When Stone Gossard heard Tigercub’s second album, As Blue as Indigo, he was so infatuated that he used the Pearl Jam Twitter account to ask the band to sign to his label, Loosegrove Records.

“It’s the sort of thing you dream about as a kid – you go to a gig, and the guitarist points you out and goes, ‘Come up here!’” says Jamie Hall. “It was a big move to do that so publicly, and it’s very nourishing to have the respect of your peers. We were never gonna say no!”

Welcoming the British alt-rock trio into the Loosegroove family was a coup for Gossard, who sees Hall as a generational talent. “I’d put his riffs up against anyone in rock today,” he gushes. “He’s as good as Homme or Morello, and he can frickin’ sing and play them at the same time. Insane.”

That’s high praise from a man who penned some of the most defining riffs of the ’90s – and, indeed, signed Queens of the Stone Age for their 1998 debut. Now, with Tigercub’s fourth album, Nets to Catch the Wind – their second on Loosegroove – Hall is laser-focused on living up to that praise.

“It’s pretty scary,” he says. “I’ve been compared to seminal players and it's my responsibility to repay that compliment. I don't want to fall short and make Stone look like an idiot!”

How involved was Stone in the making of the record?

He was very hands-on, like a mentor or creative director. He helped me look outside of the framework I’m comfortable with. He was telling me about the time they made Mirror Ball with Neil Young. I’m the Ocean, the lead single, was one take, live in the room. I would never do that in a million fucking years!

If he had his way we'd have done the whole record in a day. But I didn't feel like Tigercub had earned the right to do that yet. Coming off the back of Perfume of Decay [2023], where everything was controlled, he helped invert that idea and let the band playing together in a room be the take.

If you make a mistake, but the vibe of the take was really good, that’s more valuable than something that’s neat and tidy. I think Pearl Jam recorded Even Flow like 70 times live, without a click. I hadn’t even questioned the click!

So he pushed for a rawer sound?

One thing we learned from Stone was that if you play as close to live as possible and put as little processing in the way of what you're doing, it’s easier to sound like yourself.

Nets to Catch the Wind was recorded live with a WEM Dominator combo, Hiwatt Custom 50, or a Peavey Bandit paired with a JCM800, and a Korg SDD-3000 delay pedal. The rest was all tone and volume control, fingers on the strings, and using different plectrums. There’s more room to project your personality onto a more basic setup.

Cave divers go to huge depths, and if they don't have their oxygen levels diluted with another other gas, they get punch drunk and don't know which way is up. Having too much gear can have the same effect – just without life-threatening consequences!

What guitars did you record with?

I’ve got a Chapman of every flavor. My main guitar was the ML3 BEA Rabea Massaad signature baritone. Rabea's film studio is next door to our locker, and when he made the switch to Music Man, I got a text one day like, “I’ve got all this stuff. What do you want?”

Experiencing drop C and lower on a longer scale was eye-opening. The strings are like fucking train tracks, so it was a bit of a learning curve, and playing with a wound G meant bluesy guitar solos were off the menu. I ended up doing more John McGeoch or The Edge-type stuff. But it’s got a real throaty, midrange quality to it.

The stock ML3s with single coils are really good. I’ve got two with maple necks. The black one was a rental; it was the local bike and a bit knackered, but it’s got this lovely chimey, upper-harmonic character in standard. My tobacco one is great for the Tom Morello drop C stuff; it never fails me.

For the drop-tuned stuff, I also used an ML1X Strat; it works really well in the out-of-phase position. If you roll the volume knob off to seven, the gain goes down, but it gets brighter – it could take the fucking enamel off your teeth. I use it for high, soaring arena stuff.

I mostly soloed on a standard-scale Lawmaker. And they all went into various overdrive pedals to push the front end of the amps, which were all screaming.

You teased a signature Chapman a couple of years back; what happened?

It’s not in the works anymore. I’d customized my black ML3 with gothic decals that represented the Perfume of Decay album art, and I threw a hot rail pickup in there so it could cover a little more ground, so I wouldn’t need as many guitar changes. Rob wanted to put that version on sale.

I used a bespoke company called Burnt Axe for the etchings, but we got ghosted, and that prolonged things to the point that there was a change in the structure of the business. So for the minute, that’s on hiatus.

Tell me more about those amp combos.

I created my own kind of Jenga mishmash of amps. We bought an old Peavey Bandit, which was loads of fun for ’80s metal. The WEM has an old Fane speaker, so it’s really midrangey. It sounds quite restricted on its own, but it plugs a gap when it’s coupled with a JCM800. I can’t move away from Marshalls – I think they sound best when everything’s on 10, and I let the guitar controls determine what happens next.

There was an old Fender Twin at Rockfield Studios that everyone’s played through; it’s a rite of passage to use that. But between the Hiwatt, the WEM and the Marshall, you’ve pretty much got every base covered.

What other gear are you loving?

We toured with Eyehategod in America, and Jimmy Bower used an Ampeg SS-150 with two Mesa/Boogie cabs. It was the most punishing live tone I’ve ever heard. I had to get one. It’s really great for the sludgy stuff.

What makes a great Tigercub riff?

Most of them have some form of chromaticism. They live on their own, outside of the key of the song, so the only relationship the riff has to the key of the song is the first note. The rest is just corkscrewing dramatic stuff.

Mickie Most used to look at songs as mini films with a cinematic quality. It’s nice to play with people’s expectations.

• Nets to Catch the Wind is out now via Loosegroove Records.

Seattle in the ’90s has reached mythological status. A time when the world focused its collective attention on a tiny scene of bands that had nothing in common other than a love of distortion, riffs and authenticity.

It gave birth to household names – chiefly the ‘big four’ of grunge: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden – but it also snuffed out the candle for some of its most iconic musicians.

Drugs and depression were an undercurrent that swept through the city like the Duwamish River. Kurt Cobain, Andy Wood, Layne Staley were all claimed by addiction. Chris Cornell and Mark Lanegan left longer legacies, but were still taken too soon.

For Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready, they were friends and bandmates. People he misses dearly. And the grief hit him all over again during the Covid lockdown.

“I was sitting around thinking about the singers that had died in our scene,” he tells me from his studio over Zoom. “I’ve had dreams about some of them and they haunt me sometimes. I was thinking, ‘Was it worth it for all these guys and women?’”

He didn’t know how to answer that question. He sought solace the only way he knew how: through art. Writing it all down seemed the best place to start.

“I could only write what I know. But I wanted to do it in the context of a historical fiction of the Seattle music scene. And I wanted to change the names and create its own world within it.”

McCready’s name is intertwined more than most. He got his first break when Cornell invited him to play on Temple of the Dog, the Soundgarden frontman’s tribute to his departed friend and roommate Andy Wood. Pearl Jam formed at the same time. A later stint in rehab sparked Mad Season, his part side-project, part therapy with Layne Staley and Mark Lanegan.

This new project, however, was outside his comfort zone, so he sought advice from friend, director and lifelong Pearl Jam fan Cameron Crowe. He was convinced: this could be a rock opera.

