you might as well put it in any song because they don’t mean anything. It’s basically just beating off, and there’s no point to it.

“I think the reason why people play the way they do now is because it all broke down. Where could guitar have gone from where people in the ’80s took it? It was so flash it got ridiculous. So shit — the natural thing is to break it down to the lowest common denominator and start over.”

Ed wasn’t dismissive of newer players as a group, however. Even artists who stood outside technical orthodoxy, like Kurt Cobain, could still be making meaningful musical statements.

“He was still speaking,” Van Halen said of the Nirvana guitarist — a point that Joe Satriani recently made. “He was still expressing himself through one string or one note or whatever. But some people’s lack of technique doesn’t work.”

Ultimately, Van Halen saw the ebb and flow of guitar styles as cyclical rather than permanent — an ongoing reset between extremes of complexity and simplicity.

“The natural thing is to break it down to the lowest common denominator and start over,” he said. “And it’s just gonna build right back up. It’s almost like every ten years it happens. This is phase two of disco and punk. We survived the first one, and we’re going to survive this one too.”

Jim Irsay’s lauded $1 billion collection of acoustic and electric guitars is set to be sold, his family has confirmed.

The billionaire businessman, who passed away aged 65 in May, was the owner of the NFL team, the Indianapolis Colts, from 1997 until his death, having inherited the club from his father. But it was his penchant for acquiring famous and hugely influential guitars that earned him such a fierce reputation in the music scene.

“It’s an eclectic collection, but really it’s about spirituality,” he had once said of a hoard of instruments dubbed “the greatest guitar collection on Earth” by Guitar World. “It’s about human beings being as great as they can and changing the world with love and strength,

Included in his collection is David Gilmour's iconic Black Strat, acquired for $3,975,000 in 2019, and Jerry Garcia's Tiger, which kick-started his collecting when he bought it in 2002.

The sale of the collection will be handled by Christie’s New York, which previously auctioned off Mark Knopfler and Jeff Beck's storied instruments. A series of auctions will take place in March.

“This decision was not made lightly, but with deep reflection and love for the legacy he built,” the Irsay family says in a statement via the Colts. It has been noted, however, that some items in his collection will be kept in the family, with the “majority” going under the hammer.

“Our dad was a passionate collector, driven not by possession, but by a profound appreciation for the beauty, history, and cultural resonance of the items he curated,” the family’s statement expands. “Each piece in the collection tells a story — and he was always so excited to share those stories with the world.”

Indeed, much of his collection was recently put on display at Indiana University Bloomington and has also been accessed by the Steichen and Purdue University Guitar Lab for educational purposes.

Many of his pieces, including the Fender Mustang Kurt Cobain played on the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" music video — bought for a record-breaking $4.5 million in 2022 — and Bob Dylan’s infamous Newport Folk Festival Stratocaster, which he played during his controversial first electric set, hold huge cultural significance.

Several Beatles guitars are also housed in the collection. That includes John Lennon's 1963 Gretsch 6120 Country Gentleman, used to record “Paperback Writer,” George Harrison’s 1964 Gibson SG, used on the same song and across the Revolver album, and Lennon’s 1964 Rickenbacker Rose Morris Model 1996.

Two iconic Eric Clapton instruments, his Fool SG, which played a starring role in Cream and is synonymous with his woman tone, and his 1939 Martin 000-42 acoustic guitar, played during his career-reviving MTV Unplugged performance, also feature. As does Prince's unmistakable Yellow Cloud guitar, built by luthier Dave Rusan, meaning they could all be headed to auction in March.

It's not just instruments in his stock, either. Aside from Paul McCartney's handwritten "Hey Jude" lyric sheet, he'd acquired an Apple II manual signed by Steve Jobs, Hunter S. Thompson's Red Shark convertible and Jack Kerouac's original typewritten manuscript of On the Road.

“Christie’s is honored to offer this magnificent collection, so lovingly compiled, maintained, and shared by legendary collector Jim Irsay over decades,” Julien Pradels, president of the Christie’s Americans region, says in light of the impending auction.

The auction signals the end of an era spanning over two decades, and one that, in Irsay’s eyes, represents the best of his homeland.

“I’ve been so blessed, and like I always knew, rock and roll and N.F.L. football — that’s America, man, that’s what it’s about,” he said in 2022. “I mean, it doesn’t get any bigger, better than that.”

Trends in music come and go, and former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Brad Gillis believes that the electric guitar needed grunge music to shake up the scene.

The Honolulu-born guitarist was drafted into the Prince of Darkness' band in the wake of Randy Rhoads' passing. Rudy Sarzo says Ozzy Osbourne would have died if they hadn’t carried on quickly after Rhoads' death.

His brief stint in the band is immortalized on the 1982 live album, “Speak of the Devil”, and he built on the platform with Night Ranger throughout the rest of the decade. As the ‘90s dawned, he felt that a decade littered with power ballads needed to end.

“It was a whole new ball game,” he tells 101 WRIF. “A lot of it was kind of downer music, [but] it got a little too prissy with '80s rock n' roll. [There were] too many love songs back in the '80s.”

In particular, Gillis was drawn to the gritted heaviness of the grunge movement – spearheaded by Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains.

“I grasped a lot of these new bands, and I was into them because it was a whole new style of music,” he says. “As it progressed in the '90s, things got a lot better, I felt.”

The legacy of those bands, and Nirvana especially, cannot be overstated. The two most expensive guitars to have ever sold at auction were Kurt Cobain’s. The pair outsold David Gilmour’s Black Strat, John Lennon's Help! 12-string Framus Hootenanny, and plenty more big hitters beyond it. Those bands reflected a whole new generation.

For those married to the ‘80s shred scene, grunge bands were often sneered at for their simplistic soloing styles. Joe Satriani recently came to Cobain’s defence in that regard, calling him a “great guitar player,” and Gillis has echoed those sentiments, stressing the need for change.

“When that happened, any rock n' roll musician was wondering, ‘What's going to happen with good old rock n' roll?’ And things kind of died,” he reflects. “I think guitar solos got to a point that they were just so crazy and [had] too many notes, that backing it down to simplify the new styles and sound with the Nirvanas, really just kind of set up a new regime. And then we just noticed little by little rock n' roll coming back into fashion.”

Gillis echoes similar comments by session legend Tim Pierce, who said that Kurt Cobain's arrival on the scene helped him become the “perfect studio musician,” by skewing the music landscape. Guitar pyrotechnics were out.

Gillis has also looked back on the moment the Ozzy gig began to feel real.

“I was up really late on a Saturday night with a... ‘new friend.’ and I get this call at seven in the morning,” he says. “‘Hello Bradley, this is Sharon Osbourne, Ozzy's manager. We'd like to fly you to New York for an audition.’ I thought someone was screwing with me. I didn't believe this would ever even happen.”

Sharon then passed the phone to Ozzy to convince him this wasn't a hoax, and the singer had said, “I'd like you to grab a pen and paper and write these songs down.”

“I started shaking,” Gillis remembers, “I was thinking this could be real! I had to learn 19 songs. When I flew to New York, I was given two live cassettes from a few months earlier.”

The cassettes had mixes taken directly from the soundboard, so that Gillis could “hear Randy clearly.

“Sharon set me up with a boom box, and an amplifier, and I'd sit in my room all day and learn by ear,” he adds.

The guitarist would hold down the fort in the band until Jake E. Lee was chosen as Ozzy’s second full-time guitarist, and 37 years after he left the band, the pair mended their relationship at the Back To The Beginning concert. Lee went on to reveal the final words Ozzy ever said to him during a touching tribute.

Aaron Rash's tireless Nirvana obsession has seen him pour over every facet of the band's 1993 album, In Utero.

After years of searching, he's now found his Holy Grail: the exact make and model of electric guitar Kurt Cobain used to track the album's dirty guitar tones.

For years, the guitarist has been running down rabbit holes in a bid to uncover every secret about the grunge icon's third and final album. He has worked closely with producer Steve Albini to ensure his re-creations are unflinchingly accurate.

Rash's tone-searching efforts have always been exhaustive, as his comments on the release of his In Utero impulse response pack revealed last summer.

“I have bought and sold probably seven different [Fender] Quad Reverbs to find the perfect-sounding one, because — news flash — they don’t all sound the same, even with the same speakers,” he had said of his painstaking process. “They really vary all over the place. The amount of money that I’ve spent has got to be astronomical.”

Knowing the exact guitar Cobain used for the record represents the last piece in the puzzle. But getting there was no easy task, and the expected answer — "a Fender Mustang" — proved incorrect.

“I figured out the mystery,” he exclaims in his latest YouTube video documenting the saga. Ever since I started playing guitar a little bit over three years ago, I've had a million Mustangs on my YouTube channel. And it's because I wanted to learn how to get this really specific tone from In Utero."

But the newbie guitar player would soon learn the nuance of tone.

“In the beginning, I thought it would be so easy, I just play a Mustang and, boom! — I would have that sound,” he admits. “I started playing all these guitars. I ended up collecting them all, trying tirelessly to get this tone of In Utero.”

Thus began his quest to reverse engineer the album’s gritty-souding guitar parts — what he calls Cobain's "mean" tones — and the cleans, too.

“It’s never been about copying Kurt or his tones,” he adds. “I’ve just always wanted to figure out what it was, 'cause it drove me crazy.”

His search even saw him building guitars that closely replicated Cobain's own Mustang, as he followed the breadcrumbs of information online.

Then he discovered a post from Albini in a Reddit forum that confirmed the guitars used on the album: a Mustang, a Jaguar, Cobain's Jagstang hybrid, a “pawnshop” Univox Hi-Flier and Albini’s own aluminum Veleno guitar, heard on “Very Ape,” “Heart-Shaped Box,” and “Rape Me.”

Befriending Cobain's guitar tech, Earnie Bailey, also revealed a golden piece of information: the rare 1974 Fender Quad Reverb used for the album's lean tones was an outlier from the pack, as it was built with Utah speakers.

But Rash’s biggest breakthrough came when he pivoted his attention away from the Mustang to the Univox Hi-Flier.

“I knew that Kurt didn’t use the Mustang to record In Utero, at least not all the 'mean' stuff with it,” he tells MusicRadar. “[Albini] said that Kurt mainly used a Hi-Flier to record — that and the Veleno.

“I also have a different email that he wrote me as well. He said, ‘I only remember seeing one Hi-Flier. It had the original pickups with the nickel chrome surrounding. It’s possible there were others, but it was mostly that guitar, his Mustang, and the Veleno from memory.’”

Bailey had suggested that the mysterious guitar might have been a Phase III model, which proved a fruitless and expensive detour.

Then a Phase II model with a mahogany fretboard appeared for sale online. He bought it and while waiting for the shipment to arrive found images of Cobain playing a Phase II Hi-Flier with a mahogany fretboard at New York City's Roseland Ballroom.

When it arrived, he played it. It was the sound he'd hoped to hear.

“Literally all the stars aligned,” Rash says with a smile. “I know to you guys this sounds stupid, but I’ve been trying to figure this out for so long. So I think you guys know what this means.”

The guitar, like Cobain's, had stock pickups, which proved a quintessential chapter in Rash's story.

Rash suggests he'll serve up another video to tell more about Phase II Hi-Flier pickups.

“Simply put, those Phase II pickups are absolutely wild,” he says. “They’re so weird.”

And in case you were wondering — he's already dissected them to find out what makes them so special.

Courtney Barnett is the latest artist to be spotlighted in the ongoing Fender Sessions video series, showcasing her technical but heartfelt guitar style on both a Stratocaster and a Jaguar. However, it's the latter of those two electric guitars that has had the biggest influence on her career.

The 37-year old Australian singer-songwriter released her debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, in 2015, and has since released two more studio albums, as well as a collaborative LP with Kurt Vile and End of the Day, the soundtrack to Anonymous Club, the 2021 documentary about Barnett. She’s also picked up several domestic and international awards along the way, and a Grammy nomination.

Barnett's woozy indie-rock stylings, characterized by effects-warped Fenders and her intricate fingerpicking, have won her plaudits, but she downplays her skillset in the new video.

“I'll always call myself a guitar player before I call myself a singer or a songwriter or whatever, 'cause I think it's just my comfortable state,” she says. “That natural and comfortable state is playing music.”

Over the years, she’s become most synonymous with her employment of a Fender Jaguar. It was an instrument, she says, that came to her in time of need as she suddenly became greatly exposed as a guitarist and found its tonal versatility to be a lifesaver.

“We used to tour a lot as a four-piece and always had another guitarist,” Barnett explains, referring to her former touring guitarist, Dan Luscombe.. “Then there was a point where my friend Dan couldn't tour anymore, and so I had to learn both guitar parts.

“While I was in the process of learning how to do that, I was like, 'I need a different guitar.' Up until then, I was playing a Telecaster, so I went out and I bought myself my first Jaguar. It just was easier; something about the sound. I could make both worlds work.

