Indholdsfortegnelse for Holiday 2021 i Guitar World

HELLO AND WELCOME to our jam-packed “Legends” issue — an issue with five different covers (For those of you following along at home, the Edge is on all the newsstand editions and one quarter of subscriber editions, while Jerry Cantrell, Poison Ivy and Tom Morello make up the remaining three quarters of the subscriber editions). Sure, we could’ve filled this issue with an entirely different collection of “legends” (Where’s Eddie? Where’s SRV? Where are Jeff, Jimmy, Jimi, Joe and Steve?), but we’re proud of this quirky yet incredibly well-rounded batch, a batch that covers metal, pop, weirdo rock ’n’ roll, hard rock and more. Anyway, as much as I enjoyed reading everything in this issue, the real treasure for me is Scott Rowley’s Poison Ivy feature — a feature based…

WHEN JIMI HENDRIX passed through Paris on one of his tours, a guitarist he was keen to meet was Nicolas Kasanda wa Mikalay — the Congolese finger-picking electric guitar master more widely known as Dr. Nico, or to many across mid-20th century Africa, L’ Eternel Docteur Nico. At around the same time that “Clapton is God” graffiti was appearing on London walls, Africans were calling Dr. Nico the Guitar God. With good reason. If cascades of gorgeous-to-gritty tone, an effortless flow of sparkling, playful melody, harmonization and dazzling polyrhythmic syncopations make up your idea of six-string divinity, Dr. Nico surely belongs in your pantheon. He came along at an ideal moment in musical history and African history. In the late 1950s and early Sixties, the electric guitar had reached a…

Nobody will care about your 10,000 followers if you can’t play to a click track WHILE THERE’S NO single path to being a professional session guitarist, there are certainly a few things you can do to put yourself on the right path. Here are six tips I wish I’d been given when I was starting out. 1. GET STUFF! Get yourself an interface, speakers/headphones, mic and DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and learn how to use them. Gone are the days of resident studio musicians; it’s now possible to produce high-quality tracks in your bedroom with a modest setup. GarageBand comes stock on Macs, and most budget interfaces come with free versions of programs like Ableton Lite. YouTube has a plethora of tutorials to help you get the most out of…

OVER THE PAST four decades, the Edge has influenced generations of music lovers to go that extra step and pick up a guitar. For many of those music lovers, October and Achtung Baby played important roles in their introduction to U2. Below, a host of guitar greats discuss the influence of the Edge, through an October and Achtung Baby lens. TOM MORELLO The Edge has challenged conceptions of what an electric guitar should sound like — and constantly pushed the boundaries of what an electric guitar can sound like. One of my favorite Edge moments is on “Love Is Blindness” on Achtung Baby. Apparently recorded in the midst of a rending divorce, Edge’s playing is deeply emotional and sonically confrontational. The song has two very different solo sections. When I…

DAVE MURRAY IS laughing at Guitar World’s question, and, honestly, we can’t really blame him. We’ve connected with the Iron Maiden guitarist to discuss his iconic metal band’s new record, Senjutsu. It’s an epic double album bursting with complex, head-spinning guitar action — and we’ve just asked him to pick out its single most challenging six-string moment. “Anything that sounds difficult … was difficult to play!” he says with a chuckle. Murray’s good-natured jibe aside, Senjutsu is a truly formidable work of art. The New Wave of British Heavy Metal trailblazers’ 17th album is a 10-song, 80-plus-minute collection of classic Maiden grandeur and inimitable triple-guitar assault, courtesy of Murray and his compatriots Adrian Smith and Janick Gers. It’s stacked with Iron Maiden’s signature calling cards: dual-guitar harmonies, soaring solos, galloping…

JERRY CANTRELL LIKES TO KEEP NOSTALGIA at arm’s length. “I never look back too much,” he says. “I think if you spend too much time on the past, you’re not moving forward. I was never the kind of guy to just kick back and cruise. I’m always thinking about getting over the mountain. I try to keep my eye on what’s in front of me.” Even so, the guitarist is happy to spend part of our interview strolling down memory lane, reflecting on those years — now three decades ago — when his band Alice in Chains, along with fellow Seattleites Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Nirvana and others, fused punk, hard rock and metal for a sound that revolutionized music. “It was a cool time,” he says. “It was very personal,…

