“Joe Walsh and Don Felder would show up for a session and unpack a minimum of 30 guitars and five or six amps apiece,” Hotel California producer Bill Szymczyk says. “It was, ‘Let’s try this with that.’ What I remember most, though, throughout Hotel California, was a whole lot of Gibson Les Paul with a lot of Fender Telecaster.”

No one can be sure exactly how many – or which – Les Pauls make appearances on Hotel California, but we do know about one of them: Felder’s famous 1959 Burst, which was painstakingly reproduced by Gibson in 2011.

As he told Guitarist around that time, Felder bought the original guitar from a traveling dealer who was famous for his superb stable of vintage axes.

“His name was Tony Dukes,” he said, “and every time we’d go through Texas, Tony would show up. He was a horse trader, and he always had something in his truck you wanted. He would show up in a station wagon or a truck that was full of Les Pauls, Teles and Strats, and I bought probably 20 pieces from him over the years.

“It must have been about 1974 or something, right after our first big hit, One of These Nights, when I started making money. He came round, and I think I bought three or four pieces from him – the Les Paul, a Tele, a Strat and some other stuff.” And, as he told Guitar World in 2013, he plugged his LP into a Fender Tweed Deluxe – “just kind of cranked up, with just the guitar into the amp.”

“The acoustic guitar in the intro to Hotel California is a Takamine 12-string with a DeArmond pickup,” Felder added. “We mic’d the acoustic and put that in the center of the mix. Then we took the pickup’s output and ran it through a [Maestro] Echoplex and a Leslie. We mic’d that in stereo so it has this left-to-right kind of swirling, ethereal characteristic.”

“For recording acoustic guitars, I usually used a Neumann KM84,” Szymczyk says. “Don had a pickup on his guitar running to a pair of little Orange amps, and we mic’d them in stereo. The initial opening-guitar intro is an acoustic guitar in the middle and an amp on both sides, with a chorus that is flowing back and forth between the two amps.”

“Felder and I always found that if we both used single-coil or double-coil [guitars], there wasn’t enough contrast to give the songs any personality,” Walsh told Total Guitar in 2012. “It just turned into a guitar wall.” That’s why he famously played a Telecaster on Hotel California, which was perfectly paired with Felder’s Les Paul.

“I played a Tele, through – I think – the Roland Cube, which I used a lot back then,” Walsh added. It was most likely the same Roland Cube he and his Strat used on Life in the Fast Lane.”

On the Hotel California tour, Walsh also used a Fender Black Panel Deluxe Reverb, a Fender Tweed Deluxe and a Mesa/Boogie Mark I.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

“The desert is where mirage and myth are created, and so is Hollywood,” Eagles founding member Don Henley tells Guitar World. “We are just as susceptible, now, to illusion as the pioneers were – if not more so.”

That mirage, myth and illusion was immortalized on Hotel California, the Eagles’ big American dream-come-true. “Hotel California was obviously our creative peak,” Henley says. “Every band, every artist, has one.” Released 50 years ago – on December 8, 1976 – it’s not only their personal best, but the third-best-selling album of all time, at 32 million copies and counting (the Eagles’ Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) is Number 1).

The epic title track inspired a thematic album about the toll of dreams, touching on fame (New Kid in Town), the high life (Life in the Fast Lane), relationships (Victim of Love) and westward expansion (The Last Resort). The message throughout was that dreams often look different up close and have a way of vanishing in thin air.

“We were always keenly aware of the transitory nature of fame and fortune,” Henley says. “The entire Desperado album was basically about that. We had witnessed all the wreckage alongside the Yellow Brick Road. Pop culture, for lack of a better term – and which might be an oxymoron – is all about the new.

“You grind away for seven or eight or 10 years, and suddenly, boom, you’re on the radio; your face stares out from a billboard on Sunset Boulevard. Then your sophomore album flops, your record label drops you, and you’re right back to square one – ‘Please drive through.’”

While square one wasn’t part of the Eagles story, chasing the new was. And the turmoil and pressure to keep outdoing themselves led to substance-fueled power struggles that turned once-close friends into rivals and led to a breakup three years after Hotel California. As Glenn Frey once said, “We made it, and it ate us.”

Significantly, the mythic desert passage is one that all five band members on the album had made respectively in the late ’60s and early ’70s. It was a more innocent time, as they relocated from the South and Midwest with hopes of being part of the burgeoning hippie country scene in and around Laurel Canyon and nightclubs like the Troubadour.

The spot where everyone from Kris Kristofferson to Carole King made their debut is where Henley first joined Glenn Frey for a beer, starting a friendship and the creative nucleus for the Eagles. Back then, the two would ride around L.A. in Frey’s ’55 Chevy, nicknamed Gladys, “plotting and planning.”

It took a while for things to take shape. Both were already in groups signed to the same indie label. Henley’s Shiloh made one album, produced by Kenny Rogers. Frey’s Longbranch Pennywhistle (with J.D. Souther, a key collaborator on Hotel California) did one that included Wrecking Crew cats James Burton and Larry Knechtel. Neither record troubled the charts.

The duo joined Linda Ronstadt’s touring band in 1971, which soon added bassist Randy Meisner of Ricky Nelson’s Stone Canyon Band and guitarist Bernie Leadon of the Flying Burrito Brothers. The proto-Eagles quartet played together only once, during Ronstadt’s engagement at Disneyland, on the Coca-Cola Terrace in Tomorrowland. It was a prophetic spot for the birth of a band that would become as ubiquitous – and successful – as America’s favorite soda.

Within two months, thanks to help from Jackson Browne, they’d signed to David Geffen’s Asylum Records. Their first two albums – Eagles and Desperado – produced by Glyn Johns, were released in 1972-73, inside 10 months. And thanks to Take It Easy and Peaceful Easy Feeling, the group quickly climbed to the top of the country-rock heap. But they craved a bigger heap, especially when they found themselves on the bill with arena rock acts.

“Opening for Jethro Tull and Yes was odd because it was such a mismatch, musically, but it did have the effect of toughening us up,” Henley says.

“But our main problem was that we didn’t have a repertoire. We had released only one album, and Take It Easy was our only hit song at that point. But somehow we survived. Glenn was right saying so-called country rock had its limitations in terms of commerciality, but I think we defied those limitations as we expanded our stylistic perimeters to include more different veins of music. Ronstadt did that, too.”

In the studio, the toughening up got a boost from a new producer. “My first thought was, ‘I don’t want to do a cowboy band!’” Hotel California producer Bill Szymczyk tells Guitar World.

“But they wanted to rock. They’d started their third album with Glyn, who was one of my heroes. But they weren’t happy. Glyn was a taskmaster and had rules about no drink or drugs in the studio. Meanwhile, the guys had heard The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get, which I did with Joe Walsh [in 1973], and said, ‘Who produced this?’”

“Bill was – and is – a lover of rock ’n’ roll, blues and funk music,” Henley says. “He had produced Edgar Winter and B.B. King, among others. After a long day of grinding away on our own material, Bill would put an Ohio Players or a Parliament album up on the big playback speakers in the studio, and we’d kick back and listen. It was fun. The great thing about Bill was that he was willing to let us follow our own instincts, which, at that time, were leaning more toward rock and R&B.”

Szymczyk called Johns to get permission to take over the album. “The answer was, ‘Better you than me, mate!’” A week later, they cut Already Gone, a rousing rocker that gave Frey a chance to bust loose with some razor-tooth lead guitar. Suddenly, the band was getting the edge they wanted.

“It was the beginning of a great marriage,” Szymczyk says, “with each album doing better than the one before, and then Hotel California, which was the high point of their career – and mine.”

For 1974’s On the Border, they added hotshot guitarist Don Felder, who’d been touring with David Blue and Crosby & Nash. Bernie Leadon, who’d played with Felder in high school bands, said, “Felder was a really great guitar player, but when he joined, I could see the writing on the wall for me. I thought, if I’m going to leave, better that a friend of mine gets the gig.”

Leadon stayed for 1975’s One of These Nights, which further upped the ante on extended solos (the title track and the underrated Visions were both six-string showcases). “We were balls to the wall on that album,” Szymczyk says. “They wanted to rock, and we proceeded to damn-sure rock.”

With each album came more fame, more pressure to outdo themselves and more substances. In the mid-’70s rock world, cocaine was the drug of choice. “It was a writing tool, but one that brought out the worst in everyone,” Frey once said. But even without drugs in the mix, there was always creative friction between Henley and Frey.

“It was the Lennon and McCartney thing,” Szymczyk says. “Don writes this way, Glenn writes that way, but together they write better than they do separately. There was always a lot of competition. Frey was competitive in everything! Darts, shooting pool, you name it. He wanted to win. Henley wasn’t as up front about it, but he knew very well what he had, talent-wise. We called him Golden Throat.”

Since the days of cruising around in Gladys, there was one thing the two leaders did agree on; they wanted their band to be the biggest on the planet. And that meant pushing the rock sound to the limit. As Leadon predicted, that put him in their crosshairs. The guitarist had played lead on Take It Easy and Tequila Sunrise. He’d co-written Witchy Woman. His background with the Flying Burrito Brothers had imbued the Eagles with country-rock cred.

For all that, his relationship with them was never easy. Exhaustive touring (he’d already logged five years of roadwork before he joined) and the drug use (he’d kicked those habits) only deepened his discontent. “None of it sat well with Bernie,” Szymczyk says. “The further we went into rock, the less he liked it.”

He remembers asking the guitarist what he thought of a take of One of These Nights with Leadon replying, “I think I’m going to go surfing.” Things came to a head one night in 1975, backstage at the Orange Bowl. As Frey was rallying the band, Leadon poured a beer over Frey’s head and walked out.

Enter Joe Walsh. Late of the James Gang, Walsh was three albums into a successful solo career in 1975. He was already friendly with the Eagles from crossing paths on the road. When they approached him, his response was, “Being part of a group would take a whole lot of weight off my shoulders.”

But it’s easy to forget what a mismatch it seemed. Walsh recalled in The Guitar Greats, “I think 80 percent of people said, ‘That’s stupid – there’s no way it’s going to work.’”

Not only did it work, it changed the band’s energy level. “For starters, things got louder,” Henley says. “Joe, being a bona fide rock ’n’ roll guitar slinger, was the perfect foil for Don Felder. They propelled one another in a friendly-but-competitive sort of way. We had upped our horsepower. This is not to take anything away from Bernie, who was – and still is – a highly skilled musician.”

“As we got into Hotel California, it was like, ‘This is a match made in heaven,’” Szymczyk says. “The friction with Bernie was gone, and it was replaced with somebody that could just blister with a forceful edge.”

Speaking of forceful edge, in Walsh, the Eagles now also had a resident bad boy and gleeful wrecker of hotel rooms. His instrument of choice was a chainsaw. Dressers, chairs, tables got sliced, diced and tossed from windows.

“Keith Moon and Joe were good buddies, and that, of course, led to some mischief,” Henley says. “It was amusing for a little while, but it eventually became a very expensive hobby, and we were beginning to get barred from some of the hotels we liked to stay in. So, after a while, the chainsaws got locked away in storage and other kinds of dramas replaced the ‘remodeling’ of rooms and hallways.”

He adds, “But, at least Joe got a hit song out of it,” referencing 1978’s Life’s Been Good.

In 1976, the Eagles played 68 shows worldwide, from Tucson to Tokyo. For most bands, that would not be a year to make a new album. But the Eagles did, grabbing studio time whenever and wherever they could.

“The demands of touring definitely made it more difficult for us to stay in a creative space, particularly in terms of songwriting,” Henley says. “But, because we were young – and driven – we managed to learn how to juggle. Did the work suffer? Probably, but we did the best we could, given the circumstances we were in. It’s a demanding job, feeding the machine. The machine is always hungry.

“But momentum is important,” he continues. “Once you’re on a hot streak, it’s wise to try to maintain it. Otherwise, you get forgotten or replaced pretty quickly. Back in the ’60s, the Beatles had set an impossibly high bar, both in terms of quality and quantity. So record companies had come to expect an album or two every year. But the Beatles had been able to stop touring and focus solely on recording. Touring was a necessity for us so that we could pay for rent and gas.”

The first sessions for Hotel California were in March at Studio C, the coveted big room at the Record Plant in Los Angeles, with Szymczyk back behind the board. “We’d do two or three weeks, then the band would go back on the road,” he says, recalling they had only one finished song – Meisner’s Try and Love Again. Beyond that, just a “handful of fragments, licks and phrases.”

As Walsh said in Buzz Me In, “We took all of that, put it on a table and said, ‘Okay, let’s pretend this is a jigsaw puzzle,’ and we started piecing things together.”

The jigsaw puzzles could be complex. On the surface, the album’s first single, New Kid in Town, is a soft-rock sigh. But structurally and harmonically, it’s one of the most-involved Eagles songs. Henley says, “That one was mostly J.D., with some essential input from Glenn in terms of words, melody and arrangement, and a few lyrical contributions from me. It’s a great piece of work.”

Modulations, shifting choruses, meticulous ornamentation from Felder on electric and Meisner on the guitarrón Mexicano, wrapped in a harmony cascade that earned a Grammy for Best Vocal Arrangement (“It had parts out the wazoo,” Szymczyk says). How did those beautifully complex arrangements get written?

“Well, nobody ‘wrote’ anything; it wasn’t that formal,” Henley says. “We did everything intuitively, including vocal harmony arrangements. First, we’d decide who was going to sing the lead vocal and then assign harmony parts around that, depending on the key of the song and where the melody sat within the chord progression.”

In the studio, they worked from “2 to 2, with a dinner break at 7,” usually at Dan Tana’s, a favorite red-boothed old Hollywood eatery, next door to the Troubadour. Though friends dropped by the studio, mostly it was the band and Szymczyk, who they nicknamed “Coach.”

“They said I was the Don Shula of rock ’n’ roll,” he says, referencing the Miami Dolphins’ legendary honcho (who was at the helm for their perfect 1972 season). “I was a player’s coach more than Shula,” says Szymczyk with a laugh.

He kept a keen eye and ear on the sessions and was a wizard with a tape-editing razor. And on Hotel California, he had to lay down what he called “the six o’clock rule” to make sure recreational activities didn’t derail progress, including his own.

“Everything was getting a little out of hand by three in the afternoon, so I was like, ‘Okay, enough of that. No beer, no blow, no reefer, no nothing until six.”

That worked for a few weeks; then the grumbling started. Szymczyk says, “I’d be changing reels in the control room, and I’d hear them muttering, ‘Is it six yet?’ followed by ‘It had better be.’”

On the initial pressings of the album, “It is six o’clock yet?” was etched into the runout groove of Side A.

On Side B, the etched phrase was, “VOL is five-piece live.”

“That’s because we were proud that we got that song, Victim of Love, in one take without any edits,” Szymczyk says. The rocker began with a Don Felder guitar instrumental that he passed to Henley and Frey. They brought in J.D. Souther again, who came up with the concept – that having a broken heart is like being a victim of a car crash. In that scenario, all three were frequent car crashers, burning through relationships. “Dudes on a rampage” was how Henley described it.

When it came time to do an album, he and Frey would usually move in together. Before Hotel California, they were briefly ensconced in a Beverly Hills house that once belonged to actress Dorothy Lamour. With panoramic 360-degree views, it was nicknamed “the Eagles’ nest.”

They were an odd couple – Henley the tidy one, Frey the lovable slob, leaving mountains of cigarette ash everywhere. The togetherness might not have helped their friendship, but it was great for songwriting.

Victim of Love’s tale of betrayal and disillusionment was paired with a stuttering, crunchy groove. Felder had assumed he would sing lead, but after a week’s worth of takes, his vocal was deemed “not up to band standards.” Henley recorded the lead while manager Irving Azoff took Felder out to lunch to break the bad news.

In the summer, Szymczyk moved the sessions to Criteria Studios in Miami. “The guys were actually quite happy to be out of L.A. and away from all the partying and the hangers-on,” he says. The only challenge in Miami was the occasional ear-splitting squall coming from the studio next door, where Black Sabbath were recording their 1976 album Technical Ecstasy.

Meanwhile, in the world outside the studio, the United States was basking in its bicentennial. On the surface, the country’s 200th birthday was all stars and stripes, but that was tainted by a Watergate hangover and relentless dark stories in the news.

“The ‘peace and love’ idealism of the ’60s had faded by the beginning of the decade,” Henley says. “The so-called counterculture, due in part to its own excesses, had disintegrated. The U.S. was trying hard to focus on the bicentennial, but the Cold War continued and the Boomer generation had slowly realized that the same corporate forces that had always been in charge were still, in fact, in charge, and there was an air of capitulation.

“There were now the realities of jobs and families to consider. Gone was the dream of a new kind of America; gone was the appetite for rebellion. ‘We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969.’”

One of the album’s standout tracks was both a celebration and critique of L.A.’s decadence and the band’s own excesses – Life in the Fast Lane could’ve been subtitled Nervous, Edgy Feeling.

“There are a great many of our songs that could be retitled Note to Self,” Henley says. “Excess – too much of a bad thing or a good thing – was a subject we examined, both from a personal perspective and an American cultural standpoint.”

The song’s classic riff began as what Walsh called his “coordination drill.”

“I had this lick that I played that I would warm up for a show with,” he told Paul Shaffer on Plus One. “It’s an exercise between your right and left hand, faster and faster. I was just playing, warming up for the show, and Glenn comes busting in my dressing room and says, ‘What the hell’s that?’ ‘I don’t know, it’s just this lick I warm up with.‘ He said, ‘No, that‘s an Eagles song, dude!’”

On In the Studio with Redbeard, Frey said the title came one day after a crazy car ride with a drug dealer nicknamed The Count. Going 90mph, Frey asked the dealer to slow down, and the answer came – “It’s life in the fast lane!” With that title, he and Henley wrote the lyrics and melody together.

“We knew it was going to be the most rock ’n’ roll thing the Eagles had attempted so far,” Walsh said. “They turned me loose on that one.”

And what guitar was he using? “That’s a Strat,” Walsh told Total Guitar, “and the amplifier was probably this little orange Roland Cube I was using a lot back then. I found it to be a pretty darn good little amp for recording with a Strat, by turning it up pretty good to make it work.”

The killer riff doubled with guitar and bass, cliff-hanging power chords and trademark four-part harmonies on the chorus. This was a classic Eagles record, yet one that sounded like nothing they’d ever done. And as sonic icing, Szymczyk employed a Jimi Hendrix trick – the “Electric Ladyland two-track flange technique” – to add a whooshing sound to the song’s off-ramp exit.

“When I suggested phasing at the end of the song, Henley and Frey were skeptical,” he says. They thought it might sound too much like the Small Faces’ Itchycoo Park, which Szymczyk says was the inspiration. “I just wanted listeners to feel the rush of the wind in their hair!”

An ocean breeze was in Don Felder’s hair the afternoon he got the idea that would become Hotel California. In his Malibu beach house, noodling on a 12-string Martin acoustic, he hit on a Spanish-sounding chord progression. He put it down on a reel-to-reel four-track, then layered on syncopated electric guitars and a samba beat from a Rhythm Ace drum machine.

He sent it off to Henley and Frey on a cassette with another dozen snippets. They liked what they called “the matador in Mexico” vibe of it and experimented with lyrical and melody ideas.

Henley took the cassette in the car, his favorite place to write. He says, “I think it has something to do with movement and a constantly changing view. Just sitting in a room and trying to find inspiration can be stifling; it’s a static situation. Driving, if you’re not in heavy traffic, creates a feeling of flow that can free the imagination and call up memories and images while the music’s playing.”

After a week or two, the song took shape. “The hotel concept came first, and then the melody,” Henley says. “Sometime in May of ’76, Glenn and I had gone to see Neil Simon’s play California Suite in Los Angeles. But that was after we had come up with the hotel concept; seeing the play was a ‘field research’ trip, just to see if it would help us to flesh out our initial idea. But it wasn’t very helpful; it wasn’t dark and spooky enough for what we were after.”

Or maybe the title influenced them, because their spooky inn became the Hotel California, and in turn, a metaphor for everything from the myth-making of the American Dream to an artist’s search for the muse and spiritual meaning.

The recording of the song took some searching, too. “We cut the track several times, first at Criteria Studios, shortly after Felder had given me the demo,” Henley says.

“The Miami recording was a rough arrangement with the working title ‘Mexican Reggae.’ The second time we cut it was at the Record Plant in L.A., after Glenn and I had come up with some ideas for lyrics and melody, but that recording turned out to be in the wrong key, at least for singing.

“There was often a schism between what key was best for the guitars and what key was best for the lead vocal. At the end of the day, though, the vocal has to take precedence. There are workarounds on the guitar – tunings, capos, etc – but you can’t capo a voice. Or at least you couldn’t then. So we ended up cutting the final track in Miami in the key of B minor with the choruses going to G major.”

Szymczyk recalls that the final version consisted of “33 separate tape edits from five different takes.”

Aside from being the album’s thematic centerpiece and the Eagles’ best song, it also rode out on one of rock’s most iconic guitar duels, with Felder and Walsh trading sizzle and sting, one-upping each other, then finally merging in triumphant two-part harmony.

“We worked really well together,” Walsh told Guitar World while promoting Analog Man in 2012. “It was competitive. We brought out the best in each other. We liked to kick each other in the butt! He would play something, and I’d get an attitude, like, ‘Oh yeah? Listen to this.’ And he’d go, ‘Wow, listen to this!’”

“For two days, we workshopped the hell out of that,” Szymczyk says. “We had amps out in the studio, but Felder and Walsh were in the control room with me, one to the right, one to the left, like gunfighters! Felder was the ultimate technician, always a tad on top of the beat. And Walsh was the ultimate ‘feel’ guy, always a tad behind it. Together, they were phenomenal. Those two days were one of the high points of my career.”

“There are at least half a dozen guitar tracks on the original recording,” Henley says. “In live concert settings, this required Felder to play a double-neck guitar, with the 12-string neck being capo’d on the seventh fret for the intro and the breakdown, and the six-string with no capo for the single-line phrases and the tag solos.

“One of the unique things about the song is that it ends with extended dual guitar solos. Skynyrd had done something like that a couple of years earlier.”

Another thing it shared with Skynyrd’s Free Bird was a length that wasn’t exactly radio friendly – six and a half minutes, to be exact. “The label wanted us to do a single edit, and we all said no way,” Szymczyk says. “Obviously, we were right to.”

After seven months of off-and-on recording, the album wrapped in October.

The cover artwork, designed by John Kosh (who also handled Who’s Next and the Beatles’ Abbey Road), featured a photo of the Beverly Hills Hotel taken from a cherry picker 60 feet above Sunset Boulevard at dusk. Built in 1912 in a Mediterranean Revival style, the pink stucco hotel had hosted famous guests from Marilyn Monroe to Frank Sinatra.

A month after the album came out, when the hotel learned that the Eagles had used the image without permission, they threatened a lawsuit, then dropped it when they realized their bookings had tripled because of the record’s success.

Hotel California was released December 8, 1976, and certified platinum in its first week. It went to Number 1 on the Billboard 200, where it stayed for eight weeks. Reviews were glowing. Creem said there were “no weak tracks; the music flows majestically every step of the way.”

Phonograph Record praised its “peerless harmonies" and said it was “pretty and punchy, as the best albums of fellow troubled hedonists Steely Dan and the Beach Boys are.” NME said, “There’s no laurels-resting, and a lot has gone into its meticulous crafting.”

While Szymczyk calls the record a “quantum leap forward,” Henley’s estimation is more modest. “I don’t know if I’d call it a ‘quantum leap,’” he says. “One of These Nights had three big hits on it. But, in terms of growth and consistency and range, I’d agree that Hotel California was an improvement.”

But the 10-month, 72-date world tour that followed was grueling, so much so that the band’s road crew nicknamed it “The Prison California.” Everyone traveled with their own little entourage. Walsh and Felder had their faction, briefly entertaining the idea of forming their own band.

In History of the Eagles, Henley said, “Glenn and I saw ourselves as the leaders, but other people saw us as dictators. You just cannot have five leaders in a band. It doesn’t work.” But according to To the Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles, even the two leaders had stopped talking and would only communicate through second parties.

There were also cocaine-induced physical ailments. Stomach ulcers all around. Henley suffered back pain. Frey’s nasal lining was shot (he’d have two surgeries before getting his nose repaired with teflon). By the end of the tour, Meisner had become persona non grata after refusing to sing Take It to the Limit at one show; he left the band shortly after.

The Eagles managed one more album, 1979’s difficult The Long Run (“We called it ‘The Long One,’” Szymczyk says) then broke up after a benefit concert where Frey and Felder openly threatened to fight each other on stage during the performance. It would be 14 years before they reunited.

Despite one album of new material in 2007, the Eagles have become a heritage act, playing the hits – albeit one of the highest-grossing ones on the circuit. After Glenn Frey died in 2016 at age 67, they soldiered on with his son Deacon and Vince Gill taking his place. And so it’s gone over the past decade.

Meanwhile, there are at least 10 high-profile Eagles tribute bands who are on the road as much as the Eagles were in their ’70s heyday. And though classic rock radio has mostly disappeared, subscription services have kept the music playing. Hotel California alone passed two billion streams on Spotify in October 2025.

During the Eagles’ 2026 residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere, Henley confided to CBS Sunday Morning that “This year will probably be it. I’ve said things like that before, but I feel like we’re getting toward the end.”

