“Judas!”

When Bob Dylan “went electric” – fully abandoning his image as a Woody Guthrie acolyte authoring stately acoustic protest songs – a lot of fans didn't want to join the ride. Case in point, the above comparison to history's most famous backstabber, shouted at Dylan during a now-legendary gig at the Manchester Free Trade Hall on May 17, 1966.

Dylan was nothing if not defiant, though – indeed it was the first artistic 180 in a career that would be marked by a million of them. That evening, he turned to his backing band and ordered them to play their next tune after the interruption, the epochal Like a Rolling Stone, “fucking loud”.

The Hawks, later to be known as simply The Band, were the group in question. Their guitarist was one Robbie Robertson, who had the formidable task of serving as Dylan's electric six-string foil in this tumultuous new era.

Back then, full-on, raucous rock shows staged at many-thousands-of-people scale were a fairly new phenomenon. We take enormous PA systems blasting rock, dance music, hip-hop or what have you for granted nowadays – you can hear them anywhere and everywhere – but in the mid-’60s, your average person probably had little reference point for anything as loud as the amplification needed to reach the crowds Dylan drew on his first electric tour, in 1965 and 1966.

As such, some have argued that the sheer volume of his electric shows of that formative period played into their mixed reception.

Discussing his experiences backing Dylan on that historic tour in a 1998 Guitar World interview, Robbie Robertson said, “We weren't that loud, but when we were playing with Bob, and they amplified everything, it seemed like it was extremely loud.

“Bob was very excited about having this extreme power behind him. I mean, here's this guy with a harmonica and a little acoustic guitar, and all of a sudden there's this locomotion.”

That said, Dylan hadn't consistently performed electric band shows since his teens – and those gigs certainly weren’t to cheering (and jeering) masses.

“Back then, he didn't know anything about electric guitar, and a lot of guys who get their first electric guitars plug in and just go, waaah-wahhh! It can be really annoying,” Robertson told GW in 1998.

“He didn't know how to put his hand over the back of the strings, and he didn't know how to finesse the instrument. It was like, ‘Don't worry Bob, I'll adjust the amp for you, it sounds great, don't worry.’ In time he started to get some things going, and started to understand the electric guitar better. Now, he's much better than he was.”

The tour was controversial and personally exhausting enough that it – coupled with the effects of a serious motorcycle accident just months after its conclusion – put Dylan off touring for almost a decade. The next time he did hit the road, though, it was once again with the Band, now hugely successful in their own right, in tow.

Their 1974 tour was an enormous success – something both critics and performers, ironically, chalked partially up to the boos and hecklers of 1965 and 1966.

Levon Helm, the Band's drummer, said to that effect, “I sometimes had a funny sensation: that [during the tour] we were acting out the roles of Bob Dylan and the Band and the audience was paying to see what they'd missed many years before.”

All Along the Watchtower might now be synonymous with Jimi Hendrix. However, the track was originally written and released by Bob Dylan on his eighth record, John Wesley Harding (1967). The Hendrix version, released within a year of Dylan's as a single from his final studio album, Electric Ladyland, breathed new life into the song.

It signaled a new sophistication in the virtuoso's studio work, one that would later appear fully realized on the posthumous release First Rays of the New Rising Sun. Yet, the recording sessions for Watchtower – held between Olympic Studios in London and the Record Plant in New York in 1968 – were marked by frustration and studio mishaps. This heady combination would ultimately contribute to the song's brilliance.

“After a long, frustrating day, Mitch [Mitchell, drummer] and Jimi get to about take 18 or 19, and then things start to change,” recalled Hendrix producer Eddie Kramer in a 2011 Guitar World interview.

“Mitch has finally got the intro and then… crash! On the tape, you hear this other being in the studio, and it's Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones. He stumbles in, and he's out of his frickin' mind!”

During that time, Jones was already deep into his drug and alcohol addiction. As a result, he had become increasingly unreliable in the studio, even with the Stones.

“Jimi was trying to get work done,” continues Kramer, “but he didn't want to just throw Brian out, because they were really close friends. Unfortunately, on take 20, Jones started playing the piano, and all you heard was clang clang clang clang – total rubbish, out of time, wrong chords. Take 21 was even worse.”

Eventually, Jones managed to get into the control room, and as soon as he found himself in front of the mixing console, passed out. “So Jimi and Mitch resumed, and we finally got the magic take.”

However, another issue soon cropped up. Bassist Noel Redding was nowhere to be found.

“Jimi grabbed Noel's bass, which is strung for a right-handed person, and played it upside down and nailed the part. It's that beautiful looping, swooping bass tone you hear that is just a central part of the sound on the final track.”

There was a long way to go before the track was finished. Hendrix, ever the perfectionist, was also working on the acoustic guitar parts and invited Dave Mason from Traffic to play a 12-string.

“For some reason, Dave couldn't get it together,” the producer recalls. “Eventually, he got it, but there was a lot of tension getting to where the two of them were locked in.”

The four-track recording was initially transferred to a “new and innovative, but rather noisy” twelve-track one-inch tape. While Hendrix added a whole bunch of percussion and guitars to it, both Kramer and the guitarist hated the noisy machine.

At this point, Hendrix had become increasingly dissatisfied and scrapped the work they had done on the twelve-track. Instead, the two invested in what was then one of the newest sixteen-track machines – which proved to be a game-changer.

“Introducing a sixteen-track machine into the Electric Ladyland sessions was a big deal,” noted Kramer. “It kicked open the doors, technologically speaking, and gave us the tremendous flexibility of being able to manipulate individual sounds.”

Giving stupid answers to smart questions, it’s our weekly snarky pseudo-interview… Fret Buzz. This week: Bob Dylan’s guitarists keep going on garden leave. But what makes The Bard a tough gig, and who are rock’s most notorious paymasters?

Dylan’s guitarists are walking out? You just can’t get the staff…

They’re dropping like flies. Last month, long-term sideman Doug Lancio quit the road band, followed a fortnight later by Bob Britt. We wouldn’t like to speculate, but Britt’s farewell post – “Sayanora Bobby” – seemed flippant (at best) or a man bursting with bottled-up venom (at worst).

Yes, I’ve always gone with ‘thanks for the opportunity’. What’s Britt going to do now?

Gardening, apparently. He wrapped up his next post by announcing he was off to weed his flowerbeds.

He’d rather do that than play with Dylan? Next you’ll be telling me Stevie Van Zandt has quit the E Street Band to creosote his fence.

Well, tell that to the 35-plus guitarists who’ve blown through Dylan’s lineup [indeed, Dylan debuted his third new guitarist in three weeks, Jad Tariq just this past weekend – Ed]. The guy gets through sidemen like kamikaze pilots.

But Dylan is the era-defining poet of the rock ’n’ roll epoque. A seminal visionary who…

Yeah, yeah, we know all that. But being his guitarist isn’t necessarily easy.

Isn’t it just G, A minor, C, and A?

In theory (although what you just said is slightly reductive). But Dylan’s freewheeling onstage tendencies can apparently feel like one long hazing ritual.

“I was great friends with the Heartbreakers,” Dave Stewart of Eurythmics once recalled. “They were on tour with him and said he’d suddenly play the song in a different key, or he decides to miss out a verse.”

Heh. What a jokerman. I bet he’s a riot in the studio?

Not according to Robben Ford, who recalled one ’90s session where Dylan arrived in the studio only to slump wordlessly on a stool – “[he] doesn’t say anything, head down, nothing”. Then there’s the relentless death march of his touring schedule.

Don’t people nickname it the Never Ending Tour?

Yep. By the time you finally get home, the babies whose births you missed are arthritic old gargoyles hobbling around looking for their dentures.

Is Dylan the toughest rock icon to work for?

Not by any means. Rock ’n’ roll is full of borderline despots. Take James Brown, who reportedly fined his players for missing a note, or even just wearing the wrong shoes.

Wow. So by the end of Sex Machine, you could owe him $50? Maybe I would be better off as a dog-walker.

That’s nothing. Prince demanded a ‘purple’ lifestyle of his band members.

What does that even mean?

Search me. Lots of beets on the backstage rider?

Maybe he should have just hired Barney the dinosaur.

Then there’s Frank Zappa, whose standards were so absurdly high that you literally had to be Steve Vai.

And what about that poor sessioner that Axl Rose humiliated by making him wear a KFC bucket every night…

No, that was his choice. I mean, the guy’s called Buckethead. He’s kind of painted himself into a corner on that one.

So how do I apply for the Dylan gig?

Just hang around the stage door for the next sessioner to storm out. We’ll have your gardening gloves waiting for you…

Bob Dylan has hired yet another new guitarist as the folk great's ever-rotating cast of guest players gets its third name in as many weeks.

Jad Tariq follows Joel Patterson and Julian Lage into Dylan's band, which has been operating with a flexible assortment of guitarists over the past month.

Lage was a surprise addition to the band in late June, replacing the outgoing Doug Lancio. And, after Bob Britt abruptly left the tour, Joel Patterson was also hired.

But Lage has been in and out of the tour as he juggles other commitments, seemingly leading to Tariq's appointment.

Tariq debuted at the PNC Pavilion in Cincinnati on July 10, forming a tandem with Patterson. Given Lage’s absences, which have now been attributed to his busy solo schedule, it’s unclear if Tariq is deputizing in the short term or will become a more permanent appointment.

Often found playing Gibson hollow-body guitars, the Memphis-based guitarist blends swinging jazz with traditional 1950s-era rhythm and blues.

With Lage set for a string of North American shows in October, when Dylan is in Europe, Tariq may become a recurring figure in Dylan’s ever-changing live band throughout the rest of 2026.

Dylan is set to play Philadelphia’s Leader Bank Pavilion on July 14, before hitting Gilford, New Hampshire, two days later, and the Hartford HealthCare Ampitheater in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on July 19. Who will join him on those dates remains to be seen.

The folk musician, who famously stunned the music world when he went electric with Mike Bloomfield at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, has never been afraid to keep his fans on their toes. His latest guitarist shake-up is just another example of that.

Bob Dylan has had some serious lineup changes over the past few weeks.

After Julian Lage sneakily replaced Doug Lancio at Dylan’s Santa Barbara show on June 17, and second guitarist Bob Britt quit with a “Sayonara Bobby” post on social media, Dylan fans were left wondering who would join his rotating roster of guitarists.

Turns out, it wasn’t too long before we got the answer, as Chicago-based blues guitarist Joel Paterson made his debut with Dylan’s band on June 29 at the Moody Amphitheater in Austin.

Up until last week, Paterson held a weekly residency at Chicago’s historic Green Mill Cocktail Lounge with his jazz quartet. Just two days ago, he went from playing to a crowd of 150 to performing for 5,000 alongside the Bard.

While it’s unclear how acquainted Paterson was with Dylan’s complete repertoire before he landed the gig, he did have a previous relationship with at least some of his songs, having played pedal steel on If Not for You, To Ramona, When to See the Gypsy, and Tell Me That It Isn’t True on alt-country and indie folk band The Cactus Blossoms’ Bob Dylan Songs Vol. 1 EP.

Paterson has been a mainstay of the Chicago roots music scene for over two decades.

Aside from his new gig with Dylan, his current projects include The Joel Paterson Quartet and The Western Elstons. He’s also an accomplished studio musician, having played with the likes of JD McPherson, Kelly Hogan, Pokey LaFarge, and Deke Dickerson.

As for Britt, following his public post announcing his departure, his wife, Etta Britt, took to Facebook to clear the air that he didn’t leave because of Julian Lage.

“Julian has gone back to his tour. He enjoyed playing with him and said he’s a great guy.”

Lage’s representatives confirmed with Rolling Stone that the jazz virtuoso will continue playing with Dylan this year – at least when his schedule permits. Comparing the pair's gig calendars for the coming weeks, it looks like Lage may make every show except the July 4 date.

Guitar World reached out to Joel Paterson with a request for comment about his new gig.

Bob Dylan is potentially on the hunt for yet another new guitarist after Bob Britt abruptly quit his band over the weekend.

Britt, who joined Dylan’s band back in 2019, apparently announced his surprise departure from the group in a Facebook post (as per Rolling Stone), which included an image of a plane flight and the caption, ‘Sayanora Bobby.’ And, in response to a commenter on the post asking for context, Britt replied, “I quit.”

In a later statement, Britt shed a bit more light on his sudden exit, stressing he was not fired but had decided to leave of his own accord.

“Apparently there are quite a few threads out there with people speculating about my departure from the Bob tour. I’d like to clear it up,” he writes. “I was not fired but left of my own accord for reasons I would prefer to keep private. I will miss my band mates and crew.

“I am looking forward to getting back to doing sessions (give me a call) and also finishing up Etta’s gospel record. As far as any touring goes, we will see what the future holds. Meanwhile, I have some flower beds to weed.”

Britt is the latest Bob Dylan guitarist to cut the band. His departure comes two weeks after the folk legend’s other longtime guitarist, Doug Lancio, was suddenly replaced by jazz virtuoso Julian Lage in one of the most unexpected and surprising lineup changes in quite some time.

Having already had the task of replacing Lancio, Dylan now seems to be in need of another new guitarist.

It remains to be seen what Dylan has planned going forward. It’s unclear just how permanent Lage’s appointment will be, given the solo commitments he has of his own.

According to Cult Following, session guitarist Joel Patterson was drafted for Dylan's show last night (June 29) to fill in for Britt, but, like the situation with Lage, it remains to be seen whether his appointment will be permanent.

Julian Lage declined to comment to Guitar World on his position in the band.

Bob Dylan is proving to still be full of surprises, with jazz maestro Julian Lage an unexpected addition to his current touring band. But it’s unclear how long he’ll stick around for.

The hard-working and highly esteemed guitarist has entered the fray under the radar, stepping out on stage with Dylan and company without fanfare, a press release, or an excited announcement about what is a very exciting meeting of worlds.

Lage has replaced Doug Lancio, who first joined the band for 2021’s Rough and Rowdy Ways tour, but no one seems to know why, and for how long.

The Los Angeles Times, which was in attendance at his Santa Barbara Bowl show last week, is even reporting that a spokesperson for the Like a Rolling Stone songwriter was unable to confirm if this will be a fleeting few appearances for Lage or the start of a more substantial relationship.

The move is typical Dylan; a man who has spent his 85 years on the planet dancing to his own beat is at it again.

Of course, Lage may just be filling in for Lancio – the fact he’s six shows deep into the tour doesn’t necessarily point to him being a more permanent addition. But either way, he’s proved a smart pick, with the LA Times in particular highlighting his “tender and spooky” playing on Tryin’ to Get to Heaven, “where every 30 seconds or so the chords would go in some direction I could never have predicted,” Mikael Wood writes.

Interestingly, Lage never mentioned his then-impending work with His Bobness when Guitar World interviewed him just a few weeks back. Lage’s socials have shed no light on the matter, either.

A further snoop around online for more information about the Lage-Dylan tie-in suggests his arrival has prompted a change to the set list.

Instagram page Liveformusic says that “the setlists have taken a more stable and predictable format,” blending Rough and Rowdy Ways cuts with classics like All Along the Watchtower, When I Paint My Masterpiece, and Watching the River Flow. There’s also been a handful of covers chucked into their set, including songs by blues greats Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Bobby “Blue” Bland.

Despite working with everyone from Nels Cline to Yoko Ono and Virgil Donati, Lage has yet to reach household name status. He’s still very much a guitarist’s guitarist, and in those circles his reputation more than precedes him; this once child prodigy has grown into a very skilled, stylish, and accomplished player.

As one Instagram commenter says, it’s perhaps a little strange to see this guitar phenomenon reduced, in a way, to being a sub to a star, but who would rightly turn Dylan down? It’s a collaboration we should probably soak up while it lasts.

In related news, Lage and Al Di Meola sat down for a revealing roundtable chat with Guitar World, where the chemistry was flying, and no topic was off the table.

Two guitars from the collections of Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan are up for sale and are set to fetch a combined $1.55 million.

A classical guitar from the King of Rock n’ Roll, and a unique Fender Stratocaster from folk icon, are both up for grabs via New Orleans antique experts M.S. Rau. They have $900,000 and $650,000 price tags hanging off their headstocks, respectively.

Dylan’s custom Strat, as revealed by Robb Report, was crafted in 1993 at the then-new Fender Custom Shop by master builder J.W. Black, who also worked closely with Jeff Beck.

It features a unique aluminum body engraved with an impressively intricate Art Nouveau-style design that extends across its fretboard, making it a little more Tim Henson than typical Dylan.

The guitar was one of four experimental builds showcased at NAMM 1993, while beneath the pickguard an inscription reads: “J. Black for Bob Dylan.”

Though Dylan started his career on an acoustic guitar, he controversially pivoted to electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, with a Strat as his weapon of choice.

The Telecaster played by his foil, Mike Bloomfield – which was dubbed the guitar that killed folk – went up for sale for $275,000 last year. The $900K price tag here puts the Tele to shame.

Elvis’ classical guitar, meanwhile, represents a more traditional instrument and is believed to have been his sidekick circa 1958, when he was stationed in Germany during mandatory military service.

It sports a natural finish with a smart black trim, and single-dot inlays at the fifth, seventh, ninth, and 12th frets.

Presley reportedly gifted the guitar to a close friend in Las Vegas in 1976 after an impromptu rendition of That’s All Right. He then signed the acoustic’s soundboard as one final parting gesture. Although a little worn now, that signature is still visible.

Between Germany and Las Vegas, the guitar reportedly remained by Elvis’ side for nearly 20 years as he became a global superstar in the 1960s and ‘70s.

The instrument is being sold with a certificate of authenticity issued by Graceland Records in 1995, as well as “unique images” of the late icon.

It comes after the King’s 1968 Comeback Special Hagstrom Viking II hit the auction block with a $1 million estimate in April.

“Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan are two of the most influential musicians in history, and these guitars are among the most important examples of music memorabilia I have ever encountered,” says M.S. Rau owner Bill Rau.

“To have a classical guitar owned, played, and signed by Elvis Presley alongside a limited-edition Stratocaster custom-built for Bob Dylan is nothing short of extraordinary, with comparable examples having approached and surpassed the million-dollar mark.”

Head over to M.S. Rau for more.

Jimi Hendrix spent his formative years, in the early ’60s, on the Chitlin’ Circuit (a network of clubs and venues that featured Black artists) working as a backing musician for a range of soul and blues stars – essentially serving his apprenticeship and honing his skills.

Unsurprisingly, once he’d decided he’d had enough of standing in the shadows, and started to front his own band, much of his repertoire comprised cover versions of the same blues and soul material that he’d cut his teeth on, with a handful of contemporary pop and rock classics thrown into the mix.

Here are 10 of his finest moments, where he took the raw material of an original, injected the spark that was his unique mojo, and recreated the songs in his own image – often almost as if they were written for him.

1. All Along The Watchtower (Electric Ladyland – 1968)

The ultimate mark of respect that any artist can receive for a cover version of a song is when the original artist adopts the new version for their own future performances, which is exactly what happened with Bob Dylan when he heard Hendrix’s reinvention of Watchtower.

As is frequently the case with acts covering Dylan’s songs, the original version often becomes, essentially, a songwriter’s demo (see pretty much every Byrds cover of a Dylan track).

Where Dylan’s original lumped along in a fairly pedestrian fashion, Hendrix took the bare bones and soared, to create a track that would feature high on the list of any compilation of Jimi’s greatest moments.

Dylan himself was generous in his acknowledgement of what Jimi brought to the piece, “He took some small songs of mine that nobody paid any attention to and brought them up into the outer limits of the stratosphere, turned them all into classics.” Not only is this the greatest cover of any Dylan song, but it is also, for many Hendrix fans, one of his absolute career highlights.

Jimi creates a unique atmosphere with layers of guitars, including subtle wah-wah embellishments, Wes Montgomery-like octave runs and deft slide work that all combined to provide a strange sense of otherworldliness that chimed perfectly with the song’s opening line, “There must be some way out of here…”

2. Hey Joe (Smash Hits – 1966)

Hey Joe has received countless different treatments across numerous cover versions, but again the Hendrix take provides the definitive reading of Billy Roberts’ lyrically dark tale of murder. Ignoring the temptation to increase the tempo, as in The Leaves’ hit version, Hendrix substitutes depth and power for their frantic garage band approach.

Jimi released the song as his debut single, scoring his first hit anywhere in the world, eventually reaching number six in the UK pop charts. As with all of Hendrix’s hit singles, the soloing is taut, economical and memorable, creating parts that are as essential to the song as the lyrics and melody. No doubt manager Chas Chandler was a key figure in maintaining the band’s strict focus in the studio.

Jimi was already covering this song, as well as several others on this list, when he was playing regular shows at the Café Wha in Greenwich Village. This was the first song that future manager, Chandler, saw Hendrix play in 1966; he’d gone to check him out following up on a recommendation from Linda Keith – Keith Richards’ girlfriend.

It was on the basis of that night’s show, that Chandler invited Hendrix to go back to the UK with him, with the intention that Chandler would – in the words of the old cliché – make him a star.

3. Wild Thing (Live At Monterey – 1967)

This song could have been written for Hendrix – there is certainly very little that is wild about The Troggs’ original version. Essentially a novelty song in its original incarnation, it hit the top of the US charts in 1966. As if to emphasize the absurdist aspects, the solo on the Troggs’ version, as performed on the obscure ocarina, practically sounds like a spoof on the title. Wild? Yeah, right.

What is undeniably wild though, is the sound of Hendrix’s guitar – at its most rampant as he powers through the simple three-chord intro, bringing an entire universe of subtext to the table.

Many of the ‘wild man of rock’ cliches spring from Jimi’s rendition of this song in the movie, Monterey Pop, with the guitar-burning finale.

This is not the best version, however. Jimi usually prefaced the introduction with some severe Strat whammy bar wrangling. The downside of such abuse though, is the calamitous effect it had on the guitar’s tuning.

Jimi would often try to remedy this as the song was in progress, but it’s clear that on the Monterey version, there are still some issues. Ironically, that slightly sour clash of intervals actually enhances the outside nature of Jimi’s take.

