Throughout his long, illustrious career, Steve Morse has played with some of the best. But even before he was a star, he was jamming with legends.

The former Kansas and Dixie Dregs man is Deep Purple's longest-serving guitarist, replacing Ritchie Blackmore, and he's also played with Lynyrd Skynyrd, who pulled him out of retirement. More recently, he has tapped up Eric Johnson and Steve Petrucci for his first Steve Morse Band album in 16 years. As evidence suggests, he's no stranger to locking his fretboard with other virtuosos.

The Ohio-born guitarist formed one of his first bands, the Dixie Grit, with bassist Andy West after enrolling at the Academy of Richmond County. They were largely a vehicle for Led Zeppelin and Cream covers, but the band's life was cut short when Morse was expelled for refusing to cut his hair.

Later, he moved to study at the University of Miami School of Music, which presumably had slightly less stringent fashion policies. It was there that he'd form Dixie Dregs, having reunited with West, but they weren't the only students there who would go on to big things. Hiram Bullock, who played bass and later keyboards in the band that would become Dregs went on to join David Letterman's band. And there were two significant others.

“One of my most treasured memories is sitting with Pat [Metheny],” he says in conversation with Jordi Pinyol (see video below). “I had a room that was fairly quiet because they installed air conditioning in the dormitory building. He came over to the dorm, and I had a reel-to-reel tape recorder, this big TEAC with 10-inch reels.

“So I said, ‘Come on over and let's jam,’ and he was as good as you could imagine. He was a child prodigy.”

The pair had played together before, but it was that jam that really compounded, in Morse’s mind, that the future 20-time Grammy winner was a cut above the rest.

“I said, ‘Let's just jam without any songs, just totally free form. I'll play something. You play something. Let's see if we can play something together, and let's keep changing it up,’” Morse remembers. “And we did that, listening to each other the whole time. I love that recording. That was wonderful.”

Jaco Pastorius, the future Weather Report and Trio of Doom bassist (his short-lived, jazz-fusion trio with John McLaughlin and Tony Williams) was also among the university's impressive cast of students. The Jaco Morse knew was supremely studious and made complex music look easy to play.

“Jaco would come to our rehearsals for the band that became the Dregs,” Morse reveals. “Sometimes he would say, ‘Hey man, I got a chart for you guys.’

“I went to jam with him one time at his place up in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. And he was renting an apartment, a little tiny cottage house right on the ocean up in North Lauderdale. He was so hyper he said, ‘Before we jam, man, we gotta jog. I’ve got too much energy.’ I wasn’t a jogger!

“It was a real workout,” he laughs. “And I go, ‘Let's get our feet washed off and let's go play.’ He said, ‘No, no, no, man. Did you see those waves? We've got to body surf.’”

After body surfing and a shower, the pair eventually get down to playing, “and that was the only time I could get him to sit down long enough to jam!”

These days, Morse is busy working his farm for most of the day, but the “student of evertyhing” believes fixing tractors and flying planes – there’s a runway on his farm too, of course – makes him more creative. It’s never a dull day in Steve Morse’s life.

Most guitarists slow down as they get older.

But most guitarists aren’t Steve Morse.

The former Deep Purple guitarist spends his days fixing tractors, cutting hay, flying airplanes and maintaining the 56-acre farm he calls home. The routine sounds exhausting, but he says it actually fuels his creativity.

Speaking to Premier Guitar while promoting Triangulation — the first Steve Morse Band album in 16 years and his first new music since leaving Deep Purple in 2022 — the 71-year-old reflected on the surprisingly busy life he leads away from the stage.

“I fly all the time,” he says. “I’ve never stopped flying.”

Morse has stepped away from the music industry twice before, seeking distance from the chaos and burnout that can come with a life onstage.

When his pioneering jazz-fusion outfit Dixie Dregs broke up in 1981, he traded guitars for heavy machinery, with his days spent running bulldozers and cutting hay.

Music eventually pulled him back. The Steve Morse Band gave him a new outlet when Capricorn Records offered him the freedom to record whatever he wanted, entirely on his own terms.

But the grind of the industry caught up with him again. Burned out, Morse left music once more and pursued another lifelong passion: aviation. He trained as a commercial airline pilot before being lured back onto the stage when Lynyrd Skynyrd invited him to join their lineup.

These days, Morse still balances playing the electric guitar with the practical realities of running a working farm — one that even has its own small runway.

“I think it’s very important, because you have more to say with the music if you have a life outside of it,” he says.

Much of that life revolves around keeping aging machinery running.

“The biggest part of my extracurricular thing is fixing stuff because I’ve got old hay equipment and old machines, and I have to learn the systems for each one,” he explains. “So a lot of my life is spent looking for manuals, finding sources for parts, learning hydraulics and learning the way electrical systems work so I can basically fix everything.”

It’s demanding work.

“I work all day, basically,” Morse says. “I don’t wake up early, but when I do wake up, I just go straight outside and start working until dark. Then I’ll work on music after dinner.”

For many musicians, that kind of schedule might stifle creativity. For Morse, it has the opposite effect.

“I think it’s super important, because when I’m doing laps in the tractor, cutting weeds or whatever, I’m thinking about stuff,” he says. “Melodies and parts come to mind that I’ve been working on recently, and I just kick them around.”

His curiosity extends well beyond guitars.

“When I’m at a gig and I walk by and see a guy welding something in the back, I stop and ask questions: How are you doing that? Did you preheat that? Does that make it crack?” he says. “I’m a student of everything.”

In recent years, Morse has also had to adapt physically. He continues to battle severe arthritis in his right-hand wrist — a condition so serious that a sports doctor once laughed when he said he intended to keep playing guitar.

Instead of stopping, Morse modified his guitar and continues adjusting his playing style, often day by day, to stay onstage.

The determination mirrors the resilience that has defined much of his career, including his nearly three-decade tenure in Deep Purple, where he stepped into the formidable role once held by Ritchie Blackmore.

Even there, Morse says creative frustrations were common. At one point, he estimated that about 95 percent of his ideas were rejected by the band. But one sympathetic bandmate appreciated his more unusual compositions, allowing a handful of Morse’s more adventurous ideas to slip onto Deep Purple records.

When Steve Morse left Deep Purple in 2022, he had logged more time with the group than any other guitar player.

But perhaps familiarity really does breed contempt: Morse says several members of the band were more than happy to see the back of him.

The Dixie Dregs founder enjoyed side quests with Kansas and Lynyrd Skynyrd before he joined Purple in 1994, just as Ritchie Blackmore’s second spell in the band came to an end. After eight studio albums with the British hard rockers, he departed when his wife fell ill with aggressive Stage 4 cancer.

As Morse recently revealed, his time in Deep Purple was marked by frustration over his tendency toward virtuoso fusion playing, which took the group a step away from the blues-meets-classical roots they formed with Blackmore. He's said that 95 percent of the ideas he presented to the group were dismissed.

Morse now tells Guitar Interactive Magazine he believes his band mates were glad to see him go and that he can't imagine performing with them again even for a one-off event.

“I think if the band felt differently, I would feel differently,” he says. “But I think that there's a couple of guys in the band that were really glad for me to be gone, because they were sort of heading back to their roots and wanted just to be a rock band, and ‘don't give me any of that fancy crap.’

“When you look at me as a writer, I definitely give you that fancy crap,” he says, laughing. “I can't help it.

Deep Purple seems to have found what they want in Morse's replacement, Irishman Simon McBride, who is another blues-centric player, and a fine one at that.

“So I think the band's happier the way they are,” Morse adds, “and it would be kind of a step back for them to wanna do something like that. They're happier and better off, and I think it’s the same here.”

Vocalist Ian Gillan said as much last summer.

“Simon is a fantastic contributor to the band,” he told Made in Metal last summer (via Blabbermouth). “It's one of the best things that could have happened.”

“He's changed things quite a lot,” he said in another interview two years prior. “He's a catalyst; we feel very relaxed with Simon's style of playing. It's very compatible with the way we started. It's very straightforward; the platforms are simple, and the virtuosity is on top.”

Reading between the lines, it's easy to see why Morse hints at there being more disharmony during his reign than the fact that he stuck around for 28 years lets on. The comments on McBride’s playing, and of its simplicity, also feel like a veiled dig at Morse’s inability to do likewise.

Talking of his successor, Blackmore called Morse a “fantastic” guitarist, but suggested he played more from the head than the heart, which he felt was to his detriment.

Morse is back on familiar ground with his namesake trio. He’s got a new album out in Triangulation and is back on the road to celebrate it. This, despite his ongoing struggles with arthritis, which means he has to change up his playing style daily. It’s also rendered one of his more virtuoso songs unplayable.

Across his 28 years with Deep Purple, Steve Morse became the band’s longest-serving guitarist. However, the creative impact he had on the British rock giants wasn’t as big as many would believe.

The fusion ace joined the group in 1994 to replace founding riffer Ritchie Blackmore, who had returned to the band after leaving in 1975 to form Rainbow. Deep Purple had hired Joe Satriani for a year of touring before Morse was sworn in, and though his fretboard mastery made him a tour de force onstage, his role was diminished when it came to composing songs.

“My job with Purple became providing ideas for the writing sessions, and one out of 20 might get used,” he tells MusicRadar. “Ninety-five percent of the time I was hearing, ‘That’s not going to work.’”

When he joined, the band was fronted by vocalist Ian Gillan, who was serving a second spell with the group after a clash of egos with Blackmore forced him to depart in 1973. The group was rounded out by bass guitarist Roger Glover, drummer Ian Paice and keyboard maverick Jon Lord.

It was in Lord that Morse found a kindred spirit to make his ideas work with the band.

“Jon was the guy who listened to my ideas and thoughtfully added to them, rather than just saying, ‘That doesn’t sound like Purple,’” Morse says. “When Jon was around, he would hear something and say, ‘That’s a little bit left field, but what if we do this?’ And he would play it with a slight twist.”

He recalls a time writing 1996's Purpendicular, when the rest of the band had stopped to drink tea. As the band's only American, he kept on playing, and at one point, Lord placed his cup down, turned to Morse and said, “Ah, that’s something there.”

It sounds like the rest of the group were a little more conservative regarding the Deep Purple sound, doubling down on an identity forged by Morse's predecessor. Blackmore himself, speaking in a now-taken-down video on YouTube in 2018, didn't exactly give Satriani and Morse a glowing review, despite praising their talents.

“Joe Satriani is a brilliant player, but I never see him really searching for notes. I never hear him playing a wrong note,” Blackmore said. “Jimi Hendrix used to play lots of wrong notes because he was searching all the time… ‘Where the hell is that correct note?!’ And when he did find that right note, wow, that was incredible.

“But if you’re always playing the correct notes, there’s something wrong; you’re not searching, you’re not reaching for anything. That’s not to say that he isn’t a very brilliant player. It's the same thing with Steve Morse, a fantastic player.

“Certain people play from the heart, and other people play from the head,” he concluded. “I prefer a ‘heart’ player. If I hear someone really technical running up and down the fingerboard, I can hear that for a couple of minutes, then I start to get bored.”

In related news, Morse reveals that he broke his wrist on the eve of a tour with the band, forcing him to modify his guitar to aid his shredding.

And as he battles his arthritis issues with ingenuity, he's also given Guitar Player readers top tips for keeping your cool when the going gets tough, something he certainly had to do in that moment.

The career of journeyman guitarist Steve Morse has been defined by constant invention. From his work with the Dixie Dregs to becoming Deep Purple’s longest-serving guitarist during a 28-year stint — and later adapting his technique to combat arthritis — Morse has consistently found new ways to push the envelope.

In his new appearance on the No Cover Charge podcast, Morse demonstrates his innovative employment of the tone knob to create frequency modulation effects.

“Are you doing a wah effect with the tone knob?” asks eagle-eyed host Tyler Larson, who also runs the YouTube channel Music is Win.

“Yeah,” Morse replied before demonstrating what is a simple-but-genius technique via some smooth blues playing. It really does sound like a wah pedal, and it's achieved by anchoring his fourth finger on the tone knob while playing for an optimized economy of movement.

“Turn it off, hit the note, and turn it on,” Morse says, explaining the technique. The rolling motion essentially helps mimic the motion of a wah's envelope filter effect. In the video clip, he can also be seen switching to the volume dial a couple of times for slight volume swells that he uses to introduce certain phrases.

The position of the tone knob also has a pretty big impact on how easy or hard it is to execute the technique. On Morse’s Music Man signature guitar, the control knobs are in proximity to the strings, but Larson finds it’s far more challenging to nail on a Gibson 335 as the controls are far less accessible in relation to the strings.

It’s certainly a handy technique to have in your arsenal, especially when you find yourself in a jam sans pedalboard.

It also shares a parallel with Eric Clapton’s infamous woman tone, which generates its magic by rolling the tone knob all the way off. Together, they are prime examples of how versatile guitars can be without needing extraneous tools like overdrive and chorus pedals to alter their character. Joe Bonamassa's viral guitar lesson video also proves that.

Morse has just released Triangulation, his first album with the Steve Morse Band in 16 years, and his first album since leaving Deep Purple three years ago.

“The 'Tri' part of the title comes from the tritone interval that's used in the basic guitar riff," Morse says of the album's title track.

The album features guest performances from Eric Johnson and John Petrucci, and ends with a collaboration with his son, Kevin. “Taken by an Angel” was written for his late wife's funeral; it was her battle with cancer that prompted him to leave Deep Purple, opening the door for his successor, Simon McBride.

The record also features a song called “Tumeni Partz,” a tongue-in-cheek sequel to one of his greatest ever songs.

Yet if it weren’t for Lynyrd Skynyrd, Morse would have left music behind decades ago. He retired from music to become a commercial airline pilot in the late '80s. But the chance to get onstage with the southern rock legends brought him back to his passion for the electric guitar.

With that in mind, Morse recently spoke to Guitar Player to offer his advice on how to keep your love for guitar burning when the going gets tough, leaning into a lifetime of playing to aid players who may find themselves in positions similar to those he’s regularly found himself in.

Steve Morse is currently back on the road with the Steve Morse Band, using all his know-how to combat ongoing arthritis issues in his right wrist. To help his cause, he’s modified both his guitar and his playing style, allowing him to continue playing and enjoying it, despite his ongoing struggles.

But it’s not the first time he’s been forced down that road.

As Morse revealed in an interview with Rick Beato at the start of this year, the Dixie Dregs and former Kansas and Deep Purple guitarist no longer has cartilage in his picking hand wrist, a painful side effect of tireless practice and gigging. He says the condition was so bad that, when he approached a sports doctor for help, he was practically laughed out of his office.

“Rather than roll over and die,” he had said, “I'm like, 'No, I still wanna play.'”

A quarter of a century earlier, he was faced with a similar test, albeit one that was entirely his own making. In the summer of 2000, while messing around on a skateboard, Morse fell and broke his left wrist. He had a Deep Purple tour looming, on which the Dixie Dregs were the support act. He had double duty every night.

Thinking ahead, Morse asked his osteopath for a cast that did little to inhibit his movement. As he reveals to MusicRadar, Morse also modified his Ernie Ball Music Man Steve Morse signature in a way that was almost impossible to see.

“I couldn’t reach some of the notes on the neck with the cast on,” he explains. “So I got a grinder and cut down the heel of it to help facilitate that.”

As for the neck plate?

"I took the steel plate off and ground that down, and well,” Morse confirms.

Footage of the band’s breathless performance at Montreux — where they returned last year for a rather literal cover of “Smoke on the Water” — shows that reaching those higher frets for his tasty guitar solos was pretty easy.

Luckily, Morse was no novice to electric guitar surgery. His first mod came before he was even a teenager, and his Stratocaster was the victim.

“A friend of mine had one of the first fuzz boxes. It was more like a battery-operated preamp, but it plugged right into the guitar,” he told MusicRadar in 2012. “I couldn’t plug it into the recessed jack, so I took a piece of an outlet box that had a hole drilled into it, and I put the jack on that.

“The fuzz sounded pretty cool, I must say,” he added, “especially to an 11- or 12-year-old kid.”

Previously, Morse has sat down with Guitar Player to empower readers with his five go-to ideas for playing and writing. Back in January, he explained how players can keep their cool when the going gets tough — such as when you break your wrist right before touring with one of the world's most iconic rock bands.

Steve Morse's gigging days are numbered. He's made peace with it as he continues to battle arthritis in his right-hand wrist.

But he’s moving heaven and earth — and adapting his playing style — to stave off the inevitable.

The guitar virtuoso believes that his issues are the result of “practicing about 10,000 notes a day for decades.” He’s left with no cartilage in the wrist of his picking hand, and that’s making every day full of uncertainty, and he’s having to dig deep in his bank of knowledge for workarounds.

“When I say I’ll do something, I’m used to doing it, and doing it excellently,” he tells MusicRadar. “Right now, I don’t know.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen: When I wake up, am I going to be able to move my hand or not? So far, I have been able to. So far, I have been able to make every gig. But I dunno.

“I can’t play the C section of 'Tumeni Notes,'” he adds. “I can’t go across the strings fast enough, so I can’t do it. It’s very frustrating.”

After making his name in the Dixie Dregs and Kansas, Morse retired to become a commercial airline pilot before he was pulled back into the game by Lynyrd Skynyrd. He later became Deep Purple's longest serving guitarist.

Now, however, his entire focus is on adapting his technique to the ravages of arthritis.

“I have had to come up with new ways of picking — several new ways — because different bones in my joint have different pain levels when I change the angle,” says the guitarist, who is currently on tour with the Steve Morse Band. “So during the set, you’ll see me change. During the show tonight, I’ll be changing positions constantly.

“I have to practice those different ways of holding the pick, and the different angles, and whether to bend my arm or pick from the elbow. It’s a lot. I mean, you have to really, really, really want to play to deal with the advance of arthritis.”

Morse isn’t shying away from the inevitable end days, but he’s planning ahead, knowing that things will have to continue to change so he can continue, in one way or another, to play, write, and perform.

“I think my time of doing the performance grind is closing,” he says. “That window is closing, but my time for writing, and possibly performing with some help, with some other musicians, is very possible. I see a future.”

Acceptance, however, doesn’t make the bitter bill of reality any easier to swallow.

“It’s very frustrating at times, dealing with this stuff, but on the other hand, my friends who know me know me as a handyman, and I will try to fix anything better than accept the fact that it’s broken,” he concludes. “I will take it apart and rewire it. I will make it work somehow. And that’s the way I feel about my playing. It’s broke, but I’m gonna find a way.”

The guitarist has previously said he visited a sports doctor about the state of his wrist, who, in turn, laughed at him. That makes the fact that he’s still out there touring, and readying a brand new Steve Morse Band album, Triangulation, all the more impressive.

It's his first ‘solo’ record since 2009, and his first release since leaving Deep Purple in 2022, a decision made, in part, in light of his wife’s battle with cancer. Janine Morse has now sadly passed, and so he and his son collaborated on the track, “Taken By an Angel.”

“That song is new territory for me,” he confesses. “It was put together for my late wife's memorial service, with my son Kevin playing along. It brought tears to many folks' eyes because Janine was a huge part of my life and career.

“People knew her from the Steve Morse Band tours. She was the smiling face opening CDs for me to sign, selling T-shirts, listening to people's stories in the crowd, and taking photos for VIP visits.”

For more on Morse, check out his five go-to ideas for playing and writing, and his wonderful take on a Jeff Beck classic.

In a recent interview with Guitar Player, while discussing the 10 albums that changed his life, Joe Bonamassa had kind words for Steve Morse. “I really hold Steve Morse in such high regard,” he said.

“Not only as a player but as a good, humble guy. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get named in the same sentences as a lot of other players of that era, like Eddie Van Halen, Allan Holdsworth and Bill Nelson. He’s the last to be named or not named at all.”

Turns out that Joe B. was right. As Morse himself checked in with GP, his affable personality and endless humility were apparent from the hump. After some 50 years making music, the 70-year-old guitarist remains unpretentious and clear-eyed about the art of playing guitar.

“It’s a never-ending struggle,” Morse admits. “But when you look at anything worth doing, there’s always going to be struggles.”

“It’s like a NASCAR race,” he continues. “There are guys on the pit crew struggling to keep things reliable, but everything is always deteriorating. As a musician, my skills and technique will deteriorate, so I always have to replenish them. It’s a constant struggle; it’s never going to change.”

It’s not all bad, of course, and Morse still loves the game. “The joy of creating music and playing music is a constant,” he beams. “It’s always great. It’s like, ‘Okay, we had a terrible gig,’ but you can have a great gig under the same conditions. It’s about fighting for it and finding balance.

“I started off as an annoying teenager with an electric guitar,” he laughs. “I slowly transformed to the place I’m at now, where I’m humbled and impressed by anybody willing to work hard and play a great solo,”

Starting with your Dixie Dregs days, what were the biggest challenges you faced while on the road, and how did you overcome them?

In the early days, the sound systems weren’t that good. Some places just had a P.A. for a vocalist, and we didn’t have one. So these places wouldn’t have enough inputs and headroom to mic everything. We got this idea to have everybody play through two sound sources — basically, two cabinets. We had two Leslies, two bass cabinets and two guitar cabinets, which, for the most part, allowed us to play shows without monitors.

Did you find that to be reliable?

The only reason that fell apart was that it was similar to the mutually assured destruction of nuclear power that was written about in the ‘60s, where everybody had the ability to destroy the world. And that was supposed to deter things because that meant that if anybody acted up, they’d get blown up.

With our equipment wars, all it took was one person playing a little bit too loud for another band member on the other side of the stage to turn up their equipment. The person that turned up loud to begin with would hear more of that instrument on their side of the stage, so they’d turn up again. That made us revert to a traditional band setup and letting everyone be the loudest thing.

Was there a specific turning point for you regarding your personal equipment on the road?

When I came across the idea of muting the output of the speakers. That was before there were power attenuators that went between the speaker and the amp. I tried running higher impedance on the speakers by putting them in series, and I employed a cover for the speakers — basically, anything thick that I could cover the speakers with. By doing that, I could turn the amp up enough to get the tube saturation I was looking for.

Once you joined Kansas, how did your challenges on the road change?

With Kansas, we had a team, including roadies, so my interaction with my equipment was about finding a place and a volume for me to fit in. At the time, the vocals were loud through the side fills, and that’s when I started using earplugs for every show because I was next to that side.

This is around the time you started using Engl equipment, right?

Yes. I started using Engl front cabinets and putting them on their side so the two 12s would be pointed in one direction. The other two 12s would be pointed in a slightly different direction, rather than being pointed up at my head. That gave me a little bit more headroom, and I could hear myself without the monitors.

A lot of players are fine with sound through the monitors. Why was that an issue for you?

For some reason, to me, when I hear a guitar through monitors, it sounds like it has a little bit too much presence. Unless I hear the whole band through the monitors, it seems like the guitar doesn’t fit in sonically. So I try to limit the monitors as much as possible so that I get more ambient sound.

In those early days, was there ever a time when you felt like you failed onstage?

Yeah. Those times are what I referred to as “normal shows.” [laughs] Music has always been challenging enough that, at some point in the show, you miss something that you know you can play.

How do you overcome that?