That change came in tandem with her recognition of her creative pitfalls.

“Over years of playing live, I’ve recognized that one of my safety fallbacks was to use a lot of distortion pedals,” she told Guitar Player in 2022. “When in doubt, just make a big noise. I recognized that it started to feel a little bit lazy and repetitive.

“Obviously, it’s fun to do that, and a lot of the songs called for it, I was looking for different angles: different ways to show emotions and find dynamics in the songs.”

That saw her leaning into meditative moments, peeling away from a constant craving for loudness, and she used lessons learned from visual arts school to her advantage.

“The visual stuff and music inspire each other,” she says. “Just like the power of silence in music, there’s the power of negative space in visual art. It all overlaps, and there’s no formula. It all depends on the song and the moment.”

Being left-handed, though, her search for a new guitar was greatly limited. That drew her to a reissue of Kurt Cobain's famed 1965 model. The stock model comes with DiMarzio DP103 PAF and DP100 Super Distortion pickups and a Chrome Adjusto-Matic bridge with a vintage-style floating tremolo. Here, she uses it for a frentetic take of “Turning Green”.

Elsewhere, she plays an American Vintage II 1961 Stratocaster for "Before You Gotta Go," which showcases her Neil Young in Crazy Horse-inspired fingerpicking, and she's recently taken her love for the artist one step further by covering "Lotta Love".

The dreamlike rendition is featured on the forthcoming tribute record, Heart of Gold: The Songs of Neil Young, which also includes contributions from Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, Sharon Van Etten and Brandi Carlile.

Few session guitarists have as many notches in their belt as Tim Pierce. The PRS artist has lent his talents to records by Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Crowded House, Hans Zimmer, Celine Dion, the Goo Goo Dolls and a dizzyingly diverse array beyond them.

He's been hard at it since featuring on Bertín Osborne's 1974 LP, Acuérdate de Mí, and during that time, he's seen the music industry change exponentially. One of the most notable changes came in the wake of Nirvana’s success in the early ‘90s. And he’s incredibly grateful for it.

By its very nature, session work is incredibly cutthroat. As musical styles and trends fall in and out of fashion — often in the blink of an eye — players can find their calling card no longer desired as producers scramble for their next hit record.

Pierce was nearly two decades deep when the '90s rolled around. He'd already proved an indispensable name in the phone books of producers and record label execs. Still, he felt the shifting landscape at the hands of Cobain’s against-the-grain success. Thankfully, it fell in his favor.

“I think it was when Nirvana showed up, the environment shifted to where I was the perfect studio musician," Pierce tells The Zak Kuhn Show. "Because I was the guy who could sound a little less polished, a little more like a band guy, but I could reliably deliver all the parts. It's just perseverance and time that brought me into the fold.”

The ‘80s, was an era in which Randy Rhoads, Eddie Van Halen and acrobatic shredding were in vogue. Everyone wanted to dazzle and take the guitar to new heights. Grunge brought that to an end in favor of a more rough-and-ready musicality.

“When Nirvana showed up, and that changing of the guard happened, that's when I really started working it,” Piece continues. “They wanted guitar players to throw surprises, and you did not have to be perfect as a guitar player. So that's one thing that helped.”

While some players see Kurt Cobain as no better than an average guitarist, Joe Satriani has recently come to the defense of his talents. He believes Cobain doesn’t get his dues as a guitarist, going to lengths to explain why he was underrated.

As for Pierce, despite feeling that his warts and all playing style was winning him new gigs, he was far less humble when it came to the gear. Speaking about his 50-year career with Guitar Player, he explained why he needed to travel with as many guitars as possible.

“We had quite an arms race in our neighborhood,” he explains. “People would go, ‘Okay, that sounds good, but do you have a Fender Jazzmaster? Do you have an old Tele? How about an old Supro baritone? Say, what acoustics do you have?’ If I didn't bring everything and they asked for something, I’d have this sinking feeling because I wanted to say yes to every request. It was endless.”

The rise of grunge in the early 1990s killed the popularity of guitar virtuosity and technical wankery. Even so, it didn’t stop Joe Satriani from launching his annual G3 tour in 1996 with Steve Vai and Eric Johnson. Over the next decade, the shredfest became celebrated for presenting ever-changing lineups that featured some of the day’s most technically proficient players, like John Petrucci, Yngwie Malmsteen and Robert Fripp.

But as Satriani tells Classic Rock, accommodating the players’ varying musical styles and idiosyncratic requests could be a chore at times. Take Fripp, who insisted on being an unlisted show opener and performing out of sight as attendees entered the venue during G3’s 2004 run.

“You have two extremes,” Satriani tells Classic Rock. “Like, Robert Fripp, who said, ‘No lights on me, I want to sit down and I want to be behind everybody.’ So it was sort of an ‘un-demand’, y’know?”

And then there’s Fripp’s polar opposite, the irrepressible Yngwie Malmsteen, who appeared on the 2003 tour, where he, Satch and Vai jammed on Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing."

“I mean, if you invite him, you have to just say, 'I know what I’m inviting,' ” Satch concedes. “To Yngwie’s credit, he always plays so great and always puts on the Yngwie Malmsteen show.

“The only problem that I would have is that sometimes he wouldn’t pay attention to other things happening onstage when his bit was done, because he’s just not used to not being the focus of the show. I’d say, ‘When Steve [Vai] is soloing, don’t throw your guitar up in the air right next to him, because he’s got his eyes closed. I don’t want him to get hit in the head.’”

Satch says launching G3 proved problematic simply because no one had ever done something like it before. Some guitarists’ managers saw it as a competition rather than a celebratory jaunt.

“The vibe back then was to keep the gunslinger guitar players away from each other,” he explains. “The record companies, the management — everyone was like, ‘Don’t stand next to that guy, because he’s your competitor.’

“So we had nice little arguments with them, saying, ‘This is different.’ This was something I felt the audience really wanted to see, because I wanted to see it. When I was 14, if I had a chance to see Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck together on the same stage, I’d think that was the greatest thing ever. I wouldn’t be thinking like a promoter, I’d be thinking like a fan.“

Considering that grunge essentially killed the whammy-bar wrangling, double-tapping guitar acrobatics that G3 would go on to celebrate, Satch he has no animosity. “I didn’t pay any attention to that, I guess,” he says, noting that his 1992 album, The Extremist, “came out as my love letter to the classic rock era, so it was a throwback record anyway. But when I emerged from the studio I realized, ‘Oh, it’s all Nirvana and Soundgarden.’ ”

And while many technically proficient guitarists love to slag Kurt Cobain’s rudimentary axe-handling skills, Satriani has nothing but praise for the way Nirvana’s frontman used his talents in service of his songs.

“He was a great guitar player,” Satch says. “You go back and look at Nirvana clips, and you realize this guy is playing everything he’s supposed to play. He’s not looking at what he’s playing, so obviously he really knows the instrument. And he’s playing with one of the greatest drummers of all time [Dave Grohl], so that wouldn’t have worked if he was not a good guitarist.”

Satch's appreciation for Cobain shouldn't come as a surprise to those who know him. After all, he, Vai and Guthrie Govan picked Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" as one of their show-closing jams on the 2016 G3 tour.

Satriani is coming off a busy year that saw him revive G3 with Vai and Johnson for a limited run of shows, perform Van Halen–era songs with Sammy Hagar on his Best of all Worlds tour, and tour with Vai. The new year looks like it will be just as busy. Last month he and Vai announced they’ll hit the road in June as the SatchVai Band for the Surfing with the Hydra tour. The road stint will be the first time in their nearly 50-year musical careers that the two electric guitar virtuosos have performed as band members. Their tour begins June 13, 2025 in Europe, with more dates to be announced.

In addition, Satch and Vai have been writing new music together, which means a SatchVai Band album can’t be far behind. Stay tuned.

Stars of Jim Irsay’s renowned guitar collection will be on display at Indiana University Bloomington for the next year as part of an exhibition called Amped IU.

Aside from his day job as the owner, chairman, and CEO of NFL's Indianapolis Colts, Irsay is an avid collector of history-steeped six-strings, and the new exhibition aims to celebrate the music and stories that ice his collection.

The wider exhibition highlights the story of modern guitar and will be housed in the McCalla building of IU Bloomington’s campus. It will run from September 27, 2024, to September 2025.

Among the businessman's collection is Kurt Cobain's Smells Like Teen Spirit Fender Mustang, bought by Irsay at auction for $4.5 million in 2022. At that time, it became the second most valuable guitar to be sold at auction, beaten only by another Cobain guitar – his heavily modified Martin D-18E MTV Unplugged acoustic guitar.

That gives a sense of perspective as to how illustrious many of the guitars in Irsay's ever-growing collection are.

But, as Irsay himself says, the collection isn’t simply buying up guitars for his own personal glory. He wants to preserve key pieces of music history, and share them with the world.

“I am thrilled to preserve and protect another piece of American culture that changed the way we looked at the world,” Irsay said of his eye-watering Mustang purchase in '22.

Moreover, a portion of the proceeds went to Kicking The Stigma, Irsay's national initiative to raise awareness about mental health issues, and erase the stigma around them. This, he said, made the purchase “even more special to me.”

The initiative was also the beneficiary of a mammoth auction of Steve Vai gear later that year. The collection included a myriad of electric guitars, acoustics, rack effects units, amplifiers, and even a motorbike.

David Gilmour's Black Strat, heard on Comfortably Numb, Shine on You Crazy Diamond, and Money, and bought for $3.975m, and Bob Dylan’s infamous Newport Folk Festival Stratocaster, are also key parts of Irsay's collection. The latter was bought for nearly $1m after it was found in the back of a woman's attic.

The new exhibition will hold a grand opening event on September 27 (12-5 p.m.), which coincides with the IU Family Weekend.

It will feature, for one day only, the gems of Irsay's stable, among them guitars played and owned by Jerry Garcia, Kurt Cobain – expected to be that multi-million dollar Mustang – Eric Clapton, and many other legendary musicians.

There will also be a guided tour of the gilded collection on opening day, alongside performances from IU Jacobs School of Music students.

Some of the vintage guitars set to be on display for the full duration of the exhibit include an 1850s CF Martin guitar, a 1910 Gibson Model U Harp Guitar, and a 1939 Rickenbacker Silver Hawaiian Lap Steel, together helping chart the instrument’s evolution.

Two ‘59 builds – a Sunburst Fender Stratocaster and a Gibson Les Paul Standard – will also feature, alongside a 1964 Firebird V.

Beyond guitars, it will feature artifacts from game-changing artists such as The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Holly, and Paul Stanley.

Irsay has been adding to his collection, driven by a love for music, history, and pop culture, for decades. It has been exhibited across the USA in recent years as a “traveling museum,” while numerous artifacts have also been loaned to museums and nonprofits for display and research.

Readers can register for self-guided tours via the IU website.

The roots of American guitar builder CF Martin & Company can be traced back several generations to the early 1800s. The story in America began in 1833, when Christian Frederick Martin Sr (son of German cabinet maker Johann Georg Martin and former apprentice of renowned Viennese guitar builder Johann Stauffer) emigrated to New York City. That same year, he set up shop and founded CF Martin & Co, before relocating to Nazareth, Pennsylvania in the late 1830s, where the company continues to thrive

Few guitar builders can claim to be as crucial an influence on the history of popular culture as Martin. Remaining at the forefront of guitar evolution since the mid-1800s with innovations such as X-bracing, larger body sizes, steel strings and 14-fret necks, Martin has endured as an industry leader, while the guitar continued to gain in popularity over the years with different musical styles emerging.

Although numerous benchmark Martin designs have stood the test of time with their understated elegance and world-class tone, spanning multiple music genres, the 18-series of acoustic guitars stands out for many as the classic embodiment of the instrument.

“Style 18s first appeared in the 1850s, before the U.S. Civil War,” Martin’s museum and archives specialist, Jason Ahner, tells us, “and at that point, they had a rosewood back and sides. Although, nowadays, most people think of 18s as having a mahogany back and sides, they didn’t change to mahogany until 1917, at a time when large manufacturers – mostly out of Chicago – were buildings thousands of guitars a year. Martin was trying to compete against the likes of Lyon & Healy, who built Washburn guitars, and I think because mahogany was cheaper than rosewood, it was a way to build some more competitively priced models, but it would have been what we refer to as ‘genuine mahogany’ sourced mainly from Central and South America.

“From the 1870s up until the 1910s, every guitar Martin was building had a rosewood back and sides – they weren’t using mahogany at all during that period. But if we go further back to ledgers from the 1850s and 1860s, we find guitars that had a mahogany back and sides with wholesale prices from $13, along with [rosewood] Style 18 guitars that cost $18 wholesale. That’s where Martin got the ‘18’ from. What we now call the ‘level of ornamentation’ originally referred to the wholesale price in dollars.

