Features archive
April 2025
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62 articles
- April 20
- April 19
- April 18
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- “I just learned them from the records. I don’t read tabs or anything, I don’t read music – I learned by ear”: How a teenage Muireann Bradley put a cover of Blind Blake’s Police Dog Blues on YouTube and became a standard bearer for country blues
- “He got that from me. I used to throw my guitar as high as I could, like, 20 feet, and my guitar tech would catch it”: Dez Dickerson on Prince, his iconic Little Red Corvette solo, and why he left the Revolution
- “I’d always seen the guitar as a thing for really accomplished people like Jimi Hendrix – watching Nirvana on MTV Unplugged exploded my brain”: Studio nerd Corinne Bailey Rae broke through after moving on from her punk roots. Then she went back
- “Elton said, ‘I'd better buy that guitar just to have in my house.’ I played it and said, ‘Yeah, you'd better buy it, so I can play it when I come by’”: One of Davey Johnstone's favorite guitars was once a piece of upscale decor for his superstar bandmate
- “Leo said, ‘Here, try this guitar.’ I grabbed it, turned it around, held it upside-down backwards and started playing ukulele chords. He almost fell off his chair laughing”: How Dick Dale made the Stratocaster the ultimate surf-rock weapon
- “When I first heard his voice in my headphones, there was that moment of, ‘My God! I’m recording with David Bowie!’” Bassist Tim Lefebvre on the making of David Bowie's Lazarus
- April 17
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- “It was tour, tour, tour. I had this moment where I was like, ‘What do I even want out of music?’”: Yvette Young’s fretboard wizardry was a wake-up call for modern guitar playing – but with her latest pivot, she’s making music to help emo kids go to sleep
- “One of the guys said, ‘Joni, there’s this weird bass player in Florida, you’d probably like him’”: How Joni Mitchell formed an unlikely partnership with Jaco Pastorius
- “I said, ‘If I could have it my way it would sound like this,’ and I pulled the bass guitar out of the mix”: Why Prince removed the bassline from When Doves Cry
- “I don’t want a guitar that, the moment I play it, sounds like the blues. Sometimes I want a guitar to sound truly horrendous!” For IDLES’ Lee Kiernan, modding guitars is a gateway to sonic chaos – and Fenders make the perfect platforms
- April 16
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- “The Beyoncé effect is, in fact, real. I got a lot of traffic just from people checking the liner notes”: With three Grammy wins and plaudits from John Mayer, Justus West is one of modern session guitar’s MVPs – but it hasn’t been an easy ride
- “I met Joe when he was 12. He picked up a vintage guitar in one store and they told him to leave. But someone said, ‘This guy called Norm will let you play his stuff’”: The unlikely rise of Norman’s Rare Guitars and the birth of the vintage guitar market
- April 15
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- “I used to weigh my guitars and use the heaviest one. As I’ve got older and my back’s got worse, lighter guitars are definitely better”: Lee Malia’s Jackson signature completes a full circle 20 years in the making – and it redefines what a Jackson can be
- “Every tour was the best I could have done. It was only after that I would listen to more Grateful Dead and realize I hadn’t come close”: John Mayer and Bob Weir reflect on 10 years of Dead & Company – and why the Sphere forced them to reassess everything
- April 14
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- “I use a spark plug to play slide. It's a trick Lowell George showed me. It gets incredible sustain – metal on metal”: In the face of sexist skepticism, Fanny's June Millington carved a unique six-string path, and inspired countless players in the process
- “There’d been three-minute solos, which were just ridiculous – and knackering to play live!” Stoner-doom merchants Sergeant Thunderhoof may have toned down the self-indulgence, but their 10-minute epics still get medieval on your eardrums
- “For years, the only 12-string acoustics I got my hands on, the necks always pulled off after a bit. I earned a lot of money replacing them!” Why one of the UK’s most prolific luthiers is a bolt-on acoustic die-hard
- “I was writing songs from eight years old, but once I got a guitar I began to deeply identify with music… building an arsenal of influences”: How Lea Thomas uses guitars her dad built to conjure a magic synthesis of folk, pop and the ethereal
- April 13
