Features archive

December 2024

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94 articles

December 31
- “Those overdriven cowboy chords and stadium-conquering chorus hooks will be omnipresent throughout 2025”: When Oasis finally returned
- “His finest work since The Dark Side of the Moon”: How David Gilmour made a blockbuster comeback with Luck & Strange – and Ice-T
- “Joe was great at making me comfortable – he’s such a nice guy”: When Matteo Mancuso jammed with Joe Bonamassa
December 30
- “An end to 100 years of service to the music community”: Why the closure of Sam Ash marked the end of an era
- “Her weapon of choice is, in fact, 45 years older than she is”: The unstoppable rise of Grace Bowers
- “This is a historic collaboration”: How Diamond Rowe made history with Jackson Guitars
- “Jason and I were always battling for the same space in the mix”: The controversial mixing of Metallica’s …And Justice for All wasn’t a hazing of Jason Newsted. This is James Hetfield’s explanation
December 29
- “We had a band powerful enough to turn goat p*** into gasoline”: When it comes to Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn’s huge catalog of bass grooves, this ear-catching line from The Blues Brothers is a great place to start
- “Fresh eyes, honest appreciation and devoted teamwork have brought us to this special moment”: A nu-metal institution was reborn as Linkin Park returned for 2024
- “It proved to be short-lived”: The year Dave Navarro returned to Jane’s Addiction, got assaulted, and a fractious reunion fell apart
December 28
- “They’re both amazing guitarists, but Jeff Beck let you take liberties”: Rhonda Smith had been on call with Prince for more than a decade when she told the Purple One she was busy with Jeff Beck
- “The interviewer asked Joe Satriani, ‘Why Andy Fairweather Low?’ And that’s exactly the question I would’ve asked, too”: He's played with Eric Clapton, George Harrison and David Gilmour, but now, this rhythm guitar hero is ready to take center stage
- “Historic for Gojira and metal”: Why the Olympics played an unlikely host for some of the biggest guitar moments of the year
- “Anti-colonialist anguish, hope, joy and the search for connection, all through his guitar. That’s what makes a guitar hero”: Guitarists of the Year 2024 – the players who took 2024 by storm
December 27
- “We’re thrilled to be back”: Why 2024 marked a major milestone for Fender – and saw a surprising turnaround for 2025
- “You can rehearse until you’re blue in the face, but once you hit the stage, all bets are off”: How King Crimson was reborn at the hands of Steve Vai and Adrian Belew
- Gibson launched an epic multi-guitar partnership with Jimmy Page this year – but 2025 could be even bigger
- Remembering the guitarists we lost in 2024
December 26
- “I don’t think they do too well living in a case all their lives”: Mark Knopfler parted ways with his guitar collection – but he hopes they all get played
- “You could write your own Stairway to Heaven on an instrument like this”: The hottest guitar gear launches of 2024 – from Wolfgang Van Halen’s long-awaited semi-hollow signature to UAFX’s Dumble-in-a-pedal
- “I never thought little ol’ 15-year-old me playing metal guitar in the bedroom would amount to this moment”: After 10,000 applicants, Kiki Wong landed the Smashing Pumpkins guitarist gig
December 25
- “We’re probably better off than the previous generation. Not because we’re better, but because it’s easier to reach a certain level faster”: Matteo Mancuso on how he plans to take his playing to even greater heights – thanks to some advice from Steve Vai
- “I’m backing away from being a ‘blues guitarist’. It’s not what I wanted to be boxed into”: Grace Bowers took the blues world by storm – but she says there’s much more to her playing ready to be unleashed
- “I was playing at three times the speed I normally play at”: When Pete Townshend got his first Jackson guitar… and loved it
December 24
- “It couldn’t be any simpler – yet, in truth, it couldn’t be any better”: Inside the remarkable story of the Gibson Les Paul Junior – the single-cut that changed the world
- “People want to get onstage and stagedive, but if you run into me, you’re not coming back. There’s a Travis Bean-shaped dent in someone’s head”: Duane Denison on the inspired return of the Jesus Lizard – and that time he tried to sell Steve Howe a guitar
- “Further proof that the gear doesn’t matter when you have the skills to pay the bills”: When their gear didn’t turn up for a festival performance, Primus played brand-new Fender guitars from Guitar Center – with the tags still on
December 23
- “There are better players, better lyricists, better songwriters – but there’s an energy to their combined powers that is hard to rival at the moment”: The best guitar albums of 2024
- “I don’t classify myself as a rock ’n’ roll or rockabilly player… I was trying to be as all-around as I could be”: Billy Bremner on his greatest sessions with Pretenders, Nick Lowe and countless others – and the story behind Rockpile
- “He’s playing pretty badly, but he is playing”: That moment when Corey Feldman engaged full shred mode and melted the internet's face
- “Everyone thinks Slayer is getting back together, but that couldn’t be further from the truth”: How Kerry King rose from the ashes of Slayer – ready to slay all over again
December 22
- “The door burst open. It was James, who was late and had come into the wrong room. He started listening and said, ’No, no, that's not the way you do it,’ and grabbed my EB-3”: Jack Bruce on his chance meeting with Motown hit-maker James Jamerson
- “I have a hair tie around the nut of my bass, and I pull it up to the 17th fret”: Just when we thought he’d settled into his routine as a bass superhero, Victor Wooten pulls out another surprise: a 25-cent hair tie?