In fact, for one of the best filmed performances of this song, check the rendition from 1967, from the Blackpool Opera House in England, where the tuning problem doesn’t really impact on Jimi’s playing.

4. Killing Floor (Live At Monterey & BBC Sessions 1967)

Allegedly, after witnessing Hendrix tearing through his total reinvention of the Howlin’ Wolf original, in a guest spot with Cream in 1966, Eric Clapton was so taken aback with what Jimi did that he had to leave the building. Clapton has said that it made him reassess everything he’d been doing.

Chas Chandler recalled, “Clapton stood there and his hands dropped off the guitar. He lurched off the stage.” Clapton himself recalled the event, “Of course Jimi played it exactly like it ought to be played, and he totally blew me away.”

There were never any sour grapes on Clapton’s part though; they were good friends for the remaining years of Jimi’s life and Clapton actually cited the BBC version of Killing Floor as his favorite Hendrix song.

The blistering pace at which Jimi takes the song transforms it from the sedate – though undoubtedly menacing – pace of the original into a hypersonic adrenaline blast. The speed and dexterity with which Hendrix punctuates the rhythm parts truly conveys the impression that there are two separate guitarists playing.

As great as Hubert Sumlin’s work was on the original, Hendrix was always able to find a further, unimagined dimension in every song he covered.

5. Like A Rolling Stone (Live At Monterey – 1967)

Another Dylan interpretation, and another hangover from the Café Wha days. Bob’s original, recorded after he’d fully embraced the electric, rock focused approach that had divided his fans so sharply, remains one of Dylan’s most loved songs.

With this one, Hendrix didn’t tear up the blueprint and rewrite the rules, but what he did do was to bring a cool, laconic vibe that wasn’t present in Dylan’s own version. Where Dylan sounds bitter – few can sneer a lyric the way Bob could – Hendrix conveys a sense of ‘it’s your loss, not mine.’ There is a wry, humorous air to Jimi’s reading of the lyrics and of course, his playing is, as always nonpareil.

The Monterey version includes the iconic moments where he says, “Let me play my guitar” in the intro, and also the casual way he relays to the band that he missed a verse out towards the end.

Fans are evenly divided between this and the Winterland version, recorded in 1968, on which is best. The argument for Jimi as the ultimate interpreter of Dylan – posited via Watchtower – is further strengthened with Rolling Stone, and a couple of more entries further down this list.

6. Rock Me Baby (Live At Monterey – 1967)

Jimi had so totally reinvented B.B. King’s original that it made perfect sense to rename it and make it his own song, morphing into Lover Man. Of course, B.B. never rocked out to any significant degree, even in his earliest ’50s recordings, so there isn’t a comparable moment from King’s own mighty back catalog.

B.B.’s own opinion on the Hendrix version isn’t known, though he did relate, in a number of interviews, that he’d encountered Hendrix in Jimi’s early days – when Hendrix was playing with Little Richard and the Isley Brothers – finding him to be quiet and friendly, and they did encounter each other towards the end of Hendrix’s life. King often spoke of his admiration for Jimi’s playing.

Hendrix had quite a few attempts at recording Lover Man but was never happy enough with any of them to sanction their release. Jimi applies the same formula to Rock Me Baby as he did to Killing Floor, where all that really remained of the original song was the lyrics.

Again, Jimi blends in rhythm and lead parts to create the illusion of two guitarists playing at once, and also employs the Delta blues trick of singing and playing the same melody lines at times – something he did to great effect on his own track, Voodoo Chile.

7. Star Spangled Banner (Live At Woodstock – 1969)

As always, Hendrix finds a way to keep the essential core of the original melody whilst simultaneously taking it to places that no other artist could have even imagined.

Often interpreted as an anti-Vietnam protest – though Hendrix never said that himself – it sounds more like the soundtrack to Armageddon. The full blown aural assault assails the senses – indeed pushing the listener into sensory overload, as Hendrix replicates the essence of the Sturm und Drang of bloody, violent warfare.

There is a common misconception that this was a one-off protest by Hendrix, but he had been playing the piece for quite some time and had also adopted a similar approach with the UK national anthem, and allegedly, though no aural evidence exists, the French national anthem.

The concept of ‘killer guitarist plays solo national anthem’ has become a fairly common occurrence at major sporting events, but no other artist has ever dared take it to the places Jimi did, to deliver a pioneering exploration of the outer limits of what a man, possessed of unrivalled skills and imagination can wring out of an electric guitar set to stun.

8. Drifters Escape (Loose Ends 1973)

The third dip into the Dylan songbook for this list, covering a track that the Bobster never actually played live until 1992. It was originally on Dylan’s John Wesley Harding album, which was released to mixed reviews back in 1967.

Hendrix recorded his version three years later, though it remained unreleased in his lifetime, initially turning up on one of the many posthumous cash-in compilations – Loose Ends, before later appearing on the far superior roundup of outtakes and works in progress that was South Saturn Delta.

The song is essentially based around the I chord, with brief forays to the IV, creating an endlessly repeating loop that didn’t offer a wealth of harmonic potential, something that clearly didn’t faze Hendrix, who sprays superlative fills and rhythmic motifs across the verses and choruses, and unleashes yet another Hendrix masterclass on the solo.

Although Jimi didn’t give the song the radical reworking that he applied to other cover versions, he did manage to repurpose it for an electric rock audience from its acoustic guitar/harmonica folk-based source.

9. Come On Part 2 (Electric Ladyland – 1968)

Earl King’s original single version was split across both sides of the 7” and named Parts I and II accordingly. Hendrix’s cover combines both sides of the single, although he calls it Part I. (When Stevie Ray Vaughan covered it, he called his version Part III, in a clear nod to King and Jimi).

Hendrix brings a stomping upbeat soul feel which he welds onto an otherwise faithful recreation of the original, until the solo, where Hendrix once again pours his own special sauce across three choruses of fluid, dynamic incendiary fretboard fire in the middle of the song before returning to the main theme, and again for a couple of choruses at the end.

Jimi had been covering the song for many years since its release in 1960, performing it in some of his first bands; much like Freddie King’s Hideaway it’s the kind of blues rite of passage standard that guitarists saw as a benchmark of their abilities, and one of the staples of the blues guitarists’ canon in the early ’60s.

Earl King re-recorded the song in 1977, taking some inspiration from the Hendrix interpretation to complete the full circle of song evolution. According to Experience bass player, Noel Redding, it was the last song recorded for Electric Ladyland, “We just played it live and they took it.”

10. Johnny B. Goode (Hendrix In The West – 1970)

One of the most covered songs of all time, and a staple in the repertoire of every bar band since Chuck Berry released it, way back in 1958. Johnny B. Goode doesn’t appear on this list due to Jimi’s reinvention of the song, but rather, his reinvention of the typical approach to the solo.

The average guitarist is usually content to blast out a stream of archetypal Chuck Berry licks, mixing and matching Berry’s blueprint in a predictable way. Hendrix eschews the obvious, of course, and brings his signature supernatural take, whilst still maintaining contact with the essence of the song, though there are moments when it almost feels like he’s about to leave the whole thing behind.

Each of the six choruses of solos kicks off with the Berry motif before launching into outer space for a series of crazily bent notes that reach pitches that shouldn’t exist. The tone that Jimi creates with the mix of Strat, Marshall and unfeasible overbending, excoriates all subsequent cover versions, rendering them redundant.

11. Daytripper (BBC Sessions – 1967)

Although Hendrix brings plenty to the table with this cover, it doesn’t really fall under the “made it his own” umbrella and hence is added as an extra for consideration - a side dish to the feast that is the ten songs above.

One of many tracks that were uniquely cut for various BBC radio shows in the UK (all captured on the essential BBC Sessions collection), Jimi laid down this version a couple of years after The Beatles’ original hit the top five on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s interesting to compare the unrestrained, free-flowing vibe that Hendrix introduced, which takes the song to another level.

Jimi’s version is far more urgent, making the Fab Four’s original sound a little sedate by comparison – something that happened every time Hendrix covered a song. With the Beatles’ version, not much really happens in the middle break – of course, Hendrix grabs the opportunity to blaze through a rip roaring solo, overloaded with scorching guitar pyrotechnics.

Slight Return – a handful of contenders for further consideration

Although the tracks above are the cream of the crop, there are a handful of other noteworthy examples, including the BBC Sessions cover of yet another Dylan song, Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window, any of the attempts at Hound Dog – a song which Hendrix toyed with on a number of occasions, his mini version of Cream’s Sunshine of Your Love and another BBC Sessions cut showcasing Jimi’s spin on Muddy Waters’ Hoochie Coochie Man.

Slash might be best known for his solo and Guns N' Roses work, but there's no denying he's also the ultimate collaborator. From his work with Michael Jackson, to trading licks with Iggy Pop and even whipping up a solo on I’m Just Ken from the 2023 blockbuster Barbie, Slash has racked up his fair share of credits.

As such, it takes a lot for Slash to be starstruck. However, he couldn’t help but do “a double take” when he was invited by producer Don Was to feature on Bob Dylan’s 1990 release, Under the Red Sky, and walked into a session full of legends.

“The scene at the studio was a total trip,” Slash told Guitar World in 1990. “I walked in at about 2 p.m. and George Harrison and Kim Basinger were there hanging out – I did a double take on that one.”

Yet, he nearly missed Dylan himself. “Next, I noticed this little guy wearing leather gloves and a hooded surfer's sweater, which struck me as odd because it was warm out. Finally, I realized it was Dylan. I thought, ‘What's going on here?’”

Slash described Dylan as “pretty quiet” while “George was laying down some slide, and we started just getting drunk and stuff.” Slash was asked to play on a song with “a pretty silly title, Wiggle Wiggle.”.

“I just learned it on the spot,” he remembered. “It was such a simple [song], yet superb.”

Yet, Dylan had a very specific direction in mind which took even Slash by surprise.

“When I went to play the lead, Bob came up and asked me to play like ... [incredulously] Django Reinhardt! l couldn't figure out where he was coming from. I didn't hear that at all!” he recalled.

“So basically, I just laid down the part I thought should be there. Everybody seemed to be happy with it. It was just a funny day, but the song got done.”

The solo was eventually left on the cutting room floor as Dylan thought it sounded too much like Guns N' Roses.

However, in a more recent interview with Gibson, Slash said that he’s more than grateful for the experience, as, legends in one room aside, “at that time, I hadn't done a lot of session work and it was a great learning experience.”

And, speaking of Slash, one of his crew members revealed what it takes to tech and tour with him.

Elizabeth “Connie” Converse may not be a household name, but the singer-songwriter who wrote the large majority of her songs in 1950s New York – the bedrock of the singer-songwriter movement later spearheaded by the likes of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez – was years ahead of her time.

Using a Crestwood 404 reel-to-reel tape recorder and a humble Regal acoustic guitar, Converse transformed into a guitar-based storyteller after moving to Greenwich Village, a world away from her small-town New Hampshire roots.

According to her brother, Phil, it was “an act of pure rebellion.”

“I think they [her parents] assumed she was running away from them,” Phil told The AWL in 2010. “And my guess is that maybe they were right."

Her strong DIY ethic spanned everything from recording herself on reel-to-reel to creating her own private Song-of-the-Month Club, of which her brother and his new wife, Jean, were members.

The club kicked off in 1950 with a recording of her first original song, Down This Road, and wound down in 1955 with Empty Pocket Waltz. All in all, she mailed roughly three dozen guitar-based songs, all recorded at her Greenwich Village apartment.

You could describe it as a precursor to the niche, direct-to-fan marketing of the internet age, or even the DIY punk/indie label movement of the 1970s – regardless, by luck or design, Converse was thinking decades ahead of her peers.

Over the years, Converse developed her own unique finger picking style – blending harmony and complex chord voicings that traversed genres, including blues, country, folk, hillbilly, parlor songs, and early jazz. Meanwhile, her lyrics reflected her complex inner life and narratives that were as equally opaque as they were brutally intimate.

In 1954, Converse’s burgeoning career took a public turn when she performed at a semi-regular music salon hosted by illustrator, animator, and film director Gene Deitch. While initially coming across as standoffish, Converse quickly proved herself and enthralled her audience.

“[She was a] plain Jane, wearing glasses, and not at all looking like she would fit in with our crowd,” wrote Deitch, as reported by The Times. “When she started to sing, she transformed us.”

Soon Converse was invited to perform on CBS’ Morning Show, hosted by the then-up-and-coming Walter Cronkite.

Unfortunately, no archival footage of the televised performance survives, save for a couple of stills. But even more unfortunate was the fact that the performance did little to launch her music career.

Two years later, as if to mark this period, Converse recorded an album of all her guitar songs and sent it to her brother Phil.

Musicks (Volumes I and II) served as a declaration of what she had crafted up until that point, and an indication of where her music was heading next: piano songs that revolved around the theme of unrequited love and culminating in her final form and output – an art song cycle inspired by the Cassandra myth.

Frustrated by the lack of support from audiences and the music industry, coupled with the news that she needed a hysterectomy, Converse left New York in 1961 and headed to Ann Arbor, Michigan, seeking a fresh start.

While she continued to work on her music – albeit at a slower pace – Converse took up other roles, including political activism, a stint as an editor of the Journal for Conflict Resolution, and a series of academic jobs.

Her life took a tragic turn when, thirteen years later and a week after her fiftieth birthday, she mailed a series of letters and cryptic notes to her loved ones, speaking about her need for a fresh start somewhere else, and saying that she struggled “to find a place to plug in.” She quietly drove away, never to be seen or heard from again.

What really happened to her remains a mystery. According to the definitive biography, To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music and Mystery of Connie Converse, written by Howard Fishman, “some believed she drove her car off a cliff in Canada, while others had claimed she started a new life in Brazil” [as paraphrased by the BBC].

In the BBC piece, British musician Martin Carr commends her guitar work, noting: “Her playing reminds me of the way Paul Simon plays; orchestral arrangements for six strings. She was a true individual, an artist of no time.”

Truthfully, it took until the turn of the millennium before Converse’s avant-garde sensibilities found the audience that she had longed for.

In 2004, Gene Deitch debuted some of her songs on WYNC radio, leading to a surge of interest, so much so that the singer-songwriter somehow became a favorite among the likes of Karen O and Bill Callahan. More recently, Ratboys were inspired to pen the track A Vision. 2009 also saw the release of her official debut album, How Sad, How Lovely, via Lau Derette Recordings.

This March, Jack White’s Third Man Records reissued the album on vinyl. On making the announcement, White crowned her “one of the first singer-songwriters”. Indeed, 51 years after her disappearance, it seems Converse’s reputation is only growing stronger.

How Sad, How Lovely is out now on Third Man Records.

Speaking of other pioneers, Fanny’s June and Jean Millington recently spoke to Guitar World about their experience being in one of the world’s first “all-female” rock bands.

Tony Garnier has been doling out basslines for chart-toppers since his early-'70s stint with Asleep at the Wheel. Most notably, he has become a keen interpreter of song for Bob Dylan. Indeed, 38 bassists appeared on Dylan albums before he came onboard; in the 37 years since, no others have.

In addition to multiple albums with Dylan, Garnier has recorded with Marshall Crenshaw and Tom Waits, manned the bass chair at legendary venues The Lone Star and Tramps, and anchored everyone from Dr. John to Chuck Berry.

“I asked Chuck how he liked to hear the bass,” Garnier told Bass Player back in May 2015. “He preferred broken eighth-notes on the root, as opposed to a moving pattern of steady eighths.”

Garnier also subbed for T-Bone Wolk on Saturday Night Live for three years, which is where he met guitarist G.E. Smith and drummer Chris Parker, who were in Bob Dylan's band.

In 1989, Dylan bassist Kenny Aaronson had to take a medical leave. Garnier was flown to Europe to fill in for six weeks, ended up finishing out the year, and has remained ever since.

When Smith departed two years later, Garnier stepped into the bandleader role – “making sure the songs start and end where they're supposed to.”

How would you describe the bass role in Bob's band?

Simplicity works best. Complicated basslines can be distracting. You don't want to disrupt the song; you want to help it along. I'm all about trying to add some movement in between the vocal or the verses, but not sound like I'm just filling.

I'm looking to provide subtle forward motion, as opposed to playing a fixed, steady groove. I'll come up with my own basslines, or versions of basslines from Bob's earlier songs, and if he wants it different he'll let me know.

What inspires you when creating parts?

The lyrics and the vocal, as well as what the rest of the band is playing. You have to learn the lyrics to the songs. That will tell you what and how to play, and it makes your job easier because you have a connection; you're not just playing notes and chords.

I've always told new guys in the band, “You're not playing guitar – you're playing a song.” I know what the songs are about, and that gives me an emotional attachment when I'm coming up with the basslines. And of course there's Bob's interpretation to draw from.

He seems to vary his renditions quite a bit.

Absolutely; the songs are different every night because he never sings them the same way, so we're not playing them the same way. If he's phrasing a little differently on a song like A Simple Twist of Fate, the bassline I played the night before might not work.

He may bunch up some words or draw them out, and it goes beyond that; sometimes he'll change the chords. Or he'll sing a different melody for a few nights, or change the lyrics – like on Tangled Up in Blue, the lyrics in the live show are different from the recorded version.

Ultimately, it's a conversation between everyone onstage. All I have to do is listen and react. It's actually a lot easier than having to play the same basslines every night, and it's much more creative and fun.

What would you say you've learned from Bob, playing-wise?

The concepts I've learned are like what you might learn from Duke Ellington or Miles Davis – ideas that you can use with other artists throughout your career.

For example, in Bob's book Chronicles: Volume One, he speaks about music in terms of numbers and how three and five are interesting choices. Maybe he'll write a song with three verses and a bridge, or create a melodic line in groupings of five, and the same can apply for basslines. If I'm stuck, I may apply that, or something like what Rick Danko did on Chest Fever, by The Band.

What advice would you offer to young bass players?

I'd advise getting a home studio and start writing and singing. Whatever it takes – just don't sacrifice your ideals. It's very challenging now in the music business, but music is a big part of people's lives all over the world, and the need for good musicians will always be there.

If my two kids want to become musicians, I won't discourage them if I see they have the passion for it. If that describes you, keep practicing and expanding your musical horizons.

The list of credits and collaborations that the late Traffic guitarist and session legend Dave Mason chalked up over a storied life of musical triumphs is all kinds of incredible.

The Rolling Stones, George Harrison, Michael Jackson, Fleetwood Mac… Where do you stop? Eric Clapton, Delaney & Bonnie, Graham Nash… the list goes on and it of course includes some era-defining work with Jimi Hendrix that would give us, arguably, the greatest cover song of all time, All Along the Watchtower.

When we read through Mason’s myriad collaborations, particularly in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, he appears to us as some Zelig-like figure. In the parlance of the Swinging Sixties, he was there, man.

And he was there in 1966 when Hendrix landed in London, with no great discography behind him yet but with a reputation that maybe this was the guy who would revolutionize electric guitar.

“I was aware of Jimi when he first came to London, even before he had ever made a record,” Mason once recalled in a Guitar World interview. “London was a conglomeration of great people all in one place. There were only so many studios and a few good engineers around at the time, so it was inevitable that people would run into each other from time to time.”

This was an era when everyone stayed out. London had an after-hours scene. Soho was still firmly committed sleaze. Flashes of neon would hint at the next blush of modernity to augment the city. There were places to go and people to see.

“I met Jimi at a late-night club one night and just started talking to him,” said Mason. “He was a Traffic fan and I remember he got up and played with the band that was there that night and I just said, ‘Wow!’ [laughs].”

The idea for All Along the Watchtower came like many of the world’s best ideas, at a party. We can only imagine this gathering. But there we have the heroes of this story, Mason and Hendrix, and Bob Dylan was playing on the turntable.

“It was a Saturday or Sunday and we were in London and we got together somewhere. We were invited over to this girl’s apartment,” said Mason, speaking to Guitar World in 2015. “There were a lot of people there, and we just dropped by. She had the first copy of John Wesley Harding, the new Bob Dylan album, and we had to hear it. So we put the album on…”

Hendrix couldn’t believe what he was hearing. We’ve got to place ourselves in his shoes. He had never heard this stuff before. Mason most likely hadn’t either. Dylan’s new album was doing the business – and Hendrix had a brain wave.

“Jimi got it into his head that he wanted to do All Along the Watchtower,” said Mason. “I remember he said to me, ‘That’s the coolest song! I’m gonna go and record it! You want to come and do it with me?’ That’s basically how it started. He was just amazing.”

When they made it to the studio, Hendrix played six-string acoustic guitar, with Mason playing 12-string. It wouldn’t be their only collaboration. Mason would sing back-ups on Crosstown Traffic.

There was even talk that he would have been playing bass guitar for Hendrix but it never amounted to anything.

“It was going to happen, but the manager kind of put a stop to it for some reason,” said Mason. “Maybe it was an image thing. But I got to spend some cool time with him. I did some other stuff with him playing bass. I have no idea where those tracks went. I’ve never heard them.”

In the rearview mirror, we can all agree that All Along the Watchtower is one of the great tracks, assured of its place in the pop-cultural pantheon (it’s even in the Forrest Gump soundtrack), and, again, the ne plus ultra of cover versions.

Even Dylan, a Nobel Laureate of literature no less, admitted that Hendrix’s version “overwhelmed” him and informed future performances. But at the time Mason just thought as Hendrix thought, that, yes, it was a cool tune. He was too busy living to be cataloging these events.

“I knew they were great tracks that created attention, but it’s hard to say what people would really think because at the time, I was living it,” he said in a 2014 Guitar World interview. “Looking back now, I was very fortunate to have ended up playing with so many great artists, even just for a moment.”

And Hendrix? Mason never forgot that first night when he witnessed the arrival of guitar’s most radical talent.

“I didn’t know who the hell he was, and when he started playing, I started thinking I should look into a different instrument,” he said, with a laugh. “He was truly unique.”

The late, great Dave Mason passed away earlier this week at the age of 79, prompting an outpouring of tributes from across the music world.

In his role as producer, Don Was has often had to play the diplomat, especially when he found himself caught in the crossfire of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. But they weren’t the only stars he had to mediate between.

