“People say, ‘You get great guitar sounds’ and I say, ‘Thank you very much,’ because if you give me a bad guitar sound, I sound like a beginner,” says Peter Frampton on a video call from his home in Nashville.

The 76-year-old musician knows what he’s talking about, of course, having blown our minds with his guitar prowess for the last six decades – and that experience is audible on Carry the Light, his first studio album in 16 years.

Loaded with guitar textures, Frampton’s 19th album ranges from sweet acoustic mellowness to the extravagant but controlled soloing for which he became known in his early band, Humble Pie – and even more so after the impact of his talkbox-heavy, eight-times-platinum solo album Frampton Comes Alive! in 1976.

He tells us that his objective with the solos this time was to sound “sweet and just on the edge of distortion,” delivering the goods via the famous “Phenix” Les Paul, a black 1954 Custom model that was lost in 1980 and returned 31 years later (you’ll know it from the cover of Frampton Comes Alive!).

Elsewhere on the new album, Frampton and a cast of guests including Tom Morello, Sheryl Crow and H.E.R. (aka singer Gabriella Wilson), run through slow-building blues, understated balladry and all-out rock, the latter heard most clearly on Lions at the Gate, which features Morello’s signature choppy riffing.

The long outro of Islamorada is another highlight, featuring a blistering solo outro from Frampton, and yet another is Breaking the Mold, a subtle acoustic piece featuring Crow.

In GW’s chat with the affable veteran we cover a lot of territory, from the abuse of power, via the unlikely strength of an 18-watt amp, to the experience of playing at Star Wars HQ.

We also discuss Frampton’s ongoing struggle with inclusion body myositis, a muscle-wasting disease that may or may not prevent him touring the new album – but never fear, he’s not planning to retire any time soon.

Carry the Light is a hell of a record.

Oh, thank you very much. After not releasing any new material for the last 16 years, I knew it had to be good. I’m not as prolific as the next guy, maybe, so it took me at least six years to find all these songs, and my son Julian and I completed them all in the last year.

There’s a stellar cast of guests on the album. How did you meet H.E.R.?

We met when I played George Lucas’ 80th birthday in 2024 at his place up in California, Skywalker Ranch. Basically it’s a winery, right in the middle of hundreds of acres of wine. It’s just gorgeous. Lucky bastard! But he deserves it…

Anyway, H.E.R. was playing first, and then it was us, and then Don Felder played, and I sat in. It was weird looking out and seeing Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas looking back at us.

What’s your connection with Tom Morello?

I’ve known Tom for a while now – I keep bumping into him. We’re managed by the same person, and I’ve been a huge fan of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, and – rest in peace – Chris Cornell. I’m a big fan of his.

So a couple of years ago, I said to Tom, “If I had a song, would you…,” and he said “Yes!” I didn’t even get the question out. It was wonderful, and he said some lovely things about Frampton Comes Alive! and how it affected him.

He guests on Lions At the Gate. What’s that song about?

It’s basically about having too much power and money, which come together. It’s about the billionaires and their power and their influence. I didn’t realize it would be so topical, but the first verse is about sending our kids off to war.

The title comes from the first time I went to Los Angeles, which was probably in the late ’60s. We said, “Let’s go to Beverly Hills and look around,” and you’d see all these big mansions with huge lions on their gateposts. To me, that always made me feel like they were showing off their power.

Basically it’s a protest song, saying that we’ve got to stick together. There’s safety in numbers, and we’re a band of brothers, and we’ve got to fight this.

Your son Julian was your co-writer and also the album’s co-producer.

Yeah. The thing is, Julian knows me so well, that it’s like one person writing, which is so cool. I’ll write a song, and then he’ll come in and help if I need a line, or he’ll write a song and I’ll come in and do the same, or we’ll write a song 50-50.

I’m Sorry Elle is an acoustic showcase, for both rhythm guitar and solos.

That was the first song I wrote for the album. That one’s all me. A lot of the inspiration came from Covid and my daughter giving birth in the middle of Manhattan and barely being able to see her husband because of the restrictions in the hospital. I didn’t see her for four or five months because of the travel thing.

Islamorada has an incredible solo section.

Thank you. My son wrote that one. He wrote the verses and brought them here to Nashville because he lives in Los Angeles, and we’d spend three weeks at a time, and then he’d have to go back.

He also brought in the melody and the chords, which I really love, but he said, “I need a chorus,” so we wrote a chorus that same day – and that was it.

Does the Phenix make an appearance on this record?

Oh yes – on nearly all the solos, I think. When I got it back from Gibson in 2011, they had just made it playable. I said, “Don’t take any of the scars on the body away; just make it playable.”

CBS Sunday Morning News came down to the concert that night because they wanted to see it, so I didn’t play it for the whole show, and then right at the end, just before Do You Feel Like We Do, it all went dark. I pulled out the guitar and put it on the stage, and all the lights hit it.

The whole audience stood up and went berserk. I was thinking, “What about me?” [Laughs] No, the guitar was more important than me that night, because everyone knew it had been gone for 31 years. It was an amazing night. I only played it for Do You Feel... for a while, and then I gradually started bringing it back into the set, and I hardly play anything else live now.

Do you still have the Penta-Suhr you played on David Bowie’s Glass Spider Tour in 1987?

The one I played with David went in a major flood here in 2010, but John Suhr is making me another one, which is very similar. I love his work. Nearly all the solos and all the rhythm sounds on the new album come from a Suhr Badger, which is an 18-watt amp.

Only 18 watts?

Yeah! It’s amazing when you think of those huge sounds, isn’t it? I mean, some of them are really huge, but it’s just that amp with a 1x12 cabinet and Neumann and Shure mics, both the same distance from the speaker. That’s the sound, plus a couple of room mics and some pedals that I had laying around.

What about acoustic guitars?

I used quite a few. There were three different Matons, including the Tommy Emmanuel model and a small travel one, which I’ve recorded with before and is so good.

There’s my old Epiphone, and of course I have my own Martin D-42 Peter Frampton model from the Nineties: that’s a long time ago. I think that’s it. Martin, Matons and Epiphone, basically.

Will you be playing live, or does the myositis prevent that?

It’s making it more difficult. I’m not saying there won’t be some dates, but right now we don’t have anything on the cards. I wish there were, but I just have to wait and see how I do.

Because the condition comes and goes?

Well, we call it “progression or plateau.” It’ll progress for a bit and then it’ll plateau, and right now I’m in a plateau. It is what it is, you know. I’m fully aware of where it’s going, and it’s not great, but I’ve always been the most positive person. It mainly affects my legs, but it’s affecting my hands too.

How do you manage that?

In October, we did a little three-week tour, and I was going, “Okay, finger number two ain’t going to make it there in time: finger number three, you’re up!” I hate thinking when I play, but in this situation, I have to. It’s just a case of changing the way I play a little bit.

I can’t play at the speed I once could. Not that I’ve ever been a shredder, you know. It’s always been more about melody, for me. There’s definitely some shredding going on in Humble Pie and Comes Alive! and some of the other albums, but I tell you right now, it’s less notes, more feel.

You look well, though, and the solos on the record sound as dexterous as ever.

Thank you. Long may that continue. I have some great friends who are making music, and if I don’t have anything of my own to work on, I tell all of them, “Send me tracks, because I want to play every day.”

So right now I’m working on three different tracks: that’s what keeps me going. I love, love, love to play so much, and I’m not going to let it go. Until the last second I’m going to be playing solos and rhythm parts on people’s records.

What inspires you these days?

I listen to everybody for inspiration, like this guy. [Holds up Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue] Oh, my God. I’ve vocally learned the opening cut of Kind of Blue, So What, and then I’m going to learn it on guitar.

I’ve seen a woman online who sings Miles’ solos from that record, and it’s incredible, so that’s why I started doing it myself. I said, “If I can learn to sing it, then I’ll be able to sit down and learn to play it.”

Is it true that when you played with Bowie, you used an electric sitar that once belonged to Jimi Hendrix?

Yes, I did. In 1977 I was finishing I’m in You at Electric Lady in New York, which was Jimi’s studio, and as we were leaving on the last night, the studio manager came out with a guitar case and said, “We’ve really appreciated you being here, I hope you had a good time. We have something here that we think Jimi might have wanted you to have.”

I was expecting it to be a Strat, but they opened it up and showed me this electric sitar, and I went, “Oh, my God.” Jimi’s road manager Gerry Stickells once wrote, “Jimi had three electric sitars. I know where two are, but I can’t find the other one.” [Laughs] I’ve got it here!

• Carry the Light is out now via Universal.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Today is Tuesday. I got home on Sunday from a trip to San Francisco with my guitar and pedals, where I opened for Spike and the Gimmie Gimmes at The Kilowatt city venue. It was fabulous.

But while my pedal bag included a PolyTune, OCD and reverb, all I really needed was my beloved Vox wah-wah. Hello, my name is Eva Walker. I'm a wah-wah addict, and this is my story.

I remember my first wah-wah fondly. I didn’t buy it – it was gifted to me by an ex. But no matter the source, I marveled that I could manipulate my guitar’s natural tone with a simple flex or point of my foot. As a former dancer (tap and ballet) I could put my training to good use.

For me, the wah-wah is single-handedly the greatest, most recognizable guitar sound. The alternation between high and low frequency isn’t just a cool effect – it’s power! It’s the ability to influence the listener from sounding like a temper tantrum from my two-year-old daughter to the teacher on Charlie Brown giving a lecture.

What I love most is that it sounds like it could be talking or crying. Whenever I hear a player using it, I wonder: are they speaking or are they weeping?

One of my favorite weeping wah-wah songs is Maggot Brain by Funkadelic. As some guitar-heads know, George Clinton told Eddie Hazel to play the lead solo as if his mother just died. Mission accomplished!

Although I think it’s more that the Strat’s mother just died and Funkadelic are the pallbearers. Sometimes I can’t listen to the whole 10-minute song without feeling overly emotional.

The weeping wah-wah features prominently in plenty of songs from the 1960s and ’70s. Perhaps most famously is Voodoo Child (Slight Return) by Jimi Hendrix; he sounds like he’s wailing, screaming and even begging. Somehow, though, it’s just two tones on a seesaw.

As for that delightful talking wah-wah, players know that making a guitar talk isn’t the most difficult thing in the world. The talent is in how a player puts emotion into that language. One of my favorite examples is What I Am by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians.

The guitar practically raps – clean, calm and consistent, the energy builds as it makes its final point. Kenny Withrow knows how to make his guitar talk. It’s like he gave it a public speaking class; he shows real diction and dexterity.

Another great example is Tell Me Something Good by Rufus and Chaka Khan. It’s as if Chaka Khan is Chuck D and the lead guitar is Flava Flav – yes, that’s the hype wah! The guitar offers two standout features that could carry the track on their own, yet they prove to be complimentary in the background; the peanut gallery.

More of my favorite wah-wah comes in 1970s Afrorock songs from areas like Nigeria and Zambia. W.I.T.C.H, Chrissy Zebby Tembo and the Ngozi Family kill me. Tracks like Coffin Maker and Troublemaker are Zamrock staples that heavily stand on the fuzzy wah-wah.

The recordings at times even sound cheap or low quality – muffled. But it’s the talent and the choices made by the musicians that make them some of the best recordings I’ve ever heard, where the wah-wah displays rawness, resilience and frustration from civil wars and economic struggle.

Another example is Blacky Joe from the Nigerian band PRO (People’s Rock Outfit). The tune puts me in the shoes of the titular Joe, who’s burnt all his bridges in town. He’s a misfit, constantly in shady situations. The guitar solo at the end could easily be Joe running away or begging for his life. It’s the sound of a defenseless man.

The best compliment I’ve ever gotten came from a man in New York. I’d just come off stage after an hour with my favorite pedal. “Wow!” he said. “You’re like Jimi Hendrix but with a better ass!”

I’m pretty sure I hugged him. Hey, addicts have to stick together.

Detroit-born Ralphe Armstrong was a 17-year-old classical upright bassist, weaned on the jazz and R&B ways of his Motown surroundings, when John McLaughlin selected him to anchor the second edition of the Mahavishnu Orchestra and play on the group’s landmark 1974 orchestral record, Apocalypse.

Armstrong would record on two more Mahavishnu albums, play with Carlos Santana, and tour with Frank Zappa and Herbie Hancock before keeping his promise to Mahavishnu violinist Jean-Luc Ponty and joining his band in 1975.

Ponty, who pioneered the electric violin (augmented with effects), quickly became a fusion figurehead, known for his Euro-melodic compositions over repetitive rhythmic forms that helped him reach the Top 5 on the Billboard Jazz charts for 12 consecutive albums.

Armstrong's five-disc stay with Ponty included his most critically acclaimed release in 1977, Enigmatic Ocean.

“That album was about long pieces,” said Ponty in the November 2013 issue of Bass Player. “I had come up with the title-track suite in four parts, and I developed a second suite, which became The Struggle of the Turtle to the Sea. I wrote Part I while I was with Mahavishnu in 1974.”

Armstrong’s groove-turned-solo on The Struggle of the Turtle to the Sea, Part III is perhaps the ultimate showcase of his unbridled energy – forged through three years of intensive fusion study with Mahavishnu.

“I would distribute solos to band members based on their affinity with the style of the piece, and this seemed like a great spot for Ralphe.

“I gave him a chart with written basslines for Part I and some of Part II, and just chord changes for most of Part III. There, l asked him to come up with a funky groove that would lead into his bass solo.”

The track begins with Steve Smith’s one-bar drum fill into Armstrong's bassline for what is a repeating three-bar chord sequence (Cm-E, F7-Ab7, F7-Db7), with an eighth-note anticipation of all three beat one downbeats.

“I remember Jean-Luc asking me to make it funky,” said Armstrong. “So I started with a Bb-C, to be bluesy. From there I tried to come up with a fluid line by putting notes between the accents on the roots of the chords.”

At 01:05, the second half of the solo takes a sharp turn, adopting an entirely different mindset.

“I wanted to use effects halfway through, and go for a Hendrix vibe: rockin’ out with a sense of freedom.

“I had a Morley Wah pedal and a Maestro Bass Brassmaster BB-1. It was a pedal designed to make your bass sound like a trombone, but I found that by turning the sensitivity knob all the way up, I could sound like Hendrix.”

Armstrong basically abandons the harmony and jams on a C blues scale for the ensuing 36 bars. Turning the effects off, he returns to bass mode for one three-bar phrase before Daryl Stuermer begins his guitar solo.

“The solo is a combination of my R&B roots, my classical training, and the way John McLaughlin was playing guitar in Mahavishnu. He played a lot of rapid passages made up of connected chord arppegios.

“My classical training was crucial because it taught me how to do just that: play arpeggios and connect fast passages.

“I used my Gibson Grabber, with D’Addario Half Rounds, and we recorded it direct.”

Orianthi-fronted power trio The Power of 3, featuring acclaimed drummer Cindy Blackman Santana and bassist Rhonda Smith, have announced their self-titled debut album and debut double single, War in the Streets and Treat Me Like a Lady.

The album, out on December 11 via She2Music, was produced by legendary Jimi Hendrix and Davie Bowie collaborator Eddie Kramer and features a special guest appearance by Carlos Santana.

Recorded entirely in analog, the record promises to capture “the raw chemistry of three world-class musicians whose collective careers have included collaborations with Michael Jackson, Prince, Jeff Beck, Alice Cooper, Beyoncé, Lenny Kravitz, Santana, and Pharoah Sanders.”

The Power of 3’s origin story harks back to a suggestion by Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis, who encouraged Orianthi to assemble a power trio inspired by Hendrix collective Band of Gypsys.

Orianthi reached out to Blackman Santana, known for her work with Lenny Kravitz and Carlos Santana. The two went on to recruit Smith, who held down the low-end for Prince, Jeff Beck, and Beyoncé.

Speaking about the new ensemble, Orianthi says, “I know people all over the world want to see us, and we can't wait. It'll be so much fun to get out there. Playing together with Cindy and Rhonda, this is like a powerhouse. It's not just me... this is a real band.”

In a recent interview with Guitar World, the guitarist also spoke about working with a producer who has a fair few legends under his belt, including Jimi Hendrix.

“He definitely has brought out something that other producers haven’t with his energy alone,” she said.

“Eddie focuses on getting the right microphone placement and works his magic... It’s very old-school and interesting. I love watching Eddie in the studio when he’s panning and doing wild shit. We did a 25-minute jam, which will be on the record, and he had to mix that. He was sweating afterward!”

She continued, “Because I’m such a huge Hendrix fan, I respect him so much. He suggests things like, ‘Why don’t you try this amplifier, this setting, this pedal, or this guitar?’ I’ll try whatever he calls for, you know? My heart is open. Being in the studio with Eddie Kramer and Kevin is an honor.”

The trio has already made its live debut, having played at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium twice, most recently before the Raiders-Cowboys game last November.

Orianthi confirms that they’re now preparing to bring the project to audiences worldwide.

The Power of 3 is out December 11 via She2Music and available to preorder/presave now.

Marshall is continuing to celebrate 60 years of one of the world’s greatest guitarists with three new Jimi Hendrix-inspired drops.

Few players have rewrote the guitar rule book quite like the late Jimi Hendrix. 60 years on from the beginning of the pair’s partnership, Marshall is paying tribute to one of its greatest champions.

The three new releases, which include Major V headphones and an Emberton III Bluetooth speaker, are headlined by the Studio Vintage JMH, a smaller version of that purple-splashed $3,400 half-stack that arrived last year.

Guitar World had raved about the JHM amp, saying it “provides purist-satisfying 1959 Super Lead tones and feel,” and stands as a must-have for collectors. Here, 100 watts of tube amp glory has been condensed into a tighter 20W package.

The all-valve head also has a 5W power-reduction mode for smaller venues and happier neighbors. Saddled with ECC83 preamp valves, an ECC83 phase splitter, two EL34 power valves, and a switchable series effects loop, it’s vintage charm galore.

Its shell is handmade from plywood and wrapped in black Tolex, but it’s the aesthetic on top that stands out. Drawing on Hendrix’s fascination with the third eye and expanded vision, plus a splash of cosmic goodness, it gives the amp an absolutely killer look.

The amp face swaps Marshall’s black-and-gold look for black, silver, and purple, and serves up a Presence dial, three-band EQ, an additional High Treble dial, and a Normal control. Its voicing is based on the classic Studio Vintage amp.

It is, Marshall says, “the sound of the plexi era,” delivering everything from “warm blues to biting leads.” The head pairs with an equally pretty JMH 2x12 angled cab, featuring two Celestion V-Type speakers.

Ally Venable has been chosen as the face of the amp’s promo.

“Marshall gave Hendrix the power, and Hendrix showed the world how to use it,” she says of their iconic partnership. “The sound you can get out of it is incredible; it has different options to get different kinds of overdrive in your playing. It’s not just something you can hear, but something you can feel.”

The purple oil-on-water design continues across the drop, and can be found on Major V overhead headphones and an Emberton III Bluetooth speaker.

The Marshall Studio Vintage JMH is priced at $2,499.99, making it $1k cheaper than the previous release.

See Marshall for more.

Back in 1969, a 22-year-old drama student, Albert Goodman, found himself face-to-face with Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock and managed to capture his iconic closing set.

Now, this rare footage has been unearthed in a new film, Jimi Hendrix: Live at Woodstock – A Second Look, which premiered during a YouTube livestream on August 18 at 9 pm ET.

Goodman left his tent and managed to sneak onstage, shielded by a friend who was carrying a guitar. After securing AC power for his Sony CV ½” video camera, he set it up just 15 feet across the stage where Hendrix would grace the Woodstock revellers.

According to the official description, “Goodman was left alone, assumed to be just another member of the sprawling film crew who had surrounded the stage for the entire event. He settled in behind percussionist Juma Sultan and prepared to document history.”

While technical limitations caused occasional interruptions in the video signal, the more obvious glitches have been replaced by photos.

Goodman managed to capture Hendrix in his prime on August 18, 1969, in Bethel, New York. The newly available footage includes Purple Haze, Voodoo Child, Hear My Train a Comin’, Message to Love, and his history-making rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner.

Wielding a Strat, Hendrix can be seen setting the stage on fire with his playing, alongside the newly formed Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, also known as the Band of Gypsys.

The lineup consisted of guitarist Larry Lee, bassist Billy Cox, Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell, and percussionists Juma Sulytan and Jerry Velez.

Following Woodstock, Goodman hitchhiked and was offered a ride by a driver who, coincidentally, said he was friends with people working at the house Hendrix was renting nearby. This eventually led to the legend himself screening Goodman’s footage and giving his seal of approval.

Goodman kept his tapes stored for the next three decades, before making them available to the Hendrix family.

Since footage from Woodstock is rare, these new videos offer new insight into a performance that not only captured the zeitgeist, but also cemented Hendrix as a guitar hero for the ages.

Back in mid-1967, neither Jimi Hendrix nor Buddy Guy had yet cemented themselves as Mount Rushmore-level guitar pioneers who delighted in breaking rules, bending convention, and blowing minds.

Hendrix was on the cusp of a blinding ascendancy that would see him become, arguably, the most influential electric guitar player who ever lived by the time of his tragic death just three years later. Guy, however, was – and would remain for decades – not nearly as famous as some of the A-list blues-rock guitarists who took cues from his stinging phrases, piercing volume, and embrace of feedback.

Back in 1967, you could forgive the man for snickering a little when compared to one of his younger, more famous blues guitar contemporaries. For instance, Eric Clapton, who decades later would refer to Guy as “the greatest living guitarist”, was already packing arenas with Cream by that time.

Speaking to Guitar World in 1983, Guy recounted the first time he came across Jimi Hendrix’s name in 1967, via an excited concertgoer who was trying to pay him a backhanded compliment after a gig.

