The Rolling Stones didn't just tour America in 1969 – they rewrote the rules for stadium rock, playing to unprecedented crowds with towering PA systems, a purpose-built stage production and a volume level that pushed contemporary equipment to its limits.

At the same time, their search for a stage-worthy guitar and bass rig had become a logistical headache. The British amps they'd relied on at home weren't always practical overseas, and the band's ever-growing live setup demanded more power than most manufacturers could comfortably supply.

Andy Babiuk, who published Rolling Stones Gear: All the Stones' Instruments From Stage to Studio, explained in the May 2014 issue of Bass Player: “When the Stones came to the States, they got some Fender amps, but Bill Wyman stuck with his Vox. He said he really liked the tone, and he didn’t want to change it.

“Brian Jones and Keith Richards both got a pair of Sheldon amps, so they were using those. At that point, Vox also started making other things that they kept on giving them – the 760 cabinets, the heads, and the Supremes. But for their 1969 Hyde Park performance in London, they each had stacks of Hiwatts.

“The intent was to bring those to the United States for the ’69 tour. The problem was, they weren't set up for the right voltage.

“When they got over to rehearse, at Stephen Stills’ place, Stills had a bunch of small Ampeg combo amps, and they liked them. So Stephen was instructed to ask, ‘Hey, you got any bigger amps? We're going to be doing a tour.’”

The events that followed would see the Stones abandon their original plans, and unwittingly help launch one of the most legendary amp lines in rock history.

“Rich Mandella, who was with Ampeg at the time, said, ‘We’d designed the SVT, but we’d only built a handful of them.’ So they never really tested them out – 300-watt heads with two cabinets per head.

“But they put them on a truck that belonged to the Stones and hoped for the best. The Stones were the guinea pigs for those amps.”

The gamble transformed the Stones’ live sound, helping lay the foundations for the modern high-powered bass rig. But revolutionary gear has a habit of revealing its limits in spectacular fashion.

“I talked to some of the guys from Ampeg that went on that tour. Every night they were terrified. They didn't know if the stuff was going to work. They were working on them at night after each show, and trying to fix it to make it better.

“I think the show was Oakland. Second song in, the amps blew up. You can hear Jagger apologizing to the crowd: ‘We're trying to get it together up here. Maybe we'll do a couple acoustic ones.’

“By the time they did Madison Square Garden, they had so many amps because they just wanted to have backups. There were 17 SVTs onstage. That's far out to me – who in their right mind would have the balls to use the Stones as guinea pigs for beta testing SVTs? But it sounded great.”

With Keith Richards plugging his guitar into a 300-watt bass amp and refusing to ease off the volume knob, the band's stage levels became the stuff of legend.

“Here was Keith Richards playing guitar through an SVT – and Keith's not one to turn down. Bill told me that when you see videos of Mick running across the stage and sprinting when he’s near Keith, he's not running because he wants calisthenics. He's doing it because he's trying to get away from the volume!

“Bill told me he didn't really want to play loud, but had to just to compete. He said one night when he was standing in front of Keith’s amp, ‘I looked down and my trousers were moving!’”

The shred generation is hitting retirement age and beyond, and arthritis diagnoses are becoming increasingly common – but the good news is that the condition doesn’t have to be the death knell for anyone’s playing days.

Our aging guitar heroes have shown the impact a life of playing can have on our bodies. Jake E. Lee’s right hand has “basically no cartilage.” A sports doctor laughed in amazement when Steve Morse showed him his hands, ground down by years of shredding – and relayed his ambition to continue touring.

Keith Richards recently revealed that arthritis has cast uncertainty on his continued ability to play for longer periods, while Alex Lifeson, Joe Perry, and Joe Satriani have all suffered their own struggles.

According to Nuffield Health, 50 percent of adults aged 65 and over have been diagnosed with arthritis, and Jimmy Page isn’t immune just because he’s a guitar god. Wear and tear over time is a major factor, but there are measures we can take to prevent and alleviate symptoms.

Dan Turnell, Clinical Director at Elite Performance Physio, has worked in the performing arts sector for over a decade. He wants players to look at their hands a little differently.

“One of the biggest mindset shifts is that playing an instrument is a skilled muscular action,” he says. “They should think of themselves as an athlete, instead of as a musician.”

There are over 100 types of arthritis; but for guitarists the most common is osteoarthritis: the cartilage at the end of a bone gets damaged or worn down, resulting in bone-on-bone contact. It currently affects over 32.5 million Americans including Lee, Morse, and Richards.

Repetitive motion has slowly ground down cartilage, causing pain, inflammation and, in extreme cases, a loss of hand mobility. “Playing guitar is small repetitive movements continuously happening,” Turnell notes. “It runs the risk of potential cartilage changes and microtraumas.”

He adds: “When you’re young you think of arthritis as something that affects your granddad,” warning that the approach is to our detriment. He regularly works with young musicians to help establish “good practice routines that protect the body and minimize the risk of injury.”

Prevention will always outweigh any cure. “I encourage people not to sit and play for six hours at a time, and to understand that a warm-up is important before you even touch the guitar,” he says.

Warm-ups help release synovial fluid, which lubricates joints and keeps muscles warm and responsive. Turnell recommends hand exercises such as stretches and grip and squeeze movements, or using strengthening bands for individual fingers.

Joe Satriani benefited from hand massages after a tour of particularly challenging music. The shows put extra strain on his hands and he suffered the consequences of malpractice to his digits. I’ve used a D’Addario Varigrip for years as part of my pre-show routine – it’s worked wonders.

It might be helpful to think of arthritis as the last domino in a line. The best way to prevent it is to ensure that you’re always working with, rather than against, your body.

“Prevention comes down to making sure that all the muscles around the fingers, hands and wrists are as strong as they need to be to minimize the pressure and over-aggravating our joints,” Turnell says.

“It comes down to load management within the body. For example, if you’re not setting your practice environment up in the appropriate way, then playing for six hours in a suboptimal position, you’re potentially going to suffer microtrauma injuries through the joints.

“Posture is likely to be a secondary or tertiary cause of arthritis, but by being hunched over a guitar, the body isn’t able to move with freedom. Guitar straps help offload the weight; otherwise, all that weight is going to come into the hands and impact shoulder mobility.”

Likewise, diet and lifestyle choices represent another domino. “Certain food combinations can be inflammatory for the body; and if we’re not hydrated, our joints aren’t hydrated either.

Sugar and processed foods are the biggest culprits. “From a socializing perspective, alcohol can act as an inflammatory substance, and it can affect our sleep – which impacts our body’s ability to recover and prepare to play the next day.”

Turnell emphasizes the importance of semi-regular check-ins with a physio, just as you’d take your car to the garage for maintenance. But he says there’s another issue at play too. “Once musicians get to a certain standard, they often stop taking lessons,” he says.

“But lessons are really useful – not necessarily from a technical perspective, but to make sure you’re not falling into bad habits, which can be a potential trigger for an arthritic change.”

After that, it’s time to look at your instrument and setup – should you ditch that heavy, fat-necked Les Paul for something that’s kinder to the body?

Morse has accepted his gigging days are now numbered, as his arthritis worsens, but a key modification to his Music Man signature guitar is helping relieve unnecessary stress. Perry confessed to recording the band’s recent One More Time EP exclusively with his Fender/Warmoth “Burned Strat,” as it’s been set up to be kinder to his hands.

The more our guitar heroes face arthritis struggles and talk about what it means for them, the better it is for the wider guitar-playing community.

“Seeing people doing things with an arthritic condition improves our understanding that it’s more of a self-limiting condition rather than a death knell,” Turnell concludes. “You just modify your activity around it.”

• For help and advice around arthritis and related issues, head to Arthritis Foundation.

For the past six decades, Keith Richards has claimed that he wrote (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction in his sleep.

But for all its mythical origins, Richards never thought of the song's iconic guitar hook as “the big guitar riff” – not even when he added a dose of fuzz to it.

“That all fell into place at RCA [recording studio in L.A.] when Gibson dumped on me one of those first Fuzz-Tone pedals,” he recalled in a 2005 Guitar World interview.

“I actually thought of that guitar line as a horn riff.”

For Richards, the song was never actually finished – his fuzz parts were only intended to be demos for a real horn line.

“When this new Fuzz Tone pedal arrived in the studio from the local dealership or something, I said, ‘Oh, this is good. It’s got a bit of sustain, so I can use it to sketch out the horn line.’”

So you can imagine his surprise when he realized his back-of-the-napkin riff ended up on the final recording.

“We left the track and went back out on the road. And two weeks later, I hear it on the radio. I said, ‘No, that was just a demo!’ They said, ‘No, it’s a hit.’”

Satisfaction helped the Stones clinch their first-ever number one in the States, after it reached the top spot on July 10. It stayed there for four weeks before being displaced by I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am by Herman's Hermits.

Otis Redding ended up covering the track on his album, Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul in 1965. And it was only then that Richards' original vision for the track was fulfilled.

“At least Otis got it right,” the guitarist later chuckled. “Our version was a demo for Otis.”

Eric Clapton’s long-lost Les Paul is back after six decades in the wilderness. But which iconic guitars are still missing in action, and why haven’t our heroes heard of padlocks? Drilling into that very subject, via the medium of a conversation with, er, ourselves… It’s Fret Buzz.

I keep hearing about Eric Clapton’s Summersburst. Has the veteran British bluesman brought out a new Snapple flavor?

That would be amazing. But no. The Summersburst is the 1960 Les Paul bought by Clapton from The Police’s Andy Summers and played on Cream’s 1966 debut album. It’s been missing for [checks watch] 60 years. But it just resurfaced in a Paris guitar shop.

Where’s it been all this time?

Hanging out with the absinthe fairy and cancan dancers at Moulin Rouge? For a long time, its last-known location was Dan Armstrong’s repair shop in New York, where Clapton was apparently unhappy with the neck fix, refused the bill, and ditched the guitar. Now it’s been revealed that it had been kept under the watchful eye of collector, Perry Margouleff.

How does Clapton feel about its resurfacing?

Publicly, he doesn’t seem that bothered. After all, the guy’s already auctioned his guitar collection. Maybe it’s like when you’ve tidied the shed and your neighbor suddenly returns that rusty lawnmower you’d forgotten about. Or your idiot kid comes home from college and starts yelling on Fortnite. And besides, his Beano is still missing.

Well, it’s only a comic book. Just buy another one. It costs, what, $4?

No, we mean the 1960 Les Paul that Clapton played on the Bluesbreakers’ fabled ‘Beano’ album of 1966. That one was swiped from a church hall in the same period.

Any leads?

Joe Bonamassa insists that Beano “is in a collection on the East Coast. It still exists. I haven’t seen it, but I have it on good authority from people who have.”

How do you smuggle a guitar out of a dressing room anyway?

We can only assume, in harem pants. But it happens more than you’d think. Keith Richards had nine guitars stolen from the Stones’ Côte d'Azur mansion during the recording of 1972’s Exile On Main St.

Nine! But surely Keith in that early-’70s period was alert and vigilant, and would have fitted out Villa Nellcôte with burglar alarms or at least completed the relevant contents insurance forms?

Erm, you might want to read his memoirs. Anyway, one of Keith’s Les Pauls turned up last year at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Looking pretty rough after all these years, I’d imagine.

There was deep weathering after decades of abuse. As for the guitar – that looked pretty good!

At least Michael Angelo Batio’s four-neck Quad couldn’t feasibly be stolen.

Actually, it was, in El Paso, by a particularly ballsy thief who presumably told security he was holding an enormous pair of garden shears. Only the top two necks were ever recovered, which is still more than any reasonable person needs.

So stolen guitars do come back?

If you wait long enough, it seems, the universe will provide. In 2024, Paul McCartney was reunited with the legendary 1961 Höfner bass stolen 52 years earlier. And no doubt did a cheery thumbs-up for the cameras.

So what you’re saying is: ‘guitars are like homing pigeons’?

Even better. Because they don’t crap on your shoulder when you’re busking.

The following excerpt is taken from The Original Punk – Jeff Beck Stories: From Yardbird to the Guitar Shop by Steve Rosen.

Sometime around mid-December 1974, Mick Taylor left the Rolling Stones. He had been in the band since June 1969 and played on their most legendary albums: Let It Bleed; Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out; Sticky Fingers; Exile on Main Street; Goats Head Soup; and It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll. Despite being part of the world’s biggest rock and roll band, Taylor couldn’t take another day.

“If I’d just been content to be a side man and make a lot of money,” Mick Taylor divulged, “I’d have stayed where I was, but I wasn’t content. There’s always something more I wanted to express and more I wanted to do. I went through a few years, which were kind of a bit of a wasteland, where I lost my sense of direction and my spiritual needs completely.”

Down one guitar player, the Stones put out the call. Jeff answered. “I got a call from Keith Richards,” Beck recalled. “He acted like he had known me for 20 years. He asked me to come over and play and I thought it meant just kill a weekend. So, I thought, ‘Well, it would be nice to spend a couple of days in Rotterdam [Holland].’

“I went over there and I found out they wanted me to join; I couldn’t believe that. I mean the money was tempting; I could have made a fortune and not ever have to work again. But I would have been half-dead, and my reputation would have been shot. I think things have worked out better this way; I couldn’t be happier really.”

Assuredly, his relationship with Jagger and the Stones was a love/hate thing. “I have this affection for them in a funny sort of way,” the sometimes Mick Jagger lookalike mused. “I don’t like their music at all ‘cause they were pirates; they pirated the whole thing.

“Eel Pie Island [island in the River Thames, which featured the Eel Pie Island Hotel, where everybody from the Yardbirds, the Tridents, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, the Who and the Rolling Stones performed during their nascent days] was my first introduction to this dreadful scene.

“I had a little combo from Richmond [the Tridents], but they were good though. The guy used to play the harmonica like Little Walter, and he was an unbelievable blues player and a little drummer who was 18 or 17 or something. Every group knew every other group by name and by every sort of detail; there was a hot interest then.

“I suppose it’s like if you invented something right now and it swept the nation; you’d be hot for it because it’s something you were part of from the beginning.”

When Beck quipped, “I don’t like their music at all,” what he actually meant was, “I have no respect for them whatsoever.” When questioned how he felt about the Stones going out on the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour [1989] when the bandmembers averaged an age of around 45, he responded with typically unfiltered comments. He also took a shot at the Who.

“That’s just ironic,” he mused, “these older guys coming out. It’s nothing to do with me at all. I intended to do this tour way, way back. I don’t know what motivated Pete [Townshend] to go back other than personally to see if they could do it or whether the money had anything to do with it. Or if it was just a fun thing to do for entertainment’s sake. A lot of kids would love to see that while they’re still able.

“Unfortunately, [Keith Moon] Moony isn’t around but [Simon] Phillips is in there and he’ll give them a kick up the ass. I’ve heard four tracks on the Stones’ album [Steel Wheels] and it’s really something. If they’re gonna come out with material like that, then hallelujah.

“If it had been a naff (bad) album, then I would have said for sure they’re doing it just for the money. People want to see them all up there on the stage; they don’t want to see Mick or Keith on their own in some yuppified, designer rock outfit. They want to see the Rolling Stones rolling.”

Several months later in 1986, he teamed up again to assist on Mick Jagger’s second solo album, Primitive Cool. Though he had played on seven of the nine tracks from Jagger’s first album, She’s the Boss, there he was only one amongst a cadre of lead guitarists who played. On the follow-up, he was bumped to the top of the album credits and listed as Lead Guitar: Jeff Beck.

“I did the first Jagger album [She’s the Boss], which was done just for fun, and it sounds like it,” Beck hinted. “It sounds like a good beginning to something really promising. But it was the second album [Primitive Cool] when I realized I was just slotted in as a guest, studio-type guy, and I really didn’t like that.

“I think he [Mick Jagger] had this brainwave that he wanted to put this big show together where he was the star and we were all planetary kinds of people and all [much in the same way as Rod Stewart treated Jeff during their short-lived tour). That didn’t appeal to me.

“I wanted to be in Rolling Stone number two with a tomorrow feel to it; like an experimental Rolling Stones with Jagger singing, and I was sure that’s what he wanted. As time drifted by, I realized he was determined to put these old songs on tape the way he wanted them. He wanted to produce and have a very stylized album, which I didn’t want any part of.”

If Jagger couldn’t have enticed Beck to join the Stones, he could at least have him play in his touring band. Wrong again. “He did say at the beginning of the project that he wanted me to tour as well, and I worked flat-out on the She’s the Boss album and he’d really liked that. It was only halfway through the second project that I started to back out of it.

“He liked what I was doing, but I just didn’t like the way it was going. There was rhythm guitarists every day coming and putting their 10 cents in [Living Colour’s Vernon Reid; the Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart; Jimmy Rip; and Jim Barber]. I just felt like a bump on a log. I walked out of it; there was no way I could handle it.”

• The Original Punk – Jeff Beck Stories: From Yardbird to the Guitar Shop by Steve Rosen is available now from Amazon and Tonechaserbook.com.

Keith Richards has looked back on the time a close encounter with one of his guitar heroes didn’t go exactly as planned.

Boil down the Rolling Stones’ music to its core components, and you’ll find nods to the impassioned licks of Howlin’ Wolf and the hip-swinging charm of Chuck Berry. So, when Richards found himself in Chuck Berry’s dressing room early in his career with the Stones, it was a dream come true. Soon, though, he was sent crashing back down to earth.

“He punched me once, years ago, in the ‘60s, I think,” Richards reveals of his meeting with Berry to the Guardian. This would have likely been in 1969, when the Stones, their star rising, toured the US and had Berry as a fill-in opening act on some nights.

“We were in his dressing room, I was having a peek at his guitar, and I was just about to stroke it, and he went: ‘Nobody touches it!’ And bam!”

Chuck Berry’s Gibson ES-355 is the stuff of legend. Richards quickly realized his mistake.

“I would have done the same,” he admits. “I’ve never had to, but then I’ve never caught someone doing that.”

Despite the close encounter, Richards remains effusive in his praise of Berry, who helped shape the Stones sound.

“There’s something about those early records of his,” he says of Berry. “They have an ease about them and a sophistication in a way. I loved his naturalness when he was playing, the way he moved – his whole body became part of the guitar.

“He made me focus on what was possible for me, which made my mother shell out for an electric guitar,” he adds. “I just felt a natural affinity for him, even though he was a cussed bugger!”

Suffice to say, Richards never tried to touch the guitar again. Luckily, he now has his own line of ES-355s that carries more than a little of Berry’s DNA.

The Rolling Stones are set to release their second Andrew Watt-produced album, Foreign Tongues, next month, and Ronnie Wood has been discussing his artful weaving around Richards’ guitar parts ahead of it.

Meanwhile, Joe Perry has thanked Richards for turning him onto the ultimate slide guitar.

On Tuesday (May 5), the Rolling Stones announced a new album, Foreign Tongues.

Their 25th long player in total, it – like its predecessor, 2023's impressively vital Hackney Diamonds – was produced by Andrew Watt, and (also like its predecessor) features a laundry list of special guests: Steve Winwood, the Cure frontman Robert Smith, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, and some up-and-comer named Paul McCartney.

The Stones officially launched the album that same day with a splashy listening party and Q&A led by Conan O'Brien, held at the cavernous Weylin event space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Of course, those aforementioned guest spots were high on the list of discussion priorities, but less tabloid-friendly (and arguably more interesting) were the more nuts-and-bolts insights into how the Stones have musically kept on, well, rolling, for well over 60 years.

O'Brien at one point asked Wood – sat in between the ever-ageless Mick Jagger and the ever-wry Keith Richards – about how his own fondness for open E tuning clicks with his six-string comrade's love of Open G.

“In my Faces days I always played open E, and Keith always played in open G,” Wood explained. “Somewhere in the middle, there's this sort of mesh that we call ‘the ancient form of weaving’. Sometimes we cross accidentally!”

Indeed, if you've ever heard Richards discuss in other interviews the way his playing interacts with Wood's – or Mick Taylor's and Brian Jones' before him – you've likely also heard him use that exact term.

It's the bedrock of the Stones' sound – rhythm and lead blending into one; no showing off; blues, country, and rockabilly all blending together seamlessly. The overlapping riffs that have been played by millions of guitarists the world over.

Richards, for his part, highlighted to O'Brien that there's no need for discussing the fine matters of arranging with his guitar partner of half a century.

“[There's no] ‘Oh, this chord goes like this; this chord goes like this,’” he said. “We know [where and when to play] without thinking about it or talking about it.”

At just 32, Matthieu Lucas has managed to build something extraordinary.

The entrepreneur, guitarist, and music enthusiast has painstakingly chipped away at building the emporium that is Matt’s Guitar Shop from the ground up, attracting A-list clients from all four corners of the globe.

The journey was far from plain sailing. However, judging by the caliber of artist guitars gracing every inch of the walls in this slice of musical paradise – tucked away on an unassuming street in Paris – it has well and truly paid off.

“It was not easy because you just show up at a store, and you look like a baby, and somehow, you start talking big dollars to very reputable dealers or collectors, and some of them were like, ‘How is this possible… this guy is selling drugs somewhere,’” he quips, as he recalls the early days of his ambitious venture.

However, it’s perhaps Lucas’ marketing prowess and ethos – that even the most prestigious of guitars are meant to be played on stage – that has transformed him into the go-to guy for artist guitars, with players such as Marcus King, Craig Ross, Billie Joe Armstrong, Myles Kennedy, and Yungblud all getting in on the action.

“I was very inspired by banks and huge associations buying Stradivarius [violins] very early on and lending them to musicians on tour playing classical music,” Lucas says.

“Guitars need to be shared with the world. That's my theory. That's why we lend ours on stage all the time, and that's always going to raise the value. They're really artifacts of a very specific period when the guitar revolutionized everything.”

What inspired you to start Matt’s Guitar Shop in the first place?

It’s been a little bit more than 10 years, actually. Time flies! [However], it all started when I was 15 years old.

I was not really interested in music or guitar in general. I was just playing video games with a friend of mine. His father showed up in the room and he said, “Guys, you need to listen to AC/DC.” And then I said, "Okay, [I’ll] give this guy five minutes with his old band and then I'm going to be finished with him.”

And we listened, and Angus Young was really the guy who penetrated my brain, and my passion for guitar started there. Six months later, I was seeing AC/DC in a stadium and buying an SG copy, and that started it all. And then I just wanted to buy more and more guitars because I started to discover bands.

Step by step, I went to Paris guitar stores. I was hanging out in a store called Guitar Store in Paris, and the guy was nice to me, and he let me discover the world of guitar sales – buying, selling… the daily life of a guitar shop.

I was already buying and selling privately. So it [Matt’s Guitar Shop] started in an apartment in Paris – a very small apartment. Three years, maybe four years later, we had the opportunity to get the place here, and that was it.

What were some of the initial challenges, especially as a young businessman?

They really put you in boxes initially, and that was not easy, but step by step, we met people that trusted me, and I knew who I wanted to work with over time.

I don’t come from a musical family myself. So I was mainly listening to those guys in my headphones when I was younger. I was listening to Lenny [Kravitz] and Craig [Ross] quite a lot because I have deep respect for that duo and what they represent.

One day, I show up at Rudy's Music [in New York], and Rudy just traded me one of Craig’s main touring guitars, which was his 1964 ES-345.

I didn't have the money back then, so I said, ‘Give me three months. I'm going to buy and sell in France, and I'm going to come back and pick it up.’ And my friend, who was with me at this time, told me, ‘Are you crazy? This guitar is way too much money.’

It was a time when social media was different. I just sent a message to Craig on Facebook, and two weeks passed by, and I was like, ‘Okay, this guy is busy. He's never going to reach me.’ And, suddenly, my phone is popping off, and Craig Ross just answered me, and he was so kind. [He was like,] this guy is 22 or 23 years old, he just made a huge purchase for himself, compared to his capacity.

So when I bought this guitar, we met at L'Olympia in Paris, and we got that connection going. So, for me, just meeting him was great because Craig really proves that you can’t buy class. I met Lenny later, but with Craig, it's been like 10 years and I still have that connection with him.

Which artists’ guitars command the most demand and attention?

It's quite mixed. We have John Frusciante's 1961 [ES-]335 that he played on stage. We have, of course, Paul Kossoff's 1955 “Black Beauty”, which was also used by Eric Clapton during Cream because they used to trade guitars quite a lot.

I’ve had this guitar for almost 10 years now, and I don't regret buying it. Another interesting one is Steve Lukather’s 1951 Esquire. We [also] have AC/DC's Cliff Williams’ bass – we have number three, which was toured all around the world for four years with AC/DC.

How has your vision for the showroom evolved, compared to when you first opened the doors?

When I started this business with artists’ guitars, I had two kinds of people: the people who believed in it and the people who were laughing at me.

Now, I was very proud when I was assisting at the [Jim Irsay] auction in New York City because I think that the guitar changed the world, and that the guitar will still be listened to in 1,000 years, and all those guys will be gone, and what's left is the music and their instrument. [When you buy that guitar,] you are the owner of their legacy.

So we feel kind of amazed at the shop every day because I really believed in that market when it was not fancy.

What made the Jim Irsay auction different?

Everybody was waiting for that auction. That was, after all, the greatest collection [that ever existed] of artists’ guitars.

People are starting to understand that there are good aspects to buying a guitar – whether it's for the investment or whether you're a guitar player – but if you choose wisely, those guitars will never go down [in price] because there is always somebody richer than you who wants to have that guitar.

Why have the Jim Irsay guitars leapt in value in such a short time span?

It depends on the auction house you're dealing with, the place you're buying the guitar from, and the marketing around that.

Marketing is key when you want to sell a pricey instrument like that, and I think Christie’s did a great job. They went everywhere, and when you're doing that, you just attract the best buyers because they don't have any doubt about what they're buying.

Everything went through the roof because those buyers were brought together by Christie’s in one room. They could have been telephone bidders. They could be room bidders, or internet bidders, but they were all together in one room for this collection, which was exceptional.

I see that with the shop. I don't have a single customer older than 60, and usually my customers are between 25 and 50, so it's a new generation who just discovered the world of guitars, and those people are working hard to get those guitars.

When you put them in one room, I can guarantee you that you will see new world records. If Jimmy Page's “Number One” was in that room that day, that would be between 20 and 30 million [dollars] easy.

But who are these people? What are their backgrounds?

I can give you an example of one person I know: Bobby Tseitli in Chicago. Bobby is a good friend of mine – those guys are really amazing, and they're putting together a collection called Family Guitars.

I knew they wanted [Jerry Garcia’s] “Tiger” so much. I gave him a huge hug when he bought that guitar, and I can guarantee you that this guy probably cried like a baby in his room sleeping next to the guitar that night, and that everybody in the room was feeling amazed because he was bidding with all his heart. The night after, Derek [Trucks] played it on stage. I mean, what's better than that?

I think we should be thankful for those guys who believe in the market and make it dynamic because they're not only buying guitars; they are making the shows more attractive. Everybody in the room will remember the day they saw Jerry Garcia's guitar in the hands of Derek Trucks. [In terms of the buyers’ backgrounds], I never ask too much unless they talk about themselves.

For sure, at Christie’s, we saw hedge fund guys, tech guys, cryptocurrency guys… so it's new money, in a good way, not in a bad way. From what I can tell, we have more and more young people who are just working hard, and they could be in tech, they could be in sports, whatever… we have so many kinds of buyers, and that's the beauty of this job.

Do you think we're going to see David Gilmour’s Strat one on stage anytime soon?