You just have to keep going. The good thing about playing music day in and day out is it keeps you very humble. I got to a point where I just accepted the fact that when I play a solo, the best score I can get is 75 precent. Well, that’s the best average performance; I can play a horrible solo, and sometimes I play a great solo. But the average of that is 75 percent.

Has that ever impacted your ability to enjoy yourself onstage?

It’s still fun for me. If you’re enjoying yourself onstage, that sense of excitement, — and in a small way some risk taking — conveys something to the audience. To this day, when I play a show, there’s a point where I screw up, and I just work around it and immediately fix it. I’ll hit a wrong note or mess up a chord change, and I’ll take those wrong notes, bend it in one or two ways, and it’ll fit.

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced shifting from Kansas to Deep Purple?

My first encounter with Deep Purple was a really good jam session, and my first encounter with Kansas was a writing session. Those were different things, but they were the things that I connected on with each band. With Kansas, it was more about writing, but with Purple, it was about the feel of everybody improvising, listening and reading each other’s minds. With Purple, that connection grew very organically.

Did you need a whole new setup to cover Ritchie Blackmore’s parts?

I eventually changed the amplifiers four times before I ended up going with Engl. When I first started with Purple, I was using a 5150 setup. I used that through the [1996] Purpendicular album. That setup worked fine, but the gear needed to be turned up in order for the type of distortion I needed to convey the notes. The search began to find a rounder tone with more impact. That led me to the Marshall Jubilee to the Marshall 2000 series to Engl.

What made Engl Amps perfect for Deep Purple?

At the time, I liked some of the characteristics, but I really wanted to make some changes. Luckily, the designer started bringing prototypes to the shows with breakout boards attached to the amps that let me adjust the tone centers of the tone controls. It was awesome. That begat my signature amp.

What’s the most significant stumbling block for any guitar player trying to survive in a rock band on the road?

Oh, boy. To ensure success within a band, you have to give respect. If the lobby call is at 10 a.m., you need to be there at 10 a.m. the latest, and be prepared. You better learn your parts and really learn the arrangements before soundcheck so you can work on sound changes and figure out what pickups you’ll use and whatever else.

When you’re in a band, you’re on a team, just like a football player. It takes a whole team to do well before you’re going to be a great band. Every minute of your life needs to be spent becoming a better player. It goes back to basics; if you have a road crew, treat them with respect, help them when you can, and realize they’re just like you; they’re just doing a different job.

What challenges do you face today on the road, and how do they differ from your early days?

The equipment is just better and more reliable. And with digital tuners, things are better right off the bat. Usually, you have fewer excuses for screwing up. [laughs] Things are easier, I think, than they’ve ever been on the equipment front.

So what’s not easier?

What’s not easier is getting the gig experience that we got back in the ’60s and ’70s. I always want to support anybody who’s doing live music because we need to keep that alive, to give young people a chance to develop their craft. Nothing can take the place of live performances for honing your art. Nothing can be as exciting as a live performance from a listening standpoint.

Steve Morse offers a caveat before he breaks into a heartfelt cover of Jeff Beck's "Cause We've Ended as Lovers" in a brand-new video. "I apologize for what's about to happen," the shred virtuoso deadpans to his backup band.

But there's certainly nothing to make amends for. The result is a dazzling display of virtuosity that features the impressive tapping, muscular bends, emotive vibrato and delicate pinch harmonics for which Morse has long — and rightly — been celebrated.

The feat is all the more remarkable when you consider that Morse has been dealing with arthritis, for which he's forcibly adapted his picking technique.

Recorded and filmed for American Musical Supply's YouTube channel with assistance from the AMS band, the Beck cover gives Morse a chance to break in his brand-new signature Engl head. At just 20 watts, the small tube amp is packed with features, including a highly tweakable clean channel with plenty of headroom, a built-in noise gate and a midrange boost to give single-coils a more humbucker-like, full-bodied flavor.

Morse pairs the new amp with his Music Man signature guitar, which looks distinctly roadworn, but oozes with the purring quality of Beck’s crooning tone. Uniquely, the guitar features four pickups, split evenly between humbuckers and single-coils.

Morse’s rendition of "Cause We've Ended as Lovers" sees him following in the footsteps of guitarists Eric Clapton, Joe Bonamassa and Matteo Mancuso, each of whom has covered the track. (Matteo recently made his devotion to another guitar hero evident with "Paul Position," his tribute to Paul Gilbert.)

Morse's tribute is a world away from his new collaboration with Charvel signature artist Angel Vivaldi: a violin-propelled cover of Jean-Luc Ponty's "New Country," released earlier this week.

Ponty, the famed French fusion violin virtuoso, wrote the tune for his celebrated 1976 album, Imaginary Voyage. The new arrangement, crafted by Vivaldi, offers a modernized take on the classic and features a a slew of galloping clean guitar licks from Morse, along with some supple playing from Vivaldi and impressive playing by violinist Siobhan Cronin. The highlight, undoubtedly, is Morse's jaw-dropping 30-second solo toward the end.

“This song is one I’ve dreamed of working with for well over a decade,” Vivaldi explained to Ultimate Guitar. “Jean-Luc’s work has been instrumental in shaping my musical foundation, introducing me to artists like Chick Corea. Steve Morse, and this incredible band elevated this project to extraordinary levels. I’m truly thrilled that we had the opportunity to create music together.”

Adds Morse, “This is a very difficult tune to play well. I love the fact that Angel is spreading his wings and taking on other genres than what he has already proven so good at.”

Morse’s name may now be etched in the annals of guitar history, but he has recently opened up about how he quit music twice before, only for Lynyrd Skynyrd to pull him back, and feature him on a live album.

Nowadays, it’s hard to think of Steve Morse not being a pillar of the guitar community. He’s been a music industry mainstay for nearly five decades with a CV that notes the Dixie Dregs, Kansas, Deep Purple, and Lynyrd Skynyrd among his employers throughout an illustrious career.

But there were two occasions when he was on the verge of quitting music for good, and it took the efforts of two of those bands to save him.

As Morse explains in the latest episode of Ernie Ball’s String Theory video series, the first instance was around 1981 after Dixie Dregs, the band with which he made his name, broke up.

By that point, Morse felt that “the music industry was a little bit too weird for me.” He needed to escape.

“So,” he says, “I started doing some odd jobs. Running a bulldozer, cutting hay for people, stuff like that. Not trying to work as a musician.”

Thankfully, he admits “it didn't last too long because I felt like I really missed it.” So, a compromise was needed. “I had to figure out something to do to eat,” he says.

“Phil Walden from Capricorn Records was very encouraging for me to make my own band,” the guitarist continues. “Whatever the problems were in the past, ‘do your own thing.’

“I thought if I had a trio I could manage everything and get through the lead times better. It would be a real workout for me, musically, but that's something I relished. So we did the Steve Morse band for years, [but] we kinda burned out.”

Burnout is sadly a recurring theme for Morse, but it was here that Kansas came to his rescue.

It was 1986, and Kansas were reforming after a three-year hiatus. What was initially presented as an invitation to help write a song for what would become 1986’s LP, Power, quickly snowballed and saw Morse turning on his inclination to quit the industry.

“I got the opportunity to work on a song with Kansas,” he recalls, “which turned into more songs, then a tour and an album.”

Another album, 1988's In the Spirit of Things, and another tour followed, with Morse very much in the spirit of being in Kansas.

However, burnout and the cyclical nature of rock n' roll soon ground the guitarist down. Once more, Morse looked for an out road.

So, instead of being part of a band that flew around the world, he transitioned into being the one doing the flying, as a commercial airline co-pilot.

With that as his job, he says: “I could record whatever I want. I could make music without having to worry about pleasing anybody in the business end. That really appealed to me.”

Thus, his first solo album, High Tension Wires, was born; a record from the heart and not from the marketing rulebook.

“The whole intent of that was to [tell the] record company people ‘I don't care’: I'm gonna make my living. If this sells that's one thing, but I'm here to make music and that's it.”

That carefree attitude was crucial for an industry-cynical Morse. Suddenly he was writing for writing’s sake. However, his work as a pilot took up more and more of his time, and Morse came to an extremely sobering realization.

“Getting that job was a big challenge and I really enjoyed it,” he says. “But once I did it and did it repetitively I realized that every job has things you don't like about it. Sometimes you just have to deal with stuff.”

With these thoughts as a backdrop, he received a call from Gary Rossington: Lynyrd Skynyrd were rolling into Atlanta and they wanted him to join the party.

Says Morse: “I remember coming back from a long, long day that started at 2 a.m. I still had my uniform on and on the phone was Gary Rossington.”

They were playing the city’s Omni Coliseum and, as Morse remembers it, Rossington told him, “‘Man, you gotta come down, bring your guitar, we're recording tonight.’”

Morse protested; his long, tiring day and freshly cut hair his reasons. He was no longer a rock star.

Rossington simply repeated himself: “Bring your guitar, I'll see you at six.”

In the end, Morse half obliged: He came with his guitar, but at that point, the band was already entertaining the Omni’s 16,500-strong crowd.

“Gary gets the message that I'm here,” Morse details. “He says [to the crowd] ‘Alright everybody, we're gonna bring up Steve Morse to play a song called Gimme Back My Bullets.’ Somebody pushed me on stage and there's an amp I've never plugged into before.”

What followed was captured on the band’s live album, Southern by the Grace of God, and it sparked something in Morse that has never since extinguished.

“I said ‘If it's ever it's gonna be this cool again, I should get back into music full-time because this is awesome.’ Having guys that remember me and being part of something, it's special.”

Since then, Morse's career has gone from strength to strength, with a 28-year stint in Deep Purple and his more progressive endeavors with Flying Colors two clear highlights.

His influence in the industry can't be downplayed, either. In 2022, John Petrucci praised his talents, telling Guitar Player: “There are moments that you can pinpoint and say they were truly life-changing, and for me, hearing Steve Morse play guitar was one of them.”

Steve Morse has spent decades wowing guitarists with his precise, light-speed fret-work. In a new interview with YouTuber Rick Beato, though, Morse revealed that that very right-hand precision has taken a significant physical toll. 

To achieve his trademark blistering arpeggios and string-skipping, Morse would mute strings with his pinky and palm, letting his right-hand wrist work at incredible speed with minimal movement.

That very technique, however – plus, the electric guitar icon reveals, both a family history of arthritis and his grueling practice regimen – has significantly damaged Morse's picking hand.

“These bones,” Morse says, gesturing to his right-hand wrist, “don't have the cartilage anymore – and [they've become] worn away, diseased, and very painful.”

Morse, however, was determined to find workarounds, and keep playing.

“Rather than roll over and die,” the Dixie Dregs, Kansas, and Deep Purple alum tells Beato, “I'm like, 'No, I still wanna play'.”

One of these workarounds, Morse demonstrates, is an Ernie Ball-branded, fret wrap-esque tool that lightens his right-hand workload by seemingly using the guitar's locking nut to quickly attach to its strings when needed.

“It's obviously been done before,” the guitar legend notes, “but I invented a different way of making the structure and making it more immediate.”

Mods aside, though, Morse has also had to make some technical adjustments to his approach, using fingerpicking for taxing passages whenever possible, despite the fact that – according to Morse – “it doesn't sound the same.” 

When fingerpicking isn't an option, Morse has also taken to generating movement from his right elbow while keeping the wrist stationary, holding the guitar pick with the side of his finger or between his thumb, index, and middle fingers.

This isn't to say that Morse is completely unable to use his right wrist as he used to – however, the guitarist notes, doing so is quite painful. 

Morse has sought medical attention for his arthritis on a number of occasions, telling Beato that one sports doctor laughed in amazement at the extent of Morse's right-hand damage.

“I had shooting pains for a long time, but I always thought it was ligaments and tendons that I'd strained earlier,” Morse explains. “I've got it all – tendonitis, you name it. Whatever you can get from playing relentlessly for half a century.

“I thought it was soft-tissue stuff – that it would be fixable. The sports doctor was laughing at me – he said, 'Why do you have so much arthritis? You're too young for this!' I went up to Harvard medical, and said 'Could you guys give me some cartilage?' and they said 'No, it'll be like a tumor if we do – but we could fuse your bones.' So, that's what I chose to do – fuse the bones in my wrist for most of the strenuous stuff.”

In addition to his solo career, Gary Hoey has recorded and/or toured with some of the biggest electric guitarists around — players like Brian May, Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson, Peter Frampton, Rick Derringer and Kenny Wayne Shepherd, among others. He explains that with each pairing, he keeps his eyes and ears open for any playing tips he might pick up, and he’ll seek advice whenever possible. 

“I’m a fan of these players, just like anybody else,” Hoey says. “I’m always trying to incorporate the things they can do into my style. I did a Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp with Steve Morse, and I picked up some cool pointers from him.” 

One such technique involved fingerstyle playing with your picking hand. “Steve talked about how a lot of players don’t use their fingers while they’re using their picks,” Hoey says. “Their fingers just hang there while their pick does all the work. You can add all kinds of licks if you work your fingers into the mix. Even if you’re strumming chords, you can grab the strings with your third, fourth and pinkie fingers. It’s kind of like how a piano player can get multiple notes all at once. I’ve been doing that now, and it’s really cool.” 

Of course, Hoey has his own tips for electric guitar players who want to up their game, and he took the time to share them with us. Try these for yourself! 

LEARN YOUR NECK 

“I’m always surprised to see how a lot of players don’t learn the neck of their guitar. They kind of play blindly, but they really haven’t taken the time to know where they’re going. They’re probably thinking, How come I can’t play the right note at the right time? The answer is simple: Because they don’t know what the right note is. 

“I started by telling my students to look at the first part of the neck, where there are four dots. Now look at the part of the neck after the 12th fret — there are four dots there too. You’ve got your big neck and your little neck. Anything you can play on those first four dots can also be played on the little part of the neck starting with the 12th fret. Train yourself to slide up there an octave higher and try it. This can really make your solos more interesting and exciting. 

“Remember, there are only 12 notes. If you learn a C major scale like you would on a piano, you’ve already learned three-quarters of every note on the neck.” 

PRACTICE BENDS WITH YOUR TUNER 

“I’ll hear a guitarist play, and he’s nailing all the right notes, but quite often I notice that his bends are out of tune. This is what separates the pros from the Joes. It’s like when you hear certain singers and you think they’re great, but then they hit a note a little flat or sharp.

“I tell people to make sure they’re in tune when they practice. The best way is to use a clip-on tuner and play a bend: Try to bend up a whole step without looking at the tuner. Once you think you’ve done it, look at the tuner and see if you’re in tune. I started doing this and I found that I was flat quite often. To fix that problem, I decided to bend a little higher and use my ear. After a while, I noticed on my tuner that I was right on the money. You can do this with anything you play — it doesn’t have to be a bend. After a while, you can train your fingers and your ears to know when you’re playing in tune."

DO THE "TRILL DRILL" 

“I have this little exercise called the ‘trill drill.’ I’ll play a 16th-note trill on the B string using my first and second fingers on the fifth and sixth frets. After a few measures, I’ll switch to the first and third fingers on the fifth and seventh frets. Then I’ll do the first finger and my pinkie on the fifth and eighth frets. Try it. You’ll feel a little burn, but it’ll really develop your hammer-ons and pull-offs. 

“You can get fancy and vary it. Try the second and third fingers, and then the second and fourth. Finally, try the third and fourth fingers. You can go through all the different combinations and have a good time with them. Even if you do it for just 60 seconds in the morning, you’ll feel your hand is warmed up and ready to go. If you start playing solos, you’ll find yourself throwing in little Hendrix trills because you’re loosened up.”

DEVELOP YOUR INTERNAL CLOCK 

 “I’ve noticed that a lot of guitar players don’t tap their feet when they play. I don’t know why that is. Are they counting time in their head? I don’t know what they’re doing, but many of them aren’t playing in time. 

“Every day I wake up, I get myself a cup of coffee, and I pick up the guitar and play a little something. And I always tap my foot. It doesn’t matter what I play — if I’m tapping my foot, I’m in time. That’s what you need to do. Tap your foot, get a little groove going and start improvising. But I want you to live inside the eighth note: When your foot goes down, that’s the downbeat, and when your foot comes up, it’s the upbeat. Play eighth notes inside each beat, and then add 16th notes. Pretty soon, you’ll be improvising and playing really cool stuff. You’ll be playing music, and because you’re tapping your foot, you’ll be in time. 

“I was just playing the riff to ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ by Neil Young. I tapped my feet and played the chords, but then I would alternate a few of the bars and add in a little soloing, all while living in the eighth notes. I was never out of time because I tapped my foot. That was my internal clock working for me.” 

PUSH YOURSELF PAST YOUR ABILITY

“Nobody ever asks me, ‘How can I be a better rhythm player?’ It’s always, ‘How can I play fast? How can I develop speed?’ I’ll tell you how, and I’m going to go against the grain here, because most guitarists say, ‘Start slow and build your speed.’ Well, I have a contrarian approach that really works. 

“You need to practice playing fast, but you have to push yourself. Think about it: The first time a NASCAR driver gets in a car and drives 100 miles per hour, he probably doesn’t breathe — he’s that tense. But the more he does it, he starts to relax and breathe, and what used to feel fast doesn’t feel very fast at all. Playing fast guitar licks is the same. 

“When I was growing up, I found that I had to push myself beyond my playing ability. That way, my nervous system could adjust, and before long I learned how to relax. That’s what I want you to do. Play riffs and solos to the point where you can’t go any faster — and then push yourself beyond your limit. Don’t worry about sucking — you will suck at first. Muscle through it. If you’re sloppy, that’s fine. That sloppiness is your body adjusting to what you’re doing. But the more you do this, the easier it’ll become. You’ll start to relax, and before you know it you’ll play the fast stuff with ease. 

“If you’re always playing right to the level of your ability, you’ll never go past it. You’ll stay in one place. Push yourself. I’m not saying you should always play fast — of course not. But if you want to develop speed, you won’t get there by playing slow. Floor it.”

The following interview with Sharon Isbin was originally published in Guitar Player in 2011.

Sharon Isbin isn’t your average internationally renowned, multiple Grammy Award-winning, Billboard chart-topping classical guitarist. In addition to making dozens of recordings of music from the traditional and modern classical guitar repertoires – including nine compositions written specifically for her – and giving hundreds of performances with leading orchestras and ensembles in celebrated venues worldwide, she has also passionately embraced music of other traditions.

For example, 1999’s Dreams of a World explored several varieties of folk music from around the globe, and 2009’s Journey to the New World bridged British Isles and American folk. Both albums received Grammys.

On her latest release, Sharon Isbin & Friends: Guitar Passions, the maestro pairs with electric guitarists Stanley Jordan, Steve Vai, Steve Morse, and Nancy Wilson, in addition to Brazilian jazz guitarist Romero Lubambo, percussionist Gaudencio Thiago de Mello, soprano saxophonist Paul Winter, and vocalist Rosa Passos.

“Guitar Passions is a guitar tribute album with a Latin theme,” says Isbin. “It crosses the boundaries of people who are very present in the musical world today, and people who have figured in my life in the past in important ways, such as Joaquin Rodrigo, who put the guitar on the map in 1939 with his Concierto de Aranjuez, and the late Laurindo Almeida, who brought bossa nova to the West and arranged Adagio from the Rodrigo work – a revised version of which appears on the album. The uniting force is that we’re all passionate about the guitar!”

Briefly describe the roles of the other guitarists on Guitar Passions.

“Steve Morse improvised the solo on the bossa nova section of Adagio, a part originally played by Larry Coryell when he, Laurindo Almeida, and I toured as Guitarjam back in the ’80s. Steve and I go back a long way, and I absolutely love the way he improvised his very hot rock-styled part to the Adagio theme. 

“Steve Vai and I had played together several times, and he actually composed a major 20-minute work called the Blossom Suite that we performed together in Paris and hope to record. We were at his house one day when I started playing this Allegro by [Agustín] Barrios and he started improvising to it, and I said, 'Why don’t we do this on the album?' He’s such an amazingly lyrical player – so inventive.

“Stanley Jordan created an extraordinary new part for an expanded arrangement of [Quique] Sinesi’s Sonidos de aquel dia, which blends beautifully with the classical guitar part I’m playing. For Dreamboat Annie, Nancy Wilson and I arranged and recorded the entire song, including the tongue-in-cheek bossa nova section at the end, in an afternoon. I grew up listening to Heart, and having the opportunity to meet and record with Nancy was a thrilling experience.

“Finally, Romero Lubambo played beautifully on Adagio and Carlos Barbosa-Lima’s arrangement of [Antônio Carlos] Jobim’s Chovendo na Roseira.”

You mentioned that Morse and Vai improvised their parts. Improvisation played a prominent role in early classical music, didn’t it?

“Absolutely. For example, Bach was the pop artist of the time in the early 1700s, and improvisation was very much a part of being a performer and composer in the pop world. I think the ability to improvise is something that is a part of all of us, but when it’s developed to the fullest in artists like Steve Morse or Steve Vai, who can just create music on the spot, it’s truly something to marvel at. And I really like working with that kind of fresh energy because it inspires me.

“I’ve been spending time with Carlos Santana lately, doing some exploration for a project that we might do together, and that’s actually forcing me to learn how to improvise. So that’s my new project: learning how to improvise!”

That raises the question of why many classical musicians are uncomfortable improvising.

“I think that the fear factor probably interferes more than anything. For example, when I was in the studio with Nancy Wilson, she simply made me improvise, and I really liked the results. It becomes a lot freer rhythmically. You take your mind off the page and you just explore what comes to you, and that is a very freeing idea.

Similarly, working with Carlos was like getting a seven-hour guitar lesson. He was so patient and just stuck with it. I have a long way to go, but once I began to feel some sense of security, the freedom became enjoyable rather than terrifying.”

What guitars did you play on the new album?

“I played two instruments on Guitar Passions – one by Michael O’Leary and one by Antonius Mueller. They both have cedar tops, but are otherwise very different. O’Leary’s approach is to increase the volume and the resonance by focusing on the soundboard. The back and sides are doubled make them more stable, and the soundboard does all the vibrating.

“Tony Mueller’s guitar has a double cedar top with a sandwich material glued in between for stability. Both tops are very thin, and that thinness creates a very fast response, so that the string is almost playing before you touch it! The guitar has amazing warmth, and the high-E string has an extraordinary, bell-like sound. 

“I love both guitars, and I thought they would work well together on different selections. The only piece I played them both on was the Porro duet, and it really worked.”

How do you prefer to record your guitars?

“I like to have a resonant space, so I’m getting something back in terms of the studio itself. The setup usually involves four microphones – two placed close to the guitar to get the articulation and the presence, and two mounted on stands a little further away to get the ambiance of the room.”

How many distinctly different sounds can you get from a classical guitar just by changing the way you strike the strings?

“It’s really like an orchestra. If you play by the bridge using just your fingernail, and play perpendicular to the string, you can get a very bright metallic sound. The more you angle your nail when attacking the string, the warmer the sound, and when you add flesh it becomes even more sensuous and velvety in its color. Moving your hand down toward the fretboard makes the sound even warmer.

