Innehållsförteckning för January 2022 från Guitar Player

FROM HIS FIRST session for the Mamas & the Papas when he was just 16, Lee Ritenour forged a career working in L.A.’s pressure-cooker session scene and became a first-call guy for every major act from Michael Jackson to Pink Floyd. “I’ve done every style of music except country,” he tells Guitar Player. After becoming one of the most recorded guitarists in history, Ritenour decided in 1976 to make the switch from session superstar to solo artist with his debut album, First Course. “For modern-day readers, that session era probably seems like a thousand years ago,” Ritenour says. “The mid-to-late ’70s was an interesting period because, having already been established as a studio musician playing just about everything, I needed to create my own sound. My first album was a…

SCOTT SHARRARD HAS no shortage of talents. The acclaimed guitarist, singer, songwriter and bandleader likewise has no dearth of providence. He was born on the very day his future lodestar, blues virtuoso Freddie King, died. Sharrard’s father, himself a guitarist, guided his son, exposing him to the Allman Brothers Band, the Band and Little Feat. Sharrard would describe these experiences as “Big Bang moments." In the years ahead, he built generational bridges to his triumvirate of top groups, and they beckoned to him. After studying music in Milwaukee and developing his chops, Sharrard formed a band with Gregg Allman’s saxophonist Jay Collins, resulting in his becoming lead guitarist from 2008 to 2017 with the Gregg Allman Band. Thus, the first plank was set. Sharrard formed the second plank by establishing…

JOAN JETT HAS so fully inhabited her 1981 signature hit, “I Love Rock ’N’ Roll,” that most people assume she wrote it. In fact it was penned by Alan Merrill, a New Yorker who in 1974 moved to the U.K., where he found success with the glam act Arrows. Although the group scored a handful of hits, ironically “I Love Rock ’N’ Roll” didn’t even scrape the lower reaches of the U.K. charts and might have been forgotten forever had Jett not chosen to cut it. Merrill told me the story behind the song’s creation in 2016, and we remained close friends up to his untimely death from Covid-19 in March 2020, making him one of the pandemic’s earliest victims. “Arrows needed a fourth single, and Mickie Most, our producer…

IF A CASUAL glance tells you the Baranik B-1 is an homage to the fun, funky, cheap and cheerful Italian catalog guitars of the ’60s, you are entirely correct. But it’s only when you get in close and take this beauty in your hands that you discover what that quirky inspiration becomes when rendered by an acclaimed luthier long known for his achievements in high-end acoustic guitar building. As a teenager growing up in New Jersey in the 1980s, Mike Baranik was inexorably drawn to heavy rock and the electric guitar that was front and center within it. Heading west in his late teens with plans to attend the Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles as a springboard to rock stardom, he was dismayed by the number of struggling…

HELMED BY THE visionary producer Bob Ezrin, along with engineers Jay Messina and Corky Stasiak, the recording sessions for Destroyer — held between January 4 and February 3, 1976 at the storied Record Plant in New York City — were deeply creative, occasionally combative and surprisingly disciplined. Still, it was the result of a heated combustion: a single-minded, highly educated and inspired musical professional attempting to harness the talents of four young rock and roll Turks hellbent on enjoying the newfound success they’d earned from the previous year’s smash live LP Alive! These testimonials from both band and studio guys alike — drawn exclusively and with permission from writer Ken Sharp’s superb 68-page booklet accompanying the Super Deluxe edition of the Destroyer 45th anniversary boxset — offer a riotous glimpse…

AMP MODELING ISN’T new territory for Boss. The company has plied those waters for many years and to popular effect with latter-day products like the GT-1000 floor controller and Katana amp series. But this compact and truly stompbox-sized offering somehow feels like a step in a new and entirely natural direction. The IR-200 Amp & IR Cabinet presents an impressive featuresto-size ratio and might be one of the boldest efforts yet to squeeze an entire rig into the smallest space possible, while still offering a comprehensive menu of amp types, cab sims, room reverbs and bountiful userprogrammable preset slots. In naming the IR-200 Amp & IR Cabinet, Boss has overtly recognized the explosion in credence given to an impulse response (IR) technology and its ability to accurately replicate the sounds…