Meanwhile, their Sphere setlist contains the three key tracks from Hotel California – New Kid in Town, Life in the Fast Lane and the title song. With sold-out audiences singing along to every word and guitar lick, this is music that is now an indelible part of musical culture. It’s a reminder of how the world felt and sounded in the mid-’70s, and also how the American Dream continues to roll along that desert highway, toward the light, but surrounded by the dark.

It makes the album sound just as relevant as it did 50 years ago. “I could make a case for it,” Henley says. “The political chicanery, the national delusion, the undoing of decades of environmental progress, the rebirth of the military-industrial complex. I’ve lived long enough to see that we go around in circles. I think it was Mark Twain who said, ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.’”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

The Eagles has been the home to a handful of guitar greats – but the introduction of one such player into the mix helped spell the end for one of the band’s founding members.

The mid-1970s was a transitional period for the Eagles, who, after dropping their first two records – Eagles and Desperado – began to embrace a harder-leaning rock edge in a quest to be the biggest band on the planet.

To help, Don Henley and co recruited Don Felder – a hotshot young player who at the time had been touring with David Blue and Crosby & Nash.

However, his arrival helped speed up the existing creative tensions between the band and their founding guitarist, Bernie Leadon. When this sound became the priority, he knew his days were numbered.

“Felder was a really great guitar player, but when he joined, I could see the writing on the wall for me,” Leadon remembered in the new issue of Guitar World. “I thought, if I’m going to leave, better that a friend of mine gets the gig.”

Felder’s appointment coincided with the Eagles wanting to push their rock sound to the limit. And, speaking to Guitar World, Henley and producer Billy Szymczyk recalled how it led to Leadon’s departure.

“None of it sat well with Bernie,” Szymczyk says of the band’s new direction. “The further we went into rock, the less he liked it.”

Leadon stuck around for 1975’s One of These Nights, but it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing in the studio.

The friction between Leadon and the band was apparent. Szymczyk recalls asking Leadon one day what he thought of a take of One of These Nights. Leadon replied, “I think I’m going to go surfing.”

Things famously came to a head between Leadon and the band when, while backstage one night at the Orange Bowl in 1975, Leadon poured a beer over Glenn Frey’s head and walked out.

In the wake of Leadon’s departure, the Eagles hired Joe Walsh. He was, as both Henley and Szymczyk admit, a far better fit for the band, and the perfect companion for Felder’s high-octane rock style.

“For starters, things got louder,” Henley says of Walsh’s appointment. “Joe, being a bona fide rock ’n’ roll guitar slinger, was the perfect foil for Don Felder. They propelled one another in a friendly-but-competitive sort of way. We had upped our horsepower.

“This is not to take anything away from Bernie, who was – and still is – a highly skilled musician.”

“As we got into Hotel California, it was like, ‘This is a match made in heaven,’” Szymczyk adds. “The friction with Bernie was gone, and it was replaced with somebody that could just blister with a forceful edge.”

Head over to Magazines Direct to subscribe to Guitar World. The latest issue features a deep dive into 50 years of the Eagles, as well as interviews with Michael Angelo Batio and Jerry Cantrell.

There’s a possibility that Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh has become infatuated with the virtuosity of Matteo Mancuso of late, because he’s been seen playing a Yamaha Revstar at a recent show.

The Eagles icon used the underdog guitar – and a mainstay for the Sicilian shred whiz – for a performance of his 1979 solo track, In The City, at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival on May 2.

Walsh looks to have opted for the RSP20 model, which has a chambered maple-and-mahogany body, twin humbuckers, and a Passive Focus Switch. Not to mention its sunset-to-dusk styled finish.

He's given it a test drive in front of a massive crowd, with the guitar's cut and warmth particularly heard on the song's wah-laden guitar solo.

Reflecting on the show on Instagram, Walsh later wrote: “I am still a 14-year-old kid from Wichita by way of Columbus and Montclair in the body of a 78-year-old who still can’t believe that I stumbled my way into the greatest job on Earth. This never stops taking my breath away.”

Granted, Walsh has a history of collecting oddball instruments, so Mancuso may not be wholly, if at all, to blame for Walsh’s latest fling.

Late last year, a huge charity auction of his gear raised some mad figures, including $22,400 for a Zakk Wylde Epiphone Les Paul. With it, his penchant for left-of-center axes was resolutely on display; just one look at the Chrysler Building-esque Buzz Feiten Bo Diddley Tribute Gretsch, and a guitar with a Morse code fretboard, tells you all you need to know about what instruments tickle his proverbial pickle.

So, the Revstar’s surprise appearance at the Eagles' latest showing in New Orleans might just be Walsh being Walsh and adding a new toy to his collection. Either way, it’s a big win for Yamaha.

The Revstar was first introduced in 2015, then revamped seven years later. It has found great use in the hands of British blues rocker Chris Buck, who has his loaded with P-90 pickups, and he became the first player to get a signature version earlier this year.

It's no surprise that Mancuso is now the subject of speculation about a signature model, and who knows, maybe Walsh will wind up with one, too…

The perception of Vince Gill as anything but a rocker is not true, judging by the versatility he’s shown during his last 10 years with the Eagles.

“Whatever you’re walking into, you try to be authentic,” he says. “You’re trying to fill up space with the right sound, just like a painter with the right colors. I’m doing the same thing with guitars.”

He’s currently promoting a series of EPs titled 50 Years from Home, with the idea of giving his followers their musical fill.

“What you’re striving for is many subtitles,” he explains. “It’s about phrasing, editing, and not playing as much as maybe you think you should. I try to be as musical as possible and say the most with the least.”

Whether or not the Eagles are planning to hang it up later this year, Gill isn’t done. “There’s an awful lot of music inside this old knucklehead – I gotta try and get it out! I don’t have as much time left in this world as I once did. I’m trying to accommodate my love for being creative more than anything else.”

Meanwhile, he regards his experiences with the Eagles as “the gift of a lifetime,” adding: “What I’ve learned most is how important songs are. But I’m only getting to do it because of something sad.

“It’s because of the tragedy, the passing of Glenn. I’m not beating my chest saying, ‘I’m in the Eagles!’ I’m just grateful to be there, and help continue a legacy that’s pretty unmatched.”

What inspired your 50 Years from Home EP series?

Over the last bunch of years, I wound up with tons of songs. And the funny thing these days is that, in the record industry, you can kind of do whatever you want. People like a lot of content and a lot of information. So I’m trying to accommodate – I had all of these songs and I said, ‘It’d be fun to see what they turn into.’

What keeps you inspired as a songwriter and guitarist?

In all honesty, I’m as good as I’ve ever been. I’ve not seen my abilities go the other way – which at some point they’re going to. You’re gonna have trouble breathing; you’re gonna have arthritis; you’re not gonna be able to play like you could. Those things are coming but they haven’t shown up yet. So I feel compelled to take advantage of that.

You’ve been with the Eagles for around a decade. How has that changed you as a player?

My ears have taught me how to be authentic. You don’t have to play one way – you can play all kinds of ways if you want to. I remember early on, we were playing Rocky Mountain Way and I was just rippin’ these power chords for Joe. Don Henley’s looking at me like I’m crazy. He goes, “I thought you were a bluegrasser!”

I said, “Well, I am – but I’ve played a good bit of this stuff too!” I’ve always prided myself on being a chameleon. If you wade into any music there is and do it with a sense of authenticity, it doesn’t sound like a country player trying to play rock or a rock player trying to play bluegrass.

So you really haven’t had to adapt your style?

It’s all in there! It’s not much of a guitar chair for me because they didn’t need that. They needed a singer more than another guitar player. I play a little bit, but not very much – not nearly as much as I do in my own shows.

I think you’re being modest.

Well, I play a couple of solos, and that’s about it! But I knew what I was supposed to do when I joined the band. I’m doing the job at hand, trying to authentically replicate the way Glenn sang those songs.

I’m mostly playing rhythm all night long; it could be crashing big chords for Joe on In the City and Life’s Been Good. I get with play with Joe on Funk #49 – we trade back and forth and have a little fun that way. I just play what’s appropriate and use the right guitar for the right part, like an acoustic for Lyin’ Eyes, Take It to the Limit, and Tequila Sunrise.

Speaking of appropriate gear, what do you use while recording?

I’ve got an awful lot of blackguard Telecasters, but I always pull the white one out; it’s the most familiar to me and sounds to my liking. And I’ve got a ton of different amps, so I don’t lean one sound and one guitar, and just make it “one size fits all.”

People see my guitar collection and get kind of wide-eyed, going, “Why do you need so many?” I say, “If I were a painter, do you think I’d paint with just one color?” They all do different things, sound different, and play differently.

You mentioned your white Tele, which has become synonymous with you. How did you acquire it?

I got it in 1978 – it was the first Fender I’d ever bought. I always wanted a Telecaster. A guy named Bob Woods had a guitar store in Dell City, Oklahoma, and I happened to be there that day. They’d traded about 20 guitars for another 20 guitars, and I watched this whole big swap go down.

I saw that white Tele, picked it up, played it, and it just felt like a million bucks to me. I asked, “Would you sell this?” He goes, “Sure – $450.” I’ve had it ever since.

What makes that Tele special?

It just felt right in my hands. Certain neck profiles don’t feel good because I don’t have big hands. A lot of necks from the early Fender days were a little on the big side for me. But I’d never had a Telecaster before, so I didn’t have any reference for saying why this one was great or not. I just loved the way it felt, how it sounded, and how it played.

It’s been the sound of my life for nearly the last 50 years. I’ve played it on just about everything – Pure Prairie League records, my solo records, and sessions I did for other people. Even though I have 15 or 20 other blackguards from the same era, that’s always the Tele I gravitate toward.

How big of an influence has playing with Joe Walsh been on your gear choices?

I pretty much use the same stuff I’ve been using. I use a lot of Little Walter stuff live; I really like the way those amps will take a humbucker, a Tele, or a Strat – whatever you put in front of them, they sound real musical.

When we’re out on the road, Joe and I go on guitar safaris. He’ll buy 10 guitars while I might buy one. He’ll say, “You only bought one!” And I say, “Yeah, but my one costs more than the 10 of yours combined!”

Joe is such a joy to spend time with and play with. He was a big inspiration to me when I was playing in my little bands in school. We played all those James Gang songs like Rocky Mountain Way. It’s pretty surreal to be standing across the stage from him, getting to play those songs with him that I always loved.

I always loved that he didn’t have to play a lot to impress you – he just played with such restraint. He’s still willing to play with brevity. So many musicians aren’t; they have to play everything and a lot!

You never really know what Joe’s gonna play. We’ll start Funk #49, and we’ll get into a little duel. He’ll play something, and I’ll try to play it back at him in some way. It’s not always note for note, but it’s always fun to see what he’ll play, and watch him laugh when I play something back to him. We’ve just become really sweet friends.

Don Henley has said that 2026 will mark the end of the Eagles. Have you thought about what life will be like once those guys retire?

I’m in such a beautiful position – I don’t have to decide anything! It’s been fun having a boss again, doing something for someone the way they want it done. I’ve tried to further the creativity they’ve shown and the wealth of great songs they came up with. I’m just part of reproducing those songs. I don’t get to lay claim to any notes of music they’ve created.

What will you cherish most about being a part of the Eagles story?

For me personally it’s been validation of the work I’ve done for the last 50 years. That work is why they chose me to try to carry their catalog forward. I was really grateful to be the one they asked – that’s not lost on me.

What will you do after the Eagles play their last show?

I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished in my 40 or 50 years of being an artist, and I’ll continue to do that. You know, the kids won’t get Christmas gifts as good as they’ve been getting for the last 10 years! But I look back on it all with nothing but gratitude.

• The Eagles continue to add 2026 tour dates to their schedule. Head to Gill’s website for details on his 50 Years From Home series.

Fresh from selling off a raft of his unused guitars, the Eagles riff-slinger Joe Walsh has joined The War on Drugs at their annual charity bash.

The alt-rock band has been hosting the benefit show, A Drugcember to Remember, every December since 2018, with proceeds going to The Fund for the School District of Philadelphia. The shows – this year at the hybrid restaurant and venue Johnny Brenda’s – see the band playing deep cuts and covers with a host of special guests.

Their shows on the 19th and 20th of December were no exception, with singer-songwriter Craig Finn and their former lead guitarist Kurt Vile getting in on the act. But it's the second set of those two nights that stood out, as Walsh joined a band he adores for a cluster of songs.

“Sat in with one of my favorite bands last night for A Drugcember to Remember,” Walsh wrote on Instagram after night one, before trying to name the band. “Joe Walsh on Drugs? The War on Walsh? Whatever you call it, let’s do it again tonight?”

Songs played included two Joe Walsh solo tracks, Rocky Mountain Way and In the City. They then welcomed Vile back to the stage as they closed out with their setlist staple, Under the Pressure.

It was a set list that constituted a handful of guitar changes for Walsh, with a sunburst Gibson Les Paul, an all-black Strat – what appears to be a Charvel Pro-Mod S-type – and a semi-hollow PRS, his picks.

“I saw these guys play about two years ago,” he tells the crowd before Rocky Mountain Way. “And I thought, ‘Damn, what a cool band. I’d love to be in a band like that.’ Well, be careful what you pray for.”

Beneath pillars of fairy lights, Walsh and co. dish out the jams in a relaxed setting, and even without planting his foot on the gas, Walsh shows a near-effortless class throughout. His slide guitar playing on Rocky Mountain Way is particularly sumptuous before swapping to his Les Paul mid-song for a bit of talkbox fun.

Walsh has been doing his own bit for charity of late, with his gear auction raising funds for his veteran charity, Vets Aid. It had fundraised over $4M before Walsh's collection of oddball custom Teles and rare prototype axes went under the hammer.

However, it was a score of unexpected guitars that helped add a substantial amount to that figure, including $22,400 for a Zakk Wylde Epiphone LP.

Joe Walsh’s epic Life’s Been Good auction has just closed at Julien’s, and with more than 750 items sold, the Eagles guitarist and vocalist’s fundraiser for VetsAid will have raised a fair few bucks for the veterans’ charity.

But even in this day and age of bonkers prices for artist-owned electric guitars and gear, Walsh’s auction really did require a double take. This was an occasion when someone bid $32,000 for a Squier Bullet Stratocaster – that’s right, the archetypical beginner electric guitar, going for grail prices. Why? How? What?

Well, there is an explanation for that one. It is finished with a unique Bad Company graphic and was signed by the English rock supergroup after Paul Rodgers and co gifted it to Walsh in 2016. They had just finished their One Hell of a Night Tour across North America.

Also, note the signatures on the body. You will notice a name out of place, Rich Robinson of the Black Crowes, who was sitting in for the late Mick Ralphs. There’s a piece of musical history. Yours for, well, over 20 times the estimate that Julien’s Auctions had placed on the lot.

This was a recurring theme of an auction. Estimates were getting smashed left, right, and center, as though they were a hotel room during the Eagles’ days of hellraising.

The auctioneers know what they’re doing but even they could not have foreseen an auction in which an Zakk Wylde Epiphone Les Paul Custom sold for $22,400. That’s Murphy Lab money for an Epiphone guitar.

Perhaps that is the premium that comes with a stage-played instrument; Walsh actually played this EMG-loaded singlecut onstage with the Eagles during their 2008 Long Road Out of Eden Tour. That Bullseye finish… It just seems weird. What’s next? Peter Frampton auctioning off his Dean Kerry King Overlord?

Other lots were arguably more predictable. The hot orange Duesenberg Starplayer TV you see Walsh playing in the picture at the top of the page went for $35,200. Another of Walsh’s Duesenberg’s, a prototype of his signature model, fetched a cool $19,200.

Our personal favorite from this event was the Buzz Feiten Bo Diddley Tribute model. This is a super-rare 2019 model that was made to honor the rock ’n’ roll trailblazer in his typically outré style. Forget S, T, or V-style guitars, singlecut or doublecut; this art deco oddball is, as Julien’s describes it, more Chrysler Building than Gretsch.

It wasn’t just guitars that went under the hammer. Walsh sold off his 2007 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 for $102,400, which is steep enough before you think about feeding that V8 gas.

Martin Nolan, Julien’s Auctions' co-founder and executive director, described the event as “historic” and with a portion of the proceeds going to VetsAid, it was all in a good cause.

“Life’s been good for Joe Walsh, whose music has shaped decades of rock history,” said Nolan. “This historic auction was a true celebration of that incredible journey. Julien’s are honored to have worked with Joe who wished to share pieces of his story with fans, collectors, and investors who truly appreciate his artistry and also support the important work of VetsAid.”

You can check out the full catalog over at Julien’s Auctions.

You could say that Danielle Haim and her sisters – Alana and Este – were born and raised to be guitar-wielding rockstars.

“I was around 10. We started our ‘band’ – which was us just learning songs and playing them in our living room,” Danielle reminisces. “Our first gig was in fifth grade.”

Danielle, Alana, and Este – the triumvirate that forms the band Haim – have been on quite a journey since their first-ever gig as a trio at a Jewish deli in Los Angeles.

Their debut EP, Forever, released in 2012, set them on a path that continues to redefine what a contemporary rock band – and modern guitar heroes – sound and look like, with subsequent genre-blending records, Days are Gone (2013), Something to Tell You (2017), Women in Music Pt. III (2020), and this year’s I Quit taking as much from hip-hop, Joni Mitchell, Destiny’s Child, and TLC as they do from conventional rock.

Danielle’s own guitar playing is no different. The multi-instrumentalist shifts between percussive, funk-adjacent rhythmic guitar parts and searing classic-rock-esque solos – a style she embodies, partly due to her background as a touring guitarist and gun-for-hire, but mostly from her rigorous foundation as a drummer.

“I actually approach guitar playing more as a percussive instrument,” she says. “I've always loved funk music. I love muted jabs and more rhythmic playing. I think that's the stuff that I really, really love.

“[Dr. Dre’s] The Chronic 2001 was huge for me. The way that [Outkast’s] André 3000 in The Love Below utilizes guitar was huge for me, like Prototype and Hey Ya! – all those kind of muted guitar lines were super-influential.”

How did playing classic rock covers with your family band, Rockinhaim, shape your guitar playing and tone?

I played guitar, and so did my mom. My mom played more rhythm. She played a Mexican Tele that she still has, and I would kind of fit around and take leads – whatever I could play.

I would play a lot of blues and pentatonic stuff, but I think learning classic rock songs really informed my guitar playing, and it really informed my songwriting. It was such an incredible way to learn about music and learn what sounds good with a band and where to fit in.

You toured with the likes of Jenny Lewis and Julian Casablancas. That must have had an impact, too.

It was incredible. I was around 19. If you had told me five years or four years before I went on tour with them… when I was 14 or 13 – they were my favorite artists. I snuck into so many Strokes concerts and Rilo Kiley concerts.

It was crazy when I got the opportunity to work with both of them. When it comes to guitar playing, I love the Strokes' guitar parts so much. I learned so much about guitar parts through those songs.

We played [The Strokes’] Hard to Explain at Coachella [with Julian Casablancas], and I literally was playing guitar, and I couldn't believe my life, but I [also] learned so much about performing and where I could fit in.

What would you say are some of your all-time biggest guitar influences?

I love Tom Verlaine's playing. I love Television. I love Marquee Moon – to me, it’s one of my favorite guitar solos of all time. I can just sing it from memory. I know the whole thing.

I'm a huge Mike Campbell fan, also a super-rhythmic genius. Bonnie Raitt – I think she's the most incredible. Every time I watch videos of her playing guitar, I'm just melted on the floor. I think she's one of the most genius guitar players.

I'm also a huge Joe Walsh fan. Life in the Fast Lane, that guitar, to me, is some of the hottest shit of all time. George Michael is always an inspiration. Prince is always an inspiration – I think Prince is the most underrated guitar player. Keith Richards’ playing is always an inspiration.

U2’s The Edge is a huge inspiration. I will say we did track down his effects pedal for Numb [Haim recreated the Numb sample for Now It’s Time, a track from their latest album, I Quit.]

Throughout the years, you’ve mostly been spotted wielding SGs and Strats. What would you say is your go-to guitar nowadays?

I turned into a Strat player. I never thought I would. It's such a fun guitar to play. I love my SG. I love getting so high up on the fretboard. I actually started playing a Melody Maker my dad bought me. My dad would find guitars, and he bought my first guitar [because] it was just so light.

It was a very light, black ’80s Melody Maker, a Gibson. And he was like, ‘All right, this will do.’ And then when it came time to graduate to my next guitar, I picked the SG because it was, honestly, so light, but it just turned into my favorite guitar.

And so I just kind of continued with it for a long time, and then Rostam [Batmanglij, from Vampire Weekend and one of Haim’s collaborators] bought a really nice Strat from the ’50s, and it's the most fun guitar to play, so we used that a lot on the last two albums [Women in Music Pt. III and I Quit]. And so I kind of melded into more of a Strat player.

Would you ever consider releasing a signature model?

Oh, my God, I would love to. No-one's asked me! That'd be incredible.

How do you and Alana navigate arranging two guitars in a Haim song?

She's been playing a lot of acoustic on the road – a lot of the acoustic parts. She's an incredible rhythm guitar player. We're all drummers, so we really are huge on the rhythm.

Alana does everything, literally. We call her Merlin. She's playing guitar, she's playing percussion, she's playing keys, she sings. She does it all. It's pretty incredible to watch.

I take lead, but Alana lays it down. When it comes to her rhythm, she doesn't miss a beat. Her feel is so in the pocket all the time, which really helps.

What are some of the biggest things you switched up when writing and recording I Quit?

Letting the rockier moments speak louder. I do think that, sonically, it's a lot more raw and a lot more visceral. A little angrier – in a more free-spirited way. It's more [about] letting go, and that's what we're talking about. “I Quit” energy is like quitting the shit that doesn't serve you and really going for it. And I think it's just way more raw than our earlier stuff, which I love.

You’ve collaborated with a wide range of artists – including Taylor Swift, Bon Iver, and even film maker Paul Thomas Anderson. How have these collaborations developed your own artistry?

I mean, collaborating with Paul… he's such a genius. And I think the thing that we keep coming back to is: keep it simple.

Taylor Swift and Bon Iver, I mean, they're just such geniuses. I feel so lucky to be able to kind of get a peek into their process. Taylor's so incredible, so prolific. Justin [Vernon, Bon Iver] is an incredible musician. I’m just so honored to be able to work with such great artists.

Haim made history when you were the first “all-female” rock band ever to earn a Grammy nod for Album of the Year – and you made history again this year when you were nominated in the Rock Album category for next year’s Grammys. Do you feel these nominations have changed the way the industry views Haim, and, more broadly, how it views women in rock?

First of all, we're so honored to be nominated in the rock category. Growing up, my favorite artists that were rock musicians were women.

When I think about Stevie Nicks, when I think about The Pretenders, Heart, The Go-Go’s, The Bangles… when I think about all of these incredible women who were in rock bands, to me, growing up, those are the artists that I looked up to.

All we want is to inspire women to pick up guitars, to pick up drums, and that’s truly the biggest gift to hear [if we’ve inspired other women].

As far as being recognized, I think we were just so honored that we were nominated for Best Rock Album – part of the reason why I love what we do is that people have had a hard time putting us in a box.

Maybe there was confusion about what box we fit into. But I think what's amazing is, over the last few years, we've just kind of kept doing what we’ve always done, and to be recognized in this way is really, really special.

• I Quit is out now via Columbia Records/Polydor.

Joe Walsh has become the latest big-name guitarist to shift a score of stage-played gear at auction – and there are some rather notable lots in the collection.

The Eagles guitarist is looking to give some of his pre-loved, and rather quirky, a second life with Julien’s Auctions.

Auction highlights include a 1966 Framus Strato Gold De Luxe 12-string guitar (est. $15,000-$20,000). It featured on his debut album with Barnstorm, which he formed after leaving the James Gang. It's an odd-looking build, with gold control plates and a woodgrain-like pearl celluloid pickguard covering its sunburst finish, while gold single coil pickups complete the look.

“I worked on it for a long time,” he says of the workhorse guitar. “Tuning it was really hard, especially because I was stoned a lot.” The fact that it has a whammy bar didn’t do him any favors, either.

There's also a Paoletti Wine Series Telecaster (est. $4,000-$6,000), which was custom-made for Walsh. The 25.5" scale guitar is made from century-old reclaimed chestnut – they were formerly wine barrels – with a thin satin finish. It was a gift from the Paoletti wine vineyard in Italy, and, according to Walsh, “it's got 100 years of mojo in it”.

For other notable picks, see the heavily played 2015 Duesenberg signature guitar, which is prototype #1 (est. $4,000-$6,000), and features Morse code inlays as a nod to his radio ham side gig. Or how about the Breedlove Mark I Electric Guitar (est. $5,000-$6,000) he played in the video for Ringo Starr's Fill In The Blanks?

There are around 420 guitars and other instruments in the collection – choose from a violin, a Blue Moon Cittern, and several lap steels if you’d prefer – among some other interesting picks.

All proceeds will go to Walsh’s charity, Vets Aid, which offers financial support to veterans after they've served their country. It's a cause close to Walsh's heart, given that his father was a flight instructor for the first US operational jet-powered aircraft, the Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star.

