In 2022, Lzzy Hale made history when she was honored with her first signature guitar, the Gibson Explorerbird – a spin-off of the Explorer, which in turn has been her go-to electric guitar for much of her career.

However, the Halestorm guitarist wasn't always such an Explorer loyalist. In fact, she started out on another Gibson model but ultimately switched ranks – after buying her first Explorer second-hand from Craigslist.

“Originally I was a Les Paul girl,” she reveals to Guitar World’s Paul Riario. “I fell in love with the Explorer shape while we were making our first album [2009's Halestorm] out in California.

“I ended up getting my first Explorer off Craigslist. This poor guy had to sell his guitar because of medical bills. So I went to see him, and he was so incredibly excited that it was gonna actually get played and go out on the road.”

The switch from Les Pauls to Explorers was a no-brainer, according to Hale. The Explorer just had the right vibe.

She continues, “What I love about the Explorer shape is that it doesn't matter whether you're front row or in the nose bleed [seats] section, you see that shape and it's undeniable. It's like, ‘Okay, this isn't going to be country. This probably isn't going to be pop. This has to be rock.’”

Shortly after unveiling her Explorerbird, Hale introduced the pointier-but-still-Explorer-inspired Kramer Voyager.

Elsewhere in her interview with Guitar World – for which she's joined by bandmate Joe Hottinger – Hale looks back on the band's involvement in Back to the Beginning, and recalls how they had to pivot to their plan B after Metallica ended up covering their first-choice Black Sabbath song.

Lzzy Hale has also singled out one guitarist as proof that the future of rock 'n' roll is in very safe and capable hands.

Through the ’80s and ’90s his beloved fretless StringRay appeared on records by Paul Young, David Gilmour, Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Don Henley, Phil Collins, Tears For Fears, Go West and Joan Armatrading, among others. That iconic instrument has now been commemorated by Ernie Ball Music Man with a new signature model.

After 50 years in the game, his fretted and fretless playing still reaches the top of the charts.

“Miley Cyrus, Ed Sheeran, Beyoncé, Harry Styles – they’re all great artists,” he says. “Their songs sound great before I even get to them. The question is, ‘How do I fit in but also add something?’ That process has never changed.”

Few bassists have a catalog as extensive as yours. What do you think when you look back?

I wasn’t particularly ambitious when I started playing. It wasn’t like, as a teenager, I thought I’d be a session musician. I just wanted to play guitar or bass in a band.

Did you choose the bass or did it choose you?

It chose me, definitely. I was really into sports in my early teens, but a short time after I started playing guitar, I could hear chords and recognize them, even if I didn’t have a guitar. I didn’t realize that was unusual!

How did you get your start in session work?

It just happened. I saw a couple of concerts with backing musicians playing behind solo artists, and I thought, “They sound really good, but they’re not a band as such. I wonder who they are?”

Early on in your session career, you began using a Music Man StingRay fretless bass. What led to that?

I grew up in Cardiff, Wales, and I’d had a Kramer fretless for a little while. I often try to remember what the hell I did with it! I must have sold it or traded it. But I’d I never really gravitated toward it – I’d just wanted to try it out.

But then in 1981, when I was in New York on tour, I went into a Sam Ash on 48th Street and saw this StingRay fretless bass, and it just looked cool. I bought it and I played it at the show that night. It was a big turning point for me – I started to find my own sound.

Another key piece of your early rig was the Boss Octave pedal. What led you to that?

I was working on a session and I came up with a bassline, then I had the idea to double the line an octave higher. I liked it, so I bought a Boss OC-2 to get that sound live.

At what point did you begin to feel you’d created a sound on bass that people wanted on their records?

That was in the ’80s. The first chance I got to play my Music Man on a record was Gary Numan’s I, Assassin. Gary was very encouraging and gave me license to express myself.

Then Laurie Latham and Ian Kewley, who were working for Paul Young, called me to play on his No Parlez record. I went did five records and numerous tours with Paul through the ’80s. That’s when people heard me playing the fretless. I got a lot of calls after that!

One of those records was David Gilmour’s About Face in 1984.

I’d played on a song for Paul called Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home). We did an arrangement that was pretty different from Marvin Gaye’s original; we slowed it down, and Paul really made the song his own – he really killed it.

They had left space for a bass intro and suggested I should come up with a fretless melody to introduce the vocal. David Gilmour heard that song; he’d seen me playing live with Paul around 1983, so he invited me to play on his record.

That was like a dream for me! I was a huge Pink Floyd fan, and even more a David Gilmour fan! His guitar playing is so melodic and soulful. He told me who was playing on the record – “We’ve got Jeff Porcaro on drums, Steve Winwood on keyboards” – and I’m freaking out. It was one of those huge moments for me.

In 1985 you played on Pete Townshend’s White City: A Novel.

That’s connected, too – David did a song on his record called Love On The Air that he’d written with Pete. Pete heard that, and so I was recommended for White City. That was the start of my relationship with Pete.

Was the chemistry between you and Pete immediate?

It was actually the second song where we really kicked off. The first song was White City Fighting, and there was a bass feature in there. It all went well, and Pete was very positive. He asked Chris Thomas, the producer: “You know that song we cut the other day? Why doesn’t Pino try playing on that as well?”

He left the room while Chris played me Give Blood, which David Gilmour had played on, along with Simon Phillips on drums. It sounded so amazing, but there was no bass on it. It was like, “Hello – it’s my lucky day!”

I came up with an idea using the octaver. Pete came back while I was doing it and he really liked it. I think Give Blood really opened up the thing with Pete.

In 1989 you played on Eric Clapton’s comeback hit, Bad Love.

That came about through Phil Collins. I’d already worked with Phil, who was doing that song with Eric, and I got the call. I remember hearing the intro and coming up with a fretless line. Once we cut the track live I went into the control room and fleshed out my intro idea.

In the ’90s you transitioned from the fretless StingRay to a traditional fretted. What led to that?

From the early ’80s through 1995, that fretless was pretty much the only instrument I used. That’s a lot of fretless over a long time! Then I had a short-scale Fender Mustang bass, and I started playing that. In the ’70s I listened to a lot of R&B, funk and Motown; and in the ’90s, I just wanted to get back to that stuff.

Is that when the Fender P-Bass came into play?

In 1974 my father had bought me my first-ever bass, a 1974 Fender Precision. Round about 1992 I got myself a ’60s Fender Precision and put some flatwound strings on it.

My great friend Steve Jordan and I were always talking about the sound of those incredible records from back in the day. That’s what inspired me to put flats on my Precision Bass. As soon as I put them on I was like, “There’s the sound!”

I felt like that was the sound I wanted to hear again. It certainly wasn’t popular; in fact, that sound had been considered pretty old-fashioned through the ’70s and ’80s. In 1997 I was asked to play on an album of duets for B.B. King, Deuces Wild.

That’s how I met D’Angelo, which led to me to recording and touring with him, then using my P-Bass at Electric Lady Studios with the Soulquarians. We recorded for Erykah Badu, Common, Bilal, De La Soul, Talib Kweli and Roy Hargrove, amongst others.

In 1999 you featured on Jeff Beck’s Who Else! record.

I’d actually toured with Jeff back in 1993. He was just so special – for me he’s the greatest. I’d been a fan since The Jeff Beck Group days; then later on the Blow by Blow album blew my mind. I also toured with him in 2006 and we did a live record with Vinnie Colaiuta and Jason Rebello, Official Bootleg USA ’06. That was such great band.

Jeff liked the way the fretless bass sounded and I learned so much from playing unison lines with him – the way he’d bend notes and use vibrato. He’d sometimes pick up my fretless and just play the craziest licks. I was in awe! “Jeff, please show me that lick you just played!”

Your work with John Mayer beginning with 2005’s Try! is also noteworthy. How did you hook up with him?

That came through Steve Jordan. I got the call to go and play with John and Steve in New York, and after rehearsing a song for the tsunami relief TV show, we started jamming on other stuff.

There was obvious chemistry there; John’s playing and his love for that music really shone through. It was just the perfect meeting at the perfect time for us. He actually booked a tour for us as The John Mayer Trio, even though we didn’t have many songs to play!

What were your observations of John as a player and bandmate?

He’s a very natural musician – he’s got such a great ear for melody, harmony and arrangement. Just listen to Neon, an amazing guitar piece. He plays that live on an acoustic, with the bassline and the chords at the same time, along with some topline stuff. And he’s singing too!

You’ve been playing with The Who since John Entwistle’s death in 2002. Pete has often said your arrival opened new avenues of inspiration for him.

I guess Pete knew what he was getting with me, but there was no way I could have played in the same style that John did; he was unique. Luckily for me, Pete encouraged me to be myself.

There are obviously some iconic, brilliant and memorable basslines that John played. His lines are often integral parts of the songs and they need to be played like he did. I always tried to pay homage to the music of the band – in the end it’s all about the music.

Did you have to alter your approach much to fit in with The Who?

Not really, apart from hitting the strings harder, and digging in more to cut through that huge band sound. I just tried to follow Pete but be ready to react with the group’s dynamics.

What are your typical recording and touring rigs like these days?

For recording it’s pretty much just turning up with a couple of basses. Sometimes I’ll take a pedalboard with a Khan DI. At most studios there’s an Ampeg B-15 amp, and I have a Pure Tone valve amp and an Eich combo. But I’m okay with whatever they have at the session. Most engineers will take a DI as well as an amp sound and match them up.

For playing live we all have in-ears now, so there’s no big rigs on stage. Last time I toured with John Mayer I had a B-15. I don’t even know if the speaker was plugged in – it was a B-15 head driving the bass sound and the DI into the in-ears.

What’s next for you?

I recently released That Wasn’t a Dream, my second album with Blake Mills. We had a lot of fun making it. Blake is an incredibly gifted musician and producer. I’m really looking forward to touring to support it with Blake, Chris Dave and Sam Gendel.

I’ve also worked with Ernie Ball on the signature version of my ’79 fretless Music Man StingRay bass that’s just come out. I enjoyed working with the team at Ernie Ball; we really got into the fine details of what makes my bass unique, and built all those details into the signature model.

• For more information on the Pino Palladino StingRay, head to Ernie Ball Music Man.

Australian acoustic guitar virtuoso Tommy Emmanuel has issued a public service announcement by demonstrating what he believes is the best way to put on a capo in order to eliminate tuning woes.

“I try to make people aware of things that are important on stage,” he says in a new in-depth chat with Guitar World, during which he warns players of the tuning issues that can come with capos.

“I think tuning is the most important thing. You’ve got to be in tune. Every time you put the capo on wrong, you are going to pull the guitar out of tune.”

For Emmanuel, who incorporates lots of percussive techniques into his wide-ranging and ever-expansive sound, correct capo technique is paramount to his performances.

After all, for some of his arrangements, he equips and removes his capo mid-song. His inventive reimagining of George Harrison’s Beatles hit Here Comes the Sun is an example of that.

However, because capos apply extra pressure on the strings when depressed, it's all-too-easy for them to pull your guitar out of tune.

So, what is the correct way of doing it, and how does Emmanuel avoid such issues? For his GW demonstration, Emmanuel uses a Kyber-style capo with top-mounted levers. This, he says, helps with the mid-song changes.

“The capo has a spring in it, so it's going to push down on the strings a little bit,” he prefaces. “The best way you can get as accurate as possible is, put the guitar on an angle [slightly flatter against your knee].

“You look down at the fret where you want to put it, squeeze it, drop it on, and you'll feel it sit kind of flat. Now, take your right hand and with your palm just push down on the strings.”

Pushing down on the strings helps ensure all strings are being put under even pressure by the capo.

Check the video above at the 01:01:00 mark to see the technique in action.

For more valuable insights from Emmanuel, find out what he thinks is the difference between a guitarist and a guitar player – and why that matters – and how knocking on his hero's door helped kickstart his career.

Before becoming a solo artist revered for his virtuosic jazz/blues fusion chops, Ford had ingratiated himself into the music scene at a young age and became a go-to hired gun for many big-name artists.

He earned himself a place in George Harrison's live band for the Dark Horse tour, and worked closely with Joni Mitchell on stage and in the studio. His relationship with the Big Yellow Taxi singer is one he holds in high regard.

“She was lovely to work for. The musicians around her were all great – especially on the first tour, which resulted in the Miles of Aisles album. It was just a constant joy,” he tells Guitar World in a soon-to-be-published interview. “She never distanced herself in any way from the band, [there was the] feeling where you’re all in it together.

“And, of course, her next record was The Hissing of Summer Lawns, which is like frigging Sgt. Pepper’s, you know? It’s just a work of genius.”

When it came to recording, the gear that Ford and the rest of the band used on her albums was never a huge deal. They worked with what they had – and Mitchell had some maverick ideas for recording.

Ford continues, “I’ll tell you one thing that exemplifies what it was like to work with her: we used the volume pedal a lot in those days, but she said, ‘Robben, how about you just plug into a [Maestro FZ-1] Fuzz-Tone and then plug directly into the console and we’ll see what that sounds like?’

“I was like, ‘Oh, Joni, that’s gonna be terrible, we need an amp,’ you know?”

But the singer pushed back, argued the case for trying it out. Just to see.

“Begrudgingly, I was like, ‘Okay…’” he says. “And that turned out to be the guitar on In France They Kiss on Main Street. It’s different and cool, and it made me play a different way. So, she was creative, and never in a hurry, you know, patient, like that.”

https://www.guitarworld.com/gear/does-bad-guitar-tone-even-exist-anymoreMitchell understood that just because something wasn’t the ‘done way’, it didn’t mean it was necessarily the wrong way. It's a mindset that has shaped many contemporary trends, including the djent guitar movement, and the current obsession with plugging direct into multi-track recorders a la Mk.gee. Mitchell was ahead of the curve.

Ford’s full chat with GW will be published online in the near future.

In related news, session virtuoso Andy Wood recently recalled the time Ford brought his prized Dumble to a guitar retreat and let fans play it. Ford's jazz and blues-amalgamating guitar style has also been the subject of an in-depth GW guitar lesson.

The White Stripes, Bad Company, Soundgarden, Carol Kaye, Cyndi Lauper, Joe Cocker, Outkast and Chubby Checker were all among the Rock Hall’s Class of 2025, along with Warren Zevon, Thom Bell, Nicky Hopkins, Lenny Waronker and Salt N Pepa.

Soundgarden were inducted by Jim Carrey, who paid tribute to the band’s late singer Chris Cornell, remembering the time they crossed paths on Saturday Night Live – and was gifted a prized electric guitar signed by all Soundgarden members.

“I met the band in 1996 when I was hosting Saturday Night Live for the very first time, and I insisted on Soundgarden as the musical guest,” Carrey remembered. “By then, the lineup was Chris [Cornell], Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron on drums, and Ben Shepherd on bass. They launched into the dark, epic beauty of Pretty Noose.

“I stood right in front of them, letting the waves of electricity wash over me, like an audio baptism. They pushed me under and when I came up I was free.

“After the show, they handed me what is to this day, one of my most prized possessions. The Fender Telecaster Chris played on the show, signed by the whole band.

“Tonight, we make sure that Chris Cornell, Kim Thayil, Hiro Yamamoto, Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd go down in history as one of the most majestic, powerful and influential bands ever to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Long live Chris Cornell. Long live Soundgarden.”

Carrey’s tributes to Cornell and Soundgarden were accompanied by a performance from the surviving members of the band, who were fronted by Taylor Momsen and Brandi Carlile for covers of Rusty Cage and Black Hole Sun, respectively.

It was a heroic outing for grunge music. For Soundgarden’s set, Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready – wielding a Gibson Les Paul for the occasion – doubled up Thayil’s riffs on Rusty Cage, while Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell layered up the leads for Black Hole Sun with his G&L Rampage.

It wasn’t the only performance dedicated to Soundgarden and Cornell. Toni, Chris’ daughter, was joined by Nancy Wilson for an acoustic rendition of Fell on Black Days, performed underneath an in memoriam photograph of the late vocalist.

Elsewhere on the docket, The White Stripes were honored by pop-rock duo twenty one pilots, who performed Seven Nation Army, and Olivia Rodrigo, who – fresh from her festival-stealing Glasto headline set – joined Feist with her acoustic guitar to sing We’re Going to Be Friends.

Flea also played bass for Stevie Wonder on a cover of Sly & The Family Stone’s Dance to the Music, and The Killers honored Warren Zevon with a performance of Lawyers, Guns and Money. Zevon was inducted by David Letterman, who, in his own speech, also recalled the time Zevon had gifted him a guitar.

Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi closed out the show with a cover of The Beatles’ With a Little Help From My Friends. Bryan Adams, Cyndi Lauper and Chris Robinson were among the song’s guest stars.

Trucks and his trusty Gibson SG were on guitar duty for the song, and though the spotlight was firmly on the singers, he still found room for some trademark fingerstyle licks sans slide.

You can catch up on the 40th Annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony and rewatch all the action at Disney+.

After two studio LPs and one live album for Alligator Records – which helped establish him as a rising star and likely future of the blues – Ingram has boldly charted his own path.

Ingram had just turned 20 when he debuted with his 2019 album, Kingfish. Even so, he’d already been gigging around his hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi, for years, having learned to play at the Delta Blues Museum’s music-education program. Ingram’s mentor, the late guitarist Bill “Howlin’ Mad” Perry – who gave Ingram the name “Kingfish” – would bring star pupils from the classes to perform with him at the Ground Zero Blues Club, partly owned by Morgan Freeman.

“That was like a reward, and it was a great experience,” Ingram says. “The first time he did it for me, I realized this was it for me. It wasn’t going to be a hobby.”

Buddy Guy’s endorsement – and working with Tom Hambridge, Guy’s producer and songwriter – gave Ingram a boost, as did being signed to Alligator, the landmark Chicago label that was home to Albert Collins, Son Seals, Koko Taylor and other greats. The strength of his debut gave Kingfish immediate credibility, swiftly generating a buzz around him as the future of blues guitar playing.

Hard Road remains rooted in Kingfish’s singing and searing blues guitar playing, but the songwriting veers into more modern approaches, with touches of rock, pop and R&B. The songs’ lyrics also explore emotionally raw and complex topics of love, loss, identity and personal growth. Ingram, now 26, has seen a lot more of the world – literally and metaphorically – than he did as a debut artist.

In recent years he has lost his mother, Princess, his earliest and biggest supporter; he’s toured the world; he’s worked with legends like Guy and Steve Miller; and he’s appeared in the hit 2025 film Sinners. And now he’s started a label and begun establishing himself in a new world. All of these experiences are reflected in the songs of Hard Road.

“This record comes from real-life reflection,” Ingram says. “I’ve been balancing fame, heartbreak, love and relationships while trying to stay grounded, touring, creating and maturing. These songs are about owning my story. They’re about learning to see myself clearly and seeing others with more compassion. That’s changed the way I write, the way I play, the way I live.”

How and why did you start your own label?

Red Zero Records was an idea my manager, Ric Whitney, formulated a couple of years ago. It morphed into me wanting to give opportunities to other artists who probably didn’t have the same resources I had.

You’ve come a long way. Could you have imagined yourself five or six years ago talking about your resources?

In a relatively short time! Yeah, I’ve been grateful. When I was 15, I was hustling it out in the juke joint clubs, and then along came Mr. Buddy Guy, who was gracious enough to help me out with my first record and put me on the road with him.

Then I got on Alligator Records and I’m in a position now where I can help the other guys and gals coming along, and that is exciting. Mr. Guy is, of course, an OG, and I was so honored that he helped me get out of my region, where I was playing since I was a teenager.

Tom Hambridge worked with you as well; it felt like he helped you craft your story into great songs that have your voice. Been Here Before from your debut always stuck out in that regard.

Yeah. That was the last song we did on the Kingfish sessions. We were upstairs in the studio, and I had an acoustic and we were going back and forth, and out that song came, and we went downstairs and recorded it. And, yeah, it is my story.

As a child, before I even knew anything about blues, I would always repeat some of the soul songs my mom would listen to and give people a show. Five years old, singing stuff like the Stylistics, and people would always say, “He’s not normal; he’s an old soul.”

I did an interview with Derek Trucks when he was about your age now. I remember him saying, “I’m just really excited to get past the 'kid' thing.” Do you relate to that?

Definitely. It can be a blessing and a curse. When people see a kid playing, they automatically think “gimmick,” but there’s been some serious guys coming up as kids. No-one wants to get stuck being the cute kid that plays guitar. So that’s when you got to focus on the lyrics and singing, which I did on this one. I’m ready to just have my music listened to and not have people think, “He’s great for a kid.”

On the new record, you show more blues and R&B influences. Do you feel free to do anything you want, or do you worry about how your audience might respond?

It’s definitely something I think about a lot, and it’s a double-edged sword. I’m always told I’ve got the potential to go here or there. It’s something I struggle with, and I look at it like this: I have the potential to go a lot of places musically, and that’s what I want to do.

I have a lot of influence, but what I do is always gonna be rooted in the blues, because that’s the aim and that’s who I am. I want to reach my generation, and to do that, I need to mix it a little bit to pull them in. Once they get in, I can really show them the real raw thing, and that’s pretty much what I’m doing.

Did recording this for your own label change the way you approach the material? Would it have been more straight blues for Alligator?

That’s a good question. Probably not. I was ready to branch out a little in any case.

What songs on the album highlight where you are now?

Can I say all of them? I do feel that way, but I think the ones that really showcase what the album is about, the journey in the different genres are Voodoo Charm, which is the blues-rock space; Bad Like Me is more in the pop rock vein; Nothin’ But Your Love is serving the adult contemporary, R&B space. Those three songs showcase what the album is trying to say, showcasing my voice and my range on the guitar.

You have a great voice. Have you worked on that a lot, or was it more like you started playing guitar, opened your mouth and started singing – and that’s what came out?

That’s exactly how it started out! I literally just focused on my guitar playing and started singing. I’m just now trying to work on my voice. I’m learning more about myself, that I have range. There were places where I thought I couldn’t go vocally, and working on this record showed me that I could.

How much do you still work on your guitar playing? How much do you practice?

I play guitar every day. My weak point is that I don’t have a regimen; I just pick up the guitar and play. Sometimes I do try to work on different scales or whatnot, but there’s no plan, and I think I can and should be more orderly in that regard. But I’ll never not play my guitar every day.

When you’re not on the road, are you happy relaxing and chilling at home, or are you pacing the floor waiting to get back out on the road?

