The following story originally appeared in the October 1984 issue of Guitar Player.

Several hours before show time, Stevie Ray Vaughan sits alone on a weary couch in a backstage dressing room, his head buried in his trusty, albeit beat-up, Stratocaster. Dressed in Japanese happi coat, wide-brim black gaucho hat, black slacks, and pointed-toe shoes, Vaughan limbers up, and greets the occasional visitor with a vice-like handshake and a bit of tentative conversation. It's a ritual the slight but wiry Texan has been through countless times, but he still appears a bit nervous.

Once plugged in onstage, however a completely different Stevie Ray Vaughan emerges – cool, confident, flamboyant, and even a bit cocky. Before the crowd is finished applauding the opening instrumental, Testify (from his debut album, Texas Flood), he and the two-man rhythm section known as Double Trouble (bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton) launch into Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Chile (from the group's impressive follow-up, Couldn't Stand the Weather).

For the next 90 minutes, each vocal phrase, every guitar solo and fill, is delivered at full-throttle. Even during almost inaudible parts of his solo in the dirge-like Tin Pan Alley, Vaughan's intensity never subsides. He doesn't just play his guitar; he mauls it – as evidenced by the nonexistent finish and 1/4"-deep scratches on the face of his battered '59 Fender Strat.

By the end of the set, closing with Hendrix's sonic tour de force Third Stone From The Sun, Vaughan has played the guitar behind his head, off his shoulder like a violin, behind his back, and on the floor – standing over the cutaways with one hand firmly on the guitar's neck, the other pulling up on the vibrato bar.

While making vintage guitar collectors wince and teachers moan, Stevie Ray has given the biggest exposure in years to one of the most fundamental but unsung musical forms: the blues. And with every achievement and accolade he has received since he burst onto the charts on David Bowie's critically acclaimed album Let's Dance (lauded in large measure because of Stevie's searing guitar work), the 30-year-old has shared his honors with the bluesmen who preceded him and with the genre itself.

“Most of all, I'm glad to see the blues getting the recognition it deserves,” the guitarist has emphasized on more than one occasion.

After being lifted out of the Austin, Texas, blues scene to play on Let's Dance, Stevie Ray went back to his hometown group, Double Trouble, and teamed with A&R legend John Hammond to produce Texas Flood, which took top honors in Guitar Player's 1983 Readers Poll as Best Guitar Album.

In the same balloting, Vaughan racked up two more blue ribbons – completely dominating the New Talent category and edging out no less than Eric Clapton as Best Electric Blues player – to become the first triple-crown winner since Jeff Beck's 1976 hat trick.

With Texas Flood still selling strongly, Double Trouble released Couldn't Stand The Weather, which hit the Billboard pop chart on June 13 of this year at (144, leaped up to 63 in its second week, and bulleted to 37 and 31 in the following two weeks.) “What's happened, I guess,” drawls Vaughan, “is that we've come from playing clubs to where we can pretty much fill a 5,000-seat hall now. We just worked our butts off.”

Vaughan's popularity is as worthy of scrutiny as his phenomenal guitar playing. While numerous blues-based rockers have become guitar heroes after crossing over to the rock camp – including Clapton, Michael Bloomfield, and Jimi Hendrix – Stevie is the first since fellow Texan Johnny Winter (who also eventually drifted into out-and out rock and roll) to make the major leagues by sticking with the blues.

His videos of Love Struck Baby (from Flood), Couldn't Stand the Weather, and Cold Shot (from Weather) are in steady rotation on MTV's playlist, and Pride and Joy (from his debut LP) received substantial airplay on FM stations. He teamed with George Thorogood for a tribute to Chuck Berry at this year's Grammy awards, and has appeared on such unlikely TV shows as Solid Gold.

Most people's first exposure to Stevie Ray's searing solos, of course, was via Bowie's Let's Dance. But even though the material was not the type of R&B he had mined in Texas bars for more than a decade, Vaughan's razor-edged leads were pure blues, relying heavily on Albert King for tones and riffs.

Texas Flood revealed a debt to blues masters such as Jimmy Reed, Magic Sam, Lonnie Mack, Buddy Guy, and Hubert Sumlin, and paid that debt with interest. Opening for coliseum acts such as Men At Work, the Moody Blues, Huey Lewis and the News, and the Police – Stevie riveted audiences with his passionate homages to Jimi Hendrix, including Voodoo Chile, Little Wing, and Third Stone From The Sun.

While countless guitarists have been influenced by the creative genius of Hendrix, few have attempted to cover any of his songs.

There are several obvious similarities between Vaughan and the late southpaw – each led a trio, had incredible control of feedback and volume with a minimum of effects devices, and could sing adequately but not well enough to make it strictly as a vocalist. But what sets Stevie above other pretenders to the Hendrix throne is his ability to play lead and rhythm simultaneously – like Jimi, he fires a nonstop barrage of chords, licks, hammer-ons, pull-offs, and unorthodox tricks at the listener. Vaughan's guitar technique doesn't just impress; it overwhelms.

Instrumentals such as Rude Mood (from Texas Flood) and Scuttle Buttin' (Weather) are textbook studies of the pedal-to-the metal Vaughan style, while Lenny (Flood) is reminiscent of Hendrix' most sensitive ballads, and Stang's Swang (Weather) reveals a firm grounding in organ-trio guitarists such as Kenny Burrell, Grant Green, and early George Benson.

Unlike many other guitar-based trios, Double Trouble overdub next to nothing in the studio; the 12-inch pieces of vinyl are accurate representations of the sort of thing Vaughan & Co. have been playing onstage since they formed in 1978 – following Stevie Ray's stints with the Cobras and Triple Threat Revue.

Couldn't Stand The Weather made use of a few of Vaughan's Texas buddies – saxophonist Stan Harrison, Fabulous Thunderbirds drummer Fran Christina, and brother Jimmie Vaughan (guitarist/leader of the T-Birds) – and at press time, Stevie was finalizing plans to augment the trio further for his October debut at New York's Carnegie Hall. To be recorded for a possible live LP and video, the concert will tentatively include Jimmie Vaughan, organ legend Booker T. Jones, and the Tower Of Power horn section as special guests.

A lot has happened to Stevie Ray Vaughan since he was featured in the August '83 Guitar Player. In the following interview, he talks about his techniques and tricks, his major influences, his collection of Stratocasters, and the most important element to Double Trouble's sound: soul.

There seems to be a long tradition of Texas guitar players.

“Yeah. I don't know if any of us know what it is. It's just in the air, you know.”

Does the environment of friendly competition improve the caliber of the players?

“Sure, yeah. For some reason, nobody lets go of the soul of it. Same way with a lot of San Francisco players. There are a lot of musicians in the Bay Area who do remember how to play from their heart – as opposed to a lot of the things in LA that are missing that; it's just show time. But in Texas especially, there seems to be a lot of musicians interested in pulling for each other and working together, and it really, really helps a lot. It makes you a tighter unit, and it keeps you right in your heart. And that has a lot to do with your playing.”

Austin musicians definitely have strong feelings of community – even though a band like Asleep At The Wheel plays Western swing, the Fabulous Thunderbirds play blues, and Eric Johnson plays fusion.

“It doesn't matter. People still work together.”

Can you spot a Texas guitar player by hearing him?

“Oh yeah. I don't know what it is – I just can hear it. Maybe it's the water [laughs].”

What's the blues scene like in Austin?

“There's some crazy jam sessions going on down there. Hubert Sumlin is staying down there now, and Mel Brown is living there, and Lonnie Mack. He's a great cat. Also Buddy Guy comes down and hangs out for two or three weeks a month, just about.

“It ends up where all those guys are up there playing. And Mel Brown plays [Hammond] B-3 organ like nobody's business, too. Antone's closes down at 2:00, but it's nothing out of the ordinary for it to be 4:30 when the last set's over – after starting at midnight. A four-hour set ain't too bad.”

I heard stories years ago about a jam session at Antone's with B.B. King, yourself, and Luther Tucker.

“Yeah, that was the night B.B. scared me to death. He sat on his amp and played rhythm for me for about four songs. And then he stood up and played one note – [picks up an acoustic guitar and plays a high, stinging vibrato]. You know, one of those B.B. notes that make you go, 'Haaugh!'”

What you just played sounded exactly like B.B. Did you work on that a lot?

“Just listened.”

When you first took up guitar, was it blues that you were mainly attracted to?

“A lot – because of my brother Jimmie. He'd bring home records by B.B. and Buddy Guy. And he was the one who hit me with Lonnie Mack, too; the first record I ever bought was The Wham Of That Memphis Man. Jimmie brought home a Hendrix record, and I went, 'Whoa! What is this?' I'll never forget that.”

Did Jimmie show you things on guitar, or did you just pick up things from hearing him around the house?

“At first, he taught me a couple of things, and then he taught me how to teach myself – and that's the right way.”

Your brother was heavily influenced by another Texas bluesman, Freddie King. Did that style rub off on you as well?

“Yeah, it did. I had that instrumental album of his [Let's Hide Away And Dance Away]. Jimmie used to know him pretty well, but Freddie wouldn't talk to me in public. In private, but not in public. I guess I was a young white boy he didn't want to be seen with [laughs]. I played with him once, sitting around a table when no one was around.”

What specifics did you get from various players?

“I got a lot of the fast things I do from Lonnie Mack – just the ideas and the phrasing. Like on Scuttle Buttin'. [plays a barrage of chicken-picked pull-offs]. That's really a Lonnie Mack thing – that's dedicated to him. I got a lot of turnarounds from Freddie King.”

Who were the main blues players you heard on records?

“Well, let's run 'em down. There was Buddy Guy, Muddy, of course, and all the various guitar players who were with him [including Jimmy Rogers and Pat Hare], Hubert Sumlin, Lonnie Mack, B.B., Albert King, Freddie, Albert Collins, Guitar Slim – he'd just turn it all the way up. I can just imagine people saying, 'Slim, why do you always play so loud?' 'Because it sounds like this' [laughs].”

Johnny Winter was the first white Texan bluesman to make it on a big scale. Were you influenced much by him?

“Yes, although I hadn't heard him as much then. I listened more to people like Albert Collins, Albert and Freddie King, [and] Johnny Guitar Watson. But around '71 or '72, I got to jam a lot with Johnny over at Tommy Shannon's house – that was a little bit after his initial big success.”

How did you meet Tommy Shannon and Chris Layton?

“I've known Tommy for years and years – since about '69. I was in Dallas playing at this after-hours place called the Fog, and he'd just left Johnny Winter. He claims that he walked in and saw this little person playing guitar [laughs]. I was 15 or something – wasn't supposed to be in that club.

“We've played together in bands off and on ever since. Chris and I have been together about six years, I guess. I met him through Joe Sublett of the Cobras – they were roommates. I went over to the house once and Chris was in the kitchen with his headphones on, blasting away on the drums. When he was finished, I told him I needed a drummer, so he quit his other band.”

Was he basically a blues drummer when you found him?

“No, but he could do it. Took him about 15 minutes to learn how to do a rub shuffle right. A lot of it was just natural.”

Did you play in clubs in Dallas before you moved to Austin?

“Yeah. I could make decent money there, playing the Cellar, but it wasn't the kind of place you'd want to hang too long. That was the only place that let me do what I wanted to do – because nobody cared about shit there. They just had strippers and crabs everywhere [laughs]. If you really wanted to come in there and play, they'd let you. A couple of times, people would get pissed and start shooting at the stage. You had to duck and keep playing [laughs].

“I played there from age 14 until I was 18. There was a Cellar in Dallas and one in Fort Worth. We'd play two sets in one town, drive to the other club, and play two more sets. We got 90 bucks a night per person, and we were never awake during the day, so there wasn't any way to spend it.

“I was trying to stay as close to this kind of music as I could, but at the same time I was going through a phase of playing through Marshalls – just turning up to 10 and being a teenager. I remember doing some Allman Brothers songs, which I liked at the time – skirting the outskirts – but we were also doing Buddy Guy and B.B. King stuff.”

Have you had a hard time playing blues as an opening act to major rock bands?

“No, the audiences reacted real well to it. I think more of the people on the Moody Blues tour were aware of what we were doing. When we played with Men At Work, it was still a lot of fun, but there were mainly 13-, 14-, and 15-year-olds, and a few of them knew how to slingshot dimes, you know [laughs]. But a lot of those kids really went for it, even though they weren't expecting it.”

Your playing on Let's Dance isn't along the lines of Texas Flood; it's more like Albert King.

“I kind of wanted to see how many places Albert King's stuff would fit. It always does. I love that man. When that album first came out, Albert heard it. He said, '[sneering] Yeah, I heard you doin' all my shit on there. I'm gonna go up there and do some of yours" [laughs].

“We were doing this TV show right outside of Toronto – Hamilton, I think – and during the lunch break, Albert went around to everybody in there looking for an emery board. I didn't think anything of it. We were jamming on the last song, Outskirts Of Town, and it comes to the solo, and he goes, 'Get it, Stevie!' I started off, and I look over and he's pulling out this damn emery board, filing his nails, sort of giving me this sidelong glance [laughs].

“I loved it! Lookin' at me like, 'Uh-huh, I got you swinging by your toes.' He's a heavy cat.”

Do you ever play with your thumb to get an Albert King sound?

“I play with a pick and a finger. I used the round end of the pick, too. You break less of them and don't get tangled up in the strings. Sometimes I play with both together, or I'll palm the pick and use my fingers, or sometimes I'll just 'Hubert' it [play with bare fingers a la Hubert Sumlin].”

Is that to get a variety of tones?

“Different tones, different moods. It depends on how the amps are working that night, how dead the strings are, how much I can hear, how crazy I'm feeling.”

On Cold Shot, did you play through a Leslie speaker to get that underwater sound?

“It's a Fender Vibratone, which is basically like a Leslie. It's a 10" speaker with a Styrofoam rotor in front of it – so the speaker is stationary, but a drum with a slit in it revolves – and then you mike it from both sides.”

On Couldn't Stand The Weather, were there any tracks where you cut a rhythm part and overdubbed a lead, or vice versa?

“No, on some of the songs I just played and then did the vocal later – which sometimes is a mistake, because you play differently when you're not singing than you would if you were singing along. A lot of times the licks won't match the phrasing of the vocals. Most of the solos were cut live. I redid one line in Voodoo, because my amp went crazy on me. The punch-in didn't come off very well; it still doesn't sound right to me.”

Texas Flood sounds like there are hardly any overdubs.

“There aren't. Only if I broke a string or something.”

So you played the lead and rhythm in the same take, rather than laying down a rhythm track and soloing over it later?

“Right. We redid a few vocals, but some of them were live, too. That was mainly to go back if a word was left out or not real clear, plus, we got a better vocal sound by redoing them. I don't think that's cheating too much.”

Do you set up in the studio the same as onstage, or do you use drum booths and headphones, etc.?

“The first record, we pretty much set up like we do onstage, but we did have a few baffles between us. We went ahead and used headphones like on one ear. We couldn't see the control room; it was at the other end of this place with a bunch of stuff in between and no window. I like it a lot that way.

“That was at Jackson Browne's rehearsal studio called Downtown, in LA. For Couldn't Stand The Weather, we were in the Power Station [in New York], and all the walls separating the rooms are glass, so we were separated but we could still see each other. So I could go in and play louder than shit.”

Do you usually record pretty loud?

“Sometimes. Sometimes real quiet, like on Tin Pan Alley.”

What about Voodoo Chile?

“Had it up as loud as I could – and I was in the same room with it.”

Do you use the same amps in the studio as onstage?

“Yes. Two Fender Vibroverbs – they came out in '63; they're number 5 and 6 off the production line, but I bought them in two different places at two different times.

“It's basically like a Super Reverb with a 15 and a shorter cabinet, and it has no midrange knob – it's preset on 4, I think. My favorite setup used to be two Vibroverbs and two Supers – just stack 'em up. Just let the Vibroverbs handle the bottom. I had one Super set clean, and the other where I could just turn it up or down wherever I wanted it.”

You don't use the Super Reverbs now?

“Right now, I use a Howard Dumble 150-watt. He calls it the Steel String Singer, I call it the King Tone Consoul [laughs] – that's s-o-u-l. It's like an overgrown Fender tube amp. Some Dumbles – like the Overdrive Special – you've got to know what you're doing with them, because they'll get away from you and take you with 'em.”

Was John Hammond in the studio for the first album?

“No, he wasn't there at all, except for the mixdown and the mastering. This time he was there a lot for the recording.”

Do you have any guitars not in the Strat family?

“I have a 1958 Gibson dot-neck ES-335 and a '48 Airline that's a bit smaller but the same shape as a Barney Kessel Kay. It's got three pickups with a 4-position toggle switch – bass, middle, treble, or all three. I've got an old Rickenbacker prototype with a flat top, and I'm giving that to Hubert [Sumlin]. And I've got this 1928 National that belonged to Blind Boy Fuller. Byron Barr, my guitar roadie, gave it to me.

“Sometimes I'll pull it out at the end of a set and sit down and play Rude Mood or a little slide. I'd planned on using it on the last record, but we got sidetracked and never got around to it.”

Do you play slide in open tuning?

“I usually just tune up the G string to Ab and leave everything else the same.”

How did you go about recreating the sounds you heard on Hendrix's records?

“You just keep listening and trying to find the sound, because it's in your hands as much as anything. It's the way you play. There are different techniques to playing everybody's styles, and it's not just necessarily the amp or the guitar. It's the way you pick, the way you hold the guitar.

“For instance, T-Bone [Walker] played like this most of the time [holds guitar horizontally, away from his body], and the tone is different when you play that way. Can you hear the difference? [Holds guitar against his body and plays the same licks – gets a bassier tone]. It's the way your fingers hit the strings, and you're more prone to pick closer to the neck when you hold the guitar like T-Bone.”

Your '59 Strat has the vibrato bar anchored off the bass side of the bridge. Did you set it up that way because Jimi Hendrix's guitar bodies were upside down?

“Well, I started listening to people and noticed that when Otis Rush used one, he had it on the top – he played upside-down. And Hendrix had the guitar upside-down, except he strung it regular. It seemed to me that the people who did that the best had it on top, so I moved mine. Sometimes it does get in the way. I've had it tear my sleeve halfway off.”

So instead of working it with the little finger of your picking hand, it lays right in the middle of your palm.

“Yeah, and I've got the springs set up so I couldn't move it with my little finger anyway. It's pretty tight, with four springs tightened all the way up. That's how I can do Third Stone From The Sun and still be in tune. See, I have my old Strat set up where it won't go up at all. On my newer Strats, the vibrato handles are on the bottom, in the regular place. The orange one and Lenny, the brown one, both of their vibratos will go pretty far up and down as well, and they're set up a lot lighter.

“All the guitars have personalities of their own and feel completely different. They each have different sounds. Like the brown one sounds real good for jazzy-type things or Lenny. It's a '63 or '64 that my wife, whose name is Lenny, found for me.”

What about the old beat-up one?

“That's my first wife [laughs]. The new one with my name on the fretboard, I call Main, for main guitar. It's a Hamiltone, build by James Hamilton of Buffalo, New York. It's basically Strat-shaped but a little thicker, and the construction of the neck is pretty much like a [Gibson] Super 400, except it goes all the way through the body. So the vibrato is on the neck, basically – dead center right there. You can pop the low E string, and the whole guitar has this reverb you can hear even without an amp, because of the springs being in the neck.

“It's got an ebony fretboard that's the same width as my beat-up '59, and then they added binding on the outside of that, because I have big hands and I always play barre chords with my thumb wrapped around. What happens a lot of times is my thumb will end up pushing the low E string accidentally. So the wider neck keeps me from doing that.

“The pickups in there now are EMGs with a little computer chip preamp in them, so there's a battery in the guitar, of course. I like that a lot. They say that the battery will last six months, but I can hear it going down – you can hear it in the tone; it gets fuzzier, like it's straining. When it's got a brand-new battery in there, it sounds clear as a bell, and smooth. It'll sing to you.”

You've also got a white Strat with three Danelectro "lipstick tube" pickups.

“That was put together by Charley Wirz at Charley's Guitar Shop, Dallas, Texas. He also gave me the yellow one with the pickup in the bass position. That one is hollowed out from the neck to the bridge, because the guy from Vanilla Fudge had put four humbucking pickups in there. It's got a pretty cool tone. Charley then came up with the design for the white one with the Danelectros. He also found me the orange 1960.

“All of the Strats have bass frets. I get them from Gibson, or I use Dunlop jumbo bass frets, the biggest ones I can get. I don't have to replace them twice a year, and there's a lot more sustain. It's a lot easier to get under the strings when you use big strings like I do. You can work yourself to death with those little frets. Instead of the note fading out when you bend a string, it'll get bigger when you bend with the jumbo frets.”

Do any of your Strats have maple necks?

“Yeah, Lenny does. It's got a real clear tone, and the pickups are microphonic – you can hear it when you hit the pickguard. But when you play it soft, it sounds great. When I first got the guitar, it had a rosewood fingerboard, but it was thinner, and that bothered me. So I put a copy of a Fender maple neck on there that Billy Gibbons gave me.

“I like the rosewood necks usually, because for one thing, when you sweat, you don't get blisters. It seems like the finish on a maple neck gets hotter and there's more friction. As hard as I play and as much as I sweat, I get sore enough as it is. There's a fatter sound on the rosewood, as far as I can tell; it's not as bright. The ebony fretboard seems a little bit clearer, but it's fat, too.”

Which guitars have you recorded with most?

“Lenny on the song Lenny, and everything else has been the '59. I'd like to record with the one with the Danelectro pickups; I like it a lot.”

How do you do some of the tricks you do onstage – like getting the whole guitar behind your back so fast?

“As I'm spinning around, I'm taking the strap loose and the guitar pivots behind my back, and then I rehook it behind my back. It's really playing the same way, except you've got to hold the guitar out a little bit, and you just can't see as well.”

In Third Stone From The Sun, you have the guitar laying on the stage while you straddle it, pulling up on the neck with one hand and on the wang bar with the other.

“Yeah, I wouldn't recommend that anybody do that on their 335 [laughs]. A Stratocaster's a pretty tough thing, though. Then I figured out how to get the guitar to rumble. I put it on the middle pickup, turn the tone knob down, grab it by the wang bar, and just shake it on the floor.”

Do you use any effects besides the wah-wah on the Hendrix tunes?

“Just an Ibanez Tube Screamer. I have Univibes, but I don't use them. I use the Vibrotone for that effect. I don't have any straight distortion devices; I use the Tube Screamer for that.”

Who works on your guitars?

“Charley Wirz or Michael Stevens in Austin, depending on who's available and what I'm having done. Certain things, both of them do very well; other things, one of them does better.”

Do you string all the Strats the same?

“Yeah, I use a .013, a .015, or .016 depending on what shape my fingers are in, .019 plain, .028, .038, .060 or .056. If I go down to an .018 on the G string, it feels like a rubber band to me.”

Do you have 3-way or 5-way switches on the Strats?

“5-way. I use all the positions for different tones.”

With the amount of amplification you use, do you still pick fairly hard with your right hand?

“Yeah, terribly. That's just how I play. Sometimes I literally pull the strings off. I can deaden a set of strings completely after one set, because I play 'em hard and do a lot of this – [snaps bass string] – to get bottom notes, like Albert Collins. Sometimes, though, I play really soft. That's probably the best Albert King tone I can get.”

When you got the '59 Strat, was it as beat-up as it looks now?

“[Laughs] It wasn't in real good shape. You could still get a jar of model car paint and go around the edges to make it look decent, but that continued to wear off. You asked if I pick hard – well, look at the top of the guitar [which is worn away a good 1/4"]. That's from picking.

“It's gradually sounding different, because I let it dry out too much. I bet if I start oiling it up, it'll start fattening up some. The body is a '59, but the neck is a '62, I believe. In the body, it says, 'LF.59.' I came to find out that was Louis Fuentes, not Leo Fender. But Louis Fuentes was a good cat. You never heard a Stratocaster sound real meaty like that one.”

The tendency on the part of most white blues-rock artists has been to eventually drift more towards mainstream rock.

“We try to keep it going in both directions. There's no reason for us to leave behind what we've got, you know, but there is a good reason to expand on it. I'd like to keep it as a trio, keep that identity, but I have nothing against playing with great horn players or keyboard players or other guitar players – or more than one drummer, even.”

Stang's Swang is still blues, but it's a departure from the type of stuff you're known for.

“I wrote that four or five years ago. I like guys like Kenny Burrell and Grant Green a lot. I like Django Reinhardt a lot, too, and Wes [Montgomery], of course.”

What's the turnaround on that song – IIVs?

“I don't know. I don't know what key I'm in sometimes. I just try to listen.”

Are you completely self-taught when it comes to any theoretical vocabulary?

“I don't know any of that stuff.”

What about the chord voicings you use?

“I just look for things that sound right.”

So if you're playing something like, say, a diminished 7th...

“I don't know it. I almost learned how to read chord charts doing some of those Bowie things. But as soon as I learned how to read the charts, they took the charts away. Most of the time, I'd listen to a couple of run-throughs while he was doing his vocals, to get an idea of where the song was going. Then I'd figure out in my head where this Albert King lick or that Albert King lick would fit [laughs].”

Stevie Ray Vaughan’s first encounter with Jimi Hendrix didn’t come from some carefully curated record collection or a mentor’s recommendation. It came out of a trash bin.

As Vaughan recalled to Guitar Player in 1989, his brother Jimmie returned from a gig in Dallas one night with a discarded Hendrix album he’d found behind a club.

“The first time | ever heard Jimi’s name was when my brother brought home a record of his. | guess it was around '67, and Jimmie had found it in a trash bin. He recognized it because he'd seen a short paragraph about Jimi Hendrix in a magazine, and he knew he was supposed to be something really happening.”

“He put it on the record player, and what could you do but say ‘Yeah!’” Stevie laughed. “It really knocked my socks off.”

At the time, Vaughan was still a teenager — barely 15 — and like so many of his generation, he learned guitar the hard way: by listening repeatedly until the music gave up its secrets. Hendrix’s records became a private master class in his room.

“I remember getting my little stereo — an Airline with the cardboard satellite speakers — and I would mic that up with a Shure PA that I had in my bedroom.

“For some of my first gigs, I’d rent four separate reverbs, and I’d have all this set up in my room. Of course, the parents were at work. I would go in there and floorboard it—dress up as cool as I could and try to learn his stuff.”

No instruction — just repetition, obsession, and a willingness to chase every nuance of the music on his electric guitar.

But Hendrix wasn’t just another technical hurdle. For Vaughan, he was proof that the blues could be something larger.

By the time SRV was famous and speaking publicly about Hendrix, he was pushing back against the idea that his music was untouchable. In his view, Hendrix wasn’t an outsider to the blues tradition — he was one of its most radical extensions.

“Some people don’t see that Jimi Hendrix was a blues player,” he said. “I hear it in the way he approaches things. Even though he wasn’t ashamed at all of doing some things differently, I still hear the roots of the old style.”

That perspective carried directly into SRV’s playing. Hendrix material wasn’t something he kept at arm’s length; it was part of his live arsenal. And he never treated that decision as controversial.

“For some reason, there seems to be a thing about it being sacrilegious to play Jimi Hendrix’s music. I think he would call bullshit on that,” he said from a London limo in 1988. “I may be wrong, but it seems he would want his music to be out there, just as accessible as anyone else’s.

“Hendrix was not scared to take [his] influences and incorporate them into his music,” he added. “Now, some people look at that as ripping people off. If it’s added to, and it comes out as yourself… it’s still got a new bite to it.”

Which is exactly what SRV did throughout his career. He honored Hendrix while cutting his own path as he stunned both David Bowie and Eric Johnson, and left Jeff Beck to compare him to his old friend Jimi.

Fittingly, Hendrix never left Stevie’s setlist. Vaughan’s final live performance closed with “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” a full-circle moment that underscored how deeply the connection ran.

Stevie Ray Vaughan was still a studio greenhorn when David Bowie invited him to play guitar on Let’s Dance in 1982.

At the time, the Texas electric blues guitarist was largely unknown outside regional circles. Vaughan had begun attracting attention with his band Double Trouble, but he had yet to release the debut album — Texas Flood — that would soon make him one of the most celebrated guitarists of his generation.

“That entire recording experience helped a whole bunch, and in a lot of ways,” Vaughan told Guitar Player in 1983. “I learned a lot about playing—particularly in terms of recording techniques — and about business.”

As album producer Nile Rodgers recalls, Vaughan quickly figured out not only how to approach the music but — just as importantly — how to fit into the room when he showed up with his “Number One” Fender Strat and 1964 Fender Vibroverb amp .

Rodgers remembers the guitarist’s reaction the first time he heard the title track in the control room.

“The look on his face when he first walked into the control room and heard ‘Let’s Dance’ was like, ‘Oh my God — I’m experiencing something important and magical. What do I do? How do I fit in on this thing? I have to get out of their way and just add spice.’

“I didn’t have to tell him anything. He instinctively knew his role was like, ‘The meal is fantastic—now here’s the dessert.’

“And, bang, he nailed it.”

Vaughan also understood that relationships in the studio mattered. Seeing how hard the musicians were working — and how little time they had to step away — he found a simple way to show his appreciation.

“He wanted to bond with them so that he’d be accepted as family, too,” Rodgers says. “He also knew we were making Let’s Dance like a Black record. White bands would book the studio for months and months, but Black records only got a few hours. We’d work an eight-hour shift because we had lower budgets than rock albums.

“So we would order our food at the beginning of the day so it was here when we took a break for lunch. We’d eat and — boom — back to work.

“Stevie saw we were doing that, and he called Sam’s BBQ in Austin, Texas, to order lunch for the day he came in. We didn’t know this, so we started putting in our lunch order, and Stevie said, ‘Y’all, I got lunch today.’

“The next thing you know, all this BBQ came in. I was like, ‘Check this dude out. He’s right up on the vibe.’ And from that moment, Stevie and I became like brothers.”

The sessions for Let’s Dance, released in 1983, would prove pivotal for both artists. The album became Bowie’s biggest commercial success, while Vaughan’s stinging blues guitar — heard on tracks like “Let’s Dance” and “China Girl” — helped give the sleek pop record an unexpected edge.

Within months of the album’s release, Vaughan issued Texas Flood and emerged as a major force in modern blues guitar — proof that the young musician who walked into Bowie’s studio eager to “add spice” was already bringing something special to the table.

August 27, 1990, was a devastating day for the blues. In the early hours following an all-star jam at Alpine Valley Resort in East Troy, Wisconsin, a helicopter carrying Stevie Ray Vaughan crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all onboard.

In the confusion that followed, early reports misidentified victims, triggering a wave of grief for musicians and loved ones who believed what they were hearing.

For Richard Marx, the tragedy quickly became personal. As recently recalled on his podcast Stories to Tell, he awoke to the news like everyone else, stunned by the loss of Vaughan, a generational blues talent who was just 35 years old.

“We all wake up to this tragic news that Stevie Ray Vaughan has been killed in a helicopter crash. But the initial reports were, ‘Stevie Ray Vaughan and members of Eric Clapton's band have perished in a helicopter crash.’”

Roughly an hour later, the situation took a devastating turn.

“My manager calls me and says, ‘Richard, I'm so sorry. Nathan's dead.’ I get emotional just thinking about it even now all these years later. I collapsed. I was sobbing, I was inconsolable.”

The “Nathan” in question was Nathan East, his close friend and collaborator of Marx’s, and the bass guitarist in Eric Clapton’s touring band.

Then, after hours of mourning, came another call, one that would reverse the emotional whiplash in an instant.

“Hours later, I get a call saying, ‘No, no, no, no. He's okay. It was these other people.’”

More than three decades on, the memory remains vivid. Sitting opposite East, Marx still recalls the surreal weight of those intervening hours — not just the shock of the news, but the very real experience of loss that came with it.

“It was hours of me mourning you,” Marx tells East. “Like, I experienced losing you.”

“It’s such a bizarre thing to be told that someone very dear to you has been killed, and then to have the relief, hours later, that they're fine. That was really an extraordinary thing for me.”

Marx and East recall that they spoke later that night, roughly 24 hours after the accident, while the episode was still fresh in both their minds.

“I remember towards the end of our conversation, you were talking, and I wasn’t saying much,” Marx continues. “And you said to me, ‘Ricardo, I’m not dead.’ And I went, ‘But you were to me. I was told you were.’”

For East, the day was no less harrowing, despite the fact that he had survived.

“It was the darkest day of my life,” he says.

“People were showing up at my folks’ house saying, ‘We heard about what happened.’”

He adds that Clapton’s manager had diverted all calls intended for the band’s crew to his own hotel room. When East’s parents tried to reach their son, the rerouted calls only deepened their fear that the worst had already occurred.

The misinformation spread quickly and widely. Pat Metheny, hearing the news while in Brazil, left a somber message on East’s answering machine, lamenting that they would never have the chance to work together.

Then came the most chilling detail: East was supposed to be on that helicopter.

The very night of the accident, he had struck up a conversation with another pilot, who invited him to fly on a Twin Cessna instead. East accepted, as did Clapton keyboardist Greg Phillinganes, another musician who had originally been slated for the helicopter. Their last-minute decision made all the difference.

“Lots of things go through my head as I reflect on that day,” East says. “One is, ‘I guess I'm still meant to be here.’”

Stevie Ray Vaughan may now be remembered as one of the greatest blues guitarists since Eric Clapton and Howlin’ Wolf, but in his early years as a recording artist the electric guitar-slinger struggled to build an audience.

He got a little help from singer Huey Lewis.

In 1985, Huey Lewis and the News were one of the biggest acts in pop thanks to their third album, Sports, a number-one hit that spawned huge singles like “Heart and Soul,” “I Want a New Drug” and “If This Is It.” Lewis was an SRV fan and eager to bring the guitarist along for the band’s tour. He even went to battle with his management to get him on the bill, such was his belief in the Texan’s talents.

By this point, the guitarist’s stock was rising, most notably thanks to David Bowie’s shrewd recruitment of him for his 1983 album, Let’s Dance, alongside Nile Rodgers. But he was yet to become a megastar.

“Stevie Ray’s manager at the time asked for more money than they were worth,” Lewis writes in a reflective social media post. “My agent said, ‘This is ridiculous. We can't pay them this kind of money. They're not worth anything. We're just helping them by putting them on the tour. They should be paying us.’

“I said, ‘Forget about it. Just pay him. Trust me. You'll be glad you did.’”

It was a strong show of support for a guitarist who had already befriended Eric Johnson, and Lewis got his wish. In hindsight, though, Lewis may not have been glad he did. The tour began at the Zoo Amphitheatre in Oklahoma City, but despite SRV’s best efforts, the crowd offered very little in response.

“They were killing it. Then the song ended, and there was a moment of dead silence,” Lewis expands. “Then the audience started chanting, ‘Huey, Huey, Huey, Huey.’”

As Louder Sound reports, a review of the night from the local newspaper The Oklahoman claimed the crowd was “more concerned with the long lines at the beer taps.” Lewis couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and so he tried to offer some kindly words to soften the blow of a wounding opening night.

“Look, fellas, you're tremendous,” he had said. “Here's the thing: The audience is invested in us. They know our music. They play the record on the way to the venue. No matter how good you are, they're bound to think that we're going to be much, much better.

“There's no way you're going to score here. What's going to happen is, when they go home tonight, they're going to say, ‘Hey, you know what? That first band was pretty good.’”

Of course, the next few years would be kind to Stevie Ray Vaughan. It’s unlikely that Double Trouble’s tour with the News was the sole factor, but Lewis doubled down on his support by inviting the guitarist to end their set with them each night, when they’d play “Bad Is Bad” together.

“We were inseparable for the whole tour,” his post concludes.

It was also a memorable tour for News guitarist Chris Hayes, who reveled in the chance to share a tour bus with such a talented player.

“Stevie Ray Vaughan was great,” he told Vertex Effects last year (via Guitar World). “Every night, it was like a guitar lesson for me.”

Then there was one particularly heavy night on the bus.

“He kicks all the other guys in the band off the bus, and it's just me and Stevie on the bus, with a bottle of Crown Royal, and we just wrapped it down,” he said. “Of course, he could handle it. I think I was sick as a dog in the morning because it's not the safest thing to drink.”

Elsewhere, Carlos Santana has bizarrely claimed that Stevie Ray Vaughan once begged him to play his #007 Dumble amp from beyond the grave. Jeff Beck, meanwhile, compared the guitarist to Jimi Hendrix for one specific reason.

His brother, Jimmie Vaughan, has also used his brother’s virtuosity to dismiss the long-standing belief that there is a big difference between rosewood and maple fretboards.

Earlier this year, Sammy Hagar claimed that he’d written his latest single in a dream with the late Eddie Van Halen. The story met with bucketloads of skepticism by many, but it turns out Hagar isn’t the only musician to have received contact from the dead.

“I get visitations from Miles Davis sometimes, as well as B.B. King,” Carlos Santana says in a new, eye-opening interview with Guitar World. “Sometimes a dream is not a dream; someone has come back to communicate with you.”

That was the case, he believes, when Stevie Ray Vaughan entered his dreamscapes from beyond the grave.

“He was saying, ‘Carlos, where I am, I don’t have any fingers; I am only spirit.’ He missed putting his fingers on a guitar and making the speakers push air,” Santana recalls of his supernatural visitation. “He told me to call his brother Jimmie and ask him to lend me his amp, the #007 Dumble, and then play it with a Strat so he could feel it through me.

“You know that Ghost movie with Whoopi Goldberg?” he asks. “There’s a part where a ghost comes into her body so he can feel. That’s what Stevie was doing. He wanted to utilize my body and hands because he missed playing guitar.”

More cynical readers may view this tale as a rather elaborate plan to get his hands on one of the most coveted amps in history. It’s safe to say Jimmie Vaughan wasn’t completely sold at first, either. In fact, it was only after SRV’s guitar tech, René Martinez, revealed he’d had the same dream that Jimmie relinquished possession of the historic tube amp.

“The last person to borrow it was John Mayer,” Santana says. “Let’s just say Jimmie doesn’t loan that thing out very easily.”

As for the amp? Carlos says, “[It] sounded like everything I love about Peter Green when he played a certain kind of heavenly blues.”

Pressed for more recollections of the amp’s tones, the Mexican guitarist thinks back to a conversation he once had with his mother.

“She once asked me, ‘Mijo, do you like Whitney Houston?’ and I said, ‘Of course,’” he begins. “She then told me that when Whitney sang, her voice would become a legion of angels. I think my mom knew what she was talking about. Sometimes when you play, you channel things.

“I feel like I’m like [John F. Kennedy International Airport] and all these musicians are landing on me and sharing things,” he adds of his clairvoyant abilities. “I have to figure out what it all means.”

For a time, SRV's other famed Dumble amp, the Dumbleland 300 SL that dominated the Texas Flood sessions, was under the care of Ben Harper. Then he found a Dumble of his own at a yard sale, and when following the rite of passage of asking Alexander Dumble for permission to use the amp, the near-mythical amp builder uncovered its unlikely back story.

In related news, Santana has recalled the time he ignited the strangest of feuds with Gene Simmons. He’s also discussed details of his 1999 album, Supernatural, the record that finally saw him give Tube Screamers a try, and he's revealed who convinced him to do it.

Jeff Beck’s love for Jimi Hendrix was well known in his lifetime. He frequently mentioned Hendrix in interviews, sharing stories about their interactions and their occasional adventure jamming or hanging out.

It’s been equally well established that Beck felt Hendrix sidelined his career and took the shine off his rising star when the American guitarist arrived in London in late 1966. In seemingly no time at all, Hendrix was the player everyone was talking about.

