Jimmy Page and Robert Plant helped give Canadian alt-rock outfit Our Lady Peace an early break. But 30 years on, frontman Raine Maida says a very different moment — one involving the Van Halen camp — proved just as pivotal to the band’s trajectory.

Now on the road marking their 30th anniversary, Our Lady Peace are revisiting nearly every chapter of their catalog. For Maida, the milestone has brought two formative experiences into sharp focus.

The first came when Plant heard the band on the radio and promptly invited them to open for him and Page at Chicago’s Rosemont Horizon (now Allstate Arena), along with a stop in Indianapolis. The exposure was transformative.

“Robert was extremely welcoming,” Maida told Ultimate Classic Rock, recalling crowds that were “so giving of their ears, their hearts and time” — a reception that quickly elevated the band’s profile.

Just months later, however, they found themselves in a far less hospitable environment: a summer 1995 amphitheater tour with Sammy Hagar–era Van Halen, in support of Balance, with Skid Row also on the bill.

“We were nervous,” Maida admits. “These were sold-out shows, and the fans — unlike with Page and Plant — really didn’t want to see us.”

Hagar, in particular, pushed the band to adopt a more overtly crowd-pleasing approach.

“He came up to me a couple of times and said, ‘This is supposed to be a party — you’ve got to get the crowd pumped up more,’” Maida recalls.

Maida held his ground. “I told him, respectfully, I get that — he’s an incredible singer — but I’m a very different performer. I’ve never seen myself as an entertainer in that way.”

Tensions escalated to the point where Maida was told a lineup change might be imminent.

“I thought, ‘That’s it — we’ve been kicked off the tour. What am I going to tell my mom?’”

But the decision wasn’t Hagar’s to make. Behind the scenes, guitarist Eddie Van Halen and drummer Alex Van Halen intervened.

“We got a knock on the door, and the tour manager said Eddie and Alex wanted to see me,” Maida says. “Alex and I had become friends — we both had back problems, so we bonded over that.

“I went in, and they told me, ‘Don’t listen to Sammy — he doesn’t have the power to do that. You’re not going anywhere.’ My head was spinning. It wasn’t a great vibe after that, but Eddie and Alex saved us.”

The tour continued as planned, a decision that, in hindsight, left a lasting impression on Maida, not just professionally but personally.

“Eddie showed you what it takes to be a master musician,” he says of the virtuoso electric guitarist. “He’d walk into catering with a guitar on, start soundcheck an hour and a half early. Forget 10,000 hours — we’re talking a million. He was the instrument. That was incredibly inspiring.”

The story has fresh resonance amid renewed activity in the Van Halen camp. Alex Van Halen is reportedly working with Steve Lukather on material drawn from archival demos recorded before Eddie’s death, with discussions ongoing about a possible vocalist. Paul Rodgers has declined involvement, while former bass guitarist Michael Anthony has suggested the recordings might be best left as instrumentals.

And in related news, Sammy Hagar has fired a new shot at Alex Van Halen by unfavorably comparing him to Roger Waters.

Even after decades in music, Lucinda Williams still finds herself surprised by who listens to her records.

Reflecting on her career, the singer-songwriter says some of the artists who have expressed admiration for her music over the years caught her completely off guard — including punk icon Joey Ramone, David Byrne and Robert Plant.

“I’ve met so many fantastic, legendary artists over the years who like my music,” she tells The Bluegrass Situation in a new interview. “And some might be a surprise.

“I was surprised, actually.”

Williams says discovering that artists she admired were listening to her work has been among the most rewarding experiences of her career.

“Like, Joey Ramone was a fan. David Byrne is a fan,” she says. “Robert Plant is a big fan, and I’ve done quite a few shows with him. Those kinds of things have been a big boost for me.”

Over the years, Williams has had opportunities to meet and even collaborate with some of those artists. She and Ramone once shared the stage for a songwriter’s night in New York City. Williams and Byrne performed the Jimmie Dale Gilmore–John Reed song “Tonight I Think I'm Gonna Go Downtown” at South by Southwest in 1999. (Byrne also covered Williams’ hit “Sweet Old World” in 1993 at New York City’s Bottom Line.)

And Plant, alongside Alison Krauss, recorded a version of Williams’ song “Can’t Let Go,” in addition to sharing festival bills with her.

“Those probably have been the highlights of my career — being able to connect with those kinds of artists,” Williams says. “The people I listened to when I was starting out and looked up to.”

Williams says she was equally surprised to learn that Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson of Heart are fans, a discovery that led to her joining select dates of the band’s 2026 Royal Flush Tour.

“It seemed like with their fans and my fans there was kind of an overlap,” Williams says. “It seemed to work musically as a bill.”

The experience also deepened her appreciation for Nancy Wilson’s guitar playing.

“I don’t think enough has been said about Nancy’s playing,” Williams says. “I hadn’t realized how proficient Nancy was on the electric guitar. I was just sitting there watching it like, ‘Oh my God!’”

Williams is currently celebrating the release of her latest album, World’s Gone Wrong, whose songs draw heavily on the tradition of protest music. It’s her first release since she suffered a stroke in November 2020.

While she continues to recover and has yet to return to the guitar, Williams says she remains focused on the part of music she can still do.

“I still struggle when I walk,” she told NPR’s Morning Edition. “But I can sing.”

The guitar, she says, “will have to come later.”

Robert Plant has announced the release of his next solo album, which will feature him and his new group, Saving Grace, performing a collection of century-old music.

Likewise titled Saving Grace, the album is a treasury of songs from the past originally recorded by others. They include cuts made popular by legends like blues singer/guitarist Memphis Minnie, and gospel blues singer/acoustic guitarist Blind Willie Johnson.

But there are also newer songs first recorded by performers such as Moby Grape’s Bob Mosley, indie-folk act the Low Anthem, singer-songwriter Martha Scanlan, folk-rock artist Sarah Siskind, and Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk’s dream-pop band Low.

Plant calls Saving Grace — which arrives September 26 on Nonesuch Records — “a song book of the lost and found.”

You can hear Robert Plant and Saving Grace’s reimagined rendition of Low’s “Everybody’s Song,” which comes out today.

The genesis for Saving Grace was lockdown, when Plant connected with a diverse band of musicians in the English countryside who share his love of evocative song. The performers — vocalist Suzi Dian, drummer Oli Jefferson, guitarist Tony Kelsey, banjo and string player Matt Worley, and cellist Barney Morse-Brown — have spent the past six years developing the band's wide-ranging styles and personalities.

Through it all, Plant says, there has been a focus on joy and abandon.

“We laugh a lot, really. I think that suits me. I like laughing,” the singer says. “You know, I can't find any reason to be too serious about anything. I'm not jaded.

“The sweetness of the whole thing… These are sweet people and they are playing out all the stuff that they could never get out before. They have become unique stylists and together they seem to have landed in a most interesting place.”

Sharp-eyed music hounds will note this is not the first time Plant has worked his magic on tunes by Memphis Minnie and Blind Willie Johnson. The singer covered Minnie’s “When the Levee Breaks” and Johnson’s “In My Time of Dying” and “It’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine” while in Led Zeppelin.

Plant’s last album was Raise the Roof, his multiple Grammy–nominated 2021 reunion with Alison Krauss.

Saving Grace was recorded between April 2019 and January 2025 in the Cotswolds and on the Welsh Borders. It follows on Plant’s previous Nonesuch releases 2014’s lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar and 2017’s Carry Fire.

The release of Saving Grace will be accompanied by a fall tour that will mark the group’s first appearance in the U.S. and include an initial run of a dozen North American shows. See below for the full list of dates and visit robertplant.com/timetable for tickets.

Saving Grace is available for pre-order.

Robert Plant & Saving Grace Tour Dates

July 17 - Vienne, FR - Théâtre Antique

July 19 - Salon-de-Provence, FR - Château de l'Empéri

July 21 - Marciac, FR - Jazz in Marciac

July 23 - Carcassonne, FR - Festival de Carcassonne - Theatre Jean Deschamps

July 26 - Granada, ES - Palacio De Congresos De Granada

July 28 - Valencia, ES - Palau de les Arts

July 30 - Barcelona, ES - Teatro Liceo - Milleni Concert Series

October 30 - Wheeling, WV - Capitol Theatre Wheeling

November 2 - Charlottesville, VA - The Paramount Theater of Charlottesville

November 3 - Washington, DC - Lincoln Theatre

November 5 - Brooklyn, NY - Brooklyn Paramount

November 6 - Boston, MA - Boch Center Shubert Theatre

November 8 - Port Chester, NY - Capitol Theatre

November 10 - Toronto, ON - Massey Hall

November 12 - Chicago, IL - The Vic

November 13 - Chicago, IL - Old Town School of Folk Music

November 15 - Denver, CO - Ellie Caulkins Opera House

November 18 - Seattle, WA - The Moore Theatre

November 19 - Vancouver, BC - Vogue Theatre

November 21 - Oakland, CA - The Fox

November 22 - Los Angeles, CA - United Theater on Broadway

Forty years ago on July 13, the Live Aid concerts kicked off at London’s Wembley Stadium with the British rock group Status Quo. Armed with Telecasters and described by organizer Bob Geldof as “ordinary blokes with long hair and denims,” the group opened the day’s festivities with the 12-bar rock of John Fogerty’s “Rockin’ All Over the World.” It sent an unintentional but perceptible message that, even in the synth-saturated mid 1980s, “the boys and girls with guitars” — as Geldof described them — would rule the day.

Live Aid did rule, on that day and through 40 years of memories (as well as 20 years for its follow-up event, Live 8). True to Fogerty’s anthem, the benefit for African famine relief was a global event, ping-ponging between Wembley and Philadelphia’s JFK Stadium, as well as locales in Europe, Australia and Japan. Styled as a “global jukebox,” Live Aid presented most of the biggest acts at the time to nearly two billion viewers in 169 countries. Along the way it raised about $140 million for the Band Aid Charitable Trust, which Geldof launched with the all-star “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” single released eight months prior.

Live Aid’s 20 or so hours of music played out as a day for guitar heroics that were at times notable, notorious, triumphant and tepid. The players came from the worlds of rock, metal, blues and jazz, and nearly three dozen of them went on to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Four decades later, we still remember these most notable guitar stories from Live Day.

Led Zeppelin: Like a Lead Balloon

Led Zeppelin grounded itself immediately after drummer John Bonham died in September 1980, with the three surviving members going their own ways. But with Jimmy Page’s the Firm and Robert Plant both on the road, circumstances dictated an ascent back up the stairway to heaven, if just for one day. Plant was the first to sign on and wanted Page to be involved — but not necessarily to get the Led out.

“The original idea was not to do a Robert Plant set as such, but something a little lighter — like the Honeydrippers,” Plant said at the time, referring to an ad hoc all-star band he’d put together to record an EP of rock and R&B oldies in 1984.

“As Jimmy was part of the Honeydrippers I phoned him and said, ‘Would you like to be part of it?’ He did, and as we got to talking about it, we said, ‘While we’re doing it, why not do two of our [Led Zeppelin] songs?’ The whole thing really evolved.”

It ultimately sounded better in discussion than onstage. With former Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones on keyboards rather than bass, Paul Martinez from Plant’s band on bass, and Chic’s Tony Thompson and Phil Collins on drums, the shambolic three-song set felt like a genuine moment for the euphoric crowd at JFK Stadium, but not beyond.

Collins, who had flown in on the Concorde to play at both the London and Philly shows, introduced Zeppelin after playing solo piano renditions of a couple of his hits. He hadn’t rehearsed, and it showed, as did any lack of plan between him and Thompson on songs — “Rock and Roll,” “Whole Lotta Love” and “Stairway to Heaven” — that really weren’t made for two drummers.

Jones also had a small amount of rehearsal on the day of the show, Page — who busted out his Gibson EDS-1275 double-neck electric guitar for the occasion — sounded out of tune at times, and Plant was a bit hoarse from playing the night before in Detroit. To make matters worse, the stage monitors reportedly weren’t working properly. Plant later termed the performance “horrendous.”

The dissatisfaction was evident during a tense post-show interview with MTV’s Alan Hunter, which Collins dominated when the others proved truculent. The drummer later wrote in his 2016 memoir, Not Dead Yet, “If I’d known it was to be a two-drummer band, I would have removed myself from the proceedings long before I got anywhere near Philadelphia.”

Collins, who’d played on Plant’s first two solo albums and toured with him in 1983, also took exception to Page laying blame for the failure on him for “bashing away cluelessly and grinning.” Collins noted, “If you look at the video, you can see Jimmy dribbling [cocaine] onstage, Robert not hitting the notes and me miming, playing the air.”

Not surprisingly, Page, Plant and Jones refused to allow the performance to be included on Live Aid’s subsequent official DVD release. Led Zeppelin would have more satisfying reunions at the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary Concert in 1986, its Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1995 and the 2007 Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert in London, which is, as of now, its final performance.

The Who: Before They Got Old

There are several tellings of how the Who came to be part of Live Aid’s London program, the group’s first time onstage since breaking up after a farewell tour in late 1982. In his memoir, Is That It?, Geldof says Townshend suggested it after he invited the guitarist to take part on his own. That led to a series of protracted negotiations with singer Roger Daltrey, who refused to play with drummer Kenney Jones, and bassist John Entwistle, who refused to not play with Jones.

Townshend, however, subsequently accused Geldof of blackmailing and bullying the band into being part of the show. In his memoir, Who I Am, Townshend wrote, “When Bob sensed I might refuse to appear, he took the gloves off...‘Every pound we make will save a life. Do the fucking math. And do the fucking show!’”

Geldof denies he blackmailed or bullied the guitarist but makes no secret of how important it was for the Who to be part of Live Aid.

“I live, die and swear by this band,” he explained recently. “I really minded that the Who reformed and did it, ’cause it’s significant. I felt that 20 million people would watch that; if five percent of them contribute, we’re home.”

Though Townshend contended that “the Who were out of practice and should probably have left it to Queen and George Michael, who stole the show,” the four-song evening set — part of a killer chain that included U2, Dire Straits, Queen and David Bowie — was one of the day’s most exciting, despite any flaws — and stage monitor issues. “My Generation,” “Pinball Wizard,” “Love Reign O’er Me” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” crackled with vintage Who energy. Townshend was in full, furious, windmilling form, while Daltrey opened his shirt, twirled his microphone and jogged around the stage like a marathoner in training.

Even Townshend would acknowledge, perhaps grudgingly, that “we all felt proud to be there” and happily helped Paul McCartney close the show with “Let It Be,” with the two rock icons hoisting Geldof on their shoulders at the end of the song.

Bob Dylan: Too Rolling Stoned

It was another Live Aid collaboration that probably looked good on paper.

Bob Dylan, who’d sung on USA for Africa’s famine relief single “We Are the World,” was chosen to close the show in Philadelphia and in turn recruited Rolling Stones Keith Richards and Ron Wood. The trio, along with Faces/occasional Rolling Stones keyboardist Ian McLagan, gathered at Wood’s New York home to rehearse, with Dylan ultimately choosing two deep cuts — “Ballad of Hollis Brown” and “When the Ship Comes In” — along with the iconic “Blowin’ in the Wind” to play on the night.