“He said, ‘You sound like Jimi Hendrix!’ I said, ‘Jimi who?’” Guy remembered. When the surprised fan asked the Chicago blues legend, “Don't you know Jimi Hendrix?” he replied, “‘No, but if he and I play alike you should ask him if he's heard of me.’”

It wasn’t long before Guy met Hendrix in person, with the latter supposedly telling him that he cancelled a gig to see Guy play. Not too long after came an after-hours Guy/Hendrix jam that was captured for posterity via some wonderfully grainy footage.

Ironically, given that Guy was often chided early in his career for playing too loudly, he felt the same of Hendrix when he first saw the latter play live.

“You’ll laugh, but I thought he used to play too loud,” Guy told Guitar World last year. “When I first came up, Muddy Waters and those guys had two little speakers at each corner of the blues club, and it was a clean sound.”

Waters and co. weren’t playing arenas, however. As rock shows began drawing people by the tens of thousands, and with amp technology in many ways still in its infancy, the first volume wars took hold.

“The clean sound went away because, with the amplifiers, it was a dogfight. It was just a rat race,” Guy told GW. “And then all the special effects came in, and Jimi, I think he was one of the greatest who ever took advantage of the special effects, because a lot of people used them after him.”

Today, Guy is a mainstay act on the ongoing Experience Hendrix tribute tour series. “I'm so grateful we had the chance to become friends,” he told GW last year. “It's an honor to help keep his legacy alive.”

Peter Frampton has looked back on how he got his hands on one of Jimi Hendrix’s most experimental instruments – which he later used in David Bowie’s band

The Humble Pie legend often finds himself at the heart of intriguing gear stories. The tale of how he ended up with one of only three electric sitars that were once owned by Hendrix is no exception.

“I was finishing [1977 solo album] I’m in You at Electric Lady in New York, which was Jimi’s studio,” Frampton recalls in the new issue of Guitar World.

“As we were leaving on the last night, the studio manager came out with a guitar case and said, ‘We’ve really appreciated you being here; I hope you had a good time. We have something here that we think Jimi might have wanted you to have.’”

Plenty of Hendrix’s gear has ended up in the hands of notable players, often as gifts. Frank Zappa acquired the Strat Hendrix charred at the Miami Pop Festival in 1968, Vito Bratta recorded a White Lion classic with his black Strat, and even My Chemical Romance’s Ray Toro has gotten in on the action.

But when the studio manager opened up the case that day, Frampton was caught off guard.

“I was expecting it to be a Strat, but they opened it up and showed me this electric sitar, and I went, ‘Oh, my God,’” he recalls. “Jimi’s road manager Gerry Stickells once wrote, ‘Jimi had three electric sitars. I know where two are, but I can’t find the other one.” [Laughs] I’ve got it here!”

Stickells can consider that mystery solved, then, and Frampton later put the sitar to use in Bowie’s band. It’s believed that Bowie himself used it to track Zeroes, from 1987’s Never Let Me Down, with Frampton taking it to the stage.

Frampton’s tenure with Bowie came at a key point in his career. A chance to join the Who fell through at the time, with Frampton telling GW in 2022 that Bowie helped him regain his “credibility”.

Elsewhere in the interview, Frampton revealed how he met his new favorite guitar player at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch during a private all-star party.

To read Frampton’s interview in full, grab a copy of Guitar World magazine today. Paul McCartney is the cover star, with the feature tracing 60 years of his finest riffs.

Copies can be ordered from Magazines Direct.

Seven decades since it rolled off the production line in Fullerton, California – and whatever your personal tastes – you’d have to agree that Leo Fender’s deathless doublecut is the quintessential electric guitar.

It’s the shape a kid would draw if you handed them a crayon. It’s the model you’d show to a visiting glow-fingered alien curious about humanoid rock ‘n’ roll.

To sling a Strat is to experience the ultimate collision of tone and ergonomics.

Respect to the Telecaster (born three years earlier, in 1951), but it’s a caveman’s club next to Leo’s next great lightbulb moment.

Sleek as a surfboard, contoured to the body like a well-cut suit, with stellar access and the first bulletproof tremolo system. Sonically unique, with an unmistakable singlecoil ‘cluck’ that could be fattened, starved, or stacked via a cluster of idiot-proof dials and a five-way selector (from the mid-’70s on).

Back then, in 1954, the Strat seemed to come from the future, and even now, if you pause and consider it afresh, it still does.

But the Fender Stratocaster would just be a glorified carpentry project without the players who danced across its neck and gave it life. Here we celebrate 25 of the very best Strat-o-masters, from the worlds of blues, rock, funk, disco, prog, shred, grunge, metal, and beyond.

Buddy Holly

It’s December 1, 1957. Buddy Holly is performing That’ll Be The Day on his Ed Sullivan Show debut, and the great American public is seeing the Fender Stratocaster in action for the first time.

He might look like a librarian on uppers, but the Texan bandleader’s piston-pump rhythm work is not to be sniffed at, and to a generation that has known nothing but horn bands, that hard, biting jangle is a clarion call announcing that things will be different from now on.

Jimi Hendrix

Admittedly, the defining image of the Strat’s greatest Sixties ambassador sees him torching the damn thing onstage at 1967’s Monterey Pop Festival. But the instrument’s real pyrotechnics happened before Jimi lit the match.

Exploring the outer limits of its mischief-ready sonic scope and easily abused tremolo, he couldn’t have conjured the same black-magic cacophony – or the beauty of Little Wing – from any other model. Jimi’s trademark flip ‘n’ restring, meanwhile, was an audio-visual WTF that only cemented the impression he’d just stepped off a spaceship into Swinging London.

Hank Marvin

You Americans don’t know how lucky you are. It wasn’t until 1959 – a full five years after US production began – that Shadows bandleader Cliff Richard bought and gifted to his guitarist what is believed to be the first Strat on British shores (a Fiesta Red stunner with gold hardware). Those gorgeous, glassy, plaintive melodies on Apache and Wonderful Land wouldn’t have shimmered the same on anything else.

Jeff Beck

Sure, a Telecaster (in the Yardbirds) and Les Paul (on Blow By Blow) were fine for the punch-your-lights-out early stuff. But when Beck really found his voice and fell into his signature techniques – the volume swells and whale-song whammy tickles, exemplified by Where Were You – only the Fender doublecut could get the job done.

“What is it about the Strat that I love so much?” he mused in an interview with Malcolm Gerrie of Sky Arts. “Its endless color…”

Eric Clapton

Like Beck, EC played ’em all, from his Yardbirds Tele, through the revved-up Les Paul of the Bluesbreakers, to the SG-fueled ‘woman’ tone showcased on Cream’s Disraeli Gears. But like so many Sixties galacticos, as the decade turned, he was drawn to the Strat, retooling a clutch of second-hand models bought from a Nashville music store into the fabled Blackie mongrel that drove everything from Cocaine to Wonderful Tonight.

“I felt like Blackie had become part of me,” Clapton once told Guitar Player. “A guitar like that comes along maybe once in a lifetime.”

David Gilmour

Compared to his ’70s-gunslinger peers, the Pink Floyd man didn’t play too many notes. But the sweetness of his phrasing, twinned with the haunting, bell-like quality of his ’69 Black Strat, meant each one was a symphony (revisit the shivering four-note starburst of Shine On You Crazy Diamond Part II).

That Black Strat was just recently auctioned from the private collection of late Indianapolis Colts boss Jim Irsay for $14.5 million, making it officially the world’s most valuable guitar.

Stevie Ray Vaughan

The Texas bluesman picked up his early-’60s Strat – known as both Number One and First Wife – from an Austin music store in 1974. As a man who played so hard he had to perform DIY on his own tattered fingers, the instrument probably deserved its retirement in 1990 – while SRV’s tragic death that August meant he never saw Fender’s signature replica launch two years later at NAMM.

Ritchie Blackmore

Deep Purple’s dark wizard got his wings on a Gibson ES-335, but a fateful 1969 encounter with Eric Clapton’s roadie changed everything (“He brought a Strat, so I said to him, ‘Do you want to sell that guitar?’”).

In a 2024 GW interview, Blackmore told us he tracked Smoke On The Water on a mongrel, before summing up the Strat’s pragmatic magic: “It’s a way of paying the bills. It also happens to be an incredible guitar.”

Nile Rodgers

Just for a moment, consider how many unfathomable millions of dollars must have flowed through the Chic legend’s ‘Hitmaker’ Strat.

Seeing action with everyone from David Bowie to Madonna, the sonic character of its unusually light alder body is perfect for Rodgers’ muted hits and zingy chord fragments. But he might never have picked it up from a Miami pawn shop in ’73 were it not for the curt advice of wingman/bassist Bernard Edwards (“Get a Strat, motherf***er!”)

Yngwie Malmsteen

Before the Scandi shredder broke out with 1984’s Rising Force, ‘scallops’ were something you gagged on at posh dinner parties.

Inspired by a 16th century lute with carved-out frets, Malmsteen recalled that “people thought I was crazy” when they saw his teenage handiwork. But there was no arguing with the added velocity of scalloping, which made this already-lightning-fast player even speedier, like strapping rockets on Usain Bolt’s sneakers. Only Clapton was offered a Fender signature Strat before him (but Malmsteen’s ’88 model was the first to feature his signature on the headstock).

Dave Murray and Janick Gers

Given all that demon iconography, you’d expect Iron Maiden’s three-guitar frontline to reach for something macabre from the B.C. Rich brochure. In fact, the British metallers’ gallop is largely underpinned by a pair of workhorse Strats, with Janick Gers favoring a Seymour Duncan JB JR-bolstered model and Dave Murray driving a pair of Hot Rails (Adrian Smith is more of a dabbler, mostly wedded to his Jackson San Dimas).

Tom DeLonge

The Blink-182 man has bounced between Fender and Gibson his whole career, and lately seems sworn to his signature Starcaster. But after retiring the iconic early “Sticker Strat”, the Enema Of The State period saw DeLonge punch out parts like All The Small Things on a pastel-hued Custom Shop Strat with a lonely Seymour Duncan Invader bridge ’bucker (it was released in 2001 as a production guitar).

Albert Hammond Jr

Beset by bowel-tuned nu-metal, it felt like we hadn’t seen a Strat in years when The Strokes broke out with 2001’s Is This It.

While Nick Valensi was all studied cool on an Epiphone Riviera, his corkscrew-curled wingman hammered thrillingly at a high-strapped 1985 reissue of a ’72 Strat (that instrument was also behind the feral, Freddie King-inspired solo on Last Nite).

Billy Corgan

Alt-rock will forever be associated with a sticker-coated Jazzmaster, but look closer and the Strat appeared in the hands of everyone from Kurt Cobain (at the ’92 Reading Festival) to Mike McCready (the out-of-phase shimmer on Yellow Ledbetter). Amongst these, Corgan was arguably the greatest virtuoso and most committed Strat-o-phile.

In his words, the Smashing Pumpkins leader “walked into a Guitar Center one day and, off the wall, bought an Eric Clapton ’57 reissue. That became the main guitar for Siamese and Mellon Collie, and launched a thousand ships of people chasing that sound.”

Mark Knopfler

Before he settled back into the molten Les Paul solos of Brothers In Arms, the Dire Straits leader was the fastest gun on London’s post-punk scene, revered for the quicksilver bob ‘n’ weave outro to 1978’s Sultans Of Swing.

Tellingly, the red ’61 he played it on (supposedly something of a partscaster) was one of the few models that Knopfler chose to ring-fence from his 2024 guitar auction.

Bonnie Raitt

The Californian slide goddess and 13-time Grammy winner picked up her first Strat on the street following a 1969 gig – immediately falling for the often-neglected third position. “It’s all about that middle pickup,” says Raitt. “You just can’t beat it.”

Eric Johnson

The Cliffs Of Dover virtuoso could easily have followed his G3 brethren into an Ibanez endorsement. But Johnson is a Strat diehard with a very specific wishlist, insisting that models from ’54, ’57, and ’58 are best (“I think Fender had a shipment of wood that was real special”) and adding an offbeat f-hole to his 2018 signature thinline.

Cory Wong

Funk belongs on a Strat – don’t argue – and Wong’s kinetic grooves with Vulfpeck have moved more feet than anyone on the modern scene. He’s proved price isn’t everything with his dedication to his teenage Highway One model – also the inspiration for his 2021 signature model – and should really be taking a salary as Fender brand ambassador.

Wong was led to the aforementioned Highway One Strat by his father, who – Wong said in a 2023 Guitar World interview – told him, “‘Listen! You love the Chili Peppers, you love Stevie Ray Vaughan. Look at Jeff Beck, look at Jimi Hendrix, look at Stevie Ray and Eric Johnson.’ He gave me this lineage of the Stratocaster and basically said: Look at all the things this guitar is capable of.’”

H.E.R.

The Strat’s generation-leaping appeal is underlined by Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson, whose breakout 2021 album, Back Of My Mind, bends the backbone of vintage R&B into bold new shapes.

“The Strat is an iconic guitar, just because of the look and shape,” says the 28-year-old Californian (who got her own signature model in 2020). “But the tone, the heaviness… to me, it’s the unicorn. It’s classic, but it’s new at the same time.”

Rory Gallagher

Bought on credit in 1963, and beaten like a dog through the ’70s and ’80s, the Irishman’s ’61 looked set for a quiet retirement. Instead, it now enjoys an afterlife as a blues-rock Excalibur, loaned out to wide-eyed fanboys like Joe Bonamassa.

“I’m thinking, ‘I’m gonna take so much shit for this’,” recalled the US bluesman of test-driving Rory’s doublecut at London’s Hammersmith Apollo in 2011. “Because everyone on the Internet will go, ‘Who do you think you are?’ But anybody would have done it…”

The Edge

U2’s sonic maverick has built up quite a rack since 1980’s Boy (you could argue he’s equally associated with the Explorer). But hands-down the most neck-tingling moment of any show is the delay-drenched jewelry box tinkle of Where The Streets Have No Name, and for that, a Strat on the middle pickup is non-negotiable.

Mdou Moctar

If your first guitar had been built from driftwood, bicycle cables, and the keys used to open sardine tins, you’d be glad to get on a Strat too. The desert-blues figurehead’s only stipulation is that the strings on his American Professional left-hander are at least two years old.

Steve Lacy

Every time you think you’ve got the Strat all figured out, a twenty-something gunslinger comes along and flips it on its head.

Take the Californian alt-R&B phenom, who splits his licks between solo work, The Internet, and a billion guest-spots with everyone from Vampire Weekend to Tyler, The Creator. Then there’s Lacy’s rulebook-shredding People Pleaser signature Strat – complete with an onboard fuzz circuit.

Ry Cooder

There’s a case that the Californian slide man barely qualifies as a Strat player. His trademark ‘Coodercasters’, after all, are so heavily modded that Leo Fender would barely recognize them as his children. But Cooder demands inclusion for his beyond-spellbinding, desert-baked, and dust-blown tone.

Buddy Guy

When the great Louisiana bluesman headed north in ’57, he assured his ailing mother he’d return from Chicago at the wheel of a polka-dot Cadillac. Guy couldn’t keep that promise, but made amends by commissioning his spotted Fender signature model.

He’s never strayed from the Strat, and even on the brink of his nineties, used it to dig out a gorgeous fingerstyle blues in the credits scene of last year’s Oscar-winning Sinners.

Pete Townshend is largely credited as one of the first guitarists ever to smash a guitar on stage. However, Jimi Hendrix managed to build quite a reputation for the almost ritualistic way he destroyed instruments – even going as far as to set them on fire.

Eric Barrett, who served as Hendrix's roadie during his heyday, was just 21 when he found himself on the frontline of the guitarist's stagecraft.

“During the last number, Jimi took all of his frustrations out on the equipment,” he writes in an excerpt from his upcoming memoir, Experienced: On the Road with Jimi Hendrix and Beyond – published by The Sunday Times – as he looks back on his first run of shows with Hendrix in 1968.

“He beat the hell out of the amplifiers and poked bloody great holes in the speakers with the neck of his guitar. No wonder the last roadie took a bucketload of acid and fucked off mid-tour.”

While Barrett can’t clearly remember whether Hendrix “set fire to anything” during that first short tour of Italy and Switzerland, he confirms the legend did go out of his way to smash “plenty of guitars and amps.”

In typical rockstar fashion, “He’d never warn me before a performance. I don’t think he knew himself until it came time for the encore.”

As a responsible roadie, Barrett tried his best to save a couple of Jimi’s guitars from this fate.

“Before he went on stage, I’d always point out an old guitar, or one I’d rebuilt, and say, ‘Jimi, if you’re gonna smash a guitar tonight, please use that one,’” he continues.

“Sometimes he’d listen to me, other nights he didn’t. I remember one really beautiful Fender Stratocaster; I watched in horror as he destroyed it during the encore in Bologna.”

Backstage after the show, Barrett was left wondering why Hendrix would deliberately smash perfectly good guitars.

Hendrix’s reply? “‘Eric, I just couldn’t get any more out of it, man. I squeezed every note and every sound that guitar was ever going to give me. It had nothing left to give.’”

In a 1968 interview with reporter Jay Ruby, later published in the November 1991 edition of Guitar World, Hendrix reflected on his guitar-smashing antics, giving more insight into why he did it.

“It was just because we felt like it,” he said. “It might have been because we had some personal problems.

“You feel very frustrated, and the music gets louder and louder. You start thinking about different things, and all of a sudden, crash, bang. Eventually it goes up in smoke.”

By that point, Hendrix had already set fire to his guitar at London's Finsbury Park Astoria in 1967. He famously repeated the stunt at the Monterey Pop Festival that same year, inspiring generations of guitarists, including Kurt Cobain, Matt Bellamy and Phoebe Bridgers.

In the late 1960s, when both Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton were leading the charge in blues rock music, the two change-makers were pitted against one another in a fierce battle for ultimate guitar god status.

It was, in theory, an easy comparison to make. Both guitarists were taking the electric guitar to an all-new level.

Clapton had already been anointed ‘god’ by the press, but Hendrix’s arrival in London in ’66 exacerbated the six-string arms race. Within months, he left his contemporaries quaking in their boots – Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, you name it. Britain’s biggest players knew they had met their match.

Clapton was included. After Hendrix crashed a Cream gig and famously stunned Slowhand and his audience with an impromptu stage appearance, he knew things would never be the same again.

It was one of guitar’s most intense – yet respectful – rivalries, one which found fans and the press alike comparing the two guitarist’s playing styles.

This didn’t sit right with Hendrix. As he once explained during an interview with Jazz & Pop Magazine in 1968, it was a forced rivalry he didn’t really understand. In his mind, they were two completely different players.

“That’s one thing I don’t like,” Hendrix had said at the height of the pair’s perceived rivalry. “Sometimes the notes might sound like [we’re alike], but it’s a completely different scene between those notes.

“First they do that [compare him to Clapton], and then they expect me to play blues exclusively. We just say we don’t want to play blues all the time – we just don’t feel like it all the time. You see, there are other things we can play too, nice songs or different things.”

Clearly, Hendrix didn’t think of himself and Clapton as similar players, but that’s not to say we didn’t rate his ‘rival’. After that Cream gig, the pair remained friends, and Hendrix never held back in dishing out praise.

“But as far as the blues scene goes, some of the things that Albert King and Eric Clapton do are very good,” he continued in his Jazz & Pop interview, which was re-published in the November 1991 issue of Guitar World.

“I don't have any favorites. It's very hard because there are so many different styles, and it's so bad to put everybody in the same bag. I like to listen to anybody, so long as they don't bore me. I tend towards the blues as far as guitar players are concerned.”

The ‘competition’ was healthy, and both players left a lasting impact on one another. Clapton once credited Hendrix with influencing his decision to turn to the Stratocaster.

Slowhand even purchased a rare left-handed Strat as a gift for Hendrix in 1970. As fate would have it, he never got the chance to give it to the American guitarist, who died the night it was going to be presented.

Hendrix and Clapton never let the forced rivalry get between them. Instead, it helped them both hit new heights.

“When I first started to play, it was a real bitch. You have to prove yourself every time. You have to play twice as good as any man. But you just can’t let it intimidate you,” virtuoso jazz player Emily Remler once told Guitar World. And prove herself she did.

By that year, the early 20-something guitarist had already cut her teeth training at the prestigious Berklee College of Music and playing in blues and jazz clubs around New Orleans.

She took things a step further when she released two studio albums under the respected label Concord – 1981’s Firefly and 1982’s Take Two.

“Berklee didn’t prepare me for Little Queenie and the Percolators, say – it gave me a good knowledge of harmony, though, and I learned to read there,” she told GW in a January 1983 interview.

“I could solo over something without hearing it first, just by knowing the idea – but I didn’t learn to play with soul or feeling. You learn that yourself.”

As Guitar World observed her performing at New York's legendary Blue Note in the lead-up to her second release, Remler spoke about her wide-ranging influences.

While jazz icons Wes Montgomery and Barney Kessel were central to her style, she also drew inspiration from rock ’n’ roll and Jimi Hendrix.

“I’ve been listening to The Essential Jimi Hendrix, which I had on cassette while I was spending time on the beach in Jamaica this summer. Hendrix was amazing; he was singing and playing scat lines long before [George] Benson…”

“Somebody just told me I sounded like Hendrix,” she added with a shrug.

And while she sounded nothing like Hendrix, Remler's unapologetic approach to her instrument and her knack for blending genres were reminiscent of Jimi.

“I’ve been playing for 10 years,” she explained, “started out with folk songs, like everybody does. But I knew something was up – I could sing all sorts of rock solos, sax breaks, and my friends couldn’t do that.

“So then I tried to play rock stuff – Johnny Winter, Hendrix, the Stones.” Remler noted that, at that point, she “didn’t particularly like jazz; I couldn’t hear what was happening in it.”

“But at Berklee School of Music, I couldn’t avoid jazz,” she continues, “and when I heard Pat Martino and Wes Montgomery, I got really excited right away. I changed to jazz in my first year.”