Meanwhile, Beck was struggling to find his groove in the wake of his departure from the Yardbirds.

“It was a horrible time, really,” he told Guitar Player associate editor Barry Cleveland in 2003. “Not because of him, but because of the fact that he swept us all aside and put us in a bin. I think that was more the case for us than for the public at large, who were happy to have us all.

“But I know how it felt having a girl ring up and ask, ‘Did you hear Jimi Hendrix?’”

Despite the difficulty Hendrix caused him, Beck was filled with admiration for his talent and nearly obsessive commitment to electric guitar .

In 1989, Beck had an opportunity to work with another iconic Strat slinger: Stevie Ray Vaughan. Five years after they performed “Jeff's Boogie” at a CBS Records convention in Hawaii, the two legends were paired up on the Fire Meets the Fury tour, which saw them co-headline a 30-date stint put together by their label, Epic Records. The tour was as sensational as it sounds today and became one of the highest-grossing music road shows of 1989.

As it was wrapping up, Beck and SRV sat down with Guitar Player’s Matt Resnicoff and Joe Gore for a historic interview, a meeting made all the more significant when Stevie Ray died not long afterward.

The interview is filled with great moments, and as often happened where Beck was concerned, the subject of Hendrix came up. It was here that Beck made a comparison between Hendrix and SRV that was especially meaningful given his familiarity with Jimi.

Jeff, what was it like to jam with Hendrix?

STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN Yeah, good question.

JEFF BECK What was it like? Well... it was awful! [laughs] The first time, I felt like a peanut, like a fucking hole would have opened up and swallowed me.

The thing that puts it right is the fact that there’s a genuine love Jimi had for my style as well, which I couldn’t believe. Then I realized that Jimi was not a messiah; he was a very genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, music-loving person. He didn’t give a damn about the reputation, the showbiz razzmatazz.

All he was interested in were the licks and what you were feeling like…. It was just sadness that we couldn’t nurture the friendship a bit more. In those days, life was just totally crazy. He would be off in a 24-hours-a-day lifestyle, and I couldn’t keep up with it. I had to have my sleep. He was a boogier — a club here, club there — and he’d be jamming ’til 5:00 in the morning.

My lifestyle was never destined to be like that, so I just had to say, “Adios, Jim, I gotta go to bed!”

I felt very amateurish alongside him, because he lived and breathed it. You’re very similar to Jimi in that way. I’m just a part-time employee.

SRV I don’t know about that one. [laughs]

BECK I’m not in love with the guitar as much as you are or Jimi is — was. I just pick it up and play it sometimes. [laughs]

Beck wasn’t exaggerating about his on-again-off-again relationship with the instrument. Much of his free time was spent working on his collection of vintage hot rods and Corvettes.

“I feel really guilty,” he continued on. “Whatever I choose to do, it always robs me of something. The guitar robs me of my time building rods, and the rods take their toll on the playing.

“But the payoff is the refreshment on both sides. By building, I’m able to completely steep myself in physical things, and all the time I’m doing that, I’m thinking of licks and music, which I’m not able to do sitting with a guitar.

“That’s probably the reason I’m able to maintain a modicum of interest in music after 30-odd years.”

Sadly, SRV would — like Hendrix — die early, leaving a void in the guitar world, and a legacy that remains vibrant to this day.

As for Beck, he would renew his solo career in earnest near the turn of the millennium and continue to amaze us all with his ability to make his guitar speak in ways no other could, using his fingers —no pick — volume control and whammy bar. Not bad for “a part-time employee” of the guitar.

Mike McCready has recalled one of the lowest points in his life when he had abandoned playing guitar and was in the throes of sickness, and how a spiritual journey, soundtracked by a Stevie Ray Vaughan concert reignited his love for the electric guitar.

In conversation with Rick Beato, the guitarist says the life-pivoting moment predated his pre-Pearl Jam band, Temple of the Dog. That outfit, which provided McCready with his first studio experiences, saw him link up with Chris Cornell and drummer Matt Cameron to pay tribute to Cornell’s late Mother Love Bone bandmate and roommate, Andrew Wood. They’d produce just one album, and one that is held in very high regard today. It is certified Platinum.

Fruitfully for McCready, Mother Love Bone’s demise saw two of its members, guitarist Stone Gossard and bass player Jeff Ament forge ahead and form a new band: Pearl Jam. McCready’s work in Temple of the Dog ultimately saw him join the fold, a record on which Eddie Vedder also featured.

It's feasible, then, that neither of those two bands would have carved their names into rock and roll folklore if it were not for a blues guitar great, and some mind-expanding drugs bringing McCready out of his darkest days.

“I was very much into metal, but I was starting to get into the blues” he says. “So I dropped acid and I went and saw Stevie Ray Vaughan at the Gorge [in Grant County, Washington].

“This is around '88, '89,” he continues. “I'd moved back from Los Angeles, kind of trying to make it with [high school band] Shadow down there, and we just didn't do it. I got Crohn's, and I'm sick. All this stuff was going on. I stopped playing music.

“I went and saw Stevie, tripped, sat up all night, and went, 'I gotta play guitar again.' So I started playing guitar again the next day.”

Reflecting on the gig with Guitar World, he recalls the all-important moment in a far more poetic fashion.

“As soon as he started ‘Couldn't Stand the Weather’, these huge clouds rolled in overhead, and rain began pouring down,” he recalls. “When the song ended, the rain stopped. It was like a religious experience, and it changed me. It lifted me out of the negative mindset I was in, and it got me playing again. I thank him forever for that.”

He also realized, perhaps with the aid of the drugs, that Seattle was “exploding” — that was the place to be. He was with his second band, Love Chile, when he crossed paths with — and more importantly impressed — Gossard.

Fittingly, the story goes that McCready’s take on “Couldn't Stand the Weather” sealed the deal. The pair struck up a friendship that laid the foundations for Pearl Jam.

He tells Beato that things “fell into place” when Wood died of a heroin overdose in March 1990. But, as another person’s tragedy presented him with an opportunity to chase his dream, he stayed sensitive to how the gig materialized.

“I was very careful. I felt like I got into a situation because this guy died,” he says. “I knew I was good and all those things, but I felt like this was this catalyst that, 'Oh, wow, this is my opportunity, but I want to be really careful with this Temple thing because I don't want to step on anything.'”

Pearl Jam are currently back out on the road and brought another of their early guitar heroes, Peter Frampton on stage in Nashville for a special rendition of "Black".

Meanwhile, fellow Seattle alumni Soundgarden are set to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a recognition that guitarist Kim Thayil believes is important to the late Cornell's legacy.

Does the wood choice of a fretboard really impact a guitar’s tone? Ask big-name players like Joe Bonamassa and Joe Satriani and they’ll give you passionate reasons for why they lean on either side of the long-raging debate.

Ask Jimmie Vaughan and he’ll tell you it doesn’t make one iota of difference either way. And he’ll point to his late brother for proof.

Today, as manufacturer’s look for alternatives to dwindling supplies, fingerboards can be made out of a huge variety of woods. Pau ferro, laurel and wenge have since come to the fore, alongside Richlite, an ebony-like material made from paper and found on builds from Aristides and GOC.

Regardless of the growing options, fingerboard woods can fall quite naturally into light and dark categories. For many, a rosewood fretboard offers comfort and warmth, while a maple neck supposedly offers greater note clarity.

Joe Satriani veers away from maple, believing it isn't a consistent wood, and opts for rosewood in his Ibanez signature guitars.

“Say you bring eight guitars on tour, getting all the maple-neck guitars,” he said last year. “It is just a piece of wood. It grows out of the ground and Mother Nature decides what's it gonna sound like.

“I owned a '54 Strat, and I loved it. It had a maple neck, and I thought it was the greatest guitar, but I did not have a job then where I had to play melodies and solos nonstop for two and a half hours. And so, this job of being a solo artist has changed my needs as a guitar player.”

Joe Bonamassa, meanwhile, is firmly in the maple camp. Writing in his Guitar World column in 2023, he said “one can argue that a rosewood ’board results in more of a Stevie Ray Vaughan-type sound,” but added, “I always refer to maple-neck Strats as the 'Buddy Holly' guitar, and great players such as Eric Johnson, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix are also well known for playing maple-neck Strats.

“To my ears, the notes jump off it in a different way, as compared to a rosewood ’board.”

Although Bonamassa believes rosewood ‘boards are responsible for SRV-type tones, the Vaughan family seemingly aren’t as quick to make that connection.

Discussing all things gear and tonewoods with Guitar World in a new interview, Jimmie Vaughan spotlighted his prized 1963 Fender Stratocaster. It had a maple neck with a rosewood fretboard, but he swapped it out for a maple neck and didn't notice a difference between the two.

“The body is from a ’63 Strat, but the neck is one [Austin blues guitarist] Bill [Campbell,] gave to me, so I guess it’s kind of a ‘parts’ guitar,” he says of its Frankenstein nature. “It was really put together by Charley’s Guitar Shop in Dallas and René Martinez, who was a fantastic guitar tech.”

And it turns out his reasons for swapping the neck out weren’t tonal.

“I’d wanted a white Strat for years; it felt like it was unobtainable when I was a kid,” he sighs. “I remember seeing Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps in an old movie, and they all had white Strats with the maple neck. I just thought it looked better than the dark rosewood, so I replaced it.

“I know there are people who think it makes a big difference to the sound, but I really don’t think it does,” he adds. “I know Stevie always sounded the same whether it was a rosewood or maple neck.”

The debate extends beyond the realms of the Strat too, with Jason Isbell, the current owner of Ed King's legendary “Red Eye” Les Paul, believing rosewood is “more forgiving,” when it comes to Telecasters and that they “soften things up a little.”

Texas has a rich history of producing guitar greats, and when two of its finest share the stage for a rare collaboration, you know something special is about to go down. That's exactly what happened on April 8, 1985, at the Fast and Cool Club in Dallas, Texas, when Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Johnson jammed out some tunes to close Stevie's set.

Long before the days of camera phones at every show, no video footage of the pair sharing the stage exists. However, lucky for us, someone had the foresight to smuggle in a cassette recorder — and it makes for quite the listening experience.

Johnson had been opening for Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble that night at the Dallas venue, right in the middle of Stevie's tour supporting his 1984 album Couldn't Stand the Weather.

The pair played three songs together, including the Earl King tune "Come On (Part III)" and "Voodoo Child" by Jimi Hendrix. However, the true highlight came during the performance of "Shake 'n Bake," a Vaughan deep cut that was a staple of his early live shows.

The performance is packed with high points, but be sure not to miss the moment around the three-minute mark, as Johnson's cascading runs seamlessly blend with Stevie's powerhouse phrasing, building up to an epic exchange that the lucky audience in attendance audibly can't get enough of.

Almost 40 years on, Johnson still vividly remembers the sheer power of the performance that night, as he told Guitar Interactive in a recent interview.

"Being onstage with Stevie was like standing next to a hurricane," Johnson recalls. "I opened some shows for Double Trouble, and, I mean, I play loud, but I remember when I went on for the encore and played ‘Voodoo Child’ with him, I couldn't hear anything! I had a full hundred-watt stack, and I couldn't hear it. It was pretty intense out there. He had a huge sound."

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Johnson were still early in their careers. Although international recognition was a ways off, the pair were giants in the thriving Austin music scene. Johnson fondly recalls his first encounters with Vaughan.

"He had just come to Austin, and I met him at a music store called Ray Hennig's Heart of Texas Music," the revered local haunt frequented by just about every player in the scene and the store where SRV bought his "Number One" Fender Stratocaster.

"I didn't have the pleasure of knowing him really closely, but we were friends. I knew him, and we hung out a little bit, and I did some shows with him. He was a really sweet guy. Even throughout his whole career, after he got successful, he remained a sweet, nice guy — happy, and obviously, a tremendous talent."

Vaughan, of course, had just as much respect for Johnson and his uncommon ability on the instrument and was a big fan of what would have been Johnson's debut — but shelved until 1998 — album, Seven Worlds. Speaking to Guitar Player in 1986, Vaughan said.

"If the record that he made years ago, Seven Worlds, had come out at the time it was ready, instead of being held back for the reason of dollars and pennies... he would have been as big as Jeff Beck.

"He would have been very much in the public eye for modern jazz, rock, and fusion. The guy deserves a lot more recognition than he's ever gotten."

Sadly, these lo-fi recordings document the final time the two guitarists would share the same stage, as Vaughan tragically passed away in August 1990.

Johnson would later pay tribute to his late friend and peer with the track "S.R.V." from his 1996 album, Venus Isle — a song that also featured a guest spot from Stevie's older brother, Jimmie Vaughan, who told Guitar Player last year he is “still in denial” over his brother’s death.

Recently, Johnson has also been paying tribute to both Vaughan and —let's face it — all of our shared musical influence, Jimi Hendrix, as part of the Experience Hendrix tour.

At a show in Seattle last September, another special guest joined him onstage — Izabella, Hendrix's famed 1968 Olympic White Fender Stratocaster, famously used during Jimi's legendary Woodstock performance.

Reflecting on playing the Stratocaster — now primarily housed at the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) in Seattle — for a few Hendrix numbers, Johnson explains that the instrument's mojo is, in part, due to the fact that "it was Jimi's guitar, but it's also a great guitar."

"The universe made sure he got that one," Johnson says. "It's like, 'Oh look, Jimi's down there walking to Manny's in New York. We better get him this guitar.' You know, things happen the way they do, and sometimes they're more than coincidence."

He continues, "It's an amazing guitar. I remember playing it for an hour backstage and just going, gosh, it's real inviting to play. It was just the perfect thing you want — an instrument that makes you forget about yourself — it carries you away"

You can currently catch Eric Johnson on the Experience Hendrix Tour, with dates running through mid-April. No guarantees of Hendrix-played instruments making an appearance, but you can bet the house on some incredible playing.

Cory Wong has divided opinion among his Instagram followers after revealing his strict criteria for what he says makes someone an “advanced guitarist.”

Wong says it's vital for guitarists to be intrinsically acquainted with their fretboard and know the location of different notes across every string.

“Gentle call out to the folks that consider themselves advanced guitarists,” he says in the video posted to his Instagram. “If you can't do this exercise, I would not consider you an advanced guitarist.

“Why?” he adds. “Because you should know where all the notes are on a guitar.”

To that end, he lays out a challenge for his followers, asking, “Can you play me a C on every string?” before repeating the exercise with G and Bb at an impressively quick pace. (The latter exercise reveals his guitar isn't completely in tune, which is pretty a low bar to clear.)

The concept is simple, and it’s easy to understand why Wong places so much importance on players being able to hit a certain note on the fly without having to stop and think about it. It demonstrates that players are at one with their instrument, be it an acoustic or an electric guitar.

Wong doesn't include technique as a barometer of a player’s expertise. Regardless, he says his criterion is “a hill I’m willing to die on.”

As you might expect, several comments from his followers show that not everyone is on board with him.

One naysayer pointed out that Stevie Ray Vaughan would likely fail Wong's test. The reader notes that the late bluesman — largely accepted as one of the world's greatest players — did not know the fretboard with such a level of detail. He adds fuel to the fire by saying “a nice vibrato” is far more important.

Wong retorted with his “guarantee” that SRV would pass with flying colors, adding, “I think it’s important to know the roads you’re driving on”.

However, Wong's challenger has a point. As Stevie Ray told Guitar Player in his 1984 cover story he wasn't schooled in theory. For him, feel came first.

When asked about theory vocabulary, Stevie replied, “I don’t know any of that stuff. I just look for things that sound right.”

He said that when playing on David Bowie’s iconic “Let’s Dance” record, he used his ear — not his brain — as his guide.

“Most of the time, I'd listen to a couple of run-throughs while he was doing his vocals, to get an idea of where the song was going," Stevie said. "Then I'd just figure out in my head where this Albert King lick or that Albert King lick would fit.”

Other commenters point out that even the best players have composed songs using complex chords without knowing their names — yet another rally against Wong's "theory first" argument.

Guitar teacher John Huldt, meanwhile, adds that, of all the world's musicians, “only guitar players pride themselves on not knowing how music works,” believing that to be at their detriment. It implies a rhetoric that all violinists, for example, would not struggle with this challenge because of the culture of mastering the instrument.

Another user provided some useful hints for players wanting to level up, with tips for finding octaves and the "one string down, five frets up" trick for finding duplicate notes.

Perhaps most damning, some have accused Wong of gatekeeping.

Says one user, “You are better than this."

Wong is best known for his incredible right-hand technique and water-tight funk rhythms, but he’s also a thoughtful improviser. His understanding of where notes can be found on a fretboard at any given moment plays a key part here. That’s why he has brazenly laid down the gauntlet to the online guitar community. For better or for worse.

Indeed, unlocking the fretboard can help players achieve a newfound freedom on the instrument, making it far easier to find their voice and avoid duff notes when jamming. Whether this is the only requirement for a player to rise through the ranks or not is a discussion that will likely rage on for far longer.

Despite fears that drum machines and synthesizers would eclipse the guitar in pop music, the 1980s were an incredibly fertile time for electric guitar. Virtuoso soloists like Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson landed instrumental tunes on mainstream rock radio. Steve Val was in heavy rotation on MTV playing with former Van Haien mouthpiece David Lee Roth, and even had a role in the hit film Crossroads.

Then there was Eddie Van Haien, who — after raising the rock world's collective eyebrows with his solos on 1978's Van Halen and '79s Van Halen II — kept the heat up throughout the '80s with a slew of crowd-pleasing albums. Van Halen's celebrity extended beyond guitar culture. He could be seen regularly on MTV and had a cameo on Michael Jackson's mega-single "Beat It."

But virtuoso shred wasn't the only game in town. Many bands — including the Smiths, Bauhaus and U2 — featured guitarists who consciously avoided six-string histrionics. These players were texturalists who used broad palettes of effects to color and shade their music. Their approach grew in popularity, and by the mid '80s, no serious working guitarist could show up at a gig or recording session without the requisite chorus, delay and flanger pedals, or a rack full of digital processors and multieffects.

With the 1980s several decades behind us, we decided to look at the players who molded the sound of guitar back then. We didn't do it for nostalgia's sake. After all, there's loads of inspiration to be found in the tones and ideas these players hatched back in the day. Fire up Metallica's Kill 'Em All and hear just how devastating power chords can be. Spin a Michael Hedges disc and you'll never again think of acoustic guitar as the electric's folky cousin. Throw on a Police album and you're bound to get some new tonal inspiration. Step into the Guitar Player time machine, and you'll see what we mean as we present the decade's most innovative guitarists. They launched a revolution that continues to this day.

Daniel Ash

The goth-influenced soundscapes of English art-rockers Bauhaus and subsequent splinter group Tones on Tail (basically Bauhaus, sans lead singer Peter Murphy) spotlighted Ash's edgy-but-atmospheric tones and creative use of noise. And even when TOT later changed their name to Love and Rockets, and ventured in a more song-oriented direction, Ash never strayed from his ideal of texture over flash. "I love the idea of music that sounds like it comes from another world, but you can still tap your foot to it," he told GP in 1994. "I always found the notion of solos comical — just ego wanking."

Though the EBow was an essential part of Ash's razory sound since the beginning (often pressed directly against the neck pickup), he also relied on delay, flange and tremolo pedals, and employed such tricks as banging on a reverb-equipped amp to coax guitar sounds that were indistinguishable from synths, samples or industrial machinery.

KEY TRACKS "Bela Lugosi's Dead," "Terror Couple Kill Colonel," "Stigmata Martyr," "Hot Trip to Heaven"

1980s GEAR Burns guitars, H&H IC100S amp, Heet Sound EBow, DOD chorus and tremolo pedals, Watkins Copicat tape echo — AT

Adrian Belew

In an era when many guitarists felt threatened by the expansive sonic possibilities of synthesizers, Belew single-handedly proved the guitar to be a limitless tool for unheard-of sounds that no synth could match — from beautiful whale moans to jarring electronic screams. His mind-blowing sonic assaults made him one of the preeminent experimental rock guitarists of the 1980s, and landed him work with King Crimson, Laurie Anderson and David Bowie (on 1979's Lodger, then as Bowie's musical director for the '86 Sound and Vision tour). And Belew's not just a "noise" guy — he's also a master of subtlety. Listen to the Tom Tom Club's hit "Genius of Love." What sounds like a steel drum is actually Belew tapping the strings with one hand while manipulating the resonance control of an ADA flanger.

Belew's contributions to Talking Heads' 1980 release, Remain in Light, still stand as some of rock guitar's most monumentally creative offerings. "Talking Head's music at the time was very funk driven, one-chord stuff — a huge canvas for a guitarist to go wild," Belew told GP in 1990.

KEY TRACKS "The Great Curve" (with Talking Heads). "Elephant Talk" (with King Crimson). "Big Electric Cat," "Twang Bar King" (solo)

1980s GEAR Fender Strat, two modified Fender Mustangs, Roland JC-120 amplifiers, Foxx Tone Machine, various Electro-Harmonix and MXR effects units — DF

Warren Cuccurullo

To legions of pop fans, Missing Persons was all about Dale Bozzio. But as self-conscious and tragically trendy as the L.A. band's image may have been, the "guys" (bassist Patrick O'Hearn, drummer Terry Bozzio, and guitarist Warren Cuccurullo) were absolutely murderous players. All were alumni of Frank Zappa bands, and Cuccurullo's obsession with electronics would help forge Missing Persons into one of the '80s most modern-sounding acts. His massively processed textures, lush distortion washes and soaring, synth-like lines added mystery and excitement to what were, for the most part, merely clever pop songs. And, like Missing Persons' costuming and staging, Cuccurullo's contribution to guitarcraft was scrupulously calculated.

"I want to cut my own niche in rock guitar playing," he said in a February 1985 GP interview. "I want to be easily identifiable and known as a little wiz."

KEY TRACKS "Destination Unknown," "Give," "Mental Hopscotch," "Walking in LA.," "Words"

1980s GEAR Gibson SG and ES-335, self-designed "Missing Link" solidbody (with two necks joined by a loop), custom Performance guitar, custom Vox (assembled from a Vox wah, a Vox neck, and Vox pickups), 100-watt Marshall head and 4x12 cabinet, Garvin X-100B head, Mesa/Boogie head, ADA Flanger, Foxx Tone Machine, Heet Sound EBow, Lexicon Prime Tune, Maestro Super Fuzz, Morley Echo/ Volume, Mu-Tron III, MXR Pitch Transposer — MM

Elliot Easton

With a sound that was as far from macho '70s rock as possible, the Cars were possibly the quintessential '80s band. Looking back on his days in the group, Elliot Easton feels it was no accident that they forged one of rock's most individual and identifiable sounds. "Our different influences made us sound the way we did," he says. "Certain factions of the band were into the technological advances — keyboards and things — while my influences were Moby Grape, the Grateful Dead, and a lot of Memphis soul and New Orleans R&B. There was always a creative rub in the band that made the Cars unique."

On the group's pre-'85 records — The Cars and Candy-O — Easton managed to sneak hot country guitar ("My Best Friend's Girl") and clever bluesy solos ("Bye Bye Love") into the band's poppy tunes. "I never related to the 'skinny-tie' scene," Easton says. “And I was never impressed with the punk-guitar ethic. That whole primitive style of guitar playing is just not what I'm about." What Easton is about is simple. "I think I have a knack for making a song happen," he told GP in '86. "And that's a big get-off for me."

KEY TRACKS "Cruiser," "Magic," "Shake It Up," "Since You're Gone"

1980s GEAR Fender Strat and Telecaster ("I'm a twanger at heart" he says), mono Gibson ES-355, Guild Nightbird and Flyer, Rickenbacker 12-string electric, custom-made Kramer solidbody, assorted Dean solidbodies, assorted amps (including Lab Series, Pearce, Marshall JCM 800, various Fenders and Mesa/Boogies), Boss delay and chorus, Pro Co Rat, Scholz Rockman — DF

The Edge

When the relentless, echo washed lines of "I Will Follow" hit the airwaves in 1980, it was immediately obvious that the world had changed. The cutting-yet-ambient guitar soundscapes were so different from anything else heard at the time that The Edge became an instant guitar hero. However, due to the band's youth — The Edge was only 19 when U2's debut was released — more than a few guitarists assumed that a non-technical player had simply stumbled onto a few glib tricks. Not so.

"I was struck by the fact that groups such as Television had a well-defined sound that was like no one else’s,” The Edge said in the June '85 issue of Guitar Player. "So when we started putting material together, it was always in my mind that we had to find what we could do that was different. The most important thing is that we maintain a certain originality in everything we do."

The Edge remained true to his quest for individuality throughout the '80s, providing fans with thrilling, almost cinematic textures, and challenging other guitarists to re-evaluate their relationship with their instrument "There's no reason on earth why guitar players should copy one another and end up sounding the same," he declared.

KEY TRACKS "Gloria," "I Will Follow," "Sunday Bloody Sunday," "Where the Streets Have No Name," "With or Without You"

1980s GEAR Gibson Explorer, Fender Strat and Tele, Vox AC30, Mesa/Boogie MK-IIC, Boss SCC-700 Effects Center, Electro-Harmonix Memory Man, Korg SDD-3000 digital delay, Yamaha D1500 digital delay and R1000 digital reverb, MXR Pitch Transposer — MM

Billy Gibbons

ZZ Top was already a huge concert act when the advent of MTV in the early '80s gave the "little ol' band from Texas" an opportunity to boogie its way to unprecedented heights. Video images of the bearded mysteriosos with their custom coupe accompanied hit after hit from the 1983 release Eliminator, and behind it all was Top's enigmatic guitarist, Billy Gibbons.

The trademark pick harmonics, stubby solos and grinding riffs that fueled Eliminator and the subsequent Afterburner were old tricks for Gibbons, but his streamlined approach to playing over sequenced grooves made it easy to forget that blues was still the magma at ZZ's core.

As Gibbons explained to GP in 1986, "Try as we might to spice up our sound with synthesizers and this and that, it basically comes down to a few moments of bluesiness that we want to hold onto. That's where we came from, and that's pretty much what we'd like to keep stabbing at."

KEY TRACKS "Dipping Low (In the Lap of Luxury)," "Planet of Women," "Sleeping Bag," "Velcro Fly," "Under Pressure"

1980s GEAR Dean Z, Tom Holmes customs, Strings & Things St. Blues (Strat-style guitar), Roland GR-700 synth, Fairlight digital workstation, Fender and Marshall amps, Scholz Rockman, Roland Dimension D, Ibanez rack effects — AT

Michael Hedges

While the electric guitar was everywhere in the 1980s, the decade also ushered in a rising interest in virtuoso solo acoustic guitar players. The Windham Hill label was the launching pad for many of these guitarists, including William Ackerman (who headed the label) and Alex de Grassi.

Then along came Michael Hedges — with a style that encompassed some of the lyrical, contrapuntal approaches of his labelmates, and also incorporated funky rhythms, minimalist song structures and jazz-inspired chord voicings. As Hedges said in the February '85 Guitar Player, “Ackerman and de Grassi have good rhythm. It's just not as kinetic as mine. They're great impressionists and romantic players, but that doesn't come naturally to me."

Hedges showcased his composing and performing chops on his '81 debut, Breakfast in the Field and the '84 followup, Aerial Boundaries. The latter album featured Hedges' stupefying, one-man-band arrangements, with percussive two-handed tapping and a host of extended-range tunings. Hedges had, in effect, broken the four-minute mile, forever expanding the boundaries of what players and listeners thought was possible in the solo-acoustic realm.

KEY TRACKS "Aerial Boundaries," "The Happy Couple," "Hot Type," "Rickover's Dream," "Spare Change"

1980s GEAR Martin D-28 and00-18, Dyer harp-guitar — AL

James Hetfield

"There was the real glammy stuff when we were starting out playing the clubs in L.A. — the Mötley Crües and the Ratts," James Hetfield said in the April '89 GP. "Music was based around the singer, and no one was really riffing."

With Metallica's first three records, Kill ‘Em All, Ride the Lightning, and Master of Puppets, Hetfield single-handedly changed that, and metal was never the same. Performed with Gibson Flying V or ESP Explorer-style guitars and Mesa/Boogie Mark II heads, Hetfield's punishing lock-step riffs spawned several copy-cat bands, as well as a legion of young, denim jacket-clad guitarists hell-bent on learning Metallica tunes — not the solos, but Hetfield's speedy power-chord riffs, performed almost solely on heavy downstrokes. "That's key!” he said. “It's tighter sounding and a lot chunkier.”

KEY TRACKS "Creeping Death," "Eye of the Beholder," "For Whom the Bell Tolls," "Four Horsemen," "Whiplash"

1980s GEAR Gibson Flying V, ESP Explorer-style solidbody (loaded with EMG pickups), Mesa/Boogie Mark II heads — DF

Allan Holdsworth

In 1980, Allan Holdsworth — a veteran of U.K., Bill Bruford, Tony Williams and Jean-Luc Ponty — formed his groundbreaking quartet, I.O.U. He described the band's music in the December '80 Guitar Player as having "some elements of jazz and rock, but we try not to be overly tricky."

Compared to what? The music on the band's '82 debut, I.O.U., was teeming with modulating time signatures and circuitous chord progressions — in other words, tricky. Holdsworth's unique style featured clarion-toned, legato solos and a unique chordal approach. Only guitarists with brave hearts and pliant hands worked their way through Holdsworth's '85 book of compositions Reaching for the Uncommon Chord.

Holdsworth began looking to guitar synths for new sounds around '85, but because he was prone to playing blazingly fast, synth controllers could barely make sense of what his hands were doing. He eventually found that the Synth-Axe could keep up, and he featured the instrument prominently on his '86 album, Atavachron.

KEY TRACKS "Devil Take the Hindmost," "Panic Station," "Road Games," "Three Sheets to the Wind," "Where Is One"

1980s GEAR Custom Charvel single-humbucker electrics, Ibanez AH-10, SynthAxe, various amps (including Hartley-Thompson, Pearce, Fender and Sundown), Steelmaster volume pedal, Yamaha E-1010 analog delay, two ADA STD-1 stereo tapped delays (one for clean tones, one for dirty). — AL

Eric Johnson

Like Roy Buchanan and Danny Gatton, Eric Johnson initially gained prominence as a result of other guitarists singing his praises. Steve Morse, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Johnny Wffiter and Billy Gibbons were among those who raved about Johnson in interviews. Not a prolific recording artist, Johnson developed his legendary rep based on a radical '84 Austin City Limits performance and the 1986 album Tones, his only release of the decade.

With a rocker's ears, a cellist's hands and an alchemist's curiosity, Johnson forged a signature sound from fluid, multi-octave arpeggios, buttery bends, cascading pentatonic runs, and chimey, close-voiced harmonies. He proved that one could coax sweet, violin-like sustain from a Strat while cruising up and down its fretboard with flawless intonation. It was Johnson who got guitarists thinking about cable impedance and directionality, the timbral differences between germanium and silicon transistors, and carbon-zinc and alkaline batteries. While the rest of the planet was exploring the multichannel amp, he perfected the triple-amp rig. By making us aware of each element in the signal chain, Johnson elevated electric guitar tone to a science.

KEY TRACKS "Cliffs of Dover," "Soulful Terrain," "Rail of Tears"

1980s GEAR '54 Fender Shut, two Fender Twin Reverbs (driving an open-back Marshall 4x12 cab), Dumble Steel String Singer, Dumble Overdrive Special, 100-watt Marshall heads driving Marshall 4x12 cabs, Ibanez TS-9 Tube Screamer, Paul C's Tube Driver, TC Electronic Sustainer, Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man, Echoplex — AE

Mark Knopfler

Using phasoidal Strat tones, poignant bends and snarky double-stops, Mark Knopfler established himself in the late '70s as a soulful and melodic player — and one who preferred to pick with his fingers! But in '85, with the release of Brothers in Arms, Knopfler and his band Dire Straits hit the musical jackpot. In addition to scoring massive worldwide sales, the album provided Knopfler an opportunity to stretch out as an arranger, songwriter and ensemble leader. His guitar tones expanded to include throaty Les Paul riffs and darker, distorted Strat lines, and he began to explore extended themes involving guitar, keyboards and woodwinds. Released when many listeners were buying their first CDs, Brothers in Arms also became an audio benchmark.

Even today, many engineers use tracks from this beautifully focused recording to fine-tune stage and studio sound systems. Many of Knopfler's new musical ideas emerged from his film scoring experiences, which began in '83 with the magical soundtrack to Local Hero. Cal, The Princess Bride, and Last Exit to Brooklyn followed.

No other guitarist has so successfully combined the twin careers of solo artist and film composer. For Knopfler, each discipline strengthens the other: His albums have become timbrally richer and more thematically complex, and his scores have benefited from his soaring solos and tinkling resonator guitar work.

KEY TRACKS "Brothers in Arms," "Going Home," "Money for Nothing," "Walk of Life"

1980s GEAR Strat-style Schecter with Seymour Duncan pickups, Strat-style Pensa-Suhr with EMG pickups, '53 Gibson Super 400, '58 Gibson Les Paul, '36 Style "0" National, Ovation Adamas, Gibson Chet Atkins solidbody classical, twin 100-watt Soldano heads driving two EV-loaded 4x12 Marshall cabs, rackmounted CryBaby wah, Ernie Ball volume pedal — AE

Steve Lukather

In every decade there's an elite group of studio guitarists who seem to get all the top sessions. In the '70s, it was Larry Carlton and Louie Shelton. In the '90s, Michael Landau, Tim Pierce and Brent Mason ruled the roost.

But in the '80s, it was Steve Lukather. His Reagan-era credits include albums by Eric Clapton, Stevie Nicks, Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Don Henley, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Joni Mitchell, Manhattan Transfer, Paul McCartney, Chet Atkins and many others. His tight chord work and tasty-yet-muscular solos helped sell literally hundreds of millions of records.

Lukather also had success with his own band Toto — particularly with the 1982 release Toto IV, which enjoyed multi-Platinum sales, hit singles and a sweep of that year's Grammy awards. Through it all, Luke has remained a regular guy who is just happy to play guitar. "I know I'm very lucky," he told GP in June 2000. "I've had the chance to work with all my heroes. My career is a dream come true."

KEY TRACKS 'Africa," "Rosanna" (with Toto). "Dirty Laundry" (with Don Henley). "Running with the Night" (with Lionel Ritchie). "She's a Beauty" (with the Tubes)

1980s GEAR '63 Fender Strat, '59 Gibson Les Paul, Gibson 15, custom Ibanez electrics, Paul Rivera–modified 100-watt Marshalls and Fender Deluxes, Fender Concert Lexicon Prime Time delay, Eventide H910 Harmonizer, Roland SRE-555 Chorus/Echo, various Ibanez multi-effectors — MB

George Lynch

One of the original hot-shot LA metal players, Dokken guitarist George Lynch had chops to burn but always kept them in check with a tasty vibrato and keen sense of melody. When Randy Rhoads left his guitar teaching job for the Ozzy Osbourne gig, he insisted Lynch fill his shoes and take over his students. Not a bad referral.

The majority of Lynch's Aqua Net–glazed fury can be found in his super-charged solos. "I think a typical George Lynch solo should have melody and build to a climax," he told GP in 1986. "Speed is also important. People may get down on that, but it's impressive and it gives the solo energy" Aside from his stellar lead work, Lynch's wicked, tritone-laced riffing absolutely defined the hard rock "hair band" sound for the next several years.

KEY TRACKS "It's Not Love," "Lightning Strikes," "Mr. Scary," "Paris Is Burning"

1980s GEAR Various custom guitars (including Charvel, ESP, and Kramer solidbodies), Aria acoustic, vintage Marshall heads and cabs, Randall amplifiers — DF

Yngwie Malmsteen

The Swedish shred king first hit our pages in Mike Varney's February 1983 Spotlight column. Soon after, Malmsteen came to the States and joined Hollywood metal-rockers Steeler. After working on their '83 album, Steeler, he quickly outgrew the band's limited scope and left to join Alcatrazz. His tenure didn't last long — after recording just one studio album, No Parole from Rock 'n' Roll, he left Alcatrazz to concentrate on his own band, Rising Force, where Malmsteen was finally able to realize his artistic vision.

With intricate original compositions — inspired by classical composers J.S. Bach and Nicolo Paganini — and extended-play solos, Malmsteen tolled the bell for all who had ears to hear: He was the new king of Shred Hill.

KEY TRACKS "Black Star," "Evil Eye," "Far Beyond the Sun" "Icarus' Dream Suite," "Marching Out."

1980s GEAR 1969 Fender Stratocaster (and other Strats of similar vintage, all with scalloped fingerboards), modified 1971 Marshall 50-watt heads, Marshall 4x12 cabinets (with Celestion G-65 speakers), DOD Overdrive Preamp 250, Korg SDD-1000 rackmount digital delay, Fender extra-heavy picks ("I couldn't play with anything else,' he said in the May '85 GP) — AL

Johnny Marr

Armed with a huge palette of tones and a savvy sense for turning oddball chord sequences into hit

songs, the Smith's Johnny Marr forged a guitar style that incorporated '60s primitivism, '70s funkiness

and gobs of Byrds-style chime. Two of the many things that set him apart from his '80s-era contemporaries were his disdain for guitar solos ("I like improvisation in the right place, but I find most solos corny") and his natural ability to create unique clashes by superimposing major and minor modes. "I use a thumbpick,” he told us, “because when you have all five fingers going, your fingers go to progressions you don't even know you're doing.”

Marr's bright, jangly tones always sounded huge without the benefit of distortion, and his spine-chilling slide intro on the pulsating "How Soon Is Now" remains one of the most distinctive guitar sounds ever recorded. Following the breakup of the Smiths in 1987, Marr appeared on albums by the Talking Heads, the Pretenders, Electronic, The The, Paul McCartney, Kirsty MacColl, Bryan Ferry and others.

KEY TRACKS "How Soon Is Now?,” "This Charming Man," "What Difference Does It Make?,” “The Headmaster Ritual," "The Violence of Truth"

1980s GEAR Epiphone Casino, Fender Strat, Gibson ES-335, Gibson Les Paul, Martin D-28, Rickenbacker 330, Fender Bassman, Fender Showman, Fender Twin Reverb, Mesa/Boogie Quad Preamp, Roland JC-120, Dunlop Cry Baby wah, Eventide Harmonizer, Roland GP-8, T.C. Electronic 2290, Yamaha GEP50 — AT

Prince

It's difficult to find an '80s artist more prolific or cutting-edge than Prince, who ushered in the decade with the release of Dirty Mind. On this record of slamming funk rhythms and catchy melodies, Prince was credited as playing guitar, bass, drums and keyboards — as well as singing, producing, arranging and writing all the tunes.

Controversy followed in '81, but it was his '83 album, 1999, that gave him his first taste of superstardom. The infectious title track, with its sinewy chord stabs and slippery wah figures, became an instant classic. Prince's dry, in-your-face rhythm parts set the standard for funk rock in the '80s. Purple Rain took things higher still, with strong tunes and even bolder guitar work. His trademark funk rhythms abound on Purple Rain, but it was the blazing solos on tunes such as "When Doves Cry" and "Let's Go Crazy" that turned guitarists' heads. With over-the top distortion, squealing feedback, and a flamboyant persona (that drew on Hendrix, Little Richard and James Brown influences), Prince the Guitar Hero had arrived.

Prince would go on to release six more albums in the '80s, changing stylistic gears with each record. This incessant self-reinvention confused and alienated some fans, but many of them were brought back into the fold with 1987's Sign O’ the Times, which showed Prince's heavier side (on the title track), as well as his pop stylings ("I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" and "U Got the Look").