There was undoubtably tension in the air at JFK Stadium, not only because of the occasion but also because the trio was directly following Mick Jagger’s explosive performance — backed by Daryl Hall & John Oates, and with Tina Turner guesting — at a time when Jagger and Richards were on the outs.

What’s more, Dylan’s performance was followed by a group performance of the hit “We Are the World” that would close the event.

“The sound guys had no idea we were going on,” Richards recalled the following year. “Here’s three guys with acoustic guitars and they were getting ready for [sings] ‘We Are the World’ with 50 people behind us.

“They were tuning up and we were trying to play,” Richards explained a few years later. “It was like, ‘shut ’em up, Bill Graham, or we’ll shoot the lot of them!’ Bob and I kept looking at each other like, ‘Where’s the blindfolds and the last cigarettes?’ But it was all for a good cause, so what the hell?”

Their performance was plagued by problems. The stage curtain had fallen in front of the stage amplifiers, preventing Dylan, Richards and Wood from hearing each other and causing them to play out of sync. When, early on, a string broke on Dylan’s guitar, Wood gave him his and used a cheap instrument a crew member handed him. The new guitar was out of tune. Wood wound up playing slide on only one of the strings.

Dylan, meanwhile, caused a stir when he suggested that, “I hope that some of the money that’s raised for the people in Africa, maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe one or two million, maybe, and use it...to pay the mortgages on some of the farms that the farmers here owe to banks.” While Live Aid did eventually spawn the charity Farm Aid, Dylan’s comment showed he had no grasp of the event’s purpose. “Something so simplistic and crowd-pleasing was beyond belief,” Geldof wrote. “[Dylan] displayed a complete lack of understanding of the issues raised by Live Aid.”

Seven other notable guitar moments...

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, on hiatus after his sophomore solo album About Face in 1984, played with Bryan Ferry’s band during the Roxy Music frontman’s four-song set in London.

Five of B.B. King’s songs from his set at the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague, Netherlands, including “Why I Sing the Blues” and “Rock Me Baby,” were carried as part of the global telecast.

Dire Straits, which was in the midst of its own 12-show run at Wembley Arena next door, was joined by Sting to recreate his guest vocal on “Money for Nothing.”

David Bowie tapped Kevin Armstrong, who had played on the Absolute Beginners soundtrack, as his guitarist for Wembley Stadium. Bowie subsequently asked Armstrong to be a fifth member in Tin Machine after he played on the group’s debut album (he turned it down), while Armstrong co-wrote the title track to Bowie’s Outside album in 1992.

Pat Metheny sat in with Santana for its five-song set in Philadelphia, which included “Brotherhood,” “Open Invitation” and “Right Now” (verify song title — may need clarification).

Chic was on hiatus but Nile Rodgers brought his guitar to Philadelphia to play with Madonna (“Love Makes the World Go Round”), and the two of them joined Thompson Twins for a rendition of the Beatles’ “Revolution.”

After landing in Philadelphia, Phil Collins first got onstage with Eric Clapton for his set, which included Cream’s “White Room,” Derek and the Dominos’ “Layla” and “She’s Waiting” from the Collins-produced Behind the Sun album

Robert Plant has listed a treasure trove of gear for sale to raise funds for charity, including a golden-era Stratocaster and a leftfield piece of Gibson history.

Cheltenham, UK-based guitar emporium ATB Guitars is handling the charity drive, with proceeds being donated to “charities close to Robert's heart.”

Incredibly, four pieces, including a 1990 Les Paul Standard gifted to Plant by Les Paul himself while backstage at a Page/Plant show at Madison Square Garden in 1995, have already sold. But arguably the most storied instrument of the collection is still up for grabs.

Plant’s 1962 Fender Stratocaster is heralded by ATB as “a guitar with a wonderful history and no doubt many stories to tell”—and with good reason. Its finish has been stripped, revealing the alder body’s wood grain, and the guitar has seen plenty of action in the 63 years since it left the factory.

The singer bought the guitar from Stan Webb of '60s blues band Chicken Shack in the 1970s. The pair first crossed paths during the early British blues boom in which the band enjoyed its heyday.

Led Zeppelin were said to be huge fans of the band, and so Plant is said to have jumped at the opportunity to own a Webb-played six-string and either Webb or Plant pulled the trigger on several modifications.

Most notably, it passed through the workshop of Tony Iommi-approved luthier John Birch. There, its fingerboard was lacquered, and, curiously, an extra pickup selector switch added for “more tonal options”.

Elsewhere, new saddles and Schaller tuners were installed, and two Suhr vintage V60LP single-coil pickups were placed in the bridge and neck positions. The middle pickup remains untouched—an original “black-bottomed” single-coil.

Unusually for a Stratocaster of that era, the headstock decal has been changed. It’s clear that Plant, Birch, and co. weren’t overly concerned with preserving historical accuracy during the guitar's transformation.

The headstock has also been repaired, with a visible scar running through it and ending beneath the D-string tuning peg. ATB assures buyers the instrument is “totally stable,” and the damage is considered historic.

The guitar is available for £19,995 (approx. $26,650).

Other listings came at more modest price points, including a 1993 Dobro F-60 Resonator, which sold for £1,995 (approx. $2,650), and a 1992 Washburn M-1S/TS Mandolin, which fetched £495 (approx. $659) and was described as a “no-nonsense workhorse.”

A Gibson A-1 Style has also been sold. It was crafted in Gibson’s famous Kalamazoo, Michigan factory—now home to a Hard Rock Hotel—and features a design that became the precursor to Gibson’s iconic arch-top builds.

Visit ATB Guitars to see the full collection.

The sale follows the success of the band's new documentary, which traces Led Zeppelin’s earliest days, including a “devastating” first jam session that gave no hint of the success to come.

In addition, lost footage of Led Zeppelin playing in Denmark in 1979 has resurfaced after sitting in a drawer for 45 years. It’s now been restored with original audio and gives fans a rare glimpse of the band just before their legendary Knebworth shows.

Although Alex Lifeson cites many influences on his playing — including Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend and Steve Hackett — the biggest is, without a doubt, Jimmy Page. Here Lifeson tells Guitar Player about meeting the electric guitar player who once called Rush "One of the young bands that I like."

"I saw Led Zeppelin in Toronto in 1969 after waiting in line for 15 hours,” Lifeson recalls. “We sat on the floor in front of Jimmy, about three people back. I was so impressed. I wanted to look like him, and play like him, and be just like him. If there was any single person I ever wanted to meet, it was him, but I never thought I would have the opportunity.”

That changed in the mid 1990s, when Page and Robert Plant began touring together as Page and Plant following the release of their Platinum-selling live album, No Quarter. Some time prior to that, Rush bassist Geddy Lee met Plant while in Morocco, as he describes in the video clip below. When the Page and Plant tour landed in Toronto, Geddy and Lifeson were on the guest list.

"Robert invited us to the Page/Plant show in Toronto,” Lifeson continues. “When we went backstage, Jimmy came into the room, and I started shaking. I was that excited. He was so sweet, and so charming and engaging. It was incredible.”

Lifeson had recently put out his 1996 solo album, Victor, and brought along a copy to give to Page.

“I built up the nerve to give it to him,” he recalls. “I had written in it that he was such an inspiration, and that his influence was all over the record. I said, 'I hope you don't mind, but this is my solo record and I'd like you to have it.' He stood up and gave me a hug and thanked me. We walked down to the stage with them, and they had set up a couple of chairs for us by the [monitor mixing] board. Jimmy kept looking over and smiling at me when he would play these great signature parts.

“He played so well. Just incredible. I was like kid. I can picture the dressing room, with Robert sitting across from me and Jimmy sitting to my left asking me questions. I can take myself right back there, and it just feels great.

“You meet your hero, and he's a hero! He was everything I hoped he would be. I'll never ever forget that."

As Lifeson has explained to Guitar Player on previous occasions, he gives special props to Pete Townshend for inspiring him both as a rhythm guitarist and as a songwriter. Townshend is himself known to declare himself rock's finest strummer, having said, "There's no one to touch me." His influence on Lifeson, Lee and the late Rush drummer Neil Peart played out when the group recorded their 2004 EP Feedback, featuring covers of songs by 1960s groups that were influential to the band, including the Who's 1970 single "The Seeker." .

“When Geddy and I were going through a list of influential songs that we were going to do for Feedback, I realized how much of Pete was in my playing,” Lifeson says. “That's how I learned to play rhythm guitar. In a three-piece band, you really have to be aware of your rhythm playing. It's all about how you fill in the space, and how you move in and out of the melodies, especially with a rhythm section like Geddy and Neil.

“And I just learned so much from Pete. He's such a great strummer — so unique. His style of soloing was so effective, and he was the only guy who could make an acoustic guitar sound heavier than a Les Paul. He's such a well-rounded, fantastic guitarist, as well as a fabulous songwriter.

Lifeson adds that Townshend’s progressive-rock approach to songwriting informed his own, particularly during the era of 2112 and Hemispheres.

“Absolutely. We learned a lot about songwriting from them,” he says. “I think you can be influenced by someone, and not sound anything like them. There are bands like Porcupine Tree that cite Rush as a major influence. They don't sound like us, but I hear it in their arranging and their dynamics.”

And when it comes to the guitarists he’s toured with over the years, Lifeson said a few players stand out in his mind.

“A great bill was UFO and Rush. We had such a ride together,” he says. “Michael Schenker and I got along so well. What I remember most about Michael was showing up for soundcheck at 4:00, and Michael would already be there, warming up for a couple of hours. He would play constantly. There was always so much passion in his playing."

He likewise praised Steve Morse, who recently told Guitar Player how he manages to stay in love with guitar playing after so many years.

“Steve Morse is one of the nicest people I've ever met. He's another guy where we'd be onstage doing soundcheck, and he'd be walking around the arena practicing incessantly. He's an incredible musician. He's such a great player that he deserves more.

Lifeson also weighed in on Eric Johnson, who recently spoke of his friendship with fellow Austinite, the late Stevie Ray Vaughan.

“Eric Johnson did two tours with us," Lifeson noted. "I used to go watch him play almost every night. What struck me most was the beautiful sensibility in his playing —so warm and complete and articulate. And the guy is just nuts with his tone. I've always loved his guitar playing.”

In related news, Lifeson recently revealed that he and Lee still get together and jam on a weekly basis. While they record their sessions, Lifeson says they have no plans to make another run together as Rush.

"Once a week I go to Ged’s — it’s in the calendar — keep my fingers moving, play Rush stuff, new jams," he told Classic Rock. “We do record it, but I couldn’t even begin to tell you where it’ll go.”

Led Zeppelin III might open with the rolling thunder of "Immigrant Song" but it's an album that debuted a more pastoral sound. Periodically switching to acoustic guitar to leave the electricity to Robert Plant's righteous wail, Jimmy Page integrated folk and alternate tunings into the mix, changing perceptions of what rock could be at the time.

It confounded critics, but then they were always confounded by Led Zeppelin. Maybe they shouldn't have been surprised. Led Zeppelin were never going to be just another rock band – new decade, new sound. As Jimmy Page said: “Our attitude was, ‘Fuck the ’60s! We’re going to chart the new decade!’ We were on a mission.”

1. "Immigrant Song"

Driven by a thundering Jimmy Page F# octave riff and Bonham’s propulsive beat, “Immigrant Song” kicks off Led Zeppelin III – the so-called acoustic album – with even more force than “Whole Lotta Love” launched Led Zeppelin II. 

And were Led Zeppelin ever more over the top than when Plant let loose with his chest-beating Viking wails on the song’s intro? (One need only witness Jack Black’s wild-eyed re-creation in the 2003 comedy School of Rock to confirm that, yes, this is quite possibly the most Zeppelin-y of all Zeppelin moments.) 

It’s a standout opener, as Page knew it would be. “With that hypnotic riff and Robert’s bloodcurdling scream, I thought, 'That’s the way to open an album,’” he once noted.

2. "Friends"

“Friends” features one of Page’s most intriguing alternate tunings: C6 (low to high, C A C G C E). His right-hand rhythm work and fret-hand pull-offs suggest a ragtime feel, but with its exotic chord shadings and John Paul Jones’ expert string arrangement, the song sounds decidedly more Eastern in nature. 

In addition to re-recording the tune in Mumbai in 1972, Page and Plant pulled it out again for 1994’s UnLedded project (a version appears on their album, No Quarter), where they were accompanied by an orchestra that included numerous Middle Eastern musicians.

3. "Celebration Day"

With its jaunty rhythm and slippery guitar riff, “Celebration Day” sounds as freewheeling and lighthearted as its title suggests. 

While it’s not one of the band’s heavier electric songs, famed producer Rick Rubin once correctly noted that it “feels like a freight train.”  Adding to the rollicking nature is the fact that the song seems to stumble in at the intro, a result of the original beginning having been accidentally erased by an engineer. 

Rather than re-record the part, Page extended the synth line from the end of “Friends” into the top of “Celebration Day,” filling the space until his guitar part came in. “That’s called ‘salvaging,’” he remarked.

4. "Since I've Been Loving You"

This Zeppelin original is quite possibly their greatest blues composition. Some critics and fans have pointed out similarities to Moby Grape’s “Never,” but the power of the song – Plant’s rafters-shaking wail, Page’s frenzied guitar solo and unique chord work, Jones’ warmly glowing organ and Bonham’s thunderous drums (squeaky bass-drum pedal and all) – is 100 percent Zeppelin. 

Page once called the song “sophisticated,” and it is, but the furious climax is also as primal and cathartic as any Zep moment recorded before or after.

5. "Out on the Tiles"

The title – British slang for a night out drinking – came from Bonham, who received a writing credit in return. His tight-but-loose drumming holds the whole thing together, not an easy task given the knotty riffing and herky-jerky chorus syncopations.

And while Zeppelin performed the entire song onstage just twice in their career, its opening salvo was later reassigned as the live intro to another heavily syncopated hard rocker, “Black Dog.”

6. "Gallows Pole"

This side-two opener has its roots in a centuries-old European folk number, “The Maid Freed From the Gallows,” though its most famous form before Zeppelin’s was the 1939 version, “The Gallis Pole,” by 12-string bluesman Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly. However, Page said he first heard the song “on an old Folkways” album as recorded by white American folksinger Fred Gerlach. 

While Zeppelin’s rendition is clearly rooted in folk-blues, Page and Jones’ expert layering of acoustic and electric instrumentation – including six-string guitars, banjos and mandolins – is practically symphonic in nature.

7. "Tangerine"

With hushed minor-key verses that give way to soaring major-key choruses and Plant’s yearning vocal, “Tangerine” demonstrates Led Zeppelin’s range as skilled pop balladeers. 

The song’s origins stretch back to a tune Page wrote while in the Yardbirds, “Knowing That I’m Losing You,” although “Tangerine” was also among the pieces he and Plant worked on at Bron-Yr-Aur. 

Like several of the acoustic-based tunes on III, the power of the song stems largely from the thoughtful arrangement, with Page on six- and 12-string acoustic, electric guitar and pedal steel, and Jones adding mandolin.