“When you add the left hand to the process, fingering in the first position, versus a higher position, produces a warmer sound. Add vibrato to that – say, finger an E on the third string at the 9th fret and multi-finger vibrato, where you put all your fingers down and really pull at that string with the left hand – and it creates an otherworldly kind of sound. 

“Adding harmonics, crossing the strings behind each other to get a snare drum effect, playing staccato where you muscle the string, pulling the strings to get a snapping sound – all of these add even more colors.”

What are a few examples of altered tunings used within the classical guitar repertoire?

“One common altered tuning is to lower the low E to D, and sometimes also to lower the A to G. And in Renaissance music sometimes the G is lowered to F#. It can become much more complex than that depending on the composer, but those are the basic ones that I have used.”

You have an extraordinary command of dynamics. What advice can you give electric guitarists to better incorporate dynamics into their playing?

“Their temptation is to be loud because they can be. But they might be surprised how they can also draw people to them by being as quiet as possible, so that they bring the listener into their world rather than the other way around. That establishes a real intimacy that is equally exciting as the loud and bombastic. So, if you have both of those and everything in between, then you really have a palette of expression that is incomparable. 

“Of course, I’ve always enjoyed the intimacy of the classical guitar, as playing it is a very tactile experience. You are touching the string, creating the vibration and the sound is born. In that process, I love to explore how softly I can play, how much I can turn each nuance into a caress, and then go to the other extreme of strumming away, which can be really loud and fierce. 

“One exercise I like involves taking a simple scale such as C major, and playing each pitch multiple times with alternating fingers. I might start with the softest I can possibly play, gradually getting louder until I reach maximum intensity, and then backing down gradually again, as I move through the scale. That really gives you a sense of how to move in between these extremes.”

Speaking of exercises, in your book, Classical Guitar Answer Book, there’s a chapter called 'Relaxation' and 'Visualization for Performing'. What is the visualization part about?

“I like to play by memory when I perform onstage, and there are several aspects of memory that come together to make that possible. You’ve got the motor memory of your muscles, the aural memory of what you hear, and the visual memory of seeing the notes or the position on the frets where your fingers are going. All of these are important, but, basically, the last signal that makes the sound happen is the impulse in your mind to put your finger on a particular fret to get a particular pitch. 

“I like to practice without the guitar and hear in my mind exactly what I want the music to sound like. That’s a freeing process, too, in that it gives you the chance to create an alternate vision of the music unencumbered by an instrument or technique. I visualize in my mind all the left-hand and right-hand fingerings and articulations at the same moment as I’m hearing the sound in my head, which unites the processes of the aural, visual, and visceral memories. 

“Immersing yourself in the music gives you a sense of confidence because when you step onto the stage you will know exactly what to do.”

What are a few classical guitar exercises that steel-string acoustic or electric players would benefit from?

“The Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos wrote 12 etudes, or exercises, the first of which [Allegro Non Troppo – Arpejos] uses a finger pattern that is a little complicated, but it just repeats every measure, so once you learn one measure you have it. I take that finger pattern as a daily warmup, and it is something that would really free up an electric or steel-string acoustic player who wants to be able to use their fingers as well as a pick.

“To get really great articulation with my left hand I practice hammer-ons and pulloffs, including playing with the very tips of my fingers, which gives me even more power and control. I also do exercises to maintain finger independence. 

“For example, if I’m playing hammer-ons and pull-offs up and down a string, when I’m pulling off I leave my other fingers on the adjacent string. So, if I’m playing on the sixth string, as I pull off, I keep my other fingers on the fifth string so that I’m only moving one finger at a time, with the others anchored, and that creates more finger independence for the left hand.”

How would you access the current state of classical music and where do you envision it going?

“I think we’re in a very exciting time in that composers really have free reign to explore what inspires them and there aren’t any restrictions as there were at one time, when you had to write 12-tone or atonal music. You can do those things if you like, or write tonal music, or be very avant-garde and experimental. And when composers have a link to their own heritage – whether it’s Chinese or African or British or Italian – they’ll bring something unique to the picture. 

“There are no limits other than the limits composers impose upon themselves – and that bodes well for the future, because anything is possible and the results are entirely unpredictable.”

No gaff tape marks on the stage are necessary for Simon McBride – he always remembers where the sweet spot is. Alone under the lights for his big guitar cadenza each night with Deep Purple – and just after kicking on a Tube Screamer to make his white-hot electric guitar tone a few degrees hotter – he moves to that invisible X, hits a single note high up on the fretboard, and, with zero vibrato, gets it to sustain infinitely. When a shimmering overtone emerges from within the sound, the endless note becomes all the more prismatic. It grabs your ears the way a laser beam shooting up into the night sky attracts your eyes.

It’s an old trick, but, after watching McBride do it flawlessly at 16 different arenas all over Europe last fall (I was playing with the support band, Jefferson Starship), I can report that I’ve never seen anyone do it more hypnotically. It’s mesmerizing. Rather than seeming gimmicky, it comes off as heartfelt and part of a grander musical statement.

Next, McBride suddenly jumps up to a high-altitude F-major scale pattern, and, starting on the highest A on the highest string, blazes down an octave and a half of the shape as fast as possible, repeating the dazzling maneuver again up a half step, and then again up another half step, and so on. The notes whiz by faster than tracer bullets. It’s thrilling to experience, and it incites roars of delight from each new audience.

Standing at the monitor board after taking in McBride’s many guitar solos each night, Donny Baldwin – the veteran, multi-Platinum drummer in my band – turned to me and said, “Damn, that dude plays with so much emotion!” I agree. Whether McBride is playing slowly or quickly, I still feel each note. If you still think of Steve Morse as “the new guy” in Deep Purple – even though the brilliant Dregs guitarist’s tenure in the iconic rock band was, at 28 years, far longer than that of founding guitarist Ritchie Blackmore – you’re forgiven. There may still be a few guitar fans who haven’t yet heard that Morse announced his retirement from Deep Purple last summer to help his wife, Janine, through ongoing chemotherapy treatments as she confronts stage IV cancer.

The new new guy is Simon McBride. Hailing from Belfast, the Irish guitar hero was already established before joining Deep Purple, with multiple solo albums and videos released under his own name. (Want to hear a spectacular fuzz guitar break? Listen to McBride engage his Vahlbruch Octavia pedal on “Kingdoms,” from his latest solo album, The Fighter.) McBride had also proved his worth to the Purple camp by touring and recording with two legendary members of the band, keyboardist Don Airey and singer Ian Gillan, long before they ever knew they might need to enlist him for Purple.

“Two-thousand-twenty-two was weird but also wonderful,” McBride says of the year he officially joined forces with the British rock titans. “At first I was sort of subbing in for Steve, but when they said he was stepping away and asked me to join, I said, ‘I’ll think about it.’” He laughs. “No, I actually immediately said, ‘Yes.’”

Of all the guitarists you’ve seen perform in your lifetime, who most blew you away with the sheer level of emotion in their playing?

It’s got to be Gary Moore. Gary was a massive influence on me, starting when I was a kid. Obviously, he was from Belfast too, but when I was about 10 years old and my dad took me to see him, it inspired me to go, “I want to do that.” He played with such aggression and passion, and I think from learning all his stuff over the years it’s a natural thing that comes out in me, too. I have to thank Gary for that.

There are so many Gary Moore songs that a lot of people don’t really listen to, because he was so popular for his blues thing, as that’s what really broke him and made him massive. But people forget the heavier stuff, like Corridors of Power. He has so many brilliant albums, all of them full of great riffs.

What’s your philosophy on getting a kick-ass hard-rock guitar sound in an arena?

It’s about having teeth. I do have a lot of modern gadgets like, for example, the [Neural DSP] QuadCortex, which I use in the studio and think is great. But live, I’m that old-school kind of a player who is used to having a fire-breathing dragon – a wall of Marshalls – shouting at me.

I started using Engl stuff when I joined Purple, and it’s great. I used Steve [Morse]’s heads for a while, and they’re great, but while that amp suits Steve, it is a bit more compressed and high-gain than what I prefer. Plus, there are too many buttons on it for me. I’m a very simple guy. I’m like, “Just give me my bass, mid, treble, gain and volume.” Done.

So the guys at Engl tweaked a head for me to have more aggressiveness, especially around the high mids, because that’s how a guitar frequency cuts through. Once you start sucking the mids out of your sound, you lose the guitar, whether you’re playing a small club, an arena or a stadium – especially in a band like Purple, where you’re competing with [Airey’s] Hammond running through two Leslies and a Marshall, which has a similar frequency range as your guitar.

One modern development, though, is that I now run my stage rig in stereo, and for that I blame COVID, because for two years I was sitting in my home studio playing in stereo through my studio monitors. When live gigs started happening again and I plugged in my mono setup, I was like, “This is not gonna work.” [laughs] I now run a simple left/right setup with stereo effects courtesy of TC Electronic Plethora and Boss Space Echo pedals. I also tried the wet/dry/wet thing, but it wasn’t for me.

You get an amazing spectrum of sounds from that Paul Reed Smith with the f-hole. [McBride has played a red-finished custom PRS 408 and now has one in gray.]

Yeah, I had it made for me about nine years ago. It’s basically a PRS 408, which they stopped making – maybe because the pickups had slightly odd shapes, which meant people couldn’t swap them out easily if they wanted to. But I love the 408’s design. It’s very versatile. You have a three-way toggle selector, plus two little switches that split each humbucker. And it cleans up brilliantly through a proper valve amp. I think there’s a capacitor in there that helps it get a little brighter when you roll the volume back. People always ask me why I don’t have a tone knob on the guitar, and I’m like, “I haven’t used a tone knob in 25 years, so what do I need one for?”

There’s an exciting moment in “Hush” each night where you and Don trade licks back and forth and really seem to be pushing each other. It’s a total head-cutting duel.

Oh, yeah, every night it’s a full-on battle. It’s great because at that point it’s just me and Don, with only Ian [Paice]’s drums behind us, so we can drift in and out of stuff and go wherever we want, musically. Don has told me, “It’s 14-1 to you, Simon,” but I don’t know. Every night I have to try harder, because he comes down to soundcheck each day and practices, coming up with ideas to try and screw me up. [laughs] Really, it’s just fun. We’re just having a jam and having a laugh. We just love doing it.

Is there a secret to kicking off “Smoke on the Water” each night? Any pressure when you’re starting off what is possibly the world’s most famous guitar riff?

At the moment, no. But the first time I did it I was very nervous, because that was with Ian Gillan in front of about 10,000 people. But it’s such a simple riff. The main secret is just giving it the right tempo. Then Don kicks in with the Hammond playing the same thing, Roger kicks in with the bass, and it’s just a wall of power. Some people overcomplicate the “Smoke” riff by playing it like a guitar player – you know, they throw vibrato and other things into it – but then the riff loses its essence. You just have to keep it simple. There are plenty of other places in the set for me to try new things.

People always ask me, “Do you have freedom to improvise in Deep Purple?” The answer is yes. But there are certain things you just have to play as they were recorded, like Blackmore’s solo on “Highway Star.” It would be very arrogant of me to think that I can do better than that. That’s a brilliant solo. It’s iconic.

“Kansas has a knack for distributing parts where they’re needed,” guitarist Rich Williams notes proudly, “rather than saying, ‘We’ve got to find something for everybody to do here!’ It’s just a process of getting everybody involved the right way, not stepping on toes, and serving the songs with only what they need.”

Of course, you’d expect that to be the case after 50 years, but Kansas had their game plan in good shape largely from the get-go. The group was forged in Topeka by what Williams calls “the last man standing of our peer group that wanted to continue on with a musical life rather than get a straight job.”

The original six members – Williams, guitarist-keyboardist Kerry Livgren, singer-keyboardist Steve Walsh, singer-violinist Robbie Steinhardt, bassist Dave Hope and drummer Phil Ehart – had played in a variety of groups, including White Clover and the Reasons Why.

After a few false starts, this lineup formed Kansas in earnest in 1973, forging a unique blend of heavy blues-based rock and complex, progressive opuses. According to Williams, “Everybody had different influences” that included Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels, the Rolling Stones (for whom Kansas opened during the summer of 1978) and the classical music of Steinhardt’s formal training.

“We were tired of playing the required music you’d play in a bar. We were trying to remove the box of, ‘This is what a band does. This is what rock music is today.’ We were very inspired by what became called ‘progressive music.’ That taught us there is no box; there are no parameters. You can sing about anything you want to. You can use any time signature, any approach you can think of, any instrumentation that appealed to us.

“We just wanted to do something that came naturally to us, not emulate anything we’d been doing previously or copy the trend of radio. We wanted to do things our way. We were very stubborn in that want and need. What drew the six of us together was to do something special.”

The inaugural, self-titled Kansas album of 1974 was certainly that, an amalgamation that started with the gritty gut-punches of “Can I Tell You” and a cover of J.J. Cale’s “Bringing It Back” and moved into soaring pieces such as “Journey from Mariabronn,” “Apercu” and “Death of Mother Nature Suite.”

A pattern was established that would be maintained on subsequent albums, finally breaking big with the multi-Platinum one-two punch of 1976’s Leftoverture and the following year’s Point of Know Return, and hit singles such as “Carry On Wayward Son” and “Dust in the Wind.”

Along the way, Williams became a player of the moment in the studio. “Many times, I don’t know what I’m going to do until I hear, ‘Roll it,’” he explains. “I don’t like going in too rehearsed because I like the panic of not knowing where I’m going.” He recalls that Steve Morse, a member of Kansas from 1985 to 1991, dubbed him “Mr. One-Take.” “I’ve been very fortunate at creating in the moment.”

Williams and Ehart have been Kansas’s stalwarts throughout the group’s history, having seen 22 other members play on the group’s 15 studio albums. The current lineup, which is responsible for 2016’s The Prelude Implicit and 2020’s The Absence of Presence, is one of the group’s strongest yet and is on the road this year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the band’s formation.

The band is also working on new material for an album to be released in 2024, and the 73-year-old Williams – who moved to North Carolina during the pandemic following a long tenure in Atlanta – doesn’t see himself getting out of the act any time soon.

“I kind of grasped the concept early on, actually before I even started taking guitar lessons, that I wanted to be part of something like this,” he notes. “I’m just fortunate that it worked out. There have been some rough moments – usually they’re travel-related – but I’ve been through so many weird times that we just laugh at it now. It’s a complete surrender to and acceptance of whatever all of this is.

“We just roll with it and keep taking the next step forward, and suddenly 50 years is here. It’s a wonderful life.”

1. “Can I Tell You” from ‘Kansas’ (1974)

“We had started the band and were more concerned about original music, so we started writing the song ‘Can I Tell You.’ I wrote this little chord pattern that’s basically the beginning of the song and brought it to rehearsal. Steve Walsh took it home and came back with the chorus and the three verses, and I came up with the middle section while Robbie added all the violin parts and stuff, and a song was born.

“We made a demo tape, ’cause we thought, Wouldn’t it be cool if we could actually make an album? It wound up on [producer/manager] Don Kirshner’s desk, and he liked that song. There were six songs on the demo tape, three on each side, and I don’t think he ever heard the second side. He really liked ‘Can I Tell You,’ and that got us our record deal.

“In 2022, we did [the compilation] Another Fork in the Road, and record companies traditionally want something new in a package like that. While we do have a few songs in the can, since we’re working toward releasing a new record in 2024, we thought, What if we remade ‘Can I Tell You’ with the current lineup, since that was the song that brought us to the table. We thought it was a way to bookend our career and to see if we could do that song in a modern way.

“So Phil went to the studio in Georgia where he always does his drum tracks, and I did my guitar tracks here where I’m sitting at home. Everything went through [keyboardist] Tom Brislin, who was assembling all the parts at home. Ronnie [Platt] sang his parts in Chicago, [David] Ragsdale did his violin parts in his bedroom, and Chad Singer – who’s our front-of-house sound man and knows what we sound like more than we do – produced the project and did all the mixing.

“We’d never really tried something like this before, and I’m really happy with the outcome. We were attempting to recreate the vibe as much as we could and just freshen it up. It’s funny: [Amazon’s virtual assistant] Alexa plays stuff randomly around our house, and I was up early this morning to make coffee, and in the background ‘Can I Tell You’ came on. It was at a low enough volume that I couldn’t tell if it was the new or old recording until my guitar solo came along. I play something different on the new one, and it wasn’t until it got to that spot that I could tell it was the new recording.”

2. “Carry On Wayward Son” from ‘Leftoverture’ (1976)

“We were in our rehearsal room in Topeka and had been working on material for the album. It was the last day. We were gonna pack up the gear and head to Bogalusa, Louisiana, where we had done the third album, Masque. Then Kerry comes in and says, ‘I’ve gone one more song.’ There was a lot of moaning and groaning, ’cause we were tired of the process and ready to get in the studio and start recording. He started showing us the song, and the general consensus was, ‘There’s a lot here. This could be a really good song.’

“We went down to the studio and worked out an arrangement – a rough one; we hadn’t really learned the song yet. The tape was rolling and we were playing the song until, finally, [co-producer] Jeff Glixman said, ‘I think we’ve got one.’ The version on the recording is probably the first time we got it correct.

“At the time I was using my red 100-watt Marshall Lead amp, which was the only amp I had, and my Gibson L6s, which I’d used on the three previous records. But from traveling on the road, the amp got a little beat up, and there was another musician who worked out of that studio who said, ‘Just use my Marshall head.’ It had Gretsch tubes in it. So I did.

“Me and Kerry double the riff at the song’s beginning. For the verses, Kerry was on piano and Steve Walsh played background organ. It didn’t need electric guitar during that part, so I played acoustic, mimicking the piano part. 

"When it advanced into the chorus, we didn’t want to go full balls-out yet, so I just added a clean electric behind the chorus. That way, when the main riff kicked back in, it had more oomph to it. It was just a process of leaving room for each other, not stepping on each other’s toes but giving everybody something to do.

“We felt really good about it. Don Kirshner kept calling in, and we were holding the phone up to the speakers so he could hear it. Everybody in New York was excited. When we rolled the mix, that’s when it hit all of us: This is something different. That’s when we were high-fiving. We knew we had delivered something that was a game-changer for us.”

3. “The Wall” from ‘Leftoverture’ (1976)

“Kerry was on this weird, miraculous writing streak during Leftoverture. He comes in one day and says, ‘I got a song I wrote last night,’ just on an upright piano he had. And he starts playing all these parts and changes, and shows us the lyrics. We were like, ‘You wrote this last night? Where did that come from?!’ There are songs that for me are quintessential Kansas songs, and that is definitely in the top five.

“I can remember there was a sound that I really wanted to try for this song, one that I hadn’t previously used much. Once again, it was my trusty Marshall 100-watt Lead – the bass channel, with everything on 10, with my Les Paul, bass pickup, treble off, volume stopped. It creates such a cool lower overtone, with really good sustain but not an in-your-face kind of feel. That was the approach I took on this song for the solo part at the beginning. Since it re-occurs before the final verse, I did something a bit different.

“The rest of the song is basically keyboard-driven, so I’m playing a clean guitar and arpeggios through the chorus. I wasn’t sure what to play there, and Steve suggested that, and it was a good idea, so that’s what I added at that point.

“I remember I was sitting outside at the studio, which was in the country in Louisiana, and I could hear that opening being played through the door of the studio. It was my opportunity to really listen to it. Phil Ehart’s first wife was listening to it, too, and she said, ‘God, Rich, that’s beautiful!’ And that reaffirmed to me that I had created something there.”

4. “Point of Know Return” from ‘Point of Know Return” (1977)

“As I was saying about ‘Wayward Son,’ our approach here, once again, was to serve the song and just give it what it needs. We had the basic tracks done, with the violin, the heavy organ parts and stuff, and I thought, Do I really need to play here? As a result, I didn’t play in the opening – there just wasn’t room for it. For me, it was a very simple process of elimination: This sounds really solid with the Hammond organ and violin. I don’t need to be here, and we don’t need to keep me busy by creating a part, so let’s leave it alone.

“And I have to say, that’s hard. It’s really fear-based, like, ‘I can’t think of anything to do that would add anything. What’s wrong with me? I think I’m a professional guitar player, but I can’t think of anything!’ But you just have to accept that your instincts are right. So while I was scared that I sucked for a minute, in the end I did the right thing.

“For the verses, I played single notes, outlining a triad. We’d take the third up and play the corresponding part, and then play the fifth, and we created this triad with a very clear-stringed guitar sound and mixed that in with the piano. You really have to listen closely to hear that it’s there, and even then, you probably wouldn’t know it was a guitar. So that’s what I added to the verses. Then in the B section – ‘Your mother…’ – that seemed like a good spot to add a new Martin acoustic that I had. We were looking for a change in texture before it goes back into the ‘How long’ part, where I’m gone again.”

5. “Dust In the Wind” from ‘Point of Know Return’ (1977)

“Kerry had written the song, but it wasn’t really a song when it was being written. He brought in a really rough recording with an acoustic guitar, kind of mumbling the words. Me and Phil are going, ‘Whoa, this is a cool song!’ It was put on the back burner, and eventually we got to it. I played the basic tracks. I had never done much acoustic guitar finger-picking at all. I had once borrowed a banjo from a friend of mine and taken some banjo lessons, so I was used to playing with metal picks, which is what I used on this.

“Now, back then, on those old tape machines, you couldn’t even punch in a part; you had to record it in its entirety. So it took all day to record, just me alone with a naked, acoustic guitar. It was double-tracked on a Martin, and then I added a nylon-string guitar and double-tracked that with a high-strung guitar. I’d get to the end and hit a clam, and then it was, ‘Damn, now I’ve got to start over again!’ After a while, ear fatigue was really wearing on me, but I got it done.

“I came in the next day, and everyone was hanging their heads, saying, ‘We’ve got to re-do it. Listen to this.’ It all sounded great, except in the background you could hear this noise from all the layering of the guitars. Those metal picks sounded like a team of horses running through the song. So we couldn’t use it, and I started all over again. My fingers were bleeding by the time we were done with it. And, obviously, I got to know the song very well. [laughs] I knew it inside and out by the time we were done.”

You might think that master guitarist Steve Morse never gets in a rut with his playing. But guess what? He’s just like the rest of us in that regard. However, being that he’s Steve Morse, he’s figured out some ways to dig himself out of any kind of hole he finds himself in.

“I’ve found that changing my perspective always helps me,” Morse says. “One way I do that is by imposing limits on myself. We tend to gravitate toward choices that are easy on the guitar, and because of that we wind up playing a certain way.

“Let’s say you’re playing too many box patterns,” he suggests. “What you can do is say to yourself, ‘I’m only going to solo on the D and G strings.’ To make an octave phrase, you’re going to have to move your left hand. By doing that, you’ll play in a more linear manner. It’s a cool trick.”

He laughs. “It sounds counterintuitive,” he admits, “but by taking away options you’ve opened yourself up to playing in a way you never would before.”

Morse reveals another method that works in a similar manner. “Let’s say you’re playing a familiar shape with your left hand,” he says. “Tell yourself, ‘I can play on any string, but I can only use my third and fourth finger.’ Now you’re going to be forced to do different things. I love to do that. By limiting my options, I develop new ways to play, and then when I introduce my other fingers back into the equation, I’m doing things I never would have thought of.”