KEY TRACKS "Baby I'm a Star," "Sign O’ the Times," "When Doves Cry" "I Would Die 4 U," "1999"

1980s GEAR Fender Telecaster, Hohner Tele copy, Mesa/Boogie amps, Boss pedals — MB

Trevor Rabin

Seminal prog-rock band Yes had apparently seen the rising and setting of its sun in the 1970s, with nine albums and several hits (including "Roundabout," "Long Distance Runaround" and "Yours Is No Disgrace"). Then, just as 1983 was winding up, South African guitarist/vocalist/producer Trevor Rabin brought his cache of songs to founding members Chris Squire (bass) and Jon Anderson (vocals), and resurrected Yes with the smash 90125, an album rife with slick production, radio-friendly hooks and tactile, layered guitars. Although Rabin's harmonized leads are arguably the most memorable color of his tonal spectrum, his inventive use of modern gear proffered a wealth of tones — from super-compressed clean to crunchy to sweetly sustaining. Even his acoustic guitar tones were amazingly distinctive. In short, Rabin's command of tonal shades proved him to be both a brilliant texturalist and a fiery lead player.

KEY TRACKS "Changes," "Hearts" and ”Owner of a Lonely Heart" (with Yes). "Can't Look Away," "Etoile Noir" (solo)

1980s GEAR '62 Fender Stratocaster (with Seymour Duncan stacked humbuckers and Schaller tuners), two Ernie Ball volume pedals (one for regular volume, one for echo volume), and various MXR pedals (including a Pitch Transposer, a Dyna Comp, a 10-Band graphic EQ, an analog delay, a Distortion+, a flanger and an envelope filter), MXR 15-band EQ and digital reverb rack units, Roland SRE-555 Chorus/Echo — SH

Vernon Reid

Besides blurring color lines as one of the few all-black hard rock bands on the scene, Living Colour launched a whole new sound with their ingenious blend of funk, avant-garde jazz and metal. Guitarist Vernon Reid's massive, Zeppelin-influenced rifling, grinding dissonance, and furiously chromatic solos were masterfully balanced with slithering dance grooves, complex chording and adventurous use of new technology, including samplers and guitar synths, that he combined with his ESP and Hamer Superstrats.

KEY TRACKS "Cult of Personality," "Glamour Boys," "Middle Man," "Open Letter to a Landlord"

1980s GEAR Hamer Chapparal and ESP Strat-style guitars with Floyd Rose tremolos and EMG pickups (two single-coils and a humbucker), Cry Baby wah, Korg volume pedal, Roland GP-8, DigiTech DSP-128, Dean Markley CD-120 1x12 combo and Fender Dual Showman head driving Fender 4x12s, Mesa/Boogie Quad Preamp and Strategy 400 power amp, ADA MP-1, Boogie 4x12 cabinets — SH

Randy Rhoads

Many thought Ozzy Osboume's career was finished when he was fired from the pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath in 1978. However, thanks to his discovery of the brilliant, classically trained guitarist Randy Rhoads, Osbourne emerged triumphant in 1980 with Blizzard of Ozz — an album that is still regarded as one of metal's finest. As one of the few hard rock guitarists of the early '80s who didn't jump on the Van Haien bandwagon, 22-year-old Rhoads introduced the world to a distinctive tone and unmistakable style that bristled with blinding pull-off licks, staccato rhythms, and chromatic solo flurries. Despite a sparse discography, Rhoads has gone down in history as one of heavy metal's most original guitarists.

KEY TRACKS "Crazy Train," "Dee," "Flying High Again," "I Don't Know"

1980s GEAR Gibson Les Paul, custom V-shaped electric with DiMarzio pickups, Grover Jackson–designed shark’s-fin guitars equipped with Seymour Duncan pickups, Dunlop Cry Baby, Korg delay, 100- watt Marshall heads through Marshall 4x12 cabinets with Altec speakers, MXR Distortion+, EQ, chorus, and flanger pedals — SH

joe Satriani

In the early '80s, Joe Satiani was a guitar teacher in Berkeley, California, with a couple of band projects and some sessions under his belt. By 1987, he was on the cover of every guitar magazine in the world, thanks to Surfing with the Alien.

With dazzling technique, high-energy tunes and extreme guitar tones, Satch proved that all the rumors of his greatness (some of which were started by his former student, Steve Vai) were true. And he did something that very few guitar heroes have done — sell records.

Surfing was a smash hit with guitarists and non-guitarists alike, and Satriani would enjoy further success with his subsequent releases and tours. He was also picked by Mick Jagger to go on the road and cover parts originally played by Keith Richards and Jeff Beck.

Looking back on his debutante decade, Satch told us, "Making the transition from giving lessons in the back of a store to being the Surfing with the Alien guy and Mick's lead guitarist was a completely mind- and life-altering experience."

KEY TRACKS "Circles," "Hordes of Locusts," "Ice 9," "Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing," "Satch Boogie"

1980s GEAR Homemade Strat-style guitars, Ibanez solidbodies, 100-watt Marshall amps, Scholz Rockman, Echoplexes, Boss CE-1 chorus — MB

Neal Schon

As a teenager in 1970, Neal Schon achieved Northern California royalty status by joining Carlos Santana's band. A couple of years later, Schon formed his own group, Journey, which became increasingly popular with its Santana-esque brand of jam rock. At the close of the '70s, however, Journey found their winningest formula when they added vocalist Steve Perry and moved in a more pop-rock direction. When the '80s rolled in, Schon was the guitarist — and one of the chief songwriters — of a veritable hit machine.

What set him apart from most other popsters of the decade, however, was his stellar guitar work. Schon's punchy, intricate rhythm parts — and his soaring leads that blended melodicism, dynamics and fiery chops — earned him unshakeable street cred among guitar freaks. His two albums with keyboard god Jan Hammer further cemented his rep as a player, making him the first choice as a jam partner when guitarists such as Gary Moore, Eddie Van Haien and Jeff Beck came to town.

KEY TRACKS "Walks Like a Lady" "Stone in Love," "Girl Can't Help It" (with Journey). "I'm Down," "No More Lies" (with Jan Hammer)

1980s GEAR 1963 Fender Strat, Gibson Les Pauls, Aria Pro II, various amps (including Peavey Mace, Fender, Marshall and Mesa/Boogies), Electro-Harmonix Hot Tubes — MB

John Scofield

Celebrating his blues and funk influences — and attacking the electric guitar as a truly electric instrument,

with bluesy bends and chorus-tweaked tones — John Scofield brought an earthy vibe to jazz's heady mindset. He was also one of the '80s most versatile jazz guitarists, performing with Miles Davis, pianist McCoy Tyner and the French National Orchestra.

"One thing I learned from Miles Davis," Scofield said in '84, "is not to be afraid to play what you hear. In other words, just play what you feel. Miles was a master of the fine art of letting things happen naturally"

Scofield spent much of the '80s expanding the progressive ideology that began with his Davis tenure by working with contemporary jazz-funk rhythm sections. Then in 1989, he bid the decade farewell with Time on My Hands, a stinting return to the acoustic jazz realm.

KEY TRACKS 'All the Things You Are," "Pick Hits," "Techno," "Who's Who" (solo). "What It Is" (with Miles Davis)

1980s GEAR Gibson ES-335 and ES-175, Ibanez Artist AS-200, Polytone Mini-Brute IV, Music Man 410-HD, Sundown amps, Ibanez stereo chorus and stereo reverb, Pro Co Rat, Boss Octaver — MM

Brian Setzer

They had the look, the attitude and the wild-boy flash of rockabilly rebels, but while MTV pumped up the fashion factor for video fanatics, the Stray Cats were more than mere cartoons. Credibility came howling from Brian Setzer's Gretsch 6120, with a lead style that honored the genre's heroes while simultaneously nudging rockabilly into uptown duds. Setzer was channeling Django Reinhardt and other jazz greats along with hellraisers such as Carl Perkins, Cliff Gallup and Paul Burlison.

"When I first heard Cliff Gallup," said Setzer in the September '83 Guitar Player, "he was kind of what I wanted to be — a jazzy rockabilly player. He really sent me."

But while Setzer's head was sometimes transcending rockabilly conventions, his tones were totally true blue. "I use the middle-pickup position on my Gretsch," he explained in '83. "I usually turn the presence up full on my Bassman, and the volume to about four or five — just to the point where it's about to distort. The volume is so low, I could play in my bedroom and it would be fine. I usually put the bass around five, and the treble up to eight. I set the echo for one repeat almost directly after the original note — bop, bop. It's pretty tight."

Shooting the Cats beyond the tattoos and haircuts of lesser rockabilly contenders was the fact that Setzer was absolutely immersed in the style. He got it. "The early rockabilly stuff is basically a country guitarist trying to play rock and roll guitar — which is a mixture of black blues and white country" he said. "It's a feel. A lot of people put the cart before the horse. They think they've got to buy a '58 Gretsch and an old Fender amp. That stuff is great, but you've got to have the feel."

KEY TRACKS "18 Miles to Memphis," "Double Talkin Baby" "Rock this Town," "(She's) Sexy & 17," "Stray Cat Strut"

1980s GEAR 1959 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins, '60s blond Fender Bassman, NCR Analog Delay, Dean Markley strings (.010 or .011 set) — MM

Robert Smith

As main guitarist and visionary for what has been called "the world's biggest cult band," Smith graced the nine Cure albums released during the '80s with moody, multicolored guitar. Listen to what lurks behind any of the Cure's hooky vocal melodies and you'll likely find complex patterns of intersecting guitar parts that swirl around the main line to create an energetic and enticing backdrop.

Able to visualize the entire song during the recording process, Smith typically recorded all the guitars himself, adding depth and color to his six-string tapestries by incorporating open tunings and tracking each part with varying degrees of distortion and/or effects.

Alternative instruments also factored heavily into Smith's sonic sculpting. As he told GP in 1992, "The whole Faith album [released in '81] has six-string bass. I think when people talk about the 'Cure sound,' they mean songs based on six-string bass guitar, acoustic guitar and the Solina (a.k.a. the ARP String Ensemble)." One of Smith's more oddball studio tricks involved detuning each of his guitars' high E strings a few cents apart to create natural chorusing effects when the individual tracks were mixed together.

KEY TRACKS "The Blood," "Fascination Street," "Love Cats," "Other Voices "

1980s GEAR Fender Jazzmaster, Gibson Chet Atkins, Ovation six- and 12-string acoustics, '62 Fender Bass VI, Peavey amps, Dunlop Cry Baby, Boss pedals (chorus, delay, flange, phase, and overdrive) — AT

Steve Stevens

A central figure in Billy Idol's aggressive mix of punk, new wave, heavy metal and dance music, Steve Stevens wrote the book on balancing texture and technique. “I try to avoid the lead guitar-solo syndrome," he told GP in 1984. "My approach is more sonic than actual notes — if you have a really brilliant sound together, you don't have to play all that many notes."

Stevens elevated the songs he and Idol wrote into a realm that blurred the line between Ozzy-approved pyrotechnics and Bauhaus-style noise-art. Wielding short, fierce solos, feedback assaults, trem-bar antics and sci-fl-style sound effects, he furnished Idol's Rebel Yell with wall-to-wall guitar. But when the following release, Whiplash Smile, took a more techo-oriented turn, the guitarist decided it was time to get his own band together.

Stevens' inventive guitar playing resurfaced in full force on his 1989 solo debut Atomic Playboys, a release that gave Stevens the opportunity to indulge his hard-rock side, as well as his interests in R&B, pop-jazz, and John McLaughlin–style acoustic work. "I never wanted to lose the acoustic part of my playing," Stevens said. "I always loved the way that people like Robert Fripp, Steve Howe and Steve Hackett could be acoustic players, but also utilize effects."

KEY TRACKS: "Atomic Playboys" (solo). "Eyes Without A Face," "Flesh For Fantasy" "Rebel Yell," "White Wedding" (with Billy Idol)

1980s GEAR '53 Gibson Les Paul, Hamer Steve Stevens Signature, custom Suhr Strat-style, custom Jackson, Guild acoustics, Roland GR-700 synth, Marshall IMP and KM 800 heads, Vox AC30, Boss effects (CS-2 compressor, 0C-2 Octaver, CE-2 chorus), Vox Clyde McCoy and Cry Baby wahs, Pro Co Rat, Eventide 999 Harmonizer, Lexicon PCM-41 multi-effector, Maestro Echoplex, Roland rack effects (SDE-3000, SRE-555, Dimension D), Scholz Rockman — AT

Andy Summers

The Police launched in 1978 with the release of Outlandos d'Amour, and the band hit their stride in the early '80s with Zenyatta Mondatta and Ghost in the Machine. Vocalist/bassist Sting was the Police's chief songwriter, but Andy Summers had a more vital role in shaping the band's sound. His novel chord voicings, off-beat (in both senses) rhythm grooves, and shimmering chorus and delay-laden tones were essential to Police hits such as "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da."

In the January 2001 issue of Guitar Player, Summers revealed that "procedure by negation" was the key to sculpting his unique guitar voice. "Back in my Police days," he said, "I thought, Everyone's still jamming on power chords. I don't want to do what everyone else is doing, so what am I left with?"

One thing Summers did to outstrip the Joneses was to avoid distortion or overdrive — except as a last resort. (The solo on "Driven to Tears" showcases his dirty side.) Another Summers-ism was to use add9 chords in place of standard barres and power chords. ("Every Breath You Take" is built almost entirely around major and minor add9 chords.) He also avoided the cliché of extended solos, favoring brief, personal anti-solos. (Check out his synthed-out breakdown on "Don't Stand So Close to Me.")

Ironically, Summers' innovations were embraced by legions of post-Police guitarists, rendering his specialties nearly as common as the generic affectations he sought to avoid.

KEY TRACKS "Driven To Tears," "Every Breath You Take," "Message in a Bottle," "One World," "Walking on the Moon"

1980s GEAR 1963 Fender Telecaster Custom (with Gibson humbucker in the neck position), Roland guitar synths (G-303 or G-707 controller guitar with GR-300 or GR-700 synth module), various amps (including Mesa/Boogies and Marshalls), Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress flanger, Musitronics Mu-Tron III envelope filter, Roland RE-301 Chorus Echo, Echoplec, MXR pedals (Distortion+, Phase 90, analog delay and Dyna Comp) — AL

Steve Vai

The first murmurings of Steve Vai's talent began when he was credited with "impossible guitar parts" on Frank Zappa's Man from Utopia. His first solo album, Flex-Able, showed what Vai could do when left to his own devices — namely, creating wacky tunes that proudly displayed his Zappa influence and his stunning chops. Filling the shoes vacated by Yngwie Malmsteen, Vai joined Alcatrazz for one incredible album, Disturbing the Peace. Criminally under-promoted and underappreciated, the album features songwriting, tones and arrangements that can hang with Vai's most celebrated work.

His next move, to David Lee Roth's band, brought Val squarely into the spotlight with one of the most high-profile rock gigs of the decade. He also recorded and/or toured with Whitesnake and PIL in a decade where it seemed as if there was nothing he couldn't do.

KEY TRACKS "The Attitude Song," "Viv Woman" (solo). "Jazz Discharge Party Hats" (with Frank Zappa). "Painted Lover" (with Alcatrazz). "Shy Boy," "Skyscraper" (with David Lee Roth)

1980s GEAR: '78 Fender Strat with DiMarzio X2N bridge pickup, custom Charvels, various Ibanez JEM models, Carvin X-100B amp, 100-watt Marshall, Roland SDE-3000 delay, Boss SD-1 Super OverDrive. — MB

Eddie Van Haien

Van Halen's 1978 debut — and Eddie Van Halen's "Eruption" solo, in particular — breathed new life into rock and sent hordes of guitarists scrambling to the woodshed. However, Van Halen continued to leave jaws agape throughout the '80s. Though two-handed tapping, whammy-bar abuse and raging staccato licks are the most conspicuous marks of his signature sound, Van Haien also surprised the guitar galaxy with deft slide work, intricate classical-flavored pieces and impeccable rhythm playing. His influence on subsequent generations simply can't be overstated. Eddie Van Halen stands as one of guitar's most far-reaching and important innovators.

KEY TRACKS "Cathedral," “Could This Be Magic," "Hot for Teacher," "Little Guitars" and "Mean Street"

1980s GEAR Charvel Strat-style guitar (with a '58 Strat bridge — later exchanged for a Floyd Rose — and a Gibson PAF humbucker), custom Kramers (with PAFs or Seymour Duncans and Floyd Roses), MXR Phase 90 and Flanger pedals, Echoplex, Lexicon PCM-70, Eventide 949 Harmonizer, Roland SDE-3000 delay, Variac-equipped 100-watt Marshall plead heads with Marshall 4x12s — SH

Stevie Ray Vaughan

At a time when drum machines ruled and it was hipper to own a Roland G-707 synth guitar than a '62 Strat, Stevie Ray Vaughan pushed bare-knuckle blues back onto the airwaves. Ironically, most listeners first heard Vaughan as a sideman on David Bowie's club-oriented Let's Dance. In '83, pop radio was dominated by new wave and synth bands, so Vaughan's stinging Strat tones and Albert King–inspired bends in "China Girl" and "Let's Dance" sounded downright revolutionary. That same year, Vaughan's bluesy debut, Texas Flood, hit the Top 40 and established the 29-year-old as a bona fide guitar hero. For the first time in more than a decade, it was cool to play blues.

For the next seven years, Vaughan never strayed from his roots, recording taut, guitar-driven R&B with his Lone Star confederates, Double Trouble. Whether reinterpreting Hendrix and Howlin' Wolf, or pounding out an original R&B shuffle, Vaughan infused each note with palpable tension. You can witness his blend of feral energy and superb technique in Live at the El Mocambo, a video shot in a sweaty Toronto nightclub in '83. Because of its unwavering honesty, Vaughan's music remains as popular as ever.

KEY TRACKS "Lenny," "Love Struck Baby," "Pride and Joy," "Texas Flood," "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)"

1980s GEAR '59 sunburst Fender Strat, a pair of sequentially serial-numbered '63 Fender Vibroverb 1x15 combos, Fender Vibratone, Ibanez TS-9 Tube Screamer — AE

Jamie West-Oram

Punctuating the Fixx's radio hits with his chorused, squeaky-clean Strat tones, Jamie West-Oram was one of the most identifiable guitarists on the '80s new wave front. Though his restrained funk rhythms, shimmering harmonics, palm-muted syncopations, and echo-drenched chordal washes marked him as mainly a texturalist, West-Oram also peppered his work with quirky whammy warbles, feedback-soaked squeals, and brief-but-cathartic solos. His unique sound earned him sideman gigs with many notable artists, including Tina Turner, Depeche Mode, Stevie Nicks and Brian Eno.

KEY TRACKS "One Thing Leads to Another," "Red Skies," "Saved by Zero," "Stand or Fall"

1980s GEAR Charvel Strat-style guitar (with Schecter neck, EMG single-coils, and a Floyd Rose tremolo), Marshall 50-watt heads with JBL-loaded 2x12s, Korg digital delay, Yamaha SPX-90, MXR stereo chorus, Pro Co Rat — SH

An outspoken advocate of tube amps and vintage guitars, the late César Dîaz worked as an amp tech and gear adviser to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton and Keith Richards, among others electric guitar players. He was working with Bob Dylan when Guitar Player caught up with him for a discussion about guitarists’ gear and tone.

Among the players Dîaz spoke of, Stevie Ray Vaughan stood out as one who benefited perhaps most significantly from the tech's insights. Given that SRV was young and working with little guidance at the time Dîaz met him in 1979, he stood to get more from him than more experienced players. Stevie — whom fellow Austin guitarist Eric Johnson recently lauded for his uncelebrated singing talents — benefited with improvements to his guitars and, especially his amps.

What was the state of Stevie Ray Vaughan's gear when you started working with him?

I first saw Stevie in 1979 at a club in Bethesda, Maryland, and I immediately got floored. I went, "Man, the guy can play his ass off, but he sounds like shit!"

So I went up to him and said, "Look, you sound great, but I can make you sound better." He had the '59 Strat he called Number One, except that it wasn't beat-up yet and the letters "SRV" were still intact. He didn't have the left-handed whammy bar on it. So when I told him that Hendrix had his bar on the top so that he could do that vibrato stuff with his elbow, Stevie said, "Oh, great, can you get me one of those things?" I did, and I thought that he would put it on a new Strat body or something like that, but the next time I saw him he had it on Number One.

You know, Stevie wasn't an educated guy. He just did what came natural to him. It was up to somebody else to make him sound great. He just plugged in and played. Later on, though, he did become somewhat of a maniac and really cared about his stuff.

What was his amp in the early days?

He was using a black-panel Vibroverb, the rare one with the single 15-inch speaker. This is not to be confused with the chocolate-brown one that has an active tone section. When he added a second Vibroverb, the two were in numerical sequence with their serial numbers. They were 1964s, the only year of production for this particular model. In '65 they became the Pro-Verb. Stevie was sounding fine with that pair of 'Verbs, but the stuff was a little loose on the low end.

Was he open to suggestions about how to improve his sound?

Always. When we were on the road, he would come in my room in the middle of the night to talk about how to sound better. He was always happy to have me around because I could make the changes in the equipment. He could get uptight about his sound, and around the crew I got to be known as Stevie's pacifier.

What was Vaughan's first major equipment change?

The first big change was replacing the amps' output transformers, because the old ones were worn out. The secondary taps on the transformers were not matching, and with push/pull amp designs it's very important that the two taps read close to each other. If not, to put it in simple terms, one tube will not be heating up or phasing with the other as well as it could. One of the first things I do to an amp is test the DC resistance, and then I test the signal out of the transformer taps to see how each tube is being pulled.

Did his use of beefy strings—.013 through .052—and half-step-low tuning affect his amp performance?

Definitely. An amp's input sensitivity is set for a certain amount of pitch. Stevie's nonstandard frequencies created a different set of spikes in the amp, so his input had to be buffered slightly to reduce the signal from the guitar. He also hit the low strings real hard, which would do wonderful things to the tubes [laughs], like sparks and Fourth of July kinds of things. I saw plenty of smoke coming out of his amps. In some of his passages he would be hitting spikes that would go up to 700 plate volts! But he felt that it was his sound, and that the Vibroverb was the amp for him.

See, Stevie had this superstition about numbers. He was used to his controls being set at a certain level, no matter what the amp was sounding like at that point. So in order to avoid problems, I would back off the volume control by unscrewing the knob and turning it back a bit so it would appear to be at the same level as before. Or I'd turn it ahead a bit, depending on how the amplifier was working at that particular time. That way when he would turn the volume to 6, it would sound the same to him.

Do you mean that no matter where he was playing, he always dialed the same settings?

Yes, the same. Volume at 6, treble at 5 1/2, bass at 4. But he was up and down a lot with the guitar controls.

Were his guitars modified?

They were stock except for one that had an extra coil inside to cancel out the hum. I did try to tell him about the ways I had been rewinding pickups with reverse wrap and reverse polarity, but I wasn't the guitar tech. Rene Martinez was.

Did Stevie ever talk about the tone of other guitarists?

Oh, yeah. We were always talking about other players like Mike Bloomfield and Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf's lead guitarist. Stevie was also really into Otis Rush's tone. And Pee Wee Crayton and Guitar Slim as well. Most of those guitarists favored a bright, cutting tone similar to a Tele's.

Did you ever see Stevie play one?

The only time was during the In Step session for "The House Is Rockin'," when he used Paul Burlison's Esquire. Someone had added a rhythm pickup near the neck, so I suppose that qualifies it as a Tele.

Did Stevie play loud in the studio?

Yeah, as loud as he played anywhere. He never let an engineer or producer tell him to use little amps. When we started the In Step rehearsals in New York, Stevie was being extra particular about everything, to the point where it kind of got on the nerves of some of the other participants. He had a tough time making up his mind about things, so we took 32 amplifiers with us.

So he would hit these notes, and the whole place would rattle. There were 32 amps running into the board, and Stevie would put his headphones down in the middle of recording and come over to me and say, "The little Gibson amp upstairs is fucking up!" I'd give him a look like, "What, are you kidding me?" But then I would go check and sure enough, there was a problem with the amp. Stevie could really hear every little thing. It was amazing.

Had he found his ultimate sound?

No, not at all. He was always searching, looking, trying to learn more. And there was so much more that he wanted to do. He was never satisfied with his accomplishments, and being free from drugs allowed him to have an incredibly sharp focus on his future.

Austin-born guitarist Eric Johnson has reflected on his hometown’s knack for spawning next-level guitarists and how the city, with its “little artistic pockets,” helped shape them.

Certain places have come to be intimately associated with specific styles of music, from the Mississippi blues to the Seattle grunge explosion of the ‘90s. Austin, meanwhile, is often celebrated as the world’s live musical capital, as well as for its ties with the blues. And Johnson has always been in awe of its most famous export, the late Stevie Ray Vaughan.

During a sit-down interview featured in the latest issue of Guitarist, the '"Cliffs of Dover" composer offers a taste of what the Austin scene was like when he cut his teeth there. He’s also revealed the one skill SRV boasted that Johnson feels deserves as many accolades as his abilities on electric guitar.

“When I look back now, I realize there are certain little artistic pockets that are known for certain things, like new art,” he says. “Austin had its own thing; its own artistic pocket. A lot of the players there had that blues influence. No matter what kind of music they did; whether it’s country or country rock or blues or jazz, there’s an element of blues in what they do.”

Perhaps there’s something special in the water supply. It would go some way to explaining SRV’s revolutionary talents.

“Stevie was fantastic,” Johnson continues, paying his respects. “I got to do some touring with him and hang with him a little bit. He was a wonderful guy and obviously a tremendous talent. Just the way he could give it up and go out there and get out of the way of himself and channel this great, beautiful force and be a really, really fine singer in front of all the powerful music that he did.

“I really admire that, probably just as much as his guitar playing,” Johnson continues. “I think he was a great singer and he wrote really good songs. He had the whole package. I learned a lot from that — trying to put emotion into what you do. He certainly was a master at that.”

SRV's legacy was cut all too short when he died aged just 35. His brother, Jimmie Vaughan has spoken to Guitar Player about the impact his death had on him.

“I’m still in denial about it. It was terrible. I had to deal with losing my little brother,” he said only last year. “The thing is that he died on the same day that our father died, four years earlier. Imagine how that felt when I was calling up my mother to tell her. I guess she thought I was calling up to tell her I was thinking about her on that anniversary. And I have to tell her that Stevie got killed?

“It’s a life-changing experience... I didn’t know what to do or say about it when it happened. I almost didn’t even want to play anymore. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.”

While SRV enjoyed a sizable reputation, he once went on record to lament that Johnson's stature wasn't bigger. “If Seven Worlds had come out at the time it was ready, instead of being held back, he would have been as big as Jeff Beck,” Vaughan said.

The record was released in 1998 but had been recorded two decades earlier, in the wake of his old band the Electromagnets splitting up.

Meanwhile, footage of Stevie jamming with Albert Collins and Jimmie Vaughan in 1989 has recently resurfaced, after being feared lost for 20 years.

For more than 50 years, Jimmie Vaughan has been a force onstage and on records. He came to prominence in the late 1970s when the Fabulous Thunderbirds brought their Texas roadhouse blues to a national, and later international, audience. The T-Birds broke into the U.S. singles charts in 1986 with “Tuff Enuff” and enjoyed high-profile success at home and around the world.

Vaughan left the T-Birds in 1990 to record Family Style with his younger brother, Stevie Ray. Plans to build upon that platform, touring as the Vaughan Brothers, came to a grinding halt when Stevie was tragically killed in a helicopter crash that same year. Jimmie found the loss impossible to deal with, and refrained from recording until the release of his debut solo album, Strange Pleasure, four years later.

Since the release of that first solo record, Vaughan has continued to record a series of critically acclaimed albums and to tour extensively. The 2023 documentary Brothers in Blues was the first official telling of Jimmie and Stevie Ray’s story. It features not only extensive interviews with Jimmie but also appearances from Billy Gibbons and many associates of Stevie and Jimmie from their earliest days.

Jimmie is pleased with how it turned out, but still finds it hard to talk about Stevie. “I still can’t believe that it’s true that Stevie got killed,” he says. “I’m still in denial about it. It was terrible. I had to deal with losing my little brother.

"The thing is that he died on the same day that our father died, four years earlier. Imagine how that felt when I was calling up my mother to tell her. I guess she thought I was calling up to tell her I was thinking about her on that anniversary. And I have to tell her that Stevie got killed?

“It’s a life-changing experience,” he continues. “I didn’t know what to do or say about it when it happened. I almost didn’t even want to play anymore. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. There’s an expectation as well, when people speak to you about it, that you’ll have something profound to say. I sometimes think that maybe God picked that day so that we knew they’d be together. What else can you think?”

Once again this year, Jimmie will join up with Billy Gibbons for shows at Antone’s, the Austin, Texas blues club where the Vaughan brothers (and many other electric guitar players) got their start. Jimmie and Billy have intermittently teamed up for their Jungle Show performances at the venue, joined by Sue Foley, Mike “The Drifter” Flanigin and Chris “Whipper” Layton. This year, Vaughan will be the special guest on December 27 and 28 when Billy F. Gibbons and the BFGs, featuring Flanigin and Layton, take the stage.

“We’ve talk about doing more things,” Vaughan says, “but Billy is very busy, and I’ve been real busy, but we always come home around Christmas time, which is when we often do shows together. We have been thinking about maybe doing something in Vegas. I think we’d have to make a record first though, but that’s currently on the back burner.”

Vaughan’s primary focus at the moment is to continue to tour across the States. He has dates scheduled through January, and there will undoubtedly be more to come. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a big deal or a small deal, it’s always exciting to play guitar and to get together with your friends to play,” he says. “There’s something magical about playing the guitar. I still can’t believe that I get to be a guitar player.”

We asked Vaughan to share the stories behind some of that magic as he’s applied it to key songs from his career. Here’s what he told us.

“WAIT ON TIME” (1979)

“I picked this one because it’s from the beginning of my recording career with the T-Birds, and it’s also one of the very first original songs that we worked up. The whole album was pretty representative of what we were like as a band. This was a song that we’d been playing at Antone’s for years. [Vocalist] Kim Wilson came up with the lyrics, and I think it’s a song that sounds like it could have been written at any time. If you didn’t know that it was an original, you could easily be forgiven for thinking it was some old, obscure blues cover version.

“That was what we did, you know? We’d be playing across the states at blues festivals and clubs, and we’d have that mix of original and cover songs, but I doubt the average listener would know which was which. Playing as the back-up band at Antone’s, with whatever blues great was playing there, was a tremendous apprenticeship as a band.

“I think I used a ’58 Strat that I’ve still got, and I think maybe a Bassman amp. We were really pleased with the album when it came out. It was real exciting. Denny Bruce owned the label [Takoma Records], and Ray Benson from Asleep at the Wheel recommended us to him. We recorded the album in Dallas in a couple of days, since we’d been playing those songs for so long.”

“TUFF ENUFF” (1986)

“Dave Edmunds produced this album, and it was the first time that we allowed somebody to produce us, as opposed to record us. It was the first time that we asked for help and got it. Dave wanted us to overdub, and put a lot of guitar layers on the tracks. We spent a lot more time on the vocal tracks as well. He was a great producer, and we were confident that he could bring something extra to the table for us.

“We were fans of his records of course, and I think the album turned out pretty good. We thought, and Dave agreed, that 'Tuff Enuff' could be a radio hit. We did everything that we thought we needed to do in the recording of it to achieve that, which it did of course, giving us our first hit single. We still stuck to our guns though — it still sounds like the T-Birds. Most of the album was a little more like our regular approach, but ‘Tuff Enuff' is still an authentic-sounding T-Birds song.

“For this song I think I used my white Strat, which was a ’62 body with a neck that René Martinez built for me, and he put a Fender decal on it. This was before I had a deal with Fender. I think this was either two Super Reverbs or Bassman combos together with a ‘Y’ cord. I turned the amps to 10, then turned it down on the guitar. If I needed something extra, I always had something in reserve.”

“POWERFUL STUFF” (1989)

“This was the last T-Birds album that I played on. This was the follow-up hit to ‘Tuff Enuff,’ and I thought it was a real good record. We got a lot of airplay on this one. This is another example of where we updated the sound of the band a little while still remaining true to who we were as a band.

“There’s actually a live version of this on YouTube for some TV special and I think it actually came out a lot better than the record. I had a Stratocaster tuned down a tone, with real heavy strings that I used for those parts that sound like a baritone guitar — even though I did have a Danelectro Longhorn baritone that I used on a lot of the T-Birds records. There was a song when I was a kid that I heard it on, by Grady Martin, whose playing I really loved. Man, he played with everybody in Nashville. He had that great double-necked guitar with the little, short neck [a 1952 Bigsby double-neck]. Great guitarist.”

“TICK TOCK” (1990)

“Recording the Vaughan Brothers’ Family Style with Stevie was one of the highlights for me. I wrote the music and the chorus, with the words ‘Tick Tock.’ Nile Rogers, who was producing, wrote the lyrics. When I turned up, I had a recording of what I had, played it to Nile and he took about 10 minutes to write the words. [laughs]

"I couldn’t pick a particular favorite from this album — it was all real serious and heavy to me as we were working on it. And then Stevie got killed. We were together for three months making that record and had a real great time doing it. Tony Martell at Epic came up with the idea of us making an album. Ever since we were little kids our dad would say, ‘Okay, boys, go get your guitars and play something in the living room for our guests,’ and someone would always say, ‘That’s really great boys, maybe someday you can make a record together.’ It was a long time coming.”

“BOOM BAPA BOOM” (1994)

“This cut from Strange Pleasure was the kickstarter to my solo career. After several years of not knowing what to do after Stevie’s death, this was my return. I asked Nile Rogers to produce this because I’d enjoyed working with him on Family Style. He’s the greatest producer I’ve ever worked with. He’s such an inspirational guy, that it’s almost like magic.

“Stevie had enjoyed working with him on Bowie’s Let’s Dance, which was why we asked him to produce our album. I felt a certain amount of pressure and scrutiny in the making of this record, because it was the start of a whole new thing for me, particularly as I was also doing all the vocals. The thing is though, as you get older, and you’ve had a good career, I think you always feel a certain amount of pressure to come up with something that will stand alongside your best work.

“I’d decided to change one of the fundamental approaches to my music by having the organ cover the bass parts instead of using a bass player. I’d been a huge fan of people like Jack McDuff and Jimmy McGriff, and those kinds of guys, since I was a teenager. I ran into Bill Willis, and thought that was my chance to do something in that vein. If you call up your favorite guy to make a record and he says yes, that’s a pretty special thing.”

When Bill Finnegan stopped production of his famed Klon Centaur overdrive pedal in 2008, prices for the stompbox were driven to the stratosphere. New comments by Warren Haynes will only help keep them there, while frustrating everyone who is still lusting for an original Klon.

“Probably 80 percent of my sounds are just straight-in guitar and amp,” Haynes tells Ultimate Guitar while promoting his new solo album, Million Voices Whisper.

The remaining 20 percent of his tone, he says, comes from his pedalboard, upon which an original Centaur lies.

“I don't think anything's worth the price they put on it these days,” he admits, “but it's a great pedal. I've got a silver one and a gold one.”

“When Bill Finnegan first started building those, I remember I was playing with Gov't Mule at a club in Boston called Mama Kin's, which was Aerosmith's club.”

Fittingly, Aerosmith's Joe Perry once owned an ultra-rare early Klon, but it unintentionally ended up in Jeff Beck’s collection.

“Bill came by our sound check and gave me one. I liked it a lot,” Haynes says. “He had been working on it for, I think about a year and a half, on a way to get it to boost your sound without changing it, which is what Stevie Ray Vaughan used to use the [TS9] Tube Screamer for.

"One of his Tube Screamers was just to get on top of the band but not have your tone change,” Haynes continues.

“The Klon did that even better to the extent that you couldn't detect any difference in the tone if you set it that way, where you weren't boosting the gain or the tone, the bass or treble. You were only boosting the level.

"I used it that way for a long time because I love being able to achieve that when the band gets louder and you just want your sound to be louder, but not different.”

"But then, at some point, I was like, 'I'm wasting this pedal. It's such a great pedal.' The way I've been setting it now is where it's a little warmer and a little gainy-er, and it's great.”

Haynes also revealed other pedals on his board, which include a Hughes & Kettner Rotosphere Leslie speaker simulator, a Boss octaver and an Emma DiscumBOBulator envelope filter among them.

“I also have what's called a Texas Ranger, which Caesar Diaz made years ago, and it was based on the top boost of an AC30. He put it into a pedal and built it in a way where you could choose high, mid, or low to boost,” he adds. “I find that when I boost the low, it kind of gives you that sound that Hendrix would use sometimes on a Strat.”

But he bookends his pedalboard dissecting by repeating the value he finds in getting great tone from an electric guitar and an amplifier alone.

“Everything else to me is like a variation, another voice. Pedals just become colors and effects for me.”

While on his Million Voices Whisper promo trail, Haynes stopped by YouTube favorite Rik Beato’s studio, where he spoke about the two things every guitarist should do to stop sounding like an amateur.

Ritchie Blackmore has never been shy in his regard for his fellow musicians. And not surprisingly, some of his comments have been highly controversial.

In 1991, he raised a stink with his appraisal of Jimi Hendrix. “I was impressed by Hendrix,” he told Guitar World in 1991. “Not so much by his playing as his attitude. He wasn’t a great player, but everything else about him was brilliant. Even the way he walked was amazing. His guitar playing, though, was always a little bit weird.”

In that same interview, Blackmore offered an uncomplimentary view of another Fender Stratocaster player. "Stevie Ray Vaughan was very intense. Maybe that's what caught everybody's attention,” he suggested. “As a player, he didn't do anything amazing."

Which raises the question, what musical artist does impress the erstwhile Deep Purple/Rainbow guitarist?

If it’s not obvious, think for a moment about the music he makes now with his Renaissance folk-rock act Blackmore’s Night. What other band in rock history comes close?

If you guessed Jethro Tull, you’re correct. In fact, in Blackmore's and Tull’s heyday, the guitarist would catch the band every chance he had. Blackmore admired music built on originality and complexity, and he was impressed by Anderson's flair for crafting highly intricate baroque-flavored rock in convoluted meters.

“Ian Anderson is a genius, especially with his later stuff,” Blackmore told Guitar Player writer Steven Rosen for his cover story in the December 1977 issue. “It's horrifying to think how he wrote that stuff. But if you talk to him, he goes, ‘Oh, I just count two.’ But you can't count two over that — it's 9 over 5 1/2! Martin Barre and the rest of the group must have memories like computers to remember that.

“Admittedly I wouldn't like to be in that band playing the same thing every night," he added. "But I love to go and see them. I see them at least four times a year."

Blackmore — who was known to have Tull's "SeaLion" playing in venues prior to his shows — admitted that he’d become such a fan boy, Ian Anderson once decided to take the piss out of him in front of a packed theater.

"In fact the last time I went and saw them was in Paris, and they put me right in the front row," he said. "I thought, "Why do they want me in the front row right in front of Ian Anderson?"

“So it came to the last number and Ian leaps off the stage and lands in my lap and starts singing to me. The spotlight is on me and I'm trying to act cool because my girlfriend was there."

Although he was less than thrilled at having his tough-guy public persona messed with, Blackmore was charmed by the episode and continued to to love Anderson's work. “Whenever he brings out a new LP, I say I hope it's not as good as the rest of them, because then I'll feel a little bit better that I can't write like that," he said. "And sure enough, he comes out with another blinder. He gets so involved he writes a symphony.”

