“I don’t think of myself as a guitar hero,” Roger McGuinn tells Guitar World modestly. “I just like to play.” In fact, he suggests a little light-heartedly, his Rickenbacker-bred 12-string sound comes from a different instrument.

“I’m a banjo player,” he laughs. “I do fingerpicking on the banjo, like the three-fingered style. I definitely apply that to my electric and acoustic guitar playing.”

He didn’t work alone on Byrds albums like Mr. Tambourine Man (1965), The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968), and Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968). Initially he had help from David Crosby, and later the Tele-toting Clarence White.

“David played up and down strumming rhythm,” McGuinn remembers. “He was a great, great rhythm player. But Clarence played amazing, innovative, improvised leads. You never knew what he was going to come up with. He was improvising all the time – it was like having a loaded machine gun.”

The trio’s guitar chops influenced everything from folk to psych to country –something the 83-year-old could never have imagined. “I didn’t set out to do anything like that. I just wanted to play music. I’m really, really happy about how it all worked out. I’ve had a really good ride.”

We often hear about your 12-string guitar sound when it comes to The Byrds, but David Crosby was a big part of that sound too.

“David was great at harmony; he was into jazz and listened to a lot of intricate harmonies. Instead of singing a straight third, fourth or fifth harmony, he’d interplay them – he’d do a third here, a fourth there, a fifth there, and kind of mix them up. It made the music really interesting.”

How would you describe his approaches to guitar compared to your own?

“I came out of the old school of folk music. They taught me how to fingerpick like Merle Haggard, and the stuff that Chet Atkins did with his thumb, and two fingerpicks. I did a lot of Earl Scruggs-style playing on five-string banjo.

“So I was more of an arpeggio player, as opposed to strumming up and down like David did. He did it really, really fast and really good.”

Since David was into jazz, are there more jazz elements in The Byrds’ music than people realize?

“Yeah! We actually recorded a version of Miles Davis’ Milestones once. We did it in a studio, but it never came out. You can probably find it on YouTube or something.”

Were The Byrds friendly with Miles?

“Yeah – he got us signed to Columbia Records. Benny Shapiro was Miles’ agent. We played an audition for Benny at his house. His 14-year-old daughter was upstairs and came running down, all excited. She said, ‘Daddy, who’s that?’ She thought The Beatles were in her living room!

“The next day, Benny told Miles about this story about these kids who’d came over and his daughter has freaked out. Miles called up Goddard Lieberson of Columbia and said, ‘You know that rock band you've been looking for? I think I got them for you.’ And Columbia, after hearing an audition tape, signed us on his recommendation.”

Miles Davis was no stranger to electric guitar players by the late ’60s, like John McLaughlin. Did he ever ask you or David to be on his records?

“No, that didn’t come up. But there’s a funny story where Miles recorded one of David Crosby’s songs. They were in New York, and Miles invited David to listen to a recording he’d made of Guinevere. And said, ‘Well, you can release it – just don't call it Guinevere or give me any credit!’”

Would you say The Byrds influenced Miles at all?

“I would imagine. He had his ears open to everything that was going on. But I wouldn’t say folk-rock was a big influence on him; he was already doing his own thing.”

You focused on clean, chiming tones when British bands like The Kinks and The Who leaned on distortion. Were you ever tempted to do the same?

“I think we used some feedback; but no, we didn’t want to do a lot of fuzz. We didn’t do a lot of phase shifting either. We just liked a clean sound.”

As The Byrds got into psychedelia and LSD, did it alter how you approached writing and playing?

“We’d all done LSD and smoked pot, you know – we were kind of there! I don’t think it had a real big impact on the songwriting or guitar playing… it was just that we saw brighter colors and got high!

“We didn’t really write drug songs on purpose. People called Eight Miles High a drug song, but it was really jazz. We were inspired by John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar; it was an amalgam of Indian music and modern jazz.”

Can you remember writing Eight Miles High?

“Gene Clark had the chords when we flew to England and did a tour over there, where we met The Beatles and The Stones. We had a great time hanging out with them, and flying back, we decided to write a song about the tour.

“Gene said, ‘How high do you think this plane is?’ I said, ‘Probably about 39,000 feet, maybe seven miles high.’ But The Beatles had a hit with Eight Days a Week, and Gene thought eight was a cooler number than seven.

“So I said, ‘We can change it to Eight Miles High’ – you know, poetic license. But later some radio stations did the math and said, ‘Airliners don’t fly eight miles high. They must be talking about some other kind of high!’”

The Byrds shifted more toward country rock when Clarence White joining the replaced David Crosby. Which era do you feel closer to?

“I love them both for different reasons. The recordings we did for the first couple of albums were the best; and then, the live onstage Byrds were the best with Clarence and those guys.”

Do you feel there’s one quintessential Byrds album?

“I like The Notorious Byrd Brothers. I think that it’s got a lot of good innovation on it, and some pretty songs. And Gary Usher was a good producer.

“We were all kind of listening to The Beatles so we included some sound effects and things like that. And I think by that point I did have a phase shifter, but I wasn’t using any different guitars or amps at that point.”

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.

Martin has announced a surprise acoustic guitar drop by unveiling the D-11E 'Rock the Vote', which is designed to “inspire young people to get involved in our democracy”.

The instrument was designed in collaboration with David Crosby’s estate, artist Robert Goetz, and Rock the Vote – a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing the number of young registered voters across the US.

The three parties hope to spin an inspirational story with the guitar and what it represents.

“David was a patriot,” says Martin boss, Chris Martin IV. “He believed deeply in this great experiment of ours, and his passion for voting is something we wanted to honor and continue.”

The guitar follows the D-16E Rock the Vote that was launched ahead of the 2020 US Election, carrying the same message of the value of political participation.

The build unites American sycamore satin back and sides with a spruce gloss top that boasts Goetz’s bold artwork of Crosby himself. Its dreadnought size and 000 dimensions, meanwhile, offer a “powerful protective sound and comfortable depth”.

The D-11E also features an L.R. Baggs M80 soundhole pickup and Luxe by Martin Kovar strings, which are said to last longer than standard string sets and pack a unique, frequency-balanced tone.

“Kovar is a unique alloy of two ferromagnetic metals, nickel and cobalt, not found in conventional phosphor bronze strings,” Martin explains. “It’s the ideal pairing for players seeking warm, authentic amplified tones in any performance setting.”

The limited-edition release coincides with Martin making a $5,000 donation to Rock the Vote.

“I believe it’s our responsibility as citizens to participate in our democracy,” Martin continues. “It's important that you register, it's important that you vote.”

At $1,649, it’s not the most expensive Martin acoustic on the market, but nor is it the cheapest. While it represents a good cause, it remains to be seen whether a premium acoustic guitar with the artwork of a musician – though a huge player in the counterculture movement of the 1960s – from a bygone era will catch the attention of young American players.

That being said, it is far cheaper than the $2,799 asking price of its predecessor, and its return to market suggests that the guitar did sell.

Head to Martin to learn more about the Martin D-111 Rock the Vote guitar.

Visit US.gov to register to vote.

2023 was a standout year for the guitar – 12 months that saw fantastic innovations in the gear space, and players of all genres raise the bar, and move the instrument forward in amazing, unique, and unexpected ways. 

Sadly, though, it was also a year in which we had to say goodbye to a staggering amount of guitar geniuses who were just as innovative in their day, and helped lay the bridges that today's players cross. 

Here, we recognize those guitarists, and their contributions to the instrument. 

This list is presented in chronological order.

Sebastian Marino

A veteran heavy metal guitarist, Sebastian Marino did tours of duty with both Anvil – playing on their 1991 album, Worth The Weight – and Overkill, contributing to the latter group's The Killing Kind, From The Underground And Below, and Necroshine albums, respectively. 

Later, Marino pivoted to backstage work, becoming a sought-after guitar tech and crew member for a number of notable rock acts. 

“Seby was a dear friend and I will miss him profoundly,” wrote Anvil singer/guitarist Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow of Marino. “Worth the Weight was an extremely special Anvil album and it will keep Seby alive through our history forever!”

Alan Rankine

A beloved figure in Glasgow, Scotland's music scene, Alan Rankine helped found Electric Honey Records, a student-run label headquartered at Glasgow's Stow College (now Glasgow Kelvin College). Electric Honey served as the home for early releases by Biffy Clyro, Snow Patrol and Belle and Sebastian, and provided those and many other groups crucial support and exposure in their formative years. 

Rankine also played guitar in The Associates – a unique post-punk group that found success in the UK in the early '80s with the top 20 hits Party Fears Two and Club Country – and found success as a producer, manning the boards for releases by Paul Haig and Cocteau Twins. 

In a statement posted to Belle and Sebastian's Facebook page, the band's drummer, Richard Colburn, said, “If it wasn’t for Alan, our path would’ve been very different. We owe a lot to him. Alan was a fantastic, generous and talented person who will be sorely missed by everyone that knew him. He was an unbelievable musician and his musical legacy will live on forever.”

Jeff Beck

By any measure, Jeff Beck was one of the greatest, and most influential, guitarists of all time. His aggressive, fearless approach to the instrument seamlessly blended influences from blues, jazz, and... well, whatever else caught Beck's fancy. His fingerstyle playing was always expressive – ignoring showiness in favor of powerful, flawlessly executed melodic runs, pinpoint phrasing, and jaw-dropping bends.

Stepping into the giant shoes of Eric Clapton as his replacement in the Yardbirds in the mid-'60s, Beck pushed the popular group to new artistic heights, influencing countless psychedelic-, blues- and garage-rock-minded guitar players in the process. It was on his own, though, that Beck displayed the full, staggering breadth of his talent and creativity.  

Beck began his solo career with a pioneering, thundering instrumental titled Beck's Bolero, and would go on to innovate for the remainder of his life. He helped shape the sound of blues- and hard-rock guitar with 1969's Beck-Ola, combined rock and fusion approaches as no one had before with 1975's Blow by Blow, returned to his rockabilly roots on 1993's Crazy Legs, flirted with techno on 1999's Who Else!, and touched on classical orchestral arrangements on 2010's Emotion & Commotion.

“If you ask me about some other players, I might lean toward their early work but with Jeff Beck, I immediately think of his most recent record,” Joe Satriani said of Beck's constant evolution in a 2021 Guitar World interview.

“How does he make us all feel that the most happening Jeff Beck is the one that’s happening right now? That’s pretty remarkable in an industry that’s so focused on what you did decades ago or your highest-charting thing. 

“As you and I are talking,” Satriani continued, “he’s working on something that’s going to blow us away, and we’re not going to know about it for a bit, but you know he isn’t just sitting around doing nothing and he’s certainly not thinking about something he did in 1972! It’s a combination of pure talent, constant innovation and fearlessness.”

David Crosby

A legend in the annals of '60s and '70s rock, David Crosby was a larger-than-life figure who served as a rhythm guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter for the Byrds, and subsequently Crosby, Stills & Nash (and sometimes Neil Young). Grounded in folk techniques, plus an eclectic mix of other influences, Crosby's playing helped bolster his greatest strength – his songwriting. 

After growing dissatisfied with, and departing, the Byrds in the late '60s, Crosby teamed up with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, creating with them a hugely influential soft-rock sound powered by dazzling harmonies and killer songcraft across the board. Though he wasn't the supergroup's foremost hitmaker, Crosby's contributions to CSN(Y) – such as the defiant counterculture anthem, Almost Cut My Hair – brought a more daring, experimental, and atmospheric side to the group's radio-friendly catalog.