Remler's fire continued to burn brightly until 1990. After leaving Concord and signing with Justice Records, the guitarist recorded This Is Me, which would prove to be her final album.

It marked a radical departure from her previous works, reflecting a more experimental and singular voice that forayed into electric jazz-pop.

Remler never saw the album's release. She died of heart failure at 32 while on tour in Australia, after grappling with a heroin and Dilaudid addiction.

34 years later, in 2024, producer Zev Feldman, alongside Bill Milkowski and George Klabin, paid homage to the virtuoso by releasing the posthumous live album, Cookin' at the Queens: Live in Las Vegas 1984 & 1988.

It offers a glimpse into the live performances of a pioneering guitarist who was gone too soon.

Few recordings have achieved the mythical status of the 15-minute Voodoo Child jam from the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Electric Ladyland.

Cut in the early hours of May 2nd, 1968, with an all-star cast that included Steve Winwood and Jefferson Airplane bassist Jack Casady, the sprawling blues workout was the product of a spontaneous late-night studio session at New York City’s Record Plant Studios.

For Casady, the invitation came after years of crossing paths with Hendrix on the late-‘60s touring circuit, where a friendship with drummer Mitch Mitchell led to one of rock's most celebrated recordings.

“In the late ‘60s Bill Graham was managing us, and we would suggest other artists to him for our shows,” explained Casady in the October ’93 issue of Bass Player. “Jimi was one of them.

“The first concert we did together was Monterey Pop, and we became friends. In fact, Mitch Mitchell and I really hit it off, both musically and personally.

“Later, when Jimi was recording Electric Ladyland, we came through New York, and a bunch of musicians, including Steve Winwood, went down to see him.

“Around 4am, Jimi decided we should do some playing – fortunately, I had my Guild with me. He broke out a blues tune that we ran through three or four times and then recorded; it ended up on the album as the long version of Voodoo Child.

“I'm also on a couple of tracks from the Live at Winterland tapes that Rykodisc later released.”

Unlike his more melodic work with Jefferson Airplane, here Casady locks tightly with drummer Mitch Mitchell, letting Hendrix and Winwood take the spotlight.

His bass tone is unmistakably late-‘60s – rich in low-mids, lightly overdriven, and full of the kind of natural bloom that comes from a cranked amp in a live studio environment.

“After hearing bands like Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, I became really interested in overdriving my amp. I'd been using the semi-hollow Guild Starfire along with my Jazz Bass, and I noticed that the Fender didn't distort well, but when I played overdriven chords and moved up the neck on the Guild, it had a sweet sustain with a lot of interesting overtones.”

Reflecting on his almost telepathic lock with drummer Mitch Mitchell, Casady said: “When I work with drummers, we often have a hard time seeing eye-to-eye because I don't play patterns with them. It's still a marriage rhythmically, but playing together does not mean just playing the same notes.

“Fortunately most of the drummers I play with understand this, so we're able to support each other while still exploring new ideas.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is it?

When it comes to guitar players, there are simply none more iconic than Jimi Hendrix. His otherworldly tones and raw energy on stage were backed up by the roar of an almost equally iconic Marshall amplifier. The combination of the two yielded sounds that still influence guitar players 60 years later. So, to mark the 60th anniversary of this pairing, Marshall has launched a rather fetching Hendrix signature amp - the Marshall X Jimi Hendrix 60th Anniversary JMH Half Stack.

Based on a Marshall Plexi, specifically the 1959 Super Lead, which Hendrix famously used, the amp is a hand-wired limited edition with only 300 being made available.

Befitting of its collector's status is the striking purple and black “cosmic swirl” finish and the accoutrements that come along with it - a poster, a letter from Janie Hendrix, a handkerchief, some picks, and, most notably, a Fuzz Face pedal.

Hendrix’s Fuzz Faces are things of lore, thanks to the way engineering guru Roger Mayer would curate and mod them, leading to fuzz sounds that would often vary.

The pedal included in this bundle is inspired by the aggressive sound used by Jimi in his final UK performance on the Isle of Wight in 1970, and is adorned with the same purple and black swirls as the amplifier. It's also not available to buy separately.

It would be remiss of Marshall to put out such a unique-looking head without a matching cabinet. Given that this is from the days when guitar amps needed to fill a venue, that cab is, of course, a 4x12 and loaded with Celestion G12H 30 speakers.

In short, we have a Fuzz Face, a Plexi, a 4x12, and a hell of a lot of volume. This should be fun.

Specs

• Launch price: $4,999 | £3,799 | €4,399
• Type: Tube amp head and cab with Fuzz Face
• Origin: UK
• Output: 100W
• Speaker: 4x12 Celestion G12H 30
• Channels: 2
• Controls: Presence, Bass, Mid, Treble, Volume 1, Volume 2
• Connectivity: ¼” instrument input
• Footswitch: No
• Weight: 20.5kg/45.1lbs (head)
• Dimensions: 29.1”x12”x8.2”/740 x 305 x 210 mm (head)
• Contact: Marshall

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

At $4,999 or £3,799, I am expecting this head and cab combo to be nothing less than premium. Thankfully, that is exactly what we get.

Both sport thick birch plywood sides, hard-wearing tolex, and robust carrying handles that are clearly built to last. The controls on the head are all satisfying to turn, and the rotary selectors that control the impedance and mains power settings operate with a reassuring clunk, as do the power and Standby switches on the front.

The limited edition Fuzz Face is built to the overblown size of the vintage models, complete with the hardy metal chassis. These are both collector's items that will happily last the foreseeable future if they are looked after and properly maintained.

Maintenance for the head will include swapping out those tubes at some point, of which we have three ECC83s/12AX7’s in the preamp (one of which is a phase splitter) and four EL34s kicking out those 100 watts.

This is all within hand-wired circuitry. Some will debate how much difference this makes tonally, but either way, it is certainly an indication that care has been taken here, and it’s this sort of attention I would expect an amp in this price range to be getting.

For me, the star of the whole thing is that swirling purple finish against the more traditional black of a Marshall amp. While it’s not a reference to a specific album cover or such like, in my opinion, it nails the psychedelia associated with Hendrix and rounds off what is a great-looking bundle.

Usability and features

Usability and features rating: ★★★★½

One of the joys of a good ol’ tube amp is that you just plug in, turn up until it sounds good, and go. Given that this amp is essentially a Marshall 1959 Super Lead, it would be rude not to start the same way here.

As one of the most iconic amps of all time, many of us will already be familiar with this setup. But for the uninitiated, we have two channels - a High Treble and a Normal channel, each with a high and low sensitivity input.

The high sensitivity is designed for low-output pickups, and the low sensitivity is designed for high-output pickups.

These channels can be jumped with a patch lead (by, for example, connecting the low-sensitivity input of the High Treble channel to the high-sensitivity input of the Normal channel) and mixed to taste.

On the front panel, you will find everything you need to tweak the tone - a three-band EQ, a Presence control, and a Volume for each channel, in addition to a power and a standby switch.

Then, around the back are two ¼” speaker outputs, an output selector allowing for 4, 8, and 16 ohms outputs, and a mains selector that switches between 100, 120, and 230 volts.

So, nothing fancy. A faithful re-issue of traditional amplifier technology that is bound to please the purists, resulting in an easy-to-use piece of gear, free from the complications that modernity can bring.

The only thing you need to be careful with is that you select the correct impedance for the cab you are using. Marshall helpfully includes a few notes on this in its manual.

It’s worth noting that with no master control or modern tech, breakup is achieved via pushing the valves with the volume controls. Wattage is not a measure of volume, but even in the context of 100W amps, believe me when I say this amp is loud!

So, in pushing it into breakup, you are going to want to make sure you are in a big room that can handle the level, or employ some modern tech to tame it. In our case, a Torpedo Captor X Plus.

Aiding in that volume is that 4x12 cab, which helpfully comes with castors. Not that I found those helpful while lugging it up the stairs to our studio's testing room.

The Fuzz Face follows the vintage correct approach with an unwieldy size, no power input, and a 9V battery compartment that requires removing the backplate to access.

As much as these vintage correct appointments are kind of a pain compared to pedals with mains inputs and easy-to-reach battery compartments, the result is a bundle that feels like it pays real homage to the time and player, which is entirely the point here.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

Playing these amps is a visceral experience. It is not the smooth, produced sound that many will have heard in digital versions of a Plexi-style amp. It is brash, unforgivingly touch-sensitive, and undeniably addictive.

The High Treble channel is very bright, unpleasantly so until you get the volume around the halfway point. Here, the low-end increases and starts to complement that very present treble, creating a more balanced sound, but one that is still very forward in the treble and high-mid range.

The Normal channel is the opposite and remains quite dark until similarly pushed, with much less of that high end. For me, the best results are gained by using both and jumping the inputs.

That three-band EQ is relatively subtle in the Presence, Bass, and Mid, giving enough to tweak the amp to the room whilst preserving its character. The Treble has a much wider sweep, going from dull and dark to ear-piercingly bright.

I am testing with a Les Paul Classic, a Custom Shop Telecaster, and, of course, a Stratocaster. Setting both channels to around seven creates a snappy drive with that mid-forward, present high end that is typical of that Marshall-style, as you would expect.

It is wonderfully dynamic, responding to the different pickups in the guitars and reacting faithfully to the guitar’s volume pots, perhaps more than any other amp I have played.

This sort of touch sensitivity and detailed high-end make the amp feel like it is truly connected to your fingers and your guitar. However, a word of warning, it also makes the amp an unforgiving beast, recreating every bit of a player's nuance and therefore every imperfection. Not for the faint of heart.

It's a sound that makes most sense in a band context, where that presence will serve to cut nicely, and the low end is filled by other instruments. I suspect that many would find these tones to be too bright on their own.

Indeed, it took me a moment to properly adjust and start appreciating it during testing.

I am, of course, playing through as many Hendrix riffs as I can remember, and it isn’t long before I am plugging in that Fuzz Face with the Strat.

A traditional Fuzz Face will change as you turn the volume up, opening more high-end as you get louder. For me, the best way to use them is to gun the volume, set the Fuzz control just a little back from full, and control the amount of Fuzz with your guitar's volume control.

This Hendrix Isle Of Wight festival set-inspired Fuzz Face possesses the aggressive high end as promised, and certainly cuts. There is a little more gain than on some other versions of the Fuzz Face I have played, so I find myself running the Fuzz control back a little further than usual in order to have it clean up properly on the guitar's volume control.

With the guitar's volume gunned, it is a full and fat fuzz, obviously reminiscent of that Foxey Lady and Voodoo Chile sound. And with the volume rolled back, the circuitry of a Fuzz Face allows the signal to clean up spectacularly well whilst staying bright, forming an essential part of Hendrix’s cleaner tones. All in all, I am having a lot of fun here.

But let's not forget, the Marshall Plexi sound was also used by the likes of Paul Kossoff, Jimmy Page, and many others. If you want those sounds, get some humbuckers and dial in some more gain from the volume controls, and you're there.

Additionally, in more modern contexts, this sort of amp works well as a pedal platform. Using a Thorpy Kudu overdrive pedal, I am able to push the amp into high-gain territory, useful for some more modern sounds.

Having no effects loop does somewhat limit the amp in this context, so you will need to be comfortable running your time-based effects into the front end, especially considering that there is no onboard reverb.

Verdict

The Marshall 1959 Super Lead is an undeniably influential sound and is the sort of amplifier that I think every player should experience at least once.

Not only to provide some context to what people really mean when they talk about that Marshall thing, but to gain a better understanding of the type of amp that contributed to the history and development of the guitar.

While the amp is impractically loud, and the fuzz is way too big for most boards, as a tribute to the time and player, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Guitar World verdict: The Marshall X Jimi Hendrix 60th Anniversary JMH Half Stack provides purist-satisfying 1959 Super Lead tones and feel, in a bundle that pays a poignant tribute to the Hendrix/Marshall pairing. For collectors and enthusiasts, this will be a much-coveted purchase.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Marshall

Guitar Bonedo and Planet Guitar

Guitarist–meets-businessman-meets-pedal-wizard Mike Matthews’ company Electro-Harmonix is, undisputedly, one of the earliest pioneers of guitar pedals – converting the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, and Jimmy Page – into loyal fans. However, the company has faced its fair share of hardships and pivots to survive – and thrive – in 2026.

The ’70s were a particularly fruitful period for the company. After starting with just $1,000, a scrappy attitude, and a knack for innovation in 1968, EHX was grossing $5 million annually by 1978 and had offices in New York, Toronto, London, and Tokyo.

However, great success and great hardship can go hand in hand.

After a series of business decisions – coupled with an aggressive campaign by a trade union in New York that targeted EHX’s 200-something employees – caused one of the company’s potential lenders to pull its funds, Matthews was forced to file for bankruptcy. Even more heartbreaking, he had to sell the Electro-Harmonix trademark.

“I went bankrupt in ’82. I still tried to hang in there,” he recounts in an interview on The Zak Kuhn Show.

“Finally, the doors were shut. We brought in the generator to just keep the power on. I had loyal people that worked with me. But finally, in ’84, I was completely bankrupt, and it was very devastating, depressing.”

Matthews was forced to do a complete 180. His new plan and target market? The Soviet Union.

“I got involved with vacuum tubes because I was going to the Ministry of Electronics. Everything in Russia was centrally controlled,” he explains.

“In the ’70s, [I] was doing some business with communist countries, like with Hungary, which was communist-controlled. They came to my booth in Frankfurt and wanted to order about $1,000 worth of pedals. They picked out some stuff. I went back to them. I said, ‘Look, instead of ordering this and this and this, order this, because they'll sell better.’ And they said, ‘Okay, we'll take your advice.’”

“So the next year they came back and gave me a $2,000 order, and they said, ‘Mike, you pick out what we should buy.’”

Eventually, Matthews built enough rapport with the Eastern Bloc to secure an invitation to exhibit at the first consumer trade show open to Western countries.

“I jumped on it, and I got carried away. I took a whole band, and I took a guy to set things up… we would go on three times a day.”

This first introduction to the Soviet Union led Matthews down a path that would not only save the company but also secure its future – all under his new brand name, Sovtek.

“I got involved with the vacuum tubes. When we were in Russia, everybody wanted to buy our stuff, but they had no money. So I started thinking, well, ‘What can I buy from Russia, so they'll have money?’”

He continues, “At first, I was thinking of integrated circuits… so I went over to the Ministry of Electronics there… I saw, hanging on the wall, vacuum tubes. That's how I got into vacuum tubes.”

As the Cold War came to an end and the Soviet Union collapsed, another phenomenon was brewing in the guitar world.

“In the ’70s, we built tens of thousands of different pedals… the thing that puzzled me was that pedals that were built in the ’70s were selling for more than what they used to sell for when we had built thousands,” Matthews adds.

“This new vintage market developed, and so initially I started making them [the pedals] in Russia, because Russia collapsed, and they were desperately looking for work to survive.

“I hooked up with a very small military factory in St. Petersburg. They started making these pedals. That's how they came out with the first Electro-Harmonix pedals made in Russia.”

This Russian side quest eventually led to a full EHX comeback – and Matthews even managed to get the trademark back and restart Stateside operations.

The EHX founder's business learnings continue to guide him to this day – right down to his favorite pedal. “[It's] whatever sells, because I mean, it's a business. If I'm not focusing on business, I can't make more money, and if I can't make more money, I can't get more designers to design more products, especially in digital.”

In an exclusive Guitar World interview, Matthews looked back on the brand’s groundbreaking Hall of Science – a veritable candy store for audio pioneers that predated the likes of the Gibson Garage and Fender flagship stores by decades.

When we talk about phrasing on blues guitar, this can often translate to rhythm. It’s possible to play a great solo without many notes if the rhythm is interesting.

Obviously, the same goes for rhythm parts – so the example piece concentrates on this area but using a hybrid ‘rhythm/lead’ approach favoured by John Mayer, SRV, Nile Rodgers and Jimi Hendrix, among others. Blurring the boundaries between the traditional distinctions of rhythm and lead guitar also serves a trio format well, and, as you’ll hear, the backing track consists of only bass and drums.

While we can be minimal at times, there is a responsibility (some might say freedom!) to fill the harmonic and/or rhythmic gaps. Not all blues is ‘funky’ per se, but there is a lot to be gained from understanding displaced/off-kilter rhythms, and this is what the example piece is designed to help you with.

A good starting point is to think of each beat in the bar as divided into four semiquavers. Initially, mute all of the strings then play alternating ‘down-up-down-up’ strokes, four per beat of the bar/16 to the whole bar. You’ll sometimes hear this described as a ‘1-e-and-a’ pattern.

Accent the first downstroke on each beat of the bar, then try moving the emphasis around, maybe to the ‘e’ or ‘a’ on the upstrokes. This is the basis of the approach used in the example piece, though you’ll notice I’m not playing every single semiquaver beat, even though my picking hand often goes through the motions.

Another thing to bear in mind is to keep it relaxed and don’t hit the strings too hard. This is an easy trap to fall into when playing tight staccato rhythms. Finally, remember you can mute with both picking and/or fretting hands to control ringing strings. Hope you enjoy and see you next time!

Example 1

Almost every bar is 'locked down' with a double hit on an A5 power chord and a more rhythmic answering phrase in the subsequent three beats.

This can often be a repeated phrase, but it’s more useful to show you a range of options in this context. Though the muted hits are notated as faithfully as possible, this is not an exact science, so allow yourself a little flexibility, rather than attempting to duplicate anything precisely.

Example 2

Moving to the IV chord (D), this second phrase plays around with the initial chord hits using a dotted rhythm. This is a bit of a liberty as the bass and drums stay with two straight quavers, but I think we'll get away with it...

Concentrate on the drums to aim your accents/pauses as precisely as possible, and note that not every 1-e-and-a’ space is filled, even if your picking hand does go through the motions to keep the timing.

Example 3

The C and D chords use a similar pattern in this final example. Note the tied/held chords going across the rhythm – slow the whole thing down if that helps make sense of what’s happening on the various subdivisions of the beat.

Like Example 1 (and 2), the muted hits should be played without over-thinking which strings you’re hitting – just make sure everything is muted and it won’t matter too much. For the last bar, it was fun to change to the bridge pickup and go for a rockier feel. This is optional!

Hear it here

John Mayer Trio – Try!

Recorded live, this album is a particularly great example of what a trio can sound like – and it was a major inspiration for the example piece, especially Who Did You Think I Was. Also on this album, check out I Got A Woman and Wait Until Tomorrow.

Bonus mention goes to Another Kind Of Green for combining Little Wing-type chordwork with a funky shuffle feel. There are a good many ideas waiting to be used here – it’s an ample source of inspiration!

Jimi Hendrix – Band of Gypsys

Though he loved to overdub complementary rhythmic parts in the studio, Jimi was adept at making it work live, too. Check out out Freedom from The Cry Of Love for an example of his studio savvy, then compare with Who Knows from Band Of Gypsys to hear it live in a trio format.

Also, listen to Message To Love from the same album, with funky and unison riffing. This really makes the distinction between rhythm and lead guitar seem obsolete.

Nile Rodgers – Various

We’re going unapologetically funk for the last suggestion here – and Nile Rodgers is still the definitive example of a funk rhythm player. Check out his work with Chic: Le Freak, Good Times and I Want Your Love.

Alternatively, try Sister Sledge with Thinking Of You, We Are Family or Lost In Music. Elsewhere, why not check out I’m Coming Out by Diana Ross, or Get Lucky by Daft Punk. All these parts are based on the ‘1-e-and-a’ rhythm described earlier.

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Hey Joe (Smash Hits – 1966)

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

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

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

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

3. Wild Thing (Live At Monterey – 1967)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8. Drifters Escape (Loose Ends 1973)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11. Daytripper (BBC Sessions – 1967)

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

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

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

Slight Return – a handful of contenders for further consideration

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

Few producers and engineers have had as much impact on rock ’n’ roll history as Eddie Kramer. His sonic fingerprints can be heard on career-defining records such as Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin II, Kiss’s Alive!, and Anthrax’s Among the Living.

Yet it’s perhaps his close collaboration with Jimi Hendrix that most pushed the envelope of the craft itself, including pioneering techniques such as stereo phasing/flanging, which created the characteristic whooshing psychedelic sound that’s quintessentially Hendrix.

“Experimenting with stereo, which I really, really got into on Axis: [Bold as Love, released in 1967] showed the next expanse of Jimi’s sound: phasing,” Kramer tells Rick Beato when reflecting on Hendrix’s ever-expanding palette of guitar sounds.

“I was very fortunate to have worked with the Beatles on two occasions. I did All You Need is Love and Baby, You’re a Rich Man. I think it was on the All You Need Is Love session. We asked – now he's dearly departed – George Chkiantz, a fantastic engineer, and we said, ‘George, how did you get that phasing sound for the Beatles?’”

Chkiantz was far from keen to spill his secrets. “He says, ‘Well, chaps, you know, if you look in the BBC Radiophonic Handbook, you’ll actually find it there.’ And we said, ‘Fuck you, George.’ I mean, come on, we’re just asking!”

Kramer knew that the Beatles had managed to get it in mono, and, spurred by the nonchalant reply, was determined to go one step further – and teamed up with Chkiantz himself to do so.

“George, God bless him, locked himself away in one of the small studios in the back with about four tape machines, and a week later he came out and said, ‘Eddie, I got it. I got the stereo phasing.’ ‘Great! Let’s try it with Hendrix.’”

That’s exactly what they did, testing it first on the coda of the freshly recorded Bold as Love.

“On the appointed day, we're putting the final touches to the mix. ‘Jimi, come in. We want to play you something.’”

As Kramer relates, the tape machines were rolling, and right as Mitch Mitchell launches into that massive, thundering drum break, the phasing kicks in – created by slightly delaying one signal against another – forever defining Hendrix’s psychedelic-infused sonic universe.

“Jimi's sitting behind me on the couch, and he hears this, and he loses his shit completely,” Kramer recalls.