Blackmore was somewhat less enthused about Tull guitarist Martin Barre, and shared some blunt opinions that, while fair, weren’t the kind of thing to win him any favor.

“Martin is fun, he's got a great memory, but he hasn't learned to improvise too well I think,” Blackmore said. “He's got a problem there with his fingers, but he's still great. You can't say anything against him because he's such a nice guy.”

As we reported here recently, Blackmore was highly complimentary about former Beatle George Harrison when the two greats teamed up in 1984 during an Australian tour in support of Deep Purple MkII's album Perfect Strangers. But it seems he was more impressed by George’s feet than his playing.

“George was very modest,” he concludes. “A very quiet man. I noticed onstage that he had big feet, because he was tapping out the rhythm. I looked down at one point and thought, My god, he has big feet!”

Anyone who’s studied Stevie Ray Vaughan’s gear would have noticed the “upside-down” tremolo on his 1959 Fender Stratocaster. Dubbed “Number One” and “First Wife,” the electric guitar was purchased from the owner of an Austin, Texas music shop in 1973. It was Stevie who replaced its right-hand whammy with a lefty.

While many have rightly assumed Stevie was emulating his left-handed heroes Otis Rush and Jimi Hendrix, there was more to it than appearances, as Stevie revealed to Guitar Player assistant editor Dan Forte in the magazine's October 1984 issue.

“Well, I started listening to people and noticed that when Otis Rush used one, he had it on the top — he played upside-down,” Steve said. “And Hendrix had the guitar upside-down, except he strung it regular.

"It seemed to me that the people who did that the best had it on top, so I moved mine.”

While Stevie liked the results, it caused difficulty with his clothing. “Sometimes it does get in the way,” he admitted. “I’ve had it tear my sleeve halfway off.”

As Forte pointed out, the position of the bar meant Stevie worked it with his palm, rather than his little finger.

“Yeah, and I've got the springs set up so I couldn't move it with my little finger anyway,” Stevie said. “It's pretty tight, with four springs tightened all the way up. That's how I can do ‘Third Stone From the Sun’ and still be in tune.

“See, I have my old [’59] Strat set up where it won't go up at all. On my newer Strats, the vibrato handles are on the bottom, in the regular place. The orange one [his Hamiltone Strat, built by James Hamilton] and Lenny, the brown one [his circa '65 composite Strat], both of their vibratos will go pretty far up and down as well, and they're set up a lot lighter. All the guitars have personalities of their own and feel completely different. They each have different sounds.”

Of course Hendrix wasn’t the only influence on SRV’s guitar playing. Albert King was another big inspiration to him. When asked by Forte about King, Stevie shared a story about the time the two bluesmen performed together on December 6, 1983, at CHCH-TV studios in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Stevie was still an up-and-comer, and King initially refused to do the show because he didn’t know who SRV was. Eventually he realized he was “Little Stevie,” the skinny kid who used to sit in with him when he played in Austin.

The show in Hamilton was one of two collaborations between the men recorded for the TV program In Session. The intimate studio performance reveals how comfortable the two men were with each other, which also results in some hilarious moments.

At one point, during "I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town,” as Stevie solos, King casually stands up, retrieves his pipe and nonchalantly lights it.

During another of Stevie’s solos, King pulls an emery board from his pocket and begins filing his fingernails.

As Stevie revealed to GP, King had heard Stevie copping his licks on David Bowie’s Let’s Dance album and wanted to show him who the boss was at their performance.

“When that album first came out, Albert heard it,” Stevie told GP. “He said, "[sneering] Yeah, I heard you doin' all my shit on there. I'm gonna go up there and do some of yours.’

“We were doing this TV show right outside of Toronto-Hamilton, and during the lunch break, Albert went around to everybody in there looking for an emery board. I didn't think anything of it. We were jamming on the last song, ‘Outskirts of Town,’ and it comes to the solo, and he goes, ‘Get it, Stevie!’

“I started off, and I look over and he's pulling out this damn emery board, filing his nails, sort of giving me this sidelong glance. [laughs]. I loved it! Lookin' at me like, ‘Uh-huh, I got you swinging by your toes.’ He's a heavy cat.”

Have a look.

Nine years before he got his big break in George Thorogood and the Destroyers, a young Texan guitarist by the name of Jim Suhler seized his chance to make an impression on Stevie Ray Vaughan.

“I met him for the first time in 1989,” he tells Guitar World. “We had a family jewelry shop in Dallas and Stevie had an old antique watch he brought in to get repaired. I just happened to be there when he came in. In fact, I walked right past him when my dad was talking to him.”

Suhler had yet to break into the music industry at this point. It would be another three years before the release of his debut album as Jim Suhler and Monkey Beat, and his father wanted to help him achieve his dreams.

“My dad called me back and said, ‘Son, there’s somebody here you want to meet.’ And it was Stevie,” Suhler recollects. “I was in my late 20s trying to get it together. I hadn’t met George at that point, so my dad asked him: ‘Do you have any advice for my son?’

“I was really embarrassed by that,” he admits, “but Stevie said to me, ‘Yeah, keep it clean.’ To me, one of the greatest parts of his legacy was his sobriety and him helping others through that journey.”

With those words still ringing in his ears, Suhler awaited Vaughan’s return to the store. But it was a day that never came. Inexplicably, the guitarist never returned to pick up his watch.

So when he and his band rolled into the city once more a year later, in 1990, he knew what he had to do.

“I took the watch out to where he was playing, got backstage, and gave it back to him," Suhler says. "He had a light — an aura or energy — about him. It was palpable. It was real and he was very powerful. God bless him. He was a great man.”

The show, as part of the B.B. King–headlined Benson & Hedges Blues Festival, would prove to be one of SRV’s last. The guitarist died tragically that August.

But where one legacy ended, another began. Buoyed by his idol’s advice, Suhler developed his career as a solo artist with a slew of album releases. He was also featured on Robert Ealey's 1995 album, If You Need Me, before he caught Thorogood's eye.

Since then, Suhler has gone on to enjoy quite the career, releasing four studio albums as part of Thorogood's band. During that time he's opened for AC/DC and performed with Joe Bonamassa and "The Reverend" Billy F. Gibbons, who officiated at his wedding.

Suhler tapped Joe Bonamassa for a Hendrix-esque number on his 2007 solo album, having seen the guitarist “killing it” with a Rory Gallagher cover while on the road with Thorogood in San Diego, in 2001. He says he needed “superhuman skills” to bring the song to life, and Bonamassa, who has recently talked about why he's brought Dumbles back into his live rig, was the man for the job.

As for his Gibbons-bolstered wedding, Suhler says, “You haven’t lived until you’ve gone out on the town in Texas with Billy Gibbons. His influence is very big on me, personally as well as musically.”

For more from Stevie Ray Vaughan, check out his recently revived classic GP interview, which sees him talking about jamming with B.B. and Freddie King, Dumble amps, and dodging bullets while playing his earliest shows.

Taking place the night after the inauguration of the 41st POTUS, George H. W. Bush, on January 21, 1989, the Presidential Inauguration Concert was exactly what it sounds like — but on this evening, politics took a back seat to pure musical talent.

The black-tie event was held at the Washington Convention Center and featured a whole host of rhythm and blues and soul's finest, including Bo Diddley, Chuck Jackson, Willie Dixon, Sam Moore, Delbert McClinton, Carla Thomas and Billy Preston. However, the highlight of the night was arguably the closing set from Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, who drafted in some additional firepower in the form of Stevie's older brother, Jimmie Vaughan and blues legend Albert Collins.

Following an introduction of, "Ladies and gentlemen, the master of the Telecaster! Texas' own Albert Collins," the Texas blues trio launched into a high-octane performance of Frosty — the opening track from Collins's 1965 debut, The Cool Sound of Albert Collins. The 'Iceman' cut a familiar figure onstage with his signature oversized guitar strap on his right shoulder, a capo in place, and a fiery opening blues lick.

There's some tasty playing from the Vaughan brothers and Collins throughout the upbeat instrumental in E flat, as you'd expect with Stevie putting his Number One Strat through its paces. However, special credit has to be given to Reese Wynans for holding the fort harmonically on the Hammond organ while Collins literally goes for a walk to somewhat comical effect towards the song's conclusion.

Although Collins only sticks around for one of the tracks, the video clip also features some stand-out renditions of SRV staples "Texas Flood" and "Lovestruck Baby," as well as the reimagined Stevie Wonder classic "Superstition." Be sure not to miss the closing performance of "Scuttle Buttin'," either. Though it's largely curtailed due to Stevie breaking a string in the opening eight bars — always the ultimate professional, seeing him coolly switching guitars before the song's lighting-fast conclusion is worth the price of admission alone.

The story goes that this footage was thought to be long lost for over twenty years; however, around 2014, it was rediscovered, restored, remixed, and finally broadcast for the first time — as well as being available on DVD as A Celebration of Blues & Soul: The 1989 Presidential Inaugural Concert.

Regularly integrating Collins's material into his setlist from as early as the late 1970s, Stevie Ray Vaughan was never shy about paying tribute to those who paved the way for him musically whenever he could, telling Guitar World in 1988 that guys like Collins — along with Albert King, Otis Rush, and B.B. King — "are the ones who really ought to have the recognition," before humbly adding that he considers himself "just another Texas blues guitarist."

Before introducing the penultimate track of the night, Vaughan told the crowd, "It's a real pleasure to be here with you all. To be able to be here with my family and friends, it means a lot to me... 'cause this is a special year for me too, you see?"

It proved to be, with In Step — his first studio album in four years and the first since finding sobriety — being released in June of that year to universal acclaim. Unfortunately, this would be the last to be released before his death the following year, in August of 1990.

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Johnson are both electric guitar legends, but you won't typically hear them both talked about in the same sentence.

Vaughan, of course, was the man who re-energized blues guitar playing, bringing a swaggering, Texas-sized approach to familiar material that inspired countless guitarists worldwide. Johnson, meanwhile, was a virtuoso whose technical skill and melodic prowess similarly upended the world of guitar instrumentals.

Johnson and Vaughan, however, were both based in Austin, Texas, and – as fellow up-and-coming guitarists – developed a fast friendship in the 1970s and '80s.

“Eric is a wonderful cat,” the late Vaughan told Guitar Player in 1986. “He's always been one of my favorite people in the world, as well as one of my favorite guitar players. 

“The guy has done more trying to be the best that he can be than anybody I've ever seen. He plays all the time, and tries to get his instruments in perfect shape all the time. He works hard on his tone, sound and techniques. He does incredible things with all kinds of guitars – electric, lap steel, acoustic, everything.”

Though both Vaughan and Johnson were linchpins of the Austin scene by the late '70s, it would be years before either would achieve their commercial breakthrough.

From 1976 through 1978, Johnson recorded what was supposed to be his debut album, Seven Worlds. Due to various business-related holdups, though, it would be two decades – long after Johnson's commercial breakthrough – before the album came out. 

Vaughan was a great fan of Seven Worlds, and maintained that the album would have been a breakthrough for Johnson – and the guitar as a whole – had it come out in the late '70s as originally planned. 

“If the record that he made years ago, The Seven Worlds, had come out at the time it was ready, instead of being held back for the reason of dollars and pennies – someone besides Eric was holding out for too much money for a deal – he would have been as big as Jeff Beck,” Vaughan told GP in 1986. “He would have been very much in the public eye for modern jazz, rock and fusion. 

“The guy deserves a lot more recognition than he's ever gotten. Eric is an honest human being, and he cares about everything. Just listen to him and learn.”

Filmed in the summer of 1988, during what would be Stevie Ray Vaughan's final run of UK dates, the Texas blues icon took some time out to explain to UK TV show Wired  the subtle differences between how fellow guitar greats Freddie King and Eric Clapton would approach the track Hideaway.

SRV explains, "As I was hearing the original blues masters from the States, I was also hearing the English blues boom at the same time. So not only was I getting the original — but I was getting this updated, energized version of the same thing. So, I had less reservations and less reasons to be a so-called purist, and therefore, I wasn't as restricted about what I could learn.

"For instance," he demonstrates, "Freddie King does Hideaway like this. Eric Clapton does it like this! There's a small difference there." 

Thankfully, the interviewer asks Stevie to show us how he combines the two, which you can see in the video clip below. Note how the somewhat small changes in the vibrato choice, pick attack and placement on the fingerboard create substantial tonal variations throughout.

Vaughan was never shy about tipping his hat to his musical influences — regularly sharing the stage with many of them across his career. Even on his 1983 debut, Texas Flood, the past masters flowed through his work.

As he told Wired, his song Rude Mood is actually based on a Lightning Hopkins track. Vaughan says: "It's like a thing called Lightning Sky Hop, which is a take-off of it... And I guess it's, y'know, it's just mean. It sounds like a rude mood."

The fast-paced blues shuffle instrumental earned him a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 1984 but lost to Sting's Brimstone And Treacle. 

SRV also briefly speaks about overcoming his longstanding drug and alcohol addiction that caused him to ultimately collapse in Ludwigshafen, Germany in 1986. At the time, it forced him to cancel the last 13 dates on his tour while he received treatment for substance abuse.

"I woke up one morning on a tour bus in Germany. I couldn't hardly get up. I was scared of everything. My friends. Just being awake. I was scared. I tried to say hi to my bass player and I started crying. I was a wreck. And I realized right then that the only way to win this thing was to give up. And I did. I had a breakdown," says Stevie. "Thank God that happened — because then I was able to ask for help as opposed to 'I'll make it through this.'

"I'll make it through it if I ask for help is the reality of it. It's a myth that people are superhuman – that when you see someone on stage, the obvious first thought is that these people are bigger than life and stronger than life," he continues. "I mean, look what it did with Eric Clapton. People were calling him God, and he went, wait a minute, I'm human!"

Stevie would go on to win that elusive Grammy award for his 1989 release In Step. The group had planned to embark on a European leg in September 1990; however, it was canceled after Vaughan died in a helicopter crash following the East Troy concert on August 27, 1990.

This interview originally appeared in the August 1992 issue of Guitar Player.

"Ain't a lot of chords to it
It's just a big beat
And I sound just like a whole band
Now you dig it, and dig my feets."
– John Lee Hooker's "Teachin' the Blues," 1961

Our search for the big beat led us to John Lee Hooker's house in Redwood City, California. At 72, Hooker can proudly look back on a career that began in Clarksdale, Mississippi, during the 1930s. Unlike his contemporaries Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson, Hooker didn't play roll-and-tumble Delta jukes, choosing instead to launch his career in Memphis, singing gospel and blues.

He moved to Detroit after World War II to work by day in an auto plant and make the rounds of Black Bottom clubs by night. 1948's “Boogie Chillen',” his first R&B hit, inaugurated the most prolific recording career in postwar history (It's estimated that between 1949 and 1953 alone, Hooker cut some 70 singles on 24 different labels, using a dozen different names to avoid contractual problems). 

Other big R&B hits followed: “Crawlin' King Snake” in '49, “I'm in the Mood” in '51, and “Dimples” in '56. Hooker made his first foray into Europe in '62 and returned to find that “Boom Boom” had become his first crossover hit. 

Covers by the Animals and other British Invasion bands helped him win white audiences at home. Since then, Hooker has moved to California, recorded armloads of albums, and associated with some of the most respected names in rock and blues.

As it was in the beginning, so it is today: The very heartbeat of John Lee Hooker's music remains his unique songwriting, powerful voice, and down-home propulsive guitar. 

Like Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins, and very few others, he remains a musical law unto himself, still specializing in the sparse blues and infectious boogies that first rocked the globe more than 40 years ago. As Miles Davis expressed it after a 1990 session, “John Lee, you the funkiest man alive. You sound like you buried up to your neck in mud!”

Mr. Hooker received us graciously, sat us on his couch, and tuned his electric guitar to open A. He quickly launched into an instrumental version of “Boogie Chillen',” each foot tapping to a different beat.

Watching you play “Boogie Chillen'” close up, it seems like what you're doing is very simple, and yet it's very difficult for others to get it right.

“For me, it's simple, but... [laughs].”

That was one of the first songs you recorded.

“Uh-huh.”

Did you write it when you were a young man in Mississippi?

[Nods yes].

How are you counting time with your feet?

“I couldn't tell you. It's just boogie. Just go on with it. I don't need drums.”

You often played that way in Detroit, using your feet instead of a rhythm section.

“Yeah. That first came from my stepfather, Will Moore, from whom I learned to play when I was 13. John Hammond does it too.” 

Do you usually keep your guitars tuned to a chord?

“Not really. But I use open tunings. 'Boogie Chillen',' that's in open A. For 'Boom Boom,' I've got to retune it.” [Ed. Note: Rich Kirch, John's backup guitarist, details: "John plays almost everything in open E, except for 'Boogie' – for that he usually tunes three strings up so he's in open A."] 

What do you look for in a tone?

“I look for a deep, gutty feeling. I don't use picks, so I can get that deep gut feeling. People ask, 'How do you get that?' It's just there. A lot of people try to play real fast chords – da da da da da – that's not the blues. It's synthetic. It ain't the hard, solid blues. It's a lot of speed and everything. It has no feeling to it. 

“You've got to sit down and play some [whispers] funky, funky guitar. Take your time! Don't rush it. Just let it come flowing through you. I can play guitar so funky, until it brings teardrops to your eyes. It has that funky, funky tone. I'm just me.”

While most musicians stick to 12-bar blues, you seldom follow that format.

“That's for the birds. People just feel – that's the way the blues is supposed to be played. Shut your eyes, and then you'll know what you're doing. I know what notes to hit. I know what notes not to hit. I can do a 12-bar perfect – perfect. Oh, yeah. If I did, then I wouldn't be John Lee Hooker. See, I'm known for not doing it. When I'm just playing to myself I do it – 8, 12, 4, 16, 24. But ordinarily I don't do it, because it would take away a lot of my feeling. 

“You cannot learn this in a book. You feel it here [points to his heart and head], not by writing on a piece of paper. Throw that paper away! When I walk into a studio, I don't need all that stuff. I can go into a studio and in two hours' time I can record five or six songs. Sometimes it take some people three or four weeks to record one or two songs!”

Sometimes it takes a band years to make one album.

“Yeah, It does! I can make ten albums in a year, and they all come out perfect, too.”

Can you make up songs on the spot?

“Yeah. They're on the spot. I get that good feeling. But one thing I don't like – what really bugs me – is anybody telling me how to play, what to do and how to do it. Don't do that.”

Has that been a problem on your recent Chameleon and Charisma albums, since so many of the songs feature guest bands? When you recorded with Santana, for instance, you were working in a pretty straight format.

“Heavy duty. We get together on it. They know how I do it. With 'The Healer,' we did two takes – it came out perfect. 'Stripped Me Naked' [laughs].” 

What were you thinking when you wrote that?

“Well, I got stripped naked once. She took the house, the Cadillac. And the money in the bank – she took that too.”

Did Carlos come to you with the music for that song?

“He came to the house, and we sat around. Like, he talked and we would just go with things. Just me and him. I'd go to his house, we'd lay the foundation, and then he'd pass it on to the guys. And it comes out perfect every time. 'Stripped Me Naked,' that took just about two takes.”

Have your recent albums had a big impact on your career?

“Very, very big impact, because they were all-stars. But this one I got coming out now, I'm not going to have all-star everyone – just me and my band and some local people. Carlos will probably be on it. We already got a thing called 'Chill Out' on the shelf, so we'll probably use that. 

“I'm in the studio now working, getting some pretty good stuff. A lot of the stuff I did a long, long time ago, which is new to the kids now – some of my classic stuff. But the kids never heard it, so I'm doing it over. I always did want to do it that way. Now that I got a chance, I'm going to do a lot of it all over, like 'Sugar Mama,' 'Boom Boom,' and 'Dimples.'”

Those songs turned a generation of kids on to your music during the 1960s.

“That 'Boom Boom,' that 'Dimples' – turned a whole generation. It went to Europe, and then come back here and turned the whole universe on. Then different artists took to doing that song, 'Boom Boom' – Bruce Springsteen, all them. Big Joe Turner, he was doing 'Dimples'.”

Is it a compliment when people try to play like you?

“Yeah, it is. Because I know I'm doing something to be loved. If he didn't like it, he wouldn't try to do it! So it's very complimentary to me.”

Some guys feel very protective...

“Not me. I love people that do my stuff. Robert Plant, he did 'Dimples'. He sings it all the time. He's one of my favorite people. Nice guy. Every time he comes over, he tries to look me up. 

“He flew me out to New York once to meet him, paid for my hotel and everything. Had a lady with him called Big Maggie Bell from Scotland. Met her. But my hero is Bonnie Raitt. Me and her are just like this [holds two fingers together]. I guess you know that. We're real close. I've known Bonnie over the years, and I'm a guest on her tour in LA.”

A lot of your old material has recently come out on CD.

“Yeah. You know they're coming out now because we're doing big things. They're just throwing out everything now – boom. Rhino Records did one.”

That has many great tracks, but it's missing “Mad Man Blues.”

“Yeah. Oh, I love the 'Mad Man Blues'.” [Claps time and sings 'I love the Mad Man Blues' and 'I'm Gonna Kill That Woman' to the original melody].

Do you play blues when you're alone?

“Yeah, around the house I do. Yeah, I sit down in my room and just go with things I want to do, some of that old stuff that I'm trying to revive again and bring back.”

Do you work on your own guitars?

“No. The little light stuff I do, like adjusting the bridges and raising the saddles. You get beyond that, no.” 

Why do you play semi-hollow guitars?

“Well, I like 'em. You've got to do that now because the generations come and go, and the young generation, they like to dance and they want it loud. But you still can make funky loud.”

You could play a Fender.

“I could, but I don't want to. I'm plainspoken and I don't want that. This is what I like. You don't have to bring me around the bridge. This is what I like – boom. I like the tone. I always did like Gibson. Even the old-style ones.”

Why do you have a guitar with B.B. King's name on it?

“I saw it and I went and bought it. He's an old buddy of mine. I said [to the salesman] 'Give me that one.' He gave me the price – he said, 'It's a lot of money.' I said, 'I don't care. Just give it to me.' He said, 'Who are you?' I said, 'I'm John Lee.' He said, 'Oooh,' and he came down on the price when he found out who I was. I was signing stuff in his store.”

What's the greatest amplifier?

“I know who's got the greatest name – Fender. I've got one sitting right there [points to an old Concert]. I've got another one back there, man, a Bedrock – boy, that thing is powerful! Whoo. It's not famous, but oh, it's powerful. But Fender is a brand name, and it's the name that sells, and it's what people go for.”

How do you set the amp controls?

“Different songs, different settings. I don't like it real sharp. I like it kind of medium. Not too much bass, not too much sharp.”

Do you like reverb?

“Not really. On some of my new stuff I did. About two weeks ago, I put reverb on a couple of my really funky tunes, like 'Sugar Mama.'”

Carlos Santana says a man's tone is his face.

“He knows.”

Albert Collins' tone, for instance, is spiky and sharp...

“It is. Oh, it's a thousand miles apart from mine. It's good, but it's his thing. You're talking a different world.”

Do you like B.B.'s tone?

“Whoo, Yeah! Are you kidding? Oh, yeah. My old buddy. And Albert King is funky! He puts that pipe in his mouth and rears his head back. He's a good man, and he's going to do things his way or no way! [Laughs] He's working on his own bus right now.”

You've used some of the same backup musicians for many years now.

“Oh yeah. My guitar player Rich is nice, nice. He's a good guy! Boy, that guy loves me and I love him. I'm the one that brought him to California. He'd been in Chicago all his life. 

“I've known him about 12 years. I got the guy a ticket, brought him out – he's been with me ever since. I talk to him every day. He's a heck of a nice guy and a good guitar player. Jim Gayette – oh he is funky! He's a funky bass player, and funny too. He keeps the band laughing all night.”

When you were starting out, would you play for a long time at night?

“Before I became famous? When I was a kid? If my parents would let me I would.”

You hear about guys playing in Delta juke joints from nightfall until morning...

“No, I didn't do that, no. I would've, but I didn't [Laughs].”

What was Hastings Street like when you first came to Detroit?

“That was the best street in town. Everything you wanted was right there. Everything you didn't want was right there. It ain't no more now. It's a freeway now – Chrysler Freeway. But that was a good street, a street known all over the world. But I didn't just play on Hastings – I'd play any club on Russell, Chene, Jefferson... In those days, I was so into my music, but I had to work to survive. I was a janitor – I pushed a broom.”

What do you remember of your sessions at United Sound Studio in Detroit?

“On West Grand Boulevard and Second? Still there. I would always use my amp, just plug into my old funky amps – an Ampeg or a Silvertone.”

Was your first electric guitar the Les Paul you're seen with in some of the early pictures?

“It was. Really good one. Before that I had some round-hole pickups [for amplifying an acoustic guitar]. No, T-Bone Walker gave me my first electric guitar. Then I thought that was the best I ever seen. It was an Epiphone archtop.”

Did you use an acoustic for early sides like “Mad Man Blues”?

“Yeah, that's acoustic. I had an old Stella with a pickup called DeArmond, and it fit across the soundhole. You slide it in. I thought at that time it was a great, great sound.”

Was Newport '63 your first big concert?

“Never been so scared! My first big concert, yeah. Couldn't get my body to stop shaking!”

You appeared with Muddy Waters there.

“Yeah. I was good friends with Muddy.”

Do you have any favorite memories of him?

“Yeah, I do. I've got so many I couldn't tell 'em all. He'd come to Detroit, he used to stay at my house. I had a big house in Detroit. Matter of fact, I own property there now. He never would stay in a hotel. Him and Jenny, his wife, would stay at my house. Little Walter would be with him. He was a sideman then, one of the greatest harmonica players ever lived. 

“We would go on tour together sometimes, me and him and Little Walter, Jimmy Rogers. Remember Jimmy Rogers? He had this old Oldsmobile, brand-new. And Little Walter was crazy, and he used to drive. Speeding in it. And he'd be laughing because I'd be nervous. Just a lot of good memories, things I cannot ever forget. Muddy was a really good man. And he was just beginning to come into it, like I am now. Just beginning to climb up the ladder really high.”

His last four albums were terrific.

“They were. He was beginning to climb up to the top, and it's a hard climb. But, you know, you get there somehow. Some get there and some don't. I'm one of the few giants at the top of the ladder. In my traveling and living in God's world, I love people. My heart go out for people. I'm just a softy. I just give my heart to people, and how can I say no to the people that I know I should? I don't like hurting people.

“We all like money, don't get me wrong, but it's not the greatest thing in the world, though we have to have it. Friendship, love, peace of mind, and health are the greatest things in the world. You have to have money to survive, but – and a lot of us do – we can't let money get in the way of friendship and love and the people that put you where you are. People put me where I'm at today. If it weren't for those people, John Lee wouldn't be sitting on top of the ladder – I'd be sitting down below.

“And who put me there? The working people – people go out and work five or six days a week, and come out to see me and buy my albums, and stuff like that. Young kids. Old people. They're the people that got me there. Some stars seem to forget the people that blazed the path for them, the people that put them there. If there wasn't any people, you wouldn't be there. 

“I love to go into little clubs, funky bars, and get up there singing. I walk into a lot of little clubs, and they're surprised to see me in there. They say, 'What're you doing in here?' And I say, 'I'm just like you. I'm here to have some fun and get down with you.' I don't think about the fact that I'm a big star, or that I have money. I don't think about that. I'm out there at a place where I like to get down and have a beer with you. I don't look at myself as a big star. I really don't.”

Who were some of the other bluesmen that you enjoyed playing with?

“There are so many of them. You sure got me on the spot there. But really I enjoyed playing with Muddy when we did the Whiskey A Go-Go – me, Otis Spann, and Muddy Waters. Oh, so many it's hard to say.”

What's your opinion of Otis Spann?

“One of the greatest blues piano players ever. And a good man too. Loyal, friendly, no ego, no nothing. Just a perfect gentleman.”

Who would you consider the great slide players?

“Well, I would say Ry Cooder. He's one of the greatest. I had a cousin, he's gone now, but he was pretty great – Earl Hooker. He was a monster. Nobody could beat him. I got some of his stuff here now, man. We used to work together a lot over the years. Boy, he used to make a wah-wah talk and slide along with it. I've got that album here now, with Fred Below on drums. It's real funky.”

Have you ever played slide guitar?

“I have messed around with it. I could play slide, but I wouldn't be very good. I used to play a little harmonica and drums.”

Did you ever see Elmore James?

“Once, in Chicago. I went to his hotel where we sat and talked. He was a nice man. A lot of people copied him too, a lot of people.

Who is your favorite younger blues singer?

“Out of the younger generation of the blues singers, who was my pride and joy? Stevie Ray. I know that kid – I used to go around Austin, Texas, before anybody knew about Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan. Every time I go there, he sits in and plays. 

“We used to talk. He used to come to the dressing room, come to my hotel room. To me, he was one of the greatest young blues singers. He could do anybody – Albert King, Jimi Hendrix, George Benson – anybody's thing. I'd sit down and watch him do that. He had his own style – he did, definitely – but he could play anything else anybody could play. He'd say, 'I'm gonna play you now,' and he play me. And if he can play me, he can play anybody!”

Who's come closest to playing like you?

“Let's see. Eddie Taylor is real close. He can do it. Buddy Guy can get pretty close. He can play 'Boogie Chillen'" real good. He plays it on every show. Buddy Guy is playing so well, and I'm so happy for him. He getting a lot of recognition that he should have had a long time ago, like us all of us should have gotten. He's such a beautiful person.”

Do you admire John Hammond's playing?

“Who doesn't? We've been together a lot over the years too. Now, he can play like me! [Laughs] Yeah, he can. He'll say, 'I'm gonna play like you now, just like you,' and then he plays it and starts laughing. I say, 'If someone was outside and walking up, they'd think it's me in here playing.' 

“He's really a nice gentleman, an easygoing person too. He loves people. He talks to me about it a lot. We sit down together [imitates John Hammond's voice]: 'John, you know, you love people. We let them get away with things we shouldn't, but we don't want to hurt them.' That's the way he talks. I said, 'They think John Lee don't know any better, but I do.' You help people, you take them in. It all come back to you.”

Perhaps the measure of a truly great man is how he treats people day in and day out.

“Right! The little things in life, the love. I always believe in 'it comes back to you if you do something good.' I was taught that, and I think it does. You do good deeds, somewhere in life it's going to come back. You can only do wrong so long before you get it in some kind of way. That's my belief. 

“So, I'm happy with my life. I had a good life, and I had a rough life – I've had both. I don't try to live in the past. I can't bring back those little things. I can't change the rough things that come through, so I look for the future. You can't live in the past – a lot of people try to live in a memory. I live for today and for people today.”

This interview originally appeared in the June 2010 issue of Guitar Player.

There’s a nomadic spirit in Jeff Beck’s personality that causes his muse, and often his physical being, to push on to new frontiers even when the place he’s at would seem to be the perfect altar for him to preach the gospel of godly guitar.

From his Yardbirds era and onward, Beck has had the habit of changing direction or even completely disappearing just when the planets seemed perfectly aligned in his favor. But genius rarely follows a road map, and Beck’s willingness to risk short-term gain in order to make lasting musical statements says a lot about his integrity and why he’s still out there creating vital and exciting music while many of his peers from the British Invasion generation haven’t been able to top what they did in the ’60s and ’70s.

Most recently, and after a fairly long hiatus following the release of his last album (simply titled Jeff), the Guv’nor surfaced like a submarine-fired missile to wow the crowd at the 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival. And it wasn’t just his awesome playing that created the huge buzz – a good deal of the clamor was due to Beck’s sly enlisting of a very talented bassist named Tal Wilkenfeld to play alongside veteran rock drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and keyboardist Jason Rebello. 

The performances that followed – including the 25th Anniversary Concert of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at New York’s Madison Square Garden – were heralded as Beck’s best ever. In 2009, Beck was inducted for a second time into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and he released the platinum-selling Live at Ronnie Scott's DVD, which also garnered him a Grammy nomination for his instrumental rendition of the Beatles tune “A Day in the Life.“

Of course, after all this success, what else could Jeff Beck to do for an encore other than completely rearrange the furniture by launching a new album titled Emotion & Commotion, which finds him fronting a 64-piece orchestra on several tunes, including “Over the Rainbow,“ Puccini’s aria “Nessun Dorma,“ and an instrumental redux of Jeff Buckley’s performance of “Corpus Christi.“ 

Beck was clearly savoring the surprise factor when he said, “I think this album will shock people when they hear it. It’s not what they expect of me.“ 

During my interview with him at the Sunset Marquis hotel in Hollywood, Beck described the new album this way: “It’s Spector-esque, if you’ll pardon the expression. It leans more towards a pop-rock sort of album than would have been the case if we’d done a classical album, which would have had to be bowtie- and put-on-me-tux proper. But it’s not like a drum and bass record that people can talk over and drink over. 

“In a lot of clubs, there’s not one person listening to you, it’s just one big background noise. I wanted at least an album that could be listened to and be really plugged into. Maybe after a long day, you’ll go sit there and listen to it. It’s got just enough tweak to get you going, but it’ll lull you as well.“ 

Produced by Trevor Horn and Steve Lipson, and recorded last year at Sarm Studios in London, Emotion & Commotion showcases some of Beck’s most beautiful playing ever – his soaring tones and fluid vibrato making even such a mournful orchestral tune as “Elegy for Dunkirk“ (from the film Atonement) something to behold. Like a great opera singer, Beck delivers every note with such intense feeling that you may not even care that there isn’t an abundance of ripping lead work here.

Asked whether he purposely reduced the notes-to-bar ratio in order to reveal some deeper elements in his playing, Beck answered, “Absolutely. I wanted the beauty to be there without the embellishment. I didn’t want any showing off. In fact, I just found it so foreign to try to jump when it wasn’t necessary to jump. 

“The songs we’re talking about didn’t require any shredding, though they’ll probably end up that way if it becomes a regular format with the orchestra. When we were making the record, I just kept saying to myself, ‘don’t get too cheeky.’“

Still, Emotion & Commotion doesn’t entirely ignore the needs of those who simply crave a dose of Beck’s fiery guitar playing, which comes to the fore on the songs “Hammerhead,“ “There’s No Other Me“ (featuring the Colaiuta/Wilkenfeld rhythm section), and “I Put a Spell on You“ (sung by Joss Stone), where Beck knocks off a killer blues solo backed by Clive Deamer on drums and Pino Palladino on bass.

At the end of the day, Emotion & Commotion stands as an honest and completely uncontrived statement from one of the most singularly unique guitarists on the planet. It speaks to the inner workings of someone who, despite having some serious misgivings about the process of making records (more on this later), obviously loves creating the aural equivalent of fine art and is unencumbered by the need to satisfy anyone but himself and his loyal fans. 

So as surprising as Emotion & Commotion is on a certain level, it hardly seems all that unusual for Beck, who has a history of turning loose elements into sonic marvels. As he himself put it: “Making this album gave me a similar feeling with somebody else doing the orchestration and making stuff happen the way George Martin did on Blow by Blow. When we started that album we had very little material as well. After the event, I started to realize how close it was.“

What are the benefits and downsides of going into the studio without having the music fully prepared?

“The benefit is that you are thrust in. In some ways it’s better to not be too prepared. The biggest pitfall there is that you are going to sound over-rehearsed and too contrived. It’s a weird process to try and remember the chain of events that led up to how we did this, but my manager is very forceful, and he has a way of persuading me to go in unprepared. 'Oh, it’ll be great,' he goes. And the first two weeks was miserable. Not that the other players weren’t good, but they were unsuited to the sort of thing I was looking for. 

“It wasn’t until I came away that I realized I’d lost two really good players who just weren’t on the same wavelength with me. But you live and learn. It was folly to go in with a bassist and drummer that I’d never heard of. It was weird for me that Tal and Vinnie weren’t there – we should have gone in with a band situation. Of course, there was the stuff with just me and the orchestra, which didn’t require any bass or drums at all.“

Why didn’t you want to use the bassist and drummer you’d been playing with for the last two years?

“Well, to get them over to England for three or four tracks just didn’t make sense. So we ended up doing it without them. But then we had to fly Tal over to do the bass part. And to repair some of the drum parts that were not that great, we actually sent the producer over to the States to record Vinnie. So it kind of ended up costing more in the long run, but at least they’re on the album, and they did a great job on the tracks.“

How does the high expectation that people have of you affect your creativity?

“I’m more than overwhelmed by it, but that pressure is not the most desirable feeling. Even though it’s all very complimentary, I go in the studio with this feeling that I’ve got to not let these people down. And then, down comes the big concrete boom on the head. And if it’s a bad day or a non-productive day, I start thinking, 'I can’t do this.' 

“The secret, of course, is not to worry about it and just go in and make the nicest sounds you can make. And if those sounds move people, then let it go. But I don’t want to think about how to impress the world. I’ve done enough of that, and I think reaching people is the magic thing now.“

What have you been listening to for inspiration?

“Lately, I’ve just been listening to opera singers and other great singers. Not so much blues, because they’re all about embellishment, and it’s all in the throat – but someone like Pavarotti, who has just the most passionate and full sounding voice. In fact, we were going to put Puccini’s 'O Mio Babbino Caro' [from the opera Gianni Schicchi] on the album – it’s just a fantastic song. But that’s too classical, and I wanted to save it for a classic album that will hopefully be done with the London Philharmonic.“

What was the reason for doing an album now that features orchestral pieces but isn’t full-blown classical?

“I had always wanted to see what it would sound like playing with a really classy string section. I’d previously made an attempt at doing a classical album. I wrote a list of about twelve tracks from composers that I loved – from Puccini to Ravel to Mahler – and they were beautiful songs that lent themselves to single-note melody. And then I did Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 with the New York Philharmonic. The result was quite stunning really, so I took it along to EMI Classics and they fell in love with it. 

“They asked, 'Where’s the rest of it?' And I told them, 'This is it – this is the bait we’re throwing out.' So they said they’d be interested if I could do 11 more tracks like that. They gave me half a dozen fabulous CDs to listen to, and that’s as far as it ever went. But I did love the sound and the emotion of surrounding my guitar with all that instrumentation.“

How do you interpret a classical piece in order to make it more guitar-centric?

“I learn the melody completely off path and I play it like a blues, or as bluesy as I can. I use artistic license up to a point, but I can’t stand listening to people do covers of great songs who think they can write better than the original composer. 

“If the melody was worth having in the first place, then leave it alone. If you play it with all the feeling but without any embellishments, then sometimes you can slip around a little bit. But with a great piece you just don’t. If the melody was crafted well enough to go with the chords, then the job’s done.“

What’s the biggest challenge of arranging a song to play with an orchestra?

“First of all, can I pull it off live? You need to make sure the song can be played live, otherwise you’re going to get yourself into big ditch and never get out of it – especially if you’ve got Olympic leaps all over the place and stuff like that. It’s got to be played in the way the blues would be played. It has to feel that natural.“

Your tones on this album are beautiful. What amps did you use?

“I’ve found that my best friend is the straight-ahead amplifier with very little effect pedal. If distortion is needed, I’ll use a much smaller amplifier and overload that rather than use a pedal to alter the circuitry. When you go through a pedal you’re going through some guy’s circuit before it gets to the amp. I want the amplifier to get the most honest and direct signal from the pickup. That way, you get the tonal advantage of the guitar and the fingers. 