Vets Aid has raised over $4M so far, and this auction is set to give that figure a healthy boost.

Head to Julien’s Auctions to learn more.

Elsewhere, Walsh's exacting ear for tone left his guitar foil confused, and then hugely impressed. It served as a valuable lesson.

Since their lauded debut, Days Are Gone, back in 2013, Haim have firmly established themselves as genre-bending multi-instrumentalists who quickly redefined what constitutes a rock album in the 2010s and 2020s.

In fact, the trio have just bagged their first Grammy nod for “Best Rock Album” – making them the first band composed entirely of women ever to be nominated in this category.

Danielle Haim – the band’s lead guitarist, co-producer, main vocalist, and drummer – switches from funk-inflected rhythm playing to searing, classic-rock-esque solos, and her influences are as wide-ranging as the band’s own repertoire: from hip-hop classics to cult alt-rock heroes.

“[Dr. Dre’s] The Chronic 2001 was huge for me,” she tells Guitar World in a new interview. “The way that [Outkast’s] André 3000 in The Love Below utilizes guitar was huge for me, like Prototype and Hey Ya! – all those kind of muted guitar lines were super-influential.

“I love Tom Verlaine's playing. I love Television. I love Marquee Moon – it’s one of my favorite guitar solos of all time. I can sing the Marquee Moon guitar solo from memory. I know the whole thing.”

Classic rock is also big in Haim's world, with Danielle singling out Joe Walsh (“Life in the Fast Lane, that guitar, to me, is some of the hottest shit of all time”) and “super-rhythmic genius” Mike Campbell.

But she saves her biggest praise for a blues star who is no stranger to the Grammys herself.

“I think Bonnie Raitt is the most incredible [player]. I don't play slide [but] every time I watch videos of her playing guitar, I'm just melted on the floor. I think she's one of the most genius guitar players.”

Other key influences include Prince – who she deems “the most underrated guitar player” – and Keith Richards, as well as U2’s the Edge, whose effects pedal the band tracked down specifically to recreate the Numb sample used in Now It’s Time, a track from their latest album, I Quit.

For more from Danielle Haim, keep your eyes peeled on Guitar World, as the full interview will be published in the coming weeks.

Besides vintage influences, Haim are fans of vintage instruments, too. Bassist Este Haim has previously shared how she ended up buying her dream ’70s Fender Precision Bass on Craigslist for a bargain price.

Session veteran Tom Bukovac says Joe Walsh went through a “conveyor belt” of guitar amps in the hunt for the perfect one as they prepared for a tour together – and he was surprised by which one he went for.

Bukovac was Walsh's foil when he hit the road to support Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and rehearsals proved to be quite the ear-opener for him.

“We were rehearsing and while we were doing these weeks of rehearsals, getting this tour together, they kept bringing in pallets of amps for Joe to try, two at a time,” he tells fellow session great Dan Huff. “Like, hundreds of amps on a conveyor belt coming in from I don't know where.

“He'd set up two Fenders, play for a second, and then we’d play a couple of songs, and then they'd bring in two more. I don't know what he was looking for or what he was doing, but to be honest, they all sounded exactly the same to me. That's just the way his hands are.”

It's an experience Greg Suran can relate to. Speaking to Guitar World previously, he said, “Joe had a semi-truck full of amps and swapped them out every two or three shows. He'd be like, ‘Yeah, what do you think?’ And I'd be like, ‘Sounds great! It sounds just like you every time.’”

Clearly, Walsh was hearing something these other two players couldn't.

For Bukovac, however, there was a distinct moment when Walsh stumbled across an amp that he was convinced would be another for the reject pile. Walsh had other plans.

“I walk over there, and they just brought two new ones in. He played a couple of chords, and it literally sounded like a fucking ice pick,” he continues. “It was so thin and bright. I couldn't believe it.

“I thought he was going to laugh and say, ‘Oh, this is a piece of shit.’ But he looks up and goes, ‘Pretty awesome.’ And I was just like, ‘Is it?’ Maybe I’m the asshole here, but it sounds terrible to me.

“On my side of the stage, I had these old Fenders and a real sweet sound, but it still had some bite.”

But Bukovac quickly learned why Walsh’s amps sounded like they did.

“I would go out and sit out at soundchecks in the 100th row of these empty arenas. I'm listening to the guitars, and Joe Walsh's rig sounds incredible, even though it's like an ice pick on stage.

“Then my tech, who's a good guitar player, comes and plays my rig, and it sounds like [makes muffled noise]. I started thinking there is no limit to how much high-end you can have in an arena.”

Elsewhere, Chris Holt has detailed how he became the Eagles' latest guitarist and what fans can expect from their new-look line-up. He's stepped in for longtime guitarist Steuart Smith, who was forced to step down from the group in January following health struggles.

In 1976, The Eagles released one of the best guitar songs – and, in turn, one of the best guitar solos – ever committed to tape when they dropped Hotel California. A few years later, plans for a spiritual sequel were in motion – but they never came to pass.

Instead, that song, which had been mooted as a follow-up to Hotel California, found life outside the confines of The Eagles – and ended up as the theme song for an animated feature film five years later.

Speaking in the new issue of Guitarist, Eagles guitarist Don Felder addressed rumors that his solo hit Heavy Metal had originally been conceived as a song for the band, confirming it had been intended to be another excuse for him and Joe Walsh to let loose on some “dazzling” guitar work befitting a Hotel California sequel.

“It was going to be a follow-up on The Long Run to Hotel California,” he states. “It had a real kind of heavy hand to it and I wrote it so that Joe [Walsh] and I could play even harder than we did, or edgier than we did on Hotel, against each other.

“It had harmony parts, trading-off solos and a much harder rock edge. We went in and recorded the basic track for The Long Run but never got around to finishing the lyrics.”

The track went unfinished, but Felder would bring it out of its early retirement a few years later when he got tapped to write a song for animated sci-fi feature film Heavy Metal. He had the perfect song in mind for the gig.

“We had a basic track, but it just died in the Eagles’ vault until I got a call years later about doing a song for the Heavy Metal movie,” he continues.

“Without the title Heavy Metal, that song could have, and should have, in my opinion, been finished on an Eagles record with Joe and I following up on Hotel with some dazzling guitar solos and stuff.

“It didn’t happen, we just didn’t have time,” Felder continues of Heavy Metal’s fate. “We had a tour booked and planned, and we were just dying to get through this record [The Long Run], the final mixes, cleaning up vocals, mastering, artwork.

“We just didn’t have time to do everything we needed to do. There were a lot of dropped ideas along the way, but I took the idea and turned it into Heavy Metal.”

Back in 2021, Walsh discussed the makings of Hotel California, revealing the iconic lead lines were not pre-planned – and were instead entirely improvised.

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitarist, which also includes an interview with Mark Knopfler and his former guitar tech – who discusses why he convinced Knopfler to swap Strats for Les Pauls.

Jeff “Skunk” Baxter has played with everyone from Steely Dan, the Doobie Brothers and Joni Mitchell to Gene Simmons and James Brown. It’s not surprising that his advice errs to eclecticism. “The more you have to call from your encyclopaedia of music, the better it gets,” he says.

With his wide range of credits and a mad-scientist inclination to Frankenstein every guitar he touches, one might think Baxter has a scattered approach. But he reflects: “I’m a fairly well-rounded player. I’ve been in a studio position for 60 years. I know a little bit about playing the guitar, I guess.”

When he’s not rewinding pickups or working with Roland on his beloved Blues Cube, he’ll be found touring or recording. “I still love it; I’ve enjoyed all the session work,” he says. “It’s the challenge to play something that’s creative and also contributes to the song.”

What was the key to your tone with Steely Dan on Rikki Don’t Lose That Number?

“I don’t know! I built all my own guitars, so I guess it had somewhat of a unique sound to it. I was building guitars as a kid. I worked at Dan Armstrong’s shop for a long time. I learned a lot from Dan, Bill Lawrence and folks like that. I strove for the ability to build a pickup and electronics that would allow me to be really dynamic.

“I think the more dynamic you can be, the more expressive you can be. I just love the clarity of brand new steel strings on an electric guitar. My goal was to translate that sound as best as possible. The guitars I worked on had different kinds of decks and fretboards. I’d fret them with different kinds of frets.

“I was always a big fan of Gibson bass frets that were big and chunky. When you dressed and crowned them they were solid, and you could feel that. That was what I was looking for.”

You played a lot of pedal steel early on with the Doobie Brothers. Did you build those too?

“No, I’ve never built a pedal steel. I just got reunited with the folks at Sho-Bud, a steel guitar company founded by Shot Jackson and Buddy Emmons. I think it’s the world’s greatest instrument, frankly. There’s nothing you can’t do on it.

“With pedal steel, you’re there as a guest; it really challenges you. But it’s so beautiful – and it’s not just a country instrument. I think a lot of people tend to put it in that category; but it’s an incredibly eclectic instrument. It’s my favorite at the moment. “

You recorded a memorable solo for the outro of the Doobies’ How Do the Fools Survive? Do you remember doing it?

“I do. I had a couple of Fender Deluxe Reverb amps that were customized and modified by Paul Rivera, who did virtually all the amps the LA studio musicians used. It was kind of the LA sound. The guitar was a Fender Stratocaster I’d built with custom pickups.

“The idea was that it was the last song on the album, and the opportunity just unfolded. The fade was so long that I thought, ‘Wow, maybe this is an opportunity. I’m going to approach this in a slightly different manner – I’m going to stay away from the dominant chords of the song and play around them.’

“I used it as kind of an exercise, and it was a bit of a challenge. I believe that was one take; I just sat down and played it. When I finished, it was kind of like, ‘Oh, wow… what just happened?’”

You played guitar on Joni Mitchell’s In France They Kiss on Main Street. How did you approach that?

“Basically, as a professional studio musician; I thought, ‘What does it need? What can I do that would add to the overall presentation and feel of the song?’ It wasn’t really about me. It was more about wanting to make her happy and wanting to do the best I could for her song. Not that I didn’t put a lot of emotional effort into it.”

You played on four songs from Gene Simmons’ 1978 solo record. Did Gene call you himself?

“Yeah, he reached out to me. I said, ‘Sure, I’d love to. What you got?’ I went in, listened and said, ‘Yeah, I could do that one, and this one sounds good to me, and that one.’

“He had some ideas about what he wanted me to play and which songs he wanted me to play on. I think there was one that went by, and I said, ‘Hey, I think I’ll take a shot at that.’ But it was pretty much doing your own thing. He wanted the expertise I had to apply to it. I think he wanted something that was more personally stylistic.”

You toured with James Brown in 1986. Were those funky guitar bits a challenge?

“I already knew them because I’d learned to play that kind of music, being such a fan. I was going to a gig with Bobby and the Midnites, and James Brown was on the bill. His guitar player got caught in a snowstorm so they were looking for somebody. I said, ‘I know all that stuff,’ and that’s how it started. I put on a nice suit, and it was away we go!”

Did James talk a lot about “putting it on the one,” as he was known to do?

“Not a whole lot. I think he expected the rhythm section to perform flawlessly. I think he also expected that everyone in that organization would understand what he was trying to do.”

You worked on Albert King’s Red House album in 1991. What are your personal observations of Albert ?

“I loved his playing. The dynamics and the geometry of his playing were different because it was a regular guitar but played upside-down, which opened up all kinds of interesting things.

“I loved the fact that his guitar playing was so close to a voice – it’s like there were two singers; him and his guitar. I was always fascinated by the way they interacted. I wondered if maybe there was a singer inside of him that never came out in his voice, but came out in his guitar.”

In your opinion, who is the best of the Three Kings – Albert, B.B., or Freddie?

“Well, each one is unique, so I’m not sure about who’s best, if that term is even applicable. Each is the King of his own realm, and each realm is unique and excellent.”

Speaking of the best, you were in a supergroup called The Best with John Entwistle and Joe Walsh. How did that come about?

“John and Joe were friends of mine. We were unofficially the house band at the China Club in Los Angeles, with Simon Phillips – an unreal drummer – and Keith Emerson, who’s probably my favorite keyboard player of all time.

“Michael Jensen, the publicist, came into the China Club one day and said, ‘We ought to take this on the road.’ He booked four shows in Japan and one in Hawaii. We managed to shoehorn those shows into the schedule, and that was it.”

Was there ever a thought of recording music?

“The good news is that it was recorded, so you can go online and see it. The bad news is that the reason you can see it is because the person who recorded it stole all the master tapes. We’re still trying to track them down.”

What’s been the secret to your success as a lifelong session player?

“That’s an interesting concept! I’d certainly say a lot of it is application and perseverance. The bottom line is exposing yourself to as many different musical influences as possible.

“The more electric you can make your playing, the more opportunities it gives you to accomplish whatever someone wants you to do; it gives you more color and facets.”

• Baxter’s most recent solo album, Speed of Heat, is on sale now.

The Eagles’ newly appointed touring guitarist Chris Holt has revealed he didn’t have to audition for the gig, and has detailed what it’s like playing alongside Joe Walsh and Vince Gill.

Holt, who has been playing with Don Henley and Mike Campbell & the Dirty Knobs since 2015 and 2022, respectively, was sworn into the band following long-serving guitarist Steuart Smith's retirement. The veteran guitarist had enjoyed a two-decade-plus stint in the band but was forced to step down at the start of the year in light of health struggles.

In contrast to the open auditions recently held by the Smashing Pumpkins and Chaka Khan, the Eagles kept recruitment in-house, with Holt’s reputation helping him to secure the job.

“It wasn’t really an audition,” he tells Guitar World in a new interview. “When they knew that Steuart was going to step down, I think they had a short list of names that would be considered a good fit. Somehow, luckily, I got the call. It was the highest honor, and I immediately accepted the invitation. It’s the dream gig of a lifetime for a rock n’ roll guitar nerd like me.”

The coup means the band’s classic, harmony-rich three-guitar tandem will remain, and Holt has a key role in the refreshed setup. He is, however, sensitive to the legacy of the band, who have produced seven studio albums and won six Grammys across their prolific career.

“Just being onstage with those two guys is the most exciting thing I can imagine,” Holt continues. “Joe and Vince are very different players, and I love that. They’re both capable of great spontaneity. But we don’t veer off script much in the Eagles – it’s all about the songs – and those guitar parts are so iconic and integral to the songs, so I don’t go changing them up.”

Holt’s hiring was announced in January, with Smith’s retirement coming halfway through the band’s Las Vegas residency at The Sphere. It’s a venue, as John Mayer learned last year, that has strict volume restrictions and stage limitations. Those same restrictions saw the Edge turn to amp modeling pedals for the first time in his career.

Being drafted into the fold at such short notice, and for such high-profile shows to break the ice, is no small task. So how exactly did Holt fit into the band?

“Vince is probably the best guitarist of any of us on that stage, but he isn’t doing a ton of heavy-lifting guitar-wise, ‘cause he’s really singing a ton of stuff in the show,” Holt explains.

“Steuart covered a lot of the trickier lead parts, so I stepped in to do that stuff. It allowed everyone to keep doing their usual parts without having to rework the show too much.

“Playing with Joe is an absolute delight,” he continues. “He’s still got it, and you can still hear so much joy and swagger in his playing every single night. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder and do our thing, and I still feel like I have to pinch myself. He’s been one of my favorite guitarists since I was a kid, so getting to play alongside him every night… it’s a dream come true. I can’t state that enough.”

Lionel Richie guitarist Greg Suran is another player full of praise for Walsh. He recently shared the top-tier soloing advice he got from the guitarist, which has served him well across his rich variety of touring gigs.

Guitar World’s full interview with Chris Holt will be published online in the near future.

Jimmy Page has always been synonymous with his beloved 1959 sunburst Gibson Les Paul, a guitar so iconic that it was exhibited at no less than the Metropolitan Museum of Art, during the museum's guitar-centric 2019 exhibition, Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll.

Now, it's no CIA-held secret that the Les Paul wasn't always Page's instrument of choice for Zeppelin. He used a Telecaster for the band's fiery, epochal debut, Led Zeppelin I and, at least for a while, was satisfied with that and his Les Paul Custom.

Enter Joe Walsh.

Then a budding guitar hero with the James Gang, Page and Walsh had known one another since the former's pre-Zeppelin days with the Yardbirds. And Walsh had a proposition for him.

“Back then, Joe brought a Les Paul Standard along to a Fillmore East gig on the first leg of [a Led Zeppelin] American tour and said, ‘You’ve got to have this guitar,’” Page said in a 2023 Instagram post. “I said, ‘Well, I don’t need it, Joe, I’ve got a Les Paul Custom.’”

Walsh's lobbying, however, eventually won Page over.

Telling the story slightly differently in a 2012 interview with Guitar World, Walsh said, “When [Led Zeppelin's] first album really took off, Jimmy was still playing the Telecasters that he played in the Yardbirds. He was looking for a Les Paul and asked if I knew of any, 'cause he couldn’t find one that he liked. And I had two.

“So I kept the one I liked the most, and I flew to New York with the other one. I laid it on him and said, ‘Try this out.’ He really liked it. So I gave him a really good deal, about 1,200 bucks. I had to hand-carry it; I flew there and everything.

“Whatever my expenses were, that’s what I charged him,” the future Eagles guitarist continued. “That guitar ended up being a significant part of Led Zeppelin’s body of work. But again, I just thought he should have a Les Paul, for godsakes!”

Page quickly put the Les Paul to use, on Zep's What is and What Should Never Be and for what this publication ranked as the greatest guitar riff of all time, Whole Lotta Love.

“I played the Les Paul on Whole Lotta Love and What Is and What Should Never Be and that decided it for me: it was definitely going to be the Les Paul from then on,” Page said in 2023. “I always wanted to make a change for each album sonically and that was my first decision for Led Zeppelin II.

“Like I had built Led Zeppelin I around the Fender Telecaster, I built the second album around the sonic texture of the Les Paul Standard. Neither Joe Walsh nor I realized at the time just what an important thing he had done by coming along with that Les Paul.”

An electric guitar hums, then yawns, then lashes out aggressively, without abandon, in every direction.

It sounds like some free-form live Sonic Youth interlude, or Andy Gill's snarling, feedback-laden intro to Gang of Four's Anthrax. In parts – especially the moments where you can catch bits of proto-tapping – it bears a striking resemblance to Eddie Van Halen's Eruption, more in structure than in particulars.

What's amazing is that it came a full decade before even the first of these examples.

The seven-minute outburst, appropriately titled Free Form Guitar, came from the hands of the late Terry Kath, who served as Chicago's lead guitarist for the first decade of their existence.

In reference to the pioneering guitar instrumental, Joe Walsh once said, “In some places, I had no idea how he was getting his guitar to sound like that.”

Chicago were hugely popular even during Kath's time, so it remains surprising that conversations around the most important guitarists of the '70s rarely include him.

It's not like he faded into the background after Free Form Guitar, which appeared on the band's 1969 debut album. Quite to the contrary, the band's classic rock radio mainstay, 25 or 6 to 4 (which remains ubiquitous enough that this writer played it in his high school jazz band), features an absolutely sizzling Kath solo.

A performance of 25 or 6 to 4 that shows Kath in particularly jaw-loosening form was captured at the band's July 21, 1970 concert at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts.

There are, of course, plenty of other standout lead guitar moments to pick out from Chicago's Kath-era catalog.

To celebrate their aforementioned debut album, Chicago Transit Authority, the band recruited no less than Steve Vai to put his spin on a few of them at their November 17, 2023 concert at the Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Speaking about the guest spot in a Facebook post, Vai said, “Terry Kath, who was the original guitar player in Chicago until his death in 1978, was an inspired, visceral player whose raw '60s-'70s guitar tone helped shape the sound of rock guitar in popular music starting from their days opening up for Jimi Hendrix, who was a fan and friend of Terry.

“It was an honor to pay tribute to this legend and the band by contributing to several songs throughout the night.”

Kath's most beloved guitar, a 1966 Telecaster, added to his legend.

Covered in Pignose stickers – and, among others, a Chicago Blackhawks sticker, because of course – given additional firepower by a neck humbucker, and also fitted with custom body routes, a reverse control plate, custom tuning machines, and three wing string trees, the guitar was as singular as Kath's playing.

Recreated in exacting detail by the Fender Custom Shop in 2022, the Tele was so treasured by Kath that he is said to have bought a seat for it when flying with the band on tour.

Tragically, Kath met an all-too-early end.

Increasingly struggling with substance abuse problems as the '70s wore on, Kath also took to collecting guns, which he would then carry around with him – on tour or not.

One night, Kath jokingly put one of his guns – a 9mm semi-automatic pistol – to his head. Not realizing that what he thought was an empty chamber actually had a bullet left in it, Kath pulled the trigger, and was killed instantly. He was just 31 years old.

The acclaimed 2016 documentary, The Terry Kath Experience delves deep into the guitarist's life and work, and features interviews with his Chicago bandmates, and a few of the many prominent guitarists who have called him an influence – among them Jeff Lynne, Steve Lukather, and Mike Campbell.

Most famously, there's also the oft-repeated story that Jimi Hendrix visited Chicago backstage after a show in 1969 to meet Kath, telling another member of the band while there that he thought Kath was a better player than he was.

Kath, Joe Walsh once said, was simply “one of most underrated guitar legends of the '70s.”

“I’m like a squirrel,” Greg Suran says. “I’m thinking, ‘Look – Eddie Van Halen!’ then ‘Oh, Stevie Ray Vaughan – that's cool’ then ‘Holy shit, Robert Fripp, that’s amazing!’ I was always darting around, trying to learn different things.”

That’s brought him versatility, which he’s used to effect with Joe Walsh, The B-52s, Lionel Richie, The Goo Goo Dolls and Sunny Day Real Estate – and he’s also in the American Idol house band. “I kind of throw myself in the fire a lot,” Suran laughs.

“I learned enough bits and pieces to get enough vocabulary that I could fake any style pretty well. For the most part, I’m usually willing to go for it, and embarrass myself if I have to.” But he adds: “Going from one gig to another, I’ve never felt like I wasn’t up to it. When I get into a performance situation it’s like musical smelling salts."

Suran’s greatest strength is his humility. “When I’m on a gig with another guitar player who does something so much better than me, I’m blown away – and that happens all the time. The great thing is that you pick stuff up from them.

“It pushes you; every gig has a unique way of bringing something out in you that you didn’t think you had, as long as you’re open to it and put the effort in.”

When did you feel like you’d found your sound on guitar?

“I don’t get that one a lot, because people mostly know me for playing with other artists. If I’m being honest it was probably in the late 1990s. I had my band, Cupcakes, and we had a deal with DreamWorks Records. I was learning about the things I thought were unique about guitar playing, trying to separate myself a bit.

“Guitar playing in the ‘90s differed from the ‘80s when it was about virtuosity and technical proficiency. The ‘90s were more punk and indie, and guitar playing was approached differently. It wasn’t about technique; it was about concept, ambient textures – fuzz, delay, and things that made me feel something.”

How did you hook up with The Goo Goo Dolls in the early 2000s?

“Cupcakes broke up, and I did about a year and a half with Sunny Day Real Estate, then they broke up. I was still young enough to be like, ‘What am I going to do about all this?’ and I thought, ‘I could do the hired gun thing.’

“I’d been to music school; I’d studied; I thought I was capable of it. I called DreamWorks and talked to Beth Halper, Butch Vig’s wife. I said, ‘There’s a dude called Barry Squire who auditions guitarists in LA.’ She said, ‘I’ll put in a good word.’

“He got me a Goo Goo Dolls audition – I kind of talked myself into it, like, ‘Barry, please give me an audition!’ I had to work that a little on the phone; but in the end they were like, ‘Yeah, sure,’ even though they already had about 12 people lined up.”

What gear were you using at the time?

“I had my Bogner Ecstasy head in a road case, a mandolin that I bought at Guitar Center, a Les Paul and my pedalboard. I literally checked all these things onto a Southwest flight from Chicago. When I auditioned we played Broadway and another was Iris. I think it was after two or three songs that they told me I had the gig, which was kind of crazy.”

After The Goo Goo Dolls, you worked with Joe Walsh – a totally different animal on guitar.

“I was Jewel’s music director for a while after The Goo Goo Dolls, and I hired a friend of mine, Drew Hester, to play drums. Drew was playing with Joe, and Joe needed a guitar player for a big tour. Drew recommended me, and I actually went to Joe's house in LA and into his studio.”

What were your first impressions of Joe?

“Joe was like, ‘Alright, come on in – let’s jam.’ We basically played some blues riffs and we did a couple of his songs; we just kind of played guitar. And he’s like, ‘Yeah, okay, sounds great.’ That was it!”

The gear you used with Joe must have been very different from The Goo Goo Dolls.

“For sure. I’ve changed my gear around a lot, depending on the gig. With Joe I was playing through a Divided by 13 head that was kind of like a Vox AC30. Then I was going into a ’65 Fender Princeton Reverb – so two amps.

“I ran them both clean with a Keeley modded Boss Blues Driver for a little bit of overdrive. Joe was also playing through two amps; I wanted my two to be a little smaller than his. I didn’t want to overpower Joe Walsh!”

Joe is a seat-of-his-pants type of player. What was that like for you?

“It was great; I loved it. Joe had a semi-truck full of amps and swapped them out every two or three shows. He’d be like, ‘What do you think?’ I’d be like, ‘Sounds great! It sounds just like you every time.’

