Features archive
December 2025
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49 articles
- December 20
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- “I had letters threatening me with death for getting Bert Jansch to play through an amp”: The life and wild times of Danny Thompson, the legend of upright bass who “brought greatness to everything he played”
- “He will go down as one of the greatest rock drummers of all time. I can bring him a bass riff in seven-and-a-half and he’ll be right on it”: Justin Chancellor explains how bass fits into Tool’s challenging brand of prog
- December 19
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- “Gear is a nightmare. When you play every night, the failure rate goes through the roof”: Award-winning UK indie stars English Teacher on the dangers of self-relic'ing, and why they love Fender offsets “for the same reason any alternative band does”
- “Buddy Guy isn’t just our last living line to the real origins of the blues – he’s a hell of an actor, too”: 25 reasons why 2025 was a great year for guitar
- December 18
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- “Nuno’s shoutout was an emotional moment for me. I was gobsmacked. Without my brother showing me Extreme’s music, I would never have been there”: From Plini to Polyphia, how Rick Graham quietly became one of progressive guitar’s most influential names
- “Noel said, ‘Ever been in a band with three guitars? We’ll let Bonehead do Bonehead, and we’ll fit around it’”: Noel Gallagher’s longtime right-hand man Gem Archer takes us inside the Oasis reunion – and how they negotiated their new three-guitar lineup
- “I heard someone playing deep, fiery guitar in the room next door. I thought, ‘Boy, I wish that guy was in the band!’ I looked over the balcony… It was Ace”: The otherworldly life and times of Kiss guitar icon Ace Frehley
- December 17
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- “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’”: From Eddie Van Halen’s “uncanny genius” to his brutal crash-testing, inside the making of the EVH 5150 III
- “There’s nothing worse than someone saying, ‘You were born with a gift.’ No, I got up every day and picked up that guitar when I was supposed to be doing other things”: Nuno Bettencourt on why he’s finally ready to become a guitar teacher
- “Bob Dylan had me, Eric Clapton, Dr. John, Ronnie Wood, Levon Helm and Paul Butterfield. It wasn’t the greatest music I ever played”: Bob Margolin on The Last Waltz, the jam party afterwards and his years with Muddy Waters
- “Gibson wasn’t the only company to lose its mind in thrall to technology”: The 21st century gear trends that never caught on
- December 16
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- “I was recording with Jerry Garcia, but I still had to ride my bike to school and keep my grades up, or else my parents would throw my guitar in the trash”: Starship trooper Craig Chaquico on “corporate rock”, and life as a teenage guitar whiz
- “My friend told me I couldn’t even play a 6-string bass – so I had to learn it to prove him wrong!” Meet 7-string bass wizard Dylan Desmond, whose accidental two-handed tapping powers doom’s most adventurous low-end
- “It’s incredibly light, almost like a toy. But it’s not a toy – it’s an incredible instrument I’m about to use to play to 50,000 people”: Polyphia’s Tim Henson on making his game-changing Ibanez that started a nylon-string revolution
- December 15
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- “Gary was great on a 335 – he really, really pulled the expression out of that guitar”: Greeny and his Strats were his superstar electrics, but these ‘60s Gibson semi-hollows were Gary Moore’s workhorses – and they’ve still got the blues mojo
- Pat Metheny called him “the best guitar player I’ve heard in maybe my entire life” and he recorded his last two albums in the same day – meet Pasquale Grasso, the guitarist taking jazz into the future
- “Every time I go to plug in, it feels like Christmas. I knew it was going to be useful. I just didn’t realize how useful”: Steve Vai on the first mini amp he found that could truly punch above its weight
- December 14
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- “To think that Jamerson could compose this entire bassline spontaneously and still be locked into the groove is astounding. That's his genius”: How Motown hit-maker James Jamerson funked up a Christmas classic on this 1968 holiday gem
- “I knew the Silver Sky would take years to take its place in the world. And I say this cautiously, but it feels like it’s become pretty widely accepted”: How John Mayer and Paul Reed Smith made the Silver Sky
- December 13
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- “Robert said, ‘Would you be prepared to play bass?’ And I thought, ‘Four strings, six strings... what could be the problem?’”: Greg Lake started out as a guitarist – before being convinced by Robert Fripp to switch to bass when joining King Crimson
- “I wanted it to be a workhorse I could bash around, beat up, hit with metal pipes and get thrown into kegs without breaking in half”: The making of Jim Root’s Telecaster, the guitar that brought Fender into the modern age
- December 12
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- “Dad let me organically follow whatever I wanted. That was his main mantra: ‘Just play.’ It’s that simple”: Wolfgang Van Halen on Allan Holdsworth, unintentional Van Halen-isms, and his go-to guitar-test riffs
- “I remember thinking, ‘This is like Eddie Van Halen’s death.’ He influenced so many, and he was one of a kind. His legacy is monumental”: Bruce Kulick remembers Ace Frehley, and the Frehley-era Kiss song that caused him the most trouble
- December 11
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- “I turned into a Strat player. I never thought I would”: Danielle Haim on her guitarist-for-hire days with Julian Casablancas, I Quit energy and Haim’s historic Grammy nomination
- “Back in the heyday we had huge touring budgets and room for large travel rigs. Now you can store all your amps on a USB stick”: The greatest guitar gear of the 21st century (so far)
- December 10
- December 9
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- “When people throw around the Lennon/McCartney comparison to Bob Mould and Grant Hart, I think that’s fair”: Greg Norton believes Hüsker Dü were always going to break up, but it happened too soon
- “The guitar I learned to play on isn’t worth much, but I’ve played it at thousands of concerts and hundreds of recording sessions”: He’s performed on over 500 albums. Now Marcus Deml is making breathtaking guitar instrumentals under his own name
- “It was a little hard bouncing between classes and playing gigs like Coachella. Now I’m out of school, I can devote all my time to being a musician”: Is Brandon ‘Taz’ Niederauer guitar’s next superstar?