In 1990, while behind the desk for Bob Dylan’s Under the Red Sky, he found himself at the center of disagreement over a guitar solo between the folk rock legend and one of his guest collaborators, George Harrison.

“I learned a lesson pretty early on,” Was says in conversation with Rock & Roll High School . What was the lesson? Well, as he puts it, it was “benign honesty.”

“George Harrison came in to overdub guitar in the song,” he explains. “I'd never met George Harrison before. The room was aglow with personality and charisma.

“And Bob, I guess, on a previous record, had only let George play an overdub one time, and then he cut him off. So, as we’re walking into the control room, George Harrison said to me, ‘Don't let him do that again. Give me a chance to play it a few times,’ which Bob overheard.”

Was plays the comment as being “jocular” and fun, rather than it coming from a place of malice. Then, without much warning, the engineer hit record. Without even hearing the song before, or having even tuned up, Harrison cut a take.

“All things considered, George played a respectable solo; he was digging his way out of not knowing what key it was in,” Was recalls.

“We get to the end, and Bob says, ‘Okay, that's great. Thank you,' [clearly eager to move on]. George Harrison turns to me, and he says, ‘Wait a minute, what do you think, Don?’ And Bob goes, ‘Yeah, what do you think, Don?’ Time slowed down.”

This is a man who grew up idolizing these two elite musicians, who considered selling his car to get a ticket to the Concert for Bangladesh. But he realized, in that moment, that he wasn't there to be a fan.

“I said, ‘Well, you know, it was good. Why don't you tune up, and we'll do another one. Let's see if we beat it.’

“It was diplomatic,” he says. “I didn't insult anybody, but I got us to the next take, and there's a lesson in benign honesty. And Bob didn't really mean it, you know. He was just fucking around. We got the solo. It didn't take long.”

Harrison, ultimately, was a dab hand at quickfire guitar solos. When Mike Campbell couldn’t face the heat of soloing in front of Harrison while cutting a Traveling Wilburys track, he insisted Harrison did it himself, and he made light work of it.

Meanwhile, Was has made the bold claim as to why John Mayer is better than the Beatle because of one key aspect of his musicianship.

When Bob Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, it was a watershed moment for the trajectory of popular music – and the Telecaster that his foil, Mike Bloomfield, played on that day was instrumental in ‘killing folk.’

Now, Eastwood Guitars has recreated the guitar for the masses – including its rather garish cutaway – in the form of the Mad Cat MB63.

Bloomfield’s early ‘60s Tele – its neck is stamped August ’63 – was later used across Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album. It can reportedly be heard on seminal tracks, including Like A Rolling Stone and Tombstone Blues, but it was still in one piece at the time.

It was only later, after Bloomfield swapped it for a ’54 Gibson Les Paul in 1965, that the cruder-than-crude cutaway was made by its new owner for better access to the upper frets, with no concern for the instrument's history.

So, while the guitar never looked like it does now while in Bloomfield’s hands, Eastwood’s recreation of the electric guitar is being used as a way of honoring its most famous player.

“The Eastwood Mad Cat MB63 tips its hat to one of the great troublemakers in guitar history,” it says. “The original wasn’t precious. It had that famously rough upper horn cutaway and a straight-to-the-point, workmanlike feel. It looked like someone simply decided it needed to be different and made it so. That’s the spirit we wanted to keep.”

It pairs a swamp ash body with a maple neck and rosewood fingerboard, and is kitted out with Eastwood-branded single-coil pickups, a T-Style Chrome bridge, and vintage-style tuners.

Crafted to a 25.5" scale length, it also has a 12" fretboard radius, 20 Jumbo frets, and aged white inlays. It has been designed to look worn and pre-loved – complete with that gruesome cutaway.

“Taking inspiration from the vintage car world, we decided to add a clear coat over the distressed body finish to seamlessly blend the old with the new,” Eastwood explains.

“At its core, this is still a no-nonsense single-cut with all the snap, bite, and clarity you’d hope for. It’s for players who like their guitars a little rough around the edges and a lot big on personality.”

Priced at a not-too-shabby $1,399, it certainly saves players the job of taking a hacksaw to their own beloved Teles, and stands as one of 2026's most unique guitar tributes. The original guitar sold for $275,000 in January 2025, so Eastwood’s version is also a damn sight cheaper.

See Eastwood Guitars for more.

Detroit-born bassist and producer Don Was has rubbed elbows with a who’s who of timeless artists including Bonnie Raitt, John Mayer, the Rolling Stones and Willie Nelson – but his approach to the work remains simple.

“I try to play from the heart, listen and react, stay in the groove, support the storytelling, and refrain from showing off too much,” he tells Bass Player.

But he admits: “If we’re being honest, the weakest link in the rig has always been my fingers and harmonic naiveté. I harbor no illusions about being a session bassist. I’m not in the same league as Jamerson, Pino, Hutch, Lee Sklar, Marcus, Nathan, David Hood or Chuck Rainey.”

Which doesn’t mean he can’t hack it. “I’ve got a feel that’s occasionally appropriate for a song,” he allows. “Brian Wilson said he called me for sessions because I sounded like a guy in a band and not a session player. I’m okay with that.”

At 73, Was isn’t slowing down. He’s the President of Blue Note Records, and he recently started a new group, Don Was and The Pan-Detroit Ensemble. He says he’s driven by a rule he learned years ago: “The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is realizing that you just need to play with soul. It’s already inside you.”

What inspired you to pick up the bass guitar?

Seeing McCartney on Ed Sullivan in 1964, when I was 12. I noticed his guitar only had four strings, but I didn’t know what a bass actually did. I thought it was a guitar missing the high B and E strings – I was soon to learn otherwise!

The best band at our junior high, The Shy Guys, needed a bass player. I answered the ad, and the leader, Ron Lefko, came over with his guitar to audition me. He said, ‘Let’s play Walk, Don’t Run.’ I knew the chords and played them on my guitar, very carefully avoiding the B and E strings.

Ron said, ‘Okay, you know the chords – now play the bass part.’ I said, ‘That was the bass part. I never touched the B or E string!’ He looked perplexed, then kindly explained what the bass actually is.

I didn’t get the gig, but I did go buy a skinny-necked, Bill Wyman-style Framus Star Bass and an Ampeg B-15, and I started practicing.

You were influenced by the blues, jazz, and ’60s counterculture. How did that shape your playing?

Oh, I stunk at all three styles! But at 19, a brilliant Bill Evans–influenced jazz pianist in Detroit named Lenore Paxton hired me to play in her trio. She showed me the ropes about remembering changes, creating walking bass lines and locking down a groove.

I played in her trio for a decade – four or five sets a night, four nights a week – at a groovy, dimly-lit bar called Bob ’n Rob’s. It was maybe the best gig I ever had. We had a lot of fun and she made a bass player out of me.

Detroit exposed us to a cultural jambalaya of styles. On off-nights, I’d play with all kinds of musicians: a gypsy band, Ted Lucas’ folk-rock band, musical theater pit bands.

Did you get into the drug scene?

Got way into it! Self-consciousness and fear are a musician’s fiercest enemies, and drugs that obliterate those roadblocks have a strong allure. Unfortunately that approach comes with its own set of “ancillary issues.”

If you're in it for the long haul, I’d recommend a methodology that keeps your receptors open, but also lets you move through life gracefully, without wrapping your car around a phone pole or pushing your friends and family away.

What did your bass rig look like once you got going?

I’ve always favored a simple, direct setup. You can’t lose with an Ampeg SVT, though in recent years I’ve also gotten an incredible thrill from a Benson Gnostic. I’ve got a couple of ’60s Fenders, a couple of beautiful Roger Sadowsky Jazz basses.

For the past few years I’ve been playing Bill Nash’s 1963 Precision models – they give me all the joy I’m looking for. No pedals. I use David Gage pickups on double bass, but given the emphasis placed on subwoofers and bass drums in contemporary sound reinforcement, the warmth of the double bass gets somewhat obliterated in larger venues.

So I’ve started using an Ampeg Baby Bass or an Eminence 4-string with the Gage pickup for a little more definition. In the studio, I’ve been using the Acme MTP-66 Motown preamp as a direct box.

Tell us about working with The B-52s on Cosmic Thing and Good Stuff.

I can tell you who played bass – it wasn’t me! Sarah Lee played on Cosmic Thing, and Sarah, Tracy Wormworth, and Hutch Hutchinson played on Good Stuff, at least on the tracks I produced.

The sessions were fast. Everyone played and sang live in the room at once. Love Shack was recorded in one take. Both records were made in a relaxed, enjoyable atmosphere, and we had a lot of fun. Listeners can perceive the vibe in the room – they can hear joy and they can hear struggle.

You did play bass on Dylan’s Under the Red Sky.

I haven’t played on most of the records I’ve produced. I don’t play unless someone specifically asks; it feels presumptuous and unsavory to force yourself on an artist. The biggest problem with playing and producing is losing objectivity – you go into the control room and focus on what you just played instead of the big picture.

But Dylan is my hero. Since I was 14 my dream in life was to play bass with him. So I wrote myself into the scene. I don’t think I ruined any songs, and we had a ball. It was a loose, relaxed album.

Bob is smart, very funny, and a master record-maker. Over the years I’ve learned from him about putting a premium on feel, trusting your instincts and avoiding too much polish. I’ve done a bunch of things with him over 35 years – if you’re a fan of his work, I can assure you that your admiration is well-placed.

You produced Iggy Pop and Ringo Starr in the early ’90s.

Ringo and Iggy have one big thing in common: they’re incredibly underrated. Ringo has an unbelievable feel – he swings like crazy, plays with a lyrical musicality, and infuses joy and personality into every bar. The Beatles would not have impacted culture the way they did without his contribution. For bass players, he’s a total gas to play with.

As for Iggy, every wild story you’ve heard probably contains a kernel of truth, but he’s so much more than that. He’s a highly cultured, well-read, smart, and sensitive cat – a poet disguised as a human lightning bolt. Greatest frontman in rock ’n’ roll history and a brilliant, evocative songwriter with a unique perspective. I’m really proud of the two albums we made.

You’ve worked extensively with Bonnie Raitt. What’s she like?

It’s hard for me to talk about Bonnie without getting emotional because I love her so much. She’s the most soulful vocalist walking the face of the Earth, and to paraphrase Archie Bell, she can play guitar just as good as she sings. She learned from the blues masters and earned their complete respect.

There’s no disconnect between her voice and her guitar. It’s one voice, kinda like Aretha Franklin with her piano or Willie Nelson with his guitar, Trigger. I once produced a duet between Willie and Bonnie – their voices and guitars wove together seamlessly.

What’s the backstory behind producing the Stones’ Voodoo Lounge and Bridges to Babylon?

In 1993 the Stones had just signed with Virgin Records and the label wanted them to have a producer. They sent me to NYC while the band was auditioning bass players at SIR.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards came over and sat on either side of me, and both started talking at the same time – neither one of them yielded to the other guy! My head was whipping back and forth like I was watching a ping-pong match.

Best I could tell, Mick was outlining what he wanted in a producer, and Keith was explaining why they didn’t need a fucking producer! It went on for about two minutes, which, In that situation, is an excruciatingly long time!

Finally, they both ran out of steam. Silence. Then Keith said, “Are you sure you want to be the meat in this sandwich?” I walked out convinced I’d never see them again.

What changed?

Four days later, Keith called, apologized for being curt, and said maybe they could use a producer. He wanted to use Don Smith as the engineer for Voodoo Lounge because he’d done a great job on his two solo records with The Expensive Winos.

But Mick wanted a neutral partisan behind the board and Keith wanted me to talk with him about it. I'd been working with Don Smith a lot and I thought he would be perfect for the album. So I called Mick and told him that Don was my choice, not just Keith's.

Mick relented, and when I called Keith to tell him Don Smith was in, he said, ‘Your name's not Don Was – it's Don Is!’ I was hired, and the same pattern of shuttle diplomacy continued for the next 25 years!

We made four studio albums together: Voodoo Lounge, Bridges to Babylon, A Bigger Bang, and Blue and Lonesome. I also produced a handful of live albums, a bunch of new singles for greatest hits packages, and I finished old tracks for deluxe reissues of Exile on Main St. and Some Girls.

They've been like generous big brothers to me and taught me a whole lot about music. I also got to play bass with them any time Darryl Jones couldn't make it to a rehearsal or a writing session.

Is the chemistry between Mick and Keith as volatile yet magical as it’s made out to be?

All that crap is ephemeral and disappears the minute they start playing. The musical conversation going on between these guys is masterful, relaxed and jocular. They listen to each other closely and respond with lightning speed.

Charlie would play something on his hi-hat that would make Keith respond with a certain figure, which would make Mick phrase the next line differently, which would make Ronnie play something wild that Charlie would pick up on.

They were four enormous musical presences who came fully to life when they were playing as the Rolling Stones in front of a stadium full of folks. They are the greatest band ever.

What’s the key to getting the most out of Keith?

Keith is sharp as a tack and very well-read. He singlehandedly changed the concept of rhythm and lead guitar. The notion that he’s somewhat sloppy is a misnomer – if you listen to how crisp his attack is and how he releases the notes rather than letting them blur everything up, you understand that he's got impeccable technique and a deep groove.

As he gets older, he gets better; more succinct and effective in his choices. So yeah, he's still totally got it. And the key to getting the most out of him is to stay the fuck out of his way and let Keith be Keith!

Are you working on the next Stones album?

I think the torch has been passed. Mick wants to make modern pop albums, and I believe that Exile on Main St. sounds like what a modern Rolling Stones record should be. He’s certainly earned the right to chase what he hears.

I introduced him to my buddy Andrew Watt – younger, brilliant, rock-rooted, and hit-savvy. We're all still good friends. People liked Hackney Diamonds and all is well.

What was it like working with Chris and Rich Robinson on the Black Crowes' Lions?

Well, if you want the truth, I wasn’t in great shape during those sessions. I wasn’t putting a premium on sleep. When you’re making records, ‘good’ is the enemy. Any motherfucker can make a good record – if you can’t make a great one, stay home.

In my compromised state I didn’t have it in me to push for greatness, which is sad because Rich, Chris, and Steve Gorman were getting along well at that moment. I view it as a squandered chance to make a timeless classic. That’s not the Black Crowes’ fault – they’re good guys and can be an awesome band when they want.

You’ve worked with Willie Nelson. Is he as stoned as people say?

He’s probably had THC in his blood every day for the last half-century, but I’ve never once seen him compromised, weakened or out of control. He maintains a nice, Zen Willie Nelson bubble – a noble state of mind to aspire to.

Along with Jimmy Scott and Frank Sinatra, Willie is one of the great phrasing geniuses of all time. Every line feels heartfelt and warm. His guitar playing is the same; voice and guitar are one storyteller.

Go to a Willie show and you’ll see a cross-section of America getting along peacefully – folks who’d normally be at each other’s throats in these polarized times. That’s testimony to the unifying power of music and to the strength of Willie's artistry and intelligence.

Was working with Scott Weiland in 2010 a trip?

At that moment he’d just completed rehab and spent months in a halfway house. He was making a heroic effort to be sober and reliable. His bandmates were cautious, so I was hired to work with him privately on lyrics and vocals.

He was the opposite of volatile; he was quite sweet, had a fantastic work ethic, and was determined to deliver the goods. We worked every day for about three weeks. He wrote deep lyrics and sang the shit out of the songs. We had wonderful, philosophical conversations, and I had tremendous respect for him.

When he passed, it hit me hard. He fought his demons with all the courage a man could muster. He won many battles but was simply outflanked and couldn't win the war.

After a few albums with John Mayer, what can you say about him?

John is a brilliant guitarist, songwriter, and singer who gets even more expressive with time. He knows how to get thick, beautiful tones and how to build compelling arrangements. He generates a dizzying array of parts – my biggest role is helping him choose the most effective bits.

He also has the most comprehensive artistic vision I’ve ever seen. Before we even begin recording he knows what the album cover, tour ads and merch should look like. It blows your mind to watch him in action.

A couple of weeks ago I was telling him about an interview in which Woody Allen said that, as a director, if you get 40 percent of what you originally envisioned up on the screen, you're doing well. That seemed like a pretty unambitious batting average to me.

I asked John what percentage of his vision he was willing to reasonably accept. Without missing a beat, he said, “I accept nothing less than 100 per cent.” We've made three albums together, and that answer completely checks out.

Where does the bass player version of you end and the producer begin?

Everything I do seems inextricably connected, including my work as president of a record company. The goal is always to help create music that gets under people’s skin. It’s about making them feel something – helping them make sense of their lives and deal with a world that's increasingly chaotic and confusing.

Or at the very least, make them feel better for three and a half minutes. That’s why we’re here.

What’s next for you?

My new band, Don Was and The Pan-Detroit Ensemble, released our first album, Groove in the Face of Adversity, in October. We’re a nine-piece soul-jazz group from the Motor City that tries to embody the raw, honest, deep-pocketed musical traditions of our hometown.

We’ve got months of touring lined up for 2026, and we’ve started a new album. I’m in my 15th year as president of Blue Note Records and we’ve got the strongest release schedule in the company’s history.

Production-wise, there are some very cool records on the calendar – but I’m superstitious about discussing them until they’re in the can. I’m 73, but I feel energized like a kid, and the plan is to keep moving and growing till I drop.

• Groove in the Face of Adversity is on sale now.

Warren Haynes will play a trio of electric guitars tied to three bona fide guitar legends at Gov’t Mule’s celebratory show at New York’s Beacon Theatre on New Year’s Eve.

The show will be the band’s 50th at the iconic venue and will be a celebration of all things 1971. It's been described by Haynes as “arguably the greatest year in rock music history,” and he’ll play three guitars that Jerry Garcia, Dickey Betts, and Bob Dylan made history with for a special set.

The first of those is Jerry Garcia’s 1976 Travis Bean TB500 #11. It featured extensively on the Grateful Dead’s ninth album, Terrapin Station, and was played at over 90 shows before it was auctioned off in 2013. The late great is said to have retired the guitar once the Tiger came into his life.

Dickey Betts' main guitar between 1969-71 – a 1958 Gibson Les Paul Gold Top Dark Back – will also play a key role. The guitar starred in their iconic Fillmore East shows and was used to track the Allman Brothers Band’s first three albums – The Allman Brothers Band (1969), Idlewild South (1970), and Eat a Peach (1972).

Rounding out the trio of history-makers is “the guitar that killed folk”: the 1963 Fender Telecaster that Mike Bloomfield played during Bob Dylan’s 1965 Newport Folk Festival set, the first time he went electric.

It was later used to record Highway 61 Revisited, a record that saw Dylan further establish his rockier, more electrified sound. The Tele, which went up for sale for $275,000 in January, received a crude left-handed modification sometime after Bloomfield opted to swap it for a ’54 Les Paul in late 1965.

John Nuese, who took the hacksaw to the instrument, was the guitarist during Gram Parsons' early career.

Haynes will use the guitars to perform songs from a barmstorming year in rock. Albums released that year include Led Zeppelin’s IV, the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality, and John Lennon’s Imagine, which should give you an idea of the evening’s setlist.

After years of trying to convince him, Haynes and Gibson finally worked on a signature Les Paul earlier this year. It's loaded up, in a shock twist, with P-90s – and the hybrid pups might just be having a renaissance.

Generally speaking, there were two versions of the Byrds – the early lineup featuring Roger (formerly Jim) McGuinn alongside David Crosby, Gene Clark, Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke, and the later, decidedly edgier band that was navigated by McGuinn, the lone “O.G. Byrd,” amid a sea of lineup changes.

And while that’s a gross oversimplification that leaves out a host of in-between lineups, one thing is certain: the band’s later variations featured an absolute ace of a guitar player named Clarence White.

Some even say that, despite the shimmering beauty of the band’s early singles and albums (consider 1965’s The Bells of Rhymney and 1966’s Wild Mountain Thyme), the later version of the Byrds created some of the band’s most striking music.

McGuinn, to a point, agrees, referring to the White-fortified lineup as “a hot performing band.”

“Clarence had been hired as a studio musician for some earlier sessions [including 1967’s Younger Than Yesterday and 1968’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo],” McGuinn says. “But when everybody else left the band, they left me holding the bag. Clarence wanted to be a Byrd all his life. He told me that he loved the fact that he got to be in the Byrds, along with [multi-instrumentalist] Gene Parsons.”

White (along with Parsons) became a full-on Byrd in the summer of 1968, and his unique phrasing added some serious sparkle – and undeniable spark – to a slew of later Byrds albums, including 1969’s Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde, 1970’s (Untitled) and 1971’s Byrdmaniax and Farther Along.

However, White’s guitar work is particularly prominent on 1969’s Ballad of Easy Rider, an album named after the Byrds track that famously appears in Easy Rider, the 1969 counterculture film starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson.

“Peter Fonda and I had been friends since I worked with Bobby Darin,” McGuinn says. “We kept up a relationship over the years.” That relationship led to McGuinn recording the original version of Ballad of Easy Rider for the film’s soundtrack.

“The one for the soundtrack was where Peter and Dennis Hopper came into the studio,” McGuinn says. “Gene Parsons was there with the harmonica, and he did a great part. And it was just me and, I think, an acoustic 12-string guitar.

“I remember Dennis Hopper, who was a kind of wild man, said while leaving the studio, [quoting Ballad of Easy Rider] ‘All they wanted was to be free, and that’s the way it turned out to be. What’s that?’” I said, ‘Think about it, Dennis.’ And Dennis said, ‘Oh, wow, man. That’s cosmic!’” [Laughs]

Ballad of Easy Rider went on to be an essential part of Easy Rider’s soundtrack, although the tune’s co-writer, Bob Dylan distanced himself from the song and the film after watching it. He called McGuinn, asking that his name be removed from the credits.

But when the Byrds recorded Ballad of Easy Rider – an 11-song album that (beside its title and title track) had very little to do with Easy Rider – it included an updated cover of Dylan’s It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. Dylan didn’t have much to say about this development.

“I never heard from him about it, so I don’t know,” McGuinn says. “But, you know, with Bob, he doesn’t really give you a lot of feedback. He kind of runs hot and cold.”