But not just yet. A stage show is still on the cards, but Farewell to Seasons is releasing first as a graphic novel that tells the story of Seattle through four fictional bands.

It’s packaged with a soundtrack album that features all-new songs from McCready, who is also singing for the first time, alongside a band of Seattle music vets including Duff McKagan, Dave Matthews bassist Stefan Lessard, Fastbacks drummer Mike Mussburger, Chris Friel, Nate Yaccino and Thunderpussy’s Molly Sides.

While it was challenging on both practical and emotional levels, McCready ultimately found the project cathartic. In a candid interview, he revisits his favorite musical eureka moments, the Seattle guitarists who most inspired him, and just what’s next for Pearl Jam.

You said you’re haunted by these ghosts. It must have been challenging to dig into the history of the Seattle scene and your part in it, given how many friends and fellow musicians you’ve lost along the way.

It was. It’s hard to think about the whole scene and how young and naive everyone was, and how much this explosion happened in this relatively provincial small city of Seattle, Washington, where everybody knew each other.

I was playing in a band prior to all that called Shadow, and I wanted to put that in the story as well. That’s one of the bands that’s actually named after the real band.

I felt like we never really got the props that we should have over the years, because we were 16 and playing all around the Northwest and doing shows. We broke up when everything started happening. I spent my 10,000 hours with that band, and I’m very proud of that era.

But later, getting to play with Layne or Chris or Lanegan, all these incredible singers, and now they’re gone. Kurt, for that matter – I didn’t know him at all really, other than him being an incredible singer-songwriter. Even Hendrix. What would they be doing now? Would they be blues artists? Would they be painters? That’s what haunts me to this day.

You moved to L.A. with Shadow to try and make it. When did you realize it hadn’t panned out?

About a year in, I got really sick with Crohn’s. We played a bunch of shows down there. Rick Friel, our bass player at the time, booked all the shows and made it all happen. We opened up for Andy Taylor. I got to see some cool stuff – I saw Jane’s Addiction at a club; I saw the Welcome to the Jungle video shoot.

The reason we moved down there was that Duff McKagan stopped by the Shadow house in ’84, and said he was moving to Los Angeles. And we were like, “There’s something to that.” And then a year later, they put out that EP [Live ?!★꩜ Like a Suicide].

It was a year of me working at Aaron’s Records, drinking too much, getting Crohn’s, going, “I can’t do this anymore.” So I moved back and I gave up. I quit playing music for two years from ’88, ’89. I was done. And then I got a call out of the blue from Stone.

What do you remember about that moment when you first played together with Stone? That must have been pivotal for you as a guitar player, to come back to the instrument after almost giving up.

When I got the call from Stone, I was working at a pizza place and I had given up. I was depressed and probably drinking too much. I was at my friend Tim DiJulio’s house, playing to a Stevie Ray Vaughan record – so I was still playing a little bit. And [Stone] saw that – I remember him walking in when Love Bone was still happening. But I had known him since seventh grade – Seattle was very small in the ’80s and in the early ’90s before it blew up. We all knew each other, we all went to the same parties.

When we started playing together, selfishly, I was like, “’Okay, this seems to be my door. I better walk through it.” I always think of this Paul Westerberg quote: “Opportunity knocks once and the door slams shut.” After me going through LA and not making it and being depressed, all of a sudden this thing happens when I’m not looking for it. And out of a death – Andy Wood dies. That was an interesting musical paradox early on for me.

It was exciting. It was new. Who knew what was going to happen? But I felt like we connected first through humor. And then, he just had a ton of riffs and when we started playing, I wanted to do something opposite of what he was doing. Kind of like Aerosmith did stuff – early Aerosmith was in my mind back then – and I was going to be the lead guy, I guess, was his thought.

Farewell to Seasons starts with a young teenager, David Williams – who is based on you – jamming in his bedroom. Can you remember the moment you got your first guitar and started jamming in your bedroom?

It was late 1978, early ’79. Мy dear friend Danny Newcomb, who was the guitar player for Shadow, lived on my block and we were both 11. And I met Rick and Chris Friel. I’m a Cub Scout playing soccer, and all of a sudden I see this Kiss lunchbox that my friend Rick has. Those guys are playing and then I join them within six months.

We’re playing shows at 12 years old – our drummer’s eight. We started playing right away at talent shows in junior high. We rented a church out called the Unitarian Church. I just found a ticket for it the other day – it was a dollar. The Friel house is where everybody went and we would rehearse there all the time, three hours a day, five days a week for five or six years.

What was that first guitar?

It was a $100 Matao Les Paul, black. It was pretty good. It had a good neck on it. I smashed it and then I fixed it. I was doing that early and I kind of regretted it. I was 12 and I threw it in the air at this talent show – there’s a picture of me chucking it in the air in one of the Pearl Jam books. Yeah, I was way into The Who. [laughs]

Another thing that really struck me is how the novel depicts your life with Crohn’s disease. David’s parents say, “All he does is use the bathroom and play guitar.” Did playing guitar help you deal with Crohn’s?

[Laughs] I think it’s a little harsh on my parents because they were really supportive, actually. But for story’s sake, we kept it in there.

The pain that comes with Crohn’s disease – which feels unbearably bad in your gut, and it’s embarrassing and you shit yourself, and all sorts of stuff I’ve had happen to me over the years – I believe my playing got better because of that.

And it also got me back to Seattle from L.A. – so I look at it as a catalyst. This is with perspective; when I had it, it sucked and I thought my life was over. And it turns out it wasn’t. Luckily there’s a lot more medications and diets now than when I got it. I continue to work with the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation because of that.

But yes, I think it helped – it made me play deeper, hopefully. It was an antidote. Guitar is an antidote to many things for me.

And of course, you had your own addiction problems, but guitar was always there. You even formed Mad Season out of rehab.

As I was spiraling in my addiction and alcoholism in the early ’90s, I luckily got into rehab. I got out and I was kind of naive – like, “I want to get everybody sober along with me.”

Layne was my friend, I saw him struggling and I wanted to help him out, but also wanted to create music with him because I was sober for the first time. It gave me confidence, whereas I didn’t really have the confidence as much with Pearl Jam because everybody was such great writers for those first three records.

Mad Season allowed me to explore my writing abilities with Layne and my friend Baker [Saunders], and then I always wanted to play with Barrett [Martin] because he was this great drummer for the Screaming Trees.

The premise of it was to help Layne or help all of us… but everybody’s got to help themselves. I had to find out the hard way.

Collaboration was such an important part of the Seattle scene. What are the jams and recording sessions that really stick in your mind?

We did a cover of Hey Baby (New Rising Sun) by Hendrix with myself, Chris Cornell, Matt Cameron, and Jeff Ament [as M.A.C.C.]. Those guys [Soundgarden] were in recording one of their records and I just came by and said, “Hey, I’ve got an opportunity to do a Hendrix song. Do you want to do this?” And they were all up for it. We got to do that song during their session. Watching Chris sing on that one…

I had seen him obviously when we did Temple of the Dog. Temple was probably the first life-changing experience for me in terms of, “Okay, now I’m playing on this thing that’s very important.” This was a tribute to Andy Wood that Chris had written and I wanted to be very conscious of that but also play my ass off.