“I’ve seen 13s, 14s, 15s and 16s in our sales ledgers from that period that were mostly smaller mahogany guitars with very simple appointments, and the vast majority of them would still have [Spanish-style] fan bracing. Even 17s were fan-braced up until the turn of the 20th century, but once you got into a Style 18, you see that most of them have X-bracing.”

Designed by CF Martin Sr in the early days of the company, Martin’s revolutionary X-bracing system was a first for the acoustic guitar and is still in use today. “CF Martin Sr was experimenting with bracing in the late-1830s/early 1840s,” says Jason. 

“The [Stauffer-style] guitars he learned to build in Vienna tended to be ladder-braced, and when he started emulating the designs of the Spanish guitar builders he began using fan-bracing. We think one of the issues that came up when he was trying to use pin bridges with fan-bracing was that he’d drill into the braces – and then he’d have to pull everything apart, fix the brace and put everything back together again.

“What we do know about CF Martin Sr is that he was a perfectionist when it came to building, so we see him experimenting with bracing patterns quite a bit, and then in 1843 the first guitar with braces arranged in an X-pattern appears. It was built for an extremely popular Spanish guitarist that came to the U.S. in 1841 named Madame de Goñi. We can only assume that [Martin] liked it structurally because he could use a pin bridge without hitting the brace and he really liked the tone of the guitar – otherwise he wouldn’t have stuck with it!”

Like so many other breakthroughs in guitar evolution, the X-bracing system was notable for its ability to help improve the instrument’s volume. “X-bracing helped give the guitar more volume – even with the gut-string models of the time, it gave the guitar more of a punch,” says Jason. “If you play the Madame de Goñi guitar we have in our museum collection and compare it to a fan-braced model from around the same time, you’ll find it’s a noticeably louder instrument. And that would have been perfect for her because she was playing large venues at the time.

“Little did CF [Martin] Sr know that, around 80 years later when Martin really starts getting involved in steel strings, X-bracing would be the perfect pattern for a steel-string guitar. It just so happened that it worked. And it still works. It’s very hard to improve upon that design, and that’s why we still use it today.”

In its ongoing pursuit for greater volume following the introduction of X-bracing, Martin developed two larger bodied variants – sizes 0 and 00 – during the 1850s.

“The larger the instrument is, the more volume and low-end you’re going to get from it,” says Jason. “Early on, we see that everybody had what’s commonly referred to as a ‘parlor’ guitar – so-called because the guitar was mostly an instrument played by women as a form of entertainment in the parlors of their homes. It’s a bit of a loose term but, personally, I would say that anything below an 0 size [i.e., sizes 1, 2, 2½, 3, 4 and 5] would be a parlor guitar.

“But as the guitar grew in popularity, it started being played in larger venues and so the size of the guitars started growing. Martin built the first 0 size guitar in 1854, then you see the first 00 in sales ledgers in 1858. Prior to that, a size 1 was the largest model, which is what the Madame de Goñi guitar is, so we can see the demand for larger guitars was really starting to happen from then onwards.”

Throughout the late 1800s and early 1910s, guitar players increasingly broke away from the confines of the home parlor and became a prominent voice in band settings, orchestras and banjo/mandolin clubs. While seeking to be heard among the more strident-sounding metal-stringed fretted instruments, the guitarist’s need for additional volume was met by Martin with further advancements in guitar design.

“The first 000 appeared in 1902, as did the first steel-string that Martin built – a special order 00-21,” says Jason. “But Martin didn’t get into producing guitars with steel strings on a regular basis until the 1910s. Hawaiian music was huge at that time and that’s when Martin started building Hawaiian-style guitars with steel strings. After that, they would offer a guitar three different ways: with gut strings for classical playing; with steel strings for classical playing; and with steel strings for Hawaiian playing.”

Ultimately, steel strings became so popular that in 1923 they became the standard option for Style 18 guitars, while gut-stringed versions were referred to special orders. By the late 1920s, this became the norm for most other Martin styles, marking a new turning point in the history of the company.

“And then the Dreadnought arrived in 1916,” says Jason. “Originally, Martin only built Dreadnought models for the Oliver Ditson Company – the 222 and the 111, which was pretty similar to what would later become a D-18 [via the experimental D-1 model], because it had a spruce top with a mahogany back and sides. In 1931, after Ditson went out of business, Martin started building the Dreadnought under their own name.

“Early on, the Dreadnoughts didn’t do that great because they were still the large 12-fret models with the thick neck. They had a 1 7/8[-inch] nut width and there was really no fingerboard radius, so it was kind of a classical fingerboard on a big steel-string guitar. 

"But in 1934, Martin changed the design to the 14-fret neck and from there we really see the Dreadnought models take off. Martin had been building smaller guitars with 14-fret necks since the arrival of the OM-28 [in 1929], and they had 14-fret 0-18s, some with sunburst tops, in 1932. That became the standard very quickly. By 1934, Martin had switched over the majority of their line up to 14-fret necks.”

With mahogany backs and sides, spruce tops, X-bracing, steel strings, larger bodies and 14-fret necks, Martin’s 18-series had finally arrived in the form of what many see as an archetypal American acoustic guitar.

“As far as the 18-series goes, if you want the most balanced sound you can get, then you’re going to want an 0-18,” says Jason, “While a 00-18 is going to have a little extra volume and bass, and a 000-18 even more so, if you’re really looking for maximum volume and bass response, then you’ll want a D-18. That’s why the early country and bluegrass players gravitated towards Martin – players needed the most out of their instrument.

“The D-18 and the D-28 are both workhorse guitars when it comes to the history of popular music, but I think what really set the D-18 apart for a lot of players is that, although it was always a cheaper model, after a while people learned how well it records and how good it sounds live. 

"Personally, I prefer a mahogany Dreadnought. Mahogany is less prone to feedback than rosewood. Because it’s not as dense, you’re not getting as much low-end, which is really where the feedback problems occur. And, to my ears, a D-18 records better. I think they sound a little more focused than a rosewood guitar and I can separate the notes a lot easier.

“There are tons of guitar players who have used 18s throughout the history of popular music. Bob Dylan used an 0-18 and a 000-18, as did Steve Earle. Elizabeth Cotten, Muddy Waters and Steve Howe played 00-18s. Woodie Guthrie and Martin Carthy played 000-18s, as did Elvis originally, then on his Sun Sessions he played a D-18. Gordon Lightfoot, Clarence White and David Crosby all played a D-18.

"We have Kurt Cobain’s [1953] D-18 in our museum. He nicknamed it ‘Grandpa’. It’s old and beat-up. And then there’s the [1959] D-18E he played on the MTV Unplugged show. After the folk boom of the ‘50s and ‘60s, Martin sales were down in the late ‘70s and through the ‘80s, but we saw things take off in the ‘90s when the MTV Unplugged shows aired.”

In more recent years, Martin has continued to build 18-series guitars by hand in time-honored tradition by taking inspiration from its golden-era production years of the 1930s and ‘40s.

“The sound factor is what makes golden era 18-series Martin guitars so attractive,” says Jason. “I think part of that did come down to the use of ebony for the fingerboard and bridge. 

"Martin moved away from it for decades. Although it wasn’t recorded until 1940, you see the smaller 18s changing from ebony to rosewood fingerboards and bridges in the late 1930s, followed by the D-18s in 1946, but we went back to an ebony fingerboard and bridge, along with the earlier-style forward-shifted scalloped braces, on the D-18s in 2012. It’s been very well received and, since that time, we’ve started building the 0-18 and 00-18 again.

“We’ve had a lot of success with our 18-series over the years, and many players still look at those as the go to guitar when it comes to an acoustic.”

With thanks to CF Martin & Company, Vintage ‘n’ Rare Guitars in Bath, U.K., and Graham Firth.

***The following originally appeared in the June 2011 issue of Guitar Player***

Certain guitar solos are infused with magic. They may or may or may not be technically challenging, flashy, or otherwise virtuoso, but they have that special something that sets them apart from what came before, and they typically alert guitarists everywhere that their world has forever changed. 

What’s more, those magic solos tend to inspire legions of guitarists to attempt to unlock their technical and tonal mysteries, and permeate the six-string community’s collective unconscious, re-emerging later as direct and indirect influences on individual players’ styles. Somewhat paradoxically, however, there is no consensus on which solos have achieved this iconic status.

When we began working on this story, we came up with a lengthy list of solos to include. Our first task was to set up some guidelines. We decided to limit the list to electric rock solos, along with blues and jazz-rock fusion solos that influenced rock. We also set a limit of one solo per artist.

At that point, there were still many more than 40 solos on the list, so we had to make some hard choices. To start, guitarists who were hugely influential overall, but couldn’t be tied to an ultra-influential solo – such as Tony Iommi and George Harrison – were cut. 

We then had to narrow down our selections to just one for each artist, which was difficult for someone like Eric Clapton, whose entries at that point included “Crossroads,” his cover of Freddie King’s “Hideaway” on the Blues Breakers album, and his historic wah workout on “White Room.” Once the smoke cleared, however, we had reached consensus. 

The solos are organized chronologically – including those that fall within the same year – because we thought it would be instructive to see how they relate to each other historically. 

We hope that you like we came up with and perhaps even discover an overlooked gem or two for yourself...

1. Elmore James “Dust My Broom” (1951)

Jimi Hendrix originally called himself Jimmy James and Maurice James in homage to Elmore, and every bluesman since the ‘50s – particularly slide players – owes something to the King of the Slide Guitar. 

Played in an open-D tuning (D, A, D, F#, A, D, low to high), probably on a Kay flattop or Harmony Sovereign with a D’Armond pickup, the slide hook on this tune, and the solo based on it, reappear countless times throughout blues and rock music.

2. Les Paul “How High the Moon” (1951)

The super-syncopated, slap-back soaked runs, chukka-chukka doublestops with bluesy bends, plucky cascading figures, and idiosyncratic ornamentations in Paul’s two solos helped propel this standard up the charts, and further established Paul as the most creative electric guitar player of his generation. 

It was recorded with his “old Epiphone” – a.k.a. “the Clunker” and “the Breadwinner” – with custom-wound hot pickups and other major modifications.

3. Scotty Moore “That’s Alright, Mama” (1954)

Armed with his Gibson ES-295 through a ‘52 Fender Deluxe, Scotty Moore, bassist Bill Black, and their bud Elvis, had no idea what a firestorm they were about to create with this early single. 

Moore’s simple, to the- point style covered the drummer-less bases quite easily with a fat tone and swinging musicality, giving this rather hillbilly ensemble some dangerous sonic heft.

His break on “That’s Alright, Mama” inspired everyone from George Harrison to Keith Richards to Jimmy Page, as well as Danny Gatton, who never missed an opportunity to throw a Moore homage in the middle of one of his famed rockabilly rave ups. 

Moore’s barking double-stops and approximation of a tic-tac bass line on “Mama” are as hooky as it gets, making this solo one of the most important ever.

4. Eddie Cochran “Sittin’ in the Balcony” (1957)

Slinging a 1955 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins Hollow Body 'G'-branded guitar with a Gibson P-90 in the neck slot, Cochran, with his iconic presence and echo-drenched tones, hugely impacted early rockers – such as Lennon and McCartney, who bonded over Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock” upon meeting in 1957 – and innumerable players thereafter, particularly Brian Setzer. 

The twangy solo on Cochran’s first hit, “Sittin’ In the Balcony,” crackles with the influence of his heroes Chet Atkins, Joe Maphis, and Johnny Smith.

5. Chuck Berry “Johnny B. Goode” (1958)

While some people might not consider this song’s intro a “solo,” it might be the most important rock guitar part ever recorded. 

The doublestops essentially usher in the post-Elvis rock era, and the tone and balls of this iconic part would echo in the playing of George Harrison, Keith Richards, Eddie Van Halen, and Angus Young... and that's just one tenth of one percent of the players who have copped these licks. 

Listen to it again. You’ll see.

6. Hank Marvin “Apache” (1960)

A primary influence on nearly every British guitarist of a certain age, Marvin created a dreamy, echo-y sound on this #1 U.K. hit that was achieved by playing his Stratocaster – the first in England – through a Meazzi Echomatic tape delay and a Vox AC30 tube amp. 

Marvin mostly used the bridge pickup, but picked near the neck, and palmed the vibrato arm to impart his trademark twang.

7. Freddie King “Hideaway” (1960)

Freddie (a.k.a. Freddy) King cobbled “Hideaway” out of parts lifted from tunes by Hound Dog Taylor, Jimmy McCracklin, Robert Lockwood Jr., and even Henry Mancini. 

Between the breaks where he recycled bits of “The Walk” and “Peter Gunn,” King played stinging solos that he plucked on a P-90 equipped Les Paul using a plastic thumbpick and metal fingerpick. 