As you might expect, Morse has other suggestions and advice for guitar players of all levels, and they’re all tips that he’s employed himself over the years. “Some of them might sound a little weird,” he admits, “but I’ve always liked weird.”

1. Divide Your Practice Into Three Parts

“I find this is a good way to get in a solid session of practice. We’ll start out with technique. Slow things down whenever you hear a mistake or imperfection. Isolate it, analyze it, and then make up an exercise to give you repetitive chances to correct the mistake. For example, I’ve made up exercises to perfect my picking upwards on the B string and downwards on the E string.

“The next part of your practice is what I call ‘discovery.’ It involves writing, transcribing, recording and listening back to your performances to illustrate what you need to work on. Don’t skip this part! It’s really valuable to your overall progress on the guitar.

“The third part is the rewards section. After you’ve done the technique and discovery phases, you can goof off and play anything you want. Go nuts and get wild, or play stuff you’re comfortable with. You’ve earned it.”

2. Commit to Realistic Goals, and Stand by Your Commitments

“This has to do with human nature. You might say, ‘I want to play this at 200 beats per minute by next month.’ Okay, sounds good, but maybe start with something more realistic. Rather than committing yourself to a goal you don’t know you can achieve, why not commit yourself to an achievement that you know you can accomplish?

“Here’s something everybody can do: Tell yourself, ‘I’m going to practice for 35 minutes on technique before I set the guitar down to take a break.’ Don’t say you’re going to practice for three hours without a break. Nobody’s going to do that. All right, some people can. [laughs] But you know what I mean – set realistic goals. Be consistent and reliable. And here’s the thing: If you don’t set unrealistic goals, you’ll have less stress to deal with, and with less stress, you’ll find you play better.”

3. Be Real

“If you really believe in the music you’re playing, and you love the act of expressing it, it will go straight into the hearts of your audience. Now you’ve made a piece of art, and you’ve touched people. That’s what music is all about – a form of communication. To me, it’s the best in the world.

“I adopted this philosophy years ago. I remember early in my career with the Dixie Dregs, our booking agent said, ‘If you stopped all this crazy instrumental stuff and hired a singer, I could make you big money.’ I thought about it and said, ‘No. This is what the band is. This is who we are.’ We believed in what we were doing, and we loved doing it. We didn’t become rock stars, and we didn’t make millions of dollars, but we had our identity. We had something that was ours, and the people who loved our music stayed with us.”

4. Be a Student of the Universe

“This is both a life and career tip. Recognize that every person has been given a gift. Whatever it is, it’s different and has been distributed in different ways, but it’s just as valid as what you possess. Never think that you’re more important than somebody else, because you’re not, and never think that you can’t learn from somebody else, because you can.

“This holds true for your bandmates, of course, but it’s even true for people you come in contact with as part of your band activities. For example, take the people who work at a club, or maybe people on your crew: Take time to talk to them. Listen to them. They might have something to say that can teach you something. I’m a freak about learning from other people.

“I’ve seen artists who start to have success, and they begin to change. They start to think that they breathe rarified air and that they’re beyond listening to anybody else’s input or advice. They become arrogant. It’s just a matter of time before it works against them. How do you expect to move people if you close yourself off to them? In my mind, you can’t.”

5. Follow the Nine out of 10 Rule

“Several weeks before I’m set to perform, I introduce different methods to my practice routine. If I don’t have other people to play with, I’ll make some tracks to play along to and try to re-create the sounds that I’m going to deal with when I get with other musicians. By doing that, it changes the dynamics of my playing and the density of the notes I choose.

“Another thing I do is practice standing up. You use different muscles with your hands and feet when you’re standing up versus when you’re sitting down. It’s good to start using those muscles as early as you can so that you’re already in the zone. “Another thing I do is run through three songs without stopping so that I can perform them all perfectly. If I mess up, I start over until I get them right. I use the ‘nine out of 10 rule’: If I make one mistake, I have to play it nine times correctly. I’ll repeat each mistake I made until there are no mistakes.

“It sounds hard because it is hard, but the benefits are enormous. You’ll be able to play a piece, or even a whole set, and do it with feeling.”

Jimi Hendrix has gone down in history as one of the most significant musicians of the 20th century. Even today, over 50 years on from his death, his influence on the electric guitar is still profoundly felt. 

For many he was the ultimate electric guitarist. Hendrix was a musical visionary, a virtuoso, and an incendiary live performer (literally), accomplished songwriter and a skilled wordsmith. He was perceived as a social and cultural icon, lauded by both music fans and by his not insubstantial peers and followers.

We asked an array of phenomenal guitarists about the influence that Hendrix had on their own guitar development and music in general. So enjoy this special tribute to a master as some of the greatest guitarists in the world explain what Jimi means to them. 

Starring, in alphabetical order: Jan Akkerman, Jennifer Batten, Joe Bonamassa, Kirk Fletcher, Marty Friedman, Eric Gales, Brett Garsed, Paul Gilbert, David Grissom, Steve Hackett, Allen Hinds, Greg Koch, Michael Landau, Ronni Le Tekro, Steve Lukather, Hank Marvin, John McLaughlin, Steve Morse, Oz Noy, Orianthi, Uli Jon Roth, Joe Satriani, Kim Simmonds, Andy Timmons, Walter Trout and Carl Verheyen.

But which one of them isn't even a Hendrix fan?

JAN AKKERMAN

JAN AKKERMAN

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

I think he was a great musician and showman, but I had very different influences like Django Reinhardt, Wes Montgomery or the first rock pioneers, and all different styles because I used to play the accordion when I was six years old. So in short, NO second-hand blues licks. 

So in the beginning I didn’t pay too much attention. I did like "Hey Joe" and "The Wind Cries Mary" as compositions, but didn’t think much of it until I hooked up with Joachim Kuhn, a monster keyboard player and friend and totally into free jazz and a big fan of Hendrix. He emphasised the freedom of Jimi’s playing, which I loved, also especially the albums Electric Ladyland and Axis: Bold As Love. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

His style was very expressive to say the least. It is difficult to describe his technique because he didn’t care for that. I liked his tone on the Stratocaster. I like the sound of single-coils like Fender or my Gretsch White Falcon. One of the reasons I couldn’t play a Fender is because the controls are always in the way. Jimi didn’t have that problem because he played upside-down so the volume pot was on the other side of the guitar. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why? 

I still like "Hey Joe," "Spanish Castle Magic," etc, but I heard some experimental stuff which was pretty out as well. All in all he was one of the greatest artists in any scene. 

JENNIFER BATTEN

JENNIFER BATTEN 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

He represented a movement in electric guitar of breaking the boundaries of what had gone before, and challenging expectations in the role of the guitarist in a band. With his presence the guitar’s potential became adventurous, dangerous, exciting, and wild. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar? 

He brought a renewed creativity as to what was possible with guitar effects, harmonic composition, tremolo bar use, and manhandling the instrument for a totally new level of entertaining engagement. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

My favourite Hendrix moment was going to a double or triple bill movie of all Hendrix films. It was total immersion when I was a young teen. My parents wouldn’t let me go see him live at my age, when my sisters went and saw a double bill with Jimi and Joplin. So it was as close as I could get. I’m sure that was a chunk of inspiration that pushed my desire along to continue down the guitar rabbit hole. 

JOE BONAMASSA

JOE BONAMASSA 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi Hendrix meant the world to generations. He was the total package. Player, showman and writer. As innovative and revolutionary as his playing was it’s the songs that stand the test of time. Great guitar playing needs a vehicle for it to do that. Jimi has great songs... period. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

Jimi brought fire... He used his guitar as a weapon. Up until that point only Buddy Guy had weaponised the electric guitar. It was visceral and almost terrifying to listen to and watch as a young kid in his formative years. Beautiful tone, phrasing and use of chords. Game changer. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

Jimi at Monterey... Black 1965 Fender Strat, a Marshall stack and a blackface Fender Showman amp covering Bob Dylan’s "Like A Rolling Stone." A life-changing moment for those lucky enough to witness it in person, and life changing for me. 

KIRK FLETCHER

KIRK FLETCHER 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi Hendrix has meant many things. When I was a kid I saw Hendrix as an amazing guitarist both in and out of the studio. A sonic genius way ahead of his time. His command of sound with this deep understanding of soul. 

As I grew older I started thinking about how he came up with his guitar parts and his lyrics, and also studio techniques. And then for myself becoming a songwriter, it made me view his work in another light. When I listen to Are You Experienced the man could write a song three minutes long, like "Purple Haze" or "The Wind Cries Mary," and it’s still played somewhere on radio to this day. 

Imaginative storytelling lyrics with the most beautiful melodic guitar in a three-minute pop song? I mean, wow! 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

I feel he brought a whole new language to the guitar. His command of playing and blending so many styles and influences. There are so many branches to the Hendrix tree. For rock guitarists you have his use of the whammy bar and overdrive. 

I feel that the great funk movement of the 70s, groups like Funkadelic, were definitely inspired by Hendrix. I feel he wrote the book on funk-rock guitar soloing. His use of double- stops and rhythm guitar is a whole language. His melodic phrasing on ballads. It would be difficult for me to think of a music world without Jimi Hendrix’s contributions. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

Picking one Hendrix song is like saying which one of your kids you love the most! I would say "Are You Experienced." I mean that song is from the first LP. It has poetic, lyrical content. Completely amazingly orchestrated guitar parts. And it still sounds so fresh to my ears. 

I think I love that album so much because I have often dreamed about hearing it when it first came out in 67. It’s like that great line in that Joan Baez song Diamonds And Rust: “You burst on the scene already a legend!” 

MARTY FRIEDMAN

MARTY FRIEDMAN 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

When I was a kid, I was a massive fan of Uli Roth, Frank Marino and Robin Trower. I loved their playing and learned so much of it, inside and out. I was told that those guys were heavily influenced by Hendrix, so I checked him out. 

I understood the connection, but Hendrix just sounded very weak and undeveloped compared to those guys. Kind of like being used to an iPhone 11 and then someone tells you that if it weren’t for the iPhone 1, there would be no iPhone 11. This is true, and very important. But I’d still rather use an iPhone 11, figuratively speaking, especially as a teenager discovering music. 

I wasn’t there in the 60s when he did the things that inspired literally all of my guitar heroes. So I just never ‘got’ it. I was never into hippie, psychedelic, druggy mind-altering motifs in music so there was just never anything about him that attracted me to his music. How I filtered these same elements out of Trower’s and Marino’s music is anyone’s guess. Had I been around when Hendrix came out I might have felt differently. 

So even though I certainly know, respect and admire his monumental influence on music and great musicians, his music never connected to me personally. 

Recently I was on a long flight and listened to a huge collection of Hendrix to try to find something that I could get excited about. Believe it or not, I still couldn’t hear what everyone else is hearing. Maybe I’m missing something. 

People have this magical unconditional love for the guy, which is fantastic, but they never seem to point me towards some great piece of music that I need to hear from him. I’m always open to suggestions. I feel like it’s in the ‘you had to be there’ category.

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He brought so many great things to the guitar. Fashion, charisma, beautiful noise, aggressive blues playing like never before, wonderful angelic clean chord voicings, wild showmanship, and was an early innovator in experimentation with guitar sounds. 

You have to respect these things. He was a pioneer and was the first to do a lot of guitar things that are taken for granted 50 years later. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

In my first band, Deuce, we covered "Purple Haze" and I sang and played it. You can believe this or not, but I had never heard Hendrix at this point. The Mahogany Rush Live album was on loop in my world at the time, and could not have cared less that most of that album was cover songs. 

I adored Marino (still do) and when I discovered him, I probably got the same feeling that many guys in the 60s got when they discovered Hendrix. It’s all good. 

ERIC GALES

ERIC GALES 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

It's hard to sum up. But what I can say is that he brought to the world things that had never been explored in music, period, and also the guitar. He was a major influence on every guitarist in the world that came after him and even during him. That was a domino effect that added to a lot of others’ styles, that led to them carrying on the inspiration and influence. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He brought things to the guitar that even still today leaves great minds puzzled. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

It’s hard to give a single answer as to what’s my favourite Hendrix song. But I’d have to say my earliest memory of "May This Be Love" was and still is one of the songs that emotionally moved me, even as a young lad. And as I said it still does. 

BRETT GARSED

BRETT GARSED 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

My older brother had the Isle Of Wight album and also the Woodstock soundtrack which I was listening to before I even attempted to play the guitar. So Jimi was feeding the urge to give it a go. 

I went on to learn the version of "All Along The Watchtower" from the live album note for note, and was astonished when I heard the studio version with all the overdubs. The live version sounded massive to me and it was incredible to think it was just three musicians creating that wall of sound. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

The obvious things are the authentic R&B influences and his experimentation with effects which he pretty much set the standard for. The level of musicality that he achieved using the simplest of tools is still a high bar that most players strive for. 

But, the thing that astounded me was the way he intertwined his voice with his guitar playing, almost creating a third instrument. He had total independence between what he was playing and what he was singing, and the two would weave in and out of each other, sometimes in harmony, unison or total counterpoint. It’s an incredibly difficult skill to develop and, once again, Jimi had it mastered. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

It’s Jimi’s performance of "The Star Spangled Banner" from Woodstock. Not because I listen to it constantly for enjoyment but because of what it taught me about the power of music and sound to make an emotional statement. 

At first I was intrigued with the feedback, whammy bar divebombs and just the overall pyrotechnics of it, but when I discovered that the whammy bar was imitating actual bombs and inside the other sounds were machine gun fire and people screaming, I learned that he was superimposing a song of national pride over the horror of the Vietnam war and all conflict in general.

I never listened to that song the same way again and it became so much more powerful to me, as did the man who created it. 

PAUL GILBERT

PAUL GILBERT 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi’s rock songs grabbed me first. I liked "Foxy Lady," "Purple Haze," "Spanish Castle Magic," and "Crosstown Traffic." My uncle Jimi (who changed the spelling of his name to match Hendrix), recommended an album called War Heroes. I bought that, and listened to an instrumental called "Midnight" a lot. 

My parents also had a live record from the Monterey Pop Festival. One side was Otis Redding. The other side was Jimi. So I heard Jimi’s live versions of "Like A Rolling Stone," "Rock Me Baby," and "Wild Thing." 

When I was around 12, my mom took me to a midnight movie showing the Jimi Hendrix documentary. The clip of Jimi playing "Rock Me Baby" at Monterey was one of those breakthrough moments, when I suddenly ‘got it’. 

As time went on, I started to love Jimi’s rhythm playing with a cleaner sound as well. "Wait Until Tomorrow," "Castles Made Of Sand," and the intro of "Bold As Love" are all so beautiful. 

Now that I’m older, I love to listen to Jimi as an improviser. He was fearless, soulful, melodic, angry, gentle, and seemed to be singing through the guitar. Sure, there were some noises and ‘wrong’ notes. But when you blast a hole in the side of a mountain, some boulders are gonna fall. And he was ‘chopping it down with the edge of his hand’. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He brought a voice to guitar. He used enough volume and distortion to make the guitar sustain in the way that a human voice can. And he brought the elements of expression that a voice has; sliding, bending, contrasts of volume, texture, and length, and the best vibrato anyone had heard in 1966. 

Traditional guitar was NOT built to do this. The guitar is designed more like a lute, where chords are fretted, and the strings are plucked. It’s sort of a portable harpsichord, and the great fingerpickers from Segovia to Chet Atkins, played it masterfully like that. 

B.B. King, Otis Rush, Freddie King, and other early electric blues players certainly opened the door for what Jimi did. But Jimi’s songs, live performances, and use of sustain, took the guitar ‘as a voice’ into sounds that made everything before him seem outdated. 

Jimi said, “And you’ll never hear surf music again.” And when you hear the guitar intro of The Beach Boys’ "Surfin’ USA," it sounds pretty stiff, compared to the world that Jimi created. 

I still love The Beach Boys, and I don’t mind when guitar players play guitar like a guitar. But I must admit that a good portion of my time is spent trying to get my guitar to sing, like Jimi did. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

The first that comes to mind is "Killing Floor" live from Monterey Pop. It was Jimi’s chance to win an audience in the USA, and he was in competition with The Who. 

With that much pressure and adrenaline, most players would get thrown off balance. But Jimi launches into his opening number like a rocket. His aim is perfect. He is painting with a big brush, but still achieving detail. 

I can just imagine Pete Townshend watching in the wings, and thinking ‘Holy #$%!’ And Jimi hasn’t even turned on his distortion pedal yet. Look out! 

DAVID GRISSOM

DAVID GRISSOM 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

I was in junior high deep into The Stones and Beatles when I got Hendrix In The West. It was like finding the Holy Grail. I immediately got a wah-wah and obsessed on the live version of "Voodoo Chile" until I got close to copping some of it. 

I dreamed of having a Stratocaster and dug into the studio albums. Just as important to me was being inspired to discover Jimi’s influences. I was lucky to take lessons from a guy who turned me onto the three Kings and helped me connect the dots to Jimi. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

I think he changed electric guitar playing the same way Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker changed jazz. He drew from a very deep well. Not only was his playing mind blowing, he wrote really great innovative songs that covered a huge range of styles, tones, and dynamics. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

How do you pick just one? On the more intense side of things, the studio version of "Spanish Castle Magic" slays me. The moment that nearly brings me to tears every time I hear it is the solo on "May This Be Love." I love that softer, melodic side of Jimi. 

STEVE HACKETT

STEVE HACKETT 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Initially I thought he came across with a rare animal power, but when you look more closely, his lyrics are full of poetry. Sometimes the words are very dark with lots of references to imminent death and allusions to the next world. He played like a reanimated zombie, with a haunting otherworldly aspect. 

His showmanship seemed to come naturally to him. No-one ever moved as gracefully with the guitar in hand, as if he possessed this extra electric limb. I feel it was his fluidity as well as his innovation and risk-taking that impressed and influenced me. His playing was heady stuff for me as an aspiring teenage rocker. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

Hendrix was a bluesman with a very big difference. I knew his guitar tech, Eric Barrett, who said that Jimi played through feedback constantly, like a weapon permanently set on stun. The spacecraft aspect of his playing was hugely inspiring. He was always going to take you on a trip to some uncharted part of the universe. His playing skirts the limits of earthly experience. It’s virtually a shamanic inner journey. 

He also brought many production ideas to the guitar. Somehow you feel at Woodstock that he was trying to register his protest at the falling bombs on Vietnam, managing to say as much with his guitar as other protest songs had done with words. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

I think "Purple Haze" is my favourite Hendrix song. It’s a very cleverly written tune, and is full of unexpected twists. It defines the term psychedelic. Both the angular guitar riff and the opening dissonant chords give you that feeling of Iron Man Cometh. 

But there’s vulnerability too in the lyric, with the idea 
of confusion running through it. Although "Purple Haze" is a short song, he often played it live with extended moments which sometimes literally did "kiss the sky," to quote the lyric. 

His impact on music was huge. A man who didn’t need a light show. For me it was just enough to watch the alchemy of his fingers, his dexterity and the way he danced with his instrument. 

ALLEN HINDS

ALLEN HINDS 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

I remember my older brothers and sisters buying Are You Experienced. First thing was, “holy crap, this is the coolest guy I’ve ever seen”, so the nostalgia factor is high. He could play really well and I fell in love with the songs. Even though I loved the Beatles, he was the first guitarist I wanted to emulate. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He brought a Marshall amp and psychedelic sensibility to the blues and R&B. I suspect even to him the acceleration of volume and feedback with amplification was overwhelming. I think he was just holding on for dear life, in a great way. No one had heard anything like that before! 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

For the playing alone I love Band Of Gypsys the most. Listen to his solo in "Machine Gun." He was so creative. You could extract some of his improvised phrases and make complete song melodies. 

He was like a jazz player in that sense and could create something from nothing. You just waited on the edge of your seat for the next burst of emotion. Still the very best! 

Some confuse his curiosity and adventurism as sloppy at times, but I don’t hear that at all; he was searching and going where no man had gone before. 

Just imagine if he were here now! 

GREG KOCH

GREG KOCH 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi was and is my main inspiration. He was a true innovator as a guitarist, songwriter, performer and purveyor of sonic mayhem. My chordal approach as well as blues playing is heavily influenced by Jimi’s. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

Of course the way he manipulated the whammy bar, or Mr Wiggles as I like to say, along with feedback and his creative use of effects from the Octavia to the Uni-Vibe greatly expanded the emotive range of the electric guitar. 

His greasy blues phrasing and extraordinary rhythm playing really has left an indelible mark on everyone since. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

It’s hard to narrow it down to one. Let’s just say if I had to bring one record to a desert island it would be Axis: Bold As Love. 

MICHAEL LANDAU

MICHAEL LANDAU 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

I first heard the song "Purple Haze" when I was eight years old. We were driving around in my mother’s car and when it came on the radio it scared me to death. But after I heard the song a few times, it started to have a calming affect on me and I couldn’t get enough of it. 

His music and his guitar playing demonstrated all of the different sides of human emotion in such a beautiful way. His influence has always been enormous. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He reinvented it, plain and simple. He showed everyone a completely new and fresh approach to playing techniques and sonic possibilities that had never been done before. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

"Castles Made Of Sand" would be one of my many favourites. Here Jimi was mixing R&B style guitar playing with abbreviated jazz voicings as only he had done, and the tone was just so raw and beautiful. The sentiment of the lyrics on that song are beautiful as well... it’s almost like a nursery rhyme, but for grown-ups. 

I also love the out-take of "Blue Suede Shoes" from the Loose Ends record. You can really hear the joy, the energy, and the fun he was having with Buddy Miles in the studio. Such a great moment. 

RONNI LE TEKRO

RONNI LE TEKRO 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

I started playing the electric guitar in 1976, just a few years after Jimi passed away. At the time 1970 seemed like 100 years ago, being 13 myself. My uncle gave me "The Wind Cries Mary." It was a revelation. 

I loved his voice, playing and image from day one. Later, when I was able to hear more material I instantly understood that Jimi was one of a kind. His ability to push the guitar into new landscapes stunned me and has been a big inspiration. Especially his extensive and abusive use of the vib-bar as well as implementing large doses of feedback. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

Jimi revolutionised the electric guitar. Still I haven’t heard another guitar player with such rhythmical feeling. His solos and playing are so incorporated into his compositions. It’s reaching a higher dimension when you play, sing and compose like that. He was driving the band to magical heights. 

My favourite line-up must be with Mitchell and Redding. Those guys certainly knew how to play freely on the highest level. It sounds like it’s out of control. 

I love that Jimi also gave all guitar players a warning about what could happen to you if you indulge in chemical drugs. Some didn’t take the warning, unfortunately. They sensed that drugs where the driving force in Jimi’s music, but like Jimi they couldn’t handle it. 

His image and live performances inspired and inspires most of us. That being said, I have always been trying to create my own sound and way of playing the guitar. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

My favourite song is "The Wind Cries Mary," simply because it was the first track I ever listened to. It’s something about that song that still gives me the shivers. The production is so full of life and feeling. I think his opening guitar line has probably been copied a million times. 

Of his live performances my favourite is Isle Of Wight festival. You can sense it’s getting closer to the end but little did Jimi know. He is delivering a show out of hell. 

