Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2021 i Guitar Player

SUCH IS THE difficulty of establishing an original new guitar design that many otherwise talented builders abandon the effort altogether and simply re-create their own version of the Stratocaster, Jazzmaster or Les Paul. Contrary to this, Canadian luthier Tom Bartlett made a new classic in grand style a few years back when he teamed up with Kim LaFleur of Historic Makeovers and Swedish designer Magnus Melkersson to develop the Retrospec model [reviewed in GP, July 2014]. Previously known for his high-end, detail-perfect guitars created through fastidious research of original ’Bursts, Bartlett packaged the essential ingredients and proportions of a vintage-style Les Paul into the Retrospec’s uniquely stylized body and immediately won plaudits from players who normally wouldn’t touch anything but a guitar shaped exactly like the real thing. Now Bartlett…

WHAT BETTER VEHICLE to drive to the country club than a Cadillac? And what better guitar to pull out for that swanky gig than a Gretsch Country Club — and a Cadillac Green one at that. Introduced in 1951, the Country Club had changed substantially by the time our featured example from 1962 arrived, embodying a form that will be more familiar to most of today’s players. Yet even then, it remained one of Gretsch’s grandest electric guitars, and a sign that a guitarist had “made it.” Labeled with the 6196 model designation when dressed in a Cadillac Green finish, the Country Club sported a large, 17-inch-wide body like the Country Gentleman and top-of-the-line White Falcon, which was a clue to the guitar’s exalted lineage. Even two decades later, the…

LIKE ROCK AND ROLL itself, it’s not easy to pinpoint the origin of hard rock, its louder, noisier and more provocative offshoot. Driven by strong rhythms and dominated by loud guitars playing aggressive riffs with distortion, hard rock grew from the stylistic and tonal preferences of electric blues players like Willie Johnson and Pat Hare, and rock and roll guitarists such as Link Wray and Dick Dale. The first blossoming of a hard-rock scene occurred in the late 1950s and early ’60s in Texas, Southern California and, especially, the Pacific Northwest, where garage-rock bands — including the prototypical hard-rock act, the Kingsmen — churned out three-chord tunes like “Louie Louie.” In this primitive state of its evolution, hard rock was a germ looking for a healthy host to help it…

SURE, THE FAB Four’s diverse musical history has blurred over time into a miasma of nostalgia, highlighted by pop fare like “Hey Jude,” “All You Need Is Love” and “Strawberry Fields Forever.” But the Beatles could get as heavy as the Who, Cream and the rest of the 1960s acts for whom they paved the way. Consider John Lennon’s “Ticket to Ride,” a 1965 rocker that featured Ringo Starr’s heavy drum rhythms and a circular guitar riff performed by George Harrison on his Rickenbacker 360/12 and Lennon on his Fender Strat, all of it girded on the verses to Lennon’s low, droning guitar notes. Later that year, Paul McCartney plugged his bass into a fuzz box for Harrison’s Rubber Soul track “Think for Yourself” and turned it into the rattiest-sounding…

HIS BACKLINE OF up to 15 Vox AC30s was referred to as the Wall of Death for its sheer volume. That alone might qualify Brian May for inclusion on any list of hard-rock guitarists, but there is much more to his style. As Queen’s guitarist for 50 years and, along with the late Freddie Mercury, one of its main songwriters, May expanded hard rock’s stylistic palette, combining rock and roll with the theatricality of Led Zeppelin, the glammy camp of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust era and the musical diversity of the Beatles. Along the way, he’s made his ringing, harmonized lead work one of the most distinctive and recognizable guitar tones in all of rock. His signature sound was nearly fully formed when Queen arrived in record shops in 1973…

WHEN JOURNEY FORMED in the early ’70s, it was a mind-blowing experience to witness this spectacular young guitarist — who as a teenager had turned down a job offer from Eric Clapton and left his gig with the Santana band — step out on his own and play with such fire, passion and intensity. As Journey moved away from their early fusiony sound and began transforming into the pop-rock megaband we know and love, Schon’s playing remained incredibly soulful and bluesy. He’s always crafted his solos with great compositional skill that moved the music and kept the listeners wanting more. Schon wasn’t labeled a “shredder” per se (which can be a good or bad thing, depending on one’s perspective), but he’s had a certain willful restraint in his playing that…