“I’ve adhered to that, and I think you can hear it on the album without any B.S., except for a couple places where I used a ring modulator – like for two bars on the Joss Stone track 'There’s No Other Me.' You know, Jimi Hendrix didn’t use too much of that either. He used one effects pedal and a Crybaby wah-wah, and he just cranked the hell out of his amplifiers.“

Why did you switch to Marshall plexi reissues, which have less gain than the JCM2000s you had been using?

“I was looking for purity of tone so it wouldn’t jar with the orchestra. I couldn’t hear a shred tone like Steve Vai gets, or even Brian May or Billy Gibbons, who have these very fat, distorted guitar tones. I just couldn’t really see that working, so I tried to get the sound of my guitar as natural and organic as it could be. Like on 'Over the Rainbow' or 'Elegy for Dunkirk,' those are just right honest performances with just me and the orchestra.“

You still get a lot of sustain on those tracks, so is that the Marshall turned way up?

“No, it was a Fender Champ. I joked once about making an entire album with a Champ, and I just about did that this time. In a couple of places there’s a 50-watt Marshall with a 4x12 speaker cabinet, and I think that’s on 'Lilac Wine' and 'Corpus Christi.' Those songs were done in the studio live with a mic placed several feet away. But when we got into the overdubs I just ended up with a Champ. Mine is a 1950s model with that brown rag across the front – the tweed, you know? It sounds amazing really, and you don’t need volume. 

“Some people can’t do without lots of volume to get their tone, but I think if you can’t get it without four million watts, something’s wrong. Because a mic doesn’t read volume, it reads tone. You’ve got all the level in the world at your disposal in the console, and the remixing and the rest of it to compensate for lack of power. But the tone is the thing, and that’s something that came from Scotty Moore, who once told me, 'Get some better tone and you’re there – volume you don’t need.'“

Can the small-amp/less-volume concept work for live playing?

“By using the P.A. to act in the way it was designed – which is play at low level and use all the distortion and whatever else you need, but make sure you don’t come out louder than the side-fill monitors or the front wedges – you can blow the house down, and I’ve done it. 

“I’ve done a whole tour with a Fender Twin when Stevie Ray Vaughan was going through about four billion watts with a rig that looked like an amp shop. He asked me, 'What the hell are you using? Are your amps under the stage?' I said, 'Nope, that’s it right there.’ [Laughs.] But we spent quite a lot of time dialing in the sound and getting rid of the squeaks and squeals. We’d raise the level and then tweak it a little bit, and then we’d raise it a little more. You can’t believe what you can get out of a little tenor 20-watt amp. 

“I think Billy Gibbons is on that route as well, as he plays though some blown-up little thing now. You have to work in symphony with the amp for what sounds best, and it depends on what you’re playing. If it’s power chords, then you’d probably use a slightly bigger amp, otherwise it’ll shred down into a narrow bandwidth. Most of the time, though, you can get away with a couple of Champs – one clean, one distorted – and use the clean one to get more definition.“

What has led you to being more concerned about volume?

“The louder the stuff is on stage, probably the worse it’s going to end up sounding. Your hearing goes, your pitch goes, and you can’t really hear any depth of field. If you have to question whether it’s too loud, then it is too loud. The power has to be there, but without the level. But if you’re going to be loud, get the speakers away from you. Lately, I’ve been one putting one 4x12 facing backwards, just so that the P.A. guy doesn’t go around the bend with too much volume. 

“I’ve also seen Pete Townshend with a stack of Fenders facing each other like a sandwich, so the audience only gets the back of it. Sounded great to me, but I haven’t gone that far. On a big stage, I might put four Marshalls up there, like two big stacks, and have them right at the back just to see what they sound like wide open. But they’d have to be damn deep in the stage so there’s not too much spillover. I’ll try that on this tour, but I’ve got a feeling that the little Champ will win out because the orchestra and the Champ are going to sound in proportion. 

“I played with this powerful band that had 18 pieces, and I thought I’d need a Marshall for it, but I didn’t; I needed a Pignose. Even though the trumpets and the horns were blasting away, the difference in character of the guitar with that concentrated trebly sound just cut right through.“

Did you use anything other than a Strat on this album?

“I went through about five different guitars, and they all got put back on the rack. We did one song with a Gretsch and some with Guild even, but they just didn’t sound like me. I picked the Strat back up and, boom, there I am again. So why go against it?“

Since you play with your fingers, do you use heavier gauge strings?

“My guitar is strung pretty lightly now because I haven’t played live for a while. But, by mid-tour, I’ll go to a .012 on the first and a .052 on the bass. It’s self-torture, but you’ve got have that. The great Jimi Hendrix picked up my guitar once and he said, 'What are these rubber bands doing here? You’ll never get tone out of that.' I was really disappointed because I thought I had found what I was comfortable with. But he was right, there was no guts in there. And there was no effort. 

“The half of playing blues is you have to suffer the pain of the wire digging into your fingers. And the more you play, the harder your fingers get and the fatter your strings can get.“

What were you playing when Hendrix said that to you?

“A Les Paul, which is kind of a sissy guitar compared to a Strat anyway. The Les Paul is heavier, but because of that bulk you can do bends on it more easily. Also, the Les Paul’s lack of a vibrato arm means you’re not wrestling against the spring-loaded bridge all the time. 

“The Strat is the ultimate because it’s like having a miniature pedal steel within it. Once you get familiar with where the bends are and where they meld down into a fourth or whatever, you can do all kinds of pedal-steel-like things, which I think are cool. Some of the things that sound the most difficult are the easiest for me.“

Despite having your Strat set up with a floating vibrato, you don’t ever seem to touch the tuners, let alone switch guitars during a show. How do you stay in tune?

“Sometimes it’ll goes out if it’s a wild gig like Crossroads where there’s like 40,000 people and I go shredding all over the stage. But unless those situations happen, the guitar stays pretty much in tune. The strings are pre-stretched to start, and they’re stretched to almost the breaking point before I go on. Then they’re retuned and retuned. 

“So far, I’ve been lucky. I’ve broken a few, but it’s more likely a flaw in the string somewhere around the bridge area that causes it to break rather than me playing it. But I do drive them pretty hard. 

“Also, the roller nut that I designed seems to work pretty well – especially for the top three strings, which stay in tune really well. It has a double roller system, so the strings go over two rollers, and for some reason they don’t hitch up. Because you get a lot of lateral movement when you depress the tremolo arm – the string actually moves across the nut – and sometimes it doesn’t come all the way back, and then you’re in trouble.“

The way you use the vibrato on “Over the Rainbow” it sounds like you were actually trying to mimic the warble in Judy Garland’s voice.

“That’s what I tried to do. It started out as a bit of tongue-in-cheek thing, but when I got halfway through, the whole place was soaked in tears. Vinnie is a tough guy, but even he was going, 'Jeff, stop. I can’t bear it!'“

The melody you came up with for “Elegy for Dunkirk” is even more of a tearjerker.

“That’s probably the deepest thing I’ve ever done. I picked that melody out from the original score. I haven’t seen the film Atonement, but I’m pretty sure I know what I’m going to see, as it’s the end of the Dunkirk landing. 

“When I heard it, I thought first of all that it was an ensemble piece for the violins and cellos. But I picked out the melody and made it a really nice piece. I altered it by putting my guitar voices in a different spot, though. I played it up an octave to get away from the down-in-the-dumps kind of thing. It’s still a bit dirgy, though – a pretty sad thing.“

Were there any concerns about putting “Corpus Christi” as the first song on the album?

“Because you’re expecting shred and it doesn’t happen? That one and 'Lilac Wine' sort of set the mood for the album. When I heard Jeff Buckley’s versions of those songs, I was touched because they’re so gorgeous. 'Corpus Christi' is a traditional tune from the sixteenth century, and my dear friend and wife said to me, 'That melody is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. Please do it.'“

Did you originally intend “Hammerhead” to be a tribute to Jan Hammer?

“That’s an interesting story. About a year ago I was sitting around a campfire with Dave Gilmour and I said to him, 'If we do the Royal Albert Hall, why don’t you come and play?' Well, he kept me to it, and so at the gig I suggested we do the song 'Jerusalem,' which is very English-sounding. He said, 'Why don’t we do ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’? – it’ll bring the house down.' I told him, 'Not on your life.' So he goes, 'What if I sang it?' So I said to Jason [Rebello], 'Look, we’re going to do ‘Silver Lining,’ but I don’t want to do that stomping, ching-ching-ching rhythm thing.' So he said, 'Right, leave it to me.' 

“He knows how much I love Jan Hammer – and Jason’s a huge fan too – so he came up with a very Hammer-esque sort of riff for it. And that’s the riff we played at the Royal Albert Hall concert, which made it sound much more modern. We salvaged the riff from that song and then Jason rewrote the melody to get away from 'Hi Ho Silver Lining.' The whole song was very inspired by Jan, and that’s why I called it 'Hammerhead.'“

What kind of wah did you use on the intro to that song?

“It’s the Snarling Dogs Super Bawl, which is not really an annoying wah-wah. It just opens an envelope in a very subtle way, and the sweep is not going to take your head off in full treble like a Crybaby will. I use the wah to take the top off the guitar – most of the top anyway – so you’ve got a voice appearing. You see, I’m trying to be a singer.“

On “Never Alone,” are those actual voices that you hear in the backing tracks?

“I wanted to do some close harmonies on that song. One of my favorite close-harmony groups is the Mystery Voices of Bulgaria, who I’ve loved for like 15 or 20 years. Their harmonies are just above all reach of understanding. So I said to Jason, 'Why don’t you throw some really good voice samples on a pad and let’s listen to how I sound with voices only.' And it was much more interesting than a cheesy string pad or a Fender Rhodes pad. 

“Soon as you get into these individual voices played with these complex chord shapes, your head starts going places, and that’s the result. The riff is powerful and you’ve got 30 strings playing the riff along with these amazing big chords. The voices just ring better than any other instrument, but, because of their lightness, you can put the levels up and they don’t rob too many frequencies.“

Was it your idea to run the ’50s standard “Lilac Wine” and the operatic aria “Nessun Dorma” together almost as a single piece?

“No, Steve Lipson did that. I can’t praise him enough. I mean he put up with me for three and a half months, and I think he wondered what the hell he had gotten involved with after a couple of weeks because I tend to loathe everything.“

Why do you think that is?

“I hate making that commitment and then going home and not feeling like I’d actually done anything. And the money clock’s going by and it’s like, 'Oh god.' This is all a load of crap anyway because everything is phony, the whole thing – you’ve got another chance at the solo. In the early days, the rockabilly acts used to learn the stuff and go in and count it off – 'one, two, three.' That’s what I like. I’ll never get that out of my blood.“

But you could make records that way if you wanted to, right?

“It’s a question of being forced or cajoled into it by the fact that recording techniques now are different. Everything is safe and you’ve got choices. They can pitch correct your voice and put your instrument through virtual this, that, and the other plug-ins. And it’s all there. What amp do you want? All right, bonk, and up it comes, and it’s a bitch of an old Marshall. There’s too much assistance and not enough hard-edged, 'C’mon, what have you got?' 

“There’s a microphone, you’ve got the amplifier, there’s the take, go and play. And that’s what I really like, and I miss that. That way you’re on your toes right away and you know that you’re going to succeed or fail. And if you don’t succeed you go back and try again. 

“What I’m describing is that Pro Tools draws you to a place that you don’t want to be and it makes you stay there because it actually gives you something that you shouldn’t have, which is a sort of flattery – the fact that you were sounding like crap a minute ago and now you don’t. So I don’t like that. And I tried to make this album sound like we could play it, and I’m damn sure we can play it. It’s always in the back of my mind: 'How are we going to do this?'“

I understand that “There’s No Other Me” had to be altered in the studio because you knew you couldn’t pull it off live?

“Yes. Jason wrote the two parts for that song and he wanted me to play the long sustaining notes that make the basis of the melody, and, in-between those lines, I was supposed to shred. The problem was that we couldn’t really perform it because of the overlap – I’d have to stop playing the long notes in order to play a solo. 

“So, Joss Stone was around and she’s fantastic, so I said, 'Look, just come in, you can’t lose – we’ve got a track that’s smoking, and it’s wide open for you.' So she sat there and about an hour later she’d written these lyrics. And what a performance! 

“I was sitting down watching her because I didn’t want to get in the way, and she had a backless dress on. And I’m telling you, that was the most erotic, beautiful sight I’ve ever seen. The muscles she was using, and everything about her breathing – it was just an amazing sight. I wish I had filmed it. I can’t wait to play it now, which means we’re going to have to carry her on the road.“

Recently released by Freestyle Digital Media, Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan: Brothers in Blues is the first authorized documentary on the life and times of the Vaughan Brothers, made with the full co-operation of Jimmie.

It’s a fascinating and informative film that includes interviews with the Vaughan brothers, as well as with contemporaries from the early days and household names like Eric Clapton and Billy Gibbons.

Using clips from Jimmie’s archives, the movie paints the fullest picture yet of how the two brothers started out and went on to transform the face of blues in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

Jimmie’s discussion of the events around Stevie’s tragic accident are particularly moving, as he recounts the tension between them prior to Stevie taking his fateful flight.

Essential viewing for any fan of these two titans of Texas blues, Brothers in Blues is a timely reminder of the magic of Stevie and Jimmie, and the unique connection that the two brothers had, both with each other and with the essence of the blues.

A press release says Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan: Brothers in Blues is now available on AppleTV, iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Sling and YouTube to rent or purchase. 

DVD copies of the film may be ordered from Amazon and Walmart.com.

After 10 years of grueling one-night stands, forging a reputation as a one-of-a-kind new breed of electric bluesman, Stevie Ray Vaughan was poised to make 1983 his watershed year. Stevie’s Stratocaster sprayed blistering licks across David Bowie’s Let’s Dance, released that same year, punctuating the songs with a dose of Texas grit and primo blues flavorings and taking Bowie’s songs to a whole new level.

It was only half of the story, though, as shortly after the release of Let’s Dance, he delivered his startling, game-changing debut album, Texas Flood.

While Let’s Dance was a fantastic showcase for Stevie to sprinkle some of his Texas hot-sauce stylings, Texas Flood was the full-blown, no-holds-barred, real deal – arguably the greatest blues-rock album made since Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Winter were in their prime. Sure, there were plenty of great discs that might loosely fit the pigeonhole of blues rock, but their emphasis was always on the rock side of the tracks. With Stevie, blues was king.

At a time when there wasn’t too much to excite anyone looking for a hefty dose of full-blooded, ass-kicking, guitar-focused blues, Stevie brought not only outstanding guitar pyrotechnics but a sense of style and flamboyance that made his every performance an event.

Prior to his breakthrough, it had been his big brother, Jimmie, who, with his band, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, had managed to revitalize a tired genre that was mired in predictability and clichéd, extended wig-outs. The T-Birds returned the blues to the juke-joint concept of short, sharp songs that got to the point and moved one’s soul via their feet.

Stevie opted for a different route to express his unique mojo, channeling the wild excesses of Hendrix, mixed with a big chunk of Albert King. While there have always been any number of great guitarists who can fire off Hendrix-inspired fusillades of killer licks, or cop Albert’s trademark moves, no player combined the essential elements of what made those two guitarists so important while retaining a strong sense of their own identity. The fact that Stevie was held in the same high reverence as his iconic influences is testament to the magic that he wielded whenever he broke out his succession of road-worn, battered old Strats.

While 1983 was the year of his big breakthrough, the events of the previous year set the stage for what was to come. The catalyst for everything that came to fruition was Stevie’s appearance at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival with his band, Double Trouble, featuring bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton. The trio played their usual blistering set, as can be heard on Live at Montreux 1982 & 1985, but what can also be heard is a section of the crowd who were booing Double Trouble’s ramped-up take on the blues.

If Stevie and his band were dismayed by the response, they put those thoughts behind them when they met Jackson Browne backstage. The folk-rocker was so impressed by what he had seen and heard that he offered the group free recording time in his California rehearsal studio, Down Town.

David Bowie was also in attendance, and what he saw stuck in his mind as he began recording his next album and needed someone who could really make an impact on his sound. “I figured that Montreux was the key to the whole thing, what with Jackson and Bowie,” Layton tells Guitar Player. “And I really had a strong sense that everything was about to change anyway after that.”

Stevie and the band made their way to Browne’s studio in November 1982, working through Thanksgiving to spend three days cutting the tracks that would, unbeknownst to them at the time, become their debut album. “We managed to get two songs down the first day and eight the second day of recording,” Shannon recalls. “We just set up like a live gig. We didn’t have isolation.”

Layton concurs. “We set up in a circle, just like we did onstage, put mics on everything and ran through the songs a couple of times,” he says. “Everything was a first or second take I believe.”

Stevie mostly played his “Number One” guitar on the sessions, an alder-bodied 1962 Fender Stratocaster he mistakenly referred to as a “’59” due to markings on the backs of the pickups. He also brought along Lenny, a brown, maple-neck Strat given to him by his wife, Lenora.

For amps, Stevie used two Fender Vibroverbs and Browne’s own 150-watt Dumbleland Special and 4x12 cab with Electro-Voice EV12L speakers.

While Browne’s gift was much appreciated, the band were unimpressed with the assistance they were provided. Down Town engineer Greg Ladanyi had kindly offered up his services for the ragged band of Texans over the holiday weekend, but he wasn’t interested in doing much more than capturing the group on tape. Stevie was unhappy with the sound he was hearing.

As it happened, Richard Mullen, a musician and friend who had run sound for them in Austin, was in Los Angeles. Over the group’s dinner break, Mullen encouraged Stevie to speak up and demand the sound he wanted. Returning to the studio, they found Ladanyi was gone and another engineer in his place. Newly emboldened, Stevie told the man that Mullen would be taking over the session. Within an hour, things were sounding much better.

As Mullen recalled to Guitar World in 2004, he used two Shure SM57s on Stevie’s amps: one on a Fender Vibroverb and one on the 4x12. “Stevie played through two Vibroverbs, but I only miked one of the speakers in one of them,” Mullen said. “I positioned the mics about three or four inches off the cabinet at about a 45 degree angle to the cone. The only effect he used was an Ibanez Tube Screamer.”

The band only cut the backing tracks at this point – the vocals would be tracked at Riverside Sound in Austin – but as Layton recalls, the plan all along had been to record the equivalent of a demo. “We weren’t making the tapes to make an album,” he says. “It was just to record our songs. It just turned into an album later.”

Double Trouble played a few dates in L.A. to help pay for their room at the Oakland Garden Hotel while they were cutting the record. Layton recalls being woken at 3:30 in the morning by a phone call. “I remember thinking that it was pretty strange to be getting a call from David Bowie,” he says with a laugh. The British musician had not forgotten Stevie’s performance at Montreux months earlier. Now in the middle of making Let’s Dance, he decided Stevie’s guitar work was the missing ingredient and tracked him down.

“He wanted to speak to Stevie, so I had to go wake him up and tell him David Bowie’s on the phone,” Layton says. “They seemed to be talking for quite a while. When he came off the phone he told me that Bowie wanted him to play on his new album.”

As it happened, he had never really been a fan of Bowie’s music. “Stevie never listened to David Bowie,” Shannon says. “The songs on Texas Flood showed you what Stevie loved, you know?” Adds Layton, “He respected Bowie, but he definitely wasn’t a fan per se. He thought he was talented, and he’d obviously had a great career.”

Regardless, no one could deny it was a great opportunity for Stevie. “Management told Stevie he really had to do Bowie,” Shannon says. “They didn’t anticipate that there would be a conflict with Texas Flood, because at the time we hadn’t even secured a deal or anything. We didn’t even know that we were making an album!”

Of course, with the recordings for Texas Flood completed, there remained the task of deciding what to do with them. “We called our manager, Chesley Millikin, and suggested that he call John Hammond to see if there was something we could do,” Layton says. An active musician, talent scout and producer since the 1930s, Hammond was behind the careers of countless musicians, including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Bloomfield and George Benson. “Apparently, when Chesley told John that we had a whole record’s worth of music ready, he said he’d get us a record deal with Epic. The deal was on the table before Stevie even started recording with Bowie.”

With things looking good on the band front, in January 1983 Stevie traveled to the Power Station studio in New York to begin working on Let’s Dance. Hearing him for the first time, producer Nile Rodgers didn’t share Bowie’s enthusiasm for the guitarist, whose solos he felt leaned too heavily on Albert King.

He soon changed his mind after Stevie loosened up and began to draw from his own unique palette of rich blues flavorings. Rodgers later admitted that he’d misunderstood Stevie’s intention: Where a lesser player would have unloaded licks all over the track, Stevie laid back, embellishing with just what the song required. He may have been a masterful exponent of the extended blues solo, but Stevie knew when to play and when to let the song breathe. He cut all his solos in a couple of days over the completed backing tracks, listening to each song once before adding his contributions in no more than two or three takes – although the first take was usually the one selected.

Stevie’s playing and tone on Let’s Dance was impeccable. Using a Strat and a Fender Super Reverb, he brought a richness of sensitivity and atmospheric depth to the songs that was transformative. Although Rodgers changed his opinion of his playing, Stevie himself joked that he basically played his favorite Albert King licks, and told one interviewer that Albert had ribbed him for doing so. But there is no doubt that Stevie’s mojo was all his own.

When Bowie’s album was released in April 1983, the reviews were uniformly strong. Stevie’s playing was often cited as a particular highlight, with good reason. It’s hard to imagine that the album would have hit home with such resonance without his dynamically sensitive Strat stylings.

Although Texas Flood was set for release, Stevie was scheduled to play on Bowie’s extended world tour to support Let’s Dance. Reportedly, Bowie’s camp intimated that Double Trouble could open for Bowie on selected dates, but Shannon and Layton have slightly different memories and perspectives on this.

“David definitely told us that we could open for him from the outset,” Shannon says. Layton, however says, “Bowie was actually a little vague about the prospect of us opening.” Although he acknowledges that the singer and Double Trouble agreed it would be great to tour together when they met at Montreux, “my instincts were that he wanted Stevie to play on the record, and having Stevie on that record was his prime concern, not what Double Trouble would do.”

As rehearsals for the Let’s Dance tour got underway in Dallas that April, it was evident Stevie was bringing an entirely new dimension – a cool blues-nuanced vibe – to Bowie’s older songs, something revealed in recordings that have surfaced over the years.

But as Shannon recalls, Stevie was out of his element. “He didn’t seem that happy about the music that he was playing with Bowie in the rehearsals,” the bassist explains. “He was really unfamiliar with Bowie’s material, and it wasn’t in his heart musically. Stevie always lived by what was in his heart, first and foremost. I don’t think he listened to anything before the rehearsals started. He just picked it up as they went along, same way as when he did the recording session with Bowie.”

As the rehearsals drew to a close, the question of whether Double Trouble would come along was finally decided by Bowie’s camp. Not only would they not open for Bowie but Stevie was not even allowed to discuss the band’s upcoming debut album in interviews.

For Stevie, this was completely unthinkable. “That really pissed Stevie off, because he didn’t want to leave our band behind,” Shannon says. “There was never any indication why Bowie changed his mind that we knew of. I wonder if it was possible that he was using the notion of us opening as some kind of persuader to make sure Stevie would do the tour. I’m sure he never expected Stevie to pull out at the last minute – to give up all the big touring lifestyle, the top hotels and whatever to go back on the road in our milk truck.”

Whatever the case, that’s exactly what Stevie did. “I really respected Stevie for that,” Shannon says. “He was just so into what we were doing that he just couldn’t leave it.”

According to Layton, the crux of the problem was that Stevie was not able to discuss the matter with Bowie. “I think Stevie had a good relationship with Bowie when they first spoke and when they did the album together,” he says. “But I think it suddenly started to turn into something else on Bowie’s part when the tour came into the picture.

“When Stevie wasn’t able to get a hold of Bowie to address the issue directly, I think he knew that he had to be true to himself. That was one thing about Stevie: He was one hundred percent natural. He couldn’t fake things. Stevie just said, ‘You know what? I’m going to stay with my band.’

“Who knows what would have happened if he’d done the tour,” he continues. “These were the conversations Stevie had with us: how he could do the tour and take care of us; how we could even get paid as a band. I said I couldn’t really see how that was even practical. How could it ever work out, especially if the tour went on for a couple of years, or even longer?

“But at the same time, I didn’t want Stevie to think he had to make us his main concern. Stevie always said that the thing that he wanted in life, when it came to his music, was for us to all have our own band and to play what he loved, and I wondered how that could ever have figured in the idea of going on tour with Bowie. It troubled him that he could even do the tour on that basis, and it troubled me and Tommy, as we wondered how we could even have a band if we were on hold for two or three years.”

Carlos Alomar, Bowie’s guitarist and band leader at the time, has recounted in interviews that he and Stevie discussed the tour’s potential to help promote Double Trouble and Texas Flood. He remembers cautioning Stevie that it was Bowie’s show, and as a band they were all there to play their role in that show; the chance that the tour could make a significant impact on Stevie’s fortunes as a solo artist were probably slim.

Unwittingly, perhaps, Alomar helped firm up Stevie’s resolve to abandon the tour, regardless of its immediate benefits for his career. Although Alomar was unhappy that Stevie left so close to the time they went out on the road, his departure opened the door for Alomar’s long-standing musical partner Earl Slick, a frequent contributor to Bowie’s albums and live show, to come onboard as Stevie’s replacement.

Before Stevie pulled out of the Bowie tour, Epic had been unsure how to make the most of his appearance on it. The label had even debated whether to hold back Texas Flood. Despite this, a couple of New York City showcase events to promote the record were held in early May 1983, and it was clear to those present – including many big names in the industry – that Stevie’s charisma and raw, unbridled access to the deep core of his soul had the ability to transform the face of blues guitar.

He was the ultimate crossover artist, a bluesman who could hold his own with any legend on the rock or blues side of the musical spectrum. Moreover, he commanded the respect from his peers that can only be earned.

With the Bowie matter now moot, it was all systems go. Stevie and Double Trouble threw themselves into the full-on promotion of their blistering new album. Released on June 13, Texas Flood received some surprisingly mixed reviews. Certainly, the climate was much friendlier to the kind of synth-driven, dance-oriented music featured on Bowie’s Let’s Dance than it was to Stevie’s more traditional blues-rock. Yet, against all expectations, Texas Flood started to pick up serious airplay.

Once the record’s two singles, “Love Struck Baby” and “Pride and Joy,” received heavy rotation on MTV, the die was cast. With his lean build and signature bolero hat, Stevie even had the visuals to compete with the style-obsessed bands that were dominating MTV’s scheduling. Together, they helped Texas Flood rack up sales figures that even the most optimistic execs at Epic couldn’t have hoped for.

The record’s huge success came as a surprise to the band. “Well, I know we were all real pleased with it when it was finished,” Layton says. “But of course, when you make a record, you live with it for a long time before the public ever hears it, so it’s not like, ‘Wow, that sounds amazing,’ if you hear it on the radio or something. But it was real satisfying to see that people picked up on that special thing that we had as a band, and Stevie’s genius. It happened so quickly for us though. When it was released and started selling right away, it was like, ‘Boom! Shit’s really happening for us now!’”

Forty years on, Layton still looks with pride upon the group’s achievement with Texas Flood. “The record is what it is,” he says. “I think everyone, to some degree, looks back at things they’ve done with a slightly critical ear, but I think it’s a real good picture of who we were at that time. It’s always too late to do what you could’ve done, and things are always what they are. From our way of living, it was an all-or-nothing kind of thing; our life was about the music and the band. It wasn’t like we had a big strategy, you know? We were a band, we played shows, made a recording and hoped to put a record out and see how things went. Everything that took off was almost a wonderful interruption of the basic way that we saw things going.”

Shannon echoes those sentiments. “We were real happy with it. We all thought it sounded like a great picture of what we sounded like live – it wasn’t a big production. Stevie was real happy with how it turned out. We didn’t really have any expectations that it would be successful – we were just doing our record, y’know? We loved what we were doing, and Stevie loved playing with us so much that we were all real happy with how it turned out. Stevie was real excited when the record came out, but like me and Chris, he had no idea it would become the big success that it did.”

Stevie and Double Trouble’s career trajectory was vertical, with a rocket. He became the hippest name to drop among a rapidly expanding cadre of established legends, with the likes of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Buddy Guy singing his praises. With the opportunities came the temptations that high-profile success brings, and Stevie developed some serious addiction problems that threatened to derail his career for a couple of years before he finally managed to put his dependency problems behind him.

Whenever an artist is taken before their time, the temptation to wonder what they might have gone on to achieve is irresistible. The fact that the last two albums Stevie worked on, Double Trouble’s In Step and Family Style – recorded with his brother, Jimmie – featured some of his finest playing certainly boded well for his future.

Once upon a time you needed the detective skills of Sherlock Holmes and some seriously deep pockets to track down live recordings and scratchy videos of Stevie and his band plying their wares around the world in 1983. Now all you need is YouTube and the ability to type “Stevie Ray Vaughan 1983” into the search to be rewarded with hours of astounding footage that will enthrall and amaze you.

Unsurprisingly, the surviving members of Double Trouble never expected to be discussing their music 40 years hence when they laid the tracks down. “I don’t even know what to think about that,” Layton says. “I definitely couldn’t have imagined we’d be here this far down the line discussing it.”

There are always the inevitable ’what if?’ thoughts when an artist is taken way too soon. “I’ve probably thought about everything a hundred different ways, a hundred different times,” Layton says. “But I stopped going down that path, because it didn’t really serve any real purpose, you know?”

Shannon believes that, had Stevie lived, their music would have continued to evolve. “I think Stevie wanted to get some horns in the band and we were gonna change the style a little with a horn section in there,” he says.

No doubt, Stevie would have been bemused to learn in 1983 that his music would be pored over and revered by blues fans and scholars alike for decades to come. It likely would have startled him to think future guitar greats would cite him as a primary influence, or to hear that he would be placed on equal standing in music history with the players he himself idolized.

Remarkably, it all began with an album recorded on gifted studio time. But the fact that it had any impact at all is down to the phenomenal talent that was Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Order Texas Flood here.

“When it comes to marriage or relationships, I’m a one-person person,” says Carlos Santana, who married his drummer, Cindy Blackman, after proposing to her onstage at a gig in Illinois. “But when it comes to guitars,” he adds, “I’m definitely not a one-guitar person.”

However, Carlos has been pretty brand-loyal over the course of his almost 50-year career. He was a staunch Gibson man in the years following his eponymous band’s debut at Woodstock. The SG he played at that historic 1969 festival didn’t last very long, but one magical Les Paul served him through Santana’s classic golden period, from 1970 to 1972, when he made Abraxas, Santana III and Caravanserai.

Carlos switched to Yamahas in the mid Seventies, designing his own model in collaboration with the Japanese guitar-making giant. But ever since the early Eighties, he has been one of the foremost advocates of Paul Reed Smith guitars.

He rode a PRS to fame on his phenomenal 1999 comeback album, Supernatural, and on many other outstanding recordings. Smith himself will tell you that Santana can be demanding when it comes to guitars. Much like the renowned guitar maker, Carlos has a great ear and can assess a guitar’s tonal virtues after playing just a few notes or chords on it.

“As soon as I hear it, I can tell if it’s gonna be a lamp or something that can go onstage,” he says, and laughs. “You can tell when a guitar sounds all nasal and weird. All you can do with it is wire it up for a light bulb and put a lampshade on it. That’s all it’s good for. It may look nice, but if it doesn’t have the tone I want, I’m not interested.

“Some people might add a lot of pedals to fix the tone, but that’s not for me. It’s gotta be straight from my fingers to the amplifier. If it don’t sound good like that, you’re not gonna fix it with a mixing board or computers.”

Still, Santana isn’t averse to picking up the occasional Strat or other guitar, as long as the tone is there. Pulling out some of his finest instruments, he just can’t resist plugging a few into an amp and letting rip. 

1968 Gibson Les Paul Custom

This instrument, a refinished maple-top Les Paul, is pretty much the holy grail of Santana guitars. Carlos purchased it at Prune Music in San Francisco in 1970, shortly after his group’s big breakthrough. It was a replacement for the red Gibson SG he played at Woodstock.

“That SG wouldn’t stay in tune, so I destroyed it,” he says. “At the time, if I wanted a new guitar, I had to ask the band, ’cause we were all paying for it. The band didn’t want to get me a new guitar, so I destroyed the SG. Then I had to get a new one. This guitar was my main workhorse for at least seven albums. It’s got the tone, the feel. You grab it and it’s ready to go.”

This is the guitar that generated the fiery leads on “Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen,” “Oye Como Va,” and, indeed, just about everything else on the classic Abraxas album from 1970, as well as the inspired discs that followed in its wake.

PRS Santana Model Prototype

Master guitar builder Paul Reed Smith began showing Santana his guitars in 1976, just as Smith was launching his business. The instrument that hooked Santana was the legendary Paul Reed Smith Golden Eagle, the first maple-top guitar Smith ever built, owned by Heart’s Howard Leese.

Carlos borrowed the guitar to play the leads on his 1981 Zebop! album and fell in love with the instrument.

“It had a very rich, low, masculine tone,” he recalls. It was like, ‘Ooh, I’ve been playing a soprano, and this is a tenor.’”

Santana commissioned Smith to start building guitars for him. The guitars that Smith custom-built for Santana in the Eighties would eventually become the basis for the PRS Santana II model. The one guitar that particularly pleased Carlos was the model seen here, known in the Santana camp simply as Number Two.

PRS Santana II “Supernatural”

“This guitar really is supernatural. I played most of the Supernatural songs on it. There is the Woodstock guitar and there is the Supernatural guitar. Those are huge doors to walk through.”

Of the many guitars that Paul Reed Smith has made for Carlos, this one holds a very special place in the guitarist’s collection. It arrived just as Carlos was beginning work on Supernatural, which would usher in an exciting new phase of his career.

Carlos has often spoken of being divinely guided in creating Supernatural, and the guitar’s appearance seems providential.

Carlos calls it his Red Coral guitar. He knew there was something unique about it as soon as he picked it up. “It was the tonality, the weight of it, and the feel of it,” he says. “And the color: a beautiful orangey, salmon red. A lot of times, the color of a guitar changes the mood for me. And what can you do without the right mood?

1952/1953 Gibson Les Paul

Another historic Les Paul in Santana’s collection is this instrument that belonged to the late blues master Mike Bloomfield. “He was one of my first heroes,” Carlos says. “Before I heard Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix, I heard Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop in the Butterfield Blues Band in 1965. So I treasure this guitar.”

It was Bloomfield who gave Carlos his first shot at notoriety, inviting him onstage to jam at the Fillmore West. The event led to Santana’s discovery by Fillmore owner and entrepreneur Bill Graham.

Also notable is the fact that this Les Paul was originally a gold top and was subsequently refinished with a flame top. In addition to the refinish job, the original trapeze tailpiece has been replaced with a Tune-o-matic, and humbuckers have taken the place of the original P-90s.

1963 Fender Stratocaster

Carlos picked up this Strat at a Guitar Center sale several years ago. He recalls, “They told me, ‘Some guy in Ukiah [California] had this under his bed for years.’” He bought the guitar on the spot and used it to play his interpretation of “Little Wing” on Guitar Heaven.

Carlos has fond memories of a recent gig at which he played this Strat through Stevie Ray Vaughan’s legendary Dumble Steel String Singer amp.

“When I got this guitar, I had the same dream over and over, where Stevie Ray came to me,” he says. “In the dream, Stevie Ray said, ‘Listen, Carlos, you know where I am, man. I’m not in the body anymore. And where I am, I have no fingers. I’m just pure light. But I miss the sound and feel of my guitar. Please call my brother Jimmie and ask him to lend you my Steel String Singer. I need to feel your fingers through this amplifier.’

“A few nights later, I had the dream again. So I called Jimmie Vaughan and asked to borrow the amp, and he was like, ‘Hell no!’ But then René Martinez, who was Stevie Ray’s guitar tech, had the same dream too. He called Jimmie and told him. Next thing I knew, the amp arrived.

“The amp and the Strat came in time for a gig at Madison Square Garden. I plugged the guitar into the amp at soundcheck, and it was like...whoosssh! I said, ‘I wanna play the whole concert with this!’”

It’s virtually impossible to pare decades of rock and roll down to a top-ten list. There are, however, some guitar solos every player needs to know about.

Here are some of the greatest ever committed to record...

10. "Statesboro Blues" by The Allman Brothers Band from 'At Fillmore East' (1971)

Guitarist: Duane Allman

Although the end of "Layla" may be more memorable to most folks, Allman’s Statesboro slide show verifies his title as the undisputed king of bottleneck guitar. 

Slick as oil but with the ability to stop on a dime, Allman not only redefined how slide guitar was played but also created a recycling market for empty Coricidin bottles.

9. "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns N' Roses from 'Appetite for Destruction' (1987)

Guitarist: Slash

While Axl swayed and sashayed like Steve Wonder around his mic stand, Slash laid back with his Les Paul, patiently waiting for his turn in the spotlight. 

Then, with his blistering ascent up the E harmonic minor scale – which kicks the second solo of this tune into high gear – the top-hatted genius single-handedly breathed new life into wah-pedal sales.

8. "Crossroads" by Cream from 'Wheels of Fire' (1968)

Guitarist: Eric Clapton

Slowhand? Not on this track. Clapton pulls out every blues-rock move in his lick-tionary for this roadhouse romper. 

The true voodoo of this solo lies at the crossroads where major and minor pentatonic tonalities meet, mingle and blast off from E.C.’s fretboard. 

Ol’ Scratch surely smiled when he heard this one.

7. "Crazy Train" by Ozzy Osbourne from 'Blizzard of Ozz' (1980)

Guitarist: Randy Rhoads

You almost wonder if Ozzy named this tune after hearing Rhoads’ white-knuckled rock and roll ride up and down the F# minor scale. 

What more could you want in a metal guitar solo? Tapping, rakes, bends, trills ascending legato runs... 

Rhoads set Eighties guitarists on the rails of neoclassical rock with this one. All aboard!

6. "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin from 'Led Zeppelin IV' (1971)

Guitarist: Jimmy Page

Jimmy Page's "Stairway” solo is nothing short of divine. 

His resolution to the natural F note in the opening minor pentatonic lick of the solo couldn’t have been more perfect if the Almighty himself had chosen the note.

5. "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits from 'Dire Straits' (1978)

Guitarist: Mark Knopfler

Sultan says, “Spend less time making your harem moan and more time making your guitar cry and sing!” 

For those of you who’ve learned the outro solo the lazy way – playing eighth-note triplets for the daunting Dm, Bb and C arpeggios – get your fingers back to the wood shed. 

Those are 16th notes that the “Sultan of Strat” rips off.

4. "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd from 'Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd' (1973) 

Guitarist: Gary Rossington and Allen Collins

To paraphrase Adrian Belew in King Crimson’s "Indiscipline," "I repeat my licks, I repeat my licks, I repeat my licks…” 

This could go on forever – kinda like the outro solo to "Free Bird," in which guitarists Rossington and Collins double each other for most of this pull-off parade. 

It’s impressive not because of the degree of difficulty of the licks but because of the sheer volume they need to recall – 27, including variations!

3. "Eruption" by Van Halen from 'Van Halen' (1978) 

The Holy Grail for all aspiring rock guitarists. Learn Eddie Van Halen's "Eruption" and you’ve earned some serious bragging rights. 

But if you really want props, you’ve got to tame the whole volcano, not just the tremolo picking and tapping sections.

2. "All Along the Watchtower" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience from 'Electric Ladyland' (1968)

Jimi Hendrix offers plenty of reason to get excited in his "Watchtower" solo. 

Besides his masterful manipulation of the C# minor pentatonic scale, Hendrix’s wah-drenched octave climb and the double-stops in the latter half bear out his gift for melodic embellishment. 