“He falls on the floor in a fetal position and puts his hands on his ears. ‘Oh my god, oh my god, I can’t believe [it]! What is that? That was something in my dream. How did you do that? Play it again!’ So we play it again. Oh, he’s going crazy! [He says], ‘I want that shit on everything, man.’

“True story!” the producer concludes with a laugh. Watch the full interview above, or subscribe to Rick Beato’s channel for more.

Kramer spilled the beans on what went into working with Hendrix in a recent Guitar World interview, where he also detailed how they managed to achieve the “backwards guitar” on Are You Experienced.

Some players like bolt-ons. Some love offset guitars. Others might need to wrap their arms around a hollowbody electric guitar just to feel human.

We all have our favorite electric guitars – especially experienced players who have played the field and settled down into a happy marriage with their instrument. Ray Toro of My Chemical Romance fame is no different.

If you’ve seen him perform over the years then you’ll know that he will invariably be up there with a Gibson Les Paul in his hands. That’s his jam. Okay, there might occasionally have been an Explorer back in the day but the Les Paul Standard – often fitted with a Seymour Duncan JB humbucker at the bridge, or a pair of Seymour Duncan Phat Cat P-90s – is his happy place.

But there was one time when he rocked up at Mates Rehearsal Studios in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, and had an epiphany. Speaking to Guitar World in 2011, he recalled as almost a spiritual experience the time he got to play a Fender Stratocaster belonging to the GOAT.

“I’m still a Les Paul player, but recently I had the chance to play one of Jimi Hendrix’s Strats,” said Toro. “Totally mind blowing! This guy, Jimmy, from Mates Rehearsal Studios in California, had one. I had shown up at the studio, and I didn’t have a guitar to play, so Jimmy let me play this Hendrix Strat that he got from Jimi’s old guitar tech.”

Needless to say, this got him thinking that there was life beyond the Les Paul. Heck, playing Hendrix’s Strat would give most people a second sight, a view into a dimension not quite our own.

Furthermore, this guy Jimmy let Toro borrow the Strat to use in the studio. Vintage instruments don’t always live up to their rep. Sometimes they sound great and play like dogs, and that’s part of their charm. This, however, this was Jimi Hendrix’s Strat and it did not disappoint.

“The thing was beat to shit, but it was the best-playing guitar ever,” said Toro. “I played it for a year – Jimmy let me use it in the studio. Man, I loved that.”

Did it change Toro? Well yes, yes it did. Or at least it had him leafing through whatever was the equivalent of Reverb was in 2011 (plain old eBay?) in search of Strats, but also Telecasters, too. Go figure.

“Live, I’m still a Les Paul guy, but playing Jimi Hendrix’s Strat really got me interested in Strats and other guitars,” he said. “In fact, I’m in desperate search for the ultimate Tele to play. If I can find one, I’m there.”

Well, if you're reading this, Ray, we're not sure how you feel about PAC-MAN but there's this new Telecaster you might wanna check out...

Marshall has announced its celebrating the 60th anniversary of its historic association with Jimi Hendrix by rolling out a host of special edition releases.

Aside from his flipped Fender, Hendrix is largely associated with one piece of gear: a Marshall stack. Indeed, the image of Hendrix wielding his Stratocaster in front of a Marshall amp is one of the most enduring and recognizable symbols of rock ‘n’ roll.

Hendrix first plugged into a Marshall in 1966, and would use the brand’s amps over the course of his life during some of the most iconic gigs in history. Monterey 1967. Woodstock 1969. Ronnie Scott’s in London. The list goes on.

As Marshall puts it, “Hendrix didn’t just play through Marshall amps, he redefined what they could do. From London and Monterey in ’67 to Woodstock ’69, he tamed the raw power of the Marshall stack to shake the world.”

To honor its world-conquering collaboration with Hendrix, Marshall has released a limited-edition 1959 JMH 100W Half Stack and 1960 AJMH 4x12 cab, as well as a limit-edition Fuzz Face pedal.

Both have been inspired by “Hendrix’s iconic sound and cosmic aesthetic", meaning there’s an appropriately psychedelic Purple Haze-esque artwork given to the amp, cab, and pedal, as well as a nifty purple LED indicator and silver detailing inspired by Hendrix’s jewelry.

As for how they channel Hendrix’s sound, Marshall tells Guitar World that the amp remains as standard for a 1959 hand-wired half stack, while the pedal utilizes BC183 silicon transistors for a more aggressive, snarling tone.

The pedal, Marshall says, offers a fuzz tone more akin to Hendrix’s 1970 Isle of Wight performance, with a vintage-style wire harness and hand-stuffed components to boot. It is available exclusively with the stack.

“Jimi was a formidable musician, a real force of nature. He took everything to a new level and carried everybody with him,” says Terry Marshall, Co-founder, Marshall Amplification.

“When he played, it was an emotional time for everybody because everyone was thinking, if he can do it, I could maybe do it. And he’s using Marshall, therefore we want Marshall.

“It was a really special time for us all and there’s no doubt that we grew with him and his fame, it was a natural tie-up. The rest is history as they say.”

The half stack and pedal are joined by a similarly styled Action III wireless speaker, complete with the same purple-on-black, water-on-oil style aesthetic.

The Hendrix head is available now for $3,400, while the matching cab is priced at $1,1599.99. The bundle, which includes the pedal, is priced at $4,999.99.

Head over to Marshall to find out more.

A judge in London has rejected claims by the heirs of two of Jimi Hendrix’s former bandmates in their bid to secure royalties from the icon’s catalog, following what’s proven to be a long-running dispute with Sony Music and the Hendrix estate.

According to British High Court Judge Edwin Johnson, Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist Noel Redding and drummer John “Mitch” Mitchell both signed a recording agreement on October 11, 1966, that waived their rights and wholly eliminated the possibility of future royalties.

“I conclude that the first owners of the copyrights… were the producers,” Judge Johnson wrote in the 140-page ruling [obtained by Rolling Stone].

The judge goes on to say that a critical clause in the original agreement meant that the producers, and not the Jimi Hendrix Experience musicians, owned the rights to “any sound recordings made hereunder.”

The sub-clause also specified that the rights covered “the copyright throughout the world in all sound recordings of performances of musical works by the artistes.”

The judge continues, “It is difficult to see how this could have been expressed more clearly. The producers were to have the copyright in sound recordings made pursuant to the terms of the recording agreement. This clearly included the recordings, which were all made pursuant to the terms of the recording agreement.”

The agreement was “clear and unequivocal,” with “no temporal or territorial limitation to this agreement” or anything qualifying ownership.

Furthermore, the judge found that, after Hendrix’s death in 1970, a “series of transactions” made his estate “the ultimate successor” to the producers’ rights under the recording agreement.

As for Hendrix’s own heirs, Janine Hendrix, his younger sister and the CEO of Experience Hendrix, cheered the ruling, commenting in a statement, “Jimi’s music is more than a catalog – it’s a living piece of our family’s soul, filled with his spirit, his passion, and his truth.

“This decision means we can continue protecting that legacy with the love, care, and integrity it deserves, and ensure his voice is honored for generations to come.” Redding and Mitchell’s representatives did not reply to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.

Earlier this year, another high-profile royalties dispute was settled after Sting paid around $800,000 to his former Police bandmates, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dave Mason, the English singer-guitar icon who co-founded Traffic and sessioned with some of the biggest artists of all time, has died at the age of 79.

The news was confirmed in a statement issued by Mason’s publicist on Wednesday (April 22) morning, which read, “On behalf of his family, it is with deep and profound sadness that we share the news of the passing of Dave Mason.

“On Sunday, April 19, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, celebrated songwriter, musician, singer, and author passed away peacefully at his home in Gardnerville, NV. Dave Mason lived a remarkable life devoted to the music and the people he loved.”

Last year, Mason was forced to cancel all of his scheduled tour dates amid ongoing health issues, after it was announced he’d been battling a serious heart condition. The condition was discovered in 2024, though Mason later contracted an infection during recovery in March 2025.

Not long after, Mason announced his retirement from touring, closing the curtains on 60 remarkable years of rock ‘n’ roll and marking the end of a significant and storied era in music history.

Mason leaves behind a tremendous legacy in the world of rock music, having penned some bona fide classics both as a founder of Traffic, and as a successful solo and session artist.

Born in May 1946, Mason co-founded Traffic as a youngster alongside Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, and Chris Wood, and in 1967, they released their debut single, Hole in My Shoe. Penned and sung by Mason, the single shot up to the Number 2 spot in the UK charts and was an early indicator of the guitarist’s psychedelic influences.

The single was followed by the band’s first two records, Mr Fantasy (1967) and Traffic (1968). Mason, despite leaving the band between the two albums, featured on both, writing and singing on other core Traffic standards such as Feelin’ Alright and You Can All Join.

Those records highlighted Mason’s robust guitar style, typified by its utilitarian emphasis on melody and ‘serving the song’. It served him well when he left Traffic and pursued a career in session and solo work.

Indeed, Mason’s post-Traffic days were defined by a series of high-profile collaborations with some of the biggest names in guitar music. He recorded and toured with the likes of George Harrison, the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac and Michael Jackson.

He also famously played on Jimi Hendrix’s cover of All Along the Watchtower, playing the acoustic guitar, and served as Harrison’s guitar player during the Beatle’s All Things Must Pass project.

Speaking to Guitar World in 2014, Mason discussed how he ended up working with Hendrix, recalling, “I was aware of Jimi when he first came to London, even before he had ever made a record.

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

“One night, Jimi and I were at a party listening to John Wesley Harding [Bob Dylan’s latest album at the time] when Jimi got it into his head that he wanted to do All Along the Watchtower. I remember he said to me, ‘That’s the coolest song! I’m gonna go and record it! You want to come and do it with me?’ That's basically how it started. He was just amazing.”

As for his collaboration with Harrison, Mason told Guitar World in a separate interview that his work on All Things Must Past stemmed from a social bond he had with the Beatle.

“I was just one of a lot of people there; if you ask me which tunes I played on it, I can’t remember,” he noted. “I just played some acoustic rhythm guitar on a couple of them, and I think I played electric guitar on one, but I’m not sure. I was one of a number of musicians that were invited.

“I knew George more from the Beatles and from hanging out with him, as I sort of knew a little more of him socially than I did musically. He gave me my first sitar; he also played me Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band before it came out.”

Other major moments in Mason’s storied career also include a stint in Eric Clapton’s Derek and The Dominos, as well as a brief period as a member of Fleetwood Mac, with whom he recorded 1995’s Time.

Despite having contributed to the fabric of English rock music across his career, Mason remained humble, and in a reflective interview with Guitar World he looked back on the music he made.

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

“To me, I’m just another guy who picked up the guitar and went out to make music. Fortunately, I started writing things that resonated with people.”

Mason is survived by his wife and partner, Winifred Wilson, and his daughter, Danielle.

’90s music journalists coined the term “shoegaze” as a pejorative to describe bands such as Ride and My Bloody Valentine whose members were overly fixated on their effects pedals. Nowadays, musicians wear the tag proudly, perhaps none so much as singer-guitarist Danny Moffat, who leads the shoegazey-as-hell Boston-based outfit the Collect Pond.

“To me, ‘shoegaze’ means you have an aggressive wall of sound and you’re being very creative with layers of guitars, all of which is good,” Moffat says. “Plus, we tend to mix the vocals a little low, which is a shoegaze hallmark. We’re influenced by the whole scene, and we’re influencing it right back.”

Moffat and company (guitarist-bassist Ben Bonadies, keyboardist Roger Maranan and drummer Chris Anthony) have concocted something of a lo-fi masterpiece with their third album, Absence of Something.

There’s thrashy rave-ups (Modern Con, Cemetary Man), jangle and jagged gems (Every Little Thing Is the Same, Net 30 Invoice) and even a couple of whacked tone poems (You Could Murder Again, Revolution), all set to Moffat’s introspective lyrics. “I tend to write about very personal things, like unfortunate roommate situations,” he says.

Moffat pens the tunes, but he marvels at the unexpected ways his bandmates can improve the material.

“I showed them Every Little Thing Is the Same, and I played it down-up, down-up on the guitar,” he says. “I don’t think Ben can play upstrokes. He plays down-down-down like Johnny Ramone. But it was the perfect thing for that song; it sounded way better that way.”

Born with a rare spinal condition called spina bifida, Moffat has faced his share of challenges.

“I’m often in pain, so I can’t play heavy guitars or stand for long periods of time,” he says. Even playing typical barre chords has proved to be painful; pressure on his arm or wrist shoots right to his spine. Then one day a friend showed him how Jimi Hendrix would stretch his thumb around the neck of the guitar to play bass notes on the sixth string.

“That changed everything for me,” Moffat says. “I was like, ‘It doesn’t hurt. I could play like this all day long. And it sounds great!’’

• Absence of Something is out now via Candlepin
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Paul Gilbert’s completely unplanned Jimi Hendrix tribute set – which he performed in 1991 after a gig with Albert Collins fell through – is set to be released digitally for the first time.

It’s been described by a press release as “the album that almost never was, or never should have been”. An accidental blessing that, had things panned out slightly differently, may never have existed.

As the story goes, Gilbert – flying high on a Mr. Big Lean Into It wave at the time – was invited to trade solos with blues icon Collins at the Frankfurt Jazz Festival in Germany. Gilbert, who was on tour in Europe at the time, said yes.

Unfortunately, the Gilbert/Collins collab never came to be, after Collins suffered health issues that rendered him unable to perform. The festival organisers were scrambling. They needed someone to fill the headline slot.

Gilbert was the obvious choice. But he had come alone. He had no band, no material, no idea what to play. He and the promoters had to salvage something at the last minute. Naturally, Gilbert was up for the challenge.

“The promoter was panicking and asked me to be the headlining act instead,” Gilbert remembers. “I didn't have a band with me. And I didn't have any solo material prepared.”

With the help of the promoters, Gilbert assembled a backing band comprising the bassist and drummer from the Alvin Lee-led Ten Years After. Then it was just a question of figuring out what to play.

“The only thing I could think to do was to quickly rehearse some Jimi Hendrix songs, and make the solos long enough to fill up a whole set. I told the promoter, "We only have time to learn 5 songs, so I'm going to have to play REALLY LONG SOLOS.”

Really long solos at a jazz festival? The promoters were sold. A few hours of rehearsals alter, and Gilbert and his makeshift band were hurtling through fiery renditions of Red House, Hey Joe, Highway Chile, Midnight and Purple Haze – all with suitably lengthy leads to fill the slot time.

“It turned out great,” Gilbert says. “I don't think I've ever played such long solos in my life!”

It was not only an excellent exercise in the discipline of improvising, adapting, and overcoming, but also a suitable opportunity for Gilbert to honor one of his heroes.

He continues, “Jimi’s songs are such great vehicles for jamming. His writing invites musicians to play with each other and listen to each other. The songs are flexible enough to allow musicians to keep their own style and still make the song work.

“In the end, the pressure of pulling everything together quickly in front of an audience – and being worry-free about endless guitar jamming – may actually have brought me closer to Hendrix’s spirit than if I had planned everything while sitting in a chair.”

Tribute To Jimi Hendrix will be released on June 12 to celebrate the set's 25th anniversary, marking the album’s first digital release. The first track, that scorching cover of Purple Haze, is available now.

Named for the town's transportation system, Chicago Transit Authority – soon shortened to Chicago – began in 1968 as a savvy septet with a propensity for pioneering jazz-tinged rock suites, as well as perfectly crafted pop gems.

It was the latter that quickly established their northerly flow on the charts, via smash singles like Saturday in the Park, 25 or 6 to 4, Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?, and Colour My World.

Peter Cetera’s lively-yet-locked basslines and melodic upper-fret forays influenced a generation of privy peers and subsequent budding bassists, including Will Lee, of The Late Show and hundreds of New York sessions.

“Peter had an R&B-rooted style marked by great taste and tone, plus a real McCartney-esque quality,” Lee told Bass Player. “He was the polish in the whole Chicago picture, adding sweetness to the vocal harmonies, while providing a gorgeous sound on the top and bottom. Very few days go by that I'm not thinking about him somewhere in my playing.”

Born and raised in Chicago's Morgan Park section, on the South Side, Cetera recalls radio transitioning from the Hit Parade to the early rock & roll of Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and Ritchie Valens. At age 11, unable to convince his parents to buy him a guitar, he instead was given accordion lessons.

A few years later, some older friends took him to a teenage nightclub outside of town. “I walked in and a band called the Rebel Rockers was playing,” said Cetera in the December 2007 issue of Bass Player. “I remember the guitarist and bass player were standing on their amps, rocking back and forth. I thought it was the coolest thing l'd ever seen – I was hooked.”

Eventually, he joined the Exceptions, staying six years with the Chicago area’s “best sound-alike” band. The group gained invaluable experience as a rare white band on the chitlin' circuit, opening for and becoming the Dells backup band, and signing with a Chess subsidiary, Tollie Records.

For the opening of a new club in December 1967, the Exceptions were booked opposite the Big Thing – a six-piece horn band that played some original music, but relied on organ pedals for basslines. The unit was looking to add a singing bass player, and Cetera accepted the role.

In 1968, The Big Thing changed their name to Chicago Transit Authority, relocated to Los Angeles and signed to Columbia Records.

“We discovered we couldn't make it in Chicago because radio wouldn't play you unless you were famous, but the only way to get famous was to be on the radio!

“Our manager, Jimmy Guercio, who was a producer at CBS, moved us out to L.A. It was an amazing time; Jimmy got us steady Tuesdays at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go.

“One night Jimi Hendrix came in, and word spread across the stage. After the set he came knocking on the dressing room door and said, ‘You guys are motherfuckers! I want you to come on tour with me,’ which we did. The same thing happened with Janis Joplin.”

What do you recall about your initial bass experience?

It was pretty funny; I got my Danelectro Short Horn bass guitar and I asked somebody in our band how to tune it. He said, ‘I think it's tuned like the first four strings of a guitar.’ So, that's what I did.

I started playing, and I'm thinking, ’It doesn't sound real bassy.’ A few weeks later, a local bassist came and sat in at our club gig. He put the bass on and went, ‘What the hell?’! He quickly tuned it down the right way and I had to learn it all over again; I was lucky the neck hadn't snapped!

From there, I went on to a Fender Precision, with an Ampeg B-15 flip-top. That was a big step up, sound-wise. Another bad habit I developed was fingering some notes on the E string over the top of the neck, with my left thumb.

Who were your early influences?

Well, the guitarist in my band taught me some Bo Diddley and Jimmy Reed tunes, and I was still playing with a pick, having come right from the guitar. Then R&B and soul took a more modern turn, and Motown was all over the radio.

I didn't know who James Jamerson was, but when I heard his parts I knew I needed to start playing with my fingers. My Girl really solidified that for me; I would anchor my thumb on the P-Bass thumbrest and alternate my index and middle fingers, but I also kept a pick wedged in behind the pickguard, and I'd switch between styles.

Seeing James Brown and his band a few times influenced my technique and approach, too, as did the bassists we played opposite on the chitlin' circuit.

Your move from the Exceptions to what would become Chicago seems like a pivotal time.

It really was part of an awakening for me. The Beatles had come along and changed everything. I realized I was playing other people's music, from a different era, and didn't have my own voice yet. The Beatles showed that it could be done; it was music of my generation. And Paul McCartney's basslines were pure genius; it was almost like he was playing a whole different instrument.

I bought a ’64 Hofner right away to use in the Exceptions, but it just wasn't bassy and ballsy enough for Chicago, so I got a '63 P-Bass and had it painted paisley. I was aware of other great rock bassists, like Jack Bruce and John Entwistle, but besides Jamerson and McCartney, the guy whose playing really spoke to me for its uniqueness was Andy Fraser of Free.

How did you come up with your bass parts in Chicago?

My primary goal was to be melodic; McCartney was so in my head then that I'd try to think a little out of the box – like picking my spots for the upper-register stuff. Plus, Jamerson and my R&B roots were in my subconscious, so keeping a strong groove went without saying.

Coming up with parts varied by who wrote the songs. Bobby's tunes were fun to play; they were melodic, they had meaning, and he wouldn't give you too much of a parameter – you would just play what you felt and he'd say, ‘Cool.’

Terry was more defined and opinionated as to what he wanted and didn't want. And Jimmy was really specific about what to play. But, as I say, I always tried to be melodic when the time in the track allowed for it. The only song that was given to all of us note-for-note by Jimmy was Colour My World.

How was your hookup with drummer Danny Seraphine?

I first met Danny during my club days, and he subbed with the Exceptions. He was a great, funky, raw ‘street’ drummer, with a small kit, and we locked well together from the start.

In Chicago, I was a pushing kind of player, as was Terry, but Danny was laid back a bit and Robert leaned back, so we had the pocket covered from both sides!

Eventually, Danny started taking lessons and his approach changed; Terry called it ‘lead drums,’ so having Laudir De Oliveira, and later, my brother Kenny, on percussion helped solidify the overall groove.

How did you approach singing while playing on various Chicago tunes?

I didn't put singing and playing together conceptually in Chicago because the bass parts were important and they were constant, so if I had to sing lead on a tune it was something separate. I'd been doing it since my club days.

My first sing-and-play for Chicago was Questions 67 and 68, which, like 25 or 6 to 4, was really high. I remember getting nervous and blowing the top notes one night at the Fillmore East because Leonard Bernstein was in the audience!

Overall, I found the key to singing while playing bass is to learn both parts separately and then slowly work them together though the tune, section by section. The more you perform the song the more comfortable you'll become, to the point where you can loosen up and expand on both parts.

Apparently, there was a period of adjustment when the band first went into the studio.

That's true. We were the greatest live band; we would blow anyone off the stage, but we didn't have experience in the studio. When we went to Columbia Studios in New York City, the pressure was on.

We had limited time, so it was decided to record live. Well, we soon realized we had to do it separately: rhythm section, then horns, and then vocals. In those days, we couldn't punch, so if someone made a mistake we'd have to start over.