All of the above! The first couple of days are straight chilling. But I’m here in the studio, still working and making music every day. After a few days, I am – like you say – starting to pace the floor. [Laughs] When it’s time to go back out, I’m ready to get it popping.

Who are your greatest guitar influences?

Acoustic guys like Son House and Robert Johnson and then Albert, B.B. and Freddie King, Prince, Ernie Isley, Gary Moore. There are also a lot of players of the day that I’m into, and I hate to even mention them because I know I’m leaving out so many, but I really like Isaiah Sharkey, Matteo Mancuso, Yvette Young and so many others. I love where the world of guitar is going, even though I’m considered to play an old style.

You mentioned that on Red Zero you wanted to be able to give other people an opportunity. Is anyone else signed?

Yes, two artists to start. Dylan Triplett, a young man out of St. Louis. What’s so dope about Dylan is that, even though we have a lot of young guitar slingers – male and female – coming up, we don’t have a lot of young Bobby Blue Bland-style soul singers, and that’s Dylan’s main thing, though he also plays guitar.

We also have Matthias Lattin from Houston, who won the International Blues Challenge in 2023. He’s a young guitar slinger in the rock-blues-fusion space, a great writer and arranger. We have a lot of other artists we’re developing as well, but those are the guys we’re starting with.

How involved in the label are you? You have a trusted manager, so do you get involved in the label and in your own business?

I have no other choice but to know it, because Ric isn’t going to let me just leave it to him. He tells me everything. We’re both hands-on with my career and the label. As far as giving other guys resources, it’s imperative for me to know what I’m doing so I can share some knowledge, too!

• Hard Road is out now via Red Zero.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

When we consider all this in sum, we might be able to understand why Salas turned down not one, but two former Van Halen frontmen when they came calling.

That’s right. ‘Diamond’ David Lee Roth and the ‘Red Rocker’ Sammy Hagar, bona-fide rock legends, tried to recruit Salas. He said thanks but no thanks to both.

Salas is a self-described “Van Halen nut”, so how could he pass this up? Well, technically he did say yes to Hagar. At least, he played with him for a little bit. It just never went any further, as Salas explains in a new interview with Guitar World.

“With Hagar, I was a Montrose fanatic, so when he called me, he flew me to San Francisco, picked me up himself in his Porsche, and I stayed at his house,” says Salas. “We started to write together, and I wanted to write a Montrose album, and he wanted to write an album more like the Eagles – and I hate the Eagles. [laughs] No disrespect, but I didn’t like the Eagles, so that didn’t work for me.”

Salas has long said that Montrose’s self-titled debut album is his favorite rock album of all time. But there's no point in forcing a collaboration if you’re not on the same page. Besides, the timing was all wrong. This was the mid ‘90s and Salas’ solo career was doing well. Back from the Living was “blowing up” in Europe and he was still under contract to the label.

David Lee Roth? That’s a more surreal encounter. Salas knew Roth, met him when he was doing his thing with Rod Stewart. He and Eddie Van Halen were good friends.

At the time, Roth was in need of some six-string talent. Steve Vai had left his band for Whitesnake, so he gave Salas a call.

“I was a Van Halen nut, but when Roth called me, I was vacuuming, and I thought when he called, somebody was taking the piss,” says Salas. “But it was him. I turned the vacuum cleaner off, and was like, ‘Oh, shit…’ [laughs]”

Roth made him an offer. But all these years later, Salas is not so sure what Roth was looking for. It sure as hell wasn’t Eat ‘Em and Smile Part II.

“He talked to me for about an hour, but he kind of sounded like he was out of his mind,” says Salas. “He was talking about making a blues album, like B.B. King, and I’m thinking, ‘What am I doing?’ I had a recording contract, and I was like, ‘Shit…’ and didn’t like where Dave was going. I didn’t like the Skyscraper album, and I just didn’t think it was what I wanted to do.”

And so he didn’t, and the rest is history. You can read the full interview with Stevie Salas, coming soon to Guitar World.

When their Jacksonvile, Florida contemporaries Lynyrd Skynyrd launched their recording career with Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd’ (1973), the difference in their approaches became immediately apparent.

While the Allmans are best remembered for Allman and Betts' virtuosity, and their traiblazing jam band style, Skynyrd’s legacy was signposted in the timeless quality of their songs, and the razor-tight chemistry with which they were performed.

Their classic tracks are loaded with bluesy solos, which “...are signature parts that everybody in the audience can sing,” current guitarist Rickey Medlocke astutely observes.

In the 70s, Skynyrd fluctuated between two and three guitar line-ups, each player layering their distinctively-voiced licks to form a cohesive solo, sometimes playing lead breaks in blazing unison.

“You perform as a team,” Medlocke explains to GW. “I was there in the Hell House, playing drums. Ronnie Van Zant was Skynyrd’s strongest point, the most incredible writer. And he got us together as a team – he wanted a band that, when they walked out there, was a machine.”

Medlocke has unique insight into Skynyrd’s sound, having served as their drummer between 1971 and 1972, when Van Zant, and founding guitarists Allen Collins and Gary Rossington, were crafting legendary songs like Freebird.

After his own successful career as vocalist/guitarist with Blackfoot, Medlocke was invited by Rossington to rejoin Skynyrd in 1996, as part of the reunion initially begun in 1987 in tribute to Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and his sister Cassie (backing vocals), who’d lost their lives in the tragic 1977 plane crash that ended the original band's career.

Tasked by Rossington with faithfully representing the late Allen Collins’ style, Medlocke has also played a key creative role on all Skynyrd’s post-'96 albums.

Since Rossington's passing in 2023, he and frontman Johnny Van Zant are honoring their fallen bandmate’s wishes in driving the band forward. Now, Medlocke joins Guitar World for a run-down of his Skynyrd guitar predecessors and partners.

Allen Collins

“Allen was a huge Eric Clapton fan,” Medlocke reveals, “and he was into Jimmy Page, Hendrix, and Jeff Beck, like myself. Allen [took] that influence and formulated his own thing.”

Collins' frequently-imitated solo on Freebird is a masterclass in composing memorable minor and major pentatonic phrases, and sequencing them dynamically to reach a searing crescendo, balancing speed and precision.

Collins infused every note with his customary fire and passion, setting a template not just for Skynyrd, but for Southern rock.

Gary Rossington

“Gary idolized Paul Kossoff,” Medlocke recalls. “We all saw Free at the skating rink in Jacksonville. Gary always wanted to play unique signature melodies.”

Like Kossoff, Rossington achieved powerful results with a minimum of notes, as his gut-punch double stops and wailing bends on Saturday Night Special attest.

Also responsible for Freebird’s slide guitar lines, Medlocke notes that, “...in his latter years, Gary loved playing more slide than anything.” Fittingly, the band’s most recent album, Last of a Dyin’ Breed, opens with Rossington breaking out the bottleneck.

Ed King

Joining as bassist in 1972 for Pronounced..., King then became third lead guitarist until 1975, returning between 1987 until 1996.

“Incredible guitar player,” Medlocke says. “Sweet Home Alabama – that lead, it's just unique. He used seashells as a pick, that's where he gets all that squank from on that Stratocaster.”

King’s idea of playing G major pentatonic/G major blues licks over Sweet Home’s borderline G major/D mixolydian progression came to him “...in a dream,” he told this writer. “I got up, picked up my guitar, and played it as I saw it in the dream. Sure enough, it was great.”

Steve Gaines

In 1976, Skynyrd chose Cassie Gaines’ unknown kid brother for the third guitar slot over Mountain’s Leslie West and session ace Wayne Perkins. Ronnie Van Zant told writer Cameron Crowe, “The kid’s a writing and playing fool. He’s... scared everybody... into playing their best in years.”

Gaines' lightning-fast chops and “soulfulness,” as Medlocke aptly puts it, light up 1977's Street Survivors with genuinely dazzling moments like I Know A Little’s intro, and his fluid, lyrical lead break at 0:57 and closing exchange of ascending licks and harmonies with Collins on That Smell.

Randall Hall

When paralysis sustained in a 1986 car accident prevented him from playing on the 1987 tribute tour, Allen Collins selected friend and solo band member Hall as his replacement.

“I knew Randall when we were teenagers,” Medlocke says. “He was well known around Jacksonville – a great guitar player. He took a lot of directions off of Allen. He did great.”

Hall's nimble, bluesy style sat well alongside Rossington's measured approach until his departure in 1993.

Mike Estes

Hall’s replacement, present until 1996, was also a friend of Collins, and of Skynyrd stage manager Craig Reed, who invited Estes to collaborate on songs for 1993’s The Last Rebel.

After befriending King and Rossington, Estes joined for Endangered Species (1994), an acoustic album aimed at the country market, co-writing the highlight Devil In The Bottle.

Rickey Medlocke

Blackfoot's classic albums from Strikes (1979) through Highway Song Live (1982) marked Medlocke out as a ferocious lead guitarist, able to fire off slide licks so sharp you could shave a yak with ‘em.

Considered an original Skynyrd member by Rossington, Collins, and Ronnie Van Zant, Medlocke wrote, played drums and guitar, and sang, on the pre-fame Skynyrd’s First: The Complete Muscle Shoals Album.

Sharing influences and a love of Gibson Firebirds with Collins, Medlocke re-energized the reunion-era band in 1996, just as Steve Gaines had the original.

“The exact words out of Gary's mouth were, ‘Rickey, you're the closest thing to Allen I could hope for, and I want to make this band rock again,’” he recalls.

Asked for a favorite track from recent albums, Medlocke chooses drop-tuned bruiser Still Unbroken.

“That was an old riff that I had laying around, I loved playing the lead to it. I'm still a very heavy rocker, because that's what Blackfoot were based off of.”

Hughie Thomasson

Described to this writer by his Outlaws bandmate, Freddie Salem, as “...one of the best American guitarists ever born; the finesse of Chet Atkins and the fury of Jimi Hendrix,” Thomasson would sharpen his picks to rip out biting, warp-speed licks from a glass-toned Strat on classics like There Goes Another Love Song.

Recruited simultaneously with Medlocke, Thomasson remained for nine years, reforming the Outlaws in 2005.

“I loved playing with him,” Medlocke enthuses. “Hughie used to do the beginning of ...Alabama as an instrumental, and it was brilliant. We wish he'd stayed.”

Mark Matejka

“Johnny [Van Zant] knew of Mark,” Medlocke says of Thomasson’s replacement, “and he fit the bill.

“Mark is a very talented player, very educated. He knows that fretboard, and chord structures, like nobody I've ever seen. When we're onstage playing Tuesday's Gone, he adds these little inversions against what I'm playing. He knows every chord in the book.”

Matejka’s lead work in Skynyrd is equally impressive; check out his fleet-fingered, Albert Lee-style hybrid picking on I Know A Little.

Damon Johnson

Prior to playing with Alice Cooper, Thin Lizzy, and Black Star Riders, Johnson's band, Brother Cane, supported Skynyrd in 1993.

Brought in as a substitute while Gary Rossington recovered from heart surgery in 2021, Johnson was kept on Rossington’s insistence. The two played together in 2023 at a gig released this year as Celebrating 50 Years: Live at the Ryman.

“Little did we know, it would be Gary's last show,” Medlocke says. “Gary insisted Damon stay there, next to him, with an acoustic guitar. That was a special calling, insisted [on] by Gary.

“I miss Gary, it's still a very sore spot in my heart. We were very fortunate to get Damon. But the stipulation was to play the exact licks, go for the exact tone. He's using Gary's original rig, because Gary requested it. Damon's done an incredible job. The audiences, for the most part, have accepted it.”

In conclusion, Medlocke surmises, “All the guitar players that have been in this band have been unique, and I salute them.”

Looking ahead, he reveals that, “Johnny and I have got a lot of material that we never recorded. When I first joined Skynyrd, he was only 10 years old, I've known him that long. We’ve even got some of Gary on tape, talking.

“If we do another record, I would hope that Damon would bring that essence of Gary into [it]. Johnny and I are gonna make a decision, along with management, and see about doing a new record.”

His PRS Silver Sky has become one of the best-selling signature guitars in recent years, having topped Reverb’s sales charts for 2022 and 2023. It took two years to fully develop, and speaking about that process in the new issue of Guitar World, Mayer detailed how the experience proved to be an education for him, too.

“Before creating this guitar, I didn't understand what neck radius meant,” he admits, “I just looked at the guitars I loved the most, and they were 7.25". That was my measuring stick. Now that I know the math behind it, I still don't think about it.”

In simple terms, 'neck' radius – or, more accurately, fretboard radius – relates to how much a fretboard curves. As conventional wisdom would have it, 'rounder' fretboards make fretting easier as they better trace the natural curvature of our fingers. Flatter necks are typically better at bends and guitar solos, because there's less resistance to move over.

Many firms have their preferred measurements. Very broadly speaking, a 7.25" radius offers a more 'vintage' style, while the likes of 9.5" and 12" are used on more modern builds. But Mayer doesn’t see it as the be-all and end-all.

“The difference between 7.25" and 9.5" is less significant than your guitar strap being an inch higher or lower,” he professes. “I'll fight anybody on that.

“Every guitar is different and has about 100 points of variation,” he explains. “Neck profile helps sort out neck profile, which is only one of many details. So the only way to truly compare radii is to build two molecularly exact copies of the same guitar with just that difference.

“I can do everything on this neck that I could do on a 9.25". If the guitar is set up correctly, if the frets are level, you can do anything you want.”

Elsewhere in his Guitar World interview, for which he was joined by Paul Reed Smith, Mayer looked back on the making of the Silver Sky. During the conversation, Smith recalled the unexpected discovery he made when he put Mayer's 1964 Strat under the microscope.

Head to Magazines Direct to pick up the new issue of Guitar World, which features a list of the best guitar gear of the 21st century.

“Is Charlie here yet?” The impending arrival of the veteran jazz bassist was clearly causing anxious excitement despite the bona-fide rock star already present. Flea responded by strapping on his '61 Fender Jazz Bass and stabbing energetically at its flatwound strings, escaping into his own musical world.

When Charlie Haden finally stepped from his hired limo, the whole place seemed to relax. The two bassists had never met before, and the reason for their meeting was an advertising photo session for Gallien Krueger, whose bass amps both players endorsed.

Flea's band is the Red Hot Chili Peppers, one of the most creative and successful in rock, and Flea himself is one of the genre’s most revered bassists.

He found his playing voice melding funk techniques with the intensity of punk, but his initial musical fascination was with jazz, a passion that has stayed with him decades after commending himself to a life in rock & roll.

Haden, whose lengthy resumé includes legends like Ornette Coleman, Keith Jarrett, and Pat Metheny, as well his own Liberation Music Orchestra and Quartet West, began singing on his family's country radio show.

Following his older brother, he took up bass, then got hooked on jazz after hearing pioneering saxophonist Charlie Parker. Haden joined Ornette Coleman's revolutionary group when he was still a teenager.

Flea: “You were singing country music as a kid. And all of a sudden you're playing with Ornette Coleman! What happened there? You were pretty young.”

Charlie Haden: “I was 19.”

Flea: “From singing country music at 15 to inventing free jazz with Ornette at 19 – that's a big switch. Four years isn't that long!”

Charlie Haden: “Before that, in the late '40s, there was no TV and I listened to classical and jazz radio constantly.”

Flea: “Did you study jazz?”

Charlie Haden: “I’m self-taught. One of my brothers played bass on the radio show, and he had some jazz records, but you're talking about Missouri. It was hard to find records, and nobody played jazz.

“I went to a concert in Omaha, Nebraska – Jazz at the Philharmonic with Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, and Oscar Peterson – and when I heard Charlie Parker play, that was it. It was unbelievable. He had beautiful harmonies and beautiful melodies. You hear the gamut of beauty in his playing.”

Flea: “It's hard for me to fathom: not only that level of musical sophistication, but the depth of feeling. And to step so far beyond what had ever been done before on an instrument.

“When I was a kid, I had such an opportunity to get that education through my step-dad, who was a jazz bassist. I was 12 when my parents divorced, and all of a sudden I was living with a jazz musician who was having jam sessions at the house all the time. It changed my life.

“My goal was to become a jazz trumpet player, but then I got into my early teens and I had to rebel against my parents. All I wanted to do was be a punk rocker and play the bass guitar. I went completely in the other direction from jazz, and now I'm trying to catch up. I'm studying theory and trying to play along over bebop changes with the Jamey Aebersold books and everything.”

Charlie Haden: “On trumpet and bass?”

Flea: “Mostly on trumpet, but on bass, too. I regret not learning that stuff when I was young, but my path is my path and it's been really good for me.”

Charlie Haden: “Well, you still have that learning opportunity. I never discouraged my kids from what they were excited about, and they grew up hearing all kinds of music. They went in the direction they went in on their own; I just encouraged them.

“Josh used to say, ‘Dad, you have to listen to this.’ it would be the Meat Puppets and Black Flag and all kinds of punk rock. And I'd say, with a forced smile, ‘Oh, my goodness! That's great, Josh. It's beautiful!’

“Did you ever hear Jimmy Blanton play the bass?”

Flea: “On records, yes.”

Charlie Haden: “He was amazing. Duke Ellington's band came through St. Louis and played a dance – back then it was dances and not concerts. Afterward Duke went back to the hotel to sleep, and all the musicians went to an after-hours session.

“This young bass player was playing, and these guys flipped out. They went back and woke up Duke Ellington, and brought him to the session. Duke hired Jimmy on the spot, and the band left St. Louis with two bass players. Jimmy Blanton made all those records in 1940 and 1941, and then he got what they called ‘consumption’ back then, tuberculosis.”

“He got very sick in L.A. and they had to leave him in a sanitarium. Milt Hinton told me he went there every day to see him. Milt was playing in Cab Calloway's band at that time, and every night they'd dedicate a song to him. Milt said he was there when Jimmy took his last breath. He was 23 years old. But if you've ever heard him play ... man!”

Flea: “It's unbelievable how many guys die so young. Booker Little is a big one for me. He has one of my favorite trumpet sounds ever.”

Charlie Haden: “I played with him. He used to come into the Five Spot when I was there with Ornette and Don Cherry.”

Flea: “Did you ever play with Eric Dolphy?”

Charlie Haden: “I recorded with Dolphy on this album called Free Jazz with Ornette and Don Cherry, Freddy Hubbard, Billy Higgins, Ed Blackwell, and my closest friend in life, Scott LaFaro, who used to share an apartment with me in L.A. before I moved to New York.”

“Scott was killed in a car accident when he was 25. He played on a very famous album by the Bill Evans Trio called A Sunday at the Village Vanguard. That was one of the last records he made.

“He was a tenor sax player with his dad's dance band when he was in high school, and one night the bass player didn't show up, so his dad made him play. He started playing the bass and he loved it, but he had the concept of the horn in his head. You can hear it when you hear him play.”

Both of you started your musical lives with something besides bass. Has that affected the way you think about or approach bass?

Flea: “Since I played trumpet first, when I picture notes in my head, I make a valve pattern with my hand and finger it on the trumpet. I never think about the bass like that, and I'm sure that has a big effect on my approach to playing bass. I never think of notes as fret patterns. I always think about it on trumpet.”

Charlie Haden: “So you think of yourself as a trumpet player first?”

Flea: “I don't know!"

Charlie Haden: “The real answer is that the instrument really doesn't matter. It's the music. I tell my students that, especially the bass players. They have to take themselves away from the concept of the bass. It's really important to discover your own music, and you're not going to discover your music if you're trying to play like some other bass player.”

Flea: “I always say the same thing. Any instrument is just a vehicle to express who you are and your relationship to the world. No matter what level you're doing it on, playing music is an opportunity to give something to the world.”

Charlie Haden: “When I was a kid and my older brother played the bass on our radio show, I noticed that when he didn't play, the fullness of the music stopped, and I was really attracted to that sound. He wouldn't allow me to touch the bass, but the minute he left the house, I'd pick it up, put on a record, and play along.”

What's important to you in terms of your sound?

Flea: “As time goes by, I realize more and more how important it is to have a good sound. Recently, I've only been playing all-wood vintage basses, whereas before I didn't really think it mattered what bass you played. I was so into being raw about it and trying to get across what was in my heart.

“I always heard guys talking about using this or that amp, this or that setting, and certain strings, and I thought it was all bullshit. I thought what mattered was how you hit them and your emotional intent, and I still think that's the bottom line. I mean, Charlie Parker could have played some old piece-of-shit sax and it would have sounded like Charlie Parker.

“But now I treasure the instruments that I play more and more. So now I play a 1961 Fender bass, and I love the old wood sound. It sounds really nice; I think it's further away from being a tree and is more used to being a bass now.”

Charlie Haden: “I always look at the sound of the bass as being like a rainforest: I try to get a deep wood sound. There are so many jazz bass players who spend thousands of dollars for these old instruments, like the classical guys do, and then they proceed to put a horrible pickup on it, plug into a horrible amplifier, turn up the treble or reverb or whatever, and it sounds like an electric bass. So they could have saved all that money and got an electric bass to begin with.

“I want to get the sound of the wood, so I use an amplifier that's made specially for the acoustic bass, and I also use gut strings on the G and D, which bring the wood sound out of the instrument. For the A and E, the lower-vibration strings, I use Thomastik SpiroCore because gut strings would be too loose.”

Flea: “The most incredible thing about the upright bass – the few times I've played one – is the way you can feel the whole thing vibrate when you have it up against your body. It's like your body is resonating with the instrument. It's a very fulfilling feeling.”

Charlie Haden: “That's why I stand so close to the bass when I play. One night in 1959 I was playing at the Five Spot with Ornette, Don Cherry, and Billy Higgins, and I always play with my eyes closed – but I opened my eyes, and there was some guy onstage with his ear next to my f-hole. And I was like, ‘Who is this guy?’ And Ornette was like, ‘That's Leonard Bernstein!’”

Flea: “I grew up listening to anything I could get my hands on. The Beatles were first, but jazz was the real discovery. When I was 12 and wanted to be a trumpet player, it was all Kenny Dorham, Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard, and Miles.”

Charlie Haden: “Did you ever hear Fats Navarro?”

Flea: “Oh, yeah. And Lee Morgan is really my guy, too. The fact that those guys could play like that still boggles my mind. Outside of musicians or real jazz aficionados, people don't even understand. They think jazz is wild and crazy, but they don't realize the discipline, work ethic, and academics that are required.”