Prior to that, it was a big learning experience for me to let go, and Chris allowed me to let go and play all over that record. He was always super-cool to me and super-cool to Ed [Vedder]. So I’ll love him dearly forever for that situation.

Playing with Layne was great – the thing about Layne was that he would never talk shit about anybody. We’re all shit-talkers in Seattle, very passive[-aggressive]. Layne wouldn’t. He was funny and had a good heart. So when I got to play with him and I was trying to get sober, it was a mixed bag of emotions. I felt very proud of the project, but I was worried at the same time: am I getting too close to this? Could this be bad for me?

Playing with Ed for the first time [in 1990] was amazing. We were listening to some old tapes when he first got here – he recorded stuff on a boombox, and I went, “Fuck, this guy is good.” It was the first time I was in a situation where everybody was really firing on all cylinders when Pearl Jam first got together. And that was going on at the same time as Temple. A lot was happening very quickly.

Who were the guitarists that had the biggest impact on you from the Seattle scene?

Clearly the most obvious would be Hendrix, which is the scene before, but he made it in England and we all know the history of all that. I love to hear Kim [Thayil] play – he’s got an interesting style. He hits a chord differently than I hit; that allows him to move his fingers in that way in those Soundgarden songs.

I like Jerry’s style – he’s a great writer. Getting to see all those guys play was really fun, and getting to tour and open up for Alice in Chains when we were Mookie Blaylock was a fun time. Steve Turner and Mark Arm just beat the hell out of the guitars and there’s a relentless punk energy there, so that’s fun to watch.

The thing that surprised me about the Seattle scene is everybody’s so different, and this very small scene turned out to be huge. Kurt, of course, was a great guitar player in his way, as a songwriter – getting to see that live was incredible, too.

I’ve got to get to the inevitable Pearl Jam questions: what’s next and when are we going to find out who the drummer is?

We’re on a holding pattern right now because I’m working on this and Ed’s going to Japan. We’re going to find somebody. We don’t have anybody right this second to announce. I wish I did. I’m dying to play. We’ll make it happen – I’m excited to see where our future is. Everybody still wants to do it.

Were you surprised when Matt Cameron announced he was leaving?

I was kind of surprised. I think Matt was getting tired of being on the road; he’s paid his dues over the years and I wish him the best. It just wasn’t working for him anymore going on the road, and that’s OK.

We’ve been around a long time, and Matt was a huge reason we are still around; we were lucky to have him for 27 years. I was a little surprised and sad, but I also love him and I wish him the best.

Lastly, is there any new guitar gear that’s impressing you? Last time we spoke you were raving about Fender’s digital Tone Master amps, and lately you’ve been running FRFR cabs.

My guitar tech, Josh Schreibeis, has designed an amp modeling system and I think it’s made me play better. I used it on the Dark Matter tour. I love the consistency of it. [McCready’s live system is based around the Fractal Axe-Fx III – Ed]

I love the Tone Master [Pro] – I have it right here and I play on it every day [at home]. I can pick up any kind of pedal on that thing and it sounds pretty great.

I know there’s purists that probably aren’t into that, but I felt like my amp modeling system along with the old analog stuff has made me a better guitar player.

I can say, “Hey, I want this to sound heavier,” and he’ll go, “Okay, bam, it’s heavier.” He knows the technical stuff, and I know the verbiage – like, “Make it sound like The Byrds in 1966.”

I think it was the consistency of the amps over the Dark Matter tour that pushed me to play better than I have ever done. I just felt more confident.

• Farewell to Seasons is released on October 6 2026 via Z2 Comics.

Mike McCready is currently prepping the release of rock opera Farewell to Seasons. In its initial graphic novel form, it tells the story of the Pearl Jam guitarist and Seattle itself through four fictional bands. But there’s one group that shares its name with a real band: McCready’s first project, Shadow.

The hard-rock outfit was formed when the guitarist was in ninth grade at Seattle’s Roosevelt High School, and he feels they deserve more credit for what they were achieving at a young age.

“I felt like we never really got the props that we should have gotten over the years, because we were young and 16 and playing all around the Northwest and doing shows,” McCready tells Guitar World. “We broke up when everything started happening. I spent my 10,000 hours with that band.”

In the mid-’80s, Seattle was not the place to be; but LA most definitely was. So when McCready’s contemporaries started moving to the West Coast to make it, he made sure that Shadow – whose sound owed more to Iron Maiden and Van Halen than anything foreshadowing grunge – followed.

“Duff McKagan stopped by the Shadow house in ’84, and said he was moving to Los Angeles. And we were like, ‘There’s something to that.’”

By the tail end of 1986, McKagan and his band Guns N’ Roses had built a reputation on the Sunset Strip and released their first EP, Live ?!★꩜ Like a Suicide. Things never quite took off for Shadow, however – and it wasn’t for a lack of trying.

“We played a bunch of places. We opened up for Andy Taylor. I got to see some cool stuff – I saw Jane’s Addiction at a club; I saw the Welcome to the Jungle video shoot.”

One year into the move, McCready got sick with Crohn’s disease which, combined with a lack of record label interest, sealed Shadow’s fate.

“It was a year of me working at Aron’s Records, drinking too much, getting Crohn’s, and going, ‘I can't do this anymore.’ So I moved back and I gave up. I quit playing music for two years from ’88, ’89. I was done. And then I got a call out of the blue from Stone.”

Guitarist Stone Gossard had recently lost singer Andrew Wood to a heroin overdose, bringing his own dreams of rock success to a tragic close. He was seeking a new musical sparring partner, and hit up McCready after seeing him playing along to a Stevie Ray Vaughan record at a party.

“I had known him since seventh grade. And when we started playing together, selfishly, I was like, ‘Okay, this seems to be my door. I better walk through it.’ After going through LA and not making it and being depressed, all of a sudden this thing happens when I'm not looking for it.”

From there, history was made. Pearl Jam would go on to make Ten and become one of the greatest success stories to emerge from the Seattle scene. But McCready never forgot about Shadow, the band who kickstarted his path to lead guitar stardom.

Farewell to Seasons is released on October 6 2026 via Z2 Comics. Guitar World’s full interview with Mike McCready will be published in the coming weeks.

Rockstars are larger-than-life characters who possess musical abilities that we mere mortals could only dream of – but the thing is, they all had to start somewhere. When you are at the very beginning of your guitar journey, it can be easy to forget that our guitar heroes weren’t born with the ability to rip a face-melting solo, each and every one of them started in the very same place as you. It’s humbling to think that at one point in time, the guitar god you idolize didn't even know how to hold the instrument that they have now become synonymous with. 

Over the years, we’ve had the privilege of sitting down with many of our heroes, delving into their musical beginnings and the paths they took to become the stars they are today. 

