This month in Bought & Sold, the Cult’s Billy Duffy swoops in on the back of his Falcon to discuss all things guitar, from first electric guitars to the rig that gets him through a show – and why getting through the show is really the only thing he can be thinking about when it comes to pedals.

He tells us about Johnny Marr’s kind gift, winces in pain as he tells of a Les Paul loved and lost, and answers one of the greatest philosophical questions of our time: which combo is better, the cheap guitar/high-end amp or high-end guitar/cheap guitar?

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money?

“It was an Ibanez Les Paul copy from back when they were making copies in the ’70s. I got a complete deal on it… it might have fallen off the back of a lorry, if you know what I mean [laughs]. But it was Wine Red and like a Les Paul Standard. What I really wanted was a Les Paul Custom, but beggars can’t be choosers.

What was the last guitar you bought, and why?

I’m sitting right next to it: I just bought that Mick Ronson [1968 Les Paul Custom Collector’s Edition] tribute guitar from Gibson – and I did buy it with my own money!

The fact that it happens to be wood-fronted and a Les Paul Custom with no pickguard or pickup covers might be something that sounds familiar to me over the last 30 years [laughs]. I couldn’t not buy it. How could you not buy a Ronno?

What’s the most incredible find or bargain that you’ve had while buying guitars?

Rapid City, South Dakota: Les Paul Custom with a wood front. Pawn shop: $400. We [The Cult] were supporting Metallica, so this would have been spring or early summer of ’89, I believe. I remember this because I never found anything in pawn shops, apart from that guitar, which I had sprayed black. I think it’s a ’75, or a ’76. That was my best score.

What’s the strongest case of buyer’s remorse you’ve had while buying gear?

I remember going through a phase of buying, wanting and looking for the ultimate overdrive pedal. I kept buying pedals and trying them out, but they were basically all shite [laughs]. I wanted the ‘ultimate’, but nothing beats what I’ve got – a Klon – so that’s buyer’s remorse.

And okay, I did buy a Gibson twin-neck, which is on Sonic Temple somewhere, so I should probably get a demerit for that. I used the 12-string part, but I mean… what was I thinking? It was cream-coloured and I guess it was beautiful.

Have you ever sold a guitar that you now intensely regret letting go of?

Oh, yeah. I bought a refinished but otherwise all-original ’59 Les Paul for about $10,000. You can see it on YouTube because I used it on a few TV shows around the Electric album. I would use it on stage occasionally, like at the live concert we did for the BBC in London. But I didn’t use it all the time, just for maybe encores, because I never really got along with it.

I knew the guitar was valuable, but remember: this was before Slash blew up, so nobody really wanted Les Pauls. They all wanted fucking Charvels, not flame-fronted Les Paul Standards. Then, all of a sudden, Slash came along.

Anyway, I sold the guitar to Bob Rock like an idiot for $10,000… then Slash blew up, and I immediately missed out on about $150,000 worth of profit right there [laughs]. But that was the marketplace for the guitar at the time – and we knew it had been refinished, but it was only re-lacquered on top, otherwise it was all-original. It had all the right electrics, but it was purchased knowing it had a refin.

So I let Bob have it for what I paid for it in a moment of largesse that I regret… and he still reminds me about it today! I also sold him a 1961 P-Bass that I bought and that we used quite a lot on the road. We used it on Sonic Temple, too. It was a cheap white P-Bass, but it was great-sounding.

What’s your best tip for anyone looking to buy their ultimate guitar?

Sit with the guitar in your hands and if it doesn’t feel right, if it doesn’t immediately feel good, it ain’t for you. Go with your gut. Trust your instincts. I’ve tried to make guitars work for me and, in the end, I’ve gotten rid of them. If you feel immediately at home with a guitar, that’s a beautiful thing.

And it doesn’t matter what type of guitar, you know? I’ve never been much of a Fender person, but there are certain Fenders that I’ve picked up, and I’m like, ‘Oh, this is epic.’ It’s not a branding thing, it’s just the individual instrument – and you have to bond with it.

If forced to make a choice, would you rather buy a really good guitar and a cheap amp, or a cheap guitar and a top-notch amp?

It’s interesting because a good amp is a very useful thing to have because there are a lot of bad amps out there. So I’d be more inclined to keep the amp, but that sort of contradicts what I just said about buying a guitar!

If you buy a good guitar and a bad amp, you’re gonna have to get a good amp or else you’re always going to sound shitty. If you do it the other way around, you might actually sound better with a bad guitar because if the guitar is badly put together, you could change the pickups.

It’s much easier to throw a good pickup in the shitty guitar and transform it, right? Unless it’s a bad acoustic… You’ll have to find somebody to take it off your hands because there’s no fixing a bad acoustic.

If you could only use humbuckers or single-coil pickups for the rest of your career, which would it be, and why?

You can answer that one. With me, you really can [laughs]. With humbuckers, I just love the thickness of the sound. Personally, I have never really gotten over walking on stage with a really good Les Paul and a really good Marshall – or equivalent – amp, and just letting rip with the visceral nature of what that can do, you know?

I’ve used single-coil guitars on albums for bits and pieces here and there, and for layering guitars. But, for me, they’re a bit too… they’re just kind of delicate, I guess. I’m a bit of an old-school player who likes to feel the air move and the raw power of the thing. And that’s a humbucker for me.

Billy’s Go-To Rig

After grunge happened and the band wasn’t as popular, I had to simplify my rig and just put together pedalboards where I can replace most of the stuff. I use two or three delays, though people tell me, "Why don’t you just reset one delay?" I say, "Have you ever done a gig in Argentina in front of thousands of people? There is no time to be resetting your delay," [laughs]. I’ve also got a couple of overdrives and a clean boost – I’d recommend one for any player.

I started using Friedman 50-watt amps, the Dirty Shirley. Dave [Friedman] modifies them for me a bit, but in essence, they’re pretty standard. With that, I’ve got two Marshall 4x12s – I use the Vintage speakers in one and the mid-’80s ones in the other. And then I use a Roland JC-120 for some clean stuff, and also a Vox AC30 – but it’s one of the Chinese-made ones. I found the hand‑wired ones to be a bit too honest.

For guitars, I’ve got a few Les Paul Customs that are very similar to each other, so I’ll take out three [Gretsch White] Falcons and three Les Pauls – I can get most of the sounds I need from that.

And for acoustics, Johnny Marr gave me his [Martin M-7] signature acoustic. That’s a really cool seven-string with the cheeky extra G string. It gives me a little bit of instant access to what was originally Roger McGuinn’s kind of trick, you know?

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

The Cult guitarist Billy Duffy has opened up about a severe case of guitar seller’s remorse that saw him lose out on an estimated $150,000.

Duffy had used this particular vintage gem during the band’s Electric era in the late 1980s when The Cult were at the height of their powers. It fetched a high price, but sold it before its value, thanks to a well-known, top hat-wearing shredder, skyrocketed.

“I bought a refinished but otherwise all-original ‘59 Les Paul for about $10,000,” he reveals in the new issue of Guitarist. “You can see it on YouTube because I used it on a few TV shows around the Electric album. I would use it on stage occasionally, like at the live concert we did for the BBC in London, but I didn’t use it all the time, just for maybe encores, because I never really got along with it.”

Still, Duffy knew the guitar had value – anyone burning 10 grand on an electric guitar knows exactly what they’re buying. But the timing of the sale, more than anything, is what has left the guitarist with egg on his face.

“Remember,” he says, “this was before Slash blew up, so nobody really wanted Les Pauls. They all wanted fucking Charvels.

“I sold the guitar to [producer] Bob Rock like an idiot for $10,000,” he continues. “Then Slash blew up, and I immediately missed out on about $150,000 worth of profit right there. He still reminds me about it today!”

Hey, at least he got his money back. Just how close the sale was to the Les Paul’s reversal of fortune, though, is crazy.

As Guns N’ Roses producer Mike Clink says, Slash made the Les Paul cool again with the monumental success of their debut album, Appetite for Destruction. At the time, super shredder guitars were hugely in vogue as a generation of players looked to emulate King of the Guitar World, Eddie Van Halen.

The irony, of course, is that Slash’s Appetite Les Paul wasn’t actually a Gibson, but either way, he became a much-needed poster boy for a guitar considered old news for much of the decade.

For reference, The Cult released Electric in April 1987, just three months before Appetite gave a legion of guitar lovers an, err, appetite for Gibson’s flagship axe. And as the record blew up, Bob Rock probably laughed his way to the bank. You can’t win them all, Billy.

Duffy’s full interview can be found in the new issue of Guitarist, which celebrates a century of Gibson’s Flat-top acoustic guitars. Slash also features, discussing his surprise switch to Magnatone amps.

Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a print or digital copy.

Truth be told, The Cult’s Billy Duffy doesn’t have a clear memory of how Fire Woman, the band’s 1989 hit from their mega album, Sonic Temple, came to be. “Sounds crazy, but it’s a total blank!” he admits.

What he does remember is that producer Bob Rock – who’d go on to work with Metallica, Bon Jovi, Blue Murder and Mötley Crüe – told him he’d make him a guitar hero through the track.

“We wanted to add a few elements, layers and textures from the [1985] Love album,” Duffy says. “But I will confess: Bob edited a lot of what I played to refine exactly what he felt the song needed. We knew it was a potential single.”

Fire Woman would peak at number two on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, as well as topping charts around the globe. Since then it’s become a fixture in The Cult’s set – though Duffy admits it’s not easy to play even now.

“It’s a challenging song. Bob told me, ‘I make the records; it’s your job to figure out how to play them live!’ But I would say, especially when we were young in the late ‘80s, we smashed it.”

He continues: “We probably went through a difficult period after that with the tune, but I'm happy to report that in the last few years, I think we’ve cracked the code. I’ve been super happy with how the band plays it.”

Where were you as a player by the time of Fire Woman?

It was a time when Jamie Stewart, the bass player, and I had decided we needed to up our proficiency. The previous album, Electric, had opened the door to the mainstream rock market in North America.

We wanted to move on from that purist approach to something that was perhaps a tad more layered and, dare I say, sophisticated. We felt Electric, while great fun and full of attitude, was not a record we could or would make twice.

What gear were you using by that point?

I was using the Marshall JCM800 heads and cabinets we’d bought new when the band finally made some money from the Electric World Tour. I had mine modified in NYC by Harry Kolbe, so they had more gain, which I really liked. It had a thicker, fuller, warmer, fatter sound.

I also used a Roland JC120 for that magical clean chorus. But I’m sure Bob had amps knocking around too. I’m always open to using what I term ‘studio amps’ for specific parts and sounds – and trust me, on a 48-track recording, there were many parts to cover!

What was the studio like?

It was the “world famous” Little Mountain in Vancouver, Canada. I can’t remember much except it had two full separate studios – other bands would be in there doing odds and sods too.

What did Bob bring out in you as a guitarist?

He told me, “Don’t worry, I’m gonna help you become a guitar hero.” And he did! Prior to that session in 1988, we’d been on the road in America with Billy Idol then Guns N’ Roses. I saw up close just how good and dedicated those guys were to their playing and instruments.

It really focused my mind into bettering myself as a player. A bit of punk rock attitude is great too, and I had that. But the way music was heading, I needed to work hard to improve the technical side of my game at that time.

Put us in front of your amp with a guitar in hand while recording Fire Woman.

I always track in the room with the guys, but then the serious business of laying down deeper stuff is done in the control room. I spent many, many days with Bob and Mike Fraser. As I said, I was reaching to move The Cult sound forward, and it took a lot of time and effort.

I remember working on the picking parts for the intro using the Gretsch White Falcon and maybe the 12-string of a Gibson double neck. Don’t judge – Zep were back at that time!

We wanted to reference She Sells Sanctuary a little bit, obviously. Also, a lot of time was spent doing seriously tight rhythm guitar parts. Bob cracked the whip there. As for solos and fills, that was the fun stuff we did at the end, once we had all the basics.

Fire Woman went on to become a hit. Was that a surprise?

I wasn’t surprised it had more mainstream commercial success. It took the band to the next level – and we made a solid video for it. A lot of hours and sweat went into the track, and the album. I learned a lot in the process.

What does Fire Woman mean to you now?

It’s one of the hardest, if not the hardest, songs to get right. The chorus vocal on the word “fire” is super high for a start. Bob told Ian Astbury it was only a background vocal initially!

And the guitar is very layered, so I had to figure out how to distill all those parts down, and then the groove. And don’t forget the backbeat, which was played by a session drummer. It’s vital, so the tune has bounce and swagger.

Charlie Jones has had long-term bass gigs with Page and Plant, Robert Plant and The Cult – but he admits his arrival in the four-string world “sounds stupid.” He explains: “When I was young I bought an ‘electric guitar’ with money from delivering papers, so I could join my friend’s band.

“I’d thought to myself, ‘Wow, this sounds weird…’ But I went to his place, all ready to go, and he said, ‘This is a bass – you’re a bass player!’ I went, ‘Okay, then…’” Luckily he took to the instrument. “I learned very quickly. Within three years I was learning upright.”

Jones has gone on to play on a host of records, most notably on Page and Plant’s No Quarter (1995) and Walking into Clarksdale (1998). But he’s also heard on records by Goldfrapp, Siouxsie, and most recently The Cult.

Working with formed Led Zeppelin icons Page and Plant was, of course, “a very big deal,” he confirms. “It was very informative. I had to have a deeper understanding of blues, learn to be quick, make decisions and listen. They really worked on instinct. There was equality there; I was given freedom to express myself. Those guys were very generous.”

Jones adds: “My musical tastes are eclectic. Once I left Robert and got into Goldfrapp – a primarily electronic band – it opened up my potential further.”

What led you toward the acrylic bass?

When I started, all the basses around England were Japanese or Korean copies. Some were good, some weren’t. I used English gear – an HH cabinet and whatever else I had knocking around. The acrylic bass thing came about because I was very into glam rock, and I’d seen the Dan Armstrong basses.

I loved them, but I couldn’t get on with the short-scale neck. Before I got the gig with Robert I was using a Fender Precision Bass. I asked Fender if they could make me an acrylic bass then, but they couldn’t – though they did later.

But basically, what led me to the acrylic bass was the desire to have a long-scale Precision Bass with the aesthetic of those ‘70s Dan Armstrong basses

What led to the gig with Robert Plant?

I’d done a record with a producer called Tim Palmer in Austin, Texas. He recommended me for that gig when I was doing sessions. I had to give Robert lots of demos I’d played on. I had a taste for crossover artists from the Middle East, and you know how Robert’s into that stuff.