IN ALMOST ANY other case, it would be outrageous to say that rock and roll would sound entirely different were it not for one artist. But when the artist in question is Eddie Van Halen, who passed away in October 2020 at age 65 after a long battle with cancer, it’s the stone-cold truth. It took just 30 seconds of brainscrambling, two-handed tapping in 1978’s “Eruption” for Eddie to completely change guitar’s vocabulary. But that was just one act in his rewiring of the electric guitar’s DNA. Eddie also blurred the line between rhythm and lead playing and made every song a thrill-a-second rollercoaster ride with his screeching pick slides, dive bombs, superhuman shredding, syncopated grooving and fiercely aggro-metal riffing. He may not have been the first player to use…

WARREN DEMARTINI WAS just 19 when he joined Ratt, and it didn’t take him long to achieve rock immortality. One of the first things he brought to the band was the partial-chord–specked, insanely catchy, EVH-like main riff to what would become the band’s breakthrough hit, “Round and Round.” DeMartini (along with co-guitarist Robbin Crosby) remained a first-rate riff man throughout the decade, and you’d be hard pressed to find a budding ’80s player who didn’t log endless hours learning how to play the hard-charging six-string parts that powered arena-rock anthems like “Lay It Down,” “Back for More” and You’re in Love.” But it was as a soloist that DeMartini truly shined and stunned. He was part of the first wave of post-EVH hotshots who could rip through insanely intricate note…

NUNO BETTENCOURT DIDN’T appear on the guitar scene until the tail end of the ’80s, but even then, at the height of the shred-guitar boom, he instantly stood out from the pack with his unique rhythmic approach, heightened melodic and songwriting sense, and absolutely devastating chops. Bettencourt’s playing was spiked with blistering picking runs, wildly off-kilter licks, classically influenced (but hardly neoclassical) tapping, and deep-in-the-pocket, syncopated rhythm work, and he approached it all with style, whimsy and a sense of barely controlled chaos. In that regard, of all the Eddie Van Halen acolytes — and by 1989, when Extreme’s self-titled debut was released, there were many — Nuno is arguably the one who best reflected that same spirit, groove and sense of high-wire bravado. More than 30 years after the…

THE STRAP BUTTON is easily overlooked, but its placement is a huge factor in playability and a small factor sonically. At least one button is generally provided by the manufacturer and placed smack dab in the middle of the lower bout. Placement of second strap button is such a personal choice that some manufacturers leave it up to the player. Other manufacturers make the decision for some models but not others. So why do they put those strap buttons where they do, and if not, where should you? GOING STRAPLESS OR BUTTONLESS Players who sit and strum don’t need a strap, let alone a strap button. Everyone else needs a strategy for second-button placement or can simply leave it off. The upside of having no button is having no intrusion…

INTRODUCED IN THE early 1960s, the fuzz box was one of the first genuine solid-state effects pedals for guitar. It speaks to its expressiveness that the effect has remained both timeless and eternally in fashion in at least one prominent genre of popular music (and sometimes several) for the better part of six decades. The sound of a good fuzz pedal never seems to wear thin, and time and again it has been at the forefront of the latest wave of guitar-fueled fury as practiced by players ranging from Keith Richards and Jimi Hendrix to Billy Corgan and Jack White, and beyond. Pedal maker JHS is celebrating the many-splendored world of fuzz with retro-styled re-creations of four gnarly noisemakers in its Legends of Fuzz series, the two most seminal of…

When It’s Love I’ve only gotten about halfway through the issue [Holiday 2020], but I had to stop and let Matt Blackett know what an amazing writer he is. The EVH tribute is so heartfelt and well crafted. Excellent use of the quotes, superb storytelling and masterful weaving of personal feelings and observations with professional knowledge and experience from himself and others. And kudos to the entire staff at GP for getting the issue together quickly and thoughtfully. Excellent! Even to the detail of the EVH guitar graphics on the sides of the pages. Yes, I am of the Beatles, Hendrix and Clapton generation. But Eddie was special. I can’t say any more here than you most eloquently already have. I just wanted to thank you at GP for a…