I know by name the guy who bought it. I don't know him personally. If he reads the interview, [I would say] I think you should put that guitar on stage. But I hope all those guitars [from that auction] are going to be on stage soon.

How do most of these clients find you?

Social media helps. You put the guitars on stage, and people are always filming. The audience recognizes the guitar, and I get texts or messages on Instagram.

So, I think it's a win-win-win because the crowd is winning because they get to see a very special guitar that day. Marketing-wise it's great for the shop, and it's also great for the artist because when this is going to the press, the tour is gonna get some marketing.

When Marcus King was touring in Paris 10 years ago, he was playing in clubs [in front of] 20 people, and we were there already, and now he's more famous, of course. And he still loves to play that Paul Kosoff guitar. Every time he’s in Paris, he plays that guitar on stage, and it's one of his favorite guitars to play.

What trends are you noticing in the types of guitars that command the highest prices in today's market?

When I started, nobody really wanted a guitar from Green Day, for example. Now, I’m getting asked more often.

I think it's a generation thing – Green Day are getting bigger because the older they get, the bigger their legacy. When the band is getting older, their fans are also getting older, and they have more capacity to buy the items of their dreams. When artists pass away, sometimes you get a bit emotional. So, of course, people are missing them so much that they want their guitars.

But I would be curious to have one of those big “dinosaur” guitars on stage [at an auction]. After the success of the Gibson Keith Richards signature, [I would be curious to have] one of Keith's guitars going on stage, the black [ES-]355, the “Micawber” Tele... or Jimmy Page's guitars or Brian May's guitar or Paul McCartney's bass – those legendary guitars that are still used by them.

I think we would be surprised by the price they fetch because records are made to be broken and are made to be set higher every time. And again, it wouldn't surprise me in the near future if we see a guitar [sell for] between $20 and $30-40 million.

Do you see any risks or misconceptions for new buyers entering the vintage guitar market, especially those treating it as an investment?

I would suggest that you check the provenance of the instruments. You have to choose wisely. If you're advised wisely and if you decide to buy the guitar at the right price, that's great.

To give you an example, when I bought Steve Jones' guitar, I knew there were rumors of Steve selling the original one 14 times to different people.

So we checked the mother-of-pearl inlays. We checked all the dings and marks. We scanned the pictures of the guitar today, and we matched those mother-of-pearl inlays. When [there are] three matches, then you know.

Beyond the monetary value, what makes a guitar collectible?

The more provenance you have and the more history you have with the guitar [the better]. For example, if Keith Richards just played one guitar one time on the sofa two minutes backstage and signed it, that doesn't really make sense to me. But what matters to me is if he played it on stage. Why did he choose that particular one for his personal collection? Was there a reason sound-wise?

I don't agree with comments on the internet that say that, ‘Oh well, David Gilmour modified the Black Strat like 700 times over time…’ [If you want a pristine guitar,] then just buy a vintage guitar. Don't even look at an artist guitar.

I understand that it doesn’t make sense for some people to buy a $15 million guitar, but I think the more modifications it has, the more personal the instrument becomes – and that’s what makes its value even higher.

There's been a lot of criticism over the amounts spent at the Jim Irsay auction. What would you say to people who feel that collectible guitar prices have lost touch with reality?

I think we are living in a world where records are made to be broken.

I would get [that comment] from the perspective of somebody earning a medium salary. That's understandable, because for some people, it's just hard to feed their children, and then you see on the news that somebody just bought David Gilmour's guitar for $15 million.

But I would say it has been like this forever, in sports, the arts… let's not even talk about the football world. I think the world is discovering guitars with these auctions, with these pieces of history, [and] with the new players as well. The rich will always be richer. We can't control that. If they want the David Gilmour Strat for $50 million one day, that's it.

What's been your proudest moment of seeing one of your guitars being played on stage?

I lent Myles Kennedy Jeff Buckley's guitar on stage in Paris a few years ago. That was the final show I assisted before Covid, but that was a moment because it was at L'Olympia [in Paris].

It was full of symbolism. We were preparing for that day for four months. Myles was the perfect guy to sing Hallelujah on stage with the very guitar that Jeff recorded the song with. I still get chills talking about it.

[Another standout moment was when] I saw Craig Ross playing [Jeff Beck’s] Yardburst in Paris.

If I told my young self, [who was] listening to Lenny Kravitz and Craig Ross, that one day I would have Jeff Beck's guitar and then Craig would play it on tour, especially in Paris, my hometown, I wouldn't believe it. It was really a full-circle moment.

• Learn more about Matt's Guitar Shop.

“This is Keith” is a pretty mundane phrase, but when you answer your phone and you hear those three simple words growled at you by the most distinguished rhythm guitarist of all time, they make a lasting impression.

The 30-minute interview that follows is no less impactful. Even at 82 years old, Keith Richards is in devilish form, prone to laughing hysterically at his own jokes, dropping clusters of F-bombs, mocking some of GW’s more naive questions and generally behaving like the snaggle-toothed Captain Jack Sparrow caricature that all Rolling Stones fans recognize and appreciate.

Talking to him, you don’t feel like you’re in the company of some godlike rock star; you feel like you’re backstage at a Stones show, laughing it up over life’s more surreal and stupid moments.

Still, Richards, who was infamously labeled “mad, bad and dangerous to know” more than half a century ago – and with good reason (you already know the coke, heroin and switchblade anecdotes) – is a mellower character these days than the terrifying Glimmer Twin persona of decades past.

He’s a well-spoken fellow; you can still hear traces of the suburban London accent that he shares with his fellow Stone Mick Jagger as he talks enthusiastically and at length about all things guitar.

He’s a committed lover of his instrument – almost literally, by the sound of it – and is especially keen to discuss his latest signature model, the Gibson Keith Richards 1960 ES-355 Collector's Edition.

Built by hand at Gibson’s custom shop in Nashville and available in a limited run of 150 units, 50 of which are signed on the F-hole label and headstock and 100 on the label only, this guitar comes in at a marriage-destroying $29,999 and $19,999 respectively, in other words too expensive for you and me; well, maybe you but definitely me.

The point of the new ES-355 model is that Richards’ original, which has been 3D-scanned by Gibson to make the new version a millimetrically identical copy, occupies a rare spot in guitar history; he used it (among other guitars) to record the Stones’ seminal Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main St. albums in 1971 and ’72, and has played it on every Stones tour since 1997. If you ever get your hands on one, count yourself lucky.

The same adjective applies to Richards himself. He’s still in pretty good shape despite an early-career adherence to the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle that few could possibly survive; he’s an acknowledged legend in his own lifetime; and he still wants to be better at what he does.

I was expecting him to be pretty jaded at the prospect of yet another guitar-related interview, but the opposite turned out to be true. You’ll enjoy the chat that follows, even if your relationship with your instrument isn’t quite as intimate as his.

Hello, Keith. Are you at home in Connecticut?

I am, yes. We’re absolutely snowed in. Nobody can get here except a man with a snowplow. He’s working away right now. I quite like it, because it means I can’t get out.

This new Gibson ES-355 of yours is pretty tasty, isn’t it?

Yeah, yeah! What a surprise, and what a fuckin’ honor. I tell you, when they came at me with this one, I was like, “How can I refuse?” It was a shock to me at first, because when I started, the idea of even owning a Gibson was pretty much out of the picture.

There are only 150 of them. How many of them are Gibson giving you?

Oh look, I have enough guitars already.

Is it true you have 3,000 guitars in your personal collection?

It’s something like that. You can call my guitar man, Pierre de Beauport, if you want the exact number, but it’s around there. But it’s not like I go around buying them or anything; a lot of these guitars have been given to me. I’ve never seen them all.

I actually only use about… well, the working number is about 15 guitars in the rack, for different sounds and whatever. But the other 2,900, I don’t know. They’re taken care of, though. I mean, this is a prime collection.

You’re known for putting groove into your playing and hanging back behind the beat.

It’s actually nothing you can put into words, because it’s just the way I feel the rhythm. I always say that I can only do this because I’ve been blessed with the best drummers in the world. I have the luxury of knowing that the guy knows what he’s doing, you know.

Were you the first guitar player to bring that swing to rock music?

Well, if you think about it, it’s the other way around. Rock music came out of swing music. You listen to any of the old ’30s and ’40s big bands, they’re playing as much rock ’n’ roll as Bill Haley or Little Richard. The essence of a lot of it was in those big bands and their rhythm sections.

You played with Chuck Berry in the ’80s. What was he like?

Chuck, as a person, was an ornery old fucker – a lovable, ornery old fucker.

Why do you admire his guitar playing?

The same thing you’re talking about; there was something about the way he used that rhythm behind the drums that, to me, was fascinating. He said to me, “I was just playing with the right guys, [bassist] Willie Dixon and [pianist] Johnnie Johnson.” And that’s the way I feel about the way I play – lucky to play with the right guys.

We’re talking about a mysterious thing, a thing called feel, a thing called groove. Luckily you can’t put your finger on it, you know. But I try! [Laughs]

Is the way you weave lead and rhythm parts playing with Ronnie Wood an unspoken thing?

Oh, absolutely. There’s something between us. It was the same with me and with Mick Taylor, and also with Brian Jones, back at the beginning. You’d meet the right guys and automatically they knew that “You take over here, I’ll come in underneath,” and there was a beautiful little ballet going on. That’s amazing, and that’s what makes it worth doing, you know – this interconnection between musicians.

When it works, it seems almost telepathic.

Yeah, it is kinda telepathic, in a way. I suppose. You can put that word on it. [Shouts] Ronnie! [Laughs] And it’s something you don’t wanna fuck with. Once it’s there, you don’t talk about it amongst yourselves. It’s an unspoken reliance upon each other, which is a beautiful thing.

You mentioned Brian Jones, who we rarely discuss as a guitarist. What was his playing like?

Personally, he was the first steel slide player I heard. His middle name could have been Elmore, because he used to just play Elmore James stuff. He was really, really in front of that game, and that’s what I really admired about him when we first started playing together.

This band was started by a piano player, Ian Stewart, and he had Brian with him. Once I heard Brian playing Elmore James, I thought, “I’ve found a guy here who I can mess with,” and then we got into Jimmy Reed stuff and, of course, Muddy Waters, all of that… I wouldn’t call it a university education. [Laughs]

Have you ever played with a guitarist who couldn’t groove?

I very rarely play with stiffs! I’ve been lucky to play with the best. Listen, I’ve played with the guys I grew up listening to. Little Richard, Scotty Moore. Jesus Christ, should I go on? [Laughs]

Did you know John Mayall?

I had great admiration for John. He was such a scholarly guy about it. John was sort of a shadowy figure. A lot of those guys came out of the folk music scene, as it was known at the time, because for some weird reason in those early years, there were hierarchies between traditional jazz and folk music.

You know, people got fussy about shit. Anyway, it was amazing to me that these guys were dying to play music that comes from thousands of miles away and that it resonated with them. Therefore the resonation continues; music is about resonation.

Did you like the British folk guitarists?

Yeah, I did listen to them, and they were good pickers, you know. Wizz Jones used to come round to my house and hang out for a few free cigarettes and show you a lick or two. Do you remember Wizz Jones? He was an incredible guy. I really actually admired those guys. Bert Jansch was fuckin’ amazing. And unrecognized, really, for how great they were.

When you got into open-G tuning on five strings, it seemed to change your whole view of guitar playing.

It did, actually, and anybody that tries to get into it, it changes their fucking mind, too. [Laughs] Because it is a really strange setup, especially if you’re used to six-string guitars.

You have to reconfigure everything, and you realize you’ve restricted yourself to five strings and three open notes [GDGBD], you know. You have to learn to play the chords. I figured it out. It’s still fascinating. I’m still rambling around in there, looking for stuff.

Is the objective of the partial chords you often play to strip the music down?

Yeah, basically, because with five strings in open G, your bottom string is a G, so you’re immediately stripping away a whole load of possibilities of being Jimi Hendrix. [Laughs]

Also, if you get into it, you find a million other things people haven’t explored before, or at least, very few of us have. For me, it started off as an interesting sort of experiment and then I suddenly found that, hey, this is the stuff.

You mentioned Hendrix. Did you ever want to be a virtuoso soloist yourself?

No, I have never really wanted to go down that path. I mean, with solos, I admire the virtuoso and the technique and the nimbleness, but at the end of the day, what are you soloing over? You’re the icing on the cake. And I’m the cake!

So what did you think of the Sunset Strip shredders that got big in the ’80s?

[Laughs] I laughed my fuckin’ head off! Like, “Oh my God, what have we spawned?”

They were skilled players, though.

Yeah, they were good pickers, and they had a hit record here and there, but that’s pop music. Look, as long as you’ve got something to solo over, then go. But that never appealed to me. What appeals to me is what’s going on underneath. What I really do love is two or three guitars playing together, because that’s what fascinates me. Just one guy soloing means nothing much to me. Right?

Do you play fewer notes these days?

Yes, I do, because I’m not as fast as I used to be. [Laughs] I tell you what, at my age, what I find most interesting about the guitar is you can compensate for certain disabilities and nimbleness and find other ways of getting around the problem, and it still teaches you another thing – you never stop learning with the damn thing. I love it and it’s my friend forever. If I had to, I’d fuck it.

Noted. Are your hands holding up OK at age 82?

Well, I do have arthritis and very large knuckles. They don’t hurt, but it does get in the way sometimes. I’m going for a wider fingerboard for that reason.

Do you warm your hands up before a show?

I sit on ’em. No, I do have one of those hand pumps, you know. I’m really lax, quite honestly. I just look at my hands and my hands look at me, and we say, “Well, let’s see what we can do today.” And that’s the way I play guitar. I look at it and I say, “We’ve got nothing else to do. Come here. I love you!” [Laughs]

What’s your favorite song ever?

What, just one? Oh man, you’re sticking me against the wall. You’re killing me here.

It’s what we do.

Yeah! I gotta go with Robert Johnson’s Come On in My Kitchen. It’s all there – originality, everything. It’s fantastic.

And if you could only play one guitar for the rest of your life, which would it be?

Whoa… you’re a firing squad, ain’t ya? I have a little black Gibson looking at me right now, a 1936 acoustic, broken, battered. I’d keep that one with me.

You’ve often said acoustic playing is at the heart of what you do.

Well, you can’t become an electric guitar player without knowing where the damn thing comes from. If you don’t get the basics, where do you think you’re going to end up? [Laughs]

Are you still learning as a guitar player?

Who isn’t? That’s the beauty of the thing. My teacher never stops teaching. I’ve been at it for years now and he still knows more than me.

Have you got any advice for our younger readers about guitar playing?

I cannot give you any advice, kids. If you love the thing and feel like playing it, just dig in and find out yourself. It’s a great pal, and when there’s nothing else around, there’s always a guitar. It becomes a friend, a real deep friend, and also a challenge. It looks at you across the room and leers at you. [Laughs] “Come on, you ain’t got nothing out of me yet.”

It’s been 11 years since your last solo album. Will you do another one?

I’m thinking about it. I never plan these things. [Rolling Stones drummer] Steve Jordan and I were having a chat about it the other day, and usually you start by just saying, “Let’s go in and cut a track or two.” Sometimes that’s what happens, and other times you say, “Hey, here’s another one, and here’s another one.” So I’m not counting it out.

Are you still inspired to write songs?

Oh, God, long may they come. They come out of nowhere. They come out of babies’ mouths, they come out of a car crash; you never know. Everything’s a song.

They say the best songs come when you’re feeling anger and frustration. Is that true in your experience?

Anger and frustration help for a while, but you’ll never make a living at it.

What makes you happy these days?

Well, breathing. [Laughs] No, this winter my grandkids have been around. They’re all ones and twos and threes; it’s fascinating to watch. I’m starting to get the hang of it, you know. Over this winter, they’ve been my inspiration.

What are your goals at this point?

To make it to the next winter!

• For more information on the Keith Richards 1960 ES-355, head to Gibson.com.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Backstage Auctions has launched a new collection of historical musical items, which includes gear used by Eddie Van Halen, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and more – and it's expected to fetch a cumulative figure of up to $1.5 million.

The auction is already live and taking bids, with storied and oddball pieces – many from the collection of the late Small Faces founder, Ian McLagan – making up the lots.

It includes the Don Musser acoustic guitar that Eddie Van Halen reportedly used on two 1990s Van Halen albums, Balance and Van Halen III. It can be heard on the likes of Take Me Back, Without You, and Neworld.

According to a 1995 Guitar World interview, EVH had bought the acoustic from Norman's Rare Guitars, and it was regularly put to work at 5150 Studios.

Also featured is Eric Clapton's stage-played 1974 Fender Strat, which Ronnie Lane also played after it was gifted to the Small Faces/Faces guitarist circa 1977.

See also Keith Richards' 2005 semi-hollow Duesenberg Starplayer Outlaw electric guitar, which sports a unique mosaic-mimicking finish described as a “custom pearl finish.” It was a birthday gift from Richards to McLagan, and it features chrome skull knobs to really tap into the Outlaw vibe.

There's also a movie star up for grabs... sort of. When Elvis Presley was filming Viva Las Vegas, he fell into a pool with a guitar, and when it was discovered to be water-damaged, a Gibson acoustic was drafted in for the remainder of the scenes. Yes, that back-up guitar is up for auction.

McLagan's 1965 Telecaster, customized with a Strat neck and featuring a “custom-painted psychedelic pickguard,” is also of note. Bought for his first show with the Small Faces, it was later used by Steve Marriott to record Tin Soldier and All or Nothing.

It was originally Cream, but that finish was stripped off to reveal a natural look in 1969. That same year, Peter Frampton hand-carved its neck pickup hole to accommodate a Gibson humbucker salvaged from the SG that Townshend had been brutally smashed to pieces during a show at the Marquee Club.

Consequently, Backstage Auctions has dubbed it “a singular piece of rock and roll history.”

Bidding is now open. See Backstage Auctions for more.

Keith Richards has opened up on how age and arthritis has changed his approach to the guitar, as he continues to adapt his chops to prolong his playing days.

Richards is one of the most decorated and celebrated rhythm guitar players of all time. Still going strong to this day, Keef continues to hammer his electric guitars with the Rolling Stones – but he’s having to make some adaptations.

The man who has written some of the greatest guitar riffs of all time went public with his struggles with arthritis in 2023, and it’s forced the 82-year-old to change tack.

Asked in the new issue of Guitar World whether he plays fewer notes these days, he says, “Yes, I do, because I'm not as fast as I used to be.”

“At my age, what I find most interesting about the guitar is you can compensate for certain disabilities and nimbleness and find other ways of getting around the problem,” he adds. “And it teaches you another thing – you never stop learning with the damn thing. I love it, and it's my friend forever.”

Richards isn’t letting his body get in between him and his guitars. A wider fingerboard is one compensation he's had to make, but he doesn’t use his hand pumps to aid his pre-show warm-ups as much as he should.

"Well, I do have arthritis and very large knuckles," he says when asked how his hands are holding up. "They don't hurt, but it does get in the way sometimes. I'm going for a wider fingerboard for that reason.

“Honestly, I just look at my hands, and my hands look at me, and we say, ‘Well, let’s see what we can do today,’” Richards adds. “And that's the way I play guitar. I look at it and say, ‘We've got nothing else to do. Come Here. I love you!’”

His love of the six-string – which is, admittedly, sometimes reduced to five – is reflected in two new signature guitars with Gibson. The Collector's Edition models are painstaking replicas of his go-to axe.

In related Richards news, he recently confessed to having no recollection of writing one of his most iconic riffs, and says he laughed his head off when a legion of shredders emerged from the Sunset Strip in the 1980s.

He's the cover star of the latest issue of Guitar World. Copies can be ordered from Magazines Direct.

Keith Richards has looked back on the heyday of 1980s shred guitar in a new interview with Guitar World, admitting that he wasn’t especially fond of the music that was coming out at the time.

As Don Was recently attested, Richards is one of greatest rhythm guitarists to ever have played the instrument. As such, it makes sense that his favorite players from across the years are the ones that sat firmly in the pocket, those that favored groove and feel over fretboard acrobatics.

Early era swing music, Bill Haley, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and the blues – the diet that Richards was reared on – all helped cement his standing as a rhythm great, with the Rolling Stone showing little interest in becoming a lead player.

Unsurprisingly, that meant when the musical tides turned in the 1980s and Eddie Van Halen left a new wave of shredders emerging in his wake, Richards wasn’t all that impressed with what he saw.

“I laughed my fuckin’ head off!” he says in the new issue of Guitar World when asked about the Sunset Strip shredders of the era. “Like, ‘Oh my God, what have we spawned?’”

It won’t come as a shock to learn that the breakneck speeds pushed by the Shrapnel stars and shred innovators such as Yngwie Malmsteen and Marty Friedman weren’t quite Richards’ thing. That said, he appreciates the skill for what it is.

“They were good pickers, and they had a hit record here and there, but that’s pop music,” he adds. “Look, as long as you’ve got something to solo over, then go. But that never appealed to me. What appeals to me is what’s going on underneath.

What I really do love is two or three guitars playing together, because that’s what fascinates me. Just one guy soloing means nothing much to me. Right?”

It goes back to why Richards himself never cared much for lead playing, and why he instead dedicated himself to the craft of rhythm guitar so enthusiastically.

“I have never really wanted to go down that path,” Richards replies when asked if he ever wanted to be a soloist. “I mean, with solos, I admire the virtuoso and the technique and the nimbleness, but at the end of the day, what are you soloing over? You’re the icing on the cake. And I’m the cake!”

Guitar World’s new interview with Keith Richards is available in the magazine’s latest issue. You can subscribe to Guitar World over at Magazines Direct.

Last week, the Jim Irsay Collection auction set a new gold standard for high-profile guitar auctions.

David Gilmour's Black Strat went under the hammer for a record-shattering $14.6 million, with Jerry Garcia's “Tiger” guitar hot on its heels, selling for $11,560,000. These two white whales were followed by Kurt Cobain’s Smells Like Teen Spirit Mustang and Eric Clapton’s MTV Unplugged Martin, which fetched $6,907,000 and $4,101,000, respectively.

And, in a market where the prices of these mythical guitars only seem to be rising, the question on every guitar aficionado's lips is: what instruments could overtake the “Black Strat” one day?

“When a band is getting older, their fans also are getting older, [and] they have more capacity to buy the items of their dreams,” explains Matthieu Lucas, guitar market expert and owner of Paris emporium Matt's Guitar Shop – when asked this million-dollar question.

“So the price of the items is also growing. When, of course, some artists are passing away, people are missing them so much that they want their guitars. That's the only connection they can have with them anymore.

“But I would be curious to have one of those big dinosaur guitars on stage... after the success of the Gibson signature, one of Keith Richards' guitars going on stage, like the black ES-355, the “Micawber” Tele, or Jimmy Page's guitars, or Brian May's [Red Special] guitar, or Paul McCartney's [Höfner 500/1] bass.”

Lucas is, of course, referring to the legendary guitars that these rock giants are still using to this day.

“I think we would be surprised by the price they fetch, because I think records are made to be broken and are made to be set higher every time. It wouldn't surprise me in the near future if we see a guitar [sold for] between 20 and 30, 40 million [dollars]. That wouldn't surprise me at all.”

As for the one guitar Lucas speculates would have actually gone for this price last Thursday, well, there's one in particular... “If Jimmy Page's “No. 1” Les Paul was in that room that day, that would be between 20 and 30 million [dollars] easy for sure,” he asserts.

Guitar World's full interview with Matthieu Lucas from Matt's Guitar Shop will be published in the coming weeks.

The cream of the crop of Jim Irsay's collection of instruments and music memorabilia alone raked in a total of $84,091,350 from 44 lots – smashing all pre-auction estimates along the way. Guitar World’s Jackson Maxwell reported live from the auction floor, witnessing these historic sales.

Although unavailable for many years, the late Ted Newman’s unique solidbody – originally conceived for Keith Richards back in the ’70s – has made quite a return since the introduction of the 5 String in 2024, the first of an ongoing series of limited-edition models made in the UK under the stewardship of the Cream T Custom Shop.

Along with that guitar, there’s been the single-pickup Honeycomb Junior GT-40, the dual-pickup Honeycomb Senior (both with either Guitar-X swappable or fixed-pickup options), and towards the end of 2025 this Torn and Frayed addition, “a limited edition run of guitars designed to celebrate the history of Newman Guitars and Cream T Pickups”.

It’s offered in artfully and heavily aged nitrocellulose Butterscotch Blonde (as pictured), Black, Cherry Burst and Vintage White.

The Newman design centres around the offset single‑cutaway slab body, which – under the worn paint here – is solid obeche, contributing to its light weight of 2.58kg (5.68lb). With a comfortable asymmetric profile, the bolt-on neck has 24 frets and, with a shorter 629mm (24.75-inch) scale length, is topped off with that distinct and lightly back-angled six-a-side headstock.

There’s no Guitar-X pickup swapping here, though: the Cream T Banger & Mash humbucker mounts on the black scratchplate, the new Mint T single coil in the aged Gotoh T-style bridge plate. The controls obviously follow the Telecaster’s more modern configuration albeit with a pull-switch on the tone control to split the neck humbucker.

Rolling Stones fans will know the origin of the name, and there’s more than a whiff of Keef’s fabled old Telecasters about the style, enhanced by pretty big frets suggesting an earlier refret. But it’s a seriously practical design, not least strapped on, with good access to the upper frets, the comfort helped by the lightly rounded neck heel.

At the bridge the Mint T doesn’t sound over-wound, it’s bright and spanky and seems to suit some crunch where it comes across as raw and cutting, while the Banger & Mash almost sounds like it looks – a big Tele neck voice that has clarity with humbucker width that can be split to clean things up and drop back to a really classic mixed pickup combination. It’s not just the finish that looks old – the guitar sounds it, too.

Just like the song goes, its “coat is torn and frayed, it’s seen much better days. Just as long as the guitar plays, let it steal your heart away”.

• The Newman Torn and Frayed Edition is priced £3,299 (approx $4,495). For more details, see Aurora Guitar Works.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

In the early ’90s, legendary bassist and record producer Don Was started what would become a very fruitful partnership with the Rolling Stones – a relationship that, as Was relates in a recent Bass Player interview, nearly didn't transpire…

“Mick and Keith came over and sat on either side of me, and both started talking at the same time,” Was recalls of that crucial first meeting. “Neither one of them yielded to the other guy. My head was whipping back and forth like I was watching a ping-pong match.”

Eventually, what Was refers to as “the same pattern of shuttle diplomacy” continued for over two decades – spawning just a fair share of hit records along the way.

Naturally, working with the Stones afforded Was the opportunity to see Keith Richards in action and observe the minutiae of his playing style up close.

“Keith is sharp as a tack and very well-read,” he says matter-of-factly.

“If you listen to how crisp his attack is and how he releases the notes rather than letting them blur everything up, you understand that he's got impeccable technique and a deep groove.

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

Was continues to make his case for Keef in an interview with the Broken Record Podcast.

“Anyone who thinks he's sloppy is out of their fucking minds. Man, his technique – it's so crisp. The attack, where he lays into the rhythm and where he releases the notes, that's the other thing. It's a lost art, releasing the notes.

“To really get a groove going, you have to let go of the note and let some air come in there so you can feel the syncopation of the rhythm, and it requires tremendous practice and technique.

“He's got that. He's a badass guitar player. He completely redefined the connection between rhythm guitar and lead guitar in rock and roll,” he concludes.