- December 8
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- “It’s like getting a pre-washed pair of jeans: they’re broken in so they’re comfortable right out of the store”: The making of the American Professional Classic series – the brand-new “lived-in” (but not relic’d) US Fender line
- “I discovered African blackwood probably around 20 years ago. The first guitar was paired with a cedar top and the volume blew me away”: How a $10k acoustic build put the loud into Lowden – with exotic tonewoods and faultless construction
- “I got bored with Miles Davis. He was like, ‘Robben, play that just like the record.’ And I didn’t join Miles Davis to do that”: Robben Ford explains his dalliance with Davis, Joni Mitchell’s fuzz tips – and how Jeff Beck got him back on the Strat
- December 7
- December 6
- December 5
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- “When I heard his stuff I was like, ‘This guy’s got the pipes.’ I watched his live stuff and I thought, ‘He’s got it, man!’” Joe Perry on Aerosmith’s surprise Yungblud collab and paying tribute to late Bad Company legend Mick Ralphs
- “You can get some very mournful sounds out of it as well as in‑your-face. It’s a real old battle-axe”: Gary Moore’s 1963 Telecaster is modded and thrashed to death – and it’s got a tone pot that behaves like a wah
- “I never heard from John. He sold the guitar once he got out of rehab. And that was that – I never saw it again”: The incredible story of the Les Paul that Dave Navarro bought for his Guns N’ Roses audition – and ended up giving to John Frusciante
- December 4
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- “I didn’t want to go down the route of Fenders or Gibsons – I wanted something that sounds and looks different”: She’s Brian May and Johnny Marr’s new favorite guitarist, but The Last Dinner Party’s Emily Roberts still has imposter syndrome
- “Ironically, the quest for a natural sound increasingly meant filling a guitar with wires, batteries and circuit boards”: The challenge of amplifying our acoustics has been one of guitar’s great challenges over the decades – are we nearly there yet?
- “I don’t know if Jaco was a Van Halen fan. We were both more intent on getting drunk than anything else”: When Michael Anthony met the self-proclaimed “greatest bass player in the world”, Jaco Pastorius
- “My playing has always sucked, but it sells because I keep it simple”: Steve Cropper was one of guitar’s most modest yet influential figures. In one of his final interviews, he looked back at making Booker T & the MG’s classics and working with Jeff Beck
- December 3
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- “I’m known for these real dumb rock ’n’ roll solos... We don’t think of ourselves as super-pickers”: Primitive solos, Luchador masks, SpongeBob SquarePants? Meet Los Straitjackets, guitar’s most out-there instrumentalists
- “Noel goes, ‘What guitars do you want to borrow?’ I was like, ‘Well, I’ve played that one and it’s incredible. I was going to buy one, but it was about seven grand!’” The story behind Oasis’ new signature guitars
- “Ace was the reason... His image made me go, ‘This is what I want to do with the rest of my life’”: John 5 on his final conversations with Ace Frehley, working on Peter Criss’ new record, and the signature guitar so good he’s written a song about it
- December 2
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- “I’d like to get a Flying V. I saw James Hetfield of Metallica playing one live, and I thought, ‘He’s got such a great guitar sound’”: Kim Deal on finally making her solo debut, working with Steve Albini and why she hates bright guitar tones
- “Bob Dylan wrote some notes on a napkin and said, ‘Give this to McGuinn. He’ll know what to do with it.’ It was like the Holy Grail”: Roger McGuinn on the making of The Byrds’ countercultural classic
- “My mom said, ‘What are you doing? Your kind of music has gotten popular. Why are you changing it?’ I thought it was a good idea – just like Mrs. Robinson was a bad idea”: The Lemonheads’ Evan Dando on the art of cover versions
- December 1
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- “Some might be thankful they only made one because Gibson didn’t waste any more wood”: Meet the obscure ’60s Gibsons that prove double-necks were a thing before Stairway to Heaven
- “He said, ‘Have you heard Metallica’s version of Whiskey in the Jar?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘What planet are you living on?’” Thin Lizzy’s Eric Bell on reinventing an old Irish standard as a rock track and performing it with the “cartoon” Metallica