8. "That's the Way"

In a sense, “That’s the Way” is the most conventional of Led Zeppelin III’s acoustic numbers, carried along by little more than a strummed acoustic in open-G tuning and Plant’s poignant, affecting vocal and lyrics (which seem to address a relationship gone south but have also been said to be about Zeppelin’s ambivalent feelings toward America). 

Despite its simple arrangement – which includes pedal steel, dulcimer and mandolin – “That’s the Way” is one of the band’s most beloved songs and the acoustic track that critics and fans often single out for praise. A truly beautiful composition, it’s seemingly the essence of Bron-Yr-Aur brought to life.

9. "Bron-Y-Aur-Stomp"

Despite its unplugged arrangement, “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp” has its roots in a full-band jam called “Jennings Farm Blues” (included on the 2014 deluxe reissue of III), which featured several of the song’s riffs in heavy, electrified form.

For whatever reason, Zeppelin chose to rework the tune in a wholly acoustic arrangement for the record and onstage, where it was usually performed with Jones on upright bass. 

The title appears to incorporate both a reference to Bonham’s thumping rhythmic pulse and Plant’s Welsh cottage, whose name is, intentionally or not, misspelled.

10. "Hats Off to (Roy) Harper"

Featuring Page on acoustic guitar and Plant singing lines culled from old blues songs (most notably Bukka White’s “Shake ’em on Down”), “Hats Off to (Roy) Harper” is less a song and more a sound collage. 

Page frequently punctuates his rapid strumming with what appear to be random slashes of slide work, while Plant’s voice is fed through the tremolo channel of, according to Page, an old Vox amp. The song is psychedelic, spellbinding, perplexing and inscrutable. One thing it most certainly is not – critics take note – is a CSN&Y imitation. 

“We did a whole set of country blues and traditional blues numbers [see the Page/Plant acoustic jam “Key to the Highway/Trouble In Mind,” included on the 2014 deluxe reissue of III] that Robert suggested,” Page said. “But that was the only one we put on the record.” 

In a last bit of abstruseness, “Hats Off” was credited on Led Zeppelin III to Charles Obscura, a pseudonym for Page.

Order Led Zeppelin III here.

At the dawn of the 1970s, Led Zeppelin were one of the biggest rock bands in the world. Though the foursome of Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham had been in existence for just upward of a year, in that brief span of time the group had released two massive-selling albums – Led Zeppelin and II – and performed more than 150 live shows across the U.K., Scandinavia, Europe and North America. The U.S., in particular, had embraced the band, perhaps even more than its British homeland, with fans on these shores ravenous for the group’s heavy blues-rock sound.

Of course, Zeppelin were hardly the only British band playing that style in the late 1960s. During that time, Cream, Ten Years After, the Jeff Beck Group, Vanilla Fudge, Iron Butterfly and Page’s previous band, the Yardbirds, among others, had plundered black American blues music in the service of creating something more modern, multifaceted and riff-centric.

But arguably none of these acts did it with the same balance of bombast, agility, songcraft and barely restrained ferocity that Zep achieved in the studio and onstage. As Jimmy Page once remarked of the band’s arrival in America, “It felt like a vacuum, and we’d arrived to fill it. It was like a tornado, and it went rolling across the country.”

Zeppelin’s bombastic style was defined by Page’s “Whole Lotta Love”-style proto-metal riffing, Plant’s histrionic wail and Bonham’s cannon-blast drums. But there was always much more to the Zep sound – the “light and shade,” as Page so often referred to it. And nowhere in the Zeppelin catalog is that approach so clearly on display than on 1970’s Led Zeppelin III.

To be sure, there’s plenty of heavy rock on the album, starting with the thundering opener, “Immigrant Song,” and continuing with “Celebration Day,” the heated minor-blues workout “Since I’ve Been Loving You” and “Out On the Tiles.”

On the other side of the coin is the small clutch of songs that has served to forever define Led Zeppelin III as the band’s “acoustic album.” Those tracks include the folky, pastoral “That’s the Way,” the rustic hoedown “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp,” the traditional reworking of “Gallows Pole” and the Eastern-tinged, alternate-tuned “Friends.”

It’s certainly a fair categorization. Zeppelin never had, nor would again, explore acoustic instrumentation to such an extent. Yet these unplugged elements had been present in the band’s sound practically since the start of their existence.

In fact, the folk-blues “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You” was among the first songs that Page played for Plant at one of their earliest meetings, in mid-1968, at the guitarist’s houseboat on the River Thames in the village of Pangbourne. The tune was written by a University of California, Berkeley student named Anne Bredon in the 1950s, and was subsequently adapted by folk singer Janet Smith. Joan Baez heard that version and made the song her own.

Page, a dedicated Baez fan, took a liking to the track, although he stated that by the time he played Baez’s version for Plant in Pangbourne, he had already decided upon his own approach to it, “using a more fingerstyle method and then having a flamenco burst in it,” he said. “It’s light and shade, and this drama of accents.”

Led Zeppelin recorded their version of “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You” for their 1969 debut, complete with a newly composed, full-band instrumental assault in the choruses. That album also included another Page acoustic moment, “Black Mountain Side,” which borrowed heavily from British fingerstylist Bert Jansch’s interpretation of a traditional Gaelic folk tune known as “Down by Blackwaterside.” Jansch was a key figure in the British folk revival of the 1960s, and many of Page’s British guitar peers, Eric Clapton and Keith Richards among them, were avowed fans of his work. But neither Clapton nor Richards were able – or, really, even attempted – to synthesize Jansch’s approach into a rock context.

Page, on the other hand, incorporated the interlocking, baroque-sounding fingerstyle patterns and alternate tunings of British folk revivalists like Jansch and Davey Graham (whose “She Moved Through the Fair” Page used as the basis for his own instrumental, “White Summer”) to add a unique character to Zeppelin’s sound. 

Indeed, the hypnotic acoustic lines, incorporating unusual chord voicings and droning open strings courtesy of DADGAD tuning (which Graham had helped popularize) seemed to function as a portal into an antiquated and esoteric universe that existed far outside the more straightforward riff rock and earthy blues howls of Zeppelin and their peers’ primary source material.

What led Page to be so receptive? Perhaps it was down to his naturally omnivorous tastes. He grew up enamored of everything from blues, rockabilly and skiffle to folk, traditional music and jazz. But there was also his extensive history as a working guitarist in various styles, which led him to label himself an “all-arounder.” Page was only 24 when he left the Yardbirds and formed Led Zeppelin, but by that point he had already made his name as an in-demand session musician, playing, often uncredited, on recordings for artists in a wide range of styles.

“You just got booked into a particular studio at the hours of two and five-thirty,” he explained. “Sometimes it would be somebody you were happy to see, and other times it was, ‘What am I doing here?’” The idea of commiting to just one musical style might have never even crossed his young mind. “There’s such a wealth of arts and styles within the instrument… flamenco, jazz, rock, blues… you name it, it’s there,” Page once said. “In the early days, my dream was to fuse all those styles.”

And so, with Led Zeppelin, he did. But while Led Zeppelin III is commonly viewed as the band’s “acoustic album,” it is also so much more, taking the rock, blues and folk elements present on the band’s first two albums and synthesizing them into something unlike anyone else was making at the time, be it the exotic futurism of “Friends,” the otherworldly “Hats Off to (Roy) Harper,” which twists the Delta blues into an echoing miasma of harsh slide guitars and distorted wails, or the almost jazzy electric blues of “Since I’ve Been Loving You.”

“Led Zeppelin was definitely growing, there’s no doubt about that,” Page has been quoted as saying of the band at this time in its complicated history. “Where many of our contemporaries were narrowing their perspective, we were really being expansive.”

All of which is to say that, when it came time to begin work on their third album, Zeppelin were ready for something different. And so, after completing their fifth North American tour in April 1970, the band took a well-deserved break. Jones and Bonham returned home, but Page and Plant had other ideas. At Plant’s suggestion, the two headed to a cottage in Wales, near the town of Machynlleth, where the singer had spent time with his family when he was a boy. The 18th century home, named Bron-Yr-Aur (“The Golden Breast”) didn’t even have running water or electricity.

By this time, Page already had three new tunes in his pocket: “Immigrant Song,” “Friends” and “Since I’ve Been Loving You.” However, Page and Plant planned to spend their time at Bron-Yr-Aur relaxing, not writing, and taking a break from the demands of their band. “When I look back at what we actually did in 1969 alone, it’s absolutely mind-boggling,” Page said.

But soon enough, the duo began working on new songs – folky, acoustic material that mirrored their bucolic surroundings. “That’s the Way” was developed during a walk around the Welsh countryside, something Page and Plant did regularly during their time at Bron-Yr-Aur. “We had a guitar with us,” Page recalled. “It was a tiring walk coming down a ravine, so we stopped and sat down. I played the tune and Robert sang a verse straight off. We had the tape recorder ready and got the tune down.”

Although “That’s the Way,” with its languid, strummed chords performed in an open-G tuning, was the only full song to emerge from their time at Bron-Yr-Aur, Page also stated that, “It was the tranquility of the place that set the tone of the album.”

Of course, to say that the act of unplugging from urban life at Bron-Yr-Aur was on its own enough to spur Zeppelin’s move toward a more rustic sound would be reductive. “There were three acoustic songs on the first album and two on the second,” Page pointed out, with his admiration for Joan Baez and Bert Jansch made clear on Led Zeppelin, and songs like “Ramble On,” with its strummed acoustic verses offset by power-chord-fortified choruses, highlighting II.

Additionally, by 1970 both Page and Plant had been turned on to British folk acts like Fairport Convention and the more psychedelia-laced Incredible String Band, as well as artists like Joni Mitchell and the Band. “The places the Fairports and the String Band were coming from were places we loved very much,” Plant remarked. “The Zeppelin thing was moving into that area in its own way.”

But, Page noted, “I don’t think you’d ever confuse Led Zeppelin with Fairport Convention or the Incredible String Band. I think they were coming from a much more traditional place, and I was coming from so many different areas.”

Early sessions for Led Zeppelin III had already taken place in November 1969, at Olympic Studios in London, the same facility that birthed Led Zeppelin. But upon returning from Bron-Yr-Aur, Page and Plant reconvened with Jones and Bonham at a new locale, Headley Grange, described by Page as a “damp and cold” 18th century country house in Hampshire that, much like the beloved Welsh cottage, was far removed from the trappings of modern life. There, the group set to work on new material.

“The reason we went there in the first place was to have a live-in situation, where you’re writing and really living the music,” Page said. “We’d never really had that experience before as a group, apart from when Robert and I had gone to Bron-Yr-Aur.”

Recording sessions ensued at Headley using the Rolling Stones’ Mobile Studio, with additional work done at Olympic and Island studios. By this time, Page had his electric guitar setup more or less solidified. After playing a 1959 Fender Telecaster on Led Zeppelin, he came upon that most classic of combinations, a sunburst ’59 Gibson Les Paul Standard – purchased from Joe Walsh and subsequently nicknamed No. 1 – through a 100-watt Marshall (though it wasn’t his only amp on the record), just in time for Led Zeppelin II.

The Les Paul is heard on Led Zeppelin III as well, but when it came to the acoustic parts for the record, he turned to a trusty companion: a Harmony Sovereign H1260 that he first purchased in his Yardbirds days and subsequently employed to write all the acoustic songs, and some of the electric ones, on the first three Zeppelin albums.

For III, that modest Harmony also served as his acoustic guitar in the studio (although a 12-string, believed to be a Giannini GWSCRA12-P Craviola, was used sparingly, most noticeably on “Tangerine”). From there, the Harmony remained his primary acoustic both onstage and on record until 1973’s Houses of the Holy, when he acquired a Martin D-28.

As for what he liked about the Harmony? “It helped me come up with all these amazing songs!” he once exclaimed with a laugh. “It encouraged me. It didn’t fight back, and it didn’t go out of tune. It would say to me, ‘Go on, man, give me more! C’mon!’”

Led Zeppelin III was released in the U.S. on October 5, 1970, with advance orders registering at almost a million copies. Roughly three weeks later, it was issued in the U.K., where it immediately topped the charts (it soon hit No. 1 in America as well).

Critically, however, the record fared less well, and after its initial peak, sales lagged. While Led Zeppelin were never much of a critics’ band to begin with, this time around they were also, oddly enough, dinged for moving away from the sometimes bludgeoning, overly sexualized sound that many had criticized in the first place. 

Some journalists wrote off the acoustic material on III as a mere Crosby, Stills & Nash rip-off. Lester Bangs, writing in Rolling Stone, opined that “the acoustic stuff sounds like standard Zep graded down decibel-wise,” even as he singled out “That’s the Way” for praise.

But as Page commented, “We were so far ahead that it was very difficult for reviewers to know what the hell we were doing. They couldn’t relate to it. Very rarely could they get the plot of what was going on.”

And indeed, there was a lot going on. Led Zeppelin III’s first two tracks, “Immigrant Song” and “Friends” – also the first two composed for the record – laid out the album’s warring styles: electric vs. acoustic, aggressive vs. exotic. But even “Immigrant Song,” with its pile-driving riff and wailing lyrics, held unexpected musical treats, such as the stabbing G minor chords that accent the main F# riff during the outro. 

“It pulls the whole tension of the piece into another area or another dimension, just for that moment,” Page explained. “And a bit of backward echo makes it a bit more complete. It’s putting all these elements together that makes the music have depth.”

“Friends,” meanwhile, was the result of Page’s experimentation with an unusual tuning, in this case open C6 (low to high, C A C G C E). The churning, deliberately strummed acoustic rhythm is clearly rooted in folk, though Jones’ mesmerizing string arrangement – which serves as the main accompaniment, along with some light percussion and a hint of synthesizer – suggests an Indian flavor. (As if to acknowledge this fact, in 1972 Plant and Page traveled to Bombay – now Mumbai – and recorded a version of the song with a group of musicians, including sarangi, sitar and tabla players, that they credited as the Bombay Symphony Orchestra.)

The rest of side one held numerous treats, in particular “Since I’ve Been Loving You.” While on the surface it seemed of a piece with previous Zep slow-blues behemoths like “I Can’t Quit You Baby” and “You Shook Me,” it was anything but. For starters, unlike those songs, “Since I’ve Been Loving You” was a Zep original. What’s more, it introduced a sort of progressive blues built from a complex chord structure and movement, and used a slow build that erupted in a furious crescendo. Plant described it as “a bit more classy than a 12-bar.”

“It was meant to push the envelope,” Page said. “We were playing in the spirit of blues but trying to take it into new dimensions dictated by the mass consciousness of the four players involved. The same thing goes for the folk stuff, as well.”

Indeed it did. And all of that “folk stuff,” save for the previously mentioned “Friends,” was found on side two of the record, which kicks off with one of Zeppelin’s most stunning interpretations: “Gallows Pole,” which is based on the traditional tune “The Maid Freed From the Gallows.” According to Page, the song emerged suddenly, after he grabbed Jones’ Vega PS-5 Long Neck banjo, an instrument he claimed to have never played before. “I just picked it up and started moving my fingers around until the chords sounded right, which is the same way I work on compositions when the guitar’s in different tunings.”

On the recording, Page played banjo as well as acoustic and electric guitar, with Jones adding electric bass and mandolin. “What happened with Zeppelin was very organic,” Jones recalled. “You find yourself with a bit more time and you sit down with some acoustic instruments, and you start exploring.”