Elsewhere in the Bass Player chat, Was talked about playing bass on Bob Dylan’s Under the Red Sky, and producing Iggy Pop, Ringo Starr, and Bonnie Raitt.

NAMM 2026: Gibson has partnered with Keith Richards for a Collector’s Edition version of the Rolling Stones legend’s 1960 ES-355.

It’s the latest example of Gibson partnering with a member of the rock royalty to replicate a particularly historic electric guitar. In the past, Gibson has given the red carpet replica treatment to Kirk Hammett’s Greeny, Jimmy Page’s EDS-1275, and the Back to the Future ES-345.

And while Richards' ES-355 might not seem like the most obvious choice for the next addition to the series, it is certainly more than deserving of its place as the newest Collector’s Edition Gibson guitar.

Aptly described as a “limited-edition love letter to one of the coolest guitars on the planet”, the semi-hollow stunner is a replica of the famed black ES-355 that Richards used in the studio and on the stage.

What’s more, the ES-355 has been a staple of Richards’ live guitar arsenal since 1997, and has been a main player in every one the Stones’ globe-trotting tours over the past few decades.

Two versions of the guitar have been reproduced, but the topline is both are painstaking recreations of the original, built with the aid of advanced 3D scanning, period-correct materials and construction techniques, and Murphy Lab aging to mirror the wear and tear of the source material.

One has Richards’ signature on both the label and guitar itself, while the other has his signature on the label only.

Now, Richards is famed for using a five-string approach on tunes such as Brown Sugar and Start Me Up, but he is, of course, a dab hand at the six-string, too. While his Fender Telecaster is usually set up with five strings, he always turns to Gibson guitars when he needs six.

“This is my standard tuning six-string,” Richards tells collaborator and Stones producer Andrew Watt in a launch video. “This is the other side of my thing. My six-string stuff has always been, you know, a great Gibson – that’s where I feel the most comfortable.

“And also with the sound. Put it through just about any amp, and it will sound the way you want it, because this has so much more room for expression.”

Specs include a three-ply maple/poplar/maple body with multi-ply binding, with red spruce bracing and a weight-relieved maple centerblock, requested by Keef for improved comfort. The mahogany neck has a profile modeled on Richards’ original guitar, and is topped with a bound ebony fingerboard.

There’s also a Bigsby B7 tailpiece, Grover Rotomatic tuners, and unpotted Custombuckers with Alnico 5 magnets, specially developed for this launch. Oh, and it ships with a replica of the strap Keef uses.

Only 50 of the guitar-signed version will be made at $29,999 apiece. The label-signed version will be priced at $19,999, and 100 will be made.

Visit Gibson for more.

It's a truth universally acknowledged that the gods of inspiration can strike at any time – and, in Keith Richards' case, he wrote one of the Rolling Stones' biggest hits in his sleep.

“I remember absolutely nothing at all about writing Satisfaction because it was, in actual fact, one of those bizarre stories of me waking up in the middle of the night,” he says matter-of-factly in one of his many interviews with Uncut. “And I had a little cassette player next to the bed, one of the earliest ones – they’d just been invented, in fact.

“Without knowing it, in the middle of the night, I’d woken up, picked up the guitar which I quite often slept with,” he adds. “So anyway, it was one of those rare nights when I was actually alone, and obviously I’d recorded about 15 seconds of Satisfaction.

“But I had no idea and didn’t remember doing it until I woke up and saw that the tape had been run all the way through. So I must have hit the button in the middle of the night in one of those mad dreams.”

As Keef recalls, when he rolled the tapes, there was a faint ‘Duh duh, duh duhduh, I can’t get no satisfaction’, which went on for 20 seconds or so, before drifting off into “40 minutes of snoring”.

He continues, “And it was only because I’d bothered to put the machine back and sort of say, ‘Well, how did that happen? What’s on there?’ And there it was. So in actual fact, it came in a dream… which has to be the easiest way to write songs!

“I really have no recollection of doing it. Obviously, though, I had because I’d made a record in my sleep!” Richards concludes.

The very rough “demo” would prove handy in shaping what would become one of the band’s most enduring hits – their first number one in the States and their fourth in the UK. As legend has it, a couple of days after he unknowingly crafted the riff, the band was off to America for a recording session. However, they were missing a key track…

“They said, ‘We’ve got nine, 12, 11 tracks and we need another track,’” he recounts. “So I said, ‘Well, I have this little thing.’ So we knocked it out, and I figured, ‘Well, it won’t do for this album. That’ll just be a demo.’

“So, we went back on the road, and a week later it’s on the radi,o and I’m in Omaha! And I was cursing, ‘How did you put that out, you bastards! It’s not ready yet. It’s only a dub.’ And meanwhile it’s Number One, and they’re going, ‘Shut up, Keith!'”

In a 2005 interview with Guitar World, the Stones' legendary guitarist offered more insight into how 10 of his all-time-favorite Rolling Stones riffs came about.

It has been reported that the Rolling Stones have cancelled plans for a 2026 tour.

The band’s 2024 US tour, in support of their most recent studio record, Hackney Diamonds, grossed an estimated $235 million, and earlier reports suggested the band had been eying up dates in the UK and Europe next year.

According to Variety, though, the band has now axed those plans. The Sun newspaper likewise quotes an unnamed source close to the band as saying: “When they properly sat down to discuss the tour, Keith said he didn’t think he could commit and wasn’t keen on a big stadium tour for over four months.”

Another unnamed spokesperson added: “The band were looking to tour earlier this year but couldn’t make it work either. It’s hard for their fans but The Stones will get back onstage when they’re good and ready.”

News of a Rolling Stones tour had never been officially confirmed, although Variety reports the band's touring pianist Chuck Leavell had recently told the press in the UK that the Stones had almost finished a new record, and were formulating plans to tour it.

Production duties for that forthcoming record are also reportedly being helmed by Andrew Watt, who worked with the Stones on Hackney Diamonds.

The Rolling Stones team have been approached for comment.

In the early '90s, the Rolling Stones began a fruitful partnership with revered record producer Don Was – but he was convinced he'd never get the gig after witnessing a rather heated discussion with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards during their first meeting.

At the time, Was had worked on studio albums with Carly Simon, Iggy Pop, and the B-52s, plus an expansive box set release with Elton John. With each new release, he was adding to his burgeoning reputation. Working with the Stones, however, was a cut above.

“The label wanted them to have a producer. They sent me to NYC while the band was auditioning bass players at SIR,” he says in a soon-to-be-published interview with Guitar World.

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

“Best I could tell: Mick [Jagger] was outlining what he wanted in a producer, and Keith [Richards] was explaining why they didn’t need a fucking producer,” he laughs. “This went on for about two minutes, which, in that situation, is an excruciatingly long time!”

Eventually, a silence blanketed the room.

“Then Keith said, ‘Are you sure you want to be the meat in this sandwich?’” Was recalls. “I walked out convinced I’d never see them again.”

But he would see them again. Perhaps more incredibly, he even got a small repent out of Keef.

“Four days later, Keith called, apologized for being curt, and said maybe they could use a producer,” says Was. “He told me that he wanted to use Don Smith as the engineer for [1994 LP] Voodoo Lounge because Don had done such a great job on his two solo records with The Expensive Winos. However, Mick wanted a neutral partisan behind the board. Keith wanted me to talk with him about it.”

Four days had passed, but the pair were still at odds. So, once again, Was found himself in the thick of it. But luck was on his side.

“Well, it turned out that I'd been working with Don Smith a lot, that I loved his work, and thought he would be perfect for the album,” he explains. “So, I called Mick and told him that Don was my choice, not just Keith's. Mick relented and, when I called Keith to tell him that Don Smith was in, he said, ‘Your name's not Don Was - it's Don Is.’

“I was hired, and the same pattern of shuttle diplomacy continued for the next 25 years.”

Together, they made four records. They followed up Voodoo Lounge with Bridges to Babylon in ‘97. Eight years would pass until LP three, A Bigger Bang, saw the light of day, and another 11 after that for Blue & Lonesome, with a smattering of live albums, greatest hits packages, and deluxe reissues scattered among them.

The band then turned to hotshot producer Andrew Watt for their 2024 comeback album, Hackney Diamonds, and one GW scribe believes it features some of their finest fretwork in decades. It even saw the band reuniting with former bassist Bill Wyman, despite him not liking the track he played on.

With Don Was, the band found not only a top-quality producer, but a peace maker more than happy to mediate himself with Jagger and Richards’ politics.

The full interview with Don Was will be published in the near future.

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.

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.

The mystery Gibson SG that Kirk Hammett played at Back to the Beginning has sold for $76,800 at auction, alongside a host of other eye-catching electric guitar sales that took place as part of Julien's Played, Worn & Torn event.

After much speculation, Hammett’s axe was revealed as a CEO-4, the fourth creation born from CEO Cesar Gueikian's passion project of hand-building guitars to raise funds for in-house charity, Gibson Gives.

Gueikian, appointed CEO in 2023, has been using the series of builds to improve his luthiery skills. The CEO-1 was a Les Paul, the CEO-2 a James Hetfield-esque Explorer built for actor Jason Mamoa's son, and the CEO-3 a Gibson Victory.

The CEO-4 was used by Hammett to play Black Sabbath's Hole in the Sky with Metallica at Back to the Beginning. The guitarist signed its Ghost Burst-finished body afterwards.

“We sent it to him so that he could put it through his rig for a couple of soundchecks before,” Gueikian told Guitar World. “He said he really loved it, and it was going to be the perfect guitar for Hole in the Sky, and also as a way for him to pay tribute to Tony [Iommi].”

It was sold as part of Julien's latest Played, Worn & Torn auction, which featured 150 Hammett-played guitars. That included a 1985 Gibson Custom Shop Michael Schenker Flying V ($160,000), his Mamma Said 1990s ESP Custom Shop M2 ($32,000), and a 1996 ESP Wavecaster ($89,000) with a clear Lucite body filled with yellow-colored liquid.

All these guitars left their estimates in tatters, with the V's $15,000 figure, the highest of the bunch, representing less than 10% of the final sale price. The CEO-4 added just over $70,000 to its upper estimate of $6,000.

Elsewhere in Julien's collection, a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard, played by Keith Richards during the Rolling Stones' 2007 A Bigger Bang tour, which features his signature on the back of its headstock, sold for $192,000.

That made it the priciest lot of the collection, surpassing the $64,000 sale of a Warwick Streamer played on stage by U2's Adam Clayton.

There was also a Gibson Gives Ukraine Relief Les Paul, emblazoned with the country's colors, for sale. It had been played on stage and signed by Slash. It also went for $38,400.

Visit Julien's Auctions to see the final results of the 2025 Played, Worn & Torn auction.

Altered tunings can be one of the most fun and rewarding elements associated with the guitar. Specifically, the ability to change the tuning of some or all strings in the pursuit of finding new chord shapes and evocative progressions is really inspiring. And inspiration is what we all crave when playing and writing.

It’s common to associate 'big change' tunings like open G (D G D G B D) with slide players, but it has also driven some of the most famous non-slide songs in rock and blues. Two fine examples are The Rolling Stones' Brown Sugar and Jumpin’ Jack Flash.

The beauty of this tuning is its instant usability. While tunings like DADGAD can be a challenge during first forays, open G (aka Spanish tuning) gives up the goods far more readily as you’ll discover in the following examples.

When I’m playing in open G, I keep a close eye on the triads (three-note chords) on the fourth, third and second strings as the results are the same as with standard tuning.

So, all the normal major and minor triad shapes can be used as reference points around which you can add colour with the other strings. Typically, this can involve using open strings to provide a relationship with the triads. Or you can really exploit the I to V relationship between the fifth string (G) and the sixth and fourth strings (both D).

As would be expected, open G major often pulls you towards playing in the key of G. While this isn’t a bad thing, you do want to ensure you get the best out of any altered tuning by exploring other keys, too.

For example, open G is particularly effective for playing in C major and D major as the open strings can be used to create colour or tension against fretted notes. In this regard, it’s a good idea to map out common open position major and minor shapes to begin with. Remember, the magic of open G lies in the fact that you have familiar reference points on the fourth, third and second strings. Onto the examples!

Example 1 - The open strings of Open G

It may seem obvious but the best place to start with any tuning is simply to hear it. This is best done by slowly playing the open strings to hear their relationship to each other and then play all strings together to hear the open chord. In this case, you'll be sounding a huge G major. Don't under-appreciate the loudness and resonance of all open strings sounding together in Open G – it's that good!

Example 2 - Simple C and G chords in Open G

Next you can start locating simple open major and minor chords and find out where chord progressions such as I – IV and I – IV – V lie. In this example, you’ll play G (the I chord) to C (the IV chord) progression. Listen how the open fourth string (D) at the top of the C chord creates a rich add9 extension.

Example 3 - Fingerpicking in Open G

Open G can take some of the work from the fretting hand as the open strings do so much. In this fingerpicking example you’ll play through the I – IV – V chords in G major (G - C - D). Check out how the chords require very few fretting hand fingers, a nice relief!

Example 4 - Thickening notes in Open G

Open G is a fantastic Americana and bluegrass tuning, even more so given how many traditional tunes are written in keys like G and C. Check out how easily you can thicken a G major chord using unisons (unison = two occurrences of the same note played together).

In bar 1, the G5 chord has two G notes and two D notes, sounding like a variation on a 12-string guitar.

Example 5 - Extended chords in Open G

It’s easy to find rich chords in open tunings, and Jimmy Page took this approach with many of Led Zeppelin’s classic tracks. This example explores rich-sounding G and D chords where the open strings add interesting textures: rich chords with little fretting hand work.

Example 6 - Americana stylings in Open G

This example is an Americana/folk inspired piece inspired by Rich Robinson of The Black Crowes. Importantly, it gets you out of all the ruts you may find in standard tuning so will, physically and sonically, sound fresh.

It’s based around G, C and Dm chords, using the open strings and textural options of the tuning to bring the piece to life.

Players who use Open G tuning

The Rolling Stones - Brown Sugar

Keef is perhaps the player best associated with open G tuning through the massive early Rolling Stones hit, Brown Sugar. Study this song and you’ll appreciate how the triads on the fourth, second and third strings serve as an anchor in open G tuning.

The Black Crowes - Remedy

The influence of Keith Richards and Jimmy Page is ever-present in Rich Robinson of The Black Crowes. That said, he took open G tuning and made it his own by writing many gorgeous parts in this tuning. Check out Remedy to hear how he uses it in a blues-rock context.

Charley Patton - Magnolia Blues

It's not just '60s and onwards guitarists that love Open G. The early blues pioneer, Charley Patton often used open G tuning which gave his playing a softer, folk blues feel. Magnolia Blues used this tuning, often with a capo placed at the 2nd fret or higher. For sure, you can hear Charley's influence on Keith Richards.

On its surface, a Tom Waits/Keith Richards collaboration – let alone multiple, stretching across decades – seems a bit improbable.

Though beloved by critics and his ever-loyal cult following, Waits' ramshackle, straight-from-the-underbelly poetry has found its largest audiences through the voices of others.

The propulsive, perfect-for-the-mid-'80s rocker Downtown Train reached the upper echelons of the charts via Rod Stewart; Ol'55 came through the turntables of millions after the Eagles covered it for their On the Border album, while the imperial ballad Jersey Girl became so often misattributed to Bruce Springsteen that the Boss made it part of his own onstage repertoire.

And yet, why wouldn't the singer/songwriter best known for his singular, gravelly, whiskey-soaked vocals – time-weathered even when he was barely 30 – click with the wizened rhythm guitar master who's lived a thousand lives with the world's greatest rock and roll band?

Seeing their potential musical and personal chemistry, Waits' wife and musical partner, Kathleen Brennan, encouraged him to seek Richards out during the making of his masterful 1985 album, Rain Dogs.

Waits himself thought the team-up was about as likely as winning the lottery, but nevertheless decided to name the Stones legend – as a joke, mind you – when his record company asked if he wanted guests on the album.

What do they say about speaking things into existence?

Recalling the chain of events in a 2011 interview with Pitchfork, Waits recounted, “My wife Kathleen said, ‘Why don't you get Keith Richards on here? You love him. You love what he does. We're in New York and he lives in New York.’ And I go, ‘Oh, I gotta listen to this shit.’

“So then I was talking to the record company and they say, ‘Any guests you want on the record?’ And I said, ‘What about Keith Richards?’ I was just joking, but somebody went ahead and called him. And then he said, ‘Yeah.’ And I said, ‘Now we're really in trouble.’”

Now, Richards is known to be far more of a down-to-earth presence than his tabloid perennial bandmate Mick Jagger, but this is still a Stone we're talking about.

“I was really nervous. He came with about 600 guitars in a semi-truck. And a butler,” Waits said of the guitarist's arrival.

“We were in these huge studios in New York, like The Poseidon Adventure. Huge, high ceilings in these rooms like football fields. They'd fill these things up with orchestras and we were in there with five guys. It felt a little weird. He killed me. I was really knocked out that he played on all those things.”

By “all those things” Waits means a whole trio of Rain Dogs cuts, most prominently the lolling Blind Love, to which Keef lends the twangier side of his lick library, and backing vocals.

Richards has gone on to appear on two more Waits albums – co-writing and playing on That Feel, the closing tune from 1992's acclaimed Bone Machine, and either lending licks or vocals to more than a third of the tunes on Waits' most recent LP, 2011's Bad as Me.

Speaking about his recording experiences with Waits in a 2023 Uncut interview, Richards said, “The sessions I do with him, it’s just him and me.

“He has a unique angle on just about everything, and it’s refreshing to hang around with him and join in. We kick around every subject under the sun and then we get in front of the microphone and do something.

“Tom’s music is so American. Probably more folk-American than anything, but somehow modern. He’s a weird mixture of stuff – a great bunch of guys!”

The 1959 Gibson Les Paul that famously appeared on the Rolling Stones' breakthrough Ed Sullivan Show appearance in October 1964 is at the center of a dispute between former Stones guitarist Mick Taylor and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Taylor's representatives are asserting that the guitar – nicknamed the “Keithburst” – belonged to him at one point, and was allegedly stolen when the Stones were recording Exile on Main St. at a mansion on the French Riviera near Nice in 1971.

Therefore, the guitarist expressed his surprise to The New York Post when the guitar resurfaced at the museum, with Taylor’s manager Marlies Damming asking the Met to “make the guitar available so that we can inspect it and confirm its provenance one way or the other.”

Now, the Met shared what it alleges to be a copy of the guitar's recorded provenance with Guitar World. “This guitar has a long and well-documented history of ownership,” states a spokesperson.

The Les Paul's story starts at Farmers Music Store in Luton, England, where it was recorded to have been bought by an individual named John Bowen in March 1961, with a Bigsby vibrato added around 1961–62 by Selmer's Guitar Store.

Reportedly, the guitar was traded for a Gretsch Country Gentleman in late 1962 at Selmer's. Keith Richards acquired it sometime before August 1964 and, according to the provenance, owned it until 1971.

Record producer and manager Adrian Miller is then listed as its owner in 1971 – however, it's not clear whether he bought the guitar from Richards or someone else. Heavy Metal Kids' Cosmo Verrico then reportedly acquired it in 1971 from Adrian Miller, trading it for £125 plus a 1959 Gibson ES-175 with PAFs.

As per the Met's records, in 1974, Whitesnake's Bernie Marsden bought it from Verrico for £400, followed by Mike Jopp in that same year for £450. Fast-forward to 2004, and the historic guitar was part of a very public attempted sale by Christie's (part of lot 267) but was left unsold after it did not reach the desired price.

Swedish producer Peter Svensson bought it two years later, while, a decade later, it was acquired by billionaire businessman Dirk Ziff, with the help and advice of producer and guitar collector Perry Margouleff.

Ziff would later loan the guitar to the Met in 2019 for the Play It Loud exhibition – later moved to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Interestingly, Richards himself was very involved in this exhibition, even sitting for an interview and loaning other instruments and gear to the exhibit. In 2024, Ziff donated the guitar to the Met, where it can be found today alongside the museum’s new collection of guitars, which spans from 1920 to 1970.

“This is not just a once-in-a-lifetime gift,” Jayson Kerr Dobney, the Met’s curator of musical instruments, comments in a press statement. “It is a once-in-a-century opportunity for the museum – a visionary, comprehensive collection of American guitars, unparalleled in both its breadth and variety.”

Guitar World has reached out to Mick Taylor's representatives for comment.

Considering the impact the Rolling Stones' appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in October 1964 had on music history, it perhaps comes as no surprise that the 1959 Gibson Les Paul – complete with its sunburst finish, mahogany body, and maple top – wielded by Keith Richards, would end up at New York's esteemed Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This historic addition was gifted by a collector who, earlier this year, donated 500 vintage guitars to the museum. However, in recent weeks, a representative for former Stones guitarist Mick Taylor stated he was surprised to learn that the guitar is in the museum.

According to Taylor and his representatives, he purchased the Les Paul from one of the Stones' road managers while he was playing with John Mayall. Then, when he joined the Stones in 1969 for five years, he took it with him. His version of events became part of rock ‘n’ roll lore, with Taylor's manager, Marlies Damming, even saying in a statement last month that, at some point, the guitar had “disappeared”.

The museum is now disputing Taylor's story, stating that Taylor played the instrument but never actually owned it. In addition, the Les Paul has had a public history – the guitar went up for auction at Christie's, even appearing on the cover of the catalog, and in 2019, it was also featured in a Met exhibition, with no claims from Taylor or his team.

And while the Met states it was actually Richards who held onto the Les Paul as its owner until 1971, a 2013, 700-page anthology of Stones instruments, Rolling Stones Gear by Andy Babiuk, suggests the contested Gibson was among eight guitars stolen in 1971 when the Stones spent a summer in the French Riviera – a story that the Met refutes.

The museum's provenance does leave somewhat of a gap, however. It lists Adrian Miller as the Les Paul's owner in 1971, but there's no indication of how he acquired the guitar. Miller went on to sell it to Heavy Metal Kids' Cosmo Verrico in 1971, who, according to correspondence with The New York Times, “can't recall how Miller acquired the guitar.”

Alongside listing all the subsequent owners, the provenance also notes its attempted sale at Christie's in 2004. While the bidding did not reach the desired price, the guitar ended up being bought in 2006 by Swedish music producer Peter Svensson. A decade later, investor and billionaire Dirk Ziff acquired it and lent it to the Met in 2019 for its Play It Loud exhibition.

The story doesn't stop there – The New York Times confirms that they have received an email from Damming, saying, “We would like the Metropolitan Museum to make the guitar available so that we can inspect it, and confirm its provenance one way or the other,” as well as the manager publicly sharing a Facebook post stating, “A long-lost piece of rock ‘n’ roll history has resurfaced, decades after it vanished."

Guitar World has reached out to Mick Taylor's representatives and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for comment.

The Met’s new exhibition of guitars has become the center of international intrigue, after a 1959 Les Paul Standard that had been stolen from Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor in the early 1970s mysteriously re-surfaced as part of the collection.

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it had come into the possession of a 500-strong arsenal of guitars back in May. Included in the hefty donation was a Bigsby-loaded 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard used by Keith Richards during the band’s legendary appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.

Having seen the news of the guitar’s arrival at the Met, Taylor’s manager has now revealed that the guitar’s prominence goes beyond that show, sharing previously unknown details about the guitar.

Taylor had bought the guitar from Richards in 1967 as he prepared to join John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. However, a few years later, after Taylor then joined the Stones in 1969, the guitar was stolen in 1972 during the recording of Exile on Main Street.

It was stolen from Villa Nellcôte, a sprawling mansion in Côte d'Azur, and was said to have been carried out by local drug dealers. Nine guitars ultimately went missing, alongside a bass guitar belonging to Bill Wyman and Bobby Keys’ saxophone.

“There are numerous photos of Mick Taylor playing this Les Paul, as it was his main guitar until it disappeared," says Marlies Damming. “The interesting thing about these vintage Les Pauls is that they are renowned for their flaming, which is unique, like a fingerprint.”

As reported by Louder Sound (via pagesix.com), a source claims, “Taylor says he never received compensation for the theft and is mystified as to how his property found its way into the Met’s collection.”

Jimmy Page is also believed to have played the guitar during his days as a session musician, and Eric Clapton borrowed it for a Cream show in July 1966, after ironically, one of his electric guitars was swiped during rehearsals.

Avid gear collector, Dirk Ziff, was behind the Met’s new donation, which has been in the works since 1987. The instruments date between 1920 and 1970, with guitars that once belonged to notable players including Roy Rogers and Mississippi John Hurt among them. Its existence, up until May, had been kept secret for decades.

“It was so secretive that when I, as a curator of the Met, came to visit, I had no idea what was actually there,” The Met’s Jayson Dobney revealed. “I just saw those eight guitars.”

“Since embarking on this journey with Perry in 1987, our objective has been to assemble a comprehensive collection of American guitars, many of them historic and culturally significant, and preserve them for the benefit of future generations,” Ziff had said in May. “It is genuinely thrilling to see our vision validated at the greatest cultural institution in the world.”

Taylor’s camp has now added more mystery and intrigue to the collection.

Wizz Jones, the English folk icon best known for the role he played in the British folk revival and for being a consistent figure in the scene for the past 60 years, has passed away aged 86.

The news was confirmed by his son, Simeon, yesterday (April 27) on his dad's official social media platforms. “With an extremely heavy heart, I’m letting you all know that my beloved father, the great Wizz Jones, passed away early this morning, two days after his 86th birthday,” reads the statement.

“His loss has left a huge hole in the lives of our family and has robbed the music world of one of its precious treasures. His health declined rapidly this year and we thank Trinity Hospice for making his last few days as comfortable as possible.”

Born Raymond Ronald to a working-class family in Thornton Heath, Surrey, England, the young Jones earned the nickname Wizzy from his mother after the Beano comic strip character “Wizzy the Wuz” – because at the age of nine, Jones was a budding magician. The name stuck, and when he formed his first band, The Wranglers, in 1957, it became his stage name.

Inspired by the likes of Big Bill Broonzy and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Jones learned his guitar licks from contemporaries like Davy Graham and Long John Baldry while playing in coffee bars in Soho, London, in the late ’50s. This was followed by a busking stint spanning from the streets of Paris to the markets of Marrakech in the early ’60s, further developing his guitar style.

Despite releasing his only single in 1965 – a rendition of Bob Dylan's Ballad of Hollis Brown – it took until 1969 for Jones to release his first solo album, Wizz Jones. By 1988, he had ten solo albums under his belt – plus a host of collaborations, including playing on Ralph McTell's 1974 album Easy, briefly joining acoustic folk-rock outfit Accolade alongside “king of the buskers” Don Partridge, as well as traditional folk band Lazy Farmer in 1975.

Speaking about his trusty guitar, his 1963 Epiphone Texan – which accompanied his ventures since 1967 – in an interview with the Orpington Folk Club, Jones once said, “I nearly lost it recently. It was on a jet going to Milan, coming from Scotland, supposed to be changing planes to go to Germany, they canceled the flight and my baggage went missing. I lost it for ten days, so I borrowed a guitar from the shop. Whenever I borrow a guitar I realize just how good this one is.”

A key fixture since the very start of the folk scene and a keen collaborator, Jones has also been cited as an inspiration for Keith Richards, Thurston Moore, Eric Clapton, and Rod Stewart, to name a few – so much so that he's often included in their lore.

“I found out Eric used to come to a little club in Croydon and watch me play, but I didn’t know him. In a recent book about the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards said I used to teach him guitar in the toilets at Art College! Complete fabrication,” he clarified.