This was especially frustrating for me; I was a live player, with two of three good takes in me. We were doing up to 50 takes! We'd get to the end of take 49 and someone would make a mistake and we'd have to go back and do it all again.

It got better, but I never really felt comfortable playing in the stadio, where you're under the microscope. Even our live Carnegie Hall album had a studio-like atmosphere; the best example of us live was the bootleg of the show in Japan.

Grammy-nominated Malian guitarist, singer-songwriter, and actress Fatoumata Diawara recently made history by becoming the first woman of color to be honored with an Epiphone signature model.

And, while Diawara is indeed a modern day guitar hero, she's also quick to acknowledge the guitarists who came before her, including who she deems her biggest guitar hero – Jimi Hendrix.

“I don’t think anyone has changed the world as much with their guitar,” she says in the latest issue of Guitarist. “I’m trying to do something similar through my own music, using my personality to create, and inspiring people in the process.”

As for what she's learned from Hendrix's music and playing style, she says that it's “all about finding your own sound, something that’s completely unique to you.

“I’m learning by myself and trying not to listen to other people. I didn’t study anything; I’m just making it up as I go along, finding my way through the blues. It’s more about the human soul, emotion, and self-expression. I just want to play from the heart. It’s about quality, not quantity. That’s what Jimi did.”

Diawara is, of course, a changemaker herself in her own right, and her first signature guitar continues to prove it. “If I can help wake up a new generation of African or female players, that makes me twice as proud. People following me will see this guitar and say, ‘Okay, it’s possible for a Black woman to do this!’” she asserts.

The Epiphone Fatoumata Diawara SG was described by our Guitar World expert reviewers as a “jaw-dropping SG with a standout body artwork that honors her heritage” with a “very broad and usable range of voice.”

For more from Diawara, plus new interviews with Kim Gordon and Robben Ford, pick up issue 535 of Guitarist from Magazines Direct.

Witnessing Karma Sheen live is transcendental. The gritty tone of a ’60s Les Paul melds with the unmistakable sparkling sound of the sitar, as frontman Sameer Khan switches between vocals, harmonium, and bansuri, which all pay homage to a 600-year-old Hindustani classical music lineage.

The band undulates in tandem, crafting a colorful tapestry of sounds and textures that’s as inspired by Sufi lyricism and Indian ragas as it is by Jimi Hendrix and ’60s psychedelia.

Indeed, the London-based outfit – led by Khan, and composed of Rod Bourganos on sitar, synth, and theremin, Amad Chima on guitar, Grisha Grebennikov on bass, and Arun Dhanjal on drums – somehow manages to bridge an ancient musical lineage with contemporary subcultures and diasporic experimentation – a captivating pairing which has made a fan out of none other than Jimmy Page.

“The first time that Page saw us was in 2017, in this very embryonic stage of Karma Sheen,” recalls Khan of his first encounter with the Led Zeppelin maestro.

“That was quite nerve-wracking to play in front of him, but I said, ‘You know what? I’ve just got to get on with it, because we've got all these people that are here to see us. Rock royalty is sitting in the room, but I know I've got a job to do.’”

Page’s seal of approval was completely unexpected. “At the end of that show, he goes, ‘The way that you mix rock and Indian music is something of the likes I've never seen before.’

“This is coming from someone who was the first white musician to have a sitar in the UK. He used to listen to Ravi Shankar at the Indian Embassy before Hindustani classical music became very Woodstock, hash, and harem pants. So for him to say that to me was all the assurance on a personal level that I needed.”

Take us back to the moment you first picked up the guitar.

I grew up watching pro wrestling. I’d listen to Kurt Angle’s music, Shawn Michaels, D‑Generation X – all that. I just thought, ‘I really love this kind of music.’ All this rock and alternative rock sounded amazing.

I picked up a guitar in 2003, when I was about 11, turning 12. That was when School of Rock came out. I watched the film, and it made me want to play guitar – I wanted to be Zack Mooneyham, basically.

There’s that scene where Jack Black has all the rock genres and band names on the board. I remember pausing the DVD and writing down all the band names, then going off to find and listen to them. I even started practicing guitar the way Jack Black tells the kids to practice: listen to the music and figure out what the guitar is doing.

How did you end up discovering – or, should I say, rediscovering – Hindustani classical music and seriously pursuing that?

My family has always been into music, but they were always into traditional music – classical folk music from Pakistan. They were always friends with Ustad Shafqat Ali Khan [legendary classical singer of the khyal vocal genre from Pakistan and the custodian of a centuries-old legacy of traditional music].

My parents would hold concerts in their house, and according to him, when all the other kids would be laughing and running around, I would just be sitting there listening and absorbing it all in.

Then I got into Ravi Shankar playing on the sitar. I got into ’60s music. I got into my final guitar hero, which is Hendrix, and I started learning how he played stuff. I tried to find ragas [melodic framework for improvisation in Indian classical music] on the guitar. As I was learning singing, I was trying to match everything on the guitar with my voice.

Then one fateful night happened. The nephew of my teacher [Ustad Shafqat Ali Khan] was visiting London. And whenever they would visit, we would always spend a lot of time together. My old bandmate in Karma Sheen, Martin, said, ‘Do you want to sing with us?’ And he sang Bageshree [a Hindustani raga that depicts the emotion of waiting for reunion with one’s lover].

There's this absolutely beautiful photo of me and the old bassist, Samuel, and Shujat Ali Khan [the nephew]. Me and him are both looking at Shujat in the middle, just smiling, knowing that what we're witnessing, and what we're a part of, is incredible. It was from that day that I decided I was going to start singing and doing things in a more traditional way.

How did that training influence your guitar playing?

There's this myth that surrounds Hindustani classical music – that it's magical. I do think it's magical, but there is this myth that you need a sitar to get those microtones, but the truth is, they are all just notes.

Sure, there might be a note that's in between the fifth and the sixth fret, but that note is going to sound closer to either the fifth or closer to the sixth. So then you just reinterpret it. If we look at Bageshree, or if we look at Jog, or any raga from the Kafi thaat, they’re pentatonic ragas.

Every guitarist on earth knows the pentatonic scale. You use that as your blueprint to play these particular ragas. The notes are the same, but it’s just the manner in which you play it which could potentially be seen as a limitation.

Are you sliding? Are you pulling off or hammering on? Do you understand the rules of the raga? How are you supposed to engage with this raga?

Karma Sheen’s music is 99 percent based on the structure of Hindustani classical music. So all the notes and riffs that we're using are all pretty much notes from the raga that we're singing.

My go-to flavor of soloing doesn't go to blues pentatonic anymore. It goes to classic Hindustani classical pentatonic – those ragas that are in between that – and so what I now do is, I'm fusing a lot of the blues pentatonic shapes with the pentatonic ragas.

How do you approach fusing these ragas and rhythms with psych rock?

I don't think there is a band that’s come before us that has done this. They've done fusion, but for us, there is no reference to fall back on. There's only inspiration. So it'd be like, ‘Oh, you know what song I really, really love? Are You Experienced? by Jimi Hendrix. What's he doing here?’

So you try to break it down. This chord or these notes are not in this raga, and the raga that it’s closest to is most likely Jog, Bageshree, or Malkauns – it’s usually between these three pentatonic-shaped ragas. Then you can just kind of figure it out that way.

Our goal is to be the custodians of this kind of music, but we want to bring it forward in a way that makes it a little bit more accessible. This music doesn't just deserve to have someone in yoga pants, smoking a spliff, meditating.

I don't want to say that that is appropriation [but] yes, this music is spiritual, and yes, we can attach ourselves to that, but it doesn't necessarily need to be taken in that aspect. It can also be taken in a very light-hearted way, in a very rock way, and in a very cool way as well.

You’ve developed quite a reputation as a Les Paul player. Why did you go for a Gibson Les Paul, as opposed to, say, Hendrix’s favorite, the Strat?

Contrary to what people might think, I’m actually a Strat man – 100 percent. It’s simple. My dad's favorite car that he ever drove was a Vauxhall Vectra Elite model. I was asking him, ‘Dad, why don't you get that car again?’ And I was asking him that while he was sitting in his Mercedes, and he looked at me and simply said, ‘Son, once you go Mercedes, you never go back.’

And I can, hand on my heart, say the Fender Stratocaster is my absolute favorite guitar. But once you get a Les Paul, you can't go back. The Strat is an extension of you. But if you play a Les Paul and then you decide to go back to your Strat, your hands are like butter all over the Strat. It just feels incredible. The Strat for me is the ultimate lead and rhythm guitar – but the Les Paul is a fucking riff machine.

And when you play a ’60s model, there's just something that the Les Paul does that allows me to play in ways that I never knew I could play before.

Jimmy Page recently attended one of your headline shows. What was it like to play in front of him?

Our sitar player, Rod, is really good friends with Jimmy Page. He met him once by chance, outside of his [Page’s] house. They started talking, and they kind of developed this relationship.

For Rod, Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Page are everything, and so they've been communicating to a point where he's trying to get him to watch us.

Fast-forward all those years, maybe even seven years, and he's finally managed to find some time in his busy schedule to come and see us. It was quite nice because it was the third time that I'd met him. It's quite strange, actually, because he's more like a friend than someone who I really want to impress.

The truth is that, when I got chatting to him for the first time, I kept forgetting who he was because he was just a dude. But then, every so often, he'd make a face, or he’d make a comment that makes you go, ‘Oh shit. This is Jimmy Page.’ And in that moment, I was like, ‘Oh my god, brother. I literally got a poster of this guy behind my door that I just saw two hours before I came to this concert.’

What has been the highlight of Karma Sheen so far?

It's the entire journey – from writing my first ever song on a drum machine to playing in front of Jimmy Page. The only thing is that it’s in tandem with another job – otherwise, I am literally living the dream. I go and play national and international shows. We get a lot of respect from our peers, colleagues and friends. We are carving a very, very unique name for ourselves.

When we did the support tour with WITCH [the legendary Zamrock band from the ’70s], we were looking at people who were like, ‘Who are these guys?’ And every single night, it was like watching a flower blossom.

By the end of it, they are completely bloomed to the idea that who we are and what we're doing is a very unique thing. So I feel like I'm living the dream, and that, in and of itself, is the biggest highlight of Karma Sheen.

• Karma Sheen's latest single, Ishq Kalma, is out now, and the band will be heading over to the States for the year's SXSW in Austin, Texas.

Mosrite Guitars is back in business after being acquired by lap-steel guitar makers Sho-Bud, ushering in a new era for the cult brand.

The company was founded by Semie Moseley in Bakersfield, California, in 1956. Having cut his luthiery teeth at Rickenbacker in Los Angeles, his namesake firm gained notoriety throughout the ‘60s, establishing a presence in the surf rock, grunge and punk rock scenes.

Johnny Ramone was a fan, Kurt Cobain recorded much of Nevermind with a 1960s Gospel Mark IV, and Jimi Hendrix had a Joe Maphis 12/6 Doubleneck. It wasn’t short of advocates.

However, a series of tragedies left the business in the hands of Moseley’s daughter, Dana, by the early ’90s. It continued to operate on a smaller scale, though its website went offline in 2020.

Six years later, the firm has been given a new lease of life, and the revived Mosrite brand is celebrating with the launch of the Mosrite Mark II.

The quirky, house-of-mirrors-esque model is made with a choice of either a solid basswood or alder body. That’s then paired with a bolt-on, one-piece maple neck and rosewood fingerboard with 22 narrow vintage frets, and an ever-cool zero fret to keep the original's mojo intact.

Built to the slightly peculiar 24 5/8" scale – a slightly shorter take on 24.75" designs, as seen on various Gretsch models over the years – it also offers SH configured Seymour Duncan pickups, Volume and Tone dials, and a three-way pickup switch.

Its hardware specs are rounded out by a TonePros TOM bridge and tailpiece, along with Grover tuners, delivering oodles of vintage chic.

Right- and left-handed models are available in White, Blue, Red, Gold, and Black colorways, shipping with a hardcase for $2,750.00.

“The Mosrite Mark II reissue represents more than the return of an iconic instrument. It is a continuation of a legacy shaped by an extraordinary luthier and innovator, Semie Moseley,” says General Counsel of Sho-Bud, Fred Waid. “Sho-Bud is committed to honoring Semie's vision.”

“This is a personal project for us,” Sho-Bud’s co-CEO, Dawn Jackson, extends. “Semie Moseley wasn't just a legendary builder. Sho-Bud and Mosrite had a close connection through our father, David Jackson, who collaborated on projects with Semie. This fusion is a way of reconnecting those roots and carrying them forward with respect and intention.”

The guitars are shipping with an estimated six-month turnaround as production gets underway, with Mark I and Gospel models also promised to follow.

See Sho-Bud for more.

Mateus Asato – acclaimed guitarist and sideman to stars of the caliber of Bruno Mars and Tori Kelly – is finally stepping out on his own with the release of his debut album, ASATO, on February 27.

The album follows the Brazilian electric guitar virtuoso's first-ever solo release, Cryin’, which dropped in October, and ushers in a new era for the guitarist – one that sees him take center stage as a solo artist.

Hendrix, the first single from ASATO, is inspired by one of the very best to ever do it – Jimi Hendrix.

“Everything started after a late-night thought I had in my studio while trying to make another song for my debut album: ‘If Hendrix were alive today and we were friends… around the same age… how would he write an instrumental song?!’” Asato explains.

“After that, I had a song in 20 minutes. Everything simply just came out, and I felt like a vessel receiving melodies from above. A unique experience.”

Asato reveals that this only happened after “reading two books of his biography” and “being completely inspired by it.” Therefore, he felt like he “had no choice but [to] honor the greatest guitar hero in history.”

Spanning 10 years of creative growth, the debut album captures the breadth of Asato's evolution as both a guitarist and an artist, with a track list that includes some of his earliest compositions, like 2014's Changes, to tracks recorded in December 2024.

Ahead of his album release, Asato announced his departure from Suhr – the brand he's collaborated with for over a decade and released a string of signatures with – and also set the record straight on the rumor that he's joining Fender.

Before the giant beard, before the MTV stardom and spinning fur guitars, before he was seen onstage with bandmates playing 17-string basses, and even before the band that made him famous existed, Billy Gibbons was plying his six-string trade with the Moving Sidewalks, a true Nuggets-era psychedelic/garage-rock band. What can you say? The man's lived many lives.

Though they never quite made it big nationwide, the Moving Sidewalks' biggest single, 99th Floor, was enough of a hit in the band's native Houston, Texas to give the group some momentum as rock fully entered its tie-dye era.

That wind at the Moving Sidewalks' backs was enough to convince promoters to stick the band on the bill with some budding rock juggernauts when they rolled through town, particularly one James Marshall Hendrix, for whom the band opened in 1968.

Gibbons and co's usual set, mind you, featured multiple Hendrix songs. Incredibly, the band kept that set – Purple Haze and Foxy Lady included – when opening for the man himself, something they cheekily chalked up to a lack of material.

Far from being angry, Hendrix was actually impressed by the sheer gall of his openers, and struck up a friendship with Gibbons.

Try to contain your shock, but during their time touring together, prime-era Hendrix made quite an impression on the young Gibbons. The rulebook-shredding that millions of guitarists only got to hear on record, Gibbons got to see up close and in-person.

“It was just wild. He knew all the tricks – five-way position on the toggle switch before it was five-way, bending the wang-bar up so that it'd go down farther, immobilizing the strings... it was just great to be near him to see all this stuff he was doing instinctively,” Gibbons recalled with some wonder in a 1984 Guitar World interview.

“I remember one night he came ripping into the hotel room and said, ‘Um, do you know this?’ and he'd slap down a lick that would last for 10 minutes. I'd shake my head and say, ‘Uh, no. Could you run through it maybe once more?’”

In a more recent interview on the YouTube show Rock & Roll High School, the ZZ Top man recalled another hotel room hang with Hendrix, during which the two guitarists sat in wonder listening to Truth, the debut album from the Jeff Beck Group.

Hendrix, Gibbons said, was himself left in awe by the album, asking Gibbons how Beck could've gotten such otherworldly sounds out of his Les Paul.

“I said, ‘Jimi, it would probably surprise you to know that Jeff Beck is probably listening to your record trying to figure out what you’re doing at the same time!’”

Best of 2025: Over the holiday season, GW is shining the spotlight on some of its biggest stories of the year.

Rammstein riff machine Richard ZK has offered a fascinating insight into the divided Germany he grew up in, revealing the lengths it took to get his hands on one of his first proper electric guitars – and it reads like something out of a spy film.

Born in 1967, the guitarist – who was driven to design “the best guitar that ever happened in guitar history” with his brand-new LTD signature – grew up in East Germany in the wake of the Second World War, which resulted in the division of the country.

The West was the richer of the two sides, with the communist East often struggling economically. The Berlin Wall cut through the country’s capital, and while people could largely travel between the two countries, the process was slow and involved rigorous inspections.

“There obviously was a shortage of good guitars,” Richard ZK tells Guitar World in a new interview. “I had one crappy thing made by Diamant. My wish at that time, because I was listening to a lot of Hendrix, was to own a Fender Stratocaster. In my heart, that’s the one I felt I needed to have. But we couldn’t get them in East Germany.”

To get hold of his much-craved six-string in the East, he’d have to put his trust – and a considerable financial outlay – on the line.

“I was selling jewelry in the markets at the time and ended up exchanging 12,000 East Marks into 1,200 West Marks,” he remembers. “I met a guy in a coffee shop who traveled between the East and West. I didn’t know him or trust him. But I gave him all of that money in the hope he would bring me a Strat next time he was over. I had no idea if I would ever see him again.”

His contact left, and Richard ZK was left playing the waiting game.

“Three months went by and there was nothing. I was thinking I’d been really stupid, of course, he was going to take the money for himself,” he recalls. “Then just before Christmas, there was a guitar bag in front of my door with a black Stratocaster inside.”

Yet, tragically, his relationship with the guitar didn’t blossom into the love affair that he’d dreamed of for so long.

“My expectations of the Fender were so high because it was a serious guitar with proper pickups,” he says. “I thought it would help me play all the things I wanted to play... which led to frustration. I was used to playing humbuckers on that crappy Diamant guitar. The single-coils didn’t sound right, I was wondering what the fuck they were. I learned from that lesson and later sold the guitar.”

Richard ZK has been using ESP guitars since 1996, three years into life in Rammstein. He’s also since been playing higher quality humbuckers – his new signature guitar features a pair of Fishman Fluence pickups.

Best of 2025: Over the holiday season, GW is shining the spotlight on some of its biggest stories of the year.

Though often an accidental and unwanted byproduct, guitar feedback has widely been accepted as yet another expressive tool that players can add to their arsenal in order to inject their playing with some additional color, flair, or personality.

Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Pete Townshend are just some of the electric guitar heroes to have adopted feedback as a means to supercharge their performances, as was blues veteran Buddy Guy, who was one of the earliest pioneers of using the noise to his advantage.

However, while players of today may be inspired to channel feedback by watching their heroes online, Guy didn’t have such luxury, and as it turns out, he first stumbled upon the tool entirely by accident.

“In Chicago then, we didn't have stages. We'd always go in a corner and play,” he told NPR. “And they had jukeboxes during their breaks, and they would play tunes. And that's how I learnt, by listening to other people, greats – Muddy Water, Wolf and so on.”

During one fateful gig, though, Guy left the stage with his Strat still plugged in and, having forgotten to turn off his guitar amp after the set, left it vulnerable to passers-by – one of whom would inadvertently influence Guy's approach to the guitar.

“I forgot to turn my guitar off one day and a lady passed by, and her dress tail hit the G string,” Guy continues. “And it just stayed there with distortion for about 20 minutes. And I said, I'll never forget that. And I went up, and it worked with me, and I've been doing it ever since.”

“We were just in the corner playing. And she got up from her table to probably go get a drink or use the bathroom or something like that. And I said, wow, I forgot to cut my guitar off. And it was right in tune with the particular tune what was playing on the jukebox.”

It was a lightbulb moment for Guy, who put this newfound feedback hack into action as soon as he could. From the 1960s onwards, some of Guy’s most impressive feats of soloing – especially his live cuts at Montreux and Austin City Limits – were decorated with tasteful uses of feedback.

“After I found out it would stay and distort that long, I just went up one day and played and stood right there where it was, and it works,” he says.

The select use of feedback and using it to his advantage was only one aspect of Guy's expansive style, though, which would influence everyone from Jimi Hendrix to John Mayer.

The estates of Jimi Hendrix’s former bandmates, Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, are suing Sony over a streaming rights dispute.

The case against Sony Music Entertainment UK (SMEUK) has been taken to the UK’s High Court by the estates of the bass player and drummer who, alongside Hendrix, made up the Experience. Disputes revolve around the copyright and performers’ rights for their part in three iconic records – Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold As Love, and Electric Ladyland.

The pair is being represented by the copyright and trademark specialist Simon Malynicz KC. Speaking on Tuesday, December 9th, he said the band was “one of the most commercially successful acts of its era,” believing that the two musicians were excluded from revenue early on in their lives.

He says they "died in relative poverty", while finances earned from streaming – All Along the Watchtower and Purple Haze have a combined 1.2 billion streams on Spotify alone at the time of writing – went to SMEUK (as per the Independent).

He also argued that since their passing – Redding died in 2003, Mitchell in 2008 – the successors of their estates have also been excluded from the revenue. Typically, they would be entitled to a cut via inheritable property rights, meaning they would be able to recoup revenue after their deaths.

The allegations point towards the administrators of Hendrix’s estate. Malynicz alleges that a major multinational “yet again… refuses to recognise or remunerate their copyright and performers’ rights.”

There are various types of copyright involved with albums, and here, Malynicz is focusing on the copyright related to the recording. The lawyer has urged the court to “ensure not only that justice is done to the memory of Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, but... also give effect to James Marshall Hendrix’s wishes.”