He heard that, and some of the other stuff I’d done, and it was quite eclectic. That appealed to him. I wasn’t strictly a rock bass player; and, of course, Robert’s tastes are pretty eclectic.

What gear did you pair with the acrylic bass once you joined Robert?

Robert was very gracious because I didn’t have the budget to buy the type of gear I needed for the touring he was doing. I needed a good rig, but the popular rigs at the time were Trace Elliot, which weren’t for me.

I was allowed to buy anything, and I went for the Marshall Jubilee for bass because I loved it. They had these big cabinets and massive transformers, and they weren’t valve amps. They had transistors with huge headroom with no breakup, and were very focused.

It informed my gigs live, though not necessarily for recording. I generally don’t use large valve heads; I use rigs with good weight transformers and plenty of headroom. The Jubilee series was bulletproof.

What was it like transitioning from working with Robert to adding Jimmy Page for the No Quarter - Unledded show?

Jimmy had his own viewpoint when he started working with Robert again, so there was a bit of a transition. The word "re-audition" is a bit big; but it was a different production working with Jimmy so that he felt comfortable. It meant having to dive much deeper into the Led Zeppelin catalog.

Jimmy is a fantastic bandleader. And his knowledge of the Led Zeppelin material – he’d study the bootlegs and say, ‘Hey, I wanna do this extended version of this song.’ So it was pretty intense. It was like a big apprenticeship.

And you were learning bass parts laid down by John Paul Jones, which is no easy feat.

That’s exactly right. Sometimes they’d say, “Your playing is not exactly like John Paul Jones’ on this tune. But we like it, so stick with what you’re doing.“ They were flexible. As long as it was working, they were happy.

They weren’t necessarily trying to do a reproduction of Led Zeppelin, because that’s not possible without the original rhythm section of John Paul Jones and John Bonham. It had to be genuine, and that meant adding a bit of your own flavor to it, and they were open to that.

Which led to you working on Page and Plant’s collaborative album Walking into Clarksdale.

That was different – when we did the Unledded record it was a huge Egyptian-style ensemble. We’d just get our heads together on the spot. But with Walking into Clarksdale we had to go into a room and write together. Writing with those guys was very organic. But it was no bowl of cherries!

Notably, you co-wrote Please Read the Letter during those sessions.

We rehearsed and wrote a rough arrangement for it. Then when we got to Abbey Road, Steve Albini was producing, which was a thrill for me. That was crafted between all of us, meaning we all had big input on the song. Robert took the lead in terms of the top line, and how the chords would fall within the arrangement, but I always believed it was a special song.

Still, it must have been a surprise when the song netted you a Grammy after Robert re-recorded it for his Raising Sand album.

Truthfully, it was! I was in this weird situation. I’d come off tour and said, “I’m not gonna open any of my mail for three months. I don’t give a shit. I don’t care what comes through. I’m shutting myself away.” Then my manager called and said, “Do you realize you’ve got a Grammy for this song?”

I went, “Really?” My manager said, “Yeah; your certificate’s come through.” I had to go outside to the garbage bags to find the certificate ‘cause I’d thrown it away! So it was a surprise; but to Robert’s credit, he always had a vision for that song and it never dwindled.

In 2022 you had the Fender Custom Shop build you an acrylic bass. Is that now your main instrument?

Yes, but it lives in America. I love that bass; it’s a copy of a ‘70s Precision. I found that some of those old basses from ’75 to around ’80 are slightly heavier, with thicker necks. They really lend themselves to rock compared to the '60s basses. So I had Scott Buehl copy that.

He made it lighter than the one I’d used with Goldfrapp, which weighed a ton. He chambered it, so it has a different sound. I use that one a lot with The Cult paired with Aguilar amplifiers and cabinets, but I leave it in the States. When I fly home, I use a ‘70s-style Antigua or a flat-body Precision.

Not everybody takes the so-called “plastic basses” seriously, but you’ve done a lot to alter that way of thinking.

I can’t be specific, but you assume a lot of musicians don’t take the instrument very seriously. They think it’s a novelty or an oddity. I understand why people think of it like that. But it really does have a sound, and I love that sound.

It doesn’t fit solely into one genre. Combined with the visual aspect and working with lots of different artists, it made my viewpoint as a player. You can’t pigeonhole what I do. That’s always been the case, and I’m happy about that.

How did you get the gig with The Cult?

It was kind of a homecoming because I’ve always loved The Cult; I always wanted to join, or at least do some recording with them. Tom Delgety, the producer, asked me to play on Under the Midnight Sun, and I got on so well with them that they asked me to join. It’s great – but I really had to concentrate on playing with a pick again.

The Cult have announced a hiatus from touring. What’s next?

I don’t really know what’s next for The Cult. I think they’re gonna take this time out, and there’s maybe some box set coming out of the Death Cult and Cult material from Beggars Banquet. And they may well want to do some recording, so that may happen this year.

Other than that, I’m gonna be doing my own stuff, and some other sessioning and recording. I’ll be concentrating on my bass playing, working hard to dig deeper into the lane that I’m in.”

• Stay up to date via Jones’ website.

GW connected with Cult guitarist Billy Duffy as the band was about to head off to South America, where they’ve maintained a huge following for nearly 40 years.

For the band, 2025 isn’t only about touring their regular show, but also celebrating the 40th anniversary of their previous incarnation as Death Cult, with dates planned where they will focus on material that they haven’t played since 1985.

Duffy is excited to be able to revisit his distant back catalog. “It’s really energized the band,” he says. “It’s shaken things up, taken us out of our comfort zone, and also given me a fresh perspective on my own playing back then.”

Unlike many legacy rock acts, the Cult aren’t content to merely recycle their back catalog.

“There will be some new music coming, though whether that will be a full album is hard to say, given the economics of the music business.” One thing Duffy can state with confidence, though, is that these are the three guitars that he considers most significant as he looks back over his career.

Gibson Les Paul Junior

“I actually wanted the TV [Yellow] model as I was a huge Johnny Thunders fan. But they were really hard to get, so I had to settle for a double-cutaway in a cherry finish.

“I remember the first time I saw the New York Dolls on television, in 1973, on The Old Grey Whistle Test. Thunders wasn’t playing a Junior – I think it was a Vox Teardrop – but the TV Yellow Junior became synonymous with him after that.

“Sylvain Sylvain, interestingly, was playing a single-cutaway White Falcon, so there’s a big part of my guitar journey right there on that clip. This wasn’t my first pro-level guitar; in 1979 I had a wine-colored, 1970s Ibanez Les Paul copy, which I got by devious means, which I won’t go into detail about. [Laughs]

“It was the time when people thought the Ibanez copies were better than Gibsons; it was a bad era for Gibson, I suppose. I parlayed the Ibanez into an actual white Gibson LP. There are pictures of me playing the Les Paul in a band I had called Lonesome No More. I played it through a Fender Twin. Of course, and coincidentally, that was the classic Steve Jones setup in the Sex Pistols.”

“I actually don’t remember how I got the Junior. I was always trading up to get better guitars – around the late ’70s/early ’80s I only really ever had one guitar at a time. It’s all a bit foggy, but I suspect I may have used the Les Paul to get the Junior. It was an original ’50s model.

“The Junior would’ve been totally stock, except the original tuners, which were rubbish. I only ever buy guitars that are players; I don’t need something to be totally authentic if it’s not functional. I do have a little of the approach where I treat them as work tools rather than sacred objects, though I understand the value of authenticity in the vintage market.

“But if the tuners are no good, the guitar is no good, so it had Grovers, which were an upgrade. This was the guitar I used to audition for Theatre of Hate, which leads neatly on to my next choice…”

Gretsch White Falcon double cutaway

“I was looking to join a band who was on a higher level than the things I’d done in previous bands. Theatre of Hate were well established on the U.K. indie scene at that time. I’d never really done much extended touring, more of the weekend-warrior stuff – playing one-off-type shows but not an actual extended tour as such, and Theatre were a legit touring band.

“Boy George actually suggested that I approach Kirk [Brandon, vocalist/guitarist] to see if we could get something sorted out. When I auditioned, Kirk was already playing a green Gretsch Single Anniversary. When I first met him, he came around to my flat in London and I had a picture of a Gretsch on the wall and he remarked on it.

“I said if I got into a band where I could play full-time, I’d get a Gretsch White Falcon. I’d never seen a picture of Theatre or seen them live, though I knew a few of their songs, so I didn’t know he was a Gretsch player. I guess maybe he felt like it was meant to be or something.”

“As soon as I got the job in the band, I tried to find a Gretsch. I think I must have traded in the Junior. I bought it from Orange Music in London. In the late ’70s, there was very little demand in the U.K. for Gretsches; but once the Stray Cats broke through, that changed almost overnight. I suppose, post punk, everyone was looking for a new sound, exotic guitars and experimenting with sounds.

“I liked the Gretsch because it helped me to find my sound, plus it forces you to play in a different way from smaller guitars. Orange were importing second-hand Gretsches from America; you’d put your order in, but they couldn’t guarantee what model you’d get, so I started with a double-cutaway White Falcon, though I wanted a single-cutaway.

“Worse than that, though, was that it was one of those stereo models. It was actually a good guitar – a Baldwin-era model. I’d still happily play one, though I wouldn’t have a stereo one.”

Gibson Les Paul Custom

“I’d used a White Falcon exclusively in the Cult up to Electric [1987]. We’d recorded the album once, but we weren’t happy with it, so we re-recorded it in New York.

“I used a couple of borrowed Les Pauls; there was no Gretsch on it at all. That made me decide to get a decent Les Paul. I got a 1979 Custom, and I decided I wanted to get the finish removed from the front.

“It was a tribute to Mick Ronson, one of my early guitar heroes. I saw Mick playing in Vancouver with Hunter Ronson, and I sadly didn’t take the chance to go backstage even though I was there with Bob Rock, who knew him.

“Just as the guitar was in the shop getting its refinish, it was decided that we needed to shoot the cover of Sonic Temple [1989], which has become a bit of an iconic photo. I actually borrowed the black Les Paul that’s on the cover. Incidentally, my first electric guitar was a black Les Paul copy by Columbus, which cost about $50. It wasn’t much good, but it looked the part, which was what mattered for your first guitar.

“The photo shoot was funny and a bit embarrassing; it looks like a live shot, but it was done in a photographer’s studio, where I had to go through my guitar-hero poses. I was being told, ‘You’ll need to move your arm about six inches to fit between “the” and “Cult” on the cover.’

“You do what you have to do for show business. [Laughs] The 'Woodie' Les Paul was my main guitar for a few years – if you look at any videos from Fire Woman through to Ceremony [1991], it’s always the wood-front Les Paul.

“My only real guitar regret was another Les Paul, but for financial rather than sentimental reasons. I’d bought a 1959 model that was all original, other than a refinish. It was expensive, but it didn’t feel right so I sold it to Bob Rock for the same amount I paid for it. Just after that, the ‘Slash effect’ happened; everybody wanted a Les Paul, and he sold it for about 15 times what he paid. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”

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

On his way up the rock ’n’ roll ladder, Billy Duffy – co-founding guitarist of the Cult – wasn’t all that into heavy metal, leaning instead toward glam and proto-punk, genres centered on primal simplicity.

“I just wanted to be like the Stooges,” he says today. “Really, why can’t you play four chords over and over again? [Laughs] It’s hypnotic! I’ve always loved early Stooges records for [their] simplicity; they had a kind of hidden hypnotizing quality.”

Although they definitely brought more than four chords to the party, Duffy and the rest of the band – singer Ian Astbury, bassist Jamie Stewart and drummer Nigel Preston – succeeded in bringing a touch of hypnotism to their second album, Love, released in October 1985. Let’s just say its grooving bass lines, lush melodies and massive guitar hooks put record buyers in a major trance, turning Love into the band’s breakthrough release.

Love came on the heels of the band’s 1984 debut, Dreamtime, which, although reaching Number 21 on the U.K. charts, wasn’t the massive hit the band and the label – Beggars Banquet Records – had in mind. The vision for Love, which was produced by Steve Brown, who had helmed Wham!’s debut album and helped the Cult achieve success with She Sells Sanctuary back in May, was simple.

“I liked Bad Company and Free a lot,” Duffy says. “To me, those bands, like David Bowie and Roxy Music, were all pop. But their albums had deeper cuts; that’s what I hoped the Cult could pull off.”

Along with She Sells Sanctuary, which ended up on side two of Love, singles like Rain and Revolution provided the hits, while Nirvana and Phoenix served as the types of deep cuts Duffy yearned for.

All in all, Love was a winner; in the 40 years since it was released, it’s sold nearly three million copies and has earned its status as a mid-Eighties rock classic.

“It’s my favorite of all of [our albums],” Duffy says. “I have no complaints. It’s a very special record. I don’t listen to it often, but occasionally, when I do, I’m like, ‘It kind of holds up, doesn’t it?’”

Going into Love, where was the Cult at, band-wise, after your 1984 debut, Dreamtime?

“It was a massively important period for the band. Dreamtime was sort of cobbled together from singles and EPs, so it was a bit of a mishmash. It was a decent enough record, but from ’84 to ’85, it sort of felt like our peers in the U.K. were all having hits, so we felt pressure to come up with one.”

Is that why you released She Sells Sanctuary,” which ended up on Love, months ahead of the album?

“In some ways, it sounds a bit naïve now, but we did Sanctuary as a single before we went in to make the album as a trial to check out this producer called Steve Brown. We were actually after Steve Lillywhite, as everybody was in those days, but he was probably too busy with Simple Minds and U2. [Laughs]”

Steve Brown produced Wham’s first album, 1983’s Fantastic. Did you feel he was right for the Cult?

“He turned out to be a brilliant character and the perfect guy for what we needed at the time. He brought a lot of pop sensibilities, but our record company said, ‘Look, this is a gamble. Why don’t you go in, do one song with him and see how it goes?’ That turned out to be Sanctuary.”

Sanctuary was recorded at Olympic Studios in London. What was that like?

“It was an old rock studio that had been used by Led Zeppelin, Free and loads of [other] people. It wasn’t very modern; it was quite old fashioned. We wanted to go somewhere that had some kind of spirit and energy.

“So, we went in, did the single there and got lucky that it was a hit. That changed everything. Basically, everybody around us – the management, the record company – said, ‘We’ll have more of that, please,’ which was understandable.”

You recorded the rest of Love at Jacobs Studios in Farnham, which I’m assuming was very different from Olympic, right?

“We went in to do Love in the middle of 1985 on the back of Sanctuary, which had a slow climb up the British charts – but it stuck around for a long time.