BLACK STONE CHERRY are more than a band. They’re practically a family. The American hard-rock quartet’s members have been friends for more than 20 years and began playing music together when they were still at school in Edmonton, Kentucky. They even have a familial connection with another area group, the Kentucky Headhunters; Drummer John Fred Young is the son of the Headhunter’s rhythm guitarist, Richard Young. Consisting of Young, bassist Jon Lawhon, lead guitarist and vocalist Chris Robertson and rhythm guitarist Ben Wells, BSC have a unique take on the traditional southern rock sound, adding pulverising downtuned riffs that have won them fans in the metal and hard-rock arenas, all while maintaining a roots feel that has helped them score airplay on mainstream country radio. Their new album, The Human…

I LOVED RITCHIE Blackmore when I was a young guitarist, and I still do. His solos were uniquely inventive, and he often incorporated harmonic minor scales, along with piercing string bends and a vibrato-bar assault that was all his own and could sound otherworldly and supersonic. Most importantly, his solos were mini compositions that were great musical adventures. As a guitarist, he was a great storyteller with a lot to say, and he does on Deep Purple’s Machine Head. Released in 1972 on the Purple label in the U.K. (and on the Warner Bros. label in the U.S.), it’s the group’s sixth studio album and the third to feature the Mark II lineup of Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord and Ian Paice. Its hit “Smoke on the Water”…

HE CAME OUT of nowhere with a sound and style like no other. When Jeff Beck joined the Yardbirds in 1966, he took over from Eric Clapton, soon to be celebrated as no less than God for his fiery guitar playing with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. Another guitarist might have gone weak in the knees having to follow in Clapton’s footsteps, but Beck was practical. “It occurred to me that it was a lack of dexterity or skill as a guitarist at that time that made me explore the weird sounds that I found I could make with it — feedback, echo and the like,” he told Guitarist magazine in 2009. “So I just delved into my brain box to find sounds that didn’t sound like a guitar. I…

BOSTON ARE OFTEN maligned as “corporate rock,” an ironic categorization for a band whose debut album was conceived largely by one guy working alone in his wood-paneled basement after getting off work as a product design engineer for Polaroid. That guy, guitarist and songwriter Tom Scholz, not only managed to come up with Boston’s self-titled, multi-Platinum-selling 1976 debut album — he also revolutionized rock-guitar tone using little more than a goldtop 1968 Les Paul with a “neck like a log” that he recorded at extremely low volume due to his less-than-adequate studio environs. Scholz has identified that tone — characterized by a sweetly distorted and heavily sustaining guitar sound — as the combination of his Les Paul running into an old 100-watt Marshall head and a prototype power soak that…

MICHAEL SCHENKER IS about to celebrate his 50th anniversary in the music business, since joining Scorpions in 1971. His first appearance on record was at the age of 16 in 1972, on Lonesome Crow, the debut Scorpions album. Soon after, the band was on tour opening for the U.K. hard-rock act UFO when Schenker accepted their offer to join. “I always said to the guys in Scorpions that if an English band asked me to join them, I wouldn’t hesitate,” Schenker recalls today. “England looked like the place to be if you wanted to have a career playing rock and roll, not Germany.” Schenker’s work with UFO saw him quickly join the ranks of the great ’70s guitar heroes. His style influenced legions of subsequent legendary names, including Randy Rhoads,…

JOHN SYKES MAY not be a household name, but any fan of ’80s hard rock knows his work. That’s Sykes’ dynamic playing — part masterful melodist, part muscular shredder — on Whitesnake mega-hits like “Still of the Night,” “Is This Love” and the indomitable “Here I Go Again.” Describing his goal with the formerly pub-rocking Whitesnake — whom he joined in 1983 and exited, under acrimonious circumstances, just after recording the massive-selling 1987 self-titled album — he said he wanted to bring in a “modern, edgy guitar sound with melody, finesse and drive,” and that he did. It’s also a pretty accurate description of Sykes’ guitar approach throughout his career. Sykes came on the scene in 1980 as a member of New Wave of British Heavy Metal also-rans Tygers of…

THERE WERE PLENTY of hotshot guitarists tearing it up on the Sunset Strip in the mid-to-late ’70s, but three undoubtedly stood out: Eddie Van Halen, then–Quiet Riot guitarist Randy Rhoads…and George Lynch. At the time, Lynch was playing with a band called the Boyz, who had enough clout — and Lynch enough of a rep as a supreme shredder — that, in an oft-told story, Kiss’s Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley came to see them headline at the Starwood in L.A. The story ends, of course, with Simmons taking the opening band that night, Van Halen, back to New York to record a demo. The rest, as they say, is history. Lynch, however, went on to do just fine himself, hooking up with singer Don Dokken in his namesake band,…