“He loved tinkering with ham radios, pedals and amps; he just loves exploring. I feel like all of his tone comes from his hands. I know that’s a cliché but in Joe’s case it couldn’t be truer.”

What’s the most important lesson you learned from Joe?

“I came in hot, wanting to really impress him – most guitar players would want to impress a hero like that. We’d trade solos sometimes, like on Turn to Stone, and he’d give me a solo on Life of Illusion. It was always interactive. I’d try to bust out my best hot and fast licks, and he’d always be so helpful.

“He’d say, ‘All those licks are cool – but just slow it down, man. Tell a story.’ That classic, old-school building of the arc of a solo thing: I really took that to heart. When someone like Joe tells you that, and you’re playing alongside him, you want to do it.

“He’ll do his thing. If you play something cool on stage, he’ll go, ‘Yeah!’ He’ll verbalize it to you. And all you want to do is make him do that again. It was a real education – I got better at thinking lyrically, not trying to impress other guitar players but making the audience feel something. Joe is so good at that.”

Would you say you’re a different player after gigging with Joe?

“Yes! I’ve been fortunate to play on some high-level stuff that's pretty eclectic. I learned the best way to grow as a guitar player is to have different musical experiences and be challenged.”

For example, after working with Joe you hooked up with The B-52’s.

“The Joe Walsh tour ended. We had a dinner where he let everyone know he was going back to the Eagles for a while and the band wouldn’t be very active. Then Sterling Campbell, drummer in The B-52s, and Paul Gordon, the dearly departed keyboard player, called me and said, ‘Dude, Is there any way you could be in New York tomorrow to play a gig with us?’

“Keith Strickland was retiring from touring, and this gig came up as a last-minute thing, and he couldn’t do it. So I was the first person to play with The B-52’s who was not an original member of the band. It was huge pressure.”

How did you handle learning such idiosyncratic guitar parts?

“I had to learn all the songs on a red-eye flight to New York. I had my iPhone loaded up with the songs, and I started charting stuff out on the flight. The tuning was hard to figure out – especially on a plane without a guitar in my hands! But once I got a guitar, I started decoding the tunings; I think I got most of them right.”

“The gig went great, and the band was like, ‘You’re our guy if you want this gig.’ With Joe wrapping up, I was like, ‘Yeah, this works out great.’ I told Joe about it and he was like, ‘Oh, that's great – those girls with those big beehive hairdos?’ I said, ‘Yeah, those guys!”

How did your rig change with The B-52s?

“I love that music and the guitar playing. My whole thing was, ‘If I’m a fan going to see this band, the worst thing would be to see some guy doing it wedding-style or like a bar band.’ The only way to do that was with the proper tunings, guitars, and tone.

“I really put work into it. I got a couple of Eastwood guitars that were Mosrite copies and tried to be faithful to the brilliant parts and not reinvent iconic things.”

Be it the Goo Goo Dolls, Joe Walsh, or The B-52s, has there ever been something you couldn’t master?

“I wouldn’t say any tone escaped me – but there’s one intro for The B-52’s song Roam that has a tape flange or something. I was never quite happy with that or with how it matched the record, but it was still pretty cool.”

For the last few years you’ve been the house guitarist for American Idol. That gig is tailor-made for you, considering you can play anything at any time.

“That really is what the job is about. It’s a great band. I’m lucky to play with such great people who are incredibly talented and super versatile. Nailing tone, parts, and getting the essence of the style, and really playing it legit matters. That pushes me harder. Sometimes you learn 86 songs in a week; other times it’s as little as 18, if you're lucky!”

If you had to, could you boil your rig down to one guitar?

“Oh, yeah! I’m actually doing it these days. I played with Lionel Richie – I’ve been playing with for the last couple of years – at a casino in Las Vegas. And Sunny Day Real Estate had a gig that night too. I finished the set with Lionel and went straight to the Sunny Day Real Estate gig, all with a Ciari folding guitar called the Ascender.

“If I could only take one guitar to any gig, if not the folding guitar, it would probably be a Telecaster with my Neural DSP Quad Cortex. With those two things I could do a gig anywhere.”

What’s your best advice for someone looking to get into your line of work?

“Practice a lot and learn as much as you can. If you want to do be playing with a lot of different artists, be open to different kinds of music. Listen to a lot of music. It’s about being open to experiences.

“I never went, ‘No, I’m too cool for that,’ or, ‘That’s not my thing.’ If something seems interesting, just go for it. The way this business works is other musicians recommend other musicians – so build relationships, be open to new experiences; and eventually you’ll get your opportunities.”

• Follow Suran on Instagram.

Versatility is Greg Suran's trump card. From working with Iris hitmakers The Goo Goo Dolls and Seattle-born emo band Sunny Day Real Estate, to performing Lionel Richie's timeless repertoire and playing a wide array of tunes as part of American Idol's house band, Suran is a true guitar chameleon.

Another formidable act to add to this bulging list? The Eagles' Joe Walsh, whom he played with from 2011 to 2013 on the Analog Man tour, also served as a mentor in some capacity. So, how did this gig come about?

“I was [singer-songwriter] Jewel's music director for a while after The Goo Goo Dolls, and I hired a friend of mine, Drew Hester, to play drums,” Suran tells Guitar World.

“Drew was playing with Joe, and Joe needed a guitar player, and he was about to do this big tour. Drew recommended me to Joe, and I actually went to Joe's house in LA and into his studio.

“Joe was like, ‘Alright, come on in, let's jam.’ We basically played some blues riffs, and we did a couple of his songs, but we just kind of played guitar. And he's like, ‘Yeah, okay, sounds great.’ That was it.”

Playing with Walsh came with plenty of guitar – and life – lessons. Suran admits that he “came in hot, wanting to impress him”– understandable, considering Walsh's stature in the guitar community.

“We'd trade solos sometimes, like on [Walsh's] Turn to Stone, and he'd give me a solo on [Walsh's] Life of Illusion. It was always interactive. I'd try to bust out my best hot and fastest licks, and he'd always be so helpful,” he describes.

“He'd say, ‘Man, all those licks are cool. They're great. But just slow it down, man. Tell a story.’ That classic, old-school building of the arc of a solo thing, I really took that to heart. When someone like Joe tells you that, and you're playing alongside him, you want to do it.”

Guitar World's full interview with Greg Suran will be published in the coming weeks.

The name Greg Suran may not immediately ring a bell, but his incredible CV speaks to his skill and versatility as a guitarist.

Suran has lent his chops to legends of punk (Sunny Day Real Estate), pop (The B-52's), and R&B (Lionel Richie). Oh, and he's also had the imposing task of sharing six-string duties with no less than Joe Walsh.

As you might imagine, Suran learned plenty from Walsh, and was also – he recently told Guitar World – privy to his boss's endless tonal tinkering.

“Joe had a semi-truck full of amps and swapped them out every two or three shows,” Suran recounted. “He'd be like, ‘Yeah, what do you think?’ I'd be like, ‘Sounds great! It sounds just like you every time.’

“But he loved it. Joe loved tinkering with ham radios, pedals, and amps; he just loves exploring. I feel like all of his tone comes from his hands. I know that's a cliché, but in Joe's case, it couldn't be truer.”

Though the ‘don't focus on showing off’ lesson has been repeated ad nauseam by countless players, it can still be difficult to resist, especially if you are – as Suran was – trading solos with a player of Walsh's caliber.

As he explained to GW, the importance of resisting that temptation was also imparted to him by the Eagles legend.

“I came in hot, wanting to really impress him,” Suran recalled of his first jams with Walsh. “Most guitar players would want to impress a hero like that.

“We'd trade solos sometimes, like on [Walsh's] Turn to Stone, and he'd give me a solo on [Walsh's] Life of Illusion. It was always interactive. I'd try to bust out my best hot and fastest licks, and he'd always be so helpful.

“He'd say, ‘Man, all those licks are cool. They're great. But just slow it down, man. Tell a story.’ That classic, old-school building of the arc of a solo thing, I really took that to heart. When someone like Joe tells you that, and you're playing alongside him, you want to do it.”

Since brothers Howard and Ron Albert transformed their Criteria Studios in Miami from a one-room recording booth into a premier destination for big artists, they’ve accumulated 40 gold and 30 platinum records.

Or so Howard reckons. Their resume includes Jimi Hendrix, the Allman Brothers, Frank Zappa and more, which means he's probably right.

While their innovative multi-mic recording technique built their reputation, Ron says that’s not the only thing that made Criteria Studios special.

“What made it great was that we had several rooms,” he tells Guitar World. “We had a lot of camaraderie between acts.

“Someone was in one room and they’d come into the next studio, sit in on something, maybe help to do a guitar part. It would happen on so many records. Because of that, I couldn’t begin to tell you who played on what!”

While the Albert Brothers rubbed elbows with Eric Clapton and Joe Walsh, the best of their work probably came via Dickey Betts and Duane Allman, resulting in records like Eat a Peach – which Ron holds dear.

“That was finished after Duane died,” he says. “Though he played on some of the tracks, Dickey went and learned the slide part for Melissa. Everybody thinks, ‘Oh, this is Duane.’ But Duane wasn’t there; it’s Dickey Betts.”

The Albert Brothers sold Criteria Studios in 1983 and retired; but in 1987 they formed Vision Studios and Audio Vision Studios, which today focus on hip-hop artists like Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Lil John and Ludacris – a far cry from the guitar-drenched days of the ‘70s.

“We were sort of cheating the world because there were two of us,” Howard says.

“We had one standing in the control room while the other was moving mics. We could hear the change from location to location. We could get guitar sounds that no one else was getting then because we had two sets of ears.”

How did Criteria Studios form?

Howard: “It was originally started by Mack Emerman. He was recording jazz records at his house in Coconut Grove. His father had a piece of land nearby on which he was going to build a candy store. Mack convinced him to let him have the property, and we built the recording studio.”

Ron: “It was a one-room facility.”

Howard: “It kind of grew from there. When Ron and I started at Criteria, we started in that one room. It grew to a larger room called Studio A, and then there was Studio B, Studio C, Studio D and so on.”

You were innovators in how you recorded sound.

Ron: “As technology improved, we’d work on our skills. We’d come in late – everybody else would go home at six o’clock. We came up with our multi-mic technique for recording drums: we’d go overhead, have one mic on the kick and mics on every cymbal.

“Part of getting a good guitar sound was knowing the instrument. People will still behave like they’re on stage, and put a microphone straight on a guitar – but if you move the mic six inches to the left, or right, or down, suddenly the sound is so much different.”

Early on, you worked with Jimi Hendrix, who’s primarily known for working with Eddie Kramer. What was that like?

Ron: “Eddie was the chief engineer at Electric Lady, and I was the chief engineer at Criteria. We became friends. Eddie would stay at my house in Miami, and I would stay at his house if I was in New York.

“We were the Miami Pop Festival, which came before Woodstock – kind of a dry run. We had all our equipment in the truck, along with our custom console.

“Eddie came with Jimi; Jimi was on stage and Eddie came in the truck with us. Eddie says, ‘You tape it,’ because he didn’t know our setup.

“We recorded him there, and that became part of our resume, due to Eddie. He’s a good friend.”

How did you become involved with Derek and the Dominos?

Howard: “We were doing a lot of Atlantic Records acts, and they were one of the acts that came through. It was amazing to work with them because they were such amazing players and musicians. It was like a big jam session – which was good because we had a lot of good pieces to put together.”

What was it like working with Eric Clapton and Duane Allman?

Ron: “Eric was in England when they started rehearsing, then he decided to come to Miami. When we started the sessions they didn’t have a name, but it was a real band. I remember we set up Eric and Duane in the studio, so they were face-to-face about two feet apart.

“They could literally touch each other’s guitars if they wanted to; and, like Howard said, it was a good jam session. Eric’s playing was unbelievable because he was held up by Duane’s playing, and Duane was held up by Eric. The rest is history.”

Another big piece of your history is your relationship with the Allman Brothers Band.

Ron: “Duane, of course, gets all the credit – but there’s no Allman Brothers without Dickey Betts. Dickey came up with all the harmonies, and Duane played ‘em. Not unlike Eric and Duane, Dickey and Duane were on such a plane together.

“Dickey’s style was so unique in his harmony parts. We’d sit in the studio for hours, rewinding the tape to play it back for him.

“We knew we already had the track, but he’d work for hours getting those harmony parts together. He would show them to Duane, he’d play them, and what came out was Jessica or In Memory of Elizabeth Reed. That stuff doesn’t happen without Dickey.”

Howard: “Dickey had this way of playing; he matched what Duane did on slide, but he’d do it pretty much without a slide. It was pretty amazing what he’d come up with.”

Ron: “Duane died when he was 24 years old; but the thing was that, without people knowing it, Dickey had stepped into the leadership role.”

You also worked with Joe Walsh on The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get.

Howard: “That was an awe-inspiring guitar moment for us. We did that record with Joe in Studio C, and we kind of had him set up in the hallway. We went through the intro; he was playing and he had no idea we were actually recording it.

“As he was getting ready to say, ‘Okay, I’m ready,’ we called him in and said, ‘Now you’re done.’ Rocky Mountain Way was done in one take, so that was pretty good!”

What was it like working with the Rolling Stones on Goat's Head Soup?

Ron: “They were really great. They drove themselves to the studio in rented station wagons – they didn’t come in limousines. When they arrived, they took their guitars out of the cases and tuned up themselves. They were just like regular people.

“Keith Richards is a character, alright! But I think the one thing that stands out was when we came in one day, and they were hopping around like bunnies for the whole session!”

You also worked with Frank Zappa in the ‘70s.

Howard: “All these players come in with their own sound. Our job is to capture that sound. All these guys use Fender or Gibson guitars and whatever brand of amp, but Frank was a player with his own approach.

“I think that’s what gave him the sound, along with the ideas. And our job was to capture that sound; and again, that comes down to knowing where to place a mic. We really needed to listen to what Frank was playing and then figure out how to get it all to tape.”

You’re renowned for your drum sounds, but you greatly impacted the guitar landscape too. What are you most proud of at that end?

Howard: “Well, I’m proud we lived through it! But I don't know… we were in the right place at the right time. We had some talent and knew what we were doing, and that came out in the records. But we had an extremely high caliber of people that we worked with, and that certainly helped make something that lasts.”

The Eagles’ 1976 song Hotel California makes just about every list of best guitar solos, including ours.

Credit for the guitar majesty of Hotel California is often given to Joe Walsh, who toughened up the Eagles’ laid-back California sound when he joined the band just prior to the Hotel California album’s recording.

Actually, the primary guitar heard throughout the solo belongs to Don Felder, who wrote the music for the track and actually conceived and played the solo’s intricate harmonies on his initial, instrumental demo.

“Every once in a while it seems like the cosmos part and something great plops into your lap,” Felder has said.

In the video below, Felder explains the inspiration behind the song, which he cowrote with Don Henley and Glenn Frey.

More importantly, he also shows you how to play it, with an in-depth, unaccompanied playthrough of the iconic chord progression, followed by its epic solo section.

The original studio version of the song was recorded in B minor with a capo at the 7th fret, but Felder would play the track live in A minor, and uses a capo at the 5th fret for his lesson. He removes the capo for the solo.

In his book Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles, Felder described how he wrote the track.

“I had just leased this house out on the beach at Malibu – I guess it was around 1974 or ‘75,” he recalled.

“I remember sitting in the living room on a spectacular July day with the doors wide open. I had a bathing suit on and was sitting on this couch, soaking wet, thinking the world is a wonderful place to be.

“I had this acoustic 12-string and started tinkling around with it, and those Hotel California chords just kind of oozed out. I had a TEAC four-track set up in one of the back bedrooms and I ran back there to put this idea down before I forgot it.”

In this feature we’re going to look at how to get some country-blues flavor into your playing. 

Listening to iconic country-rock bands such as The Allman Brothers, The Flying Burrito Brothers and Eagles, legendary players like Joe Walsh, Don Felder, Dickey Betts, Clarence White, Glen Campbell, Albert Lee, and Ray Flacke, and – more recently – Brent Mason, Vince Gill, Keith Urban, and Tom Bukovac, will give you an idea of how these guitarists combine classic blues sounds with a more country flavor.

If you’re familiar with blues, you will doubtless be aware of how we use the Minor Pentatonic scale (R-b3-4-5-b7) as a basis for much of the classic vocabulary, but when we play country music, much of our vocabulary comes from the Major Pentatonic scale (R-2-3-5-6). 

This is because so many country songs are based firmly in a Major tonality, so the notes that make up a Major chord (R-3-5) are represented in the scale. Playing licks from this scale will give a prettier, happier sound, and when we incorporate stylistic techniques such as pedal steel-style string bends, double-stops etc, we're going to start to sound ‘country.’

Sometimes though, that overtly happy sound can be too much, or not ideal, especially when we want to sound a bit more bluesy or rocky, so in these instances we need to create licks and phrases that bounce between Major and Minor Pentatonic scales and ones that mix notes from both of them in one phrase. Doing this well will give us that country sound and approach but mixed with blues – the best of both worlds! 

If you look at both of these scales combined into one, you get the following notes: R-2-b3-3-4-5-6-b7, which is a hybrid scale of Minor and Major Pentatonic. Furthermore, if you add the b5th interval that we find in the Minor Blues scale (R-b3-4-b5-5-b7), you incorporate an even more bluesy element. Additionally, if you remove the b3 from the hybrid scale, you get the notes of the Mixolydian mode (R-2-3-4-5-6-b7).

All of these scale-based approaches can give us a seemingly endless combination of potential note choices. But looking at it this way can also seem rather daunting. So a good way to approach it is by doing a lot of listening and learning of solos, licks, and lines that incorporate these various combinations, analyzing the origin of the various notes along the way. It won’t take long for you to start playing this way instinctively, and this in turn will help you to develop your own ideas.

To this end, we have five exercises which layer the different Major intervals (2nd-3rd-6th) onto Minor Pentatonic phrases, and also mix Major Pentatonic and Mixolydian tonalities, to give you an idea of how these note combinations create different sounds. In addition, there are two mini pieces to learn, one mid-paced and the other more uptempo, to which I’ve given a country flavored blues-rock vibe.

Take your time with the examples, absorb the ‘sound’ of the licks, hear where the key notes of R-3-5-b7 are, note how the phrases are structured, and the various country-style articulations employed to create them. Do so and pretty soon you’ll be developing your own country-blues vocabulary. Have fun! 

Get the tone

Amp Settings: Gain 6, Bass, 4, Middle 6, Treble 6, Reverb 4

Single-coil pickups will give a cleaner, more traditional country approach, with perhaps a little compressor pedal to add sustain and smooth out the sound. A humbucking guitar is better for heavier country-rock, where more overdrive is required. A fixed bridge guitar will avoid tuning discrepancies when playing two strings where one is held bent. Add reverb or delay.

Exercises

Exercise 1.
[Bars 1-2] This is a standard blues lick based on the D Minor Pentatonic scale (D-F-G-A-C).  Make sure the tone interval bend on the second string is accurately pitched.
[Bars 3-4] This lick is similar to the previous one, except that it introduces the Major 3rd (F#) note (11th fret, third string and 9th fret, fifth string).

Exercise 2.
[Bars 1-2] This country-blues lick adds the Major 3rd but also the b5th ‘blue note’ (13th fret third string and 11th fret, fifth string) from the D Minor Blues scale (D-F-G-Ab-A-C), which adds a more bluesy sound. [Bars 3-4] 

Make sure the third-string tone bend on beat 1 is accurately pitched in order to appreciate the difference between this, and the subsequent b5th note on beat 3. Getting these articulations spot on is what country-blues playing is all about.

Exercise 3.
These phrases add the Major 6th (B note in D) to the blues licks, in addition to the Major 3rd and b5th. The 3rd and 6th can be borrowed from the Major Pentatonic scale (R-2-3-5-6), but also from the Mixolydian mode (R-2-3-4-5-6-b7), especially when used in conjunction with the b7th (C note in D). 

Exercise 4.
[Bars 1-2] This lick has a more noticeable country flavor because it uses a D Major Pentatonic (D-E-F#-A-B) tonality. The b3rd to Major 3rd move gives a bluesy vibe.

[Bars 3 -4] The scalic movement descending from the Major 2nd (E note) to the root note (D), going through the b7th (C) and 6th (B) to the 5th (A note) on beats 1 and 2, gives a definite D Mixolydian mode (D-E-F#-G-A-B-C) sound. The following b5th and b3rd going to Major 3rd again keeps things bluesy.

Exercise 5.
[Bars 1-2]  This distinctly country sounding phrase uses a mainly D Major Pentatonic and mimics the kind of lick of a pedal steel guitar could play. Use your fretting-hand’s fourth finger on beat 3 to hold down the top two strings at the 10th fret, while the third finger pre-bends the third string a tone at the 9th fret, then lets it down. 

Let all three strings ring. [Bars 3 -4] This Mixolydian line with the familiar b5th and b3rd to Major 3rd move keeps the bluesy flavor.   

Mid-Tempo Piece – Rhythm

[Bars 1-8] Play the appropriate blues shuffle rhythm for each chord, and feel free to use fretting-hand muting to add percussive scratches and rhythmic interest, especially after the third beat of each bar. Aim to keep the timing locked in tight to maintain a good groove. 

[Bars 9-16] The technical approach changes here to one of arpeggiating chords. Again, keep the timing accurate and let the notes ring together to keep things flowing and fluent.

Mid-tempo piece – Solo

[Bars 1-8] These bars mix notes of D Minor Pentatonic (D-F-G-A-C) and D Mixolydian (D-E-F#-G-A-B-C) to create some tasty country-blues sounds. Note the quick use of the b5th (Ab) from the D Minor Blues scale (D-F-G-Ab-A-C) in bar 8. 

[Bar 11] This triplet phrase uses a chromatic line from a ‘hybrid’ scale of D Minor Blues and Mixolydian (R-2-b3-3-4-b5-5-6-b7). The chromatic ascent from b3rd-5th is widely used in country, blues and jazz. [Bar 12] This country bend marks the A chord using the A Major Pentatonic scale (A-B-C#-E-F#). 

[Bar 13] For this tricky lick, bend the first string ,15th fret (G) up a full tone to the 17th fret (A) but then re-pick it a semitone lower (Ab). This necessitates some very accurate pre-bending of the string, so make sure you listen carefully.

Up-tempo Piece – rhythm

The technical approach to this rhythm part requires that it’s played with a good degree of timing accuracy due to the overall tempo. You can sparingly add some fretting-hand muted scratches to enhance the groove, but don’t overcrowd it. 

Approach relatively lightly, with an eighth-note framework (downstroke on the beat, upstroke on the off beat) and with a bounce so the whole sounds rhythmic, even when playing the single-string connecting notes seen in bars 4, 7, and 14.

Up-tempo Piece – Solo

[Bars 1-6] These phrases are based on mixing notes taken from the A Minor Pentatonic (A-C-D-E-G) and A Major Pentatonic (A-B-C#-E-F#) scales, but as in the lick in bar 3, can also be looked at as being from A Mixolydian (A-B-C#-D-E-F#-G), as we have a descending line going from the b7th (G note) through the 6th (F#), 5th (E), and 4th (D). 

[Bars 7-8] This typical country bend marks the E chord here, and uses the root, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th from the E Mixolydian scale (E-F#-G#-A-B-C#-D). Ensure the second-string bend remains accurately at pitch before it descends. This almost ‘mechanical’ bending style is typical of country guitar.

When Mark Knopfler’s Guitar Heroes was hailed as “a landmark in rock music history”, it was no exaggeration. The former Dire Straits leader has pulled together an astonishing lineup of famous players to appear on a charity single in aid of noble causes including Teenage Cancer Trust and Teen Cancer America. 

Going Home (Theme From Local Hero), a song written by Knopfler and originally released back in 1983, was recently reworked as an extended showcase in which he is joined by legendary guitarists including David Gilmour, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, Brian May, Slash, Steve Vai, Ronnie Wood and Joe Walsh. Poignantly, it also features the last ever recorded work of guitar icon and innovator Jeff Beck.

And elsewhere, layered within Knopfler’s six-string tapestry, is longtime Toto man and general session legend Steve Lukather, who was more than happy to lend his licks. “Are you kidding me?” Luke tells Total Guitar. “To be a part of something like this, which is so cool, and to be on this with all those cool players for such a great cause – it’s an honour. I just wanted to be a part of it.”

In his typically Southern Californian way, Luke breaks down the experience as only he can. “It was special to be a part of something so great,” he says. “I hope it raises millions of dollars for the cause because it’s a really good one. I don’t know Mark personally, but he’s very into philanthropic work, as we’ve seen with him auctioning off all his guitars. 

“I can relate to getting to the point where you have a warehouse full of shit and you say, ‘Why?’ I’m at a stage where I want to give back and just be thankful for what I’ve got. I’m into simplicity now. So, it’s very easy to want to be a part of it…”

So how did you end up involved with this project?

“It’s funny, because I was very flattered to get the call. I was immediately into it and said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it!’ They basically reached out to me out of the blue, which had me saying, ‘Wow’, as they already had so many people involved. I made zero demands and just did what I did. It was a lot of fun.”

Once you dug in, what were your initial thoughts regarding what you were hearing?