In the mid-’90s, Jones' career experienced a revival thanks to an appearance on the Bert Jansch TV documentary Acoustic Routes, which led to renewed interest in his work. In 2001, he collaborated with John Renbourn and other members of the folk-rock band Pentangle on his album Lucky the Man, followed by a reissue of his 1970 album The Legendary Me and 1973'sWhen I Leave Berlin in 2007 by the Sunbeam record label.

In 2012, another working-class hero – Bruce Springsteen – opened his sold-out Wrecking Ball tour date at the Olympiastadion in Berlin, Germany, with Jones' song, When I Leave Berlin. Fast forward to 2019, and Wizz finally received the recognition he deserved when he was presented with the lifetime achievement award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.

Performing until the end, Jones played his final show at London's Ivy House on February 28, 2025.

“Always a humble man, these were his closing words at the end of his last ever gig earlier this year,” writes his son.

“‘Thanks to all the people – all over the world in fact – that heard my songs and my guitar playing, and came to my gigs for all those years. Thank you very much.’”

Even after a career playing electric guitar with rock’s biggest names, playing alongside a Rolling Stone is still heart-stopping. That’s what we’ve learned from a new interview with Los Angeles sideman Jason Sinay, who tells us about times on stage with Neil Young, Joe Bonamassa, and the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir.

Sinay is best known as a 20-year member of The Dirty Knobs, the band led by Mike Campbell between stints with Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers.

You might think that experience would leave you ready for anything. Sinay landed a gig as house band guitarist at an LA jam night led by Waddy Wachtel, and found that wasn't quite the case. “You never knew who was going to come through,” Sinay explains.

One night, Sinay noticed the club was packed to capacity. “I knew the Stones were in town, but I did not know that I would end up meeting and jamming with Keith Richards – and hanging out with him that night,” he recalls.

“It was a complete and utter shock to my system,” Sinay exclaims. “I’m such a huge Keith freak. We got to do Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Wild Horses, and a few other Stones classics.”

Most exciting for Sinay was that Richards used his gear. “I had known [Keith’s] guitar tech, Pierre [de Beauport], for years, and when Pierre came in, he was like, ‘Keith’s using your rig!’” Sinay laughs. “That was really great.”

Look for Sinay’s full interview, including his experiences with Neil Young, Joe Bonamassa, and Derek Trucks, on GuitarWorld.com soon.

Former Prince guitarist Dez Dickerson has also been talking about experiences with the Rolling Stones, describing Prince’s disastrous 1981 support slots with the band.

Inspired by the smoky playing preferences of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Keith Richards, a new cigarette-shaped clip-on tuner has hit the market – and it’s one of the most wonderfully weird things we’ve seen in a while.

Coming in a façade-continuing packet, the Tunerette is a chromatic tuner that satisfies a player's tuning needs while giving off that classic rock star look without the need for actual cigarettes and their health kick backs. Because, why not?

Keef and co. would often be seen placing their smokes in between the strings and their headstock mid-performance, with smoke billowing out from its end while they unfurled fiery licks further up the neck.

It's a move that's synonymous with peak rock ’n’ roll, but in the smoking ban era, the image has become a rarity, and in truth, it wouldn't look the same with an e-cig. Now, that might be about to change.

The Tunerette comes from the mind of Dave Hinson, best known as the owner of St. Louis store, Killer Vintage Guitars. He's also the editor of the Vintage Guitar Price Guide and a contributing editor to the Blue Book of Guitars, so he knows his onions when it comes to vintage guitars. He also knows plenty about clip-on tuners, it would seem, and knows where many fail to pull a draw.

“Inspired by the legends of rock, [Hinson] envisioned a tuner that not only paid homage to the golden age of guitar but also addressed all the gripes he had with existing headstock tuners,” says Tunerette. “Add a dash of smokin' style to your tuning game.”

All jokes aside, the “fast and accurate” Tunerette features a bright LED display that looks clear and intuitive, weighs a little over an ounce, and its lithium battery is rechargeable via USB connection.

It also auto-switches off after 60 seconds to conserve battery power, and there's a warning when there is about 20 minutes of tuning time left – so players aren't forced to bum a tuner from a friend or a random person in the smoking area of a venue.

Lastly, it has a handy benefit for the forgetful types. A disclaimer on its vintage cig packet reads: “We advise removing any clip-on tuner before a performance. But with Tunerette, if you leave it on, at least you won’t look like an idiot!”

The oddball tuning has the backing of Norman Harris or Norman's Rare Guitars, who jokes: “We're in California, a lot of people don't smoke anymore, but you can look cool with this up in your headstock.”

Granted, owning one will cost $49.95, considerably more than a pack of smokes proper, but you can’t drop tune your guitar with a Malboro Red – or any brand, for that matter.

Head to Tunerette to learn more.

As a young guitar innovator, Harvey Mandel soaked his playing in feedback and sustain, pushing his amps to the brink on early recordings with Charlie Musselwhite before making his way to San Francisco to rub elbows with Jerry Garcia and Elvin Bishop.

He soon landed a surprise gig with Canned Heat – and a few days later found himself in front of a massive crowd at Woodstock. “I didn’t realize it at the time how iconic that gig would be,” Mandel tells Guitar World. “Nobody did! It was pretty mind-blowing. I was kind of nervous; it was scary getting up on stage and seeing that massive audience. But it turned out good!”

Mandel stuck with Canned Heat for two years before joining John Mayall. The challenge of filling the shoes of Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor wasn’t an issue: “I didn’t want to copy other guys. I didn’t study their playing. I appreciated what they did – but I pretty much stuck with my own style.”

His style has always been unique. From early adoption of the two-handed tapping technique that exploded with Van Halen, or his infinite walls of pedal-free sustain, Mandel was both confident and in demand. That demand led him to the Rolling Stones via a late-night call from Mick Jagger, and he went to Germany to record for 1976’s Black and Blue.

The vibe was that he might be Mick Taylor’s replacement – but according to Mandel, it was not to be “because of Keith Richards.” More on that later.

That near-miss was, unfortunately, the apex of his career. “The highlight was the Stones,” he reflects. “But I got to play with Canned Heat and John Mayall, and I was an innovator of certain sounds.

“I’m sure I influenced many guitar players with the sustain and feedback. I was doing it back in ’65, ’66 and ’67, way before I heard it with Jeff Beck and any of those people. I didn’t get credited like I should have over the years.”

He retains hope that things will pick up again. “I had a setback because of medical issues. There was a four-year period where I didn’t get to play live. But I’ve recuperated and I’m back in top form. I’ve got a new record coming; hopefully it’ll get pushed and get me up there, so that people will remember who I am.”

Early on you became known for a fuzzy, feedback-laden style with a ton of sustain. How did you develop that?

“Back in my club days in Chicago, I always had different amps. Sustain and feedback were the things I was always aiming for. So when I came to San Francisco, it just continued. I was experimenting with different amps – back then, there wasn’t a whole bunch of pedals, so it was really certain amps.

“It became my signature thing. The only other guys in the world who were doing it, of course, were Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix and those guys, but I was doing it before I even heard them. I always had that.”

So it was instinct?

“The sound I was aiming for was kind of like a violin, and it just developed. I didn’t really have to think about it that much; it just happened automatically.”

You shared the San Fransisco scene with Jerry Garcia. Did you get to jam with him?

“We did on a couple of occasions. There was a club called The Matrix, where all the guys would jam. There were a couple of times when Jerry, Elvin Bishop and a couple of other people did a big jam there. I didn’t get to play with Jerry that much, but he was a really nice guy and a good guy. We had a lot of fun back then.”

You later joined Canned Heat, stepping in at the last minute for a Fillmore West show after Henry Vestine left.

“It was one of those nights when I went to the Fillmore and I didn’t even know who was playing. Some girl ran up to me and said, ‘The Bear [vocalist Bob Hite] knows you’re here – come and meet everyone.’

“So I was hanging out with them, smoking a couple of joints and having a good time. I heard the story that Henry Vestine had been fired that night, and Mike Bloomfield helped them with the first set. After the break, they invited me to come sit in for the second set.”

What gear did you have available?

“I really don’t remember – I didn’t have my guitar and stuff. I just had to play what was there. I think it was Henry Vestine’s guitar that he’d left. They had these custom amplifiers and stuff. It sounded great and they literally asked me to join the band that night. Three days later, we were at Woodstock. I came in at the right time!”

What are your memories of Woodstock?

“We flew in via helicopter, which was really far out because you could see all the people at this whole thing. When I got up on stage, I had a Strat I’d been using at the time, and they had their custom amps; I was using Henry Vestine’s.

“During the first song the amp blew up. They gave me another one, which sounded terrible. I had to play on this piece of shit for the rest of the set – which to this day, I always cringe when I think about it.

“It was kind of a nightmare; it was not sustaining. I couldn’t get a good sound out of it, and I didn’t have a bunch of pedals to compensate. I did the best I could. It was still a great thing to play for an audience of that size; had I been able to play through that first amp, I would have sounded a thousand times better.”

After Canned Heat you joined John Mayall’s band. Was it a challenge coming in after Clapton, Green and Taylor?

“John saw me play with Canned Heat when they’d decided to have Henry Vestine come back in. So John asked me to join his band. Truthfully, I didn’t really think about Clapton, Mick Taylor or any of those people – I just did my Harvey Mandel stuff.”

Did John communicate his expectations for you as a guitarist?

“He didn’t really offer too much – we pretty much did what we wanted. But he knew we knew how to play the right stuff. All the musicians were really good, so John didn’t have to say anything.”

You were an early adopter of the two-handed tapping technique. Where did you pick that up from?

“I got it from the Pure Food and Drug Act group that I was in. The second guitar player was Randy Resnick – he’s the first one I saw tap, in ’67 going in ’68. He did it in a very melodic but simple way. I didn’t want to do it in front of him, but once I saw him do it, I was able to practice it. [Resnick disputes the year of their meeting, stating it was 1971 – Ed].”

How did you make the technique your own?

“When I left the band I took it off into my world. It’s a much more melodic, fluid version, as opposed to where Eddie Van Halen took it with his wild stuff. People heard my stuff and thought I was a jazz player!”

There’s a lot of debate about where Eddie and the players of the ’80s picked up the tapping technique.

“I was playing at the Whisky and the Starwood, where George Lynch, Van Halen and a couple of other people saw me doing it. Next thing I know, Eddie took it off into his own world. I can’t say anything bad about him – he was a great player, but he was more of a gymnastic player.

“He’d use two-handed tapping to do all kinds of tricks, whereas I tried to make it more musical, as opposed to going crazy and showing off with it.”

Two-handed tapping became a hallmark of ’80s guitar. Do you feel you were properly credited for your development of it?

“Not really. Although if you go on YouTube, you’ll see all different videos where I get credit. But back then, unfortunately, I wasn’t with a known band – Van Halen had a hit record so the world got to hear him doing it. The audience that got to hear me do it was much more limited.”

Did you ever get to meet Eddie or George, or any of the other players, and talk with them about it?

“Not really. I never got to speak with Van Halen, even though he came and saw me play. I saw him play on a few occasions, but we never got to hang out. The only guys I got to meet were Alvin Lee and Mick Taylor. I was playing in Chicago and they came to the hotel. They kind of kidnapped me inside of my own hotel!

“Alvin refused to leave until I showed him the tapping. That was the only time a famous person actually sat there with me like that. Mick Taylor was great – but Alvin was the one who was mostly interested.”

Speaking of Mick Taylor, after he left the Rolling Stones, you were tabbed to record in his place for 1976’s Black and Blue album.

“I was living in LA. In the middle of the night I got a call and it’s Mick Jagger. I thought it was somebody goofing around but I realized it was Mick Jagger. He said, ‘We want you to come to Germany.’

“He didn’t say it was an audition to join the Stones; he wanted me to come and play to be a part of the record. Next day I got a ticket, took the Acoustic amp and my guitar, and flew to Germany.”

You played on Hot Stuff and Memory Motel. What was that like?

“Yeah, we did a recording – and if it wasn’t for Keith Richards, I would have been a Rolling Stone.”

Keith stopped you from joining the band?

“Ronnie Wood came in the next day, and they were pals. They grew up together and hung out. Mick Jagger wanted me to play. Keith Richards wanted Ronnie Wood, who won out, because Keith had the power to insist it was Ronnie, or else. So I kind of got aced out.”

Was Keith and Ronnie’s friendship the only reason?

“My concept was to come in and replace Mick Taylor – not to jump about and go crazy, but to leave that to Mick Jagger. I wanted to stay in the background and play the cool guitar stuff, like Mick Taylor. He played great guitar but he was never out in front. My idea was to do the same thing. But Ronnie Wood got the gig.”

Did Keith have an issue with your playing?

“Keith Richards was kind of weird. I played some of the greatest guitar licks I ever played, but he didn’t even say hello or shake hands. He was kind of unfriendly – where Mick Jagger was the complete opposite.”

Was Keith resentful of you because he wanted Ronnie?

“It was before Ronnie Wood even came into the picture; he didn’t come in until a day or two later. Keith was just kind of aloof. I don’t think he was intimidated, but he wasn’t really friendly. Maybe it was because I was American, and he wanted everything to stay with British people. I really can’t say.

“Everyone else in the band – the drummer [Charlie Watts], the bass player [Bill Wyman] and Mick Jagger – were all super-nice. They had some of my early records and two or three of my solo albums; they were very complimentary and treated me really good.

“I never got friendly with Keith Richards. If it wasn’t for him, I would have been the Rolling Stones’ replacement for Mick Taylor. He’s the one that screwed me up.”

Things tapered off for you after that. Do you lament not getting the gig?

“It would have been great if it had happened. Keith Richards is a great rhythm player – the stuff he played is phenomenal. I would have been happy to just be in the background.

“My reputation jumped up dramatically; I got bookings all over the place and I was real popular for a while. But then, the allure of the Rolling Stones wore out, and it tapered down, and that was the end of that.”

In your heart of hearts, should you have gotten the Rolling Stones gig over Ronnie Wood?

“Oh, by light years. Ronnie was a nice guy. I actually played at his club and hung out with him a couple of times. He was actually a really nice guy – but let’s face it: he ain’t no Mick Taylor, and he’s no Harvey Mandel. He’s what I call a C-plus guitar player.

“He had the show; he could jump around and be part of the craziness, but he never impressed me as an actual player. I think they would have been much better off musically if I was the one playing – they didn’t need Ronnie Wood for the show. Mick Jagger was the show.”

• Mandel reissues his 1972 album The Snake as a limited Record Store Day exclusive on April 12.

Aside from being one of the pioneers of the two-handed tapping technique that gained steam in the post-Van Halen era, Harvey Mandel made his mark on rock ‘n’ roll history as a member of the Woodstock-era Canned Heat, as well as playing side-by-side with John Mayall. And oh, he was also almost a Rolling Stone...

“I was living in LA at the time. In the middle of the night, suddenly, I got a call, and it’s Mick Jagger,” he tells Guitar World. “I thought it was somebody goofing around at first, but after I talked with him on the phone for a few minutes, I realized this was Mick Jagger.

“They were in Germany at the time, and he said, ‘Well, we want you to come to Germany…’ He didn’t really say it was an ‘audition’ to join the Stones; he wanted me to come and play to be a part of the record.”

Despite playing on Hot Stuff and Memory Motel, which would later be released on 1976’s Black and Blue, Mandel asserts that Keith Richards blocked his trajectory to becoming a Rolling Stone.

“Ronnie Wood came in the next day, and Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards were pals,” he explains. “They grew up together and hung out. Mick Jagger wanted me to play. Keith Richards wanted Ronnie Wood, who won out because he [Keith Richards] had the power to insist that it was Ronnie Woodor else. So, I kind of got aced out.”

In his heart of hearts, however, Mandel still believes that he was the one who should have landed the highly coveted gig.

"Ronnie was a nice guy. I played at his club and hung out with him a couple of times. He was actually a really nice guy – but let’s face it: he ain’t no Mick Taylor, and he’s no Harvey Mandel. He’s what I call a C-plus guitar player,” he says matter-of-factly.

“He had the show, and he could jump around and be part of the craziness, but he never impressed me as an actual player. So, I think they would have been much better off musically if I was the one playing because they didn’t need Ronnie Wood for the show. Mick Jagger was the show.”

As we documented in our feature on Ted Newman Jones III, he has a unique place in rock ’n’ roll history. A fledgling guitar maker and modder, he started touring with The Rolling Stones in 1972 as ‘guitar tuner’ and in conjunction with Keith Richards created a five-string open G-tuned electric that featured in many Stones shows during the early to mid‑’70s.

Ted developed the design and, with initial funding from Keith, set up shop in Austin later in the ’70s where he and a small team began making guitars for local players and plenty of rock stars. Ted passed away in 2016, but prior to this current Newman owner, Jeff Smith, worked with him to digitise the design, which Ted approved.

Since then, Jeff has worked with numerous boutique makers to produce very limited versions of the modern Newman design and in 2023 started work with Cream T to co-produce a range of Newman models made here in the UK by Auden Musical Instrument Company. Cream T owner, Tim Lobley, wanted to start this new part of the Newman story with the unique electric five‑string you see here.

As you’d expect, compared with the pair of prototypes we played earlier in the year, the finished Newman 5 String looks and feels like a proper guitar should. This first run of just 12 instruments shares the same specification and there are no options: what you see is what you get.

There’s an obvious Fender-like construction style, but the scale length is 628mm (24.75 inches), not the longer 648mm (25.5 inches) you might expect. As with an increasing number of UK builds, the body is solid obeche, with its lightly striped, very straight grain visible through the Butterscotch finish; you can clearly see it’s a two-piece spread that’s superbly centre-joined. But despite a generous edge radius, it’s a slab body with no comfort contouring.

The original offset ellipse outline, however, is distinctive and very practical. The single cutaway, for example, allows full access to the upper of the 24 frets, the heel platform isn’t exactly contoured, but the treble-side edge is rounded; there’s no neckplate, either, and the four screws sit in very tidily recessed washers.

The slightly diagonally grained ‘rift-sawn’ neck has a similar straight grain to the body running down its length. Its tinted colour is very close in hue to the body, though the neck and fingerboard finish is lightly satin. The distinctive six-in-a-line headstock is back-angled, too, its outline mirrored by the black plastic truss rod cover.

There’s no scratchplate to confuse the unfussy style, and the through-strung bridge is another unique design, conceived by Jeff Smith and crafted in the USA. The walled base is machined from aluminium with five more generic-looking block saddles that appear to be stainless steel. It’s a classy design, but the edges of the aluminium base are left a little sharp and, if we’re honest, still feel a little ‘prototype’.

Also created exclusively for this new UK model is the pair of Newman humbuckers. These are designed and made by Cream T and are controlled by the simple no-tricks master volume, master tone and a three-way toggle pickup selector placed just above the square, chromed-metal output jack plate. All in, it’s a pretty classy, pared-down build that comes with some case candy, a spare string set and a really good Newman-logo’d gigbag.

Feel & Sounds

While the guitar has a very appealing light weight of 2.91kg (6.4lb), it’s obviously the narrow neck that presents the big difference here. It actually looks a little narrower than it is because there’s seemingly little taper from the nut to the top 24th fret.

So, at the nut it measures 41.82mm wide; at the 24th fret, it’s 49.3mm. String spacing at the nut is 33mm and at the bridge is 41.5mm – which gives an individual string spacing of 10.4mm.

What does all this mean? Well, at the nut it’s only a millimetre thinner in width than a standard modern Fender six-string, and the individual string spacing is slightly wider. The bridge spacing is a little narrower than vintage Fender, too, but it really is minimal.

Depth-wise, we move from a pretty regular 21.5mm at the 1st fret to a pretty full-feeling 23.9mm by the 12th; the profile is a full-shouldered ‘C meets D’. Fretwork, from a medium gauge with good height (approx. 2.6mm wide x 1.2mm high), is very tidy, and there’s a little rolling to the edges, but a little more would certainly be welcome on the bass side.

The supplied strings are 0.011, 0.016, 0.018, 0.030 and 0.042 gauge, which look heavier on paper than they feel. Don’t forget, the scale length is shorter than Fender and the top and bottom strings are dropped a tone.

If you’re not familiar with open G tuning, that – combined with the relatively thin-width neck – will create quite an alien instrument. But if you’ve got your open G style down, well, you’re in for a treat.

You just can’t help bashing out Brown Sugar or any of those classic Stones tunes that are powered by Keef’s open G style. The voicing of the guitar is near perfect. The bridge sounds extremely Stones-y – it’s raunchy and defined but not overbright, with some midrange clout, and it’s dirty but with a clarity to the attack.

The pickup mix is delicious and very single coil-like, perfect for more laid-back tunes like Wild Horses, or with a harder pick attack it’s old-style snappy blues. The solo neck pickup loses a little of that sparkle, but it’s far from over-thick and proves a good base for bluesier slide licks, not least with a bit of gain boost.

Of course, it’s not just for Stones fans – plenty of bands and players have embraced open G, and while most of us have either done that on a retuned six-string, with or without the low E, the five-string concept here (after just a little adjustment) feels and sounds not so much like a new instrument but one that is very purpose built. Even if you don’t plan to hit a stage anytime soon, it works great as an overdub guitar – a real roots rock tool.

Verdict

As we said, an open-tuned five-string guitar is unique and will clearly have niche appeal, but it seems fitting to kick off this new project because creating exactly that all those years ago was the starting point of this story. For this writer, finally playing a proper Newman – and a design that was signed off by Ted Newman himself before he passed away in 2016 – is really quite poignant, not least with its royalty level rock ’n’ roll DNA.

Nevertheless, it’s far from a cheap date, amplified by the simplistic specification, especially for an instrument that may well only be used on a handful of songs in a set. Plus, unlike any half-decent SH or HH Tele‑style six-string that – like Keith – you can easily convert to a five string, you’re stuck here with just five strings if your open G excursions don’t prove as exciting as you’d hoped.

All that said, this initial 12-guitar run – with its unique design, pickups and bridge – sold out barely after the paint was dry (there are more coming!) with customers including a couple of very big names. Forgetting that cost, then, the feel, sounds and that distinctive outline are all really rather special: a very vibe-y homage to its original designer. Bless ya, Ted!

Specs

• PRICE: £2,799 (inc gigbag)
• ORIGIN: UK
• TYPE: Original offset-shaped solidbody electric
• BODY: Obeche
• NECK: Maple, bolt-on
• SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5”)
• NUT/WIDTH: Bone/41.82mm
• FINGERBOARD: Maple, black dot inlays, 254mm (10”) radius
• FRETS: 24, medium
• HARDWARE: Newman 5-saddle bridge, enclosed Gotoh tuners – aluminium/chrome plating
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 41.5mm
• ELECTRICS: 2x Custom Newman (by Cream T) open cover humbuckers, 3-way toggle pickup selector, master volume, master tone
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 2.91/6.4
• OPTIONS: No
• RANGE OPTIONS: This 5 String introduces the UK-made Newman range and more custom colour runs follow. Then we’ll see a honeycomb-chambered single-pickup model and a standard 6-string model later this year. Other Cream T guitars include the Aurora (£2,799 w/ pickup swapping) and the Polaris (from £2,799)
• LEFT-HANDERS: Not yet
• FINISHES: Butterscotch (as reviewed) – gloss polyurethane body with tinted satin-finish neck/fingerboard
• CONTACT: Newman Guitars

Picture Keith Richards, and your first image is probably of the Tele-toting, bandana-wearing wildman of rock. However, explore The Rolling Stones’ back catalogue and you’ll see that acoustic instruments feature heavily, from strummed and picked acoustic guitars to 12-strings, mandolins and Nashville-tuned guitars (the high strings from a 12-string set).

For the acoustic singer-songwriter or accompanist, the styles of Richards and his accomplice Ronnie Wood are essential study.

Keith Richards was born in 1943 in Dartford, Kent. His grandfather Gus Dupree was a working musician who famously told the young Keith that he would give him guitar lessons when he could reach the instrument on the shelf. Richards finally got the guitar in his hands and lessons began. 

His early influences were the prominent jazz musicians of the time, principally Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. However his first guitar hero was Scotty Moore, the rockabilly legend and sideman to Elvis Presley. While Richards would develop his own sound and approach, you can always hear a bit of Scotty Moore in his playing.  

Richards famously met Mick Jagger at school and their shared love of blues became the bedrock of the Rolling Stones sound. Their rock and roll side was defined by Richards’ love of Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters, and this accounts for his ability to move from rhythm to lead and back again within the space of a bar. 

Although Richards famously favours open G tuning and just five strings for a lot of his rhythm work, he also frequently uses standard tuning and that’s what I’ve opted for here.

This is partly to save you the bother of re-tuning your guitar but also so that hopefully you’ll be able to hear the colour he gets from his rhythm parts when using standard tuning.

Triads form the basis of his picking style and he will add open strings to give these chords greater richness. For example, he will replace a D major triad with a Dadd9, taking advantage of the open first string.

His characteristic rhythmic swagger is harder to approximate, however. Aim for a loose, relaxed feel and pay attention to the swing of the rhythm section – you are not aiming to play it straight. 

Interestingly, Richards’ first love is actually acoustic guitar. He views electric as more limited and prefers the challenge that acoustic playing can offer him. Delve into the music of The Rolling Stones and you are guaranteed to find plenty of acoustic! 

Get the tone

Amp Settings: Gain 2, Bass 7, Middle 6, Treble 7, Reverb 2

As you’d expect, Richards has a large and enviable guitar collection. The acoustic he used most was a Gibson Hummingbird, and you’ll hear this guitar on Jumpin’ Jack Flash among others. 

These days, however, you are more likely to see him with a 1964 Martin 00-21. For this recording I used my Martin Custom Expert 1937 D-28 through a Soyuz 017 FET microphone for recording guitar. 

[Bars 1-16] To play the A major chord use a partial barre with the first finger across the fourth, third and second fingers as this will make for a smoother move to the following Dadd9 chord. 

To play the Dadd9 use the third finger at the 4th fret of the fourth string, the first finger at the 1st fret of the third string and the second finger on the 3rd fret of the fourth string. Make sure the second finger isn’t touching the open first string or you’ll mute the vital E (9th/2nd) note. 

[Bars 17-33] As with many classic rock and roll players you can try hooking the thumb over the sixth string to the play the D/F# chord that follows the G. When moving from the G chord, keep the third finger on the 3rd fret of the second string as it acts as an ‘anchor’ for the D/F#. 

You can also use the first finger to fret the sixth string but when you get used to using the thumb it’s actually much easier (many players of the era used ‘thumb over’ instead of barre chords, too). 

Not too many small, independent guitar-makers can list The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Mike Campbell, not to mention James Honeyman-Scott and Joe Ely, as owners and players of their guitars. There are plenty more, too, and that includes a relatively recent convert in Billy F Gibbons.

The brand in question is Newman Guitars whose roots take us back to the glory days and Ted Newman Jones III.

From the off, the story of Ted Newman Jones III, or just plain ‘Newman’, is a little hard to definitively pin down. He was born in Dyersburg, Tennessee, in 1949, and caught the rock ’n’ roll bug in his teens, though he found that he was better at fixing up guitars and selling them on than he was at playing them. Some sources credit Ted with bolting together ‘Blackie’ for Eric Clapton, but that’s not the story EC tells. 

