Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2024 i Guitar Player

SPEAK TO ME WHEN WORD CAME that a new David Gilmour album was due this fall, you can be sure it created a buzz throughout the music press. This is, after all, a legendary guitarist from a legendary band that has made legendary albums — not to mention a musical artist whose solo album output remains fresh, imaginative and imperative. Since the demise of Pink Floyd, Gilmour seems to have distilled his songwriting talents and guitar work to an essence, like a heady, potent liquor you can soak in. Knowing how press-shy the man is, I put in our interview request, crossed my fingers and checked in with my co-editors across the pond at regular intervals to catch up on the latest Gilmour scuttlebutt. What I heard was deflating: He’d done…

WHEN BRIAN RAY joined Paul McCartney’s band in 2002, he was tasked with the responsibility of learning more than 40 songs — in one week. “Fortunately, I listened to the Beatles nonstop throughout my life, so I already knew most of them,” he says. “Of course, it’s much different when you’re playing in a band that, oh yeah, is led by Paul McCartney himself. Needless to say, I immersed myself in the material.” He also had to learn another instrument. The gig with McCartney required Ray to switch between guitar and bass on songs where McCartney played guitar or piano. “I definitely had to woodshed on bass, but Paul made it very easy for me,” he says. “I could never re-create his parts exactly, but as long as I got…

AS TIME GOES on, I’ve become more acutely aware of the musical history that’s been lost with each new generation. People today can’t imagine not having access to a billion songs, instantly available via voice command, but the wealth of options on tap means many important artists from past eras are simply lost in the musical shuffle. I happily admit that most of the young musicians I know are significantly better informed — and qualified — than I was at their age. Still, some of our greatest guitar pioneers have been lost to time like needles in the proverbial haystack. Sol Hoopii is one of them. He was born in Honolulu in 1902 and reportedly was playing ukulele by the age of three. By his teen years, Sol was fluent…

The Black Strat The most famous of Gilmour’s guitars, the so-called Black Strat is a much-modded guitar that he purchased at Manny’s in New York in 1970. It was originally a Fender 1968 to ’69 alder body with black painted over the original sunburst finish. It had a Fender late-’60s maple neck (large headstock) and 21 frets, but a rosewood-necked version features on The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here. To muddy the waters still further, the guitar was later fitted with a Charvel neck. The Black Strat was on display at the Dallas and Miami Hard Rock Cafes until 1997, after which Gilmour played it for Floyd’s 2005 Live 8 show and continued to make modifications. The guitar can be seen in the concert film…

FROM HIS TIME with Frank Zappa through his work with David Bowie, Talking Heads and King Crimson, Adrian Belew could be spotted onstage with a battle-scarred sunburst-finish Fender Stratocaster. Given its history, that guitar may be one of the most storied Strats in the history of avant-garde rock. How it came to play such a vital role in Belew’s career is a tale in itself, one that began in the 1970s, when the guitarist was still a young unknown from Covington, Kentucky, who was suddenly dropped alongside Frank Zappa, an unflinching perfectionist guitar virtuoso. As Belew reveals to Guitar Player, his Stratocaster was certainly not the prettiest or most expensive example — just one that he could afford. And he rode it all the way to his breakout success as…

DAVID LINDLEY WAS the epitome of a musician’s musician, not only for his comprehensive skills but also for his infectious personality. Lindley was best known as the ultimate sidekick, with crazy credits ranging from Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton to John Hiatt, James Taylor and Jackson Browne. His melodic lap steel and signature searing tone totally transformed Browne’s sound in the ’70s, so much that Lindley was practically a second lead voice in his band. “Running on Empty” and “Stay” wouldn’t likely be the classic rock staples they’ve become without Lindley’s presence. (That’s him singing the impossibly high falsetto chorus on the latter track from the Running on Empty album.) Lindley, who died of complications from Long COVID on March 3, 2023, founded his pioneering world-fusion band El Rayo-X…

EPIPHONE HAS EXPANDED its Inspired by Gibson Custom range, and in doing so has arguably narrowed the gap in quality between these guitars and those of the parent company. At the same time, Epiphone has expanded its offering of period-correct models, which so far has included renditions of the J-45, J-180 and SJ-200 acoustics. The new lineup features the 1959 Les Paul Standard, Les Paul Custom, 1963 Les Paul SG Custom, and the two more exotic offerings, reviewed here, the 1963 Firebird V and 1959 ES-355. While the majority of Epiphone’s guitars have been “inspired by Gibson” models since it was absorbed by its parent company in 1957, the series represents a much closer collaboration between the Chinese-made guitars and the luthiers of Gibson’s Nashville-based Custom department. The twofold goal…

A DETAIL-PERFECT clone of a 1959 Gibson Les Paul is sure to set players’ and collectors’ hearts aflutter. So when the Gibson Custom Shop and Murphy Lab apply their skills to re-creating a legendary ’Burst from that same year, you can bet it will result in off-the-chart excitement. The guitar in question is Red Eye, the ’59 Burst formerly owned by the late Ed King of Lynyrd Skynyrd, which now resides in the collection of Jason Isbell. While music’s best and brightest tend to excel in one or two directions, Isbell does it all. Not only is the six-time Grammy Award winner a top-flight solo artist, band member, session guitarist and vocalist, he’s also the rare singer-songwriter who is deeply obsessed with vintage guitars and knows how to suss the…