December 21
- “There’s not a bad note on Rio. Everything just came together for that album”: Duran Duran’s John Taylor breaks down the group’s landmark album and how it inspired his signature bass
- “Ron played bass like John Entwistle – he was definitely into that kind of rhythmic gallop”: When Ron Asheton switched from guitar to bass, Iggy and the Stooges recorded their most influential record
December 20
- “It’s rare to find Gilmour and Vai in one package, but these double-neck escapades cross the electric guitar solo rubicon”: December 2024 Guitar World Editors’ Picks
- “People get too dependent on the sound they’re getting from the pedals”: Duane Betts on why less is more on his pedalboard – but a tuner and a boost? Everyone should have one
- “In the past you might have said, ‘That’s only for a metal or super high-performance hard-rock guy.’ Well, maybe not”: Allen Abbassi has overseen every Fender electric guitar since 2007 – but he’s still pushing the envelope
December 19
- “I’ve never heard this guitar sound like this”: Upgrade the performance of your Strat – and harness a Randy Rhoads vibe – with FU-Tone’s premier all-brass bridge
- “Rhythm guitar is the apex of guitar playing. Just look at Keith Richards or Steve Cropper. It’s not the solos, it’s the character in the chords. Most people can solo quite easily”: The Heavy Heavy have bottled rock ’n’ roll soul – ready to shake up 2025
- “It was building up in the back of my mind for so long that it finally pushed its way to the fore”: Why this was the year Slash finally got the blues
- “The first big gig for Starship was opening for Skynyrd in Florida in front of like 30,000 people. I had all these note-for-note solos, going, ‘God, I hope I nail these!’” Alastair Greene played sideman to rock greats – before he came back to the blues
- “This year has been one long vulgar display of Bowers”: The best guitar songs of 2024 – as chosen by Guitar World editors and pro players
- “I felt like I’d expressed everything I had inside me and nothing was left. After 20 years I thought, ‘Man, maybe I’m done’”: How Eddie Van Halen inspired Todd Jones to pick Nails up off the canvas for a face-ripping comeback album
December 18
- “I wish we’d had bidding wars – a mad time dining out with everyone falling in love with us. But no; we had one dude with a small label who believed in us”: Gavin Rossdale on the sacred and absurd experience of making Bush’s Sixteen Stone
- “There is a difference in the tone compared with just the simple wrapover bridge, which resonates more in your body”: Why Rory Gallagher’s “Kid Gloves and Walkin’ Wounded” Gibson Les Paul Juniors were two of his best-sounding guitars
- “All these sound engineers and friends were advising us to use a backing track… we really despise that! We wanted a real person”: How an 18-year-old shredder supersized Frozen Crown’s triple-guitar power metal assault
- “I hope I don’t sound too French... but we already know how most typical guitars sound. Why stick to someone else’s palette?” Meet Lizzard’s Mathieu Ricou, the delay-keen guitarist whose giant tone defies the power trio format
December 17
- “I just loved mushrooms. My dad thought it was hysterical, so he had the freaking guitar made with a mushroom on it”: Rosanne Cash on learning the ‘Carter scratch’ technique, her most valued guitar gear – and recreating Johnny Cash’s iconic SJ-200
- “This is like Santana’s Soul Sacrifice at Woodstock or Hendrix’s Machine Gun, an act of freeform radicalism”: The best guitar solos of 2024, as chosen by Guitar World editors and pro players
- “Joe Perry was running close to 15 cabs on stage, and he ended up asking Tony to turn down. The amp was only on 4”: From Eddie Van Halen’s amps to the art of boosting, here are Tony Iommi’s tone secrets – from the man who knows them best
- “A lot of my practice is about making smooth pedal changes to avoid surprises”: God Is an Astronaut’s Torsten Kinsella on his favorite fuzz flavors, tube amp disasters and learning his pedalboard dance steps
- “Music has to be heartfelt. Robert Johnson didn’t go back and redo anything. John Lee Hooker, he walked in there and did it once”: Tab Benoit on returning from the swamp with the blues comeback of the year, and why he’s a one-take wonder
December 16
- “Mastodon have this tuning where the sixth string drops to B. Our singer would say, ‘No, I want it lower.’ As soon as I picked up a 7-string I wished I’d done it sooner”: Meet Obeyer, the chorus-soaked UK metallers hand-picked by Periphery
