Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2022 i Guitar World

VOL. 43 | NO. 12 | DECEMBER 2022 IT'S STORY TIME! IN THIS ISSUE — instead of focusing entirely on new albums — we bring you a collection of intriguing stand-alone stories. There is, of course, the story — as told by Noë Gold — about the now-legendary night that Jimi Hendrix and Star Trek star Leonard Nimoy connected in Cleveland and chewed the fat until the wee hours. There’s the fascinating (but not incredibly well-known) story about Johnny Thunders’ rise and fall with the New York Dolls, the Heartbreakers and beyond (as told by Mark McStea) — and, of course (assuming you’ve seen this issue’s cover), there’s the story of “Ego Death,” Polyphia’s brilliant new collaboration with Steve Vai, their fellow Ibanez-ax-wielding instrumental miracle worker. The stories are given…

Provocateurs AGITATORS. MERRY PRANKSTERS. TIM HENSON AND SCOTT LePage,the diabolical guitar duo and main drivers of the Dallas-based progressive band Polyphia, own up to all of it. Over the course of the group’s 12-year career, the two ax wizards have delighted in busting balls and messing with their fans’ heads (who can forget the band’s aptly titled 2017 EP, The Most Hated, on which the celebrated virtuosos purposely featured nary a lick of fretboard theatrics?), and in preparation for the release of their new album, Remember That You Will Die — their first studio offering since 2018’s New Levels New Devils — they came up with their most devious plan yet: the grand fake-out. “First, we made everybody wait a really long time,” Henson says. “We teased that we had…

SOUNDCHECK ERNIE BALL MUSIC Man’s long-standing collaboration with John Petrucci has resulted in the fascinating evolution of both his original JP signature model and the innovative Majesty model, the latter introduced in 2014. The new Music Man Majesty 8-String represents the pinnacle of Petrucci and Music Man’s collaboration to date, offering incredible tonal versatility, the performance advantages of a multi-scale design, refined playability and sleek, modern styling. The Majesty 8-String is ideal for guitarists seeking to expand their expressive capabilities, but unlike many other 8-string models, which are “specialty” instruments that most players will only use for a few songs, the new Majesty makes an ideal main instrument that can fulfill the roles of several guitars. FEATURES Featuring a solid body that is two inches longer than the 6- and…

WHEN IT COMES to mid-priced acoustics, your choices are boundless. And to make matters more complicated, once you’ve set your sights on a particular brand or model, along comes one of your trusted guitar-playing buddies to make a strong case for another. Well, let me be that friend for a moment. Fender makes a dizzying amount of musical instruments, and if there’s one category that’s often overlooked it’s their more traditional acoustics that get passed over for their cutting-edge Acoustasonic, which has garnered a great deal of cachet. Fender aims to change that perception with their excellent Paramount Series of acoustics that are not only budget-friendly, but also include all the classic body styles of a Dreadnought, Orchestra and Parlor. For a few weeks, I was able to brush up…

For video of this lesson, go to guitarworld.com/december2022 THIS MONTH, I’D like to continue exploring a topic that’s near and dear to my heart — using string-bending techniques and related phrasing approaches to craft emotionally expressive melodic lines. I’ve had many great guitar playing influences along the way, and all of these brilliant musicians continue to provide inspiration to me every day. I recently had the opportunity to see a dear friend of mine, Steve Lukather, perform with Toto, who came through Dallas playing on a double bill with Journey. It was a sold-out show in an arena packed with enthusiastic fans, which, as always, was wonderful! Truth be told, I have probably gotten more from Luke than any other player; he has been that big an influence on my…

“CALL ME LITTLE SUNSHINE” WORDS AND MUSIC BY TOBIAS “A GHOUL WRITER” FORGE AND MAX GRAHN. COPYRIGHT © 2022 PAPASTRELLO SONGS, WARNER CHAPPELL MUSIC SCANDINAVIA AB AND WOLF COUSINS. ALL RIGHTS FOR PAPASTRELLO SONGS ADMINISTERED BY BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT (US) LLC. ALL RIGHTS FOR WARNER CHAPPELL MUSIC SCANDINAVIA AB AND WOLF COUSINS ADMINISTERED BY WC MUSIC CORP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY PERMISSION. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF HAL LEONARD LLC.…