Ballad of Easy Rider also includes a version of the Art Reynolds Singers’ Jesus Is Just Alright. Although the Byrds’ version – released as a single that December – was essentially overlooked, it became a hit for the Doobie Brothers three years later. Long story short? While Ballad of Easy Rider was packed with quality tunes and tied to an iconic movie, it wasn’t exactly a smash.

“It was like Sweetheart of the Rodeo,” McGuinn says. “It was a bomb when it came out, but it gradually elevated to [a level] higher on the Rolling Stone chart than any other Byrds album. Things take time to catch on. I guess we were a little ahead of our time. We were just doing what we liked doing. If people liked it, that was great. And if they didn’t, well, we’ll wait!”

Ballad of Easy Rider was the theme song for Easy Rider, the film. How did that come about?

The story goes that Peter Fonda put a couple of Byrds tracks on the soundtrack of Easy Rider, I think, as placeholders – or maybe his engineer did it for him. But they kept listening to it, and they were like, “Instead of putting some other kind of music on here…”

Peter got the idea that he wanted Bob Dylan to write him a theme song, so he flew up to New York and screened [the film] for Bob. Bob wrote some notes on a napkin and said, “Here, give this to McGuinn. He’ll know what to do with it.”

Peter got back on the plane and came to my house, and it was like the Holy Grail. He presented to me like, “Bob wants you to have this, man.” I looked at it, and it was the first verse, “The river flows,” and a chorus, but he didn’t have a tune. I got out my guitar, made up a tune for it, wrote the second verse, and that’s the way it came out.

When it came time to do the rest of the album, Terry Melcher – who had produced 1965’s Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn! Turn! Turn! – was behind the glass. How did he impact you and Clarence?

Before Clarence, Terry was instrumental in making me the kind of lead guitar player I was with the 12-string Rickenbacker. Then, in the studio, Ray Gerhardt, the engineer at Columbia Records, put us through two Pultec compressors, which really clamped down the sound and made it sustain for a long time.

The Rickenbacker, when it comes out of the factory, doesn’t sustain for very long. It’s got a good sound, but it needs that sustain to do the stuff like I did. So that was the first thing they did. I thought Terry was a good AM radio and mono-record producer. I don’t care what anybody says about him; he was really good at that.

I’ve read that Terry didn’t believe in stereo, yet Ballad of Easy Rider was the first Byrds album to be exclusively released in stereo.

I don’t think we had a choice. There are things beyond our control that went on at Columbia Records. They were highly union-oriented. I remember one time I touched the board and all the union guys got up and walked out.

But Terry didn’t believe in stereo. He thought it was a gimmick. Like four-track, the quadrophonic thing, he thought that was a gimmick. He was practical. Most people didn’t have stereos; they had AM radios in their cars, and that’s the market Terry was aiming at.

How did Terry like working with Clarence?

Terry worked well with Clarence. And then Clarence and I interacted quite a lot. Clarence had this amazing personality and was a great bluegrass picker. But then, on the Tele, once he got the B-bender, he went off into some other zone. It was like John Coltrane; it’s like improvising all the time, doing great counterpoint and things you wouldn’t believe – you know, wonderful stuff.

Of course, fellow Byrd Gene Parsons built that B-bender for Clarence.

Correct! Gene was the only guy I ever met who had a lathe in his garage. He’d make things on it, and the B-bender came out of that. I guess Clarence said, “Is there any way you can get the B string to bend?” Gene went to work and came up with the B-bender. It’s a great invention – I love it.

Did your guitar approach change once Clarence joined the band?

I played my normal leads that I’d been playing. Clarence just improvised around it. It was just his adaptation to what I was already doing.

What amps were you and Clarence using?

I’d go into the control room and plug into the board. That was my main thing. And Clarence, well, because Columbia Records bought Fender, we had Fender Dual Showmans. I think we also had a couple of Twin Reverbs. Basically, it was all Fender gear.

How did the cover of Jesus Is Just Alright come together?

That was Gene Parsons. He was a fan of the Art Reynolds Singers, the gospel group, and I guess he had that record. He brought it to us, and we learned it and did it like Art Reynolds. Then [in 1972], the Doobie Brothers did it like us and got a hit with it. It’s always sad when you get overlooked, but I was happy for them.

Initially, Ballad of Easy Rider received mixed reviews, but it’s become a cult favorite. How do you view it now?

It’s a good record. We were kind of winding down… I mean, the best performing band we ever had was with Clarence, Gene and Skip [Battin, bass – although John York plays bass on Ballad of Easy Rider].

That was a really hot performing band. People would go wild, and we’d get three or four encores. It was amazing, especially in Europe or somewhere like that. But as far as the recording goes, it kind of wound down to where it was all over.

• Ballad of Easy Rider is available via Sony Legacy.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

‘Underrated’ seems a strange word to use about a musician who has sold 75 million records. And yet there’s a case that Dave Stewart has never quite received his due as a guitarist. Perhaps this oversight is understandable.

Partnering the androgynous, octave-straddling Scottish vocalist Annie Lennox on Eurythmics’ chart-topping dash through the ’80s would put anyone in the shade. Nor did the multi-instrumentalist Stewart feel the need to constantly flex his guitar chops, driving many of the duo’s biggest hits – like 1983’s icy Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) – on synth and programmed drums.

And while Stewart has been hugely prolific as a producer, songwriter and music-industry Swiss Army knife since Eurythmics’ dissolution in the ’90s, he’s never attached himself to another full-time project in quite the same way.

As such, the 72-year-old’s new release – a fantastic collection of Bob Dylan covers snappily titled Dave Does Dylan – is a welcome reminder of Stewart’s generational guitar skills, showcasing his supple fingerstyle and lived-in vocal on songs that take him right back to the start.

How do you feel about Dave Does Dylan? Are you pleased with it?

“Well, yeah, considering I wasn’t even making an album at first. What happened was, whenever I was in a hotel room or whatever – you know, that ‘hurry-up-and-wait’ thing when you’re doing shows – I’d just sing one of the Dylan songs that I used to play in the folk clubs when I was 15.

“There were no amps – every song was just one live take filmed on an iPhone with a couple of mics going into a laptop. All the videos are on Instagram and the album is those actual recordings. I didn’t change anything. So that’s how the album came out sounding stripped bare.

“It was about a quarter of the way through posting these things that people started saying, ‘I want to get this as an album.’”

How did you discover Dylan’s music in the first place?

“My brother left me a couple of Dylan albums when he went to college, so that’s what I learnt guitar from. Before that, I wasn’t interested in music. I just wanted to play football for Sunderland. But instead, I had my knee broken by this kid on the football field. That was the same month my mum left my dad, so he was totally depressed. I just remember looking out of the window at these slate-grey Northern skies and thinking, ‘I’m fucked…’

“Then the postman came with this box that my older cousin had sent me from Memphis. Inside was a pair of Levi’s and under that were two blues albums. So now I had my two Dylan albums and these US blues records – I think one of them was Robert Johnson. And when I switched on the radio that day, it was The Kinks with You Really Got Me, followed by The Stones, The Who, The Beatles. I was like, ‘Holy shit!’

“So I tried to learn it all. I remembered that my brother had a guitar with about five strings on it in his wardrobe, so I hobbled to his room and got it. I didn’t have a tuner, but I learnt some two-note blues riffs. But when my brother came back from college, his mate said, ‘It’s not tuned right.’ So he tuned it all normal. And I went, ‘Oh, fucking hell’ because I couldn’t play the thing again!”

Could you tell us about when you were playing Dylan on the Sunderland folk circuit?

“They wouldn’t let me in for ages. I was about 12, so I’d stand out on the street playing until the really lovely guy who ran this folk club – called The George And Dragon – eventually let me in. I had to stand at the back until he says, ‘This kid has been standing outside in the cold every week, let’s give him a chance.’

“The first two songs I sang were To Ramona and Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right. My voice had broken, but I looked like a tiny kid. The songs they were singing in that club were things like Shipbuilding, y’know, old English folk accompanied with the hand over the ear. So they didn’t really know these Dylan songs and they were a bit taken aback. But the guy allowed me to come back.”

“All the pubs realised that folk music brought people in to drink. I remember one club just outside Sunderland. I went along with my guitar and there was just one guy drinking his pint in front of these four crates that had been put together for a stage. I didn’t care, I just wanted to play, so I got up and this sweet guy was clapping on his own.

“But as I was singing the second song, I had my eyes closed and I felt this tapping on my hand. It was the guy. He goes, ‘I’m sorry, son, but I’ve got to catch me bus.’ He probably didn’t know what to do because I was probably singing a Dylan song with 30 verses.”

Dylan is sometimes accused of just being a campfire strummer. Do you rate him as a player?

“You listen to any of the early albums, most guitarists, no matter who they are, if you say to them, ‘Well, go on then, fingerpick that Dylan song and sing at the same time’ – it’s not easy. We both love Mississippi John Hurt and older blues guys like that. When he’s playing electric, he likes things to be kind of raggedy on purpose.

“But if you see him play Like A Rolling Stone, his guitar playing is great; it’s just that he’s unpredictable. I was great friends with the Heartbreakers. They were on tour with him, and they said he’d suddenly play the song in a different key, or he decides to miss out a verse.”

You became friends with Dylan too, didn’t you?

“The story is nuts because, having been such a fan, in 1985 I was in the studio with Feargal Sharkey. He went out and I was sat in the control room when our receptionist rang through and said, ‘Bob Dylan’s on the phone for Dave Stewart.’ I thought it was just Feargal larking about.

“Anyway, when I picked up the phone, it was one of those voices that nobody could imitate. That night, we met up, had a meal, drank sake. Later, when he came to England, we’d be sitting around my kitchen table. It just slowly became normal.

“I’ve been on stage with him a few times. I’ve got this great film of us in Tokyo. I’ve got this tiny video camera and I’m about 12 inches away from his face as he’s singing Like A Rolling Stone. When it gets to the chorus, I swing it round to the audience and all these Japanese people scream: ‘How does it feel?’ Amazing.”

How did you decide which acoustic guitar to use?

“It depended on where I was. I think there were about seven guitars on the album. I used a tiny 12-string miniature called a Maton on Shelter From The Storm. I used this Martin Custom Shop, which is made using wood from the bottom of a ship that sank in the 1800s.

“There was a tiny Gibson LG-2 parlour guitar. And then I used my blue Takamine that I bought in the ’80s. I played that on just about every Eurythmics tour. It’s almost got a hole through it now, like Willie Nelson’s Trigger.”

Do you play more acoustic guitar than people realise?

“Yeah, at the end of the day, I always just sit with an acoustic guitar, noodling about, and often with a slide, playing some blues. It feels very natural for me to do that. And I never went away from that, even all through the ’80s synthesizer period. People would say, ‘Oh yeah, Eurythmics, they’re a synth-pop duo.’ But, actually, I would write on whatever the song required.

“A lot of those songs started with me playing electric guitar and making a riff, like Would I Lie To You?, Missionary Man or Thorn In My Side. Even Sweet Dreams is a blues song, really. It just stays on this groove, it hardly changes.

“That’s why the label didn’t put it out until the fourth single. They said, ‘We don’t understand, where’s the chorus?’ I’ve played it before with electric guitar and slide and somebody singing it like a blues song. And then, obviously, Marilyn Manson really changed it.”

What were the core guitars you used with Eurythmics?

“That blue Takamine was very important because Annie and I would often do an acoustic set, although I used a Guild F412 from 1974 on Thorn In My Side. I’d also use Fender Strats. But there were different periods of Eurythmics. It depended how much money we had. Because when you get a record deal, you don’t instantly get money – you wait ages. And when you play live, you’re losing money at first.

“But what’s really nuts about when you become a famous artist is that you’ve been broke and living in a squat – and now you’ve got money and people are giving you things. It’s like, ‘I wish you could have given me that before.’ My silver Strat is what I use now for Eurythmics songs. I also have an amazing Duesenberg signature guitar called the Blackbird – it’s beautiful.”

Do guitars still excite you? What would happen if we were to walk down Denmark…

“[Interrupting] Don’t let me walk down Denmark Street!”

• Dave Does Dylan is out now via Surfdog.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

mgk (formerly known as Machine Gun Kelly) might not be the first artist you think of when anointing a contemporary guitarist with the title of “guitar savior”.

However, the genre-hopping artist's departure from rap in favor of a more pop-punk and rock aesthetic has earned him a number of fans in the guitar world, including Polyphia's Tim Henson, who gave mgk a shoutout for making “guitar cool again.” Now, his latest fan is, perhaps unexpectedly, Bob Dylan.

After posting a video of mgk on social media – a rarity for Dylan, who uses his Instagram feed as a tribute page – the two formed an unlikely friendship. In fact, mgk's seventh studio album, Lost American, features a voice note from Bob Dylan.

“I reached out to him and was like, ‘Did you guys make a mistake?’” mgk related in an interview with The Times. “[Dylan’s] manager was like, ‘Apparently he likes you…’

“I wrote him this big letter about the Lost Americana album I was doing: ‘It would be amazing to have the great American voice be the narration to the announcement of this album.’”

His letter did the trick. Dylan sent him a voice note, waxing lyrical about how mgk's “music celebrates the beauty found in the in-between spaces,” which consequently ended up in the teaser trailer.

As for whether he ended up meeting Dylan in person, well, after mgk's surprise appearance with Willie Nelson at the Outlaw Music Festival in Hollywood, he claims to have been approached by “a dude all in black.”

“He’s like, ‘Let’s go meet Bob.’ I get on his bus and [Dylan] has a hoodie on, white cowboy boots, and this energy that feels like you’re in the midst of Peter Pan or something, while also in the midst of Homer writing the Iliad – this prolific, young, spirited guy.”

And what did Dylan tell him? “You really rip it, man.”

Despite Dylan’s contribution to his album launch, and the flourishing relationship – which also includes the exchange of letter – mgk admits that he still doesn’t know how and why Dylan, an elusive figure, granted him access into his life.

“One thing I know for sure is that he can’t figure me out, which I think is interesting to him. And I can’t figure him out, which is very interesting to me,” he concludes.

In a 2023 interview with Guitar World, another one of mgk's collaborators, shredder Sophie Lloyd, revealed how she went from being a YouTube guitar sensation to playing stadiums with the rapper-turned-rocker.

Eurythmics legend Dave Stewart grew up listening to Bob Dylan – so you can imagine his surprise when, one day in the studio, he received a call from his hero out of the blue.

Stewart’s affection for Dylan and his music is well-documented, and the guitarist took that to new heights this month with the release of Dave Does Dylan – a fully fledged cover album that takes on 14 of Robert Zimmerman’s most beloved hits.

But Stewart’s connection to Dylan stems far beyond a surface-level appreciation for the man and his music. Instead, after spending years idolizing the man, he received a call from him out of the blue.

“The story is nuts because, having been such a fan, in 1985 I was in the studio with Feargal Sharkey,” he says in a new interview with Guitarist. “He went out and I was sat in the control room when our receptionist rang through and said, ‘Bob Dylan’s on the phone for Dave Stewart.’”

It seemed too good to be true, and Stewart was skeptical. He couldn’t believe it at first, and thought it was a prank call. Turns out it was the start of a longstanding friendship.

“I thought it was just Feargal larking about. Anyway, when I picked up the phone, it was one of those voices that nobody could imitate. That night, we met up, had a meal, drank sake. Later, when he came to England, we’d be sitting around my kitchen table. It just slowly became normal.”

The pair took their friendship to the stage and played together multiple times over the years. One of Stewart’s fondest memories comes from a gig in Japan, which demonstrated the sheer global reach of Dylan and his music.

“I’ve been on stage with him a few times. I’ve got this great film of us in Tokyo. I’ve got this tiny video camera and I’m about 12 inches away from his face as he’s singing Like A Rolling Stone.

“When I get to the chorus, I swing it round to the audience and all these Japanese people scream: ‘How does it feel?’ Amazing.”

Folk hero and activist Peggy Seeger has carved out quite an enduring niche for herself throughout the decades.

Seventy years of performing and songwriting has resulted in a bulging repertoire that includes beloved songs I’m Gonna Be an Engineer and The Ballad of Springhill, countless collaborations, and over 20 albums – the latest of which, Teleology, was released earlier this month, and is reportedly her final; a fitting tribute to her legacy as one of North America's finest folksingers.

Speaking of fine folksingers, Seeger also once crossed paths with a young Bob Dylan – which makes sense considering her brother, Pete Seeger's key role in Dylan's early career.

“I met Bob Dylan when he was Robert Zimmerman, a student,” she tells The Guardian. “I remember him very clearly because the event organizer said: ‘You know that little fellow who followed you around with his briefcase? He’s Bob Dylan.’

“At that point, I said, ‘Who’s Bob Dylan?’, but more power to him. He’s like me in that he hasn’t got a ‘good’ voice but he’s got a character voice and he created the character Bob Dylan out of Robert Zimmerman. It makes me wonder if I created myself, because I’m much more of an entertainer now than I was when I was just a singer of folk songs. I do little jokes and monologues and all kinds of things I never would’ve done as the Peggy Seeger of 1962.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Seeger also reflects on her guitar playing, saying, “I never mastered the guitar – my sons are better players than I am – but folk music didn’t ask very much of me. I took pride in learning songs. I was a guitar accompanist rather than a solos person.”

Indeed, Seeger’s compelling guitar accompaniments have become a trademark of her career, with her knack for the Carter Family strumming, Spanish style, drone-bass or “automatic thumb” fingerpicking (among many other techniques) being the subject of a two-hour Peggy Seeger Teaches Guitar Accompaniment DVD release.

“I played with my father [renowned folklorist and musicologist Charles Seeger] when I was seven or eight and the main thing I would say is learn something really well before you perform it for anybody else. Don’t necessarily feel you have to be that good, just play and enjoy the sound of this wonderful instrument, and once you learn the normal tuning try open tuning.”

Speaking of Bob Dylan, the highly-lauded biopic A Complete Unknown saw Gibson partner with the movie's production team to provide the actors – including Timothée Chalamet, who starred as Dylan – with a series of top-of-the-line Gibsons that deliver period-correct and distinctly Dylan-esque tones.

Julien's Auctions has recently announced the return of its Music Icons sale – and this year's two-day sale includes over 700 collectible items from some of the world's biggest music icons.

The sale includes several guitars that were stage- or studio-played by the likes of Eric Clapton, Kurt Cobain, Brian May, Melissa Etheridge, and Bob Dylan, to name a mere few.

“This incredible collection brings together the instruments, fashion, and personal items that shaped the soundtrack of our lives – from the guitars that changed music history to the unforgettable looks worn by the world’s biggest stars,” comments Martin Nolan, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Julien’s Auctions. “It’s a celebration of artistry, legacy, and the timeless power and endless enjoyment of music.”

Among the gems, guitar aficionados can find Cobain's 1989 Takamine FP360SC left-handed electro-acoustic guitar, played during Nirvana’s 1991 Hilversum Sessions recorded in North Holland, which is expected to sell for between $300,000 and $500,000.

Elsewhere, Eddie Van Halen's stage-played circa 2007 Charvel EVH Art Series – black with red and white stripes – which the virtuoso played (and signed) on October 5th, 2007 in Uncasville, Connecticut is estimated to fetch $20,000 to $40,000.

Another Nirvana link-up comes by way of a 1989 Warwick Dolphin Pro I bass, which Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic played during a session in Hilversum, also in 1991, just before the band’s performance at Amsterdam’s Paradiso. It’s estimated at $100,000 to $200,000.

Eric Clapton's 1980 Santa Cruz FTC-15 is also part of the auction. This acoustic guitar – owned and played by Clapton – was crafted by Santa Cruz luthier Richard Hoover, who in 1980 received a handwritten letter from an “E. Clapton.” Upon opening it, Hoover discovered it was indeed from Eric Clapton, who had seen the FTC in a magazine and wanted to know how he could “lay my hands on this particular model.” The guitar is expected to fetch upwards of $40,000.

Also featured is a Gibson Les Paul Special DC Tribute in cherry red, signed and stage-played by Joe Perry during Aerosmith’s 50th-anniversary concert in 2022 in Boston, which is estimated at $30,000 to $50,000. David Bowie's name also makes an appearance with a signed 1998 Seagull S6 Mahogany Spruce acoustic, played during his final Australian performance.

Other notable guitars include a Noel Gallagher-autographed Suzuki Hummingbird in cherry burst, and a 2012 ESP Ronnie Wood signature Telecaster, signed by the Rolling Stones guitarist and accompanied by a handwritten lyric: “Have you heard about the midnight rambler?”

An exhibition of the Music Icons highlights will be on display at the Hard Rock Cafe Piccadilly Circus in London from May 9 to May 13, before heading across the pond to the Hard Rock Cafe New York from May 21 to May 31. The collectibles will then hit the auction block on May 30 and 31. For more information, visit Julien’s Auctions.

Late last year, the original Mary Kaye Strat – one of the most iconic Fender electric guitars of all time – sold for $227,500 at an auction hosted by Julien's.

Fred Tackett has played guitar on albums by Jackson Brown, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, and Fleetwood Mac – but his inspiration is hardly mired in classic rock alone.

“I think of what a funky saxophone player would play,” he tells Guitar World. “It always just kills me.”

Still, he learned a lot from his late friend Lowell George. “He was an immaculate artist,” Tackett says. “He would come with these gorgeous, simple melodies. One of the biggest aspects of his playing that I liked is his melodic sense.”

George passed away in 1979, bringing an end to his band, Little Feat. But Tackett has held down the guitar-related fort in a new incarnation since 1988. Beside him is Scott Sharrard, who Tackett feels is one hell of a player too.

“His slide playing is beautiful and immaculate. I’ve gotten more comfortable to throw a couple extra licks in now and then. And Scott can just rip off the blues.”

He continues: “I spent my whole life as a guitarist in studios, playing whatever kind of music. I didn’t concentrate on playing the blues. There’s a difference in our playing, but Scott can play any kind of style. I’ve picked up a lot from just listening to him – we meld together as a unit very easily.”

What was it like coming up as a young session player?