DISTRIBUTED BY GODLYKE, this hand-built, tube-powered boost pedal from Italy’s Cicognani Engineering takes a dual-channel approach by featuring foot-switchable clean boost and mid-boost controls, a global cut knob and a bypass foot switch. A single LED indicates which circuit is active — green is clean boost and red is mid boost — and bypass (or “on” actually) is indicated with a blue LED. The switches are click-on/click-off mechanical types, and the unit appears to be well made and features high-quality components — at least judging by what is viewable, since the PC board inside obscures much of the actual circuit. However, the all-important 12AU7 tube is visible under a triangular plexiglass cover mounted to the die-cast metal housing, which is also covered with a panel of clear plexiglass. Power is…

ZAKK WYLDE FIRST came to prominence when he joined Ozzy Osbourne’s band as a replacement for Jake E. Lee, making his recorded debut with Ozzy in 1988 on No Rest for the Wicked. The gig was a dream job for Wylde, who’d always loved Black Sabbath and cited Randy Rhoads as one of his favorite guitarists. Ozzy initially wrote off Wylde as a Rhoads clone, but once the guitarist got the chance to show what he could do, it was a no-brainer for the Prince of Darkness. Wylde has featured on Ozzy’s records and in his live band on-and-off ever since. He embarked on a solo career while with Ozzy, recording Pride and Glory in 1994 and Book of Shadows in 1996. Wylde formed his own band, Black Label Society,…

SINCE ACE FREHLEY’S first departure from Kiss in 1980, the band’s lead guitar chair has been held down by many capable, creative players, including Vinnie Vincent, Bruce Kulick, Mark St. John, and, its occupant since 2002, former Black ‘N Blue guitar slinger Tommy Thayer. But if those players have served the band nobly, and even contributed a few fan favorites to Kiss’s repertoire — Kulick’s work on 1992’s Revenge is particularly noteworthy — the band’s melodic, hooky lead guitar legacy was framed, built, established and given enduring wings by one man: the inimitable Paul Daniel “Ace” Frehley, a.k.a. the Spaceman. “Y’know, I can remember as a kid hearing Eric Clapton interviewed, talking about his solo on Cream’s ‘Sunshine of Your Love,’” recalls the 70-year-old Frehley, fresh from a soundcheck with…

ALTHOUGH SUE FOLEY is originally from Canada, on two major occasions her life has directed her to Texas. At the end of the ’80s, the guitarist and singer-songwriter moved to Austin when the city’s late blues impresario Clifford Antone signed her to his record label and became her mentor. The timing and location couldn’t have been more perfect for a 21-year-old blues guitarist building a career. Right when Stevie Ray Vaughan was blowing the music world away and putting Austin on the map, Antone made sure Foley shared the stage with every national and local blues master who came through his eponymous club. Playing three sets per night, six nights a week, Foley honed her chops and found her musical home and kindred spirits within the Texas blues community (one…

SO YOU’RE FOOLING around on your guitar, and out of the blue comes that moment all songwriters live for but seldom experience: a burst of inspiration. You hit upon a musical idea and instantly feel in your bones that there’s a song just waiting to be born. The hours pass like minutes as you magically craft an entire new song. Well… almost. Inevitably, you come to realize that you’re missing a section or two. Unfortunately, the initial, glorious epiphany has faded, and you’re now faced with the hard work of writing. While any section could be missing, in my experience this challenge often involves creating an intro and/or a bridge section. For that reason, we’ll focus on those two sections in this lesson. So how does one create an intro or…

GIBSON SG SPECIAL This early ’60s-style SG Special has the vibe and sound heard on countless classic-rock recordings. Features include a comfortable SlimTaper mahogany neck, a bound rosewood fingerboard, two P-90 pickups, a three-way toggle switch and hand-wired controls with Orange Drop capacitors. The SG Special is available in Vintage Cherry and Ebony gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finishes, and comes with a hardshell case. $1,599. gibson.com DEAN CUSTOM RUN #16 ML The long-awaited limited Dean Custom Run returns with number 16. This ML in sandblasted grey has a swamp-ash body, a three-piece mahogany neck with 24 jumbo frets, an Evertune bridge and Fishman Fluence Moderns in black chrome. The production run is limited to 100 pieces. $1,799. deanguitars.com ERNIE BALL MUSIC MAN MAJESTY HYDROSPACE Limited to just 175 six-string models and…