FOR ANYONE WHO thinks Judas Priest co-founder K.K. Downing ran out of musical steam and mental energy when he “quit” the band in 2011 and was replaced by Richie Faulkner — you’ve got another think coming. Downing’s new band, KK’s Priest, is pugilistic and propulsive, rife with instantly engaging riffs, blazing solos and memorable hooks. Does it sound like Judas Priest? Sure it does, but who has more of a right to make music that sounds like everything else he’s done than one of the forefathers of Judas Priest and the metal movement? KK’s Priest’s debut albaum, Sermons of the Sinner, the first major metal project on which Downing has played since Judas Priest’s 2008 operatic Nostradamus, is a feast of palm-muted riffs that burst into infectious, but not always…

IF YOUR MINI pedal cravings need to be addressed faster than the speed of light, consider checking out Pigtronix’s lil’ floor-stompers as future spacefaring voyagers for your pedalboard. Pigtronix launched a batch of stellar stompboxes with names like Gamma Drive, Moon Pool, Constellator and Space Rip that sound like they’re right out of a SpaceX playbook, but they are very much “down to earth” analog mini-pedals with advanced circuitry and futuristic enhancements. Two of them reviewed here — the Constellator, an analog delay pedal with 600ms of modulated echo and two selectable Feel modes; and the Space Rip, an analog synth pedal featuring pulse width modulated (PWM) sawtooth and square wave voices in multiple octaves — integrate classic tried-and-true tones with unusual twists that yield inspiring results. FEATURES Both pedals…

STREET PRICE: $1,853 MANUFACTURER: DACS Digital Audio, dacs-audio.com The relay switching box provides jacks for connecting up to eight separate amps and four speaker cabinets. A separate interface/selector unit can be placed remotely in the control room, allowing users to instantly select amp and speaker combos via push buttons. THE BOTTOM LINE: The DACS HeadLine Guitar Switcher system provides studio guitarists who prefer to use a variety of tube amps and speakers with the same instant rig-switching gratification as players who use digital modeling apps, processors and amps.…

I’M NOT GOING to lie to you; I’m a big fan of rock ’n’ roll! I’m a huge fan of the Rolling Stones and was very saddened to hear of the recent passing of their legendary drummer, Charlie Watts, surely one of the absolutely greatest rock drummers of all time. As a young tyke, I used to play along to great live Rolling Stones records, such as Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! and Love You Live. I love the Faces, with the incredible Ronnie Wood and, of course, Rod Stewart. I love Dave Edmunds… what I’m trying to say is, I like rock ’n’ roll! For this month’s column, I thought it’d be fun and instructive to offer some examples of ways to embellish a little three-chord jam, kind of a…

WHEN JOAN JETT released “I Love Rock ’n Roll” in the early Eighties, she instantly transformed herself from an underground punk/hard rock misfit best known for her role as the former rhythm guitarist for the Runaways into an international superstar and female rock legend. The single was a massive hit, reaching Number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in March 1982 and remaining in the top spot for seven weeks. Surprisingly, this was not the first time the song was released. The original version by the Arrows was issued as a single in the UK in 1975, and Jett recorded a different, previous version in 1979, which appeared as the B-side to her first solo single, “You Don’t Own Me.” Jett recorded her first version of “I Love Rock…

GUITAR: c. 1965-66 Gibson Melody Maker Double with Red Rhodes Velvet Hammer 54 ceramic magnet humbucker (bridge) and 1971-72 Gibson humbucker (neck) (bridge pickup), Bridge Volume: 10, Bridge Tone: 10 AMP: c. 1978-79 Music Man 212-HD 130 combo (left channel, Input 1, Bright, Volume: 10, Treble: 8, Middle: 7, Bass: 3, Master Volume: 3, Deep) with two Electro-Voice EVM 12L 12-inch speakers EFFECTS: None STRINGS/TUNING: D’Addario XL110 (.010-.046)/standard PICK: D’Andrea Delrex 390 Sharkfin 1.0mm…

Cheech & Chong & George Thanks for the George Harrison cover [September 2021]. I’ll add a Harrison studio performance that I’ve never seen mentioned anywhere: “Basketball Jones” by Cheech & Chong. Before you laugh, go to YouTube and listen. Yes, that’s none other than George Harrison playing that slinky, tone-drenched riff. It sounds like he’s playing a Strat through a Leslie — and it sounds incredible. I’m a longtime subscriber (I have every tab magazine going as far back as 1983 — Guitar for the Practicing Musician all the way through to Guitar One, Maximum Guitar, Guitar World Legends, Guitar World Classics, Guitar World Acoustic, Guitar School and GW), and I owe a debt to every transcriber, because I would never have made it this far in playing ability. Thank…