Crosby brought that same restlessness to his solo career, which began with 1971's If I Could Only Remember My Name, an often sparse but strong LP whose foreboding, hazy atmosphere forecasted the sounds of the indie-folk explosion of the 2000s and 2010s. Though his career was derailed by a much-publicized battle with addiction in the '70s and '80s, Crosby – once sober – would remain active onstage and in the studio for the remainder of his life.

“The soul of CSNY, David’s voice and energy were at the heart of our band,” Neil Young wrote in tribute to Crosby. “His great songs stood for what we believed in and it was always fun and exciting when we got to play together.”

Antony “Top” Topham

Before Clapton, Beck and Page, there was Antony “Top” Topham, who co-founded the Yardbirds and served as the band's first lead guitarist. Though he'd leave the group in late 1963 – before any of the band's studio material – he helped establish their energetic, blues and R&B-influenced sound.

Topham pivoted to session work in the late '60s and the beginning of the '70s, notably lending guitar work to future Fleetwood Mac keyboardist/vocalist Christine McVie's solo debut, Christine Perfect. He released his first, and only, solo album, Ascension Heights, in 1970, and would go on to join the Subud spiritual movement, after which he changed his name to Sanderson Rasjid.

Remarkably, a full 50 years after his original departure from the group, Rasjid rejoined a reconstituted Yardbirds in 2013, before leaving the band for good two years later.

“He’d been my best friend at school, and had introduced me to the music I fell in love with,” Yardbirds guitarist Chris Dreja said of Rasjid in 2007. “Pretty soon, we were playing four or five nights a week. which made it a paying proposition.”

Tom Verlaine

With fellow guitarist Richard Lloyd, Tom Verlaine drove the sound of Television, a proto-punk quartet that specialized in nervy, arty rock driven by tight rhythms and Verlaine and Lloyd's interlocking, weaving guitar work.

Though never commercially successful, Television left a significant mark on New York City's nascent punk scene in the mid-'70s, which included a number of bands that would go on to significantly eclipse them in popularity years later, such as Talking Heads, the Ramones, and Blondie.

Influenced by avant-garde music and jazz as much as rock, Verlaine brought his unique musical vocabulary to the guitar, and helped define Television's revolutionary debut single, Little Johnny Jewel, Parts 1 & 2, and their seminal 1977 debut album, Marquee Moon.

Verlaine, Patti Smith once wrote, played “lead guitar with angular inverted passion, like a thousand bluebirds screaming.”

Jesse Gress

A perennially underrated Strat-slinger, Jesse Gress spent many years in Todd Rundgren's band, and also played with the Tony Levin band, and with former Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty.

Gress is most well-known, however, as an instructor. He was a longtime contributor to Guitar Player magazine, and authored both tab and score books – for the Beatles, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Guns N’ Roses, and more – and his own lesson tomes, such as The Guitar Cookbook and Blues Lick Factory.

“Jesse was an institution,” Guitar Player editor-in-chief Christopher Scapelliti said of Gress. “His lessons were like gold to our readers, and everyone was a better player for the knowledge he shared with us. I was sorry that he left the magazine to focus on his music and writing, but we were all very lucky to have benefitted from his wisdom, insights, and talents for so many years. God bless him.”

David Lindley

A multi-instrumentalist and session guitar great, David Lindley featured prominently on albums by Linda Ronstadt, Warren Zevon, Ry Cooder, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Rod Stewart, and, most famously, Jackson Browne.

Lindley contributed to each of Browne's albums from 1973's For Everyman through 1980's Hold Out, shining on lap steel in particular. With the country tinge of his steel work, Lindley helped – through his contributions to Browne's work and to many similar albums of the period – shape the sound of West Coast soft-rock in the process.

Lindley's session schedule remained busy far beyond the '70s, and he even found time to record a number of albums with oud/hand drum master Hani Naser, experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser, and drummer Wally Ingram.

“The loss of David Lindley is a huge one,” Jason Isbell wrote on Twitter upon hearing of Lindley's death. “Without his influence my music would sound completely different. I was genuinely obsessed with his playing from the first time I heard it. The man was a giant.”

Gary Rossington

Guitarist Gary Rossington was a key member of Lynyrd Skynyrd – arguably, along with the Allman Brothers Band, the most popular and influential Southern rock band of all time – for their entire history. Indeed, at the time of his death, Rossington was the band's last surviving original member.

Along with Allen Collins and first Ed King, then, later, Steve Gaines, Rossington was an integral part of the band's trademark three-guitar attack. That three-guitar-sound, coupled with frontman Ronnie Van Zant's unapologetic but nuanced lyrics about the Skynyrd's rough 'n' tumble life in the South, won them a national audience that transcended genre. 

Free Bird – the closing track on the band's 1973 debut album, (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd) – has become, in the 50 years since its release, one of the most iconic rock songs of all time, while Skynyrd's funky 1974 hit Sweet Home Alabama (co-written by Rossington) has become a classic rock staple, especially in the South. 

Rossington survived the tragic 1977 plane crash that claimed the lives of Van Zant and Gaines, and, a decade later, helped spearhead the band's reunion – with Johnny Van Zant taking his older brother Ronnie's place on vocals.

“Gary was not only a great guitar player, he also composed a lot of the classic guitar melodies that Lynyrd Skynyrd is known for, and he co-wrote so many of their timeless songs,” Warren Haynes wrote in tribute to Rossington. “Their unique blend of influences, filtered through their own musical personalities, created a style of music all to itself which became the soundtrack to millions of people’s lives. Gary was leading the charge.” 

Jim Durkin

A thrash/progressive metal guitar veteran, Jim Durkin co-founded the band Dark Angel, and played on their first three albums – 1985's We Have Arrived, 1986's Darkness Descends, and 1989's Leave Scars. 

Though they never reached the commercial success of the so-called Big Four of thrash, Dark Angel were influential, and well-respected by their peers, with Durkin's equally brutal and complex guitar work leading the way. 

In a GoFundMe created to help Durkin's family with funeral and memorial costs, Durkin's loved ones spoke of both his guitar acumen and kindness. 

“While best known for creating ear-blistering, adrenaline-inducing, soul-slaughtering guitar riffs and writing songs that would become legendary in a genre of metal that his band helped create,” the statement reads in part, “he [Durkin] was also a gentle giant with an incredible singing voice who would stop everything to move an injured animal – insect, bird, reptile, mammal – out of harm's way.” 

Mick Slattery

As a co-founder of Hawkwind, Mick Slattery played a brief but significant role in the development of what would come to be known as space-rock. 

Though he left the group in 1969, before their debut album, Slattery featured featured on the band’s first demo, and played with them at their legendary first shows at the All Saints Hall in Notting Hill. Decades later, Slattery re-surfaced as a guitarist in Space Ritual, a band comprised mainly of former Hawkwind members. 

In a social media post announcing Slattery's death, Hawkwind singer/guitarist Dave Brock wrote of his “fond memories from our younger days.

“In the late ’60s, we used to rehearse in my upstairs flat in Putney and also in the basement of Bob Kerr's music shop in Gwalior Road, playing loud music, much to the annoyance of our neighbors.”   

Wayne Swinny

For almost three decades, Wayne Swinny served as the lead guitarist for nü-metal mainstays Saliva. Swinny brought a brawny, hard-riffing classic rock element to Saliva's sound, opening them up to listeners slightly turned off by the Korns and Slipknots of the world, and making them a crowd-pleasing live favorite. 

In a statement following Swinny's death, Saliva vocalist Bobby Amaru said that Swinny “was a guitar hero onstage, with all the rock ‘n’ roll swag that most guitar players dream of.”

Tom Leadon

The younger brother of Eagles multi-instrumentalist Bernie Leadon, Tom Leadon served as one of the guitarists in Mudcrutch – the band Tom Petty fronted before he found fame with the Heartbreakers. 

Though Leadon fell out with Petty in the early '70s, and departed from Mudcrutch before the latter transformed the band into the hugely successful Heartbreakers, Leadon would go onto lead a fruitful music career in Southern California.

With his brother, Bernie, Don Henley, and Glenn Frey, Leadon co-wrote the Eagles' Hollywood Waltz, played in Linda Ronstadt’s backing band, and with the band Silver, which scored a top 20 hit in 1976 with the song, Wham Bam Shang-A-Lang.

After decades out of the spotlight, though, Leadon – at Petty's request – re-joined the latter and his former bandmates in a reunited Mudcrutch. The resurrected Mudcrutch – with Leadon and Campbell on guitar, and Petty on bass – would go on to record two albums, 2008's Mudcrutch and 2016's Mudcrutch 2, and stage multiple successful tours, before disbanding following Petty's untimely death in 2017.

Leadon's Mudcrutch bandmate – and Petty's six-string sidekick in the Heartbreakers – Mike Campbell, described Leadon as his “deepest guitar soul brother.”

“We spent countless hours playing acoustic guitars and teaching each other things,” Campbell said of Leadon. “A kinder soul never walked the earth. I will always miss his spirit and generosity. Sleep peaceful my old friend.”

Guy Bailey

As the guitarist and co-founder of Quireboys, Guy Bailey helped bring straight-ahead, no-nonsense rock back to the upper regions of the UK charts, just before the arrival of the grunge tidal wave. 

The co-writer of all of the tracks on the band's hugely successful 1990 debut album, A Bit of What You Fancy – including the album's UK Top 20 hit single, Hey You – Bailey was a low-key, but integral, Keith Richards-like presence in the band; both personality-wise and on guitar.

“Guy was the kindest, funniest man you could have the pleasure of being around,” the Quireboys' frontman, Spike, wrote of the guitarist. “He was loved by everyone he ever worked with, all the bands he ever toured with and all the Quireboys fans he ever met. He certainly loved you all more than you will ever know.”

Ian Bairnson

Though the name Ian Bairnson may not immediately ring a bell, you've definitely heard his skilled fretwork. 

A native of the Shetland Islands, Bairnson was an A-list session guitarist who appeared on albums by Paul McCartney & Wings, Kenny Rogers, Tom Jones, and, notably, lent an acrobatic, bend-heavy solo to Kate Bush's 1979 smash, Wuthering Heights. 

Bairnson was also a key member of the Alan Parsons Project, serving as the group's chief guitarist on every single one of their studio releases. So, if you've ever wondered who played the thundering guitars on the Parsons Project tune Sirius, a dramatic instrumental that became immortalized as the entrance music for the Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls, that's Ian Bairnson. 

Remembering his late bandmate, Parsons said that Bairnson was “a musical genius.”

“He was a true master of the guitar,” Parsons said, “he knew every possible playable guitar chord and how to describe it – 'G Minor Sixth Add 9' or 'C Sharp Major Ninth Add 13,' but amazingly, he never took the time to learn conventional musical notation. 

“Another indication of his incredible talent was when he picked up the saxophone and played it like a pro on stage with the British incarnation of The Alan Parsons Live Project – he had only spent a few short weeks learning the instrument.” 

Lasse Wellander

Though never an official member of the band per sé, Lasse Wellander helped drive ABBA's world-conquering sound as their stage and studio guitarist of choice. 

In the studio, Wellander's precise, song-serving playing was a crucial ingredient to the band's incredible string of hits. Onstage, though, the superstar quartet gave Wellander a surprising amount of room to stretch out – a particular example being his soulful solo on the Live At Wembley Arena version of Eagle. 