“What it really boils down to is this: To be great, you have to be able to love and care way more than your physical body is capable of.”

How do you tap into that when you’re onstage or in the studio?

Flea: “I just try to be who I am and do the best I can. I love music, and I love connecting as a human being.”

Charlie Haden: “I always tell my students, if you want to become a great jazz musician, first you have to strive to become a great human being, with qualities of humility, and appreciativeness. Do that, and you might have a shot at becoming a great jazz musician.

“There is no yesterday, there is no tomorrow, there is only right now. And in that moment, everything changes because you see a different perspective of life. You see your complete insignificance in the world. Only then are you able to see your true importance to the universe. And that's what real humility is.”

Flea: “I remember being on tour and being miserable. I had broken up with my long-time girlfriend, I was unhealthy, I was stressed out, and I couldn't sleep. I was falling apart. I didn't want to do it anymore. I know I shouldn't be whining, being a big rock star and all that, but at the time I was very unhappy.

“Then one day I woke up and thought to myself, 'So what if I'm miserable? It's not about me, it's about going out and playing for people.' So I tried to forget about all my problems and concentrate on what I could give.

“We all have our burden – you can try to fill it up with drugs or some other kind of addiction, but the bottom line is that the only thing you can do is give.”

However, that performance was far from a last-minute affair. In 2017, Brandi Carlile took the initiative to organize “Joni Jams” at Mitchell’s home – monthly jam sessions that assisted her recovery and encouraged her to entertain the possibility of playing on stage again.

It all culminated in a three-hour “Joni Jam” in 2023, at the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington State – billed as Mitchell’s first ticketed concert in 20 years. It was as miraculous a comeback as there ever was.

Despite Carlile's years-long efforts to get Joni back on stage, she admits she received her fair share of critique for her involvement.

“I took a lot of shit for my time with Joni in a way that just made me feel so beat down,” she tells Howard Stern. “And I don't know why, because most people were beautiful about it, and in some ways, I got too much credit. But any criticism at all just felt so unjust, because I knew people didn't understand what was happening.”

When asked by Stern what the backlash was exactly, Carlile replies, “People that didn't understand the situation wanted me to get out of the way and hear more of Joni or see more of Joni, and just didn't understand the dynamic that we had established.

“And I remember talking to Joni about it, and she was like, ‘Brandy. Those people [have] always been there. They'll always be there.”

“That was probably the hardest thing I've ever seen in terms of criticism about myself, which makes me lucky, because I think people can be brutal. That one set me back a little bit. I had to rethink some shit.”

Following her momentous return to the stage, Mitchell opened up about how she relearned guitar by watching videos online to “see where I put my fingers.”

Hey, it was ever thus, but take a look at the shortlist for year’s Best Rock Performance and you’ll find Australian punk-rock alive and kicking, with Amyl and the Sniffers up for U Should Not Be Doing That, and the Yungblud-led supergroup from Black Sabbath's farewell show, Back to the Beginning, nominated for their take on Changes.

Nuno Bettencourt might have to look out for his tux after all. Purple socks optional.

Yungblud’s crazy big year sees Idols nominated for Best Rock Album, and Zombie for Best Rock Song. We’d say that’s where the smart money lies but who can say with the judges?

If Yungblud is the tip of the spear for rock’s next superstar generation then the Best Rock Album category still has a bit of the ‘90s about it, with Deftones’ immaculate Private Music and Linkin Park’s blockbuster comeback LP, From Zero, both in the running.

They’ll all be up against Gibson SG-toting sister act HAIM, who are nominated for I Quit, and new-school hardcore champs Turnstile, nominated for Never Enough – the title-track is in contention for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance. Open up that pit, yo.

Okay, heavy metal. Not that it is particularly metal to get excited about the Best Metal Performance award – well, not unless you’re actually nominated, then it might be kinda cool – but this year’s nominees include Dream Theater for Night Terror, the venerable John Petrucci’s extraterrestrial chops doing a number on the voters, while Mike Stringer’s Spiritbox are in the mix for Best Metal Performance.

There’s Sleep Token for Emergence and Ghost’s Lachryma, and, in a twist we did not see coming, Turnstile have turned metal with a nomination for BIRDS.

And then making a turn into Best Alternative Music Performance, where Seein’ Stars is in competition with Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers’ Wet Leg, who are up for mangetout. Representing Shecter guitars and Boss pedals (spiritually, if not in an official capacity), The Cure are nominated for Alone. Bon Iver and Hayley Williams will be keeping them company.

Wet Leg are proving that see-through neon B.C. Rich electric guitars are a charm. Moisturizer is deservedly up for Best Alternative Music Album. Can it pip The Cure’s Songs of a Lost World? Depends on what mood the voters were in.

Taking the fuzz and overdrive pedals out of the signal chain, let’s check in on Planet Bluegrass. Yessiree, Billy Strings is up for his superlative Highway Prayers. Not to editorialize or anything but he should be up for Best Metal Performance alongside Cryptopsy for their collaboration on the Blasphemy Made Flesh anniversary edition but there you go, there is no justice in this world – maybe there is if Gibson signature artist Sierra Hull wins for A Tip Toe High Wire.

Who knows. We will be happy if Buddy Guy gets his flowers for Ain’t Done With the Blues. If it was anyone other than the world’s greatest living blues guitarist, we’d say the Best Traditional Blues Album category would be keenly contested, what with the Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’ collab, Room on the Porch, Charlie Musselwhite’s Look Out Highway, and Young Fashioned Ways from Kenny Wayne Shepherd & Bobby Rush all in the envelope.

We’ll wrap this up soon but can a list like this be truly complete without at least one former GW columnist among the nominations? Of course not. Well, we’ve got two this year.

First, step on up, Molly Tuttle, whose So Long Little Miss Sunshine is nominated alongside Larkin Poe’s Bloom and Willie Nelson’s Last Leaf On The Tree for Best Americana Album.

And among the Contemporary Blues Album category we have current GW columnist and all-round blues guitar superstar Joe Bonamassa, who is up for Breakthrough, and up against an album he co-produced, Eric Gales’ A Tribute to LJK, on which Gales pays tribute to his big brother and mentor Emmanuel Lynn Gales, aka Little Jimmy King. Samantha Fish is also in the running for Paper Doll. Don’t rule out pedal-steel virtuoso Robert Randolph for Preacher Kids.

You can check out the full nominations over at the Grammys.

The musician/producer turned YouTube star has welcomed scores of the greatest players in the world to his show. But, as he admits in a recent video interview with Guitar Player, having Gilmour sitting there beside him, playing through his Fender Stratocaster (not the Black Strat, that was sold at auction) was particularly surreal.

“Oh, I mean, that was unbelievable,” says Beato. “Because he has all the original [gear]. He’s playing through all the original gear that he used on these famous records.

“When you hear that Binson [Echorec] and he’s demonstrating his whammy bar and everything, it’s just, like, wow! And it sounds pristine. It was going through, like, five different amplifiers right near me.”

Just think of some of the famous players who have been on the Rick Beato Show, and the guitars they brought with them. But would you want to play your hero’s guitar?

Beato says he's had the chance and every time he has declined. Gilmour never asked him if he wanted to play his guitar, but if he had, Beato would have said no.

“Never. I try and never touch anyone’s instruments,” he says. “Even if they do [offer], I’m like, I don’t want [to]. I’ve had people hand me things.”

And it turns out these “things” he's been handed are pretty cool. Even with such a policy, there must have been a bit of Beato that wanted to see how Peter Frampton’s legendary Phenix would play.

“I had Peter Frampton, the first time I met him, he handed me his black Les Paul and I handed it right back to him,” says Beato. “Larry Carlton handed me his [Gibson ES-] 335. I handed it right back to him. ‘I’m not going to play this.’ I’ve had so many people hand me their guitars, and I’m like, ‘No, thank you.’”

It’s not the guitars that wow Beato, it’s the players. That's why he'd rather prefer his guests play their gear, rather than spend the time playing it himself – seeing these guitarists up close with the equipment they used to make their music gives him an all-new appreciation of what makes them special.

That is certainly the case players such as Neal Schon from Journey, his latest guest.

“I’ve watched Neal play a thousand times but you can’t tell what people are doing unless you’re right next to them,” says Beato. “Like his right hand? I can’t… He showed me how he holds the pick, and how he picks and everything, and he kinds of uses it at an angle, but he is so relaxed.”

Elsewhere in his recent interview with Beato, Schon recalled the time Albert King yelled at him for picking up his Gibson Flying V. In a separate conversation, Beato also explained why he stopped playing solos for 25 years – and why it was good for his playing.

The experience left such a mark on him that it would inform the lyrics for Mammoth’s latest studio album, The End – a recording shaped by panic, anxiety and dread.

Speaking to the Rolling Stone’s Music Now podcast, Van Halen elaborates on exactly how bad it was. He was already wound up pretty tightly before they took off. These shows were a big deal and they were being played at altitude. Mexico City is 7,350 feet above sea level. That got into Van Halen’s head big-time.

“Being a singer, anytime I’ve been in a place that has a really high-altitude elevation, it’s very tough,” he explains. “You’ve always got to prepare yourself, like, for a show in Denver stuff like that. And after looking at the elevation and seeing it was going to be the highest show I’d ever played, I was super nervous just for a show of that magnitude, obviously on that crazy stage.”

He had good reason to be nervous. Performing at altitude is not easy. It’s harder to breathe up there. The air is drier. Singers, in particular, have to be meticulous with their preparation. It didn’t help that Van Halen is a nervous flyer.

“I’m really good at psyching myself out anxiety-wise, and I didn’t get a lot of sleep before the flight,” he continues. “I already hate flying to begin with. I’m just a very anxious person.”

On the plane, Van Halen tells Rolling Stone that it was everything, everywhere all at once happening to his body.

“My vision started closing,” he explains. “I thought I had had a panic attack before. If you think you’ve had a panic attack, you probably haven’t. It’s like your body betrays you.

“My vision closed up. I felt like I was gonna throw up. I started sweating profusely, but I was freezing – and it was really crazy. I’d never been aware of how badly that could happen. That feeling of feeling like everything was over and ending.”

He has learned to use this anxiety in Mammoth’s songwriting. Speaking to Guitar World, he says writing is “therapeutic” – a release for all those tensions.

When writing for The End, he not only had the panic attack as source material, he had the Los Angeles wildfires of January 2025, when he had some of his late father, Eddie Van Halen’s most-sacred gear packed up and ready to go at a moment’s notice. All of that was weighing on his mind.

“With the way I write, it’s very much a therapeutic release. Working those thoughts out is a way of calming the voices in my head and subduing my anxiety,” he said. “I was working through a lot this time around. The vocals were recorded in January while we had everything in 5150 packed up and ready to go at any moment, because of the Los Angeles fires.

“There’s a lot of nerves, stress and anxiety there. I was thinking about all of my dad’s instruments and all of his belongings before I could even think about mine. We had a U-Haul truck filled with everything. It was tough to be creative in that environment.”

Wolfgang Van Halen's full interview with Guitar World is available to read online.

It's been a yearly challenge for Scallon and his co-writer and co-conspirator Andrew Huang since 2018. It finds them writing and recording an entire album in around 12 hours, with their trials and tribulations all captured on camera.

Seven years into the First of October project – which, shock horror, takes place on October 1 each year – they’ve opted for their most public setting yet.

There are pros and cons to this, naturally. There’s the huge risk of having a creative meltdown in front of a store full of people, but there’s also a rather plentiful supply of gear to dive into.

“You can just grab a bass from behind you and choose a different one every time,” says Scallon at one point, a plot forming in his mind. Anything the pair saw that took their fancy was fair game – Guitar Center gave them free roam to use whatever they liked.

And, of course, there are umpteen pedals to try out. Prioritising some of the more “crazy” options available, Scallon builds a pedalboard that includes a chrome Morley wah, a Daredevil Chicago Rat, and Boss’s new XS-100 Poly Shifter, paired, conveniently, with his signature Schecter and a Fender combo amp.

But away from the adrenaline rush of the project, the day also carried a note of sentimentality for Scallon.

“This is my hometown Guitar Center,” he says. “I grew up in Arlington Heights. My friends and I would ride our bikes here as kids. This is where I first started really playing instruments.”

Speaking previously about the video series and his “one day a year band,” Scallon told Guitar World how its success has completely inverted their expectations.

“The First of October had a terrible first day,” he says. “We were going to make the worst album ever, and that’d be why it would be a really fun video, but we made some songs we really liked, and we found that making a ten-track album in a day was actually achievable.

“You can’t spend time thinking, ‘What’s my amp setting?’ When you get rid of that part of the process, you actually make better music. It’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.”

It's also a great advertisement for the value of brick-and-mortar stores in the online gear shopping age, and a shrewd tie-in for the store. Chatting business strategy with Guitar World previously, CEO Gabe Dalporto has said the business's future must prioritize premium guitar.

“I think a solo should complement the song, rather than just jerking off,” Bell summarizes his philosophy in the latest edition of Guitar World.

“I still play that solo. I suppose people expect it. But it took a long time. It wasn’t blues, and it wasn’t rock. I was used to playing blues and rock, but when Whiskey came along, there was this huge question mark over my head, going, ‘What the fuck am I going to play?’”

Bell remembers that he got over that initial hump by humming the solo, which he admits is “the way I made most of my solos”.

“I’ll play the chords, and I’ll sing or hum it over and over again,” he explains. “It might take quite a long time to get the solo I want to hear, but it seems to work.”

The whole process took around two or three weeks – “I was trying to get the phrase, that little hook,” he explains – which took him to various, erm, places. Literally.

“I was going everywhere – on the toilet, the bath, the taxi, and walking down the street – going, ‘What do I hear coming in there after those chords?’ It took forever, but it’s stood the test of time.”

When asked whether nailing that solo took a couple of passes in the studio, Bell replies, “No. Because Phil [Lynott, Thin Lizzy vocalist/bassist] did a rough vocal, and then we went to listen to it, and I hadn’t a clue.

“I had no idea whatsoever. I just didn’t know anything about it. At first, it took me a long time, so they gave me a cassette of the rough song, and I worked on it day and night.

“Eventually, I came up with the whole song – the intro, the little phrase, and the solo. So when they put me in to play in the studio, I had every single note worked out. I knew it was going to work.”

Metallica would eventually breathe new life into the song by putting their own spin on it for their 1998 record, Garage Inc.

While the band invited Bell to perform the song with them in Dublin, he revealed in an extensive interview with GW last year that it was an experience he didn’t particularly enjoy.

For more from Bell, plus new interviews with fast-rising shred virtuoso Spiro Dussias and Jim Root, pick up issue 598 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.

Isbell, echoing comments David Gilmour made last year, believes guitars sound better with age. And though he reckons Martin’s contemporary creations can grow to sound just as good as the builds from its golden age, that’s going to require some patience. Luckily, he has a method for speeding up the process.

“I think the guitars that they're making right now hold up with the pre-war guitars,” he says of Martin. “Especially as they age. I think they'll wind up sounding just as good, and that's a beautiful thing.”

Pre-war Martins are perceived by many as the pinnacle of acoustic guitar luthiery and tone. To get his newer acoustics in a similar tonal ballpark, he treat to some, erm, high volume exposure.

“It's one of those things that the longer it goes, the more the pores dry out and widen and the wood gets lighter and thinner over the years, the better the guitar is going to sound,” he accepts. “I recommend putting it in front of a couple of stereo speakers when you leave the house and turning it up really loud.

“I normally use Outkast or something, just so when I come home, Outkast is playing on the stereo. It makes me happy. But all my new acoustic guitars get to listen to Outkast for about 40 hours the first week they're in the house.”

The theory here is that sound vibrations help open up the wood of a guitar, essentially maturing it at a much faster rate. The science plays out at a molecular level, as it essentially helps dry out the wood as water molecules hinder an instrument's resonance.

With Martins in particular, Isbell feels there’s great value in this process.

“Martin is the quintessential American guitar company, certainly for acoustic instruments,” he states. “I've tried everything else and I still prefer Martins, old ones and new ones.”

Isbell’s Martin collaboration comes after the launch of his new Tim Shaw-voiced signature Telecaster pickups, and a Gibson Murphy Lab reissue of his famed “Red Eye” Les Paul.

He's also come to the aid of beginner guitar players, offering advice on how newbie strummers can get over the hardest part of learning the guitar.

Taking the Halloween spirit in full stride, Strings and his band were dressed in a smattering of different costumes, from a Phantom of the Opera nod, to a vampire and Frankenstein's monster, for their show at the CFG Arena in Baltimore.

Playing what looks to be a PRS McCarty electric guitar, Strings is bang on the money with the cover, nailing everything from the tone to the song's iconic guitar solo. It's excellent stuff.

As someone commenting on the cover writes, “You never know what you're gonna get when you go to a Billy Strings concert!”

It’s the latest in a long line of Ozzy tributes that have graced stages since his passing. Already, we've seen Nuno Bettencourt and Extreme get creative with a superlative medley, Wolfgang Van Halen’s tear-jerking Mama I’m Coming Home, and the somewhat divisive all-star medley at the MTV VMAs.

Meanwhile, Strings released two signature Martin guitars at the start of the year, both of which are based on his 1940 D-28 in a move that has parallels with the firm's new releases with Jason Isbell. It follows a signature pedal drop with Chase Bliss last year.

Strings has also had his ear pricked by a musical troubadour who's penned a song about buying guitars.

And if you're not over the Halloween frivolities yet, James Hetfield playing a thrash classic dressed as a Kangaroo might just be the remedy you need.

There are the jam-band devotees who view him as a native son for his deep-grooving tenure with the Allman Brothers Band, and satellite projects with the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Vida Blue, Frogswings, BK3, Gov't Mule, members of Phish, and his own Peacemakers.

And now there are the adoring Deadheads, fit to be tie-dyed over their singing bass guitar hero in Dead & Company.

It was in 2015 that Burbridge was given the unenviable task of replacing Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh in a new incarnation of the band called Dead & Company.

“It’s so hard when you come in to bands like the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band where the fans actually care who the bassist is,” Burbridge told Billboard. “You don’t want to copy the original guy, but you feel obligated to honor what bass melodies the founding bass player crafted for the song.”

Lesh’s distinctive playing style defined many Grateful Dead songs, enabling the original lineup to roam freely from rock, blues and country through sprawling jams.

“Considering how brilliant Phil is and where he comes from conceptually, when you take that out of the mix, in a sense you don't have the Dead anymore,” said Burbridge in the February 2018 issue of Bass Player. “He's that big a part of their sound and feeling, and neither I nor anyone else can really replace him.”

How did you get the bass chair in Dead & Company, and how did you prepare?

I got a call from Bob Weir's manager, Matt Busch, asking me to come and play with the guys, because they were thinking about continuing on after their final show in summer 2015.

I had done BK3 with drummer Bill Kreutzmann and Scott Murawski, so Bill and I had developed a chemistry, and I had already played with Bob, Phil Lesh, and Jeff Chimenti, so it went well. Then I saw photos of Mike Gordon at the Dead's rehearsal space, so I figured he got the gig.

A couple of months later Matt called and said, ‘You're up.’ Apparently, Mike had to pass on the gig due to Phish and his solo album. I knew about 20 Dead songs from various projects I'd done, and I picked my favorite 50 out of what they seemed to be playing a lot. Then I called John Mayer, who was already onboard.

He knew 70 songs, so we compared lists, and I learned the extras, as well. By the end of rehearsals, we were up to 80 or 90 songs.

You've called the gig a revelation for you.

For sure. Friends have been trying to get me into the Dead since high school, but I had to be older and more mature, having attempted to write lyrics and sing, to fully appreciate their music.

There are two key elements. First, the gig is very challenging, because the music is quite intricate. As Bob said to me, ‘Oteil, we were not dabblers!’ It's like architecture the way the songs are crafted, between the lyrics, the melodies, the chords, the grooves, the odd meters, and the wide variety of influences.

There are tunes that seem like a jam, and all of a sudden, 15 minutes in, the first verse starts! Or a bridge will happen three-quarters of the way in, and never again. Or each verse of a song will switch one chord.

Like Box of Rain – you wouldn't believe how hard that song is. At the same time, you're under absolutely no obligation to execute the songs correctly.

Musically, I'm using everything I've ever learned; it's the ultimate gig for me. We cover as many styles as we did in the Allman Brothers, but with a wider scope of harmony, and the lyrics are farther out as well; these guys are poets.

The other key is that from their start, this is a band that rejected preconceptions. There were no rules, which connects them to my biggest influences, like Miles Davis, Sun Ra, Jimi Hendrix, P-Funk, and Col. Bruce.

I keep asking myself, Why didn't I recognize this sooner? In a way it feels like it was all supposed to happen for me.

How have you approached replacing Phil Lesh?

Phil's approach was to do the opposite of what the expectation was. As a result, there really aren't a lot of set basslines in the Dead's music. Truckin' has one, as does Shakedown Street and Dancin' in the Streets, but most tunes don't. So I got a clean slate, in a way.

I come from a more traditional way of bass playing, which is rooted in the African tradition of the groove. But what I didn't realize is a lot of the Dead's music comes out of the same tradition. Bob hears a lot of reggae and funky halftime bass grooves in his head. For example, on Estimated Prophet, Bob always wanted Phil to play that kind of bassline, and Phil wouldn't do it!

With my roots, I naturally played it that way, and Bob dug it. He's encouraged me to take that approach on everything – play what you are. As a result, I always say I won over the crowds‘ asses before I won over their ears.

On the other hand, your improvisational abilities seem to mesh with the Lesh template.

Absolutely. There's so much I relate to in Phil's playing. I try to cop his style on Bertha, but in my voice. In some ways he's like a rock 'n' roll James Jamerson, playing counterpoint melodies on the bass, and it's all improvised. Those are the areas where I can connect with him.

Plus, I get a solo spot on Eyes of the World, which I really don't need because there's so much improvising on the gig, but it does allow me to try some chord-melody ideas. So I'm playing the most stretched-out stuff I can think of... in stadiums! Are you kidding me?

And you're singing lead on some songs, as well.

“Can you believe it? I sing in stadiums and people dig it. It blows my mind. That's another part of my personal growth from this gig, thanks to the guys’ insistence that I sing some songs. I'm doing Comes a Time, China Doll, and If I Had the World to Give, and I'm sharing lead with John on Ship of Fools.”

How do you reflect on your time with the Allman Brothers?