- “Bluegrass and thrash are nearly the same – fast, precise, aggressive, melodic, with songs about death, destruction and doom”: Meet The Native Howl, the thrashgrass pioneers running Taylor acoustics through Mesa/Boogie stacks
- “I was 15 when we met – I was recording demos for my first record, and he was working with his brother, Jimmie Vaughan”: Eric Gales on the riffs that changed his life – and meeting Stevie Ray Vaughan as a teenager
December 15
- “People don’t use enough downstrokes. That up-and-down crap is for the birds”: Tom Petersson’s 12 tips for bass players
December 13
- “He turned it up, and it was uncontrollable”: Eddie Van Halen on the time Billy Corgan played through his rig – and why his setup shocked the Smashing Pumpkins frontman
- “We don’t want to be an old-school death metal band. But if you say ‘progressive death metal’, people expect hyper-sweeps and polyrhythms”: How Blood Incantation fused B.C. Rich, doom and David Gilmour to make one of 2024’s most talked-about metal albums
- “Even those who couldn’t afford carved tops, fancy inlays or binding weren’t expected to compromise on their tone”: The tonal mysteries of Gibson’s P-90 dog-ear pickups, which got their due in the Les Paul Junior
- “Mustangs are sick. They can take quite a beating when you’re literally chucking yourselves around”: Meet Lambrini Girls, the noise-punks starting a riot with blunt punk and scathing social commentary
- “I needed to have a bucket on the side of the stage because I was that sick”: Richie Kotzen on his worst-ever show, that time wildfires came for his guitar collection, and upsetting his mom by getting Purple Haze wrong
December 12
- “I went to Lars’ house, and he played me the tape of Hit the Lights. I said, ‘This song sucks. You need more guitar solos’”: They forged a new sound, and in 10 years, they were the biggest band in the world
- “You could describe it as an early ‘boutique’ pedal company… but its products were made in a damp, rat-infested basement”: Loved by Nuno Bettencourt, Jeff Beck and Kurt Cobain, the ProCo Rat graduated from dank basements to the world’s biggest albums
- “I was approached to join David Lee Roth’s band, initially… I didn’t want to be Eddie Van Halen part two”: Steve Stevens on laying down the Dirty Diana solo with Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones, recording Rebel Yell – and why Vai got it right with Roth
December 11
- “I used my P-Bass in the studio and my Jazz Bass live, because it projected a little louder”: Originally recorded as a B-side, this riff-driven blues became a Jimi Hendrix classic – and bassist Billy Cox played a pivotal role
- “There was a time you wouldn’t have touched a Superstrat, at least in my world – that was very illegal. It’s cool to be able to let go of those old feelings and those silly rules”: How Chris Shiflett learned to love his inner shredder
- “The guitar can be your best friend one day and your rival the next – it keeps you on your toes”: London jazz ace Artie Zaitz on why the amp is your second instrument and how he learned to love mistakes
December 10
- “This pickup could have come out of a late-’50s Gibson. If you had a guitar from that era with these pickups, everyone would be like, ‘Wow. That’s a badass-sounding Les Paul’”: How Adam “Nolly” Getgood and Bare Knuckle reinvented the P.A.F. for a new era
- “From the first chord, we both thought, ‘Wow’ – I quit my band and moved to Denmark”: How husband-and-wife duo the Courettes became one of the most exciting bands in the garage-rock underground
December 9
- “I won seven guitar contests in a row. When I went to enter again, they said, ‘No, don’t even enter – you’re going to judge the next one’”: Dimebag Darrell discusses his love of soloing – even when it was uncool – and dishes advice in his final interview
- “I was having so much anxiety about getting a great sound that I wasn’t writing songs… I said, ‘I’m gonna stop thinking about it. This is going to be my sound’”: Tom Morello on his tone struggles and what he learned from teaching his son Roman how to play
- “I have a Southern accent, and it’s the same on the guitar. I adapted the guitar to do the talking for me when I was too shy”: Marcus King on why your fretboard has its own language – and how mental health became his muse
- “When we learn to improvise, the first thing we pay attention to is where to put our fingers… rarely do any of us pay attention to the rhythm of a melody or lick”: Can’t figure out why your improvised solos don’t feel right? Here’s how to fix them
December 8