“If you listen to the Live At Wembley Arena album, for example, it was much looser than on the records,” Wellander explained to Guitar World in a 2022 interview. “Of course, we played the things that belonged to the song, but there were parts where it was much looser. It sounded rockier live than on the record, and there were some solos.”

Eagle, Wellander told Guitar World, was his favorite ABBA song to play live. 

“I liked Eagle because I had a long guitar solo in that song,” he said. “I enjoyed it all, actually, but I looked forward a bit more to that number. It was amazing being out on the road. We played six days at Wembley Arena, full house.”

Mark Sheehan

Mark Sheehan was a prolific, much-sought-after session guitarist, but it was with the band The Script that Sheehan made his greatest impact.

Influenced by R&B and hip-hop, Sheehan's deft touch on the guitar helped make the band a bona-fide sensation, particularly in their native Ireland.

Irish President Michael D Higgins led the salutes to Sheehan after his untimely death, citing his and the Script's “originality and excellence.” 

“Through their music, Mark and The Script have played an outstanding part in continuing and promoting this proud tradition of Irish musical success across the world.” 

Otis Redding III 

A son of soul legend Otis Redding, Otis Redding III was a guitarist who worked extensively to promote the musical legacy of his late father, and also played guitar in the The Reddings, and with soul veteran Eddie Floyd. 

Having picked up the guitar at a young age, Redding formed The Reddings as a teen with his brother, Dexter, and a cousin, Mark Lockett. One of their early singles, 1980's Remote Control, became a top 10 hit on the Hot Soul Singles chart, and made the lower reaches of the Billboard Hot 100.

After The Reddings split up in 1988, Redding briefly joined soul veteran Eddie Floyd's band as his guitarist, but on one condition. 

“He [Floyd] said, ‘You can play guitar with me, but you’re going to have to sing a few of your dad’s songs,’” Redding told WCSH-TV in 2018. “I was like, ‘Huh? I don’t sing,’ you know. And he was like, ‘Well, you’re going to sing Dock of the Bay with me tonight.’”

From then on, Redding began to more frequently play and sing his father's songs, working to – with the help of his family's Otis Redding Foundation – preserve the musical legacy of his father. Redding also worked with the Foundation to organize summer camps that help teach children to play music, and served as the board president for the local chapter of Meals on Wheels.

Gordon Lightfoot

Alongside the likes of Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot was part of a wave of elite singer-songwriters to emerge from Canada in the late 1960s. 

Lightfoot was both commercially and critically successful, scoring major hits with 1970's somber If You Could Read My Mind and his 1976 epic, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which fully established him as one of the world's pre-eminent guitar-slinging storytellers.

“We have lost one of our greatest singer-songwriters,” wrote Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau upon learning of Lightfoot's death. “Gordon Lightfoot captured our country’s spirit in his music – and in doing so, he helped shape Canada’s soundscape. May his music continue to inspire future generations, and may his legacy live on forever. To his family, friends, and many fans across the country and around the world, I’m keeping you in my thoughts at this difficult time.”

Tim Bachman

The brother of guitarist/singer Randy Bachman and drummer Robbie Bachman, Tim Bachman co-founded Bachman–Turner Overdrive with his brothers and bassist Fred Turner in the early '70s.

Though he left BTO, as they came to be known, in 1974, Bachman still lent a deft six-string touch to some of the band's major early hits, including Let It Ride and the ubiquitous Takin' Care of Business. He would return to the BTO fold a decade later, playing guitar and contributing backing vocals to their final album, 1984's Bachman–Turner Overdrive.

“I am the last of my family on this side with all my memories of our life growing up in Winnipeg,” Randy Bachman said of his brother in a Facebook post, “So grateful for that. I’m sure my parents welcomed him home with my other two brothers who have passed in quick succession since the pandemic. I was the oldest. Rest in peace.”

Rob Laakso

A veteran guitarist best-known for his time with Kurt Vile & the Violators, Rob Laakso was an understated indie guitar hero and multi-instrumentalist.

Aside from his well-regarded time with the Violators, Laakso also played guitar in the renowned indie bands Swirlies and Mice Parade, and worked as an audio engineer on projects for Google, Apple, and Adidas.

“Rob and I worked close together on [Vile's] B'lieve I'm Goin Down... and Bottle It In,” Vile wrote of his late bandmate. “He co-produced many of the tracks alongside me, engineering often [and] playing many different instruments, slaying with ease.

“Wakin on a Pretty Daze was his first full time Violators record and you can see the shift [in] epic proportions from [2011's] Smoke Ring for My Halo to it.” 

Tony McPhee

Though less of a household name than contemporaries like Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, Tony McPhee was a pillar of British blues-rock guitar in the late '60s and beyond.

As the guitarist and singer for the Groundhogs for the majority of their 50-year existence, and a go-to session guitarist – McPhee toured and swapped licks with a who's who of British rock royalty, including Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, and John Mayall.

As a testament to McPhee's blues acumen, he and the Groundhogs backed the legendary John Lee Hooker on multiple UK tours in the mid-'60s, which, in turn, led to the band baking other visiting blues luminaries, such as Little Walter and Jimmy Reed. 

Though they had stiff competition, Hooker regarded the Groundhogs as “the number one British blues band” of their time.

Ryan Siew

A beloved figure in metalcore guitar, Ryan Siew got his start as a teenager on YouTube, garnering attention with his pinpoint covers of finger-twisters by Killswitch Engage, Intervals, and Periphery.

Siew would go on to further prominence as a guitarist in the Australian metalcore band Polaris, who received ARIA award nominations for their first two albums; 2017's This Mortal Coil and 2020’s The Death Of Me.

YouTuber Ryan ‘Fluff’ Bruce was one of many guitarists to salute Siew, writing in an emotional statement, “We were literally just talking about 5150s and Friedman BEs like we always did. It was such a pleasure to know you and see you grow into a world-class musician. I am crying for your family and your band. Rest easy, brother.”

Rick Froberg

A post-hardcore guitar hero, Rick Froberg served as the frontman and guitarist for a number of bands, most notably Drive Like Jehu and Hot Snakes.

Often working with his guitar partner-in-crime, John Reis, Froberg was unafraid to experiment, and all too happy to change his style on a dime – from the ambitious noise of Drive Like Jehu and his and Reis's pre-Jehu band, Pitchfork, to the battering-ram, garage-punk force of Hot Snakes.

Of his friend and musical partner, Reis wrote, “He will forever be remembered for his creativity, vision and his ability to bring beauty into this world.”

George Tickner

Alongside Neal Schon, the band's sole constant member and lead guitarist to this day, George Tickner was one of the co-founders of Journey. 

Though he left the group before they became permanent radio fixtures with giga-hits like Don't Stop Believin', Tickner helped shape their early material, performing on their 1975 self-titled debut album. Tickner was the co-writer of a number of its tracks, including Mystery Mountain and Of a Lifetime.

Though Tickner left the group after their debut, the material he wrote with Journey continued to be used by the band in the coming years, with songs co-written by the guitarist appearing on their second and third full-lengths – 1976's Look Into The Future and 1977's Next.

“Godspeed, George,” Schon wrote in tribute to Tickner, “thank you for the music.”

Edwin Wilson

Edwin Wilson was a master luthier who – during his decades-long tenure at Gibson – served as a major figure in the development of the company's True Historic and Collector’s Choice series, and in the creation of signature models for some of guitar's biggest names. 

Starting with Gibson in 1985, Wilson initially Custom Art and Historic department, before taking the reins at the company's True Historic builds division. After three decades with Gibson, Wilson left to take up a role as the Head of Research and Development at Vista Musical Instruments Ltd., the parent company of the revived Harmony brand and Heritage Guitars. 

“Very sad to hear of the passing of Edwin Wilson,” Joe Bonamassa wrote of the luthier on Instagram. “Back in the day, Edwin was instrumental in developing prototypes for both my signature Les Paul and 335 models as well as the Collector's Choice series for Gibson Custom. He was a good dude – gone too soon.”

Sinéad O'Connor

A native of Ireland, Sinéad O'Connor rocketed to international fame in the early 1990s. Despite generating considerable controversy with her outspoken political views – particularly an infamous 1992 performance on Saturday Night Live that saw her tear a photo of Pope John Paul II to pieces on live television – O'Connor's raw, straightforward songwriting touched millions of listeners worldwide, and forecasted the wholesale post-'80s transformation of popular music. 

O'Connor channeled her traumatic childhood into her self-produced 1987 debut album, The Lion and the Cobra, and became a superstar in 1990, when her re-interpretation of the sweeping Prince ballad, Nothing Compares 2 U, topped the charts in the US, UK, and a number of other countries. 

O'Connor's originals addressed political issues and the singer's struggles with her mental health with incredible candor, helping open the door for countless other songwriters to do the same in their own material.

Though her commercial standing never recovered from the aforementioned SNL performance, O'Connor remained unbowed, politically, in the face of criticism, a boldness that also extended to her eclectic studio output.

Her 1992 LP, Am I Not Your Girl?, explored the world of jazz standards, while 2002's Sean-Nós Nua returned the singer to her traditional Irish roots. 2005's Throw Down Your Arms, meanwhile, saw O'Connor taking on classics from the reggae catalog.

“Really sorry to hear of the passing of Sinead O’Connor,” Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar said of the singer in a statement. “Her music was loved around the world and her talent was unmatched and beyond compare.”  

Randy Meisner

As a first-call session bassist and guitarist, and a member of Poco and, most prominently, the Eagles, Randy Meisner was one of the key figures in the development of the breezy folk- and country-influenced West Coast soft-rock sound that dominated the airwaves and charts throughout the '70s. 

Meisner joined Poco in the late '60s, and though he left the band before the dawn of the '70s, the exposure helped him land a number of high-profile session gigs, including spots with Rick Nelson, James Taylor, and Linda Ronstadt. Those sessions, in turn, led him to Don Henley, Glenn Frey, and Bernie Leadon, with whom Meisner would co-found the Eagles. 

Meisner played bass with the group until 1977, contributing to the band's trademark harmonies and singing lead on a number of tunes, most prominently the classic Take it to the Limit. 

Saluting Meisner, the Eagles wrote that he was “at the forefront of the musical revolution that began in Los Angeles, in the late 1960s,” while recognizing him as “an integral part of the Eagles and instrumental in the early success of the band.”

Sixto Rodriguez

To say that singer-songwriter Sixto Rodriguez had a unique career would be quite the understatement. He released only two studio albums in his lifetime – 1970's Cold Fact and 1971's Coming from Reality – each featuring plain-spoken, acoustic-driven folk songs á la early Bob Dylan, often couched in luscious string and horn arrangements. What really made Rodriguez, as he was known, stand out, though, were his lyrics.

Mincing no words, Rodriguez documented the many woes of his native Detroit, telling tales of addiction and poverty while scorning the corrupt politicians and businessmen that played a significant role in the city's marked decline from its post-World War II heyday. 

Commercially, however, the two albums flopped, and Rodriguez soon left music, and took up a series of manual labor jobs in Detroit.

Entirely unbeknownst to him, though, Rodriguez's two albums found their way into South Africa, where their focus on the mechanisms behind oppression, poverty, and racism connected in a profound way with citizens segregated by the country's brutal apartheid regime. 

The Detroit native became a massive star in the country, but remained for decades unaware of his belated success, all the while never earning a cent from his ample South African record sales.