Eric Clapton did his own version of the tune on John Mayall’s 1966 album, Blues Breakers, and the success of “Hideaway” made it a launch pad for a number of other King instrumentals that would further his notoriety as one of the top blues guitarists of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

8. James Burton “Hello Mary Lou” (1961)

Having turned pro as a teenager on the Louisiana Hayride, Burton was a seasoned vet by the time he became the lead player in Ricky Nelson’s band, which was featured regularly on the TV show The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. 

Burton was a great rock and roll player, as evidenced by his Chuck Berry-style solo on “Believe What I Say,” but he also inspired legions of pickers with his explosively twangy lead break on “Hello Mary Lou.” 

Burton’s playing on Merle Haggard’s early ‘60s hits like “Mama Tried” and “Swingin’ Doors,” inspired the late, great Roy Nichols, who said, “I learned a lot from Burton, and I copied some of his licks, but I couldn’t copy him to a ‘T’.”

9. Jeff Beck “Over Under Sideways Down” (1966)

Along with the Rolling Stones, no band inspired more hard-edged guitar-wielding maniacs than the Yardbirds. Beck’s playing on their classic garage rock anthem is, like much of his playing at this time, inspired by the groovy sounds of the sitar. 

Equal parts spacey modal madness and meth-infused pentatonic fury, it still ranks as some of Beck’s most inspired playing, and that says a lot. 

And not only was Beck’s otherworldly playing inspirational to a generation of guitarists, but his punky stage demeanor and nasty sonic streak (a ‘54 Fender Esquire into a Tone Bender fuzz and AC30), served notice to everyone that a new sheriff was in town, and he was kicking ass.

10. Albert King “Born Under a Bad Sign” (1967)

If Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix lift your licks lock, stock, and barrel, your influence has been spread very far and very wide. In fact, one can make the case that Albert King was the most influential King, just by virtue of the not-so-subtle tributes by his admirers. 

King Albert’s authoritative bends and economical phrasing are required study for anyone who wants to play blues-rock guitar. On this cut, the Velvet Bulldozer lives up to his nickname, making his Gibson Flying V moan, scream, and move mountains with sweeping bends and a stinging tone that delivers all of the nuances in his playing. 

It also proves that, even though SRV and Clapton could “do” Albert, they were never really even close. 

11. Eric Clapton “Crossroads” (1968)

This one is a giant among giants. Little did Slowhand know, after he walked off the Winterland stage in San Francisco, he had created a template setting the standard for expressive, lyrical, howling blues-rock guitar. 

Armed with a ‘64 Gibson ES-335 and a couple of non-master volume 100-watt Marshall stacks, Clapton’s first break is a textbook example of how to build a solo’s intensity, while the second manages to kick it up one more notch for maximum climax. 

Not a duff note in the bunch, impeccably phrased, and with a vibrato that’s as classy as they come, Clapton could have never played another note and he’d still be one of the most influential players ever. 

12. Jimi Hendrix “All Along the Watchtower” (1968)

One can only guess what sort of “light bulb” moment Jimi experienced when he first heard this tune from Bob Dylan’s 1967 album John Wesley Harding. Maybe it was the biblical references in the lyrics, or the great melody – or perhaps just the wide-open space for improvising afforded by the four-chord progression. 

Whatever it was, the version that appeared on Hendrix’ Electric Ladyland album gave rise to one of Jimi’s most memorable solo outings. Playing soulfully and inventively using a wah and fuzz, Hendrix reinvented “All Along the Watchtower” to such a degree that it’s sometimes easy to forget who actually wrote the tune!

13. Peter Green “Black Magic Woman” (1968)

B.B. King once said of Green, “He has the sweetest tone I ever heard; he was the only one who gave me the cold sweats.” After establishing himself as a masterful blues stylist in John Mayall’s band, Green quickly evolved both as a player and a songwriter with Fleetwood Mac. 

On his D minor tour-de-force “Black Magic Woman,” Green pulls off an incredibly captivating melody, and his beautiful phrasing and soulful bending on a Les Paul with “magnetically out of phase” pickups was pure gold. 

Carlos Santana made the song a huge hit on Abraxas, and Green was also influential on Irish blues rocker Gary Moore, who would own – and eventually sell – Green’s famous Gibson. 

14. Robert Fripp “21st Century Schizoid Man” (1969)

Fripp’s serpentine solo on this alarmingly virtuosic track combines a supersaturated sustained tone with atypical intervallic movement, non-bluesy bends and trills, and note choices and phrasing that had more in common with Coltrane than Clapton. 

Playing a three-pickup ‘59 Les Paul Custom through a Marshall stack and probably either a Burns Buzzaround or a Colorsound Tone Bender, he recorded the seminal progressive rock solo.

15. Jimmy Page “Heartbreaker” (1969)

Selecting the most influential Page solo led to a heated debate. 

But the squawking tone of a ‘58 Les Paul into a Marshall SLP 1969 Super Lead, maniacal cluster picking, wicked hammer-ons and pull-offs, and behind-the-nut G-string bending in the first solo on “Heartbreaker” – not to mention the smoking second solo – explain why everyone from Brian May to Steve Vai to Steve Morse have hailed it as a definitive guitar solo.

16. B.B. King “The Thrill is Gone” (1969)

With a tone sweeter and thicker than molasses, B.B. King graced this song with one of his most emotive blues solos of all time. King knew what the tune called for in context of the highly produced album Completely Well (his first with strings), and it wasn’t about showboating. 

Far from it, judging by the way he grooves so succulently behind the beat. Besides being a big hit for B.B., “The Thrill is Gone” showed guitarists the power of playing slow and cool. 

In an era when Johnny Winter was introducing blues-rock shredding, B.B. King’s huge vibrato and deep soul defined what “playing from the heart” was all about. 

17. Leslie West “Mississippi Queen” (1970)

Leslie West’s massive and massively influential tone on Climbing! – which included “Mississippi Queen” – was created by playing through a Sunn Coliseum P.A. head and four 4x12 speaker cabinets. 

“The head had four microphone inputs and a master volume control, huge transformers and gigantic KT88 tubes, and the cabinets were loaded with Eminence speakers, which never hurt your ears, even with the treble all the way up,” West told GP in 2010. 

He was playing Gibson Les Paul Juniors at the time, and used a single-cutaway 1956 Jr. with a single P-90, strung with La Bella Electric Guitar strings (with a .010 banjo string for the high E and the other strings moved down one to create a light-gauge set) on the track. 

The song reached #21 on the Billboard charts, assuring that West’s signature sound was heard across the country and around the world.

18. Duane Allman “Statesboro Blues” (1971)

By 1970 Duane Allman and Dickey Betts had forged one of the most iconic guitar sounds of all time with their harmonized melodies on songs like “Revival” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” 

But as far as slide players went, few at the time got more acclaim than Duane himself, after the 1971 release of The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East. Duane’s slick phrasing and fat, singing tone on the opening track of the double live album was inspired by hearing Taj Mahal’s rendition of the song with Jesse Ed Davis on slide. 

Sonny Landreth, who remembers seeing the Allman Brothers at the time, recalls: “That huge tone that Duane got when he played slide on a Les Paul through a Marshall was a real game changer. I don’t remember anyone else who had a sound like that back then.”

19. John McLaughlin “Meeting of the Spirits” (1971)

Although he had already done revolutionary work with Tony Williams’ Lifetime, Miles Davis, and as a solo artist, McLaughlin’s combination of molten Gibson-through-cranked-Marshall distortion, impossibly fast and complex yet ultra-precise picking, and unique phrasing on The Inner Mounting Flame shattered all existing concepts of “electric guitarist” and lit the fuse of fusion.

20. Ritchie Blackmore “Highway Star” (1972)

Actually a harmonized pair of solos, the tasty bends, rapid-fire triplets, and whammy manipulations on this Strat-into-a-Marshall-amp (via a reel-to-reel tape recorder preamp) solo make it one of Blackmore’s most memorable.

The Deep Purple guitarist’s influence on legions of rock and metal shedders from Morse to Malmsteen to Mustaine is undisputable.

21. Billy Gibbons “La Grange” (1973) 

Gibbons made his mark on this classic shuffle with two solos. 

The first, done on a ‘55 Strat, enters screaming with that classic rear pickup Fender bite, before Gibbons flips to the front pickup for a swinging double-stop workout and some liquid pentatonic runs delivered with his impeccable sense of time and swing. 

But it’s the track’s second solo that the guitarist is most famous for, and the one that every hard rock player would study, due to Gibbons’ insane pinch harmonics. With his “Pearly Gates” ‘59 Les Paul, the Reverend squawks, grunts, and chokes out so many pinch harmonics that it would be laughable if it wasn’t so damm bad ass. 

22. Brian May “Bohemian Rhapsody” (1975) 

Brian May’s touch, tone, and orchestral instincts have proven impossible to imitate, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying. 

His majestic lines on this classic are quintessential May, with precise picking, impeccable phrasing, and a bold, loud sound. 

The solo’s placement in the mix was influential, informing how bands such as Boston and Styx featured their solos. You’ve got to assume Dr. May’s harmonized lines at the end of the song got Tom Scholz’s attention as well.

23. Larry Carlton “Kid Charlemagne” (1976)

Carlton was already a session legend known for his smooth-as-silk lines that were reminiscent of Wes, Pass, and Trane when he cut this Steely track. 

But when Mr. 335 combined a rock dude’s tone with a jazzer’s harmonic sensibilities, he created the standard by which every jazz rocker would be judged. 

Ask Steve Lukather, Robben Ford, or Mike Stern what impact this solo had on them. 

Alright then.

24. Carlos Santana “Europa (Earth’s Cry, Heaven’s Smile)” (1976)

Santana masterfully caresses the tune’s main melody with his trademark singing sustain and thick tone, never quite giving up the goods until the outro solo where he lets it all hang out in an outpouring of soulful yet wicked playing. 

He displays a fluid, tactile control at all times, and his tone is more open-sounding and less compressed than in recent years. 

And when he kicks the wah on, look out – he ratchets up the intensity tenfold, just when you think it can’t go any higher. Simply put, “Europa” is a study in pace, melodicism, and space – as well as good, old fashion burning!

25. Al Di Meola “Race with Devil on Spanish Highway” (1977)

Sure, there were people who could play fast before Di Meola, but nobody had made it such a central part of their deal before Big Al came along. 

Di Meola’s picking ability coupled with his sick, self-described “mutola” technique raised the bar for audacious shred and players interested in pushing the limits of picking. 

Far from being a pattern-minded monotone shredder, Di Meola’s Latin influences and his compositional sense have always made his displays of virtuosity supremely musical. 

And for all of the shred haters, Di Meola proved that the emotional impact of many notes is just as valid as a few well-placed ones. 

26. Eddie Van Halen “Eruption” (1978)

What can you say about this cadenza from hell? Cut in 1978, this has to be one of the most influential pieces of guitar playing ever. 

EVH took a Strat with a humbucker, an MXR Phase 90, and a plexi Marshall, and then played some supercharged Clapton licks that boggled just about every 6-stringer’s mind in the world. 

It was Van Halen’s two-handed tapping that truly grabbed everyone’s attention, however, and made this the most recognizable solo of the next two decades. “Eruption” made an impact on millions of rock dudes and seemingly every kid who set foot inside a Guitar Center.

27. Allan Holdsworth “In the Dead of Night” (1978)

As Bill Bruford put it, this solo was, “94 seconds of liquid passion married to a blinding technical facility that was to go down in the annals of rock guitar history. 

"All the hallmarks of his brilliant playing were there in this solo: poise, pace, melody, the Slonimsky interval jumps, the whammy bar, and all over a killer groove.”

28. Mark Knopfler “Sultans of Swing” (1978) 

When Mark Knopfler released this fingerpicked two-pickup masterpiece, he showed guitarists that you don’t need distortion or a plectrum to rock. 

With a Strat on the bridge and middle pickups, a Fender Twin Reverb and a Roland JC-120, Knopfler played two deft, bouncy solos that referenced Chet Atkins with snappy popped notes, crying bends, and clever arpeggios. 

Along the way he influenced just about every clean tone for the next 20 years. When people talk about an “out of phase” Strat tone, they’re talking about this tune.

29. Michael Schenker “Rock Bottom” (1979)

The 1970s was a great time for live records, with classics from Frampton, Lizzy, and Ted Nugent, but one of the sweetest solos to grace a double LP came from UFO’s Michael Schenker. 

The extended break on this tune has everything great about Schenker: melody, dynamics, tone for days, and burning. 

This lead would fascinate rockers all over the world, including George Lynch, Vinnie Moore, Akira Takahashi, and Kirk Hammett.

30. David Gilmour “Comfortably Numb” (1979)

Few solos can match the vibe of Gilmour’s work on this iconic piece. 

Playing a ‘79 black Stratocaster with a ‘62 neck and DiMarzios through Hiwatts and Yamaha RA-200 rotating speaker cabinets, Gilmour transformed what are essentially blues licks into a signature statement that affected the molecules in myriad musical minds. 

This is arguably his crowning achievement as a soloist.

