Latest articles by Henry Yates
Mdou Moctar is one of Africa’s premier guitar heroes – and he’s using his Stratocaster to spark a revolution
As the Niger guitarist releases a bristling new collection of protest songs, he explains how injustice puts the fire in his fingers, what keeps him loyal to the Strat, and why everybody in his hometown wants to play guitar
Why Mdou Moctar loves two-year-old strings – and what makes the Roland Cube his favorite amp
The gear (or lack of) behind Mdou Moctar's searing signature sound on Funeral For Justice, which fuses Saharan rock music with Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen flair
“It was Clarkin alone who fed the band, writing the entirety of Magnum’s catalog and admitting in 2002 that he thought of little else”: Remembering Tony Clarkin, the driving force behind a British rock institution
The Magnum guitarist died following diagnosis with a rare spinal condition, leaving behind a staggering body of work and huge affection amongst fans and industry peers
![IDLES's Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan [right]](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/7NmfKqjZr8S39kVfaGSgbn-840-80.jpg.webp)
“We’re trying to avoid sounding like a conventional guitar band… Our goal has always been to expand what guitars can do”: Idles’ radical guitar duo dissect their “violent, dark tones” and explain why modeling is “wack”
Savage, socially charged and allergic to cliché, Idles are less categorisable than ever on fifth album, Tangk, and its dynamic guitar partnership Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan are holding nothing back
“I was gonna have a year off after Knebworth, but when John rang up saying, ‘Look, I’ve got these tunes,’ I thought, ‘I’m in, mate’”: Liam Gallagher on why John Squire is like Hendrix and the best guitarist of his generation
The former Oasis frontman talks Gallagher/Squire and pays tribute to the Stone Roses guitar legend in an interview that is 100 percent gold
“Jimmy Page once said to me, ‘Have Gibson not been onto you?’ And I said, ‘No, maybe I play too many Strats.’ I think it’s more likely they don’t know who I am”: John Squire opens up on his return to music with Liam Gallagher – and why he’s no guitar hero
The reclusive guitar great invites us to his studio to talk classic riffs, career-ending injuries, what caused the Stone Roses reunion to fizzle out, and why music keeps pulling him back in
“I hate modeling, I think it’s wack. You can hear it right away”: IDLES explain why recording with an amp modeler risks messing with your tone, your head – and probably your dog
UK post-punk heroes Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan reckon modelers are best consigned to the role of live backups – and you shouldn’t let them near your recordings
“Geordie was a true inventor of a massive sound that has influenced so damn many of us”: Remembering Geordie Walker, the sonic maverick whose playing could brutalise and beguile
Guitarist remembers the Killing Joke guitarist, who died on November 26 2023
“I’ve used 4x12 cabinets and heavy Marshall heads, but it almost felt unnecessary”: Jake Kiszka explains why he only used combo amps on Greta Van Fleet’s last album
The guitarist has been detailing his gear choices behind the band’s 2023 album Starcatcher
“So much music has been inspired by the sound of these little boxes. When BOSS released a new pedal, you simply had to try it out”: How BOSS pedals shaped guitar culture
Inspiring artists and gear designers alike, BOSS gear has shaped much of the last half-century of music. Here, we consider the company’s impact on guitar culture
How BOSS became one of the world's biggest guitar amp companies in under a decade
BOSS’s status as an effects heavyweight is set in stone – but lesser-known is how the visionary company reached the summit of the amp sector in under a decade
“There’s no player of my generation who doesn’t remember when they first heard that almost one-second delayed repeat. It was truly epic”: How BOSS's trailblazing delay pedals changed the world
History repeating: BOSS’s delay pedals changed everything – now the modern range salutes the Japanese firm’s storied past while forging ahead with bold new creations
“Before BOSS, there just wasn’t a wide enough selection of pedals. They kicked it into high gear, eclipsed everything else…” How BOSS changed the soundscape of modern music in five decades
The inside story of how BOSS revolutionized effects. The milestones that led the Japanese firm to the cutting edge of the modern music scene
Are BOSS's 50th Anniversary versions of the DS-1, SD-1 and BD-2 the ultimate collector’s editions?