His incredible story was the focus of the Oscar-winning documentary, Searching for Sugar Man, which helped finally bring Rodriguez the Stateside fame he long deserved in the early 2010s. 

Though he was cheated out of royalties and didn't see success until his twilight years, the singer/songwriter harbored no regrets or bitterness. 

“There have already been rewards just from the opportunity to do all this,” he told The New York Times in 2012. “I guess we all want to get there right away, but I believe it’s never too early, never too late.”

Robbie Robertson

As the guitar-slinger for The Band – who backed Bob Dylan on some of his most influential work, before embarking on a remarkable career of their own – Robbie Robertson left an indelible mark on rock guitar, and had a major role in shaping the sound of the 'Americana' genre (even though he himself was Canadian).

The Band shepherded Bob Dylan through his infamous mid-'60s transformation from protest singer to Strat-wielding rocker, and, later in the decade, established themselves as roots-rock pioneers with one of the greatest debut/sophomore album opening salvos in rock history – 1968's Music From Big Pink and 1969's The Band.

Robertson was the band's leader, and that very creative dominance would lead the group – despite their enormous success – to call it quits with an epic concert they called The Last Waltz. Packed to the brim with the group's superstar friends, it was captured for posterity by Martin Scorsese, and went on to become one of the most famous rock concert films of all time.

Indeed, Robertson's most prominent post-Band work would come with Scorsese, with whom he worked on over a dozen film soundtracks – collections that showed the true breadth and scope of Robertson's musical talent and knowledge. Their last collaboration was Robertson's score for Killers of the Flower Moon, which was released in October of this year, after the guitarist's death. 

In his final Guitar World interview, originally published in 2019, Robertson credited Dylan with inspiring him to bring a cinematic sense to his guitar playing and songwriting – with the Band and on his own. 

“There was a tremendous sense of freedom from what Bob uncovered and revealed to the world. It was like, there are no rules. 

“Even years later when I started making solo records I found I was almost scoring the songs as opposed to strumming along or picking a little riff behind it. It was almost like it was going to be a sonic experience – and that’s continued.”

Bernie Marsden

Best known for his four-year tenure in Whitesnake, Bernie Marsden was an incredibly accomplished rock and blues guitarist, respected and loved by players across the genre spectrum.

Having previously played with Paice Ashton Lord, UFO and Glenn Cornick’s Wild Turkey, Marsden co-founded Whitesnake with frontman David Coverdale in 1978. The guitarist would contribute significantly to the band's first five albums – most prominently co-writing the song Here I Go Again – before departing in 1982. 

With his beloved 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, “The Beast,” Marsden went against the era's prevailing trends by relying more on phrasing and soul than speed to express himself on the instrument – a distinct touch that continued to shine throughout his prolific solo career, and in gigs with Ringo Starr, Gary Moore, Joe Bonamassa, and Robert Plant. 

Joe Bonamassa, a close friend who collaborated with Marsden, cited the guitarist as “a great encourager, a confidant, a brilliant writer and most of all… a dear friend. 

“He was the best of the best and championed so many young careers while being such a brilliant musician on his own. I never saw him happier than the time we camped out at Abbey Road Studios for a month writing music together for what would become [Bonamassa's] Royal Tea album. So much talent wrapped up in such a wonderful human being.”

Jack Sonni

Jack Sonni spent years in the late '70s and early '80s toiling as a relatively obscure session guitarist and Rudy’s Music employee, before he was recruited by Mark Knopfler to join Dire Straits in the mid-'80s.

Sonni joined in time to make a small contribution to the band's extraordinarily successful 1985 album, Brothers in Arms, and performed with the band at that year's record breaking Live Aid mega-concert. 

Sonni only remained with the group for two years, but would go on to work for Seymour Duncan and, later, assist in the development and launch of the game-changing Line 6 POD. 

“A sad farewell to our old friend Jack Sonni, whom I met when he was working at Rudy’s Music Stop on 48th St,” Knopfler said of his late bandmate on social media.

“Jack was a genuine guitar enthusiast who loved to play, jam, and talk guitars and amps all day. He joined us on tour during the Brothers in Arms era and took to life on the road with the band like a fish to water.”

Sammy Ash

The COO of instrument retailer Sam Ash, Sammy Ash helped guide the company – founded by his grandfather – through an era that saw the demise of many formidable names in music retail.

Knowledgable and much-loved in the industry, Ash also happened to have come up with the name of one of the most famous effects pedals of all time; the Ibanez Tube Screamer.

“The name was suggested by the Sam Ash Music family, by Jerry [Ash]'s son Sammy Ash,” Tube Screamer inventor Susumu Tamura told Guitar Player in an interview earlier this year. 

“Sammy asked, ‘Do you know how the Cry Baby pedal got its name?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it sounds like a baby crying.’ And he said, ‘This sounds like a screaming tube amp.’ So when the Maxon OD808 Overdrive Pro was born, Ibanez’s overdrive was named the TS808 Tube Screamer Overdrive Pro.”

“The guitar business has lost one of the greats,” Gibson Director of Brand Experience Mark Agnesi wrote in tribute to Ash. “Sammy Ash was a legend in the industry, a great father, and a passionate guitar nerd. I’m proud to have called him a friend. My condolences to the Ash family.”

Angelo Bruschini

The longtime stage and studio guitarist for the British electronic group Massive Attack, Angelo Bruschini helped bring a brooding rock edge to the band's atmospheric trip-hop sound.

Bruschini made a number of important contributions to the Massive Attack discography, including guitar work on the band's hugely successful 1998 album, Mezzanine. Of note on that album is Bruschini's playing on the song Angel, which sets the guitarist's alternately ethereal and industrial soundscapes over a dark, brooding beat. 

Massive Attack, in a note posted to their social media accounts, cited Bruschini as a “singularly brilliant & eccentric talent.

“Impossible to quantify your contribution to the Massive Attack canon,” they wrote. “How lucky we were to share such a life together.”

Geordie Walker

The long-serving guitar player and foundational member of the iconic post-punk band Killing Joke, Geordie Walker cast a long (and often overlooked) shadow.

Perhaps the most famous example of Walker's uncredited influence is his ominously jangling opening riff to Killing Joke's era-defining single, Eighties, which was blatantly lifted by Kurt Cobain on Nirvana's smash, Come As You Are. 

Part of Walker's wholly unique tone – described by Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan as “a massive sound that has influenced so damn many of us” – came from his unconventional (for post-punk, at least) six-string of choice: a Gibson ES-295.

“Originally I got that guitar because I wanted a distorted sound while still being able to hear the notes if I played a complex chord,” Walker told Guitar World in 2016.

“So the idea was that I should get a semi-acoustic distorted sound, put a contact mic in it, and blend the two sounds. But I saw that [ES-295] in an old magazine and then found one in a little store in West London for £640, which at the time was like $1,000. And as soon as I plugged in, there was the sound.”

Shane MacGowan

As the legendary frontman and sometimes guitarist for the Pogues, Shane MacGowan seamlessly blended punk rebelliousness with Irish musical tradition.

MacGowan's most famous song is the Pogues' Christmas classic, Fairytale of New York, but over the course of five albums with the band, he established himself as a world-class songwriter, contrasting his and the band's boozy and rowdy reputation with evocative, beautifully sketched out and structured lyrics. 

Upon MacGowan's death, Irish president Michael Higgins weighed in on the singer's legacy, saying “Shane will be remembered as one of music’s greatest lyricists. So many of his songs would be perfectly crafted poems, if that would not have deprived us of the opportunity to hear him sing them.”

Myles Goodwyn

An icon of Canadian rock, Myles Goodwyn served as the singer/guitarist for April Wine, a band that – despite never quite achieving household name status in the US – sold over 10 million records worldwide. 

Starting out in the early '70s and stretching into the following decade, April Wine enjoyed a string of FM Radio-friendly hits – many of them written by Goodwyn. 

Famously, April Wine served as the co-headliners of a 1977 show at Toronto's El Mocambo Club, playing alongside “the Cockroaches,” who turned out be the Rolling Stones under a false name. 

Denny Laine

Aside from Paul and Linda McCartney, Denny Laine was the sole constant member of Paul McCartney & Wings, and was an integral part of the post-Beatles band's sound, doubling McCartney's parts, or adding color and depth where needed. 

“If Paul writes a song on guitar, and it’s a very simple thing, I would probably just try to add to that,” Laine explained to Guitar World of the band's process in his final interview earlier this year. “I wouldn’t be the main rhythm guitarist, because what the song needed was accompaniment. 

“I was always pretty in with what Paul was playing, which probably makes it sound more like one part. We did that a lot, where I would play lead parts in unison with him, like on Helen Wheels [from Band on the Run].”

Though not the group's star attraction, Laine was integral to their framework, helping keep Wings together during the infamously troubled sessions for what would become their best-known and most-acclaimed album, Band on the Run. Though he – by his own admission – rarely took solos with Wings, Laine's soulful lead break on that album's Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five is a terrific display of his skill and soulful voice on the instrument.

Laine – who also a co-founder of the Moody Blues, playing guitar and singing lead on the group's smash hit cover of Bessie Banks' Go Now – maintained a prolific solo career after Wings' dissolution in 1981, and toured frequently. Laine played live even well into 2023, revisiting classics from both his Moody Blues and Wings years.

“I can’t be strictly a studio guy. That’s how I came up, playing live,” Laine told Guitar World. “I think that’s the way the best records are made. You take that energy you get from performance and bring it into the studio. Then you come out with something good. It’s a hard thing to do in this business, but that’s what you need to do. It’s all about balance.”   

The Hollies and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young legend Graham Nash has recalled a time he witnessed rock ‘n’ roll legend Little Richard upbraiding a then-unknown Jimi Hendrix for upstaging him.

Speaking to UK newspaper The Times [paywalled], Nash remembered the incident, which reportedly occurred during his first trip to New York with The Hollies in 1965. That night the group were playing a support slot on a bill with Little Richard at Brooklyn’s Paramount Theatre.

“I remember watching the end of Little Richard’s show,” says Nash. “And he came off screaming [at his guitarist], ‘Don’t you ever play your fucking guitar behind your head again, don’t you upstage me, I’m fucking Little Richard.’’

That guitarist was Jimi Hendrix, reveals Nash. Hendrix was then serving as part of Little Richard’s touring band – a role he was not due to hold much longer. Indeed, he was fired by Little Richard in July of that year. 

It was not the guitar icon’s first sacking, either. Hendrix did stints on the road and in the studio with the likes of Wilson Pickett, Sam Cooke, Ike & Tina Turner, Curtis Knight, The Isley Brothers and Jackie Wilson, among many others. It was a touring circuit that saw young guitarists hired and fired with equal ease.

“Hendrix got dumped plenty of times,” writes Charles Shaar Murray in his definitive Hendrix tome, Crosstown Traffic. “He would behave for as long as he could, but after a while he would either upstage the star or miss the tour bus.”

Getting kicked out of Little Richard’s band, though, would likely have been a more meaningful parting for Hendrix, as Shaar Murray notes:

“It is almost impossible to overestimate the importance of Little Richard as a formative influence on Jim Hendrix,” notes the author. “On his arrival in England, Hendrix told interviewers, ‘I want to do with my guitar what Little Richard does with his voice…’

“Inevitably, Richard and Hendrix fell out. Hendrix later claimed that Richard had given him a hard time for wearing a ruffled shirt on stage, and had fired him by announcing, ‘I'm the only one allowed to dress pretty.’ Richard, much incensed, insists that Hendrix was fired for persistent lateness after missing one bus too many.”