Jones also played mandolin on “Hey, Hey What Can I Do,” a country-inflected acoustic number from the III sessions that didn’t make the final album. He recalled that he had purchased his first mandolin while on tour in America, and said that he probably learned his first tunes for the instrument from the 1969 Fairport Convention album Liege and Lief. “Literally, it was sitting around a fire at Headley and picking things up and trying things out,” he explained.

As for the remainder of side two, “That’s the Way” featured Page on the Harmony acoustic in open-G tuning, as well as on dulcimer and pedal steel – believed to be a Fender 800 model – and Jones on mandolin.

There was also the sentimental pop ballad “Tangerine,” which once again combined Page’s acoustic and Jones’s mandolin to great effect in the verses, and was accented by more pedal steel from Page in the chorus. “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp” is a Lonnie Donegan-style skiffle tune that actually had its origins in a Zeppelin electric jam titled “Jennings Farm Blues.”

The closing track, “Hats Off to (Roy) Harper,” is an acoustic blues that sounds as if Page and Plant exploded the form from the inside out and reconstituted the pieces in cut-and-paste manner. The peculiarity was named for then-current British folk musician Roy Harper, with whom Page had recently struck up a friendship, as a nod to an artist he viewed as uncompromising. “I mean, hats off to anybody who sticks by what they think is right and has the courage not to sell out,” Page said.

The same, of course, could be said of Page and his cohorts with the making of Led Zeppelin III. And yet, while the record introduced a new facet of the band, its ethos was of a piece with their two previous efforts in that it saw them taking sounds and ideas present in rock, blues, folk and traditional music and twisting them into something entirely new.

To that end, the brilliance of Led Zeppelin III, and in particular its folk-based material, is that, while it often sounds like music from the past, it’s a past unlike anything we’ve heard before – and one that possibly never existed at all.

Led Zeppelin’s approach on the record also served to influence their musical future. For their subsequent fourth, untitled album, they returned to Headley Grange and further integrated their folk side into its tracks, in particular on “The Battle of Evermore,” “Going to California” and, most significantly, “Stairway to Heaven,” a song Page said “crystallized the essence of the band.” (The album’s lack of a title, meanwhile, was Page’s reaction to III’s chilly critical reception.)

The band reconvened again at Headley for 1975’s Physical Graffiti, an album that included a III outtake, the Page acoustic instrumental “Bron-Yr-Aur,” and saw them pushing their wide-ranging sound out even further.

But in the end, it’s Led Zeppelin III that, through its embrace of more traditional instruments, unlocked the musical adventurism that flowed freely throughout the band’s subsequent albums. As Plant stated, “The third album was the album of albums. If anybody had labeled us a heavy metal group, that destroyed them.”

For Led Zeppelin, taking a step back on III was a statement that there was really only one direction – forward. “Now that we’ve done [it], the sky’s the limit,” Plant said. “It shows we can change. It means there are endless possibilities for us. We won’t go stale, and this proves it.”

Or, as Page put it, “I was into the ’70s. Our attitude was, ‘Fuck the ’60s! We’re going to chart the new decade!’ We were on a mission.”

The following appeared in the September 2019 issue of Guitar Player

Buddy Miller developed a singular guitar style that would make him an icon in the music genre known as Americana. With a rootsy resonance grounded in country, blues and rock, and a healthy dose of Daniel Lanois-influenced ambience, Miller’s approach is one where prodigious technique is always subservient to soul.

Through seven solo records, as well as albums with Jim Lauderdale, Bill Frisell and others, Miller has honed a unique approach to twang, while his textural side was brought to bear in his work with Robert Plant’s Band of Joy. All of the above is applied to 2019's Breakdown on 20th Avenue South (New West), his third collaboration with his wife, Julie.

On some of the electric numbers, the tone of his trademark Italian Wandrè guitar is in evidence. Miller owns two of these radically designed instruments and makes no bones about their importance to his music. “I originally paid 50 bucks each for them, and they are the key to my whole life,” he says. “One is tuned standard, and the other one is usually either tuned up to F or down to Eb, because I like having the open strings.”

Miller initially thought the guitars were branded Noble because of a name that appears the back of the headstock. “Noble was an importer of Italian accordions in Chicago,” he explains. “I guess the Wandrè guitars came as part of the deal.” Indeed, with their glittery finish and push-button switching, a visual and mechanical resemblance to an accordion is apparent.

The glossy appearance is deceptive, however, as these are cheaply constructed guitars. “I’ve probably put 50 dollars worth of superglue into this thing over the years,” Miller says. “The fancy binding tends to come off. I only bought one because of the sparkles and then realized it sounded great, even acoustically. They are all I have played as my main guitar since I got the first one in the mid ’70s.”

These instruments come with a permanent cover over the saddles, creating a small issue. “You cannot palm mute easily,” Miller says. “I got okay at it, but unlike on a Fender or Gibson, you can’t put your palm where the strings meet the bridge.”

In another odd turn, the strings are pulled through holes in the bridge. In the early days, when Miller would be playing in clubs for six hours a night, it was not unusual for him to break a string on the Wandrè. “I got really good at changing it in the middle of a song, but it’s like threading a needle,” he explains.

The peculiar construction of the Italian guitar doesn’t end there. The three pickups are not attached to the body but instead float, supported by an aluminum strut to which the body is bolted as well. This doesn’t seem to adversely affect the tone. “You can get a good country sound with just the bridge pickup,” Miller explains. “When you put on two of the pickups, it’s kind of like a Strat sound.” Two of the pickups are physically out of the phase, as on a Stratocaster, while the third is electronically out of phase, producing the thin, funky tone associated with early B.B. King or Peter Green.

Two decades in Nashville may have given Miller the demeanor of a southern gentleman, but he grew up in the North, coming to country music through a circuitous route. The guitarist was born in Ohio, where he simultaneously saw Elvis and a six-string guitar at the age of three. Miller’s family soon moved to New Jersey. “My parents got me my first guitar when I was seven or eight – a $29 nylon-string,” he recalls. “This was pre-Beatles. The only book or instruction around back then was The Folk Singer’s Guitar Guide, by Pete Seeger, but we were halfway between Philadelphia and New York, so there was great radio.”

That’s where Miller first heard country music. “What got me hooked was the guitar playing,” he says. “James Burton and cats like that drew me in with their great signature parts.” Working with various bands later led him to Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City, which, believe it or not, was a hotbed of country music for a while.

Following three solo records on Hightone, Miller recorded his first album with Julie, with the second following in 2009. Years passed before this third collaboration as the in-demand musician was sidetracked, producing or co-producing Richard Thompson, Shawn Colvin, Ralph Stanley, Jim Lauderdale and Robert Plant, as well as working and occasionally appearing on the television show Nashville.

The couple reignited their musical partnership recently when Julie began a streak of writing songs that begged to be recorded. Breakdown on 20th Avenue South takes its name from the location of the Millers’ house in Nashville. The home features a full-on recording studio that takes up most of the downstairs, but Julie, whose health has been erratic, declined to use it. “We didn’t record down here,” Miller explains. “It was a horrible little setup upstairs, in the corner of our bedroom. I couldn’t move in the chair, and the dog would get up on my lap. There’s one song where you can hear a dog bark every now and then.”

The “horrible” recording setup included a laptop and a Universal Audio Apollo X16. “The UA stuff is great,” Miller admits. “The Apollo has a feature called Unison pre-amp that allows you to use their Neve or Telefunken Preamp plug-ins while you’re tracking. It records the sound of their mic-pre modeling, which all of my engineer friends tell me is outrageously accurate. I’ve got real Telefunken V76s and Neves, but I didn’t bring them upstairs.”

Miller did take along a floor tom with a towel on it to lay down a loop, as well as a Wandrè guitar and one Swart amp. “I built up the tracks one at a time,” he explains. “I don’t usually make records that way. I’m used to having a guy on the drums that I can look at and play to.”

Working in such a small space, the guitarist found he needed to use another Universal Audio product, the Ox, for its attenuator feature. “It is basically like a power soak with a line out,” he explains. “I don’t normally use the modeling, although I might have used the speaker simulation on a couple of songs because it lets you turn the amp speaker off. It sounded amazing.”

After the luxury of recording on full consoles in commercial studios and his own, Miller had to adjust to mixing in the box with a personal computer. “I was working in a space that is four by four with a laptop and two little monitors,” he says. “I’ve edited audio in Pro Tools on a plane, but I don’t usually work that way. It wasn’t until after the record was finished that I realized you could plug in a mouse and a keyboard to make it feel like a real system.”

For their first joint effort in a decade, Miller let his wife take the lead and assisted by presenting her with a special instrument. “I got Julie this funny-looking acoustic Avante guitar,” he says. “She always likes me to play something like a guitar tuned an octave higher, which is the reason I have the electric Vox Mando-Guitar. The Avante is tuned D to D [above normal tuning], almost an octave up. 

"It’s a great sound. She would write the songs on it, and that would become the sound of that song. I bought a second one because it’s a specialty sound and looks a little weird, so who knows how long they’ll make them.”

Designed by Veillette Gryphon and distributed by ESP, the Avante is but one of a variety of cool instruments used in the making of Breakdown on 20th Avenue South. “I also have this Stella or Kay fixed up by Scott Baxendale in Athens, Georgia,” Miller continues. “He takes the top off these old Kays and Harmonys, rebraces them, and makes them sound great when they should sound horrible. This one is in a drone tuning.”

The title tune finds Miller forsaking his Wandrè for a moment. “I usually don’t stress over which guitar to play; I’ll just pick up whatever’s nearby and if it feels right, I’ll go with it,” he says. “I think that was a Gibson 330 with P-90s. I can’t usually get music out of Gibsons. I’m really not that that versatile of a player.”

Listen to the track “Unused Heart,” and you will hear Miller hitting a low C# courtesy of an old Jerry Jones baritone. “I’ve been using that a lot for the last eight to 10 years,” he says. “When I was playing with just me and Emmylou Harris, I would play baritone because it let me add some color and melody while playing bass at the same time. I also used it with Patty Griffin and Shawn Colvin. The scale’s different from a guitar. You have to stretch your fingers a little bit more, but it’s worth it, soundwise.”

Live, Miller favors a pair of Swart AST Pro amps, but the small space permitted the use of only one when recording with Julie. “I used the tremolo on the Swart for the record, but I use the Fulltone Supa-Trem live,” he says. “I love the Swart’s reverb. The springs react a little differently.”

On the solo for “I’m Going to Make You Love Me,” Miller sounds as if he is slamming away on the low strings of some mysterious instrument, creating an evocative sound that is hard to place. “Isn’t that the coolest thing? That’s just a guitar. It might have been the Wandrè or a Tele,” he says. 

“I’ll tell you what was in the back of my mind. My secret weapon is an old Willy Joe Duncan record. He played a one-string Unitar, and it is one of my favorite recordings. I wasn’t consciously ripping that off, but months after we cut it I realized I’m doing Willy Joe Duncan. I was trying to do it on the A string, but it sounded better on the E string. That’s all that is. I’m just trying to impress my wife.”

“Underneath the Sky” offers up electric guitar tones that go from bass-saturated breakup to cutting treble, all a product of Miller merely switching pickups. “That’s an old track,” he says. “We started a Julie record 15 years ago. I did my record Universal United House of Prayer instead of finishing hers because she takes a long time and I’m used to making a record in a week. ‘Underneath the Sky’ meant a lot to her because her brother had just passed away. He was struck by lightning. That was cut with just me playing the guitar live and Brady Blade on drums. It’s only one guitar on that track.”

Though there are plenty of gritty electric workouts on the record, it is the pristine sounds of the acoustic instruments that reveal how completely the producer was able to transcend the limits of his recording setup. Of course, having great gear helps. “The main acoustic on the record is a 1934 Gibson L-00,” he reveals. “You can hear every string. It’s not like strumming a guitar, more like playing a piano.” Miller purchased the instrument from Nashville guitar repair guru Joe Glaser. “There was brace loose in it and he said, ‘I think it adds to the sound, so I’m just going to leave it that way.’”

No matter how good the guitar, when it comes to superior acoustic tone, miking is crucial. Miller has many classic mics: a vintage Neumann 254 tube mic, an old Shure SM5 and Telefunken U47s, among others, but he chose to use newer ones. “I didn’t want to bring expensive stuff upstairs because of the dogs, and because things fall over,” he explains. “That said, I used great mics made in Nashville by a company called Miktek. I used their small-diaphragm microphone on the acoustic. I think they only make one [the C5], and I love it.

“Most small-diaphragm mics, even expensive ones from high-end companies, have a bump at around 4-to-7k, which I find unattractive and unnatural. The Miktek mics are really flat and sound like the guitar. As to mic placement, I didn’t have many choices. I was playing at a desk in front of a laptop.”

Anyone who has seen Buddy and Julie Miller perform knows that they are one of the all-time great musical marriages, up there with George Jones and Tammy Wynette, and Richard and Linda Thompson. Unlike the others, the Millers are still an ongoing couple, but Julie’s health has precluded them from performing together live for many years.

We couldn’t let Miller go without asking him about his Band of Joy days working with Led Zeppelin legend Robert Plant. “That relationship with Robert came about in such a cool way,” he explains. “He was at an Emmylou Harris gig in London. I heard he was in the pub afterward, and went to meet him. We hit it off talking about Arthur Lee and Moby Grape. He loves country music and rockabilly, but our point of intersection was both being fans of West Coast ’60s rock. I guess I didn’t suck that night, because he kept my number and called when the Alison Krauss/Robert Plant tour happened [in 2008].”

Miller tries to take something away from every gig and every session, and working with this rock icon was no exception. “Robert is such a great band leader,” he says. “I learned so much from watching the way he communicates onstage. You have to spot the slightest shoulder gesture, because he’ll go out on a limb. It’s not the same set and certainly not the same vocal every night. There were certain songs where we could go wherever we wanted, and he would push the musicians to go there. His instincts are impeccable, so you just go with it.

“Nothing is set in stone and the arrangements are just guides. At certain times during the show, it’s going to seem as if we’re lost, because we are. I like that, so don’t tell me where the ‘one’ is. Don’t try to bring me back.”

Listen to Buddy & Julie Miller’s Lockdown Songs here.

“The blues is scary,” Jimmy Page says. “It’s threatening. It’s saying: ‘I’m coming to get you.’”

Harder, heavier and hairier than anything before them, Led Zeppelin shook up the blues scene, established Robert Plant as a bona fide rock star and Page as an untouchable guitar god, and gave the world the ferocious rhythm section of drummer John Bonham and bassist John Paul Jones.

“The blues – I mean, it’s just undeniable,” Page says. “It was just an undeniable element of everything that was going on in Led Zeppelin. If there hadn’t been that sort of movement in Chicago, back in the ’50s, and all that sort of riffing, then you wouldn’t have got what came through in various bands later – certainly for me and how it affected me in Led Zeppelin.

“In those days, all the guitarists were learning from records. I was lucky that I had a blues collector called Dave Williams. Through him I got to hear stuff like Elmore James. You weren’t going to hear that on the radio.”