- “I played a 5-string with Lauryn Hill, but it didn’t feel like a real bass”: Raised on R&B, schooled by fusion, and empowered by punk rock, Bad Brains bassist Darryl Jenifer remains a 4-string purist
December 7
- “Zoom discontinued that pedal because nobody bought it – but bass players are always coming up to me wanting to know how I got those sounds”: Remembering jazz great Victor Bailey, who used an unsung multi-FX pedal for his cover of Prince’s biggest hit
December 6
- Proggy pentatonic! How to use the good ol’ pentatonic scale in cool new ways
- “I had a hard time playing in tune. The producer stopped me and said, ‘George, tune up again.’ I didn’t realize the value of that until Breezin’ came out”: How George Benson landed a hit album by breaking the rules – and learning to play in tune
- “Even though a Marshall sounded fantastic, I refused to play one. That’s my bad… I had a terrible sound for years”: Punk-grunge icon Donita Sparks on ironic gear choices, L7’s infamous Reading Festival set and why recording with Butch Vig was “maddening”
- “I bought my ’54 Strat from the biggest dealer in Sweden – he was crying when I walked away with the guitar”: Brian May, Steve Vai and Neal Schon have all given Yngwie Malmsteen guitars – but nothing compares to his Fender Strats
December 5
- “If there was ever a time to get off the rollercoaster, it was going to be at the top”: Being in a band is tough – just ask bassist Dirk Lance, who left Incubus at the peak of their powers
- “Trying to emulate these different players was a challenge. Chris Poland to Marty Friedman is like night and day. But that’s what excites me”: Glen Drover grew up idolizing Megadeth and King Diamond’s guitar heroes – then he had to step into their shoes
- “Many players think that the pickups are the main contributor to the way a guitar sounds… But if you change what the string does, that changes the guitar”: How Andy Powers rethought electric guitar design for the Powers Electric A-Type
December 4
- “We made a handwritten tab book. I wanted to make some sort of DIY zine, and I had all these guitar solos from the EP that people were asking about”: Musical polymath Luna Li on blending harps with Fender Jaguars – and the art of arrangement
- “I remember watching Jimi when I was younger, while he was in the room with me. I’d have my social studies book, but I was listening and watching him”: Ernie Isley lived with Jimi Hendrix – then took his place to write hit after hit in his brothers’ band
- “We wanted to carry the torch of the guitar duo – Friedman/Becker, Gilbert/Bouillet – and pay homage to the golden era of shred guitar”: YouTube virtuosos Pete & Vinnie Play started with Racer X covers – now they’ve released their own classic shred single
- “I always liked bluegrass a lot because the tempo is a lot closer to a NOFX beat”: Meet the Bad Ups, the Philadelphia punks inspired by country-and-western, reggae and Chet Atkins
December 3
- “David Ellefson told me, ‘You got the gig. Oh and by the way, Dave told me to tell you that you played many of the wrong guitar parts’”: Marty Friedman tells the inside story of his auditions with Ozzy Osbourne and Madonna – and landing the Megadeth gig
- “I don’t like brand-new guitars. I’ll see a new guitar and I’m like, ‘That’s gonna look good after I drag it across the driveway’”: Alter Bridge’s Myles Kennedy spills his tone (and drop tuning) secrets
December 2
- “We have no problem with sampling. If it hadn’t been for that you probably wouldn’t be interviewing us today”: Cymande bassist Steve Scipio on how the funk pioneers were almost buried before crate diggers like De La Soul and the Fugees brought them back
- “Delay isn’t something you really think of when you think of an acoustic guitar, but it works quite well when you’re adding a top line to a loop”: How Yamaha evolved its TransAcoustic tech to create an acoustic guitar with an onboard delay and looper
- “I don't look at the fingerboard, I listen to it. All of my fretless basses have no fret lines. I can't play on a lined fingerboard”: How Bakithi Kumalo’s swung, fretless bassline helped create one of Graceland’s defining sounds
December 1
- “When I was growing up, everyone said, ‘Oh, bass is just a second guitar.’ Bull! It's an art, man!” How Matt Freeman became one of punk’s most iconic bassists – bringing bass solos, jazz band and Carole King to Rancid
- “We try to schedule shows around school, and if we can’t, we’ll end up skipping… The band is our first priority”: The Linda Lindas are too punk-rock to stay in class – but they’re learning all the time