31. Angus Young “You Shook Me All Night Long” (1980)

It serves to reason that a song that is all about getting it on should have a solo that is sexy, right? 

Damn straight. 

Young’s turn on this global hit finds him harnessing his kinetic blues tendencies into a steamy, attitude-laden solo that is actually kind of funky. 

His tasteful major pentatonic flavorings as well as his gorgeous tone – thanks to a wound up old Marshall and a Gibson SG – are the icing on the cake of his impeccable groove, intonation, and phrasing.

32. Randy Rhoads “Crazy Train” (1980)

After Van Halen, it wasn’t easy for an L.A. rocker to make a mark, but Randall Rhoads did so in a big way on his debut with Ozzy. 

Rhoads took what he had gleaned from Mick Ronson, Gary Moore, and Bach, and synthesized it into this metal tour de force. 

He wasn’t the first guy to blend classical music and rock, but he was absolutely the gateway drug for players like Zakk Wylde and Tom Morello.

33. Stevie Ray Vaughan “Pride and Joy” (1983)

The second cut on SRV’s debut album, Texas Flood, “Pride and Joy” blasted onto the airwaves courtesy of a great melody, catchy lyrics, and a gamechanging solo in which Vaughan threw down a barrage of killer licks with a gargantuan tone from his Fender/Dumble rig. 

SRV’s deft songwriting and his Albert King/Hendrix-influenced style succeeded in making what was fundamentally a classic “tay-hass” shuffle into a huge AOR hit that every classic rocker is expected to cover in perpetuity. 

Bottom line is, after SRV came along, anyone who thought they could play blues with fire and passion got a schoolin’ the size of Texas.

34. Yngwie Malmsteen “Black Star” (1984)

Mike Varney’s rep as a finder of great guitarists was already solid when he wrote about a kid from Sweden with a funny name in 1983. 

Many players’ first exposure to Malmsteen was on this shred fest. With his blinding speed, dazzling classical arpeggios, gorgeous Strat-into-Marshall tone, and larger than life vibrato, he didn’t raise the bar for rock technique – he obliterated it. 

Yngwie changed the game forever with this one, just ask any rocker who has swept an arpeggio since then.

35. George Lynch “The Hunter” (1985)

Dokken's George Lynch has inspired countless rock and metal players for nearly 30 years with his perfect blend of structured melodicism and off-the-rails fury – all in the space of a 16-bar solo. 

This solo is a perfect example, as he eases into it with memorable, understated melodic motifs that are helped along with some thick-ass tone and sick vibrato. 

Halfway through, however, Lynch begins to turn up the jets. Alternate picking, sweep picking, and legato playing become one within a single winding phrase, giving him a sound and style that are difficult to ape. 

However, Lynch did show the way for shred-obsessed guitarists on how to structure a meaningful statement in the middle of a tune and leave an everlasting mark. In fact, his solos are the only thing that don’t sound dated about Dokken.

36. Kirk Hammett “Master of Puppets” (1986)

Kirk Hammett’s influences include his teacher Joe Satriani, Michael Schenker, and Thin Lizzy. And nowhere are those influences more prominent than on this tune. 

Hammett’s whammy bar work and speed picking would inspire countless kids to notch their mids, cram their theory, and play blazing solos over chugging grooves.

37. Joe Satriani “Always with Me, Always with You” (1987)

Satriani is obviously known as a master technician, but it’s his melodic side that has left the biggest imprint on guitardom. 

This sweet ballad showcases Satch’s singing tone, skillful ornamentation, and ability to blend the tasty with the jaw dropping. 

The reach of this solo is apparent in hundreds of instrumental guitar records, country ballads, movie soundtracks, and car commercials.

38. Kurt Cobain “Come As You Are” (1991)

Although he took about as many solos and Johnny Ramone, the late Nirvana guitar anti-hero played a memorable one in this song from 1991. 

Presumably using a Boss DS-1 for dirt and an Electro-Harmonix Small Clone chorus for the warbly modulation, Cobain simply quoted the vocal melody in a snotty, vibey way, and the kids went crazy. 

Suddenly, young players – many with a sanctimonious disdain for ‘80s-style wanking – were taking a break from strumming through songs and trying their hands at playing single-note lines.

39. Zakk Wylde “No More Tears” (1991)

Logic dictates that Zakk Wylde was doomed to failure when he got the gig with Ozzy. 

A blond kid with a Les Paul? Really? 

But then people got a taste of his huge tone, squealing harmonics, and rapid-fire pentatonics and a new star was born. 

On this tune Zakk channeled Rhoads, Billy Gibbons, and Frank Marino into a solo that was emblematic of the new generation of metalheads.

40. Dimebag Darrell “The Great Southern Trendkill” (1996)

The post-Van Halen, post-Randy Rhoads world was in dire need of a champion when Darrell Abbott came on the scene. 

He took the styles of those guys, mixed in some Ace Frehley, some Lynyrd Skynyrd, and a heapin’ helpin’ of moonshine and created the ass-kicking solo here. 

Dime made it cool to love Holdsworth, EVH, and Billy Gibbons all in the same song.

Considering how ubiquitous overdrive pedals are today, it’s difficult to think of a time when they were still in their infancy. Remarkably, the late-’60s to mid-’70s classic rock era achieved its template-setting guitar tones without the aid of any overdrive or distortion pedals as we know them today.

Fuzz boxes and treble boosters were present and accounted for, but the magic of amp-like clipping in a compact stompbox didn’t become a reality until the mid to late ’70s, and the ProCo Rat was there at the center of it all.

Based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the former home of the Gibson Guitar Corporation, ProCo Sound Inc. evolved in 1974 from the remnants of another local studio-sound company and quickly made a name for itself manufacturing professional-quality microphone and speaker cables and snakes.

But the product for which the company would be best known was the Rat.

ProCo engineer Scott Burnham was an avid guitarist who was fond of modding fuzz and distortion pedals but was unhappy with what he found under the hoods. He decided he could build a better mousetrap and set about designing a new and original pedal.

He unveiled the first few custom-made renditions of the Rat in 1977 and 1978, and named them in honor of the rodents that were infesting ProCo’s basement workshop.

According to JHS Pedals’ information site, thejhsshow.com, Burnham made only 10 standard Rats and one double Rat in the first year or so of the unit’s existence. The pedals in this initial run are known as Bud Box Rats for the off-the-shelf hobby enclosure in which they were assembled.

The popularity of these pedals was enough to convince the company’s owner, Charlie Wicks, there was a future in the thing, and ProCo put the Rat into production in 1979.

The pedal featured on these pages, known as a Version 1-B, was built in mid ’79 and is virtually identical to the first production V1-A pedals of early ’79 other than a change in the logo, which lost its “fringe” from the “T” and the tip of the Rat tail.

Notable on all early Rats until around 1981 is the inclusion of a center tone control, where the majority of Rat players are used to seeing a filter control, one of the few changes to the circuit from the pedal’s inception through to its wider distribution in the 1980s and ’90s.

The Rat’s bright, heavy distortion is the product of op-amp clipping, allegedly made even heavier than intended by an errant resistor choice during the prototyping, which pushed the op amp harder.

The Rat circuit is rather similar to that of the Boss DS-1 Distortion pedal, which debuted in 1978, although many players have noted that the DS-1 begins to compress more as you turn up the gain, whereas the Rat stays raw and immediate almost to the end of the dial.

Otherwise, the only real circuit alteration from this V1-B Rat to the more popular later renditions is a simple reversing of the tone control to make it a filter control. Both are simply low-pass filters, as found on many other overdrive pedals, but the former adds treble as you roll it clockwise, whereas the latter adds treble as you turn it counter-clockwise.

The V1-B Rat shown here has the fabled Motorola LM308 op amp used in all early renditions of the pedal, and is entirely original, other than a mini switch added many years ago to disengage the battery when the external adaptor is used.

Most often praised for its ability to re-create the fury of a cranked 100-watt stack, the Rat’s tonal nuances make the unit far more than an all-out sonic assault device. Judicious use of the distortion control can drive a tube amp more subtly, similar to a lower-gain overdrive pedal, but with the Rat’s raucous personality.

Set midway through the dial, the distortion knob delivers seminal heavy-rock lead and crunch rhythm tones, and when pushed to the max it approximates a genuine fuzz pedal, with plenty of hair and splutter amid the clipping.

The Rat pedal’s success in a market thin on usable overdrive and distortion boxes brought it a host of notable users. Over the years they have included Kurt Cobain, Johnny Greenwood, Joe Perry, Thurston Moore, James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Jeff Beck and Graham Coxon.

More than just a retro-toned dirt box, the Rat has proved its staying power, too. In addition to the several original and reissue renditions of the pedal – plus popular spin-offs like the Rat 2, Turbo Rat and Lil Rat – numerous clones and homages have paid tribute to the gist of the original circuit.

The Joyo Splinter, Jam Rattler, Mooer Black Secret, Pettyjohn Rous, Stomp Under Foot Skinner Box, JHS Pack Rat, ThorpyFX Warthog and many others all contain a good dose of ProCo Rat DNA.

But for retro purists, only the original will do.

Essential Ingredients

• Black metal enclosure
• Fluted plastic knobs
• Controls for distortion, tone (changed to filter on later models) and volume
• LM308 op amp

Guitar Player would like to thank Retro Fret for showing us this vintage ProCo RAT.

The 1969 Fender Mustang electric guitar that Kurt Cobain used in the iconic music video for Nirvana's smash hit, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," has sold at auction for a whopping $4.5 million.

The eye-watering price tag makes it the second most valuable guitar ever sold at auction, beneath only another Cobain guitar – the heavily-modified Martin D-18E acoustic guitar the late Nirvana frontman used during the band's 1993 MTV Unplugged performance. That particular six-string was sold in June 2020 for $6,010,000.

Having gone under the hammer over the weekend (May 22), as part of Julien’s Auctions’ Music Icons sale, the Mustang obliterated its pre-sale estimated value of $600,000 – $800,000. It was sold to Indianapolis Colts owner – and noted collector of valuable guitars – Jim Irsay.

The Lake Placid Blue Mustang was used by Cobain for a number of prominent Nirvana live performances – including the band's show at the Tree Club in Dallas in 1991 and their 1993 set at the Hollywood Rock Festival in Rio de Janeiro. At the Dallas show, Cobain is said to have smashed the Mustang on a mixing board, resulting in a broken neck joint that was later repaired.

Its most memorable turn though, was its appearance in the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" music video, which – with relentless play on MTV – made Nirvana overnight superstars.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the guitar – which was previously displayed at Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture – are set to be donated by the Cobain family to Irsay's mental health-focused Kicking the Stigma initiative.

“I am thrilled to preserve and protect another piece of American culture that changed the way we looked at world,” Jim Irsay said of his purchase in a statement. “The fact that a portion of the proceeds will go toward our effort to kick the stigma surrounding mental health makes this acquisition even more special to me.”

For more info on the guitar, visit juliensauctions.com.

On this day in 1994, Nirvana played their final show. A little over a month later, the world would receive the devastating news that Kurt Cobain had passed away aged 27.

While this tragedy may have signaled the end of a groundbreaking period in music history, Cobain’s era-defining legacy lives on as generations of electric guitar players continue to find inspiration in his life’s work.

In addition to audio and music videos, some of Nirvana’s best live footage can be found on the band’s official YouTube channel.

Such gems include cuts from the iconic MTV Unplugged concert released in 1994; the Live and Loud video recorded in Seattle in 1993; the unforgettable appearance at the UK’s Reading Festival in 1992; and the Live At the Paramount show recorded in Seattle in 1991.

Also available are clips from the Terminal Einz show filmed on March 1, 1994 – including an explosive performance of “Drain You” from Nirvana’s watershed 1991 album Nevermind. 

Although he was diagnosed with bronchitis and laryngitis, Cobain’s voice remains strong throughout this rendition of a song he once described as a personal favorite.

Commenting on “Drain You,” Cobain told Rolling Stone he thought the song was, “as good as ‘Teen Spirit.’ I love the lyrics, and I never get tired of playing it.”

“Drain You” is believed to feature the most guitar overdubs on Nevermind. 

In the 2005 film Classic Albums: Nirvana – Nevermind, producer Butch Vig explains how the song’s five-track “orchestral” guitar sound was achieved using a combination of Mesa/Boogie and Fender Bassman amps along with a “super grunge” pedal/Bassman combination.

According to Vig, however, Cobain was somewhat reluctant when it came to recording multiple overdubs. 

He therefore had to use some 'creative psychology' in order to convince the guitarist he needed to repeat performances, claiming previous takes weren't captured properly or that the tuning was off.

“I don’t know how I got Kurt to do all those guitars,” says Vig. “I think I was lying, basically... He thought he was doing the same part and, meanwhile, I just kept putting him to new tracks.”

Get Nevermind on vinyl here.