“The fact that I was able to work on the Los Angeles studio scene for a good 10 years taught me how to make up parts on the spot. So when I started playing live I understood you don’t just strum on the guitar, you actually play a part – even if you’ve never heard the song before.

“The skill that I developed, for hearing a demo then going in to play, was thinking up a part that’s not going to get in the way of other people’s parts.”

What was your greatest inspiration as a player?

“I was a trumpet major in college and I’m enthused by saxophones. Every time I play a guitar solo, I play something like Junior Walker would play on a tenor sax instead of what Jimi Hendrix would play on guitar.”

Was your friendship with Lowell George your way into Little Feat?

“Yes. Lowell was one of my best friends – he actually lived in my house on several occasions. When I first came to Los Angeles, my girlfriend, who’s now my wife, lived next door to Lowell, and he was studying Ravi Shankar.

“So she brought him over; I came downstairs and Lowell was sitting in the middle of the living room floor, all dressed in white, playing the sitar. I was like, ‘Hey, man, we can tune that thing up and play some psychedelic music.’ He was like, ‘Oh, no, I only play sacred Indian music!’ I was like, ‘Oh, okay, cool…’”

How did you end up playing on some of Little Feat’s records in the early ‘70s?

“Lowell was a good friend way before he thought about putting Little Feat together. At one point, he joined the Mothers of Invention and was trying to talk us all into being hippies; and at that point, he started putting the band together with Billy Payne.

“Gradually, they had the first incarnation of the band. I didn’t play on anything then, but when I had written Fool Yourself, Lowell said, ‘I’ll take that one,’ and he put it on the Dixie Chicken album. That was my first time playing with the band.”

In 1976 you played on Jackson Brown’s The Pretender album. What was that like?

“I used a Princeton Fender amp and a 1963 Stratocaster pretty much straight in, with probably a little delay. There’s a lick on the song The Pretender. One time when I was going to sit in with Jackson, he said, ‘Do you remember the lick on The Pretender?’ I went, ‘No, I don’t have any idea what I played.’

“He said, ‘That’s funny – I make all the guitar players copy it.’ I went back and listened to it, and it’s like Duane Eddy. I was always a big fan of Duane Eddy and all those guys. So, yeah, Duane Eddy was a big inspiration behind my playing on The Pretender.”

You worked with Bob Dylan in the early ‘80s. Was he very particular about how you approached your parts?

“No – Bob is a great, great guy to work for, man. He would say something to me like, ‘Play more like Albert King and less like Albert Einstein!’ I had a tendency to play a lot of notes – I’d get nervous about spaces, which I’m better at now. But back when I was playing with Bob, I’d want to fill everything up. He’d say, ‘What’s the least amount of notes you can play?’

“I said, ‘Well, Bob, I could play one note.’ He goes, ‘Do that.’ So, I just turned to crank the amp up, hit a big chord, and let it feed back and go through the chord changes. He turned around and laughed. I did it for a couple of nights, then he said, ‘Okay, you can play two notes now and then!’

“That was the key to my starting to play better. But Bob wouldn’t tell you what to play – he just gave you hints on style, like, ‘Play a little less,’ or ‘What about a little reverb?’”

Was your experience with Tom Waits, who seems very particular, much different, while recording Swordfishtrombones?

“That was very, very cool because Tom was very experimental. Some of the stuff was really kind of angular, with odd guitar licks that I’d play over and over and over throughout the whole song. He actually had that written out.

“I’d change a note here and there, but basically, I’d do the same note over and over. Tom would say, ‘Play your guitar with a car key.’ He was always coming up with ideas; it was very inspiring.”

What was it like shifting to something less experimental with Bob Seger while recording Like a Rock?

“Bob pretty much had definite ideas of what he wanted you to play. It was pretty simple, and he was into playing, you know, pop music. He was non-experimental. Each person basically played rhythm through and chugged through it.”

What’s your best piece of advice for young session players?

“You need to be comfortable with all styles of guitar playing because you never know what’s going to come up – 90 percent of the time you get a call and it’s just, ‘There’s a date at three o’clock at the studio. Can you make it?’ You show up with your stuff and find out what it is.

“The best advice I ever heard anybody give was, ‘Take your wallet onstage with you!’”

What will your rig consist of for Little Feat’s upcoming live dates?

“It’s relatively simple – I have a 1961 Fender Deluxe amp that I’ve been playing for many, many years. It belonged to my son, but he ended up trading it for the Princeton Reverb I’d used in the studio for years.

“Along with the Fender Deluxe, I have a couple of Stratocasters. I’ve had a Stratocaster since I started studio work. And the pedalboard I use, besides having a delay, is just to make things louder!

“One pedal gets it a bit louder and has some grit. One of them is just off the charts, like you don’t want to know. I use them all sometimes – I turn them all on at once, so it’s just a matter of getting louder and louder and more louder!”

Considering you’ll be 80 in August, do you see an expiration date on your career, or will you rock until you drop?

“Hopefully, we won’t drop anytime soon! But yeah, we’re just walking it out, man. We’re taking it one day at a time. I do what the telephone tells me to do. The phone rings and they say, ‘Be at the airport at this time,’ and I go, ‘Cool. I’ll see you there.’ There’s no plans at the moment to do anything except keep rocking.”

• Little Feat will release their new album, Strike Up the Band, on May 9 and commence a tour four days earlier.

Mike Peters, frontman of the Welsh band The Alarm, has passed away at the age of 66 due to blood cancer.

The guitarist and lead singer was forced to cancel a U.S. tour last year following a fast-growing lymphoma diagnosis and had since been undergoing treatment at the Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester. His death was announced by a spokesperson for Love Hope Strength, the cancer charity he co-founded with his wife.

Peters was born in Prestatyn, Denbighshire, Wales, and started his musical career with Hairy Hippie, a band he formed with his schoolmates to perform at his sister's 21st birthday party.

Following his initial brush with band life, he formed the Toilets after seeing the Sex Pistols play in Chester, England. Various lineup changes and a rebrand (plus the addition of guitarist Dave Sharp) later, the new-and-improved band – The Alarm – played their first gig in Prestatyn in 1981.

They would go on to open for U2 and Bob Dylan, tally up an estimated 5 million sales worldwide, and become stalwarts of Welsh rock, cracking America along the way.

While the band broke up after Peters left the group on stage at London's Brixton Academy in 1991, the vocalist/guitarist powered on with his first solo venture, Breathe, in 1994. Just a year later, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and in 2005, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which returned in 2015 before he went into remission.

Despite his health struggles, Peters continued to record new material, tour his music across Europe and the U.S., and raise awareness about cancer – releasing the inspiring documentary Man in the Camo Jacket in 2017 and receiving an MBE in 2019 for his services to cancer awareness.

“The simple message is to stay alive and appreciate every second you’ve got,” he told Guitar World in a 2017 interview. “Live right up to the last breath and stay positive about the world, your family, and the environment you live in.

“When we first came to America, I was in my early twenties. I’m 58 now and am still the same punk rocker in my head. I want to give the feeling out to live life to the fullest.”

Guitarist and songwriter Mac Gayden – best known for his work on Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde and co-writing the long-standing pop hit Everlasting Love – has died at the age of 83, at his home in Nashville. According to his cousin, Tommye Maddox Working, the cause of death was complications due to Parkinson's disease.

Gayden played a key role in helping turn Nashville into the cross-genre recording hub it is today. As part of an elite group of session players known as the “Nashville Cats,” Gayden gained a solid reputation for being the first call from that group. Bob Dylan producer Bob Johnston once dubbed him, “The best guitar player I ever heard.”

One of his most notable contributions was his work on Dylan's seventh studio album Blonde on Blonde. His percussive guitar work on Absolutely Sweet Marie showcases his breadth as a player – which makes it all the more unfortunate that it went uncredited for decades.

Non-country artists flocked to Nashville to work with Gayden – which is why he ended up on records by Elvis, Simon & Garfunkel, The Valentines, Linda Ronstadt, Leonard Cohen, Bobby Vinton, and The Pointer Sisters.

“I first met Gregg and Duane [Allman] when they first came to Nashville and played the Briarpatch for a while. Jammed a little with Greg one night and did a session with Duane at RCA studio B one night,” he told Blues GR in 2013, giving a sneak peek into his day-to-day life as one of Nashville's hottest tickets.

“We were both beginning to play slide guitar at the time. So we would swap licks with each other in between songs. Everyone thought that it sounded cool but it didn’t go down on record.”

In fact, it was his slide guitar and wah pedal combination – epitomized on J.J. Cale’s 1971 Top 40 single Crazy Mama – that cemented his signature technique and sound.

“A few years ago, a writer called me ‘father of the wah slide,’” Gayden wrote in his 2013 autobiography, Missing String Theory: A Musician’s Uncommon Spiritual Journey. “It’s humbling to realize I developed a stylistic approach to playing slide.”

As a songwriter, his most enduring success came in the form of Everlasting Love – the evergreen song he co-wrote with Buzz Cason and which eventually found its way onto records by artists as diverse as Town Criers, Gloria Estefan, Sandra Cretu, Love Affair, and even U2.

However, his exploits didn't end there. As the ’60s rolled into the '70s, Gayden and a couple of other alumni of the early ’60s pop combo the Escorts formed two improvisational country-rock outfits: Area Code 615 and later, Barefoot Jerry.

The former – a supergroup of sorts consisting of some of Nashville's most prolific session musicians – was formed in the wake of Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline album and managed to record two albums, which included their best-known track, Stone Fox Chase, before resuming their session work.

Barefoot Jerry, on the other hand, was an early Southern rock group, which also featured Gayden on vocals and a hodgepodge of Nashville session players. Gayden would depart after just one album to record his first solo album, McGavock Gayden, in 1971.

After a series of other projects and accomplishments – including being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame as part of the Nashville Cats, and being featured in the 2015 exhibit Dylan, Cash, and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville – Gayden released his last album, Come Along, in 2020.

Speaking about his intimate relationship with music and its links to spirituality in the Blues GR interview, Gayden concluded, “I knew from an early age that music comes from another dimension, because it grounded me. In other words it relaxed my physiology and allowed me to feel Bliss, something as child that comes naturally.”

“On days when I didn’t have some music or art, I felt something was missing. So as an adult, meditation takes me every day to that subtle place of experiencing the world, and thus feeling that inspiration and bliss once again.”

The Byrds were famously one of the first rock ’n’ roll band to be signed to Columbia Records – no mean feat considering the label's longstanding love affair with jazz and classical Broadway show tunes, especially at the time.

An audition tape that landed in the hands of Miles Davis' agent – plus a little coaxing from the jazz trumpeter himself – led the quintet to secure their first deal with Columbia – and guitarist (and frontman) Roger McGuinn's Rickenbacker 360 12-string would serve as the secret sauce that helped make their debut single stand out from the flurry of releases.

“Columbia was very conservative. They didn't like rock ’n’ roll,” McGuinn says in an interview with Pete Ganbarg on the Rock & Roll High School Podcast. “They thought it might tarnish their reputation as a quality label.

“So they gave us a record deal for one single, and if we didn’t get it hit with a single, we were out. So we needed a strong song, and that's where [Jim] Dickson [their manager at the time] came up with Mr. Tambourine Man. He knew Dylan, and he got a copy of it sent out from M. Witmark & Sons in New York, Dylan's publisher at the time, and we all sat around listening to it.”

However, not everyone in the band was as enthusiastic as Dickson about the song – which Dylan himself released in March 1965, roughly a month before the Byrds’ rolled out their own version.

“[David] Crosby said, ‘I don't like it, man.’ He said, ‘That folky 2/4 time never gonna play on the radio.’ And he was right. They were playing rock ’n’ roll.’” To make the song work for them, and more palatable to audiences, McGuinn changed the time signature to 4/4 time, and the band – along with Dickson – gave it the electric rock treatment, effectively creating the subgenre of folk rock.

A key part of the song's makeover was the addition of McGuinn's distinct jangly guitar playing – courtesy of his Rickenbacker. As the third-ever person to own a Rickenbacker – following a certain George Harrison – the Byrds' guitarist had big shoes to fill, but the left-field guitar eventually became his signature instrument.

"I've been listening to the Searchers and the Seekers, and they had these really cool 12-string intros,” he says of his initial inspiration to incorporate the Rickenbacker. “I found out later it wasn't a 12-string – it's two sixes in octaves – but they got to 12-strings later, and that sound for an intro was really captivating. I thought it'd be cool to do that with Mr. Tambourine Man.”

Speaking more about how he managed to achieve the “jingle-jangle” tone that continues to capture guitarists’ imagination to this day, McGuinn told Guitar World that his Rick was awash with compression – courtesy of Fairchild compressors and Pultec limiters.

“The technique was to run one compressor into another – piggyback them – just to get as much compression as possible to get as much sustain as possible. Because the Rickenbacker is a very short-sustain instrument. That’s good for rhythm, but it’s not good for lead.”

He continued, “The lead lines I was doing needed longer sustain. So we used compression. Originally, though, I think the reason why we started using compression wasn’t for the sustain. It was a by-product of the fact that [recording engineers] did it so that we wouldn’t blow up their equipment!”

The Byrds’ lasting impact can be epitomized in New York guitarist Christian Parker’s two albums’ worth of a love letter to the Byrds' repertoire – with Parker going as far as picking specific instruments and gear to match the era and the material.

In the mid-1980s, Bob Dylan found himself at a crossroads.

Famous as he was for wild creative left turns, he truly outdid himself with the trio of deeply religious albums that followed his conversion to Christianity.

Though still rooted in rock – each of three LPs, 1979's Slow Train Coming, 1980's Saved, and 1981's Shot of Love, featured crack studio musicians, with the first also featuring Mark Knopfler – the albums came as a shock to his fans, alienating many of them in the process.

For 1983's Infidels, his full return to secular music, Dylan sought the services of Knopfler again, with the Dire Straits man taking a much bigger, co-production role.

With reggae aces Sly and Robbie (drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare) handling the rhythms, Infidels couched some of Dylan's strongest songs in years in easygoing, unhurried shuffles, with Knopfler lending his signature tasteful and limber guitar leads throughout.

When invited onto David Letterman's then-new late-night show for a performance in support of the album, using the same trio onstage was always going to be difficult – Knopfler in particular was obviously busy with Dire Straits at the time – but the logical move was to hire a band that could replicate, to a somewhat faithful degree at least, the sound of the record.

But this is Bob Dylan we're talking about.

The iconic singer/songwriter had been, for a number of months, jamming on and off with the rhythm section of LA punk group the Plugz, bassist Tony Marsico and drummer Charlie Quintana, and their friend, guitarist JJ Holiday.

When the time came to head to New York for the late-night performance, it was, improbably, that trio that Dylan chose to bring along.

What unfolded was a three-song set that was equally baffling, shambolic, and transcendent (those some may disagree with this writer on that last point).

Once the band – sans Dylan – arrived on the East Coast, they prepped themselves with some jamming and rehearsal. Only problem was, they hadn't the slightest idea of what they were going to play.

“We got together for a couple hours in New York the day before the show, just to jam a little,” Tony Marsico told writer Ray Padgett in his Flagging Down the Double E's newsletter. “Bob stopped in a little bit, but we pretty much went cold to Letterman.

“We never knew until the minute we walked out on stage which songs we were gonna play.”

With Holiday wielding a blonde Tele, and Dylan a Strat not dissimilar to the one he played at his notorious set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Dylan – there to promote Infidels, as Letterman pointed out in his introduction – decided to lead the band into a ramshackle version of Sonny Boy Williamson's Don't Start Me Talkin'.

“We didn't know what we were going to play,” Marsico reiterated to Padgett. “If it sounds raw, that's why it's raw. I figured we'd play at least one from Infidels, but when we were walking out on stage, he just said, ‘Sonny Boy in E.’ It was like, ‘Oh, shit, here we go.’”

Speaking about Dylan's guitar style in an interview with Gibson, Nick Baxter, the Executive Music Producer of the recent Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, said, “I think you realize pretty quickly that he never plays the song the same way twice and we wanted to draw from it. The iconic version that everyone is used to hearing on those records was really just one moment in time for him.”

“They pushed record one day, he stepped in front of the mic and played it that way,” he continued, “but there’s no way he’s ever going to play it that way again.”

One looking for an example of this need only listen to the smooth, Knopfler-laden studio version of Infidels opener Jokerman, then watch the second performance of the evening – a revved-up take on that song featuring Dylan's fingerpicking (ish) and (very) loose strums.

In the context of the studio version of Jokerman, the Letterman version has a charming, Stones-y quality, with Dylan's Strat stabs and Holiday's Tele work developing some genuine rapport – a bit of what Keef would call “weaving.”

Unfortunately, though, the Jokerman performance is best known for a painfully awkward snafu involving Dylan ditching his Strat for one of his trademark wailing harmonica solos, only to find that he's been given the wrong harmonica for the song.

Dylan leaves the stage entirely for a moment, re-emerges, seemingly tells the band to hit the chorus again, and is finally given the correct vessel through which to work his magic.

“What's going through our mind is ‘What the fuck?’” Marsico said of the mishap. “And if you see Bob's face, you could read his mind, and he's thinking the same thing.

“So we just looked at each other and kind of laughed. Like, here we go, now you're really flying by the seat of our pants. Hold on. If things were raw and bad before, we don't know where this is going. But it's live, so just go with it, and that's what we did.”

Less eventful, but still character-building, was the motley crew's final tune, an initially stumbling, but ultimately soaring take on Infidels highlight License to Kill.

Why stumbling? Well, that might have had something to do with Dylan not counting the song off – launching into it at his own leisure.

“It's very hard to come into a song without a count,” Marsico said, following with a word of advice for any musician – even one backing a far less spontaneous singer than Dylan.

“Watch the singer at all times. Don't take your eye off him. Especially if you're playing in front of millions of people on TV.”

Reb Beach has enjoyed a high-profile career, playing electric guitar with Whitesnake, Alice Cooper, Dokken and Winger. But one gig that flew under the radar was his appearance in Bob Dylan’s 1987 movie Hearts of Fire, in Bob’s backing band. In a new interview with Masters of Shred, Reb reveals what it was like to work with Dylan.

At the time, Beach was guitarist for New Jersey rock singer Fiona, also in the movie, who landed Beach the gig.

When the shredder spotted Dylan struggling with the tuning on an electric guitar, he stepped in to help out.

“‘Excuse me, Mr. Dylan? Hi, I'm Reb, I'm playing in your band. I just wanted to tell you, that's a Floyd Rose. It's a whammy bar, and you have to tune it from these fine tuners here on the bridge,’’ Reb told him.

Reb does not say what model of guitar Dylan was playing, only that it had a Floyd Rose bridge.

“And he said, ‘Oh, these newfangled things!’ He took it off, didn't even try to tune it, and picked up another guitar,” Beach continues.

“We played the blues. But the next morning at breakfast, I hear this, ‘Hey, Whammy Bar!’ I turn around. It’s Bob Dylan: ‘Let's jam the blues again today.’ And we did. We jammed the blues every day.

“He called me Whammy Bar for that two weeks of shooting. I’d just hear like, ‘It's Whammy Bar over there! Hey, Whammy Bar!’ You know, it's really cool.”

A young and mulleted Beach can be seen in this scene from Hearts of Fire, from 7:49.

It seems Dylan did indeed avoid whammy bars after that: in the film he is seen playing a Fender Telecaster and a Gibson Les Paul, both with fixed bridges.

If you enjoy the thought of Beach jamming the blues, check out his electrifying version of Crossroads with Steve Morse.

Meanwhile, Timothée Chalamet recently revealed which song made his biopic performance as Bob Dylan click.

Monica Barbaro's portrayal of the fingerstyle master Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown has led generations of music fans to discover (or perhaps even rediscover) the folk icon's hefty repertoire. And while the actor didn't manage to snag Best Supporting Actress at last night's Oscars for her celebrated performance, she did develop an undying love for the guitar that seems to be extending beyond her on-screen character.

“I carry my finger pick around all the time now, because it reminds me that I want to keep playing guitar,” Barbaro says in a new Hollywood Authentic video, in which she goes guitar shopping – and plays a few vintage Martins. “And also that it happened because it's so surreal to me that I even got to shoot this movie at all.

“It's really satisfying to get to be a part of something where the standard level is high, and you're working with the best in the industry. [With] the folk chords, you can play a lot of songs, which I think is why it was such an approachable music genre for everyone in in Greenwich Village buying a guitar – because you learn the chords and you can kind of apply them to most songs.

“So once you've got a handle on it, and maybe a couple [of] fingerpicking styles, you could play your own arrangements of a ton of songs, and so you could perform pretty quickly.”

In the various interviews Barbaro has given in the run-up to the Oscars, she revealed that she had never played guitar before auditioning for and landing this role.

“When I got it, I was like, ‘I wish I’d learned guitar, why did I do that to myself?!’” she told Hero Magazine. “I give Jim [James Mangold, director] a hard time too, because he likes to say, ‘It was always yours. As soon as I saw your audition, it was you.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, you could have told me that!’ [laughs]”

As for her relationship with Baez, Barbaro revealed that she combed through “all of that evidence” to make the character – and her distinct guitar playing – come to life. Oh, and she even managed to get Joan Baez herself on the line...

“She wrote about herself a lot, and she’s really honest. She doesn’t hold any punches, even when she’s just talking about herself and her intentions, she has a sense of humor about herself and all of those things made her a very approachable person to understand,” she asserted.

“Also, the music preparation, having not been a singer or guitar player, diving headfirst into that was a way of connecting to the journey she went on as a fourteen-year-old.

She continued, “We had a brief phone conversation at one point and she said to me that she’d fall asleep with her guitar in her bed and then wake up and play it the next day. I was like, ‘Oh my God, I did that too!’ Those sorts of things naturally connect you to a character so it’s not quite as cerebral, it’s about letting that go when you get there.”

As for her co-star, Timothée Chalamet, the actor has already showcased his guitar chops on multiple fronts, including performing Bob Dylan deep cuts on Saturday Night Live.