“The biggest thing was that I didn’t want to put much input into it other than trying to find something cool to play. I hadn’t heard the full track at first, so I wasn’t sure what they were gonna keep, but my initial thought was something like, ‘Man, this is such an undertaking to get so many people like this on one track!’”

What was your approach?

“I knew that the track was stuffed from top to bottom, so I had to figure out a way to play over all of that. I kinda figured I should stay outta the way, and I came up with some cool rhythm parts and stuff like that. I said, ‘Seems like everyone else is playing all this crazy stuff.’ And I appreciated that, and my thought was to do something a little lower key.”

Did Mark give you any direction?

“Interestingly, no. When they reached out, I was like, ‘Wow, you’ve got so many people, so what do you want me to do here?’ And they basically said, ‘Just do what you do.’ I said, ‘Well, thanks!’ So I had no other input other than, ‘Try and find something interesting to play.’ And like I was saying, that wasn’t easy since there are so many amazing players in one zone.”

While working out your parts, did anything immediately stick out?

“It was hard since they sent me a pre‑mixed [song], so I had to work with this in-progress thing. I couldn’t dissect it and take it apart to see who was who. That said, some players’ styles are more obvious than others, so there was that. I also didn’t have a lot of time, so it wasn’t something where I could get super-deep into it. I just found some little parts, added them, and I guess they liked it!”

Surely you found a way to add some of those quintessential Steve Lukather touches?

“Ah, you’re too kind! I realised that there was a lot of single-line stuff going on, so that impacted how I went about adding some rhythms and the textures I used. And as far as Mark goes, I’ve been a big fan of his playing forever, though we don’t really know each other. We’ve met briefly, and his stuff definitely stuck out. I was just honoured to be asked to be a part of it.”

The track features the final recording by Jeff Beck…

“Knowing Jeff was on it was pretty cool. I mean, it’s no secret how much I love Jeff Beck’s playing, man. We’d known each other since ’82, and I’d worked with him on a bunch of stuff. Jeff was and is my favourite single-note guitar player ever on this Earth. Granted, I know there are many great players, but if you ask anybody, they’ll tell you Jeff was the guy.”

Did you find Jeff’s contributions particularly moving?

“I haven’t heard the final mix, so I can’t say for sure. But that cat never stopped moving forward and never stopped moving the needle. He was a quirky dude, man, but at the same time, he blazed his own trail. I don’t think there will ever be anyone like him again. He’s up there in the same space as Hendrix, and he’s one of the true innovators of the guitar.”

Considering how Jeff’s playing often brought guitar circles together, it’s special that his last recorded piece is part of track designed with the same purpose in mind.

“Jeff was a one-of-a-kind player and guy. I toured with him, got to record with him, and all that stuff. When Jeff played, everyone else would stop playing and listen. I would be like, ‘Okay, let’s watch the master work.’ 

“He always brought something special to the game in the sense that you can hear one note and go, ‘Oh, there it is. There it is, man!’ It never had to be a flurry of crazy notes. It just had to be one fucking note that would bounce off the wall and back at the listener. One note, and everyone would be on their feet. That’s a special player.”

Though you don’t know Mark, has his playing affected you much?

“I’m a huge fan. Mark is another one of those unbelievable, unique and wonderful players. He’s a fingerstyle guy, and his touch is amazing. From what I’ve gathered over the years and from what I’ve listened to – which is a lot – Mark is an incredible guitarist. And like I said before, he wasn’t there when I recorded and gave me no notes. He never said, ‘Play this, or do that.’ There are so many players on this track, and so much is going on, but they just let me be me.”

There are 54 musicians on the track, and yet you found a way to stand out.

“It’s crazy, because the initial thought was, ‘What the hell am I gonna play?’ But I found this little muted part, with more than a few notes, and managed to create some parts that fit well in there. It was important for me to stay in my lane, you know? I felt like I needed to jump back because, with all these players on there, I just wanted to find something to help the track and not get in the way.”

Your career as a session player served you well to that end!

“I think so, too. I’ve done that in a lot of instances in my life, and maybe that’s why they sent the track to me – they knew I’d do something like that. But it was flattering not to be told what to do, and it was cool that they said what I did was great. They said, ‘Oh, this is different from what everyone else did, thanks!’ It was a lot of fun and a massive honour to be in the same musical space and on the same track as players I consider my favourites, many of whom are dear friends.”

Where did you record your parts?

“I don’t have a home studio – I believe in separation of church and state! Home is home, and work is work. But I’ve got a million friends, and my son [Trev Lukather] has a studio, but he wasn’t around. Otherwise, I would have asked him.

“So, my old friend [Toto vocalist] Joseph Williams said, ‘Come over to my house, and we’ll do it.’ He engineered it, helped me put it together, and we sent it back. The big thing was to be in a place that I thought would sound good, so that’s what I did. It took maybe an hour.”

What was your recording rig?

“I had my Music Man [Luke 4 HH] that I’ve been playing forever, but my rig was a little different. I have a totally new pedalboard that my tech is putting together for me with all different stuff, but it’s still being built. So, I had this Mickey Mouse temporary rig with the Music Man, one of my favourite 50-watt Bogner amps, my Shure SM57 mics, a little reverb, and some compression. That was it.”

Do you feel any one player stole the show?

“That’s impossible to answer. You’re talking about a roster full of legendary people, all of whom have their own voices. I dig them all for different reasons. I mean, the whole ‘who is the best’ thing is just an impossible question. Hell, who is the most beautiful person in the world? I can say these types of things and ask them, but none of it matters. Everybody has their own voice and can play great shit – and that’s what I heard. The track and the people speak for themselves. I can’t pick a favourite.”

A lot of people are referring to this as the We Are the World of guitar playing. That’s heavy praise.

“Once you get a lot of great people together for a good cause, all the bullshit goes away. If you’re doing this for nothing other than the cause and because you want to be a part of it – which is the way this was – it can’t go wrong. They came to us with the idea that this was a charity project, explained what it was, and that Mark put it together and wrote the piece.”

And how do you view and relate to it on a personal level, if at all?

“It sounds like something Mark would write, and he procured amazing people, which again leaves me very flattered. I made the cut among some amazing players who are friends and heroes. It’s a cause toward a very positive thing. Whenever I can give back, I do it. I’ve been blessed, so I need to give back. But need aside, I want to give back, too.”

• Going Home (Theme From Local Hero) by Mark Knopfler’s Guitar Heroes is out now.

The Eagles are one of the most successful bands to emerge from the '70s country-rock scene. The group’s mixture of styles can be heard on countless hit songs that are embedded in the very fabric of popular culture. Indeed it’s hard to imagine rock music without The Eagles. 

As well as their wealth of hits – including Take It Easy, One Of These Nights, Desperado, Lyin’ Eyes, and Tequila Sunrise – they are also responsible for some of the most iconic guitar performances ever committed to tape. 

The guitar solo on Hotel California is seen as one of the greatest of all time, and is the perfect example of two guitar players totally in sync with each other. But listen to the rest of the song – the rhythm parts, the acoustic picking, the harmony counter melodies. It’s just incredible. But it isn’t just Hotel California. The guitar plays a massive part, in both sound and appeal, throughout the band's immaculate catalogue of hit songs.

The Eagles were formed in 1971 by drummer and vocalist Don Henley and singer-guitarist Glenn Frey, with the band originally put together as the backing group for Linda Ronstadt. The original lineup also included Bernie Leadon on guitar and vocals, and bassist-vocalist Randy Meisner. Their blending of country and rock as well as their rich vocal harmonies helped to quickly establish the band’s unique sound. 

Guitarist Don Felder was brought into the fold for guest solos on the band's 1974 album, On The Border. This record has more of an overt rock sound, as it showcased Felder’s tasteful and feel-drenched lead playing, with the opening track Already Gone featuring a guitar duel between Felder and Frey.

Leadon’s final album with the band was One Of These Nights, which included the instrumental track Journey Of The Sorcerer, which would be used as the theme tune to the original television version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. 

Although the album was a huge success and included two of the band’s most popular songs, One Of These Nights and Take It To The Limit, Leadon felt the group’s new rockier appproach was not for him, so he left. 

Joe Walsh was brought in as Leadon’s replacement, and the pairing of Walsh and Felder took the band to new heights. Walsh added a more gritty rock element to The Eagles’ polished sound. 

This unrivaled guitar partnership recorded the band’s most popular material, with 1976’s Hotel California being the first album to feature Walsh, who made an instant impression with his performance on such songs as Life In The Fast Lane, Victim Of Love, and, of course, the title track itself, which not only became the band’s signature song, but also a textbook example of rock guitar done well.

Felder had a turbulent relationship with Henley and Frey, leaving once and then being fired after the band had reformed. He was replaced by guitarist Steuart Smith.

So what makes the guitar style of The Eagles so great? At its heart we have incredible songs with satisfying chord changes, and a wide variety of guitar-driven textures. One musical tool we see throughout is subtle tension and release, using slash chords within a progression. A chord move heard a lot in their early music is based around the open G, shifting up to C/G and resolving back to the G Major.

And then there’s slightly more elaborate chord harmony and movement; listen to the picking during the conclusion of the verses in In The City. Here there’s an open D Major chord which shifts up a tone to E/D, which is simple yet very effective. As well as chord rhythm we have riffs; Victim Of Love and Life In The Fast Lane both provide a more classic rock backdrop to their sound. Harmony plays a big part, too, and not just in the solos.

Listen to the intro to One Of These Nights, or the counter melodies in Hotel California; these harmony lines add movement and richness, not obtrusively, just perfectly orchestrated and arranged. There’s also a mixing of styles, including country and western, rock, bluegrass, and even reggae. So, from a guitar perspective, there’s a mixture of approaches that you wouldn’t normally hear in a rock band from this era. 

When it comes to lead guitar, once again we see lots of different approaches. Country lead work plays a big part in the early songs, mixing double-stops and pedal steel-style bends, mostly played by Leadon. Blues rock is also plainly in evidence, with the use of traditional Pentatonic licks but also with a focus on chord tones outlining the accompanying progressions.

Then there’s slide playing; Joe Walsh favours opening tunings for this approach, often choosing open E. And let’s not forget the twin leads, from intricate harmony lines to the classic arpeggios of Hotel California, played by Walsh and Felder in 3rds. 

In the following four examples we’ll examine different approaches to rhythm, looking at powerchord-based riffs and country-style parts. We’ll then look at two lead examples, with slide in open E tuning, plus a ‘guitar trading’ style solo that also includes that legendary arpeggio sound.

Dig back into your Eagles albums and listen again to the sheer brilliance of this great group. And, above all, have fun! 

Get the tone

Amp Settings: Gain 3, Bass 7, Middle 6, Treble 7, Reverb 3

Both Don Felder and Joe Walsh favoured a mixture of Gibson and Fender guitars and Fender amps during the classic era of The Eagles. Aim for a bright, slightly pushed clean tone for the country rhythm, while opting for a mildly driven tone for the more rock orientated rhythm parts. For the solos aim for a classic overdrive tone with an American edge. 

Example 1. PowerChord Riff

This example kicks off with a descending harmony riff idea, and illustrates how orchestrated harmony guitar is used by The Eagles as a way of setting up the feel and mood of a track. 

The main riff kicks in at bar 5 and is based around powerchords. Really pay attention to the space of the chords, as well as how the delay repeat fills in the gaps. 

We also have some ‘pushes’ during this riff, with chord changes appearing on the ‘off beat. I have have tipped the hat to one of my favourite examples of Joe Walsh’s rhythm playing with the use of the F to the G/F triads, which add interesting harmonic movement. 

Bar 13 introduces a tight 16th-note figure which is based around triads. Once again, pay attention to space, and keeping the rhythm tight.

Example 2. Country-Style Rhythm

Our next example looks at the band’s country style. This example kicks of with the G to the C/G slash chord but is embellished by sliding the the shape up a whole tone. Bars 5-8 introduce the A to D Major chords, and here we embellish with stylistic intervals including 6ths and 3rds. Following the repeat we conclude this section at bars 15-16 with some country-fueled bends. 

Bar 17 introduces the second half of our progression as well as changing the feel with the addition of Minor chords. This section uses country inspired string bends and intervals, as well as including fills based around C/E and D/F#. 

The track concludes with a classic harmonic move where we modulate from C Major to C Minor, before returning to G Major with a classic country bend.

Example 3. Slide Soloing

Here’s a Joe Walsh-style slide solo in open E tuning. Raise the fifth and fourth strings by a tone and the third string by a semitone. This makes it easier to play vertically as well as allowing the notes to blend into each other during phrases. Bars 1-8 kick off with us playing over the A-G Major chords, before resolving to C-D Major. 

Due to the tuning we can largely stay around a single fret! But what makes it interesting is how we phrase, sliding in and out of notes and adding tension by lowering either the 3rd or the 5th before resolving back to pitch. In bar 5 you’ll have to jump out of position to achieve higher chord tones. 

The solo concludes with a harmonic shift as we play over a tight E5 chord riff. Use the position of the E barre chord at the 12th fret as your point of reference. Concentrate more on the phrasing for this example.

Example 4. ‘Duel’ style Guitar solo

For our final example I’m emulating the sound of Don Felder and Joe Walsh jamming over a colourful chord progression. Although we are using predominantly B Minor Pentatonic, the focus is on chord tones, targeting notes that are relative to each chord of the progression. Pay attention to the pitch of your bends, especially at bar 3, bar 4, and bar 5. 

Also look out for the string bending lick at bar 7; for this lick you’ll bend up a whole tone on the first string, but release a pre-bend note on the second. This is a very tricky lick to master, so take your time practising it. 

The example concludes with a take on those legendary arpeggios, performed on the top three strings, so you’ll need to pay attention to your picking as well as the position shifts.

Mark Knopfler has put together an almighty assemblage of A-list guitar talent for an expanded all-star version of Going Home, his theme track to Local Hero, with the charity single opening with the late Jeff Beck’s final recording, and proceeds going to teenage cancer charities.

In sum, more than 60 rock legends, including 50-plus guitarists, were involved in the recording, which was produced by Guy Fletcher, with some choosing to track at British Grove Studios, in West London, others sending their parts in, and others, such as Pete Townshend of the Who, just appearing out of the blue with an electric guitar, an amp, and the look of a man who wanted to get down to business.

“Before I knew where I was, Pete Townshend had come into my studio armed with a guitar and an amp,” says Knopfler. “And that first Pete power chord…man, I tell you. We were in that territory, and it was just fantastic. And it went on from there.”

It did. The cast of players is ridiculous. Let’s take a deep breath and name a few names: Brian May, Tony Iommi, Slash, Joan Armatrading, Joan Jett, Buddy Guy, Hank Marvin, Bruce Springsteen, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Slash, Orianthi, Tom Morello, Peter Frampton, David Gilmour, Albert Lee, and Eric Clapton. There are many more.

Alongside Townshend, Clapton and Lee were among the first to contribute. Speaking of which, Slowhand was in top form. “Eric came in, played great, just one tasty lick after another,” says Knopfler.

The track will be previewed at Newcastle United’s home match against Wolverhampton Wanderers on March 2 (the team walk out to the Local Hero theme), before being released via Sony/BMG on March 15. A number of the performers will be at the match. 

Let’s name some more names. Also featured are Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, Joe Bonamassa, Nile Rodgers, Duane Eddy, Steve Lukather, Sheryl Crow, Joe Walsh, Mike Rutherford, and Ry Cooder. We also have a Beatles/Stones crossover event, with Ronnie Wood playing guitar, and Ringo Starr on the drums. Starr’s son, Zak Starkey, also plays drums. Oh, and Sting is playing bass guitar. It’s that sort of occasion. 

But it is Jeff Beck’s presence that makes this all the more poignant. This was the last guitar track he recorded before his death in January 2023. 

Knopfler described Beck’s contribution was “spellbinding.” While Fletcher says Beck's part was “absolutely meant to be. What he did with it, it just brings you to tears.”

Knopfler was taken aback by the response from his peers, and admits that they had to extend the track to fit everyone on it.

“What I really want to do, more than anything else, is just to thank each and every one for this sterling response,” he says. “I really had no idea that it was going to be like this. It hit Guy and I quite early on that we had to extend this piece somehow, to take in the number of people who joined in.”

Going Home is an instrumental but it does feature one of rock’s great frontmen, Roger Daltrey, playing harmonica. The single will benefit the Teenage Cancer Trust in the UK, which Daltrey is an honorary patron of, and the Teen Cancer America, which he co-founded with Townshend. 

The sheer scale of this Going Home charity redux production calls to mind Live Aid, when in 1985 the convening powers of Midge Ure and Bob Geldof got pop’s biggest stars to unite against famine in Africa for one of the defining pop-cultural moments of the decade. But has there ever been a track with so many star guitarists?

The cast certainly gave Sir Peter Blake plenty to work with for the cover, and he took a similar approach to his iconic Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album artwork, with images of all the guitarists – plus the likes of Local Hero stars Peter Riegert and Burt Lancaster – cut-out and arranged across a picture of the legendary Hank’s Guitar Shop on London’s Denmark Street.

The Mark Kopfler’s Guitar Heroes version of Going Home (the Theme from Local Hero) is available to preorder now, and is out March 15 on CD, 12” with etched b-side, and a deluxe CD/Blu-ray package including sleeve notes by Paul Sexton. Digital formats will include a Dolby Atmos mix of the track.

The track has already raised a six-figure sum following NeoFidelity Recordings’ sale of an Original Disc of the master recording.

In addition, eight guitars have been donated by leading guitar brands to support the initiative, each of which has been signed. One will be auctioned for the Teenage Cancer Trust at a private donor event on March 1. 

You can read the track’s full cast below, and find out more at Teenage Cancer Trust and Teen Cancer America.

Mark Knopfler's Guitar Heroes: 

Joan Armatrading, Jeff Beck, Richard Bennett, Joe Bonamassa, Joe Brown, James Burton, Jonathan Cain, Paul Carrack, Eric Clapton, Ry Cooder, Jim Cox, Steve Cropper, Sheryl Crow, Danny Cummings, Roger Daltrey, Duane Eddy, Sam Fender, Guy Fletcher, Peter Frampton, Audley Freed, Vince Gill, David Gilmour, Buddy Guy, Keiji Haino, Tony Iommi, Joan Jett, John Jorgenson, Mark Knopfler, Sonny Landreth, Albert Lee, Greg Leisz, Alex Lifeson, Steve Lukather, Phil Manzanera, Dave Mason, Hank Marvin, Brian May, Robbie McIntosh, John McLaughlin, Tom Morello, Rick Nielsen, Orianthi, Brad Paisley, Nile Rodgers, Mike Rutherford, Joe Satriani, John Sebastian, Connor Selby, Slash, Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr and Zak Starkey, Sting, Andy Taylor, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, Ian Thomas, Pete Townshend, Keith Urban, Steve Vai, Waddy Wachtel, Joe Louis Walker, Joe Walsh, Ronnie Wood, Glenn Worf, Zucchero.

One look at Kenny Passarelli's discography – which includes stops with Joe Walsh, Elton John, Dan Fogelberg, Stephen Stills and Hall & Oates – will tell you all you need to know: he was born to hold down the low-end.

“It all started with the bass guitar,” Passarelli tells Bass Player. “Once I understood it, be it traditional or fretless, I was hooked. But the funny thing is I was a classic trumpet player as a kid and was heading toward Julliard before I got bored. I had the chops, but that life never would have worked for me socially.”

Rock music did work for him, though, leading to his membership of Walsh’s band Barnstorm. “I never would have gotten the gig with Joe had it not been for Tommy Bolin,” Passarelli reveals. “We were good friends, and while we never got to do something together formally, he turned me on to the fact that Joe needed a bassist. The rest, as they say, is history.”

Walsh aside, Passarelli weaved his way into rock’s ‘70s tapestry, ending up on classic records such as Dan Foelberg's Souvenirs (1974), Stephen Stills’ Stills (1975), Elton John’s Rock of the Westies (1975) and Blue Moves (1976). As the ‘80s dawned, he stayed busy, holding down the rhythm for Hall & Oates.

Things tapered off later, though he did appear on Yusef ‘Cat Stevens’ Islam’s Roadsinger (2009) and Walsh’s Analog Man (2012). These days, while not actively recording, he’s got an off-Broadway play in the works, featuring the hits he lent a hand in recording.

What initially drew you to the bass guitar?

“It was the mid-’60s British Invasion. I had some high school buddies who were into guitar, and they had a drum set too. I’d go there to hang out, play guitar and even play drums.

“But nobody wanted to play bass, and I’d taught myself to play a bit on my parents’ four-string Spanish guitar by listening to The Animals, so that’s what started it.”

Can you recall your first real bass guitar?

“My first real bass was one of those Fender six-string basses [the Bass VI]. It differed from regular Fender basses because it was like an octave below.

“But my first four-string bass was one I borrowed, and that would have been some sort of Gibson, which I liked because all the British guys played them. Later, I became known for using a Fender P-Bass, but that didn’t happen until the ‘70s.”

From there, how did you hook up with Joe Walsh in Barnstorm?

“I had quit college and I was in a music store in Denver, Colorado, and there Tommy Bolin was. We became friends, and later I was doing some session work in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Tommy was working up there too.

“He said, ‘Hey, I’d like to do something together, but I’m too busy.’ Then he said, ‘There’s this guy named Joe Walsh who moved to Colorado with his wife, and he just quit the James Gang. He wants to start a new band, and I told him you’re the guy.’”

And what were your impressions of Joe?

“I flew back to Denver, borrowed my dad’s car, went up the mountains and met Joe. There was about two feet of snow, but we got there, went down to Joe’s basement, and he played me a few tracks in his makeshift, 24-track studio. I heard that, took the gig, and that was it. It was all thanks to that call from Tommy Bolin.”

How close did you come to doing something with Tommy?

“Tommy was a couple of years younger – he was a runaway when I met him in ’68. We were both young but became good friends. We went to New York together to be jazz musicians, and we got in front of Tony Williams before he formed the Lifetime band. We had a shot, but there was a lot of heroin, and I’m too much of a capitalist – if there was no money in it, I didn’t wanna do it.”

You started using your trademark Fender P-Bass while with Joe.

“When I went to play with Joe, I had recently purchased a ‘50s P-Bass with a mahogany neck. It was so retro and I fucking loved it! I got it when I thought I might be a jazz player, but it was perfect for Joe.

“But something happened with Joe that changed my career: he turned me on to this prototype with a maple neck and no stripes, just dots. It was a white Fender P-Bass, and it was fretless. So, a big part of the Barnstorm sound was that fretless bass, which Joe got me into. It changed everything, man.”

Is it true you co-wrote Rocky Mountain Way with Joe?

“Yes. But the guys in the band were pissed by that point because Joe had initially said Barnstorm was to be a band, not a solo thing. We were starting a band, but Joe was already signed to ABC because of the James Gang, and so it was implied that it was a Joe Walsh thing, when really it was a band.

“The songwriting was often done as a band, which was very important. And Joe was always very supportive of that with me – he said, ‘Write songs not just for the band, but because it will generate your future income.’ I appreciated that, and despite some of the issues with guys being upset, I always loved working with Joe.”

What led to the end of Barnstorm?

“It was a bummer, but things changed once the money came in. We did an extensive tour with Dan Fogelberg, and only Joe and I did the Fogelberg record after that, so the writing was on the wall for the band. And after those sessions, on the plane back to L.A., Joe told me, ‘I’m leaving my wife, and I’m breaking up the band, and I’m moving to L.A.’”

Is that how you ended up with Elton John?

“The thing with Elton was incredible – and there was no audition. He’d heard all my work, which was good because I was licking my wounds at the time, thinking, ‘Man, what the fuck do I do now?’

“Around this time, Elton fired his band and I was recommended to him. Elton’s management called me and flew me to Paris, and when we got off, we were off and running.

“It was a whirlwind because I didn’t know these people and I wasn’t a big fan. By that point I was an American rock guy, and Elton’s stuff was way different. But I had a blast. I couldn’t believe it – I had just gotten off the plane and was told, ‘You got the gig.’ We started rehearsing and recording, which led to some amazing things.”

Through all of this, did you maintain contact with Tommy Bolin?

“Honestly, no. This is sad, man. Tommy was like my brother, and we were so close, but I barely saw him after I joined Barnstorm, save for running into him on the road.

“He joined the James Gang, and we didn't see each other for a long time. And then he joined Deep Purple, and I finally saw him while I was with Elton in late ’76, and he looked so fucked up.

“Tommy was like a different guy by then. He was deeply in trouble, and he seemed so lost. Not long after, I got a call from Tommy’s manager, asking me to go to Japan with him. But I said, ‘No, I can’t do it.’

“He was too fucked up; and not long after, he overdosed and died. But I’ve got tapes of me and Tommy that would blow you away. It’s us with a drummer; we would have been a hell of a power trio.”

Would you consider releasing those tapes?

“The truth is I only have one copy on CD, man. Tommy’s family has the rights to the publishing so it’s up to them and his management. All this stuff is spread out everywhere, and it’s sad.

“Tommy was so amazing, but sadly, he got fucked in lots of different ways because he wasn’t paying attention. A lot of people don’ t know – and Tommy told me this – that he was basically illiterate, so he was prone to being fucked over.”

What are your lasting memories of Tommy?

“He was just like Hendrix, man. You’d go to his house, and no matter the time of day or what he was doing, the guy had a guitar strapped on. One minute he’d be learning John Coltrane; the next, he was rocking. 