Either way, Nash clearly witnessed the beginning of the end. 

Elsewhere in his Times interview, the songwriter reflects on the loss of his estranged collaborator, David Crosby, revealing the two had begun to patch things up prior to the Crosby’s death.

“I’m incredibly sad, I miss the music, I miss the man,” says Nash. “At the end we were actually talking, he left me a voicemail saying that he wanted to apologise for shooting out his mouth. I set up a FaceTime time so we could see each other…I waited, and I waited, and he never called back, and then he was dead.” 

Nash also says that he doesn’t think his band will be remembered over the long term, or at least not in the same breath as the guitarist he saw upbraided by Little Richard in 1965.

“I think in 50 years when people look back at what happened in the late 1960s and early 1970s they will remember the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and they’ll remember Joni [Mitchell],” concludes Nash. “I don’t think they’ll ever remember CSNY [Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young] at all.”

We doubt that, but then we suspect he’s right about Hendrix. Indeed, only weeks ago, Steve Vai led 7,968 guitarists in a world record-breaking performance of Jimi Hendrix classic Hey Joe.

For better and worse, nobody embodied the counterculture like David Crosby. Close your eyes now and you’ll picture him at his ‘60s peak, as an idealistic young rebel in fringed jacket and Obelix moustache, offering his worldview from a West Coast stage. 

Think of his music and you’ll recall the wild-honey voice that defied age and gravity all his life, or those underrated guitar skills, standing out even in line-ups that featured such stone-cold pickers as The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn and Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills & Nash. 

Quite rightly, it’s this benevolent side of ‘Croz’ that was evoked by the well-wishers when the 81-year-old passed over on 18 January. But it’s telling that even the most loving eulogies came with a caveat. “David and I butted heads a lot over time,” wrote Stills. “They were mostly glancing blows, yet still left us with numb skulls. I was happy to be at peace with him. He was without question a giant of a musician.” 

As a singer, writer, player and mouthpiece for rock’s most outspoken generation, Crosby’s genius was indeed undeniable. Yet those qualities were only one facet of a complex man whose estimation of himself as controlling, egotistical – “the world’s most opinionated man”, as he put it on CSN’s Anything At All – would at times have been endorsed by his closest friends. 

Depending on when you encountered him, Crosby could be the blissed-out utopianism of the hippie dream or its bloodshot-eyed reflection in a cracked mirror. He could be the peace and love personification of 1969’s Woodstock festival or the pistol-packing paranoia of its evil twin, Altamont. 

In his troubled late 1970s and ‘80s, weighing Crosby’s discography against his rap sheet was too close to call. Perhaps The Simpsons said it best when the singer guested on the show, with Springfield’s town drunk Barney thrilled to meet his role model but bemused to learn Crosby was famous for something other than excess: “You’re a musician…?”

Born in Los Angeles on 14 August 1941, David Van Cortlandt Crosby briefly suggested he might follow his Oscar-winning cinematographer father into the business. “He’d be shooting at a little fake Western town out in the valley and I’d get to run around,” the singer told Uncut. “It was something he was a little reticent to do ’cos I was kinda a wild kid and he was a very serious guy. My dad was not a fun guy – he was not a good dad, either.” 

But Crosby had spent his teens listening to ’50s jazz and buying folk records: he cites Woody Guthrie’s Bound For Glory, Joan Baez’s self-titled debut and the harmonies of Peter, Paul and Mary as key influences, while claiming to have “picked up the guitar as a shortcut to sex”. That passion won out, making him ditch a drama course at Santa Barbara College to tumble onto the 1964 folk circuit and the orbit of McGuinn and Gene Clark. 

“We went to see A Hard Day’s Night,” the Byrds’ 12-string legend told this writer in a 2011 interview. “After we came out of the cinema, David grabbed a lamppost like Gene Kelly in Singin’ In The Rain and said, ‘That’s what I want to do! I want to be in a band like The Beatles!’”

This proto-Byrds line-up shuffled, with Crosby trying his hand at bass until the arrival of Chris Hillman saw him take on rhythm guitar and high harmonies. “His right hand was good at doing very fancy strumming,” noted McGuinn in the same interview. “David could do multiple ups and downs, a good rhythm player. He was bright, gifted and very opinionated. That’s just the way he is.”

As it turned out, Crosby had bigger plans than emulating The Beatles – or continuing to lean on the Bob Dylan songbook, as The Byrds had on 1965’s debut album Mr Tambourine Man. While Clark’s early dominance kept him at bay, his exit let Crosby submit standouts like the tumbling I See You, the wistful trill of What’s Happening?!?! and at least part of the freeform psychedelic masterpiece, Eight Miles High, which channelled John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar to mind-expanding effect. “I think that’s the best thing we did,” Crosby told Vulture. “But we did a number of them.”

Still in his mid-20s, Crosby’s writing was already sophisticated beyond his years. By 1967’s Younger Than Yesterday album, he pushed hard for the inclusion of gems like the spooky, jazz-inflected Everybody’s Been Burned, and Mind Gardens, a song that spiced the familiar Byrdsian jangle with faint unease and underscored his mastery of mood. 

But his growing dominance brought friction. One contentious move was to eliminate his bandmates’ vocals from Lady Friend, rendering the track a blissful wash of Crosby harmonies. “I was a thorough prick,” he reflected of his steamroller approach to the studio. McGuinn preferred “a little Hitler”.

As a personality, Crosby’s onstage sloganeering and capacity to hold court at interview was anathema to the fame-shy Byrds line-up. The inevitable happened in October 1967, with Crosby fired halfway through sessions for the following year’s The Notorious Byrd Brothers (the band retained his soft-focus Draft Morning and the brilliantly slippery time signature of Tribal Gathering). 

“They came zooming up in their Porsches,” remembered Crosby, “and said that I was impossible to work with and I wasn’t very good anyway and they’d do better without me. Fuck ’em.”

That short run in The Byrds had almost secured his immortality. But as Crosby told Uncut, when he first sang harmonies with ex-Buffalo Springfield man Stills and Graham Nash of The Hollies, he foresaw a musical direction that energised him. “I encountered Stephen and he swung really hard. He could play a kind of music The Byrds couldn’t play and it appealed to me tremendously. I wanted that, and I really didn’t want to go in the direction that Chris and Roger wanted to go in, of becoming more country.”

CSN proved an instant smash (the band’s self-titled 1969 debut has since gone four‑times platinum) and Crosby seemed as snug as a songwriter as he did within the trio’s close harmonies. Composing on acoustic guitar – he favoured the Martin D-45, having bought three of them that year – he swiftly served up Guinnevere, a hypnotic stunner in an unusual EBDGAD tuning that, like so many of Crosby’s best songs, gave the impression of floating. 

“The time signature is odd. The structure of the song is odd. It’s me all over,” said Crosby. “I don’t know if ‘quirky’ goes far enough to describe my guitar style. It came from a very odd place, man. I’d listen to jazz keyboard players like Bill Evans. They’d play dense chords. I wanted those chords. But I couldn’t play ’em in regular tuning. That’s what pushed me. As soon as I put the guitar in another tuning, I said, ‘Oh yeah, this is what I was looking for.’”

Recruiting Neil Young – and achieving career-best sales figures – 1970’s Déjà Vu was arguably the musical peak. But CSNY’s chemistry was souring, while the shattering loss in a car crash of Crosby’s girlfriend Christine Hinton left the singer bereft. For now, he could still deliver the goods, though if you listened a little closer to Déjà Vu’s classic choppy rocker Almost Cut My Hair, its author sounded ill at ease (‘It increases my paranoia/Like looking in my mirror and seeing a police car’). 

More troubling still, on his brilliant 1971 solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name, was the wordless swoop of I’d Swear There Was Somebody Here. “I had this vision that my girlfriend who had gotten killed, Christine, was standing right next to me,” Crosby told Vulture of the song’s heartbreaking genesis. “I could feel her there, her presence. Then I improvised that piece of music while thinking about her then and there. I think you can feel it. If you listen to it, you’ll know.”  

While CSNY stuttered along in various permutations, Crosby’s output dried to a trickle as his personal life spiralled. The years ahead would bring the singer to some humiliating lows. Heroin and crack cocaine – and the shadow men who supplied them – became his constant companions, his neglected body a tapestry of scratches and sores. In the mid-‘80s, Crosby hit rock bottom, serving a nine-month jail stretch for drugs and weapons charges. 

“There’s absolutely no question that taking drugs enhanced my creative process,” he told Classic Rock in an interview in 2021. “Taking hallucinogens probably helped, in part, but obviously drugs are all different and cocaine and heroin took me right down. I ended up in a Texas prison. There’s no way around it, it nearly killed me, destroyed my career, fucked me up bad.”

When CSNY regrouped for Live Aid, commentators took a double-take at the cadaverous figure in their midst. As Spin put it: “A 14-year addiction to heroin and cocaine has left David Crosby looking like a Bowery bum.”

Few were expecting a happy coda from this hopeless case, but Crosby still had a little magic left in him. “I wrote Compass in prison about waking up from drugs,” he told Vulture of the highlight from CSNY’s 1988 American Dream, which he considered the start of his redemption. “It was when I realised that I was going to come back, I was going to get sober, I was going to be able to handle it, and then I was going to write again – which was crucial. I was sober for the first time when I was released.”

Cleaning up for good in the post-millennium – “I’m not clean,” he corrected this writer, “I still smoke pot” – Crosby’s late period produced some of his best work, including 2018’s Here If You Listen, which he considered “as good as anything I’ve ever done”. Alongside that, his playing continued to evolve (“I’m a picker on acoustic now and mostly a strummer on electric”). 

And while physically, he softened into an avuncular silver bear, the young firebrand still raged whenever a journalist proffered a dictaphone. “Trump,” he told Guitarist, “is like an eight-year-old kid that’s broken into his dad’s office and he’s pissing all over the papers ’cos he never got to play in there.”

If he stayed true to his politics, then Croz was also faithful to his love of music to the end. He told this writer of his nightly habit of “taking a guitar off the wall, smoking a joint and playing for hours”. He added that the period he was most proud of was “tomorrow”. In the days after his death, it emerged that Crosby was readying new material, perhaps even taking it on the road. “He seemed practically giddy with all of it,” guitarist Steve Postell told Variety.

It was not to be. Yet for all those wasted years, the astonishing body of work we inherit from David Crosby – not to mention his thumbprint on how we view the world – will resonate. “I’m working on leaving behind my best,” said the singer, and he certainly achieved that.  

The tributes were as grand as the company Crosby had kept, with the stars to salute him ranging from David Gilmour (“I’ll miss the Croz more than words can say. Sail on”) to Jason Isbell (“Grateful for the time we had”). But perhaps the final word should go to the man with whom Crosby clashed most viciously yet sang most beautifully. 

“It is with a deep and profound sadness that I learned my friend David Crosby has passed,” wrote Nash on Instagram, alongside a shot of his former bandmate’s well-travelled guitar case. “I know people tend to focus on how volatile our relationship has been at times, but what has always mattered to David and me more than anything was the pure joy of the music we created together. David was fearless in life and in music.”

Yesterday (January 19), it was announced that David Crosby had passed away at the age of 81.