Given his legacy, Page doesn’t owe anything to anyone as a guitarist, but he waves away the notion. “I owe it to all of them,” he explains. “That’s how I learned. My breakthrough was when I understood how to do bottleneck guitar. That’s the point when open tunings first come in for me. Boom! That’s it. And that whole world opened itself up for me. I wasn’t actually trying to play note for note what anyone else had done.”

Instead, Page broke the mold. It’s impossible to overstate the impact of that first Led Zeppelin album.

“As far as the material for the first Zeppelin album goes,” Page recalls, “I definitely knew that I really wanted to do ‘I Can’t Quit You Baby.’ ‘Dazed and Confused,’ too. And that’s not blues, I know. But it is! If you have the harmonica playing that riff, you know that it’s blues all right. And also ‘Babe I’m Gonna Leave You.’ All of these things. I could just list them and list them.

“It was very intentional what the first album was gonna be. There was gonna be a definite showcase of the blues. But it needed to have that Led Zeppelin character put into it.”

How did Zeppelin’s treatment of the blues differ from, say, John Mayall’s and Eric Clapton’s three years before? “Well, it’s the atmosphere and it’s the attitude that’s created on something like Muddy Waters’ ‘Standing Around Crying,’” Page says. “It’s like Howlin’ Wolf: When you hear Wolf, he’s not messing about. It’s like, ‘I’m coming at you – and I’m gonna get you!’ And that’s why I love him.

“So let’s put it this way: Whether it was the first album or whether it was ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’ [from Led Zeppelin III] or ‘Tea for One’ [from Presence], whenever Led Zeppelin do a blues, it’s not like anybody else doing the blues.”

Remarkably, Page says he wasn’t Zeppelin’s biggest blues fan. “We all had our roots,” he explains. “Each and every one of us had played the blues in some sort of department or other.

“What I would say is that Robert was a blues aficionado, but he was very into the country blues. He was a damn fine harp player.

“He was used to playing that acoustically, but I was keen to get him playing it through an amp. So then you get things like ‘When the Levee Breaks,’ which is really gonna scare the pants off you with what he does on harmonica.”

Order Led Zeppelin's 1969 debut album here.

Born Lizzie Douglas in Louisiana in 1897, Memphis Minnie rocked the blues with guitar in hand and a voice both honeyed and forceful.

She ran away to Memphis at 13 and honed her talent as a powerhouse singer, guitarist and writer of earthy blues tunes.

As skilled, charismatic and raunchy as her many male peers, Minnie challenged their monopoly on the genre with her songs and performances.

She moved to Chicago in the ’30s, where she famously beat Big Bill Broonzy in a cutting contest on his own turf.

Minnie’s early sides with her partner Wilbur "Kansas Joe" McCoy (1905-1950) secured her legend and made more than a few male artists richer.

She and McCoy cut “Bumble Bee” (a huge hit that inspired Muddy Waters’ “Honey Bee”), “If You See My Rooster” (which Willie Dixon remade as “Little Red Rooster”) and “When the Levee Breaks,” which Led Zeppelin famously appropriated for their fourth album in 1971.

"There are so many classics from way back which we can give a little of ourselves to take them through the years," singer Robert Plant told Melody Maker in the mid-‘70s.

“That’s one thing about blues – you can do more or less anything, around a very vague shell,” he later explained to the Guardian. “And the more of it you do, the better you get until at the end there’s very few boundaries to it at all, and yet it’s all very tight.

On her own, Minnie enjoyed numerous hits, including 1941’s “Me and My Chauffeur Blues.” She took up electric guitar as early as 1942 and began laying down the kind of gritty electric blues guitar Muddy Waters wouldn’t play for another few years.

Although ill health forced her to retire in the ’50s, Minnie got her due in the ’60s blues and folk revival and through covers of her music by Jefferson Airplane and Led Zeppelin.

She spent her last years in a nursing home and died penniless in 1973. She’s buried in Walls, Mississippi, under a tombstone paid for by her fan and musical beneficiary Bonnie Raitt.

Order the Memphis Minnie Essential Recordings here.

Throughout the course of his long career, Jeff Beck collaborated with a vast array of artists.

Diverse, dynamic and in-demand, the number of fellow musicians he teamed up with is astounding.

The following list of classic moments captured on tape could easily be expanded without compromising on quality.

From Jon Bon Jovi and Roger Waters to Ozzy Osbourne and Kate Bush, here are 10 of Beck’s greatest studio collaborations…

1. “Blaze of Glory” by Jon Bon Jovi from ‘Young Guns II’ (1990)

“Blaze of Glory” was written by Jon Bon Jovi in response to a request from actor Emilio Estevez who had originally hoped to use the Bon Jovi classic “Wanted Dead Or Alive” for the Young Guns II soundtrack.

The similarity in feel between the two songs is no accident, but the crucial added ingredient to the mix is Beck’s blistering, iconic solo.

Utilizing his matchless whammy bar technique and volume swells, he opens up the solo with lines that mimic the sound of slide guitar. But it soon becomes clear there is so much more going on as Beck builds in intensity, taking the song to another level while unleashing the kind of fretboard pyrotechnics only he could deliver.

One of Beck’s most celebrated collaborations, it is unsurprising that countless YouTube videos explore exactly how Beck played the piece.

As is often the case, seeing how it’s done may remove some of the mystery, but the genius is in the conception as much as the execution. No one approached a song with the left-field slant that Beck brought to everything he worked on.

2. "Look Out Mabel" by Big Town Playboys from ‘Roll the Dice’ (2004)

Beck was always a huge fan of rock and roll and rockabilly. In fact, he devoted an entire album to Cliff Gallup’s pioneering guitar work with Gene Vincent in the form of 1993’s Crazy Legs.

In order to authentically recreate the tones of Gallup, Beck turned to a DeArmond Model 2000/Dynasonic-loaded 1956 Gretsch Duo Jet, eschewing the Strat with which he’d become synonymous.

The Big Town Playboys helped Beck recreate the timeless genius of Gallup and Vincent on the album, and he later reunited with the group for 2004’s Roll the Dice.

Amongst a slew of great guests on the record, this particular track saw Beck team up with fellow ‘50s rock and roll devotee Robert Plant.

The song they took on was a cover of a single originally released in 1958 by G.L. Crockett on the Checker label. Long revered as a lost classic of the genre, it was the perfect vehicle for Beck to flex his rockabilly chops.

For a full 24 bars, Beck slips and slides into flurries of pull-offs and glissandos to deliver a knockout solo that bridges the gap between vintage rockabilly and modern rock.

3. “Hello Jeff” by Stanley Clarke from ‘Journey to Love’ (1975)

Beck collaborated with Stanley Clarke many times throughout his career, both in the studio and on stage. In 1975, Beck released his best-selling solo album, Blow by Blow, and recorded this track with Clarke the same year.

Clarke’s genius and vision along with his ability to redraw the parameters of what the bass guitar could do paralleled Beck’s own astoundingly innovative approach to the electric guitar.

The fusion of two intensely creative mavericks was bound to deliver something unique and “Hello Jeff” did not disappoint.

The opening theme rapidly gives way to Clarke’s instantly recognizable bass before Beck re-enters to play a relatively simple hook, lulling the listener into a false sense of calm. The guitarist then unleashes a cascade of blazing licks – each one a masterclass in delivering the unexpected.

Every time you think you know how a line is going to end, Beck confounds your wildest expectations by finding the outside notes that somehow just work.

Even when referencing the standard licks in every guitarist’s trick bag, he manages to extract something astonishing from the fretboard.

4. “I Just Want To Make Love To You” by Paul Rodgers from ‘Muddy Water Blues: A Tribute to Muddy Waters’ (1993)

Given Beck’s dynamically expressive approach it is perhaps a shame that he didn’t play more of the straight-ahead gutbucket blues he rips out on this track from Paul Rodgers’ 1993 all-star project.

The tone on the opening few riffs instantly focuses the listener’s attention. The raw, nasty, down-and-dirty edge Beck brings creates a perfect counterpoint for Rodgers’ muscular blues-wailing vocal.

From there, things only get more intense as singer and guitarist push each other to deliver some of the deepest blues recorded by either.

For the solo, Beck opens with a curveball of deep, growling bass licks – instantly wrongfooting the listener as he builds on a handful of perfectly chosen notes delivered with extraordinary finesse. Halfway through, Rodgers joins Beck as they ratchet up the urgency to breaking point.

The mark of a true artist is knowing when not to play – when to sit on a note and extract the maximum juice. And Beck’s solo on this track is the epitome of such an approach.

Here, Beck has nothing to prove – no need to shred a million notes a minute. For him, it’s all about the intensity of emotion.

5. “Amused to Death” by Roger Waters from ‘Amused to Death’ (1992)

According to Waters, Amused To Death completed a conceptual trilogy alongside Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall.

The bleak, mournful tone of the title track provided Beck with the perfect sonic soundscape to paint an extraordinarily soulful solo.

Having had David Gilmour – a master of the understated – by his side for the first of the two albums in the putative trilogy, Waters knew he’d need to bring a seriously heavy hitter to the show for the final piece of the puzzle.

And with Beck on board, Waters found perhaps the only guitarist who could effectively convey the message at the heart of his dystopian lament.

For over nine minutes, Beck picks precisely the right moments to interject with the subtlest of fills, each one finding a way to counterbalance the vocal line that preceded it.

Dispatched by Beck with apparent ease, the guitar work here is sparse; choice vignettes of meticulous precision that expand the reach and depth of the song with every note.

Manipulating harmonics with his whammy bar, Beck produces sounds that most guitarists would not suspect lurk within their own instruments.

6. “You’re the One” by Kate Bush from ‘The Red Shoes’ (1993)

On reflection, the pairing of Beck and Kate Bush seems like a no-brainer; Beck specializes in producing unearthly guitar tones and intensities of emotion that no other can equal, and the same could be said of Kate Bush’s unique voice.

She can move in an instant from the deepest of growls to the most sublime falsettos. Likewise, Beck possessed the ability to turn on a dime and take the listener to places never imagined.

A lament for loss, “You’re the One” was written by Bush at a time she later revealed had been particularly tough on a personal level. She needed someone who could turn that pain into joy.

Enter Jeff Beck.

Played over the gospel-flavored keyboard of Procul Harum’s Gary Brooker, Beck’s guitar solo finds endless ways to twist, turn and manipulate the melody into a statement of salvation and hope. It rises, phoenix-like, from a world gone wrong.

As Bush’s vocal sears with raw pain, Beck’s guitar solo brings a gentle, restorative calm.

As was so often the case, it is his ability to speak volumes with a handful of notes that brings the song home on an optimistic note.

7. “A Thousand Shades” by Ozzy Osbourne from ‘Patient Number 9’ (2022)

Beck’s most recent work on this list, his playing here is as fresh and unexpectedly disarming as anything he ever recorded.

Ozzy has worked with some true legends of guitar – all of whom would happily defer to Beck as the master.

Taken at a slower pace than many of Osbourne’s songs, there is a hint of Beatles-esque melancholia about this track (unsurprising given Ozzy’s oft-stated love of the Fab Four.)

Beck’s guitar asserts itself from the moment it appears, instantly transforming a standard mid-paced rocker into something transcendental.

The solo finds ways to continue ascending with quirky phrasing and virtuosic whammy bar moves. This utterly unique take on melodic invention enables Beck to find nuances in the song that Osbourne surely could not have conceived of.

Beck and Ozzy were both well into their 70s when this track was recorded; proof, if ever it were needed, that rock music is the elixir of youth. There is no trace of the miles on the clock in Osbourne’s voice or the insane energy that Beck imparts with every flurry of notes and unerringly precise flick of his vibrato arm.

8. “People Get Ready (feat. Rod Stewart)” from Jeff Beck’s ‘Flash’ (1985)

Rod Stewart and Beck's musical connection goes way back, with Stewart delivering vocals for the guitarist’s first two albums, Truth and Beck-Ola in 1968 and 1969, respectively.

During the ‘70s, Stewart became a household name as he shot to fame as a solo artist. And while the singer had expressed some unhappiness concerning the Jeff Beck Group early on, he later became much more positive about his time with the band.

Beck had spoken fondly of Stewart and his vocal prowess, thus the stage was set for some kind of musical rapprochement.

Having featured on Stewart’s 1984 LP Camouflage, Beck asked him to return the favor by appearing on his Flash album released the following year.

For Stewart’s collaboration, Beck had earmarked the gospel-like “People Get Ready” – a Billboard hit for the Impressions in 1965.

Written by Curtis Mayfield (no slouch on the guitar himself!) Beck took this stirring melody and rendered its every minute inflection with an almost absurdly light touch.

Beck was able to convey every nuance of Mayfield’s vocal before Stewart even got to sing a note. But when Stewart does enter the fray, he delivers one of the strongest performances in his catalog, and the half-step key change towards the end sets the seal on a truly uplifting tune.

9. “Love Is the Light” by Beverley Craven from ‘Love Scenes’ (1993)

Perhaps the most unlikely collaboration of Beck’s long career is this track with the somewhat maudlin, U.K.-based singer-songwriter, Beverley Craven.

Seemingly, the two artists have nothing whatsoever in common and it is appears unlikely their paths would ever have crossed – much less that Beck would play on one of her songs.

However, there was a connection.

Love Scenes, Craven’s second studio album, was produced by Paul Samwell-Smith, Beck’s former Yardbirds bandmate from way back in the ‘60s. He managed to rope Beck in to play on three tracks, the best of which, “Love Is the Light,” sees the guitarist deliver a solo that turns a fairly anonymous MOR piano ballad into a serious musical statement.

From the first note Beck plays, the outrageously supple fluidity of his technique elevates the song to a whole new level.

Beck’s guitar stands out clearly from the backing – indeed, it is perhaps one of the most exposed-sounding lead breaks in his collaborative catalog. Furthermore, it is arguably the most transformative a contribution he has made to a recording that would otherwise appear unremarkable.

10. “Can’t Start Over Again” by Dion from ‘Blues With Friends’ (2020)

On an album crammed full of astounding guitar players, including Billy Gibbons, Joe Bonamassa, Sonny Landreth and Brian Setzer, it is Beck who steals the show on Dion’s blues collaborations collection.

Dion himself attested to the importance of Beck’s contribution. “I’ll be honest, when Jeff Beck said yes, I think I knew anybody else would say yes to playing on the album,” he stated. “Like, okay, it’s bona fide, certified, y’know? That was important because Jeff is such a huge talent, and his presence has such a weight.”

Ironically, given the overall blues feel of the album, Beck’s contribution was to a song that had something of a Hank Williams feel about it. His guitar mimics the sound of a pedal steel at times and exudes intense emotion.

What he plays on the intro is amazing enough, but the solo appears extraordinary as Beck mixes chords, harmonics and microscopically accurate microtonal bends.

“Anything he plays is just mesmerizing,” agreed Dion. “He’s one of the greatest guitarists on the planet. We have a lot of great roots in common – he loves rock and roll. I saw him do a version of ‘People Get Ready’ at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame where he did about six choruses of solos and each one was amazing.

“He’s the only guitarist who can make me cry.”