1 “I Smell a Rat” Buddy Guy Raw, ferocious blues. A blistering track recorded in 1979. The tension and pure emotion are palpable. An added bonus is Buddy’s brother Phil on rhythm guitar with a hip, flanged tone. 2 “Pack It Up” Freddie King The Burglar is on my short list of desert island blues records, and this is the opening track. Where do I start? The voice, guitar tone and groove are dripping with vibe. 3 “Bad Love” Luther Allison I’m a sucker for a good slow blues, and this one is performed with conviction. The intro hits you right in the gut. It’s from the album fittingly titled Soul Fixin’ Man. 4 “Blue Bash” Kenny Burrell Jazz organ-guitar combos get me every time, whether…

“Edge was always the tempo, the metronome for the band… HE DIDN’T FOLLOW LARRY — LARRY FOLLOWED THE EDGE” STEVE LILLYWHITE HAS a very unique distinction; he’s been witness to the monumental rise of U2. The band initially approached him to record their debut album, 1980’s Boy. After a lengthy tour, U2 was running on fumes and looking for direction. So they turned to Lillywhite to help them craft October. “My first thought was, ‘I’m not going to do it,’ because in those days, I had this strange, almost moralistic approach that artists should work with as many producers as possible,” Lillywhite says. “As a producer, I could work with as many artists as I wanted, so why would they have to only have one producer when I could go…

TOM MORELLO HAD BIG PLANS FOR 2020 — first and foremost, a world tour with a reunited Rage Against the Machine that would’ve seen him rocking stages from Pittsburgh to Prague, Kansas City to Krakow. Instead, like all of us, he was stuck at home. “Pretty frankly, it was a time of great anxiety and depression,” Morello admits to Guitar World. But then something shocking happened. “Weirdly,” he continues, “inspiration came… from Kanye West.” Let us state for the record that, no, Morello has not collaborated with the hip-hop icon. Rather, he found encouragement in something West had said in an interview. “He was talking about how he recorded the vocals to a couple of his big hit records on the voice memo of his phone,” Morello recalls. “And I…

(TODAY IN BOOMER Tales) Way back in the mid Seventies when I was a teen, when you walked in a music store and asked for a Stratocaster, the reply was, “Sunburst, black, white, blonde or natural?” Today, it will probably take the sales rep half an hour to rattle off all of the available models even before getting into finish options. Fender currently offers more than 50 Strat models, including three Acoustasonic acoustic-electrics and artist signature guitars representing every imaginable style of music. Simply put, a Strat is an essential instrument that every guitarist should own. Whether you don’t have one already or are thinking of getting another one, the two new models we looked at — the 75th Anniversary Stratocaster and American Ultra Luxe Stratocaster Floyd Rose HSS —…

STREET PRICE: $179 (each) MANUFACTURER: Pigtronix, pigtronix.com The Constellator features up to 600ms of analog echo, with a Feel button that engages smooth chorus or vibrato modulation. The Space Rip emulates analog synthesizer sounds with its pulse width modulated sawtooth and square wave voices in multiple octaves and zero-latency tracking. THE BOTTOM LINE The Pigtronix Constellator modulated analog delay and Space Rip PWM guitar synth will take your tone beyond the stars as feature-packed mini pedals.…

LET’S CARRY ON with our examination of soloing approaches to take with the song “Electric Gypsy,” which is built around a simple four-chord progression in the key of D major, D - A - Bm - G, with each chord lasting for a single bar. In the last column, I demonstrated some musically effective approaches to connecting pairs of notes that are a diatonic 6th, or six scale degrees, apart, using notes that are the 5th and major or minor 3rd of each chord. For example, the pair of notes that make # up the 6th over the D chord are A and the F . Likewise A chord , are the E pair and of C # notes . For the that Bm represent chord the notes are F…

Dan Buckley AGE: 69 HOMETOWN: Coldwater, Ontario, Canada GUITARS: Left-handed Hagstrom Swede through a Vox AC15 and Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal SONGS I’VE BEEN PLAYING: “Story of the Blues,” “Further on Up the Road” and various blues songs GEAR I WANT MOST: Gibson ES-339 and any Marshall tube amp David S. Thomson AGE: 64 HOMETOWN: San Diego, CA GUITARS: ’58 Strat, five more Strats, ’68 Gibson SG Jr., Gretsch Double-Jet w/Bigsby, Epiphone Korina Flying V SONGS I’VE BEEN PLAYING: SnakeOil Burlesque originals, the Groundhogs “3744 James Road,” Jeff Beck Group “Situation,” James Gang “Standing in the Rain” GEAR I WANT MOST: ’64 Gibson Trini Lopez Patrick V. Hernandez AGE: 32 HOMETOWN: Raleigh, NC GUITARS: PRS SE Custom 24, PRS SE Custom 24 seven-string with Sentient/ Nazgul pickups SONGS I’VE BEEN PLAYING:…