What seems more likely is that Newman – who had a bit of a thing for The Rolling Stones – met the band when he was invited to a show on their 1969 US tour by author Stanley Booth who was on the road researching his must-read book, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones. Noë Goldwasser, writing for Guitar World in 1981, suggested Ted was at the fabled Altamont Speedway gig on 6 December 1969, “tossing perfectly tuned guitars to his man”.

What definitely did happen is that Ted decided to make his way to the south of France, ultimately to the Nellcôte mansion just outside Villefranche-sur-Mer in the summer of 1971 where the tax-exile Stones were recording Exile On Main Street.

He specifically wanted to show Keith Richards a Rickenbacker he’d modded that he’d tuned to open E. Apparently, Keith pulled off the low E string, tuned the guitar to open G and said, “That’s how you do it!” 

Not wanting to overstay his welcome, Ted returned to the USA, possibly via Spain, where he wanted to learn some tips from the guitar makers there.

Keith later called Ted after the famous Nellcôte break-in to ask for his help in replacing his lost pieces and, after The Stones decamped to Los Angeles on 29 November to finish and mix the album, Ted temporarily moved in with Keith, set up a bench and helped him sort things out.

Keith, meanwhile, headed off to Switzerland on 26 March 1972 to pursue a ‘cure’ from his drug addiction. In May, rehearsals started in Montreux for The Stones’ June USA tour.

At some point in early 1972, then, Ted got a call from Keith asking if he wanted to go on the forthcoming tour. It seems there was no specific job in mind, but Bill Wyman places Ted as “guitar tuner” in a list of that tour’s entourage.

During the various times Ted spent with Keith, they discussed creating a five-string electric guitar for open G tuning – Keith was, of course, taking the low string off his Teles – with an idea for the body shape that combined two ellipses.

Presumably after that tour had finished on 26 July at Madison Square Garden, Ted got to work. The resulting guitar is very distinctive and was first used live by Keith on 18 January 1973 in Los Angeles, for a well-publicised Nicaragua Benefit concert. 

On the 11-date Pacific Tour that followed in January and February 1973, Keith used the Newman five-string again.

“Keith Richards changed his axe after every number,” noted a journalist from Music Maker, “but as far as I could hear, it didn’t help his playing.” By our reckoning, it remains the first electric five-string electric guitar and was put to good use until Ronnie Wood gifted Keith an electric five-string guitar made by his luthier-of-choice, Tony Zemaitis.

Presumably, when he was off tour Ted was developing his craft and the guitar we know as the ‘modern’ Newman shape evolved from that first non-cutaway five‑string to a not dissimilar outline but with quite a squat, sharp-pointed cutaway (Keith is pictured with this in an early Mesa/Boogie catalogue).

Start me up

Ted Newman stayed with Keith until around 1977 or ’78. Writing for Vintage Guitar magazine, Doug Yellow Bird states: “Danny McCulloch, a close friend of Ted, recalls the birth of Newman Guitars like this: ‘In 1977, Keith Richards gave us $20,000 to set up shop in Austin, Texas. Ted and I set up in a big warehouse on 4th Street in downtown Austin. 

“Soon after, Ted and I hired Bob Harris and Joel Judlin to help. We flew to Memphis the summer of 1978 to catch The Stones’ Some Girls tour, and one evening we went downtown with the band and had BBQ spaghetti. That was when I recall Bill Wyman pointed out to Ted that the word ‘Newman’ could be an ambigram if you messed with the ‘e’ and the ‘a’.’”

The Austin period proved quite successful, with the fledgling Newman guitar company making instruments for plenty of local players and international rockstars.

The ‘modern’ Newman shape was documented as a fold-out blueprint in The Rolling Stones: The First Twenty Years by David Dalton, originally published in 1981, which also includes a lengthy interview with Ted.

That blueprint of Newman’s five-string design is dated January 1980 and named the ‘Keith Richard [sic] Guitar’. It’s this style that Keith is seen playing while moonlighting from The Rolling Stones with Ronnie Wood and The New Barbarians’ tour of 1979.

Meanwhile, the reputation of Ted Newman was spreading. Archetypal guitar hero The Pretenders’ James Honeyman-Scott owned at least one, and when asked by journalist Jas Obrecht in 1981 if he cared for his guitars himself, he replied, “No, I have a guy that looks after them for me.

“On the next American tour I’m taking Ted Newman Jones, who works for Keith Richards. He wants to come with me. He builds beautiful guitars, fantastic guitars. He made some five-strings for Keith. He’s great.”

Ted had a brush with the mainstream when American-brand Chandler produced the Austin Special in the early ’90s. The project apparently stalled over a disagreement, but it served to keep Ted’s story alive.

As Joe Gore wrote in Premier Guitar: “He subsequently hit hard times, including a prison stint and poor health, and passed away in 2016.” But that’s not the end of the story; it’s the start of another… 

Not fade away

The current CEO of Newman Guitars, Jeff Smith, describes how he got involved. “After much discussion with Ted about rebuilding the company, I drove to Dyersburg, Tennessee, in late March of 2015

“Ted was diagnosed with lung cancer later that year, which changed the plan from building guitars together to preserving his vision. The new goal was learning everything Ted knew and digitally storing it in a CAD file in order to build a guitar for his approval within his lifetime. Ted approved the last prototype just two weeks before he passed away on 1 July 2016.”

Subsequently, Jeff has been recreating versions of Ted’s guitars for the past eight years, but it’s not a conventional guitar-making venture. First of all, there’s the distinctive design, which itself evolved during the ’70s. “Back when Ted was building guitars, they weren’t the same, one after another,” Jeff tells us. 

“They were evolving using techniques, tools and machines that he developed. [From that early Keith five-string,] there was the sharp cutaway that he added later in the mid-’70s, for example.

“He evolved that with a bigger, more distinct cutaway to the more refined guitar we’re familiar with today. In fact, Ted told me he couldn’t get that cutaway right and saw a mayonnaise jar lid on the ground and he literally drew around that!”

Jeff sees the modern Newman as less about the ’70s experimentation and more that its starting point is that published blueprint of the five-string.

When we reveal we’ve seen a lot of guitars over the decades, but we’ve never reviewed a five-string electric guitar, Jeff laughs: “Yes, there are lots of references to five-strings being made by Ted in the late ’70s and into the ’80s, but I think by then he was really concentrating more on six-strings. He asked me what I thought the demand for a five-string actually was today. I simply replied, ‘Where’s the five-string to demand?’

“I believe the [five-string] instrument has great merit,” Jeff continues. “Instead of just taking off the low string of a six-string, that’s a great way to learn, but I enjoy what I get out of playing a five-string – it seems to be refreshing and has more melodic functions.

“I also think as people’s hands get more stiff with age, it brings some better options. The way we do the neck, it capos beautifully, too, so there are many options. You don’t have to buy another guitar, but if you’d like to, we do make them,” he laughs.

And in a sea of similarity, the five-string marks Newman out as very different. “I was at a guitar show recently in Indiana and, you know, I was the only guitar maker there with something unique, not my version of a Fender. It was great to know we had the only five-string electric guitar for sale in the whole place! To be uniquely positioned in a crowded space has always been a desire of mine.”

All down the line

During 2023, the Newman Guitars story took another turn when Cream T’s owner, Tim Lobley, announced that a new range would be made here in the UK. “Currently, Jeff’s output is something like 30 to 35 instruments a year,” Tim told us at the start of the year, “of which a small proportion, maybe three or four, are five-strings.

“Jeff has been down the route of going to retailers and making a few more guitars at times, but Newman Guitars is mainly an in-house boutique builder. That said, Jeff doesn’t make the guitars; they’re made in partnership with various USA boutique makers. One [of those makers] might make four or five a year, someone else might make just one. 

“So, while the shape does stay the same, the overall output – between those pre-determined boundaries – is actually quite eclectic and that is a function of people custom-ordering them and then different makers custom-making them. Jeff will continue to do that eclectic mix.

“Our plan is to standardise it a little more. It’s an extension of what Jeff has been doing with Newman in the USA; we’re just doing it here in the UK on a larger scale.”

“Yes, what we do here is totally one-off in most cases,” Jeff continues. “That’s the way we’ve always been because we’ve always been able to sell whatever we build. Several gifted luthiers throughout the USA have built for us including Jacob Harper, Robert Mondell, Saul Koll, Greg Platzer, Chris Morell, Mike Flaherty and Bill Harden. They have all contributed to what they think best represents their vision for what a collaboration with Ted may have looked like.

“Jacob Harper, however, started working with Ted and I in late December of 2015 and he was a critical part of digitally preserving the design elements that were important to Ted.”

So when will we see the new UK Newman guitars? And does it mean, after all these decades, that we’ll finally get our hands on a five-string?

“We have full digital files and rough bodies created,” Tim told us in early January. “Once we’re back from NAMM we’ll see a ‘skeleton’ guitar for proof of concept. One will come to me, the other will go to Jeff at Newman HQ. We’re hoping we’ll be 90 per cent there as we’re not designing something new.

“Once we’ve evaluated that, we’ll create what will be a final production prototype, then [it will go] into production. So, although we don’t have a guitar in our hands at the moment, we’ve done the hard work.

“We plan to start with the five-string,” Tim continued, “as it’s the simplest guitar, a workhorse to launch the concept. Then we should have a version of the guitar Billy Gibbons is playing, a honeycomb-chambered single-pickup ‘Junior’ that we’ve had a lot of interest in already. Then we’re hoping to drop the six‑string in the middle and that should be quite straightforward to do.” 

Cream T will be making the pickups, including those for the five-string, and there’s even talk of pickup-swapping versions in the not too distant future.

“You know, after we’d built the first guitar to Ted’s specs I showed it to him, he could have just thrown it out the window,” Jeff reflects.

“Instead, he looked at it and said, ‘It’s…’, and he’s spinning it around, ‘It’s… a Newman!’ It was a great moment because it’s something we achieved – what his vision really was – within his lifetime and to his approval.”  

• For more information on the UK-made Newman, visit Cream T.

We’ve all been there. The string break. The dreaded string break. That dawning realisation that you’ll have to nip down to Guitar Center or, most likely, order a whole new set of strings from Amazon. The pain. The upheaval. The admin. But what if it didn’t have to be this way? 

No, this is not an article about unbreakable strings – but instead about the world of guitarists who play with missing strings on purpose. These luminaries from the worlds of grunge, reggae, metal, new wave and beyond show us that the odd snapped string need not be an obstacle, but an opportunity.

1. Keith Richards

Keith Richards is by far the most notable guitarist to use a restricted string setup. His distinctive five-string chime can be heard on some of The Rolling Stones’ best tracks, including Brown Sugar and Start Me Up.

In the late 1960s, after realising he “was not going to get any better on the sixth string,” Keef started experimenting with open tunings in order to allow him access to new resonances, frequencies and chords that weren’t always possible on the traditional six-string standard tuning configuration. It’s proof that The Human Riff was always keeping his ears open to new sonic possibilities.

2. Bill Orcutt 

Bill Orcutt is a giant in the experimental world. After forming then disbanding influential noise rockers Harry Pussy in the 1990s, he went on to cultivate a knotty and uncompromising solo catalogue, as well as many fruitful collaborations.

The defining characteristic of albums such as Odds Against Tomorrow and – fittingly – Why Four Strings? is the four-string guitars he plays. He removes the second and third strings, and the space between the low E and the G gives his tone a distinctive roaring, yowling sound.

The albums he’s made with the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet – Music For Four Guitars and ​​Four Guitars Live – show the primal power of what four four-strings can do in unison.

3. Ricky Wilson

Easily one of the most inventive guitarists in new wave, Ricky Wilson of The B-52’s lent his chops to legendary cuts including Rock Lobster, Mesopotamia and Private Idaho. The key to his urgent, snappy, wound-tight style was heavy-gauge strings, Mosrite guitars, bonkers tunings (BADXG#C#, anyone?) and the four and five-string set-ups he favoured.

His tragic death from AIDS in 1985 cut short what should have been a longer and more illustrious career. Indeed, many believe the real sound of The B-52’s died with Wilson. 

4. Seasick Steve

With his bushy white beard, baseball cap and beat-up red hollowbody of unidentifiable origin, Seasick Steve is immediately recognisable. Nicknamed ‘The Three-String Trance Wonder,’ the instrument provides the perfect gutbucket backing for his tales of getting booked “for vagrancy” and “sleeping under a bridge.” Add a brass slide and a touch of Tube Screamer overdrive, and Steve really makes the guitar sing.

Whether you believe his backstory or not, Steve posits that this set-up came about through pure expediency, saying: “If you broke a couple of strings and were a baby about it, and said you weren’t going to play, then you didn’t eat.”

5. Kurt Cobain

A devotee of lo-fi music and Leadbelly, Kurt Cobain channeled this appreciation into Nevermind, Nirvana’s breakthrough album. Listen to any of the acoustic guitars and you’ll hear the slack, muted rattle of his dilapidated Harmony Stella.

The guitar frequently went out of tune, had its tuning pegs held in place with duct tape, and had five nylon strings despite being designed for 12 steel strings. You can hear its unique tone most prominently on the moody banger Something In The Way, as well as Polly.

It’s rather endearing that Cobain – who could have owned any high-end acoustic – so often plumped for a $20 model. The moral is simple: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

6. Brushy One String

Brushy One String takes the philosophy of the restricted set-up to the next level. After giving up the guitar as a child, he was reportedly inspired by a dream to play using just a single string.

His Chicken In The Corn video has 64 million views on YouTube. It best demonstrates his unique style, which involves beating out percussion parts on a truly battered acoustic guitar, and thumping his string like a bass.

Brandon Rodriguez, who works for NASA, says in an excellent TED Talk that “constraints aren’t the boundaries of creativity, but the foundation of it” – and Brushy One String is a testament to that.

7. Max Cavalera

Co-founder of metal legends Sepultura and leader of Soulfly, Max Cavelera has been wielding a four-string configuration since two broke off on an early tour, and he never bothered to replace them.

He explained in 2008: “I just do rhythm,” hence the reason he had no need for the other strings. The configuration allows him to emphasise his unfussy power chord-based style, best heard on Sepultura ragers like Roots Bloody Roots and Refuse/Resist.

8. Henri Cash

Henri Cash, guitarist of LA-based rockers Starcrawler, was first inspired to use his three-string configuration after learning guitar via open tunings.

In 2023 he said: “It’s something I’ve done since I was a kid… My dad played guitar, and he used a lot of open tunings. I kind of narrowed that down to the bare essentials and found that three strings were all I needed.”

You can hear the sound of his gorgeous custom-made ‘White Bat’ triple-string on Starcrawler albums such as Devour You and She Said, where it adds a Stonesy swagger to the glam rock backing. 

9. The Presidents of the United States of America

Ever heard of a ‘basitar’ or a ‘guitbass’? Enter The Presidents of the United States of America and their Frankenstein’s monster-esque instruments.

Singer and bassist Chris Ballew told Bass Player Magazine in 1997: “I've always been of a disposition to take off strings and find my own way to do things.” He played a guitar strung with two bass strings, while Dave Dederer used a guitar strung with three guitar strings tuned to drop D.

Much like Max Cavalera’s instrument, the guitbass and basitar are machine-tooled for pure impact – an adaptation that suits the raucous energy of albums such as PUSA’s self-titled debut and Love Everybody.

10. Leo Kottke

In a case of the tail wagging the dog, Leo Kottke once sawed off his Martin D-12’s top two machine heads so “it’d fit into a normal case.”

Listening to Kottke’s immaculate fretwork – all sparkling, liquid runs and muscular fingerpicking – you’d be forgiven for thinking it was the output of a different, more pristine instrument. But no: it was a battered 10-string that was taped up like a rugby union prop, with battle scars and an amputation to boot.

That this old war horse is responsible for some of the most thrilling American primitive guitar is yet more evidence that when it comes to strings, less is often more.

A 1977 Fender Telecaster-style guitar that was hand built for Keith Richards by his longterm guitar tech and luthier Ted Newman Jones is set to head to auction this Thursday (April 25).

The T-style build has been authenticated by Stones gear expert Andy Babiuk who confirmed it was the model used by Richards in the recording of 1978 album and Rolling Stones fan favorite, Some Girls.

Jones (aka Newman) built the instrument’s unique mahogany body and pickguard, then paired it with an authentic Fender rosewood neck, alongside Tele bridge bridge and neck pickups and a Fender bridge. 

“The back of the body has a round pearl inlay with Newman's ‘N’ and a "77" for the year,” notes Babiuk in his appraisal.

The electric guitar was subsequently used in the Some Girls sessions and later on tour in support of the record – regarded by many as the quintessential Stones tour and the peak of their live powers.

As explained on the Newman Guitars site, Jones stood down from his position as Richards’ chief tech soon after, in order to focus on his burgeoning guitar store and luthiery business, which he had opened in Austin, TX. The business was founded with a $20,000 loan from Richards.

At this point it seems that Richards’ custom Tele underwent some significant changes, as Babiuk explains.  

“In 1981, The Who's guitar tech Alan Rogan started working with the Stones as their new guitar tech for the Tattoo You tour,” writes the vintage expert.

“It was at the beginning of the tour that Rogan had David Schecter build a Telecaster body made of rosewood and took the neck off the Newman Custom Built Telecaster and made a new rosewood Telecaster guitar for Keith to use on the tour.” 

The new, all-rosewood model left the Newman T-style body without a home, at which point it was given to Schecter (yes, he who founded Schecter Guitar Research), who brought it back to life with a maple Fender neck (with a rosewood board) and a new bridge and pickup set.

It was later sold to a ‘radio station executive’, at which point Richards’ signed the instrument with the message ‘To Doc, Love and prescriptions, Keith Richards’.

The Keith Richards Some Girls custom T-style guitar carries a minimum bid of $400,000 and will go on sale on April 25, via Nate D. Sanders Auctions.

Hello there, and a very warm welcome to Guitar World editors’ picks – our new-and-improved, comprehensive monthly guide to the guitar tracks that have captured the attentions of our editors over the past four weeks or so.

With the aid of our Spotify playlist below, we’ve rounded up all our favorite new releases from the month of March, and put them under the microscope to wax lyrical on the playing, tones, and songwriting that have set our six-string senses a-tingling.

Without further ado, let’s hand things over to our EIC MAB to kick things off…

Michael Astley-Brown – Editor-in-Chief

All eyes have been on Gary Clark Jr. this month, after the so-much-more-than-a-blues-guitarist dropped his frankly jaw-dropping opus, JPEG RAW. A dizzying amalgamation of the many genres he’s absorbed over the decades, it’s a reminder that a stinging pentatonic lick can add a dose of urgency to hip-hop just as well as it can funk, rock and soul.

Speaking of pentatonics, another new Pearl Jam single dropped this month, and I’d be remiss not to mention the fact that I attended a listening party for forthcoming Andrew Watt-produced effort Dark Matter, during which Eddie Vedder handed me a beer. True story.

But the thing that struck me most during the album actually appears on newly released punk-rock cut Running. Skip to 1:23. Is it just me, or is that Stone Gossard and/or Mike McCready doing The Gojira Pick Scrape™? It’s the crossover episode I never knew I needed.

Other things I simply must mention: The Black Crowes released their long-awaited new album – and possibly the best-named full-length of 2024 – Happiness Bastards. It’s a strutting, Southern-fried classic-rock, erm, classic. Truly. Flip to the other side of my ADD-addled brain and I have been wearing out the digital tape on Standards’ latest technicolor epic. Two-hand tapping wizard Marcos Mena has been seriously honing his thump chops, which bolsters his already breathless math-rock technique locker with fresh rhythmic sass.

Shoutout, too, to pop-punk titan Olivia Rodrigo’s collab with space-age guitar hero St. Vincent. Obsessed is awash with tasty guitar overdubs that showcase Annie Clark’s unique ear for tones in an addictive new context. No wonder Rodrigo has been donning a St. Vincent Goldie to play the track on tour.

My (sadly not yet tangible) solo of the month gong, however, goes to Adrenaline Mob heavy-hitter Mike Orlando, who has joined forces with Living Colour’s Corey Glover for a new supergroup of sorts, Sonic Universe. The name gives me a minor case of the ick, but there is absolutely no arguing with the guitar playing on debut single I Am. Pentatonic swagger, frenzied alternate-picked flourishes and Whammy squalls: Orlando’s solo is a tour de force.

Jackson Maxwell – Associate Editor

March always feels long, doesn’t it? This one’s been no exception. The dreariness that can sometimes accompany this month, though, was offset by a bounty of killer new guitar-driven music.

Personally, I’d start with a true ‘did not have this on my bingo card’ recording involving two of my biggest guitar heroes. In tribute to the late Lou Reed, the one and only Keith Richards took on the Reed-penned, street-smart Velvet Underground classic, I'm Waiting For The Man. Though Keef, of course, doesn’t break into anarchic feedback squeals, the fact that his true-to-self approach – always in the pocket rhythm work and bluesy fills with that vibrato you’ll recognize in a second – fits the song like a glove is testament to Reed and Richards’ shared grounding in the work of early rock guitar riffmasters like Chuck Berry. 

It was also a fine month for one of my personal favorite genres, indie folk. Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker returned with Bright Future, her first solo full-length in four years. Though it features none of the scorching and freewheeling electric leads that’ve punctuated her band’s most memorable work (her astonishing three-minute spin-out on Not remains one of my favorite solos of the 21st century) Bright Future highlights like Free Treasure showcase Lenker’s formidable fingerpicking acumen. 

Moseying on over to the country side of things, we were blessed this month with Tigers Blood, a new album from Katie Crutchfield’s Waxahatchee project. The whole record’s really worth a spin, but 365 really hits that ‘open highway at 3 a.m.’ sweet spot. Go through the interviews on this website and it won’t be long until you read a guitarist mention the importance of economy – making a solo sing, the importance of leaving space between notes, doing more with less… 

All of those qualities are epitomized in a gorgeous, perfectly articulated MJ Lenderman solo that stands as my personal favorite guitar moment of the month. It has an amazing sense of space – you practically hang on every individual note – and rounds out the song perfectly. 

Matt Owen – Staff Writer

I’m a sucker for Jacob Collier’s Djesse trilogy, so his Djesse Vol. 4 was one of my most anticipated releases of the year – not least because it was set to feature Steve Vai, John Mayer, Brandi Carlile, Lizzy McAlpine and more. It dropped at the start of the month and, as expected, it's a music marvel: Mayer (whose track was actually released a while back) was soulful as always, Vai was on top form for his solo cameo, and Carlile’s country-tinged contribution was sublime.

Plus, there was the small order of that 5-string Strandberg, which absolutely steals the show on WELLLL, which is perhaps Collier’s most riff-heavy song to date. I might have to give that funky alternate tuning a go...

I was also particularly taken by the return of Black Country Communion – whose new single Stay Free finds Joe Bonamassa doing his thing over a seriously tasty swamp blues bop – as well as Al Di Meola, who merged flamenco and fusion with Fandango. It’s served to continue my current acoustic obsession that Julian Lage started last month, and has further pushed me to explore my unplugged improvisation. 

My thirst for indie rock and alt pop, meanwhile, was suitably quenched this month, with Ten Tonnes returning with yet another crowd-pleasing, Vaccines-on-steroids bop titled Little Lovin’. I’ve also been waiting (im)patiently for a new Bleachers album, and the Jack Antonoff-fronted outfit finally dropped their self-titled album this month, which was a production triumph. Jesus Is Dead, with its quirky turnarounds and main hook, is a particular highlight.

I’d also like to give an honorable mention to Greywind and Slow Joy, who have rounded out my monthly playlist with a nice touch of noisy, no-nonsense emo riffage thanks to Swing and Sway and Pulling Teeth. Very tasty stuff indeed.

Matt Parker – Staff Writer

This month, I’ve been getting excited about the return of NYC/Brooklyn indie rockers Les Savy Fav, who release new album Oui LSF in May. They have somehow not made an album since 2010’s boisterously melodic Root for Ruin, but first single, Guzzle Blood, is dark, and sludgy – and shows they have come back because they actually have something to say.

Elsewhere, cult label Italians Do It Better is adored by retro electronic fetishists for good reason. Of course, its output is usually associated with the synth-ier end of the spectrum, but Elegant Death – a taster single from new signings Curses – is an exception to that rule. It reimagines new-wave and goth-y electro-pop, blending in effects-laden guitar toplines and melodies where you’d traditionally expect to find synths – and, as such, melds two of my favorite worlds together at once.

On the unplugged front, our colleague and Guitarist magazine editor Jamie Dickson has shared the fruits of his recent studio labors (produced by Ida Mae guitarist Ben Turpin), in the form of his new album Withershins. It follows in the footsteps of some fine British fingerpickers and does a beautiful line in the woodsmoke and weather-beaten Celtic tanglings of the likes of Bert Jansch, or more latterly, Ben Walker. And he’s not even offered me beer money to write that.

Back on US shores, Nathan Salsburg is a player that you can depend on to bring something fresh to something old. I loved 2022’s Landwerk No. 3 album (which imaginatively repurposed hypnotic loops of old crackling folk recordings as beds for eerie guitar instrumentals). However, despite his credentials, I still balked when I learned Salsburg had teamed up with James Elkington to cover Neneh Cherry’s Buffalo Stance – which, even as I write this knowing better, still sounds like a horrible gimmick.

It is not. Somehow the duo have breathed new life into the ’90s hip hop stalwart, turning it into a lost pastoral classic with the kind of grassy, woven acoustic melodies that could come right off a William Tyler record. I don’t hold a candle for the original but here it is utterly transcendent and the playing – repurposing rap and vocal elements into fingerstyle lines – is superbly inventive. 

The Rolling Stones have been around since 1962, so this is their seventh decade making music. With such a long history, the iconic band has a massive body of work, a discography that was recently enlarged by their latest album, Hackney Diamonds.

Starting out as a London-based blues group, The Stones achieved phenomenal worldwide success mixing pop, rock, and blues, crafting their own unique sound that’s stood the test of time with classic songs like Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Honky Tonk Women, and Angie which, even decades on, still sound fresh and exciting.

The Stones have always been a two-guitar outfit, with the legendary Keith Richards having been there from the beginning, partnered originally by Brian Jones, who tragically drowned in his swimming pool in 1969. Jones was followed by ex-John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers guitarist Mick Taylor, who in turn was replaced by Faces guitarist Ronnie Wood in 1975.

Throughout their recorded works, the guitar sounds of The Rolling Stones have been a mix of electric- and acoustic-based, with references to the band’s blues roots in cover versions of classic songs like I’m A King Bee and Little Red Rooster, and Richards, Jones, Taylor, and Wood all contributing slide guitar in various songs, too. Keith Richards' inspired guitar riffs have become the stuff of legend via songs like Jumpin’ Jack Flash and Satisfaction, the latter of which was played using a Gibson Maestro FZ1 fuzz-tone pedal.

Perhaps one of the most recognizable and consistent musical sounds in the Stones' catalog is Richards' open tunings, where his guitar is tuned to open chords such as D, E, or, usually, G, where he removes the sixth string. This can be heard on numerous songs – such as Honky Tonk Women and Start Me Up – and has a big, rich, immensely pleasing sound. 

These songs, among many others, would probably have been played using arguably Richards' most famously recognizable guitar, his 1950s Fender Telecaster, nicknamed Micawber, which features a Gibson PAF humbucker pickup in the neck position.

In this feature we’ll be looking at the styles of all the Stones' guitarists, with examples featuring their individual approaches – including their use of bluesy ideas such as mixing Minor and Major Pentatonic scales, country style flavors with the use of 6th interval shapes, and rock 'n' roll influenced double-stops.