Much has been made of Nirvana’s timing, mostly how the dive-bombing and strutting hair-metal din that had wailed from L.A. since the second half of the 1980s was decisively silenced by 1991’s Nevermind.

That was a great story for music journalists covering the impact of the band’s second album and the emergence of Seattle’s grunge scene as a whole at the time. But the deeper truth for many guitar players offers something more than merely pitting subgenres of rock against each other.

For a generation of players, Kurt Cobain emerged as a worldwide star at a crucial point in their development.

When you’re first coming to grips with the guitar, the sheer enormity of possibilities can be the very thing that drives you away. Kurt’s songs offered accessibility for budding guitarists, with an energy and force we could aspire to, and be inspired by.

And his intense live performances with bassist Krist Novoselic, drummer Dave Grohl – and later, second guitarist Pat Smear – proved the point.

He was not an overnight sensation. How many guitar players ever are? The instrument takes time and dedication.

Kurt served his time, taking the first tentative steps in his bedroom in Aberdeen, Washington with the electric guitar his uncle Chuck had given him for his 14th birthday; taking a month of guitar lessons and learning his first riff (AC/DC’s “Back in Black”); and roughing it in a freezing van in North America touring Nirvana’s debut, Bleach.

It was the pursuit of a dream to communicate his music to others.

But misconceptions about his guitar playing remain. Kurt Cobain didn’t kill off the solo, and he wasn’t guitar’s revolutionary anti-hero.

Instead, the energy and immediacy of his talent brought an integrity back to the mainstream that cut to the very heart of what makes rock and roll such a visceral force.

“His playing was misunderstood,” notes Earnie Bailey, the guitar tech who worked closely with Kurt through much of his Nirvana touring career.

“He was more advanced than he revealed, and his minimalist playing was more about subtracting the notes and clichés he disliked and working with what’s left.”

That remainder adds up to a compelling legacy.

Just as Cobain was inspired by everyone from Buzz Osborne to Ace Frehley and Black Francis, there are countless players he inspired, and there continues to be.

Almost 30 years after his passing, that influence resonates as much as every power chord and discordant lead on Nirvana’s records.

Buy the Nevermind 30th Anniversary Super Deluxe box set here.

Two decades after Kurt Cobain redefined mainstream rock with his raw, uncompromising songwriting and anti-guitar hero way of playing guitar, a left-handed guitarist and art school student in Hobart, Australia, took inspiration from his example.

Courtney Barnett knew the rock music of several eras, thanks to a neighbor’s mixtapes, and her own modest CD collection consisted mainly of Nirvana albums.

While playing right-handed guitars upside down at first (due to the unavailability of good lefty guitars), she developed a unique way of playing rhythm and lead with her thumb and fingers, since she didn’t like the sound of a pick against the strings.

By the early 2010s, Barnett was playing in bands and appearing as a co-writer and guitarist on recordings by local singer-songwriters.

After a stint as a slide guitarist and co-lead singer in the psych-country-folk group Immigrant Union (you can hear her on their sophomore album, Anyway), Barnett released her debut EP, I’ve Got a Friend Called Emily Ferris in 2012 on Milk! Records, a label she cofounded with fellow artist and then-partner Jen Cloher.

The 34-year-old’s widely eclectic take on indie rock can be gleaned from a playlist of influential songs she curated for a streaming service for many years following those first band experiences.

Her selections show a wide tapestry of musical input, ranging from her parents’ favorite jazz singers to the ’90s bands of her generation, like the Lemonheads, EMF, Pavement and the Breeders, as well as Jimi Hendrix, Yoko Ono, PJ Harvey, Leonard Cohen, Sonic Youth, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith and Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings.

Barnett signed with Marathon Artists in 2013 and combined her first EP with a new collection of songs as The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas.

Momentum quickly built. The international music press picked different tracks as their “favorite of the week,” while Barnett got booked on American late-night TV shows and landed a slot at the Coachella festival.

Her 2015 debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, became her commercial breakthrough and was lauded as a rock – not indie-rock – classic.

Her infectious songs were a meeting of uncompromising noise rock and American roots music, combining an exhilarating mix of sharp stream-of-consciousness lyrics and humor, delivered in an instantly recognizable half-singing vocal that sometimes recalls Lou Reed.

The album was accompanied by a series of fun music videos that revealed a self-deprecating artist who also played many of the album’s fills and solos on her black Telecaster.

You don’t see that too often, and people welcomed her with fervor.

It’s not hard to grasp what intense adulation can do to a person who suffers from anxiety and depression, as well as to their art, where it can be tempting to keep giving the audience the musical identity that they love, but that you are starting to outgrow.

And so Barnett started to expand her ways of expression on her 2018 follow-up, Tell Me How You Really Feel. This new direction is also noticeable on her new album, Things Take Time, Take Time, a lockdown memento born of change and calamity.

Barnett was struggling following her breakup with Cloher, the pandemic lockdown and the terrifying Australian bushfires of 2019-2020, known colloquially as the Black Summer.

When a friend suggested she make a list of what she looked forward to, Barnett gave it a try, focusing on small things: a cup of coffee, sunrise. That, in turn, gave birth to the songs on Things Take Time, Take Time, a collection of sprawling songs built from the minutiae of everyday things.

To record it, Barnett chose a studio that was new to her – Golden Retriever in Sydney – and worked without her usual gear or her band featuring bassist Bones Slone, drummer Dave Mudie and guitarist Dan Luscombe.

Instead, she created and coproduced the record with Warpaint drummer Stella Mozgawa, who had previously performed on Barnett’s 2017 collaboration with guitarist Kurt Vile, Lotta Sea Lice.

“Maybe that was a subconscious effort to push myself out of my comfort zones and try something different,” Barnett says of her decision to work amid so many changes. “I wanted to work with Stella again, and the timing was perfect because both of us were in the same country. If the pandemic hadn’t been there, we would’ve been busy with our other projects.”

The time is ripe for Barnett to enjoy a resurgence.

She’s the subject of director Danny Cohen’s brand-new documentary, Anonymous Club, which offers insights into the creative process and struggles of an artist Cohen refers to as an anti-influencer, a recluse acclaimed by audiences, and a strong female performer in conflict with herself.

We recently spoke to Barnett in Los Angeles, as she was kicking off her recent U.S. tour together with Sloane and Mozgawa.

Is surprise an important component to your music?

Not so much trying to surprise other people, but I think embracing the spontaneity. I’ve often gotten the majority of the song ready, where I know what it’s gonna do, but there are always bits that I don’t have planned.

Normally it’s things like guitar solos. A lot of the time, I leave them until the last minute to see what happens. Often, it’s that first thing you do that ends up being the best one. And every time I try to overdub a better guitar part or solo, it never has that same energy.

I think that’s what I try to capture; sometimes that’s what that slightly deranged thing is. There might be wrong notes and small things that aren’t completely right, but it captures a certain energy, and I try to trust that first-thought mentality.

“Small Poppies” [from Sometimes I Sit…] is a great song filled with beautiful ’50s retro guitar references, even though they also have that twist.

That is actually my friend Dan Luscombe who played on the song. I played pretty minimal rhythm guitar on it. Dan played on my first few albums, and I listened to that song the other day. His guitar playing on it is so incredible.

But after I finished that album and was ready to go on tour, I found out that he couldn’t join me, so I had to learn all of his amazing parts and all these different skills. It really pushed me as a guitar player, and I find him to be really inspiring.

How did you develop your playing style? Were there any influences, choices, or decisions on what not to do? We’re thinking of St. Vincent, who once said in an interview that she really tries to avoid playing “muscle memory licks.”

It’s hard to see what my own style is, because it’s what I know and what I’ve figured out over the years.

The muscle memory comment is a really good one, because I think it’s easy to fall into that comfort zone. I guess I try to keep myself on the edge of it, so that I’m not too comfortable but always learning new things.

Part of my style is playing rhythm and lead at the same time. I was 18 when I started my solo career shows; I played acoustic guitar and had to bridge this gap between rhythm and lead.

Over the years, as I started bands, I always tried to get a second guitarist to do the lead bits, but I’ve played as a three-piece for so much of my musical career that I had to learn how to blend the two out of necessity.

How would you describe your guitar aesthetic?

I would probably avoid doing that. It’s a combination of lots of ideas and trying to find the perfect blend of everything.

On Things Take Time, Take Time, you’ve moved away from the rock songs with punchy hooks and the feedback-driven solos that made your debut album a huge hit with fans and critics. This work is a lot more low-key, with a warm and comforting sound palette that mirrors the ruminating lyrics you’ve written. What brought about this new direction?

Over years of playing live, I’ve recognized that one of my safety fallbacks was to use a lot of distortion pedals: When in doubt, just make a big noise. And I recognized that it started to feel a little bit lazy and repetitive.

Obviously, it’s fun to do that, and a lot of the songs called for it. But – thinking of that thing St. Vincent said – I was looking for different angles: different ways to show emotions and find dynamics in the songs.

It’s easy to rely on the same tricks in songwriting or in the studio. I wasn’t trying to change patterns completely but just be aware when something came up that felt familiar and try a different way.

How did you and Stella work out the song arrangements?

For this album, we tried to use different instruments, and when things were sounding familiar or just a bit same-same, we would mix them up.

I only took one electric guitar into the studio, my sunburst Fender Jag [Kurt Cobain model with stock pickups]. I always get the best sounds out of that guitar. I also used a lot of acoustic guitar [a custom Maton] to thicken up guitar parts.

But a couple of times, we’d work on a song that sounded like it had too much guitar, and so I’d take the guitar totally out of it, highlight a Wurlitzer [electric piano] or something else instead, and replay the song from that angle. And that created a sonic space that allowed the lyrics to breathe differently.

You used a drum machine and percussion instruments, and throughout the album one can hear these little rhythmic accents popping up in the songs. It seems like they’re a central part of the arrangements because they sound like hooks, but in an understated way.

Yeah, I wanted that to be a feature. It created a meditative, repetitive feel that would build over the course of the songs. A big part of this album is the percussion, and a lot of the rhythms are the equivalent of a riff or a refrain. I thought it’d be so cool to find a different approach instead of using a melodic guitar riff or piano line.

Stella is an amazing drummer and percussionist. The rhythms might sound simple at first, until you tune into all the little things happening and realize how complicated it is, without being over the top.

You once said in an interview that you look for left-field sounds to make things interesting in headphones. Did that apply to this album as well?

I mean, always. That’s the fun part of recording. Doing the weird things, like banging a case against the floor and affecting sounds in ways that we aren’t used to hearing.

On my last album, I recorded the sound of my kettle boiling [on “Hopefullessness,” which also features a great feedback-driven solo]. It comes in halfway through the song and slowly creeps up and up like a weird, anxiety-inducing, drone sound.

On this album, we did a lot of field recordings. I’m not sure they made it onto the album, but they were inspiring to capture and hear. On one part of a song, I played my guitar with a cello bow to create a droning, synthy string sound.

Parts of your album are about healing after a breakup, and one of the songs, “Here’s the Thing,” has an instrumental passage that feels very cinematic and blue. It has lush rhythm guitars and these otherworldly-sounding notes that are floating above the chords. Is that a vocal or a guitar?

That’s actually the song with the cello bow. There are strings underneath it, and sometimes they sound like trumpets. It was just a weird frequency. But that main melodic door-bell type of sound that you’re referring to is an Omnichord [an electronic autoharp-synthesizer] that we had in the studio.

We messed around for quite a while, trying to find the right sound and the right idea, and then we probably put it through some effects as well just to make it more wobbly, like it was underwater.

What amps and effects did you use on the album?

I didn’t take any gear with me besides my electric guitar. I know I used the studio’s Mesa/Boogie and Roland Jazz Chorus [JC-120] amps. I also didn’t have my usual pedals, which forced me out of my comfort zone.

I used their [Death by Audio] Reverberation pedal a lot, and the [Electro-Harmonix] POG for the chorusy, wavy and wobbly sounds. The studio also had a vintage vibrato pedal and some overdrives that I used.

Are all your songs and solos created through inspiration by just staying open to whatever comes, or do you ever set up any sort of framework?

No, it’s normally pretty feel-based. I try to just trust that instinct and feeling.

You’re known for your lyrics, which tend to be conversational, often with a dry or wry sense of humor, and full of great observations about people and mundane things. Do lyrics inform your guitar playing in any way?

It happens sometimes. It’s fun to find the emotional match. In “Take It Day by Day,” which is a bass-driven song, the lyrics are slightly playful and cheeky, and the guitar kind of matches that. The bass is a little bit overdriven and bratty. When the guitars and the synths do the riff [sings a staccato melody], it also has a bratty quality to it.

You also went to a visual arts school when you were 18 to 20 years old, and you’re often involved in the making of your music videos and album cover art. How does art influence your music?

The visual stuff and music inspire each other. Just like the power of silence in music, there’s the power of negative space in visual art. It all overlaps, and there’s no formula. It all depends on the song and the moment.