So, with that in mind, we’ve dug through old interviews, from Slash to Stone Gossard, Jimmy Page, Josh Klinghoffer and many more, to bring you the inspiring stories of their early guitar memories in the hope that it motivates you to realize your own dream and become the guitarist you've always wanted to be.  

Slash

Speaking to our sister publication, Metal Hammer, back in 2010, the Guns N’ Roses axe man revealed exactly what made him pick up the guitar in the first place – and it’s a tale as old as time. An abandoned beat-up guitar paired with adolescent rebellion and just the right amount of musical inspiration was enough to pique a young Saul Hudson’s curiosity in the instrument and the living legend that is Slash was born. 

“I was 15, I picked up the guitar in 1980. I picked up the guitar after I met [Guns N’Roses drummer] Steven Adler, who had an electric guitar at his grandparents’ house where he lived. When they left for work in the morning, we would ditch school and go and bang on his guitar through an amp and crank up Kiss Alive II.

“A guitar teacher played me a solo from Cream’s Disraeli Gears album, and I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do!’

“[My first guitar was] a beat-up flamenco-style acoustic that my grandmother had in her fuckin’ closet: she gave it to me.”

So if you have a dusty old beginner electric guitar sitting in the back of a closet, maybe you should dust it off and give it a go. You never know, you may discover your hidden talent and go on to write one of the most recognizable guitar intros of all time. 

Stone Gossard

The Pearl Jam guitarist and grunge icon sat down with Total Guitar in 2012 to discuss the beginning of his guitar career, his love of all things punk, and how that shaped his early interest in the guitar. 

“I think my first guitar was a white Les Paul knock-off. I had a guitar teacher named Kevin Callahan who I took lessons from – and he had a guitar and said I could buy it from him. At that time, particularly in Seattle, the big thrill and what excited me about music and playing was the fact I was hearing from my friends who were really into the Seattle underground scene and punk that you didn’t have to learn how to play. Just plug in and start a band: it’s awesome. And that sounded exciting.

“The idea that starting guitar lessons was going to be 25 years of hard labor and eventually you’d be able to play a quiet concert hall and people would clap: that was daunting. I wanted to be in bands and I wanted to play something like Ace Of Spades or something like The Stooges. Or even just some bad version of Iron Maiden – something that was heavy and made me lose my mind. That was the goal at that point.”

Gossard proves that to become a guitar player – and a successful one at that – you don’t need to bury your head in books, learning advanced theory, modes, or the circle of fifths. With the right attitude, determination, and a passion for music, you can become a well-rounded musician who inspires millions. 

Jimmy Page

To many, Jimmy Page is the quintessential guitar hero and has inspired countless players to pick up the instrument. JImmy’s love of the guitar goes all the way back to the late ‘50s and was kick-started by a rather unusual-looking Grazioso electric guitar – although as he tells Guitarist in 2014, he would quickly progress to the coveted Fender Stratocaster. 

“That’s the first electric guitar I got. The one before it, a Hofner, my dad bought, but… maybe he was psychic, and he knew what was coming. Because there’s a whole procession of guitars that come into my life over the next few years. 

“I’m either 14 or 15, it’s 1958, or probably 1959, and that’s the first one, the Grazioso. It looked and felt like an electric guitar, even though it wasn’t a Fender. In fact, it had a tremolo arm on it, and I’ve got recordings of me playing on this thing, but you’d think this arm would break, actually. I heard somebody, a sort-of record collector, he told me, ‘You’ve got to hear this Carl Perkins stuff’ – and it’s terrific guitar playing, he’s a real stylist.” 

Reminiscing about pining over a Fender, Jimmy told Guitarist, “Oh, this is a result of seeing and drooling over Gene Vincent & His Blue Caps, by the time they’re doing Hot Rod Gang [1958 movie] and they’ve got all those Fenders. It was oh… my… god. I’ve seen Bruce Welch talk about when he saw the Fender with Buddy Holly on The Chirping Crickets album, and he describes it exactly the same way as I felt, too, which is: that thing looks like it’s from outer space! What is it?! So, you find out, and then you see them, and they’ve been sprayed in almost hot-rod colors, and they’re all matching. It just looked so damn sexy! The Fenders were sexy to begin with, just beautiful, sculptural designs. 

“I did get a Strat along the way. But guitars in those days, they weren’t all user-friendly, you know? Just because it was a Strat, didn’t mean to say it was like a Strat we know now. Then it goes from that to one of those orange Chet Atkins Gretsches, and then pretty much from there through to the Les Paul Custom."

When we think of Jimmy Page, it’s hard not to imagine him on the world’s biggest stages with a dangerously low-slung Les Paul around his neck, but of course, he had to start at the beginning just like us. By all accounts, his beloved Grazioso wasn’t a particularly great instrument, but that didn’t matter. The young Page just wanted to make music, and he was going to do it regardless of the guitar he had. 

Nowadays, beginner guitars are of a much higher quality and standard. Even at the lowest end of the price range, guitars are playable, stylish, and sound great. So you have no excuses, really! 

Albert Lee

Now, you may think that if you don’t have a beginner acoustic guitar to hand, you’ll never be able to learn. Well, normally, that would be true, but that certainly didn’t stop Albert Lee. The English guitar virtuoso revealed to Total Guitar in 2016 that for the initial months of his guitar tuition, he didn’t even own his own six-string. 

“I played guitar for 18 months without actually owning one. The first guitar that my folks bought for me was a very cheap Spanish guitar, which they paid about £3.10 for, but they soon realized I was getting on quite well teaching myself to play.

“So, at Christmas in 1958, they bought me a secondhand Höfner President, and that was a revelation. Here was a guitar that had a reasonable action and that was easy to play. Up until then, guitars were really cheap things that you managed to pick up, but this was really good.” 

Again, this just shows the dedication of guitar players. We are a resourceful bunch, and when we put our minds to something, we tend to do it – even if we don’t have the essential tools, like a guitar, to hand. 

Josh Klinghoffer

As a former member of Red Hot Chili Peppers and a touring member of Pearl Jam and Jane’s Addiction, Josh Klinghoffer has amassed an impressive collection of vintage Strats. However, speaking to Total Guitar, the guitarist revealed he still had a fondness for his first guitar – even if he didn’t treat it particularly well. 

“The first guitar I owned really was a 1980s Fender Strat, that had Fender’s weird eighties-ness on it: like its version of a Floyd Rose. I got it out of [LA-based classified ads mag] The Recycler in the mid 1990s. 

“I got into a big fight with my mother and my grandmother about dropping out of school at 15 and they enraged me so much – think my grandmother got really worked up – I threw the guitar and broke it. Instantly I knew that was a bad move. 

“The first time I got a little bit of money after playing with the Chili Peppers, I found the guitar in my parents’ garage, and I brought it into my trusty guitar repairman, and he fixed it. It was as good as new. And now, it hangs in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame!”

So, look after your first guitars, kids. You never know; one day, it might be hanging in a museum, and you’ll need to explain how it got the embarrassing scars.