It’s enough to make any cat growl.

1. "Little Wing" by Stevie Ray Vaughan from 'The Sky Is Crying' (1991)

With little bits of Jimi, Wes and Mayfield, and a whole lotta soul, SRV exhibits exceptional dynamic prowess throughout, making this reverent Hendrix cover his own. 

A seemingly lost art among modern-day guitarists, Vaughan’s R&B-style chord melody is like priceless art. It should be both admired and studied.

Most guitarists who have plugged into a whirling, sound-warping, Doppler effect-inducing Fender Vibratone can recall the major impression that playing through a rotary-speaker cabinet made on them. It’s unlikely any compact electronic rendition of the effect will fully satisfy them.

The occasionally crosspollinated worlds of vibrato and chorus have been immensely popular with guitarists in their many forms since they first became available. From the late-’60s Univox Uni-Vibe to the mid-’70s Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble and today’s contemporary re-creations of those and other beloved analog pedals, each is an electric guitar classic in its own right.

But the trail begins with the granddaddy of them all: the Fender Vibratone. Produced from 1967 to 1972, it’s a hulking electromechanical sound swirler that produced what is still the most hypnotic and enveloping version of this effect.

Fender licensed the Vibratone from an original rotary-speaker design by inventor Don Leslie, who introduced his rotary-speaker cabinet for use with Hammond organs in the 1940s. The most popular of these units were formidable beasts that contained their own power amplifiers as well as two different types of rotary speakers.

That trenchant swirl you hear from a great Hammond player like Jimmy Smith, Booker T. Jones, the Heartbreakers’ Benmont Tench and the E Street Band’s Danny Fenderici is most often the result of a big Leslie Model 122, 142 or 147.

Aptly called Tone Cabinets, these beasts weighed upward of 150 pounds, were housed in louvered wood cabinets, and included a built-in tube amp, a 15-inch woofer firing downward into a ported rotating drum, and a dual-horn tweeter that spins on a horizontal plane. (One of the horns is a dummy that simply acts as a counterweight to its partner to maintain balance.)

A crossover splits the lower and higher frequencies between the woofer and horn, respectively, and both the drum rotor and horn spin, speed up and slow down at different rates, creating a veritable maelstrom of sound when the drum and horn are spinning at full tilt.

Standing in a room or onstage amid such a storm of sound can be a heady experience. Indeed, play through a Leslie and you’ll discover why many guitarists will never settle for anything less than the sound of a true rotary-speaker cabinet.

While guitarists have lusted after the rotary-speaker effect virtually since its incarnation, and occasionally adapted Leslies for use with the six-string, these cabinets really weren’t well suited to the instrument. Aside from being huge and monstrously heavy, the contribution of the upper tweeter section was often regarded as less than ideal for reproducing the guitar’s frequency range, and the built-in amp was seen as redundant, since most guitarists were already plugged into standard amps that they liked. What’s more, the Leslie cabinet took its power through a cable connected to the organ, making the adaptation of one for guitar a particularly complicated endeavor.

As it happened, the Fender Vibratone was based on the somewhat smaller, black Tolex-covered Leslie Model 16, which required the use of an external amplifier and contained only a single 10-inch speaker firing forward into a rotating 15-inch foam drum, which threw the sound out through ports in the sides and top of the cab. The result was a sound that lived in the guitar’s midrange band and emanated via a more portable and user-friendly unit.

Like the Model 16, the Vibratone included a devoted cable set and interface/crossover, which connects between the speaker output of a traditional guitar amp and the rotary cabinet. This was equipped with a two-button foot switch for changing between the cab’s slow (chorale) and fast (tremolo ) speeds, and switching your amp’s signal between its internal speaker and the Vibratone speaker.

Introduced at the height of the psychedelic-rock movement, the Vibratone was one of several popular effects that helped bring acid-tinged sonics to many prominent recordings.

Jimi Hendrix tapped one for “Little Wing” and “House Burning Down,” and the Byrds, Cream, Pink Floyd, Todd Rundgren and scads of other artists all dove in, too. 

Later, Stevie Ray Vaughan famously broke out a Vibratone for several songs on his album Couldn’t Stand the Weather, the title track included, although it’s relatively low in the mix and he doesn’t appear to have found the speed switch.

If you’re looking to acquire the real thing for use today, be sure it’s in good mechanical condition and has a fully functioning foot switch and interface. And make sure that you’re prepared to haul around a 70-pound, 29 x 21 x 15-inch box in an age where such things are no longer considered compact and portable.

Alternatively, try to forget that addictive, unreproducible, in-the-room sound and make do with a modern Uni-Vibe clone – which, of course, is why the Uni-Vibe was invented in the first place – or Fender’s Pinwheel rotary-speaker pedal, which features three different rotary-speaker emulations, including the Vibratone.

Essential Ingredients

• Ported rotating drum
• 10-inch speaker
• Chorale (slow) and tremolo (fast) speeds
• Cable set and interface between amp and cab
• Two-button foot switch

Who knows what guitar music might be today if Stevie Ray Vaughan hadn’t come along in 1983.

When SRV and Double Trouble released Texas Flood that year, radio was dominated by synth-pop and hair-metal acts. It seemed unlikely that an electric blues album was going to change anything, let alone make a dent in the charts.

But that’s exactly what Stevie and his band did.

Despite assurances from record promoters that rock radio would never touch the album or its pair of singles, “Pride and Joy” and “Love Struck Baby,” Texas Flood began climbing the charts shortly after its June 13 release that year, while the video for the latter track became an MTV staple.

Touring the U.S. in support of the album, SRV and Double Trouble saw attendance at their shows quickly grow.

Coming out at a time when production values favored synthetic sheen over natural tone, Texas Flood was an antidote of sorts for fans of blues, rock and great guitar playing.

“The performance is pure, honest and right there,” Double Trouble bassist Tommy Shannon told Alan Paul and Andy Aledort, authors of the 2019 book Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan. “And it has the best guitar tone Stevie ever got on record.”

Texas Flood would eventually go double Platinum in the U.S., but sales figures aren’t the real story. The album unleashed a flood of its own as young electric guitar players got turned on to this “new” sound and began playing blues.

Older and less well-known blues guitarists like Robert Cray, Robben Ford and Walter Trout were suddenly enjoying success and acclaim, and even John Lee Hooker found his popularity revived in 1989 with The Healer.

Before the decade was over, blues fans had their own magazines devoted to the music, along with bars and clubs across the country. Stevie Ray launched an industry.

And then suddenly he was gone.

The shock of his death on August 27, 1990, at just 35 years old, has lessened over the years, but the memory still brings a flash of astonishment and sacred awe over those who recall hearing the news and reflecting upon what was lost.

“I’m an awkward son of a bitch when it comes to doing the expected,” Jeff Beck said in an interview published in the April 1992 issue of Guitar Player.

Beck made the comment while explaining his decision to not record Gene Vincent’s biggest hit, “Be-Bop-a-Lula,” for the Crazy Legs album, but the guitarist’s quote could apply to any moment from his career, or even its entirety.

During the late ’80s, when instrumental rock guitar albums became increasingly popular and artists like Joe Satriani and Yngwie Malmsteen reached respectable chart positions, the music industry’s “guitar hero” environment seemed perfect for Beck to stage a comeback. He did, indeed, finally emerge from several years of relative silence by releasing Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop in 1989.

But instead of returning to his jazz-rock fusion roots or jumping into the fray with a collection of blazing metal-inspired shred workouts, the guitarist delivered an album that defied the era’s genre categories with its high-tech synths, state-of-the-art electronic production and truly innovative guitar performances.

The Guitar Shop album presented Beck in a different kind of power trio, accompanied by keyboardist Tony Hymas (who previously played on Beck’s 1980 release, There and Back) and ex-Zappa, U.K. and Missing Persons drummer Terry Bozzio. The material was dazzling and eclectic, with Beck performing everything from the punky new wave strut of “Sling Shot” and simulated industrial noise of pneumatic wrenches on the title track to meditative, soaring melodic lines on “Two Rivers.”

Elements of metal and blues were present but not prominent on songs like “Big Block” and “Stand On It,” while country twang, rockabilly swing and slinky funk made appearances elsewhere. The overall result could only be described as “Jeff Beck music.” The most stunning showstopper, particularly when Beck played his Guitar Shop material live, was “Where Were You.”

With his skillful and tasteful manipulation of harmonics and his Strat’s volume control and vibrato bar, Beck delivered an emotional and beautiful performance that transcended previous perceptions of an electric guitar’s capabilities. Inspired by the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir and its album Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, Beck transformed his guitar into a vocal-like instrument, establishing a template for his deep exploration and deft interpretations of numerous ethnic vocal styles throughout the rest of his career.

In support of the Guitar Shop album, Beck went on the co-headlining The Fire Meets the Fury tour with Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1989. Beck, Bozzio and Hymas played almost the entire Guitar Shop album, with the sole exception of “Two Rivers,” every night, along with a handful of songs from Beck’s Blow by Blow and Wired albums and an instrumental version of “People Get Ready,” the song with which he scored a hit when he reunited with Rod Stewart in 1985.

Regardless of who was headlining that night, Beck and Vaughan usually joined each other onstage for a final encore of “Going Down,” where the two traded extended solos. “It’s been a lifelong thing to me, listening to you,” Vaughan said about Beck when Guitar Player interviewed the two together on tour for the February 1990 issue. “For me it’s an honor to be out here with you now. And I’m not just being a parrot talking shit. This is the real deal.”

Although the tour was an incredible success, Guitar Shop enjoyed only moderate sales and failed to achieve Gold certification in the U.S. Arranging another tour seemed like the next logical step to maintain his career’s momentum, but unfortunately Beck aggravated the effects of tinnitus he suffered by playing at excess volume levels every night, and playing onstage had become unbearable.

Instead, he retreated to the quiet and solitude of his country home in East Sussex, emerging occasionally to participate in a few studio sessions for other artists’ projects, including the Days of Thunder soundtrack, Jon Bon Jovi’s Blaze of Glory debut solo album, and guest appearances on albums by Buddy Guy, Tony Hymas and Roger Waters.

In 1992, the upcoming release of two albums prominently featuring Jeff Beck were announced: a soundtrack record for an Australian television mini-series about the Vietnam War called Frankie’s House and a tribute to Beck’s biggest influence, guitarist Cliff Gallup of Gene Vincent’s Blue Caps, called Crazy Legs. Although neither album was the solo effort follow-up to Guitar Shop that so many of his fans wanted to hear, both treated listeners to a bounty of amazing guitar playing.

Crazy Legs featured uncannily accurate reproductions of Gene Vincent’s recordings and almost note-for-note duplicates of Gallup and Johnny Meeks’ solos, while Frankie’s House went in almost the opposite direction, showcasing Beck’s incredible emotional and tonal range as well as his uncanny ability to evoke the distinctive phasing of Vietnamese wind instruments.

On each project, Beck teamed up with appropriate collaborators. For Crazy Legs, he was accompanied by the British jump-blues tribute band the Big Town Playboys. Beck and the group recorded all the material live in the studio over the course of a few days. “To hear the sound coming together, as it must have done 35, 38 years ago, was quite amazing,” he said in the April 1993 issue of Guitar Player. “We had two main rehearsals and went straight in [the studio] and cut four songs right off. The second day we did another four. The album existed after about four or five days.”

Ironically, Beck first hooked up with his Frankie’s House collaborator, keyboardist Jed Leiber, in hopes of recording a rockabilly project, albeit one with modern energy and flair similar to the Guitar Shop cut “Savoy.” The guitarist had initially reached out to songwriter Jerry Leiber (of Leiber and Stoller fame, who penned hits for Elvis Presley, among many others) about collaborating, but the elder Leiber declined the offer, stating he was no longer the “angry young man” of his youth.

Instead, he suggested that Beck should work with his son. Beck and the younger Leiber did manage to record a few rock and roll tunes, including a cover of “High Heel Sneakers” for Frankie’s House and a hot-rodded version of “Hound Dog” for the Honeymoon in Vegas soundtrack (allegedly recorded during a one-hour lunch break while working on the former).

Although Beck’s initial “future rockabilly” plans never worked out, Leiber turned out to be a perfect partner when the soundtrack project was offered, and Beck quickly realized that he preferred the “wide-open piece of paper and pen” composition aspects of soundtrack work over conventional songwriting. “I can’t write pop songs,” he admitted. “This is much more my thing. Artistically, I feel I contribute much more to that open-endedness and searching than I can to a pop song that people will enjoy for three minutes and then throw away.”

After those albums were released, Beck retreated to his home again and participated in a handful of sessions over the next few years. His most notable appearances included three blues covers he did with Paul Rodgers for the singer’s Muddy Water Blues tribute album, a collaboration with Seal on “Manic Depression” for the Stone Free Jimi Hendrix tribute album, and guest appearances on albums by Kate Bush, Duff McKagan and Jan Hammer.

In 1995, the guitarist made his long-awaited return to the concert stage on a co-headlining tour with Santana, reuniting with his Guitar Shop bandmates Terry Bozzio and Tony Hymas, plus bassist Pino Palladino. The energetic spirit and incredible displays of musicianship onstage were welcomed by Beck’s fans, but it also reminded them just how much time had passed since the guitarist’s last record.

Frustratingly, Beck still failed to release any new material over the next four years. Sessions produced by Steve Lukather in Los Angeles and at David Gilmour’s studio in England failed to materialize into an intended solo effort. His session work also slowed down, although the exceptional quality of his performances on John McLaughlin’s “Django” and Brian May’s “The Guv’nor” and his stunning cover of the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” recorded for Sir George Martin’s In My Life album showed that his talents continued to mature and expand.

By this point it seemed that Beck was content to make only cameo appearances, trading solos with other guitar greats, or record cover songs. Almost an entire decade had passed before he finally delivered his next recording, Who Else!, in 1999.

In an interview conducted that year for Japan’s Player magazine, Beck explained his reason for the long delay. “The last nine years were rough for music,” he said. “It has been jumping around all over the place, like a fox. I could never tell where anything was going to go. I was also really depressed about not being able to keep the original three-piece band together: me, Tony Hymas and Terry Bozzio. I got really disillusioned with my playing as well. I knew that there were these other guitarists coming up around the block, and they could really play. It was just telling me that it was time to move on. I wasn’t going to let that happen, but they did shove me aside or a while. I just thought that I should be an observer rather than a participant.”

In typical Jeff Beck fashion, the guitarist found inspiration from an unexpected source: electronica. “I’m a great fan of the Prodigy,” he admitted. “They kick butt and they make that great, wallowing-in-the-mud sort of festival music. I love it. It’s like the Who and the Yardbirds. I love their drum sounds. They’re punky, but they’re articulated and beautiful. It’s not trashy. I wanted to capture that power with my guitar on top of it.”

For the first time in his career, Beck was also joined on an album by a second guitarist, Jennifer Batten. In addition to providing rhythm guitar support, Batten performed keyboard-style backing on guitar synth. Tony Hymas played a major role on the album as well, recording keyboard parts and writing or co-writing nine of the album’s 11 tracks. Even Beck and Jan Hammer reunited on the Hammer-penned cut “Even Odds.”

Beck’s fascination with the modern, Pro Tools-based production techniques of electronica and his new musical partnerships with players like Batten helped him overcome the creative paralysis that plagued him during the ’90s. Less than two years after releasing Who Else!, he delivered You Had It Coming in November 2000.

Beck credits producer Andy Wright, who previously worked with the KLF and Massive Attack as well as various pop artists, with keeping the momentum flowing. “I was throwing things at Andy Wright, and he was throwing them back at me,” Beck said. “That’s the way it worked. I’d play and play and play, then go out and have a beer. 

"Then I’d come back after an hour at the pub and listen to what Andy had done. He’d go, ‘I pulled this section out of your solo. What do you think?’ Then I’d start composing. I was composing and soloing simultaneously. Choruses would appear out of nowhere. It was super high-tech but old-school at the same time. It came together very quickly, but I wanted that.”

While the production of these albums gave Beck’s guitar work a modernistic flair, the guitarist’s continued fascination with ethnic vocal music showcased his incredible emotional mastery of his chosen instrument. The Irish folk tune “Declan” on Who Else! and his instrumental interpretation of Asian Underground musician/producer Nitin Sawhney’s “Nadia” on You Had It Coming were highlights of each album that suggested Beck could duplicate the feel, phasing and characteristic nuances of any style he set his mind to.

Beck completed his electronica trilogy with the release of the Jeff album in 2003. Fully immersed in modern production techniques, he collaborated with as many engineers and remixers like David Torn, Dean Garcia and Howard Gray as he did musicians. 

Once again, amid all of the high-tech flash, Beck astonished listeners with his stripped-down emotional fireworks on “Bulgaria,” finally making good on his promise to pay proper tribute to the Bulgarian Female Vocal Choir and completing the circle he began with Guitar Shop’s “Where Were You.”

Beck’s prolific output during the early 2000s was a stark contrast to his relative silence throughout most of the ’90s. After releasing Jeff, he looked forward to exploring new styles and collaborations that expanded his horizons as well as his reputation as a master guitarist even further. At this point in his career, he found true happiness in expressing himself as a musician without any boundaries, instead of trying to pursue commercial success.

“By now I’m so set in my own ways that I don’t care whether I put out any hits or not,” he said in 2002. “I would never dance to someone else’s tune. That constant state of being is fine with me, provided that I do make at least a little bit of money. I’m happy as long as I get a reasonable turnout at my shows and reasonable sales for my records.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen to it again. You’ll see.

6. Hank Marvin “Apache” (1960)

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

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

7. Freddie King “Hideaway” (1960)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11. Eric Clapton “Crossroads” (1968)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

15. Jimmy Page “Heartbreaker” (1969)

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

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

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

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

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

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

17. Leslie West “Mississippi Queen” (1970)

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

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

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

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

18. Duane Allman “Statesboro Blues” (1971)

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

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

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

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

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

20. Ritchie Blackmore “Highway Star” (1972)

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

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

21. Billy Gibbons “La Grange” (1973) 

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

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

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

22. Brian May “Bohemian Rhapsody” (1975) 

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

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

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

23. Larry Carlton “Kid Charlemagne” (1976)

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

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

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

Alright then.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

26. Eddie Van Halen “Eruption” (1978)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

29. Michael Schenker “Rock Bottom” (1979)

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

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

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

30. David Gilmour “Comfortably Numb” (1979)

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

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

This is arguably his crowning achievement as a soloist.

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

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

Damn straight. 

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

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

32. Randy Rhoads “Crazy Train” (1980)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

34. Yngwie Malmsteen “Black Star” (1984)

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

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

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

35. George Lynch “The Hunter” (1985)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

39. Zakk Wylde “No More Tears” (1991)

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

A blond kid with a Les Paul? Really? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

René Martinez is a legend among guitar techs. With decades of experience under his belt he has worked with the likes of Prince, Carlos Santana and John Mayer.

However, Martinez is best known for his work with fellow Texan Stevie Ray Vaughan, whose skin he regularly saved – both literally and figuratively.

Check out this video clip of Martinez seamlessly swapping Stratocasters after SRV breaks a string during his performance of “Look At Little Sister” for an Austin City Limits special in 1989.

Like a true pro he stealthily swoops in, cleans up the situation and is gone in a flash.

SRV played hard – wrangling his Strat for all the tone it was worth. And part of his signature sound came from his use of hefty string gauges.

Tuning down a half-step and stringing his axe up with a set measuring .013, .015, .019 (plain), .028, .038 and .058 simply gave more tone. But it sure took a toll on his fingers.

“We played so many shows, he started tearing the skin off his fingers and they would bleed,” recalled Martinez in an interview with Hittin’.

While SRV reluctantly agreed with Martinez that he should consider using lighter gauges, the ever-practical guitar tech had a solution that would patch things up in the interim: super-glue.

Watch this interview clip where the Texas Guitar Whiz details his use of DIY skin grafts…

While he was on the road with Jeff Beck in late 1989 during their co-headlining Fire Meets the Fury Tour, GP chatted with SRV about the blood, sweat and tears of using heavy strings.

The following interview extract originally appeared in the February 1990 issue of Guitar Player…

You’re using pretty tough strings.

I’m using a lighter setup now because I’ve got a hole in my finger.

Because of the schedule we’ve had, Rene [Martinez] hasn’t had the chance to dress the very edges of my frets, and I just found yesterday that at the points where I play a lot, my calluses were getting ripped off to where it stuck a hole in the finger. 

Right now, I’m using a little bit lighter strings, just until I get my calluses back.

Then you’re going back to an .013 E?

Yeah. I like the sound of them, I really do, even though it’s painful to use them. I used to use a lot heavier. I used to use an .018.

On the E string?!

Yeah. In a way, it was insane, but I played a lot more simply, and what I chose to play was very to the point.

I got out of that, and into using smaller strings just looking for recognition, I guess, looking for flash. But using bigger strings and playing slower was my way of being able to be reserved.

Of course, I couldn’t see playing as many gigs as we’re doing now like that; I don’t think my hands would hold up. They’re not holding up right now.

What did you have on the bottom?

The biggest one I found so far was a .074. It’s been years and years since I found them, and I just used them for a little bit, because they ate tuning heads, but it was great.

You’d hit an open E and it sounded like “Crosstown Traffic”, that piano part. Those things are fun, and I like that sound, but then again I don’t think there are many amps that can take that for very long.

Browse the Stevie Ray Vaughan catalog here.

Stevie Ray Vaughan (1954-1990) and Jeff Beck: two of the greatest electric guitar players the music world has ever known. Rock icons synonymous with the Fender Stratocaster, they were united on the road from October to December 1989 during their co-headlining Fire Meets the Fury Tour.

Along the way, both Vaughan and Beck sat down with Guitar Player to share some insights and stories in a rare dual interview.

At the time, Beck had just released his sixth studio album, Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop, while Vaughan had put out his fourth, In Step, earlier that summer.

It was to be the final Double Trouble album released during Vaughan's lifetime as the guitarist tragically died during a helicopter crash in August 1990.

The following interview extract originally appeared in the February 1990 issue of Guitar Player…

Both of your styles are grounded firmly in blues tradition, but you each take that tradition in very different directions.

Stevie Ray Vaughan: I play it less original than most people I’ve heard. This is one of the things that blows my mind about what Jeff does, that he takes the roots of it and is able to make it go way out there.

That’s what Buddy Guy did, Hubert Sumlin, Muddy Waters. They all changed it up and did their own thing with it.

Jeff Beck: But I wasn’t even close to it. I was three and a half thousand miles away in suburban England, and all I had was this fuzzy radio to listen to, and I’d read things and try to steal records when no one’s looking.

I used to go and listen for hours and wear all the records out and then just buy one. Befriend your local record-store guy – that was the way to do it. That was a big awakening for me. And going to art school was great because we’d just lend each other records and drink. That’s all we could do.

Jeff, what was it like to jam with Hendrix?

SRV: Yeah, good question.

JB: What was it like? Well [pause], it was awful! The first time, I felt like a peanut, like a fucking hole would have opened up and swallowed me.

The thing that puts it right is the fact that there’s a genuine love that Jimi had for my style as well, which I couldn’t believe.

Then I realized that Jimi was not a messiah; he was a very genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, music-loving person. He didn’t give a damn about the reputation, the show biz razzmatazz. All he was interested in were the licks and what you were feeling like – kind of like Buddy Guy.

Remember that night we were playing with Buddy? It was a conversation. The guitar was just talking and he was listening and looking: “Hmm, that’s interesting!”

It was much the same with Jimi. He wasn’t out to blow you off the stage at all. If he did, he did, but… What am I talking about, ‘If’?' Phew! It was great.

When I got friendly with him, it was just sadness that we couldn’t nurture the friendship a bit more. In those days, life was just totally crazy. He would be off in a 24-hours-a-day lifestyle, and I couldn’t keep up with it. I had to have my sleep.

He was a boogier – a club here, club there, and he’d be jamming until 5:00 in the morning. My lifestyle was never destined to be like that, so I just had to say, “Adios, Jim, I gotta go to bed!”

I felt very amateurish alongside him, because he lived and breathed it. You’re very similar to Jimi in that way. I’m just a part time employee.

SRV: I don’t know about that one [laughs].

JB: I’m not in love with the guitar as much as you are or Jimi is – was. I just pick it up and play sometimes. I feel really guilty. Whatever I choose to do, it always robs me of something. The guitar robs me of my time building [hot] rods, and the rods take their toll on the playing.

But the payoff is the refreshment on both sides. By building, I’m able to completely steep myself in physical things, and all the time I’m doing that, I’m thinking of licks and music, which I’m not able to do sitting with a guitar.

That’s probably the reason I’m able to maintain a modicum of interest in music after 30-odd years.

The Strat requires a lot of hand strength. And you both use fairly macho action on top of that.

JB: That’s part of the reason I started playing it onstage, because I found that the energy level was 50 times more than sitting around at home.

And it’s better to have something that’s tuned up for that, rather than sloppy action that makes you say “Oh God! I wish it was harder to play. This is too easy!” Then you start sliding downhill.

You have to have this thing just above you, pulling you, making you work.

SRV: If I put smaller strings on there so they don’t hurt, I can’t get the same sound. Then my tendency is to play harder, and I just tear things off.

Sometimes at home I either tune down to C and leave the same strings on, or I put lighter strings on and use a light pick so I start remembering about a lighter touch. But when I get on stage, I really need the big strings.

Great blues tone isn't rocket science – you just need to get a happening sound in your head, and then use the right tools to replicate the magic.

All great players have specific guitars, amps, and effects that are essential to their sound.

Some, like B.B. King, used the same setup for decades – in his case, a Gibson ES-355 through a Lab Series combo or a Fender Twin Reverb – while others tweak their systems incessantly in the pursuit of groovier tone.

Stevie Ray Vaughan favored one guitar – a Stratocaster – and a few key effects throughout his career, but he experimented a great deal with amps and speakers.

No matter which player you choose to emulate, it's important to understand that merely replicating every detail of their gear is no guarantee that you're going to sound exactly like them.

Tone is, after all, 90% touch and 10% hardware.

Buddy Guy would sound like himself no matter what equipment he used, and the same holds true for most great players.

Still, some guitars and amps can inspire you to play a certain way, and using rigs similar to the ones used by players you respect may help you zone in on a killer sound that can later be morphed into something uniquely yours.

ERIC CLAPTON

"Clapton Is God" graced many a structure in the late '60s, and for good reason – he practically wrote the book on how to play blues-rock electric guitar.

Attaining a credible Clapton sound requires that you first determine which period in his long career you like best.

During his time with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Clapton famously used a late-'50s Gibson Les Paul Standard through a model 1962 Marshall 2x12 combo.

Part of the secret here is that Clapton's amp was equipped with KT66 output tubes, which have a more refined midrange and clearer top end than either EL34s or 6L6s.

With Cream, Clapton went to high-volume heaven with 100-watt Marshall heads and 4x12 cabs.

He also used a Vox wah-wah and, occasionally, a fuzz.

After his Les Paul was stolen, Clapton played a '61 SG-style Les Paul, and then a Gibson ES-335 for Cream's farewell concert.

With Blind Faith, Clapton used a Gibson Firebird through a Fender Showman.

He then switched to maple-fretboard Strats through Fender tweed Champs during his Derek & The Dominos/"Layla" period.

Both setups yielded tones that rate among Clapton's best.

ALBERT COLLINS

The "Iceman" had one of the most original tones around – just listen to his fabulous sting on such classic cuts as "Frosty," "Too Many Dirty Dishes," "Iceman," and "Put the Shoe on the Other Foot."

Collins certainly did things his own way.

He played a beat-up Fender Telecaster, with a Gibson humbucker in the neck position, that he tuned to open Fm.

He used a capo – often at the fifth or seventh position – and he snapped and popped his strings with his thumb and forefinger.

Collins also favored '70s-era Fender Quad Reverb amps (100 watts into four 12s), and he used a 100' cord.

This latter detail allowed him to get friendly with the audience, while the added cable capacitance helped defrost his icy highs.

ALBERT KING

Almost every blues guitar player "borrows" something from Albert King – even Stevie Ray Vaughan based his blistering style on King's mammoth bends and lightning-bolt stabs.

Almost no one tries to duplicate the left-handed bluesman's gear, however, which isn't too surprising, considering that King played a flipped-over Gibson Flying V with the low-E string closest to the floor.

According to repair ace Dan Erlewine (who built King's replica V, "Lucy"), Albert strung his guitar .009, .012, .024W, .028, .038, .050, and tuned it C, F, C, F, A, D (low to high.)

Steve Cropper, who produced a number of King's albums, offers a different tuning – C, B, E, F#, B, E (low to high) – which he says allowed King to create a one-finger Em chord by raising F# to G. (Another important aspect of King's tone was that he played exclusively with his fingers.)

Onstage, King often plugged into an Acoustic 370 solid-state guitar amp driving a 2x15 enclosure with a built-in high-frequency horn – a real pawnshop prize!

While a Flying V is the way to go here, just about any quality, dual-humbucker guitar can be coaxed into the Albert zone.

Consider, however, that Otis Rush gets a chillingly similar sound with a Fender Strat!

Amps? That's a good question, as almost nothing available sounds anything like an old Acoustic 370.

Our advice is choose an amp (or amp channel) with enough clean headroom to preserve your note attack. Crank the volume, but go easy on the distortion – King's tone was big and bold, not squashed and compressed.

B.B. KING

The King of the Blues' sweet, singing tone stands out as one of the great guitar sounds of all time.

King's original tone recipe was a Gibson ES-355 through a long-discontinued Gibson Lab Series 2x12 combo amp.

From the '80s, he played a Gibson Lucille model stereo guitar, which features a TP-6 fine-tune tailpiece and no f-holes.

King used both pickups simultaneously and strung his guitar with light-gauge Gibsons (.009-.042).

Though he favored vintage Lab Series amps, he often ran through a Fender Twin Reverb onstage.

Replicating B.B. King's sound requires running your amp's output stage fairly hard, while avoiding the fuzzier distortion produced by high-gain channels or stompboxes.

T-BONE WALKER

Often called the father of electric blues, T-Bone Walker helped establish the guitar as a featured lead instrument in the 1940s.

Guitarists inspired by Walker's playing (or his flashy stage moves) include Chuck Berry, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Wes Montgomery, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, Billy Gibbons, Albert King, Otis Rush, Michael Bloomfield, and Duane Allman.

Walker cut his teeth on primitive acoustic-electrics, but his signature ax was a blonde, maple-bodied Gibson ES-5 that he bought at the peak of his career in the early 1950s.

Walker held the guitar perpendicular to his body (when he wasn't playing it behind his head or between his legs), and it's likely that he plugged into a Gibson tube amp.

T-Bone Walker forged the basic vocabulary of rock and roll using double-stops, half- and quarter-step bends, and his patented, third-to-second-string unison bends.

His unorthodox playing style probably created a little extra string lift and snap, and he preferred his tone dry, clean, and relatively bright compared to jazz guitar players of the time.

A deep-bodied guitar – preferably with P-90-style, single-coil pickups – running through a reasonably clean-sounding tube amplifier are essential ingredients for T-Bone tone.

STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN

Stevie Ray Vaughan forged a sound that defines big blues tone.

Five basic ingredients are required here:

• Rosewood fretboard Fender Strat strung with heavy-gauge strings (Vaughan used GHS sets as heavy as .013-.060)
• Ibanez Tube Screamer overdrive (either a TS-9 or an older TS-808)
• Rotating speaker (he favored vintage Fender Vibratones, but you may wish to substitute a stompbox-sized simulator here)
• Vox wah wah pedal
• Fender tube amp with four 10" speakers

Vaughan often combined amps – Fender Super Reverbs with 1x15 Fender Vibroverbs, Marshall and Dumble rigs with Fender combos, and so on.

Heavy electric guitar strings are an important part of the Vaughan recipe, but remember that Stevie tuned down a half-step – you'll want to do the same if you plan on performing his gargantuan bends on girthy gauges.

Choose your Strat carefully for lightness and resonance, and set your amp's controls to produce a clear, beefy clang from the neck pickup. (Fender Super Reverbs do this naturally.)

To hardcore fans, Jimmie Vaughan is a virtual deity – a living legend with an electric guitar style so deep that it defies description.

Since emerging in the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Vaughan has walked the long walk and earned the respect of blues guitar superstars such as B.B. King, Buddy Guy, and Eric Clapton.

He has spun his signature licks in dives and stadiums, shared a bill with Jimi Hendrix, and toured the world with Clapton, ZZ Top, and the Rolling Stones.

Not bad for a guy who traded high school for an endless stream of roadhouse gigs.

Back in 1998, Guitar Player caught up with the man himself following the recording of his maverick solo album Out There.

During our conversation, Vaughan revealed some rare insights into how he manages to nail his world class guitar tones.

The following interview excerpts originally appeared in the July 1998 issue of Guitar Player…

Fat Strat Tone

“I've narrowed it down to what works and what doesn't work, and what works is getting that fat tone on a Fender guitar – which is not necessarily known for that… It's not really any trick. You just turn the amp up and use your fingers to get a good guitar sound.

“I like the treble pickup because it has a pure tone without a lot of overtones. It almost sounds like a steel guitar, you know?

“But you can say different things tonewise by where you pick. For example, depending on where I pick the string – closer to the bridge or farther away from the bridge – and whether I use a pick or a finger is sort of like my three pickups.”

Raising the Game

“I don't know if this is good advice for anybody else, but I raise up my [pickup] treble side and lower the bass side. It just seems more balanced that way – you know, the ratio of the volume between the treble strings and the bass strings.

“Now, if you get the pickup too close it'll start making a beating sound. One thing I do that I don't think nobody else does is raise my action up real high. I don't necessarily use big strings, but I have the action up pretty high so that my strings really ring.

“I know Fenders were designed to play really easy, but I like it when you've got something to hold on to.”

Studio Secrets

“Back with the Thunderbirds we got our sound by using the room. Instead of recording the signal and putting an effect on it to make it sound good, we moved the microphones away from the amps and the drums… That's really how I get a good guitar tone. It's the room. Now I'm giving away all my little secrets.

“It's also the amp and the guitar, of course, but you record everything where there's enough room for the sound to breathe. You don't put the mic right up on the speaker. 

"This is the same way I've recorded every record I've made – the ones that sounded good, anyway.” [laughs]

Browse the Jimmie Vaughan catalog here.

Chances are, if you recognize the name Doyle Bramhall II, it instantly recalls the guitarist's brushes with musical greats such as Eric Clapton, B.B. King and Roger Waters.

At age four, Bramhall and his family shared a house with Stevie Ray Vaughan in Austin, Texas. Hence the youngster spent countless hours listening to his dad – renowned singer-songwriter and drummer Doyle Bramhall – jamming with Stevie and Jimmy Vaughan.

Suffice to say, by age 18 the young guitar prodigy was playing with the Fabulous Thunderbirds.

In more recent years, Bramhall has donned his producer cap for the likes of Eric Clapton and Sheryl Crow, while his outstanding guitar playing talents have seen him collaborate with Elton John and the Tedeschi Trucks Band.

He is also a prominent solo artist in his own right.

Many years ago, Guitar Player spoke to the man himself following the release of his 2001 solo album Welcome. During our conversation, Bramhall shared some insight and advice for fellow musicians.

The following interview excerpts originally appeared in the October 2001 issue of Guitar Player…

1) Songwriting

“You can perfect what comes naturally to you, but I don't know if you can learn to write good songs or songs with substance. The key is to be emotionally connected to your songs and to convey a message – even if it's not the most lyrically poetic or heady message. If you're heart isn't connected to the song, it's not worth doing.

“Clapton gave me some advice. He said to just follow your heart, and if it's good, people are going to come onboard and follow your lead. But you're the only one who has your vision, so don't second-guess it.”

2) Solos

“A lot of times, a solo has to play out a specific melody because it's really important for that song. But it just depends if the song calls for it. For the most part, I just come up with the stuff when I pick up the guitar. Even with the things that I stick to, I don't think I ever play them the same way twice.”

3) Inspiration

“If you want to create great music, you have to either shut out everything and create something new, or you have take bits from all kinds of music – world, jazz, blues, classical, anything. All the great bands did that. The Stones took from classical, blues, country, and traditional music.”

4) Listening

“I grew up listening to Freddie King, Lightnin' Hopkins, Little Son Jackson, Mance Lipscomb – a lot of the local Texas blues artists. Here's one that will get you – I thought John Lennon was a great guitar player. Not many people look at him as a guitar player, but I found him to be really inventive.” 

5) Stevie Ray Vaughan

“Stevie was one of the greatest players ever, and nobody is ever going to fill that void, so you might as well just get over it and make your own music. There are a lot of cheap imitations out there, and I think they're all missing one thing – his soul.”

Browse Doyle Bramhall II’s catalog here.

Albert Cummings is an electric blues powerhouse. Having shared stages with guitar masters of the sheer caliber of B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Johnny Winter, among many others, he is known today as one of the greatest players on the contemporary blues guitar circuit.

Cummings arrived at the blues party later in life than you might expect, given his natural ability to stun audiences with a seemingly effortless display of jaw-dropping technique.

In fact, he was 27 years old when he first played with a band. At an age when some of the world’s greatest musicians checked out, Cummings was just checking in.

 “It was a couple of years after that when Double Trouble had me come down to Austin,” he tells Guitar Player. “Then I met B.B. King and Buddy Guy and Johnny Winter. It happened quickly. I was doing all that and still building houses.”

Yep. You heard him right: He was still building houses. And with one foot onstage and the other in the construction business, he’s still building houses today.

“There’s a song on the new album, Ten, called ‘Two Hands,’” the guitarist explains. “It’s one of my favorites, and it tells the tale of a working man. I think a lot of people are going to relate to that song.”

Relatable, open and honest, Cummings is a guitar player with whom anyone can connect.

Now, with more than two decades’ worth of solo releases under his belt, his recorded body of work catalogs a guitarist who has gone from strength to strength.

We caught up with the man himself to talk about the art of blues guitar following the release of Ten (Ivy Music Corporation), a ripper of an album recorded in Peter Frampton’s Phenix Studios in Nashville with legendary engineer/producer Chuck Ainlay.

You’re currently endorsed by Fender, but what was your first guitar?

I just inherited an old acoustic guitar that was hanging around that my father had. I remember it was an Aria jumbo. I wish I could find one again. It was fancy looking. I remember it had stars on the pickguard. But the action was just terrible! I mean you could park a truck under the strings. [laughs]

But really, whatever you have to learn on is good. Seriously, if you’re learning to play guitar, that’s great. You know, at the end of the day, it’s a piece of wood with some metal tied onto it.

You’re known for performing wild, improvisational stage shows. How did you develop that sort of approach to playing?

My father played guitar a little bit, but he had given up performing in a band just about the time I was born. I never really got to see him play regular shows, although he would get together with his old band whenever one of the sons or daughters of the band members got married. They’d always be the house band and play the wedding. So I’d get to see them do it then.

My father was really good at improvising, but only around certain solos. He’d play the melodies perfectly and then he’d stretch out a little bit. That was what got me thinking about improvising and playing something that’s not exactly the same, so you’re not just repeating yourself all the time.

How do you grab an audience’s attention?

I’ve been to shows where I’ve seen the guitarist come out and just widdle away, but where are the feelings? That’s what you see on social media all the time. Tommy Shannon [of Double Trouble] is a good friend of mine – you know, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s bass player – and we talk about this a lot.

He’s been in music stores where he’s heard bass players that are scary good, but if you put them in a band setting, they just can’t groove. They can’t make the audience stop talking. When everybody’s talking, it’s often because there’s nothing going on onstage.