“He was very special, innocent, and had no idea what people were doing to him. And once he got with Deep Purple, it was all over. They were heavy party guys, as was his last girlfriend, and he made a lot of mistakes with them.”

How did you become involved with Hall & Oates in the early ‘80s?

“I got a call from a friend, saying, ‘Hey, John Oates says you are playing at Madison Square Garden – he loves your playing.’ This was when Rich Girl was climbing the charts, and they needed a bass player to go on tour. But I had never seen those guys.

“I was convinced to go on tour with them; the deal was I’d be musical director and get a band together that was worthwhile. I said, ‘I’m not playing with these kids making $200 a week. They’re not good enough.’”

Why did things fall apart with Hall & Oates?

“I had done well financially for my age. I had a house in Boulder, Colorado, and I had an expensive apartment in New York City. But after things fell apart with Hall & Oates, I was out of a gig. Hall & Oates couldn’t pay for my retainer because they were broke.

“I remember seeing them walking out of their accountant’s office crying, after they found out all their money was spent by the people who were supposed to be helping them.”

I read somewhere that you auditioned for Foreigner in the ‘80s. Is that true?

“It is true. A friend told me Foreigner was auditioning bassists and said, ‘Hey Kenny, you’d be perfect!’ I agreed, so I got a hold of Mick Jones, and he asked me to come down and rehearse.

“Man, I killed it. I was sure I got that gig. You have to ask Mick what happened, but I was told management got involved, and things fell apart business-wise. And then, I was going to still be working with Daryl Hall, but he was pissed, and that was never the same. So that was it.”

In 2012, you worked with Joe again on his record Analog Man. Were there any talks of continuing onward together?

“We talked about it. It took a while, but Joe got in touch, saying, ‘I want to go back into the studio with the Barnstorm guys.’ We ended up meeting up in Joshua Tree, California, a few years ago. But nothing came of it – it wasn’t there.

“We hung out in the house together for around 11 days, but it didn’t work. The magic was gone. But I’m still in touch with Joe, and we’ll see what happens.”

Perhaps a lesser known bluesman to the wider guitar playing community, but by no means less successful than any of his peers, is Mr Chris Rea. Hailing from the UK, Chris has had a rich and successful career, with 25 solo albums and many hit singles to his name.

Originally from Middlesborough, the guitar legend actually started his music career quite late in life. Originally wanting to be a journalist, Chris bought his first guitar in his early 20s, and was inspired in particular by Charley Patton, a well-known slide player on whom Chris based his own approach. 

Rea was influenced by Blind Willie Johnson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Ry Cooder and Joe Walsh. He was also inspired by the Delta blues movement, in particular citing Muddy Waters.

But Rea’s sound and style are definitely more grounded in British rock, rather than blues in particular, and many of his records testify to that foundational sensibility. But he adopted many styles of music in his songwriting. 

Some records sound more classic rock while others have more Motown influence with extended 7th and 9th chords and lush string sections that might be more typically associated with artists like The Temptations. All the while, his distinctive slide guitar was used across all these records giving him his unique blues-pop sound.

In 1974 Rea managed to secure a solo recording deal with Magnet Records after fronting a few local bands, releasing his first single, So Much Love. This led him to further opportunities, including his contribution to Hank Marvin’s album, The Hank Marvin Guitar Syndicate, in 1977.

His own debut release came a year later, with Whatever Happened to Benny Santini? It peaked at No 49 on the Billboard Hot 200, and was there for 12 weeks. The lead single off this record, Fool (If You Think It’s Over) was his most successful song in the USA, reaching No 1 on the Adult Contemporary singles chart and No 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. Despite this success, he’s had no ambitions to tour in the US and still hasn’t worked there to this day.

Chris had a fair bit of success in the European charts, though, but his major breakthrough wouldn’t come until his 10th studio record in 1989. The Road To Hell was his first UK number 1 album, being certified 6x Platinum by the BPI in 2004.

Rea made a return to his blues roots after many years of success with more contemporary pop and rock sounding records. Therefore, for the purposes of our studies on Chris’s playing, we’ll look at examples of his slide guitar style first in a pop-rock context, and then in a more soulful, Motown-inspired track. Enjoy! 

Get the tone

Amp Settings: Gain 3, Bass 5, Middle 5, Treble 5, Reverb 4

Any guitar, whether single coils or humbuckers will do the job nicely. You’ll need a slide for these solos, so a guitar with a medium action height will benefit you here. A clean amp on the edge of break-up with a touch of reverb will put you squarely in the sonic ballpark. Either neck or bridge pickup will do the trick, as long as you get a clear, singing tone.

Study One

This solo is a great example of Rea’s style from his pop-rock years. Chris plays everything (including regular lead guitar) in open E tuning, but we are in standard tuning here. The solo is constructed mostly around triads that contain notes all on the same frets, so as to accommodate the slide.

Study Two

This solo is an example of Chris’s playing in a more soulful context. Notice that each idea is a development of what came before. We use the slide to essentially harmonise the original melodic idea using triads to create a choir-like effect that sounds airy and open, unlike conventional guitar strumming.

As far as guitarists go, legendary power trio the James Gang are most associated with Joe Walsh, the iconic six-stringer who would go on to find international fame with the Eagles. Before Walsh, though, James Gang's electric guitar slot was occupied by Glenn Schwartz.

Schwartz's story is a fascinating one – after he left the James Gang in 1967, he eventually joined a religious commune, and would only surface again on the music scene decades later, playing a uniquely raw and singular strain of blues that never caught on commercially, but proved to be significantly influential, particularly to a young Dan Auerbach.

Shortly before his passing in 2018, Schwartz began collaborating with Auerbach, with whom he would go on to record a number of songs.

One of those tunes, Daughter of Zion, also features Walsh, and appears on a new compilation from Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound label titled Tell Everybody! (21st Century Juke Joint Blues From Easy Eye Sound).

Dating back to Schwartz's days playing religious music, Daughter of Zion certainly makes his influence on the Black Keys clear. Outfitted with a monster groove, the song features hypnotic, Stones-like interplay between the three guitarists, who look to compliment one another with their licks, rather than compete for attention.

Auerbach himself isn't coy about the musical debt he owes to Schwartz, calling him his “biggest rock 'n' roll inspiration.“ 

“There would be no Black Keys without Glenn Schwartz, that's for sure,“ Auerbach said in a statement. “I really miss him. He was a sweet man who loved the lord and loved music so much. I really respected his conviction.“

Set for an August 11 release, Tell Everybody! also features tunes from other underrated guitar legends like RL Boyce, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, and Robert Finley, alongside younger players such as Nat Myers and Auerbach himself.

To preorder the album, visit Easy Eye Sound's website.

In 2013, Foo Fighters set out to make a record unlike any they had made before.

The album – which, under the name Sonic Highways, would be released the following year – features eight tracks that were cut in eight different legendary studios, with location-specific guests contributing to each song. 

Perhaps the most legendary of the studios the band chose was Rancho De La Luna in Joshua Tree, California, where they tracked the song, Outside. To add some mojo to that particular tune, the band invited a man who knows a thing or two about West Coast guitar rock, Joe Walsh.

All of the Foo Fighters were fans of the Eagles electric guitar hero, but nobody in the band – or, perhaps, the world – was as big a Walsh fan as the band's late drummer, Taylor Hawkins. 

To say that Hawkins was thrilled about Walsh's guest spot would be quite an understatement. When his hero arrived at Rancho De La Luna and set to work on his solo, Hawkins – seated mere feet away from Walsh on a couch – could barely contain his enthusiasm. The touching scene was, thankfully, captured for posterity in the 2014 TV mini-series that chronicled Sonic Highways' creation. It can be seen below starting at around the 5:50 mark. 

No doubt inspired by the desert setting himself, Walsh – Stratocaster in hand – concocted a beautifully atmospheric solo for the song, slowing things down and using his impeccable phrasing, articulation, and vibrato to get incredible milage out of each note.

At one point, during a gap in tracking, Hawkins – with a sheepish grin – says to the room, "This is my new favorite Foo Fighters song."

As Walsh's first take on the solo gets played back to the room, Hawkins is overcome to the point that he can barely sit up straight.

It was good, too, that Hawkins was there to hear that first take, because Walsh didn't need another one. Towards the end of the playback, the guitar hero begins to nod in confidence at producer Butch Vig, who exclaims – at the take's end – "That's it, it's done!"

Hawkins came to the studio that day sporting a baseball cap adorned with the logo of the James Gang, Walsh's pre-Eagles power trio. He appreciated all of Walsh's work, but was a true-blue James Gang fanatic, even naming a song on Red Light Fever – the second album Hawkins released with his solo group, the Coattail Riders – after the band.

It was all too appropriate, and bittersweet, then, that the first Taylor Hawkins tribute concert – held on September 3, 2022 at Wembley Stadium in London, six months after the drummer's tragic death at the age of 50 – played host to the James Gang's first performance in 16 years.

“If you’ve ever seen a picture of Taylor Hawkins, most likely he was wearing a fucking hat that said James Gang on it,” Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl told the London crowd that evening by way of an introduction to the band.

“Taylor was like my little brother who was always asking questions,” Walsh said in a statement prior to the concert. “He had an insatiable curiosity about playing hard and loud like we used to do in the ’70s.

“We spoke a lot about being in a three-piece, how we recorded James Gang Rides Again [the band's 1970 album] and what life was like for a musician before he was even born. He thought I was pretty cool and the feeling was mutual.”

A team of A-list musicians have teamed up with a group of Afghan refugees currently living in Pakistan to record a defiant cover of Tom Petty’s anthemic 1989 track, I Won’t Back Down.

Though the collective of musicians boasts some impressive names – including Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh, bassist Timothy B. Schmit and former Guns N’ Roses drummer Matt Sorum – the star of the show is the group of young Afghan girls, who are living in Pakistan having recently escaped Taliban rule.

With a handful of groups armed with a suite of acoustic guitars – and others tasked with providing vocal harmonies – the young musicians help transform the rendition from a run-of-the-mill cover to a far more powerful performance courtesy of their collective six-string strumming en masse.

Country singer Blake Shelton completes the remotely assembled ensemble, with Walsh also taking the opportunity to treat the track to a particularly piercing guitar solo with a healthy dose of Tele twang.

The message of the song, which is concerned with defiance and strength in the face of adversity or oppression, is especially poignant in this case, given the fact that the musicians seen in the video have been forced to flee their home country.

The Afghan musicians seen in the video are beneficiaries of The Miraculous Love Kids – a charity founded by Lanny Cordola that “served as Afghanistan’s only school of music where guitar lessons were taught to war-torn, poverty-stricken girls and young women”.

However, following the ascension of Taliban rule in the country, “the guitar lessons, the recordings, the videos, and the hope for a better life” were all removed.

According to Cordola, I Won’t Back Down became an anthem for those who fled the country in their pursuit of freedom, justice, equality and peace.

“It’s not only for the girls and women of Afghanistan but for all oppressed people of the world,” Cordola said of the song. “As Tom Petty so powerfully wrote” ‘You can stand me up at the gates of hell but I won’t back down…’”

“May music always bring you girls the inspiration and connection to a higher power that delivers you strength and joy,” commented Walsh. “I’m grateful to have shared this moment with you all. Peace and love.”

Schmit offered his own praise for the charity’s work, commenting, “Lanny is a saint for being a part of these girls’ lives by helping them move forward through music. Even after all they’ve experienced in their young lives, you can see and feel their beautiful life forces shining through.”

It’s not the first time The Miraculous Love Kids have teamed up with high-profile artists for a charity single. Almost a year ago to this day, the nonprofit enlisted Tom Morello, Nandi Bushell, Julien Baker and more for a rendition of God Help Us All.

To find out more, head over to The Miraculous Love Kids.

Few guitar/player partnerships are as iconic as Jimmy Page and the Gibson Les Paul. Indeed, the Led Zeppelin legend is synonymous with the single-cut, having switched to the ranks of Gibson after almost exclusively using a Fender Telecaster for the band’s debut album.

Though somewhat similar in ergonomic design – both have single-cut bodies, after all – the differences between the Telecaster and Les Paul are night and day, with distinctions in almost every department, from body and neck material to electronics and hardware.

Writing on social media, Page recently took a deep dive into these tonal and functional differences, and revealed why such contrasting specs ultimately convinced him to permanently switch to the Les Paul.

And, while doing so, he revealed how Joe Walsh helped him along the way, with the James Gang icon once selling him the Les Paul Standard that went on to construct the “sonic texture” of Led Zeppelin II.

In a lengthy statement posted to Instagram, Page reflected on his friendship with Walsh, saying the pair’s close connection can be traced back to his Yardbird days in the mid ‘60s, when Walsh – then part of James Gang – would come to watch the band when he was in town.

It was during this era that Walsh introduced Page to a particular Les Paul Standard, which soon usurped the Fender Telecaster as the young Led Zep maestro’s go-to guitar.

“Back then, Joe brought a Les Paul Standard along to a Fillmore East gig on the first leg of the American tour and said, ‘You’ve got to have this guitar,’” Page explained. “I said, ‘Well, I don’t need it, Joe, I’ve got a Les Paul Custom.’”

Page was already familiar with the Les Paul’s potential, as he reveals: “I knew that Les Paul guitars were very user-friendly, insomuch as they put out a lot of level when you plugged them into the amplifier because they had a double-coil pickup, whereas the Telecaster had a single-coil pickup.

“With the sort of volume that I now needed to put out in live situations, although I was using controlled feedback, I found that the Telecaster was starting to squeal a bit.”

Indeed, this erratic nature of the Tele at high volumes – as well as its inability to fully tame feedback – was what initially put Page on to the Les Paul.

He continued, “I had to be very careful about where I was standing because of the unsympathetic feedback. With the Les Paul you’d get feedback through the amp and speakers, but you could control it more easily and work with it. You could actually change the literal note and frequency that was coming back on the feedback.

“I just really enjoyed playing Joe’s guitar, and so I agreed with him that maybe I should buy his Les Paul Standard after all.”

Page enjoyed it so much, in fact, that he went on to use Walsh’s Les Paul on some of Led Zeppelin’s biggest hits, from Whole Lotta Love to What Is and What Should Never Be. Not only that, the Les Paul helped shape the entire sound of Led Zep’s second album, just as the Fender Telecaster had influenced their debut record a few months before.

“I played the Les Paul on Whole Lotta Love and What Is and What Should Never Be and that decided it for me: it was definitely going to be the Les Paul from then on,” Page concluded. “I always wanted to make a change for each album sonically and that was my first decision for Led Zeppelin II.

“Like I had built Led Zeppelin around the Fender Telecaster, I built the second album around the sonic texture of the Les Paul Standard. Neither Joe Walsh nor I realized at the time just what an important thing he had done by coming along with that Les Paul.”

Walsh himself has spoken about the Les Paul that ended up in Page’s hands on previous occasions. Speaking to Cory Wong’s Wong Notes podcast, Walsh recalled how the Led Zeppelin legend once told him back in the ’60s the “Telecaster ain’t cutting it for” him anymore.

“Jimmy and I became friends,” Walsh said. “Jimmy said to me, ‘Look, The Yardbirds is great, and I played on so many records…’ He played on so many sessions. If you look up what he played on, you’ll be amazed.

“But he said, ‘This Telecaster ain’t cutting it for Led Zeppelin. And I don’t know what to do.' Now, Les Pauls virtually didn’t exist in England at the time,” Walsh added. “They didn’t hit popularity yet, and they were pretty easy to find because they hadn’t been discovered – and they didn’t cost very much.

“After the fact, when that became the guitar for rock ‘n’ roll, the rest is history. But he said, ‘I got to get a double-coil situation and I’ve looked for Les Paul, there aren’t any in England. Do you know any way you could help me get one? Because Led Zeppelin ain’t making it with a Telecaster.’”

That guitar, according to Walsh, is Page’s “Number One”: “The body of Led Zeppelin music is that Les Paul that I gave him.”

Though there are some discrepancies between the two recollections – each guitarist insists the other approached them about the Les Paul, and Walsh fails to mention Page’s original Les Paul Custom – the outcome of how Page defected to the ranks of Les Pauls remains ultimately unchanged.

Though it's often thought that Page played a Fender Telecaster for the entirety of Led Zeppelin, there was one other guitar he used: a Gibson Flying V, which featured on the band's cover of You Shook Me.

Dave Grohl was a special guest at Joe Walsh’s VetsAid fundraiser last night (Sunday November 13) and took the opportunity to drop in and perform with two iconic groups: the Breeders and The James Gang.

The Foo Fighters’ frontman pitched up on guitar and vocals with the Breeders for raucous interpretation of frontwoman Kim Deal’s iconic Pixies’ track, Gigantic. The performance saw Deal (who usually plays a rhythm guitar role in Breeders) swap back to bass temporarily, leaving guitar duties to bassist Josephine Wiggs and her regular foil, lead player Kelley Deal. 

Grohl, meanwhile, showed up wielding his distinctive signature Gibson DG-335 (itself based on Trini Lopez’s 1967 signature guitar) and, amusingly, stole the song’s iconic opening wails from under Deal’s nose.

Grohl also got the chance to appear during the James Gang’s set during standout hit Funk #49 – a favor returned, given Joe Walsh reformed the group for appearances at both the LA and London stints of the Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins tribute shows. This time the Foo Fighters’ man was seated on the drum throne of a second kit on a riser behind the group’s own sticksman, Jimmy Fox. 

Fan shot footage of both performances has since surfaced and seems to show Walsh in particularly fine form leading the percussive, funk-laden breakdown. 

The night was the latest of Walsh’s VetsAid shows. The fundraiser was established in 2017 and has since raised over $2,000,000 for a variety of veteran’s charities. 

The 2022 event was pitched as an ‘all-Ohio’ line-up, featuring solely groups who have a connection to the state, including Nine Inch Nails, the James Gang (which Walsh put together during a formative period in Cleveland), The Breeders and The Black Keys. Grohl, meanwhile, originally hails from Warren, Ohio. 

Check out the footage of both performances above and head to the VetsAid site to learn more about the event.

As one of the most iconic songs of all time, featuring one of the greatest guitar solos, it’s fair to say the Eagles’ Hotel California has a special place in music history, and by extension, so does the gear the band used to record the 1976 effort.

While most people would be in awe of those instruments, including the purple Fender Jazzmaster electric guitar that Joe Walsh used to play the song’s verses, the same can’t be said for Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale, who bought the iconic offset with little regard for either Hotel California or the Eagles.

Speaking to Guitar World's Amit Sharma for a forthcoming interview, Rossdale recalled rather matter-of-factly how he come to own the Fender Jazzmaster, and explained that – owing to the fact he didn’t “give a fuck about the Eagles” – he was less than impressed when Walsh voluntarily signed it for him.

“I bought that guitar from Vintage and Rare, this fantastic guitar store in London,” Rossdale explained. “As a kid I used to go in there with no money. I was one of those annoying customers who would never buy anything, so when I signed a record deal, I went there and bought a guitar. I tried every guitar in there. The Jazzmaster was in the window, funnily enough.

“I knew I loved the look of the purple Jazzmaster in the window but I wouldn’t let myself buy the first thing I saw – I had to try every guitar in the store,” he continued. “I came back to the Jazzmaster and it sounded great.”

Though the Vintage and Rare salesperson probably thought Rossdale would be further encouraged to buy the guitar knowing it had once belonged to Walsh, it turned out the Bush frontman couldn’t have cared less.

“They told me Joe Walsh had previously owned it,” Rossdale stated. “I’m English, so who cares about the Eagles, really? I don’t give a fuck about the Eagles, but I can respect them even if I don’t listen to them. Everyone else was freaking out about it, but it didn’t really mean much to me.”

After buying the Jazzmaster, Rossdale then decided to get it verified by Walsh himself, though mainly for financial reasons.

“I was actually being managed by [the Eagles'] manager for a long time,” he recalled. “So when I met Joe, I asked if he knew this guitar. He picked it up and started playing it, and then said, ‘Yeah, I actually used it for the verses on Hotel California!’ 

“So I got him to sign a bit of paper to prove it and I told my kids to sell it the day I die – because I’d used it on [Bush's debut album] Sixteen Stone, which has some history, but the massive bit of history is the fact that it had been used on Hotel California,” Rossdale added. “And of course I respect that, even if I don’t care about it personally.”

However, while the offset was with Walsh for verification, the Eagles guitarist thought he’d up the value of the instrument even further by signing the body – something that didn’t go down too well with the Jazzmaster’s new owner.

Rossdale went on, “Here’s something I’ve never told anyone and it’s brilliant. I sent the guitar over for Joe to verify and look over with his tech, who has probably been with him since forever. And he sent it back signed with his name on the actual guitar. 

“As soon as I saw it, I had to get that shit off. I’m a professional musician! I don’t give a shit, this is just for my kids to sell when I’m dead… wake up, I don’t care! [laughs]”

Bush’s new album, The Art of Survival – which may feature the now-signature-less Fender Jazzmaster – arrives today (October 7).

Eagles’ Joe Walsh has recruited Nine Inch Nails, Dave Grohl and The Black Keys to perform at VetsAid 2022, the annual festival organized by his non-profit veterans organization VetsAid.

The festival – which is due to take place from 6PM on Sunday, November 13 at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio – will also see a performance from the newly reunited James Gang, of which Walsh is a member alongside Jimmy Fox and Dale Peters. Dayton alt-rockers The Breeders will also perform.

This year’s VetsAid aims to curate an all-Ohio bill, with net proceeds going to Ohio veterans and their families via a carefully vetted list of charities. Both James Gang and Nine Inch Nails are originally from Cleveland, while The Black Keys are from Akron, and Dave Grohl was born in Warren.

• The secrets behind Joe Walsh's tone on the James Gang's Funk #49

“It all started in Ohio,” Walsh says. “Picking up my first guitar as a kid in Columbus set me on a musical journey to Kent State, Cleveland and then the world. Now it is a great privilege and humbling opportunity for me to share the stage once again with my original James Gang buddies and with this absolutely incredible group of Ohio rock legends like Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, The Black Keys, The Breeders and Dave Grohl.

“I believe in Ohio and look forward to celebrating our musical legacy while honoring our veterans with VetsAid 2022.”

Joe Walsh’s support of the US military comes from a place close to home. His father, Robert, was a flight instructor for the Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star in the United States Air Force, and died on active duty in Okinawa when Walsh was just 20 months old.

This year marks the sixth installment of VetsAid, after its inaugural event in 2017. Since then, the festival has seen performances from Zac Brown Band, Gary Clark Jr., Keith Urban, Walsh’s Eagles bandmate Don Henley, Chris Stapleton, James Taylor, Haim, ZZ Top, Doobie Brothers, Sheryl Crow, Eddie Vedder, James Hetfield and more.

At the time of writing, VetsAid has disbursed over $2 million in grants. The nonprofit will continue to offer grants in 2022, but this year only to organizations based in Ohio. Tickets for VetsAid 2022 are available now via the VetsAid website.

The first run of musical residencies on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will include week-long appearances from St. Vincent, Joe Walsh and James Taylor.

Each of the artists will collaborate with the show’s house band, Stay Human across a week of shows, beginning with St. Vincent (aka Annie Clark) – who makes her first appearance tonight (July 25). Taylor will sit in the following week (beginning August 1) and Walsh then takes over from August 8. 

As Deadline points out, the move reprises a format that has proven successful on James Corden’s The Late Late Show, which also airs on CBS – though this marks the first time that any of the three artists announced have played with a house band. 

It’s a pretty stellar opening line-up and exactly the sort of thing you’d expect, given the draw of the veteran host. Nonetheless, Colbert’s house band Stay Human has some form of its own. 

As regular viewers will know, the ensemble – first selected by Colbert back in 2015 – features guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Louis Cato and is fronted by band leader and vocalist/pianist Jon Batiste. The band have previously collaborated with Wynton Marsalis, Nas, Billy Joel, Cory Wong and Chad Smith, to name a small but eclectic selection. 

Batiste also worked with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross scoring the 2020 Disney Pixar film Soul. The trio later received an astonishing awards haul for their efforts, including a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, a Grammy and an Oscar.

Finally, this Reznor link brings us back to St. Vincent, who this week released a filthy and thundering cover of Nine Inch Nails track Piggy, featuring Dave Grohl on drums. You can listen to that above. It is menacing, messy, and has the sort of bruised post-party sheen of Clark’s most rock-oriented material. 

Either way, we imagine she’ll have plenty to chat about with Batiste on set at The Late Show…

For this lesson, I’ve gone with what is essentially a two-chord vamp (A7 and D), taking a blues-rock approach with nods to Joe Bonamassa, Gary Moore and a little bit of Joe Walsh.

It is unashamedly pentatonic, with a few b5s to make it technically the ‘blues scale’ – plus a couple of brief triads and descending A Dorian run at the end. 

That said, I was not thinking in those terms as I played. The pentatonic and CAGED shapes exist within the same spaces on the fretboard, and, if you link the positions together, it’s easy to find yourself playing a linear scale pattern like that last one. (Initially, I had felt this unimaginative and was going to go for another take, but then realised it’s quite a good demo of that last point…) 

Aside from the notes/patterns used, a major consideration is the rhythm. It would be perfectly possible to play an interesting line with just one or two notes – for a while, at least. Perhaps the boldest rhythmic contrast here is the use of short staccato passages and longer sustained notes side by side, though things do get a little more ‘70s cop show’ in Example 2! 