“But the studio where we did the rest of the album had a Mitsubishi digital desk. We even had a Japanese bloke whose job was to sleep there and make sure if the desk went down, he could fix it. [Laughs] Looking back on it, we wanted to go the organic route with Sanctuary and capture the spirit, and we ended up in a ridiculous state-of-the-art studio. But it all worked out.”

What guitars and amps did you bring into the studio?

“We didn’t have a lot in the way of equipment. I had a couple of Gretsch guitars – a [White] Falcon and a Country Club that I’d painted black, and I believe Ian had a Telecaster, which I borrowed but didn’t use often. And there was a Vox [V223 Mark XII] Teardrop 12-string that you can see in the Revolution music video.

“t was a red thing. A whole load of them from the Sixties appeared in London; they found them in a warehouse and put them together – they had bolt-on necks. And there might have been an acoustic knocking around, but I don’t remember owning one.”

Would that have been the acoustic guitar we hear on She Sells Sanctuary?

“I think there’s a sample of an acoustic on Sanctuary – that ‘ca-chin-chin’ kind of thing – which was done at the very end of the recording. That was Steve Brown being a producer. He said, ‘Put a little acoustic thing on it.’ As much as we enjoyed being organic, we weren’t afraid to play around with technology.”

Guitar amp-wise, what was the secret to your tone?

“There would have been a Marshall, and there would have been a Roland JC-120, so that would have been my go-to setup. But Ian also had this odd Yamaha that was a copy of a Fender Twin that I’ve never seen since. It had, like, red dials.

“But honestly, I remember not ever feeling comfortable with the tone until I blended all the amps together with various mics and distances. And Steve Brown was pretty mental; he’d basically go for anything. I think we might have taken everything we had and just blended them. It was basically like a wall of about four amps.”

Do you remember recording Rain?

“Sanctuary wasn’t a fluke, but it just happened. With Rain, it was much harder because I was tasked with coming up with a follow-up single, and I found Rain. I’m actually more proud of Rain than I am of Sanctuary because Sanctuary really was a gift, but Rain was a bit more perspiration. [Laughs] It had some guts to it; we were trying to heavy-up our sound.”

Love ended up being a big hit in the U.K., topping out at Number 4 while also gaining a decent foothold in the U.S. Given the success of She Sells Sanctuary. Did you expect that at all?

“Steve Brown had this pop sensibility, but his foundation was rock, and he had a very cavalier attitude. He was very focused on pop and wanted to bring out the commerciality in the band. He felt we had talent but hadn’t quite gotten our pop hooks together. He was instrumental in helping us work on that. It was just one of those things where the album was meant to happen, but we didn’t take it for granted.”

What does Love mean to you as a guitarist, and what did it mean for the trajectory of the Cult?

“It gave me confidence. We found our identity. That album meant a lot to us, and it gave us confidence that we were on the right path. There were a few moments of doubt after Dreamtime, and we might have had a few dark evenings of self-doubt, though having a big hit single like Sanctuary helps.

“ut it was very important to us not to just be a one-hit wonder and to come up with quality songs once we had the ear of the public. Suddenly, rather than being sub-cultural, we were open to the entire British music market. It was interesting!”

• Love is out now via Beggars Banquet.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Gretsch has partnered with The Cult’s Billy Duffy to produce a new Falcon signature guitar in celebration of the band’s 40th Anniversary.

First officially anointed The Cult in 1984 (after performing under the Death Cult moniker for a year prior) the group have long been established as one of the UK’s most successful gothic rock exports.

During his four decades with the band, Duffy has largely been known for two things: his psychedelic blend of gothic and rock music, and the assortment of Gretsch electric guitars that have helped him craft his signature style.

Specifically, Duffy has been overwhelmingly loyal to the Falcon – a hollowbody model with which he first started a lifelong love affair after he successfully auditioned to be the new lead guitar player for a band called Theater Of Hate.

“[The lead singer] said to me in the audition, ‘If you got in the band, what would you do?’ I said, ‘I kind of always wanted to get a Gretsch White Falcon. That’s the next thing I’m obsessing on.’

“I got in the band, took all my life savings and waddled down to a shop in London. Everything I owned I put into that guitar. I rolled and put everything on Gretsch – and it worked out okay.

“The main attribute of all Gretsch guitars is that they create a three-dimensional [sound],” continues Duffy. “The analogy I use is, if you ever go into a cathedral, there’s a certain quality, and I think most of the Gretsches I’ve ever known have an element of that quality.

“It allowed me to create space with the instrument. Certain other guitars are quite dense, and there’s air and breath within a Gretsch.”

Because of his affinity for the original Falcon design, this 40th Anniversary model stays largely faithful to the source material, save a few Duffy-selected flourishes.

These include Black Top Filter’tron pickups, gold hardware and gold sparkle binding, as well as a commemorative “8424” metal truss rod cover that sits next to Duffy’s own signature, which has been hand-signed on the back of each model.

Some more familiar specs include a 2.75”-deep maple body with parallel tone bars, a U-shaped maple neck, a 25.5” scale length, and a 12”-radius ebony fingerboard, as well as a Bigsby B6GW tailpiece and a pinned TOM-style bridge.

“The Gretsch allowed me to create, what I think is the most important thing for any guitar player, and that is to find your own sound and your style,” Duffy adds. “That’s what playing a guitar with this certain set of attributes did for me.”

The limited edition G8424T Billy Duffy Signature Falcon is available now for $4,499. Each model comes with a Duffy-styled hard case and appropriate case candy.

Visit Gretsch for more info.

The Cult were formed in 1983 in Bradford, England by vocalist Ian Astbury, guitarist Billy Duffy, Jamie Stewart on bass, and drummer Ray Taylor-Smith. There have been numerous bassists and drummers over the years, with Astbury and Duffy the mainstays of the band throughout its career.

Beginning as a post-punk or gothic rock band, The Cult achieved success in the late ’80s and early ’90s with a more mainstream rock sound. She Sells Sanctuary was a big UK hit in 1985, and then with producer Rick Rubin at the helm gained success in the USA as well, with songs like Love Removal Machine.

Rubin used the AC/DC blueprint of simple, medium-fast tempo (allegro) arrangements around the 130bpm mark, with classic guitar riffs and catchy vocal melodies, to great effect. At a time when bands were utilising overblown, ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ arrangements, The Cult headed in the opposite direction and kept things minimal but effective.

After Rubin steered them to mainstream chart success, The Cult also recorded with Metallica and Bon Jovi producer Bob Rock, which helped to solidify and maintain their commercial appeal in an era that saw rock dominate the mainstream charts.

But don’t be fooled into thinking it was the producers that took The Cult in a direction they didn’t want to go; Duffy grew up on a diet of Queen, Aerosmith, Thin Lizzy and Led Zeppelin, and his playing shows a significant influence from those bands. He has also been involved with side-projects featuring Alice In Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell, John Corabi of Mötley Crüe, and The Alarm’s Mike Peters.

Our track is at the appropriate tempo of 130bpm, which is indicative of the kind of pace that many of us walk at, and find an innate familiarity with, not least of all due to it being slightly faster and more exciting than a ‘two beats per second’ speed.

The key is A minor (A-B-C-D-E-F-G), but mostly when the F note is played it’s an F#, not an F natural. This gives us the sound of A Dorian mode (A-B-C-D-E-F#-G), which is still minor, but with a brightness not present in the A natural minor scale. There is also an A major chord during the second section, which contains the notes A-C#-E.

The solo is also built around A Dorian mode, although the phrasing is based around A minor pentatonic (A-C-D-E-G), along with one phrase that adds an Eb to make the A minor blues scale. The theory may sound complex in print, but in reality you can just think A minor pentatonic plus F# and/or Eb and you won’t go far wrong.

Get the tone

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

It's humbucking pickup territory, if possible. Duffy is a famous Gretsch White Falcon and Gibson Les Paul Custom player. If you don’t have access to humbuckers, roll some treble off single-coils. A classic Marshall amp sound with plenty of power amp gain and not too much saturation is the way to go for this type of tone. Use light to medium reverb/delay.

Example 1. Rhythm

Getting the single notes inside the chords to ring clearly is going to be of paramount importance, particularly as this type of arrangement is usually going to have double-tracked guitar parts. Pay attention to the louder articulations (dynamics) on a few of the chords as well.

Example 2. Lead

The fast phrase towards the end of the solo uses picking, hammer-ons and pull-offs. With this type of phrase, use whichever fingers feel most comfortable to you.

With the ability to create seemingly unending deep pockets filled with sub-hooks, Chris Wyse has landed gigs with Ozzy Osbourne, Ace Frehley, Tal Bachman, The Cult, and, most recently, the Hollywood Vampires, making for a hearty resume. 

And while his climb to the top of the bass-playing mountain was long and hard, he felt he was destined to make it from the start. “I had a strong sense that I’d play music for a living, and I had an even stronger drive,” he tells Bass Player.

“So I made some recordings, which made their way to Mike Varney, who wrote some very nice things about me. He said I was one of the finest two-hand tappers he’d ever heard – which was amazing as I was only 17, and I’d been playing for just three years. It was like the gods had confirmed my intuition was right.”

Wyse’s chops landed him exposure in mags like Guitar Player when he was 17 and Guitar for the Practicing Musician when he was 20; but things didn’t really kick off until he made his way to L.A.

“As an up-and-coming player, the big thing was being able to lay down grooves and do so tastefully,” he says. “I did my best to dress songs up like a Christmas tree to where there was a theme.”

That ability to dress songs up has served Wyse well, while giving him the opportunity to play alongside some of rock and metal's finest – and it nearly scored him a spot in Metallica, leading to a well-known audition (more on that later).

These days, when he’s not working on his bass-centric solo work, Wyse is currently holding down the low end for the Hollywood Vampires, who wrapped up an extensive tour at the end of 2023. 

Given that he's served under Ace Frehley, it’s no surprise he’s been able to lock in so well with Joe Perry. “With Joe and Ace, you just have to let them do what they do and lay down a solid, groovy, powerful and dynamic rhythm,” Wyse says. 

“If you create that bed, they’ll layer all sorts of things over the top and create some real excitement. What they do isn’t precise – there’s some sloppiness – but they both know how to create a wide sound. It’s amazing to watch them do what they do; it’s unlike anyone else.”

Can you remember what first inspired you to pick up the bass?

“When I was young many of my friends played guitar and drums, and I was looking for my instrument. I wanted to play music – I was into a lot of hard rock bands – but I didn’t know what I wanted to play. I got into everything from The Beatles to Led Zeppelin to Rush, but that didn’t spark me to pick up the bass.

“My friends wanted me to play bass in their band, and around then I heard Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast. That was an eye-opener because Steve Harris showed me that the bass could be very diverse and almost athletic as an instrument. That’s how I found my instrument.”

Can you remember your first bass?

“It was a Gibson Ripper L-9S. It was honey-blonde colored. I regret getting rid of it to this day – it was such a cool bass, man!”

And how about your first proper bass rig?

“I remember getting an Ibanez Roadstar II bass with a maple neck. I liked it because it was closer to a Fender P-Bass, which I really wanted. I drove that Ibanez into the ground until the neck was unplayable and totally shot. That bass got me into tapping and soloing like Eddie Van Halen, who greatly influenced me.

“I also remember having a Kubicki Ex Factor bass with a Steinberger TransTrem bridge. I had all kinds of stuff, but the P-Bass is what I related to most. I found this guy with a ’54 Tele neck bass, and I put that neck on my ’95 P-Bass body and put a DiMarzio J pickup in there, along with a Quarter Pound T pickup. That’s been my number one since the ‘90s – makes it onto every record.”

Speaking of the ‘90s, can you remember recording Tal Bachman’s hit, She’s So High?

“I would have been using the ’54 Tele neck Frankenstein bass. Bob Rock loved the sound of that bass, and even though he had all sorts of bass guitars in the studio, that bass kept coming up because it just has this special thing. The neck has a lot to do with it, but maybe there's some kind of resonance in the wood, too – I don't know.

“Anyway, I remember Tal’s demos featured some different stuff, so I took some chances by playing some riffs more melodically, and they loved it. The big thing was that I worked hard to respect the song – make it pop and create excitement. I might have added some arpeggiated things, which made it pop.”

From there, you hooked up with The Cult, who had an established sound. How did you put your stamp on things?

“The first album I did with The Cult was Beyond Good and Evil, which came when they were getting into heavier and more detuned stuff. I used an overdriven tone on that record, which is my signature. I found a frequency and tone out of this Tech 21 SansAmp, then split it with a clean tone, and I got this amazing sound.

“The tones I brought were nothing like The Cult ever had before – I think many people think it’s a guitar, but it’s me on bass. It was very exciting to jump in and affect things by doing what came naturally to me. That whole opportunity came through Bob Rock, who thought I’d be good for the role. He was right!”

And it was Bob who also got you the audition with Metallica after Jason Newsted left, right?

“Yeah. But the thing with that was Metallica had pretty much figured out that they wanted to go with Robert Trujillo. Bob said, ‘Hey, there’s another guy who can play with his fingers and do all the Cliff Burton stuff.’ The guys in Metallica had heard that Cult record; they liked my tone and were into my playing so they say, ‘Yeah, this guy has something. Let’s have him come in.’

“I was there for several hours. I was very comfortable because of Bob and his engineers, all of whom I knew and had worked with. I knew I could play all the finger stuff like Cliff, and maybe even add some stuff that would be new and fresh because of my crushing tone.

“They wanted Robert – but after me, they took a few weeks, so I must have made an impression on them because they had to think about it.”

Why do you feel they didn’t choose you?

“I think they thought I was still a young kid at that point, you know? I understood – and maybe I was. But I still felt comfortable. In the end, Kirk Hammett called me, saying, ‘We’re gonna go with Robert, who’s been a friend for a long time. But since Robert is leaving Ozzy to join us, maybe you'd be into it?’

“I was into it, but then Kirk called me back about an hour later, saying, ‘Man, you won’t believe it, Jason Newsted is joining Ozzy. He got the gig!’”

You did eventually join Ozzy later. Was it a challenge coming in behind the many great players he’d utilized previously?

“No, it was very natural because I’m a Geezer Butler and Bob Daisley guy. I grew up on that stuff and understood how to jump into that mix. The two Ozzy Osbourne releases I did, Under Cover and Prince of Darkness, were so much fun and natural. All these sinister riffs flowed out of me, and when we played live, I could interpret those classic songs. It was a lot of fun with Ozzy and a dream come true.”

Given Ace Frehley’s freewheeling nature, was it a challenge to get in sync with him? 

“I was always a big Kiss fan; they were a huge part of my early excitement for hard rock music. Those ‘70s Kiss records blew my mind! Our version of Ace’s band – me, Richie Scarlet [guitar] and Scot Coogan [drums] – really pulled it all together. That lineup was so bombastic and trapped in a moment in time. We were tight as can be, man.”

