Features archive
May 2025
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54 articles
- May 22
- May 21
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- “Only Happy When It Rains has a solo and lot of that is backward guitar. We had to figure out how to play it – and flipped the two-inch tape reels over. I struggle playing that every night!” Garbage’s Duke Erikson and Steve Marker don't like to look back
- “You’ve gotta be able to learn the songs by ear – especially with Cradle of Filth. The tabs online are terrible”: Cradle Of Filth’s Donny Burbage and Marek ‘Ashok’ Šmerda on their theatrical metal roles – and what modern players miss about Marshalls
- “Did l know she was a future legend? Not at the time. I didn’t know how talented she was. Obviously, we all found out”: 40 years ago, session ace Paul Jackson Jr. turned up to record with a then unknown singer – her name was Whitney Houston
- May 20
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- “The volume was painful. The loudness came from Stevie, who had a Frankenstein wall of amps”: Marked by substance abuse, new members, and studio snags – Stevie Ray Vaughan's Soul to Soul was a classic that signaled trouble to come
- “CBS ran an ad that said, ‘6 million people have heard the sound of his guitar. Let us introduce you to him…’ That made a huge rift”: Barry Goudreau was there from the beginning of Boston – but has regrets about how things ended with Tom Scholz
- May 19
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- “People were saying, ‘You’re not gonna make it.’ We just kept going. It took us six years”: The Smithereens’ Jim Babjak on how they went from broke to touring with Tom Petty – and became Kurt Cobain’s tonal reference for Nevermind
- “Muddy Waters told my dad, ‘Jimmie, when I’m gone, teach everybody how to play like that.’ He liked the way he played slide”: He's the son of Jimmie Vaughan and the nephew of SRV, now he’s carrying the weight of his family playing legacy
- “Those were the cocaine ’80s. They devoted a whole day to auditioning snare drum samples – just to double-up the actual snare”: Nancy Wilson knew Heart had to adapt to survive the excesses of the 1980s – but she didn’t expect their greatest success
- May 18
- May 17
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- “Keep your mind on the music. I never thought of myself as a ‘woman’ musician at all, but a guitarist and then a bass player”: Studio bass icon Carol Kaye on why it is not about who you are, but how and what you play that defines you as a musician
- Buddy Guy said he would take the blues “into the future,” and he was a guitar brother-in-arms of Mike Bloomfield. An unsung blues great talks influences, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and crossing over into jazz
- May 16
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- “Johnny will sometimes come out with something and we’ll laugh at the bludgeoning nature of it”: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs on happy accidents with broken pedals, collabs with hip-hop royalty, and the riff that’s so heavy they can’t play it live
- “I like doing weird things like playing my phone through my pickups, and then looping that while playing over the top”: How Bonnie Trash’s Emmalia Bortolon-Vettor is reinventing guitar sounds with a $1 ring slide, a looper and her imagination
- “The first thing you need to do is listen to what the other instrumentalist is playing and see if what you’re doing can enhance that”: Cory Wong on the secrets of collaboration and how to stack and blend guitar parts that complement the song
- May 15
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- “He was opening for Bobby Darin and the audience were going, ‘We want Duane! We want Duane!’ Poor Bobby was backstage, almost in tears. From there on, Duane finished the show”: Albert Lee, Joe Bonamassa and Vince Gill on the life and legacy of Duane Eddy
- “I had very few reference points – no one saying, ‘Try this.’ I just played through a bass amp then added a second amp”: Meet the Meffs, the Britpunk duo outnumbered by their amps
- “People forget that in the ’80s, the Fender Strat was like having an old car and someone saying, ‘Why are you driving that piece of crap?’” Yngwie Malmsteen explains how he broke the mold for rock guitar – and brought the Strat in from the cold
- May 14
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- “I was really fortunate that I got to work with Kurt. He had a real ear for a hook – playing bass with him was super-easy”: Krist Novoselic achieved harmony through Kurt Cobain’s chaos – and was the making of this Nirvana classic
- “We were getting comfortable being back together – that was part of the reason we went out on the road without a record deal. Another reason was that we couldn’t get a record deal...” Why Aerosmith’s ’80s misfire, Done With Mirrors, was the making of them
- “To be in this band, you’ve got to be able to play solos and straight-ahead blues, and be something of a bass player, too, to cover the low end guitar-wise. It’s hard to find someone who can do all that”: The resurrection of GA-20
- “We met Greg Sutton, who played for Bob Dylan. He said, ‘Let’s get Mick Taylor out.’ So we paid Mick, got some blow and wrote a few songs...” Anthony Krizan on what it took to perform Hendrix with Noel Redding – and best Alex Skolnick in an audition
- May 13
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- “Distortion, distortion, gain and more gain were my digs before I joined the Smashing Pumpkins. But they’ve introduced me to a whole new world of pedals”: Kiki Wong on her life-changing audition, and what she's learned from Billy Corgan and James Iha
- Their job titles are ‘Wrangling Hellcat’ and ‘Waste Management’ – meet the multi-talented minds behind Jack White’s fast-rising pedal brand, Third Man Hardware
- “We’re an African band who make hard rock. Before Songhoy Blues, you’d never hear anyone do this. It’s like a little Rolling Stones from Mali”: Songhoy Blues’ Garba Touré created his own crossover guitar style – now he’s changing it up again
- “My friend found me a replica of John Frusciante’s Strat for €28,000. Spending that kind of money is ridiculous. It doesn't do anything for me”: Richard Z. Kruspe on why guitars are like kisses, reverse kill-switches – and the riff that launched Rammstein
- May 12