It isn’t really until halfway through the solo that I start making use of the drive and sustain available with this kind of tone, with some held high notes/vibrato. You might want to consider what sort of vibrato works for you best: fast Paul Kossoff, introduced selectively like Gary Moore, or wide and aggressive like Zakk Wylde. The best way to assess these aspects of your own playing is to record and listen back. Enjoy! 

Example 1

Initially, I was thinking here of Joe Walsh at the beginning of Funk #49. This is classic shape 1 A minor pentatonic, which fits okay over the A7 as long as you don’t labour the C natural or bend it slightly sharp. 

At bar 4, I change position for the D major chord. Though I’m not playing the whole chord here, it is the lower part of the shape Hendrix uses in Wind Cries Mary. This happens again later, so don’t worry if it isn’t obvious.

Example 2

Back to the shape 1 A minor pentatonic for some doublestops and staccato rhythms, sliding down to the adjacent shape 5 at the 3rd/5th frets. You may notice the chromatic slide in bar 3. 

To be honest, this wasn’t really intentional, but that’s how it’s come out so that’s what I’ve transcribed! Be sure to exaggerate/emphasise the staccato phrases for the full effect – and lose a little gain if necessary.

Example 3

Once you internalise the patterns, this kind of position shift isn’t difficult. Starting from the shape 5 mentioned in Example 2, a bold slide up to the 9th fret leads to a restatement of the Jimi-style D chord I mentioned earlier. 

Knowing there is a brief C chord here, I’ve grabbed a nearby C major triad then, in the heat of the moment, a D major as a passing thing. From here, it’s back to pentatonic with a series of slides and doublestops, for which you’ll need to organise your fingers carefully.

Example 4

A brief excursion to the highest register before using the third and fourth strings to shift all the way back to where we started: the shape 1 A minor pentatonic. However, we don’t stay there long, either. 

The palm-muted A Dorian run might not be the most melodic choice, but it does demonstrate another option at your disposal. This would also run neatly back into chord accompaniment in a band context.

Hear it here

James Gang – James Gang Rides Again

This 1970 classic from James Gang kicks off with Funk #49, from which I briefly borrow the repicked bend for the beginning of my own solo. It’s also well worth checking out Joe Walsh’s funky blues-rock riffing and solo phrasing on tracks such as Asshton Park, Woman and Thanks. 

Pay particular attention to the way certain chord inversions can integrate into the pentatonic‑based riffs and phrases; there are very few ‘straight’ powerchords to be found.

Joe Bonamassa – Dust Bowl

Joe has always straddled the gap between British Invasion-style blues, and classic and modern rock. Check out the title track for blues with a soul/funk tinge, plus some atmospheric textures.

Elsewhere, try You Better Watch Yourself for a more traditional blues shuffle – though, as ever, with lots of useful ideas worth lifting! Finally, check out The Whale That Swallowed Jonah to hear how Joe brings a blues sensibility to a less obviously ‘blues-based’ chord progression.

Gary Moore – Blues and Beyond

Gary Moore’s combination of rip-roaring technique and melodic awareness is unmatched, even in his ’70s/fusion days, which saw him integrate jazz lines into his repertoire with the same flair. 

There’s so much to enjoy in this collection: check out his fiery phrasing on Stormy Monday, some more soulful lines on That’s Why I Play the Blues, and, finally, hear him bring a Jeff Beck vibe to The Prophet.

Deacon Frey, the son of late Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey, has departed the band after filling in for his late father for the past four-and-a-half years.

In a statement posted to the Eagles’ website, the band confirmed Deacon will be leaving the iconic rock outfit to “forge his own path”, and said they’ll “support him in whatever he wished to pursue in the years ahead”.

The group also went on to say the door will remain open for Deacon, should he wish to join the Eagles onstage for future gigs.

“Deacon Frey has devoted the past four-and-a-half years to carrying on his father’s legacy and, after some weeks of reflection, he now feels that it is time for him to forge his own path,” the statement read. “We understand completely, and we support him in whatever he wishes to pursue in the years ahead. 

“In the wake of his dad’s demise,” the band continued, “Deacon, at age 24, did an extraordinary thing by stepping from relative anonymity into the very public world of his father’s long illustrious career. 

“We are grateful to Deacon for his admirable efforts and we wish him well as he charts his future. Deacon’s Eagles Family will always be here to surround him with love, support and goodwill, and he is always welcome to join us onstage at any future concerts, if he so desires. 

“We hope our fans will join us in wishing Deacon the very best as he moves into the next phase of his career.”

Glenn Frey, who co-founded Eagles in 1971 with Randy Meisner, Bernie Leadon and Don Henley, passed away in 2016 at the age of 67. His son, along with Vince Gill, was drafted in to fill Glenn’s place in 2017, and has been touring with Eagles ever since.

There’s been no word if a replacement guitarist will be recruited, meaning the current lineup – comprising Gill, Henley, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit – will continue operating as a quartet for the foreseeable future.

The band are set to continue their 2022 tour, which will resume on April 19 at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio. The 18-date stint around Europe and North America will conclude on June 26 at Hyde Park in London.

For a full list of tour dates, head over to the Eagles’ website.

Back in late 1971, Joe Walsh – the electric guitar master who would go on to play with the Eagles – grew tired of being the frontman and primary songwriter of his band, the James Gang, and formed a new group, Barnstorm.

Primarily featuring Walsh, Joe Vitale on drums and Kenny Passarelli on bass guitar, Barnstorm recorded two albums – a self-titled effort in 1972, and 1973's The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get – but had disbanded by 1974. 

Aside from a one-off onstage reunion in 2017 – at their induction into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame – Barnstorm have been quiet, as their members have pursued a multitude of other projects, for almost 50 years. According to producer David Catching though, that may be about to change.

In a statement endorsing Audix Mics, Catching – who owns the Rancho De La Luna studio in Joshua Tree, California, and has also played guitar with Eagles of Death Metal, Queens of the Stone Age and Earthlings? – offhandedly mentioned that Walsh and Barnstorm recorded "the first album they’ve done in 50 years" at Rancho De La Luna in 2021.

“I’ve been a fan of Audix mics forever,” Catching wrote in the statement. “But it’s not just me. One of the better stories I can tell you is that in May and June of 2021 we had Joe Walsh in here with the original Barnstorm, recording the first album they’ve done in 50 years.

"The producer was Bill Szymczyk, who did a bunch of the original Eagles records," Catching continued. "Bill is incredibly famous and accomplished and can have any equipment he wants, and he told me he was bringing a ‘handful’ of mics to the studio. So, I thought he was going to bring in vintage Neumanns and C12s and that level of crazy stuff. But for drums, he showed up with [Audix] D2s, D4s, a D6 for the kick, and a few i5s as general instrument mics. 

"We had Joe Vitale as the drummer, who is one of the greatest, and the Audix mics with virtually no processing were the go-to drum sound. Man, it sounded so good.”

Frustratingly, Catching's anecdote contains all the information we currently have on this theoretical third Barnstorm album, but we'll update you with more if and when we have it.

Always a busy man, Walsh is also set to soon appear on Brother Johnny – the all-star Johnny Winter tribute album that's slated for release in April – and recently made a guest appearance in Ringo Starr's new "Drumming and Creative Collaboration" MasterClass course.

Johnny Winter, one of the all-time giants of blues guitar, passed away back in 2014.

Now, his brother, Edgar Winter, has assembled a jaw-dropping all-star cast to pay tribute to his brother's musical legacy in the form of a tribute album, Brother Johnny.

Featuring 17 tracks hand-picked by Edgar and producer Ross Hogarth – including two new Edgar Winter originals – the album is set for an April 15 release via Quarto Valley Records. 

About that all-star cast, though. For Brother Johnny, Edgar Winter recruited a simply astonishing guest list that includes Joe Bonamassa, Doyle Bramhall II, Ringo Starr, Derek Trucks, Robben Ford, Billy Gibbons, David Grissom, Joe Walsh, Phil X, Taylor Hawkins, Warren Haynes, Steve Lukather, Michael McDonald, Keb' Mo', John McFee, Doug Rappoport, Bobby Rush, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Waddy Wachtel.

The album's first single – a cover of Chuck Berry's rock 'n' roll standard, Johnny B. Goode, featuring some red-hot electric guitar work from David Grissom and vocals from Winter and Joe Walsh – can be heard below. 

Edgar chose Johnny B. Goode due to its significance in his and Johnny's story. As children (Johnny was 14 or 15, according to Edgar) the Winters won their first talent contest in Beaumont, Texas with a cover of the Berry classic. The prize? A chance to make their own record, an opportunity that led to the recording of the duo's first single, the Johnny-penned School Day Blues.

Edgar was first approached about making a tribute album for his brother almost immediately following Johnny's passing on July 16, 2014 in Zurich, Switzerland.

“Many people immediately started trying to convince me to do a Johnny Winter tribute album," he said. "But I was totally devastated, and the timing just didn't feel right to me. It wasn’t until after I completed the Rock ‘N’ Blues Fest, a tour we were meant to do together with our respective bands, that the idea of a tribute record started to take form.”

“I had naturally expected the whole thing to be cancelled," Edgar continued. "But much to my surprise, the promoters begged me to go on with the tour as planned, asking me to headline. The first night, after playing Frankenstein, I closed the show with Johnny B. Goode, Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo, and Jumpin' Jack Flash, dedicating the end of the set to Johnny.

“I had anticipated the tour to be very emotional, perhaps sad, and possibly difficult, but playing those songs turned out to be a great source of strength and comfort to me. Everyone on the tour was so kind and supportive, getting up to jam, and it became a kind of tradition. 

"There was such an overwhelming outpouring of love and respect for Johnny, I began to realize it was not just business people sensing an opportunity here; it was Johnny's true, loyal, and devoted fans and our fellow musicians, many of whom are on this record, who wanted to see this happen as well.

“After the tour, and over the following years as talk of a tribute album continued, my wife Monique, whose intuition I trust more than my own, said, 'I think you have to make this album, both for Johnny, for yourself, and for the world. You owe that acknowledgement to your older brother. If it weren’t for him, you wouldn’t be where you are today. There’s no need to worry about it. If it’s meant to happen, it will.'" 

For more info on the album, head on over to Edgar Winter's website.

Ringo Starr has become the latest music artist to join online learning platform MasterClass.

Teaching Drumming and Creative Collaboration, the Beatles legend's new 10-part course takes students through a host of lessons detailing the essentials of a drum kit, playing in bands, how to approach songwriting, how to connect with an audience and more.

The course – which clocks in at almost two hours in total – will offer fans “unprecedented insight and access into Ringo's life and career”, adding that “members will leave this class inspired to explore creative collaboration and equipped to start their drumming journey and forge a personal relationship with music.”

But perhaps most intriguingly, the course rounds off with an all-star jam session featuring Toto's Steve Lukather and Eagles' Joe Walsh, two former members of Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band. The jam also features keyboardist Jim Cox, bass guitar legend Nathan East, and drummers Gregg Bissonette and Jim Keltner.

“Ringo is an international icon,” says David Rogier, founder and CEO of MasterClass. “As a member of the bestselling band of all time, he candidly shares a behind-the-scenes look into the trajectory of his life as a musician, teaching members how to forge a personal relationship with music and instrumentation.”

“If I can give any piece of advice, it’s to love what you’re doing,” adds Starr. “In my class, I will not only teach members how to get started with drums but share how to bring creativity into anything they are passionate about and inspire them to work at something they love.”

Ringo Starr's course is available now on MasterClass. An annual membership to the platform is $180, and gives you unlimited access to over 150 other experts' courses with topics ranging from cooking to acting to sport. And for a limited time, MasterClass is offering two memberships for the price of one. For more information, head to MasterClass.

The Beatles drummer is just the latest music artist to add his name to MasterClass's increasingly large portfolio of teachers. Earlier this month, thrash legends Metallica partnered with the platform to teach being in a band.

Earlier this year, Eagles guitar maestro Joe Walsh teamed up with PRS to create a new signature Limited Edition McCarty 594 Singlecut electric guitar.

Though that guitar served as the primary catalyst for Walsh joining Paul Reed Smith for a recent episode of the master luthier's Long Distance YouTube series, the two ended up discussing a number of other topics, including the legendary solos to the Eagles' 1976 mega-hit, Hotel California.

Now, if you've spent more than, say, 15 minutes listening to classic rock radio in your life, Hotel California needs no introduction. The song is approaching a billion streams on Spotify, and its climactic dual guitar break – courtesy of Walsh and Don Felder – was ranked by Guitar World readers as the 5th greatest guitar solo of all time earlier this year.

As memorable as those solos are though, they were not, as it turns out, composed beforehand. 

When asked by Smith, "How much of the solos in Hotel California were thought of ahead of time and how much of it was in the moment, playing melodic, when the tape machine was running?" Walsh revealed that the process of their creation was a fairly spontaneous one.

"Well, Don Felder and I sat down and we worked all the descending lines," Walsh said. "After the basic track was done and Don [Henley] had sung it, it was our turn.

"We agreed on who was gonna play when at the end at the big solo, and we tried to complement each other and build it up to the very last part. 

"So the solos were not planned, they were spontaneous playing off of each other," he continued. "We were really good at that, and the rest of the song was kind of planned out, we put those descending lines on because that was the first set of overdubs."

Smith went on to share an anecdote about how he – after seeing Felder perform live recently – went backstage to personally compliment Felder on his playing, to which Walsh added, "He's brilliant. Before I joined the Eagles, there's a body of lead guitar that speaks for itself. He's brilliant, he was a joy to play with."

The PRS founder went on to ask Walsh about how he approaches soloing in a live setting in general, and whether he tries to capture "the feel and the energy of what happened in the studio" onstage. Walsh said:

"I think so. I like to do that but I like to leave spaces so it's different every night. I like to improvise. In Rocky Mountain Way, I leave everybody to, 'Play whatever you want, just make sure I like it,' that's my instructions.

"Those songs, that was a long time ago, and we tried to play it like the record first, and probably later, a couple of years later, we took more and more liberties."

PRS has teamed up with Eagles legend Joe Walsh for a new signature electric guitar, the McCarty 594 Singlecut Joe Walsh Limited Edition.

Limited to just 200 pieces worldwide, this luxurious solidbody features a bound, 24.594” scale length mahogany neck and a Brazilian rosewood fretboard with 22 stainless steel frets and PRS's signature bird inlays.

Sonically, Walsh's new signature PRS is fitted with a pair of PRS 58/15 LT+ pickups – which aim between them to offer both powerful humbucking tones and sweeter single-coil sounds – controlled by two volume and two tone controls with push/pull coil taps, and a three-way switch.

Unique visual appointments on the guitar, meanwhile, include Paul Reed Smith’s handwritten signature on the front of the headstock, and Walsh’s signature on the backplate.

“I don’t like new guitars, but out of the box this is absolutely perfect," Walsh said of his new signature model in a press release. "All the stuff on a new guitar that I always have to try to fix, is already done here. Out of the box. Thank you, Paul.”

"Joe's endorsement of the McCarty 594 Singlecut Joe Walsh Limited Edition means the world to me," added Smith. "We work very hard to keep pushing the guitar-making craft forward without losing sight of its rich history. 

"The McCarty models have always embodied that balance, and to have a player like Joe Walsh say we’ve nailed it is heartwarming.”

We've yet to ascertain the price of the McCarty 594 Singlecut Joe Walsh Limited Edition, but, given its limited-edition nature and special appointments, it's pretty safe to say it won't be in the budget electric guitar range.

For more on the guitar, stop by PRS.

A proverbial light at the end of the long tunnel that is 2020 has emerged, with Ringo Starr announcing a new five-song EP entitled Zoom In, which is set to be released next year.

The EP itself has been a work-in-progress throughout the year, having been recorded at Ringo's home studio between April and October, and features a long list of musical guest appearances.

The former Beatles drummer reunites with bass guitar player, vocalist and all-round music legend Paul McCartney, and teams up with the likes of Dave Grohl, Joe Walsh, Lenny Kravitz, Corinne Bailey and Billie Eilish collaborator FINNEAS, amongst others.

Extra precautions were taken during the recording process in order to complete the EP, with Ringo inviting only a small amount of musicians to record in the studio at once.

You can get a taste of what's to come with Here's to the Nights, the first single from the forthcoming collection penned by songwriter Diane Warren, and featuring a number of his special guests. Have a listen below.

Ringo writes that he "loved the sentiment of it" when Diane played it for him, and that it's the type of song "we all want to sing along to."

"It's a song of peace, love and friendship," Ringo goes on to say. "It feels like a good song to end the year on."

Zoom In is set to be released by Universal on March 19 2021. 

When it comes to electric guitars, there is one that sits firm in the hard rock throne as Gibson’s crowning glory: the Les Paul Standard. 

From Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and Peter Green to Gary Moore, Slash and Joe Bonamassa, the ’Burst has prevailed as the company’s most iconic and enduring image across the decades. 

Beginning in 1996 with the Joe Perry Les Paul, the Gibson Custom Shop began honouring our beloved Les Paul-wielding guitar gods with their very own signature models (a signature signature model, if you will!). 

However, not all guitars were created equal – especially within the mysterious confines of Gibson’s Custom Shop – and when we heard that a collection of top-drawer Jimmy Page, Joe Walsh, Don Felder and Billy Gibbons ’Burst replicas had arrived at Vintage ‘n’ Rare, we wasted no time in booking ourselves an appointment with co-owner Steve Hove to bring you a little closer to these rare beauties. 

“They’re all based on a particular ’Burst these guys used back in the day,” begins Steve, “so they’re a bit different to a regular signature model that has been custom spec’d at the factory. They are the top-of-the-line Custom Shop Les Pauls and were made in strictly limited runs.

“The quality and the demand is there, and there’s only so much stock, so the prices have appreciated quite a bit – much like the original run of around 1,600 ’Bursts [made between 1958 and 1960]. They came in three different versions: VOS, aged, and signed and aged.

“The majority are VOS guitars – they’re more affordable but they still feel like old guitars. In the middle tier are the hand-aged instruments, while the top-tier ones have also been played and signed by the artist.”

Appealing to fans and collectors, they offer a unique piece of rock ’n’ roll history and are as close as most will ever get to owning the real thing.

“But they’re also great instruments in their own right,” adds Steve. “Gibson tried to match everything as closely as possible, even down to the weight. They meticulously analysed the original instruments to replicate the contours and wear as closely as possible. A lot of work went into choosing the maple for the tops to match the flame of the original guitars.

“By their nature, ’Bursts have their own unique features – the tops are always different and the PAF pickups all have their own character. Some of that is reflected in these guitars but it’s also about the way a guitar changes over the years depending on who’s played it. That’s a very personal thing that has been encapsulated in these Les Pauls.” 

Reflecting the customised neck profile and electronics of Jimmy’s original ’Burst, the 2009 Gibson Custom Shop Jimmy Page ‘Number Two’ Les Paul is perhaps the most personalised of the bunch.

“Jimmy Page’s ‘Number Two’ was heavily customised,” confirms Steve. “It was a backup for his ‘Number One’ ’Burst, and he had half a dozen different switches installed to push the boundaries of what a Les Paul could do.

“There are two switches attached to the underside of the pickguard you can use to control phase and flip between series or parallel circuitry, and there are four push-pull pots – the volume knobs also switch between series and parallel, and the tone knobs split the coils.”

Original PAFs typically display a broad range of DCR values from 7kohms to over 9kohms, and we were interested to discover that the pickups in this guitar sit somewhere in the middle (as do all four of the Les Pauls we have here), measuring 8.2kohms in the bridge and 7.8kohms in the neck.

Steve plugs in and flicks it into standard mode. The sound is clear, articulate and expressive. “Those are the characteristics you’d look for in a PAF – an airy sound that isn’t too thick or bloated,” highlights Steve.

“The whole thing about PAFs is that they sound open and clear. These pickups were made specially for this model. They’re based on Gibson Burstbuckers – there’s an Alnico 5 in the bridge and an Alnico 3 in the neck.

“Jimmy likes really skinny necks and this has got the same shaved-down profile as his ’59. Back in the day, people would occasionally shave the neck down to give it a faster feel. It feels like a 1960 ‘blade’ neck profile but there’s very little taper of any kind – it feels the same all the way up the neck.

“It’s got Grover tuners like Jimmy’s. That was a common upgrade back in the day for a hard-working guitar. The finish is like an Iced Tea ’Burst. The red aniline dye they used in the original ’Bursts faded out quite easily but that’s what gives them a bit of individuality and character, along with the different grains and flames.

“This one is subtle but it’s very pretty. It’s number 66 of 100 that were Tom Murphy-aged. Another 25 were also signed by Jimmy Page, and they made 200 VOS guitars.” Jimmy Page was sold his ‘Number One’ Les Paul by Joe Walsh, another renowned ’Burst player whose very own Gibson Custom Shop signature model – a 2013 Joe Walsh 1960 Les Paul Aged & Signed – is also on display at Vintage ‘n’ Rare.

“This is number 28 of 50 that were aged by Tom Murphy and signed by Joe Walsh,” Steve tells us. “They made 75 other Murphy-aged [non-signed] ones, along with 125 VOS guitars. It’s got golden era-style nickel hardware and reflector knobs, and – like the Jimmy Page ‘Number Two’ – this one features Grover tuners as per the original mod.

“In 1960, Gibson changed the red aniline dye they used to spray the sunbursts. The effect is a more pronounced ’Burst – sometimes referred to as a ‘tomato soup ’Burst’ – which stands up differently over time. In 1960, they also changed the neck profile to make it much shallower. And as far as I can tell, this one is very consistent with the real thing.

“This guitar is definitely the brightest looking out of the lot. There’s a lot of orange-y red in the finish, which they named Tangerine Burst. It really stands out from the ’59s. The flame on this guitar is very pronounced, almost holographic. It’s got real depth.

“The dings on the top mimic the original, as does the buckle rash on the back, which is a common thing to see on original ’Bursts. If you look more closely, there are subtler ageing effects like the ‘worming’ you can see in the finish on the back where there are indents but no finish has been taken off.

“I think that’s been done very well. The weight is very nice. Most Les Pauls have a bit of weight to them because they’re made of solid mahogany and maple.” Although both pickups have a DCR measurement of 7.9kohms, when Steve plugs in, we immediately discover it sounds pokier than the Page guitar.

“The bridge pickup sounds like there’s a bit more top-end to it,” remarks Steve, “and the neck is quite rounded but there’s still enough air in the tone. These pickups, Alnico 3 Custom Buckers, were designed to replicate the sound of the PAFs in Joe’s original guitar.

“PAFs have their own tolerances and character, and the magnets degrade over time, so it’s really interesting how Gibson went about trying to recreate the individuality of each guitar. It makes you wonder what these old ’Bursts sounded like when they were brand-new.”

Much like Joe Walsh’s 1960 ’Burst brought a harder rock sound to the Eagles’ sonic palette, so too did Don Felder’s 1959 ’Burst, replicated here in the form of a 2010 Gibson Custom Shop Don Felder ‘Hotel California’ 1959 Les Paul Aged model.

“Apparently, Don keeps the original under lock and key and uses these ones to gig with,” says Steve. “Gibson made some artist proof models – prototypes that go to the artist to be checked out and signed off. The artists were heavily involved in the process, which is great. 

“It’s good to know they’ve played an integral part in the whole thing. It gives a genuine insight into the instruments they play. This is number eight of 50 aged guitars that were played and signed by the man himself, so it’s quite low in the run. There were also another 100 hand-aged, plus 150 VOS ones. 

“This top is awesome. It has a nice tight flame and you can see some cool vertical grain in the maple on the bass side. For me, it’s definitely up there in terms of looks. The sunburst – known as the Felder Burst – has a really faded look. It’s kind of like an Iced Tea but it’s got a bit more red in it, like a super-washed Cherry.

“Like Don’s ’Burst, it’s got the original-style Kluson tuners and a Nashville bridge. This one is a really nice weight: it weighs 8.6lb, which is very good for a Les Paul Standard. It’s got a much fuller neck profile than the others. 

“Many of the original ’59s have a bit of meat right in the middle of the neck, which gives them a mega-soft ‘V’, but this feels quite rounded. There are transitional features with ’Bursts. Early ’59s, for example, can have typical ’58 features like plainer tops and chunkier neck profiles. 

“This one feels a bit like the [2012 Gibson Custom Shop] Paul Kossoff 1959 Les Paul Standard Aged we also have in stock, and that’s based on what is thought to be an early ’59. It’s a chunkier neck but it’s still very comfortable.” 

Through the amp, this guitar sounds particularly smooth in the neck position, while the bridge pickup has an almost outof-phase quality to it. 

“There’s a honkiness to it,” agrees Steve. “That can help leads cut through nicely. But it’s still got that characteristic PAF airiness. It’s fitted with a Burstbucker 2 in the neck and a Burstbucker 1 in the bridge. The neck pickup measures 8kohms and the bridge measures 7.7kohms, which is interesting because the bridge pickup is normally the hotter of the two.”

Among the most revered and collectible artist models known is the 2009 Gibson Custom Shop Inspired By Series Billy Gibbons ‘Pearly Gates’ Les Paul Aged.