What do you think made that lineup so special?

“There’s always an element of rock ’n’ roll danger with Ace. We were just so solid and bombastic. We really had it together and it didn’t need to be polished. I think the energy of that lineup was amazing, but we always knew it wouldn’t last. I got to a point where I was at a crossroads: I had an offer to join the Hollywood Vampires, which, despite how much I loved playing with Ace – who had a ton of plans – I couldn’t turn down.”

How did the Hollywood Vampires gig present itself?

“I had been on tour with Ace, opening for Alice Cooper. Ace and Alice’s band were good friends and I became great friends with Tommy Henriksen, who’s also a member of the Vampires. 

“The Vampires had Robert DeLeo, who was going to do Stone Temple Pilots again, and then they got Duff McKagan, but Guns N' Roses got back together again, so he was out. Tommy was talking to me about all this and he goes, ‘We’re looking for a guy.’ I totally didn’t get it, and suddenly I was like, ‘Oh God, you’re talking about me!’ 

“It took a while – but eight months later I got a call and was asked to join the Hollywood Vampires. It made sense because I’d also worked with Joe in his Joe Perry Project band. It felt natural.”

How did Ace take it?

“Honestly, he was fine; around that time he’d said, ‘Look, I’m gonna start using Gene Simmons’ band,’ and I had the Vampires, so there was no conflict.

“Ace and I are forever bonded as friends. I spent so much time with him, and when I had my hernia surgery, he actually drove me there and took care of me after, and even bought me food while I stayed with him for two weeks. I’ll forever be proud of my time with Ace and my little Kiss chapter.”

In addition to the Vampires you've got your solo work. What’s next? 

“The guys in the Vampires are prolific writers, and watching people be so consistently creative is inspiring. We’re releasing a filmed concert that we did in Boston, and there will be some behind-the-scenes stuff, which is cool because we’re very powerful and tight now. I’m excited for people to witness us at this stage because we've worked hard to get here.

“As for my solo stuff, I’ve put my band, Owl, on hold and I’m working on some solo, bass-centric stuff. I’ve got six tracks up online so far for people to check out. It’s gothic-sounding, bass-heavy and has a lot of layering. I’ve got a song about Jack the Ripper – I’m exploring some new ground. It’s not traditional stuff; it differs from Owl, but I’m very excited to share it with people.”

• Follow Wyse’s work-in-progress at his website.

“Being back on tour in the States touring was a real blast!” enthuses the acclaimed Charlie Jones, whose resume with Page & Plant, Goldfrapp, Robert Plant and many other artists has given him a reputation as a go-to stage and studio bassist. He has good reason to be cheerful, not only because he’s just back from a successful Stateside tour but also because he has a new bass. 

A Custom Shop one-off made by Fender Master Builder Scott Buehl, the new Precision has a body made of acrylic and is the fourth transparent-bodied bass he’s owned. We ask him what the benefits are of a see-through bass, and check in with Buehl himself about the challenges of this crazy material...

Charlie, you’re known for playing acrylic basses, to the point where Fender have now made you one in their Custom Shop.

"They have indeed. I always wanted a plastic bass guitar, but people never took the idea seriously. There were very few around when I was starting out, apart from Dan Armstrong basses, so I bought one of those before I started working with Page & Plant. It wasn’t quite right, though: there was something about the feel of the neck that I wanted to change.

"I started working with Fender in 1998, so I asked them if they would consider making me a plastic bass. They said, ‘Well, it’s not really our thing’, so I had an acrylic bass made by Neil MacDonald of Nightingale Guitars. That was a P-Bass copy, with a plastic headstock grafted onto a wooden neck. You can see me playing it on The Wanton Song with Page and Plant on Jools Holland in 1998."

How do the tones differ from a regular wood-bodied bass? 

"In my experience, having had three different acrylic basses already – the new one being the best so far – is that they have a low-mid focus and punch to the sound. It’s got this low-mid strength to it, to the point where if you were sitting behind a desk in the studio, you could really hear the difference. The other thing is that having a plastic headstock on top of a wooden neck also makes a difference to the sound: it’s really focused, with a strong, direct type of tone." 

And what’s the sustain like?

"Fantastic. It has a lot of good, long sustain – very clear and tuneful and melodic. It’s a very musical sound. You wouldn’t call it a light bass, but it’s not a backbreaker. It’s no heavier than playing a Gibson Recording bass, for example. I pair it with Aguilar amps and I use Bass Centre strings." 

You’ve been out on the road with the Cult lately. Their former bassists Jamie Stewart and Chris Wyse have both told us that even though loads of the Cult’s hits are just eighth notes in D, C and G, there’s a lot of nuances in those bass parts. Is that correct?

"It’s very interesting. I’ve done a lot of stuff as a bass player over the years, on electric and upright, so when I joined the Cult I knew not to underestimate them, because Ian [Astbury, singer] and Billy [Duffy, guitar] are fantastic musicians: conceptually, they’re off the scale. Billy said to me, ‘Everyone thinks the Cult’s music is easy, with only four or five chords, but every song is different. You have to know the song inside out, because if you don’t know the difference between me playing a C instead of a G or an F instead of A, it’s easy to screw up.’"

In other words, simple songs are just as challenging as complex ones?

"Maybe even more challenging. Remember this: when you’re playing music that’s complex, it has very obvious ornamentation that you can hang a hat on. That’s easier than playing music where all the chords are very similar and they swap around. It’s a bit like saying to somebody who works with James Brown, ‘Oh, the songs all have the same grooves all the way through’. Yes, but just imagine learning all that stuff. It’s the same principle with the Cult. The songs are very well thought out. There’s no meat on the bone – so you need to rehearse them until you’ve got them down perfectly." 

Find out all you need to know about Charlie's transparent P Bass in this next clip. His new acrylic axe emerges at 10:00. Charlie also demos his Nightingale Guitars P-Bass copy at 06:30.

Grand Designs: An interview with Scott Buehl of Fender Custom Shop

Chances are you may already know about the handiwork of Fender Custom Shop master builder Scott Buehl. When it comes to the art of guitar building there are few luthiers who can match his open-minded approach. We asked Scott to explain the fine art of making basses from acrylic. 

Scott, what are the challenges when making a bass body from this material?

"When you cut the stuff, you have to really slow the cutters down, and also you have to cut with water. If you cut it dry, it would be very slow and take very small bites. Also, it’s very sensitive to all of the chemicals that we use. Are you familiar with the term crazing, where the surface cracks? That’s what happens when you touch acrylic with the wrong stuff: it shatters like a piece of safety glass, down to about half a millimetre deep. It’s a nightmare." 

Is it a heavy material? 

"Very heavy. If you look at Charlie’s bass, with the pickup routing, I cut that material out all the way to the edge of the pickguard. I took as much weight as I could out of the thing."

Is it physically strong?

"If you hit it hard enough, it’s going to break, depending on where you hit it, but the nice thing is that you can just polish that spot and fix it, if it doesn’t have paint on it. But no, it’s not strong. I couldn’t make a neck out of it. I wouldn’t say it’s rubbery, but it does flex more than wood when it’s under load, so I have to compensate for that with the thickness of the material." 

Charlie’s bass has an acrylic headstock. How does it attach to the neck? 

"It’s glued on, with a scarf joint. The truss rods actually anchor out in the acrylic. It’s joined at an angle, and then the fretboard goes on top of those two pieces and makes a sandwich, so it’s really strong. The challenge there was figuring out what to glue it with, and trying to keep the truss rod clean." 

What’s the coolest instrument you’ve ever made?

"There was a Ferrari Red Jazz bass with a maple neck that I built 10 years ago. It was really beautiful, and everything on it was great. Another one was a Strat made out of hydroformed aluminum. Everybody loved it, and a VP came in one day and said, ‘Hey, can we loan this guitar out to this artist? He’s recording a record right now and he wants to borrow it’. So I sent it out to the guy, and he ended up keeping it because he liked it so much. I wish I could tell you his name, because he’s a very famous guy, but he deals with another guitar company and doesn’t play our stuff."

What’s the craziest guitar you’ve made?

"It was a guitar called a Splattercaster, which was made out of aluminum. It had windows with liquid goo inside that moved around. That was about 20 years ago, and funnily enough it was for a design contest in your magazine, Guitar World. That took such a long time, with such a lot of development work, that at the end, I just wanted to hang the thing up and shoot it!"

For more information about Charlie Jones visit charliejones.net.
You can follow Scott Buehl on Instagram at www.instagram.com/scotty_fender.

Welcome to Guitar World’s weekly roundup of the musical highlights from the, erm, world of guitar. Every seven days (or thereabouts), we endeavor to bring you a selection of songs from across the guitar universe, all with one thing in common: our favorite instrument plays a starring role.

The Cult – A Cut Inside

What is it? Yet more evidence that Billy Duffy’s guitar playing is quite simply timeless. A Cut Inside is taken from the UK rock institution’s 11th studio effort, and it’s anthemic and brooding in equal measure.

Standout guitar moment: Duffy’s Gretsch tone – possibly courtesy of the still-in-development Falcon Junior – soars out of the speakers, especially on that chunky main riff. With a different rig, those Phrygian overtones would be out-and-out metal, but they’re all the more beguiling delivered via hollowbody crunch.

For fans of: The Cure, Def Leppard, L.A. Guns 

– Michael Astley-Brown

Yungblud – Don’t Go 

What is it? For whatever reason, Yungblud is a polarizing figure in music, but if there’s one thing that everyone can agree on, it’s that his most recent self-titled album – his third studio LP to date – is his most mature, accomplished and well-rounded effort so far. Case in point is Don’t Go, which sees Yungblud – aka Dominic Harrison – pair his story-like lyrics with some tightly produced guitar action. 

Rather than offering a sporadic assault on the ears with loud-as-you-can-go gains and vocals that tread the line between singing and screaming, Don’t Go is contained and well-structured, and is a sign that, despite his mad hatter act, Yungblud is a seriously good musician.

Standout guitar moment: The see-sawing between lo-fi acoustic guitars that sound like they were recorded on a smartphone and the high fidelity electric guitars make for a refreshing Yungblud listening experience, with the delicately layered melodies adding even more six-string ear candy into the mix.

For fans of: KennyHoopla, The 1975, Machine Gun Kelly

– Matt Owen

Lamb of God – Grayscale

What is it? The third single from Virginia metal juggernaut Lamb of God’s forthcoming ninth album, Omens. Following its title track and Nevermore, Grayscale is similarly frantic – with a clutch of speaker-rattling riffs courtesy of longtime axemen Mark Morton and Willie Adler – and showcases a metal institution that despite nearly three decades in the game, courses with more unbridled energy than ever.

Standout guitar moment: While Mark Morton and Willie Adler’s tried-and-tested Phrygian antics are an obvious choice here, we’re hard pressed to remember a better-played pinch harmonic than the one at the 1:15 mark.

For fans of: Machine Head, DevilDriver, Trivium

– Sam Roche

Joanne Shaw Taylor – Just No Getting Over You (Dream Cruise)

What is it? The tough, soulful lead single from the British blues guitar great’s new, Joe Bonamassa and Josh Smith-produced album, Nobody's Fool. Just No Getting Over You nods to the blues certainly, but isn’t an orthodox work, referencing Stax and Motown with an infectious, horn-led groove that’s impossible not to love. 

Standout guitar moment: Uptempo it may be, this a heartache song, and Taylor delivers the goods with a biting, attitude-filled solo that speaks a thousand words. Top prize, though, has to go to that opening riff, which Keith Richards would have been proud to pen. 

For fans of: The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Joe Bonamassa

– Jackson Maxwell

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Ice V 

What is it? Another extended epic from Aussie psychedelic rockers King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, who spend Ice V’s 10-minute runtime stitching together a tapestry of growling lead licks and numerous nuanced melodic counterpoint motifs. It’s also the first single ahead of what looks to be a hectic October for King Gizzard, who are gearing up to release not one, not two, but three albums in one month. With each track boasting plus-five-minute runtimes – a few even hit the 15 minute mark – you better have a big appetite for Gizzard material: there’s a lot coming.

Standout guitar moment: The extended jam section from the 2:10 mark is a highlight. Kicking off with some percussive wah strums and twinkly upper-register scale licks, the instrumentation builds as it introduces more and more six-string action, culminating in the form of snappy strums and slow bebop-y runs.

For fans of: The Smile, Black Midi, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets

– Matt Owen

Brutus – Victoria

What is it? Art-rock, post-rock, post-hardcore: whatever you want to call them, Brutus are possibly the most exciting thing to ever come out of Belgium, thanks to the potent combination of pining guitar melodies and impassioned vocals from singing stickswoman Stefanie Mannaerts.

Standout guitar moment: If you like your guitar tones slathered in reverb, Stijn ‘soundgaerden’ Vanhoegaerden’s got your back. He’s got a smart ear for guitar parts that tread the line between chord progressions and riffs, all of which weave their way into your psyche.

For fans of: Thrice, Cave In, Emma Ruth Rundle

– Michael Astley-Brown

Cherie Amour – Letting Go

What is it? Offering an stirring blend of hip-hop and pop-punk, Baltimore-based four-piece Cherie Amour serve up killer vibes in abundance on their latest track, Letting Go. While frontman Trey Miller highlights himself as a exceptionally talented vocalist – switching between effortless rap flow and uber-catchy melodic lines – guitarists Casey Reid and Brendan Willis illustrate how well the electric guitar works with hip-hop with a series of punk-style arpeggios and powerchords.

Standout guitar moment: The intermittent arpeggios in the intro marry perfectly with Miller’s vocals, with periodic volume swells for added dynamic effect.

For fans of: KennyHoopla, State Champs, Blink-182

– Sam Roche

Molly Payton – Do It All the Same 

What is it? She’s currently on tour supporting indie rock phenom Beabadoobee, but Molly Payton has all the attributes to become one of the genre’s hottest up-and-coming acts in her own right, evidenced by her guitar-heavy new single, Do It All the Same. Oversized chorus hooks, sizzling decorative leads and an infectious attitude that makes you want to sling an air guitar down to just above the knees, it’s a track that is probably proving to be very popular among Beabadoobee gig-goers right now, and for good reason.

Standout guitar moment: As far as indie tones go, Payton’s sticker-battered white Fender Strat treads the tightrope between clean and dirty very nicely indeed, and, when paired with the razor-like leads of the chorus, falls over the edge into all-out indie rock bliss.