STAY CONNECTED WITH GUITAR WORLD ON A nice mix! I appreciate the nice mix of cover artists — four different people if I’m not mistaken? — in the September issue. Keep it up! —Gabe He lives for death metal Perhaps one page in the magazine could be dedicated to death metal each month? That would be of interest... And how about a writeup on the new Goatwhore album [Angels Hung from the Arches of Heaven]? The new single is a cerebral masterpiece. —Theo Are GWAR for real? This October 2022 issue of Guitar World was a hoot — the most diversity in your mag so far. I’ve been a subscriber for years and have never heard of a lot of these bands and artists. That’s all good. I started to…

AT THE END of the day, it really doesn’t matter how good a guitarist you are if the instrument you’re holding isn’t in tune. Only a handful of players have made a living wrestling guitars back into pitch without putting so much as a foot wrong over the years — Jeff Beck arguably being among the finest, considering how much abuse his whammy bar gets on any given night. But for the rest of us mortals, those chords, riffs and leads are just not going to sing as well as they could — or, indeed, as well as they should — if our tuning isn’t as close to perfect as humanly possible. There have been all sorts of components invented and reinvented for the guitar to help combat slippage, from…

After taking LISTENERS ON A NONSTOP THRILL RIDE THROUGHOUT Remember That You Will Die, Polyphia guitarists Tim Henson and Scott LePage knew that their album closer, “Ego Death,” had to be a doozy of a definitive statement. And who better to aid them in their conquest than a guy who knows a little something about knockout grandeur — their guitar hero, Steve Vai? “When Steve agreed to play on our song, it just blew my mind,” Henson says. “You know, right there I could just check off a box on my ‘dreams come true’ list.” “And then it actually happened. We got the track back, and we’re like, ‘Yep, that’s actually Steve Vai playing on our music,” LePage says. “You’re listening to it and you think, ‘OK, it doesn’t get…

WHEN EVH NAMED its new 5150 amps the Iconic Series, they hit the nail on the head. The original 5150 Eddie Van Halen signature amp introduced three decades ago is a bona fide classic that shaped and defined modern guitar tone for hard rock, metal and several other genres of popular music. Although EVH’s 5150 Iconic Series products are designed by James Brown, who collaborated with Ed on the original 5150 and 5150 II, the new amps are not reproductions but rather original designs that deliver all the tones of the predecessors along with a wider palette of Van Halen’s signature tones and beyond. Featuring a straightforward two-channel design, numerous pro features and a street price below $1,000, the EVH 5150 Iconic Series 40w 1x12 combo promises to deliver incredible…

For video of this lesson, go to guitarworld.com/december2022 IN THE PREVIOUS two columns, we looked at the basic elements that make up Muddy Waters’ rhythm guitar playing and approach to single-note lines and solos on his blues classic, “Rollin’ Stone.” This month, we’ll add another essential element to the mix, which is the inclusion of open-string drones. On guitar, a drone is most often played as an open string that is sounded and allowed to ring along with the performance of an additional melodic line. One of the reasons the key of E is used so often in blues guitar music is that both the open low and high E strings can conveniently be used as drones in order to fill out the sound while also serving to emphasize the…

For video of this lesson, go to guitarworld.com/december2022 THIS IS THE fourth installment on the live version of my tune “Triple J Hoedown,” featured on my latest album, Live at the Spud, recorded at the infamous Baked Potato in Los Angeles. Last month, we looked at the section that precedes my guitar solo and features drummer Gary Novak and myself freely improvising on the groove with no strict adherence to any chord progression. I’d now like to talk about what I play in the tune’s solo section. This section is essentially a basic 12-bar blues in the key of G with a ii - V - I (two -five - one) turnaround. At this point in the song, the groove shifts to “cut time,” or 2 2 meter. As a…

“SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND (PARTS 1-5)” WORDS AND MUSIC BY ROGER WATERS, DAVID GILMOUR AND RICK WRIGHT. COPYRIGHT © 1974 ROGER WATERS OVERSEAS LTD. AND PINK FLOYD MUSIC PUBLISHERS, INC. COPYRIGHT RENEWED. ALL RIGHTS FOR ROGER WATERS OVERSEAS LTD. ADMINISTERED BY BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT (US) LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY PERMISSION. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF HAL LEONARD LLC.…