Alvin Lee

Sometimes all it takes to become a blues rock icon is a little spite. Ten Years After guitarist and singer Alvin Lee told Total Guitar that in an effort to prove his parents and guitar teacher wrong, he practiced for hours on end. 

“My first guitar was a sunburst Broadway Plectrum guitar with no pickup. I learned rhythm for about a year – I used to play Django-style rhythm stuff. Then, at the age of 12, I bought a Guyatone solidbody with ‘crystal’ pickups. That was the first one I actually bought because the Broadway was my dad’s – he played a bit.

“When I first met my guitar teacher, Norman Barnacle, he and my folks worked out a schedule for lessons, and I asked, ‘How long will it take before I can play as good as you?’ They all laughed, and something inside me said, ‘Right, I’ll show ’em.’ That’s the first thing I remember, and maybe it helped to motivate me, because I practiced three or four hours a day.”

Beginner acoustic recommendations

So there you have it, that’s the story of how a few of the biggest names in guitar got their start. Now, if you fancy following in their footsteps, we’ve listed a couple of our favorite beginner guitars below that we think will give you the best possible start to your musical journey. You never know, your name may appear in an article like this in the near future. 

Beginner electric recommendations

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It's no secret that Pearl Jam and Neil Young have mutual love and respect for each other's work. 

Young has previously referred to Pearl Jam as “old souls – they've been around. Musically there's youthful energy, but without the sound of inexperience” in a 1995 Guitar World interview. In 1992, Pearl Jam included Rockin' in the Free World in their setlist and also supported Young on his 1993 North American tour. 

The culmination of their relationship, however, was the moment Young recruited the band to record on his 1995 album, Mirror Ball. In a new interview on the Broken Record Podcast, Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament recall the "nerve-wracking” but equally “joyful” recording sessions. 

“He called me last summer,” says Ament. “He just goes, ‘Man, your guys’ playing on this is so great. And I think I moved so fast from record to record, I don't really get a chance to listen back.’

“‘But I'm really listening to how you guys chose to play, and I appreciate you so much. I hope we get to do it again.’ And of course, you're like, ‘Oh, can we please do that again, because we'll give you more space and will be so much better than we were in 1995.’”

Gossard also recalls how fast Young worked during those sessions, and how they all worked hard trying to keep up with him. “He plays the song once for us. We learn the chords and he's like, ‘Okay, we're gonna record it,’ and then you record it,” he reflects. “We're just trying to remember the chords.”

Despite largely utilizing three-chord songs, the magic of Young's songwriting influenced both Gossard and Ament, and increased their admiration for the Godfather of Grunge. 

As Gossard remarks, “It's just like playing three chords. There's nothing more satisfying than having transcendence in three chords, where it's not all the years of studying music, and it's not any sort of science or anything that is rigor. It's just literally joyful play, with three notes.”

Of course, with the pressures of working to Young's pace, the sessions weren't completely stressless: Ament mentions how the anxiety and pressure of playing with one of his idols also got the better of him. 

“It was four days of recording the Neil songs. I had the flu for two days. So it might have just been like pushing down the pressure and the anxiety. You're in the studio with one of your favorite, if not your favorite artist ever, and not wanting to let him down and let the whole session down.”

“None of us are studio musicians. I mean, there's people that can come in and chart things out in two seconds, like play by ear,” Gossard explains. “You're kind of trying to find the basic chords and then quickly find something that helps those chords, and it was nerve-wracking for me.”

Despite the stress, both Gossard and Ament agree the experience was one of their favorite things they have ever done. As Ament puts it, “It felt like a dream.”

Stone Gossard may be playing his first shows with new Mason Jennings-fronted side-project Painted Shield, but he’s taking his Pearl Jam bandmate Mike McCready along in spirit, as he’s been sighted playing the lead man’s Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster.

Footage taken from the third night of Painted Shield’s debut gigs at Seattle’s Clock-Out Lounge shows Gossard giving the Fender Custom Shop Limited Edition Mike McCready 1960 Stratocaster a runout on eerie electro-rocker I Am Your Country, its bridge single coil accentuating his edgy fingerpicking.

Launched in 2021, McCready’s Custom Shop model recreates the PJ soloist’s iconic ’60 Stratocaster, right down to custom hand-wound pickups, a Callaham bridge block and, of course, every scratch and ding it has endured throughout Pearl Jam’s career. A more affordable version is apparently in the works.

It’s likely McCready – who tracked a number of solos on Painted Shield’s debut album – hooked his longtime rhythm partner up with the guitar, as he did St. Vincent, who brought the Strat into the studio with Willow earlier this year.

Gossard, who was running through a Deluxe Reverb guitar amp for the show, employed a few other surprise guitars throughout the set, including his rarely seen Bigsby-equipped Strat, which got an outing for Aerosmith-vibed riff rocker Evil Winds, while he switched over to Hofner Club-style bass on Knife Fight.

It’s not the first time Gossard has been sighted with an unlikely guitar choice. On Pearl Jam’s US tour last year, his go-to model was a Gibson Les Paul Signature Semi Hollow Gold Top – notable for its ES cutaway up top and Les Paul cutaway on the lower bout.

A mashup of ’70s glam, new wave, punk and trip-hop, Painted Shield has been an active concern since the release of their self-titled debut in 2020.

Besides Gossard and singer-songwriter Jennings, the band’s lineup also includes drummer Matt Chamberlain and keyboard player/vocalist Brittany Davis, while Seattle session vet Jeff Fielder handles the lion’s share of bass duties during live performances. Their second record, Painted Shield 2, landed in May 2022.

“I write a lot of songs, so there’s only so much real estate on a Pearl Jam record for my indulgences,” Gossard told us of the band’s origins back in 2020. “Luckily, Mason is still appreciative of some of my songwriting efforts! It’s so easy to do, because we just send songs back to each other.”

Stone Gossard, one half of Pearl Jam’s dynamic guitar duo (completed by Mike McCready), has added his two cents on the grunge vs hard rock debate, arguing that grunge was not to blame for the demise of its hard rocking predecessors. 

Speaking to VWMusic, Gossard instead makes a case for the transition as part of a broader “life cycle”. 

“There’s always renewal in the world,” Goassard tells Andrew Daly. “And with that renewal comes new perspectives. And I think that hard rock was really stagnating at that point in a way that gave an opportunity to what I’ll call ‘less musically talented’ musicians to say, ‘Hey, there’s another way to play rock songs… to have songs that are heavy… outside the normal color palette of a heavy metal song.” 

In the piece, Gossard discusses his early love of bands like Iron Maiden and the NWOBHM movement, alongside Motörhead, Led Zeppelin and Merciful Fate – groups that are not usually held up as influences by the archetypal grunge player. Instead, the guitarist explains, his contrasting playing style came about more by accident than design.

“I was into it,” he says. “[But] I didn’t really know how to play like that, so I was just doing what sounded right to me. And I think that in the late ’80s, there was a very free attitude about art and music that was brewing in the wake of hard rock, and a lot of people were experimenting with sounds, and the bands formed from there. There was something about it that was fresh, that really captured people’s ears, and that had a huge effect on it all too.”