“Billy’s original ’59 ’Burst was nicknamed ‘Pearly Gates’ after his band’s car, which they believed was touched by divinity,” recounts Steve. “When it was eventually sold, Billy got some money that went towards the purchase of his ’59 ’Burst.

“Many people consider these Pearly Gates guitars to be Tom Murphy’s best stuff. I mean, this really does look and feel like an old one to me. There were 250 VOS guitars made, along with 100 Murphy-aged instruments, 50 of which were also played and signed by Billy. This is number 39 of those 50. They’ve really gone to town on this.

• The story of Paul Kossoff's 'Stripped Top' 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard

“It’s probably involved more work than any of the others to get it looking right. There’s lots of lacquer checking and detailed bits of wear across the whole guitar, with some nice tarnishing to the hardware. The mahogany back has this incredibly smooth contoured wear along the upper edge and is beautifully figured, as is the maple top.

“The top has a nice dish – very pronounced like the original 50s ’Bursts – and the finish is a little bit darker. It’s more on the Tobacco Burst spectrum, and with a slight redness to it.

“The bridge pickup measures 8.1kohms and the neck measures 7.3kohms. They’re Seymour Duncan Custom Shop PAF replicas made specifically for this model. They’re very natural and woody sounding. 

“Again, it’s a very unique guitar. These are all very unique handmade guitars. And that’s also what makes vintage stuff so great. Everything is so streamlined and sped up now. Nowadays, for example, the wood is kiln-dried but back in the 50s the wood they were working with was old already.

Everything changes over time, from the wood to the pickups, so it’s nice that Gibson have acknowledged those unique characteristics and attempted to recreate them as best they can. And they get pretty close – these are all really great guitars. They’re cool things to own – it’s like your own slice of rock ’n’ roll history. It’s as close as you can possibly get to the real thing.”

Vince Gill has been playing the guitar for 55 of his 62 years. His virtuosic and sweetly expressive solos - whether flatpicked or played fingerstyle - have graced more than 20 genre-spanning studio albums that have earned him 21 Grammy awards and just about every honor the Country Music Association has come up with. Asked if he feels like he has anything more to prove, the easy-going guitarist laughs gently and says, “Probably not. I’ve had a good run.” 

He pauses a little before expanding on his answer: “I mean, there’s still a lot that I can’t do on the guitar - we could fill a book with it. But a while ago I reached the point where I said, ‘I’m just going to play what’s necessary.’ That comes with age and experience. You don’t think like that when you’re young, but it’s a peaceful place to be. I’m content to say what I want on the guitar, and I can leave it at that.”

At an age where most guitarists might give thought to easing their workloads, Gill has been pulling triple duty. In addition to performing solo shows, he’s maintained a steady recording and touring schedule with his country swing ensemble the Time Jumpers, and since 2017 he’s been trekking the globe with the Eagles in an incarnation that includes band members Don Henley, Timothy B. Schmit and Joe Walsh, along with guitarist Steuart Smith and the late Glenn Frey’s son, Deacon. 

“I would be a pretty fortunate man just to be doing my own thing,” Gill says, “but to play with the Time Jumpers and now the Eagles, it’s like, ‘How more blessed can I be?’ But I just try to do the best I can and honor the music I’m playing. I can’t do more than that.”

Despite the hectic pace, Gill managed to carve out a block of time recently to record his first solo album in three years, Okie, which is perhaps his most personal and poignant release to date.

“I’m proud of where I come from,” the Oklahoma native explains. “We were called ‘Okies’ as a put-down, but you know, we’re good and honest people. So I’m kind of appropriating that term as a way of saying, ‘You can’t judge us with preconceived notions.’ Goodness knows there’s too much of that.”

Much of the album is bathed in the sound of acoustic guitars (the tender ballad Black and White is a fingerstyle gem), although Gill and guest pickers Tom Bukovac and Jedd Hughes let their electrics snarl on the dusty country rocker That Old Man of Mine.

On two stellar cuts, Nothin’ Like a Guy Clark Song and A World Without Haggard, Gill pays tribute to two of his departed musical heroes - the latter track pairs the guitarist’s heartfelt strumming with sweeping pedal steel textures that reach toward the heavens.

“This record is so important to me. As we recorded, I listened to it over and over, and I left no stone unturned,” he reveals.

“Through that, I also arrived at the process of elimination. There’s no extraneous guitar playing on it; every note played had to matter, and if it didn’t, I took it out. So in the end, I have an album that I found very pleasing to listen to, and I think my fans will feel the same way.”

During the 1970s, the Eagles were right up there with Led Zeppelin when it came to rock ’n’ roll excess. Would you have joined them back in the day?

Probably. You know, I had my days of roaring, but I’m glad they’re over. I think those guys are glad their rowdy days are done, too. I don’t judge people. I would never say, “I can’t play with you because you’re too rowdy or you’re too whatever.”

Even so, we can’t really picture you taking a chainsaw to a hotel room.

[Laughs] I’ve done a few things. I’m no saint, but you know what? I would’ve done it because the music’s so important. In many ways, the Eagles are the top of the heap in the history of American rock bands. It’s hard to think of a more impactful group. So yeah, I would’ve joined them at any point in their career - in a heartbeat.

You’re used to playing in a big band with the Time Jumpers, but did you have to adjust your playing style to fit into the pocket with the Eagles?

Oh, sure, but it’s not a heavy guitar gig for me. You’ve got Joe Walsh and Steuart Smith playing their parts. Steuart’s been in the band for 20 years, and Joe’s been with them for 43 years. So I just went in to do what was needed - be a good asset and a team player, somebody who’s easy to get along with.

Did you have to consider the fact that you had to play and sing precisely what’s on the records? This gig isn’t about spontaneous jamming.

I knew that going in. Those records are so iconic, so I was going to stay true to them. Yeah, I’ve got a little bit of a spontaneity streak in me, but that’s not what those songs deserve. If you came to hear Hotel California and you didn’t hear those solos the way you know them, you’d leave disappointed.

It must be delightful to sing New Kid in Town, but it’s probably bittersweet.

Oh, of course. My mantra has been “I wish I wasn’t doing this,” because that would mean Glenn would still be here. That’s what’s in my heart, but that’s not life. But I think Don knew what was important - the legacy of those songs and the fact that they had to be sung.

As a guitarist, what’s surprised you about playing with Joe Walsh?

Well, I always knew how great he was. I was playing Rocky Mountain Way in my bedroom when I was 15. I played it in garage bands and at sound checks. I think Joe Walsh could be the most important guitar player in American rock. You got Chuck Berry and several others, and across the pond there’s Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton. I think Joe is every bit as important as any of those guys. 

He plays with a great brevity and restraint; there’s always so much thought he puts into each note. That’s what I like about him - his patience. It’s not about whittling a bunch of notes and trying to impress you. It’s the way he’ll bend a note, the time and care he’ll put into it. I’m just in awe of him.

On your new record, songs like Black and White and Forever Changed have weighty themes. A lot of country fans don’t want message-oriented songs; they want fun and good times.

Well, I don’t think that I’m for them. In terms of what people might associate with country music, I’m 62; I’m not 25 and trying to bust the charts. I’ve lived a life and am trying to talk about things that deserve to be written about. The point is, I’m trying to make you feel something when I write these songs, but it’s not coming with judgments. Even if there’s struggle in the songs, there’s some hope in them, as well.

There’s some stellar fingerstyle playing throughout the record. How many fingerstyle tracks do you tend to blend together?

Well, it’s the three of us playing - Tom Bukovac, Jedd Hughes and me. Both of those guys are phenomenal, and everybody listens to each other. We don’t fight for space. Everybody honors what the other one’s playing and plays off of that. It’s really neat when it works like that and it all meshes together. It’s what makes great food.

How many passes of each track do you usually do before everybody knows what they’re going to play?

These guys play remarkably right off the bat. There’s not a lot of gnashing of teeth or figuring out a part. Everybody has enough history and experience to come in knowing what not to do before you ever get started. There’s so much that could go wrong, but it never does.

The acoustic solo in The Red Words is beautifully understated. Was that spontaneous, or did you have it worked out?

I had an idea - it’s all about listening to what somebody’s playing off of you. There might be two notes that I’d stick on at the end of a phrase, but it would cover up what Jedd was doing. That was me and Jedd doing that call-and-response thing. It’s really like dancing. It’s really beautiful when two people really know how to dance, and it’s just as pretty when two musicians know how to play off of each other.

The Dobro solo on A Letter to My Mama is gorgeous. What I like about it isn’t just the melody; it’s in the way I’m hearing your fingers pluck the strings.

I played it with the meat of my fingers rather than the pick. That’s why it sounds the way it does, because the meat of your finger will make a different bloom come out of a string than a pick, which is a harder, straighter purer sound. 

That song’s about my mom. I wrote it about 18 years ago with Dean Dylan, but I never got around to recording it. In all the music I’ve made over these 55 years, what my mom said to me some time ago was, “You’ve done a lot of neat things, but I always loved to hear you play the Dobro.” I don’t play it that much, but I knew I had to include a Dobro solo in this one. And I’ll confess, I was very scared and a little insecure about playing it. The simplicity of that solo is what makes it poignant and beautiful.

We’re trying to picture you being nervous in the studio. Does that still happen to you?

Well, if you weren’t nervous, it wouldn’t matter. When the red light goes on, it’s mind-numbing. Even after 45 to 50 years of doing it, you’re still a little bit scared, because somebody is listening.

You’ve got a pretty big guitar collection. Which models did you use on this album?

There’s probably 12 different acoustic guitars that I played. I’ve got a really serious Gibson collection - J-45s, Southern Jumbos, J-200, J-185s. They all find their way onto the record. If you’re a painter, you want to use a variety of colors. 

For electrics, I have my favorite white Telecaster and a really great ’69 Strat. And I’ve got a ’59 Sunburst Les Paul that sounds beautiful. Those are my favorites. Every song is different, so I try to just try to play what’s appropriate, what I think would fit the space the best way. You can’t play every guitar all the time, so you just go for feel and sound, and hope for the best.

Joe Walsh’s contributions to rock electric guitar tone are immense. With the bands James Gang, Barnstorm and the Eagles - and as a solo artist - he has recorded dozens of influential solos and riffs that continue to inspire guitarists today.

He also introduced the talkbox to the rock guitar vernacular and made highly innovative use of effects like the Echoplex and Leslie rotating speaker.

Walsh played a crucial role in the gear choices of other iconic players by selling Jimmy Page the legendary #1 Les Paul Standard heard on dozens of Led Zeppelin recordings and giving Pete Townshend the Gretsch 6120/Fender Bandmaster rig used on the Who’s early '70s albums.

As a noted gear hound, Walsh has recorded a multitude of awesome guitar tones, from his solos on the Eagles’ Hotel California to the seminal talkbox hit Rocky Mountain Way.

One of the coolest tones Walsh ever recorded is also one of his simplest: Funk #49. Internet 'experts' often claim that Walsh used only a Fender Tele and tweed Fender Champ to record the song, but Walsh corrected this - in his May 2012 Guitar World interview - by noting it was actually a blackface (circa 1964-’67) Champ.

40 years earlier, in a 1972 Guitar Player interview, Walsh said he used a 'Vibroplex', but this was probably an inside joke as Walsh is a ham radio enthusiast and a Vibroplex is actually a Morse code key. Perhaps it was actually a 1964-’67 Vibro Champ, which is identical to the Champ with the exception of its added tremolo circuit.

Details about the exact year of Walsh’s Tele are unknown, although in the 1972 interview he said it was “old” and he had modified the pickup wiring to provide “modern” bridge/both/neck settings. Teles featured either a 'blend' circuit until 1952 or a neck bass/neck with tone control/bridge without tone control circuit from 1953 until 1967, so the Tele was most likely from 1959 or earlier as Walsh prefers Teles with maple necks - and he referred to it as “old.”

Walsh’s Tele tone on Funk #49 sounds particularly raunchy and percussive due to the guitar’s lowered action and Walsh’s use of a light-gauge nylon pick. Having compared the sounds of a tweed and blackface Champ when playing the song, I can attest that it’s definitely a blackface, as the tweed’s midrange is too prominent and the bass is too loose, while the blackface has the perfect treble sparkle and low-end spank.

Get the sound, cheap!

• Squier Classic Vibe Telecaster ’50s
• Fender Pro Junior IV

TONE TIP: The Pro Junior IV is bigger and louder than a blackface Champ, so don’t overdo the controls. Volume at 8 and Tone at 5 (using the front panel’s 1-12 designations) works best.

Original gear

GUITAR: Circa 1953-’59 Fender Telecaster with maple neck and modified “modern” pickup wiring (bridge pickup); Volume: 10, Tone: 10.

AMP: Circa 1964-’67 Fender Champ or Vibro Champ with 8-inch Utah or CTS speaker (Volume: 10, Treble: 10, Bass: 10; if Vibro Champ Speed: 0, Intensity: 0), Input: 1

EFFECTS: None

STRINGS/TUNING: Ernie Ball Slinky .010-.046/Standard

PICK: Herco Light/Flex 50 (gold) nylon

With album sales in excess of 20 million, English guitarist Peter Frampton is one of the most successful rock musicians in history, boasting gigantic pop hits like “Baby, I Love Your Way,” “Show Me the Way” and “Do You Feel Like We Do.”

The explosion of his 1976 double live album, Frampton Comes Alive!, was — until recently — the highest-selling pop album of all time (prompting Mike Myers to joke, in Wayne’s World, “In the Seventies, this record was government issue!”). What is sometimes overlooked is that Frampton is a phenomenally gifted guitarist, one who has been voted as one of the top 50 rock guitarists of all time in many polls over the years. That Frampton was able to apply his distinct, virtuosic playing within the framework of solid pop songs has earned him a spot alongside legendary guitar megastars like Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend, David Gilmour and Joe Walsh.

Frampton first came to international attention at the age of 18 when he joined with former Small Faces singer and guitarist Steve Marriott to form Humble Pie; their 1971 double live album, Rockin’ the Fillmore, was a smash on the strength of the band’s crushing cover of the Ray Charles song “I Don’t Need No Doctor,” which features brilliant soloing from the then-20-year-old Frampton, who was already displaying a unique sound and approach.

One of the earmarks of Frampton’s soloing style is that he blends the influences of blues and blues-rock with jazz and modal sounds, as evidenced by his leads in “I Don’t Need No Doctor.” The solo is played over a simple A5-C5-D5 progression, and the guitarist builds his lines from a combination of the A blues scale (A C D Eb E G: see FIGURE 1), with the A Dorian mode (A B C D E F# G: see FIGURE 2. FIGURE 3 demonstrates these two scales woven together.

Also played in the key of A minor, FIGURE 4 offers a four-bar passage along the lines of how Frampton launches into his solo on the track. With phrases built primarily from steady 16th notes, there’s an abundant usage of color tones such as the sixth, F#, the ninth, B, and the flatted fifth, Eb, all delivered via a legato articulation approach that incorporates hammer-ons, pull-offs and string-bends. In bar 3, the minor triad arpeggio based on the fifth, Em, is superimposed over the A tonal center, with emphasis on the notes E, G and B. The jazz-influenced approach of superimposing alternate triadic arpeggios can be found in many of Frampton’s solos, and he has used this tactic to enrich the harmonic content of his solos beyond that of a typical blues-rock guitarist’s vocabulary. FIGURE 5 is inspired by the second half of Frampton’s solo, and here we revisit the use of the Em triad over A5 chord in bars 1 and 2. In bars 3 and 4, the solo wraps up with a descending line that’s based on A Dorian and built from a sequence of eighth-note triplets.

Another great Frampton solo featured on Rockin’ the Fillmore can be found in the track “Stone Cold Fever,” which is played over an Em vamp. For this solo, the guitarist relies on the E Dorian mode (E F# G A B C# D), as illustrated in FIGURE 6, combined with the E blues scale (E G A Bb B D). FIGURE 7 presents a seven-bar solo along the lines of how Frampton starts his. In bar 2, the five-minor approach of the “I Don’t Need No Doctor” solo is employed once again, this time in the key of E minor, with the relative five-minor triad being Bm (B D F#). In the following bar, this arpeggio superimposition concept is moved from the five-minor to the two-minor, which in the key of Em is F#m (F# A C#). Bar 5 pushes into other harmonic territory for a moment with the incorporation of the two-note forms B5 (B and F#) and C5 (C and G), and the passage wraps up in bars 6 and 7 with lines based on a combination of E Dorian mode and E blues scale.

One of Frampton’s most beloved songs is “Lines on My Face,” which he initially recorded for the 1973 album Frampton’s Camel and included in expanded form on side four of Frampton Comes Alive! “Lines on My Face” is a very interesting song that moves freely between the keys of C major for the chorus section and A minor for the verses and solos. Frampton chooses to play lines based on the C major scale across all of the song’s chords, which results in modal-based harmonies for each chord. FIGURE 8 illustrates the C major scale, also known as the C Ionian mode (C D E F G A B). The intro and verse move repeatedly between Fmaj7 and G6, and when the notes of C major are played over Fmaj7, the sound of the F Lydian mode (F G A B C D E) is created, as shown in FIGURE 9. Likewise, when these notes are played over G6, this creates the sound of G Mixolydian (G A B C D E F); see FIGURE 10. And over Am, we get A Aeolian (A B C D E F G); see FIGURE 11. Notice that each of these modes is built from the same set of notes but starting at different points in the sequence.

The intro and verses to “Lines on My Face” begin with the repeating chord progression Fmaj7-G6, and for the Frampton Comes Alive! version, Frampton solos over these chords during the song’s intro. FIGURE 12 offers a three-bar improvisation inspired by this intro solo, and in bars 1 and 2, the lines are built primarily from steady 16th notes. Notice how the same handful of notes that form the C major scale sound completely different and provide interesting melodic options when played over the Fmaj7 and G6 chords. In bar 3, the lines are played in double-time as steady 32nd notes, quickly ascending and then descending through the scale tones. Practice this phrase slowly at first, paying attention to precision in both the pick-and fret-hand articulation.

The legendary closing track on Frampton Comes Alive!, “Do You Feel Like We Do,” features an extended open-jam section in the key of D minor during which Frampton gets to stretch out and solo at length. FIGURE 14 offers an eight-bar solo played along the lines of his initial improvisation in this classic performance and kicks off with lines based on D minor pentatonic (D F G A C), but the five-minor superimposition approach is soon revisited. At the end of bar 1 into bar 2, the notes A C and E are played, which form an A minor triad. Bar 3 ascends through the D blues scale (D F G Ab A C), and the end of bar 3 into bar 4 there’s a quickly repeating phrase based on a “threes-on-twos” rhythm.

In bar 5, another Am triad, in descending form, is played over D, and the passage ends with bluesier lines based on D minor pentatonic, played in a more Clapton-like style.

Frampton's most popular and well known song is “Show Me the Way.” He originally recorded the track for his 1975 studio album Frampton, but it was the live version featured on Frampton Comes Alive! that became the celebrated megahit. The guitarist’s deft use on this track of the Heil Talk Box, a device designed from a tweeter speaker that sends the guitar signal through an affixed plastic tube that the player holds in his mouth in front of a vocal microphone, resulted in the invention being most closely associated with him, though it had been used previously by Joe Walsh (“Rocky Mountain Way”), Joe Perry (“Sweet Emotion”), Jeff Beck (“She’s a Woman”) and others.

The intro and verse sections of “Show Me the Way” move between the key of D major and its relative minor key, B minor, and Frampton utilizes the D major scale (D E F# G A B C#) to play over both chords, as this note set also forms the B Aeolian mode, also known as the B natural minor scale (B C# D E F# G A). FIGURE 15 illustrates both modes, and FIGURE 16 presents an eight-bar solo inspired by Frampton’s solo in this live performance. Notice how, over the D and D/C# chords, the notes of a D major triad (D F# A) are emphasized, and when the progression moves to Bm, the notes of a B minor triad (B D F#) are emphasized, so that the phrases closely follow and describe the chordal harmony.

In February, Frampton announced that his next tour — kicking off in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last month and wrapping up in San Francisco in October — would be his last. We wish him all the best and thank him for all the great music and memories!

Eric Clapton has announced the fifth installment of his Crossroads Guitar Festival.

Set to take place at the American Airlines Center in Dallas from September 20-21, the festival will gather together a jaw-dropping list of blues-guitar greats for two nights of music. All proceeds from the event will go towards The Crossroads Centre in Antigua, a substance-abuse rehabilitation facility founded by Clapton.

In addition to the concerts, the Guitar Center Festival Village will be featured on Victory Plaza adjacent to the arena. Ernie Ball, Fender, Gibson, Martin, PRS and more will host interactive exhibits where electric guitar enthusiasts can plug in and play new products and classic favorites. In addition, the Guitar Center Festival Village Stage Presented by Ernie Ball will host master guitar clinics and solo performances by main stage artists, next generation guitar virtuosos and special surprise guests. The Guitar Center Festival Village will be open from 12pm to 8pm each day and is free to all ticket holders.

This year's installment is the fifth for the festival, following those in 2004, 2007, 2010 and the most recent edition in 2013. You can check out the full lineup below. 

For more info on the festival, head on over to crossroadsguitarfestival.com.

2019 Crossroads Festival lineup (in alphabetical order):

Alan Darby, Albert Lee, Andy Fairweather Low, Billy Gibbons, Bonnie Raitt, Bradley Walker, Buddy Guy Band, Daniel Santiago, Derek Trucks, Doyle Bramhall II, Eric Clapton, Gary Clark Jr., Gustavo Santaolalla, James Bay, Jeff Beck, Jerry Douglas, Jimmie Vaughan, Joe Walsh, Jonny Lang, Keb Mo, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Los Lobos, Pedro Martins, Peter Frampton, Robert Cray, Robert Randolph, Sheryl Crow, Sonny Landreth, Susan Tedeschi, Tom Misch, Vince Gill

As milestones go, the 50-year mark is a pretty big one.

So as the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ first performance on The Ed Sullivan Show approached in 2014, organizers put together a celebration to herald the moment that presented the Beatles to America.

Called The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles, the tribute was a celebration of both the Beatles’ impact on music and their debut appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. The tribute was filmed on January 27, 2014, at the Los Angeles Convention Center and first broadcast on February 9, 2014, 50 years to the day the Beatles first appeared on Sullivan’s show.

Featuring a house band that included Steve Lukather and Peter Frampton on guitars and Don Was on bass, the show offered musical tributes from Stevie Wonder, Maroon 5, John Mayer and Keith Urban, as well as performances from former Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. The broadcast also featured clips of the Beatles performing on The Ed Sullivan Show and an interview with McCartney and Starr by David Letterman in Studio 50, the Ed Sullivan Theater.

• The standout moment for many was the evening’s performance of the George Harrison song “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” which featured Joe Walsh and Gary Clark Jr. on guitars and Dave Grohl on drums. Both Walsh and Clark turn in some fiery guitar work, while Grohl rocks the drum kit as if he’s playing a Nirvana tribute. (Mute the sound and you just might think he is.)
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The Eagles have announced the release of Legacy, a comprehensive 12-CD/DVD/Blu-ray set spanning the band’s entire career.

Legacy will be released on November 2 in two versions. The first boasts 12 CDs and includes the band’s seven studio albums and three live albums, as well as a compilation of singles and b-sides and two concert videos, Hell Freezes Over (DVD) and Farewell Tour: Live From Melbourne (Blu-ray). A vinyl version of Legacy features all the music from the CDs on 15 LPs, but without the two concert videos. Both sets are housed in deluxe slipcases and accompanied by a 54-page hardbound book filled with rare and unseen photos, memorabilia and artwork.

Grammy-winning mastering engineer Bob Ludwig remastered Hell Freezes Over and Millennium Concert especially for Legacy. Both albums—along with several tracks from the singles and b-sides compilation—are being released on vinyl for the first time ever as part of this collection, save for a small European vinyl pressing of Hell Freezes Over around its original release in 1994. In addition, the double-album Eagles Live is making its long-awaited return to vinyl in this set after being out of print for decades.

Legacy CD/DVD/Blu-ray Listing:

Eagles (1972)

Desperado (1973)

On the Border (1974)

One of These Nights (1975)

Hotel California (1976)

The Long Run (1979)

Eagles Live - Double LP (1980)

Hell Freezes Over - Double LP (1994)

Millennium Concert - Double LP (2000)

Long Road Out of Eden - Double LP (2007)

Single and B-Sides (2018)

1.    "Take It Easy" (Single Version)

2.    "Get You in the Mood" (Non-LP B Side)

3.    "Outlaw Man" (Single Version)

4.    "Best of My Love" (Single Version)

5.    "One of These Nights" (Single Edit)

6.    "Lyin' Eyes" (Single Edit)

7.    "Take It to the Limit" (Single Edit)

8.    "Please Come Home For Christmas"

9.    "Funky New Year"

10.  "Hole in the World"

DVD: Hell Freezes Over (1994)

Blu-ray: Farewell Tour: Live From Melbourne (2005)

Legacy LP Listing:

Eagles (1972)

Desperado (1973)

On the Border (1974)

One of These Nights (1975)

Hotel California (1976)

The Long Run (1979)

Eagles Live - Double LP (1980)

Hell Freezes Over - Double LP (1994)

Millennium Concert - Double LP (2000)

Long Road Out of Eden - Double LP (2007)

Single and B-Sides (2018)