For fans of: Wallice, Beabadoobee, Soccer Mommy

– Matt Owen

Sorry – Key to the City

What is it? The latest from North London’s hottest gloom-pop outfit marries downbeat grunge sensibilities with the kind of melancholic arpeggiated progressions that dominated indie post-Johnny Marr. In essence, it’s right up our street.

Standout guitar moment: The opening guitar line is deceptively tricksy, awash with nifty hammer-ons and pull-offs.

For fans of: Arlo Parks, Placebo, Shame

– Michael Astley-Brown

Wednesday – Bull Believer

What is it? The first single the up-and-coming Asheville, North Carolina quintet have released with indie giant Dead Oceans. Wednesday have had some noisy outbursts before, but Bull Believer is a different beast all together, a multi-faceted eight-minute colossus with a stunning, climactic outro that takes this group’s sound to a whole new level.

Standout guitar moment: Karly Hartzman and MJ Lenderman’s six-string chemistry has never been more potent, but it’s Xandy Chelmis who really steals the show here, making his lap steel alternately sound like blaring sirens and hypnotic, ever-so-slightly discordant church bells.

For fans of: My Bloody Valentine, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Snail Mail

– Jackson Maxwell

Ozzy Osbourne – Nothing Feels Right (feat. Zakk Wylde)

What is it? The latest from The Price of Darkness’s highly anticipated and star-studded 13th solo album, Patient Number 9. Continuing the album’s trend of high-profile guest spots – Jeff Beck featured on its title track, while Tony Iommi appeared on second single Degradation Rules – Osbourne’s former six-string sidekick Zakk Wylde lends his chops to this one, offering crystalline cleans, stereo-filling powerchords and a lead passage for the ages.

Standout guitar moment: Wylde displays not only his enviable soloing skills but also his six-string endurance in a minute-long solo from the 3:28 mark, loaded with lightning-fast alternate picking phrases, soaring melodies and face-melting descending pull-off runs.

For fans of: Black Sabbath, Black Label Society

– Sam Roche 

The Cult have announced that their first album in six years will be titled Under the Midnight Sun, and it will arrive October 7.

To celebrate their long-awaited return, the English rock veterans have dropped the record’s tantalizing lead single, Give Me Mercy – a track that is said to be indicative of the band’s continued development over the past half-decade.

Propped up by a captivating lead melody executed by resident electric guitar titan Billy Duffy, the track is quintessential Cult, featuring the commanding vocals of founding vocalist Ian Astbury and plenty of juicy six-string action.

Of the track’s origins, Astbury explained, “I was absolutely enamored with this piece of music Billy had written, and it perfectly fit these thoughts I’d been having about our culture’s need to move past assumptions of duality. We need new language because words can’t express where we’re going.”

“Give Me Mercy has all the hallmarks of the new classic Cult to my ears,” Duffy added. “Fresh yet familiar.”

Under the Midnight Sun’s conception can be traced back to an “almost occult” phenomenon experienced by Astbury during Finland’s Provinssirock Festival, wherein the sun didn’t leave the sky one evening.

“It’s three in the morning, the sun’s up, and there’s all these beautiful people in this halcyon moment,” Astbury recalled. “People are laying on the grass, making out, drinking, smoking. There were rows of flowers at the front of the stage from the performances earlier that evening. It was an incredible moment.”

After the pandemic halted their recording and touring routine, it wouldn’t be until lockdown lifted and the band could meet in the studio that work on Under the Midnight Sun started to take shape.

“When the world stopped, I had this moment to write in real time, to calculate,” Astbury commented.“I was compelled by this vision, this anomaly, this memory, of being under the midnight sun. Tom [Dalgety] helped us bring a new musical shape and frequency to our process.”

Under the Midnight Sun will be The Cult’s 10th studio album and their first since 2016’s Hidden City. It was produced by Dalgety, whose credits include Pixies, Ghost and Royal Blood.

• Under the Midnight Sun is available to preorder now via Black Hill Records.

“We both felt that Coloursøund was a bit like unfinished business,” Billy Duffy says about his collaborative project with The Alarm singer Mike Peters. And indeed, it’s been unfinished since Duffy, then on a break from The Cult, and Peters, who likewise was on hiatus from the Welsh band he had fronted since the early ‘80s, released their debut together, Coloursøund, all the way back in 1999.

Since then, Duffy has remained plenty busy with a reunited Cult, while Peters has worked with a new version of The Alarm (dubbed The Alarm MM++) as well as launched a solo career. But the two artists’ personal and professional relationship remained strong, and so when it came to Coloursøund, it was less a question of “if” and more a question of “when.”

“Coloursøund didn’t split up in so much as I had to leave it in ‘99 because The Cult reformed and we got offered a really big record deal,” Duffy says.

“But Mike and I have always worked together over the years and we have a great connection. So when The Cult were going through a bit of a quiet period, I just felt like, you know, I like to work. And that's what Mike and I started doing.”

The result is the aptly named Coloursøund II, which picks up, more than two decades later, more or less where the first one left off, with a collection of high-energy, hip-shaking jams (see the first single, Paradise [Free People]) that, while heavily rooted in classic rock, bring in elements of the styles both artists cut their teeth on, from punk and post-punk to new wave and alternative. 

If anything, the record is a bit rougher and rawer than its predecessor, and in some cases, such as the chugging, metallic Lightning Strike, even heavier.

“For me and Mike, our intention going in was just to keep a bit of the humanity and the spontaneity,” Duffy says. “Just make a rock record. We didn’t want to drag it out.”

Duffy sat down with Guitar World to discuss that new rock record, as well as the connection between he and Peters that makes Coloursøund click. He also reminisced on his teenage punk years in England, including the seismic moment of witnessing the Sex Pistols and the Buzzcocks onstage in a tiny Manchester club, and then looked forward to give us some exclusive info on his recently teased collaboration with Gretsch on a forthcoming signature model. “It exists, and it sounds great,” he says.

It’s been more than 20 years since the first Coloursøund album. Why now?

“That’s a very good and reasonable question to ask. I don't know, there just never seemed to be the right set of circumstances in the last 20 years. I got busy with the Cult, and then the Cult wasn’t busy, but then Mike got busy with the Alarm and his own solo thing. I mean, Mike is probably the busiest man in rock that I know. He's always doing something. 

“But in late 2019, I think, I just sent him a riff. Because what happened was, I'm still working on the new Cult album as well, and there’s a few little riffs and things that are just not seemingly right for where the Cult's at these days. So I sent one off to Mike to see how he would react.

“Within 20 minutes he'd written a verse and sent it back to me and we thought, 'Oh, okay. Maybe there's something still here…' And once we’d done that first track, which wound up being Paradise, that sort of set the intention: “Well, maybe we'll get together and write some more stuff…”

What was the process for putting this one together?

“In January 2020, we decided to get together in a little cottage on the coast in North Wales. And so that's what we did. You know, I always joke about the Led Zeppelin thing, where Jimmy Page and Robert Plant got together in a cottage in Wales and wrote songs about California. Well, we did the cottage bit, and it was great. I really loved it. As a rock fan and a bit of a rock music geek, I’ve always felt that's how records should be made, right? You go away and you get in the bubble and you make a whole magical thing. 

“So that was it – we gave ourselves three days, we came up with seven or eight songs. I went back to America for a while and Mike worked on those songs, got some lyrics together. I came back to England in March, and then the lockdown happened. And basically we just sort of long-distance worked on the songs until we felt we were ready to record. And the minute they lifted the lockdown in the UK we went into the studio and cut some stuff and finished it off. And that was the album, basically. It was spontaneous. It wasn't a dragged-out thing.”

I’ve heard you talk about wanting to do something that was simple and direct, almost live-sounding, with this album. Basically, what we think of as the sound of a rock ‘n’ roll band. Which, in 2021, is sort of outside the norm.

“Yeah, I agree. Most people now are embracing technology and making records in a different way and, you know, there's no judgments. If something sounds good, it is good. It doesn't matter how you get there.

“So we would sit in the control room every morning after breakfast at this residential studio called the Chapel in deepest Lincolnshire, which is like England's Nebraska… if Nebraska had a coast. [laughs] We worked on the tracks fairly spontaneously with the producer, George [Williams], who ended up playing bass on the record. And the drummer was Smiley, who plays with Mike and is a very musical guy. It just felt like a good, honest, old-fashioned way of making a record.”

That said, it also sounds like a contemporary record. Which speaks to a larger point about your guitar playing. Your style has always hit on a lot of classic rock and blues-rock references, but interpreted through a punky, sometimes almost post-modern lens.

“I try to do that. You know, I think that's one of the dangers of saying in 2021, 'Oh, we're just making a rock record.' You really have this terrible fear it's going to just be some riffs that are a thousand times rehashed. But I try to put my own personality into it. And I think that growing up in England, and the punk thing that Mike and I lived through, has had somewhat of an indelible effect on our DNA as performers and writers. 

“Which isn't to say that I want to make punk-rock music, but there's something about the atmosphere of living through that that will be with me always. There was a point in my life where I was 15, 16, and I was like a sponge. And just the sights and the sounds and the smells of actually being at punk gigs, actually being in the room when the Sex Pistols played for real, that’s never gonna leave me.

“Much in the same way that people talk about being at the Fillmore East when Hendrix got up and jammed with, I don’t know, Humble Pie or whatever. It stays with you and it's in there to this day.”

It influences the way you interpret those bluesy, classic-rock-style riffs. We hear it in Paradise (Free People) the same way we did in the Cult’s Love Removal Machine.

“Well, another thing I would say, and this is more from the guitar-playing point of view, is that I never had guitar lessons. And most of the guys I knew never had guitar lessons. But when I came to America I found a lot of kids who were great players, and they'd had guitar lessons when they were, like, 13, where someone showed them how to play all these songs. And then they ended up in cover bands to earn a living. So they knew how to play all these tunes. It was almost a bit like their vision was colored by the greats. 

“Whereas for us, with that punk, post-punk upbringing, we never did covers. Or if we did, they were basically like Stooges or New York Dolls or something, nothing too complex. So developmentally I guess my generation grew up a little bit less structured, perhaps. I really didn't know how to play Led Zeppelin songs properly, and I think that was good for me. It's not that I didn't enjoy that kind of music, it’s just that I didn't ever have to play it, so I didn't need to learn it. And I just got on with my own stuff.”

Speaking of your own stuff, what gear did you use this time out?

“Funnily enough, the majority of my equipment lives in the United States, where the Cult is based as a business. So when I'm in England it’s a bit of whatever I can get my hands on.

“Guitar-wise, I used my standard, which would be, I have a [Gibson Les Paul] Goldtop there, and a [Gretsch] White Falcon. I basically like to have a Gretsch and a Gibson, and some form of Fender, possibly, but not that so much. Really, a Gretsch and a Gibson are my two go-to guitars.

“And amps, I’ll just use anything I can, although I'm primarily a Marshall guy. I use Friedmans in the States, although I didn't have one in England. But I used a couple of Marshalls, I had a little Roland, and nowadays – I will not lie – there was a bit of amp modeling mixed in there. I'm not scared to admit it. Just to add a little thickening to the sauce.”

Speaking of the Gretsch, you recently teased a smaller-bodied White Falcon signature model. Is there anything you can tell us about that?

“I'm actually sitting here and staring at one of the prototypes now. I've been playing one for some Coloursøund stuff. We've made some videos for the album and I've been using them. So I think it’s going to get made, we're just fine-tuning it. 

“My thing is it's a 'Falcon Junior'. It's stripped down, and basically based on all those simple one-pickup guitars that I loved as a kid. It was like, 'How can I take the essence of a Falcon and kind of shrink it down a bit but still keep the balls?' And that was to make a junior. So, what would that look like? What would it feel like? And I think we've cracked it.

“It's a thinner body, kind of a medium-sized body. The headstock's about a third smaller. I can't give away too many details, but we wanted to keep it separate from the big White Falcon. It could be a little more of an easy-to-use, grab-and-go instrument. And I've got to say, it's a lot of fun. We've pretty much signed off on it. And I'm hoping that we're going to get it out soon.”

Before I let you go, I have to ask: you mentioned earlier that as a teenager in England you saw the Sex Pistols perform. What was that like?

“It was great. I mean, I was only 15, I was still in high school, so it was very, very different. It was very violent in the crowd, and the Pistols, they were wearing all these fabulous outfits that had been designed by Malcolm McLaren and, of course, Vivienne Westwood. And they sounded great. They were this otherworldly band. I mean, you know, Paul Cook and Steve Jones, Glen Matlock, I saw them in that incarnation, the original ‘76.

“I also saw the Buzzcocks as well, which was their first gig. It was the same gig, and it was incredible. Pete Shelley had a guitar that had been, like, basically sawn in half length-wise. And he did a guitar solo which I think is still one of the best guitar solos ever recorded, and it's only got two notes in it. It’s a song called Boredom. The whole thing just stuck with me. Because I went in there liking Free and Aerosmith and Thin Lizzy and Status Quo – you know, rock. But seeing the Pistols changed my outlook. 

“After that it was Iggy Pop, the Dolls, the Stooges, the MC5. I never lost the love for good, honest, guitar-driven rock, but I also started going down the path of alternative music that wasn't necessarily commercially successful.”

Where was that Pistols show?

“It was in Manchester in, I think, July of 1976, at a little venue called the Lesser Free Trade Hall. And you know, it was a bit of a pivotal moment. These days a lot of people now claim to have been there.”

Sure they were.

“[laughs] There were actually probably only about 250 people there. But I was one of them. I have the ticket and the poster to prove it!”

• Coloursøund II is available to preorder now.

The Cult electric guitar great Billy Duffy has teamed up with the Alarm’s Mike Peters for Coloursøund II, the second effort from their Coloursøund collab.

The pair formed Coloursøund in 1997, and released their self-debut in 1999. “You could say that our songwriting partnership was born outside of wedlock,” Peters said.

“When we first started working together in the late 1990s we had no allegiance to either the Cult or the Alarm. We were drawn to write instinctively together, Billy drove the music from a guitar perspective and I would add lyrics and vocals affected by being in the presence of someone who had followed a similar life journey and affected as I had, by the turbulence of the rock and roll existence."

Coloursøund II marks their first recorded work in more than two decades, and you can check out the first fruits of the effort, Paradise (Free People), below.

Explained Duffy, “Free people is who we are now. We have a lot more understanding of how life works and the original Coloursøund phase taught us both so much about ourselves, that we were able to return, survive and thrive in the bands that we made our reputations with.

“Ever since we first started working together, we have both retained and hung on to elements of that newly found artistic freedom we experienced through the Coloursøund project.“

He continued, “2019 felt like the right time to do something together as Coloursøund. What neither of us saw coming was the pandemic and how this music would help us both through the challenges of lockdown."