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- “I liked that they were the underdogs. It was not the mainstream guitar. It was something that was hard to find”: Vox guitars deserve a second look – just ask L.A. Witch’s Sade Sanchez, who’s teaming hers with ugly pedals for nouveau garage rock thrills
- “I suppose I felt that I deserved it for the amount of seriousness that I’d put into it. My head was huge!” “Clapton is God” graffiti made him a guitar legend when he was barely 20 – he says he was far from uncomfortable with the adulation at the time
- April 12
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- “It holds its own purely as a playable guitar. It’s really cool for the traveling musician – you can bring it on a flight and it fits beneath the seat”: Why Steve Stevens put his name to a foldable guitar
- “I was in a frenzy about it being trapped and burnt up. I knew I'd never be able to replace it”: After being pulled from the wreckage of a car crash, John Sykes ran back to his burning vehicle to save his beloved '76 Les Paul
- April 11
- April 10
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- “It’s one of the most beautiful, living, breathing pieces of art – all the grime has just aged into the wood”: Margo Price on playing Willie Nelson’s Trigger, growing up with Gibson and bringing her signature J-45 to life
- “I’ve got a friend in a well-known band, and he says Martins have unnecessary bottom-end. My retort was always: ‘Well, you need to learn to play properly’”: Johnny Marr on the magic of his 7-string signature Martin – and his fight with capo addiction
- April 9
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- “It's like the guitar is built for 10 fingers and two hands and he's got three hands and 17 fingers”: He was called “The Humbler” and regarded as one of the world's greatest under-the-radar guitarists – and he would solo with a beer bottle and a towel
- “I got that bass for $50 off this coke dealer. I don’t know what Jaco did to it, but he totally messed up the insides!” How Cro-Mags’ Harley Flanagan went from buying a Jaco Pastorius bass on the street to fronting one of hardcore’s most influential bands
- “He didn’t sound like any other previous Whitesnake guitarist. His thumbprint is an indelible part of that record”: Remembering John Sykes, the journeyman virtuoso who made his mark on both Thin Lizzy and Whitesnake
- “My worst case of buyer’s remorse? An impulse-buy banjo. I was third-wheeling on a date, and I felt awkward”: Yvette Young on how to buy a guitar, and why – maybe – you should think twice before lending anyone a beloved acoustic
- April 8
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- “What’s going through our mind is ‘What the…?’ And if you see Bob’s face, you could see he’s thinking the same thing”: When Bob Dylan played with an LA punk band to promote the album he made with Mark Knopfler
- “It’s become a bad habit. I bought a 1955 Tele and turned it over to carve my initials into the back. My friend screamed, ’Don’t do that!’” Kirk Hammett on his favorite Metallica solo and tone – and his most prized purchases from other guitar heroes
- “Ibanez and Japanese brands in general were irritating the hell out of Gibson, Fender and other US companies targeted by copyists”: From copies to innovations – the origin and rise of Japanese electric guitars (and the truth about ‘lawsuit’ guitars)
- “The original Jordan Boss Tone was probably used by four out of five garage bands in the late ’60s”: Unpacking the gnarly magic of the Jordan Boss Tone – an actual guitar plug-in that delivers Dan Auerbach-approved fuzz
- April 7
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- “The main acoustic is a $100 Fender – the strings were super-old and dusty. We hate new strings!” Meet Great Grandpa, the unpredictable indie rockers making epic anthems with cheap acoustics – and recording guitars like a Queens of the Stone Age drummer
- “We go and look in the garage – it was there. It hadn’t been looked at for 20 years and was sad and falling apart. It was like, ‘Help me!’” James Dean Bradfield on unearthing his rare “birthright” guitar, gear epiphanies and why Robert Smith is underrated
- “You can almost hear the music in your head when looking at these photos”: How legendary photographer Jim Marshall captured the essence of the Grateful Dead and documented the rise of the ultimate jam band
- April 6
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- “To be honest, I didn’t like Stevie’s tone as much in the heavy Dumble period. It sounded a little tight to me”: Ian Moore on jamming with the Stones, writing with Billy Gibbons, and discussing those SRV comparisons – with Stevie Ray Vaughan