Gossard’s case for rock’s evolution in the early-’90s is more nuanced than the narrative we’re used to hearing. History is painted by the victors, and usually in broad brush strokes, but the classic tales of rock’s various slash ‘n’ burn moments are highly simplified. 

• Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready looks back on 30 years of Ten

Contrary to popular opinion,  punk – grunge’s spiritual predecessor – was populated by many musicians who (mostly privately) respected the experimental tendencies of the prog musicians they were positioned to ‘destroy’. 

Similarly, Gossard’s take is that grunge’s mission statement was not as simple as erasing the hard rock scene. That is something that fans and listening habits took care of, and not completely…

“You know, a lot of those heavy metal bands you’re talking about are still around,” says Gossard. “So clearly they all didn’t die. Sure, a lot of them had to regroup, and yes, some did die, but that’s part of the life cycle, right? There are still a lot of fans out there who love hard rock, and I’m one of them. I love hard rock, and I always have, but renewal and rebirth are a part of art.”

Fortunately, Pearl Jam have often taken care of their own renewal and rebirth – one of the reasons they're still with us – case in point, their recent move to digital amps. 

After a long wait, Pearl Jam are finally out on tour in support of 2020’s Gigaton album, and eagle-eyed fans have already spotted some substantial changes to their onstage rigs.

Most notably, tube connoisseur Mike McCready has a pair of fresh Fender guitar amps stacked behind him, both of which bear a telltale Tone Master badge in the bottom right-hand corner, confirming them as combos from the Big F’s foray into digital versions of its classic amps.

The series’ Deluxe Reverb and Blonde Twin Reverb feature in McCready’s rig alongside a Lead Custom from Seattle amp builder Rola, which runs into a Marshall 4x12. Presumably, the Fenders handle clean tones, while the Rola gets switched in for dirtier sounds.

McCready’s live endorsement is one of the biggest seals of approval for the digital amp series yet. Of course, Fender no doubt hooked the Seattle soloist up with a combo or two when working on the Custom Shop replica of his ’60 Strat, which is set to be released as a more affordable production-line model in the near-future.

The tour has served up a few other surprises on the gear front, too, not least from co-guitarists Stone Gossard and Eddie Vedder, who have dug deep into their collections to pull out two rarely seen Gibsons for the run.

Gossard has been sighted with a Gibson Les Paul Signature Semi Hollow Gold Top – notable for its ES cutaway up top and Les Paul cutaway on the lower bout.

Launched in the early ’70s, the Signature Semi Hollow was the fourth and final guitar designed by Les Paul as part of a late-’60s reunion with Gibson, and features a pair of low-impedance pickups that excel at clean tones.

Judging from footage of recent shows, the rare semi-hollow has become one of Gossard’s main guitars on the trek, seeing use during standard-tuned tracks including Glorified G, Not For You and Seven O’Clock, as well as setlist staples Black and Alive.

Eddie Vedder, meanwhile, has further indulged his love of Pete Townshend and added the Who guitarist’s signature Gibson Les Paul Deluxe to his onstage arsenal.

A 2005 replica of Townshend’s heavily customized 1976 Cherry Sunburst #9 Les Paul, the guitar boasts a pair of mini-humbuckers and a DiMarzio Super Distortion humbucker – just 75 were made and came with a #9 decal, not displayed on Vedder’s model.

The guitar is currently employed for standard-tuned tracks including Corduroy, Not For You and Lightning Bolt.

Both guitarists are still playing their regular squeezes alongside the new additions – so, for Gossard, that’s a Bigsby-equipped Les Paul Sunburst, while Vedder uses his target-sticker-adorned Telecaster for tracks that require a cleaner tone, such as Better Man. McCready, of course, sticks to his ’60 Stratocaster, but a Les Paul with uncovered humbuckers and a P-90-equipped Firebird have also seen some action.

Pearl Jam kicked off their 2022 tour in San Diego on May 3, with the run set to conclude on May 20 in Las Vegas, after which the band head over to Europe for a series of summer dates, before returning to the US and Canada in September.

The treks mark the touring debut of former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer, who officially joined the live liveup last year.

Last week, the band paid tribute to Taylor Hawkins with a cover of Foo Fighters’ Cold Day in the Sun, led by PJ drummer Matt Cameron on guitar and vocals.

We all know that Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan has deep punk roots with Seattle-based acts like 10 Minute Warning and the Fastbacks. But apparently there’s another early punk outfit in his history – the Living, with whom he played electric guitar as a teenager.

That period in Duff's musical life has now been unearthed on the new The Living: 1982, a seven-song collection of McKagan-penned tunes being released on Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard’s Loosegroove Records label on April 16.

You can check out the video for one of the songs, Two-Generation Stand, above.

The Living: 1982 features a 17-year-old McKagan alongside drummer Greg Gilmore, later of 10 Minute Warning and Mother Love Bone, as well as singer John Conte and bassist Todd Fleishman. 

Said Gilmore in a statement, “The Living was the beginning of all things Seattle for me – a turning point in my life. I joined a band and a community. These guys are still my brothers. I’ve cherished these recordings since the days we made them. This record is a fantastic document of a loaded moment. I love it.”

The songs, which were recorded in a single-day studio session, were lost for 39 years before being recently rediscovered by Gilmore.

McKagan, for one, appears thrilled it’s finally seeing the light of day. “Would this even ever get out of our basement?” he said in a statement.

“We had something magical then, and it was ours, so who gives a fuck!”

The Living: 1982 is available for preorder here.

In this line of work, it’s not often you find yourself speaking with a guitarist who really doesn’t want to talk about gear, but Stone Gossard’s devil-may-care attitude to recording sets him apart from most interviewees.

“Usually, for guitar sounds, I’m literally like, ‘What’s the amp that we got here? Is there a pedal? Plug it in. ‘OK, everything’s working,’” he laughs.

“I don’t really spend a lot of time thinking about it, because I’m so, I dunno… lazy! But also because sometimes the best stuff comes from whatever the circumstance is – just letting it be whatever it is.”

Rather than searching out the next big thing, Gossard relies solely on his ears and gut instinct to guide his tones and songwriting – but when it’s been his driving force for three-plus decades of irresistible riffs and grooves, who are we to argue?

Over a career spent negotiating the intertwining writing forces that fuel alt-rock juggernauts Pearl Jam, and working with some of rock’s greatest frontmen in Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, Andrew Wood and Shawn Smith, one thing Gossard knows about is collaboration.

It’s this adventurous creative spirit that found him knocking at the door of Mason Jennings, and led the pair to form electronic-rock crossover Painted Shield.

The group – which is completed by in-demand session drummer Matt Chamberlain and Seattle singer-songwriter Brittany Davis – release their debut, self-titled album this month, a brooding, electronica-infused marriage of Gossard’s syncopated hard-rock riffs and Jennings’ rich vocal range.

It’s an album that owes as much to ’70s glam as it does new wave, punk and trip-hop – and if it sounds like the work of a band several albums in to a career, that can be put down to the project’s long gestation period.