IF YOU’RE A regular at Guided by Voices shows — and most of the band’s rabid fans have seen the group dozens, if not hundreds, of times — you’ll know what to expect when you turn your gaze stage left: lead guitarist Doug Gillard, legs apart, feet firmly planted on the ground, heavily worn black Les Paul Custom slung over his shoulder, while an equally well-used Mesa Dual Rectifier blasts out the cascading licks, signature riffs and tightly clustered chord voicings that have made him one of indie rock’s most celebrated players and landed him on Rolling Stone’s list of “The 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” “Doug is original and also diverse in technique,” says Robert Pollard, Guided by Voices’ frontman and principal songwriter. “He can let loose when…

STEVE MORSE Favorite solo: “Comfortably Numb” “The soaring melodic tone is an inspiration for me to try to find the right notes and really play from the heart. I’ve had the honor of working with Pink Floyd producer Bob Ezrin on many projects, and he always jokes with me when I’m having difficulty finding a solo he likes. He’ll say, ‘You know, Gilmour played the solo on ‘Learning to Fly’ in one take on a little practice amp,’ which will elicit a predictably dour comeback from me about how we can’t all be David Gilmour!” KIRK HAMMETT (METALLICA) Favorite solo: “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” “There is a riff in that song, but it’s so sideways and so around the back. It’s a freaking blues progression, but it doesn’t sound like it,…

PREVIOUSLY PART OF PRS’s Maryland-built guitar line, the SE NF3 was recently reissued in the company’s offshore-produced SE series. The SE NF3 is so named for its Narrowfield Deep Dish (a.k.a. DD) “S” pickups. These unique PRS-design units have deeper bobbins to accommodate more windings and extra metal pieces between the magnets to yield a more powerful “single-coil” tone, while remaining noise-free because they are in fact humbuckers. A control set consisting of master volume, tone and a five-way blade switch allows the usual selections of bridge, middle and neck pickups by themselves and the neck-plus-middle and bridge-plus-middle combinations that allow the SE NF3 to veer into Strat-like territory in switch positions two and four. All of this makes the SE NF3 quite different from standard humbucker-equipped PRS guitars, although…

FENDER NEVER OFFERED a “deluxe” rendition of the Stratocaster until 1987, more than three decades after that model’s introduction. By contrast, the Telecaster proved ripe for modification on several occasions long before the Strat reached that milestone. I’m not talking about the evolution of components and appointments that defined the chronological march of all Fender guitars through the company’s early years, but rather the unveiling of a souped-up or upgraded rendition that appeared along-side an original model. Leo and company did just that with the Telecaster Custom in 1959, a mere nine years after it was introduced as the Broadcaster. The Telecaster Custom featured a bound body and a then-new rosewood fingerboard. The next change came nearly a decade later when Fender lightened the load of heavier ash stocks with…

“FOR 40 YEARS, fans — and especially a lot of musicians — havetoldme that this era of the band was a watermark,” Adrian Belew says, discussing the version of King Crimson that he led alongside founder and visionary Robert Fripp in the 1980s. “Was it popular and well-known by MTV lovers? No. But that’s not what the intent was in the first place. We weren’t trying to make hit records. We were trying to be adventurous.” “Adventurous” is an understatement. The three records that Belew, Fripp, drummer Bill Bruford and bassist and Chapman Stick wizard Tony Levin released during that period — 1981’s Discipline, 1982’s Beat and 1984’s Three of a Perfect Pair — represent some of the most groundbreaking, challenging and creative music of the band’s lifetime. The original…

CHICAGO NATIVE J.D SIMO and Memphis-bred Luther Dickinson each harbor an affinity for the blues. At 39 and 51, respectively, they’ve been banging around for years but had never crossed paths. That all changed pre-COVID, when Dickinson dropped Simo a line via Instagram, launching a slow but steady trudge toward the duo’s new debut, Do the Rump. It was apparently a match made in heaven. “We just fit,” Simo tells Guitar Player. “We speak the same roots language but phrase completely differently.” “We have similar tastes and aesthetics,” Dickinson concurs, “but express ourselves differently through our guitars. Our tones, phrasing, and note choices are different, but they complement each other. That all becomes apparent on Do the Rump, an album that’s brimming with the classic blues cuts that have inspired…

THE SOL ENCANTO is the newest member of Cort’s top-of-the-line Masterpiece range, featuring all solid woods and elegant aesthetics, and it’s the only nylon-string model of the four Masterpiece models currently available. When the press release came out, I quickly asked about a review unit because the Sol Encanto checks a lot of boxes. Here’s a nylon-string guitar with solid mahogany back and sides, a solid Engelmann spruce top, a soft Venetian cutaway, a side sound port and Fishman electronics, all at a street price below $1,500. Once I saw the gorgeous promo photo, I simply had to meet this lovely in person and feel it in hand. The Sol Encanto is a true stunner with a distinct appeal. The White Blond gloss finish makes its Engelmann spruce top truly…