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN two of our most storied American guitar makers goes back to 1957, when Gibson purchased the New York–based Epiphone company and applied the brand name to new guitars built alongside its own in the Kalamazoo factory. Come 1970, Epiphone was shifted into more of a downmarket option, with production moved overseas and prices aimed at entry-level players. The new Epiphone Limited Edition 1959 Les Paul Standard, however, represents a return home of sorts. Although manufactured in China, it’s the first Epiphone guitar made in collaboration with the Gibson Custom Shop in Nashville, and as a result, it displays a wealth of enticing vintage-inspired details for a Les Paul with a price tag well under $1,000. “Our relationship with Gibson Custom Shop has always been great,” Epiphone product…

SUBSCRIPTIONS Renewals/Questions: help@mymagazine.co.uk New Orders: help@magazinesdirect.com Phone: 800-289-9839 Mail: Guitar Player Subscriptions P.O. Box 2029, Langhorne, PA 19047 GUITARPLAYER.COM JACKSON MAXWELL Online and Social Media Managing Editor jackson.maxwell@futurenet.com WEBSITE & SOCIAL GUITARPLAYER.COM FACEBOOK.COM/GUITARPLAYERMAG TWITTER.COM/GUITARPLAYERNOW THE MAGAZINE CHRISTOPHER SCAPELLITI Editor-in-Chief chris.scapelliti@futurenet.com ART THOMPSON Senior Editor arthur.thompson@futurenet.com ROSIE WEBBER Art Editor rosie.webber@futurenet.com JUDE GOLD Los Angeles Editor judegold@gmail.com JIMMY LESLIE Frets Editor j@jimmyleslie.com DAVE HUNTER Gear Section & Video Contributor dhunterwordsmusic@yahoo.com JIMMY BROWN Lessons Editor jimmy.brown@futurenet.com…

OVER THE COURSE of more than three decades as lead guitarist and co-songwriter for Soundgarden, Kim Thayil was responsible for crafting some of the most twisted, psychedelic and downright heavy riffs and solos in the modern rock canon. So it’s not surprising that when people think of him as a musician, “the first thing that comes to mind is the body of work that I did with Soundgarden,” Thayil says. But, he adds, “there’s other stuff that I’m really satisfied with as well.” Which is all the more reason why Thayil was happy to sit down with Guitar Player and discuss some of his favorite guitar performances from his long and illustrious career. Not content to stick with five tracks, he gave us six worthy recordings to consider. They comprise,…

AS A KID playing in garage bands in the ’60s, I lusted over the smorgasbord of electric guitars that became available in that decade. The more garish their shapes and features, the better. The Vox Phantom, with its odd five-sided body, wasn’t popular with a lot of rock stars of the day, but it made a deep impression on me and the guitar world at large. Teisco, Silvertone, Liban, Penncrest, Guyatone and many others created their own copies of it. The Domino Californian shown here is just such an example, made by Kawai of Japan for the Maurice Lipsky Music Company of New York City, which also sold a copy of the Vox V222 Mark VI Teardrop. The Vox models were an odd choice to replicate, given that few big-name…

NO GUITARIST OF the 1960s brought as much volume, aggression or savagery to rock and roll as the Who’s Pete Townshend. Much of that is down to his use of distortion, feedback and power chords, but it was also due to the sheer volume he would achieve onstage. Indeed, Townshend was one of a handful of guitarists — including Ritchie Blackmore and Big Jim Sullivan — who pushed Jim Marshall to make his amps louder. And it was Townshend, along with Who bassist John Entwistle, who blazed the trail for the 4x12 double stack, now and forever a mainstay in hard rock. But Townshend needed a stage presence to go with that big sound, and he got it by making his every move as big as possible: windmilling his arm…

JIMI HENDRIX SO completely changed the music landscape in the late ’60s that it’s difficult to conceive how any guitarist of the last half century couldn’t have been affected by him or his music. Without Hendrix, how would guitars with locking trems have been developed? What about high-gain amplifiers and effects pedals? Hendrix had Marshall amps, the Fuzz Face, the Cry Baby wah and the Octavia that Roger Mayer invented. He played a right-handed Strat that he flipped over so he could play it left-handed. For his short-lived career, it was all he needed to create game-changing music. He took the blues styles that he was well acquainted with to a whole new level via his use of distortion, feedback and sheer volume to create sounds that dovetailed with everything…