Formed six years ago at the recommendation of a trusted friend, Dan Fields – who happened to be Jennings’ manager at the time – Gossard cites the collaboration as “trusting a process that you don’t necessarily understand”.

“I write a lot of songs, so there’s only so much real estate on a Pearl Jam record for my indulgences,” he reasons. “Luckily, Mason is still appreciative of some of my songwriting efforts!”

That he certainly is. The pair’s early collaborations initially bore fruit in the form of a one-off single some years back, featuring the tracks Knife Fight and Caught in a Mess. But some of Gossard’s compositions date back much further – the basis of hard-rock jam Evil Winds was recorded 12 years ago, long before Jennings came into the picture.

Even considering the long gaps between Pearl Jam albums – with this year’s Gigaton arriving after a seven-year wait – this is the record that took longest to fully assemble for either artist. What’s more, the pair only physically crossed paths once during its creation, with the rest of the album recorded remotely.

In fact, the record didn’t near completion until Chamberlain – who himself had a brief stint with Pearl Jam in the early ’90s – and Davis took a bigger role in the process, fleshing out existing arrangements and bringing entirely new soundscapes to the table.

When it came to guitar playing, however, Jennings is quick to clarify that his contributions were vocal only.

“I got demoted. I got my guitar taken away,” he laughs. “I just sang, so it was cool for me. All the music was coming to me from Stone – and he had stuff he’d done with Matt Chamberlain prior – and then I would just crank it in my car and drive around, and just come up with stuff that way. It was super-cool.”

Jennings would be listening to demos assembled by Gossard and Chamberlain for long periods of time before writing – sometimes he would pen his contributions years after hearing the initial track.

Shaking up the songwriting process and breaking habits was key to Painted Shield’s work ethic, according to Gossard, who saw his role as a “cheerleader” as much as a songwriter, encouraging the new contributions coming his way from Chamberlain and Davis.

Gossard was also rooting for mixer John Congleton – whose keen ear has shaped the off-the-wall guitar sounds of records from St. Vincent, Baroness, Explosions in the Sky and countless other sonically bold outfits over the years.

It was his hand that tore the entire album apart once it had been recorded, and lent it its fresh, progressive production.

“Congleton took a lot of the main guitar riffs and would pull them. Sometimes this harmonic soloing part would be the only thing in,” Jennings enthuses. “Stone was so brave to go, ‘OK, John, let’s take out my actual riff, and let this little thing come all the way to the front.’ And it turned out cool. I was blown away.”

“When you make records, you pile too much stuff on,” Gossard concurs. “And to have somebody re-prioritize, and really listen with fresh ears, where you can hear where something gets redundant, or hear where a song needs a shift emotionally, it can be a really helpful process. Particularly in a situation like this, where we don’t have a history – there’s no expectation other than, ‘I wonder what it is?’”

It wasn’t just Congleton who lent the album its distinctive guitar sounds; despite not being a gearhead by any stretch of the imagination, Gossard has always been keen to push the envelope.

“I love freaky guitar tones, and I’m always trying to do something [different],” he says. “We were always throwing on fuzzboxes, and these days, in terms of mixing, everybody’s always running guitars through another filter, or another delay…

“There’s lots of direct guitars – I love that, where you plug directly into the [mixing] board, but you just run it through a bunch of preamps, so it breaks up, but it breaks up in a way that feels very present, very close.”

While he admits he has “no idea” what amps made the cut on the record – “vintage Fender amps, maybe it’s a Vox, or maybe it’s a Marshall” – the key guitars were clearer in his memory.

“I played my Les Pauls with Bigsbys a lot,” he recalls. “I mean, I like a Bigsby just for a little movement sometimes. I have a Strat with a Bigsby now. [laughs] Totally sacrilegious!”

As that burgeoning Bigsby obsession testifies, some habits die hard – and in his new cheerleader role, Gossard couldn’t resist bringing a few friends along for the ride.

When GW compliments the lead playing on the track’s riff-rock lynchpin Evil Winds, he laughs, “You know who that is? That’s Mike McCready! Yep, wherever I go, Mike McCready lurks in the background.

“I feel lucky – he came in and blasted a solo, and didn’t even think about it. He also played the solo on On the Level. We had a lot of guests on the record, so if you hear something and you think suddenly I’ve improved as a guitar player, you might be disappointed.

“Jeff Fielder, who’s a fantastic Seattle guitar player who’s played with Mark Lanegan for ages, is also one of my go-to guys. He plays all the sitar parts on Knife Fight, à la Steely Dan.”

Yet for all the guests, all the solos, all the layers, the key learning Gossard has taken from the process is removing all non-essential elements – a realization that’s slowly been dawning throughout his time with Pearl Jam.

In fact, when it comes to riffs, leaving that space for grooves to ferment and grow has become something of a signature move for the guitarist.

“Subtraction is my method at this point,” he says. “It’s: what’s your idea, and then how much can you take away where your idea is still percolating in there, but you create more space for other melodic energy and vocals.

“People like the Edge understood that from the get-go, in terms of how space is this instrument that has to be used effectively. But it took me a long time, because I’ve just been in bands where everyone’s playing all the time. I mean, that can be cool, too – the cacophony, the onslaught, that’s great – but in this particular case, I think space is great.”

The subject of space leads Gossard and Jennings to talk amongst themselves, effusively praising the new demos they’re already working up for the next Painted Shield record.

Their excitement is palpable. In fact, it seems fair to say that this looks to be a longterm endeavor.

“We’ve got Painted Shield stuff brewing right now,” Gossard enthuses. “It’s so easy to do, because we just send songs back to each other, so there’s no reason why we couldn’t. Unless we have major disagreements about [adopts snooty tone] art!”

That seems unlikely. Even on the subject of the guitar lessons the pair have learned over the years, Jennings strikes a similar tone to Gossard, noting how a lighter touch is what makes electric players great, and acoustic – his usual go-to – needs a very different approach.

“The big thing I learned is how different acoustic and electric are to play,” Jennings says. “I don’t think they should both be called guitar, even! An acoustic guitar is so physical – you lean in, and it has a completely different response. I spent so much time playing acoustic, and it’s similar to drums.

“And then electric, I watch these interviews on YouTube with people that I really love, like Mark Speer from Khruangbin, and his gear setup, and the way he’s conceptualizing sustain and his pedals. It’s almost like he’s a car mechanic, a gearhead – he understands electronics, how to play something light and have it sound huge.”

An awareness of texture and tone shines throughout the Painted Shield, even during forays into previously uncharted territory for its guitarists, such as the industrial synths that drive Chamberlain-penned curveball I Am Your Country.

While the sonic landscape looks different, Painted Shield highlights that unifying thread across Gossard’s career: collaboration. Although, by his own admission, he never sought out to work with some of the greatest musicians in rock… it just happened.

“They’re just people that you see in your neighborhood, or you meet through friends,” he recalls. “And it’s just shocking to me that I got to play with Andy Wood and Shawn Smith and Chris Cornell. I guess the rock and roll aspect of it is wherever you are, and if you’re trying to make a band or trying to discover something, most likely it’s probably right in front of you.