Timothée Chalamet's transformation into Bob Dylan for music biopic A Complete Unknown has earned him widespread acclaim – including the most coveted of them all, an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

Much has been made of his Dylan-esque guitar playing, showcased both in the movie and during his double-duty appearance as host and musical guest on Saturday Night Live. And while the film features an array of high-end Gibsons, Chalamet started on a humble $200 Yamaha from Guitar Center – just like the rest of us.

“When he first came over we used my guitar. I told him, ‘Show up without a guitar. I have a couple of guitars for us,’” Larry Saltzman, Chalamet's guitar tutor, tells MusicRadar.

“Then he went to Guitar Center here in New York, on [West] 14th Street. And again, this was pre-Covid, November or December of 2019. He did the most humble thing, he went in there and he bought a $200 Yamaha acoustic guitar.

“I spoke to Jim Mangold, the director, about that. Jim was asking, ‘Does he have a guitar?’ I said, ‘Yeah, he went and bought a $200 Yamaha guitar. And Jim goes, ‘That’s interesting.’ I said, ‘Look, if he shows up with it and I think it’s not appropriate we’ll go shopping and I’ll return it.’”

However, the budget-friendly Yamaha turned out to be the perfect guitar to start Chalamet's deep dive into all things Dylan.

“It was very playable and sounded good. And the other thing that was good about it was that you don’t really have to worry about an instrument like that and if it falls over it’s not the end of the world – rather than going out and getting the proper vintage J-45.

“I loved that he showed up with a $200 guitar. He didn’t show up with a $2,000 guitar and he could have. I just loved that he did that. It’s humble.”

For the movie itself, Gibson kitted the actor out with plenty of acoustics, including a pair of custom J-50s as stand-ins for The Bard's original 1947 model, the smaller-bodied, quasi-parlor-style Nick Lucas Special, an SJ-200, as well as a few J-45 round-shouldered dreadnoughts.

Each of the guitars were fully set up with aged strings for historical accuracy and to capture the rawness of Dylan's early recordings. “A lot of the time it was about how we get the guitar to sound almost worse,” admitted Executive Music Producer Nick Baxter.

In more A Complete Unknown news, Saltzman recently shared what it was like to teach Chalamet the nuances of Dylan's playing – and the trickiest song the actor had to learn.

In a new interview with Guitarist, country icon Rosanne Cash has discussed her involvement in “the family business”, alongside the release of two new Gibson signature guitars, based on her father Johnny Cash’s SJ-200 and her own J-185.

Amid the discussion, she describes her father’s contrasting attitude to guitars and guitarists – pointing to the ready accessibility they had as children to even his most valuable instruments and his honoring of Bob Dylan as evidence of his thinking.

Cash says Johnny’s original SJ-200 (made for him by Gibson during at the height of his initial success in the late-’50s) was a familiar sight around the house as a kid.

“It was like, ‘Oh, that’s my dad,’” says Cash. “That guitar is inseparable from my idea of who my father is.”

Echoing the sentiments of her recent conversation with Guitar World – in which, she explained Johnny “wasn’t precious in any way; no matter how valuable the guitar” – Cash tells Guitarist, “He had no sense of being territorial about his guitars when we were kids. You were always welcome to play his guitars.”

Instead, he viewed guitars as tools and preferred to place his respect with the players who used them – be that his own children, or even other artists he admired.

“In fact, there’s a tradition in country music,” says Cash. “Where an older musician – in order to give respect to a younger musician – would give them his guitar. So I remember my dad gave Bob Dylan one of his guitars.”

The exchange is thought to have involved a Martin acoustic guitar and happened when the two players met at Newport Folk Festival in 1964.

Cash Sr. was already a vociferous supporter of the songwriter, and the feeling was mutual, as Dylan later recalled in Martin Scorcese’s documentary No Direction Home.

“Johnny Cash was more like a religious figure to me,” said Dylan. "And there he was at Newport you know standing side by side. Meeting him was a high thrill of a lifetime and just the fact that he had sung one of my song was just was unthinkable.”

Blues musician and music critic, Tony Glover, recalled the event in the same film.

“Johnny Cash and June Carter came by after Bob had put a couple or three tunes on tape for him on some portable machine,” says Glover.

“Johnny called him out in the hall and Bob came back in a few minutes later and he says, ‘He gave me his guitar.’ Bob Neuwerth was saying, ‘Wow! That's an old country tradition – if somebody gives you their guitar that's a big honor...’”

Elsewhere, in the Guitarist interview Cash says it was again the meaning behind the instruments, as opposed to the tools themselves, that had her approaching the Gibson project with some trepidation.

“I thought, ‘Do I really want to do that?’ You know, did it seem like encroachment?” says Cash of the signature builds.

“[And I thought] ‘In this point in my life, it’s not like I’m a kid and just starting out and trying to co-opt something.’ It just made sense. My dad and I are the only father and daughter in the Nashville Songwriters Hall Of Fame. And I thought, ‘Well, this is something like that.’ The generations go on, and we have a family business.”

As a young man, Eric Bibb found himself immersed in the burgeoning folk scene of New York. His father, Leon Bibb, a renowned activist in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, entertained house guests that included Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Pete Seeger, and their influence doubtless went on to help crystallise Eric’s own musical direction.

Eric found a home in the blues genre and, with five decades of relentless touring behind him, his new album, In The Real World, presents itself as something intensely personal.

“Maybe it’s an age thing,” he says, “but I think you get to a point where you realise, ‘My goodness, I’ve actually traipsed over many a mile…’ and you start reflecting on that journey because it’s suddenly amazing that it’s been that long.

“I realised that, in that reflective mode, I’m starting to touch base with a lot of my early influences and the things that have become an ingredient in my gumbo, you know? So I just feel like, both thematically and musically, this record is a kind of a self-portrait.”

What exactly were the influences you drew upon?

“Well, let’s start with the music. Everything from early African American songs like John Henry and Midnight Special and later work songs. Early soul music from the early ’60s that grew out of the wonderful gift of Sam Cooke and the whole church secular get-together singers, and folk singers and songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Dylan and Odetta.

“Those people were influences, not to mention, musically speaking, that jazz was an influence, too. It was part of the soundscape. So everything from gospel sounds to impressionistic music, like the music of [Gabriel] Fauré or [Maurice] Ravel. All of those were ingredients that influenced me in terms of melodies and that kind of thing.”

Was there anybody in particular who influenced you to pick up the guitar in the first place?

“Well, my dad had a guitar at home. He was an amateur player who realised early on that his beautiful voice needed a beautiful guitar player, and he was not going to be that guitar player in time for his career. So he started hiring wonderful guitars. So around my home, not only was there a wonderful little Italian-made guitar, there were also the instruments of my father’s accompanists around when they were rehearsing at home.

“I had access – and not only sound-wise, but actually physical access – to fine guitars from a pretty early age. I was fascinated, and by the age of seven I was starting to take lessons.”

Out of all those influences, it’s the blues that has remained a constant factor in your own music.

“It has emerged to be so, but I don’t think it was a plan. I don’t think it was a given. The blues was always in the mix. What’s interesting is how, not only is it in the mix, but as you say, it’s become, unconsciously but then consciously, the foundation of my music making, even my songwriting. It’s taken a place that certainly feels good, but it’s become a dominant influence in what I’m doing in some way or another, subtle or not subtle.”

What was the thinking behind recording the album at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios?

“Well, we really wanted to make a statement. We really wanted to let people know that what we’re doing is work that we feel is important, and that it deserves the best circumstances for producing the music available, within some kind of reason.

“And we also realised that there is this whole competitive business of music making and selling your music – and getting promotion has everything to do with who notices you. You have to kind of wave all kinds of flags to get noticed. Your music is not enough. You have to have all kinds of other activities going on around that lets people know that the music even exists.

“So being able to not only have the advantage of a wonderfully equipped and wonderfully run studio, we also wanted a studio that was going to suit us musically. Really, what you want is to create something beyond the music – a buzz, if you will – so that part of it was driven by our artistic needs and sharing artistic vision with a guy like Peter Gabriel, but also had to do with making a big noise about it.”

One of the things about the album that really shines out is the arrangements, and this was something you did with Glen Scott, your producer. Can you tell us how that collaboration works out in practical terms?

“Glen and I have been working together very closely on my albums for more than 20 years. And we are prolific, as they say, meaning that we produce quite a few records in a short time. We’ve become so familiar with the collaborative process that it’s beyond thought; it’s almost telepathic in some ways.

“Glen is an arranger who really understands what I want to say and what the song says. He really serves the song sonically and he’s so diverse and informed [with] so many genres at his command.

“His ability to accent one or another of the influences that you’ll hear in a particular song is just, for me, genius. He’s somebody who knows how to frame my work and create the kind of excitement in the arrangement that keeps listeners aware that there’s a story being told.”

Glen is also a multi-instrumentalist, isn’t he?

“You know, you have a person who not only has a command of different genres but also several instruments, and not only several instruments but several styles involved with all of these different instruments.

“It’s an amazing array of information that he has available. I mean, I could go on and on, but it starts to get nerdy. Glen’s skills together with what I write and sing and play is just a marriage made in heaven. It’s been wonderful and it just gets more and more enjoyable making music together.”

Where does an arrangement begin?

“It’ll start with Glen hearing the song and with him framing the groove that the song is in. First the percussion and the bass, you know, and Glen plays all of that himself. So it begins from there and then it just seems to flower. And, finally, we reach a point where that’s it. We kind of both intuitively feel like it needs no more. Maybe it even needs less. Then comes a final mix – there you have something you hope you’re going to be happy listening to 10 years down the road.”

Robbie McIntosh plays lead guitar on many of the tracks on In The Real World.

“The combination of having Glen as a producer and a side-person like Robbie McIntosh is heaven. He is a heavenly guitar player and a great guy to be around – so humble for his amazing talent and sensitivity. I would play with Robbie any day, every day. We’ve done some gigs with him, and it’s always wonderful to play with him. We’ll definitely try to be together at some of the [forthcoming] UK gigs.”

Which guitars did you bring into the studio with you?

“One that you’ll see often in the videos, a guitar I really leaned on was made by a luthier named Juha Lottonen. It’s the guitar that has pickguards above and below the soundhole. It’s wonderfully warm and funky, one of my go-to guitars.

“Another guitar was made by Larson Brothers, which is a brand once famous because of the two Swedish immigrants who went to New York and created great guitars, but their logo got sold to a company in Germany who uses that original Larson Brothers logo. The luthier who made this all-mahogany guitar is Maurice DuPont. He makes a lot of Maccaferri-type Gypsy jazz guitars, but this is a flat-top, a great guitar.

“What else did I use? A Bulgarian guitar that’s just amazing – it has a big, kind of oversized bout with a second soundhole. A great guitar that I don’t tour with, but record with when I can.”

How do you amplify your guitars when you play live?

“You know, ever since I started touring with these wonderful guitars, I’ve been using soundhole pickups made by Fishman called Blackstack pickups. They’re passive, which is great. You don’t have to fool around with batteries, which I’ve always found really annoying on tour to keep checking all of that. They’re dependable and have a magnetic sound that I like.

“I run it through a Roland Jazz Chorus amplifier. I split the signal between a DI and then combine that with the microphoned amplifier. That’s the kind of liquidy sound I like. When Roger Bucknall [of Fylde Guitars] first started making these wonderful guitars that I play, it seemed to really work well with them. A kind of amplified acoustic guitar sound that’s as close to an acoustic guitar sound as possible.”

Alternatively, in the studio it all comes down to sensitive mic’ing combined with good production.

“You’re not wrong. It starts there, of course, and then it goes through the whole process. And Glen is a technician – an audio technician extraordinaire – as well, which means that he’s with the process from beginning to end. And he’s a stickler, you know? He’s forensic. Many people comment on the sound quality of the album. I mean, it’s multi-dimensional. And it doesn’t come that way by coincidence or luck; it’s really down to somebody who really has a lot of experience.

“I’m in a position as an artist that is so longed for in my circles, you know? And I’m there. I have a situation where I can make music with somebody without it being full of friction or complicated. I haven’t always had it; I’ve struggled, like everybody does, to try to get that balance between creative freedom and commercial accessibility and all of that. So, yeah, you’re looking at a happy camper.”

Do you still enjoy touring?

“That’s a great question. The emphatic answer is ‘mostly, no’. Let’s keep it real. I enjoy travelling sometimes and I enjoy playing almost always. It’s a question of having done it intensely for decades. The older I get, [the more] I’m finding my comfort level is reduced as I haul guitars around the world. Where it didn’t really bother me [before] to the extent that it would today, lugging three guitars around and changing hotels every night is no longer that attractive.

“It was necessary – and it was even enjoyable, to an extent – for a long time, when you’re trying to get on the map and trying to let people know that you’re out there. But having come past that point, I have to really start thinking about, ‘Do I really want to do it like this for the next 10 years?’ And I don’t.

“So travelling to favourite venues, meeting bands, wherever I have them, on those kind of limited terms is what’s attractive to me. I don’t want to stop performing because I love it, and travelling can be wonderful. It’s just a question of degrees.”

Have you tried any of the new material out in front of a live audience yet?

“I have but not that much. It’s been very limited because the album is really quite fresh. And usually, if I’m touring – and I was very busy last summer – I don’t really have time to put new material into the book in the same way that I would if I had a long period of hiatus.

“But I’m looking forward to it because this album, more than others of recent issue, is really centred around my guitar, meaning it needs to be prominent in the mix. Meaning that the tune can be borne along with my guitar alone. And that’s always been my goal. I’m that troubadour kind of guy, I want to be a self-accompanying singer.”

• In the Real World is out now via Stony Plain.

Timothée Chalamet's portrayal of Bob Dylan has earned him various accolades (including a hotly tipped Oscar nomination) – and, acting aside, one of the most talked-about aspects is his commitment to Dylan's musicianship and, by extension, the unequivocally Dylanesque guitar-playing he recently showcased on Saturday Night Live.

The tutor behind the star? Larry Saltzman, the session pro with a hefty resume, which includes touring with Simon and Garfunkel, and who also moonlights as a guitar tutor to the stars. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he looks back on those initial sessions and what it took for Chalamet to transform into The Bard.

“When he got to my place and we had our guitars in our hands, I asked if he’d played, and he said just a little. He kind of knew one or two chords and formed a couple of chords, and that’s what he did. I could tell he was just very musical right away.”

Teaching Chalamet the Bob Dylan guitar lingo also included tackling Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, from his sophomore album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan – complete with its distinct, albeit tricky, fingerpicking.

“It blew my mind to revisit it,” Saltzman admits. “And it’s a really fast tempo. I was intimidated by teaching it to him. I was intimidated from playing it myself. He wasn’t intimidated by it. He just did it. It has a little funny hammer in it that comes around every once in a while.

“Sometimes Bob would maybe vary the pattern. But in the middle of me explaining it to him, he’s already playing. I mean, it wasn’t playing like at tempo and perfectly, but he’s already like going.”

Just last Saturday, Chalamet put all his and Saltzman's work on full display on Saturday Night Live by playing a couple of Dylan deep cuts – namely, the Gibson acoustic-driven Tomorrow Is a Long Time, released in 1971 as a live recording from Dylan’s 1963 concert at New York's Town Hall and covered by a host of other artists, including Elvis; Outlaw Blues, from Dylan’s 1965 electric breakthrough Bringing It All Back Home; and Three Angels, from 1970's New Morning.

In early December, Gibson revealed a collection of A Complete Unknown-themed acoustic guitars, following the legacy brand’s involvement in crafting a number of guitars specifically for the film.

Less than a week after Mike Bloomfield's extravagantly painted 1966 Fender Telecaster made its way to the second-hand market, the Tele he played during Bob Dylan's infamous Newport Folk Festival set in 1965 has now come up for sale.

However, some rather choice and stomach-turning mods have been made to the heavily butchered electric guitar.

Listed on the Retro Fret website for $275,000, the instrument was present for a change-making moment in rock ‘n’ roll history, as, with Bloomfield by his side, Bob Dylan ditched his acoustic guitar to go full electric for the first time during the Newport Folk Festival.

As the gear seller says, “Dylan’s take-no-prisoners plugged-in performance with Michael Bloomfield loudly ripping away at his side on this Telecaster was a seminal moment in pop culture.”

Vintage Guitar Magazine’s October 2015 cover story called it “the guitar that killed folk”, but that set isn’t the only story it has to tell.

As for the instrument’s build date, its neck is stamped August ’63 while the body is hand-dated to October. Bloomfield called it his first “good” electric, and he first recorded with it on a 1965 demo session with Columbia producer John Hammond Sr.

Soon after, Bloomfield was brought into Dylan’s camp and used the guitar during the recording of Highway 61 Revisited. This particular Tele can reportedly be heard on Like A Rolling Stone and Tombstone Blues.

Bloomfield also favored this Telecaster when he helped record the self-titled debut album by The Paul Butterfield Band.

As the story goes, the electric guitar was still in one piece when Bloomfield decided to swap it in late 1965 for a ’54 Gibson Les Paul. John Nuese, its left-handed new owner, then made the crude cutaway to make it easier to play. He was the guitarist for Gram Parsons during the singer’s early career.

At the same time as the cutaway was made the entire electronics were updated, but its last owner – who bought the Tele at a 2015 auction – has changed the pickups to hand-wound 1963-style Seymour Duncan Custom Shop single-coils, with modern reproduction 250k pots and wiring to help restore the guitar’s original character.

The strap button on the tail end is original, but several old holes on the treble side show a history of moving button locations. Retro Fret promises a “superb playing instrument”, despite its scars and modifications.

Head to Retro Fret to learn more.

A unique 1966 Fender Telecaster once owned and played by blues rock pioneer Mike Bloomfield has been listed for sale at Carter Vintage.

The vintage gear emporium in Nashville, TN, is no stranger to standout signature models – its current stock includes a Gibson Collector's Edition version of Kirk Hammett's "Greeny" 1959 Les Paul Standard for $65K – and this six-string is no different.

As the story goes, Bloomfield owned two of these models, one of which kept its original blonde finish but was famously cut down and converted to a left-handed model.

The second, and the one now looking for a new home, was given a swirling custom blue paint job reportedly composed by the sister of Bloomfield’s then-girlfriend.

Both guitars were used across the late ’60s and early ’70s as Bloomfield forged a reputation with his psychedelia-tinged blues rock.

Away from his solo work, he was Bob Dylan’s right-hand man for a time, and featured during his iconic 1965 Newport Folk Festival performance.

Bloomfield also played a key role in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s early success thanks to his fizzing chemistry with their guitar and harp-playing main man. He left the outfit in 1967 to form The Electric Flag, before reprising his partnership with producer Al Kooper, whom he had worked with on Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone.

As for this unique-looking electric guitar, it notably starred during The Electric Flag’s performance on the Don Kirshner's Rock Concert variety show in 1974.

Later that year, Bloomfield was booked for a gig at the Cave Club in Vancouver but disappeared before it ended. The understandably-furious club owner’s rage was later tamed by Bloomfield, who offered up the two guitars he’d left behind as compensation. One had been his blue-painted ’66 Tele, the other a ’59 Les Paul.

The Tele was then sold to Bruce Lopez – the bass player in the cover band Butch Whacks and the Glass Packs, which regularly played at the venue – for a mere $125 in cash. After that exchange, it is said to have been “hidden in a closet for decades”, before being discovered after Lopez’s recent passing.

The guitar features an alder body, maple neck, and a Brazilian rosewood fretboard. As part of its restoration, the bridge pickup has been rewound to its original specs because it had rusted from years in the shadows. Otherwise, the guitar remains the way Bloomfield had it.

The instrument can be yours for $235,000 – and it comes complete with a hard case in which the original bridge pickup coil can be found.

Head to Carter Vintage to learn more.

Peter Yarrow, an icon of the '60s folk explosion best known for his guitar, vocal, and songwriting contributions to the era-defining trio, Peter, Paul & Mary, has died at the age of 86, his publicist confirmed. He had been suffering from bladder cancer.

“Our fearless dragon is tired and has entered the last chapter of his magnificent life,” Yarrow's daughter, Bethany, said in a statement. “The world knows Peter Yarrow the iconic folk activist, but the human being behind the legend is every bit as generous, creative, passionate, playful, and wise as his lyrics suggest.”

As one-third of Peter, Paul & Mary – alongside Paul Stookey and the late Mary Travers – Peter Yarrow was a huge figure in the '60s folk scene that produced the likes of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.

Through songs like Puff the Magic Dragon – which Yarrow co-wrote with his college friend, Leonard Lipton – alongside renditions of folk standards of the past, such as If I Had a Hammer, and the future (Bob Dylan tunes like Blowin' in the Wind), Peter, Paul, & Mary deftly walked a tightrope between commercial accessibility and strident political activism.

The trio, which came together in 1961, were rewarded with a remarkable run of commercial success – two chart-topping albums, a number of Top 10 hits, and millions of albums sold in total.

Aside from their commercial success, Peter, Paul & Mary had tremendous cultural impact.

Their third album, In the Wind, contained three songs by a then-mostly-unknown Bob Dylan. Two of those covers, Blowin' in the Wind and Don't Think Twice, It's All Right, became hits for the trio, and helped establish Dylan in the public eye as a songwriter to be reckoned with.

Alongside other folk stars of the day, like Dylan and Joan Baez, Peter, Paul & Mary were active in the civil rights movement, performing at the 1963 March on Washington, at which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Activism remained a constant throughout Yarrow's life and career. His anti-war original, Day Is Done, was one of the group's last hits before their dissolution in 1970.

On his own, Yarrow remained a consistent progressive voice and prolific musician, releasing four solo albums from the early- through mid-'70s.

It was in that decade, though, that Yarrow's career was permanently tainted by his conviction on, and guilty plea to, charges of taking “immoral and improper liberties” with a minor.

Though Yarrow was later pardoned by President Jimmy Carter after serving three months in prison the decade before, further accusations of sexual impropriety towards minors would be levied at Yarrow over the years.

In 2019, Yarrow admitted to committing acts of sexual abuse over the course of his career, writing in a statement, “I fully support the current movements demanding equal rights for all and refusing to allow continued abuse and injury – most particularly of a sexual nature, of which I am, with great sorrow, guilty.”