And when one creative avenue dries up, it’s good to explore another one until the ground gets more fertile again.

Exactly.

Danny Cohen has made a documentary about you called Anonymous Club, where he followed you on the road for a couple of years. How did you connect?

Danny is a really good friend of mine, and he’s made a couple of my video clips. He came on tour with me pretty much from the album cycle for Tell Me How You Really Feel. He was on and off tours around the world, and made this really beautiful and pretty simple film.

What did you talk about, and what was the filming experience like for you?

We talked a lot about the art-making process and the fears behind being an artist. There was so much deep and personal stuff. So even if there was some confronting, for the most part it was an interesting process.

Browse Courtney Barnett's catalog here.

There’s only one J Mascis. And to the godfather of grunge we say: happy birthday!

As the principal songwriter, singer and guitar player in Dinosaur Jr., Mascis is renowned for using a Jazzmaster plugged into a Marshall amp. Since the band’s pioneering alternative rock days of the mid-‘80s he has used the classic Fender offset (because he couldn’t afford a Strat to begin with) and has since been honored with two signature models: the Fender J Mascis Jazzmaster (released in 2007) and the Squier J Mascis Jazzmaster (released in 2011.)

Earlier this year, Fender also released the J Mascis Telecaster.

But Fender solidbodies aren’t the only electric guitars Mascis favors; he also loves to play a rare 1950s Gibson flat-top model known as the CF-100E. Unveiled in 1951 as an electrified version of the CF-100 (released the previous year) this golden era classic was ahead of its time. These days, cutaway electro-acoustics are the norm, but back in the ‘50s they were slow to catch on and by the end of decade the model was discontinued.

Here’s Mascis putting a Gibson CF-100E to good use during a 2011 solo performance in Austin, Texas…

Fuzz pedals hadn’t even been invented by the time the Gibson CF-100E was discontinued in 1959, and Mascis’ use of the effect is pretty radical even by today’s standards. But then he hardly used the Jazzmaster to play jazz with. And it’s exactly this kind of inventive and uncompromising use of gear that has helped him become such an influential figure in the guitar world. Indeed, Kurt Cobain, Billy Corgan and Kurt Vile have all cited him as a major inspiration.

While we’re on a nostalgia trip, here he is rocking a Jazzmaster/Marshall rig back in the mid-‘80s…

And long may it continue. Many happy returns, Mr. Mascis!

Grab a copy of Dinosaur Jr.'s latest album Sweep It Into Space here.

On this day in 1993, Nirvana recorded their iconic MTV Unplugged studio performance in New York.

The corresponding live album – MTV Unplugged in New York – was released roughly a year later following Kurt Cobain’s tragic death on April 5, 1994, debuting at the US Billboard 200 number one spot.

This essential long-player has since clocked up millions of sales, making it one of the most influential live albums in recent times while helping to re-popularize the acoustic guitar.

“At that time, Nirvana was probably the biggest band in the US,” C. F. Martin & Co’s Museum and Archives Specialist, Jason Ahner, told Guitarist magazine. “After the folk boom of the '50s and '60s, Martin sales were down in the late-'70s and through the '80s, but we really saw things taking off in the '90s when the MTV Unplugged shows aired.”

While Cobain’s 1953 Martin D-18 (lovingly dubbed ‘Grandpa’) remains in the Martin Museum the 1959 Martin D-18E he used on the MTV Unplugged recordings – an electrified version of the workhorse dreadnought produced for a very short time in the late ‘50s – was sold for a record sum of $6,010,000 last year.

In 1993, who would have known that the guitar Cobain was playing would later smash the world auction record of $3,975,000 held by David Gilmour’s Black Strat?

“This guy representing Lead Belly’s estate wants to sell me Lead Belly’s guitar for $500,000,” says Cobain as he introduces “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” – Nirvana’s final number of the set.  “I even asked David Geffen personally if he’d buy it for me and he wouldn’t do it.”

Although Cobain credits Lead Belly (1888-1949) for Nirvana’s version of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night,” according to famed ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax the blues legend learned the traditional American song from folk revivalist Cecil Sharp in 1917.

Lead Belly is known to have recorded several versions appearing under alternative titles including “In The Pines” and “Black Girl.”

Cobain’s MTV Unplugged rendition is haunting. A poignant mix of pain and beauty it is testimony to what greatness can be achieved with little more than an acoustic guitar, some simple chords, and a voice.

Buy Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York here.

As one of the more affordable “genuine vintage Fender guitars” in the ’80s and ’90s, Mustangs were snapped up and hot-rodded by punk, grunge, indie-rock and alt-rock players who were in search of punchier, more powerful sounds than the original, fairly weak single-coil pickups could provide.

As a result, the model roared back into popularity. However, an original Mustang – such as our featured instrument from ’66 – can be an excellent and expressive guitar before you inflict a single tweak upon it.

The Mustang was unveiled in 1964 at the tail end of Fender’s pre-CBS years in an effort to upgrade the company’s beginner and student lines. Previously, in 1956, Fender unveiled its scaled-down, single-pickup Musicmaster and dual-pickup Duo-Sonic models to capture the business of young players hot for this new rock and roll fad.

These models quickly became gateway guitars to more grown-up Fenders. Each had a 22 1/2–inch scale length that was shorter than anything Fender had yet produced in a Spanish-electric. These short-scale models are sometimes referred to as “three-quarter-scale” guitars, but they’re closer to nine-tenths the size of a standard Fender model from the day.

A slight reworking of the body style and electronics delivered both the hardtail Duo-Sonic II and vibrato-equipped Mustang in ’64, and although both were also still available in the shorter 22 1/2–inch scale length early on, the 24-inch scale quickly became more popular for both models.

The body represented another slight departure for Fender, both in its more compact and streamlined size and shape and in the poplar wood that was most often used for its construction. The neck was the standard bolt-on Fender configuration of one-piece maple with a rosewood fingerboard and generally feels superbly comfortable in the hand.

Both were made in two different widths, too, as measured at the nut and indicated by a letter code found alongside the date stamped on the neck’s heel: “A” indicated a narrower 1 7/16–inch width, while “B” signaled the more standard, and more desirable, 1 5/8 inches.

The Mustang vibrato was an entirely new contraption, with a sprung tailpiece unit and separate rocking bridge, all mounted to the same base plate (with much of the workings hanging underneath).

New, too, were the electronics. The pickups were made similarly to the Stratocaster’s but were entirely covered, with no pole pieces showing, and often tended to be a little weaker.

Each was wired through its own three-way slider switch, which provided not only “on” and “off” positions but also an out-of-phase setting in relation to the other pickup when both were on and the switches set in opposite directions.

Original Mustangs of 1964–’68 vintage were offered in white, blue and red finishes similar to Fender’s Olympic White, Daphne Blue and Dakota Red, although they were never officially named as such.

The Competition Series Mustangs, which featured diagonal racing stripes and forearm and rib cage contours, were introduced in 1968 and fetch about 30 percent more on the vintage market today. This is purely due to their cosmetics, as ’64–’66 Mustangs can be perfectly excellent electric guitars.

The Mustang remained in regular production until 1982, when ownership shake-ups at Fender induced a lot of changes. It was back by demand in reissue form in 1990. For examples in the hands of pros, check out Kurt Cobain’s frequent use of a battered Mustang (often with bridge humbucker added), David Byrne with early Talking Heads or Matthew Healey of the 1975, among many others.

Thanks to Olivia’s Vintage Guitars for showing us this wonderful 1966 Fender Mustang.

Juliana Hatfield is best known for her alt-rock hits “My Sister” and “Spin the Bottle,” both from the Juliana Hatfield Three’s 1993 album, Become What You Are, and for her stint in the Lemonheads the previous year, when she played bass on It’s a Shame About Ray.

Those who jumped ship when the ’90s faded have missed a lot. In back-to-back releases like Beautiful Creature and Total System Failure, Hatfield expressed her love of pop songcraft and grimy blasts of distortion, respectively, a dichotomy she wields masterfully.

“I’m just trying to express who I truly am, and I’m a very conflicted person,” she says. “Even with my moods I’m like that. I go back and forth, and I’m always trying to figure out who I am and how to integrate my authentic self into one whole self. My music is just an expression of that.”

You’re known as a guitar player and songwriter, but you studied piano at Berklee College of Music before taking up bass. How did those experiences feed into the type of music you make?

I think that people with unique voices are born with those voices, so I don’t know how much Berklee helped me as a songwriter. It definitely helped me open up my ears – helped me to listen more carefully and more closely.

I never really paid much attention to how the different elements in a song were working together. I was not well-versed in the language and with theory. All the ear training and learning to distinguish intervals and chords really helped me communicate to other musicians.

Were you already playing guitar at that point?

I was getting really burned out on playing piano, but I used my piano-playing background to get into Berklee. I don’t think they would have admitted me otherwise, because I had no vocal training and no guitar training.

For one semester I studied jazz piano intensively. I learned how to comp and how to read a lead sheet, which ended up being really helpful to me later on. After that one semester, I could notate my songs, and now when I’m in the studio and I want to put a keyboard on a track, I can write myself a little lead sheet and play off of that.

Then I started studying voice at Berklee, because I had never had any voice lessons. At the same time I was starting my first band, the Blake Babies, and I was very new at playing guitar.

On 2019’s Weird, you layer elements like fuzzy riffs and solos onto a foundation of clean, articulate playing, which is also something you’ve done on earlier albums. Are you drawn to the opposite natures of those sounds?

They’re just little moments that are really exciting to me. Like on [1995’s] Only Everything, I really loved the solo on “Simplicity Is Beautiful.” I think it’s a couple of solos on top of each other. I was trying to capture that kind of feeling that a J. Mascis [of Dinosaur Jr] solo captures. It’s definitely not the same kind of dexterity with my fingers, but that was just a great moment for me.

There are a lot of really cool guitar moments on that album, like how the solo in “Dumb Fun” develops. I think in the beginning of the song I was trying to be like Kurt Cobain, playing the vocal melody on the guitar like in “Come as You Are.” Then I went off in different directions, and it just became this really fun thing.

You’ve done several side projects, like the I Don’t Cares with Paul Westerberg and Minor Alps with Matthew Caws of Nada Surf. What drives you to collaborate?

Emotional instability, I guess. What drives anyone who has obsessive-compulsive leanings? I can’t stop writing songs, and I have too many, so I have to find other people to record with so people don’t get barraged with too many Juliana Hatfield records.

Plus, Matthew Caws is one of my favorite singers and songwriters. To be able to work with him was kind of like a dream, you know? If I’m going to have an opportunity like that, I’ll definitely go for it.

What about Paul Westerberg? Were you a Replacements fan early on?

Yeah. Huge Replacements fan. A long time ago in the ’90s, Paul and I were supposed to do a tour together. He was doing a tour for one of his solo albums, but he threw out his back and had to cancel the tour, so that never happened, but we were in touch.

He had tons and tons of songs recorded. Some of them were just so great, and I would say, “Why don’t people know this song? Let’s work on this.”

You reissued your solo debut, Hey Babe, on vinyl. Does it feel different to pick up a guitar and write songs now than it did back then?

It does and it doesn’t. I mean, I still do it the same way. It’s still just me alone in a room with an acoustic guitar. But I’m less miserable now. I’m not so focused on my own anguish in my songs. I think my subject matter has shifted a little bit away from myself. I’m not as anguished as a songwriter. I’m more confident, maybe. I don’t know if that makes my work better or worse. Some people want their artists to be tortured and suicidal.

Check out Juliana Hatfield’s latest album – Blood – here.

Fender has re-released Kurt Cobain's signature Jag-Stang electric guitar.

Reissued to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Nirvana's legendary Nevermind album, the Jag-Stang dates back to 1993, when Cobain began sketching out his ideal Fender in his journals. Remaining faithful to Cobain's vision, the Jag-Stang is essentially a Mustang/Jaguar hybrid that's available in left- and right-hand versions.

The guitar features an alder body and a maple, slim C-shaped neck boasting a 24” short scale length rosewood fingerboard with a 7.25” radius and white pearloid dot inlays.

Sonically, the guitar features a custom humbucker in the bridge and custom single-coil in the neck, controlled by individual volume and tone knobs and a pair of Mustang slider switches that can dial in four unique settings for increased tonal variety.

Elsewhere, the Jag-Stang boasts a six-saddle, vintage-style Mustang bridge with tremolo, vintage-style tuners, and a four-ply aged white pearloid pickguard.

The Fender Kurt Cobain Jag-Stang is available now – in Fiesta Red and Sonic Blue finishes and with a deluxe gig bag included – for $1,249.

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

On September 24, 1991, Nirvana dropped their game changing sophomore long-player, Nevermind. Music would never be the same again. Elevating the band from underground sensation to global phenomenon, the cultural impact of Nevermind made seismic waves that resonate today.