“All those guys were big musical sharers. Eddie is one of the foundational artistic people in my life in regards to how much I care about art and how important it is and what your process is, and people’s eclectic natures, and embracing those. I’m the luckiest guy in rock!”

As for whether he’s picked up any lessons from the many guitar players he’s worked with over the years, Gossard doesn’t name any specific techniques; rather, it’s their attitude towards the instrument that has shaped his own approach.

“With Chris Cornell, he would get into great detail and has tons of harmonic knowledge,” he explains. “But I think he would have said he didn’t have a schooled background in terms of why the harmony he was putting down made sense.

“It’s important to study, but also learning just by trusting your ear and trusting your natural instincts about how to make an instrument exciting can be a really powerful weapon in your arsenal.

“The guitar needs to be treated like the sandbox sometimes, where it could be anything: you could bang on it with a stick, make up your own tunings. Finding different ways to make it simple, so that when you pick it up you can do a couple of things and all of a sudden it sounds good. I just think there’s a world of opportunity for amateur guitar players – you don’t have to be great. I’m proof of that!”

Gossard’s modesty overlooks the fact that he remains one of rock’s most respected rhythm players. When both GW and Jennings pipe up to remind him that, really, he’s quite good at the instrument, Gossard outlines a simple philosophy that’s guided his musical journey, from the moment he started playing guitar through every record he’s made to date, and every record he’ll make in the future.

“I have a talent, but it’s really the same thing that I’ve been doing since I was 16 years old, which is just stumbling on guitar,” he laughs.

“Literally just stumbling around until I hear two notes that make me go, ‘Oh, that’s cool – going between that note and that chord to this note all of a sudden,’ so that’s my change.

“I’m just gonna hang on to that and see what happens, and I’ll just keep making more stumbles, and then you sort of have a sonic sound that doesn’t sound like anything else… It sounds good to your ear; it sounds like you.”

• Painted Shield’s debut album is out on November 27 via Loosegroove Records, and available to preorder now.

Friday night, during their performance at Seattle's Safeco Field, Pearl Jam paid tribute to Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell, covering "Missing," an early Cornell solo rarity, and jamming with Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil during their encore.

"Missing" is a track taken from Cornell's obscure 1992 solo EP, Poncier, which collects his contributions to the soundtrack of the Cameron Crowe film, Singles. You can see Pearl Jam's live cover of the song above. 

During their encore, the band also welcomed Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil onstage for a trio of covers: MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams,” the Stooges’ “Search and Destroy” and Dead Boys’ “Sonic Reducer.” The latter two songs also featured Mark Arm and Steve Turner, of fellow Seattle grunge luminaries Mudhoney. 

You can check out fan-filmed footage of the covers below.

Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament reunited with the surviving members of Mother Love Bone—their pre-Pearl Jam band—at a charity concert in Seattle this past Saturday. You can watch their performance above.

The performance—which re-teamed Gossard and Ament with multi-instrumentalist Bruce Fairweather and drummer Greg Gilmore—was a benefit concert for SMASH (Seattle Musicians Access to Sustainable Healthcare.) It was the band's first performance in eight years.

Mother Love Bone disbanded in 1990 following the death of the band's lead singer, Andrew Wood, after a heroin overdose. Wood's place was taken at the concert by singers Shawn Smith (Pigeonhead) and Ohm Johari (Hell's Belles).

Mother Love Bone last reunited in April 2010 at Seattle's Showbox at the Market.

During a show in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Wednesday night, Pearl Jam invited Chad Smith and Josh Klinghoffer—drummer and guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers—to the stage for a spirited rendition of Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World."

The performance of the 1989 Young classic, which you can watch via some fan-filmed footage above, is an absolute stormer and features Eddie Vedder tossing a number of tambourines into the crowd and Klinghoffer trading some scintillating solos with Pearl Jam guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready.

Just last week, Pearl Jam unveiled "Can't Deny Me," their first new song in five years. The song is from the band's as-yet-untitled upcoming album and was produced by the band with Brendan O'Brien.

You can download the track at pearljam.com.

Last week, Pearl Jam shared a new song called "Can't Deny Me" exclusively to members of their official fan club. Now, the band has released the song to everyone. According to their website, the song is from their as-yet-untitled upcoming album and was produced by Pearl Jam with Brendan O'Brien. You can hear it below.

Last year, the band released Let's Play Two, a live album and concert film documenting their two-night stand at Chicago's legendary Wrigley Field in August 2016. Their last studio album was 2013's Lightning Bolt.

The song is available for download at pearljam.com.

In recent weeks, Pearl Jam has been teasing a concert film called Let's Play Two. The footage from these teasers shows brief clips of the band's performances at Wrigley Field last August. Now, the band has confirmed the details of Let's Play Two, a concert film that indeed documents those two performances at one of baseball's most legendary venues.

The band also announced that an accompanying live album will be made available alongside the film.

The soundtrack will be available September 29, while the film will premiere in select theaters on the same date, before recieving a one-off TV airing in the United States on FS1 on October 13, and arriving on home video on November 17.

You can watch the official trailer for the film, and check out the tracklist for the accompanying soundtrack (which you can preorder here) below.

Let’s Play Two Soundtrack Tracklist

• 1. Low Light
• 2. Better Man
• 3. Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town
• 4. Last Exit
• 5. Lightning Bolt
• 6. Black Red Yellow
• 7. Black
• 8. Corduroy
• 9. Given to Fly
• 10. Jeremy
• 11. Inside Job
• 12. Go
• 13. Crazy Mary
• 14. Release
• 15. Alive
• 16. All the Way
• 17. I’ve Got a Feeling

Temple of the Dog, the grunge supergroup featuring Soundgarden's Chris Cornell, Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard and Mike McCready—plus Matt Cameron (who plays drums for Pearl Jam and Soundgarden)—have announced their first-ever tour.

The band, which originally was formed in 1990, will play five shows in five cities in November to mark the 25th anniversary of the band's first and onlyalbum, Temple of the Dog.

The group was formed from the ashes of Mother Love Bone, which dissolved upon the death of lead singer Andrew Wood. Chris Cornell wrote numerous songs in tribute to Wood, his longtime friend, and decided to record them with Ament, Gossard and McCready, who had formed the bulk of Mother Love Bone.

The group recorded Temple of the Dog with Cameron. It spawned a major hit in "Hunger Strike," Cornell's duet with a yet-unknown singer by the name of Eddie Vedder.

Temple of the Dog is being given the deluxe reissue treatment by UMe. The reissue, which will hit stores September 30, will be available as four-disc Super Deluxe, double LP, two CD Deluxe and single CD sets.

You can check out the group's tour dates below and pre-order the album here.

TEMPLE OF THE DOG ON TOUR

• 11/04 Philadelphia, PA Tower Theater
• 11/07 New York, NY Madison Square Garden
• 11/11 San Francisco, CA Bill Graham Civic Center
• 11/14 Los Angeles, CA The Forum
• 11/20 Seattle, WA Paramount Theater