Later I learned to love Frank Marino and the Mahogany Rush. I think he is the guitar player that developed and carried Jimi’s legacy the best. Check out "King Bee" from his Live album. I think Jimi would have been proud.

STEVE LUKATHER

STEVE LUKATHER 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

It was the aftershock of the Beatles changing the world, then an alien came and landed on our planet to give those that understood, the truth. All that before he was 27 years old. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

A total reinvention of the possibilities. He could make a statement with his use of feedback and amazing use of chords and R&B stylings which he made his own. Very loudly! It’s like nothing else. I’m not sure anyone could make an impact like that afterwards. 

EVH did but he was not on a cultural level because Jimi was part of the 60s anti- establishment scene. Black man with a white band accepted by everyone but I never saw colour, just the sound. It was a colossal sound; the anger and intensity of "Machine Gun" through to the softness of "The Wind Cries Mary."

Goodness knows what he could have gone on to have done!

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

Impossible. They are all a huge part of my growing up. Kids today might not ‘get it’ but remember this was 1966! NOTHING like it had happened before or indeed after it. 

HANK MARVIN

HANK MARVIN 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

It was probably early 1967 when I first heard the Jimi Hendrix Experience. They were performing their first single, "Hey Joe," on Top Of The Pops and, as we say in the weather bureau, I was blown away. 

I loved Jimi’s guitar solo, blues but not as we know it and with so much feeling. Jimi opened the door to a whole new world of guitar playing. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

I’m not aware of anyone before Jimi using feedback in the way he did, or using the whammy bar to create effects so extreme that it probably contributed to global warming. 

He also showed the music world that the electric guitar could be played with the teeth, used as a fireplace and in the right hands be a wonderfully expressive instrument. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

The opening riff on "Purple Haze" is hard to beat, but then there’s the live version of "Red House" on Hendrix in the West. I love those deceptive bends. 

JOHN McLAUGHLIN

JOHN McLAUGHLIN 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi changed the electric guitar forever. I was exposed to the acoustic guitar playing of Muddy Waters at the age of 11, and it was revolutionary. Jimi started a revolution 25 years later. Now while I was exposed to Muddy, Bill Broonzy and other great blues players at an early age, I got captured by jazz from 15 years old. But on hearing Jimi for the first time, I heard a guitar being played in a way I’d never heard before. 

At the same time I could hear the profound influence of Muddy Waters not only in the playing but in Jimi’s singing. It was completely new and yet I could hear the history behind his playing. 

I mention my love of jazz but there’s a connection to Jimi here. Jimi revolutionised the sound of the guitar using distortion to bring in harmonics; by the mid 1960s, John Coltrane began to bring in harmonics into his sound and, while the two styles of Coltrane and Jimi are really diverse, there is something very deep that connects them. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

By renewing the influences of the great Mississippi blues players, Jimi brought history up to date with a concept that was not only contemporary, but remains contemporary today. 

There are great musicians who have a powerful impact on other musicians, but to create a new concept of playing is even more significant. I think it’s safe to say that the concept Jimi introduced, changed the way of playing the guitar for all time. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

My favourite piece from Jimi is his interpretation of "The Star Spangled Banner." With a guitar, an amp and a wah-wah pedal, he created not only the most amazing interpretation of the American National Anthem, full of irony, but the most powerful anti-war piece of music I’ve heard to this day. 

STEVE MORSE

STEVE MORSE 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

I loved the way that he created mind-bending, unreal atmospheres with his studio recordings; the backwards solos, the echo effects, Rotovibe, wah-wah, octave box, slide effects, whammy bar, etc. 

I was just a young teenager and I just wanted to play "Purple Haze" and "You Experience" solos upstairs in my room with my amp cranked up to get feedback. That is partly how I developed an approach where I mute all the strings but the one I am playing, in order to limit the feedback only to the string I wanted. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

All the previously mentioned sounds (backwards solos, echo effects, Rotovibe, wah-wah, octave box, slide effects, whammy bar, etc), but also strong phrasing, soulful, powerful bends, and melodic rhythm playing. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

That would be "Are You Experienced." In fact, I wrote a ‘in the style of Hendrix’ piece called "Well, I Have” as a tribute. The ending part has the backwards solo too! 

OZ NOY

OZ NOY

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Hendrix is the most influential and important electric guitarist that ever lived. His tone, touch, energy, musicality and fire to me are what rock-blues electric guitar is. I loved Hendrix’s songwriting, and his sense of rhythm influenced so many guitar players in all different styles of music from rock to funk to R&B to gospel. 

Also, to me he is one of the greatest blues players to ever lived, as every time he played a slow blues it was special. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He opened the doors to electric guitar in such a huge way, that I don’t think anybody has more influence on the instrument than he did. The tone of both his rhythm and lead guitar is still untouchable. His soloing was obviously amazing, the depth of his blues roots mixed with this new-age rock feel using very loud amps that created a lot of sustain. 

I don’t think any of that existed before him, and if it did it wasn’t on such an extreme level. He was also a very special rhythm guitar player. The use of wah-wah, fuzz and Univibe set the bar for those sounds to this day, really. 

Hendrix didn’t only change music, he changed our culture! 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

"Castles Made Of Sand." I also love the intro and the actual song and the guitar tone of "Spanish Castle Magic." I love the rhythm guitar playing; it’s hard to choose one! 

ORIANTHI

ORIANTHI 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

The first time I heard Jimi Hendrix was when my dad put on the Woodstock video. I was 11 years old. I was blown away. The freedom in his playing and the sounds he created inspired me so much. He was such a force. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He opened people’s minds. He was an innovator and was constantly searching. He made the guitar sound like no other. He changed the way people heard it. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

"The Star Spangled Banner" from Woodstock. It’s just an amazing moment. I also love the acoustic performance of "My Train A Coming."

My favourite tune is "Voodoo Chile" though. I cover it a lot. 

ULI JON ROTH

ULI JON ROTH 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi was my most important influence, artistically speaking, when I was younger. I can’t even begin to put into words how much I have learned and soaked up from that man. 

To this day, his music doesn’t get old, but always sounds fresh and incredibly alive. His contribution to the world of guitar playing and rock music is unbelievably important. Of all the people in rock music, Jimi was simply the most unique and most visionary. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He brought a completely new approach, both in terms of playing as well as forging a sound which had never been heard before. His playing was always so much more than ‘just’ guitar playing, though. 

There was always something deeper, something more meaningful, something mysterious behind the notes. He was one of the great inspired artists of all time, and because of that he will be remembered forever. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

There are so many moments that are totally inspired and unique, but if I have to pick one, it would be Axis: Bold As Love. It doesn’t get better than that. 

JOE SATRIANI

JOE SATRIANI 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi’s heart and soul were evident on everything he played. This had the most profound effect on me as a young player. I still get the feeling that he surrendered himself to the music every time he performed. 

For Jimi, every song was a unique opportunity for expression, exploration and exposition. Even though he was a true showman, he still strove for something new, honest and ‘of the moment’. 

His skills as an improvisor were spellbinding, and convinced me as a young musician that that very skill had to be part of my life’s pursuit. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He showed us that the electric guitar could be played with far more expressiveness than previously attempted. 

He innovated with his fingers, hands, and his whole mind and body on every song he played. 

He proved that the sound of the guitar was a vastly larger tool for musical story telling. 

He showed us that you could play like a virtuoso without reminding the audience of anything that sounded like scales and exercises. 

I could go on... 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

Every time someone asks me this question I find a new answer. The problem is, I love all of Jimi’s songs! For sheer groundbreaking electric guitar brilliance it has to be "Machine Gun" from the Band Of Gypsys: Live At the Fillmore. For sheer beauty maybe it’s May This Be Love or 1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be). 

But, I can’t ignore the magic captured on film at the Monterey Pop Festival when Jimi talks to the audience and introduces the Bob Dylan song "Like A Rolling Stone," and then proceeds to reinvent it, elevate it, and destroy it, along with his guitar! 

His innocence, boldness, naivety, audacity, musicianship, showmanship, are all gloriously on display in this once-in-a-lifetime and beautifully captured moment. 

KIM SIMMONS

KIM SIMMONS (Savoy Brown) 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi made me focus on who I wanted to be as a guitarist. He was so flamboyant and multi-faceted that I knew I couldn’t compete on that level, so I had to look within and find my own personality and style. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

Jimi’s guitar playing was Arabesque. It was a mixture of rock, blues, gospel and jazz. He brought a sensuality to the instrument that we hadn’t seen before. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

"Foxy Lady" comes immediately to mind. It was on his 1967 debut album and the song brings back happy memories of London in that time period. 

ANDY TIMMONS

ANDY TIMMONS 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi’s life and music are a continuous source of inspiration and encouragement to explore growth and creativity in a most loving and spiritual way. His true beauty of character emanated through his guitar and his songwriting. Jimi also spoke with the same beauty and eloquence with which he played his guitar and wrote his poetic music. 

I encourage you to seek out interviews and documentaries to learn more about the incredible human Jimi was. And is!

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

I think we largely take for granted much of Hendrix’s innovation in technique and tone today. You have to consider what he did, when he did it. Think about the other music that was happening in late 1966 and early 1967! 

His masterful command of chordal embellishment, his incredibly soulful bending, his array of tones, his control of feedback, his use of the vibrato bar, his ferocious and charismatic live performances. 

All of these elements were certainly beginning to be implemented by other performers and players, but nobody had put it all together in such a highly developed fashion like Jimi. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

Though I have many favourites ("Freedom," "Angel," "May This Be Love"), "All Along The Watchtower" has always stood out as a really special Hendrix recording. It’s at once dark yet beautiful, haunting yet uplifting. An incredible reading of his hero Bob Dylan’s beautiful lyric, Bob’s precedent gives Jimi even more confidence vocally. The guitar tones and incredibly melodic soloing take you into the stratosphere! 

All that being said, my favourite moment was easy to pick. His performance of "The Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock is legendary on so many levels: the tone, approach and arrangement, the protest of the war, the sombreness and finally the beautiful love of his country despite its deep flaws. 

The moment? Check out the melody that magically appears at 2:10 in the midst of chaos, anguish, air raids, bombs, missiles and terror. Almost like permutated taps. Sombre yet hopeful. 

WALTER TROUT

WALTER TROUT 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

It’s monumental. He took electric guitar playing to an entirely new place. I was 15 and this friend of mine said, I have this album by this new guy, Jimi Hendrix, come on over. I was into Michael Bloomfield and Scotty Moore and James Burton, and I went over and he put on the first Hendrix album. I said, “It doesn’t even sound like a guitar, this is the worst shit I ever heard!” 

Then I realised he’d taken what the rest of the world knows about the electric guitar further than anyone had ever taken it. And to this day he’s my favourite guitarist. But it was so new that it was shocking to hear it. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar?

He was huge once I came around to what he was doing. I had to listen to "Red House" before I realised he’s playing the blues. Even though he was pushing the limits, everything he was doing was based in blues, and R&B and soul music. 

He’s putting it all together and playing it through an electric guitar like no one had ever done before. I think Jeff Beck is the world’s greatest living guitar player, but Jimi was the ultimate. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why?

My favourite track is "Voodoo Child." But I mean the long slow jam version, not the "Slight Return" that everyone plays ad nauseam, every club band. But with that slow blues version, everyone is in the studio and they’re just having this great blues jam.

 Steve Winwood is on Hammond B3 I think, and they just do this long, slow, 14-minute blues jam. For me, his guitar playing on there is the ultimate of everything that he ever did. 

CARL VERHEYEN

CARL VERHEYEN 

What did Jimi Hendrix mean to you as a player?

Jimi Hendrix is a huge influence on my rhythm guitar playing. His concepts and chord voicings have saved me countless times in the studio when searching for a part. All you have to do is learn these five songs: "The Wind Cries Mary," "Castles Made Of Sand," "Electric Ladyland," "Bold As Love," and of course "Little Wing." 

You’ll see that his rhythm licks in D Major are the same as the ones he uses for the relative Minor which is Bm. Learn the rhythm licks and study this Major-Minor concept and you’ll be a much better rhythm guitar player. 

What do you think Hendrix brought to the guitar? 

Jimi was a pivotal musician in the 20th century. Besides his R&B training with Little Richard’s Upsetters, he draws on the Delta blues players’ deeply moving tradition of acoustic blues. That tradition migrates up the river to Chicago where players like Muddy Waters electrify it, and one-chord Delta blues songs become Catfish Blues and Two Trains Running in Muddy’s band. 

When Hendrix arrives on the scene mid-century, he turns them into psychedelic rave-ups like "Voodoo Chile" and "Machine Gun," thus carrying the tradition into mainstream rock. Obviously his use of distortion, effects and recording techniques were huge breakthroughs for the electric guitar, but I believe his contribution to popular music will be remembered equally for its deep roots in American blues. 

What’s your favorite Hendrix moment, and why? 

It’s really hard to pick one because I love "May This Be Love" as much as "Who Knows" from Band Of Gypsies. But the long version of Voodoo Chile stands out for me because Jimi is baring his soul on this record. Tuned down a whole step, his huge Strat sound completely fills the room. 

When I recorded with Jimi’s engineer Eddie Kramer a few years ago, I asked him how he got that sound on this ‘live in the studio’ recording. Eddie said, “That was Jimi’s amp bleeding into all the mics: Steve Winwood’s Leslie cabinet mic, Mitch Mitchell’s drum overheads, Jack Casady’s bass amp mic, and the vocal mic.” I said, “Weren’t you worried about phasing issues?” He replied, “We got lucky!” 

I hold this up as one of the greatest Stratocaster sounds of all time. Very lucky indeed! 

Originally published in Guitar Techniques issue 314. Subscribe to Guitar Techniques in print or digital.

If you like in-depth interviews with great guitar players AND you like to hear them play, then you need to listen to our No Guitar Is Safe podcast.

Presented by Guitar Player and hosted by Jude Gold, No Guitar Is Safe is free to listen to at your leisure on iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts.

With over 150 episodes uploaded there’s plenty to get your teeth into.

Ready to “fly the ‘copter” all the way to Germany? 

Well, being that Jude Gold was just on tour with Jefferson Starship opening shows for Deep Purple all over Europe (so cool!), you know there was NO WAY he was not going to land an interview with their brilliant new guitarist, Simon McBride.

This exciting episode takes us all the way to Oberhausen, Germany, for an inspiring backstage guitar hang with the Irish six-string virtuoso, where, in a side room at the town’s Rudolf Weber-Arena (FKA the König-Pilsener-Arena) Simon plugs in his custom Paul Reed Smith.

Here, he demonstrates many of the captivating electric guitar approaches employed each night on stage with his legendary bandmates – Ian Gillan, Ian Paice, Roger Glover, and Don Airey.

Simon also reflects on what it means to take over the guitar chair from longtime Deep Purple guitarist Steve Morse – who, after 28 years in the band, stepped down earlier this year.

Elsewhere, the maestro reveals what it’s like follow in the footsteps of Deep Purple’s founding guitarist, Ritchie Blackmore; trade licks each night with the band’s formidable keyboardist, his good friend Don Airey; and start off one of the world's most iconic guitar songs each night, "Smoke on the Water."

Thank you for listening!

Visit the Deep Purple website for news and tour info.

John Petrucci is currently on his first headlining solo tour with drummer Mike Portnoy (also of Dream Theater) and bassist Dave LaRue (Steve Morse/Dixie Dregs) and will be appearing at the fabulous Palace of Fine Arts Theatre in the fabled Marina District of San Francisco on Monday.

Special guests Meanstreak – the all-female power/thrash metal band from New York – will be opening up.

Petrucci graced the cover of GP's August issue alongside mentor Steve Morse for a shred summit sharing their experiences and advice on the art of guitar craft.

Check out this article that includes the official video for the title track of Petrucci’s 2020 solo effort Terminal Velocity, and a video of Petrucci commemorating two decades of working with Ernie Ball Music Man.

Petrucci has amassed a vast array of signature instruments, and the 2022 Majesty Collection includes an outrageous 8-string.

Petrucci says, “I just celebrated 20 years with Ernie Ball Music Man. It’s been such a great experience. Beyond building guitars, there’s a family there. 

"I’m proud to play these guitars and be a part of the family.”

His latest single is the hard-driving “Temple of Circadia,” and here’s the officially kick-ass animated video...

Come see Petrucci put all his musical craftiness and instrumental craftsmanship into play at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts Theatre on Monday. 

Tickets are selling super fast, so secure yours right now here.

WIN TICKETS!

For a chance to win a pair of tickets to see GP Presents John Petrucci, send an email to gp@jimmyleslie.com with “Petrucci” in the subject and simply include a sentence about yourself and why you want to go.

Phone contact greatly appreciated for confirmation.

Winner must provide own transportation to the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, California on Monday, November 7, and have own accommodations in the Bay Area.

Best of luck!

EVENT DETAILS

Guitar Player Presents John Petrucci plus Meanstreak

Monday, November 7

The Palace of Fine Arts Theatre
3301 Lyon Street San Francisco, CA 94123

Call/Text: 415-855-1607

7pm doors, 8pm show; All Ages

Free Guitar Player magazines and Martin strings

BUY TICKETS HERE.

“How does anybody play guitar like that?” Dream Theater guitarist and main man John Petrucci says, recalling his reaction when he first heard the music of Steve Morse. “It was the wildest, most incredible stuff I had ever heard. There are moments that you can pinpoint and say they were truly life-changing, and for me, hearing Steve Morse play guitar was one of them.” 

It was the mid ’80s and Petrucci was a metal-crazed high schooler and budding guitarist big on Metallica, Iron Maiden, and Ozzy Osbourne. “I spent most of my free time practicing, and I thought I was getting pretty good,” he says. “I could play a lot of the stuff by my heroes pretty well.” 

One day, a friend’s older brother gave Petrucci a mixtape of tracks by the Dixie Dregs, a band the young guitar player had vaguely heard of, along with a sage piece of advice: “You have to listen to Steve Morse.” 

Petrucci didn’t know what to expect when he loaded the tape in his deck. The first song that came up was “The Bash,” an exuberant, revved-up and rocking country jam on which Morse charges out of the gate like a bucking bronco, blitzing across the fretboard and spinning wild chicken-picking licks all over the neck while keeping pace with Allen Sloan’s hyper-giddy violin lines. 

“It totally blew my mind,” Petrucci says. “I couldn’t understand how anybody could play like that. I wasn’t very familiar with bluegrass, but Steve mixed it with rock in such an exciting way. His technique and phrasing hooked me immediately.”

From that moment, Morse zoomed to the top of the list as Petrucci’s favorite guitar player. “I even transcribed the song, because I wanted to learn how to play like that,” he says. “I did the deep dive and immersed myself in all things Dregs and Steve Morse. Whatever he played, I had to hear it. He became ‘the guy.’” 

By Petrucci’s estimation, Morse’s impact on his guitar playing has been incalculable. “He helped bend and shape my approach to the guitar in so many ways,” he says. “The first was compositionally. I loved how he could incorporate rock, bluegrass, and classical, and that added flavors to my repertoire. Technically, Steve took me to a very high level. I read about his approach to practicing, and that prompted me to apply his work ethic to my own practice routine. I said, ‘I’m going to do what he did and follow in his footsteps.’” 

Happily, Petrucci reports that the oft-repeated adage “don’t meet your heroes, they’ll only disappoint you” doesn’t apply to here. After first encountering his idol at a guitar clinic Morse was conducting, Petrucci, by then a guitar star in his own right, went on to establish a peer-to-peer relationship with him. 

“Developing a real friendship with Steve has been remarkable,” he says. “Over the years, we’ve played together and have done some writing together. We’ve toured together, Dream Theater and the Dregs. We share the same manager, and we both have a relationship with Ernie Ball Music Man, so we’ve done a lot of events together. It’s just incredible. I love hanging out and doing signings with Steve. He’s always so smart, insightful, and funny. I’m still like a kid who’s in awe of him, and I always will be.”

For his part, Morse seems similarly bedazzled by Petrucci. “I would hear him on records, and his playing was so astonishing,” he says. “I’d think, This guy just can’t be real. It’s rare to find somebody who really pushes the limits of everything that can be done on the guitar, and John does that so powerfully. I find that very inspiring.” 

He recalls going backstage to meet with Petrucci before a Dream Theater show. “It was the first time I really hung out with him,” Morse says. “John was warming up, and it confirmed to me, Yep, he’s human. I thought, He’s going to start at this tempo, he’s going to increase it, and he’s going to put in the time so that when he hits the stage, he’s gonna explode. 

"He let me witness what is usually a very private time, and that really struck me as being meaningful. It was like him telling me, ‘I’m comfortable enough with you to let you see what I do when I’m alone, because I know you’ll understand. And then I’m going to go out and kill people.’ Which he did. It was a big deal.” 

Hearing this for the first time, Petrucci lets out a laugh. “And the whole time, I was freaking out inside. All I was thinking was, Oh, my god. Steve Morse is watching me warm up!” 

Guitar Player recently extended an invitation to Petrucci to lead Morse in a mentor-mentee discussion about his career and shredcraft. Within minutes of the two men sitting down to chat, it became clear that this wouldn’t be a standard Q&A session but rather an engaging, relaxed, and at times freewheeling exchange between two giants of the guitar… who also happen to be very good friends. We present their conversation, with Guitar Player occasionally chiming in.

Influences

John Petrucci: "Steve, I’m reminded about something. I did an interview one time and I mentioned how you were my biggest influence, and then something happened that I’ll never forget: You called me." 

Steve Morse: "Oh, yeah. I remember that!" 

Petrucci: "It was the coolest thing. I guess you got my number from our mutual manager, Frank Solomon. You left a message on my answering machine. It meant so much to me. In fact, we still have the answering machine with the tape and your message. I cherished it so much. It was so awesome that you did that. You didn’t even know me at the time." 

Morse: "Yeah, well, I was very impressed with your band. But you as a guitar player, it was so incredible to me to hear somebody at such a young age who had this command of the instrument. It wasn’t like you had this one trick, you know? And the thing about you is, you keep getting better." 

Petrucci: "Oh, my…" 

Morse: "Well, it’s true. You think, This guy can’t possibly get any better, but then you do. I was listening to your last solo album [2020’s Terminal Velocity], and your playing is just effortless. There’s great writing and ideas, and everything musically is performed with such control. Your vibrato – it’s all right there. It’s like, I can’t handle it. [laughs] And you do it on each recording. I don’t know how you do it, but you do."

Petrucci: "Oh, wow… That’s such praise. Of course, my whole practice mentality came from reading articles about you – interviews in which you talked about your discipline and your own practice routine. That’s what got me into using a metronome and really putting the hours in. What inspired me about you was how you talked about setting a goal and going about achieving it, no matter how long it took. 

"The only other person I read about who did something similar was Randy Rhoads, and how he started learning classical guitar. I’m curious: Who had that kind of impact on you?" 

Morse: "Well, it’s kind of a long story. For me, that all started with John McLaughlin. I went to see him and the Mahavishnu Orchestra at this outdoor show at our college, only the gig was rained out and they had to set up in the cafeteria. I got to be the first person right in front of the whole band." 

Petrucci: "Wow!" 