Beginning November 12, Geffen/UMe are celebrating this monumental album by releasing a digitally remastered version of the original Nevermind tapes. Also included within the various reissue formats will be 70 previously unreleased tracks (from a total of 94 audio and video tracks.)

While a standard digital/CD and single disc vinyl with bonus 7-inch will be available, hardcore Nirvana fans and completists may be interested in the forthcoming Nevermind Super Deluxe Editions. These will be available in both vinyl and CD+Blu-ray formats, as follows:

Vinyl

• 8LPs
• 180-gram black vinyl, all in premium tip-on jackets
• New 7-inch (A-side: “Endless, Nameless”/B-side: “Even In His Youth” and “Aneurysm”)

CD+Blu-ray

• 5 CDs
• Blu-ray: Live in Amsterdam, Netherlands (remastered audio & video in HD)

These Nevermind Super Deluxe Editions contain four newly remastered live shows, including: Live in Amsterdam, Netherlands (Paradiso club, November 25, 1991); Live in Del Mar, California (Pat O’Brien Pavilion, December 28, 1991); Live in Melbourne, Australia for triple j (The Palace in St. Kilda, February 1, 1992); and Live in Tokyo, Japan (Nakano Sunplaza, February 19, 1992).

Pre-order your copy of Nirvana’s Nevermind (30th Anniversary) here.

“We like things that sound a little 'off' or unsettling," Pixies singer, rhythm guitarist, and primary songwriter Black Francis explains. "We don’t want it to sound wrong with a capital W, but if you can get away with having one little thing that just kind of makes it a little bit weird, like, ‘What’s going on here?,’ that’s a good thing.”

At this point, the Pixies have made a career – make that two careers – out of doing things that are a little bit weird. The Massachusetts-based band’s first run, highlighted by classic late-’80s albums like Surfer Rosa and Doolittle, established them as something of an indie-rock Velvet Underground – not especially successful in the mainstream, but massively influential to the generation or two of rock acts that followed in their wake. (Once, when describing the quiet-verse/loud-chorus format of Nirvana’s hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Kurt Cobain famously said he was “basically trying to rip off the Pixies.”)

That influence only grew after the Pixies broke up in 1993, to the point that, upon reuniting a decade later, they received a hero’s welcome, playing to crowds that were arguably larger (at least in the U.S.) than any they’d experienced in their heyday.

Since then, the Pixies – Black Francis (born Charles Thompson), original lead guitarist Joey Santiago, original drummer David Lovering and more recent addition bassist Paz Lenchantin, who fills the spot vacated by original member Kim Deal – have released a trio of studio albums, starting with 2014’s Indie Cindy and continuing with 2016’s Head Carrier.

Their latest studio album – 2019’s Beneath the Eyrie (BMG/Infectious) – hearkens back to the sound of their late-’80s efforts. Its tracks include the ominous, droning opener titled “In the Arms of Mrs. Mark of Cain,” the demented surf rock tune “St. Nazaire,” and the throttling first single, “On Graveyard Hill,” characterized by Santiago’s buzzing electric guitar melodies and Thompson’s ever-more agitated vocal.

The band even gets downright anthemic – but still, of course, a little bit weird – on “Long Rider.” The record reminds listeners what made the band so legendary to begin with, while it demonstrates that the Pixies are far from a nostalgia act.

Beneath the Eyrie is arguably the strongest of the three studio efforts you’ve put out since reuniting. Did you go into this record with any particular intentions?

Joey Santiago: Not really. We were just coming in with a collection of songs. We demoed it, we weeded out the ones that were the weakest – or what Tom [Dalgety, producer] thought were the weakest ones – and we made the record we were comfortable making. But we didn’t really have any intentions of what it should sound like.

Black Francis: We usually try not to get too boxed in by any preconceived attitudes. We mostly just want it to be interesting and not boring. But if there was one suggestion that was on the table, I suppose it was the very loose idea of “the gothic,” whatever that means.

Whether it was literary or in a cliché way, or even in a way that sounded musically like so-called goth music, there was this idea that if the gothic showed up, and if it revealed itself, we wouldn’t fight it.

At the very least, there seems to have been an element of the gothic present in your choice of studio environment. You worked at Dreamland Recordings in upstate New York, which was once a 19th-century church.

Santiago: Oh, yeah. We were in an old church, it was the wintertime. Things were dead. If we made this record at the Grand Canyon, I would say it probably would have had a different vibe.

Francis: But we would never pick a studio based on, you know, “Is the ambience going to work for the theatrical affectations that we’re sort of sporting?” It’s much more that we showed up and it was, like, me and [Tom Dalgety] going – wink-wink – “Looks pretty gothic out there, eh?”

But the environment was very headless horseman, the swamp, the ghost in the attic. It had all of that kind of stuff going on. So that was nice.

Charles, in a recent podcast chronicling the recording sessions for the album, you mentioned that on the first day of tracking you almost hit a herd of deer on the way to the studio.

Francis: Yeah. I was in a big cargo van with a bunch of gear in it, and I was thinking about this new chord shape I was working on two days before that I liked. I needed a lyric for it. I’m really glad I didn’t have an accident. But I just looked at it like a Buddhist death philosophy kind of thing, where you try to appreciate your life by imagining you’re about to die.

So I was able to take that little moment from before the session and be like, “What if I had hit the deer? Let’s tell the story of that guy.” And it’s a song on the record called “Daniel Boone.”

Speaking of chord shapes, how do the two of you work together as guitarists?

Santiago: Charles will bring in an idea or a lyric or maybe a melody. And then, for the most part, I’m always just concentrating on little chunks of the song. I treat every part – verse, chorus, bridge – as its own entity, its own little song. And the overall goal is to try to have some kind of string around an idea within the verse, chorus, bridge – all the parts – and have that dictate the feel.

But I’m basically at the service of the song. I’m either the shadow in it or a little light in it. It depends on what the song is.

Charles, what do you see as Joey’s role?

Francis: The biggest role Joey has is that he makes it sound like the band. Because when I’m writing a song, it doesn’t always sound like a quote-unquote Pixies song.

Sometimes I’ll make a demo, and it will have the bass and the drums and some rhythm guitar and even my voice, and it still doesn’t necessarily sound like a Pixies song. But when Joey turns on his guitar amplifier and starts to play something, even if it’s a bunch of mistakes because he’s still learning the song or whatever, it’s like, “Oh, now it sounds like the Pixies!” There’s this big shift in terms of the sound of the band.

Joey, your style is so distinct, but it’s also hard to define. It isn’t easy to pick out, say, blues or country or classic rock influences in your playing. Who are some of the artists you’re inspired by?

Santiago: Well, Ennio Morricone would be one. And another would be Steve Reich. He doesn’t use guitars, but he gets a lot of good, cool tones with xylophones, violins – things like that. And I read somewhere that Jimi Hendrix was inspired in his guitar playing by sax players. That had a lot of influence on me, the idea of making a guitar sound not like a guitar. It’s just a different way of thinking.

You’ve said that when you were younger, you wanted your guitar to sound like a drill.

Santiago: That just happened to be because of the gear I had at the time. My first amp was a Peavey, and it had this control called saturation, which is a great fuzz knob. And when you turned it up, it made the guitar sound like a power drill! [laughs]

Francis: If you know Joey, when you hear his guitar playing, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, of course that’s what he sounds like.” I can honestly say that his personality is very much represented in his style. I say this because, in all of the musical analysis that goes on in writing about our records, he probably doesn’t get enough credit for how much his playing makes the music sound like the Pixies.

It’s often said that a lot of alternative- and indie-rock bands over the years have copped your style. Do you ever hear it?

Santiago: I didn’t until someone pointed it out. We were at a festival, and the band playing was Cage the Elephant. I forget the name of the song – it may be “Trouble” [from 2015’s Tell Me I’m Pretty] – but it does sound a lot like [the Surfer Rosa track] “Where Is My Mind?”

Francis: Every once in a while I hear some band where I think, Oh, yeah, they’ve definitely heard a couple of our records. But it probably happens a lot less than people think. We get asked about it a lot, as if it’s this common thing: “Oh, there it goes again, that old Pixies thievery!” And I don’t know how I feel about it, because that reduces what we do.

“That other band sounds just like you guys.” It’s like, “Really? We sound like that? I hope not, ’cause this isn’t very good!”

Do you feel like the Pixies sound does get reduced too easily to just a few sonic elements? The quiet-verse/loud-chorus dynamic shifts, for instance, or the whisper-to-a-scream vocals?

Francis: Well, yeah, sure. But what are you going to do? If we get reduced to, “Oh yeah, they’re doing that loud-quiet-loud thing,” or, “They’re doing that screaming thing that they do,” I mean, sometimes it feels a little simplistic. But I’m old enough now where I’m not really offended. It’s just like, “Wow, welcome to showbiz!”

When you go onstage these days, what does a Pixies crowd look like?

Francis: I can’t really get too sociological on you. But when you get a little older, and you get audience members that have heard about you by reputation and maybe weren’t even born when you made the records that they’ve come to hear, there’s a little bit of reverence going on.

They’re like, “Okay, I finally get to go see this band I’ve heard about my whole life.” They’re not necessarily whooping it up. We get confused sometimes, because we think, ‘Oh wow, we’re not going down too well, are we?’ And then we realize everyone’s just trying to be respectful and not act like a bunch of yahoos.

Has anything about the band’s second run been particularly surprising to you?

Santiago: The only surprise I had was when we reached the seven-year mark, which was longer than we were together the first time.

Francis: To be honest, I just accept it, because I didn’t really imagine anything. Whatever I use my imagination for, it’s usually much more escapist in nature. It’s not like [adopting snooty accent], “What’s it going to be like in 20 years? What will my audience be like then?” I don’t really care about that. I’m imagining other things that are a lot more abstract or personal or whatever.

Do you imagine the Pixies can continue indefinitely?

Santiago: It’s up to us and the fans still having passion for it. And that could be fleeting. But so far it’s a good relationship between the Pixies and the people out there.

Francis: The way I see it, everyone seems to be liking what we do, so we probably shouldn’t mess with it too much. And anyway, it’s not like we had that much of a blueprint in the first place, you know what I mean?

Buy Beneath the Eyrie by Pixies here.

The legendary 1959 Martin D-18E used by Kurt Cobain for Nirvana's 1993 MTV Unplugged performance has sold at auction for over $6 million.

The ultra-rare acoustic was purchased, with a bid of $6,010,000, by Australian businessman and RØDE Microphones owner Peter Freedman during the Julien's Auctions Music Icons auction held in Beverly Hills, CA last week.

The astonishing sum of money makes it by a wide margin the most expensive guitar ever sold at auction, smashing the previous world record of $3,975,000, set by David Gilmour’s 1969 Black Strat last June.

The seventh of only 302 D-18E Martin guitars to be built, the guitar features a Bartolini pickup added by Cobain, and was sold with its original hardshell case - complete with a half-used pack of Martin guitar strings, three picks and Cobain's suede bag, which is decorated with a miniature silver spoon, fork and knife.

For his part, Freedman says that - rather than locking the guitar away - he will exhibit the guitar in galleries and art spaces around the world, putting all of the proceeds towards the performing arts. 

“It’s a big deal. I didn’t even buy it for me,” he told the PA news agency.

“I paid for it but I’m going to use it to highlight the plight of artists worldwide by touring it around, and then I’m going to sell it and use the dough for that as well, later.

“Musicians and artists have supported my family since the ’60s. We’ve been in that game forever so I’ve been very lucky with RØDE and I’ve been able to give away lots of money, quite a few mill.”

The Martin, rumored to be the last guitar Cobain ever played, had been gifted by Cobain's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, to her ex-husband, Isaiah Silva, during their marriage.

The legendary 1959 Martin D-18E used by Kurt Cobain for Nirvana's 1993 MTV Unplugged performance is going up for auction.

Left by Cobain's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, to her ex-husband, Isaiah Silva, as part of the couple's divorce settlement, the ultra-rare guitar is being valued at over a million dollars.

The seventh of only 302 D-18Es built by Martin, the guitar is being auctioned off by Julien’s as part of its Music Icons auction, which is set to take place in Beverly Hills, CA on June 19 and June 20. 

Featuring a Bartolini pickup added by Cobain, the D-18E will be sold with its original hardshell case, complete with a half-used pack of Martin guitar strings, three picks and Cobain's suede bag, which is decorated with a miniature silver spoon, fork and knife.

The Martin guitar, rumored to be the last guitar Cobain ever played, can be viewed at the Hard Rock Cafe in London’s Piccadilly Circus from May 15 - May 31 and then at Julien’s Auctions Gallery in Beverly Hills from June 15 - June 19.

If the guitar indeed sells for a million, it would be the third most expensive acoustic guitar ever sold, behind only John Lennon's $2.4 million Gibson J-160E and David Gilmour's 1969 Wish You Were Here Martin D-35. 

For more info on the auction, and this guitar, stop by juliensauctions.com.