THEY CAME OUTTA Sacramento, California, and Akron, Ohio, their heads full of B-movie violence, cut-throat rock ’n’ roll and fetish-mag filth. They were the Cramps. The men looked like creeps and killers. The woman, Poison Ivy, looked like a high priestess or a Fifties movie queen. In a flip of the usual showbiz dynamic, the singer wore high heels and ended almost every gig naked while his partner — the woman — ran the show. She produced, managed, wrote the music, played the guitar and frequently reached over to tune the guitars of her bandmates. They might have seemed deviant, but the Cramps nevertheless played all-American music — the kind of music that had rocked the country before the British Invasion — a Frankenstein’s monster stitched together out of the…

CARLOS SANTANA IS one of a handful of guitarists whose style is so instantly recognizable that — if you hear just a handful of notes anywhere on the neck — there’s no doubt who’s playing them. He released his debut album, Santana, in 1969 and famously played at the Woodstock festival (where, some argue, he stole the show) that August. The following year, he cemented his rep with Abraxas, a now-classic album that stars three of his most popular songs — “Oye Como Va,” “Samba Pa Ti” and his cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Black Magic Woman” — all of which have been staples of rock radio for the past 50-plus years. As successful as Santana already was, however, his career shot to another level with the release of the star-studded…

STREET PRICES: $899.99 (75th Anniversary Stratocaster); $2,499.99 (American Ultra Luxe Stratocaster Floyd Rose HSS) MANUFACTURER: Fender, fender.com Extremely cool designs highlighted by matching painted headstocks and contrasting pickguards and control knobs. The 75th Anniversary has three Vintage-Style ’60s Single-Coil Strat pickups, classic master volume and tone knob configuration and five-position switch. The built-in Red Box provides eight separate speaker cabinet simulation settings, with different settings stored for each channel. The American Ultra Luxe Floyd Rose HSS boasts an Ultra Double Tap humbucker (bridge) with S-1 coil tap switch and two Ultra Noiseless Hot Strat single-coil (neck and middle). THE BOTTOM LINE: The 75th Anniversary model delivers classic Strat tone and playability for an affordable price, while the American Ultra Luxe Floyd Rose HSS offers the ultimate modern hot-rodded experience for…

DIGITAL MODELING AMPS, processors and apps offer studio guitarists an incredible variety of instantly accessible tones, but a lot of players still prefer the sound of genuine tube amps and real speakers captured by a microphone. Unfortunately, swapping amp heads and speaker cabinets to find the ideal tone is a bigger hassle and more time-consuming than accessing a menu and making a few clicks on an app or control panel. While that may not be a problem when working alone in a home studio, it can be a nightmare when impatient bandmates or clients are watching the clock. The DACS HeadLine offers guitarists who want to instantly access a wide variety of amp and speaker combinations a pro-quality, powerful and easy-to-use solution. Up to eight amps and four speaker cabinets…

WE HAVE NOW arrived at the fourth and final column analyzing a slide solo in open E tuning that I played over a backing track by guitarist Jim Oblon. (If you don’t know Jim, he’s a fantastic guitar player that you should check out!) A quick review: open E tuning is spelled, low to high: E, B, E, G#, B, E. For about 98% of this solo, I use an original Coricidin glass “bottle”-style slide from 1970; the great Duane Allman popularized the use of a glass Coricidin bottle for slide with his virtuoso slide work on such legendary recordings as “Statesboro Blues,” “Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’,” “Done Somebody Wrong” and many other Allman Brothers Band classics. Combining the use of a wah pedal with a slide is an approach…

“TOOTH AND NAIL” Dokken THIS UPTEMPO EIGHTIES-METAL classic showcases the shred-guitar virtuosity and musical brilliance and flair of the legendary George Lynch, a.k.a., “Mr. Scary.” The guitarist is flying by the seat of his musical pants here, as he manages to ride and stay on top of a fast-moving musical tsunami. As such, there are some subtle rhythmic and melodic variations in the song’s recurring riffs and pattern-based lead licks, which aren’t really noticeable... until you go to transcribe or sight-read them. For example, Lynch never plays the descending chromatic line at the start of the song (see bar 1) exactly the same way twice when recalling it later. (Notice the repeated E and B notes in the descent.) But to give you, the reader, consistency for learning the part,…