What are you looking to achieve when you pick up a guitar and perform?

I’m looking to make somebody’s life better. Especially in the world today, people need something. I’ve cried playing. I’ve laughed playing. My guitar is my communicator when I’m not singing. It’s my way of communicating with people. It all sounds kind of crazy, but I love connecting with people.

What advice would you give to people learning how to play blues?

You know, when kids come to the show, I’ll give them a pick and I’ll tell the parents, “Make sure he or she is understanding there are so many greats.”

But like B.B. King told me, “Just borrow something from the ones you like.” It’s like if you go to a farmers market and you’ve got your little basket that you’re going to put your vegetables in: Pick the ones you like and bring it home. It’s just endless.

Who are some of your favorite guitarists working today?

Tommy Emmanuel is one of the greatest I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen him play live, but I’ve watched his videos. He’s completely amazing. I love it when I can’t even understand what a guitarist is doing because they’re so advanced.

Redd Volkaert is another guy like that. He played guitar for Merle Haggard, and I think he’s probably partly responsible for helping Brad Paisley learn a few things. Redd is one of those guys who you watch and go, “I don’t even know what he’s doing – is it even in the same tuning?” Because he’s just so advanced.

I love players like that because everything they’re playing has something unique to them. That’s what I like.

What about Stevie Ray?

It was his “take no prisoners” approach that I loved so much. You know, it’s a freight train and you’re not going to stop it. Stevie Ray was the first guy that really made me stop in my tracks to listen.

When I first heard Stevie Ray, I was like, “There’s no way that’s real. Nobody plays like that!” I thought it was two guitars: one hitting rhythm and one playing lead.

Early on, when I was in college, I went to see Stevie by myself, and I just remember thinking how incredible it was. I just didn’t know anybody could play like that.

That experience was so inspiring, it set me on a mission to move more toward that way of playing. It was just so powerful. And relentless. He let you see his spirit – who he was. That was Stevie Ray.

What does the blues mean to you?

To me, blues is an expression of feelings. And if you’re not willing to expose your belly and let people know how you feel through that instrument, then you’re not really revealing yourself. You’re not being yourself. No matter how good you get or what you’ve learned, you’re hiding something.

It’s a state of mind.

Exactly. And it’s very hard to teach that. I mean there’s no music school in the world that can teach that. You can say, “Here’s a chord pattern, here are the notes, charts, learn this, read this,” et cetera.

And that’s great, if you want to be a performer. But if you want to be a creator, you’ve got to go on a whole different journey. As a true creator, you don’t have a trail to follow and there’s nobody in front of you, because there’s nobody like you. You’re on your own path.

Order Ten by Albert Cummings here.

Eric Gales exploded onto the music scene at the age of 16 with his 1991 debut album, The Eric Gales Band.

A clip on YouTube shows him winning a local battle of the bands contest in 1989, at the age of 14, with an incendiary rendition of “Spanish Castle Magic.”

Inevitably, as with any Black blues guitarist adding a little rock to the mix, the “next Hendrix” tag was duly applied. Indeed, it did seem Gales was channeling a strong Hendrix vibe, not only by the way he played but also in how he looked.

Featuring his brother Eugene on bass and vocals, the performance showcases a staggeringly gifted guitarist, able to peel off face-melting Hendrix licks with ease.

Likewise, Gales’ first appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show, in 1991, plugging “Sign of the Storm,” from his debut album, had all the swagger of classic SRV at his best.

Gales started to learn guitar at the age of four, and, by his own admission, it came fairly easily for him. “It felt very natural,” he tells Guitar Player. 

“Actually, every musical instrument I’ve played has always felt right. I believe this was something that was cast in my life before I ever started to play.”

Although right-handed, he plays left-handed on a right-handed guitar, with the bass strings at the bottom. Taught by his older brother Manuel – a lefty playing an “upside-down” axe, who achieved success under the name Little Jimmy King – Gales never questioned how he was taught.

Manuel introduced him to a whole world of great music, not only the obvious blues guitar legends but also classic rock, from the likes of Led Zeppelin and Frank Marino to mavericks like Eric Johnson, as well as the jazz guitar styles of Kenny Burrell and Wes Montgomery.

While absorbing this rich guitar gumbo, Gales was infusing the mix with the urban sounds of rap and hip-hop he heard on the radio. The result was an artist who transcended his own influences to become a significant inspiration to those who followed in his wake.

Like many musical artists, Gales has had struggles with addiction issues, and he spent 21 months in prison from 2009 for breaking probation rules after a drug conviction. 

He wasn’t even allowed to play guitar until a warden realized who he was and managed to provide him with an instrument. The guard also persuaded Gales to form a band while inside, to help with the rehabilitation process.

“Toward the end of my sentence, we got to play quite a few shows, festivals and things like that, which made things a lot easier to bear,” Gales explains.

The guitarist is upbeat about the outcome from his experience, and feels that his personal development during that time – specifically his ability to reflect and resolve to change – was essential to breaking the chains of addiction.

“God gave me a gift, and I think I lost my way for a time,” he says. “But I’m back on track and grateful for all the opportunities that a life in music has given me.”

Having recorded 21 albums and appeared as a guest on considerably more, Gales – whose main guitar is his custom Magneto Sonnet RawDawg II – has a broad catalog to draw upon when selecting five key songs from his career.

Perhaps surprisingly, four of the tracks chosen are drawn from his last two albums, 2017’s Middle of the Road and 2019’s Bookends, both of which were recorded since he resolved his substance abuse problems. They are, in Gales’ opinion, the best music he has made in his career, topped only by his most recent release, 2021’s Crown.

Gales is understandably enthusiastic about the new album, given that it encompasses everything we’ve come to expect from him, while it shows him taking his music to a new level.

A key highlight for many will be his guitar duel with Joe Bonamassa on “I Want My Crown.”

Bonamassa produced the record with Josh Smith and was determined to help Gales realize the vision that he had for the project. Consequently, there are strong statement pieces, humorous nods to the trials of Gales’ own life and three short instrumental vignettes that call to mind elements of Hendrix.

Gales is fired up and ready to make sure there are no further setbacks on his path to musical redemption.

“I’m hungrier than I’ve ever been, man,” he tells Guitar Player. “I love the process of touring and recording, and I can’t wait for people to hear what I’m going to be coming up with in the future.”

As for his selections for this list, he says, “A couple of these songs are pretty long, but I like to be able to stretch out and make a strong statement. Probably out of 10 songs on an album, I’ll usually have a couple that are on the longer side.

“Sometimes the spirit wants to go long, so you have to allow that to happen.”

1) “Freedom from My Demons” from ‘Crystal Vision’ (2006)

“This is the oldest song I picked for the five, and also the most traditional in style. It’s a really strong pointer to my sobriety.

“For a few years I wasn’t really listening to my own lyrics, but then I went back to it after a long time and I thought it was great to see the way that the ideas applied to me now, being nearly six years clean.

“I think this is a deep song with beautiful lyrics. And come on, who doesn’t like the blues? I believe this track needed to be pulled out for this list.

“The real Superstrat tone was actually a Magneto going through a Fender Tweed Bassman and a Tube Screamer. I think I achieved a magnificent tone with that setup. I guess there is a hint of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s version of ‘Texas Flood’ about the song. I was aiming for that sort of vibe and aura.”

2) “Boogie Man” from ‘Middle of the Road’ (2017)

“This is one of three songs I chose from Middle of the Road, which I feel is really one of my strongest albums. I have had a long history of being known as the ‘bad guy,’ you know? What with being arrested, going to prison, drug addiction and everything, I thought ‘Boogie Man’ was a great representation of this statement that I had been labeled with.

“‘Boogie Man’ was originally a Freddie King song, and I love that lyrical idea that goes right back to Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Bo Diddley – that real braggadocio approach. It takes me back to those blues roots. I think it tells a story that I can relate to with my rep.

“There’s a lot of humor in songs like this, which people don’t often realize. These guys mean it, but they’re not taking themselves too seriously.

“Gary Clark Jr. contributes some great guitar and vocals as well on this one. I like working with guests. When the chemistry is right, you can make magic happen, you know?

“You can inspire and fire each other up. Guitar-wise, it is definitely the Magneto on this song. They’re a great company, their guitars play great, and it’s become my go-to guitar for whatever I want.”

3) “Help Me Let Go” from ‘Middle of the Road’ (2017)

“I play acoustic guitar on this one; I think it was a Paul Reed Smith acoustic. And I guess what I like about this song is that it goes against the grain of what people know me for or expect to hear from me.

“I think that difference helps it to really catch the listener’s ear by making a very different stylistic statement. It encapsulates the beautiful relationship that I feel that I have with the acoustic guitar. I do really love to play acoustic things. I think you can get a very warm, expressive tone that enables you to make a statement with your music.

“This song was written while I was in rehab in 2016, and I think the message in the lyrics is just as applicable today, for me or anybody. There are some times and some things that you just have to let go of. It meant so much to me to be able to put a song on the record that described my journey, the route that I had to take through life at that time.

“I suppose it is also a little different because there is so little guitar on the track. I really just tried to say what needed to be said without overplaying. I think it’s important to have the self-knowledge to know when to play, and when to sit back and let the song speak. 

"Just a little touch here and there, then get out of the way. [laughs] Sometimes less is more, and sometimes you want to really let loose. It’s all about how to serve the song in the end.”

4) “I’ve Been Deceived” from ‘Middle of the Road’ (2017)

“There’s a very powerful drive to this track. The lyrics are about me having a conversation about being deceived by drugs. The drugs were friends with me at the beginning, but the whole time it was a big deception.

“Musically, I would say that this is a great example of where I’ve tried to take the blues to a different place. There’s some classic-rock stylings, obviously some blues, and elements of urban music and R&B.

“I think that combination of influences is what maybe makes my music stand out, and what gives me my own signature.

“I have influences from so many different areas and I try to incorporate all of them into my music. What made an impact on me as a listener is what has inspired me to try to re-create in my own music.

“I think it’s important to let your influences filter into your music, but also, maybe even more importantly, to use them to make something new that is your own. I always want to acknowledge those who went before me though, in so many fields, not just blues.

“Who knows? Maybe what I do will influence someone else and so on, as music gets passed on.”

5) “Southpaw Serenade” from ‘The Bookends’ (2019)

“This song is a testament to the way I play, and it’s a reflection on a lot of things that happened to me in my personal life. I guess I thought, Why not do a song about playing left-handed? [laughs]

“Doyle Bramhall II appears on this track. He’s someone I’ve been friends with for nearly 30 years, and he’s a southpaw too, so it seemed like a natural fit.

“I really like the tone of my guitar on this song. It’s very warm and creamy. I used my Magneto with a wah pedal, a delay and a distortion unit. I forget what brands they were, but there was nothing fancy – just standard kinds of things.

“I think the sound that I get is really about who I am, and the way that I play. I suppose what I’m saying is that I sound pretty much like me whatever I play through, which is what we’re all trying to achieve in the end.

“We all have different guys that influence us, but how we turn those influences into our own style, our own statement or whatever, is what we bring to the table as musicians.”

Browse the Eric Gales catalog here.

It’s right there in the name – a reference to one of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s best-known songs. Crazy Tube Circuits (CTC) makes no bones about its Crossfire pedal giving you access to some of the Texas blues phenom’s coveted tones. As they put it, “Crossfire is inspired by one of the most iconic pedal-amp combinations in guitar history.”

In fact, this dual-effect pedal offers much more. The left side is voiced to emulate blackface tube amps like the Fender Twin and Super Reverbs. CTC uses analog circuitry to mimic the sonic signatures of those vintage legends. A headroom switch lets you choose the super-clean solid-state rectified 4x6L6GC power amp sound of a Twin or the distortable sponginess of a tube-rectified 2x6L6GC Super Reverb.

The right side provides the famous green pedal (read: Ibanez Tube Screamer) mid-hump overdrive. In addition to re-creating the circuit of this classic overdrive, CTC added some of the modifications the pedal has seen throughout the years.

A clipping toggle switch selects between original symmetrical or asymmetrical clipping, while a gain toggle adds more gain and alters the low frequency response, as if you were running two of the pedals in series.

A passive effects loop allows pedals to be placed between the overdrive and the amp side. When both sides are in bypass, the loop is true bypass as well, but this just refers to the signal path. If the pedal in the loop is on when you shut both Crossfire sides off, it still affects the signal. Think of it as running three independent pedals.

Using just the amp side, we set the toggle for the 2x6L6 simulation and the gain for a bit of breakup. We turned the treble up, the mids down, and the bass about halfway for a superb Super Reverb tone. This provided instant SRV rhythm sounds, while driving it slightly with the right-side Screamer pushed it into Stevie lead territory.

But this pedal is no one-trick pony.

Cranking the bass and mids on the amp side and switching from a Strat to a Les Paul served up some Hubert Sumlin-through-a-tweed Deluxe tones. Toggling to the 4x6L6 setting while lowering the mids shifted the tone toward a Twin and gave our 1x10 Supro Comet the girth of a 2x12 Twin, and adding the overdrive side set for extra gain produced luscious, Santana-like sustain.

Even at higher gain settings the pedal remained sensitive to both touch and guitar volume settings. So, yes, the Crossfire can deliver SRV sounds, but if you aren’t tuned down a half-step, using telegraph-wire gauge strings and playing as if your life depended on it (and loud enough to get arrested), don’t expect to sound like him.

The good news is that tons of warm, American, tube-like tones and a gargantuan variety of malleable grit from slight drive to near fuzz reside in this solid pedalboard-friendly pedal.

Specifications:

CONTROLS: Overdrive: gain, tone, volume, clipping toggle, gain toggle internal headroom switch. Amp: gain, volume, treble, mid, bass, headroom toggle switch, bright toggle switch

EXTRAS: A passive effects loop between the overdrive and amp in a box. An internal switch provides 18V DC to the overdrive circuit

SIZE: 4.5” W x 3.5” D x 1.25” H

BUILT: Greece

Visit Crazy Tube Circuits for more information.

Mike McCready’s classic rock-and blues-influenced soloing has been part of Pearl Jam’s signature sound since they formed under the name Mookie Blaylock in Seattle, in 1990.

Signing to Epic Records the following year, they changed their name and released their debut album, Ten, a breakthough that generated three hit singles – “Alive,” “Even Flow” and “Jeremy” – and established the band as a major force in the ’90s music scene.

Pearl Jam developed a sound contemporaneous with the burgeoning grunge movement, yet they were unafraid to reference elements of classic rock in their arrangements.

Playing alongside rhythm and co-lead guitarist Stone Gossard, McCready brought elements of Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan and David Gilmour without ever resorting to slavishly ripping off their licks.

Pearl Jam have always maintained a high degree of quality control over their music, releasing only 11 studio albums to date over a 30-year career.

The band’s latest full-length, 2020’s Gigaton, followed after a seven-year gap from the album before it, 2013’s Lightning Bolt.

According to McCready, that is not the intention for their next record.

“Assuming all goes according to plan, we’ll be touring the states and Europe in 2022, and then we should be looking at making an album after that,” he tells Guitar Player.

“So I don’t expect there to be anywhere near as long an interval before the next record comes out.”

Reflecting his love of Stevie Ray Vaughan, McCready bought what he thought was a 1959 Fender Strat in 1991.

“It was the first expensive guitar that I ever owned,” he explains. “It was kind of beat-up around the sides, but it’s gotten a lot worse since I bought it; I do love electric guitars that look beat up. I put a five-way switch in because it had the original three-way and I use all the switch positions on the Strat, so I really get the full mileage out of the sonic options.

“Fender wanted to make a custom model, replicating every detail on the guitar, so they took it away for a couple of days to measure and photograph everything. When they brought it back to me, they told me that it’s actually a ’60 Strat.

“I was totally shocked. I felt like I’d been living a lie for years.” He laughs. “I’ve got a ’59 tattoo, so I need to get a ‘plus one’ added to it.”

Notwithstanding the unexpected news regarding the guitar’s vintage, McCready was blown away by what the Custom Shop came up with.

“They did such a great job that I’ve actually confused the new model with the original at times,” he admits.

“I did wonder for a moment if my original might feel a little different once they’d taken it apart and reassembled it, but it was in the hands of master builders, so the mojo was still there when I got it back.

“I guess I’ve done maybe a thousand shows with it, so it’s a part of me. We’re working on a more affordable signature model now, because obviously this limited-run Custom Shop model is a relatively expensive guitar.”

McCready has performed with many acts over the years, including Temple of the Dog, featuring late Soundgarden vocalist Chris Cornell (1964-2017), and Mad Season, fronted by deceased Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley (1967-2002).

More than 30 years down the line, he is more enthusiastic and excited by music than ever before.

“Just as lockdown kicked in, we were all rehearsed and ready to go on tour,” he says. “I learned to use GarageBand, and since I had a lot of time on my hands, I got pretty good at using it and worked on a lot of song ideas. It helped me keep my sanity.

“I’m always learning, working on improving my songwriting ability and staying in gratitude. I try to keep learning new things all the time. It’s so great to have such a huge fanbase that still wants to see us. That still blows me away and keeps everything exciting year after year.”

1) Temple of the Dog | “Reach Down” from ‘Temple of the Dog' (1991)

“Temple of the Dog was the first legitimate album that I played on. Chris Cornell wrote a demo for this song that was just spectacular. He played everything on it. I remember him saying, ‘Hey, let’s make the first song on the record an 11-minute song, just to piss off the record company!’ [laughs]

“He’d said, ‘We’ll need a long lead part on the song to stretch it out.’ I was very nervous; I wanted to make sure I wasn’t overplaying and that I was respecting the song. I did one lead and Chris said, ‘I think you can do better,’ and then he went out for a cigarette.

“I just really went for it on the next take. I pulled out all the tricks I’d learned up to that point from listening to Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix, toggle-switch stuff – everything. I didn’t think about it though; I was just playing.

“For the last minute and a half of the solo, my headphones had fallen off, but I was so into it that I played on through. That’s the take on the record. Somehow, I really channeled something special.

“I think people weren’t really playing long solos so much at that time, and I’m still so grateful to Chris and the guys for giving me the opportunity there to really put my own mark on such a great song.”

2) Pearl Jam | “Present Tense” from ‘No Code’ (1996)

“I wrote this song at a time when I was trying to experiment and do different things. I just came in with that riff and started singing some lyrics, and the guys helped me arrange it.

“I like to have a lot of dynamics in my songs, and I felt that this was something that we could really build when we played it live. The intro was just me and Ed [Eddie Vedder], and hearing the crowd sing the lyrics back when we do that part live is immensely moving and satisfying.

“The song is about keeping things in the present tense, not tripping out about the future too much or worrying about the past. I love that idea. If I can stay in the present tense, my life is much better.

“This song is in D tuning, with the G tuned to F#. There’s a lot of space in the song. I think I’m using an MXR Phase 90 on the intro, and the track builds from there.

“Everybody in the band is aware of space and thinking about what not to put in the song. That’s a David Gilmour thing I picked up on. He uses space to let his solos breathe.”

3) Pearl Jam | “Given to Fly” from ‘Yield’ (1998)

“I recorded the Mad Season album, Above, with Layne Staley around the time that I wrote this song, in ’94. This track was a huge deal for me, because it was the first time I’d ever gotten sober, and making that Mad Season record gave me the confidence that I could really do this and write songs in a new frame of mind for Pearl Jam records as well.

“On the day I wrote it, it was snowing in Seattle. I was messing around with different tunings, and I had this euphoric feeling, like, ‘Wow, I can write those kind of songs now.’ I felt like I had a new confidence.

“Prior to then, the fact that there were so many great writers in Pearl Jam made me feel less confident in putting my songs forward. But with ‘Given to Fly,’ I felt that I could really relate to the lyrics that Eddie came up with. It was a turning point for me, and it’s one my favorite songs of all the ones I’ve ever written.

“I tuned my ’60 Strat to open D, without detuning the G string to F#. When you change tunings, it forces you to play a different way. Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of things in standard tunings but using capos to change the feel of what I’m playing.

“I like to be pushed, though, and a different tuning will really do that. I like to make a mistake and learn from it, and different tunings help with that. They break you out of all the habits that you gravitate toward subconsciously in standard tuning.

“I think I recorded this with a Fender Bassman into a Marshall JCM800 and a 4x12 with four 25-watt speakers and my MXR Phase 90.

“Some people have said it sounds a little like ‘Going to California.’ It never even occurred to me at the time. I’ll certainly cop to ripping off some Zep in my songs at times, but that wasn’t the case on this one. [laughs]

“Robert Plant came to one of our shows in Sweden, and he jokingly gave me some shit about it. It was glorious. Eddie even introduced the song as ‘Given to California’ on that date.” [laughs]

4) Pearl Jam | “Inside Job” from ‘Pearl Jam’ (2006)

“This was one of the first times that I’d written lyrics as well as all the music to a song. We were trying to get it ready for the record and we were running out of time. It was getting down to the wire and Eddie didn’t have any lyrics.

“We were on tour in Mexico, and I remember thinking that if I don’t come up with some lyrics for this song now, it’s not gonna make the cut. I just sat down and wrote what I was feeling, in terms of how it’s an inside job for me to take care of myself, my demons or whatever, and find a spiritual solution, so that was the angle I was looking at.

“I remember when I’d completed the song and took it to play for Eddie, I was super nervous: ‘Okay, I’m going to sing for Ed’. [laughs] He was very gracious about it and he liked the lyrics.

“When we got back from that tour and Ed put his vocals on it, it sounded amazing. I really wanted to write an epic piece of music, and I think the band helped me to pull that off. I played the acoustic intro underneath the strange, dissonant notes that Stone put over the top, which made it sound darker and cooler.

“Live, I go totally Jimmy Page and use my double-neck SG [Gibson EDS-1275] for this. I don’t generally write solos out, but I did for this one. I wanted to put something down that would be a solo that I’d always want to reproduce when we played the song live.”

5) Pearl Jam | “Sirens” from ‘Lightning Bolt’ (2013)

“I’m so happy with the way the music for this track turned out, and Ed’s lyrics are really beautiful. We recorded this in L.A., and I worked out a delayed lead on it. I wanted to sound like a siren passing by you.

“It was another lead part that I consciously wrote to be a permanent fixture in the song. I was trying to channel some David Gilmour. I’d seen The Wall tour around this time, which was the most incredible show I’d ever seen.

“I love Gilmour; he is the master of delay, subtlety, underplaying and knowing when to hit exactly the right note. His solos are songs within a song. I don’t know if he works them out or not. We cover ‘Comfortably Numb’, and I have to do that solo exactly note for note. You can’t improvise on it; it just doesn’t sound right.

“Stone and I are always discussing how perfect Gilmour’s solos are. I’d say about 10 percent of my solos are worked out, and the rest are off the cuff.

“Initially it came out of laziness and not wanting to re-learn my solos. After a while I found that my first two or three leads are the best ones. Sometimes I’ll do a comp.

“The problem with repeated takes is that I think about it too much and start trying to fit in parts that I liked, but the spontaneity will have gone and it never has the same spark if I do multiple takes. After three takes I’m usually not feeling it.”

Browse the Pearl Jam catalog here.

In the summer of 1989, Miller Lite – desperate to revive their flagging sales – decided to hold something it called the "Biggest Party in History."

Held primarily in Houston and Dallas, Texas, the festivities attracted hundreds of thousands of attendees, who braved the boiling summer heat to enjoy a bill that was headlined by The Who, but also featured Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble.

A portion of Vaughan's September 3 set at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas – his second of two performances at the festival – can be seen above.

The video begins as Vaughan and co. are ripping their way through their opening number, "The House Is Rockin,'" and captures "Mary Had a Little Lamb" before sadly cutting out in the middle of "Pride and Joy."

Though the quality of the footage isn't superb, it's good enough to capture the incredible form Vaughan was in at the time. Sober and riding the success of his then-recently released fourth album, In Step, Vaughan and his band are simply on fire. 

Vaughan's extended "Mary Had a Little Lamb" solo in particular – with its fluidity, speed, and Texas-sized bends – is a treat.

Sadly, the "Biggest Party in History" would be one of Vaughan's final performances in his home city of Dallas before he was killed in a helicopter crash in Wisconsin the following year. He was just 35 years old. 

Countless guitarists have lifted Chuck Berry’s electric guitar licks and riffs, which seems only fair, considering that Berry stole some of them himself. 

But when did it cross the line? Apparently whenever Chuck said so. 

Here are five blatant thefts from the Berry patch...

1) The Beach Boys | “Surfin’ U.S.A.” (1963)

This Beach Boys hit is essentially Chuck’s “Sweet Little Sixteen” with new lyrics penned by Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson and singer Mike Love, who was uncredited.

Wilson liked how Berry’s lyrics named key places in the U.S. and thought a song that gave a shout out to California’s top surf spots could be a hit.

“I just took ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ and rewrote it into something of our own,” Wilson told The Los Angeles Times in 2015.

While the Leonard Chess biopic Cadillac Records depicts Berry (played by Mos Def) as being angry about Wilson’s appropriation of his music, in reality the guitarist liked “Surfin’ U.S.A.” and reportedly even complimented the Beach Boys.

“We ran into Chuck Berry in Copenhagen and he told us he loves ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’,” guitarist Carl Wilson recalled.

But that didn’t stop him from demanding his cut.

Beach Boys manager Murray Wilson (the father of Brian and his brothers) gave the song to Berry’s publisher, Arc Music, and for a while the song was credited solely to Berry, although in later years it has been shared by Berry and Wilson.

2) The Beach Boys | “Fun, Fun, Fun” (1964)

These guys again! You’d be forgiven for hearing Carl Wilson’s opening guitar solo to this early Beach Boys hit and thinking it was a cover of “Johnny B. Goode” – it’s nearly identical to Berry’s timeless intro to his 1958 classic track.

But Berry didn’t sue, and he likely couldn’t have, considering that he had himself copped the lines from Carl Hogan’s intro to the Louis Jordan’s 1946 tune “Ain’t That Just Like a Woman (They’ll Do It Every Time).”

Citing his influences, Berry said, “The main guy was Louis Jordan. I wanted to sing like Nat Cole, with lyrics like Louis Jordan, with the swing of Bennie Goodman with Charlie Christian on guitar, playing Carl Hogan’s riffs, with the soul of Muddy Waters.”

3) The Beatles | “I Saw Her Standing There” (1963)

“From the first minute we heard the great guitar intro to ‘Sweet Little Sixteen,’ we became fans of the great Chuck Berry,” Paul McCartney wrote upon Berry’s passing. “We learnt so many things from him which led us into a dream world of rock ’n’ roll music.”

Like his Beatle bandmate John Lennon, who was famously known to pinch Berry (see below), the bassist appropriated the bass line to this early Beatles cut from Berry’s catalog, specifically the track “I’m Talking About You,” which the Beatles performed on the BBC in 1963.

“I played exactly the same notes as he did and it fitted our number perfectly,” McCartney revealed in his autobiography, Many Years From Now. “Even now, when I tell people, I find few of them believe me; therefore, I maintain that a bass riff hasn’t got to be original.”

4) The Beatles | “Come Together” (1969)

John Lennon’s opening composition from Abbey Road begins by lifting a pair of lines from the second verse of Berry’s 1956 cut “You Can’t Catch Me,” with a minor alteration: Lennon sings “Here come ol’ flattop, he come groovin’ up slowly,” while Berry’s original was, “Here come a flattop, he was movin’ up with me.”

Originally played at a faster tempo than it appears on Abbey Road, “Come Together” was too close to Berry’s tune for McCartney, who suggested the Beatles give the song a different groove to help disguise the obvious similarities in the lyrics and melody.

“I said, ‘Let’s slow it down with a swampy bass-and-drums vibe.’ I came up with a bass line and it all flowed from there.”

That didn’t stop Berry’s publisher Big Seven Music from filing a claim of copyright infringement. 

The case was settled out of court after Lennon agreed to record three songs from Big Seven’s catalog.

5) The Yardbirds | “Jeff’s Boogie” (1966)

This hyperspeed instrumental showcase is a highlight of Roger the Engineer, the Yardbirds’ psychedelic rock effort featuring Jeff Beck, who takes his cues here from Berry’s 1958 romp “Guitar Boogie.”

Berry’s version may be his own take on Arthur Smith’s 1948 12-bar Western swing track that bears the same name, which makes sense when you consider that Berry’s music was a fusion of R&B and country.

Beck’s version became a staple of his live shows, and he performed it with Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1984 (see the Live in Honolulu DVD) and during their 1989 tour.

Browse the Chuck Berry catalog here.

Albert Cummings is an anomaly. A late bloomer by anybody’s standards he started playing guitar at 27. Indeed, at an age when some of the world’s greatest musicians checked out, Cummings was just checking in.

Once his superlative musical talent was eventually tapped into there was no going back and his unique brand of pyrotechnic electric blues rapidly became an unstoppable force.

Before long, he was sharing stages with the likes of B.B. King, Johnny Winter and Buddy Guy. In fact, Cummings is regarded as one of the greatest blues guitar players on the circuit today. Renowned for his raw, off-the-cuff stage performances, what you see really is what you get with this maestro.

With over two decades’ worth of solo releases under his belt, his recorded body of work catalogs a guitarist that has gone from strength to strength.

And the best, he promises, is yet to come.

His tenth solo album – aptly titled Ten – is due for release this year on April 8 via Ivy Music. Recorded in Peter Frampton’s Phenix Studios in Nashville with legendary engineer/producer Chuck Ainlay (Dire Straits & Mark Knopfler, Taylor Swift, Dolly Parton) Ten also features a guest performance by Vince Gill.

We caught up with Cummings ahead of the album’s release to talk guitars, Nashville and the blues.

You’re currently endorsed by Fender. What is it you like about Fender guitars?

I’m almost exclusively Fender. That’s pretty much all I’ve ever played. Gibson have sent me stuff before. And PRS sent me three or four guitars once, but I could never find the tone I liked. They were beautiful pieces of work – all this quilted maple and stuff – but, boy, I just wish they sounded as good as they looked! I like the simplicity of Fenders. They’re pretty rugged too.

What’s your go-to guitar right now?

I call it CC. It’s a Strat from around ‘92/’93. It’s on its second neck. Fender put a new neck on it for me because I wore out the truss rod on the last one. I just wore it out again. I tend to beat on my guitar a little bit.

I’ve put at least five different pickup configurations in it. I ended up with one of the most unique configurations I’ve ever seen on a Stratocaster. I have a Tele pickup in the neck, a Texas Special in the middle, and I have a ’59 humbucker in the [bridge]. That guitar with the five positions: you can get any sound you want.

Also, I play heavy Dunlop strings – a 12 down to a 58. And with those gauge strings I can get a beautiful clean sound. With that pickup configuration there’s not a sound I can’t get.

What amps did you use to record Ten?

I’m a [Fender] Vibro-King junky. On this album, I used a Vibro-King along with a [Fender] Vibroverb – the original brownface Vibroverb model with two ten-inch speakers. I think it was Peter Frampton’s.

I love a Vibro-King because it’s got the punch, but it sometimes misses that little bit of sweetness. So, live, I usually play a [Fender] Deluxe with it at the same time.

For those who haven’t seen you perform, how would you describe your live shows?

When I start a show, I don’t usually stop until I’m finished. I don’t talk much; I just go from one song to the next. I believe if you’re thinking, you’re stinking. And I rarely use a set list. I just let the music take me where it’s going to go.

My style of music is completely off the cuff. People ask me, ‘what was that third song?’ or whatever and I’ll have literally no idea. I’ll jump off songs into others. If I feel like playing something, I’ll give it a shot.

What did you learn from gigging with B.B. King?

B.B. King taught me that I’m there as an entertainer. If the audience wants to hear something, I’m happy to oblige. I go onstage and I become a member of the audience. There’s no negativity on my stage. I want people to come to my shows and feel good when they’re there, and when they’re going home. I’m just an entertainer. That’s my goal.

How did you meet B.B. King?

I was able to meet B.B. King’s assistant manager and she came to see me play when I did the first show with Double Trouble. The next thing I knew I was on stage with B.B. I did several tours with him and ended up being really good friends with the man. It was just such an education for me to sit and watch B.B. King every night.

That man has been the biggest inspiration in my life. And not only with guitar. Anybody that picks up a guitar will be influenced by B.B. King. They might not realize it, as they might have copped something from somebody else who was directly influenced by B.B. King.

B.B. told me one night: “We don’t steal licks – we borrow them.” And that’s so true. It’s like vocabulary – the more words you know, the smarter you are. The guitar communicates, no matter what language you speak.

What’s the best way to advance as a guitarist?

I think the best way to advance on your own instrument is to get lost. Because once you get lost, you learn a new trail to get out. If you’re following the same path, you’re not lost. So, my advice is just run off into the woods and don’t think about the path. If you make a mistake, just do it again and it’ll sound intentional. [laughs]

Tell us about how your career took off.

The first time I ever played with a band I was 27 years old (I just turned 54), and it was a couple of years after that when Double Trouble had me come down to Austin. Then I met B.B. King and Buddy Guy and Johnny Winter. It happened quickly. I was doing all that and still building houses.

And to this day, you’re still working in construction…

There’s a song on the new album, Ten, called “Two Hands.” It’s one of my favorites and it tells the tale of a working man. I think a lot of people are going to relate to that song.

What was your experience of recording the new album, Ten?

I’ve never been so excited about a record before. I’m still on the honeymoon. Every day I think about it. This one is completely different. I’ve been growing as an artist over the years, but everything came together at the right time on this one.

Chuck Ainlay is like the Stevie Ray Vaughan of producers. He is so gifted. He’s incredible. The first thing he said to the band was, “Our main goal here is to give Albert something he’s never had before.” And they certainly did. They just killed it. Vince Gill told me, “You’ve got the best players in Nashville, Albert.”

What’s your philosophy to making music?

My philosophy in life is that building something – be it a house or a record – takes a team. And if I can assemble the right team, everything’s better. They were just pushing me and making me feel as comfortable as possible. They were just warm-hearted, beautiful people and they have my ultimate respect.

I really wanted them to bring their personalities and their feelings. I mean, I was in Nashville. Every city has a different sound, and I believe if I cut that record in L.A., London, or Austin it would have sounded different.

I want every record I do to be my best one. Like every house I build, I want it to be better than the last.

Pre-order Ten by Albert Cummings from February 18, 2022, here.

The traditional blues players from the 1920s through the ’60s established many popular song structures, chords and guitar techniques. It’s testament to the quality and enduring popularity of these artists that so much of the identity of their playing can still be heard in today’s blues music. 

Less well known is that blues is at the heart of much of the rock and metal that would emerge from the ’70s on – so there’s something for everyone to learn. What more reason do you need to follow our lesson on some core blues basics?

Classic Blues

Get jamming the easy way, with a simple, traditional repeating boogie riff in the style of the great John Lee Hooker (Ex. 1). Based around an A root note, this line can easily be taken through a standard 12-bar blues progression (A - D - E) by shifting the pattern up one string to a “D shape” riff and down one string set for the E chord.

Ex. 2 uses the rhythm and blues groove first popularized by Bo Diddley in his self-titled 1955 single and known today as the “Bo Diddley beat.” It’s been adapted by many artists, including the Rolling Stones in “Not Fade Away,” Bruce Springsteen in “She’s the One” and George Michael in “Faith.”

This catchy groove is all about the rhythm and timing, so strum slowly at first, then try using some other chords you know. To achieve the desired feel, keep your picking hand moving in a continuous, uninterrupted down-up-down-up manner with the underlying 16th-note pulse, even during the rests.

Stevie Ray Vaughan was famed for the shuffle rhythms and ferocious lead work he’d coax from his “Number One” Strat. In Ex. 3, a blues bass line is woven around an open A5 power chord. You get the weight of the chord while the bass line outlines a more sophisticated A7 harmony. Listen to SRV’s “Pride and Joy” and “Rude Mood” for inspiration.

Ex. 4 shows a blues turnaround inspired by Eric Clapton, who adapted Robert Johnson-style changes to electric blues guitar. Playing fingerstyle will help make all the melody notes and the descending bass notes ring out clearly.

Funk-rock blends nicely with blues rhythms, as Jimi Hendrix demonstrated in many of his classic tracks. Ex. 5 is informed by his style and employs one of his favorite chords (the 7#9, often dubbed “the Hendrix chord”) played in both E and C. In the single-note part of the riff, you can pull the 5th-fret G note slightly sharp for an even bluesier flavor.

B.B. King was famed for his soulful touch and his quivering “butterfly” vibrato technique, which is deftly employed with the A note in Ex. 6. To emulate B.B.’s signature sound, aim for a quick wobble of the string but without too much pitch change. Rest the base of your fretting finger on the side of the fretboard then “flutter” your hand around this pivot point to create the vibrato. It’s easier than using pure finger strength, and it’s pure B.B.

In blues circles, a mini sweep across the strings is referred to as a rake. This drag of the pick is more of a percussive effect, so the notes don’t need to be perfectly fretted. You can even mute the strings entirely as you pick, so that the rake notes are pitchless “chucks.” We’ve written picking directions for the rakes here (Ex. 7). Notice how the quarter-tone bend in bar 1 provides a blues edge too.

Playing two notes at once is a great way to thicken up your guitar sound. This is an effective thing to do to help avoid the dreaded “tone dropout” you might experience when soloing in a power trio. Ex. 8 is inspired by John Mayer, and in bar 2 we’re playing a line that descends the B and high E strings in diatonic 3rds strings, sweetly harmonizing the key of A minor.

From Eric Clapton to Joe Bonamassa, great blues guitarists seem to have a never-ending vocabulary of stock phrases, yet they somehow always sound authentic. The key is to use the minor or major pentatonic scale as a foundation and keep your solos simple at first. In Ex. 9, we’re playing a very triplet-y phrase based on the A minor pentatonic scale (A, C, D, E, G) and presenting ideas that can be reimagined in myriad ways.

With some minor pentatonic basics under our belts, we can expand these ideas into something more sophisticated, using fast pentatonic flurries, as demonstrated in Ex. 10. Legendary bluesman Buddy Guy often plays fast flurries of notes, straight from the minor pentatonic scale. That means the shape feels familiar but you’ll be delivering more “angular” phrased licks.

Blues isn’t only about minor keys. Listen to Freddie King’s “Hide Away” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Need Your Love So Bad.” Both of these songs feature extensive use of the major pentatonic scale (intervallically spelled 1, 2, 3, 5, 6). The simple lick shown in Ex. 11 is designed to help get you started with this warm-sounding set of notes. Watch out though. There’s a bluesy minor note in there too – the 5th-fret C, right before the last dyad (two-note chord).

The previous lick hinted at an idea we’re going exploring more fully in our next example – mixing up parallel major and minor pentatonic scales in solos. Why bother? Well, the combination of “happy” major and “serious” minor scales sounds way more sophisticated than sticking to just one or the other. Ex. 12 keeps things simple, but this idea is a key part of blues, so experiment!

21st Century Blues

Whether it’s the fuzz-fuelled lo-fi riffing of the White Stripes and the Black Keys, or the Zeppelin-like hard rock sensibilities of Rival Sons and Greta Van Fleet, it’s fair to say that blues has evolved somewhat in recent years.

Though many of the chords and scales owe a debt to earlier forebears, many bands are putting their own stamp on blues with retro-inspired drive tones and tone-bending effects like octavers and wild fuzz distortions. Here we’re looking at a few of the tricks and riffing tropes of the current generation of blues players.