We also look at Richards' open G-tuned rhythm style, as well as some Brian Jones-esque slide. There are also three ‘mini pieces’ which have a short rhythm guitar beginning followed by a solo. These are in three distinct musical flavors – a Major tonality piece, a Minor tonality piece, and a blues style piece.

It’s only rock 'n' roll, etc, so have fun!

Get the tone

Amp Settings: Gain 4, Bass 3, Middle 6, Treble 7, Reverb

Either a single-coil or humbucker-equipped guitar can be used here, since all four guitarists regularly switched between the two. A higher action might be better suited to slide though. You can use anywhere from clean to light or medium overdrive for both rhythm and solo duties. Feel free to add reverb or a mild delay for ambient thickening.

Keith Richards

Example 1: Keith Richards

This is in the key of C and features melodic C Minor Pentatonic licks (C-Eb-F-G-Bb) over the Major chords C, F, and Bb. 

Example 2: Keith Richards

This demonstrates Richards' rock 'n' roll influence from players such as Chuck Berry. Make sure the third string’s tone interval bends are accurate. 

The double-stop bends on the third and second strings in bars 2-4 can be achieved with either the third or fourth finger of the fretting hand pushing upwards, or the flat of the third finger pulling downwards. Either way, make sure the third string bends up a tone and the second string bends up a semitone.

Example 3: Keith Richards

This exercise demonstrates Richards' style of rhythm playing using open G tuning. Tuning as follows, low to high: D-G-D-F-B-D. However, Richards famously removes his sixth string for this tuning, so as to avoid unwanted sixth string noise completely. 

If you don’t want to go to such lengths, simply mute the sixth string with the tip of your fretting hand’s first finger when fretting the chords. Tuning it down to D of course, means if you do accidentally hit it, it’s not a disaster.

Example 4: Keith Richards

An extension of the previous exercise, this one shows how the chords can be embellished with open-string runs and pull-offs to make for a more involved rhythm part. Richards used this idea in tracks like Tumbling Dice and Honky Tonk Women to create an instantly memorable sound.

Brian Jones

Example 1: Brian Jones

This slide guitar example uses open G tuning and a clean guitar tone. Ensure correct pitching by placing the slide directly over the fret. Then add light vibrato.

Example 2: Brian Jones

Another slide guitar example, this uses open E tuning. Tune the strings low to high: E-B-E-G#-B-E. A distorted guitar tone is used here, and side-to-side slide vibrato. Jones was a natural musician, playing a number of instruments and styles. His slide guitar topped the charts on Little Red Rooster.

Mick Taylor

Example 1: Mick Taylor

This example shows how the ‘country’ 6th interval is often played by the band. Taylor, Wood and Richards can all be heard using this approach at various times. 

Make sure your fretting-hand fingers make the appropriate 6th interval shape, with the picking hand either using a fingerstyle approach of thumb and finger, or a hybrid picking approach of pick and fingers, or just the pick using alternate picking. Of the three approaches, hybrid probably makes the most sense.

Example 2: Mick Taylor

This example features some melodic bluesy licks, typical of Taylor’s lyrical style. Bar 1 involves bending the string up a tone but only letting it down by a semitone, so accurate pitching is essential. 

Taylor likely learned this idea from copying Eric Clapton, who favored this often in his soloing. The repeating phrase over two strings in bar 2 is important to play cleanly. As a suggestion, try a downstroke on the second string and an upstroke on the third string.

Ronnie Wood

Example 1: Ronnie Wood

This country-toned E Major Pentatonic (E-F#-G#-B-C#) idea features a 6th, with the third string bending up a tone (use the fretting hand’s third finger), while the fourth finger frets the first string. In bar 3, use the same fingering for the bend on the second string, with the fourth finger fretting the first string.

Example 2 

This example shows how the Major and Minor Pentatonic scales can inter-weave over a Major tonality chord progression in order to create a colourful mix of sweet Major sounds blending with bluesier Minor approaches. B.B. King was the master of this, with Eric Clapton, Peter Green, and others highly influenced by it.

Rolling Stones Mini-Pieces

Piece 1: Major

This piece is in the key of A and is in open G tuning with the capo at the 2nd fret. The first eight bars are a rhythm part and feature our Keith Richards-style approaches. The following eight bars are the solo. As the first string is lowered by a tone, remember the notes won’t be in the same place as they normally are.

Piece 2: Minor

Our Minor piece has a tonal center of B Minor and alternates between a bar of B Minor and a bar of E; the overall sound is B Dorian (B-C#-D-E-F#-G#-A). 

After the first four bars of ‘rhythm,’ the subsequent solo section mainly contains bluesy B Minor Pentatonic (B-D-E-F#-A) licks. In bars 7 and 8 we encounter some E Major Pentatonic country flavored licks over the E chord, adding another tonal character to the solo.

Piece 3 

This 12-bar blues in G has a straight, driving feel, with two bars of chunking blues shuffle rhythm before the solo kicks in. Featuring licks containing both G Major Pentatonic (G-A-B-D-E) and G Minor Pentatonic (G-Bb-C-D-F), the overall feel of the solo is melodic. Make sure your string bends are pitched accurately.   

The first prototypes of this very different electric guitar were made in 1969 for USA amplifier company Ampeg by Dan Armstrong, who had already made quite a name for himself both as a player and repairer by the time he opened his own repair shop in New York in 1965. 

With its clear acrylic solid body – named Lucite, Plexiglas and Perspex – it soon earned the ‘See-Through’ nickname, which was apparently trademarked by Ampeg. Its brief production lasted from late 1969 to ’71, when, after a disagreement with Ampeg, Dan Armstrong relocated to the UK.

Its futuristic plastic body housed some tricky passive electronics, too, and could be fitted with various interchangeable electric guitar pickups – Rock Treble, Rock Bass, Country Treble, Country Bass, Jazz Treble and Jazz Bass – designed in collaboration with Bill Lawrence.

It may well have become a footnote in guitar history had Ampeg not got one into the hands of Keith Richards in October 1969 while The Stones prepared for their ’69 US ‘comeback’ tour.

Aside from featuring on Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! (and picturing on the original album cover), it was the ‘See-Through’ that hung around Richards’ neck while the horrors of Altamont unfolded: the concert that ended the swinging ’60s dream.

While you get a great idea of the guitar’s gnarly tone on the film of The Stones at the Marquee in 1971, before they headed off to the south of France (that’s another story!), the ‘See-Through’ guitar, and its bass version, has had plenty of rockstar outings from the likes of Ronnie Wood in the early Faces days, to Bill Wyman, Geezer Butler, Phil Lynott, Joe Perry, Tom Petty, Tom Verlaine and Dave Grohl.

Iconic? We’d say so.  

From 1968 on, The Rolling Stones’ sound was dominated not only by Mick Jagger’s swaggering vocals and the funky rhythm section of Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, but the guitars that somehow sounded unlike anything else out there at the time. Keith Richards had discovered a new rhythm sound, and with it an unprecedented burst of creativity.

Open tunings are common in the world of fingerstyle acoustic and blues slide, but far less so with regular strummed rhythm guitar. But when country-blues legend Ry Cooder showed Richards open G tuning while working with the band during 1968, it was a lightbulb moment for Keith. With this new tuning he would go on to write some of the most memorable riffs of all time.

Tuning the sixth, fifth and first strings down by a tone gives the notes DGDGBD. Keith quickly surmised that having a 5th interval on the bottom string (the bass string) would be a hindrance, so in a moment of genius he simply removed it. This gave a five-string G chord with the root on the bottom, so placing a full barre anywhere on the neck created a new major chord; at the 5th fret we get C, on the 7th fret D, and so on.

When Keith added his second and third fingers to the barre to create what looks like an Am7 shape, the G chord became Cadd9/G, the C became Fadd9/C, the D became Gadd9/D, etc. This simple scheme with its unique sound launched many of the Stones’ greatest riffs.

Here, we list the top 10 – as voted by Total Guitar readers – and reveal the stories of how each of them were written and recorded.

10. Tumbling Dice (1972)

Recorded at Keith Richards’ rented chateau in the South of France, the lead single from Exile On Main Street kicks off with a killer riff in B, played in Keith’s newfound open G tuning with a capo at the 4th fret. 

“I was starting to really fix my trademark, starting to find all these other moves,” remembers Richards. “How to make minor chords and suspended chords. The five-string becomes very interesting when you add a capo. It gives a certain ring that can’t be obtained any other way.” As Bill Wyman was absent for the session, lead guitarist Mick Taylor played bass.

9. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (1965)

The riff that broke the Stones globally was ‘dreamt’ by Keith who captured it on his cassette recorder before going back to sleep. In the studio he used a Gibson maestro fuzz pedal to emulate horns, as initially he wanted to replace the guitar figure later.

“I was screaming for more distortion,” he recalled. “We turned the shit up and it still wasn’t right.” Pianist Ian Stewart nipped out to a local music store and returned with the pedal. “I never got into the thing after that,” states Richards, “but it was just the right time for that song.”

Guitarist and founding member Brian Jones played the E-D-A chord figure that goes under the riff on acoustic, Richards added clean electric rhythm, while Bill Wyman walked his bass from root to 4th and back, along the E natural minor scale.

8. Midnight Rambler (1969)

Originally recorded during the Beggars Banquet sessions, Midnight Rambler was held over for the following album Let It Bleed. It was also the final track to feature Brian Jones, who played congas. 

Jagger and Richards reckon it’s the archetypal Stones song, written together while on holiday in Italy. Keith said of their four-part epic: “Nobody went in there with the idea of doing a blues opera. That’s just the way it turned out. I think that’s the strength of The Stones; give them a song half raw and they’ll cook it.” 

Held together by Keith’s 5th-fret capo boogie rhythm and slide guitars, Jagger adds fills on harmonica while Wyman and Watts groove as only they can. 

7. Sympathy For the Devil (1968)

The opening track on Beggars Banquet began life on acoustic guitar with Jagger strumming the chords. “The first time I heard it was when Mick was playing it, and it was fantastic,” Charlie Watts enthused. 

Along the way the song transformed into the hypnotic epic we recognise today. As Richards remarked, “It started as sort of a folk song and ended up as a kind of mad samba, with me playing bass and overdubbing the guitar later.” 

Although there is strummed rhythm on the final cut from Brian Jones it’s barely audible. Instead the song is propelled by session pianist Nicky Hopkins, with percussion added by members of the band plus Ghanaian musician Rocky Dijon.

The main guitar feature is Keith’s two spiky-toned solos, played on a three-pickup Gibson Les Paul Custom through a Vox AC30. The first enters two and a half minutes in, with spitting E minor pentatonic licks played mostly in shapes one and two. His second outing begins at 4:42, where he elaborates on the gritty, blues-flavoured theme until the track fades. 

While Richards’ lead work certainly divides opinion, what cannot be denied is that this instantly recognisable guitar playing powers one of the most important rock songs of all time.

6. Start Me Up (1981)

On any Top 10 Greatest Intros list, Start Me Up should be right up there. But the track, which begins with one of Keith’s greatest ever riffs, had a difficult birth. From when the band first tried it for 1978’s Some Girls sessions (and some have said even earlier), Richards always envisaged it as a reggae number. But after 40 or so takes they shelved the song as a lost cause. 

Come 1981’s impending tour, and management demanded a new album. With Mick and Keith not on the best of terms, producer Chris Kimsey trawled the archives knowing he had a clutch of half-finished gems in the can. 

Among the failed reggae attempts, Kimsey found a rockier version of Start Me Up that became the basis for the ‘new’ track. As Richards later mused, “With a band that goes on for a long time, you end up with a backlog of really good stuff that you didn’t get the chance to finish, or put out.” 

Assembling in New York for overdubs, Keith adopted his trademark Telecaster and open G tuning to nail the three-chord boogie intro. Ronnie doubled it using a harder electric tone and added sparse fills. Jagger’s vocal is classic Stones sleaze, while engineer Barry Sage and Santana percussionist Michael Carabello augment Watts and Wyman’s groove with handclaps and cowbell.

5. Honky Tonk Women (1969)

Another brilliant Keith intro, here he simply picks the open fourth and third strings with thumb and forefinger to create the unforgettable, “Der, dert-dert, der’ lick. With it, Richards stamped Honky Tonk on the world in mere seconds – with a little help from producer Jimmy Miller’s cowbell, Charlie’s kick and snare, and it would seem also from Ry Cooder. 

Hired by the band for various projects Cooder has claimed the track is built around licks ‘lifted’ from these sessions.

“A lot of what I did showed up on Let It Bleed, but they only gave me credit for playing mandolin on one cut,” bemoans Cooder. “Honky Tonk Women is taken from one of my licks.” In his autobiography, Life, Richards admits that Cooder showed him the open G tuning that became his mainstay. Over the years, of course, it has become his own.

Mick Taylor played lead on the track. “I didn’t play the riffs that start it,” he states, “that’s Keith. I played the country-influenced rock licks between the verses.”

We’ll leave the last word to Richards: “Honky Tonk can be a bastard to play, man. When it’s right, it’s really right. There’s something about the starkness of the beginning you really have to have down, and the tempo has to be just right. It’s a challenge, but I love it.”

4. Brown Sugar (1971)

It’s that open G thing again! And on Brown Sugar, which opens 1971’s Sticky Fingers album, it forms the basis of the song’s entire rhythm track. From the opening ‘dit-dit, dat-dat-da-daa-da’ lick, Keith runs around the extended turnaround chords of Eb, C, Ab, Bb, C, with added and pulled-off sus4 and 6th (his classic move).

The verses are built around a modified boogie blues, but with the inimitable sound of Richards’ pile-driving guitars stamping them with pure Stones magic. And when Mick Taylor added fills in the G breakdown section, and Bobby Keys played his belting sax solo, a rock classic was born. 

The joyous music, however, is a backdrop to lyrics that were dark and controversial even back in 1971. But 50 years on it was deemed unsuitable to air live, so in 2021 Jagger withdrew it from the band’s setlist, admitting that he would not write such words today.

3. Jumpin’ Jack Flash (1968)

This single from 1968 marked a welcome return from the band’s psychedelic ‘lost weekend’ of Their Satanic Majesties Request to their bluesier, rockier roots. It was also their first time with producer Jimmy Miller, and ushered in a more relaxed and enjoyable way of working – the band had self-produced Satanic Majesties and it had been a long and arduous process. 

“I hated it,” remarked Bill Wyman. “Every day at the studio it was a lottery as to who would turn up and what, if any, positive contribution they would make.” Richards, too, found Jimmy’s regime much more enjoyable. “Suddenly, between us, this whole new idea started to blossom, this second wind. And it just became more and more fun.” 

Jumpin’ Jack Flash is driven mainly by Keith’s Gibson Hummingbird acoustic tuned to open D with capo added. This was fed into a cassette recorder and back out to a mic’d-up extension speaker. “The band all thought I was mad,” laughed Richards, “and they sort of indulged me. But I heard a sound and Jimmy was onto it immediately.” 

Richards added a second acoustic in Nashville tuning (essentially the high octave half of a 12-string set, which gives an almost mandolin-like effect, especially when capo’d). Jones played another rhythm on electric guitar, along with the sparse licks in the choruses. 

Jumpin’ Jack Flash is The Stones’ most performed song, and one of Keith’s best-loved. “As soon as I pick up the guitar and play that riff, it’s one of the best feelings in the world,” he grins. “You just jump on the riff and it plays you!”

2. Gimme Shelter (1969)

The track that kicked off Let It Bleed came from a dark place in Richards’ life, but also represented a time of political unrest, race riots, and the Vietnam war. Keith’s problems were that his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg, whom he’d earlier stolen from Brian Jones, was doing risqué scenes with Jagger for the film Performance, and Richards was convinced they’d take things further. 

He was also consumed by drug use, and came up with Gimme Shelter while watching people outside a friend’s London apartment rushing to escape from a sudden storm. 

Jones doesn’t appear on the track, and Taylor was not yet fully in the band, so Richards played all the guitars. Again it was open G tuning, picking out notes from the descending and ascending C#, B, and A chords, then embellishing them with overdubbed fills.

“That beginning is so eerie, “says Richards. “Sometimes in a stadium you start to hear echoes.” The strumming becomes more insistent as the song progresses, with Keith adding further lead interjections.

Keith also played acoustic on Shelter, but “it died on the very last note,” Richards quipped. “The whole neck fell off. You can hear it on the original take.”

1. Can’t You Hear Me Knocking (1971)

Our poll’s winner is a seven-plus-minute epic of two halves. The first is the ‘song’ part which, unusually for a band that used to jam their tracks into shape, was more or less worked out before they entered the studio. The second section was a Latin-inspired jam that happened purely by accident. More of which later…

The meat and potatoes of Can’t You Hear Me Knocking is Richards’ tight and grungy rhythm track, once again employing the open G, five-string regime and probably played on his black Les Paul Custom. This is countered by a second, equally strident rhythm part performed by Taylor on a walnut brown Gibson ES-345 through a 100-watt Ampeg VT-22 combo amp. 

Richards’ part is relatively complex when compared to simpler numbers such as Honky Tonk Women. Using mainly doublestops in 4ths and 3rds, he weaves around the changes while Taylor supports him with a more straight-ahead feel. The two-guitar arrangement works brilliantly to create one of the band’s tightest and most focused pieces of work.

Unusually for a Stones song, Can’t You Hear Me Knocking features a stack of vocal harmonies. According to Jagger the key was too high and he struggled in places, so layered up his vocals to disguise the crack in his voice on some of the high notes.

The slowly building jam that takes up the majority of the tune is perhaps Mick Taylor’s crowning glory as a Stone. We’ll let him pick up the story: “Towards the end of the song I just felt like carrying on playing” he explains. “Everybody was putting their instruments down, but it sounded good so everybody quickly picked them up again and carried on playing. It just happened, and it was a one-take thing.” 

As luck would have it, the tape was still rolling so Taylor’s beautifully toned licks, languid string bends and smooth vibrato (the antithesis of Richards’ spiky leads), were captured in full.

“We didn’t even know they were still taping,” Keith confirms. “We were just rambling and I figured we’d just fade it off. It was only when we heard the playback that we realised we had two bits of music. There’s the song and there’s the jam.”

Listening to the finished article, on which Bobby Keys added a gritty tenor sax solo, Billy Preston provided organ stabs, and Rocky Dijon and producer Jimmy Miller chimed in with congas and other percussion, it’s clear that Richards was giving Mick Taylor his moment. 

Having no idea that they were being recorded, the confidence and class of the core members is evident throughout, while Miller’s idea to augment the jam with other musicians was a masterstroke. 

Many cite Mick Taylor’s tenure with The Rolling Stones as the band’s most musical period, and listening to this it’s hard to deny. Taylor, however, is more modest about his contribution. 

“I tried to bring my own distinctive sound and style to Sticky Fingers, and I like to think I added some extra spice,” he speculated. “I don’t want to say ‘sophistication’ – I think that sounds pretentious. Charlie said I brought ‘finesse.’ That’s a better word, so I’ll go with what Charlie said.”

Last week (October 20), the Rolling Stones released Hackney Diamonds, their first album of original material in 18 years.

Filled with some of Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood's finest fretwork in decades, the LP has been well-received, and shows that – even after 60+ years together – the Stones still have creative fire.

To promote the album, Richards recently stopped by The Tonight Show, where host Jimmy Fallon – who hosted a live-streamed Q&A with the Stones last month – proclaimed Keef “the greatest guitarist of all time,” and asked the riff-master to “show the kids out there how it's done” with renditions of a few Stones classics.

To the former point, Richards said with a chuckle, “[Andrés] Segovia might disagree,” but he acquiesced to the latter, bringing out a classical guitar – which, you'll note, features just five tuning pegs – to run through some tunes with Fallon on vocals.

You can see the unlikely duo's charmingly rag-tag performance below.

Richards begins by demonstrating his use of open G tuning to the audience, picking out the opening to Honky Tonk Women with just open strings. Then, he moves on to the stadium perennial Start Me Up, which inspires Fallon to do his best Mick Jagger impression. Points for the accent, we've gotta say.

Expressing wonder at how Richards gets such a full sound on his own, Fallon then requests that the riff-master lead them out with Jumpin' Jack Flash. The two do get some help from the Roots, with guitarist "Captain" Kirk Douglas providing some extra backbone with (we'd assume) his signature triple-humbucker Gibson SG.

Richards is only armed with a classical model on Fallon, but he certainly wasn't lacking for choice gear during the Hackney Diamonds sessions. 

The album's producer, Andrew Watt – who, in recent years alone, has also worked with Pearl Jam, Ozzy Osbourne, and Iggy Pop – brought five amps that had been worked on by the great Alexander Dumble to the studio, and lent him a 1930 Gibson L-4 acoustic for Hackney Diamonds' closer, a fitting cover of Muddy Waters' Rolling Stone Blues.

For 30 years, Bill Wyman stood in the shadows of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, anchoring the titanic riffs and ramshackle grooves of the Rolling Stones. “Like it or not, the bass, in my view, is there to support the rest of the band and provide a good solid underbelly to the proceedings,” said Wyman in the May ’98 issue of BP. “It’s not there to hog the limelight.”

An early pioneer of the fretless bass, “I think it’s Japanese,” is all Wyman could offer as to the origin of his “homemade“ fretless. “I was playing in an R&B band in 1961 when I bought it from this bloke our drummer knew. Before that I’d been playing bass on the bottom two strings of a detuned guitar, so I was glad to finally have a ‘real’ bass. Unfortunately, it was horrible! The body was this great big wide thing.“

Ever tenacious, to Wyman's credit he decided to make some improvements. “I’d seen Gibson and Fender bass guitars in pictures of Little Richard’s and Fats Domino’s bands, so I drew a shape like one of those on the back of my bass and I had my next-door neighbour saw it down. I bevelled the edges, took off all the paint, and put in a new Baldwin pickup.

“Still, it rattled with every note because the frets were so worn. I figured I’d just pull out all the frets and put in new ones when I could afford some. But when I pulled them out, it suddenly sounded really good! So I never put frets back in. I think it was the first fretless bass ever. I used it on every Stones album and many of the singles up to 1975. From early R&B covers like I’m a King Bee to the period of 19th Nervous Breakdown – it’s got the sound.”

Fearful of taking his “precious gem” on the road with the Stones in the early ‘60s, Wyman soon began playing short-scale, hollowbody Framus Star basses. “They were the only ones in the shop with necks as narrow as my fretless. And the boys liked the sound of them onstage; they cut through, but were still boomy. Next I moved on to a smaller Framus. It was shaped like a Les Paul bass and had a natural finish with striped wood grain.”

Although he was by then a Framus endorser, Wyman was given a brand-new Vox Bill Wyman Bass in 1965. “The trouble was they never approached me beforehand. They just appeared with this awful, spoon-shaped thing and said, ‘We want to call it the Bill Wyman Bass – we’ll give you 5%.’ I never did see any money from them, but then again I never liked their bass.”

Wyman played many more classic short-scale axes over the years, including a Gibson EB-3 (“awful sound, totally dull”), two Dan Armstrong (“a wooden one with a sliding pickup, and a Plexiglass model that weighed a tonne”), a Travis Bean (used extensively on 1978’s Some Girls), and a Fender Mustang. 

“Keith loved James Jamerson, and he was always saying, ‘You should play a Fender. They get such a good sound in the studio.’ But they’re simply too big for me. I tried a couple of Jazz Basses, but I ended up giving them away. So when I heard about the short-scale Mustang, I thought I’d finally be able to manage a Fender – and please Keith at the same time! It wasn’t too bad. I used it onstage a bit, but it never felt quite right.” 

In 1981 Wyman raised Keith’s eyebrows again when he began playing one of the first Steinberger L-2 headless basses. “No one liked the looks of it – especially Keith, but the sound was really good. The bigger problem was that with the headstock chopped off I had nowhere to put my cigarette! We ended up gluing the top of a ballpoint pen to the end of the neck. It was a perfect fit!”

Another early piece of Wyman stage gear was his 25-watt Linear Concorde amp. “When we started out, it soon got to the stage where I needed a good valve amp. I sent off for a build-your-own Linear Concorde kit, from the back of a wonderful magazine called Radio & Wireless. I remember it had one hell of a sonic kick, but on the downside, it used to give off low-level electric shocks to anyone who went too close. At the time, we were all reckless young men and the boys loved the feeling that anyone of us might revive a free Afro hair style!”

You'd be forgiven for greeting the announcement of The Rolling Stones' Hackney Diamonds – their new first album of original material in 18 years – with a bit of skepticism.

For one, the band lost Charlie Watts – the ever-steady drummer who was a cornerstone of their sound and, other than Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the band's sole constant member over the last 60 years – in 2021. 

Then, there was Hackney Diamonds' inevitable high-profile rollout – a live-streamed Q&A with Jimmy Fallon, and a music video featuring Hollywood it-girl Sydney Sweeney. 

Granted, the band have earned their imperial status many, many times over, but the main question hanging over all this pomp and circumstance was clear: can the Rolling Stones – now together for over 60 years, and whose principal members are either in or rapidly approaching their 80s – still make a great record?

Well, let's start the answer with the song that got the aforementioned glossy video treatment – Hackney Diamonds' opener and lead single, Angry.

Angry greets listeners – from its opening bars – with a striking illustration of what's old and what's new with this rock institution. On the latter front, there's the backbeat from new drummer Steve Jordan – steady, like Watts, but significantly more muscular. On the former, though, there's Ronnie Wood and Mr. Keith Richards. 

Reminiscent of the none-more-iconic opening riff to the Stones' last true mega-hit, Start Me Up, Keef's rhythm guitar hook makes Mick Jagger's job on Angry a whole lot easier, freeing him up to swoon and shout to his heart's content. Jagger, a great-grandfather of three, cries “We haven't made love and I wanna know whyyyyyyy” as Richards and Wood dutifully keep up the riffwork behind him. It's familiar. It works. It's fantastic.

Off to a flying start, the album then serves up the phenomenal Get Close, a swaggering rocker with an absolutely dynamite riff – arguably Keef's finest of the 21st century to the date. His interplay with Wood is spellbinding, and fits like a puzzle piece with Jordan's strutting backbeat and the celebratory sax solo that enters the picture around the song's halfway point.

Richards recently told Guitar Player that the Stones are “all about teamwork,” and it's the enduring strength of that spirit that really makes Hackney Diamonds shine. Just listen to Depending On You, where the band's two-guitar tandem recede and let Jagger do the melodic heavy lifting, especially in the song's soaring chorus. Keef sits back and reacts to Jagger with evocative fills and responses – just as stellar a supporting player as he was in his prime.

Darryl Jones, the Stones' long-serving live bassist, was unable to contribute to Hackney Diamonds due to other commitments, leaving a low-end gap that was filled by Richards, Wood, and even the band's former bass guitar player, Bill Wyman. Another bassist to feature on the album is a lefty you might have heard of, named Paul McCartney.

Just as Jordan gave the band some 21st century muscle on drums, the rotating carousel of bassists makes for some colorful, convention-breaking moments, none more so than McCartney's fuzztastic four-string break on the roof-raiser Bite My Head Off.

Using a Univox Super Fuzz circuit-loaded ‘64 Höfner gifted to him by Hackney Diamonds producer Andrew Watt, McCartney makes the band sound more early-noughties NYC than Swinging Sixties London. 

It's far from the only time Watt – the superstar producer who, in just the last couple of years, has brought incredibly vital music out of veterans like Pearl Jam, Ozzy Osbourne, and Iggy Pop – and his vintage gear stable make a mark on the record.