Nevertheless, Yarrow cast a large shadow in folk circles for the rest of his life, both with Peter, Paul & Mary – who reformed in the late '70s and remained together until Travers' death in 2009 – and in his own right.

In a tribute to Yarrow, Paul Stookey said, “I was five months older than Peter – who became my creative, irrepressible, spontaneous, and musical younger brother – yet at the same time, I grew to be grateful for, and to love, the mature-beyond-his-years wisdom and inspiring guidance he shared with me like an older brother.

“Politically astute and emotionally vulnerable, perhaps Peter was both of the brothers I never had – and I shall deeply miss both of him.”

In a message to Yarrow recorded shortly before the artist's death, Jared Polis, the Governor of Colorado, said, “Peter, you've been an inspiration to so many, and will continue to be for centuries, for millennia, to come. You are magic, and everything that you've touched has become magic as well.”

Monica Barbaro – who stars as Joan Baez alongside Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown – has opened up about her acoustic guitar experiences while playing the folk hero in the hugely popular biopic.

Directed by James Mangold, the film follows Chalamet as he charts Dylan’s rise from aspiring singer-songwriter to world-conquering folk hero, leading right up to the point he sent shockwaves through the folk community by “going electric” at the Newport Folk Festival.

Along the way, he encounters a handful of influential figures from Dylan’s life and the wider music community – who are similarly played by a stacked cast of big-name actors – from Edward Norton’s Pete Seeger, Boyd Holbrook’s Johnny Cash and Scoot McNairy’s Woody Guthrie.

The film also stars Barbaro as fellow folk legend Joan Baez, who was one of the first major players to record Dylan’s songs in the early 1960s.

Speaking to the New Yorker, Barbaro discusses her performance of Baez, and reveals that Norton had tried to steal – and encouraged her to take for herself – the vintage Martin guitar she had played in the movie.

“Ed Norton kept stealing it from me,” Barbaro says of the artist-accurate 1929 Martin 0-45 that can be seen onscreen. “He was telling me stories about how to keep props. I was, like, ‘Ed, I’m not stealing this guitar!’”

During her time filming, and since she refused to steal her on-screen six-string, Barbaro instead visited a vintage guitar shop in search of a Martin of her own that could help develop her burgeoning guitar chops.

However, just as Dylan did at the infamous Newport Folk Festival, she now wants to break the golden rule of folk music and pivot away from the acoustic: “I shouldn’t admit this publicly, but I really want to get an electric guitar,” she told the New Yorker.

“I’ve been carrying these finger picks that I used for the movie in my pocket ever since we filmed. It’s like a totem to prove that it happened.”

It’s not the first time a Martin acoustic has been a talking point in a Hollywood film.

By now, you’re probably familiar with the famed Hateful Eight Martin scandal, which saw Kurt Russell destroy a priceless acoustic loaned from the company’s museum without realizing he wasn’t in fact holding the prop replacement.

Gibson acoustics also make up a large part of A Complete Unknown, too. For the film, Gibson gave Chalamet a collection of pristine, handcrafted guitars.

Many nine-year-old guitarists dream of shredding on stage with their electric guitar heroes, but very few get to live that reality – let alone at that age.

As part of the second generation of talents to play in The Allman Brothers Band, Derek Trucks’ story is much different. Indeed, by the time he was legally able to buy a drink, he’d already played live with Buddy Guy, Bob Dylan and a handful of other greats.

“I was really lucky to play with a lot of my heroes early,” Trucks tells the Foo Fighters’ Chris Shiflett on a new episode of the Shred With Shifty podcast. “I started touring at nine or 10 years old, and remember doing shows with Buddy Guy and sitting in with Bob Dylan at 11.”

It proved to be an incredible early boost to Trucks’ resume, which got Shiflett wondering: at such a young age, was he encouraged to show off his talents, or did he recoil into the background?

“I was reserved naturally so they would have to pull you out of your shell a little bit,” he replies. ”Buddy Guy was always great about that. He’d let you know, like, ‘Get your ass out here.’

“What I remember about Buddy Guy is, we were playing a lot of small blues clubs in the early ’90s. He hadn’t really had [his] big resurgence yet. When he wanted, he would bring the band down to a whisper. I could hear the amps humming.”

In that moment, Guy instilled what would eventually become a core characteristic of Trucks’ playing into the baby-faced guitarist.

“I remember that discipline and that use of dynamics just being a huge thing that went off in my head. It’s powerful when you can bring things down to that level but still hold the intensity. Then when you take the lid off of it, it’s a big trip that you've taken.

“I'm lucky,” he repeats. “I’m sure there were people along the way that were less inviting, but those were usually the mediocre musicians. The great ones are usually really confident in their shoes and they’re like, ‘Come on, what you got?’”

Guy has a long history of supporting the next generation of blues guitar players. Earlier this year he linked up with Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram for a Fender promo, and during their chat he recalled how Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page all rushed out to buy Fender Stratocasters after they saw him play.

Trucks, meanwhile, recently reunited with his former bandmate Warren Haynes to finish a long-forgotten Allman Brothers track. Around that time, Haynes remembered how he was skeptical at first about Trucks – then only 11 years old – ahead of seeing him play live for the first time. His opinion quickly changed after Trucks started to play.

Back in May, Trucks traded licks with Duane Betts for an emotional cover of Dreams following Dickey Betts’ passing.

Gibson has revealed a stunning collection of acoustic guitars themed after A Complete Unknown, the forthcoming Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet.

In the process, the company detailed its partnership with the film's production team, particularly its Executive Music Producer, Nick Baxter.

Having built a number of guitars specifically for the film, and the recording sessions for its soundtrack, Gibson worked with Baxter and Chalamet on getting the iconic singer/songwriter's distinct guitar tone – which shifted around even in the few years the movie covers – exactly right.

In a newly-published interview with Gibson, Baxter recounted the exhaustive process of mirroring Dylan's early/mid-'60s sound.

“I was listening to a lot of music with Jim [Mangold, the film's director] and Timmy to try to pick apart some of the magic in these recordings,” Baxter said.

“On the Dylan side, we were given a whole library of unreleased stuff from Dylan’s manager, Jeff Rosen, which was incredible. Hours and hours; I think it was almost 16 hours of recordings of him in hotel rooms, apartments, and studios – little tape machines that he turned on one day. I think Timmy listened through pretty much all of it, which is an incredible undertaking.”

As is the case with just about every aspect of his musical approach over the last 60 years, Dylan's early guitar playing was always subject to sudden and unexpected changes. As Baxter tells it, that fluidity actually made capturing his guitar sound a bit easier.

“I think you realize pretty quickly that he never plays the song the same way twice and we wanted to draw from it,” he explained. “The iconic version that everyone is used to hearing on those records was really just one moment in time for him. They pushed record one day, he stepped in front of the mic and played it that way, but there’s no way he’s ever going to play it that way again.

“It’s sort of daunting but also freeing; we don’t have to be super-dogmatic or rigid about what we’re doing with the songs. We wanted to capture the essence and the spirit of it, but not get too bogged down in the minutiae, which Jim was clear about right away, too. So that was liberating.”

As for the guitars themselves, the collection features nine instruments, each of which were used in the making of the film.

They include: a small-body L-00 Original, a trio of SJ-200s – a standard, a Custom Shop '57, and an ornate Johnny Cash signature – a pair of J-45s (a '50s Faded model and a '60s Original example); a J-35 '30s Faded guitar, a Hummingbird Original, and a Southern Jumbo Original.

Ironically, one of Baxter's tougher tasks was getting these pristine instruments to sound... worse.

“A lot of the time it was about how we get the guitar to sound almost worse, in a way,” he told Gibson. “For most of the songs, you need old, dead strings for sure, or else it does not sound right. And a lot of times on these recordings there’s just a sort of dead quality to the guitar. It’s not super-resonant.

“That’s not to say it’s not good – there’s a really cool feeling to a guitar when it’s dead in that way. You can attack it differently. It sort of emotes differently. But recreating that was a challenge.”

Last month, Chalamet opened up about the process of learning Dylan's guitar style, telling Zane Lowe, “It’s a lot of downstrokes, and his strumming pattern in the early ’60s was very different [from his later career].”

The Gibson guitars used in A Complete Unknown will be put on display at the Gibson Garage Nashville starting next week, December 19, through January.

For more about the collection, visit Gibson.

The Byrds were a massively influential group whose legacy has faded somewhat over the years, at least in part due to a steady turnover of members and their exploration of a variety of styles.

But from their debut in 1965 until they broke up for good in 1973, the Byrds helped create and popularize folk-rock, starting with their reworking of Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man, the success of which helped push Dylan to go electric.

Three years later, they helped invent country-rock with Sweetheart of the Radio, which featured singer/songwriter Gram Parsons. His tenure was short-lived, however, as he was soon replaced by Clarence White, a blazing Telecaster player and all-around bluegrass legend who had worked with the band since 1967’s masterful Younger Than Yesterday.

White and late-period Byrds drummer/multi-instrumentalist Gene Parsons (no relation to Gram) invented the B-bender, a string-pulling device that helped White achieve otherwise-impossible sounds on his Tele.

And while CSN&Y legend David Crosby was a founding Byrd, Roger McGuinn – best known for his ringing 12-string Rickenbacker 360 sound – was the only member to be a part of every iteration of the band. His songs in particular had a huge impact on Tom Petty and R.E.M.

Upstate New York guitarist Christian Parker loves the Byrds’ music so much that he has now recorded two consecutive albums full of it: Sweethearts, a tribute to Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and Change Is Now: A Tribute to the Byrds, an all-encompassing salute to the band, focused more on the 12-string McGuinn sound.

The songs on the album, some of which were recorded with session musicians who played on the original versions of the songs, span the band’s entire career. His versions are true to the originals while being distinctly his own.

Why do the Byrds mean so much to you?

“I appreciated the Byrds’ musical diversity, starting with folk-rock and then country-rock. Their influence shaped my musical journey and guided my songwriting.”

When you did Sweethearts, did you plan on doing another volume?

“Originally, I was going to make one Byrds tribute album. I recorded Gene Clark’s She Don’t Care About Time when I started the project. We were thrilled to get Earl Poole Ball, the original piano player [from Sweetheart of the Rodeo], to track Life in Prison.

“After some time, we decided to record the entire Sweetheart of the Rodeo album after Earl suggested we do it in its entirety. We had many earlier songs completed for Change Is Now, so making it a two-volume set seemed fitting.”

The Byrds went through a lot of lineups and musical changes. Can you discuss how some of the various guitarists impacted you?

“The first member to leave was Gene Clark, an excellent songwriter whose songs are some of the Byrds’ best. Dave Crosby was next in line to leave and form Crosby, Stills & Nash. When Clarence White entered the band, it elevated their guitar work. White and Roger McGuinn were electrifying.

“Clarence introduced the B-bender Telecaster, which pulled the B string a whole step by using a mechanism installed by Gene Parsons. He wanted to emulate a pedal steel guitar and blended his bluegrass/fiddle style. He pioneered a style that’s heard even today in players like Brad Paisley.”

Are you playing the B-bender on this album?

“I play it on Ballad of Easy Rider, but Chris Larcombe of Manchester, England, plays on the other bender songs. He has White’s articulated sound down; he does it justice.”

Tell me about that and the other guitars on Change Is Now.

“I played the bender on Ballad of Easy Rider since it was my favorite song. Originally, [the Byrds] cut the bender solo out of the studio version, and I felt it needed to be there on my version – so I played it.

“As for other guitars on the album, I played a Gretsch Tennessee Rose, an Epiphone Casino and six- and 12-string Martins. Gary Jacob plays the majority of 12-string Rickenbacker electric, which was McGuinn’s signature sound. We both play 12-string Rickenbackers on the title track – almost like a double tracking.”

Do you carefully pick the instrument to match the era and the material?

“Yes; I did have some specific thoughts on the gear and the production. I tried to honor the songs and keep them close to the original while improving their sonic quality with modern recording techniques. Our main objective was to get a great vocal performance, then drums and bass guitar, and make the guitar work stand out in the mix.”

Can you tell me about the other musicians on the tracks? How many played on the Byrds’ albums? What did working with them bring you?

“We had Earl Poole Ball on piano and JayDee Maness on pedal steel guitar. They both were on Sweetheart of the Rodeo [Lloyd Green also plays pedal steel on the original album], and JayDee went on to play with Chris Hillman in the Desert Rose Band years later.

“I was honored to have them. I never thought I’d work with these gentlemen and record a classic album from start to finish. I learned a lot in the process, specifically that everyone needs to stay in their lane. Don’t play over top of each other; know your place.”

Is it hard to straddle the line of being true to the material while expressing yourself?

“Honestly, it didn’t seem too difficult to be me. I can only sing how I sing and play how I play. I love the material, so it made it a fun project.”

Can you talk a bit about your original music and how it has been impacted by the Byrds’ music?

I’ve been a songwriter for over 30 years, and the early Byrds’ 12-string sound was on all my earlier recordings in my 20s. I was drawn to McGuinn’s guitar work — and Tom Petty. In 1990, they recorded a song called King of the Hill [from McGuinn’s 1991 album, Back from Rio], which had every element I loved about the Byrds and Petty.

Describe what each of these Byrds members means to you. David Crosby.

“His open tunings and fingerpicking, as well as his beautiful harmonies.”

Roger McGuinn.

“His leadership in the Byrds, his banjo-style picking on the 12-string electric songs like Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season).”

Gene Clark.

“His songwriting and melodies. He’s one of my favorite songwriters.”

Clarence White.

“His genius on the guitar; he never played the same thing twice and kept getting better until his untimely death in 1973.”

Gene Parsons.

“His drumming was locked in with Clarence; he machined the B-bender and installed it in Clarence’s guitar, which Marty Stuart now owns.”

• Change Is Now: A Tribute to the Byrds and Sweethearts: A Tribute to the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo are out now via Edgewater Music Group.

Texas is home to some of the best guitarists the world has seen – and among the best are the underrated. Jim Suhler is primarily known for his lead role in George Thorogood and the Destroyers, but there’s more to his forceful talent for playing slide guitar, transforming that twang of blues into celestial quality.

Starting out in his trio, Jim Suhler & Monkey Beat, he’s gone on to work with incredible artists, collating extraordinary stories along the way. Those including a memorable encounter with Stevie Ray Vaughan, Billy Gibbons officiating his wedding, and Joe Bonamassa’s star appearance on Monkey Beat album Tijuana Bible.

Why did you gravitate towards slide technique?

“Initially it was Johnny Winter’s Captured Live! album. His cover of Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited really hit me hard. I remember going to a friend’s house and watching Dazed and Confused, sitting in his room listening to that; it just blew my mind.

“Slide came more naturally to me than anything else I was trying to do. I was also listening to Robert Johnson in my late teens and started trying to cop a lot of that stuff somehow.”

Monkey Beat’s second album Shake includes the track Snake Bit, where different instruments characterise a snake – slide movements up and down the fretboard, and 16th notes on shakers like a rattle. Was all that intentional?

“Probably only with the shaker! Not necessarily the slide – but now you mention it, yeah, I hear that! I remember cutting that solo. We did it at Compass Point Studios in Nassau in the Bahamas with Terry Manning producing.

“He wanted me to use a particular guitar sound on the solo, but I wasn’t digging the sound at all. Man, he was right! Once I listened to the track it really fit well within it. I’m glad he overrode me that day. I’d never thought of the snake vibe with the guitar before, but I guess you’re right!”

What guitar did you use on Snake Bit?

“It was a ’93 Gibson Hall of Fame Les Paul Junior with P100 pickups. The neck got snapped – I was flying overseas and when I opened the case, it had snapped at the headstock. I had it repaired; twice, actually, but it was never the same. I really miss that guitar. It had such a great sound and great vibe to it.”

Was Monkey Beat a Gibson gig, or did you switch it up?

“On the first album Radio Mojo, any electric guitar you heard would have been a Strat. But the second album going forward I was using more Gibsons. More humbuckers and P90s, just for a little textual variation.

“There were times where a Fender was a little thin. I’m always trying to find a happy medium between Gibson and Fender. It’s a never-ending battle. It’s easier for me to make the Fender sound like a Gibson than the other way around.”

When you joined George Thorogood and the Destroyers in 1998, was it an easy decision?

“My only question was: ‘When do I start?’ Things were slow – I was between albums and struggling financially. I’d actually thought to myself it would be nice to get a side gig with some big band. I got the call and started playing a few months later with them. I was elated. It was a very easy decision to make.”

How has George shaped you as a guitarist?

“First and foremost, George is an entertainer. Even before I was in the band, just watching him, I learned how to deal with the crowd and how to handle an audience. I had always liked playing with a second guitar player so that was easy. If George is playing one thing, I’ll find another thing to play.

“It’s not a ground-breaking musical idea, but learning how to listen, when to step up and when to stay back, is another thing I got with George.”

You opened for AC/DC in 2002. What was it like playing to their crowd?

“They don’t have a lot of patience for anything other than Angus – on the second show in Hamburg, the Black Crowes, who were opening, got booed off. The first show, we got into Bad to the Bone, then they were like: ‘Oh, those guys. I know who this is.’

“I remember AC/DC signed my Strat. I had everybody sign it – Neil Young, Jeff Beck… In fact, when Angus saw Beck’s signature he said: ‘Oh, the bouffant!’ They were great to us; gave us all kinds of access, like standing with the guitar tech. It was just a wall of Marshall amps for as far as you could see.”

How did you get Joe Bonamassa to appear on Monkey Beat’s Tijuana Bible album?

“Joe played on Deep Water Lullaby, which was a title I’d dreamed. A friend of mine – I didn’t know this at the time – had a family member who drowned. I don’t know where this stuff comes from, but it’s floating around.

“The song is very Hendrix, so I was thinking, ‘This really calls for a superhuman to play a solo beyond my abilities.’ I knew Joe, so I called him. He was coming from Houston and had a night off, but he was sick. He came out to the studio, did the solo and killed it.

“He did a couple passes, one with a Les Paul and one with a Strat; I think we used the Strat solo. I tried to pay him some money but he wouldn’t accept it. I’ve got a lot of love for Joe. We go way back; he was still riding around in a van when I met him before he ascended the stratosphere.”

Can you remember the first time you met?

“I was playing with George in San Diego in 2001 and Joe was opening. I walked in and hear this guy playing Cradle Rock by Rory Gallagher, and I was like: ‘Whoa!’

“First of all, Rory wasn’t that popular, so that had my attention. Second, he was absolutely killing it. We became friends from then on. Monkey Beat would do shows with Joe whenever he came through Texas or Oklahoma. He came down to Dallas and played the guitar show with me a few times; he’s a good friend and a good man.”

On a slightly different note, Billy Gibbons officiated your wedding.

“Yeah! The crew working for the Destroyers also worked for ZZ Top and they were still in touch with Billy. I knew our tour manager had been married by Billy; I think they were the first couple. I jokingly said to a crew member: ‘I’m engaged – ask Billy if he’d do it!’

“Then Billy called me, and I thought it was a prank call. I don’t know what he knew about me, but he did it. It was as nutty as you’d think it was. He took it very seriously and his mother, Lorraine, was there. Then we all went down to the Texas coast.

“Billy sent us champagne, chocolates and flowers. You haven’t lived until you’ve gone out on the town in Texas with Billy Gibbons. His influence is very big on me, personally as well as musically.”

You’ve met Stevie Ray Vaughan – how did that come about?

“I never got to play with him, but I had seen him a bunch of times. I met him for the first time in ’89. We had a family jewellery shop in Dallas and Stevie had an old antique watch he brought in to get repaired. I just happened to be there when he came in; in fact I walked right past him when my dad was talking to him.

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

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

“He never come back to get his watch, so in 1990, the last time he played in Dallas, I took the watch out to where he was playing, got backstage and gave it back to him. He did have a light – an aura or energy – about him. It was palpable. It was real and he was very powerful. God bless him; he was a great man.”

Timothée Chalamet is set to transform into Bob Dylan in the highly-anticipated James Mangold-directed biopic, A Complete Unknown. The Hollywood A-lister will portray Dylan as the 19-year-old musician who descended upon New York trying to make a name for himself, up until the time he shocked the music world by going electric.

As part of the role, Chalamet had to learn guitar – but not only that, he had to learn the nuances of Dylan’s playing and his distinct approach to the instrument.

“It’s a lot of downstrokes, and his strumming pattern in the early ’60s was very different. You know, I’ve heard some people say his guitar playing sort of peaked in the ’80s and ’90s, that he was getting better,” Chalamet tells Zane Lowe in a new interview with Apple Music.

Mastering Dylan’s voice and guitar playing was no mean feat, and it was one the actor found challenging and, at times, frustrating. However, he describes how it finally all came together when he performed Song to Woody from Dylan’s self-titled 1962 debut album.

“We did these pre-records – but I’m not playing the guitar on the pre-records – with Nick Baxter, who is a super-talented musical supervisor, and I would butt heads with Nick a lot. The guitar sounded really friendly. It’s hard to get that sound. I mean, he was playing on a guitar that was basically falling apart, you know,” Chalamet explains.

“It was Song to Woody, which is one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs ever [when things clicked]. It was the first one we shot in the movie. You couldn’t do it to a playback because it’s such an intimate scene.

“It’s in a hospital room with Woody Guthrie [one of the most significant figures in American folk music] and Pete Seeger [American folk singer-songwriter and activist], and I did it live. And it clicked, it went great.”

He continues, “And I’m making mistakes in the guitar a little bit here and there. You can kind of fill those in after. [But] I went home and I wept that night, not to be dramatic, but it’s a song I’ve been living with for years and something I could relate to deeply.”

After filming the scene, Chalamet felt “it was the most dignified work” he’s ever done, and while he admits that dignity “might be a weird word here”, he feels “humbled” that he and the team “were just bringing life to a thing that happened 67 years ago”.

A Complete Unknown is slated for a December 25 release in the States, and stars Chalamet as Dylan, Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash, Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, and Scoot McNairy as Woody Guthrie.

In this lesson, we are exploring the guitar style of one of the most celebrated ‘protest singers’ of America in the 1960s and beyond. A legend of the folk genre, Joan Baez was born in New York in 1941 but moved frequently as her father’s employment situation often changed.