“For surely,” he adds, “he would have wanted his fellow musicians to receive everything to which they are entitled.”

On the other hand, SMEUK lawyer Robert Howe KC alleges that the copyright belongs to the producers of those albums, which includes Chas Chandler and Hendrix himself, rather than the musicians involved in its recording.

Furthermore, Howe argues that the predecessors of their respective estates relinquished their rights to the songs. To that end, he pointed to payments of $100,000 and $247,500 made to each member, respectively, in the 1970s, meaning they would receive no share of further revenue.

The trial is expected to conclude on 18 December, and a written judgment will be made at a later date.

Since the release of the box office-smashing Michael B. Jordan movie, Sinners, Buddy Guy has reached a completely new audience – and a level of recognition he's using to, in his own words, “keep the blues alive.”

“I promised Muddy, B.B. and them, and we all spoke about this day – that whoever lived longest, please try to keep the blues alive,” he extrapolates in an interview with Variety. “Even at my age, when they ask me to do something, I say, ‘If I can still walk, I’ll be there.’”

And speaking of legends, Guy also looks back on the first time he encountered another Strat-wielding icon.

“[At first], I ain’t know who he was, man,” he says, referring to Jimi Hendrix.

“After I played 1967 Newport Jazz Festival, I got invited to play in New York, and I’m on the stage putting on this show, trying to play with my teeth and throwing the guitar. Somebody put a spotlight on me, and I missed the guitar coming down after I threw it. When it hit the floor, I said, ‘Oh, my God,’ so I just jumped down on it and everyone thought I did it on purpose.

“I heard somebody with real taste was sitting in front – Jimi Hendrix. I said, who? They [introduced] us and he said, ‘I canceled a gig to come watch you play, could I steal some licks from you?’ That’s when we got to know each other, and we finally got to jam – I can’t [remember] when, but it was in New York.”

As for his initial thoughts on Hendrix's playing, well, Guy revealed in a recent Guitar World interview that he “thought he used to play too loud,” since, coming from the Muddy Waters school of blues, Guy was used to a much cleaner sound.

Vernon Reid has long been a champion of Ernie Isley, the genre-bending guitar player best known for his work with The Isley Brothers.

Last year, Reid even went as far as to tell Guitar World that Isley is the “near direct tonal descendant of Jimi Hendrix”. Now, in a new interview with Billy Corgan on his Magnificent Others podcast, Reid doubles down on his admiration of Isley and why the Strat wielder deserves more attention.

“Ernie was completely shut out in the ’70s,” he asserts. “He kept the Hendrix voice alive on hit records, not rock critic records, but commercial hit records, and he was completely shut out.

“He was completely ignored by the guitar press of that time period. Especially in his prime, when he was young, on fire, he was summarily ignored, and I remember that pissed me off.”

Corgan interjects and asks Reid whether he feels there was a sense of injustice going on with the way Isley was treated – especially when compared to his contemporaries. “The thing about it is, it's not that I didn't love Rory Gallagher,” the Living Colour guitarist replies. “I love him. I think he's incredible.

“It's not that I didn't appreciate Jan Akkerman. Jan Akkerman is an influence on me, but Ernie Isley deserved to be featured, to have his own cover and his own story about how he literally saved The Isley Brothers.”

He continues, “He actually dragged them from the ’50s and ’60s into their later career, because That Lady [an Isley Brothers classic] is a re-record. Ghat was originally a song of theirs that was part of the bossa nova craze in the ’60s. And it was Ernie Isley that insisted that they re-record it as the funk rock masterpiece that it is.”

In last year's Guitar World interview, Reid went on to name the wild space fuzz solo on the 1973 rework of That Lady as one of his all-time favorite guitar solos from the ’70s – and insisted that Isley's “continued non-acknowledgment as a near direct tonal descendant of Jimi Hendrix continues to this day.”

While scales are great for getting your fingers and brain in shape to play single-note solos and melodies, there are situations in which a knowledge of the chords you’re working with is a big advantage. One good example of this is the trio format, where you might only have bass and drums for support.

There is a limit to how much a bass guitar can convey harmonic details (such as a major or minor chord) without forfeiting its main function of keeping a consistent low-end, so it’s down to the guitar in this context to provide more harmonic and melodic content.

A single-note solo played over just bass and drums runs the risk of sounding a bit empty and lacking in musicality after a while. The solution is to include some chord tones, fragments or arpeggios to help outline the harmony for your listeners.

This isn’t as daunting as it sounds. The key is being able to find the triads around the fretboard, then embellishing them. It’s surprising how little it takes to transform a chord accompaniment into a ‘featured’ part.

If you break down the beginning of Little Wing by Jimi Hendrix, you’ll see that’s basically what he’s doing. Larry Carlton takes triads and superimposes them over different chords to create a complex, layered harmony. You can also break the triads into arpeggios and spell them out a note at a time.

This does sound like a lot to absorb, but these four examples are designed to give you some ideas to try covering each of these areas. You don’t need to become a music theory genius to use triads in this way – just find a few go-to ideas and build from there using trial and error. Hope you enjoy and see you next time!

Example 1

The root notes played by the bass in this first example are A, D then back to A. Upon this foundation, I’m starting with an A7 triad but then taking a boogie-woogie piano-style movement to D, G and C triads where the bass is playing D.

This gives a sense of movement and harmony, without clashing with the root on the bass. Bar 3 takes a similar approach by superimposing the triads of Gsus2, D and A. It’s probably a good idea to treat this as a ‘lick’, rather than examine the chord/scale relationships too much.

Example 2

Having established some harmony with all those triads, this example starts with a short ascending chromatic run, leading to a single-note line based around a Dadd9 arpeggio in bar 1, which then turns into a melodic lick based on that same pattern.

Bar 3 resolves back to A, with the guitar following suit, starting with a slide up to C#. The final lick is another piano-style idea, based around D major, but it could also be viewed as part of the A minor pentatonic scale, adding a brief Eb (b5) and a staccato C natural for a bluesy feel.

Example 3

After a brief pick-up, these descending 6th chords are reminiscent of a lap steel but are played more aggressively. Shifting down chromatically from E6 down to C6, these triads are superimposed over the E and D notes from the bass.

The beginning of bar 3 features the arpeggiated triads of A and G major. The beginning of what would be another A major triad is interrupted by the short, sharp G6 and A6 chords, then finishing with D-Eb-E in another chromatic run.

Example 4

Here’s an alternative take on Example 1. The repeated triad triplets are a classic blues device, staying static for the whole of bar 1, then shifting to D for bar 2 and relenting slightly – a small detail, but this is the stuff that gives a good feel and avoids too much repetition.

Bar 3 gets things moving with A7, D, A and D6 arpeggios superimposed over the A on the bass. The final bar is similar to how we came in on Example 1. The grace notes and staccato hits are an important part of the feel but allow a bit of looseness, rather than trying to be too exact.

Hear it here

Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble – Texas Flood

SRV manages to fill a lot of space – both harmonically and sonically. Check out his playing on Texas Flood, which establishes a strong sense of the harmony before breaking out into single notes. In fact, the whole of the Texas Flood album is a masterclass on how to play blues guitar in a trio format.

Beyond this album, Cold Shot demonstrates how chordal accompaniment and a riff with fills can be one and the same thing. Finally, listen to how he integrates chords, doublestops and solo lines on Lenny.

Kirk Fletcher – Heartache By The Pound

As well as his own solo career, Kirk has worked with Charlie Musselwhite, The Fabulous Thunderbirds and Joe Bonamassa. He’s comfortable both as a soloist and accompanist, who clearly knows his chords and triads back to front.

Check out his playing on Afraid To Die, Too Scared To Live from Heartache By The Pound to hear him mixing triads and self-assured single‑note lines. Elsewhere, try Ain’t No Cure For The Downhearted and Love Is More Than A Word, both from the 2020 My Blues Pathway album.

Jimi Hendrix – Axis: Bold as Love

Jimi is a renowned master of creating sophisticated harmonic textures in a trio format. Have another listen to Little Wing on Axis: Bold As Love, and then The Wind Cries Mary and Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland) elsewhere.

Admittedly, there seem to be a couple of layers going on here, but plenty happening in terms of superimposed triads, doublestops and embellished arpeggiated chords. Don’t stop at these three tracks – there’s a wealth of ideas on the original studio albums, and be sure to check out the live recordings, too.

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Jimi Hendrix was a guitar-playing revelation and blew the minds of those who heard him on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 1960s. However, despite admiring what the new kid on the block could do, Buddy Guy has confessed he didn’t love everything about Hendrix.

Guy, raised on Louisiana and Mississippi blues greats like John Lee Hooker and B.B. King, was from a slightly different school than Hendrix – who brought something completely new to the table.

“Well, you know, after I met Jimi Hendrix… you’ll laugh, but I thought he used to play too loud,” Guy says in the new issue of Guitar World. “When I first came up, Muddy Waters and those guys had two little speakers at each corner of the blues club, and it was a clean sound.”

Hendrix, on the other hand, wasn’t quite so clean. He was, in truth, a product of changing times.

“When the British guys started playing, they had stacks of Marshalls,” Guy explains. “And when I got to know Jimi, I’d go see him and say, ‘Before you go in there, you ain’t gonna hear nothing.’ That type of sound just took over.”

Ironically, Guy was told early in his career that he abused the volume dial of his amps too much. But in his days playing blues clubs, tucked away with a small amp in the corner of the room, he made some quiet innovations. That included embracing feedback after a lady's dress accidentally whipped his guitar during a break.

Jimi Hendrix would continue reinventing the blues.

“The clean sound went away because, with the amplifiers, it was a dogfight. It was just a rat race,” Guy recalls. “And then all the special effects came in, and Jimi, I think he was one of the greatest who ever took advantage of the special effects, because a lot of people used them after him.”

Guy first met Hendrix in 1968, when the latter is said to have cancelled a gig to watch his hero play, and they struck up a fruitful friendship.

“I'm so grateful we had the chance to become friends. It's an honor to help keep his legacy alive,” he tells Guitar World, alluding to his decision to play the 2025 Experience Hendrix Tour. The lineup included stars from across generations, including Zakk Wylde, Samantha Fish, and Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram.

Guy has since said that he won't retire until the blues gets a higher profile, and his role in the blockbuster smash Sinners certainly helped with that mission.

Find Guy’s full interview in the latest issue of Guitar World, which features a bumper cover story on Guns N’ Roses, with work on a new album confirmed.

Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

Leo Lyons achieved success as the bass player for blues-rock band Ten Years After before moving into record production and professional songwriting in Nashville. Through most of his career, Leo has mainly been a one-bass guy, but his hands aren’t the only ones to have played his road-worn 1962 Jazz Bass. Leo takes us back to the beginning.

“I went for guitar lessons when I was 11 and my teacher introduced me to a couple of his other pupils. They had one of those bands that rehearsed twice a week and gigged twice a year. There were four guitar players and a drummer and they needed someone to play the bass, so I started playing the bass lines on the low strings on my guitar.

“I really took to it, so I sold my bicycle and my guitar and bought a Höfner bass on hire purchase. There weren’t many bass guitars around in those days and the only one in my hometown in Mansfield was the one I got. I played that until I found a 1960 Precision in Jennings on Charing Cross Road.

“It came with me to Germany when we began playing the Star-Club in 1962. A bassist in the other house band had a Jazz Bass and I preferred the narrow neck and the chrome parts, but I couldn’t afford one. In late 1962 we were back in England playing a gig in Norfolk and the guy in the support band was playing a Jazz Bass.

“We got talking and I asked if he wanted to sell it or do a swap. He told me he wasn’t really a bass player and had bought the bass from a music teacher just so he could get the gig. We agreed to swap instruments and I gave him £15 on top.

“That guy was Ian Hunter who went on to form Mott The Hoople, and the last time I saw him he offered to return the £15 in exchange for a commission for every gig I’ve done with it. He actually still owns my 1960 Precision.”

Precious Hard Work

Leo acquired his Jazz Bass the same year it was made, and he confirms it was almost like new: “It came from the second run of Jazz Basses that Fender made. The earliest ones had volume controls with dual concentric tone controls, but mine has two volumes and a separate tone control. It was from that changeover period in 1962.”

One glance at the bass and it’s clear to see it’s had a lot of use, as Leo explains: “I used to clean it after every gig and put it into a velvet bag before I put it back in the case. I was very precious with it, but the varnish eventually got worn down and I made an indentation in the wood that you can probably see in the photographs.

“It did a lot of work and was used on stages where history was made. I didn’t tour with several basses; I just took my Jazz Bass. If I broke a string, somebody would talk to the audience or the band would simply carry on playing without me while I put on a new one. It has been on all the records I’ve done, too.”

Studio Stories

By the time Ten Years After came off the road in the mid-’70s, Leo had already started producing. The band’s label, Chrysalis Records, had just bought Wessex Studios and asked Leo to supervise the refurbishment and manage the facility.

During his production career, Leo’s Jazz Bass was always on hand and proved popular with other musicians.

“I produced three records with UFO, and Pete Way always played my bass,” Leo says. “He had that old Gibson Thunderbird that looked really good hanging low at the hip, but it sounded like crap. It was the same with the Magnum records I did.”

Quite a few famous bands used Wessex Studios, including Queen, but Leo’s stint lasted for little more than a year. “Chrysalis wanted Ten Years After to go back on tour,” he says, “so I had to give up the job. After that, I bought a Neve desk and built my own studio, which I ran as a commercial facility.”

However, one of Leo’s earliest recording studio experiences was in 1960 when a nascent Ten Years After, then called The Jaybirds, signed a deal with the legendary Joe Meek.

Leo remembers: “Joe was very eccentric, but he wasn’t too bad with us and he was very innovative. He had an 8ft-square room with a couple of tape recorders and he would bounce tracks between them. The floor was always covered with pieces of edited tape. He would DI the bass, the piano had drawing pins pressed into the hammers, and the echo chamber was the bathroom.”

Jimi Jams

Leo’s bass has also been played by Jimi Hendrix. “In the late ’60s we were all doing the same gigs and hanging around together,” Leo explains. “It was the time when the headline act only gave you half the PA power, you couldn’t use lights and you had to set up in front of the other band’s equipment. Everybody was a musician, we all mucked in together and we all knew each other.

“When Jimi first came to London, Chas Chandler was looking after him and I met them down the pub. I knew Chas and he asked if I’d be interested in joining Jimi’s band. They were offering good money, maybe £40 per week, but Alvin and I had put so much time into Ten Years After that I didn’t want to do it.

“We hung around a few times and used to play in The Cromwellian Club, where lots of musicians would come to jam. Jimi also played my bass in New York at The Scene, and on another occasion Mitch Mitchell came up to jam.”

Taking Woodstock

Ten Years After’s Woodstock performance in ’69 has long since passed into legendary status, but Leo recalls how, at the time, it seemed anything but.

“Nobody expected the gig to be that big,” he says. “There were lots of festivals during that period and we were on the road with Nina Simone and Dizzy Gillespie as part of the Newport Jazz Festival tour.

“We had played Missouri the night before and when we arrived in New York to travel up to Woodstock, we learned it was total chaos and the roads were blocked.

“We checked into a Holiday Inn nearby and flew into the gig, and that’s when I saw how many people were there and what it was like. There was rain and mud slides, and the stage was covered in cables and wires with water running between them. The audience was great, but when we came off stage we hadn’t eaten for 24 hours and the helicopters had stopped flying.

“By the time we got back to New York they had given away my hotel room and I had to sleep on a table in a conference room. It felt like just another gig, but people soon began asking about it – and after the movie came out things went supersonic. Before Woodstock we were playing to crowds of 3,000 in the US, and within a few years we were drawing 50,000.”

Power Struggles

Leo has used some very cool amps over the years, including a few that were seldom used for bass. “Alvin and I started out with a Vox AC15 each and our rhythm guitarist had an AC10,” he says. “Then I started using valve hi-fi amps like Leaks and Quads with a 12-inch speaker in an old TV cabinet before I went on to 18-inch speakers and enclosures that I built myself powered by 25- and 50-watt stereo amps.

“My friend, who played bass for Shane Fenton and the Fentones, had a deal with Jennings Musical Instruments [Industries], so he had Jet Harris’s AC30 Super Twin. I bought that when he emigrated to America and I used it until Watkins started providing us with gear.

“I stopped using Watkins amps when we began touring America because we couldn’t get Watkins gear over there. That’s when we changed over to Marshall amps and I stuck with them through most of my Ten Years After career. I was using two 100-watt heads with 16 12-inch speakers. I’ve also used Acoustic, Fender, Ampeg and Genz Benz over the years, but recently I’ve gone back to Watkins.”

All That Jazz

Despite having used his Jazz Bass almost exclusively, Leo has still acquired 26 basses along the way, including a quintessential pawn-shop find courtesy of Billy Gibbons.

“That was when we were playing in Houston, Texas,” he tells us, “and I got on well with the guys in the other band, which included Billy. We had a few days off, so I went back to Houston to hang out with them and Billy took me to a pawn shop where they had a 1955 Precision in the window. I really liked it, so I bought it, but I’ve only played it live once at The Isle Of Wight Festival and I recently gave it to my son.

“I also own a replica of my original Jazz Bass that was made by Barry Moorhouse at The Bass Centre in London. It’s his Leo Lyons signature ‘Woodstock Bass’ and I’ve been gigging it almost exclusively with my band Hundred Seventy Split because it looks and sounds almost exactly the same.”

“The original just became too valuable to take on the road and when I did sneak it out, the crew guys would start to feel uncomfortable. I couldn’t leave it on stage and I’d have to take it out of the van every night and keep it in my hotel room. I’m not a collector; I’m a musician who believes instruments are meant to be played. That’s why I am considering selling my Jazz Bass if I get the right offer for it.

“Everything about the bass is original besides one potentiometer, and it has been refretted. I’ve owned quite a few Fender basses, but this Jazz Bass is unique and whenever I use it on a record I do wonder why I bothered to buy all the others.

“It’s a historic artefact that has been on countless records and even appeared in the Eurovision Song Contest when I lent it to a friend. I’m 81 now and I’m thinking, ‘What are my boys going to do with it when I’m gone?’ If I sold it now, I’d probably be doing them a favour.”

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Norman’s Rare Guitars is home to some of the finest vintage guitars in the world – and, by extension, that means it’s also home to the best vintage Stratocasters currently accounted for.

However, apparently none of those can hold a candle to one Mexican-made model that’s currently sitting in the store’s inventory, because it has amazingly been deemed the best-sounding of all its Strats – even if it’s “ugly as shit”.

The Fender Jimi Hendrix Stratocaster, in an Ultraviolet finish, was released as a limited run in 2018 to celebrate the late guitar hero’s legacy. It features vintage-voiced single-coil pickups, a maple neck and fingerboard, and an Authentic Hendrix neckplate.

There’s even a reverse headstock, and a flipped bridge pickup, as a nod to the fact that the southpaw guitar legend played right-hand axes out of necessity.

Posted to Norman’s Rare Guitars’ ‘secret stash’ Instagram page, its looks have been ridiculed, but its sounds have been praised.

“OK, I know what you’re thinking, and I will agree with you 2000%: it’s ugly as shit,” the post begins. “But if you want probably the best-sounding Stratocaster in the house, then you might wanna get over the look.

“Ask anyone in the store, and they will tell you. The other day, [Michael] Lemmo played it and everyone in the shop agreed this guitar holds up to any Strat we have, even the vintage ones. It’s just special. It has that thing and sounds ridiculous. I guarantee whoever gets this one will be thanking us.”

The guitars were limited edition when they were released, with a price tag of around £799 GBP (approx $1,080). That will likely have inflated a little since then as a result of its rarity. Even then, if the Mexican-made Strat gets close to the hyperbole the store is dropping here, it could be quite the steal.

It’s also a big pat on the back for Fenders made south of the border. Of course, guitars crafted in its Corona, California, factory are the most sought-after, but as Fender Japan continues its hot streak of left-field creations, and more affordable overseas Fenders continue to shine, it shows that not all foreign-made Fenders should be snuffed at.

We don't imagine that Ultraviolet finish will be making a comeback anytime soon, though...

Rick Derringer, long revered as one of rock’s greatest guitarists, passed away at age 77 on May 26 at his home in Ormond Beach, Florida. Derringer first came to national prominence via the 1965 hit Hang On Sloopy, which he recorded with his band, the McCoys. It was released just as he was turning 17.

Thus began a long and storied career that found him working as a multi-instrumentalist on guitar, pedal steel and bass, and as a successful producer. The long list of artists he recorded with or produced includes Johnny and Edgar Winter, Todd Rundgren, Steely Dan, Kiss, Cyndi Lauper, Barbara Streisand, Alice Cooper and Air Supply.

He also produced, arranged and performed on six “Weird Al” Yankovic albums, including 1984’s “Weird Al” Yankovic in 3-D, home of the Grammy-winning Eat It.

Derringer – born Richard Dean Zehringer on August 5, 1947, in Celina, Ohio – was raised in Fort Recovery, Ohio. As a child, Derringer was steeped in the music of his parents’ vast record collection and was initially inspired to play guitar by his uncle, Jim Thornburg, a successful local singer and guitarist. Derringer got his first electric guitar for his ninth birthday and quickly began playing music with his younger brother, Randy.

After the eighth grade, the Zehringers moved to Union City, Indiana, where Rick and Randy formed their first band, the McCoys, briefly known as the Rick Z Combo and then Rick and the Raiders before reverting to the McCoys. As Derringer told me in 1994, “The first song I learned to play was The McCoy by the Ventures, and we took our name from that song.” By the time he went to high school, the family had moved to a town just outside of Dayton, Ohio.

In 1965, the McCoys opened for the Strangeloves, a fictional group that consisted of three New York City songwriters. The Strangeloves’ I Want Candy became a hit in mid ’65, and they were considering releasing My Girl Sloopy – which had been a 1964 hit for R&B vocal group the Vibrations – as a followup. However, their touring partners, the Dave Clark Five, told them that they planned on releasing Sloopy as a single when they got back to England.