Limited to a production run of just 7,000 units each – and featuring one-off finishes – here’s why BOSS’s 50th Anniversary DS-1, SD-1 and BD-2 are the holy trinity…
“I loved Hendrix – he was my first guitar hero... But seeing Stevie Ray Vaughan was transcendent. He made me understand Hendrix better”: Mike McCready says SRV helped him make sense of this Hendrix technique
“When he [Vaughan] did Voodoo Child, it was so bad-ass," McCready says. “He changed how I wanted to play, and if you listen to Even Flow, you can hear me trying to emulate his stuff”
“My Foo Fighters setup is the kind of beast you have when somebody carries your s**t around for you!” Chris Shiflett on his double-life as a jobbing solo artist and lead guitarist in the world’s biggest rock band
The Foo Fighters stalwart tells us about the “blasphemy” of his new backline, holding his breath when he solos and why the kind of guitar playing he loved “became pretty much illegal”
“When I played Here I Go Again to Jon Lord he had a certain look in his eye. He said, ‘You’re a clever little sod, aren’t you?’”: Remembering Bernie Marsden, 1951-2023
The Whitesnake co-founder and lifelong bluesman left us on 24 August. Guitarist remembers an all-time-great player, writer, collaborator, collector, mentor and friend
“It feels like total blasphemy!” Chris Shiflett on why he joined the modeler movement and switched from tube amps to amp sims
The amp aficionado flipped the script for his recent solo tour, which demanded an entirely new approach to guitar setups from the Foo Fighter
Steve Vai called him “the evolution of the guitar” while Al Di Meola said his playing was “light years ahead”. We meet Matteo Mancuso, the young guitarist redefining virtuosity
The Sicilian virtuoso is at the forefront of technical guitar playing, but as he explains, “I’m not a shredder and I’m not a jazz player – I listen to a lot of different stuff and I wanted it all in my music… You need to be open-minded”
“It’s really taken off – Rabea Massaad has introduced players to a new way of delivering tone from a Strat”: How Bare Knuckle redefined the sound of the Stratocaster with its radical new Triptych single coils
How the tones of Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Mayer and Philip Sayce informed a signature set of single-coil pickups for one of guitar's most progressive players
“It needs a tune – but we’ll do that free of charge!” Meet the Gibson Firebird that Jimmy Page lost in a drinking game with John Bonham
This heavily modified Non-Reverse Gibson Firebird III is a lost Led Zeppelin guitar with a fascinating history – we get the story behind the Page-owned beauty and the buoyant market for Gibson’s under-appreciated cult hero
“Everyone else had walls of Marshalls, but Rory just turned up, put a Vox AC30 on two folded-out chairs and let rip”: Rory Gallagher – the gear behind the legend
As we rebuild the exact rigs from the late Irishman’s most famous live periods, using historic gear loaned by his estate, Daniel Gallagher looks back over his uncle’s lifetime onstage
Rival Sons’ Scott Holiday: “I don’t need to play all the notes at a very high speed. I can appreciate that in players, but I’m looking for texture and color”
As the Californian rockers return with Darkfighter, Holiday invites us into his guitar room to talk mad-scientist fuzz pedals, his adventurous new doubleneck, and why he mods no more
Marty Stuart: “It started with my Clarence White Telecaster. That old guitar is kinda like an invisible band member. It has a tone of its own”
The country legend on channeling the Byrds’ guitar tones, how YouTube helps him cope with the loss of Johnny Cash and finding the amp he’d been searching for all his life
Graham Nash: “The acoustic guitar touches the heart faster. It’s much more human and personal than electric guitar”
As the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young legend releases the “most personal record” of his half-century career, he tells us about speaking truth to power, selling his Woodstock Martin D-45, and making up with David Crosby