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- “I gave the Nocaster to Stevie. I'd catch him playing it. Years later someone paid a million dollars or something for it”: Jimmie Vaughan on his three favorite guitars – and the story of the megabucks Fender he gave to his brother
- “How the gain sags and blooms is going to influence how you perform. When you track DI and change the tone, you lose the essence of the performance”: Connor Kaminski and Keyan on the secrets behind one of the year’s hottest guitar collaborations
- May 11
- May 10
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- “I will use mattresses for isolation and try not to bother the neighbors too much… I was just following the songs to see what happens”: How Jonathan Hultén channeled Nick Drake’s Pink Moon and recorded an entire album in his walk-in closet
- “Paul Simon called Stax and said, ‘Who are those Jamaican musicians?’ They told him, ‘Those are some white boys from Alabama!’” David Hood on being starstruck by Aretha Franklin, what Otis Redding taught him, and tales from golden age of Muscle Shoals
- May 9
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- “Even today, there’s little nuances that Eddie did, and I can get close, but it’s about trying to capture the feeling”: Why George Clinton’s P-Funk All Stars never shined so bright as when ‘Kidd Funkadelic’ and Eddie Hazel joined forces on Maggot Brain
- “A personal crowning moment for me was having Lemmy ask me to play on a Motörhead record!” Alice in Chains’ Mike Inez on why Cliff Burton ruled, Paul McCartney's influence – and what John Entwistle told him (that he already knew)
- “Listening to Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, Paul Gilbert… all kinds of crazy-fast players. And you tried to keep up with them”: Andy La Rocque on why he is no longer a 120mph soloist – and what we can expect from the long-awaited King Diamond album
- “This was specifically wanting it to have the sort of grandiosity of a Comfortably Numb-type guitar solo but without really referencing that vocabulary”: Randy McStine reveals all behind his cosmically epic solo on Steven Wilson's The Overview
- May 8
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- “I play the double-neck and trade solos with Joe Walsh on Hotel California. It’s a bit terrifying, but it’s the greatest thing ever”: Chris Holt landed The Eagles without an audition – but his gigs with Mike Campbell and Don Henley might have helped
- “John Lennon hated doubling his vocals. The chief engineer at Abbey Road came up with a way to add a delay and put it onto another track. That’s what that pedal does”: The Cars’ Elliot Easton on the secrets of his pedalboard – and the wizard who made it
- May 7
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- “I wasn't familiar with PRS. If anything, I was like, ‘The birds are too flashy!’ But the moment I played one I was like, ‘Whoa, I can play faster now!’”: Meet Mei Semones, the Berklee graduate reimagining New Orleans vibes with an intricate indie flair
- “A lot of modern guitarists want to get all the notes right but if you listen to Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page, it’s beautiful playing, with loads of mistakes”: Peter Brewis on Field Music’s ‘collage rock’ – and why he owes his career to Robert Zemeckis
- “Iggy left the Stooges and had a career – ditto Lou Reed with the Velvet Underground or Morrissey with the Smiths. Where’s Biafra’s solo career?”: East Bay Ray explains why the Dead Kennedys’ chemistry hit its peak on Fresh Fruit... and why it fell apart
- May 6
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- Faced with the loss of their founding guitarist and creative leader, Night Flight Orchestra are persevering with the big melodies and sonic largesse of rock's golden era
- “There’s a sleek look to bands like Loathe, Spiritbox or Knocked Loose. Spiky shapes are engrained in our values – we want to wear our influences on our sleeves”: Employed To Serve are re-embracing metal guitars – but dropping amps
- “Tokai’s LS series are probably the best-built Les Paul-style guitars that have ever come through my shop”: How the Japanese guitar market came of age with ’80s Fender and Gibson clones – some that would rival the originals
- May 5
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- Played by everyone from Magic Sam and Otis Rush to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robbie Robertson, Noel Gallagher, and Robben Ford, the Riviera remains Epiphone's semi-hollow superstar
- “Smashing Pumpkins taught me that music doesn’t have to fit neatly into a box… it’s not as easy as pie. It’s pie with a side of metal!” Billy Corgan asked Jenna Fournier to go back to bass, and she says the timing is perfect
- “I always used it with Whitesnake, which was perfect because it sounded like John Sykes' Les Paul”: Doug Aldrich on how Randy Rhoads’ inspiration helped him find a “killer” Les Paul – that was owned by the man who co-wrote Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven
- May 4
- May 3
- May 2
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- “I remember there was a video of Gary Moore and he played Red House on this Fiesta Red Strat, and I thought it was just the most incredible thing”: Is Toby Lee Britain’s next blues-rock superstar?
- “I love the guitar, but essentially it’s an instrument that belongs to the 20th century in many ways. So it’s a question of, what can you do to try to reinvent that vocabulary to make it seem relevant?”: Steven Wilson on the making of a cosmic prog epic
- “I had big shoes to fill, but I knew I had a lot to offer on my own. I think Billy Corgan saw that in me”: From Veruca Salt to the Smashing Pumpkins and Garbage, Nicole Fiorentino has become alt-rock's go-to bassist
- May 1
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- “We both wanted to shred. Joey wanted to be as crazy on guitar as he was on drums”: Wednesday 13 on getting his guitar confidence back – with help from some heroes – and the Murderdolls future that never happened
- “I still use the Strat and Big Muff sound here and there for overdubs, but when I watched Eddie Van Halen play 3 feet in front of me, I learned that it’s about the hands”: Billy Corgan on critics, tone secrets, and how he keeps Smashing Pumpkins fresh
- “I subsequently became the world’s most famous guitarist with The Police. I wanted to play with somebody else to see how I’d do, like an experiment on myself”: At the height of his ’80s success, Andy Summers needed a challenge – he found Robert Fripp