DEVIN TOWNSEND OFTEN thrives on extremes. From his early Nineties breakthrough singing on Steve Vai’s Sex & Religion, to the brutalizing industrial death-thrash of Strapping Young Lad, to his coffee-centered prog opera Ziltoid the Omniscient, to the drone-heavy ambient daydream of last year’s Snuggles solo album, the Canadian eccentric isn’t known for staying in a specific lane for long. Townsend is just as predictably unpredictable on his 21st solo album, Lightwork, which may raise eyebrows from the metal faction of his fanbase over its grandiose, hard-swung power ballads (“Lightworker”), industrial biker rock (“Dimensions”) and cactus-scented, electro-acoustic strummers (“Vacation”). “Sometimes people who aren’t familiar with my work assume I do these things to be provocative,” Townsend suggests of his many musical mood swings, “Like, ‘You know what would really throw a…

IN THE 13 years since Alexisonfire released their last full-length album, much has changed. Screamo has gone from being a punchline to a beloved nostalgic era, as evidenced by the huge crowds jamming into Emo Nights across the continent. But when it came time to get back in the studio, capping off a reunion that until now has generated just a handful of singles to go along with regular touring, capitalizing on nostalgia was the last thing the Canadian quintet had in mind. The result of those sessions, Otherness, is a moodier affair. As always, the band is relying on singer/guitarist Dallas Green’s angelic voice for the hooks, punctuated by the demonic screaming of George Pettit and gravelly whiskey-and-cigarettes tenor of Wade McNeil. But the album relies less on the…

BEING A MUSICOLOGIST is like being a detective, especially when you’re tracking the artifacts of legendary performers who have passed. You research not in musty libraries but often in conversation with the survivors and cohorts of genius, following leads that take you down sonic wormholes and cultural tributaries. I’ve always compared digging up the truth about a legend like Jimi Hendrix to the journalist in Citizen Kane who searches for his quarry’s Rosebud. It’s like foraging for runes in the Great Pyramids, except instead of sarcophagi, you dig up priceless Stratocasters, rare minutiae of photographs and sagas of performances long since silenced. That’s how it went when I interviewed the disc jockey who brought Jimi Hendrix and Leonard Nimoy together — and also when I spoke with Spock before he…

The first time I saw Johnny Thunders — with the New York Dolls on U.K. TV in 1973 — I immediately connected with the reckless abandon that was apparent in every gesture, every guitar-hero pose he struck. And then there was the rawness of the band’s approach at a time when mainstream rock was still mired in the keyboard-laden pomposity of prog and the tired blues-rock tropes that had become the standard fallback for many so-called “serious” bands of the time. As a huge fan of British glam rock, particularly T. Rex and Slade, here, at last, was an American band unafraid to transcend the predictable and the expected, to deliver their own brand of shock rock ’n’ roll. Even 50 years later, when taking a solo, if in doubt,…

For video of this lesson, go to guitarworld.com/december2022 AS I MENTIONED last month, I recently recorded a follow-up to my 2003 album Blues Deluxe, titled Blues Deluxe, Vol. 2, for which I used a similar template, covering a handful of my favorite blues classics. One of the songs featured on Vol. 2 is Fleetwood Mac’s “Lazy Poker Blues.” I’m, of course, referring to the original incarnation of the band that included the great British blues guitarist Peter Green. I’m a huge fan of his, especially his sort of nonchalant performance approach of, “Let’s just wing it and see how it goes!” “Lazy Poker Blues” is a standard blues shuffle in the key of E, featuring a signature lick along the lines of FIGURE 1. Played with a triplet feel and…

“CALL ME LITTLE SUNSHINE” Ghost BEHIND ALL THE theatrics and elaborate makeup presented by Ghost frontman Tobias Forge (a.k.a. Papa Emeritus) and his band of “Nameless Ghouls” (with some very capable contributions from guitarist extraordinaire Fredrik Åkesson) you’ll find well-crafted songs and rock guitar parts, with this recent single from the band’s latest album, Impera (2022), featuring great riffs and melodic lines. When playing the Intro riff that kicks off the song, make sure your fretting fingers “stand tall,” so as to not inadvertently mute the open-string notes, which should be allowed to ring. You’ll notice how, in bar 5, when the tone switches from clean to dirty (w/dist.), some of the notes are played on different strings. This heavy incarnation of the riff reappears in the song’s chorus (see…