Morse: "I was sitting on the floor and they were up on a small stage. The power and energy from the band was incredible. I was close enough to see that John McLaughlin was picking every note, and he sounded incredible. He just destroyed everybody. It was that moment where everything was like, 'Yes!' It made me think playing guitar at this high level could be very effective. It was never going to be pop music or a path to riches, but it was something that interested me deeply. 

"In music school, I was studying piano. Everybody had to. I remember hearing my teacher talking with one of her students who was worried about an upcoming recital and said, 'I don’t know. I’ve just made some mistakes.' And the teacher said, 'Well, let’s go through it. Have you been practicing your four to six hours a day? Have you been doing your memory practice so you can work on the piece without being in front of the instrument? Have you done the analysis? Have you done this? Have you done that?' It was a complete checklist. 

"That was the level that you had to be at if you were going to play at a recital, and I just remember thinking, Wow! So that really impressed me, and it helped push me in terms of what I expected out of practice. I expected myself to be able to do what a keyboard player could do."

Petrucci: "Hearing you talk about seeing McLaughlin and how he picked every note reminds me of how I felt when I heard you play “The Bash” [from the Dixie Dregs’ 1979 album, Night of the Living Dregs]. All the guys I was into before that were really good technically, but they didn’t play like that. From that point on, my whole mentality was like, I need to be able to pick every note. 

"Then I got into Al Di Meola and other players who could pick every note. It became something of a litmus test, like, only real players can do that. You know, none of this wimpy hammer-on sweeping. [laughs] Now, as I’ve learned about guitar since, all the techniques are awesome, and it’s fun to be able to do everything. I’m not as snobby as I was as a teenager. But there was a period where I was like, 'I’ve got to pick every note because that’s what Steve Morse does.'" 

Morse: "Picking every note was a way to be more versatile. Wrist licks and those 'tweedly-tweedly' pull-offs are extremely natural, and they work great for blues and rock stuff, but what about classical music and stuff where you’re playing along with a horn player, a keyboard player, or a violinist? 

"I’m talking about stuff where the music doesn’t necessarily lay out that well on the guitar." 

Petrucci: "Exactly." 

Morse: "Fingering-wise, nobody knows more about that stuff than you, John. You play with [Dream Theater keyboardist] Jordan Rudess."

Beating The Keyboard Player To The Punch

Petrucci: "Well, that leads me to a question for you, Steve. As you know, I’ve been playing with keyboard players for years, so I’ve always been in a position where they’ll come up with something that feels incredibly comfortable to them, and then it’s like, 'Okay, play this on guitar.' And I’m like, 'Why are there so many fourths?' Translating it to guitar isn’t always so easy. My approach is to figure out the easiest way to play it. What do you do?" 

Morse: "Well, the first thing I try to do is beat the keyboard player to the punch."

Petrucci: "Of course! [laughs] 

Morse: "When writing something with a keyboard player, I’ll say, 'What was the best voicing for that other chord?' Then while they’re trying to figure out what I’m talking about, I’ll start thinking, Oh, this line will work, and that line will work… 'Oh, by the way,' I’ll say, 'I’ve got an idea for that fast part.' 

Petrucci: "That’s awesome. I love it." 

Morse: "That way, I know I can play whatever it is, because I’ve already worked out all the possibilities. I do that every single time. Well, I mean, I try to do it. Sometimes you can get stuck. 

"Once when I was working with Flying Colors [Morse’s prog-rock side project], [singer] Neal Morse came up with something. He showed it to me, and the tempo was okay. Then [drummer] Mike Portnoy came in, and pretty soon the tempo got faster and faster, to the point where it was just screaming. It was almost impossible. I had to keep changing the fingering to keep up. It was just one of those things: You do what you have to do." 

Petrucci: "I hear you." 

Morse: "You had mentioned fourths. When I was at the peak of my technique, I could play fourths across the strings at about 80 percent of the speed that I could play fast single notes – linear notes, rather. Guitar players tend to think more linear, and when you come up with lines and present them to a keyboard player, it’s funny watching them learn it, because it’s not natural for them. 

"They have to use two hands. It’s very easy for us to repeat a note and do a tremolo thing, but it’s really hard for them."

Working Harder

John, you had mentioned hearing Steve play “The Bash” the first time on record. What did you think the first time you saw him play it live? Was it with the Dregs? 

Petrucci: "No, it was with the Steve Morse Band. When he played clubs like My Father’s Place [a former music venue in Roslyn, New York] with the Dregs, I was too young to get into bars. I kind of missed that whole period. 

"I first saw Steve when he put out The Introduction [the Steve Morse Band’s 1984 debut album] and he was playing with a trio on Long Island. Seeing him live was amazing. I was blown away by several things. [to Morse] You guys were a trio but you sounded huge – so full and musical. I loved your guitar sound. And, of course, you had multiple volume pedals, and you were bringing delays in, and chorus. It sounded so beautiful. 

"You were playing lines that I had only heard on tapes and records, but now you’re playing them before my eyes. You were sort of combining parts. I was amazed that all this sound was coming out of one guitar player. I would go to see you again and again, and I remember having this feeling that you kept getting better every time."

Morse: "That’s very kind. I was trying to get better."

Petrucci: "Actually, I met you before that. I was a student at the Berklee College of Music, and I went to see you at a clinic at a music shop right by the school. I remember waiting in line, and you walked in with your gig bag. I was freaking out, like, 'Oh, my God. There he is! That’s him!' [laughs] At the clinic, you taught all this stuff, and I don’t know if I had written it out while you were talking, but I immediately went back and learned it all. 

"I still practice the things that you taught at that clinic. I was 18 years old. You taught me something very valuable that day about how you hold your pick, the way you sort of make this pocket so you can mute certain strings while letting other strings ring. That’s something I’ve used forever."

Morse: "You mentioned that period when I did the trio stuff. Doing that, I could use a lot of my classical left hand to try to make the voicings bigger. You have to work a little harder in a trio format. And, of course, I could use [bassist] Dave LaRue’s talent."

Petrucci: "Whenever I would see you in those trio situations, you did look like you were working really hard. You had all these pedals, and you were working your guitar through various pickups. It seemed like such an intense level of concentration, beyond all the nerdy playing aspects. How did you prepare for that?" 

Morse: "I would think it was similar to what you would do with a trio. I would get Dave to come over, and we’d work without a drummer – we’d work to a click. But sometimes [drummer] Van [Romaine] would come over and we’d rehearse for a day.

"A lot of the stuff I do involves switching from a distorted sound to a clean sound; I’m going from my guitar volume on 10 to somewhere between three or four. It’s variable. Every time I do it, it’s going to be slightly different. And then I work with the short delay or long delay, maybe some chorus. Plus, I’m changing the pickups at the same time, trying to make up for the high end that’s lost by turning down the guitar that’s plugged into a distorted amp. Trying to manage it all is a bit difficult, but you figure out a way to connect everything." 

You do realize, John, that you’re talking to a guy who can fly a plane and practice guitar at the same time? 

Petrucci: "I know. Who can do that?" 

Morse: "Anybody could do that." 

Petrucci: "Oh, sure! [laughs]" 

Morse: "No, seriously. To be a good pilot is all about judgment. Writing is the same way. Art is all about judgment – the balance and looking ahead. The same is true for flying. It’s all about realizing how many things you need to be on top of. You control what you can, and if you think you can’t stay in control of something, you take an alternate route, so to speak."

Petrucci: "I would read about you, Steve, how you could drive and practice at the same time. It made me feel like the ultimate slacker." 

Morse: "Sometimes on long trips there just wasn’t any time to practice. What I would do was, I’d put this fleece pad – like one of those shoulder-belt pads – on the steering wheel, and I would drive with my knees while playing the guitar. If the road was crowded, I wouldn’t do that, but if I was on an interstate and no cars were around, sure, I could manage it. It’s only a few inches from the guitar neck to the steering wheel, so you can get your hands back on the wheel pretty quickly."

Finding Your Voice

Both of you have established your own musical identities and found success by bucking musical formulas and industry expectations. How hard was it to stick to your guns and not play it safe? 

Petrucci: "It can be hard and scary sometimes. For me, it’s all Steve’s fault. [Morse laughs] No, it’s true, in a way, because I was a young musician getting into rock music and playing guitar. And then I heard the Dregs and I thought, There’s more to this than what other people are doing. And I include Yes and Rush in that – they followed their own paths. 

"I decided that I wanted to play music that is more challenging and more nontraditional as far as structure, and that kind of attitude really bucks the whole system. But that’s what I wanted to do. It’s been an uphill battle at times, sure, but we’ve been fortunate to make a career out of doing a style of music that we love.

"We’re really proud to be part of this big prog family tree that includes Steve and the Dregs. For as scary and difficult as it is, it’s also really rewarding. You’re doing things on your own terms, and you’re forging your own path. 

"I was into the Dregs, Rush, Yes, Iron Maiden, and Metallica, so when I played, it sounded like a metal version of instrumental prog music. But I never heard any music like yours before, Steve. I never heard anything that sounded like the Dregs. It was so original. How did you come up with that? I’m really curious."

Morse: "That’s a good question, and there’s a lot in that. See, by the time you heard my music, I had played in bluegrass bands and rock bands. I’d played in many cover bands and studied classic guitar. I’d written pieces for classical guitar, and I was in a weird band that we called Dixie Grit. The name was just a joke, because none of us were really from the South. It was just a funny joke. We’d get hired for dances and the people would flip out – not in a good way. [laughs] People just hated it. 

"That band eventually broke up, and then it was just [bassist] Andy West and me. We got another drummer and started something else. It was all like, 'What can we do?' We threw ideas around and put together a three- piece band. We played a free concert for college kids, and it went over well enough to inspire us. I noticed people could put up with a lot of variety – and not just put up with it but really enjoy it. That’s something the music business doesn’t encourage. 

"The business is all about niches – radio stations play only one type of music, and they only play the hits. Record stores back then were the same way. The whole thing made me feel alienated from the business of music, so I concentrated on what was in front of me, which was the music itself. We played a lot of free gigs early on. Because I wrote the music and didn’t have to look too much at my fingers, my eyes were always on the audience. 

"I watched them and noticed what would make them get up and walk away. What would make them stop and listen? That’s when I realized it was melody and changes, getting in and out of sections and back to the melody. When we did solos, they couldn’t be too long. I put a four-minute cap on the songs, and I kept writing things and imagining people listening and smiling, or maybe they’d be moving their heads and tapping their feet. 

"This was in Miami, which was quite a cosmopolitan place at the time. That experience really helped me feel like there was a future for what I wanted to do. I knew that it was never going to be big commercially, because I could see the popularity of the stereotypical things. But once I saw people liked the variety of music that we played, and they could see we were having a good time doing it, it gave me the push to continue."

Leading The Band

You two have something in common in that you’re both band leaders. Did that come naturally to you? 

Petrucci: "In my case, it did. There are some guitarists – amazing virtuoso players – who join somebody else’s band, and they’re quite happy in that role. However, I think there’s a certain kind of personality that makes somebody gravitate toward the position of leading a band. 

"Without sounding like a megalomaniac, I like to have my hand in things. I like to do the work. I have a very specific way that I think about things and how I imagine things should be presented musically and visually, and how business should be run. I’ve been producing the band for a while now, and I feel as if that’s my comfort zone. I like being able to see things through, not only to my own satisfaction but also in a way the band can feel happy about. 

"It’s not about being a dictator in these situations. If you’re a good leader, then you want to respect and use everybody’s talents; you want to bring out the best in everybody. Some people don’t feel comfortable in that role. Others have it thrust upon them: 'Okay, nobody wants to lead the band, so I will.' I welcome it." 

Morse: "I can say that John is a natural leader, so that makes him an excellent band leader. He has a vision and he knows how to persevere. He has a patience level that I know I don’t have. I kind of envy him for that. [laughs] When he wants to do something right, he puts his mind to it." 

Petrucci: "Yeah, but I got so much of that from you!" 

Morse: "Well, thank you, but I think you had it in you all along. Now, see, with me and the Dregs, I sort of fell into my niche and it evolved into the musical dictator. It started with Andy West and me: 'What do you want to do? How about this? Oh, how about you play that?' After a while, it came back to me to decide. I was kind of like the kid in class who always had his hand up: 'Pick me, pick me! I know!' 

"Whenever it came to a musical question, the rest of the people in the band kind of sat there because I would still be talking: 'Let’s do this. Let’s change that. And, oh, can we change that other thing?' It’s just the way I am. I like to run through the possibilities. I was happy to defer to the guys on other matters. But as far as having the big picture about the music, yeah, that kind of fell on my shoulders. I never minded."

Behind The Guitars

You two also share a connection to Ernie Ball Music Man: You’ve both designed signature guitars with the company.

Petrucci: "Steve, you were first with that." 

Morse: "Yeah, what happened was, Sterling Ball asked me about doing a guitar. I had an experience with another company that kind of soured me. Whenever I would present an idea, they would say, 'You can’t do that,' so that was a real turn-off. But Sterling said, 'There’s only one rule: We won’t stop until you’re happy.' I said, 'I can live with that.' So we went to it. 

"We did some prototypes, and very soon after I was playing them all the time. I put my Tele Strat down. [Morse’s main guitar with the Dregs was a Frankenstein made from a Telecaster body, a Stratocaster neck and a complex array of electronics.] The guitar I designed with Ernie Ball Music Man turned out to be all the guitar I ever needed. I’ve still got serial number one. When John came along, things went to warp speed with what they could do in terms of design." 

Petrucci: "For me, the relationship with Ernie Ball Music Man came about in a serendipitous way. I had been using another brand, but my manager, Frank Solomon, called me up and told me what they were doing with Sterling Ball. I was playing another guitar, but I did use Ernie Ball volume pedals, and I loved those. 

"A friend of mine who was teching for me at the time said, 'Man, you’ve got to play a real guitar. You’ve got to play Music Mans.' Frank set up a call with me and Sterling, and we hit it off. Of course, having my favorite guitar player of all time as an Ernie Ball Music Man endorser sealed the deal. I thought, 'If it works for Steve Morse, it’ll work for me.' Sterling said the same thing to me: 'We’re not going to stop until it’s right. We make tools for artists.' 

"I just celebrated 20 years with Ernie Ball Music Man. It’s been such a great experience. Beyond building guitars, there’s a family there. I’m proud to play these guitars and be a part of the family.

"Working with them, I really got into design. It opened me up to so many ideas: 'Why can’t this be over here? Why does this have to be so hard to reach?' The idea that a guitar can still be improved and it can be exactly what you want has been a real revelation to me." 

Morse: "That’s the way John’s mind works: 'Why can’t this be better? How can we make this thing better?' For most people, good enough is the end of everything. For John, it’s a starting point. The way he designs these amazing guitars from start to finish takes an incredible level of commitment and discipline."

Petrucci: "You’re the same way. You’ve always been an inspiration in that you’re a problem solver." 

Morse: "I just don’t know any other way to go about things. It drives some people crazy, but I always try to bring them around to my side."

The release of Legacy: A Tribute to Leslie West demonstrates the respect felt by so many axe heroes for Leslie West’s unique talents.

The breadth of artists that contributed to it – from contemporaries like Robby Krieger and Martin Barre to shred legends such as Yngwie Malmsteen and Marty Friedman – highlights the fact that a truly great artist can transcend all genres.

Blackberry Smoke’s Charlie Starr formed a close friendship with West in his later years and was keen to be a part of the star-studded album project.

Any favorite personal memories of time spent with Leslie?

I got to play “Mississippi Queen” with him at the Beacon Theater in New York City. We jammed for something like 10 minutes before he even played the riff. It was mesmerizing.

What are the highlights of Leslie’s back catalog for you?

When you make two records as strong as Climbing! and Nantucket Sleighride, it’s hard to single out specific highlights, but for my money, not much is better than “Sittin’ on a Rainbow” and “To My Friend” [both from Climbing!].

Those two pieces of music cover the spectrum.

Why did you choose to cover “Silver Paper,” from Climbing!?

I don’t believe you could go wrong with any Mountain track, but this one has always hit home with me.

What is it about Leslie’s playing that spoke to you?

His playing is like a soulful singing voice. He never overplayed. His guitar was just an extension of his own amazing singing. Plus he has the best tone ever.

Order Legacy: A Tribute to Leslie West here.

Steve Morse makes every note count. One moment he soars across the fingerboard with amazing speed, and in the next lulls his listeners with slow, poignant phrases.

In the early '80s, during his Dixie Dregs years, the Deep Purple guitarist shared some fantastic tips that many electric guitar and acoustic guitar players will no doubt still find useful.

We've had a rummage through the Guitar Player vault to bring you five of his finest...

1. Warming Up

"The important part about warming up is not to do it too hard right at the beginning – do it slow and easy, then work up. You want to get your muscles warmed up, and then let them relax and loosen up. Then go and do it some more. 

"In three to five minutes you can get warmed up enough to break for about 30 seconds or a minute. Then you can practice for as long as you want, as long as you mix it up. Don't do too much of one thing."

2. Learn to Walk Before Running

"I practice [new lines and techniques] slow 80% of the time, and then 20% of the time try to do it for speed. It's important to try to do it at speed, but keep going back to slow where you can play it perfectly. 

"If you play it all slowly, then you won't have the experience of doing it fast. If you do it all fast, you'll make too many mistakes and be sloppy."

3. Scale It Up

"I do all the major scale modes in three different positions, starting with my index, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th finger on the tonic. For any scale or mode, there's at least three different ways you can finger it starting on the same note and still stretch no more then one fret between your fingers.

"Say the A major scale on the 5th fret. If you start with your 1st finger, the 1st finger plays every note that falls on the 5th fret. The 2nd finger plays every note on the 6th fret, the 3rd finger every note on the 7th fret, and your pinkie plays every note on the 9th fret. There isn't any on the 8th, so the pinkie plays a one-fret stretch.

"Then do the same thing, only start with your 2nd finger on the tonic. In this case there are no stretches at all because your 1st finger goes down to the 4th fret. You go across and it all fits. When you start with your pinkie, you stretch on one fret.

"Those little stretches shouldn't affect you because you do them all the time when you play, anyway. I do scales up and down the neck, starting picking up, starting picking down."

4. First Cut Is the Deepest

"My approach to soloing is just play naturally and take takes. When you get one that sounds good, keep it. Go ahead and get another one that sounds good, and keep that. Sort of figure out what it is about it that sounds good – why does it feel good?

"If there's a way to make it better by changing a little bit more, do it. Otherwise, just keep one of the good ones. As most people will probably agree, your best solos generally come out of your first five to ten takes. A lot of times the very first ones will be some of the best."

5. The Show Must Go On

"My confidence will depend on how well my playing is at that moment. If the set's been going good, I'll keep playing better. If it's bad, I'll be trying a bit too hard to make up for it and I might keep making mistakes.

"This is on an introspective level, though. I have to emphasize that while this is happening, I still have a good time onstage. I don't make faces or throw down my guitar. I just keep on smiling because people have come to hear the band.

"Our first responsibility is to them, and I try to keep my own hypercritical attitude away from the audience because I don't think they want to see that."

By the mid-1990s, Joe Satriani had things pretty much sewn up career-wise. Four of his six studio albums had gone either Gold or Platinum, and his touring dance card was filled for much of any given year.

But despite his spectacular success, something had started to feel a little...off. He wasn’t having the kind of fun he had imagined years before, when he was a budding guitarist dreaming about rock stardom.

“I thought there would be more camaraderie among other players than what I was experiencing,” he says. “As a teenager, I had this idea of what things would be like if I ever hit it big. There would be parties, and I’d get to hang out with my guitar friends. We’d jam and talk about music all night long – that kind of thing.

“Instead, the opposite was true: I was isolated. I would go on tour and play the same set, and then I’d go back to my hotel room and be on my own. I’d have 100 shows in front of me, and then I’d have to make another record and do it all over again.”

Satriani wanted to shake things up, but he didn’t quite know how. And then it hit him: He would create a new kind of show, one that celebrated the communal spirit of electric guitar playing that he craved.

“Nobody was really doing anything of the kind,” he says. “You had blues and reggae festivals. You’d see disco revivals and things like that. Lollapalooza had just started up. But there was nothing really that spoke to guitarists.”

It’s no coincidence that, at that time, interest in guitar was entering a slump from which it would take years to recover.

Starting in the late 1980s, rap and hip-hop had grown in popularity, and were the dominant forms of popular music as the century careened toward its conclusion. Youngsters had become more interested in the power of two turntables and a microphone than in the trenchant blast of a Les Paul cranked through a Marshall stack.

It was still too early to see the lean years that would come, when guitar heroes’ relevance would dim, but Satch’s desire for a guitarist-led event would prove timely.

“I wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with my friends and peers,” he recalls. “And so I thought, Well, nobody else is doing it, so I’ll do it.”

Satriani met with his management team and laid out his grand vision of a traveling show featuring himself and two other guitarists (hence the “G3” moniker), with each player performing an hour-long set followed by a three-way jam.

Once his managers were sold on the idea, the hard part began: convincing booking agents and concert promoters of the package’s validity. “We were breaking the rules that everybody had been taught over the years,” Satriani explains.

“Promoters around the world, and especially in the U.S., like to keep guitarists’ itineraries separated, for business reasons. They don’t want to dilute the market. But I always thought this format would be energizing, because it went against the trends. I always knew it could work.”

Since its first run in 1996, G3 has become the longest-running guitar-centric tour of its kind. All in all, Satriani has taken the show on 18 treks across the U.S., Europe, South America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Along with Satch himself, the tour has featured guitarists such as John Petrucci, Robert Fripp, Steve Morse, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Steve Lukather, Yngwie Malmsteen, Michael Schenker, Uli Jon Roth, Paul Gilbert, Al Di Meola, Adrian Legg, Phil Collen and the Aristocrats.

But none of it would have happened had G3’s maiden voyage not connected with audiences.

Satriani knew his first package had to pack a wallop, and his dream lineup – a triple-headline bill he shared with his close friend and one-time guitar pupil Steve Vai, along with Texas guitar star Eric Johnson – was a no-brainer.

“I really didn’t have to think about it,” he says. “I wanted to do it with them, and that was all there was to it. I knew we could all shine together onstage.” Vai and Johnson required no arm twisting.

“I said yes immediately,” Vai says. “The second Joe told me about what he wanted to do, I was in. And it superseded other plans I may have had, because the concept felt fresh. Plus, it was something that I thought was needed in the guitar community at the time. The idea was just fantastic.”

Says Johnson, “I felt the same way. It sounded like a novel idea at the time. I remember my manager said, ‘I like this. It sounds really different and cool.’”

Some 25 years on, the first G3 tour and its subsequent editions remain a singular achievement in the world of guitar. Coincidentally, all three of the tour’s founding members are currently releasing albums and planning tours. We thought it was the perfect opportunity to ask them to reminisce about their experiences together and to fantasize what another run might look like.

It was important to me to keep the spirit of guitar music alive no matter what new style of music was becoming popular. I wanted more interaction with great players, and I knew the audience wanted the same. So I took the bull by the horns.

By the late ’90s, it was evident that guitar-based music was losing popularity as rap and hip-hop became the dominant genres. Joe, did you have a premonition that the guitar was in danger of losing some of its relevance when you launched G3 in 1996, just a few years before?