Though Richards has long had the same guitar amp setup in the studio – a trio of enviable vintage Fenders and an early-Sixties Watkins Joker – Watt brought to the studio five (!) amps that had been worked on by the great Alexander Dumble, of which Richards took a particular shine to a Dumble-modded '58 Fender Twin. 

Wood, meanwhile, alternated between his trusty mid-'50s-era Stratocaster, and the Zemaitis he used on the Faces' iconic song, Stay With Me.

It's a fantastic-sounding blend of the old and the new, gear-wise – perfectly reflective of how the Stones were able to let one of music's most in-demand producers fully take the reins on Hackney Diamonds, without losing their soul, or any of their still-ample charm.

Speaking of charm, after ripping through a number of other strong tracks – including the album's penultimate number, a stunning gospel blowout titled Sweet Sounds of Heaven – the Stones end their new album by taking things all the way back to the beginning. And we do mean all the way back.

Richards uses a 1930 Gibson L-4 acoustic given to him by Watt – and chosen for its similarity to the Gibson L-1 associated with Robert Johnson – to run through Muddy Waters' Rolling Stone Blues, the song that gave the Stones their name and that – incredibly, after all these years – the band had never covered. 

With all of the tabloids they've appeared in, and all of the stadiums they've taken over around the world, the Stones end their new album with the simplest of acoustic blues jams. Close your eyes, and it'll sound like a window into what Mick and Keith's first rehearsals might have sounded like, over 60 years ago.

Richards has insisted that there is no greater meaning about the band's future in choosing to end the album with this cover, but either way, it's a perfect note on which to close a record that finds the Stones embracing new tools and new sounds, but never straying from their spirit and heritage. It makes you wonder why people still even bother telling the Greatest Rock 'n Roll Band in the World to 'hang it up already'...

Keith Richards has addressed long-standing rumors that The Rolling Stones were once lining up to recruit Jeff Beck to their ranks, following the departure of Mick Taylor in 1974.

Taylor, who replaced founding multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones in 1969, was part of the Stones family for five years, and left shortly after the release of the band's It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll album. With the need for a new guitarist, the Stones swiftly began auditioning potential replacements.

As the reports go, Beck found himself on that list (alongside one Rory Gallagher), but after a trip to Rotterdam and an ill-fated audition, the two parties never saw eye-to-eye, and as such, the late electric guitar icon ended up remaining on his own musical path.

Speaking in a new interview with Guitar Player ahead of the release of the Rolling Stones' new album, Hackney Diamonds, Richards reflected on the post-Taylor period, and addressed whether there was any truth to the rumors of Beck’s potential appointment in the mid-’70s.

“We felt that Jeff had his own furrow to plow and that he was not a team man,” Richards recalled. “He was a soloist to the max. He was such an individualist. It wouldn’t have worked with the Stones at all. We’re all about teamwork.” 

Despite the obvious creative clashes between Beck and the Stones, Richards was also quick to caveat his comments with the observation that the Stratocaster master was an exceptionally gifted guitarist.

“But don’t get me wrong, he was a tremendous player,” Richards went on. “The odd times we got together, I was always amazed by the stuff that he did with his tremolo bar. He was one of the best, man, and he’s going to be missed.”

Back in 2012, Beck gave his own account of his Stones audition, and cited similar reasons as for why his own interests and those of the band never truly aligned.

After not meeting any member of the band for the first two days following his trip to the studio, Beck then spent a day with them – enough time to realize they were both on completely different paths.

“Eventually, we got into the same room together and I started playing Bill Wyman’s bass so hard the dust was flying off,” Beck told Ultimate Classic Rock. “I wandered off and the engineer, Glyn Johns, said, ‘That’s incredible!’ I said, ‘One for the archives, mate. I’m leaving tomorrow.'” 

Reportedly, Beck described their process as “dysfunctional,” and said he couldn’t deal with the “lack of purpose” that came with the gig, no matter how financially lucrative the package would have been.

“Some people might find it hard to believe that you’d walk away from the Stones gig,” he said, “but Keith and I wouldn’t have gone through an album without punching each other out anyway.” 

Like Richards’ recent comments, Beck also had nothing but positive things to say about the rock ‘n’ roll icons, even going so far as to later tell BBC 6 Music (via Far Out) that he “would have loved to have been a Rolling Stone.”

“But the thought would have been better than the act, I think – the fantasy of it,” Beck mused. “I don’t think I would have lasted, number one. I don’t think, musically, they were on the same path.”

To read the full interview with Keith Richards, visit Magazines Direct and pick up issue 740 of Guitar Player.

That issue also contains an interview with Hackney Diamonds producer Andrew Watt, who tells the story of Paul McCartney creating “complete carnage” while in the studio with the Stones thanks to a modded Höfner bass.

Though they first formed back in 1962, The Rolling Stones are still going as strong as ever, with the group gearing up to release Hackney Diamonds – their 24th British and 26th American studio album later this month.

That 61-year career has notably played host to Keith Richards’ evergreen affection for the electric guitar – an instrument that he’s been forced to approach in different ways across the years as a result of his arthritis.

Speaking to the BBC, Richards – whose guitar collection totals into the thousands – reflected on the current state of his relationship with the instrument, and discussed how his severe arthritis (a condition that inflames and affects the joints) has altered his playing.

However, while he admits the condition has indeed impacted his playing, its overall effect hasn’t been as detrimental as you might first think.

"Funnily enough, I've no doubt it has, but I don't have any pain, it's a sort of benign version," he said when asked if arthritis has changed his guitar playing. “I think if I've slowed down a little bit it's probably due more to age.”

Naturally, losing the ability to move one’s fingers as nimbly as before does throw up some hurdles, but Richards has taken them in his stride. In fact, he views the need to reconfigure his hand positions as an opportunity to explore new ways of playing.

“I found that interesting, when I'm like, 'I can't quite do that any more,' the guitar will show me there's another way of doing it,” he went on. “Some finger will go one space different and a whole new door opens. And so you're always learning. You never finish school, man.”

Richards went on to explore the “always learning” aspect further, taking a far more philosophical stance to the guitar by commenting “the more you play it, the less you know”.

“It provides you with endless questions,” Richards mused. “You can never know the whole thing. It's impossible.”

Richards’ mitts are clearly in fine working order despite his arthritis, as evidenced by Angry – Hackney Diamond’s first single, which arrived back in September.

As mentioned above, Richards’ love affair with the guitar is well-documented, and though his passion for six-strings (or five-strings, in his case) has stood the test of time, his opinions towards what constitutes the 'best' instruments is firmly rooted in tradition.

“It's kind of weird, but they haven't really improved the electric guitar since Les Paul and Leo Fender put their touch to it,” Richards once told Guitar World. “Everything else is trying to sound like them, with maybe a few more extras – split pickups, 10 different tones... 

“Electronics have come a long way, but the original Telecaster pickup still picks up,” he went on. “With the electric guitar, perfection was made in the beginning. Everything else was then a variation on that. I wouldn't be playing a guitar made in the ’50s if I knew that I could pick one up now and it's just as good.”

The Rolling Stones are officially back, sharing the first single from their forthcoming new album, Hackney Diamonds, which hits record stores (and streaming services) worldwide on October 20.

The track is titled Angry, and it is everything you could want from the Stones in the 21st century, with an insistent riff, a big vocal hook, and a couple of solos that sound as though they’ve tumbled head first out of the electric guitar.

The video follows Sydney Sweeney (The White Lotus) in a convertible that’s working its way through a West Coast city’s streets – it has to be L.A. – as billboards along the side of the road come alive with animated renderings of the Stones – and their guitars – through the years.

There’s what looks like the 1969 Madison Square Garden performance that was captured for posterity on Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! 

There’s Ronnie Wood with his 1978 Zemaitis single-cut – playing a lead that doesn’t quite match what’s laid out on the track here but that’s not what matters; we’re taking a trip through Stones history here.

There is Jagger in a blue jump suit. Keith Richards and his number one Telecaster, the heavily modded Micawber. Director Francois Rousselet does a neat job in threading the line from past to present.

As for the present, Hackney Diamonds will be the English rock ’n’ roll institution’s first album of original material since 2005’s A Bigger Bang. The Stones decamped to various studios across the world in the company of über-producer Andrew Watt – most notable in these parts for his work with Ozzy Osborne and Pearl Jam, but a who also counts blue-chip stars such as Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber among his clients.

Watt reportedly shares a writing credit on Angry, and his itinerary with the band took him on a whistle-stop tour around some of the most legendary recording facilities in the world. There was Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles, Metropolis in London, Sanctuary Studios under the hot sun in Nassau, Bahamas, Electric Lady Studios and The Hit Factory/Germano Studios in New York.

The album will be their first with new drummer Steve Jordan, but is also reported to have some of the final recordings laid down by the late Charlie Watts. It is not as though the Stones have been in retirement these past few years. 

Their Sixty Tour celebrated the band’s anniversary in stadiums across the world. Keith Richards had made it known on his Instagram page that new music was coming. The question was when.

Today, 6 September, 18 years to the day since A Bigger Bang’s release, we have the answer, with the band in at the Hackney Empire in east London right this minute announcing the album in the company of Jimmy Fallon. 

Hackney Diamonds is out October 20 through Universal.

There's a long history – even in the United States – of certain songs, deemed by those in power to be too inflammatory to be unleashed on the innocent ears of the public, getting banned from the radio.

The list of these banned songs is lengthy, and contains one very notable odd man out – Link Wray's Rumble.

What sets Rumble apart from its fellow blacklisted tunes is that it has no words. The 1958 instrumental is all about Wray's ringing, gnarled, tough-sounding electric guitar power chords, played over the simplest of struts.

Rumble came out years before Keith Richards used a Maestro FZ-1 fuzz pedal for his bratty sound on the Rolling Stones’ earth-shattering 1965 smash, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, and long before even Dave Davies sliced a hole in the speaker cone of his Elpico guitar amp to achieve his savage tone on the Kinks' You Really Got Me (Wray beat Davies to that particular innovation, but more on that later). 

Simply put, Rumble sounded like nothing that came before it.

Born out of a request to play The Diamonds' hit The Stroll (which Wray and his Wraymen band were unfamiliar with) at a dance, Rumble sprung from improvisation. Someone reportedly stuck a microphone too close to Wray's amp as he was playing his new riff, creating the song's signature distortion. From there, Wray once recounted, “The kids just went ape.”

In the studio, Wray famously poked dozens of holes into the speaker of his Premier amp with a pencil in an ultimately successful attempt to achieve that same distorted effect.

Rumble was released in 1958, the same year that radio giant Mutual Broadcasting System banned rock n' roll from its extensive network, casting the genre out as “distorted, monotonous, noisy music.”

Certainly, few hits of the era embodied the first and third of those adjectives more than Wray's oddball instrumental. 

According to music journalist Jimmy McDonough, even the man responsible for signing Wray and releasing Rumble, Cadence Records head Archie Bleyer took a dim view of its aggressive sound and its subsequent impact, reportedly telling a friend, “I never liked Link Wray and the negative influence his music had on the young people of America.”

To add to its sins, in the eyes of those in charge, Rumble proved to be just as popular with young Black audiences as it was with young white listeners, at a time when politicians, judges, and law enforcement (especially in the South) were doing everything in their ample power to prevent integration.

Another issue for Rumble came from its name, which, at that time, was slang for a large fight – typically involving gangs.

As so often happens, the attempted suppression of the instrumental only made it more appealing to teenagers. Rumble became an unlikely top 20 hit even despite the blacklisting, and, more importantly, found its way into the ears of countless budding guitarists. The impact of the piece and its brash, distorted chord progression on the development of rock guitar playing simply cannot be overstated.

The Who's Pete Townshend dubbed Wray “the king,” saying at one point, “if it hadn’t been for Link Wray and Rumble, I would have never picked up a guitar.”

Bob Dylan called Rumble the “finest instrumental ever,” and Jeff Beck covered it dozens of times.

For It Might Get Loud, the guitar-themed 2008 documentary, Jimmy Page was filmed listening, and even playing air guitar to, the record.

“I listened to anything with guitar on when I was a kid that was being played,” Page tells his fellow It Might Get Loud co-stars, Jack White and the Edge, at one point in the film.

“But the first time I heard Rumble – that was something that had so much profound attitude to it… It really does.”

In October 2002, the Rolling Stones were celebrating their 40th anniversary and preparing the release of career retrospective, Forty Licks. Guitar World writer Alan di Perna was granted the rare chance to sit down with Keith Richards for a free-ranging discussion of his wild career, his electric guitars and his development as a player across 40 years on the frontline.

Keith Richards moves like a shadow along a cobblestone West Village backstreet. It's a hot summer day in New York City and Keef is in earth tone – a sandy brown bomber jacket, reddish brown headband, moccasins. For some strange reason, each passing year seems to make this quintessential English rock star look more and more like a shaman, with his creased visage and prominent nose.

Out here in the open, on a public street, he has an uncanny ability to blend in with his surroundings – to tread lightly and stay close to the ground. Ex-junkie street smarts combine with the self-preservation instincts of a man who's spent his entire adult life dodging hysterical rock fans.

The guitarist seems to grow taller and more confident as he leads the way into the cool, quiet safety of a chic, sparsely furnished office. Here, for the next two hours, Richards will reminisce about the life and times of the Rolling Stones – sometimes called the 'World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band' – who are celebrating their 40th anniversary this year.

"We've decided not to make too big a deal of this, knowing that everyone else will," he says, his entire loose-limbed body undulating with infectious laughter.

Not that the event will go entirely unmarked. The Stones are doing a massive tour and they're releasing Forty Licks (Virgin), a double-CD set of greatest hits that also features a few new tracks, including the ballad Losing My Touch, sung by Keith.

"But honestly," Richards insists, "the last thing we thought of was all this coinciding with the 40th anniversary. It just so happened that it did. And we realized, with some shock, 'Oh God, they're gonna rub it in, man.' We could just see someone designing a stage for us with a big Four-O as a backdrop."

Richards indicates that a sizeable box set of Rolling Stones rarities and outtakes is in the works, but it's still down the road apiece. For now we'll have to content ourselves with Forty Licks. And with killer Stones tracks like Satisfaction, Sympathy For the Devil, Street Fighting Man, Brown Sugar, Happy, and Tumbling Dice all included, there are plenty of reasons for contentment. 

Old fans can remember just what made the Rolling Stones one of the most important groups of the entire rock era, while new ones can discover the gutsy howl and crossfire hurricane of the Stones in their prime.

The Rolling Stones sprang up in the early Sixties as the dark, Dionysian antithesis to the Beatles’ sunny exuberance. Scruffy yet dandified, unabashedly raw, they seemed determined to shatter every taboo they could find. 

Long before the birth of heavy metal, they were cozying up to the Evil One with album titles like Their Satanic Majesties Request and songs like Sympathy For the Devil. They predated goth by several decades, putting death in Top 40 with Paint It Black.

Years before the glam era, they became the first rock band to pose in drag, on the picture sleeve for their 1966 single Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In the Shadows? They repeatedly antagonized the politically correct with works like Brown Sugar, Some Girls and Black and Blue. 

The Stones were busted for everything from urinating in public to drug charges both trumped up and well substantiated. They've known the inside of jails and the salons of high society.

Musically, the Rolling Stones awakened young, white baby boomers to America's rich blues heritage. Richards made his mark as a resourceful and fiercely original guitar stylist, whose capoed, varisped, open-tuned riffs seemed to spring from some ancient Delta source. They continue to elude guitar transcriptionists and other upholders of rational analysis.

The Stones' deep blues roots have enabled them to weather many a storm. At their inception in 1962, they were a sextet. But pianist Ian Stewart was deemed to possess insufficient visual appeal by an early manager, so he graciously assumed the reduced role of road manager and session keyboard man. 

That left Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman and the mercurial guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones – a gifted yet troubled blues fanatic whose initial leadership of the band eroded as Jagger and Richards emerged as one of rock's greatest songwriting teams. Jones left the Rolling Stones in 1969 and was found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool shortly thereafter – a sad and mysterious death that still draws speculation as to what really occurred.

Jones was succeeded by Mick Taylor, a technically more accomplished, although less versatile, guitarist and an alumnus of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. With Taylor on board, the Stones scaled the heights of album rock glory with classics like Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main St. But by 1974, Taylor had jumped ship. 

His successor was affable Faces vet Ronnie Wood. While less of a virtuoso than Taylor, Wood has meshed with Richards more closely than any other Stones guitarist, in a style that Keef has often called "an ancient form of weaving."

Ian Stewart died in 1985. And in 1993, Bill Wyman relinquished his long-standing role as the Stones' bassist, leaving Jagger, Richards and Watts to soldier on. This grizzled triumvirate of original Stones, supported by a well-chosen cast of musicians and singers, has become one of rock and roll's most venerable institutions.

Given the life he's led, it's a miracle that Keith Richards is alive to ring in the Rolling Stones' 40th year together. Heroin addiction claimed much of the ’70s for him, although it didn't seem to prevent him from turning in some of his most brilliant work as a guitarist, songwriter, and de facto musical director of the Rolling Stones.

There has been a succession of women in his life, including the dangerous Swinging London beauty Anita Pallenberg, whose long liaison with the guitarist was particularly tempestuous. But all that is in the past now, and Richards seems content with his wife of 19 years, ex-model Patti Hansen, his kids, and one other ever-present companion – a small yet spirited white poodle named Delilah.

"Quite honestly, when I reached 50 I didn't feel any differently than I did when I reached 40," says Richards. ''And I think the Stones are approaching this anniversary thing the same way anybody approaches turning 40. Except we're doing it en masse."

As he speaks, Richards fidgets with a few small, metal, Maltese crosses affixed to his graying locks. He can't seem to figure out whether these ornaments should go over the top of his headband or stick out underneath. An assistant brings him a large Absolut vodka with orange soda – the first in a long series, punctuated by even more Marlboros. Relaxed and utterly at home in his lank body, Keith Richards is in a talkative mood.

You've never been one to live by the clock or calendar.

“Not exactly, no.”

So does a milestone like the 40th anniversary of the Rolling Stones mean all that much to you?

“When a band has stayed together this long, there is a certain secret professional pride in that. But I don't think any of us would go around saying that – certainly not to each other, or even to ourselves. I guess there's just a thing in our society about decades – numbers that end in zero. I don't know why.”

What prompted your decision to include some brand-new Rolling Stones tracks on Forty Licks?

“The only difference between us and the Beatles is that we're still going. So, unlike the Beatles' greatest-hits set, we felt we had to put on two or three new tracks in a 'to be continued' kind of spirit. I didn't want it to be all just nostalgia.

“Also, I didn't want to turn up for rehearsals for this tour without having played together with everybody since the end of the last tour. That would have been a little too much – straight into Start Me Up all over again. I love to play those songs. But I already know how to play them. I don't need to rehearse them. So I wanted to get the band to play together on some new stuff.

“Playing new music really tightens the band up. Getting everybody together for a month in Paris, I didn't mind if we came out with no tracks at all. But as it turned out, we came out with 30 tracks! On our very first night in Paris we got three tracks down. Everybody went, ‘Yeah.’ Out of the 30 songs we recorded, we mixed four or five. 

“We're still dickering between them right now, figuring out what will go on the album. But my strategy worked, I think. Everyone's got their chops together and they're really looking forward to this tour. It's not just a regurgitation. It's still a working band.”

Is it safe to say that it paid off for the Stones to abandon blues purism and start playing the pop game circa 1963?

“We did that because we wanted to make records. To get into a recording studio was almost like getting into heaven. Even harder, maybe. So the inducement of a recording contract made us willing to play that game. We all agonized about it, of course. ‘Should we put these jackets on and go on TV?’ But once we did, there was no turning back.

“Within a week or so we were suddenly London's answer to the Beatles. We were in the pop game. At the same time, we learned the music business. And we realized we'd stepped into a sea of piranhas. The question was, did you spend your energy on the music or dealing with these piranhas? Well, you've got to learn to do both at the same time. Once you're in, you really can't get out. 

“There you are with Melody Maker and 16 magazine. And you're going, ‘What the hell am I doing talking to this chick about what's my favorite color?’ And they say, ‘Oh, we're going to do a group photo. You can't sit on the bed together.’ Well, where else should we sit? There's no chairs in the room.”

Why couldn't you sit on the bed together? Would that have had homosexual connotations back then?

“Yeah. Just the fact that it's the bed and two guys are on it. If it was a chick, it would be even worse, I guess. There were all these weird rules you had to learn. But we found it pretty easy, I must say, to play the pop game. Especially when the chicks started throwing themselves at us. That was an added inducement.”

Bill Wyman, in his autobiography, Stone Alone (Viking, 1990), said that the groupie scene started quite early for the Stones – around the time of your first or second single in England. Is that the way you remember it?

“Well, yeah. Wyman was quite accurate in that. But the fact is anytime musicians are passing through a town and they're up onstage… It didn't start with the Stones, believe me. Some of the chicks Bill had had been through half the rock and rollers of the previous generation before they got to him. It may have started for him then. But from time immemorial, that's why guys become musicians and go on the road. ‘Hello darlin', how ya doin'?’ Then, ‘Thank you very much. I'm outta here. See ya next time around.’ I'm sure there's been groupies for 2,000 years at least, if not longer.”

Can you recall when it first turned kind of "professional"? More than just the local schoolgirls backstage in drab little coats?

“Oh yeah, that was '66 or '67. The Butter Queens and the Caster Plasters [sic]. These little teams of chicks that would set themselves up as professional groupies.”

The Butter Queens?

“The Butter Queens, yeah. They did loads of wonderful things with butter, apparently. I used to see them around all the time, but they never buttered me up. I used to avoid them like the plague. Anything that smacked of professionalism. ‘We've got a plaster cast of Robert Plant's cock. Would you like to add yours to the collection?’ No, I never wanted to be part of anybody's collection. But mind you, there were some great individual operators out there.”

I remember Steven Tyler telling me that as he got deeper into drugs he'd be much more interested in copping some good dope on the road than availing himself of any of the female companionship on offer.

“Yeah, that was basically part of my thing as well. But there are always wonderful ladies out there. At the end of the day, that’s the other payback. Except very early on, when Ian Stewart used to decide where we would stay. Stu loved to play golf and he'd book these hotels miles from the venue, way out of the way, so as to be near a golf course. 

“The rest of us had trouble persuading girls to ride all the way out there in the van. Stu probably got us out of a lot of trouble, in one way or another. But we were grateful once the organization got too big for Stu to pick out the hotels anymore.”

In stage photos and TV stills from that early period, you're often seen with an Epiphone semi-acoustic. Was that just a stage guitar or did it make it onto the early singles?

“I'm pretty sure that Epiphone was on It's All Over Now and probably some of the earlier ones from England. I used it for a good while, mainly because I had it. It was a nice guitar, because Epiphone was a branch of Gibson at the time. It was a great guitar for studio work and in clubs. But once we got into theaters and bigger gigs, I found the feedback and howl of those Epiphones was uncontrollable and I started to go for solid bodies, like the Les Paul.”

[Richards has played numerous Les Paul models over the years but is perhaps most closely associated with Black Beauties, i.e., three-pickup, black Les Paul Customs, particularly a late-Fifties Custom decorated with a moon-and-star motif painted by the guitarist himself—GW Ed.]

Can we make a case for the Stones' pioneering riff-oriented rock with songs like Satisfaction and The Last Time? Those were some of the earliest songs where the guitar riff is the statement – the main hook.

“I don't know. Sometimes it's easy for me to get carried away by other people's theories of what we've done. When I wrote Satisfaction I wasn't thinking in terms of that particular riff being the big guitar riff. 

“That all fell into place at RCA [recording studios in Hollywood], when Gibson dumped on me one of those first footpedal boxes – the Fuzz-Tone. It was just a new toy that somebody had given us from the local dealership or something.

“Actually, I thought of that riff in Satisfaction more as a horn riff. The way Otis Redding ended up doing it is probably closer to my original conception for the song. It's an obvious horn riff. So when I got this Fuzz-Tone I said, ‘Oh, this is good, because I can use it to sketch out the horn line.’ So we left the track unfinished, to my mind, and went back out on the road. 

“Two weeks later I hear it on the radio. I said, ‘No, that was just a dub [a demo].’ No, I was told, that is a hit! But at least Otis got it right. Our recording of Satisfaction was a demo for Otis!”

The Stones did a lot of recording at RCA in the early days. Along with Satisfaction, hits like The Last Time and Mother's Little Helper were also cut there. What did you like about the place?

“It was a lovely big room, which meant you could work for hours and hours without getting tired. Good equipment. Great address [on Hollywood Boulevard]. Also Dave Hassinger was there, who was a great engineer. 

“In those days, for two or three years, we were basically working 350 days a year. You'd have 10 days off the tour to go to L.A. and record. RCA was the first room we recorded in in L.A. So we knew that when we got there we weren't in for strange surroundings. There was no time to check out a bunch of studios in those days. You'd just set up and go. 

“That first year we came to America we discovered RCA and Chess Recording: 2120 [South Michigan Avenue, in Chicago. Immortalized in the title of a Stones instrumental from that era, the Chess studio had been the site of historic recordings by Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and other of the Stones' blues heroes – GW Ed. ] After what we'd been used to in England we said, ‘Wow, these are what we call studios.’”

Listening carefully to Get Off My Cloud, you realize how beautifully the rhythm guitar works with the piano. The piano is subtle, but it's important.

“I think that was just a matter of saying, ‘Stu, this sounds a bit thin. Can you just play a little piano under it?’ 'Cause for me, and for Charlie, I think – I don't know if Mick would agree – this is basically Stu's band. We're working for a dead man. When we recently had that week of recording in Paris, a couple of times we'd be playing and Charlie would look up at me: ‘Stu?’ ‘Yeah, he's here.’

“But yeah, that was just one of those things you could do in those days – shadow a guitar with a piano. As long as you didn't make it obvious, it would add some different air to a track. 'Cause that was all four-track time. Basically, you had to get it in the room. There was no, ‘What if we overdubbed added violins?’ The only choice was to decide whether you'd got it or if you had to do another take. 

“All that changed very quickly, of course, going to eight, 16, then 24 tracks in a matter of just a couple of years. Everyone was reveling in all these tracks, and at the same time their records weren't sounding too good and they were taking longer to make.”

What did you use to create that curiously aquatic guitar sound for the melodic riffs on Mother's Little Helper?

“That's a 12-string with a slide on it. It's played slightly Oriental-ish. The track just needed something to make it twang. Otherwise, the song was quite vaudeville in a way. I wanted to add some nice bite to it. And it was just one of those things where someone walked in and, ‘Look, it's an electric 12- string.’ 

“It was some gashed-up job. No name on it. God knows where it came from. Or where it went. But I put it together with a bottleneck. Then we had a riff that tied the whole thing together. And I think we overdubbed onto that. Because I played an acoustic guitar as well.

The Stones had an endorsement deal with Vox around this time. Were those the amps you were using in the studio?

“I have no doubt they were. The AC30's a damn good amp. But you don't want two guitar players in a band playing out of the same make and model amplifier. It's too much the same sound. So as soon as I got to America I got myself a Fender amp. There was something about that little herringbone box. I fell in love with Fender amps real quick. 

“But Ronnie Wood still uses AC30s today in the Stones. And Brian used them. Basically it was a Brian deal with Vox. 'Cause they made him his teardrop guitar. [Jones played a rare two-pickup version of the Vox Mk VI—GW Ed. ] But the AC30 was probably the best all-around British amp at the time, without a doubt. Of all time.”