The Strangeloves couldn’t beat them to the punch because I Want Candy was still so fresh, so they enlisted the McCoys – the band that had been opening for them and backing them – to record the song. “The Strangeloves were looking for a young band that looked like the Beatles, and we fit the bill,” Derringer said.

The McCoys flew to New York and sang on the Strangeloves’ already-recorded instrumental track; Derringer – who suggested the name change to Hang On Sloopy – also recorded the song’s guitar parts and amped-up solo. In an interview at the time, Jimi Hendrix said, “Have you heard the guitar player on Hang On Sloopy? He’s great.”

“That was the first time I recorded in a real studio,” Derringer said. “When we finished, everyone in the control room was jumping up and down, going nuts, yelling, ‘Number 1!’ Hang On Sloopy went to Number 1, and we thought, ‘This business is easy!’ I soon found out it wasn’t quite so easy.”

I asked Derringer if they got rich for having a hit single. He laughed and said, “Not at all; we got rich in life experience. We were kids with no experience, and our parents had no experience, and, contractually, we’d sold ourselves down the river. We got cheated about every way you can.”

Following three albums – You Make Me Feel So Good, Infinite McCoys and Human Ball – the band relocated to New York and became the house band at the Scene Club, which was frequented by the rock elite and run by entrepreneur Steve Paul, who managed Johnny Winter.

“I was there that famous night in [March] 1968 when Jim Morrison got up and sang with Hendrix and went completely nuts,” Derringer said. “Jimi would come down every night, and he, my bass player Randy Jo Hobbs and Buddy Miles would back everyone up. I often got up and played with them, as did Larry Coryell. Jimi usually had an open-reel tape recorder there so he could tape the sessions.

“They were up there jamming, and Morrison, who was so wasted he could barely stand, climbed onstage and grabbed the mic in the middle of this jam! This was when Jimi was wearing hats with feathers, and Morrison reaches over and grabs the hat off Jimi’s head. Jimi was a nice guy, but it was like, ‘Now you’re screwing with my hair!’

“He put Jimi’s hat on his own head, and everyone in there went, ‘Ohhh, I can’t believe he did that!’ Steve told the bouncers to get Morrison off the stage, and four guys grabbed one limb each and started dragging him off while Jim was screaming, ‘AAAROOAAROOOO’ into the mic.

“It was incredible! He screamed into the mic until the cable wouldn’t stretch anymore and he had to drop it.” (The tracks from this gig can be heard on the bootleg releases High, Live ’N Dirty and Woke Up This Morning and Found Myself Dead.)

“That’s how we first met and started playing with Johnny Winter, and we all moved upstate to Hyde Park, New York,” Derringer said. “We lived in two houses next to each other and formed the band known as Johnny Winter And. They didn’t want to use ‘…and the McCoys’ because of our bubblegum image, so someone suggested, ‘Just call it “Johnny Winter And!”’

“We began work on material for Johnny Winter And [1970], which I think is a cool record. Everyone always gives credit to Johnny Winter And Live [1971], but I always thought the studio album was overlooked. It was a great example of what the McCoys did and what Johnny did, and we were writing for each other. The album is really important to me from a collaborative point of view.

“I wrote Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo for Johnny. I wanted a song that had some rock and pop kind of parts that Johnny would sing, so it needed a melody and lyrics that weren’t foreign to his style. The title says it all – it’s ‘rock ‘n’ roll,’ but it’s ‘hoochie koo’ too, whatever that means! The rhythm parts are more rock, but the single-note riff is more bluesy.”

Also in 1971, Derringer worked with Alice Cooper on his fourth album, Killer, supplying all the guitars and the blistering solo to Under My Wheels.

For his 1973 solo debut, All American Boy, Derringer recut Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo, which became his first hit as a solo artist. “I felt the version we’d cut with Johnny could’ve been better, so that’s what I tried to do. We sped it up and added the female background vocals. It became more of a rock-sounding record with more energy.”

After the breakup of Johnny Winter And, Rick joined Edgar Winter’s band, White Trash, and thus began a relationship that resulted in Derringer producing that group’s first four albums, White Trash (1971), Roadwork (1972), They Only Come Out at Night (1973) and Shock Treatment (1974). Derringer supplies incredible guitar work on every record; his solo on White Trash’s Keep Playing That Rock and Roll is one of his best.

“I’m proud of that solo,” he said. “This is one of the few that, when we play the song now, I try to emulate the original solo.

“I’m aiming for a certain balance in my solos. Whether I’m playing show-off kind of stuff, or slower and simpler, it really doesn’t matter as long as the whole thing has some form. John Coltrane always played these wild, strange solos, but somehow they always maintained a sense of form, and I’ve always been a student of that.

“For a time I was studying to be a painter, and I felt the things I was good at were form and composition. I think along those lines for guitar solos, too.”

The live White Trash album, Roadwork, is a showcase for Derringer’s virtuosity as a guitarist. He is featured as the singer on incendiary versions of Still Alive and Well and Back in the U.S.A, and his extended solo on the latter is a masterclass in rock guitar brilliance.

Edgar Winter and Derringer scored a massive hit with Frankenstein from They Only Come Out at Night.

“I was working with Bill Szymczyk as my engineer; he’d co-produced All American Boy with me,” Derringer said. “Then I used him on two projects as an engineer, Johnny Winter’s Still Alive and Well [1973] and Edgar’s They Only Come Out at Night. Edgar had always done a song called The Double Drum Solo, which they first did when Johnny brought Edgar into the limelight to tour with him in the late Sixties. This was a song they did every night to show off, as Edgar would move from organ to saxophone to the drums.

“This turned into Frankenstein; all of the parts were already there except for the synthesizer break in the middle. When we went in to do the album, Bill and I were looking forward to doing that song as much as anything else on the record. The rest of the music was more traditional, but this was a big, long instrumental with all of the wild stuff.

“At some point, we got word that the record company was thinking of not including the song on the album because they thought it was too different – too jazzy or something. Bill and I went to whoever the powers that were at that moment, and we said [shouting], ‘What do you mean you’re dropping it? It’s the best one!’

“Of course, we had no idea how successful it would be. It became a Number 1 record and was a big hit for a long time. The real hits are usually the ones that the record companies have fought against.”

How did the song get its signature title?

“The song was too long, even for the album version, and it was cut even more for the single. We didn’t want to call it The Double Drum Solo, and I was thinking it was a real Frankenstein in the way we spliced all the sections together. I may have even suggested it as a title. I didn’t have the power to give it the title, because it was Edgar’s song, and in the end, he chose that as the title.”

Around this time, Derringer began to do a lot of session work, often recording with Steely Dan. Previously, in 1972, Rick had played on a Donald Fagen demo that secured a record deal for the band. Derringer added guitar to the Steely Dan tracks Show Biz Kids from 1973’s Countdown to Ecstasy and Chain Lightning from 1975’s Katy Lied.

In 1980, Derringer again worked with Steely Dan on Gaucho, adding guitar to My Rival, and he played on Fagen’s 1982 solo album, The Nightfly. Derringer collaborated with Todd Rundgren on Something/Anything (1972), A Wizard, A True Star (1973), Initiation (1975) and Back to the Bars (1978).

In 1976, Rick formed the band Derringer, which went on to release six albums. Their eponymous debut LP was released by Blue Sky, Johnny Winter’s signature imprint. The album features stellar guitar work from Derringer and co-guitarist Danny Johnson; one of its highlights is Beyond the Universe.

“This is a song that remained in our set for the longest time,” Derringer said. “We needed an uptempo, fast song, and that’s what I came up with. I had been reading a lot of Carlos Castaneda books, and much of the lyrics were copped from those books. It was something I was into; I wasn’t just writing anything down. I think that was the whole idea of the Castaneda books – that you could go anywhere and do anything.”

At the end of the track, he and Johnson trade unaccompanied guitar solos. “In a lot of records nowadays, that’s the stuff I miss. In striving to devise something for the marketplace, oftentimes the guitar playing is forgotten, just lettin’ the guys get out there and play.

“Everything is so charted out, the solo can become something of a musical contrivance – it comes and goes so quickly – and you miss hearing somebody really play. When we cut it, we’d been playing it live for a while, and we recorded it totally spontaneously in the studio. We wanted to show people what we were like as a live band, too.”

In 1982, Derringer began working with comedian “Weird Al” Yankovic, producing his eponymous debut, released in 1983, followed by “Weird Al” Yankovic in 3-D, which included Eat It, a parody of Michael Jackson’s Beat It.

“Something people wouldn’t expect is that some of the best records I ever produced were with Weird Al,” Derringer said. “I feel bad about it in some ways, because we had to take apart the best-made records of that time. When Quincy Jones produces Michael Jackson, unlimited money can be spent to make those records great. We had to learn to take them apart and recreate them!

“Because Weird Al was thought of as a ‘novelty artist,’ all of a sudden my production career became stagnant, because people considered me to be a ‘novelty producer.’ The only thing novel about it was how hard we worked!

“This took me into some work with the World Wrestling Federation, and I produced two albums for them. The first included a song I wrote that went on to become Hulk Hogan’s theme song, I Am a Real American. I got the WWF gig because they said, ‘This guy’s a novelty producer – we’ve got to get him!’”

Among the scores of studio tracks featuring Derringer’s contributions, two were hit power ballads written and produced by Jim Steinman – Air Supply’s Making Love Out of Nothing at All and Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart, both from 1983.

“It may sound silly to some people, but my favorite solo I’ve ever cut is probably the one on Making Love Out of Nothing at All,” Derringer said. It’s relatively simple, but it’s very dramatic and melodic, and I love how it’s harmonized. It fits the song so well.”

Over the course of his career, Derringer released 15 studio albums and three live albums. Between 1993 and 2010, he recorded seven blues albums, plus two with drummer Carmine Appice and another with Appice and bassist Tim Bogert (DBA), 2009’s The Sky Is Falling.

In 1997, Derringer became an Evangelical Christian and, with his wife Jenda and their two children, released four Christian-themed albums. Starting in 2010, he performed on three world tours as a member of Ringo Starr’s All-Star Band.

Derringer has provided inspiration to generations of guitar players, including some of the greatest axe-slingers of all time.

“Duane Allman told me he was inspired to pick up slide guitar because he saw me playing slide with the McCoys,” Derringer said. “That blows my mind! He became one of the greatest slide guitarists ever.”

Derringer’s larger-than-life exuberance as a guitarist, singer and songwriter will continue to inspire musicians for decades to come.

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

Jimi Hendrix is one of the most influential guitarists to ever have lived, and his playing has inspired just about everyone who has ever picked up the electric guitar.

That goes for pros, too, with seasoned veterans and emerging guitar stars alike – from Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page to Melanie Faye and Mateus Asato – all citing Hendrix as a key influence.

David Gilmour is another guitar legend to have been shaped by Hendrix. In fact, Hendrix was such an informative force on his own playing that Gilmour remembers the first time he ever heard him play.

Speaking to Rick Beato, Gilmour remembers, "When I was living in London and I was completely broke – and this was long before I joined Pink Floyd – there was a club in South Kensington called Blazes.

“If you were a member of that club, and it cost five pounds or something to be a member, you could go free from Monday to Thursday, or Tuesday to Thursday, so I'd go there quite a lot, because it was free.

“One night, I went in there, and it was rammed with people, all the Beatles and all the Stones were in there. I thought, 'This is a bit unusual.' A kid came in with a guitar case, got up on the stage, opened his guitar case and put it on the wrong way round, plugged into an amp and started. The entire place was just jaws dropped. It was absolutely extraordinary.”

Gilmour wasted no time in trying to track down more of this mystery guitar player’s music, though he hit a bit of a sticking point: Hendrix was so early on in his career that his music wasn’t available.

As Gilmour remembers, “I went out the next day trying to find records by this character, Jimi Hendrix, and those James Hendricks of Hendrix, Lambert and Ross he didn't exist.”

He clearly knew he’d witnessed something special, though, and it wasn’t long before the world had cottoned on to the fact they were witnessing the rise of one guitar’s true pioneers and innovators.

“As soon as Jimi Hendrix came along, I thought, ‘Yes, Jimi, I want a slice of that,’” Gilmour says.

In a previous chat with Beato, Gilmour discussed the origins of his own guitar technique and style, which has since been held up as the gold standard for ‘feel’ playing.

During the small hours one night in Spring 1969, John McLaughlin found himself jamming with Jimi Hendrix. But what should have gone down as a peak life moment turned into a “disaster” because the jazz guitar great had the wrong guitar – and no money to do anything about it.

The jam took place at the Record Plant on March 25, 1969. The New York studio, which had opened up two years prior, had been used by Hendrix to record portions of his third album with the Experience, Electric Ladyland. That night, it played host to quite the party.

“I walked into the studio with [Hendrix drummer] Mitch Mitchell, I knew him from the '60s with Georgie Fame, and it was loud,” McLaughlin tells Ultimate Guitar.

“Jimi was in a process of changing the Experience to Band of Gypsys. Mitch had come to see us because I was playing at the Village Vanguard with Tony Williams at that time, with Larry Young on Hammond organ.

“We were in the studio. Buddy Miles was already playing some boogaloo. He was unbelievable. And Jimi was there. But there were quite a few guitar players there. It was a big party.”

Legend has it that the jam session, which also featured Dave Holland on bass, went on from 2am to 8am. McLaughlin wasn’t well-equipped for it, he says.

“The problem is, the only guitar I had was a Gibson Hummingbird [acoustic guitar],” he explains. “I'd moved to Europe by that time, and I’d run out of money. I had to sell my really nice Gibson guitar. [The Hummingbird] was pretty cheap, and I had a DeArmond pickup over [the sound hole]. It was a bit of a disaster.”

“But, at that volume, I plugged my guitar in, and it was instant feedback. It was really hard to play. It was unfortunate. I needed a solid body guitar on that session.”

There was a silver lining to McLaughlin’s evening – he struck up a friendship with Miles, which saw him play on his second solo album, Devotion, released later that year. He’d also get to meet Hendrix at a later date, in less ear-splitting circumstances.

“He was a sweet guy. We had a chance to talk, and he was just totally unpretentious,” McLaughlin says. “But I think he knew he was causing quite a revolution on the electric guitar. He certainly affected me, and about another five million guitar players.

“He was a one-man revolution on the guitar. It was unbelievable what he was doing, with a wah-wah pedal and a Marshall amp. That was it.”

In related news, McLaughlin has recalled gifting Jeff Beck his Wired Stratocaster and the time Miles Davis stopped his band from playing to offer him some unlikely advice.

And Andy Fairweather has spoken about another late-night jam session involving Jimi Hendrix, and how it led to him guesting on a classic Hendrix cut.

There are varying degrees of guitar hero, but Carlos Santana is a name you’d expect to find near the top of any list. Like Jimi Hendrix, Brian May or Slash, Santana has transcended guitar music and permeated his way into popular culture, immortalizing his name into legend on every corner of the globe.

Of course, he’s a tremendous player, but it goes way beyond that; he’s a highly prolific composer and collaborator, the type of musician who can thrive in just about any musical environment, drawing from an impressively wide pool of influences to make his guitar speak to any kind of audience or listener.

His latest album, Sentient, serves as yet another reminder of these universal talents. It consists of 11 tracks, three of which were unreleased until now, and the rest reimagining some of his most famous partnerships over a storied career, from a moving live version of Michael Jackson’s Stranger in Moscow to classic cuts alongside Miles Davis and Smokey Robinson.

It’s an impressive body of work that captures the breadth of his sound and imagination while taking the listener on an unforgettable journey that defies all notions of boundary or genre. And, as the chart-topping veteran explains to GW, it’s mainly because his approach to music is a profoundly holistic one.

You’re one of the most prominent faces for PRS, but you’ve played all kinds of guitars throughout the years.

“Guitars are like crayons to me. Life is the canvas, and guitars are the colors you use to express your soul, your spirit, your heart, your passion and emotions. Those are the ingredients to create beauty, and guitars are the tools.”

How many guitars do you own these days?

“I don’t know, but probably not more than 100 and not fewer than 75. I guess the Fender Strats and Gibson Les Pauls would be the oldest models in my collection. I’ve got Strats from 1954; some of my Les Pauls go all the way back to 1959.”

You even had a Yamaha signature model in the ’80s.

“That’s right. I had a good time with Yamaha. I learned from each one of the guitar companies. They all have their own sound, texture and feel. But I always go back to my PRS models.

“Paul Reed Smith has mastered creating an instrument that behaves. No matter what the weather is like, it will stay in tune and always give you that great tone. I’m very grateful to Paul. He came up with his own vision to create a different tone and feel.

“I’m grateful he did that because his designs suited my personality when it came to self-expression. We’ve had a relationship since the late ’70s. He convinced me to come on board. Back then, there were only three companies I knew of – Gibson, Fender and Gretsch. There were others, but those three were the main ones.”

The PRS signature guitar you call “Salmon” is the guitar you’re most associated with lately. What makes it so special?

“I also think of it as my Supernatural guitar, because that’s what I used for 99 percent of that album [1999's Supernatural]. As for what’s special about it, I think it’s the most fluid. It’s the easiest instrument for me to materialize my inner-vision, thoughts and emotions. There’s not much struggle translating myself onto that guitar. But sometimes that struggle is nice, you know?

“Some people struggle with playing Stratocasters. It’s not easy to play a Strat and get really nice tones without pedals, because some people use pedals for extra sustain. But when you play loud enough like Jimi Hendrix going straight into Marshall stacks, they can become a whole other canvas. That’s why players like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Buddy Guy stuck with Stratocasters.”

PRS has continued to evolve through the years with models like the Silver Sky. Have you ever tried one?

“A bit here and there. I thought they were pretty close to the original design it had been clearly inspired by.”

The company’s SE models are also pretty well known for being some of the best guitars you can find for that kind of money.

“That’s right! From guitars to food or whatever, there are two words that are important for any business – impeccable integrity. When people put love and attention into what they make, it stands out.

“When my guitars arrive from Paul Reed Smith, they are always perfectly in tune. I’m not making it up! They come to me set up perfectly because somebody at the factory is doing that final check. A lot of companies don’t do that.”

You play PRS single-cut models, too. What kind of situations call for that over a double-cut?

“It’s like wine. You’ve got choices like burgundy, merlot and cabernet sauvignon. The singlecut is more like a merlot, it’s a more robust sound. When you play a double-cut, the sound changes dramatically and you get more treble. So in situations where I want more of a rounder sound, I will go for the single-cut. Both have their uses for different sounds and songs.”

On your new retrospective album, you turned your guitar into a voice for an instrumental version of Michael Jackson’s Stranger in Moscow. Not many players can make their instruments talk like that.

“There are components to articulating. It’s a bit like how a chef thinks about ingredients, from flavors to nutrients. To cook a delicious meal, you need more than salt and pepper. Nothing is closer to the heart than the voice. To make a guitar speak to people, it’s more than just volume and control.

“You need to put your soul into each note; when you do that, it changes the sound. There are a lot of people who play music that’s more mental, which has a different type of feel. It’s okay for certain things, but I prefer the sound of someone playing from their heart because of players like Wes Montgomery and Otis Rush. They made you feel what you hear.”

Which singers helped you most with your phrasing?

“If I sang, I’d want to sound like Marvin Gaye. If I were female, I’d want to sound like Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston or Billie Holiday. That’s what I’m thinking of when I play guitar – how to articulate.

“I’ve spent a lot of time taking my fingers for a walk with Smokey Robinson, so when I play my guitar, I become the voice through my fingers on the fretboard. It’s the same way I approached Stranger in Moscow. I had to morph myself and get into a character, almost like an actor.

“When you see Robert De Niro on a talk show and he’s not in character, sometimes he can be a little boring. But when he turns into the guy from Heat, Taxi Driver or The Godfather, he’s incredible. It’s a frame of mind. When I’m playing Stranger in Moscow, you’re hearing a different Carlos, because I’m thinking of Michael Jackson and phrasing everything differently – even if it’s still got my own fingerprint.”

On a technical level, what were you doing to sound like the original vocal?

“I chose to play more relaxed and behind the beat, choosing my notes carefully. It’s like putting your fingers in water and sprinkling someone’s face with water, or if you take a spoon to grapefruit and it squirts.

“Those are the good notes. A lot of people don’t know how to squirt their best notes! I learned this stuff from Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Albert King and Freddie King. If you don’t know how to squirt, everything is contained, and it can get boring after a while.

“I like being squirted in the face by music because it makes me feel alive. The goal of any guitar player, whatever the style may be – from funk and flamenco to heavy metal – is to make the listener feel alive. A good guitar solo should sound like an orgasm. I can hear it in Eddie Van Halen’s playing, and the same goes for Jimi Hendrix. I live for the juicy notes.”

There’s almost a Jeff Beck approach to your improvisation on that track. You knew each other and famously played together on The Nagano Sessions [with Steve Lukather] in 1986. What do you remember most about Jeff?

“Jeff Beck took guitar way beyond. His approach was like letting the hamster out of the cage. I was a big fan of Jeff from the second I heard him play. What I loved most was his imagination and passion. He was a very untraditional player, even though he had learned the traditional approach to blues to start with.

“I remember hearing Truth [Beck's first solo album from 1968] a long time ago and loving it, but I think the first song I heard by him was Over Under Sideways Down by the Yardbirds. He had this fuzz sound that was very special. You could also tell he’d been listening to people like Ravi Shankar or Ali Akbar Khan.

“He was a multi-dimensional player in that sense, the opposite of a one-trick pony. He learned from Roy Buchanan and Buddy Guy – I mean, we all took a lot from Buddy – because he put the turbo inside the blues. Like Jeff, I learned how to take a deep breath and trust my fingers almost like a child going down a water slide.”

Is it because in situations like that, it’s more about heart and soul than technicality?