JOE SATRIANI I was more focused on what I felt the fans were craving, and what I too was craving: more fun with the guitar. Having been a performing musician since I was 14 years old, I knew that styles would change and society would simply change channels, so I wasn’t phased by what was happening in the mid-to-late ’90s.

It was important to me to keep the spirit of guitar music alive no matter what new style of music was becoming popular. I wanted more interaction with great players, and I knew the audience wanted the same. So I took the bull by the horns.          

Eric, as everybody knows, Joe and Steve share a long history. When you signed up for G3, did you feel like you had to break the ice with two guys who knew each other so well?

ERIC JOHNSON Well, maybe a little bit, but they were always affable and made me feel comfortable right away. Obviously, Joe and Steve grew up together, and I wasn’t a part of that. But I was totally aware of both of them and their music. I respected them and knew what they were about. I was welcomed very warmly, and that made it very easy to be a part of G3.

Joe and Steve, did you feel like you had to bring Eric into the fold, or were you two like, “Oh, he’ll figure it out”?

SATRIANI I knew it would be fine. I never thought that we had to coach each other. We were all of the same mind: “Isn’t this going to be amazing?” Then at the end of the night, when we start playing together, our attitude was, Let’s just wing it and see what happens! And I can’t tell you how excited I was every night to be destroyed by these two guitar players.

STEVE VAI Come on! [laughs]

SATRIANI It’s true. It was so much fun, because it’s one thing when somebody destroys you onstage like that, and you’re right next to them and you can see how they do it. It’s a life-learning experience. I loved that, and it’s something I’ve always loved about every G3. There’s nothing like it. You can’t replicate it in any other way.

VAI To answer the question you asked about having Eric: Yes, Joe and I have a friendship that goes way back, a very rich, wonderful friendship throughout our lives. We’ve been joined at the hip since I was 12. [laughs]

So to do G3, and to know that Eric was going to do it, too, I was immediately thrilled. Bringing Eric into the fold, it never felt like Joe and I were a group and there was an outsider. We were all very present in the moment. We were three accomplished, mutually respectful players really looking to raise the bar for ourselves and for the guitar.

I know for me, every time I get on a stage with really accomplished, inspired players, it’s impossible not to expand my own potential. Like Joe says, when you’re standing next to these guys, they push you and challenge you. You have to raise your bar because they’re doing it. That’s the feeling you get when it’s your turn. It’s very inspiring, and it’s nice.

Some of my favorite onstage moments were when the three of us were playing together and listening to one another. It’s a very intimate space, and nobody is Joe, Steve or Eric. It’s just this environment of listening and responding.

Joe, during those first G3 tours, did you have a sense that you were keeping the spirit of guitar virtuosity alive at a time when it was in short supply? Did that have an impact on the shows, either in your commitment to keep doing them or in who you brought along on tour?

SATRIANI The G3 stage was the one place where you could play any way you wished. There were no boundaries. You could overdo it, or you could underplay it and be subtle. You could stand still, you could sit like Robert Fripp, or you could bring your own rock and roll circus to the stage.

I encouraged my fellow players to try anything and everything every night. We would support, echo and sometimes challenge each others’ improvisational tangents. Virtuosity on the guitar comes in many forms, and there’s no reason they can’t be celebrated right next to each other.

There have been three other tours with this lineup. When you tour, does it feel like “the band is back together”? Like you’re the Three Amigos.

SATRIANI “The Three Amigos” – I like that. [laughs] I think we should launch another tour once the world opens up a bit. It would be interesting to see where we’ve been musically. We can come back and trade our secrets once again.

JOHNSON Yeah, yeah!

VAI I’m down.

JOHNSON We could wear those Mexican outfits like [Chevy Chase, Martin Short and Steve Martin] did in The Three Amigos. At least for the encore. [laughs]

Joe, when you put together other iterations, did you ever ask Steve or Eric who they wanted to come along as the third guitarist?

SATRIANI Well, it’s a complicated thing putting G3 together, because my responsibility is both creating and selling the package. It starts a year before we want to hit the road. There are a number of scenarios that we have to float to all the different promoters to get a consensus of what they will agree is worthy of the invitation, because you can only play if you’re invited. You don’t just show up.

That means that we come up with Plans A, B, C, D, E, F and G, and then we see what the reaction is. Part of the music business is pretty cruel. It’s numbers and statistics. It’s always been about ticket sales, but back then it was a lot about radio. These days, the social media thing is really a big deal. It’s the first thing promoters do: They see if you’re trending on TikTok or Instagram. They need to determine if they want to take the risk.

That’s how that starts. And, of course, there’s a fine line between sticking to your guns about what you really want to do and listening to the feedback you get from your promoters. There’s no way to know who should be the third guy in Eastern Europe versus Canada, so you’ve got to talk to the promoters to see what they think and what suggestions they might have. Sometimes they’re good ones, and sometimes you’re scratching your head going, “Really?”

It’s difficult. It’s a very long period, and we have to be extremely quiet and discreet about it until we’ve distilled all this advice and feedback. Then we put out the invitations and reach out to the players that have risen to the top of the list, and we have to see what they say. Some players don’t want to play with other guitarists.

I suppose that’s true.

SATRIANI Yeah. I think there are fearless players out there, and then there are people who are still very guarded. I think that’s the defining difference. These gentlemen here are fearless and totally confident, and they just want to make their audience happy. That’s what you want. You don’t want any other baggage coming onstage.

I imagine sometimes choosing the third guitarist feels very easy and natural, but are there instances when you’ve thought, I don’t know how this is going to work?

SATRIANI Well, one of the most interesting characters was Robert Fripp, beyond a doubt. When he joined up, he insisted that he not be listed, and he wanted to play before the show. He said, “Look, don’t turn the lights on. I’m going to sit behind all the amps, and I’m going to play music as people walk into the venue and find their seats. And don’t mention my name.” It’s what he wanted to do.

Sometimes [bassist] Stu Hamm would play with him unannounced. He’d just come out, sit right next to Robert and he’d play along, or some of the other guys would play. It was really quite beautiful. Robert is such a wonderful human being and an incredible musician. We did a couple of other tours together, just me, Steve and Robert playing blues guitar or something. It was hysterical, and he was fearless about that. He was Robert Fripp to the very end.

JOHNSON Well, I was actually thinking of Robert Fripp when Joe mentioned him, because it was like, Wow, that’s different! He was definitely coming from left field, I think. But it was beautiful and cool. People really enjoyed it, too. I thought it sounded great. A lot of people told me, “Hey, have you heard Robert play with the G3 thing?” They thought it was great.

For the encore jams, you three have played “Red House,” “Goin’ Down” and “My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama.” How do you guys come up with those songs?

SATRIANI We start emailing each other about what would be a fun song. I think I put it to the guys that we should pick songs that weren’t our own but were somehow connected to us in some way. They would be songs that the audience would recognize and that would celebrate the guitar.

It wasn’t about one of the participants’ new single or something like that. We had to drop all that pretense that we were there to sell our new thing. I think the Zappa song was Steve’s suggestion. He brought that in, and it was great. It turned into one we did over and over again through the years.

VAI Joe would always reach out for suggestions, and there were many, many songs we’d toss out. Some of them would be head-scratchers, but I always relied on Joe to decipher it all, feel through it and pick what the final jam songs would be.

That went for everything – routing, position in the set, where you’re standing onstage. It was always diplomatic, but there’s a practical sensibility that needs to be exercised in all of these things. And that was Joe, because he’s got the tools.

Joe and Steve, you’ve done a number of G3s with John Petrucci as the third guitarist. Eric, I think you played on one tour with John. Is that right?

JOHNSON I did, yeah, in South America. John Petrucci’s amazing. I’m more familiar with him now, and his drummer, Mike Mangini. You know how there are certain groups that you don’t know their whole deal? Even though they’re almost a parallel track as yours, it’s not somebody you really listen to that much, but you still knew they were great.

I wasn’t familiar with John at first, but I was really blown away by him. It was kind of funny, though, because when I first met Mike Mangini, I didn’t know who he was. I asked him, “Are you down here teching for the band?”

VAI I remember that.

JOHNSON Then I heard him play, and I was like, “Oh, my God.” I should say that teching’s no different than playing. I think I embarrassed myself, because I didn’t know who he was. It was a bummer, because I was never able to get to know him; I think I made him feel awkward.

But he was such a fabulous drummer, and John was remarkable. They had a whole different thing going on, with the way they broke up time signatures and stuff. It was just amazing. I got schooled on that during the tour, not unlike the G3s that I did with Joe and Steve. It was like taking lessons every single night.

This is for all of you: How did your G3 experiences impact your feelings about the other two guys here?

SATRIANI Whoa… There have been so many moments when I would stand on the side of the stage watching Steve and Eric play, and then I’d look out at the audience and think, Do they have any idea how amazing this thing is? When are they ever going to see this again?” [Satriani’s cell phone rings] Oh, sorry about that. It’s my agent calling.

JOHNSON He’s saying, “Come on. Book a G3 tour!” [laughs]

SATRIANI And make it snappy! [mutes his phone] Like I said, there were so many moments. For me, in those private moments, standing there and watching them play, it was beyond remarkable. They truly felt the music, and that’s very inspiring. And then to see what they did to the audience, lifting them up, raising their spirits. It just makes you think, We’re doing the right thing.

JOHNSON With Joe, I was really shocked at his precision, virtuosity and sound. Every single night, he would nail everything, unlike somebody else who might be talking. [laughs] Obviously, his records are beautiful, but he plays that stuff live to a T. His touch, his fingering… truly outstanding. He would just nail it all the way.

And then there’s Steve – this organic guitar orchestra. From comedy to sadness, he packs in all these different emotions, and they go way beyond guitar sounds. That blew my mind. It was just such a hemisphere of learning for me.

How about you, Steve?

VAI With Joe and Eric, I already knew of their excellence. You know, I can be a sloppy, visceral performer. I always enjoy what I do, but there’s a little part of me that says, “You can be better. You can be more concise. You can be clearer and cleaner.”

So when I’d get onstage with these guys, that’s what I recognized. Seeing them perform, I saw the presentation of a whole piece of music that was immaculate. No disrespect to any other G3 performer, but if I go back to listen to any G3 record, I go right to Eric’s performance of “Manhattan,” which is flawless.

Every night I would watch him, and beyond being absolutely entertained by a musician at the height of his potential, I would always feel like, Steve, you’ve got to do more of that. He was inspired and performed beautifully from beginning to end.

And, of course, that’s Joe’s middle name. You know how many times I’ve seen him perform? [laughs] Every time he gives you this incredible presentation. What he offers you is beautiful. The song is respected, and it’s mastered completely.

You get as much out of it as the audience.

VAI Oh yeah. When I see these guys do what they do, I could be depressed or I could be inspired. And they always inspired me. I knew how they could perform. But what was interesting for me was putting a microscope on myself.

If anything, I’ve always been a bit of a pretentious rock star. [Joe and Eric laugh] It’s true – you guys know it. And that was exorcized out of me a bit. When you work with guys like this – because they’re humble, and they’re excellent – it’s fun and educational to get your ass kicked.

We were friends before, and we’re friends after. What more could you ask for?

Order Joe Satriani/Eric Johnson/Steve Vai: G3 Live In Concert here.

Visit the Joe Satriani website for more info on G3.

“A lot of our songs are very complicated, but this is one of our most straightforward tunes,” says Steve Morse, speaking about “Take It Off the Top,” the high-octane, fun and frisky prog-rock instrumental that kicked off the Dixie Dregs’ second album, 1978’s What If.

“At the time, our road manager said to us, ‘It’s good to finally hear you play straight-up rock and roll for a change.’ I was trying to be as to the point as possible, but leave it to me to throw in a bunch of stuff that destroyed any chance at commercial success.”

Even though What If failed to ascend higher than number 182 on the Billboard Hot 100, “Take It Off the Top” became an instant favorite among Dixie Dregs devotees.

As Morse notes, “My style is what it is. I’ll go along for a few bars, but then I’ll veer off into jazz guitar or classical. It kept us off the charts, but it won us fans who stayed with us.”

SCIENCE FRICTION

Soon after the release of the Dregs’ 1977 debut album, Free Fall, Morse started tinkering with a sparkly, pinch-harmonic riff that he hoped would grow into a song.

“I went over to my friend [Allman Brothers keyboardist] Chuck Leavell’s house to see if we could write something,” he says.

“We didn’t get past what I had, though he did add a bit of comping to it. It started out really rock – my love of Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck – but I began to add a bunch of contrapuntal elements to the bridge. My jazz side was coming through.”

Gradually, Morse worked up enough of a melody over a chord pattern to call it a song, but he would only show it to the rest of the band a few sections at a time.

“As soon as they got a part down, I would change it,” he says. “I was like a mad scientist, always refining. They would get mad at me: ‘Didn’t you just show that to us in C sharp?’ And I’d be like, ‘Yeah, but it’s better now. Trust me.’”

GREAT SCOTT

For What If, the band sought out celebrated producer/engineer Ken Scott, not so much for his work with the Beatles or David Bowie but because of his production of the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

“Those guys were our heroes,” Morse says, “so we were eager to work with Ken. We felt like we were graduating to the next level.”

At L.A.’s Chateau Recorders, the band ran down a few takes of “Take It Off the Top,” none of them varying too much from the arrangement they had been playing live.

“The only things that kept changing were my solos, which I overdubbed,” Morse says. “Ken was great about letting me try out whatever I wanted.”

The guitarist also raves about Scott’s sonic skills. “He introduced us to distant miking and different ways of getting reverb – things we knew nothing about,” Morse says.

“We put my guitar amp in a bathroom. I’d never tried that. Everything Ken did was incredible. Suddenly, the guitar and drums sounded huge.”

LOVE FROM ENGLAND

Morse remembers the response from Capricorn Records, the band’s label, as being positive, but radio programmers just wouldn’t bite.

“It was just too progressive for everybody at the time,” he says. Things weren’t much better in the U.K. “Melody Maker wrote ‘Take it off… please,’” Morse recalls.

“That was the entirety of their review, and it pretty much sealed our fate in England for a while.”

The band did find one fan in the U.K., however – disc jockey Tommy Vance, host of the popular BBC Radio 1 Friday Rock Show. Vance used “Take It Off the Top” as his theme song during the show’s run, from 1978 to 1993.

“That was a nice surprise,” Morse reveals. “We found out about it after the fact.” He laughs. “If there were royalties from it, they must have gone somewhere. They didn’t go to me.”

Nonetheless, “Take It Off the Top” remained a staple of the Dregs’ live performances for years. The only times it wouldn’t be in the set was when the band played an earlier rocker, “Cruise Control.”

“The two songs sort of sat in the same lane, and we always tried to have a lot of variety in the set list,” Morse explains.

“But the fans always loved it, and we had a great time playing it. Sometimes we would throw in bits of other songs, like ‘Mississippi Queen.’ I have a lot of fond memories of those gigs.”

Buy What If here.

We recently asked some of the guitar world’s best-known players to name their favorite lesser-known guitar solos. Here’s what Zepparella axe slinger Gretchen Menn had to say…

1) Deep Purple | “Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming”

From Purpendicular (1996)

GUITARIST: Steve Morse

“This is so tasteful and melodic, with a few bursts of chromaticism that are unmistakably Steve Morse. The solo soars, sighs and reflects on the song’s main instrumental theme.”

2) Daniele Gottardo | “Hansel and Gretel”

From Non Temperato (2014)

GUITARIST: Daniele Gottardo

“There are a handful of solos that consistently make me shake my head and laugh because they’re just that amazing. This one is at the top of that list for me. You wouldn’t realize what lies ahead by hearing the first few minutes of this composition for electric guitar and chamber orchestra.”

3) Django Reinhardt | “Minor Swing”

GUITARIST: Django Reinhardt

“Although this is perhaps the most iconic of all gypsy jazz guitar tunes and solos, it’s on my list because guitarists of any genre should be able to readily appreciate Django’s brilliance – the variety of his melodic ideas, the impeccability of his rhythmic sense, the formability of his improvisatory skills and his complete and utter musical fluency.”

Pick up a copy of The Essential Django Reinhardt here.

Steve Morse has defined himself as one of music’s most versatile shredders, not only through his work with Deep Purple but also with the Dixie Dregs and the Steve Morse Band, where he’s demonstrated his talent for crafting inspiring instrumental fusion and rock guitar songs. What does it take to write a successful guitar instrumental? We asked, and he answered.

What is it about guitar instrumentals that appeals to you?

The main thing is that the guitar can control the mood and energy. It’s totally a composed creation mixed with some improvised soloing. Vocals are very expressive, and the electric guitar can be too when you use a wide range of attack, tone, vibrato, bends and so on.

What can an instrumental provide a listener that a vocal song can’t?

Less repetition, for one thing. In songs, the music often stays the same for three rounds of verses. Instrumentals work better when there’s always something changing, or when you add more parts to them.

How do you start writing one?

I use a combination of experimentation, inspiration and transcribing what’s in my head.

Do you try to retain a typical song structure?

Usually not. I tend to revisit the melody with some changes at the end. That said, the typical song format can work fine if you include some changes on each verse.

When it comes to writing guitar melodies, is it useful to study a vocalist’s approach?

I think it’s good to study horn melodies and vocal melodies. Vocalists tend to use many different techniques, and guitarists can always learn from trying to sing a melody.

How do you keep a solo performance interesting over a long stretch?

I use a variety of tones or attack, changing from a mono to a more polyphonic approach, or changing the density of the notes in different sections. I’ll change effects for different parts, too.

Do you ever adopt the approach of “start low and slow, and finish high and fast”?

I wouldn’t say that’s a feature that I always use. However, I have often used the approach of adding more and more melodies as overdubs to the ending section to make the sound more dense.

Do you have any favorite keys or tempos?

Keys? Any that might allow some open strings to be used in voicings of chords. Tempos? No favorites, but sometimes I limit the tempo if it is very technical, of course.

Do you find it easier to write in minor or major keys?

I change to the relative major or minor so much within a song that it doesn’t make much difference. Some of my more metal friends hate that I often use major-key melodies and chords. They sound “too happy.” If anything I play makes somebody happy, I’m fine with that! But seriously, I use major too much to ever be embraced as a legit hard-rock guitarist.

Any favorite modes?

Mixolydian and Dorian seem to come up a lot in my stuff!

What about modulations into new keys?

I always try to do it, because it seems to freshen everything up sonically. It can be very corny, though, if it’s done as a huge deal and uses a big Broadway-style turnaround.

Does the backing band have to work differently than it would on a vocal song?

Yes. For example, the bass often doubles lines or takes over my original riff while I add a melody or harmony.

What are your thoughts on harmonizing?

Don’t just stay with diatonic harmony that follows the exact contour of the melody. Let it take some jumps to 6ths, 5ths, 4ths, as well as the usual 3rds.

What guitar instrumentals have inspired you?

Eric Johnson’s “Cliffs of Dover” and Joe Satriani’s “Satch Boogie” come to mind. My earlier influences were the Allman Brothers’ “Jessica,” Jeff Beck’s “Ain’t Superstitious” and the Ventures’ “Walk Don’t Run.”

For more than five decades, prog rock has been the cradle from which guitar virtuosity has crawled forth.

Here, in their own words, more than 20 pioneering prog-rock guitarists share insights into their craft.

Frank Zappa

“The history of pop music has a habit of telling us who we really are – ’cause if we weren’t that way, we wouldn’t have spent billions of dollars on those records, would we? 

“After careful training by media and merchandising people, the entire population (even guitar players) has been transmuted into a reasonably well-groomed, odor-free, consumer-amoeba which is kept alive only to service manufacturers and lives its life by the motto: ‘Biggest, fastest, loudest is most and best.’”

Listen To: “Watermelon in Easter Hay“

Robert Fripp (King Crimson)

“Originally, the [Frippertronics] system was introduced to me by Brian Eno. I worked with him on it for the piece of music that became No Pussyfooting. I began working on it on my own in June and July 1977, when I was living in New York. Frippertronics as such went public for the first time in February 1978 at the Kitchen [a New York City arts and performance gallery], where I was giving a solo concert. 

“I needed a name for it, so I came up with ‘Frippertronics’ because it was silly. Then it went very, very public in 1979 with a four-month solo tour – two months in Europe and two in America. And it was there, actually in front of people – in record shops, pizza parlors, record offices, small cinemas, museums, all matter of places – that I began to learn to work with it pretty well. 

“I would run the tape back and improvise on top of it. The original form was with two Revox tape recorders, but now I’m working with the Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Digital Delay. It was advertised as a Fripp in the Box. It’s far smaller, quicker, and easier to set up than two Revoxes, although the sounds one gets are quite different.”

Listen To: Let the Power Fall (Robert Fripp)  

Martin Barre (Jethro Tull)

“I learnt my lesson in 1967. I was in a studio doing a session for Eric Burdon and we were doing the backing track. Jeff Beck wandered in. We were in awe. When we finished the track, he picked up an old amp and guitar in the corner of the studio, plugged in and sounded amazing. 

“And it was Jeff Beck that produced that sound, not a particular amp or pedals. It was purely him. He was totally in control. He could’ve reproduced that anywhere in the world in any circumstances. That’s what I’m always aiming for.”  

Listen To: “Aqualung”

John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu Orchestra)

“Sometimes I can’t actually sit down and write music. I have to wait until I hear something. That’s why I like my iPhone: I get an idea and I can sing it directly into my phone, and it’s archived. 

“It might be just a melody, or it might be an idea I have for a particular chord progression, or it might just be a rhythmical idea. So I actually do so much with my iPhone and my voice. Who knows where I might be? I’m not necessarily going to be home when I get an idea, and if I don’t record it, it’s gone.”  

Listen To: “Birds of Fire”

Jan Akkerman (Focus)

“Focus is for me one of the few groups who know how to catalyze love for music and voice. We get into the theatrics strictly through the music, like with ‘Hocus Pocus.’ I want to reach the people with pure beauty. I want to make pure music.”

Listen To: “Sylvia”

Todd Rundgren (Utopia)

“Mahavishnu Orchestra was a revelation to us, so we started composing long, polymodal polyrhythmic marathons with bits of vocal and occasionally something that sounded like a song…. 

“We were comparing ourselves individually to our various heroes as well as to each other, and I developed a whole new relationship with the guitar. The material was structured in a way that left long passages without vocals and an uninterrupted focus on the instrument. For fleeting moments, I could channel the inner mounting flame.”

Listen To: “The Ikon“

Steve Hackett (Genesis, GTR)

“In Genesis, I was always writing solos. There were a few improvised ones, but there were not that many because there was always such an emphasis on writing with the Genesis team. I think I probably erred more on the side of blues than any of the other guys in the band. 

“I did always have the ability to be able to go into a blues. And I still do. It’s something you can share onstage with somebody else’s band, and I often have, where I don’t know the tune but I just wing it as a blues player. It’s stood me in very good stead.”  

Listen To: “Fifty Miles from the North Pole” 

Mike Oldfield

“When I listen back to Tubular Bells and Hergest Ridge, it sounds like yesterday. For a start, I use all five fingernails on my right hand, not a plectrum, so I get a very pure sound. That’s why people don’t seem to see me as a guitar player. 