The greatest gift from that experience was learning about rock 'n' roll and other genres from the people who created them. I learned so much that I didn't know about Black music, from a long-haired white guy who looked like a biker, in Gregg Allman.

He'd play me amazing recordings of old soul artists I had never heard. Like the Dead, the Allmans are a unique gumbo of styles, with the influences of jazz, blues, R&B, British Invasion rock, folk, country, bluegrass, New Orleans, and Latin music; it was all stirred together.

Plus, I got to play with an insane number of greats at our Beacon shows – Roy Haynes, Stanley Clarke, Taj Mahal, Levon Helm, Hubert Sumlin, Little Milton, Dr. John, and Billy Gibbons. I stepped into history with that band. Musically, it made me feel so patriotic. The Allman Brothers taught me to love America!

How about your Tedeschi Trucks Band stint?

For years, I thought Derek Trucks and his wife should have a band together, and for it to happen and to get to be in it with my brother Kofi was a blast. But when you have an 11-piece band like TTB, you have to gig a lot to keep it going.

I didn't want to be on the road that much, so I stepped away after two years and two albums. But all the miles and the hard work we put in, you can hear it in the music. The live album we did really captures the band firing on all pistons.

And when he reaches for inspiration to create the riffs behind his new band’s rolling early ’70s rumble, he’s coming from the same place as guys like Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton.

“All of those guitar players who started the concept of the guitar riff, they were learning comping before the style even existed,” Faherty says. “They were learning to back up the melody, not take over the melody with their guitar playing. I think what helps me for Canyon Lights is that the riffs come from the comping style of playing rhythm guitar.”

Faherty and drummer Tim Carman, his bandmate in GA-20 – a band that, incidentally, recorded an entire album of blues covers, 2021’s Try It... You Might Like It: GA-20 Does Hound Dog Taylor – formed Canyon Lights after jamming on riffs and song ideas that didn’t fit the more conventional blues of their previous band.

Modeled in the mold of power trios like the James Gang – whose Walk Away they covered and released earlier this year – and Cream, Canyon Lights paints with a much broader brush.

Breathe Easy, their debut album’s title cut, is rooted in a bluesy shuffle and accented with slide licks, but Faherty’s approach to vocals and harmonies carries the song deep into the disco decade. And the single-note picking in the intro to Song Behind Those Tears rings like a long-lost Byrds tune before he lays down the stomping main groove.

Faherty’s ability to move seamlessly from chunky riffing to slinky funk to ripping slide reveals his virtuosity. After all, he’s schooled in jazz and once took on the role of Eddie in a Van Halen cover band; he even posted YouTube tutorials on how to play some of the late guitar legend’s solos during Covid days.

“I grew up with a lot of different sounds in Boston in the ’90s. I have a basic rock background, but I was also playing punk, hardcore and metal,” Faherty says. “All of that coalesced into certain kinds of vibes that just weren’t going to work with GA-20.”

Breathe Easy has the organic tones and feel of garage rock’s glory days, but those blues touchstones are still Faherty’s north star.

“That live video of Buddy Guy doing First Time I Met the Blues in 1970 that was in the documentary Chicago Blues – if I could ever even get close to the feel or touch of that performance, I'd be able to die a happy man,” Faherty says.

• Breathe Easy is out now via Canyon Lights.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

After leaving home as a teenager she caught the ear of blues masters such as Son House, Fred McDowell and John Hurt. “I was always treated with a very warm feeling of acceptance,” she recalls. “Perhaps it’s because I played some of the same material. I believe there was an understanding that they were being honored.”

Since then, Block has released dozens of records and won numerous awards with her trusty Martin OM-40 in hand. Her latest record, Heavy on the Blues, delivers classic downhome, old-school acoustic blues, and she’s not slowing down. “Music is a universal language; and I’ve always said that the music community is really a big family.”

When you left home, you made connections with Son House, Fred McDowell and John Hurt. Were you always a fan?

I’d already been working hard on transcribing early blues. I was familiar with the music of those founding artists. Growing up in Greenwich Village during the roots music revival of the 1960s, I was exposed to just about every American music style from the 20th century.

I was in the right place at the right time to meet Son House, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White, Reverend Gary Davis and Mississippi Fred McDowell. My dad was a country fiddle player, so we were connected to a small and dedicated group of music lovers.

They played in the old styles, searched for the early masters and sought out vintage recordings. I was the beneficiary of that research, working on transcribing as much as I could.

Can you remember your earliest interactions with the blues?

At 14 years old, I lay in bed every night with headphones on, listening to these rediscovered records. I transcribed Mississippi John Hurt's version of Frankie and Albert before meeting him, which added to the joy when I got to hear him play it in person.

Reverend Gary Davis lived in the Bronx, where Stefan Grossman and a handful of others took lessons from him. That was my daily reality, and I didn’t realize how fleeting it was. We thought everyone in the world was a musician!

It must have been incredible to see the players you grew up loving brough into the forefront.

Son House was rediscovered by Dick Waterman and two others who were traveling around, knocking on doors and sleuthing out leads. Waterman went on to manage Son, Bonnie Raitt and even me for a while.

Tragically, Robert Johnson had died earlier; Charley Patton and Tommy Johnson, too. I can only imagine how great it would have been if they’d had been alive.

What did you learn from the greats that you still apply today?

Son House was first and foremost a passionate player. He rolled his eyes back and tossed his head when he played – he seemed to go into a trance, snapping and slamming the strings, and playing with total commitment.

Mississippi John Hurt was a gentle spirit, humble and soft-spoken. But behind his peaceful demeanor lay a burning energy. I learned that what he did was far more complex than what one might perceive at first.

Can you remember the first time you met Son House?

Dick Waterman brought Son to Stefan’s parents’ apartment in New York City, where I spent one-on-one time with him. We started talking about Willie Brown and Robert Johnson, and Son told me he taught Robert Johnson how to play.

I could clearly see their influence on each other based – shared material, shared styles and shared tunings. Walking Blues and Death Letter Blues are essentially the same song done by two different artists in unique ways. You didn’t always notice the overlap until looking closer.

Is it true that Son was surprised by your chops?

I played Future Blues and Walking Blues for him. He looked at Dick and Stefan and asked, “Where did she learn to play like this?” There must have been an amount of surprise when he saw his music was being revered, studied, and emulated decades later.

What about Mississippi John Hurt?

He welcomed us into his home to play music. He was a gentle spirit who was gracious to everyone. I was unaware at the time, but I later discovered that he’d endured considerable hardship – he hadn’t been properly compensated for his work.

And what was Fred McDowell like?

He was from a slightly younger generation, with one foot in the early blues and the other in modern electric blues, similar to Muddy Waters and Elmore James. Fred seemed a little less surprised and a little more contemporary when I met him!

You’ve long been associated with Martin guitars.

Growing up around musicians, it seemed we all understood that Martin guitars were the best in the world. When I was 14, Stefan and I hitchhiked coast to coast, stopping at pawn to search for Martins. Stefan would go in and say, “Got any old guitars?”

They’d come out of the back with a pre-war pearl inlay Martin that needed a neck reset. They’d say something like, “Gotta have $50,” and that was how Stefan started an amazing collection of priceless Martins.

That same year, I remember sitting in the artist’s area with Tom Paxton at a festival in Berkeley. I had one of Stefan’s Martins and told Tom it was worth $1,500. He was incredulous. It seemed like a million dollars at the time – later you could add two more zeros!

How important has that signature Martin, the OM-40, been to you?

I longed for a Martin of my own but they were always out of reach. One day I got a call from Martin’s artist rep, Dick Boak. He told me they wanted to make a signature model in my name. I almost fainted!

Dick and I designed on dinner napkins at a restaurant near the factory. When I picked it up I was walking on air. Martin gave me the #1 in the series and a couple of the prototypes. It’s a deeply moving part of my journey – a real landmark for me.

You released Heavy on the Blues in August. Since it’s a blues record, were there any hardships while making it?

Once the recording process begins there are no hardships, just joy. I love recording. The hard part is the doubt that can set in before starting, when I wonder, ‘Will I ever be good again?’

I’ve recorded 14 projects for Rounder Records, 12 for Stony Plain, and a few brief forays with other labels. Just as I was about to start recording, Stony Plain was sold to a catalog-only company. Artists, publicists, and promo people were all cut loose.

I went into a deep despair, thinking my career was over. It wasn’t be the first time I’d felt that way. I usually experience a lull between projects – sometimes when I’m waiting for a record to come out I begin to doubt myself. The worst thing is not knowing.

So I called my old friend Maria Muldaur for a little sisterly advice. She said, “Listen to me, little sister: don’t get depressed. Don’t get angry. Just get up and find yourself a new label, because we have a lot more music to give.” I called two labels – and both wanted to sign me!

Mark Carpentieri of MC Records injected me with fresh enthusiasm. He said, “You’ve done all these tributes; you’ve done themed albums; you’ve had lots of success. Now it's time to do whatever you want. Just do Rory Block.”

The new CD swings from the earliest country blues to hard-driving electric blues, from Charley Patton to Koko Taylor. And I brought in some great players for collaborations.

We also managed to pick up a smaller tour vehicle, now that my big bus is grounded with 340,000 miles of hard rolling. We got back on the road and drove 10,000 miles through the North Country and Midwest, followed by a coast-to-coast trip. There’s nothing to complain about!

• Heavy on the Blues is out now.

His third album with his trusty sidekicks the Heartbreakers – 1979's Damn the Torpedoes – was his breakthrough, one of those blockbusters of the era where virtually every song either was a hit single or could have been one.

Refugee, Here Comes My Girl, Even the Losers, Don't Do Me Like That, What Are You Doin' in My Life? – these were all masterclasses in songwriting. Petty delivered winning chorus after winning chorus, while ever-underrated lead guitarist Mike Campbell played the perfect supporting role, gamely responding to Petty's exhortations with leads and solos that often had hooks almost as catchy as the ones tasked with carrying the load up the mountain.

The music business is a tough one, though, and once Petty had delivered literal and figurative gold, the expectation was that there would be more to follow.

Though his disdain for the needs and wants of record companies was legendary, Petty was also a dogged perfectionist who was himself determined to not lose any momentum. No pressure or anything.

Petty knew that the followup album's lead single in particular needed to hit the nail on the head. Consequently, he explained in an interview captured in the terrific documentary Runnin' Down A Dream, he “wanted something that had a little lick from the beginning.”

And then came the riff – perfectly simple, perfectly effective; pick-up-'n'-play-it – and that's what he did. All he did, really.

“That's all I had,” he said. “I did that for weeks.”

Then, another breakthrough – that magical chorus; unforgettable and charming, but again, so simple.

But then came another wall. So, what to do other than go back to that riff? Over and over again...

“All week,” Petty said, cycling through the riff to the amused interviewer. “You eat dinner, come back, sit down and pick up the guitar... People started banging on the wall – ‘Don’t play that anymore!’”

Then, the song that would become The Waiting finally came.

The opening line alone, “Baby don't it feel like heaven right now”, made the teething process worth it. Throw in Mike Campbell's instant classic of a lick that swirls beautifully around that stubborn riff in the intro, and you have something timeless.

A top 20 hit, The Waiting – coupled with the duet he wrote for himself and Stevie Nicks around the same time, Stop Draggin' My Heart Around – indeed kept things rolling at pace for Petty & the Heartbreakers. No-one would think of him as a one-album wonder again.

However, Dussias admits that he's secretly – or not so secretly – a “classic-guitar nerd,” and even has his heart set on releasing a blues album.

“I jam to Joe Bonamassa, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and John Mayer all day long, going into a Plexi-style thing,” he discloses in the latest issue of Guitar World.

“It sounds like I’m joking, but there’s definitely a blues album in me, and it’ll come out before I turn 30. I might be doing hyper-modern stuff – maybe I’m playing into the hate I get from how cold it can be – but I will do a 180 at some point and make people cry with a version of Stormy Monday.”

Dussias is quick to note the division between more traditional guitar players and those committed to challenging the very boundaries of the instrument.

“There’s this whole narrative where you are either real-as-fuck and old-school or hyper-produced,” he observes. “I’m trying to push the envelope in both respects.”

As for what we can expect next, the virtuoso reveals that he's well into the process of launching his own “project” – and is knee-deep in studio sessions for what we assume to be a brand-new band.

“Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be in my own band. I’ve also been in the studio with Polyphia, working on their next record, but my dream is to tour my own music and get this band off the ground.”

At Guitar Summit last month, Misha Mansoor joined Henson and Abasi in showering praise on Dussias, even going as far as to call his playing “alien stuff.”

For more from Spiro, plus new interviews with Henson and Jim Root, pick up issue 598 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.

Notable for its absence of keyboards and ballads (apart from the piano-dominated Right Now), it was an immediate success, debuting at #1 on the Billboard charts and spawning several hit singles as well as a hugely successful world tour. It also demonstrated that Van Halen remained a vital force amid changing musical times.

As he had since the band's 1978 debut, Michael Anthony provided the basslines and the high vocal harmonies that remained as much a part of the band's signature sound as Eddie Van Halen's guitar pyrotechnics.

“I loved making that album,” Anthony told Bass Player back in 2018. “Working with producer Andy Johns was great – he wanted a big bass guitar sound, and I think it really came out. The band was firing on all cylinders. It was a great time.”

The lead single, Poundcake, features a thunderous 16th-note bassline that provides much of the track's heaviness and power, while also supporting the other musicians and serving the song.

“I hold things together so Ed can play anything he wants. I don't get to flash as much as I'd like to, but I'd say to any bass players who are critical, ‘Let me see you lay down a groove like Poundcake.’ To me, that's harder than getting up there and soloing.”

While a few earlier Van Halen songs such as Mean Streets featured 16th-note basslines, they generally followed the guitar riff. On Poundcake, however, the bass works in contrast to Van Halen's syncopated riff, driving the track relentlessly from down among the low frequencies.

“Back then, we always tracked everything live as a band – we would play, and Sammy would sing or scat any ideas that he had. A lot of times when Eddie would show us a riff, Alex would just bust into a beat and we would jam.”

In the case of Poundcake, he notes that “the openness of the chords and the beat pretty much lent itself to a 16th-note pulsating groove underneath.”

The track begins with Eddie Van Halen revving up a power drill before Alex Van Halen's four-bar drum groove. Anthony enters with a booming swoop down the E string, and then he immediately starts laying down 16th-notes under the sparse guitar riff. Chromatic, melodic, and bluesy minor-pentatonic licks provide contrasting tension-and-release to the steady flow of root notes.

For the first verse, and Sammy Hagar's vocal entrance at 00:53, the constant rumble of the bass is especially striking under the false harmonics provided by Eddie Van Halen.

The pre-chorus at 01:58 is the only part of the song where Anthony’s bassline doubles the guitar riff for an extended period. He returns to previous form for the second chorus, and a brief bridge at 02:34 .

The guitar solo begins at 02:52, marked by a key shift up a whole-step to F#, and a funk-inflected bass groove by Anthony for the first eight measures (before returning to 16ths for the final 12 bars). The return of the pre-chorus at 03:38 is also a whole-step higher, to correspond with the guitar-solo key.

The final chorus finds Anthony shifting up an octave for the first seven measures (and an octave higher yet for the eighth). To play the part requires excellent time, considerable stamina, and an ability to groove without sounding mechanical.

“I suggest you get out the metronome, set the tempo, and just start locking into it. You do not want to sound like a machine playing the line; you have to make it pulsate, rather than playing it straight. That's when you get it grooving!”

Anthony used Rotosound roundwounds, and he believes he played a Music Man StingRay on the song, although he isn't certain. The amp was an SWR.

“I don't remember which model it was, but it was a bi-amp system, with one 4x10 speaker cabinet and one 1x15 cabinet.”

His cameo in Michael B. Jordan's Sinners says it all. The movie finishes with Ingram playing alongside Buddy Guy – a visual representation of the veteran and the rising star truly keeping the blues alive.

“I was mentored by older people who helped me with my songwriting and playing,” Ingram tells The Guardian.

“Blues isn’t just a guy with a guitar – it’s a feeling, and rap can be blues. See, blues is the foundation of so much American music – jazz and soul and rock and rap – but people tend to narrow it down to a guy with a guitar. I might be a guy with a guitar, but it’s more than just this.”

Hard times growing up pushed Ingram to immerse himself fully in the genre, which his classmates found odd.

“Everyone was into rap and R&B and, while I didn’t get bullied, they would ask me: ‘Do you really like that old music?’ I’d tell them: ‘Yeah, I do. You should check it out.’ Maybe they now are!” he adds with a laugh.

“I learned a lot in church as a child – my mom’s side of the family are all church people and gospel is a great teacher.”

Ingram's next-gen star status was recently solidified by the fact that he just landed his second signature guitar – a new-look Delta Day version of his original Telecaster Deluxe.

Since we last spoke in 2024, they’ve continued to surprise. They’ve lost a guitarist in Colm O’Reilly, gained a guitarist in Zac Stephenson, released second album All That Is Over, signed to the venerable Sub Pop label, toured relentlessly and made the leap to full-time musicians.

“There’s still the fear every single day – ‘Are we going to pay our bills?’” says guitarist and vocalist Karla Chubb. “But you have to find calmness in the chaos: the fact that not every day is going to be the same.”

Stephenson had to get to grips with such weirdness pretty quickly. Initially drafted in as temporary cover, he proved a surprisingly good fit and was soon asked to join.

“I went from being in an office one day to playing a main festival stage to 20,000 people the next day – then back in work three days later,” he says. “I was like, ‘Oh, that was strange.’ And then it just kept happening!”

Chubb credits Stephenson’s arrival as one of several factors, including a break-up and a new relationship, that gave the tour-battered group a shot in the arm. “So much had changed in the year since [2024 debut] Letter To Self that I almost couldn't relate to the music anymore,” she says.

“Zac came in with fresh energy and a childlike innocence and wonder for it all. We went, ‘Nah what we’re doing is cool! We need to get a grip on ourselves.’ Now we’re like, ‘Let’s go!’”

How have you evolved as players since album one and, in your case Zac, joining the band?

Chubb: As a guitar player, the main thing I’ve had to struggle with is confidence, and accepting that to be the best player for a track does not mean having the most impressive solo or riff. I probably consider myself a songwriter much more than I consider myself a guitarist.

Stephenson: I’m similar – I really fell in love with the guitar again in the pandemic. I’d been fronting and producing a band, but I was sharing a house with six people, so I couldn't make any noise, and I couldn’t leave! So I got into playing really softly. One of the biggest things I learned was the importance of dynamics and your picking hand.

I spent a few years trying to learn scales and things, which can be good. But I don’t think you get better from learning scales – it’s like a reference you can go back to if you’re stuck on a puzzle. When you’re playing you don’t necessarily think in scales.

We hear a surprising amount of guitarists say, “I don’t think of myself as a guitarist” like it’s a loaded term.

Chubb: I think it’s like a self-preservation thing. If I label myself as a guitarist, someone can be like, ‘Well, she’s shite at it!’ I remember vividly when I was first playing, I went to a lesson and I wanted to learn a Nirvana song. The teacher was like, “Kurt Cobain is one of the worst guitarists in the world!”

I was like, “First of all, fuck off! Secondly, that is objectively not true.” What a way to put someone down when they wanted to learn. You get a lot of that online too. There’s a lot of trolling, and calling yourself a guitarist opens you up to more of it. Maybe we just need to own it a little more.

One of the most notable elements of All That Is Over is the way you’ve worked in acoustic guitar and some gothic feel. Where has that come from?

Chubb: It’s pulled from flamenco and Spanish influence – that chromatic scale thing adds a lot of tension – and it’s all because I bought a nylon-string guitar. A music shop in Dublin was having a closing-down sale, and I picked up this nylon-string and it just felt right.

I wrote three or four songs within a week or two. It’s just so accessible. You make the art with the tools you have at your disposal. There’s no plugin. There’s no “get the interface.” The phone’s voice note app starts recording and it’s just like, “Go!”

You worked with producer Daniel Fox again. Last time you spoke about him, there was talk of fingers bleeding. How did he push you this time?

Stephenson: This time there was olive oil on the fingers!

Chubb: Yeah – we were playing the nylon-string and we were recording it so close to the fretboard, but we wanted to stop all the squeaking when you shift. It really worked.

How much olive oil are we talking?

Stephenson: A tiny ramekin thing that you dip your fingertips in. Not enough for your bread in a restaurant – just dip them in, rub a little bit of it off and play.

When it came down to gear on the album, what made the cut?

Chubb: My main instrument is the Jagstang. I’ve always loved a short scale, and I think it has a lot more bite than the Mustang. So we brought the Jagstang, a Jazzmaster, and a Gretsch to have that double humbucker grit on some of them. Then we had the nylon-string and a standard Fender Dreadnought acoustic.

Stephenson: My workhorse is my Italia Rimini 6, a Trevor Wilkinson brand. I got it second-hand years ago and they’ve gotten more expensive since then. It’s got two humbuckers; it’s kind of like a Rickenbacker style, but it’s so versatile.

I use the neck pick up a good bit on it. It’s quite warm. For anything kind of spikier I used the Jazzmaster. I used a lot of the Jazzmaster tremolo arm as well. For Desire, it was just feedback from the amp and I was moving the pitch around with the trem bar. Then Dan just did some magic and made it sound not-terrible!

What are your guitar highlights of the record?

Chubb: I have a few. Zac’s little spaghetti Western riff on Desire. The riff for Something’s Gonna Happen originally was a very simple one I wrote; drop D, and Zac added a slide into the first note. It added so much texture – I was like, “Oh, he’s a genius!”

Stephenson: In the intro to Better; there’s a rising feeling [from Karla’s Boss Harmonist] that’s like you’re being pulled from the depths of Hell. Then the solo in Rage, which was not an intentional take. I was messing around on a guide track – I don’t know what effects I had on and I hit a wrong note as well! But Dan was like, ‘You’re not doing that again!’

What was the song that set the amp on fire, Karla?

Chubb: That was Coming Alive, on the Fender Princeton. There were two of them, and they both looked absolutely battered – the front shell was coming off the one I used. We were always bringing coffee and food into the control room, so I thought it was someone burning their toast when the amp went up. We had to extinguish it, a little bit!

Speaking of risky amps, I caught a gig recently and it looked like you were plugging in your nylon-string acoustic into your amp.