Founder of the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the influential guitarist, singer and songwriter performed his last-ever live show early last year, when he joined Jason Isbell for a powerful two-song cameo at The Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara.

Footage from that evening has resurfaced online, with fans flocking to clips of Crosby performing his last-ever live song: a cover of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s Ohio.

Joining country guitar star Isbell and his house group, The 400 Unit, on February 26, Crosby helped his peers perform a cover of the band’s protest song Ohio, which was written by Neil Young and released as a single in 1970 by the band.

Wielding a Stratocaster, Crosby can be seen corralling the crowd into singing along and punctuating Isbell’s vocals with his own improvised contributions, all while supplying some gritty supportive strums.

It’s a track the pair know well, having performed it at various venues and occasions, including a rousing rendition in 2019 at the Red Rocks Amphitheater.

Just before playing Ohio on the evening in question, Crosby, Isbell and The 400 Unit also joined forces for a live rendition of Isbell’s What’ve I Done to Help – a track for which Isbell drafted Crosby into the studio for vocal duties.

Crosby and Isbell’s relationship extended far beyond the Arlington Theatre performance, with the pair first meeting at the 2018 Newport Folk Festival, where they performed Ohio and CSN’s Wooden Ships. After a handful of sporadic live team-ups – including that Red Rocks show – Crosby then helped Isbell record What’ve I Done to Help and Only Children in 2020.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, Isbell reflected at length on his relationship with Crosby, and recalled the evening of February 26 when the pair teamed up for Crosby’s final performance.

“What got him out of the house and to the show was that he wanted to come see his buddies,” he said. “And it would have been silly for him to come and not sing.”

“That was the last time I saw him,” Isbell continued. “At that time, he didn’t think he was going to be able to do any more touring. He was having trouble with his hands for a long time and getting to the point where it was hard for him to play. 

“I think that had caused him to resign himself to not be able to do any more live shows, but recently I think he was feeling a little more optimistic about it. He was still writing and recording a whole lot and finished another record from what I understand.”

Isbell also took the opportunity to pay tribute to Crosby’s carefree spirit by recalling the time the pair recorded What’ve I Done to Help, saying, “Dave [Cobb, producer] had just bought a brand new API console, the first brand-new one I had ever seen in my life, and [Crosby] came in, sat down and dumped out a big sack of weed right on the console, and started rolling a joint.

“He smoked a joint, we sang together, and then he laid down on the couch and went to sleep.”

Isbell added, “Rule No. 1 for David was to be honest. So if he complimented you, it wasn’t bullshit. He was somebody who would challenge even the greatest of his peers, be it Neil [Young] or Joni [Mitchell]. 

“He would challenge them to go somewhere that wasn’t comfortable for them musically. If he got bored with the way a guitar sounded, he’d tune a different tuning that nobody had ever tried before.”

David Crosby, who passed away on January 18 at the age of 81, was one of the leaders of a musical revolution inspired both by British invasion bands of the '60s and the music of the American folk and blues minstrels.

Alongside fellow singer-songwriters Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, they melded their influences into a new kind of electro-acoustic folk-rock, using open tunings and introspective lyrics, often layered up with glorious vocal harmonies.

Crosby was at the heart of The Byrds and several iterations of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young brand and continued to work with various members for many years.

This included recording, gigging and doing sessions with Nash, as on David Gilmour’s solo album On an Island, plus legendary Royal Albert Hall appearance Remember That Night (captured on DVD). Crosby and Nash also sang on John Mayer’s Born and Raised, and on tracks by Elton John, James Taylor and many others. 

However, always interested in new singers and writers (who were even more interested in him), he never stopped making musically relevant and highly listenable music, both on solo albums and as collaborations with a number of contemporary artists, including Snarky Puppy’s Michael League. 

Crosby’s final studio album was aided by his musician-producer son James Raymond, and was part homage to Joni Mitchell, with the title-track cover of her ballad, For Free.

The album also included collaborations with Texan singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz, plus vocal additions from Doobie Brother Michael McDonald, and a long-awaited co-write with Steely Dan legend, Donald Fagen.

In this conversation, which was conducted in late-2021 and marked one of his final guitar interviews, David joined Guitarist by phone from his California homestead to discuss his approach to songwriting, his love of Martin acoustic guitars and the golden era of the Laurel Canyon scene.

You’ve made the new album For Free with your son James Raymond, who produced it, co-wrote some tracks and played piano on it. 

“Yes. A wonderful cat, too, man. He’s a really, really decent guy and he loves making music, and so we have a blast doing it. We have a record that we haven’t even put  out yet, and we are already recording the next one. It’s a joy to work with him. He has just turned into the best record producer and the best writing partner that you could hope for.”

In your work with bands, you could always recognise the Crosby songs. Is it a certain attitude that sets you apart?

“I think it has to do with the fact that I’m usually trying to tell a story of some sort, and I think it has to do musically with the fact that I like more complex chord structures and progressions. I did listen to a lot of jazz, and so I like dense, unusual chords. But if you try to shape it to what the pop taste is at the moment, you listen to everything that’s succeeding and then you try to be just like that – it doesn’t work for me.”

Did you play guitar on new album, For Free? And if so, what tunings did you use?

“Yes, I did. I used the tuning [EBDGAD] on the track I played the most on, which is I Think; I have a good guitar part on that. There are guitar parts on some of the others, but it hasn’t been a major thing on this one.”

In previous interviews, you’ve mentioned the difficulty you might have playing guitar because of your hands. How is that affecting your playing? 

“I’ve lost a percentage, maybe 10 per cent, maybe 15 per cent. But I can still play, just not quite as well as I used to. It’s heading in the wrong direction. There isn’t anything anybody can do about it. It’s tough, but whining isn’t going to help anybody. All my guitars are set up as low as they will go. I can play, but I know in the long run I’m going to lose it.”

From the very beginning, vocal harmonies have been integral to everything…

“Well yes, they are for me. I love them, and if there is a chance to do those dense chords that I like, I always will. Most commonly, although we did it in every possible variation, Stephen would sing the melody, I would sing the middle, which is the hard one, and Nash would sing the top. All the harmonies in The Byrds are me. The Byrds is basically two-part, although sometimes Gene [Clark] was in there, too.”

You emerged at a time and in a place where the music was spectacular…

“There was a plethora of really talented people really trying hard to make good music, and that was a wonderful thing.”

CSNY, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor all released landmark albums in 1970, the year The Beatles broke up. The pendulum swung from British to American. You guys had the talent and were making all the moves. 

“Thanks, man. I think Joni was a thing on her own. She is probably the best singer-songwriter that ever lived. But I think, yes, it did shift to the United States right then, but I’m sure it shifted back when Pink Floyd happened.”

It must have made everybody raise their game because you had these friends putting out brilliant stuff? 

“If I think about it, I knew that there were all these other people who were really good. People I was competing with were James Taylor and Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan and the singer-songwriters. Nobody could compete with The Beatles, but we did compete with the singer-songwriters and we generated a whole lot of really wonderful songs.”

There are some great collaborators on the new album, the instantly recognisable Michael McDonald helps out in the opener River Rise, for instance.

“I’ve been saying for a while that probably the two best singers in the United States are Stevie Wonder and Michael McDonald. Michael is the best singer I know. [Everybody] heard him on Steely Dan records and went, ‘Holy shit!’ And those hits with The Doobies, ‘Holy shit!’”

There is some great guitar on the record from Shawn Tubbs, and from session legend Dean Parks.

“Shawn was an LA guy, but he moved to Texas. I sent a couple of things down to him and got him to play them. Dean is just a freaking genius. I just did another thing with him. It was so much fun I couldn’t believe it.”

On this album, when you recorded the tracks did you layer everything up or did you learn the songs as a band and put them down in the studio? 

“We had to do it piecemeal because of the pandemic. So these were built piece by piece, but I always have done it the other way.”

In a normal situation do you like to have control over what people play? 

“No, no, I get really good musicians and then I listen to what they do, unless there is something more that I want I tell them. But the best thing is, see what they come up with because they are probably going to come up with something you didn’t think of, which may be absolutely fucking wonderful. So don’t close the door!”

Rodriguez For A Night has lyrics by Donald Fagen. That song really nails those Steely changes, doesn’t it?

“Yes, we went for it, no question. We love Donald. We loved Steely Dan. Aja and Gaucho are both in my Top 10 for life, up there with Blue [Joni Mitchell], Heavy Weather [Weather Report], and Kind Of Blue [Miles Davis]. There’s a handful of records, and two of theirs are in there.”

The title track, For Free, is such a simple song, but you can’t slavishly copy it. So how did you and Sarah Jarosz approach it?

“I had listened to her singing with Sara Watkins and Aoife O’Donovan in I’m With Her, their band together. They are fantastic. Then I listened to Sarah Jarosz’s record, Build Me Up From Bones, a fantastic record. Then she put out World On The Ground and it was even better. I couldn’t stand it.

“I got hold of her and I said, ‘Listen, this is a stunning record. I really love your stuff and I’d like to sing something with you. I don’t know what. I don’t know where. I don’t know where we’d put it. I just want to do it because it’s fun.’ 

“She said, ‘I’d absolutely love to.’ I said, ‘Okay, let’s figure out a song and we’ll sing it. We are not trying to accomplish anything. We just want to have some fun. How about ‘For Free?’ She said, ‘Oh, I love that song.’ Then I went to James, and James did a piano track for it that is so evocative and so beautiful that it made me sing it better than I’ve ever sung it. I transcended myself. 

“We sent it off to her and she sent it back with that harmony on it, which is like a lesson in how to do harmony. Just fucking perfect. I called her up and said, ‘Listen. Can I put that on my record? It’s just so good.’ She said, ‘Of course you can. I think it’s fantastic.’”

James also plays a lovely piano part on I Won’t Stay For Long. He wrote the song, too, even though it could be something autobiographical from you... 

“He wrote it and it’s the best thing on the record. He says that he wrote it off [the Greek legend of] Orpheus and Eurydice. Hmm-hmm.”

Onto guitar, you were all playing Martin D-45s around the Woodstock era… 

“Yes, And we loved them. I have three 1969 D-45s. But I have a bunch of really great guitars, man. I didn’t buy famous people’s guitars; that’s what Nash did. I think he probably made more money on it than I did. But I bought guitars that played unbelievably well. I have probably the five best acoustic 12-strings in the world. 

“I have a [Martin 12-string] that was converted from a D-18 that I bought in a store in Chicago. It’s the best guitar I’ve got. It’s louder and more resonant with more overtones than anything else I’ve ever played.

“I’d always been drawn towards Martins until I ran into a guy right outside Seattle named Roy McAlister. I have five of his guitars. That should be everything you need to know right there.”

You recently sold your publishing to help fund your life. That must have been a big burden lifted. 

“We had two ways of making money: touring and records. Streaming doesn’t pay us. It’s like you did your job for a month and they gave you a nickel. You’d be pissed. That’s why we are pissed – because they are making billions and not paying the people who are creating the music. So I’m trying to be grateful that I can still play live and pay the rent and take care of my family. But along comes Covid and I can’t play live. That was it. Now I’m broke. I don’t want to lose my home, man.

“We’ve got an old adobe house here in the middle of a cow pasture. It’s just fucking wonderful. A beautiful, beautiful place in the middle of a bunch of trees. It’s just lovely; it’s not fancy and it’s not rich and it’s not big, but it’s really right. We want to live here all our lives, so I sold my publishing.”