- “At some country show I was playing, my dad saw one lying on the floor that somebody left or dropped. I had never seen one before”: He started playing at the age of three, and at 13, he came across something that would help define his unique sound
- “It's the most significant development in the last 50 years. Everything else has just been a little tweak on something Leo Fender or Les Paul did”: Once Allan Holdsworth picked up a headless Steinberger, there was no turning back
- April 5
- April 4
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- “You have to fight to be heard in metal. But you have to give them something worth fighting for!” 20 metal bassists who took heavy bass playing in new directions
- “What you hear on Stratus is pretty much the first take. Tommy Bolin's guitar playing is some of the best that ever was”: Legendary sideman Lee Sklar reveals the studio secrets behind his incredible career
- “I played the national anthem at a football game on a Les Paul with a Floyd Rose. I turned my back for five minutes and it got stolen”: Orianthi names her favorite guitars – and tells us why her PRS sounds better than a holy grail Les Paul
- “I did the intro to The Killing Moon without thinking. We went for a curry – and the engineer spotted that run and put it at the start”: How happy accidents, disastrous finances and an un-tuneable 12-string made Echo and the Bunnymen’s classic album
- April 3
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- “A new drummer affects everyone in Dream Theater. We all play off the time keeper”: John Myung on how the return of Mike Portnoy has changed the band – and his bass playing
- “I freaked out when I saw it on stage. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s it. That’s the guitar I worked on’”: It went viral with John Mayer, but 50 years before he played it, this mystery Martin began an incredible untold story
- “Slapping was a matter of natural evolution”: 21 slap bass legends who made thumpin’ and pluckin’ their own
- “The Charvel is something Mike had at the house. The idea was to be able to cover pads, synth sounds and faux acoustic sounds”: From Raphael Saadiq to Mk.gee, Andrew Aged is on a quest for guitar reinvention – one guitar mod and off-kilter pedal at a time
- “My wife heard Locomotive Breath on the radio. She said, ‘I wish you played like that now.’ I was a bit upset”: Martin Barre on revisiting Jethro Tull, Leslie West – and the bootleg Les Paul that bent like a banana
- April 2
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- “Mick Ronson came to see one of the Springsteen shows, and he was just so proud of me. He had a classic rock ‘n’ roll existence, but I love him for all that”: Shane Fontayne on the kindness of Ronson, serving the Boss – and playing Stairway for Jimmy Page
- “These guys started the band the same year I was born – they have a whole world of history together”: How Nicole Row went from a wild ride in Panic! at the Disco to laying down the low-end in Incubus – and rerecording their biggest album
- “I started on guitar because I wanted to be in a band and meet girls. Richie wanted to be a guitar player, because he wanted to play guitar”: Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen come from different worlds, but it all comes back to the blues
- “He fined me 50 bucks and fired me, even though I didn’t mess up”: The bassists of James Brown reveal what life was really like playing alongside the Godfather of Soul
- April 1
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- “I get asked, ‘What’s it like being a one-hit wonder?’ I say, ‘It’s better than being a no-hit wonder!’” The Vapors’ hit Turning Japanese was born at 4AM, but came to life when two guitarists were stuck into the same booth
- “Let's play... you start it off now, Stevie”: That time Stevie Wonder jammed with Stevie Ray Vaughan... and played SRV's number one Strat
- “The bass is the instrument you need to play the longest to become truly funky”: 20 funk bass legends who took low-end groove to new heights
- “There’s an art to simplicity, and Jason Newsted brought that art. Cliff Burton was more aggressive, and a busier player”: The bassists of Metallica
- “We set out to put our thoughts and musical ideas out there, hoping they’d be appreciated. That’s proved to be true”: Sampled by Grandmaster Flash, De La Soul and the Fugees, Cymande shaped the sound of hip-hop. Now they’re back to claim their legacy
- “I got the impression that he needed to be quite forceful to get his songs onto Beatles records”: George Harrison orchestrator John Barham reflects on their shared love of Indian music and being conducted by Phil Spector
- “Our goal is to stay at the forefront of amplification innovation”: How Seymour Duncan set out to create the ultimate bass amp solution by pushing its PowerStage lineup to greater heights