History has not been kind to Randy California. His name is stubbornly linked to his estate’s failed lawsuit claiming Jimmy Page and Robert Plant copied his 1968 composition “Taurus” to write “Stairway to Heaven.”

He should be remembered instead for his work with the band Spirit and as one of the great early hard rock guitarists.

Born Randy Craig Wolfe, he was a 15-year-old Los Angeles transplant when he met Jimi Hendrix at Manny’s Music in New York City, in 1966, and joined his band, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames.

It was Hendrix who dubbed him “California,” to distinguish him from the group’s bassist, Randy Palmer (whom Hendrix nicknamed “Texas,” also for reasons of geography).

When Chas Chandler took Hendrix off to London, California and his stepfather, drummer Ed Cassidy, formed their own group with singer Jay Ferguson, bassist Mark Andes and keyboardist John Locke.

Calling themselves Spirit, the band debuted in 1968 with their self-titled debut, a psychedelic pop masterpiece that featured “Taurus.”

A U.S. tour that year saw Led Zeppelin as their opening act, a stint that would later bolster claims that Page had more than a passing familiarity with Spirit’s music.

The group drifted from psychedelia for its next two releases, although California’s “I Got a Line on You,” from 1968’s The Family That Plays Together, and “Dark Eyed Woman,” from 1969’s Clear, were cut firmly in the style.

Spirit returned to the genre in earnest with 1970’s Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus, their lowest-charting album at that point, although, ironically, it included a song for which the band remains well-known today, the folk-rock tune “Nature’s Way.”

What’s remarkable about California’s guitar playing is not just his stinging tone or versatility with everything from blues and folk to the blistering maelstrom of wails that peals over the outro of “Nothing to Hide.”

It’s also his supreme gift for melody that graces his solos.

Early on, he used a Danelectro U56, but later photos show him with Fender Stratocasters, Gibson Les Pauls and an Ampeg Dan Armstrong Lucite guitar.

Consistent to his setup for at least the first four Spirit albums was a Jordan Bosstone jack-mounted fuzz unit, which he taped to his guitar’s body for extra security onstage.

Among the best examples of his psychedelic skills can be heard in “I Got a Line on You,” “Uncle Jack,” “Mechanical World,” “Dark Eyed Woman” and his harmonized solo on “1984.”

In this fascinating interview clip from the early '80s, California recalls his time spent with high priest of the psychedelic era, Hendrix, in New York during the mid-‘60s.

“We hooked up spiritually, mentally, and he invited me to play with him,” says the guitarist. “It was his first solo gig at the Cafe Wha?

“We played for three months together; five sets a night, every night of the week except Sunday.”

Browse the Spirit catalog here.

It's not often you get two of the world's biggest bands on stage at the same time. But at the 1995 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, members of Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith joined forces for a spectacular live performance of six songs including "Train Kept a Rollin'," "For Your Love," "Bring It On Home," "Reefer Headed Woman," "Boogie Chillen" and "Baby Please Don't Go."

That year, Aerosmith vocalist Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry had the honor of inducting fellow hard rock veterans Led Zeppelin into the esteemed ranks of the Rock Hall.

During the ceremony, the pair shared some thoughts on the group Rolling Stone called "the biggest band of the Seventies."

“I love this band because they had no limits,” said Perry. “They weren't musical snobs and never held on to any one style. Zeppelin would change gear six times on one album; they played blues, funk, rock, reggae and ballads with equal ease.

“I think it’s laughable that some people still consider them just a heavy metal band, since at least half of their best songs are acoustic. They were doing Unplugged long before it was a hip thing to do.”

Meanwhile, Tyler recalled some poignant memories of the early days.

“In 1969, I saw Led Zeppelin perform at the Boston Tea Party,” said the Aerosmith frontman. “They ran out of songs after they played their whole first album, so they had to do a bunch of Elvis tunes because they wouldn’t let them get off stage.

“I just sat cross-legged in the back of the room while they played the middle section of 'Dazed and Confused,’ and it was so fucking heavy that it made me cry.

“Another time I cried over Led Zeppelin was an hour later when Jimmy Page emerged from the dressing room with a beautiful girl on his arm. I would have been very impressed except it was the girl I’d been living with (up until that moment.)”

Interestingly, Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones recounted his own memories of performing at the Boston Tea Party in 1969 to NME .

“As far as I’m concerned, the key Zeppelin gig, the one that put everything into focus, was one that we played on our first American tour at the Boston Tea Party,” said the legendary bassist.

“We’d played our usual one-hour set, using all the material for the first album and Page’s ‘White Summer’ guitar piece and by the end, the audience just wouldn’t let us off stage…

“I’ve never seen that at a gig before or since, and when we finally left the stage, we’d played for four plus hours.

“Peter [Grant, Led Zeppelin’s manager] was absolutely ecstatic. He was crying, if you can imagine that, and hugging us all.”

Browse the Led Zeppelin catalog here.

Browse the Aerosmith catalog here.

Visit the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame online here.

When it comes to shaking up the guitar world, in many ways Led Zeppelin were to the ‘70s what the Beatles were to the ‘60s.

Around a fortnight after Led Zeppelin released their eponymous debut album in January 1969, the Beatles performed together for the final time on the rooftop of their Apple Corps headquarters in London.

And as the decade that gave us Flower Power crossfaded into the era of hard rock, the airwaves grew heavier with the sound of electric guitar riffs.

Leading the way for myriad bands the world over, Zeppelin’s far-reaching appeal has inspired generations.

From the British folk acoustic guitar brilliance of Bert Jansch to the Chicago blues genius of Willie Dixon, Led Zeppelin directly referenced guitar culture on both sides of the Atlantic, weaving the roots of rock together tighter than ever.

With the historic Beatles split coinciding with Led Zeppelin's meteoric rise, the music world was in a state of flux and some journalists were keen to dig deeper.

How much influence did the Beatles exert on ‘70s rock music?

What’s the difference between Led Zeppelin and the Beatles?

How does Jimmy Page feel about the Beatles?

All of these questions and more are answered by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page in this intriguing compilation of early interview recordings.

Interestingly, when asked about whether they hope to be awarded MBEs (as per the Beatles) Page replies, “I think they’ve given up on people like us for that.”

However, in 2005, the guitarist one-upped the Beatles while receiving an OBE from the Queen at Buckingham Palace for his humanitarian work in Brazil.

Similarly, Page’s award was trumped by Plant in 2009 when the singer received a CBE for his services to music.

Browse the Led Zeppelin catalog here.

After decades of working with artists like the Mavericks, Bob Seger, Kenny Chesney, Willie Nelson, Buddy Guy and Taylor Swift, 2012 ACM Guitarist of the Year Kenny Greenberg has released a record of his own, Blues for Arash (We R They Records).

But we would still be waiting had not screenwriter Arash Amel requested music for a prospective film about a blues fanatic from West Africa.

“He was looking for a combination of African rhythms and American blues,” Greenberg says. “Slide guitar and some cinematic stuff.”

Greenberg ensconced himself in his home studio and began recording. For the West African flavors, the guitarist had invaluable help from Justin Adams of Robert Plant’s Sensational Shape Shifters, but the blues is all courtesy of the Nashville session ace.

Some of the aforementioned slide was played on a Gibson SG with mini-humbuckers, but for the bulk of the record he used the more unusual DiPinto Galaxie.

“I was buying a compressor and the guy said, ‘I’ll throw in this guitar,’” Greenberg says, with a laugh. “I put on big strings and love it for playing slide. I ran a ’90s Fender Pro Jr. into a 4x12 cabinet that I close- and distance-miked. I had an overdrive pedal on, just to get a little more gain from the amp.”

For the acoustic blues guitar parts, the guitarist used a wooden National resonator guitar and a Harmony Sovereign. With each, he combined direct pickup and miked tracks.

Electric guitar rhythms were courtesy of his Strat through a Jeff Heim custom amp. 

The music’s spirit is best embodied in the track “Nairobi, Mississippi.”

“That’s my favorite thing on the record,” Greenberg reveals. “Justin sent me files of Juldeh Camara playing the one-string Gambian fiddle. We flipped the beat around and added this acoustic hill country blues on top.”

Greenberg recorded most of the record working alone, yet his playing retains a live energy that makes the tracks pop.

“I try to turn my mind off and just play,” he explains. “I’m fortunate to have this great home facility here, where I can play as long as I want. I loop the song, get a cup of coffee, stand in front of the speakers and try to not think too much. That’s when the good stuff comes.”

Once it became clear that the movie wasn’t going to get made, the music was released to the guitarist to use as he wished.

“Rather than have it sit in obscurity, I thought I would just put it out,” Greenberg says. “I mean, why not?”

Buy Kenny Greenberg's Blues for Arash here.

“My next guest this evening is a member of certainly the most successful group to come out of Britain in the last couple of years,” begins "Britain's First Lady of Folk" Julie Felix (1938-2020) as she introduces Jimmy Page onto her BBC TV show in 1970.

“The Led Zeppelin LP topped both the British and the American charts. And the lead guitarist in that group is definitely a very talented and special musician.”

This classic clip, though visually askew, captures a brilliant rendition of the guitarist's beloved “White Summer/Black Mountain Side” solo acoustic guitar highlight played on a Gibson J-200.

While Page also played Martin guitars and is undoubtedly the best-known endorser of the Harmony H-1260 Sovereign flat-top, the acoustic tracks on Led Zeppelin’s self-titled 1969 debut album were all recorded using a borrowed Gibson J-200.

“The J-200 used on Led Zeppelin I belonged to Mickie Most, the producer of the Yardbirds,” Page told Guitar World in 2014. 

“It was an amazing-sounding instrument. He graciously let me use it for the first album but didn’t let me use it for the second album, because, I think, by then he knew he wasn’t going to be the producer.” [laughs]

Many moons ago, Guitar Player also spoke to Page about his use of this fabled Gibson J-200 on 1969's Led Zeppelin. The following interview extract originally appeared in the July 1977 issue of Guitar Player…

What kind of acoustic guitar are you using on "Black Mountain Side" and "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You?”

That was a Gibson J-200, which wasn't mine; I borrowed it. It was a beautiful guitar, really great. I've never found a guitar of that quality anywhere since. I could play so easily on it, get a really thick sound; it had heavy-gauge acoustic strings on it, but it just didn't seem to feel like it.

Do you just use your fingers when you play acoustic?

Yes. I used fingerpicks once, but I find them too spiky; they're too sharp. You can't get the tone or response that you would get, say, the way classical players approach gut-string instruments. The way they pick, the whole thing is the tonal response of the string. It seems important.

Can you describe your picking style?

I don't know, really; it's a cross between fingerstyle and flatpicking. There's a guy in England called Davey Graham, and he never used any fingerpicks or anything. He used a thumbpick every now and again, but I prefer just a flatpick and fingers because then it's easier to get around from guitar to guitar. Well, it is for me, anyway. But apparently he's got calouses on the left hand and all over the right as well; he can get so much attack on his strings, and he's really good.

Get Led Zeppelin on vinyl here.

On this day, in 1975, Led Zeppelin released their monumental double album Physical Graffiti. 

Produced by guitarist Jimmy Page, the Multi-Platinum, US Billboard 200 chart-topping long-player featured the exotic DADGAD-flavored song, “Kashmir.”

Following an idea originating from Page and developed with drummer John Bonham, "Kashmir" was recorded in early 1974 at Headley Grange in England. 

Soon after Physical Graffiti was released, “Kashmir” became a firm favorite among fans and a staple of Led Zeppelin’s setlist until their disbandment in 1980 following the tragic passing of Bonham.

When Page and singer Robert Plant reformed as Page and Plant in 1994 along with drummer Michael Lee and bassist Charlie Jones (no relation to Zep bassist John Paul Jones), “Kashmir” remained a highlight. 

Greatly enhanced by an ensemble of Egyptian and Moroccan musicians, the standout song also featured as the closer on 1994’s No Quarter: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded live album.

DADGAD – occasionally referred to as Celtic tuning – is a popular form of alternative guitar tuning. It can be easily achieved by tuning the first, second and sixth strings down a whole tone from E standard tuning. 

This creates an open D suspended fourth chord which includes the fourth note of the D major scale (G) in place of the major third (F#) while the fifth (A) remains alongside the root (D).

This tuning was famously adopted by British folk guitarists Davey Graham and Bert Jansch – both of whom were of major importance to Page.

During a famous scene from the late '00s documentary film It Might Get Loud, U2 guitarist The Edge asks Page where the idea for “Kashmir” came from. To which he replies: “It originated from playing around on a tuning that I’d been using quite a bit. They call it DADGAD…

“You’ve got this riff which is circling round and then this cascade that goes over the top and it hits its atonal point, you know… That’s one of those real hypnotic riffs.”

One of the clearest demonstrations of Page playing this riff appeared in a 1989 BBC Arena documentary titled Heavy Metal. Here, you can get a close-up look at how he uses the open tuning to create mesmeric drone notes while sliding melodic chord shapes up and down the neck of his acoustic guitar. 

Similarly, the chromatic "Kashmir" signature riff is rendered all the more effective by a low open D pedal note.

Browse the Led Zeppelin catalog here.

On this day, 50 years ago, Led Zeppelin released the “Rock and Roll” single with “Four Sticks” as its B-side. Both songs appeared on the band’s best-selling untitled 1971 album widely known as Led Zeppelin IV (also dubbed ‘the four symbols album’.)

Featuring a guest performance by Rolling Stones pianist Ian Stewart, “Rock and Roll” initially came together during a spontaneous jam while recording “Four Sticks.”

“We’d just finished a take and John Bonham did the drum intro [from Little Richard’s ‘Keep A-Knockin' (But You Can't Come In)'] and we just followed on,” Jimmy Page told an interviewer back in 2010. 

“I started doing pretty much half of that riff you hear on ‘Rock and Roll’ and it was just so exciting that we thought, ‘let’s just work on this’… It was just so spur-of-the-moment the way that it just came together more or less out of nowhere.”

Renowned for their spontaneity both on stage and in the studio, all four members of Led Zeppelin are credited as songwriters on “Rock and Roll.” The only other song on the album to receive a four-way split is the band's interpretation of Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie’s “When the Levee Breaks.”

This recording features one of the most sampled drum tracks in music history. Indeed, drummer John Bonham’s standout sound inspired the band to explore the song further.   

“I heard the drum sound in the hallway, that iconic drum sound,” Page told the Ultimate Classic Rock Nights radio show. “The minute I heard that sound on these reflective surfaces, I said, ‘We’re gonna revisit that number.’”

In this 1995 clip from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductions, Led Zeppelin can be seen and heard keeping the jams alive with a characteristically "tight but loose” rendition of “When the Levee Breaks.”

With Neil Young toting his faithful Old Black modified Goldtop, this rare moment captures Robert Plant also strapping on an electric guitar, creating a rough and ready trio of Les Pauls.

Visit the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for more information.

Block out your diary today from 6PM GMT/1PM EST to join Robert Plant and Alison Krauss as they treat fans to a series of live performances celebrating the release of their latest album Raise the Roof.

Following the smash success of their Grammy award-winning 2007 debut LP Raising Sand, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss have once again teamed up with producer T Bone Burnett (guitarist with Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue).