Dan Auerbach

Spiky fuzz distortion tones have been a big part of the signature retro sounds of the aforementioned bands. The riff shown in Ex. 14 is designed to make good use of a dirt pedal. If you’re using a regular drive pedal, keep the treble high, roll off a little bass and experiment with your amp’s EQ and gain.

From Robert Johnson and Elmore James to Derek Trucks, Gary Clark Jr. and Auerbach, slide guitar has long been at the heart of blues. The simple electric slide lick shown in Ex. 15 will help you develop this tricky technique.

Place your slide on your 3rd or 4th finger and aim directly over the fret you’re playing (not behind it). Use your 1st finger to dampen the strings behind the slide and suppress unwanted string noise and overtones. Additionally, it helps to use your pick hand to mute the strings your not playing on at the moment.

Contemporary bands’ minor pentatonic riffs owe as much to ’70s rock as they do to early blues. The pentatonic riff shown in Ex. 16 could easily be a Black Keys tune, a Led Zeppelin line, or you could slow it down and give it a traditional “Hoochie Coochie Man” treatment. It describes an E minor tonality, so the 6th string can be used as your tonal center to “bounce” the other notes off.

The advent of multi-track recording in the ’70s saw bands double-tracking guitar riffs. In recent years, duos like Royal Blood have used switching systems to recreate the effect in live performances. The layered riff in Ex. 17 is ideal for two guitars.

We take this idea further in Ex. 18. Here, we’re playing a simple melodic line on top of our previous riff. To make sure it stays riffy, we’re following the same rhythm for both lines – no solo widdle here! It’s based on the E minor pentatonic scale (E, G, A, B, D) throughout.

If you’re playing in a guitar-drums duo, White Stripes-style, you’ll need to fill out your sound. Ex. 19 covers plenty of notes to provide a full backing sound, then punctuating them with some fat-sounding power chords. For more weight, think about using an octaver effect as Jack White and Auerbach and Royal Blood’s Mike Kerr might do.

Even simple minor pentatonic licks can kick a song’s proverbial rear end. Ex. 20 demonstrates this with a lick inspired by Auerbach’s fretwork on the Black Keys song “Eagle Birds.”

Jackson Browne is wandering the backstage caverns of San Francisco's Cow Palace looking a bit worried. "Where's Lindley?" he asks his road manager. "We're onstage in 15 minutes!"

A door at the end of the hallway is seeming blasted open by a torrent of beefy sustained lap steel licks. Inside, Lindley is squatting precariously, his Hawaiian guitar balanced on his knees. Crunching chords and crystal-clear single notes are pouring out of a crude-looking amplifier about a foot in front of his face.

"I want this one, Howard," David says to a large man who is smiling like a proud father. "Not this model, not one like this, but this one, OK?"

"It's just a prototype." Howard Dumble points out.

"Fine," nods Lindley. "I'll take it."

David Lindley, of course is notorious for using a vast array of exotic guitars from an instrument collection that number well over 100. But on the road, he uses only one brand of amplifier, a fact that makes Howard Dumble understandably proud.

As Lindley told Guitar Player in a July '77 interview, "I've got a lot of little amps, but on the road, I always use Dumble amps because they never break down. We went about getting the sound in those amps by taking an old Fender Deluxe to Howard Dumble and saying, 'We want this, but bigger and louder.' And Howard got the closest of anybody I've heard."

Howard Dumble grew up in Bakersfield, California, and began building transistor radios from scratch at age 12. He took up guitar at 16 (he later did his fair share of studio dates in Hollywood, which included working with songwriter Jim Webb), and in 1965 built a series of amplifiers for Mosrite that were used by the Ventures.

An extensive tour backing Buffy Sainte-Marie financed Dumble's first "out of the backyard and into a building" amp shop in 1968, in Santa Cruz, California. The following year, Dumble came out with his Explosion model amplifier (his original prototype still works), which later evolved into the Overdrive Special.

As well as the Big Tex reverb unit his line of amplifiers currently includes seven basic models: the Overdrive, the Steel-String Singer, the Winterland and the Dumbleland for bass and electric guitar, the rack-mount Phoenix, a no-frills 50-watt Dumbleman, and the Dumblelator.

From the beginning, he has remained a one-man operation, personally building every one of his amplifiers by hand.

In spite of their steep price tags – a standard 100-watt Overdrive head sells for $1,925; the Steel-String Singer and Dumbleland each go for $5,000 before options ­– Dumbles are always in demand, and Howard has his hands full keeping up with orders.

Besides Lindley and Browne, the impressive roster of Dumble users includes Larry Carlton, Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jay Graydon, Ry Cooder, Tom Verlaine, Eric Johnson, Steve Lukather, Robben Ford, Dean Parks, Carlos Rios, The Beach Boys, Christopher Cross, Tiran Porter, Jimmy Haslip, Jerry Miller, Thom Rhotella, Randy California, Terry Haggerty, Rick Vito, Kenny Loggins, and many others.

In discussing what's so special about his amplifiers, Dumble uses aesthetic more than technical terms. "That's the bottom line," he stresses. "It's the emotional influence that's really important; technology is secondary – it's just a vehicle. The idea is to have lots of fun."

Improvisational specialist Henry Kaiser elaborates on what sets the Dumble apart from the rest of the amp crowd: "Number one, you could drop the thing out of a four-story building, replace any tubes that break, and it'll work fine. It does appear to be the most durably built amp possible.

“Number two, it seems to me that Howard, through a long intuitive working process, tunes the amps and designs by ear so that they're very sophisticated machines for producing a wide variety of tones and distortion colorations. Because of my specific avant-garde bent, I'm really interested in tone and timbre, and I need to have a really wide palette of tonal color available to me, and I've got about four times as many colors available on the Dumble. Any other amp sounds awful to me. I feel terrible if I play anything else – except for a Fender Champ."

In an August '77 Guitar Player feature, the late Lowell George of Little Feat was more succinct. "It's like a Fender made right," he said of his Dumble. "It's the best amp I've ever played through."

Your amps have a reputation for almost never breaking down. How do you build them with such durability?

Those are absolute guarded secrets. In fact, if you take the amplifier apart, you can't detect how I do it. I definitely have secrets that make the amp perform and last the way it does. With most companies, it's just a misapplication of technology. You don't have to destroy the product – you don't have to get a Variac and turn it up to 170 volts – to get good results. An extreme amount of attention is paid to every connection. Plus, I found which parts last and which ones don't.

What made you gravitate towards electronics in the first place?

I loved music, for one thing. Music's always been a passion. I used to listen to Les Paul and Mary Ford as a kid. Also, I come from an engineering family; my father developed one of the first automatic transmissions.

It wasn't hard to absorb the technology; it was just there to do. I also saw that I could make some bucks at it. I started making small pocket radios from scratch for the kids in school for $5 a pop. I was doing real well until one day everybody had one, and there were enough radios in the class that you could hear the local rock station at a small din through all the earpieces. So, the teacher finally busted me.

What inspired you to first build an amp?

I was a junior in high school, and this guy named Jack Smith came over and wanted me to build a piece of equipment for the junior baseball association. He said that he had access to a "mountain of parts" – I said okay!

We went down to this big warehouse, and there were heaps of parts, so we gleaned as many as we could – all free. We built this huge 200-watt power amplifier so they could announce to nine baseball diamonds.

As I understand it, it still works today. Then, Jack and I made some Dual showman-type amps, although we couldn't get Fender transformers – they were very tight about what they'd send you – so we used David Hafler transformers, which made the amp sound quite extraordinary.

Prior to building your own amps, had you taken apart other amps such as Fenders and Gibsons?

I can draw some of the those schematics from memory [laughs]. Of course, I had to absorb other approaches. In fact, my old Fender mods I did in the late '60s were exactly the same as the schematics a lot of the later high-gain amplifiers used.

How did you come to make amps for the Ventures?

I was an 18-year-old kid in school in Bakersfield, and I went to see Semie Moseley, who was the only person I had access to there. I walked in and just bold-faced said, "I've got something that sounds like nothing else. You better hear it." And it flipped him out; he said, "This is the best thing I've ever heard."

He offered to go in with me to build 10 amplifiers. He bought the parts and paid me $90 a week – for about four weeks, and then I had to work for free. But I still got to build 10 amplifiers on a production basis when I was only a kid. They were called Mosrite amps, but they were my design. Actually, I built 11, so I still have the original one I built.

The Ventures played through them and were really interested, but it was a little too much rock for them. They wanted me to go into business with them, but I decided against it, and went back to playing in studios and in rock bands.

Did your early amps have certain qualities lacking in commercially available amps of that period?

Yes, I definitely made sure they had more frequency bandwidth. One thing I noticed about the early guitar amps was that they were real limited, especially in the lower end. But you have to be careful to make sure you still keep the proper midrange and treble response. I found that out early on.

You can't build a hi-fi circuit and expect it to be a good guitar amp – it just doesn't work out. You need a whole different response curve. But I did notice that if I put a little more low end into the preamp circuitry, it was much more tasteful and fun to play.

Once you got started, did a Dumble philosophy evolve?

I try to be flexible. I've always been aware that whatever I make has to be crafted with the best intentions. Never have anything shoddy. Always make sure that it works and looks perfect. The actual techniques I use to get the sound that I go after have evolved extensively. It's a growing process. That's the toughest thing about staying with one thing. You're always thinking of new ways to do it. Basically, I've kept the Overdrive the same but the other models are open to flexibility.

What changes did the Explosion undergo before it became the Overdrive Special?

The active circuitry changed quite a bit, and the tone circuitry did also. But the concept of processing the signal post preamp stayed the same. Most other high-gain amplifiers use a pre-preamp gain boost, but I broke away from that quite early in the late '60s. I found that trying to build the signal up before the preamp had a tendency to really overload the preamp, and you got nonharmonic tones and a very unmusical end result.

Plus, you ran into a lot of vacuum-tube problems with harmonics. So, what I wanted to do was get all that wonderful oomph and beautiful sustain and harmonic richness without the electronic troubles.

Were you making what was to become the Overdrive before you made the Steel-String Singer?

The Steel-String Singer came later, but I actually started making a series of amplifiers called the Dumbleland in about '66, and I still make them. That was the forerunner of the Steel-String Singer. I didn't change a whole lot about that; it was a design way ahead of its time. It was too much power and too silky clean for people. It's perfect for Stevie Ray, though. He has a hard time playing an Overdrive.

Why is the Overdrive so sensitive?

It's a different kind of signal handling. In the Overdrive, I approach gain levels that are extremely intense; within the linear region, I have a signal gain capability of one million. So if you stuck 10 microvolts in, you'd get 10 volts back. And I do it with stability, and it's still very musical.

The best way to approach an Overdrive is real slow. Walk up to it, look at the knobs, have it turned down real low, and then get a feeling for it. Learn what to do with your fingers to make it respond well. If you walk right up to it, it has a tendency to absolutely frighten some people.

The secret control on the Overdrive's panel section is the ratio control, which controls how much overdrive is fed back into the circuit. If you turn that up, it's Rock City.

How different is the Overdrive Special you customized for David Lindley from a standard model?

I might have changed the value of a capacitor to some extent, so that it has a different treble response, but the circuitry is basically the same.

Lindley says that for certain sounds he's looking for, you sometimes borrow his guitar and Dumble for the weekend to match the amp to the guitar?

That's true. The amplifier responds so differently to each guitar that to get some effects, I need to use the player's guitars, instead of my own. That's one of the great things about the amplifier; it doesn't modify any guitar into any one sound or homogenize it. It expands whatever you start with.

The amplifier is a real important part of the sound regeneration system, but it needs to be very responsive to whatever the guitar is delivering. The philosophy I try to keep in the amplifier is that whatever you can hear in your head, this will help you get it.

Stevie Ray Vaughan calls his Steel-String Singer the "King Tone Consoul."

There are some different things about Stevie's. His is set up more like a bass amp, modified to accommodate the guitar range. It's not the usual lead guitar "Singer" approach. One thing he liked was that he could turn the volume control all the way up and it didn't distort – it just got louder.

He does make it distort sometimes because he has about 50 megatons of pressure when he attacks the strings [laughs]. He gets an incredible amount of signal out of his guitar, and most amplifiers can't take it. He did his first album with a bass amp I'd made for Jackson Browne.

Some players describe Dumbles as different, more powerful, more durable more efficient versions of a Fender Deluxe

That's a good way to describe it – in a limited fashion. There are some great qualities to a small Deluxe. You get a great harmonic structure at a small acoustic volume. It's real pleasing, especially when you're playing by yourself. But that sound is not convertible into a group ambience – it's gone.

So, in the respect that I try to get something comfortable and very musical, only in a bigger fashion, that's a good analogy. But the circuitry is not even close. I use vacuum tubes, and transformers and knobs, but the similarity stops there. To get the result I want, I have to use unique circuitry. It's my tone circuits and coupling circuits and the way I process phase-inversion.

Can you "Dumble-ize" a Fender amp to the point that it shares the Dumble philosophy and sound, or would it be a compromise?

It's a compromise. The actual physical construction of the Fender limits what can be done. In fact, after the last Steel-String Singer mod I did to David Lindley's amps, he no longer uses the Fender Bassman I Dumbleized for him. He wanted this luscious transparency and response – like floating in white clouds – and I came up with special circuitry.

I can use a Fender chassis, but you have to rip everything off of it, fill in all the holes, and re-drill it. They're just a little bit too squashed. A distance of half a centimeter makes a big difference in the way something sounds. It's a science involved with what's called circuit constants.

Instead of a single bright/deep switch, most of your amps have separate bright and deep switches. Can you use both at the same time?

Oh, you bet. It gets luscious low notes that you could float on and beautiful, crystalline highs that are silky as glass.

How many watts are the various models?

The overdrives are 100 watts, but they're switchable down to 50, and I do make a special 150-watt Overdrive, which is a lot of fun. The range in power goes from a 25-watt recording amp called the Hotel Hog up to the 450-watt Winterland, named after the concert hall in San Francisco.

Could there be an ultimate amp for you, or are the Overdrive and Steel-String Singer too distinctive to be combined?

Well, the Phoenix series is where I've done that – so you can combine things – because it's a rack-mounted affair. You can buy all the separate preamps, with or without overdrive, and a choice of 50-, 100-, or 150-watt power amplifiers, and hook them together. The overdrive section is expanded – instead of two overdrive controls, you have four.

After experimenting with various speakers, what do you favor?

I've gone with everything. There are a lot of things I still like. The most versatile is the EV. But all manufacturers, including Altec and JBL, make wonderful speakers that do specific jobs other speakers can't do. I divide speakers into two classifications: the efficient and the low-efficient. Both are very useable.

Low efficiency speakers are things like Celestion and Jenson and PAS. Usually because of the physical construction, they don't get the same acoustic level per watt as the Altecs, JBLs, and EVs do. There's an advantage to that, because you can make the amplifier work harder to get the same acoustic level, and a whole different kind of harmonic structure results.

I love the sound of JBLs, especially for chords, but I had a lot of trouble with 4" voice coil not traveling in a linear fashion. The actual coil would short out against the magnet structure. The Altecs didn't do that, so I was using them up until '79, when EV started coming out the the EVM series.

How does your philosophy on speaker enclosures contrast with other companies?

I think mine's different. I just don't believe in a baffle board with a couple of sides. Everything is designed to respond tonally. Even my open-back enclosures use air to the optimum. It's an ongoing process; I'm still finding out things that are useful.

There's a definite technique to developing enclosures. Instead of increasing the output all from the front by feeding more watts in, I designed a special series of open-back enclosures so that there's actually an air pole inversion process – I make the air respond in an in-phase relationship, both in front and in the rear of the enclosure. So, from the same amount of speakers, it's almost a doubling of sound.

Does that change the tonal quality?

Yes. The low end is absolutely luscious. You feel like you're floating on a football field filled with marshmallows. And it gives a singe to the midrange that puts solos right out there. It works great for chords and solos, but especially well for slide. It's the kind of enclosure that Lindley and Lowell George used.

Is there a single emotional aim you're shooting for, or many?

It's a whole panorama. I don't believe in being confined. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands or millions, of valid guitar tones. When the air becomes electric, that's the right sound, no matter what the one is. It's that sound exciting the senses.

Jimmie Vaughan’s reputation as a premier electric guitar slinger stretches way back to the ’60s, when he found regional success in Texas, crossing paths with many of the big names of the time, including Jimi Hendrix.

For most listeners outside Texas, Vaughan first came to prominence in the late ’70s as the killer guitarist in what was arguably the first really cool blues band in eons, the Fabulous Thunderbirds. After seven albums of no-frills, down-and-dirty blues guitar, Vaughan left the group, made an album with his brother Stevie – 1990’s Family Style – and settled into a solo career playing blues-rock songs of his own and mixing in acclaimed collaborations with numerous blues luminaries, including a pair of albums with Omar Dykes.

In recent years, though, Vaughan has made several return visits to the music he loves best: the rare and frequently arcane recordings of R&B artists he grew up with, like Jimmy Reed, Jimmy Liggins, Bobby Charles and Nappy Brown.

He released his first R&B covers album, Plays Blues, Ballads & Favorites, in 2010, and followed it up in 2011 with Plays More Blues, Ballads & Favorites. His third album in the series, 2019’s Baby, Please Come Home is a righteous celebration of blues, while last year saw the release of The Pleasure's All Mine (The Complete Blues, Ballads & Favorites Sessions).

Earlier this year, fans were treated to The Jimmie Vaughan Story – an encyclopaedic 96-track 5-CD epic release. Showcasing Jimmie’s distinctive take on the blues these recordings comprise rare and unreleased gems from the initial part of Jimmie’s career, including his early bands Storm and The Fabulous Thunderbirds.

Back in 2019, GP caught up with the man himself shortly after the release of Baby, Please Come Home.

Baby, Please Come Home is your third album of blues covers. Is this the plan going forward?

At this point, I’m just doing stuff that I like. That’s the truth of it. I just like those songs. Basically, when I write my own stuff, it sounds like the same kind of thing, and nobody knows these songs. And I really enjoy making this music with my band. We get to play blues, we can swing, and we can rock out.

Are you no longer interested in writing original material?

Well, if you’re gonna write, you have to get up in the morning and write something every day and really work on it. I am gonna make an album with songs that I’ve written at some point, but this is where I’m happiest at the moment.

It’s interesting to hear how your vocals have developed over each album and how you’ve really found your voice.

For years, I didn’t want to sing, until finally I got into a position where I had to sing or go home. When I was a kid – maybe 15 or 16 – you couldn’t tell from my playing how old I was. I think my voice has gotten deeper, maybe partly from getting old and also from just doing it.

Does the singing change your phrasing on the guitar?

I think when you play for many years, your phrasing will always change as you try to reproduce the stuff that you hear in your head. I always think of myself as a sax player. I like the way the sax player expresses himself, and, especially if you’re singing, you kind of express your song in the voice, then you go back and do it on the guitar. I suppose that makes it sound pretty simple!

Guitarwise, are you still using your signature Strats into Grammatico amps?

Yeah. I use Fender Bassmans as well. A Grammatico is really just a hand-wired Bassman. I like the way 10-inch speakers sound. I used to really enjoy the Matchless, but they quit making them. It’s hard to beat a Fender Bassman though.

You keep your guitar volume low but run your amp high.

That “hots” the amp up, gets it on the edge. That’s the sweet spot where you get the best from the amp. I like it where it sounds like it’s going to blow up. It sounds present.

From the first Fabulous Thunderbirds, it was obvious that you put thought into the spaces between notes – that what you didn’t play was as important as what you did play.

That was a “call and response” style that I learned from my heroes, even those who didn’t play guitar. When you first start to play as a kid, you want to fill up all the holes, but then you realize that the reason why you like certain people is not only because of their tone but also their phrasing.

Just the idea that you can have phrasing that sounds like jazz or blues is pretty intriguing to me. When I hear a sax player like Gene Ammons – he’ll play a phrase and then he’ll wait. And it’s the wait that gets you. That space to breathe. That space to give you time to feel what you just heard.

You had a great way of sitting in behind the harp on Kim Wilson’s solos and not taking up too much space.

I listened to Jimmy Rogers with Little Walter and Eddie Taylor with Jimmy Reed… All those guys. I loved the way they play. I’m a real big fan of that approach.

The first four Fabulous Thunderbirds albums were in a more traditional blues vein. Starting with Tuff Enuff, the music became more mainstream and the group had its greatest success.

Tuff Enuff was more rocky, but it was still true to what we’d been doing. We didn’t feel like we changed that much. The increased level of success had its good and bad points: You never get to come home, and you have too many gigs. Life starts getting in the way of all that.

We did have a fabulous time though, ’cause we were doing what we wanted. You know, when we started out playing covers of old rhythm and blues songs, record companies would say to us, “You can’t get a record deal. That’s a bunch of old shit that no one wants to hear.” We did it anyway, and we had to fight hard each step of the way.

So when we made Tuff Enuff, we just did it the way we wanted to. And we made them take their words back.

You really introduced a lot of those old blues players from the Excello label to a wider audience. Was that deliberate?

Well, what a great thing to do if we could do that. We were just playing what we wanted to hear. I never get tired of the Excello players: T-Bone Walker, Buddy Guy, Jimmy Reed…all the guys I’ve always loved.

Given the demands of success, did you split from the T-Birds because you felt burned out?

What happened was that the record company kept asking me and Stevie, would we do an album together, and we’d been thinking about it since we were little kids. We’d play at home for the guests. My dad would say, “Go get your guitars!” and we’d play for the people, and the guests would say, “Well that’s pretty good, kid. Maybe you guys could make a record someday.”

We ended up making Family Style. Then Stevie got killed before it came out, which really screwed everything up. I didn’t know what in the world to do, and everybody was just flipped out. I still can’t believe what happened, and I’m talking about my feelings and the way it still feels. It took me a long time to really get back. He was my little brother.

When we were kids, I was supposed to get him to school and back. Protect him. So it felt like I’d failed, even though there was nothing I could do about it. It took me a while to process everything.

Stevie never got to have a family or anything like that. I’ve been blessed. I have a wonderful family, I get to play guitar, I have a great band. I have all the wonderful things in life.

Had Stevie not died, do you think you would have followed a very different path and perhaps worked more closely with each other on a regular basis?

I think we would have done a tour and probably another album. But it’s all speculation. I might have done more with the T-Birds as well. It wasn’t like I was trying to quit the group to be with Stevie or he was leaving his band. This was just something different for us. We were just trying stuff.

Afterward, you came out with your first solo album, 1994’s Strange Pleasure. Did you feel under pressure to match the T-Bird standard once you were out on your own?

Well, you always feel pressure to try to make a better record next time. You have to follow yourself. What happens is, once in a while you just screw around with ideas and you get something really good. But you don’t know how that happens, ’cause if you could figure it out, you would do it every time.

It’s that “lightning in the bottle” moment.

Yeah. The gypsies call it duende. If you can find that in yourself, that’s the fun of it. I just love to play so much. If you keep playing everyday, and you keep working on it and your sound, I think it comes to you.

Buy Family Style here.

A blues-rock guitar player of astonishing prowess, Jeff Healey impressed everyone who heard him ply elastic licks, fluid bends and emotive vibrato from his Squier Strat. 

Here are five reasons he remains a guitar legend…

1. Matchless Technique

Born in Ontario, Canada, on March 25, 1966, Healey developed eye cancer before the age of one, requiring the removal of both eyes, which were replaced with ocular prostheses. At age three, he was given a guitar and shown how to place his hands on it, but Jeff preferred to play it in his lap, with both hands over the fretboard. He quickly developed on the instrument and by his early teens had formed his own rock quartet, Blue Direction.

2. Music Fanatic

Jeff’s early musical passions included old-time jazz, and he became proficient on trumpet and clarinet. While still in his teens, he began hosting his own music show on CIUT-FM, where he spun discs from his ever-growing collection of 78 rpm jazz records.

Later, after achieving fame, he would host a similar program titled My Kinda Jazz on Jazz.FM91 in Toronto, and eventually amassed some 30,000 jazz records, including many rare sides.

3. Platinum Success

By age 17, he had formed the Jeff Healey Band and begun playing at Toronto clubs, where he was spotted by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert Collins. In 1988, Healey and his band signed to Arista Records and released their debut record, See the Light, which contained his number-five Billboard Hot 100 hit, “Angel Eyes.” The disc went Platinum in the U.S. and made Healey a star.

4. Road House

During the making of See the Light, Healey and his band were cast in the Patrick Swayze movie Road House. The role gave Healey several scenes with Swayze and helped raise his profile further. He continued to fuel his success with albums like 1990’s Hell to Pay, which included performances from Mark Knopfler, Jeff Lynne and George Harrison, whose song “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” was featured on the record.

5. Multi-Instrumentalist

Healey’s later work became more jazz focused, and he went on to release three albums of traditional jazz music featuring himself on trumpet with his band Jeff Healey’s Jazz Wizards. He opened the club Healey’s in Toronto, where he performed with his blues band on Tuesday nights and his jazz group on Saturday afternoons.

Sadly, in 2005, he developed cancerous sarcomas in his legs, and in January 2007 underwent surgery to remove cancerous tissue from his lungs. Jeff Healey died on March 2, 2008, in Toronto at age 41, just nine days before the release of his final album, Mess of Blues.

Explore Jeff Healey’s catalog here.

In the first part of our lesson in navigating the last four bars of a blues guitar progression – the so-called “blues turnaround” – we looked at the styles of T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, Albert King, Peter Green and Eric Clapton. In this second part we conclude our study with a look at how guitar greats Carlos Santana, Gary Moore, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robben Ford and Larry Carlton create soulful and harmonically effective melodies in their turnarounds, adding melodic and harmonic interest and resolution that leads the song back to the start of a new verse.

As we saw previously, a turnaround is usually improvised and generally occurs in the last two bars of a blues or jazz standard. In the context of a 12-bar blues progression, the vocal melody typically concludes at the beginning of the 10th bar, so instead of simply sitting on the tonic, or “one,” chord for two more bars, a chordal turnaround is inserted in bars 11 and 12 to provide interest and forward momentum for the progression to loop back to its start.

Turnaround licks are frequently played over four chords (two per bar), usually I-IV-I-V or the jazzier I-VI-ii-V (lowercase Roman numerals indicate minor-type chords), but there are many variations, as these lessons demonstrate. The chord types may be diatonic or non-diatonic (based on the parent scale of the key, or not) and are also influenced by the style of blues (major versus minor).

As per the previous lesson, each player will be represented here with three examples that cover major and minor keys and feature a range of grooves and tempos. In addition, because some licks can be interchanged between major and minor keys, our examples will start on the same root note. Once again, the examples are presented as they would occur in the last four bars of a 12-bar blues progression – bars 9 through 12. Remember that turnarounds also function as intros and can be used to launch a blues song or guitar solo.

Carlos Santana’s famously Latin-influenced style and thick, singing tone provide a unique flavor to his blues playing. Performed in the key of F minor, the Santana-style turnaround changes in Ex. 1 (bars 11 and 12) are a variation on a jazzy i-VI-II-V progression, with tritone substitutions applied to what would be the VI and V chords (D and C), which become bIII (Ab) and bII (Gb), respectively. The lead melody in these bars begins on an Fm7 arpeggio (F Ab C Eb), which then follows the chromatically descending chord sequence by targeting the 5th of each chord.

Throughout his career, Santana has excelled at the moody minor blues style, as shown in Ex. 2’s i-vi-ii-V turnaround, also played in the key of F minor. Interestingly, while the progression is based overall on the F natural minor scale (F G Ab Bb C Db Eb), with its minor, or “flatted,” sixth and seventh scale degrees (Db and Eb), the vi chord in the turnaround, Dm7b5, is rooted on the major sixth scale degree, which is “borrowed” from the parallel F melodic minor scale (F G Ab Bb C D E).

Notice how this is highlighted in bar 11, perfectly outlining the underlying Dm7b5 chord. Likewise, the V chord in bar 12, C7aug, is native to the parallel F harmonic minor scale (F G Ab Bb C Db E). This kind of use of modal mixture – borrowing notes and chords from different, parallel modes based on the same root – adds color to a progression by offering different “flavors” of major or minor to the harmony.

Ex. 3 offers a Santana-inspired I-VI-ii-V turnaround phrase in the key of F major, in which the VI chord (D7) is non-diatonic, meaning not native to the parent F major scale, but is rather the temporary V chord of the ii chord, Gm, or, more simply, the “V of ii.” Notice how the third of D7, F#, is deliberately played on beat three of bar 11. Targeting a chord tone on the change in this way, especially the third, fifth or seventh. is a highly effective technique to employ to achieve a harmonically strong melody.

Gary Moore’s blues soloing style was soulfully passionate and hard hitting, often characterized by wide, ferocious finger vibrato and a bold, high-gain tone, but he also had a softer, jazzier side, which informs Ex. 4. Played in the key of G, the progression here includes a I-VI-ii-V turnaround (G7-E7- Am7-D7). Notice the way notes from the parallel scales G major pentatonic (G A B D E) and G minor pentatonic (G Bb C D F) are liberally combined and how in bars 11 and 12 the use of notes from G minor pentatonic add altered tensions to the E7 and D7 chords.

Moore also explored fusion with his band Colosseum II in the mid ’70s, and Ex. 5’s I-bVI-ii-V turnaround in the key go G minor (Gm-Ebmaj7-Am7b5-D7#9) is idiomatic to that style. The melody notes here are based mostly on G minor pentatonic, but notice in bar 11 the addition of the second, or ninth, A, and how the G harmonic minor scale (G A Bb C D Eb F#) is employed in bar 12 to generate D Phrygian-dominant sounds over the D7#9 chord.

Ex. 6 is a Moore-style solo passage played over a medium blues shuffle in the key of G, with a standard I-IV-I-V turnaround in bars 11 and 12 (G7-C7- G7-D7). Despite the use of nothing more than the G minor pentatonic scale, with the exception of the first note, A, which alludes to D minor pentatonic (D F G A C) over the V chord, D7, every chord change is beautifully acknowledged and outlined, due to the placement of the notes.

Stevie Ray Vaughan pioneered a blues rebirth in the ’80s, achieving a bold, muscular and distinctive electric guitar voice while remaining faithful to the heritage and language of the blues. 

Performed in the key of A, Ex. 7 presents an SRV-style lead phrase played over a I-Ib7-IV-IVm-I-V turnaround with a descending bass line (achieved through the use of chord inversions) that illustrates how parallel major and minor pentatonic sounds can be mixed, T-Bone Walker-style, to create licks that are both cool- and warm-sounding. Notice the inclusion in bar 11 of the high B note, which is the ninth of A. This note lends a sophisticated, “uptown” quality to the melody.

Played in the key of A minor, the i-iv-i-V turnaround in Ex. 8 (Am-Dm-Am-E7#9) is another example of “forward thinking.” Here, the first chord of the turnaround, Am, is anticipated with an A minor pentatonic lick at the end of bar 10. Notice also the trademark SRV hybrid-picked double-stops with grace-note hammer-ons in bar 11, which create a soulful, organ-like sound. In bar 12, A minor pentatonic licks provide altered tensions to the V chord, E7#9, with C serving as the #5, or b13, relative to E.

Presented in the key of A, Ex. 9 is a perfect example of how to simplify your turnaround approach, à la Stevie. Here, think only of the I and IV chords, A7 and D7. By ensuring your ideas and phrasing are strong, you can play over the entire sequence with an A blues-scale (A C D Eb E G) lick that concludes on the V chord (E7) on beat three of bar 12. Remember, it always sounds good to anticipate the resolution a beat or a half a beat early, as demonstrated here.

Robben Ford spent many years working as a sideman for acts that included the Yellow Jackets and Miles Davis before he set the world alight with his 1988 solo album, Talk to Your Daughter. The record showcased his virtuoso bluesy-fusion style, which he delivered with a fat, organic tone that many other players try to emulate. Ex. 10 shows a simple, yet effective Ford-style approach to a turnaround in the key of B that applies a descending phrase in bar 11, which creates a cool-sounding contrary motion against the ascending bass line.

Ex. 11 is a Ford-style phrase played over a i-vi-ii-V turnaround in the key of B minor. Remember that the vi chord in a minor turnaround (G#m7b5, in this case) is almost always rooted on the major sixth interval, relative to the tonic key (see Ex. 2). This is highlighted in bar 11 here, where a G# note is played on beat three. In bar 12, the ii chord (C#m7b5) is intentionally and effectively ignored to allow more time and space for a lick based on the tense-sounding F# Super-locrian mode (F# G A Bb C D E) to play out across the entire bar. This provides a strong, welcome resolution to the Bm tonic chord in bar 13 (bar 1 of the next 12-bar chorus).

Ford will frequently add the major-sixth interval to the minor pentatonic, allowing him to create a 13th sound over the tonic chord, as demonstrated in bar 11 of the I-IV-I-V turnaround shown in the key of B in Ex. 12. As the progression moves to the IV chord (E7), the tonic minor blues scale (B D E F F# A) is used to craft a long, rolling-and-tumbling phase that fits the chord perfectly. In bar 12 the B major tonality is acknowledged with a double-stop hammer-on, from the minor third of B, D, to the major third, D#. Note how the lick concludes on the b7 of the V chord, F#7, on beat three, with a chromatic “walk-down from F# to F to E.

Larry Carlton’s early influences included jazz guitarists Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery and blues virtuoso B.B. King. His blues playing is marked by beautifully sophisticated and tasteful phrasing that’s never overly complex, and always features his trademark wide dynamic range. Played in the key of E, Ex. 13 is a jazzy-bluesy turnaround in Carlton’s style. Note the use of the B.B. King “blues box” in tonic position throughout bar 11 and later transposed to fit the V chord (B7) in the following bar (starting with the bend to the 14th fret).

Ex. 14, in the key of E minor, offers a Carlton-style phrase played over a i-bVI-ii-V minor turnaround (Em-Cmaj7- F#m7b5-B7aug). The bVI chord in a minor turnaround shares the essential chord tones of the tonic minor and can effectively be ignored, hence the cool double-stop fourths in bar 12 that seem to float across the changes. These are followed in bar 13 by a major-sixth double-stop that outlines the ii chord’s b3 and b5 (A and C, respectively).

Ex. 15 wraps up our lesson with a Carlton-style phrase shown in the key of D and played over a I-VI-i-V turnaround (D7-B7-Em7-A7). In this final lick there’s a reminder of the effectiveness of mixing parallel major and minor pentatonic scales in your turnaround licks, in this case D major pentatonic (D E F# A B) and D minor pentatonic (D F G A C).

In bar 11 the D major tonality is enhanced by chromatically approaching the major third, F#, from a half step below, via a decorative finger slide. The rest of the lick draws from D minor pentatonic, highlighting chord tones and color notes from the accompanying harmony. Carlton does this effortlessly, and to achieve his level of easy sophistication will take dedicated practice and listening.

Ariel Posen is one of a group of players, including Josh Smith, Joe Bonamassa, Matt Schofield, Eric Johnson, JD Simo and others, who form what you might call the Tone Titans – players known as much for their mastery of sound as for their way with a riff.

“In the early 2000s, I was listening to a lot of Stevie Ray Vaughan and John Mayer,” Posen explains. “I started listening to what my playing sounded like and what it needed. I had a Boogie Rectifier, but I was playing for pop and country artists. I thought, What the hell am I doing with an amp like this?

“I realized I needed a blackface Fender sound. And then I found that, although a 15-watt Blues Junior is a great amp, it’s hard to play over a band with it. I realized I needed an amp that was between 40 and 60 watts. Later, I started hearing the difference between my Fender Hot Rod amp and reissue vintage amps, like the Super and Deluxe Reverbs. It’s as much about how it feels as how it sounds.”

A large part of Posen’s tone education lay in those epiphanies about using gear appropriate to the gig. “I started having these aha moments that told me these pedals are good but might not work for one situation, so I’m going to use them for another,” he says. “That’s when I started homing in on my gear.”

And so it began. As someone who was largely a sideman, Posen had a host of different performing situations which he needed to match with the appropriate gear. This led him down the slippery slope to Gear Acquisition Syndrome.

“You know how it goes,” Posen says. “You see a show and someone’s got this pedal or amp that sounds amazing. You buy it and you’re like, ‘It doesn’t sound like it did at that show. I still sound like me.’ But you keep it anyway and start acquiring stuff.”

Posen’s musical destiny appeared to be preordained from birth. His parents played in a klezmer band, and the guitarist has childhood memories of his mom and dad recording in the studio. Early piano training honed his understanding of theory, harmony and reading.

“I moved to guitar when everybody in school started playing,” he says. “After five or six months, it seemed they had stopped playing and I was the only one who kept going. I didn’t go to college or university for music. I took lessons for a couple years when I first started and then became self-taught. I spent a lot of time on the edge of my bed, at my desk, eating dinner and going to the bathroom, all with the guitar on. It’s like a part of me.”

After years of working as a session player and sideman, Posen became well known through his work with the Bros. Landreth. The brothers are no relation to slide wizard Sonny, though both Joey Landreth and Posen are also masterful slide players.

Posen was initially intrigued by the technique after hearing George Harrison’s slide work on “Free As a Bird,” the record Harrison, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr cut in 1995 from a 1977 demo by the late John Lennon. But it wasn’t until years later, when he heard Kevin Breit – guitarist with Cassandra Wilson, k.d. lang and Nora Jones – that he decided to try it himself.

“He was the first guy I heard play sliding chordal stuff and picking behind the slide,” Posen recalls. “I tuned a guitar to open E [low to high, E B E G  B E] and decided I’m learning how to do this.”

Eschewing other open tunings, Posen sticks to the open-E intervals but will also use them with the instrument tuned to various keys, like D or C. He’s also just as likely to play in standard tuning for slide or open tuning for standard playing. “I have been getting into playing in baritone tuning: B standard,” he says. “I think of all the tunings as colors. I like how they each bring something different to the table and inspire musical choices.”

Posen has now become associated with slide to a degree that warrants a signature model by the Rock Slide company. It’s made of brass and is long enough to cover all six strings. “I have played glass, ceramic and steel slides, but I like how brass sounds,” he explains.

“When I first started playing slide, I did the thing I tell everybody not to do, which was pick up the first slide I saw. It was probably three times the size of my finger. I tried it and said, ‘I don’t think I’m very good at this,’ threw it away and didn’t play slide for a while, rather than look for a perfect fit. My favorite slide players, with the exception of Ry Cooder, have the slide on their ring finger, but mine is on my pinkie. It’s what’s always felt comfortable.”

Various and low tunings require different sets of strings. “I use String Joy, a company out of Nashville,” Posen says. “They’ll do heavy-gauge custom sets for my open-D, -C and baritone guitars. For standard tuning, I typically use Ernie Ball, either .011 to .054, or .012 to .056.” When not playing fingerstyle, he uses 1.14 purple Tortex Dunlop picks.

As is the case with other Tone Titans, Posen’s presence looms large on YouTube, with hundreds of thousands of viewers catching his appearances on channels run by Andertons Music, That Pedal Show, Reverb.com, Carter Vintage Guitars and Norm’s Rare Guitars. This worldwide exposure comes in handy, whether the guitarist is touring around Europe, the U.S. or his native Canada.

“A lot of people come to gigs because they’ve seen me on Andertons, or something like that,” he says. “I keep telling musicians that with YouTube it’s never been easier to get yourself out there. It’s the modern-day TV. This is where people have gravitated.

“You have to hustle and find ways to get exposure. You don’t want to limit yourself to playing gigs. I’m always thinking of the big picture and taking any opportunity I can get. I’m very grateful that people like Andertons and Norm’s have me on. I don’t have any issue with how someone has heard of me. I’m just flattered when anybody likes it.”

Browse Ariel Posen music here.