An early interest in music saw her learning ukulele as a child and this quickly led her to guitar. Watching Pete Seeger play live in her early teens re-enforced her goal to become a singer-songwriter herself.

As a young adult in the late 1950s she found herself in Boston, where the popular folk club scene provided plenty of opportunities for Baez to hone her musical craft as both a singer-songwriter and guitarist.

Her major performance break came when she was invited to play at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959. Her success there quickly led to a recording deal and the following year saw the release of her self-titled debut album. Although she is a writer herself, her early recordings predominantly featured old ballads, gospels and blues with her original material coming to prominence from the late 1960s onwards.

Baez’s early guitar style falls into the classic folk singer-guitarist territory of cleanly fingerpicked chords with melodic ideas interwoven into the underlying harmony. However, as she started to work with other musicians her ideas became more sophisticated than the typical open chord picking of the protest singer.

This piece examines her mid-1970s style where you’ll find jazzy chord voicings and even some angular dissonance. Baez has a strong Spanish heritage and you can hear this influence in her playing. Anyone who has learned the Spanish classic Romanza will recognise the influence of the picking patterns on the higher strings here.

Listen to one of her most famous originals, like the autobiographical Diamonds and Rust about her past boyfriend Bob Dylan, and you can hear a dark, almost flamenco influence within the melodies and chords that she performs on the guitar within this track.

Whereas many of the folk singer-songwriters would often create very basic guitar parts to accompany their vocals, with Baez you get the sense that over time her arrangements became more creative and composed and could even stand on their own as melodic instrumental pieces.

If you are new to Joan Baez or the 1960s protest movement guitarists in general, it’s well worth checking out these acoustic styles and approaches.

While Dylan and Paul Simon are the names that you may most associate with the American 60s folk sound, artists like Joan Baez have much to offer to anyone embarking on an acoustic guitar journey and provide more of a challenge to the fretting and picking hands.

Study Piece

[Bars 1-16] Baez often breaks out of the open position to create parts on the third, second and first strings. The arpeggiated triads that open this piece are a hallmark of her style and show the sort of approach that Baez takes to adding melodic interest.

She’ll also use ascending and descending scale ideas like the passage in the bar 8 which moves down the E minor scale.

This whole opening sequence hints at the dark melodic Spanish/flamenco sound that is underlying in some of Baez’s writing. However, this then contrasts with the softer major 7 voicings that follow.

[Bars 17-32] From bar 19 there’s another passage on the third, second and first strings. Use a traditional pima approach here so the thumb takes care of the sixth string while the first, second and third fingers play the third, second and first strings respectively.

The Fmaj7 in bar 27 is not in this key (E minor/G major), but it’s a useful passing chord that highlights the more sophisticated style of songwriting that refuses to follow the I-IV- V route.

Warner E. Hodges of Jason & the Scorchers is perhaps the most energetic country rock guitarist of all time. Slinging his Telecaster on its strap 360 degrees over his thigh, spinning in circles, soloing with a cigarette up his nose – while his hat stays on his head and no note is missed – is definitely cowpunk.

Born to country musician parents, he joined the band formerly known as Jason & the Nashville Scorchers in 1981, alongside equally energetic lead singer Jason Ringenberg. Over the decades they’ve been given many wacky genres, but their roots stem from punk rock and country.

“The musical influences from the four guys was a pretty amazing thing,” Hodges says. “Everyone brought their quarter but the four quarters added up to way more than a dollar. We were listening to Hank Williams and George Jones; and also the Ramones, AC/DC and the Sex Pistols. Jason was listening to Neil Young and Bob Dylan. The drummer, Perry Baggs, was listening to Van Halen.”

The Scorchers built a hefty reputation for their wild stage presence. “It was four dudes that all fronted a band before themselves,” Hodges explains. “Everyone had been the guy – nobody was gonna get outshone. You didn’t know where to look or who to watch.”

Were there ever any onstage mishaps with the Scorchers?

“Oh, yeah! It’s an expensive mistake with a Les Paul if you lose it! And that’s happened a few times… I’ve torn up 15 or 20 nice guitars. I would literally put two Telecasters in a gig bag and check it. People would say, ‘Aren’t you worried about them?’ I’d say: ‘They aren’t going to do anything to each other that I wouldn’t do.’

“I had a Sunburst Anniversary Tele that I did the forward throw with in Norway – and I felt the strap go. I was like, ‘Okay, it’s gone.’ I watched it sail out into the dark. I got it back after the show; it went 16 rows deep and it still worked!

“That same guitar got run over by an airplane tractor. It destroyed the case but didn’t do anything to the guitar. I played it the next night! You can’t do that with a Les Paul. That Tele’s probably the toughest guitar I own.”

When did you first feel an emotional connection to the guitar?

“I started noodling when I was 14. The first time I saw AC/DC it was like, ‘I gotta learn how to do that!’ I didn’t sell myself as a guitar player until I was 19 or 20. When I heard Never Mind the Bollocks – we had a little punk rock scene here in Nashville – I was like: ‘Okay, I’m a guitar player. I can do that. I can sell my services.’”

Was AC/DC the drive for you to play rock music?

“Yeah – I’ve seen them 106 times. I go see those guys and I’m that 15-year-old kid again for two hours. It was like, ‘Oh, I gotta get out from behind the drum kit and get out the front there. Angus looks like he’s having too much fun! Let me in on that!’”

Jason & the Scorchers have released many albums over the years, but their most successful track was a cover of a Bob Dylan’s Absolutely, Sweet Marie.

“Part of the reason we did a good job with it was that I thought it was the greatest song Jason Ringenberg ever wrote – I didn’t know it was a Bob Dylan song! Had I known, I’d probably have refused to play on it, like a complete 22-year-old idiot.

“The cover came out the way it did because we didn’t bring a lot of preconceived ideas to the song. And we lucked-up. That was the first time we worked with a real producer, Terry Manning. He was involved with Eliminator for ZZ Top at the time. Terry brought technical proficiency and ideas to the band that we didn’t have as stupid kids.”

Did Bob Dylan have a reaction to your cover?

“We toured with Bob in 1989. The first three or four shows, we weren’t playing Sweet Marie because it was his song. Cut to show four and Bob asks, ‘Why ain’t you boys playing Sweet Marie?’

“‘Well sir, it’s your song.’

“‘Yeah – your version’s better than mine. You should be playing it!’”

I heard he wanted to buy your ’64 Jazzmaster.

“Yes, he did. It was the first guitar my parents ever got me; they left it for me in the closet for when I decided to start learning. I still have it. Most of our debut album, Lost & Found, is that guitar.

“Mr. Dylan asked me almost every day when on tour, ‘Hey, when are you going to sell me that Jazzmaster?’ I said, ‘No sir, I’m not going to sell that Jazzmaster.’ It’s not a seriously valuable guitar – but it is to me. I’d be remiss to get rid of it.”

How much might you have got out of him?

“I wasn’t even going to negotiate. He could have offered me half a million dollars, and I wouldn’t have sold it. It’s not worth anywhere near that, but I’m not selling it. I don’t tour with it any longer – I’ve caught two different people trying to steal it.”

Early on in the Scorchers, you opened some shows for the Ramones and R.E.M. – how did those opportunities arise?

“I don’t know where the Ramones opportunity came from, but we did well with it and they were good to us. They made sure we got fed. By the end of the tour our stuff was broke-down and we were playing all of their gear. They didn’t get all buddy-buddy with us, but when we had a problem they sorted it out for us.

“The R.E.M. thing… I saw their first show in Nashville. They played to 16 people in a little punk rock club and slept on the floor of the club. We probably played 100 shows with them in the first three years we were together. They’re great guys, and I still have a relationship with all four of them.”

You’ve moved between Fender and Gibson throughout the years. Why is that?

“The Scorchers is basically a Fender Telecaster single-coil gig. I played Teles and Strats forever. But I had to become a Gibson guy in Dan Baird and Homemade Sin, as well as Bad Satellites.

“It’s almost like learning another language. The first few tours, I’d bring a Les Paul and a Telecaster, and I would inevitably end up on the Tele. I finally just brought two Les Pauls, and I was miserable for a week or two. It was such a different animal. All my Tele tricks didn’t work on a Les Paul; your right hand, you’ve gotta have a lot more finesse.

“Here in Nashville, there’s the Gibson Custom shop. Cody Higbee built me a magnificent guitar – a 1958 custom shop Lemonburst. I’m glad I had to learn to speak the Gibson language. I’ve got a nice Custom Shop SG with a huge neck, and a Custom Shop 345 with a jumbo neck. The fatter, the better for me.”

What guitar gear do you depend on now?

“I went through a lot of gear, but what I’m trying to do has remained the exact same. With Jason & the Scorchers I always tried to find one amp that could play ‘cry in your beer country’ and as loud crazy punk as you wanted to go.

“If we’d just played country, I would have bought a Fender Deluxe. If we were playing just rock music, I’d have bought a 50- or 100-watt Marshall and been done with it.

“Now I use a Goldfinger 45 Bognor amp – it’s the best amp to do both things. It’s a two-channel amp that also has a volume boost for both. The clean side, you can’t make it get dirty; it will not get dirty. The dirty side, you have three different versions of a Vintage Marshall amp.”

For readers who might not be familiar with the Scorchers’ music, could you recommend one song that encapsulates the band?

“I’d have to give you two or three: Harvest Moon, Sweet Marie of course, and Last Time Around, all from Lost & Found. Then White Lies, Pray for Me Mama or Still Tied. It’s all serious ‘cry in your beer country’. I’ve given you six now!”

Any regrets from your musical journey?

“Not regrets. It took what it took to get here. I do wish I didn’t start drinking. I think alcohol and other things caused a lot of things in Jason & the Scorchers, and I’ve seen it destroy many a band. It would have been nice if I had just said, ‘Nah, I’ll pass.’”

What would your advice be for someone who’s going through a similar situation?

“Don’t drink, just for a day. Take a day off. You don’t have to decide about tomorrow just now. Take the day off. Talk to someone about it – nobody understands a drunk better than a drunk.”

• The Warner E. Hodges Band’s latest album Soul Shaker is out now.

If you ask Alexa to define 'country music turned up to 11', she might just point you to the new star-studded single from Ira Dean and Ronnie Dunn.

Tele-Man, a song about – who’d have guessed it – the Fender Telecaster sees the pair recruit some seismic talents in the form of country greats Vince Gill, John Osborne, and Brent Mason.

The all-star lineup pays homage to the twangin’ country guitar staple and the players that make it sing. That’s why Dean was so eager to bring in some of the genre’s finest talents to bring their fire to the track.

As such, Ira Dean, often seen with an acoustic guitar or a bass on his lap, saw the track as an opportunity to bring his dream of forming a country version of the Traveling Wilburys – a supergroup comprising Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty and more – to fruition.

“The Telecaster isn’t just a guitar – it’s an emblem of country music,” he says. “If I never do another song again, I can hang up my hat on this one.”

“This song is rapid-fire fun with amazing Telecaster players on it – some of the best in town,” Dunn returns.

Hinged on a spinning chord progression, there are sumptuous single-coil solos and lightning-quick vocals everywhere you turn. More still, there’s no ego at play: it feels like every solo is delivered with a smile as each player shows what they feel a Tele does best.

“When I heard Tele-Man with all these guys on it just smoking, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s really cool,’ I was thrilled,” says Nashville’s hottest hired gun Brent Mason. He recently told Guitar World that “session players don’t get the credit they deserve”, but he’ll no doubt get plenty of plaudits here.

John Osborne extends those sentiments, saying he was “already sold on the idea” before discovering the company he’s keeping on the track. “Give me any reason to play guitar, I’m down,” he says. “But the fact that I get to play with my heroes is so awesome.”

Gill, meanwhile, describes the track as “a lot of entertainment with a lot of really talented guys”.

Tele-Man teases Dean's new album, I Got Roads, which is expected in early 2025. Gretchen Wilson will also feature on the record, as will Uncle Kracker and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers drummer, Steve Ferrone.

“If you’re a country music fan who doesn’t put these guys on their Mount Rushmore to record with,” says Dean of the talent that litters Tele-Man. “John Osborne was the last piece of the puzzle. The first time I did a show with Brothers Osborne I heard John and knew right there and then he had to be part of this band in my head.

“From the bottom of my heart I wanna thank Ronnie, Vince, Brent, and John for making this dream come true.”

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist, Mike Campbell, has recently recalled an incident involving his beloved 1962 Gibson Les Paul SG Junior, during which his guitar snapped in two in front of a live audience, right in the middle of an impassioned Bob Dylan speech.

“I'm on tour with Bob Dylan, with Tom [Petty] and the Heartbreakers. We're at The Forum here in LA [in 1986, as part of the True Confessions Tour] and I had this guitar on and I'm standing there trying to be cool,” Campbell tells Gibson TV.

“And I kind of went to scratch my ears or whatever. And Bob was talking to the audience, going on some important spiel about something, and the strap came loose, and it was wide open, and it went 'bam'.

“And the amp was up, the guitar was up, and the neck broke off right here [pointing to the nut area]. And Bob turned around like, ‘What the fuck are you doing back there? I'm trying to talk up here.’ And my heart just broke, because I love that guitar, you know, and I just thought they're gonna repair it, but it'll never be the same. But it kind of is. They did a great job.”

In the same interview, Campbell talks about how he bagged this guitar at a bargain price.

“I was in Hartford, Connecticut, on tour, and I went for a walk, and passed a video store.

“I just walked in, and somehow, in a conversation, they said, ‘Oh yeah, we have a couple of guitars, and this is one of them.’ They had this. Why would a video store have guitars? I don't know. They had two. In the back was this one, and I bought them both. It was like, I don't know, 120 bucks.”

Earlier last year, Campbell joined Larkin Poe on stage for a surprise rendition of the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers classic, Runnin’ Down a Dream, a performance the band described as a “lifetime memory made”.

Artifacts from Jim Irsay’s renowned billion dollar guitar collection are set to go on display as part of a new exhibition hosted by Indiana University in Bloomington.

The ‘Amped at IU’ exhibition has been marketed as a “collaborative effort” that aims to “celebrate music” by displaying pieces from Irsay’s world-famous collection of culturally significant electric guitars and acoustic guitars.

Indiana University’s installation is also set to “highlight the history of the modern guitar”, and will run until September 2025.

However, Irsay will be bringing out the big guns for one day only, and will only have the most significant examples from his collection on display for the grand opening of the exhibition on September 27.

As far as collections that tell the story of modern guitar go, you’d be hard pressed to find one that upstages the assortment of instruments that has been assembled by the Indianapolis Colts owner over the past few years.

Sure, some collections may boast more historically vintage guitars – we’re looking at you, Nerdville – but few (if any) can hold a candle to the sheer scale of Irsay’s catalog, which comprises some of the most famous guitars in existence.

Some notable examples that immediately spring to mind include David Gilmour’s Black Fender Stratocaster, Jerry Garcia’s Tiger, the Strat Bob Dylan used to ‘go electric’ at Newport Folk Festival (which is Irsay's favorite of the lot) and the Fender Mustang that Kurt Coban used in the video for Smells Like Teen Spirit.

In late 2023, Irsay also acquired Eric Clapton’s 1964 ‘The Fool’ Gibson SG, with his collection also comprising legendary instruments once belonging to the likes of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Prince.

And it looks as though the ‘Amped at IU’ exhibition will serve as a greatest hits for the catalog. According to a press release, “guitars owned and played by legendary musicians such as Jerry Garcia, Bob Dylan, David Gilmour, Eric Clapton, Prince, Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Nancy Wilson, Les Paul, Pete Townshend, and The Edge” will all feature.

As mentioned, these will only be available to view for one day, but that’s not to say Irsay won’t be lending some other pieces to the year-long exhibition.

For the rest of the year, Irsay will be lending the University some other vintage guitars, such as an 1850s Martin acoustic, a 1959 Fender Stratocaster, a 1950 Epiphone Electar Lap Steel, and 1971 Fender Rosewood Telecaster and a ‘Burst Les Paul.

“The exhibit is focused on the history of the modern guitar and allows patrons to survey some of the most important and iconic instruments of the last 70 years,” the University writes.

“It reflects on how guitars and similar stringed instruments have impacted popular music genres including jazz, country, folk, and especially rock and roll.”

It’s not the first time elements of the Jim Irsay Collection have been on display and parts of it have been featured in a variety of exhibits and concerts around the US since 2021.

Last December, The Jim Irsay band played a free show with Buddy Guy, Billy Gibbons and Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and some guitars were put on display prior to the performance.

The exhibit is free and open to the public, and those interested in attending are able to register for guided and self-guided tours of the Irsay collection.

Visit Indiana University’s website to find out more.

Cage The Elephant's Nick Bockrath is known for his diverse portfolio of vintage guitars. However, he recently revealed that one lap steel guitar, a vintage Gibson BR-6 lap steel, belonged to Nashville legend William “Bucky” Baxter, famously a member of Bob Dylan's backing band.

“Bucky Baxter sold this to me, who was my good friends’ dad, and he was my buddy, as well as a mentor, when I first moved to town [Nashville]. And I think it's from the ’30s or ’40s,” says Nick Bockrath in a rig rundown video with Premier Guitar. “He played this thing with Bob Dylan and Steve Earle.

“When he sold it to me, he was like, 'This is the only lap steel I would go out and play rock and roll with, like you're doing, so really, this one's for you.’ This is a badass guitar and keeps me connected to the Buck.”

Baxter also served as a sounding board for Bockrath when it came to guitar-buying advice. “Due to Bucky's advice, I remember I was like looking at [pedal] steels. I was checking out like, Sho-Buds and all this stuff.

“And I'm like, ‘What do you think of this one?’ He'd be like, ‘Too heavy, you know? Just get a GFI. You're not gonna want to learn how to tech the thing. You don’t want to learn how to be in tune for the first couple of years, right?’ I was like, ‘Huh, that's good advice.’ So I got this GFI, and I gotta say, it's heavy enough. It's perfect.”

Bob Dylan recognized Baxter's steel guitar mastery and requested steel guitar lessons from him in the early ’90s. These lessons led to Baxter joining Dylan's backing band as a steel player, joining Dylan on the 750 show-strong Never Ending Tour.

He also played at Dylan's iconic 1995 MTV Unplugged concert, and on his Grammy Award-winning album Time Out of Mind (1997). In addition to Dylan, Baxter was a founding member of Steve Earle's The Dukes and featured on albums by R.E.M., Ryan Adams, Joe Henry, Kacey Musgraves, and Beastie Boys.

While we’re on the steel feels, Guitar World recently checked in with Instagram star and pedal steel player, Noah Faulkner, AKA Pedal Steel Noah.

In this lesson, I will be focusing on the techniques and approaches of three early country artists: Merle Travis, Lester Flatt, and Hank Williams.

While these players sat firmly within the country and bluegrass genres – Flatt, as one half of the legendary Flatt & Scruggs guitar and banjo duo; Travis, a country megastar after whom Travis picking was named; and Williams, a troubled songwriting genius who died just before his 30th birthday – today’s Americana artists blur all of these stylistic boundaries. 

Today, Americana incorporates techniques from bluegrass, country, folk, blues and more to create its unique sound. 

In its earliest form, Americana means Appalachian mountain music, which then develops into a number of different styles from bluegrass to American folk, the latter giving voice to artists like Paul Simon, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, who brought the nascent sound of Americana to a much wider audience. 

It also encompasses elements of country, blues, and Louisiana cajun music, which makes Americana a catch-all for several different styles and therefore meaning things to different people. As you’ll see from this study, each artist had a unique approach to the guitar which inspired many generations to come.  

Example 1

In this Travis picking example, the melody moves while the bass plays a root/octave pattern. Travis used his thumb and first finger for plucking everything, but most guitarists use second and third fingers for the third, second, and first strings. Chet Atkins refined Travis picking like this to make the technique his own. 

Example 2

Now you can try the ‘other’ Travis bassline which incorporates the fifth string against the earlier root/octave pattern. Remember with Travis picking you are still generally playing through chord progressions so the thumb has to be adept at quickly altering its pattern as you change chords. 

Example 3

This example tests your ability to move between two different chord shapes and basslines while sustaining a melody line over the top. At first this may feel like a lot to process, so start slowly and focus on getting the picking-hand thumb to the point where it’s automatically and accurately playing the bassline. 

Example 4

For this Lester Flatt-style alternating bassline on a D major chord, Flatt would have used a thumbpick which gave him a different angle of attack and therefore a slightly different sound from that produced by a pick. You can play this with downstrokes all the way. 

Example 5

Here’s the percussive element of Lester Flatt’s style. The three-string D chord is played staccato so it only sounds briefly. Take the pressure off the chord as soon as you have played it but don’t remove the fingers altogether. Ease off the pressure and you’ll notice the chord stops sounding which creates a more percussive quality.

Example 6

Here the chord is played on beat 2 and the offbeat, as well as beat 4 and its offbeat. If you are using a thumbpick the approach is similar to the Carter pick/flick style though here you can use just the first finger of the picking hand for the down/up flick, or the first, second and third fingers together for the down/up motion. 

Example 7

Intros and outros are a huge part of what the guitar does in bluegrass, and Flatt was famed for his G major runs like this one. It’s based around a G major scale in the open position and takes us from G to D and back again. If you only learn one bluegrass lick then this is the one! You may find this easier to play with a plectrum. 

Example 8

Although Hank Williams’ style was simple he played with a great feel and, when combined with his ‘choppy’ strumming, gives you the rhythm guitar style that is at the core of country playing. This example in 3/4 time shows how an alternating bassline works on a mid-tempo waltz. 

Example 9

This next Hank Williams style example shows how he’d play loose strumming patterns in 4/4 with the alternating bassline approach, again note the slight swing feel in here and make sure you are accurate when picking bass notes followed by chords. 

Example 10

Williams hinted at bluegrass in his more up-tempo tracks. The alternating bassline/chord pattern is still here but the tempo is faster so work on separating the bass and chords. Play this loosely but see if you can maintain the stamina to play the pattern repeatedly for a few minutes, as you would in a performance.

• The Americana Guitar Book is out now via Fundamental Changes.