THE DAWN OF the ’70s saw hard rock emerge as the predominant form of rock, a loud and brash style that excelled in arenas and stadiums, to which touring acts had graduated. Next to Led Zeppelin, two of the biggest groups of the time were Deep Purple and Grand Funk Railroad. After exploring pop and prog in the late ’60s, Deep Purple found their groove with their Mark II lineup in 1970, releasing In Rock, the album that broke them into the mainstream. Meanwhile, Grand Funk Railroad became massively successful with their updated power-trio format. Despite critical denunciations and little radio airplay, the band sold millions of albums and in 1971 sold out Shea Stadium in just 72 hours, something that had taken the Beatles several weeks to do in…

ANGUS YOUNG AND AC/DC have been accused of making the same album over and over again for the past 45 years. But if you achieve high-voltage rock-and-roll perfection on more or less the first try, why would you change a thing? The Aussie guitarist is certainly one of the most explosive and captivating players in rock and roll, with guitar and sartorial styles all his own. Mixing hopped-up Chuck Berry rhythms with blues boogie, pop songcraft and a hint of heavy-metal thunder, Angus and his late brother, rhythm guitarist Malcolm, constructed the riffs that power some of rock’s most monumental and iconic songs, including “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” “Highway to Hell,” “Back in Black” and “You Shook Me All Night Long.” Regarding these riffs, Angus once said, “We always…

FOR MILLIONS OF American teens in the 1970s, there was no more perfect song for late-night cruising than Golden Earring’s “Radar Love.” Its shuffling boogie rhythm encouraged pedal-to-the-metal driving, while the lyrics captured the thrill of joyriding and, hopefully, getting lucky. Pushing it all along was the insistent riffing of guitarist George Kooymans, who punctuated the space between Barry Hay’s lyrics with some of the tastiest licks outside of a Dairy Queen drive-thru. “Radar Love” was and remains the quintessential American hard-rock road song. So imagine how surprising it was for young listeners to discover Golden Earring hailed not from the U.S. but the Netherlands, or that the group had been a going concern for more than 10 years by the time it scored its breakthrough hit. Kooymans and bassist…

BIG, POWERFUL AND seemingly primed to take over the world, the guitar and bass amps made in Michigan by David West and his West Laboratories in the late ’60s and early ’70s embodied a classic breed of local ingenuity. In an era when more was definitely more, they appealed to the archetypal American band. Back in the golden age of rock, when the American amplifier market was still dominated by a small handful of major manufacturers, several notable regional makers often filled the void for local guitarists who couldn’t easily access or afford the Marshall, Hiwatt, Fender, Ampeg or Sunn stacks that were slaying huge audiences in arena shows around the world. With a “Sure, I can build you a killer stack right here!” attitude, many of these smaller shops…

LIKE ACE FREHLEY, Mick Mars had the misfortune of working with bandmates whose antics, both onstage and off, effectively overshadowed him. What’s more, Mars was a few years older than his ’80s guitar-playing peers when he joined the band and something of a traditionalist compared to the rest of the Sunset Strip crew. After all, he had grown up listening to the likes of Clapton, Beck and Mike Bloomfield and playing in ’70s-era blues rock bar bands, rather than woodshedding two-handed tapping and other EVH techniques in his bedroom. Which means that he came at ’80s hard rock and metal from his own distinct, and less-peacocking, angle. “My goal was always to play something that fit and something that was memorable, not just a barrage of notes,” Mars said. “And…

BY THE MID ’80s, the hard-rock guitar landscape was overrun with pointy-guitar-wielding, Aqua Net–abusing “Shreddy” Van Halen speed demons. Until Slash came along. The Guns N’ Roses guitarist is widely credited with triggering a 180-degree turn in the guitar universe, injecting the scene with a much-needed shot of bluesy soul and classic-rock style. And while those hair-conscious guitarists didn’t exactly disappear with his arrival, you could rightly argue that hard-rock guitar playing styles changed dramatically after Slash came on the scene. Furthermore, while there was certainly still a healthy representation of custom-graphic superstrats in Sunset Strip clubs and MTV videos post 1987, when Guns N’ Roses released their epochal debut, Appetite for Destruction, Slash returned the Les Paul to its iconic status — even if, as we all know now,…