People still want to hear new music from you – and not every musician from the era you came up in can say that.

“Nope. I guess I’d better keep trying…”

David Crosby has released two new tracks from his forthcoming album For Free: the title track – a cover of Joni Mitchell's track of the same name – and an original titled Rodriguez For A Night.

Following the album's debut single River Rise – which arrived last month – Crosby's For Free remains largely faithful to the original – with lush and enveloping piano the central instrument – though it sees him team up with Texas singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz for some truly gorgeous vocal harmonies.

“Joni's the greatest living singer-songwriter, and For Free is one of her simplest,” Crosby says. “It's one of my favorite songs because I love what it says about the spirit of music and what compels you to play.”

On Rodriguez For A Night, Crosby joins forces with his son Raymond and Steely Dan's Donald Fagen for a far more upbeat number, implementing clavinet-fueled funk stylings and smooth winding bass lines.

“Steely Dan's my favorite band and I've admired Donald a long time, so that was a thrill for us,” Crosby says of the collaboration.

On working with his son Raymond – who has also produced the album – Crosby explains: “Can you imagine what it's like to connect with your son and find out that he's incredibly talented – a great composer, a great poet, and a really fine songwriter and musician all around?

“We're such good friends and we work so well together, and we'll each go to any length to create the highest-quality songs we can.”

David Crosby's For Free arrives July 23 via BMG. Pre-order is available now.

Even as he takes a victory lap with the 50th anniversary reissue of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s landmark Déjà Vu, singer-songwriter and acoustic guitar legend David Crosby has announced a new solo album, For Free.

The new effort will be released July 23 via BMG, and you can listen to the first single, River Rise, featuring former Doobie Brother and yacht-rock legend Michael McDonald, below.

Crosby made For Free with his son, multi-instrumentalist James Raymond, and the album also features several musicians who played on his 2017 album, Sky Trails, among them saxophonist Steve Tavaglione and drummer Steve DiStanislao.

In addition to McDonald, other guests include Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and multi-Grammy Award-winning artist Sarah Jarosz.  

Described as a “majestic and massively uplifting number,” Crosby co-wrote River Rise with Raymond and McDonald. Said Raymond, “River Rise came from wanting to write something very evocative of California, but almost with a country-song perspective – something that speaks to the empowerment of the everyman or everywoman.”

The album’s title, Crosby explained, comes from the included cover of the Joni Mitchell classic. “Joni’s the greatest living singer-songwriter, and For Free is one of her simplest,” he said. “It’s one of my favorite songs because I love what it says about the spirit of music and what compels you to play.”

For Free is the follow up to Crosby’s 2018 effort, Here If You Listen, which he created with Michael League of Snarky Puppy, Michelle Willis, and Becca Stevens.

In addition to River Rise and the title track, the album also includes a song penned by Fagen, Rodriguez for a Night, expressly for the project. “Steely Dan’s my favorite band and I’ve admired Donald a long time, so that was a thrill for us,” Crosby said.

Regarding working with Raymond, Crosby added, “Can you imagine what it’s like to connect with your son and find out that he’s incredibly talented – a great composer, a great poet, and a really fine songwriter and musician all around?

“We’re such good friends and we work so well together, and we’ll each go to any length to create the highest-quality songs we can.”

The final track on the album, I Won’t Stay for Long, was written solely by Raymond, and Crosby called it his favorite. “I’ve listened to it 100 times now and it still reaches out and grabs me, it’s so painfully beautiful,” he said. “I did end up getting a pretty stunning vocal on it, because it meant so much to me that I sang the hell out of it.

“One thing James and I both believe is that songs are an art form and a treasure – so when a song comes along that’s as good as that one, we’ll just give it everything we got.”

For Free is available for preorder here.

David Crosby has apologized for his insensitive remarks about Eddie Van Halen following the electric guitar great’s death at age 65.

And the reasoning is, well, quite David Crosby-ian, with the CSN singer and guitarist explaining he simply forgot Van Halen has recently passed.

As Crosby wrote on Twitter, “Yes you Van Halen fans I did just toss off an answer that was not cool. The even more embarrassing truth is... I didn’t even remember he had just died or I would have kept my mouth shut….I do make mistakes …no offense intended.”

The dust-up began on October 10 when a fan tweeted at Crosby, writing, “I know you’re not into metal David, but what’s your opinion on Eddie Van Halen?”

To which Crosby replied, “Meh…”

After being roundly criticized, Crosby later doubled down: “Hendrix changed the world of guitar,” he wrote. “Nobody else really. Look I get it: many of you loved Van Halen… and the one time I met he was nice… and he was talented.”

“[M]eh to me means I don’t care that much… and I don’t. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t good, he was but not for me.”

As guitarist Pete Thorn explained in his own reponse to Crosby, “David, there were two electric guitar game changers. The first was Hendrix, the second was Eddie Van Halen.

“Just because you weren’t tuned into it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It totally fucking happened. For millions upon millions of us.”

Tributes have been pouring in for Eddie Van Halen since the electric guitar great passed away on October 6 at age 65. But one artist who apparently has a different take on the legacy of EVH is David Crosby – and fans and peers aren’t happy.

On October 10, a fan tweeted at the Crosby, Stills & Nash singer and guitarist, writing, “I know you’re not into metal David, but what’s your opinion on Eddie Van Halen?”

To which Crosby replied simply, “Meh…”

This, not surprisingly, raised the ire of plenty of other Twitter-ites, among them Testament’s Alex Skolnick, L.A. Guns guitarist Tracii Guns and Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider.

“I appreciate @thedavidcrosby too much for this to get in the way, but a much better answer would have been: 'I know he meant a lot to so many but his sound & style just weren't my thing,'" wrote Skolnick, who also pointed out that punk poetess Patti Smith, who hardly traveled in the same circles as Van Halen, posted an emotional tribute to the guitarist.

Wrote Guns: “Wrong answer as fuck and rude as fuck!!! There are better ways to say you don't care for someone's music. That was very disrespectful. And yes straight out fuck you and your smug answer."

Following the outpouring, Crosby took to Twitter to clarify his statement… and didn’t do himself any favors with his critics.

“Hendrix changed the world of guitar,” he wrote. “Nobody else really. Look I get it: many of you loved Van Halen… and the one time I met he was nice… and he was talented.”

“[M]eh to me means I don’t care that much… and I don’t. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t good, he was but not for me.”

Which, of course, led to even more reaction in the Twitter-sphere.

FU-Tone, home of the EVH D-Tuna, tweeted: "I never get involved in negative shit online. Today I will make an exception. Fuck off @thedavidcrosby."

And wrote guitarist Pete Thorn: “David, there were two electric guitar game changers. The first was Hendrix, the second was Eddie Van Halen.

“Just because you weren’t tuned into it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It totally fucking happened. For millions upon millions of us.”

Amen, Pete. Amen.

David Crosby has been through more than his fair share of challenges over his five decades-plus in the music industry, but the past year has brought about some particularly troubling times for the songwriting legend.

In a new, wide-reaching interview with Rolling Stone, Croz revealed he was facing up to the recent tragic death of his son, the financial implications of the coronavirus, America’s environmental and political future - and the fact that he may never play guitar again.

“I get trigger-finger tendonitis in my hands,” Crosby explains. “I went in to get it fixed and it didn’t work. Now I’m in a tremendous amount of pain in my right hand. It’s entirely possible that I may never play guitar again.”

If he is unable to get treatment for his condition, Crosby intends to sing without his trademark Martin acoustic guitar slung around his shoulder during any forthcoming rescheduled tour dates - which he concedes may be his last.

“The thing that happens to me is I’m not sure I’ve got a next year,” he says. “I’m almost 80 years old. So when you take away my next year, you might have just taken the last one I got.”

Croz is, however, more positive about his forthcoming solo album, which features fellow songwriting royalty in the form of Michael McDonald and Donald Fagen.

“I think it’s going to be called Lifting Force or Lift. I think it’s going to be really good,” he enthuses.

“We’ve got three singles. I’ve never had singles before, but I’ve got three of them this time. I got one we wrote with Michael McDonald that’s just killer. That’s River Rise and Michael sings harmony with me on it. He and I kill it. When we sing together, it’s scary.

“And then we’ve got a song that I wrote with Donald Fagen. It’s really fucking good, man. I’m so honored he gave us a set of words.

“I think people are going to love the record. I think people are going to like the music. And that is great. That is what I’m holding onto, fiercely, to try and get through all the crazy. And there’s a lot of crazy.”

Martin Guitar has collaborated with David Crosby and artist Robert F. Goetzl on an, um, eye-catching new special-edition acoustic guitar aimed at getting Americans to rock (or at least strum) the vote.

Features on the D-16E Rock the Vote Special Edition include satin-finished sycamore back and sides and a Sitka spruce gloss top. There’s also a high-performance neck taper for ease of playability up and down the fretboard and Fishman Matrix VT Enhance NT2 electronics.

And then, of course, there’s the artwork, which includes, among other things, the Statue of Liberty, part of the preamble to the Constitution and not one but two images of Croz.

“My hope is that this guitar will inspire people to register to vote and exercise this fundamental and important right,” said Martin Chairman and CEO Chris Martin.

And if the Rock the Vote guitar still doesn’t have enough visual pop for ya, perhaps one of these special edition Martins will do the trick.

The D-16E Rock the Vote Special Edition is available for $2,799. For more information, head to Martin.

Small Dots appearing directly above certain tab numbers in the verse sections of this transcription indicate where guitarists Stephen Stills and Neil Young employ fret-hand muting to create staccato articulations for their chords strums.

To recreate the staccato rhythms heard on beats two and four of each bar in the verse, simply relax and loosen your fret hand’s grip on the strings after strumming each chord, just enough to break the contact between strings and frets and stop the strings from vibrating. But avoid lifting your fingers completely off the strings, as doing so would likely result in unwanted open notes.

When performing Young’s fingerpicked licks in bars 1–4 (Gtr. 2 part), barré your index finger at the fifth fret while hammering-on or pulling-off the melody notes with your ring finger. Pluck the top strings for each chord with your pick hand’s middle and ring fingers while simultaneously sounding the lowest note with the thumb. Alternatively, you could flatpick the low notes while still fingerpicking the higher strings with your middle and ring fingers. This hybrid picking technique facilitates smooth, quick transitions to flatpicking/strumming subsequent chords and melody notes.

During the song’s chorus, Stills and Young frequently employ their guitars’ vibrato bars to shake various notes and chords, as mentioned by the text note for Gtr. 2 in bar 15. If your guitar isn’t equipped with a bar, you can emulate the vibrato sound on the chords with either a tremolo effect pedal, or by quickly wiggling the strings up and down with your fret hand as you play.

For Jeff Perrin's tab of "Almost Cut My Hair," check out the May 2018 issue of Guitar World.

David Crosby has announced his fifth solo album, Lighthouse. The album, which was produced by Michael League of Snarky Puppy, will be released October 21 via GroundUP Music/Verve Label Group. It's the followup to Croz, which was released in 2014.

Crosby and League recorded Lighthouse at Groove Masters, the Santa Monica studio owned by Crosby’s longtime friend, Jackson Browne.

Crosby tells the Wall Street Journal that the past few years have been “a very fruitful time” for his songwriting.