Coloursøund II was recorded between lockdowns at the Chapel Studio in Lincolnshire with bassist George Williams and Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros drummer Smiley joing Duffy and Peters.

“I had this vision to create a really simple, direct rock record,” Duffy said. “A record that allowed both Mike and I to do what we do best and be heard for who we are. Almost like we were playing live without overdubs.

“I had a belief that a record recorded and delivered in this manner, would cut through and sound as contemporary as anything out there. We have gathered so much experience between us, that I felt we could be totally honest in our musicianship and deliver a record that captured the essence of our relationship.”

Added Peters, “As soon as I opened Billy’s email and heard that first classic riff of his, I knew the calling of Coloursøund had to be answered. No one plays guitar like Billy, he’s the master of his art and more, and to create music and sing with him is a privilege.

“This is not the Cult, nor is it the Alarm. This is Coloursøund – alive because it exists. Here and now because we have made it so, and this is the time to set it free.”

Coloursøund II is out July 16, and is available for preorder here. Additionally, the band's debut album, Coloursøund, will be available for the first time on streaming services beginning April 30. 

Although best known as the co-founder and lead guitarist of The Cult, Billy Duffy has been working virtually nonstop since the late Seventies. Beyond The Cult—who are hitting the road with Stone Temple Pilots and Bush on the Revolution 3 tour this summer—Duffy has played in Kings Of Chaos (alongside members of Guns 'N' Roses, Stone Temple Pilots, Cheap Trick and ZZ Top), Coloursound (with The Alarm's Mike Peters) and Circus Diablo. Duffy has sold millions of albums between these acts, and always has a big catalog to pull on the road.

Duffy—who is well known for his signature Gretsch White Falcon—recently spoke to Guitar World about guitars, The Cult and more.

Even back in the early days you played a Gretsch White Falcon. What was it that led you to the White Falcon?

It was a combination of things. Initially it was the look of course, then the sound. Pre-punk it was Malcolm [Young] and Neil Young and post-punk it was the New York Dolls and Bow Wow Wow. I always had a soft spot for Gretsches and the Falcon to me was the most iconic, almost a semi mythical guitar (laugh). Magic powers, maybe. In a practical sense the guitar helped me in the search for my own post-punk rock sound when The Cult formed due to its uniqueness.

How does the Billy Duffy version of the White Falcon differ from what was originally on the market?

It’s identical to my original 1975 single cut Falcon in every way except for a more normal truss rod arrangement, and of course much more powerful pickups; Seventies ones were very, very weak. Oh, and no scratch plate and the bridge is fixed in place. All the little things I prefer and require of a guitar.

You seem to regularly change up between a White Falcon and a Les Paul. Do you exclusively write on a particular guitar?

No, I find I tend to rotate guitars at home every few weeks, and that helps me to get a bit of variety to what I may come up with. I’ll grab one for a month and then swap out, no preference, but like you say for live I prefer the Paul and the Falcon. I don’t have a huge collection, just a [Les Paul] Junior, a few of my own versions of Esquires with my signature pickup in them. They're fun. I have a Nash Strat that surfaces once in a great while [and] I need to get my hands on a Jazzmaster.

Hidden City is the latest studio album from The Cult. Is there another full-length in the works?

Never say never! Ian [Astbury, The Cult's frontman] and I enjoy the process of making new music, and we feel it’s vital to keep the band healthy, even if it’s pretty much in the law of diminishing returns area now. Who knows if it will be a whole album a series of singles or an EP? I can say new Cult music will be forthcoming, but these days we don’t rush it as there’s no point. Quality is key. We are past the point of having to release stuff so if we feel it’s good enough, then we will release it in some shape or another.

On your upcoming tour with Stone Temple Pilots and Bush, will your set be focusing on a particular period of your career?

No, it will be a mixed bag. What we feel most appropriate for a multi-headliner situation... Always a recent song or two in there along with the hits.

The Cult aside, I saw you perform with Kings Of Chaos a year and a half or so ago. Is that band still active?

I really enjoy the challenge of the Kings gigs, playing with some amazing musicians and a few legendary ones. It’s always a lot of fun as we all enjoy a break from our regular gigs. I’m sure if any opportunities arise for Kings Of Chaos, I’ll get a call from Matt Sorum, and if I’m free I’m there.

What about Circus Diablo? Or is The Cult going to be your primary focus for the immediate future?

(laughs) No, at the moment The Cult gets 100 percent of my attention.

When not busy with music, how do you like to spend your free time?

I lead a split personality lifestyle, I suppose. Half outdoorsy and half couch potato.

What was the last concert you went to for fun?

Good question, actually it was Morrissey with Billy Idol as guest at the Hollywood Bowl. I went with Jonsey [Steve Jones] from The [Sex] Pistols and had a great night out.

Finally, Billy, any last words for the kids?

A word of advice… Well to be honest, I’d hope “the kids” are way too self-assured to listen to an old geezer like me, so I tend to keep my own council on these matters. However, if you put a gun to my head, I’d always advise on a great haircut and guitar and as many girlfriends as you can manage!

As legend has it, guitarist Billy Duffy essentially created the mystical guitar sound for the intro to this classic hit song “by accident,” by having every effect on his pedalboard left on following a bit of wild studio experimentation.

Most noticeable, and of importance to the overall sound, is the use of two separate delay pedals, set for short and medium delay times of approximately 400 and 800 milliseconds, respectively. If you have access to only a single delay pedal, the 800ms setting will best allow you to approximate the sound heard in the original recording. Also present on the clean guitar heard during the song’s intro is a flanger effect, as well as the built-in chorus from Duffy’s Roland JC-120 stereo guitar amp.

Later in the song, however, the guitarist turns off the flanger effect and kicks on an overdrive pedal to create a heavier guitar tone for the verse and chorus sections.

The song’s main riffs are pretty straightforward, as the majority of the melody notes are played up and down the G string in combination with the open D string, which Duffy effectively employs as a drone. [See this month’s In Deep column for more on drones.] The only tricky part might be performing some of the big note leaps, such as when you jump from the F# on the 11th fret in bar 13 down to the D note on the seventh fret on beat two, all within the space of half a beat. Learning to nail such large interval leaps with consistent accuracy means memorizing the riff and playing it over and over until your hand practically takes you there by itself, via muscle and “touch” memory.

For Jeff Perrin's tab of this song, pick up the June 2018 issue of Guitar World.

Stone Temple Pilots, Bush and the Cult are coming together for a North American tour they've dubbed Revolution 3. The "tri-headlining" summer tour will take the bands to amphitheaters and arenas across the continent from mid July through early September. Each band will take the stage in a different order on every stop of the tour.

"Over the years I have come to call the DeLeo brothers close friends. I appreciate their excellent musicianship and crazy sense of humor," Billy Duffy of the Cult said in a press release. "I'm looking forward to this amazing tour with STP and Bush, knowing we'll all be sharing the stage and enjoying a lot of laughs!"

"It is with great honor and pleasure to know we will be spending our summer vacation on the road with the gents from the Cult and Bush," said Stone Temple Pilots guitarist Dean DeLeo. "Two great bands and more so, great friends. Also, to be there with you is even better. With love. See y'all soon."

"It's going to be a great summer with STP and the Cult, two bands built on great rock songs," said Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale.

“For fans of guitar-based rock music, this is a killer bill," added Bush guitarist Chris Traynor. "It’s going to be a fun summer!”

You can check out the full itinerary of the tour below. For more information on tickets, head on over to livenation.com.

Revolution 3 Tour Dates:

Wednesday, July 18: Nashville, TN—Municipal Auditorium

Friday, July 20: Noblesville, IN—Ruoff Home Mortgage Music Center

Saturday, July 21: Burgettstown, PA—KeyBank Pavilion

Sunday, July 22: Huber Heights, OH—Rose Music Center

Tuesday, July 24: Detroit, MI—Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre at Freedom Hill

Wednesday, July 25: Toronto, ON—Budweiser Stage

Friday, July 27: Wantagh, NY—Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater

Saturday, July 28: Holmdel, NJ—PNC Bank Arts Center

Monday, July 30: Boston, MA—Blue Hills Bank Pavilion

Thursday, August 02: Gilford, NH—Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion

Sunday, August 05: Bristow, VA—Jiffy Lube Live

Friday, August 10: Pehlem, AL—Oak Mountain Amphitheatre

Wednesday, August 15: Laredo, TX—Laredo Energy Arena

Thursday, August 16: The Woodlands, TX—Cynthia Woods Mitchel Pavilion Presented by Huntsman

Saturday, August 18: Albuquerque, NM—Isleta Amphitheater

Sunday, August 19: Morrison, CO—Red Rocks Amphitheatre

Monday, August 20: West Valley City, UT—USANA Amphitheatre

Thursday, August 23: Pocatello, ID—Portneuf Health Trust Amphitheatre

Saturday, September 01: San Bernardino, CA—Glen Helen Amphitheatre

Sunday, September 02: Phoenix, AZ—Ak-Chin Pavilion

In this exclusive video from Ernie Ball, guitarist Billy Duffy discusses meeting Rick Rubin for the first time in New York City and working with the legendary producer on the Cult’s classic 1987 album, Electric.

If you like what you see below and want to check out the complete episode, Ernie Ball: The Pursuit of Tone—Billy Duffy will air 8 p.m. ET/PT Friday, July 1, on AUDIENCE Network DIRECTV Ch 239/U-verse Ch 1114.

In the episode, Duffy covers a wide variety of topics, including his early goals, why he considers “finding your own sound” to be the most important pursuit and the transformational effect the Sex Pistols had on him after seeing the group perform in Manchester, U.K.—and much more.

“Guitars are just a bit of wood with strings on it,” Duffy says. “It’s about the person playing it.”

Though they recently revealed that Alice in Chains and Lenny Kravitz would open select dates on their forthcoming "Not in This Lifetime" tour, Guns N' Roses had still yet to reveal who would open the vast majority of their stadium dates this coming summer.

That is, until today.

Today, the band revealed a slew of different openers for different dates on the tour, coming from an eclectic variety of genres.

For instance, country superstar Chris Stapleton will open the band's July 9 show at the Nissan Stadium in Nashville, while EDM icon Skrillex will open the band's August 5 show at the NRG Park in Houston.

In addition, Canadian rocker Billy Talent will open proceedings at the band's July 16 date at Toronto's Rogers Centre, while The Cult will open four shows during the tour's Southern swing from July 27-August 3.

You can see the full lineup of tour dates (with openers) below, and get tickets for the shows here.

• 06/23 — Detroit, Mich. — Ford Field (feat. Alice In Chains)
• 06/26 — Washington, D.C. — Fedex Field (feat. Alice In Chains)
• 06/29 — Kansas City, Mo. — Arrowhead Stadium (feat. Alice In Chains)
• 07/01 — Chicago, Ill. — Soldier Field (feat. Alice In Chains)
• 07/03 — Chicago, Ill. — Soldier Field (feat. Alice In Chains)
• 07/06 — Cincinnati, Ohio — Paul Brown Stadium
• 07/09 — Nashville, Tenn. — Nissan Stadium (feat. Chris Stapleton)
• 07/12 — Pittsburgh, Pa. — Heinz Field
• 07/14 — Philadelphia, Pa. — Lincoln Financial Field
• 07/16 — Toronto, Ontario — Rogers Centre (feat. Billy Talent)
• 07/19 — Foxborough, Mass. — Gilette Stadium (feat. Lenny Kravitz)
• 07/20 — Foxborough, Mass. — Gilette Stadium (feat. Lenny Kravitz)
• 07/23 — East Rutherford, N.J — MetLife Stadium (feat. Lenny Kravitz)
• 07/24 — East Rutherford, N.J. — MetLife Stadium (feat. Lenny Kravitz)
• 07/27 — Atlanta, Ga. — Georgia Dome (feat. The Cult)
• 07/29 — Orlando, Fla. — Orlando Citrus Bowl (feat. The Cult)
• 07/31 — New Orleans, La. — Mercedes-Benz Superdome (feat. The Cult)
• 08/03 — Arlington, Texas — AT&T Stadium (feat. The Cult)
• 08/05 — Houston, Texas — NRG Park (feat. Skrillex)
• 08/09 — San Francisco, Calif. — AT&T Park
• 08/12 — Seattle, Wash. — CenturyLink Field
• 08/15 — Glendale, Ariz. — University of Phoenix Stadium
• 08/18 — Los Angeles, Calif. — Dodger Stadium
• 08/22 — San Diego, Calif. — Qualcomm Stadium

Yeah, they dressed funny and their lyrics often lacked the angst and agonized self-awareness that we’ve come to expect in this decade of the rock and roll sissy-band, but the pop metal acts of the Eighties produced some top-shelf albums during their short reign.

In chronological order, these are the 20 best records woven, steamed and blow-dried by the most esteemed members of rock and roll’s Hair Club for Men before they were abruptly given the hook.

Check out the photo gallery below—and be sure to join the conversation in the comments section below the story.

Below, guitarist Billy Duffy of The Cult answers a series of questions from Guitar World readers.

As the only constant members of the Cult, you and [singer] Ian [Astbury] are the heart and soul of the band. What is that partnership like? How does Ian complement your creativity? — Kelly Youngblood

We’re both the same birth sign, and there are a lot of similarities between us. We provide each other with the creative tension we need to create better art than if we were working independently. We have a special creative nature that was revealed when we first got together in a small apartment in Brixton, London, in 1983.

One example of how our relationship works is illustrated in how the song “The Wolf” came together. It was a particularly difficult song to bring together. I had the main riff even before the last Cult album, but Ian didn’t want to work on it; he wouldn’t even touch it, so I let it lie. But I brought it back, because I knew it was good.

This time out, Ian and the rest of the guys were really patient with my obsession to work it out, and we were able to. I’m very happy with the results, possibly because of its difficult upbringing.

I heard the single “Lucifer” from Choice of Weapon, and I love it! Judging from the album name and cover art, it seems like you’re exploring some dark subject matter. What can you tell us about the album’s themes? — Francis Soyer

“Lucifer” is certainly about hedonism, but that song isn’t indicative of the whole album. It’s more of a teaser track than a single. But most of our records are kind of dark, and that’s Ian’s deal. If I could sum up Choice of Weapon, I’d say it’s about urban shamanism. The album was written in New York and Los Angeles but also in the California desert. It’s trying to connect the dichotomy of living in urban areas but realizing that outside of those areas is where our food and water comes from.

You can have all the technology you want, but if you don’t have clean air to breathe, it’s game over. That said, I’m a guitar player and not the lyricist, so I’m just talking about what I’m observing coming from the singer of our band. But those have always been reoccurring themes for the Cult: love and appreciation of nature but also appreciation of an urban society’s vibe, violence and sexuality.