Stephenson: The sound engineers are always so confused when Karla plugs the nylon-string into the amp through all the pedals. But 99.9 percent of the time it sounds unbelievable. They’re like, “Where’s that coming from? I can’t see it on the thing!” And it’s like, “That’s the amp!”

Chubb: It’s class! I also lovebeing able to put the chorus on, like on Desire. I think when you put a guitar straight through a DI, it just doesn’t have the same effect. I want the warmth of the Deluxe Reverb.

On the next tour we’re going to have a second amp with its own pedalboard, because we’ve struggled with levels. Playing through the pedalboards is fun. A nylon-string in a cowboy song with a Fuzz War? C’mon!

You previously talked about playing Liam Gallagher stadium shows with Boss Katana practice amps. You seem to have a happy disregard for the tonal “rules.”

Stephenson: All new tones were made by people breaking the tonal rules. What's Jack White's entire career been based on, other than doing things that were considered weird at the time?

Chubb: I don’t know any of the tonal rules anyway. And also, we’re poor! I’m like, “I’m gonna plug this into that! Why not?” Zac and I are rebuilding our pedalboards and our sound engineer is such a frequency and voltage nerd. He’s like, “You should get this equalizer pedal, then I can knock out some of these frequencies.” I’m like, “No, it’s fine – let there be noise!”

• All That Is Over is out now on SubPop (US) and City Slang. SPRINTS tour the UK in November and the US in January and February.

“Most of our influences, in some way or another, either come from America or broke in America,” he says. And, as it happens, a “good word” from none other than Slash helped make these North American dates a reality.

A new band in name only, Cardinal Black’s story began 16 years ago. Long before the sold-out shows and social media acclaim, Buck, frontman Tom Hollister and drummer Adam Roberts were just three friends from Wales, gigging under the name TH3.

They played weddings, pubs, funerals – anything that paid. After a few years of slogging it out with mixed success, they split to pursue other projects. As the world was emerging from lockdown, the trio reconnected, renamed themselves Cardinal Black – and after an overwhelmingly positive response to a self-titled debut EP in 2021, released a stellar album, January Came Close, the following year.

“Our manager joked it was a greatest-hits album of songs nobody had ever heard,” Buck says. “Some of the tracks were weeks old; others dated back to 2009. It’s a weird Frankenstein.” The new record, though, is a snapshot of the group today.

“This time, we couldn’t rely on any older material,” Buck says. “There was something liberating, though a bit terrifying, about having a totally blank canvas. We wrote the album in the moment, and that’s why it feels so cohesive – it captures who we are now.”

The same goes for Buck’s playing. Listen to his solos – on Midnight at the Valencia, on his YouTube channel or in a sweaty club – and there’s always a moment where the notes curve sideways, blurring into something between a human voice and a steel slide.

That identifiable fingerprint was by design, but it didn’t just appear overnight. “I spent years just trying and failing to sound like my heroes,” Buck says. “But that’s the secret – if you take enough influence from different places, it gets diluted into something that’s just you. All my favorite players – Derek Trucks, Jeff Beck, Peter Green – you could pick them out after one or two notes.”

Still, even if the worry’s unfounded, Buck is wary of predictability. A quick scroll through social media and you’ll spot a slew of guitarists mimicking his musical turns of phrase, often with the hashtag “Chris Buck style.”

“There’s a danger in becoming too predictable,” he says, “so now I use some things more sparingly, in a more musically mature way. I don’t want to become a pastiche.” As for finding your voice, he shrugs off any talk of a formula. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all thing, finding your sound. It’s different for everyone, and it takes as long as it takes. You can’t force it.”

With their first U.S. headline tour set for this year, Cardinal Black faced a major hurdle – securing a visa. “Our lawyer said, ‘You need a letter from an industry expert,’ so I texted Slash,” Buck says.

Their friendship began years ago when Buck, then 21, got a call in the “cheese aisle at the supermarket” – inviting him to jam on stage the next night in front of 12,000 people. Within the hour, Slash sent in the good word. “Our lawyer goes, ‘That’s not the Slash, is it? Fucking hell – it could have just been your manager,’” Buck laughs. The visa was approved.

Could 2025 also mark the year Buck’s signature Yamaha Revstar takes a step closer to reality? It’s an honor typically reserved for musicians with twice his mileage.

“When Yamaha do signature models, it’s almost always a legacy appreciation thing – for folks further into their careers like Nathan East or Mike Stern,” he says. “As much as I can’t categorically say it’s coming – because a Yamaha rep will probably appear out of nowhere and shoot me – there’s a good chance it’ll be sooner rather than later.”

He laughs. “It would be as close to mine as they can manage, considering mine’s been played to death. That means my inlays, my pickup choices, the wraptail bridge, a three-way switch… You know. My guitar. Hypothetically speaking…”

Though you won’t catch him on stage without his Revstar, Buck has a soft spot for vintage guitars. He’s played a few ’59 Bursts – including Bernie Marsden’s “Beast” – and owns a ’62 Strat. Still, for Buck, older doesn’t always mean better.

“I don’t subscribe to the idea that all vintage instruments are great, because I’ve definitely played some dogs. Some of my favorite guitars were made after 2020, and some were made in the ’60s. There’s a synergy between you and a great instrument. That could be a $300 Squier or a $5,000 Gibson. It doesn’t matter. If it speaks to you, it’s the one.”

His latest find? A 1962 Gibson ES-335. “The moment I strummed it, I thought, ‘This is alive,’” he says. “The guitar’s a mess, but I fell in love with it. It’s got original PAFs and original electronics. It’s been resprayed. The headstock has had a catastrophic break – but it’s just such an amazing instrument.”

• Midnight at the Valencia is out now via Jump In Records.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

The band appears to have transcended the niche and are now firmly making their way into the mainstream, becoming one of those “artists’ favorite artists” and turning everyone from actor Cillian Murphy to St. Vincent into fans.

Back in 2022, following the release of their sophomore album, Projector, Guitar World interviewed the guitar duo of Emily Green and Foster Hudson, who described that record by saying, “There’s a lot of youthful energy in the record. We were in high school and just doing our thing. And we’re still babies, we’re still only 19.”

Hudson's weapon of choice for that era was a Les Paul Special, equipped with two P-90s. And, while the guitarist announced his departure from the band in 2023, Green can still be seen rocking her black Reverend Double Agent with a humbucker in the bridge and a P-90 in the neck position – a key part of her guitar arsenal.

“I was very close to buying a Fender when I was looking for a guitar,” she said. “Then I found this in a store, and it sounded amazing. It cost about $500 less than a Fender would, so I got it!”

And, speaking of Reverend, the guitar brand's founders recently spoke to Guitar World about their wild signature collaborations with the Smashing Pumpkins, Vernon Reid, and Reeves Gabrels – and what it takes to make an artist’s dreams come true.

The parallels ran deeper – not least when Gillan joined Ozzy's old pals Black Sabbath in 1983, for the controversial Born Again album. There's an additional link in the shape of guitarist Bernie Tormé, who played in both frontmen’s solo bands.

Dublin-born Tormé, a uniquely gifted player whose legacy has received renewed attention via two recent box sets, had a ferocious style that blended shred-level chops, hotwired blues licks, and ear-grabbing whammy-bar dives, making him a cornerstone of Gillan from 1979 to 1981.

And although his stint with Ozzy lasted a mere seven gigs, from April 1 to April 10, 1982, the Prince of Darkness deemed it to be of pivotal importance in allowing his career to continue after the tragic death of Randy Rhoads in a plane crash the previous month.

Deciding to continue his tour, Osborne had frantically reached out to many well-known guitarists, including Michael Schenker and Gary Moore, but later confirmed that Tormé had been the only one willing to step up. The Irishman first listened to Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman the day before flying out to join the road trip, reportedly learning the material in flight.

Despite the additional pressure of hooking up with a band still processing the shock of Rhoads’ death, Tormé took the stage at Stabler Arena, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, remaining until longer-term replacement Brad Gillis was ready to take over.

In 2022 Osbourne told Metal Hammer: “I remember thinking, ‘I’m done.’ Sharon... said, ‘No, Randy wouldn’t have liked that, you’ve got to keep his memory alive.’ Bernie was rushed in at the last minute, didn’t know what he was getting into – but he did me a great favor. If it wasn’t for him I’d have given up.”

Of course, Tormé’s legacy extends far beyond that fleeting tenure. Last February’s Gillan: 1978-1982 collection showcased the guitarist’s vital contribution to the success of that band, as both soloist and songwriter. Seven months earlier, Tormé: The Bernie Tormé Archives Vol. 2 brought together his mid-80s albums with future LA Guns frontman Phil Lewis.

By 1982, Tormé had blazed a singular trail through the UK music scene. Influenced by Jimi Hendrix, Gary Moore, and Rory Gallagher, he’d played in mid-70s hard rock combo Scrapyard with future Gillan bassist John McCoy. Enthused by the energy of the punk scene, he then formed his own punky power trio, the Bernie Tormé Band, gigging with Generation X and the Boomtown Rats.

When he supported Gillan in January 1979, Tormé’s fretmelting musicianship and exuberant showmanship impressed the headliner.

Speaking to this writer in 2024, Gillan recalled: “He was doing his soundcheck, and all I could describe is that he was having sex with his guitar!

“It was unbelievable; so exciting. I thought, ‘Wow, I’d like to work with this guy!’” When previous six-stringer Steve Byrd quit shortly thereafter, Tormé lit a fire under Gillan, as can be heard on Glory Road highlight Unchain Your Brain. “Bernie and I ended up great friends,” said the singer.

Leaving in 1981, the guitarist re-emerged with Bernie Tormé and the Electric Gypsies before teaming up with former Girl frontman Phil Lewis in Tormé in 1984. They recorded two effervescent glam-punk albums – gathered in The Bernie Torme Archive Vol 2 set – complete with characteristically wild, exciting fretwork, as in Eyes of the World).

Sadly, the UK’s major record labels’ indifference to rock limited their prospects. In 1987, Lewis accepted Tracii Guns’ offer to join LA Guns, going on to major Stateside success.

Tormé also crossed the Atlantic, joining former Twisted Sister vocalist Dee Snider’s Desperado. Their prolific partnership fueled a titanic debut album loaded with pounding, blues-infused riffs and ripping solos, only for record label politics to scupper its release and sink the band.

Returning to the UK, Tormé continued to launch well-received albums until his untimely passing in 2019, including a reunion with former Gillan bandmate John McCoy in GMT.

His continued friendship with Phil Lewis saw him guest with LA Guns onstage in later years, the last such occasion occurring in 2017.

“It was inconceivable playing a show in London without Bernie showing up,” Lewis said. “Tracii adored him; they became really good friends.”

“Bernie was fearless,” Guns – a diehard Rhoads fan – marvels. “To step into Randy Rhoads’ shoes that fast was brave. I was just listening to some of the recordings from the dates he did with Ozzy. He was playing right out of Randy’s pedalboard and amp.

“Bernie told me that Randy's pedalboard was doing changes on its own, which is one of the things that really freaked him out about doing the gig. And Rudy told me that before I knew Bernie.”

He continues: “He was a true pentatonic Lord. The way he interpreted the solos, the rhythms, the fills – it's actually mind-blowing because it's off the cuff. That’s why he was so brave.

“And he’s playing the Stratocaster, so it’s almost like Hendrix stepping in for Randy. And he looked great next to Ozzy.”

The impression Tormé left on Guns was as immediate as the one he’d left on Osbourne.

“It was only a two-day period where we were in London,” Guns says. “But we had a lot of conversations. We really had great respect for each other. He was still passionate about creating music and playing live.

“Next thing I know, we're onstage doing Rip and Tear. He had his Strat and I’m like, ‘Turn it up!’ He goes, ‘Oh, I’m gonna turn it up!’ To play with him and Phil at the same time was a huge experience for me – I watched that video a lot.

“Bernie could have done it a hundred more times with us. I was looking forward to more of that.”

• For more information head to Tormé’s website.

The late Whitesnake guitar great, whose influence spans generations of blues and rock guitar players, bought the 1959 Les Paul Standard in 1979 for £600. He played it relentlessly and used it to record every one of his Whitesnake guitar parts, including the singing-into-your-hairbrush classic Here I Go Again, which he co-wrote with David Coverdale.

Marsden once put the guitar up for auction with a weighty $1.3 million asking price, but pulled it away from any potential bidders after a change of heart. It therefore remained in his possession until his passing in 2023.

A year later, Marsden's wife, Fran, entrusted Buck with the famed electric guitar, which he played during an all-star event in honor of the Whitesnake legend.

Now, the Les Paul is enjoying another foray as part of the Cardinal Black guitarist's live rig, as Buck – who was once namedropped by Slash as the GNR rocker's favorite upcoming British guitarist – revealed during a gear rundown on his YouTube channel.

His rig, he says, has changed “fairly significantly” since the group's recent US tour. The most significant change, naturally, was the fact The Beast was a special guest for the band’s show at Camden, London’s gorgeous Koko venue.

“The Marsdens – Liv, Charlotte, and Fran – very kindly offered for me to play the guitar this evening,” Buck says.

“My friendship with Bernie aside, it's such a beautiful guitar. It's particularly poignant to play it at such a big show,” he continues. “There's not much more to say that hasn't been written or said already; it's a stunningly beautiful guitar. Scarcity and value and everything else aside, it just sounds great.”

There were around 1,500 crammed into the venue for the band’s biggest London show to date. Reflecting on his second dance with the LP after the gig, he couldn’t help but think of the added personal poignancy it held.

“Bernie was a wonderful man, musician, and songwriter who, in a strange twist of fate, passed away on the same day as my father,” he wrote on Instagram. “Closing the show with Bernie’s iconic ‘Burst on Push/Pull – a song about my dad’s passing – and Tied Up in Blue was not only an honour but deeply moving.”

Shortly before Marsden's passing, Guitarist was granted an up-close-and-personal tour of the electric guitars he was willing to sell, including a 1950 Gibson ES-5 in remarkable condition and an early Les Paul Goldtop from 1952 saddled up with P-90 pickups.

Buck recently explained why Yamaha Revstars have usurped Fender Strats in his live rig, believing the Strat comes with plenty of “baggage”. He also recalled the time Slash came to his band's aid when they needed to sort visas for their US tour.

However, the genre-hopping guitarist cut his teeth playing the blues, trading licks with Carlos Santana in Santana’s classic lineup, and becoming a keen student of B.B. King, Muddy Waters, and Michael Bloomfield.

“My roots were R&B and blues, and it's so crazy that I've never been in a band that did that!” Schon says in a recent interview with Rick Beato.

One of the blues greats he regularly jammed with was Albert King, the Flying V-slinging player and one of the Three Kings of Blues.

“I played with B.B. quite a lot,” Schon reveals. “I played with Albert even more so. He was a funny human being. Had his little wine bottle at the back of the amp.

“I played with him so many times. [One time] we were downtown in San Rafael, close to where I live in Marin County, and he was in town. He was playing Uncle Charlie's – a cool little blues club – and so I went down to see him for the soundcheck and said, ‘Hey, man, I would love to come by and jam tonight.’

“He said, ‘Sure, man. Bring your guitar and I'll bring you up in the second set.’” However, the jam didn't quite go as planned...

Schon continues, “So I go up, and I'm talking to him, and he goes off to the bar to get a drink, and I pick up his V. And he screams across from the bar, ‘What you doing, boy!’ I jump out of my shoes. He goes, ‘Put that guitar down. Nobody knows my tuning!’”

As for what he noticed about King's guitar from that very fleeting encounter, Schon remembers, “[His strings] were light but tuned [way] down, and in a weird tuning.”

It was clearly a careful setup that lent itself well to the bluesman's penchant for dramatic bends.

Earlier this year, the Journey guitar hero took his jaw-dropping, 9-string Ibanez Custom Shop model out for a spin across a series of Instagram videos.

The band’s bassist was a surprise guest at the lesson, which was hosted at the musical instrument store and headed up by Dave Kushner of Velvet Revolver fame – who is now Senior Director of Music Education at Guitar Center – and Guitar Center CEO Gabe Dalporto.

In footage from the lesson, Kushner shows a semi-circle of students the basics of the metal banger’s main riff. Then Trujillo, with a cheeky grin across his face, barges in saying, “No, that doesn’t sound right.”

He was then handed his signature Godin A4 Ultra electro-acoustic bass in Yellow Flame – very convenient – to help guide the students through a playthrough of the riff at a nice, accessible tempo.

There is some irony in a guitar shop encouraging customers to play one of the fabled forbidden riffs – no Stairway, denied! – but it makes for great viewing. And why not learn from the best?

Trujillo, who has also played with Ozzy Osbourne, Suicidal Tendencies, and Jerry Cantrell, joined Metallica in 2003 and has since played on four studio records with the heavy metal titans.

Dalporto, meanwhile, has been tasked with leading the store into a bold new era and has told Guitar World that he's on a mission to win back the trust of his fellow guitar players.

This comes in the face of uncertain economic climate and rising online markets, which is putting a strain on running brick-and-mortar stores. Last year, for example, Sam Ash go out of business after nearly a century of operation. The iconic retailer has since been acquired by Gonher Music.

The Seattle heavyweights toured the US in 2017, but the run of dates was cut short following Chris Cornell’s death in May that year. Even before they hit the road, Shepherd felt uneasy.

“I always thought we were going to be weird old men sitting out in the cabin he owned in the woods, laughing about everything. He really wanted to meet my son Noah, and he never got to,” Shepherd tells Bass Magazine of the impact of Cornell's passing.

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how the night before we left for the tour, I knew that something bad was going to happen,” he continues. “Something came over me, and I deeply felt like I couldn’t do it. I went around and said goodbye to my family. I could feel it.

“We were making the same mistake we always did, which was interrupting making our record in the studio to go play some tour for some reason.”

The band's last album, King Animal, came in 2012. At the time, it was their first record in 16 years, and landed after Soundgarden reformed in 2010. That was later followed by a collection of B-sides and rarities, Echo of Miles, but the record they were writing before that ill-fated tour was never finished.

At first, the band was hesitant to continue without Cornell, and have only taken the stage for a string of charity shows in the intervening years, including one fronted by Guns N’ Roses’ bassist and fellow Seattle native Duff McKagan. But the situation has since shifted.

Speaking to MusicRadar in 2019, guitarist Kim Thayil confirmed that they were looking to complete their demoed material, but the Cornell estate was holding onto the frontman's recordings.

The dispute, which stretched several years, was resolved out of court in 2023, and back in May, Thayil said the new album “would be a great gift to the fans.”

In his Bass Magazine chat, Shepherd confirmed that Terry Date – who has worked with Korn, Deftones, and the Smashing Pumpkins – will be producing the new LP. He first worked with the group on 1989's Louder Than Love, and its 1991 follow-up, Badmotorfinger.

"The first song we did together, the mighty one – seems when you first hear the demo, it’s not powerful at all," Shepherd says of the new material. "And then when you start playing it you’re like, Holy hell! I blistered my hands trying to play those parts.

"I was like, Thanks, Cornell. He and Kim always throw some wild riff in there that you have to nail. It’s just intuitive for them. I’ve always been amazed by those two, and that song is just whomping. These songs have been flooring me with how powerful they are."

The band is set to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this weekend, alongside a Seattle-heavy cast of vocalists, including Brandi Carlisle, the Pretty Reckless’ Taylor Momsen, and Jerry Cantrell.

Soundgarden has previously performed with Carlisle, who said she hoped to be the band’s new singer in 2021.

The Black Sabbath guitarist and forefather of heavy metal was diagnosed with lymphoma at Birmingham’s Heartlands Hospital in 2012. He would go on to battle the disease for four years, entering remission in 2016.

Now, he’s hoping the sale of his personal SG will contribute to the hospital’s £150,000 (approx $195,000) fundraising appeal, which will fund the refurbishment of its cancer treatment center.

Fans will have a one-month window to purchase a raffle ticket for the electric guitar, with Iommi set to announce when the raffle is live via his Instagram.

“It was a terrible shock,” Iommi says, speaking to the BBC of his diagnosis. “It's really hard when you're going through that. You just never think until you're in that situation, and I know how difficult it is, and how they feel. I like to be able to give something back and be involved and help.”

Chief on the refurbishment’s shopping list are special chairs designed for chemotherapy patients.

“The more comfortable you can make the patient, the better,” Iommi reflects, looking back at his own experiences. “I know when I was in, they treated me so well, that everybody was so nice, the nurses were nice, everybody was great. To have the right environment means a hell of a lot.”

Iommi, who re-released his signature pickup set with Gibson over the summer, is back at work on his new solo album following Black Sabbath’s history-making Back to the Beginning bow out. He has admitted he’s in no rush to finish a record that’s set to involve orchestrations and Kemper amp modelling.

He’s also spoken about his long-running love affair with the SG, including why he shunned Les Pauls for them despite craving an LP for years, and the disappearance of two of his special white models.

Meanwhile, another SG – the mystery axe that Kirk Hammett played at Back to the Beginning – is headed to auction.

“People talk, but I was there,” Ranglin says. “I am a humble man, but I do know what happened back then.”

Ranglin is referring to this keystone work with a young Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Millie Small, Monty Alexander, the Skatalites, Ken Boothe, Max Romeo and Bunny Wailer to name a few, which led to him essentially creating the sound of popular reggae and ska guitar.

“You can hear the styles of rhythm and the music in all my playing,” he says. “Sure, I like being called an ‘innovator,’ but I always just loved playing and creating for people and the world. That they got some enjoyment from my music is very comforting.”

Though he’s 93, Ranglin is remarkably sharp, if not wistful, when he reminisces on his career. “It seems amazing looking back,” he says. “But there was so much music in the air, and with the good lord’s help, I was able to create the music from that.”

Growing up as a youngster and in practice throughout his career, Ranglin was – and is – a devout jazz guitarist at heart. But that didn’t stop him from branching out. “I always wanted to grow as a guitarist,” he says.

“That is what brought me to do collaborations and explore different types of music over the years, not just jazz, ska, or reggae, even though I was the guy who invented that style,” he says. “I later did collaborations with musicians such as Baaba Maal from Senegal. I always wanted to travel to India… not sure if I am going to make it, but you never know. [Laughs]”

To that end, Ranglin admits that while his mind is willing, these days, his aging body is fighting him. “I am 93, and I am really not playing too much,” he says. “But I still get the fire every once in a while.”

“And my hearing isn’t as good these days, but the fingers still move,” he says of the times that he does pick up his beloved Gibson ES-175 or Ibanez Joe Pass model. “I always say I will find that note. I love my classic guitars. Oh my, they are beautiful.”