“I don’t know how to explain this, but, most people my age have petered out,” says the 74-year-old co-founder of the Byrds. “They don’t have a writing surge. My writing always comes in bursts, but for the last couple years, I’ve had this inexplicable surge. Probably the densest and longest surge I’ve had, which at this stage in the game is a miracle. I can’t explain why that would happen except that I’m happy. I’m a very happy guy. That may be the key to the whole deal.”

Crosby co-wrote half of Lighthouse’s songs with League.

“He’s an immensely talented musician,” Crosby says. “He was very sneaky, too. He didn’t tell me he could play lead guitar. He didn’t tell me he could sing. And he never told me he could write words. But when we sat down at my house, we wrote three songs in three days.”

Lighthouse Track List
1. “Things We Do For Love”
2. “The Us Below”
3. “Drive Out to the Desert”
4. “Look in Their Eyes”
5. “Somebody Other Than You”
6. “The City”
7. “Paint You a Picture”
8. “What Makes It So”
9. “By the Light of Common Day”

“An Evening with David Crosby” Summer North American Tour
Aug 18 - South Orange, NJ - South Orange PAC
Aug 20 - Poughkeepsie, NY - Bardavon Opera House
Aug 21 - Bethlehem, PA - Musikfest Café
Aug 23 - Alexandria, VA - The Birchmere
Aug 24 - State College, PA - The State Theatre
Aug 26 - Greensburg, PA - Palace Theatre
Aug 28 - Evansville, IN - Victory Theatre
Aug 29 - Kansas City, MO - Uptown Theater
Aug 31 - Chicago, IL - Thalia Hall
Sept 2 - Kitchener, ON - Centre In the Square, Main Hall
Sept 4 - Toronto, ON - Danforth Music Hall
Sept 6 - Thunder Bay, ON - Community Auditorium
Sept 8 - Winnipeg, MB - Burton Cumming Theatre
Sept 9 - Regina, SK - Casino Regina Show Lounge
Sept 11 - Calgary, AB - Jack Singer Concert Hall
Sept 12 - Edmonton, AB - Winspear Centre For Music
Sept 14 - Kelowna, BC - KelownaTheatre
Sept 15 - Vancouver, BC - Vogue Theatre

He's one-fourth of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and owns a sweet collection of rare and vintage axes. But what Guitar World readers really want to know is...

What’s the key to great harmony? — Willy Latham

Listen to Phil Everly. I don’t think there’s any question that the first time I got hooked into harmony singing it was listening to “[All I Have to Do Is] Dream” by the Everly Brothers.

That’s where it starts, but then you have to go to a lot of places besides that. Listen to classical music, listen to Bach. It’ll never hurt you, and if you really listen, it’ll help you a lot. Listen to the first record by the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir from 1966, Music of Bulgaria: The Ensemble of the Bulgarian Republic, under the direction of Philip Koutev. It is beyond-belief good. Those little Bulgarian housewives can sing rings around everybody. [Graham] Nash and I would credit them with changing our lives. It will rot your brain.

You recorded and toured with David Gilmour a few years ago. How did that connection come about? — Chris Thumann

David knew Graham, and he came to our Crosby & Nash show in London a couple of times and liked our harmonies and our way of going at it, and he asked us to sing on [his 2006 solo album] On An Island. In the process, we got to be pretty close friends. He asked us to sing at his concert in London. We ended up doing, like, eight shows, just singing the songs we sang on the record. I think Fender should erect a monument to Gilmour. He has this tone, and it’s not gizmos. It’s his touch.

Your new album, Croz, is your first solo record in 20 years. Why the long wait? — James Fitze

You’re only looking at solo albums. In between, I did a double album with Graham Nash [2004’s Crosby Nash]. I was working on a covers album with CSN. And we’ve all been working on the CSNY 74 thing for a couple of years [a forthcoming collection of performances from the band’s 1974 tour].

When you hear it, you’re not going to freaking believe it. So I’ve been working on other stuff; I just haven’t done a solo record. I was writing so much with my son, James Raymond, who’s a brilliant writer. We were both having a very good streak of writing on our own, together and with [guitarist] Marcus Eaton. The songs are the key to the entire thing. Do you have a real song? Can you sit down and sing it to somebody? Can you make them feel something? If I have songs, I want to make a record. So we both had these songs. We didn’t really have a choice.

How the hell does your voice sound the same after all these decades? — Lisa Rogers

I don’t really understand it, although I didn’t smoke cigarettes. I may’ve been herbally enhanced once or twice, and I went through hard drugs and all that stuff. I don’t know how I have a throat left. [laughs] But there it is, and as long as it still works, I’m going to work it. I’m pretty happy about how it sounds, but a lot has to do with how my son recorded it on the new album.

I read about your guitar collection in Guitar Aficionado magazine. What do you look for when buying guitars, and which one is your favorite? — Gil Pender

It’s a complex thing. I don’t collect the way other people do. Some people collect rare guitars, like, “I have a ’54 Strat worth $50,000.” And I don’t collect the way Nash does. Nash has Duane Allman’s guitar and Johnny Cash’s guitar. I bought guitars because they sounded good. I played them, they sounded unbelievably good, and I couldn’t resist. I probably have the best set of acoustic 12-string guitars in the world.

But I’ve gone through an odd change about it. I have a strong room in my house where I keep them. When I go in there and play them, I feel kind of bad that they’re hanging on the wall when they can be in the hands of someone who is desperate to play a guitar that good. I keep getting the urge to give them away. I gave a Collings dreadnought to a young guitar player in the Valley where I live, because he didn’t have a good acoustic and he’s a terrific player. I might do more of that. Or I’ll auction off the whole batch when I run out of money.

What inspired you to play a Gretsch Tennessean with the Byrds? — Clarence LeBlanc

That’s what George Harrison had. And he had that Rickenbacker [360/12], which is what Roger McGuinn got. We went straight for their shit. [laughs] We said, “Okay, that’s how you do it!” And you know, once you play a Gretsch, you find out there are tricks to it. Take a Gretsch and roll the volume all the way up on the guitar and then control it from the amp. Then you get that crunch that Gretsch guitars have got. But they won’t give it to you unless you turn the volume all the way up and control your volume from a pedal or the amp.

Are you always writing new music? — Lucy Sciancalepore

Yes. As a matter of fact, I wrote one of my best songs right after we mastered the new album. How fucked up is that? [laughs] Last night, I played it to an audience for the first time—and they loved it! I’m thrilled and excited, stoked and stuff.

Did you write any CSN songs in Joni Mitchell’s kitchen? — Jody Porter (Fountains of Wayne)

I know we sang a lot there. That’s where we put Crosby, Stills & Nash together. Stephen and I had been singing and we were there with Graham. We sang, “In the morning when you rise” [from “You Don’t Have to Cry”], and Graham said, “Would you sing that again?” So we sang it again.

And he said, “That’s fantastic. Would you do it one more time?” We sang it a third time, and he put the top harmony on it. Right then, we knew exactly what we were going to be doing for a long time. There wasn’t any question. We have very different voices and some kind of weird chemistry. And it definitely was in Joni’s kitchen. Stephen is fiercely sure it happened at Cass Elliot’s, but it didn’t.

You’re friendly with everyone from CSNY, but do you have a relationship with the other Byrds, especially since they kicked you out of the band? — Elijah Hunt

I have a very good relationship with [bassist/guitarist] Chris Hillman. He lives not too far me, so we have dinner together sometimes. I’ll go out to hear him and Herb Pedersen play country music, because they are the real deal. I have a friendly relationship with Roger [McGuinn], and the last message I got from him was very friendly; he said he liked the new record.

Roger doesn’t want to be in a band. He wants to be folkie and work by himself, and that’s frustrating to me and Chris, because we know we could make really good music together. There’s not even a question. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Roger. Half of what the Byrds had was Roger and his ability to arrange and play and his ability to know how to translate a song from the demo of “Mr. Tambourine Man” into what it became. If you heard the demo, you’d break the record. [laughs] It’s terrible! Roger translated it into a brilliant pop record.

What happened to the album Crosby, Stills & Nash were recording with producer Rick Rubin just a few years ago? — Gregory Swedberg

Trying to make an album is a chemistry between people, and the chemistry wasn’t there. And I’m not saying this to slight Rick. He’s a talented guy, and when he does have good chemistry with the people he’s working with, he does good work. But he didn’t have it with us. We didn’t get along.

We didn’t have the same things in mind; we didn’t have the same way of going about things. And you have to understand all those records that were huge that we did, we produced those. We worked with Rick for months and got nothing we thought was worth anything. Then, just to check, we enlisted Jackson Browne’s Groove Masters studio, and we cut, like, five things in four days. So I have to think we can do it our own way and do it pretty easily! We’ll probably finish that record.

Do you have a favorite chord, one that makes you feel comfortable like a warm blanket? — Vin Downes

Yes. I have a couple of them. The one I can describe to you is Em9-7. But I have another one that’s in a different tuning. I can play it for you, but I can’t tell you what it is!

Do you practice or play guitar around the house on a regular basis? — Frank Little

I try to do it every day. The muse is out there, and it will come by your house if you leave the door open. But you have to open the door! Pick up the guitar and make space for it to happen. And then it will happen—if it’s gonna happen. But you have to pick up the ax and open the door.

What inspired your open tunings, and can you share a few of them? — Tim Goodwin

I use a lot of tunings because I listen to a lot of jazz. I hear the chords [jazz pianist] McCoy Tyner had to play for John Coltrane. He was asked to play really rich, thick tone-cluster kinds of chords, which he did brilliantly. I would listen to those chords and say, “I want to play that, but I’m not good enough.”

So then I grab my guitar and I can get versions of the chords that were different from what everybody else was playing. And it works. That’s where I got “Déjà Vu,” “Guinnevere,” “Compass” and “Climber.” They are all in really strange tunings because they give me another sound that expands the envelope, gives you more to work with—if you’re willing to take up a whole new set of chords. There is that minor detail. [laughs] You tune the low E to a D and then your D chord sounds really fantastic. That’s the beginning of the slippery slope!

David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash joined Neil Young — OK, it was actually Jimmy Fallon in a Seventies Neil Young getup — on last night's episode of The Tonight Show.

Rather than perform something obvious (like one of their hits, for instance), the "reunited" four-man supergroup performed a cover of a current Hot 100 hit, “Fancy” by Iggy Azalea.

You might recall Fallon has performed as Young before. In 2012, he invited Bruce Springsteen onto his show so they could sing Willow Smith‘s “Whip My Hair.”

“I saw that. I thought I was really good in that,” Young told Fallon later.

Last week, we reported that Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters is working on his first rock album in more than two decades.

Well, this week it's David Gilmour's turn for big announcements.

Gilmour, Pink Floyd's guitarist, has confirmed that he's also working on a new studio album, the followup to 2006's On An Island.

ABC News reports that David Crosby and Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills and Nash have taken part in the sessions, and have done so free of charge.

"What the hell would it cost you to have David Crosby and Graham Nash getting on a bloody train to Brighton to sing with you?" Nash said during last month's Needle Time appearance on vintage.tv. "We're musicians. We love good songs. We'll sing them until we are dead."

Crosby and Nash also appeared on On An Island's title track.

For more details about Waters' upcoming album, head here.

The new Roger Waters issue of Guitar World features interviews with Waters and all the guitarists behind The Wall Live) and more — including Black Oak Arkansas, the Winery Dogs, Marty Friedman, a guide to the most incredible concerts and roadshows in rock history, a holiday gift guide and John Petrucci's monthly column — check out the Holiday 2013 issue at the Guitar World Online Store.