I love the Gretsch White Falcon. Are you using it or the Les Paul on the new record? And I’m also wondering what’s your trick to prevent the Gretsch from feeding back in live situations? — Dave Belknap

I’ve always used the Les Paul and Gretsch White Falcon, and they’re both heavily featured on the new album. Regarding the second part, that’s a very pragmatic question. One thing I’ve done with the White Falcon is put things in the body — little bits of T-shirts or whatever — to help stop some of the feedback.

But don’t overfill it or the guitar will sound dead. You also have to be conscious of where you’re playing onstage. We spend a lot of time soundchecking at every Cult gig, trying to remove the frequencies that create that real deep, low-mid feedback. And finally, I’ve always put high-output, hot pickups in my Gretsches. My original pickups in the Seventies were so puny that you’d have to run the amp really loud, and it would create horrible feedback problems. I’ve used Seymour Duncan and TV Jones pickups, and they work really well. They keep the Gretsch tone and chime but prevent feedback from the amp.

The transitions in your songs from chorus to verse are so seamless. Do you have to really focus and work these out, or do you simply write in a linear way? — Arnon Wiggond

It used to be very linear, out of necessity. Then Pro Tools came along, and it’s changed how people construct songs. When Bob Rock came in to finish the production on the new album, he helped us with the arrangements. We laid everything down organically, and then changed and moved sections around with Pro Tools. So it can be a really useful tool, if you make sure to keep an organic feel to it.

Reality TV shows like Gene Simmons Family Jewels and The Osbournes have been a way for rockers to show another side of themselves. In retrospect, do you think your participation in Married to Rock was a positive thing, or do you wish you had taken a pass? — Jessie Chadwick

I’m happy that I participated in that show. I think I was comfortable with the legitimacy of the other band guys involved: Duff [McKagan] with Guns N’ Roses, Perry [Farrell] with Jane’s Addiction and Steve Stevens with Billy Idol. I didn’t hear the sound of a barrel being scraped, if you know what I mean.

The show was about the women, and some of the guys were in it more than others. For me, it was kind of interesting. I never want to be the kind of person that says no to everything. I wanted to participate in a contemporary experience like reality TV and see how it impacted me. It was also good because it got the Cult out there to an audience of millions during a time when the band didn’t have an album out.

In interviews over the years, you’ve mentioned you witnessed a lot of special gigs as a teenager in Manchester. Was there one that topped the list for you and made you say, “I wanna do this for a living”? — Steve Wood

Yeah, there were two gigs: one that made me think, Yes, I wanna do this for a living, and another that made me realize, Yes, it’s possible for me to do this for a living. The former was Queen. They were touring the Sheer Heart Attack album, and I was blown away. I will take to my grave the image of Queen opening before a 2,000-seat hall with “Now I’m Here.”

It was a black stage, the guitar was chugging a D chord, which I’ve ripped off a million times, and Freddie Mercury appeared in some window with just his face visible. Then, when the song kicked in, every light on the stage lit up. The entire band was dressed in white, and Brian May had a cape.

That experience, which is utterly indelibly printed in my mind, made me realize I wanted to do that for a living. The gig that made me realize it was possible was the Sex Pistols. I saw their second show in Manchester in June 1976. There were, like, 300 people there. It was heavy, violent, and there was a fight, and a lot of people left. It was also the Buzzcocks’ debut show. That show blew my mind. At that point, the idea of playing music for a living changed from being a fantasy to a reality.

Which of your songs ranks as your defining “guitar” moment? — Filipe Dias

“She Sells Sanctuary.” There’s a guitar sound on that record [Love] that I’ve heard no one create before or since. It’s a combination of feel and the music itself, which keeps it fresh even to this day. It was just in the Budweiser Super Bowl commercial with the Flo Rida mash-up, and it sounded great. The guitars still jump out of the speakers.

I saw a YouTube clip of Matthew McConaughey playing bongos with the Cult during your recent South by Southwest performance. What’s the story behind his guest appearance? — Russ Ziskey

Matthew is a longtime Cult fan. You’re more likely to find him in the pit banging it out with the fans than find him backstage. So we were going to South by Southwest to promote the new record, and Matthew wanted to come to one of the gigs. My manager actually pointed out that Matthew really likes to participate and had the idea of asking him to play congas on a couple songs, including the new one, “Lucifer,” and an old one, “Spiritwalker.”

Matthew was into it, so he came out to the big gig and played with us in front of 25,000 people. It was a lot of fun, but it was also about raising awareness for the new record in this media-saturated world. So with Matthew McConaughey and the Cult, it was like “two plus two equals seven.”

Photo: Travis Shinn

Few guitars throughout history are as elegant, distinguished and iconic as the Gretsch White Falcon, a full-bodied behemoth once characterized by Guitar World’s own Alan di Perna as “the indisputable gold-trimmed Cadillac Coupe DeVille of the electric guitar universe.”

Since its introduction in 1955, only a handful of guitarists have been brave enough to embrace the White Falcon, and few do it with the grace and panache of the Cult’s Billy Duffy.

“The only thing I am emotionally attached to is my White Falcon,” Duffy told Guitar World in 2008. “It’s my longest-lasting possession, and it’s been everywhere with me.”

As Duffy is rarely seen without his White Falcon, it stands to reason that Gretsch would honor him with a signature model of the distinctive instrument.

The new G7593T Billy Duffy White Falcon guitar has various features that separate it from the rest of the Falcon line, namely its period-correct Seventies Baldwin-era styling, pure-white gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finish, V-shaped Falcon headstock, Silver Sparkle binding, custom-wound hot “Black Top” Filter’Tron pickups with three-point adjustable Seventies-style metal bezels, and Duffy’s preferred Bigsby tailpiece.

In addition, the Duffy White Falcon features a single-cutaway three-ply maple body that’s 17 inches wide and 2 3/4 inches deep, a three-ply maple arched top and back, two parallel tone bars and sound-post bracing, a three-piece maple neck with ebony fingerboard, a chrome-plated truss-rod cover with Duffy’s signature, a chrome-plated output jack plate, pearloid wide-block fretboard inlays and Seventies-style aluminum “G” arrow knobs. The guitar comes in a premium gray-speckled Billy Duffy case.

For more information, visit gretschguitars.com.

Today, GuitarWorld.com presents the exclusive debut of "Give," a new track by LA-based rock band Owl.

The song is from Owl's new album, The Right Thing, which will be released April 9 by Overit Records. Owl is Chris Wyse (vocals/bass), Dan Dinsmore (drums) and Jason Achilles Mezilis (guitar/vocals).

"Give" is all about building up the energy, the melody and the atmosphere," Mezilis says. "The song takes you different places along the way, slowly rising in tension until the big payoff at the end. The tune offers a wide open landscape to experiment, use different textures, techniques and sounds. I love playing this track."

“We were an unstoppable force in the studio,” Wyse adds. “This album is heavy and bombastic and is our unorthodox ode to rock.”

Between touring and recording commitments with Wyse's other gig — playing bass in the Cult — Owl began writing what would become The Right Thing in early 2011. Kinks fans, take note: The album kicks off with “Destroyer,” which finds Owl transforming the Kinks' classic into a swaggering, futuristic stomper.

For more about Owl, check out their official website and Facebook page.

Catch Owl Live:

• 3/29 — NYC, NY @Mercury Lounge (with Killcode)
• 3/30 — Clifton Park, NY @Upstate Concert Hall (with In This Moment)
• 4/12 — Los Angeles, CA @The Roxy

(More shows to be announced soon.)

Los Angeles-based hard rock trio Owl, fronted by the Cult bassist Chis Wyse with with Dan Dinsmore on drums and Jason Achilles Mezilis on guitars, released their self-titled debut album in 2009.

Their followup release, The Right Thing, is set to hit the stores April 9 via Overit Records. The album, which has been in the making for a long time, offers a relatively diverse and experimental set of tunes.

I recently chatted with Jason about the album and his unique gear setup. Read the conversation below, and visit the band online at owltheband.net.

GUITAR WORLD: Owl are ready to release their second album. Was there anything different about working on this album as opposed to the first one?

It actually was really different. This album was a much more collaborative band effort. When the first record came through, Chris had been working on the songs for a long time and basically brought us in to refine the tracks and help bring the live energy. This time around, from the creation to the writing, everything was a more combined effort. Chris is the producer of this whole thing, and I think he’s trusted me a lot more, which is awesome because on a personal level as a guitar player I get to be more creative with my parts and more experimental. So it definitely was a different process. It’s cool, and I think we’ve taken in new elements we hadn’t explored the first time around.

In terms of your gear, did you change anything?

My rig is very simple. Even for moments on the record that might sound particularly "effected," I just use a combination of very simple effects applied in a different way. I like to use a delay and a flanger, but then I’m playing with a slide and I’m doing volume changes. I would say half of the sounds and effects I do are just coming from the guitar through different ways of trying to play the instrument.

I used more amplifiers on this record, which for me was a new thing. We did a lot of rhythm tracks with a Peavey 5150, the original issue, and that was fucking awesome. Some of the tracks were recorded in LA so I was able to bring my regular rig, and then some were recorded on the East Coast so I was borrowing the rig from friends of Chris. It was cool because it brought me sounds I wouldn’t have been able to create with my rig.

That over-saturated 5150 sound isn't something I'd own or normally put out there, but I was stoked to find it because it was fun. So I guess my sound is still very much the meat-and-potatoes guitar-amp distortion. I try to keep it as rooted as possible.

There’s one thing you might find funny, though. There’s a secret weapon amp I used on about four songs on this record. It’s actually a mini-Marshall Silver Jubilee. They look like full-sized Marshalls, but they’re like 4 feet tall in total for a full stack. My friend gave it to me as a joke, and I pulled it out and plugged it in when we started recording this album. It sounded amazing, so I did a bunch of rhythm tracks using this little amp, running it through a full-sized cabinet. It ended up sounding great [laughs]. I think the Silver Jubilee is the last great Marshall amp, and even the solid-state mini-version of it is pretty fucking awesome.

The new album seems a little more experimental and diverse. Is that because all three of you expressed yourselves, rather than just Chris?

Yeah, I think it’s a combination of everybody having more input, and then also having a much more open concept going into the record in general. Chris had a very specific vision for the first record, I think, and this time around he was more open. We’ve been working on this record for a long time, and initially it was going to be an EP. Then we realized, "Hey, these songs are good! Let’s move forward and do more stuff." So things were created at different times, and I think the combination of a more collaborative band effort and the space of time it was created in allowed for a lot of different styles and influences to come in to play. It was more amorphous.

The Gibson Les Paul is your primary instrument. It's the guitar I’ve seen the most in rock and metal. What is it about the Les Paul that makes it the popular choice in heavy music?

It’s funny, man. When I bought that guitar, I hadn’t joined Owl yet, and I had never played Gibson or Gibson-style guitars before. And for whatever reason, a month before I ended up joining this band, I had this weird feeling of wanting to own a Gibson-style guitar! I had a feeling something was coming up, and so I bought the guitar. It’s actually a mid-'70s Japanese knockoff of a Gibson, and it was made during the period when Gibson was suing companies in Japan because they were making copies of Les Pauls that were too good and selling them for cheap.

If you’re familiar with the Ibanez lawsuit-model Gibsons, my guitar wasn’t made by Ibanez. It was made by another company that was making them at the same time. Gibsons are too heavy for me normally. The weight just fucking kills my shoulder, but this is a semi-hollow body, and because of that it gives it this particular resonance. So it has a Gibson body style, but it echoes a little inside, and it has this very particular sound. I got it for like, basically nothing [laughs]. Chris was laughing at me, and he was like, "Dude, I spent more on my shoes than you did on that fucking guitar! What the hell?"

I had some work done on it by my tech in LA. His name is Greg Coates; he’s over at Future Music in LA. He did a great setup job on it. It just plays awesome. For this band, it needed that meaty sound, and that wasn’t something I had done before. I wanted to change my style to fit Owl better, so that’s why I basically picked a whole new instrument and adapted all these styles playing for this band so that it would be different from the other things I’ve done in the past. I also try to keep my basic mentality of keeping the tone very rooted, and getting the sound from the amp and the guitar. That’s what I’ve always gone for, you know.

Your guitar is a Japanese knockoff of a Gibson, but Gibson caught up with those people in Japan and made them stop the process. What are you going to do if you need another guitar exactly like this one?

I’ll make some calls to Gibson and get that done really nicely [laughs]. We’ll have to introduce the signature Owl semi-hollow bodied Les Paul '70s reissue. I’d be totally fucking down for that.

Are you tied to your gear or could you pretty much play anything?

I’m tied to my guitar. With amplifiers, at the end of the day I don’t give a fuck. As long as I can dial in my sound, I’m fine. The guitar is where it’s at. Especially for me, because I play guitar left-handed, so my options are extremely limited. You go to a guitar shop; there are 500 guitars on the wall. A normal person can go through all 500, but for me I probably have three options and they all suck [laughs]. So that’s basically it. I’m tied to the guitar, and as for the amps give me a good old Marshall and I’m happy.

Other than Owl, what are you up to? Last time I saw you, you had a little home studio of your own and you were working on some solo material, producing other bands. Are you still doing that?

I am! I have a new home studio as well as my downtown LA organic audio recorder, which I think you came to. So I still have the old studio, which is a hybrid digital-analog setup. And I’ve got a new home studio now, which is the same thing but on a smaller scale. We actually did some recordings for the new Owl record in both my studios. John Tempesta did his drums in my studio downtown. It was a complete fucking honor to have that guy in there. It was just amazing. Those were three of the loudest hours of my life [laughs].

At the home studio we did a bunch of the guitar overdubs, and we also did the bagpipes for the song "Rover." We did that in my living room, which was hilarious because I kept wondering what the hell my neighbors are thinking the whole time. But they were pretty down for it, and nobody complained. I did a lot of work on "Rover" in my home studio. I’ve been able to continue producing a lot of bands. That’s basically what I do when I’m not playing with bands, and that’s how I make a living, with production and engineering work. But it was great because I was able to put the new studio to test with this new record. I’ve got to tell you, recording bagpipes is a lot more fun than you might think [laughs].

Playing-wise, do you feel you’re able to fulfill yourself in Owl, or do you feel like doing other stuff?

Owl is a very specific thing for me. I do play in a lot of different projects and sometimes I end up getting roped into playing with bands I record for production work. They’re like, "You know all the songs, so you should play with us for our show next week!" [laughs] But you know, Owl needs a very specific style of playing that I don’t explore anywhere else. Plus the caliber of musicianship in this band is off the scale with Dan and Chris.