Ranglin has been out of the recording game since around 2008. And considering his advancing age, the odds are that that won’t change. He’s more into playing his guitar when he’s able, and looking back, though the latter isn’t always easy, especially when it comes to measuring his impact.

“It is a little hard to answer that,” he says. “It is not really for me to say necessarily. I still think I can play, but I am pretty quiet these days. I am glad I have been able to do what I have done in music. Most people in my profession don’t make it this far. [Laughs] But I am appreciative to have had such a long career in music, truly.”

What sparked your interest in playing guitar?

When I was around four or five years old, I heard two of my uncles playing, and I knew right then. I would wait for them to leave and go to work and then try to figure out what was this thing. [Laughs] But certainly, I did not know what I was doing.

So, when did you start to take the guitar seriously?

I didn’t start taking it seriously until I was a young teenager. I just used their guitar when they left town, and then I was able to get a clunky guitar that was always out of tune. I think that helped develop my ear in the end. I will say I have collected many amazing guitars over the years; I would even work on them a little bit.

Did the guitar come easily to you?

Like many beginning guitar players, I just started playing what sounded right to me and my ear, which was pretty limited because I didn’t know what I was doing. At first, I was playing by copying whatever I heard by ear, so to speak. By the age of around 14, I decided that I wanted to play seriously. I made up my mind; it was what I wanted to do, be a guitar player!

You’re mostly self-taught, right?

I couldn’t afford a tutor, so what I learned from books, and started at the beginning. What was the book First Steps in Guitar Playing. I kept going to each level, and I even learned about chord changes through those and other books similar to that.

Was playing live around your area a big part of your coming of age as a player?

Now, from there moving on, my very first break in live work was when I went over to the Cayman and Caicos Islands to play for the tourists, even though my parents were against me becoming a musician. They thought it would lead to, what shall I say… an unseemly lifestyle. I also wanted to prove to them that I didn’t go to school and waste my time, so they saw my education come to something.

Can you describe the music scene you were exposed to coming up, and how it impacted you?

I grew up listening to my mother play the organ in church and church music, but we would listen to music from America. I loved jazz from the moment I heard it, and this was what was popular when I was growing up. I loved the great Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Prima, and Charlie Christian.

I heard how to play and the style of Bird, and thought, “Wow!” There was a whole blend of music that… how would you put it… permeated through the island, Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and R&B. As time went on, music was always evolving, and that was always part of my spirit. I found my own style, and it was rooted in all these types of music.

How did you find your sound, and what did that look and sound like?

Well, like I mentioned, I started in a jazz tradition, but I was also self-taught, so I think there were many factors. I played in my first band when I was fifteen or so. It was Val Bennet’s band, and it was just great with horns. It was such an eye-opening experience.

I would watch and listen and even look behind at their music stands for the notes and what the different keys were because horns had their own key/concert signature. It really helped me later to learn as an arranger. But honestly, I would never say I found my sound… a style perhaps, but I am always trying to grow.

Since you were into jazz early on, did you want to be a jazz guitarist?

Yes, that was what I played for a while. When I got my first break, it was with a jazz band. We would play at hotels, and I started playing with big bands. We would do Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and I had a band playing mainly on weekends at the Half Moon Hotel. We even sometimes shared the bill with Clancy Heywood’s band from Bermuda.

How did you get into playing calypso music, which essentially led to you creating the sound of reggae guitar?

Well, that type of music was all over, and I played in Bermuda. It was an interesting time, and reggae came later after I got back from England. But the calypso and mento were in our soul, so to speak. Then, we started with the music coming out of New Orleans, like R&B, and the shuffle.

I was working at the Jamaican Broadcast Corporation [JBC], and Coxsone Dodd, who had one of the big sound systems, was starting to do recordings. We would hear the R&B music from America, and the demand in Jamaica made it possible to start doing these recordings.

I was Coxsone’s musical director and arranger. He and I kind of had the same vibe and feeling about the sound, and as the story goes, we went up into the studio one Sunday, and by Monday, we had the ska rhythm, and I put the sound to the paper.”

What gear were you using once you got into session work?

“We used a lot of borrowed gear from the JBC. I had old Phillips amps, and I seem to remember early Fender amps, and [inventor] Hedely Jones’ amps were important. That was some of my original tone. It was so long ago, but I am pretty sure I used that on [Millie Small’s] My Boy Lollipop. I had a Guild hollow body, but we also used what was available to us.”

What’s the story behind you composing the music for the James Bond film, Dr. No?

Well, that was interesting because they were filming the movie, and they had the musical supervisor [Monty Norman]. They came to me because Carlos Macolm was the musical director at the JBC, and I worked there, and he hired me to create a more “island sound.” They realized they needed some authentic sound to help the film.

I was known to have the arranging skills, and as someone who could work with the “professional” person to give the island vibe and sound. Of course, I don’t remember getting paid very well or real credit, but the movie was cool, ya know? James Bond… [gestures like James Bond shooting a gun].”

How did you meet Chris Blackwell?

I met him while working on the music for the James Bond film [Dr. No]. Chris then came and saw me at the Half Moon Hotel while I was playing in bands there. He was just getting started in the business and he seemed to like how I was playing. [Laughs] He contacted me really quickly after he saw me play.

He had recently founded Island Records, and he thought he could take the Jamaican sound international. He was actually able to get me an audition and gigs at Ronnie Scott’s, where I was able to show my guitar style. People and many of the big guitar players from England would come by; it was pretty humbling.

But that was also when Chris brought out the singer Millie Small and had me arrange music for her. We did an arrangement of My Boy Lollipop with mostly English studio musicians… they finally got the feel, and the rest is history. It sold millions of records.

How did you become involved with the Wailers’ early track It Hurts to Be Alone?

As far as It Hurts to Be Alone, it was before Chris signed Bob Marley and the Wailers. I was the musical director and arranger at Studio One, and this skinny young boy [Bob Marley] and his friends, Neville Livingston and Peter Tosh. They would hang around all the studio and sing harmonies and American R&B.

What did you think of Bob and the Wailers after first hearing them?

They got better as they practiced, and Coxsone and I decided they had something. I basically took what Bob had, and it was funny; he was so green, there was no beginning, no end to the songs, no real structure at all.

I basically arranged and essentially co-wrote the tune and played on it. I will say there was something special about Bob. We all could feel it. He later asked me to come on the road and not just teach him how to play guitar, but to teach him how to be a true arranger and composer.

Speaking of the road, you later toured with Jimmy Cliff. What was that like, and what gear did you use?

Yes, I was Jimmy’s musical supervisor for a good part of the ’70s. He was also a charismatic personality, but I also taught and influenced his sound and style. By then, I believe I was using my Gibson [ES-]175 and [Roland] JC-120.

What do you remember about recording guitars for Max Romeo in 1977, Bunny Wailer in the early-’80s?

Max was a sweet man and kind man and always nice to work with. Bunny was a big personality but super-smart and knew who he was really into the Rastafari and was always true to his work. I always brought my thing to whatever I was working on, but I was always trying to grow and challenge myself, and working with others always made that possible–so many different personalities and talents.

Would you say that jazz guitar requires a different approach than reggae and ska?

Well, jazz was and is always a true love and to come back to. I like so many different sounds and styles of music. Of course, they require different techniques. Jazz has much more chord changes and patterns, and ska and reggae are very different in that it is less technical but has a real specific feel, more reduced in those changes. They all require specific techniques, and at the end of the day, it is all about a feeling.

How do you view your accomplishments and influence when you look back?

That is tough for me. I do feel like I have influenced almost every aspect of Jamaican music, and that while many people know, many people haven’t heard about my contributions. But I always served the music and the muse. And I have had a long and healthy life with a loving family and a musical family. It is good to be able to look back and know you were there for all of it.

You, along with Lee Scratch Perry and Clancy Eccles, essentially created the sound of reggae as we know it. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, what is there to say except I was lucky enough to be part of the creation of a sound that truly became universal and transforming. Scratch was one of a kind, and Eccles was multi-talented… even as a tailor! [Laughs] But again, there was a sound coming up, and boom, now it is culture. It is worldwide, and to have been a big part of that is very gratifying.

How do you hope to be remembered when it’s all said and done?

I want all my music to be remembered as pleasing, reasonable, and that people got some joy from listening to it. I am a musician who has worked hard, sacrificed a lot for the music, you can say, gave my life to the music, and while I certainly did not become rich, I feel like I would like people to know that I was the true inventor of ska and reggae.

• Wranglin' is available to preorder, out on November 14 via Sowing.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

When Guitar World catches up with him over Zoom, the musician – progeny of Eddie Van Halen, and a dynamic master-tapper in his own right – is riding high from leading his live band through a series of opening dates on Creed’s Summer of ’99 tour. It’s put the ever-rising act in front of huge arena crowds and had Van Halen sharing laughs backstage with his old Tremonti bandmate and Creed guitarist, Mark Tremonti.

Each night so far, Mammoth has electrified the masses with The End, the tapped-and-slapped ripper that roared to the top of the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts over the summer, and which is likewise affixed to one of the most memorably goofy-and-gory music videos of 2025 – featuring vampiric maulings aplenty and a scene where Wolf’s mom, Valerie Bertinelli, punches out a ghoul during a mid-concert bar brawl.

It’s been a fun few months, to say the least, but Van Halen also explains that The End arose out of a long period of tension and turmoil – its songs reflecting an existential dread informed by terrifying natural disasters and general anxiety.

“During the last show we played with Metallica in Mexico in 2024, I had a really traumatizing panic attack on the airplane,” he says. “I’d never had that before, and that was the impetus of my lyric writing when it came to the subject material on The End.”

As such, The End marks a highly personal exploration of identity, the weight of expectation, human connection and more. But despite that heady thematic whirl, The End – recorded at his late father’s 5150 Studios with longtime collaborator and producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette – remains a jubilantly rocking offering full of energized anthems, phase-glazed soloing, grungy melodicism and daringly funkified struts.

It feels like you’re poking at some interconnected ideas on songs like The End, Same Old Song and Something New.

With the way I write, it’s very much a therapeutic release. Working those thoughts out is a way of calming the voices in my head and subduing my anxiety. I was working through a lot this time around. The vocals were recorded in January while we had everything in 5150 packed up and ready to go at any moment, because of the Los Angeles fires.

So there’s a lot of nerves, stress and anxiety there. I was thinking about all of my dad’s instruments and all of his belongings before I could even think about mine. We had a U-Haul truck filled with everything. It was tough to be creative in that environment, and I’m already a really anxious person, you know?

How close had the wildfires gotten?

At one point there were four separate fires within two miles of us – you’re just kind of sitting there watching the news and watching the LAFD be the incredible heroes they are. It was the winds that were the scariest, just how it would carry over miles. We were incredibly lucky. I know a lot of people who weren’t. It was a terrible time to be in the area.

How long did it take to get back into the recording sessions?

There were about two weeks where we couldn’t work more than an hour without getting some sort of alert – I didn’t have the brainpower to focus on it, because I was just like, “I need to make sure Frankenstein [Eddie Van Halen’s iconic parts guitar] is safe.”

Once stuff started to calm down, that’s when we really started slamming. There were two ideas I wanted to finish, but we didn’t have the time. They might show up on something else in the future.

Getting into some of the urgency that is on the record, there’s a really dramatic tempo pivot that kicks off the record, in the intro to One of a Kind.

I thought it’d be fun to really start this off with something different, almost like a jump-scare. You’re kind of lulled into this one thing, and then it explodes. But it was also fun to play with something that we hadn’t before, which was a dramatic time change.

It’s almost Sabbath – not the arrangement itself, but with how Sabbath get halfway through a song, and then they start chugging on something else and it’s badass. I also thought it was fun to tie that to the lyrical motifs of the song.

What’s the song about?

A lot of stuff on the album is about somebody losing themselves to some sort of negative influence. By the end of the song, that negative influence wins. That’s why I thought about ending on that really gross note – how it hits that last note and just feeds back for a little bit.

Something else that jumped out at listeners is the tapping intro to The End.

There’s a little callback in the intro to Source of Infection off of Van Halen’s OU812, where I think maybe Donn Landee says Take one, and then Dad does all this tapping stuff. I actually yelled that into the pickup of the guitar on The End, which was pretty funny.

But yeah… I had that idea for a bit, but it seemed a little over the top. I almost used it as a challenge of, like, “How can I make a song out of this?” It was one of the last ideas I pulled out for pre-pro. It was very inspiring and we had a lot of fun doing it.

People have been trying to sleuth out the slapping technique of your verse riff, too.

I really need to post a how-to video, but I haven’t had the time. But it’s literally just a slap bass part. And you’re plucking harmonics. Originally, the idea was to use it on the bass – like that one moment right before the first chorus, where it drops and the bass is playing it. But when I was showing my producer, Elvis Baskette, I was like, “I have this idea – imagine this on a bass,” and I did it on the guitar. Then he’s like, “Dude, you should do that on the guitar.”

Was it easier to throw that down on bass guitar or to transpose it onto Frankenstein?

On the guitar you almost have to lay back and be real soft with it, whereas with the bass you can dig in more, because obviously they’re bigger strings. But I found that the more I relaxed while doing it on guitar, the easier it was to get the sound I wanted.

An Instagram video you posted reveals you’ve got some electrical tape covering the D string, near the pickups.

That’s just a studio trick to make sure there’s no buzz. It was just to deaden any possible extraneous noise. Obviously, I don’t really have a problem doing the riff live now, but when you’re recording, you just want it to be as quiet as possible.

You’ve used Frankenstein on earlier Mammoth records. Have you learned anything in particular about how to harness the sound of that guitar over the years?

Not really. But any moment I have it in my hands… just being able to hold something that my dad had such a history with is nice, since my dad’s not around anymore. It’s a little bittersweet, but it’s a nice thing to have on the record with me. I think that’s why I try to bring it out on every record.

Do you have that same kind of connection with other pieces of gear at 5150?

Pretty much everything, yeah. I mean, just the fact I’m recording in 5150 is enough. But because Frankenstein is arguably one of the most famous instruments in music history, let alone guitars… the emotional and historical weight of it all is a lot to handle. You almost have to push it to the side and just enjoy the moment.

How defining a factor is your own signature EVH SA-126 on this record?

I have a ’burst – I believe it was the second prototype of the 126 – and that was the backbone of Mammoth II. Pretty much everything recorded on The End was the goldtop 126 I have now, other than the Frankenstein guitar parts. It’s just been so fun to have this instrument that Matt Bruck, Chip Ellis and I put together become the defining sound of what Mammoth has become.

How about the guitar amps?

Amp-wise, it’s pretty straightforward, and it’s what we’ve been using on tour, which is the 50 watts. I have the EVH 5150 III 6L6, and the specific one I have in the studio is the one I used for the Taylor Hawkins tribute shows [in 2022]. The cabinet, too.

I Really Wanna has some great phases running through it. Can I assume that’s a classic MXR in there?

Yeah! The other effects I used were just fuzzy sorts of vibes. We have this Foxx Tone pedal we used a lot. We always had a layer of Uni-Vibe… or maybe it was a Univox? Elvis is the guy for all the effects.

I’m never really relying on an effect unless it’s something extremely specific – like on Happy, we used the MXR Rockman [X100 Analog Tone Processor] for this clean lead over the chorus, so it really cuts through. And during The Spell there’s a lead thing starting in the second chorus where we’re doing wah, just to sweeten it up.

The Spell is driven by those funky sharp-ninths. Where did that song come up in the process?

I was thinking of Lenny Kravitz when I was writing that song, paired with a ’70s rock vibe. It felt vintage, because I’m doing what I guess people call the “Hendrix chord.” But I also think of the last note Dad hits on You Really Got Me – a lot of Van Halen songs end with that big note. But that’s definitely one of my favorite choruses on the record. I’m happy with that one.

You mentioned Happy earlier – that song feels like one of the larger vocal showcases on The End.

With that initial vocal melody in the verse, I was basically thinking of Failure and Nirvana. And in that headspace, I was like, “We should straight-up do a Smells Like Teen Spirit sort of thing and have the guitar solo be that vocal melody.”

That song starts off with the lyric “I need control – it shows.” How could that line speak to the broader experience of making music on your own as Mammoth?

You could certainly make that comparison, but with the overarching theme of the record and anxiety, I think it’s more about trying to find your comfort zone amid chaos. That’s a criticism I never saw coming, honestly. Like, “He’s really selfish because he plays everything.”

I always thought it was just a fun thing for me to do. I’ve been in bands before where it’s been a collaborative effort, and it’s very much still a thing with me and my producer, Elvis. He helps me to avoid second-guessing myself, and he tells me when I should keep digging on something.

But a lot of people say things like, “Why don’t you just have other people on the record? It’ll deepen the sound,” or some real ethereal bullshit like, “You’ll give it more zhuzh if you have more people on it.” [Laughs] I don’t know… this is exactly how I want it, and I’m very happy with it.

The music world faced a great loss this summer with the death of Ozzy Osbourne. The day he passed, you performed his song Mama, I’m Coming Home in Hartford, Connecticut. How did Ozzy’s death impact you at that moment?

I think it was around three o’clock that day when we all looked at our phones and everybody went silent. It was really tough. We felt like we needed to do something, because how could you not? He affected everything we do, forever. It would’ve felt weird to go out there and try to play Crazy Train or Paranoid. Mama, I’m Coming Home felt like the right thing to do.

I was very nervous because I didn’t have all the lyrics memorized, and I didn’t even know how to play it. But we sat in the dressing room and listened to it over and over again. We played through it two-and-a-half times in soundcheck, and then we kept doing it acoustically backstage. I don’t even remember the rest of the show because I was so focused on Mama. I didn’t want to mess it up.

You didn’t play Crazy Train that night, but was that a formative song for you to work your hands around, as a developing guitarist?

Absolutely, which is why it was such an insane thing to be asked by Ozzy and Sharon to play it at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction he had last year. And knowing my dad’s connection with Sabbath… he would tell me all the time about that tour in 1978 where Van Halen opened for them. One of my dad’s favorite riffs of all time was Into the Void.

You had to pull out of Black Sabbath and Ozzy’s Back to the Beginning farewell concert in Birmingham. What would you have played? Was there a plan in place?

Not really. It was all very down-to-the-wire. The rehearsal schedule kept moving, because obviously it was an incredibly monumental thing to put together. I don’t put missing the show on anyone – it was a crazy thing to organize.

But the rehearsal dates for this tour kept looming over everything, and the rehearsal dates for Back to the Beginning kept changing. We just weren’t able to do both, and that really sucked, but I’m happy I was able to do the Hall of Fame thing, so at least I got to see Ozzy, give him a hug and talk to him a little bit.

Are you excited to transition from doing these six-song shows with Creed into playing the fuller, hour-and-a-half sets on your own headlining tour this fall?

This is going to be our craziest tour yet. Up until now, all the headline shows we’ve done have been mainly performance focused. We didn’t have much of a show built around it other than lights and a backdrop.

This time we’re bringing stuff we’ve never brought out before. And now that we have three albums of material to pick from, I’m excited to really cater the set wherever we go. It’s going to be a good time.

We don’t necessarily want to ruin a surprise, but are you going to be killing any vampires on stage during The End?

[Laughs] No, there’s not going to be much acting. Our show is just going to be a bit more souped up in comparison to what it’s been before.

• The End is out now via BMG.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

The singer and guitarist took to social media to explain his absence. “My hope was to be at the Rock & Rock Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony and to perform for the fans, but at this time I have to prioritize my health,” he wrote in a statement posted to the band’s official Instagram.

“I have no problem singing, it’s the stress of everything else. Thanks for understanding. Simon along with some outstanding musicians will be stepping in for me – guaranteed to rock.”

The rock supergroup is set to be inducted into the Rock Hall this weekend at the Peacock Theater in L.A., alongside Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, OutKast, Soundgarden, the White Stripes, Salt-N-Pepa, Warren Zevon, Thom Bell, Nicky Hopkins, Carol Kaye and Lenny Waronker.

And while the other surviving original member of Bad Company, former Free drummer and co-founder Simon Kirke, revealed the two intended to reunite on stage on Saturday, plans have now changed due to Rodgers' health.

The reunion would have marked the duo's first public performance since 2019, with the drummer previously confirming the news with Gold Derby, “I’m not at liberty to say which songs. I mean, quite honestly, I don’t give a shit. We’re going to play, and whatever Paul chooses is fine by me! Just to play with him again is going to be a real thrill for me. I missed him.”

Over the past decade, Rodgers has suffered 11 minor strokes and two major strokes, and in 2023, even told CBS Mornings that the band was likely done due to various health issues.

The 2025 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony will stream live on Disney+ on November 8 at 8 p.m. ET and will be available on-demand shortly after.

At last year's ceremony, Peter Frampton stole the show by busting out his signature talk box and treating audiences to a collaboration with Keith Urban.

But when the guitar maestro considers how far GN’R has come since his and bassist Duff McKagan’s return in 2016, his mind is clearly blown. As he tells Guitar World, “It really trips me out that all of this has happened.”

From the outside looking in, of course, Slash’s return to the GN’R fold seemed inevitable. Behind the scenes, though, he and GN’R vocalist and leader Axl Rose barely spoke after the guitarist left the band in 1996, let alone thought about teaming up to take on the world again. And even when he did agree to cozy up alongside Rose again, he didn’t exactly have the long haul in mind.

“It sounds crazy, but when I first got involved again, it was just to do a couple of shows, one of which was Coachella,” Slash says. “We’d been getting these offers to do that event for years, so Axl and I got together, sat down, and hashed out a lot of stuff that had built up over the years. That’s when he said, ‘We get these offers to do Coachella. Do you want to do it?’ I said, ‘Yeah, that would be fun.’”

So much fun, in fact, that Slash is still here, nine years later. But this isn’t your father’s Guns N’ Roses. There are no more hardcore drugs, no more binge-drinking benders, and no more infighting – the factors that tore the band apart in the first place.

“That’s the best way to put it,” Slash says. “But other than changes in the way things were handled back in the day, it’s just maturing… and maybe the lack of massive substance abuse on my part. [Laughs] I can't speak on everybody else’s behalf, but all those things play into it. It’s a perfect storm of a lot of things.”