“Anybody can practice scales up and down. But there’s something about coming down a water slide. You don’t know how you’re going to land; it might be on your head or on your feet.

“That’s what happens when you deviate from the melody. John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter taught me a lot. It’s the art of improvisation, entering the unknown. People would ask Wayne how he practices, and he’d tell them, ‘We don’t know what we are going to play; how do you practice the unknown?’

“I learned improvisation from Coltrane. I learned cosmic music from Sun Ra. I learned down-to-earth music from the Grateful Dead because they were heavily immersed in the folk and bluegrass worlds. And don’t dismiss the guitar playing of Bob Dylan. He played a lot of great guitar, which worked beautifully with his vocals. I’ve learned from many musicians, especially the incredible women I mentioned earlier.”

Playing along to soul singers is something nearly every guitar player could learn something from.

“I don’t care who you are, whether you are Al Di Meola or not, I’d recommend this to any guitar player. If you spend even one day learning how to play and phrase like those lady soul singers, you will become a better musician. This is the truth. This is genuinely the most important part of the interview – right now. The only thing people will remember about your music is how you made them feel.

“They are not going to remember all the fast scales and ‘Look at what I can do!’ moments. But they will remember those three notes that made the hairs stand on the back of the neck and tears come out of their eyes, even if they don’t know why. That’s a whole other element, one I call spirit. Some people don’t know how to play with spirit, heart and soul. Those are three very important ingredients.”

Music isn’t a sport at the end of the day – especially for the listener.

“If you just practice all day and night going really fast, after a while, it’s a bit like going to the gym and seeing somebody flexing their muscles. Big deal. So what? Playing with spirit is like giving someone a hug that lasts for infinity. Time stops.”

Are there any songs that you think demonstrates this best?

“There’s a note Jimi Hendrix plays in All Along the Watchtower that makes you feel like you are entering eternity. It’s like being from Kansas and having only seen the Pacific Ocean on a postcard, then going to Hawaii and putting your feet in the water. That’s when you understand the totality and absoluteness of an ocean. A lot of musicians don’t understand how to play like that, but Chick Corea can.

“You have to learn how to dive into infinity through one note. It’s like learning how to French kiss correctly – to be fully alive with all your senses but no guilt, shame or embarrassment. Take the inhibitions and all that stuff out. You will see how beautiful it is to interact so intimately. That’s what a guitar player is. The guitar is a very naked and sensuous instrument. That’s just the way it is.”

The other Michael Jackson track on the album, Whatever Happens, has some harmonic minor lines, but on nylon acoustic. Where’d you learn to use that sound?

“I got a lot of it from my father because he played violin. It’s funny; when I started, people would say I was using a Dorian scale. But the only Dorian I knew was a girl who went to my junior high school. She invited me to go over to her house when her mom was working. I had a good time with Dorian.

“They also said I was using tonic scales, but the only tonic I knew was in gin and tonic. I don’t know, nor do I want to know, about scales because that will get in my way. I would rather feel like a blind man touching someone’s face. They are memorizing something in a completely different way to how someone else would see it.

“I’m not saying ignorance is bliss; I’m saying that if you learn everything, you can take some of the magic away. Don’t lose the magic of self-discovery. There’s something so beautiful about purity and innocence. Again, it’s like that first kiss.”

The Smokey Robinson track, Please Don’t Take Your Love, has a distinct, lively blues tone. What were you using?

“That sound is a combination of three things. The guitar was a really old white Stratocaster going straight into a Dumble amplifier that was lent to me by Alexander Dumble. The tone of that Strat with the Dumble is something magical.

“You stop playing notes, sounds and vibrations, and it all becomes a living sensation. How many players can say they play with a living sensation? Manitas De Plata, Paco De Lucía, John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharrock. The main ingredients for me are spirituality and sensuality. Without those two things, I wouldn’t play guitar like this. I wouldn’t want to be on this planet.”

Get On is an interesting piece of music. Do you play differently knowing someone like Miles Davis is on the same track?

‘I’m almost 80. I’ve learned how to diversify my portfolio and my Rolodex of expression, tones and vibration. When I first heard this song with Miles, I had to trust that I knew enough about what he was doing.

“Certain music comes from Africa, and that went on to influence stuff played by Cubans and Puerto Ricans, all this sensual music like guahira, bolero, charanga. If you listen to the African band Kékélé, you will hear a lot of Santana in there. I have to give credit to the musicians because they knew how to make music feel like it’s alive. It’s not just notes and clever inversions. I always go back to something physical.

“You have to make people feel. They can’t take it or leave it. The song has to speak to them. They will stop all conversations because they are enthralled and captivated. The sound is making love to them. And it takes trust. If there’s no trust, you won’t get the goods. With music, you gotta give the goods, man. Otherwise it’s just too clever and intellectual, and that stuff is boring.”

You’ve said Stevie Ray Vaughan once came to you in a dream and told you to use his Dumble Steel String Singer amp for a performance at Madison Square Garden. Not many people can say that.

“I call them visitations. I get visitations from Miles Davis sometimes, as well as B.B. King. You don’t have to be dead to visit me. Sometimes a dream is not a dream; someone has come back to communicate with you.

“I had a dream about Miles where I went to his concert and someone said, ‘Miles knows you are here and wants to see you in his dressing room.’ He asked how I was doing and started writing on a bit of paper, which he then gave to me. And just as I was about to read it, I woke up. I have to analyze what he was trying to tell me.

“It’s like that with Stevie Ray and Jaco Pastorius. I feel very honored that these people come to me. Sometimes I feel like I’m like [John F. Kennedy International Airport] and all these musicians are landing on me and sharing things. I have to figure out what it all means.”

What exactly did Stevie tell you?

“With Stevie, he was saying, ‘Carlos, where I am, I don’t have any fingers; I am only spirit.’ He missed putting his fingers on a guitar and making the speakers push air. He told me to call his brother Jimmie [Vaughan] and ask him to lend me his amp, the #007 Dumble, and then play it with a Strat so he could feel it through me. You know that Ghost movie with Whoopi Goldberg? There’s a part where a ghost comes into her body so he can feel. That’s what Stevie was doing.

"He wanted to utilize my body and hands because he missed playing guitar. Jimmie wasn’t sure at first. Fortunately, Stevie’s tech, René Martinez, had the same dream and called Jimmie, which is how we convinced him to lend me the amplifier. The last person to borrow it was John Mayer. Let’s just say Jimmie doesn’t loan that thing out very easily.”

Rightly so. For those of us waiting in vain for Jimmie Vaughan to give us the green light on the Dumble, how would you describe the sound of that amp?

“It sounded like everything I love about Peter Green when he played a certain kind of heavenly blues. My mom once asked me, ‘Mijo, do you like Whitney Houston?’ and I said ‘of course.’ She then told me that when Whitney sang, her voice would become a legion of angels. I think my mom knew what she was talking about.

“Sometimes when you play, you channel things. One person I haven’t mentioned too much is Michael Bloomfield. I miss him a lot. He was a great player who knew how to tap into things. Those Paul Butterfield Blues Band albums, like the [self-titled] debut and East-West, are incredible, with songs like Born in Chicago. And the stuff he played with Bob Dylan, forget about it. Michael Bloomfield was a hero beyond heroes to me.

“But the guy who got me out of all that stuff was [Hungarian jazz, pop and rock guitarist] Gábor Szabó. The way he could play ballads was amazing. Listen to his album Spellbinder [1966] and you will hear a lot of Santana in there. Anyone reading this should listen to Hungarian gypsy music. There is nothing more romantic than hearing that stuff. It really pulled me out of the blues, which is something we all need from time to time.”

• Sentient is out now via Candid.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Since earning his first Grammy nomination while he was still in high school with the genre-blending avant-garde outfit The Internet, it's safe to say that Steve Lacy has gone from strength to strength.

Now, with the upcoming release of Oh Yeah?, his first album since 2022’s highly lauded Gemini Rights, he’s indisputably at the forefront of a new type of guitar hero – one defined by an off-kilter, homespun playing style, a strong production sensibility, and a keen eye for collaborators.

Looking back on his humble beginnings in Compton, Lacy recalls how he started playing guitar – crediting his church band with inspiring him to pick up the instrument in the first place.

“At the end of the service, they would just shred, and I would sit there and watch with my jaw to the floor, not moving,” he tells Rolling Stone. By then, he had already become enamored with the concept of playing guitar, thanks to hours spent with Guitar Hero.

“When I was 10, I was obsessed with the instrument. I wanted to touch it. I wanted to be around it. I wanted to hear it,” he says matter-of-factly.

Fast forward to 2023, and Lacy's status as a Gen Z Stratocaster icon earned him a signature model with Fender – the Steve Lacy “People Pleaser” Strat.

Speaking about his penchant for the model in an interview with Guitar World, Lacy said, “I think the Strat is a good representation of my roots as a guitarist. When I think back to the people that I loved and looked up to when I was starting out, they were all rocking the Strats.

“Jimi Hendrix was one of the biggest influences on me back then. I was a young Black kid watching Hendrix rocking the hell out of his Strat and thought ‘Damn!’ I started out on a Squier, too, so it was only right that I’d end up working with Fender to have my own signature.”

Elsewhere in the GW interview, Lacy revealed how he ended up co-writing and co-producing a Kendrick Lamar track and working with Thundercat.

Jimi Hendrix has been immortalized in Lego form as part of a special 255-piece set that includes a Marshall stack and a buildable electric guitar.

Created by the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, in collaboration with Authentic Hendrix and Most Incredible Studio, this unique set is not officially endorsed by Lego, but it might be the closest we’ll ever get to the real thing.

The first-of-its-kind collab “transforms Jimi’s spirit into a living monument” and presents the guitar hero in brick-ified form, complete with a Woodstock-inspired outfit, a Marshall tube amp, a stack of cabs, and a Strat.

Proceeds generated will support MOPOP’s mission of spotlighting cultural icons and its exhibitions, preservation work, and educational programs.

Available from the museum’s gift shop from June 21, its release coincides with the museum’s 25th birthday celebrations. There is no word on whether or not it will be available online, so a day trip to the city that birthed grunge might be in order.

Several music-oriented Lego sets have been released over the years, including a Fender Stratocaster with a mind-blowing level of detail, through to a tropical ukulele, and a rather pricey grand piano as part of its Icons series.

MOPOP is a non-profit museum founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2000 as the Experience Music Project. In its first quarter-century, 17 exhibitions have toured across the U.S. and internationally.

Educational programmes include STAR (Student Training in Artistic Reach), workshops for children and teenagers, and a sci-fi short story contest. It also has a hip-hop artist residency.

Hendrix's legacy has been living on in other ways, too. His iconic 'Izabella' Strat, which was played by the late great at Woodstock, joined the likes of Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Robby Krieger, and Zakk Wylde on last year's Experience Hendrix tour. Epiphone also launched a special ‘Love Drops’ Flying V in September.

While Jimi Hendrix may be best associated with “Izabella” – his 1968 Olympic White Fender Strat – another one of his favorites in his stable of electric guitars was “Black Beauty” – his iconic black 1968 Strat.

In fact, the iconic six-string was so important to Hendrix he was seen with it a day before his death. On September 17th, 1970, Hendrix's then-girlfriend, Monika Dannemann, took photos of him drinking tea and lovingly clutching the black Strat.

The Strat ended up in Dannemann’s possession after Hendrix’s untimely death and remained with her until she died in 1996. Later on in her life, though, Dannemann had reportedly married Scorpions guitar player Uli Jon Roth, who ended up becoming the guitar’s de facto caretaker.

“That guitar is not mine. That guitar belongs to the Dannemann family,” Roth tells Guitar World matter-of-factly in a new interview. “You know, when Monika was alive, it was always just sitting there, but I never played it.

“Maybe I played a few notes on it, but I didn’t want to break a string. It is the only Hendrix guitar that is still in exactly the same condition as he left it. And it’s the one that he played through his last year on a lot of shows. It’s the one that he played Machine Gun with at the Band of Gypsys concerts, and he also played it on his last gig in Germany, where I was backstage.”

As one can safely assume, the guitar has attracted boatloads of attention from many potential high-profile buyers over the years.

“I know somebody tried to buy it for a crazy amount of money when Monika was alive, like 30 years ago,” he reveals.

“I mean, 30 years ago, a million dollars was a lot of money. I guess, it’s still a lot of money – but not for some people – and the number two guy at Microsoft, Paul Allen, who made the Hendrix museum in Seattle, offered a million dollars at the time. Monika said, ‘This guitar is not for sale,’ you know? And nowadays, it would, of course, be worth a lot more, particularly since it’s never been changed.”

Topping that, an art dealer from the Middle East allegedly offered $9 million for the black Strat, a well-known industry anecdote that Roth confirms. “I had that guy on the phone, and I said, ‘Give me one good reason why we should sell you the guitar?’ He said, ‘Well, the money…’ I said, ‘That’s not a good reason.’ So, it was a short conversation.”

And while Allen didn't manage to nab the Black Beauty, rumor has it that he did manage to buy Hendrix’s Woodstock Stratocaster for $1.3m in 1993.

Guitar World's full interview with Uli Jon Roth will be published in the coming weeks.

Veteran guitarist Dave Mason has been forced to cancel all of his scheduled 2025 tour dates amid ongoing health issues.

The English singer-songwriter is best known as one of the founding members of Traffic and as a session guitarist. He's worked with everyone from Jimi Hendrix to George Harrison across a tireless career spanning seven decades, and today continues to battle a serious heart condition.

It was discovered during a routine check-up last year and led to his fall 2024 tour being postponed and subsequently rescheduled for this summer. Steps were taken to treat the condition, but he faced a further setback after contracting a severe infection while recovering in March.

Mason’s camp says he has been “courageously battling” the infection ever since, but nearly three months later, there is little sign of improvement.

“With deep regret, I must cancel all tour dates for 2025 due to ongoing health issues stemming from the infection I had in March,” Mason writes on Facebook. “I’m incredibly grateful to my team of doctors – this has been challenging territory, to say the least.

“A heartfelt thank you to all the fans, and to my family, band, agents, and the venues who’ve waited patiently and supported me throughout this journey. Your kind messages have lifted my spirits more than words can express.

“Recovery is a long road,” his statement concludes. “My love for you all runs deep.”

From playing 12-string acoustic guitar on Jimi Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower – a song voted the greatest cover of all time last year – to featuring on George Harrison's 1970 solo album All Things Must Pass, alongside credits with the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, and Eric Clapton, Mason's career has been storied, to say the least.

“I got to know Hendrix a bit when he was becoming a sensation in London,” he told Guitar Player of his encounters with the late guitar great.

“I saw Hendrix at the Scotch of St. James when Chas Chandler was taking him around to sit in and jam with everybody, and I think McCartney was there that night. This guy gets up and starts playing and I'm like, ‘Holy shit! Who the fuck is this?’”

Of the Watchtower recording session, he adds: “Mitch Mitchell was playing drums and Jimi and I sat down facing each other, with Jimi on six-string acoustic and me on 12-string.

“It took me 10 or 11 takes to get the timing on the intro right. I stayed and watched the whole session, with him putting bass and electric guitar on the track and it was one of the most incredible, inspiring musical experiences I’ve ever had. Absolutely inspiring to watch him work.”

In 2023, the 79-year-old told Guitar World that he built up his commendable resume without “a lot of technique,” admitting, “I wish I knew more about what the hell I was doing when I’m playing.”

“I’ve treated guitar more as a melodic instrument than anything,” he added. “So if I’m noodling around it’s probably mostly going to be some blues stuff.”

Self-deprecating or not, Mason's talents have kept him in high demand. He formed the psych-rock outfit Traffic in 1967, but his time in the band was tumultuous, ultimately paving the way for a more stable career as a session player. He’s also released 16 solo albums, the most recent being 2023’s A Shade of Blues.

Mike Matthews doesn’t play guitar. He’s a businessman. Always has been, always will be. Business opened for Matthews in his hometown – the Bronx, New York – circa 1946, when he was just five years old.

As a child, he’d stop at nothing in his feverish pursuit for profit, collecting golf balls from New York City sewers with a coat hanger and sneaking out to the lake to collect fishing lures during his time at summer camp.

After high school, Matthews attended Cornell University and, at the request of his father, majored in electrical engineering. A product of the Great Depression, Matthews’ father insisted that he pick something that would ensure financial stability for his son. Sure enough, after graduation, IBM came knocking and offered Matthews a job.

Still, his entrepreneurial spirit simmered. Matthews’ schedule at IBM was flexible, and when the Rolling Stones released (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction in 1965, that simmer turned into a boil.

Can you describe the first time you saw the need for a guitar pedal?

“On the radio while I was at school for IBM, the Number 1 hit was Satisfaction by the Stones, and Keith Richards playing the Maestro Fuzz-Tone. Then, 10 weeks later, I went out again to another school, and Satisfaction was still the Number 1 song. Everybody wanted fuzz tones, but they couldn’t build them fast enough.

“In those days, all of the music business was on 48th Street in New York City. There were about 10 music stores, different repair shops and this and that. One guy in a repair shop said to me, ‘I’m building these fuzz tones one at a time. You want to come in with me? Then I can get them out much faster.’

“I said, okay, but then he didn’t do anything and I was stuck trying to figure out how to get these fuzz tones built. So I found a contractor in Long Island City called All Instruments, and they built the fuzz tones.

“Meanwhile – I don’t remember how or why – but Al Dronge, the president of Guild Guitars, contacted me and said he wanted to buy all the fuzz tones. He decided to call them Foxey Ladys.

“I had them printed up every two or three weeks, and I’d leave IBM to pick up a few hundred of these fuzz tones at All Instruments. Then I’d drag them out to the Guild warehouse in Hoboken, New Jersey, where Guild would write me a check. After that, I’d go back to work at IBM. That’s how I got started.”

Was the Foxey Lady the catalyst for your friendship with Jimi Hendrix?

“No, I didn’t collaborate with him at all, but the first Big Muffs I made, I brought to Manny’s Music on 48th Street. A few days later, Henry Goldrich [son of founder Manny Goldrich] told me he had sold one to Jimi Hendrix.

“Jimi had used the Fuzz Face on his early recordings, but he always invited me to go down to the studio, and I saw on the floor that he was using a Big Muff.

“Back when I was in college during the summers, I hooked up with a place called the Highway Inn in Freeport, Long Island, and I said, ‘Look, let me bring in some acts. I’ll promote it. I’ll take the gate, and you’ll have a big bar.’”

“In those days you could buy acts real cheap. Chuck Berry, I booked him for $1,000 a night for two nights, with the General Artists Corporation (GAC).

“Then that same promoter from GAC called me up and said, ‘Mike, I need you to take this other band. I can give them to you for three nights for $500.’ So I hired this band called Curtis Knight and the Squires. I didn’t know what the hell they were.

“Chuck Berry would do two shows a night and after the first show, I went in to count the gate while Curtis Knight and the Squires went on.

“Steve Knapp was the second guitar player backing up Chuck Berry, and he came running to me, telling me, ‘Hey, you got to hear this guitar player. This guy is really great. Jimmy James [an early stage name used by Jimi Hendrix] is his name.’ I liked his playing.

“After that, Jimi and I became friends. Every couple of weeks, while I was working at IBM, I’d take a break and go up and visit him. He was staying at a hotel in Times Square. [It was a] fleabag hotel and had no bathroom in the room. He had his hair set in these pink curlers and we would just talk band drama.

“I went to see him at a gig; during the break he sat down with me and said, ‘Mike, I gotta quit. I want to form my own band. I want to be the head writer.’ I said to him, ‘Well, if you’re going to be the head writer, then you’ve got to sing.’

“He says to me, ‘Well, that’s the problem, Mike, I can’t sing.’ ‘Look at Bob Dylan,’ I said. ‘Look at Mick Jagger. They don’t sing, but they ‘phrase’ great and people love them.’ He says, ‘Mike, you got a point.’”

What can you tell me about the beginning of Electro-Harmonix?

“In early 1968, the problem was that when you pick a note on the guitar, you could easily have a circuit that builds up the amplitude and it dies out, so when you play a new note, you get all these pops and crashes because the circuit could not respond fast enough to hitting the new note.

“A guy at IBM recommended this circuit designer, Bob Myer, who was a big inventor for Bell Labs. I went out to Bob’s house to listen to a prototype. The prototype he built was a little box.

“I says, ‘Bob, why do you have this box plugged in?’ He says, ‘Well, I didn’t realize that the output of a guitar was so low, so I built a little one-transistor preamplifier to boost the signal.’”

“Now, in those days, back in ’68, all amplifiers were designed to have a lot of headroom, so you’d turn an amp up to 10 and they wouldn’t distort. I took Bob’s one-transistor preamp and put on a volume control.

“When you turned the volume up enough, it would get into overdrive. I started selling that [via] mail order. That was the first Electro-Harmonix product, the LPB-1 Power Booster. I sold hundreds of thousands of them throughout the years.”

What philosophy has kept Electro-Harmonix so potent for more than five decades?

“In the early days, I would tell the designers, ‘I want this,’ and then they would do it. In more recent years, I would let our designers come up with different proposals. [At other companies] designers usually come up with too much stuff to stick in.

“This is a business, so you’ve to get a product out. If you put in too much stuff, you never get the product out. That’s how we’ve run the last few years.

“Right now, we have a tremendous number of sensational circuit designers. The most senior is a guy named David Cockerell who lives in England and worked for us full time back in the mid-’70s. He’s the one that designed the Small Stone [phase shifter], which was the biggest-selling Electro-Harmonix product of all time.”

Even though EHX thrives in simplicity, have you ever seen a complex product work?

“Yes. I was sick for a time, and I let the engineers overdesign this product called the POG III, which we finally got out. It was so complex, it took four-and-a-half years to come out, and we spent a fortune.

“But finally, POG III is out. That’s our Polyphonic Octave Generator, and it’s really sensational. We just started shipping it in November.”

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