In addition to the teardrop guitar, Brian was often seen playing a Gibson Firebird. Did he use that in the studio or just for concerts and TV appearances?

“He definitely used it in the studio. I can see him right now with that Firebird. The thing with Brian was he would hop from instrument to instrument. He was always searching for another sound. As a musician he was very versatile. He'd be just as happy playing the marimbas or bells as he was guitar. 

“Sometimes I'd be saying, ‘Oh, make up your mind what sound you're going to have, Brian.’ 'Cause he'd keep changing guitars. So it's difficult to say which guitar he was using on which track. He wasn't one of those guys who said, ‘Right, here's my ax.’ Brian had so many. Sometimes he'd walk in with a guitar someone had given him and he'd insist on using it, even if it wasn't the right one for the job.”

Did you ever fool around with sitars or other instruments Brian left lying around?

“No. Something about the strings on a sitar – they were too thin. Brian got into playing it, and I did find the instrument interesting – the idea of the sympathetic strings underneath that resonate to one of the strings on top. So it was good for drones. Arrangement-wise, I used it as I thought it should be used – as an interesting extra sound on one or two things, like Paint It Black.”

Who thought up the coda to Mother's Little Helper, where it modulates to the relative major and ends with that ‘Hey!’?

“I think I had that song pretty well set up, arrangement-wise, when I brought it into the studio. I had the main riff. It might have been Bill Wyman who came up with that ending. He was also instrumental on Paint It Black, adding organ pedals to the bottom end. Mother's Little Helper and Paint It Black are these semigypsy melodies. I don't know where they came from. Must be in the blood somewhere.”

Speaking of things being in the blood, what was it like coming from a middle-class background...

“Actually, I'm not; Mick could be classified as middle class. I come from the projects.”

Okay, what was it like to come from that kind of background and suddenly be part of the Swinging London scene circa '66 or '67 – rubbing shoulders with aristocrats and people from the fine arts world?

“Well, it happens very easily when they want to know you. [laughs] England was really shrugging off WWII, at last, by the end of the ’50s and early ’60s. Everybody was quite willing to change the playing field. 

“I certainly had no aspirations in that particular area at all – society or anything like that. But I have a feeling that there was a certain percentage of the higher strata of English society who felt they were being left behind. And suddenly they wanted to go slumming. Or at least their kids did. So it was more a matter of them wanting to get into our society, rather than us wanting to get into theirs.

“When you're on the road as a musician, you learn to take people as they come. It doesn't matter where they come from or anything like that. There's always a barrage of people, and you're here today and gone tomorrow – always traveling. So you learn to size up people really quickly. Without even realizing it, you fall into the knack of doing that. If you don't, you get into trouble. 

“The rest of it doesn't matter. You don't have time to go into people's backgrounds. And then two weeks later someone says, ‘Oh, when you spent the night with Princess So and So...’ And I'd say, ‘Who? What do you mean?’ ‘You know, that chick Lucy.’ ‘Oh, is she a princess? She didn't act like it.’”

Do early songs like Play with Fire, or catty songs on Between the Buttons like Complicated and Miss Amanda Jones, come out of that kind of experience –observations of debutante life?

“Yeah, they probably do. They all come out of our first year of fame and being on the road – expanding our horizons and at the same time seriously getting down to work writing songs. Inevitably you draw on your own experiences. It's all a bit of a lark, really.”

In retrospect, do you think Between the Buttons is an underrated album?

“Between the Buttons was the first record we made when we hadn't been on the road and weren't shit-hot from playing gigs every night. Plus, everyone was stoned out of their brains. And it was the Summer of Love over there in America as well. 

“Between the Buttons was the first time we took a breath and distanced ourselves a little from the madness of touring and all. So in a way, to us it felt like a bit of a new beginning. But not everybody was in great shape. Brian was starting to be wonky at the time.”

When did you first have an inkling that Brian wasn't going to make it?

“I guess toward the end of ’66 I started to get this impression that Brian thought it was his band. He started to get ideas. Given the pressure of work at the time, nobody had time to think about it. They just said, ‘Oh Brian, piss off.’ Which I think he took more personally than was probably meant. Alienation started to set in. 

“That grew more intense in the period of Between the Buttons, when we had this time off and everybody suddenly wasn't on everybody else's back. At the time, with Brian, we all figured, ‘It's just pressure. He'll get over it.’ But instead he kind of separated himself from the band in a way. It was only a slight nuance at the time. We just carried on and said, ‘Oh, big deal.’ But it grew more intense over the next couple of years.

“And then of course the thing with Anita happened – then it became personal. [There were violent scenes between Jones and his then-girlfriend, Italian-German actress-model Anita Pallenberg, during a road trip to Morocco that the couple made with Richards in March 1967. Pallenberg transferred her affections to Richards. She would later bear Richards' sons Marlon and Tara Jo Jo Gunne and daughter Dandelion— GW Ed. ] 

“I suppose that was the irrevocable break. But shit happens, you know? Yeah, I stole his girlfriend. But only because he was trying to beat her up. I tried to stop it because he was coming off worse. 

“Brian had two broken ribs and a broken wrist, and Anita just had a black eye. Anita and I fell in with each other. By then Brian had become pretty unbearable to live with. Which is probably why I ended up with Anita.”

Many people say that your place in Cheyne Walk in London, which you shared with Anita for a while, was haunted. Do you think it was?

“No. It's an old house and it creaks a lot. Old houses do that. A lot of people were really stoned there. No doubt they had heightened imaginations. But quite honestly, in the time I lived there, that never occurred to me. If it was haunted, it was haunted by the cops!”

Have you ever seen a ghost?

“Only my own, pal.”

For all the Stones' problems in the late Sixties, with Brian and harassment by the police over drugs, that period is also one of the band's most brilliant. Jumping Jack Flash, for instance. Do you remember which guitar you used for that?

“A Gibson Hummingbird [acoustic] tuned to open D, six string [low to high: D A D F# A D]. Open D or open E [low to high: E B E G# B E], which is the same thing – same intervals – but it would be slackened down some for D. Then there was a capo on it, to get that really tight sound. 

[As the recording sounds in the key of E flat, Keith's guitar was most likely tuned to open D, with a capo placed at the first fret. Although tape varispeeding may also have affected the key – Ed] 

“There was another guitar over the top of that, but tuned to Nashville tuning. I learned that from somebody in [country star] George Jones' band in San Antonio in '63. We happened to be playing the World Teen Fair, and San Antonio in 1963 was just a cow town. 

“George Jones and his band practically had tumbleweeds around their Stetsons and boots. One of his band had a high-strung guitar. We had a couple of hours to kick around. So he showed me how to do it, with the different strings, to get that high ring. I was picking up tips.”

Was the high-strung guitar on Jumping Jack Flash an electric?

“No. That was an acoustic, too. Both acoustics were put through a Phillips cassette recorder. Just jam the mic right in the guitar and play it back through an extension speaker.” 

People tend to associate the cassette recorder trick more with Street Fighting Man.

“I used it there too. The acoustic guitar is all about what comes off the fingers. That's what's important. Once you put a microphone in front of any guitar, it's automatically electric. Even if [classical guitarist Andres] Segovia's playing. For me, there was no way of miking up an acoustic guitar that would do. What I was after with all of those – Street Fighting Man, Jumping Jack Flash was to get the drive and dryness of an acoustic guitar but still distort it. They were all attempts at that.”

Did you use the same open tunings for Jumping Jack Flash and Street Fighting Man?

“No, on Street Fighting Man there's one six-string open and one five-string open. They're both open tunings, but then there's a lot of capo work. There are lots of layers of guitars on Street Fighting Man. There's lots of guitars you don't even hear. They're just shadowing. So it's difficult to say what you're hearing on there. 'Cause I tried eight different guitars. And which ones were used in the final version, I couldn't say.”

According to Wyman's Stone Alone, once again, Street Fighting Man started on cassette, was transferred to four-track, and then from there it went to eight-track.

“That seems right. 'Cause we just couldn't reproduce the sound of the original demo I did on cassette. So we played the cassette through an extension speaker so I could play on top of that – shove a microphone into an acoustic and overdub to that. 

“Then we put it on a four-track, played it back, and at the same time the guitar was going on, I had [session keyboard great] Nicky Hopkins playing a bit of piano, and Charlie just shuffling in the background. Then we put drums on it and added another guitar while he was doing that. And we just kept layering it.”

People aren't always aware of your bass-playing contributions to the Stones. But you played bass on Jumping Jack Flash...

“Yeah. Sympathy for the Devil. Live with Me. I do like playing bass. Still do.”

Is it that Bill just wouldn't be around when it came time to record the bass?

“Usually. Or sometimes I'd say, ‘Bill, it goes like this.’ And he'd say, ‘Why show me? You got it down. Let's make this simple. You do it.’ There were never any hassles in that respect. Just like there are some songs where Bill plays keyboards.”

You're seen with a Telecaster, if memory serves, in Jean-Luc Godard's film One Plus One (AKA Sympathy For The Devil) , which documents the sessions for Sympathy for the Devil. Was that around the time the Tele first arrived in your life?

“That's around when I started, yeah. Around '67 or '68. That's when I really started to get to grips with the Fenders. Before that I was using Gibsons, and any other guitars that came my way, through Fender amps. Then I realized that Leo Fender's genius was matching the amp to the guitar. 

“If you really want a nice sound out of a Fender amp, you have to use a Fender guitar. It's a beautiful electronic marriage. It seems obvious, but it took me a while to figure that out. A matching pair. Oh dear me, well done, Leo. That's what really impressed me. 

“And also the Telecaster, for all its distinctive sound, is capable of quite a lot more than you'd expect. If you play around with it and put a humbucker up on the top, it's really versatile. You can get some very rich sounds. Depending on what it's made out of: the maple. I've got two different Telecasters. One is like a feather. The other one, you sink into the ground when you pick it up.’

Which is the one you call Micawber?

“I think that's the heavy one.”

Do you know what year that is?

“Micawber is a '53. And I have a '54 Tele named Malcolm. They always start with ‘M’.”

Does the Telecaster lend itself especially well to the five-string, open G tuning that has become so integral to your sound? 

“Exactly. Around the same time I was getting into Telecasters I was experimenting with open tunings. I don't know why. Maybe it was because around that time, ’67, we started having time off that we didn't know what to do with. So I started to experiment with tunings. 

“Most people used open tuning basically just for slide. Nobody used it for anything else. But I wanted to use it for rhythm guitar. And what I found was, of all the guitars, the Telecaster really lent itself well to a dry, rhythm, five-string drone thing. 

“In a way that tuning kept me developing as a guitarist. ‘Okay, now figure out a diminished sixth on it!’ You've got so little to work with. And that makes you reconsider six-string concert tuning. 'Cause if there's so much in that little space [i.e., five string] how much am I missing on the other? You can transfer some of that back to six-string concert tuning. You can swap knowledge between one tuning and another.”

Whether it's a matter of tunings, arrangements or recording, you've always taken a very open-ended musical approach.

I think you have to. Probably the best example of that is Sympathy for the Devil, which Mick brought in to the studio as a very Bob Dylan-ish kind of folk guitar song and ended up as a damned samba. 'Cause that's what the band did in the process of recording the song. 

“The thing with a good band is not to put them in the studio and say, ‘It goes like this.’ Put them in there and see what they come up with. I've written rock and roll songs that have come out as ballads, and ballads that have come out as rock and roll songs. 

“When we did Midnight Rambler, nobody went in there with the idea of doing a blues opera, basically. Or a blues in four parts. That's just the way it turned out. I think that's the strength of the Stones or any good band. You can give them a song half raw and they'll cook it.”

Speaking of Midnight Rambler, how did you get that incredibly beefy yet crystalline guitar tone on there?

“That was done on a full-bodied, Australian electric-acoustic, f-hole guitar. [The brand name was Maton—GW Ed. ] It kind of looked like an Australian copy of the Gibson model that Chuck Berry used. I played it on Gimme Shelter too.”

For the tremolo rhythm part that starts the song off?

“Yeah. I used that guitar on all that. It had all been revarnished and painted out, but it sounded great. It made a great record. And on the very last note of Gimme Shelter the whole neck fell off. You can hear it on the original take.”

Wow. Where'd you get it?

“From some guy who stayed at my pad. He crashed out for a couple of days and suddenly left in a hurry, leaving that guitar behind. You know, ‘Take care of this for me.’ I certainly did! But it served me well through the album [Let It Bleed].”

Let It Bleed was the last Stones album to include Brian Jones—playing percussion on Midnight Rambler and autoharp on You Got The Silver. After all you'd been through with Brian, was it difficult letting go?

“Of course. I had a lot of good times with Brian. He was a great musician and a good guy to play with. Especially as guitarists go. Virtuosity is fine, but my thing has always been what two guitar players can get going together. Or three or four. If you get the right guy to play with, you can sound like an orchestra. 

“When you've got that down with somebody, it's always a pain in the heart when they go somewhere else. But Brian had become impossible. Really over the top. And self-destructive. Not the ordinary, ‘Oh, he's drinking too much or doing too much of that drug.’ It was almost starting to feel like he was determined to kill himself in one way or another. 

“I think he wanted to be Mick Jagger and he couldn't understand why he wasn't. That really got to him. Brian was just cantankerous – even to himself. I don't think he liked being comfortable, really. He wanted to be uncomfortable, to the point of death. 

“It had become so unbearable that Mick and I had to go down and actually fire him. What a rotten task to do. Especially with him not being in good condition. But at the same time, we had to keep the band together.”

You brought Charlie down as well to Brian's house at Crotchford Farm to give him the news.

“Charlie was the backup. We told Brian, ‘If you don't pull your weight, you're not in, man. If you're not there when we're working, and if you're totally fucked up when you are there…’ It was the Beach Boys syndrome, you know? ‘If it's gonna be like that,’ we told him, ‘we can't work together.’ And he said, ‘Oh, I've got my own plans and projects, you know.’ Nobody expected that in a few months he'd be dead.”

Did you achieve that two-guitar symbiosis with Mick Taylor right away? Did you lock it up quickly?

“That's when I learned that everybody's different. But yes, Mick Taylor and I worked really well together. He was very different to work with than Brian. I really had to refocus things. But Mick Taylor is a brilliant guitar player. Some lovely energy. Sweetly sophisticated playing, way beyond his years. Lovely sense of melody. I never understood why he left the Stones. Nor does he, I think. 

“I spoke to him several times and said, ‘Why did you do it?’ I think he felt that he had more to say and could do it more freely outside the Stones. He wanted to be a producer, a writer, more of an all-rounder. Have more say. He wanted to grow up and be his own man. 

“I just think it was an ill-considered decision. It's kind of difficult to step off the Rolling Stones and go somewhere else. I had no desire to see him go. We were lucky after losing Brian to get another guy. Mick and I were working real tight and then it was, ‘Oh no. Not again.’”

Did you guys really bond during the making of Exile on Main Street in France?

“Mick's a really shy guy. I wouldn't say that you ever get to know him. I don't think he lets anybody get to know him. Probably the closest I got to Mick was playing guitar. I mean, I knew him well. He was a good mate. But he was always reticent.”

What's your favorite track from the Mick Taylor period?

“I love Can't You Hear Me Knocking. And Love in Vain – the live version. Most of my favorite stuff with Mick is probably onstage. Mick is a great guitar player. But he found out the hard way that that's all he is.”

Was the jam in the end of Can't You Hear Me Knocking inspired by Carlos Santana?

“Not really. We didn't even know they were still taping. We thought we'd finished. We were just rambling and they kept the tape rolling. I figured we'd just fade it off. It was only when we heard the playback that we realized, ‘Oh, they kept it going.’ Basically we realized we had two bits of music. There's the song and there's the jam.”

Did you ever use that clear plastic Dan Armstrong/Ampeg guitar in the studio? I know you used it live a lot, and it's pictured on the original album jacket for [the Stones' 1970 live album] Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!

“The first guitar Dan Armstrong ever made me was a gem. It was one of the first prototypes or first preproduction models. And you could plug those pickups in. [The guitar design allowed for interchangeable pickups to be slid in and out of a slot cut in the body—GW Ed.] 

“I know I used it on sessions. But I don't know if anything I did on it ended up on a record. And then that guitar disappeared. They gave me two or three other ones, production models, but they were shadows of that particular one. And I gave up on them.”

Wasn't there an endorsement deal with Ampeg for a while? The Stones used their amps onstage during that late ’60s/early ’70s period and Ampeg even gets a credit line on Ya-Ya's.

“Yeah, there was. For a while Ampeg had some really good stuff. And they were delivering on time. But it was the same as with the Dan Armstrong guitar. As they got bigger and bigger, the quality of the material went down. It even happened to Gibson. The first Hummingbirds we got the first couple of years were really beautiful. Then they just became stiff.

“And guitars, if they're really good, it doesn't matter how old they are. Like anything made of wood, they get better. It's kind of weird, but they haven't really improved the electric guitar since Les Paul and Leo Fender put their touch to it. Everything else is trying to sound like them, with maybe a few more extras—split pickups, 10 different tones... 

“Electronics have come a long way, but the original Telecaster pickup still picks up. With the electric guitar, perfection was made in the beginning. Everything else was then a variation on that. I wouldn't be playing a guitar made in the ’50s if I knew that I could pick one up now and it's just as good.”

Here's another amazing fact: some of the Stones most celebrated work was done when you were in the depths of heroin addiction. And it wasn't like you were just hanging on for the ride. You had a real leadership role, particularly on Exile on Main Street.

“Well, you see [lifting his glass], I can't even get drunk. I'm a party toxic. I can take anything and I'll never get sloppy drunk. The stuff I was writing and the music I was doing in the ’70s, which is basically when I was on smack, I couldn't have done better straight. And maybe I wouldn't have done as well straight. 

“Music and drugs – I don't really correlate one thing with the other. One is what you're putting out and the other is what you're putting in. I never felt any different about my music because of it. 

“It was more of a separate thing. It was more to keep my own inner self in balance. I never really figured it out. It's just that once you're on smack, it's really difficult to kick it. But it ain't impossible. It's not like getting your leg blown off.”

When you came off dope in the early ’80s, what was it like facing an audience completely straight for the first time in years?

“Pretty damned good. I think it was the crowds backstage and the crowds in the rest of my life that I didn't want to face. Not the audience. I love them always. And when I was doing smack, it was actually very rarely on the road. I would clean up to go on the road. I just didn't want to have that hassle of looking for stuff in strange towns. 

“Which kind of fooled me in a way, 'cause I thought, ‘Oh, I can stop anytime I want.’ But of course the minute the tour ended, boom, I'd say, ‘Oh, it's time to relax.’ And I'd go straight back in; Mind you, I'm not really putting down dope. But it's something not to get into. And if you are, it's something to get out of.”

The Stones kicked off the ’80s in fine form with Start Me Up, which is another classic example of a Rolling Stones song radically changing form during the recording process.

“Exactly. I was convinced it was a reggae song. Everybody else was convinced of that. ‘It's reggae, man.’ We did 45 takes like that.”

Did it have that guitar hook when it was a reggae song?

“No. It was very Marley-ish. It was sweet. We were all enjoying it. That's why we played it so many times. But then, on a break, I just played that riff, not even really thinking much about it. Which is why it took us five years to find it on the tape. We did a take rocking away and then went back to work and did another 15 reggae takes. So it was stuck in the middle there. 

“A lot of great things can happen when you're focusing on something else. I pride myself on being able to spot those things. So the fact that I missed Start Me Up for five years is one of my disappointments. But you can't catch everything.”

What songs did you want to put on 40 Licks to represent the ’80s?

“Difficult period. Which is probably why you won't find a lot from the ’80s on there. There's a couple of good things on Dirty Work. Let me put it this way: Undercover of the Night is not going to be on there.”

As you say, a difficult period for the Stones.

“For me, particularly. I'd been on dope throughout most of the ’70s. And I had let Mick take over quite a lot of day-to-day stuff about the Stones. So he fell into that same syndrome as Brian, of thinking that he'd run the show. When I got off the dope I said to Mick, ‘I'm willing to take on some of this stuff again. Let me shoulder some of your burden.’ 

“Mick took that to mean that I wanted to reassert power, or take power away from him, which wasn't really the case. He'd gotten used to running things and he didn't want to relinquish that. I went through a very tough thing in the early ’80s with Mick. So you get some songs like All About You, to name just one. There's more on some of the Winos records [Keith's side project, the X-pensive Winos—GW Ed. ].

“That whole period culminated in 1985, at the end of Dirty Work, which was our World War III. He'd become so high-handed with everybody that it was just unacceptable to me. So we said, ‘Okay, let's take a break and see what we can do on our own then.’ 

“I think that everybody – with the possible exception of Mick himself – has learned the lesson that Mick Jagger's really good when he's with the Rolling Stones. But when he ain't, I don't think anybody gives a fuckin' toss. Whether he gets the message or not. Obviously he does. Otherwise he wouldn't be on this project.”

What do you think of his latest solo album, Goddess in the Doorway?

“What, Dog Shit in the Doorway? I listened to three tracks and gave up on it. Sometimes you wonder. With the Stones he's great. It's best to keep him on a short leash.”

How do you rate Mick Jagger as a guitar player?

“On acoustic, he's a damned good rhythm player. I'd never let him play electric if I could help it. He's like Bob Dylan, same thing. They thrash away at it. No sense of electric at all. Usually I turn him down.”

Sway is Mick on electric.

“Yeah... Well, like I say, acoustically he's got a nice touch. It doesn't translate electrically. It's not his thing. It's not everybody's cup of tea.”

So if the ’80s were a difficult period for the Stones, how do you rate the ’90s?

“The ’90s were interesting. There's almost five years between Dirty Work and Steel Wheels. Steel Wheels was a very tentative restart, in a way. It was almost another chapter. Certainly there was a lot of energy in there. And Voodoo Lounge I really enjoyed making. It's a good record.”

The sound toughened up appreciably on that.

“Yeah. Steel Wheels was a good beginning and Voodoo Lounge came up from there. But things were changing in the ’90s. Our tours were just great. Basically we're a live band. We love making records, but playing live is what we're all about. 

“Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, suddenly we were in the new era of MTV and synthesizers – where every record is judged by what it looks like, not what it sounds like. To me, this is all starting to lose touch with what we're all about. And really what any band is all about.”

Speaking of playing live, is there any chance – this being a 40th anniversary tour – that there will be special guest stars from the Stones' past? Mick Taylor? Bill Wyman?

“Well, who knows? Those things kind of happen along the way. We're certainly not ruling it out. Everybody's really up for it. When Mick, Charlie, Ronnie and I were in Paris, it was great to hear about tickets selling out in four minutes. But we also said, ‘There go our days off. 'Cause they'll want to add extra shows.’ 

“After all these years, for me, it's great to get out there, do what I do, meet the folks and have a good time. There's enough trouble in this world. Let's take some time off, pals, and have a good time.”

If you want to learn more about Keef’s gear, check out Keith Richards: A Life In Guitars.

Ever since the fresh-faced newcomers of the ’60s Beat groups grew up into megastars, there’s been intense retrospective interest in the gear used in the early days of bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Numerous reference books have been written on the subject, aiming to provide a definitive account of what guitars were used for seminal gigs. 

One problem is that no one was taking notes at the time – and very few photographs, either. Another problem is that the beginner’s electric guitars that legends such as Keith Richards started out on in the ’60s were often poorly documented budget instruments built in Europe, about which relatively little is known even to this day. 

A classic example is the Gallotone Valencia archtop Keef used for The Stones’ first official gig on 12 July 1962 at London’s Marquee Club. During that performance, Keef used his Gallotone, then fitted with a floating pickup at the neck, ensuring it a small but important role in music history.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a growing market for Gallotone Valencias, just as there is for guitars such as the Futurama electric once used by George Harrison during The Beatles’ early gigging career in Hamburg. 

If you happen to enjoy finding and trading such instruments, as guitar retail veteran Paul Waller does, chasing down such star-associated student guitars can be a fun eBay pursuit as the sums of money involved are typically well shy of those commanded by vintage American guitars.

But just occasionally, it’s possible you might encounter one that may possess more serious provenance, as Paul did when he found what he believes may be the original Gallotone that Keith used on that historic first gig.

And while it’s beyond the scope or intent of this article to verify that it is indeed ‘the one’, Paul certainly presents evidence that gives food for thought – along with some insights into a niche market that has the potential to grant cheap-ish thrills to dedicated fans of legendary players.

“I’d seen the picture of Keith Richards playing his Gallotone in The Rolling Stones 50 book and in the Rolling Stones Gear Book [Andy Babiuk and Greg Prevost]. It was the Andy Babiuk book that first did a proper feature on that guitar and what it was, and clarified that it was a Gallotone Valencia,” Paul recalls.

“So once I knew that was the model Keith used, whenever I saw one, I’d always try to buy it. I had a natural one and then this one, the actual guitar in question, then came up for sale.

“I thought, ‘Oh, that looks a bit interesting,’ because it was a bit more worn – whereas the previous one [I’d bought] was quite clean, like the one in the Stones Gear Book. So I did a screenshot of it that enabled me to put it next to the [12 July 1962] picture of the original, so I could then A/B them side by side on my phone. I thought it might possibly be the one, but it was a long shot really, thinking, ‘Oh, it could be… but anyway, I’ll bid on it.’ But then, after all that, I forgot to bid on it!”

After being thwarted just as he thought he might be on to something, Paul struck lucky again when the same guitar came up again on eBay some time later – only it had, by this point, been rather carelessly modified with a reshaped headstock and new hardware, including gold tuners and a new tailpiece. Undeterred, Paul put in a winning bid this time and a quick message to the seller enabled him to obtain the original hardware that had been removed from the guitar. 

So what made him think it might be Keef’s first-gig guitar itself? The main evidence, in Paul’s view, is a darkened patch in the same place where Keith had once painted a crude Stones logo in hand-drawn lettering, as well as similarities in deeper scratches and discoloured areas that he finds persuasive.

“When [I received it] I noticed there were patches on it, areas that were darker – most notably in the same area where the ‘Rollin’ Stones’ writing was, and my first thought was, ‘Oh, Christ, it could be that.’

“So I started really looking at it, photographing it, adjusting the contrast and applying filters [to make underlying marks more visible]. It really made the darker areas in question more pronounced, where [I believe] the writing was, most notably. But there are definitely some other marks on it that started really making me think that it could be it,” Paul explains.

While there’s no irrefutable ‘smoking gun’ among the evidence Paul has examined, taken together, the apparent similarity of certain wear-marks is at very least worthy of continued curiosity. 

“Obviously, time has passed and [if it is Keith’s original guitar] it could have acquired more marks since, so you’ve got to try to focus in or home in on the notable ones: the big area where the writing was, a big scratch to the right-hand side, near the f-hole… There’s also a patch near the f-hole. Plus, geographically speaking, it came from South West London – which was another thing that was quite cool.” 

Asked about the next steps towards determining if the guitar could actually be the one Keith played on that first gig, Paul says: “I’d like to show it to Keith himself because, while there are loads of people who are authorities on The Stones that I could show the guitar to, showing it to Keith would be the most logical thing,” though he acknowledges “that could go fifty-fifty as well”.

So, Keith, should you read this, the door is open for a (possible) reunion with an old friend – though it remains to be seen if this guitar really is a ‘prodigal son’ returning. We look forward to hearing more should that meeting happen one day. 

• Guitarist would like to thank Paul Waller for showing us this intriguing guitar.