The duo’s much-anticipated follow up album is due out tomorrow and features a host of stellar guitarists including Marc Ribot, David Hidalgo, Bill Frisell, and Buddy Miller.

Performing live renditions of choice tracks from Raise The Roof with their knockout band in Nashville’s Sound Emporium Studios the event can be viewed on either Robert Plant or Alison Krauss’s YouTube channels.

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Click here to subscribe to Alison Krauss’s YouTube channel.

And the fun doesn’t stop there. After the gig, at 7PM GMT/2PM EST, fans can immediately head over to NPR Music’s YouTube channel for a listening party where Plant and Krauss will be joining host Ann Powers to talk about their historic album. RSVP here.

Following the release of “Can’t Let Go,” “High and Lonesome,” and “It Don’t Bother Me” fans are now able to get a final peek at the album with “Somebody Was Watching Over Me.”

Buy Raise the Roof here.

Yesterday, we remembered British folk guitar legend Bert Jansch (1943-2011) on the day of his birth and, today, we are excited to share news of Robert Plant & Alison Krauss’s latest single – an interpretation of the great man’s 1965 number “It Don’t Bother Me.”

“It Don’t Bother Me” is the title track from Jansch’s second album released in December ‘65, shortly after his eponymous debut longer-player arrived earlier that year.

While Jansch’s original track is a dark, bare-bones solo acoustic guitar performance (exactly the kind of production fans of the folk legend adore) the new Robert Plant & Alison Krauss single “It Don’t Bother Me” is a lustrous reimagining embellished with dolceola, marxophone, pedal steel, handclaps and percussion.

“It Don’t Bother Me” also features some stellar work from maverick guitar genius Marc Ribot (Ceramic Dogs, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello) and guitarist David Hidalgo of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees Los Lobos.

“It Don’t Bother Me” is the final teaser from Robert Plant & Alison Krauss’s eagerly awaited new album titled Raise the Roof (Rounder Records.) Set for release on November 19, Raise the Roof follows up 2007’s Grammy Award-winning, platinum-selling Raising Sand.   

Speaking of Jansch’s “It Don’t Bother Me” as a choice of song for the new album Plant said, “I’ve been a big follower of Bert Jansch’s work since I was a teenager, and of that whole Irish, Scottish, English folk style that has a different lilt and different lyrical perspective. I was very keen to bring some of that into the picture.”

Listen to “It Don’t Bother Me” by Robert Plant & Alison Krauss here.

Pre-order Raise the Roof by Robert Plant & Alison Krauss here.

Following the release of their lead single “Can’t Let Go” in August this year, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss have today released a second track – “High and Lonesome” – from their forthcoming album Raise the Roof. 

Produced by Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue guitarist T Bone Burnett the much anticipated long-player follows up 2007’s Grammy award-winning Raising Sand. Landing next month on November 19, Raise the Roof showcases a line-up of guitar luminaries including David Hidalgo, Buddy Miller, Bill Frisell, and Marc Ribot. 

The Plant/Burnett-penned “High and Lonesome” is the standout original track from Raise the Roof while the remaining songs on the album consist of covers (Bert Jansch, Calexico, Merle Haggard, The Everly Brothers, Anne Briggs, Allen Toussaint, and Geeshie Wiley being just some of the artists explored.)

“It’s such a far cry from everything I’ve done before,” commented Plant. “I love the whole kaleidoscope of music that I’ve explored, but this is a place where you can think within the song, you can decide how to bring home an emotion. It’s another blend that we’ve got, and long may we have more of them.”

“Working with Robert, and with T Bone, is always a great education in musical history,” adds Krauss.

Tracked at Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville, “High and Lonesome” features appearances by guitarist Marc Ribot (Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, John Zorn) and pedal steel player Russell Pahl (Yola, Dan Auerbach, Kings of Leon) while Burnett also lends his talents to electric guitar, mellotron, and vocals.

Pre-order your copy of Raise the Roof by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss here.

With the live music scene gathering momentum it may be time to start thinking about dusting off your rig and shaping up to gig (if you aren’t already!) And while there can be a hell of a lot to think about, you can’t beat some good, old-fashioned preparation to alleviate some of that gear anxiety and minimize any problems that may occur. After all, anything can happen during a gig, right?

Chris Lawson has worked as a Guitar Tech for some of the biggest acts in the business from Kate Bush, Queen and Robert Plant to the Electric Light Orchestra and Peter Gabriel. In this priceless interview, he shares his expert knowledge so that you can get on with doing what you do best: performing!

How do you deal with the common problems faced by gigging guitarists?

Guitars, amps and pedalboards are all susceptible to having a hard life on the road. So many things cause wear and tear and you've got to factor that in when you're thinking about gigging. You've got to think 'What can I have a spare of?' Cables have a pretty hard life – they might get flight cases rolled over them, or guitar jacks will go, so it's important to have spares.

Pedalboards can sometimes be very difficult, depending on how they're put together. My tip is to have a pedalboard where you can easily access things individually, so that if something does go down you can get in there and fix it quickly.

How do you keep a guitar road-worthy?

With guitars it's really just the basic stuff. Is the instrument set up well? Is everything tightened down? Are all the electrical connections and pots good? You can do yourself a lot of favors if you check the silly stuff, like strap buttons – are they screwed in tight enough? In the past I've picked up guitars and noticed strap buttons that are about to come out, which you don't want in the middle of a show.

What should people consider when it comes to amplifiers?

Check everything's tight. Sometimes you'll get a rattle or something, especially on new amps. Just before the start of a tour, or before a gig, check the basics and make sure everything's clean, including the jack sockets. Valves can quite easily come loose and might need to be reseated if an amp has been out on the road, or it might have taken a bang during handling.

Also, keep some spare fuses. You're going to look pretty silly if the rest of the band are looking at you and you can't play any more of the gig because you haven't spent pennies on a fuse.

Is your approach to equipment maintenance generally the same, regardless of venue size?

It's all about preparation and that goes for all levels of performance. It'd be the same if I was doing a club gig or if I was going to do a concert at Madison Square Garden. I'd want a plan-B with an adequate number of spares. It's about being attentive so that if something goes wrong on stage you've got it covered.

What's really important when it comes to using musical equipment live?

What musicians actually need is gear that's just going to work and can be changed. There's a lot of nonsense talked about gear – a lot of marketing speak. After 15 minutes at full volume on stage you cannot tell the difference between cables. I'm open to anything and will listen with an open mind, but the geek in me can only go so far these days. I just want something to work and to play. I'm not a Luddite, but it needs to work.

What's the best way to mic up a guitar amp?

In a live situation things need to be miked as close as possible if you want to cut down on microphone spillage. Normally people use fairly tight dynamic mics. The classics for guitar cabs are things like Shure SM57s and Sennheiser MD409s and MD421s.

People tend to go for the traditional stuff when miking cabs, but I've also seen people using Electro-Voice RE-20s and even AKG D-12 kick drum mics for a particularly bottom-end-heavy sound. It comes down to the fact that people just know they work!

The other thing with microphones is to try and tuck them out of the way, because stuff sometimes gets knocked around at a show.

What should guitarists consider when it comes to amplifier settings?

If you have too much bottom-end in your guitar tone the chances are that the front of house are going to cut it out. Because if there's lots of washy bottom-end they'll always be trying to get on top of it.

The other thing is they're always going to try and hold your volume back. If you're louder than the PA (which is easily possible in a small venue) then they may ask you to turn down, which to most guitarists is like insulting their mother.

It's been increasingly less important to have loud amps on stage and a lot of bands use modelling these days. Quiet stages are preferable for most people, unless you're a guitar driven rock band whose trademark really is that sound of loud guitars on stage at high volume.

Some people use power soaks and there's a lot of cab simulators around now as well.

What's the best way for a band to get a good monitor mix on stage?

It's all about how you communicate with the engineer. The classic one with a band is that everybody's talking at once. If you've got a five-piece band on stage and they're all asking you for stuff at the same time then it's extremely difficult.

When it's your turn to do a monitor mix, everyone else should shut up and, likewise, you should shut up when they're doing their mix. One at a time and you'll get there much more quickly – and you'll get what you want.

Buy the Fender Custom Shop Tool Kit by Cruztools here.

Otherwise known as Led Zeppelin, the band comprising Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham were introduced at their very first show together as "The New Yardbirds.” 

While Jimmy Page initially set out to recruit members for a new Yardbirds line-up, Led Zeppelin would prove to be far more than The Yardbirds version 2.0 as they went on to dominate the hard rock world at the tail end of the late ‘60s and throughout the ‘70s.

Though it was their first gig – on this day in 1968 – the band received rave reviews. “Their performance and their music were absolutely flawless,” wrote one attendee following their debut show at the Teen Club in Gladsaxe, Denmark.

“The music continued to ring nicely in the ears for some time after the curtains were drawn after their show. We can therefore conclude that the new Yardbirds are at least as good as the old ones were.”

By October 1968, the so-called New Yardbirds began appearing under the now legendary Led Zeppelin moniker (rock lore has it the name Led Zeppelin comes from the British phrase ‘going down like a lead balloon’ and was first suggested by The Who’s John Entwistle.)

Recounting the formation of Led Zeppelin in a recent interview, Page told a journalist, “I was looking for new [Yardbirds] members and I found Robert Plant first. I was recommended to go and see this guy up in the Midlands. I went up to see him and I listened to him sing and I thought, ‘Well, let’s give him a try. He’s certainly got an interesting range.’

“Robert recommended John Bonham and so then we got a drummer. And then John Paul Jones calls me up and says, “I hear you might be putting a band together. Can I join?” So we have a rehearsal in London and then I get them to my house to rehearse everything that we’re going to need for a set, and everything that we’re going to need for Led Zeppelin I.”

Premiering at the Venice Film Festival just days ago, the new documentary – Becoming Led Zeppelin – chronicles the story of all four members throughout their formative years as musicians during the ‘60s, leading up to the rehearsal that would effectively change the course of popular music forever as Led Zeppelin begin to snowball into the world-dominating rock titans we know and love.

Produced by Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty, Becoming Led Zeppelin features never-seen-before interviews with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and the late, great John Bonham.

In early 1969, Led Zeppelin upped the ante on Britain’s electric blues boom with their self-titled debut album. Though some heard the record as the first coming of heavy metal, it was in fact nothing less than an epic and thunderous celebration of blues-rock. And it put Jimmy Page and his new band on the map in the U.S.

But before the year was out, Led Zeppelin would out-do themselves with their sophomore effort. Born of real adventures they experienced while touring in America, zig-zagging from coast to coast, Led Zeppelin II was written and recorded piecemeal in studios across the U.K. and U.S.

At the end of May 1969, while their first album was charting at number 10, Zeppelin ended their second U.S. tour with two sold-out nights at New York City’s Fillmore East. Following the second show, Atlantic Records held a party for them at the Plaza hotel, where they were presented with a Gold record for Led Zeppelin. It was also here that Jimmy Page was told that Atlantic was itching to get a new album in stores before the end of the year.

Stung into action, Page ordered the band back to the studio after the party. Fortunately for all concerned, Led Zeppelin’s music was evolving at a faster rate than ever, and often onstage. Many of the spontaneous jams they’d created on their U.S. tour had taken on a life of their own and become full-fledged songs. They included “What Is and What Should Never Be,” “Ramble On” and “Whole Lotta Love,” which had surfaced on tour as part of an extended improvisation during “As Long As I Have You,” a Garnet Mimms tune that had been a standout of their set list early on. 

These and other songs built on ideas begun in motel rooms and tinkered with at soundchecks and rehearsals provided the foundation for Led Zeppelin II.

Eddie Kramer, the U.S. engineer on the sessions, had worked with Jimi Hendrix on Electric Ladyland the previous year. “I got a phone call from [Zeppelin’s] office in New York,” he recalls. “‘The boys are in town, and they want to know if you want to help put this record together.’” Kramer recalls “scrounging” recording time for them in any studio he could, and even recording some of Page’s electric guitar solos in hallways.

“They were all over the place,” Kramer says of the sessions. “Some things were done in London, some were on the road. They had this huge trunk of tapes [from the various sessions].” Kramer notes that, once the tracks were assembled, he and Page completed and mixed them in just two days, on August 29 and 30, at A&R Studios in New York “on the most primitive console you could imagine.”

Regardless of how it was made, Led Zeppelin II successfully evoked gutbucket electric blues, amped up beyond anything previously heard and laced with potent traces of psychedelia. “The goal was synesthesia,” Page said. “Creating pictures with sound.”

Released in October ’69, Led Zeppelin II put the group at the top of the charts. With U.S. advance orders of half a million, it was the biggest-selling album in America that year, deposing the Beatles’ Abbey Road from number one and keeping the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed from the top spot. All told, it spent 138 weeks on the charts and climbed to number one in February 1970.

“LZ II was a marvelous record and so different from the first album,” Kramer says. “With the mixing process, it was an organic thing. We instinctively went for something different, and Jimmy did some really interesting stuff with the sound.”

“Whole Lotta Love”

Page initially came up with the classic “Whole Lotta Love” riff in late summer 1968 at his boathouse home on the Thames in Pangbourne. Some nine months later, in April 1969, it was this song that kick-started the sessions for Led Zeppelin II at Olympic Studios in Barnes, London.

The song originally took shape around Page’s killer three-note riff, with its E power-chord conclusion and a descending chord structure that made use of a backward echo, an effect that the guitarist had first used on a Yardbirds recording session with producer Mickie Most. Further overdubs were added at A&M Studios in Hollywood. Final work on the track took place at the marathon mixing session at New York’s A&R Studios on August 29 and 30.

“The whole thing with Jimmy was that we liked to leave in little mistakes and ad libs and things,” Kramer recalls. “It added to the whole vibe. So on ‘Whole Lotta Love,’ we left in that cough at the beginning. Then, on Robert’s ‘Way down inside’ vocal part, we found we had a leakage from track eight, a previous vocal track that we couldn’t seem to lose. So Jimmy and I cranked up the reverb and left it in. Big mistake? Happy mistake!’’

Lyrically, the song borrows wholesale from Willie Dixon’s “You Need Love,” recorded by Muddy Waters in 1962. Dixon successfully sued Zeppelin for royalties in 1985. Following an out-of-court settlement, the bluesman’s name was added to the song’s writing credits. At the song’s fade-out, Plant also threw in lines from Dixon’s “Shake for Me” and “Back Door Man.”

“Whole Lotta Love” received its live debut on Zeppelin’s second U.S. tour during a show at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, on April 26, 1969. The band also played the song on its support gig for the Who in Columbia, Maryland, on May 25, 1969. In June 1969, Zeppelin previewed it on a BBC session but didn’t play it again until 1970. From then on, the song became an integral part of their set.

“What Is and What Should Never Be”

“What Is and What Should Never Be” is another song Led Zeppelin initially worked on in April 1969 at Olympic Studios. Further overdubs took place in June at Mayfair Studios and Groove Studios in New York City. Page had by then switched from his Fender Telecaster to his Gibson Les Paul for recording and performances. The track is notable for the flanging effects and stereo separation on the fade-out.

“I’d done a lot of that type of panning and phasing with Jimi Hendrix on Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold As Love,” Kramer says. “‘What Is and What Should Never Be’ had all the phasing and panning, which we loved to do. It typifies the whole vibe of Led Zeppelin II.’’