So it’s really challenging for me in all the right ways. I think in any project you’re involved in, you want to be challenged. You don’t want to do something unless it’s going to make you better. Of course, you want to make the project better as well. But yeah, Owl for me is challenging and satisfying at the same time.

The live shows are crushing. Whenever we play live, we mostly get the same comment, "I can’t believe all that sound came from just you three guys." People have asked us whether we have keyboards in the background or something like that, just because the sonic layer of the show is so dense. There’s a certain virtuosity that’s necessary for this band, and that is really fun for me to explore. I’ve always been focused on tone first, and flash second.

In a band like this, there are moments where that flash has to be there. So it’s fun to push myself, and to have Chris and Dan pushing me to adapt to that moment. A perfect example is the guitar solo in the song "Send." That solo is awesome, and probably my favorite moment on the record. It came about because Chris was pushing me in the studio to do better. At the end of the day, that’s what I did and it was fucking awesome.

Another thing on the record that stands out is there there's a lot of vocal melody. Chris obviously did most of the vocals, but what was it like for you as a backing vocalist?

Live I have to carry out all the harmonies because there’s only one Chris. On the first record, he did all the harmonies himself, but on this one I forced my way in there [laughs]. So I’m definitely singing more. I love harmonies and I love singing them. Any opportunity to put more harmony onto something is good with me. That means we’ll have to figure out how to sing all that shit live, and that’s going to be interesting [laughs]. But yeah, I have the kind of voice such that I would never be a lead singer but it’s great for harmonies.

Andrew Bansal is a writer who has been running his own website, Metal Assault, since early 2010, and has been prolific in covering the hard rock and heavy metal scene by posting interviews, news, reviews and pictures on his website — with the help of a small group of people. Up till February 2012 he was based in Los Angeles. After that, he had to move to India, but is still carrying on his heavy metal endeavors with the same intensity.

Gretsch has announced the G7593T Billy Duffy White Falcon guitar.

The new guitar, named and designed for The Cult guitarist, has unique aesthetic differences that separate it from the rest of the “Falcon” flock.

[[ Keep up with Guitar World's NAMM 2013 coverage right here! ]]

There's its period-correct ’70s Baldwin-era styling, pure White gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finish, V-shaped Falcon headstock, Silver Sparkle binding, custom wound hot “Black Top” Filter’Tron pickups with three-point adjustable ’70s-style metal bezels and Duffy’s preferred Bigsby tailpiece.

Duffy’s signature model features a 17-inch wide, 2 ¾-inch deep single cutaway three-ply maple body with a three-ply maple arched top and back and two spruce parallel tone bars and sound post, a three-piece maple neck with ebony fingerboard, a chrome-plated truss rod cover with Duffy’s signature emblazoned on it, a chrome-plated output jack plate, pearloid wide-block fretboard inlays, ’70s-style aluminum “G” arrow knobs and a premium gray speckled “Billy Duffy” case.

“This guitar is very personal to me,” Duffy said. “It’s hard to separate the guitar from the evolution of (The Cult’s) sound. In essence, the big white Gretsch became synonymous with the band very quickly. I’m not really that much of a sentimental person, but in a house fire it would be the first non-living thing that I’d be going for.

“It’s not for the faint-hearted,” Duffy added. “It’s massive. You’ve got to have big hands and you’ve got to really command the instrument when you play it. You can’t really play it with any degree of fear.”

For more information, visit gretschguitars.com.

The Cult have just released a new music video for the track "Honey From A Knife." Watch it below.

"Wealth and beauty, to a man who will not relinquish them, are like a knife covered with honey which, even before he has had the pleasure of eating the honey, cuts the tongue of the child that licks it," said frontman Ian Astbury of the song's theme.

"Honey From A Knife" is the latest video taken from the band's latest album, Choice of Weapon (buy on iTunes), which was released earlier this year.

As the only constant members of the Cult, you and [singer] Ian [Astbury] are the heart and soul of the band. What is that partnership like? How does Ian complement your creativity? —Kelly Youngblood

We’re both the same birth sign, and there are a lot of similarities between us. We provide each other with the creative tension we need to create better art than if we were working independently. We have a special creative nature that was revealed when we first got together in a small apartment in Brixton, London, in 1983. One example of how our relationship works is illustrated in how the song “The Wolf” came together. It was a particularly difficult song to bring together. I had the main riff even before the last Cult album, but Ian didn’t want to work on it; he wouldn’t even touch it, so I let it lie. But I brought it back, because I knew it was good. This time out, Ian and the rest of the guys were really patient with my obsession to work it out, and we were able to. I’m very happy with the results, possibly because of its difficult upbringing.

I heard the single “Lucifer” from Choice of Weapon, and I love it! Judging from the album name and cover art, it seems like you’re exploring some dark subject matter. What can you tell us about the album’s themes? —Francis Soyer

“Lucifer” is certainly about hedonism, but that song isn’t indicative of the whole album. It’s more of a teaser track than a single. But most of our records are kind of dark, and that’s Ian’s deal. If I could sum up Choice of Weapon, I’d say it’s about urban shamanism. The album was written in New York and Los Angeles but also in the California desert. It’s trying to connect the dichotomy of living in urban areas but realizing that outside of those areas is where our food and water comes from. You can have all the technology you want, but if you don’t have clean air to breathe, it’s game over. That said, I’m a guitar player and not the lyricist, so I’m just talking about what I’m observing coming from the singer of our band. But those have always been reoccurring themes for the Cult: love and appreciation of nature but also appreciation of an urban society’s vibe, violence and sexuality.

I love the Gretsch White Falcon. Are you using it or the Les Paul on the new record? And I’m also wondering what’s your trick to prevent the Gretsch from feeding back in live situations? —Dave Belknap

I’ve always used the Les Paul and Gretsch White Falcon, and they’re both heavily featured on the new album. Regarding the second part, that’s a very pragmatic question. One thing I’ve done with the White Falcon is put things in the body—little bits of T-shirts or whatever—to help stop some of the feedback. But don’t overfill it or the guitar will sound dead. You also have to be conscious of where you’re playing onstage. We spend a lot of time soundchecking at every Cult gig, trying to remove the frequencies that create that real deep, low-mid feedback. And finally, I’ve always put high-output, hot pickups in my Gretsches. My original pickups in the Seventies were so puny that you’d have to run the amp really loud, and it would create horrible feedback problems. I’ve used Seymour Duncan and TV Jones pickups, and they work really well. They keep the Gretsch tone and chime but prevent feedback from the amp.

The transitions in your songs from chorus to verse are so seamless. Do you have to really focus and work these out, or do you simply write in a linear way? —Arnon Wiggond

It used to be very linear, out of necessity. Then Pro Tools came along, and it’s changed how people construct songs. When Bob Rock came in to finish the production on the new album, he helped us with the arrangements. We laid everything down organically, and then changed and moved sections around with Pro Tools. So it can be a really useful tool, if you make sure to keep an organic feel to it.

Reality TV shows like Gene Simmons Family Jewels and The Osbournes have been a way for rockers to show another side of themselves. In retrospect, do you think your participation in Married to Rock was a positive thing, or do you wish you had taken a pass? —Jessie Chadwick

I’m happy that I participated in that show. I think I was comfortable with the legitimacy of the other band guys involved: Duff [McKagan] with Guns N’ Roses, Perry [Farrell] with Jane’s Addiction and Steve Stevens with Billy Idol. I didn’t hear the sound of a barrel being scraped, if you know what I mean. The show was about the women, and some of the guys were in it more than others. For me, it was kind of interesting. I never want to be the kind of person that says no to everything. I wanted to participate in a contemporary experience like reality TV and see how it impacted me. It was also good because it got the Cult out there to an audience of millions during a time when the band didn’t have an album out.

In interviews over the years, you’ve mentioned you witnessed a lot of special gigs as a teenager in Manchester. Was there one that topped the list for you and made you say, “I wanna do this for a living”? —Steve Wood

Yeah, there were two gigs: one that made me think, Yes, I wanna do this for a living, and another that made me realize, Yes, it’s possible for me to do this for a living. The former was Queen. They were touring the Sheer Heart Attack album, and I was blown away. I will take to my grave the image of Queen opening before a 2,000-seat hall with “Now I’m Here.” It was a black stage, the guitar was chugging a D chord, which I’ve ripped off a million times, and Freddie Mercury appeared in some window with just his face visible. Then, when the song kicked in, every light on the stage lit up. The entire band was dressed in white, and Brian May had a cape. That experience, which is utterly indelibly printed in my mind, made me realize I wanted to do that for a living.

The gig that made me realize it was possible was the Sex Pistols. I saw their second show in Manchester in June 1976. There were, like, 300 people there. It was heavy, violent, and there was a fight, and a lot of people left. It was also the Buzzcocks’ debut show. That show blew my mind. At that point, the idea of playing music for a living changed from being a fantasy to a reality.

Which of your songs ranks as your defining “guitar” moment? —Filipe Dias

“She Sells Sanctuary.” There’s a guitar sound on that record [Love] that I’ve heard no one create before or since. It’s a combination of feel and the music itself, which keeps it fresh even to this day. It was just in the Budweiser Super Bowl commercial with the Flo Rida mash-up, and it sounded great. The guitars still jump out of the speakers.

I saw a YouTube clip of Matthew McConaughey playing bongos with the Cult during your recent South by Southwest performance. What’s the story behind his guest appearance? —Russ Ziskey

Matthew is a longtime Cult fan. You’re more likely to find him in the pit banging it out with the fans than find him backstage. So we were going to South by Southwest to promote the new record, and Matthew wanted to come to one of the gigs. My manager actually pointed out that Matthew really likes to participate and had the idea of asking him to play congas on a couple songs, including the new one, “Lucifer,” and an old one, “Spiritwalker.” Matthew was into it, so he came out to the big gig and played with us in front of 25,000 people. It was a lot of fun, but it was also about raising awareness for the new record in this media-saturated world. So with Matthew McConaughey and the Cult, it was like “two plus two equals seven.”

The Cult have just unveiled a music video for their song "For the Animals," a provocative clip directed by Michelle Peerali and starring actress Hanna Mosqueda. It can be seen below.

"'For The Animals' is a metaphor for people existing in a realm outside of structured society and what cultural editors deem to be relevant," said frontman Ian Astbury. "It could be the feral punk rock kids squatting in abandoned homes or the spirited individual who has little regard for social conventions. It's for people who choose not to tow the party line or try to fit in. It's for the free-thinkers who are creative and dynamic."

The Cult's new album, Choice of Weapon, is due out May 22 via Cooking Vinyl.

The Cult have just announced dates for a headlining North American tour to coincide with the release of their new album, Choice of Weapon. You can get full dates for the trek, which kicks off on May 25 in San Diego, California, below.

"This is going to be a very intense, high-energy tour," said vocalist Ian Astbury. "We are really looking forward to the time we spend on stage connected to our music and our audience. That's our purpose."

Joining the band on the bill will be Against Me! and The Icarus Line.

The Cult will release Choice of Weapon, their first new studio album in five years, on May 22.

The Cult 2012 Tour Dates

• MAY
• 25 San Diego, CA - Humphreys By the Bay
• 26 Las Vegas, NV - M Resort
• 27 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
• 30 Denver, CO - Ogden Theatre

JUNE
1 Chicago, IL - Congress Theatre
2 Windsor, ON - Great Canadian Beaverfest, Riverfront Festival Plaza
3 Pittsburgh, PA - Stage AE - Indoor Stage
5 Boston, MA - House of Blues
7 Buffalo, NY - Erie Canal Harbor Central Wharf
8 New York, NY - Terminal 5
9 Hampton Beach, NH - Ballroom
10 Philadelphia, PA - Electric Factory
12 Washington, D.C. - The Fillmore
13 Norfolk, VA - The Norva
15 Myrtle Beach, SC - House of Blues
16 Orlando, FL - House of Blues
17 Atlanta, GA - The Tabernacle
19 Houston, TX - House of Blues
20 Dallas, TX - House of Blues
22 Tempe, AZ - Marquee Theatre

Continuing the morning's theme of rock stars and movie stars, The Cult drew more than their fair share of celebrity attention over the weekend at SXSW.

On hand for their Friday-night gig at Chevy Sound Garage was Gerard Butler, who was in the audience for the show and reportedly hanging with Cult guitarist Billy Duffy afterwards.

Saturday saw the band joined on stage by Matthew McConaughey — perhaps best known for Boys on the Side, Tiptoes and Bernie — who sat in on the band's set, playing congas. You can check out video from the performance below.

The Cult will release their first new studio album in five years, Choice of Weapon, on May 22.

British rockers the Cult will see their hit song "She Sells Sanctuary" appear in a Super Bowl at for Budweiser this Sunday, February 5.

The track will be part of a mashup that will also feature rapper Flo Rida's track "Good Feelin." According to an official press release, "The one-minute spot is a celebratory romp through several decades of great times in America that begins with the end of Prohibition in 1933."

The Cult will release their new album, Choice of Weapon, on May 22. You can download "Lucifer" from the new album for free right here.

The Cult have announced Choice of Weapon as the title for their forthcoming new album, which is due out May 22. You can preview a new track from the album, "Lucifer," over at Rolling Stone or download it below from the widget.

"The title of the record reflects the fact that here we are, we have a choice to make right now," frontman Ian Astbury told Rolling Stone. "We can choose different modalities. We can either choose literal weapons, which, many people have picked up weapons in Libya, Egypt, Syria. Or picking up weapons and overtaking systems, physically, by force."

He continues: "In a more metaphorical sense, a weapon can be a camera, a weapon can be a pen, a weapon can be a statement, a verbal statement, a weapon can be an article of clothing. Tantric weapons are symbols they use in tantric rituals, like the dorje, which is an object that the shamanic figure is actually holding. The dorje being representative of a thunderbolt enlightenment, that moment of awakening, where you go, 'Aha!'"

You can read more here.

Track Listing:
01. Honey From A Knife
02. Elemental Light
03. For The Animals
04. Life>Death
05. The Wolf
06. Amnesia
07. Lucifer
08. Wilderness Now
09. A Pale Horse
101. This Night In The City Forever

It looks like the Cult have re-teamed with producer Bob Rock for their upcoming new studio album, their first since 2007's Born Into This. The band are currently finishing up the album for an early 2012 release.

The pairing should come as no surprise given that the band have worked with Rock on three other occasions, most notably on 1989's Sonic Temple and also on their 1994 self-titled effort and 2001's Beyond Good and Evil.

The as-yet-untitled new album will mark the Cult's ninth studio effort.