That perfect storm has seen Guns N’ Roses go from a legacy act – who went through lead guitar players like it was going out of style in the early 2000s – to regrouping and picking up where they left off after the Use Your Illusion tour in the early Nineties.

“We did Coachella, and then we just kept going,” Slash says. “It never really stopped. The only thing that [temporarily] stopped it was Covid, because we were just going from tour to tour and having a great time.”

Having a cache of iconic songs to revisit surely made having a great time much easier. But for Slash, these aren’t just any songs. For the most part, these are songs defined by his riffs and his solos, which the guys who kept his spot warm for 20 years could never quite replicate.

Yeah, you could say Slash is Guns N’ Roses’ proverbial X factor. But it has nothing to do with top hats (though he makes those look damn cool), nor does it have to do with Les Pauls slung low (because those are always cool), but the vibe he elicits from the stadium-sized audiences GN’R perform to every night.

“I don’t want to sound cliché,” Slash says, “but every show is so contingent on the audience. That sort of reciprocal energy is what drives it, and that has been solid for this whole run since I’ve been back in it. That’s how it was from our inception back in the day, up until I left in 1996.”

The last part of that statement, specifically about leaving in 1996, is particularly critical when it comes to Guns N’ Roses. Despite their issues, Axl Rose and Slash epitomize that classic lead singer/lead guitarist dynamic. It’s magic – but in 1996, that magic died.

Yes, the post-Slash lineup of GN’R gave us 2008’s Chinese Democracy, and yes, it was kind of fun to see Buckethead shred with Guns N’ Roses. The same goes for Robin Finck and Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal – but we wanted to see the band that gave us Appetite for Destruction and Use Your Illusion I and II.

We wanted Slash. We wanted him to welcome us back to the jungle, and we wanted him to dance with Mr. Brownstone (figuratively). And now that he has, Guns N’ Roses are stronger than ever.

“We’re fortunate to be a band whose material has stood the test of time like that,” Slash says. “And we’re fortunate to be appreciated this far out. To be able to maintain that much interest, you have to consider yourself really fucking lucky, and that’s the way I see it. It’s been quite a ride.”

That ride isn’t over yet. GN’R has shows planned around the world in 2025, aiming to circle back to America for yet another stadium-sized victory lap. After that, their long-awaited reunion album just might be in the works… but not until the time is right. More on that later.

For the time being, Slash is vibing and enjoying the ride in a way his younger self maybe couldn’t.

“I constantly have to stop and be thankful that we're able to do something that I love so much,” he says. “There's really nothing like it. To be able to go out there and play for three hours is really a blessing.”

The chemistry within Guns seems stronger than ever. How come?

I have no idea. [Laughs] I think a lot of the stuff that was an issue for Guns in the early days – especially in the Nineties – had to do with management issues and stuff that pitted me and Axl against each other. And it worked; it definitely worked.

But without that element, he and I get along great. Duff and I have always gotten along great, and I love working with Richard Fortus. He and I make a really great guitar team, and he’s just a good guy. We all get along really well, and we have a good time doing what we do.

What’s it been like playing beside Richard compared to Izzy Stradlin and Gilby Clarke?

Richard is a great all-around guitar player. He can do it all. And the cool thing about him is that of all the guys who were in the band when I wasn’t – like Buckethead, Bumblefoot, and DJ [Ashba] – he was the only one I’d worked with prior.

He was there for a minute, and with all those guys in there, I don’t know how that would have worked when I came back. And there was a lot of expectation that Izzy was going to do this, but Richard was there that first day we started rehearsals, and I was given the opportunity to see if I liked working with him or not.

Although we did toy with the idea of Izzy coming back, Richard was always there. I felt really at ease and comfortable with Richard staying in when Izzy didn’t work out.

Izzy is such a recluse; it’s difficult to imagine him playing so many big shows on such a grand scale.

Well, it was weird coming back into it for me. So we had just started to rehearse, and the depth of the material at this point, and the level of playmanship and all that kind of stuff, since the Nineties, was where everybody had been growing as players.

We were all really eager to get better and just keep evolving. But I don’t know where Izzy would have fallen in at that time. I have no idea, because we never really got a chance to jam at any of those initial rehearsals for the Not In This Lifetime tour.

So I don’t know what it would have been like. Everybody has been constantly working this whole time and growing as musicians, but I don’t know what he’s been up to on a musical level.

Looking back, how did you write the riff for Appetite for Destruction’s first track, Welcome to the Jungle?

Welcome to the Jungle is funny because when that riff came to me, Axl had come over, and I played him that riff, right? And then, we had our first rehearsals at this guy Nickey Beat’s studio in Silver Lake in L.A., and on that first day, we were like, “What are we going to play?”

This is when the band first got together – the classic lineup with Steven [Adler] and Izzy. Axl goes, “Why don’t you play that thing you were playing to me earlier?” And that’s where Jungle started.

We all fell into where I had the riff – and Izzy and everybody just had different input. That’s how all our songs worked. No matter who came up with the initial idea, everybody was hands-on.

Did the solo come just as spontaneously?

I remember doing the solo, but I can’t remember how we ended up in C#. [Laughs] I remember changing a couple of notes around the chord changes, and the solo just came together. But all of that material on Appetite, musically, almost wrote itself.

I can’t remember too much time being spent on any one particular song where we were trying to get the arrangement right. Everything had to be done in the studio at Nickey Beat’s, and entire songs came out of it. And Jungle was one of those, where it really came together in the time it took to have a session.

Is it true that you didn’t initially like Sweet Child O’ Mine?

Yeah, I have to admit I did have a thing with it. [Laughs] It was a riff I came up with, and I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I wasn’t really thinking about it at the time, but it inspired the whole song. I always say this, but to me, we were like a Motörhead-type hard rock band, so any kind of ballads were sort of uncongressed. [Laughs] But it really became part of our set.

We played it one time opening for Ted Nugent, and when it was time to play that song, I was like, “Oh, fuck…” [Laughs] And, of course, I had to remember how to play the riff accurately by myself in front of everybody every time we played, which, at the time, I was a little drunk, and you never knew what was going to happen. [Laughs]

How do you feel about the song now?

As luck would have it, it was the single that actually broke the band. It’s a great song, and I don’t have any issues with it. I had issues with it back in the early days when I’d go out and play it, but it’s become one of the big tentpole songs in the set. So it is what it is. [Laughs]

When people talk about your guitar solos, November Rain always comes up.

Yeah. But all the solos, that one included, were very spontaneous and at-the-moment when the song was written. You figure out what the chord changes are going to be and then just do whatever you feel. The November Rain solo, which sounds so structured to me now, was just what happened in the moment.

Can you visualize how you came up with it?

The first version of November Rain we did was on acoustic. Even though Axl wrote it on piano, we didn’t always have a piano, so we used to play it on acoustic, and that solo was there. That was just the spontaneous way it went.

I think what happens is you come up with a basic melody that comes to mind when you play the song, and the more you play the song, the more it starts to have a vocal life of its own. That’s what a solo should be. It’s an extension of whatever the song is. It’s another melody, a counter-melody, or an extension of the vocal, but it should be lyrical and melodic.

How do you feel about those solos when you play them now?

I have to admit, it feels weird. Like, if I get hung up one night and don’t feel like playing the solo for Sweet Child O’ Mine and I play something else – and that does happen, especially if I break a string – it feels weird if I don’t play the solo the way it’s supposed to go. I know people get really disappointed if I don’t play it the way they’re used to hearing it.

That’s the double-edged sword. It’s cool because it means something in the context of the song; it’s not just a ripping solo that comes, goes, and is forgettable. It means it has some tenacity.

But then again, you can’t just go off on a tangent like I would like to do sometimes in songs like that. [Laughs] Because it just doesn’t feel right. You feel like you’re missing something if you don’t play it the way that you hear it, or heard it originally, you know?

Those solos sound so well-planned, like mini-compositions. It’s hard to believe they were just off the cuff.

Yeah, they really all were. I don’t remember ever sitting down and figuring any of them out. Especially Jungle. I remember going into that, and it sounds very structured to a point, but that’s just what the chord changes were. It’s interesting to think back on sometimes. When you’re onstage, your mind wanders, and I’ll go back and think about stuff like that. [Laughs]

When you play Rocket Queen live, it features an open-ended jam.

That whole jam section has been there since the Nineties. When Guns was doing the stadium tours back then, we started to extend parts of certain songs to make jams out of them and really just made them up on the spot. You really didn’t know what the structure was.

How has that evolved since you’ve been playing with Richard?

[Initially] he was doing a solo section, I was doing a solo section, and then it would get back to the arrangement of the solo section of the song, which is a slide solo thing, and it’s evolved a bunch of different times in different ways.

And now we’ve added a piano part and some more chord changes, and Richard does this fucking ripping solo, and I go into a voice-box solo afterward. We’ve been doing it that way on this tour, and it seems to hold its own that way, so it feels a bit more structured now.

But whenever we do any kind of jams, very little time is spent working shit out. You just go for it by the seat of your pants and see what happens. [Laughs] And since you’re playing however many nights a week, you can remember what was fucked up from the night before and work on it in the moment.

On the gear side of things, you’re forever associated with the Gibson Les Paul, but you’ve been using everything from B.C. Rich Biches to Gibson ES-335s.

It’s just one extended evolution, right? It started out with gear that wasn’t mine back in the day, and then in the Nineties we had a touring apparatus where we needed to have reliable shit. I was using three Marshall Jubilees back then, which were a new thing at the time.

I happened to get them because, if I remember correctly, they came from Guitar Center, and I got them for cheap, or if not, for free… somehow. I can’t remember exactly how I got them, but I had them. [Laughs]

So those were in my touring rig. Then I had two Les Pauls I got from Gibson, which are affectionately named Jessica and Stephanie. I still use Jessica, and I still have Stephanie. And then, during the Nineties, because there was so much material on the Use Your Illusion records, I started picking up different guitars for different sounds.

You had a B.C. Rich Mockingbird back in the day, too.

The Mockingbird was actually the first professional, brand-name guitar I ever got. I was always a big fan of B.C. Riches, and I worked in a guitar store in Hollywood that was a B.C. Rich authorized dealer.

I had a lot of interaction with B.C. Rich as a kid, and when we were doing Use Your Illusion, I actually had enough money to buy a new guitar, so I picked up a used Mockingbird, an early-Eighties one, which I still use on the road.

I also picked up an Eighties Les Paul goldtop that was really amazing, and some other odds and ends while we were making the Use Your Illusion records. When we went out on the tour, I took all that gear with me, and I still use some of it.

You’ve incorporated a lot of other instruments since then, right?

Yeah, I picked up a lot of stuff over the 20 years when I wasn’t in Guns N’ Roses, like different types of Les Pauls. I started working with Gibson on a lot of signature models, the double-necks and so on. And with Guild, I designed a [Crossroads] double-neck acoustic-electric that I predominantly used for Civil War in the early Nineties.

That’s still around and I still use it. But lately, the mainstays are a killer B.C. Rich Bich and the guitar that’s a replica of the guitar I recorded Appetite on… which was a replica of a Gibson Les Paul.

A replica of a replica!

Yeah. [Laughs] That’s on the road with me. And I’ve been really into Gibson ES-335s lately. I have one of those on the road, and some really amazing handmade [Leo] Scala guitars, but I don’t take vintage guitars on the road as a rule. I’m too hard on them, so I pick up new stuff. I’ve gotten different things for different songs, basically.

For amps, I switched from Marshall to Magnatone in the last couple of years. And on the What You Want and What You Get Are Two Completely Different Things tour, I’ve been using newly co-designed 100-watt Magnatone heads and matching 4x12 cabs.

When you returned to Guns nine years ago, did you imagine you’d be packing stadiums with the world at the band’s fingertips again?

No, I didn’t! It’ll be 10 years in March 2026, and I’m tripping that so much time has gone by. Like I was saying before, I’m blown away that we’ve managed to have such a great following this whole time.

Is there a new album in GN’R’s future?

There’s so much material at this point – it’s a matter of having the discipline to sit down and fucking get into it. But the thing with Guns is, in my experience, you can never plan ahead. You can never sit down and go, “We’re going to take this time, and we’re going to do this.”

Every time we’ve done that, it falls apart. It just spontaneously happens through some sort of inspiration that triggers it. And the next thing you know, it’s off and running. So it’s coming. I know it’s coming because everybody is thinking about it. It’ll just happen when it happens.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

She’s come a long way since her early years, from being mentored by a certain British new wave legend and cutting her teeth on the Detroit blues scene, to her present-day life and career in Music City – Nashville – and beyond.

As Taylor herself recounts in a heartfelt interview with Guitarist, she practically grew up in the business, having been discovered at the age of 15 by Dave Stewart, one-half of Eurythmics.

“Dave Stewart came about because, unfortunately, my mom had breast cancer when I was 15, and she was part of a support group,” she shares. “One of the chaps from [English reggae band] UB40s' wife was in it, and they wanted to do a fundraiser, so they asked me if I wanted to play.

“And it just so happened, a friend of Dave's was there. So we did the gig, and he got a demo CD, [did] like a little three-track demo CD somewhere in Birmingham, and he passed it on to Dave. He phoned the house, spoke to my parents, and we were off to London the next day to talk about a record deal.

“I had no idea who he was,” Taylor admits. “I'd heard of Annie Lennox, but I had no idea who Dave was, which his wife found very funny.”

Taylor was signed to his label for the next two or three years, and was also out on the road with him and his band, D.U.P.

“We toured around Europe for about two years,” she recalls. “He got me out with B.B. King doing some shows. But the most important thing with Dave was, he was really the first guy to tell me he didn't think I was just a guitar player. He thought I was going to be a songwriter and singer that played guitar, which, at the time, I'd only been singing [for] a few months.”

Stewart shared plenty of advice with Taylor, but one piece of wisdom stuck out: “He said, ‘You know what always gets voted the most popular guitar solo in the world?’ I said. ‘No,’ and he said, ‘It's Hotel California – because it's great solo, but it's a great song.

“‘You can write the best solo in the world, but if it's not a good song, no one's ever going to hear it.’ So he was very fundamental in mentoring me towards being more than just a guitar player.”

Speaking of career advice and mentors, Taylor recently looked back on that one time Joe Bonamassa’s haggling skills helped her land a signed signature model of her favorite player.

As such, it should come as no surprise that Van Halen took the development of the amp very, very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that he developed a mad-scientist torture test to ensure the amp was borderline indestructible.

As EVH leaders Wolfgang Van Halen and Matt Bruck recall in the new issue of Guitar World, that test involved plenty of volume, lots of feedback, and (above all) patience.

“The process was long and difficult, because the amp was reimagined from the ground up, which meant we had to establish a new foundation to build up from,” Bruck says of the amp, which has been selected as one of the most influential pieces of gear of the 21st century.

He adds, “This meant a new chassis and formulating the transformers, which are amazing, built like a tank and over spec’ed – the way they should be if you’re going for something great.”

While Bruck is quick to point out the lengthy R&D phase, Wolfgang highlights the testing phase, for which his father devised “the most rigorous testing an amp could go through”.

“I remember Dad testing it up in the studio. You could hear it from the bottom of the house, this slight feedback,” he remembers. “As you went up toward the studio, it started to get louder. Then you opened the door to the first room, and it was a little louder.

“When you opened the door to where the guitar was, there was a guitar sitting there, with every knob pinned, feeding back. He literally kept it there for a week, just to crash-test it and make sure it didn’t explode.”

Bruck says Eddie called it the “crash testing” phase, and while those around him were a bit skeptical of his methods, Van Halen himself held his nerve.

“It was where he would just try to destroy a piece of equipment,” Bruck adds. “It was so when it went to market, it would be reliable. He just dimed the thing, left it leaning against the cabinet and created this eternal feedback loop. I was terrified the place was going to burn down.

“I was saying, ‘It’s going to get hot. It’s going to explode. We’re going to have a fire.’ He was like, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll see how long it goes.’

“After about five days, he was like, ‘Okay, it passed the test.’ That gives you insight into the uncanny genius and how much of an outside-the-box thinker Ed was.”

Safe to say Eddie Van Halen’s “crash testing” methods left an impression. A few years ago, his rig builder Dave Friedman spoke about his guitar amp “torture test”.

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitar World, which features a rundown of the most important gear releases of the 21st century.

Halestorm were one of the bands that made up the historic lineup, which also included Mastodon, Anthrax, Tool, Alice In Chains, Guns N' Roses, and Metallica, to name a few. However, as they reveal in a recent interview, the show's set list wasn't cemented until just a few weeks before the event.

"When we got the call, ‘Sharon's asking you to be a part of this,’ we're like, is this real?” Lzzy Hale tells Guitar World's Paul Riario.

“There was this email. It was like, ‘Hey, Sabbath is gonna play one last gig with the original four members, and maybe Metallica might be there. Do you guys wanna be on the show?’” relates lead guitarist Joe Hottinger.

“We're like, ‘Well, yeah, of course.’ And that's all we knew about it. Then they announced it, and we were like, ‘Oh, this is a whole thing.’”

Halestorm ended up putting their own spin on Perry Mason, from Ozzy's 1995 record, Ozzmosis. However, it wasn't their original choice – or what they had prepared for.

“That wasn't what we were going to be playing until about two weeks out. We were going to be playing A National Acrobat off Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,” explains Hale.

“We worked up A National Acrobat, and then Morello was like, ‘Hey, you can't do that. I think Metallica was gonna [do that]...’ ‘All right, fine,’” continues Hottinger.

“He's like, ‘Tony Iommi hasn't made up the set list... It's up in the air with that one,’” adds Hale.

When A National Acrobat was axed, Perry Mason felt like a natural choice, since, as Hottinger relays, “When we came up, listening to rock ’n’ roll in the ’90s, Ozzmosis was out, [and] that song was the one on the radio.”

In more Halestorm news, Hale recently revealed how a “fluke accident” resulted in her band opening for Heaven & Hell during what would be Ronnie James Dio’s last show before he died.

Popovic’s take on the blues has always been edgy. She’s never cared what people think and isn’t focused on tradition. “I want to be new, uncensored, not fake,” she says. “I want to be myself and to give the real me to the audience and listeners with every new record.”

Popovic says Dance to the Rhythm features “a strong sense of roots.” Her “musical home is the starting point, as I’m always aware of where I came from musically.” But she’s not planning on staying home. She isn’t sure where she’s going, and she’s not worried.

“It’s about new, unexplored horizons,” she says. “Even after all this time, I look around and I am just thankful.”

Your take on the blues is different, which galvanizes and polarizes fans.

If you’re bound to break some rules to bring something new to the table, how can you be bothered by what the majority has to say about it? Either you've got the balls to do it or you don’t. Do you want to recycle or try something new? I never chased the popular opinion as much as I chased my inner feelings.

What inspired Dance to the Rhythm?

We were jubilant, we were full of dance. No boundaries for our creativity. That’s how we felt making the record – groove and dance. With Power, we were trying to survive. Through Dance, we celebrated life and a new chance. Dance is one of the styles of music I haven’t explored, [but] it has always been present in my life. I always wanted to make a connection between the guitar and dance.

How has surviving cancer shifted your perspective?

It’s a major shift in your universe. It puts a perspective on your whole life. I’ve always approached my art as sacred. I need to put my whole self into it. Don’t borrow from people around you; try to be authentic. But being faced with so much insecurity brought the aspect of time.

Who are you as a guitar player today?

I am a guitar player who’s in charge of everything. When I think about my playing, I see the big picture. With time, the guitar became literally my right hand; it serves as an inspiration for the stories.

What guitars are on the new album?

My “Foggy” Custom Shop Strat, my all-original ’64 Strat and my ’57 reissue Strat, plus Teles, Gibson Les Pauls, Martin acoustics, and so on. My pedalboards are always a mix of older and newer gear, but I’m a fan of older gear.

What’s your outlook now?

While having a long career, you come across obstacles. You fight on, and the reward tastes twice as sweet. But what I’m most proud of is that I’ve done it without compromising my private life.

• Dance to the Rhythm is out now via Electric Heel.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

At the time of this interview Dey’s about to head to Europe to perform a series of concerts with Swiss guitarist Jill Yan, while also promoting a new album with prog-rock supergroup DarWin. Oh yeah, and she’s producing her own album as well, not to mention a recent stint with Willow Smith opening for Coldplay.

“I’ve been touring with Willow, and I’ve also been touring with my own band,” says Dey. She explains it’s down to “a lot of homework I have to keep up with” that she’s able to handle all the demands of each ensemble.

“I'm also doing a lot of recording sessions on the side, and I’m in the mixing and mastering stage for my second album. I guess I’m just hyperfunctional like that.”

With a fast-tracked career into music – from a humble upbringing in India to playing on some of the world’s biggest stages, as well as collaborating with superstars including Steve Vai, Greg Howe, Simon Philips (appearing on the superb new Distorted Mirror album) and Zakir Hussain among many others – Dey has an enviable résumé at the age of 29.

Yet for all her session experience, it’s now as a bandleader in her own right that she looks set to make her most personal musical statement to date.

“I’ve played in so many bands where I’ve been asked to play in a certain way, but when I started to write my own music, that’s when people really saw what I’m capable of. Luckily for me, people are ready for some more of that.”

Dey also sounds a note of caution to anyone who thinks they have reached their peak and have nothing left to learn: “I never thought I’d get hired by a pop band. Opening for Coldplay was never a career goal! I just never thought I’d be hired for a gig like that because of the way I play.

“But sometimes life can just hit you. You might be so focused on your own path that you’re not always prepared for when the universe is ready to give some of that energy back.”

You have quite a resume. Tell us how it all started.

“Initially I didn't have many goals. I just had one! Which was to move out of my parents’ house and be independent. I ended up getting my own place when I was 17. I was already playing with some of the biggest pop bands in India, but then I started working with a more international artists, and I realized I didn’t have to stay in India. I ended up moving to Nashville, and I got the gig with Willow Smith soon after that.”

How did you get the gig?

“Her management told me that she was a big fan of my bass playing and that she wanted me in her band. I hadn't heard much of her music at that point. I had heard Whip My Hair, and Wait a Minute, but those releases were from when she was a lot younger. She’s been through such a huge transformation in the last few years from Coping Mechanism to Empathogen. She's a totally different personality now.”

What happened next?

“I asked her management if I could listen to some of her new music. I wanted to know what I was letting myself in for! But also to make sure they were making the right choice by hiring me. I was already touring with my band and I didn’t want that to take a backseat. But when I heard her music I could totally hear myself in that setup, so I accepted the offer, and that’s how I got the gig.