ON SEPTEMBER 24, 1 991, three albums were released that would go on to change my world. Two were from bands out of Seattle, and the third from Los Angeles. Care to guess which albums? Here are some hints: Both bands from Seattle named their albums with words spliced together to form one perplexing title. One was a colloquialism that a youthful grunge culture with no spellcheck at the ready blindly accepted, while the other was a snarky play on words meant to scoff at a Montrose song. The L.A.-based band named theirs with not a care in the world for syntax or for spelling all the words properly. Despite all three bands disregarding the written word, this trifecta would go on to sell in the millions, define a generation…

BORN FROM A long line of high-gain Rectifier amplifiers that dropped on the heavy-rock scene in the ’90s — and rapidly evolved from the Dual and Triple Rectifiers to the Road King, Roadster, Mini-Rectifier and Recto-Verb 25 — Mesa/Boogie’s new Badlander is its most sophisticated yet. It boasts all-new preamp and power sections that have been designed to do several things: Stay tight on the bottom end and sweet and singing on top, deliver exceptional dynamic and touch sensitivity, and allow the character of the guitar and the player to come through, no matter how the gain is set. The 100-watt Badlander on review here starts out with five 12AX7s and a quartet of EL34s (or a pair in the 50-watt model), and can be quickly rebiased for 6L6s via…

THE NEW FLAG SHIP in Godin’s venerable Multiac line of hybrid instruments is a top-shelf nylon-string guitar that results from the company’s renewed collaboration with the acoustic-electrification experts at L.R. Baggs. The two manufacturers have an extensive history of innovation dating back to 1988, and the Grand Concert Deluxe represents a significant step forward. Baggs created custom electronics around hexaphonic pickups and a Lyric microphone to capture percussive elements from the Grand Concert Deluxe’s solid cedar top. In addition to volume, EQ, phase and blend controls, the onboard preamp features an adjustable tape-saturation simulation slider to emulate the warmth and subtle drive that results from recording to analog tape. The modern/classic hallmarks of Godin’s Multiac line are on full display and in play on the Grand Concert Deluxe. The overall…

AT NAMM 2020, Rainger unveiled a drive/distortion/fuzz mini-pedal that changed its sound depending on which liquid you put into a plastic container embedded in the chassis. Reactions ranged from “What?!” to insert-your-laughable-liquid-joke-here. That was then, but now the time has come to check out the seriousness of this intriguing stomp box. Some of the Mini Bar Liquid Analyser’s appeal is its off-the-charts cool factor. Carnival colors plaster the small casing, and the single output knob is bright orange. The plastic liquid container lights up when the effect is engaged, and a small green light under the fluid flashes when you play. So far, so fun, but how does it sound? Well, if you don’t put any liquid in it, it doesn’t sound at all. However, add just enough fluid to…

IT’S ALWAYS NICE when a product offers more than meets the eye. MXR’s new Tremolo pedal seems straightforward enough at first blush, but this compact pedal is one powerful modulation box, with six tremolo styles that are selected by pushing the gain knob, which also controls the volume of the effect. The Tremolo carries depth and speed controls — along with input and output jacks and a nine-volt input for the included adapter — but it quickly gets much deeper thanks to a CTR (control) jack and accompanying two-position slider switch that allows the use of an optional foot switch for tap tempo, or an optional expression pedal to blend between two different tremolo settings. Depending on how the switch is set, there are also three available stereo (TRS) modes:…

SOME SONGS HAVE a way of becoming both timely and timeless, and that’s certainly true of Styx’s feisty and impassioned tribute to the dashed dreams of everyday workers, “Blue Collar Man (Long Nights).” “It’s a song that still hits home,” says its composer, guitarist and singer Tommy Shaw. “No matter who you are, even if you’re in a successful rock band, you can relate to it. I know I do. I show up, suit up, do the job, and I love it. When something like that gets taken away from somebody, it’s terrible.” The rousing track, which features a corker of a guitar solo played by Shaw (who also turns in a gutsy lead vocal), was the first single from Styx’s 1978 album, Pieces of Eight. Reaching No. 21 on…