“When there’s a video of me, I don’t look like I’m doing very much. I use violin vibrato. I can only think of Robert Fripp, who also uses that. And I often play just one note with a lot of power to start a melody.”

Listen To: “Ommadawn”

Steve Howe (Yes, GTR, Asia)

“I’ve always put [prog-rock] down to a post-psychedelia reinvention of rock music, because it had already got churned up quite a lot in psychedelic times, but I think it got broader then, and orchestral spirits came into it. I think what was great about [Yes, Pink Floyd, Genesis, King Crimson, and Led Zeppelin] was that each one of its members had a different story that they wanted to bring into the group. 

“I wanted to bring my writing into the band – my guitar ideas, my chordal ideas and songs. Bill [Bruford] wasn’t going to play 4/4, you know? He always knew what was appropriate, but he also knew what Bill Bruford would do with it.”  

Listen To: “Siberian Khatru” (Yes)

Steve Hillage (Khang, Gong, System 7)

“I was nine when I got my first guitar – a little acoustic with steel strings. I learned to play with a pick, and by the time I was 12 I’d got quite good. My first electric guitar was a Watkins Rapier, then finally I managed to get a Fender Stratocaster – my first pro guitar – in ’67. I think it was either a ’62 or a ’63. 

“I gradually found my own thing through a long series of experimentations with tape recorders, and later on I started getting into tape echo and various echo boxes. That’s how I really developed my personal sound and style.”  

Listen To: “The Glorious Om Riff” (Steve Hillage)

Alex Lifeson (Rush)

“I feel [my vibrato] is one of the more outstanding characteristics of my playing. I’m heavily influenced by Jimmy Page, and he has a fantastic vibrato. It’s so loose and so emotional. So as vibrato bars got better, I really wanted to create a subtlety in the right hand with the bar that matched my left hand. 

“I would push the left hand a little more, and I would ease off on the right hand. Of course, I did a lot of dive-bomb stuff in the ’80s, but I always wanted to have a very subtle vibrato on the whammy bar. It takes time, but it’s a very emotional thing. And very effective.”

Listen To: “La Villa Strangiato”

Allan Holdsworth

“I’ll just experiment with different voicings. What I usually do is just try to find the kind of voicings of particular chords that I like, and turn them around. I don’t like the sound of conventional guitar voicings. I love listening to jazz guitar – I listened to it a lot when I was younger, because my father introduced me to it. 

“But I very quickly tired of the sound of the chord voicings. I just decided that if I was going to get some chord things together that I might as well play some other voicings, instead of the kind of Jazz Book One or Jazz Book Two or Jazz Book Ten types of chords.” 

Listen To: “Metal Fatigue”

Tosin Abasi (Animals As Leaders)

“I would say the pure definition of progressive is to create new things. So advancing the scope of a genre – or the expression within a genre – is to be progressive. The minute you try to define what you’re doing is when you put limitations on yourself. I’m looking outside metal for my inspiration right now. That’s not to say that I don’t love my influences, because I do. But I want to keep moving.” 

Listen To: “Tempting Time”

Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree)

“This idea of being ‘progressive’ is misleading. I don’t like the word, anyway. I certainly don’t like the word prog. There’s nothing on anyone’s record that you cannot relate back to something from the past. I am aware of that, and I kinda embrace it. 

“What we’re doing is trying to invest that musical vocabulary with enough musical personality that it still sounds fresh. For [Wilson's 2015 solo album Hand.Cannot.Erase.], I would say it’s conceptual rock music, with all the implications that may or may not have.”  

Listen To: “The Raven That Refused to Sing” 

Steve Morse (Dixie Dregs, Kansas, Deep Purple)

“To become a good guitarist, you have to be open to things. When I first played with Al Di Meola, I asked how he sounded so percussive. We switched picks and there was a difference, so I changed from nylon to celluloid for the rest of the tour. 

“I’d love to get to know Jeff Beck and see if he really is pulling it out of nowhere, which is how it seems. It feels like he’s really improvising and making art through his guitar.”  

Listen To: “Tumeni Notes”

Steve Rothery (Marillion)

“I fell in love with Genesis after I heard ‘The Knife’ on Alan Freeman’s Saturday Rock Show. After that, I discovered Camel, Yes, King Crimson.... For me, there’s only good and bad in music. Labels are meaningless. 

"The true meaning of progressive is music without any self-imposed boundaries. It’s having the freedom to work outside the constraints of conventional song structure, almost like a soundtrack-type approach to creating songs.”

Listen To: “Grendel”

Dweezil Zappa

“I love the sound of microtonal instruments. On Via Zammata, I played the oud and a Godin Glissentar. I’m inspired by a variety of Eastern styles, including Indian, Turkish, Arabic, and Bulgarian. 

“I even recorded some music by the Bulgarian Women’s Choir. The tunes I chose have resonated with me since my dad took me to one of their concerts. I orchestrated them for guitar in a way that pays homage to Brian May.”   

Listen To: “Funky 15”

Alan Morse (Spock's Beard)

“When I saw Yes, I felt like they incorporated everything I loved about music into one thing. I saw them play live when I was 12, opening up for Black Sabbath in Los Angeles, and they really changed my mind. I was raised with all this classical music and some jazz, and I loved the power of rock and felt like Yes particularly embodied everything that I loved about music.”  

Listen To: “The Man Behind the Curtain”

Omar Rodríguez-López (The Mars Volta)

“From a fretboard perspective, I work with shapes rather than patterns. I’m useless at running through scales, but I’m good at arranging my thoughts into geometric shapes and creating chords and melodies out of them. Thoughts have shapes, just like tones – they have waveforms. 

“You can translate the shapes of thoughts and emotions through your hands onto the fretboard. With experience, you start relating the shape of your hand on the fretboard to certain geometric shapes that enter your mind when you’re hearing those sounds or having those feelings. You hear people use shapes to describe things all the time, such as, ‘That guy is a square,’ or ‘This sound is really round.’”  

Listen To: “Eriatarka”

Mike Keneally

“I decided a good discipline exercise would be to learn all the guitar parts on all the Gentle Giant albums. It turned out to be very valuable. But even more valuable was the time spent learning from Zappa’s discs. 

“I managed to develop a pretty good memory by playing stuff off of them. One of Frank’s names for me was Evelyn Wood [of speed-reading course fame], because of my unusual amount of comprehension and fast recognition of patterns. I can read music, but I don’t sightread it.”  

Listen To: “Lightnin’ Roy”

Guthrie Govan

“I think the best way to become comfortable with odd time signatures is to not think of them as odd. You just have to develop a natural feel for the contour of the bar in any given time signature, so you can sense when the ‘one’ will return without having to do any literal counting. 

“However daunting the top number in the time signature may appear, there’s generally an underlying framework, so it’s helpful to focus on finding the most prominent pulses within each bar, which are generally separated by smaller, more manageable numbers, like 3 and 4.” 

Listen To: “Sevens”

Steve Morse has a long history with Guitar Player. Back in 1981, readers voted Dixie Dregs’ Industry Standard the year’s Best Guitar Album, while Morse himself received Best Overall Guitarist, an accolade he won for five years in a row, at which point he entered the Guitar Player Gallery of Greats. 

In 1984, “The Introduction,” the title track from his solo debut album, was featured on our flexi disc Soundpage, giving readers a chance to enjoy his unique combination of melodic invention and insane chops. 

It was the age of shred, and Morse was ahead of the game, thanks to his success with the Dregs, who combined southern rock, fusion and prog in a distinctive sonic stew. In our present age of socially conscious rebranding, it’s interesting to recall why the Dregs dropped Dixie from their name. 

“Audiences thought we were some kind of Dixieland jazz band,” Morse explains. “We were just three kids coming up with band names as a joke, and we thought the Dixie Dregs sounded funny. None of us were even from the South.”

Morse’s solo career really took off with “Tumeni Notes,” from his third solo album, 1989’s High Tension Wires. The track is a master class in alternate picking, on which he displays the face-melting speed most players can achieve only with sweep picking.

By then, he’d been a member of Kansas, which he joined in 1985. Since 1994, Morse has been in Deep Purple, who have just released Whoosh! (earMUSIC), a collection of thoughtful and inventive songs that take their lyrical cue from today’s world and the direction in which it’s headed, without ever sounding preachy or sanctimonious. 

On the new record, Morse’s playing is as invigorating as ever, and while he suffers from arthritis, it’s had no discernible effect on his ability to weave his signature lines in and out of Deep Purple’s distinctive sound. 

“It’s in my family,” he says of his arthritis. “There’s no doubt that all my years of playing have made it worse, but I’ve adapted my technique to deal with it. The most difficult has been trying to pick from the elbow rather than the wrist. 

“Most of my technical practice is designed to perfect that. I go through a show pretty well now, though at times there is lot of pain that requires pharmaceuticals. I tried a treatment of blood-sucking mosquitos yesterday,” he says, laughing. “But it didn’t seem to help!” 

Like other performing acts, Deep Purple have been sidelined by Covid-19 and the worldwide shutdown of live music. 

“We’ve lost 18 months of work,” Morse laments. “We’ve only played one show this year. It is so bad for so many artists who have depended on their live income. For a lot of people, royalties don’t help much, even when they’re getting them. You look at Spotify and you’d need a computer to work out what percentage of one percent your royalty check would be.” 

In addition to Deep Purple, Morse has continued to work with his Flying Colors side project, which released its third studio album, Third Degree, last year, and has just issued the new live album Third Stage: Live in London. He has also periodically revisited the Dregs, both to tour and record. 

Given his long career and numerous bands, we were curious to see which five tracks Morse considers among his most important.

“Take it off the Top“ – Dixie Dregs ('What If,' 1978)

“I was working on an idea for a song, and I realized that I wanted to compose more parts for it, rather than have a lot of improvisation. When the verse came in, it had a lot of power chords, and the idea was to start with the rock riff in E. 

“I was trying to simplify my writing a bit, but then I slipped back into the more complex route, just like somebody falling off the wagon. [laughs] The song has a bit of southern rock, fusion… You know, that mixture that is kinda like the Dregs’ philosophy.  

“I can’t really help that, because I don’t see any real distinctions between styles. I basically play a style of music that I call ‘tonal music.’ I don’t write in atonal styles. Others might say it is different styles, but I’d probably say that they’re sub-styles.

“There’s a lot of commonality between disparate musical genres. For example, church organ music and the chord progressions in a lot of heavy songs have a lot in common. On the first part of the song, I’m choking the pick with my fingers and moving back up the low-E string to generate those harmonics. It’s a subtle effect, but I think it makes listeners sit up and pay attention.”

“Night Meets Light“ – Dixie Dregs ('What If,' 1978)

“This song marks the first time I ever composed a piece following nothing but the melody. A lot of times I think of chords and melody together, but not for this. It was a bit like a violin piece or something, where I was chasing the melody and I ended up with some interesting arpeggiated parts and some very confusing timing. 

“When I was finished and I analyzed it, I thought, Oh boy! [laughs] The timing sometimes changes from one bar to the next. I tried to fix it and make it more regular, but it sounded dumb.  

“Back when we cut this track, we used to play shows for a percentage of the door. At the time, we were up in the mountains of Virginia, about 700 miles from home, and we were broke. It was a week before our next gig, which we hoped would pay enough to get us back home. 

“We were staying in some cabins that were usually used for skiers; it was out of season, so no one was there, and we could stay all week for free. We were so poor that Steve Davidowski, our keyboard player, was catching grasshoppers to eat. [laughs]

“While we waited for the gig, we set up all of our gear and played each day. I showed the song to the guys, and we kept working on it. It went through a period of evolution and refinement, which caused them some frustration. They’d say, ‘That’s not how you played it a few minutes ago!’ And I’d say, ‘I’m refining it!’” [laughs]

“Tumeni Notes” – Steve Morse ('High Tension Wires,' 1989)

“When I was learning to play classical guitar, I played through a lot of traditional studies. They would concentrate on left-hand position, right-hand technique or whatever, and I used those concepts to find ways to home in on things that I felt needed work in my own playing. 

“I still write my own studies to fix possible weak links in my playing, and that’s how ‘Tumeni Notes’ evolved. I was trying to improve my one-note-per-string skipping technique with the pick, and the B section – where it goes to C sus and then G/C – remains the hardest thing I’ve ever written. 

“When you write something, you play it over and over to get the right combination to please your ear, and at that point it didn’t seem like it was impossible to play. The piece fit me like a glove, performance-wise. Now it is like a death trap. [laughs] It particularly exacerbates my wrist problems.

“At that time, I twisted my wrist and picked in an arc, which enabled me to get accuracy and speed, and I could mute and unmute with the palm of my hand, which made it exceptionally clean. Now it’s different. I have to use the traditional non-arcing technique. I still have speed, but I can’t jump between the strings as easily.”

“Hereafter” – Dixie Dregs ('Dregs of the Earth,' 1980)

“Almost everything on this could be played as a solo classical guitar piece, with the melody on top of the chords. It was very intently through-composed. I really like the chordal movement in it. All the chords have slight suspensions, and a lot of them have inner moving voices as it changes. 

“I like the way the melody and harmony run through at the same time in some places. I think there’s a lot of Celtic influence in my playing from my grandfather being a Cajun fiddler; I think there are many similarities between the two styles.  

“I also listened to and played a lot of traditional music, like John Dowland lute pieces and Bach transcriptions for classical guitar. Those influences really come through on ‘Hereafter,’ which, to my ears, has quite an ancient feel about it at times. 

“I definitely gravitate to Renaissance-period music, where so much lute music has been transcribed for classical guitar. I actually played it on acoustic 12-string, which is very difficult to keep in tune with the moving voices.”

”Man Alive” – Deep Purple ('Whoosh!,' 2020)

“Some of the suspensions in the chords require very long stretches to get those different voicings, which are a key part of the sound. They’re not terribly unworkable positions, but it’s definitely a big difference from the traditional thumb-over-the-neck rock power-chord grips. 

“The solo on this is an attempt to play something different from what I would normally do. Bob Ezrin, the producer, didn’t like the jazzy overtones that I was bringing to it. He wanted me to go for something simple. I was playing his cheap Danelectro/Sears baritone guitar, which has strings like radio antennas. [laughs] 

“The good thing about long, high-tension strings is that it’s really easy to get artificial harmonics, and they ring very true. It forced me to keep the solo slow and simple.  

“A guitar that compels you to play differently really helps you concentrate on the music. I used artificial harmonics on almost every note. It stands out in my mind as a weird combination of things that make it a little different from the rest of my work on the new album.”

• Deep Purple's new album, Whoosh!, is out now on EARMUSIC.

To mark the 30th anniversary of Stevie Ray Vaughan's death, Guitar Player ran a long-lost interview with SRV. The interview, conducted by Tom Nolan in 1988, found Vaughan in optimistic mood. 

Vaughan talked about his recovery, about his influences and experiences playing blues in clubs when he was too young to get in, and of his enthusiasm for new projects. 

To accompany the piece, we reached out to some of the guitar world's best players for their thoughts on Vaughan's playing, and their tributes reflect a talent that influenced generations of playing and changed how we think of blues guitar. 

Eric Johnson

“Stevie was one of the rare guitarists who was a complete musician. Great guitar playing, excellent singing and great songs – the whole package. I remember when he was playing in Paul Ray and the Cobras many years ago, there would be the wonderful moment where Stevie took center stage and would start singing, ‘Well, it’s flooding down in Texas, all the telephone lines are down…’ And the rest of his musical journey is beautiful history. I loved it, and he was a very kind human being.”

Tommy Shaw (Styx)

“SRV was one of those originals who you couldn’t watch for just a minute and then move on to something else. His genuine ‘lost in it’ presence when he played makes you want to go there too. His groove on ‘Pride and Joy’ is so universal and timeless. 

“It’s a great one to remember him by. He was a year younger than me and we never crossed paths, but I always admired his amazing talent, like everyone, left only to imagine the music he would have created.”

Richie Kotzen

“Stevie Ray Vaughan was and still is a very important musical figure in my life, and played a huge role in my development as a guitarist. I remember when I was still living at my parents’ house, my friend and I would sit for hours in our barn – which had two rooms that were converted into an eight-track recording studio – and jam over the chord changes to ‘Lenny,’ over and over and over.

“As a youngster, I was very much into soul and R&B music, as well as heavy metal, but I had very little knowledge about the blues. It was Stevie Ray Vaughan who introduced me to blues, and from there I discovered other artists, like Robert Johnson and Albert King. I was about 15 years old when my band had the privilege of being direct support to Jimmie Vaughan’s band, the Fabulous Thunderbirds.

“I can remember the devastation I felt when I learned of Stevie’s passing. It was unthinkable to me that someone that special, unique and important could be taken from us so soon. Legend, icon, guitar genius… Those words only scratch the surface in describing the impact and influence of Master Stevie Ray Vaughan.”

Steve Stevens

“New York City in the early ’80s was a hotbed of recording studios, producers and great musicians. We were all aware of what each other was doing. In 1983, Billy Idol, producer Keith Forsey, myself and our band were camped out at Electric Lady Studios, the house that Hendrix built. 

“Somehow, word got to us that producer Nile Rodgers was over at the Power Station with David Bowie and a stunningly great guitarist named Stevie Ray Vaughan. That record was Let’s Dance. As soon as the single was released that March, I knew there was a new and important guitarist in town.

“What was truly amazing about that record was that Stevie was able to keep his blues soul intact in a musical setting that was anything but. That is really a mark of greatness. His playing on that record is so supportive of the songs, yet still lets you know this guy was a monster player with deep roots. It was certainly no surprise that it launched him into a massive solo career of his own.

“‘Crossfire’ just might be my favorite SRV tune. The live interplay between his vocal and guitar really pulls you through the song. Obviously, the solos are ripping. Stevie, like Hendrix and all the legends of electric blues guitar, has that ability to hang on a note and, through vibrato and sheer will, bend it in and out of shape in an almost microtonal way. 

“The end result is more like the human voice than a guitar. He was a bona fide real-deal American blues guitar player, complete with the pain and sorrow to make his every note sound like his life depended on it.”

Joe Satriani

“I loved how Stevie would play melody, rhythm and lead guitar all at the same time. His timing was so good that he could not only pull it off but also put you at ease and make you feel exhilarated at the same time! 

“He was brilliantly gifted in that way. It never sounded like he missed a note or played too many. With his own unique brilliance, his influences and his 10 fingers, he reinvented how to play blues on a Fender Stratocaster.”

Steve Morse

“SRV’s band was playing at a Texas club where the Dregs were also booked. Everybody loved his playing, and I admired his powerful left-hand bends and vibrato. Smooth as silk, but mighty at the same time. 

“Years later, I was on my last legs from illness, too weak to travel, and SRV’s bus driver and road manager offered me a spare bunk to lay on while they repositioned the bus from West Texas to Atlanta, where I made it home.

“Bottom line is that he was a straight-up great player who created a Hendrix-y blues style that is still imitated today. I never heard a bad solo from him, and every one was full of passion.”

Steve Vai

“Stevie Ray was the gold standard for contemporary blues. He gave no excuses and did his thang in the most powerful of ways. God bless you, sir.”

Kirk Hammett

“My first exposure to Stevie Ray Vaughan was probably in 1984. I remember that [former Metallica bassist] Cliff Burton and I were in a hotel room and the MTV video for ‘Couldn’t Stand the Weather’ came on.

“At the time, I thought, Okay, just another blues player, but of course Cliff instantly jumped on it. He said, ‘Wow, this guy is amazing!’ and then pretty much ran out and bought the first couple of Stevie Ray Vaughan albums.

“I mean, hindsight is 20/20, but I didn’t really pay much attention to him until he passed away. I still regret that. I regret I didn’t pay attention while he was alive, because I would’ve tried to see him as much as possible.

“So, after he passed, someone gave me a VHS tape of one of his shows. I threw it into the VCR to give it a shot and was completely blown away. Up to that point, my only visual exposure to his playing had been the MTV video, but this was a whole concert. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I had been so wrong about this guy.

“He was so damn special, so good, and I hadn’t noticed. I was hit with that regret and felt really bad, wishing I could have been more exposed to his music and been able to understand what he was about when he was still here. Maybe even talked to him, played with him.

“After that concert tape, I became obsessed with Stevie Ray Vaughan. I tried to find all the live performances that had been filmed, and, of course, I bought all the albums and started learning the songs. From 1990 to 1996, he became probably one of the most listened-to guitar players of my life.

“What really blows me away is that Stevie Ray Vaughan is the complete package. By that, I mean someone who competently plays his instrument, understands music theory and melody, but also understands attitude, tone and performance.

“And all the subtleties! Stevie Ray Vaughan was all about subtleties. Those little things added up to such huge overall results. He could write, sing, perform and improvise. That’s the complete package. You could tell he was playing from the heart 99 percent of the time. 

“Even the songs he had to play every night were still being played with 100 percent conviction. And that conviction, where he was with his musicality – well, you don’t just wake up and find yourself there. You get there by hard work.

“That means practicing and practicing and practicing. Playing with other musicians as much as you can. Pushing the limits and expanding your musical horizons. You can tell that Stevie Ray Vaughan did that. And that inspired me to do the same.

“The thing about Stevie Ray Vaughan is that he didn’t just turn on his generation; he turned on a much younger generation as well. After those first few albums hit, all these young blues players started showing up, and that was an anomaly.

“Up to then, all of the ‘new’ blues players were in their 30s or 40s, but now you were getting young kids like Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Jonny Lang and John Mayer, who were breaking the model of what a blues player is supposed to be.

“They were young white kids who were totally committed to blues, and not just mixing it up with rock and roll. They were true to the genre, and that was a phenomenon that came about thanks to Stevie Ray Vaughan.”

In every chord progression, there is a melody hiding in the low strings, just waiting to be brought to life. But it often seems that more advanced guitar players tend to play melodies mostly on the high strings and frets, well above the chords and harmony.

However, one of the most natural places to play a melody on the guitar is on the low strings, and this fact was not lost on classic country players, who would often play beautiful themes on the lowest three strings.

I picked up a lot of low-string melodies when I was younger by watching cowboy movies or seeing country guitarists perform live. Sometimes these players would even use baritone guitars to give the notes more twang and depth. 

Inspired by these wonderful sounds, I wrote a galloping instrumental called “Tri County Barn Dance,” which appears on my solo album Major Impacts 2. Its main theme is presented in the eight-bar musical example below.

First, familiarize your ears with the phrase’s harmony by playing through the chord progression (which is presented in the chord diagrams above the music) using an eighth- or 16th-note-based strumming pattern. 

Why focus on the chords first? Because, as you’ll soon find out, the best part about playing a melody on the low strings is that while you’re doing it, it’s often easy to strum the accompanying chords in the spaces between the notes.

The melody is shown in the notation and tablature staves. Notice that each time a new chord appears, the melody note directly beneath it lies within that chord. After learning the melody, your next goal should be to strum each chord at least once immediately after playing its initial melody note, letting the chord ring as best you can while you continue playing the melody.

You’ll notice that you actually have space to strum the chords a few times during the longer melody notes. This melody/accompaniment double-duty is not an exact science. Experiment with the approach and find what works for you, striving to make it sound lively and almost as if there are two guitarists playing.