A version of the song was recorded on June 24, 1969, for the BBC at the broadcaster’s studio in Maida Vale, London. During the session, DJ Brian Matthew interviewed Page and asked him to select a track representative of the forthcoming album. His choice? “What Is and What Should Never Be.” Explained Page, “It’s got a bit of everything.”

Along with “Whole Lotta Love,” “What Is and What Should Never Be” was broadcast on John Peel’s BBC Radio One Top Gear show on June 29, a good four months before the album’s release. It was premiered live during Zeppelin’s appearance at the Laurel Pop Festival in Maryland on July 11, 1969, and performed again in Framingham, Massachusetts, on August 21. It was then inserted on the late-1969 U.S. tour and played at every gig through 1970–’71 up to the U.S. tour in June 1972.

“The Lemon Song”

“The Lemon Song” was cut at Mystic Studios in Los Angeles in May 1969, with further overdubs applied in August at A&M Studios in Hollywood. “It was such a small studio,” recalls Chris Huston, the studio engineer at Mystic. “I was very impressed with Jimmy’s ability to double-track and create the sound he wanted first time, every time. What you hear is the product of a lot of spontaneous chemistry in their playing. We did the tracks live, with Robert Plant standing in the middle of the room with a hand-held mic. You can hear that in ‘The Lemon Song’ where Plant sings ‘floor, floor, floor.’ That echo was recorded in real time.”

Though originally credited to Led Zeppelin, “The Lemon Song” borrowed heavily from Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor.” ARC Music, the copyright holders of Wolf’s song, reclaimed the tune in 1972 in an out-of-court settlement. For a short period, U.K. copies of Led Zeppelin II listed the track as “Killing Floor,” credited to Chester Burnett (Wolf’s birth name). Later copies listed it as “The Lemon Song

“Thank You”

“Recorded at Morgan Studios in London in June 1969, Robert Plant’s emotional love song to his wife brought out the best in him and provided one of his finest vocal performances. Elsewhere in the arrangement, John Paul Jones excelled on Hammond organ, and Page complemented it all with some delicate picking using his ’67 Vox Phantom. The song’s chord structure bears a resemblance to the Traffic song “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” and some of its lyrics draw from the Jimi Hendrix track “If 6 Was 9.” “Thank You” also references Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” with its “mountains crumble to the sea” reference.

Led Zeppelin debuted “Thank You” at Birmingham’s Town Hall on their January 1970 U.K. tour. The song stayed in their set through 1970–’71, acting as a spotlight for Jones’ keyboard solo. It was used as a marathon encore on the 1972–’73 tours, after which the band deleted it from the set.

“Heartbreaker”

“Heartbreaker” was cut at New York City’s A&R Studios in May 1969, with additional work done at Atlantic Studios, also in New York. It’s another integral part of the recorded Led Zeppelin canon and a perfect platform for Jimmy Page to display his guitar virtuosity. “For me ‘Heartbreaker’ is a stand-out,” Kramer says. “The solo was genius Page.’’

A long-standing stage favorite, “Heartbreaker” was added to Zeppelin’s set during their European dates in autumn 1969 and made its premiere at Scheveningen, Holland, on October 3, 1969. It was performed along with “Immigrant Song” at Zeppelin’s bill-topping appearance at the Bath Festival in 1970 and throughout the rest of their dates in 1970 and ‘71. “Heartbreaker” became part of their encore for the U.S., U.K. and European and Japan tours of 1972–’73 before being returned to the main set as a medley preceding “Whole Lotta Love” for the 1973 U.S. dates. In concert, Page was known to stretch out his solo to include sections from “Greensleeves” and an instrumental passage based on Bach’s Bourée in E minor.

“Living Loving Maid (She’s Just a Woman)”

This is another track from the Morgan Studios sessions of June 1969. Page played his Gibson Les Paul to knock out what the band always considered to be something of a production-line filler. However, this tight, hook-laden song found favor on the radio as the B-side of the single “Whole Lotta Love.” When that tune finished its chart run in the U.S., radio DJs flipped the record over and began playing “Living Loving Maid,” eventually making it an A-side, after which it climbed to number 65 on the Billboard chart. The track also became a favorite of U.S. FM radio stations, where it was frequently preceded by “Heartbreaker,” as on the album.

Remarkably, some early U.K. pressings of Led Zeppelin II misprinted the title as “Livin’ Lovin’ Wreck (She’s A Woman).” “Livin’ Lovin’ Wreck” was actually recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis and can be found on the B-side of his 1961 single “What’d I Say,” released on the Sun Records label. This anomaly created a much sought-after rare Led Zeppelin II pressing.

Page has been quoted as saying the band never really liked “Living Loving Maid,” and thus the song never received a full public airing. Plant slipped the first line of the song into “Heartbreaker” during a March 1970 performance in Hamburg, and he sang the opening line in jest at the group’s Earls Court gig on May 24, 1975, no doubt disappointing fans who expected to hear the song. In a surprise move, Plant performed it on his Manic Nirvana U.S./U.K. solo tour set in 1990, turning it into a rousing encore with a mock Beach Boys arrangement.

“Ramble On”

“Ramble On” was laid down on the run at Mystic Studios and Mirror Sound in L.A. in May 1969, and at New York City’s Groove Studios and Juggy Sound in June. Plant’s lyrics reference J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as the song slips from quiet, mournful passages into an uplifting chorus. As such, it’s vividly illustrates the light-and-shade dynamic that would characterize much of Zeppelin’s best work.

 Page’s overdubbed interweaving lick on his Les Paul is an early attempt to create the sort of guitar army assault that would become his trademark. Kramer gives credit to Jones for his nimble bass work and notes how the band members connect so well throughout. “You can pinpoint certain things on the track,” he says. “It’s the whole band looking into each other’s eyes.’’

Surprisingly, Zeppelin never gave a full performance of “Ramble On,” though on the spring 1970 U.S. tour, Plant threw in lines from the song during “Communication Breakdown” and “Whole Lotta Love.”

“Moby Dick”

John Bonham’s monster percussion showcase took shape on Zeppelin’s second United States tour, where it was known as “Pat’s Delight” in reference to the drummer’s wife. The recording took place at Mystic Studios in May 1969, with further work performed at Mirror Sound in Los Angeles and Mayfair Studios in New York City. The track was mixed at A&R in New York City. “‘Moby Dick’ was a bit of a job piecing and editing performances from two different studios,” Kramer recalls. “Whenever I hear it, I think of the job that took, but it’s Bonzo, and he was the best.’’

The riff part of the song can be traced back to the Sleepy John Estes track “The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair,” which Zeppelin recorded at a BBC session on June 16, 1969. It also echoes the 1961 Bobby Parker track “Watch Your Step,” which the band had rehearsed early in its existence but never performed live. For the 1990 Remasters box set release, Page merged this studio performance with “Bonzo’s Montreux” from Coda to create an amalgamated Bonham drum presentation.

“Moby Dick” was first performed live on Zeppelin’s autumn 1969 U.S. tour and stayed in the set on every tour until 1977 (although it was not played at every single show). It developed into an excessive 20-minute showcase which provided the other band members with a much-needed break from performance. By 1975, Bonzo was incorporating a “Whole Lotta Love” riff segment played on electronically treated kettle drums. On the 1977 U.S. tour, the song was aptly renamed “Over the Top” and used the intro riff of “Out On the Tiles” rather than the “Moby Dick” theme.

“Bring It On Home”

“Bring It On Home” was the product of on-the-run visits to studios during Zeppelin’s second North American tour in 1969. It included recording at Mystic in Los Angeles and a session on May 10 at R&D Studios in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The latter studio, referred to as the Hut, played host to a vocal and a harmonica overdub.

Although “Bring It On Home” was originally credited to Page and Plant, its intro is a blatant rip of Sonny Boy Williamson’s 1963 arrangement of “Bring It On Home” – another Willie Dixon composition – which was issued on the Chess album Real Folk Blues. In 1972, Dixon successfully sued Zeppelin for use of the song, and future releases listed him as the song’s sole creator. Following the intro, on which Plant plays harmonica, the song snaps into action via a riveting Page riff and Bonham’s and Jones’ rhythm. A rough mix recorded at Atlantic Studios on July 24, 1969, surfaced on the 2015 extended Coda album.

Zeppelin performed “Bring It On Home” on their autumn 1969 U.S. tour and retained it for their 1970 itinerary. In concert, the song developed into a lengthy piece, with a terrific Page/ Bonham guitar-drum battle. It was revived briefly for the 1972 U.S. tour as an encore (as can be heard on the album How The West Was Won) and re-used on the 1973 U.S. tour as an opening sequence riff link to merge “Celebration Day” with “Black Dog.”

Buy Led Zeppelin II here.

Buy Mick Wall’s When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin here.

Check out Dave Lewis’ incredible Led Zeppelin books here.

Following the smash success of their Grammy award-winning 2007 debut LP Raising Sand, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss have once again teamed up with producer T Bone Burnett (guitarist with Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue). 

The duo’s much-anticipated follow up album – Raise the Roof – is due out on November 19 and features a host of stellar guitarists including Marc Ribot, David Hidalgo, Bill Frisell, and Buddy Miller.

“We wanted it to move,” says Krauss. “We brought other people in, other personalities within the band, and coming back together again in the studio brought a new intimacy to the harmonies.”

“You hear something, and you go, ‘Man, listen to that song, we got to sing that song!’” adds Plant. “It’s a vacation, really – the perfect place to go that you least expected to find.”

Consisting of twelve new tracks, Raise the Roof showcases songs by a variety of artists such as Merle Haggard, The Everly Brothers, and British folk guitar hero Bert Jansch, as well as the Plant/Burnett-penned “High and Lonesome,” and the Grammy-nominated Lucinda Williams classic “Can’t Let Go.”

Ahead of the album’s release, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss have today shared their cover of Randy Williams’ composition “Can’t Let Go.” Powered by a locomotive rhythm, Plant and Krauss duet, “I got a big chain around my neck, And I’m broken down like a train wreck,” while Frisell provides some exemplary reverberated twang tones on electric guitar backed by Hidalgo on acoustic guitar.

Pre-order your copy of Raise the Roof by Robert Plant & Alison Krauss here.

On this day in 1979, Led Zeppelin geared up to perform the second of two performances at England’s Knebworth Festival. Although they had managed to squeeze in a couple of lower-key warm up shows a few weeks prior it was the first time in over two years the band had played to a large crowd after their 1977 North American tour was cut short following the tragic death of Robert Plant’s son.

It was also to be their last show on British soil with drummer John Bonham. Bonham – one of the most respected and influential drummers in rock history – sadly passed away the following September, after which Led Zeppelin’s remaining members disbanded. It was the end of an era.

“Ladies and gentlemen! Jones, Bonham, Page, and Plant: Led Zeppelin!” comes the announcement over Knebworth’s PA system as an estimated 200,000 fans eagerly await “the biggest band in the world” to take to the stage.

In this historical film, Led Zeppelin kick off their typically substantial two-and-a-half hour set with “The Song Remains the Same” – the first track from their 1973 album Houses of the Holy. 

During this opening number, Page can be seen playing his iconic cherry Gibson EDS-1275 double-neck electric guitar using the upper 12-string neck, before swapping to the lower 6-string neck to perform the second song in the set, “Celebration Day” from 1970’s Led Zeppelin III album.

Further footage of 1979’s Knebworth Festival can be found on the excellent Led Zeppelin DVD collection. Buy a copy here.

Today marks the anniversary of Tim Buckley’s untimely death in 1975, some 22 years prior to the tragic passing of his estranged yet similarly gifted son, Jeff Buckley. Previously covered by the likes of Robert Plant and John Frusciante, “Song to the Siren” is considered by many to be the finest (and most eerily prophetic) song penned by Tim Buckley, and this live clip from 1968 to be his greatest rendition of it. 

12-string acoustics reached their peak of popularity during the American folk music revival while electric versions of the instrument made by Rickenbacker and Fender were endorsed by The Beatles and Bob Dylan (respectively) during the mid-Sixties. At this time, some of the finest 12-string flat-tops were produced by Guild at their Hoboken factory in New Jersey – including the F-212, F-212XL, and F-312 jumbo models. Here, Buckley shows us exactly why these guitars are sometimes referred to as a ‘one man orchestra’.

This classic clip from 1969 shows Led Zeppelin on the brink of international stardom as they perform live for Danish television during their Spring tour of the UK and Scandinavia. 

Very soon the band would need no introduction whatsoever as they began to dominate the 70s hard rock scene and Led Zeppelin fans piled into stadiums in their thousands. But check out Robert Plant here as he casually introduces the band to a polite studio audience: “On bass guitar: John Paul Jones… On drums: John Bonham…  Lead guitar: Jimmy Page.” 

The Telecaster-wielding guitar prodigy responds with a surly, snarling wah wah-drenched “Smokestack Lightnin’” riff before the band crescendos into the four-note foot-stomping riff of “How Many More Times.” 

Undoubtedly, one of Led Zeppelin’s finest moments captured on film.

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Here's a fun little throwback to the time Robert Plant showed up during Jack White’s set at the 2015 Lollapalooza Argentina festival to perform Led Zeppelin II’s “The Lemon Song.” 

The former Led Zeppelin front man and the blues-loving guitarist were both on the lineup for that year’s festival, and they clearly made good use of the opportunity during White’s headlining performance.

White had included “The Lemon Song” in his sets previously, including at his headlining spot at Bonnaroo 2014.

Surprisingly, however, this occasion marked the first time Plant had sung “The Lemon Song” live since he and Jimmy Page performed together on their 1995 tour.

On that stint, the Led Zeppelin cofounders played the song during their stop in Norway.

Italian acoustic guitarist Luca Stricagnoli is a man of many talents, but he has a particular penchant for dazzling re-imaginations of classic hard-rock tunes. 

In his latest video, Stricagnoli executes an absolutely astonishing one-man-band arrangement of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" - incorporating Page, Plant, Jones and Bonham’s individual parts into one, breathtaking whole. 

One particular highlight comes when Stricagnoli brilliantly executes rapid twists of his acoustic's tuning keys to mimic Page’s slide licks in the chorus.

This version of "Whole Lotta Love" is taken from Stricagnoli's new album, Change of Rules. If you're up for a challenge, the acoustic master has also released tablature for the arrangement.

For more of Stricagnoli's videos, stroll on over to his YouTube channel.

• Explore our pick of the best acoustic guitars

Led Zeppelin have announced that their Celebration Day concert film will be streamed for free on YouTube this Saturday, May 30.

The 2012 film documents Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones’ 2007 reunion performance at a tribute concert for Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun at the O2 Arena in London.

The show (which featured John Bonham's son, Jason, on drums) set a world record for ticket demand for a single concert, with 20 million ticket requests. The band performed an acclaimed 16-song set of some of their most beloved classics, including "Stairway to Heaven," "Kashmir," "Good Times Bad Times" and many more.

Celebration Day will premiere on YouTube on Saturday, May 30 at 8 p.m. BST, and will be streamed in its entirety for three days.

To view the stream, head on over to Led Zeppelin's official YouTube channel.