“The Tiny Desk concert was my first gig with her. I never would've thought I’d land on a Tiny Desk with Willow Smith, and then we played Jimmy Fallon!”

Have you ever felt pigeonholed or labelled?

“I think people see me as someone who can tick a lot of of boxes. I’ve played in metal bands, jazz bands, and pop bands. I’ve played reggae and Brazilian music. Willow just lets me be who I am, and that’s the most important thing. If I was in a band where I felt restricted, then I just wouldn’t do it.”

You also toured with guitarist Greg Howe last year.

“I was out with Greg for two months. I grew up listening to Greg on albums like Extraction, which also features Victor Wooten and Dennis Chambers. I couldn’t wait to play some of those Victor Wooten basslines live!”

What other bassists have influenced you over the years?

“Players like Michael Manring, Gary Willis, Adam Nitti, and Victor Bailey. I was always a big fan of Jaco’s bass tone. Later on I got into gospel players like Sharay Reed, and that’s when I started trying to mix the tight attack of Jaco’s playing with the P-Bass tone of someone like Sharay. It was important for me to have a sound that would work with slap bass as well.”

Was it ever a challenge for you to develop your technical prowess?

“I think I’ve always been a very technical bass player. I was always intrigued and fascinated by the intricacy of technique, which led to my discovery of the different tones that are available from different playing techniques. That’s when I started to develop my own signature way of playing.

“Growing up in India I learned a lot of traditional carnatic music. I learned Raagas, and konnakol, and so I became comfortable with polyrhythms at a very young age. Metric modulation is another thing that’s taught in India. And so I'd construct exercises that allowed me to replicate tabla patterns on the bass.

“But it wasn’t until I started slapping that I realised I have a lot more in my vocabulary than I thought. That's when I consciously started to train myself to be more percussive.”

When did you start making YouTube videos?

“My channel really came out of a need to document my journey. It’s really inspiring to look back and see how far my bass playing has come. I still feel I'm the same person, but really I'm a completely different player. I also like looking back into the archives and seeing if there are any tricks that I could bring back!”

“Playing at Wembley Stadium with my own band, Sector 27, would be one,” he tells Bass Player. “And possibly opening for The Police at Madison Square Garden might be another.” When it comes to recording, he adds, “working with Freddie is a high point.”

He did learn an important lesson from Sabbath, though – the importance of retaining freedom. “I have my own band, which has been up and running for a few years. It’s allowed me to get back to writing, as in the early years with Sector 27.”

He adds: “Being in control has been of huge importance in my life. In the Black Sabbath time I had none. I’m also happy to be free of the industry, which I now realize is and always has been corrupt. No regrets!”

When you played with The Troggs, how did you nail their classic garage rock tone?

“The Troggs were my first pro band. In 1978, when we played New York City, the Ramones and the New York Dolls were in the audience along with Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Deborah Harry and Andy Warhol. Reg Presley was treated like the godfather of punk, and the band had taken on the mantle.

“I’d recently bought a silver Music Man StingRay bass. It had a great maple neck which felt like a Fender. I was lucky to have an Ampeg SVT supplied by the club, which I set to my usual tone – slight mid-cut with slight bass and treble boost.

“What I hadn’t reckoned on was the EQ on the Music Man bass, which was actually more clanky than I expected. If you listen to The Troggs Live at Max’s, the bass sound is not really my thing – but boy, does it push Ronnie Bond and the band along!

“I didn’t keep the Music Man; I couldn’t get on with all that EQ and choices. I’m back to a fretted Precision as a companion to my lovely ‘battered blonde’ fretless.”

You played bass on Freddie Mercury’s Mr. Bad Guy album. What led to that?

“Sector 27 was being looked after by Elton John’s manager, John Reid, and we did extensive touring as the opening act for Elton. John had also managed Queen, and the contact with Freddie remained.

“I had also worked with Roger Taylor and Rick Parfitt on a single for Jimmy Nail, so I was already in the family of musicians around Freddie. On one of those clubbing nights out that used to happen, Freddie asked me to come to Munich.”

Did you err toward John Deacon’s bass style?

“Freddie told me to be free-thinking and not to worry about trying to be John. My style was similar anyway – ‘less is more’ has always been a mantra. I guess it was old-fashioned in the days when bass guitars were getting attention from manufacturers who were starting to offer fancy, ever more sophisticated basses.”

What were Freddie’s expectations of you as a bassist?

“On so many recording sessions for major artists, those artists are never actually there. If they are, they tend to instruct from the control room via microphone. But Freddie was a remarkable musician and totally on it in the studio.

“In the control room, or even sitting in the recording room with me, he was throwing ideas back and forth, encouraging me to experiment. He was careful to keep me at ease while being this whirlwind of ideas. Like Michael Jackson, he was able to sing the parts he wanted played.

“Freddie liked to work fast. He used to say, ‘If it’s not brilliant by the third take, move on – maybe come back tomorrow.’ On his his vocal takes that rule was never needed. Once he was prepared, his tracks were all first takes.”

You played fretless on Mr. Bad Guy. What led to that?

“Freddie had specifically asked. He really wanted to get away from all things Queen, although he was has happy enough when Brian and Roger dropped by and even made suggestions.

“Aside from some light compression applied from the control desk, it was just me and my lovely battered fretless bass plugged in direct.”

How did you hook up with Jason Bonham in Virginia Wolf?

“I got a call one day from Roger, saying he was producing this great band but they needed beefing up. He had secured Jason to play drums, and wanted me on bass. I did kind of jump at the idea! That afternoon Jason and I were certainly beefing up those tracks at Pete Townshend’s studio.”

Was the chemistry between you and Jason immediate?

“I felt a certain responsibility for this young man bouncing around like a scared bunny, following desperately in his late father’s footsteps. Eventually, being on tour in the US with him was definitely a challenge, but a nice one.

“Jason and I locked in as a rhythm section immediately. He played and sounded like his dad. After listening to Led Zeppelin II over and over at school, I was allowed to use the influence from those tracks. It was probably the first time that I acknowledged John Paul Jones’ influence. Later on, even Robert Plant said I played like him!

“After two years, Virginia Wolf crashed and burned in the flame of inexperience and internal pettiness. It was a shame – Atlantic Records had backed the band a few quid for their attempt at domination in the USA.”

What led to you getting the call for Black Sabbath’s Eternal Idol tour?

“Phil Banfield had been Virginia Wolf’s manager. He managed Ian Gillan and he was part of a bigger set-up which included Jeff Beck and Black Sabbath. When he heard Sabbath needed a last-minute replacement for their European Eternal Idol tour, he called me.”

Was there an audition?

“There was no time for an audition! I just arrived at production rehearsals, with the huge stage, sound system and lights already in place. The sound desk was set up at a distance in the aircraft-style hangar. The only rehearsal I had was a couple of days, listening to a cassette of the show and a copy of the album.”

Were you expected to play a rig and in a style similar to Geezer Butler’s?

“The rig set was three Ampeg SVT amplifiers, each with an 8x12 cabinet. As it happens I had my own SVT set up – my amp of choice – so I was familiar with them, except there were three!

“Even so, the sound wasn’t right, and after a few run-throughs, Tony said the same thing. I’d had the first amp taken away because it was distorting like crazy; the pre-amp valves had been tweaked into overdrive. Then the penny dropped.

“We put that amp back in line and the distorted sound gave my bass loads of sustain, which made Tony smile. It took some getting used to – the bass was like an animal in my hands. It was difficult to stop it resonating. My trouser legs were flapping with the sound pressure from the three big cabs!

“As a 20-something, I was more Led Zep than Sabbath. I knew the more well-known Sabbath songs, but I did struggle with identifying one or two of the titles. I was certainly not able to play like Geezer when he would virtually play a bass solo over the instrumental parts; there just wasn’t the time to learn them accurately.

“I always felt I was playing an approximation when the band launched into some of those riffs in faster time changes.”

Can you pinpoint how your style specifically differed from Geezer’s?

“My style was more melodic. But you have to remember that I followed a long list of bass players, and it was really only the earlier songs that had his style. Bob Daisley played on the Eternal Idol album.

“War Pigs was a classic which I enjoyed playing, although the solo sections were always a challenge. Glory Ride was an easy rocker. I really liked the tracks we played from the Eternal Idol album as well as the classics. It feels like a privilege to have played Iron Man.”

Was it a challenge being on the road with Sabbath during those lean ’80s years?

“Travelling was absolutely fine. Me and drummer Terry Chimes had met when he was with The Clash and I was with Tom Robinson. Tony Martin was also a newbie, so I guess there was some nervous energy on the tour bus.

“Jeff Nicholls was a funny guy and very friendly. After years of playing offstage, he had no ego; he was a very present friend to me while travelling. Tony had that classic Brummie sense of humor, which matched with Jeff, so all in all it was pretty comfortable – with four-star hotels included.

“It only felt lean when tour manager Richard Cole dragged me out of the bus, still in my sleeping bag, and told me, ‘Hurry up! We’re all going home.’”

Did he give an explanation?

“I’m not sure why the tour ended so abruptly. All the gear was impounded by the sound and light company, who hadn’t been paid. I never got a bunch of my gear returned, although I did eventually get my fretless back. People don’t get sacked from Sabbath; they just don’t get spoken to again!”

You’ve also worked with Brian Setzer.

“I knew him through his time in England with the Stray Cats, when we often hung out. I met him again in the Rainbow in LA and his first comment was, ‘My bass player’s got an attitude. Do you want the gig?’

“I had a Precision-style Peavey bass stored at a friend’s house. I hadn’t played it very much, but it meant I was able to get straight to rehearsal the next day. Even that bass felt a little over-spec for the hillbilly rock ’n’ roll we playing. I felt I should have had a semi, like an old Epiphone Rivoli bass.

“Brian was a great guy and a truly talented guitar player. He also introduced me to the best Mexican restaurant in Hollywood, which I still visit when I can!”

What are you up to now?

“The Jo Burt Experience have released four albums – the most recent one is Anglicana. We’ve done four tours of British Columbia and Calgary. France and Belgium have also been happy hunting grounds. It’s all done as a cottage industry.

“Most recently, I released a superb live album entitled Jo Burt The Live Experience in limited-edition vinyl. It’s due to be cut at Abbey Road in for a spring 2026 release.”

• Anglicana is out now.

“The reason all guitar music sounds the same is because people just put their hands in the same position,” he tells Cory Wong on the Wong Notes podcast. “On a piano, you write melodies and chords. On a guitar, it's built so weird with that one string in the wrong position, and so everybody plays the same crap all the time.

As he succinctly describes it, “It's all the square, the box, the blah, blah, blah.” His solution, which is allegedly on full display in his upcoming material, is writing “all this guitar music on the piano, which is what I used to do in the old days.

“I used to write everything, a lot of stuff, on the piano, and then I'd learn it on the guitar, and then I recorded it. And once it was all recorded, it sounds really melodic and very, very unique – unlike any guitar music I've really heard before.”

Speaking about how his early inspirations shaped his thought process and approach to composition, Anastasio waxes lyrical about how he “loved Brian May. I was just obsessed with Queen. So, Queen, Zeppelin, Fripp, Broadway, classical music, Ravel, and all that kind of added into this.

“I wrote a lot of this stuff on the piano… these chords and these melodies... Brian May and Fripp, that was the [guitar] tone I was going for. I wanted a mid-rangy, sustaining [tone] that sounded like a voice.”

Earlier this year, Anastasio contributed to a stunning rendition of The Beatles' While My Guitar Gently Weeps in New York alongside Peter Frampton and one of the guitar world's fastest-rising stars.

Erin Phelan showcased her musical talents in front of a hall full of her schoolmates during the farewell ceremony, for which she played what looks to be Fender's Nebula Noir 70th Anniversary Player Strat. Slick tapping, screaming whammy bar harmonics, and lyric-imitating licks are all a part of Phelan's trick bag, and the video has since gathered widespread attention.

The clip was posted on her school’s official page and has gained over 41,000 likes and nearly 1,000 comments. Her showcase was part of a school leavers' event, with the school drawing attention to the “iconic moment” the teenage shredder provided.

What’s perhaps most impressive, beyond the superlative showing of what she can do on an electric guitar and a pretty tasty tone, is just how at ease she looks while doing that. Phelan is locked in.

Some commenters have described her as “absolutely fearless” and praised her “great phrasing”, while another writes, “This kid does not know how good she is, and that's why this is so good.”

The future of shred guitar looks to be in safe hands. Alongside Phelan, 10-year-old Bay Melnick Virgolino recently made waves on America's Got Talent this year, and he's been benefiting from the coaching of ex-Megadeth guitarist Kiko Loureiro. Youngster Maya Neelakantan – who has been praised by Adam Jones – also made a serious name for herself on the show in 2024.

There's also a nine-year-old who can play arpeggios at insane speeds despite being smaller than his electric guitar, while Tom Morello's son, Roman, has been melting faces on the road with his dad.

Dani Nightingale explains: “Being neurodivergent and queer, I’ve never really felt at home in this world. I’d always play and sing it to myself backstage; it’s been a very comforting song – like maybe things will be better in another time. I love its warring hopefulness and despondency.”

Conjurer still cite Converge, Mastodon and Armed for Apocalypse as their biggest influences, but Nightingale also credits the genre-blurring inspiration of Agriculture.

“They sometimes barely sound like a black metal band – they bring in all these country and transcendental folk elements.”

Guitarists Nightingale and Brady Deeprose sat down with GW to discuss their latest album and their new custom instruments.

What other inspirations can we hear on Unself?

Deeprose: “Our records might have 50 touch points inspired by other bands – Gratefuls, Cult of Luna, Jim Geddy, Chat Pile, Baroness, Amenra, Yashira, Giles Corey or Have a Nice Life – but those sections will sound nothing like them. It’s not about copying those bands’ sounds. We just love that they have their own thing. We’re digging down into what makes our band unique.

“It sounds like wanky musician talk, but our music is more honest than it’s ever been. Bands can lose their zest over time, but we’re a decade into our career and I’ve never been more excited about music we’ve put out than now.”

Did you trial any new gear for the record?

Nightingale: “On Pathos (2022), we were recording mid-lockdown, so we used what amps we had: Brady’s Engl Powerball and my EVH 5153. But our producer, Joe Clayton, has a bunch of different amps and cabs in his studio, so there was more swapping things in and out.”

What about guitars?

Nightingale: “We both got new customs: Brady got a Carillion and I got a Mozer. Mr Mozer showed us some guitars at a festival in the Netherlands. I couldn’t help but get myself one. It’s an Antholite with a Duesenberg Tremolo. It’s great – but the guys had to come down on me for overusing it! I wanted country dives on all the clean parts and they were like, ‘Just play it straight, man!’”

Deeprose: “I used to play an ESP V and I systematically destroyed it over eight years of touring. Chris from Carillion had been hitting me up since 2020, so for the new record, I told him: ‘You need you to build me an absolute workhorse.’

“It’s based on the King Slayer V, with a white Limba body and Wenge neck. 26.5in is on the shorter end of the baritone scale, but after an adjustment period it’s so comfortable to play.”

Was scale length a consideration on the new builds?

Nightingale: “Our old tuning, with the top five strings in C# standard and the thick bass string at G#, was really awkward for intonation and string tension. 24.75in guitars couldn’t handle the tension but baritones were too long. I have a Classic 6 from Jericho, whose standard length is 25.75 – the perfect length between standard and a baritone.”

“When we were looking into custom builds, we went for those in-between ‘extra-long regular’ or ‘shorter-scale baritone’ lengths. It’s very nerdy and a lot of people won’t give a shit, but for tuning and tension it’s been perfect. My Mozer is a 26.2in scale. The reason for the unusual number is that it’s 666mm – so I had to have that!”

What about pickups?

Nightingale: “I’ve got a Hyperion humbucker in the bridge and a P90-Bucker in the neck.”

Deeprose: “I’ve been using Bare Knuckles for five or six years; they make the best pickups for heavy music. I’ve got a VHII in the neck and a Nailbomb in the bridge of the Carillion. Changing from active to passive was huge, too – I’d forget to change the batteries and have a meltdown pre-gig when my EMGs died!”

You share your Guitar Pro tabs online for fans to buy at whatever price they want. How did that start?

Deeprose: “From the jump, Dani and I would write with Guitar Pro, send ideas back and forth and tab everything out exactly as we wanted it. The thinking was, ‘If you can make a banger on Guitar Pro with the crappy guitar synths and programmed drums, it’s going to sound insane when we record it!’”

Nightingale: “I came from the UltimateGuitar.com community, where you’d search for a song and either there’d be nothing or the tab would have two stars. It was always a great feeling when someone had put in the effort to tab up a song you wanted.

“I used to do it in WordPad or jot things down at work. My bag would be full of scraps of paper with riffs, time signatures and reminders to ‘record this when you get home!’”

Deeprose: “Every guitarist has had the frustration of finding a crap tab, or the band’s tab book is £100. We have the tabs, so we want anyone who wants to spend the time to learn our music to have them. If they want to pay for that, great, and if they don’t, that’s also fine. Bottom line: it’s nice!”

Did you hit any bumps when tabbing your parts?

Deeprose: “We recently went back and did the tabs for our first EP, as they weren’t finished at the time.”

Nightingale: “You had to ask me what your solo was.”

Deeprose: “I got there though – I knew roughly where the notes were, but we hadn’t played it in years. I found a video of us playing it in Plymouth, which was very helpful!”

• Unself is out on now via Nuclear Blast Records.

Beck, who had offers to join both the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd during his career, is considered as one of the world’s greatest – and distinctive – guitarists, but he often didn't see it like that.

Blackmore and Beck first crossed paths in the mid-’60s during their session player days. They both played on a track produced by Jimmy Page, who, after his brief stint in the Yardbirds, would find fame with Led Zeppelin.

“I couldn't believe how incredible he was,” Blackmore recalled of that session following Beck’s passing in January 2023. “He could reach up into the stars and make magic with his playing. His choice of notes was always absolutely perfect.”

Now, in a fresh interview with Rock Of Nations With Dave Kinchen And Shane McEachern, the Deep Purple legend has spoken more about the late guitar great and his struggles with imposter syndrome.

“ Jeff was a great guitar player. That was a big blow, him going,” he says. “He had a very special way of playing. It was so different from anybody. I always used to go and see him play, because I found him very refreshing.”

But despite Blackmore and the rest of the world drooling over his tradition-skewing chops, it seems he didn’t always feel the same about his craft.

“He would always put himself down,” Blackmore continues. “I'd say, ‘How is your latest record, Jeff?’ And he'd go, ‘Oh, it's a lot of rubbish.’ He would always say that about anything he put out. He was always reaching for something he couldn't find.”

The story harmonizes with Mick Rogers' claim that he owns the last recording that Beck ever made, but added that it's unlikely to see the light of day because Beck didn't like his guitar tone and had planned to re-record it.

Joe Satriani has also spoken about nearly getting Jeff Beck on a G3 tour, but he pulled out late on. Satch says he's one of the few bucket list players to have turned the gig down.

After the record-breaking sale of Beck's guitar collection, one of his most iconic guitars has gone on to pass through the hands of contemporary players to keep his legacy alive. His infamous Yardburst Les Paul, which was given a Custom Shop reissue last year, has been gigged with by Marcus King and Lenny Kravitz's foil, Crag Ross, since its $490,000 sale.

Meanwhile, Blackmore is back on the road again after his wife and musical partner issued some updates concerning his health back in April.

“Honestly, the first adjustment I made when we were putting the specs together for this guitar was to get rid of the tone knobs,” she tells Guitar.com.

“It was like the very first thing I told them, because in all the years I’ve been playing since I was a child, I don’t remember ever adjusting a tone knob for literally anything. So, I’m like, you know what? Clearly, I’m not going to miss it. So, I just did two volume knobs.”

Tone knobs (or no tone knobs) aside, the guitar does come fully equipped with the classic metal pairing of the EMG 81 in the neck and EMG 85 in the bridge – and Rowe has a bone to pick with those who think active pickups can ruin your tone.

“I gravitated towards playing what my favorite bands played because when I was 11, I didn’t know anything about, you know, different pickups, active, passive, string gauges, nothing like that,” she continues.

“It was just like, oh, Kirk Hammet plays EMGs, so that’s what I want to play. So my first guitars had them in there. And I feel like it just became a part of my sound.

“Whenever I play EMGs, it just it’s that metal sound that everyone knows,” Rowe elaborates. “And some people like that about them and some people don’t. They feel like it might take away some of like the uniqueness of their playing or whatever. I don’t. I love them. I plug and play EMGs and I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s what I need.’”

Earlier this year, the fast-rising guitar star revealed the name of the metal legend who asked her for a guitar lesson.

Metallica's set at Optus Stadium, Perth, on October 31st saw half the band get into the spooky spirit early on in their performance, surprising fans at the 70,000 capacity venue.

Hetfield the Kangaroo, with a spring in his step, was joined by bass player Robert Trujillo in a hi-vis vest and builder's helmet. The items were likely cobbled together from crew members backstage, but he gets marks for trying. Kirk Hammett and Lars Ulrich’s casual attire, though, didn't quite nail the brief.

“Let’s hop to it!” Metallica posted on Instagram, accompanied by footage of the Ride The Lightning cut. Hetfield’s vocals are a little muffled by the costume, but, playing an Electra Guitars 2236 Flying Wedge inscribed with the band's Scary Guy logo, he handled its guitar parts with aplomb. He’s set a high bar for next year.

The guitar is a cheap Japanese copy of the Gibson Flying V, and the original featured on their debut album, Kill 'Em All. Speaking to Ultimate Guitar in 2023, the band's guitar tech Chad Zaemisch revealed that he and luthier Bill Nash had recently been tasked with tracking down several of these guitars and modifying them to recreate the tonal magic of the band's early days.

He also revealed that the original V was dusted off and put back into circulation around this time, so the one Hetfield is playing here could be the one that was such a key part of the band's formative years.

In related news, Kirk Hammett's mystery Back to the Beginning SG is headed to auction, along with more than 150 guitars from his personal collection. He'd used the Custom Shop Gibson SG to cover Black Sabbath's Hole in the Sky during the historic event.

In more recent Metallica-related news, Dave Mustaine has revealed that the last song on Megadeth's forthcoming final album will be a reimagining of Ride the Lightning, a song he helped write before leaving the band in 1983.